Lake Effect

“Lake-effect snow: a phenomenon created when cold dry air passes over a large warmer lake, such as one of the Great Lakes, and picks up moisture and heat.” Dictionary.com

Route 49, photo by Jerry Davich

We had lake effect snow yesterday and again today.  It isn’t too bad, but I worry about the Michiganders coming down from Grand Rapids through the infamous snowbelt.

No stranger to controversy, Speros Batistatos, President of the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority, wants the 2014 air show held at Fair Oaks Farms in Newton County.  I personally don’t care and am relieved the city of Gary isn’t shelling out money needed for support services.  Hammond mayor Thomas McDermott, however, called the plan to earmark funds from a Lake County hotel/motel tax to benefit counties nowhere near the southern shore of Lake Michigan a travesty.  Batistatos wants to extend his empire south and, as Jerry Davich asked, “Is this move about a regional power grab more than keeping the air show flying above the many beaches across Northwest Indiana?”

The Archives was booming Wednesday, but the campus was not as crowded as normal, with many cancelled classes.  In my 37 years of teaching I can’t recall ever calling off class.  Even after my knee operation, I had Ron Cohen take over my upper division course and Supplemental Instructor Tom Pawelski show a documentary on Reconstruction in the surveys.  I guess that’s what one might call old-school.

Marla Gee, who sits next to me in Nicole Anslover’s class, asked me to read her “personal statement” for admission to law school.  It is charming, traces the various jobs and life experiences she has had in the 42 years since she graduated from high school.  After saying that she left IU after a year to travel and then the various jobs and education she had had since then, she concludes: “With what I suppose must be some form of karmic justice, I am standing at the door with my hat in my hand, over 40 years later, asking for admittance and a second chance.  I labor under no delusions here.  There is no federal bench in my future.  Sidley Austin will not be wining and dining me, six-figure contract in hand.  Many graduates with IU law degrees will be found in the paneled board rooms of Fortune 500 companies and hotshot law firms.  That’s terrific.  But by the same token, the poor and elderly are just as entitled to first-tier legal counsel as the rich and powerful.  Ideally I would like to return to the federal government, (volunteering unfortunately will not repay my student loans), where ageism and mandatory retirement are not as widespread, in addition to hosting weekly volunteer Talk-To-A-Lawyer sessions at a homeless shelter or senior center here in Gary.  Folding metal chairs, cookies and Kool-Aid over there on the table in the corner with the cheap plastic tablecloth.  Not pretty, but I like to believe that I could make good things happen there.  Thank you for the opportunity to tell you about myself.  I look forward to proving to you what a dedicated, passionate student I will be; and in turn, a lawyer worthy of Indiana University.”  Marla’s compassion for those who need attorneys the most shines through in her beautiful letter.

Gabriel Fraire included this note to me along with his book “Mill Rats”: “All my work reflects the challenges and triumphs of being Mexican-American.  I was a Mill Rat.  I was born in East Chicago, Indiana, in the Mexican-American barrio known as ‘The Harbor.’  It was adjacent to the steel mills.  I worked the steel mills.  My father worked 43 years in the mills; his stepfather was killed in a mill.  Growing up, everyone I knew worked the mills.”  Gabe, or Rocky as I knew him, moved to Sonoma County, CA, in 1975 with wife Karen and has two daughters.

Ron Cohen informed me after the fact that he appeared on WBEZ, being interviewed by Mike Puente about an upcoming event honoring the Gary Roosevelt and Indianapolis Crispus Attucks teams that played in the 1955 state basketball championship.  He sent me chapters of another manuscript dealing with vernacular music in the 1930s.  I learned what chanteys were, songs sung by sailors while at work aboard the ship.

Ray Smock wrote: “We always find popular shorthand language to describe political conduct. Once Watergate happened, any scandal or crisis in Washington had to have a ‘gate’ as part of its name. The ‘Nuclear Option’ became a dramatic phrase to suggest the extreme nature of changing the rule dealing with cloture, the way the Senate ends debate. ‘Nuclear’ suggests laying waste to the Senate rules, not merely changing or reinterpreting them.  This hyperbole also suggests that the Senate itself will never be the same again. This may be the case. But just naming something ‘nuclear’ does not make it so.”

The Engineers won five of seven points thanks to John’s 590 series.  On the next lanes The Legends were wearing new shirts with their nicknames.  Walter Peasant’s read “Sweetness” and bore the number 32, Walter Peyton’s old number.  Shannon McCann was a no-show, so no hugs for me or Melvie.

Fairyland

“I never said it was wrong to enter fairyland, I only said it was always dangerous.”  G.K. Chesterton, “The Innocence of Father Brown”

Englishman G.K. Chesterton, above, known as the “prince of parables,” was a lay theologian and mystery writer who was friends with George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells and died in 1936 at age 62.

On the way to and from Camelot Lanes I heard several favorite songs on WXRT from 1992, including “Teen Angst” by Cracker, “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” by Sugar, and “Waiting for the Sun” by the Jayhawks.  The Regular Guy passed on famous movie lines, including Jack Nicholson’s “You can’t handle the truth” from “A Few Good Men,” Al Pacino’s “Whoo-ah” from “Scent of a Woman,” and Tom Hanks’ “There’s no crying in baseball” from “A League of Their Own.”  Best movie that year was Clint Eastwood’s “The Unforgiven.”  The Bulls won their second straight NBA title; they made it three straight the following year, defeating the Phoenix Suns led by MVP Charles Barkley.  For the first time a Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays, won the World Series over Atlanta.  They, too, would repeat in 1993, beating my Phillies on Joe Carter’s walk-off home run.

James had a good bowling day.  One frame he threw a gutter ball on a spare and looked crestfallen.  Then he knocked down all the pins on his second ball and flashed us a huge smile.  Dave was dragging from three hours sleep.  He chaperoned the E.C. Central student bus trip to the football game in Fort Wayne and then had to wait a half-hour at school for the last parent to arrive, rejecting the other chaperone’s suggestion that the students be dropped off at the jail and parents could retrieve them from there.

Alysia Abbott and dad

At the library I came across “Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father” by Alysia Abbott, whose mother died in a car accident when she was two and then Steve, her gay dad, took her to San Francisco in the early 1970s.  One of her first memories is being at an all-male party where few guests had clothes on and being attracted to the tile at the bottom of a swimming pool.  She went in over her head and, not knowing how to swim, nearly drowned until someone told her dad and he pulled her out.  As a little girl Alysia wanted a penis.  She pissed standing up until she spent a week with her maternal grandparents and was told girls didn’t do that.  Among the last wave of “flower children” to arrive in Haight-Ashbury, Alysia’s dad was a sad, gentle dreamer who hoped to earn a living selling gay-friendly cartoons to underground publications.  Looking for freedom, he became an AIDs casualty.

In season six of “The Sopranos” two guys collecting protection money at a gay club recognize Vito Spatafore dressed like one of the Village People.  Fearing for his life, he takes off to New Hampshire.   Most everyone but Tony wants him tracked down and killed.

Derrick Rose is lost to the Bulls for the entire year, and the Bears, decimated on defense, couldn’t stop the Rams’ running attack.  In the news: Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry reached a tentative agreement with Iran regarding its nuclear program that Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu called a “historic mistake.”  Republicans are sharpening their knives, branding Obama naïve and weak.

Miley Cyrus turned 21 and performed “Wrecking Ball” on the AMA music awards in a sexy outfit accompanied by a lip-synching kitten.  Katy Perry dressed like a geisha for her number, “Unconditionally,” which includes the line, “All your dirty laundry never made me blink one time.”  Lady Gaga pretended a sexy secretary to the president, played by R. Kelly, while singing “Do What U Want.”

Toni and I did a $250 Thanksgiving shopping, enough for three more dishes with Jewel stamps.  It’ll be ham on Thursday and turkey on Friday.  That morning I’m taking Becca, Alissa, and Tori to “Catching Fire.”  Anne Balay Children’s Lit professor, gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up.  Saturday we travel to Fishers, Indiana, to see the Bayers, once again Hoosiers after 20 years in Vermont.  All three Bayer kids will be there.

When mention of Spiro Agnew’s resignation came up in Nicole Anslover’s class, I provided details of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, mainly the work of Indiana Senator Birch Bayh and adopted in 1967, which provided for replacing the V.P. should that office become vacant.  Had it not been in place, House Speaker Carl Albert would have been next in the line of succession.  Someone asked if Nixon knew in advance of the Watergate break-in.  When he sent the “Plumbers” to work with his re-election committee, he knew they would be engaging in dirty tricks but probably didn’t want to know the details to give himself “plausible deniability.”

Unlike with JFK, the subject of Nixon’s sex life (or lack of one) did not come up.  It’s dubious that he and wife Pat still screwed, and there is no proof that he buggered close friend Charles “Bebe” Rebozo.  Suck-up Henry Kissinger, I’m quite certain, would have given him a “lub job” if asked, but my guess is that the President, a loner to the core, was a masturbator and probably didn’t even enjoy it all that much.  A new Kinsey Report claims that women experience orgasms more frequently in intimate relationships more than in casual ones.  Also while the percentage of men who have gay sex has remained the same, three times as many women are indulging in lesbian sex compared to a decade ago.

Governor Pence’s attempts to marginalize spunky Indiana school superintendent Glenda Ritz may backfire, as there is a groundswell of support for her to oppose him in 2016 should he run for re-election.  I’d work for her.

I won my Fantasy football match with nephew Bob to move into a first place tie thanks to wide receiver Anquan Boldin’s two TD catches.  Even though I was rooting for Washington on Monday, I was not disappointed to see him get the ball.  This coming week I play Phil in a battle for first place.