All spelled out for you

All week in schools across Van Wert County and all over the region, dozens of students have stood with sweaty palms and quivering stomachs awaiting their word. Yes it’s spelling bee time again. A time where ordinary middle school-aged kids memorize the spelling of rare and obtuse words in hopes they have memorized the words that will become their word when the day of the bee comes along.
As a good student in school, I enjoyed the challenge of the spelling bee -- and the competition. As a fifth grader, I wanted to show up the older kids. As a sixth and seventh grader, I wanted to uphold my reputation. Then as an eighth grader, I wanted to get it all over with. Can you guess which year I didn’t win?
Full disclosure: I won the spelling bee for my age group at my school three times out of four years. I never won the county spelling bee, but I had three good showings. That fourth year I must have blocked from my memory. I only remember missing a word during the school competition and the expression on the pronouncer’s face when the three-time defending champion blew the spelling of an easy word. I always lost on easy words, not the ones that nobody should be able to spell. I lost one year by misspelling a three-letter word and another year it was a four-letter word. (No, not any of those words that you just thought of.)
I remember sitting alone in my bedroom with a small booklet containing the official word list of the spelling bee. These books were put out by the national sponsor of the event. The cover was orange with cartoonish bees all over it. Inside, the words were listed in columns and in groups of ten. The book itself was divided into three sections: Easy, Intermediate, and Advanced. Let me tell you right now that the words in that Advanced section are all made up. That’s my theory anyway. At one time the sponsor made up a whole new section of words like smaragdine, hydrophyte, maculature, xanthosis, and chiaroscurist. Yes, those are spelling bee words. Those are winning words from the national competition over the years. The winning word is not the word the second place speller missed. The winning word is the word the winner spells after he or she has correctly spelled the word the other kid messed up. When we played H-O-R-S-E with a basketball on the playground, we would call this “proving it.” In a spelling bee, the winning round only serves to prolong the agony. After all, isn’t it silly to think that in round after round of spelling that anyone would have to “prove it” by spelling another word for no apparent reason?
Anyway, I learned the Easy spelling bee words without a lot of difficulty. There were a few tricky ones, but that section wasn’t too bad. My goal was to learn all of the words in the Intermediate section. There were some toughies there. Each year I could spell roughly 80 percent of that section, and I stood a chance at getting lucky on the remaining 20 percent. Close enough.
In a twist of fate, I began my career I was a radio broadcaster where the spelling of a word doesn’t really matter. You just have to pronounce it correctly. Now, as a newspaper editor, I have to become a walking Spell Check. But in newspapers, we can pronounce it wrong provided we spell it correctly. I’ve made the trip from one end of the spectrum to another.
But does good spelling really matter? In an age where texting and online communication seem to have a unique shorthand language that defies everything I learned in the spelling bee book, people laugh at the need to spell correctly. As a writer, I have never needed to spell chiaroscurist (aside from earlier in this column), but if I do it will be spelled correctly. It is important. Just don’t ask me how to pronounce it.

Which day is the proper day?

We’re just starting to exit one of the most awkward times of year. We all have a task to do, but there is no consensus as to when it should be done. As a result the end comes, not in one huge wave of silence, but in a slow fade.
I thought of this the other day as I watched crews take down the Christmas decorations in downtown Van Wert. It was after New Year’s Day, but then again, these were not private decorations. Workers were on the municipality’s schedule. But what about the rest of us? When should the tree come down? The lights on the house? The giant inflatable Santas? What is proper etiquette?
There are some people who will take down the tree on Dec. 26. Maybe it’s getting dried-out or it’s just in the way, so the decorations hit the storage boxes the morning after the big day and the tree is in flames by noon. Even folks with artificial trees can be in the Day After Club. It is more understandable years ago to get it out of the way, but the majority of people still have Christmas celebrations after Dec. 25 has been marked off the calendar. Why not leave the centerpiece of the interior decorations up until after you’ve finished the last of the leftovers from the last Christmas dinner?
On the other side of the coin, there are certain houses that leave decorations up far too long. You know who you are. Drive by a few houses on a warm April evening and check to see if any of them still have strands of icicle lights tacked to the roofline. They probably won’t be on, but they will be there just the same. Of course there are a few people who leave lights up year-round, calling them Valentine’s Day lights or July 4th lights, or Labor Day lights or Halloween lights. These people are special cases who have probably invented a way to change the color of the lights from green and blue to pink and red for February and then swapping hues for each successive holiday. These people have their own issues. We’ll leave them alone. But somewhere in the middle of the Day After Club and the Up Until April Fellowship is the proper answer.
As I did my research, I discovered some traditions of which I was unaware. Who knew that it all had to do with that long Christmas carol that is the holiday equivalent to “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall?” That’s right. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was the original guide for un-hauling out the holly. Today most people do not understand what the 12 days of Christmas are. While there is debate over some of the customs and about how to count days, for the most part, the days begin Dec. 26 (the First Day of Christmas) and conclude with Jan. 6 (the Twelfth Day of Christmas, or Epiphany). In any case, Twelfth Night, which is actually the evening of Jan. 5 is when Christmas decorations are to be taken down, according to custom. To top it off, if you leave your decorations up after Twelfth Night, the tradition states that you will have bad luck. I guess the bad luck could be having dozens of motorists driving by your lighted home and laughing at you. My research mentioned things like crops failing, spring not returning, and “mischief in the house.”
This being January 6, if you haven’t cleared out the stockings and the mistletoe and the “Dear Santa, I can explain...” coffee mug, it looks like you are in for a period of mischief in the house. My suggestion is to “fall back” a few hours for Christmas Saving Time and get it done. Hurry. The neighbors are laughing at you.

Christmas Music Overload

By this time of December, either you've haven't heard enough Christmas music for your liking or you've heard plenty more Christmas music than you want to hear. It's the curse of the holiday -- how much music is enough and how much is too much.

Musical performers will all record Christmas music. They have to. It's the law. Alright, it may not be the law, but they all do it. The reason singers record Christmas music is that they realize that if they have one hit that strikes a Christmas chord with the general public, their careers will never die. Artists can make their career based on one record, and with a Christmas record, it will be dragged out and played every year. Brenda Lee has "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," Bobby Helms has "Jingle Bell Rock," and Elmo & Patsy have "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." Each have become as much a part of Christmas as stockings, trees, and one-horse open sleighs.

But in the glut of Christmas music, many songs get lost along the way. Realize that there are only a handful of accepted Christmas carols and then a separate group of Christmas songs. In all, there are really not many songs that keep getting repeated on those 24-hour Christmas radio stations. If you listen for an afternoon, you'll already have figured that out! However, many other recordings are treated with as much respect as the box with all the broken ornaments and non-working Christmas lights. Because I have a background in radio broadcasting and music, I may have heard of a few Christmas recordings that you may have never heard. Allow me to peruse my personal collection of Christmas music and share a few with you.

"Merry Chirstmas from The Brady Bunch" - What could be cuter than the lovable television family warbling carols? Well, plenty. The real actors performed the songs on the album, meaning it sounded only slightly different than any group of kids in the early 1970s singing Christmas carols. Mighty forgettable. (Note: There was also a "Partridge Family Christmas Card" album, but good taste overtook me and I didn't pick that one up!)

Twisted Sister - "A Twisted Christmas" - Imagine the hard-hitting rock and roll chords of the 80's hit "We're Not Gonna Take It." Now imagine those same three chords with the lyrics of Christmas carols instead the cries of teen angst. You've got "Twisted Christmas." It's the album that makes it possible to bang your head to "O Come All Ye Faithful."

"Christmas Day with Colonel Sanders" - I, as a lover of truly terrible music, was overjoyed at the thought of Col. Harlan Sanders crooning holiday classics coated with 11 herbs and spices, but alas the album was a mix of hymns and carols sung by real musicians like Al Hirt, Jim Reeves, Ed Ames, and other household names from over half a century ago. So I passed on the album and got the bucket of chicken instead.

The Singing Mailmen of Miami - "Mail Early and Have a Merry Christmas" - I'll admit, this may be my personal favorite. I stumbled across this in the record library stacks of a radio station I worked for. It was the late 80s, but the recording dated back to the 60s. There was an actual group of postal workers known as The Singing Mailmen of Miami who sang for charity purposes. This album was Christmas-themed, but also served as public service announcements for the post office. One tune sounded like "Jingle Bells" but the lyrics were about remembering to use zip codes to make mail deliveries quicker. Another cited the benefits of mailing cards and packages early during the holiday season. The Singing Mailmen of Miami were always good for a useful holiday tip.

My Christmas wish for you is that you do not overdose on sappy Christmas songs this year, and that the music you enjoy is always at your disposal. But, if you want to jam to the Singing Mailmen of Miami, let me know. We can play it LOUD!

My traditional words of wisdom

What do July 4th fireworks, Opening Day for the Cincinnati Reds, and my grandma's date pudding have in common? All three are strongly associated with tradition. The tradition holds that we celebrate the birth of our nation with colorful explosions in the sky on the night of the fourth, unless it's raining too badly. The tradition used to be that the first Major League Baseball game of the season would be held in Cincinnati. And it is highly traditional for my grandma's special mixture of dates, brown sugar, and around three ka-jillion calories to be served each Thanksgiving.

We have traditions to cover pretty much every annual event. I think the reasons they become traditions is because we are too lazy to change them. Or else we just don't want to fight about it. In fact, I think if enough research would be done, I could find that the word tradition is rooted from some Greek word meaning "we can't change this or people will burn down the city." Nothing is as protected as something we call a tradition. If it's just something that comes up every year, we can change it however you like. But smack of label reading 'tradition' on it, and it will never be allowed to change. Think of that time as a kid when you made a funny face and your mother told you to stop making that face or else your face would get stuck just like that. That's what has happened with some of our traditions. They just stuck like that.

Traditions are cherished because so many people fear change. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe change requires so much effort. Maybe it makes us unsure of our place in the world. Nah. Change forces us to do something different. People are creatures of habit. For some reason, many people enjoy the consistency (some might call it a rut) of having a set pattern to life. I've never been one of those people. While I like familiarity, I enjoy the challenge of doing something different. But others try to keep such a little amount of change that they make the Amish look hip and modern. That's fine for them, but just don't try to require me to live by the same code.

Don't get me wrong. I understand the value of tradition. We are approaching a time of year when tradition almost rules our lives. My reference to Grandma's date pudding, for example. It is on the table every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Only a couple of people actually eat it these days. I can't do it. It is so sweet and rich that my teeth begin to rot and fall out while the fork is on the way to my mouth. But somehow it is comforting to see that glass bowl of dark brown sugary stuff topped with Cool Whip sitting there beside the gravy. It's almost like Grandma is still with us for the family celebrations. And that's the value of tradition -- to remember the people and events that helped shape who we are today. But some traditions are just empty reminders instead of living history.

Maybe the best thing we can do with tradition is to actually figure out why each is important or trivial. Or better still, create new traditions that actually have meaning, at least for the time being. Have you ever purposefully started a tradition? I have. And I have known others who have done the same. One family began the tradition of working each Thanksgiving at a soup kitchen to feed those in need rather than gorge themselves on turkey and stuffing. Another family now takes the money they would normally spend on presents for one another and uses it to give to the needy at Christmas. The tradition I began gives us a chance to concentrate on the meaning of the holiday rather than the means we celebrate it by these days. That ties into the value once again of remembering that which has shaped us. Not that a few dozen plates of pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes and gravy, and date pudding wouldn't change my shape for the worse, mind you! But when one of those traditions comes up in the next six weeks or so, maybe you can cherish the comfort of reliving some of the traditions which have made you who you are. Or just maybe, you can ignore it in favor of something more meaningful that will make you even better.

A great discovery -- count on it!

As I was sorting through the list of possible topics to write about -- Veterans Day, 11/11/11, elections, Joe Paterno, and other newsworthy and noteworthy items -- I found the news item I've been hoping for my whole life. Are you ready? A university professor of nutrition at Kansas State University has lost 27 pounds in two months by eating... junk food! Yes, my snack-loving friends, you read that right. This professor of nutrition (mentioning that again for emphasis) lost 27 pounds in two months with a diet that included every three hours eating a Twinkie or a Little Debbie snack cake or a small bag of Doritos. Are you with me on this? A little junk food doesn't hurt.

Professor Mark Haub won't be pushing his 'convenience store diet' in a book or appearing on daytime television talk shows anytime soon. But his premise actually is simple. If you want to lose weight, consume less calories than you burn. It doesn't have to be fresh asparagus or specially-harvested, flavor-optional seaweed. The nutritional information that restaurants are being pressured to provide really are irrelevant if your goal is weight loss. It's all about the calories.

If there are two subjects that I have a lot of knowledge about, they are diets and junk food. I've had weight issues since elementary school, my weight going up and down depending upon my lifestyle and habits. And I've had jobs where much of my time is spent on the road, so I've learned the finer points of dining on Zingers and Rolos. But I have always contended that chocolate was not a poison causing instant mounds of fat to appear at the first taste. It's the total amount.

I checked on the aforementioned Hostess Twinkie. In one filled sponge cake treat, there are 27 grams of carbohydrates, 4.5 grams of fat (2.5 grams of those are saturated fat), 20 mg of cholesterol, 220 mg of sodium, and 1 gram of protein. But if Prof. Haub's idea is accurate, all that is irrelevant to weight loss. What you need to know is that in one Twinkie there are 150 calories. You should be able to figure out that there are 300 calories in two Twinkies. That is key because those stinkin' things are usually sold in packs of two. Let me remind you that a medium-sized apple is about 95 calories, a banana has about 105, and a can of Dole pineapple chunks packed in juice contains about 315 calories.

But if you protest, thinking something is wrong here and that junk food will make us less healthy, the good professor points out that after his 'diet' his good cholesterol had gone up 20 percent, his bad cholesterol had gone down 20 percent and his triglycerides were reduced 39 percent. In other words, he was actually healthier after the two-month junk food binge! Well, it was not all junk food. About one-third of his diet was normal food, including some green vegetables and a protein shake each day. Still Professor Haub isn't recommending other people try this experiment. In fact, he is not really sure what to make of the results. It's not often a 41-year-old man with a trash can full of empty Little Debbie cake wrappers can drop his body fat index from 33 to 25 percent. But he appears to be sticking by his guns that dieting is simply a matter of eating fewer calories than you use. Who'da thunk it?

If you can see large amounts of turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie in your future, but you don't want to get pudgy heading into Christmas candy season, remember the key is cutting down the number of calories you take in. Stop before you hit the 15th helping of that so-called 'good-for-me food.' And don't fear the Twinkie.

Milestones ahead

I've always been fascinated with milestones. Perhaps it is the geographer in me, wanting to know how far it is to the next landmark. Milestones date back to Great Roman Empire at least. The Romans, probably wanting to brag about the size of their empire, set out to measure the distance from one end to another, and many shorter distances in between.
Where I grew up along U.S. 30 in Indiana, there was a green sign we always passed which indicated the mileage to the next two decent-sized cities down the road. As a sports fan, my first instinct was that someone had posted football scores along the side of the road (New Haven 10, Fort Wayne 14), but my parents filled me in on what they were for. Since that time, I've studied milestones. When I lived in Cumberland, Maryland (the beginning of the Cumberland Road which later became the National Road), I got to see the first milestone which dated back 150 years. It was the first in a long series of markers which helped early American travelers figure out how far it was to the nearest Stuckey's.
I'm thinking about milestones because my household is coming up to a number of them. My daughter turned 10 years old earlier this week. It's a milestone that really doesn't seem to be that special on the surface. Nothing really changes at 10, although at 10 it seems that everything changes daily! So her age is now double digits, even though she truly believes she is somewhere in her mid-twenties.
My oldest boy turns 20 next month. Now 20 is one of those ages that should be a milestone, but really isn't. Absolutely nothing changes except a 20-year-old is no longer a teenager. Because he is away at college, I've had a hard time considering him a teenager the past year and a half anyway. His big landmark is next year, but unless he plans on taking up a drinking habit, not much will change there either.
My middle child will turn 18 this spring. Now that's a landmark! Well, maybe not so much the birthday itself, but it seems that a lot of things start to change right around the time of the 18th birthday. High school turns to college. Childhood turns to adulthood. If only I could get the car insurance rates to change from "Have you thought about borrowing the money?" to something actually affordable!
And as for me, next month I will officially hit middle age. My 50th birthday is coming up. Um, 50 is halfway, right? So in honor of hitting middle age, I would like to have a mid-life crisis. This would be a welcome substitute for all my other assorted crises. The thing is that so-called experts claim that a mid-life crisis is a reaction to depression over uncontrollable changing circumstances in a person's life. I'm not in the market for depression or uncontrollable things. However, I have always wanted a flashy red sports car.
Years ago, I knew a man who hit close to 50 and went out and bought a shiny red two-seater sports car. He even got the little sloped cap too. You know the kind. It's guaranteed to make a sane person look like he's living on Fantasy Island. But he really enjoyed the car and seemed to avoid all the other pitfalls of a mid-life crisis.
Me, I can't afford a sports car. I'm not going to drown my life with alcohol because I really don't like it well enough to pay all that money for it. Can't afford a Harley. And an affair with my secretary is out of the questions for many reasons, the least of which is that I don't have a secretary! So I guess I'm going to have to hit this milestone head-on with some vitamins in one hand and some Geritol in the other.
With milestones along the road, you know how far you have to go. With life's milestones, you only get a reminder of where you've been. Whatever the second half of my life turns out to be, I know that I have made it down the first 50 years of roadway. I may have four bald tires and one bald head, but I'm fueled up and ready for the trip! But I'd rather avoid anymore milestones for a few years!

Only a few voices speak to me

He was supposed to call at 11, but it was 20 minutes before that and the phone was ringing. The caller ID display said it was from “Enberg, Barbara,” so I readied my recorder and answered the phone.

“Hi, is this Ed?”

“Yes, speaking.”

“Oh good, this is Dick Enberg.”

“Uh, yeah... I recognize your voice.”

That was an understatement. The voice was crystal clear. This was the play-by-play voice I remembered from NCAA basketball, from eight different Super Bowl broadcasts, the World Series. He was the host of the game show, Sports Challenge, which I loved to watch as a kid. I talked to him for about 15 minutes, and listened as he regaled me with stories of traveling with Al McGuire and Billy Packer during the college basketball season, and his enduring friendship with the former Marquette coach. It was a very nice conversation with a charming gentleman.

I'm not generally affected by celebrities. I've met more than my fair share. In this job, I've interviewed all sorts of folks, including a big chunk of the performers who have played here in town. I have finished many interviews thinking the artist I've just talked to is a very nice, bright person, but it didn't really register with me that this person was a celebrity.

That was how my talk with Mr. Enberg was as well. Almost. You see, the voice of Dick Enberg took me back to my youth. The voice that brought NFL football games to me. The voice that described college basketball games during my high school and college days. The voice that helped my enjoy Major League Baseball games. That voice! It was a little like being young again.

The last time I had felt like that was when I had a chance to do a phone interview with impressionist Rich Little. Growing up, Rich Little was my favorite performer. Talking to him was not so much getting to know a celebrity, but letting him take me back to a simpler time. He even did a couple of impressions while telling me stories, and when the interview was over, Mr. Little just kept going. He was obviously having a good time talking, and I was lapping it all up. I was 13 again and was a private audience with my favorite entertainer.

I've tried to think of other celebrities that have had a similar effect on me, but for the life of me I can't come up with another one. No other performers, no other announcers, no politicians. Nobody. Earlier today, I did go through a bunch of old voicemail messages on my phone here at The Times Bulletin and found one from country performer Charlie Daniels. I remember my interview with Mr. Daniels. He was entertaining, funny, and all I ever wanted from an interview. I even had a few of his records back in the 70s. (Kids, if you don't know what a “record” is, go ask your grandparents.) But talking to Charlie Daniels was not like talking to Dick Enberg or Rich Little. Maybe if he'd launched into a chorus of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” it would have been different, although, I have always been amused by the concept of me having a voicemail message from Charlie Daniels somewhere in the phone system.

I have tried thinking of other people who could have the same kind of effect on me, but I can't really come up with any. Of course, as with Dick Enberg, I probably wouldn't realize it until I heard the voice. Well, I'm sure Howard Cosell's voice would do the same thing, but considering he has been dead for more than 15 years, hearing his voice would probably have a quite different effect on me!

I've heard it said the voices of the past are heard in old photographs and other such memorabilia. As it turns out, voices of the past are also heard in voices of the past.