MR. HAGEN'S CLASS

“The past is never dead.  It isn't even past.”                                                                                            -William Faulkner You can only talk and listen to the radio on a road trip for so long before the boredom lulls you into silence.  If you’re not careful you might just be forced to think. We pulled into the Missouri visitor center for a road map and a little advice.  We’d driven over a thousand miles - Milwaukee to Dallas and part way back - relying solely on GPS but now we w...

Long before someone introduced Bango the Milwaukee Bucks mascot to steroids and we all learned to “fear the deer,” there was another equally ferocious character terrorizing the city’s north side.  Now I'm not saying I grew up in a sketchy part of town but apparently my grade school mascot was a mouse. Behold “The Mouse’s Roar,” my school newspaper from spring of 1976. A word of advice for parents:  if you’re looking into schools for junior you may want to inquire about the mascot.  If it’s a mouse, vole, rat, or any other potentially Black Plague/hantavirus spreading mammal just move on.  Your kids will thank you for it. My high school mascot wasn't much better.  I attended Custer High School (now Barack Obama Academy) home of the Custer Indians.  The school wasn't actually named after George Armstrong Custer of the infamous Little Big Horn massacre.  It was named for a different Custer. I'm not sure what the Indians did to him. Apparent...