This morning I took my son to Keene, New Hampshire to play their ~10-year-old “squirt B” hockey team. My son’s team lost 4-0, and it’s not the loss that has me upset. They’ve lost plenty of games and they’ll lose more. What has me upset is the fact that the only way they could have won that game was if they showed up ready to play dirty. Instead, my son’s team played the game they’ve been taught: play hard, play to win, but play fair and play your best.

I can only assume the other team played the game they were taught: play to win, at all costs, and minor penalties like tripping, checking, and holding the goalie are accepted parts of the game.

I base this assumption about the other team on (a) the way they played and (b) the way the game was refereed. No penalties were called whatsoever. I’m not saying it was called unfairly; the refs did a great job of being nearly 100% consistent on both sides of the puck. There was no obvious favoritism. The problem is that they didn’t call a damned thing.

You see, at this age and in this program the refs are typically teenagers and presumably local ones at that. Yes, I’m sure that USA Hockey dictates they take some certification course, but there’s no way that course, however long it is, would undo the years of conditioning they’ve had. Those refs we saw today in Keene were almost certainly raised through the same hockey program that still exists today in Keene. And if that’s true, then those refs were taught early on that tripping, checking, and holding the goalie are accepted parts of the game and are to be overlooked.

I’m very curious to see what happens next weekend when that very same team comes to our rink to play us at home. A game that will more than likely be refereed by kids that were raised through our program and are far more likely to call all the aforementioned penalties (if they see them, of course, and I get that the refs will always see a different game on the ice than we see from the stands).

But it’s more than that. Because they’re on the ice, we (as parents) are looking to these refs as the main people who can keep our kids safe. Tripping isn’t illegal because someone decided that would make the game more interesting. It’s illegal because if it happens all the time someone’s eventually going to get hurt. The same is true for not allowing checking at this age. And when you’ve got kids out there getting frustrated by inconsistent refereeing, THAT is when levelheadedness goes out the window and kids start hurting each other.

My son LOVES contact sports. In addition to hockey he plays football and lacrosse. He’s already been through three broken bones (none, funnily enough, from any of the aforementioned sports!). I wouldn’t be surprised to see him go through more of that before he’s through. It’s all part of it. But I do expect the refs to do their level best to keep him safe, and the biggest key to that is simply having an audited level of consistency throughout each league. That way the kids (in a general sense) as well as parents and coaches know what to expect and local “customs” don’t change the nature of the game from town to town. Organizations like USA Hockey exist for a reason, and it’s about time they stepped up and solved this issue.

As an aside: Yes, I realize that in pro sports there’s significant inconsistency amongst refereeing. I feel that this consistency is MORE important in childrens sports because this is where they’re learning. They need that to stay safe. We as parents need that for the kids to stay safe, and it needs to be fixed.

It’s 12:01pm on Tuesday, March 2nd, and we still don’t have power restored. We’re doing OK, we’re on a generator, and thankfully the temperatures have been above freezing so there hasn’t been much concern for us. The problem is, we’re used to this — we know that, on average, we’ll have a multi-day outage each year. It was explained to us before we moved here, but we didn’t believe it. After 5 years, not only do we believe it but we’re pros at dealing with it.

This leads me to ask the question: what would it take to recoup the cost of burying all these power lines underground in this and other high-impact neighborhoods?

I’m sure from PSNH’s standpoint the answer is, “oh, it’s cheaper to repair downed lines 100 times than it is to bury them once.” And I’m sure that’s true. But that’s not even the beginning of the total cost here.

Let’s list some of the costs in addition to those incurred by PSNH’s repair crews:

Town infrastructure costs, including temporary shelters for residents, management time coordinating with utilities, additional emergency workers, and overtime work for local crews and staff.

Personal costs, including fuel for generators, lost groceries, frozen/burst heat pipes, hotel rooms, meals out, and lost productivity at work.

Health risks, including loose (and potentially live) wires on the street, toxic leakage from downed transformers, and carbon monoxide poisoning from generators (the fire department brought a neighborhood woman to the hospital just yesterday).

I, for one, would love to see a cost analysis here, and if it means adding a surcharge to the local residents, please propose that and let’s make the decision together. Until we do, I *know* that each year we’ll be without power for several days and yet again incurring all of these expenses and exposing ourselves and the town to all these risks.

It seems silly not to at least consider doing this.

It just doesn’t get much better than this, folks. I’m glad to be home.

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The article came out today, and it’s horrible how much this woman lied just to spice up her story. Lisa was being kind and offered to hide our son’s piece of pizza (bought at another booth) from sight while Dumond took a posed photo. Instead, Dumond photographed her in action and made it seem as though Lisa had given our son the veggie wrap instead of the pizza. Nothing could be further from the truth (Lisa ate the veggie wrap, and our son ate the pizza!).

Dumond also indicated that the booth owners gave our children golden cherry husk tomatoes, something that also didn’t happen (and my kids were upset to read they missed out!).

The food at the booth was good — and I especially encourage everyone to try “french fry green beans” if given the opportunity — but it’s terrible when a human interest writer has to overly twist the facts in order to get published. There were plenty of truths here to write about, and had they been properly spun together the story could have been even more interesting.

Shame on you Amanda Dumond and Foster’s Daily Democrat for supporting this practice.

Technorati Tags: journalistic integrity, new hampshire

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See you on the flip side… I hope.

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Apparently, my son had confused things and thought that the slaves WERE the smugglers… AND, well, he assumed that because these smugglers were doing one thing that was illegal, they were probably thieves as well.

We set him straight, and he’s good to go now, but man… wouldn’t it have been horrible if we hadn’t nipped this in the bud, and the kid had developed the foundation for a life-long prejudice based on our comments?

Whew!

Technorati Tags: family, prejudice, slavery

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