Les Chats de l'hiver

The title means "The cats of winter," and Minden and München have fluffed out, cuddled up and used their instincts to keep warm against the bitter Michigan winter.

Not that they're outside cats, of course. Minden once did stray into the garage - a fascinating place. But staying warm, even when it's 70 degrees inside, is an art form. It requires two talented cats to form a single heart-shaped pussycat.

München has a special hideaway in the back of the closet, atop a fuzzy blanket and beneath Dad's sweaters.

Minden, when he's not cuddled with München, will cuddle with Kissy Missy on her recliner.



C'est l'hiver en Michigan. C'est froid. Maintainez le chat chaud!

Front page

I clicked onto Central Michigan University's front page today - and got a really nice surprise.
The featured image was the classroom/lab where I teach. Those are two journalism students - graduates, now, actually - and a colleague.
Actually, the front page feature photo rotates around to a number of different showcase programs. It's nice to see the affirmation of what we do.
And Taryn, Kim and Kent - you're looking good. Much better choice than putting me up there.

Winter's progress

Today is Jan. 21.

That means we are one month into winter.

Winter is ONE-THIRD done!

Which means we've got twice as much winter in front of us as we've already experienced.

Woo. Hoo.

Decide you’re not cold

It’s a little frosty outside, but it’s a lot more bearable if you just decide to use the proper words to describe the temperature. Be optimistic.
Not sure which words you should use? Here’s some guidance to choosing the right words to feel warmer:
50-59: Sweater weather
40-49: Pleasant
30-39: Cool
20-29: Chilly
10-19: Brisk
0-9: Nippy
-9 to -1: Frosty
-10 to -19: Shivery
-20 to -29: OK, now I’ll admit it’s cold
-30 to -40: Maybe we should go inside …
-40 or below: … and bring the keg inside, too.
Just remember that at minus 30 with a 30 mph wind, human flesh freezes solid in 30 seconds. Anything less is just frostbite.

The finals

The Friday Night Performance

There were tears in my eyes at Ford Field as I watched the best performance I have ever seen of the Mt. Pleasant High School marching band.

The music was awesome, on-target. The marching was crisp, the flags right on.

After several highly cerebral performances by the truly excellent bands from Ferndale, Grand Rapids Northview and Stephensville Lakeshore, the Oiler band wrapped up the flight with rock and roll.

Playing rock and roll with a marching band is tricky business. It can sound really bad. The Oilers do it better than anyone.

The result: an awesome 79.35 score, the best for an Oiler band since they won the state championship in 2000.

I couldn't help but remember how, two years ago, I was so excited when the band broke 70. Two years ago, Mt. Pleasant scored a 72.35, good for sixth. Last year, it was a 73.65, good for eighth. Last year, four band broke 80; this year, three did - Ferndale in third, Northview second and Lakeshore winning it.

Mt. Pleasant proved it belongs in that stratospheric height. And the band members already are looking forward to 2009.

Kiss? The Who? The Doors? Nobody does it better.

The Flight III schedule

Here is the schedule of performances Saturday for the Flight III state competition at Ford Field:

1:10	p.m.	Marysville
1:25	p.m.	Allegan
1:40	p.m.	Linden
1:55	p.m.	Byron Center
2:10	p.m.	Trenton
2:25	p.m.	Redford Thurston
2:40	p.m.	Gr Rapids Northview
2:55	p.m.	Stevensville Lakeshore
3:10	p.m.	Ferndale
3:25	p.m.	Mt. Pleasant
3:40	p.m.	Awards

Yes, the Oilers perform last. What an opportunity!

The best score in eight years

The Mt. Pleasant High School Marching Band will move into the Michigan Flight III finals in fourth place after achieving its highest score since 2000.

The Oilers scored a 74.7 at the Huron Valley Invitational in White Lake Saturday. That was good enough to finish third behind five-time defending state champion Ferndale and the very tight, highly talented Redford Thurston.

That came after Mt. Pleasant won the Plymouth-Canton Invitational earlier in the day, collecting all the caption awards.

I just had to ....

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The uniforms aren't purple!

From Sound Off on TheMorningSun.com:

I'm a Mt. Pleasant High School graduate and an alumni (sic) of the band. I was horrified that our new band uniforms are not blue and gold. Those are our school colors. They bought black and purple? I will not support the band anymore.

Ahem. The band uniforms are NOT purple.
The Mt. Pleasant community raised about $40,000 for new marching band uniforms, which the band has worn proudly since mid-September.
The uniforms are mostly black and very sleek-looking. One sleeve is white, and a white stripe shaped like a mountain (to honor the Mountain City) accents the chest. Above the stripe, the uniforms are an electric blue.
When performing at a Mt. Pleasant football game, the band wears triangular gold patches that read "MP." At competition, the patch is replaced by a mirrored accent that adds dramatically to the band's visual impact.
The marching band's final 2008 local show will be Friday, Oct. 24 at halftime of the Mt. Pleasant-Fruitport football game.
That will be followed by competitions Saturday, Oct. 25 at Lakeland High School in White Lake and at the Plymouth Canton Invitational - and likely the state marching band finals at Ford Field in Detroit Nov. 1.

The show went on

Dusk had fallen on downtown Mt. Pleasant as the Oiler band launched into a standstill performance of its 2008 competitive show, "The Show Must Go On," at the corner of Broadway and Franklin streets.
They'd marched in the Mardi Gras parade (yes, Mt. Pleasant's Mardi Gras is in September, and it's on a Friday - do I have to explain that every year?) and they showed off their new uniforms.
The show went on.

The best line for a Sunday

From today's Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times:

"The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it."

Being part of the future

The fat guy on the left explains the capabilities of the new media lab to CMU Board of Trustees Chairman Jeff Caponigro and CMU President Michael Rao. (CM Life)

Usually, I don't link to the "other" paper in town, even though I once worked for them and am proud of that fact. But this time, the college paper, Central Michigan Life, has the story.
Mr. Caponigro came to see his lab.
Jeff Caponigro is a department of journalism alumnus, chairman of the CMU board of trustees, and a wealthy man - obviously. He gave, out of his own pocket, most of the money to build CMU's fabulous new media lab.
He came to see it - and I got asked to be part of of demonstrating it.
I got to demonstrate the photography and graphics capabilities, while my colleague David London, on sabbatical in Cairo, chimed in from an Internet cafe, and my colleague Kent Miller showed off the capability of creating Web video.
It was all very impressive. I feel as if I'm part of the future.
And what a future it will be.
Think about this: The first graphical Internet browser, Mosaic, was released in November 1993, 15 years ago. Microsoft's Internet Explorer came along later; Netscape, Firefox, Safari and the rest came along later. Mosaic is no longer with us. But it's all happened in just 15 years - and look what's out there.

Compare this: The first automotive production line was developed by Ransom E. Olds - not Henry Ford - in 1901 to build Curved Dash Oldsmobiles. Ford and his Model T perfected it, and the world changed.
I would submit that the World Wide Web is about where the automotive industry was 15 years on, in 1916. The basics were there - gasoline-powered internal combustion engines, four rubber tires, a steering wheel, headlights, brakes, springs. All the rest has been fine-tuning and engineering.
The basics of the Web are here now - it's up to us to fine-tune them and use them the best way.
What Mr. Caponigro did was the equivalent of donating an automotive research lab to a major university - in 1916.
It's the beginning, including the Wow Factor.

Jazz band in Detroit

It was the main reason we decided to go to Detroit in the first place. The Drummer is a member of the Mt. Pleasant High School Jazz Ensemble - although he plays trombone in the ensemble. When plans for a weekend in Newberry fell through, we looked at spending the weekend at Frankfort. That fell through, too.
Plan C: Go to the Big City. It turned out to be a lot of fun - and the music and the setting were spectacular.
The band did a 45-minute set at Campus Martius, public space at Woodward and Monroe. They only had to compete somewhat with the band warming up on the Main Stage a couple of hundred yards away
We weren't the only band parents there - and, as it turned out, we weren't the only band-parents-without-kids-in-the-jazz band there, either.

Waiting for Obama

They loved him. They simply loved him. Even though he spoke for only about 11 minutes and talked mainly about giving money to the Red Cross for relief from Hurricane Gustav, Detroit loved Barack Obama on Labor Day.

Obama didn't have anything to do with the original plan, which involved the jazz festival and a Tiger game. But when we heard that he might be appearing at Hart Plaza, we thought, hey, why not? Why not get in line?
The line was incredible. We got there more than two hours before the scheduled start of the speech - and the line was 15 blocks long at that point. But we stayed with it - surrounded by people of all ages, all colors.
There was no pushing and shoving, no drinking, little line-cutting - except for the 20-something in the BMW who probably felt a little threatened when he drove down a closed Shelby Street into the crowd He ended up backing out.

Hart Plaza, according to City of Detroit event planners, has a rough capacity of 50,000 people. The crowd spilled out of the plaza several blocks onto Jefferson and Woodward - I'd guess at least 70,000 people showed up. The roar from the crowd when Obama spoke was loud and long.

The rally was at the end of Detroit's big Labor Day parade - we saw marching plumbers and sheet metal workers and sprinkler workers and teachers and huge numbers of Auto Workers. But this wasn't just a labor thing. This has the sense of a Movement.

My New Classroom

At 8 a.m. tomorrow, a new era dawns for Central Michigan University's department of journalism with the opening of the Caponigro Multimedia Lab. I'll be teaching the first class in there, the opening section of Journalism 202, Introduction to Writing for the Mass Media.
I'll almost expect to hear "Beam me up, Scotty."

It looked as if the opening of the lab might be delayed - construction and fabrication problems slowed things down. But Sunday afternoon, Scott and Rennie, the technical gurus from the College of Communications and Fine Arts, along with their crew, were busily unpacking and setting up Intel Duo Core Macs, and loading them with Adobe CS3, Final Cut Pro, Microsoft Office Suite and other software.

Robert tagged along, and took at look at the wide-screen setup.

Much of the money to pay for this lab was donated by Jeff Caponigro, a journalism alumnus who made very good in public relations. He's now chairman of the CMU board of trustees. The lab features the gear and the software that all of our graduates will need to know how to use as professionals in the multimedia age.

My job: Teach them to use it, while teaching them how to find accurate information, make it relevant for the audience, tell the stories well - and spell all the names correctly.

Andrew heads off to college

Andrew organizes the last of his stuff in the hallway.

Tuesday was a bittersweet day around here. The day we've planned for and aimed for for years came: He left for college.
I'm so proud of him. He's the little boy who cuddled with me on the stairs on Haley Street, who looked so lost and alone that rough year at Sacred Heart, who found himself with the artists and musicians at Mt. Pleasant High, who loved Robert Heinlein, who became a Life Scout and senior patrol leader, earned a varsity letter in skiing, scored near-perfect on the ACT, was recruited by MIT and Michigan, then chose Michigan Tech "because it was right," and was accepted into their honors program.
Yeah, I'm proud of him.

One last e-mail check on his Mac.

I'll worry about him, and I'll probably never stop worrying about him. I worried when he was in second grade. I worried when he skied on Germany's highest mountain. It probably will be Thanksgiving before I see him again, although we'll probably be able to do regular video chats. And I'll miss him. I already miss him.

Miranda may miss him more than anyone else.

Miranda came along on the trip to deliver Andrew to his mom's - she'll actually be making the 10-hour trip up to Houghton. There's something special about those two. They changed each other - both for the better.

Andrew, buddy, as always - make me proud. Or, in this case, prouder. Go Huskies.

Fourth in the North

Relaxation - on the Frantic Fourth?
A quick trip to Newberry, so Kissy Missy could see her mom, the rest of her family, and everyone else she knows.
And nice fireworks over the bay at Naubinway at dusk.

Tauberbischofsheim

Word from Robert:

I can´t say much right now, other than that Coca-Cola Fantours are fun. I know you don´t know what those are. I might explain later, but it does involve football and beer.
That was Mörbisch.
Bayern had beer. My host family in Hirschau owns a brewery. I did have beer. It wasn´t bad. Interesting flavor.
I´m in Tauberbischofsheim right now. I went swimming earlier today. That was fun.
Right now I feel really elated, and I´m not sure why. My host family does have a fantastic view from their balconies, though.
All of our concerts are going well. Even better now that we have all of our music. We still don´t have our xylophone, though. It might be in Portugal. It´s impossible to know.
I have a concert tomorrow, on Thursday I have time with my host family and Thursday night I depart for France.
I´m still very excited.

The Chippewa at night

Click here to play the video.
I seem to have spent a lot of time wetting myself recently.
My assignment this time: Take a kayak down the Chippewa River - again - only this time, in the dark.
Really.
Buckley's Mountainside Canoes has begun offering moonlight canoe trips, and a few friends of the livery - and, of course, the press - was invited along. I seem to be the river guy, so I got to do the story.
Ryan Evon shot some great stills and video, and I put them together into a nice package for TheMorningSun.com. The story's here.
The experience bordered on the mystical, with a hint of danger and the unknown. Very, very cool.
But I left out the part where the kayaker who came into the landing first slipped getting out of her boat, fell into the water and doused me.

The fridge dancers slide show

This is an experiment - using PicassaWeb, a free service, I've added captions to the Fridge Dancers images from last and tried to turn this into a slide show.

Looks like it works!