Stone Cold

“If you piss me off, Donald Trump, I’ll open an eight-billion-dollar can of whoop ass and serve it to ya.”  Stone Cold Steve Austin

In 2007, at WrestleMania 23, Donald Trump got in the ring with wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin and as a publicity stunt was the recipient of Austin’s signature move, the Stunner.  Another one of Austin’s gimmicks was to pour two cans of beer toward his mouth at the same time and douse himself with the contents.  Twenty years before, Trump promoted WrestleMania events in Atlantic City in hopes of boosting casino revenue at the Trump Taj Mahal, which nonetheless filed for bankruptcy in 1991.  Last July in a tweet that originally appeared on the rightwing site Reddit (posted by user HansAssholeSolo), Trump used footage from one such event where he body-slammed WWE owner Vince McMahon only the figure had a CNN logo over its face.  CNN responded that it was “a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters.”

At a Chesterton show choirs Open Mike fundraiser held at Val’s Famous Pizza and Grinders, Becca sang “Stone Cold” by Demi Lovato, a breakup song that starts out, “Stone cold, stone cold, you see me standing, but I’m dying on the floor.” Dave backed her up on guitar.  

Christina Hale spoke at IUN’s Women’s Center on the topic “Yes, You Too: What To Do When You Want To Set Your Hair On Fire.” Formerly a Democratic State Representative and candidate for lieutenant-governor in 2016 as John Gregg’s running mate, she described herself as a 46-year-old Latina native of Michigan City and former single mother who graduated from Purdue Northwest and is still paying off her student debt. She is presently CEO of Leadership Indianapolis, whose mission is to recruit and develop community leaders. She was dozing on a plane in rural China when she felt a hand on her breasts. Next to her, the culprit was masturbating.  She tried to report what happened but nobody would listen until she boarded her subsequent flight.  The pilot warned that if she pressed the matter, she might be detained for hours by Chinese authorities and miss her flight. Anxious to get home, she demurred, but the incident brought home to her why many victims fail to report sexual assaults due to the unpleasant consequences.

In addition to talking about the value of the Me, Too Movement, Hale described the frustrations of being in the distinct minority in the Hoosier statehouse.  Republican lawmakers recently made it illegal for people to tattoo their eyeballs but avoided passing legislation defining sexual consent.  In rural Wayne County, she said, ten percent of newborn babies suffer from opiate addiction, and on highway signs FARM stands for “Find and Report Meth.”  Millionaires buying private planes need not worry about sales tax, while struggling mothers pay duties on diapers and tampons.  The onetime reporter is a board member for the Indiana Humanities, the Indiana Commission on Latino Affairs, the Domestic Violence Network, and the Indiana Coalition to End Sexual Assault. When she apologized if she made Chancellor Lowe uneasy bringing up tampons, he said no problem, he has a wife and daughter.

In the audience were students from two Sociology classes, plus several faculty, including Philosopher Anja Matwijkiw.  When Christina asked for questions, nobody initially responded until one of the few males in the audience spoke up, which got things going.  I kept silent but afterwards thanked the speaker and added that, while I agreed with her on the need for new blood in politics, people in the Region will sorely miss retiring  State Representative Linda Lawson, a former police officer and IUN grad.

Joining our Chesterton bridge group were Unit 154 president Gary Chaney and Fort Wayne sectional chair Kim Grant, who presented certificates of accomplishment to Terry Bauer and Chuck and Marcy Tomes. In the hand that kept me thinking afterwards, Dee Van Bebber opened a Spade.  I had five Hearts to the Queen, Ace, King and two other Clubs, 3 Diamonds to the Queen, and a singleton Spade.  I bid 2 Hearts, Dee responded 2 Spades, and I jumped to 3 No-Trump.  Dee had 6 Spades Ace, Queen Jack, Ace spot of Hearts, 4 little Diamonds, and one little Club.  With only 22 combined points, we were in trouble, especially after Chuck Tomes led a Club and my Spade finesse failed.  Marcy led back a Club, which Chuck took, and then forced my Club Ace.  I crossed to the board with a Heart and led out the remaining Spades, which fortunately broke 3-3.  Still, I needed one more trick with a bare Queen of Hearts and a Queen-3 of Diamonds left in my hand and both red Kings out against me.  Marcy took my Diamond lead from the board with her Ace and cashed a good Club.  When I played my Heart Queen on it, Chuck discarded his Heart King, keeping a Diamond King over my Queen.  Marcy then led the 8 of Hearts, which beat dummy’s Heart 7.  So close but no cigar!  It turned out that we ended up with the second highest board since other couples went down 2 or 3.

Brenda Ann Love reports: 

Today I thought I may have seen one of three things: 1) a dick measuring contest; 2) a circle jerk; or 3) a literal pissing contest. To give some context, there were three men standing in a circle down the alley. There seemed to be quite a bit of tittering, which could explain any of the three things above.  Upon discussing the above with Sam, he explained to me that they were most likely just three dudes smoking a joint, something he used to catch his students doing back in the day.  My mind is clearly in the gutter.

Ray Smock posted this assessment of House Speaker Paul Ryan, who claims he wants to spend more time with his family but will likely take a lucrative position as a corporate lackey.  As bridge buddy Helen Booth puts it, he is the latest rat abandoning the sinking ship of state:

    Paul Ryan will not seek re-election. The speculation about this is over. He never liked the job and it never fit him well. As the former House Historian who worked with three Speakers, I hereby dub him: The Reluctant Speaker. He was reluctant to take the job. He was reluctant to challenge members of his own party in the so-called Freedom Caucus. He was reluctant to cooperate across the aisle. And he was very reluctant to challenge our demagogue president. Furthermore, he has been reluctant to use his constitutional office to help set the national agenda. He was never able to get the House to work using the regular order of business. He bears a good deal of the blame for the terrible dysfunction in the House during his tenure.

 B-24 Liberator at Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson

At bowling Chris Pfeiffer showed me a WW II-era publication called Tucson Liberatorthat contained a photo of his mother and other defense workers who belonged to a bowling team, as well as other memorabilia.  There is a good chance that she was a real life Rosie the Riveter working on B-24 Liberator planes.  I told his to get in contact with the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tuscon, Arizona, as curators there might be interested in what he discovered.

“Straight Man” takes place in a distressed Pennsylvania city Richard Russo calls Railton, whose demoralized workers, the author writes, “have gone from unemployment to subsistence checks and whose marauding kids roam the streets at night marking time until they’ll be old enough to acquire the fake IDs that will allow them to climb on barstools next to their sad parents in seedy neighborhood taverns that sport out-of-date beer signs in their dark windows.”

 Betty Dominguez at right and below

Jerry Davich moderated a debate held at IUN’s Bergland Auditorium among the candidates running for Lake County sheriff.  He had audience members submit questions and chose the ones he felt were most germane.  Rather than ask for a closing statement, he asked each what their greatest regret in life was.  Richard Ligon said that it was waiting 45 years to get married.  Betty Dominguez, who I’d vote for if I lived in Lake County, said she didn’t have any.  

The Quest

“It is the mission of each true knight

His duty, nay, his privilege

To dream the impossible dream.”

         Don Quixote, “Man of La Mancha”

photo by Bettie Wilson

Thanks to an invitation from librarian Scott Sandberg, I participated in a community discussion about Martin Luther King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech.  It took place on the second floor of IUN’s Anderson library on the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination.  The panel also included ministers, attorneys, and Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy (who was great).  Discussion facilitator Junifer Hall, head of the Katie Hall Educational Foundation, asked us to elaborate on statements from the address, such as King’s contrasting contemporary technological achievements with what he termed a “poverty of spirit.” From past experiences in this setting, I knew how to concentrate on certain points I wanted to make - such as that King’s dream of a nonracist society was one that inspired people of all races and backgrounds, myself included.  I brought up Richard Hatcher’s civil rights activities using King’s tactics prior to his becoming mayor.  I emphasized that employing nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to protest unjust laws allowed King and his followers to assume the moral high ground and that his principled opposition to the Vietnam War was an act of courage that cost him support from President Lyndon Baines Johnson and probably hastened his death. Lutheran pastor Delwyn Campbell and Deacon John Henry Hall got into a doctrinal dispute over the relative importance of faith versus good works and love of self as opposed to love of others. NAACP attorney Barbara Bolling-Williams mentioned lawsuits by her organization against Republican efforts to infringe on poor people’s voting rights. Regarding prospects for the future, I stressed the need for inspired leadership and importance of studying the past.

Reminiscent of John Updyke in “Rabbit Run,” Richard Russo portrays ministers hilariously.  In “That Old Cape Magic” a Unitarian man of the cloth presides at Jack Griffin’s daughter’s wedding, unencumbered, Russo writes, “by liturgical obligation.”  He “clearly fancied himself a comedian and used those parts of the service that might otherwise be given over to prayer to relive memorable moments of the rehearsal dinner to a smattering of nervous laughter.”  When Griffin’s date “set upon the Unitarian comic on the dance floor,” he “looked everywhere but at Marguerite’s chest, unintentionally providing the very comedy that had eluded him during the wedding ceremony.”   I enjoyed “That Old Cape Magic” so much I decided to reread Russo’s “Straight Man,” about a professor at a mediocre Pennsylvania branch campus where getting promotion “was a bit like being proclaimed the winner of a shit-eating contest.”  The sentiment was similar to Griffin’s parents complaining of being stuck at as Hoosier college in the “Mid-fuckin’-West.” Hank has a white German shepherd named Occam (for Occam’s razor, the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the most valid) whose signature move is to put his wet pointed snout in a visitor’s crotch and tug upward.

The Cubs’ quest for a second World Series championship in three years got off to a rocky start, as they failed to score a run in 2 consecutive games, plus the final 14 innings of a 2-1 loss to the lowly Marlins.  They finally broke out of it in an 8-0 win over the Brewers and then took the series three games out of four.

Sergio Garcia

At bowling an overhead TV broadcast round one of the Masters from Augusta, and I watched Tiger Woods fight back from 3 over par with 2 birdies on the back nine.  When last year’s winner Sergio Garcia put five balls in the water for a 13 on a par 3 hole named Firethorn, I thought I was watching instant replay since the set was on mute. Sergio’s wife Angela recently gave birth to a girl named Azalea, nickname for the thirteenth hole at Augusta. When Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner quipped that Sergio won’t be naming his next kid Firethorn, Angela Garcia called him an idiot.  Lerner subsequently apologized, needlessly, I thought. 

The annual Portage High School (PHS) variety show lasted 3 and a half hours and featured 37 acts, culminating in a number from the spring musical, “The 25^thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  James appeared in it as William Barfee (“That’s Bar-FAY!”) Administrators had put the kibosh on plans to stage “The Drowsy Chaperone” because of alcohol references but did not censor a group singing “Californication” by Red Hot Chili Peppers.” Go figure!  Must have slipped through the cracks.  Thirty years ago, when Dave and friends performed “Cretin Hop” at a similar PHS show, the brochure left out the name Sex Pistols.   I recognized Meghan Trainor’s “Like I’m Gonna Lose You,” sung by Lailah Abdulla and Danny GoShay as the number Becca did at Alissa wedding. Highlights included Angelo Turner singing Coldplay’s “Everglow,” Jaden Vandever crooning the John Legend number “All of Me,” and a dance number by multi-talented Andrea Vance, who also sang with the PHS Dance Group and PHS Thespians.

 Andrea Vance

Larry Lapidus, "Vintage Couple"

Gregg Hertrieb

Over the weekend two exhibit receptions took place, “Straight Shooters: Photographs by Larry Lapidus” at the Munster Center for the Arts, and “Time Ghost,” curated by Lapidus and featuring surrealistic watercolors and acrylics by Gregg Hertzlieb at Gardner Center in Miller.  A brochure for “Time Ghost” stated: “Enter a world inspired by nature and art, where characters and elements exist as fantasy or metaphor.  Hertzlieb’s message is one of peace, delight, and joy in the possibilities of the imagination.”  I told Gregg, VU’s museum curator, that he had a fertile mind.

“Scandinavia,” a travel book by Rick Steves, asserted that nearly every educated young person in Finland, where Dave and I will be going in two months, “speaks effortless English – the language barrier is just a road turtle.”  I’d never heard the phrase “road turtle” and subsequently learned it stands for raised pavement highway reflectors sometimes called road studs or cat’s eyes.  While our destination is Jyväskylä, virtually the entire chapter dealt with things to do in Helsinki, the only European capital without a medieval history.  Its most distinguished buildings were constructed during the nineteenth century when Finland was part of the Russian empire and modeled after architecture in St. Petersburg. Steves wrote:

  In 1917, Finland won its independence from Russia and enjoyed two decades of prosperity until the secret Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 assigned them to the Soviet sphere of influence.  When Russia invaded, Finland resisted successfully, its white-camouflaged ski troops winning the Winter War of 1939-1940 and holding off the Russians in the Continuing War from 1941 until 1944.

  After WW II, Finland was forced to cede territory to the USSR, accept a Soviet naval base, and pay huge reparations.  The collapse of the Soviet Union has done to Finland what a good long sauna might do for you.

At Gino’s in Merrillville for a book club meeting, I enjoyed a free plate of raviolis at the bar to go with my 8-dollar pale ale 16-ounce draft. Two guys in their sixties talked about having to deal with a catheter and urine bag, one due to a kidney stone and the other after prostate surgery.   Sitting nearby, Debra Dubovitz commented that it’s tough growing old.  On the TV were shots of snow falling at Wrigley Field, forcing cancellation of the Cubs home opener.

 J.D. Vance

Joe Gomeztagle talked about J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” a surprise best-seller in the wake of the 2016 election, frequently comparing and contrasting Vance’s background and his own and Middletown, Ohio, with Gary, Indiana. While it is primarily a work of self-congratulation by one who overcame a rough childhood (with a drug-addicted mother and 15 stepdads) and made it out of a former Ohio steel town by joining the marines and then going on to graduate from Yale Law School, conservatives have touted Vance as the voice of the rustbelt and the book as the explanation why Trump is so popular with Appalachian whites.  Though proud of his Scotch-Irish hillbilly roots, Vance admonishes those who “spend their way into the poorhouse and choose not to work.”   Like his Yale mentor Amy Chua, author of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Lady,” Vance preaches a message of tough love and personal responsibility.  Vance now works for a Silicon valley investment firm, and many Republicans want him to run for political office, perhaps an Ohio Senate seat. He seems content making an obscene amount of money from speaking engagements.

During the discussion Brian Barnes mentioned that the Scotch-Irish have tended to be tribal and violence-prone, dating to when they relocated to Catholic Ireland and later emigrated to the American frontier.  Debra Dubovitz said that her Irish family considered it a “mixed marriage” when she married someone Polish, even though they were both Roman Catholic. Lee Christakis did her one better, claiming that his folks disapproved of a Greek girlfriend because she was from a different island.  I mainly criticized “Hillbilly Elegy” for tending to blame poor people for their own economic plight and criticizing welfare state programs that at least ameliorated their situation rather than corporate capitalists who exploited and then abandoned them.  Citing David Goldfield’s “The Gifted Generation,” I concluded that the primary cause of their work ethic decline was not moral failure, or what Vance calls “learned helplessness,” but unhealthy corporate concentration, the weakening of organized labor, and governmental neglect.  

Spring Solstice

“Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party.’”  Robin Williams

Toni prefers celebrating the Spring solstice rather than Easter, but egg dying is an annual ritual, as is hiding James and Becca’s Easter basket.  The busy weekend began with James moving in, Toni making a standing rib roast, and the arrival of Phil’s family en route to Naples, Florida.  Becca and Angie returned from their Florida choir trip Saturday in time for Chinese carry-out.  Sunday, Toni was up at 3 a.m. to see Phil’s family off to O’Hare Airport, then served a delicious roast to eight of us, including Angie’s dad and Tamiya Towns, who forwarded photos she took (below) to me. 

above, Toni; below, Tamiya, John Teague and Jimbo

“Roseanne,” which debuted 30 years ago, is back on the air with the original cast. The initial episode received huge ratings and a congratulatory shout-out from Trump since actress Roseanne Barr is a supporter, as is her character on the show, who resembles “All in the Family” bigot Archie Bunker.  Sister Jackie is the liberal foil, and there is an African-American grandkid to demonstrate, I guess, that Roseanne isn’t a racist.  As always, John Goodman (as Dan Connor) was hilarious, first appearing in bed wearing a breathing mask for sleep apnea.  At one point Dan goes outside to urinate because the bathrooms were occupied and then claims to have waved to a neighbor with his free hand. Like most sitcoms, the plot seemed contrived, with one of Roseanne’s daughters wanting to be a surrogate mother and a grandson attending first day of school in girl’s clothes.  When Dan first hears about it, he escapes to the garage. Roseanne cautions about disturbing him until he’s had a couple beers, then moments later says, “That should be long enough.” 

Sometimes I confuse Roseanne Barr with Rosie O’Donnell, whom Trump hates.  The feud evidently goes back 12 years to when O’Donnell criticized Trump for not firing a Miss USA winner who admitted to drug use and underage drinking.  Trump responded by calling her fat and a real loser.  Five years later, when Rosie became engaged to Michelle Rounds, Trump tweeted that he felt sorry for Rounds and her parents.  In 2014, when O’Donnell returned to the TV show “The View,” Trump tweeted, “Rosie is crude, rude, obnoxious, and dumb – other than that, I like her very much.”  During the first Presidential debate of 2016, when Megyn Kelly questioned Trump about demeaning women by using words such as pigs, slobs, and disgusting animals, Trump interrupted to say, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

In Richard Russo’s “That Old Cape Magic” Jack Griffin encounters an Archie Bunker type while at the Old Cape Lounge.  After the guy belittles his companion and ex-wife Marguerite, Jack ruminates: “How good it would feel to coldcock him, knock him clean off his bar stool, bloody his fucking nose.  Here she was, trying valiantly to be happy, and this asshole wouldn’t let her.” After he breaks up with Joy, Jack dates fun-loving Marguerite. When he meets Joy’s new “friend,” Jack labels him a fart-hammer, an expression he recently picked up from an old-timer.

Danna Conley thanked me for latest Steel Shavings, which mentions her and late husband Pat several times and contains excerpts of an article by Hayley Sekula, whose grandmother is her good friend.  A year ago, Danna thanked me for volume 46 and wrote: “Recently my granddaughter mentioned seeing someone dressed as a flower child who looked as if she came from the 1960s.  She had learned about the Hippie Era in history.”  On the card’s cover: Georgia O’Keefe’s 1937 painting “Red Hills and Flowers,” which juxtaposed still-life elements against a far-off desert landscape alive with color and undulating curves similar to a human body.  Many feminists believed O’Keefe’s flowers were symbolic of female genitalia.  She was adamant that, in her words, “the subject matter of a painting should never obscure its form and color, which are its real thematic elements.”  O’Keefe’s work reminds me of the photos of Liz Wuerffel, who often focuses her lens on symbols of decay and aging.  At present Liz is at Bryce Canyon National Park, where IUN grad Amanda Marie Board worked last year.

 Bryce Canyon National Park photo by Liz Wuerffel

For Nicole Anslover’s Diplomatic History class dealing with Ricard Nixon’s Vietnam policy I gave a short report on Rick Perlstein’s “NIxonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America” in order to point out that secrecy and deception  were standard Tricky Dick operational procedures.  I had Nicole put these paragraphs on the screen: 

    In March of 1969, Nixon ordered the bombing of sections of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that meandered through Cambodia, the beginning of a long-term plan called Operation Menu (its component parts were Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner, Dessert, and Supper).  This scaled new peaks of deception: the bombings were recorded on a secret ledger, which was later destroyed.  A half million tons of ordnance were eventually dropped on this neutral country, 3,875 sorties without Congressional knowledge.  “The State Department is to be notified only after the point of no return,”Nixon instructed.  

. . . .

    On May 15, paratroopers from the 101^stAirborne Division stormed up an objective Americans called Hill 937.  The AP ran an evocative dispatch on May 19:  “The paratroopers came down the mountain, their green shirts darkened with sweat, their weapons gone, their bandages stained brown and red – with mud and blood.”  It reported them cursing their commander, whose radio call was Blackjack: “That damned Blackjack won’t stop until he kills every one of us.”  It became known as Hamburger Hill.  The soldiers won the objective, just as Americans often won their military objectives; 633 North Vietnamese main-force soldiers were killed, fewer than 100 Americans. Then the hill was abandoned, just as Americans often abandoned objectives in Vietnam.  “We are not fighting for terrain as such,”Commander Creighton Abrams explained.  “Don’t mean nothin’,”answered the troops, a refrain echoed all the way back home. Senator Ted Kennedy called the Hamburger Hill assault “senseless and irresponsible, madness, symptomatic of a mentality and a policy that requires immediate attention.”

To an obscene degree, Nixon expanded upon trends begun by predecessors, including dirty tricks against political opponents and basing diplomatic maneuvering on domestic political calculations. During Nixon’s presidency over 21,000 Americans died in Vietnam and about a million and a half Vietnamese. The terms Nixon settled for in 1973 were obtainable when he came into office, but he continued the war for political gain, an unforgivable sin, in my opinion.  The result was not “Peace with Honor,” as he claimed, but an obscene stain on America’s legacy.

March Madness climaxed with Villanova, my pick to go all the way, winning its second NCAA title in three years.  With star player Jalen Brunson on the bench saddled with foul trouble, sixth man Donte DiVincenzo scored an amazing 31 points to enable the Wildcats to cruise to victory.  Within hours, Sports Illustratedhad DiVincenzo on its latest cover.

 Faye Anderson; photo by Barb Walczak

Bronze Life Master Faye Anderson, 98, passed away. Barb Walczak wrote:

  It was never in Faye’s plans to become a Life Master, but one day I said, “Let’s hop a plane to Reno and get started on our Life Master gold.”  She was game for the adventure.  We traveled to many places in the next nine months until we had our 25 gold.  We even had the thrill of playing with Eddie Wold and Mike Passell (ranked in the top 12 in ACSL) in Lake Geneva.  Faye was feisty (in a lovable way) and had a fun teasing personality endearing her to everybody.  Gunnar Berg called her “Bulldog” – and I think she liked that nickname.

  One of Faye’s biggest regrets was that she was not able to go to college.  It was in the 1930s and there were 12 children in the family, and it couldn’t happen. It was a shame – her potential was never fully realized.  She was a smart lady.

At bridge, on director Alan Yngve’s advice, I asked Barbara Stroud about Bridgerama, whose origins in Northwest Indiana go back decades.  Evidently started by women belonging to Tri Kappa, an Indiana service sorority, Stroud took it over when it was in danger of ending.  There’s one group of women and a second male-female group.  Couples play 20 hands at the host’s home, turning in the results to Stroud.  I told her about the Archives Bridge collection, and she said she recently emptied a file cabinet of many back records. Dee and I finished slightly above average (53.17%) for .28 of a master point.  In one hand I was dealt 8 Diamonds, including the top 5, two King-Jacks, and a bare King.  After determining that Dee held one Ace, I bid 5 Diamonds.  There was a Club lead to my singleton King, leaving no way to cash in one Dee’s Ace and Queen.  Even had Dee’s Ace overtaken the King, leading the Queen of Clubs would not have helped.   We went down one, as did another couple. The two other North-South pairs made 6 Diamonds when opponents led out an Ace rather than a Club.

Beverly Gray’s “Seduced By Mrs. Robinson” revealed that “The Graduate” (1967) was a low budget movie with a relative unknown, Dustin Hoffman, in the lead role as a disillusioned college graduate who has an affair with an older woman but is hot for her daughter.  It became a surprise box office hit primarily because of its appeal to Baby Boomers.  Though it did not deal with race tensions, the Vietnam War or campus protest, the film, wrote Gray, “appeared in movie houses just when we young Americans were discovering how badly we wanted to distance ourselves from the world of our parents. . . .  If we were anxious about parental pressure, or about sex (and our lack thereof), or about marriage, or about the temptations posed by plastics, it was all visible for us on the movie screen.”

 John S. Haller

My old fellow Marylander and IUN colleague John Haller reviewed Philip F. Gura’s “Man’s Better Angels: Romantic Reformers and the Coming of the Civil War” for the Journal of American History.  Haller concludes that the seven reformers, including Horace Greeley and Henry David Thoreau, culminated their intellectual journey “in their fatuous worship of John Brown and his murderous band of outlaws.”  Haller equates their “high-minded resolve to acquire liberty and equality even if it necessitated violence” to Maximilien Robespierre, architect of the French Reign of Terror.  Really?  

Teaching in Saudi Arabia 30 years ago, I was shocked at how down on John Brown the students were because Brown’s Kansas band of Free State volunteers murdered five pro-slavery Border Ruffians who had burned and pillaged the Free Soil town of Lawrence.  Later, when one student claimed that Nixon would have been a great President had it not been for Watergate, I replied that compared to John Brown, Nixon was a mass murderer, responsible for more than a million Vietnamese dying in an unwinnable war.  Some hold Brown partly responsible for bringing about the Civil war, which killed a half-million Americans.  Does Haller?

Hollis Donald dropped off an Easter essay about turning around one’s life through faith. He wrote: “Life can take you on many roads and can get so tangled up and twisted and lost in the tide, there can appear to be no way out.  You may need a new life, and Jesus is the giver of life.”  As the Doobie Brothers put it, “Jesus is just alright with me.”