Welcome Initiatives

“Time to get up

Time to go to class

Time to tell bigots who bother me

To kiss my ass.”

         “Time,” Morning Bishop (1979)

Morning Aarona Bishop moved to Gary in 1967 and after raising more than a half-dozen kids graduated from IU Northwest in 1980 at age 38.  A few years later, she founded a children’s theater troupe at the YMCA, which became the Morning Bishop Theatre Playhouse.  Bishop also directed productions with adults at a variety of Gary locations.  Thanks to numerous grants, she was able to find a permanent home on Lake Street in Miller beginning in 2004.  Morning Bishop Dilworth passed away in 2015, and as her obituary stated, “she was a wife, mother, advocate, and complete community force.”

The NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) awarded Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette (above) a hundred-thousand dollar grant for their Welcome Project initiative, “Flight Paths: Mapping Our Changing Neighborhoods.”  They are partnering with nine area organizations, including IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives.  The project, in their words, will feature “a multi-media initiative  to help users engage and analyze factors contributing to de-industrialization and the fracturing of neighborhoods, communities, and regions in post-industrial America.”  They conclude: “Flight Paths will prove an invaluable source to anyone who wants to understand why – fully 50 years after the height of the modern Civil Rights movement – the extent of both racial segregation and racial inequality in the United States remains as jaw-dropping as ever.”

Jimbo and Ron at Lake St. Gallery book signing; on left is Ken Schoon

Ron Cohen arranged for VU History professor Heath Carter and I to have lunch with him in Miller, and we ended up at Bakery Café after finding Captain’s House closed.  We talked about ways area History departments have periodically cooperated in the past (unfortunately, not much) and future possibilities. I have spoken in Heath Carter’s class on the Civil Rights movement in Northwest Indiana and offered to talk about Jacob A. Riis in an upcoming one covering settlement houses during the Progressive Era.  In the Spring Carter also has a seminar on Trump’s America, which will trace past Evangelical and populist movements and compare the present administration with previous presidents.  With Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirerbuddy David Pecker plea bargaining with regard to paying hush money to  porn star Stormy Daniels and a Playboyplaymate Karen McDougal, it would be ironic if the House of Representatives brought impeachment charges against him on matters of sex, as Republicans did with Clinton.  I hope lawmakers concentrate on more important matters (actual “high crimes”) in regard to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

 Karen McDougal

At Chesterton Y I partnered in bridge with octogenarian Dee Browne for the first time, and we did well despite being unfamiliar with each other’s tendencies. There were five and a half tables.  After having very few biddable hands, the round we sat out we’d have had a grand slam.  Several top area players competed, including life master Trudi McKamey and Dave Bigler, who thanked me for the DVD copy of our interview and is making one for his grandson.   My best hand was when I doubled a 4-Heart bid (I held five Hearts including the Ace King as Dee was void in them), which went down four, earning us 800 points for high board.  Barbara Mort, learning that Toni plays but doesn’t like duplicate, invited us to her place on a Monday evening when she and Kris Prohl deal out practice hands. Toni promised to consider it after the holidays.

above, Billy Foster; below, Tanice Foltz and Bonnie Neff

I was disappointed that jazz pianist Billy Foster did not play at IUN’s Holiday party, but at least the choir re-assembled for a fifth year under Kathy Malone’s direction.  With Rick Hug indisposed, its lone male member was retired Education professor Ken Schoon.  Once again, the highlight was audience participation for “12 Days of Christmas.” On the seats were slips of paper instructing what you’d represent; mine read“2 Turtle Doves,”meaning that on 11 occasions, I was to stand and sing that line. Old pro David Parnell coached me on how to bob my head in a pecking motion.  Near us Sociologists Chuck Gallmeier and Kevin McElmurry twirled as they belted out “A partridge in a pear tree”a dozen different times.  Will Radell was leading a group of swans a swimming, while choir members were acting out all the verses, Tanice Foltz most expressively. Afterwards I chatted with historians Jonathyne Briggs and Diana Chen-Lin; both have daughters in college that I first met as young kids.  Chancellor Bill Lowe noted, “I see that you’re wearing a tie,”and I replied, “Yes, it matches my sneakers.”  It’s part of our yearly routine since at a previous Holiday celebration he quipped that my tie went with my sneakers. When Garrett Cope was in charge of arrangements, the event was held in the Savannah gym and featured entertainment by Gary high school choral groups. Now downsized, it takes place in the conference center, and few faculty attend.  The food was plentiful, and I took two beef sandwiches and two brownies home for Toni’s dinner.

 scene in "Blue Velvet"

Neither Alan Barr nor George Bodmer attended despite the former having retired this semester, which just ended, at age 79 and the latter scheduled to depart in the spring.  Doug Swartz quipped that he’ll soon be the old man in the English department.  Each previous spring, Barr has taught a film class. A couple years ago, I audited one on erotic movies and saw such notable classics as “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” (1989) and “Hiroshima Mon Amour” (1960).  I recall Alan telling the students that most worthwhile films are made outside the United States.  A critique was due each week, and Alan wanted them succinct, thematic, and original rather than a lengthy summary of what happened or what other reviewers thought. Barr liked my essay about a scene in David Lynch’s nightmarish “Blue Velvet” (1986) where drug dealer Dean Stockwell is lip-synching to Roy Orbison’s sorrowful lament “In Dreams” (about a lover existing only in one’s sleep) while crazy Dennis Hopper mouths the words nearby and a man dances with a snake.

 Barr (white shirt) retirement; to his right, Bodmer, Mary Russell, Doug Swartz

Both Barr and Bodmer have been forces to be reckoned with regarding faculty governance and staunch believers in the primacy of research in tenure and promotion decisions, although not, unfortunately, in Anne Balay’s case.  For years, until they began shunning me over that matter, they were fond lunch companions. Some years ago, Bodmer was seriously injured when struck by a car as he was jaywalking across Broadway.  While he was recuperating, I sent him an Anne Tyler novel.  He later told me that his wife enjoyed it.  Since then, he’s frequently predicted he’d be remembered as the person responsible for getting traffic lights installed near the spot of his accident.  In addition to his scholarly output in children’s literature, Bodmer does minimalist etchings (he’d often send me home with samplings to elicit Toni’s opinion). Unless I’m mistaken, he taught a class to homeless Chicagoans.  While his sardonic classroom persona and biting criticism of mediocre work (criticisms leveled at Balay) turned off some students, others, including son Dave, poet Sarah McColly, bowling buddy George Villareal, and steelworker Dave Serynek, found his classes stimulating.  Serynek told me that he ended his academic career with a bang, reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita” in Bodmer's class.  George used to wear a Chairman Mao cap, once changed a flat tire for me, and has a cool wife. 

 Bodmer etchings

Doris Guth at Mel Guth's funeral service (2016)

At Hobert Lanes the Electrical Engineers took 5 of 7 points from Better Without Phil (the name of a former teammate who left to form his own team), which spotted us 99 pins a game.  Five frames into the match, we had squandered the 99-pin lead and trailed by 60 pins.. from then on we pretty much bowled them even. Both Terry Kegebein and I finished the series more than 50 pins over our average; I rolled games of 165, 146, and 158 with only a handful of strikes but just one split.  Opponent Larry Ramirez has a mean lefty hook.  Twice he threw gutter balls followed by several strikes in a row.  “I got mad,”he said both times.  Our Mel Guth Seniors league selected Doris Guth as our sportswoman of the year.  A few years ago, the Engineers won two games from her team, Best Friends, and when she began the third game with two strikes, Dick Maloney said,“Take it easy on us.”  Doris replied with an expletive.  Last week my 765 handicap series was second highest to Jaime Delgado’s 772. Next week is the Holiday banquet, and opponent Phil Magdiak promised to bring fresh smoked Polish sausage from Misch brothers grocery in Calumet City. I’ll bring my usual, deli pickles.

ABC nightly news ran a feature on Genevieve Purinton, the 88-year-old originally from LaPorte reunited with her daughter Connie thanks to DNA findings.  Christina Caron, the New York Timesinvestigative reporter who broke the story, emailed me that Genevieve had moved in with her sister before giving birth at age 19 at Gary’s Mercy Hospital because her mother had warned her that her father would “kill” her if he learned about the pregnancy.

Valued Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy gave me a hand-made Happy Holiday card with this composition:

  Back in the day I thought I was

All that . . . an a bag of chips, 

Today I’m an old guy with memories

Flapping lips!!!!!

I met Allison Schuette and Liz Wuerffel at Hunter’s Brewery in Chesterton.  We celebrated the NEH grant coming through, and I suggested they get in touch with Kenny Kincaid at Purdue Northwest so they could expand their “Flight Paths” to include Latinos from the Indiana Harbor district of East Chicago.  Latinos comprise approximately 7 percent of Valparaiso’s population, they told me. Many, I’m sure, trace their family history to either Gary or East Chicago.  One of their interns interviewed her father, Steve Walsh (below), formerly a Post-Tribune investigative reporter and now affiliated with a San Diego PBS station.  Walsh once covered the statehouse in Indianapolis during legislative sessions with regard to matters affecting Northwest Indiana.