Simple Song

"Come and sing a simple song of freedom

Sing it like you've never sung before

Let it fill the air, tell the people everywhere

We, the people here, don't want a war”

    Bobby Darin, “Simple Song of Freedom”

I finished Bill Pelke’s excellent book, “Journey of Hope: From Violence to Healing.”   It took eight years for him to persuade prison officials to authorize a visit with Paula Cooper, who was serving a 60-year sentence for murdering his grandmother; during that time they had exchanged dozens of letters.  In 1994 the Discovery Channel aired a documentary entitled “From Fury to Forgiveness” that included an interview with Paula at Women’s Prison in Indianapolis.  She had said that she wanted to look Bill in the eye and be sure he had forgiven her.  When they finally met, Pelke gave her a short hug, stepped back, looked her in the eye and exclaimed, “I love you and have forgiven you.” 

In an email to Pelke I praised his efforts, both his words and deeds, and told him it was interesting to come across the name of folksinger Charlie King in the book.  I first met Charlie in the late 1970s when he performed at an anti-nuke rally protesting NIPSCO’s plans to build its proposed Bailly plant.  One of his songs on the album “Somebody’s Story,” “Acceptable Risks,” was about a soldier named Paul Cooper who died of leukemia after being near a 1950s atomic test at Yucca Flats.  One line went, “It wasn’t what they told you, it was what they didn’t say.”  At a party afterwards I bought the album and he signed it, “Songs are the soul of our struggles, good times and bad.  Carry it on.”

About ten years ago King, by now a greybeard but still idealistic, performed at IU Northwest thanks to the efforts of Ron Cohen and Linda Anderson.  I was not surprised that he enlisted in the cause to end death penalty executions. Someone posted a YouTube clip of Charlie singing “Simple Song of Freedom” (written by Bobby Darin, of all people, in 1969, whose image is in the Rock and Roll puzzle James and I have been working on) at a 2009 School of the Americas Watch peace vigil.  The original purpose of Americas Watch had been to protest our government training Latin American military officers connected to rightwing dictatorships.  King usually performs with fellow protest singer Karen Brandow.

Jane Ammeson, reviewing “Valor” for The Times, read in the afterword that I first learned about Roy Dominguez’s fascinating background at Casa Blanca after a Latino Historical Society meeting.  She emailed: “It's one of my favorites though I always thought the best was El Patio. It was a family tradition of sorts to play cards and have Mexican food on Christmas night (after the large turkey dinner earlier in the day) and for us, it was a given the food would be from El Patio on Main Street.  One blustery cold Christmas night, my daughter, who is Korean, and I went there to pick up our food and there were the usual elderly Mexican men sitting at the counter, drinking coffee.  One of them looked at my daughter and started speaking to her in Korean.  Turns out he'd fought in the Korean War.  I thought only in The Region could you walk into a Mexican restaurant in the only building still inhabited on the block on Christmas night and run into someone of Hispanic descent who speaks Korean.  It was such an Indiana Harbor moment. I was so sad when I drove to El Patio and found that it had been torn down. I wonder where all those old guys are now and the waitresses who had been there forever and who always called me chica which for a woman of my age is a compliment.”

On “The Newsroom” Jane Fonda, of all people, played the gutter-mouthed Fiona Lansing, CEO of the parent company that owns “News Night.”  Worried that the show had been exposing the Tea Party as less a grassroots movement than a front for multi-millionaires, Fiona tells the Sam Waterston character, “I got where I am by knowing who to fear.”

I’ve been reading Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s “A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812.”  Ballard lived along the Kennebec River in Hallowell, Maine, and delivered 812 babies, the last at age 77 a month before she died.  Her diary, expertly analyzed by social historian Ulrich, is a priceless primary document for social historians, touching on sexual matters and family squabbles as well as the place of women and the state of medicine during the post-Revolutionary era. 

California storyteller Beth Nord visited the Archives seeking info about women steelworkers.  Before she arrived, the lights went out in the entire building.  Then the Internet server shut down, which rendered all phones useless.  Since I had told Beth to call me if she needed help with parking, I went to the front entrance of the library just as she pulled up and asked if I were Dr. Lane.  Beth grew up in Miller, her dad was a steelworker, and she worked in the U.S. Steel mailroom one summer.

I showed Beth my Traces article entitled “Indiana Women of Steel” as well as what I wrote about the District 31 Women’s Caucus in “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”  Both make use of quotes from Valerie Denney, who worked as a millwright at U.S. Steel’s Gary Sheet and Tin mill.  She almost called off the interview because of a bad cold. I also used the material in papers for oral history conferences in Turkey and Australia.

Nephew Bob send a photo of him in front of a 1936 San Diego Historical Society marker reading “Lane Field (under construction) Pacific and Broadway.”  My Uncle Jim moved to California during the depression and made a fortune in the tuna fish packing business before becoming a part owner of the San Diego Padres when they competed in the Pacific Coast League.  I thought Lane Field was named for Uncle Jim, but evidently the former racetrack was named for longtime owner Bill “Hardpan” Lane who moved his club to S.D. from Los Angeles, where their name had been the Hollywood Stars.  Ted Williams led the Padres in 1937 to their lone PCL pennant.  Uncle Jim was an associate of C. Arnholdt Smith, who bought the team in 1955 and was awarded a major league franchise for his club in the late-1960s before selling the team to McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc.

A Moscow judge sentenced three members of Pussy Riot to two years in prison. Outside the courthouse police beat several protestors, including chess master Garry Kasparov.  An NBC news anchor said he could not say the name of the punk band, but the New York Times and Wall Street Journal had no such qualms.

Vice Chancellor David Malik announced the creation of Chancellor’s Professorships to be awarded distinguished faculty who have demonstrated meritorious performance in the areas of teaching, research, and service.  Meg Demakas emailed that she wanted to nominate me.  I told her I’d be honored, but then after reading the fine print she concluded that she wasn’t eligible to nominate me and that I, being officially retired, probably wasn’t eligible to receive it.

In honor of Bill Pelke and victims of injustice I popped a beer and put on the Indigo Girls’ 1999 CD “Come On Now Social,” which contains the song “Faye Tucker” about the first woman executed (by lethal injection) in Texas since the Civil War.  Governor George W. Bush rejected pleas for clemency from religious leaders around the world.  The third verse of “Faye Tucker” goes: “Well the minister wants you to live now, and the governor wants you to fry; and whatever it was that you thought might occur, they got something else on their minds.”