It's been a quiet week.  Spring arrives in town, young people begin to go outside without jackets, and Lyle Janske runs the high school basketball concessions stand to take his mind off his son's illness.

Oh, just one more thing...

I'm guessing that the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Channel is going to start adding Columbo to its schedule, because they have a Columbo Marathon all weekend -- and beyond -- on now.  Wall-to-wall episodes the rest of today, through the night, all day Sunday and until 9 AM (Los Angeles time) on Monday.

So, if you're a fan of the show -- as I am, big time -- check to see if you get HMM.

While looking for something else, I came across this video and found it to be quite wonderful, so I thought I'd post it here.  It's not a song I've ever heard, it's just a joy of a performance.

This comes from a show by a Canadian Klezmer group, Beyond the Pale.  They were doing a show at a coffeehouse in Berkeley, California. The Freight and Salvage.  It turned out that legendary performer Theodore Bikel was in the audience, so they invited him up on stage and asked him to play a number.

It should be noted that this is from just five years ago, when Mr. Bikel was 86 at the time.  And had no vocal warm-up or rehearsal.  It's just a little, Russian folk song, and he sits down, plays and sings the bejeepers out of it, the mark of someone who has been doing this for probably close to 70 years and has a pretty good idea how it's done.  The band joins in and does a nice job filling in an impromptu backup, but they know they're with someone in another league.

Before they help him head back to his seat in the audience...

When former University of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith passed away last February 7, it got a great deal of coverage.  Smith was one of the winningest coaches coaches in NCAA history, but more than he was was beloved.  

Beloved has the potential to be an overused word, but in Dean Smith's case it was well-deserved.  Former players not only stayed in touch with him, decades after, but more than just stayed in touch, they continually came to him for advice on among the most personal and important matters in their lives.  He was seen as much as a second father-figure to them.  And by "them," I don't mean former players who went on to other, less-visible careers, but people like Michael Jordan, not known for his touchy-feely outreach to others.

This kind of personal connection with his players is rare for any coach, but especially for one in the highest reaches of a sport, where survival there is so cut-throat.  The only other coach I'm aware of who was at that vaunted a level and maintained that much affection was UCLA's John Wooden.

But these are just words.  Let me give just one example of how and why Dean Smith was so beloved by his players:

He bought all of his former lettermen dinner -- all of them.  After his death.

Really.

Thanks to a Tweet sent out yesterday by one of the recipients, it turns out that in Dean Smith's will, he left a provision where all 180 of his former lettermen players received a check for $200, specifically to have dinner, on the coach.

That is known as an act of graciousness.  And probably explains more than anything why when people says Dean Smith was beloved...they mean it.

The funniest conclusion of this story is that it might not even cost the Smith estate much of anything.  As one sports commentator said on ESPN, "How many of the players who got this check do you think will actually cash it, rather than frame it instead?"  (His partner answered, "Oh, probably five.")

Though I was born and raised in Illinois, I spent a good deal of my childhood in Indiana.  We had a lot of relatives there, and a family-run department store, H. Gordon & Sons, was based in Gary.  Alas, it eventually went out of business in the 1970s when the city of Gary did, as well.  (Harry Gordon was my great-grandfather.)   My beloved Grandma Rose lived in an area known as Miller Beach, on the shores of Lake Michigan just outside Gary.  As a little kid, I'd spend summers there with her, and with the multitude of relatives who lived nearby (some even within blocks, walking distance along the sandy streets), and my family would visit there often during the year, including annual car trips there for Thanksgiving.

So, I have a lot of ties to Indiana.  I even was accepted to Indiana University.  In fact, it was my first college acceptance letter, which is always a huge relief.  (A greater relief is that I ended up going to Northwestern...)  My second-cousin Margie (my mother's first-cousin) was a massive lover popcorn -- massive -- and I recall the joy she had when discovering a popcorn factory that made such high-quality corn that she'd drive 70 miles round-trip from Gary to Valparaiso to buy 25-pound sacks.  We were the lucky recipient of her gift packages of the stuff -- my introduction to this, at the time, local company, Orville Redenbacher.  Margie's husband Stanley was long-involved with Illinois Senator Paul Douglas to save the glorious Indiana Dunes -- an effort which eventually succeeded when it was made a National Lakeshore.

So, it's heart-breaking to see Indiana's passing its Intolerance Bill -- and no matter what paper they want to wrap it in and call it, that's what it is.  Though it's not as surprising as some people seem to think.  After all, Indiana was one of the largest centers of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th Century.  In 1925, over half the members of the Indiana legislature were members, and endorsement by the Klan was a near-requirement for politicians.

Times have happily changed.  But intolerance sadly still lives strongly in Indiana.  And despite what the lyrics say in the official state song, the moonlight is not fair tonight along the Wabash River.  It's about as unfair as one can imagine.

As such, I thought it would be appropriate to pull out a satiric piece I wrote for the Huffington Post almost four years ago to the day, on March 25, 2011.  (I reference it as "satiric" because, at the time, far too many readers -- and one would have been too many, but it was more... -- thought the article was serious!) Though the specific subject matter is different from the news today, the point behind it in many ways is even more appropriate.

A private citizens group in Illinois today announced plans to build a wall along the Indiana border to keep out those they say are streaming across the unprotected state line.  The problem, they say, has been growing for the past 30 years.

“Ever since the oil refineries in Gary began closing in the mid-1970s, people there have had to find other income,” states the leader of the group, T. Herbert Duffy.  “They’ve been streaming into Chicago ever since.”

Duffy’s organization was founded four months ago in mid-January.  “We didn’t actually care about immigration,” he acknowledges.  “We just got together because it was so butt-numbing cold that all anyone could do was sit in the basement shivering.  So we came up with the idea of this club.” 

At first, the only agenda item was to complain about shoveling snow.  It was only after the Spring thaw came that the illegal Indianan idea popped up.  “Our wives kicked us out of the basement, and we needed another problem or they’d make us come home.  That’s when Phil started complaining about having lost his job, and blamed the Illegals from Indiana.”

Although the man had worked in a Galesburg tractor factory that had closed in order to manufacture cheaper overseas, the Minutepeople still knew they had their issue.  “It just pissed us off, all those illegal Indianans sneaking into Illinois to steal our jobs and womenfolk.  A couple of six-packs will do that.”

The mission grew from there.  Starting from only five disgruntled men, they began recruiting, and found that there were enough people who wanted to get out of their house or meet singles that the club grew to its present total of 57 Minutepeople.

“That wasn’t our original name,” Duffy acknowledges.  “We wanted to call ourselves Minutemen.  We even had a lot of t-shirts made up.  But someone thought there was another group with the name.  Back in the Civil War or something.  [Editor’s note:  it was the Revolutionary War.]  We figured it was better not to get sued, so we changed it.”  A similar situation impacted the women in the club.  “We had intended to call them Minutemaids, but we got a ‘Cease and Desist Order” from the orange juice company.  So, we’re all Minutepeople.”

The name has its own sense of history, Duffy relates.  “My wife would ask me to take out the garbage, mow the lawn, and I’d all always say, ‘In a minute, honey.  In a minute.’  The name just stuck.”

As attention to the wall-building grows, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has announced that he is ordering members of the State National Guard to the Illinois-Indiana border.  “We will be sending four National Guardsman,” a spokesman for the Governor’s office reports.  “There are going to be a lot of drunk guys with loaded firearms in the hot sun, and we don’t want another Dick Cheney incident.”

At present, the wall along the Illinois-Indiana border stretches 12 feet.  The Minutepeople hope to have it completed by the end of August, though Duffy figures late-Autumn.

Many experts figure that it will take at least several hundred years.  Some suggest longer.  “With soil erosion and the natural corroding of cheap materials they bought,” states Lawrence Eberhardt of Eberhardt Fencing, “within 30 years they’ll likely have to start repairing their earlier work..  Then, each year the later-construction will begin falling apart.  This could stretch until eternity.” 

Duffy and the Minutepeople remain undaunted.  They insist they will finish the wall.  It’s a mission now to the club.  “I know some people have said this is all racist, but that’s not true.  If Indians want to live in Indiana, that’s fine.  We have some right here.  But wherever you live, you don’t enter somebody else’s land uninvited.  That’s been true in America ever since the Pilgrims landed in America.”

Duffy is clear to insist, that it’s not just Indians the Minutepeople want to protect Illinois from, but all Illegals.  The problem, he says, is that there aren’t enough border guards in Illinois.  “Or actually, any.”  That’s when they knew they had to build the wall.  “To keep all illegal immigrants out.  All.”

When asked if that includes illegals from Kentucky, Duffy hedged a little.  “That’s the really squiggly part of the state border,” he noted, “and it’s pretty hard to build a wall on something that shape.  We can bend our metal piping a little, but not that much.”

However, the Minutepeople are concerned about illegal immigrants from Missouri.  “In some ways, they’re worse than Indiana,” the Exalted High Poobah noted.  “Who wants all those St. Louis Cardinals fans here?!  The Cardinals suck..”  But the Minutepeople don’t have any plans to build a fence along the Illinois-Missouri border.  “No, that’s why God created the Mississippi River,” states Duffy.  “If anyone from Missouri tried to swim across, their fat butts would sink.”

The river, however, is only the first line of defense against both the Missouri and Iowa borders.  “If any Illegal tries to drive into Illinois over bridges, you can see them coming.  And since it’s mostly single file, that makes them easy to pick off.  Also, we’re buying landmines to plant along the shore.”

That only leaves the Wisconsin border to the north.

Duffy admitted that initially the Minutepeople had forgotten about the northern border.  But after a good laugh and a couple of beers, he said they all realized, “We really got nothing against Wisconsin.  Cheese, beer, how can you not like them?  Hate the Green Bay Packers, but the Bears rule, so what?  The only thing about Wisconsiners is that when they come here they drive tractors really slow down the middle of the road.  Forget ‘em.  They’re like us, they’re okay.”

It’s a difficult mission, but one that makes Duffy’s wife Helen extremely proud.  “I know the Tribune did a big state poll which said 98% of people in Illinois thought the Minutepeople were idiots, but I don’t believe polls.  I’m sure it’s less than that.  We do get about 75 phone calls every night yelling at us for being un-American, but I don’t believe phone calls either.  I’m sure they’re just wrong numbers.  And every morning our house is covered with eggs, but I don’t believe the egg-throwing.  I’m sure they’re just trying to give us food for our important work.”

In the end, T. Herbert Duffy is proud of all that he and his Minutepeople have accomplished in so short a time.  “Some may call us vigilantes,” he says,  appreciating his 12-feet of fence, “and while that is true, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  After all, it got us on TV.”

This is a bit of a different Mystery Guest segment than those I usually post, but it's one of the most adorable and also hilarious.  The celebrity guest is someone who was quite well-known in her day, but not at this point, Helen Traubel.

Helen Traubel was a famous Metropolitan Opera star.  Never the prima donna (which will be clear as you watch), later in her career, she made a slight and "controversial" shift and began performing in more popular music venues, and her contract with the Met was not renewed when she refused to give them up.  Most famously, she  starred in a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, one of their lesser-knowns, called Pipe Dream, based on a couple of John Steinbeck novels, Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday.  It has a pleasant score, if not distinguished.  Two songs I recall as being nice are “All At Once You Love Her” and “The Man I Used to Be.”  

(Side note:  a very unsuccessful movie – but one I liked a great deal – was made of Cannery Row in the 1980s with Nick Nolte and Debra Winger.  I was working at Universal Studios at the time, and ran into the producer Michael Phillips after it flopped.  I explained why I liked it so much, and his face lit up when he said, “You got it!  Yes, that’s exactly what we were going for.”  The story is about a bunch of bums and low-lifes in the Skid Row district of, I believe, San Francisco, and that’s how it got reviewed, with disdain and no reason to care about the downtrodden characters.  But in their little world, they didn’t see each other as bums and low-lifes at all, but had respect and dignity and charm, in their own little microcosm, separate from the outside world.  That’s the sweetness that I loved, and what the producer was SO happy I got.  Phillips and writer-director David S. Ward had previously made The Sting together.)  

Anyway, back to What's My Line?  Helen Traubel is an utter joy -- but what also makes the video such a treat is panelist Wally Cox, sitting in for Bennett Cerf.  Wally Cox always played a sort of shy, nerdy comic character -- made famous in the TV series, Mr. Peepers, which was on the air at the time.  He clearly is totally lost with how the game is played and how to ask the proper questions, but he has such total lunatic fun with his bewilderment that he turns what could have been annoyingly awkward into a hoot.  And Helen Traubel eats it all up.

I can't edit the video to just the Mystery Guest segment, but just scroll to the 17:50 mark.