Still futzing along with my spare computer while I wait to find out if the data from my fried MacBook can be retrieved. My spare Intel box has been working, except I’m using the same Bluetooth keyboard for this and my iPad, and the keyboard favors the wrong device when I need it.

After cancelling the springtime Dark Lord Days, Three Floyds Brewing Co. has finally announced a plan to distribute this year’s allotment. People visiting 3floyds.com on October 19, starting at 3 pm Central, can place an order. Each $170 package includes:

• Four custom-printed bottles of 2020 Dark Lord Russian-Style Imperial Stout
• One bottle of a rare 2020 Dark Lord variant
• Tote bag (That’s right!)

Limit 2 packages per customer. Each package will contain a random 2020 variant. People who buy two bags will get different variants.

Friday, October 9

Saturday, October 10

Sunday, October 11

“Leading” senior citizen groups are upset because opponents of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s graduated income tax shakedown are suggesting that it could lead to an Illinois tax on retirement income.

Older people will get confused, the groups say. But this is one older person who sees clearly that, indeed, the graduated income tax, while not making a tax on retirement income inevitable, sure makes it easier.

Once a graduated income tax is in place, calling for a tax on “rich” seniors will be a lot easier than imposing the existing flat tax on all seniors, including seniors who are living off meager pensions or social security.

And why not?

Illinois is one of only three  states that doesn’t tax  retirement income. It’s especially gratifying for unionized Illinois government workers, whose retirement income eclipses more modest private sector workers.

Democratic politicians here see additional “revenues” (i.e. taxes) as a major solution to Illinois catastrophic budget crisis. That they won’t touch one of the most obvious sources of additional revenue reveals a truth about them: Cowards.

Related: Pritzker revenue director sponsored bill to tax retirement income.  

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“Protest in college football is nearly as old as the sport itself, but change has come slowly. Are the power dynamics finally shifting?” –Alex Kirshner of TheRinger.com

The quote above served as the headnote in a piece this summer titled “The Impact and Evolution of College Football Player Protest”. The story outlined the experiences of groups like the Syracuse 8 and relationships to the realities for player activists today.

For the record, the Syracuse 8 — actually nine as the media miscounted — was a group of Black players who boycotted spring practice in 1970 after head coach Ben Schwartzwalder refused to address their concerns and instead barred them from team activities. Players also said Schwartzwalder bad-mouthed them to NFL types. None of the nine played in the league.

Kirshner wrote, “That December, chancellor John Corbally said racism in the athletic department was ‘real, chronic, largely unintentional, and sustained and complicated unwittingly by many modes of behavior common in American athletics and long-standing at Syracuse University.’ However, Corbally said he saw no reason to make ‘personnel changes.’ Schwartzwalder stayed on the job until retiring in 1973. Syracuse didn’t apologize to the boycotting players until welcoming them back to campus for an on-field ceremony in 2006, 36 years later.”

Flash forward to today

The recent social justice movements that have swept across the nation and globe certainly harken back to those events of 50 years ago.

Kirshner wrote, “At Iowa, former and current players gave testimonials that led to the resignation of the country’s highest-paid strength-and-conditioning coach. At Clemson, players pressured the administration to remove John C. Calhoun’s name from the honors college. At Mississippi State, a player helped spur legislators into voting to get rid of a state flag that incorporates the Confederate battle emblem. Players have also taken stands at Oklahoma State, Florida State, UCLA, Texas, and Texas A&M, among other schools.

“Protest in college football is nearly as old as the sport itself, but players and academics alike believe that today’s athletes have more power than their predecessors from any other era. That may be a reflection not only of how demands for systemic change are resonating throughout America, but of how this sport has evolved in particular.”

College football coaches and administrators are certainly well aware of this. Our Monday Prairie State Pigskin story chronicled events that have led to the dismissal of Illinois State’s offensive coordinator and the retirement announcement of the school’s longtime athletic director.

http://www.chicagonow.com/prairie-state-pigskin/2020/10/social-justice-movements-state-college-football-programs-strike-to-find-a-balance/

Being the head coach of a college football program requires a balancing act between running your program as you see see fit while opening your ears and mind to player concerns. And of course, there are the demands and expectations that you must win to keep your job.

Prairie State Pigskin asked the Illinois FCS head coaches to share their thoughts on the growth of player power.

“First of all, it goes back to who you recruit in your program,” Western Illinois’ Jared Elliott said. “As college coaches we’re fortunate to make our programs look like how we’d want them to look by who we bring in here. I think we’ve done a good job of that. I love our locker room. I love our players. I love the character of our players. We try to recruit those things as much as we do football skills. So when you do that, you’ve got kids that you trust and know what they’re about. I love having the ability for our players to have a platform and a voice. I know that our kids put a lot of thought behind what they say and what they mean. We’ve got a very unified team. We’ve got a team that really does stand together and cares about one another.

Jared Elliott

“There is a shift right now that we’re seeing, no question, more of a player voice than we’ve ever heard. My approach and my stance is that at the end of the day it’s my job as head coach here to be a decision maker, and we’ll make decisions. We’ll all be behind them whatever that is, but I am in full support of especially the leaders on our team, the guys that have been elevated to the leadership positions. They’ve put a lot into this team to earn that respect and to have a voice. My staff and I are in full support of those guys having a voice.”

Sophomore running back DeShon Gavin is one such player in Elliott’s program using his voice. The Joliet native who played at Providence Catholic High School has been active in an on-campus voting registration drive. 

“I want to encourage a movement, using my platform as a student-athlete to promote real change,” Gavin was quoted on the WIU athletics website.

Reasonable expectations

“You have to be reasonable as a coach and the players have to be reasonable,” Illinois State’s Brock Spack said. “You can have demands, but demands really don’t go very far. It’s expectations that you need to communicate. What are my expectations and how do I get to that? Young people growing up have to learn that if you’re going to have that kind of power they have to learn how to communicate their expectations in a way that’s respectful and reasonable. That’s key. Being disrespectful and unreasonable is not going to get you very far. They need to understand that. Coaches are listening, more than we ever have been. At least we are here. We’re trying to be. We get it.

Brock Spack

“So that’s where I come from. We have to have middle ground. There has to be understanding there is a chain of command, and you have to understand that. We all have to abide by the protocol of our program, the protocol of the organization because when you go out in the working world and you go outside of the protocol, the rules and the expectations of the organization you’re working and you’re going to find yourself in the unemployment line. I think we have to understand that as players and coaches as well. Your organization runs better when you listen.

“And on the flip side of that, the players should have an opinion and you should listen, but is your opinion reasonable? That’s something we should look at. We can have open dialogue. It’s good to have it, but we’re the adults, we’re the ones that have the experience and that’s what we get paid to do  — to make those kinds of decisions. You have to communicate that and make sure the players understand . . . but you as a coach, you as a leader should listen. That doesn’t mean you’ll always agree, but you can explain yourself and why you may not agree.”

Open and honest communication

Like many head coaches today, Adam Cushing of Eastern Illinois has a players’ council that he and his staff meet with regularly.

Adam Cushing

“It’s a positive for college football, for the whole society, that people are using the voice and are empowered to do so. In the end, that’s what’s critical,” Cushing said. “Listen to what’s being said and get to the why it’s being said. Have open and honest conversation. That’s how we’re respecting everything that is said.

“And then, here’s what our side of that is. I know that’s what you want; here’s why we want to do it this way. Take any example. Here’s why we ran after practice today. We had our eight periods of helmets and non-air work this morning and then we ran. We didn’t run last week because we’re trying to progress them up. But explaining, ‘hey we ran you and we ran you really hard because you have to get better than you were last week.’ That’s a microcosm, but it’s explaining on both sides. I think truly gone are the days of, ‘Do it this way!’

“There’s more information at their fingertips than anyone of our generations ever had. They absolutely deserve the why. As long as we are continuing to communicate that on both sides, that’s the balance, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but open and honest communication.”

Social media is a game-changer

Southern Illinois head coach Nick Hill finished his record-setting career as Salukis’ quarterback in 2007, so he’s not that far removed from his playing days.

Nick Hill

“It’s a good thing that the players’ voices are definitely being heard,” Hill said during his media address Tuesday. “I would say in the last 10 years since I was here (things have evolved). The social media platform has obviously changed in the last decade. When I was a junior Facebook first came up, and you didn’t have it on your phone. At any point, now everybody has a platform. How you use that is important. That’s probably the biggest thing that has changed.

“Players in sport have always had a platform. It’s using it in the right way. It’s using it in pursuing that. And recognizing that the window of opportunity that you have as a student-athlete to use your voice and use your platform, connections, those type of things to create change, create a positive conversation. I think that that’s always been there, I think more so now with the social media. Those type of things make it easier for their voices to be heard.”

You ever have that moment when you wake up, open the laptop, click on Zoom and think to yourself, “Yep. I’m ready to work on a farm.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, this forced work-from-home arrangement started out great. No commute. Optional pants. But I feel like I signed a deal with the devil. He sold me on sweatpants but didn’t mention this would go on for a year, maybe longer. He didn’t tell me that by October the phrases, “Wanna hop on a Zoom call?” “Let’s hop on a Zoom,” “You get my Zoom link?” would make me want to throw my laptop into a lake.

But it seems like a lot of people enjoy this new setup. Or at least that’s what the headlines say. At most, you’ll see something like, “Employees mention ‘Zoom fatigue,’ but by and large are thriving with work from home.’ Out in Silicon Valley, companies compete for who can extend work-from-home longest.

“Our employees will be working from home til the end of 2020.”

“Oh yeah? Well, ours will be working from home til 2022!”

“Yeah? Well, ours will no longer be working at all. We’re paying them to do yoga, from home, til 2025.”

“Wait, really?”

“Eh, that might’ve been too far.”

For introverts, this is the golden era of office work. Years of trying to focus at their desks surrounded by, “Hey, how bout that Bears game? You see that Bears game?” has been replaced with a working nirvana. They’re getting so much done. Introverts are on fire. Extroverts are talking to their plants.

As an extrovert, what ultimately led me to work a farm shift was simple: If I can’t be around co-workers, then at least give me some cows and chickens. Doesn’t matter if it’s on a Saturday, doesn’t matter if it’s 6 am, I’m ready to do some work that’s not held over Zoom.

Welcome to the Farm

I show up at 6 am to All Grass Farms. The sun is rising off in the distance and there’s fog over the prairie. I take it in for a second, ready to let out that work-from-home sigh, the one where you think, “Man, I wish I could be outside today,” before it registered,”Wait, this is my office.” The sunrise, the fog, the field. It’s all part of it. I look around and the space seems huge. It’s a whole different outlook than scrolling through Outlook.

I meet with one of the farmers and our first task is to fill up buckets of feed to take out to the egg-laying chickens. We fill up the buckets, throw them in the back of a John Deere Gator. Drive over and when I see the two chicken areas, there’s gotta be a thousand chickens. Maybe more. All of them are going crazy. Cluck-cluck-cluck. When you carry a bucket of food around a flock of chickens, you are their god. They all surround you and there’s no sense of order, no middle manager chicken who says, “Alright guys, now let’s line-up single file.” It’s total chaos.

They have a big dog named Baraboo who hangs out with the chickens and fights off any intruding foxes, raccoons, or other predators that try to sneak in. He occasionally takes out a chicken himself, but that’s only when they get too close to his food. All the animals on the farm take their food very seriously.

After the chickens, it’s time to feed the pigs. When you’re with a group of pigs, you look down and wonder, “Where did the Porky the Pig cartoon ever come from?” Pigs aren’t pink, they’re not cute, and they don’t have a stuttering problem. But they definitely pig out. And they’re a total mess. Where the chickens look up to their feeder as a god, I don’t think the pigs even see someone holding the bucket. I probably looked like food to them too.

Actually, it’s kind of like how I look down at the pigs. All I see is bacon.

The Guernsey Girls

The next stage of the shift is the main event. All Grass Farms is, first and foremost, a dairy farm. They’ve got 25-30 Guernsey cows that need to be milked every morning for the 9 am opening of the farm store. We head over and herd the Guernsey cows into the barn. I look and each one has a nametag. There are a few one-month, two-month-old calves hanging out with their moms. One of the farmers talks about the different personalities of the cows and it’s true, some are easy-going, they’re good with walking right into the barn. Others fight back a little. A few are just lying down like teenagers on a school day. “Come on, just give me like 15 more minutes. I got the snooze button.”

We take the cows into the milking area and I look up at the clock. “It’s not even 8 am!?” They bring in four cows at a time, bring each one to a stall. My job is to setup four big bowls of food in front of them. Cows aren’t nearly as crazy as the pigs, but they don’t look up to me like the chickens. They have more of an entitled look in their eyes like, “Alright, skinny boy, keep my food coming.”

After eight, maybe 12 cows, they give me my first shot at milking. There’s a milking machine, but the process is first you wipe off the udder, clean off any dirt from each teat (and there’s nothing wrong with giggling each time I use the word ‘teat’ in this post). After that, here’s the tough part. Time to manually get a couple of squirts. The squirts go into these four petri dish type things with a purple dye. You’re testing the milk for mastitis, which you determine based on the color and consistency in each dish.

My instinct when milking is to pull down like you’re ringing the “Thank You!” bell at an Arby’s. Doesn’t work. Try again. Nope. Turns out milking a cow is a lot like the surfing scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall; the general rule is “To do less.” I’d try and describe the right way to do it, but I don’t think I 100% figured it out. Had to be bailed out a few times.

It reminded me of the introvert vs. extrovert dilemma in the work-from-home era. In the office, the extrovert could always point to the “morale” boost they provided to the team. Being a good “locker room guy.” And so a manager might say, “Well, they don’t know how to milk the cow, but their Arby’s tug makes people laugh and it’s good for the culture.” Meanwhile the introvert is flying through their tasks but the manager says, “Ehhhh, but they don’t really talk to anyone. And they didn’t join the work league softball team.” The extrovert ends up winning because of those “intangibles.” But the work-from-home era has wiped out all the extra stuff. Now it’s only about who can milk the cows the fastest.

After the mastitis test, you put this yellow foamy stuff on each teat, let that sit for 30 seconds. This is further cleaning and disinfecting. Wipe it off. Wipe the teats with another disinfecting wipe. And then clamp on four suction tubes which begin the actual milking process. The milk goes through the tubes, through the pipes, through another filtration system and into the store. Doesn’t get more “milk on tap” than that.

For anyone who has concerns with the safety of raw milk, those fears are gone after a shift at All Grass Farms. When you start with cows that have nametags and personalities, that are allowed to roam freely on the grass, eat nothing but what they’re designed to eat, and each teat is checked, cleaned, tested, and then filtered again, that’s about as pure as it gets. It’s why I swear by their milk – not only being the best I’ve tasted but I feel great after it. Their milk is a super food.

Grab a Shovel, Kid

So what do 30 cows do as they wait to go into their stalls? It’s simple. Nothing but pee and poop. Each cow is kind of like a 1,600 lb newborn baby. After they’ve been filed out back to the farm, now it’s time to grab a shovel.

For at least an hour, maybe longer, I’m shoveling crap the same way I’d shovel a driveway in January. One row at a time. Reach the end. Throw the pile into a wheel barrel. Start the next row.

This was a new perspective on work. Literally doing the “crappy” part of the job. And it made me think, you know, no matter if the work is something you love to do or not, there’s always the shovel the crap part. Even something fun like writing this blog post, Monday’s the fun part, but Tuesday and Wednesday I come back in and look for mistakes. Edit. Shovel the crap. At work, there’s the parts you love, but then there are the long meetings. And catching up on email. And, of course, the dreaded Zoom. I think next time I have to do one of these parts, I’m gonna look at a shovel on the wall. “Oh yeah, this is the crappy part.”

After the cows, we head over to the baby turkeys and chickens area. Our mission is to pick up 20 turkeys that look bigger than the rest and move them over to what I’ll call a turkey pavilion.

Those 20 turkeys, it’s totally random who gets picked. I’m just trying to spot which ones look a little bit bigger than their counterparts. But I imagine the turkeys talking to each other afterwards. They come up with reasons for why they didn’t get picked.

Whew. I didn’t get picked because I’ve been a pretty good turkey this week. 

Or:

Yeah, Dale totally deserved to get fired. He’s been a total turkey jerk this week.

Seems absurd, of course, but I think about this in life – when good things or bad things happen – I’m always trying to pinpoint something I did right or wrong to deserve or earn it. Or you look at those age-old philosophical questions, “Why do bad things happen to good people or good things happen to bad people,” whatever the case, we try to assign meaning. I wonder if God feels a lot like the guy looking down, sorting through the turkeys. Just smiles and says, “Oh man, you guys have no idea what’s going on.”

That’s another thing on the farm, you’re surrounded by life and death. I saw two chickens and one turkey that didn’t make it. Another one who was injured, probably wouldn’t make it to the next day. In the office, there’s no life and death. The closest thing to death is a broken printer.

I thought about all of these turkeys and some are earlier in the process, but all of them it’s onto the pavilion, eat, get bigger, walk around, then eventually show up on our Thanksgiving tables. The whole cycle feels very Lion King “Circle of Life.” They go from farm animal to food to nap to a fond memory. So there’s really no end to a turkey’s life, it’s just different stages that all connect together.

Or, to use a quote from Eckhart Tolle, “Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.”

Farmer vs. Turkey

Now it’s time for the best part of the day. They attach this pavilion type structure to the back of a Ford F-150. The goal is to move it forward so the turkeys have fresh grass. I’m given a stick that’s kind of like a kayak paddle or the offering stick they use at a Catholic church.

I head to the back of the pavilion, get in my defensive stance. As the truck pulls forward, the turkeys rush to the back, trying to escape. I patrol the space like a hockey goalie. “Get outta here!” You smack the stick against the boards, the sound scares the turkeys enough to run forward. But you gotta be quick, another five turkeys are trying to make a run for it. Sometimes you gotta push the turkeys forward with the paddle. And it’s for their own good, if they get caught under the pavilion, it’s game over.

We repeat this three more times, this time with the chickens. They’re a little bit easier. As we’re leaving, my co-worker (co-farmer?) points to a pile of cow crap. He talks about how the crap naturally brings in a bunch of flies. The flies lay eggs. Then the larvae/maggots become some of the best food, best source of protein for the chickens. Talk about a Circle of Life.

And as I went home for the day, feeling exhausted and sore all over, I wondered if my time there was helpful at all. I wasn’t the fastest shoveler. Wasn’t the greatest milker. But I thought, you know, if a farm can utilize a pile of cow crap, well, there must be at least some value in a volunteer shift from a city writer.

Over the last several months, I’ve been using the Medium Rare blog in a different format, featuring local restaurants and businesses around the Chicago area. These can also drift into a little bit of philosophy and stories from my own life + a historical deep dive like this one a couple weeks ago on the history of milk. You can read more about All Grass Farms’ story right here.

To catch up with the city pieces, most about restaurants and small businesses in Lakeview East, check out this book-in-progress over on Long Overdue Books.

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