Election Day

My legs are sore from walking and knocking on doors. I've talked to a lot of township residents in the last few weeks and I'm once again impressed at the many paths that our residents take in their pursuit of happiness. That drive to live our lives with as much authenticity as we can possibly create, coupled with the capacity to not just tolerate, but to appreciate our neighbors and their unique paths is the key to the economic revival of our township, our region, our state, and our nation.

Sounds hyperbolic, I know.  It’s been that sort of week.  New York suffers under Sandy and suddenly climate change is back on the table and the federal government is competent and people appreciate it.  Here in Leland Township, events have been iconic in a more positive way.  Leland School’s boys soccer team won game after game in their post season until they had claimed the title of 2012 District and Regional Champions, or as it was explained to me “one of the four best teams in the state”.   Their last game was on Halloween in Big Rapids, which left three team members who are also in Mr. Wodek’s  civic class precious little time to complete the required six hours of volunteering on a political campaign.

That’s how I ended up with “bodyguards” on my last weekend of campaigning door to door.  I like going door to door with students, especially on foot. One day we walked from my house down M-204 to M-22.  The next day we walked east from my house into Lake Leelanau.  While we walked, I talked about the the history of the road and the homes, the people who live here now and the ones who are gone.  We met a mom who remembered when Austin’s dad was her oldest son’s soccer coach. We met a 92 year old man who missed keeping chickens in the village. We visited Bad Pony, one of our fledgling internet businesses and, next door, The Washington Building, where Doug Fierberg took time out to give us a tour of the national law firm that they run out of his Lake Leelanau office.  We saw a pileated wood pecker, Provemont Pond, a hidden barn, boots planted with cactus.  Carol Drow told us about her solar panels, "Been there since Jimmy Carter was president!" Simon Dyer turned off his leaf blower long enough to share his comparison between US elections and elections in his native Ireland. 

Sometime halfway through the first day, one of the guys said, “Wow! Everybody here is connected!”  Of course, that’s the point of my patter, the point of the walking tour, the point of going door to door, the point of civics class, the point of serving in local government.  We are all connected, by blood, or by history, or by economics, by sharing the same roads and parks and fire department and lakeshores.

My challenge as supervisor will be to foster that sense of community, and to see where it leads.  The loose ends can be woven in by encouraging our residents to shop locally, by making opportunities for young people to come back and establish their careers and families here, by making township government open and accessible to everyone, not just as a place to complain when things go wrong but as way to meet their neighbors and collaborate to solve problems and create whatever comes next.

I thank all who have helped me along so far, the folks who encouraged me and bankrolled me and advised me and opened their doors and took time to ask good questions and tell me about their lives.  I especially enjoyed the high school students who accompanied me along the way. I hope they have absorbed the idea that governing is not just about winning arguments or elections. 

   

I’m optimistic about the results of today’s voting.  The results for local races will be available at Leelanau.cc  after the polls close, absentee ballots are all fed into the machine, and the township clerk reports the totals to the county clerk’s office. Vote today, and thank our election workers when you do.

Anna Plays Ball

Anna on the volleyball court.

Anna, my third daughter, is younger than the other two by nearly a decade. She strives to distinguish herself from her sisters, who set the bar high with their academic achievements. Anna has spent seventh grade being a jock, playing basketball, then volleyball, and she is now co-manager of the varsity softball team.

I know little about basketball and less about volleyball. I haven't tried to learn. There seem to be enough parents around who know all of the lingo and all the strategies and who want to tell anyone within earshot what the coach is doing wrong. Seventh grade is when kids are starting to break away from their families and establish their own identities. I'm glad the coaches are there providing venues for kids to try out their newly minted autonomy.

Anna had one basketball coach who yelled, and one who wrote on a clipboard. Her volleyball coaches were mantra-types, repeating the same simple instructions, "Happy stance! Call it! Shuffle shuffle!" In volleyball, the kids were not even supposed to look at the score. They were praised by their coaches for using the proper six-step serving techinique, even if they never got the ball over the net. Once the ball was in play, they were supposed to try for six touches every time the ball came to their side, regardless of scoring possibilities.

Liz said, "Yeah, the seventh and eighth grade teams always lose, but by the time they get to ninth grade they're really good." We shall see. I'm happy to see discipline and practice stressed over "talent", whatever that is. And I'm happy to go to the games and make the popcorn when it's my turn and otherwise enjoy the show.

Building Community

This is a poster that hangs in Mr. Evans' music room at Leland School. I liked it so much that I had to find it on the web. The text reads as follows:

Turn off your TV.
Leave your house.
Know your neighbors, Look up when you are walking;
Greet people; Sit on your stoop; Plant flowers;
Use your library; Play together;
Buy from local merchants; Share what you have;
Help a lost dog; Take children to the park;
Garden together; Support neighborhood schools;
Fix it even if you didn't break it;
Have pot lucks; Honor elders;
Pick up litter; Read stories aloud;
Dance in the street; Talk to the mail carrier;
Listen to the birds; Put up a swing;
Help carry something heavy; Barter for your goods;
Start a tradition; Ask a question;
Hire young people for odd jobs; Organize a block party;
Bake extra and share; Ask for help when you need it;
Open your shades; Sing together;
Share your skills; Take back the night;
Turn up the music; Turn down the music;
Listen before you react to anger; Mediate a conflict;
Seek to understand; Learn from new and uncomfortable angles;
Know that no one is silent athough many are not heard.
Work to change this.

Mr McFluffers Goes to School

The second hand store cage was too small, so our raised-from-egg chicken, Mr. McFluffers, will be appearing in this weekend's production of Fools in this lovely brass cage complete with a stick perch scavenged from the playground at Leland School. You can see from the photo that the cage was originally topless, but we wove a new top for it from fishing line.

Life in the theater is not all glamor and makeup. Here Mr Mc Fluffers sips some water amid the hubbub of final carpentry work on the upturned cow prop downstage and Mr Cox tuning the piano upstage.

Fools will be presented this weekend only:

Saturday, November 15 at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm

Sunday, November 16 at 7:00 pm

Leland Public School • Performing Art Center

Tickets $8 adults, $5 students – available at the door or in advance by calling 256-9857.

As mother of the chicken, I had a special seat at the dress rehearsal. I was impressed by the expressive and tightly knit cast, hilarious dialogue, and one very talented hen. Don't miss it!

Fools

From the school newsletter:

One weekend only! • November 15 & 16

Leland High School Drama presents Fools, by Neil Simon. Directed by Jeremy John Evans.

Saturday, November 15 at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm

Sunday, November 16 at 7:00 pm

Leland Public School • Performing Art Center

Tickets $8 adults, $5 students – available at the door or in advance by calling 256-9857.

This story, by Neil Simon, takes place when Leon Tolchinsky, an ambitious young school teacher, arrives in the village of Kulyenchikov, and discovers that the town is suffering under a 200-year curse of stupidity. The curse was cast on them by none other than Vladimir Yousekevitch, after his son’s fiancé was forbidden to see the younger Yousekevitch by her father, who found out the boy was illiterate. She subsequently was made to marry another man. If Leon can’t educate the fiancés descendent within 24 hours of his arrival in Kulyenchikov, he, too, will fall victim to the curse. The curse can only be broken if he can educate Sophia…or if she marries a Yousekevitch!

Hilarity ensues as this fast-paced comedy with quick and witty banter takes place on our Leland Performing Arts Center stage. As always, our Leland productions are brought to you in part by the generous donations of the Verdier Circle of Friends.

The Och family's contribution to this production is......a chicken. Jeremy called me a few weeks ago to ask if they could borrow a chicken, in a cage, for the character who is trying to teach a chicken to talk. The chicken is easy to come by, if a bit challenging to wrangle, but a cage suitable for a Russian village is something else. I think I found a candidate at Jaffe's consignment shop in Lake Leelanau, a cute ornamental cage. Now if the chicken will only fit inside.....

Election Day

Finally it's Election Day. At least it's Election Day for everyone who didn't vote by absentee ballot. It's another beautiful late fall day, sunny and warm. The chickens are roaming the yard, playing out their little chicken rivalries. Gas prices are unusually low, $2.26 at the BP station in Lake Leelanau. It's the sort of day that tempts us to think that the golden days might just go on forever, even though all logic tells us otherwise.

Richard has been fishing and has voted already this morning. One 14 inch walleye, not a keeper, and a short wait to vote. I keep thinking about my own campaign, thinking of more people that I could have talked to. I did more door-to-door canvassing, more advertising, and more standing in front of the post office than my opponents.

But I am running as a Democrat in an area where running as a Democrat has always been the kiss of death. It turned out that many of my supporters were the orphaned moderate Republicans. Many of the people I met going door-to-door told me that they were so fed up that they were voting straight Democrat this year. The guy I carpool with won't vote for me, nor will his wife, because "We always vote straight Republican." I ended up leaving party reference off of my pamphlets and ads because all it seemed to do was muddy the waters.

Leland Township will face challenges in the coming years, much as we wish the golden days to go on. Energy prices will make our area less attractive as a Traverse City bedroom community. We can expect Big Wind to come back again with tempting lease terms for our farmers; we will also be confronted with the idea of windmills out on Lake Michigan. Our lake shore septic puzzle isn't going to solve itself. Public school funding will continue to be a problem, exacerbated by those volatile energy prices. A combination of the economic slowdown and Michigan's pop-up tax are already affecting our real estate market in unexpected ways. The harbor renovation will fly or falter depending on state funding.

So many of theses issues will be resolved -- or not resolved--by the various levels of government working in combination. Playing chess with Anna yesterday reminded me of trying to figure out these local issues. The best land for wind towers is in the northern tip of Leelanau county, but there are no transmission lines, but the new Comprehensive Energy Plan provides for expediting the siting transmission lines. There are lots of possible scenarios and how they play out depends on who is elected at the various levels. It's hard to imagine a county board that won't require some type of septic inspections, even if it's only for antique lake shore systems. It's equally hard to imagine a state legislature that actually faces up to school funding and the pop up tax problem.

Liz has tickets to go hear Obama speak at Grant Park tonight. I think it will be a victory speech but I'm wary enough that I warned her to take a friend and stick with him. And to wear shoes she can walk in. I can't stop contemplating all possible scenarios.

So I'm off to vote, to do my small part in shaping our future. Wish me luck.

Don't Forget Leland School!

When you are voting tomorrow in Leland School district, don't forget to go all the way to the end of the ballot, past the medical marijuana question and the stem cell question, and vote YES on Leland Public School's operational millage renewal.

This is a renewal, not a new tax. It renews the millage on non-homestead properties and it is a requirement -- if we can't pass this millage, Leland School will not receive money to operate next school year.

We pass this renewal millage, and hold the school board election, in May. Putting this millage on the ballot in November will save the expense of a separate election; it does not accelerate the actual collection of the tax.

There are no candidates for school board on the ballot, but there are two write-in candidates. Andrew MacFarlane is ready to serve another term, although he missed the August filing deadline. Janine Fierberg, who was recently appointed to finish Peggy Miller's term, is also willing to continue her service. We are lucky to have two good people ready to put their time and energy into our school.

Small Victories

That's Richard, with one of the biggest walleyes he has ever caught. He got up early this morning and went down to the dock as the sun was just rising. He nailed this one on the first cast, then struggled to land it as it was surely going to break the line if he tried to haul it up conventionally. It weighed in over 6 pounds and yielded some beautiful fillets.

I woke up early (by my standards, but hours after Richard) to drive Anna to her dog sitting job. I was able to snap that picture because over the weekend I took my old broken camera to work and spent my breaks disassembling it and trying to figure out why the batteries drained within ten seconds of turning it on. I was looking for bad contacts or a short, but once I took the case off and tested it, it started working almost fine again. I say almost fine because it makes a strange new noise when the lens extends. Before I took the case off, the lens was totally stuck and the camera was wasting all of the battery energy trying to move the lens. Once it started working, I put it all back together, testing it at each step, and now I have a working camera again.

The camera is going on four years old, which is ancient in the world of digital cameras. Richard has his eyes shut in the picture, just like he had his eyes shut in Shelagh's graduation picture. I'm still wishing I had a camera with a screen that I could see without my glasses. But my wishes and my budget just don't coincide. It's good to have any camera again.

I spent all Friday baking bread for a bake sale to help Leland's Odyssey of the Mind teams go to world competition. Anna didn't do OM this year, but her old team members still have their teeth sunk into structure problems. Her old teammates now are split among two bound-for-worlds teams, and it's going to take the whole community to raise enough money to get them there. I contributed 20 loaves of bread, one of many bakers, and I hear the Saturday morning bake sale raised over $600. Their next fundraiser is dinner at the Steak Haus by Sugarloaf on Thursday May 15th from 5-8 pm. . All tickets are $15.00. You have a choice of either a steak dinner, battered shrimp dinner or a veggie alfredo dinner. Team members are selling tickets and they are also available at Northwoods Kitchens.

I keep getting interrupted by people who saw the rhubarb sign. I take them out to cut some rhubarb, chat a little, and take their dollars. Eggs are selling, too, faster than my hens can lay. I've started giving away my tomato plants, using them to encourage the many people who are starting new gardens this year.

More on School Equity

There was a long story in the Leelanau Enterprise this week about Leland School's band program and the hard decision not to grant tenure to our band teacher. Tonight I had a long conversation with a school board member as we waited for kids at choir. She confirmed what I had suspected, that the decision came down to a matter of money. Keeping the band teacher on, even part time, would have meant cutting an elementary teacher. We talked of keeping band as a pay-to-play activity or somehow drawing on talented members of the community to provide some sort of band experience. But a full-time tenured band teacher is not something that our school can afford.

As I explained last post, Leland School would be in a different position if we had been spending a little more money in 1994. We would have the option of asking the voters to approve millages for operations, for payroll, utilities, and bus fuel, the biggest hunks of a school's budget and the fastest rising portion of everybody's costs.

But Wait! There's More! If your school was one of those spending more than $6500 per student in 1994, your school gets special "20j money" straight from the state of Michigan because....well... just because.

Leland School's business manager, Sandy Potts, described the situation in a March 2008 paper. Here are some highlights:

PROPOSAL “A” AND SECTION 20j
The promise of Proposal “A” was that both property tax levies and educational dollars for K-12 schools would be equalized throughout the state. The formula created would, over time, narrow the gap between the highest funded and lowest funded K-12 school districts.

Language in Section 380.1211 of the State School Code, as revised, limited the increase in per pupil funding for each district to the lesser of the rate of inflation or the amount determined by the legislature in each year’s budget. This meant that those schools with very high per pupil funding would get enough to cover inflation but the lower paid schools would gradually be given more to bring the funding levels closer together. The gap between the highest and lowest school districts’ per-pupil funding began at $7,532 in 1994 and narrowed to $5,454 in 2000 under this formula.

In 2000, the increase to the Student Foundation Grant Allowance was $238 per pupil but the inflation rate was relatively low at 1.6%. This meant that the schools at the highest end of the funding range would have received less than $238 per pupil. (Remember that these schools were already receiving as much as $5,424 more per pupil than the lowest paid schools.) This was not satisfactory to the schools at the highest end of the scale and therefore the legislature was convinced to add Section 20j of the State Aid Fund which allows them to receive the full foundation increase. This was a direct, purposeful, political change in opposition to the intent of Proposal “A” as passed by the voters of the State of Michigan.

Section 20j payments average $251 per pupil and are given to the 51 highest paid schools in the state. The total paid out under Section 20j has averaged $54,000,000 annually for the last five years, for a total of $270,000,000 paid to the 51 wealthiest districts in the state...

...The 20j schools will insist that they can’t survive without the 20j payments but even you if remove the 20j payments, these schools will still receive a minimum of $1,118 and as much as $5,135 more per pupil than the base foundation grant which is the amount with which than half of Michigan’s schools must operate their programs.

In fiscal year 2000, to qualify for the original 20j monies, a school must have had a base grant of $6500 or greater. Since that time a hold-harmless base grant has been set each year and those above that amount receive the extra monies based on the above mentioned calculation. Fifty one districts qualified in the first year. However, only 50 districts qualified in 2000 based on their foundation grant allowance and only 45 districts qualified in years 2002-2008. Yet each year, all 51 of the original schools have been given 20j payments. To date, the 20j payments made to unqualified schools from 2000-2008 is approximately $84,250,000; money that should have been used elsewhere.

Dan Hanrahan, Director of the State Aid and School Finance Office, states that the legislature has never given him direction to change the funding formula for the 20j schools even though the base grant for those schools has been changed each year. Thus all 51 schools on the original list, whether they meet the new 20j base amount or not, continue to receive additional funding for each of their students.

I can't figure out what the moral of the story is. Schools that always had more money still get more money. The rules are so complicated that I can barely find out what they all are, let alone explain them to you. The Director of the School Aid Fund can't even give a good answer as to why some schools get more.

I keep thinking about last fall when the State of Michigan almost shut down because they couldn't come up with a balanced budget. My brother called some friends in Lansing and asked what the legislators were discussing. His friends said, "Oh the legislators aren't talking, they're just sitting around. The lobbyists are meeting and when they come up with a compromise, they'll tell the legislators what to do."

Meanwhile, there goes the band teacher.

Dog Auditions for Annie

Leland Public School's spring drama project is a no-holds-barred presentation of the musical "Annie". Even the auditions are an event, as you can see from this note in the Morning Announcements:

If you need a good laugh and want to be a part of the Annie Dog auditions check out the fun Saturday @ 1 pm as talented Leelanau Pups vie for the role of Sandy, Annie’s dog. Admission per family is $5. Hosted by Luke Speicher and judged by local celebrities: Kathy Lau, Alanna Toro, & Jeremy Evans They even have doggy clean-up provided by the Doo-Do0Don’ts. If you want to enter your dog contact Bill Robinson.

Bill's phone number was included, let me know if you want to contact him.

Basketball Team

Leland's varsity basketball team celebrates their win over Bellaire in the Regional Championships. This photo, by Jan-Michael Stump, was published in the Record Eagle a few days after Chess Club.
4-H Chess Club gets a little lumpy towards the end of the winter. Kids are hitting walls, where they pretty much know who they can beat and who can beat them. Kids who were making great advances in their games just from playing, now find themselves playing the same game over and over again. A few are bored because they always win; a few are discouraged because they always lose. In this small school, kids are starting to get on each others' nerves and the walls seem to be closing in on all of us.

This year we've held off the cabin fever by bringing in adults to play. First it was Ian, my co-leader's son, back from Iraq foe a few weeks. Then it was Shelagh and Jordan, my daughter and son-in-law, home on spring break. (Shelagh handled my rudest kids with a combination of the phrases she grew up with and new repertoire from her education classes. It was like watching a new and improved version of myself.)

March 6th is my favorite, though. I hadn't planned on guests. One of my kids took a board to another table to play with a friend. Jordan Gibson, a former chess club kid and now a senior basketball player sat down to watch the game. I think he asked to play the winner. I was absorbed in my own game; by the time I looked up again, most of the team was there and my boards were full.

Much of the basketball team had been in Chess Club when they were in the lower grades. Those guys had gone through the chess club cabin fever thing, too. They ended many Chess Club meetings by playing touch football, even in the slush and mud of spring. It was always the continuation of the same game, which reconvened anytime the could get together for 20 minutes or half an hour. Now they were grown up, calm and polite, wearing dress shirts and ties because it was a game day.

My co-leader was amazed. "Why are our kids so well-behaved?" she whispered.

"Because there are men here," I answered. Our usual problem kid was quiet, watching the games. Every once in a while he would try to tease someone, but the older guys would growl "Cut it out!" and then he would.

The team won their game that night, against Mio, and then won the Regionals against Bellaire in a nail-biter on Wednesday. By the end of the week, the team was the big story, a story made richer by the many similarities to the Northport team that their coach played for a generation ago.

The team's run ended last night in a loss in the state quarterfinals against Muskegon West Michigan Christian. In chess, one of my tasks is to teach grace while both winning and losing. You don't gloat when you win. You don't cry when you lose. You shake hands -- eye contact, palms together, -- and thank your opponent for the game. I'm as proud of these guys in a loss as I was when they were winning. Maybe prouder.

Selling our Schools to Pay the Bills

Michigan's slow-moving school funding crisis tends to get lost in the shuffle amid the bad news about the Big Three, the threatened state shutdowns, and the "one-state recession". Most people think like the lady down the road who told me "As long as the bus shows up every morning to take the kids to school, I just figure our school is doing alright."

It's hard to think beyond the local. Even if my kids' school and your kids' school seem to be doing fine, that doesn't mean the system isn't messed up. An article in today's Lansing State Journal, New proposal would solve school funding woes describes the biggest problem, in terms of dollars facing Michigan's school districts:

A 2004 report from the non-partisan Citizens Research Council found "unfunded pension and health liabilities" for Michigan school employees now amount to around $19.3 billion.

In this case, a "liability" means money legally owed to pensioners who have retired, confident their pensions would take care of them after their years of service. "Unfunded" means just that. There are no assets on the books allocated to cover the $19.3 billion in pension and health care liabilities promised by the system.

School districts make annual contributions to cover pension and health care obligations for their employees, both active and retired. These contributions today consume around 23 percent of all local school budgets. And they're rising fast. Estimates by Citizens Research Council economists predict their contribution rate will increase to around 32 percent in about a decade.

And that means that school districts, already hit hard by inflation and the funding rigidities imposed by Proposal A, risk being eaten alive by their fixed costs. Even then, what the school districts are paying in isn't going to be enough to cover their obligations.

The author doesn't mention the historical basis for this problem, that former governor Engler decided that the pension fund did not need to be fully funded, and then drained that account to make his tax cuts possible. No use crying over spilt milk, I guess. And of course those health care costs are crippling this and a lot of other pension funds, just like health care costs are crippling a host of other governments and industries.

Likewise, he doesn't mention that one of the fine-print side effects of Proposal A was to raise the local districts' portion of retirement costs from 5% to 100%. The author moves right along to the great new solution: sell our school buildings!

Take all the school buildings and real estate in the entire school system. Sell them to, say, a real estate trust. Lease back the buildings needed for school purposes. Take the excess and use it to fund the unfunded pension and health care liability.

Bingo! You've resolved the problem by, in the language of the accountants, "securitizing the asset value."

.....Naturally, the schools will have to pay rent on the buildings they've leased. If the trust needs to get a 5 percent return on its $30 billion investment to buy the buildings, that's $1.5 billion a year.

But consider that the real estate trust would without doubt manage and maintain the buildings far more efficiently than school districts do. Department of Education figures for 2006 show a $1.8 billion cost for building operations and maintenance.

Could that be halved?

Possibly. What seems certain is that the figure could be greatly reduced. So even without counting building maintenance savings, there's enough money to provide a return for investors in the trust.

The article plows on from that point, with the implicit assumption that local school districts are poor money managers and with the requisite vague example of mismanaged costs.

Frankly, it's hard for me to pay attention at that point. I can only remember those many evenings I spent at our Leland Public School working on the School Facilities Committee in the late 1990's, trying to decide what sort of building project we needed, and where we would build it. I was one of thirty-some volunteers engaged in this process, a lot for this small community. Our committee was only the second generation in a process that took three different attempts to pass a construction millage. What eventually emerged was a compact, versatile building located in the village and used by everyone from early-morning weightlifters to the evening senior citizens group. The building itself came in well under budget, partly due to lucky timing in the construction cycle. Our school is a centerpiece for the community, and it sits on a choice piece of land, to boot. Sell it? To a Real Estate Trust?

Handing control of school funds over to the state has been a losing proposition for our school district. We send boatloads of money to Lansing, we are refunded a mediocre amount, and then are asked to cover more and more in fixed costs. It's hard enough dealing with the State of Michigan, now we are supposed to sell our building and deal with a landlord as well?

What a mess. I don't have the answers, but I know that if the rural areas don't pay attention, we are going to have to swallow someone else's solution.

The Christmas Shopping Post

The turkey and its stuffing are gone. It it snowing and blowing and the cars are sliding down the hill and into the ditch in front of the Kingdom Hall. The news anchors are keeping us breathlessly posted on the progress of "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday", much as they kept us breathlessly updated on each wave of toy recalls a few weeks ago.

I was thinking that I was glad that I didn't have any little kids who were writing letters to Santa, requesting the latest in TV advertised trash. I asked some of the people at work what they were doing about toys for kids this year. "Well, I guess we'll just buy some toys, let them lick 'em, and see if they pass out," was one response. Another said: "Blocks. Can't go wrong with plain wooden blocks."

I realized that I had always struggled to fight the toy advertisers. I had, in fact, perfected a whole folklore about Santa and toy advertising, first published here two years ago. It went something like this:

The toys you see on TV are not really good toys. In the commercials they look like fun toys, but those kids aren't really playing. Those kids are actors and they are just pretending to have fun. Sometimes they are really good actors so the toys look like they're amazing --but if you get those toys they don't do what the commercial made it look like they do. The plane doesn't really fly. The doll doesn't really eat. They break, or the batteries run down, or there are so many pieces that it takes longer to clean up than it does to play.

Santa only brings toys that are going to be fun for a long time. He doesn't like toys that break or get their pieces lost. He likes to bring toys that can be whatever you need to pretend. He likes sturdy toys, and books that are good enough to read over and over. The people that make TV toys have to spend so much money to make those commercials that they don't have enough money left to make really good toys; that's why Santa won't put those toys in his sleigh.

It was a nicer world when the worst thing a toy could do was break or be boring. These days we have to look at toys as potential poison or potential recalls. Many of my coworkers are turning to electronics in their quest for safe toys. This scares me, too, as the "edutainment" of younger and younger children is a huge uncontrolled experiment on developing brains.

Over the years I have sought to replace seasonal shopping with other experiences. Music has played a huge part, as we devote a good deal of time to preparing for the Leelanau Childrens Choir concerts, as well as church services. The girls like to organize informal carolling parties, as well, using the holidays as an excuse to walk around the neighborhoods at night, maybe accepting a cookie or two.

We also cook a lot, making batch after batch of cookies, pies and sweetbreads. We also put together batches of oatmeal cookie mix and homemade baking mix, to give as presents. We sew polar fleece hats and mittens, make catnip toys, build birdhouses. When my kids talked about what they wanted to get for Christmas, I always asked them about the gifts they hoped to give.

Somehow, it all worked. Anna was one of the last kids in her class to give up the idea of Santa. Despite buying less and less, we seemed to have an abundance that convinced her. "There must be a Santa," she told me last year, "because you and Dad couldn't possibly afford everything that we have."

First Day of Sixth Grade

Anna's first day of sixth grade was yesterday. I was in Leland at the end of the school day, so I stopped by to pick her up. I watched each kid exit Mrs. Lisuk's classroom, waiting for Anna. They sure have grown! But the kids looked oddly self conscious as the exited the classroom one by one.

I had forgotten about Mrs. Lisuk's exit rituals. Sh had stationed herself by the door and would only release each kid when they had told her "Goodbye" using the ritual of the day. On the first day of school it was a simple "Hasta Manana!" Some kids were fine with it, but others clutched when asked to utter the unfamiliar words. On the board were the rituals for the rest of this week. My favorite was "May the force be with you," answered by "And also with you."

In Sixth Grade, although students are still physically in the Elementary wing, they are starting the middle school curriculum. They will spend the year learning about learning. They will each be issued a laptop computer to use at school and at home. They will study learning styles and identify themselves as visual, auditory or kinetic learners. They will learn study strategies for all styles, and then practice by doing a lot of work in groups.

Later on in 7th grade they will investigate possible careers and do job shadowing with volunteers from the community. They will learn how to do internet research and business correspondence by researching and writing to colleges and trade schools that fit with the careers that they are considering. We want them to have enter high school with some idea of what they will do after graduation, and a realistic idea of what they will have to achieve in high school in order to make their plans happen.

In 8th grade they will learn to write resumes, fill out job applications, and how to conduct oneself in a job interview. At the end of the year, every student will go to an actual job interview, walking alone to a business in the village. Our business community graciously participates in this program, but many of the seasonal places snag good summer help this way.

Anna spent last week trying on possible "first day of school" outfits but then finally opted to wear the same plain shorts and tank top she had worn the day before. Mrs. Lisuk's room was filled with monarch butterfly items, including a tank of milkweed with caterpillars and chrysalises destined to become butterflies. Our K-12 school is all one building, but we house 7th and 8th grades upstairs by themselves, the chrysalis, where they can grow into confident, self-directed high school students.

Showtime!

I have lately seen a lot of traffic from people looking for costume and set building ideas for Seussical and Honk! I noticed a similar trend last year at this time, as people everywhere started planning their spring musicals.

This year Leland is staging Schoolhouse Rock Live. Once again I find myself scouring the internet for information on a show that has existed beneath my personal radar. I liked the Repertory Actor's Theater's description of the show:

The show is a little campy, a wee bit corny, kinda patriotic, but definitely A LOT of fun! For many, myself included, Schoolhouse Rock Live! is a charming sojourn back to bygone innocent Saturday morning memories, a brief eighty minute escape from current world worries and woes. My hope is that it entertained and uplifted the spirits of all who had the chance to see it. As we struggle through these uncertain times, one thing is for sure,..."Knowledge is Power!"

Anna auditioned for the show, but she is still waiting to see if she got a part. It is a high school production, but in a school our size everyone needs to pitch in. I wonder if this show will somehow end up with someone playing the part of a bird?

Liz Graduates

This has been one of those times when life moves by way too fast to chronicle. Liz graduates from high school tomorrow. In the past month she has appeared as Gertrude in Seussical, totaled the car by smacking a deer, landed a summer job at Misfit Toys, gone on the Physics Trip to Chicago and Six Flags, gone on the senior Trip to Mackinac Island........

I can't keep up. In September Liz will start college at Northwestern University. She plans to study "everything". I think that's a good plan. I always tell my kids to just keep learning how to learn. Chances are their life's career hasn't even been invented yet.

Seussical, The Musical

This year Leland Public School is combining forces with St Mary's School to present Seussical, The Musical.

The first parent's meeting was last night. The casting is done and the kids have been rehearsing. there is only one commercial CD of the music, but the kids have been listening to it night and day.

Peformances are planned for two weekends, May 12 and May 19, at the Performing Arts Center at Leland Public School.

I've found some links that will help us old folks get up to speed. First a synopsis of the show. This article from Playbill gives some insight as to why Seussical is so popular. There is also a photo of characters in costume, but I offer this only as a suggestion. Our cast is creative and our budget is small, so I expect our costuming to look less commercial and more interesting.

Maybe like these photos from the production at Western High School in Parma, MI. Or this extensive slide show of costumes from a production near Vancouver, BC. Or Santa Monica College's production. Here's another high school production. Those folks must love to sew!

This page takes a long time to load, but it showcases the work of a middle school art class that created the props for their school's production. I was clueless when Jeremy talked about needing props for this show. Now I'm starting to get it.

You can learn more about the composer and lyricist of this show by checking out the Ahrens and Flaherty website. The photo at the top of this article is from the photo section of that website.

Still More Naked Gardener

The Naked Gardener Calendar continues to cause a stir. Sunday's
article in the Traverse City Record Eagle was well written and balanced. According to the article, the first printing of the calendar has sold out, 500 copies at 20 dollars each. Not so balanced was the rumor yesterday that the pastor of the Lutheran church was bringing a petition to the school board meeting demanding that Mike Hartigan be punished for appearing in the calendar.

Oddly enough, I was at the 4-H office when I heard about the petition, checking on the progress of Leelanau County 4-H's main fundraiser, a plat book that sells for $28. Our plat book is a series of maps that detail the property lines and who owns what throughout the county. It is used by people interested in real estate, hunters and fishermen, farmers, and the generally curious. It is expensive to produce and has generated some vociferous complaints from people who disagree with how their property lines are portrayed. We started selling our latest printing of 1000 in April and we had sold 538 of them as of yesterday. I will be very happy if we sell out in a year; selling out in a matter of weeks is unthinkable.

I had a 4-H board meeting last night, but Liz went to the school board meeting as our family's representative. She reports that the high school library was filled and that the most of the people there wore yellow nametags that read "I Support Mike", that were made by a member of the class of 2003 and distributed by his mom. When I dropped Liz off I saw all kinds of people walking into school. Most of the faculty was there, many students, parents, and graduates.

Two people spoke against the calendar, but most of the meeting was, in fact, a "kind tribute to our superintendent" as one mom told me later. Mike Hartigan did offer an apology to anyone who was offended by the calendar. The threatened petition never materialized. One of the people who spoke out against the calendar in the first comment session spoke about what a good job Mr. Hartigan was doing in the second comment session.

Liz was confused by that, but I understand perfectly. None of these people are bad people, and almost everyone supports public schools and expects them to be adequately funded. It is totally possible to come out to a school board meeting alarmed about a calendar and come back home even more alarmed to find out that the tax dollars you had thought were paying for your local school are disappearing to who knows where.

People around here are polite. Although they came to speak about the calendar, they stayed to hear about the four new textbooks that our district will purchased this year, about the addition of a JV soccer team, and about how our intermediate school district's fund balance is growing even as the individual school districts are coming up short. It is hard to vilify the school board as you see them in action, trying to use our limited resources make the best choices for our kids. The Naked Gardener produced one of the best attended school board meetings in history, and that may be its crowning achievement.

The Chicken Farmer Reviews HONK!

Derek Telgard plays a turkey in the opening barnyard scene
There is something inherently entertaining about people impersonating poultry. Remember the classic hypnotist's schtick? The climax is always when the subject is told to strut and cluck like a chicken.

People often act like poultry. They can't help themselves. I started working at the casino the first year I raised baby chicks. I spent a lot of time watching the baby chicks and I spent a lot of time watching casino patrons. After enough time and enough sleep deprivation, the group of guys standing around watching one guy play blackjack was indistinguishable from the group of chicks standing around watching one chick pick at a hole in the newspaper lining their pen. Craps players flocked from one crap game to the other, just as seagulls flock between picnic tables. Just last week I sat in the waiting room at the hospital next to a group of ladies that cackled and picked at each other like classic "old biddies".

So it may be that HONK! draws upon some sort of common ancestral memory. The show opens with a square dance inspired song and dance number that introduces the inhabitants of the barnyard, including the evil cat, modeled on the classic silent film villain. When the barnyard birds cackle, cluck, and peck the cat into temporary submission, the audience is moved to spontaneous applause and cheering.


The players won their audience over in that first number, and they didn't let go for the entire show. High school productions typically suffer from lost lines, lost characterizations, and arduous scene changes. There was none of that in Leland's production; the players took full advantage of their small but well equipped stage and minimal sets to move the show along from one scene to the next. They smoothly moved between playing people and poultry with perfect comic timing. (Who would have thought that hatching out a clutch of eggs required a Lamaze coach?)

The small size of Leland's student body means that athletes are pressed into roles that they might never attempt in a larger school. Director Jeremy Evans used these guys to their full potential, choreographing numbers that borrow more from the WWE than from your mother's musical theater. (The second unexpected burst of applause is towards the end of the Cat's song "You Can Play with your Food," when, after a long series of chases and feints, the Duckling and Cat suddenly lock arms and tango. I suspect the applause is not for their dancing, but for their stamina.)

HONK! 's score is full of these tempo changes, but it also features several songs that stand on their own, like the lovely "Now I've Seen You." The second act's showstopper, "Warts and All," was a hit even before the chorus line of young frogs makes its appearance, dancing and singing with pure joy. Just when you think that the number couldn't get any better, the orchestra breaks into the bump and grind (this part is your mother's musical theater) that signals every available cast member onstage, as frogs, singing and dancing through a happy, green legged collage of frog philosophy. If you can't get on board, you might as well, as the frog says, "hang it up."

The story line of HONK! is familiar, it is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "Ugly Duckling". Familiarity does not diminish the emotional impact of the show's themes; when Kevin Price, as Ugly sings of his loneliness and confusion in "Different", we are moved. When Ugly's siblings taunt him (crossing the people/poultry line with ease), we are nauseous. Anna Pentiuk's depiction of Ugly's long lost --but still searching-- mother is a moving testament, not just to mothers, but to all who struggle to do right in the face of ridicule and disappointment. Her song "Hold Your Head Up," while initially introduced as a swimming lesson, serves to bolster Ugly through his seasons of wandering.

John Gleason, as the Cat, morphs back and forth between mustache twirling villain and raunchy tomcat with ease and glee, providing the comic relie needed to balance the heavier themes. The supporting cast, working their way through a treasure trove of simple costumes, seem larger than life. They switch roles with their costumes at a dizzying speed, depicting all of Andersen's original characters and a few updated ones, most notably a television news crew and a flock of navagationally challenged Canada geese whose dialogue is lifted from a family car trip.

This is, after all, the reason for musical theater. Out of a classic story and some wonderful songs, with the aid of some simple props and costumes from the attic, the players open a door and show us our own lives, reflected in their characters. The players respect our ability to use our imagination; we allow ourselves to go along for the ride. We laugh, we cry, and in the end we know a little more about ourselves. And we have some new songs to take home. At the end of the show the players go back to being our kids, but a little wiser, maybe. And maybe a little more like poultry.

The cast of HONK! will present their show again on Friday May 20th, Saturday May 21st, and Sunday May 22nd in the Leland Public School Performing Arts Center. All shows are at 7 pm. Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for students.

If you aren't there, you missed it.