Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Niagara volunteer coach McKee jumps to AHL’s Americans


Niagara volunteer assistant coach Jay McKee has been named an assistant coach with the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League.

After 14 years in the NHL with Buffalo, St. Louis and Pittsburgh, McKee spent the 2010-11 season behind the Niagara bench.

“Words can’t express how thankful I am to (NU head coach) Dave Burkholder, (Niagara AD) Ed McLaughlin and Niagara University for the wonderful privilege and opportunity they gave me in allowing me to assist in coaching the Niagara men’s hockey team last season,” McKee said in a statement. “The program has surrounded itself with a lot of first class personalities, attitude and work ethic, from staff and management to each player in the dressing room. I was very fortunate to learn a lot from the current coaching staff and will be forever grateful using those lessons as I further my coaching career.

“I’m very proud to have been Purple Eagle and without question would be very proud of my daughters if they chose the family that is Niagara University as their choice to achieve their dreams in academics and athletics.”

“I’m very excited for Jay with his new opportunity within the Sabres organization,” Burkholder added. “He was a great asset to our program last season. Everyone tied to the Niagara hockey program was excited to have him back on staff this season, but when this opportunity came about, it was something Jay needed to do. He will make a terrific coach and it won’t be long before he’s on an NHL bench.”

Glee Sneak Preview

I just watched a sneak preview video for the new season of Glee. You can watch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQgCrME9FM4 It looks like it's going to be a great first back-to-school episode.
I also read an article that said that Damian is going to be the first contestant from The Glee Project to appear in season three. He will appear in episode four as an Irish foreign exchange student. He will be staying with Brittany's family. The article also said that because they will need to develop a storyline in which we get to see Brittany's home life, they are working now to cast Brittany's mom. A few comments on the article suggested Lisa Kudrow. I think she would be perfect. We will see what Ryan Murphy does.
The article went on to say that Samuel from The Glee Project will not appear in until much later in the first half of the season. There was no word on what his character might be.
If you felt out of the loop on Glee, now you are caught up. I'm really excited about the new characters and story lines for this third season of my favorite television show.
Thanks for being a part of my journey!

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Interesting Meeting

I had a very interesting meeting this morning. The Habitat Executive Director, our Mortgage Services staff member, and I  traveled to the city of Hamilton, OH this morning for a meeting with the staff of LifeSpan. LifeSpan offers personal financial planning, credit consolidation, pre-purchase homebuyer education, and a lot of other services in Butler County, Ohio and beyond.
We already have a good partnership with LifeSpan. They offer free credit counseling to our home ownership program applicants. The purpose of today's meeting was to learn about how we might better serve our home owners who have been struggling to keep up with their mortgage payments. As you might guess, when the recession hit, many of our home owners were some of the first impacted. Many have had their hours cut back and some have lost jobs. Along with this, because our families are always struggling to make ends meet, whenever the price of gas or food or other every day expenses increase, they struggle even more.
I find it infuriating that so many of the Wall Street folks who helped get us into this mess in the first place walked away with huge bonuses and everyone else, especially the poor, got the shaft. But I digress. Maybe I should save those thoughts for another blog posting. Anyway, it looks like there are some very helpful things that LifeSpan can do for some of our families who are really struggling to keep up with their mortgage payments.
One of the topics that we discussed quite a bit in the meeting is our whole philosophy and approach to working with home owners. One of the LifeSpan staff members laid it out pretty well. She said that we can either be our home owners' friend or we can be their creditor but we can't be both. I think she hit the nail right on the head. We build relationships with our families over time as we partner with them to build their homes. We know their family stories. We know their struggles. We know their financial history. And while knowing all of that is helpful information, sometimes this means that we still think of our home owners only as people who still need our help. This makes it really difficult to hold them accountable when we need to.
This is not to say that we coddle our families. We do our best to hold them accountable to the agreements in their mortgage documents. We do indeed foreclose on families who stop making their payments. We take this very seriously and understand that families can't live in their houses for free. We also understand that our donors and volunteers expect us hold families accountable and empower them to be succesful home owners.
It's a real balancing act. I always like to err on the side of grace if possible. However, I also understand that if I really want to give families a hand up out of poverty, I can help but they need to do the heavy lifting.
So, I'm giving God thanks for the opportunity we had this morning to meet with the folks from LifeSpan. It's a great organization and I am grateful for the partnership Habitat has with them. I am also grateful for the ways in which LifeSpan educates and empowers families to take control of their personal finances.
I hope you will join me in praying for our Habitat home owners and all people who are stuggling during this uncertain economic time.
Thanks for your prayers and thanks for being a part of my journey!

NFL just beginning to pay price for ex-players' health issues

   About 18 months ago we began a project here that became known as Broken Bucs.

Much had been written and said about the physical and mental plight of retired National Football League players, but most of it was anecdotal – based on a struggling individual here or there.

We decided to find as many members as we could from the 1979 worst-to-first Tampa Bay Buccaneers and identify their ongoing health issues. To my knowledge, no news organization had ever tried to look at an entire team before. The result was striking.

At a hotel in north Tampa for a meeting that included many players from that team, I watched as player after player limped into the room and told story after story about their struggles. Some of them could barely walk. Others talked about bouts of confusion and forgetfulness.

I visited former Bucs running back Jerry Eckwood in Nashville. He is battling dementia, possibly caused by multiple concussions he suffered as a player. He is four years younger than me and his coherence comes and goes, often within a single conversation. That scared the stuffing out of me.

Nearly every ex-player we spoke with complained that when they tried to get medical help through the NFL, to which they were entitled, they were stonewalled.

I remember John Reaves, who played quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles and other teams, said of the NFL's attitude toward retired players, "It's delay, deny, and hope you die."

This is in the news again because seven former Bucs -- including Hall of Famer Lee Roy Selmon, tight end Jimmie Giles and running back James Wilder -- joined in a lawsuit against the NFL and two equipment makers over alleged negligence in dealing with head injuries. The lawsuit claims "callous indifference" and "reckless abandon" against the defendants.

Not everyone is sympathetic.

Some of the comments on TBO.com are highly critical of Selmon and the others for joining in this lawsuit, filed late Friday in Los Angeles.

Many of you think they should have known the risks that now seem obvious. Some of you figure that these players made a deal with the devil for riches and glory early in their lives and have to pay the price today. Indeed, I've talked to many retired players in the last few years who say they'd do it all again if they could, even as badly as they hurt today.

Many of them masked the pain as players with powerful, numbing drugs. It got them through three hours on Sunday, but now they can barely walk. Stupid? Probably, but that was the culture of the NFL -- you can't make the club in the tub, that sort of thing.

We now know a concussion is a serious brain injury, but back then it was treated as a nuisance. So, as former Bucs safety Cedric Brown told me Monday, a player sniffed an ammonia capsule and got back in the game as quickly as possible.

No one thought anything about it until decades later when some of these players began to fall apart physically and mentally. The NFL has essentially been shamed into providing more assistance to these players, but this issue has barely started rolling.

You're annoyed at Lee Roy Selmon and the other ex-Bucs who joined in this lawsuit?

Well consider this: NFL owners just spent the summer locking out their players because they wanted a larger slice of the more than $9 billion the league brings in each year.

So far, the legal attacks have come from basically a handful of players who were in the league more than 30 years ago. All of them speak to a culture of playing through pain, injuries, concussions, and doing whatever it took to stay on the field. If they didn't, they were out of a job.

Think of the thousands of players who have passed through the NFL since then.

Many of them carry the same physical time bombs in their bodies that these players did – bombs that will start going off in a few years in the form of crippling arthritis, the need for joint replacement, memory loss and even dementia.

These lawsuits are going to keep coming. The claims will keep coming. The need for assistance will keep coming.

You think the players should have known what they were getting into?

Maybe.

But I'd also counter it's a moral issue with the NFL. These men built the league and were basically treated as pariah years later when they needed help. That's why there is this lawsuit and all the others.

If the NFL had been more proactive with its retired players, it might not have come to this. I'm not saying this lawsuit has merit; I'm also not saying it doesn't. But I do understand the frustration that led these players to file.

As we found out in our Broken Bucs series, the league-appointed doctors spent more time trying to avoid insurance claims from retired players than trying to help. "Just because you had nine knee surgeries as a player, what does that have to do with needing a knee replacement now? You might have tripped getting out of your car. Can you prove you didn't?"

Delay, deny, and hope you die.

Those simple words keep going around in my mind.

Now those players have some words of their own: See you in court.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Cleaning

My friend Mari is coming to visit. In preparation for her visit, I spent some of this last weekend doing some extra cleaning in my apartment. After doing this, I realized my apartment really needed some extra TLC. While I try not to let it get too out of control, there are just some things I don't like to do.
One task I really hate is scrubbing the bathtub. For me, this is a pain in the neck. I aways have a hard time getting my tub really clean. There always seems to be gunk in the grout that won't come out or soap scum that seems to be fused with the tub itself. Thankfully, we have really good water in Hamilton and there is not a lot of lime or iron in it. In one parsonage I lived in, it took about two days for the toilets to turn orange from all the iron in the water.
In addition, I think I would like my life's motto to be "I don't do windows." Mostly I just keep the blinds closed so I don't have to see how bad the windows are. I don't know how they get so dirty. I could understand it if I had kids putting their hand prints all over them. However, it's just me and I try not to mess with my windows. Cleaning windows when they streak and smear drives me crazy.
I think the household chore I hate the most is dusting. This task just never seems to be done. As soon as something is dusted more dust seems to come from other parts of the world and gather on all of my stuff. I don't know where dust bunnies come from but I wish they would keep on hopping away from my apartment.
One thing about having company is that it does give me an opportunity to do some of this extra cleaning. When it's just me, I don't really care all that much about dust or dirty windows or soap scum on the bathtub. However, when I know someone else is going to see these things, I want to avoid having my guests run screaming from my apartment for fear they may get eaten by a giant dust bunny or need a tetanus shot after they use my bathroom.
I'm grateful to have most of the straightening done already. I still need to do some more dusting, clean the kitchen really well and give some more attention to the sliding glass door. I know it won't be perfect. I also know that Mari won't really care. But I care because for me this is a part of offering good hospitality. So, I'll do my best and keep on cleaning in preparation for what I know is going to be a great weekend.
Thanks for being a part of my journey!

Fly the flag on 9-11-11