Elmo's Pink Slip

My mom and dad were steadfast volunteers for Meals on Wheels. She coordinated volunteers, and he served as the fill-in when one of the regular volunteers was ill or out-of-town. If my sister had a day off work and he needed help, he’d call her. When I visited my parents, he enlisted me a couple of times to assist him in delivering meals to the homebound, checking in on our community’s most vulnerable older adults. In fact, so committed to delivering those meals, he answered the call when another volunteer fell in the snow, breaking his own seventy-eight-year-old hip in a similar fall.

So when I heard that funding for Meals on Wheels was on the chopping block in the recent federal budget proposal, it hit a sentimental nerve. But the more I learned about the proposed cuts, the less sentimental I became, and the more concerned about the quality of life in our country – and in our county.

Does your seventy-five-year-old Aunt Matilda, who lives in the drafty homestead out in Nova, receive a once-a-year Winter Crisis payment towards her heating bill? She and at least five hundred other households here in Ashland County will lose that assistance.

Do you listen for tornado warnings in Nankin or Rowsburg? Those new systems were installed because of Community Development Block Grants, along with various sewer projects and road paving in the county. Have you walked the Freer Field path (also known as the Dale-Roy sidewalk project)? CDBG funds as well as privately-raised funds made this possible.

Did you realize your neighbor has a new ramp leading into her house, allowing her access to the family home despite her worsening multiple sclerosis? That HUD-finded program, that can also help with disintegrating foundations or wells that run dry, is slated to be eliminated too.

Have you ever ridden Amtrak? One summer, work schedule didn’t allow for one of our sons to travel with us to Maine on our family vacation, but he was able to travel on the train, with enough time in Philadelphia to grab a cheesesteak. As it stands, all Ohio Amtrak service will be eliminated.

While the waters of Lakes Erie, Niagara, Huron, Superior and Michigan don’t lap upon Ashland County shores, we’re close enough to the Great Lakes to be concerned about the toxic pollution hotspots the Great Lakes Restoration funding attempts to mitigate. And there are also nuisance species like phragmites, an invasive reed which blogger Jim McCormac described as “scrambling around with astonishing speed, threading its way into all available nooks and crannies like a chlorophyll-filled cockroach.” I’m not a naturalist or botanist, but I see a horror movie in my future, with the uncontrolled twenty-foot tall phragmites crawling out of my bathtub drain.

As to the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, what can I say? If you’re a regular reader, you know my view on the value of the arts and humanities. As Arlene Goldbard noted, these cuts would threaten “the small programs that help us know and understand each other.” Programs like Ashland Chautauqua, regional arts centers, the Massillon Museum, and perhaps even our own Schine Theater project, part of downtown revitalization. Why? Because elimination of federal funds will also increase competition for state funds.

The Center for Public Broadcasting, which includes funding for NPR, PBS, and local affiliates, is also threatened. To draw attention to this threat, a video is making the rounds on social media that documents the firing of Elmo after thirty-two years of employment on Sesame Street Workshop. He’s given the job lead of taking pictures with tourists in Times Square for tips, not a good option.

Yet after he mulls on his own loss, he has two other questions. The first is his concern for the other monsters who are losing their jobs, but the second is this one “But what about the kids?”

What about the kids, our kids? What about the elderly who want to remain in their own home? What about those who need heating or housing assistance, safe water, a nutritious meal? What about us? Today, I’m wondering about that too, Elmo.

A Real Team

On our way to the NCAA Division II Tournament basketball game last week, I invited our son to join us, raving to him about the wonders of the Ashland University Lady Eagles. Drew’s response to me (paraphrased), was this: “Thanks for the invite, but I’m not interested. I’ll concentrate my basketball viewing on the above-the-rim game, the superior athleticism of the NBA.”

Are you kidding me? While I’m a fan of the Cavs, LeBron and company are paid millions of dollars to play the game of basketball, and they still whine every time they’re called for a foul. Sure, I’ll watch their games and cheer when they win, but outside of the shared context of basketball, there’s no comparison between the wine and gold of Cleveland and the purple and gold of Ashland University.

I made a valiant attempt to convince Drew of what it’s like to attend an AU game at Kates Gymnasium. I told him about the 5’9” Kelsey Peare, the best female three-point shooter in the country this season. I told him about the 50+ percentage shooting of the starters; of Laina Snyder, the GLIAC player of the year; of Andi Daugherty’s game-changer role; of Alex Henning’s tenacious defense; and of Jodi Johnson, the GLIAC Freshman of the Year. All from Ohio.

And then there’s the bench. Most teams, from middle school to the Cavs, lose a step or two when they make substitutions to their starting five. Here in Ashland, that substitution buzzer sends shivers into our opponents, as it means the fresh legs and gritty determination of a new wave of shooters, ball handlers, and defenders. All from Ohio.

Yet with all of the accolades that have come to the individual players, they are the pure example of what “team” means. As Cleveland sports writer Terry Pluto noted at the start of the tournament, “This Ashland team is undefeated, averaging ninety-six points a game, yet no player averages twenty points a game . . . no player is on the court for more than twenty-five minutes a game.” No superstar here who puts the rest of the team on her back and carries them up and down the court.

Lest I forget to tell you about the fans, Drew, the sheer volume of the crowd at Kate’s is a huge part of the winning equation. In the din of the crowd, I’m sure I felt the infamous foot stomp of retired Eagles coach Sue Ramsey, whose many years of work at AU developed the structure of a program that continues to flourish under coach Robyn Fralick (only two losses in two years of coaching).

Yet what I can’t explain to you, Drew, are the components that aren’t measured on a stats sheet or the Richter scale of crowd involvement, those intangible characteristics of a team that mold the character of its players. While we measure a team’s economic impact by hotel room usage or restaurant meals purchased, there’s no way to measure what this team means to both the university and our community in terms of goodwill, of bringing people together.

I’ve described myself as a smitten immigrant to the Ashland community, and a smitten Nana to my sweet granddaughters. Ever since I began to attend the women’s basketball games when our son Dan ran camera as a student in the Journalism and Digital Media department at AU, I’ve been smitten with the Lady Eagles. And so, next week I’ll be crammed into Alumni Hall at Ohio Dominican for the Elite Eight games, believing the Ashland women will bring home the national championship trophy. But win or lose in a basketball game, these young women have once again won my heart.

In life, sometimes there are situations when we do the politically correct thing and agree to disagree (even when we know we’re right). So Drew, despite the indisputable fact of an undefeated season marked by the legendary teamwork of the Eagles, I’ll let you have your NBA glamour and glory. And in case you change your mind, there’s room in the car as we head to the NCAA finals in Columbus on Tuesday. Go Eagles!

Frame, Divert, Deflect

A number of years ago, I gave my first – and last – presentation on the topic of budget development for Salvation Army units. I got good ratings from the participants, at least for entertainment value, but my use of a certain video clip as an introduction may not have found favor with the people in charge.

The film clip is a classic: Abbott and Costello need to pay back rent on a room. The landlord tells them they owe thirteen weeks at seven dollars a week. Lou Costello proceeds to prove to the landlord that he only owes twenty-eight dollars. He divides, multiplies, and adds, and each time the total is twenty-eight dollars, not the ninety-one dollars my calculator displays when I punch in the numbers. And no, he didn’t use the incomprehensible new math that the lovely Madelyn Simone is learning in first grade. If you’ve never watched the scene, take a google on YouTube under “Seven into Twenty-Eight,” because if you don’t see it, you won’t believe how easy Costello makes it look.

My premise in that long-ago presentation was this: in budget preparation, you can make numbers mean whatever you want. I’m sensing that we’re living in a time in our country where it’s possible to make facts mean whatever you want them to (and perhaps even to invent them, as Costello did with his arithmetic). In attempting to educate myself on topics such as affordable medical care, immigration reform, and proposed budget changes, I’ve listened to various commentators, read a variety of articles on a given subject, and even gone to the sources of information through research-based studies. Yet by the end of my search, I feel just as confused and conned as Abbott and Costello’s landlord did.

With the on-going attempt to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, where are the facts? Where is the reasonable discussion about how our government can help its people obtain and/or maintain adequate, affordable, and accessible health care? How much will the new plan cost, the landlord’s $91 or Lou’s $28? Where are the numbers on immigration, the facts about immigrant terrorists versus homegrown terrorists? Where are the numbers on how much it costs to detain, to deport? How will proposed budget cuts impact our lives here in Ashland County? Do those making the decisions on these vital topics receive a series of biased reports, or can they see through the various smoke screens to some semblance of the truth?

As I was working on this column, I watched the Abbott and Costello skit again with an eye to why it was so successful, and here’s what I figured out. Before Lou picked up the Crayola and began to do his math on the wall, both the landlord and I knew for a fact that 13x7 does not equal 28. But as he divided, multiplied, and added, Lou used tactics that caught my attention. First, he attempted to hand the landlord the money quickly, hoping he wouldn’t notice that it wasn’t enough. Then, he used his personality to bluster his way through. He engaged the landlord to help him, allowing him to “hold” the “little bit a 2” for a while until he needed it. He even let the landlord add up all the “3s,” but grabbed the crayon back to add up the seven “1s.”

I’ve seen this before, I realized. Yes, the film clip was familiar, but I’ve also seen what linguist George Lakoff calls preemptive framing, diversion, and deflection. By controlling the conversation, diverting as necessary from the real issue (that 13x7 does not equal 28), and deflecting (grabbing the crayon out of the landlord’s hand and changing direction), Costello convinces the landlord that his argument is correct, and the landlord walks away with an empty pocket (he had made a deal Lou to forgive the rent if he could prove his point).

It happens in families and governments, in the workplace and even on the playground. By preemptive framing, diversion, and deflection, power is gained and we are left, like Costello’s landlord, scratching our heads and wondering, “How did he do that?” Now you know. Maybe, seven times thirteen really is twenty-eight.