RIP Badger: You were a good dog too

For the past 27 months I had been harboring the dread that anytime now I would get a call from my brother, Mike, whose dog, Badger, a 17-year-old Yorkie who had been on his last legs for some time. Like most pet owners, my brother and his wife Beryl, had a strong bond with Badger. He was, in many respects, my brother’s only child.

And in truth Badger was a neat little pooch. Where Mike went, Badger wasn’t far behind. But alas, last week, in typical 21^st century tech-notification manner I received his short, cryptic text message: rip Badger. Today that’s about all anyone needs to see to realize another life has passed. I re-texted my condolences and spent a few minutes recounting some of the incidents involving Badger, who in his heyday was a cool little guy.

I remember first meeting him, a tiny tea-cup of a pup. But he grew up to be stocky, and a typical A-personality type, strangely a lot like my brother. It’s said that humans tend to look like their dogs, but Badger and Mike tended to look like each other and act like each other. I don’t mean to say my brother had shaggy hair and pointed ears, but his demeanor was very much like that of Badger’s. Badger even developed a sort of sarcastic growl when things weren’t going quite how he wanted them to, just like Mike does.

Travelling with Badger in the car was a trip. He wasn’t content to sit in the back seat, or in the passenger’s lap. For Badger the only seat worth sitting in was the one along the back of the car seat directly behind my brother’s head. He was a living, breathing head rest. I suppose if we got caught up in the fear-driven world’s perspective some would say that the practice was dangerous for both my brother and Badger. But in our lives, meaning Breidenbach, we don’t often get caught up with what’s popular or what the masses seem to think is appropriate. Over the years we have found the masses are often wrong.

So we would ignore those who would want us to keep our pet in a crate or a car seat or some other method of locking them down. Dogs fit a certain niche’ in our family, and the list of “famous” hounds of the Breidenbachs is long. My earliest recollection is Star, a beagle we had who had to be put down due to distemper. But there are many others:  Snuffy, Happy, Isis (pronounced Is Is by those who really knew her), Cinder (and Ella after my mother), and specifically in my house:  Teddy, Sadie, Hobbes, Grizz, and now Snuggs, the Great Dane and by far the biggest dog.

Looking back at Badger, there are so many memories. Perhaps the first time I realized Badger was a special dog was when I learned about his favorite stuffed toy, Red Rex. Red Rex was a medium-sized red T-Rex stuffed toy. It was Badger’s favorite toy for years, until he had finally wore out the critter. Badger would track down Red Rex if you threw it, no matter where it landed. In another room, he would get it; under the bed, no challenge for Badger; into the pool…well that actually started another adventure that would become, for me, Badger’s defining moments.

We found out during that time that Badger was extremely fond of the pool. It took a matter of seconds for my brother to get the idea that a mechanical swimming shark might be fun to put in the pool with Badger. That’s how we learned that dogs can actually swim underwater. Badger would dive down to get the shark, eyes and mouth wide open as he closed in on the tail. In no time at all, Mike had to get a new shark then another and another and another. Not only will we have that in our memories, but we even have pictures. Mike would get one of those disposable underwater cameras and shoot away. He didn’t need a lot of good pictures from each roll of film, just the one or two perfect ones with Badger in hot pursuit of Jaws.

About two years ago, it became apparent that Badger was on his way out. Mike and Beryl nearly took the step to have him put down when their vet offered another solution. The solution was to give Badger a monthly shot that would keep him rolling for another four weeks. Since they no longer had the pool, Badger learned to like fishing. The stream behind Mike’s house in Wilson, NC, provided plenty of action. Mike would catch a small sunfish, bring it up on the stream bank, and Badger would go bonkers over the fish flopping around before it worked its way back into the water.

That went on for another 26 months, but this past month Mike said he had noticed a big change for the worse with Badger. He didn’t have the same zest, he had slowed down some, and his trips to go fishing were less and very short. After his normal monthly trip to the vet for his “shot” the physical ailments increased. A few days later he took his long-time pal in and had him, as my sister put it, sent to go fishing at the Rainbow Bridge. It’s really hard to say goodbye to our pets; so I guess the text message put it best: RIP Badger.

Testing will continue until morale, or SOL scores, improve

While I am not the person who has the solution to Petersburg’s SOL accreditation woes, I can assure you that taking a swing at year round school (YRS) is probably not the answer. While it may be that the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) suggests that YRS may be beneficial to some students, there is a vast amount of information suggesting that YRS is no more productive than the regular 9-month schedule, and may in fact be detrimental and more costly.

JLARC states that YRS breaks the school year up into smaller bites with “intersession” breaks of about two weeks. They state that the shorter breaks increase retention for the students, but studies show that the biggest part of memory loss over the summer takes place in the first two weeks, the same amount of time allocated for each intersession break. They counter that the time between sessions can be used for remediation. But if remediation is taking place during that time period, that means teachers will be needed and transportation and food service—so where exactly is the cost savings in that?

The JLARC study showed improvement for certain groups: blacks, Hispanics, limited English proficient students, and economically disadvantaged students, primarily. The data indicates that those students improved their SOL scores faster than students in traditional nine-month programs. It says nothing at all about exceeding the SOL scores or even meeting the demands of the SOLs.

It seems to me that this is another boondoggle that the “next administration” at Petersburg is hoping will turn things around. There is no question that something needs to be done, but pulling out these outdated and unproven remedies reeks of rounding up the usual suspects.

For years, the Petersburg School system has addressed the SOL short-fall by having the students take more and more tests. They have pre-tests, pre-pre-tests, tests, post-test, post-post tests, practice tests, and test reviews. At times it seems as if the students spend so much time testing that there’s barely any time left for teaching and learning.

As far back as I can remember the adage was not to teach the test, but to teach critical thinking skills. The idea, as odd as it may seem, was that students armed with solid critical thinking skills could somehow manage to dodge through the A, B, C, and Ds of diagnostic testing armed with a toolbox full of useful information.

But now there is so much emphasis on the TEST that teachers are driven to teach the test. How best to ensure your students pass the SOLs? Make sure they see, if not the exact question, then one that is very close to jog their memories when they sit down at the computer and start clicking to fill a representative dot.

No doubt propping up those scores is important; how else can the general public feel good about the school systems they support. And as we all know, there’s nothing like a test to prove how good, or how bad, someone actually is at something. Surely, failing to pass an SOL test is an indication of bad teachers, or bad parents, or bad students, right? Well maybe it’s just an indication of an administration that is set on ensuring accountability for educating the masses by subjecting them to a test.

Let me be the first (ahem) to state that testing is not an indication of intellect, personality, or any other qualities we find in human beings. Some people, and I know this is going to be very hard to believe, but some people actually have a thing called test anxiety that makes it very difficult to get the information they know out of their heads and onto the test paper or form. Well, I am sure you would never believe something as irrational as that.

So you want scores to improve, well here are a few suggestions from the peanut gallery:

1.      Stop all the unnecessary testing. By running the students through so many practice tests it puts an inordinate amount of stress on them when they face the REAL test. It also bores them. A practice test or two is fine, but parading the students into the computer room for another round of fill in the dots every week is not very productive.

2.      Get the parents more involved with their kids. Somehow, the school system needs to get the parents, or those serving as parents, to understand the need to work with their children. This may be difficult, and in some cases it may be impossible. I am sure there are organizations in the community that are willing to provide volunteer remediation to fill the gaps for students who lack support at home.

3.      Let the teachers actually teach for a change. Don’t lock them down to meeting some prescription for what someone or some group thinks they need to cover. Sure a curriculum is a necessary road map, but let the classroom teachers find out what makes the class tick. For me, Egyptian history started when I learned about King Tut’s tomb, and a lifelong interest in paleontology started with a trip to the American Museum of Natural History and a walk past a T-Rex skeleton. Let the teachers make the classroom excursions necessary to uncover whatever it is that drives the kids to learn. Force feeding a set of standards ensures that a certain amount of material gets covered, but it doesn’t leave much room for creativity or expanded thinking. Give the teachers a chance to give the kids a chance.

Youth Sports--out of control

Officiating youth sporting events can be a dangerous prospect when you consider the attitudes of some coaches, parents, and yes, even players. So it really isn’t much of a surprise to read about a soccer referee, Ricardo Portillo, getting punched by a soccer player after awarding the player a yellow card. But what is surprising is that Portillo later died as a result of the hit, leaving the 17-year-old player to face charges that could include manslaughter.

Some coaches, parents and players have gone totally overboard about youth sports. For some reason, they forget that it’s just a recreational league game and not the World Series or the World Cup. It’s not everyone, but I would be willing to bet that everyone involved in any youth sports program can identify people who fit the mode.

We are no stranger to it right here in the Tri-City area. In fact, it’s hard to believe that something like this hasn’t already happened here. That’s not to say there haven’t been incidents; I am more than sure there have been. But people today need to figure out what’s really important and it’s not wins and losses on a soccer field or baseball field or football field.

Not too long ago I remember working as an official. It’s a tough position because no matter what you do or say the judgment is going to have an adverse effect on one team or the other. It’s a difficult path to follow, and the best of officials manage to find their way without creating a mess during the game.

But there are times when even the best of officials has to intervene. There is a saying that when the officials are at their best, you hardly notice them on the field. The same can be said about teams, and players, and coaches. At times officials have to become more prominent, mostly in order to get control of the game.

A wise old official once told me that there were actually four games happening at once when any two teams take the field. There was the game the kids were playing, the game the official was calling, the game the coach is watching, and the game the parents were seeing. No two of the games are the same, but all of them are legitimate.

Everybody is watching the game for different things. The players are looking for the next play, the parents are watching Johnny and Susie play, and the coaches are making sure the players are doing what they have been shown to do in practice.

The officials have to sit in the middle of all that and make sure that, to the most part, the rules are observed. While they can’t see everything happening on the field at once, they need to be aware of player reactions and to some extent the commentary from the sidelines. They also need to know what to ignore. In officiating parlance it’s called having rabbit ears. What that means is that you are paying too much attention to the verbal commentary from the sidelines and acting on that.

A good official knows when to stop listening.

Still there are times when things get out of hand. One incident occurred locally when a driver sped down the back lane behind the B-field near Shepherd Stadium in Colonial Heights many years ago. The driver had gotten out of his car and was yelling and hollering at everyone. I walked out to the fence and asked him to leave the premises, to which he refused. Easy enough of a fix, a simple call to the CHPD got him ushered out of the area.

But actually getting nose-to-nose with players on the field is much rarer. There’s no doubt that such things can happen. It seems every year we hear about one or two confrontations. But to actually throw a punch at an official seems way out of bounds. Even had this incident not taken such a tragic turn it would have been reprehensible.

And now, it’s likely to end up in serious charges against the 17-year-old who struck the referee. It’s likely he will face a life-changing event. In all likelihood this is a multiple year prison sentence. And the sad thing is it won’t serve as a deterrent; somewhere someone else will do something equally stupid in a sporting event.

Someone is to blame for the two VSU students' deaths

On the face of it, swimming across the Appomattox River doesn’t seem so daunting a dare when it comes to hazing, fraternities, and other frat-like organizations, like the Men of Honor. But the Appomattox River, and especially that area near Campbell’s Bridge, is renowned for people losing their lives.

Since 2005 at least seven people have drowned in that stretch of water. The river can seem placid and somewhat docile, but underwater currents, eddies, and debris make it more of a mine field than most people understand. Campbell’s Bridge itself is a common area that people choose to end their lives.

Having lived in this area for 25 years, the danger of swimming in the Appomattox River is common knowledge to me. While not everyone who goes swimming in the Appomattox ends up drowning the turgid waters can be a severe test for even strong swimmers. The river is full of rocks, pilings, and hidden snags that can easily grab an unsuspecting swimmer and pull them to their death.

Even strong swimmers who are aware of the river’s reputation for taking lives have become victims. According to reports, the area around Campbell’s Bridge has claimed at least seven lives since 2005, and many more before that, with at least three people killed after jumping off the bridge. Most people who have lived in the Tri-City area for even a few years are well aware of the danger swimming in the river presents.

With all of that in mind, it would seem that the prospect of having seven “candidates” for the Men of Honor group, which for the record is not an on-campus organization at Virginia State University (VSU), attempt to cross the river would have inherent dangers.

Only two of the seven failed to complete the test, but those two paid an extreme price by drowning. The two students, Marvell Edmondson and Jauwan M. Holmes, both 19, disappeared while attempting to complete the task. Both bodies were pulled from the river over the ensuing few days.

Police have charged four men, James A. Mackey Sr. of Midlothian, Eriq K. Benson of Quinton, Cory D. Baytop, and Charles E. Zollicoffer II with five counts of hazing in relation to the incident. Police say they are all affiliated with Men of Honor. Mackey, Benson, and Baytop have been arrested; police continue to seek Zollicoffer.

Perhaps charging these men with hazing is enough. But it seems to me they were well aware of the danger the river presents. It’s not unreasonable to think that the reason the river crossing was part of the ritual was specifically because of the danger it presented. At the same time, I don’t think any of these gentlemen thought for a minute that the event would have the tragic ending that it did have.

The bigger question, to me, is whether they are culpable to any extent? If they were aware of the potential danger posed by attempting to cross the Appomattox River, should they not be charged with negligent homicide or some other charge that makes them accountable for the loss of life? Ultimately, I realize, these seven candidates chose to enter the water and that some responsibility for what happens rests with them.

Charging the men with hazing doesn’t seem harsh enough given the results; the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime. There may in fact be no higher crime that these men can be charged with, but it seems a miscarriage of justice for them to be charged with hazing when the result of their actions cost the lives of two young men.

We have lots of charges for people who are responsible for other people’s deaths, why should this be any different? It’s time to take a closer look at this incident and see if we can’t find a criminal charge that is more befitting such a case than simple hazing.