The Blaisdell Blog

Imagine my surprise when Stephen Colbert featured several quotes from the Bible all in one episode of the Tonight Show!   Not that liberals can’t be religious but Christianity hasn’t been fashionable in Hollywood since Jane Fonda found God and it turned out not to be Ted Turner.   The first quote came from his guest, Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine.   Kaine is a practicing Catholic (as is Colbert) and spent a year in Honduras as a Jesuit missionary worker.   He taught welding and carpentry to the Hondurans when he could have been at Harvard, which is what I call living your faith.   You have to admire that.   When Colbert asked Kaine for his favorite quote from the Bible Kaine offered Philippians 2:3. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.     Kaine was followed by Tony Hale, an actor on a truly vile HBO series called VEEP.   Hale is also creator of The Haven, a pl...

Today is National Dog Day and I am remembering the first dog I ever owned.   When we lived in Luverne, Minnesota we had a Norwegian elkhound named Torgy.   These beautiful animals were originally bred to hunt, not elk, but moose (Scandinavian elk).   They did not attack the animals, but tracked and then worried and confined the animal until the hunters arrived.   These dogs are wonderful family animals, but you need a cool climate and acreage.   A Norwegian Elkhound considers his “yard” to be as much territory as he can cover in a day and still get back to his dog dish by nightfall.   They consider a fence to be just one more interesting puzzle to solve.   Elkhounds look like small, square sled dogs.   Their thick, silver-gray fur has a pure white undercoat.   Like all of them, Torgy’s face, ears and paws were trimmed in black, but the best part was his tail.   Elkhound’s tails are curved tightly over the back, the white under fur...

Have you ever looked around at work and discovered that somehow you have morphed from the ingénue into the old guard?   About the same year a former student of mine was introduced as the new teacher, I found myself as co-chair of the teachers’ negotiation committee for a very large suburban St. Louis school district. In my years as co-chair we got a great deal of good work done with no strikes or overt nastiness.   Part of the reason for that was the way my co-chair and I worked together.   We could switch our roles of good cop/bad cop on cue without so much as a nod to the other person.   Mary and I had that kind of relationship. Mary was the daughter of immigrant Mexican parents who had settled in West Texas.   She had four sisters and said that when they were growing up the only thing that got them out of working in the fields was saying that they had to study for school.   So they did.   Despite long rides on the school bus, no plumping in...