Tempus Fugit

“Time flames like a paraffin stove

And what burns are the minutes I live.”

    Irving Layton

In Harper’s weird column “Findings,” which presents without explanation dozens of biological oddities, I learned that Japanese quail possess a gland that turns “copulatory fluid” into “meringue-like foam” and that “invasive mussels were purifying the Great Lakes, thereby killing loons.”  Say what?  Inspired to look further into this, I discovered that clear water allowed sunlight to penetrate to greater depths, facilitating the growth of algae mats.  When they decompose, they produce deadly botulism toxin that infect Gobies and other fish that the loons eat, ultimately paralyzing them. 

On the way to watch James bowl I listened to WXRT’s show on 1990, not my favorite year musically although “Love Shack” by the B52s and Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” were cool.  It was the year Nelson Mandela got released from prison and the Soviet Union dissolved.  “Home Alone,” “Goodfellas,” and “Pretty Woman” were box office hits, and Johnny Depp starred in the year’s strangest movie, “Edward Scissorhands.”  At Camelot Lanes Dave told me he’s been named English Department chair at E.C. Central.

At Miller Bakery Café with Linda Anderson and Ron and Nancy Cohen, I had the scallops “small meal” and a house salad (perfect choice). Nancy watches two grandchildren three times a week and is weaning Rocco off diapers as his third birthday approaches.  Linda, once IUN’s athletic director, asked about folks she used to work with, including Scott Fulk and Mary Lee. Folk singer Charlie King is performing at Temple Israel next weekend; Ron arranged for him to sing at IUN some years before. I first heard Charlie at a Bailly Alliance No Nukes rally; now he is active in Bill Pelke’s movement to abolish the death penalty, Journey of Hope . . . From Violence to Healing.

 Charlie King

After dinner we attended a Gardner Center showing of “Everglades of the North: The Story of the Grand Kankakee Marsh.”  All four producers were on hand, including Pat Wisniewski and Jeff Manes, and answered questions afterwards.  The most touching moment was when they thanked the late Cara Spicer for all her support with Steve and many of her friends in the audience.  Although I’d seen the documentary before, it still was jarring to realize the callous disregard for nature and the wholesale slaughter of migrating birds.  One company would fire off a huge cannon-like rifle that could kill hundreds in a single shot.  President-elect Benjamin Harrison got lost in the marsh during a hunting excursion; the country might have been better off had he never been found.

 Blondine Huk and Frederic Cousseau

Frederic and Blandine arrived from Hunter’s Inn in Glen Park, whose owner was so impressed with them that he plied them with free drinks and offered to have a party in their honor in October.  Dick and Cheryl Hagelberg gave them photos from when they took in a RailCats game, and I introduced them to Karren Lee (who they’re going to interview), Jeff Manes, and Pat Wisniewski.  As we were leaving, Brenda and Samuel Love drove by, saw us, and stopped to chat. All in all, a good evening.

Home in time for the season debut of SNL, hosted by Tina Fey, who played an Albanian woman in the evening’s funniest skit, a parody of “Girls.”  I managed to stay up till midnight to see Arcade Fire perform both “Reflektor” and “Afterlife.”  Frontman Win Butler had black makeup around the eyes, making him resemble a raccoon.

Jeff Manes had alerted me that his Sunday SALT column was about his North Newton Latin teacher, Mrs. Maggie Merchant, now 91 and a resident of a healthcare center named for Hoosier humorist George Ade.  During WW II she attended Ball State and told Manes: “If it had not been for a scholarship, I wouldn’t have been able to go to college. At that time, they had quarters rather than semesters. It was $27.50 per quarter; my scholarship covered $22 of that. I worked at the movie theater while going to college. I smelled like popcorn all the time.”  When Jeff told her it seemed like just yesterday that he was in her class, she responded in Latin, “Tempus fugit.”  Time flees.

Union stalwart Alice Bush arranged for Frederic and Blandine to attend Sunday afternoon line dancing at the SEIU hall.  About 25 women were learning steps from a retired steelworker.  They were delighted to be filmed and some tried out their French on their guests.  I wore my SEIU cap and, though normally a terrible line dancer (I could never master the electric slide’s change of direction), I did one new step well enough to earn high fives from several women near me, including Jackie, who is a champion step dance competitor.  I tried to keep her in my sight whenever possible and do whatever she was doing.

Chris Graham wrote: “You were my first professor in college in the winter of 1991. You taught me more than you will ever know. I ended up with an MBA and run a business while working for Abbott Laboratories these days.  When we are young we don't get all that matters. I do now. Thank you!”  He had interviewed his grandfather for my 1950s Shavings issue, and I wrote back that I had found two interesting quotes:  “My grandfather told my aunt, ‘If the boy likes you enough, he'll call you.  You don't have to act like a common whore.’”  And: “My grandfather required my aunt's dates to pass the handshake test.  They had to have a firm grip.” He replied: “I recall those quotes.  Wow.  So long ago.”

As Republicans threaten to shut down the government over Obamacare, Taylor Branch’s “The Clinton Tapes” is a reminder that abject partisanship has been a GOP hallmark for the past 20 years.  At least, thanks to the over-reaching by Ken Starr, special prosecutors are mostly a thing of the past.  One Clinton administration victim, HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, was hounded out of office and saddled with huge legal fees because in Senate hearings, though he admitted he had once supported a mistress, he underestimated how much he had paid her.  Branch writes that even Republican Alfonse D’Amato, the leading Senate Republican on the committee during confirmation hearings, wrote Attorney General Janet Reno “that the error by Cisneros was of no consequence.”  I heard Cisneros speak at IU Northwest, and the former mayor of San Antonio was quite brilliant and should have had a bright future.

Chelsea Clinton comes across in The Clinton Tapes” as intelligent and thoughtful.  While at Stanford, she gave up a chance for a Rhodes Scholarship because she had had some many opportunities to travel the world that she thought someone else needed the honor more than she did.

On January 14, 2001, Taylor Branch was a Meet the Press panelist discussing outgoing President Clinton’s legacy.  He recalled: “Every time I mentioned public policy, somebody flew into derision about Monica Lewinsky, impeachment, or sordid variations of Whitewater.”  During commercial breaks moderator Tim Russert and the other guests exchanged gossip about Clinton being “off the reservation” and seeing other women and then gleefully sang the chorus of the Baha Men hit “Who Let the Dogs Out?”  One hypocrite on the panel was Bill Bennett, who postured as a moral paragon but loved the bright lights of Las Vegas but had lost millions due to a gambling addiction.

I had mixed feelings watching the Eagles-Broncos game.  I’m a Philadelphia fan, but once they got way behind, I wanted Peyton Manning to rack up FANTASY points for me.  He passed for four TDs, and I easily beat nephew Garrett with 123 points, second only to Bobby’s 125, with the running back tandem of Adrian Peterson and Reggie Bush.

John Mutka reported that Harry Flournoy and Orston Artis have finally been selected to enter the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.  Hailing from Gary, they played on the all-black starting team for Texas Western, coached by Don Haskins, that defeated the all-white Kentucky team coached by Adolph Rupp, 72-65, for the 1966 NCAA championship.  At the game was former mayor George Chacharis, who had spent two years in prison earlier in the decade for tax evasion.  Froebel grad Artis recalled that Chacharis shook his hand after the game.  Hoosier sports pundits, Mutka sneered, “routinely pretend this corner of the state doesn’t exist unless it’s to reinforce negative stereotypes.”  Emerson grad Flournoy twisted his knee and only played for six minutes in the championship game but made the cover of Sports Illustrated, snatching a rebound from Wildcat Pat Riley, the future NBA coach.  In 2007 the Naismith Hall of Fame honored the entire Texas Western team.

Harry Flournoy in 2007

I received a recall notice about the Corolla having a defective airbag inflator, so I spent two hours getting it replaced plus an oil change.  Among the reading material was a copy of “Gary, Indiana: A Centennial Celebration” by Kendall Svengalis, who must also be a Toyota man (I’m assuming he donated the copy unless it was another customer).  I learned that during the 1930s Kendall’s father Frank changed his last name from Zwingalis on the advice of a fortuneteller.  Frank was infatuated with the occult, and the name was similar to Svengali, a fictional character played by John Barrymore who possesses hypnotic power.  Around this time Frank’s brother Edward changed his name to Lewis, Albert shortened his to Swing, and Sam took the name Jackson, the same as the street where he lived.  Ironically, brother Vincent, who joined a Lithuanian order, changed his to the original family name - Zvingilis

Arriving at the library, the crowd outside indicated a fire drill was taking place.  Burnt popcorn caused the fire alarm in the vending machine room to go off, it turned out, but it was a beautiful, sunny day, so nobody seemed to mind. 

In Nicole’s Sixties class the guy next to me said he took my “Vietnam Veterans” magazine to the Lake Station VFW, and the commander, Rex Allen Lewis, found an article Rae Helton did on him entitled “56 Assault Missions.”  Based at An Khe in the Central Highlands in 1967, he was a “Forward Observer” whose expertise was in reading maps.  He tried not to get too close to fellow soldiers, knowing they might get killed, but told Helton: “You can’t avoid it because you are with guys 24 hours a day and know more about them than your best friend at home because that is all you have out there, each other.”

A student brought in a cartoon of LBJ with a voluptuous mistress (the war machine) turning away an emaciated beggar (his anti-poverty programs).  Nicole mentioned that LBJ feared all of Vietnam going communist would open him to charges similar to the canard that Harry Truman lost China.  A second so-called lesson involving China was that if he invaded North Vietnam, it could lead to big power intervention as happened in Korea.  Thus, his policy essentially was “enough but not too much” – enough to prevent the fall of Saigon but leave Ho Chi Minh in power in Hanoi.