6/5/2010: Law School

[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. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 8/14/2026] 

 Those looking for prurient information should skip this section. I dated only two women while in law school.

I started Valparaiso University School of Law in August of 1984. 

My first semester was rocky. I had been out of school for two years. I was neither certain if I retained any academic abilities nor that I belonged there socially. 

Second semester became a disaster. I came back knowing my mother's lung cancer had returned to kill her and that TJ no longer wanted me. I teetered on the brink of flunking out. That I might not survive scholastically was a first for me.

 Dad offered to mortgage his house. I turned him down. I spent the summer working for him so I could be close to Mom. I got myself onto law review by way of the law review's case comment writing competition. (By the way, I consider my contest entry better written than my law review note which is stilted, pedantic, and boring.) I reverted to a pre-TJ mentality for survival: the professors, the school, became the enemy, my opponents.

I survived the summer of 1985 and watching the effects of chemo on Mom.  With my attitude towards school, I survived. Even with Mom dying in March 1986 and learning in April that my Great-Aunt Elsie had liver cancer, I made it through.

I stayed with and worked for my father the summer of 1986 so I could spend time with Aunt Elsie. She died a month after I started my Fall semester class. I made it to graduation.

 Survive may be a bit of an understatement, as I increased my grade point average and class ranking every semester. This occurred even though in my last year I was on law review, had a part-time job at the undergraduate library, delivered pizzas for about a month, and was a professor research assistant. I always knew how to work.

 I thought law school was a serious place for serious people. They were not the educated morons I met at college. To the disappointment of at least one professor, we were not interested in the abstract, scholarly aspects of the law but in careers that could put food on the table. Thankfully, I was at Valparaiso instead of Indiana University-Indianapolis. Valparaiso offered none of the distractions of people and places in Indianapolis. 

I think I would have done better for myself had offered the clinical class that it now offers. Anyone actually wanting to practice law needs to take clinicals. They will do themselves great harm by avoiding practical experience.

 I will also say that a law school education is one of the best educations anyone can have and more should be exposed to its rigors. However, not everyone should practice law and no one should feel any shame about graduating law school and then foregoing the practice of law. I could not imagine not practicing law. I think now that I was utterly unprepared for the business side of law.

(How to know if you should go into private practice? If you cannot schmooze, if you cannot network with those your business depends upon, then a solo practice is not for you. Also read Jay Foonberg's How To Start and Build A Law Practice.)

Since becoming a felon, I seriously doubt ever being asked back to my law school (or to any other), but for the last twenty years I have wanted to tell law students two words they need for success. Those two words are: cash flow.

I admit creating a serious problem for myself by financing my law school career with student loans. I lost all control over my student loan payments in 1999. I took this path on the advice of my Aunt Mary Ellen's youngest son. Tax policy then allowed deducting student loans. Tax law changed, but being committed to finishing what I started, I took out more loans. Never base any long-term plans on the federal tax law. Doing so truly is building one's foundation on sand.

(Another interruption: with the Great Recession, the firms shed lawyers and student loan debt requires a steady income for younger lawyers. I predict we will be seeing younger lawyers leaving the profession and fewer wanting to go into the profession; law schools will soon find the environment as competitive as we did in private practice. I worry about the smaller cities in Indiana. I have already seen fewer younger lawyers coming into Anderson as solo practitioners. Operating costs have increased. I expect the Anderson paradigm of solo attorneys sharing office space as being extinct by the time I finish my sentence. Which then raises the question of how many people will go without what variety of legal services.)

I left law school for private practice. I had had no plans for myself past graduation. All the reasons I had for law school and going into the legal profession had departed from my life by May of 1987. I was never good at doing things for myself, such selfishness never felt right to me. I had no idea what to do now that I was on my own. No real goals other than to make money. Inertia saved me a lot of thinking, and I was heading back to Anderson.

[It looks like I was not far off the mark in 2010 about new law school students: Law School Enrollment Trends, 1963-2025 (LawHub ). And I was not wrong about law schools, but did not expect it to get worse:

 As for what I saw for Indiana: ISBA Attorney Shortage Plan (Indiana State Bar Association)

They even have a map where there is a shortage of lawyers. sch 8/14/2026]

 

Movies and Theater, Muncie & Anderson; Books Worth Noting; Kit Marlowe Dies, Again

Ball State's Emens Theater calendar: Upcoming Events at Emens Auditorium.

 Anderson's Paramount Theater is showing movies again! A wondrous place to see movies. I wish more of the films rose to the ocassion.

Movies, movies, movies! Anderson's Paramount Theatre offers slate of free famous films (heraldbulletin.com)

I have a beein in my bonnet about Hollywood remaking movies - instead of recycling well-done material into second-rate reboots, why not plunder older IP? 

Other than Warren Williams, Barbara Stanwyck & Joan Blondell being dead?

 

 Books: The Curse of Queen Kelly (Film Comment)

 Bruce Dern ruined Robert Redford's The Great Gatsby for when I read someone saying Bern should have played Gatsby. Yes, that would've been so much more interesting.

‘I turned down Gandhi because I’m terrified of snakes’: the amazing movie memories of Bruce Dern  (The Guardian) 

I have a fondness for Llosa & Irvine Welsh & Téa Obreh & Kit Marlowe: 

I Give You My Silence by Mario Vargas Llosa review – Nobel laureate’s final novel is a love letter to Peru (The Guardian)

When I Give You My Silence was published in Spanish in 2023 its author, the Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, rightly predicted that it would be his final novel. He died last year at the age of 89. I Give You My Silence may have been completed with the spectre of death approaching, but there is nothing morbid about this book, which is an eccentric love letter to Vargas Llosa’s native country and, in particular, its music.

Can Nothing Save Us? by Irvine Welsh review – US family saga is a late-career triumph  (The Guardian)

Irvine Welsh’s 16th novel Can Nothing Save Us? comes as something of a surprise. An epic American family saga, it explores a collective emotional malaise at the heart of a great power in decline. This is a bold and ambitious work, in which Welsh deftly shifts point of view with confidence and conviction: his ability to jump generations and to capture the voices and feelings of his disparate cast of characters is at times quite astonishing.  

A History of the Novel in Britain by Philip Hensher review – a masterpiece of criticism (The Guardian)

In his opening paragraph, Philip Hensher declares that a novel not only “tells a good story” but is a good story in itself. We could extend that neat formula to include this book, which is not only a masterful account of fiction since 1719, when Daniel Defoe set Robinson Crusoe down on his desert island, but is itself a wonderful read. There is nothing dreary here; no sense of being back in the seminar room taking notes. Instead it is 600 pages of deep pleasure, an excuse to revisit old literary loves and be reminded of ones that have slipped from view.

***

Hensher never falls into crankiness, but he is unafraid to point out home truths. Such as the fact that so much of the pleased-with-itself “experimentalism” of the 1960 to 1980 period was merely a retread of things that had been done better before. Tickled by the clever wheeze of having central characters with no name? Fanny Burney was already doing that in 1814. Keen on using fragmentary collage to signal modernity? That blustery old fogey Evelyn Waugh got there first with Vile Bodies (1930). As for self-reflexivity, that device by which the novelist comments on the process of writing a novel, you should go back to Fielding.

Téa Obreht on Writing a Layered, Intertextual Tale of the American West (Literary Hub) - a delightful writer.

From Marquis de Sade to Grand Theft Auto, a Brief History of Depravity (Literary Hub). I have understood the French fascination with Sade. It seems to fall in line with their admiration of Jerry Lewis. The essay is in good company, Camus started with Sade in The Rebel. I think he was  faker, living in his head, but that might be the point of the essay. He let out all the demons.

Interview with Stephen Greenblatt on the Death of Christopher Marlowe in 1593:

 

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Notes From The Weekend

 Dedicated followers of passion: the Kinks’ 40 greatest songs – ranked! | The Kinks | The Guardian

 The-Brick-Foxhole-vs-Crossfire.pdf

 Madison County Democratic Party

Nolan's 'The Odyssey' ruined a poem I never bothered to read | Opinion

 Think of intelligence in terms of goals, not brains | Aeon Videos

 Toward the Next Century of Carmen Martín Gaite - Public Books

 “As Good As It Gets”: Talking Liberalism with Kevin Schultz - Public Books

 Think of intelligence in terms of goals, not brains | Aeon Videos

 After 60 years, scientists uncover metformin’s hidden brain effects | ScienceDaily

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Heat Advisory Without Air Conditioning

 Oh, boy.

I went to the hospital to check on whether there was paperwork I needed for the pre-op. Also, I paid a bill. Then I decided to run up to Enterprise to get a car. No car. So, I ate at Burger King. I think for the first time since I got home.

I went out about 9 and got back home around noon, to a steam room. I had put in a repair order for the air conditioning on Sunday. No one had come. Why not I found out later.

A bath to make the heat and humidity tolerable. 

Then it was time to head back to Enterprise. I got a little Nissan, then off to the property management company. I did not want the car towed. While there, I found out the work order had been cancelled. That got fixed. 

I did a little drive around Muncie, ending up at the west side Payless. The car had air conditioning. 

That got me back here around 6:30. Mierable, I must remember not to eat solid food. And the closeness of my rooms did not help. I cannot remember what I did after 8:45. Then, too, I am not sure what I did before!

I could not sleep, I have been up for three hours now. I went out for smokes and RC Cola. The car had air conditioning, remember? Strange how quiet the town is. I do not think there are any all-night restaurants. It seems I was told the bars close around midnight now. Little traffic, but it is probably safer traffic than before I went away. I do not know how much of the change is due to things like COVID-19, but I think the town is getting old like I am. 

Early Migration to Indiana (Before Railroads) goes back to this past weekend and I have not had time to add it on here. 

Same with “Copperheads in Indiana” Civil War Roundtable w/ Author Nancy Baxter:

  

And what I am trying to do:

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5-17-2026: Anderson to Indianapolis; a Day of Futility

 I finally figured out how to get the images off my camera. It was time to catch up with my travails and troubles of this past Sunday.

Anderson's Applewood - Target is gone.

I stopped for lunch here close by IU

I had the chicken shwarma, and it was good. The Chinese restaurant I went to after my sentencing with CC and Ray S is gone. Perhaps it was an omen of things gone. It was the last time I saw Ray.

Then I got to the IU campus:

 I think I knew there was to be a fair at Military Park across the street from the McKinney Law School. If I knew, I had forgotten. The day being hot and not being able to find a parking spot, so I headed towards the closest parking garage I knew of. It cost me $20.

Walking from the garage to the law school, I passed across the canal. It looks like a bit of Venice dropped in on Indianapolis, or so it is probably hoped.

 When I got to the law library, it was closed. Sweating, tired, and put out with my lost time. The event at the park looked like it would cost money. Between that and my inflamed temper, all I wanted was to get out of the area.

 Some views of the area then:

 

 

I headed east looking for K's 2-in-1. I stopped at Irvington Plaza, or what there was of it. When I was a kid, more than 53 years ago, there was life and business here. 

The building in the background was a bowling alley. I remember going there with my cousin Paul. It had to be 1971 or 1972, when he was at Purdue. I associate The Loggins & Messina song “Your Mama Don't Dance” with the visit, so most likely 1972. The red-roofted building was the Dairy Queen my mother would take us to; she had a milk allergy and it seems to me she could eat at DQ.

In the second photograph, there was a Haag's Drug Store at the corner. Here was where I first saw Vampirella and Creepy comics. There was an S & H Green Stamps store further up the buildings. Mom collected stamps, I recall putting them in the books and a couple of shopping trips there. Haag's and S & H are long gone.

 

All is empty, as decayed as the pavement.

Continuing east searching for an office supply store, I found a Karma store. Once our most wide-ranging record store. This is at Post Road and Washington Street. I recall buying my copies of Mott the Hoople's Mott, Graham Parker's Squeezing Out the Sparks, and Stiffs Live there. All three records are now long, long gone. 

 

Also decayed was Washington Square. Memory says it was to be built after my family moved back to Anderson in 1973. It forced the closing of Eastgate, the mall we most often shopped at when I was a kid and the first enclosed mall in Indianapolis. 

 I did not find the store I looked for, so I went searching for my great-aunt's grave. 

 

 

I falled in that, too.

 

Then I headed north to another Staples. I had some old woman start to sideswipe me. Driving regresses me into a foul-tempered, cranky old man. No luck finding what I searched for, so I came home with my nerves frayed and my temper throbbing.

 

Everything hoped for went unaccomplished. Futility, all was futility. But it was a bright, sunny day.

 

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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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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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A Grab Bag: Making Music in Indiana! Hooser Filmmakers! Bob Dylan! Unreliable Narrators! American Short Stories!

I put together this post on February 3, meaning to do more with what I had found on these sites. Work, illness, recuperation kept me from doing more. I added some brief notes today.

Want to write a movie and want to see real scripts. Rian Johnson has posted his at rcjohnso / scripts.

 Why Bob Dylan’s COVID-Era Album Was the Real Nobel Lecture 

“Murder Most Foul” is, first, the story of a killing, which Dylan depicts as an execution, and, then, a catalog of the plangent reverberations for a nation—­as he later sings—­in “slow decay.” Dallas strictly speaking was dark when Kennedy arrived, rainy and gray, and from the outset Dylan embeds the assassination inside prior American cataclysmic cruxes: Native American ethnocide (referencing the Oglala Lakota saying, “a good day to die”) and Pearl Harbor, via Franklin Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech. But 1941 was also the year Dylan was born, and his song is just as cannily personal as it is historical. His memoir Chronicles recounts his mother’s avid response to a Kennedy campaign visit to Hibbing, Minnesota, six months after Dylan left for Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota. “He gave a heroic speech, my mom said, and brought people a lot of hope,” Dylan wrote. “I wish I could have seen him.” Kennedy also figured into one of Dylan’s first public controversies when, on December 13, 1963, he ruffled his Emergency Civil Liberties Committee hosts in New York after they bestowed upon him their annual Tom Paine Award—­for civil rights efforts—­by remarking that “I saw some of myself” in Lee Harvey Oswald. More recently, Dylan included paintings of Oswald and Jack Ruby in his “Revisionist Art” series (2011-­2012), both modeled after reconfigured Life magazine covers. On his twenty-­first-­century albums, “Love And Theft” (2001), Modern Times (2006), and Tempest, Dylan circulated several conspicuously political songs, among them “High Water (For Charley Patton),” “Cry a While,” “Sugar Baby,” “When the Deal Goes Down,” “Workingman’s Blues #2,” “Ain’t Talkin’,” “Scarlet Town,” “Tin Angel,” and “Tempest.” During an interview with novelist Jonathan Lethem, he might jest, “You know, everybody makes a big deal about the sixties. The sixties, it’s like the Civil War days. But, I mean, you’re talking to a person who owns the sixties. Did I ever want to acquire the sixties? No. But I own the sixties—­who’s going to argue with me?” Still, on “Murder Most Foul” Dylan thwarts readymade nostalgia, an easy revisiting of the storybook sixties and his golden “spokesman” moment. Instead, mixing and juxtaposing voices, lingos, and tones, he traces the decline of America over the trajectory of his own lifetime through the kaleidoscope of the Kennedy assassination. 

  hoodox Hoosier documentaries that inspire. 

Hoodox is a nonprofit organization on a mission to support and share stories that connect Hoosiers, spark conversations, and inspire positive change in Indiana.

We believe Indiana’s future can be bright, and that amplifying true stories told by and for Hoosiers is one of the most powerful ways to help us get there. 

 The Musical Family Tree - Indiana bands

The Musical Family Tree archive was started in 2004 and serves as a crowd sourced archive of the Indiana music scene with a focus on the late 1970s through the 2010s. The MFT archive contains 1,720 musical artists and 22,311 recordings, almost none of which are found on traditional streaming services. Please explore the archive and contact us at team@musicalfamilytree.org with any questions.  

(Muncie bands - most of whose names I do not recognize, but Faith Band goes unmentioned. Indianapolis bands - too many to look through - but looking through the listing by name, I found my favorite Indy band from the early Eighties: The Future! No entries for Anderson. No Pedlar?)

Can you make a 5-minute film for $5,000?  (Mirror Indy)

Now, Hoodox has created a new opportunity for Indiana filmmakers, in partnership with Indiana Humanities, Free Press Indiana and Heartland Film. LIFT will give five filmmakers $5,000 awards to help them create short nonfiction films “to raise the spirit of Indiana,” Walls said. The films will premiere at the 2026 Indy Shorts International Film Festival in July.

“But a big part of this program is also the mentorship opportunities. We don’t want to just throw out an application and then give five filmmakers $5,000 and hope that it all works out,” Walls said. “We want the entire process, starting with the application, to be an opportunity for filmmakers to learn and grow.”

Adriane Leigh on Why We Are Living in the Age of the Unreliable Narrator (Crime Reads)

Social media encourages us to experience our lives not as they happen, but as they will be presented. Moments are filtered through the lens of potential content. Emotions are evaluated for shareability. Experiences are edited into arcs: struggle → insight → growth. In this environment, the self becomes a story rather than a state. And stories demand consistency.

The problem is that real people are not consistent. We contradict ourselves. We regress. We behave badly for reasons that aren’t flattering. We want things we’re not proud of. But social media trains us to hide these fractures, to smooth them over, to rewrite ourselves in real time.

Over time, this produces a subtle psychological shift. We don’t just lie to others—we start editing our own memory. We remember the version of events that performed best. We forget the parts that didn’t fit the narrative. Like classic unreliable narrators, we come to believe our own omissions.

“A National Art Form”: John Stauffer on Rediscovering the 19th-Century American Short Story, from Poe to Wharton  (Library of America)

LOA: The short story emerged as a distinctive American art form in the nineteenth century. What factors propelled its rise and development?

JS: The nineteenth century was marked by tremendous change and innovation in American writing, and the short story was at the center of that creative and intellectual ferment, fueled by the evolution of new printing technologies, the rapid growth of periodical literature, and rising literacy rates. Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819), a collection of essays and short stories, became the United States’s first literary bestseller, offering a rebuttal to British critics who had long laughed at the paucity of US cultural achievement. Looking backward at the accomplishment of the American short story in The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (1962), the celebrated Irish short story writer Frank O’Connor remarked, “Americans have handled the short story so wonderfully that one can say that it is a national art form.”

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4/20-4/21/2026: Writing, Reading, A PO Visit

 Another night when I woke up with sharp pain, leaving me wide awake. The same thing happened two days ago. Tuesday was bad, never quite losing the burning, needle pricking pain.

No church that morning, none yesterday, and probably none today. If I can stay awake to 6:30, then it is off to liturgy. 

Then I have a follow-up visit to the eye doctor. Glaucoma may be in my future.

 It helps when I have responsibilities with other people. I made it to Liturgy on Sunday because someone was giving me a ride. I worked on “No Ordinary Word” in fits and starts, getting around spells of lethargy. 

Monday? More work on “No Ordinary Word", then I got it finished and got off to sleep late. When else did I do? Not that I can recall.

Tuesday, I had a lunch meeting. Like I said, the pain had flared up. Then the PO showed up with the old one. The one was doing his glum, chunk routine. The new guy seems friendly but also nervous, as if he is lost and seeking directions. Perhaps, they came as a duo as some sort of training exercise. What bothered me most was the inane questions might make me miss my bus. I had already missed two.

The new guy seems to have fastened on my Friday group sessions with a passion. He asked this time and last about treatment. I have already told him what the guy running the sessions told all of us - it is not therapy. Also, I omitted that what is going on is a repetition of the same program. I am now going into the second iteration of the lectures. (And I still need to get caught up with my notes from those sessions).

He did ask what I was writing, so I assume he may be the first to read this blog. I sent him to the stories on this blog. (Please check them out yourself; they are on the left hand side of your screen). 

 Long after he left, it came to me that he kept using the word “treatment” I should have asked treatment for what. Next time.

 Leaves are coming out; it is Spring.

Tuesday morning, Muncie downtown in the Spring sunshine from the MITS station. 

I stopped off at White Rabbit Bookstore to do some shopping. The bookstore does not take plastic, so I was shopping. Afterward, I went to wait for the #2 bus going west. The following is the scenery at Martin and University Streets.

I had lunch at The Dumpling House; instead of going to get groceries at Payless, I caught the bus to the second bookstore on my itinerary. Only The Book Center was not at its location in the White River Plaza. Although the pain was still present, I decided to walk back to Tillotson. This gave me a chance to look at the river in the West Side Park.

But for the building across the river (and the park to the north), you might think civilization was not close at hand.

Years ago I caught some bass further upriver, but I have been wondering since my return if there is any worthwhile fishing to be had. I have never seen any carp, little in the way of minnows, but I have seen a few large sculpins and blue herons hunting. Yesterday, I noticed some holes that might hold fish and the same lack of life.

 

I got some items at Payless, then caught the bus back to The White Rabbit, where I spent almost $40 and had to leave off two books. I was going to put in a list of books bought, but I have shelved them and am too lazy to do so; besides, this post is getting too long.

 

Then it was back here. I watched a silly movie on Netflix, “War Machine”. 

 I worked on a few posts.

Wednesday, I moved slowly into consciousness. I squeezed out some blog posts, worked my way through the email.

The view as I waited for the bus on Riverside to go to the writers group:

KH and I talked on the phone as I rode the bus. He has not had time to look at “No Ordinary Word”, but he has a real life.

The place where the writers group meets; I helped plant these locust trees in the Summer of 1982.

I read two more sections from “Scenes from a Small Indiana Factory Town”, and they were well-received. Somewhat shocked and a little embarrassed by how effusive everyone was. I am beginning to think the thing only works with Hoosiers.

Afterward, I walked back down to White Owl:  

I bought the two books for which I lacked cash on Tuesday, plus a copy of Midnight's Children.

 

Back here, what a good day descended into bad. Although I kept the email trimmed down and started this post, the pain, and discomfort heated up and that is why I am finishing this post at 4:29 AM.

 

I did get a text from J. She has given me the best advice for my troubles - ice packs - and I let her read “Scenes”. Her text was a bout my story and it knocked me for a loop. She was effusive in her liking it. Between the group and her, it was a good day.

Now, to share some recent reading.

Learning something new about Mounds State Park in Anderson: This Eerie Abandoned Village In Indiana Is Hiding In A State Park 

Indianapolis Monthly has a Hoosierist - which I am still checking out. 

I do not like linking to things behind a paywall, as is Adam Gropnik's St. Paul Remade Human History. How Did He Do It? (The New Yorker), but I found it rather engrossing.

This revisionist view of Paul has reached a climax with Nina E. Livesey’s recent book, “The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context” (Cambridge). Despite its dry title, the book argues, astonishingly, that Paul’s epistles, indeed “Paul” himself, are inventions of the second century—that they actually were written largely by the crucial yet easily overlooked figure of the heretical editor Marcion and then backdated. Livesey, a professor emerita at the University of Oklahoma, is recognized as a significant Pauline scholar, and her book is closely argued, formidably annotated, and beautifully provocative. In her view, no first-century evidence exists for Paul, just as little exists for Jesus. More important, Paul’s preoccupations with the politics of circumcision, and with Jewish ritual generally, seem to fit badly within a first-century, pre-Jewish War context. Back then, with the Temple still intact, those things were not controversial. The preoccupations make far better sense in a second-century context, when a wave of anti-Jewish suspicion filled the Empire, particularly after the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132-35 C.E., the last great Jewish uprising against Rome, which ended in catastrophic defeat, mass death, and the refounding of Jerusalem as a pagan city. No one cared about condemning circumcision in 50 C.E.; everyone did a century later.

Letters were, in any case, a genre more than an epistolary act: most collections of antique letters, Livesey points out, were unmailed and literary, written to enlarge a theme, not persuade a recipient. The proliferation of letters in the New Testament is also typical of second-century literary activity; letters written as rhetorical models, using the epistolary form as an intimate vehicle for argument, are everywhere in the later period. So Livesey thinks that Paul’s letters make much better sense as a literary performance, too, if keyed to second-century Greek concerns and practices. This dramatic redating also contextualizes those odd interpolations—the Jew-hating sentences make more sense if written after the Bar Kokhba revolt—and, indeed, the broader question of how, exactly, there could have been so many practicing churches for Paul to correspond and commune with so soon after the establishment of the Jesus cult.

All days of fulfillment in religious history are, in any case, Great Disappointments, since the thing expected—Nirvana, the Apocalypse, the New Jerusalem—never does happen. Sooner or later, we trust the disappointment more than the dream. The original “Jewish” Church, which flares out like a glorious firework in the last, apocalyptic book of the Bible, Revelation, faded away in time, and Paul’s universal Church grew and eventually triumphed.

***

An oddity of modern life is that, just as humanists have made us newly alert to the irreducible power of stories, people of faith, who already possess the advantage of strong stories, reach for spurious “science” to underwrite them. Hence the appeals to a “fine-tuned universe,” as if divine order were proved by the fact that the cosmos had to meet an exquisitely narrow set of conditions to yield conscious human beings. In truth, this is the same argument, beloved of parents, that the whole point of the universe was to produce one particular child. Consider the chain of contingencies that had to align, and the child’s existence can feel like a miracle. In a sense, it is. Yet the pattern is blessed only in retrospect. We were always going to find ourselves in a universe compatible with our existence, because there is no other place in which we could be aware that we existed. And, if we are not cold or conscienceless, the universe that contains us cannot be wholly cold or conscienceless, either. It includes warmth because it includes us. Our values are human-made, but that does not make them unreal.

Was Paul’s effect on history, incalculably large, good or bad on the whole? Edward Gibbon argued that Paul carried a “Jewish” intolerance into a pagan world that, for all its cruelties, was broadly pluralistic in matters of worship. Yet Paul also offered a universalism so urgently moving that it remains powerful today. That may be as close as judgment gets for a figure of his scale. We turn to philosophers and essayists, from Socrates to Richard Rorty, for inquiry and self-doubt. We turn to apostles and prophets, from Paul to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for the broader conviction that faith really can move mountains, and then for the still bolder thought that even moving mountains is not enough if love is absent. “All or Nothing at All,” Sinatra’s greatest epistle, revised across his life as the purposes of his music changed, might have served as a theme for that Capra bio-pic. It is bad advice for a lover. But it is good advice for a believer, since such intensity of commitment is, in the old-fashioned sense, awesome. St. Paul, whenever exactly he lived or whatever precisely he said, was nothing if not all in. 

I do not remember subscribing to the Substack Literary Fancy, but that did not keep me from reading 5 “Boring” Classics That Are Actually Unhinged (Once You Know What's Really Happening). I never found any of them boring (okay, Middlemarch was more like Long March, but I do not recall being bored.), but your mileage may vary. See, I never had to read any of them in school.

There is also Part 2: 8 More “Boring” Classics That Are Actually Unhinged to which I have the same comments (except I had to read Ethan Frome on college - but I liked it) and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (which left me blah) and Jude the Obscure, which I have not read. 

I also took a look at The 40 Famous Classics You're Allowed to Skip (And Why Everyone Secretly Agrees). Yeah, I agree with some and disagree with a few more. I am literally scared of Finnegan's Wake and The Faerie Queen. Surprised by how many I have read.

A piece about one of the great places to eat in Muncie: The Downtown Farmstand: Overcoming the 2019 Pandemic (Ball State Daily).

 Donald Trump continues to prove himself an incompetent blowhard and coward. 

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Muncie Public Art

 No commentary here, just news.

Art for the People: Muncie Celebrates Eight Public Artworks 

The Muncie Arts & Culture Council invites the community to celebrate eight extraordinary public artworks with six celebrations during the Art for the People: Public Art Celebration Weekend on April 24 - 25, 2026. This historic milestone showcases place-based, forward-thinking installations that reflect who Muncie is today and who we aspire to be tomorrow. 

Made possible through a $500,000 American Rescue Plan Act investment, these artworks represent a significant shift in Muncie's approach to public art from traditional commemorative works to community-driven installations shaped by neighborhood voices. Four new artworks and two longer-standing murals will be celebrated with neighborhood events, while two previously installed works invite exploration throughout the weekend. 

Long ago, I suggested that Anderson get involved in public art to attract visitors and to build the community. It seems Muncie worked up the same idea. I have seen some of the works; it does perk up the city.

sch 4/7 

 

Touring Anderson

 I found myself truly impressed and surprised by the people who want to drive around Anderson and Muncie.

 

 

And I have to admit there was an unsettling feeling when I drove around the Mounds Mall area last year.

sch 3/17 

Eating in Anderson

 I know, dear reader, this will not be of interest to you in China, but maybe my persistent reader from Kokomo will find Food The Absolute Best New Restaurants in Anderson [Updated 2026] (Indiana Insider) has some points to consider.

First, Bonge's is not new - Bonge's has been going strong over 15 years, but it's not in Anderson. 

Second, neither Pendleton nor Chesterfield are Anderson.

Just nitpicking?

Good to see The Pitt is still open. I hope the food remains as good. 

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Midwest Ghost Towns

 Having witnessed the first collapse of General Motors in Anderson and Muncie back in the late Seventies, I felt slightly displaced in time when reading Why Do Midwest Factory Towns Become Neglected? (United States Ghost Towns).

While manufacturing has long been the backbone of the Midwest economy, the region now faces an unprecedented convergence of challenges decimating its industrial workforce.

You’re witnessing the loss of 90,000 manufacturing jobs in 2024 alone, with automation impact intensifying the decline. Each Rust Belt state has shed between 290,000 and 340,000 manufacturing positions since 2000, fundamentally altering the region’s economic landscape.

The situation’s gravity deepens as 25% of your manufacturing workforce approaches retirement age, while workforce retraining struggles to keep pace with technological demands. Higher interest rates and persistent inflation further complicate economic recovery in these regions.

Despite these job losses, manufacturing output grew by 45% since 2000, showcasing the shift toward automated production.

As factories increasingly turn to AI and automation to remain competitive, traditional manufacturing skills become obsolete.

All that seems like history repeating itself.  It was automation, not moving jobs to Mexico, that left UAW workers out of jobs at the beginning of the Seventies. 

 Not to sound like a deranged conspiracy theorist, but Indiana's Republicans do not seem to want an educated workforce. Property tax reform has left schools struggling to pay the bills. The uneducated are easier to govern - point to Washington, not Indianapolis, for the cause of worker's discontent; point to New York, and say it's the free market, that Golden Calf of capitalism that is at work; say it is the workers' fault for not keeping up with economic changes. 

Our industrial belt declined because we were dependent on outside corporations. General Motors never reinvested in its factories as did Toyota because they were making money. Detroit's arrogance led to the Camry, not the Chevrolet, being America's favorite car. But it cannot be that those rich guys sitting in a Detroit boardroom wearing their expensive suits could be greedy morons; the fault had to be unions. By the time I die, no one will remember what power GM had over the cities of Muncie, Anderson, Kokomo, and Marion; or that Chrysler had over New Castle and Kokomo. 

Worker retraining has never received enthusiastic support in Indianapolis. Why spend money when there are plenty of jobs - flipping hamburgers. 

I was in prison when COVID-19 hit Indiana, it might be that I am wrong about a change I see in Indiana. Before, if you did not like your life in Indiana, you could just leave. Go look at the number of graduates from Indiana college who moved elsewhere. The pandemic keep people from moving, they had to live with what the Republicans gave them for state government. 

It may be a while yet before those who have always had to stay put from lack of job skills and/or education recognize how screwed they have been by following the Republican/MAGA party line.

Automation - and I include AI as a species of automation - needs to be reckoned with. Restricting that which does not benefit the citizenry. Educating that citizenry to confront and adapt to the future.

Or so we can hope, else we become not ghost towns but the deserted cities of the plan.

sch 12/147 

The PO Visits, Art Show

 And it is Thursday.

Rejections coming in:

Thank you for letting us read your story, "Learning The Passion and Control Twist." Unfortunately, we are not able to accept it for publication at this time. This does not mean that your story is without merit. We receive thousands of submissions each year, and unfortunately, we must reject many fine stories.

We wish you the best in placing it elsewhere.

Best Wishes,

The Fiction Editors

Bayou Magazine

From The Colored Lens:

Thank you for considering us, but we're going to pass on this one. We enjoyed the world-building and noir-like style, but we wanted to get into the plot a bit sooner.

I wish you well in placing this piece elsewhere.

 And another for a different story:

Thank you for submitting your work, "Coing Home." Regretfully, we cannot find a place for it in our upcoming issue, but we wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.

At Epiphany we are committed to evaluating every submission we receive thoughtfully and respectfully. Many issues factor into every decision we make either to publish a piece or pass on it, from its consonance or dissonance with other work we've accepted to the simple issue of personal preference, which cannot be anything but subjective. To familiarize yourself with the work we do (and some of the work we've loved best), please check out our website or subscribe to our print magazine.

We value long relationships with the writers and artists who entrust us with their work, and hope you’ll keep us in mind for other submissions in the future.

To keep up to date with Epiphany, join our newsletter or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, X, Bluesky, Threads.

Sincerely,

The Editors

Bringing back memories: Not fooling anyone: this storage facility in Anderson used to be…  (Hiding in Plain Sight)

Is there any retail presence more anachronistic than Kmart these days? Once a titan of American shopping, Kmarts dotted the landscape from coast to coast! Their bright red “K” logos beckoned families in for everything from clothes and toys to lawn furniture and layaway deals. Unfortunately, times have changed. Competitors modernized, consumer habits shifted, and one by one, the familiar blue-light specials faded into memory. 

From a prior draft:  The Chili of the Tzadik Nistar (Conjunctions) by Evan Hannon is brilliant. I wish I had the heart to write such a story. 

The PO came up and upset my schedule for writing. The new computer is not set up, nor does he need to be present for doing so. He is to send me a message when I can set up the new machine.

I went to see the doctor. My A1C is down, which is good news. 

Then I partook of Muncie's First Thursday. That got me to see MadJax for  the first time, and then to Cornerstone for a display of local art. I left with a bracelet for CC and a print for myself. The art was so much better than what I saw at Ball State - these artists are striving to be creative, with results that were not insipid.

So, back here, I looked up some things for CC. Then started on cleaning out the email and eating my dinner. Vegetable soup in the crock pot. Not bad.

I suppose a person in my position should not be reading What Is Sex? Ask a Boomer, a Millennial, and a Gen Z and They’ll All Say Something Different (The Walrus). Well, screw that nonsense. The group sessions have gotten the feeling that I have lived my life in a deviant way. That is, I should have been looking at every woman as a possible acquisition, and I was supposed to be treating them with my tongue hanging out and drooling over every female form. Well, I didn't, and I am too old to start now. Reading the essay, I find my feelings about the group sessions validated. That porn flicks have changed how people interact with one another. That they lead to objectifying people and emotions. So, if they're objectifying people, then of course acquisition follows. I grew up finding porn flicks silly, not a documentary. KH and I have talked about this - we had Penthouse Forum and Xaveria Hollander's books; the former more fantasy than the latter, but not nearly as fantastical as a porn flick. I read a long time ago that Americans read The Kama Sutra as a technical manual, while the Indians read it as a spiritual guide. Sex is spiritual, not rote. Being together with another human involves something more like the improvisation of jazz than the rigidity of computer code.

And there I end today

sch