Feelings surrounding my Notre Dame Weekend

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Feelings are part of our senses, too, so I’ll try to compress all the emotions that washed over me during this past football weekend at Notre Dame.

  • Awe. Notre Dame, first and foremost, is a Catholic institution of higher learning. While they are immensely proud of that, they do more than just tolerate other faiths — they embrace them. Yes, there are chapels in every dorm; yes, there are crucifixes in classrooms; and yes, there’s a 19-foot tall golden statue of Mary atop the Main Building. But nobody is forced to become Catholic; indeed, there’s a plethora of religious organizations on campus for a wide variety of faiths. That they all co-exist so serenely is inspiring (maybe the entire world should take note!).
  • Peace. Notre Dame’s campus is chock-full of places where one can contemplate. The sheer number of unusual-looking trees overshadowing wooden benches makes for a hallowed feeling. The 14-story Hesburgh Library offers plenty of places to read and stretch one’s mind. And the Grotto with its kneeling rail and vigil candles provides a spot where even the most troubled spirit can find calm.
  • Jealousy. I might sound like an old geezer here, but I’ve got to admit to a teeny bit of jealousy — at these kids’ youth, their brightness, their exuberance, the possibility that some of them will cure diseases or save lives or make the world a better place — and they’ve got time on their hands to do so.
  • Anticipation. You know that heart-racing excitement you get when something wonderful is about to happen, and it can’t happen fast enough for you? That’s it! This was my first time to hear what a 400-plus member Band sounds like, to be part of 81,000 screaming fans packed shoulder to shoulder in an open-air football stadium, to re-visit some of the spots on campus  I’d only glanced at on earlier (and busier!) trips, to see (in person, no TV commercial breaks!) a college football game again.
  • Self-satisfaction. Hey, I faced my fears, stepped out of my comfort zone, whatever you want to call it — and was rewarded with the adventure (and memory) of a lifetime! It doesn’t get much better than that!
  • Pride. Watching My Favorite Domer in his habitat, smiling at the ease with which he greets fellow students, realizing how seriously he takes his obligation of being in the Band and his studies, knowing this great university is the right place for him — well, I can’t help feeling proud. What a difference a few years make — as his mom, I still remember the brave little boy walking into preschool without looking back!

I’ll wrap up my journey down Memory Lane tomorrow — though this won’t be the last of my blogging. I’d love to hear your thoughts on my adventure!

Sights from Notre Dame

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Everybody knows “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

The “wordsmith” in me doesn’t particularly like that statement, but I’m realistic enough to know it’s probably a tru-ism. With that in mind, I’m sharing some of my favorite photos from my weekend at Notre Dame. Enjoy!

The Band of the Fighting Irish during march-out Friday afternoon

National Championship banners line the tunnel at Notre Dame Stadium

The Grotto for prayer and reflection

Bagpipe Band serenades campus

Some of the estimated 81,000 in attendance

Irish practice scrimmage before the game vs. Purdue

Students doing pushups after the Irish score some points

Post-game, football team faces student section and sings the Alma Mater

Tomorrow, I’ll add to this Memory Book from my first-of-many Notre Dame weekends to come!

Smells from Notre Dame

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Think you know where I’m going with this one, right?

As a writer, I have to “exercise” all my senses, and scent is definitely one of them. So here goes:

  • Incense. Mass at the Basilica on Sunday morning featured the newly-installed Bishop of Lafayette, IN. While he obviously was a Purdue fan, Notre Dame welcomed him, and he returned the welcome — dousing all of us with tons of blessed incense. Thank goodness for air conditioning, which helped clear the air!
  • Grilling. The individual dorms set up luncheon fare — brats, hot dogs, burgers, etc. — on the grounds outside, and students hawked their wares at passersby. The pungent odor of charcoal blended with the scent of magic markers (used to write out their prices on poster board signs).
  • Cigarettes. Being from Illinois, where smoking has been all-but-banned in every public space, I’ve gotten used to the clean smell of fresh air. Our neighbors to the East, however, haven’t opted for this type of law. Consequently, I found lots of cigar and cigarette smoke wafting across campus (though smoking IS banned in Notre Dame Stadium!)
  • Clothing. Because it turned cool early, people brought out hoodies, jackets, and jeans — all of which have a distinctive scent. Perhaps it’s mustiness from being in a closet or drawer for so long; maybe it’s simply newness from being purchased that day at the campus bookstore!
  • Brass. Band instruments made of brass — trumpets, trombones, tubas, etc. — offer up a metallic smell as their owners march past.
  • Dog. Surprisingly, many people brought their dogs to campus to watch the festivities. I saw a Puggle (Beagle-Pug mix), a Goldendoodle (Golden Retriever-Poodle mix), and many others (one wearing a cute Notre Dame bandanna!)
  • Grass. No, not the drug! I’m talking about freshly-cut green grass, the kind you walk on. The scent of mud blended with the grass and reminded me just how beautiful this campus is — in every season.
  • Beer. Okay, you knew I had to smell that! While officials are fairly rigid about prohibiting alcohol inside Notre Dame Stadium, tailgate parties were being held all over the place — parking lots, nearby hotels, and I expect dorms. In addition, I saw people carrying beer cans around campus, heard more than a few slurred words, and got a whiff of brew whenever people opened their mouths to talk or cheer.
  • Cologne. Not just on the women but on the men, too, in the form of after-shave lotion, antiperspirant, etc. Much better than plain-old sweat!

Join me as I do some more reminiscing tomorrow.

Sounds from Notre Dame

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Okay, I know most people would write about “sights” first, but I’ve always liked shaking things up a bit!

From the peace and calm of the Basilica and the Grotto to the wail of sirens, the screams of fans, and the blare of the Band, Notre Dame is a sea of sounds over a home football weekend.

  • The Grotto. How many universities in this country have their very own “prayer-place” where the silence weighs heavily despite the throngs nearby?
  • The Basilica. Commonly referred to as the “wedding factory” because of the sheer volume of weddings it hosts (never on football Saturdays, though!), the Basilica of the Sacred Heart is where the entire football team and coaching staff go — clad in suits and ties — before home games.
  • St. Mary’s and St. Joseph’s Lakes. Complete with a real swimming swan, no less.
  • The circle. Plenty of benches to rest you, fat squirrels to entertain you, shade to cool you (but, with temps hovering in the 50s and 60s, that certainly wasn’t necessary!)
  • Campus tours. Led by students who walk backwards while carrying on a running commentary, these are a great way to see campus and hear some interesting tidbits of the past and the present.
  • Bagpipe Band. Comprised of kilt-wearing students, this group parades around campus playing bagpipes and drums; they also hold a short concert on the morning of a home game.
  • Band of the Fighting Irish. Approximately 400-strong, this group is the heart and spirit of the University! Some of their traditions for football weekends include Trumpets in the Dome, a Concert on the Steps of the architecture building, march-outs around campus, as well as pregame, half-time, and post-game performances.
  • Clarke Memorial Fountain. AKA ‘Stonehenge,’ this limestone fountain features water splashing into a black granite pool; no matter the temps, you can find swimsuit-clad students (mostly males) with immense plastic blow-up rafts and other water toys awaiting the Band’s arrival and cheering wildly.
  • Leprechaun. Yes, a student chosen as the green-suited, acrobatic leprechaun to help the cheerleaders keep the noise pulsating before, during, and after games.
  • Fans. Dads playing an impromptu game of catch with their young sons, moms helping paint their daughters’ fingernails alternating colors of navy and gold, students running to and fro chattering excitedly, fans of the opposing team arriving and people actually being polite and nice to the visitors.
  • The Stadium. You just can’t help hearing “the Echos” of past generations in tradition-rich cheers, chants, and ceremonies — the blessing the players receive in the tunnel before the game, the singing of “America the Beautiful,” the raising of the American Flag, the playing of numerous school songs, and the singing of the Alma Mater at the conclusion, when the entire football team proceeds to the student section, links arms, and sways from side to side!

I’ll continue reminiscing tomorrow!

Notre Dame Football, part 1

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I just got back from my first football weekend at Notre Dame, and I’m stoked to capture it all! But, writer that I am, I took in so many impressions I’ll have to break them up over a few days’ time.

Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way today.

This was a BIG DEAL for me. I imagine lots of people go to college football games every year, but I’m one who hasn’t.

Not that I haven’t wanted to.

It’s just that I live 500 or so miles from my alma mater (Go Rebels!), and that’s a pretty far piece to travel for a three-hour game.

So I watch on TV every Saturday, screaming at the screen, yelling with the fans, and scaring my poor Sheltie senseless!

And even when I was an undergrad, I was in the Band all four years, so I never really had to figure out the logistics of attending a game. Things like: how do you get a ticket, where can you park, what can you bring (or not bring) into the stadium, how do you find your seat.

That sort of thing.

So last year, when My Favorite Domer asked me to come to a Notre Dame game, I panicked and put him off. Couldn’t get tickets, couldn’t get a hotel room.

‘Fraidy-cat. Big time.

This year, he tried again, only he was ready for my excuses. He fired up his laptop and found me a convenient hotel (so it was in the next county, but Indiana isn’t that big!); he even sent me a link to order my tickets online.

How could I refuse?

My sister (who’s been married forever) said I was very brave to try something like this by myself. Several friends, jealous they couldn’t get tickets for the season’s first game under a brand new coach, insisted I take LOTS of pictures so they could experience it vicariously. Even my mom volunteered to go with me and stay in the hotel “so I wouldn’t be alone.”

They thought I was NUTS for wanting to be alone!

But I wasn’t. There were 80,000-plus fans screaming right alongside me!

Tomorrow, I’ll share more sights and sounds from campus.

The fashionable heel, 2010

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I got my new issue of Lucky magazine recently and combed it cover to cover in hopes of finding that fashion designers had finally come to their senses and were showing classic, comfortable shoes again.

Sigh, it wasn’t to be.

Check these accidents-waiting-to-happen:

Spiky high heels

Yikes!

My niece is twenty-something and swears by this kind of high heel. It makes her look taller, she says.

I refuse to argue, but if I wanted to look that tall, I’d carry around a ladder with me!

Besides, after having crammed her feet into such high fashion shoes for the past several years, she’s now complaining about foot pain, bunions, and all the other ailments that go with mindless beauty.

Oh, sure, I used to wear high heels, too — back when I was young and mindless.

I had a pair of at-least-three-inch-pumps in every possible color — navy, black, maroon, beige, you-name-it. They were comfortable, they made me look taller and feel more confident, they immediately proclaimed me “off limits” to too-short men, and they were necessary so I didn’t have to re-hem my slacks.

But don’t expect me to wear those things now!

I picked up a pair yesterday at a department store, casually wondering how women get their feet inside, and had not one but two other women volunteer they’d never again wear such spike heels!

“I’d break my neck,” one said.

“My back already hurts,” added another.

The fashionistas are trying to convince us to shed our summertime flip-flops and sneakers, replacing them with more fall-like colors and styles. I understand that. It’s been a tough economy for everybody, and shoe manufacturers aren’t exempt.

But seeing these styles, I can’t help but fall to my knees and thank God I work for myself and don’t have to wear shoes at all if I don’t want to!

Lamination gone bad

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I’m so mad I could spit!!

My favorite Domer and I took several of his dorm room posters to a local copy shop this morning for laminating. He said they last much longer with that plasticky stuff front and back.

We picked them up and paid for them (close to $30), then went home. When we gave them a closer inspection, we were appalled to realize the ink had bled through. The backs were almost as printed as the fronts. The lines and letters were fuzzy, the colors were blurry, and the edges had all kinds of icky ink bumps on them.

I called the shop manager, explained our “disappointment” (in a nice way, mind you), and was told we “must not have noticed” the ink was bad when we dropped them off.

Huh?

That doesn’t fly, because we had looked them over very carefully beforehand.

I tried to tell her this, but she got all huffy and told me she isn’t to blame for laminating that goes wrong.

Really?

As a small business person myself, I understand how difficult it is to have to re-do a job. It’s time-consuming and you can’t simply re-bill for that time.

But oh how much worse it would be NOT to “make it right”!

One bad customer with an axe to grind can truly ruin your entire basket of business!

Most business people know this.

Take Wal-Mart, for example. If you’re not satisfied with a purchase, simply return it — they’ll credit the card you used for the purchase, give you cash for your return, or let you exchange it for something else.

Simple. And effective.

That’s why folks love Wally-world!

Why should a copy shop be any different?

Sure, they have a monopoly — especially in a small town — but does that excuse them from Basic Business Ethics 101??

We went back to the shop to show the manager what we meant. MFD insisted I wait in the car — at 19, he’s certainly old enough to register his own complaints!

He was back within minutes, steaming. The manager, he said, refused to do anything. Since his posters are obviously ruined, he asked if she would reprint the posters from his flash drive, then try the lamination again. No deal.

She was sticking to her guns and that was that.

Now he’s out the initial money to print the posters AND the money for the ruined lamination job!

This, on a college kid’s “allowance.”

Of course I checked her business out online, hoping to register a complaint there. She’s not accredited by the Better Business Bureau, nor is she a member of our city’s Chamber of Commerce.

Short of writing a scathing Letter to the Editor of our newspaper, I’m at a loss.

It makes my hackles rise that one puny excuse of a business owner can set such a sorry example for our youth!

And you can bet we won’t step foot inside her shop again!

Thinking about Accents

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After I got home from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I was on the phone with one of my clients, who observed, “I can tell you went south for your vacation. You’re dropping “g’s” all over the place!”

Yes, I am.

It doesn’t take long for me to pick up a Southern accent!

Blame it on the fact that I was reared by two Southerners and was saying “y’all” before I even went off to kindergarten. I also went to college in the south and lived and worked in Mississippi and Texas for a number of years.

The whole thing’s even more prominent when I have a cold.

I make no apologies for my accent, and I’m pretty sure my client wasn’t poking fun at it. We all have to be from some place, and the majority of us pick up the accents we’re around the most.

Accents help us “categorize” each other. If you’ve got a halfway decent ear and a bit of experience, you can pinpoint at least the region a person hails from by his accent.

Most of the time.

Early in my career, I worked for a woman from Mississippi who admitted she’d taken elocution lessons and spent countless dollars to rid herself of a southern accent. It sounded rednecky, she told me.

How sad.

Just because a person’s from Hicksville doesn’t mean he’s a hick. By the same token, simply having a British accent does not confer the monarchy on you!

For years, a “flat, Midwestern accent” was considered the ideal when it came to TV anchors and other readers of the news (think Walter Cronkite). Everybody, it seemed, wanted to hear vowels and consonants pronounced the same way.

But even across the Midwest, there are many varieties of accent. A person from southern Illinois certainly speaks differently than a resident of Minnesota, for example, and “city folk” use different expressions than rural residents.

Because our society is so mobile today, I suspect even more shifting of accents will occur over time.

Still, isn’t it fascinating to talk to strangers and really listen to not only what they say but how they say it?

Of Tar balls and Heat

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Now that I’ve just about caught up from being on vacation, I can write about my experiences.

We traveled to Gulfport, MS. That’s all the way down south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Right there where BP’s tar balls were coming ashore.

No, I didn’t see any. In fact, what I saw were pristine, sandy beaches, with brand-new palm trees, piers, roadways, and new construction.

The Coast has come a long way from the state it was in five years ago after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the place.

Oh, sure, there’s much to be done — like getting the residents back, getting the businesses back, getting the hope and joy and spirit of fun back.

But, fellow travelers, don’t expect to see slime all over the beaches.

It ain’t there.

Don’t expect to find a wealth of homes and businesses sprouting up waterside, either.

The Mississippi Coast used to boast fabulous antebellum homes with sprawling lawns, profuse flowers, immense live oaks, and splendid views of the water. Home after home lined Highway 90, from the eastern state line to the west.

No more.

Katrina took care of that.

The owners of such “mansions” either moved farther inland or abandoned the area entirely.

What’s there now pales in comparison.

“Homes on stilts” or “hurricane-proof” structures are the wave of the present, thanks to more stringent construction laws.

Which were needed.

But it’s still sad to see.

Many of the restaurants and other businesses, too, relocated, meaning you have to work a bit harder and drive a bit farther to find your favorite places. But, as I was told, there’s no recession on the Coast when it comes to food — everybody, it seems, is eating out and enjoying it!

What I wasn’t prepared for was the heat and humidity.

You expect July to be hot. It’s hot in Central Illinois; it’s hot out East; shoot, it’s hot in Russia!

But this was beastly heat, the kind that sucks the energy right out of you, the kind that’s flat-out dangerous to be in.

So I stayed inside. With the air conditioning. And felt sorry for those who had to be out in the heat.

Vacation time

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Quick — what’s the worst thing about being on vacation?

The hassle of packing?

The agony of resting from work?

The relaxing of standards of diet and exercise?

Nope, it’s the being unconnected from things!

I took a few days off recently (more about that another time!), and even though I hauled my laptop with me, I found whole hours — even days! — passing without my turning it on.

To check e-mail.

To read blogs.

To do any work.

To simply catch up with the news.

I know, I know. Most people would say, “What’s the problem with that? You were on vacation.”

True, but when you like your “work” as much as I do, it’s not work.

It is vacation!

So, online friends, please forgive me for not commenting on your blogs or replying to your e-mail messages. I really didn’t fall down a hole.

I missed you, and your wit, and your thoughtful comments. I missed hearing what was going on in your world. I missed laughing with you, crying with you, seething with you.

I missed our connection.

And, even though there’s an immense pile of stuff screaming for my attention, it’s good to be back.