Haymarket

On Roger Ebert’s recommendation I saw “Our Idiot Brother" starring Paul Rudd as Ned, a sweet idealist who cannot resist telling the truth even if it gets him in trouble and embarrasses his pretentious sisters. When a cop in uniform gives him a sob story and wants some pot, he tries to give the man some and gets arrested for his trouble. Later when he tells his parole officer he was so stressed out he smoked a joint, he goes back into the slammer. A couple talk him into a three-way and when he can’t go through with it, he worries that maybe he’s a homophobe. He has a dog named Willie Nelson that befriends one called Dolly Parton.

Speaking of weird dog names, Alissa, boyfriend Josh, and new dog Jerry Seinfeld showed up for breakfast Saturday on their way to a 50th-anniversary party for her maternal grandparents Donna and Bob. Great to see them. Her mom Beth dropped in the day before.

I made lunch for former student Sam Barnett, who brought over a special issue of “AREA Chicago” that he co-edited about the Haymarket Riot and its aftermath. It includes several oral histories that he did. I gave him volume 41 of Steel Shavings that he raved about.

Sunday’s Little League World Series final, won by a California team over Japan, was delayed a couple hours because of Hurricane Irene. Brent Musburger did a good job but sidekick Orel Hershiser was a dud as an analyst. The Japanese team ran a brilliant play, bunting with a man on first and then having the runner go on to third since the infielders were all out of position to cover the base. Orel never commented on it. Similarly, when a California player drove in the winning run a hard single to center with the bases loaded, there was no coverage of whether the runners on first and second touched second and third base – had they not, a force-out would have negated the run.

Today’s the beginning of the Fall semester, and the campus was bustling. It being taco day at the cafeteria, I indulged and had two of them. Jean Poulard was complaining that they kick him out of his SPEA office and exiled him to the fourth floor of Lindenwood.

I returned Doctorow’s “The March” and picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s “A Man Without a Country,” which came out in 2005. He wrote: “The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick, and Colon. In former V-P Cheney’s new book “In MY Time” the Dick takes credit for preventing more attacks on America after 9/11 and slams Secretary of State Powell for not being more of a War Hawk. Vonnegut also writes: “Socialism is no more an evil word than Christianity. Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Both, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.”

Talked to Gaard Logan about Patti Smith’s memoir “Just Kids” about her friendship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe. They met in 1967 and lived together at the Chelsea Hotel. They were lovers until Mapplethorpe realized he was gay and friends thereafter. She compares him to a fragile emerald bird and says she was his model and he was her muse. He took the photograph that was the album cover for “Horses,” fell under the spell of Andy Warhol (whom Patti distrusted) and died of AIDS in 1989.

Another book reviewed in Magill’s (by John Nizalowski of Mesa State) is “Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters.” Ginsberg flowered after publication of his Beat poem “Howl” while Kerouac sank into oblivion shortly after publication of “On the Road.”

Three longtime IUN staff members are retiring, secretary Rhoda Burson, Janet Tayler from Duplicating and Marianne Malyj from Purchasing. All are good people and will be missed.