Just Breathing

My head’s above the rain and roses

Making my way, away

My way to you.”

         “Still Breathing,” Green Day

 Green Day album cover

At Chesterton Library, I found the new Green Day CD “Revolution Radio.”  Billie Joe Armstrong and company still rock out, carrying on a punk tradition blazed by the Ramones.  The lead single, “Bang Bang” is a commentary on America’s violent culture.  I also found Joe Buck’s “Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I’m Not Allowed to Say on TV” because I was interested in what the sports announcer had to say about attending IU (Dave was in a class with him and wasn’t impressed).  He gives no indication that he learned anything while at Bloomington.  I only found these paltry references:

   I ended up going to Indiana University, the Harvard of central Indiana.  And I think I needed a phone call from my dad just to get in.  I’m sure that it was a proud moment for him.  Even after he spent all this money on this little private school [Country Day], his dumb son couldn’t get into Indiana on his own.

When I was still in college, I started working as the number 2 play-by-play broadcaster for the Louisville Redbirds, the Cardinals’ triple-A team.

I left IU.  My dad paid for those years of Country Day, and now his kid was a college dropout.

I bowled my first 500 series of the year – 509 to be exact, with scores of 191, 181, and 137.  I overcame a slow start in the first with a four-bagger.  My final game I got off to another poor start and then finished with five straight spares.  The Engineers took five points from the Fab Four (Carol Dopiriak, Marilyn Feczko, Sheryl Burell, and Rob Tucker).  After I doubled in the second game, Carol joked, “Sit your ass down,” so I acted as if I was going to sit on her lap.  Daughter-in-law Delia’s four uncles were nearby and called Duke Caminsky ‘Grumpy.”  He actually seems to like the nickname.

 Thomas Bradley goes for the score

IU’s basketball team has fallen out of the top 25 with star players James Blackmon and OG Anunoby injured, but the Hoosiers won an exciting triple-overtime contest against Penn State, 110-102, with Thomas Bradley, Robert Johnson, and Josh Newkirk all having career highs with 31, 27, and 27 points respectively.

I’ve just about finished laying out volume 46 of Steel Shavings, but I needed Krishna Shah of IUN’s HELP Desk to get a gif converted to a jpeg.  All that’s left to do is proofread the Index, a mind-numbing task best done in small bites.

Celebrating Lin Brehmer’s 25 years of service, WXRT put on a “Great to Be Alive” Wednesday special using my favorite deejay’s trademark expression.  Saturday morning featured music from the year Lin started, 1991.  On the way to Inman’s I heard the Grateful Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band” sung by the Indigo Girls and “Learning to Fly” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who will be at Wrigley Field next summer for a 40^th anniversary show.  I left early to fill in for Dave in an eight-hour History of the World board game until he got there.  We had just finished the second of seven epochs when he arrived. First I was the Indus Valley Bronze Age civilization and then the Vedic city states.  Dave told me later that Charlie Halberstadt won.

 Jef Halberstadt playing History of the World; photos by Charlie Halberstadt 

Jef, T. Wade, and Jimbo

Three grant proposal are among the 144 finalists for the Knight Foundation’s Cities Challenge.  The most promising is a Gary Ruins Garden Project to turn what’s left of City Methodist Church into a tourist site, something VISTA workers Sam Salvesen and Alex Koerner are working on with deputy director of redevelopment Jack Eskin.  Others projects include Ballpark Plaza (converting a vacant property across from the Steel City Yard into a beer garden and farmers market) and In Love in Gary (transforming empty property at 500 Broadway into an urban wedding destination).

above, Sam Salvesen at City Methodist; below, Alex Koerner and Jack Eskin; P-T photos by Kyle Telethon

Arriving at the condo for the weekend were Alissa and her mom (Beth) and Miranda with boyfriend Sean, who brought a six-pack of the Seattle Space Dust IPA from Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle, Washington.  After a couple Coors Lights one bottle of Space Dust hit the spot as we played cards and joked around.