Global Doc: Coming home
By Dr. Vincent DeGennaro Jr. '02
I feel guilty for every extravagance, no matter how small. I reused the same paper napkin for lunch and dinner, not wanting to throw it out after being soiled with only a daub of mustard.
News » Archives » November 2012
Soundings: Dread and celebration
By Kerry Temple '74
A month or so ago, as the Fighting Irish closed out their surprising but convincing road win over Oklahoma, and jubilant Domers danced, I cringed in dread. “Oh no,” I thought.
The Lost Generation
By Liam Farrell '04
I am a member of the Lost Generation of Notre Dame Football. We entered Notre Dame and graduated between 1994 and 2012. The names we remember aren’t Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Eliot. They are Davie, Willingham and Weis.
A coaching legend’s no-how
By Jason Kelly '95
John Gagliardi left his office door open while he studied game film, an unheard of security breach compared to the paranoid lockdown of most college football programs. It’s true that Gagliardi, the head coach at Division III Saint John’s University for 60 years until his retirement on Monday, operated outside the scope of the sport’s most intense surveillance. Still.
Unbalanced: The football feast
By Carol Schaal '91M.A.
It’s been many years since ND was in the championship conversation. I’d almost forgotten what it feels like to see the Irish ascend the rankings; to care about what those SEC guys are doing; to jeer all those warm-weather teams. But this year, I remember. And what I remember most of all is sitting in front of the TV for a Saturday afternoon football feast with my dad, watching the Ara Parseghian-coached teams win and win and win again.
The Playroom: Nothings better than gravy
By Maraya Steadman '89, '90MBA
Believing: Haley Potato Stuffing
By Michael Garvey '74
In 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday, 21-year-old John Haley was a corporal in Company E of the 157th New York Regiment. With his 23-year-old brother, Thomas, he had enlisted less than a year before, and both young men had been through quite a bit during their short military careers, leaving the sentinel camps around Washington for a particularly ugly tour.
For Whom the Echoes Awake
By Michael Rodio '12
As 80,000 faithful supporters rose and made their cheer, senior players emerged one by one from the hallowed Stadium tunnel, into loving family embraces and into Notre Dame lore.
Molarity Redux: The end of the world as we know it, Part 3
By Michael Molinelli '82
Welcome to Molarity Redux, the 38th strip in the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends. Oh the levels people will stoop to to keep ND out of the BCS.
Play something country
By Tara Hunt '12
I almost think tuning into the country station began as a joke. I found myself driving with the windows down (there was no ac), eating blueberries out of a brown paper bag, tapping my leather cowboy boots as Tim McGraw belted on the radio, feeling young and liberated.
The Light of Loneliness
By Sara Felsenstein ’12
It’s 3 a.m. now. The laptop heats up and the fan starts going, puncturing the silence. Nothing exciting is on Facebook anymore but you keep “watching” it, blankly, blindly, your fingers dragging languidly down the touchpad.
Useless Beauty: A canticle for the cosmos
By Scott Russell Sanders
What do we make of a universe saturated with an extravagance of beauty?
A Road Runner rerun at last?
By Jason Kelly '95
After one of the more recent indignities heaped on the Notre Dame football team — Michigan State’s heart attack inducing fake field goal, I think — a faculty member vented on Facebook: “OK, joke’s over. Could whoever turned us into the Wile E. Coyote of college football these past years, please turn us back into the Road Runner?”
The Playroom: Wine stash
By Maraya Steadman '89, '90MBA
In our house we have a wine stash labeled “Thursday night wine.” This complex labeling system was started after an incident with a pricey burgundy wine I once put in my chili. I don’t know the first thing about wine other than sometimes I need to cook with it and sometimes I need to drink it, such as on Tuesday afternoon after taking three kids to Costco to buy toilet paper.
Unbalanced: The luck of the Irish
By Carol Schaal ’91M.A.
The day before the heart-attack Notre Dame-Pitt football game, a Domer visiting from Minnesota told me, “I really think this is the year. Look at the teams that are left. Notre Dame should beat them all. They really could go all the . . .” "Hush!” I told him. “Don’t say it!”
Global Doc: Leaving Rwanda
By Dr. Vincent DeGennaro Jr. '02
I don’t want to leave Rwanda, but the time has come for a change. Haiti has been calling me since I last left two years ago and the longer I stay in Rwanda, the less likely it seems that I’d get back to Haiti. So I’m leaving, and going home.
A would-be Irish curse dispersed
By John Nagy '00 M.A.
I should have seen it coming, but the kidding around that began with my friend’s surprising revelation over dinner last Friday evening would turn deadly serious just 24 hours later.
A Cardiac Comeback
By Michael Rodio '12
At the start of their game against Pittsburgh, Notre Dame seemingly had the Panthers by the tail. But as halftime neared under an ominous November sky, the Panthers found a way to grip the Irish in their claws.
Molarity Classic: 160-164
By Michael Molinelli '82
Lions and tornadoes and ruby Adidas! Oh, my!
Looking out, looking over
By Sara Felsenstein ’12
We realized there is a clear disjointedness to those two lives, college life in the Midwest and home life outside of New York City. Those two lives don’t seamlessly meld into one another, but rather seem to be self-enclosed bubbles of months or years, sharing adjacent positions on the timelines of our recent pasts.