“I’ve Been Living Your Dream,
Not mine.”
“Living Your Dream,” Danika Holmes
The best line in “Living Your Dream” goes, “This
veil is slowly lifting, reveling weary eyes.” It reminded me of the Langston Hughes poem “The Weary Blues”
about a Harlem piano man’s lament.
Hank Williams had a country classic titled “Weary Blues from Waitin’.” Danika was close to earning a PhD (what
is called ABD, or “all but dissertation) before she took the plunge and pursued
a music career.
I told more personal anecdotes than usual in my
“Age of Anxiety” lecture for Nicole Anslover’s class. Early memories include sitting on Santa’s lap in a
Pittsburgh department store and noticing his cigarette breath smelled like
Camels, my dad’s brand (their ads claimed the tobacco was a Turkish and
American blend). When I mentioned cod
liver oil, a woman recalled being forced to take it as a kid as well. After a
student read from Stanley Stanish’s diary about going to St Adelbert’s in
Hessville, I said I got hitched in a St. Adelbert’s Church in
Philadelphia. It was considered a
mixed marriage in those days since I was a WASP and Toni a Polish
Catholic. Although I had no
memories of WW II, I told about John Haller being a toddler who was taken to a
prayer service on an army base where his dad was stationed at war’s end and his
parents’ shock when they opened their eyes and noticed his mouth bulging from wads
of gum he’d found under folding chairs.
Asked if I didn’t think life was more carefree back
then, I replied, “Not if you were gay or a girl who got knocked up.” I forgot to mention the murder of
teacher Mary Cheever sparking a Gary women’s crusade against vice and crime. Young
people were into drag racing and shocking their parents in the clothes they
favored and the gangs they sometimes joined, giving rise to fears (in the media
at least) about juvenile delinquency.
Illustrating the theme of social change over time as the essence of
history, I mentioned that the WW II generation enjoyed sex, listened to music
(but not yet Rock ‘n’ Roll), went dancing, played sports, raised large
families, worried about diseases such as polio, and struggled with budgeting
their money. It was an era without
credit cards, computers, cell phones, cable TV or fast food franchises. Drive-in movies and eateries were
big. At Ted’s, according to Tom
Higgins, “waitresses dressed like drum majorettes and came to your car. If you gave them money for the jukebox,
some would dance.”
Nicole and Michele Skokely expressed disappointment
that my “Diaries, Memoirs, and Journals” class got cancelled. I told them Mark
Hoyert was working on ways to market it as a General Studies capstone course.
MSNBC pundits agreed that the Democratic convention
was generating more excitement among the faithful than last week’s GOP
charade. Michele knocked the ball
out of the park, as Dave noted on Facebook. Ditto “Mr. Bill” the next night, laying bare Republican lies
(when he say Congressman Ryan has some Brass, meaning “Balls,” to attack Obama
for something he himself supported, he brought the house down. His best line: Republicans are doubling
down on trickle down. Afterwards,
Obama embraced Clinton as Yom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” played.
Engineers again won 5 of 7 points despite being a
man short (a ten-pin per game penalty), Dick being out with a bum leg and Frank
in his last week of golf. I sucked
in game one, but Duke carried us.
Our opponents came alive in game two, but in the finale I bowled a 182,
Rob a 213 and Melvin a 199 to compensate for Duke’s spate of splits and
ten-pins. Bobby McCann was wearing
a POISON t-shirt, and I asked whether it reflected her taste in bands or
personality. I had on a DETROIT ROCK CITY shirt.
With Fantasy season about to start, already I worry
about injuries. My two best
running backs, Adrian Peterson and Trent Richardson, are questionable. Fortunately Ahmad Bradshaw got me 14
points, thanks mainly to a ten-yard TD run while the Cowboys’ running back only
got Pittsburgh Dave, my opponent 13.
Thursday we spent the day in South Bend with Mary
and Sonny. My brother-in-law had
breakfast at I-Hop (seven pancakes) while the rest of us ordered lunch (I went
with chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes). In the afternoon we told funny family stories and avoided
politics since Mary gets irrational at the very mention of the President’s
name.
After school Grace put on the Nickelodeon show
“Victorious” that featured a cameo of Kesha performing “Blow.” After singing “It’s
time to lose your mind and let the crazy out,” she adds, “Let me see them
Hanes” – meaning, I guess, a guy’s underwear. Could this be a reference to the fad of wearing one’s pants
so low that their underpants become prominent? The teenagers appear to be impossibly cool, except for the
nerdy, socially awkward Robbie (Matt Bennett), whose main companion is a
ventriloquist puppet that doubles as his cool alter ego.
The final evening of the Democratic convention was
an unvarnished success. One point
of emphasis was honoring veterans of recent wars. Both John Kerry and Joe Biden reminded the delegates that
Romney never mentioned the sacrifices of our soldiers or the war in
Afghanistan. Obama’s acceptance speech might not have matched his 2004 and 2008
orations but was miles better than Romney’s.
Paul Samuelson’s daughter-in-law Susan sent along
great photos of the Gary-born Nobel laureate in economics. Working on an article for Traces
magazine, I added this paragraph: Even
though Samuelson’s “Foundations of Economic Analysis,” based on his PhD thesis,
won him wide acclaim, his department chairman at Harvard, Harold Hitchings
Burbank, was unimpressed. In 1941,
When M.I.T. offered Samuelson a full-time position Burbank made no attempt to
retain him. As his good friend
Robert Solow later quipped, “You could be disqualified for a job if you were
either smart or Jewish or Keynsian.
So what chance did this smart, Jewish Keynsian have?”
I emailed Ray Smock, “OK, I was wrong about Hillary
and Biden swapping jobs, but what about this? Clint Eastwood is secretly
for Obama so stages the fiasco in Tampa to sabotage the GOP. It’s hard to
believe ‘Dirty Harry’ is so insensitive to fundamental fairness that he could
support the modern Republican Party. John Kerry looked like hell but gave
the speech of his life.” Ray
replied, “Clint Eastwood is a law and
order Republican. That's why, when acting, he can stick a gun in the face of a
black guy and say "Make My Day." It is convincing because he
means it. Sure he was a rebel cop in Dirty Harry, but only because he hated
government and government bureaucracy, especially the police bureaucracy that
kept him from cleaning up all the punks in the city. And the Outlaw Josey Wales
is pure rugged individualism of the Ayn Rand type. All those damn cowboys
from John Wayne down were conservative Republicans who believed the myth of the
West. Don't get me wrong. I love
Eastwood's movies. But you and I know the difference between celluloid and the
real world. What we saw at the Republican convention was Clint in the real
world, trying to pretend he was acting. It was awful to watch.”
I ran into Chuck Gallmeier while searching for a
parking space. He wants to take me
to his and barb’s Lake Michigan cabin for a weekend of boating and chilling
out. Sounds good.
On the cover of Sports Illustrated is Jim McMahon,
the punky QB who led the Bears to a Superbowl victory in the mid-80s. Sadly the story is about his having
early dementia due to at least four concussions, one coming after Charles
Martin of the Packers body-slammed him to the turf a good five seconds after
the ball left his hand. Martin,
who got a two-game suspension, should have been arrested for assault.
In Nebraska on September 7, 1804 the Lewis and
Clark expedition came across a four-acre village of prairie dogs. William Clark’s journal noted the
“great numbers of holes on the top of which these little animals sit erect and
make a whistling noise, and, when alarmed, step into their hole.” Traveling through Texas in 1965, Toni and
I came across a similar village. Where
once there were billions of prairie dogs in the American West, some species are
endangered or have become extinct.
The one thing “The Words” had going for it was
Jeremy Irons, playing a character known simply as “the old man.” The flick starts out great but limps to
a rather unsatisfactory denouement.
The three “love” scenes would have worked much better had the director
not gone for a PG rating.
Jay Keck passed on these gems for lexophiles
(lovers of words): A thief who stole a calendar got 12 months. Police were called to a day care when a
three year-old was resisting a rest.
Saturday I went from the library to McDonald’s and
had a double cheeseburger and side salad for $2.14. For dinner with the Hagelbergs Toni made pork roast with
onions, potatoes, and zucchini and as my partner made a difficult four-hearts
bid that enabled me to edge out Dick by a mere 80 points.
