Valentine's Day

“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher, was fascinated with laws of probability, as I have been since learning about the subject from Upper Dublin teacher Ed Taddei.  In Pascal’s famous Triangle,  each number is the sum of the two directly above it.  Thus, if the first row is one and the second row two ones, the middle number in row three will be two and the middle two numbers in row four will be threes.  Row five numbers will be 1, 4, 6, 4, 1. Row six would be 1, 5, 10, 10, 5, 1.

Beamer Pickert posted a Valentine’s card and this message: “To all my friends, my obligatory ‘The Simpsons’ message for the day."  Not being as devoted a “Simpsons” fan as Beamer, I can only guess what the reference is.

Steve Spicer posted a touching photo of his dear, departed Cara and him from way back when.

For Toni’s seventieth birthday I made her breakfast and gave her macadamia nuts.  She said, “I told you I didn’t want any presents.”  I replied that I had meant to give her macadamia nuts at Christmas.  “Than this is a Christmas Present,” she said, happy to have them.  Angie brought her flowers, and her sister Marianne called and posted a 20 year-old photo of her and Alissa.  Reiner Center’s Pam Broadaway phoned; I assumed it was a taped message announcing upcoming events, but, no, she was live, calling to wish Toni a Happy Birthday.  Since my birthday is February 24, I used to tell her that for the next ten days I’ll only be a year older than she is.   She never thought much of the joke, so I’ve stopped saying it.

Good old Dean Bottorff shared a “Funny How That Works” post from Democratic Underground.  How true, those hypocrits.

 drawing by John James Audubon

Why did passenger pigeons, once numbering in the billions, become extinct?  Was it because they lost interest in sex or forgot how to mate?   Wholesale slaughter by hunters eradicated the huge flocks that darkened the sky as they flew overhead, but as their ranks dwindled to groups of a few dozen and killing them was no longer profitable, why couldn’t small groups sustain themselves?  Elizabeth Kolbert, discussing Joel Greenberg’s “A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction,” mentions one theory being that the birds, in her words, “took their signal to breed from other birds, so as the huge nesting colonies disappeared, the remaining pigeons essentially lost interest in sex.”  This also explains why those in captivity did breed.  Other theories stress deforestation and predators such as foxes and raccoons eating the lone egg each passenger pigeon laid per year.

Legendary Ross Music Summer Theatre founder Jerauld Joseph Reinhart died at age 85.  A longtime Merrillville music teacher and choir director at, he founded the summer theater in 1963 and was largely responsible for the state-of-the-art high school auditorium that bears his name.  As late as last year, Reinhart directed the pit orchestra for “Les Miserables.”  Rebecca and James appeared both in “Les Miz” and “The Music Man,” which Reinhart’s son Mike said was his dad’s favorite.  Don Price shared a collage picturing Reinhart that he found on Preserving Ross Summer Music Theatre’s site.

Good old Dean Bottorff shared a “Funny How That Works” post from Democratic Underground.  How true, those hypocrits.

Why did passenger pigeons, once numbering in the billions, become extinct?  Was it because they lost interest in sex or forgot how to mate?   Wholesale slaughter by hunters eradicated the huge flocks that darkened the sky as they flew overhead, but as their ranks dwindled to groups of a few dozen and killing them was no longer profitable, why couldn’t small groups sustain themselves?  Elizabeth Kolbert, discussing Joel Greenberg’s “A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction,” mentions one theory being that the birds, in her words, “took their signal to breed from other birds, so as the huge nesting colonies disappeared, the remaining pigeons essentially lost interest in sex.”  This also explains why those in captivity did breed.  Other theories stress deforestation and predators such as foxes and raccoons eating the lone egg each passenger pigeon laid per year.

Ken Schoon gave me a rare copy of my out-of-print “Tales of Lake Michigan” Shavings that once belonged to dear, departed Lydia Grady.   It’s one of my favorites (truthfully, they all are) and includes many drawings by Dale Fleming as well as an oral history of the Edgewater neighborhood within the National Lakeshore where Dale, John, and I lived. Dale told Laue that he’d been painting and drawing in the dunes ever since an art teacher brought his class to Marquette Park in 1955, adding: “I always loved the dunes.  As far as being a parent is concerned, the dunes is the great equalizer.  My son Carl and I became more than father and son – we became best friends. Whether it was flying kites, skipping stones across the lake or sliding down a dune on a piece of corrugated cardboard, we really got to know each other.  We built a solid foundation with a lot of fine memories.”

Chris Young gave me a copy of the chapter on oral history by Robert C. Williams in “Historian’s Toolbox” that his class will have read by Tuesday, when I talk with them.  It deals with the perils of memory, which are often affected by the interviewee’s emotions and perspective.  On the other hand, the interviewer’s biases can affect the interview.  An example of this is the WPA “slave narratives” collected during the 1930s, especially those done by white Southerners, which, the author states, resulted in “patterns of deference and obfuscation.”   Helpful hints for interviewers are to let the subjects know the purpose and format of your project and be a good listener and “let the questions evolve organically from your conversation.”

I saw “The Monuments Men,” mainly because I’m a big George Clooney fan, and wasn’t disappointed.  It was rather cheesy at times but evidently based in large part on real events.  FDR and General Eisenhower did assign an “over-the-hill gang” to attempt to save priceless art pieces that Hitler stole and planned to destroy if the war went badly for him.