TJ 2010 - Part 5 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. 

This is continued from TJ 2010 - Part 4 of 5.

sch 5/4/2026] 

In the decade before incarceration, I came to believe that my ambition to prove myself to friends and family by getting to law school created the real harm to TJ and me. That if I had been more flexible with my career choices, we would have stayed together. Not much I can do with that insight at the time. However, that insight might date the beginning of a sincere disenchantment with the practice of law. That conflicted with my need for economic survival. That need meant pushing any resentments about practicing law as far back into my brain as possible,

Music stopped being so important to me as it had been with TJ. I divide my bands into pre-TJ and after TJ. I had my stereo system stolen in the autumn of 1983, and I never tried to replace what TJ helped create.

TJ was the benchmark against what I judged all other women. The cruel, the stupid, or the plain boring never got a bid. Those with kind hearts, a lively sense of humor, and an adventuresome personality were biddable. They were 5'6” or taller, and being in good shape only made them more likely. Exceptions existed on superficial things (a certain blonde comes to mind), but the substantive exceptions reinforced the rule. Even my ex-wife had comparisons to TJ.

I saw TJ three times after January of 1985. The first time was around Christmas of 1985. She was pregnant with Mike's child. (This one did not miscarry, and she should now be about twenty-four years old. Yes, time flies.) All I remember is me telling her that our lives were diverging and we would soon be strangers to one another. I made her cry one more time.

 The next time came in 1989, when TJ set me up with one of her neighbors in Florida. I flew down there. After all, who better to trust for selecting a blind date than an ex-girlfriend? I was a flop. The high point was hanging out with TJ and Mike and getting to see Pet Cemetery with the blind date. There was no sex. Nice girl, but the whole exercise degenerated from harum-scarum adventure to ponderously dull discomfort on both sides of the equation.

I last saw TJ in 1995. T2 had taken me along on vacation to Florida. I talked her into driving down to Orlando to meet with TJ and her family. We all went to eat out at a Chinese buffet. T2 was on edage. She could not understand how one could stay friends with a former lover. TJ remained her usual friendly, gracious, vivacious self. I could tell she was happy with Mike. That she was happy made me happy.

But all that came to an end. I represented Mike in a child support case that did not go the way TJ thought it should. She wrote me a letter complaining about the outcome. I read only the first page condemning me and never read any further. Like most clients, anything that went against them was the attorney's fault. Later, her oldest sister told me that TJ had told Mike not to pay child support until he got visitation, and so caused the problem. That was 1996. I never spoke with TJ again.

For all that happened, I never felt any anger towards her. Our failure was my failure. What I had with her was a respite from all the demands and responsibilities imposed by the family, or that I accepted from the family. When I let the family responsibilities intrude, there was a rift between us. Only then did peace escape me.

One memory kept recurring as I wrote this. I am walking south on the fourth floor of Ball State's old East Quad. TJ stands in the corner next to my classroom. I am in a bad mood. I had been wanting this copy of Bob Dylan's "Words and Drawings", and I had stopped by the bookstore on the way to class. TJ's brown eyes are downcast as she listens to my complaints. Then that smile that could swallow me whole lights up her face. Those big brown eyes glitter as she hands something to me. She had been the buyer of the last copy of the Dylan book. I still have that book. When my stepson tore the book's spine, I felt part of me was torn.

 [I still have the Dylan book. It is one of the few books surving my incarceration and divorce and various moves before all of that. TJ and I spoke a few times after I was released. She surprised me by knowing I had been arrested; I guess she did keep some tabs on me. I sent her an early version of my "Dead and Dying" stories, and have heard nothing further from her. Messages left on her voicemail were not returned. In the past year, or two, her phone number changed after 40 years. There is no indication she is dead, but I have no means of finding out why she went silent. It would take a personal visit to find out what happened, but I have neither time nor funds to do so. Then, too, if I did have time and money, I cannot find in myself the energy to do so; her disappearance bothers without being an obsession. Another friend gone. 

By the way, describing A- as my ex-wife makes me want to put the date of these notes to July or August of 2010.

 

 sch 5/4/2026.]

TJ 2010 - Part 4 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. sch 5/4/2026] 

 About this time, TJ met Mike. Things were a bit tense with me being away from her for the first time in years and years. She thought I might be straying. I never had any suspicion of her until just before the start of law school. TJ and I had a date, and I came down to take her out. I stopped at Anderson to see a friend of mine, flirted a bit with this woman in his office named Michelle Moon, and then went to meet TJ. She was not there. She at Mike's. I got mad. I went back to Anderson. I wound up taking out Michelle and spending the night with her. I also spent the following night.

 I hope everyone recognizes this type of behavior does not help fragile relationships. It did not help me and my relationship with TJ.

 TJ helped me move to Valparaiso for law school. Her parents brought her up one weekend. (The last home game of the Chicago White Sox was that weekend; TJ's father was a fan.) That was the last time we were together. She was firmly unconvinced I was not chasing other females. Then I came home for Thanksgiving Break.

That Thanksgiving Break, I learned that Mom was dying and TJ no longer loved me. A good time was had by no one during that break. I was more than a bit out of my head and acted the ass.

 I gave TJ and me one more try on New Year's Eve. Mike was there when I arrived, and so I left with a promise to return. TJ was a mess. Obviously drunk and angry, TJ had taken a steak knife to her wrists. Her cousin Julie was also there. The cousin told her that her maternal grandmother had to pull me off her cousin. It did not matter to her whether this was true or not (and it was not). Julie had given TJ some pills to calm her down. Instead, TJ learned a serrated steak knife is no good for a suicide. The pills had no calming effect. By ourselves in her parents' living room. TJ started kicking at kick. For the first and only time in my life, I let someone try to hit me without hitting back. While attacking me, she accused me of sleeping with every woman I knew. I walked out at 1:30 AM on January 1, 1985, and told Mike she was all his.

 I drove all the way to Andersoncrying. I never cried that much in my life.

So that covers my life between nineteen and twenty-four. Nothing looms so large during those years as TJ. Her shadow still touches me. Those who think history does not matter need to think again.

My history to this point affected my relationship with TJ. I heard the tone of voice my Mom used when she talked about putting Dad through embalming school. When TJ offered to support me so I could write, I turned her down. I presumed that if I took her offer and the relationship soured, she would have the same resentment towards me as my Mom had towards my Dad. Hindsight tells me that it would probably have been less than the resentment I saw the morning of January 1, 1985. As it turned out, I never furnished another fiction project until almost ten years after our breakup. That project only was finished thanks to it being a collaboration. Only incarceration has allowed me to write, as TJ saw me writing.

Likewise, my relationship with TJ shaped my future relationships. Yes, Cat Stevens captured some truth in “The First Cut Is The Deepest.” (Yes, Cat Stevens did the song before Rod Stewart and Sheryl Crowe.) Cliches are truths. Live long enough, and we will endure all sorts of cliches and perhaps become one too.

After TJ, I did my best to avoid anyone seeing a husband. I made it clear that I was not looking for anything but fun. Translate fun as sex, and certainly nothing serious worked fairly well for most of the years between 1985 and 2010. That I did not always follow this rule may have been my ultimate downfall.

 Plesae do not think I did not become emotionally attached. I did all too often, but I kept my mouth shut more often than not about how deeply I became attached to anyone. Between 1985 and 2005, I proposed marriage to four different women. One rejected me out of hand (T1), and another turned me down as not being serious (LAH). Of the other two, one accepted only to change her mind after living with me (T2). After all, I did not think I was truly worth marrying. That everyone was better off after me rather than with me. TJ found greater happiness married to Mike than she did with me.

 [Continued in TJ 2010 - Part 5 of 5. sch 5/4/26.]   

 

New York Property Taxes and Whiney Billionaires

 The title is precisely how I when reading CNN Business's What everyone is missing about Mamdani’s plan to tax Ken Griffin’s $238 million penthous, I came to this paragraph:

Left unsaid by both sides: Griffin’s 23,000-square-foot penthouse, the most expensive home ever sold in the United States, is valued at just $9.4 million by the city for tax purposes.

Huh?

The kerfuffle masks the larger problem with New York City’s broken property tax system, which undervalues high-end condos and overtaxes renters. Little of the city’s most expensive real estate is actually taxed at its market value. This creates a powerful incentive for the world’s richest people to park their money in New York City real estate and contributes to the housing crisis pricing out everyday residents.

That is a problem. Frankly, it seems strange New York would have screwed up like this if you exclude the rich using their wealth to avoid fair taxes. 

And if that were not enough to point out the whiny nature of billionaires:

aire Ken Griffin's (left) $238 million penthouse.
Getty Images
New York — 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood outside a luxury skyscraper in Manhattan for a video on Tax Day to deliver on his trademark plan: “We’re taxing the rich.”

The skyscraper, located on ritzy Central Park South and built at a cost of $1.5 billion, seemed a fitting symbol for Mamdani’s video announcing that New York City at long last would institute a so-called pied-à-terre tax on second homes of the city’s wealthiest.

Mamdani singled out billionaire financier Ken Griffin’s $238 million penthouse as a prime example of the “fundamentally unfair system” that allows the city’s richest to store their wealth in homes that sit empty most of the time.

Griffin and opponents of Mamdani were enraged. Griffin said Tuesday that the video was “creepy and weird” and New York “doesn’t welcome success” under Mamdani. He said his investing firm Citadel plans to expand in Miami over New York City in response.

Left unsaid by both sides: Griffin’s 23,000-square-foot penthouse, the most expensive home ever sold in the United States, is valued at just $9.4 million by the city for tax purposes.

The kerfuffle masks the larger problem with New York City’s broken property tax system, which undervalues high-end condos and overtaxes renters. Little of the city’s most expensive real estate is actually taxed at its market value. This creates a powerful incentive for the world’s richest people to park their money in New York City real estate and contributes to the housing crisis pricing out everyday residents.
Griffin's penthouse at 220 Central Park South was the most expensive home purchased in America.
Griffin's penthouse at 220 Central Park South was the most expensive home purchased in America.
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

A pied-à-terre tax “can play well politically, but it doesn’t get at the core problem,” said Jared Walczak, a Senior Fellow at the right-leaning Tax Foundation. “In a better designed New York property tax regime, these homes would be taxed higher.”

New York City’s tax system requires luxury condos and co-ops like Griffin’s to be assessed based off the hypothetical income they would generate if they were rental properties, far underestimating their actual sales value.

Large apartment buildings also face higher effective tax rates than single-family homes under the city’s laws. And people living in predominantly Black neighborhoods pay higher property tax rates than wealthier, whiter neighborhoods.

Property taxes are the largest revenue source of New York City’s budget, and the city’s complex laws are widely considered flawed. But progressive New York City mayors have unsuccessfully sought reforms for decades.

A pied-a-terre tax will help raise funds for the city and encourage primary residency in New York City, said Moses Gates, vice president for housing and neighborhood planning at the Regional Plan Association. But it’s “not a substitute for comprehensive property tax reform.”
Who’s leaving cities?

New York lawmakers have floated various tax proposals on pied-à-terre homes for more than a decade. They’ve all met fierce opposition from real estate interests and raised alarms about wealthy residents fleeing the state.

The New York City comptroller said a pied-à-terre tax could generate approximately $500 million annually from an estimated 11,200 second homes with market values above $5 million.

“There is sometimes a theatrical component of this, where the wealthy are treated as engines of economic prosperity,” said Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow at Brookings and author of “The Price of Democracy” on America’s taxation history. “The presumption with leaving is they will take economic growth with them.”

New York City’s wealthy are critical to its tax base, but it’s families with young children that are the economic engines of cities, she said. They are many cities’ highest earners, biggest spenders and future workers – as well as the people leaving high-cost metros in droves.

In New York City, households with young children are twice as likely to leave as those without young children, according to the non-profit Fiscal Policy Institute.

“New York’s pattern of out-migration is primarily a result of an affordability crisis in the state, particularly for families,” the organization said in a 2024 report.

New York City has also been losing wealthy residents, but few people move solely because of taxes.  

What started this was this kerfuffle was this:

  Mamdani singled out billionaire financier Ken Griffin’s $238 million penthouse as a prime example of the “fundamentally unfair system” that allows the city’s richest to store their wealth in homes that sit empty most of the time.

Griffin and opponents of Mamdani were enraged. Griffin said Tuesday that the video was “creepy and weird” and New York “doesn’t welcome success” under Mamdani. He said his investing firm Citadel plans to expand in Miami over New York City in response. 

sch 5/8

 

 

 

TJ 2010 - Part 3 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. sch 5/4/2026] 

Then I met Phyliss and did something stupid. For the longest time, I could not even mention her name for my shame, but leaving her out will render what follows inaccurate.  And it is not like my earlier embarrassments are not now wholly overwhelmed by my crimes.

Phyliss was the new and only waitress on my shift. Thing began with her when she sat in one of the bar stools and asked me for a neck rub. While I stood behind her massaging her neck, she slipped her hands towards me and began massaging my privates. Her reaction created a reaction she liked and I did not dislike. After the shit hit the fan, I said to a friend, “I was tossed a football. Was I supposed to do? Drop it?”  (The correct answer to the last question is "Yes”).

I think we were together no more than three times. It was purely about sex. Phyliss was getting a divorce or was recently divorced. (Too much time has gone by; all I have is a fleeting memory of a husband no longer on the scene.) She lacked TJ's body, being shorter, smaller, and a bit less firm. Her conversation was limited to the trivial and inane, contrasting harshly with TJ's intelligence. She thought my apartment would look so much better with a velvet painting of Elvis sums up her tastes. All she had going for her was her sexual aggressiveness, of which she had plenty. The last time we were together, she spent most of the night and left me incapable of sex with anyone for a few days. I never sought her out afterward. Never seeing her again seemed like a good thing. 

 TJ confronted me about Phyliss. Being mortified by the time we had spent together, thinking I had insulted TJ, I lied. Thereby, only postponing trouble.

We had now made it to the late summer of 1984. We were engaged again. I was bound for law school. The Islande became The Bull and Brew and then went out of business. TJ took a job at another Muncie bar. I had moved to Greentown at Dad's request, but I got down to Muncie as often as possible. It was understood we would marry the next year.

Phyliss came to work at the same bar as TJ.Phyliss let TJ know exactly what she and I had done. When confronted by TJ, I made an unwelcome confession.

[Continued in TJ 2010 - Part 4 of 5. sch 5/4/26.]  

TJ 2010 - Part 2 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. sch 5/4/2026] 

By 1983, TJ and I had been dating for about four years. She had been with me at Grandma Downes' funeral and at Grandpa Hasler's funeral. We had gone to all of her friends' weddings but one. I had proposed to her three times. There came a day a few months afterward when we learned she was pregnant.

TJ told me her plan was for an abortion. Being brought up as I had been, I acquiesced and supported her decision. Then she told me that I was not to go along with her to the abortion clinic. She might as well have hit me with a sledgehammer. 

The night of the day TJ went to the abortion clinic, and I went to a friend's house with a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. I also had a set of shot glasses inherited from my Grandfather Hasler. Someone had a bottle of Jagermeister liqueur. I started chasing bourbon with liqueur. Someone else showed up with beer. Wild Turkey chased by Jagermeister was chased with beer. One person suggested we go to a bar. When I expressed enthusiasm for this idea, everyone else decided it was not a good idea. They were afraid I would get into a fight. I was sure I was not in a fighting mood. My friend's wife said I broke her screen door, but I did not. I did break a glass by throwing it across the street just to hear it break.

 I had the worst hangover of my life the next morning. I left my friend's house for the next morning looking for a hangover cure and to TJ. (My best hangover cure consisted of a rare steak and an ice cold Coca-Cola; they had the effect of pushing out the poison.) I found TJ very unhappy with me. She thought I had told everyone what was going on with us. I never mentioned anything about why I was drinking so seriously. I did not tell anyone about her pregnancy and going to the abortion clinic until many, many years.

Things became ticklish between TJ and me. That I had not bought her the ring she wanted for an engagement ring caused her great annoyance. That I was saving money for the ring was unknown to her. When I bought a very cheap guitar, she broke off the engagement. She did this two weeks before I would have had the engagement ring paid off.

 We still dated. We still owrked together at the bar. I still loved her. What I did not know was that she remained pregnant.

I did not know she had not had the abortion until one afternoon in my apartment she began to miscarry. She fell to the floor, crying, and lay there in a fetal position. She was bleeding and bleeding. I made to take her to the hospital, but she yelled her insistence that her friend Kathy take her instead. So, Kathy came to take her to the hospital, leaving me to think how close I had come to killing her. She called me later to let me know that she was all right.

Sex with TJ became problematic for me. I looked upon sex with her as having injured her, of almost killing her.  The idea of me posing a danger to those I loved became firmly established in my mind.

We stopped talking about this time. No, we talked, but we did not say anything about what was important to us. I regressed at this point. TJ had broken down most of the wall I had erected around me. Now, I put them up again. Let me say here that self-knowledge does not always provide a corrective. I repeated this same foolishness with T1, T2, CC, and my wife. Let me also say that my family law experience showed me that at the bottom of almost every case was a failure of communication. All that knowledge does nothing to salve the injury caused.

 [Continued in TJ 2010 - Part 3 of 5. sch 5/4/26.] 

Something Learned That I Forgot To Post

Frederick Douglass was in Pendleton, Indiana. For those who do not know who Frederick Douglas was, click on this link.

Frederick Douglass Returns to Pendleton:

Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists visited Pendleton, Indiana, in 1843 and were attacked by a mob. Local Quakers helped to rescue them, and the following day, Douglass spoke at the Quaker meeting house. To commemorate these historic events, reenactor Darius Wallace will deliver a presentation at the same place where Douglass spoke, in the present-day meeting house. 

The program happens at Fall Creek Meeting House, 1794 W. State Road 38, Pendleton, IN 46064, on May 15 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. EDT.

sch  

Muncie Arts

 Why aren't other cities (looking at you, Anderson) doing these things?

 Connecting the Dots: How Muncie is Building Its Creative Corridor (WLBC)

The idea didn’t appear overnight. It took the input of hundreds of individuals, hours and hours of research and planning, and applications for funding. All of the feedback, suggestions, and big visions came straight from the community.

In 2024, The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County brought together artists, organizations, developers, and residents to ask a simple question: What would it take to make our arts community stronger, more accessible, and more connected?

More than 300 voices helped shape the answer.

That work became the Creative Space Action Plan—a roadmap grounded in community input and focused on expanding access, elevating what we have, supporting artists, and building a more unified creative ecosystem.

Since then, progress has been steady.

Partnerships have formed. Infrastructure improvements have begun. A shared vision has taken hold: a Creative Corridor that links downtown Muncie with Ball State University and Minnetrista, creating a more seamless and welcoming experience for residents and visitors. Phases 1 and 2 focused on foundational supports, including the creation of a partner network and leadership group, reimagination of MuncieArts as an arts service organization, and investment in downtown infrastructure to serve as a backdrop for a vibrant arts hub in Muncie.

Affordability: From silver costs, to suppliers, to advertisements for a Muncie jewelry maker (Indiana Public Radio)

 In preparation for Mother’s Day, Heidi Hale, Founder of HeidiJHale Designs, would typically face online challenges, including not getting enough orders in early enough. 

“We are living in an Amazon Prime world, but what we have to remind them is we’re either taking a loved one’s handwriting, thumbprint, [or] picture, and we’re creating something from scratch,” Hale said. “Nothing is mass produced.” 

I have been in this place, and was impressed. One year when KH came down from Toronto, I took him to the place, and he was also impressed.

Downtown Muncie Announces Brink of Summer ArtsWalk + Flower Hour on June 4 (WLBC)

Downtown Muncie’s most-anticipated spring evening returns on Thursday, June 4, 2026 — the Brink of Summer ArtsWalk + Flower Hour.

Presented by the Community Foundation of Muncie & Delaware County, the Brink of Summer ArtsWalk + Flower Hour runs from 5–8 p.m.

A special edition of the monthly First Thursday series, Brink of Summer ArtsWalk is a community-wide celebration of the arts, local makers, and the vibrant culture of Downtown Muncie. This year’s event features an expanded lineup of programming for attendees of all ages.

Flower Hour, presented by Wise Country Market with flowers provided by Normandy Flower Shop, invites participants to explore Downtown Muncie and collect blooms from 10 different locations to build their own one-of-a-kind bouquet.

You can purchase Flower Hour tickets in advance online or day-of at the event. Physical, printed tickets allow you to start your Flower Hour journey, and they can be picked up, if you purchased them online, or purchased in-person at the DWNTWN tent at the corner of Walnut and Charles Street.

Another highlight of this year’s event is the Steamroller Printmaking Experience, produced by Tribune Showprint with a roller provided by MacAllister Rentals. Local and regional printmakers will create oversized prints using a steamroller as a press, and community members are invited to participate using pre-made blocks. 

And at the other end: Ball State's The Chug bar owner plans to stay amid Village changes. (Well, they used to have bands. I once saw Professor Oak and the Hurricanes there.)

And because I have no other place to put this and have sat on it long enough, and being somewhat theater related makes it arts related: Award-winning actor Hugh Jackman speaks at Ball State University spring 2026 commencement ceremony.  I think this puts Ball State on the radar.  A blip in the night? 

sch 5/7