And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that the handwriting seems to be on the wall in regard to the future of the Waterville attendance center of the Allamakee Community School District.

Not on the walls of that almost 100 year old building, but in the information publication put out by the district’s board for consideration prior to the board meeting in November and the December meeting to announce a decision.

It isn’t anyone’s fault if the decision is to close the school. It is a victim of changing population densities. The information shows an average of about 20 students per grade just 20 years ago to about ten projected for next year. Rural populations have declined everywhere as farmers have faced the same problem as many mom and pop businesses, either get big or get out.

I have no heavily invested personal interest in the Waterville school, but I have memories, some fond, some not so much. As a high school student at St. Patrick School, we played basketball in that cracker-jack Waterville gym, where the walls were out of bounds and the ceiling too low to allow a lofted shot.

We lost, but Waterville had better players as well as home court advantage.

Many years later, I covered basketball games played in the new gym added to the school.

For many years, I covered the annual school board meeting held in Waterville after school elections. The school looked like a school. Steps of many students over many years were evident in the wear on stairways. Pride showed in the care of the building.

I was active at the newspaper when the decision was made to close the Dorchester school. There was a great deal of angry opposition at that time, and I am hoping that can be avoided in the case of the Waterville school.

But it is true that when a community loses its school, it loses more than the use of that building.

Again, it is nobody’s fault. The district has tried by changing attendance boundaries, but that proved temporary.

I laughed to myself Sunday morning when I read Garrison Keillor’s column. He castigated the Nobel Prize committee for selecting an obscure writer for its literature prize. He says the writer is dull. He said it should have gone to an American author of popular novels.

Lefty Keillor accused the Swedes who make the awards of not having a sense of humor. The Swedes gave newly elected Barack Obama a Nobel Prize for peace at the same time he was first elected president, before he had done anything except utter the word “peace” while campaigning, I found that pretty funny, Garrison.

And this year’s prize for literature went to a poet whose verses follow form and actually rhyme.

Wonder if English major Keillor considers that funny.