2010 August | Kelsey Timmerman

Are small towns killing themselves?

By Kelsey

Quiet streets. Rush hour means three cars deep at a red light. My grandmother knows your grandmother. Going to the grocery and seeing 20 people you know.

This is life in a small town.

It’s often over-romanticized. But the small town life is still what I prefer. To me, Muncie, where I live now, is a big city. It’s not big enough to have bad traffic other than at all-you-can-eat buffets, but anywhere with a multi-screened movie theater and a mall is a big city in my book.

One of the small towns that I’ve called home over the years is Greenville, Ohio. It’s where we went for groceries, swim classes, the dentist, and - up until last year - where my day job was.

But small towns are often small towns for a reason: there aren’t many opportunities in small towns. Such is the case with Greenville. A lot of my friends from high school don’t live anywhere near where we grew up.

Greenville is the county seat of Darke County. In Darke County only 33% of households have kids under the age of 18, which is far below the national average of 46%. What does this mean?

It means that I can’t remember the last time a school levy of any significance passed in the county. The attitude seems to be, “My taxes put my kids through school, by God am I going to pay more in taxes to put other people’s kids through school!”

And that attitude just defeated a $2.9 million bond issue that would’ve secured $19 million in state-funding to build a new school.

From the Daily Advocate:
Darke County Board of Election officials released the unofficial ballot votes of 2698 for (49.27 percent) and 2778 against (50.73 percent)

There are still 136 provisional ballots out there, but it’s doubtful the outcome will change.

The Greenville schools can kiss $19 million and a shiny new school that might attract employers goodbye. The cost is a little over $100/year per $100,000 of home value. I’m not for throwing away money myself, but chances are a new school would increase your home’s value more than the tax would cost in the long run.

Does Greenville need a new school? One day Last year school was canceled when parts of the middle school actually started to fall off. An elementary school running out of room (because of consolidations not enrollment increases) had to bring in trailers (aka mobile classrooms). If you’re being taught in something that can be pulled down the road by a semi-truck, you have to question what kind of education you are getting.

I heard about a business that was thinking about moving into the area and when they saw the lack of support for the schools, they decided to go elsewhere. Another business in the county has a satellite office in Dayton for their engineers because no one wants to live in Darke County.

No one wants to live there except the people that already do. And the people that already do have kids that move away and never come back. The number of households with children in school continues to decrease and the community continues to age and die.

Small towns want to hang onto their small-towness, but they vote down a thing that could help preserve their lifestyle and assure a future for their kids and grand-kids.

It’s easy to be nostalgic about small towns. It’s not easy to be nostalgic about ignorance.

Small towns like Greenville are killing themselves, and it’s tough to feel sorry for them.

Mad World

An Uncle’s Job

By Kelsey

My brother, Kyle, and his wife, Jenn, just welcomed their first child into the world.

Max Timmerman weighed in at 6lbs 9oz and was born yesterday a few skips from Houston’s Space Center. The sky’s the limit for Max. He’s got two really smart parents one of who – my brother – is a bit of doofus, but he’ll be okay.

I’ve been a proud uncle to Annie’s sister’s kids, Jared and Cale, for six years now, but it’s different with your own bro’s kids, you know? I feel like I have a little more latitude to teach Max the important things in life: how to spit, how to cuss, how to sneak sips of beer when the adults aren’t looking.

I just signed him up for lifetime subscriptions to Playboy, GQ, Esquire, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. I actually didn’t. But that’s the kind of uncle I want to be (minus the Playboy which would get me in a lot of trouble with Max’s mom).

An uncle’s job is to teach a boy all the things his mom won’t let his father teach him.

It will be an absolute honor, my man, Max.

This Writer’s Life

I want a shark bite

By Kelsey

In honor of shark week, I’m dusting off an old piece from my column writing days. It’s from 2006 so the stats might be a bit out of whack.

Sharks Bite?

The waters don’t feel sharky, but I’ve been wrong before.

I’m 85 miles off the coast of Cuba, 40-feet beneath the ocean’s surface. The water is murky and I am tooling along a lengthy coral finger. People dive in these waters to see all of the bright colors and unique fish. All I can see are shadows.

The coral finger is the big unmoving shadow to my right. The small shadows floating around it vary in size and shape; they are fish such as parrot, squirrel, snapper, and angel fish. The large shadow ahead, coming right at me is…oh, wait. It’s bulky. It travels in smooth horizontal movements. Dorsal fin - check. Odd-shaped head with two malevolent eyes unnaturally separated - CHECK! It is a hammerhead SHARK!

The chase begins, but I don’t stand a chance. 400 million years of evolution are against me.

It would be a lot cooler if the shark had moved in for an attack and I eluded it by ducking behind a coral head and then fought it off by wrestling it with its jaws snapping wildly inches from my mask, but this is not the case.

The hammerhead and I are both surprised. I don’t move or breathe. It changes course. I can see the tip of its snout, the end of its powerful tail, and the eight-feet of streamlined predator in between. Quickly, and with little effort, it disappears into the murk. The chase that ensues is my trying to get a better look at the magnificent creature.

Despite what movies like JAWS, Open Water, and The Deep Blue Sea would lead you to believe, being attacked by a shark is very, very rare. There is a long list of improbable things that you are more likely to be harmed by including, earthworms, banana slugs, and toasters.

If you are like me and you are not into tattoos, but do get some strange enjoyment out of scars, which are life’s tattoos, you may be disappointed at the rarity of a shark bite. After all, what cooler life tattoo is there? I am not talking a big bite where flesh is missing or left hanging. A small one, just big enough to be manly, which requires way less than 100 stitches and no physical therapy, would do. What’s cooler? A flaming skull inked on your flabby bicep or a few spaced out scars left by the teeth of a shark?

Acquaintances at the gym would point to your arm in envy. You could say, “Oh that…it’s just a shark bite.” Congratulations, “Shark Bite”, you just got yourself a new nickname.

Most shark attacks on humans are cases of a mistaken identity: surfers look like seals; a white foot in the silt of the shallows looks like a fish. I am not saying sharks are big puppy dogs that you should grab by the tail and give kisses to, although I have seen this being done on shark feeds in the Bahamas, but you are not the one who should be most afraid in a shark-human encounter.

Each year 100 million sharks are killed by humans. We hack off their fins, essential for swimming, and throw their wriggling, bloody torsos back into the water to die slowly, all for a nice bowl of shark fin soup. According to Julia Brown of Halifax University, worldwide shark populations are falling at an alarming rate. In the past 50 years there has been a 61% decrease in the population of large species. The population of white tip sharks, once thought to be the most abundant large animal on earth, has decreased by an alarming 99%.

It is no wonder that the hammerhead saw me and swam swiftly away. We humans are scary.

Seeing a shark while diving is a lot like seeing a police car while driving; you slow down and take stock, “Do I have anything to be worried about?” Once you realize that you are well within the limits of the laws of nature or of the highway patrol, you continue on your way, occasionally, checking your rearview mirror to see if you are being followed.

Sharks are not to be feared, but to be respected. I have taken over 700 SCUBA dives in the ocean and have yet to have a scary encounter with a shark.

The only fish that ever attacked me was a three-inch blue gill protecting her eggs in a freshwater quarry in Ohio. Unfortunately, I don’t have any scars to show for it. It’s probably a good thing; the nickname “Blue Gill Bite” just doesn’t have the same ring.

A pic I took in the Bahamas on a shark dive.

Travel

$10 for Tuesday: In support of wounded soldiers

By Kelsey

Captain Scott Smiley

Leaving your family isn’t easy. I leave mine for a month or two at time. That’s a tough goodbye. Each time I’m faced with it, I think about the men and women of our military. They are gone for much longer and traveling to lands far less welcoming.

Returning home is always sweet. I return with my hair a bit longer, a few pounds missing, and some great stories. Annie usually cuts my hair within a few days, a couple weeks eating dessert puts the weight back on, and I stew over the stories making them readable. It takes next to no time for me to be back to normal.

But that’s not always the case for our soldiers.

They said goodbye. They went to war. Some of them returned injured.

I don’t know many soldiers. But I had the pleasure of meeting Scott Smiley who is one of a few blind active-duty soldiers. He was blinded in Iraq and is now a teacher at West Point. Scotty’s journey is recounted in his book Hope Unseen due out in September.

But sacrifices like Scotty’s are ones that I don’t think about enough.

Do you?

That’s why this Tuesday I’m sending my $10 to Team, Red, White, & Blue.

Team, Red, White, & Blue is a nonprofit that matches endurance athletes with wounded soldiers and their families. The athletes raise money that goes directly to the soldier. How cool is that?

Today it’s $10, but someday it will be buckets of sweat. I can’t wait.

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Giving Back, ten4tues