By Josh Salm/Staff Writer
Valentine’s Day, that day that celebrates romantic, courtly love and the concept of giving cute little gifts to the ones you love. For most men, the day is a reminder to give the one you love something like flowers, chocolates and maybe take them out for a nice dinner. For most women, it’s just another reason to be thoroughly depressed with their relationships.
Naw, I’m just kidding. The day is about love, commitment and romance. A lot of women I know enjoy the day because it’s like a second birthday for them, allowing them to be pampered a little bit by the man they love.
My question is, what do the men get? (And please think beyond THAT for a second here).
Now all week I’ve been told time and time again by married women, “Josh, let me give you a little advice so you don’t act as a complete screw-up …” or something to that effect. Each time it’s basic advice that I’ve either already learned the hard way in my relationship or knew better than doing in the first place.
Sometimes the advice just sends my jaw crashing to the floor because it shows that either a.) that guy is a complete fool, or b.) that gal is expecting WAAYYY too much.
More often than not, these tidbits of advice leave me asking two questions. One is, do I somehow give off the impression to most women where I look like I need all the help I can get? I mean, sometimes I wonder if I fell asleep at my desk and someone put a “HELP ME” sign on my back. If so, can someone please take it off. I get in enough trouble on my own without it.
The second is, do women really think so lowly of their loved ones that they feel they need to tell every other man what not to do?
According to Wikipedia.com, “The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentines are sent each year worldwide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year, behind Christmas.”
That got me wondering why doesn’t Hallmark come out with a series of useful Valentine’s Cards, cards that women gave give men that can help them avoid the pitfalls we seem to stumble into on a seemingly second-by-second basis. It would give men the advice women have been wanting to give them for so long (or at least give them another shot at getting the point across), and justify that $4 they’d have to spend on a card in the first place that will likely not be read.
One could be, “Honey, I know you can bring the house down by belching after you drink that 10th Busch beer, but please don’t for the love of God. I’m sick of cleaning up the Legends of NASCAR plate collection off the floor every time. Soon you’re going to break that Dale Earnhardt plate if you keep that up. Love you! Happy Valentine’ Day! Signed, your wife.”
See, it’s subtle but finally allows the giver to say what she truly feels in a manner that he’ll understand. I mean, who wants to wreck a good Earnhardt plate? That would be blasphemous!
Another could be, “Treasure, I know you’re upset at the Green Bay Packers loss on Sunday, but quit screaming about it. It’s over. It’s a game. And it’s waking up the neighbors.”
I’m certain if that card was in production my wife would have given that to me, framed it and would just point to it on the wall during every game. That still doesn’t excuse the Packers for giving up that touchdown late in the game because their moron safety fell down again. Stupid Atari Bigby.
Anyway, you get the point. I think I’ve got a new way for women to reach me. Now someone just needs to come up with some kind of funny design (like a half-naked lady holding a beer) to get a man’s attention and get them to read the card.
Now if you excuse me, I’ve got to go get my wife some flowers and a card by Friday, because ice fishing beckons on Saturday (don’t worry, she’s coming with. I’m not that big of a fool.)
By the way, the entry for Valentine’s Day on Wikipedia also said, “The (U.S. Greeting Card) association estimates that, in the U.S., men spend in average twice as much money as women” on Valentine’s Day.
Just some food for thought.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Schoolyard football much like school consolidation
By Josh Salm/Observer Staff Writer
Everyone has their own holiday traditions. Some people celebrate Christmas on the night of the 24th. Others have a big party of the Fourth of July. Others still play football on Thanksgiving Day.
This past year my wife and I were invited to spend the holiday with our friend’s family in Masardis up in Aroostook County, and Turkey Day football is a tradition with that neighborhood that has gone on since they were all kids. I was invited to play in the big game, and I had a blast.
I spent the better part of the time playing quarterback, slinging the football around the yard all morning long and barely breaking a sweat because I made my receivers run circles while I held on to the football for minutes on end until the defense finally wore down and stopped covering the receivers.
There were no plans. We just winged it and it worked out in the end. By the end of the game, however, my teammates forced me to split out and play wide receiver so they could catch their breath by playing quarterback. They were less than thrilled with the workout I put them through.
No plans. Just winging it.
It all sounds a lot like the school consolidation fiasco the Penquis region just wrapped up a week ago with the referendum vote on Jan. 27. The only thing is the quarterback, this time being Augusta, didn’t come out on the winning end.
The wide outs in this drill are the regional planning committees, made up of local municipal officers, school board officials and superintendents. They volunteered their time to come up with a plan that only the state really wanted.
Augusta sent these RPC units running around in circles for months. Do this. No wait, you can’t do this even though it was okay for another district, so do that. No wait, go back to square one.
In the end, however, Penquis region voters said with a fairly unanimous voice not to consolidate schools.
The end result was no surprise, really, when you stop and think about it. School board officials, regional planning committee members and municipal officers in most towns throughout the region told voters flat-out, “Don’t vote for this.” The sign in front of the SAD 41 Superintendent’s Office reads, “Vote No.” The SAD 4 Board of Directors voted unanimously against the plan a week before the referendum vote. Union 60 has told voters from the get-go not to approve the plan. Each town had it’s reason to go against it. I don’t blame them.
But you can’t help but feel some sympathy for the RPCs. More often than not, they did the best they could with a poorly crafted law that changed on a nearly daily basis. They came up with a plan that did its best for the children and the towns involved. In the end, however, all their hard work went for naught because the referendum was voted down.
The school reorganization law, in hindsight, is a law that is best suited for the urban portions of the state and does not work in rural Maine. Big cities like Bangor, Portland and Augusta had to do very little if nothing to comply with the law. It was the towns like Guilford and Dexter, like Dover-Foxcroft and Milo, like Greenville and Jackman that had to bend over backwards to comply with a law that in the end could force them to have a single administrator for spanning from Canada to Schoodic Lake.
Towns in Piscataquis County were not alone against this plan. Heck, you could say that most of northern Maine voted against school consolidation plans. There are very few plans north of Augusta that was approved by voters.
What will happen from here on out is up to the school boards for the local SADs and unions. If they want to reorganize with another district and try to avoid the penalty is their choice, but Ann Bridge with SAD 68 had a good point when she pointed out that all the area towns voted down consolidation so who would they reorganize with?
So, in the end, school consolidation was kind of like backyard football. No plan, just wing it and here’s hoping it works out in the end.
At least with backyard football we didn’t have to deal with penalties.
Everyone has their own holiday traditions. Some people celebrate Christmas on the night of the 24th. Others have a big party of the Fourth of July. Others still play football on Thanksgiving Day.
This past year my wife and I were invited to spend the holiday with our friend’s family in Masardis up in Aroostook County, and Turkey Day football is a tradition with that neighborhood that has gone on since they were all kids. I was invited to play in the big game, and I had a blast.
I spent the better part of the time playing quarterback, slinging the football around the yard all morning long and barely breaking a sweat because I made my receivers run circles while I held on to the football for minutes on end until the defense finally wore down and stopped covering the receivers.
There were no plans. We just winged it and it worked out in the end. By the end of the game, however, my teammates forced me to split out and play wide receiver so they could catch their breath by playing quarterback. They were less than thrilled with the workout I put them through.
No plans. Just winging it.
It all sounds a lot like the school consolidation fiasco the Penquis region just wrapped up a week ago with the referendum vote on Jan. 27. The only thing is the quarterback, this time being Augusta, didn’t come out on the winning end.
The wide outs in this drill are the regional planning committees, made up of local municipal officers, school board officials and superintendents. They volunteered their time to come up with a plan that only the state really wanted.
Augusta sent these RPC units running around in circles for months. Do this. No wait, you can’t do this even though it was okay for another district, so do that. No wait, go back to square one.
In the end, however, Penquis region voters said with a fairly unanimous voice not to consolidate schools.
The end result was no surprise, really, when you stop and think about it. School board officials, regional planning committee members and municipal officers in most towns throughout the region told voters flat-out, “Don’t vote for this.” The sign in front of the SAD 41 Superintendent’s Office reads, “Vote No.” The SAD 4 Board of Directors voted unanimously against the plan a week before the referendum vote. Union 60 has told voters from the get-go not to approve the plan. Each town had it’s reason to go against it. I don’t blame them.
But you can’t help but feel some sympathy for the RPCs. More often than not, they did the best they could with a poorly crafted law that changed on a nearly daily basis. They came up with a plan that did its best for the children and the towns involved. In the end, however, all their hard work went for naught because the referendum was voted down.
The school reorganization law, in hindsight, is a law that is best suited for the urban portions of the state and does not work in rural Maine. Big cities like Bangor, Portland and Augusta had to do very little if nothing to comply with the law. It was the towns like Guilford and Dexter, like Dover-Foxcroft and Milo, like Greenville and Jackman that had to bend over backwards to comply with a law that in the end could force them to have a single administrator for spanning from Canada to Schoodic Lake.
Towns in Piscataquis County were not alone against this plan. Heck, you could say that most of northern Maine voted against school consolidation plans. There are very few plans north of Augusta that was approved by voters.
What will happen from here on out is up to the school boards for the local SADs and unions. If they want to reorganize with another district and try to avoid the penalty is their choice, but Ann Bridge with SAD 68 had a good point when she pointed out that all the area towns voted down consolidation so who would they reorganize with?
So, in the end, school consolidation was kind of like backyard football. No plan, just wing it and here’s hoping it works out in the end.
At least with backyard football we didn’t have to deal with penalties.
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