Archives

The Calumet Regional Archives was bustling Friday with volunteers and scholars. Fred McColly stopped in and talked about the sad state of national politics and his work place environment. Steve’s former student Doris Skinner came in for two copies of Steel Shavings, volume 41, which contains her Ides of March journal, entitled “Cry of a Troubled Heart” (the title of a sermon her pastor delivered). A German scholar was using the Inland Steel collection researching his dissertation about institutional racism, and Ken Schoon was perusing material for his book about the Indiana dunelands.

Before I left school I learned that Professor Frank Caucci died. The notice mentioned “after a long illness,” but I had no hint that he was sick. He looked good the last time I talked to him. He was a French teacher for many years before switching to Social Work. A few years ago he taught a course on gay novels. A good guy, he’ll be missed.

I saw a couple good movies recently, “One Day” with Anne Hathaway and “The Help, with a top notch cast that includes Viola Davis and a cameo appearance by Cicely Tyson. Set in Mississippi during the early 1960s, the latter deals with an idealistic writer (Emma Stone as “Skeeter Phelan) who decides to do a book based on the stories of Black domestic servants. One of them (Abileen) has raised many white babies only to see most of them grow up to be unthinking bigots, while Minnie, her best friend is so outspoken she has trouble keeping jobs and is in danger of being blacklisted despite her unmatched cooking skills. At the Archives Peg Schoon said she enjoyed the novel – written by Kathryn Stockett - but found it difficult at times to understand the stuff written in dialect. I’m having a similar time with E.L. Doctorow’s “The March” when the slave girl Pearl “talks.” A gross-out movie I cannot recommend is “The Change-Up,” about two buddies who find themselves in each other’s bodies after pissing in a public fountain. Jason Bateman does a good Charlie Sheen imitation playing a softcore porn actor who dates a slut who’s nine months pregnant and then suddenly finds himself married and the father of a couple brats. Roger Ebert found the movie disgusting, but there was lots of laughter in the movie theater.

More edifying is an HBO mini-series called “Mildred Pierce,” starring the great Kate Winslet (six-time Oscar nominee and winner for “The Reader”). Based on a 1941 novel by James M. Cain, it deals with an independent but self-sacrificing woman who opens a restaurant in California during the Great Depression and the clash between her and her equally spoiled daughter and lover.