New Ball Game??

     Is it possible for someone to live too long? At the ripe old age of two, in 1923, the year Babe Ruth built his house, I became a dyed in the pin stripes Yankee baseball fan. Last week, at the end of September, 2008, the wrecking ball leveled the famous stadium.

     What else to liven up national news. Senator Ted Kennedy had a brush with death, but Actor Paul Newman was not so lucky. I was unable to fight off sleep during the first presidential debate and had to shake off fears of a second Great Depression, having barely survived the first one in the 1930s.

     To block a second Great Depression, Bush’s men and those massive brains in Congress poured billions of taxpayers’ money down a rat hole called Wall Street. At least during the first one, financiers had the gumption to jump out of skyscraper windows. Other differences should include longer bread lines for starving families and more unemployed men riding the rails.

     Who should be blamed for today’s economic meltdown? Lots of finger pointing going on. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why. So all the government agents and the wise financial manipulators had no idea why the apple fell. The first Great Depression was blamed on Republican President Herbert Hoover so who is president today?   

     According to Rush Limbaugh, czar of the slime bag media, the economic crisis was caused by Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. On his own program, a listener by the name of Evelyn, broke through Snerdly’s screen and took a shot at Rush.

EVELYN: Think you can tell your listeners what they should think? Let people make up their own minds who they should vote for! Let your listeners think for themselves.

RUSH: Wait a minute, are you trying to get me banned from voicing my opinion?

EVELYN: Yes, you, Michael Moore and- -

RUSH: Are you comparing me to Michael Moore, that big bloated windbag?

EVELYN: That’s exactly what you are. Your mother should be ashamed of you.

RUSH: (tears in his voice) My mother loved me!

Evelyn was then cut off.

So many of our financial problems can be spelled out in one word: OIL. John McCain’s solution is “drill baby, drill,” instead of “invent, baby, invent our own ways of producing energy.”

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

  

     With the Yankees eliminated from the pennant race, I hereby turn my attention to the Chicago Cubs, still in the running but not until I publish my bookentitled, “How I Jinxed the Cubs in 2008.” That should get the goat of everybody in the windy city. Believe me, I know my baseball.

     In a 1980 article entitled “Waiting for George to Call,” the writer satirized my unending love of the Yankees.

   

 

Catch Anyone?

Culver’s Man of the Theater:

Still Waiting for George to Call

   By Paul Hamer ‘68

    

     No phantom or hunchback lurks beneath Eppley Auditorium. Instead, there is Harvey Firari; and, as likely as not, he can be out back playing catch with the stage crew.

     As befits a man of the theater, he wears many costumes: teacher, playwright, director, as well as baseball pitcher manqué. His actual day-to-day costume might be called military surplus chic – tie-less epauletted shirts, cargo jeans, moccasins. His deeply tanned face sets off silver aviator-style frames and silvering hair combed forward but not quite reaching his forehead. His smile creases his face in a straight line from side to side, and he exudes casual comfort.

     His “green room” office seems to reflect his personality. One might find just about anything there. But there are also reminders that this is the office of a man of achievement. Several framed citations lie in a pile, waiting to be displayed: Notable Americans for “outstanding service to community and state,” Who’s Who in the Midwest for having “demonstrated outstanding achievement… and thereby, contributed significantly to the betterment of society.” Beneath a shelf is a box of softball equipment: balls, bat, gloves, even a cap. Almost buried is a tennis trophy, a reminder that he was once a tennis coach.  

     Harvey has been director of theater since 1968, he still teaches two courses: Theater Skills and Drama. The Theater Skills course is new, and Harvey is on summer sabbatical now, working on a text-manual for it.

     Much of the energy that now goes into directing once went into writing for the theater. He first achieved recognition in 1959, when he was awarded the William Morris Fellowship for excellence in writing while studying at Yale. Last year his play “The Party” was named a finalist in competition for the Forest A. Roberts Playwriting Award from Northern Michigan University. He has written more than a dozen plays, many of them performed in Eppley Auditorium, including two about Indiana natives James Whitcomb Riley and Ernie Pyle.

     Harvey has his own style of directing which reflects the teacher in him. Rehearsals begin with discussions. “I try to help the cast discover the core of the play we want to perform. What is it really about? Why was it written? Where is the author coming from? We question each other: Why did you do it that way.”

     Of course, if this doesn’t happen, I will superimpose my own interpretation; but I prefer this exploration, and, if we have time, rehearsals are devoted to discussions which help the students find the characters for themselves.”

     Students respond positively to this style, which allows them to cultivate their own creativity.

     Baseball is his sport. He reached the acme of his career when the Ineppley Players (“Catch three in a row and you’re off the team – overqualified”), which he captained, defeated a team from the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and he won the coveted New York Yankee jacket, donated by George Steinbrenner himself, which he still proudly wears for faculty games – and, yes, a lot of catch out behind the theater.

     By the way, Jennifer or Hal, if you’re reading this, my jacket was stolen in the theater so would you please send me another one? Jenny did a splendid job as lead actress in Our Town, and Hal was a very competent Auditorium Lt.--well-trained to lead the Yankees back to their glory days.     

      A final word as the election approaches, remember to vote for the man who promises least; he’ll be the least disappointing.