A message for blog loyalists

I’m overdue to explain why the activity level in the Babyboomer Blog has declined in recent months. First is that I volunteered to become 50 percent of a two-man sports staff. Aways until now there were three of us chasing 10 high schools and York College, now it’s just Ken and me. That change makes me more or less a permanent sports guy, although I’m still managing editor officially. That has resulted in a breathtaking tumble in my ability to shoot photos at Husker sports of any and all kinds because I’m tied up usually 3 or 4 weeknights and most Saturdays covering local sports. So the photo galleries of Big Red have dried up. Because of the far greater load in York-area sports coverage I simply can’t get down to Lincoln.

The other reason is Facebook. Before, I would post both regular and sports columns here, then link to them back to my Facebook page. It’s far simpler and less time consuming, I’ve found, to simply wait until a column comes out in the paper and is posted to the yorknewstimes.com website, then link directly from there to Facebook instead of from YNT website to this blog to Facebook. Clear as mud, right? The bottom line is you are invited to slide over and find me on Facebook. I’m hit and miss here, but I always post over there.

That is all.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Hear ye! Hear ye! Big news on Fairview Drive!

It is my delirious duty to report that the family digs at 16 Fairview Drive are no longer emblazoned with the word Tyvek all the around the outside and back again.

No siree, we’re talkin’ siding. Steel siding. Sand castle hued steel siding.

It’s been a long time coming, but with the help of folks like son Aaron, Gene McElhinny of Kearney and Harry Miller and his crew here in town…the deed is either done or will be soon. We came up a few boxes short and the extra siding could be here literally any minute. In fact, I’m writing this column from home while waiting for the truck right now (Wednesday late morning). With any luck Harry’s boys will be back to slappin’ siding yet today.

The project at 16 Fairview Drive has included ripping up very dated carpet to find lovely hardwood floors resting beneath, effectively untouched, unwalked on, unspilled on and unpiddled on for decades. We had them touched up and Good Wife Norma’s 1950s wood floors look brand new.

A new countertop in the kitchen, a new tile floor and wall coverings came early in the process. Same for a new sink, raised vanity, lighting, floor and wall covering in the bathroom. Toss in a light fixture here, a couple ceiling fans there and new paint throughout and that about covers the inside.

The big deal outside was stretching a single, attached garage to a triple. It serves as a triple for us because we have a Ranger pickup and a tiny little two-seater Toyota MR2. If we had a big ‘ol 3×4 ton crew cab truck and a full sized sedan we’d be in trouble, but we don’t so we’re not. The happy upside of a slightly undersized two-holer is that now I’m required to own a small sports car more or less forever.

So I’ve got that goin’ for me, which is nice.

A new roof was necessitated by hail and that’s long-since replaced. Son Aaron scored us a great bargain that made a shingle upgrade to the heavy duty models possible. He also came up with new widows all the way around that we could afford, then took charge of installing them, too.

Sit tight for a minute while I run outside. The truck just pulled up out front. Be right back …

It’s unloaded and I’m back. Thanks so much for your patience.

Once son Aaron gets the gutters and downspouts installed and we figure out a retaining wall and some landscaping, we’ll be pretty much done … except, of course, for getting it paid off.

How much? Way less than it should have been, thanks again to son Aaron.

(Note to York County Assessor Ann Charlton: If you happen to be listening in, we fully expect our valuation for taxes to go up once we’re done. Fair is fair, after all. Trying to be ever helpful, GWN and I crunched some numbers. It looks to us like $67.50 should be about right.)

Posted in comment/columns, Family | Leave a comment

When is it time to have “The (career) Talk?”

As this is written Friday morning, May 3, I’m gathering my cameras, photos, notes and thoughts. This afternoon I’ll spend a couple hours at York Middle School meeting with students to talk about what I do for a living, how and why.

I am not alone. Far from it, in fact. All over the building and even outside a small army of adults will do exactly what I’m doing, which is talk to the kids in detail about their particular career.

Middle school kids? Isn’t that a little soon to be cluttering their heads with thoughts of professions and the like? Nope. Not at all.

These kids are 12-14 years young, but they’re also less than 10 years from being spit out into the real world. In my mind that makes this a pivotal time to begin sorting possibilities.

Do I suggest kids at this age should lock into anything? Absolutely not. Still, a bit of culling is certainly in order.

At that age I knew to a certainty there would never be a ‘Dr.’ in front of my name. Not smart enough. It was equally clear I would not be in charge of grass on a golf course (despised mowing-still do) a carpenter or a mechanic (breathtaking incompetence in both).

But here’s the thing. In the early 60s we didn’t have a middle school career day. If we had perhaps I might have given it a bit of thought, but we didn’t and I didn’t.

As a result I stumbled into my present career, the one to which it’s now obvious I was best suited all along, at the tender age of 41.

How to avoid my bumbling approach to career choice?

I suggest you chat with your son or daughter about it, at least in a casual way, starting about fifth or sixth grade. I can’t speak for the girls, but up to then the boys all want to be firefighters or forest rangers or astronauts.

Reality eventually dawns, or at least it seemed to for everyone but me, and when it does meaningful discussions become possible.

If you have a York Middle School kid, please chat about what he or she saw and heard Friday afternoon. Principal Brian Tonniges and a slew of volunteers from the community have opened the door, please don’t be shy to walk boldly through it and see what your youngster is thinking.

 

Posted in comment/columns | Leave a comment

Relief (BLAST!) is on (BLAST!) the way (BLAST! BLAAAST!!)

Hold steady, oh ye semi-deaf victims of last Saturday’s track meet at York High, blessed relief is on the way.

Your aging scribe has experienced the piercing blast of approaching trains at Miller Park softball games for years. It’s loud beyond belief as the endless parade of coal trains blast their way through the crossing on north Blackburn Street. Loaded trains rumble through the outfield from west (where the coal is) to east (where the population is).

I thought what I experienced at Miller Park was as bad as it could get. I was very wrong.

I found out just how wrong last Saturday during three hours spent photographing the long jump and triple jump pits, both of which are spitting distance from the passing trains on the west end of the running track.

I don’t remember train whistle blasts physically hurting before, but those did. Trains approaching from the east hit us so hard it was almost disorienting. In chatting about it with folks then and since it’s obvious I am late to this discussion. Saturday happened to be my first experience being helpless to escape the crossing on north Blackburn, but it was anything but for adults who have been involved in tennis, softball and track, never mind the poor kids who have to practice there every day.

We can’t live without the trains and we can’t move all those facilities. What to do?

Turns out the solution is already in the works and thank goodness for that.

Mark Christiansen, York’s director of public works, said the wheels are turning, if slowly, to make it unnecessary for trains to ‘sound off’ at Division and Blackburn.

The crossing at Blackburn is particularly troubling because its elbow configuration doesn’t lend itself to an easy fix. Mark says all of it … street and crossing alike … must be rebuilt before those nifty raised medians, the ones that won’t let drivers snake through the crossing when the arms are down and the lights are flashing, will work.

In a perfect world raised medians would silence those two crossings and Delaware Avenue, too.

Here’s the hitch in Mark’s git-along. He’s just the city guy in a project that can’t happen until the railroad, the Nebraska Department of Roads and the feds all find their way to the same page.

Yup, it’s same old story … red tape (see: Nebraska Avenue) and miles of it. Happily, Mark says silent crossings, like Nebraska Avenue, are going to happen. Just not right away.

“We hope to get to it yet this fall, but I don’t know if the state’s going to get around quickly enough for that. More likely is next year,” he said.

The railroad hasn’t signed, sealed and delivered its part of the agreement, either.

So hang tough, loyal residents and audiologically ambushed guests from out of town. Relief is on the way.

In the meantime think ear protection. Make book on this: Next time I will not leave my headset at home.

Posted in comment/columns | Leave a comment

Why not a column on columns?

If governments are allowed to have a “Committee on Committees,” why can’t we do a column on columns?

First, perhaps, a definition.

Columns are one thing in our business, news stories/articles are quite another.

In the latter we must remain as detached as possible from the subject matter and attempt to speak in someone else’s voice … someone like the star athlete, the mayor, the cop or even the criminal.

The rules are different for columns, which permit folks like me to speak in our own voice. To put ourselves into the words far more than can be permitted in a strict reporter role.

This makes columns like recess. At least I see in that light.

This is my third one this week, which is one more than normal. I did one for sports, another for the Silver Salute that was inserted in your Wednesday.

This one makes three; three different topics in three different parts of the paper.

The freedom a column offers allows someone like me to ramble on about pretty much anything.

It might be a burr under my saddle, a fractured comment or something that has/hasn’t happened at home with Good Wife Norma and me.

If it’s a column I am permitted to be funny, or at least try to be funny. Columns also come with a license to express puzzlement, sadness, annoyance and, yes, searing rage when I need to purge.

Topics come as easily some days as they are impossibly elusive other days. Sometimes a particular column idea has to be left on the back burner to steep for a couple weeks before its form is finally revealed. Other times, though, it comes boiling out and I barely get to a keyboard before a gasket blows in my head.

You’d think after averaging at least one column a week for more than two decades it would be bada bing bada boom by now.

Not so. It’s as effortless one time as it is torturous the next … exactly the same as it’s always been.

The one element that never wavers is you. Through all those 20-plus years the reader feedback to these columns has been amazing.

When I ponder what has to be nearly 2,000 columns, the only common thread running through each and every one is you, dear reader.

Thank you for that. Thank you very much.

Posted in comment/columns | Leave a comment

Out of tons of despair, a single ounce of hope

Does the world revolve around sports? From their behavior, I’m sure that’s what some of our more rabid and unreasonable Husker football fans would have us believe. Sports can, I believe, deliver a cerebral life lesson now and again.

I believe we’ve had a couple of those lately.

What could be worse for a mom and dad than to have their 7-year-old afflicted with brain cancer?

Jack Hoffman is who I’m talking about, but you already knew that, didn’t you? By now everybody knows about Team Jack and about Jack’s 69-yard touchdown in the Husker spring game.

Jack is in the worst kind of fight … the fight to have a future.

Here’s a little kid who’s had to put up with surgeons digging into his brain, way down there deep, not once but twice. What chance does a boy of 7 have against a 60-week series of chemo treatments that would knock down Mean Joe Greene? The answer, you’d think, is zero. But Jack survived it. Not only did he make it through, by some miracle he emerged with enough strength left to score that 69-yard TD and give us all a double-dose of inspiration.

And what of the Boston Marathon bombing? How toxic must be the pus that passes for brain tissue in the monsters who did this despicable, cowardly thing? The pure evil in their souls is staggering.

It’s horrible that three completely innocent people were killed. It’s horrible that something close to 20 others had one or more of their limbs blown off. It’s horrible that emergency room doctors and nurses had to dig nails and other shrapnel out of the bodies of children. Reports are that up to 40 metal fragments were removed from some of the victims.

Why? Because the bombs were packed with pieces of metal specifically intended to shred flesh and sever bone. They did their work tragically well.

What’s the “little ray of light” in the headline above?

I think it’s the way the people of our state, and then the whole nation took Jack Hoffman and his story into their living rooms and beyond, into their hearts. His story is the epitome of sad, terrifying and unfair, but because of Jack a huge pile of money is now available to help fund the search for weapons. Weapons of good. Weapons we can use to mount an assault on juvenile cancer.

We were all swept away, weren’t we, about how people reacted after those two terrible explosions in Boston?

From doctors who were there down to regular Joe Schmoes like you and me … a small army of good people rushed in to do what they could. By all accounts a great many lives were saved by people savvy enough, and willing, to pinch off gushing arteries, to use whatever they could lay hands on to fashion makeshift tourniquets or to help in countless other ways.

It’s been gratifying to see how people have responded to Jack’s story and how they charged into action in Boston.

Sports themselves aren’t the lead story in either case, but in both sports is the vehicle that helps us understand there’s a whole lot in life, and death, that eclipses sports in the grand scheme of life.

Always has been. Always will be.

 

 

Posted in comment/columns, Sports | Leave a comment