Greetings From Notre Dame: A Letter Sent in 1978

My clever, younger, and faraway best friend Kathy Connelly -- who graduated a year behind me at Notre Dame -- forwarded an email from Gray Nocjar, ND Class of 2027 and current managing editor of the university's student newspaper, The Observer.

Gray addressed his note to past Observer leaders (leaving me out since, sigh, I was a lowly reporter and copy editor), noting that this fall marks The Observer's 60th anniversary. He is compiling an anecdotal history of the paper, calling on us to "take up the mantle again and write one last story for their newspaper."

So here goes: one last Observer story by Bob Varettoni (aka "Scoop," as my Pangborn Hall dormmates called me).

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It was a dark and stormy night in Totowa, N.J. Suddenly, a shout rang out.

It was my mother, on the eve of my 22nd birthday. "Bobby," she said, "this came in the mail today." She hurled a cardboard tube up the stairs. The return address, written in the block type of a kidnapper: PO Box Q, Notre Dame, Ind.

Inside was a continuous, 12-foot scroll of yellow copy paper that had been left in a manual typewriter in The Observer's newsroom in September 1978... for anyone on staff to contribute to a birthday letter to me. I had graduated four months earlier, and I was homesick for everyone I had left behind in Indiana.

When I edited copy for The Observer, I would often, late in the evenings, leave a roll of paper in a random typewriter and start a rambling note (often beginning, like the cartoon-character Snoopy, "It was a dark and stormy night...") about my existential worries and non-existent love life (where, in the parlance of "Peanuts," I was always a chump).

So the staff kept that tradition alive for another month. Reading their birthday letter 47 years later is like traveling back in time. It's filled with the musings of future journalists and lawyers and business leaders who were stressed-out, overworked, overwhelmed, and paradoxically having the best times of their lives.

What was it like to work on The Observer staff in 1978? Here are 10 clues:

• "God help us, Diane, barefooted, said 20 minutes ago that she was going to leave and go home and get some sleep. That's the way it always starts, you know..."
• "Keith Moon is dead... Life won't be the same anymore."
• "The editorial layout guy is weird. I think he is a cucumber."
• "I hope the night editor can get the paper out without having a heart attack. He's in the other room, cussing Odland under his breath for making this issue 24 pages long."
• "Well, here I am again typing to you before I bite the big one and end up going to class."
• "I tried out for 'You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown' the other night, and made a fool of myself in the process. I tried out for one part but got another when I pretended I was talking to you, and the bitchiness came out just right."
• "You know what? This paper is shifting to the left. When I set the margins on Sunday they were at 20 and 80. Now they are at 15 and 74. From Sunday to today makes five days, so that's an average of one space per day. At that rate, we will fall into the Pacific Ocean in about 2 billion years, long after California has sunk beneath the waves."
• "We wrote not one but two ed's tonight on Dean Roemer's new Alcohol Directive, which is intended to stop campus alcoholism. It's the latest controversy on campus. The latest amusement too. It equals last year's issue of Al Hunter's suspension."
• "I want to put Tide in the Crossroads Fountain and watch the bubbles."
• "I go to the Grotto every night at midnight -- just to check. I mean you never know who'll be there, right? I'm sitting up here and everyone else is working and I'm not. Maybe if I type fast, everyone will think I'm busy working too. Oh, by the way, you do know who this is, don't you? Of course you do. I mean who else searches empty grottos? We miss you here, Bob."

I miss you too, Ann. I miss everybody.

A favorite part of the letter was from Tim Joyce, "the ace copyreader on this godforsaken rag tonight." He was writing at 11:30 on a Wednesday night, a half hour before his 20th birthday.

"What a hell of a way to start off the best years of my life," Tim wrote. He heard I lived in New Jersey, which is where he lived before he left for the fall semester 10 days prior: "that state where the grass is green, the air is clean, and the slot machines will wipe you clean." He advised me to look up a Jersey Shore bar band called Holme.

"At least in N.J. they let you drink beer out of kegs," he added. "Dean Roemer just issued an order to confiscate all kegs at student tailgaters this Saturday. What a goddamn killjoy. Well, it's almost 12 now, and my teenage years are just a few ticks left on the clock."

Just now in 2025, I checked to see that, incredibly, Holme still plays rock 'n roll classics at D'Jais Bar in Belmar. Their 7 p.m. shows have no cover... and, I think, this birthday week I will pay a visit D'Jais and raise a glass to Tim, and to the memory of Dean Roemer, and to all the wonderful people who included their names in this letter I treasure, this fading yellow scroll in the drawer of my nightstand in New Jersey.

Thank you to all who wrote -- Kathy and Tim, and Phil Cackley, Ann Gales, Diane Wilson, Barb Langhenry, Barbara ("B. not L.") Block, Mare Ulicny, Rosemary Mills, Mike ("you know, the short guy… thin mustache… oh well, forget it") Lewis, Dan Letcher, Maribeth Moran ("your last year, loving day editor"), Mark Rust, Steve Odland, and Frank Kebe.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you.

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PS -- Thank you, too, for the personal ads that appeared in The Observer that birthday week, which I don't remember (or wanted to forget) seeing before now... but which are somehow available forever in the paper's online archive.

 

Gone Fishin': 3 Poems Until September

August is the month I take a break from posting on social media... much to the relief of my family 🙂

I'll spend time taking photos, writing poems, and rooting for the Mets -- and, most importantly, creating memories with family and friends. I'll get back to other projects and social media posts after Labor Day.

Until then, I'm posting three poems here because so far in 2025 I've been inspired by writing friends, new and old. I love what they've shared, so in return let me share what I love... beginning with a poem written today, based on a "hotter than a matchhead" prompt from the Gotham Writers Workshop, a New York-based group you should check out, offering free Zoom write-ins every Friday.

Here's a snapshot of "Why Devils in Jersey Are So Overfed":

Here's a second poem I recently revised after a photo from five years ago at an immersive VanGogh exhibit randomly popped up on my iPhone's home screen:

Finally, here's an experiment in ekphrastic poetry -- that is, a poem inspired by a work of art in another medium. I recently applied for... and won... a "residency" at the Madison NJ Community Arts Center. (Check out their events calendar!) The center chose 12 poets to participate in The Writing LAB Fall Residency, which this year will focus on writing new work inspired by music.

The length of the residency? A single Sunday afternoon in September. I'm excited about the opportunity, but I'll be sure to pack light!

During a recent open mic at the Puffin Cultural Forum (another group you should check out) in Teaneck NJ, I was captivated by an exhibit of photos and poems presented by ALTE: Getting Old Together. I took a photo of a print on display by Judith Sokoloff, who captured someone in a King Kong suit in Times Square, circa 2023. The leader of the forum's open mic that night, the great Toney Jackson, suggested I write a poem about it.

So I did. And, funny thing, the poem's theme is about getting older too.

King Gone

Once upon a time

I brushed airplanes from my eyes.

I terrorized ordinary men,

protected fair-haired women,

captured the imagination of the young,

while framed in Technicolor:

like the Northern Lights,

the harbor of Rio de Janeiro,

the Grand Canyon,

Mount Everest,

the Great Barrier Reef,

volcanic Paricutin in Mexico,

Victoria Falls.

I was the 8th wonder of the world.

Beyond male,

beyond female,

the link between man and beast,

adult and child,

good and bad,

primitive and civilized,

black and white.

Am I not immortal?

Or is it my fate

day-by-day, year-after-year

to recede into the crowd,

to roam Times Square

as an Instagram curiosity.

A diminishing freak.

Hear my defiant roar.

New York City may try

to swallow me whole,

a miniature version

of my former self.

Yet I refuse to disappear.

Let this poem be a warning:

These words are my transcendence.

I am still to be feared.

Poem: 'Holes' (on the Feast Day of St. Michael Moros)

I didn’t know my wife had a two-drink minimum.

I mean, I should have realized by now. I never remember having only one drink with her. And there we were, early in July at Blackjack Mulligan's bar in Garfield, NJ, where the waitresses wear “I love BJs” t-shirts and they serve authentic pirogies from Piast’s down the street.

I had wolfed down my portion and was ready to leave, when my wife said she would like another glass of wine. So I stared out the window at St. Peter’s Greek Catholic Cemetery, in disrepair, across the street. My friends in the NJ Poetry Circle at The Sanctuary community center in Butler provided a prompt for our writing that week: one word, "holes."

I kept thinking about the prompt. Later, I took my wife by the hand to wander in the cemetery. Still later, I wrote a poem:

Holes 

Across the street from BJ’s Bar, next to Walmart,

on the Feast Day of St. Michael Moros,

the 98th anniversary of his death and entrance into Heaven,

I pass through rusted iron gates on a sweltering day in Garfield, NJ.

A sign reads, “No Dogs Allowed.”

This is St. Peter’s Cemetery, perpetually open since 1895,

where I wander among 2,600 holes in the ground,

2,600 bodies in decay, and not a single soul to be found.

I gather and dispose the litter in my path, 

then brush matted grass from stone to reveal the names of the dead.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

It has been 20 years since my last Confession,

the day my earthly father died.

My sin is this: I lost my faith that day.

I am here to reclaim it among the toppled crosses,

the stone angels worn with age,

the paper flowers blown into haphazard piles.

I linger along the back edges of the grounds,

bounded by the remains of the Saddle River,

with a stained and matted teddy bear on its banks,

before it empties into the Passaic.

For this and all my past sins, I am heartily sorry.

I seek forgiveness from Steven and Mary Seelagy,

a married couple in their late 80s,

who died a month apart in 1989.

I seek forgiveness from Carlos Samuel Cruz,

who died in 2012 at age 65,

“Always in Our Hearts,” but no obituary to be found.

I seek forgiveness from Fernando Gonzalez Sr.,

dead in 1999 soon after his 67th birthday.

I seek forgiveness from Jesse M. Rivera, “Saintly Scholar,”

who died in 2008 at age 18.

A guitar fretboard is impaled next to his grave;

he died in prison, a suicide.

I found Joan Zavinsky’s portrait face down on a trampled path

and returned it to where she was buried in 2001.

She lived to 85; her photo showing her forever young.

Her husband, Joseph, died in 1977. His portrait is fixed and stern.

Then there are more young: Charles Mancuso, age 19, who died in 1932,

Anna Marynak, 3 years old, who died in 1920,

neighboring 1931 graves of Marie Cupo and Anna Kulik, both 1 year old,

near the pristine stone of Michael Moros, 1 day old, July 2-July 3, 1927.

I finger another bead in the pocket of my jeans.

You don’t need to linger at each grave.

I will count the dead for you:

59 names, including generations of entire families…

11 Barnas, 9 Babyaks, 8 Balints,

6 Miskes, 5 Ditinicks,

including all 3 sons who died young,

4 Gburs and 4 Dutkeviches.

All buried here, where my father was born.

I summon these foresaken dead,

with a prayer for each soul

on the 59 raven-black beads of my father’s rosary.

I stay until I stand forgiven before the Lord.

Now I implore Michael Moros, infant saint:

“Restore my faith!

Raise my father to life for just one day,

and I will doubt God’s grace nevermore.”

Poem: 'Teaneck Blues' (for Ulysses Kay)

At the Puffin Cultural Forum's poetry series in Teaneck last month, the township's poet laureate, Scott Pleasants, had just arrived from reading an original poem at a street renaming.

Alicia Avenue between Evergreen Place and Pinewood Place has been temporarily (for 90 days, starting May 23) renamed "Ulysses Kay Way," honoring where Ulysses Kay lived for the last 21 years of his life, "in recognition of his significant contributions and accomplishments in the advancement of 20th century music and musicians."

As Mark Trautman, director of music and administrator at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Essex Fells, wrote on Facebook: "Ulysses Kay was a well know, prize-winning composer of the 20th century. His wife Barbara was a Freedom Rider and led the fight to integrate Englewood Schools in the 1960s. Their remains are buried in the columbarium at St. Paul's Church, 113 Engle St., Englewood."

Inspired by this, I wrote and read a poem at last Friday at June's S.P.E.A.K. (Sharing Poetic Expressions, Art & Knowledge) event hosted by MC and poet Toney Jackson. Toney leads an evening of intimacy, creativity, and positivity, open to aspiring poets and listeners. The next event is July 25.

Here's a recording of me reading this poem.

 Teaneck Blues

(Music: “Tender Thought” on Damien Sneed's album, “Classically Harlem”)

 

This is the summer of composer Ulysses Kay

where there’s a street named in his honor,

for 90 days.

Away from the heart of town,

the double-parked cars on Cedar Lane,

and Bischoff’s closed ice cream shop,

where bow-tied ghosts wear paper hats.

 

This is a mile and a half away,

amid haunted sounds:

rustling trees,

occasional birds,

gravel crunched by tires

in the lot facing his plain house

on Ulysses Kay Way.

 

This is Teaneck, NJ,

in the shadow of New York:

discordant, hesitant, forlorn,

a syncopated bass,

a trace of harmony,

a counter-melody of sadness,

defended by tanks on the lawn of the Armory.

 

This is his spectrum of sound:

a diversity of voices,

reflected in a single tender thought

rendered on a lone piano.

Come, hear the legacy of Ulysses Kay

in the summer of 2025,

where there’s a street named in his honor...

for 90 days.