Insight: Blowing in the Woodwind

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Following my mother’s insistence that I learn how to play a musical instrument as a teenager, I reluctantly agreed to try the clarinet, and it turned out to be a disaster.

She grew up during the Great Depression and was a fan of bandleader Benny Goodman, who happened to be one of the best clarinet players in America at the time.

To get me started, my parents took me on a Saturday morning to a music store where I could pick out a clarinet. My mother said she dreamed of me playing in a band and becoming as well-known as Benny Goodman someday.

But from the start, there were issues with the clarinet. At the music store, my father was reluctant to spend several hundred dollars for a new clarinet and case, and instead turned his attention to the used instruments which were much less expensive.

He selected one with a beat-up old black case that was only $15. There was a reason why this clarinet was placed in the discount rack as apparently one of the keys would stick and the mouthpiece was scratched. My father said it was a perfect instrument to practice on before I could use some of my own money from my newspaper delivery route to buy a new one.

The music store salesman also sold my father a small packet of reeds used with the clarinet. You would use your tongue to moisten the reed on the mouthpiece before blowing into the instrument. To me, it was like licking a small thin piece of wood and I detested it.

Responding to an advertisement in the Sunday newspaper, my parents arranged for me to attend lessons with a clarinet teacher for $5 a week every Saturday morning. His house was old and smelled like mildew and I quickly came to realize that learning how to play the clarinet would be extremely difficult. There was more to do than just blowing onto the reed and placing my fingers on holes in the clarinet and tapping various keys.

To make music, clarinets use multiple octaves using different fingerings and you are using every finger on both hands to play the instrument. The learning curve was formidable and at age 12, there were many other things I wanted to do with my time after school than sitting in my bedroom practicing scales on my clarinet until dinner.

When I reached junior high school that fall, my parents signed me up to be a member of the school’s band. The music teacher, Mr. Taylor, led the band and would choose music we would be playing for our annual Christmas and Spring concerts.

Every day during the period after lunch, we would gather in the music room with our instruments for band practice. Of everything I associate with playing the clarinet, that was the best for me because I got to sit between two attractive girls, Jackie Duane and Eleanor Gruver. One played clarinet like me and the other played saxophone. I couldn’t decide which one I liked more, but I never told them such.

By ninth grade, I had come to loathe the clarinet. I never really advanced beyond basic playing skills. My clarinet would constantly squeak when I tried to play the notes I wanted. Or several of the keys would stick when I played it, and I’d have to pound on them to make them unstick.

I would compare myself to others in the band and was amazed at how much better they were than I was on their own musical instruments. Each time I messed up during band practice, Mr. Taylor would stop the rehearsals and let me know about the mistakes I was making. It became intolerable and wasn’t much fun for me.

When I mentioned to my parents over dinner that I wanted to quit playing the clarinet, my father said nothing, but my mother had a meltdown of epic proportions. She berated me for wanting to play a musical instrument and then not following through with it. She said no matter how much I wanted to quit that she wasn’t going to let me do that. She said she wasn’t going to throw away all the money she spent on my clarinet lessons for the past three years.

It was a dilemma that I somehow had to resolve. I was a terrible clarinet player, and I didn’t like having to use the reed for the clarinet. I was never going to become Benny Goodman. I felt trapped into doing something I didn’t want to do in the first place.

One day after Christmas when I was in the ninth grade, I saw Mr. Taylor outside the band room, and he asked me how I was doing. I told him it was hard trying to live up to my mother’s expectations and he said he understood. He told me that playing a musical instrument is not for everyone and he would call my father about it.

The next evening, my father told me that I no longer had to play the clarinet if I didn’t want to.

So ended my time as a musician and I seriously haven’t looked back since.

Andy Young: The Extinction Bowl

By Andy Young

The College Football Playoff (CFP), a 12-team tournament that will ultimately determine this season’s national collegiate championship, begins this weekend with four games. The winners will move on to play higher-seeded teams, with the 11-game single-elimination tournament concluding with the Jan. 20 national championship game.

Truthfully though, it doesn’t matter which group of youthful mercenaries ultimately triumph. Each represents a multi-million-dollar corporation that, for the sake of convenience, has nominally attached itself to an institution of higher learning. This year’s field includes Texas, Georgia, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and eight similar athletic factories.

Regardless of which squad wins, every team involved in this year’s CFP will be back in the hunt in 2025 with revamped squads, augmented with the largest and quickest gladiators-for-hire money and similar inducements can buy. And while the contributions of influential alums will help pay for renting next season’s athletic soldiers of fortune, the bulk of the costs will be borne, largely through the courtesy of compliant lawmakers, by ordinary citizens who pay taxes and/or tuition.

I believe something of tangible value ought to be at stake in any meaningful post-season football playoff. That’s why America (and specifically ESPN’s programming department) needs the Football Elimination Tournament (FET), featuring the nation’s 12 least-successful Division I programs. This year’s lineup of gridiron sad sacks is clear-cut, since exactly 12 major college teams won fewer than two of the dozen games on their schedule. In the FET, the four worst squads would get byes through the opening round, just as the nominal top four get free passes through the initial round of the CFP.

The FET’s first quartet of games would feature eight one-win, eleven-loss teams. This year’s opening round would pit Dixie State (which, inexplicably, is located in Utah) against Delaware State, with Charleston Southern opposing Purdue, North Carolina A&T taking on Southern Mississippi, and Virginia Military Institute squaring off against Mississippi Valley State. However, unlike the overhyped, over-subsidized CFP, a win in an FET playoff game would entitle the victors to conclude their dreadful season, while the teams they beat would be forced to play on.

In the second round, the four Round One “losers” would play, in order, Kent State, Northwestern State (which, improbably, lies in the not-so-northwestern state of Louisiana), Northern Colorado, and Murray State. Kent State and Northwestern State would merit their pass through the first round by having lost all 12 of their games in 2024. The other two would get first-round byes thanks to having, among the ten teams that finished 1-11, the two worst point differentials. Northern Colorado scored 317 fewer points than their opponents, while Murray State registered an even more abysmal minus 341.

Assuming the higher remaining seeds play their way out of the FET by winning their second-round games, and that Murray State and Northern Colorado subsequently (and mercifully) end their horrible seasons by winning in the semi-finals, it would set up a loser-take-all showdown between the tournament’s last two remaining teams. But why would anyone care about the outcome of a game between two winless squads? Because of the stakes: the loser of the Extinction Bowl, Kent State or Northwestern State, would be required to drop their football program for at least five years!

Many of America’s major-college football programs (which most likely includes every team in the mythical FET) that aren’t affiliated with a major conference annually operate in the red, costing their schools obscene amounts of money. That established, the chance to rid one’s university, at least temporarily, of the fiscal sinkhole intercollegiate football has become would be a prize well worth competing for. <

The Rookie Mama: Tidings of comfort and joy and Mod Podge

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

We’ve got this, Mamas – Let’s close out this calendar year on a note of hope.

We’ve got to cross this holiday finish line together before we then jump to next year’s track, which from this vantage point might look ahead to be a big ol’ confetti blast of unknown.

But in this final stretch, I’d like to assure all that you can be the joy in this time of uncertainty.

Joy to the world, sure, but joy for your household is also an important endeavor.

And oh, what an endeavor during the month where it’s already easy enough to monumentally stress over the holiday season, let alone give a thought to the unknowns to come in the new year like bonus Yankee swap gifts you weren’t expecting.

Many of us polar plunge directly into this festive season with warm intentions to pace ourselves with a holiday head start, but the Sisyphean extraneous tasks find a way to tack on to our lists, along with concern for things beyond our control, beyond our immediate homes.

In this whirlwind world that at times may feel more like a Christmas ball of nerves, you can be the peace and hope in your own household for your littles.

In your home is where you can be the comfort and joy.

My ensemble of six spends December days steeped in sweet time-honored traditions that are not extravagant in cost, but rich in core memory-making.

A touch of frugal to our fa-la-la.

We make salt dough ornaments to frame small photos for loved ones – one of my favorite excuses to go bananas with Mod Podge – and we movie-marathon the heck out of our favorite holiday films as we eat microwave s’mores made with leftover Halloween chocolates.

Because those things have got to go.

I have enough musketeers in my household.

Another time-honored custom of ours is decorating gingerbread houses.

In the spirit of simplifying to be kind to ourselves during this time of year, we buy prebuilt.

Trust me on this.

As much as I pride myself in scratch-making lots in the kitchen, I have no shame in buying prebuilt gingerbread houses prior to SweetTarts and gum drop madness – Too many tears were once shed over royal icing and caved in walls years ago, and that solitairy ho-ho-ho hum incident was more than enough for us to walk away from that sticky disaster forevermore.

Lesson learned, just like the time our family declared ourselves independent from hunting down a suitable live tree and permanently migrated to faux fir, in all its pre-lit artificial glory.

But I digress.

Many simple Cote customs have become beloved over the course of our decade-plus of boy-raising.

We relish the magic (though it’s mustard for pork pies – a column for another day).

But the frugal tradition I love most is spending a day baking up a winter storm of fudge, cookies and reindeer chow to box up gingerly and deliver to friends and neighbors as we tour the local lights we’ve mapped out.

For more years than I’d like to admit – okay, 13, a whole teenage worth of ‘em – we’ve referred to this night as ‘platzing and the schussing,’ because it’s how Bing Crosby wondrously describes anticipation for snow when headed to Vermont in “White Christmas.”

It sounds like a beautiful way to describe ‘plotting and planning’ so ever festively, as if you had, say, magical sleighbells attached.

But as it turns out, ‘platzing and schussing’ are actually German words to describe skiing, and have nothing whatsoever to do with twinkling lights and delivering buckeye fudge.

Nonetheless, we’re sticking to the phrase like wet snow on sealcoating because we’ve invented the quirky new context for it.

Platzing and shussing – Catchy, right? – is about much more than those beaming lights.

It’s about our beaming kiddos as they become instilled in the work of creating something and giving to others.

It’s about spending our time, warming hearts, counting blessings – rather than sparkling gifts – and does not cost much to do.

It’s about a means to keep connected, to share emotions via warm conversations, not via social media posts for a moment.

Tidings of comfort and joy, in uncertain times around us.

So let’s close out this year on a hope-filled note.

Here’s to peace on earth, buckeye fudge, and platzing and shussing for all.

Be that joy for your little ones, and have the merriest holiday season yet.

And don’t forget the Mod Podge.

­– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time! <

Insight: Visitors from The Great Beyond

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

There are some topics up for discussion on social media that I’d prefer not to take part in. Recently I saw one that asked if you could bring back someone from your past who is no longer living, who would it be and why?

Since I chose not to answer that one for the whole world to see, I thought about it and decided to share a few people I would like to see again and speak to somewhere in The Great Beyond.

When I was a sophomore in college in 1972, my mother called to let me know that a good friend of our family, Elma Jolley, had passed away in Rochester. She was in many ways like a sister to my mother, who had been orphaned at 12. After being placed in a succession of brutal foster homes and orphanages during the Great Depression, my mother and her sister found a permanent home with a devout Catholic family in Rochester, New York.

The family had three teenage daughters but welcomed two other girls into their household. One of the family’s daughters was Elma, who became lifelong friends with my mother. Elma married a man who worked at Eastman Kodak Company, and they did not have children, but after her father died of a sudden heart attack in the 1950s, she and her husband took in her mother and cared for her for the rest of her life.

We frequently visited them and spent several memorable Christmas Eves with them over the years. Elma’s mother, Philomena Shay, was my godmother, and when I was confirmed by the Catholic Church, I chose the name of Elma’s father, Louis, as one of my confirmation names.

Whenever our family went to their house, Elma would instruct me to go to their basement and bring up some soda pop for myself and my brother. They kept 10-ounce bottles of Coca Cola, Orange Crush and 7-Up in a cooler down there.

In the summer of 1971, about a month before I left for my freshman year of college, Elma and her husband, Bert, came to our house because they wanted to tell our family some news. It was one of the saddest days of my life when Elma sat in our living room and told us she had inoperable cancer and would soon die. She was only in her 50s and I burst into tears. I told her that I wasn’t going to go to college with this happening and she immediately stopped me.

She told me that I had to live my own life and going to college was something that she never had an opportunity to do. She encouraged me to go and make something of myself and that God had other plans for her. She said she would be watching me and pulling for me from wherever she was going.

Five months later she was dead, and 52 years later, I still find myself thinking about Elma from time to time. It is comforting to believe she is up there advocating for me and somehow, she sees what I have accomplished in life. I sure would want to speak with her again.

My father left this world so suddenly on May 19, 1991. He had just turned 65 and was driving home after a day of visiting his elderly sister. While going 55 mph and in his own lane, a drunk driver headed in the other direction crashed into him near Kissimmee, Florida and he died after being cut out of his station wagon and airlifted to Orlando Regional Medical Center.

I never got a chance to say goodbye to him, but I know he was proud of me. From time to time when I was covering an event for the newspaper I was working for, I’d spot him unexpectedly while he watched me interview a football player after a high school game or in the stands at a college basketball game I had been assigned to write about.

When I submitted my college admissions application, it had originally listed my major as physical education. I wanted to be a basketball coach but was shocked when I arrived at college to discover that I was registered for numerous journalism classes. I thought there certainly must be some sort of mistake, so I asked to see my original application and found that before signing it as my parent and mailing it for me to the school, my father had erased “Physical Education” as my college major and replaced it with “Journalism.” It was there in his unique handwriting for all to see.

I decided to mention it to him on the phone that weekend when I called home. He laughed and said, “father knows best.” I didn’t press the issue because after my first few classes of “Journalism 101,” it seemed like something I was good at, and it changed my life.

The conversation with my father took place more than 53 years ago and I am still in awe that he had the foresight to envision a lengthy career in journalism for me. He’s definitely someone that I’d like to see again someday and to say thanks. <

Andy Young: Three memorable memoirs

By Andy Young

Anyone who’s lived at least seven decades has likely collected more than enough material to author an engaging autobiography, assuming the individual in question has the necessary time, motivation, imagination, endurance, and writing ability. However, since few possess all of those half-dozen assets in sufficient quantities, there have always been (and likely always will be) far more readers of such chronicles than there will be producers of them.

Many published memoirs are entertaining, inspiring, and thought-provoking. However, all are at least to some extent self-serving, since the writer controls both the anecdotes they’ve chosen to share and the context in which they present them. None of the three life stories I’ve just finished reading is an exception to this.

The authors, who were born in 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s respectively, all share fascinating stories, but the voice(s) they use to express them reveals far more than the tales themselves do.

In Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law, Alan Dershowitz chronicles his rise from humble beginnings to internationally acclaimed and admired litigator, defense lawyer of choice for the rich and famous, sought-after television commentator, and best-selling author. There’s no denying Mr. Dershowitz’s influence and importance. By his account he’ll employ any tactic that’s legal and ethical on behalf of his clients, many of whom he’s represented pro bono. But he also comes across as a world-class namedropper and egotist who’s rarely if ever been wrong. His lengthy (528 pages!) narrative is equal parts of passionate and narcissistic, which may at least partially explain why he’s been so successful. To borrow an old expression, after reading Mr. Dershowitz’s book, I’d like to buy him for what I think he’s worth, and then sell him for what he thinks he’s worth.

Al Pacino’s Sonny Boy is also a renowned individual’s life story, but one featuring numerous co-stars who are portrayed as being equally important to the author’s overall narrative as he himself is. Like Dershowitz’s book, Sonny Boy teems with references to multiple well-known people. But in Pacino’s book, the recognizable names are almost always referred to with gratitude by the author, and when he relates a story where another character comes across as less than attractive, he rarely mentions them by name. Pacino expresses genuine appreciation for his life in general, and for many of the people who’ve helped make it possible in particular. In a business where those who succeed usually possess outsized egos, Mr. Pacino seems an exception. His is a voice that speaks to readers as equals, rather than pontificating down to them.

But the best memoir I’ve read this month is One Stop West of Hinsdale, by Valerie Kuhn Reid. Hers is a clearly told, courageous and unembellished story involving coming of age amidst a family in crisis, the author’s continually-evolving self-awareness, and her ultimately coming to grips with an intensely traumatic past. Her clear, articulate prose, which is presented as a letter to her long-dead father, is rich in detail. The book clearly required extensive research, decades of self-analysis, and plenty of processing of past events that were in many cases undoubtedly as painful to recall as they were to originally experience.

Full disclosure: Ms. Reid is a friend of mine. However, even If I knew nothing about her, I’d recommend One Stop West of Hinsdale to anyone looking for a relatable, eloquently told, painfully honest story of a genuine human being’s ongoing journey of self-discovery.

Want to get rich quick? Go purchase some random item for what you think it’s worth, then turn around and sell it for what I think Ms. Reid and her wonderful book are worth. <

Insight: Been there, done Frat

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Whatever made a diverse group of college students choose a shy 17-year-old freshman kid away from home for the first time as that year’s fraternity pledge president, I’ll certainly never know.

Ed Pierce, right, is shown with
his fraternity brother Larry Brooks
at New Mexico Highlands
University in 1971.
COURTESY PHOTO

There were 10 of us in that group and many with more worldly experience than I possessed. As we gathered at the fraternity house in September 1971, it became apparent quickly that I was way in over my head. They were all older than I was and two had served previously in the military in Vietnam. Two others were college juniors, having transferred to our school after completing junior college. One fellow only had one leg following a car crash and had an artificial leg that he would suddenly take off to surprise people at parties.

I had just met these guys, and they knew little about me but here I stood after the first vote and chosen to lead this motley group as we tried to survive our time as fraternity pledges.

The first order of business was to protect ourselves from what was described by some fraternity members as “being kidnapped.” A group of frat guys would drop by unexpectedly in the middle of the night, put you in a car, drive you three miles out of town and make you walk home. To avoid this from happening and stay under the radar, five of us slept in one dorm room on campus while the other five slept in the dorm room next door.

Yet somehow at 3 a.m., the dorm room door flung open, and we barely had enough time to grab our coats and then squeeze into the back seat of a 1965 Ford LTD. It was a miserable, desolate and long walk home. It was cold and damp, there were plenty of rain puddles to avoid and angry dogs emerging from hidden driveways nipping at your heels along the way. But we all survived and made it back to campus safely.

As fraternity pledges we had to push the school’s cannon back and forth from the gymnasium to the football field and figuring out how to do that without running anyone over or blocking traffic was a tactical nightmare. Thankfully there were only five home football games that season, and we moved the cannon on Friday nights ahead of Saturday’s game.

Pledges gathered at the fraternity house every Sunday afternoon to study for what would be on our written test for induction into the fraternity. The local chapter had provided each pledge with a handbook of pertinent facts as to when and where the national fraternity was founded, and what each letter in the Greek alphabet was. But I came to the conclusion that no matter how many times we reviewed the handbook, some of these guys were just never going to remember the material needed to pass the test.

Another of our group tasks to complete as pledges was called “Escape Weekend.” We had to go somewhere as a group for 48 hours one weekend and not be seen by any other fraternity members. As it happened, one of the pledges’ family members owned a cabin about 50 miles away that was available. We cleared everyone’s schedule, loaded a cooler with ice, beer and sandwiches and all 10 pledges squeezed into the back of an old pickup truck with a camper and took off at 4 a.m. unseen by active fraternity members.

It was an adventure to say the least. One of the pledges, who suffered from PTSD after serving in Vietnam, brought along a pistol and he would fire it off indiscriminately outside when he had consumed too much alcohol. Unfortunately, one of those gunshots struck an elk on a property adjacent to the cabin, and we huddled together indoors hiding out and wondering what to do or if the police would come and investigate after someone reported hearing gunfire. Despite our fear and apprehension, nobody showed up, the elk disappeared back into the woods and by the end of the 48 hours, we were back in the pickup truck and headed back to the college.

The next Friday night, we all took part in something called “Three Fires.” It was a fraternity exercise where we walked alone to three different campfires at night in a large field and got to spend time speaking with active fraternity members about why we wanted to join them in the fraternity. They provided evaluations for each of us as pledges and pointed out our potential strengths and weaknesses. As for me, I was praised for my organizational skills and willingness to take on a leadership role among the pledges. 

One member told me though that he had apprehensions about me. He said that he couldn’t understand why I dropped Economics at mid-term despite having an “A” in the class. I told him that I was simply overwhelmed by the amount of reading required for that class and knew that it only got tougher after mid-term, so I chose to focus on my other classes instead and hoped I could someday take Economics again. He asked me to chug a beer in front of him to prove my worthiness and even though I detested alcohol, I did it, only to barf it out on my way to the next campfire.

By the second weekend of November 1971, our pledge class was ready to take the test and become initiated as full-fledged active fraternity members. One by one, we went down to the fraternity house basement for the test with blindfolds. Unbelievably, we somehow all passed.

When I look back now through the prism of 53 years later, I am amazed at how adept I was to survive pledging a fraternity and still maintain good grades in my first year as a college student. It’s an experience I wouldn’t trade today for anything.

Andy Young: The twelfth, not the last

By Andy Young

It was curiosity that led me to conduct an imaginary survey earlier this fall. The one-question bogus poll’s query was: “What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of December?”

The unsurprising results were, well, not surprising. Of the 794 fictitious respondents, 53.7 percent answered “Christmas,” “Hanukkah,” “Kwanzaa,” or “holidays.” An additional 42.8 percent responded with “cold,” “snow,” “ice,” or “skiing,” and another 3.4 percent said, “New Year’s Eve.”

The poll was somewhat skewed by one individual (0.125944584 percent of those participating) whose response was “surfing and intense heat.” Here’s a hint for future information-gatherers wishing to administer meaningful surveys that will yield useful findings: when conducting climate-related polls, don’t include any New Zealanders.

If I headed up December’s marketing department, I’d launch a serious rebranding. There’s far more to the year’s concluding month than just holidays and the onset of winter.

Once I got the go-ahead from December’s 12-member board of directors, the first thing I’d establish is that the calendar’s final month isn’t the year’s last one; it’s the twelfth one! The difference is as stark as the contrast between day and night, near and far, or good and evil. Being last is a downer. The last person in the chow line gets the dregs, if they get anything at all. The last people outside the arena or theatre get the crummiest seats at the concert, the movie, or the ballgame, assuming it’s not sold out by the time they get to the ticket window.

Being the last pick at the National Football League draft has become somewhat noteworthy, but other than that the only three times in history when being at the end of the line was a good thing were: In 1876, when the last available uniform for General Custer’s 7th cavalry regiment had been handed out; in 1912, when the Titanic’s final berth had gotten filled; and in 1978, when the Kool-Aid supply ran out in Jonestown, Guyana.

Being twelfth, on the other hand, is always significant. Don’t believe it? Why then are there twelve eggs in a dozen? Why do two twelve-hour periods make up a day? Why are there twelve inches in a foot, twelve people on a jury, and twelve signs of the zodiac?

The apostles Marvin, Orlando, Betty, and Sharon (yes, there were women apostles, but the misogynistic chroniclers of the day wrote them out of history) had wanted to be present at the last supper, but there was a reason only Andrew, Bartholomew, James the Greater, James the Lesser, John, Judas Iscariot, Jude, Matthew, Peter, Phillip, Simon and Thomas got invites: there were exactly one dozen tribes of Israel, which is why Jesus wanted twelve (and only twelve) guests to share His last meal with Him.

There’s a reason Shakespeare didn’t author a play called The 8th Night, and Hollywood never made movies called Ten Angry Men, Eleven O’Clock High, The Dirty Baker’s Dozen, Thirty-five Monkeys, or The Fifteen Chairs.

Even casual football fans know Tom Brady’s uniform number. But the quarterback who engineered six New England Patriot Super Bowl victories (and one for some forgettable squad with weird uniforms) isn’t the only number-12-wearing Hall of Fame quarterback to call signals for an NFL championship team. Joe Namath, Terry Bradshaw, Bob Griese, Roger Staubach, Ken Stabler and Aaron Rodgers all did it, too.

Is there something magic about the number twelve? It seems plausible, given that Henry Armstrong, the only man to ever hold three world boxing championships (featherweight, welterweight, and lightweight) simultaneously, was born on December 12, 1912.

And for those still unconvinced of twelve’s significance, well……try counting your ribs! <