Monday, October 16, 2017

Do Not Go Gentle

“Old age should burn and rave at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light”
         Dylan Thomas, “Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night”
 Dylan Thomas


Watching the Cubs defeat the Nationals on TBS, I saw far too many commercials but took note when one by Goboldly (evidently a biopharmaceutical consortium) quoted the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas about battling symptoms of old age. “Big Pharma” can easily afford to bankroll the classiest of ads.  A Volkswagen commercial used nostalgia to attract baby boomers and their wannabies by showing hippies in VW buses at Woodstock with Joe Cocker singing “With a Little Help from My Friends.” I got a good laugh seeing Snoop Dog being touted as the upcoming host for a revival of “Joker’s Wild,” a quiz show Dave loved when a pre-schooler. 

The Cubs triumphed in the finale of the five-game series thanks in large part to a successful pick-off play at first when Nationals player José Lobaton took his foot of the bag for an instant and Anthony Rizzo kept the tag on him.  The camera showed manager Dusty Baker grimacing when the umpires announced their final decision.  Dusty managed the Cubs for four years, beginning in 2003 (the ill-fated year of Bartman), and, in my opinion, was unfairly blamed for things beyond his control.
 above, Lobaton picked off; below, Dusty Baker with trademark toothpick



After three straight losses in Fantasy Football, Jimbo Jammers got more points than any other team thanks to big days by Jordon Howard, Carlos Hyde, Antonio Brown, Kirk Cousins, and the Ravens special teams, scoring TDs on kickoff and punt returns.  Cousins not only passed for 330 yards and two TDs but ran one in and rushed for a total of 26 yards.  Tough luck for Anthony’s The Powerhouse, which had the second most points.
Toni fell and aggravated her already injured knee but gamely went with us to Northside Diner in Chesterton for breakfast prior to gaming.  Dave’s high school classmate and friend Wayne Thornton did Northside’s outside mural. For the first time in many months, we played Air Lords, an Evan Davis invention.   During a day of record-breaking rainfall Toni also gutted out a trip to Outback Steakhouse and then finished first in bridge.  Hosts Connie and Brian Barnes are both my age.  On a bureau, I spotted a birthday card highlighting the year 1942.  Most items had to do with wartime prices and news, but one mentioned the internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans.

Thanks to a DNA ancestry search, Helen Booth, a friend from duplicate bridge, discovered that she has two half-sisters.  Her father evidently took off shortly after Helen was born.  It was during the Great Depression and may have been an act of desperation.  Helen never saw or heard from him again.  Back then, family secrets and so-called skeletons in the closet were not uncommon.   My great-aunt Grace and grandpa Elwood Metzger both had lovers but kept up appearances by not living together.   Great-aunt Ida M. Gordon, who lived with us, had evidently gotten swept off her feet by a sharpie from Philadelphia who deserted her soon after they married.  At least that’s the official story.  Not only did I never ask Aunt Ida about him, my mother never gave me a clear sense of what happened.
Library staff member Anne Koehler asked me to proofread an upcoming Portage Historical Society Bulletin. I thought she meant the entire thing and gave her a couple good suggestions, but Anne was referring to an excerpt from my Portage Shavings issue that mentioned recently deceased Irline Holley being a founding member of the Portage Historical Society. Anne also loaned me Matthew A. Werner’s “Season of Upsets,” about the 1950 Cinderella Union Mills basketball team, which upset Michigan City Elston to win the Sectional before bowing to Hammond High. Hammond lost in the Regional finals to Lafayette Jefferson, which in turn was upset in the state championship by tiny Madison (student population: 270).


Ron Cohen’s son Joshua passed away, a gentle soul in his mid-40s.  We knew Josh well before he moved with his mom to Indianapolis (once, setting off a firecracker on July Fourth, we feared he’d blown off a finger) and then again as an adult.  Whenever he’d see me, he’d flash a winsome smile and be interested in how I was doing.  Josh overcame some hard knocks before finding a good woman and a decent job and fathering son DeQuane.  He had a fetching smile and a good heart, and Ron is taking the loss hard.

An article by former Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf in the Summer 2017 issue of Traces highlighted the life and poetry of Etheridge Knight, a Mississippi native and Korean War veteran reborn in prison, where he served an eight-year sentence for stealing ten dollars to support a drug addiction. His most famous poem in “Feeling Fucked Up”
Norbert Krapf wrote: “Even if we don’t like poems in which the ultimate swear word is allowed to rampage free, we must admit that few poems in our language express better how ‘lowdown’ lost love can bring us.”
6+-
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 Ben Edwards



Post-Tribune columnist Jerry Davich wrote movingly about 11-year-old Ben Edwards, whose parents died last month as a result of a murder-suicide.  Michael Watkins apparently shot his wife, jewelry maker and artist Leila Edwards, and then took his own life. Speaking with Davich at the home of his maternal grandparents Edward and Donna Edwards, Ben asked that his photo be taken with pictures of both parents.  Leila owned Wonderland Stained Glass and Ben’s Bodacious BBQ Bakery and Deli in Miller, named for her son.  He is a fifth grader at Discovery Charter School in Chesterton, where James and Becca graduated from.  Ben told Davich he likes math and science, participated in spell bowl and chess club and hopes to become an engineer. Davich wrote:
   When Watkins' restaurant opened in January, Ben helped his father, working the cash register, taking customers' orders and selling his own homemade baked goods. “Cookies, brownies, cinnamon rolls, banana bread, lots of other stuff,” Ben recalled proudly. “He's quite the little chef," Anthony Edwards said. “He enjoys baking because of the science behind it.” Ben smiled again.
    His mother was a talented stained-glass artist and jewelry maker who taught her many skills to school students, curious friends and, of course, to Ben. “My mom taught me everything she knew,” Ben said. “Or I just picked it up by watching her.”
 Viki Williams with summer "sons" Andy Shipman, Aaron Cook, and Kyle Heyne



On Jerry Davich’s website, Viki Williams share Gary memories:
  I grew up on Wabash on the dead end street. Railroad tracks behind my house and 4th Ave in front. As kids we used to go up under the overpass and write on the concrete with chalk. I often want to go there to see if anything is still there. It was protected from the weather, so who knows? Our parents always told us that bums slept there...except we never saw anyone and it didn’t scare us. We just felt they were passing through on the trains. The people who live there are still taking care of the street. I left in 1971, and our next-door neighbors are still there. The Pennsylvania Station is long gone (used to put coins on the tracks and were scared we would derail a train.) That is the part that is overgrown. We would take pieces of cardboard and slide down the hill, play baseball in the triangular section at the end of the street, and all kinds of games in the street. We would go to Popsicle Mary's, which was in the basement of the lady's house where she had a freezer and several gumball machines that she kept full of gumballs and prizes. We would go to Station 8 and have lunch with the firemen. The only one I remember was Sgt. Calloway because he would play basketball with the neighborhood kids. We would play kickball against the pieces of wood at the Gary Sign Company and not get yelled at because we did no damage. I so miss that.


Tori was in her Grand Valley school’s homecoming court, and sister Miranda, a graduate, volunteered for the dunk tank.

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