PeterGlenshaw.com

Economic Mud Season

Imagine This:

Come home at the end of the day, pet the dog, kiss the kids, un-shoulder bags and coats, and head straight for the deck outside. 

Why?

To answer the question.

The Question?

How much snow has melted?

The Next Question:

Has Mud Season arrived, and when will I get the chance to throw the ball against the pitch-back for my dog, Bear, again?

A triumphant, affirmative answer came three nights ago, when enough snow disappeared to create a small landing strip for the baseball wobbling against the pitch-back.  By tonight, a semi-field existed of yellow, frozen-crusted grass and dirt, enough for me to rear-back like Randy Johnson and thrown a hard fastball from 30 yards away.  My black Labrador dog, Bear -- now soft and out-of-shape after three-plus months of gentle walks from our house around the Lyme Common, all due to the frozen and deep snow which lay in our backyard this Winter -- panted again and again as I threw the ball. 

This is hope.  This is the real thing.  A dark sky, a million stars, and the thrill of pitching a scuffed baseball again and again and again into the night at an aging pitch-back device. 

A look-ahead at the weather forecast suggests Winter might be done for good.  Like last year, the snow is receding very quickly.  The Dartmouth Green is almost completely worn of snow.  The Dartmouth Skiway has precious few trails remaining in operation, barely enough to meet this weekend's festivities.  Cross-country skiing is finished, even though the woods surrender their snow last.

On days like this, the mornings arrive brisk and solid as ice, but by 11am, it's nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  Jackets fall away, hats are doffed, and almost everyone seems to have an extra bounce in their step and gait. 

Mud season is everywhere.  Regardless of where people live -- be it China or India, London or New York, Washington or Moscow -- they seek signs which suggest some thaw in the economic deep freeze which has gripped the nation and the world since at least the Fall of 2007. 

This afternoon at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Jeff Immelt of General Electric described the situation in candid terms that were as worrying as optimistic.  We're living in historic times, he said, the likes of which he never could have predicted seeing in his lifetime.  Immelt recalled that in mid-September 2008, he received a phone call from then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (a fellow Dartmouth alumnus) who suggested that it was entirely possible that the Federal Reserve window for borrowing might not open the next day, and that GE ought to do everything it can to prepare for that possibility.  Immelt described how he and a team at General Electric stayed up the entire night that evening preparing for that possibility. 

Mud Season resets the calendar for those of us who live in northern New England.  Suddenly our skin is not so dry and itchy.  Suddenly our driveways are clear of snow and ice.  Suddenly the snow drifts don't hover near the tree branches. 

Immelt said this economic crisis is as deep and fundemental a reset as any in the last 100 or more years.  It's the mud season to end all mud seasons.  Immelt, a staunch Republican who said he has never voted for a Democrat, declared this afternoon that "we're all Democrats now."  Government spending is the only answer, and a resetting of expectations around compensation, regulation, and social values is critical for businesses who hope to succeed in this new environment. 

The market rally -- is it that? -- of the last few weeks appears to be a kissin-cousin of the optimism I bring every night to my back porch.  I seek an end to the snow and ice in my backyard.  Everyone else is asking, has housing hit bottom?  Will durable good orders increase?  Is there a bottom there, please?  When does this horrible movie end?

Politicians assure us the end, if not in clear sight, will appear soon.  Even Jeff Immelt said today that an end to this economic calamity will come.  No one is entirely sure when, but if there's any parallel with mud season, it surely lies in the fact that time, place, and season to all things in this world.

Mud season does arrive.  Spring follows, and Summer not long afterwards.  Will the economy behave similarly?

I hope so.  Everyone hopes so.

Winter Begins Its Slow Retreat

Up here, in the northern part of New Hampshire, we hardly notice when crowds gather around a Pennsylvania rodent in early February to determine if Winter will last another six weeks.  For us, it’s a given.  Winter will last another six weeks. 

In fact Winter hardly surrenders until late March or early April in this climate.  And even then, the bet is that cold weather and even the occasional snowstorm will carry forth while the rest of the nation enjoys daffodils amidst their Easter egg hunts. 

Not here.  My kids have always hunted for chocolate eggs and jelly beans when the ground stood cold, hard, and frozen on Easter.  Halloween is occasionally warm in northern New Hampshire, but Easter?  Never.

Even so, the signs that Winter has begun its annual retreat from our landscape are unmistakable. 

It starts with the most obvious and welcome of signs:  Mr. Sun.  By now, the Sun’s presence in our life is nearly as strong as it was before Halloween.  Even without the wonderful unfair advantage of Daylight Savings Time, the ground still glows and twinkles at 5:30pm thanks the Sun’s presence.  A full day of skiing no longer ends in the dark.  And a late afternoon cross-country ski has suddenly been extended by hours.  My headlamp hasn’t been used in weeks.  There is daylight, and every day brings more and more warmth and terror to Winter.

And then this:  the Red Sox.  Yes ma’am and sir, please welcome the Home Town Team.  Pitchers and catchers reported about a week ago, and it seems like almost everyone on the roster has made it to Fort Meyer, Florida by now.  There’s Big Papi, wearing shades, looking strong and lean.  Look, there’s Tek, Lowell, Youk, and our MVP, Dustin Pedroia.  The Boston Globe carries daily quotes from Tito, and I’m trying to remember the names of the new players (Scholtz?...National League guy, right?)

My backyard is completely covered in snow.  I’ve not thrown a ball against my aging pitchback since early December, and don’t expect to do so for another month or more.  If I have to walk my dog around the Lyme Common much beyond March, instead of throwing the ball to him via the pitchback, I think both Bear and I will go crazy.  It’s time again for baseball.  It’s time for nine innings of play.  Enough with the four-quarter madness of football and basketball.  Let’s get out there and throw a ball, hit a ball, catch a ball for a bunch of hours, day after day.  

And then, finally, this: fatigue with Winter. 

I know, it sounds heretical.  Fatigue with Winter?  How could it be so?

After all, we ski and snowboard and cross country ski and ice skate and sled and do just about everything there is to do in the snow and ice that dominates a northern New England Winter.  And we love it.  When the first flakes fall in October or November, the whole house explodes.  Kids and parents run outside.  We pull out the winter clothing.  We argue about whose gloves belong to whom.  We wonder what happened to that neck warmer (“that’s mine…..no, it’s not….I know it is mine…” etc).

But by now, we’ve done almost everything Winter could offer.  This Winter has been very strong.  Solid, almost Western-like snow fell throughout January, bringing fresh powder weekend after weekend to the hills of New Hampshire.  It has been so good that I’ve finally gone down every hill on the Dartmouth Skiway (Waterfall was my last double-black diamond to conquer), and even managed to finish a new extension of another double black-diamond, Lower Liftline.  The cross-country skiing has been equally fabulous.  Steady snow and solid grooming have made it a paradise.  Since December, I have often found myself in the office chair on Monday delighted to have simple place to sit for 6-8 hours after a weekend of going up and down snow-covered hills.  I’ve jumped.  I’ve fallen.  I’ve made turns unexpectedly and graciously.  I’ve gotten better and found room for improvement.  I’ve crawled into bed at 9pm at night and felt like it was 1am or later. 

But by now, I feel spent.   Each weekend in the Winter, we wake-up earlier than we doing during the week.  Tonight, with the exception of me, everyone in my family fell asleep by 8:30am.  We’re tired early and early each night.  A wake-up call at 7am feels like a chance to sleep late.   Each of us begins to yearn for mud-season, when the ground is dirt brown and wet and the air humid with 40 degree temps and everything in northern New England is ugly, because it means sleep and no wake-up calls and something called a weekend. 

That day will come.  I know it will.  Until then, we have about six solid weeks of Winter left, and four weeks of improbable, hard-to-predict weather ahead after that.  No one is breaking-out the spring clothes here.  We all know what is ahead.  We’re taking extra cold medicine and getting to bed earlier.  Winter is fading like an old movie star, and we know there’s nothing speedy to either process. 

Bush's Last Day (and Mine)

If you’re a Democratic activist, tomorrow marks the last day when George W. Bush can be President of the United States of America.  It’s a day for celebration.  It’s a day for joy.  Not only is Bush gone, but the best possible man on the planet to replace him, Barack Obama of Chicago, Illinois, will be sworn into the nation’s highest office at noon tomorrow. 

For eight long years, we on the patriotic Democratic wing of the Democratic Party have worked hard to end the reign of George the II, and restore Democratic principles and priorities to the nation.  Thanks to people like Governor Howard Dean of Vermont, we got a chance to articulate our principles and, in his role as DNC Chair, implement tactics (like the 50-state strategy) that brought the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party to power in 2008.

So, in this apparent moment of glory and celebration, why I am a bit misty-eyed?

The answer is simple, sudden, and expected.  It came Sunday afternoon, late in the day, after the snow had fallen, after the J3 Ford Sayre racers had bombed down the slalom course at Whaleback Mountain, and were preparing to leaving for a five-hour trip north – way north – that same day for a two-day Super-G training camp and race at SugarLoaf Mountain in Maine.

My daughter, Hannah, all of 13-and-a-half years, was ready to board a rented van alongside nine other ski racers, all similarly bedecked in snow/ski/racing/cool gear.  Like most families in this cohort, our day began at 6am with yet another early morning weekend wakeup call.  Some 11 hours later, both parents and their offspring gathered in the parking lot of a local establishment to make the final preparations for the trip.  Amidst the frantic talk and nervous chatter, I could see the eyes of parents widen and their throats tighten.  It was late.  They would be driving for some 250+ miles, way north, on a night when the snow continued to fall, when the visibility wasn’t great, when the easiest thing in the world would be to have your teenager at home.

But that’s not where I was, and that’s not where these other parents were.  Maybe, unexpectedly, this was our last night to be truly and solely parents.  Maybe on this night we realized an uncomfortable truth:  that from hereon, parenting was out of our direct control.  As the van drove away, as I counted the hours until I thought Hannah might actually be near her destination, I realized that what I missed, in addition to my daughter, was control.

When she was 10 or 8 or 6 or even younger, I could manage and direct virtually everything in her life.  Now was different.  Now people who might seem like strangers to me – her skiing coach, his assistant, maybe even some of the kids with whom she was travelling – were intimate and important companions in her life. 

What?!!!!!

You can’t possibly be serious, I thought to myself.  Let my precious little girl alone with these people, for this long, with only a modicum of rules and boundaries and control.

It can’t be happening.

Only it is, and it must.  To grow at this age, I realized – later, much later, around 3am, as I awoke and wondered around my house in a fitful burst of energy – requires extension beyond parents, beyond the home.

It means having to pee in the snow bank alongside your friends.  It happened with Hannah on this trip.  Would I permit it?  No, of course not, but that’s the point.

It means having a really tough crash on the snow course. It happened to Hannah on this trip.  Would I permit it?  No, of course not, but that’s the point.

And that’s just the news from Day One.  What will happen tomorrow?

I found myself today emailing my daughter with questions I swore I’d never ever ever ever ask in this situation.

1)    Did you get enough sleep?
2)    Did you get enough to eat?

Ohmigod, Dad, can you stop embarrassing me, like now?

No.  I can’t.  Last night was my final night as a parent, complete and toto.  Hereon, I am sharing you with the world.  I will never stop being your parent.  I will never stop loving you, Hannah (and your brothers, Jacob and Noah).  Regardless of what you do or say or think, my love for you is absolute.

But what is not absolute is my ability to control your life.  At some point, reluctantly and with a great deal of fear and worry, I must begin to let go.  It’s harder than I realized, even though plenty of wise people (like my own Mother) told me so.  I look back at pictures when you were in diapers and needed to be fed, and think those days seem so easy. 

Maybe so.  Maybe not.  Maybe raising children is hard work regardless of their age.  Whether they are 2 or 20 years old, children present challenges that arrive full-stop and unapologetic.  They offer the fullest and most complete way of defining yourself and life in general. 

So tomorrow comes, and by noon Barack Obama will be sworn-in as our 44th President.  I can’t wait.  He and his family, and his administration, will bring great things to our country, and demand great and wonderful service from us, its citizens.  In four years, I expect this nation will be in remarkable shape because of his leadership.

Tomorrow comes, and my daughter will come home.  As she grows, she will demand more from me than I am perhaps ready to give.  Within about four short years, she will be ready for college.  Tomorrow night, however, I will met her in a parking lot and bring her home, and maybe even get the chance to tuck her into bed.  It’s a night numbered.  It’s a night not forever. 

On this night, I’m not the only one with mixed emotions.

Glenshaw 10-K about 10Ks, 2007-2008

Most investors know that the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) requires every public company to disclose information about its performance on an annual basis.  Known as the 10-K, this form permits shareholders to learn more than they might from a glossy annual report.

My last post suggested the results from my recent roadrace would be shared with the blessed readers of this blog.  So, in a sense, this is my full disclosure statement about my performance in 10k roadraces over the last year.

Until I ran in the Hanover Turkey Trot 10k last November, it had been years (maybe 20?), since I had run this distance in a roadrace.  I vaguely remember running a 10K race in Washington, DC near RFK Stadium and the Capitol, and finishing some 45-48 minutes later and considerably out of breath.  Fast forward to the present: while the years have passed, I've admittedly gotten a bit stronger and surer of foot.  I do sprint triathlons without any trouble and am probably in the best shape of my life.

So, it was no surprise that last November 2007 saw me post what a remarkable time in my first 10k race at the Hanover 10K Turkey Trot.  I ran the race in just over 40 minutes at a pace of 6 minutes, 32 seconds per mile.  These were times I never ever saw before.  I was completely finished after the race, during the race itself, it felt as if I was floating.  Looking back, the result is one I wonder if it will ever be repeated by this old body.

Fast forward to my next 10K, this time the Tuck School "Run for the Kids" in May this year.  I was training for triathlons, had not given the race much thought, showed up, and ran...kinda disappointing.  I finished in 44 minutes, one second -- a race pace of 7 minutes, 5 seconds per mile.  This was way, way behind my time just eight months earlier.  Was I washed-up already?

So, here comes last weekend, and my final race of the season.  Three sprint triathlons, one off-road triathlon, and two 10k races kept me busy from May to November 2008, and it was time (frankly) to ease back on the training and into the joys of holiday food (pumpkin pie, good wine, and more pumpkin pie).  The only problem lay in my training this Fall. 

Between the 2008 Election, work, family obligations, and a small bout of the flu, I was not able to train for this final race as I did last year.  In fact, just a few days before the race, I felt very uneasy about my prospects.  I felt weak and as I looked ahead to the weather forecast for the race, felt even weaker.  Unlike last year, which I recall being in the high 40s or low 50s in sunny skies, this year's race promised to be held in conditions resembling late January in northern New Hampshire: temperatures between 20-25 F, with a strong brisk wind in various conditions. 

Yikes. 

Come last weekend, and there I was on the starting line bedecked in full winter running gear.  "Bang," went the gun and away we went.  Last May, on what would eventually be seen as a slow run, I knew in the first five minutes that I would be slow.  The energy just wasn't there.  But this time, I felt different.  Sure it was cold.  Really cold.  Sure, I was wearing more clothes than usual for a race.  But my lungs were warm, I felt plenty of energy inside of me, and a quiet calm -- the latter being perhaps the condition for racing.

Bottom line:  I finished the race in 43 minutes, 21 seconds, or 6:59 per mile.  Given my overall physicall state, and the weather, I was totally thrilled with the result.  No one in their right mind would ever consider encouraging me to be anything other than an enthusiastic amateur competitor, but on days like last Sunday, when the wind is howling and it's not clear if you got the stuff, it's incredibly reassuring to run hard and succeed over a 10k course.

The interesting thing about all three races?  Regardless of the specifics, I finished basically in the top third of my age group in these races.  That's both good and bad news.  Good, because I can beat 2/3 of my colleagues.  Bad, because somehow, another 1/3 of my colleagues is beating me pretty handily.

What should I do?

Get another helping of pumpkin pie,and then get back to training.

A Wonderfully Cold November Night

This is it.

The start of Winter. 

It came today, with snow and wind in the morning -- enough to cause the Lyme Listserve to crackle with announcements of slippery roads, skidding cars, and snow tires.  During daylight hours, the wind blustered and blew, the temperature hovered around freezing, and up here -- at the mid-point of the Granite State, between the extreme cold of Mt. Washington and the suburban warmth of Manchester & the Derrys along I-93 -- it was a kinda cold-all-day-long, kinda day.  By nightfall, when it became apparent that the morning snow would not melt, that the ground was still really hard, and that the wind would continue to blow, you could feel the sweet sting in your eyes and face of Winter itself.

In Hanover, at the Dartmouth campus, students walked with a slightly bewildered expression.  Not the seniors, mind you, or the juniors.  But sophomores?  Freshmen?  The look of ohmigod was clearly apparent. 

Not this.  Not this, again.

Everyone else was ready for it.  Or at least, not surprised.  You live in the northern part of New Hampshire, which is the northern part of New England.  It's mid-November.  It will be cold, day and night, from now until the end of March (if you're lucky; mid-April is more likely). 

And frankly, I love it.

For much of the rest of the United States, I suspect (or remember from my days growing-up along in mid-Atlantic states) that Winter remains a season to get thru.  No joy in Winter there.  In most places, Winter is just a series of inconveniences that made you appreciate the 90% humidity to come six months later.

Not here. 

Instead, Winter is its own time.  It's not just a season, but a way of living, of experiencing the natural world, and humanity's effort to adopt to an environment that appears hostile, but maybe is as welcoming as Summer.

Consider the following:  this afternoon, as daylight disappeared, I drove to Oak Hill in Hanover -- home to the Dartmouth Cross Country Ski course -- and got ready for my run.  From Spring until the snow is thick on Oak Hill, I strongly enjoy running and mountain-biking the trails of Oak Hill.  Like most days, I went out there today and changed into my exercise gear in the glory of a port-a-potty.  Unlike most days, though, today was a bit chilly.  But with temps in the low 30s, it was just a bit harder environment in which to undress. 

But darn it, I knew what to wear.  By the time I emerged from the port-a-potty, I had not only changed from business wear (suit, starched shirt, polished shoes) to running gear (tights, running shoes, top, jacket, hat, mittens), but I was warm.  Very, very comfortably warm.  For the next 45 minutes, as I wandered over Oak Hill and dale (literally), even though the Sun sank and my headlight had to be illuminated, there was not a cold part to be found on my body.  It was different, but just as comfortable as running in summer with in running shoes and a pair of shorts. 

And maybe this has been the biggest revelation of all to me about Winter in northern, northern New England: here, I spend as much time outside in the dead of Winter as I do in the heat of Summer.

Sure, the clothes and activities are very, very different.  But Winter is playtime here, just like Summer is playtime -- or considered playtime -- for most people elsewhere in the United States.

So, on this cold November night, when I could feel Winter get a strong grip in the land and in the air, a smile came to my face. 

Despite the dark, despite the cold, there was a different kind of warmth, a different kind of fun to embrace.  And all of it -- all of the next 4.5 months -- lay before me.  Chris, my brother-in-law, says the best day of vacation is the first day. 

Well, today was the first day of Winter Vacation.  To be certain, by then March 2009, I'll be ready for getting on a bike, for jumping in a pool (and later a pond), for running in just a pair of shorts.  But between now and then there is a whole world of Winter fun to join. 

Summer Break

It's been a deliberate while since I last wrote on this blog.

I plead "guilty" to summer.

Which, this year, has meant a wonderfully muddy triathlon (and three dry tri's) hours and days and weeks with the kids in the water (lakes, oceans, pools), and time away from time.

Summer in New Hampshire and northern New England is a fling. Even in a wet year like 2008, every day is precious fun. Can't waste 'em. The nights turn cool soon enough.

The time will come to get ready for work and school and writing. Maybe it's here already. Maybe I'm just stalling.

Summer Time

"Summer Time, and the Livin' is Easy..."

....and man, it's true.  Thank you, George Gershwin, for capturing the season just so. 

In this year of 2008 -- with $4.00+ gasoline, food prices on-fire, and housing in a major slump -- when there is good, solid, non-partisan reason to be worried (and I mean worried like you got the shingles), it's hard to deny to pleasures of Summer time.

Tonight provided a small but meaningful sample of Summer time cheer.  It came from so many places.

The sight of bicyclist after bicyclist cranking away on all sorts of two-wheeled gear in the Upper Valley.  And not just the hot-shots I saw this morning at 6:30am riding like the peleton at the Tour de France.  It was the regular folks, on upright bikes peddling like mad to reach the top of the hill. 

Or me scootering with kids after dinner, popsicles and ice creams in-hand, as we attempted to out-do one another in little tricks and turns on the asphalt.

Or watching Papelbon close out a 5-0 game for the Boston Red Sox against the Arizona Diamondbacks with fastball after fastball.

Or reading to Jacob and Noah tonight without a care about the time.  A few extra pages of "Asterix and Obelix" or "Harry Potter" would not matter.  There was no homework to complete, no school schedule to meet. 

Or, finally, the cool breeze coming throughout the house.  Every window is open.  The children are asleep.  The woods are silent but alive with green. 

Summer time is also unstructured time, when the clock fades just that little bit.  It ticks but does not tock.  The insistent rhythms from the rest of year -- gotta do, gotta go -- fade just enough. 

Summer time.  The light remains, and we find new time to play, frolic, and enjoy.

Now, it's not all good.  As the Boss reminds us...

The girls in their summer clothes
In the cool of the evening light
The girls in their summer clothes,
pass me by

This summer, my family will celebrate the 90th birthday of one of our dear friends, a man who remembers when vacationers to Maine traveled there by steamer, not car. 

No season is not perfect, but in these woods of northern New England, Summer provides a bit of heaven that kinda-oughta be preserved, if only to be released in the darkest winter days.

Newspaper, What Newspaper? (Print Journalism in the Age of the iPhone)

As I understand it, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and a few other leading newspapers routinely prepare obituaries in advance of the death of individuals whose passing will be Page One news.

Over the past few years, newspaper journalism has found itself in a similarly odd situation, as it writes stories on the decline in newspaper circulation, the consolidation of newspaper publishers, and the ever-tightening noose around some of the giants in American newspaper publishing.

As this print journalism water empties out of sink, it's become something of a curiosity for me to observe publishers react to this fast-changing environment.  Most newspaper publishers fail to understand what's happening or underestimate the severity of the change.  At the same time, it's hard to find newspaper publishers who either change their behavior dramatically or leverage their existing assets (which are significant and can be re-tooled) to adopt to the future which arrived yesterday.  To be certain, giant newspaper publishers like the Washington Post and the New York Times took the plunge years ago to diversify their business lines and develop Internet-ready versions of their venerable grey pages.  My interests rest on the small to medium-sized publishers, with daily circulations of approximately 10,000 to 75,000. 

Or, to put it locally, how could and should newspapers ranging in size from the Valley News to the Union Leader re-purpose themselves to an age where content comes from the cloud?

It might begin by realizing the vulnerabilities of local news publishing, starting with the basics of printing and delivering a paper every morning.  With US personal computer penetration at more than 950 per 1000 people, and the number of US cellphone subscribers exceeding 250M, it seems reasonable to suggest that nearly everyone in the market of a local news publisher has an email address or device by which to get news.  Investing in printing press, the people to run it, and the energy costs of delivery for one newspaper per household seems completely unnecessary and expensive

It's also not clear that classified advertising will last either.  Craigslist is famously devouring the newspaper classified business in major urban areas, and looks now to advance on medium sized markets (including sites in Vermont and New Hampshire).  Some communities even utilize their town-based list-serves as alternatives.  People routinely sell, give away, or market their services on the Lyme listserve everyday.  Items sell in a matter of minutes, and this is with a population of less than 2,000 people, of whom only several hundred are reported to be listserve members.

It's also not clear that local publishers need to break news in print and in the early  morning anymore.  Leave that task to the online version and instead think about the print version as leisurely compendium to the hard news operation that appears later in the day. 

What local newspaper publishers offer, however, remains compelling.  Let's start with high-quality writing and photography of the local geography.  In these markets, people want to see their neighbors and read about their neighborhood.  It's getting harder for these publishers to retain good writers and photographers, but those outlets who do benefit significantly. 

The issue of geography should be not be overlooked.  I'd argue that on the national level, geography appears less important than ever in distinguishing the major publications.  If the Times, Post, and Wall Street Journal each cover national business, politics, sports, and culture, does it really matter where they are based?  In those markets and in this Internet age, personality seems to matter more in creating and building a news operation than location.  Ergo, Fox News, Huffington Post, Rush, or Drudge. Local newspapers distinguish themselves by resisting this trend, particularly in communities who value social capital significantly.

At the same time, in this Internet age, local news publishers seem to miss the opportunity match their prowess for local reporting with local advertising.  As a platform, the local newspaper does a terrible job of connecting directly with consumers, and it seems odd that few publishers have turned to micro-advertising like Google's Adwords to develop an online presence that connects the auto dealer in Town X with the newspapers subscribers with prescribed circumference of its location.  Something of the same could occur via SMS to the cellphones of shoppers.  Tell me what the local sports store has on sale today, and I'd be happy to travel there.  What local businesses often need, I think, is a way to reach local customers directly. Proximity matters, especially in rural communities, and newspapers need to ask if their current advertising business really works anymore and what they could really do to make it effective.

The bottomline, I'd suggest, is that the newspaper as we know it will become more scarce and vulnerable in the next ten years, particularly as buildout of truly high-speed (4 Mps) broadband occurs, energy prices continue to rise, and devices like the iPhone become ubiquitous.  Whether existing newspublishers adopt depends as much on their tolerance for future risk, as it does on their ability to realize present-day risk.

The Open Water Swim in search of a New Politics

The routine works likes this: come Memorial Day weekend, regardless of the air temperature or water conditions, I don a wetsuit and enter a frigid lake in either  New Hampshire or Vermont for the first open swim of the season.  The experience is almost always the same: bracing.  And I mean bracing.  Gone is the nice 72-degree water of the Dartmouth indoor pool.  It's just me, a shortie-wetsuit bought from BJ's, and a cap or two on my head. 

On entering the water, my breath immediately seizes, and my hands chill.  What?  Can this really work?  But over the years, I've learned that within about ten minutes or so, I will become pretty warm.  Sure, the extremities suffer a bit, but by-and-large, I emerge some 30 minutes later feeling exhilarated and ready for a great season ahead of open water swimming.

My last open water swim of the season occurs around the first day of Fall.  So, between the end of May and the end of September, this incredibly special time of year arrives, and while much of it involves training for triathlons, the real secret is that this time of year revolves around open water swimming.  There are no lap lanes in open water swimming, and no clocks telling splits.  It's just me, the water, and the weather. 

It's very real and authentic.  The slap-slap-slap as water smacks my forehead while I  swim against the wind.  The hesitation in my stroke as a wave crests while I'm taking  a breath.  The unexpected, oogie feeling as my hand hits a dead fish.

Truthfully, there is something incredibly beautiful about swimming in northern New England lakes.  Maybe it's the way the light hits the water, or the cleanliness of the water itself.  Last year I remember swimming and seeing a bald eagle out of the corner of my eye.  I have swim at 6am and 7pm, and all times in between, and each time offers something magical that's hard to put into words.   

While swimming across Post Pond in Lyme, NH, this afternoon, I thought about all of this beauty and truth amidst the spectacle which took place yesterday with DNC in my old stomping grounds at the Marriott Hotel in Woodley Park in Washington, DC.

The back-and-forth undertaken there seemed, frankly, so completely out-of-touch with the politics that concerns most people today.  At a time when gas costs $4+ per gallon, when food costs are out-of-sight, and when the Iraq conflict seems unending, it's hard to believe that this technical dispute merits the time and attention devoted to it.  As I understand it, very clear rules about the primary process were adopted and agreed upon by every major candidate prior to the campaign. 

But instead of adhering to those agreements, at least one candidate decided that an enormous amount of time, energy, and political capital ought to be focused on undoing the political Pre-Nup.  It's this kind of political calculation that, frankly, we need to abandon.  The other main candidate in the race has campaigned vigorously on the need for a new kind of politics.

There's more than rhetoric behind Senator Obama's call (there, I said his name).  It's a understanding, from someone who has not spent the last 16 years in Washington, DC, that the rest of us who live outside the Beltway want practical solutions to the real-world problems which face us.  The fight this weekend in the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee perfectly captures a politics that prefers distractions to solutions. Will it help someone get health care?  Outside the spin zone of cable TV, the answer is obvious: no, of course not. 

We're waiting a similar truth-teller in New Hampshire.  Here in the Granite State, Governor Lynch has a lot of fine qualities, but his fairy-tale embrace of a constitutional amendment on educational funding hardly qualifies as the kind of new politics we need in the Granite State.  Where is the politician in New Hampshire who articulates what the state of our public education ought to be in the 21st century in order to be competitive globally, and who is willing to articulate the public investment model which will fund what we need to meet that vision?

At the start of each Summer, I return to the open water for long swims and find that  there's no dodging the truth in the open, deep lakes of Northern New England.  Let's hope more politicians find themselves seeking that kind of politics, instead of the politics which favors clinging to the sides of swimming pool in fear. 

Theo Epstein's Good Advice

Welcome to Super Week.  It begins tonight when all of New England and the Northeast (and the rest of the country) watch what I should be a pretty good Super Bowl game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants.  I think the Patriots will take it, but expect the Giants to perform better than you might expect. 

It's then onto Super Tuesday and the many primaries and caucuses scheduled for that day.  A Washington Post - ABC News poll released today suggest the Obama and Clinton are essentially tied among Democratic voters.  While some political writers suggest that Super Tuesday amounts to a national primary, the fact remains that 24 very different states will vote individually on Tuesday.  I think Clinton will win a majority of the delegates at stake on Tuesday, especially if she captures California.  But Obama will do particularly well in the middle of the country and the South, leaving the contest very much undecided after Tuesday.  Obama will probably do surprisingly well in the DC-MD-VA primary a few days later, and I think this means the Democratic primary race (cue Chris Berman voice) could....go....all....the.....way.  Or at least until Tuesday, March 4th, when 444 delegates are at stake, with Ohio and Texas dominating the primary that day. 

As we hit Super Week in New England, I thought it might be useful to share an email I got from a friend of a friend about his encounter yesterday with Theo Epstein, General Manager of the Boston Red Sox and supporter of one of the two remaining candidates for the Democratic nomination (read ahead to find out who Theo supports!).   

The dynamics of winning and losing are a big part of the Democratic primary, as they are of professional sports.  Winning and losing is also an important dynamic to youth sports.  My new-found friend coached a Little League baseball team that last year went 0-15.  I'm currently coach a youth basketball team that is 1-15.  When it's the closing minutes of a game and we're down 40-5, the audacity of hope never seems more alive to me than when I'm urging my guys to finish out the game as best they can.

Here's the email, and enjoy the Super week ahead.

Dear Little League Players, Parents and Fans,

I was going to wait until after the Super Bowl to think about next season but something happened this morning that changed my plans.

Barack Obama’s campaign was using the Middle East Restaurant as a staging area for canvassing Cambridge.  I was there this morning with a couple of dozen volunteers when a slightly familiar looking guy walked up to me and says “Hi, I’m Theo Epstein and I can see by your hat that you’re supporting the Red Sox and Barack Obama.”  For a moment I was speechless.  My head was all about politics and suddenly I’m thinking Red Sox!  Then Theo just brought it all together, “The next time we win a World Series I want to meet President Obama in the Rose Garden”. 

We talked about baseball and politics.  Position player vs. pitchers.  Who will be on the ticket as VP.  The usual stuff.  Finally, I told him about our less than perfect season last year in West Cambridge.   I lowered my voice and pleaded, “But, Theo what would you do?”  He thought for a moment and then said, “Change the name of the team to the Pirates”.

The man is a genius. 

So on the eve of the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday I am proud to announce the new, improved West Cambridge (formerly known as the White Sox) Pirates. Theo wishes us the best of luck next season.

Have a Super week,

Coach Harry