Mini-U, 2024 (Part 1)

June 21

You don’t need to be a data scientist to connect the dots between the readership plunge for traditional journalism, Trump’s sustained popularity, and some stunning recent statistics, like the 17 percent of voters who blame the pro-abortion rights President Joe Biden for overturning ‘Roe v. Wade’, or the 49 percent who believe U.S. unemployment is at a 50-year high when it’s at a 50-year low. Many voters aren’t afraid of looming autocracy because 76 percent of Americans know little or nothing about Project 2025, the far-right’s 900-page blueprint for a Trump dictatorship. ~ Will Bunch

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. ~ Benjamin Franklin

We left hearth and home at 6:30 A.M. on June 7. 12 1/2 hours and 798.5 miles later we arrived at Ruthie’s sister’s (Rita) home in Nashville, Indiana. Ruthie drove the entire trip (it’s fine with me because she does not make a good passenger). As indicated by the title of this screed, we were there to attend Mini-U at Indiana University in Bloomington. This was Mini-U’s 53rd year, it was the 4th for Ruthie and me – 2017, 2022-2024 (2020 and 2021 were COVIDed out). As Woody Allen postulated in Annie Hall, ”Cause adult education’s a wonderful thing. You meet a lotta interesting professors.’

Mini-U is a week long event. This year there were 67 classes available for the 400 attendees – registration for classes is very similar to how we did it in our original college days. Most of the attendees had one class every morning and two classes every afternoon, with occasional evening classes tossed in to see if we could remain awake that long. All-in-all, a good educational time was had by all. ~ Me

The only good thing about [aging] is you’re not dead. ~ Lillian Hellman [Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist, and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–1952. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a drop in her income. Many praised Hellman for refusing to answer questions by HUAC, but others believed, despite her denial, that she had belonged to the Communist Party (Wikipedia).]

June 7

I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Beanblossom, also spelled Bean Blossom, is an unincorporated community in Brown County. The town was named for the nearby Beanblossom Creek, which was in turn named for a person whose surname was Beanblossom. Beanblossom is located about four miles (6 km) north of Nashville (population 1,258) at the intersection of state roads 45 and 135 (Wikipedia).]

People change and forget to tell each other. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Beanblossom (population 3,133) on Bill Monroe Memorial Highway.]

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Bean Blossom is best known as the home of the Bill Monroe Memorial Music Park and Campground, a 55-acre (220,000 m²) wooded campground which for more than 60 years has hosted music performances (mostly country and bluegrass), first at the Brown County Jamboree barn and currently at outdoor stages. A bluegrass festival (currently called the Bill Monroe Memorial Festival) has been held every June since 1967 and is the longest continuously-running bluegrass festival in the world (Wikipedia).]

June 8

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Rita thought Ruthie really needed to carb-up after her long previous-day’s drive . . . ]

It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Early trip highlight: Rita’s 50-year old dishwasher (the same age as her daughter) crapped out the day before we arrived. Remember when push buttons were really buttons?]

You lose your manners when you are poor. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Our fellow classmates from Ft. Wayne arranged a pontoon ride on Lake Monroe for all of us the day before reporting for classes. The lake is 10,750 acres in size (Editor’s note: Think Gull Lake in Nisswa), the largest body of water in Indiana. Its watershed covers 441 square miles, extending into six counties. The lake itself is in Monroe County, with portions extending into Brown and Jackson counties. Maximum lake depth is 54 feet with an average depth of 17.3 feet. Capacity varies from 292 gigalitres (237,000 acre⋅ft) to 428 gigalitres (347,000 acre⋅ft) depending on water level (lakemonroewaterfund.org).]

Success isn’t everything but it makes a man stand straight. ~ Lillian Hellman

[The Biddies heading down to the docks and our pontoon . . . ]

There are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. And other people who stand around and watch them eat. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Looking back from Fourwinds Marina at the hotel from an incredible marine display of rental pontoons . . . ]

Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped. ~ Lillian Hellman

[A view of available watercraft . . . ]

If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody’s mercy, then you will probably write melodrama. ~ Lillian Hellman

[And more of the same . . . ]

Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge’s chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view. ~ Lillian Hellman

[And even more of the same . . . ]

Unjust. How many times I’ve used that word, scolded myself with it. All I mean by it now is that I don’t have the final courage to say that I refuse to preside over violations against myself, and to hell with justice. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful trip, That started from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny ship, The mate was a mighty sailing man, The skipper brave and sure, Five passengers set sail that day, For a three hour tour, a three hour tour . . . ]

What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Rita, Vick, Ruthie, and Scott (a/k/a, the DOM) . . . ]

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. ~ Lillian Hellman

It’s a sad day when you find out that it’s not accident or time or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Entering the lake . . . ]

I’m too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself. ~ Lillian Hellman

[A restaurant boat . . . ]

Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Prototypical Minnesota-type lake home . . . ]

[France] may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Prototypical Minnesota-type pontoon . . . ]

(I did not connect the grown men and women in literature with the grown men and women I saw around me. They were, to me, another species.) ~ Lillian Hellman

[Well, this is a lake created from a river . . . ]

Very thin ladies, any age, with hand sewing on them, have always frightened me, beginning with a rich great-aunt and her underwear embroidered by nuns. The more bones that show on women the more inferior I feel. ~ Lillian Hellman

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America. ~ Lillian Hellman

Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? ~ Lillian Hellman

[The public cruise ship . . . ]

Nobody knows what you want except you, and no one will be as sorry as you if you don’t get it. ~ Lillian Hellman

Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did. ~ Lillian Hellman

[The Ft. Wayners at the helm . . . ]

Drinking makes uninteresting people matter less and late at night, matter not at all. ~ Lillian Hellman

Fashions in sin change. ~ Lillian Hellman

[The Biddies at rest . . . ]

You can’t recover from what you do not understand. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Contrary to what you may think you see in the background, Indiana does not have snowcapped mountains . . . ]

Nowadays people write English as if a rat were caught in the typewriter and they were trying to hit the keys which wouldn’t disturb it. ~ Lillian Hellman

Don’t you think people often say other people are tough when they do not know how to cheat them? ~ Lillian Hellman

[We’ve arrived at the causeway from our start at the Fairfax area (see map at the top) . . . ]

Freedom costs you a great deal. ~ Lillian Hellman

[The causeway . . . ]

. . . I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group. ~ Lillian Hellman

You do too much. Go and do nothing for a while. Nothing. ~ Lillian Hellman

No one can argue any longer about the rights of women. It’s like arguing about earthquakes. ~ Lillian Hellman

Mama seemed to do only what my father wanted, and yet we lived the way my mother wanted us to live. ~ Lillian Hellman

You are what you are. It is my opinion that trouble in the world comes from people who do not know what they are, and pretend to be something they’re not. ~ Lillian Hellman

Rebels seldom make good revolutionaries, because organized action, even union with other people, is not possible for them. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Putting the propeller to the metal as we sprint for home . . . ]

Callous greed grows pious very fast. ~ Lillian Hellman

[The DOM occasionally liked to drive from an upright position . . . ]

Courtesy is breeding. Breeding is an excellent thing. Always remember that. ~ Lillian Hellman

[After our cruise, we dined at Sahm’s at Eagle Point Golf Club . . . ]

I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now. ~ Lillian Hellman

[The drive home to Nashville . . . ]

How often the rich like to play at being poor. A rather nasty game, I’ve always thought. ~ Lillian Hellman

A room of one’s own isn’t nearly enough. A house, or, best, an island of one’s own. ~ Lillian Hellman

Maybe money is unreal for most of us, easier to give away than things we want. ~ Lillian Hellman

[Arriving in beautiful downtown Nashville, 18.6 miles directly east of Bloomington . . . ]

Fear comes with middle age. ~ Lillian Hellman

[12.9 miles]

June 9

Haven’t you lived in the South long enough to know that nothing is ever anybody’s fault? ~ Lillian Hellman

[18.6 miles with John Mellencamp’s house somewhere in between . . . ]

History is made by masses of people. One man, or ten men, don’t start the earthquakes and don’t stop them either. Only hero worshipers and ignorant historians think they do. ~ Lillian Hellman

[The Biddies at Bruster’s in Bloomington. An automatic stop place like the DQ in Albany and the Tip Top in Osakis . . . ]

We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them. ~ Lillian Hellman

As one grows older, one realizes how little one knows about any relationship, or even about oneself. ~ Lillian Hellman

[As students at IU, The Biddies seldom missed an IU basketball game . . . ]

It doesn’t pay well to fight for what we believe in. ~ Lillian Hellman

I’m good at embroidery. It’s what I always wanted to do…. Yep, instead of whoring, I just wanted to do fancy embroidery. ~ Lillian Hellman

[A personal claim to fame. As personal valet to Basketball Dan, we attended the 1976 NCAA championship game at the Spectrum in Philadelphia where Indiana defeated Michigan to complete an undefeated season. No team has subsequently accomplished that feat . . . ]

The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be. ~ Lillian Hellman

Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it’s a stinking way to create. ~ Lillian Hellman

I’ve always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays . . . It’s a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you’ve done. ~ Lillian Hellman

[I was able to join The Biddies in a photo op when a guy from Nebraska showed up. He was there as just a fan of college campuses . . . ]

A man should be jailed for telling lies to the young. ~ Lillian Hellman

[The Perfect Season . . . ]

We all lead more pedestrian lives than we think we do. The boiling of an egg is sometimes more important than the boiling of a love affair in the end. ~ Lillian Hellman

[The Biddies with the IU football stadium . . . ]