Something in the Air

  “Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right”

    “Something in the Air,” Thunderclap Newman

When I first heard “Something in the Air,” I had no idea who Thunderclap Newman was but loved the song. It appeared on the album “Hollywood Dream” (1969) and reminded me of the Beach Boys if they had decided to make a political statement.  The original title was “Revolution,” but the Beatles had used that name for the B side of “Hey Jude.” The brainchild of the WHO’s Pete Townshend, who played bass guitar under the assumed name Bijou Drains, Thunderclap Newman consisted of Speedy Keen (who wrote “Something in the Air”), Andy Newman, and Jimmy McCullough.  Even though the single was a smash hit in the UK and U.S. and featured in such movies as “Easy Rider,” “The Strawberry Statement,” and “Almost Famous,” the group never recorded another album. “Something in the Air” was coved by many others, most famously Tom Petty in 1994.

    “We are prepared to spend the rest of our lives if necessary to save the dunes,”

  Save the Dunes founder Dorothy R. Buell

Shirley Roman touched countless lives during her 92 years.  Born in western Pennsylvania in the Ohio River town of Coraopolis, she grew up in Racine, Wisconsin and graduated from Gary Emerson High School.  While at DePauw University, she started dating Frank Roman, who’d been the star quarterback at Emerson when she was an undergraduate and after serving in World War II was attending Wabash College. They married in 1952 and became Miller mainstays, active in Save the Dunes, Marquette Park Methodist Church, scouting, the MCC (Miller Citizens Corporation), and, in Shirley’s case, gardening and knitting clubs. Shirley taught elementary school in Gary and first grade at Portage’s Crisman, where granddaughter Alissa started school, for over 20 years.  I met the Romans at a party that Tom Eaton hosted.  I recall them as strikingly handsome and personable octogenarians. Shirley loved the beach and as her obit states, “was a force for good and change in her community and fierce protector of the lake, dunes, and woods, and the unique Miller community.”  The obit added:

   Shirley and Frank loved cross-country skiing and to travel and were very social, celebrating anything they could think of with their famous cocktail parties. Later in life, they moved to Rittenhouse Senior Living.  The family (Meg, Frank, Jr., Leah Shelby, and others) thanks the staff there, as well as the staff of Harbor Light Hospice, for their gracious care given to Shirley and for laughing at her jokes until the end.

The Chesterton area establishments in Porter County are not practicing social distancing in a uniform manner. Some restaurants are open, others still closed, and many serving drive-thru or carry-out only.  The Chesterton library opened for curbside service.  One calls ahead, has books and DVDs or CDs (in my case by the Beths and Night Ranger) and then goes to one of five reserve parking spaces and calls inside for delivery.  Gaard Logan recommended a trilogy by Hilary Mantel that takes place in Tudor England.  Those novels weren’t available, so I checked out one of Mantel’s early works, “Beyond Black” (2005).  Ron Cohen also loaned me a John Williams novel, “Stoner” (1965) and “They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America October 1967” (2003) by one of my favorite authors, David Maraniss.  That should keep me busy.  Nancy greeted me at the door wearing a mask, as was I, and had a bag of books and periodicals plus three homemade chocolate chip cookies.  After a 30-minute visit, I gave Nancy an elbow bump and said, “Guess no hugging or kissing.”



“They Marched into Sunlight” focuses on two main events, a Vietcong attack on an American division on a search-and-destroy mission and an antiwar sit-in at the University of Wisconsin protesting the university allowing Dow Chemical Company, makers of napalm, to recruit in campus.  The title comes from Vietnam vet Bruce Weigl’s “Eulogy,” about a patrol suddenly under fire.  Here are the poem’s opening and closing lines”

into sunlight they marched,

into dog day, into no saints day,

and they were cut down

. . . .

The bullets sliced through the razor grass
So there was not even time to speak.
The words would not let themselves be spoken.
Some of them died.
Some of them were not allowed to.