Animals sense cold is coming, don't you think?

"Mr. Rabbit" (Iowa DNR image)

This is the time of year when Mom and I would look out our picture windows facing the north, and say of the occasional critters back there "they're getting ready for winter." I'm remembering the rabbits and squirrels. My residence is semi-rural. 

Dad got a little carried away planting trees on our property. Now I have to keep things under control. I'm sure he enjoyed it all as it was developing. 

The trees can be an invitation to nature. Have you ever noticed how a squirrel can sometimes make a loud noise? It's a fact. I was almost fearful one day, as I wondered if some kind of undesirable animal had come around. How to describe? Maybe like a dog. It had a stressed or nervous sound. I walked over with some caution and lo and behold, a squirrel! 

My late mother

Or as Mom and I might say, "Mr. Squirrel." Or we'd say "look, it's Mr. Rabbit." 

Some people really do not want rabbits around. People with gardens I presume. I plant zinnias at the front of the house and have never noticed any predation by rabbits. We had a neighbor once who shot them and I never really cared for that. No one does that now. So I really find rabbits rather charming. 

I'm told our former football coach Jerry Witt had rather the opposite attitude about them! I consider Jerry a good friend. My, the years and years of football exploits with Mr. Witt at the helm. His playing days at UMM were during the "black hole" in my life when I wasn't in Morris that much. I was here often enough to impress with the 1967 Oldsmobile Toronado that our family bought from Bill Dripps of "Dripps Oldsmobile." 

So I guess my reputation was tied up in that along with playing my musical instrument. 

 

School today and "PSEO"

I attended college in the days before college costs got up in the stratosphere. I am now learning that college cost is the big reason why high school kids seek this "PSEO" thing. I have only recently learned about this. I am concerned because PSEO drains talent from the high school. The talent would benefit all the kids and the community. 

I learned recently about the loss of kids in MAHS band, to PSEO. A restaurant waitress recently told me she felt she had no choice but to seek the PSEO thing, due to college cost. 

I have a personal theory that if the government keeps forgiving student loan debt, pressures will mount rapidly on colleges to cut any fat, any excess, any superfluity. And I suspect there is a fair amount in the categories I just cited. We have been through an era when colleges indulged themselves in sort of an arms race. Frankly I see a lot of these "amenities" as being superfluous to a degree. 

College spokesmen would bristle at my observation, as they need such things to "sell." Maybe that's part of the problem: colleges selling themselves. Is that needed at all? Maybe colleges could just make clear what they offer and let the students come who are interested. With costs as they are, we have this PSEO to provide "relief" but a negative by-product of that is for high schools to lose talent and enrichment in their own student bodies. 

I'm rather in line with Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio. He has articulated great concern about college costs. He also pounded the table recently, figuratively speaking, as he questioned this push to assume that all kids should go to college. May I say "amen and hallelujah." 

College is great when it serves the intended purpose. I think we saw the ideal when my late father went to college at the U of M in the 1930s. Another thing about college then, was that it was a celebration of Western culture and values. This is bizarre, but by the time I went to college in the 1970s, the whole thing had flipped: college existed to implore students to reject Western values and to try to learn as much as they could about everything else. The last thing you wanted to be caught doing, was to attend a standard Lutheran or Catholic Church in an outstate town. Such rubes! 

I have read that state colleges were especially bad with impressing the template I just described. Let's not subject our kids to it any more. I suspect it has declined greatly. Today it seems we have to fear the political right flexing its muscles too much. Instead of worrying about such biases so much, maybe we need to tamp down this expectation that so many kids attend college. 

It's great for the ones who are suited. Otherwise I'm on board with Congressman Tim Ryan who is "a conservative Democrat." Yes, a seeming oxymoron. 

 

Animals not created equal

So here we are in late September and you know that that means. Once the cold sets in, we live with it interminably. And it seems more daunting as one gets older. I hope the rabbits and squirrels can have a decent time of it around our property. "Mr. Rabbit" and "Mr. Squirrel." Critters do not dismay me that much but there's one exception: "Mr. Skunk."

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com