“Time, the
devourer of all things,” Ovid
Steve Rushin quoted Roman poet Ovid in a Sports Illustrated column about Alex Rodriguez’s banishment from
baseball for more than a full season. He
mentioned others that received lifetime bans, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson
and Pete Rose. Ovid himself was banished
from Rome by Caesar Augustus for reasons still debated by historians, including
the theory that Ovid had witnessed Augustus’ daughter Julia committing adultery,
probably even incest. In the same issue
is an account of the 1943 Rose Bowl game, the only one not played in Pasadena,
California, due to wartime restrictions.
In Durham, North Carolina, Oregon State defeated heavily favored Duke
20-16. Beforehand, the FBI prevented
Jack Yoshihara from traveling with the Beavers, citing an edict prohibiting Japanese-Americans
from traveling more than 35 miles from their residence. A short time later,
Yoshihara was banished to Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho. In 1985 Oregon State gave Yoshihara a Rose
Bowl ring, and in 2008 he and other internees received honorary degrees.
Anne Balay needed help on a citation from Christopher G. L. Hall’s
“Steel Phoenix,” and I saved her a trip to the Archives. On the
way to Chancellor Lowe’s well-attended “Campus Conversation” Sandra Hall Smith
told Steve McShane and me that she secured funds for Senior College next
summer. Sandra had hoped to honor
Garrett Cope’s memory by having them this year, but the money just wasn’t
there. Several folks were disappointed.
The morning of my appearance on Lakeshore Radio, host Jerry Davich
posted this notice: “On today’s Casual Fridays, we will talk
with IUN professor and region historian James Lane on an upcoming event in
Miller Beach to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
On August 28, 1963, hundreds of thousands of Americans absorbed his
soaring vision of a new kind of nation. King's speech is one of the most
enduring moments of the civil rights movement and a demonstration commemorating
the march will be held in Washington on Saturday. In the studio with us, Jim will shed light on
the speech, its relevance 50 years later, and the local event taking place this
Wednesday, August 28, at the Marshall J. Gardner Center for the Arts in Miller.
It’s open to the public and free of charge.”
1963 was a year of transition for King and the civil rights
movement. Thrust into a leadership
during the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott due to his oratory prowess, King incorporated
Mahatma Gandhi’s tactics against British rule in India in planning nonviolent
acts of civil disobedience to challenge unjust segregation laws. During the
Birmingham Crusade the emphasis was on jobs as well as desegregating public
facilities. King’s “I Have a Dream” vision was of an open society that would be
of benefit to all Americans, not just blacks, and was a challenge, I felt, for
me personally to make it my vision, too.
In fact, it was fitting that in the fiftieth anniversary rally the
spotlight is on all people discriminated against, including gays, disabled
people, and immigrants. Jerry kept me on
the air longer than expected; the last part of the show dealt with Bacon Fest,
taking place in Portage the following day.
Davich told me to watch for an upcoming article about Tamburitza
music. Growing up Croatian, he
reminisced about church picnics with Tamburitzan musicains Rich Krilich, Frank
Mosca, and Rudy Grasha at Bronko’s in Crown Point. Owner Nick Tarailo, one of my first students,
was a real ladies man in those days, picking up more than one coed at Jenny’s,
our watering hole after my 7 o’clock class.
His grandfather Nikola was a proud Serbian-Montegegrin steelworker
during Gary’s pioneer days. Nick’s
father Bronko was shot to death near his Lounge in Glen Park some 30 years ago.
Toni and I were the only ones in the Cinemark theater for its
2:15 showing of “Elysium.” Set in 2154
(same year as “Avatar”), it pitted a buffed and bald Matt Damon against
villainous Jodie Foster. When a cop asks what Damon had in his backpack, he
replies, “Hair care products, mostly”
and receives a beating for being a wiseass.
After Martha Dodd’s father was recalled as Ambassador to
Germany, according to Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts,” she parted with her
Russian lover Boris Winogradov (later purged by Joseph Stalin) and shortly thereafter
married wealthy Alfred Sloan, ten years her senior. In New York City during the 1940s she
presided over a salon that included actor Paul Robeson, writer Lillian Hellman,
photographer Margaret Bourke-White, and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi. When the House UnAmerican Activities Committee
sought to question the Sloans in 1953 about their left-leaning activities, they
fled to Mexico City and then Prague, where they lived the rest of their lives.
Corey Hagelberg
Corey Hagelberg and I waited an hour at the Gardner Center
Saturday for David Schalliol to arrive with the prints that we were to install
only to discover when I called his cell that he was in Boston, with his fiancé,
due to a “minor emergency.” Somewhat bummed out, I treated Corey to
lunch at McDonald’s (ice cream cones still on sale for 49 cents improved my
mood. I checked out the Woodson
-Wildermuth Library in Miller, where people were watching MSNBC’s coverage of
the rally at the Lincoln Memorial. I was
expecting to meet Samuel Love at Café 444 for a one-woman show, but that event
was cancelled. Instead people were
distributing free back-to-school supplies and hot dogs to local students. A man gave me “Richard D. Ligon for Sheriff”
literature and nail files. A good man,
Ligon has an eight-point program that includes training for school security
personnel, a youth boot camp, and an end to punishing officers for political
reasons.
“Clear History,” starring
Larry David, was mildly funny and virtually a sequel to the “Curb Your
Enthusiasm” series, with cameos by “Curb” regulars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, J.B.
Smoove, Philip Baker Hall, and Danny McBride.
Liev Schreiber plays a Chechen thug.
One critic compared “Clear History” to the lame final episode of
“Seinfeld.”
Jeff Manes’ SALT column was on Lake Central teacher Tom Clark,
who took my Vietnam course. His students
had collected letters from the loved ones of soldiers who died in the needless
conflict. Eight years ago at age 50
Clark joined the National Guard and put in a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Lake Central grads David Novaczyk and Sergio
Perez died in that troubled country. Tom
grew up in Gary and attended Wirt High School.
His old man was a WW II vet who believed, in Tom’s words, in “the anti-red kind of stuff” – like “kill a commie for mommie.” Never heard that expression before.
Finally got a trio of games in at Dave’s. I finished a distant third in Amun Re after a
bold but foolish sacrifice in the first round but won Acquire thanks to acquiring
the most stock in Imperial, the largest company, and drawing good tiles at
opportune moments. Dave went several
rounds without money for stock, allowing me to overcome his early lead.
Reading about the Chicago "Outfit," I had to laugh at the
colorful nicknames of gangsters, including Paul “The Waiter” Ricca, Frank “The
Enforcer” Nitti, Tony “Big Tuna” Accardo, Sam “Momo” Giancana, Fiore “Fifi”
Buccieri, Murray “The Camel” Humphreys, and William “Willie Potatoes”
Daddano. When we first moved to Chicago,
CBS crime reporter John “Bulldog” Drummond described mob activities in colorful
detail. “Bulldog” once interviewed me in
the Archives about politics in Gary.
On MTV’s video awards show Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus vied to
see who could show the most skin.
Miley’s gyrations were especially lewd and garnered the most attention. Justin Timberlake gave the classiest
performance with his old group ‘N Sync.
While the world braces for Obama’s response to Syria’s apparent use of
chemical weapons on civilians, the morning TV shows concentrated on shots of
Miley humping and stripping. Radio hosts have been analyzing it all day as
either a pathetic act of rebellion or a shrewd career move. One caller said it reminded her of a little
sister trying to show off. Jerry Davich
asked, “Are there any parents who still
want their daughters to be like Miley ‘Hannah Montana’ Cyrus?”
Plans to install the prints at the Gardner Center were pushed
back yet again, but Corey Hagelberg is being a good sport and agreed to pick
them up with me tomorrow in Chicago because the guy who was supposed to bring
them is still in Boston. I familiarized myself with Camilo Vergara’s
biography, which I’ll summarize at Wednesday’s program. Born in 1944, he came from a wealthy Chilian
family but grew up poor due to an alcoholic father, who’d leave home for weeks
at a time. Camilo himself left home at
age 15. Thanks to affluent relatives, he
attended boarding schools. He first
became acquainted with Gary while a Notre Dame student living in South Bend. In New York City he became a street
photographer, and, he writes in “The New American Ghetto,” took photos of “children cooling themselves off at fire
hydrants, black girls amusing themselves with white dolls, Latino schoolboys
cutting classes to watch dogs copulating, and poor elderly Jews on the stoops
of their tenements on the Lower East Side.” In 1990 Camilo returned to Rengo, Chili, to
find his boyhood adobe home gone, as were olive, fig, orange, and willow trees.
A few blocks away, once fragrant
eucalyptus trees were now stumps. “I understood better,” he observed, “the feelings experienced by suburbanites
who visit their old urban neighborhoods, only to find them unrecognizable.” Winner of the MacArthur “genius award,”
in 2012 Vergara was a recipient of the National Humanities Award, presented to
him by President Obama in a 2013 ceremony.
Winner of the MacArthur “genius award,” in 2012 Camilo Vergara was a recipient of the National Humanities Award. President Obama presented it to him in a 2013
ceremony.
I bowled two practice games to work on my hook. Cressmoor owner Jim Fowble showed me a book
about Vietnam memorials all over the country, including a photo and description
of the “etching” in Veterans Memorial Park in Munster. Jim still regrets that he did not contact the
family of a comrade who died at his side.
He feared it may have made things worse for them.
Britney Shearer, Lorraine and John’s daughter, asked be to
befriend her, and I did. Most of her
messages have to do with her garden.
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