South Beach Hoosier: 12/04/07

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

School kids in New York can't tell time. Don't even ask about how dumb South Florida's kids are!

Was looking for some information the other day while doing a Google search and came across this very interesting book review by Bob Blaisdell of the Chicago Tribune on November 18th about three recently published books on the sad state of contemporary K-12 education, from different perspectives: teacher and administrator.

As to the issue of who, if anyone, is to to blame for the results we've got, and what must be done
to change that, well, I guess I'll have to read the books, though I suspect the first answer is bad unfocused parents, as we all know intuitively. But that's just my opinion.

What really caught my attention, though, knocked me out, really, is a couple of devastatingly revealing lines from Dan Brown's book on the myriad challenges of teaching in New York City, The Great Expectations School, A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.
http://www.arcadepub.com/book/?GCOI=55970100235510&fa=author&person_id=373&publishergcoicode=55970

WOW! Everyone I've shared this with has come away with the same exact look of dismay and dread. I remind you, as you read this, that author Dan Brown was teaching fourth-graders, NOT four-year olds.

By the way, any guess as to when the South Florida media is going to find out the real story behind the so-called Rudy Crew 'death threats' of a few months ago? (See Miami Herald story of August 8th at bottom.)

I've long suspected that they were a not-so-bright hoax perpetrated by a handful of misguided people, and contrary to the story the Herald published, likely Miami Northwestern High School football fans, upset about Crew's -long overdue- disciplinary moves before the season started, which resulted in the firing of a very popular and successful head coach and his staff, along with imposing penalties and standards on the team.
Now there's an under-investigated story that sounded fishy from the very beginning!

Perhaps it'll all come to light shortly after Northwestern soon wins their mythical national prep football title, as crowned by people who've largely never seen them play in person.

I listened on WLRN to the Miami-Dade School Board meeting when the disciplinary measures against the team and employees were discussed.

This, after so much attention had been brought down on their heads by the media, on the never ending buck passing by adults that were legally responsible for the safety of kids in their charge, who always seemed to place more importance on the concealing of facts and evidence.

But quite frankly, the board meeting itself was horrific and embarrassing in ways that only things in Miami can be, with little to no regard to following rules or common sense.

So much so, in fact, that when Channel 10's Michael Putney returned from his vacation, I was tempted to send him an email telling him about it and suggesting that he have an intern get a videotape of the hearing, so he could see it and hear it for himself. A real eye-opener!

It revealed one of the worst aspect of life in South Florida: incompetent, petty and insecure people in places of power, largely as a result of their appeal to group ethnicity rather than merit or knowledge.

Speaking of Rudy Crew, I almost forgot to mention that the Blaisdell review also includes a review of his book, which, in my opinion, considering the state of Miami-Dade's schools, is probably surprising only in its gall.

For his book, I much prefer this review by Francisco Alvarado in The Miami New Times of November 20, 2007, titled "Rudy Crew’s Crapola The schools superintendent’s new book is, well, full of baloney."
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2007-09-20/news/rudy-crew-s-crapola/full
I didn't read it until after Thanksgiving, when one of the college football games I was watching on TV got to be so tedious I had to turn the TV off.

Alvarado had written an earlier Crew story in the New Times that I'd read the week it came out, back in August, titled "Bad Apple, Miami-Dade schools superintendent Rudy Crew has made many mistakes. Maybe too many."

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2007-08-02/news/bad-apple/
_______________________________________________

www.newsday.com/features/booksmags/ny-bkcov5461375nov18,0,5999573.story
Newsday.com
Reviews: Three views of American public schools
BY BOB BLAISDELL, Chicago Tribune November 18, 2007

A CLASS APART: Prodigies, Pressure and Passion Inside One of America's Best High Schools, by Alec Klein. Simon & Schuster, 323 pp., $25.

THE GREAT EXPECTATIONS SCHOOL: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle, by Dan Brown. Arcade, 267pp., $25.95.

ONLY CONNECT: The Way to Save Our Schools, by Rudy Crew with Thomas Dyja. Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 248 pp., $24.

Is there an institution in America that calls forth such universal criticism and universal hope as public school?

...A half-hour away via subway, in the South Bronx, a 22-year-old with a famous writer's name, Dan Brown, graduated from New York University in 2003 and took a job teaching fourth grade in "the worst class in the worst school in the worst neighborhood" in New York City. The school was PS 85 - Great Expectations School, and many of Brown's students required individual attention for learning disabilities, language deficiencies and behavior issues. Despite his intelligence and good intentions, the sensitive Brown never had a chance. Two months into the job, he tells us in "The Great Expectations School," he found it had transformed him into an unsmiling, unstrung screamer:

"I lifted cackling Tayshaun Jackson's desk above my head and wham! smashed it to the floor. 'SHUT YOUR MOUTHS!' My voice shook with convulsive intensity. The room went dead silent and motionless at my paroxysm, like a record scratching to a halt in some terrible game of Freezedance."

The school, which "looks like a prison," demanded that Brown prepare his 9-year-olds for system-wide tests that would help determine the school's funding. Teaching a history lesson, he discovered his students didn't understand that George Washington, having led the Revolutionary Army in 1776, must now be dead:

"I explained that very few people live to be a hundred. When only Sonandia and Seresa could tell me that 1904 was 100 years before our current 2004, I realized ... that these kids did not understand elapsed time, be it in minutes or decades. As a litmus test, I asked what time it would be 60 minutes from now. No hands. What time will it be sixty minutes from now. No hands. What time will it be one hour from now? Four volunteers. Thus, my hopes for in-depth, history-based lessons were banished to make way for my new, deceptively simple-seeming campaign for 'Time.'"
____________________________
Typically for the Herald's poor under-served readers, this story NEVER mentions the specific position within the state legislature and Florida's education community that Ralph Arza held at the time of the alleged remarks, much less his well-known feelings about the general direction of the Miami-Dade schools.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/story/195981.html
MIAMI-DADE SCHOOLS
Dade schools chief Crew on guard after threats
Police investigated threatening calls to Miami-Dade schools chief RudyCrew that further raised tensions between the Cuban community and theblack superintendent
By Tania deLuzuriaga
August 8, 2007

Miami-Dade schools Superintendent Rudy Crew wrote to School Board members that he intends 'to take appropriate protective measures for my office support staff and myself here, at my home and in all public venues.'
Threatening phone calls and voice-mail messages are prompting Miami-Dade schools Superintendent Rudy Crew to take extra precautions with his safety as police investigate the intimidation, officials said Tuesday.
In a memo to the Miami-Dade School Board, Crew said the calls began after the board voted 5-4 in a meeting last week to give him a $41,000 bonus, and one board member criticized his hiring practices.
''In response to board member Marta Perez's incendiary and divisive comments during the August 1, 2007, board meeting and in various media outlets, my office has received numerous death threats, racially charged messages and obscene telephone calls,'' Crew wrote to the board on Monday.
During debate about the superintendent's bonus, Perez quoted a deposition by a former school district employee who accused Crew of making defamatory remarks about Hispanics, including saying, "Cubans are the enemy.''
Perez said Tuesday that she was surprised by the superintendent's response.
''I've received threatening calls, but I didn't make any big thing about it,'' she said. 'It's his way of diverting attention from the fact that we have 26 `F' schools.''
Crew's chief of staff, Carolyn Spaht, said his office answered several disturbing calls while he was out Thursday and Friday.
''I have no idea how many; it was a lot,'' Spaht said. "They were threatening, physically threatening.''
Miami police detectives have taken a statement from Crew and are also analyzing taped evidence. There are at least two phone threats, said Detective Delrish Moss, a spokesman.
''Not only are they death threats, they are also ethnically intimidating calls,'' Moss said.

TAKING PRECAUTIONS
Crew wrote to board members that he intends "to take appropriate protective measures for my office support staff and myself here, at my home and in all public venues.''
Asked Tuesday what precautions he would be taking, Crew said, "I'm not going to publicize what those measures are, that wouldn't make sense. I'm going to go through life as normally as I can, but I have to take the necessary precautions.''
Board Chairman Agustin Barrera said Crew's actions were a sign of the times.
'With the things we've seen happen in society, we don't want to look back a month from now and say, `We should have paid attention," he said.
The phone calls seem to signal a new height in tensions between the Cuban community and the black superintendent, who has had two former employees allege that he discriminates against Hispanics.
The deposition Perez quoted last week was part of a lawsuit brought by Marjorie Santayana Figueira, a former school district employee who alleged discrimination after she was forced to resign in 2005.
Her lawyers sought to establish a pattern of discrimination by Crew against Hispanic females. They included testimony from former Deputy Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Sonia Diaz, a Puerto Rican who says Crew told her that she was hiring too many people who ''looked like'' her and that "Cubans are the enemy.''

ARZA INCIDENT
Crew has had troubles with the Cuban community, most notably last year when two members of his staff alleged they heard former state Rep.Ralph Arza use racial epithets in reference to the superintendent. An ethics complaint filed by Crew was dismissed because he had not personally heard the slurs.
Arza, a Cuban American, resigned from office for his role in threatening a colleague who had filed a Florida House rules complaint alleging Arza used racial epithets to describe Crew.
But Barrera said the highly publicized incidents aren't indicative of how the public feels about Crew.
''I wouldn't say the Hispanic community is against Rudy,'' he said.
"I would say there's a loud minority against the superintendent. We never hear from the silent majority.''
Crew has been accused of discrimination by several former employees, including a white woman who says she was demoted so her job could go to a minority, and a former assistant School Board attorney who says she was forced to retire while other, less qualified Hispanics were promoted.

Miami Herald staff writer David Ovalle contributed to this report.
______________________________________________
StuckOnthePalmetto had some thoughts on this story at the time, as did some of his readers:
http://stuckonthepalmetto.blogspot.com/2007/08/thuggery-lives-on-in-miami-dade-county.html

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The South Florida I Grew Up In

Excerpts from Joan Didion's Miami, 1987, Simon & Schuster:

In the continuing opera still called, even by Cubans who have now lived the largest part of their lives in this country, el exilo, the exile, meetings at private homes in Miami Beach are seen to have consequences. The actions of individuals are seen to affect events directly. Revolutions and counter-revolutions are framed in the private sector, and the state security apparatus exists exclusively to be enlisted by one or another private player. That this particular political style, indigenous to the Caribbean and to Central America, has now been naturalized in the United States is one reason why, on the flat coastal swamps of South Florida, where the palmettos once blew over the detritus of a dozen failed booms and the hotels were boarded up six months a year, there has evolved since the early New Year's morning in 1959 when Fulgencio Batista flew for the last time out of Havana a settlement of considerable interest, not exactly an American city as American cities have until recently been understood but a tropical capital: long on rumor, short on memory, overbuilt on the chimera of runaway money and referring not to New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Atlanta but to Caracas and Mexico, to Havana and to Bogota and to Paris and Madrid. Of American cities Miami has since 1959 connected only to Washington, which is the peculiarity of both places, and increasingly the warp...

"The general wildness, the eternal labyrinths of waters and marshes, interlocked and apparently neverending; the whole surrounded by interminable swamps... Here I am then in the Floridas, thought I," John James Audobon wrote to the editor of The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science during the course of an 1831 foray in the territory then still called the Floridas. The place came first, and to touch down there is to begin to understand why at least six administations now have found South Florida so fecund a colony. I never passed through security for a flight to Miami without experiencing a certain weightlessness, the heightened wariness of having left the developed world for a more fluid atmosphere, one in which the native distrust of extreme possibilities that tended to ground the temperate United States in an obeisance to democratic institutions seemed rooted, if at all, only shallowly.

At the gate for such flights the preferred language was already Spanish. Delays were explained by weather in Panama. The very names of the scheduled destinations suggested a world in which many evangelical inclinations had historically been accomodated, many yearnings toward empire indulged...

In this mood Miami seemed not a city at all but a tale, a romance of the tropics, a kind of waking dream in which any possibility could and would be accomodated...

Hallandale Beach Blog
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or otherwise superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and much-needed insight onto local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now, despite all the technological advances that have taken place since I grew-up in South Florida in the 1970's. On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger, disdain and laser-like attention primarily on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.

IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and be continually musing about the chronic lack of any real accountability or transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of City, County and State employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, work-ethic mentality that citizens here deserve and are paying for.

This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the Perfect Storm of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent.

Sadly for its residents, Hallandale Beach is where even the easily-solved or entirely predictable quality-of-life problems are left to fester for YEARS on end, because of myopia, lack of common sense and the unsatisfactory management and coordination of resources and personnel.

It's a city with tremendous potential because of its terrific location and weather, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of chronic mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems again that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion. Instead the city government either closes their eyes and hopes you'll forget the problem, or kicks them -once again- further down the road.

I used to ask myself, and not at all rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"

Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time.
Someone who wanted questions answered in a honest and forthright fashion that citizens have the right to expect.

Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change. http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes

Before going to my first U-M game at the Orange Bowl in 1972, a friend's father often would bring me home an extra 'Canes game program. That's how I came to have the Alabama at U-M game program from Nov. 16, 1968, which was the first nationally-televised college football night game in color. (A 14-6 loss to the Crimson Tide.) After that first ballgame against Tulane, as l often did for Dolphin games if my father wasn't going, I'd get dropped off at the Levitz parking lot near the 836 & I-95 Cloverleaf in NMB, and catch a Dade County Park & Ride bus, going straight to the Orange Bowl. Onboard, I'd get next to the window and listen to WIOD's pre-game show on my Radio Shack transistor radio. A few times, I was just about the only person onboard besides the bus driver, which was alright by me. Once at the Orange Bowl, if I didn't already have a ticket, I'd buy a game program for myself and one or two for friends or teachers before heading to the ticket window, since you usually couldn't find a program vendor once inside. I probaly had a friend or my father with me for just under 40% of the U-M games I ever went to, but you have to remember that the team, though blessed with several talented players, like Chuck Foreman and Burgess Owens, was just so-so to average at best, and the games were usually played on Friday nights, so it wasn't exactly high on everyone's list of things to do. Depending upon the opponent, if I was alone, I'd often have entire areas of the Orange Bowl to myself. (Wish I had photos of that now!) For instance, I had a good portion of the East (open) End Zone to myself against Oklahoma in the mid-70's, when the Boomer Schooner and the Schooner Crew went out on the field after an Oklahoma TD, and the Schooner received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty from the refs, as would happen years later in an Orangle Bowl Classic game. (Against FSU?) I was there for the wins and losses under Pete Elliott, Carl Selmer & Lou Saban, and the huge on-field fight in '73 when under eventual national champion Notre Dame (under Ara Parseghian), they called a time-out with less than a minute to go, and already up 37-0. Their rationale? To score another TD and impress the AP football writers; final score 44-0. Well, they got their wish and beat Alabama 24-23 for the title at the Sugar Bowl. A year later, thanks to my Mom's boss, she and I saw Ara's last game as head coach of the Irish in the Orange Bowl Game from the East End Zone -in front of the Alabama cheerleaders!!!- in an exciting 13-11 Notre Dame win over Alabama and Bear Bryant, a rematch of the '73 national title game. I was also present for the U-M's huge 20-15 win under Pete Elliott against Darrel Royal's Texas Longhorns, the week Sports Illustrated's College Football preview issue came out with Texas on the cover, below. I was also present for lots of wins against schools called College of the Pacific, UNLV and Cal-Poly San Luis Obsispo, which I'd then never heard of before.

Of cheerleaders past and present

Given South Florida's unique version of the melting pot -con salsa- demographics and mindset, these women in the photo above are surely what most South Floridians would consider attractive women. But for this observer, who's spent hours & hours at IU cheerleader tryouts and who has known dozens of cheerleaders -and wannabes- in North Miami Beach, Bloomington, Evanston and Washington, D.C., the whole time I was watching these members of the Dolphins' squad perform, I couldn't help but compare them and their routines to those of some IU friends of mine who ALWAYS showed true Hoosier spirit & enthusiasm. Sitting at my table right near the stage and still later, while watching the long lines of Dolphin fans of all ages waiting to snap photos of themselves with the cheerleaders, I couldn't help but think about those friends who always left me and other Hoosier fans feeling positive & optimistic. Was there anyone I saw in Davie who possessed these valuable intangibles: the dancing precision of IU Red Stepper -and Captain- Gail Amster, my talented and spirited Phi Beta Kappa pal from Deerfield (IL), who always sat next to me in our Telecom. classes as we took turns entertaining the other; the ebullient spirit & energy of two Hoosier cheerleaders -and captains- from Bloomington, Wendy (Mulholland) Moyle & Sara Cox; the hypnotic, Midwestern, girl-next-door sexiness of Hoosier cheerleader Julie Bymaster, from Brownsburg; or, the adorable Southern girl-next-door appeal of former Hoosier Pom squader Jennifer Grimes, of Louisville, always such a clear distraction while sitting underneath the basket? Nope, not that I could see. But then they were VERY tough acts to follow!!! And that's not to mention my talented & spirited friends like Denise Andrews of Portage, Jody Kosanovich of Hammond & Linda Ahlbrand of Chesterton, all of whom were dynamic cheerleaders -and captains- at very large Hoosier high schools that were always in the championship mix, with Denise's team winning the Ind. football championship her senior year when she was captain -just like in a movie. That Denise, Jody & Linda all lived on the same dorm floor, just three stories above me at Briscoe Quad our freshman year, was one of the greatest coincidences -and strokes of luck for me!- that I could've ever hoped for. You could hardly ask for better ambassadors of IU than THESE very smart, sweet and talented women. In a future SBH post, I'll tell the story of one of the greatest Hoosiers I ever met, the aforementioned Wendy Mulholland, the Bloomington-born captain and emotional heart of the great early '80's IU cheerleading squads, and the daughter of Jack Mulholland, IU's former longtime Treasurer. The acorn doesn't fall far from a tree built on a foundation of integrity & community service! (After he retired, Mr. Mulholland was the first executive director of the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County. I used to joke with Wendy that her dad's name was the one that was permanently affixed to the bottom of my work-study checks for years, while I worked at the Dept. of Political Science's Library, first, at the Student Building in the old part of campus, and then later, after it was refurbished, in magnificent Woodburn Hall, my favorite building on campus.) In that future post, I'll share some reflections on Wendy's great strength of character and personality; my intentions of returning to Bloomington a few weeks before Fall '82 classes started, so I could help Wendy train and work-out to rehab her knee, so she'd feel confident in trying-out for the squad again, following a bad knee injury that'd left her physically-unable to try-out for the squad the previous spring, a big disappointment to those of us who cared about both Wendy and the team; my incredulity at, quite literally, running into Wendy while walking down a sidewalk one afternoon a few years later in Evanston, IL, when we were astonished to discover we were both living there, with me trying to hook on with a Windy City advertising agency, and Wendy then-attending Kellogg (KGSM) at Northwestern, right when the WSJ had named Kellogg the #1 Business School in the country. I'll also share a story about Wendy performing a true act of kindness towards me in 1982, when I was having a real emergency, and she went above-and-beyond what I had any logical reason to expect. Yet, Wendy, along with her very helpful dad, Jack, came through for me when I was in a very bad time crunch. I've never forgotten Wendy's kindness towards me, and her true Hoosier spirit. There's NOTHING I wouldn't do for Wendy Mulholland.

It's All About "The U"

South Beach Hoosier's first U-M football game at the Orange Bowl was in 1972, age 11, against Tulane in the infamous "Fifth Down" game. In order to drum up support and attendance for the U-M at the Orange Bowl, that game had a promotion whereby South Florida kids who were school safety patrols could get in for free IF they wore their sash. I did. Clearly they knew that it was better to let kids in for free, knowing their parents would give them money to buy food and souvenirs, perhaps become a fan and want to return for future games. The ballgame made an interesting impression on The New York Times, resulting in this gem from the "View of Sport" column of Oct, 14, 1990, labeled 'Fifth Down or Not, It's Over When It's Over.' -"In 1972, aided by a fifth-down officiating gift in the last moments of the game, Miami of Florida defeated Tulane, 24-21. The country and the world was a much different place that fall because The New York Times took time and space to editorialize on the subject. ''Is it right for sportsmen, particularly young athletes, to be penalized or deprived of the goals for which they earnestly competed because responsible officials make mistakes? The ideal of true sportsmanship would be better served if Miami forfeited last week's game.' South Beach Hoosier hardly needs to tell you that this was YET another New York Times editoral that was completely ignored!

The Original Notre Dame Legend

Knute Rockne, November 7, 1927; Sixteen months after his cover appearance, Rockne perished in an airline crash over Kansas on a business trip to California. "Knute Rockne, All-American," the wonderful 1940 film about Rockne's life, starring Pat O'Brien, with Ronald Reagan as ill-fated Irish football legend George Gipp, is a film I've seen at least two-dozen times. Like the best of films, every new viewing of it makes me appreciate some aspect I'd never noticed before, even though I know it by heart. Just like 1942's "The Pride of the Yankees" starring Gary Cooper as Yankee legend Lou Gehrig.

Indiana Hoosiers in the Film Industry, Past and Present

A good source for checking Hoosiers in the film industry -No, not Cary Grant pretending to be Cole Porter in 1946's Night & Day- is this one from a website run by former Ball State prof. and chair of the IPAHF board, and author of Hoosiers in Hollywood (Indiana Historical Press, 2006, $60) David L. Smith. It's currently accessible by subject headings of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Composers, Directors, Screenwriters, Novelists, Made in Indiana, Oscar Winners, The Silent Era, and Non-Native Hoosiers.

http://www.whenmoviesweremovies.com/hoosiersintro.html

1992 Bill Clinton for President buttons

As my friends and family can attest, I was for Bill Clinton YEARS before he ever announced he was running for president -much as I'd been for Gary Hart in 1983- and was even considering running as a Clinton delegate from northern Virginia to the DNC as early as 1990. Still, IF I'd had a vote in the U.S. Senate, I'd have voted to impeach him and remove him from office. You DON"T commit perjury by lying to a federal judge and suborning the perjury of underlings. PERIOD! And you certainly don't countenance your former aides stealing classified materials from The National Archives before their testimony to the 9/11 Commission, a la Sandy Berger. As for the sordid story of one of Hillary's brothers being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby for a presidential pardon from his brother-in-law for a felon client, and nobody from his White House intervening to put the kibosh to that, consider the cast of no-talents left running things in those last few years at the White House after the good people had bailed earlier: lots and lots of Hillary loyalists. As the sign on the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance to The National Archives reads, "The past is prologue." Don't say you weren't warned.

1993 Elvis Presley Stamp -Watercolor of Elvis by Mark Stutzmamn

It was in Memphis specifically, and the Mid-South in general, on our weekend family drives around Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, where I first developed my deep and enduring love and preference for many things: the Mississippi River; rhythm 'n' blues; Al Green; The Andy Griffith Show; Dusty Springfield; Petula Clark; St. Louis Cardinals baseball in the summertime; smoky sweet Memphis-style barbecue ribs; cornbread, and, of course, The King - Elvis. To a devout Elvis fan like me, who knows just about everything there is to know about him, the good and the bad, the best books ever written on Elvis -by far- are Peter Guralnick's masterful "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley" and the follow-up, "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley." Each is written with honesty and empathy, free of the judgmental cant and analysis that doomed other books that purport to tell the tale. It was also while living in The Mid-South, that I first became greatly interested in the American Civil War, following a summer day-trip to Shiloh, the site of the bloody April 1862 battle. It was on that summer day trip that I had a chance meeting with a VERY old man on the battlefield itself. A man whose own father had actually fought in the battle. And lived to tell the tale! For more info on Shiloh, see http://www.nps.gov/shil/ Spending a day there is an awesome experience and really puts things into their proper perspective, just as my later trips to Gettysburg, Harper's Ferry, Winchester, Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania did as well.

Dr. King Is Slain By Sniper headline in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 6, 1968

My family moved from San Antonio to Memphis on Easter weekend 1965, when I was four-years old. We lived in Memphis 'till July of 1968, just weeks after Dr. King was assassinated there. Having lived thru all the chaotic and frightening tumult that took place there in the aftermath of the riots, even remembering the night I watched with my friends and their parents from the sidewalk -during curfew- as fully loaded Army troop transports and tanks rolled past my suburban apt. complex from the nearby Armory on their way downtown, when the opportunity presented itself, my father happily accepted a job offer in Miami. (We flew into MIA the day after Larry Csonka had signed his first contract with the Dolphins, as his face was the one I saw in the Miami Herald vending machines at the airport as we walked -and walked!- to pick up our luggage, me wondering who this guy with the unusual name was.) Because I was a very precocious reader, and was easily bored with kids books, The Memphis Commercial Appeal was the newspaper that helped me learn to read and make sense of the wider world.

U.S.P.S.'s 1995 Texas Statehood Sesquicentennial Stamp

I was born in San Antonio, the Home of the Alamo, at the Lackland Air Force Base Hospital during the first month of the JFK presidency. At the time, my parents worked at next door Kelly AFB, my mother for Kelly's base commander, my father in the Flight Surgeon's office. (They each saw President and Mrs. Kennedy the day before he was killed, when they Air Force One flew into Kelly and went thru the official receiving line. Our family has a photograph of them at the base that day that I've never seen published anywhere else in the myriad books and film footage of that time frame.) My maternal ancestors were Poles from a region of Prussian-controlled Upper Silesia, in what is now southwestern Poland, not far from the present day Poland-Czech Republic border. Overnight, those ancestors became Texas Hill Country pioneers, whose proud descendents have lived in Bandera ever since 1855. Due in large part to its large number of Polish, German and Czech immigrants, Bandera County was one of only a handful of Texas counties that voted AGAINST seceding from the Union at the state convention in Austin in 1861. A book I HIGHLY recommend on Texas' complicated history is "Lone Star Nation: The Epic Story of the Battle for Texas Independence" by H.W. Brands (2004), www.hwbrands.com

Coincidence of birth? Message: Don't Mess with Texas!

The week I was born in San Antonio, the cover subject of TIME magazine (dated Feb. 10, 1961) was Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn of Texas, who held that title for 17 years. As Speaker, Rayburn won a reputation for fairness and integrity -and toughness. He was also a longtime personal friend and advocate for Lyndon Johnson in Washington when LBJ was the Senate Majority Leader. JFK's election as president three months before this issue, with LBJ as Vice President, and Rayburn as Speaker, started the tradition of a Boston-Austin axis within the Democratic Party that has existed ever since, witness Dukakis-Bentsen. See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967986,00.html Nine months after appearing on this cover, Rayburn died of inoperable pancreatic cancer. The largest and most prestigious of all the House buildings on Capitol Hill is named after him. Over the 15 years I lived in the Washington, D.C. area, I spent literally thousands of hours in this amazing building: at congressional hearings of both great and little importance, and in speaking/persuading/cajoling Members and Staff. That also includes lots of hours spent transfixed by the great annual party thrown in the Rayburn courtyard by the late Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez of my hometown of San Antonio, where it was packed cheek-by-jowl with great Mexican food, cold beer flown in from Texas, a kick-ass Mariachi band dressed in costumes with cute dancers, and tons of great looking women from Texas and those who were Texans-for a-Day every year at Henry B.'s party! Whatever his views on issues and policies, in person, he was a warm and gracious gentleman whom we could use a LOT MORE of on Capitol Hill. See the Rayburn cover story at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872094,00.html Cover Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt

1972 Miami Dolphins team photo at The Orange Bowl

The same color photo of the 17-0 Undefeated Team that for six years, rested in a frame on top of my bedroom dresser at my home in North Miami Beach. There it stayed 'till that fateful day in August of 1979, when I began packing for my new life in Bloomington. The photo made the trip to Bloomington intact, where it remained on my desk in Briscoe Quad 427-A for two very eventful years at IU, the latter being the year we beat North Carolina for the NCAA title. I placed it right below my 8' x 11' b&w glossies of the Miami Herald's All-County Gymnastics team. That was a tremendous team that featured many friends from all around Dade County, as well as my own talented friends and classmates at North Miami Beach High.

Twice as Nice in Baja

North Miami High School grads Yvette and Yvonne Sylvander, January 8, 1976. The week this issue came out, only a month after we (NMB) won the Florida state HS soccer championship, many of my friends and I wondered how in the world, considering how many dozens of people we knew at North Miami High, could two such good-looking and well-adjusted sisters have been just two miles away from us all that time -and we'd never heard of them? It was quite a conundrum! The Sylvander sisters were the best-known twins out of North Miami High until the emergence of the talented gymnastic sisters, Debbie and Donna Reiser. Debbie and Donna always represented the Pioneers with class and grace in all their gymnastic meets, against NMB as well as at the GMAC's, the Greater Miami Athletic Conference (Dade County) championships.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

School kids in New York can't tell time. Don't even ask about how dumb South Florida's kids are!

In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation

#IUBB, #bannersix

Hallandale Beach's iconic beachball-colored Water Tower, between beach and A1A/South Ocean Drive

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker

Hollywood in cartoons, 10-21-06 Non-Sequitur by Wiley, www-NON-SEQUITUR.COM

Miami Dolphins

Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes

Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, April 28, 2007

Of cheerleaders past and present

It's All About "The U"

The issue I took with me the night of U-M's 20-15 upset of #1 Texas at the Orange Bowl

The Perfect Storm

Miami's Romp in the Rose

Why the University of Miami should drop football

REVENGE!

How Sweet It Is!

My, Oh My, Miami!

Why Is Miami No. 1?

Miracle In Miami

Special Issue: College Football

1984 College & Pro Spectatcular

Pro Football Hall of Fame Special Issue

FACES OF THE NFL

Coming Back

Dan's Last Stand

The War Zone

Down and Dirty

The Sunshine Boys

HOT & NOT

NFL PREVIEW 1995

Sportsman Of The Year

Dan The Man

Dangerous Dan

Super Duper!

Air Raid! Miami Bombs Washington

Rookies On The Rise

New Life In The WFL

Zonk! Miami Massacres Minnesota

Pro Football, Miami Is Rough And Ready

Miami All The Way

It's Miami and Washington

Kiick and Csonka, Miami's Dynamic Duo

Sudden Death at Kansas City

New Pro in a New Town

Old-style "Obie" the Orange Bowl Committee mascot