Imagine

“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

 

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one”

    John Lennon, “Imagine”

 

Dave performed “Imagine” on piano and dedicated it to Toni. As a kid, he’d play our piano in the basement rec room to relax, learning by trial and error.  A recent rightwing Facebook post called the song “Marxist” - can you imagine?  If it is a pipedream to imagine a world without war, government and religion, it is certainly not to be treated as dangerous enemy propaganda, only the wise words of a musical shaman too fragile for this world.

 

I had a relatively busy day compared to most during this pandemic.  Mike and Janet Bayer spent the night after visiting son Brenden and is family.  After breakfast I donned a face mask and got my toenails clipped at nearby Aqua Spa, first time in months.  They checked my temperature, squirted sanitizer onto my hands, and took me to a station that had a barrier between me and the young woman servicing me.  In the afternoon Dave and Angie stopped over, and in the evening I played Space Base via Zoom with Tom, Jef, Dave, Evan and Patti. With a scoop of ice cream I watched the news about Covid-19 spreading rapidly in Red states that re-opened precipitously and Trump denying he knew about Russian payoffs to Taliban terrorists who killed American soldiers. Also: Trump railed against Chief Justice John Roberts for striking down a Louisiana anti-abortion statute.

 

Suzanna Murphy wrote about living in a secure environment while her dad would soon be risking his life in the Korean War not long after surviving harrowing experiences in the Far East during World War II:

    The year was 1949. I was a few months past four. My mother and I had recently moved in with my grandparents in Wyncote, Pennsylvania in a beautiful old Victorian home.  We had been living in Lancaster before in an Amish home. My father had been sent overseas again and was soon to go to Korea for a very long time. I have vivid memories of my time at Grama and Grampa's home. One crisp morning, Grama was fixing oatmeal for breakfast and cooking cinnamon toast in the oven. WOR, from New York, was blaring on the small wooden radio on the kitchen cupboard. Their theme song was cheerfully playing: "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile." I went down in the basement with Grampa to watch him stoke the furnace with coal. I heard a new voice in the kitchen and came up to find the milk man visiting with Grama and my mother. The milk was in glass bottles of course. I helped Grama feed the birds out the window. After breakfast I went down in the basement with her and helped her with the wringer washer and then went outside to hang the clothes on the line.  She said I could watch her sew a dress for me on the treadle sewing machine too. I had been sick a few days and was home from school. Grampa was going to Beaver College to teach, as usual. Later he would work on his sermon for the church where he was pastor. I would help Grama in the garden and then go for a walk with my mother down to Station Park. Those were the morning plans I was told. One thing I always knew. It would be peaceful and quiet and orderly and I would be safe and loved.

 

Suzanna was my first serious girlfriend. We met at an end-of-the-school-year party soon after I graduated from Upper Dublin and she from tenth grade.  I drove her home and received a kiss as my reward. We went together until I left for college. That summer I caught a terrible case of poison ivy on my arms working on an estate right around the time I was ready to put some serious moves on her.  Her dad was home all the time dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome but I don’t recall ever meeting him. At a state fair with Suzanna and her mom, I saw Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong perform.  Now platonic Facebook friends despite and her being a Mennonite and our political differences due to her anti-abortion beliefs, Suzannah prays for me and tolerates my caustic comments to her most outlandish political posts.  To one conspiracy theory labeled “scary shit,” I replied, “Shit all right – bullshit.”  She chastised my vulgarity until I pointed out that I was using the same word as the caption.

 

Classmate Connie Heard Damon, who volunteers each year at a health clinic in Africa, posted this notice:

    While walking my dog at Trewelyn Park recently, I lost my key fob and was unable to get back in my car to drive home. Despite retracing my steps, I was unable to see the black fob in the advancing darkness. Several people stopped to ask if I needed help. One man even offered to drive me home to get my reserve fob. While I was waiting for my sister to come "save" me, a female runner stopped to ask if I needed help. She quickly offered, despite my protestations, to look for me and headed back through the woods.

    The next morning at daybreak I returned to the trail and started looking again- to no avail. When I got back to my car, there was a note on the windshield: I FOUND YOUR KEY. There next to the note was my key fob which I never thought I'd see again. I was in tears. No one was around.

    I wish I knew who found it so that I could express my gratitude. In these days when we seem to hear of so much negativity, what a joy it is to know there are generous, kind people who are willing to help a stranger. So, whoever you are, I hope you read this.  Thank you, and God bless you!!!

 

Nic

Gabriel

Ezkiel

Several Kenyans who appreciate Connie’s work were among the many commenters.  Gabriel Wafula responded: “What a good testimony.  When you plant goodness you will reap goodness.  You have been good to people who were strangers.  You have touched lives in Kenya.  The water borehole in Living Hope High school is serving a whole community. Don’t be surprised, a lot of good things are coming to you.  You shall flourish!” Nic Simiyo wrote, “Wonderful testimony, mum; good work rewards.” Ezkiel Shimbira added: “You always help many, you’re reaping what you plant.”

Valparaiso University curator and artist Gregg Hertlieb’s drawing elicited this comment from Sandy Appleby: “For sure . . . Covid the dreadful in the Southern swamps looking for those who believe they are invulnerable.”  I first met Sandy Appleby when she worked for Tri-City Mental Health Center in East Chicago and asked me to be an oral history consultant on a grant funded project dealing with Aging.  That led to similar collaborations on projects dealing with ethnicity, Alzheimers caregivers, and laid off steelworkers. Along with her colleague Olga Velazquez, who later became mayor of Portage, we took part in several scholarly conferences.  I hadn’t heard from Sandy in years. She introduced me to matriarch Maria Arredondo family, which led to the publication of “Maria’s Journey.”

Sandy and friend

Elsewhere

"The mechanism of human destiny – that intricate weave of chance and fate and free will, as distinctly individual as a fingerprint - is surely meant to remain life’s central mystery, to resist transparency, to make blame a dangerous and unsatisfactory exercise.” Richard Russo, “Elsewhere”

“Elsewhere” is a memoir about the relationship between favorite author Richard Russo and his mother, Jean, who sought to escape the upstate mill town of Gloversville and lived either with him or nearby her entire life.  By turns hilarious and sad, the book contains events and personality traits similar doings and characters found in Russo’s novels.  Taking away his mother’s huge pill supply while she was in the hospital, Russo felt “like the parent who’d disposed of the weed he discovered in the back of his kid’s closet.” After his mother dies and her ashes are scattered at sea, Russo belatedly realizes that she exhibited the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder and that he was not so different from her as he once imagined.  Fortunately, Russo’s adult compulsion – fiction writing - enabled him to make a comfortable living.

Russo wrote that, unlike many university-trained novelists, he valued plot, paid attention to pacing, and had little tolerance for literary pretention. His literary references- to Kafkaesque nightmares, Jane Eyre’s madwoman in the attic, Jim Thompson’s crime fiction characters helpless in the grip of relentless forces, Melville’s Bartleby saying, “I prefer not to” – are easily grasped. And, finally, as per Thomas Wolfe’s acknowledgement, Russo realized that he couldn’t go home again, not even for Jean’s family memorial service.  He described his final sighting of the house on Helwig Street where he grew up:

    The hazardously sloping back porches, up and down, had been amputated, and nobody had even bothered to paint over the scars. The back door I was in and out of a hundred times a day as a boy now opened into thin air, a four-foot drop to a rectangle of hard brown earth that the house’s new owner couldn’t be bothered to seed.  After that, I no longer had the heart, or maybe the stomach, to bear witness, so strong was my sense of personal failure.

I enjoyed returning to my home town of Fort Washington every five years or so, when best friend Terry Jenkins and I would retrace neighborhood haunts. For many years our old homesteads were in decline.  In my case a German couple whom I expected would be model owners took more interest in building a second home in the Poconos.  Once, Terry talked them into letting us inside; the rooms seemed smaller and shabby, and I spotted a photo of some relative, surely, in a Nazi uniform.  On our last tour new owners had spruced up the lawn and garden, painted the side fence and garage, and left the magnolia and Japanese trees in their full splendor.  The Jenkins estate now had two houses on it, but we copped an invitation to come inside the 150-year-old original (at least as far as the first floor) and were impressed with the new décor with several doors removed and the screened-in porch now the main family room. Terry recalled that his old man had arranged for one screen door to face out and the other in so their collie, Taffy, could exit and enter at her pleasure.

Many former Gary residents share Russo’s reluctance to visit the neighborhoods of their youth, at some point having become determined to live elsewhere.  That was not the case with former Catholic priest and longtime Gary teacher John Sheehan, who nonetheless wrote a volume of poems titled “Elsewhere, Indiana” (1990).  The title poem goes:

Gary
a tenuous misshapen T

gerrymandered for planners

who live elsewhere

your streets torn up by heavy trucks

that make money for peopl

who live elsewhere

your “urban renewal”

twenty years old

only just begun

high-paid planners

mostly gone elsewhere

profits gone elsewhere

ain’t nobody here to say

enough money where their mouth is

how you can really be

a good place to live

for those who can’t very easily

go no elsewhere

         except maybe somewhere even worse

than this here where


like high-rise Chicago
one thing Gary
your kids growing up
if they can dodge bullets
that enrich profiteers
elsewhere
can look out their windows
and walk out their doors
to somewhere

Gary, Indiana
where
in spite of mammoth trucks
bisecting tri-state expressway
and abandoned buildings
they can see trees and squirrels and birds
and every manner of God-given beauty
in the trash-lined dunes and swamplands
 
but they can’t see the lake
unless they get out to Miller
and it’s hard to find the river too. 

Ray Smock responded: “Gary's story is the story of American exploitation and capitalist greed.  Far too many places in this country are just like Elsewhere, Indiana. The whole damn country is Elsewhere."

Muralist Felix “Flex” Maldonado described a labor of love in honor of the Region first responders that now exists in Gary’s Miller beach neighborhood:

    10 days.. 10 days of scorching sun, sweating so profusely it burned eyes while i painted, sweaty masks, ankle breaking rocks, rain storms disrupting my flow, mosquitos biting so bad i couldn’t stand it.... but i carried on because, knowing all this, i knew i would finish one day.... but not for these individuals who CHOOSE to struggle through worse conditions EVERYDAY.. This mural is a tribute to ALL first responders who put their lives on the line so we can try and live a little better life- my “heroes”, as I like to call them... i dedicate this one to you.

    Thank you Pat and Karen Lee, of Lee Companies for allowing me to bring this long awaited vision to life. you have made the community and this world a better place...

    if you see a first responder, tell em “FLEX” said “thank you”.. @ Miller Beach Indiana

Tail-Gunner Joe

"Enemy sighted, enemy met, I'm addressing the realpolitik,
Look who bought the myth, by jingo, buy America”

    R.E.M., “Exhuming McCarthy (Meet me at the book burning)”

Joe McCarthy

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957), Republican demagogue from Wisconsin, first ran for statewide political office falsely claiming to be a war hero when in fact he never saw combat as a tail-gunner during World War II.  Fearing he’d lose a bid for re-election, he seized on the country’s fears of communism in Cold War America and claimed without a shred of proof that subversives were working in President Harry S Truman’s State Department.  Between 1950 and 1954 McCarthy terrorized opponents with smear tactics until he over-stepped by taking on the army.  This earned the wrath of fellow Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had parleyed his military generalship into becoming Truman’s successor in the White House.  The turning point took place during the so-called Army-McCarthy Senate subcommittee hearings when, as quoted in the R.E.M. song, attorney Joseph Welch stood up to the bully and asked, “Have you no sense of decency, sir; at long last, have you left no sense of decency?  Shortly thereafter, the Senate censured McCarthy, effectively ended his Reign of Terror.  He died within three years of acute alcoholism.

my mentor, William H. Harbaugh

By the time I knew much about McCarthy, in a Bucknell college History course taught by William H. Harbaugh (the man most responsible for my becoming a historian), “Tail-Gunner Joe” was dead but “McCarthyism” had become a synonym for Red-baiting, accusing political enemies of being “soft on communism.” Former Vice President Richard M. Nixon, whose political career was thought to be at an end when he lost the 1962 California gubernatorial race, had built his career by Red-baiting opponents.  Even though the Cold war ended 30 years ago, the tactic still rears its ugly head when all else fails. In fact, McCarthy’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, introduced Trump to politics and “hardball” tactics the New York City tycoon would emulate.

 

I watched “Bully. Coward. Victim,” a documentary on attorney Roy Cohn, McCarthy's sidekick responsible for framing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for being Russian spies who helped the Soviets acquire the knowledge to develop an atomic bomb. At the time Julius supposedly carried out this crime, the U.S. and the USSR are WW II allies.  What information he passed on to our future Cold War adversary was relatively unimportant.  Ethel played no role in the alleged espionage and convicting her was a ploy to convince Julius to confess and name names.  He refused, and in 1953 they died in the electric chair.  A shameful chapter in American history, brought on by paranoia exploited by politicians. On Jeopardy (a repeat, no social distancing) the Rosenbergs were an answer in the category “Traitors,” along with Brutus and Benedict Arnold. 

 

Not only did McCarthy go after alleged communists, he also claimed that homosexuals were a security risk, susceptible to being blackmailed by our Soviet adversaries.  The resultant “Lavender Scare” ruined lives even though until recently it received less attention than the Red Scare.  Ironically, McCarthy’s Chief Counsel Roy Cohn was a closeted homosexual who later would die of AIDS.  In fact, what did in McCarthy stemmed from Cohn’s close relationship with G. David Schine, a wealthy Harvard grad who was heir to a hotel chain fortune and had written an anti-communist tract.  After naming Schine his chief consultant, the two went on a European junket, touring USIA libraries with the aim of censuring leftist books. After Schine was drafted, Cohn hectored army officials demanding that the enlisted man be given special treatment so he could have time to continue working with Cohn.  When army brass balked, Cohn accused them of being pro-communist.  Following McCarthy’s downfall, Schine refused to talk about the episode.  He subsequently married a former Miss Universe, fathered six children, had a successful career in the entertainment industry, and died in a plane crash in 1996 at age 69.


The Red Scare and Lavender Scare also affected African Americans, as civil rights leaders were often deemed to be subversives and gay writers declared to be degenerates. These included such black pioneers as actor Paul Robeson, novelist Richard Wright, sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, and essayist James Baldwin.  FBI director hounded Martin Luther King for his supposed communist ties and immoral lifestyle and resorted to equally heinous actions against Black Power activists.  Harassment of black public officials was in full swing under presidents Nixon and Reagan and continues today. No wonder many African Americans chose to keep a low profile, be as invisible as possible or, in the words of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, “wear the mask.”  Historian Ray Boomhower posted Dunbar’s poem on the occasion of what would have been his 148^th birthday:

        We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- -

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile

mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be otherwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see thus, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!”

Up for Debate

In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, nor an unjust interest.” William Penn

 Several of my friends from high school re-post rightwing messages on Facebook that I mostly ignore but sometimes offer a brief rebuttal – as when, for example, they imply that Democrats are anti-police, pro-rioters or unpatriotic.  Frequently they bring up some local incident and ask why it wasn’t widely reported on the mainstream media.  Recently I came across an image of William Harvey Carney, the first African-American Medal of Honor winner, who, though badly wounded, “refused to let the American flag touch the ground.”  Above Carney’s photo were these words: “Maybe the NFL should put this up in every locker room.”  Carney (1840-1908) was born a slave.  After his father escaped with the aid of the Underground Railroad, he purchased his wife and William’s freedom.  Enlisting in the 54^th Massachusetts Colored Regiment, as did two sons of Frederick Douglass, Carney performed the heroic deed in 1863 at the Battle of Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina.  Angry that Carney’s admirable action was being politicized, I commented: “No NFL player is allowing the flag to touch the ground.”  Someone (not my friend) replied: “They just burn it.  Man, you pop up everywhere like a lib-in-a-box.”  Ignoring the fact that the person was not distinguishing between taking a knee during the National Anthem and flag-burning, I suggested, figuratively, that it was better to wash the flag than burn it.

Chesterton High School has a long, storied Debate Club tradition.  Jim Cavallo (above), a Speech and Debate teacher for38 years beginning in 1971, was the third CHS Debate Program Director inducted into the National Speech and Debate Hall of Fame.  His predecessors were Joe Wycoff and Bob Kelly.  Cavallo coached CHS to five consecutive national championships beginning in the late 1980s.  According to a NSDA press release, Cavallo was one of the first coaches to break from the “boys club” mentality and recruit females to do Policy Debate.  It concludes: “To Cavallo, every kid had talent, potential, and the ability to contribute to constructive argumentation.”

With a national debate raging over whether to take down monuments of rebel slaveholders, Anne Koehler passed on this statement by Kerri Smilie:

    I really didn't want to talk about concentration camps tonight. But today I've seen a certain post going around saying something to the effect of "Germany didn't take down their concentration camps, so why should we take down Confederate statues?”

 

   Whew. Deep breaths.

 

    In 2004 I went to Germany (one of a few trips I took there). Part of the trip entailed visiting some historical sites related to WWII. I sat in the courtroom in Nuremberg where Goering and crew were tried and condemned for their actions. I can tell you, there was NOT ONE BIT of honor for them in that room. We watched a graphic video in English, German, and Hebrew detailing the atrocities these men were condemned for. The theme of the lecture was "What they did was horrible. We as a nation stood behind it. We own it. And we will never allow it to happen again." Know what we didn't see? A single freakin' statue of a Nazi.

    But while we're talking statues, let's talk Dachau. The Dachau visit was the day after we went to Nuremberg, and my heart just couldn't take it. So my dad went, took lots of photos, and told us about it. It is completely saturated in remorse and resolve. There is nothing honoring any soldier. There is no glory in the Germany of WWII. There are no "alternate story lines." The statues there glorify those who were tortured and killed by the Nazis. One of the most famous statues at Dachau portrays skeletons strewn across barbed wire because so many of the prisoners ended their lives by throwing themselves into the fences and being shot, rather than suffer another day at the hands of the SS.

    This particular statue though is the one I want to talk about. It is called "The Unknown Prisoner." He stands tall and proud- because the prisoners were required to keep their heads bowed and eyes averted. He has his hands in his pockets- because the prisoners were forbidden to do so. He is not wearing a hat- because the prisoners were required to wear a hat on penalty of death. And his inscription reads "To Honor the Dead, To Remind (or warn) the Living." This statue is brazenly defiant. And I love it.

So if you want to compare the way Germany has kept their history alive with the way the South has, don't look at it in statues and memorials. If we want to follow Germany's lead, every plantation would be a solemn memorial to a dark time in our nation's history. There would be no weddings there- just like there are no weddings in Auschwitz. There would be no nostalgia for days gone by, but only reminders of the horrors of those enslaved.

    If we want to follow Germany's lead, then every statue of a Confederate general should be replaced by a statue of a slave breaking free of their chains, or standing proud in defiance of the slaveholders.  Don't make comparisons if you're not willing to follow them through all the way.

Ryan Askew

I enjoy reading personal items I find in obituaries, such as that Arthur Catenazzo, 88, a Korean War veteran and former U.S. Steel shift manager, walked six laps around South Lake Mall six days a week and was known as Mayor of the Mall. Former East Chicago firefighter and hospital security guard Edward Kowalski, 96, loved Hostess Twinkies and Ho Ho’s and during holiday celebrations “took the carving knife to baked hams like no one else.”  The obit for Ryan Askew, 59, a 1978 West Side grad, former Lake County police officer, and security guard at Community Hospital in Munster, gave no hint that he was shot and killed by another officer while attempting to restrain a patient who had him in a chokehold. In addition to mentioning Ryan’s wife Fonetta, daughter Da’Ja’Nay and other relatives, the notice mentioned eight “special friends,” including Gary residents Perry Gordon, Willie Stewart, Aaron Stuckey, Armon Stuckey, and Ernest Goodwin. When he first learned of Askew’s tragic death, former Sheriff Roy Dominguez, who promoted him to Commander, told The Times: “He was a nice guy, very professional, and extremely well-liked by the troops.”

Valentina

I’ve been playing the board game Space Base, both with Dave, Phil, and James at the condo and online ever since Angie ordered it for me on Amazon. Each player assumes the role of a commodore in charge of a fleet of ships purchased on one’s turn and named after astronauts such as Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins or Russian cosmonauts like Valentina Tereshkova and Pavel Popovich.  Tereshkova was the first woman in space, orbiting the Earth 48 times in 1963 on a solo flight aboard Vostok 6.  I won a couple games prior to everyone knowing the fine points of the game, but on Zoom last evening winner Tom Wade and runner-up Dave Lane left me far behind.

 

As reported by the Chesterton Tribune’s Kevin Nevers, the Chesterton Town Council discussed the Juneteenth march.  Police Chief David Cincoski announced that it was peaceful and went very well, with participants wearing masks and practicing social distancing.  He thanked the Fire and Street departments for their assistance and officers from the neighboring towns of Porter, Burns Harbor, and Ogden Dunes. Council member Jim Ton added:

    I believe the major goal of the march was to protest institutional racism and the unjust treatment of black citizens in America.  I also believe that the goal of law enforcement was to provide for the free exercise of the right to do so in a safe and secure environment.  Both of these goals were met last Friday afternoon.  Chesterton should be proud of that.

In the Tribune’s “Voice of the People” Reverend Aaron Ban of St. Jon’s United Church wrote: “Chesterton is a town where people of all races are proclaiming, ‘Black Lives Matter!.’  The Juneteenth Celebration and demonstration lifted my spirits and made me proud to live and work here.”

 

Casey King wrote:

    We are in the midst of a revolution...rise with the change or fall...and fade. I’ll be selling prints to raise money for Gary, Indiana art programs. I am a proud recent fine arts graduate of Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Indiana. Gary was once known as the “magic” city and the very foundation of the American school system, The Wirt System, began here. I would like to make a difference through my art and this is one means of doing so.  Art is universal and healing, a language that not all have to speak but one that all can understand if one tries to. To underprivileged youth, art can serve as a powerful tool to push through trying times and life’s struggles. There is comfort in creating and liberation in being able to express oneself. Keep your eyes open for when I list these on my shop. Your support is greatly appreciated.

 
I  thought of the Seventies community group The Concerned Latins Organization when reading this email post by John Fraire:

 I recently gave the keynote address for the Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) in Washington. I told the students that the Chicano student movement was an under-appreciated part of the civil rights movement and that programs like the LLI owe their thanks to the Chicano Student movement. Many parents were in the audience. Like many other times, many of them remained expressionless during my talk. After my talk, one of the fathers, a man in his 50's, approached me, shook my hand and said "Gracias, Soy Chicano."

Martha Bohn  posted  storm clouds reaching Miller Beach, and octogenarian Barbara Mort shared a phot  taken at her recent wedding to Ascher Yates