Remember when Al Franken came to UMM?

Thanksgiving weekend 2017 will be remembered as a time when we were deluged by reports of sexual misconduct by powerful men.
I remember when Al Franken came to our U of M-Morris to deliver the commencement address. His stature seemed so high then. It seemed like a triumphant time for all here in Morris. Now Franken is on his heels.
We have Ivanka Trump, daughter of the president, saying that not only will pedophiles go to hell, "there is a special place in hell" for such offenders. As if there might be a preferable place in hell. I once talked with Neil Thielke about whether we ought to categorize sins, some being worse than others. Neil was skeptical. It's not for us as mortals to make such a judgment - we all just need to acknowledge our sinful nature.
Ivanka's father has spoken as if he wants to see Roy Moore win in Alabama. A Moore victory would spell lots of complications for the Republican Party. Would Moore require special security if he goes to Washington D.C.? I remember when our community of Morris had a problem with a misbehaving priest, and we learned through media coverage that he was being handled in a certain way "for his own safety."
Child molesters present a problem for our conscience - they really do. Is there really a "moral" dimension here, or is this a condition related to one's mental state? I would assert that people like Moore have a problem with their brain chemistry. They have compulsions that they cannot control. They know that society disapproves. Moore "denies" the accusations like crazy. He knows full well what he has done. He is a profoundly conflicted human being.
In Jerry Sandusky's case, his background with football might explain his brain problems. I'm not sure there's really a moral element there. I would discourage any talk of "the depths of hell." The well-known atheist Ron Reagan Jr. talks about how he's not afraid of "burning in hell." I quite agree with his stance on this.
It's good that Sandusky is in prison because the innocent victims of his disposition need protection. The taint of criminality is not necessary.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I had the opportunity to view C-Span coverage of a Congressional hearing on football's health dangers. We learned there is a new element to worry about: a whole generation of men in their late 50s and early 60s who played football at a time when the risks accelerated. I invite you to read this blog post of mine by clicking below. It's on my "Morris of Course" site. Thanks for reading. - B.W.

http://morrisofcourse.blogspot.com/2017/11/panel-on-c-span-renews-alarms-about.html
  

The late Glen Helberg and I used to talk about how holidays are depressing for unemployed or inactive people. My family (of my mom and I) essentially have no relatives to share with any more. We celebrated Thanksgiving for most of my life with my uncle Howard and his wife Vi of Glenwood. They are gone now.
We used to enjoy the Community Thanksgiving Dinner at Assumption Church. I still remember the big spread of pies to choose from. That's gone with the wind now, perhaps a reflection of how the Morris community in general is declining. It doesn't mean that Morris isn't still a nice place to live. Holy cow, the Morris paper slid back down to 16 pages again. It's startling to see this now that the run-up to Christmas is on, normally the most robust time of year for papers.
The Morris paper scratches and crawls to keep its "sig ads" a.k.a. "sucker ads" going. We saw an example with a full page that said nothing more than "Happy Thanksgiving." And then we saw the list of businesses willing to get our their checkbooks and throw their money away on something like this. Some of these businesses are doing this with non-local people making the decisions. I think the guy acting on behalf of Riverwood Bank has his office in Baxter. It's just a budget item to them. "Happy Thanksgiving." Yawn.
 
Sports, sports, sports
Now that the Morris paper has gotten so terribly small, I think the excessive size of the sports section has become more of an issue. There is a "sports" heading at the top of the second section of the paper. I'm sure we all think it's terrific that our school has a variety of sports offerings for our kids. That's not the issue at hand. The issue is whether we need to see all the minutiae of details in print all the time. If you were to do a poll on this, I'm sure the answer would be overwhelmingly "no."
Ever wonder why "Senior Perspective" is so appealing? There are several reasons, but one is that there's no sports. Hallelujah. We love the large type size of "Senior Perspective" along with its very appealing feature-oriented content - something interesting on every page! Our community papers seem to ignore the wisdom inherent in those advantages.
The Morris paper claims it has "combined" with the Hancock paper. This is literally impossible because if anything, the Morris-based paper has gotten smaller since the claimed "combo." I assume all the obits that used to appear in the Hancock paper must now be squeezed into the Morris paper. Most people just go online for obit news.
The people who are interested in UMM Cougar sports are served totally by the online world too. The Morris paper includes all this stuff because of old habits and old expectations. Sports started becoming a problem for papers when participation in sports began growing markedly. We saw girls get totally equal opportunities. Then came the addition of various sports to join the old mainstream ones. The sports section became a political football as it were. All the teams had advocates screaming at the paper about the need for serious attention. There was a problem of just keeping up with the demands.
Another problem was that the many readers out there weren't interested in consuming all this stuff. Papers felt they had to "cave" to demands from sports parents, which while understandable, wasn't realistic from the standpoint of the paper's interests.
Most people see this the way I do, and many just shrug and continue to consume the paper anyway. But keep in mind that Hancock has lost its paper and the Morris paper is steadily deteriorating. It showers us with advertising circulars for Alexandria businesses every week. Well fine, maybe within a few years there will be an area-wide newspaper centered on Alex, mailed to people on the old Morris/Hancock subscriber list. Don't the old Hancock Record subscribers now just get the Morris paper? Oh, I think this scenario is quite likely, probably within the next five years.
It wasn't necessary. The Morris paper could have stayed stronger longer. But the opportunity for that is past. It will be up to the Fargo-based management to make the ultimate determination.
Should Al Franken resign? He just has a little sex demon in his head like we all do. Let's not start categorizing sins. Bill O'Reilly has said he's "mad at God." This was after the news came out that he paid $32 million to a woman over a harassment issue. Yes, it was God who made us this way with such peccadilloes. Or maybe we're all just descended from space aliens and Earth primates, and our very existence is a mystery. "Ancient Aliens" is a fascinating show on the History Channel. (Remember the early days of the History Channel when many of us poked fun at it, as the "Hitler Channel?")
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

Don Ellis' "Final Analysis" made UMM history

Don Ellis seemed way ahead of his time when he was in his music heyday. Examining his music today, he would still seem ahead of his time. His approach drifted away from convention. You might think it was dry or incapable of being appreciated by the "masses" (like me). So wrong! Ellis' innovative music could be intoxicating to listen to.
This was impressed on us at our U of M-Morris in the days before Jim Carlson came on the scene to lead jazz. While many UMM jazz concerts have blurred together in my mind, one stands out from the pre-Jim Carlson era. The UMM jazz ensemble performed a Don Ellis tune called "Final Analysis." I was already familiar with the tune from an Ellis album.
The subject came up recently when I reminisced with Del Sarlette. Del was in the jazz band back in that developmental time for college jazz. So was Tom Garberick, the well-known Morris drummer who mastered the "skins" (drums). Mentioning Tom as drummer should prompt lots of nostalgia.
I was in the audience for the performance I'm alluding to. I reminded Del that he "nailed" a trumpet solo early in "Final analysis." I teased him about how the solo might have been the most distinctive in UMM music history. Hyperbole, yes, but I truly remember "Final Analysis" as if I had been to the concert just recently. Clyde Johnson was the director at the HFA Recital Hall. I'm certain Clyde remembered that performance for a long time too, likely because of the way his band righted itself after the kind of disoriented state that could easily happen with an unconventional Ellis tune. Del reminisces:
 
Ah, Don Ellis' "Final Analysis." Fun tune, but the only time we ever got that Beethoven-style ending right was at the concert. Clyde had a look of immense relief on his face when we finished. If you remember, Tom Garberick was our drummer that evening. He couldn't read music, so had taken the album ("Live at the Fillmore") home and memorized the song. Quite an accomplishment given all of the weird time signatures (17/8 etc.). That one also had the strange electric guitar/synthesizer "duet" in the middle. Nobody but the band knew it, but those two guys (Chris Santillo on guitar, Omar Metawah on synth) got lost in the middle of it. They sort-of got back on track, but the band was looking at each other not knowing exactly how we were going to get out of it. Then, Tom just started playing a familiar riff and everybody jumped on board. Mr. Santillo died of cancer a couple of years ago.
 
I had the opportunity to play musically with Clyde a few times. We were together in the Donnelly Threshing Bee parade once. We also played some gigs with the Tempo Kings orchestra, a Sammy Kaye style orchestra that could travel far for its engagements. As a young person I thought the extensive travel to be exciting. I wouldn't view it that way today. We in the band joked that if it was our plan to pick up Clyde at, say, 6 p.m., we should tell him we're coming at 5:30. Get the point? But we all had fun together.
Del and I were in a generation that loved a certain set of touring big bands. Many of us got attracted to Maynard Ferguson. That enthusiasm got extended to the likes of Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Count Basie and Stan Kenton. We also became quite aware of Don Ellis. I'm not sure Ellis ever went on a national tour with his music, but we never had the opportunity to see/hear him in person. We all learned he was in a precarious health state, specifically with his heart. Alas, we lost Ellis before the '70s ended.
Going on YouTube today to hear "Final Analysis" plus other Ellis numbers, I get misty.
Ellis' trademark was truly innovation. I'll repeat that this trait did not contradict crowd-pleasing potential. It helped greatly that Ellis had a sense of humor and readily incorporated this, as with "false endings." He developed as a trumpet player. He even played with Ferguson's band. Playing with the great Maynard Ferguson gave him the pedigree to wow my generation. He was one of the trumpeters joining Maynard in his popular "Three More Foxes" improvisation tune.
Ellis formed his own orchestra in 1965 and opened eyes (and ears). His bands were distinguished by unusual instrumentation - would you believe, up to three bassists and three drummers? - and most markedly by unusual time changes, e.g. 7/8, 9/8 and even 15/16. Boy, all of that is sure over my head. He got into rock rhythms and electronics. He invented the four-valve trumpet and used a "ring modulator" and all types of wild electronic devices.
By 1971 the Ellis band included an eight-piece brass section including French horn and tuba! This reminds of some things Stan Kenton did that were not as crowd-pleasing. Kenton talked about the sophistication of his band in a defensive way - Ellis had no need for that.
Ellis employed a four-piece woodwind section and string quartet. Appreciation of his work has increased since his death.
Ellis' own trumpet playing combined dazzling technique with a hot jazz feeling. He scored the music for ten films including "The French Connection" (1971) for which he got a Grammy. His "eastern" music was rendered with great flair. What a dazzling resume and bio he compiled before he left us too soon. I'm sure he would have been delighted hearing that UMM jazz performance at the Recital Hall way back when, as pieces were getting put together for Jim Carlson's triumphant arrival to lead UMM jazz in a legendary way!
RIP Chris Santillo. RIP Don Ellis. Maybe UMM jazz of today should tackle "Final Analysis" as a historical tribute.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

Thanksgiving: an innocent story w/ hopeful air

We're approaching Thanksgiving once again. I remember that at Longfellow Elementary School, we made a big deal out of the Pilgrims and Indians story. We probably did some appropriate artwork. Of course, the happy story of the Pilgrims and Indians interacting would not be a prelude. Indians would be displaced in an unpleasant way. The European culture would run roughshod.
We still impress upon our kids the promise represented in that original story.
I wonder why we still have Columbus Day. For years I had to be reminded early in the day that it was in fact a "holiday." I had to know because of the nature of the work I did for the Morris newspaper: the Post Office would be closed.
The P.O. is closed for every imaginable holiday. I remember in a chat I once had with a post office employee, he recalled a phone call where he was asked if they would be open for "Easter Monday." He said he was stunned for a moment before he answered. He had never thought about "Easter Monday" before.
Easter Monday does in fact have significance as a quasi holiday, at least among certain Catholics: it's "Dyngus Day." I'd like to see that celebration get a little more traction. It's a day of feasting and celebration in contrast with the self-restraint imposed by Lent.
Dyngus Day sure seems preferable to Good Friday and its story of Christ's torture and ultimate death. Is it just me, or does the Christian faith give more attention to the torture/misery aspect than in a previous time? I get so discouraged by this, I have written 3-4 springtime blog posts where you might get the impression I'm an atheist. Don't take those posts at face value - I just resent the gore in the story of Good Friday.
I think that by comparison, "Dyngus Day" is wonderful. Dyngus Day got a little extra attention a few years ago when Anderson Cooper of CNN got the giggles when reporting about it. He had a hard time composing himself. I guess the term "pussywillow princess" set it off. He was invited to be the "pussywillow prince" at a major Dyngus Day celebration the next year. I'm not sure if he accepted.

History not so cut and dried
Ah, Thanksgiving. It was an event marking the opening of a new continent, at least for the Europeans, right? That's not really true. By the time the first English people settled, other Europeans had already reached half of the (eventual) 48 states.
Giovanni da Verrazzano is not remembered nearly well enough. He was an Italian in command of a French ship. In 1524 he toured the Eastern seaboard. At one point he directed a crewman to swim ashore where natives were seen. The natives took the crewman to a fire, not to roast him but to warm him!
Sailing north, Verrazzano observed a wide bay which is today New York Harbor. Alas, in 1528 this intrepid man went to a Caribbean Island where he was seized by cannibals and eaten. Verrazzano was famous in his own time. He has since fallen into obscurity. He is remembered with a bridge named for him in New York City. Years ago this bridge became high-profile as the masses of runners in the New York City Marathon crossed it. National Lampoon did a satire where the bridge collapsed under the weight of the runners!
Spanish conquistadors examined the interior of the continent in 1542. They rafted the Mississippi River! In Kansas they showed horses to Indians who had never seen them. I read that Columbus Day has actually been replaced in some places by "Indigenous People Appreciation Day." What a wonderful idea. Wonderful for here in Morris?
In 1602 a band of English explorers built a fort on the island of Cuttyhunk. Religious freedom was not their passion. They came to seek riches from digging sassafras, considered a cure for the clap in Europe. The commodity was valuable. This would not be acceptable for artwork at the old Longfellow School.
Longfellow is where I heard about the assassination of JFK. Lillian Peterson (later to be Ehlers, living over 100 years old) was called into the commons area for a couple minutes, and when she returned she grimly informed us third graders of the shooting of JFK. I can't remember if we were let out of school early, but I think we were. At home we watched the continuous TV coverage of the assassination and its aftermath. It was the first big TV news spectacle.
Let's hail the Norse people for their settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in 1000 A.D. As a Norwegian, I say let's raise a toast. The Sagas gave us spoken accounts of the Viking age (A.D. 800 to 1050). They are fascinating because of their blending of reality with the paranormal. Leave it to my forebears. We get the story of the person who was unable to use the latrine during the night because "the path was blocked by ghosts." That ever happen to you?
Did the Vikings get to Kensington? Who knows?
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

Cauldron of far right stuff reaches sex

Donald Trump is the best thing that ever happened to MSNBC. Ironic, of course, because that network is the most likely to have commentary skeptical toward the president. This is a president that lost the popular vote. He is trying to lead us in an extreme direction. He does and says things that are patently absurd all the time. MSNBC reveals that, often with the kind of smirk and incredulity that such behavior invites.
Trump binge-watches Fox News. He has special affinity with the morning "Fox and Friends" which is like a caricature of what Fox News stands for. Many people simply don't have the time to consume a whole lot of cable TV news. Or they might opt to watch other things on TV of which there are myriad. However, cable news has the power to throw out topics that leach into our main street discussions.
The media landscape of today has given the far right ideology the kind of footing it lacked before. There's a big audience out there that really applauds this stuff. It's one thing to be entertained by the rhetoric - who really wants "big government?" - but something else to truly turn the reins of power over to people who spew it.
Republicans are assaulting the Affordable Care Act over and over. They are striving to wipe out the individual mandate. Of course, if we are to have any kind of meaningful health care system, the cost must be shared. It must be shared with healthy people, and the reward for them is that they'll get help if they need it. These cheap catastrophic policies can seem real good until something bad actually happens to you.
The cost of health care can be spread by the insurance principle. The ACA props up insurance pretty well. The cost can also be shared through taxation which is a tried and true redistribution tool. I guess Republicans want neither. You all are learning, if you didn't know before, what makes Republicans tick.
There is a part of us that wants Republicans to be right, really. On the basis of pure principle, it's easy to find merit in a lot of what Republicans espouse. Who likes government? There is always waste to be found in government. Government simply does not operate like the private sector. But do you really want to place your own personal health and happiness in the hands of the private sector? "You're on your own."
The Republicans came within a hair's breadth of destroying the ACA earlier. Had Norm Coleman won our Senate seat instead of Al Franken, it likely would be done by now.
I am writing this at 2 a.m. when we are all quite consumed by the Roy Moore thing. Amazing. If I, Brian Williams, former writer for the Morris Sun Tribune newspaper, was known to be banned from Morris establishments because I was hitting on high school girls, I'd be shamed into leaving town. In Alabama a guy like this can run for the U.S. Senate. He is taken seriously even by those who ought to reject him outright.
What if I, Brian Williams, were to write that pedophilia is to be understood by the Mary, Joseph and Jesus story? People might insist that my blog be shut down. Yet this argument is seriously made by a person of high standing in Alabama. Let's remember we are talking about Alabama. It's too bad because the state has actually made inroads toward the 21st Century. The Moore episode is a big backslide supporting the ignorant stereotype of the past. Alabama was part of the Confederacy. "They lost." But the Alabama of today deserves better than to have this discussion about Roy Moore percolating.
Getting back to Mary, Joseph and Jesus, most people find the argument offensive on its face. The right wing evangelicals appear to be doing more damage to the foundation of responsible, non-political Christianity, the kind of Christianity presented by my own personal church which is ELCA Lutheran. We're plain vanilla and I'm so thankful for that.
People maintain that the virgin birth brought us the savior of humanity. But there is a credible argument that the virgin birth story was actually the product of a bad translation, sort of like when Saddam Hussein's translator gave us "mother of all land wars." The translator got carried away. Remember Jimmy Carter's Polish translator?
Well, I like the story of Christ's birth. It is a gentle, pleasant, uplifting story with the "Star" that now is the focus of a new movie. Christmas is a time of total joy in contrast to Good Friday and Easter - I guess I'm pinpointing Good Friday with its story of the absolute torture of Christ. Has the Mel Gibson movie made the torture story more high-profile? I resent it. Maybe this is why each spring, I write a post that suggests I'm an atheist. I would never write such a post at Christmas.
The Roy Moore story presents an avalanche of revelations about sexual assault and harassment. Bill O'Reilly pays $32 million to a woman who he certainly must have harassed. The Weinstein thing has brought on a ridiculous piling-on. We have conservatives who step forward to say, after some hesitation, they "believe" the women accusing Moore. But what should these people say about the accusers of Donald Trump?
Shall we all pile on this Weinstein fellow? At a certain point the whole effort becomes redundant. I have to ask: what kind of sex education did these offending males receive when growing up? Quite likely they got none because of the shame and embarrassment we all feel about approaching the subject, the old Victorian norms. If males grew up with nothing but shame and mystery surrounding sex, should we be surprised that some of them end up misbehaving?
We'll probably never be able to peel away the mystery around sex or its taboo nature. Bernard Goldberg in his signature book "Bias" addressed this. He was talking about a case where someone alleged she got AIDs from her dentist. Doubt grew when an insurance company began applying pressure to ensure the truth - this is one thing that insurance companies are really good at. Goldberg wrote: "People are notorious for lying about their sex lives." Amen and hallelujah.
Consider someone who counsels people on matters relating to sex. They'll prescribe acceptable norms of behavior, but then we must ask: How do these counselors behave re. sex in their own lives? Ahem. We lie about sex.
One of the current notorious cases in the news has to do with an entertainer who has masturbated in front of women. Is that really assault? Do we veer off into a sort of gray area? Again, what kind of sex education did that entertainer ever get? Any at all? Did he follow the old norm of "learning in the schoolyard?" That's how I learned.
We hear about that minor Star Trek actor now accused of assault, which he denies. I sure hope this doesn't eliminate all the Star Trek re-runs on cable TV. Will we never again see the movie "Beyond the Sea" because of the revelations about Kevin Spacey? If not, that's a shame.
We're still forced to see old cowboys and Indians movies that are unacceptable in the way they portray our indigenous people.
I suggest we have an "amnesty" program for offending males that calls for sensitivity training. They can hold off on running for the U.S. Senate.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

Sinclair Lewis' prescient novel re. U.S. politics

I remember hearing about Sinclair Lewis when I was quite young. I heard about his connection with Sauk Centre MN. What I heard was not entirely breathless praise. To the extent I heard pooh-poohing, it seemed vague and scattershot. Turns out, this was probably a reflection of Lewis' writing genius. He saw the world around him through his own distinctive lens. He never got on a bandwagon through expedience. He sought truth wherever it might lie.
Today, Americans do not like being told they elected a truly dangerous president. Yet can we really deny the foundation of such a thought? Of course we can't, nobody can. We have fallen for the human tendency of finding appeal in a blowhard populist who seems to just want to blow up convention. Remind you of a Sinclair Lewis book? The parallels ought to scream at you. It was 1935 with the Great Depression raging when Lewis put out "It Can't Happen Here."
Of course it can happen here - that's the whole point. While Germany was careening toward its fascist disaster, we had to wonder if similar potential existed within the American psyche. It's something we don't want to be told. A tried and true writer will penetrate the conventional notions and reveal the truth about our nature, as if peeling a banana. Lewis did this with his classic dystopian novel "It Can't Happen Here."
The book has found quite renewed popularity as reflected on Amazon.com. The Trump-like character in the book is Berzelius Windrip. Lewis wrote the book with the ominous backdrop of Hitler's rise to power in Europe. Fears grew that a like phenomenon could happen in the U.S., with the catalyst personality perhaps being Huey Long (the Louisiana senator) or Charles Coughlin (a radio priest).
We have always considered "Main Street" to be Lewis' signature work. Given what all is happening in America now, we could see "Main Street" displaced by "It Can't Happen Here." Within a week of the 2016 election, "It Can't Happen Here" was sold out on Amazon.com. Is there any doubt that Lewis should be totally lionized within literature, when you consider the timelessness and staying power of his work?
"It Can't Happen Here" is surely a dark story. It's one that many Americans of today would find inconvenient or offensive, given its suggested parallels. I say the book by itself should put Lewis in the pantheon of greatest authors.
I read "Main Street" in high school but I don't remember much about it. It would be good to re-read it. I heard Chris Matthews of MSNBC use the term "Babbitry" one day - I assume this is derived from Lewis' "Babbitt" novel. I'm not sure of the precise meaning. Google would help me within seconds of course. For pundits to today use the word "Babbitry" is another testament to Lewis' staying power.
I remember hearing that Lewis was physically unattractive. A perfect personal attack toward someone who you don't like for other reasons. We don't judge people by "unattractiveness" anymore. And besides, I've seen photos of Lewis and consider him to be quite ordinary looking. He's not obese.
Lewis was certainly not a glad-hander with the influential people and institutions around him. He could be quite the deconstructionist or cynic. Lewis delivered his Nobel Lecture in December of 1930, titled "the American Fear of Literature." He was critical of American letters, asserting that readers and even writers tended to be "afraid of literature which is not a glorification of everything American."
Lewis was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. You can see how his general attitudes, not averse at all to skepticism, might engender some resentment. To where we had to criticize his physical appearance? Such is human nature.
The Sauk Centre community of today has appeared to sucker for some of the less-than-flattering views of the author. We read that Sauk Centre has lost some of its excitement of being associated with the author. Perhaps a majority of the town voted for Donald Trump. Maybe that's it. Ignorance is bliss, eh?
I remember hearing when I was young that Lewis suggested kind of a backward air for places like Sauk Centre. I'm sure there were daunting challenges for living in small town America in the 1920s. But was Lewis seeking to diss such places? Or, were readers already disposed to thinking this was Lewis' intent, reflecting kind of a small town or "middle America" defensiveness which was once quite common.
I heard that Lewis would approve of Sauk Centre and like places today. But did he ever really seek to diminish that environment? If there was any doubt about his true attitudes, this should answer the question: Lewis had his ashes buried in Sauk Centre.
I wish to emphasize here that the old divide between "backwater America" and the metropolitan centers has been eliminated by our strides in tech and communications. Remember the "Trautman" character in "First Blood" talking about "Jerkwater USA" in that barroom chat with the sheriff? The movie scene is dated in two ways. We don't think about so-called "Jerkwater America" anymore, and people don't just sit around bars ordering alcohol-laced drinks from scantily-clad "barmaids." DWIs have taken care of that. (The sheriff ordered "wild turkey," remember?)
Is the U.S. careening toward the kind of crisis as portrayed in "It Can't Happen Here," a crisis in which so many people wondered "Why didn't we try to do more to stop this?" Don't you find yourself asking that question more and more now?
Let's laud Sinclair Lewis as one of the shining lights of literature all-time, whether the community of Sauk Centre agrees with this or not. Maybe Sauk Centre really is a backwater place, not the Sauk Centre of the 1920s but the Sauk Centre of today. Sauk Centre was a prime rival of the Morris Tigers when I was in high school. I never did like that town.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

The harassment purge in historical lens

Remember how the movie "Deliverance" (with Burt Reynolds) ended? Those guys finished their horrific vacation with the knowledge that a dead body might someday wash up from the river. So, they'd be haunted.
Today, ever since the whole Weinstein thing erupted, we see a like phenomenon. A whole lot of high-profile men are whistling past the graveyard. They know that in the past, they crossed a line in their behavior with women. The impulse today among many of us is to react by saying "well, they have it coming." Or, "they should have thought more about their behavior back then."
These issues are not as one-dimensional as they might seem. When Bill O'Reilly feels he has to pay a woman (Lis Wiehl) $32 million to make a sex harassment lawsuit go away, money enters the picture and that always clouds things. How many women have dollar signs dancing in their eyeballs? For God's sake, how did we get to this point, where a figure like $32 million comes out in connection to such a case?
I remember a friend of mine, a devout Catholic, bristling from some of the revelations about Catholic priest misbehavior, saying "what does money have to do with it?" Very good question. As a secondary issue, how can we view O'Reilly as some sort of representative of the common folk - the way he likes to portray himself - when he can get out his checkbook and do this? (I knew how to pronounce "Lis Wiehl's" first name as soon as the story broke - the same cannot be said of some cable news anchors.)
I exchanged emails with an old friend as we bandied about some of the recent sensational headlines. I made the point about how society has grown so unforgiving about certain forms of behavior that we once tolerated (or where we chose to look the other way). The World War II generation launched a lifestyle after the war that included a lot of smoking and drinking. Didn't the cigarette companies give free cigarettes to the GIs? Even without a lot of scientific data, people have long known that cigarette smoking was undesirable and bad for you. Didn't the baseball player Honus Wagner call for his baseball card on cigarette packages to be discontinued? Isn't that why that limited-distribution card became so wildly valuable?
And yet look at all the years that passed before we banned smoking from public places like restaurants? Such moves seem totally logical and natural today. We shrug and say, well, we had to pass these restrictions. I agree. But most of my adult life was spent in an environment where I might walk into DeToy's Restaurant and find the air to be blue with cigarette smoke. Most of my life was spent in an environment where seat belt use was voluntary. Today the Morris Police will chase down anyone they see not wearing their seat belt, to the point where their behavior approximates a high-speed chase. I would argue that it could endanger public safety. But this is where we set the bar these days.
Boy, only an idiot would not use his seat belt. But wouldn't that have been true 20 years ago as well?
At present, we may be seeing something like a witch hunt growing toward men who may or may not have engaged in sexual harassment in the past. Are we at the point where it might be risky to simply ask a woman on a date? I am extremely fortunate, sitting here at age 62, as I have never asked a woman on a date and I have never played football. I don't have to worry about my mind slipping away. I don't have to worry about a woman from my past coming forward and saying things that could render me unproductive for the rest of my life.
God created us with these crazy hormones that can induce such crazy or dangerous behavior. Look at the Catholic priests. Am I saying that I tolerate behavior that might be defined as criminal? No I don't approve of it, just as I do not approve of parents allowing their sons to play football. But football is still legal. The process of the sport's decline is slow but it is happening. And then someday we'll look back at our unenlightened tendencies of allowing our sons to play it.
My friend with whom I emailed challenged me, saying I ought not find a parallel between sexual harassment and certain other questionable behaviors. Obviously it seemed like I might be trivializing sexual harassment.
I'm just looking at the behavior in a context of the long-term history of our culture. We once lived in a culture where a police officer might see you driving erratically at 2 a.m. and ask you, "are you sure you're in good enough shape to get home?" Yes it's true. Secondhand cigarette smoke was assumed and common. The Bob Woodward character in "All the President's Men" asks Carl Bernstein, "Is there any place you don't smoke?" They were in an elevator.
And men like Harvey Weinstein felt empowered to behave inappropriately toward women. We had a teacher/coach here in Stevens County who spent time in prison for his inappropriate behavior with female students. We had a school administrator in Morris charged with first degree criminal sexual conduct - first degree! - in a case where charges were dropped with no explanation as to why.
The administrator's case was an embarrassment for our community and a serious inconvenience for our school district. How can you lose your high school principal in the middle of a school year? How would anyone else even know how his office was organized? Don't tell me that whole affair wasn't a logistical headache for our school, even if the board said otherwise. What would you expect them to say? I still feel the administrator should have been fired even with charges not resolved. The charges were just too sensational for any school district to live with. We have to consider the cost of putting the individual on paid leave also.
And now the school needs a ton of money for building maintenance. Money, money, money. Vote "no" and force the school to practice more responsible management. The school will try to vacuum money out of your pockets every time.
Bill O'Reilly says he's "mad at God." The brilliant David Brooks writes an odd column that subtly implies he has his own problems with sexuality. Sex is a big black hole where we feel fundamentally mystified. I am not trivializing misbehavior. But we must wonder why God created us the way He did. My generation of boys went to Annette Funicello beach movies and wondered why we were developing erections. I'm sorry if you're offended reading that - I'm just writing the truth.
Boys could enter a minefield where we'd be tempted to engage in inappropriate behavior. There was a "boys will be boys" credo out there. That is completely wiped out now.
If the new standards are so absolutely correct, why couldn't we have used better judgment in the past? If a prominent member of the community was known to be preying on young boys, there was a hush-hush reaction and parents were simply careful to tell their own sons to stay away from him. That was our old culture. Times change. As an amateur social scientist I carefully observe such things.
As young boomers we laughed at a Cheech and Chong bit about how an underage girl was mistaken for being older, by some klutz we were supposed to laugh at. It was humor! It's an outrage today.
The entertainment industry knows all about such cultural shifts. Poor Mark Halperin will never be seen on cable news again. I saw David Corn's name the other day. It's a purge. And purges are always scary. We need Corn on TV as an articulate progressive advocate.
I'll repeat what I have written before, that the mystery of sex is a manifestation of how the human species may be a hybrid between Earth primates and space aliens. Just think about that motorcycle gang in the Annette Funicello movies (LOL)!
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

MACA volleyball seeks Section 3AA title

Tigers 3, Paynesville 1
The stage is set for the Section 3AA volleyball championship match, in which our high-flying Tigers will vie. Coach Kristi Fehr will lead her proud orange and black unit into action at 6 p.m. Saturday at Southwest MN State, Marshall. The challenge is great. Our opponent Marshall is ranked No. 9 in state. They also have the "Tigers" nickname. Marshall's Tigers are ranked No. 2 in Volleyball Hub Class AA rankings. They have been flawless in post-season action so far, not dropping a single game.
But they'll surely have to take our Tigers seriously. We're fresh from a 3-1 win in the 3AA semis over Paynesville. It was our 21st win of the season against five losses.
At Marshall we'll be seeking our third straight state tournament berth. We were consolation champions in last year's state affair. Marshall has six state titles under its belt. Wow! Oh, those Tigers have finished runner-up five times too. Over the past 40 years, Marshall has been in state 26 times.
The orange and black will surely rule on Saturday, whether it's MACA's version of those colors or Marshall's.
Paynesville was no slouch to overcome. With a record well over .500, the green-themed Bulldogs were a worthy opponent on Thursday at Minnewaska. Games 1 and 2 were quite suspenseful as both ended in a 25-23 score. MACA took the first game and Paynesville the second. We came on strong in the third game to win 25-13, then we edged the Bulldogs 25-22 in the fourth and last game. Paynesville ended its season with an 18-8 mark.
Three Tigers each batted one serving ace at the Bulldogs: Karly Fehr, Jenna Howden and Riley Decker. Fehr was sharp as usual in setting, accumulating 42 assists. Two Tigers had double figures in kills: Jenna Howden with 20 and Jenna Larsen with ten. The list continues with Kenzie Hockel (5), Lexi Pew (4), Bailey Marty (4) and Fehr (3).
Here's the list of ace block contributors: Pew (4), Larsen (3), Hockel (3), Howden (2) and Fehr (1). Decker was tops in digs as she typically is, on this day accomplishing 24. Marty had 19 digs, Fehr 12 and Howden six.
For Paynesville, Jenna Lundquist had a serving ace. Molly Stang was busy as setter for the green, picking up 25 assists while Lundquist scurried around to contribute 19. A pair of Bulldogs co-led in kills with 12: Skylar Bayer and Abby Schaefer. Jacquelyn Hoeft pounded down eleven kills. Their list in this category continues with Brynn Johnson (5), Stang (4), Lundquist (4) and Ashley Ley (4).
Hoeft and Megan Utsch each had a blocking ace. Olivia Riley was the cog in digging for the green with 33. Beyer had 19, Stang 12, Schaefer ten and Lundquist eight.

Football ends season
I review the Tigers' football game vs. Pillager on my "Morris of Course" site (my companion website). Highlights were few as we bowed to the powerful Huskies at Pillager. This post also reviews the volleyball team's 3-1 win over Litchfield in the debut match of post-season. We had a bye prior. Click on the link below. Thanks for reading. - B.W.

http://morrisofcourse.blogspot.com/2017/11/maca-football-ends-season-volleyball.html

Winter nears, inevitably
Prolonged volleyball success helps keep our mind off the inevitable arrival of winter.
Prior to the fall season, a nice schedule page on slick paper was distributed by the Morris paper. However, am I correct in assuming that this feature went only to people who buy the paper? Up until recently, the paper might have distributed the schedule with the free "Ad-Viser." Man, the paper used to distribute a lot of those, almost like pollution, but it ceased to exist. The Ad-Viser is no more. That can only be a negative for advertisers. Less is certainly not more in this case.
Unless special provisions were made, the MACA fall sports schedule flyer went only to people who buy the Morris paper, and that is a very limited number of people. That circle gets smaller all the time. Perhaps some "sponsors" could arrange a direct mailing of that flyer to reach many more households? It would be a PR plus for the school district.
I imagine it won't be long before a winter schedule is prepared and distributed. But to how many people? The staggering decline of the Morris newspaper product is becoming a community issue. Let's all be proactive and try to harness the new media, the web, in an optimal way. You don't need me suggesting that to you.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com