Dinner with the McCarthys

Denise was the perfect woman for me.  Tall, smart, cute, athletic and right around the corner on Barton Lake.  Who knows what forces got me to make the trek over to her house to visit, but they must have been considerable.  Once there, in a season I don’t even recall except we weren’t going swimming, it was an idle boring afternoon.  She recalls the fancy ’68 yellow Pontiac Tempest I drove over, a cut above the beaters her other suitors tended to bring. Not enough to spark the passions I’d hoped. How much can two kids say to each other, before they start groping, which unfortunately didn’t happen.  I got a little show as Denise picked up her socks and turned them into puppets.  Then, bye.  No calling from me (why?) and certainly no gestures from shy Denise.  We went forward into our VHS careers, me with my egghead rewards and Denise with a variety of accolades, ranging from cheerleading to competitive letter-winning sports to the homecoming court’s tiara and of course the Honor Society.   We ventured off to our respective colleges and never heard from each other.  Along the way she married and had kids and I did the same, less kids.

Then Facebook happened.  There was her luminous face, looking much as I’d remembered from Barton Lake, on top of a tableau from one of the many vacations she and her lawyer husband Kevin had taken.  Her occasional appearances on my Facebook were a joy, and I made a few comments so she noticed.  We were only a year apart in VHS terms, and shared many of the same friends.  Including Sam.  We both delighted in his droll postings.  Denise was connected through her classmate Sam’s little sister Beth, and I was enjoying a growing friendship based on postings, emails and personal visits.  When Sam died in January, I copied Denise on what I was writing about him, and her responses suggested a get together of us and Becky Durham Knapp and Roger, classmates of Denise and sister of my best friend Eric.   That wasn’t happening as Denise and Kevin were cleaning out their years occupied home to move into a condo.  But they had a lunch date in Ann Arbor February 1st and wondered about tacking on a dinner date with us.  Sho’ nuff and at 6 today I stood hugging the same tall gorgeous Denise I remember from high school, maybe the first time since I graduated a half century ago.  We all seemed to like our old each others just fine.  Kevin proved a space nut, so Kathy’s regalements kept him spellbound.  We learned we were all grammar nazis, so we shared tales from the front of the war on the English language.  The food at Metzger’s was simply sumptuous, hardly the boring German fare we’d worried we’d face when Kevin made the suggestion we go there.  My rouladen was melt in the mouth, hardly like when I tried to cook it years ago, and validated my own mentor Bill Castor’s practice of calling ahead to see if it was available.  With Kalamazoo and bed for them 90 miles away, we parted without dessert but with hugs and wishes we do this again soon.  I certainly hope so.

cross quarter

Spinning through space, tomorrow February 2nd we in the Northern hemisphere find ourselves smack between the winter solstice, shortest day of the year, and the vernal equinox, when light and dark will be evenly split.  Yes, it’s getting lighter, and you should begin to be able to appreciate it.  The Celtic pagans called this day Imbolc* and celebrated the returning of the light with feasting, fire and candles to hasten return of the light, crosses fashioned from wheat stalks to honor the day’s patron Fire Goddess Brigid, and even an animal based weather prediction.  This one’s a little strange, as the critter observed was the snake emerging from Brigid’s womb.  Today’s Wiccans continue the observance, although I don’t know about the snake.  In the Catholic Church, this became a 2 day festival (cross quarter days wobble a bit) with February 1st (now she’s a-) St. Brigid’s day and February 2 Candlemas (still with the fire to encourage the light along with celebrations of rebirth).

So how did it happen that instead of feasting and fires, we hang onto news from Pennsylvania about some silly but fun rodent?  Imbolc was one of the first pagan festivals appropriated by the Church, with the first Feast of the Presentation (see Luke 2:2-40), now also known as Candlemas and Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated 40 days after Christmas 4 A.D. in Jerusalem.  Central European tribes who begat the ancestors of the Pennsylvania Dutch who settled around Punxsutawny watched the movements of the badger for weather clues, particularly his behavior on emerging from hibernation and encountering the light in late winter.  As this line of people became German and Christianized, they incorporated this rite of rodent observation into Candlemas services as Dachstag – Badger Day – with a prescribed folk formula in German: “Sonnt sich der Dachs in der Lichtmeßwoche, so geht er auf vier Wochen wieder zu Loche,” which in English is reminiscent of the Groundhog day lore we know: “If the badger sunbathes during Candlemas-week, for four more weeks he will be back in his hole.”  Pennsylvania has few badgers, so the Pennsylvania Dutch settlers adopted the similar looking and much more abundant groundhog to continue their observations.  The ritual we recognize as Groundhog Day began as a publicity stunt, of course.   In 1887, the editor of the Punxsutawney Spirit, himself a member of a local hunting club: the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, declared while standing on Gobbler’s Knob that Phil, the Punxsutawney groundhog, was America’s only true weather-forecasting groundhog.  So for 137 years and counting, Americans have breathlessly awaited to hear if one of Phil’s descendants has seen his shadow, often trying to remember the formula.  Instead of the 4 more weeks of winter the sun-shunning German badger gave, retreating Phil gives us 6.  Since weather is a very local phenomenon, why do we care what happens in Central Pennsylvania?  A number of north American communities have tackled this problem by adopting a local groundhog (they are plentiful creatures) for their own ceremonies.  I’ve been taking names over the years, and here’s my list:

Balzac BillyAlberta, Canada  
Buckeye ChuckMarion, Ohio  
General Beauregard LeeYellow Game River Ranch, California  
Pee Wee the
Woodchuck		Miles Square Farm, Vermont  
Punxsutawny PhilPunxsutawny, Pennsylvania  
Shubenacadie SamWildlife National Park, Nova Scotia, Canada  
Sir Walter WallyNorth Carolina Museum of Natural Science, Raleigh, North Carolina  
Smith Lake JakeBirmingham, Alabama  
Staten Island ChuckStaten Island, New York  
Wiarton WillieWiarton, Bruce County (on the Bruce Peninsula), Ontario,
Canada  
Woody the
Woodchuck		Howell, Michigan  

There may be one near you.  Here in southeast lower Michigan, we’re blessed with two close by:  Wiarton Willie (a rare albino) and Woody.

So now you know a little more about one of the calendar’s least appreciated holidays.  And boy do we need one about now, at least around here.  Around here we always expect a bright sunny Groundhog day, then ruin it for ourselves when we hear what the damn groundhog did.

So don’t let your joy or sorrow tomorrow rest on what your local woodchuck does, or even on who wins the Super Bowl.  Celebrate the day as the ancients did, recognizing that on the climb from the pit of winter to the hope of spring, you’re halfway there, and beginning to see the light.  Light a fire and help it along, don’t crawl back in.

*also called Oimelc to honor the milk beginning to flow in the teats of pregnant herd animals

on the list?

Some of you are reading this thanks to a batch email post I sent to you last night informing you of this blog and asking you to check it out.  Thanks for paying attention and acting on your curiosity. I was fiddling with that email list when a sort of overwhelming feeling came over me.  There are 98 emails on that list.  Ninety-eight!  And it wasn’t that had to put together.  Not bad for a shy introverted anti-social only child academic grind.  I’ve been so blessed to bump into folks like you who managed to see through that, at least a little.  A few of the emails were duds.  I’ll work to find my eighty-two year old cousin in Texas Carol, as there a few Ike cousins left and my closest, Diane, doesn’t do digital.  Some of you are suggesting other contacts, and I’m sure I’ll recollect others.  My cell phone saves every damn email I’ve ever contacted, but I don’t think I’ll be bothering Commander Cody with my blog, tho’ I expect to be writing about him some day.  Maybe this is just a freshman stoned-for-the-first-time moment of “hey, we’re all connected!”.  If so, please forgive me.  But connections make us more human, are hard to come by, are under continual assault, and need to be nurtured.  I’m so grateful to have some connection with all of you and hope this blog can be one way of nurturing those connections.  Let’s stay in touch.

Ice at the US Grant

Ulysses S. Grant won the Civil War and two terms of the presidency, then wrote a still-acclaimed autobiography explaining it all while swilling liberal draughts of whisky from vessels that saw nary an ice cube.  For a while after checking into the luxurious downtown San Diego hotel his son built, I thought he was expecting his guests to follow suit.  Americans love their ice, especially in hotels and motels.  A check in into a new room isn’t completed until a filled ice bucket sits on the counter.  Finding the ice machine and filling that bucket is a foraging ritual for the man who booked that room.  Waiting for room service to fill that bucket is a privation, akin to buying meat wrapped in styrofoam and plastic rather than blasting it in the wild.  So when my trip through the halls of US Grant with my bucket came up empty, I felt the usual male shame and disappointment having to call and ask for help.  Ice was indeed supplied, she said, in boxes by the elevators on each floor.  Out on the prowl again, I saw a box that looked like it would call for an ice pick to chip away at a large block that had been delivered there earlier by a horse drawn carriage.

Finding the lid, I looked inside to see a pile of blue plastic wrapped items looking much like segmented versions of Kool Pops of my youth, less the color.

These would be fine if I were to sustain an ankle sprain, but getting them into a bucket, let alone a glass, would take some work.

 I snagged some back to my room for the struggle, attacking with teeth, pocket knife, and any other sharp object I could find.  A few cubes dribbled out, half to the floor, before I recognized there were perforations in the plastic  

Tearing appropriately along these lines yielded cubes quite adequately, though nothing to match the ready avalanche of a trusty old hall ice machine.  I see the reasoning here: not paying for refrigeration energy on each floor, less space, and better accounting (hard to enter all those gushing cubes on the spreadsheet).  Still there’s all that plastic and of course the frustrated guests.  Big time refrigeration was still in its infancy when US Grant Jr built this hotel, which maybe was slow to take on the advances the modern American traveler has come to expect.   But he should have developed a keen appreciation for the importance of ice when his dad died and because his cancer riddled body could not be adequately embalmed was paraded around in a specialized iced casket for the hot summer fortnight preceding burial in his namesake tomb.  So US Grant needed his ice at the end.  We need it now, always, and in large amounts. Thanks for the blue bags, but I still prefer the machines.

Ann Arbor evening 1/27/20

What was the attraction here?  First evening home before the fireplace after 10 days away in the sun.  35 and rainy outside, but still not enough to wash away last week’s snow and ice.   A few beers followed by mounds of salad with hemp seed dressing washed down with a nice rosé constituted the dinner we needed after last week’s seafood and booze debauchery.  We snuck in a half bottle of malbec with San Diego Nibbles dark chocolate for dessert.  Michael Franks Spotify brought a little too much slick and sleazy 80s taste for Kathy, but Dan Fogelberg radio was just fine.  Me too, surprisingly.  Going through 10 days of accumulated mail was sufficient entertainment for the evening, punctuated by a “board meeting” of Docere LLC, our venture of soon to be 2 needing progress reports to the state and a new Admission Agreement while celebrating the deposit of my Bendcare honorarium as our latest revenues.  Our Gulfstream couldn’t be far off.  With the fire crackling and Dan radio balming with warm recollections of my young days, it was hard to turn in.  Kathy, snoring away, found no difficulty perhaps motivated by the prospect of a 5:30 alarm preparing her for a 7:30 trek into a long day of teaching.  For me, the coming day bore a long list of necessary errands, but I would be keeping my own clock, joy of retirement.  Indeed, the main draw of bed was to get on with it so I could take on tomorrow.  At this point I will stop typing, post, and go to bed. Thanks for reading.  May you all have evenings as simple and satisfying.

Cigar City

As we pulled away from the parking lot, I told Kathy I wanted to write a little bit about this place.  She noticed the catch in my voice, but discounted it as she knew of my long love for beer.  Per old Ben proof that “God loves us and wants us to be happy”.  Part of the attraction of coming to Tampa after San Diego was to check out some of the beer stops my friend Eric had recommended.  Tops on this list was Cigar City.   They’d been in business since 2009, a lifetime for South Florida enterprises, and produced an IPA – Jai Alai (named after the lively but now gone contests once common down here ) – that found its way to cans we’d liked up North.  The place was only 2 1/2 miles from our unfortunately sleazy AirBnB on Neptune.  But the Tampa we’ve seen since coming from the airport to Kathy’s convention hotel at the airport Hilton Westboure has yet to show its heart, but plenty of arteries and capillaries.  We ventured back and forth on these vessels, back to the AirBnB after Kathy’s talk, then on to Cigar City, much in need of a beer after an afternoon of frustration.  Their building is a big modern barn in the middle of an industrial park, hardly the charm we had come to expect in La Jolla. 

But we entered into the huge expanse of a recently renovated space and an array of taps behind shining brewing kettles, we knew we were in the right place. 

It took some studying to decide what to drink, and the class was open ended.  From the menu of 18 beers,

we ended up choosing: more Jai Alai (of course), Guaybera, a citrus pale ale, Florida Man, a monster double IPA, fancy Papers, one of those hazy New Englands, Invasion, a tropical pale, and Beoir Roja , a red IPA that had been aged in Jameson barrels.  Two of the more potent ones came after Kathy initially closed the bill, thinking it was time to go to the smoodge session back at her meeting.  Well, she missed that and I got my two more beers.  But my most sublime pleasure may have come as I went to relieve myself and encountered in their rooms those old fashioned to-the-floor urinals so rapidly disappearing from so many establishments.  

I commend the proprietors of Cigar City for their attention to detail. From the millions they’ve likely spent on this renovation, they’ve found a few dollars to equip their restrooms with facilities men through the ages have found especially attractive and missed elsewhere.  I don’t know if I’ll ever comeback to Tampa, but I’d surely stop at Cigar City, for its quality beers and exquisite surroundings for ingestion and elimination of same.

Dear Dr. Ripps

I was so impressed with the Bendcare Summit at the US Grant in San Diego last weekend, particularly with the M.C. and CEO Andrew Ripps, D. Pharm., I wrote him this letter.

January 20, 2020

Andrew Ripps, D.Pharm

CEO, Bendcare

2255 Glades Road, Suite 228W

Boca Raton, Florida  33451

Dear Dr. Ripps:

I was privileged to be among the participants in your Bentcare Summit in San Diego last weekend.   I was the very tall greybeard in a brown leather jacket who saw in your face traces of my old boss Bill Kelley and my late uncle Jim Stewart (not that Jim Stewart).  And all of you share traits of the bulldog, both in appearance and personality. I could blather on about the excellence I experienced in travel arrangements, housing, food and drink, talks, pharma displays and their amiable representatives, and tchotchkes, but you know all that since you and your very capable people made it happen.  My utmost joy was in the exhilarating realization that what you do might actually make it possible to practice medicine much less encumbered by the shackles thrown upon it over the 4 decades that have marked my own career.    I recommend that you add to the growing list of successes your company can claim an easing of the rheumatologist shortage, as knowledge of the options you provide coax back into the game those retirees who left, in part, out of frustration for what their once beloved practice of medicine has become.  I have not yet decided to go back through that door, but am definitely considering it, and before your Summit it was most assuredly slammed shut.

Thank you for your efforts and keep up the good work.

Robert W. Ike, M.D.

P.S.   I’ve signed up for the July Summit in Colorado Springs.  Hope to see you there.   

not included in the letter:

shameless plugs

One great satisfaction of an academic career is to come in contact with bright young people who clearly are going on to great things. I met Jason Knight when he was a bright medicine resident with a PhD level research background who figured his future was in hematology-oncology. He was having a wonderful time on his rheumatology rotation under my tutelage, and in a piece of down time I queried into his research focus and plans. It was clear as day (to me) that his focus would fit at least as well into rheumatology as into heme-onc, and by coming into rheumatology he could work in a much less crowded field. Jason eventually switched to rheumatology, excelled as a fellow, was appropriately offered a faculty position, and has seen his career skyrocket. Many in my Division now claim credit for flipping Jason, but I think it was lowly clinical me. We’ve had a wonderful relationship ever since, and I’ve proudly watched his career rise. He may not need much help from me here on in, but I felt compelled to plug him to a couple of my friends. Frankly, the main motivation was to get him out to LaJolla where he can go around and sample all the wonderful IPAs he so loves. So it really was all about beer. St. Louis is good for that too.

To my friend Deb Parks at Barnes-Jewish Hospital (where I trained at the first half) of Washington University in St. Louis, I wrote:

.Hey Deb

Do you have any input to your Division’s invitations of outside speakers, visiting professors and the like?  If so, I’d like to bring to your attention my young friend, once colleague, and – I’m proud to say – bit of a protégé Jason Knight.

Michigan is blessed with 2 rising superstars working on lupus.  Michelle Kahlenberg is a force of nature who makes the young Bevra look like a wimp, so she’s the better known of the 2.  Jason Knight MD, PhD recently tenured is a hopeless Hoosier who was not surprised when his boys got to their first bowl game in years and blew it to the Vols on New Years’ Day.  He’s resigned for a long wait to see his roundballers reach Bobby Knight glory days or even Mrs. Harbaugh (Tom Crean) mediocrity.  Which might help explain his love of IPAs, which has been allowing me to send tease texts of my choices at my last 2 LaJolla spots, which I plan to continue.   We’ve been close ever since I was his attending and helped coax him out of his planned heme-onc fellowship into rheumatology.  He buys some of my basketball tickets and when we had 4 season football tickets Kathy and I would be sure to get him and his boy to at least one game a year.  The past few years his son had to fight with his sister for that ticket.

His main thing Is APS, particularly neutrophil nets and their role. He made the cover of Nature a year or so ago.  He’s very tall and very thin and has the shyness that can go with that sort of habitus, which probably goes a long way in explaining why he isn’t as well-known as Michelle.  But it doesn’t hinder him at the podium.  He applies his dry self-deprecating wit liberally.  He peppers his talks with abundant references to history and popular events. He even goes about proving that the birth of the US was due to APS.   His APS clinic is expanding, with a new faculty member from Texas added just last year to help him out.   I’m sure he’d like to make the rounds in StL, and not just Barnes.

Kathy and I would be more than willing to come down too, but Jason is all grown up now and needs neither chaperone nor guide.

I’d appreciate anything you could do for him.  You and your Division won’t be disappointed.  Please just don’t hire him away.

B

To my much older friend Ken (we go back to ’84) who is a world renowned lupus expert, I sent the following.  I had also told him at dinner the previous night that Jason was more entertaining than Graham Hughes (who had visited UCSD in the first days of my sabbatical and had lunch with us all) and half his age.  Something for putting a young face in front of those millennials and genZers.

Great outing last night. Thanks for the victuals, alcohol and company.  Too bad AA and LJ aren’t next door instead of 2300 miles apart.

I write this time mainly to urge you to pull someone else from AA to your place.  To visit not to stay, please.

I know you’re getting to know Michelle Kahlenberg pretty well and she’s a gem.  But there’s another rising lupus superstar in my old place you may not know as well, but would enjoy it if you did.  Jason Knight MD, PhD recently tenured is a hopeless Hoosier who was not surprised when his boys got to their first bowl game in years and blew it to the Vols on New Years’ Day.  He’s resigned for a long wait to see his roundballers reach Bobby Knight glory days or even Mrs. Harbaugh (Tom Crean) mediocrity.  Which might help explain his love of IPAs, which has been allowing me to send tease texts of my choices at my last 2 LJ spots, and will surely continue.   We’ve been close ever since I was his attending and helped coax him out of his planned heme-onc fellowship into rheumatology.  He buys some of my basketball tickets and when we had 4 season football tickets Kathy and I would be sure to get him and his boy to at least one game a year.

His main thing Is APS, particularly neutrophil nets and their role. He made the cover of Nature a year or so ago.  He’s very tall and very thin and has the shyness that can go with that sort of habitus, which probably goes a long way in explaining why he isn’t as well-known as force-of-nature Michelle.  But it doesn’t hinder him at the podium.  He applies his dry self-deprecating wit liberally.  He peppers his talks with abundant references to history and popular events. He even goes about proving that the birth of the US was due to APS.   His APS clinic is expanding, with a new faculty member from Texas added just last year to help him out.   I’m sure he’d like to make the rounds in LJ, and not just Jacob.

Kathy and I would be more than willing to come out too, but Jason is all grown up now and needs neither chaperone nor guide.

I’d appreciate anything you could do for him.  You and your Division won’t be disappointed.

B

another hard day in LJ

I woke up early again, still on Eastern time, for our second full day in La Jolla.   While Kathy slept, I made train and hotel arrangements for a weekend in Chicago end of February our friends Deb and Jeff from St. Louis had just proposed.  Come 6:30, La Clochette du Coin had opened its doors so I could go get Kathy her cappuccino, disguised as a foamy tall latte so she could get the large size.  Over her cappuccino and my tea, we discussed arrangements for Sam’s June 14 (his birthday) memorial service in Nathrop CO, which we surely wanted to attend.  The old Palace Hotel in Salida where Sam had put us up during our visit last August, was booked for the 13th but not the 14th, so we now have two places to stay on successive nights.  That was enough to work up an appetite, so off we went a whole 3 blocks to see our Russian friends at Vahik, splitting a sumptuous breakfast burrito soaking up 5 different hot sauces washed down by more foamy coffee.  That left us charged to take on another walk along the beach up the coast to the Cove then inland.  The previous night’s into morning rain had left the rocks too wet and slick to try any new ways up the beach.  At the Cove, the seals were conducting a retirement seminar, and up the way around the corner with the restaurants featuring great views but mediocre food, the bird poop covered rocks still were, the scent probably accentuated by the moistening of the rains.  Turning into the village, we went about our errands, but not with enough direction to spoil the pleasure of wandering about streets we had not trod before.  The local well stocked Ace hardware had a tea ball adequate to replace the one I had just broken, and a different shape than any other in my collection.  The affable gray cashier who checked me out managed to find my Ace rewards membership, but I stopped him before the program could tell me what I wanted to buy next.  On to Von’s, the big supermarket, we couldn’t find laundry detergent in less than industrial amounts, so it was on to CVS, where we did.  Note to us to pack a few pods in a zip-loc on future trips.  CVS is conveniently near BevMo, where I had to wander among the shelves of wine to pick out another red even though we had one that would suffice for today’s sunset watching.  BevMo has a great big clock that told us it was late enough to venture over to Karl’s for our first beers of the day.  We were first through the door at Karl Strauss’ today.  I don’t know if opening up a bar has the same connotation as closing one down, but color us guilty.  Karl’s had only 4 IPAs on its board, but we made do.  I’d collected so many shots on our walk up I had to text, Kathy felt neglected.  But the last text I sent read “I am the luckiest man in the world.  I have a wife who loves beer, wine, sports, Jesus, Donald Trump, and me.  And long walks on the beach.”  I showed it to her before sending.  She approved and forgave me.

All that beer left us hungry.  I got Kathy to resist Karl’s menu and we walked back south to find El Pescatore, a combined restaurant and fresh fish market.  Kathy had enjoyed many a lunch here while I was up “working” at the UCSD campus during my sabbatical, and we had brought back to our Gravilla bungalow some choice pieces of fish flesh to grill in our little courtyard.  I learned at the Bendcare summit that one of the founders of the place was brother-in-law to Dave Klashman, Ken’s first fellow who was assigned to sit next to me at the meeting.  How about that.  We both got the cioppino, Kathy the seafood mountain salad and me the no-doubts grilled octopus, with 2 glasses of California white wine each of course about which I’ve already forgotten the specifics.

I sit now back at the shack for an afternoon of rest, punctuated by dealing with Amazon deliveries of a blue tooth cell phone speaker and watch band compasses to keep me from getting too lost on future treks and with laundry.  The clouds have begun to clear a little bit, so seeing an actual sunset as we sit on the rocks of Windnsea beach in a half hour might just be possible.  During my sabbatical, I enjoyed sending pictures of the sunset to the folks back home, and will do so again if the chance arises.  Regardless, we’ll still have the wine, bread, cheese, dancing waves upon the rocks and surfers bobbing like seals in the water to entertain us.  Tomorrow comes early, but there should still be time for La Clochette du Coin and Vahik before we board the Uber for SAN and our flight to Detroit, where we’ll stay overnight in the Westin and get up early again to go to Tampa.  We’ll be back here in June, and it can’t come too soon.

Brady in PB

We took the #30 down from our AirBnB to Cass Street in Pacific Beach where we would find Latitude 32, a semi-dive, semi-surfer bar we’d frequented with much joy several years ago.  Latitude 32 came out as “lotta dudes” to point out few females frequented the bar.  Seeking to embellish a tease text to my friends Jason and Eric, I asked the blonde somewhat rough bartender where the surfboard signed by once-Michigan coach Brady Hoke might be.   Legend was he’d left one behind upon leaving San Diego for Michigan.  Brady had been a successful and much beloved coach of SDSU before he took the Michigan job. He was apparently a regular at Latitude 32 (and continues to be).  The bartender brought out Willie the owner who told me there was no surfboard, but pointed me to the Brady-signed flags of both SDSU and Michigan displayed on the ceiling.  The latter was generated even before Brady went north, someone bringing in a Michigan flag and pointing out Brady’s heart had always been in Michigan, which it had been ever since he was an assistant coach there including d-line for the 1997 national championship squad.  Brady had successful stops at his alma mater Ball State and then SDSU before Michigan, where an 11-2 and Sugar Bowl championship season where everything went right dissolved into mediocre and then losing seasons when teams seemed unprepared and their losing informationally headwear-eschewing coach uninvolved.   Fired in November 2015 to be replaced by sainted son still prepared for greatness Jim Harbaugh, Brady slunk off with his big buyout and a few NFL assistant’s gigs to emerge in San Diego, where Willie says he’s been appearing, trimmed down,  for quite a while.  Just last week, Brady signed a 5 year deal to coach SDSU in what he says is his destination job. He hopes to put another flag on the ceiling of Latitude 32, where he shows up 3 times a week and per Willie can ably pour a beer as guest bartender.  We in Michigan wish him well, always loving the big bear of a man with a boundless love of Michigan who unfortunately turned out to be a not so good coach for us.  After the first round of Brady-lore, Willie returned to tell me of the time shortly after Brady left for Michigan when he bought a snow shovel and had all the employees and regulars sign it as a memento they sent up to Brady.  Here was a man much loved.  May he return to glory with the Aztecs and toast his many victories at Latitude 32.  Our kind of dude, Brady.