Because Sometimes We Need to Lighten Up A Bit

As I write, the leading bands of storm Isaias have reached East Tennessee and it is raining and raining and raining.  It is the heart of college football season which reigns supreme in these parts.  The biggest clash in the nation this week, Georgia/Alabama, is scheduled for a just a few hours driving southwest of here, with kickoff just a few hours from now.  The game’s fortunes are in doubt because of the storm.  Fortunately, the local Tennessee Volunteers are on the road in Arkansas and unaffected.  Meanwhile, in college gyms across the nation, practice for the upcoming basketball season has started – first games being about a month away.  And so Sports Illustrated has begun to pay attention.  This week they published a brief history and video tour of the greatest basketball arena in history – Hinkle Fieldhouse on the campus of Butler University.  It set my heart aflutter.

Built in the late 1920’s, the building reeks of history and basketball greatness. A snippet from SI:

The first game at Hinkle was played on March 7, 1928, four months before the invention of sliced bread. In the years since, the building has seen plenty of history—basketball and otherwise. The arena was the home court for two early professional teams in the late ’40s and early ’50s: the Indianapolis Jets of the BAA (a predecessor to the NBA) and the NBA’s Indianapolis Olympians. It hosted the first ABA All-Star Game in ’68. Indianapolis’s Crispus Attucks High School, led by Oscar Robertson, won back-to-back state championships at Hinkle in ’55 and ’56, becoming the nation’s first high school team with an all-Black starting five to win a state title in an integrated tournament. When the NCAA opted to hold the entire 2021 Division I men’s basketball tournament in the state of Indiana due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hinkle was chosen to host 16 games. Seven U.S. presidents have spoken there, from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama. There have been track meets (including a world record-tying performance from Jesse Owens while he was at Ohio State), bicycle races, circuses, ice shows and a piano recital in which 125 pianos were crammed onto the floor of the fieldhouse. The arena also served as a military barracks during World War II.

The building holds a special place in my heart.  Yes, I attended Butler, took PE classes in the building and used it recreationally during my student years – as well as attending games.  But my association with the building begins long before college.  My high school played the first three rounds of the state basketball tournament in that building.  There is the famous scene in the best sports movie ever made – Hoosiers – in which Hickory arrives at the building.  I lived that scene as a sophomore in high school when we arrived at that building for the first round of Sectionals and entered through the same door as the movie scene.  My coach had played his college ball at Butler, so we got the cook’s tour of the place.

I could write thousands of words about the glory and wonder of that building.  I could wax nostalgic for hours and hours about the hours and hours I have spent in the building.  I will not bore you – but I hope this story and accompanying video can give you a taste of just how special the place really is.  I hope it will warm your heart just a bit as the world around us is so dark at the moment.

Go Dawgs!

And Now, The Remainders – 

I wrote a lot this week about the moral collapse we are experiencing – so YEAH!

I once attended a live performance of John Cleese and Eric Idle of Monty Python fame.  The show opened with Cleese taking the stage and saying simply, “It is universally agreed that this is the silliest thing we have ever done,” and then showing this video.  Unfortunately, no one appreciates silly anymore – or do they?

Unsurprisingly – our government is going to war with itself.  It is an interesting quirk of our constitution that the judiciary has no means to enforce its rulings, it must rely on the executive to do so.  And yet it often tells the executive what to do.  I have long wondered what would happen if the executive decided not to listen.  Too bad it is over something so silly and insignificant.

Ah, but speaking of silly – California…

They love to ban things in California – even silly things like 3D printer filament and quartz.  As they say, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

California is corrupt to its core.  No place is it more corrupt than the public transportation system – the homeless operation apprenticed under them.

Well, at least the fleeing billionaires are providing cover for the fleeing millionaires.  The billionaires can better afford the endless litigation.

Newsom has it in for the church – one way or the other.  See covid.