The most dangerous college towns in the USA

Ithaca is no. 6. I used to hear rumors but never thought the town was that bad. I also used to see people getting arrested across the street from where I lived, but that was outside a bar and therefore to be expected. Besides, it was on the same corner where I once saw the Vienna Boys’ Choir climb into a bus. The Choir’s beatific presence contributed to the overall mildness of the place.

Gainesville is no. 1 in crime. Not too surprising. Now and then, I see Gainesville in crime documentaries. Gainesville even had its own “Ripper.”

I’m inordinately loyal to, even fond of, Bloomington (no. 10). I’ve never been there. Sometimes, I walk along its streets on Google. I hang out in Assembly Hall or outside Scott Russell Sanders’s house; I avoid notorious “Cutter” districts.

At this point, you’re probably asking what counts as a college town. Is Memphis a college town? Is St. Louis? They have universities and lots of crime. Albuquerque? Atlanta? Baltimore? Boston? Chicago? Los Angeles? New York? Philadelphia? Washington, D.C.?

Seattle? (Think: Bundy.) Salt Lake City? (Ditto.) Tallahassee? (Ditto.)

Is South Bend a college town? Maybe not, since Notre Dame is its own city. But see the murder-writings of Ralph McInerny (where there’s smoke, there’s fire). Or this sad movie.

According to the group that did the study,

a total of 26 U.S. college towns were selected based on the following criteria: The institution [the university] is a central feature of the city, meaning it materially influences local demographics and infrastructure.

Top- and bottom-ten lists don’t mean much in a field of just twenty-six.

Celtic 4, Chelsea 1

I’m sunburnt because yesterday I attended the pre-season “friendly” between these clubs, at Notre Dame Stadium. Chelsea’s fans came in droves; Celtic’s, who were fewer, cheered better. The Chelsea faithful commenced their exodus after Celtic’s fourth goal.

Martin watched Cameron Carter-Vickers, his compatriot, perform flawlessly for Celtic.

David’s aunt- and uncle-in-law, who’ve been visiting from Honduras, saw their compatriot, Luis Palma, score Celtic’s third goal.

Kasper Schmeichel was Celtic’s best performer. As for Chelsea, Raheem Stirling, of all people, was the brightest spark. He fizzled out ten minutes after coming on.

David, Stephen, and I had hoped to see Moisés Caicedo, but he was absent. So were Cucurella, Fernández, Palmer, and others. Trevoh Chalobah, whom I consider the club’s best defender, is in the doghouse and didn’t make the trip.

I know it’s the preseason and teams aren’t giving it their all, but this was the first time I’d seen players look worse live than on TV.

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I also have terrible heartburn today. I ate serving after serving of chili at my niece Belladonna’s birthday party. She is two. She is a winsome little thing.

The World Serious

This blog entry’s title is due to Ring Lardner, who, in my estimation, is the all-time greatest Son of Michiana (he was born in Niles and began his reporting career in South Bend). So much lore surrounds baseball, I wish I liked the sport. I try to watch some of the Serious each year, if only to root against the Yankees (or, lately, the Astros); often, I end up rooting against almost everyone in the stadium, but I do cheer for this or that player. A pitcher in his late, late thirties, usually. One who glares like Clint Eastwood.

This year, the Astros and the Phillies have split the first two games. It’s been exciting. (But then, watching homemade YouTube videos of marbles racing each other down the gutter can be exciting.) For reasons of moral decency, I want the Phillies to win, even though that Bryce Harper fellow carries himself obnoxiously and, let’s face it, the city’s reputation isn’t good. But perhaps virtue is irrelevant in the World Serious. The sport is hardly without blemish.

“How did MLB get to [the] point where no African American players on a World Series roster isn’t a surprise to many?” asks a Yahoo! columnist, inelegantly.

The answer: economics. “Baseball is a white, suburban game reinforced by foreign labor.” Clubs can pay to develop players, or the players can pay to be developed (I mean, their parents can pay). And so the players come from two sources: academies in countries like the Dominican Republic, where it is cheap for the clubs to operate; and domestic pay-to-play leagues, which are even cheaper, because the clubs don’t pay. Pay-to-play. What an idea. Not only is it exclusionary, it’s, like, one step removed from giving your money to a casino. There’s a lot of that around South Bend, and not just in baseball.

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South Bend novelist makes it big

Here’s a pretty typical “rags to riches” story for this part of the country. One parent works for a Catholic high school; the other works for Notre Dame. Kid gets free tuition. Skips town as soon as possible. Moves to New York, then Los Angeles. Writes debut novel about how challenging it is in the Rust Belt. Becomes establishment darling.

Back in South Bend, the dozen-plus copies in the library system are all in use. People here love to root, root, root for the home team.

Newpaper profile 1 (The Guardian).

Newspaper profile 2 (Los Angeles Times).

Library event.

Dinner with in-laws; another couch; September’s poem

Another dinner at Karin’s mom’s house. We watched Notre Dame lose, and then the conversation turned to how contemptible Joe Biden is and how “they” (the bad guys, i.e., the liberals) are coming after “us.”

“Personally,” McKenzie declared, “I’m looking forward to ‘the purge.’”

Karin’s mom had previously mentioned that she and her new husband intend to build a “family compound” in Kentucky.

“With whom does she expect to live in this compound?” I asked Karin.

“With all of us,” Karin sighed. “With all of her family.”

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Back at home, we have a new old couch. It was free for the taking. My parents happened to notice it while passing through Bremen, and some locals offered to haul it over to us in their truck (they were heading toward our part of South Bend, anyway). The couch is brown and plaid, and it’s from the 1980s. It looks like the furniture of Quito’s old Missionary Church Dorm.

Even more than our previous old couch, it “ties the room together.”

The cats already have peed on it.

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This month’s poem, by Rudyard Kipling, is “Recessional.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

God of our fathers, known of old,

Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine –

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;

The Captains and the Kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;

On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

Or lesser breeds without the Law –

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard,

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word –

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(For the Diamond Jubilee of 1897)

The sports

We watch the White Sox’s starting pitcher give up his first hit against the Twins, after 8 2/3 innings. He looks like his dog just died.

We tried, he says. But they got us.

Yeah, if by “they got us” he means they spoiled his no-hitter but still lost thirteen to zero and ran out of pitchers. (Two of their position players had to take the mound. What’s wrong with that guy’s wind-up? What’s wrong with his hair? Since when do pitchers look like that?, I wondered before I realized what was going on.)

Still, I bet the Twins are drinking champagne and dancing a conga back in the clubhouse. Back in Minneapolis, even. Because the Sox didn’t get a no-hitter against them.

Well, maybe they are doing those things. What do I know. Baseball culture is so bizarre to me.

Why is that player spitting so much?, Karin asks.

They always spit.

You know what I miss from playing tee-ball and softball? she says. When we’d line up and tell each other “Good game.”

Then:

Who is that ancient guy in the Medicare commercial?

I squint at the TV. It’s late. My contact lenses are drying up inside my eyelids.

Joe Namath.

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Were I a loyal South Bender, I’d watch Notre Dame get beaten by Ohio State. But I must not be one, because no matter what I do with the antennae and the remote control, I can’t get ABC to come in on the TV.

I really do want to watch, honest. I really do want to see the Irish lose. How the years have changed me.

This game is all they were talking about at work today, Karin says.

Is it being played here, or in Columbus?, I ask. (Don’t shake your head at me. I really don’t know. I seldom leave the house.)

Traffic hasn’t been all that bad, says Karin.

So the game must be in Columbus.

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For several years, I’ve been watching video highlights of Erling Haaland without ever seeing him in real time. Until today, that is, when he suits up for his new club, Manchester City, against Aston Villa.

Some stats from the TV:

In his first half-dozen English Premier League matches, Haaland has scored ten goals; only one other person has done that.

During the season’s first five matches, Haaland scored one goal for every fifteen touches of the ball. One goal per twenty-five touches is supposed to be a world-class scoring rate. (The announcers don’t explain what they mean by “world class,” but I assume it’s something good.)

In six games, Haaland has scored more goals from within the six-yard box than any other EPL player has scored – except for one other (unnamed) player – since the beginning of last season. That is, he leads virtually everyone in that category even though he’s been eligible during 30–40 fewer games.

Scoring so many goals from inside the six-yard box means this. The player has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. And the defenders know this about him, and they still lose track of him.

In other words, he’s very, very smart.

Haaland gets today’s goal from inside the six-yard box; indeed, he scores it with his very first touch from inside the penalty box. He’s been marked so carefully that it’s taken him until the second half to get that touch. (It isn’t as if his positioning has been bad. His runs into open spaces have been impeccable all day long, although the passes to him haven’t been.)

But what most impresses me is his hold-up and linking play. Even with defenders climbing up his back or wrenching him to the ground, he controls waist-high passes and lays the ball off, smoothly and with perfect timing, to onrunning teammates. I’d start him on my team even if he never scored any goals. Teams have won with non-scoring strikers who did superb hold-up work. Haaland does that, and he’ll probably end up scoring more goals than anybody else.

Another night out

I went with Karin and her mom to St. Mary’s College and viewed a performance of Legally Blonde Jr.: The Musical. This “junior” version is Legally Blonde: The Musical with the spicy bits excised. The actors were in elementary or middle or high school. Our old pastor’s daughter had a small but crucial role. She’s been performing for some years, but this was the first time I’d gone to watch her; I thought she was remarkable. But then, I’m biased: I’ve known her since she was a blobby little infant.

(Our own infants, Samuel and Daniel, were supervised by Karin’s dad and his girlfriend, Carol.)

After the show, the director came onstage and started talking about the sponsors and the crew and the “message” of Legally Blonde (“Follow your dreams,” was her take). “Lead us out of here,” Karin’s mom said, and so I did. When we got to the parking lot, Karin’s mom thanked me for having had the courage to leave before the speeches had ended. “I wouldn’t have done it on my own,” she said.

Karin has quite the weekend lined up for herself. Tomorrow she’ll hear Billy Joel at Notre Dame Stadium, and on Sunday she’ll watch a performance of Anastasia. I’ll look after the children.

A conference

“John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice at Fifty: An Anniversary Conference” – today and tomorrow, at Notre Dame. Look at the nice lineup of speakers. (Alas, one of them, Charles Mills, died earlier this week.)

I was to have gone with my Uncle Tim. It would have been my first academic conference in several years. But this morning I woke up with COVID symptoms – mild, cold-like ones.

Karin and Samuel have them, too.

It probably is just a cold, what with the changes in the weather. Even so, I have withdrawn from the conference and scheduled a COVID test.

This is the second conference I will have missed because of the pandemic.

If I continue to feel well enough, I’ll mow the grass.

Another celebrated South Bender

Last Sunday was cold, and our church met indoors, but today’s service was held in the parking lot, in balmy weather. After Karin and Samuel and I went home and ate lunch, Samuel refused to sleep, so I pushed him in his stroller around the block. “Enjoy the last day of good weather,” one neighbor said. Sure enough, the temperature is supposed to fall by twenty degrees.

Another sign of summer’s end: people have been towing their boats back into the neighborhood.

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Recently widowed, Karin’s mom went on holiday to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, a two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride from the northern town of Charlevoix. Beaver Island seems to be a hideaway for the rich. The residents kept telling Karin’s mom not to walk on the beaches (which may well be their private property) or on the roads (which probably aren’t).

“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” her brother said.

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Pete Buttigieg’s failure notwithstanding, a South Bender will become a very high federal official. I mean the Notre Dame professor, the Catholic charismatic, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s SCOTUS choice. This is hardly the nomination that Pete’s fans would have wished for. As for me, I don’t mind Barrett like I minded Brett Kavanaugh. Although Barrett is both a textualist and an originalist, she might rule as justly as any SCOTUS judge could do (it’s U.S. constitutionalism and judicial review themselves that are problematic, I’ve come to believe).

But the hypocrisy! What was it the Republicans were saying four years ago, when Obama wanted to install a judge before an election?

I’m surprised that I continue to be surprised.

Here are some interesting remarks by a friend of a friend. (As always, to enlarge an image: click on it; then, right-click on it; then, open it in a new tab; and, finally, click on it again with the magnifying cursor.)

Samuel sings

In this video, Samuel:

• sings along with his mother’s breast pump;
• hiccups;
• pukes on his Notre Dame shirt;
• hiccups some more; and
• sucks his thumb.

Yesterday, we brought home a stroller and spun Samuel around the block – his first field trip entirely out of doors. He slept through all of it.

A house; visitations; a cold

My parents just bought a house in Mishawaka – the first they’ve owned. Since they’re living in Ecuador, Mary performed the negotiations and signed the papers on their behalf.

Samuel and Karin & I will benefit considerably from this purchase. Later this week, we’ll move into the house, and we’ll pay a discounted rate to live there. (We won’t relinquish our apartment until the end of January, however.) Jasper and Ziva will come with us, of course, and they’ll benefit from having more space in which to run around.

We toured the house last Friday night. A ceiling fan captured Samuel’s interest:

My parents will remain in Ecuador until they take their next furlough in the United States. That will be their first period in their new house. Afterward, they may return to Ecuador, or they may retire in the United States.

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David is visiting. He hides at Notre Dame and writes for many hours each day. He hopes to complete a dissertation chapter for his university, Rice, before Christmas Eve. Then he’ll have more time for extracurriculars.

Meanwhile, in Texas, his daughter, Ada, and his wife, Ana, are visited by Ana’s parents.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Today, Samuel is two months old. He is enduring his first cold. His chest is heavily congested. He shrieks bitterly when we use a tube to suck fluid from his nostrils.

The first shower

Karin & I held the first of two gift showers for our son. This shower, organized by Mary, was attended by friends and family members who don’t worship at our church. (The church’s shower will occur next month.)

As the gifts were being unwrapped, I realized what a large proportion of the clothes from Karin’s wish list were fox-themed. Our boy also received some Fighting Irish onesies from my Domer cousin, Vickie; some Star Trek-themed Little Golden Books and clothes from Karin’s dad and his girlfriend, Carol, who are die-hard Trekkies; and a few tiger-themed items, including a Cincinnati Bengals outfit (the Bengals are Carol’s team).

Not only have our son’s gender, nationality, and religion – the standard identities – been settled well before his birth, but also, apparently, his mammalian, collegiate, intergalactic, and athletic preferences.

I was the only man at the shower. I tried to watch Manchester City vs. the Potato Tots on my computer, but the flash player wouldn’t work.

Dortmund 3, Liverpool 2

“They think they’re so great,” said Karin, “but, really, they’re just wankers.”

We were at her mother’s house and within view of Notre Dame Stadium, toward which thousands of red-clad Liverpool fans were walking. They were going to cheer during the pre-season “friendly” between Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund.

Karin & I returned to our apartment.

Using the Internet, I watched the game’s second half.

Karin put up a portable baby play-yard with mesh walls that her mother had given us. Jasper and Ziva immediately tried it out.

Dortmund duly won the game.

Some say these “friendly” matches are devoid of interest. I thought this one proved at least one thing, that Dortmund is better than Liverpool when everyone is playing at a walking pace.

Stephen watched from inside the stadium. He sent me this photo of the Liverpudlian legend, Steven Gerrard.

Now that the game is over, everybody in our family is going to hunker down again to wait for Ada, Ana’s & David’s daughter, to be born.

Yesterday afternoon, the doctors told Ana & David that labor was going to be induced. But when Ana & David arrived at the hospital, they learned that many other pregnant women were ahead of them in the queue. So they went to the cinema and watched Crawl – a horror movie about alligators.

A week off

It’s my jobless week in between the spring semester and the first summer term. This afternoon, I’m in a lounge at Notre Dame, hoping that the strangeness of the locale will stimulate me to write.

I lunched with my dear cousin, Vickie, who’s just finished her bachelor’s work at Notre Dame. The poor thing has lost 20 lbs. during her last semester. I asked if it’s because she’s been eating phở in the cafeteria every day. No, she said, she hasn’t been doing that; she’s lost weight because of stress.

She has some jobs lined up for the next couple of years, but eventually she’ll have to decide whether to go to graduate school.

She said that in one of her sociology honors courses, the professor told the undergraduates that she expected all of them to go to grad school for sociology.

I think that’s the sort of expectation that ill serves humankind.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The last two days, I got to watch two fantastic Champions League semifinal games.

On Tuesday, Liverpool defeated Barcelona at home by four goals to zero, gaining a decisive 4–3 lead in aggregate goals and canceling out Lionel Messi’s superb performance from the previous game.

And yesterday, the Potato Tots scored three second-half goals in Amsterdam to edge out Ajax on “away” goals. Lucas Moura, the goalscorer, prayed fervidly at the start of the half, and by the time he put in his second goal, it sure looked like he was receiving divine favor.

Still, I felt badly for Ajax: they’d outplayed the Potato Tots in three of the four halves. And I felt badly for Messi, whose teammates had failed to oblige when, in Barcelona’s home game, he’d set them up to score enough goals to put the series to bed.

The final (June 1) will be a ferocious contest. They’re two very gritty teams, Liverpool and the Potato Tots.

The Carter project

Our Indiana county is the site of this year’s Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, an intensive building campaign by Habitat for Humanity. Later this week, Karin will help to build one of the houses.

I wanted to peek at the Carters, and so, yesterday, Karin & I attended the “project launch,” which was held inside Notre Dame’s basketball gym in front of thousands of people. I thought Jimmy Carter might say a few words about the Bible. Alas, what transpired was an hour of mutual congratulation by the local bigwigs.

I did learn that one of the dignitaries – an architect named LeRoy Troyer, the designer of the main building of the Ark Encounter – had long worked with Habitat for Humanity, and that he’d been inspired by the Amish practice of raising barns.

David Letterman told a few jokes and introduced the Carters. Jimmy Carter said very little. Even so, he was the night’s best speaker. As the proverb has it: when you reach the end zone, you should “act like you’ve been there before”; that was what Jimmy Carter did.

Two commencements

First, I want to congratulate my Uncle Tim (my father’s brother). During the recent commencement ceremony at Bethel College, he was honored as the Professor of the Year.

Although he’s a philosophy professor, he has taught many other subjects, including biblical literature, Latin American cultural geography, and the history of sport, and he has served as Bethel’s archivist.

He moved to Bethel in 1993, having previously worked as a missionary at the Jamaica Theological Seminary and the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology in Kingston. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the University of Chicago, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. As an undergraduate, he studied at Fort Wayne Bible College, which later became Summit Christian College and then Taylor University Fort Wayne. (That campus is now defunct.) Relishing the overkill, he likes to decorate the back of his van with stickers from all these schools.

He wears a beard, a poncho, and a fishing hat. He says “Shalom” a lot. People call him Brother Tim. On a conformist campus, he’s something of a countercultural icon. People who don’t know him mistake him for a 1970s-style Christian hippie. He likes to talk about the persons and practices of our denomination (especially those of the early twentieth century), Christians in the developing world, missionaries, athletes, and ecclesiastical and collegiate politics. Secular politics hold little attraction for him. The same is true of logic, science, and anything that smacks of positivism. His vision of Christianity is both ecumenical and rooted in tradition.

He impresses those who listen to him. My sense is that the people at Bethel are less receptive to him than they used to be, and so this award may have come a bit late. But maybe I’m too pessimistic.

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I didn’t attend Bethel’s commencement. I usually avoid those ceremonies. Yesterday, however, Karin & I attended IUSB’s graduation ceremony, which was held at Notre Dame.

The keynote speech, given by the President of Indiana University, was a defense of truth. (You can read the version delivered in Bloomington.) The speech was rather bland even though it took a side in a perennial dispute.

You relativists and subjectivists! – the speech insinuated but didn’t say – Look where your way of thinking has led us! To Donald Trump! To “alternative facts!”

I wondered how many listeners understood.

I marveled at how utterly boring these mass graduations are. Hundreds of people must be recognized (they’ve paid tuition, after all). This leaves little time for anything significant. And yet … this is the last opportunity to teach these students. Why settle for a recital of platitudes? Even if these are platitudes that, embarrassingly, many academics now reject?

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We attended the commencement because I’d been invited to watch one of my tutees collect his master’s degree in social work.

I believe he’ll do a lot of good for the youth that he intends to serve. As a tutee, however, he often was difficult to work with.

During tutorials, he’d complain about the unspoken racism at IUSB.

If my own classmates can’t be genuine with me – he’d say – how are they going to be genuine with the population they’re going to work with?

Then he’d thank me for listening to him.

It’s like free therapy, he’d quip.

Well, I wasn’t prepared to be his therapist. Listening to him wore me out – especially on those occasions when he was irate with me.

But he liked me well enough, and I think I helped him to write better. And so, when he invited me to the commencement ceremony, Karin & I went. He was the very last person to receive his degree. He lagged a little behind everyone else in the ceremony – he walks with a cane – and so he had the whole stage to himself, and the audience cheered and cheered for him. It was very moving.

Afterward, Karin & I went to his graduation party at a restaurant in downtown South Bend. He greeted us warmly and went around introducing me to everyone. Karin & I were pleased for him, and we ate as many chicken wings as we could.

Idolatry … and the ark

“I feel that there is this moral high ground in higher education that is just sitting vacant.”

So laments one interviewee in The Hunting Ground, a documentary about the rape epidemic at colleges and universities across the USA.

When I heard that line, I rewound the video and listened to it again.

It seems to me that the moral high ground is indeed vacant. The schools pay lip-service to it, but do they actually dwell there?

One test is: What do they promote more? A self-sacrificing culture, or a self-serving one?

The movie depicts the horror of campus rape. Even more vividly, however, it details the idolatry – that’s the Christian term for it – of big-time higher education. The viewer is subjected to wave upon wave of athletic pageantry, of architectural pomp, of student servility. A poignant initial sequence shows highschoolers reading their acceptance emails, overjoyed to tie themselves to these lofty institutions.

This was my own feeling in 2000 when I was admitted to the University of Notre Dame.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I dodged that bullet. I ended up going to Bethel College, a rather campy school. Not long ago, Bethel’s homepage proudly showed a photo of the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, which a Bethel graduate helped to design.

Noah’s ark, of course, rests upon the highest ground of all.

The t-rex

Going to church we drove next to Notre Dame, per usual. It was graduation day. Antiabortionists were gathered in front of the campus to protest against the speaker, Joe Biden. Also present: the t-rex. Mary was very excited. “I never wanted anyone’s autograph,” she said, “but I wish I could have the t-rex’s autograph.”