Aggregate

“The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.” Helen Keller

After watching James bowl, I heard Pink Floyd’s “Learning to Fly,” “Alex Chilton” by the Replacements, and “Sentimental Hygiene” by Warren Zevon on WXRT’s Saturday show about 1987, the year the AIDs quilt debuted and 200,000 folks gathered in DC for Gay Rights and demanding more money for AIDs research.  My favorite music videos that year were “Land of Confusion” by Genesis (making fun of Reagan as asleep at the wheel) and “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)” by the Beastie Boys.  1987 was Dave’s senior year at Portage H.S.  Phil was a freshman at IU, when the Hoosiers won the NCAA championship, thanks to Keith Smart’s baseline jumper with three seconds left.

I again watched “This Is 40,” now on HBO, in order to hear Graham Parker and the Rumour and watch Melissa McCarthy’s two scenes as an out-of-control parent and noticed that Paul Rudd wore a Camper Van Beethoven t-shirt.  I also finished season 4 of “The Sopranos,” which left several plots unresolved and Tony and Carmela’s marriage on the ropes.

According to Harper’s “Index” column, a U.S. military veteran is five times as likely to be transgender than a member of the general public and an estimated 41 percent of transgenders have attempted suicide at least once.  The “Index” mentioned Gary, Indiana, twice (in a pejorative way, naturally), estimating that a third of the city’s houses are abandoned and unoccupied and that the “number of these homes the city has been able to sell to qualified buyers for one dollar” was 12.  On the lighter side I learned that since taking office Obama has pardoned 39 people and 8 turkeys.

 "Natural Selections by Gregg Hertzlieb

Corey Hagelberg did an excellent job hanging the Gardner Center “Aggregate” exhibit featuring nine Valparaiso University faculty.  A “really big crowd,” to quote Ed Sullivan, was on hand Saturday, including most of the artists.  Gregg Hertzlieb, familiar to me because he wrote the intro to Gary Cialdella’s “The Calumet Region: An American Place,” displayed fanciful “Natural Selection” pieces that featured fish, moths, and other critters.  One artist portrayed people with masks over their faces, perhaps to dramatize the growing danger of air pollution.  It reminded me of the Russian punk rebels Pussy Riot, who cover their identities with balaclavas. 

I congratulated George and Joyce Davis on their recent nuptials.  George manages the Lake Street Gallery booth at Chesterton’s European Market Saturdays and has had great success selling prints of South Shore posters.  I told them about my stepfather Howard using a psychologist to determine whether job candidates could cut it as law book salesmen.  The guy evidently had an uncanny ability. The one time Howard ignored his advice, the new hire was a complete bust.

I chatted with Pat and Karren Lee, who were looking forward to talking Frederic and Blandine the next day, and Tom Eaton, who visits Paris annually.  When I asked Marianita Porterfield whether husband Harry, a Chicago news reporter for 50 years, was in the house, she quipped that he left her and a friend off and told her to call when ready to leave.

above, Harry Porterfield; below, Kate and Jim Migoski, on right

Our dear friend Kate Migoski died.  We knew that her cancer had spread and that she didn’t have long to live, but it was still a shock.  We had planned to visit her in McMurray, Pennsylvania, later this week.  We first met her when Dave was dating her teenage daughter Suzie, and for years, until U.S. Steel transferred Jim to Pittsburgh, we’d have Easter dinner together.  Kate made a great assortment of Christmas cookies and continued to mail them to us as late as last year.  The four of us went on cruises and West Coast trips together, and I even convinced them to go to sweltering Memphis in mid-August for concerts on the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death.   Toni talked on the phone with her almost every day.  I’m still in shock.  She was a strong person with a heart of gold.

When the Tigers were up 5-1 in the eighth, they figured to take a 2-game lead in the AL championship – until David “Big Papi” Ortiz hit a grand slam.  A viral YouTube video captures hirsute policeman Steve Horgan celebrating, temporarily ignoring a sprawling Torii Hunter.

I read a short memoir by former student Molly Harvey from my Sixties Shavings entitled “The Wonder Years” in Nicole Anslover’s Sixties class.  I was tempted to read an account by Bettie Julkes of her senior year at Gary Roosevelt, when Afros were in style and girls could wear pants to school for the first time, but knew I’d tear up.  Bettie wrote:

“In 1967 a shy, young white student teacher was assigned to my biology class.  Some students were irate, but to my surprise I liked him right away.  I was on my best behavior so he would like us and not be uneasy.  In fact, after initial reservations, most of my classmates accepted him.  We had a lot of fun, perhaps because he was closer to our age than our regular teacher, who reminded me of my father.

When his teaching time was drawing to an end, we decided to buy him a ten-dollar briefcase.  On his final day he spent 15 minutes telling us how sorry he was to be leaving.  He cleared his throat a lot and seemed to turn red as he told us how much he had enjoyed the class.  When we gave him our gift, his eyes filled with tears as he managed to mutter a thank you.  It was sort of a great release.  At that moment I loved him for liking us so much to cry and for being so different from what we had been conditioned to expect.”

Since the class had been studying the influence of the counter culture I also read this memoir by Lurie, who met hippies at a Miller beach when she was 15 who asked her and some friends if they’d like to party.  She recalled:

“Of course we said yes.  The guys had bell-bottom jeans on and no shirts.  They had long hair, and some were wearing headbands.  They took us to an apartment that was on the top floor of a two-story house.  I will never forget what it looked like.  There were beads in the doorway separating the rooms.  They had black light posters highlighted with black lights and strobe lights.

Several folks were already there, sitting in the living room on big pillows, smoking pot out of this big water pipe.  They offered us some, and we said yes.  When it was time to go home, I had a lot of difficulty walking down the stairs.  One of the guys took me home, and for the first time I experienced a French kiss.  I thought it was gross.”

After answering questions about my political views back then (I used Spiro Agnew’s word “radiclib – radical in some ways, liberal in others) and whether it was true (it was) that IUN started one of the country’s first Black Studies programs, I passed the Shavings issue around.  When it reached a young woman in front of me, she said that Patty Kalvaitis, who wrote about the blizzard of 1967, had been her high school teacher.  Marla Gee said she was bussed into Bailly Middle School in the mid-Sixties and worked as a volunteer for Bobby Kennedy during the 1968 Democratic primary.  She hoped to find photos of RFK visited Gary, so I took her to the Archives and Steve emailed several to her, including one of Kennedy at the Gary Airport on April 29 taken by Post-Trib photographer Elmer Budlove. 

In Atlantic magazine’s “Jubilee” volume I found an article about novelist Sinclair Lewis by intellectual historian Perry Miller, best known for his books about Puritanism.  Summers while I was in college I devoured “Main Street” (1920), “Babbitt” (1922) and “Elmer Gantry” (1927).  An alcoholic who frequently embarrassed himself in public, Lewis was even more prolific than his intellectual mentor, Charles Dickens, who also a social critic and satirist writing in the realist tradition.  Miller, who met Lewis on an ocean liner near the end of the novelist’s life, wrote that “in the guise of ferocious attacks on America,” his novels were “celebrations of it.”  Lewis once said, “I love America, but I don’t like it.”