Mitch
Crawled Through 5 FB Fields
Dear Skane Family:
My name is Walter Mitchell. On the ASFN website I am known as Mitch. Rather than expound on my own involvement and participation on the Arizona Sports Fans' Network, and how frequently and ardently such participation was encouraged by Jim, I wish to elaborate entirely on the impact Jim made on me and everyone here at ASFN, and most importantly, Jim's true colors as a human being...certainly one of the most remarkable human beings I and we have ever known.
First of all, I believe I have experienced over the past week a phenomenon that many of the posters here at ASFN have been feeling. I am having a very hard time coping with Jim's loss. I find myself welling up with tears several times a day. I just miss him terribly. You see, other than the colleagues and students I work with every day, there is no person in this world I communicated and interacted with more on a daily basis than the man I knew as Skkorpion. And the tremendous irony is: I never met the man or shook his hand. Nor did I ever actually hear his voice...but to further the irony, Jim's voice is one of the few voices I will never forget, for I came to know that voice of reason...that voice of passion...that voice of wit...that voice of hope...and that voice of compassion...surely about as well and clearly as any voice I have ever heard.
In several of our private messages over the years we tried to coordinate a time to speak over the phone, but, due to our three hour time zone differences, we never did. Yet, in those written messages, his caring for me as a human being was extraordinary. He always asked about my family and wished all of us well. One thing I quickly learned is that Jim Skane is all about family.
And that's exactly what he created here at ASFN: a family. Today ASFN is by far the most popular and informative resource that Arizona Cardinals' fans around the world enjoy. I am proud to say that all of the posters on this board have made this website THE place to go for Cardinal news and opinion. Yet, no one was prouder of that than its founder, captain and father, Jim Skane.
I want you to know as well, how loyal Jim was to EVERY poster who ever logged on to this website. He welcomed everyone with open arms...and encouraged everyone to create and illuminate his/her own voice on this board. And Jim did this with an impeccable concern for decorum and decency. There were Jim's rules to live by on this board, and he held us all firmly to those rules (and even went as far to emphasize those rules with his parting message to us!). And whenever we would violate the rules, he would remind us of the responsibility we were all given to contribute to the board's integrity.
Jim also had such an abiding respect for integrity as he sensed it in other people. When Jim sensed a person's integrity, there was no messing with that person, not on Jim's watch.
When I think of how disadvantaged Jim was physically, being relegated to a wheelchair and beleaguered by health problems for so many many years, this makes Jim even more extraordinary. In a way, Jim was living inside his own prison...and yet one would have never known it, not in the way Jim talked so passionately about life, about ASFN and about his beloved Arizona Cardinals. And the great solace we all can feel today is analagous to the solace and joy and relief we felt when Andy Dufresne of Stephen King's The Shawshank Redemption "crawled through five football fields of the foulest %^&* one can ever imagine and came out smelling sweet on the other side."
Yet, the thing I will always treasure and cherish most about Jim Skane was his passion for the written word. Jim was a true man of letters, in both the old and the new sense. On the rare occasions when he would write a thread or an article, no one was more witty and more effectively eloquent than Jim. I often implored him in our private messages to write more often...but Jim was very modest about his own writing...in fact, at times, he was quite self-effacing about it. But, no one at ASFN or even in the great state of Arizona wrote about the Arizona Cardinals with more beguiling elan than Jim.
Top Jim's credit...he took more pleasure in delighting in others' words...and I like to think of him these days and how proud he was after the Cardinals won the NFC Championship to read the articulate and passionate threads than ensued on the ASFN board. I honestly believe that those were the halcyon days for Jim and he absolutely reveled in the majesty of his own ASFN creation...just to feel the subilme sensation of viewing the voices he allowed us all to create on this board sing in 1,000 part harmony with such elocution and elation.
In remembrance of Jim's greatest ASFN joy, and in cognizance of his extraordinary legacy, I offer you this poem by Louise Gluck from her book "The Wild Iris," which won her the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1994:
Retreating Light
Yopu were like very young children
always waiting for a story.
And I'd been through it all too many times;
I was tired of telling stories.
So I gave you the pencil and paper.
I gave you pens made of reeds
I had gathered myself, afternoons in the dense meadows.
I told you, write your own story.
After all these years of listening
I thought you'd know
what a story was.
All you could do was weep
You wanted everything told to you
and nothing thought through yourselves.
Then I realized you couldn't think
with any real boldness or passion;
you hadn't had your own lives yet,
your own tragedies.
So I gave you lives, I gave you tragedies,
because apparently tools weren't enough.
You will never know how deeply
it pleases me to see you sitting there
like independent beings,
to see you dreaming by the open window,
holding the pencils I gave you
until the summer morning disappears into writing.
Creation has brought you
great excitement, as I knew it would,
as it does in the beginning.
And I am free to do as I please now,
to attend to other things, in confidence
you have no need of me anymore.
___________________________________________________________
Well, I and we have never really stopped needing Jim...which is why the letting go is so hard. I didn't know really until this past week how much I have come to rely on him. But, I know that Jim was ready to move on...and I know that Jim has complete confidence that we will continue to write our "own stories" on ASFN. But, it will never be quite the same. This is like F.A. Schwartz losing Santa Claus at Christmas time. Somethings will never be the same.
So I will leave you with another quote from the Shawshank Redemption:
"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they flew away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice, still the place you live in is that much more drab and empty now that they are gone. I guess I just miss my friend."
God Bless our friend Jim and especially all of the Skane family...best wishes and Godspeed to all of you...goodbye great friend, O Captain! my Captain!...your voice is with God above, but the echoes will always remain.
With love, admiration and appreciation,
Mitch
My name is Walter Mitchell. On the ASFN website I am known as Mitch. Rather than expound on my own involvement and participation on the Arizona Sports Fans' Network, and how frequently and ardently such participation was encouraged by Jim, I wish to elaborate entirely on the impact Jim made on me and everyone here at ASFN, and most importantly, Jim's true colors as a human being...certainly one of the most remarkable human beings I and we have ever known.
First of all, I believe I have experienced over the past week a phenomenon that many of the posters here at ASFN have been feeling. I am having a very hard time coping with Jim's loss. I find myself welling up with tears several times a day. I just miss him terribly. You see, other than the colleagues and students I work with every day, there is no person in this world I communicated and interacted with more on a daily basis than the man I knew as Skkorpion. And the tremendous irony is: I never met the man or shook his hand. Nor did I ever actually hear his voice...but to further the irony, Jim's voice is one of the few voices I will never forget, for I came to know that voice of reason...that voice of passion...that voice of wit...that voice of hope...and that voice of compassion...surely about as well and clearly as any voice I have ever heard.
In several of our private messages over the years we tried to coordinate a time to speak over the phone, but, due to our three hour time zone differences, we never did. Yet, in those written messages, his caring for me as a human being was extraordinary. He always asked about my family and wished all of us well. One thing I quickly learned is that Jim Skane is all about family.
And that's exactly what he created here at ASFN: a family. Today ASFN is by far the most popular and informative resource that Arizona Cardinals' fans around the world enjoy. I am proud to say that all of the posters on this board have made this website THE place to go for Cardinal news and opinion. Yet, no one was prouder of that than its founder, captain and father, Jim Skane.
I want you to know as well, how loyal Jim was to EVERY poster who ever logged on to this website. He welcomed everyone with open arms...and encouraged everyone to create and illuminate his/her own voice on this board. And Jim did this with an impeccable concern for decorum and decency. There were Jim's rules to live by on this board, and he held us all firmly to those rules (and even went as far to emphasize those rules with his parting message to us!). And whenever we would violate the rules, he would remind us of the responsibility we were all given to contribute to the board's integrity.
Jim also had such an abiding respect for integrity as he sensed it in other people. When Jim sensed a person's integrity, there was no messing with that person, not on Jim's watch.
When I think of how disadvantaged Jim was physically, being relegated to a wheelchair and beleaguered by health problems for so many many years, this makes Jim even more extraordinary. In a way, Jim was living inside his own prison...and yet one would have never known it, not in the way Jim talked so passionately about life, about ASFN and about his beloved Arizona Cardinals. And the great solace we all can feel today is analagous to the solace and joy and relief we felt when Andy Dufresne of Stephen King's The Shawshank Redemption "crawled through five football fields of the foulest %^&* one can ever imagine and came out smelling sweet on the other side."
Yet, the thing I will always treasure and cherish most about Jim Skane was his passion for the written word. Jim was a true man of letters, in both the old and the new sense. On the rare occasions when he would write a thread or an article, no one was more witty and more effectively eloquent than Jim. I often implored him in our private messages to write more often...but Jim was very modest about his own writing...in fact, at times, he was quite self-effacing about it. But, no one at ASFN or even in the great state of Arizona wrote about the Arizona Cardinals with more beguiling elan than Jim.
Top Jim's credit...he took more pleasure in delighting in others' words...and I like to think of him these days and how proud he was after the Cardinals won the NFC Championship to read the articulate and passionate threads than ensued on the ASFN board. I honestly believe that those were the halcyon days for Jim and he absolutely reveled in the majesty of his own ASFN creation...just to feel the subilme sensation of viewing the voices he allowed us all to create on this board sing in 1,000 part harmony with such elocution and elation.
In remembrance of Jim's greatest ASFN joy, and in cognizance of his extraordinary legacy, I offer you this poem by Louise Gluck from her book "The Wild Iris," which won her the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1994:
Retreating Light
Yopu were like very young children
always waiting for a story.
And I'd been through it all too many times;
I was tired of telling stories.
So I gave you the pencil and paper.
I gave you pens made of reeds
I had gathered myself, afternoons in the dense meadows.
I told you, write your own story.
After all these years of listening
I thought you'd know
what a story was.
All you could do was weep
You wanted everything told to you
and nothing thought through yourselves.
Then I realized you couldn't think
with any real boldness or passion;
you hadn't had your own lives yet,
your own tragedies.
So I gave you lives, I gave you tragedies,
because apparently tools weren't enough.
You will never know how deeply
it pleases me to see you sitting there
like independent beings,
to see you dreaming by the open window,
holding the pencils I gave you
until the summer morning disappears into writing.
Creation has brought you
great excitement, as I knew it would,
as it does in the beginning.
And I am free to do as I please now,
to attend to other things, in confidence
you have no need of me anymore.
___________________________________________________________
Well, I and we have never really stopped needing Jim...which is why the letting go is so hard. I didn't know really until this past week how much I have come to rely on him. But, I know that Jim was ready to move on...and I know that Jim has complete confidence that we will continue to write our "own stories" on ASFN. But, it will never be quite the same. This is like F.A. Schwartz losing Santa Claus at Christmas time. Somethings will never be the same.
So I will leave you with another quote from the Shawshank Redemption:
"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they flew away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice, still the place you live in is that much more drab and empty now that they are gone. I guess I just miss my friend."
God Bless our friend Jim and especially all of the Skane family...best wishes and Godspeed to all of you...goodbye great friend, O Captain! my Captain!...your voice is with God above, but the echoes will always remain.
With love, admiration and appreciation,
Mitch
