Changing of the Guard

"Eden is burning, either getting ready for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage

for the changing of the guards

    Bob Dylan, “Changing of the Guards,” 1978

“Changing of the Guards” literally refers to sentries being relieved of duty by another contingent at such places as Buckingham Palace in London and Arlington National Cemetery.  I’ve witnessed both, the latter while working summers during the late 1960s at Boys Village of Maryland.  Even the young teenagers under my watch during the annual field trips were impressed.

There’s been a changing of the guard – without fanfare or ceremony, unfortunately, due to the pandemic - at IU Northwest: Chancellor William J. Lowe has retired after a decade of steady-at-the-helm leadership. He inherited a situation where after his predecessor had gone through several vice chancellors of academic affairs in quick succession, Bloomington had selected one of their own, strongman David Malik, to oversee IUN’s academic policy-making.  While in theory IUN has home rule, the mother campus still has preeminence over budgetary and tenure decisions.  As a result, Lowe, for the most part, deferred to Malik and concentrated on other duties, such as interacting with the outside community, lobbying for a new Arts and Sciences building, and attending campus events.  He was a fixture, for example, at Redhawk basketball games, academic events, and student functions and even dressed as Elwood Blues for a fundraising commercial. The son of a New York City police officer, he tended to administer with a velvet glove rather than an iron fist and apparently did not hold grudges, which cannot be said of some previous chancellors.  Lowe taught a seminar on Irish History last year and officially is taking a leave of absence with the intention of returning as a professor in my old department.  Incoming chancellor Ken Iwama has addressed faculty at a zoom town hall and appears to be a good choice, given his background and credentials, in this uncertain age for higher education. 

 

IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives has lost its longtime curator/archivist Steve McShane, whom Ron Cohen and I hired some four decades ago.  As I wrote in Steel Shavings, volume 49, which I dedicated to him, while I have learned that nobody is indispensable, it is hard to imagine the Archives without Steve.  His stellar service and unfailing patience and good humor sustained what has become a vital resource and repository under his leadership.  The pandemic derailed our plans to have a successor in place for him to mentor, and a top priority will be to convince Chancellor Iwama to authorize the search to continue with all deliberate speed.

Becca and Denzel Smith

Becca’s graduation party Sunday at the Chesterton American Legion Hall was a success despite participants wearing masks except for when they ate and a brief rain shower that interrupted outdoor activities.  We enjoyed house guests who began arriving Friday.  Good friend Tom Wade told me about a podcast on revisionist history that I’d enjoy. Jef Halberstadt recalled that his father worked for the Budd Plant in Gary, once the second largest employer I the city next to US Steel, until it closed four decades ago. When he noted that his father had developed several patents for the Budd company, I said that Vic, who died at age 50, had been a chemist for Penn Salt who had done the same thing regarding the use and treatment of chlorine. We talked about March of Dimes drives when we were in school, and Jef speculated that FDR was on the Roosevelt dime, first minted in 1946, because he started the organization in 1921 after he contracted polio.  It was great seeing Dave’s former student Denzel Smith, now a college graduate and playwright about to take a production on the road. He told me to check out Johnny Cash’s rendition of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt,” one of the last songs he recorded, about an old man’s regrets.

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

For Dave’s birthday number 51 we had Chinese food from Wing Wah in Miller and cake left over from Becca’s graduation open house.  Although everyone was somewhat weary from weekend events, Dave and I got in to games of Pitch, and James joined us for Space Base.  I eked out a win just in time; another round and Dave would have run away with it.

 

A new book by Aram Goudsouzian, “The Men and the Moment,” about the 1968 election and the rise of partisan politics, describes how third-party candidate George Wallace’s blend of racist populism and resentment against mainstream elites gave birth to a new conservative movement that Trump successfully exploited.  Goudsouzian wrote:

    To his followers, Wallace was both hero and outlaw.  He promised order while delivering chaos, dismissed charges of racism while associating with bigots, and championed traditional morality while crushing dissent.  Slipping back and forth from country preacher to the macho bad boy, he applied the modern tools of a national movement to the rituals of an old-fashioned barnstorming tour.  In the process, he forged a near mystical connection with his followers.

Trump becomes more reckless and incendiary as his poll numbers drop; a changing of the guard in the White House has become imperative for the republic’s institutions to survive intact. An increasing number of articulate Republicans have come out against him, and lackeys in Congress and the media are reduced to anti-anti-Trump rationalizations, i.e., seizing on something off-the-wall a Trump opponent might have uttered and attributing the sentiment to Biden and all Democrats.

 

Because Trump is a pathological liar, he has no credibility.  Even if an anti-corona virus vaccine miraculously appeared before election day, few voters would believe the claim. He recently signed a long overdue bipartisan conservation measure, the Great American Outdoors Act, funding neglected national parks, giving no credit to Democrats, mispronouncing Yosemite as Yo-Semite, blaming Obama for past policies going back 20 years, and bragging that it was the greatest conservation measure since Teddy Roosevelt was president.

I’ve just started “Redhead by the Side of the Road” by Anne Tyler.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, social realism is no longer in vogue among Literary Modernists, but I love novelists whose books are firmly root in time and place, in Anne Tyler’s case, Baltimore. Tyler’s previous novel “Clock Dance” is about 61-year-old Willa, whose temperamental mother sarcastically called her father St. Melvin.  Her younger sister became a rebellious teenager whose eyes in 1977 “were so heavily outlined in blush that she resembled a pileated woodpecker.” A poster in her bedroom read “Nobody for President.”  Willa’s son wanted to quit school and hitchhike around the country to meet people.  Her self-indulgent husband died in an auto accident driving recklessly in anger.

Twenty years later, Willa (named for lesbian Willa Cather, one wonders, whose forte was depicting loneliness) receives a call that lures her to Baltimore to care for a nine-year-old girl, Cheryl, that someone mistakenly thought was her granddaughter.  Remarried to an overbearing man and bored with life in Tuscan, Arizona, Willa is ready for a change of scenery.  Tyler writes: “She knows the world, which has largely ignored her, expects her now to coast along that deferential rut into oblivion.”  Aware her time clock was ticking, she had always conformed but now was open to adventure, ready to dance. 

 

Coming to prefer an eccentric new “family” to a lonely life in Arizona, Willa heeds the insight of an elderly Baltimore neighbor who tells her: “Figuring out what to live for.  That’s the great problem at my age.” Willa thinks to herself, “Or any age.”  Reviewer Ron Charles concludes:

   The bond between this lonely child and this obliging woman forms the emotional heart of “Clock Dance,” radiating what Tyler calls a “sweetly heavy, enjoyable kind of ache.” But there’s a steelier theme here, too, an existential sorrow cloaked by the embroidery of Willa’s grandmotherly demeanor. “Sometimes Willa felt she’d spent half her life apologizing,” Tyler writes. “More than half her life, actually.” She knows that the world, which has largely ignored her, expects her now to coast along that deferential rut into oblivion.

Homestead

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of comfortable living from a small piece of land.” Abraham Lincoln

When President Abraham Lincoln signed the 1862 Homestead Act as the Civil War raged, opening up a half-million square miles of western land offering 160 acres to citizens settling on the land and farming it for five years, the American myth of a country of independent farmers had not yet died.  Nonetheless, most of the free land was inhospitable to small farmers and America was becoming an industrialized nation.  Forty years later in Homestead, PA, site of a state-of-the-art steel mill owned by Robber Baron Andrew Carnegie, the crushing of a strike by military troops demonstrated that the egalitarian dream had turned into a nightmare for the working man.

Although the word homestead is defined as one’s residence and adjoining land (I sometimes use the word as a synonym for home, especially when we lived atop a sand dunes on Maple Place), the word is commonly associated with old farmhouses and their outbuildings, such as the Buckley Homestead southeast of Lowell in Lake County or the old Bailly Homestead in Porter, site of the area’s first permanent residents, Joseph and Marie Bailly, and now part of Indiana Dunes National Park. In “Rabbit Is Rich” John Updike described the fictitious Albrecht Stamm Homestead built in the mid-1820s in eastern Pennsylvania and restored by a historical society.  Updike wrote:

    Even though a young hippie couple lives upstairs and leads visitors through, to Harry the old Stamm place is full of ghosts, those old farmers lived weird lives, locking their crazy sisters in the attic and strangling the pregnant hired girl in a fit of demon rum and hiding the body in the potato bin so that 50 years later the skeleton comes to light.

 

An example of Updike’s propensity to poke fun of ministers is seen in the depiction of Episcopalian cleric Archie “Soupy” Campbell, officiating at Rabbit son Nelson’s shotgun wedding.  He writes

    In a black cassock and white surplice and stole “Soupy” flashes his “What? Me Worry” grin, those sudden seedy teeth [but] the voice welling up out of this little man is terrific.  Soupy bats the eyelids between phrases, his only flaw.

The NWI Times Saturday Stumper crossword puzzle seems impossible to anyone but Toni, but I was able to help her for once.  A clue asked for the Avenue next to Reading Railroad in eight letters.  The reference was to Monopoly and the first letter O since the word across was Sacco (1920 anarchist).  Aha – Ontario, one of the light blue properties six spaces beyond Go and next to the Reading (which some Hoosiers pronounce as if one was reading a book).

Final Jeopardy on the category Historical Names was looking for a Hungarian-born editor who in 1904 said that a free press was a prerequisite for representative government. It had to be Joseph Pulitzer, but only one contestant knew it.  Another said Hearst, the purveyor of slanted news or “Yellow Journalism.”

Having finished my latest Shavings, Paul Kern sent a long email discussing, among other things, old colleagues and students as well as region high school sports events and other memories. He attended the 1975 state championship football contest where Valparaiso defeated Carmel 14-13 with star single wing tailback Mark Allen, one of the few African-American families living in Valpo at that time.  Allen moved from Cabrini Green at age 12 and after a football career at Arizona and the USFL lived in Valpo working in construction until he died at age 51. In the late 1960s Paul lived in Glen Park and recalled an Italian neighbor complaining about black students being bussed to neighborhood schools. He wrote: “His dire predictions of decline came true even though bussing was not a cause of the economic woes of Gary.  Neither one of us had a premonition of the global and technological changes that would devastate Gary.”  Being a couple years my senior, Paul has a few World War II memories, including seeing his father in uniform and on VJ watching a kid bang on an upside-down wash tub.

 

Paul Kern, seeing my post on Terrence Malick, said they were classmates at a small Texas boarding school and that he was then considered a genius and good guy. The most intriguing guy in my high school class was Bob “Buck” Elliott, who was witty and seemingly fearless. I first encountered him in a ninth grade.  When a new teacher called the roll, after the guy behind him said his name was Vince Curll, he claimed his name was also Vince Curll.  The next guy said his name was also Vince Curll, and the teacher, a big former wrestler, was dumbfounded on what to do. Soon the class was totally out of control, with a few students trying to pay attention amidst the chaos.  The poor teacher was gone within a month. At a party Buck went into a bathroom with a girl and asked guys to guard the door until they came out. He left it to our imaginations to decide what might have transpired.  In high school he organized a squad of male cheerleaders and knew how to charm most teachers, as well as the girls. I never much noticed homeroom teacher Mrs. Davis until he said she had quite a nice trim figure. He had a really cool mother, and at a party in his house I recall the Father of eleventh grader Fern McCullough barging in when he got wind that a daughter was there and supposedly rescuing her from the den of iniquity.  Elliott became a school principal, of all things, in Hawaii.  I’m sure he was a good one. He was confident and comfortable around everyone. At a reunion he regaled us with wonderful memories.

Commenting on one of my nostalgic posts was a woman with the same name as a childhood friend’s mother.  It turned out to be his kid sister Teena, who recalled playing hide-and-seek at night in our two-story garage during which her cousin hit someone over the head with a hammer. Teena was three years younger than I; when she was in seventh grade I drove her and a 13-year-old friend somewhere.  In my flawed memory (I have no memory of the hide-and-seek game) the friend asked me if I knew what a soul kiss was and I gave her one. She was cute and alluring but considered back then too young to date, like robbing the cradle, in the parlance of the time.  Likewise, Teena, a cute redhead now 75, would have been off limits.

From an obit I learned that Angela “Gigi” Morgan Medved of Valpo died at age 57. She was born in Gary in 1963, the year Democratic machine candidate A. Martin Katz, hand-picked choice of jailed Boss George Chacharis, was elected mayor and attorney Richard Hatcher won a seat on the city council. By the time Gigi graduated from Andrean, most white students had left Gary or, if not, sought schooling elsewhere. A coach and volunteer, Gigi, the obit read, “had a passion for cooking, the Chicago Cubs, hosting pool parties, and vacations to Clearwater, Florida.” How sad to die so young, in these times when friends cannot gather to mourn her passing until, hopefully, a later date.

I played five-person Acquire online.  Dave, the winner, had talked me through have to use Google Chrome to get to the Facebook site. I could see and talk with the other players, and gamemaster Jef Halberstadt held up tiles for us while others didn’t watch.

“Glory Road” may not be a great movie, but it tells a great story of Texas Western, a team with five black starters, upsetting a favored all-white Kentucky squad coached by a legend, in the 1966 NCAA championship.  On the team were two players from Gary, co-captains Harry Flournoy, an Emerson grad, and former Froebel star Orsten Artis, who subsequently became a Gary police officer.

Area Chinese joints were closed for business, but Wagner’s Ribs was still serving carry-out, seven days a week, eight hours a day, at least for the time being. Sunday was a beautiful day, brisk and sunny and at night a full moon shining between a couple clouds above the roof looking east from our homestead.

Decade's End

    “I expect the 2010s to be remembered as a political decade that spanned the gulf between President Barack “No Drama” Obama and President Donald “Mo’ Drama” Trump.” Clarence Page

Summing up the 2010s, Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page acknowledged the enormous influence of the internet, joking that the “decade that began with the birth of Instagram and ended with me still trying to figure out what Instagram is good for. (“Twitter for illiterates” sounds about right to me, although it does do a good job of distributing your neighbors’ vacation photos in a format you can conveniently ignore.)”

In Gary the decade ended with the death of five-time mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher and a change in leadership as Jerome Prince succeeded Karen Freeman-Wilson as Mayor. The incoming Mayor thanked his immediate predecessor for giving the city her best effort.  Of America’s first black mayor, Prince said:

Mr. Hatcher was operating with self-confidence, if not divine providence. His victory galvanized Black political aspirations throughout the nation, sparking a revolution. I pledge that every day when I go to and leave City Hall, I will pass his statue, think about it, and reflect on the greatness of an individual on whose shoulders I stand.

I emerged the champion of Lane Fantasy Football, edging Phil in the finale, as his stellar running back Dalvan Cook was unable to suit up and his replacement got only one point.  Phil sent this season wrap-up:

It was a classic between myself and Jimbo (the top two teams from the regular season) both scoring well. I got huge games from Lamar Jackson and Saquon Barkley, but Jimbo had his power trio of McCaffrey, Kelce and Kenyan Drake (nice pick-up on Drake, Jimbo). It came down to Monday night where I had two players but Jimbo had a 16-point lead.  It turned out Jimbo had points to spare as my Viking players stunk it up on Monday Night Football (final score 138-129). Congratulations Jimbo on a great win and a great season. A well-deserved Championship!

It was my second title.  My previous one occurred during Payton Manning's heyday.

I attended a Celebration of Life service at New Hope Church of God in South Haven for Charlotte Smith, bowling buddy Terry Kegebein’s mate for over 20 years.  Terry’s nephew, pastor Jason Kegebein, conducted the service, which began with a country version of “Amazing Grace” over a top-notch sound system and concluded with “Hallelujah.”  The most moving testimonial came from a tenant named Tricia, the only black women in the audience, who talked about how warm and caring Charlotte was, how she treated her eight-year-old daughter like a princess, and always complimented her numerous wigs.  Afterwards, sitting next to pastor’s assistant Don Sickles, who graduated from Portage the same year as Dave, I was invited to next Sunday’s service.

Anthony's 22nd birthday; gaming with family and friends

Since we celebrate Christmas a day late, folks began arriving at the condo on the afternoon of December 25 for tree decoration and the annual “March of Presents.”  My loot included a flannel shirt, slippers, jelly, Tasty Kake krimpets, and CDs by Lush and Weezer.  Among the two dozen guests that evening were Charlie Halberstadt with Naomi Goodman and Robert Blaszkiewicz with son Max. Robert’s “Best of 2019” CD contained songs by The Head and the Heart, Wilco, Flaming Lips, Robyn Hitchcock, Lizzo (who appeared on SNL with host Eddie Murphy) and 15 others, including Karen O and Danger Mouse doing “Starry, Starry Night,” which reminded me of the opening lines of Don McLean’s “Vincent,” about artist Vincent Van Gogh.  Hitchcock opened for Wilco recently in Chicago and together they did the Beatles numbers “I Am a Walrus.” 

Because Becca’s Chesterton Sandpipers group, sang the National Anthem beforehand, I attended an exciting Valpo-Loyola basketball contest.  Overcoming a double-digit deficit, VU apparently tied the game in the final seconds only to have the referees rule that star freshman Donovan Clay’s foot was on the three-point line and the basket was only worth two points.  Clay, from Alton, Illinois, had moved into James’s dorm room for a couple weeks when not getting along with his roommate and by all accounts is a nice guy.

 Donovan Clay 

Playing Ticket to Ride: Poland by Charles Halberstadt

I spent New Year’s Eve afternoon at Halberstadt Game Weekend, which had been in progress for five days, and won my favorite Ticket to Ride version, the Pennsylvania edition, involving stock buying.  I was fortunate that my destinations were in the north part of the state, cities like Erie, Tawanda, and Scranton/Wilkes Barre, while the other three players were competing for east-west track  between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.  Jef showed me a Polish version of Ticket to Ride that one of his sons found on the internet.  Brady Wade, who works for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, was about to travel with Tom and Darcey to Jacksonville, Florida, to root for IU in the Gator Bowl.  Supporters of Bernie Sanders have nicknamed the former South Bend mayor “Mayo Pete” to draw attention to his lack of support among African Americans.  Previously they went negative against Kamala Harris, and they’re starting to go after Elizabeth Warren.

Gaard Logan told me about former slave Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818-1907), a seamstress who in 1860 was able to buy her freedom.  In Washington, DC, she set up a business that attracted influential clients, including the wives of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.  She formed an intimate friendship with Mary Todd Lincoln, eventually moving into the White House as the First Lady’s official dressmaker.  In 1868 Keckley wrote “Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.”

I rolled a 440 series, slightly above my average despite getting more splits than strikes.  The Electrical Engineers won two games and series despite Mike Vaught’s 259 in the rubber match.  Joe Piunti had a 497 series, over a hundred pins above his average. He credited eating a gummy bear with CBD oil prior to each game, which, he said, alleviated pain in his knees.

On TV over the holidays I watched an excellent Linda Ronstadt documentary and two excellent film, “Shadowlands” (1993) starring Anthony Hopkins as writer C.S. Lewis (I was about to recommend it to Toni, but then the strong woman character fell ill with cancer) and “I’m All Alone” (2013) in which Robert Redford struggles to survive after his sailboat is destroyed at sea. Reviewer Forrest Wickman analyzed its ambiguous ending:

 If you’re a pessimist, or perhaps just a realist, you might think that the main character’s final vision—of the flashlight shining down on him, and a hand reaching down into the water—is just a dying delusion, too good to be true. If you’re an optimist, you might take it all at face value: Redford’s character is literally saved. Or, if you’re religious, you might have a third interpretation: It’s not his dying delusion, but a true vision—he’s being pulled into the afterlife. In this reading, the unusual fade to white might represent something like an ascent to heaven.

Man on the Moon

“Moses went walking with the staff of wood 

Newton got beaned by the apple good
Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask

Yeah yeah yeah yeah” 

    “Man on the Moon,” R.E.M.

 Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman

Over the holidays I watched “Man on the Moon” (1999) starring Jim Carrey as comic genius Andy Kaufman, Paul Giamatti as his collaborator, Danny de Vito as his manager, and Courtney Love as his girlfriend.  Among Kaufman’s zany bits were a unique Elvis impression and singing along to a corny old standard. He loved stunts and put-ons, such as wrestling Jerry Lawler and reading “The Great Gatsby” for hours to a college audience. The film was both hilarious and sad, as Andy died young of cancer.  As the credits rolled, R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon” played in the background.

Toni, Marianne, Jimbo, Missy; photo by Angie Lane

Marianne Brush’s Holiday party featured a present exchange where everyone contributed a gift and when your number was drawn, you could either select a new one or steal someone else’s.  After three trades a gift was safe.  I stole someone’s 6-pack of craft beer.  Someone took it but another 6-pack was still available to pilfer.  I didn’t have it long; the thief first said, “I’m sorry,”then “I’m really sorry,”and finally, “I’m not really sorry.”   I ended up with a safe bottle of vodka since I was the third owner. Afterwards I jokingly told the culprit he did a pretty poor job pretending to be sorry.  He looked contrite and offered me one of the bottles.  I laughed and said that wasn’t necessary.

We had a full house Christmas afternoon for chili, tree trimming, and the annual March of Presents and even more the next day for our Christmas dinner and party. Among my presents were jelly, a belt, cool briefs Josh bought in Spain, and the party game Telestrations (for laughs, no winners). I learned Qwixx, a neat dice game, played Perudo and Texas Hold ‘em, and washed dishes while most others engaged in several games of Werewolf.  At one time I counted 18 folks at the condo, including many who slept over for several days.

I finished “Heirs to the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster.” My impressions were confirmed that Clay and Webster were, for the most part, admirable patriots while Calhoun was a pompous secessionist. Reading about the 1830 Webster-Hayne Senate debate during the nullification crisis, I recalled how school children once memorized Webster’s stirring defense of the Union.  His most statesmanlike act: remaining Secretary of State after William Henry Harrison died a month after assuming office in order to negotiate an important Canadian border treaty with Great Britain.  For more than a generation, Clay strove to find ways to prevent the slavery issue from destroying the country, an impossible task given western expansion.

Fifty years ago, what had been a miserable 12 months of war, assassinations, race riots, “white backlash,” and Nixon’s election climaxed with three astronauts aboard Apollo 8, including Gary native Frank Borman, circling the moon.  At the time I wasn’t much impressed. As Norman Mailer would write, it signaled a triumph for technology, which he despised, and the dawn of an uncertain age.  Now I am more in awe of the achievement and appreciative of space exploration.  Some asked why spend billions in a race to get to the moon before the Russians while there are so many needs at home; of course, gutting NASA wouldn’t necessarily have translated to more War on Poverty funding.

 Sharon Fisher

My 470 series helped the Electrical Engineers take two of three games despite opponent Sharon Fisher’s 582 series, 5 less than best women’s league score of the season (held by her).  I couldn’t figure why Mikey Wardell’s Kyle Schwarber shirt was red rather than Cubbie blue until he turned around and on the front it said Indiana.  Of course, he went to IU!  I kept my good ball in the car and two days later had a good time bowling with Phil and Dave,  the winner despite not having bowled since the three of us were at Inman’s a year ago.

Robert Blaszkiewicz’s “Best of 2018” mix CD contains some old favorite bands who are still making good music, such as the Jayhawks, Parquet Courts, Decembrists, and They Might Be Giants, as well as others I’d never heard of, including Superchunk (“What a Time To be Alive”) and Dirty Projectors (“That’s a Lifestyle”). Beach House again made the mix, this time with “Dive,” reminiscent of Beach Boys harmonies. I was delighted to find Kurt Vile’s “Loading Zones” among the 20 songs selected, as well as John Prine’s “No Ordinary Blue.” Robert explained that his annual exercise keeps him current with new music, that Superchunk delivers “a fitting dose of outrage in the opener,”and that “occasionally there’s a discovery that’s a pure delight”:

This year, that was The Essex Green’s album, “Hardly Electronic,” their first after a 12-year absence for this Brooklyn band. It’s a great pop record, stylistically diverse, beautiful melodies, and a lyric in the sublime song “Patsy Desmond" that stunned me first time I heard it – “Calumet City, Miller Beach, Chicago skyline just out of reach.”  

When I noticed “The Joke” by Brandi Carlile, it reminded me that once, when invited to a party at Anne Balay’s, knowing that she was a Brandi Carlile fan, I gave her a CD by the Go-Gos, mistaking Brandi Carlile for Go-Gos singer Belinda Carlisle.  Anne tactfully said she liked Go-Gos.

 Jef between son Jordan and John Hendricks (photo by Chuck Halberstadt)

Jef Halberstadt’s annual Game Weekend lasted six days, Thursday through Tuesday, attracting regulars from as far away as Wisconsin and Fort Wayne.  During my appearances I avoided the marathon games but did get in Acquire and learned a board version of Lost Cities.  When somebody asked Jef how we knew each other, he mentioned taking my Sixties course in 1981 and inviting everyone to attend.  I was the only one to take him up on it.  I have been a regular ever since, often with Phil and Dave. This New Year’s Eve I was home before dark and in bed well before midnight.  Good riddance to 2018, as Trump has shut down the government over his damned wall.  Since so many senior Republican Senators have retired, the only one left with half a spine seems to be Utah’s Mitt Romney, perhaps hoping, like Ike 70 years ago, to save the GOP from extremists.

Looking over the many Happy Holiday cards we received, including greetings from Rosalyn and Jimmy Carter and the message “Tis the season to ratify the ERA” from NOW, we heard from old friends (Phil Arnold from high school, Dick Jeary from college) former neighbors (Dean, Joanell and Ann Bottorff) and Seventies students Jim Reha and Kathy O’Rourke, among others. A few signed with first name only I had to ask Toni about.  William and Pamela Lowe’s card featured artwork by IUN students Casey King, Christopher Hartz, and Kimberly Variot.  Nice.

The Shot

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretzky

Bryce and Homer Drew after "The Shot"

With the NCAA tournament in progress, it was inevitable that “The Shot” twenty years ago by VU’s Bryce Drew would come up.  I watched at Dave’s house on Lake Shore Drive in Miller the day before he and Angie got married.  A March blizzard had blanketed the area with snow and left our Maple Place house without electricity all week.  Seeded number 13 against Ole Miss, Valparaiso was down 69-67 with 2.5 seconds to go when Jaime Sykes in-bounded the ball to Bill Jenkins, who tapped it over to Drew, whose desperation shot from 23 feet went in for a 70-69 upset.  Coached by Bryce’s father Homer Drew, the Crusaders went on to win the next game before losing in the Sweet Sixteen to Rhode Island. 

Sports historians have ranked Drew’s last-second shot one of the five best in NCAA tournament history, along with heroics by Cristian Laettner (Duke 1992), Kris Jenkins (Villanova 2016), Lorenzo Charles (North Carolina State 1983) and Michael Jordan (North Carolina 1982),  In Chicago “The Shot” refers to Jordan’s bucket against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the deciding game of the 1989 Eastern Conference finals or, for hockey fans, Jonathan Kane’s 2010 Stanley Cup winning goal against the Flyers that went in and out so fast it had to be confirmed on replay.

 Clayton Custer and Sister Jean

Over the weekend quite a few miracle shots occurred, including one that put Michigan in the Sweet Sixteen and two enabling Loyola to register upsets against no.6 seeded Miami and no. 3 Tennessee.  The first was a desperation 3-pointer as time expired; the second, an off-balance jumper by Clayton Custer, hit the front of the rim, ricocheted off the backboard, rolled around, and appeared to be coming out before swishing through the net.  In attendance was 98-year-old Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, who has become a media star.  In 1961 she began teaching at Mundelein College, which merged with Loyola, and has been team chaplain for a quarter-century.  The Ramblers had not been to the “Big Dance” since 1985.  In 1963 Loyola upset two-time champion Cincinnati in overtime with an unprecedented four African-American starters.  In 2013 President Obama invited those still alive to the White House.

For the first time ever, a number 1 seed, Virginia, lost their opening round, not on a miracle shot but by an unbelievable 20 points to obscure University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  For me, the biggest disappointment was a four-point Bucknell loss to Michigan State.  Bison star, Zach Thomas, who had scored 27 points, was assessed a technical with six and a half minutes remaining that caused him to foul out of the game.  On several consecutive plays Spartans had mugged the Bucknell center Nana Foulland without fouls being called.  Backpedaling after one such no-call, Thomas said, “What are you watching?”  Most referees would have ignored the remark because Thomas hadn’t been demonstrative nor used foul language.  I doubt a Michigan State player would have gotten the same treatment.  In fact, MSU Coach Tom Izzo acts much worse with impunity dozens of times each game.

On St. Patrick’s Day I wore a green shirt to Abuelo’s Mexican restaurant on bridge night and finished first at Connie and Brian’s helped by Toni making a small slam as my partner.  For years when my mother lived in Bradenton, we’d be in Florida this time of year and go to a great beachfront seafood restaurant.  One year I ordered their St. Paddy Day special and regretted it.  I’m Scots-Irish on my father’s side, while Brian Barnes’ Irish ancestors include a Molly Maguire and a mine union organizer in Iowa. He and Connie, raised Protestant, were teen sweethearts, but parental disapproval and separation during college caused them to drift apart until their fortieth high school reunion.

 Aaron, Tom, Jimbo and Jef playing Railways Through Time

Evan Davis and Anna; photos by Chuck Halberstadt

Evan and Aaron Davis made the trip from Fort Wayne for Jef Halberstadt’s four-day Game Weekend.  On Sunday I played an expansion version of Railways of the World called Railways Through Time.  Railroad lines can go from one dimension to another, ranging from the Stone Age to the future, where cities are named after the likes of Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and Kurt Vonnegut.  I got off to a good start against Tom Wade (the winner), Jef, and Aaron, but my inexperience at constructing long lines and upgrading trains caused me to fade. Nearby, Evan and Chuck Halberstadt were playing Terraforming Mars with two-year-old Anna looking on.  On the food table was a tray of Sue Halberstadt’s delicious brownies with Kelly green icing.

 Sandpipers at Cracker Barrel; Becca second from left

When I told Chuck about Becca’s Chesterton show choir, Sandpipers, being named Grand Champions at the Watseka invitational and thus qualifying for nationals, he mentioned that he was in Chesterton marching band, which was invited to play at the Orange Bowl.  Members needed to raise $500 for the trip, similar to Sandpipers.

In “Stormy Weather” Ray Smock put Trump’s decade-old tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels in historical perspective:

      One part of me says I really don’t care who Donald Trump had sex with in the past or in the present. I believe that even public officials should have the benefit of a private life. Another part of me says the Stormy Daniels case has a lot more to it than just extra-marital sex.

      The press and the public did not start prying into the sex lives of current and former presidents or of presidential candidates until the perfect storm that became the Gary Hart saga in 1987. Hart was emerging as a John Kennedy-like candidate, young, talented, and handsome. But his political world came crashing down when the press went after his private life.  Hart was having an affair with a beautiful young woman named Donna Rice and among their shenanigans was sailing on a yacht named Monkey Business. You could not make this stuff up. It was too good for the tabloids to pass it up.

      Perhaps only Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman, Barack Obama, and one or two others may be free of some extra-marital affairs among recent presidents. I claim no particular expertise or insights into the private affairs of public officials. It is fairly well documented that Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy all had such affairs. But while rumors occasionally circulated, the press, the old-fashioned print press, the radio, and the early network TV press usually left this sort of thing alone. A lot of reporters knew about these affairs, but they did not write about them.

      The careers of Hollywood moguls, TV moguls, members of Congress, and other prominent American celebrities have been ended abruptly in recent months. How is the case of the President of the United States any different? Why should he keep his job while so many others have lost theirs? Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution and nowhere in American law does it say that just because your name is Trump and just because you were elected President of the United States, that you are entitled to be above the law.

The topic in Nicole Anslover’s Diplomatic History class was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and she asked what my reaction to the threat of a nuclear confrontation had been at the time.  A junior at Bucknell, I wasn’t as alarmed as I probably should have been; but watching John Kennedy’s “Quarantine” speech on TV was pretty unnerving, especially when he warned that a Soviet attack would be met with an overwhelming nuclear response.  When a Soviet missile downed a U-2 spy plane over Cuba piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson, JFK’s military advisers recommended retaliatory airstrikes.  Kennedy, suspecting correctly that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev had not given authorization for its employment, sent brother Bobby to meet secretly with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and offer a deal (pledges to remove American missiles in Turkey within six months and not invade Cuba) that ended the crisis.

Dee Van Bebber and I earned 1.75 master points finishing second to Terry Bauer and Dottie Hart in an 11-couple duplicate bridge game.  As usual, what I most vividly recall is a bid I should have made.  Facing a 5-0 trump break in Hearts, I failed to draw out the final trump.  Great chocolate chip cookies were on hand.  Most everyone assumed Dottie Hart had baked them, but they came from Sally Will.  When I mentioned attending Nicole Anslover’s class, Sally said she was reading “The Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War” (2010) by Karl Marlantes, about a company of marines forced to deal not only with the army of North Vietnam and monsoon weather conditions, leeches, fungus, disease, and malnutrition but also racial tensions and duplicitous superior officers.