Sitting in Limbo

“Sitting here in limbo

Waiting for the dice to roll

Sitting here in limbo

I got time to search my soul”

    Neville Brothers

 

Dave made a list of his all-time favorite players on 30 MLB teams – refusing to include members of the hated Cardinals and Mets.  Most I couldn’t argue with such as Roberto Clements, Pudge Fisk, Kenny Lofton, Andre Dawson, and 1980 Phillies hero Tug McGraw.  Former or future Cubs included Ben Zobrist (KC), Mark Grace (Arizona), and Joe Carter (Toronto).  I was conflicted over Nolan Ryan and Pete Rose, terrific competitors but players I loved to hate.  My list would have included old-timers from my youth such as Ralph Kiner, Richie Ashburn, and Roy Campanella (Dave, to his credit, had Jackie Robinson for the Dodgers).

 

I compiled a list of vivid high school memories that fell into these categories: guys I hung with, memorable teachers, girlfriends, sports events, sock hops, senior play, homeroom, Friday assembly, sex education, and field trips. Regarding the latter, while taking a bus to New York City was eye-opening, my favorite excursion was when sexy French teacher Renee Polsky, who called me Jacques (which never failed to get a rise out of me) took us to see the play “La Plume de ma Tante” in Philadelphia.  Accompanying her was my homeroom teacher Miss Malkus, probably no more than a half dozen years older than the students.  As I recall, later that evening they were planning to catch a live show featuring crooner Johnny Mathis.

 

Regarding sex education, it fell to phys ed teacher Mr. Cunningham to conduct a few such classes to an all-male class.  He never strayed from using medical terms and succeeded in making a boring subject out of it.  Once when cut-up Dick Garretson said something suggestive under his breath, normally mild-mannered Cunningham grabbed him out of his seat and all but beat him up. I learned more about the subject from trial and error and an X-rated deck of cards Vince Curll had that depicted, among other things, fellatio. Once Vince and I double-dated and ended up in a rec room on adjoining couches.  Sneaking a glance at the other couple, I copied some of Vince’s moves, which back then we referred to as touching the bases.

 

Assemblies usually took place at the end of the week when we had other things on our minds. One afternoon, however, the Flamingos, a black doo wop group, entertained.  Singing acapella rather than with a band, they performed such incandescent numbers as “I Only Have Eyes for You,” in perfect harmony and with cool body movements. I can’t imagine why or how they arrived at Upper Dublin H.S. but they had everyone’s total attention. Our principal, whom we nicknamed “Sneaky Pete” because he often roamed the halls unexpectedly, pretty much left assemblies to his assistant in charge of discipline Mr. Wert, who once made the mistake of trying to lead cheers like at a pep rally because of a game that evening. Few students obeyed his exhortations despite threats to keep us until we showed some school spirit.

 

I had a minor role in “Meet Me in St. Louis,” our senior play, as an old man. What I remember best about rehearsals is developing close friendships, including with Judy Otto, Larry Bothe, and Mary Delp, a former girlfriend who I’d felt somewhat uncomfortable around since we’d broke up, like it had been my fault for acting immature.  On opening night, my hair was whitened and I was given granny glasses to wear.  After one scene I discovered to my horror that I had gone on stage in my regular glasses.  Probably nobody even noticed.

 

Sock hops following basketball games were more fun than formal dances because the dress was casual and the music more contemporary. One couple from near Ambler would do the dirty dig and we’d all gather around until a chaperone would notice and break it up. I fancied myself a good jitterbugger, especially with dancing partners Judy Jenkins and Pam Tucker.  The final number of the evening – usually “Goodnite, Sweetheart” or “Save the Last Dance for Me” – was a chance to hold someone tight and close to your body, a perfect climax to the event.

 

Although I attended football games and played on the golf team, my most vivid sports memories are watching basketball contests as an undergraduate cheering on John and Mike Magyar, neighbors from up the street who’d sometime shoot hoops at my place.  Though older, Mike was close to a foot shorter than John and was a scrappy jv sub who played with wild abandon.  Classmate Percy Herder starred for the varsity.  I caught several girls field hockey games coached by leggy Mrs. Rocchino, whom we suspected of having an affair with Cunningham. I loved watching LeeLee Minehart, Mildred Armstrong, and Kathleen Birchler take it to the opposition. Most unforgettable memory: an exhibition baseball team between students and teachers. Gap-toothed Biology teacher Mr. Gabauer (Ga-boo-boo) hit a towering drive way over the leftfielder’s head. Had there been a fence, it would have cleared it.  Rounding third, Ga-boo-boo ran out of gas, collapsed and was tagged out, his moment of glory gone.

 

I could go on and on about homeroom hijinks and memorable instructors (Latin teacher Mrs. LaVan being the worst, Edward Taddei (“taddy laddy”) the best. Looking back, why couldn’t I have taken Spanish rather than a dead language like Latin? LaVan once accused me of cheating on a test, saying someone near me had been looking at my answers.  I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. She’d whack me with a ruler when I’d turn around to flirt with Mary Dinkins. I learned later from guidance counsellor Mr. Dulfer that she tried to get me suspended for smoking a cigarette in a car leaving school. Taddei, on the other hand, was such a great math teacher I literally could remember everything he taught us, he made it so interesting. The unit on probability still comes in handy playing bridge. Taddei had a twin brother, and both were basketball referees.

 

I’ll restrict hanging-out stories to a merciful few. The Fifties was the heyday of drive-ins, both to eat and so-called “passion pits,” where once I had to listen to Ray Bates making out while my date insisted on just watching the movie. Pete Drake tried to sneak Ron Hawthorn and I in free by putting us in the trunk but then let us out within sight of an employee, who tried to shake us down into paying double. Jay Bumm drove a jalopy that was probably 20 years old; Chuck Bahmueller’s 40s road hog was lucky to get ten miles to a gallon and needed almost as much oil.

Other indelible U.D. h.s. memories: hearing about the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in Mr. Lewis’ Algebra II class; the pungent smell of hoagies that Pat Zollo snuck out and brought back during lunch hour from an Italian joint in Ambler; goofing off at Molly Schade’s house while supposedly studying for Mr. Sisak’s stupid Civics final; after school trips to Flourtown with Bob Reller and Dick Garretson to pick up the latest WIBG Top 40 chart at a record store and then go bowling; H.M. Jones arranging graded test papers from best to worst and scaring A student Vickie Vroom by holding hers until near the tail end.

I’m rereading John Updike’s “Rabbit Is Rich,” which takes place in 1979, the twilight of the so-called Me Decade.  Opening words: “running out of gas.”  Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, now in his mid-40s, tells a friend, “I’m glad I lived when I did.  These kids coming up, they’ll be living on table scraps.  We had the meal.” Updike used the word ramifying, which I discovered meant spreading – an apt description of our present pandemic.

Plague Journals

 Indiana Historical Society is encouraging Hoosiers to document what it’s like experiencing this unique moment with an initiative called “Telling Your Story: Documenting COVID-19 in Indiana.”  In a sense, this is what I’ve been doing in my blog and occasional Facebook ramblings.  Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich has endorsed the concept and publicized a Facebook site urging a similar practice. Former Valpo teacher Jerry Hager suggested starting by writing down 20 thoughts about something or someone. 

 

“Dear Amy” devoted her advice column to coping with the new reality and urged readers to provide anecdotes on plans postponed, cancelled or otherwise upset and creative activities substituted for them. She wrote:

    When you have so many externals stripped away, it is the basics that quickly emerge as daily blessings: Good neighbors.  Mostly reliable wireless service. Drive-thru Dunkin’

    For me, visits to the gym 10 miles away have been replaced by solitary walks in the woods.  Yesterday I saw the first signs of fiddle-head fern breaking through the forest floor.

    Faced with an empty facility, workers at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago released the penguins to roam the halls – and filmed their adorable escapades, as they went on a “field trip” to meet other animals.

 

Several people are posting photos of places they’ve traveled to, such as San Antonio (Dave), Iceland (Lisa Teuscher), Cabo observing humpback whales (Shannon Bayer), and a Long Beach Pow-Wow (John Attinasi).  Stay-at-home massages are prominent: Ray Gapinski showed Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” farm couple inside and a pitchfork lying unattended outside. Paul Kaczocha is still posting shots of Comet and Tamale romping by themselves on Sullivan Street beach. I have not yet mastered posting photos with my borrowed laptop (should have gotten a MAC if one were available).  I’m happy to do what I can, thanks to IUN’s Help Desk folks, Larry, Missy, Tony, Roger, and others.

 

My life has settled into a routine that includes watching daily a free OnDemand movie (preferably one with Scarlett Johansen, Ethan Hawke, or Richard Gere) and a documentary.  ESPN has some good ones; one I enjoyed documented the NBA Celtics-Lakers rivalry of the 1980s.  It helped that I had forgotten which team won the 3 featured championship series.  Having rooted against Boston during the era when Bill Russell-led teams almost always triumphed over Wilt Chamberlain’s squad, I naturally was pulling for L.A., especially since the Celtics employed dirty play to make up for being less talented than Kareem Abdul Jabbar and company.  What made it especially compelling was that both Magic Johnson and Larry Byrd were such great players and fierce competitors.

Toni has started a puzzle of Van Gogh’s “Starry Starry Night” that looks to me to be impossible.  She has completed the outside pieces and one corner.  I have contributed exactly one piece despite poring over it on several occasions.


I have completed the two books I got from Banta Center, B.B. King’s excellent autobiography and Len O’Connor’s “Requiem: The Decline and Demise of Mayor Daley and His Era.”  The latter got somewhat repetitive, as if the author had put the manuscript together from columns. Demonstrations of Daley’s oversized ego took priority over analysis, and even though Hizzoner suffered humiliation over Democrats faring badly in the 1976 election (Jimmy Carter losing Illinois, for example, to Gerald Ford), Daley’s grip on Chicago remained strong despite grumbling in black wards. Next up: rereading John Updike’s “Rabbit” series

 

Here’s hoping and knocking on wood that most journals, including mine, avoid having to document actually coming down with the virus.  Many years ago, Newsweek columnist Stewart Alsop wrote about living with a terminal disease.  My friend Dave Malham reported on learning h had ALS.  As instructive as these were, not to mention brave, I do not wish to travel down that path.

 

Assisted Living

 “Old age is like climbing a mountain.  The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become, but your view becomes more extensive. “Ingmar Bergman

 

Sixty years ago, if there were assisted living facilities for active seniors, I was unaware of them.  What I knew about were nursing homes for old people in need of professional care.  Both my grandmothers died before I was born, but great-aunt Ida lived with us until she suffered a stroke and my mother could no longer care for her, so she spent the rest of her days in a Lutheran nursing home in a room with numerous beds and chairs next to them for visitors or those patients able to sit in them. Very, very depressing.  After Grandpa Elwood had terminal cancer, he had a room in a former motel in Ambler near our home. I recall being with him after my dad (Vic) died at age 50 and Elwood saying that he wished it had been him.

 

After Midge remarried, she and Howard, eight years her senior, moved to an over-55 community in Florida. After Howard survived a brush with a serious illness, they moved into an assisted community that had a variety of options ranging from villas to apartments to suites to wards for the very ill. Still in her early 70s, Midge initially resented the cords on the walls that one could pull if suddenly disabled. They lived in a villa until Howard passed away at age 99.  A year or so later, Midge moved to an assisted living facility in Rancho Mirage, California. Because Howard had left her financially well off, she could afford a very nice place, with a hair salon, afternoon Happy Hour, Friday entertainment, and good meals.  I’d joke that by the time Baby Boomers reached old age, retirement communities would be swinging places, as they have indeed become if you can afford them.

 

During the current pandemic, some facilities for the elderly have become dangerous places where the disease has spread rapidly, often inflicting a death sentence on those with pre-existing health problems.  Seniors on cruise ships have found themselves adrift at sea as ports are reluctant to have them disembark.  Other facilities as yet unaffected are observing measures akin to quarantining to keep them safe. The daughter of a close friend in one such place posted a photo of her talking by phone to her mother outside her window. How sad for those with symptoms to be unable to have loved ones with them.

 

Other cultures have more respect than ours for the wisdom of the elderly, whose view of history has been broadened by experience. Those few folks left who lived through the Great Depression and World War II have lessons we could learn from if we tuned them in. As Andy Rooney once said, “The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.”

 

Facebook posts can be comforting in times like these.  Examples I’ve enjoyed include things people have made (Kyle Telechan’s Italian bread, Anne Balay’s quilts), pets (Sam and Brenda Love’s cats, Cindy Bean’s dog), kids (belonging to Charles Halberstadt and Jerry Pierce), views near one’s home (Krista Donahue of the Delaware River, LeeLee Devenney of the Atlantic Ocean) and works of art (Liz Wuerrfel’s drawings, Gregg Hertzlieb’s paintings). Then, of course, there are the humorous sayings, political cartoons, and inspirational quotations, all easily passed over if not one’s liking.

  

Socail Distortion

Social Distortion

 

“Beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact and the distortion inevitable caused by my seeing only one corner of events.”  George Orwell, “Homage to Catalonia

 

D.T. is threatening to deny help to states whose governors aren’t nice to him and apparently stalled supplies intended for Washington and Michigan out of pique. Some TV stations have ceased carrying his press conferences live because his statements are so misleading and unsettling. Of Trump and his cult of supporters, as Jonathan Swift wrote centuries ago, “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

 

 Indiana’s governor has declared gun stores to be essential businesses, and customers are lining up around the block in some places. Teachers have paraded in cars to boost the morale of students at home, a practice ridiculed by cynics but apparently welcomed by those inside.  Some communities at a certain time of day open windows or doors and cheer hospital workers risking their lives to treat coronavirus victims.  Area golf courses remain open although only one person to a golf cart and no removing the pin on the green. In neighboring Michigan and Illinois marijuana stress also remain open, but weed remains illegal in Indiana. One of my board game buddies posted a cartoon of a guy hoarding games.

 

It seems like an appropriate time to play Social Distortion - a Seventies California punk band that with Mike Ness is still recording albums from time to time. My favorite numbers are “Ball and Chain,” “Bad Luck,” and the Johnny Cash number “Ring of Fire.” Ness, like Cash, has a deep, gruff voice.  The first two re on "Somewhere between Heaven and Hill," along with favorites "King of Fools" and "Cold Feelings."

 

David Ritz, who collaborated on B.B. King’s autobiography, had previously worked with Ray Charles, Marvin Gay, and Etta James.  A lover of the blues, Ruiz found King less moody and more cooperative.  “Blues All Around Me” is amazingly candid.  We learn that B.B. had 15 children by 15 different women and that he got circumcised in his 60s.  A compulsive womanizer, gambler, and performer, he was still on the road playing 250 one-nighters a year as he neared 70. His career had appeared to be at a dead end until an adroit agent, Sid Seidenberg, took him under his wing and English rockers such as the Rolling Stones and John Lennon of the Beatles extolled him. King admired Nat King Cole for his impeccable style and talent and praised Stevie Ray Vaughan as the greatest bluesman of his generation.

 

I’m halfway through Chicago reporter Len O’Connor’s book on the demise of Mayor Richard Daley, the last of the big city bosses. Interviewing a blueblood Republican, Dr. Oldberg, who served many years on the Board of Education, O’Connor noted that Chicago’s social and business elite feared that when Daley became mayor in the mid-50s, it would signal the return of widespread corruption.  Daley proved not so horrendous as they feared but no advocate of good-government either. Oldberg referred to Daley’s Irish underlings as primitives. After Daley suffered a stroke in 1974, he spent several months recuperating at his seven-acre lakefront retreat in western Michigan.

 

IUN has a new chancellor, Ken Iwama, an administrator from City University of New York Staten Island.  I had hoped Vice Chancellor Vicki Roman-Lagunas would be selected since she is a supporter of the Archives and I tend to favor inside candidates familiar with the campus, but I took no part in the search, knowing I’d have no impact on the decision.  I wish Iwama well; he seems to be committed to diversity and hasn’t hopped around from position to position like some administrators.

 

Popping up on Facebook are questionaires asking such things as who you are named after and favorite deserts (Darcy Wade answered dive bars, meaning dove bars, prompting a friend to reply that she also loved both dive bars and dove bars).  Darcy was named for a great-aunt, I for a failed president.  Kirsten Petras answered Kiki for favorite nickname; mine would be JBo.  For last movie seen in a theater, my answer was “Little Women,” the 2019 update.

 

At Jewel during senior hours the other day, I tripped on a rolled-up mat that someone had neglected to move out of harm’s way.  I turned right to head to the deli and went down, landing on my side and bruising the area near my hip.  I was fortunate not to break anything and am on the mend, putting an ice pack on every few hours.  I missed a step on the way to the basement when we first moved to the condo and tripped over a wire in the side garden, but the latest mishap reminded me of falling in Michigan and cutting my ear. Intending to bring Phil’s garbage bin, in from the street, I didn’t notice the lid on the ground and it tripped me up.  Getting out of the car, Phil yelled, “Jimbo’s down!”  Indeed I was. Gotta be more careful.

 

What a Guy!

"What a guy!   Buddy Guy!”

    Inside joke of Phil and Jimbo

 

Ever since the family saw Buddy Guy live in Merrillville, whenever Phil or I use the phrase “What a guy,” the other says “Buddy Guy.” We have other expressions that only we find funny, such as saying “dirty rubber” when a policeman drives by, a reference to something my buddy Paul Curry said in Terry Jenkins and my presence when a cop pulled over and accused him of muttering “Dirty copper” as he drove by.  Paul claimed he had said, “Dirty rubber,” which made no sense but the cop drove off. When one of us makes pancakes, we inevitably say, “nobody doesn’t like hoecakes,” which we (and nobody else) finds hilarious.

 

Though in his mid-80s, Buddy Guy is still performing, often in his own club, buddy Guy’s Legends.  The son of Louisiana sharecroppers, he moved to Chicago in 1957 and became a session musician for Chess Records.  The last of an era, Buddy’s 1991 CD, “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues” leads off with his so-named biggest hit and includes the Willie Dixon classic “Let Me Love You Baby,” the Eddie Boyd standard “Five Long Years,” Buddy’s own “Remembering Stevie,” a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan, plus “Mustang Sally,” the Louis Jordan hit “Early in the Morning,” and more – even a John Hiatt number “Where Is the Next One Coming From?” - all made unique due to Buddy’s guitar solos.  In 2012 Guy played at the White House and persuaded Barack Obama to sing along to “Sweet Home Chicago.”

 

B.B. King’s chapter “Heavenly Music” describes services at a sanctified church that his family, complete with hand-clapping, foot-stomping, shouting, and rocking back and forth in time to the music, as Preacher Fair played a guitar and a relative the piano.  When B.B’s Mama had Preacher Fair over for a Sunday dinner of fried chicken (which B.B. had caught, wrung its  neck, and plucked off the feathers earlier that day) and chocolate pie, he let B.B. play it.  Mama had a cousin, Bukker White, who recorded for RCA Victor and called himself “king of the slide guitar.” B.B. loved visiting his Aunt Mima, who owned a crank-up Victrola and had records by Lemon Blind Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson.  Their Blues numbers, such as Johnson’s “Bow-legged Lady” (“who wears her dress above the knees”), constituted excitement, emotion, and hope for future possibilities.

 

Another important person in King’s life was Uncle Major, virtually blind from cataracts and with a stutter so bad few folks could understand him.  He’d take B.B. fishing, bolster his confidence, and teach him patience.  On the way home Uncle Major would lean of him as B.B. described the fields, birds, and other things near them.  B.B.’s mother and grandmother died, leaving him alone at age 10.  He became the plantation owner’s houseboy and bought a Stella acoustic guitar for $15, two month’s wages.  As he wrote, “My guitar gave me a new life.  It helped me cope.”

 

The season finale of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” reminded me of how “Seinfeld” ended, which critics panned but appropriately made the cast pay for its selfish past actions. In other words, you get what you deserve, reap what you sow. Mocha Joe and a secretary Larry mistreated in season ten have the last laugh as Funkhouser’s F to M transgender former daughter’s big penis wreaks havoc with a watch Larry borrowed and intended to have repaired and causes a fire that consumes the “spite store” he opened in competition with Mocha Joe.

 

Ray Smock wrote about Trump’s erratic leadership during the pandemic:

    The only part of the stimulus package that seems to appeal to the president is the half-trillion dollars that will go to corporations. He said in a news conference that he would personally oversee how this money is dispersed. Congress thought differently and set up a review process and an inspector general with subpoena power. Can you imagine Donald Trump having control of a half-trillion dollars to dole out to billionaires—like himself?

    The  president’s top priority in this pandemic is to save business, and, of course, in the process to save jobs. This is a legitimate priority. But it is not Priority Number One. All humans on the entire planet are threatened with a plague of historic proportions and it must be stopped before workers and businesses can get back to what will pass as the new normal. This is a health crisis first and an economic crisis second. They go together, for sure. But nothing will be right until the virus is gone. Trump keeps talking about opening the nation by Easter. It should be criminal for him to even suggest such blind optimism in the face of scientific knowledge and of the dire crisis faced by our healthcare system nationwide. His false optimism encourages some governors to be reluctant to act, leaving it to mayors and other local officials to make important heath decisions, like social distancing and home confinement.

After D.T. called for things to reopen by Easter to save the economy, Dr. Fauci said, "You don't make the timeline.  The virus makes the timeline."

Trump seems to infect everything he touches.  During the 1980s, unable to buy an NFL franchise, he became an owner of a USFL team, the New Jersey Generals.  After two seasons Trump convinced the owners to move from a spring schedule to the fall, then sued the NFL, claiming it was a monopoly.  He was hoping for a merger but instead the ploy destroyed the league. Houston Generals owner Jerry Argovitz told author Jeff Pearlman: “Donald didn’t love the USFL. To him, it was small potatoes. Which was terrible, because we had a great league and a great idea.  But then everyone let Donald Trump take over.  It was our death.” Since that experience, Trump has disparaged the NFL at every opportunity.

 

IUN’s HELP desk staff, now working from home, has enabled me to get into my blog and Facebook with a minimum of trouble.  Paul and Julie Kern arrived back at The Villages after a cross-country trip from California.  He wrote: “On the final lap, restaurants were open only for drive-through so their restrooms were inaccessible, no small matter for traveling old people.”  Lois Reiner, commenting on Trump’s impatience to end social distancing, wrote: “Old people, Unite.  Tell D.T. we will not die for the economy unless he volunteers to be the test case.”

 

Country pop singer Kenny Rogers died.  Most famous as “The Gambler” in TV movies, the song of that title includes the line, “Know when to hold them and know when to fold them.”  Dave sang “Coward of the County” on Facebook that got many likes and comments.  It’s contains the line, “You don’t have to fight to be a man.”  Behind him was a poster of his former band, Voodoo Chili and a photo of guitarist Big Voodoo Daddy.

 

Pandemic Update

Pandemic Update (March 23)

 

I’ve remained at home except for a brief visit to Jewel, where purchases on scarce items such a milk and tissues were limited to one to a customer (and forget about picking up toilet paper). IUN has remained open to faculty but the Governor has ordered all nonessential facilities closed within 24 hours. I’m trying to master a borrowed laptop with a miniature keyboard compared to what I’m used to, and it is going slowly. Thankfully the HELP desk has been very helpful.  I just hope it will continue to be staffed a day from now.

 

When I get slightly depressed, I consider our situation much less disruptive compared to most folks.  Toni and I feel particularly sad that Becca and other young people are missing out on senior year activities and that so many people face economic uncertainty much worse than our own situation.

 

 I watched the six-hour documentary “McMillion$,” about the head of security who stole several dozen winning tickets and in the end got off with a light sentence thanks to a plea bargain while so-called winners paid a heavy price.  I found “Yesterday” on HBO,a humorous fantasy about a singer who discovers nobody has heard of the Beatles and becomes a pop star singing their songs. “Saturday Night Live’s” Kate McKinnon is a hoot as an overbearing manager. My favorite line is when a friend named Gavin says he doesn’t mind being second fiddle and references as an example Pulp’s “Common People.” Singer Ed Sheeran has a prominent role and is quite fetching.

 

I sailed through Olga Tokarczuk’s “Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead.” “The Guardian” described the author as combining an extraordinary talent with an archaic sensibility. Janine, for example, believes in astrology and that one’s fate is determined by the alignment of the planets at birth. A rich man is described as having a saturnine look.  After Janine has had an entomologist stay her for a few days, it reminded her how awkward it was to live with someone: 

  How another Person starts to irritate you without actually doing anything annoying, but simply by being there. Each morning when he went off to the forest, I blessed my glorious solitude. How do people manage to spend decades living together in a small space? I wondered.  Can they possibly sleep in the same bed together, breathing on and jostling each other accidentally in their sleep?

 

I noticed that the Woody Allen movie “Match Point” co-starred Scarlett Johansen so I decided to watch it.  The opening scene, showing a tennis ball being hit back and forth, finally hitting the net is meant to symbolize how luck often determines one’s fate, in this case depending on which side it falls on. Later a murderer tosses evidence into the river only it hits the railing.  Which side it lands on will determine whether or not the villain gets away with the crime.

 

Ron Cohen called to see if I were still going to IUN (negative) and whether my blog entries would continue (doubtful, but we’ll see).  He recently got a call from Danny Mack, a student of ours when we first started teaching 50 years ago. He had been a grader for Ron.   I only used a grader once, when I had a class of over a hundred students. Dave Malham gave almost everyone an A, so I had to go back over them and grade them myself.

I’ve been looking at a map Phil Arnold sent me of General George Washington’s  Montgomery County (PA) itinerary between October 1777 and June 1778  .He stayed in two dozen places while hi troops were encamped nearby including an estate near Oreland owned by George Emlem that in now Sandy Run County Club, where my 55^th reunion took place.  The map identifies township (i.e., Upper Dublin, Whitemarsh), boros (Ambler, Norristown, Jenkintown ), and small towns (Flourtown, Oreland) but not, of course, Fort Washington, which came into existence at a later date.

 

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Women of the Year

   “I grew up in a beautiful era, now sadly in the past.  In it there was great readiness for change, and a talent for creating revolutionary visions. Nowadays no one has the courage to think up anything new… they just keep rolling pout the same old ideas.” Olga Tokarczuk

                          Marsha P. Johnson          below, Mirabel sisters

A special issue of Time with Jackie Kennedy on the cover was devoted to honoring influential women each year since 1920.  There were some obvious choices – suffragists Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, First Ladies Eleanor Roosevelt and Michelle Obama, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and Angela Davis, feminists Simone de Beauvoir and Gloria Steinem, entertainers Billie Holiday and Aretha Franklin, writers Rachel Carson and Toni Morrison, athletes Babe Didrikson and Serena Williams, and lawmakers Margaret Chase Smith and Patsy Mink.  A transvestite, Marsha P. Johnson, who participated in the 1969 Stonewall Inn Riot, made the list. I had never heard of some foreign leaders and scientists, as well as wheelchair-bound Judith Heumann, who fought for rights of access for the disabled.  I learned that when Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the Mirabel sisters - Minerva, Patria, and Maria Teresa – murdered in 1960, the resultant outrage contributed to his downfall. 

Hollywood barrier-breaker Rita Moreno, a Puerto Rican native who starred in “West Side Story” (1961), revealed that she refused to sing such demeaning lyrics as “Puerto Rico, you ugly island/ Island of tropic diseases.” The words were changed at her insistence.  Our misogynist President has demeaned at least a half-dozen women on the list, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ellen DeGeneres, Nancy Pelosi, Angela Merkel, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and last year’s  “Time Person of the Year” Greta Thunberg (I kid you not, as Jack Paar used to say).

Not all women profiled escaped criticism, especially foreign leaders such as Indira Gandhi, who instituted repressive measures against India’s poor, Aung San Suu Kyi, complicit in the Myanmar army’s brutal campaign against Rohingya Muslims, and even Liberia’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, for tolerating corruption and cronyism. Birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, it was pointed out, embraced eugenics as a method of weeding out defective babies.  Notably by their absence: Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique,” who objected to outspoken lesbians supposedly tarnishing the women’s rights movement, and Phyllis Schlafly, who successfully campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment.  Though she had a rancid effect on the body politic, Schlafly was a far more important newsmaker (Time’s standard for selecting its Person of the Year) than many of the more admirable women on the list.

I spotted a woman from Ivy Tech wearing a “SRAIGHT OUTTA TRIO” t-shirt and told her my son worked with TRIO students at East Chicago Central.  She said she was Central class president in 1996, that her maiden name was Letise Walden and now Jenkins, and she had worked with Mr. Lane on the school yearbook. 

The stock market Dow Jones average had fallen below 20,000, and price of gasoline has dropped below 2 dollars a gallon.  Strack and Van Til  was open, but several customers and employees were wearing masks.  The bread shelves were almost bare.  My sons were concerned that I am still going to my IUN office, but the building has been sanitized and I hardly see anyone, much less get close to them.  Chesterton library is closed, but I have several books at home that are unread or that I have barely begun.

I am taking my time with Olga Tokarczuk’s “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” because it is so rich with meaning – and sad, which seems fitting in these plague times.  She writes: “Sorrow lies at the foundation of everything, it is the fourth element, the quintessence.”  Living in a wooded area inhabited by hunters who await their prey in pulpits, Tokarczuk  notes: “For what on earth was taught from that sort of pulpit.  What sort of gospel was preached?  Isn’t it a diabolical idea to call a place from which one kills a pulpit?” The book opens with a neighbor fetching Janine in the dead of winter to help dress a man found dead from swallowing a dagger-shaped bone from a deer he’d slain.  The macabre task complete, Janine observes the “dead hobgoblin’s body in a coffee-colored suit.”

Having returned three CDs to the library’s outside video slot, I dug into my collection and put on albums by Counting Crows, Arcade Fire, and Donnas. The first two are rather somber in tone, but the Donnas ”Spend the Night” always puts me in a good mood.  As the lyrics of “Take Me to the Back Seat” advise, “let’s get this baby rockin.’”  “Take Me to the Back Seat” ends:

do you need a map?
let's skip the nightcap
i'll make it sticky sweet
just take me to the backseat

Hearing the Donnas brings back memories of a sitter by that name who’d look after us when our parents went out.  A sultry brunette who smoked cigarettes and wore sweaters that showed off perky breasts, she would sit in Vic’s chair reading a novel. I can imagine snuggling in her lap as she recites a dirty passage from “Peyton Place” to me, although by the time of that potboiler’s publication, I myself would be babysitting other kids and Donna dating collegians.

Ray Smock weighed in on the coronavirus pandemic with an essay entitled “Old Ways Won’t Work Anymore.” It begins:

    Trump is our plague president and he is a political plague. So let’s face the fact that we must deal with many things simultaneously, the virus and the ineptitude of a president and his top officials, who are in way over their heads. Congress and the rest of the government must find ways to work around the president to minimize his negative effects while science, medicine, and saner political leaders deal with the virus. Congress needs to assert its own powers, over the desires of the president. But the current GOP members are sticking with the president all the way, even as some of them come down with the virus. 

    The recent negotiations between Speaker Pelosi and Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin, appear to be one of the work-arounds, that was deftly designed so it could be sold to the president. We still need his signature on legislation. State governors need the federal government and they all say so. But many of them are already taking steps ahead of our president to meet the emergency. From what I can tell from news reports, a lot of the government decision making on the pandemic at the presidential level must first pass through the office of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, as if Trump was still running his real estate business. Shakespeare could not write a stranger tragedy.

    We are a nightmare from nature and a nightmare by the failure of our political system. Yet, we can pull through this, defeat the virus and build up our economy and our nation again. Even as we fight through the unknown, we should be thinking clearly that the old politics will no longer work. We cannot be at each others' throats over things that now seem inconsequential, when the whole world is at risk. 

    Lincoln said during the Civil War that to save the Union we had to disenthrall ourselves of old thinking. Time to heed Lincoln again, even as we are stuck with Trump. The virus will pass. And so will Trump’s presidency.

We will have much to lament and much more work to do when we beat the virus. The fall elections as difficult as they may be, will be a major event for change. We must un-elect the president and a good number of members of Congress. We need a fresh start, with new leaders, and new thinking about how we govern ourselves and protect the people. We cannot ever allow a future president to get rid of a unit of our national security apparatus that was there to protect us from pandemics, just because that unit was created by a previous administration.

While galleries are closed, thanks to social media, one can still enjoy art.  Here’s VU museum curator Gregg Hertzlieb’s latest Facebook cover photo: