Free Will?

    “Your particles are just obeying their quantum-mechanical marching orders,” theoretical physicist Brian Greene

Denying the existence of free will, Columbia University scholar Brian Greene (above), author of “The Elegant Universe,” asserted: “You have no ability to intercede in that quantum-mechanical unfolding.  None whatsoever.”  In a Time  interview Greene added: “How wondrous is it that I am able to have this conscious experience, and it’s nothing more than stuff, but that stuff can produce Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Mona Lisa, Romeo and Juliet?  Holy smokes, that’s wondrous.”  Greene’s research field is string theory, in particular quantum gravity.  With Tracy Day Greene in 2008 launched an annual World Science Festival whose purpose is to cultivate a general public informed by science.

Protestant Reformation theologist John Calvin (1509-1564) rejected the Catholic doctrine of free will and embraced the concept of predestination, arguing that due to God’s omniscience, the fate of individuals must be preordained.  Others rejecting Roman Catholicism were not so rigid, accepting what came to be known as the paradox of free will, the seemingly irrational belief that while God orders all things somehow human freedom is preserved.  Religious skeptic that I am, but less dogmatic than Brian Greene, as much as I respect him, I maintain that I am responsible for my actions.  Somewhat of an existentialist, I agree with Hoosier humorist Kurt Vonnegut that “There is no order in the world around us; we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.” In “Slaughterhouse Five,” Vonnegut’s most important novel, the author utilizes protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s experiences to address the issue of  free will. Throughout his life, Billy is forced to be part of things against his free will. In his childhood his father throws him in the water to teach him how to swim. He was unwillingly drafted into the war, taken prisoner, and miraculously escapes the firebombing of Dresden. Later, he is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians, who believe that all moments occur and reoccur simultaneously: they have already happened and no one can change fate.

Hearing Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is (some things will never change)” on WXRT’s Saturday morning show devoted to the year 1986 reminded me that things sometimes are beyond one’s control. Maryland basketball star Len Bias died that year of a cocaine overdose just two days after the Boston Celtics took him as the second pick in the NBA draft.  In the year of Halley’s Comet’s return, a Soviet nuclear reactor exploded at Chernobyl, wreaking havoc across much of Europe, and the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after takeoff, killing the seven crew members. An deadly earthquake in San Salvador and volcano in Cameroon each killed over 1,500 people.  In 1986 Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered and Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (Lady Gaga) was born in a Manhattan hospital – hard to believe their fates were predetermined.

Lady Gaga in 2016

One of my favorite songs of 1986 was REM’s “I Am Superman (I Can Do Anything” – an assertion of free will, perhaps.  Dave’s high school band LINT performed “I Am Superman” acapella.  LINT also did a rousing version of the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right to Party.”  Other top hits that year included Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” “Papa Don’t Preach” by Madonna, and Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.”  On the Ramones album “Animal Boy” were “Somebody Put Something in my Drink,” “Apeman Hop,” “Love Kills,” and “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg),” a rare political statement by the New York punkers criticizing Ronald Reagan’s visit to a German cemetery where Nazi storm troopers lay buried.

protesting Reagan's Bitburg visit

Connie and Brian Barnes hosted monthly bridge night.  Beforehand, we dined at Red Lobster, first time since Toni and I went there on Valentine’s Day for her birthday years ago and got rushed out ahead of the evening crowds.  Our entrees arrived almost simultaneously with the drinks and salad. Saturday, even though our group arrived at 3:30, it was already crowded, but we only had a ten-minute wait, the food delicious, and the service fine.  For an appetizer I had four tasty scallops and Toni the lobster bisque; we both then ordered fish and chips and had enough left over for Sunday.  As always, Brian had Stella in the fridge for me and red wine for Toni.  Brian had recently completed Glenn Frankel’s “High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic” (2017), which Ron Cohen will report on for our July history book club meeting. Beforehand, we’ll show the 1952 Western classic starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly.

Historian Jon Meachem (above), who has called Trump “the most vivid manifestation of our worst instincts,” and whose most recent book is “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” compared 2020 Presidential frontrunners Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump to 1948 candidates Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond.  The big difference: the latter were third party candidates, former Vice President Wallace, who disagreed with President Harry Truman’s bellicose Cold War policies, heading the Progressive Party and Thurmond, a segregationist opposed to the Democratic Party’s commitment to civil rights, atop the States Rights (or Dixiecrat) ticket.  Republican nominee, New York governor Thomas Dewey, was a moderate who lost in an upset to Truman.  Compared to 1948, political parties today are toothless.  On the one hand, Trump had never been a Republican prior to acting on his Presidential ambitions, while Sanders and Mayor Mike Bloomberg were not Democrats. I fear that if either became the Democratic nominee, it would spell disaster for the party.  If they wished to compete for President, they should run as Independents or, in Bernie case, as a Socialist.  

 Bernie Sanders in Soviet Union, 1988

Bernie’s rivals are taking aim at him but in a heavy-handed way, slamming him for praising the Sandinistas (at a time the U.S. was secretly supplying murderous Contras with deadly weapons), for declaring that the Cuban government under Fidel Castro increased literacy and health care for the poor (true, indeed), and for honeymooning in the Soviet Union in 1988 (a time of glasnost initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, Time’swell-deserved person-of-the-decade).  On CNN’s presidential town hall Sanders recently said: “I have been extremely consistent and critical of all authoritarian regimes all over the world, including Cuba, including Nicaragua, including Saudi Arabia, including China, including Russia. I happen to believe in democracy, not authoritarianism.” The same, sadly, cannot be said of most officeholders, especially Trump, currently in India praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he is attempting to strip Muslims of their civil rights. I want Democratic candidates to go after Bernie but without using tactics akin to Red-baiting.

Speaking at Art in Focus was musician Joe Rauen, who fashions unique instruments from unlikely objects such as canes, pipes, tennis rackets, suitcases, and hockey sticks. For example, he played a guitar with a shovel as its base.  Rauen was quite at ease, personable, and very talented, making use of a loop that enabled him to lay down a track from one instrument and have it play back while he played another  of his concoctions.  Afterwards, director Micah Bornstein said that if Dave is unable to accompany me for my appearance in two weeks, he’d be happy to play YouTube selections of 1960 Rock and Roll songs (I’ll send him a list of 25, and he’ll have them all ready to go).  While at Munster Center, I noticed that Henry Farag was putting on an Ultimate Doo Woo show in April headlining the Marvelettes (“Please, Mr. Postman”) and Edsels (“Rama Lama Ding Dong”).  I’ll plug it during my talk.

We celebrated my 78th birthday at Craft House with Dave, Angie, Becca, and the Wades, who brought two inflated balloons, one a belated “Happy Birthday” to Toni. Dave brought me a case of Yuengling and promised to burn me an Of Monsters and Men compilation CD.  He’s scheduled to participate in an East Chicago Central “Dancing with the Stars” fundraiser and will be playing guitar with three students performing Johnny B. Goode at a Black History Month assembly (he’s invited me as a special guest).  I received birthday calls from Michigan Lanes and one from my brother in California. Facebook announced my birthday to my “friends” and who knows how many others, and I got over 50 likes and a dozen responses, including “Feliz cumpleaños” from Roy Dominguez, and later, in person, at bridge and bowling.

IUN sociologist Jack Bloom, still teaching although well past his 78th birthday, asked me for book titles covering Progressivism.  He was already familiar with classics by Richard Hofstadter and Robert Wiebe, so I suggested “A Fierce Discontent” by Michael McGerr (2003) and Murray N. Rothbard’s “The Progressive Era” (2017) as well as John Dos Passos’s 1920s classic  U.S.A. trilogy.  Nicole Anslover invited me to her class on the Scopes “Monkey” trial.  I may quote Dos Passos’s take on the “Great Commoner,” whose reputation was tarnished by his participation as an attorney for the prosecution.  Here is an excerpt from Dos Passos:

    It was in the Chicago Convention in ’96 that the prizewinning boy orator, the minister’s son whose lips had never touched liquor, let out his silver voice so that it filled the gigantic hall, filled the ears of the plain people:

his voice charmed the mortgage-ridden farmers of the great plains, rang through weather-boarded schoolhouses in the Missouri Valley, was sweet in the ears of small storekeepers hungry for easy credit, melted men’s innards like the song of a thrush or a mocking bird in the gray quiet before sunup, or a sudden soar in winter wheat or a bugler playing taps and the flag flying;

    Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: 

    You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

    They roared their lungs out (crown of thorns and cross of gold)

carried him round the hall on their shoulders, hugged him, loved him, named their children after him, nominated him for President,

silver tongue of the plain people;

    Bryan grew gray in the hot air Chautauqua tents, in the applause, the handshakes, the back-pattings, the cigar-smoky air of committee-rooms at Democratic conventions, a silver tongue in a big mouth.

    In Dayton he dreamed of turning the trick again, of setting back the clocks for the plain people, branding, flaying, making a big joke of Darwinism and the unbelieving outlook of city folks, scientists, foreigners with beards and monkey morals.

Instead Clarence Darrow made a fool of him.

Hostilities

“The nicest veterans, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who’d really fought.” Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse Five”

 Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove

Even though I already knew the doomsday ending of “Cat’s Cradle” (1963) by Kurt Vonnegut, it still moved me deeply.  As one who personally witnessed the horrors of war, the author brought out the absurdity of the Cold War arms race in ways that hadn’t moved me so deeply since the black comedy “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964).  During a Memorial Day ceremony Vonnegut has Ambassador Horlick Minton deliver this devastating critique of glorifying warfare:

 Perhaps when we remember wars, we should take off all our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go down on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs.  That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.

Battle of Missionary Ridge, chromolithograph by Kurtz and Allison

Minton then recited these lines from “Spoon River Anthology” by Edgar Lee Masters, written in 1915 on the eve of American entry into the Great War: 

 I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge

When I felt the bullet enter my heart

I wished I had stayed at home . . .

Instead of running away and joining the army.

The 1863 Battle of Missionary Ridge near Chattanooga was a Union victory at a cost to General U.S. Grant’s army of 6,000 casualties.

I’m listening to a greatest hits CD by Jackson Browne, whom I saw twice at the Star Plaza, that includes “Lives in the Balance,” about “men in the shadows” selling us everything from our President to our wars. “Lives in the Balance” was released when Reagan was flirting with intervening to overthrow the socialist regime in Nicaragua.  When I spoke at a history conference in Rio about women steelworkers, I played a video of Browne performing it at a 1990 concert in Santiago, Chile.  The final lines go:

And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

Our bridge group dined at Captain’s House and then played at the Hagelbergs, who had purchased a delicious carrot cake from the Miller eatery.  I had a mediocre score but helped Toni edge out Brian Barnes to finish first.  Going into the final round, she trailed him by about 500 points.  After two hands he and Connie were up a game, but then we made two game bids to overtake them; first Toni made 4 Spades and on the final hand I bid three No-Trump and then took every trick thanks to two successful finesses and a 2-2 split with the four Diamonds in opponents’ hands. Like me, Brian and Connie had loved “Green Book.”  Noting that pianist Don Shirley should have known better than to flash a wad in a bar, Brian said that when working in Chicago for Sears, he always carried a wad.  Then if mugged, he could easily hand it over and hopefully then be left unhurt with his wallet.

I watched IU, led by Jawun Morgan (above), defeat Rutgers on Senior Day to clinch a bye in the upcoming Big Ten tournament.  Then, after running out for a cold cut Subway on an Italian roll, I enjoyed a 76ers win over Indianapolis thanks to 33 points by MVP candidate Joel Embiid.  Phil called to report on attending a week-end Comedy Fest with Delia, Alissa, Tori, and Anthony.  They had fun although unable to get tickets to 87 year-old Ed Asner’s one-man show, “A Man and His Prostate.”  In April Asner is coming to Memorial Opera House in Valpo.  I told Phil about being at Marquette Pavilion for Asner’s one-man show about FDR when he collapsed on stage and had to be removed on a stretcher.  A couple months later, he returned to Miller and fulfilled his vow to put on the show.

Former IUN professor Mike Certa returned from a cruise that included a stay in Hong Kong and just started “A Jazz Age Murder in Lake County” by Jane Simon Ammeson and noticed my name in the acknowledgment section as well as Ron Cohen’s and Steve McShane’s.  He emailed:

  So far, the first chapter is full of local references that I recognize in East Chicago, Indiana Harbor, and Gary.  The fatally injured woman in the book was taken to Mercy Hospital on Polk Street that I passed every school day for four years while attending Holy Angels Elementary School (fourth to eighth grades).  There are also references to St. Catherine’s Hospital in East Chicago where I was born.

  This seems to be my month for running across places from my youth.  At a recent political gathering in Crown Point I met an elderly gentleman named Frank, who lived in a house on Magoon Avenue in East Chicago (near the Four Corners) just across the street from Dr. Benchik’s office.  Dr. Benchik delivered me and my six siblings.  My mother insisted on him being our family doctor for years even though it meant trundling over to East Chicago from Gary.  His waiting room had the hardest wooden benches and the scratchiest horse-hair covered chairs I’ve ever endured.  However, we all liked him.  We went to him until he finally retired.  Frank knew the doctor and shared our high opinion of him.

After I told him about spending a month in Hong Kong a quarter-century ago, Certa replied:

  We were only in Hong Kong a couple of days at the end of our trip.  We stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kowloon.  They have a really good dim sum restaurant in the hotel.  The day we had lunch there, we were the only non-Asians in the place, which we took to be a good sign.  The walnut encrusted mud fish balls were very good. Oddly enough, the people at the hotel didn’t seem to speak much English, and the concierges they didn’t seem to know much about attractions in the area.  We had much better luck on the street and in the subway stations.  There always seemed to be someone who noticed us and asked if they could be of assistance.  I’m thinking particularly of the day we took the subway, and a local bus to find the Walled City Park in Kowloon.  It was an English fort, then it became a slum containing about 15,000 people.  The city razed the slum and created a lovely park that houses some of the more historic buildings. We wandered around the park for 90 minutes or so.

While lecturing in Hong Kong at Chinese University, I visited that park by subway.  Numerous groups of well-behaved youngsters were walking in step behind an adults holding different colored flags.  I told Mikethat I may be attending a history conference in Singapore and asked how he like it, eliciting this response:

  Because I was still trying to shake the effects of bronchitis, I stayed in the hotel while Mary went with our tour group on the Singapore city tour.  They all came back raving about the phenomenal botanical gardens that line the river.  They talked about the amazing orchids they saw.  Evidently being 1 degree (85 miles) above the equator is a good climate for orchids. 

  As I was feeling better that evening, I booked what was called the “Night Safari” at the Singapore Zoo.  We were bused to the Zoo where we started with a very nice buffet. By the time we finished dinner it was dark.  You can do the tour two ways:  ride the tram or walk the trails at your own pace.  We took the tram.  Animals that tend to be nocturnal are in enclosures fairly close to the road bathed in a low intensity blue light.  They show up amazingly well.  The enclosures are quite big, and sometimes the animals had wandered off to the far corners.  I’d say we saw about 85% of the animals on the tour.  Near the end of the tram ride, we discovered a third option:  you can get off the tram and walk along the trail on your own.  We did this in an area where there were smaller animals.  We got to see the very rare pangolin (an Asian armadillo-like animal).  I thought it was an interesting experience.

 Kirk Muskrat and Winston Choi triptech

Maestro Kirk Maestro brought guest pianist Winston Choi with him to the Munster Center for his “Art in Focus” talk on “The Keys to France,” the title of the upcoming Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra performance.  Personable and entertaining as always, Muspratt wore a Number 88 Jonathan Kane Chicago Blackhawks sweater, as he was attending an ice hockey game at the United Center that evening as a symphony fundraiser. He spoke about French composers Camille Saint-Seans (1835-1921), whose specialty was organ music, and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), best known for Bolero, a ballet that opens with a seductive 16-minute flamenco piece.  While dimming the lights for a clip showing the inside of Ravel’s home, Kirk briefly put a hand on my shoulder, either recognizing me from his 2018 presentation, thankful for asking him about Ravel’s private life (a bachelor, he lived alone except for a housekeeper), or perhaps  familiar with my blog.

Camille Saint-Seans and Maurice Ravel

Someone asked Muspratt about the Chicago musicians’ strike in progress, and expressed sympathy after mentioning that starting salaries were around $150,000.  The main disagreement involved cuts to the pension program. Another woman referenced the universally panned movie Bolero (1984) starring Bo Derek as a wealthy virgin looking to be de-flowered who becomes a matador after her lover gets gored.  Pointing out the steamy nude sex scenes, movie critic Roger Ebert wrote: “There are two Good Parts, not counting her naked ride on horseback, which was the only scene that had me wondering how she did it.” I checked out those Good Parts on YouTube and was amazed “Bolero” did not get an X rating.  Derek definitely deserved the 10 in the 1979 film of that name.

Young virtuoso Winston Choi, who teaches at Roosevelt University and, like Kirk, is a Canadian native, played bits of several Saint-Seans numbers and ended with a rousing crescendo by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953). In the front row near the Baldwin piano, I noticed that instead of sheet music, Choi made use of a computer and a floor device that changed pages upon his command.  According to Muspratt, Prokofiev had the misfortune of living in the age of Joseph Stalin.  In 1948 the Politburo denounced him for the crime of “formalism” and banned most of his compositions.  His wife was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to 20 hears of hard labor in a Soviet gulag. Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin.  Afterwards, I asked Choi the spelling of Saint-Seans, which he had pronounced like Sasson.  Rather than view it as a dumb question, he was very solicitous, even showing it written down.

Kirsten and Ed Petras; Night Ranger

Kirsten Bayer emailed: “It’s gonna be a great day when you park at work the moment Sister Christian comes on the radio. Hold please work while I enjoy.”  I responded: “I love Night Ranger and wore out my “Midnight Madness” album in the 80s. Had a similar car moment when "The Beat Goes On/Switchin' to Glide" by the Kings came on.”  “Sister Christian” lyrics include these lines 

Sister Christian . . .

You know those boys 
Don't want to play no more with you 
It's true

You're motoring 
What's your price for flight

When Phil and Dave were in high school, we showed up at a Jack Bloom end-of-the-semester party with “Midnight Madness,” which opens with “You Can Still Rock in America,” and had the back room hopping and people up dancing.  A YouTube video of “Sister Christian” that has received almost 18 million hits opens with girls receiving diplomas and concludes with scenes of them commingling with the long-haired San Francisco band.

Concussed

  “We can’t last forever on the football field.  You get your head knocked a bit.  They’ve got to fix the helmets so your brains don’t get rattled like they do,” Ted Karras to Al Hamnik (2011)

The word concussed is now in common usage both as an adjective (suffering from a concussion) and a verb (to injure by means of a concussion).  Though the subject comes up most often in regards to football, recent research has shown it to be a problem in wrestling, soccer, and other youth sports.  The fear is that repeated hits to the head will result in long-term brain damage.  I recall a time when euphemisms like “he got his bell rung” and “he got dinged” were used to describe head hits glorified in highlight films.

Columnist John Doherty reported that, according to a recent report in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, college athletes who suffered concussions are more than twice as likely to experience a non-contact leg injury within three months of returning to action.  The report concluded:

Given the demanding environment in which athletes are required to execute complex maneuvers, it is possible that mild neurocognitive deficit may result on judgment errors and loss of coordination.

 above, Ted Karras in 2013; below, Ted and Anna

Ted Karras, starting left guard on the Chicago Bears NFL 1963 championship team, died at age 81.  Five years ago he told NWI Times correspondent Al Hamnik: “You lose your memory and everything else.  That’s my problem right now.  I got knocked around and I can’t remember things.  But I’m glad I’m alive.  I’m 77.  What the hell.”  Hamnik pointed out that the most Karras ever made for a season was $25,000, and his monthly NFL pension was just $975.  I had the honor of visiting Ted and wife Anna at their Miller home  on Shelby a couple years while working on an article about brother Alex Karras for Traces magazine.  Looking a old photos, Ted joked about his memory loss, but I could tell how frustrating it must have been.  He'd say each time that we needed to finish by 11 a.m. when reruns of Webster, an Eighties sitcom starring brother Alex, came on.

 Coach Ryan Shelton and IUN's Lady Redhawks

Friday in a NAIA contest, the 23rd-ranked IUN Lady Redhawks played the College of the Ozarks.  Up 34-32 at the half, IUN stretched the lead to 10 before the fourth-ranked Lady Bobcats rallied.  The turning point: two straight treys by opponent Cass Johnson to put her team up four.  IUN tied the score with two minutes to go, thanks to buckets by Nicki Monahan and Jayne Roach, but lost 80-76, first time this season on their home court to fall to 15-6.  A scary moment occurred when an opponent set an illegal moving pick, and an IUN player fell to the floor, hit her head, and remained down for several anxious minutes.

I paid my respects to the Karras family at Burns Funeral Home in Hobart.  In the crowded room were two photos of Ted in his Bears uniform, taken in 1963 and 2013, and several floral wreaths, including one for “papou” from his six grandchildren.  Anna told me Ted died surrounded by family and just weeks ago was singing  - as the obit noted, he had a beautiful voice and had appeared in numerous musical productions.  I said hello to sister Helene, whom I had visited while seeking information on parents Emmiline and George Karras, a Gary doctor, who ministered to working-class immigrant families, often gratis or for products in trade.  Helene said her brothers got their size from their dad and athletic ability from their mother.

Dave was announcing wrestling Sectionals at East Chicago Central, so I took James to bowling at Inman’s.  Teammate Josh Froman had a chance for a 279 game going into the tenth frame but left a seven-pin on an apparent perfect hit.  Bowling ended early, but we were pleased to discover that Culver’s opened at ten and had lunch.

 "Straight Outta Compton" cast

Of all the black actors snubbed by the Academy, Will Smith, who plays Dr. Bennet Omalu in “Concussion” is the most obvious.  Another travesty is that lightweight (in ability) Sylvester Stallone got nominated for again playing Rocky Balboa, now a trainer, in Creed, while Michael B. Jordon as Adonis Johnson was slighted.  African American F. Gary Gray directed the acclaimed “Straight Outta Compton,” but the film’s only nomination went to two white guys who wrote the screenplay.  Some want Oscar host Chris Rock to boycott the event, but I look forward to hearing his take on the subject.

 Party Animals, Trivia Night winners

I competed on Fred and Diane Chary’s team, “Presidents Gone Wild,” at Temple Israel’s eighth annual Trivia Night.  Diane had a white wig for me as well as a John Adams mask.  On our team were the Blooms (Jack as Abraham Lincoln) and Fred’s son Michael.   The Post-Tribune had won the past several years, and a big cheer went up when Party Animals beat them out.  Our table finished about eighth out of 24 entries.  I wasn’t much help: most questions I knew were pretty obvious – for example, “Hair” and Pete Seeger in the music category. I did know the song “Get Together,” and Jack Bloom came up with the name of the group, the Youngbloods, after I speculated that it was Young Rascals.  My best contribution was recognizing a glass art piece by Dale Chihuly.  I erred on what company produced the first plastic credit card. Diners Club issued credit cards starting in 1950, but the answer, to my dismay, was American Express, whose card made of plastic dated from 1959.

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Trivia Night was a chance to see many old Miller friends.  Greeting me when I arrived at Temple Israel was Bobbi Galler, whose son Andy got Phil interested in working at the IU campus TV station.  Bobbi and Larry Galler used to host New Year’s Day chili and beer parties; that’s where I watched the 1979 Cotton Bowl where Joe Montana led Notre Dame, down 34-12 late in the third quarter, to a 35-34 victory over Houston.  Saying hi were Linc Cohen, who had been at Woodstock in the summer of 1969, and Jack Weinberg, a leader of the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement and, closer to home, the Bailly anti-nuclear fight. Weinberg’s team last year was the Marxists; this year they were dressed as cyclists and went by the Cranks (there is a Calumet Crank Club in Northwest Indiana for bikers).  Gene Ayers and I commiserated over the passing of Ted Karras.  In a recent Ayers Realtors Newsletter Gene had written about working at Jack Spratt’s ice cream shop when Ted came in with two Bears teammates, tight end Mike Ditka and defensive end Ed O’Bradovich. 

Gaming with Tom Wade and Dave, I went one for four, winning St. Petersburg thanks to getting the Warehouse, which allowed me to keep four cards in my hand.  For lunch we made ham sandwiches on marbled rye bread, which reminded Dave of the Seinfeld episode where George’s parents take a loaf of marble rye to girlfriend Susan’s house and then his dad sneaks away with it when the hosts don’t serve it.  George then attempts to replace it with another loaf while they leave their apartment.  When Jerry goes to buy one, a woman in front of him purchases the last loaf.  After she refuses to sell it, he snatches it and calls her an “old bag.”  Of course, George gets caught trying to retrieve it from Jerry with a fishing pole.

 rye snatching scene from Seinfeld

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Rereading “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout, I’d forgotten some of the minor characters that weren’t in the brilliant HBO mini-series, such as hardware store owner Harmon, whose wife Bonnie one day announced that she was done having sex.  At the marina diner Harmon sat next to a young couple smelling like pot (he didn’t mind) and talking loudly about a friend being a bitch lately, upset because she found out her boyfriend had a “fuck buddy” – a sex partner to whom she had no emotional attachment.  Harmon heard the girl say, “I mean, who cares.  That’s the point of a fuck buddy.”  Later on the phone, Harmon asked his son if he’d heard of fuck buddies and was told, “That’s the thing these days.  Just what it says.  People who get together to get laid.  No strings attached.”  At the time Harmon was having sex with Daisy Foster on a weekly basis, courting her with donuts, but found himself falling in love and (to quote Strout) “waiting for the day, and he knew it would come, when he left Bonnie or when she kicked him out.”

The protagonist in Young Adult author John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” (2006) was fascinated with the final words of famous people, such as Frank Sinatra saying, “I’m losing it.”  The last words of benevolent Henry Kitteridge as he got out of the car at Shop ‘n’ Save to buy milk, orange juice and jam were “Anything else?”  The final line in “Olive Kitteridge” has Olive thinking: “It baffled her, the world.  She did not want to leave it yet.” 

Paul Kern posted several emails regarding his and Julie’s “California or Bust” trip:

  January 30: In Texas and New Mexico the Border Patrol was much in evidence. We passed through two check points with dogs sniffing our car, saw many Border Patrol squad cars as well as helicopters that we suspect were Border Patrol. I felt like we were in East Germany or Franco's Spain instead of the United States.

  January 31: Crossing the Mojave Desert, we were buffeted by high winds and then were blinded by a torrential downpour. Finally we were hit by a blizzard. We're holed up in a motel in Tehachapi, CA waiting out the storm.

  February 1 (a.m.): We're stuck in Tehachapi [in Kern County]. Highway 58 to Bakersfield closed because of icy conditions. May open later today, but may not.

  February 1 (p.m.): Highway 58 opened late this morning under police escort and we were able to escape Tehachapi. Made it to West Sacramento around six, ending a three thousand mile road trip. Colin brought us a Chinese dinner and now we are settling into the condo we are renting for the next two months.

Charley Halberstadt and I had our ups and downs in duplicate bridge, but, more often than not, how we did was out of our hands and dependent on how our opponents bid and played.  My worst hand: Charley over-called Chuck Tomes (above) with a good spade suit but nothing else.  With ten points and five spades I jumped from one to four spades, and Charley went down three, doubled.  My best moment: Charley opened light with an Ace, King, Queen of Hearts and little else.  I had just two little Hearts but 17 points and bid Two No-Trump.  Very reluctantly, Charley raised me to Three No-Trump.  We each had four Clubs, with me holding the Ace, King.  I made it on the nose for high board when Clubs split 3-2, allowing me to cash in a low Club.