WAG - Recently my Mark Twain (he was really Samuel Clemens, I know) English capstone class had an interest set of parallel assignments based on Life on the Mississippi.

We could either A) Do a mini-research project and then have a 10-minute presentation in which you report your results

or

B) Write a one-page personal essay about a change or changes you’ve seen over the years.

Guess which choice 90 percent of the class chose?

The shorter assignment, B, seemed easier, though I tried to put a lot of effort into it. A combination of the second semester senior blues mixed with the fact my Dad finally got a job that will be moving him out of Sullivan, I was in a mood to wax both nostalgic and cynical about a town I grew up in.

My goal was to try the capture a hint of Twain’s mix of happiness and regret of how things change – for good, for bad, forever. I took my best shot at it, and the result you can shortly read below.

Note: I can’t vouch for all the facts included in this recollection. Any mistaken information I blame on the miscomprehensions of my younger self and not the present person who I am, since I simply wrote down what I remembered.

Fact or fancy, I thought you might find the perspective interesting.

Life on the Meramec, or at least a short distance from it

My father works for the Missouri Department of Conservation. Various promotions have bounced him from one side of the state to the other. In first grade, I worked it out that I’d moved six times before I turned the age of six, and we still moved a couple times after that. Nevertheless, we finally did slow down and put down roots in a small town called Sullivan, Missouri. And now, after a record 15 years in one place, a new job opportunity has arrived and my family is looking to leave their house in Sullivan behind. While I have not lived in that house for nearly four years now, the news got me thinking about the pros and cons of the town I grew up in and how it has changed since 1991.

The politics have changed. It was long rumored that the long-standing mayor when we moved there was the head of the area’s old Ku Klux Klan group. I didn’t know anything about that. It was also rumored that KKK was crudely spray painted on the back of the “businesses and clubs that want to welcome you to Sullivan” sign, but I never checked that out for myself either. Whether the mayor was racist or not, the only thing I knew for sure was that he was ignorant. He once gave a lecture to a high school class despite the fact his hearing aid battery had gone dead. Whenever people would laugh, he’d start laughing too before asking, “Heh, heh, what?” As you can imagine, we had much fun at his oblivious expense. While I don’t remember any of the topics he raised that day, I believe we all left with the conclusion that any idiot can make it in politics. Despite the long-standing legacy he built as mayor – his main accomplishment getting re-elected time and time again - he was finally pushed out of office by a candidate whose main campaign platform was the addition of a beer garden to the town’s Fourth of July celebration. That woman was later bumped out herself, and I believe the replacement has been traded out as well, though I don’t know who the mayor is now, nor do I care.

The population has grown, though the town hasn’t broken five-digits yet and the population signs haven’t been updated in a couple decades. Shortly after my family arrived, a new subdivision was christened and was hoped to be the site of 600 new homes. It was also built on a field that used to have a creek cut through it and still flooded in the spring. Local word of mouth kept the development from growing to the commonly known, and frequently shared, fact that the creek wasn’t as much diverted as filled in. Only in the past few years, as more homes were built on artificial hills – as the original model homes were constructed – has the subdivision slowly started to multiply as originally expected.

The public schools keep advancing and updating, following the earlier mentioned trends. There is more diversity in the classrooms and there are now more buildings to house them in. I’ve seen several “new” playgrounds over the years – with each new incarnation designed to be safer than the one before by adding tiny gravel bits to cushion falls, removing dangerous and suspect devices like teeter-totters and merry-go-rounds, and slowly converting everything to smooth, form fitting plastic. Granted, we still found ways to hurt ourselves; we just had to work harder at it.

The “new” playground that interested me the most was one put in by the middle school where I lived. After the holes were dug, but before the new jungle gym and swings were cemented in the ground, a friend and I jumped in and out of all the future foundation holes. Our intent was to be able to go back someday and tell our kids someday we’d been there at the ground floor. We raced each other, diving in and out of holes like gophers, and I think we both claimed to finish first; though it was really me. My last year of high school, a new school building was crammed onto the land next to the existing middle school. The old “new” playground is now a parking lot. The new “new” playground is set on the field where we used to play field hockey, kickball, and football. I can still claim to have been on the ground floor of this playground, but so many people share that argument that it makes me less special and unique than I once hoped to be.

Progress had been made in Sullivan. Change has reduced corruption, or at least made it less profitable for those who engage in it. Built as a railway depot, the town has shifted its allegiance to Route 66. We now have an expanded highway strip – with restaurants of every taste and size – and a maligned, but surviving Main Street. We have a stoplight now, which surprised me on my first trip back to Sullivan from college. After years of public discussion, and the proud declaration that we’d never need one, there it was stationed over the most dangerous intersection in town. It was located near my father’s work and I can think of multiple times while I was waiting for him in the parking lot and I heard the tell-tale crunching sound of an accident behind me, typically followed cussing and gesturing. When I first saw it, it hadn’t been connected yet, but still was wrapped in the black plastic to protect in during its transit.

The light still strikes me as the biggest change to this town, though a few new stops signs (that have me breaking the law when I cruise through intersections that used to be non-stop) have similar impact. Sullivan is different, and life it a bit faster paced, but it still remains a small, sleepy town that is only slowly, and begrudgingly, accepting change.

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WAG - N.I.T. picky

For those of you who are entirely engrossed in the NCAA basketball tournament, you may have heard that MU barely squeaked its way into the National Invitational Tournament.

INSERT YOUR OWN, N.I.T. ACRONYM JOKE HERE (THOUGH I'D ASK YOU TO SKIP THE OBVIOUS, AND FRANKLY, OVERUSED NOT INVITED TOURNAMENT) -> __________________

Anyway, we played DePaul last night, or rather, got played by the Blue Devils and lost on home turf bringing our season record to a final (16-17).

As a seasoned Mizzou fan, I am neither surprised not too torn up. While we all typically react harshly to such news, most of us have learned to take it in strive. Of course, some people will still be stewing until next season, especially members of the MU Athletic Departent, but people like me with a lest vested interest in the team can shirk it off a lot easier.

Let me just repeat the MU sports fan motto a final time before moving on:

We'll do better next season.

Here's to a healthy and productive off-season. It came early this year, so we might as well make the most of it.

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WAG - Covering the Boy Wizard

This is old new for those people who are constantly cruising the internet to get the latest gossip on Harry Potter, but I just heard of this recently, so I thought I’d write about it now.

The cover art for the next Harry Potter tome (Book Six: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in case you didn’t know) has been released.

You can find the English cover here and the American one here.

I find the differences in emphases interesting to say the least. One tries to be dark and mysterious and one catches the title character in what looks to be a serious showdown. I can’t speak for the artists on why they chose the scenes they did, though CNN.com has just posted an article on the designer of the American edition, Mary GrandPre, who I now envy just for the simple fact that she’s already gotten to read the book.

I know there will be more Potter tidbits as we get closer to the July 16 sale date. J.K. Rowling, with her website, has been quite liberal with her gifting of hints.

I now diehard fans who went nuts with the announcement of the official title in December, as I remember doing. In another month or two we’ll get the jacket blurb, which will only entice us more.

I don’t know what I’ll be doing when the book comes out. After consulting the wall calendar, I know it’s going to be the weekend, so I can try to finish the book in one day like last time. I chewed through the 870 pages pretty quickly. I purchased the book at midnight, started reading around 1 a.m. (I don’t remember what for, but I’d made some deal with my sister that included the pledge she could read the beginning chapter first), fell asleep around 7 a.m., woke up in the early afternoon and finished it after another seven hours.

We’ll see if I’m up for the marathon then.

For now, I’ll just have to content myself by looking at the pretty pictures.

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WAG - Grad’e’ating time a comin’

Okay, so I bought my graduation cap and gown today. I haven’t done that in a while.

I can’t recall filling out the paperwork for my high school graduation gown, though I can vaguely recollect the Jostens man who always seemed to be there in the spring trying to sell rings. I definitely can’t remember doing anything for my middle school graduation – which we had in my town because that was the only graduation a mentionable percentage of the students were going to get. I think I looked better in the gold middle school gown better than the black high school gown, though I didn’t lose my cap beneath the bleachers during my high school graduation.

It was strange going around the tables. There were familiar faces. I saw a member of my old F.I.G. (Freshman Interest Group) standing in the line for printed announcements. I saw several people from my English senior capstone class, which had dismissed immediately prior to our dropping by. I also saw some faces that looked familiar, I guess due to the semi-frequent crossing of paths over the last years, though I have no idea who most of them were.

The whole process wasn’t too bad. Apparently the university had the proper spelling on file for my diploma, though I learned it isn’t productive to joke around with the Spelling Lady. You may mean well by trying to lighten her day, but she had processed so many letters that she doesn’t have any brain cells left over to detect the ironic tonal inflection that indicates you are making a joke. Don’t even try.

I’d been planning on waiting before picking up items, but the 10 percent discount was enough for me to buy my cap, gown, and tassels (the red School of Journalism cord looks a lot cooler than the plain white College of Arts and Science cord). I held off on ordering invitations and/or thank you cards, though I did get some order forms so I can procrastinate looking at them over the upcoming Spring Break. I laughed at the price of the diploma frames and refused to make eye contact with the college ring guy.

Back in high school, my Dad told me to hold off getting an expensive class ring and save it up for my college one; he didn’t know I’d already been leaning toward the classic aluminum-colored Lustrum model. I do think, however, he knew I wouldn’t care to spend good money on a university ring four years down the road. I love MU, but I’m not a ring person and even one of the cheaper investments of $195 isn’t going to change me into one.

I still don’t know if I’ll be honors eligible at the end of the year. Greek honors start at the 3.5 average G.P.A. I’ve been hovering at 3.49 for about a year now. I hope to still pull one off, which is why I started studying for midterms the week before they came for a change. I won’t know for sure for a couple months, though.

I have a meeting with the head advisor of the English department tomorrow morning. I am getting my paperwork filed a bit closer to the deadline than I would care to be, but I believe it to be solid. Since I only have already jumped through various hoops for the journalism advisors, I know that if I pass the one journalism class I’m taking this semester, everything will be just fine.

I’ve got the outfit and the paperwork pretty much taken care of; I’m just not sure about the spirit. Graduation no longer feels like the hazy, nebulous event that would sometime come in the distant future like it did four years ago. But it doesn’t feel like it is only two and a half months away either.

I doubt the feeling will come when the invitations do. In fact it will probably wait until after the event comes and goes. That’s how it was in high school. Though only time will tell if things are different.

Either way, I have an extra black gown I can go trick or treating in come next October.

DING DONG!

“And what are you young… man.?”

“I’m a college graduate! I’m poor. Can you give me some money?”

SLAM!

“Hershey’s would do! Or a Snickers! I just got out of college. I’m hungry too!”

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