Uncle John’s Log & Co.

Hey, look, I probably get a buzz seeing famous people as much as the average guy, but I take absolutely no interest in celebrities just because they happen to qualify for the description. On the other hand, I really do like the stars I respect, especially if my admiration for them is rooted in the “silver age” of television, and I’d probably step on my Yorkie to shake the hand of Peter Graves.

When I learned that Johnny Crawford was coming back to Danville, I knew I had to meet him and experience his current style of entertainment. Like Kurt Russell and Ron Howard, he was a child star who kept himself on the rails, and he went forward to do an impressive range of cool things in his life as an artist, athlete, and entrepreneur. Most of all, he held true to his earliest passion—music.

If Dana didn’t fully appreciate how much I was looking forward to hearing Johnny’s vintage dance band, it was because I tried my best to avoid behaving like a groupie beforehand, but I think she understood when I dug out one of Dadbo’s old bow ties and taught myself how to tie it. It’s been quite awhile since the two of us had a nice picture taken, so I was tickled when Joan and Caitlan agreed to document our night out. Thanks, ladies!

The extra time for pictures cost us the opportunity to pick out a choice table at the Playhouse indoor theater, but I managed to discover an empty love seat near the stage. It was a fine spot to watch Crawford re-enact the period manners of a band leader from the 1920s and 1930s. We were treated to a superb group of musicians hired locally to become his vintage orchestra for the evening, including Miles Osland, Dave Henderson, and Rick Cook. Watching Crawford’s seat-of-the-pants coordination was a delight, and the entire effect was a testament to the sheer professionalism of everyone on stage. On top of that, the “CD Release Party” aspect seemed to put the star of the show in a heightened mood, and his vocals and repartee at the microphone were thoroughly entertaining. I think Dana would agree the only way it could have been more enjoyable is if I’d spent less time with the bow tie and a bit more with remembering how to do the fox trot. Maybe next time; I hope he’s invited back for an encore performance.

Years ago, when I fell in love with Danville’s brass band festival, I gained a new, profound regard for the quality of American band music from the mid nineteenth century to the era of The Great War. I also came to understand how much work it takes to resurrect all of the instrumentation to recreate a period sound. This summer, Johnny Crawford shared with our community the same preservationist spirit, and it makes me think he may be emerging as one of the country’s most important historians of our popular music, salvaging lost orchestrations and discarded arrangements of favorite dance tunes from that unique period between two World Wars. As David McCullough reminds us, Americans from a different period of our history were less similar to us than we like to believe. They lived differently, and they thought differently. It was the age of radio. Everyone aspired to be a musician, if they didn’t already sing or play an instrument. All popular music was music meant for dancing, and if people didn’t go out to dance, they probably were at a motion picture to watch others dance. There was a spirit in America that observers such as David Gelernter have told us is all but lost. Well, perhaps so, but not if Johnny Crawford has anything to say about it.

Don’t go ’round moping, hoping happiness will come.
That’s not the way; it doesn’t pay.
If you want happiness, help yourself to some.
Why don’t you try to take life the way I do:

Let the whole world sigh or cry,
I’ll be high in the sky,
Up on top of a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away.

I don’t care what’s down below.
Let it rain or let it snow.
I’ll be up on a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away.

I have learned life’s lesson: fighters who always win
Are those who can take it right on the chin—and grin.

So I shout to everyone:
“Find your place in the sun,
Up on top of a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away!”

— Month of May workout totals: Swim-0; Bike-5; Run-1; Lift-2; Yoga-0; Pilates-1; Lupus Drills-2

— When a boy makes his uncertain journey toward manhood, he will never forget the famous beauties that adorned his itinerary:
Charmian Carr — Connie Stevens — Donna Mills — Peggy Fleming
Diana Hyland — France Nuyen — Madlyn Rhue — Barbara Bain
Janet Leigh — Barbara Hershey — Julie Christie — Natalie Wood

— After nearly a month away from the weights, I found myself back in the gym yesterday, hoping to get my fitness regimen into balance. Hearing a Roberta Flack tune always gets me thinking of college days. Back in 1971, one of my earliest journal entries was about taking a date to see Play Misty For Me. The experience forever solidified my appreciation of Clint Eastwood as a cool dude, and I now regard that motion picture as the beginning of how he used his Dirty Harry appeal to negotiate with Warner Brothers a series of opportunities that would enable him to became one of the most extraordinary filmmakers of our time. If, like me, you have any libertarian leanings at all, you really have to admire a guy like Clint. He’s never been afraid to express his disdain for political correctness or those who shamelessly traffic in it.

— Not that there’s any reason for you to remember, but last summer I daydreamed in this space about my hope that a boyhood idol would eventually return to Central Kentucky (not as a mere beau, but as a performer). Needless to say, I’m thrilled to learn that my wish is granted. Johnny Crawford is best known for playing Mark McCain on “The Rifleman” from 1958 to 1963. Unlike today, it was a time when the quality of the typical child actor in Hollywood would raise the mental question, “Whose powerful uncle pulled strings with the producer?” Crawford was one of a handful of young television performers—Patty Duke, Ron Howard, Tim Considine, Kurt Russell—that were cast for their obvious talent. Throughout his run on the popular series, he not only held his own impressively with star Chuck Connors, but opposite a constellation of entertainment heavyweights, including Dennis Hopper, John Carradine, Martin Landau, Kevin McCarthy, Sammy Davis Jr., Buddy Hackett, Warren Oates, and Michael Landon. Trite as it sounds—those were the days. The tube was small, but the icons were huge.

— The passing of Jim McKay makes me think of so many entertaining Saturday afternoons in the 60s, as we experienced the infancy of sports-casting through his distinctive coverage. A decade later, any of us who were watching in 1976 will always remember his marathon reporting from Munich, when his place in the history of television was secured. McKay and the late Roone Arlidge surely redefined the medium during those years, and, ever since, I’ve been as equally fascinated by the technology and professionalism of sports broadcasting as I’ve been with what happens before the cameras in a venue of competition. So far, 2008 has been a great year for upsets—beginning with an exciting Super Bowl, and on through another horse racing saga that culminated dramatically today. Zito has firmly established himself as the preeminent crusher of Triple Crown dreams—a class act, in contrast to the trainer of Big Brown, who, with his arrogant posturing, disqualified himself for much sympathy. Instead of partying with Trump in Manhattan, he’ll be, as Marty put it, “just another sweaty guy in a horse stall” tonight. On the other hand, one has to feel sorrow for the Kent D family and be concerned for the talented stallion himself. Yes, there’s only one compound phrase for it: The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat. Let the summer games begin!

V & S

His mastery of the medium speaks for itself:

Comedy — Tootsie

Suspense — The Firm

Action — The Yakuza

Adventure — Jeremiah Johnson

Drama — They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Epic — Out of Africa

Was there another consistently better than Sidney Pollack?

— Month of January workout totals: Swim-1; Bike-2; Run-0; Lift-2; Yoga-5; Pilates-4

— I’m barely hanging on to athletic respectability, thanks to Yoga/Pilates, but that doesn’t do much for my aerobic fitness. This hasn’t been one of my better annual kick-offs, “exercise-wise,” compared to the past few years. My hope is that our traditional Super Sunday mountain-bike ride will help me turn this around, because I have no intention of not being in decent shape this year. Good. That’s settled.

— “Health is wealth,” but here’s another important reason I need to stay in noticeably sound condition: the mayor asked me to think through the idea of establishing a permanent Bicyclist/Pedestrian Advisory Committee for the city of Danville. Sounds like he intends to take my recommendations to the Board of Commissioners as soon as I finish my homework. It came out of nowhere, but seems in sync with my desire to disengage at the state level to focus more on local action. As I’ve probably said before, my days as a Kentucky Commissioner are undoubtedly numbered, since the governor who appointed me wasn’t re-elected, and my term on the KBBC will expire before long.

— Seeing Ken Watanabe in Clint’s Letters reminded me of his other emotional performances in Geisha and Samurai. And then I became even more sad, because I recently found out that Hollywood set decorator Gretchen Rau died of a brain tumor. I was really wanting to enjoy more of her exceptional work.

— I’ve been hearing funny things about The Producers since I was a college student, but it never occurred to me that it would take 35 years before I finally saw the show. This evening Dana and I had fabulous seats at Norton Center for the excellent national touring production, and I don’t know if I’ve laughed that hard since I first saw Blazing Saddles. When I’m in the right mood, nothing is more hilarious to me than Mel Brooks at his very best. I’ve always figured he was a comedic genius, but after experiencing “Springtime for Hitler” tonight, I must appreciate that he’s a genius—period. I was reminded that, when facing down the wicked, many unavoidable things are required by our warriors, but art is the best—the only true—revenge, and satiric comedy may be the ultimate—the most difficult?—form of that. Would that every aspiring dictator could look ahead only to having his personality cult reduced to an object of ridicule and gut-cramping laughter.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.
          —Edmund Burke

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because
Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric.
But if you can bring these people down with
comedy, they stand no chance.
          —Mel Brooks

V & S

— Each time this year I’ve run the 5+ miles back downtown from the cabin, the time has felt shorter, even though I’m running pretty slowly these days. The silence transpired more quickly for me this morning, too. Milton handed out his periodic survey to the group, and I discovered a 1961 Horizon in Mack’s studio that had an interview with Andrew Wyeth, famous at the time, and now the greatest living American painter. I’ll have to digest the whole article during another visit, but I was able to scan a few stimulating quotations, and then Sara Jane offered me a new commission, with the freedom to interpret a photographic image with my choice of style—the perfect assignment. Everything conspired to boost my motivation to aggressively advance the Brady and Eckerle projects, plus my fine-arts enterprise in general. I couldn’t think about anything else as I ran home. So, why am I sitting here with this log entry?

— Cliff and I had a conversation about blogging the other day and it got me thinking about my string of 616 or 617 consecutive posts, and how important making daily entries used to seem. Brendan still refers to this site as a daily journal, but that hasn’t been true for well over a year. Once again, time is malleable, and, as Arnold has said, there’s adequate time each day for everything meaningful enough to do. Blogging isn’t about the time, but about having something worth saying to yourself, maybe worth recording, possibly worth sharing. I eventually figured out that doesn’t happen every day. When it does, not much time is required to get it down.

— Terie and Marty bought the M:I:3 DVD and left it at our house, so, late last night, I watched the J.J. Abrams picture for the second time, and I liked it a bit more this time around. I think Tom Cruise is the Burt Lancaster of his generation. Regardless of what I might think of his personal life, his work product demands respect. (Hey, not all celebrities can be a James Stewart or Charlton Heston; Lance Armstrong falls into the same category.) If Cruise had not become an actor, he would surely have been an Olympic or professional athlete in some discipline. He has the mentality and natural capacity for high-performance physical achievement. Although one of the least flamboyant stunts, his Chinese-village tile-roof footwork is probably the riskiest choreography in the movie. As I’ve declared before, I think he squandered the full potential of the classic franchise and put its longevity at risk, but this sequel is the best of the lot, the most team-oriented, and it fits nicely into our ancient family idea of an M:I Saga Series. In my opinion, Abrams is a creative, meticulous director with a feel for the spy genre compatible to Mission: Impossible—Cruise certainly can’t be faulted with his selection—but Abrams will need to have further honed his story-telling skills to do justice to his upcoming Star Trek feature, another Desilu-originated concept from the “silver age” of television.

— Local historian, R.C. Brown, is dead at 90. He once saluted me on a Danville street as, “Mr. Dixon, the Spin Doctor!” We often held different political perspectives, but shared a fascination with local heritage. I recruited him in 1991 to expound before a camera, as part of a fundraising documentary (the same program in which we cast Alyx as a child actress). He was in his 70s then, and I was young enough to think I might have a future directing videos (as close as I got to being Ken Burns when I grew up). Brown was the doctor, not me. He was from Ohio, too, but went on to get a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He taught history at Buffalo State College for 28 years. When he retired to our area, he rapidly became an authority and wrote The History of Danville and Boyle County. I’ll always believe that Professor Brown respected me as a talent, even though I consider his remark shaded by a mild one-upmanship. Perhaps he did understand better than most the true nature of my commercial craft, but I hope he wasn’t thinking of Victor Papanek’s quotation:

“In persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others that don’t care, advertising is probably the phoniest field in existence today.”

I prefer this one:

“The only important thing about design is how it relates to people.”

— Thomas Bewick, my newest hero, couldn’t escape the ongoing necessity of making money with “coarse work” (as his daughter called it), despite his artistic reputation and unmatched skill as a wood engraver. I wanted to return the library book and avoid fines, but couldn’t help myself, and finished the biography by Jenny Uglow this week. As I said previously, learning more about his life has reinforced for me the notion that, although everything changes on outward levels, nothing really changes in the human dynamics of making a living as an independent, creative craftsman. I was notably saddened when I learned that he never fulfilled his dream of having the cottage workshop close to nature described in his memoir:

“The artist ought if possible to have his dwelling in the country where he could follow his business undisturbed, surrounded by pleasing rural scenery & the fresh air and as ‘all work & no play, makes Jack a dull Boy,’ he ought not to sit at it, too long at a time, but to unbend his mind with some variety of employment — for which purpose, it is desireable, that Artists, with their little Cots, should also have each a Garden attached in which they might find both exercise & amusement — and only occasionally visit the City or the smokey Town & that chiefly for the purpose of meetings with their Brother Artists.”

Dana reminded me that we all tend to get what we desire if we want it badly enough.

V & S

— Alan Arkin will play The Chief opposite Steve Carell’s Agent 86.
— The new Sidney Lumet picture with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke is reported to be outstanding.
— Brian Dennehy joins Pacino and De Niro in a crime drama by the writer of Inside Man.
— Karl Urban (Capt. Call in McMurtry’s upcoming Comanche Moon) is the new “Bones” in a big-screen Star Trek prequel by J.J. Abrams. Watch this guy.
— Looks like Clint Eastwood will direct Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Role of a lifetime?
— Marty favorite Dan Bradley, masterful stunt coordinator for the Bourne sequels, is Spielberg’s second unit director for the new Indiana Jones installment. Great choice.
— A sci-fi thriller that teams James Cameron, James Horner, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Lang, and Wes Studi? So far so good. Due in 2009.

Oh, Johnny… no Johnny…
— Although I never did go out to Pioneer Playhouse for the closing performance (to roll the dice and hope for a Johnny Crawford sighting), we did make the last showing of Raintree County at DHS. Well, it stunk as bad as I was afraid it might, except for Lee Marvin, who admirably carried every scene they put him in. I even found the bull-whip sequence a let-down. I’m not sure Mombo thought it was that good either, knowing she would use GWTW as her standard of comparison. There are numerous reasons why this expensive production flopped fifty years ago, but the list starts with 1) Lousy Screenplay. The only way they could have made this picture more disappointing would have been to ask Monty Clift to take off his shirt. Nevertheless, plenty of people around town knocked themselves out to put on the anniversary festival. It would’ve been more than worth it had Eva Marie decided to make an appearance, but she wrote organizers and said she couldn’t. I did enjoy watching her on a big screen and imagining her time on location in Danville. ”Old-timers” all say she was just as sweet as Taylor was aloof. In any case, I’ve decided that if I ever get a custom phone tone, I want to have a Raintree recording of Eva Marie saying, “Johnny… Oh, Johnny!”

Hurry! Hurry! Step right up!
— Don’t know yet if the new issue of Arts Across Kentucky has been published yet, but I managed to get my revisions to our studio Website uploaded this morning. To somebody else, it may look as though I’m comfortable when tooting my own horn. Self-promotion is something I can’t avoid, but it’s never felt natural to me. I’d always rather be pitching someone or something else. I figured that eventually the output would sell itself, but, sadly, it doesn’t work that way.

Bay-bo smile
to the rescue
— Recently broken hearts were soothed when new pictures of “Baby Molina” arrived. Everyone in my Clan already knows that the birth mother of the second hoped-for child made a decision to withdraw from the adoption process. Many of the indicators were suggesting that might happen, but it doesn’t make it any less painful for Janet and Jerome. No matter how philosophical I try to be, my soul aches for them.

V & S

— 7:30 am, meet cycling pals for an early 30-miler with Scott Joplin’s Pineapple Rag in my head; 10 am, have eggs for breakfast and read the Band Festival tabloid with a feature about my poster art; 11 am, worship with Marty at the Salvation Army and hear my friend Zach preach; 12:30 pm, tear up old blacktop with Marty and empty first Ned-load of driveway debris; 2:30 pm, eat Dana’s turkey panini lunch on the front porch with Marty; 3 pm, tear up old blacktop with Marty and empty second Ned-load of driveway debris; 5 pm, go to Marty’s place to shower and play video games, 7 pm, watch “Scarface” and enjoy a lasagna dinner with Marty and Terie; 9:30 pm, head home to check email and read a bit before bed… If all my remaining Sundays were like this, I believe I could, to use a phrase attributed to the Marquis de Lafayette, “die ’appy.”

— Seth had his graduation celebration at Greystone on Saturday and it “marks the end of an era,” according to James. Mombo made an appearance, to everyone’s enormous satisfaction. Mike R brought his mom down from Ohio for the event, and he said he wants to commission a house portrait from me. Kyle D was there, and Seth passed the torch to a new student leader for the Red Kettle campaign in Liberty. Kyle said Captain Zach reported a $1700 total from our effort last season. We discussed ways to boost that in 2007. I got a bit of inside news about the new girls’ b-ball coach at Boyle. Cliff teased me about my Band Festival pin, but got my commitment to bring him a poster. Does that mean I get a new t-shirt in trade? When it was time to kick back with a beer, I had a good talk with Nic, and he shared a vision of married life in the Valley, and how he’s sure he can resist the professional pressures to value income over becoming a family man. I hope he’s right! Afterwards we stopped at the Hall and spent more time with Mombo, plus I had a chance to grumble to Joan about how the TV networks had squandered a massive line-up of talent over the past months (Haggis, Liotta, Madsen, Diggs, Daly, Hutton, Delany, Sorkin, Busfield, Goldblum, Stowe, Minear, Fillion—I can’t go on!).

— Seeing Jeannette at Greystone reminded me of last Friday at Rotary Club, when I was asked to “unveil” my poster art and make remarks. I did something I don’t remember having ever done so explicitly, and that was pay tribute to the divine source of all creativity. I wasn’t sure it had been the proper thing to do in that context, until Jeannette told me how much she was touched by it. That, combined with seeing two similar but different kinds of youthful self-assurance in both Seth and Nic, makes me realize I need to trust my instincts more, even though I might think I’ve made progress in that area. Drop the reticence and push it further. There’s no other way. The previous day I’d successfully shrugged off the inner wimp to address the Governor in public when he visited Centre for the “Get Healthy Kentucky” initiative. My comments met with applause. Come on, what is there to lose except self-doubt?

V & S

— I’ve been trying to think of an appropriate way to tell Ian that I’m proud of his new workout discipline and to offer my encouragement, but I haven’t thought of anything cool or clever to say to him yet. Well, in the meantime, maybe this will do.

— One of the byproducts of March is an almost hypersensitivity to the ingredient stimuli that influence my state of being for each particular day—whether or not I’ve exercised, what I’m currently reading, whether I’m on the uphill or downhill side of a deadline, how much restful sleep I had, what kind of a movie I might have watched the night before, whether I began the day with a Rosary, what style of artwork I’m in the middle of, whether or not my Macintosh is acting up, etc. Being more aware of how these things affect my mood and powers of concentration is good, right? I used to just let each day find its own pitch without much thought to this kind of assessment, but now I know I can counter-balance various influences with music, poetry, prayer, stretching, dietary adjustments, or just a quick floor romp with a Yorkie. Nevertheless, there are still certain kinds of creative tension that have a tendency to throw me off my game, but I’m “getting there.”

— My talk seemed to go well enough yesterday morning that Milton wants to schedule it again as a “rerun.” I don’t think that’s ever happened before, but it might have something to do with only two other people showing up.

— Easter was a long day, but it felt like it flew by much too fast. When I waited to pick up Bruce from the hospital, I sat in the car for a spell, listening to my tape of Heston reading from the New Testament. Bruce was ready to go, but they failed to order the wheelchair transport to the exit. Such a silly regulation. I can stand to be around hospitals, but I don’t like them. As it turned out, Bruce didn’t feel well enough for the ride down to the farm, so he stayed home. We stopped in Junction on the way, to get Terie and Marty, and the four of us spent the holiday afternoon with Clan. I drank too much coffee and ate too much food. Had a very nice discussion with Peat about her job as newspaper editor next year. She’s laying the groundwork this spring, which is smart, and will spend some time in Europe this summer—quite a few Clan Kiddoes are following in my footsteps with travel abroad during student years. I found out that Seth has committed to Bellarmine. Looks like Sam Morgan will go there, too, and he’ll run track. We saw pictures of “Baby Molina,” and I got the data to do numerology charts for her and Torrance. Later in the day, I watched Marty conduct battles on the PC with ROME: Total War, and we played on the PS2 together, too. Our best boxing bout was Sugar Ray R against Sugar Ray L. Marty has moved to primarily sports video games because they require more controller skill, plus he’s getting more interested in the world of sport overall, which is having a bit of a spill-over effect for me. I actually cared who won the green jacket.

V & S

March experiment—day fifteen— I was able to take care of my physical fatigue with a good night’s sleep below an open window. I needed to find another way—perhaps not as foolproof—to deal with my mental weariness, and so we watched a DVD that Terie had recommended, Stranger than Fiction. It’s an exceptionally good motion picture and hits rather close to home for me. I’m feeling a bit disappointed about learning that another company is abandoning one of the well-recognized logos we designed in the 90s. On the other hand, I’m happy about Hayley’s honor. The director of our Community Arts Center abruptly resigned, so I’m concerned about how that will effect my scheduled one-man show in May. My dear friend Shirley C sent me an email today with news that her husband’s 48-year-old son died unexpectedly. It’s important for me to transcend these emotional cross-currents and maintain focus on the goals I’ve laid out for this month.

Today’s sight bite— Abstract patterns on the natatorium ceiling pass by—c-l-i-c-k—gliding, drifting, fading above my backstroke—as devoid of meaning as the non-thoughts in my mind.

Tomorrow— Bump the cadence, just like I’ve done when running negative splits in a 5,000-meter race…

March experiment—day four— Not much to report. Trying to get past that early sleep-dep hurdle without overdoing the caffeine. First half of today was invested with plotting the next few weeks of work at my collage station, and then we were in Lexington with our friends, the Simpsons, including dinner and a movie. Amazing Grace is worth the ticket price. Ioan’s impressive performance is what I would expect from him. I might say the same for Finney, but the truth is he knocked me out with his supporting role. If you are in England and he is performing anything on stage, go there—tonight!

Today’s sight bites— Reproductions of John Salminen’s watercolors, stopping me in my tracks—c-l-i-c-k—c-l-i-c-k—c-l-i-c-k—as I browsed the art magazines at Joseph-Beth.

Tomorrow— Time to put my rest break behind me and press on…

All weekend long I was thinking about describing the progress Dana and I were making on our conference room project, but then we decided to watch Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers tonight and the entire post that I had composed in my head just melted away. That’s what thinking about the Battle of Iwo Jima does to me…

There’s no doubt about it, Steve Carell is on a roll, especially with his upcoming “sequel” to Bruce Almighty and the feature remake of Get Smart. Dana and I make no secret that we’re huge fans of The Office and we can’t get enough of this guy. That’s why we watched The 40 Year Old Virgin tonight. I usually come down “Yay” or “Nay” on most movies I see, but can’t seem to swing one way or the other on “Virgin.” As much as I enjoyed Carell’s performance and in spite of my general amazement at the cast’s brilliant improv talents, the picture is just too vulgar for me to recommend. It brings me face-to-face with my inner prude, and I can’t deny the genuine discomfort. What can I say? Perhaps the profound lack of personal satisfaction which derives from indulging banality is the underlying point of the comedy, and, if so, I’ll give credit where it’s due, but I’m glad I inhabit this side of the fuzzy line. When the laughter was over and the credits rolled, I wanted to gargle or something. Nevertheless, the flick’s “Age of Aquarius” closing number is one of the most delightful cinematic “curtain calls” ever done—I’m so ready for this creative team to dare themselves to take their whole product up a big notch.

It sounds strange, but President Ford never seemed like an entirely substantial figure in my personal perceptions. I don’t mean in the sense of credibility or political weight, but in the literal sense of being a real person. I happened to have been living in Brussels as a student worker during the second half of 1974 and missed those supposedly multi-orgasmic constitutional spasms of the day that everyone else can usually describe in great detail. As a result, the culmination of the Watergate crisis has always felt to me like a hazy historical event, and, by extension, the 38th President like a big pretend creature from a B movie, as though one of Ian’s old Frankenstein drawings had been put in charge of the government.

They didn’t consider us “interns” back then. The term was reserved for medical trainees and I was called a “co-op,” just like Mombo was back in the early 40s. As I’ve probably described before, I remember listening to the Nixon resignation speech as it was piped by loudspeaker into the morning streets of Amsterdam, while I leaned sleepily from the open window of a youth hostel, during one of my weekend forays into that Dutch shrine of “70s-ness.” So when I returned to the States before Christmas and finally took stock of President Ford weeks later, it was like, “who the heck is this guy?”

Fast forward through the remaining two years of the Ford administration. Back then it didn’t take much to get me miffed about the national scene. I was still angry at Ford for endorsing mass inoculations to counter a Swine-Flu boogeyman, for his apparently feeble attempts to turn around the lousy economy that I faced as a university graduate, and his cold shoulder to the supreme Russian dissident of the century. I don’t remember what I thought about his pardon of Nixon—one more ghostly act from another dimension. I’d voted against Ford in ‘76 while living in Chicago. Not really in favor of Carter (it was hard for me to take Jimmy seriously), I’d lost my enthusiasm for the campaign after neither of my two favorites, Eugene McCarthy and Ronald Reagan, had managed to prevail into the home stretch. As unfocused as they were, you can tell that my political attitudes tended toward the radical, and that was the one thing Gerry Ford indisputably was not. When Carter began to “self-destruct in five seconds,” I took an odd measure of pride in the fact that Ford had carried Illinois.

Fast forward again to a newly minted 2007 with one less Former President. Clearly it’s time to reflect on his rightful place in history, and I’ve softened my viewpoint considerably. I should have liked him more. He deserved it. Nevertheless, I can’t help but think that all the kind and appreciative things being said about Gerald R. Ford would still be equally true if he had not sought to retain the Presidency beyond his short stewardship, and, as confirmation of his quintessential unselfishness and towering decency, had stepped aside with the same dignity with which he had taken office—to have recognized his unique distinction as Healer among our chief executives, to have recognized the ascendancy of national conservatism over his frayed brand of Republican establishmentarianism, and to have recognized it was time to decisively pave the way for the next necessary phase of post-Nixonian resurgence—a fresh and bold style of visionary leadership for America.

— David and Lee scheduled an appointment to look at a house on the 400 block of West Broadway, so we tagged along. I had a bad feeling about this. Californians bought the house last summer, and it seems as though they had more money than good sense. Workers and dumpsters suddenly vanished a few weeks ago. Our look through the property confirmed my worst suspicions. One of Danville’s finest historic homes had been hung up and gutted like Duke Brian in “Gorky Park.” Reportedly, the owner can’t be located. To add a ludicrous element to the whole thing, a daughter is now asking prospective buyers to pay an even higher price than her mother paid for it—a perfectly livable home that was stripped, raped, and left for dead.

— Analysts are predicting that the demand for refurbishing Web formats may soon overtake the need for new site designs. Prices for domain names are dropping, a clear indication that the market for original sites is slowing down. Some agencies and firms are staffing specialized divisions devoted to economical “creative makeovers.” Deep within his Sanctum of Fortitude, Website Makeover™ Man is contemplating his fate.

— Watched a copy of “Broken Trail” last night, which Terie taped for us (before our vacation with Marty), because we no longer pay for channels like AMC. It was interesting to study the similarities and differences in Duvall’s performance, compared to “Open Range,” along with the contrasting directorial styles brought to similar subject matter. And speaking of contrasts, the radically different character that Church personifies, versus his memorable Jack in “Sideways,” is worth the viewing. As much as I liked “Broken Trail,” and as much as I admired its aura of authenticity, the screenplay does suffer unfortunately from what I’ll refer to as presentism. For the most part, in my opinion, Costner managed to avoid presentism when he made “Open Range,”—an impressive personal achievement, quite frankly, since his indulgent first western reeked of it. Nevertheless, who doesn’t like the entertaining “Dances,” in spite of its PC tone?

V & S

Despite the difficulties in punctuality I had pulling myself away from the Dixons of Broadwing Farm, we managed to arrive on time at our appointment with representatives of Lincoln Memorial University. Our primary goal was to follow up on Jerome’s prior contact with the dean of the new DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine, but due to understandable concerns about the comprehensive visual identity of the parent institution, other administrators wanted to sit in. We had no problem with that—it dovetailed with our own philosophy of image management and it gave us the opportunity to promote our creative services to a wider audience. The meeting seemed to go well. I’d never heard of LMU, but it’s a beautiful setting and progress on the new College is moving along rapidly. Faculty will be in place next winter and the first incoming students are scheduled to begin classes in the fall of 2007. Now is the time for them to invest in projecting a high level of graphic credibility. Dana and I are ideally suited for this work. Will they choose wisely?

After leaving LMU, we headed through the tunnel into Kentucky and found a decent Mexican lunch in Middlesboro. (Home of Lee Majors, who Brendan’s dad always liked and I still admire for his work long ago in “Will Penny.” He got his start, like my pal Andrew, at Pioneer Playhouse, here in Danville.) We decided to go through with our idea of making a cold call on the University of the Cumberlands. The weather was awful, pouring like a sonuvagun, and I was trying to safeguard the portfolio. All the time I wondered if the whole thing was a forlorn hope. Quite the contrary. The timing seemed almost perfect, and we sat down with the director of community relations just as he was thinking about severing ties to a big expensive outfit from Iowa (the same kind of specialized organization that nearly recruited Dana and me back in the 80s). That meeting seemed to go well, too, and I found myself getting more and more comfortable with that KY-TN border region as fertile ground for the graybeard prospector.

We’re heading south from Michigan, having made the decision to avoid I-75 to travel down through Indy. One of the great blunders of our stay is not getting any pictures after Marty and I slew the perch yesterday. Even Dana didn’t think of it. Stupid. It would have been a good memento, plus a potential Website shot for the Resort. Our “coach” took control of the cleaning, and we just went with the flow, in a state of joy and satisfaction, neglecting the obvious documentation. Oh well, sometimes you just get caught up in the moment, so “you had to be there.”

Lot’s of little things stick with me about the week. Like playing “Grand Theft Auto” with Marty and realizing that, although the premise of the plot-line is criminal in nature, the video game has an extraordinarily broad range of programming modules that include driving, motorcycling, bicycling, boating, and flight simulation for both planes and ’copters. In other words, the play experience is, to some degree, what the player brings to it. The level of violence is largely discretionary. Although it may still be true that it has a negative influence on younger users, for most in the target age group, it’s probably no more depraved than the average action movie that same age group thrives on. My conclusion— the criticism neglects the balance of features that make it a technical wonder and which undoubtedly contribute to its success as much as any perceived focus on the violent aspect that underlies any “shoot-em-up” video game.

I also remember talking briefly to the old mechanic fixing a Chris-Craft engine at the Hessel marina. He replied to my question about horsepower with a somewhat dismissive yet still friendly answer that indicated his attitude regarding the supremacy of horsepower— “It’s all in the gearing. But you can’t get these young guys to understand that.” He told me how he used to race boats when he was young and how he would beat boats with more horsepower by generating more torque. What will happen to all these awesome vintage boats when the generation that worshipped them as boys is gone?

And I took great pleasure in watching Marty’s director’s-cut DVD of “Mohicans”. Savoring Mann’s skillful blend of style and substance again has easily convinced me to skip his much-criticized “Miami Vice.”

Most of all, I revisit moments out on the Sartoris boat, hearing Marty’s quiet chuckles of satisfaction as we hooked perch after perch, and I flash back to some great beach frisbee, with the realization that my grandson isn’t a kid anymore.

Memories like that take the sting out of departure day.

Marty hooked an eleven-inch channel cat yesterday morning while I took my conference call out in the boat, but otherwise, zero perch. Then I botched our precious panfish morsels in the kitchen when I mistook Dana’s sweetened whey powder for flour. Today’s luck was even worse, and, as Marty put it, it was a “demoralizing” day on the water. Meanwhile, Tom P is routinely bringing in 15-30 perch per day himself and his daughter Tracie was catching keepers with her little boy only 50 yards away, while we sat and watched. Hard to figure. I know there are several variables to juggle (plus Marty is a bit green and I spend a lot of time dealing with his tangles, etc.), but we should be doing better. We’ll keep trying. They’re out there. One foot-long perch jumped out of the water so close to me I should have grabbed it. All in all, no complaints. We’ve had some pretty nice days this week after the wind died down. Up to now, I’ve been getting in a good channel swim each day, but by the time we’d gone down to the lake today, the breeze had picked up again. I made an anxious crossing with loud, choppy waters that made it tough to hear any potential boats that might put me in danger. Later we watched “Master and Commander” on Marty’s console and it was even better than I remembered it, a truly great story with exceptionally well-developed characters. Seafaring in 1805 makes my dodging little motorboats look like a tame occupation. Why is it we men must find some element of daring to feel fully alive?

It’s early. Marty and I are getting up to go perch fishing. Dana is kindly making pancakes for us. It just dawned on me that I have a Bicycle Commission conference call this morning which I may need to join by cell from out on the lake. That’s too wild for me—I don’t even typically carry a mobile telephone in my “day job!”

Speaking of wild, I had a dream last night about getting stuck in an unknown J.J. Abrams TV series (from when he was younger) called “Submission,” and it was a phantasmagoric mix of “Baron Munchhausen,” Twyla Tharp, William F. Cody, and “Alias.” I thought, “Wow. This guy is a damn genius!” I had to laugh at myself when I woke up and realized it was a dream.

Five of us from Danville joined the morning bicycle ride (Frankfort to Versailles to Midway and back) as part of the “Share the Road” activities in the state capital today. It started to rain as we hauled our bikes north and it was still raining at 8 am when we left the St. Clair Mall en masse. The weather proved to be a clear deterrent to participation. There were only about 25 of us who set out, and the wet pavement caused two guys to crash within the first five miles. Steve and I opted to turn around at Versailles and got in over 40 miles before arriving at the Capitol for the “Share the Road” Rally. Martin and the two Dans did the full loop through Midway, but missed the speakers as a result. Sadly, I have to say they didn’t miss much. It started to sprinkle when we climbed back into the city via McCracken Pike and the buzz was that the rally had been cancelled. Organizers made the decision to proceed when the rain let up, but the governor had already been called away to a greater priority. Although I had the personal opportunity to network with a “Who’s Who” of cycling advocates from around Kentucky, the rally fell short of my expectations, and there was no one who came before the microphone that could articulate the full significance of the shift in policy. I didn’t see a single TV camera. I wouldn’t call it a bomb, but to say the potential for a decent media event had fizzled would not be an eggageration. Nevertheless, it was an interesting ride through a quintessentially Bluegrass region, with the Woodford Reserve estate and some of the most famous thoroughbred farms in the world. The crumbling Castlerock and Old Taylor Distilleries along Glenn’s Creek were visually fascinating. I’ve never seen anything like them. Somebody could make a helluva creepy motion picture on those grounds. Loan Andrew half a million to make a movie on location there and he could take the indie scene by storm…

Rotary Club was unusually interesting today. I was called upon to make an spontaneous appeal in support of The Salvation Army Summer Camp program. Then we heard from a hometown gal who’s taking Pioneer Playhouse by storm this summer, and that got me thinking about my young chum Andrew. Holly Henson, daughter of the Playhouse founder, gave her pitch about next year’s Raintree County 50th Anniversary Festival. She made us realize that in 1956, it was the most expensive domestic motion picture ever made, and that 40% of it was shot in and around Danville/Boyle County. She made what I thought was an amusing remark— “What if 50 years later everyone had forgotten that the movie Titanic was filmed at Herrington Lake?” Later in the afternoon, I had coffee with a rookie staff writer for the local newspaper to promote the “Share the Road Rally” in Frankfort next Saturday. I’m also in the process of raising the profile of the bicycling advocacy group that a few of us local cyclists have organized this year. We have some lofty goals, and decided it was time to “go public.” We’re committed to a long-term effort and agree it’s too late to put on the brakes now. We’ll press on and see what happens. After that, Dana and I cruised to Lexington for the Gallery Hop, grabbed dinner and a glass of wine at Alfalfa’s downtown eatery, and settled in for an Altman picture at the State Theatre. What a day!

Spent most of the day reconfiguring computer setups in the studio, and it was not fun…

So we took Marty to see “Cars,” and it was FUN!

The people at Pixar must know how to have fun with computers. Why haven’t I figured it out yet?

Let’s just give all our money to Pixar and get it over with. Somebody has to take over the world and it might as well be them instead of Wal-Mart or Microsoft.

— Sunday was a day to shrug off the crazed Prospector (you should’ve seen him mining for diamonds last night) and just absorb the world-class sounds of the Band Festival before the musicians took their final bows.

— I often hear people say that the event “isn’t my kind of music.” I wonder how much of a Festival weekend they’ve actually experienced firsthand. Yesterday afternoon was a good example of how diverse the tunes can be—jazz, rock, motion picture soundtracks, patriotic marches, worship music, pop, classical—nobody would be out of luck except for a few die-hard country, hip-hop, or church organ fans. Over the weekend I heard bagpipes, a xylophone, a melodica, all types of percussion, plus a synthetically enhanced electric tuba, but primarily loads and loads of brass virtuosity. I honestly believe there’s no place on earth one can go to hear many of the world’s most skilled brass artists play for free, except for Danville, Kentucky during a couple days every June. Now, I suppose if you simply don’t care for people blowing horns, this event is not your cup of tea. To each his own, but one ought not to make assumptions. That’s like saying “I’ve never been to The Smithsonian or the National Gallery, but museums aren’t my thing.”

— I really shouldn’t go on. Everyone has their unique preferences when it comes to entertainment. I just happen to like James Clavell novels, Triple Crown horse races, vintage Chuck Heston movies, the Tour de France, watching old TV shows from the 60s, swimming in cold lakes, looking for pirates at plastic toy conventions, and sitting in front an outdoor stage at Centre College once a year. It’s just me. I never know what particular pieces of music will stir my emotions at the Brass Band Festival. This year it was Jens Lindemann playing Leroy Anderson’s “A Trumpeter’s Lullaby” in public for the first time in his career, or Randy Edelman’s haunting “Reunion And Finale” from the film “Gettysburg” and remembering the searing performance of Jeff Daniels, or hearing a Rhythm & Brass interpretation of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of Moon” creatively fused with songs from “The Wizard of Oz.” We must all seek out these types of individual pleasures for a balanced spirit, or bring less of ourselves to the serious endeavors that life demands of us at other times.

Our friend Gruntled has a couple recent posts about one of my favorite movies of the year. Back in January, after I saw “The Squid and the Whale,” I made a personal pledge to avail myself of the great novels. I recently watched a lecture Tom Wolfe gave at Duke on my birthday (indispensable C-SPAN!), and his comments reinforced my conviction. As it turns out, I was already chest deep in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” I finished it last night. The towering, soul-rattling masterpiece has shattered any vestigial reluctance I had for embracing major American fictional works.

Now I find myself dealing with a new state of indecision— What next?

“The mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.”

— from Invisible Man

I made mention last month that we’d watched “Out of Africa,” but didn’t say that it was primarily to conduct thematic research in preparation for this coming Saturday night. I admit it. I love The Great American Brass Band Festival. We moved to Kentucky the summer it began, and June in Danville has always been about the Festival for us. Nevertheless, I’m not a big fan of trying to orchestrate a picnic table concept, as much as I thrill to the atmosphere on Saturday night. There’s nothing like being close to the stage during what’s clearly the high point of the weekend, but all the preparations and distractions of making the table into a spectacle has never seemed to be worth the bother. Having said that, I can report that Dana has me completely caught up in getting ready for our African repast, including designing graphics for the table sign, and I’m starting to get excited about how it’s coming together. We’re sharing our table with David and Lee and their guests from Durban, South Africa. The competitive juices are pumping. Look out. I’m gonna kick down every other table like Jesus on a bad day!

— Month of May workout totals: Swim-2; Bike-5; Run-5; Lift-5; Yoga-9

— The Graybeard Prospector and his Medicine Woman ventured back into the administrative sanctum of the local health care system earlier this morning, making their forceful case for a revivified working relationship.

— I traveled to Louisville today with my colleague Paul to approve the press settings for the Great American Brass Band Festival poster. He came along as the featured artist, and I wanted to make sure he was satisfied with the reproduction of his painting, “Brassy Razzmatazz.” We’ve known and admired each other for a number of years, but it’s another level of personal rapport when you get to spend three to four hours talking together during a car trip. The wildest part took place on the way back, when we were caught in a severe electrical hail storm. Visibility dropped to virtually zero when maximum wiper speed failed to help, and it was all I could do to creep down the next exit ramp, praying to escape any danger. It was the worst weather I’ve ever negotiated behind the wheel, enough for two men to confess to a state of utter terror, after we’d struggled successfully to find a safe place to wait it out.

— Over the holiday, while Dana was visiting Bruce, I decided to dig out my copy of a movie I haven’t watched in a long time—“Nothing in Common.” I can report that I found it just as enjoyable as ever. Now that it’s been twenty years since it was made, the music and styles firmly peg it as an 80s period piece, but that only adds to its enduring charm. You don’t have to be a huge fan of Hanks (which I’m not) to be thoroughly entertained by this flick, which offers a full spectrum of moods and creative attributes. It’s hilarious, sexy, witty, insightful, thought-provoking, sad, and comforting. Flaws are there, if you want to pick at it, but it’s remarkably well-paced and so loaded with talent that you wonder why Hanks hasn’t done more ensemble pictures like this. The setting seems tailor-made for my individual pleasure. If you’ve never seen it, you’ve missed a real treat. Tom plays a 30-ish hot-shot creative director at a Chicago ad agency run by Hector Elizondo, but his up-and-coming career collides with a family crisis when his parents (Eva Marie Saint and Jackie Gleason) abruptly split. Saint’s characterization is delivered with absolute freshness and total believability. Reardless of what you might think of Gleason, “The Great One” will surely captivate anyone with this final performance, a masterful blend of comedy and tragedy, and a fitting swan song for the awesomely talented and complex personality. Now add to that a group of superb supporting players—Sela Ward, Barry Corbin, Bess Armstrong, John Kapelos, and Dan Castellaneta (who would go on to create the familiar voice of Homer Simpson). But make no mistake, the motion picture is anchored by the versatile Hanks at his most physically attractive juncture and by how he takes the viewer on an emotional journey under the able direction of Garry Marshall. When you combine this movie with “Big” and “Turner & Hooch,” it forms the pinnacle of the opening chapter in the astonishing tenure of a true Hollywood Star.

V & S

I wasn’t able to spend last night working on my two “Photorama” collages for the Clan graduates, since we spent the evening with the Simpsons watching “Out of Africa.” It forced me to complete the gifts today, but everything worked out fine. After an eight-mile morning run, I was able to focus on my intuitive sprint to the family deadline—an ideal circumstance for creating this particular type of artwork—as well as getting to savor one of the only flawless motion pictures made in the past 25 years.

25 years… that’s Brendan’s lifetime, and includes the lifetimes of all the Clan youngsters present at our celebration for Nicholas and Caitlan. And speaking of Brendan, I got to see him in action with his new camera, an impressive piece of equipment. As I shot with my vintage Nikkormat, I felt like a geezer driving around in a dusty old coupe. Ah well, at least I didn’t say, “No, sirree-Bob, they don’t make ’em like this anymore.”

It was fun to eat good Chinese food with Nic and Josh and Marty, too. Nic was having a great day, one that will last long in the memory bank. I wish my Godson well as he prepares to begin his studies in veterinary medicine. I really didn’t get to chat with Oxford-bound Caitlan, but, actually, I really didn’t get to talk to many of the others either, including my mom, but that didn’t stop me from simply absorbing the magnitude of the good family vibes, before it was all over much too quickly.

• This was one of those oddball days with wall-to-wall meetings and a string of outings into the community. Naturally, I tried to make the most of continuous contact with a wide variety of people, doing my best to avoid missing any opportunity to soft-sell our valuable capability.

Blow by quiet blow, I must pursue this steady defiance, in opposition to any prevailing trend of discontinuity in my commercial affairs. Resignation—to predispositions of temperament, or inevitabilities, or thought habits, or genes, or patterns of behavior, or personal psychology, or so-called karma, or perceptions of Fate—is not an option, as long as I have the power to invite change. Nothing is fixed in a world full of grace, in a world where I am receptive to the One Source of constructive change. As one would expect, the essayist provides even more keys:

But Fate has its lord; limitation its limits; is different seen from above and from below; from within and from without. For, though Fate is immense, so is power, which is the other fact in the dual world, immense. If Fate follows and limits power, power attends and antagonizes Fate. We must respect Fate as natural history, but there is more than natural history. For who and what is this criticism that pries into the matter? Man is not order of nature…But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him…if you please to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say, Fate is all; then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free…it is wholesome to man to look not at Fate, but the other way: the practical view is the other. His sound relation to these facts is to use and command, not to cringe to them…They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, &c., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear.

“Once a pirate, always a pirate.”

No…

And the Old Fisherman was not the only one who misunderstood.

The Ghost of Lice was wrong…

Follow not the path of destiny, but accept the freedom to understand and transcend it.

Act to empower oneself with a force of creative conduct.

… graybeard prospector …

The Rollin Saga / ELENA / starring Martin Landau and Barbara Luna / Episode 10, Year One / First aired, 12/10/66

The Cinnamon Saga / THE SHORT TAIL SPY / starring Barbara Bain and Hans Gudegast (Eric Braeden) / Episode 14, Year One / First aired, 12/17/66

The Jim Saga / NICOLE / starring Peter Graves and Joan Collins / Episode 73, Year Three / First aired, 3/30/69

The Barney Saga / DEATH SQUAD / starring Greg Morris and Cicely Tyson / Episode 100, Year Four / First aired, 3/15/70

The Paris Saga / MY FRIEND, MY ENEMY / starring Leonard Nimoy and Jill Haworth / Episode 107, Year Five / First aired, 10/25/70

The Dana Saga / THE MISSILE / starring Lesley Ann Warren and John Beck / Episode 119, Year Five / First aired, 1/16/71

The Willy Saga / DOUBLE DEAD / starring Peter Lupus and Irene Tsu / Episode 143, Year Six / First aired, 2/12/71

The Nicholas Saga / THE ASSASSIN / starring Thaao Penghlis / M:I Revival, Episode 32 / First aired, 1/20/90

The Shannon Saga / CHURCH BELLS IN BOGOTA / starring Jane Badler / M:I Revival, Episode 34 / First aired, 2/10/90

The Ethan Saga, Part One / Mission: Impossible / starring Tom Cruise and Emmanuelle Béart / Theatrical release, 1996

The Ethan Saga, Part Two / M:I-2 / starring Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton / Theatrical release, 2000

The Ethan Saga, Part Three / M:I-3 / starring Tom Cruise and Michelle Monaghan / Theatrical release, 2006

If you grew up with the original Mission: Impossible concept and sat through two substandard motion picture versions…

If you admire the best aspects of the Alias television series…

If you’re ready for some young IMF team members that Dan Briggs would have been proud to carry in his portfolio…

If you don’t dislike Tom Cruise any more than you do Jennifer Garner…

If you think Ving Rhames is cool…

If you think Lalo Schifrin is even cooler…

Then you’re ready to buy a ticket for the next installment of “The Ethan Saga.”

Silver Charm, Real Quiet, Charismatic, Funny Cide, Smarty Jones… There’s been a lot of buzz over the past decade about the emergence of a new Super Horse and Triple Crown Winner. I watched each of those horses win the Derby, but hadn’t experienced the kind of emotion I felt today seeing Barbaro accelerate to his impressive victory. Didn’t even mind waiting another day to catch an M:I:3 matinee.

— Last night I did the 30-miler to Stanford and back and felt strong. Back in July of 2005 I did that same ride and I was burnt toast by the time I got home. This is called progress. As a result, my legs felt a bit spent in the pool today, but I almost broke my 300-yard record time anyway. If had the buckers, I’d locate a challenging summer triathlon and go for it. “My favorite thing that makes me happy is… money.” Tell that to the Graybeard Prospector.

— If you can believe Zogby, 20% of 18-24-year-olds think that Germany was our ally in the second World War, and 52% could not name the American president who fought it. OK, the only solution is to produce a new WWII movie blockbuster that drills it into their heads. Here’s the cast—Dennis Quaid as FDR, Hilary Swank as Eleanor, Ed Harris as Ike, Paul Giamatti as Truman, Tim Robbins as MacArthur, Pete Postlethwaite as Montgomery, Ethan Hawke as Ernie Pyle, and Michael Gambon as Winston Churchill. Top that! I know, I know… lots of big battle scenes and pre-deployment consummations.

— I’m starting to see indications of blogging backlash, and maybe you’ve seen the same thing or—Heavens, no!—are part of the lash. Well, if you have any doubts about how constructive blogging can be, check out the way Dr. Weston has integrated it into his teaching at Gruntled Center.

— I had my second meeting with Wilma today and it looks like my having a one-man show at Danville’s Community Arts Center in 2007 is nearly a “done deal.” Stay tuned…

— Take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz. I am ROBIN!

— BCA got a digital camera for his birthday present. Look out—the torch has passed. I didn’t go to his party. I figured I’d be too intimidated by all the celebrities.

V & S

— It was a small group of local runners this morning, due to the Derby Festival in Louisville. I’m sure most of them were competing in the 13.1-miler, but my pals Don and Larry were doing the full Marathon. Mort and I did ten miles at a comfortable enough pace to talk the whole time, covering a range of subjects from mentorship, aging, rail trails, grassroots activism, minority politics, and the separation of church and state, which was a great way to start a birthday. After I got home, Lee stopped by to present her gift—a copy of The Emerald Book, which she found in her grandmother’s attic. It’s troubling to think it wasn’t so long ago that third and fourth graders were reading the poems of Shakespeare, Stevenson, Kipling, Tennyson, Coleridge, Hawthorne, Riley, and Emerson. It also contains reproductions of works by painters like Hals and Carpaccio, with short lessons in art appreciation. What happened to the idea of children having the imaginative freedom to be kids while they simultaneously advance on a gradient apprenticeship to adult culture? Instead, we have a glut of twenty-something adolescents attempting to understand the roots of Western Thought by watching a Brad Pitt movie, as primary schoolers learn that “fuck” can be either a verb, noun, or interjection. Does anyone know how we let this happen?

— Although we had a good turnout at our banquet Thursday evening, most of our strong Centre College supporters were absent because, unfortunately, we were competing with the appearance of Helen Thomas as part of their Press Distinguished Lecture Series. Not surprisingly, the veteran White House correspondent directed her criticism at the president, suggesting he follow the advice given to LBJ during Viet Nam and “Declare a victory and leave”. Please pay closer attention, Helen—that’s what our enemies may already be in the process of doing. Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a desperate attempt to impede the steady rise of Iraqi democracy, revealed his appearance in a recent propaganda video. In another tape, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri pleaded impotently with Muslims to oppose our Arab allies, and he declared that militants have “broken the back” of the U.S.-led effort. In the face of such frantic attempts on the part of Al-Qaida to remain relevant in Iraq, now is not the time to abandon the fledgling coalition government.

— Terie and Marty came over for either a late lunch or an early dinner—not sure which—with berry pie and ice cream (I don’t do cake on April 29th, thank you). Marty described his new pc game, Rome: Total War, and we watched a classic M:I episode, “The System” (we used to call it “Johnny Costa” back in the 60s) while Dana and Terie finished the tuna melts, keeping an eye on the NFL draft at the same time. I’d already received my gifts of a wristwatch and set of Koh-I-Noor Nexis art pens from Dana. Terie and Marty surprised me with a Serenity DVD. Well, maybe my home is not a hotbed of high culture, but who can find fault with a full day of pleasurable cooleosity?

— Ok, it’s 54. Happy Birthday to me.

V & S