Obama walking the Wisconsin line

Brats outside of bait shops. Cheese and really crappy Wisconsin wine.  Curds from the men who sit in the bars. Oh hey there. Lakes and lakes and lakes. Bars on every corner. Journey and Reo Speedwagon blasting out of a T Top. Shiny union jackets and women who eat too many BRAAATS and drink too many of Milwaukee's Best. Welcome to Wisconsin just a hop skip and a jump away from Chicago where we all escape to swim and putter around in boats and get some RR among the cornfields and small lost Germanic towns.

Chances are Obama shot up there when he was hanging out in Hyde Park. Maybe he saw it the way we all see it and the way it is. The Land Before Time. At least the land in the seventies where facial hair is still cool and guys wear their hair like Steve Perry still and woman still layout to get that orange glow. Good times. Meat and potatoes baby. Except now the land before time is getting caught up in our twenty first century mess and the President is trying to walk the Wisconsin line. Fiscal responsibility, but leave the Unions alone. He can't seem to make up his mind.

Tough line to walk. Like the Chicagoans the Wisconsinites tolerate but need their tourist dollars, he is conflicted. Unions are big supporters but the political winds are deficit driven and the states are broke broke broke. Now the Teaparty is descending. To have a brat or not have a brat. Maybe a little ice fishing. Maybe a little water skiing. Pick up some leaches and head out. But something has to give and the President is trying to figure out which way to go.

All eyes on the Cheese heads who kicked our Bears butt. It had not been a happy season for anyone North of Chicago except for the Packers. So it will be interesting to see if the President decides to partake of Wisconsin hospitality or be that guy who says the seventies are over and Trans Ams really are gas hogs and Journey broke up a long time ago and Unions are kaput. Brats and beer or sushi. Hmmm. Hard choice.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in April

Waiting For Superman

Go see this movie. Go see it for your children, go see it for your school, go see  it for your country. Because if we believe American is in decline then we should at least know why the last great chapter of this country is closing down on us in the beginning of the twenty first century. You cannot escape that feeling anymore. And you wonder where it all began. Why do our towns look like burned out rust belt towns with no commerce except for some river boat pulled in for a last gasp of economic resuscitation? Why is our culture bankrupt and vapid?Why are we trailing the world now ? It had to start with our kids.

This documentary should not be political. Waiting for Superman should not make teachers coil up and dig in and say no way. The union should not say this is the Antichrist of all film making because it suggests that tenure is not a good thing for our children and that charter schools are not anomalies. Wisconsin is unfortunate because it casts a political light on the question of what is wrong with our schools? Why will we have only 53 million skilled workers for 130 million high tech jobs in 2020? Why do our tech companies go halfway around the world right now to find the engineers they need. Why are we almost last in math and science in the Industrialized nations?

Our schools are in decline because they are incapable of change. As a parent I get this. I have seen this. I have seen good and bad teachers, but the thought they are on equal footing is unacceptable. It is not a matter of economics anymore. It would be nice if we could assume this only exists in parts of the country, but our entire country did not test up to the proficiency standards in math and science for eight graders. Now why is that? Could it be, as the film so eloquently points out, it has become all about the adults and not the kids.

The film ends with a challenge. Do something. Do something to make our schools better. I hope I can do more, but the best I can do right now is to tell you to watch this movie and pass it on. Maybe then we can figure out what to do next.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in April

Every writer wants to be a teacher

I don't know when it happened man but everybody I know wants to be a teacher now. Especially writers. The down turn turned every vocation into something that could vanish overnight and that includes writing. Teaching used to be regarded as the sort of thing you would do if nothing else worked out. Oh yeah I couldn't make it in the private sector so I'll go teach. Nothing against teachers it was just sort of those that cant do teach you know. Not anymore.

Teaching is one cool gig now. Benefits with a capitol B. Health care man, pension, great hours, summers off, get to learn something and you can not be fired. Take that last one and it is worth everything else. Tenure baby. You can not get axed no matter how bad things get and when you retire you still get your salary. And you get to hang out with other cool people who are doing something other than scratching for the all  mighty buck.

I taught for a while as an adjunct at a Community college and we all wanted a permanent position. But there were only a few and so we all scratched and clawed and tried to win favor with the powers that be. But there were twenty adjuncts and five full time. No way. I washed out like a lot of writers do with teaching because I couldn't stop writing. But I had this fantasy about being the cool teacher writer you know. And now it's all going down in Wisconsin. They will go after the teacher gig because it is sweet. All good things come to an end in this recession man, even for the teachers.

www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man will blast off in April

The Writer's Dream

My life changed in one summer. I had just signed a two book deal with Bantam after years of struggling in total obscurity and actually been  paid good money after making nothing for years and now was on my way to the Big Apple to ink the deal and have dinner with my new editor and agent. A  year before my manuscripts had been sitting in the basement in a box where I put all those books and stories that never see the light of day, but events had flipped on their head as they tend to do in the careers of writers and acrobats and now I was headed for a victory tour of sorts.

The dinner was on the lower East side in a French restaurant with Conan O'Brien at the next table and you sort of leave the table and float down the street in the warm summer night because finally finally you have broken through to the other side. I didnt' know exactly what the other side would bring, but the biggest change is you have to adjust the way you think about yourself. Failure had been the shadow following me for years and I really wasn't used to that new ghost called success, but here she was. And so I sat and made small talk with the two people who could potentially launch my stalled literary career and then it was over and I was waking up the next morning.

I went for a run and then walked down through Manhattan still hung over and buzzing on adrenalin. I was due to meet my agent again that evening, but for now I was free and I drifted into an old bookstore and bought two very old editions of Fitzgerald Short Stories( Tales of the Jazz Age and Flappers and Philosophers)  They were the original Scribner binding with the cut pages and the slightly smaller than trade size. Second editions that I picked up for a hundred bucks, but I was making money now. And then I started walking down Fifth Avenue and that's when it hit me.

It was summer in Manhattan and one of those hot blowy days where everyone has left. I walked with my two books and knew then something had ended. I had struggled for ten years to get published and now I had and whatever happened next would be consumed with business and sales and publisher agent shenanigans. And so I walked and walked and walked those empty streets with my two copies of Fitzgerald on that hot summer day in Manhattan. I walked that whole island.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January