I was driving down the street in Chicago the other day and I pulled behind this car. It's someone affiliated with the Chicago Police Department, hence the star badge and CP on the plate. I was uncomfy with this plate. It felt like a flex to me, and totally unnecessary. If you have the star badge on the license, enough said.
I'm never going to knock Ann Arbor, what a great place to live. But I have to throw Evanston out there. I lived there for 22 years, and we moved there for our kids. You have a feel similar to Oak Park, but you also have the lake and beaches, and an easy commute to Chicago. Whenever I go back now (we moved back downtown a year ago), I'm like, "Yeah, this place was good for us. It has a really great vibe."
I’m not a big drinker, never was, but I’ve certainly had friends and family who were and are. My sister is a recovering alcoholic and now a sponsor for AA. My husband’s siblings are both alcoholics, one has cirrhosis, and his mother was a professor whose life work focused on the children of alcoholics. It’s a big topic of discussion in our family, as you can imagine. You don’t need to be an alcoholic to have a bad relationship with alcohol. If it interferes with your home life or work, it’s a problem. Not a source of shame but something that needs to be addressed.
And we have no idea what the complete story is and what went on behind the scenes. I trust that the athletic department did what it thought was best for Michigan based on the facts they have.
Happy Mother's Day to me! All my teams -- Michigan baseball, the Cubs, and the Smokies -- won today. This will be my first mother's day without any of my kids here but I guess I'll have to just bask in the winning. Hope those of you celebrating have a fine day.
I honestly wasn't curious enough about history or environmental science or anthropology to take those classes voluntarily, much less seek out books about them (I was in college pre-internet). I took a lot of classes because I had to and I'm now grateful for that. History of the Third World was one of those classes. It fulfilled a requirement, it's not something I would ever seek out for pleasure, but I'm a more well-informed person for having taken it. Plus, there's something to be said for what a good teacher contributes to the material.
I had a change of career and got a culinary degree in my mid 20's but when I went to work in kitchens, I was not prepared at all. A lot of what I learned wasn't applicable to what I would end up doing in my job. The schooling only gave me a tiny amount of real world knowledge. I don't know how other trade schools translate to real world skills, but that $12,000 (which was a lot to me back in the mid 90's) didn't necessarily provide a return on my investment, either. I think med school, law school, business school, and an engineering degree might be the only areas of study where you can reasonably expect to get a return on your investment.
I agree with a lot of what you've said, although when I went to school, it was much more affordable and everyone whose parents went to college were just expected to do the same. It wasn't necessarily a status thing but a mandatory thing if you wanted a white collar job. I ended up in a white collar job that had its own set of skills that you couldn't get at a school like Michigan, or most liberal arts schools. But I think it's important to get the kind of education you can get at a four year college (history, poli sci, basic science, literature survey, psychology, etc) because that kind of knowledge is what binds us together in civil society. It may not directly relate to our careers but where else would I have learned about the history of the third world or how smokestack industries have affected the environment (yeah, that was taught in 1986).
I said this in the other thread and I'll say it again here: They took away our head coach, put the program through the turmoil of an investigation and the firing of Partridge, which all could have derailed us, and Ohio State still couldn't capitalize on it. Sorry, Gene, that's on you.
I agree. The world needs more good stories, even if there's an element of tragedy to them. But for me, there are some things that cross the line, like school shootings. My son and I drove cross country and listened to Shane Gillis, who is very adept at un-PC comedy. I laughed at pretty much everything except the joke about a school shooting, Just couldn't go there.
I'm usually a bleeding heart and can find something to feel badly about when it comes to sports teams losing but not in the case of MSU. That fan base is loathsome and after their response to Conor Stalions, the athletic department and Izzo can go f* themselves.
Warde haters are pretty myopic, not just in the way you stated but in thinking there's only one way that an AD does his job successfully, and that all successful AD's are basically the same. They seem to leave Michigan, itself, out of the equation. Michigan has certain standards that other schools don't and that has nothing to do with Warde. He has to work within those parameters, and they're parameters that sometimes work against putting together a successful team. I'm not saying he's the perfect AD, I'm just saying that there's a lot more to his job than people willingly acknowledge.
The past couple of years, we've had terrible hail storms, with hail the size of baseballs. One storm was so bad that anyone who parked on the street was on the phone with their insurance companies the next day, trying to get all the dents and cracked windshields taken care of. And those suckers went horizontal and tore holes in the screens on our windows. We had to get them all rescreened.
I love NY pizza. When I was in middle school back in the late 70's, I lived in a town right outside Manhattan and there was a place called Four Corners Pizza. The guys who owned it and worked there were from Italy and had chest hair so dense, you couldn't see any skin underneath. They made the best NY pizza and yes, slices. Every day after school I'd get a slice and an orange soda and yes, the slices were reheated, and they were amazing.
I've looked at Gozney's too. I like the idea of wood burning but we have a gas hook up so could do gas as well. I like the Gozney Dome. It's very expensive, though. We've also looked at Alfa's but they're even more expensive. I have a Weber with a carbon steel insert but there's a hole in the middle that provides for a direct flame -- good for burgers, bad for pizza making.
Calling someone 'anti-Rosa Parks' just because they thought the protesters were disruptive at the graduation is a pretty big stretch. My daughter goes to NYU and has been prevented from getting into the library by protesters on several occasions and that pisses me off. Am I anti-Rosa Parks?
Just for perspective, I was one of the people who protested during my own graduation. 1987, against apartheid. I don't know how many of us there were, several hundred, but during the ceremony, when keynote speaker Mike Wallace spoke, we all stood in silence and put our backs to the stage. Many of us had anti-apartheid slogans stuck to our backs. The guy sitting behind me may have been pissed because I blocked his direct view of Mike Wallace, but other than that, we made the issue known without otherwise disrupting the ceremony. We sat back down when he was done. During that same period, there were shanties set up in the Diag. The administration left them alone because they didn't prevent anyone from going about their business. Yet they were there every day, a constant reminder of what was going on in South Africa.
You're going to equate this with Rosa Parks? Rosa Parks quietly asserted her own rights without disrespecting the rights of others. It was one of the most remarkable forms of protest, a disregard of the rules but it was unassailable because it wasn't disruptive. It was the most normal of actions -- just quietly riding a bus, which shined a light on the naked bigotry of her detractors. Brilliant.
I know a kid who was a talented athlete but whose parents told him he was better than everyone else and that pretty much sunk him. He just couldn't work hard and take any kind of direction, and he flamed out early in high school. They had such lofty dreams for him (telling him when he was in middle school he might be playing football for Oregon someday) and didn't take into account his lack of maturity or the fact that talent is great but if you can't grind it out, no coach is going to want to deal with you. And he certainly wasn't talented enough for a coach to look the other way on that.
My father died 6 years ago and I have his collection of baseball stuff from the 1940's. When I say stuff, it's mostly autographs of entire teams, clips from the newspapers, and letters he wrote to teams, with their responses. He was around 10 or 11 at the time and he'd go to the hotels where they were staying and all the players would autograph a lined sheet of paper. He wrote a few teams asking for autographs, and he'd get a sheet of paper back with all their autographs (or at least a lot of their autographs). I haven't seen anyone super famous but there are a few good ones in there.
I see someone act like this and I think this is exactly how some adult treated him at some point when he was younger. This is learned behavior. Some adult did him wrong. (the other day, I was driving and heard females yelling at each other. I thought it was two teenagers fighting. I looked over to see a mother and daughter walking down the street. The mother hit the teen girl, who was probably 15, and screamed at her, "That was a dumbass move! You're a dumbass!" And I thought this is how it's perpetuated)
And as much as people complain that it's slow, because of that, it doesn't require constant attention. It's a great sport for people who want to have a social evening out. You can go to a game with friends and talk, drink, and socialize and only sort of pay attention without missing the biggest moments. In that way, it really is a pastime -- an enjoyable way to pass the time in a social environment with a game as the background noise (if that's what you choose). When I go to games, I sit as close as I can to the field. I like to feel the energy of the players. I especially like to watch the pitcher. It's a contemplative game, much of it is confidence. I think it's funny (funny odd) that players who are as skilled as big leaguers can lose their confidence. That is the most intriguing part of baseball to me. These guys are so good, but you lose the feel during one game, a particular pitch isn't working, and it can spiral downwards. I mean, how is that possible when you've been doing something so well for so long?
I agree, it is hard to sell it to younger people and I think that's more the result of attention span as it relates to entertainment. They've grown up with instant gratification by way of screens/video games. Baseball requires patience from the fan. The action ebbs and flows, and sometimes there isn't much action at all. And from afar, it doesn't seem to require a ton of skill (and then you play the game and realize that catching a tiny ball while running full speed forward while looking backwards is way harder than it looks, and hitting a 98 mph fastball even for the best players is close to impossible). I really enjoyed the college game. The skill level isn't anywhere near even minor leaguers but I think that and the mistakes keep it interesting.
Count me as someone who understands the attraction but doesn't like them. Because of my kids, who played throughout high school and one in college, and my husband who is a huge baseball fan, I've developed a love of baseball. I like it more than football now. Incidentally, one of my son's college teammates played for them the summer after his junior year. I think it was on their collegiate team, which may not exist anymore. That was straight baseball. No stilts, no song and dance. I think of the Bananas as spectacle, not sport, even though all the players are good.
Harbaugh won the NC. Knowing what we know of him, it was clear he'd move on after that. Nothing left to prove, no challenge left there. He's never been the Nick Saban type. If he were to win the Super Bowl next year, it would be interesting to see the trajectory of his career after that. You can say that you'd stay as hungry to win a second one, but who knows?
Recent Comments
Wow, so did Maryland who has been on top the last two years.,
I see a Mangham Style video in our future.
Is this best of three or one and done?
I was driving down the street in Chicago the other day and I pulled behind this car. It's someone affiliated with the Chicago Police Department, hence the star badge and CP on the plate. I was uncomfy with this plate. It felt like a flex to me, and totally unnecessary. If you have the star badge on the license, enough said.
For a second, I thought we were getting Wes Welker.
I drove by there last week. This was all that was left of Ryan Field.
Yeah, that's a hike.
How embarrassing that the only thing you have now is $$$. You've all been eaten alive by jealousy and hubris. What a hollow program.
I'm never going to knock Ann Arbor, what a great place to live. But I have to throw Evanston out there. I lived there for 22 years, and we moved there for our kids. You have a feel similar to Oak Park, but you also have the lake and beaches, and an easy commute to Chicago. Whenever I go back now (we moved back downtown a year ago), I'm like, "Yeah, this place was good for us. It has a really great vibe."
A win over Ohio State and a Big Ten championship would be the cherry this year. I don't expect to win another NC.
I’m not a big drinker, never was, but I’ve certainly had friends and family who were and are. My sister is a recovering alcoholic and now a sponsor for AA. My husband’s siblings are both alcoholics, one has cirrhosis, and his mother was a professor whose life work focused on the children of alcoholics. It’s a big topic of discussion in our family, as you can imagine. You don’t need to be an alcoholic to have a bad relationship with alcohol. If it interferes with your home life or work, it’s a problem. Not a source of shame but something that needs to be addressed.
And we have no idea what the complete story is and what went on behind the scenes. I trust that the athletic department did what it thought was best for Michigan based on the facts they have.
This makes me sad. I hope he lands on his feet and has a great career.
Take care of yourself. I hope things improve for you.
I clicked on this to say the same thing -- that's a LOT of money.
Happy Mother's Day to me! All my teams -- Michigan baseball, the Cubs, and the Smokies -- won today. This will be my first mother's day without any of my kids here but I guess I'll have to just bask in the winning. Hope those of you celebrating have a fine day.
Definitely not invincible but I think he proved he belongs.
In little league, my son once bunted in two runs.
I honestly wasn't curious enough about history or environmental science or anthropology to take those classes voluntarily, much less seek out books about them (I was in college pre-internet). I took a lot of classes because I had to and I'm now grateful for that. History of the Third World was one of those classes. It fulfilled a requirement, it's not something I would ever seek out for pleasure, but I'm a more well-informed person for having taken it. Plus, there's something to be said for what a good teacher contributes to the material.
I had a change of career and got a culinary degree in my mid 20's but when I went to work in kitchens, I was not prepared at all. A lot of what I learned wasn't applicable to what I would end up doing in my job. The schooling only gave me a tiny amount of real world knowledge. I don't know how other trade schools translate to real world skills, but that $12,000 (which was a lot to me back in the mid 90's) didn't necessarily provide a return on my investment, either. I think med school, law school, business school, and an engineering degree might be the only areas of study where you can reasonably expect to get a return on your investment.
The teachers at our high school (Evanston) who have been there for a while are making around $110K.
I agree with a lot of what you've said, although when I went to school, it was much more affordable and everyone whose parents went to college were just expected to do the same. It wasn't necessarily a status thing but a mandatory thing if you wanted a white collar job. I ended up in a white collar job that had its own set of skills that you couldn't get at a school like Michigan, or most liberal arts schools. But I think it's important to get the kind of education you can get at a four year college (history, poli sci, basic science, literature survey, psychology, etc) because that kind of knowledge is what binds us together in civil society. It may not directly relate to our careers but where else would I have learned about the history of the third world or how smokestack industries have affected the environment (yeah, that was taught in 1986).
So is the Dewey Decimal System not a thing anymore? I'm probably too old for the job.
And apparently got together with other teams to get and share our signs.
I said this in the other thread and I'll say it again here: They took away our head coach, put the program through the turmoil of an investigation and the firing of Partridge, which all could have derailed us, and Ohio State still couldn't capitalize on it. Sorry, Gene, that's on you.
Yeah, that comment needs to go.
I agree. The world needs more good stories, even if there's an element of tragedy to them. But for me, there are some things that cross the line, like school shootings. My son and I drove cross country and listened to Shane Gillis, who is very adept at un-PC comedy. I laughed at pretty much everything except the joke about a school shooting, Just couldn't go there.
"...Aaron Rodgers, a conspiracy theorist who moonlights as an NFL quarterback."
LOL
I'm usually a bleeding heart and can find something to feel badly about when it comes to sports teams losing but not in the case of MSU. That fan base is loathsome and after their response to Conor Stalions, the athletic department and Izzo can go f* themselves.
Warde haters are pretty myopic, not just in the way you stated but in thinking there's only one way that an AD does his job successfully, and that all successful AD's are basically the same. They seem to leave Michigan, itself, out of the equation. Michigan has certain standards that other schools don't and that has nothing to do with Warde. He has to work within those parameters, and they're parameters that sometimes work against putting together a successful team. I'm not saying he's the perfect AD, I'm just saying that there's a lot more to his job than people willingly acknowledge.
The past couple of years, we've had terrible hail storms, with hail the size of baseballs. One storm was so bad that anyone who parked on the street was on the phone with their insurance companies the next day, trying to get all the dents and cracked windshields taken care of. And those suckers went horizontal and tore holes in the screens on our windows. We had to get them all rescreened.
It passed through the Chicagoland area, too. Not sure if it did any damage, but we had a tornado watch for a couple of hours. Stay safe everyone!
I love NY pizza. When I was in middle school back in the late 70's, I lived in a town right outside Manhattan and there was a place called Four Corners Pizza. The guys who owned it and worked there were from Italy and had chest hair so dense, you couldn't see any skin underneath. They made the best NY pizza and yes, slices. Every day after school I'd get a slice and an orange soda and yes, the slices were reheated, and they were amazing.
Just an FYI, no she ever said that ever.
I've looked at Gozney's too. I like the idea of wood burning but we have a gas hook up so could do gas as well. I like the Gozney Dome. It's very expensive, though. We've also looked at Alfa's but they're even more expensive. I have a Weber with a carbon steel insert but there's a hole in the middle that provides for a direct flame -- good for burgers, bad for pizza making.
Yes, and I'm going to do my part by not watching the game for like the 30th time in row.
Calling someone 'anti-Rosa Parks' just because they thought the protesters were disruptive at the graduation is a pretty big stretch. My daughter goes to NYU and has been prevented from getting into the library by protesters on several occasions and that pisses me off. Am I anti-Rosa Parks?
Where did I say these students are terrible?
Just for perspective, I was one of the people who protested during my own graduation. 1987, against apartheid. I don't know how many of us there were, several hundred, but during the ceremony, when keynote speaker Mike Wallace spoke, we all stood in silence and put our backs to the stage. Many of us had anti-apartheid slogans stuck to our backs. The guy sitting behind me may have been pissed because I blocked his direct view of Mike Wallace, but other than that, we made the issue known without otherwise disrupting the ceremony. We sat back down when he was done. During that same period, there were shanties set up in the Diag. The administration left them alone because they didn't prevent anyone from going about their business. Yet they were there every day, a constant reminder of what was going on in South Africa.
You're going to equate this with Rosa Parks? Rosa Parks quietly asserted her own rights without disrespecting the rights of others. It was one of the most remarkable forms of protest, a disregard of the rules but it was unassailable because it wasn't disruptive. It was the most normal of actions -- just quietly riding a bus, which shined a light on the naked bigotry of her detractors. Brilliant.
Congratulations! It's great to be a Michigan Wolverine!
I know a kid who was a talented athlete but whose parents told him he was better than everyone else and that pretty much sunk him. He just couldn't work hard and take any kind of direction, and he flamed out early in high school. They had such lofty dreams for him (telling him when he was in middle school he might be playing football for Oregon someday) and didn't take into account his lack of maturity or the fact that talent is great but if you can't grind it out, no coach is going to want to deal with you. And he certainly wasn't talented enough for a coach to look the other way on that.
My father died 6 years ago and I have his collection of baseball stuff from the 1940's. When I say stuff, it's mostly autographs of entire teams, clips from the newspapers, and letters he wrote to teams, with their responses. He was around 10 or 11 at the time and he'd go to the hotels where they were staying and all the players would autograph a lined sheet of paper. He wrote a few teams asking for autographs, and he'd get a sheet of paper back with all their autographs (or at least a lot of their autographs). I haven't seen anyone super famous but there are a few good ones in there.
I see someone act like this and I think this is exactly how some adult treated him at some point when he was younger. This is learned behavior. Some adult did him wrong. (the other day, I was driving and heard females yelling at each other. I thought it was two teenagers fighting. I looked over to see a mother and daughter walking down the street. The mother hit the teen girl, who was probably 15, and screamed at her, "That was a dumbass move! You're a dumbass!" And I thought this is how it's perpetuated)
I think they're very entertaining and hilarious, it's just not baseball. It's more like Broadway.
And as much as people complain that it's slow, because of that, it doesn't require constant attention. It's a great sport for people who want to have a social evening out. You can go to a game with friends and talk, drink, and socialize and only sort of pay attention without missing the biggest moments. In that way, it really is a pastime -- an enjoyable way to pass the time in a social environment with a game as the background noise (if that's what you choose). When I go to games, I sit as close as I can to the field. I like to feel the energy of the players. I especially like to watch the pitcher. It's a contemplative game, much of it is confidence. I think it's funny (funny odd) that players who are as skilled as big leaguers can lose their confidence. That is the most intriguing part of baseball to me. These guys are so good, but you lose the feel during one game, a particular pitch isn't working, and it can spiral downwards. I mean, how is that possible when you've been doing something so well for so long?
I agree, it is hard to sell it to younger people and I think that's more the result of attention span as it relates to entertainment. They've grown up with instant gratification by way of screens/video games. Baseball requires patience from the fan. The action ebbs and flows, and sometimes there isn't much action at all. And from afar, it doesn't seem to require a ton of skill (and then you play the game and realize that catching a tiny ball while running full speed forward while looking backwards is way harder than it looks, and hitting a 98 mph fastball even for the best players is close to impossible). I really enjoyed the college game. The skill level isn't anywhere near even minor leaguers but I think that and the mistakes keep it interesting.
Count me as someone who understands the attraction but doesn't like them. Because of my kids, who played throughout high school and one in college, and my husband who is a huge baseball fan, I've developed a love of baseball. I like it more than football now. Incidentally, one of my son's college teammates played for them the summer after his junior year. I think it was on their collegiate team, which may not exist anymore. That was straight baseball. No stilts, no song and dance. I think of the Bananas as spectacle, not sport, even though all the players are good.
Agreed. You can't win forever. You can't do anything forever. The pendulum of life swings back and forth. Just the way it works.
Harbaugh won the NC. Knowing what we know of him, it was clear he'd move on after that. Nothing left to prove, no challenge left there. He's never been the Nick Saban type. If he were to win the Super Bowl next year, it would be interesting to see the trajectory of his career after that. You can say that you'd stay as hungry to win a second one, but who knows?