Japan and Its Empire Tempted Fate... 84 years ago, Sunday morning, today.

    Times have changed in one short life span. Long life span. My father is 88, and blessed, and remembers a ton of the past. Seeing Harry Truman elected on the local TV in his hometown of Massachusetts. 1948. Three years after the same man who succeeded Roosevelt dropped the H-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    In my shorter lifetime, as a formative teen in the 1980s, Japan seemed like a nation and economy that threatened U.S. supremacy in the world. We did not fear or feel intimidated so much by China in those years as we did by the productive and formidable Japan. The place that we forced to submit with the atomic weapons when they struck us so forcefully four plus years before, that fateful Sabbath morning. Then came Korea, and Vietnam.

    Later the Middle East became part of the mix of our opponents in world competitiveness and violence.

    Always somewhere must pose a threat. If not the grand Soviet Union, nor Communist China of the People, then a nation or a group must rise up against the United States and its allies. Sometimes it is within. We ourselves become our mortal enemies.

    We compete one with another in matters of finance, money, estate, property, trust. We legislate laws and attempt to enforce them to keep us safe and avoid being preyed upon. Internally, domestically, we take care of ourselves. We try.

    There are public and private threats, and we always look for the foreign angles of infringement upon us. Latin American drug runners, the Chinese pushing precursors that funnel through Mexico or possibly Ecuador, other countries.

    Japan is a big friend now, an ally, a buffer to China and other notorious threats from around the globe.

    We lost 200,000 men and some women against Japan in the early 1940s. We still recover their bodies this past year. 231 from the fiscal year of 2025, many from World War II.

    Because of the threats from abroad, the Japanses first, then the Germans, with their European cohorts.

    May we always stay vigilant and strong, may we continue to be friends of Japan, and help them help us.

    We need all the help we can get.

    Till next year.

 Indiana Beats Ohio State 13-10. I Must Comment, Right?

    I, of all people, should comment and celebrate, right?

    Am I rite?

    Of course.

    From 2006 to 2009 I blogged about sports, with Indiana basketball and football being a huge part of it. It is who I am.

    Now, Indiana and Cignetti sit in the top sport, the hot bird seat? Hot bird. No, no. Whatever the expression. Cat bird? Yes, that sounds more like it.

    OSU did not impress me too much all year, although unbeaten, showed some weaknesses at times. But all the teams show those frailties, including the bigger powers Alabama and Georgia, and recently Texas Tech, who crunched my Cougars a second time this season, earlier in the day in Arlington, Texas.

    IU has a probable Heisman candidate in quirky, innocent, ebullient, Fernando Mendoza. 

    Wow.

    We are near the pinnacle, but the College Football Playoff awaits.

    In my normal world, I would be floating and ecstatic. But, 2025 has not been the normal world for me. Health, family, economics, jobs, has made it more sobering and I derive some ironic or somewhat less pleasure from the sporting news.

    I am older, and more tried, and I get it more when people say that they could care less.

    But, there is still the care-free boy and fan in me, too.

    May I always be.

    Go, Hoosiers! A possible national championship in football?

    While IU is thumped by Louisville. In the round ball sport.

    We cannot have everything, Hoosiers.

    Happiness, sadness, victory and defeat.

    Well, okay, yes.

We Think about Money Too Much

 We Think about Money Too Much

    I know I do. Or, maybe not enough.

 Another IU B-ball Coach makes me Question His Savvy-- Little Stuff Matters

    His name is DeVries. Rhymes with peeves, or Reeves. I have liked his coaching and decisions so far this season, his first in Bloomington, but tonight there were some lapses in judgment. I hope he improves, for the Hoosiers' sake. Us fans. The legacy of futility since Bobby Knight left decades ago. A huge portion of my life ago. It has been too long since we had superior players, coaches, teams.

    

    IU stayed ahead of Minnesota on the road in the first half, but we lost it in the last 7 seconds. Which deflated the team the rest of the way. Walk off the court with better, smarter shots. When the Gophers hit a game tying three to tie up the game at 33, there was over six seconds left on the clock, and three IU players collided with each other and knocked each other  down to the floor. 

    

    Coach! Call a time out? No. Players are banged up, literally lying on the floor in pain, maybe concussed. There are six seconds left, you have 3 or 4 time outs to use, (UTILIZE), and you do not call one, your players scramble to get off a terrible possession and shot.

    I am not perfect as a person, I make terrible decisions, probably on a daily basis, but I am not getting paid millions to coach a big time college program. To win.

    What should have happened?

    Obvious. Call the time out! 

    I hate this trend of not taking advantage of the end of first half last possession. Opportunities squandered.

    Mike Davis. Kelvin Sampson. Tome Crean. Arhcie Miller. Mike Woodson.

    Et tu, Bruto?

    Please Darian DeVries. 

    Make better decisions to help your team win. What would Bobby do?

    And the lost challenge with 18:32 left in the second half? By the way, the ball was lost of off Coner Enright, who bugs me by not directing the ball in the direction of the basket. The goal is the goal, POINT GUARD.

    Oy ve.

    The players made some poor plays and bad choices, not their night that much on the road.

    But coach, you need to give your players a better fighting chance to succeed.

    Please. Be that guy, that winner.

    Each possession matters a lot.

    Go IU. Fight, fight, fight!

    And be smarter.

 Ghetto Description -- Missing in Everything

    A few years ago, maybe twenty or so, I wrote my description of the ghetto, at least in the United States. It was a paragraph or two, talking about abandoned or empty lots, with the lack of good resources with maybe only liquor stores being around, not even gas stations.

    A friend of my daughter called it a place of "medical wastelands."

    I could not find it in my blog or my searches.

    Maybe someday.

    But the ghettos stay the same, more or less. Poverty, danger, blight, and lack of good things.

    Hmmmm...

 Boston Danger! He is no Stranger

    Sung to the tune of the coolest melody in the universe.

    Boston Danger!

    He is not a stranger!

    To me!

    He was a cutie patootie!

    But now he's bigger.

    He is dashing and handsome!

    (Quite the dapper dansome!)

    Winsomely bodacious

    Sweet and gracious

    All around loquacious 

    Magnana macious!

    He is no hirsute homunculus troglodyte

    Boston is smooth and svelte and all alright!

    He is the top of the tippity top cooler guys,

    He is funny and smart and ever the wise.

    He. Is. 

    Boston Danger! 

    He is no stranger.

    A friend to many

    And I don't mean just any...

    He is a growing warrior

    A mirth destroyer

    A budding man of promise

    Forget Lorenzo Llamas

    He IS Boston Danger!

    So don't forget his name,

    Nor slight his game.

    Cuz next thing you know...

    He'll be at your doh!

    So watch out world.

    He's on the prowl

    And you got nothing on him.

    Yeah.

    The end.

    For now.

    

    

 Poem of Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Verses

    Happy to not work this happy Thursday, 

    Spend time with family.

    The wife preparing for more meals

    The kids doing their youthful things, with friends and with each other.

    Part of me searching my soul, looking for past memories

    Keyword typing into my blog of eleven past years,

    Where I knew that I described the ghetto, defining it as I witnessed it

    

    Speaking, charlando with the daughter's friend

    Of poor neighborhoods, parts of cities that lack resources

    Medical wastelands, as she called it

    She, learning and experimenting at the psychological hospital

    Turning back, to me, to us.

    I can feel cheap and tawdry,

    Like maybe old clothes are too old and spent.

    Like maybe my money should be further spreading, more secure.

    That I should be wealthier and more secure, in all facets.

    For this I give thanks? What would be or could be?

    Am I thankful, really, at all, for what I have?

    What do we have?

    Peace. Food. Shelter.

    Love. Hope. Fellowship.

    Family.

    Creature comforts and entertainments.

    Jobs and careers that provide sustainment and enrichment.

    Are there things that we lack, itches that remain to be scratched?

    Sure, definitely, most assuredly, I and we lack so many things...

    Are we grateful for that?

    I think that we should be. 

    Grateful for the things, the life, the abundance and the richness that I do know and enjoy.

    Thanks for all the fish, thanks for Jon Phoenix at Camp Arif Jan, thankful for all of it.

    My parents, living and dead, my sisters, and former step-siblings and nieces and nephews.

    I write this now.

    For you and me and all who who may hear:

    We rejoice in thanksgiving,

    For life and what it means, and our places in it.

    Amen.