The Death of a Stranger.

It's always sad, I suppose, when someone dies.  I guess I wouldn't know - no one close to me on any level has ever died, at least not yet.  No close and dear friend, no relative.  A former college buddy passed about a year after we graduated - but though I knew him and was sad to hear of his passing - I wasn't close with him the way some people I knew were.  He was a co-editor of mine at The Equinox during our final year - he was the opinion editor, while I handled sports.  He always covered one of his hands - we were never sure why, and we never were going to ask.  But again - I didn't know him beyond the fact that we attended the same college, were majoring in the same thing, and worked together on a semi-professional level.

The closest relative to me died in December of 2009 - but he was not blood related.  It was my grandmother's second husband - a kind of step-grandfather to me, but it was always made clear that he was not related to me.

Don't worry, I'm getting somewhere.

Someone else I barely knew died last weekend.  His name was Daniel Rippe.  He lived in Mexico with his wife and child, and died of injuries sustained in a house fire.  He was 27 or 28 - his son aged 3, I think.

I barely knew him - when I transferred in to Hanover High in the fall of 1997, I think he was a part of our freshman class.  But he did not graduate with us - I never even knew where he ended up going, or if he ever even finished high school from anywhere.  (He did.)  I would see him, his wife and child sometimes when I worked at the Hanover Co-Op during my summers from college, with their long dreads, baggy clothes, and earthen feel.

I don't think he knew me at all.

And yet I feel devastated at his death - certainly not as bad as if I actually had been friends with him - and for old high school people that I knew like Justin Matheson, Nick Hall, Geoff Pappas, and Colin Vernon, who were his friends - please accept my empathy, if you ever happen to stumble upon this.

But what bothers me the most, what sticks in my head as his passing fades, is age.  I turn 27 in two weeks - most of my high school classmates do the same or already have.

Hanover/Norwich/Dresden is a magical place - it's one of those communities where, about 30 years ago, several families, almost all connected through Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, settled down to raise their families.  A lot of my high school classmates went from kindergarten to 12th grade together.  Most of their parents still live in Hanover or Norwich.  Dan Rippe's parents were one of these, though I didn't really know them.  It's a place where raising a family is easy - education is terrific, quality of living is high, and medical care is top notch.  People are smart, earth sensitive, friendly, and conscious.

I guess I'm rambling - but the point I'm trying to get to is that even though I barely knew this person, and I am SURE he didn't know me from Adam, is that death hurts - and in a closely knit community like Dresden, lots of people feel it.  Even people barely connected, like me.

For whatever it's worth, writing this has brought me a little catharsis.  I hope for those more connected, there is some for you, too, in some form.

Paul Shirley

Former NBA journeyman Paul Shirley has written a blog entry that has been vilified by most for its rather callous attitude towards the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010.  The point I think Mr. Shirley was trying to make was that no government around the world should be donating money to disaster relief for a country that has, apparently, singlehandedly run itself into the ground.  And neither will he.  While I personally disagree with 99.9% of what he wrote, not so much for his opinion, but for his attitude in writing, i.e. this specific excerpt.

Dear Haitians –

First of all, kudos on developing the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Your commitment to human rights, infrastructure, and birth control should be applauded.

As we prepare to assist you in this difficult time, a polite request: If it’s possible, could you not re-build your island home in the image of its predecessor? Could you not resort to the creation offlimsy shanty- and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?

Sincerely,

The Rest of the World

Maybe I used the wrong word earlier - it's more obdurate.  But he does make a point about our own nation that I think I agree with, regarding Hurricane Katrina and the rebuilding of New Orleans.  Is it smart to rebuild a top 60 city in terms of population in an area that is, as Shirley puts it - below sea level and a target zone for hurricanes.  Some would say it's a risk inherent in living in that area.  House insurance companies must hate it.  But I checked - New Orleans is the 59th biggest city in terms of population, home to 336,000+ people.  Less than 10% of the population size of the whole state of Louisiana. 

I realize the city has culture and history, memories of generations of people who have lived there for years and years.  But why should we rebuild a city where there is a danger from a natural formation that could and probably will occur again?  Isn't the safer thing to do to protect our people and put them in a place where they can recover?  Start new lives, earn new livings?  Couldn't the funds used for rebuilding the city be used to help them?  

Lane Kiffin, the new head football coach at the University of Southern California, is being somewhat criticized for his move to Los Angeles, after leaving the University of Tennessee, having worked there for only one season.  The criticism stems from an issue that gets visited every January (at the end of college football season) and every April (at the end of college basketball season).

The issue is simple - should coaches be able leave a job after one year to take a better one, while student-athletes (at least in the sports of football and basketball, although baseball and ice hockey are required to follow this rule), if they want to transfer are required to sit out a year?

My thought is unquestionably YES!  I fail to see why this is such an issue.  The premise, at least, is that these young men and women are there to get an education, or at least a way to start a vocation, if they are good enough to go to the pros right away.  A coach is a professional.  A student-athlete, at least in premise, is an amateur.  Don't mistake my reasoning for naivete - I'm not so dumb as to think there aren't schools having work done for their players, paying them, skirting the rules while recruiting (See Sampson, Kelvin).

But the premise, at least, the idea - is that a student-athlete is there for an education.  The chance to play a sport is the means to get it.

A coach is a professional.  Like any human being, they can take any job they want.  They can leave any job they want.  So what is the big deal?  If a student-athlete recruit is coming to Penn State because of Joe Paterno, maybe they should re-evaluate that.  Maybe they should see beyond the next four years.  Maybe they should know that Syracuse is a good journalism school and that Vanderbilt is a good education school and that Duke is a good pre-med school.

Maybe we should start going European - have sports academies on all our major sports team.  Kids can enter at at nine, and work their way up to the big squad, if they are good enough.  If they aren't quite, they can go to the UFL or the NBADL or Double-A.  We can keep collegiate sports too, and have student-athletes with the emphasis on student playing those sports.

Kent Hance Ought To Be Embarassed

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/12-09/1231leachblack.pdf


And this guy calls himself an educator?  How could any self respecting person in education look at this email and not be appalled that this guy is even communicating with someone like that booster?

Say whatever you want about Mike Leach.  He's a fool, a dope, outspoken, likes pirates, etc.  But this only speaks to the greater problem in Division I athletics.  It's stopped being about educating students, and more about making money for the school.  It's no secret that TTU ad Gerald Myers pissed off Leach by scheduling non-conference games on the road to make money for the school.  Right then and there is where the problem lies.

More on this to come...