Behind the scenes on "The Daily"

TheMorningSun.com's daily Webcast, "The Daily," went on location to downtown Mt. Pleasant for Memorial Day. Sue Field and I were at Jimmy John's before the Memorial Day parade.

Last day of high school

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this - today was Katherine's last day of high school.
Seniors, of course, get out before the rest of the student body, and graduation is set for next weekend. Classes are over.
She's still taking her college class - she's got one more week of JRN 202 at Central.
Graduation, orientation, imagination ... a lot on her mind.
And she's at the Wheatland Traditional Arts Festival tonight with That One Kid.
Life is so about to change.

From another world

A truly awesome Web video from Boston.com.

Beautiful Saturday

The temperature is in the mid-40s.
I'm looking at a pile of snow at least 4 feet high.
Yet my neighbor is wearing shorts, and people are exclaiming about how warm and wonderful the weather is.
. . . I think we've lived in Michigan far too long.

On being stupid

Ever notice that the only people who ever say, "I am so stupid" are usually really bright people who had a lapse in judgment? The truly stupid never even realize it.

SFMAWG seeks SwC

Short, Fat, Middle-Aged White Guy seeks Spinster with Cat.
A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a weekend newspaper planning session when I noted that an upcoming Sunday newspaper would come out on Valentine's Day.
"We should do something," I said.
"How about online dating?" someone chimed in, and everyone looked at me. They knew I'd met Kissy Missy online.
"A first-person story!" the editor said. They'd all heard the story, and now, I'd get a chance to tell it to the whole world.
It also seemed like a good opportunity for a video - and it was.
Apparently, this adventure was too good to keep. On Wednesday, Central Michigan Life, the student paper at CMU, did its own version of our story as its Campus Vibe front.
When you've got a great story, people want to tell it.
Happy Valentine's Day, Sweetheart.

City deer

Well, they're certainly here.
These deer aren't dumb. I was traveling along West Campus Drive this afternoon, and I spotted this little feller calmly nibbling at what was under the snow.
It's perfect habitat for adaptable critters. There's plenty of food - evergreens, shrubs, ornamental fruit trees, even a few oaks. There's lots of cover - this guy and at least one other were well-concealed most of the time in the brush along the Great Lakes Central Railroad tracks that run through campus.
The Chippewa River is just a few blocks away. Traffic isn't particularly heavy, except when classes change.
And no one's out to hunt them.
It's deer Eden.

The Christmas of the Antique Apple

It was an old-fashioned Christmas, with old-fashioned applie pie, and this year, it even featured old-fashioned apples.
Here's the story: A number of years ago - I'm trying to picture the kitchen where I first tried the recipe, and it's not coming to me - I ran across the basic recipe for Dad's Extreme Apple Pie. That wasn't what it was called, of course, but that's how it's known today.
Extreme? A single pie requires five pounds of apples.
When I was growing up, Mom made apple pies fairly often. She always looked for a particular type of apple - the Northern Spy. Even 40 years ago, they were hard to find, and today, they're extremely hard to locate in grocery stores.
They don't sell well in 21st century superstore produce departments, where the visual presentation is paramount. Frankly, they're not pretty. They look like beat-up old farm apples. And they don't travel well.
But this antique breed of apple is fabulous for pies, with firm flesh, and just the right mix of sweet and tart.
And on Christmas Eve, like a Christmas present, there they were - one 10-pound bag - in the produce section at Meijer. Kissy Missy snapped them up.

And the perfect version of Dad's Extreme Apple Pie was made on Christmas Day 2009.

For the second time in a month, the whole gang was here. Matthew slid up from Grand Rapids - literally. Andrew's back from Tech, settling in for a new adventure. Miranda was here. Katherine, and Robert and Jamie, and Kissy Missy and I all shared the kind of Christmas I'd always envied other people having. What we had: "Miracle on 34th Street" on the babble box, and on the table, pot roast, mashed potatoes, corn, carrots, asparagus (from Peru - ya gotta love the 21st century), with Dad's Extreme Apple Pie, a Sarah Lee sweet potato pie and Sleeping Bear made-in-Michigan ice cream for dessert.
And gifts, given from the heart.
What we didn't have: Relatives who sit with silent disapproval, adults playing adolescent mind games, and underwear for Christmas.

Eighteen

She's 18.


Friday was Katherine's 18th birthday. I keep calling her my "mature, responsible adult daughter." She doesn't know that I (mostly) really mean it.

I always joked that she was the one who was born with a champagne glass in one hand, cigarette in the other, wanting to know who was in charge, baby. Actually, she objects to both ideas, but she still has the attitude she was born with. She is, after all, a ginger.

Sometimes she's an airhead. Sometimes she's a blonde. But along the way she found a fierce dedication to doing things right, and working hard enough to make them happen.

I greeted her on her birthday morning with Alice Cooper's "Eighteen" at a tooth-rattling volume. She just shook her head. Her friends gave her, among other things, "Pride, Prejudice and Zombies." If you have to ask, you won't get it.
After school, I took her to register to vote. Then she went, for the first time, to the casino. Go there on your 18th birthday and the Soaring Eagle will give you $30 on a Players Club card.
She played, and came home with a pocket full of cash.
She says she'll put it in the bank. My mature, responsible, adult daughter.
(Photos by Lisa Yanick-Jonaitis)

Really. Dad's working.

So, Dad's been spending lots of time at Ford Field recently.
Beal City won the Division 8 state football championship.
Clare made it to the finals.
Central Michigan won the Mid-American Conference championship.
Dad was there with a video camera.
It's not ESPN, but it's great for TheMorningSun.com.

Katherine does her homework

Yes, I know I'm old. When I was a senior in high school, the most sophisticated equipment I got to use for school was a manual Royal typewriter, a Headliner and a Compugraphic. And my dad's 1948-model Kodak 35RF.
The idea of producing homework on video? You mean like TeeVee?

Happy Bird Day

I found this posted on the comments section of TheMorningSun.com from Obamanation, one of our regular contributors. With a little editing, I thought it was worth passing along:

During the darkest hours of the Civil War, Abe Lincoln decide to create a holiday, a propaganda holiday, to force a broken nation to overlook its troubles and be thankful for the good times of a Civil War.
Like freeing the slaves, Lincoln couldn’t have cared less, but when the Northerners started to have second thoughts about Lincoln, the war and life in general, one needs diversions.
Freeing the slaves and creating Thanksgiving were just a couple of his best-known tricks. Declaring people free means nothing if they are still treated like slaves, and what kind of nation celebrates a civil war anyway?
Today’s Thanksgiving is a bizarre ritual comprising corny presidential turkey pardons, lame parade coverage, a turkey dinner at noon, badly played football, travel problems, Christmas advertising, and some weird unwritten law that says you can’t talk about anything but what you are thankful for.
There are four kinds of ways people express their thanks on Thanksgiving.
• The Traditional – Friends, family and health. Simple, sweet, and to the point without grandstanding.
• The Modern – A laundry list of things they have. More of a bragging contest than true thanks. Just another way of some jerkball to rub it into others that they are doing better/are better than the next guy.
• The Sarcastic – A loophole in the Thanksgiving pact that allows smart donkeys a way to truly express their bitterness and spite.
• The Innocent – Ask a little kid what they are thankful for and they might reply “cats and monsters.” [Mark’s note: One of the kids once said he was thankful for boogers.]
After careful deliberation I have decided this Thanksgiving I am very thankful that the guy in Elm Hall will be open and selling pizza on Thanksgiving, and that my wife is hot, because after eating dinner at noon, watching the Lions lose, while pretending civil war, and Christmas is not just around the corner, I just might want something that is truly great.

Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving was on Sunday this year - it was the only day that fit into everyone's schedules - but we got everyone together and we gave thanks. The family was there, the table was full, and the Lions had even won a football game. It was, indeed, Thanksgiving.

And it was us. Matthew said something, well, politically incorrect.

Andrew expounds on cynical libertarianism, and defines politically incorrect just by being there.

Miranda's getting used to this.

But Jamie, well, Jamie still harbors an element of disbelief about this bunch.


The food was good and the laughter was hearty. We once were wished the gift of laughter, and it was here in full force this year. It's family. It's Thanksgiving, and we have so much to give thanks for.

The first half is the warmup act for the band

NPR reporter Tom Goldman nails it.
And yes, marching band is crazy difficult.

If only this were real ...

I ran across this while looking for something else. It's priceless.

The Finals - Again!

For the fourth year in a row, the Oiler band has made it to the Michigan Competing Band Association state finals.
This year, the band made it by the skin of their feathered caps - but they made it.
Mt. Pleasant scored a 70.3 at the Durand Invitational at Durand Saturday. That score was enough to qualify them in 10th place for the finals - by about two-thirds of a point.
It's been a challenging year for the Oiler band. It's by far the youngest band Mt. Pleasant has fielded in years, with about one-third of the band being first-year players.
Flu racked the band a couple of weeks ago - at one practice, a good third of the band was out sick. And the weather for practices and performances has been the worst I've seen in four years.
But they made it.
The show is awesome, and it deserves to be performed on the big stage. The break from "Glycerin" back into "Don't Stop Believin'" near the end of the show always brings a tear to my eye - and the close is heart-stoppingly beautiful.
Show time for the Flight III competition at Ford Field Saturday is 10:05 a.m.

Last week of the season

It all comes down to Durand on Saturday. The Oiler Marching Band has improved continuously this season, but they're young, and the show is very challenging. Still, entering the final week of competition, Mt. Pleasant is in eighth place in Flight III.

The top 10 bands head to Ford Field next weekend for the state finals. The competition this year has been as intense as I can ever remember it.

The guard's looking great this year.

Highly talented seniors like Haruki have provided the inspiration for the more than 30 first-year marchers.


And last weekend at West Bloomfield, Mt. Pleasant collected a 17.9 on its music ensemble score - a remarkably high score. Overall, the Oilers broke 70 at West Bloomfield.

For Katherine, the senior, this weekend and the shot at one more trip to Ford Field means a lot. She'll be pouring her heart and soul into it.


We've been trying to do our part, too, to support the band. Before home games, Kissy Missy and I have been selling Oiler seat cushions. Above, she turns to the flag as Robert conducts the National Athem before the Arthur Hill game.

There will be seven Flight III bands at Durand, and Linden, Trenton and Mt. Pleasant have to be considered the favorites.

It's all about the music, the marching, the effect. Don't stop believing.

Novi

The Oiler band, after a rough Friday night that included the Midland High football team running onto the field during the show, took the field at Novi Saturday - and earned a first-competition score nine points higher than last year's first time out.

The cerebral "Pachelbel's Journey" impressed the judges enough to award a 63.45.



Katherine and Robert await the judge's word after the show at Novi. The verdict: First place, , best music, best marching, best overall effect.


The mayor of Novi, right, prepares to hand the plaque to the Oiler command team as the host Novi command team salutes them.


But the Oiler band can't rest on its laurels. There was another competition Saturday, and in Flight III, Ferndale scored an incredible 73.05 - in September! Farmington Harrison checked in at 67.55, Redford Thurston at 66.8, and Trenton at 66.25. After the weekend, the Oilers are in fifth place statewide in Flight III.
And we have yet to hear from defending champion Stevensville Lakeshore, runnerup Grand Rapids Northview, or last year's other finalists, Byron Center or Linden. The two other 2008 Flight III finalists, Marysville and Allegan, are in Flight IV this year.
Thurston is on the schedule for a head-to-head competition Saturday at the Michigan Invitational Tournament in Flint, while Flight III bands Fruitport, South Lyon and Hazel Park take their shows to Livonia Franklin.
Either the judges are getting soft - which isn't likely - or there are going to be some intense, tight, stunning competitions on the way to Ford Field for the finals.

The band gears up

The young Oiler band's ambitious show hits the road today at the Novi Fanfare.
It's still early in the season - Novi is a place to work out the rough spots, see what the judges think, and start making adjustments.
The Friday night halftime show was a little rough, but they'll get there.

Mt. Pleasant's Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras in September? Of course. Even though it's on Friday.
It's a downtown Mt. Pleasant promotion - and it keeps getting bigger every year.
I don't think I've ever seen as many people downtown as I did Friday night, and the parade - well, it would do justice to a lot of much larger communities.
I was impressed not just with the size of the crowd, but the diversity of the people downtown.
And it was so, so cool to see the everyone - Katherine and Robert with the Oiler Marching Band (you see them in the video) - and Kissy Missy handing out Applefest fliers for the the Zonta Club. (She didn't make the video - not her fault nor mine.)
Not a bad celebration for our little town. Not bad at all.