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| Phoning the Athletics Department Office, I spoke to Terry Simpson, an assistant to Mr. Greenspan. She promised to ask Rick whether or not he was related to Alan and call back. However, she didn’t do so.
Instead, the Athletics Department went on Red Alert. When I phoned the next day, I wasn’t allowed to talk to Terry or even to leave a message on her answering machine. They entertained me with music for a considerable period. I hung up and tried again. A recorded message with a woman’s voice informed me that it simply wasn’t possible, at that time, to reach the Athletics Department by phone. It seemed I'd struck a nerve. Of note also was a Mr./Mrs./Ms. Kalman Greenspan. Kalman was listed as being on the faculty of IUPUI. However, no phone was listed, no e-mail, no department, and no position or duties. The strong appearance initially was that Kalman Greenspan was a ghost employee or even a fictional person. In the Indianapolis phone directory I found a "Kalman Greenspan PhD." When I called the number, a woman answered. When I asked to speak to Kalman, she said that he'd been deceased for two years. Why was he still listed as a faculty member of IU, I asked? She said that she hadn't told them. Q: Was he still being paid? A: They never paid him. Q: What had been his speciality? A: Cardiology. Her responses didn't seem entirely likely. Would a cardiologist list himself in the phone directory as a PhD? Would a cardiologist work for free? But I didn't argue, wished her a pleasant day, and hung up. I learned later that Kalman Greenspan had indeed been an employee of the IU medical center but had retired at least ten years prior to his death. If ghost employment wasn't the cause of the peculiar treatment he'd been accorded by IU, it was still of interest. Was this an effort to deny the reality of his death? Although I've tried to lighten this narrative by mentioning a projected detective novel, I should perhaps remind the reader that my story, strange as it may seem-- strange as it indeed is--is entirely real. Any reader doubting my story about Kalman Greenspan PhD is invited to look him up in the AT&T White Pages, issued Nov., 2006. If you don't have one, feel free to borrow mine. Finally, in early June 2007, I was able to talk to Mr. Rick Greenspan on the phone. He refused to specify whether or not not he was related to Alan. I invited him to offer any corrections he might have to statements made in this article. I hadn't heard back from him at the time of this writing. On June 30, 2007 I was walking downtown. Earlier that morning there'd been a terrorist incident in London of which I was, at that point, unaware. Since I walk a lot, sun exposure can be an issue. I have a hat with a cloth hanging down the back which I wear sometimes in summer and which might give me a sort of French Foreign Legion or quais-Arabic look. As I neared New York and Sherman streets, I noticed five or six police cars which had assembled around an object in the middle of the street. The object was box-shaped, approximately a two-and-a-half foot cube. It seemed to be wrapped in black cloth or plastic. And it seemed entirely possible that the whole scene had been created to coincide with my passing by. However, that didn't occur to me until I reviewed the incident mentally later in the day. None of the police on the scene tried to talk to me. In fact, I don't recall seeing that any of them had even left the comparative safety of their vechicles as I passed by. Since nothing was later reported on the news about the event, I assumed that the mysterious object was, in fact, harmless. The incident seemed a waste of the taxpayer's money. It seemed to be a charade designed to cast a vague cloud over my reputation. While it's true I don't deserve a perfect reputation, i'd rather take responsibility for my own actual misdeeds than to have the misdeeds of others transferred to my account. CONCLUSIONS & FINALE At this point in history, American civil liberties are threatened to an unprecedented degree. TV news can't report the whole story because, as we' ve seen, it is itself part of the problem. And part of the reason American civil liberties are threatened is that the level, not only of media, but of political and business corruption is extremely high. Nast's cartoon, of the fat man with a money bag for a head, could be as emblematic of our own era as of the reign of Boss Tweed in New York. While my case is probably extreme, I have reason to think that similar methods are being used against others--probably many others. Freedom is indeed on the march, as President Bush has reminded us; the only problem is that it's marching away from the U.S. Continue |
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