Amish in my Heart

Trying to do the right thing

Play it straight

The right thing changes

From state to state.”

  “Without a Trace,” Soul Asylum

Soul Asylum’s greatest hits has moved into heavy rotation on my CD player, thanks to “Black Gold” and “Without a Trace,” along with Collective Soul.

I tuned in the Olympic Men’s soccer final to root for the Brazilians against Mexico and found them down a goal after just 29 seconds.  Losing 2-0 with two minutes left, a Brazilian named Hulk scored and then with just seconds left Oscar mis-directed a header that would have tied the score.  And who says soccer isn’t exciting?  The Mexicans mugged Brazilian prodigy Neymar whenever he had the ball, picking up several yellow cards but no red ones.

After scrambling some eggs I went to Duneland Library and asked for them to order “Valor,” then checked out the latest issue of Vanity Fair.  In an interview National Public Radio’s Terry Gross repeated the advice of Mel Brooks to hope for the best but expect the worst.  I once looked forward to Esquire but detest its format.  The only memorable thing in the new issue was this joke: a grasshopper enters a saloon and the bartender says they have drink named for him.  “Oh, you have a drink named Steve?” the grasshopper asks.  At European Market I bought two yummy tacos from the folks who clean our condo twice a month.

Meg Grandfield Demakas was selling her children’s books at Lake Street Gallery during Pop Up Art in Miller.  Years ago, the IUN Education professor put on plays with our kids, and in a volume entitled “Hot Potato Poetry” she included an ode to her a high school teacher who inspired her to follow her muse.  Other titles include “Captain Jeb: Pirate Cat” and “Jeb Joins the Circus.”  Up the street at the former Miller Drugs were displays organized by Corey Hagelberg that included work by him and other Ball State alums.  Both Meg and Corey make use of Region themes and scenes in their work.

 

For the finale of “A Century of Music” in Highland the weather was perfect, a good crowd was on hand, and the performers shined.  In addition to “American Pie” and “Babe” solos Dave did a duet of “Don’t Stop Believing” and was in several other numbers in addition to scrambling around making sure the correct mikes were on.  Even though he got home late, Dave won two out of three games Sunday morning before attending tennis player Ashley Pabey’s graduation party.  In Amun Re Tom was way ahead after the first round, so I challenged him for most pyramids on one side and Dave edged both of us out with two power cards to our one.

Sunday while watching the PGA tournament, won by Rory McIlroy by a record eight strokes, I read an excellent afterword by Henry Farag for his autobiography “The Signal” and finished a manuscript my high school girlfriend Suzanna Murphy sent me entitled “Amish in My Heart.”  It describes her childhood friendship with a neighbor woman who cared for her after World War II while her father was in the Philippines and her mother had cancer and bouts of schizophrenia.  Now 65 years later Suzanna is living a simple life among Amish and Mennonite friends.  I told her she should get someone to help her market the story as an ebook.

On HBO’s “The Newsroom” Jeff Daniels plays anchor Will McAvoy and Sam Waterston his hard-drinking, compulsive gambler boss.  It looks promising.  Will’s ex-girlfriend MacKenzie, hired to be his new executive producer, is determined to emphasize quality over ratings.  The premier dealt with covering the 2010 BP oil spill.

Monday I appeared on Jerry Davich and Karen Walker’s “Out to Lunch” radio show at WVLP in Valparaiso.  Beforehand I chatted with Gregg the engineer about eccentric IU Northwest professor George Roberts, who helped him get into grad school and was his most unforgettable teacher. Jerry had recently visited Reiner Senior Center in Hobart and learned that I been a hit talking about the postwar “Age of Anxiety.”  After they asked me to compare those years with the present, I then brought the subject around to Latinos in the Region and “Valor: The Odyssey of Roy Dominguez.”  The 35 minutes went quickly and then the subject changed to a dress shop that suddenly closed, leaving brides who had paid for wedding dresses high and dry. 

Davich invited me back for next Monday’s show and “tagged me” on his Facebook page, thanking me for sharing my “wit, wisdom, and extensive knowledge of NWI history.”  Nice.  Next time I’ll talk about my latest Shavings, “Calumet Region Connections,” in which Jerry appears nine times.  Michele Gerke-Burton wrote Jerry that she loved my class so much she took a second one, adding, “He had crazy curly longer hair back in the day.  It was great.  He is a super hip top notch prof.”  Thanks, Michele.  Hope she tunes in next Monday.  In 1987 she wrote an article about June and Bill Fletcher that I published in my “Age of Anxiety” issue.  Due to a postwar housing shortage they rented a tiny two-room Hammond apartment until finding “a four-room shell” in East Gary (now Lake Station, but that’s another story) that “they finished themselves right before their third child Teresa arrived in 1949.”