Rose Hamlin Tennis: Still Teaching

This was the photo of Rose Hamlin Tennis in her book
The School That Was: A School Marm's Tale

     On an afternoon, sometime in 1990, I was at my desk when Rose Hamlin Tennis walked into our newspaper office. I offered her a chair opposite me.  Rose, who passed way in September of 1995, needs no introduction to many readers, but if you are unfamiliar with her, she taught school for 35 years—from 1931 through 1967—with many of them spent at the Fowlerville High School and Junior High. I was among her legion of former students.

Gov. Snyder ‘tone deaf’ with hiring of national public relations firm

    An article in this past Saturday’s Detroit Free Press reported that Gov. Rick Snyder has hired Mercury LLC,  a national public relations firm known for its expertise in crisis management, to “help with communications during the Flint water crisis.” In addition, the governor also hired another communications expert, Bill Nowling, who is a former Snyder press secretary and also worked for former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr.

    The announcement was made by Snyder’s current chief of staff, Jarrod Agen, who (oh, by the way) is married to Mercury LLC’s senior vice president. The article noted that she operates out of the firm’s Ft. Lauderdale, Florida office. So, we had a spokesman telling us that additional spokespersons have been hired to speak to us. The familiar put down “How many people does it take to change a light bulb?” comes to mind.

Covering Michigan State of the State address remains an enjoyable occasion

  We have been to several State of the State addresses in recent years. It’s an enjoyable occasion as well as a nice break from our normal (at times mundane) routine of providing a newspaper for the local audience.

    An aura of excitement permeates the Michigan Capitol building on this evening, much of it coming from the invited guests who have been allowed access to this center of political and governmental power. Reporters aren’t supposed to cheer in the press box, so I disguise any hint that the event is anything other than journalistic business as usual.

Michigan may have impact in current presidential campaign

 The presidential campaign, now on the eve of the caucus and primary season, has reached (to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill) "the end of the beginning." During the just completed year, the would-be successors to President Obama have announced their availability, held rallies and shook hands, spent a lot of energy courting wealthy donors and key interest groups and participated in several debates.

  Reality, in the form of poll numbers and cash-on-hand, has forced several of the contenders to withdraw before any actual decision making has taken place. After the upcoming Iowa Caucus on Feb. 1 and the New Hampshire Primary on Feb. 9, the field will presumably be whittled down even further.

Cheap Grace & False Neutrality

     Cheap Grace.

     The phrase caught my attention when I began reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. All I knew of the man, prior to finding this text in my son’s bookcase, was that he had been a Lutheran minister from Germany, had stood up to the Nazis, and was executed. In the ensuing years, the church has honored him with an annual remembrance.

   The book is entitled Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and was researched and written by Eric Metaxas. It is a weighty tome, nearly 600 pages in length, and examines in great detail Bonhoeffer’s early life (the formative years), including his family background and interactions, the unfolding events in Germany and elsewhere in the world, his evolution as a minister (being influenced by these events), and the various ways he responded to and opposed Hitler and the National Socialist Party. It concludes with his imprisonment and then his death in the final days of the war.

Facts, Opinions, Logic & Fallacies

  Philosophy is defined as “the study of the general and fundamental nature of reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language." That sounds pretty encompassing, daunting, and, yes, esoteric.

    I took several philosophy courses during my college career at Michigan State University. My favorite areas of study in this field were (are) ethics and the history of philosophy, in particular the time period of the ancient Greeks.

    In 2011, I enrolled at Kellogg Community College, which had a campus in Hastings and signed up for two summer classes—United States History from the Reconstruction to the Reagan Administration--and a required English class that focused on proper sentence structure and how to write an acceptable academic paper.