Mississippi State vs. Loyola University

The Mississippi State University Bulldogs played at Loyola University on Saturday. It was the 50^th anniversary of a very historic meeting of the two teams, a story that has much to say to us!
by Charlie Leck

I’m not a great basketball fan; though I do enjoy an occasional collegiate basketball game between some of the great teams or some of the more historic, traditional meetings of teams. Yesterday Loyola of Chicago managed to beat Mississippi State, 59 to 51. But, for the purposes of history, let’s look at the game between the same two teams in 1963 (March 15).

Loyola won the NCAA National Championship in 1963
and Mississippi State was their opponent in the second round of that championship. No big deal, right? No! It was a big deal! It has been called one of the defining moments in our national history of race relations. The game has even been called one of the most significant ever in the history of NCAA championship games.

Mississippi State was the champion that year of the talented SEC (Southeast Conference) and none of the teams in that conference had yet integrated. They had only white players. 1963 was the year that President John F. Kennedy sent troops to Mississippi State to forcefully enable James Meredith to become the first black student to enroll in Ole Miss. It took a force of more than 12,000 soldiers.

An unwritten policy existed in Mississippi that prohibited white students from competing against non-whites. Really! The times have changed that much. As a matter of fact, Mississippi State had refused to play in the big tournament in 1962 because of the presence of black players on the teams the school would have faced.

In 1963, under the leadership of its basketball coach, Babe McCarthy, Mississippi State defied the white power structure in the state and accepted the tournament bid to play. As champions of a major collegiate conference, they received a bye in the first round. The Loyola Ramblers won in an overtime game in the first round by overwhelming Tennessee Tech, 111-42.

The second round matches were set. Mississippi State would take on Loyola in East Lansing, Michigan. Loyola had four black starters on its team. Mississippi segregationists were outraged.

Loyola had played a number of games in the South during the season and its players had become accustomed to the kinds of discrimination that regions of the country could show to black players when they tried to stay in hotels or dine in restaurants or use public restrooms. Throughout the season the black and white players on the Ramblers remained cohesive and loyal to one another. So, Loyola took the match up in Michigan in stride, barely giving a thought to racial implications.

In Mississippi it was another thing. The infamous racist Governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, was set on stopping the Bulldogs from making the trip to Michigan. Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! The Governor got a judge – a pal of his – to issue an injunction against the team, prohibiting it from making the trip and/or playing in the game.

Coach McCarthy was not to be deterred. Literally, he sneaked from the state in the darkness, avoiding the legal service of the papers upon him. The game became an immediate national news story and photographers and reporters from all across America descended on East Lansing. The flash bulbs (remember them?) popped like crazy when the captains of the two teams, Jerry Harkness of the Ramblers and Joe Gold of the Bulldogs, shook hands at center court before the tip-off.

The Loyola players remained unaware of the deep significance of what was happening. They had no idea of the secretive nature of their opponent’s departure from Mississippi. They had no idea how big an event the center-court handshake was. The general, pre-game consensus was that Loyola would win the game going away. It turned out to be a close, hard-fought game that Loyola only broke open in the closing minutes (61-51).

The game itself has been called “the beginning of the end of segregation in college sports” [Mark Hollins, Michigan State Director of Athletics at the time his university hosted the game).

Members of both 1963 teams were in attendance last night for the game in Chicago between the two schools.

The video that follows is only 4 minutes long. It’s very much worth your time to watch it. I was rather moved by it.

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My Grandchildren and Elementary School

    Anna Rose and Caroline Jean, two of my grandchildren!
     I love them so much!

I’ve got four grandchildren in public elementary schools. I couldn’t help but think of them today when the news broke out of Newtown, CT.
by Charlie Leck

Think of it!
We’re talking here of little children. They were in first grade through fourth grade. Don’t you feel rage? Sickness? Exasperation?

I don’t know when I’ve felt so low – so totally miserable! They could have been my grandkids. They are someone’s grandkids, you know. Try to put yourself in that grandparent’s place. Try to understand how you’d feel – how angry and desperate you’d be.

I want to scream and litter the air with four-letter-words. I want to shout from the rooftops that I hate f--king guns with all my might. I hate them! Yet, the gun crowd would be quick to remind me – using their f--cking worn out clichéd rant: “Remember, it is not guns that kill people! It is people who kill people!”

Today I want to take their god damned posters opposing gun control and shove them down their god damned throats. I want to kick them in the gut and drop them to the ground. I want to stand above them and scream down at them: “That could have been my grandkids in their elementary school! And you want to keep selling powerful guns – automatic murder machines – to virtually anyone who walks through the door and asks for one.”

Oh, my God! We are a seriously disturbed – deeply insane – nation! Civilized nations don’t do this. They don’t put powerful murdering machines in the hands of idiots and maniacs!

This afternoon, not long after the news broke about the murders of those little children in Connecticut, Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post…

“If today’s shooting won’t prompt action, nothing will!”

Nothing will! You see, guns are too much a part of the f--cking American culture. Our founding fathers had no way to foresee what would happen to America. They didn’t know it would become such a gun society when they penned the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. They had no way of knowing that the “people” would so misunderstand what they were writing about. They had no way of knowing how powerful guns would become!

A grief-stricken President addressed the nation today. Did you see him? How he refrained from weeping, I will never know. I wept as I watched him.

Couldn’t we, at least, have a decent, unbiased discussion about the matter? Couldn’t we try to better understand the second amendment? Couldn’t we figure out how to get guns out of the hands of dangerous people? Couldn’t we limit the power and repetitiveness of guns that people use?

I tremble this evening because I know that this could have happened in the school that my grandchildren attend. I’m so angry that I’m ill. I want to throw up! I want to scream!

I read a news story last week about a grandfather who had a powerful gun in his house because he was afraid of invaders. In the night, he heard someone scuffling at the back door of his house. He got his gun. He saw, in the dim light, someone outside the kitchen door, trying to enter. He aimed and pulled the trigger. He killed his granddaughter, who lived with him and who had secretly slipped out for the evening to meet up with some of her friends.

I can’t imagine!

There must be something we can do! Isn’t there something we can do?

Twenty small, elementary school children died today. They were at their school – in their classrooms – when a deranged young man entered their school carrying a powerful gun, equipped to fire and frequently. He killed his own mother, who worked at the school, several other adults and 20 elementary school students – kids like my own grandkids.

Oh, my God, what are we to do?

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Time Flies

Can you believe it? The days are speeding by like crazy and Christmas is coming upon us like an out-of-control Greyhound bus in the wrong lane, portending a gruesome crash. Well, it’s not really that bad!
by Charlie Leck

Question!
Does any period of the year – any month’s worth of time – speed by more quickly as does that time between Thanksgiving and Christmas?

At Thanksgiving, with the family gathered, we talk a bit about Christmas and what everyone has on his/her wish list. It seems then – while we are talking about this – that there is plenty of time before the big day itself to get all the shopping and little chores done. And now, here it is, ten days until Christmas morning and I’ve still not carried out all the plans I carefully laid out to be completed by this time. I’ve still dozens of chores to do, and more gifts to shop for, and decorating to do.

My check list is not half completed. I haven’t sent out more than a half-dozen greeting cards – and those only to compliment the beauty of some card that we’ve just received. I’ll never get cards sent to everyone this year. If you on my usual list, please forgive me!

One simple explanation for my tardiness – and an excuse, I guess – is that I just can’t go at the pace I did in years gone by. I can’t walk as far; and I can’t walk as quickly; and I can’t go for as long a period of time. A couple of hours of shopping and I’m gassed. Yet, I refuse to give into on-line shopping and on-line Christmas cards. I want to touch things that I buy for people and measure the quality of these items.

My wife is done with her shopping and Amazon is all the happier for it! The giant, on-line retailer loves to serve her. She uses them for nearly all her purchases. The UPS driver has brought all the items to the front stoop; Anne has opened the big boxes, wrapped those few gifts that weren’t already wrapped for her, and stashed them beneath the tree. She smirks at me and my old fashioned idea of searching for and fighting for a parking space, traipsing through store after store, and carting everything home in awkward, clumsy bags.

Well, today – a week later than on my original schedule – I’ll ship the gifts that have to go across the country. That job I can then check off! There’s another dozen or so gifts to pick up here and there and I’ll work on that a bit this afternoon and tomorrow. My goal is to have everything wrapped up – so to speak – by the end of the day on Monday – one full week before the big morning itself.

Then I’ll be able to concentrate on shopping for our family dinner. I’ll make gravlax for Christmas morning – served with toasted bagels and a wonderful organic cream cheese. A very nice lady taught me how to make the gravlax about 10 years ago or so and her recipe never fails me – as long as I’m alert in purchasing the right kind of salmon. One daughter brings a wonderful egg-bake to go with the lax. Yummy stuff!

It seems like I’ve got a lot of time to do all this, but it’s slippery time and slides by like greased lightening (whatever the hell greased lightening is)!

So, if I blog less than every day between now and Christmas, you’ll know it’s because I’m out on the byways, trying to get all my little Christmas chores done. And, I promise you, none of it will be done on-line (except for one generous donation to the American Cancer Society as one of our kids asks us to do as a gift to her).

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays to you all!

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Beckoning of Lovely!

Who knows how much time you have to do it! It seems that the Mayan calendar ends on 21 December 2012. There are dire predictions that it will also be the end of the world. So, now, while you have the opportunity, why not go ahead and beckon some lovely. What have you got to lose?
by Charlie Leck

I’ve written here before about Amy Krouse Rosenthal. She’s a charmer. I adore her. How much sweetness can be packed into one life? Oh, I suppose she has her moments when she screeches at her husband or beats a pillow against the wall in frustration. Yet, probably not! Amy, you see, is simply and completely lovely!

Those earlier blogs can be found at…

http://chasblogs.blogspot.com/2011/06/once-in-love-with-amy.html

http://chasblogs.blogspot.com/2011/11/amy-at-it-again.html

Amy’s dad posted a video on Facebook yesterday. It’s one his grown daughter has made, urging everyone to beckon plenty of lovely between now and 12-21-12.

“What can we lose?” Amy was in one of her wondering moods. If the world comes to an end on December 21, we will have, at least, made it a bit lovelier with all the lovely we’ve beckoned. If not, that will be a lovely – even lovelier thing – won’t it?

Amy’s not crazy! She’s lovely. She’s brought so much loveliness into my life that I can’t even count it all – or explain it all to you. I’ve told you about much of it in those earlier blogs.

So for now, I’m just doing as Amy suggested and posting my essential Post-It Note up here on my blog for you. I’ll post a few around the house as well. And, I’ll put one on the dashboard of my car. I’ll take a pad of them and post one in the grocery store, near the fresh flowers. I’ll sneak one on to the wall at Starbucks, too. I think I’ll put one on the Salvation Army bucket outside the grocery store, where the fellow is ringing away for contributions.

If you think I’ve gone crazy, perhaps you should view Amy’s under-stated but remarkable video – the one her daddy posted on Facebook. Here’s what he posted and the link to her enjoyable new video…

‎"With just a pen and a post-it / Made simple for every boy and girl / you can BECKON SOME LOVELY, and save the world."
Here is the big 12/12/12 new: http://www.whoisamy.com/beckoningoflovely

I hope you have some terrific lovely today and all through the rest of your life!

One in love with Amy, .always in love with Amy,
Ever and ever fascinated by her, sets your heart on fire to stay…

Once again I’ll say, as I part from you today: Beckon some lovely! It’s easy! You do it when you smile at someone you might have looked away from… or when you help an elderly lady carry her groceries out to her car… or when you walk up to a perfect stranger and hand her a small bouquet of flowers and wish her a happy, happy day. There are thousands and thousands of ways to beckon some lovely. Think of some and do it today and everyday right through December 21 and, perhaps, you’ll love doing it so much that you’ll just keep doing it.

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Minnesota in Last Place

We’re a state proud of our rank among the states in the nation. In almost every category imaginable, Minnesota has been among the top three or four states in the nation. Now, however, comes word that we are dead last in a real and serious way in a couple of very important categories.
by Charlie Leck

According to the U.S. Department of Education, Minnesota placed last among all the states in the four-year graduation rate of Hispanic students. In addition, we were also last in the gaps in achievement between white students and both Hispanic and Native American students. We were second-worst in America in the gap between black and white students. Finally, we were ranked 29^th in the nation in the overall quality of education.

My goodness! It was not long ago that our state ranked, year after year, among the top three in the quality of the education it provided. What has happened? For one thing, the percentage of our minority population has increased dramatically in the last decade. The poor job we are doing in the education of these minority populations has dramatically impacted our overall education rating.

It is, without question, time to deal with this problem and quickly correct what we’re doing wrong.

To get an idea of some of the things that have been tried and succeeded in correcting this problem, take a look at this opinion column in the Wednesday edition of the StarTribune. It is exciting to read about the TORCH program in Northfield. TORCH raised the high school graduation rate of Latino students to 100 percent. Yup, I said 100 percent! Another opinion column by Kathy Saltzman, A Wakeup Call forMinnesota’s Schools, also outlines ways to deal with this problem. Saltzman is the state director for Students First in Minnesota and also a former member of the Minnesota State Senate.

If you are a Minnesotan, these two columns are must reading. If you are from any state, and care about the education of students – especially minority students – this is also very worthwhile reading.

I’m a very proud citizen of this extraordinary state and I want us to turn this problem around. I think we can! Or as the Little Engine that Could said: I know we can!

“Minnesota’s education is highly competitive and market-based. Children of immigrants, who have grown up in poverty, with minimal education and no English, are placed in competition with the children of educators, doctors and engineers who have lived here for generations; so are the children of the multiplying Minnesota poor. [Hector Garcia]

You know, there are lots of ways one could get involved. A good friend of mine works with a minority student in a reading program. He’s developed a marvelous friendship with the kid and this youngster’s life is going to be altered in a positive way because of the relationship. More of us could do this – or try other approaches to get involved with struggling young students. I’m going to look today at agencies that are searching for volunteers. You give it some thought, too.

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Why We Live Here

    The front door after hours of shoveling to get to it.
     We're nearly ready for Christmas.

The snow fell and fell and fell! I shoveled for more than five hours, just to keep the path to the garage open and the walkway up to the house clear. I cussed a few times, but, deep-down, I really loved it. While I shovel snow I have time to think clearly about lots of things.
by Charlie Leck

One thing I know for sure is that I would be nowhere else – well almost nowhere else. I love it here in winter, but I’m always thrilled to see springtime roll in.

Most of my readers are not Minnesotans. Many of them are from places like SC, GA, FL, AZ and CA. The only sense of understanding I get from them comes because nearly all of them were once northerners. They understand. They remember snow and they remember loving it; however, that was when they were young, free spirited and a bit on the crazy side. Now they want warm and dry roads to drive on and driveways that don’t need to be cleared of snow.

Pity them!

Winter has roared back to Minnesota – and this after a nearly snowless and coldless winter last year. What fun to have the season return and settle on the land as it should.

Some of you, reading in other places about the terror of the snow in Minnesota, forget it! Don’t believe it! All is well and beautiful here and those of us who are real Minnesotans are happy as all get out about the return of the real season.

Here are a few pictures that I took on Monday morning right here around the house. Have a nice toddy on the patio for me tonight and shake your head, if you must, about that dumb son-of-a-bitch up there in Minnesota.

    The view from the west side of the house, out into the woods
     that lead down to Pioneer Creek that ambles through our property.

    That's our quarter-mile long driveway that can be a bit
    challenging on a day like today.

    That's a stairway leading up to a little guest apartment
    above our detached garage. It's difficult to get up there
    during a winter like this one.

    An attractive little welcome slate greet guests
    who will stay in our little apartment.

    The view from our kitchen window, looking south toward the
    creek and the farm.

All is well. I am happy! Life is good.

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Lincoln

I saw the movie yesterday with two terribly interesting and compelling companions. I’m glad I was with someone who understood that a general, personal withdrawal and some quietness was required at the film’s conclusion.

by Charlie Leck

Sam knew I was extremely moved by the film. I was still fighting back emotions as we filed out of the theater.

“I can’t wait to read your blog tomorrow,” Sam said, as we walked through the theater lobby toward the exit doors. After that, he remained quite silent as we walked to the car, uttering a nearly silent farewell to Bert.

“No, this was too big for me to write about it,” I replied very quietly, after thinking about it.

“Not for you,” he said. “I’ll bet you write about it.”

“No! How do you even begin to explain such a film?”

Yet, I knew he’d thrown me something like a challenge and I sat around last night thinking about it. I sipped on some scotch that I had poured over a mountain of clear ice cubes and thought about it. I stared at the newly decorated Christmas tree and thought about Lincoln! How could one possibly explain such a big movie – such incredible storytelling and such a wondrous recreation of historical reality?

I mean… What do I mean?

The cameras and the people who worked them and directed them seemed as intruders on reality. They carried me back into history and to moments that I’d wondered about as I read the historians who tried to explain them – Doris Kearns Goodwin, in A Team of Rivals, and Gore Vidal in Lincoln.

But, I can’t explain the power of this movie to you! I sit here thinking about it and I begin to tremble when I think about the man – Lincoln. What can I write that will be meaningful?

Here’s what I know!
The movie tried to capture a period in Lincoln’s presidency – a moment when he was trying to get the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution approved by the U.S. Congress.

What was it the New York Times said about the movie – praise that got me so excited about seeing it?

“The squalor and vigor, the glory and corruption of the Republic in action have all too rarely made it onto the big screen.

“There are exceptions, of course, and one of them is Steven Spielberg’s splendid “Lincoln,” which is, strictly speaking, about a president trying to scare up votes to get a bill passed in Congress. It is of course about a lot more than that, but let’s stick to the basics for now. To say that this is among the finest films ever made about American politics may be to congratulate it for clearing a fairly low bar. Some of the movie’s virtues are, at first glance, modest ones, like those of its hero, who is pleased to present himself as a simple backwoods lawyer, even as his folksy mannerisms mask a formidable and cunning political mind.” [A.O. Scott, NY Times, 8 November 2012]

To me, it was about that something more that A.O. Scott mentions. It was about a moment in history – a moment, mind you, that might pass without decisive action or, through great moral belief and perseverance, might display the awesomeness of human character. Lincoln! Seward! Thaddeus Stevens! Oh, my, what men!

A.O. Scott says: “…Daniel Day-Lewis, who eases into a role of epic difficulty as if it were a coat he had been wearing for years.” A friend of mine spoke to me about the movie in the days before I saw it. “Daniel Day-Lewis nailed it,” he said with such total enthusiasm it was as if he were proclaiming a moment of epiphany! And, yes he did – Mr. Lewis, I mean! He absolutely nailed it and captured a Lincoln who was, to me and the other viewers around me, so real that it was as if we were sitting with him in his White House, listening to his humble tales born out of his experiences in Kentucky, Indiana and Southern Illinois. Such little stories with such far reaching morals to them!

“Above all, he gives them voice. His Lincoln speaks in a reedy drawl that provides a notable counterpoint to the bombastic bellowing of some of his allies and adversaries. (John William’s score echoes this contrast by punctuating passages of orchestral grandeur with homey scraps of fiddle, banjo and parlor piano.). [A.O. Scott, NY Times, 8 November 2012]

The screenwriter is Tony Kushner. I know nothing about him. My companions at the movie theatre were enthused and delighted when they saw that he had written the script. It was quite brilliant and excruciatingly realistic. Lincoln, Kushner makes both eloquent and down-to-earth folksy. How could a man tell tales so well of George Washington’s portrait in a toilet (WC) in Great Britain and utter so compellingly those words at Gettysburg, or deliver the magnificent chord so vibrantly in the Second Inaugural Address? Kushner, Spielberg and Day-Lewis deliver just that to us in startling reality. Brilliantly, to boot!

I have never sat through “a full-length, feature film,” as we used to call them in the old days, that so grasped me and held me tight from beginning to end. As I so boldly said in the opening to this blog, I was drawn back into the reality and moment of history and allowed to be a living, contemporary and witness right at hand.

Sally Field allowed me to have great sympathy and even compassion for the bedeviled Mary Todd Lincoln. No mother, no wife, no woman should have to endure the agony and great personal expenditures paid by Mrs. Lincoln.

Tommy Lee Jones was brilliant as Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. He was put on a grand stage and given the opportunity to play a complex and well-spoken, sharp-tongued character. He grasped the opportunity and delivered a forceful performance with such reality that I forgot it was digital images I was watching.

The gorilla in the room, in this entire story, and that which provides the compelling conflicts, confrontations and great debates, is the institution of slavery in America and whether it can be allowed to stand at the conclusion of the Great Civil War that was fought over this very question: Can a State be a State within the Union, but defy the compelling heart and soul of the Constitution of the United States that cries out that “all men are created equal!” All men!

The film is about the question of slavery and how it shall be abolished. Clearly, some dynamic northern politicos decide that it must go before peace treaties are consummated. However, the North is divided about the question. Is the black man truly the equal of the ruling white men? Is the black man equal? Is he? The question lingers there and probes at us and at the characters in the story with a sharpness that is frightening. You are smacked with it again and again! Is he?

Spielberg opens the doors to the House of Representatives and to the White House and allows us a view of the political process in all its unseemly reality – and that is incredibly dramatic and forceful. It is also dirty and corrupt and unwholesome. Yet, it is beautiful because the ends do seem, in this case, to justify the means.

Enough, read the NY Times review by Mr. Scott. Then, if you haven’t already, get your tired old ass out there and sit in a grand, big-screen theater and become an actual witness to one of the most important historical moments in all of time.

If you don’t get it yet, here is my message in total bluntness: “God, I loved this movie!”

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