Black History Month, Indiana Basketball, Bill Garrett, the Big Man

    I was thinking about writing about how big men in basketball can determine how really successful teams do in their games, their trajectories.

    Ed Pinckney was big enough to counter Patrick Ewing for one huge game and upset in 1985. I loved it.

    Two years later, Dean Garrett for my hometown IU Hoosiers was big enough to pull through for arguably my favorite sports team of all time, the Indiana men's team of 1987.

    Ahh, what a team, what memories it inspires in me.

    Today in 2026 we have Sam Alexis and Reed Bailey. Will they be enough for any run in March? Obviously the forwards and guards will likely have the most say in the team's results, but notable big men over the years can make a profound difference.

    It starts in the middle.

    Brigham Young has a few, but we remain to see the effects of Abdullah, Keita, Mboup and perhaps a little Mihaelovic.

    Okay, but what about this Bill guy, mentioned above?

    I have written of it before: the Big Ten in the 1940s did not permit integrated sports with black athletes and the whites who competed.

    However, Indiana's best hoops player was Bill Garrett, a tremendous center who was fresh out of a stellar high school career. IU bucked the racial rule, and took the center.

    Policies change, and this was a good thing. This was the future.

    Talent begets fairness, or competitiveness demands the best. Right?

    Right.

    We should celebrate the integration of sports more than only Jackie Robinson in baseball.

    It all worked for today's good.

   And there is much good still to be made. Including Indiana basketball. 

    PS: What happened to the IU women? They have lost their mojo...

    The men have been working on it for decades.

    Happy Black history month, all.

    Celebrate the big and small achievements, the steps of advancement and little and big victories.

 bob knight quoting abe lincoln about friendship

Ralph Ellison - Where is Thy Jury?

    It is still out. I will withhold the verdict for now.

    But Black History month will continue. Forever, as we may presume.

    To be determined.

    Hmmmmmm.... - I am thinking of a first response a day later.

    So far in, almost 100 pages into the book, I find it somewhat disturbing for a few reasons. Is that the point? Is Ellison trying to evoke the disturbances of the reader? 

    Is this is aim?

    I find him sexist, and rather egregiously pedantic. Maybe, yeah.

    Okay, I said those things.

    I will write next about basketball...

 Black History Month - Part III

    I feel like I have shared this before. It stays with me, so I share it again.

    At my old building, I was moving through my fifties, perhaps fighting some weariness or angst. It was not unwarranted. I had a younger cohort, who is African-American, and we had some conversations, mostly good. I got him upset when I told him of some positive (what I thought) experiences and interactions with Black history. Like, my family members help uncover unknown and mostly forgotten graves of African-Americans. A couple other things, which I see or saw as positive. He took umbrage, seeing me as a white guy, I guess. 

    To each his own. Maybe it was my tone? Maybe it was where I was then, or where he was. Divorced, with a small child, leaving military after a good jaunt. Me, sort of the opposite. But older. Wiser? Maybe, maybe not.

    I told him that I identified with some of the struggles of the enslaved, or certain Black people who toiled. Perhaps not so succinctly or well said.

    "That's weird," he replied.

    Yeah. Yes, I am weird.

    Sometimes I feel the pains and travails of peoples. Black. White. Brown.

    All of them.

 Black History Month - 20 aut 26

    Is that how we spell aut? No, maybe it is ought. No.

    I am not much of a gun guy; I do not think that I will be one at this stage of my life. Perhaps a series of many disappointments, but not anything remarkable, and nothing too tragic. Yet. Not planning on it.

    Guns affect many folks; some more than others. Our country has its own predilection with weapons and rifles and hand weapons. I did not wish to start on this subject, but here we are. I am here.

    February, and we celebrate Black History, which I and many of us think is a thing. Worth reviewing, percolating, explaining. Recognizing.

    In my old building I had a co-worker that I would share things about Black, this usually, African-American history. There is a lot out there. Things to know and remember, learn and learn. All of its history is the history of all of us.

    I am reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, which I thought that I had read some before... Maybe not. I have issues with it, but I will save the last or later replies for later. Reserve the final judgment, as they say. Opinions and sentiments can change over time.

    There are a lot of African-Americans in the building where I work. Perhaps a disproportionate number compared to the average population, I do not know. I see them, they see me. We say hello, and sometimes we exchange pleasantries. Or longer conversations.

    All of them, mostly, building me or others. Positivity. 

    Black history is happening around us, whether we are aware or conscious or not.

    We are not invisible, as Ralph has implied. We are seen.

    In 2026. 

    Celebrate, my brothers and sisters!

    Add some emotion, some love, some care, some compassion.

 Black History Month, My History, Our History

    In some Februaries past, I was in my old building, more or less happily and securely employed, thinking that I was not the most successful person, but progressing in a steady way toward fulfillment in al facets. Employment, family, goals, dreams. 

    Things can change, this we know.

    Things did change. I left that building, and I struggled to find the next place.

    It can be hard to write such things, to review these things, to share these circumstances. I have not left, nor will parts of me leave them.

    Personal histories have privations and struggles, as do those of peoples, whole millions and millions of men, women, and children...

    TO BE CONTINUED. BLACK HISTORY MONTH.

 Developing a Joke Part IV

    An Inuit boy said to a polar bear: what's a Nootka?

    The bear replied: "I don't know. What a nootka with you?"

 Developing a Joke Part III

    The Nootka boy said to the Tlingit girl, also called Klingit, that the Nez Perce were a bunch of southern nincompoops, who did not know how to survive in even a foot of snow! He explained how he had met some Pierced Noses, and they talked like they had pine cones in their mouths.

    Meanwhile, the Haida grandpa told the Kwakiutl grandma about the crazy Inuit way up north, who lived in months of endless days and endless nights, and there were some white people who lived like that, but that they ate less caribou and whale blubber. How could people do that.

    The grandma blanched.