Drones and Milestones

“Even drones can fly away.  The Queen is their slave,” “Fight Club” author Chuck Palahnuik

On NPR an expert on drones warned that with new technology the pilotless planes can peer into windows and even pick up conversation.  Switching the radio dial to WDRV, I heard the strains to The Who’s “I can See for Miles and Miles.”  Awesome!  In the future will we all be slaves to drones, even our leaders?  As one peace activist put it, with Dick Cheney supporting drones, we hardly need to know more about their legality and morality.

When Dean and Joanell Bottorff lived in rural Valpo in addition to raising sheep they tended beehives, the dynamics of which are fascinating.  Unlike a worker bee, the drone honeybee’s main purpose is to fertilize queen bees, usually from a hive different from its own.  Since drones do not produce honey or gather pollen like worker bees, the word came to mean idle or lazy.

On KISS 103.5FM, I heard a neat Bruno Mars number, “When I Was Your Man,” and then Justin Bieber backed by Nicki Minaj, singing “Beauty and the Beat.”  The chorus contained the line, “We gonna party like it’s 3012 tonight.”  Prince should sue for royalties.  Then the ridiculous Icona Pop confection, “I Love It (I Don’t Care), came on, which repeats endlessly the words, “I crashed my car into the bridge.  I watched, I let it burn,” I decided that was enough pop music for the morning.  Back to NPR for top of the hour news and weather.  The big stories were trials, including 20 year-old Chesterton resident Dustin McCowan accused of murdering former girlfriend Amanda Bach.

Convicted Lake County clerk Thomas Philpot got 18 months in prison time for paying himself bonuses totaling $24,000 from a child support incentive fund meant for deputy clerks performing additional work apart from their regular duties.  He violated a law requiring that the county council approve any supplemental pay to elected officials. Philpot’s crime was small potatoes compared to the $750,000 former Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., diverted from campaign funds for personal items such as two mounted elk heads, a fedora once worn by Michael Jackson, and a $43,500 gold-plated Rolex watch.  Jackson faces four years of jail time, but I doubt the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s son will spend a day behind bars.

 

     above,  Thomas Philpot (carrying box) in 2013, photo by Jonathan Miano; below, Ray Smock in 1976

Ray Smock recommended an essay about gun control by Michael Austin, author of “That’s Not What They Meant!”: Reclaiming the Founding Fathers from America’s Right Wing.”  In the post he included a neat 1976 photo him while skeet shooting in Pennsylvania.

Attended the Savannah Center gallery exhibit, “Objects of Contemplation: Rural Hybrids.”  Artist Bonnie Zimmer was very personable and passionate about environmental issues and threats to the food we eat.  One piece was titled “GMO OMG” and was a warning about Genetically Modified Organisms replacing natural foods.

Friday Toni cooked me an early birthday dinner, steak with corn on the cob, baked potato, and salad.  At East Chicago Becca sang the National Anthem at center court prior to Central’s Homecoming basketball game against South Bend Washington.  In a 71-62 victory sophomore sensation Hyron Edwards scored 20 points in the first quarter alone.

On Saturday James bowled his best game ever, a 127.  Afterwards, I picked up “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling’s “The Casual Vacancy,” billed as her first book for adults.  It looks promising.  Phil came down from Michigan and played board games with Dave, Tom, and me.  Dave gave me CDs of the Lumineers, Alabama Shakes, and Cracker’s greatest hits, which were on in the background.  In the evening nine of us, including Tom and Darcey Wade, celebrated my seventy-first birthday at Applebee’s. Afterwards we played Apples to Apples.  Grandkids Tori, Anthony, James, and Becca spent the night.

The Post-Trib ran Jeff Manes’s article about veteran Jim Fowble, entitled “Owner of Cressmoor bowling alley travels down memory lane.”  Jeff did his typical sterling job, from the opening “Big Lebowski” quote (“Smokey, this in not ‘Nam.  This is bowling.  There are rules”) to a final comment concerning Jim’s two tours, one in Vietnam (1969-1970) and the other on the pro bowlers circuit.  He managed to include fascinating stuff about how bowling alleys have changed since Jim became a pinsetter in 1961 at age 13.  Jim has bowled 56 perfect games and finished fifth in a national tournament in Davenport, Iowa, recalling: “It was hotter than hell that day.  The air conditioner in the bowling alley was broke.”  When Jeff asked, “Is Jimbo Lane a good bowler?” Jim replied, “You might want to shut off that tape recorder.  He tries.”  Pretty funny and true enough since the typical league bowler averages over 200.  Jim’s son Dave carries a 239 average, and wife Sue, whom he met 50 years ago in junior bowling, still throws in the 180s.

Sunday afternoon I spoke at the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the Portage Historical Society.  I got Dave and Tom Wade to read some oral testimonies about the 1950s population boom that resulted in Portage incorporating as a town in 1959.  As I arrived, to my surprise Jef and Robin Halberstadt greeted me.  Former students of mine 30+ years ago, they heard I was speaking and bought tickets.  Following a social hour, a high school ROTC contingent posted the colors and almost knocked down a chandelier near us with the American flag.  At my table - designated the Blake Table in honor of pioneer resident Jacob Blake -  was former mayor Doug Olson, who was clerk/treasurer in the late 1980s when I spent a couple weeks in his office pouring through city council minutes.  His sister talked to me about her grandparents having lived in Gary.  Squatter Jacob Blake built a log cabin around 1833, three years before the State of Indiana created Portage Township, and was buried 11 years later next to wife Caroline in what is now called Blake Cemetery.  Son Jared served in the Union army during the Civil War.

In my talk I used quotes from former neighbors Chuck Bernsten and John Laue and information from a former policeman interviewed by daughter-in-law Beth Satkowski.  Dave read this remembrance by Edward Nicholson, interviewed in 1981 by Valerie Mrak: “I was co-chairman of the committee to incorporate Portage.  I got squirreled into that.  We went through all the procedures and went to the county commissioners in Valpo who were going to vote on whether or not they would let us incorporate.  I had heard through the grapevine that they weren’t going to allow us.  During the meeting one of the commissioners named Gibbs died.  All of a sudden, just like that, his head dropped down.  The man died right there in front of us.   Of course, the meeting was adjourned.  Had he not died, the commissioners would have refused the incorporation of Portage.  We couldn’t have applied for two more years.  Meanwhile, a new bill would have allowed Gary to annex Portage.  Just because of that man dying, Portage was able to incorporate.”

The event took place at Woodland Park, where I played softball and Phil and Dave participated in the summer soccer program, before Imagination Glen supplanted that venue.  In the room where I spoke Alissa met Santa when she was about three years old and she wanted no part of him.  Volunteer Debbie Parker, in charge of raffling off items, was a classmate of Phil’s.  Tom Wade won a framed photo of a stagecoach.  The best prizes were copies of “Calumet Beginnings” and “Steel Giants” – which program coordinator Al Goin purchased at IUN Bookstore last week after visiting the Archives.

It was nice running into Irline Holley, so helpful when in charge of Portage Library’s Local History Room, and former mayor Olga Velasquez, who worked with Sandy Appleby and I in the late 70s on an Alzheimer’s Caregivers oral history project when employed at the Tri-City Mental health Center in East Chicago.  90 year-old Robert Johnson brought ancient photos of Lake Station when it was East Gary and promised to let the archives make jpegs of them.  Al Goin thanked me profusely for my talk and purchased my Steel Shavings issue on Vietnam Vets from the Calumet Region.  I showed 85 year-old Lois Millick that she was in my latest issue and she bought it.  As I was leaving, paramedics were trying to revive someone who had collapsed outside.  I was relieved that it was nobody I knew but sorry the day had to end that way for the poor woman.

James was working on a homework project back at the condo –designing a brochure.  Toni showed him ones we had saved from trips to Niagara Falls and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Stuffed from the chicken and mashed potatoes dinner, I skipped supper, watched the Blackhawks extend their streak without a loss to 18, and stayed up for most of the Academy Award presentations except for the big four.  Evidently right after I closed my eyes, Jennifer Lawrence tripped and fell on her way to receiving an Oscar for her role in “Silver Linings Playbook.”  I’m not surprised Daniel Day Lewis and Argo won but rather shocked that director Ang Lee beat out Steven Spielberg.  “Lincoln” seemed so much more worthy than “Life of Pi.”

Monday I worked on what I’d say Wednesday introducing Bill Pelke.  Here is my draft: “In May of 1985 Bill Pelke learned that his grandmother had been murdered by four teenage girls who went to her house in Glen Park on the pretense of wanting to take Bible lessons from her and stabbed her a total of 33 times. Fourteen months later, Paula Cooper, the so-called ringleaders of the group, who was now 16 years old, was sentenced to death.  At the time Bill, like his father and other family members, thought she was getting what she deserved.  But later while at his job as a steel mill crane operator, he had a vivid image of his grandmother crying and an epiphany that these were tears of compassion for Paula and her family.  From that day on, Bill decided to forgive Paula and made it his mission to get her off death row by having her sentence reduced.  Thus commenced for him a long journey that he is still on, what he has called in a book by this title “A Journey of Hope . . . From Violence to Healing.”  The goal is to have the United States abolish the death penalty.  Now, a quarter century later, as the day of Paula’s release from prison draws near, he hopes that this now middle-aged woman will have a second chance in life.  Bill lives near Anchorage, Alaska, but comes back to the Region often and travels around the country on behalf of his cause: ending executions by the state.”

Steve McShane offered to take his exhibit on Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records to Hobart’s Reiner Center, where I’ll be talking on that subject next week.  Afterwards, we had burgers and shakes at nearby Dairy Queen.  I told him that the Glen Park DQ, which closes in the winter, was in business in 1970 when I first started at IUN.