The last time I wrote this monthly column, I alerted readers that I’d might be taking the occasion of my Monthly Milestones to highlight some of the comments left by readers on articles we’ve published. Readers should bear in mind: While I do read all the comments as they’re posted by readers, I have not systematically re-read all the comments for the purpose of selecting some for this column. I have not ranked them with any kind of scoring metric to arrive at anything like the “best” comments of the last two months. There are no prizes.

The two comments I’ve chosen for this month address two dissimilar topics: skating on a frozen pond and hiring convicted felons.

I’ll try to wrap those two topics into a conclusion, in which I relate how I’m spending Groundhog Day (today) – an effort that could be described as trying (very gently) to crush people’s childhood dreams.

Whose Team Are You On?

The first comment I’d like to highlight is one left by Heidi Koester in response to one of John U. Bacon’s weekly columns on sports. In the column “Pondering Pond Hockey,” Bacon describes his childhood experience playing the game:

We’d lace ‘em up and play until it was too dark to see, then put our boots back on and head home for dinner. On weekends, we’d spend all day down there. Friends of mine who lived near Burns Park and Thurston Pond would come home, eat dinner with their skates on, then go back to the ice for more.

Editing and laying out Bacon’s column is not a Chronicle task that falls to me – so I read his columns just as a reader might, not as a editor would. So I skipped right over the mention of Thurston Pond. Had it really registered as Thurston Pond, I might have remember that, yes, that’s in Ann Arbor and I’ve been there. I spent a morning wading around in the pond with Neal Foster to report “Thurston Pond Gets Its Thirst On.”

A comment left by Heidi Koester made me go back and re-read the column, and that’s when the part about Thurston Pond sank in:

By Heidi Koester
January 24, 2010 at 3:13 pm | permalink

Enjoyed the article, but I disagree that “when you drive by those very same ponds today, you won’t see any kids.” From my home office window, I have a decent view of Thurston Pond. There’s an adult group that plays hockey there almost every day at noon time, and in the afternoons, after school is out, there are always skaters on the ice, most frequently playing hockey. It’s great to see, and it’s made possible by everyone who helps remove snow and otherwise maintain the ice.

I do agree that in general kids today seem more pressed for time than I remember as a kid in the 70’s. I did have a lot of scheduled activities (swim practice every day, tennis several times a week, etc.), but one difference is I had nowhere near the amount of homework that our 9th grader has. I think that’s another factor that, for better or worse, works against spontaneous play opportunities for kids.

What made me stop and focus on the comment was the way that Koester politely but very firmly expressed her disagreement, made specifically clear exactly what she disagreed with, then transitioned to some common ground, and added her individual perspective on that commonality.

In hockey terms, Koester took the puck shot by Bacon that was headed towards the net, slightly altered its direction, and scored the goal. So commenters who aren’t necessarily cheering everything the author writes, can still be on the same team.

The Penalty Box

We recently published a guest column by a social work student at the University of Michigan, Jason White, in which he argued that the city of Ann Arbor should eliminate the “checkbox” on its employment application, which requires disclosure of criminal conviction before a preliminary decision is made.

Many of the commenters simply cheered or jeered the call for eliminating the box. But Gary Salton took the basic premise of the column – that people with a criminal past deserve consideration – and challenged readers to do something themselves [emphasis added]:

“By Gary Salton
January 27, 2010 at 3:58 pm | permalink

I have hired felons in the past. But I did so with full knowledge of the nature and timing of the transgression. I have other employees to protect. As a responsible employer I do my utmost to provide a safe, pleasant and productive environment. Knowing who is working next to who is part of that responsibility.

I believe people should be given second chances. But that does not apply to every job and in every situation. The hurdle is higher for the felon. It should be. If you want to help reintegrate convicted felons, stop worrying about check marks. Instead, put some skin in the game. Start a business and hire them. Show them how to start a business. Equip them to handle the issue in an interview. Hiding a factual event(s) by making it more difficult to discover is not “fair” to the employer or to the other people with whom they must work.

Salton’s blunt challenge stirred a memory of a story I reported on a jobs summit, sponsored by the Michigan Prisoner ReEntry program: “Making Jobs for Former Prisoners.” At that summit, which included a panel of ex-prisoners from North Carolina and San Francisco, people pitched all sorts of ideas for starting businesses that could employ former prisoners.

Using bicycles and trailers to haul stuff around was not an idea that was pitched. I would have been the guy to pitch it, if anyone would have. I did not. Why not? Because it was not my childhood dream to launch a bicycle-based business that would employ ex-prisoners.

It’s a poor argument. Especially poor in light of the way that I’m spending Groundhog Day.

The Childhood Dreams of Groundhogs

I’m spending part of the day today at Greenhills School as a part of their Annual Day – it’s something like a career day, as far as I understand it. They’ve asked several guests to take “The Last Lecture” as a starting point.

An oversimplified backstory is that Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science, was asked to participate in a lecture series called “The Last Lecture” at that university. He delivered a compelling lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” which can be now be viewed on YouTube. It was compelling, in part, because Pausch gave the “last lecture” after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and made that a part of his presentation. He died in the summer of 2008, a little over nine months after delivering the lecture.

In the lecture, Pausch talks about how he achieved some of his childhood dreams, and the lessons he learned from pursuing them, even if he failed. It’s a fantastic lecture. But I found myself not completely connecting with it. Pausch had a whole list of dreams – from floating in zero gravity to being a Disney imagineer. But I’d be hard-pressed to produce anything like a list of childhood dreams, or even one. I recall mulling over the idea of taking a long trip on a riding lawn mower – it did not require a driver’s license … so I was all set, though our family did not own a riding lawn mower. But I think that was more about plotting an escape than having a dream.

In reflecting on what I do now on a regular basis, none of it has anything to do with childhood dreams, or even goals set as a young adult. And I think that a lot of life, not just mine, is made up of just doing the regular stuff that’s unconnected to dreams of any kind. And because that’s most of life, I’d prefer to focus on that.

So I’m going to tell the Greenhills students to give up on their dreams. Better sooner than later.

Instead of dreaming, I’m going to suggest that they be awake to the possibility that what they might enjoy most in life is something they never dreamed of.  That’s why we have this expression in English: “I never would have dreamed it.” Be open to the thing that you never would have dreamed of.

The Teeter Talk interview series was not a dream of mine – it was just a lark, some invitations sent with the expected answer: “No, Dave, that’s cute, but no, I’m not riding a teeter totter with you.” But it turns out someone said yes, and I figured I had an obligation to follow through.

Running a business that has me hauling books, tea, and recyclables around town was also not a dream – it began as a misunderstanding. I gave John Weise, proprietor of Books by Chance, a ride on my bicycle trailer and hauled him and his books to the post office – just one time, as a pre-teeter-totter activity. We documented that for Teeter Talk and one of Weise’s customer’s sent him an email praising the effort, clearly under the impression that the books-by-bike was a daily event. Well, I thought, I wonder if I could make that a reality. And so we did.

And The Ann Arbor Chronicle? Also not my dream. I was the “editor” of my junior high newspaper (highlight: an editorial about the quality of towels issued in gym class) but it was not a dream to become an editor of an actual newspaper. I’m involved with The Chronicle purely because I’m married to the publisher, Mary Morgan.

And the reason I’m married to her is not because I dreamed of it – I had no shot with her, the smartest and prettiest woman in that graduate school seminar, and I don’t waste time dreaming about impossible stuff. But on the last day of class, when she stuffed a piece of paper in my corduroy jacket breast pocket (I used to enjoy dressing the part of an academic), and stated simply, “That’s my phone number,” I was awake to the possibility that some kind of acquaintance with this woman might be possible.

So back to Gary Salton and his challenge: Start a business and hire ex-prisoners. Why not? The “it wasn’t my childhood dream” argument is clearly not going to cut it. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to quit The Chronicle tomorrow,  go out and buy a bunch of bicycles and trailers and hire ex-prisoners to pedal around town hauling stuff to and fro.

But Salton’s prod was enough to make me start thinking about what such a business would look like and where additional potential clients would come from. One thought: as the city takes a hard look at park maintenance, servicing trash cans is something that’s conceiveable by bicycle trailer – perhaps the city issues an RFP for a zero-carbon-footprint outsourced solution.

As I continue to mull this over, I wish you a happy Groundhog Day … I wonder what little groundhog dreams are made of.