Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Snort, Snork, Shtick Shtuff

"What's a vegan smoothie?" asked my brother-in-law, reading the countertop menu at a favorite Sunday morning coffee shop. "I mean, what could you put into a smoothie that wouldn't be vegan?" The silliness started as we waited in line for coffee. Sometimes you need a break from weighty discussions of life, the universe and everything. Life can't always be serious.

"A tenderloin?" I suggested, "Blood sausage? Pig feet?" I pictured traumatized vegan kitchen workers splattered by a bloody manic food processor. My brother-in-law and I are not reincarnations of comedic word guru, George Carlin, but Sunday morning walks sometimes turn into word play sessions between us. Both of us find the disparity between denotation and connotation interesting. My wife usually stays out of our discussions when we are on a roll. Just as well at times.

Once seated with the vegan smoothies ("Tastes a little like chicken"), we talked about the many odd nonsense words that are made up of "S" plus a consonant, a single vowel, and one or two letter consonant combinations. What is the attraction between "S" and silly words? I don't know, but there seems to be a link. We agreed words with real meanings (swap, swim, smit, snuff) don't count. Alright, "snuff" might count because it leads to the logical past tense "snuft" as an irregular form or just "snuffed" as a regular verb. We might be silly, but we try to be grammatical.

"Snert" "What's that?" "I think it was the name of a comedy sketch character on the Milton Berle Show." "Before my time." Yeah, mine too."

"Smurf." Too easy we agreed. Not as old as the Milton Berle Show, but just as silly. Especially in blue. "How can they do a movie about them?" "Don't know and don't care. They're as creepy as garden gnomes."

"Snork." A sort of word, depicting a healthy appetite, emblematic of college days. Other college slang included "scuzz," "smat," and "schwip." Definitions? Don't ask. Frat house slang is not PG-13.

"Swup?" No reply. A word that has yet to find a popular meaning. Sad when you think about an orphan word peering up from an empty grammatical bowl. "Pleashh shur, may I have shome more?"

"S'up?" "Words with apostrophes are not acceptable." " Yeah, especially those from ad campaigns." "S'right you are." "Ha. Humor."

I pulled a napkin from beneath my smoothie and began making notes. "What are you doing?" "I could use these ideas for my blog if I run out of material during the summer break."

"Schmuck." Good idea. I'll add that too.









Thursday, July 25, 2013

360,000 Owners are Better Than One

The Packer Shareholder meeting on Wednesday was a good way to work on your tan on a gorgeous summer Wednesday afternoon. The program was as dry as you'd expect from any other business's shareholder meeting. We heard from Packer President Mark Murphy a few times, General Manager Ted Thompson, the treasurer, the foundation, marketing, investing, the auditor, and other departments and waited to see the real attraction of the day: self-guided tours of the new South End Zone seats.

While members of the team Executive Board were called up to speak, I and many others studied cloud formations and tested the new wireless capabilities of the stadium. My wife, who works with a lot of area CEOs, watched the presenters with more interest and pointed out that almost all of them were local. I knew that, but as a Green Bay native didn't really find it remarkable. It's what I grew-up expecting. The Packer organization has some Milwaukee, Madison, and Fox Valley names on the board to pretend this is a state team, but the drive behind the organization has always been Green Bay born and raised; Parins, Meng, Long, Chernick, Weyers, Bie, French, Olejniczak and dozens of board members are local names. They are organization leaders, but they are also neighbors.

I bring up this point because of a series of new signs that I saw later posted on walls in the south concourse hallways just under the new, plush South End Zone. The theme of the sepia-tinted wall-sized posters of old players and fans is "We Believe" followed by inspirational sayings. One poster in particular caught my attention: "We believe 360,000 owners are better than one." That refers to the 360,000 shareholders, like me, who have bought basically meaningless stock certificates in order to keep the professional team in Green Bay.

Other small markets, no bigger than Green Bay, had professional teams but gave up on their dreams. We haven't and, Lombardi-willing, we never will. The strength of the team draws on our cultural make-up: stubborn, loyal, faithful, dogged, and capable of amazing things when we are competing against out-of-towners. If the team lost the Green Bay connection, it would be just another sports team run by suits. We take care of our own, and the Packers are our own. As another poster in the concourse declares, "One city, one team."

The 360,000 number celebrates legends in sports history who have built a remarkable franchise. To Green Bay natives, however, these legends are just local folks who we see in the grocery store, the coffee shop and at high school football games. Yet, consider the results: the number one stadium experience according to ESPN magazine, the third largest professional football stadium (the new expansion tops 80,000 seats -- take that, Texas Stadium), and a 30-year season ticket waiting list. And, oh yes, 13 World Championships, 22+ members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame (congratulations to this year's inductee, linebacker Dave Robinson), and a playoff contender for 15 of the last 20 years.

Mark Murphy also pointed out during his presentation that the Green Bay Packers are the 18th most valuable sports franchise in the world. Notice I said world, not just in the NFL or in American professional sports, but the world. I'm not surprised though. If you introduce yourself as being from Green Bay in any major airport and you have instant recognition and credibility.

As a shareholder of the best team in football, it's what I expect.


Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The Joy of Beach Books

I just finished Dan Brown's latest, Inferno, and enjoyed the read. No, it's not great literature, it has no subtle layers of existential meaning (unless you count Dante's nine spirals of hell, though I would credit that metaphor to Dante more than Brown). The mystery is a series of international chase scenes, an evil plot of a mad scientist, and the heroics of the ever lovable, Harvard super-nerd, Robert Langdon. Chuck Leddy, of the Boston Globe, began his May 2013 review of Inferno by writing, "Assessing Dan Brown from a literary perspective seems almost beside the point." I agree. Inferno is pleasant summer diversion, nothing more. It's a beach book.

What's a beach book? Something you read just for the joy of escapism: think of the Bourne series, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, John Patterson. Summer is the time to read books not attached to curriculum and classrooms and assessments. It's the time for science fiction, for romance, for gothic tragedy, for mysteries. There are no multiple co-authors here, no Ph.D.-laden bibliographies. Footnotes are banned until September. A beach book is just a fun story with a little meat on the bones to keep your interest.

The meat is important to me. Ultra light-weight books, the kind that float away on the cross-winds of improbability and you've-got-to-be-kidding, bore me and are quickly set aside. These are donated to the library or deleted from my queue. Dan Brown usually does a nice job of seasoning his plot with exotic and archaic settings and detail. Because of my background, I like the quasi-religious sub-tones. The Boston Globe's Leddy wrote in appreciation, "(Brown) obviously researched the architecture of Florence (and Venice and Istanbul), the symbolism of Dante's great work, and the 'mad science' behind the villain's plot." All of these are interesting to Brown's fans, otherwise we would have stopped reading him after chapter one of The Da Vinci Code.

I may add Inferno to next fall's list of reading in the classroom. I try to develop student interest in reading by providing them a variety of new reading material. Popular books and magazines often work. We read them together and talk about the ideas of the authors. I don't really care what the book or article is about when I am working with my reading students so long as they find it interesting. What's important is conveying a shared excitement about the words, ideas, and discovery. The page-turning experience, especially from a beach book, is bonus.

OK, enough academic talk about adding reading to curriculum. That's the material for long, dark February conferences. This is summer. The beach awaits. Where's that Neil Gaiman book I've heard so much about?