Indianapolis, IN

Key Stadium

Run Time: 65:35 + 2:30 kick

A windy, tired day, but this track was less than a mile away. Sometimes you have to ignore everything except fortune. So glad I did. The sun made up for the wind and the coolness, and my brain woke up from the fog of driving. Indy is not my favorite city. This little pocket was unexpectedly pleasant.

This stadium was at the University of Indianapolis, clearly a hard-scrabble, blue-collar institution. No Harvard endowment here — the track was worn through to asphalt in sections, and the grounds were not well-manicured. The bleachers were concrete, with three aisles of stairs to run. The two outer aisles were 54 steps each, the middle aisle was 47 steps, and the incline was 50.5 degrees. Brutal. By the time I got to the top of the third aisle, my thighs were burning, and my thighs don’t generally send any signals of sensation.

I’d like to think that a secondary education at the University of Indianapolis is reasonably priced, though that’s probably wishful thinking. I’d like to think that the faculty is a group of wickedly smart misfits who washed out or were cast out from more reputable institutions, the kind of mentors who sow the seeds of revolution. GOD KNOWS WE NEED THAT RIGHT NOW. What happened to higher education in this country? It used to be where radical thought originated and threatened to change society.

I’m too old, too male, and too white to lead the revolution. We need the 18-40 age group to right the fucking ship, or tip it over — whatever it takes. When some crooked politician tells a university, “We’re going to pull your funding because you are disseminating pitifully bland liberalism,” we need the students and faculty of that institution to answer, “Fine. We’re going to RIOT.” And then they need to riot.

Like everything else, the higher education game is rigged now. It’s just another financial market. And now all schoolwork is being done by AI. It’s just a system for the rich to make more money. Where is Madame DeFarge when we need her? We need a legion of Tricoteuses to inflict a new Reign of Terror on the rich and powerful.

The mascot for the University of Indianapolis is the Greyhound. That’s probably appropriate. Greyhounds have been bred for the last two centuries to race so that gamblers could bet on them. My parents used to go to the dog races. The dogs would chase a mechanical rabbit, which was later changed to a mechanical bone, possibly to appease the rabbit activists. So the Indianapolis Greyhounds are training for their chance to get on the track and chase a target that is guaranteed to stay just out of reach, so that spectators can gamble away their money on the “sport.” Not sure what exactly is the metaphor achieved here, but it’s diabolical.

Did I mention the dogs wear muzzles while they are racing? To keep them from biting each other, it was explained to me. I don’t know. They didn’t seem too interested in each other, just the rabbit (which was named Rusty, by the way). Once the mechanical device that kept Rusty moving broke, and the dogs all caught Rusty and pummeled him with their muzzles. Maybe that’s when Rusty converted to a bone. Dogs are easily trained, but I guess you need to be careful what you’re training them for.