Tell me if you uber-amateur musicians have this experience.
I pick up the old axe (well, it's a cheap Fender acoustic so maybe axe isn't the right word)... maybe pocket knife.
Anyway I pick up the guitar and start playing. The finger, lacking any sort of callouses, feel the burn of the strings. The buzz in the notes is, well, very apparent.
I kick into a song and immediately muff the chord change. Try again, the botch comes a little later. Progress.
Then I go for a little lead riff. Just a major scale, pick around it a bit, see what happens. It's going nowhere. I cring when I slide one fret too low. There's no spontaneity whatsoever.
So, to make myself feel better, I play a few of the old songs. "Roxanne" (that early Police tune) ... a couple of the easy Beatles tunes. Then I try "Hey, Hey, My, My" (the version with the Johnny Rotten lyrics, even though I'm not playing electric). I'm stunned as I can't even pull off the early note sequence.
I stop and look at my hands. Wonder what's going on in there. I want to blame the guitar (like the ballplayer looks at his glove as the ball runs through him).
Yeah, that's it ... blame the guitar. It's a piece of junk. No wonder I couldn't play well.
If crappy music is coming out of it... it must be a ... Chitar. (see left).
Yes... this is the reason why I can't play the music as I did as a 20-year-old, when I had time on my hands and practiced like a kid with nothing better to do.
It had nothing to do with me -- it was the damn guitar.
And then I looked at my hands again... and smirked. And played some more without judgment. It was fun and then the kids called.
I put it down and figured it would be August before the strings would be plucked again. Sound familiar?
You most likely won't know the name, unless you hail from New York (upstate NY in particular).
But you will recognize the makeup of the man. He's the CEO who tries to corner the market, the weekend softball player who slides into second with his spikes up, the political operative who views a victory as everything - whatever the cost.
Let me tell you a little more about this man - Steve Minarik, who has just been ousted from his long time position as the Republican political leader in Rochester, New York.
He grew up a Rochester, New York guy, in the old Polishtown side of the city. His dad dabbled in a number of businesses and was described by the son as stubborn... driven. Steve was an unathletic, overweight kid who compensated by being loud and brash.
He got into politics and, straight out of college, worked for the Monroe County N.Y. Republican Party (Rochester's county). He rose fast because the party was scuffling. By age 32 he was effectively in charge of the party. That was 1992.
He built a fundraising maching at the county GOP headquarters. And he used a hammer to get contributions.
He used the money to demand loyality from Republican candidates, and eventually GOP officeholders. He built winning Republican candidates on the county level -- often by spending plenty on ads. And those ads could be hard-hitting.
On the local level, last-minute mailing would arrive that would often aim at Democratic candidates and the party, like the one on immigration late in Minarik's career.
He cultivated an attack dog image, he seemed to revel in it.
I was a poltiical reporter for Rochester's newspaper during many of the Minarik years. The paper assigned me to write a profile of him about seven years ago. (I can't find a link, sorry). The article was steeped in Minarik's brashness -- he idolized Dale Earnhart (the intimidator)... he had posted in his office a quote from basketball coach Pat Riley - "There's winning and then there's misery."
The article started like this:
Stephen J. Minarik III reclines on a coach in his living room and talks about winning. "It's not about how you play the game. It's whether you win or lost that counts," the chariman of the Monroe County Republican Party said matter-of-factly.
As his wife, Renee, plays on the floor with their 2-year-old daughter, Minarik shifts from political elections to board games.
"I don't lose in Monopoly. I beat the kids," he say referring to Stephen IV, his 9-year-old son from a previous marriage.
"I told him 'Couldn't you let your son win once?' We're talking about Candyland here," Renee says, referring to the preschool board game.
"And what happened with him?" he asks. "Is he competitive or what?"
"He has the same attitude," she says.
"The same drive," he replies.
Frankly, at the time, I could relate. I had a rough-around-the-edges dad who loved me ... but wanted to make sure he prepped me for getting ahead. He played sports like a man possessed -- out to win. I picked up on that. It built my drive.
But as time moved on, I began to question the win-at-all-costs mentality in myself. But you saw it all the time in the politics of the day. Minarik wore it like a shiny suit of armor. And the party won in Rochester and Monroe County beating a Democratic Party there that had no coherent message regularly.
What to what end? The hard principles were obscured by the hard politics. Why strive when it only amounts to a chalk mark for the winning team. What else was there. Minarik called himself a conservative, but it was hard to see governance that put this into play.
What about waging a principled battle - and going down to defeat.
That would mean failure. Oh sure, we're all told that failure is nothing to shy away from - it gives us valuable lessons. And we're told that it's the journey, not the finish line. But American culture has shunned the loser, the failure. So what are we left with? Just win baby (right Al Davis).
Minarik did fail, however. He took over the New York State Republican Party just as their standard-bearer, Gov. George Pataki, was getting out. Minarik applied his style to the state level. It did nothing to stop the slide. He was shoved aside just two years on the job (holding down both the county and state rolls).
His ouster this past week as chairman of the Rochester region Republicans was predicated on the need for a softer, more collaborative Republican Party.
And, of course, my first thought was softer and collaborative is not Steve Minarik.
Then I thought about how Minarik suffered a stroke in 2001 (soon after that profile of him ran actually). I recalled the lesson of his life I had begun to learn -- winning at all costs is no life at all.
But here's the thing about this man. He also freely talked about how his kids meant everything to him back then. He did soften up -- at least for a moment. And then I looked at that profile again and there was this line. He said political foes took him too seriously and that they knew nothing about him. "I'm not the hard-edged, son-of-a-bitch they make me out to be."
I could believe that. He probably wasn't. He just played an SOB on TV (and the papers, and the radio and anywhere else that would get an audience of more than two).
He played the role because it solidified power, even if he was more than that attack dog.
But maybe now Steve can take off that suit of armor, stop playing the heavy and get something more out of life than just winning.
Let's hang onto to that lesson a bit.
Went to a graduation party in Monticello, Minnesota.
The American Legion Post 60 hosted the little event (cake was sweet, the drinks were plentiful).
Outside the hall sat a sculpture dedicated to one Elmer Cole - a man who clearly served his country well. It's a metal piece of an eagle holding a salmon in it's clutches.
I'm no art critic, not by a long shot. But it was done in what appeared to be large metal sheets fashioned together. There were gaps here and there in the sculpture.
Cool, I thought.
But as I snapped a frame or two I heard a frantic peeping of what sounded like hungry little birds.
I looked up into the eye of the eagle and saw a bit of straw and twig sticking out ... and moving slightly.
And then a grown blackbird came swooping down, landing at the back of the eagle and disappearing. She was there to feed the hungry mouths within.
A couple of regulars at the legion hall said birds have nested in the eagle since the piece was first place in front of the hall four years ago.
My photographic skills were not sharp enough to grab the bird entering or exiting from the steel bird (and I couldn't justify hanging around for another crack at getting the shot -- lest I wanted to be branded anti-social).
As impressive as the artwork might have been, the birds nesting in a bird was even better.
Al Franken should take a seat with someone about the recent poll numbers that came out of Quinnipiac University.
It says that here in Minnesota, the man heading the Democratic ticket, Barack Obama, is up by 17 percentage points while Franken is losing his Minnesota Senate race by 10 percentage points.
Not so good. Franken needs counsel, someone who can relate.
He needs a coffee... maybe a lunch... perhaps an all-night bull session with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Why just nine years ago, it was Clinton trying to break into the Senate. Hillary soft-launched her bid n New York on the farm of then-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Of course,she had to move into the state. She held a listening tour. Then found out Rudy Giuliani would oppose her. Then she learned he wouldn't. Then she got a little-known congressman named Rick Lazio as her foil.
And through it all, Ms. Clinton had one undeniable fact - people knew her and had their minds made up about her. And there were those who were never, ever going to vote for her. Plenty.
No name-recognition building needed for a sitting First Lady. So she spent her considerable campaign money on two things: Maintaining her appeal to those who liked her ... and trying to attract the meager few who were still on the fence.
Clinton spent plenty of time in Upstate New York (read, places outside of the Big Apple). She embarked on trying to show she was no doctrinaire liberal hell-bent on socialized medicine and unwilling to hear from Republicans. No, she would get things done... and do it by working across the aisle.
And it wasn't going to be easy. People forget that when Giuliani was the Republican candidate it was a nip-and-tuck affair. And that was before Rudy became "America's Mayor." Clinton got a break when Giuliani stepped away and a second one when the clearly not-ready-for-prime-time Lazio entered the race.
She won by winning over the more conservative hearts of those outside on NYC, at least as many as could be swayed. It was a remake of sorts.
Franken has clear name recognition. And he clearly has many more people in his state who have made up their mind about him. The poll shows that nearly one in five Democrats jump the aisle and go with Republican Norm Coleman. Can they be swayed?
Franken better find out. He has money - just as Clinton did. What should he do with it. Clinton would probably tell him -- shore up the base. And then remake yourself to appeal to those on the fence.
Clinton could probably tell him what her strategy was to get the centrist, the fence-sitters -- talk about working to get things done. Coleman's already doing that, so Franken's climb might be steep.
And maybe the senator from New York could talk about learning from her own recent strategy misfire. In her 2008 presidential run, she rode the experience horse. And Clinton was overtaken by Obama's message of change by comity.
She could relate that recent lesson, if Al would just pull up a chair at a table with Hillary.
But hurry, Al, get on the former first lady's calendar, before it's too late.
Mr. Lucky's signs (written about in my last post) got me to thinking ...
Just what signs have you seen that stand out... that make you wonder... that say something more about who we are?
American Public Media, my employer, produces everything from news stories for the statewide Minnesota Public Radio network to national programs like Marketplace and Speaking of Faith.
And APM likes to reach out to the public for story ideas and angles. The effort - Public Insight Journalism - is where I toil. We do it a number of ways including survey forms on topics.
So how about this topic - what signs do you see in your day-to-day life that make you pause. We're looking for signs that give not only their overt message, but maybe tell us something more about our current state.
Mr. Lucky's sign surely says something more about our world (especially after the Supreme Court has begun changing gun rights)
So what about you? What are the signs with meaning in your life?
Why not share the story ... maybe to a large audience, and help us get at the state of our society through unique storytelling.
If you're game just click this link. The survey you'll see starts like this....
Sometimes it's the messenger. Sometimes, the message.
But here might be one of the rare times when it's the company messages keep. A sign touting cheap divorces next to one offering to help women get gun training. A sign blasting GUNS at the reader in the middle and a sad tribute to slain officers on the end. And strangely shoved in the middle is a solicitation to find out how "Senator Coleman keeps promises..."
I blocked the number because I'm not into advertising here (feel free to visit if the mood hits you - the signs are in view as you exit I-94 onto Dale Street in St. Paul).
Call the number and you hear a message from "Mr. Lucky," who tells you that the "police can't be everywhere" and offers to help arm you and train you.
Okay, so this relative newcomer to the Twin Cities needs to know who "Mr. Lucky" is.
A quick Google dance explained that this is Maryland "Lucky" Rosenbloom, is a social studies teacher, a paralegal who has run for state office. He's also a conservative African-American with a radio program who also pens newspaper columns locally and, apparently, has written a book.
Perhaps the best accounting comes from Gov. Tim Pawlenty announcement of Lucky Rosenblooom and four others to the Council on Black Minnesotans done last May. Maybe others with a longer MN background know more about him.
Five signs on a chain-linked fence pulled me in. "Mr. Lucky" indeed.
One recent lesson starts like this: Kids have moods for the same reason we all do. Because sometimes you just are in a mood.
That's not really the lesson, however.
That begins with the notion that kids are acting up because of you. They want attention or they are being grumpy or taciturn because it's aimed at you. Of course, that's because many of us fall into the trap that kids are an extension of us. Their moods reflect on own ability to govern them, manage them, socialize them.
Wrong. Move that ego trip to the side daddy-o.
Sometimes they are sad because, well, they're sad. Sometimes they complain because they feel unsettled. Like we all do. We fail to see that when we're letting the ego rule.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you don't need to address how they exhibit these moods. We all have to learn that and we can't jettison that role (unless you want wild animals for kids).
But, man, does that ego get in the way of assessing what's going on with the kiddie ... and, boy, does it allow emotion to replace reason. And it also saps away any empathy for the little tyke who is just trying to figure things out.
So how does it feel my journalism compadres?
How do you enjoy the life of being examined from every corner, judged on every output?
Once upon a time we'd have to deal with angry phone calls or letter to the editor. We could field the call and chalk it up to "another disgruntled reader/viewer/listener." The letter might make in the paper, might not.
We did our thing and who would really change it.
Oh, but now it has changed. We - the scrutinizers - are being scrutinized. From every corner and in every fashion.
We have our constant critics and our in-house complaint stations. We have the self-investigations and the reformers.
So tell me my fellow-journos, how's it feel being on the inside of that globe?
I'm a sports junkie and a devotee of the New York Mets. The team has played lousy and just changed manager. The new man in charge, Jerry Manuel, has a gift of the gab. Over the weekend he entertained the press before the team was ready to head back to their home field. The fans have been rough on the under-achieving Mets. Some players are getting booed just as they step onto the field.
So one of the reporting gaggle asked Manuel how one of the boo-birds favorite target - a scuffling reliever - would handle the hoots back in New York. Manuel spoke about how the most beautiful flowers need not only fertile soil but fertilizer. It was a colorful way of saying that the booing can only make the players stronger.
But that's not how the New York Post heard it. "Manuel Likens Angry Mets Fans To Fertilizer," was the headline. This has long been the Post's scrubby style - twist and turn words so that it fits a nice narrative, in this case: New manager kicks fans and keeps the team in a beleaguered state.
The old days might have meant a phone call to an editor (likely ignored) or a piece of mail plopped in the ghetto of the letters section.
Now ... the Post is judged -- and with the full quote provided so you can make the call. And it's not just by one blogger, but by many. And the press performance also becomes part of the narrative. And sometimes it leads to a public flogging by none other than Keith Olbermann.
So how does it feel to be judged, dear journalists? It's damn uncomfortable sometimes. And it can throw us offguard, make us think twice about a story approach or the use of a quote (although I doubt the NY Post feels the same. To them any publicity is good publicity).
Perhaps, in this case, turnabout is not only fair play but maybe makes the press play fair.
Maybe it makes our work stronger (And note, I'm not bringing fertilizer into this, lest someone gets the wrong idea).
The girl at three and a half refuses to see limits. Parents try to set deadlines for eating, bathing, sleeping.
They warn her how the brick she's holding in her small hand might smash her toes
But the girl unbounded will not yield.
Watch her go down a flight of stairs. Her arms flail and her legs pop. She leads with her head. Her shins have bruises from flinging her body on outdoor metal furniture or basement walls.
No one will keep the spirit down. No one.
You can watch her and feel envious - she has no fear. And yet, it exasperates you. I mean how do you push back the wind?
She will find what she's looking for. And she will simply refuse to see a reason to oppose the urge that thrusts her forward.
"But I want it," she says, and she means it. A few days ago, she was told that she'll lose
T.V. if she didn't listen.
"I don't want T.V.," she said. Who would argue with the force of those words.
I'm not up to the task.
Sure, the power comes from a child's mind that vaguely knows it really doesn't have the answers. And, yes, she's still too young to know of limits, of fences, of rules.
Yet that power also brings with it this unbridled sense of joy - the kind that makes us yearn to be near a child. And you want somehow to keep that kernal of desire burning like a red hot coal as her body and brain matures ... the bruises go away ... her stride is controlled.
Some of them carried a message. None were subtle.
Just in case the Obamacons or Obamites or Obam-bams (or whatever they're called) think they'll have a cakewalk this November, remember the red side
And now for the "avert-your-eyes-if-easily-offended" alert.
There was plenty of the who is more macho sentiment flowing at the car show. From the garb to the slogans on said garb. And there were plenty of devils or skeletons with middle fingers raised.
But the tail-end of this car below truly wanted to convey the spirit of,well, testosterone. If there were a doctor in the house, surely he would have made the vehicle cough, no
And just for kicks, one more shot of the kid in the gleam of the day. Honestly, for all the excess, the two of us did have a pretty good bonding moment.
