Social Distancing

“Put simply, the idea of social distancing is to maintain a distance between you and other people — in this case, at least six feet. That also means minimizing contact with people. Avoid public transportation whenever possible, limit nonessential travel, work from home and skip social gatherings — and definitely do not go to crowded bars and sporting arenas.” New York Times

below, "Let the online teaching begin" Liz photo of Al

Coronavirus pandemic updates are totally dominating the news.  Hoarders are panic-buying items such as toilet paper while others, often Trump supporters, believe news reports to be a hoax or an anti-Trump conspiracy. Democratic frontrunners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders debated on CNN without an audience, and the candidates did an elbow bump rather than shake hands.  Illinois is closing bars and restaurants for the foreseeable future (Indiana followed suit the following day) except for carry-out, yet at O’Hare Airport passengers returning from overseas had to stand in crowded lines for up to four hours in order to pass through customs. Students at every level from preschool to grad school will be working from home. Overseas programs, such as those Alissa directs at Grand Valley State, are in chaos.

In the past 24 hours Banta Center closed and Chesterton Y drastically limited services, so no duplicate bridge. I called off bowling, and teammate Frank Shufran’s knee surgery got cancelled at the last moment. According to a CBS anchor, Isaac Newton apparently invented calculus while working in isolation during the plague years of 1665-1666.  With Trinity College, Cambridge closed, Newton returned to his family estate and worked on his own so successfully that he later referred to that period as the annus mirabilus or “year of wonders.”

After watching Willie Geist discuss binge-watching a TV series on NBC Sunday Today, I checked out “Better Things” on FX, which New York magazine had praised.  Pamela Adlon portrays a single mother and sometime actress with three precocious daughters and an unbalanced mother who likes to swim naked uninvited in a neighbor’s pool.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t get the first couple episodes free On Demand and that commercials interrupted the action every few minutes but nonetheless watched the three available shows with growing interest.  With a husky voice and gravelly laugh, Adlon looked and sounded familiar; I learned that she had been a regular on “Californication.”  Season 3 of “Better Things” almost didn’t happen because  original co-star Louis C.K. was banished after multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.  

Sociologist Chuck Gallmeier studied social distancing, not as a way to prevent catching contagious diseases but as a means of avoiding unwanted interchanges in public places.  Examples are checking email messages while on elevators and closing your eyes seated on airplanes.  I need to consult with Chuck on latest developments, as Americans keep readjusting their lives.  Whereas government officials recommended avoiding crowds of over 100 and then 50, now the number is down to ten.  

In Richard Russo’s “Chances Are,” about three college buddies (Teddy, Lincoln, and Mickey) reuniting 45 years later on Martha’s Vineyard, squeamish Teddy faints dead away when a singer he recognizes as the daughter of a long-lost girlfriend joins Mickey’s band on stage and belts out the opening lines to “Nutbush City Limits.”  

A church house, gin house
A school house, outhouse
On highway number nineteen
The people keep the city clean
They call it Nutbush

Written in 1973 by Tina Turner about her hometown of Nutbush, Tennessee, so small it doesn’t appear on most state maps, at a time when she was suffering at the hands of an abusive husband, “Nutbush City Limits” has an ironic tone, as seen in these lyrics:

No whiskey for sale
You get caught, no bail
Salt pork and molasses
Is all you get in jail

  . . .

Quiet little old community, a one-horse town
You have to watch what you're puttin' down

Rock critic Rick Hasted wrote: “’Limits’ is the key word, as she artfully sketches a circumscribed life [in a place] more like somewhere to escape [from] than like a rural idyll.”      

Buddy Johnson orchestra

Riley “B.B.” King’s autobiography, “Blues All Around Us” describes growing up in a Mississippi Delta sharecropping family. His first vivid memory: braiding his mother Nora Ella’s hair after she had worked all day picking cotton.  From his great-grandmother, a former slave, he learned that blues songs unburdened the soul but also served as a survival mechanism, for example, warning that “massa” was near.  Attending a one-room schoolhouse, Riley had a bad stutter and was more interested in girls than learning.  Nonetheless, teacher Luther Henson impacted his life, convincing him that justice would ultimately prevail over evil.  Hanson’s nephew Purvis performed in Buddy Johnson’s nine-piece orchestra, evidence of the possibility of reaching brighter horizons.  In 1944 the Buddy Johnson Band had a number one rhythm and blues hit, “When My Man Comes Homes,” with Buddy’s sister Ella Johnson on vocals.

 

Toni and I saw B.B. King, who died five years ago at age 90, headline a “House Rockin’ Blues” show at Merrillville’s Star Plaza.  Also on the bill: Buddy Guy, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Albert King.  At B.B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis with the Migoski’s on the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, the performer on stage announced she wouldn’t be playing Elvis songs for tourists but made a reference to Elvis admiring the Blues that was not uncomplimentary.

High school classmate Phil Arnold called and asked if I were a history buff.  As a historian, I replied, I might be called that.  Rummaging through decades-old possessions, he unearthed a map showing Montgomery County, PA, during the period of the American Revolution, including places where General George Washington stayed.  I was familiar with Valley Forge, of course, my home town, Fort Washington, and Whitemarsh, where our Cub Scout Memorial Day parade would end, but not Camp Hill or other places he mentioned.  He’s planning on mailing it to me. As always, I asked Phil to say hello to Bev, unfailingly upbeat despite myriad health concerns.

Phil and Bev Arnold, 2009

According to university scuttlebutt making the rounds, a few longtime professors have never interacted with students via the internet and don’t intend to start, despite expectations that they do so during the current crisis. When I retired a decade ago, rudimentary methods of contacting students online were in place, and I had begun to post assignments and other important messages.  It’s hard to believe that a handful of old-timers are resisting the inevitable. Distance learning is certainly better than none at all.

Looks like no more guest appearances in history colleagues’ classes this semester.  In the fall, if all returns to normal, Nicole Anslover will offer a class on Women in Politics.  Unlike 1990s governors Ann Richards (Texas) and Christine Todd Whitman (NJ), most early women governors and members of Congress succeeded deceased husbands and only served out the remainder of their terms.  Two exceptions were Texan Miriam “Ma” Ferguson and Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas. Ferguson’s husband had been impeached while governor and barred from holding future public office, so “Ma” ran in his place, winning a two-year term in 1924 and again in 1932.  Making no secret that she would lean on her husband for advice, Ferguson used this campaign slogan: “Me for Ma, and I Ain’t Got a Durned Thing Against Pa.”

Hattie Caraway took over husband Thaddeus’’s Senate seat in 1931 and the following year threw her hat into the ring, proclaiming, “The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept these only while someone is groomed for the job.” Senator Huey Long of neighboring Louisiana campaigned for her, and she became the first woman U.S. Senator to serve a full term.  In 1938 Hattie got re-elected after surviving a primary challenge from Representative John McClellan, whose slogan was, “Arkansas Needs Another Man in the Senate.”  Caraway lost a bid for a third term against Congressman J. William Fulbright, a former Razorback star football player and Rhodes scholar.