Standoff

“Indian legislation on the desk of a do-right Congressman

Now, he don't know much about the issue

so he picks up the phone and he asks advice from the

Senator out in Indian country

A darling of the energy companies who are

ripping off what's left of the reservations. Huh.”

         Buffy Sainte-Marie, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”

 Buffy Sainte-Marie in 2015

Born in 1941 on a Saskatchewan Cree Nation reservation, Buffy Sainte-Marie was a fixture at coffeehouses in Toronto and New York City, along with fellow Canadians Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell.  She believes that radio stations censored her music after she became active in Seventies Red Power causes.  Like blacklisted folk singer Pete Seeger, she appeared on the TV program Sesame Street and on one episode breast-fed her son Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild.

Police officers from Northwest Indiana are traveling to North Dakota where members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters are protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, which they believe will threaten the Missouri River and desecrate sacred sites and burial grounds.  Plans call for the pipeline to go under the river and, if it ruptured, would pollute drinking water.  What is being labeled a District 1 Homeland Security task force will include Lake County cops as well as officers from Munster, Hammond, Michigan City, Griffith, and Schererville. Commanding the 13-person detachment is Munster chief Stephen Scheckel, who claimed that the officers will just be manning checkpoints and, in his words, “trying to keep peace in the area.”  Let’s hope they’ve had sensitive training and made to understand the causes of the legitimate protest.

Protesters have been pepper sprayed and mass arrests made. I find it unconscionable that police from Northwest Indiana will possibly be complicit in these heavy-handed tactics. Standing Rock tribal chairman Dave Archambault has appealed to the United Nations Human Right Council to send observers to serve as witnesses to law enforcement actions.  He stated: “We are reaching out to the U.N. because the state government of North Dakota has abandoned us and the federal government in Washington, D.C., has refused to recognize signed land treaties with our tribe.”

At bowling Phil Sperry threw me a Snickers from a bag of candy bars, which I was careful to chew on the left side of my mouth so not to dislodge my temporary crown.  After winning game one, the Engineers had a ten-pin lead in the tenth frame with one bowler to go.  Both Frank Shufran and his counterpart had struck in the previous frame, but the opponent doubled while Frank spared, tying the score with each having one final ball.  Frank left the six-ten on what looked like a good hit, and the Engineers lost by a single pin.

 Kappa Pickers, Angela Atwood on right

Two of Patricia Hearst’s Symbionese Liberation Army kidnappers on the evening of February 4, 1974, Angela Atwood and Bill Harris, had previously been active in Indiana University’s theater program before becoming intrigued by the possibilities of guerrilla theater.  In 1968 Angela met freshman Jane Pauley, who recently succeeded Charles Osgood as host of the CBS show “Sunday Morning.”  Both were in a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority musical group called the Pickers, which performed on Arthur Godfrey’s TV show.  Jeffrey Toobin, author of “American Heiress,” wrote:

  One weekend Angela brought some friends from New Jersey to town, and she fixed one of them up with Jane Paulet for the day.  At a party that evening, Pauley’s date had maneuvered her into a bedroom.  Sensing her naïve young friend was in danger, Angela swooped into the bedroom and freed Pauley from her date’s advances.

In 1990, when son Dave graduated from IU outdoors on a cold, rainy day, Jane Pauley was the featured speaker.  Four years later she received an honorary degree from her alma mater.

 Wyoming H.S. volleyball team, Tori Lane at bottom

Tori’s Wyoming High School volleyball season has ended, and now she is debating whether to play basketball or do cheerleading. Even though she is neither tall nor stout, she is very strong and therefore one of the bases rather than a flyer on top of pyramids.  I hope she opts for basketball.

Samuel A. Love has been researching his ancestors and posted photos of his great grandmother Vera Hilbert, who was born in Lansing, Michigan, and died at age 35 while living in Flora, Indiana, during the post-World War I influenza pandemic.

IUN Student Support Services program assistant Barbara Gunn invited people on campus to visit their Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) altar featuring masks and other artifacts.  While there I sampled traditional Mexican bread that was on hand.  In years past Ann Fritz put together a display that included photos of deceased faculty, including Abe Mizrahi and Rhiman Rotz.  I'd like to see one of recently deceased Leroy Peterson (below).

In the Archives I met intern Victoria Morales, who is working on a university-wide oral history project in connection with IU’s 2020 bicentennial celebration.  She told me that her father had taken a class with me and that he claimed that I made history come alive.  I looked in my Calumet Region names index to see if he’d written a Steel Shavings article.  Listed were Abe, Amanda, Gordon, Ivan, and Marie Morales but not him.  Ivan wrote about two brothers, Victor and Ramiro Morales, who in 1966 were marines serving in Vietnam.  When Victor was killed while on patrol near Da Nang, Ramiro got sent home on emergency leave to attend funeral services but under orders to report back in ten days.  His father requested that Ramiro not be sent back to Vietnam, pleading, “Isn’t one son’s life enough?”  Ivan Manuel Morales wrote:

  Doctor A.A. Agana, who was treating Mrs. Morales when she became extremely ill upon notice of the death of her eldest son, distributed a petition to keep Ramiro stateside, which was sent to the U.S.M.C. Commandant and Congressman Ray J. Madden.  Post-Tribune reporter Ernie Hernandez and Father Piel of St. Ann’s also lent their support.  The Morales family was very grateful when they received news that their son Ramiro would be stationed in the states.

  In 1971 the City of Gary was in the process of looking for a Latino name for its newest school, which would replace Thomas Jefferson School.  Among the names chosen for review were that of Cesar Chavez, Joe A. Torres (the first Mexican American to serve on the Gary School Board), and Victor Morales.  Even though his name was not chosen (instead, the name Jefferson was retained), the Morales family was still grateful that Victor’s name was one of those considered.

 

Prior to the Reframing Histories interactive exhibit at Gardner Center in Miller I took more books to Liz Wuerffel, who had set up stations for participants to record their memories.  The exhibit brochure stated:

  Frames draw and focus our attention to what lies inside them; they can deepen our insights. Frames also remove features from our sight; if we ignore what lies outside them, we miss an opportunity to broaden our perspective. This exhibition frames several important elements of our Northwest Indiana history—de-urbanization, life in the mills, experiences of homelessness—and reframes them by placing them alongside each other and in the context of first-person stories of neighborhood life and resilience. Viewers can interact with the exhibit in many ways: add thoughts and memories to the exhibit, map childhood homes, browse reading material from NWI authors in the reading room, interview family and friends at the audio station, or bring historical photographs to scan, print, and add to the exhibit. Featured work includes the Welcome Project’s Flight Paths initiative, Aimee Tomasek’s photographic series, “Hot Idle, LTV Steel,” woodcut prints by Corey Hagelberg, and The Invisible Project, a traveling exhibit that makes visible stories of homelessness in Porter County through storytelling, infographics, and art.

When dating Toni in 1963, I arrived one evening to a bottleneck on Almond Street in the Port Richmond neighborhood of North Philadelphia.  With cars parked on both sides, there was not enough room for two lanes, and there were a dozen cars facing each other in both directions.  At one point every eastbound driver but one backed up, but the lead car wouldn’t budge despite threats, pleadings, and much cursing.  Finally the westbound drivers direction gave in, and the standoff came to an end.  It reminded me of the Dr. Seuss story about the north-going Zax and the south-going Zax who refused to move for one another.