He played professional football for the Oakland Raiders when I was growing up as a worshipful fan of his arch-enemies, the New York Jets.

Thus, in my juvenile universe, Biletnikov, a receiver, was an evil genius – a shifty Boris to Raider coach John Madden’s plump Natasha. Yes, football fans thought Madden was the wily one but I believed Biletnikov authored all my troubles. He was said to be too small and too slow to play professional football, and yet through cunning and guile he appeared in just the right place at exactly the right time for the Raiders to complete an impossible pass and put my beloved Jets in deep trouble or worse, send them home as miserable losers. Ugh!

As with most villains, it was easy to believe the worst about Biletnikov. He used a substance called Stickum on his hands – a goopy glue that, not surprisingly, made it easier to catch the ball. He’d slather it on his hands and other parts of his body too. Rumor was they had to bring out a new ball after every Biletnikov catch because the old one was too sticky for the others to use. John Madden said Biletnikov once caught a ball with his forearm. After Biletnikov retired, the league banned Stickum.

I despised Fred Biletnikov and at the same time, admired him in the overly dramatic way pro football loyalists view players. Here’s someone’s You Tube video of the display at the Biletnikov exhibit at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. You get to see him with action with his skinny frame and his dirty blonde hair peeking out from under his helmet. And you have to love the music – the NFL’s orchestral march version of “What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor”.

I’m grown now and don’t care about the NFL very much at all. I’m mature enough to want to wish my tormentor a happy birthday. It can’t be easy to be an old football player. The game takes a physical toll on top of the aches that nature delivers … naturally. But still, Bilentikov, why were you so intent on crushing my dreams?

Who was your childhood villain?

In the interest of candor, I must admit that Liam’s four-day trip to visit his grandfather has not been all pleasant. Liam, just two years old, was terrified by the airplane that flew him from Portland to Minnesota. For complicated reasons, my daughter Molly stayed at a nearby motel rather than camping out in my home. Liam hated the motel. He sobbed at night, unable to sleep in strange surroundings, partly because he had an ear infection that flowed openly. All of Molly’s love and patience could not console him. We learned a difficult lesson. Liam, at this age anyway, is not a confident traveler.

Molly would show up at my home each morning with hollow eyes. Liam’s eyes were red and puffy from another bad night. “Hello Grampa,” he’d say softly, running to give me a big hug.

That’s when the Baboon angels—those Trail Baboon women who loaned us toys—would appear on hushed wings to work their magic.

I’d say, “Liam, you know this is a funny house, a real funny house. The Toy Fairy flies here to leave surprises for you. I happen to know that the Toy Fairy came again last night. If you walk around, you might find some new toys!”

Liam would disappear, walking gingerly as if he were concerned about spooking the toys and causing them to flee. He would reappear toting or pushing some new toy, perhaps a rolling musical popper, a dump truck or a kid-sized plastic shopping cart.

All the toys loaned to us were chosen with the wisdom of an experienced mother. All got played with and enjoyed. I can’t name them all and wouldn’t try, but every single toy was a hit. Liam is enthusiastic about transportation at the moment, so cars, planes and trains all triggered a strong response.

If things ever got a little slow and Liam became restless, I would call him to me. “Liam, I can’t be sure, but I think I just saw that goofy Toy Fairy again! Do you suppose she left you more toys?”

The toys saved the trip. Molly had expected that we would need to drive from museum to zoo to library to aquarium in order to entertain Liam. Instead, he spent all his hours gleefully pushing little cars on my coffee table, putting the baby doll down “nighty-night” and herding plastic animals in and out of a red plastic barn. We didn’t waste precious time driving around, and this arrangement maximized the contact between Liam and his doting grampa (who got to develop a great many distinctive sound effects for internal combustion engines, to say nothing of all the different animal sounds).

The highlight of the four-day trip was a birthday party at my nephew’s home in Saint Louis Park. The party included 16 people. Liam is a party animal. He adores people, the more the better. He went about interacting with everyone, offering toys to them and occasionally running back to Molly or me to give us monster hugs, his head laid affectionately on our laps.

When my nephew brought out a bag of foam blocks, Liam delighted in making stacks of them so he could knock them down. Soon the bag was empty and 100 foam blocks were strewn all over the living room floor.

At Liam’s daycare in Portland, they teach kids to take care of their own messes. They sing a little song (“Clean up! Clean up!”) while teachers and kids put each toy back where it belongs. One of the teachers occasionally shouts “Hel-LOOOOO?” at the kids to get their attention so they will get stay on-task. Liam has embraced the clean-up ethic. He cheerfully put toys away at my home.

At the party, adults were laughing at the chaos Liam had made of the blocks when we were startled to hear someone singing in a pure, sweet, high voice. Liam was picking up foam blocks to chuck them into the big plastic bag they came in. He carried on singing and chucking until all 100 blocks were back home.

Clean up! Clean up!
Everybody! Everywhere!
Clean up! Clean up!
Everybody do your share!

And occasionally, in a voice that was clearly not his own, Liam would bark out: Hel-LOOOO?” To him, it was part of the song!

Life isn’t perfect, and there were difficult moments in this trip that Molly and I had dreamed about for over a year. But life gives us flashes of unanticipated joy to balance out the challenges. On this visit, any time little negatives cropped up we would hear the gentle flutter of angel wings and another collection of toys would magically appear.

Have you been involved in an enterprise that was unexpectedly saved by an angel?

The week before last they were punching through the ice that covers prehistoric Lake Vostok in Antarctica, hoping to find microbes that haven’t felt the sunlight for millions of years. And now, at the opposite pole, they’ve grown plants from seeds said to be 32 thousand years old.

Clearly the Russians are on a not-so-secret mission to restore a world we all thought was long gone. Could this be a remnant of the old Soviet plot to re-animate Lenin?

Microbes first, then the narrow-leafed campion, followed by the Soviet Union itself? We have Comrade Ground Squirrel to thank for this development, so carefully did he tuck his treasured seeds next to the permafrost, chattering way to his Fellow Furry Travelers that this day of glorious resurgence would surely come. Others have harbored similar wild dreams of rising from an icy demise, as we know too well from the oft-told frosty end of slugger Ted Williams.

There is some hope in all this that anything cold and dead may yet return, as we learned from Robert W. Service and Sam McGee. And as I discover over and over when dinnertime arrives and I realize I’ve got nothing in the fridge that’s remotely edible. But in the deep freeze … that’s a different story. If those Russian scientists would take a look behind that huge loaf of garlic bread at the back of my icebox, I think there’s some chicken from 1979. If I smothered it with enchilada sauce, would anyone really notice?

What’s in your freezer?

Number one. Who knew?

I discovered this quite by accident, and am delighted to know that we are first in the world in a competition we didn’t enter, and in a category that I never would have expected to win.

All credit goes to Clyde, who wrote a hilarious bit of verse about orange marmalade getting the upper hand and hitting his computer keyboard last Fall. The monkey part? That must be Google’s doing, factoring in Baboons and Blevins.

I take this as evidence that Clyde is the reigning poet laureate of orange marmalade, and no one has ever brought a monkey anywhere near the stuff. In rhyme, anyway. Until now.

This ought to be sticky enough to cement our #1 status.

A funny little monkey
For his breakfast in the glade
Topped a toasted piece of raisin bread
With orange marmalade.

A travel weary zookeeper
Whose flight had been delayed
Was surprised to see a monkey
Making breakfast in the shade.

“Toast is not a food for monkeys,”
said the keeper. “I’m afraid
that a monkey can get sickened
overeating marmalade.”

So he put the primate in a box
And shipped him, postage paid,
To a zoo where he’d be properly
And frequently displayed.

But the monkey became ill
In all the cages where he stayed.
And though they gave him monkey medicine
He got no marmalade.

He ate nothing then, for weeks.
With matted hair and muzzle grayed
Children gathered at his window
Just to watch the monkey fade.

Then one day a little girl with whom
The monkey had once played
Accidentally dropped her raisin toast
With orange marmalade

When the monkey took a tangy bite
a turnabout was made
and he hopped and ran and pranced around
his hospital stockade.

Now the monkey’s an attraction
Past his cage, there’s a parade
He makes raisin toast for all his guests
With Orange Marmalade

What phrase, as a Google search, would (should!) rank you #1?

Hey Mr. C.,

So we had this all school assembly because February 18th is Wendell Wilkie’s birthday, and I got to give the Wilke Day speech because I’ve been a sophomore, like, forever, and they’ve never asked me. Now that the older teachers are getting pretty clear signals that they’re going to get set out at the curb the next time there’s a downsizing, a couple of them pressured principal Peepers to give me a shot. I think hearing me speak to the whole school was on somebody’s bucket list. So anyway, here’s my speech:

Parents, Administrators and Fellow Students,

Today we honor Mr. Wendell Wilkie, our school’s namesake.
He was a famous loser. He ran for president and lost to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 election, just before the United States got into World War II.

So our man Wilkie was the almost-President of the country that won the biggest war the world has ever seen. He lost an ocean of future textbook ink, he lost having his own presidential library, he lost a starring role in all those History Channel documentaries, and he lost having a Wilkie Monument on the National Mall.

What did he get as a consolation prize? He got our high school. That’s it. And when you think about it, that’s a pretty big burden for us to carry.

Wendell Wilkie was a moderate Republican, a weird kind of creature not quite as ancient and disappeared as a Stegosaurus, but close. For some reason they couldn’t reproduce.

But coming up short is cool today. Career counselors say our failures make us great. The key is what you do AFTER you lose. Wendell Wilkie recovered by taking a job with the man who beat him. That’s right – Roosevelt hired Wilkie to travel around the world as his personal representative. How’s that for bouncing back? You get to have the perks of a president without the responsibility – not a bad rebound.

And he didn’t give up, at least not in his mind! Wilkie still wanted to be President, and maybe King of the World, too. There’s a pretty reliable account that during a State visit to Asia, Wilkie dallied with Madame Chiang Kai-shek. She reportedly told a confidant later that she thought she and Wilkie could take over the planet together. She’d run Asia and he’d take the Western world.

Ruler of Earth in cahoots with a temptress from the mysterious East. Not a bad daydream for a guy from Elwood, Indiana.

One other cool thing about Wilkie – he had a heart attack on a train, and died because he wouldn’t get off to seek help. The story is that he wanted to get back home to his own doctor. A true Republican hero at the end – resisting One Size Fits All health care. And I can think of just one other famous American who died of a heart attack on a train – Fats Waller.

Pretty good company for a really big loser. First in Failure! That’s our Wilkie!

I thought this was a decent speech, but they stopped me when I got to the line “He was a famous loser”, turned off my microphone, sent everyone back to class and gave me extra detention for being inappropriate. In the best Wilke tradition, I failed big on a really big stage. Pretty good tribute, eh?

Who would you choose as your partner to take over and rule the world?

I am unimpressed with this year’s so-called “winter.” It has been a disappointment. While I can appreciate that some folks like the nice snow-free sidewalks and warmer temperatures, I am a Minnesota kid, and I miss my snow and ice and cold. I tried to go out ice skating one afternoon and instead of the chsss chsss chsss of skate blades on the neighborhood rink I heard chuh chuh chuh as I tried to maneuver myself across the slushy mess. Sure it was sunny, but without any glide in my step, not even the warmth on my face or the extra vitamin D was working for me.

Still, there was one day when it was real winter. One day when it had just snowed enough to do something outdoors besides walk the dog. Daughter really wanted to go sledding. I was feeling more in a “stay inside by the fire” kind of mood, since we were in the “cold after the snow” part of the snow, but was willing to put on my snow pants to appease the seven-year-old and ensure that my Minnesota native cred was still good. So, find the boots that had not yet been needed (in the basement), pull the snow pants out from the closet (yikes, these got smaller in the last 12 months), hat (goofy looking), mittens (the warm ones), out we go to find the sleds. Crunch crunch through the quiet neighborhood – with the exception of a few folks out with their dogs, we are the only ones out. And yikes, that wind is biting; a fierce blast that I was not expecting, especially given the mild weather of the season thus far (should have added the scarf). A few blocks from home I hear myself whine like a three-year-old, “are you sure you want to do this? We could go home and have cocoa…” No. We are going. There is snow to be sledded on, this is not an opportunity to be missed.

Once at the hill, the seven-year-old races to the top with her sled in hand. I find a sunny spot to try to gather some warmth and watch. Ssssshhhhhoooo, down the hill she comes and then runs back up the hill. “You gotta try this. It’s so much fun!” I am not convinced, but trudge up with the other sled. Wedging the extra sled into a nearby stand of tall weeds so it won’t blow away, I plunk myself down into the purple plastic embrace of the sled with Daughter in front of me. Sssssshhhhhhooooo, down the hill we go together, across the path, almost to the creek. And it was fun. A few more times together, a few times each on our own sleds, timing our runs so we don’t mow down the walkers (and one biker) using the path at the bottom of the hill. Laughing as we fall over or spin backwards on our descent. Even with the exertion of going up and down the hill, eventually my face gets cold enough that I convince Daughter it’s time to go home. Bump bump bump the sleds follow us home to cocoa (and marshmallows and a fire). But I was glad I tried it, ssssssshhhhhhooooo, it was so much fun.

When have you been convinced to do something that was more fun than you expected?

my moms visit to the hospital was a good reflective time for me. she has been spending her life as the caretaker first for the students she taught while shuffling family matters then for my da when they retired up to leach lake and now she has been slow to realize that it is ok for her to be on her to take care of list too. we went a funeral for a student of hers and a classmate of mine and she felt poorly and we ended up going to urgent care, the emergency room and then checking her into the hospital where they found a tumor after deducing that her weakness and feeling poorly was due to blood loss. the doctors looked at her charts and saw that she had a do not resussitate order on her history and the doctor asked if they were going in to do the explority stuff to find where the internal bleeding had its origins and she happened to have a failure did she really want to keep the do not resussitate order in place? well…… she said that maybe they should change that. she still had some stuff to do. i thought that was a nice milestone. to realize youve still got stuff to do.

while sitting up in that god awful dressing gown
my mom found life had an attraction
she wasn’t quite done with the stuff she wrote down
her to do list still needed subtraction

she just moved back to town after living on leach
trading lakeshore for retirement stuff
she had boxes to organize and pictures to sort
shed done some but not nraly enough

she just got diagnosed with sleep apthia syndome
she just started dong the machine
just think how life could be in her freshly painted new home
with a good sleep and days in between

with brain cells and group stuff thats offer each day
the choices are endless it seems
and now she has chosen to come back and say
howdy partners life is made out of dreams

its good to be happy to just be alive
what one greater gift could there be
to count all your blessings there are at least five
on the left hand alone yip yipee

i remember being asked one how much for your sight?
how much would you sell your eyes for?
appreciate small things like having the right
to get up and walk out the door.

life throws us curve balls and flattens our tires
i hate it when whacked in the face
but theres no where that i rather be to aspire
to win out there in this rat race.

get up splash some water on that tired old smile
say helo to the friend in the glass
could be that today is the best one in a while
get up get on out there kick ass

life can be simple and life can be grand
or a conniption is yours for the giving
get out there and leave your footprints in the sand
and be glad that life is worth living

five reasons life is good please.

Greetings, Constituents!

Two days ago, I posted some thoughts here regarding proposed Constitutional Amendments and my personal feelings about Vampires. Little did I know some people would actually read what I had to say and respond!

From your comments, you seem to think that Vampires should, perhaps, be allowed to vote. This is remarkable to me, and while I can’t agree with your sentiments, I am obliged as a public servant to show some respect for your right to be totally out of your mind on this particular question. Still, I find it intimidating to consider what political candidates might do to cater to the Vampire voting bloc. It would not be beyond some of them to throw open the doors of the blood banks to win a few votes. Seriously. Mitt Romney would do it, I’m sure.

And now comes fresh news from the Pew Charitable Trusts that many states keep sloppy records and over one million dead people are still registered to vote.

These are the ordinary dead, not Vampires, but I assume if you are in favor of voting rights for soulless bloodsuckers you would also extend that privilege to the dearly departed. At least I would hope so. I know a few of them very, very well and I believe they deserve it.

Critics will say that actual dead people never show up at the polls. True, but in this they are no different from most Americans. I think the dead should stay on the rolls so that parties and candidates will alter their tactics and policies in an attempt to win the dead vote!

Why? Because it would change our politics for the better.

* The dead are immune to fashion and frenzy and they have long memories. Candidates would have to focus on lasting solutions to long term problems.

* There would be less fear mongering. The dead, by virtue of being deceased, are difficult to frighten. They don’t run from terrorists and they aren’t bothered by homosexuals or immigrants. In fact, everyone is finally equal in the land of the dead. Wouldn’t personal experience in that culture be a great addition to our voting populace?

* Conservatives should be for this one – dead people can be easily identified with or without photo ID and once set in stone, their addresses never change. Finally, a stable, predictable population to participate in our elections!

* Also, dead people have a wonderfully mature perspective on the big issues of the day, particularly health care. Many of them were receiving copious amounts of it just before they died. If they were allowed to weigh in on the matter, they might insist we spend less on prescription drugs and more on faster ambulances.

* Finally, more votes from the dead could help us re-focus our priorities on the things that matter most. I think all dead folks are environmentalists. Or to be more exact, dead folks are the environment. They’re underneath our feet. They’re mixed in with the oceans and particles of them are even floating around in the air we breathe. I think being dead would help them serve as responsible, informed voters on all the “green” issues, especially those that have to do with maintaining clean groundwater.

In fact, when you think about all the ways being dead and voting responsibly align, it’s hard to understand why we waste our time trying to get support from alive people.

Accordingly, I will introduce legislation to protect the voting rights of these expired Americans. I hope you will decide that my efforts are worthy of your support.

Sincerely,

Congressman Loomis Beechly

Help Congressman Beechly – think of a campaign slogan he can use to win dead votes.

I am not the man I used to be. My doctor told me so.

Well, it was her nurse who told me that I have become a lesser man. The way she said it was, “Your height is 5 feet 10 inches.”

I said, “Really?”

She said, “I’ll check it again. You’re 5 feet 10 AND 1/8 inches.” Ah, me! Phew! That 1/8 made me feel better.

Since my height for most of my life was 5 feet 11 7/8 inches, it is not a stretch, pun intended, to say I have lost two inches in height. Because I always claimed a height of 6 feet, it is only fair that I now claim a height of 5-10. I lost most of that height in a short time, less than a year. Ah, me! I think I’ll call myself a Settler. Maybe gravity suddenly became stronger in Mankato. Maybe my load of care is getting me down. Now I really am in depression. It has to be something the Republicans did. “They’re turning me into a Newt!”

Don’t you think I would have noticed? That it would have been harder to get things down from shelves, for instance. Harder to reach light bulbs. I am a typical male: I don’t see the thing right in front of my face unless you point at it. Wait a minute, it was harder to reach light bulbs. It should now be easier to reach down to the floor, but it’s not. Ah, me! Go figure.

Another bad thing is that I am now ten more pounds overweight, even though I have lost weight. Ah me!

Then I noticed that the cuffs of my pants and pajamas are getting frayed. One could say I’m dressed in drag. I told the launderer he should have spotted it and told me, but he has lint for brains. Now I really have a problem; I cannot buy off-the-rack anymore. I have a rather odd body. Despite having once been 6 feet tall, I had a 30 inch inseam, which is the bottom end of rack-sizes for my waist. I seem to have a 29-inch inseam or closer to 28 perhaps. Ah me! I could take up sewing.

Wait! A friend just sent a picture of fourth graders in the Two Harbors of my youth. All the boys had the cuffs of their jeans turned up three to four inches. Could we bring back that style, please?

What style do you want to bring back?

Greetings Constituents.

I’m a lawyer and it’s my job to write laws for a living. I know you don’t have much respect for that kind of work, but I’m a Congressman. I’m used to not getting much respect. It comes with the job.

But recently I’ve noticed a movement on the state level to add things to the State Constitution as a way of setting new law and preventing interference from the courts. I’m intrigued by this and I have to admit I rather like it because it gets around the tiresome talk-talk-talking about issues with people who aren’t smart enough to agree with me already.

Getting something into the Constitution is a great way to pre-emptively deal with things we imagine could become a problem sometime down the road if “those people” get their way. And you know who I mean. Everybody has some of “those people” who haunt their dreams.

Critics say this wave of amendments is like a child piling his toys against the closet door to keep the monsters from coming out. I get the connection, but I don’t much care for the tone – belittling such efforts as childish. Closet monsters are real. In fact, the U.S. Senate has cloak rooms where members are supposed to talk about issues and come to some kind of agreement. For a lot of people in Washington and St. Paul, coming to agreement is a very scary thing indeed, and they avoid it the same way you would steer clear of Frankenstein. Imagine a big, green, flat-headed lurcher named “Amity”, and you’ll get the idea. Very disturbing.

Personally, I have a thing about Vampires.

Vampires have been gaining ground in recent years. When I was a kid they only appeared in movies and always in their proper role – as scary bloodsucking beasts who could only be killed by a stake through the heart. But lately, they’ve been depicted as sexy, misunderstood lover boys who might be decent marriage material. Even though, as Vampires, they don’t have photo ID! They can’t even appear in pictures! Or is that werewolves? I’m not sure. But I do know that Vampires have lots of rich moviemakers on their side, and there are probably quite a few judges who are strong sympathizers as well. Think about it – they all wear black robes.

So my point is this – Vampires should be kept in their place as a threat and should not be allowed to become part of the mainstream in any way, yet there is a real chance that doors will be opened to them that would be very, very difficult to close in the future. Little girls already want to marry vampires as long as they are named Edward. And just think about vampires voting. What will candidates of the future have to do to appeal to the vampire base? Bite the head off a chipmunk? There are people running for office today who would do that with very little prompting.

That’s why I would welcome a constitutional amendment that states “Vampires are evil and are not entitled to any of the rights afforded human beings in the State of Minnesota, including marriage and voting.”

Since I am not a member of the Minnesota legislature, I can’t introduce this bill myself, but I hope someone will pick it up and run with it. People want protection from Vampires, and even though they enjoy Vampire-based art and seem to love Vampire-inspired style, I think they will see the sense in it. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to be scared. Let’s nail shut the lid on the next Dracula’s coffin before he even has a chance to climb out of it!

What else is a Constitution for?

Sincerely,
Loomis Beechly

How would you vote on the anti-Vampire amendment?