Free Will?

    “Your particles are just obeying their quantum-mechanical marching orders,” theoretical physicist Brian Greene

Denying the existence of free will, Columbia University scholar Brian Greene (above), author of “The Elegant Universe,” asserted: “You have no ability to intercede in that quantum-mechanical unfolding.  None whatsoever.”  In a Time  interview Greene added: “How wondrous is it that I am able to have this conscious experience, and it’s nothing more than stuff, but that stuff can produce Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Mona Lisa, Romeo and Juliet?  Holy smokes, that’s wondrous.”  Greene’s research field is string theory, in particular quantum gravity.  With Tracy Day Greene in 2008 launched an annual World Science Festival whose purpose is to cultivate a general public informed by science.

Protestant Reformation theologist John Calvin (1509-1564) rejected the Catholic doctrine of free will and embraced the concept of predestination, arguing that due to God’s omniscience, the fate of individuals must be preordained.  Others rejecting Roman Catholicism were not so rigid, accepting what came to be known as the paradox of free will, the seemingly irrational belief that while God orders all things somehow human freedom is preserved.  Religious skeptic that I am, but less dogmatic than Brian Greene, as much as I respect him, I maintain that I am responsible for my actions.  Somewhat of an existentialist, I agree with Hoosier humorist Kurt Vonnegut that “There is no order in the world around us; we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.” In “Slaughterhouse Five,” Vonnegut’s most important novel, the author utilizes protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s experiences to address the issue of  free will. Throughout his life, Billy is forced to be part of things against his free will. In his childhood his father throws him in the water to teach him how to swim. He was unwillingly drafted into the war, taken prisoner, and miraculously escapes the firebombing of Dresden. Later, he is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians, who believe that all moments occur and reoccur simultaneously: they have already happened and no one can change fate.

Hearing Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is (some things will never change)” on WXRT’s Saturday morning show devoted to the year 1986 reminded me that things sometimes are beyond one’s control. Maryland basketball star Len Bias died that year of a cocaine overdose just two days after the Boston Celtics took him as the second pick in the NBA draft.  In the year of Halley’s Comet’s return, a Soviet nuclear reactor exploded at Chernobyl, wreaking havoc across much of Europe, and the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after takeoff, killing the seven crew members. An deadly earthquake in San Salvador and volcano in Cameroon each killed over 1,500 people.  In 1986 Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered and Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (Lady Gaga) was born in a Manhattan hospital – hard to believe their fates were predetermined.

Lady Gaga in 2016

One of my favorite songs of 1986 was REM’s “I Am Superman (I Can Do Anything” – an assertion of free will, perhaps.  Dave’s high school band LINT performed “I Am Superman” acapella.  LINT also did a rousing version of the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right to Party.”  Other top hits that year included Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” “Papa Don’t Preach” by Madonna, and Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.”  On the Ramones album “Animal Boy” were “Somebody Put Something in my Drink,” “Apeman Hop,” “Love Kills,” and “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg),” a rare political statement by the New York punkers criticizing Ronald Reagan’s visit to a German cemetery where Nazi storm troopers lay buried.

protesting Reagan's Bitburg visit

Connie and Brian Barnes hosted monthly bridge night.  Beforehand, we dined at Red Lobster, first time since Toni and I went there on Valentine’s Day for her birthday years ago and got rushed out ahead of the evening crowds.  Our entrees arrived almost simultaneously with the drinks and salad. Saturday, even though our group arrived at 3:30, it was already crowded, but we only had a ten-minute wait, the food delicious, and the service fine.  For an appetizer I had four tasty scallops and Toni the lobster bisque; we both then ordered fish and chips and had enough left over for Sunday.  As always, Brian had Stella in the fridge for me and red wine for Toni.  Brian had recently completed Glenn Frankel’s “High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic” (2017), which Ron Cohen will report on for our July history book club meeting. Beforehand, we’ll show the 1952 Western classic starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly.

Historian Jon Meachem (above), who has called Trump “the most vivid manifestation of our worst instincts,” and whose most recent book is “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” compared 2020 Presidential frontrunners Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump to 1948 candidates Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond.  The big difference: the latter were third party candidates, former Vice President Wallace, who disagreed with President Harry Truman’s bellicose Cold War policies, heading the Progressive Party and Thurmond, a segregationist opposed to the Democratic Party’s commitment to civil rights, atop the States Rights (or Dixiecrat) ticket.  Republican nominee, New York governor Thomas Dewey, was a moderate who lost in an upset to Truman.  Compared to 1948, political parties today are toothless.  On the one hand, Trump had never been a Republican prior to acting on his Presidential ambitions, while Sanders and Mayor Mike Bloomberg were not Democrats. I fear that if either became the Democratic nominee, it would spell disaster for the party.  If they wished to compete for President, they should run as Independents or, in Bernie case, as a Socialist.  

 Bernie Sanders in Soviet Union, 1988

Bernie’s rivals are taking aim at him but in a heavy-handed way, slamming him for praising the Sandinistas (at a time the U.S. was secretly supplying murderous Contras with deadly weapons), for declaring that the Cuban government under Fidel Castro increased literacy and health care for the poor (true, indeed), and for honeymooning in the Soviet Union in 1988 (a time of glasnost initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, Time’swell-deserved person-of-the-decade).  On CNN’s presidential town hall Sanders recently said: “I have been extremely consistent and critical of all authoritarian regimes all over the world, including Cuba, including Nicaragua, including Saudi Arabia, including China, including Russia. I happen to believe in democracy, not authoritarianism.” The same, sadly, cannot be said of most officeholders, especially Trump, currently in India praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he is attempting to strip Muslims of their civil rights. I want Democratic candidates to go after Bernie but without using tactics akin to Red-baiting.

Speaking at Art in Focus was musician Joe Rauen, who fashions unique instruments from unlikely objects such as canes, pipes, tennis rackets, suitcases, and hockey sticks. For example, he played a guitar with a shovel as its base.  Rauen was quite at ease, personable, and very talented, making use of a loop that enabled him to lay down a track from one instrument and have it play back while he played another  of his concoctions.  Afterwards, director Micah Bornstein said that if Dave is unable to accompany me for my appearance in two weeks, he’d be happy to play YouTube selections of 1960 Rock and Roll songs (I’ll send him a list of 25, and he’ll have them all ready to go).  While at Munster Center, I noticed that Henry Farag was putting on an Ultimate Doo Woo show in April headlining the Marvelettes (“Please, Mr. Postman”) and Edsels (“Rama Lama Ding Dong”).  I’ll plug it during my talk.

We celebrated my 78th birthday at Craft House with Dave, Angie, Becca, and the Wades, who brought two inflated balloons, one a belated “Happy Birthday” to Toni. Dave brought me a case of Yuengling and promised to burn me an Of Monsters and Men compilation CD.  He’s scheduled to participate in an East Chicago Central “Dancing with the Stars” fundraiser and will be playing guitar with three students performing Johnny B. Goode at a Black History Month assembly (he’s invited me as a special guest).  I received birthday calls from Michigan Lanes and one from my brother in California. Facebook announced my birthday to my “friends” and who knows how many others, and I got over 50 likes and a dozen responses, including “Feliz cumpleaños” from Roy Dominguez, and later, in person, at bridge and bowling.

IUN sociologist Jack Bloom, still teaching although well past his 78th birthday, asked me for book titles covering Progressivism.  He was already familiar with classics by Richard Hofstadter and Robert Wiebe, so I suggested “A Fierce Discontent” by Michael McGerr (2003) and Murray N. Rothbard’s “The Progressive Era” (2017) as well as John Dos Passos’s 1920s classic  U.S.A. trilogy.  Nicole Anslover invited me to her class on the Scopes “Monkey” trial.  I may quote Dos Passos’s take on the “Great Commoner,” whose reputation was tarnished by his participation as an attorney for the prosecution.  Here is an excerpt from Dos Passos:

    It was in the Chicago Convention in ’96 that the prizewinning boy orator, the minister’s son whose lips had never touched liquor, let out his silver voice so that it filled the gigantic hall, filled the ears of the plain people:

his voice charmed the mortgage-ridden farmers of the great plains, rang through weather-boarded schoolhouses in the Missouri Valley, was sweet in the ears of small storekeepers hungry for easy credit, melted men’s innards like the song of a thrush or a mocking bird in the gray quiet before sunup, or a sudden soar in winter wheat or a bugler playing taps and the flag flying;

    Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: 

    You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

    They roared their lungs out (crown of thorns and cross of gold)

carried him round the hall on their shoulders, hugged him, loved him, named their children after him, nominated him for President,

silver tongue of the plain people;

    Bryan grew gray in the hot air Chautauqua tents, in the applause, the handshakes, the back-pattings, the cigar-smoky air of committee-rooms at Democratic conventions, a silver tongue in a big mouth.

    In Dayton he dreamed of turning the trick again, of setting back the clocks for the plain people, branding, flaying, making a big joke of Darwinism and the unbelieving outlook of city folks, scientists, foreigners with beards and monkey morals.

Instead Clarence Darrow made a fool of him.

Educated

“I believe, finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience: that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing,” John Dewey

At bridge in Valpo Vickie Voller and I finished in a tie for first with Dee Browne and Sharon Snyder.  Opponent Jim Bell sometimes bangs on the table when he’s uncertain what to bid.  Vickie jokingly asked if he was signaling to partner Fred Green.  On the final hand Fred opened 4 Diamonds; after two passes I bid 4 Hearts.  Jim raised to 5 Diamonds and I doubled.  We set them 2 vulnerable for 500 points and high board.

 Tara Westover at Cambridge U., 2018

Lila Cohen loaned me Tara Westover’s “Educated: A Memoir,” a 2016 best-seller that she had reported on at her AAUW book club. It’s a harrowing coming-of-age account of breaking away from Mormon survivalists in southeastern Idaho and, specifically, a paranoid, despotic father preparing for the end of the world, who kept Tara from attending school or seeking medical help when needed.  New York Times reviewer Alec MacGillis wrote:

    She learned to read from the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the speeches of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The only science book in the house was for young children, full of glossy illustrations. The bulk of her time was spent helping her parents at work. Barely into her teens, Westover graduated from helping her mom mix remedies and birth babies to sorting scrap with her dad, who had the unnerving habit of inadvertently hitting her with pieces he’d tossed.

In the Prologue Westover introduces herself:

    I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn.  The wind soars, whipping my hair across my face and pushing a chill down the open neck of my shirt.  The gales are strong this close to the mountain, as if the peak itself is exhaling.  On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping.  I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school.  We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom.

Emboldened by the example of a brother, who read whatever books he could lay his hands on and left for college, Tara did well enough on an ACT test to be admitted to Brigham Young at age 16.  MacGillis wrote:

    There, she is shocked by the profane habits of her classmates, like the roommate who wears pink plush pajamas with “Juicy” emblazoned on the rear, and in turn shocks her classmates with her ignorance, never more so than when she asks blithely in art history class what the Holocaust was. (Other new discoveries for her: Napoleon, Martin Luther King Jr., the fact that Europe is not a country.) Such excruciating moments do not keep professors from recognizing her talent and voracious hunger to learn; soon enough, she’s off to a fellowship at Cambridge University, where a renowned professor — a Holocaust expert, no less — can’t help exclaiming when he meets her: “How marvelous. It’s as if I’ve stepped into Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion.’”

 The 1913 George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion was the inspiration for My Fair Lady. 

Miller's Sullivan St. lakefront illustrating beach erosion and mild winter, by Paul Kaczocha

Bob Seeger’s “Roll Me Away” came on the car radio and I just had to turn the volume way up and sing along.  On the surface it’s such a celebratory “on the road” anthem that the wistful final verse, not unusual in Seeger compositions, always comes as a sobering reality:

I'm gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin', gotta keep ridin'
Keep searchin' till I find what's right
And as the sunset faded I spoke
To the faintest first starlight
And I said next time
Next time
We'll get it right

I attended Valparaiso University professor Allison Schuette’s interactive workshop at IUN sponsored by the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE) and titled “Flight Paths: Mapping our Changing Neighborhoods.”  Allison acknowledged my participation in the Indiana Humanities project and since the featured interactive map was on Gary’s Tolleston neighborhood, she passed out a brief history of Tolleston that I had written for Flight Paths. Allison played excerpts of interviews with three people who grew up in Tolleston.  One man described the ethnic mix prior to the 1960s as a blend of Slovak, Polish, Czech, and German.  His father had black friends; when he drafted Jimmy Scott, a black kid, for his Little League team, people phoned to complain and called him a “nigger lover.”  He recalled:

    Realtors would come into a neighborhood, say to the whites, “Better move now while your property is still worth something because when this neighborhood starts changing, property values will decrease and you’ll lose out on a lot of money.” And that eventually became illegal, but for quite a while these white folks just felt, “Well, I’d better do as they say and turn my house over to the realtor and get rid of it while I move elsewhere.”

    So many people just heard about these problems or these issues; they didn’t really experience them. They were watching television, seeing all kinds of marches and rebellions across the country, and they just got the impression that the black culture was antisocial, and they were a people that just didn’t understand the needs of the white person.

    When we watched on television the funeral of Martin Luther King, my uncles in particular would say, “Oh, man, we can’t have this, what is going on here? What’s happening to our society?” All they saw was the violence. They did not see the peace. They did not see the change. And the violence, they thought, was going to be widespread. It was going to come into Gary.

And I guess the whole idea of being in the same neighborhood, in the same church, in the same organization with black people was just something that they could not understand or tolerate.

When Karen Freeman-Wilson’s parents moved to Tolleston, it was rapidly becoming a black neighborhood, due to white flight.  Her father was a steelworker and her mother worked for Neighborhood Settlement House, which became Gary Neighborhood Services.  The building housed recent migrants from the South and helped integrate them into the community.  It also offered child day care and activities for teenagers and seniors. Freeman-Wilson recalled:

  I was a 4-H member there. We had a very vibrant program. I learned how to cook and to sew.  I can probably still do a pretty good hem with a sewing machine, and I still slipstitch.  We skated on a floor that was really wobbly, but it made you a good skater.  When you went to a real nice rink, you were a pro because if you could make it through the wobbles and the buckles in the floor at the neighborhood House, you could skate anywhere.

Councilwoman Mary Brown praised the resilience of Tolleston residents:

Just look around at people in my community. Retired doctors, retired teachers, retired professionals who have stayed. They’ve continued to pay taxes and pay into the city because they still believe that we can come back. They believe in the city and believe that it can work.

To illustrate Tolleston’s rapid racial transformation, Allison opened a section on St. John’s Lutheran Church, which predated the Gary’s founding by a half-century.  In 1962 Reverend Norman Brandt became pastor and visited the homes of new African-American residents, urging them to come to St. John’s.  A succession of church confirmation photos dramatically illustrated the rapid transition from all-white to all-black.  Reverend Brandt founded an alternative school in Glen Park that Phil and Dave attended for six years.  Rebecca Brandt was a classmate, as were good friends Clark and Gloria Metz’s girls.

(left; below, confirmation classes: 1962, 1964 & 1974) 

The large crowd included IUN colleagues Joseph Gomeztagle, Kathy Arfken, Lanette Mullin-Gonzales, Chris Young (with son Robert), Ellen Szarleta, Suzanne Green, Sue Zinner (with students from her Ethics class, including Munster clerk/treasurer Wendy Mis), Kay Westhues (from IU South Bend), and people from the community.  Allison posed questions that prompted small group discussions.  When the entire group shared insights, I remained quiet except to note the redlining by banks and government agencies not only prevented minorities from owning homes but also discriminated against black entrepreneurs.  African Americans in the audience shared experiences of growing up in segregated neighborhoods and encountering institutional racism.

Seeking more information about St. John’s Lutheran Church on Google led me to Michelle McGill-Vargas’s website, where I was cited in an article about Gary during the Prohibition era.  McGill-Vargas wrote:

    James Lane’s City of the Century led me to real-life gangster Gasperi (or Gaspari) Monti who ruled the city’s Little Italy section until his violent death in 1923. According to local newspaper reports, Monti is best known as the government’s star witness in a corruption case against more than sixty judges, prosecutors, policemen, and even then-Gary mayor Roswell Johnson, all for violating Prohibition laws. At the time, the Gary Police Department had a special enforcement arm called the Sponge Squad that arrested bootleggers, and then would sell liquor confiscated in the arrests to line their pockets and the pockets of everyone else up the law enforcement chain in Lake County. Monti made a deal with federal prosecutors to expose the corruption, but was gunned down in broad daylight by two unknown assailants on March 13, 1923, just days before he was scheduled to testify.

    Monti was no stranger to violence and attempts on his life. In 1922, he’d been shot through the mouth by a man who’d shot him a year prior. He owned and operated the Black and Tan Club in the 1700 block of Adams Street where shooting deaths were commonplace. Even Monti’s wife, Mary, was into the rackets. After her husband was killed, police found illegal liquor and several pounds of explosives in her home.

So-called “Black and Tan” establishments were saloons where African-American and Caucasian clientele intermingled. Scandalous to blue-blood Northsiders, the Gary “dive” was known for “debauched” activities such as interracial dancing and prostitution.

On a mute TV screen at Hobart Lanes was an ad for Lawless Auto Repair in Valpo.  Love the name.  Terry Kegebein will be attending a sixth family funeral within a year.  Since the price of obits in local newspapers has skyrocketed, many only use funeral home websites.  My great-aunt Ida Gordon, who lived with us when I was growing up, subscribed to the Easton (PA) Express for the obits about people she may have known.  I scan obits for personages of local significance or that illustrate Gary’s former ethnic diversity.  For example, from February 20 obits in the NWI Times I learned that Alice Geraldine Kiefer, 82, worked at USS Gary Sheet and Tin, met husband Carl at the Midway Ballroom, and the two were married at Holy Angels.  Robert Joseph, 96, played tackle for Gary Emerson and at IU, was a member of the 1945 Big Ten champions, and met wife Mabel at Calumet High School, where he taught for many years and founded its football team.  Here’s an excerpt from the obit for Mihailo Kostur, 77, like Robert Joseph a Gary Emerson grad:

    Mihailo was born in Vrlika Dalmatia Croatia.  He immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15.  He worked as an operator for Arcelor Mittal for37 years. Mihailo enjoyed being outdoors, gardening playing bocce ball, many different card games, making homemade wine following Serbian traditions, and spending time with his grandchildren. Mihailo was a member of St. Elijah Cathedral in Merrillville as well as the Chetnik organization.  He was preceded in death by parents Bozo and Andja Kostur.

Historian Jerry Pierce found a humorous cartoon on Facebook, and Ray Gapinski posted photos of an abandoned asylum near Terre Haute. Larry Bean, who like wife Cindy pseeks out historic ruins, responded, “Looks like it’s worth the trip.”

Turning 76

“Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been,” David Bowie

 Toni gets cookie at Ivy's Bohemia House from Amy Mackiewicz

Toni’s birthday falls on February 14, and we normally celebrate the day after so not to compete with the Valentine’s Day crowd.  Patrick O’Rourke treated me to lunch at Asparagus Restaurant, whose Vietnamese owners are friends of his, to talk about my next interview with him, so I took Toni an order of lobster and mango spring rolls.  We arrived home within minutes of one another, as Dave and Angie had taken her to lunch at Ivy’s Bohemia House.

Next day, granddaughters Alissa and Miranda arrived with Miranda’s boyfriend Will, whom we’d never met. He’s in Nursing administration and going for an MBA.  He’s been working with Spanish-speaking hospital out-patients in Grand Rapids on such matters as ensuring that they have a procedure in place for taking prescriptions at the proper dosages and times. At Toni’s request we dined at Craft House so that she could introduce our Michigan visitors to the beignet pastry fritters served with chocolate, strawberry, and caramel dipping sauces.  Beforehand, we shared an appetizer of Brussel sprout chips tossed with garlic parmesan butter and candied bacon; my entre, BBQ pork shanks, a haystack of onions, and Cole slaw, was delicious.Home in time for the conclusion of Maryland-Michigan State basketball.  Down by seven with minutes to go, the Terrapins scored the final 14 points, including 11 by Anthony Cowan (3 threes and 2 free throws), to beat the Spartans 67-60.

Sunday, I played board games with Dave and Tom Wade, including, at Dave’s request, Stockpile, which I’d only played a couple times but really enjoy, and Space Base, which I’d observed  at Halberstadt Game Weekend.  We said goodbye to our overnight house guests and prepared for a birthday party for Toni, which grew like Topsy, as the expression goes – originally referring to a slave girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1851) – to 20 people, including four of Becca’s Chesterton classmates.  Dave and Angie picked up Chinese food from Wing Wah and a chocolate cake from Jewel.

At bridge the previous Wednesday I partnered with Vickie Voller, whom I’ve known since she was an IUN student in the 1970s.  She’s an animal lover whose emails contain the quote, “Love is a four-legged word.” We finished above 50 percent.  She’ll be bringing her husband to my Art in Focus talk on Rock and Roll, 1960, and they plan to dance. I’ll start with “Hard-Headed Woman,” on the soundtrack of “King Creole” and Elvis Presley’s last recording before entering the army for two years in March of 1958 and subsequently reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

At Hobart Lanes 83-year-old Gene Clifford told me his bowling career was over, doctor’s orders, due to COPT.  In our final game against Fab Four, the Engineers finished with a 1053, 173 pins over our handicap.  Joe Piunti, carrying a 130 average, rolled a 223. I finished with a 160 and 472 series, 30 pins over my average.

Over the weekend the August Wilson play “Fences” (1985) attracted a large audience at IU Northwest.  Directed by IUN alumnus and visiting professor Mark Spencer, it deals with an embittered former Negro League baseball player (Troy Maxson) now working as a garbageman in Pittsburgh and starred Darryl Crockett and Rose Simmons.  James Earl Jones appeared in the original Broadway production and Denzel Washington in a 2010 revival, with Viola Davis as wife Rose Maxson. 

While most high schools were off for President’s Day, both IUN and Valparaiso University held classes, having honored Martin Luther King Day.  My interview with Chancellor Bill Lowe was delayed a few minutes because of a fire alarm in Hawthorn Hall (caused by a faulty toaster, it turned out) that kept Samantha Gauer from getting the videotape equipment.  She thoughtfully alerted the Chancellor and me from her cellphone.  Lowe grew up in Brooklyn; his father was a police officer.  He majored in History at Michigan State and was in Ireland doing research during a time of civil rights demonstrations that became known as the Troubles. His administrative career took him to the Rust Belt cities of Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and ultimately, Gary.

 confiscating bootleggers equipment in Gary (1926)

Invited to speak in Nicole Anslover’s class about Prohibition in Gary, I described the city in 1920 as containing 50,000 residents, mostly steelworkers, many foreign-born and often single men laboring 12 hours a day, seven days a week.  The year began with Gary under martial law occupied by army troops ordered to crush a two-month-old strike and jail union leaders whom General Leonard Wood branded as Reds.  Prohibition was anathema to men for whom the saloon was the center of their limited social life, where they drink, ate, and, in may cases, procured establishments that refused to pay off corrupt police officials.  At the Gary Country Club, the watering hole of the affluent, liquor flowed freely with no interference from law enforcement.  Some years, due to its reputation as an “anything goes” city, Gary attracted more tourists than Indianapolis, disparaged as “Naptown” or “India-no-town.” By 1930 former mayor R.O. Johnson, convicted in 1923 of violating the Volstead Act and sent to Atlanta federal penitentiary, was back in City Hall as mayor.

 partying at Gary Country Club (1926); Allegra Nesbitt standing, 2nd from right

Students asked me about race-relations in Gary during the Twenties, a time when Mill officials aimed to keep the labor force divided, and whether U.S. Steel built housing for workers as in Pullman, Illinois.  While the corporation provided home ownership opportunities on the Northside for managerial personal and plant foremen, unskilled workers were left to fend for themselves. Many boarded in bunk houses, sharing a cot with someone working the alternate 12-hour shifts. Nicole invited me back anytime; I thinking of returning in two weeks when the class discusses the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial featuring Clarence Darrow for the defense and William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution.

Bob Greene (above), author of “When We Get to Surf City,” emailed:

     What a nice letter, Jim-- thank you.

    I really liked the excerpts from the book that you chose to include in your blog-- I'm especially glad that you took note of my observations about Jerry Lee Lewis.  No one has ever specifically mentioned that part of the book to me, but it's one of my favorites, and I'm pleased that you saw in it what I did.

    Just sang again the other night in Florida with a band called California Surf Incorporated-- all former Beach Boys musicians.  Randell Kirsch, from Jan and Dean, was playing with them, and one of the guitarists wasn't feeling well and didn't want to do his vocals, so they invited me to fill in.  It never gets less fun.

    Thank you again for what you said, and especially for the way you said it.  It means a lot to me.

I wrote back:

    Thanks for the nice response.  I saw Jerry Lee Lewis live in Merrillville, IN in 1980 (what a showman!) and recall him appearing a few years ago on Letterman with Neil Young, the only time Neil agreed to be on the show.

    I’m glad you’re still jamming with old Beach Boys.  My son was in a band until a few years ago and would invite me on stage to sing the chorus of Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.”

Having enjoyed the new Of Monsters and Men CD, I checked out their earlier album “beneath the Skin” (2015) and discovered “Slow Life,” which hardly describes the past hectic days.  One verse goes:

We're slowly sailing away
Behind closed eyes
Where not a single ray of light
Can puncture through the night

With my 60th high school reunion scheduled for October, I told planners Larry Bothe, John Jacobson, and Connie Heard that I’d work on classmates who don’t normally attend. Rehashing weekend highlights with Gaard Logan, a gourmet cook who claims she has no interest in the reunion but is always interested in hearing about Upper Dublin classmates, I described the beignet pastry fritters, Brussel sprout chips, and lobster and mango spring rolls.  Signing off, I called her sweetie, eliciting a chuckle and, “Take care , my friend.”

Judy Blue Eyes

    “Fear is the lock and laughter the key.” Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” Crosby, Stills and Nash

Close to 50 years ago, after finishing three sets of tennis with Paul Kern, Nick Kanellos, and Bob Wilszynski at Woodlake Village Apartments, I was getting into my car when I smelled reefer emanating from one of the units and heard the mellow sounds of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” from the 1969 self-titled Crosby, Still and Nash album that also contains “Marrakesh Express” and “Wooden Ships.”  I waved, flashed the PEACE sign, and from an open sliding glass door a long-haired hippie waved back.  Had he beckoned, I’d have gladly joined them.  Hearing “Judy Blue Eyes,” on WXRT en route to IU Northwest, I could still recall many verses, including: “Chesnut-brown canary, Ruby-throated sparrow, Sing a song, don’t be long, Thrill me to the marrow.”  One I never understood in Spanish: “Me la traiga a Cuba, La reina de la Mar Caribe, Quiero solo visitaria alli, Y que triste que no puedo!”: Translated it appears to mean:  “I'd bring her to Cuba, The queen of the Caribbean Sea, I only want to visit her there, And how sad that I can't.”

“Judy Blue Eyes” always reminds me of grade school pal Judy Jenkins, whose brother Terry was my grade school best friend and whom I reconnected with in ninth grade after living in Michigan for over a year.  By then Judy was blond, quite beautiful, and popular; though at her and Terry’s house quite often, I was too diffident to ask her out, afraid of jeopardizing a close relationship, so settled for being a friend and confidant.

About 20 years ago, coming back from Wells Street Beach to our house on Maple Place, I heard the mellow sounds of Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” from the 1971 album “What’s Going On?” emanating from folks enjoying a cookout in front of Miller Village Apartments.  I joined them, the vibes were friendly, and I was invited to a Labor Day party in one of the fourth-floor units.  I showed up but noticed a certain tenseness among some guests, who seemed to suspect I might be a narc.  After a short time, I departed.  Carolyn McCrady lived on the same floor but soon moved out after unsavory renters moved nearby.  Five months later, home invaders broke into Dave and Angie’s cabin a block away from us and across County Line Road from Miller Village Apartments.  The three of us were playing the board game Shark.  The bastards held us captive and terrorized us for over an hour.  Though they were never caught, an FBI bloodhound traced their scent to the fourth floor of Miller Village Apartments.

Sunday after making blueberry pancakes and kaibasa and watching Sunday news shows, I found two movies OnDemand, the depressing “Blue Valentine” (2010) starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling (about a marriage falling apart) and the silly but funny “What about Bob?” (1991) with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss as a mental patient and his self-absorbed shrink. I caught the first two hours of the Oscars and learned next day that the South Korean film “Parasite” not only won both for Best Director but Best Picture as well, beating out such favorites as “Joker,” “The Irishman,” “1917,” and “Little Women.”
Maurice Sendak
At Munster Center for the Arts I told Art in Focus program director Micah Bornstein what I needed for my speaking engagement next month (sound system, stools, and dance floor), then watched a documentary about Maurice Sendak (1928-2012), most famous for the children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are,” whose upcoming Memorial Exhibition will be at the Center’s gallery for two months. Interviewed at age 80, Sendak talked about being traumatized from learning about aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby having been kidnapped and killed (it inspired “Outside Over There”) and seeing a childhood friend in Brooklyn fatally struck by a vehicle on a street trying to retrieve a ball Sendak had tossed him.  “In the Night Garden” (1970) caused a furor because of a drawing of a child’s penis.  Some librarians censored the book; others actually drew diapers on him.  Asked if he’d purposely drawn the offending member, Sendak responded, “That dick didn’t get there by itself.”

George Van Til asked me to keep my book club introduction of him brief when he spoke about his forthcoming autobiography; beforehand I wrote out these remarks:

    As George Van Til once told me in an interview, his political career both began and ended on Route 41.  It began when he took a Political Science class at Indiana University Northwest and joined the IUN Young Democrats, where he met political officeholders and aspirants, some of whom are still active in county government.  The Young Democrats served as a springboard for a career in Highland town government and as Lake County surveyor, with Van Til ultimately winning a total of 16 elections.  During that time, I would frequently see him at events in Gary and of concern to workers and environmentalists.  His efforts on behalf of those people earned him the enmity of powerful economic interests who, when they could not defeat him at the polls, turned to the Justice Department, which ultimately charged him with practices involving his staff that were common, nay, near universal among elected officials. 

    Two years ago, Post-Trib columnist Jeff Manes wrote a column about George Van Til.  He began with the Biblical quote: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast a stone.”  He ended by saying that prison taught him humility – something he admitted he needed and this quote from Van Til: “When I drive by the government center, where I worked for so many years, I avert my eyes.  It’s difficult to look.  Government service is what defined me.  That’s who I was.  What am I now?  It’s a struggle.”  Then Manes added: “As for me, I suppose I needed to talk man to man with the tall, bearded Dutchman for 90 minutes.  My conclusion? No stones cast here.”

 Jimbo and George in Terre Haute, 2016

A large group was on hand for Van Til’s talk, including former Lake County sheriff Roy Dominguez and longtime East Chicago wheeler-dealer Bob Cantrell, who starred on East Chicago Washington’s 1960 state championship basketball team that defeated Muncie Central 75-59. Much of what Van Til revealed about his career as a public servant was familiar to me from interviewing him for several hours, but he added some spicy anecdotes so as (his words) not to bore his audience.  Years ago, Lake County politicians were known to visit sporting houses at the State Capital when the legislature was in session, with the understanding that what goes on in Indianapolis stays in Indianapolis.  One well-known politician, now deceased, was undressing when the lady of the evening asked where he was from and ticked off the names of Region clients.  The man quickly put his clothes back on and was never tempted to return.  One conservative downstate Republican legislator suggested that he and his wife stay overnight and swap mates.  George didn’t take him up on the offer. 

George read off some prospective chapter titles, including one covering the feds vendetta against him, “I didn’t do it.” I teared up when he told of Mayor Richard Hatcher arranging a luncheon at Beach Café for black elected officials to express their appreciation for his services on behalf of the people of Gary.  Before starting his prison sentence in Terre Haute, George spoke with others, including former Calumet Township Trustee Dozier T. Allen, who’d been incarcerated on what to expect. When he realized that most prison guards and white prisoners were Trump supporters, he was careful not to bring up politics.  Playing the piano at Sunday church services was something to look forward to and offered needed solace.  When told by those attending that they’d been praying for a piano player, George thought, “I hope that’s not why I ended up here, as an answer to their prayers.” One holiday Archbishop Tobin conducted services at the chapel and told the prisoners, “I am your brother, Joseph.”  Van Til was impressed.  His prison nickname became “piano man.”

I’m debating how spicy to make my September Saturday Evening Club presentation on “Novelists as Social Historians.”  Before discussing such personal favorites as “Rabbit Run,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Jungle,” “Babbitt,” “Grapes of Wrath,” and recent works by Elizabeth Stroud and Richard Russo, I may start with the first novel I recall reading, the controversial potboiler Peyton Place (1956).  Kids usually read for adventure, fantasy, or to be educated – in this case, it was about sex.  Its themes of hypocrisy, social inequities, class privilege, and sexism in a small, conservative town were especially relevant in postwar America. “Peyton Place” entered the lexicon; after several high school classmates became pregnant involuntarily, gossips clucked, “This town is a regular Peyton Place.”  The book spawned several sequels, two movies, and even a prime-time soap opera starring Mia Farrow as Allison and Ryan O’Neal as Rodney.  Author Grace Metalious was a rebel who often eschewed bras and dressed in men’s clothes prior to becoming famous (some would say notorious) and drinking herself to death within a decade.  I was shocked to find a copy of “Peyton Place” hidden in the bookcase of my maiden great-aunt Grace.  It opened to pages containing juicy passages that she must have read several times.  Here’s one:

    Her finger tips traced a pattern down the side of his face, and with her mouth almost against his, she whispered, “I didn’t know it could be like this.”

    She could not lie still under his hands.

    “Anything,” she said. “Anything.  Anything.”

    “I love this fire in you.  I love it when you have to move.”

    “Don’t stop.”

    “Her? And here? And here?”

    “Yes. Oh, yes.  Yes.”

This car scene featured teenagers Rodney and Betty, who had a “fast” reputation:

    Her whole body twisted and moved when he kissed her, and when hos hands found their way to her breast, she writhed on the seat, jackknifed her knees, pushed Rodney away from her, clicked the lock on the door, and was outside of the car.

    “Now go do it to Allison MacKenzie,” she screamed at him.  “Go get the girl you brought to the dance and do it to her.”

  Before Rodney could catch his breath to utter a word, she had whirled and was on her way back to the gym. He tried to run after her, but his legs were like sawdust under him.  He hung on to the open car door and retched helplessly, the sweat poured down his face.