Download "Santa Came Too Soon"
"Old Man River & Me," written with Mark Knudsen.
Daily tracking & ranking of baseball’s top players since 1995. Showing which players most help their teams win the most games based on box score statistics.
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When my old friend and newspaper colleague called to remind me of a special section we did 20 years ago in tribute to the life of fallen basketball star Chris Street, it brought back memories and made me realize, all these years later, what a great thing we did. And though it was a great section, the paper itself didn't have one anymore. Fortunately, I did.
A poem on farm market reports, thoughts on the use of profanity as a productivity tool, pondering generational labels, and trying to figure out why birds were trying to kill me. These were a few topics of a weekly column I wrote for just over five years. Though I wrote upwards of 250 of them, I mercifully only share (or inflict upon you) 20 of the columns here and reflect back—way back—to the days when I wrote them.
On this, the 11th anniversary of 9/11, I want to begin the process to reclaim the day of September 11 as a normal day again.
Don’t get me wrong. What happened that day in 2001 was terrible and should not be forgotten or downplayed. I would just prefer that what happened not be so firmly attached to and defined by the date it happened. It is almost as if the numbers that make up the date themselves have become evil. It is almost as if the numbers 9/11 have replaced in our mind the horrible events of the day. It is almost as if it was the numbers themselves that did it to us.
Updated on Monday, June 18, 2012 at 8:00 PM by
Shawn Plank
Updated on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 9:20 AM by
Shawn Plank
Updated on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 8:53 PM by
Shawn Plank
As a June 30 deadline nears to update my Apple Macs to Lion and iCloud, I've spent hours converting old files to make sure they will still be accessible in the modern system—many would not have been if not for my intervention. This has provided me great opportunity to relive the past, but it's largely been a frustrating and confusing time that could have been spent doing just about anything else. If computers can be made easier to use, why can't they be made more easily backwards compatible?
A collection of songs by and about the people (not the folks) of Iowa (not Ioway).
My brother Andy died of ALS May 29 at his home in North Liberty, Iowa, after fighting the disease nearly five years. He was 40 and left behind his wife, Susan, and their two sons, Zac, 10, and Brennan, 7. What follows are two things. First, my thoughts about writing a eulogy for Andy and second, the eulogy itself that I gave at his funeral service, June 2:
This is my eulogy to my maternal grandfather, Gerald Scotton, who died Sunday, June 28, 2009, at the age of 96. He farmed near Northboro, Iowa, nearly all his life. In 2001, he moved to a care center in nearby Shenandoah and in 2007, he moved to a care center in Columbus Junction to be closer to his daughter, my mom.
His funeral was at the Northboro United Methodist Church on July 1. I read the eulogy as an introduction to a song I sang and played on guitar:
Sandy Martin, the high school English teacher who got me involved in newspaper, yearbook, speech, drama, and writing, retired at the end of the 2008-09 school year. On Sunday, June 7, I was among 27 speakers who surprised her at her retirement ceremony. This is what I said:
On June 1, 2009, my Dad, Chuck Plank, ends 46 years of ownership of Plank Implement, the farm equipment dealership he began in Columbus City, Iowa. Although he has sold the shop, Dad will remain as manager. Obviously, the shop has been an important part of our family’s life for as long as I can remember. My Grandpa Ray (Dad’s dad) worked there for many years. Mom worked there keeping books in the early years. We three siblings—Jodie, Andy, and I—all had our first jobs there, sweeping floors, taking inventory of the parts, or my favorite, filling the pop machine. On May 30, his employees past and present honored him at a party marking this transition. I read this poem to mark the occasion: