An interesting weekend

By Doug Page | Mon, October 27, 2008, 03:50 PM

The third weekend of October was interesting well beyond the gridiron.

By tradition, it is the national Children’s Sabbath, an event endorsed by Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders. The service is a chance to celebrate the accomplishments of children. It is also a chance to talk about the problems facing the most powerless among us.

The same weekend, a group called The Judeo-Christian View claimed to have distributed copies of the DVD “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” to 325,000 pastors, priests and rabbis across the country. No imams, though.

The Judeo-Christian View says it is a “periodical for clerical leaders”. The multimedia journal is upset with one of the presidential candidate’s stand on abortion, same-sex marriages and, I’m sure, plenty else.

Appears to me it’s an interesting case of inclusion versus exclusion.

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Council to interview candidates

By Doug Page | Mon, September 29, 2008, 05:16 PM

ENGLEWOOD — The City Council will meet on Tuesday, Sept. 30, to interview three candidates for a vacant council seat.

Those applying for the position are:

• Teresa Guerra

• Karen Strider-Iiames, a member of the city’s Planning Commission

• Marlyn Flee, former longtime Harrison Twp. administrator and also a member of the Englewood Planning Commission.

The death of Mayor Mike Bowers created the vacancy. The successor will be chosen by a majority vote of the council in open session and will serve out the unexpired term of former Vice Mayor Patricia Burnside. She assumed the Bower’s job after his death.

According to the meeting’s agenda, the council plans to meet in executive session with each candidate for 15 minutes, following a rollcall vote to go into executive session.

The council has not set a timetable for filling the vacancy.

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The passing of a noble hound

By Doug Page | Wed, September 24, 2008, 01:29 PM

I am not one to ascribe human behavior or emotions to animals, particularly dogs. They are wired in a different manner. Their eyes see a world different than ours. Their sense of smell and hearing are more refined. They process the world in a way we can only imagine.

That we would project our thoughts and emotions onto them is proof enough of the difference between out species. A dog’s world revolves around am I hungry, thirsty, warm, cold, loved?

But if you seek unconditional love, get a dog.

The house was silent this morning.

There was no clicking of nails on the hardwood floor. No galumphing down the stairs as the sun rises. No hissing of cats, awakened in such a rude manner by inquiring cold, wet nose. No muted wake-up yelps.

No prancing and bowing as the coffee brewed. No annoying metallic scraping of teeth on stainless steel as breakfast was inhaled.

There was silence and a hole in our souls.

The wife did not have her 70-pound shadow — he liked his handouts, and she was a sucker. There was no greyhound dance when the grumpy teenager came down the stairs heading off to school. And as I started my day at the kitchen table, my co-author and sometimes editor was not at his usual place on the rug.

How can a graceful, sleek animal look so doofus, napping on his back with four legs in the air?

The cancer came swiftly. The vet found the mass in his massive chest at noon yesterday. Chemo and surgery were nonstarters. Nature would take him when it was time. There was nothing anyone could do. It was my call when to end it.

I called the wife at work. Explained it all. Hung up and cried in a corner. It wasn’t as if — God, please, no — I was losing a child or my wife. I thought myself inured to death, violent or otherwise.

He was a good and faithful friend. We had rescued him — or he us — after much pleading by the then 9-year-old Siberian princess. She wanted a puppy. She got a 2-year-old retired racer. She was not pleased. First, he was not a licker. Second, he wasn’t cute. Third, he was bigger than she.

But he was gentler, quieter and faithful. The wife started leaving a Milk Bone in the mailbox so when the daughter got off the school bus, she’d enter the house with a treat in hand.

Soon he had us trained. Come in the door, and you’d better have a Milk Bone.

Our faithfulness to our new routine was repaid a thousand-fold. We could put the daughter on on end of the lead and the dog on the other. We knew both would return safely. Once on their daily “walk”, surprised by the sudden appearance of a stranger, he jumped between the daughter and the stranger, baring his impressive teeth.

“I wasn’t scared at all,” she said. “He was there.”

Though his muzzled grayed and his step slowed, every time a new swain passed over the threshold to call on the now-teenage daughter he galumphed down the stairs and take his stand between the daughter and the boy. Some made it no farther than the foyer before fleeing. Until he was sure of their intentions, they would come no farther. The ones the daughter liked were warned ahead of time to bring a treat.

At 5:58 p.m. yesterday, while I was arguing with a wrong-headed colleague, the wife called. She was cradling a convulsing dog. The vet was on his way. The dog would not go gentle into that good night.

I called Son No. 2 who rushed to our house, left the colleague to his own devices and sped home.

I was not in time, nor was the daughter. The vet knew what needing doing. He eased our friend’s journey into the dying of the light.

So tonight, the figurative drinks are on me. Hoist a cold one for Ty, the Wonder Dog, a good and faithful friend, the noblest of hounds.

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Heat in the classroom until well educated or well done

By Doug Page | Mon, September 22, 2008, 03:48 PM

It was as if we all took a collective sigh.

The rain, as it should in late summer, was soft and warm. We and the soil deserved this.

Nearly a month had passed without a measurable rain. As soon as the school doors opened, the temperatures soared.

The early September rain refreshed the lawns, gardens and crops without scouring the ditches. A dust-settler rather than a frog-drowner.

It was good for the soil and the soul.

Likewise, the traditional start-of-school heat wave occasioned a knowing grin on a parent or two dropping off the summer-tanned heathens at the school door.

The heathens have spent the summer in frolicking enjoyment. They have had the time of their young lives.

And when a child knows he or she has the world on a downhill pull, they are quick to lord it over their parents. To the child’s eye, parents are dull drones unable to get out of the working-five-days-a-week rut.

There are times, gentle reader, when even the most sainted parent wants to show those snot-nosed offspring. To rip aside the curtain of childhood fantasy and represent the world as it is.

Tough, cold, brutal.

A struggle to get through on the weekends, much less the five days a week working for the man.

That, however, would crush their poor hearts and stunt their fledgling souls. Instead, we feed them brief glimpses of their lives ahead. Starting with the opening of school.

It used to be that schools around here were not air-conditioned. Parents and school administrators watched the weather, waiting for the precise moment to open school — when it would be the hottest for the little darlings.

Teachers were considered martyrs. Not only did they have to whip the heathens into line, they also had to face the oven-like temperatures of classrooms.

Now the state is helping districts building new schools. Part of the deal is the new schools need air-conditioning.

Did someone in the state Legislature not get the memo?

My sole conclusion is whoever is in charge must have gone to a ritzy, air-conditioned school.

Pa-shaw, I say.

We need to toughen up these heathens. Knock the stars out of their eyes. Bring them to the one true knowledge.

Children, we spare you many of life’s slings and arrows early on. We do this so you may become educated.

We want you to be well-educated.

We want you to find great jobs.

And most of all we want those jobs to pay you gobs of money. That way, you will pay gobs of money into Social Security to support us in the manner to which we have become accustomed.

That’s what those hot classrooms are all about: toughening you youngsters up to handle the truth.

Your grandparents sweated in those classrooms. Your parents sweated in those classrooms.

Now it’s your turn.

Hang in there long enough and inculcate another generation, and it might just be your turn for Social Security.

Until then, enjoy the late summer rains when you grow up.

Hope you figure out a substitute for the hot classrooms.

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Hemline kerfuffle

By Doug Page | Thu, September 4, 2008, 04:14 PM

The general reaction was one of relief.

It was somebody else’s problem.

The last thing a school administrator or board member needs is a dress code flap. It’s right up there with the “zero-tolerance” policies so popular at the turn of the past century.

Zero common sense was more accurate.

Dress codes have little educational value in most instances.

“Whatever the case, there has to be some logic and common sense involved,” Brookville Superintendent Tim Hopkins said when asked about dress codes.

The brouhaha started in suburban Cincinnati. That should come as no shock.

The last stupid school trick came from the same area. Then a group — perhaps of one — objected to the performance of a play based on a 1930s British mystery novel with an original title containing a racial insensitive term. Not the play, the book.

The school administration at first canceled the production, then the school board got into the flap. How it ended, I have no idea. I quickly lose interest when adults start acting ignorant.

Any way, the latest kerfuffle involves the Monroe school district dress code, which mandates that skirts must not fall more than 3 inches above the knee. Any higher and it’s too short, young lady. (I would be surprised if the dress code mentions kilts. Or whether boys can wear skirts. These are things that must be addressed else our schools will surely fall into that great pit of moral decay.)

The problem, it seems to some parents, is the cheerleaders’ uniform skirts do not meet the dress code. Thus cannot be worn to school. Thus contravening the cheerleaders’ constitutional right (it’s got to be there somewhere, right?) to wear their uniforms to school on football Fridays. Thus leading to a cataclysmic decline in school spirit, mounting defeats for the football team and the district’s sure and certain fall into the great pit of moral decay.

Holy hemline, Batman.

Parents were upset. They’d paid good money for those uniforms.

Turns out, the cheerleader hemline affair is no big deal across much of the Valley.

Most cheerleaders no longer wear their uniforms to school.

It’s apparently a comfort issue, according several school officials. The uniforms are designed for cheering, not sitting in a classroom for several hours.

“It’s about time,” said the wife when informed of the latest breaking story. A former high school cheerleader, I went to her for the inside dope on cheerleaders and their uniforms.

“You don’t want to know,” was all I could get out of her. But she did wonder if the boys swim team would wear their Speedos to school the day of a meet.

“That might be interesting, and just about as uncomfortable as I remember the cheering uniforms.”

Local school administrators are not losing sleep over the possibility of a cheerleader wearing his or her short skirt to school.

“Most of the time, all you have to do is pull the student aside,” Trotwood-Madison High School Principal Gerald Cox said. “They take care of it.”

What a concept. Kids taking responsibility.

I wonder if their parents know?

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