Afternoon Delight

“There are few hours more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea,” Henry James

The lyrics of Starlight Vocal Band’s hit “Afternoon Delight” – i.e., “My motto’s always been; when it’s right, it’s right, why wait until the middle of a cold dark night” - make it clear that the delightful activity is sexual.  Nineteenth century Anglophile Henry James may have enjoyed sipping tea, but the American “Happy Hour” means good cheer and alcoholic beverages at reduced prices.  In Portrait of a Lady Henry James, using language that seems erotic, describes the charming Lord Warburton paying an afternoon visit to Isabel: “His smile was peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit the radiance of good feeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl’s first impression of him.  It surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather.”  Delightful.

In the final Gender Studies class of the semester Anne Balay asked if society should try to cure autistic or obese folks and if these were analogous to efforts in the past to “de-program” gay people.  Most students initially thought yes to the first, but Anne’s daughter Leah argued that while we should strive to help those with autism, it should not be at the cost of destroying their personality or treating them as pariahs.  One reading was about the “fat acceptance movement” and the National Association to Aid Fat Americans.  While the class agreed that fat people should not be stigmatized, most endorsed exercise, eating healthy, and intructing young people about proper dietary habits.  While racist and sexist jokes have become less acceptable, comedians still delight in making fun of fat people.  At Smith College, which Leah attends, the most frequently heard expression, according to an oft-repeated joke, is, “That’s not funny!”  The classroom went silent when Anne told everyone to read a new article.  As an experiment, I was tempted to see who would laugh if I said tastelessly, “I can’t believe a dozen women can keep quiet for five minutes.”  Discretion being the better part of valor, I censored myself.

Several women thanked me for adding a male presence to the class.  As a parting gesture, I gave away copies of my pink Shavings issue (volume 41) with Anne and Leah Balay in a Gary Gay Rights parade on the cover.  I showed them them copies of the full-page Post-Trib story about Anne from the day before and stated that her being denied tenure was an absolute travesty.  After class, with Anne and Leah at Abuelo’s, I ordered fajitas, beans, and potatoes (delightful and enough for me to take half home) and an 18-ounce Dos Equis on draft.  A Math whiz, Leah recently completed an internship in Wisconsin and this weekend will leave for Budapest for a semester abroad.  Sister Emma is in St. Louis for a job interview.

 Leah, Anne, and Emma at "Avengers" convention

Friday’s Post-Trib contained this “Quickly” comment: “I hope Professor Balay’s book becomes a best seller so IU Northwest regrets letting her go.  As one of her former students, she is one of the best English teachers IUN has.”  On Facebook Anne wrote: “I got the most emotional, genuine email from a student yesterday about what it feels like to see me on campus, and talk to me, and get support. What I want to know is: WHY DO THOSE VOICES NOT MATTER??? WHY ARE ONLY SOME PEOPLE"S LIVES VALUED??? That is what makes me angry about all of this. The very few students who are threatened by me are catered to, while the many who find me enlightening, and the few who find me quite literally a lifeline, don't count. Well, let me just say: even if you are silent and scared, you belong in college, and you deserve kindness.” 

All summer Anne was a trooper, giving her students, who had genuine affection for her and vice versa, her best effort, even coming to school on a day daughter Emma was having an operation in Chicago.  The main rap against Anne: she teaches to an “agenda,” code word for being an openly lesbian feminist. How is that different, I wonder, from a Keynsian economist, an existential philosopher, or a Jungian psychology professor or a deconstructionist in the English department?  Kimberly Ann Watta commented to Anne’s post: “Now that I have moved back to the area Anne, I was thinking of coming back to IUN to finish my lit degree, but because of you being let go, I say HELL NO, I'll go somewhere else to finish it. You helped me more than you can imagine and made a tremendous impact on my life.”

Times columnist Doug Ross questioned the fairness of sentencing former Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., to just 30 months behind bars for stealing $750,000 while Hammond Councilman Al Salinas got 42 months for accepting a $10,500 bribe.  Unsympathetic to either, Ross bode both, “Good riddance!”  I am less judgmental, reserving my scorn for the corporate tycoons who buy and sell their political pawns.  Sadly, Jackson’s apparently inherited love of luxury items such as watches and suits led him astray.  Salinas bought into a political culture that countenanced kickbacks from those receiving city contracts.  Smart politicians know how to turn such practices into “honest graft” in the form of billable hours or cushy consultantships.

In Harper’s, Nicholson Baker’s “Wrong Answer: The Case against Algebra II,” compares the widely hated Common Core subject (used to judge students and schools) to ancient Greek, once believed vital to a decent education.  “Useless torture,” Coleman Mccarthy termed it, yet Algebra II is an integral part of Obama’s Race to the Top and, before that, Bush’s No Child Left Behind.  Students need master, as Baker puts it, “square-rooted, polynomialed, horseradish clumps of mute symbology.  The homework is unrelenting, the algorithms get longer and trickier, the quizzes keep coming.  Sooner or later, many of them hit the wall.”  Here’s what Math teacher and engineer Arthur Dean wrote in 1930 about making Algebra a requirement rather than an elective:  “I cannot see that algebra contributes one iota to a young person’s health or one grain of inspiration to his spirit.”  How tragic that Math deficiency keeps students out of college or grad school.  A former marine and “A” student of mine, Charles Mubarak, received a C- in a required IUN Math course, which prevented from graduating.  True story.  I personally appealed in vain to the Math t chair.  Charles should have come to remedial study sessions, she argued, even though he had a full-time job.  Did he really need to understand polynomials to do well in law school.  We’ll never know.

My Algebra II teacher in eleventh grad, Mr. Lewis, sucked; when twelfth grade trigonometry teacher Mr. Taddei, who had taught us “A” section students the four years previously, realized we had learned nothing from “Louie,” I thought he was going to cry.

Retired geologist Mark Reshkin, working on his memoirs, was in the Archives seeking information about former Congressman Ray J. Madden.  He passed on a couple anecdotes about Madden securing passage of the legislation establishing the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as a federal park.  In one case he promised a colleague a desired earmark.  Madden was an ardent New Dealer who served in the House of Representatives for 34 years, beginning in 1943, the last four as Chair of the powerful Rules Committee.  Adam Benjamin defeated him in the 1976 Democratic primary.

above, Bart Letica, third from left

Bart Letica sent along more WW II photos of his ordnance crew on Tinian Island in the Pacific, including one depicting an airplane nicknamed “lady Be Good” with an image of a woman in bra and panties spreading her legs for the cause.  Boys will be boys in wartime in the South Pacific, or as the song goes, “There is Nothing Like a Dame.”

Miranda at West Beach with Jimbo and Jackie

Three welcome houseguests arrived, granddaughter Miranda from Michigan and 22 year-old niece Jackie and boyfriend Rob from Jersey.  Toni ordered carry-out from Applebee’s and we stayed up talking till 10:30 (11:30 East Coast time).  Friday I took them to West Beach, where a bride and groom were having pictures taken and a guy put a blanket over a hole he dug in the sand topped with crackers for seagulls.  They were smart enough to suspect a trap and walked around the edges before one landed, scooped up a bite and flapped its wings to prevent descending into the hole.  It was a delightful afternoon.  We stopped at Dirty Dog for ice cream cones before arriving home.  Dave’s family joined us for Chinese food, and I played Uno and ate a couple of Miranda’s just baked chocolate chip cookies before calling it a day.