Blog Posts

Surviving another polar vortex, and the polar brain freeze

1/31/2019

Charles City Press, 1-31-19

If you are reading this, congratulations!

You’ve survived the recent “polar vortex,” whatever that is.

Your eyeballs have come unfrozen, and your brain has warmed up enough that you’re able to comprehend written language. I’m very proud of you.

If you’re like me, you became tired of people telling you how cold it is. I know it’s cold. I’m right here with you.

All over social media, people posted photos and videos and “memes” about how cold it was. I’ll admit I posted some, too. I’m not immune to jumping on the icy bandwagon.

I think I saw the video of the guy blowing soap bubbles in the freezing temperatures about a kazillion times. It was kind of cool the first time — the bubbles would freeze as they were floating through the air, then they would become kind of squishy, like gum drops. Then they’d burst with a visible puff of vapor. Other people tried it and failed.

Like I said, neat to watch the first time, highly annoying the 10th or 11th time and beyond.

Not nearly as annoying, however, as the viral videos that made the rounds the last time we had a polar vortex, a few years ago.

Remember? People started throwing boiling water into the air like a pack of morons. It was embarrassing to watch.

It all started with one person, who claimed that it was so cold where he lived (I think it was Wisconsin, go figure) that he could throw a pot of boiling water into the air and it would freeze before it came back down.

A ground-breaking experiment, right?

The theory was that water, when exposed to extremely cold temperatures, turns from liquid to solid. Seems I’ve heard that before, like maybe in third grade.

The guy had someone shoot video as he threw the boiling water into the air, and what seemed to be snow and ice crystals and mist came back down to Earth. At the time, I found the whole thing a mildly amusing way to spend about 35 seconds of my life.

I said a little prayer for the person who did the experiment, asking the Good Lord to point him in the direction of some kind of treatment center where he can get the help he needs, then I moved on to other endeavors.

But there is a good percentage of Americans who aren't content to just sit idly by and watch an idiot do idiotic things. They have to join in. It’s the polar brain freeze.

Once that initial video was up, thousands of others decided they had to go to the trouble to boil a large pot of water, bundle up under layers of clothing so they could stay warm, lug the pot of dangerously hot water somewhere outside into dangerously frigid temperatures, and throw the water into the air, all the while filming it.

The results? Yeah, you guessed it. At least a hundred people burned the heck out of themselves.

It got so bad that meteorologists were following their weather reports with warnings to viewers and listeners.

"Please," they said, "please don't boil water and then take it outside and throw it into the air. You'll probably just end up burning the flesh off your Uncle Charlie's face."

Oh, and don't lick a flagpole either. Even if someone double-dog dares you.

A dozen or so other people managed to avoid the burning part but suffered injuries when they slipped on the once-boiling-now-frozen water and fell onto their butts. Or their heads. Or both.

One local media publication where I lived at the time even tried the experiment themselves, and reported on themselves, as if they were breaking news. They published the story on the front page.

That was some top-notch investigative reporting — they uncovered the stunning facts. I had always suspected that whole section in my third grade science book about water freezing when it gets cold was some kind of fabricated liberal conspiracy, but sure enough, those scientists were telling the truth.

I’m still waiting for that newspaper to publish the headline, "Area Fishermen Magically Walk Around On Lake Without Drowning."

It’s not fair to single out that one publication, however. Hundreds of local and national news organizations also attempted the boiling water trick, as a part of their coverage of the polar vortex, with varying results.

And all over YouTube, as recently as yesterday, you could find new videos of people doing things with hot water in cold weather. One guy filled one of those super-duper water guns with boiling water and shot it out into the cold. I have to admit, this was kind of cool to watch, and I wish I would have thought of it.

Then there was the guy who wanted to show what happened when you urinate in 50-below wind chills. I have to admit, this was excruciating to watch, and I wish I had never seen it. It was disturbing.

However, it's always disturbing to me when I realize that I live in a world where people have to tell other people that throwing boiling water into the air is a bad idea.
Or that water freezes when it gets cold.

Anyway, keep warm. And congratulations for surviving another polar vortex.

Take heart. Spring is just around the corner.

I promise.

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Expressing ‘outrage’ over razors and burgers

1/17/2019

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Charles City Press, 1-17-19

People are outraged.

Or so they tell us.

Yesterday, I saw an advertisement that purported to be about razor blades, although it didn’t seem to have anything to do with razor blades to me.

It was about 45 seconds long and addressed issues like bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault. It deftly worked in images of men and boys displaying what was obviously bad behavior, integrating images of other men and boys displaying good behavior.

“We believe in the best in men,” said the voice-over. “To say the right thing. To act the right way.”

The intent, it seems to me, is to encourage men to not behave like jerks — and to lead by example and show other men, and our children, how not to behave like jerks. Don’t excuse bad behavior by brushing it off and repeating the unimaginative “boys will be boys” cliche.

I still haven’t figured out where razor blades fit in, but it seemed like a decent, thoughtful message to me.

However, the essential directive, “don’t be an awful person,” was apparently too much to ask of some folks. The commercial sparked a wave of “outrage.” Many decried the commercial as “offensive to men.” Some even called for a mass boycott of the company.

Outraged? Over a little razor blade commercial? OK, sure.

The NCAA Champion Clemson football team visited the White House earlier this week, which is traditional. With the U.S. Government under partial shutdown, there were not enough people available to prepare and serve the team a dinner. So the President decided to buy huge piles of fast-food burgers and pizza, paid for out of his own pocket, and told the players to help themselves.

That’s not traditional, and it seems silly. Most of the players didn’t seem to mind, a few grumbled about it. The food sat there for quite some time and got cold before anyone had a bite. Cold fast food isn’t a culinary delight. The whole episode was good fodder for jokes from late-night comedians.

A whole lot of people said they were outraged about it, though. The editorial pages of major publications, cable news hosts and internet postings all expressed unhinged anger over the situation.

To me, it doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing to get that worked up about. The NCAA champs got served a lousy meal. A prime rib dinner would have been nice, for sure, but they’re still the NCAA champs, they still got to visit the White House, and now they’ll have a cool story to tell for the rest of their lives, about how the billionaire President bought them burgers.

Meanwhile, a freshman congresswoman called the billionaire President a dirty word earlier this month. There has been a plenty of outrage directed toward her, and although I honestly wish people in the public eye would conduct themselves with better manners, and raise the level of discourse, I don’t find myself becoming outraged. Perhaps that has something to with the fact that I’ve heard the man who is now President publicly use dirty words and call people childish names time and time again over the last 30 years — all the way up to this past week. There aren’t many people more responsible than he is for the coarsening of our culture. I know, two wrongs don’t make a right — but turnabout is fair play — so when someone uses a potty mouth to insult the king of potty mouths, it doesn’t ruffle my feathers all that much.

Meanwhile, our own congressman, Steve King, essentially told a major publication this month that he didn’t understand why being known as a white nationalist or a white supremacist is a bad thing. This would probably be outrageous to me, if it weren’t for the fact that the congressman has said things far dumber than that over and over again for the last 16 years or so, and our friends and neighbors keep electing the guy, over and over again. It seems a little late to be outraged now.

I tend to get annoyed about things, but not outraged, so it’s hard for me to believe people who claim they are outraged. I sometimes think they’re faking it — or maybe they’re a little unstable and need help.

I have a friend, who I grew up with, who now works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He defends our borders. He doesn’t work on the Mexican border, he works on the Canadian border.

When everyone talks about border security, they talk about the southern border — but the northern border is just as important.

My friend’s primary job is to protect our country from terrorists, illegal aliens, illegal weapons and illegal drugs. It’s just as much a priority in Minnesota as it is in Texas. He trained hard and he works hard.

Because of the government shutdown, he hasn’t been paid for his work since before Christmas, but he still goes in, every day, and does it. He has a wife and kids and a home. He has all the same bills you and I have, and has to figure out how to pay them.

He is not a politically outspoken person, and is not in any way responsible for the shutdown. He loves his country and doesn’t bad mouth its leaders — essentially his bosses — even when he disagrees with them. He’s too responsible. He doesn’t complain about the situation he’s in — at least not to me. In fact, he’s very optimistic, and quick to tell me not to worry, there are a lot of folks worse off than he is.

He knows that when the shutdown ends, he is supposed to receive back pay, but that’s not a certainty — and there’s no telling when the shutdown will end. I don’t know how he’s making ends meet in the meantime.

I love my old friend, and there’s nothing I can do to help him right now.

But if I were the kind of person who got outraged, I think that might be the kind of thing I’d get outraged about.

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Statehouse election is still in question, over 29 votes

12/28/2018

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Charles City Press, 12-28-18

Kayla Koether, Democratic candidate for Iowa House district 55, believes that 29 uncounted ballots in Winneshiek County are valid, and should be counted.
Incoming House Minority Leader Todd Prichard, a Charles City Democrat, agrees.

Iowa’s Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate, who is charged with overseeing the state’s elections, does not.

None of them seem to have an answer to an important question: Were there other valid votes that went uncounted in the November election, and if there were, how many?

“It’s a possibility,” Prichard said. “This is getting noticed because this election has such a close margin. It’s possible this happened in districts where the margin wasn’t so close, where people weren’t paying as close attention.”

It’s possible the number of valid, mailed-in ballots that went uncounted could be in the thousands. More than 547,000 Iowa residents voted absentee this year, a record number for the state in an election with the highest ever turnout in a midterm election of 1.3 million voters.

The current dispute is the result of a conflict between state law and current practices of the U.S. Postal Service. Iowa law says mailed absentee ballots received after election day must have a postmark to allow election officials to determine they were mailed by the mandatory deadline of the day before the election. However, the postal service doesn't typically postmark absentee ballot envelopes.

It's not clear how many Iowa ballots were not counted because they lacked postmarks. A spokesman for Pate has said the office does not know. Messages sent to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office were not returned on Thursday.

“The legislature will decide who wins this election and what votes are counted,” Prichard said Thursday. “As I understand it, it will start and end in the House.”

Koether trails Republican incumbent Michael Bergan by nine votes in district 55, which includes Clayton, Fayette and Winneshiek counties. In November, she sued Pate and Winneshiek County Auditor Ben Steines after they refused to count 33 mailed-in ballots in her race against Republican state Rep. Michael Bergan. Steines and Pate said the envelopes lacked a postmark that would indicate when they were mailed.

State law states that absentee ballots must be mailed no later than the day before the election to be counted. For ballots that arrive after Election Day, the law says officials can use either the postmark or an “intelligent mail barcode” to determine whether it was mailed on time. Court records indicate the envelopes containing the 33 ballots in question may have been too thick to run through the postmark machine.

The envelopes did, however, contain a postal bar code on a lower edge that would likely show when they were mailed. A court ruling gave Koether the right to determine whether the uncounted ballots were mailed on time. Of the 33, it was determined that 29 were, in fact, mailed on time.

“There is information on the envelope that tells you when the ballot entered the system. The state code requires that the ballot enters the system before election day. It’s that simple,” Prichard said. “If the ballot was mailed before election day, it should be counted. I think the Iowa Code is pretty clear, and I think it should be applied in this case.”

Pate and Steines, however, argued that state law doesn't allow those types of barcodes to be used to affirm a ballot mail date, and declined to count the ballots.

Koether asked Judge Scott Beattie in a lawsuit she filed Nov. 29 to order them to count the 29 absentee ballots that in question. Beattie concluded that the Iowa Constitution and state law establishes a procedure for legislative seat challenges to go to the lawmakers themselves and not the courts.

"That power is constitutionally given to the legislative branch, and this court lacks subject matter jurisdiction as a result," he wrote.

Prichard said the judge ruled that the right place to contest the election is in the legislature, pursuant to Iowa code.

Last Friday, Koether notified Bergan and Pate that she's contesting the election. That triggered a seldom-used formal process that requires the House to consider election disputes. The Republican-led Iowa House or a committee appointed by leaders now must act as a court to consider evidence and decide whether to count the ballots.

“What I expect to happen is there will be some discussions as how we adjudicate this,” Prichard said. “It’s really an undefined process — a lot of it will rest on the Speaker of the House, Linda Upmeyer, as to how she wants to deal with this.”

Prichard said that in the few times this has happened in the past, a committee was formed and the committee made a majority and a minority recommendation. The recommendations were then voted on by the full House.

He added all of this might be unnecessary, if Pate would just count the votes.

“The votes were properly cast — they are legally cast ballots,” Prichard said. “There really isn’t a grey area in what should be done. It’s clear these 29 ballots should be counted.”

If the ballots were counted and it was clear Koether lost, Prichard said it was “very likely” that she would drop the issue.

“If we knew what the vote count would be, that would cut to the chase,” he said. “The 29 votes may or may not sway the election, but I think it will prevent 29 voters from being disenfranchised, and it will uphold their right to vote, which I think is important. I think it also gives legitimacy to the winner, whoever that may ultimately be.”

Prichard didn’t rule out future legislation to clarify the law.

“If that’s what it takes, yeah, but my point is the law is already clear and straightforward,” he said. “I think the code is clear. I think the guidance from the secretary of state is incorrect, but if we need to legislate what the secretary of state has somehow made unclear, then I guess that’s what we’ll have to do.”

At this point, it isn’t clear to anyone if those 29 votes will ever be counted.

“I don’t know, I hope they do, I think they should, and I think common sense says that they should,” Prichard said. “I’m going to try to remain hopeful.”

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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Teaching gun safety in school is just common sense

12/27/2018

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Charles City Press, 12-27-18

When I was in eighth grade, the state of Iowa made it mandatory for every kid to take a certified gun-safety class before he or she could get a hunting license.

I took my class in school. My certified hunter-safety teacher was Mr. Campbell, and it was the only one of all of Mr. Campbell’s tests that I ever aced. A perfect score.

That was a big deal. It was not an easy test, and you see, a lot of my junior high classmates were afraid of Mr. Campbell.

He was one tough teacher, and had a personality that could be intimidating to your typical eighth-grader. Eighth-graders think they’re smart (they’re not), they think they’re funny (they’re usually not), and they like to pretend they’re not afraid of anyone or anything (they’re actually afraid of everyone and everything). I was no different.

But my classmates and I had met our match with Mr. Campbell. He saw right through our phony bravado.

Strict and sturdy, Mr. Campbell was a former Marine who taught science, anatomy, health, and a few other things. He was loud, he was direct, he meant business and he expected his students to mean business, too.

Each class was like a 45-minute march, with Mr. Campbell as the drill sergeant, barking out clear directions. You stayed in line. If you fell out of line, he’d let you know. Believe me, you didn’t want him to let you know.

I’ve no doubt that’s the best way to learn things in the United States Marine Corps. I’m not sure if that’s the best way to learn things in eighth grade, but it’s one way, and it was Mr. Campbell’s way. And we did, in fact, learn things.

Mr. Campbell was an avid hunter and an expert dog-trainer, and in my opinion, there has never been anyone in the history of the world more qualified to teach kids gun safety.

He taught the class after school, in his classroom. Many of us wanted hunting licenses, so the room was packed.

I however, was unable to take the scheduled class. I had previous obligations, and couldn’t fit it in. So my dad, also a teacher, talked to Mr. Campbell and made special arrangements for me to take the class at another time — one-on-one.

It was just me and Mr. Campbell.

One of us was scared out of our minds, and it wasn’t Mr. Campbell.

Earlier this month, it was reported that middle school students in two area school districts will be learning how to properly handle firearms as part of a mandatory hunter safety course being introduced in the next school year.

Students in both the seventh and eighth grades in the North Butler and Clarksville will take part in the classes starting in 2019. High school students will also be able to take part in a voluntary class teaching how to properly use firearms.

This was surprising to me, only because I assumed that this has been happening all along, in every school district.

If we’re not teaching kids gun safety in every school, we should be.

I was also stunned to hear so many speaking out against this.

According to the reports, students will use inoperable guns with replica ammunition to learn how to load and unload bullets and hold and care for firearms. They’ll also learn how to safely carry guns and how to recognize when firearms are loaded. The hunter safety courses are expected to last about a week as part of the physical education curriculums and will be taught by a naturalist from the Butler County Conservation Board. Parents can opt to have their children sit out the courses.

Seventh and eighth graders will be required to complete the course at North Butler; only eighth graders will be required to do so at Clarksville. For students interested in other grades, there will an option evening course available.

I am absolutely dumbfounded to learn that there is anything about this that is the least bit controversial to anyone with common sense. I say the two administrations of those two school districts deserve high praise for having the intelligence to decide do something that we all should have been doing all along. I hope that other schools in Iowa start to do the same.

As the superintendent of one of the schools said, gun safety, and knowing how to handle firearms, is beneficial to anyone — even those who never plan to hunt.

I have no idea if that superintendent, or the Butler County naturalist, are anything like Mr. Campbell, but if they are, those kids will learn things that they’ll never forget — things that will be helpful to them for the rest of their lives. The class may even save their life — or the life of someone else — someday.

Guns mean serious business. And when Mr. Campbell taught me about guns, I meant serious business, too.

My one-on-one gun-safety class with the terrifying Mr. Campbell was ultimately nothing to worry about. I already knew a lot of the material we covered, as my dad and my uncles had already schooled me on guns and hunting long before I’d ever walked into Mr. Campbell’s classroom. Still, I didn’t know everything, and he made sure I learned all I needed.

I also learned that Mr. Campbell wasn’t such a scary guy after all. If you were respectful to him, he was respectful to you. If you made an effort, he appreciated it.

And if you brought him some venison sausage from the first deer you ever shot, to thank him for taking the time to teach you how to shoot it, you’d made a friend for life.

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A Christmas Story: Tidings of comfort and joy

12/20/2018

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Charles City Press, 12-20-18

The young woman furrowed her brow and rubbed her eyes. Her fingers then straightened her long black hair. Everything in the store she had looked at that was any good cost just a little too much, and everything that was within her price range just wasn’t quite good enough.

She needed a perfect Christmas gift for the perfect guy — a blue-eyed, baby-faced guy who had always been sweet to her — and she became more and more frustrated as she roamed through aisle after aisle. She had looked at sweaters, watches, jackets, gloves, gadgets and colognes — and just about everything she liked cost more than she could ever afford on her wage as a waitress at a small cafe. She didn’t know whether to cry or scream. If he didn’t like his Christmas gift, she thought, maybe he wouldn’t like her anymore.

A white-haired older woman watched her and knew immediately that the young lady had to be searching for a present for a very important boyfriend. As the two came closer to one another in the cologne aisle, she cleared her throat and spoke cheerfully.

“Merry Christmas, dearie,” the older woman said.

The young woman looked at her. The older woman’s eyes sparkled through her spectacles, and she wore a navy-colored sweatshirt with a red-nosed reindeer pictured on the front — a gift from grandkids the previous Christmas.
Something about the way the strange old woman had said it soothed the younger woman. Maybe it was the silliness of the word “dearie,” or maybe it was just the musical tone in her voice.

The young woman smiled. “Merry Christmas to you, too,” she replied.

“Oh, dearie.” (There was that word again.) “You don’t have a thing to worry about. With a smile as pretty as that, your man will love you no matter what you give him. He won’t let you get away.”

The polite, pretty smile quickly became a sincere and beautiful one — the kind of smile that belongs on the cover of a magazine or in a feature film. The young woman simply beamed. “Thank you,” she managed to mutter in reply.

Finding the right gift was easy after that, and as she merrily waited in the checkout line she bumped shoulders with a middle-aged man. A tired fellow with a receding hairline and a growing belly, he didn’t care much for Christmas shopping and cared even less for crowded checkout lines. His patience was limited and he was beginning to dread the anticipated hassle of another Christmas Day — and the outrageous bills that were soon to follow.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled to her after they had bumped.

“No problem,” she said. Then she gave him that sincere smile. “Happy holidays.”

It had been a long time since a pretty young woman had smiled at him like that. His beaten posture changed as his heart lifted in his chest — his upper body seemed to inflate and his face softened significantly. He held his head high and smiled back at her — as he would smile at the whole world for the rest of the evening.

“Happy holidays to you, too,” he cheerfully exclaimed to her moments later as he exited the store, bags of gifts in tow. He seemed to be walking on air. “And season’s greetings and Merry Christmas to all of you,” he exclaimed to all the busy check-out clerks, his once-grumbling voice now lilting with gentle laughter.

His attitude had changed so drastically that he happily left a much-larger-than-usual amount of money in the charity bucket next to the Salvation Army Santa ringing the bell outside. Then, as he drove out of the parking lot, he came across a motorist with a flat tire. Normally he would have driven right by, but today he pulled over to help.

As he put the spare tire on for the nice, white-haired woman, he chatted away — and even complimented her on her “Rudolph sweatshirt.” He laughed as she told him stories about her grandkids. He told her he couldn’t wait to have grandkids of his own, and he was surprised to hear himself saying that — and meaning it.

He then followed her to the repair shop — the only one in town still open on Christmas Eve — and insisted on paying to have the tire repaired.

“It’s not much,” he told the woman. “Consider it a Christmas gift. Just promise to spend the money I’ll save you on your wonderful grandkids.”

She promised. He waved good-bye, shouted “Merry Christmas” and hurried home. For the first time in a long time, he couldn’t wait to see his wife — and to give her a kiss.

The typically-gruff repair shop owner witnessed the man’s generosity, and was so impressed that he decided to spread a little generosity of his own. He gave his only employee the rest of the day off, with full pay and a holiday bonus. It was just a small bonus — after all, business had been slow — but it was more than what the young man had expected, which was nothing.

The blue-eyed mechanic was so thrilled he actually gave his surprised boss a hug as he wished him “happy holidays” and skipped out the door. Although the moment was awkward, it somehow seemed appropriate, and the repair shop owner was pleasantly amazed at how easily he could positively impact the attitude of an employee.

Now the baby-faced young man would have just enough time to get to the jewelry store before it closed, and just enough money to pay off the engagement ring on which he had been making payments for the last few months.

It was a Christmas present for his girlfriend, a thoughtful young woman with long, black hair. He was going to ask for her hand in marriage tonight, on Christmas Eve. He’d always been sweet to her, and she seemed to care about him an awful lot. He hoped and prayed that she would say yes.

When your girl has a smile as pretty as that, you don’t let her get away.

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Merry Christmas, and don’t let the Scrooges and Grinches bring you down

12/13/2018

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Charles City Press, 12-13-18

I love Christmas music. It’s OK if you don’t.

I understand if you hate it. I understand if you’re tired of hearing it. Some radio stations go overboard with it, and start playing Christmas songs in October, and I agree that’s pushing it.

So I change the station. If you hate Christmas music, I urge you to do the same. But please, let me enjoy it.

A handful of radio stations have taken the classic holiday song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” off their Christmas playlists. That’s disappointing to me. The song is a lovely duet written in 1944. The complaint is that the song’s lyrics portray a man attempting to coerce a woman into having sex against her will. I suppose that’s a credible interpretation, but it isn’t my interpretation.

I try not to worry about it. I like the song, but if I never hear it again, my life will be no different, so I try to laugh it off.

At the same time, my preferred genre of music — when it’s not Christmas time — is heavy metal, so all my life, groups of people have been attempting to ban songs I like, for a variety of reasons — some valid, most not. So I take offense when someone else tells me what I should or shouldn’t listen to.

I listen to what I like. If I don’t like it, I don’t listen to it. It’s pretty easy.

That’s how I approach the Christmas season.

There have been similar complaints this year about the beloved traditional television movie, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” The claymation classic has been around since 1964, but for some reason this year there are a handful of people pointing out that the film contains bullying and bigotry, and Santa Claus himself is portrayed as being kind of a jerk.

This is not news. I’ve known this since I was a little kid. Rudolph and his weird little dentist-wannabe elf friend are bullied, and Santa is close-minded and crotchety. And then, in the end, Rudolph and the dentist-elf save Christmas. In between, there are a bunch of cute little songs. What’s the big deal? I enjoyed it, my kids enjoyed it, and my grandkids will enjoy it, so let’s leave it alone.

There are Scrooges and Grinches out there everywhere, who seem to have nothing better to do than try to ruin Christmas for the rest of us.

Then there are those who insist that their interpretation of Christmas is the only interpretation. Some will tell you that it’s too much about Christ, that we need to water down the religious aspects that turn people off. Others will say that there’s not enough Christ, that Christmas should only be a day of worship, that all the commercialism and secular traditions should be stopped.

Religious or secular? It’s completely up to each person, I just don’t like when that person insists that his way is the only way, and everyone else’s way is wrong.

As for me, my thought is that there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of both.

Then there are those people who insist on correcting my Christmas vocabulary. They get their Rudolph-decorated panties all in a bunch when I tell them “Happy Holidays.” They tell me that the proper greeting is “Merry Christmas,” and that when I say “Happy Holidays,” I’m declaring a “War on Christmas” and I’m part of some worldwide liberal conspiracy to “take Christ out of Christmas.”

Bless their little hearts. Aren’t they cute?

They think they are fighting political correctness, but the irony is, when they do this, they are being exponentially politically correct — and they aren’t self-aware enough to realize it.

I’ll wish them a Merry Christmas, a happy holiday, a quaint Kwanzaa, or a joyeux noel, or anything I want to wish them anyway. I honestly hope their days are merry and bright.

Because there really isn’t much about Christmas I don’t enjoy.

I love the snow. I don’t love shoveling it or driving in it, but I love looking at it.

I love the lights and decorations. I love that I have an eight-foot tall inflatable penguin in my front yard for about a month every year. His name is Opus.

What does an inflatable penguin have to do with Christmas? Probably nothing, but I love Opus anyway.

I love that my wife arranges a nativity scene every year, and decorates the house and the tree, and many of the ornaments on our tree are symbols of memories that mean a lot to her.

I love time with my family and my friends, playing games and watching football and singing songs and sometimes arguing with them. Sometimes I treasure the arguments most of all.

I love Dad’s Christmas prime rib and Mom’s Christmas soup or chili. I love all the sweets and treats and goodies.

I love getting presents and I love giving them, and I love the excitement of the kids — and how it’s contagious. Sometimes for a brief moment, a glimpse of how I felt at that age flashes through me.

I love how every Christmas, my mother-in-law reads the book “A Cup of Christmas Tea,” which is a tender story of a young man’s reluctant visit to an elderly aunt at Christmastime, and the unexpected joy it brings. She reads it aloud to the whole family, and I don’t know how closely the kids and spouses and grandkids and great grandkids are listening, but I am. And I love how it brings a tear to her eye as she reads, and a tear to mine as I listen.

I love watching the three greatest Christmas movies — “It’s a Wonderful Life,” any version of “A Christmas Carol” — and the best Christmas movie of all — “Die Hard.”

Yes, “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie. You know why? Because I want it to be.
Did I mention I loved the songs?

I love Luke, Chapter 2. I love that Jesus and Mary and Joseph were poor, and without a place to stay, and the baby was wrapped in swaddling cloth and placed in a manger, among the beasts. I love the message of charity. I love that he was visited by strangers from far away, who offered gifts. A host of angels made a joyful noise so loud that it frightened shepherds, but the shepherds were told there was nothing to be afraid of. They were told to rejoice. To celebrate. I love that.

I love Christmas. It fills me with cheer.

And I love people who hate Christmas, I love people who want to ruin Christmas, and I love people who insist that my Christmas must be the same as their Christmas.

They make me laugh. Which also fills me with cheer.

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Contested election draws Prichard into first political battle as minority leader

12/6/2018

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Charles City Press, 12-6-18

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

One month after the election, there’s still one race in Iowa that is yet to be decided.

That race has drawn Todd Prichard, a Charles City Democrat, into his first political battle as the new Iowa House minority leader — and Prichard won’t even officially take the post until next month.

“This is my first political battle and first legal battle as minority leader,” Prichard said. “The bottom line is, this is about election integrity.”

Prichard owns Prichard Law Office in Charles City and has practiced law in the community since 2004. He was chosen to replace Mark Smith of Marshalltown as minority leader when when the House Democratic caucus met last month in Des Moines. He will start his fourth term in the Iowa House when the next legislative session begins in January. Prichard represents Iowa House District 52, which consists of Floyd, Chickasaw and the eastern third of Cerro Gordo counties.

As minority leader, Prichard is the chief spokesperson for the party on issues, and the contested house race in nearby Winneshiek County in northeast Iowa is a big one. Last week, Democrat Kayla Koether — Democratic candidate in Iowa House District 55 — sued Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and Winneshiek County Auditor Ben Steines after they refused to count 33 mailed-in ballots in her race against Republican state Rep. Michael Bergan. Steines and Pate said the envelopes lacked a postmark that would indicate when they were mailed. Koether trails Bergan in the election by just nine votes out of more than 14,000 cast in the northeast Iowa district that includes Clayton, Fayette and Winneshiek counties.

“I come at this as an Iraq war vet,” said Prichard, who holds the rank of Major in the U.S. Army Reserve, served in the Army and has been deployed four times, including a tour in Iraq. “One of our biggest duties was to protect and promote legitimate elections. This situation flies in the face of that, and in the face of common sense.”

State law states that absentee ballots must be mailed no later than the day before the election to be counted. For ballots that arrive after Election Day, the law says officials can use either the postmark or an “intelligent mail barcode” to determine whether it was mailed on time. Court records indicate the envelopes containing the 33 ballots in question may have been too thick to run through the postmark machine. The envelopes do, however, contain a postal bar code on a lower edge that would likely show when they were mailed. A court ruling Monday gave Koether the right to determine whether the uncounted ballots were mailed on time.

“If the ballots were properly and timely mailed, the votes need to count,” Prichard said. “I’m disappointed it’s been so difficult to get the election officials to do what should be clear and obvious.”

Pate and Steines disagree, and argue that an “intelligent mail barcode” is a code that a county election official would place on the envelope. Only six of Iowa’s 99 counties use such a bar code to track absentee ballots.

“Absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day and do not contain postmarks, nor a county-specific Intelligent Mail Barcode, are not eligible to be counted,” Pate said.

“We think that guidance from the Secretary of State’s office is incorrect,” Prichard said.

More than 547,000 Iowans voted absentee in the recent election, when Democrats picked up five Iowa House seats to narrow Republican control, 53 to 46, excluding the contested seat. Pate’s position calls into question whether there were more votes — perhaps thousands of more votes — that were valid but never counted. Iowa officials acknowledge that the Postal Service does not put postmarks on all ballots, but it’s not clear how many ballots statewide might not have been counted because they lacked postmarks. A spokesman for Pate said the office does not know.

“Most elections aren’t this close, so they don’t receive the scrutiny this one has,” said Prichard, who added that the uncounted ballots are not a result of voter error, or even post office error. “It’s standard processing for the post office.”

On Monday, Polk County Judge Scott Beattie ordered officials to preserve the ballots and determine whether they were mailed on time. He did not rule on whether the ballots would ultimately be counted, and said that issue could be argued in court later.

“I look at it from a voter’s standpoint,” Prichard said. “If these were my ballots, I’d want them to be counted.”

The order requires Steines to work with the Postal Service to determine whether the postal bar codes contain the date ballots were placed in the mail, and if so, the information must be provided to the court and attorneys by Friday.

“The judge ruled that the ballots need to be preserved and the information from the bar codes needs to be made known,” Prichard said. “The bar code should have that information as to when the ballots entered the mail stream.”
Pate, however, said on Monday that Steines followed that law, and the Iowa State Canvassing Board officially certified the election results.

“Early this morning, the Honorable Scott J. Beattie issued his order denying Ms. Koether’s request to delay the certification of the November 6 election. Today, we officially certified those results,” Pate’s office said in a statement. “Winneshiek County Auditor Ben Steines followed the law. Iowa Code is clear on this matter.”

All the 33 ballots in question were received the day after the election. Prichard believes that would indicate they were likely mailed the day before the election, making them valid. He said that mail from Winneshiek County is processed in Waterloo, then returned to the county.

Prichard said that no one knows which candidates are checked on the ballots, so no one knows whether there would be enough votes for Koether to make up the nine-vote difference.

“We really have no idea what would happen with the final vote count,” Prichard said. “The larger issue is, every vote matters. If we’re serious about that, count the votes that were cast. It’s that simple.”

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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Revisiting the rhapsody, on the silver screen

11/29/2018

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Charles City Press, 11-29-18

“Wait until you hear this.”

It was my cousin talking, when we were just kids. He was a couple years older than me, and a couple years wiser in the ways of the world, I think. He certainly knew a little bit more about good rock music.

“You’ve never heard anything like this before,” he told me.

And he was right, I had not. And I haven’t heard anything like it since.

It was Queen. And of course, I’d heard several Queen songs before, on FM radio, but my cousin insisted that I’d never really heard Queen. I hadn’t heard their deeper album cuts, I hadn’t heard their songs that radio stations were afraid to play. My cousin was giving me a proper introduction.

It was different. It was strange. It was remarkable. And, most importantly, it was fun. I liked it.

This wasn’t just music. This wasn’t art, either. I wasn’t just listening to songs, I was joining a club. I now belonged to a group of misfits who had nothing in common, as individuals, other than the fact that we all were aware that these sounds existed.

Before they became Queen, they were a struggling blues-rock band called “Smile.” Singer Freddie Mercury, guitar player Brian May, bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor were all expert practitioners of creative sound, fluid pharmacists of a musical medicine that could temporarily cure all which ailed a teenaged hungered heart, an angered adolescent mind, the collective soul of the young and conflicted masses.

It was an eclectic, collusive collision of hard-charging guitar rock, pop piano ballads, mini-symphonies, instrumental jams, vocal exercises, lyric poetry, metal anthems, disco ditties — with a dash of self-deprecating silliness — all rolled into one. Sometimes all rolled into one song.

Many critics hated them, always, but the critics weren’t in the club. The fans understood — to the tune of about 300 million album sales.

When I walked into the movie theatre with my wife a couple weeks back, about 40 years after my initiation into the club, I was full of interest and anticipation. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was going to tell me the story of Queen — a story I already knew, but needed to see acted out.

Hollywood took a few liberties with the story, as Hollywood tends to do. I’m OK with that. We aren’t building nuclear plants here, we’re capturing the essence of a rock band.

It’s a lovely movie. If you’re in the club, you’ll think it’s great. The critics, of course, hate it — and are woefully unable to see the irony of their derision. History is repeating itself. Most critics hated Queen’s music then, but the fans were crazy about it. Most critics hate the Queen movie now, but judging by how packed the theaters have been, the fans are crazy about it.

It’s just a movie about four regular guys, each with rare musical talent. They’re portrayed as misfits, like many of their fans, who didn’t really fit in anywhere else. And it tries to show us how much they loved their fans, how much their fans loved them, and how much they loved each other. And it’s packed full of good music.

I thought it was great, despite the fact that I never heard my favorite Queen song in the movie. The song is a piano ballad called “Too Much Love Will Kill You.” It got my heart through many breakups and makeups with my high school girlfriend. When I listened to Freddie sing it way back then, I felt like he was the only one who understood what my girlfriend and I were going through. I had no idea at the time that there are perpetually about 100 million other teenagers going through the same thing.

Once in high school, my friend Scotty — a wanna-be singer — was singing it to himself when I walked into the chorus room.

“You can sing Queen?” I asked him.

“No one can sing Queen, except Queen,” he laughed.

Still, Scotty tried to sing the chorus for me, and actually hit all the notes, but he didn’t hit them with quite the gravitas you hear in a Queen song.

When I was in seventh grade, the varsity football team in my town went undefeated. It was a very exciting time. After every win, the players would crank up the Queen song “Another One Bites the Dust” on their ghetto-blasters. I looked up to those guys, and thought that was pretty cool. I had no idea that there were probably a thousand teams across the country doing the same thing after every win.

The point of all this is, the boys from Queen knew how to put together a song that everyone could relate to. Freddie Mercury and Queen came closer than anyone in music history to achieving the status of “rock gods.”

But gods are immortal, and Freddie Mercury was not a god. He died of complications from AIDS in 1991.

A few years later, my old friend Scotty, the wanna-be singer, died of leukemia.

“Too much love will kill you,” they sang. “Just as sure as none at all.”

That undefeated high school football team, which celebrated each victory to the sounds of Queen all those years ago? That team’s best player died of cancer when he was just 30 years old.

That high school girlfriend died a couple of years ago. I’m sure I’ll never understand why that happened.

My cousin, who introduced me to the music of Queen — and so much more — died at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland of injuries sustained on August 2, 2005 in Baghdad, Iraq, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device struck his convoy.

“And another one’s gone, and another one’s gone — another one bites the dust.”

All of them were members of the club. A group of misfits who had nothing in common, other than the fact that all were aware that the music of Queen existed. Also, all of them bit the dust too young.

I miss all these people, but unlike old friends, good music is immortal. There’s a different Queen song out there to remind me of each of those people, and when I hear that song, my memories of them are happy and hopeful. No tears, I feel myself smiling — all over, I’m smiling.

And when I watched the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody,” I was reminded that before they were called “Queen,” they were a struggling little college band named “Smile.”

That’s not a name, that’s advice. That’s a record collection full of life instructions, edited down to one word.

“Smile.”

That’s appropriate, I think. Hell, that’s more than appropriate.

That’s just about perfect.

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Charles City native Lidd talks about upcoming Kinnick movie, based on his book

11/27/2018

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Charles City Press, 11-23-18

By JAMES GROB

Eighty years after he won the Heisman Trophy, the story of Iowa Hawkeye football legend Nile Kinnick will be told on the silver screen, thanks in large part to a native of Charles City.

“It’s kind of a dream come true,” said author Tom Lidd.

Lidd, a former Charles City resident and lifelong Hawkeye fan, is a retired insurance agent who now lives in Cedar Rapids. In 2008, he published a historical novel about Kinnick, simply entitled “Nile.”

Ten years later, that book is the basis for the movie “The Ironmen,” which will chronicle the lives of the Hawkeyes who served in World War II. Lidd said the hope is to start filming the movie next spring, and for the film to hit theaters in 2020. A movie studio has committed to helping make and direct the film, as well as supplying a large portion of a targeted $15 million budget, with the rest coming through other fundraising efforts.

“The issue right now is raising money,” Lidd said. “There are a couple of well-known directors and actors who are interested, but it’s really coming down to financing.”

Lidd said there are some donors who are close to pulling the trigger. Once they do, the idea is to premiere the movie in Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, the night before the first Hawkeye football game of the 2020 season.

Kinnick won the 1939 Heisman Trophy and was a consensus All-American. He died during a training flight while serving as U.S. Navy aviator in World War II. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951, and the University of Iowa renamed its football stadium in his honor in 1972. Kinnick Stadium is one of just two college football stadiums to be named after a player. The other, coincidentally, is Iowa State’s Jack Trice Stadium in Ames.

“The record for a movie premiere audience is 44,000 people,” Lidd said. “They think with the Iowa Hawkeye fan base, they can get 45,000 or more in Kinnick, easy.”

Lidd said that Iowa athletic director Gary Barta is behind the film, and the film has also received a lot of attention from former Iowa football players who went on to play in the NFL.

Lidd, 66, graduated from Charles City High School in 1970. He is the brother of Mike Lidd, who owns Lidd & Cordray Clothing in Charles City. Copies of the book “Nile” will be available for purchase at the store on Tuesday.

The two-year process of writing, editing and revising the book started for Lidd in 2006. Lidd said, as he was writing, he always had a movie in mind.

“In my mind, I was seeing the scenes play out on screen as I was writing them,” he said.

Filmmaker Joe Heath, an Iowa City native, is the executive producer of "The Ironmen." Heath has been pitching the idea of a Kinnick film since he’s been in the movie business, and a few years ago, he came across Lidd’s book and thought it would be perfect for the big screen.

"It is very 'Rudy' — an inspirational, family film," Heath said in the Daily Iowan newspaper last week. "I think it will be a movie that sticks with people, especially with people around here.”

Heath and Lidd worked together to whittle the the 452-page novel into a two-hour script. That script was then tweaked by established writer and director Nicholas Meyer, a University of Iowa alumnus who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”

Meyer has written several other scripts for the small and big screen, including two other Star Trek movies, a James Bond movie, and movies such as “Fatal Attraction,” “Sommersby,” “The Informant,” and “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.” The latter also earned an Oscar nomination, and he’s been nominated for three Emmys and published eight books.

“I was asked to write the screenplay, and I based it on the novel and tried to include the main things,” Lidd said. “Nicholas Meyer then took it and he did a great job, he basically left everything the same, but put meat on the characters’ bones.”

Lidd said that the extent of his communication with Meyer has been a number of emails back and fourth. When Meyer sent him the first draft of the screenplay, Lidd couldn’t help himself — he made corrections.

“It felt kind of funny, correcting the grammar of an Oscar-nominated writer, but he thanked me,” Lidd said.

Although he doesn’t have a resume like Meyer’s, Lidd is not a novice when it comes to writing. Lidd said it was his wife, Jane Kelly, who first suggested that he write a book about Kinnick. Kelly is a U.S. Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Eighth Circuit. The two have been together since 2003, and married in 2014.

Lidd said that he used several sources as he did research for “Nile,” but there were two books in particular that stood out. One is “A Hero Perished, The Diary of Selected Letters of Nile Kinnick,” by Paul Bander.

“Through that, I really got a sense of Kinnick’s personality,” Lidd said, and added that the other book was written by Al Coupee, a former Hawkeye quarterback and teammate of Kinnick’s who went on to a career in broadcasting.

“That book really gave the back story on everybody on the team, and there were a lot of humorous anecdotes,” Lidd said.

He’s written two screenplays since he retired from the commercial insurance business in 2014.

“Actually, I have more confidence in them being turned into movies than I had when I wrote ‘Nile,’” he said.

Both of the scripts are works of historical screenplays that deal with racism. One, called “Scott vs. Sandford,” pertains to the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a slave who resided in a free territory was not entitled to freedom. Lidd called it the “worst U.S. Supreme Court decision ever.”

The other screenplay is sports-related. It’s about a basketball team at a segregated high school in Indiana in 1955 — the team’s star player was future NBA great Oscar Robertson.

That interest in sports likely stems from Lidd’s youth in Charles City. He called Charles City “a great place to grow up.” At one time, Lidd held two school basketball records, most points in a game (41) and most field goals in a game (19). Both of those records stood for 23 years.

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Please refrain from mocking mock elections

11/8/2018

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Charles City Press, 11-8-18

I didn’t take the photo, it was an acquaintance of mine on Facebook who shared it.

It was a picture of a sign hung by the powers-that-be outside of a voting area somewhere.

“NO CAMPAIGN MATERIALS OR CLOTHING ALLOWED IN POLLING PLACE,” the sign said.

I was reminded of the importance of punctuation and sentence structure, because if you read that message literally, it’s essentially telling you you’re not supposed to wear any clothes when you’re voting. The sign insists on nude voting.

My response was, “Now I’m sorry I voted early and missed all the naked people.”

I know, it was kind of a childish thing to say, but at the moment I thought it was clever. A lot of people agreed, the photo got a lot of “likes” and “shares.” I believe that was less because of my cleverness and more because people appreciated a rare moment of comic relief on election day.

Election day mercifully ended the campaign season on Tuesday night, and I hope your side won.

Honestly, I do. I hope that, however you voted, the final results gave you something to feel good about.

It was a strange election, not just locally, but nationally, and it seems to me that both sides had some things to please them and some things to disappoint them.

Almost every candidate who was running and every pundit who was analyzing said something hyperbolic, along the lines of “this is the most important election of our lifetime.” That statement is true only in the context that every election is the most important election of our lifetime, until the next election. Every election we’ve ever had in this nation has been slightly more important than the previous one, and that will continue to be the case until the last one.

There are times when I fear that the last election will be very soon, but after Tuesday, I believe the last election is still a long time from happening. By all accounts, voter turnout was very high. Many races were very close. Voters split tickets everywhere. The big winner of the election was participation, the big loser was apathy. People still care.

As a writer at community newspapers for most of my adult life, I’ve always gotten the opportunity to see elections from a different perspective. Of course, I have my own strongly-held political views, opinions and ideals. At the same time, I usually get the opportunity to meet and talk with nearly every candidate, face to face. It doesn’t take long to learn there are things I have in common with the candidate, regardless of how opposed I may or may not be to that candidate’s policies. This tempers and moderates whatever views I have.

What I’m saying is, with a handful of unique exceptions, it’s really hard to hate someone, once you get to know them. That even applies to most politicians.

About a week before the election, about 40,000 students across Iowa participated in an unscientific straw poll, which was sponsored by the office of Iowa Republican Secretary of State, Paul Pate. Here in Charles City, 198 students in Robert Pittman's social studies classes voted. This is a good thing. Students don’t just vote, they learn how to vote intelligently. They delve into what the candidates say and what their actions have been. I wrote up a little article about the results.

I was astounded by the negative reaction from a handful of local people.

"Ask em why ... see if they know … the schools are brainwashing them,” one person wrote on our Facebook page. Another called the school district an “indoctrination center.” Another said “it’s pretty much throwing liberal views down their throat.”

For some reason, there was a weird debate over what television news programs the students watch, even though there was nothing about television or news in the article.

I realize that these social media warriors aren’t exactly Iowa’s best and brightest, but none of these brilliant commenters had done even a fraction of the research the local students had done. They might have realized this, had they taken one minute to actually read the article. In fact, one of the more vociferous and opinionated commenters proudly proclaimed that he hadn’t read it.

In the article, Mr. Pittman said that the students in his classes don’t just look at what the candidates say in their campaigns, but they track the candidates’ voting history online to see what they’ve actually done.

There were some comments from people who had actually read the story, who expressed that it was a positive thing that the students were being taught to research the candidates.

“Perhaps the most important thing that students get out of the mock election experience is that they get a test run on how to vote thoroughly,” Pittman said in the article. “They look at all the candidates, they look at the issues they care about and investigate them thoroughly. We hope as adults, they do the same.”

I hope so too, Mr. Pittman. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Why bother to investigate things thoroughly when it’s so much easier to share your ignorance on social media?

I have no idea if any of these geniuses who mocked the mock election actually voted in the real one.

If any of them did — if they were actually able to find their way into a voting booth and mark a ballot — they certainly weren’t as informationally equipped as those 198 students of Mr. Pittman were.

It’s sad, I think, to have such large and loud opinions and ideas based on such a tiny whisper of knowledge and understanding.

Some of them, I’ll bet, were voting naked.

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Surviving another polar vortex, and the polar brain freeze

Expressing ‘outrage’ over razors and burgers

Statehouse election is still in question, over 29 votes

Teaching gun safety in school is just common sense

A Christmas Story: Tidings of comfort and joy

Merry Christmas, and don’t let the Scrooges and Grinches bring you down

Contested election draws Prichard into first political battle as minority leader

Revisiting the rhapsody, on the silver screen

Charles City native Lidd talks about upcoming Kinnick movie, based on his book

Please refrain from mocking mock elections

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