Valor

“Fields of valor and victory
White crosses that bear no name
Each one gave their life to history
A young boy in an old man’s game.”
Force Titan

Sheriff Dominguez and I finished proofreading the “Valor” manuscript, and I Fed Exed it to IU Press. We can’t wait to see the book. The Sheriff gave me some free passes to his Spring Fundraiser in connection with his race for Lake County commissioner. I sent two of them to George and Bette Roberts.

Lunchtime reading was a Traces article by Rachel Roberts about the Auburn (IN) Rubber Company, which started out making car tires and eventually was successful making toy rubber figures of soldiers, race cars and drivers, utility trucks, farm animals and many other figurines. After being in northeast Indiana for a half-century the company was lured into moving to New Mexico and went bankrupt 12 years later. The article mentions the Ben Franklin Five and Dime stores that once were a Hoosier town fixture. In the early 70s I found some inexpensive toys at the Glen Park store for the boys. There was also a Ben Franklin store in the old Portage Mall. They were forerunners to the modern dollar store.

Fourteen years ago Dave and Angie got married in the aftermath of a blizzard that left us without electricity for eight days. What a contrast with the record 85 degree temperature that has IUN’s lilies in full bloom on the Ides of March.

Frank missed bowling Wednesday because a pit bull attacked his dog while he was walking it, causing injuries that required a hundred stitches. A young woman had two pit bulls on a leash but couldn’t control them. Pit bulls are a menace and should be banned. Even with a good owner, they are so strong they are a threat to people and pets alike.

IUN’s Home Page features an article put out by the Office of Marketing and Communications about Chris Young’s research into the Chicago monument honoring Revolutionary War heroes George Washington, Robert Morris, and Haym Salomon. As he wrote in an issue of the American Jewish Archives Journal, the statue was meant to be a symbol of unity, both between civilians and the military but also between different ethnic groups. Chris is on a roll, having just been made a member of FACET during his tenure year.

In his diary in 1933 satirist H.L. Mencken wrote of having dinner with the Fitzgeralds. He noted: “Zelda is palpably only half sane. She occupies herself largely in painting, and her paintings are full of grotesque exaggerations and fantastic ideas. Scott has been trying for six years to write a novel, but it remains unfinished.”

I managed to stay up until 11 to watch IU, led by guard Jordan Hulls, defeat New Mexico State. Next they’ll face VCU, last year’s Cinderella team coached by Shaka Smart (great name), no relation to Keith Smart, coach of the Sacramento Kings, whose shot gave IU its last national championship against Syracuse.

Social Studies

“The Sun Goes Down
The stars come out
And all that counts
Is here and now.”
“Glad You Came,” The Wanted

The Wanted, one of the better current pop groups, have a song called “Warzone.” The lyrics would be compelling – “I throw my armor down and leave the battleground, I’m running from a warzone, I can’t do this anymore, What are we fighting for?” - if it weren’t simply about losing a girlfriend. The Brits remind me a little of Fifties cool cats singing Doo Wop under a street lamp.

I watched two excellent HBO documentaries. One was about Mildred and Richard Loving, an interracial married couple jailed in Virginia during the late 1950s for violating the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. They were given suspended sentences and told to leave the state but with the help of the ACLU eventually got the heinous statute ruled unconstitutional in a unanimous 1967 Supreme Court decision.

Martin Scorsese’s “Public Speaking” is about Fran Lebowitz. Known as a modern-day Dorothy Parker for her sardonic New York wit, Lebowitz said that while she supported the rights of gays to marry or serve in the armed forces and is herself a lesbian, she couldn’t imagine why anyone would wish to surrender their freedom to these institutions. An unapologetic meat eater and smoker, she claimed that most of her friends after she moved to New York City were older gay men. She wrote two bestsellers, “Metropolitan Life” in 1978 and “Social Studies” in 1981 but claims that she has suffered from writer’s block ever since.

In junior high I had Social Studies in place of history. It was a mismash of geography, civics, comparable cultures, and social sciences. I don’t recall any teacher explaining exactly what it was or its purpose. I learned that coffee was Columbia’s chief export (maybe drugs have replaced that crop) but not how peasants there were exploited. As a social historian, I know it wasn’t social history, and the subject matter bored me, in contrast to when I took history in tenth and eleventh grades under H.M. Jones.

“The Book of American Diaries” reports that Puritan Richard Mather wrote in April 1635 that his fear of what lay ahead was lessened by the “clearness of my calling this way.” On March 14 some 213 years later Ralph Waldo Emerson opined that “the facile American sheds his Puritanism when he leaves Cape Cod [and] runs into all English and French vices with great zest.”

On Facebook grandson Anthony “Lights Out” Lane reports winning a staring contest with his cat. LeeLee Minehart Devenney wished math lovers a Happy PI Day. Yes, there is such an animal. Mr. Taddei would have been proud she remembered.

While Information Technology network specialist Jim Lopez installed my new phone with features I’ll probably never utilize, I read a Traces article by James Thom about editing “Nuggets,” primarily a morticians’ trade magazine, for its last 25 years in existence, beginning in 1968. As Thom’s title “Never Use the D Word” suggests, its contents dealt with everything but death. Instead there were uplifting essays, articles, poems, cartoons, witticisms, and epigrams. The magazine barely limped along but his salary gave the former marine the opportunity to be a novelist on the side, and he even was able to work on the magazine while researching such novelized biographies as “Long Knife” (about George Rogers Clark) and “Panther in the Sky” (about Tecumseh). His semi-autobiographical “Staying Out of Hell” employs a word that he hardly dared use in “Nuggets.” While attempting to sell the magazine to new clients, he discovered that some confused it with “Nugget,” a “Playboy” imitator.

Archives volunteer David Mergl gave me a handsome black briefcase, a definite upgrade over my old one. He took a look at my battered one with a defective lock and mentioned that he had several just lying around unused.

MSNBC carried live President Obama greeting Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House. Most cabinet members were present except Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, in Afghanistan doing damage control in the wake of a rogue U.S. soldier murdering 16 civilians. They joked about the British having sacked the Executive Mansion 200 years ago during the War of 1812 and that Barack gave Cameron a lesson in “bracketology,” a reference to making NCAA tournament selections. In the poll I entered I picked Michigan State to win it all against Syracuse.

Beach Café is reopening next week, and Michael Chirich wanted old photos and historical background info. Using Gary city directories I discovered that an establishment called the Beach Place was at that location starting around 1940 and that the proprietor was an Ernest Smith. In the Post-Trib photo collection I found an interior shot from 1967 (when it was called Smitty’s Beach Café) and an exterior shot from 1982, where a sign identified the place as simply Beach Café.

I talked with Nell Kendrick about her actor cousin, William Marshall, whose father Vareen had a dental practice in Chicago next to his brother Bill’s medical practice. The brother evidently talked him into moving to Gary when the mills were booming. They both graduated from Claflin College in Orangeburg, South Carolina and were in a singing quartet that toured to raise money for their alma mater.

Normally I post my blog entry in the afternoon, print out a copy, and revise it in the evening, adding anything I did the rest of the day, such as bowling (tonight Cressmoor Lounge took 5 of 7 points from us as only Duke Kaminsky shines). In those rare instances when I get negative feedback or discover errors, I make changes.

Game Change

“Tell everybody waiting for Superman
That they should try to hold on best they can
He hasn't dropped them, forgot them or anything
It's just too heavy for Superman to lift.”
Flaming Lips, “Waiting for a Superman”

Perhaps inspired by the Flaming Lips (I know I am a huge fan), Davis Guggenheim titled his documentary on failures in American education “Waiting for Superman.” It portrays several students hoping to win a lottery that would allow them to attend Harlem Children’s Zone, a charter school. I do not think charter schools are a panacea, and advocates of public education criticized the documentary for claiming that money is not the answer while virtually ignoring the fact that public schools are woefully underfunded and that Harlem Children’s Zone received scads of private money.

IU senior guard Verdell Jones injured his knee during a victory against Penn State in the Big Ten tournament. It might be a game changer in terms of how they’ll do in the NCAA “March Madness.” They’re seeded number five. Realistically, however, the team probably was a year away even with Jones healthy, but potential superstars Jeremy Hollowell, Kevin Ferrell, and Hanner Perea are among the 2012 recruiting class that experts rank as one of the nation’s best.

Anne Balay needed boxes to help her parents move into an assisted living apartment, so I offered her a half-dozen empty Steel Shavings containers. How sad when the ravages of time force seniors to give up their independent lifestyle, and they become a burden to their children. Wayne Coyne supposedly wrote “Waiting for a Superman” for the album “The Soft Bulletin” while his father was critically ill.

In a trivia game at a Chicago bar Brian O’Camb correctly knew the population of the fictional town Twin Peaks: 51,201. Creators David Lynch and Mark Frost wanted it to be 5,120, but ABC feared a backlash from those thinking it was poking fun of rural yokels.

Fellow grad student David Goldfield can’t attend Ray Smock’s lecture; he will be in Greece and was sorry to be missing it. I called Walker Rumble, whom I hadn’t heard from in many years, and he replied, “What splendid news about Ray. It would be worth a plane ticket to hear him speak in that droll way he had.” Ray commented: “I never heard anyone describe my speaking style as ‘droll.’ Sometimes a new perspective is a good thing. Droll has a positive connotation in ‘dry amusement’ and a negative one in ‘buffoon.’ Let’s hope I lean more toward dry amusement than to the alternative.” I told him, “I believe droll is a positive adjective. I think of Walker Rumble as droll and am sure he saw it as an admirable trait. Like with Jean Shepherd, there remains in you a Region (Harvey, IL) quality that rebels against stuffiness and pomposity. But that does not interfere with your seriousness of purpose or good political judgment.” Ray responded, “You are too kind. But I accept your interpretation of droll. It is a Harvey characteristic, now that you mention it. And Tip O’Neill always said, ‘never forget where you came from.’” Ray was House historian when Tip was Speaker and sparring with Reagan in a valiant effort to save liberal programs of the previous quarter-century.

A driver rammed into four Lake County officers, wounding three of them and killing Deputy Britney Meux, the mother of a five-month-old daughter Savannah. A Lew Wallace graduate and former marine, Britney was also working on a degree at Calumet College. Realizing that he was the object of an extensive manhunt, the 42 year-old driver after consulting a lawyer turned himself in. He evidently has a history of alcohol-related violations. Officer Delano Scaife is still in critical condition.

Henry Farag sent me a short story called “Spit Shine” about getting one’s shoes just right before going to dances at Chapel of the Dunes in Miller during the 1950s. I told him my niece Lisa and I were going to the Star Plaza concert featuring Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt and, working with Tina Gibson at the box office, he arranged for us to have third row center seats. Tina is a former student, and her husband John is with IUN’s Business division.

Lisa and I decided to have a drink at Old Chicago, located near the Star Plaza. I dropped Lisa off at the door with instructions to find, if possible, a stool or two at the bar while I parked. I grabbed the only space left and found at least 50 people waiting to be seated. Fortunately Lisa had somehow secured a small table in the bar area for us. Arriving at the concert, a lady scanning our tickets said they were invalid. Fortunately Tina was at the box office and straightened things out on the fourth try. It was pretty funny how we kept getting turned back. We found our seats just as manager Charley Blum was finishing a spiel about coming attractions.

On stage were two chairs and three guitars, and Lyle and John played without any backup band. They exchanged banter, often related to Hiatt being a Hoosier (from Indianapolis) and took turns doing songs. Dressed in his trademark suit and tie, Lyle basically just sat smiling while Hiatt performed, but John often strummed or sang harmony during Lovett’s songs, which were mostly from his new CD “Release me.” Hiatt did many of his familiar hits – “Perfectly Good Guitar,” “Have a Little Faith in me,” “Tennessee Plates” – but they sounded different without a rockin’ band backing him. It was a great show. I tended to favor Hiatt, and Lisa liked Lyle best. Saturday morning I made blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast, and we all enjoyed Lisa’s company.

I gave a copy of Traces magazine to Michael Chirich, and he joked about the cover photo of Karl Malden. I knew by the nose that it was a Serbian, he joked. A Serbian himself, Michael is friends with tamburitza maker Milan Opacich, who has known the Sekulovich family for decades.

I finished “The Hunger Games.” Phil called just as Clove was about to carve up Katniss’s face. Fortunately Thresh, of all people, came to her rescue. The author's target audience may have been teenage girls, but the book totally kept my attention. It’s about time young adult fiction feature strong female characters. The villains in the story are those in power at Panem, the Capitol, who force most people to live like slaves and stage an annual survival contest for their own sport. The Harvard Lampoon put out a parody of Suzanne Collins’s book called “The Hunger Pains.”

“Game Change” debuted on HBO and was riveting. Julianne Moore had Sarah Palin nailed and manages to make her sympathetic, while Woody Harrelson was superb as campaign manager Steve Schmidt. Even though Republican candidate John McCain refused to resort to demagoguery against Obama in the 2008 election, he is called to account for agreeing to select an essentially clueless person to be his running mate. With the Bush administration so unpopular and Republicans reeling from big losses in the 2006 election, McCain’s handlers thought that a woman on the ticket might be a “Game Changer” in terms of attracting women resentful over Hillary Clinton not getting the Democratic nomination. While it was fun seeing Palin baffled by questions from Katie Couric, the real villains in the affair were the political operatives whose negligence put the nation at risk by elevating such an incompetent to a position just a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

Roger Ebert loved “Game Change” and thought it portrayed Palin somewhat sympathetically. He concluded that she “lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality.”

James stayed overnight because Becca had a Sunday tryout for “Annie.” We got him to play Sharpshooters, a dice game. After losing the first three games, I won Revolution, a blind bidding game, with a strategy of becoming the Spy and the Priest during early rounds, which allowed me to control the cathedral and to replace an opponent’s piece with one of my own. I ended up controlling three areas.

On March 11, 1940, Hollywood writer John Monk Saunders hanged himself in his Florida home. A pilot during WW I, he was once married to actress Fay Wray. Thinking it would be nice to marry her, playwright Clifford Odets wrote in his diary: “She is mature, adult, a real woman, womanly in a lovely way, very loyal beautiful. Then what am I waiting for?” Answer: “guarantees, like any American boob with pragmatic eyes. Will it work? Will I be happy?”

Chancellor Lowe announced that Chris Young is a Founders Day award finalist along with Subir Bandyopadhyay (Business), Michael LaPoite (Biology), and Diana Larson (Computer Information). Chris also made it into FACET. What a good hire he was for the History Department and an all-around nice guy.

The Merillville History Book Club book for March is about Timbuktu, located on the southern edge of the Sahara dessert near the Niger River in present-day Mali. Marq De Villiers and Sheila Hirtle note that the phrase “from here to Timbuktu” denoted a mysterious, faraway place. Originally founded by nomads, during the thirteenth century it was a major trade center for gold, ivory, and slaves and became an Islamic scholarly center under Sultan Mansa Musam. Its importance declined after the Portuguese demonstrated that it was easier to sail around Africa’s southern tip than to cross the “Dark Continent” by land. Conquered by Moroccans during the fifteenth century and by the French in 1893, at present, though independent of foreign domination, the dusty city is a shell of its former self and relies on tourists for its sustenance.

Wrecking Ball

“We all know that come tomorrow
None of this will be here
So hold tight your anger
And don’t fall to your fear.”
Bruce Springsteen, “Wrecking Ball”

“The Boss” has put out a classic CD that is fun to listen to but heartbreaking at times. “Death to My Hometown” describes a place where the jobs have vanished and hardly anybody visits the downtown any longer. “We Take Care of our Own” has been getting much air play, but most of the other songs are quite pessimistic about families and communities being able to do just that.

Jeopardy had a category called Seconds featuring such trivia as the second captain to circumnavigate the world (Francis Drake), the second wife of Henry VIII (Anne Boleyn), and the second highest mountain peak (K2 between Pakistan and China).

Sheriff Roy Dominguez was very pleased with the “Valor” page proofs. We went over questions I had from reading the first half of the manuscript and will get together next Wednesday to put it to bed, so to speak. If the autobiography weren’t so interesting, proofreading it would be very tiring. Roy brought with him some campaign literature having to do with his running for Lake County commissioner.

With Steve McShane’s help I put together an exhibit of Traces magazine covers and articles. The 11 covers about the Calumet Region include actors (Karl Malden), artists (Frank Dudley), singers (Michael Jackson), aviators (Octave Chanute), war heroes (Alex Vraciu) and sports stars (Tom Harmon). I’m hoping it will be a traveling exhibit and that area libraries will want it, as well as the Lake County Tourist Bureau Welcome Center. Editor Ray Boomhower thinks my article on Alex Karras may go in the Fall issue and wants to see the family photos that Ted and Anna Karras provided.

Marion Merrill left me a sizeable amount of money in her will. She and Sam had no children but basically adopted his Maryland grad students, but still it was quite a surprise. I think it would be appropriate to use the money to put out more Steel Shavings issues.

I made American Airlines and Hertz reservations and RSVPed to Maryland’s Center for Historical Studies that I’d be attending Ray Smock’s Distinguished Alumni Lecture April 5 entitled “I Did It My Way, By Accident: Lessons from an Unconventional Career.” I’m hoping to see Steve and Aaron Pickert and family Saturday, which happens to be Aaron’s birthday.

Rosalie Zak, IUN History department secretary for 25 years, passed away, son Steve informed me. During her last days in a hospice Steve played Chopin music for her benefit. An English war bride with lots of class, she always called me Dr. Lane, never Jim. In the 1970s I’d only get a haircut a couple times a years, but afterward she’d always tell me how nice I looked.

The temperature reached 69 for the second day in a row. WGN’s Tom Skilling, once known as the boy weatherman, had all sorts of graphics to explain the “heat wave.”

At lunch I told Alan Barr I was sorry I couldn’t make it to his film class to see “Last Tango in Paris.” He told me to come see “Body Heat” after spring break. George Bodmer is going to Cincinnati for a family function and hopes to visit the Cincinnati Art Museum, which has an exhibition of Nick Cave’s work (he’s most famous for what he calls Soundsuits). George mentioned that a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition there created great controversy, in contrast to Boston, where a PBS station showed examples of Mapplethorpe’s work on TV. Gaard Logan told me that a controversial Hide/Seek exhibition, subtitled “Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” is opening soon in Tacoma and that some docents quit rather than stay associated with a museum that would put on such a show. It contains Mapplethorpe’s 1975 “Self-Portrait” and artists’ responses to Stonewall and AIDS.

Peggy Roenigk wanted to know more about the Mary Cheever murder case. Cheever was a Gary teacher whose death at the hands of a purse snatcher sparked a mass movement by women to wiper out crime and vice tolerated by the local political establishment during the late 1940s.

“Wanderlust” with Paul Rudd and Jennifer Anniston was so creepy and smarmy in making fun of communal living (Alan Alda should be ashamed of himself for being in such trash) that I moved over to “Project X,” about an out-of-control teen party. While it was rated R for “crude and sexual content throughout, nudity, drugs, drinking, pervasive language, reckless behavior and mayhem,” the only really offensive thing about it was a midget who kept hitting guys in the balls.

The wind was blowing with gale force when I left the movies. With an hour to kill till bowling I ate yogurt and cookies (by mistake I bought Red Hot Cheetos and could only eat one) and read excerpts from the Civil War diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut, a Southerner who called slavery a monstrosity and an iniquity. “Our men,” she wrote, “live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. These, she seems to think, drop from the clouds.”

Engineers took five of seven points from No Weak Link with Dick Maloney rolling a 578 series, 103 pins over his average. I converted three splits, unbelievably, a 5-7, a 3-6-7-10, and a 6-9-10. The latter, a baby split with a sleeper, is almost impossible because if you go between the 6 and 10 you almost always miss the 9. I hit the 6-pin on the left, not on purpose, and it knocked the 10-pin to its left and into the 9-pin. Lucky!

How the Night Moves

“Started humming a song from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose.”
“Night Moves,” Bob Seger

The songs from 1962 that I hum sometimes are “If I Had a Hammer” by Peter, Paul, and Mary and “Loco-Motion” by Little Eva. One taught me social consciousness, the other soul. WDRV “The Drive” has album day once a month where you actually hear dead space between songs. Driving to and fro, I heard bits of Led Zeppelin Supertramp, Billy Joel, John Mellancamp, the Stones, and Bob Seger. The breakout 1976 LP (long-playing) record “Night Moves” starts with “Rock and Roll Never Forgets.” Seger’s songs often deal with loss of innocence and the passage of time – in other words, social history.

Christine Hinchman wants help finding the name of an African-American woman who danced at Chicago festivals like Taste of Chicago and Country Music Fest. Christine wrote: “She was really tiny and wore amazing outfits - I remember one in particular, a suit made out of faux cowhide. I actually met her a couple times. I worked at the Borders on State Street and she came in to order books that mentioned her. Turns out she had been a fairly well known stripper/ 'exotic dancer' in Gary back in the 60's at one of the clubs the Jackson 5 worked at. They had opened for her and we did find books that verified her story.” All I could help her with was give her the name and address of a Gary club, Mr. Lucky’s Lounge, where the Jackson (and strippers) performed.

I finished my South Shore Journal article, “The Dune-Faun: Diana of the Dunes’ Male Counterpart” after another visit to Westchester Museum. Eva Hopkins found me an article by A. F. Knotts about George Blagg, the so-called “Hermit of the Dunes.” Just a teenager during the Civil War, Bragg lived off his military pension plus whatever he could grow, pick, raise, catch or panhandle. A bit crazy, he feared that anarchists were after him but loved children and animals. Steve McShane made jpegs of Dale Fleming’s drawing of Blagg plus Earl Reed’s etchings of dunes characters Happy Cal and Catfish John to go with the nude but tasteful sketches of Diana and the Dune-Faun.

For an exhibit I’m planning with Steve Ray Boomhower sent a half-dozen past issues of Traces with covers of relevance to Northwest Indiana - Tom Harmon, Octave Chanute, Tony Zale, an Inland Steel mill, Michael Jackson, and a South Shore poster. Maybe my Alex Karras article, assuming Ray likes it, will rate the cover story treatment. I picked up a dozen family photos from Ted and Anna Karras, including one of Yia Yia (grandmother) Sophia and a studio shot of him, wife Susan Clark and “Webster” kid Emmanuel Lewis.

Time passes. Fifty years ago Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain scored 100 points in an NBA game played in Hershey, PA. There were no three-point baskets and players only got one free throw for a non-shooting foul. Brother-in-law Sonny Okomski swears he saw the game on TV although I’ve read the game was not televised. Wilt, a seven-footer, went to Overbrook, the same Philly high school as Fred Chary. I once saw him play for the Philadelphia Warriors against Boston. John Havlicek fouled him hard and Chamberlain started after him. Havlicek wanted no part of it.

My old high school English teacher Delphine Vandling died at age 99. Her daughter came across something I wrote about her on my blog and notified me. A classy lady, she loved reading poems and Shakespeare to us. And so it goes. I hope her eyesight and mental faculties remained until the very end.

I started proofreading Sheriff Dominguez’s autobiography “Valor.” The PDF version arrived electronically and the copy that we’ll mark up is supposed to arrive by FedEx mail on Monday. It’s pretty clean except for one thing that could have been major but that can be easily fixed.

I took in my annual basketball game with Dave, a Sectional battle at Gary West Side between East Chicago and Lake Central. Glenn Robinson III scored 27 points in leading Lake Central to victory. It was close until the final eight minutes. The Cardinals had a flashy freshman named Hyron Edwards that Division One coaches are already recruiting, but Coach Dave MIlausnic put Robinson on him and he didn’t score after that. In the front row with his ever-present scorebook, as always, was Louis Vasquez, author of “Weasal,” whose grandson was a student of Dave’s. Referee Mike Waisnora was officiating 35 years ago when the kids and I were rooting for Gary Emerson. It was fun seeing Dave interact with students and watching the Lake Central fans rocking out to music being belted out on huge speakers. Afterwards at Wing Wahs I just had a bowl of Won Ton soup and an order of pan fried noodles with extra onions but still couldn’t finish all of it. There was a time when all the staff recognized me; now they all know Dave.

A major storm dropped snow to the north and unleashed tornados south of us that killed over 39 people. We got rain, wind, and snow flurries. Knock on wood that winter is pretty much behind us. On Today were shots of Henryville, Indiana, virtually wiped out. One stunned resident talked about losing everything. It’s hard to imagine what that would be like. The worst would be the photo albums.

At Camelot Lanes James broke one hundred again. Teammate Ethan, wearing a cool Brazil soccer shirt, threw a ball that hooked to the left. Madalyn rarely bothered to watch her ball hit the pins but instead came back to where her grandparents were.

I proofread a PDF of “Valor” at school that IU Press editor Nancy Lightfoot sent and notified Sheriff Dominguez that the page proofs that we’re to mark up will be arriving via Fed Ex on Monday. Had a nice dinner and bridge evening with the Hagelbergs. I wore the Kidstuff Playstation shirt he gave me for my seventieth birthday.

After playing the normal trio of Amun Re, St. Pete, and Acquire, we got in a couple games of Revolution, which Dave hadn’t played before. I won the second one by using the strategy Tom employed successfully in the previous contest.

Sunday’s Post-Trib carried a sweet column by Carrol Vertrees about turning 90. Jeff Manes interviewed mental health advocate Mary Hodson. She works a suicide hotline and talked about her teenage son taking his own life. Jeff told her that he came real close to killing himself with a shotgun at that age. It must have been an emotional interview. At noon Manes showed up at the condo to interview Dave for a future column.

At L.A. Nails the lady who cut my toenails wore a mask, something that never happened before. Why, I wonder? A new policy? Foot odor? Fear of germs?

For several years the defensive coach of the New Orleans Saints paid bounties to players who knocked opponents out of the game. The player got more for a “cart off” or if the victim was the quarterback. Evidently the head coach and general, manager knew about it. The team had been warned and told to stop the practice. The league is expected to come down hard on those involved now that lawsuits are piling about involving former players maimed on the field of play.

Leap Year

“Oh Bobby, Bobby
Where can you be?”
“The Ballad of Bobby Fischer,” Micah Ellison

The HBO documentary “Bobby Fischer against the World” was deeply disturbing. His absentee mother was a communist activist hounded by the FBI, and the chess prodigy who became world champion in 1972 by defeating Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky was a full-fledged nut case by the end of his life. He almost pulled out of the 24-game championship, quit when at the top of his game, disappeared from public view for decades at a time, and ended up an anti-Semitic conspiracy nut living in exile in Iceland, scene of his triumph over Spassky, who crowed that America got what it deserved on 9/11. Other chess champions developed psychological problems, including nineteenth century American genius Paul Morphy. As the final credits ran, on came Micah Ellison singing “The Ballad of Bobby Fischer.”

The teachers tournament Final Jeopardy category was The 1960s.
The question had to do with a 1967 appointment that LBJ called the right person at the right time in history. Easy, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Only one contestant got it right. They did better on the “Human Body” category, so they must not have taught history. Let’s hope not.

Dave and Angie’s cockatiel Razz and parrot Olive died suddenly, apparently of Teflon poisoning. The grief-stricken family held a burial service at Angie’s grandparents’ farm in South Haven.

Mitch Lenyo, a law student at IU, described his first year as “a serious kick in the ass.” He wondered when I decided law was not for me. I advised him to get through the year. If he moves to Hawaii (his reoccurring fantasy) a law degree would be good to have in hand.

Four famous people born on February 29 were bandleader Jimmy Dorsey (1904), singer Dinah Shore (1916), stripper Tempest Storm (1928), and rapper Ja Rule (1976). Leap year coincides with Presidential elections, and Mitt Romney took a step closer to the Republican nomination by eking out a victory in his home state of Michigan against Rick Santorum. The former Pennsylvania Senator self-destructed with stupid comments about Obama being a snob for wanting everyone to have an opportunity for higher education and JFK’s 1960 comments about the separation of church and state making him gag.

In 1948 a neighbor kid warned that if Dewey beat Truman, my dad would lose his job. My life prior to the family moving from Easton to Fort Washington in 1950 is basically a blur except for a few images, such as: being forced to take cod liver oil at breakfast with Spike Jones on the radio; watching a snowy TV at Bradford’s; the trauma of being dropped off at a party where I knew nobody; walking into a room and seeing my friend’s mother naked; almost falling out of a moving car when I inadvertently opened the passenger door; playing a game where my brother and I tried to kick stuffed animals past each other; seeing my dad play donkey softball where he rode on said animal.

Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe won’t run for re-election because of the polarized climate caused by rightwing partisans in her own party. In 1925 Will Rogers quipped: “When a gentleman quoted me on the floor of Congress the other day, another member took exception and said he objected to the remarks of a professional joke maker going into the Congressional record. Now can you beat that for jealousy among people in the same line?”

As Subway’s February five-dollar sale was coming to an end, I bought a roast beef 12-inch (half for lunch today, half for tomorrow) and they threw in a free cookie. The temperature reached 59 and shoots of plants are starting to come up at school. Students were walking across campus in t-shirt and in a few cases shorts. The demolition of Tamarack Hall is underway. The coup de grace was the 2008 flood. Once the only building on campus, it was where my office was during my entire teaching career.

Anne Frank doubted that anyone would be interested in her “unbosomings” or unburdenings but wrote because she had no real friend. Similarly Anaïs Nin called her journal “the only steadfast friend I have, the only one which makes my life bearable because my happiness with human beings is so precarious.”

The NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle asked “half of a 1960s pop group” (Mamas) and “they can help worriers” (beads). Responding to an article on the war in Afghanistan, Vietnam helicopter pilot Rod Carlson wrote: “Soon the marines will leave Afghanistan, but that won’t end the war, not for those who did the fighting. For them it will rage on with nightmare firefights, daytime flashbacks of explosions and screams, with pain that never fades and wounds that never fully heal. Some will suffer through sad holidays unable to forget those deprived of yet another year. A country can walk away from a war, but those who fought it cannot. For them it never ends.” President Obama is holding a state dinner for 200 Iraq vets from all 50 states. Some nitpickers want a more inclusive event.

The Engineers won just one game against a team called Harry Richards, who last week gave me the Déjà vu t-shirt. I wore it at their insistence and posed for pictures with David and Johnny. The front had the gentleman’s club logo of two legs with alluring stockings while the back featured babes in bikinis and the words “have a beachin’ good time.” A lane over from us Nick Dedonna rolled a 299, leaving the ten-pin on a perfect hit on his final ball. Home to watch Derrick Rose and the Bulls win a close one against San Antonio, coached by Region native Gregg Popovich. Letterman has a great bit of Chris Christie appearing to pull up his shirt, revealing a morbidly obese upper body.

Monkees singer Davy Jones died at age 66 of a sudden heart attack. I was never into his group, but they were really big in 1967 after their TV show about a band similar to the Beatles was a smash. Last year they played in Merrillville, and admittedly “I’m a Believer” and “Daydream Believer” were catchy tunes.

And So It Goes

The dawn delivers me life.
New skins in which to hide.
My hands reach daily,
New life in me remain.
For Love Not Lisa, “Slip Slide Melting”

Instead of getting hit with six to ten inches of snow from a storm passing through Chicagoland, the temp in Chesterton stayed in the 30s and the snow mostly melted when it landed in the streets. At the Westchester Historical Museum I found a eulogy for Alice Gray (Diana of the Dunes) in the March 1925 Prairie Club Bulletin, which noted that “her fresh spirit and fair-mindedness left its impress, incorrigible individualist though she was. She knew every native plant and animal, every mood and color of lake and dune.” A loose-leaf notebook about Alice that contained excerpts from “City of the Century” as well as my “Lake Michigan Tales” Shavings.

A “Final Jeopardy” question for the category “Literary Biography” asked who was the subject of Charles Shields’s “And So It Goes.” Being a big Kurt Vonnegut fan, I would have nailed it. In fact, a recent issue of TRACES contained an article by Shields about the author of “Slaughterhouse Five.” None of the contestants, teachers all, knew the answer, perhaps because Vonnegut’s masterpiece is frequently censored due to use of the “m.f.” word.

Chuck Gallmeier congratulated me on my TRACES article “Every Tub on its Own Bottom” about Carlton Hatcher and on turning 70. Tom Dietz called from Indy, Alissa from Grand Rapids, and Fred McColly from work. Among the Facebook birthday messages was “may your cheese be ever binding” from Jef Halberstadt, paraphrasing a remark of my dad’s – “that makes the cheese more binding” - I frequently make when a board game takes an unexpected turn and that others have adopted. Niece Andrea’s hubby Nick Licata emailed: “Hope you are celebrating and enjoying life, which seems to come easily to you and that is a gift that you give others through your ready smile.” Nice. Terry Jenkins passed along a joke about guys going to a restaurant every ten years, starting in their 20s because the beer was cheap and the girls cute, in their 50s because of their good wine list, in their 60s because there was an early bird special, in their 70s because the food wasn’t too spicy and it was handicapped accessible, and finally in their 80s because (in their minds at least) they had never been there.

I decided my article about football great Alex Karras needing some mention of his Gary Emerson coach. Here’s what I added: “Art Rolfe was a shrewd judge of football talent and relished yet another Karras brother entering his program. The 60 year-old Minnesotan had starred in three sports at Carleton College and had run Emerson’s football program since 1928. Many of his players obtained college football scholarships, including Rocco Schiralli at Notre Dame, Tom Kuzma at Michigan, and Tulane’s Pete Mandich, who was elected mayor of Gary in 1951.”

Grandson James rolled his best game ever, a 114 in his Saturday morning league at Camelot Lanes in Portage, where I won a jacket 17 years ago on a team with Dave, Kevin Horn, and Tom Dick. After each ball he’d look back at us for support. After a bad frame, Dave would say, “Remember, we’re here to have fun.” One of the coaches, John English, graduated with Phil. His mother was very active in the girl scouts, and we talked about dipshit Republican legislator Bob Morris, who recently called the organization radical, pro-abortion, and harboring lesbians and feminists.

In for my birthday Phil was reading “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, which I borrowed for an hour and found irresistible. Color me hooked. The main character is Katniss, named for an edible aquatic plant and certain to be one of the top new girls names of 2012. Number one in 2011 was Charlotte, no surprise, but in second was Seraphina. Ben Afflick and Jennifer Garner started the trend by naming their kid Seraphina. Spent quality time with Diamond and the grandkids and played pinochle before catching SNL, hosted by Charlie Day, on an FX sitcom I’ve never seen called “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

In “Chronicles” Dylan mentions playing at a Minnesota state fair when wrestler Gorgeous George came through with his entourage. Hardly anyone had been paying attention to Dylan but George made eye contact, winked, and mouthed, “You’re making it happen.” When I was a kid and wrestling was a TV staple, lady, midget, and Indian performers were fun, but Gorgeous George was the greatest showman of them all.

Gamed at the condo prior to a birthday lunch at Appleby’s. Our party of 18 included Hagelbergs and Wades, who came in with a dozen balloons plus gave me the board game Revolution and a compilation CD Tom made of clever songs by Garfunkel and Oates and Jonathan Coulton. I especially love Coulton’s “Code Monkey (“very simple man with big warm fuzzy secret heart”) and “Still Alive (“there’s no sense crying over every mistake, you just keep trying till you run out of cake”).

Billy Crystal, back hosting Oscars after eight years, did a routine where he juxtaposed himself in scenes from “The Descendents” and other nominated movies as he sings a parody about the nine flicks. “The Artist” was the big winner of the night. I was disappointed that Martin Scorsese didn’t win for “Hugo” and Jonah Hill for “Moneyball” (he lost out to 82 year-old Christopher Plummer playing a gay guy in “Beginners”) Sacha Baron Cohen, who should have been nominated for his role as train station inspector in “Hugo” showed up in a huge black beard dressed as “The Dictator.”

Inside the Alamo on February 27, 1836, diarist Davy Crockett wrote: “The cannonading began early this morning, and ten bombs were thrown into the fort, but fortunately exploded without doing any mischief. So far it has been a sort of tempest in a teapot, not unlike a pitched battle in the Hall of Congress.” He was spoiling for a fight with Santa Anna. A week later Crockett, who served three terms as Congressman from Tennessee, was dead.

Alan Barr showed the 1971 Jane Fonda movie “Klute,” about a prostitute who helps detective Tom Klute (Donald Sutherland) solve a missing person case. There were cool cameos by Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker in “All in the Family”) and Candy Darling (from Andy Warhol’s Factory) as well as brief glimpses of Teri Garr and Sylvester Stallone. The class was asked to write an essay on how “Klute” separates sex from love and to what purpose. She tells Klute she never comes with Johns but in the end, presumably sexually fulfilled, goes back to Pennsylvania with him. Afterwards I told Alan it was cool seeing Edith Bunker. He looked puzzled, probably because he didn’t hear me, but is it possible he never watched “All in the Family”?

Someone sent me “Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-Town.” I thought it was a mistake – that someone else had ordered it via inter-library loan. Anne Koehler examined it and discovered it was a discarded book from the Gary Public Library. Someone must have retrieved it for me. But who? Ron Cohen? Recently Ron talked me into writing the FBI to request files on William Marshall using the Freedom of Information Act as justification. A letter from the Justice Department directed me to write to the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, MD. A runaround perhaps?