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.

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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 

Ted Turner Died - A Great American Businessman

 When I was in college Ted Turner was the pin-up guy for A Great Businessman. Audacious, fun, successful - and he married Jane Fonda. He also won the America's Cup - provign by winning American greatness.

There will not be another Ted Turner 

Comapred to Ted, Donald Trump is a loser, married to a souless mannequin, whose legacy is formed by slapping his name on things belonging to his betters rather making anything of his won.

Ted Turner, 1938–2026 (The Bulwark)

The one thing Turner understood, and helped create, before most was the ability to turn media properties into nationwide phenomena via the burgeoning technology of satellite and then cable television. He parlayed a handful of radio stations into a bottom-feeding UHF channel, then rebranded it the Turner Broadcasting System and beamed it into space, then into everyone’s homes. (Or, at least, everyone with a dish and a cable sub.) TBS out of Atlanta joined WGN out of Chicago as weird little windows into America for folks around the country, a fact that helped turn the Turner-owned Atlanta Braves into a national sports brand just a tier below the Yankees and the Cowboys, particularly in the American South where baseball franchises were few and far between.

But TBS was relatively small potatoes—an overpowered UHF channel trafficking mostly in reruns and sports—compared to Turner’s next big idea: CNN, the Cable News Network. Founded in 1980, it was the first 24-hour news network. But news alone would not fill all those hours; this is TV, after all, and television viewers demand programming. So there were shows like Lou Dobbs’s Moneyline and Evans and Novak, a show built around the longtime writing duo of Robert Novak and Rowland Evans who brought a sort of Siskel-and-Ebert charm to the day’s events. And then a few years later, Crossfire, which (alongside The McLaughlin Group) did much to introduce the shouting-head format to the body politic. Larry King Live debuted in the middle of the decade and helped bring newsmakers to the masses via the call-in format.

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TJ 2010 - Part 1 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] 

TJ's Mom graduated college with me. She had quit high school when she married. She graduated high school with TJ. Her mother was a sweet woman. That she will be disappointed by my recent misdeeds saddens me, even though I have not seen her in almost a decade.

I did not go to my college graduation. I have some regrets about that now, but that is probably just sentimentality considering how drunk I got the night before graduation. My graduation party was in Yorktown, with me being late. It was a tense thing, with me being late and Mom and Dad facing off. Baby sister lived with Dad by then, so did my oldest sister, who was married then, and me not living at home; the gloves were off between Mom and Dad. They were polite, of course, but that does not mean the air was not full of tension. Mom had not liked it one bit when Dad took me out the year before on my twenty-first birthday.

 I decided to take a year off before pursuing my plan for law school. The law became my goal during my first year at Ball State, but going year round since the Fall of 1979 had left me burned out on school. I took a job with one of TJ's brothers-in-law. I never got paid as much as I was told to expect. It would not be until 2009 that I missed a rent payment again. That job of working for a landscaping company ended effectively in August of 1982, and I found myself hip deep in Mr. Reagan's depression.

 A friend's mother found me a job at an Indianapolis Sizzler restaurant as a management trainee. The good thing was staying again with my Aunt Elsie, but I missed TJ and hated the job. The manager hated me. I got fired for the first time.

 TJ and I talked, and I went back to Ball State for a Masters in history. We talked about teaching at the college level, as I lacked any semblance of the patience needed for any other sort of teaching. I did not take my Masters seriously enough. If I had, I know my life would have been different. TJ, if you should ever read this, you were correct about what I should have done with my skills.

Sweet and kind, TJ had a temper and will of her own. We had our arguments. I did go out with a few other girls when I got mad at her. I spent a lot of 1981/1982 drinking Jack Daniel's with a redhead from Elkhart. Actually, we drank a lot of Jack Daniel's. What TJ never believed was the lack of sex - too much Jack and too much guilt. The redhead returned to Elkhart after telling me I was too much in love with TJ.

By the Fall of 1982, TJ had found me a job in Muncie working at a bar, The Island. I knew the place from my college years for its wet T-shirt contests. Mom pitched a fit at me working at a bar until I told her the wage was $4.00 per hour plus tips. Considering minimum wage was then a bit above $2 an hour, she muted her criticism.

I stayed with that job until July of 1984. While there, I learned a few things. I learned how much I liked dry martinis made with Absolut vodka and Rusty Nails and that I did not like being around drunks. I had my first experience with cocaine and cokeheads. (I walked into the tiny men's room to find one of the regulars standing there with a sheath knife in hand. I stopped wondering what the hell he was doing; he had cocaine on the knife blade, and he said, “Want to try some?” I decided best to do so. The bookkeeper extolled the virtues of cocaine to me with a voice sounding like she had found God. I was unimpressed, having been baptized at age seven. I was off to law school when I heard she could no longer control her nosebleeds.) I also learned how to evaluate and work with strangers in very different situations. (When I was hiring secretaries, I preferred those who had experience waiting tables because they really knew what it meant to work with the public.) I was happy to leave that job; the stress was horrible.

[Continued in TJ 2010 - Part 2 of 5. sch 5/4/26.] 

 

5/5 -5/7/2026: Anderson to Muncie to First Thursday

 Tuesday, I drove over to Anderson. 

I met with first K, went to Allan's pawn & Jewelry, saw a few things I had not seen in other trips, and had a chat with my mother. There was about the same number of homeless as Muncie, but more than Anderson would like. Speaking with one of the proprietors of Allan's there was a little discontent with home the city was dealing with its problems. I suspect it is inertia; they are still thinking of Anderson as it was 50 years ago. The Wing On Inn is gone, but Wawa is on its way. I am not sure if it is an improvement.

J and I went out to eat. We wound up at Thai Divine. This is the first Thai restaurant in Anderson. Anderson does not deserve this good of a restaurant. Stylish surroundings, grand food, and good service. Since I cannot copy and paste, here is what we had to eat as screenshots.

My order: 

J's order:
 

We were stuffed. J carried about half of her order home.

Probably the most fun I have had with two women on a rainy day in ages. I know it was the most I had laughed for a long time. Probably not since the last time I talked to either K or J. 

Then I came back to Muncie to St. Barnabas for the festival of St. George. 

I got home around 8:30. Problems came along later, so I did not get as much sleep as I wanted and missed Matins again.

Wednesday, I did some writing before the writer's group meeting and then back here after the meeting. I got some blog posts done but they took so long. Ice packs-R-us.

Thursday has been one of those days when I was so tired I did not really wake up until after 5 pm. A walk down to the convenience store did not help. A blog post or two done, but not any serious writing. Then I went downtown for May's First Thursday (full listing).

I wound up buying enough stuff for dinner: a loaf of sourdough bread, Lebanese olive oil, a meat pie, a slice of lemon cake, and a cookie. 

I made it to two studios at the Murray: Dunckel Haus Photography and, I think, Cassie Dunmyer. I chewed off the ears of the Dunckel's - a very charming young couple - but I was taken with their black and white photos. Some of which are online here. Ms. Dunmyer impressed me with her being 34, and having a good and inventive mind. I would have dropped a lot of money in either place at another time in my life.

I also stopped in at the ECAP Gallery. Better things than I was doing at their age; I was much better at detroying things than making. 

I caught the bus home, arriving here around 7. MW and J both called me tonight. Then I started on this post. I am tired, so I do not think I will be doing more writing. Therefore, I will close with a link to Do you say 'wash' or 'warsh?' Here's where the pronunciation comes from (NPR) and political commentary from YouTube.

 

 

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Still Thinking About Indiana's Political Parties

A bit of me floowing up on my And Republican Hoosier's Got On Their Knees For Trump.

Here is what comes from reading more than the headlines. What caused this post was Indy Democrats weather test to establishment (Indy Mirror). Which had these two paragraphs buried down towards the middle of the story.

But some political observers are cautious to draw too many conclusions from the results, given that only about 15.8% of registered voters in Marion County actually voted in the primary. While that was the highest percentage since at least 2010, it’s still a small sampling of the electorate.

“We’re still talking about a small percentage of people that chose to participate,” said Gregory Shufeldt, associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis. “That’s with a competitive congressional primary and a lot of money being pumped into races throughout the area.”

 One takeaway would be the disengagement of Indiana voters. Except  this is a primary election wherein party candidates are chosen.

I read it as a lack of party affliation. My opinion may change after November if the percentage does not change.

Indiana politicians and those running the parties can rest content with control of their political duopoly. They can put forward any candidate on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, lose or win, and still keep their jobs. Whatever good that does for the people of Indiana is an open question, in my mind. 

What if we had a truly open primary, what I think is called a jungle primary? Well, those in power of both parties might find their jobs at risk.

I have held onto this piece for too long, and while its relevance might be slim to the preceding, it is not non-existence.

OPINION: Micah Beckwith’s un-Christian, un-conservative crusade (Indiana Daily Student)

Beckwith’s has been the Trumpist response. This means it is, by origin, neither Christian nor particularly conservative, as President Donald Trump far more closely resembles Nero than St. Louis IX the king of France and a reactionary populist than a steward of this country’s traditional institutions. The form of public discourse Trump has innovated is new and beyond the old pale. 

Why, then, have so many self-described conservative Christian politicians throughout the country, especially in Indiana, adopted this way of addressing their opponents? 

Contrast this approach with that of St. Francis de Sales. The 16th-century Catholic bishop and theologian — and patron saint of journalists — reconverted, according to tradition, 72,000 people in a hostile territory. His region of southern France had recently, and enthusiastically, embraced Calvinism amid a time of fierce, and bloody, religious conflict. Yet de Sales won so many people to his cause through small virtues: gentleness, temperance, modesty and humility. 

There is a tradition of Christian thought that would resist the reduction of Christianity’s public relations to gentleness alone, that would insist the faith must sometimes wield muscle, even state power, in addition to meekness. This tradition is found in St. Thomas Aquinas: False beliefs obstruct our enjoyment of the common good, so the state, whose job it is to foster that good, has a valid reason to curb such beliefs. Presumably, Beckwith might place himself in this tradition. 

But the difficulty is that Beckwith’s actual relationship to the tradition seems nonexistent. The belligerence that characterizes Beckwith’s rhetoric is not Thomistic. Nor is it clearly the product of theological reflection over St. Thomas. Instead, it appears to have been absorbed from a post-Trump politics that favors the social media attack, replete with all-caps and bad-faith assumptions, as its foremost method of expressing grievances. Christian vocabulary like “demonic” is thus fitted onto a form that postdates it, is unrelated to it and degrades it. 

De Sales’ practical counsel, written five centuries earlier, serves well as a response to this trend. 

On language, de Sales warned against impolite words. Even without poor intentions, those who hear them may interpret them differently. The problem with Beckwith’s use of the word “demonic” is thus not only that it is uncharitable but that it prevents the conversation Beckwith should want. Rather than persuade, he performs disgust that only confirms, in the minds of band kids, that Christians are exactly what their naysayers have long suspected them of being: intolerant prudes. 

I was thinking today as I walked down to the convenience store that it seems politics have become a team sport. It is the winning that matters. But politics is what is good for the community; what enables people to live better with one another. Therefore, current politics substitutes the rightness of its victory as being good for the whole, and a loss as the destruction of the community. Viciousness replaces persuasion. It is an either/or proposition imposing a totality on human beings rather than a unity. It allows the loudest, most vicious to gain power. Such certainty in one's political views seems to have substituted the theological for partisan social views. This theological view of one's political views stifles the imperfections of human life. Sooner or later, death to the enemy becomes the only political slogan.

I do not know if a jungle primary will undermine the idea of politics as warfare; I have a deep, abiding distrust of simple answers, of one size fits all. I do think it will be a start. Perhaps we can restore reason by requiring crackpots like Beckwith to persuade rather than blather, by making them try to explain themselves rather merely bluster.

 

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