Funny Man

“My mind is a raging torrent flooded with rivulets of thoughts cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.” Hedley Lamarr, “Blazing Saddles”

The inside jacket for Patrick McGilligan’s new biography of comedian Mel Brooks, “Funny Man” reads: “He was born Melvin Kaminsky on his family’s kitchen table in Brooklyn, New York, in 1928. Mel was a mischievous child whose role was to make the family laugh.  But beyond boyhood, and after he reinvented himself as Mel Brooks, the laughs that came easily in the Kaminsky home proved more elusive.”  Brooks is perhaps best known for a string of hilarious movies, including Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein(both released in 1974), and the smash Broadway hit (a favorite of Toni and me) “The Producers” (2001-2007).  Gary football star Alex Karras played Mongo inBlazing Saddles and uttered the line,“Mongo only pawn in game of life.”  Brooks was a writer for Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” during the 1950s and still getting laughs on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” 60 years later.

 Alex Karras in "Blazing Saddles"

My wittiest friend I had was David Malham, who, like Mel Brooks, could imitate others’ facial expressions and gestures.  He often told endearing stories about his Assyrian-American mom, and his personal anecdotes often poked fun at itself.  In one he made a TV appearance on the Jerry Springer show as a grief counselor and discovered his pin-striped suit’s coat and pants didn’t match. Terry Jenkins had a great sense of humor, and on the day friends were attending a service celebrating his life I thought of him often.  In IUN’s library lobby a girl was imitating her little sister’s funny way of waking. I said, “I can do that, too” – something Terry would have done – and got them to laugh.

In the car I heard a long set from 1972, when WXRT first came on the air and the year of the Watergate break-in.  I have been tuning in to 93.1 FM since the early Eighties, which qualifies me as a long-time listener. In quick order came songs by Jethro Tull, Little Feat, Todd Rundgren, Loggins and Messina, Harry Nilsson, plus two with drug references, the Allman Brothers Band’s “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More (leave your mind alone and just get high)” and “30 Days in the Hole” by Humble Pie. I can’t recall ever hearing Nilsson’s “Coconut,” about a brother and sister getting a belly ache from a lime and coconut concoction.  On a.m. radio that year, top hits included Don McLean’s “American Pie” and the soul classics “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers and “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green. My favorite White Sox, Dick Allen, had two inside-the-park home runs in the same game!  “Joker’s Wild” debuted in 1972. Three year-old son Dave loved hearing Jack Barry yell “Joker, joker, JOKER!”with increasing excitement.  Before long Dave actually understood how the game was played and got good at it.

Mike Olszanski insists on calling May 1 Labor Day, as around the world it is commemorated as International Labor Day. On May 1, 1886, workers in Chicago and other industrial cities demonstrated for an 8-hour day.  Spring celebrations date back to Roman times and often feature dancing around a maypole.  Old girlfriend Suzanna Dienna Murphy wrote:

Who is old enough to remember May Day traditions? We hung little so-called nosegays of flowers on our neighbors’ front door handles made of bouquets put through a doily and then ran so it would be a surprise. There were also of course Maypole dances with colorful ribbons extending out for girls in beautiful flowing dresses to hold and dance. It was very dreamy and sweet. The college where my Grampa taught Philosophy and Religion classes, Beaver College, always had such a celebration. That was in Glenside Pennsylvania. There was always a reception afterwards. I remember wearing a pastel dress and while gloves and a hat, even when I was very little. For some reason I also remember little decorated sugar cubes that had flowers on top. I have not seen those in many years.

Bishopstone Church, Sussex, England

Reacting to a photo of my bowling team (Electrical Engineers) on Facebook, Ray Smock wrote, “You can fix my wiring anytime.” It took me a few seconds to get the joke.  Jef Halberstadt, who worked at Bethlehem Steel with Terry Kegebein (their lockers were next to each other), asked about our name.  When the team formed 60 years ago, all charter members were electrical engineers at Gary Sheet and Tin, the name of the Cressmoor Lanes league where we bowled until three years ago, when we switched to Mel Guth’s Seniors at Hobart Lanes. At the bowling banquet I managed to get daughter-in-law Delia’s Uncle Phil Vera to take a selfie with me; he also sent one with uncles Larry Ramirez and Eddie Lopez, plus Jaime and Melody Delgado and jokester Angel Menendez.

NWI Times correspondent Joseph Pete sought information about Gary’s Memorial Auditorium, which opened in 1927, closed in 1972, and was badly damaged by fire in 1997. Scheduled for demolition to make way for a 38-unit senior and middle-income housing project, the five thousand-seat facility housed high school basketball games and graduations, wrestling matches, concerts, and speaking engagements by visiting celebrities. I compared its sad fate to the still functioning, 80-year-old Hammond Civic Center. Pete used this quote from our interview:

 Truman gave a “give ’em hell” speech there in 1948.  Frank Sinatra sang there for a Tolerance concert during a famous school strike over integration in 1945.  Half the white students had walked out of Froebel High School, and he performed to get them to go back to school.  Bobby-soxers came in from Portage and other outlying communities to hear him.  It was a big national story that was covered in Life magazine.

Joe Van Dyk, Gary’s director of redevelopment and planning, vowed that historic features will be preserved, including limestone, cornices, the keystone, and other ornamental hallmarks.

 Times photo by Kale Wilk

After I posted the article on Facebook, Paul Kern noted that he attended his first basketball sectional there in 1969; and George Sladic commented that his late wife’s graduation ceremony took place there.  Connie Mack-Ward had this warning:

 Demolishing what remains of this building & disturbing the soil immediately around it will release microscopic histoplasmosis spores into the air--the building was found too dangerous to enter by a feasibility consultant at least 30 years ago, because it contains a large amount of bird excrement, which contains the spores, as does soil which has contacted it.
  Histoplasmosis in humans is very minor, like a little cold, so rarely diagnosed and treated, but the scars it often leaves in the eyes (not visible without special examination) can leave one blind, and the scars can become active or bleed years & even decades later, again causing blindness.

 

Mayor Pete Buttigieg made the cover of both Time and New Yorkmagazine.  The unlikely gay presidential candidate named a dog Truman inspired by the thirty-third President’s quip: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”He told Time: “The idea that we just sort people into baskets of good and evil ignores the central fact of human existence, which is that each of us is a basket of good and evil.  The job of politics is to summon the good and beat back the evil.”  Trump, who unfailingly does the opposite, blasted the decision of the Kentucky Derby stewards to disqualify apparent winner Maximum Security for endangering other horses and riders by an illegal lane change, calling it an example of “political correctness.”  Grumpy Trump is unhinged.

After many days of rain, the weekend was glorious.  I did some bush trimming and eradicated numerous dandelions.  When I was a kid, Vic paid me a dime for every 50 dandelions I pulled up by the roots.  More fun was capturing night crawlers before fishing trips, especially after a downpour. Using a flashlight, I’d pounce on those popping out of the ground before they could wiggle back into their holes.  You could feel them struggling to get free from your grip.

At Memorial Opera House we saw the delightful musical comedy “La cage aux Folles,” starring Andrew Brent and Thomas Olsen as an aging gay couple who perform in a review as drag queen and owner/master of ceremonies.  Old friend Patti Shaffner played Jacqueline, a café owner hoping to perform in the gay revue. Seeing guys dressed as female dancers reminded me of seeing “Kinky Boots” in Chicago.  Originally a French play, “La Cage aux Folles” opened on Broadway in 1983 and enjoyed another successful run 28 years later.  Dick Hagelberg knew Olsen from the Northwest Indiana Symphony Chorus; afterwards, Olsen was with an entourage at Pesto’s Restaurant. 

New York Times Sunday magazine highlighted 25 songs“that matter right now,” beginning with Bruce Springsteen’s oft misconstrued “Born in the U.S.A.,” which he performed without accompaniment in “Springsteen on Broadway.” Beforehand, he told of grooving at shows starring Walter Cichon and the Jersey Shore band the Motifs and that Cichon got drafted and never returned from Vietnam. When the selective service board summoned Springsteen, he succeeded in evading being drafted, certain he’d meet the same fate. He told the audience: “I do sometimes wonder who went in my place. Because somebody did.”

In the Field

“My first day in the field in South Vietnam I’m leaning on one of these pipes when I notice writing inscribed on it: ‘U.S. Steel, Gary Sheet and Tin.’ I exclaimed, ‘Look, I worked there.’  But nobody gave a shit.”  Omar Farag

 Omar Farag (2nd from left) skinny-dipping in water probably contaminated by Agent Orange

Omar Farag got sent to Nam in the fall of 1970, by which time the war was basically lost.  On patrol, he told me:

  My squad members liked me walking point because I altered our mission to search and avoid.  My attitude was, “Fuck, we’re going slow.”  After all, the purpose was to survive.  If I thought the enemy went one way, I went the opposite.  We all agreed; we didn’t even have to vocalize it.

President Obama with Vietnamese leader Tran Dai Quang

Barack Obama became the first sitting President to visit Vietnam, some 42 years after the end of America’s most disastrous war, and announced the end of the American embargo on selling arms to the Communist regime.  One reason for closer ties with the Hanoi regime is alarming Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.

In “Operation Homecoming,” edited by Andrew Carroll, is an article by First Lieutenant Dawn Halfaker, who in 2004, after playing varsity basketball for West Point, led her platoon on security missions and trained Iraqi police.  After three months in the field, her four-truck convoy came under attack.  She recalled:

  An RPG smashed through my truck’s engine block. Ripped my right arm from its socket, splintered my torso with shrapnel, broke eight of my ribs, and severely burned my lungs. With God on his shoulders, our driver Specialist Hill averted the kill zone and raced our mangled truck back to the police station.

 

In an induced coma for two weeks, Halfaker awoke to find herself at Walter Reed Hospital, where she’d remain for nine months.  She overcame self-pity at losing her arm by observing the grit of comrades with more grievous wounds and by remembering Omar, a prisoner who once facilitated the birth of a child by a pregnant detainee who would not let a U.S. doctor touch her.  Halfaker wrote:

  The local religious and nationalist authorities didn’t appreciate Omar’s brazenly pro-Western attitude, so they framed him for selling hashish to juveniles and had him arrested.  With no due process to depend on, Omar was convicted of nothing but remained incarcerated for over a year.

  One of Omar’s favorite pastimes was watching us soldiers play basketball on a small makeshift court we threw together outside the jail.  He would stand in his cell and peer through the bars of his window, shouting enthusiastically as though it were game seven of the World Series.  He always cheered the most for my team, mocking my opponents, claiming that no one could stop me.  The more he rooted for me, the more I wanted to prove the pride of his smack talk.

  As I recovered at Walter Reed, I learned that Omar took my injury extremely hard.  One day he became so angry and frustrated that he tore down the makeshift basketball hoop he helped us build and wrote, “No LT, no Play” on the backboard in big bold letters.  When the soldiers tried to put it back up, Omar wrestled it away from them and insisted that if I were not going to be part of the game, no one would be.

Halfaker’s description of Omar reminded me that Portage grad John Migoski, assigned by the army to Mogadishu Somalia in 1993, gave the name Omar to his son because a man by that name saved his life.  It also caused me to remember Mehmet, a helpful and sociable student at Bogazici (Bosporus) University in Istanbul when in the summer of 2000 I attended an oral history conference there.  A devout Kurd who hoped to study in Boston after meeting a girl from there the previous summer, Mehmet took me sightseeing one day to the Grand Bazaar, Suleyman’s burial mosque, and Istanbul University.  We had yummy pita bread filled with cuttings from a huge revolving piece of veal.  I’d seen them all over but hadn’t gotten up the nerve to order one.

NWI Times marketing columnist Larry Galler compared managing a business to running a farm.  A good harvest depends on plowing, planting, nurturing, protecting, and cultivating the field.  Similarly, Galler wrote, “The businessman uses other tools to cultivate, plant seeds of interest, nourish and protect the relationship with great service and ultimately produce a harvest.  The businessperson also knows that there is no harvest, or a very thin one, without cultivating the relationship.”

After a torrid start, the Cubs have cooled off, losing their last three series.  In the field Jason Haywood ran face first into a wall in the process of making a spectacular catch.  Their latest loss was on a two-out, walk-off home run by Cardinal Randal Grichuk.

Chesterton Tribune reporter Kevin Nevers encapsulated three generations of downtown entrepreneurship in “Framing Concepts to Close.”  Nevers began:

  For more than three-quarters of a century, a Baur has been doing business in downtown Chesterton and once every generation reinventing it.

  Walt Baur, Sr, the original entrepreneur, in 1938 opened the Ben Franklin five-and-dime at 133 S. Calumet Road.  In 1959 Walt, Jr. bought out his father and, looking to expand, moved the store into the 10,000-square foot space of what had been the Aron Theater at 219 Broadway.

  There Walt, later joined by his son ken, continued selling the usual stock-in-trade of a five and dime – toiletries, shoes, stationary, household items – until, by the early 1980s, the rise of the big-box discount retailers had shifted the commercial center of gravity from the downtown to the frontage road, from storefronts to strip malls.  Mom-and-pop operations had no hope of competing against such aggressive economies of scale.

  The Baurs responded boldly with a sidestep and counterthrust.  They became a specialty store, liquidating much of their traditional line and replacing it with arts and crafts supplies.  Ken completed the transition in 1989 when he bought out his father, outfitting, with wife Pat, serious artists and crafters as well as kids (and parents) grappling with social projects, birthday parties, and rainy afternoons.

  By the 21st century, however, Hobby Lobby and Michael’s were doing to Ken’s Ben Franklin what Kmart and Target had done to his father’s.  So Ken doubled down on specialization and opened Framing Concepts gallery, where for 15 years they’ve been providing high-end customized framing and display solutions for art work, family heirlooms, and personal mementos.

  Now though, Ken and Pat (above) are retiring.  The time is right, Ken says. They have had a good run in the niche business in a small town.  The decision hasn’t been forced on them by circumstance.  “We’re lucky,” Ken says.  “It’s never become a daily grind.  And we can pick and choose.”

  Not that it’s been easy though.  It took sweat and imagination.  “You build up layers in a frame shop,” Ken says.  “It’s not just residential jobs.  It’s also commercial and interior decoration.”

Nevers reported that last year Chesterton lost Smith Motors, a family-owned dealership for over 50 years, and that the Port Drive-In owners are soon retiring.

In 1996, hearing from high school teacher Susan Abbadusky, reprimanded in Monmouth, Illinois, for assigning “Slaughterhouse Five,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote:

  The first story of mine to arouse censors was about time-travelers who go back to the Holy Land at the time of the Crucifixion.  It turns out that the Bible had it right, the 3 crosses, the crown of thorns, and so on.  As long as they’re back there, they decide to measure Jesus.  He is five feet and three inches tall, the same height, incidentally, as Richard the Lion hearted.  Outrage!  Pandemonium!

 “Mistress America” (2015) is about Tracy (Lola Kirke), a lonely Barnard College freshman bonding with stepsister-to-be Brooke (Greta Gerwig), a vivacious 30 year-old veteran New Yorker.  Their parents met on an Internet dating service.  Richard Brody in The New Yorker described Brooke as “a brilliant talker and aphorist, a fast-walking, fast-talking fount of gossip and insights, cutting wit and grandiose dreams, wild impulses and crazy projects, incisive observations and boundless audacity.”  Brody added:

  As soon as Tracy lays eyes on Brooke, who sashays down the red staircase at the TKTS stand in Duffy Square with a wild shriek ("Tracy! Welcome to the Great White Way!”) and a theatrically ironic eye roll, Tracy recognizes that Brooke is a character, in both senses of the word – an idiosyncratic, overflowing, even overwhelming personality, and someone made to be represented in fiction. The next day, after a night of adventures with Brooke, Tracy writes a story, “Mistress America,” about a woman named Meadow who says and does what Brooke said and did when they were together.

Tracy labels Meadow “all romance and failure.  The world was changing, and her kind didn’t have anywhere to go.  Being a beacon of hope for lesser people is a lonely business.”  That was selling the resilient Brooke short, as Tracy later realized.

Our bridge group dined at Ivy’s Bohemia House and came back to the condo for cards and cheesecake.  Sunday at Memorial Opera House we attended “The Bobo Show,” a fundraiser for Porter County Animal Shelter.  Becca and James sang “PETS” with Anne Carmichael to the tune of “YMCA.”  Afterwards we celebrated Tamiya’s turning 21 at Applebee’s, followed by Angie’s homemade chocolate cake at the condo. 

Good buddy David Malham passed away, wife Shelley informed us, two years after contracting ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).  A master storyteller with a warm heart, he was my first A+ student.  Once for Rhiman Rotz’s class project he decided to cook a medieval meal (mainly onions and potatoes) and asked Toni and me to be on hand for moral support.  We had a hilarious time playing a dictionary game later marketed as Balderdash.  David described my demeanor in front of the classroom in the early 1970s thusly:

  Lane needed a plumed hat and rapier like D’Artagnan in “The Three Musketeers.”  He had a goatee, mustache, long hair, and a habit of making circular hand motions.  When he wanted to make a big point, the gesture would take on a particular flourish.

 

Malham earned an MA at IU before becoming a grief counselor for MADD.  In a class with pompous historian Robert H. Ferrell, he pronounced Valparaiso, Chile, like the city in Northwest Indiana, emphasizing the long “a” in the third syllable rather than the “i,” drawing Ferrell’s ridicule.  In 2000, after Dave, Angie, and I were victims of a home invasion, David held a cathartic debriefing session.  Often deliberately the butt of his own stories, he once described an appearance on the Jerry Springer show as an expert on troubled teens.  Right before airtime he noticed that his pin-stripe jacket didn’t match the pants.  His first chance to speak, he wasn’t succinct enough, so Springer cut him off.  An attractive black girl was getting the most camera time.  David broke in but got her name wrong.  I think of David whenever I sneak candy into the movie theater, which embarrassed son Michael.  His Assyrian mother for many years refused to give up her house in Gary behind Sears despite her children’s urging.  David took her along on a business trip to Washington, DC. 

Years ago at a gas station a reckless driver ran Malham down and severely injured hom.  Depressed and feeling like a burden, he divorced Shelley, his soul mate, but later they remarried.  Though unfailingly good-humored in correspondence, the emails tailed off.  I was not surprised that he declined heroic measures to keep him alive.  I’m grieving but cherish many humorous memories we shared.

Wild about Harry

  “Without Haste, Without Rest.

Not thine the labor to complete,

And yet thou art not free to cease!”

   Epigraph from the Talmud in Henry Roth’s “Requiem for Harlem”

In New York Review of Books Nathaniel Rich praised four autobiographical novels by Henry Roth, who died 20 years ago.  The first time I taught Urban History, I used Roth’s “Call It Sleep,” which described Jewish life on New York’s Lower East Side.  First published in 1934, it was quickly out of print but reissued 30 years later to great acclaim.  At the end of the semester Teresa, IUN’s textbook manager, asked if I wanted a couple more copies.  The publisher had told her to send back the covers of unsold paperbacks and to throw away the copies, but Teresa couldn’t bring herself to follow orders.  I took the coverless copies but eventually tossed them. Roth had written nothing besides “Call It Sleep” until in his seventies, when he seemed to have a compulsive need to, as Rich puts it, to grapple with his demons – or as Roth himself put it -  to “transmogrify the baseness of his days and ways into precious literature.”  Roth’s dirty little secret: an incestuous relationship.

above, Shannon and Maxwell; below, 4 generations of Lanes

Saturday Dave’s family arrived with Chinese food from Wing Wah, and we played UNO and SOB.  On Sunday Toni got Mothers Day calls from Phil, Alissa, Miranda, Beth, and Shannon Bayer, who’s visiting family in Carmel with baby Maxwell.  Knowing that my mother would be having brunch with nephew Bob’s family, I called him at 2 p.m. my time and got to wish Midge a Happy Mothers Day.

Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle wrote “I’m Just Wild about Harry” in 1921 for “Shuffle Along,” the first successful Broadway play with an all African-American cast.  One line went: “He’s sweet just like chocolate candy and just like honey from the bee.”  In 1948 “I’m Just Wild about Harry” became President Truman’s campaign song, which critics parodied as “I’m Just Mild about Harry.”  With his upset win over Thomas Dewey, old Harry had the last laugh.  Most famous Harrys for millennials: Harry Potter and Prince Harry.   For me growing up: Harry Belafonte.  In Truman’s time: Harry Hopkins and Harry Houdini.

An unusually large crowd was at Gino’s (including colleague Jonathyne Briggs) to hear Nicole Anslover talk about her Harry Truman book.  She mentioned visiting the Truman Presidential Library when just seven (her mom saved a postcard young Nicole sent from Independence, Missouri) and described doing research there as well as at the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson libraries. She stressed the many foreign and domestic matters demanding Truman’s attention after he took office near the end of WW II upon FDR’s death.  One anecdote I hadn’t heard before had to do with Truman inviting former President Herbert Hoover to the Oval Office on May 28, 1945, just a month into his presidency, to ask for his help in feeding starving Europeans.  Hoover listened silently and then left without saying a word.  Truman was furious until learning that Hoover was so overcome with emotion, to his embarrassment tears were streaming down his face.  For 12 years both parties had treated Hoover as a pariah.  An hour later Hoover called to accept serving on the Famine Emergency Committee.  Despite their political differences the two subsequently became friends.

above, Truman and Hoover; below, LBJ signs Medicare Bill

Mentioning that her next book will deal with Presidential transitions, Nicole discussed Truman’s relationships with his successors.  Eisenhower became annoyed when Truman arranged for his son to be flown in from Korea for his father’s Inauguration (I piped in, “No good deed goes unpunished”).  Even though Truman didn’t think much of JFK receiving the 1960 Democratic nomination, Kennedy was very solicitous toward him during the campaign and throughout his presidency.  LBJ signed the Medicare/Medicaid Bill at the Truman library and presented Harry and Bess with Medicare cards numbered 000-01 and 000-02.

Nicole pointed out that Truman wrote thousands of letters to Bess, his sounding board and confidant.  They have survived, but Bess burned the letters hers to him.  Harry objected, saying, “Think about history.”  That’s exactly why I’m burning them, she is said to have answered.  When Harry became angry at someone, he’d often vent in letters that he’d decide not to mail.  One he did send was to Washington Post music critic Paul Hume, who panned daughter Margaret’s piano concert performance.  Truman wrote: “Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”  Nicole pointed out that President Bill Clinton hang a copy of the letter in the Oval Office.

Book club members peppered Nicole with questions and comments.  Ken Anderson said that he’d been looking forward to her appearance for months and was not disappointed.  One person asked about the poker games Truman enjoyed with members of the press.  Another wondered what was so bad about the “Do Nothing” 80th Congress that Truman railed against on the 1948 campaign trail.  While legislators generally went along with foreign policy initiatives such as the Marshall Plan, Republicans were determined to block his domestic priorities.   I pointed out White House aide Clark Clifford advised Truman to label his program the Fair Deal and to stress that its purpose was to continue and expand upon FDR’s popular New Deal.  Brian Barnes brought up the assassination attempt by Puerto Rican nationalists in 1950 while Truman was staying at Blair House during White House renovations. 

In her journal for Steve McShane’s class Jenny Benedetti, above, who worked both at Dunkin Donuts and Dairy Queen, wrote about obtaining a washer and dryer: “No longer will I have to pile up my laundry for two and a half weeks so I can make the time to sit in town for 3 hours. No more will I have to save every quarter I find, never paying in exact change, so I would not have to use money from my paychecks!  No longer will I have to do a clothes inventory to make sure someone didn’t steal any of my belongings!”  Purchasing a bed, she stated matter-of-factly: “My dog and I no longer fit on a twin mattress so it was time for an upgrade.”  Into the video game “Fire Emblem” and the Japanese comic book series “Naruto,” Jenny described getting her septum pierced:

The piercer didn’t use a piercing gun, but literally just shoved the needle through. Frankly, it really grossed me out and I almost backed out. The piercing did hurt, but nearly as bad as I thought. I am really happy with it!  It will take ten weeks to heal, and I cannot blow my nose in that time. Considering my allergies have been acting up, this will pose a problem.

 Erica and Dan

Erica Borgo was born in Okinawa, where her dad had been stationed, and her mother is Japanese.  She grew up in Illinois, married Dan, a Munster native, and they lived in Merrillville.  Since 2008 she’s worked at Culvers and wrote in her journal:

It has helped me grow as a person in so many ways I would have never guessed. I used to be so shy and confined. Now, I am more confident and understand people better. I can talk and relate to older people now and learned to work as a team.  I have some interesting people that eat there regularly that ask for me. These older ladies that come in every Thursday are so sweet and are probably in their 70s and 80s. I hope to be like them when I get older; having a group of is this little old Jewish guy that comes in at least once a week to come see me. He talks so much my coworkers warn me when they see him coming in the doors now. He will talk your ear off. I am ok with talking for about 15 minutes but feel bad when we are busy. I have this couple that comes in every week on their way back home from Wisconsin baby-sitting their grandkids. It’s funny how you don’t even really have to talk that much to people and they like you already.

Betty Koed and Don Ritchie

Ray Smock posted a photo taken at Senate Historian Don Ritchie’s retirement.  My favorite story about my fellow Marylanders is when Ray somehow managed to get Don into a topless bar and then managed to photograph the event.

David Malham passed on an article by Mark Bauerlein entitled “What’s the point of a professor?”  It bemoaned the lack of interaction between instructors and students, concluding: “When it comes to students, we shall have only one authority: the grades we give. We become not a fearsome mind or a moral light, a role model or inspiration. We become accreditors.”  An English professor at Emery, Bauerlein wrote “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).”  Sounds like a dumb book.

Thomas Newsome, another former student, visited the Archives in search of information about the Gary NAACP.  Steve McShane made copies of pages from a booklet, and I gave him “Gary’s First Hundred Years,” drawing his attention to what I wrote about civil rights crusader Joseph Pitts and discrimination cases argued by Richard Hatcher on the group’s behalf.