apparent that there was a lot going on but he wasn’t sure what
Not since the student riots in Chicago that took place while Brown Dog was a very casual student at the Moody Bible Institute had he seen this many people going to and fro.
It was apparent that there was a lot going on but he wasn’t sure what.
Another big crowd in his life had been the Ishpeming Bugle and Firefighters Convention a few years before but there the purpose had been quite specific.
Brown Dog had stood in the garage parking lot waiting for the head gasket of his van to be replaced and had watched several hundred buglers take turns doing their best.
This turned out to be more than enough bugling to last a lifetime.
From the novella, “Westwood Ho” originally published in Julip by Jim Harrison, Grove Press, 2000.
Westwood Ho is a Brown Dog story.
One of five Brown Dog novella’s written by Jim Harrison.
Against my better judgement I am listening to the complete Brown Dog collection from Audible on my drive to work.
I don’t mind … so much … how the reader uses affectations for different characters.
Though the number of fake Native American accent’s in the storyline does push the reader and my tolerance to the limit.
Why can’t they just read the book?
But no, its not the accents or the phraseology that gets me.
It’s the lack of research they put into to pronounce place names in Michigan’s Upper Pennisula that drives me first to laugh and then shake my head in disbelief.
MUN-Sing?
MUN-Sing for Munising?
Oh come on.
es CANA ba for Escanaba.
Ojibwa and Anishinaabe get so mangled I couldn’t figure out what the reader was saying.
Menominee, Ishpeming and Negaunee all get the treatment.
Oh come on.
The feller got a bye on Sault Ste. Marie as Mr. Harrison refers to it as just ‘The Soo’ but I was ready for Salt Saint Mary’s.
Still the sentiment from today as I drove to work emerged from the words.
The focus being It was apparent that there was a lot going on but he wasn’t sure what.
I read the papers.
I watch the news.
It was apparent that there is a lot going on but I am not sure what.
Is it New Year’s yet?
PS … a couple of day later it happened … Salt Saint May’s …. 🤷🏽♂️
Three days after the House elected Johnson speaker, Mike Pence dropped out of the Republican presidential primary. The most recent Republican vice president had become a polling afterthought, and the reason isn’t hard to discern. He’s every bit as faith-forward as Johnson, he was every bit as loyal to the Trump policy agenda as Johnson, and yet — when push came to shove — he could not participate in the Big Lie. He paid an immediate and permanent price for his honesty, with his approval among G.O.P. voters plunging after the attack on the Capitol.
This is precisely indicative of the political ruthlessness that’s overtaken evangelical Republicans. They are inflexible about policy positions even when the Bible is silent or vague. They are flexible about morality even when the Bible is clear. One Christian man tells the truth, and it kills his career. Another Christian man helps lead one of the most comprehensively dishonest and dangerous political and legal efforts in American history, and he gets the speaker’s gavel.
same of truly rude, giant or smelly person made an impression
So what do you say when a guy like that dies?
John Feinstein, who wrote the bestselling book about Knight called “A Season on the Brink” said last week in the Washington Post that Knight’s two biggest flaws were pretending that he didn’t care what people thought of him (when he actually cared too much) and always having to have the last word, even if it hurt others and himself.
Still, Feinstein wrote, “He made an indelible impression on anyone who met him.”
That’s true.
But the same could be said of a truly rude person, a truly giant person, or a truly smelly person.
Making impressions is an incomplete summary of a life.
My student era at the University of Michigan started in January, 1981.
It is a long and goofy story on how I got into Michigan and a lot of things, bizarre once-in-a-lifetime pieces of the administrative puzzle had to fall into place to get me into the place, but that’s for another time.
Just say that my roommates claimed Michigan changed admission rules to make sure it would never happen again.
It was the longest of long shots that I would be a student at Michigan at the beginning of 1981 but I was so sure the bet would pay off that I figured out a way to buy student season’s tickets to Michigan Basketball.
So it was that after a whirlwind two weeks that saw me find a place to live, I boarded at a frat house, sitting in class taking notes in History of Imperial Russia while looking out the windows through the iconic columns of Angell Hall while hearing the Michigan Bell Tower strike the hours that I found myself going to my first University of Michigan game as an official student.
That game was Michigan versus Indiana.
Michigan and Mike McGee versus Indiana and Isiah Thomas.
Bill Frieder versus Bobby Knight.
I had been to a lot of Michigan Basketball games.
Michigan was famous for having one of the quietest, hard to impress, hard to get to a reaction from crowds in all of college basketball.
But not this night.
Because of Bobby Knight.
Electricity was in the air.
And it was focused on one person.
Bobby Knight.
It was kinda scarry.
My sister had been in the same building years earlier when the infamous ‘Free John Sinclair’ rally was held.
Sinclair, a Michigan Student and part of the anti war era, had been arrested on drug charges and sentenced to 5 years in jail for having two cigarettes made of weed.
To everyone’s shock and surprise, John Lennon and Oko Ono showed up.
To everyone’s shock and surprise, Mr. Lennon refused to perform any Beatles songs.
Still, my sister remembered, Mr. Lennon, in a very spooky almost sinister way, controlled that audience.
I felt that with Mr. Knight.
If he gestured, the crowd oooooooooooooooooooed.
If he looked at something the crowd urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrred.
And he was just standing there watching warmups.
Once the game started the crowd went crazy.
Knight was hard to please as a coach and unfortunately for his team, they were losing to Michigan.
Knight yelled.
The crowd roared.
Knight shook his fist, the crowd almost wet its collective pants in glee.
Knight turned and kicked the scorers table and the crowd lost its mind.
With just under two minutes to go, and Indiana down by 6 points, Knight had had enough and walked off the court.
Just left his team to figure out how to lose by themselves.
Who does that?
And they crowd went absolutely bananas.
And Michigan won.
Beat Isiah Thomas.
But more, beat Bobby Knight.
And every person there that night, felt they had had a personal role in the way victory played out.
Yes this is an essay about the University of Michigan Football team and sign stealing but let me make it understood that this is in no way a defense or justification or an excuse for what was done and what might be done to penalize Michigan.
As far as I am concerned, there are no allegations of cheating because they did it, Michigan cheated.
As Mr. B. Bunny might say, they were caught, crimson fisted, and again as far as I am concerned, they deserve anything that might come down the road whether its a finger waving now-now-now don’t do that again or if the team has to give up (vacate is the accepted term in sport) any number of wins, championships and records for any games played while this was going on.
What this essay is about it asking the question, “How could they be so DUMB?”
Anyone one who has read this blog should know that I like Michigan football.
Anyone who says I might be a Michigan Fanatic as never been to a Michigan football game and seen what a fanatic really looks like.
As I always say, I come by this honestly.
I graduated from Michigan.
8 of my 10 brothers and sisters graduated from Michigan.
We make up, according to the Alumni Association, the largest block of siblings with Michigan degrees.
4 of my siblings married Michigan grads that they met while being in school in Ann Arbor.
A large number of my nieces and nephews hold Michigan degrees.
My Dad graduated from Michigan.
My Grandfather graduated from Michigan.
We grew up with Michigan football on the radio in the house on fall afternoons.
As a fan I embraced the Michigan Record Book.
Longest streaks of consecutive sellouts, largest home crowds, ratings in the top 25, strings of winning seasons and the all time leader in College Football wins.
So many of those records disappeared under the coaching of Rich Rodriguez, the Morgantown Miracle Worker.
Even the all time streak of games with a sellout crowd string had to be changed to all time streak of games with crowds over 100,000.
But we kept the all time win list.
I have been watching this closely.
At one time, I predicted the goal of 1st team ever to win 1,000 games would be reached in early 2023.
That was before COVID and that threw my schedule but now, starting back in 1879, Michigan is but a few games short of being the first time to win 1,000 games.
… Unless.
Unless those in authority decide that Michigan’s cheating deserves a penalty that takes away any wins where this cheating took place.
Somewhere between 30 and 40 games.
And wouldn’t that just be perfect.
That team down south is right behind us and take away 30 wins from Michigan and …
And this is what gets me the most.
Michigan DID NOT NEED to do this.
And, yes, I originally typed that sentence as WE DID NOT NEED …
I have been long teased about using ‘WE’ when talking about Michigan.
I need anyone who might feel otherwise to point out any game in the last three or four years and say that Michigan NEEDED to cheat.
Think of all the movies, Paper Lion, Longest Yard, North Dallas Forty and the like and think of the work and the effort and the pain that players put up with to play this game.
And somehow someone felt that all that work by the players and coaches wasn’t enough and all that work and effort and pain was first put at risk and then made a mockery of by cheating.
DUMB
DUMB DUMB DUMB
How could they have been so dumb.
Regardless of how this all plays out, the damage has been done.
In the movie, Margin Call, about the 2009 bank collapse, Daniel Day Lewis in the role of the CEO says there are three ways to win in business.
You can be smarter than everyone else.
You can be first.
Or, you can cheat.
Michigan always claimed to be smarter than everyone else (that just makes it harder to understand how they could be so dumb.)
Michigan always claimed to the leaders, to be best, to be first.
