Same Love

“The right wing conservatives think it's a decision

And you can be cured with some treatment and religion

Man-made rewiring of a predisposition

Playing God, aw nah here we go

America the brave still fears what we don't know.”

         Macklemore, “Same Love 

Macklemore, on the cover of Rolling Stone, is a 30 year-old white rap sensation from Seattle whose real name Ben Haggerty.  With producer Ryan Lewis he first scored a number one hit with “Thrift Shop.”  In “Same Love” he starts out: “When I was in third grade I thought I was gay, ‘cause I could draw, my uncle was, and I kept my room straight.”  Later he declares, “If I was gay, I would think hip-hop hates me.”  Macklemore debuted the song, which advocates gay marriage, on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” ten months ago.

“Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” loosely (to say the least) based on a true story about Eugene Allen, who served eight Presidents, beginning with Truman, is a tear-jerker.  Director Lee Daniels wanted to use the title “The Butler” but Warner Brothers claimed it infringed on a 1916 comedy short by that name.  At times totally compelling, the film is occasionally over the top, as when the main character’s mother is raped and his father shot in cold blood on a plantation in 1920s Georgia.  Nothing of the sort happened to Eugene Allen.  It is disconcerting that well-known actors play Presidents (John Cusack as Nixon) or First Ladies (Jane Fonda, of all people, as Nancy Reagan).  The best of the lot was Liev Schreiber as LBJ, crudely issuing orders to underlings while taking a crap and asking butler Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) to fetch him prune juice. 

Oprah Winfrey turned in an Oscar worthy performance as Cecil’s wife Gloria, as did David Oyelowo as militant, estranged son Louis.  Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz were so in character I didn’t recognize them.  The mostly black Portage Theater audience vocally expressed delight when Gloria slapped Louis.  During his Black Panther phase Louis ridiculed Sidney Poitier and, by implication, his own father, for being a “white-man’s nigger.” Father and son finally reconciled in 1986 when they were both arrested while participating in an anti-apartheid rally in front of the South African embassy (Mayor Richard Hatcher spent a night in jail after such a demonstration).  Eugene Allen didn’t have an activist son, but inventing Louis Gaines allowed director Lee Daniels to encapsulate how the civil rights movement evolved. As Time reviewer Mary Pols noted, “Wildly operatic and occasionally too obvious, ‘The Butler’ is nonetheless, like ‘Roots,’ an essential and deeply moving filmic rendering of African-American history.”

At the Portage Meijer for the first time I bought a dozen pair of socks.  Reminiscent of the Super Kmart when it opened at that location twenty years ago, of the more than two dozen check-out counters all but about four were closed.

Secretary Dorothy Mokry and TerryAnn Defenser from University Relations helped me reserve an area in IUN’s Savannah Student Center to show the reproductions of murals honoring Martin Luther King for four days starting September 3.  The online form was so daunting, I never could have done it alone.  TerryAnn, Scott Fulk, and James Wallace promised to provide easels on which to display the 30 by 20-inch Camilo Vergara prints.

A two-day new faculty orientation took place in IUN’s Conference Center featuring lectures, workshops, and social fellowship.  Chuck Gallmeier talked on faculty governance and Chris Young about the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.  Tim Sutherland mentioned the Archives in his library pitch.  Jon Briggs was there, too, in some role.   New Student orientations have been occurring all summer.  My guess is that Anne Balay, in the Archives to work on captions for photos she’s using in “Steel Closets,” was not invited to enlighten either group about the LGBT support group Rainbow Connections.

Anne Balay 

Son Dave is bringing 42 East Chicago Central students to our “Dream Continues” event at the Gardner Center at 1 pm on August 28.  On Saturday during installation we’ll put out a hundred chairs.  IU Northwest Tech Services converted an “Eyes of the Prize” episode from VHS to DVD.  I’m showing a 30-minute excerpt covering the Birmingham Crusade and March on Washington.  Ryan Shelton designed posters, which I’ll take on Saturday.  Ryan, coach of the Lady Redhawks, is looking forward to the upcoming basketball season and wrote a press release announcing that IUN has a new head volleyball coach, Diane White, and has on the team a 6’1 transfer student, Natasha Van Glider, to go with four return players and nine freshman.

above, Lady Redhawks; below Jonathan and Connie in 2009

Former student and Voodoo Chili fan Jonathan Rix is getting married.  He’d been in ill health, so it’s great he’s back on his feet, in large part, I’m sure, because of fiance Connie Dudley.

According to Robert Lombardo’s “Organized Crime in Chicago,” African Americans in the Windy City during the Depression Thirties wagered an estimated $18 million a year was wagered on policy.  Walter Kelly expanded his operation from the South Side to East Chicago and Gary before gunned down by someone connected to remnants of the Al Capone gang.

First night of bowling: I rolled a 450 series and passed out volume 42 to teammates, owner Jim Fowble, and Sheet and Tin League president Bobby McCann, who thanked me profusely and whose wife had me autograph it.  Turncoat Duke Caminski joined Bob Sheid’s team, leaving us one short until Frank’s golf league ends.  I finished with a strike, raised my arms, and exclaimed, “I’ll be back next week.”  Sometimes in similar situations, paraphrasing Ernie Banks, I’ll yell, “Let’s go four.”  I woke up slightly sore in the butt, back, and neck, but the arthritic shoulder felt fine. 

tintype of Will Radell from Gettysburg Reenactment

Will Radell wrote an account about last month’s reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg.  Part of the Twentieth Indiana contingent out of Crown Point that formed part of the Army of the Wabash, he slept in a dog tent, battling ticks, mosquitoes, moles, and, on the last day, rain.  He might have passed out on the Willoughby Run battlefield, the heat was so intense, had it not been for “Ice Angels,” women passing out ice, and by constantly drinking water and Gatorade.  Sweat burned the eyes, and rifle barrels were almost too hot to hold.  Another hazard was damaging one’s eardrums, especially from canon fire.  Officers put men through strenuous drill exercise before battle and made sure rifles were cleaned and properly stacked at day’s end.  Will reunited with former comrades from Pennsylvania and met re-enactors who came from as far away as Sweden and Australia.

In the New York Times Sunday Magazine “Lives” column novelist Ben Dolnick wrote about actress Olivia Wilde (“Cowboys and Aliens,” “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone”) having a crush on him when she was ten.  At least that’s how he remembers it.  Regarding memory fallibility, he quotes William Maxwell, to wit: “In talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.”  Dolnick explains the tendency to replace “multifarious actual experience with a simplified, and possibly falsified story.”  I believe Carol Shuman had a fifth grade crush on me while I only had eyes for Judy Jenkins.  Would Carol remember it that way?  She once stabbed me in the palm of my hand with a pencil (I still carry around a trace of the lead) and became mortified when her halter-top fell off in front of me at a picnic at Wayne Wylie’s even though she hadn’t yet begun to develop breasts.  Carol had feelings toward me, I’m fairly certain, but sadly it was at a time in our lives when, as Dolnick puts it, “boy-girl relations were still perilous.”  Can memory from so many years ago even be trusted?

I delivered posters about the MLK event to Lake Street Gallery, Lee Construction, and the Woodson-Wildermuth Library and flyers to Miller Bakery Café just as Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson was arriving.  She’s attending the March on Washington Saturday and hopes to be at our event on August 28.  Corey and Sam were sprucing up the Gardner Center, and I left them two posters, too.  We installing framed photos Saturday.  Camilo posted the results of an installation at an abandoned diner in Camden, New Jersey.