Halloween Eve

     “Its winds forced among overlapping branches sing softly as harps, roar and wail as great organs....” 

     Gene Stratton-Porter, “Music of the Wild”(1910)

Responding to my “Mayday 1971 post, author Lawrence Roberts (above) thanked me and added: “It was an emotional time, kinda like today.”  I wrote back: “The scene covering the VVAW vets hurling their service medals over the Capitol barrier reduced me to tears. I remember it well. Glad you mentioned David Dellinger, trying to be a moderating influence and ending totally exhausted and hospitalized. I heard him speak at Temple Israel in Gary, Indiana, and it was a thrill to be listening to a real American hero.”  Roberts replied: “Dellinger's theories and practices are certainly relevant to today's debates. He deserves more attention. Perhaps the new Chicago 7 film will bring him some.”

 

Former IUN colleague Don Coffin interjected: “I was in grad school in Morgantown, West Virginia. Even there, a march and speeches, with several thousand involved took place. No arrests, though” My response: “I'm reading mentor William H. Harbaugh's "Lawyer's Lawyer," a biography of West Virginian John W. Davis, 1924 Presidential candidate and a nineteenth-century Wilsonian liberal turned anti-New Dealer who argued 141 cases before the Supreme Court, ingloriously culminating in representing South Carolina in opposition to school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education.” 

(opposing counsel Davis and Thurgood Marshall, below, Wm. H. Harbaugh)

I decided to reread “Lawyer’s lawyer” for the first time since shortly after its publication in 1973 because IUN Sociologist Jack Bloom sought my advice on the degree to which racism was historically rooted to political conservatism.  Central to Davis’ political philosophy was his belief in the sanctity of property rights.  As the Washington and Lee graduate declared, “History finds no instance where the right of men to acquire and hold property has been taken away without the complete destruction of liberty in all its forms.”  A Democratic Congressman who served as Woodrow Wilson’s U.S. Solicitor General and Ambassador to the Court of St. James prior to becoming a corporate attorney, Davis was chosen to be the 1924 Democratic Presidential nominee as a compromise choice on the 103rd ballot. His issued a statement mildly critical of the Ku Klux Klan in an effort to forestall progressives in his party from supporting third party candidate Robert LaFollette. Yet, wrote Roberts, his candidacy was “doomed from the beginning”due President Calvin Coolidge’s (largely undeserved) reputation for integrity.  Coolidge received almost twice as many votes as Davis and garnered 382 electoral votes, compared with 136 for Davis (basically the Solid South) and 13 for LaFollette.

 

In the Preface to “Lawyer’s Lawyer,” Harbaugh, whose scintillating lectures at Bucknell turned me from a Political Science to a History major, wrote:

  Finally, it is my pleasure to acknowledge the contributions of my personal staff: Lyn Hartridge, William Talbot, and Henry Richmond.  They borrowed (permanently) scores of my pens and pencils; they claimed proprietary rights on my scissors, Scotch tape, and best bond paper; they broke my typewriter three, and probably, four times; they compelled me – always at the moment of an intellectual breakthrough -  to play ping-pong and or pass the football (Rick’s friends Charlie McClellan and Rufus Davis are implicated kin this); the oldest, and first named above, subjected me to those very large sounds which she and her circle denominate as music.  Had they not done these things, I can almost truthfully say, the manuscript would have been completed six months earlier.  But to what consequence?

I asked Harbaugh’s son Rick, an Economics professor at IU’s Kelly School of Business, to confirm that the “personal staff” were his three children. I added: “Making a colorless person like Davis interesting is proof what a great writer he was, in addition to a meticulous historian.” Rick confirmed what I suspected (he was Henry Richmond, hence “Rick”) and remembered meeting me years ago at an IU function.  I thanked him and added: “I met two of Bill’s kids (you and Lyn?) when toddlers at a Bucknell seminar held in your parents’ home.  Every year I’d send him my latest Steel Shavings issue and he’d mail back a complimentary note, usually adding that he was in apparently good health.  One year I got a note from your mother, saying, ‘Bill would have loved the magazine, but, alas, he died.’”

 

Halloween Eve when I was growing up in a Philadelphia suburb was dubbed “Mischief Night,” and I’d go out with Terry Jenkins and Sammy Corey and ring doorbells, set off firecrackers on front porches, then run away.  Our neighbor Mr. Illingworth, who worked at Wentz turkey farm, was known to hide in the bushes and scare would-be tricksters. One year, a friend who shall remain nameless had purchased some cherry bombs; at the home of a teacher whom he despised, he inserted paper inside a jack o’lantern lit by a candle and then threw a cherry bomb onto the porch as the pumpkin went up in flames. Less intrepid than the culprit, I was scared shitless, as the saying goes, and from a safe distance made sure someone came outside and doused the fire before it did any damage.  In Indiana, I learned, “tepeeing” was a favorite prank, and our place on the hill was victimized several times while the boys were in high school, no doubt in retaliation for some mischief of theirs.

Don Coffin’s latest Japanese haiku seems appropriate:

Long autumn night

A light passes along

The veranda

 

Feeling nostalgic, Eleanor Bailey wrote:
   Remembering those October days when our family would go for car rides on Sundays. We lived in Lake Village and we would drive up and down the country roads near Morocco. Dad would find the roads where the Black Walnut trees had dropped the green husks with the walnut seed inside to the ground. Gathering them in buckets, we would take them home, and spread them in a layer in the driveway. For a week or two, twice each day, the car would be driven over them and that would break away the husk. The tedious part of picking the nut out of the shell would begin. We learned a little about nature, family history, and geography on each of those trips.

Eleanor recalled a Halloween night in 1967 in the small Lake County, Indiana town of Schneider. 

    The three boys and their sister were out with their friends. It was Lori’s first time to go trick-or-treating. Her brothers had taught her to say “trick or treat – smell my feet.” They thought this was hilarious. A typical Northwest Indiana Halloween, it was a damp chilly night. The children were wearing costumes, jackets, and boots. Their treats bags were brown paper grocery sacks. Their friend Maggie ran up and down the streets with the others, dragging her bag through the wet leaves, needless to say, her treats left a trail behind as the bottom of the grocery sack disintegrated with each step she took. The dads of the gang of children would appear just about the time that the doorbell was rung at the Daun home. There the treat was always homemade fudge. The next year, Maggie had a pillowcase to carry her treats in. The dads were up to their old trick of hiding in the bushes waiting to steal the kids fudge.

 

Due to the pandemic, rather than greet trick or treaters at the door, as we very much enjoy, not having had a chance to do so while isolated for 35 years on Maple Place, Toni is preparing bags of candy to leave on our porch.  Cynic that I am, my thought is that some young folks will hog more than one.  But so what, such is life.

Mayday 1971

 “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government,” May Day Protests of 1971 

Mayday, from the French “m’aider,” meaning “help me,” is the code word for a distress call, at sea is indicated by flying the flag upside down.  In a “Doctor Who” episode, “Oxygen,” a character asks the Doctor if he likes distress calls, and he answers, “You only really see the true force of the universe when it’s asking for help.”  May 1 is known as International Workers’ Day and often features large demonstrations.  In “MAYDAY 1971” Lawrence Roberts describes and analyzes the efforts by a disparate May Day coalition to carry out a guerrilla-style traffic blockade aimed at bringing the nation’s capital to a halt.  What resulted was the largest mass arrest in American history, with over 12,000 detained, most enduring unsanitary conditions in overcrowded cells or the municipal football stadium. Richard M. Nixon dirty trickster Charles Colson had crates of oranges sent to the detainees that purported to be from Senator Edmund Muskie, an effort to make it appear that the Maine Senator sympathized with the so-called Mayday Tribe.

 

Mayday 1971 took place a full decade after President John F. Kennedy sent a few hundred advisers to South Vietnam in a misguided attempt to crush a nationalist revolution, a commitment that escalated into a seemingly unending undeclared war that had resulted in over 40,000 American casualties.  The actions of the Vietnam Veterans against the War attracted the most publicity during the weeks-long Washington DC protests; but the climax came on May 3 when protestors blocked bridges and highways throughout the city.  Clustered together of the Fourteenth Street Bridge, for example, were baby doctor Benjamin Spock, New Left historian Howard Zinn, Harvard-trained linguist Noam Chomsky, and ex-marine Danial Ellsberg, who’d soon leak the explosive Pentagon Papers to the press. Tactically, as spokesman Rennie Davis admitted, the operation was a failure, as it got underway too early to affect rush hour traffic and was crushed by police, who had obtained copies of the demonstrators’ plans beforehand. In the long run, however, the heavy-handed tactics of law enforcement turned public opinion against the Nixon administration.  As Judge Harold H. Greene remarked, “Whenever American institutions have provided a hysterical response to an emergency situation, we have come later to regret it.”

 

Though Nixon’s henchmen overruled DC Police Chief Jerry Wilson in demanding indiscriminate arrests of suspected protestors on spurious charges that in almost all cases were invalid and dismissed by presiding judges, the President allowed Wilson to be the scapegoat for the ensuing bad publicity.  When demonstrators gathered peacefully on the Capitol steps at a time when Congress was not in session, police began making arrests as Representative Bella Abzug was addressing them.  Congressman Ron Dellums tried to intervene, but a cop swung a billy club at his ribs.  After an interminable delay, public defenders were finally allowed to see those jailed in a courthouse cellblock, Roberts described what they found:

    The lawyers’ hearts sank.  Cells meant for two people held 20 to 40 detainees each. “Some were sick; others were asleep on the floor or so exhausted they were unable to communicate.  Isolated from counsel or any outsiders for nearly 40 hours, they had little idea of what was likely to happen to them,” attorney Michael Wald reported.

    The other public defender, Kirby Howlett, was shocked at how some of the guards were abusing their charges.  Howlett half expected to see angry militants screaming obscenities at the cops through the bars but instead found most of the kids to be sincere and thoughtful.  Yet the police “had a hatred for them unlike anything I’s ever seen before – far worse than their reaction to blacks or even black cop-killers,” Howlett said later.  “I had nightmares afterward – here it was, unbridled police power encouraged by the highest authority in the country.”

 

Mayday 1971 led to Nixon forming a secret “Plumbers Unit” to discredit would-be Democratic Presidential candidates Ed Muskie and Ted Kennedy, prevent leaks from White House staff, and attempt to link the Democratic Party to radical backers.  This led to the illegal Watergate break-in and the taping of Oval Office conversations that ended with Nixon’s resignation in disgrace.

IU Bicentennial

“She’s the pride of Indiana

Hail to Old IU”

J.T. Giles, “Hail to Old IU”

Even though the pandemic has halted most IU bicentennial events, the Indiana University Foundation published a magazine titled “Imagine: A Better IU, A Better World.” The cover employed the university colors, cream and crimson, and in the middle was a heart and the caption, “This is you.” The table of contents, titled “200 Reasons to Love IU,” was divided into 20 categories, such 16 IU authors (i.e., Theodore Dreiser and Suzanne Collins, author of “The Hunger Games) and 20 IU firsts (including the nation’s first graduate folklore and Gender Studies programs). In a section titled “seven women who built IU” I learned that Juliette Maxwell was a pioneer of women athletics in the early twentieth century; that in 1948 66-year-old Anna Harting Wells visited her bachelor son, IU President Herman B. Wells, stayed 25 years (the rest of her life), and, known as “Mother Wells,” served as IU’s de facto first lady; and that opera star Camilla Williams became in 1977 the first Black professor of voice at IU.

In a section titled “12 Ways IU’s Regional campuses are making a difference in Indiana and beyond,” IU Northwest was mentioned twice, for being designated a Hispanic-serving institution by the Department of Education and for geologist Erin Argyilan and her students solving the “hidden holes" mystery at Indiana Dunes National Park that caused a boy to be buried under 11 feet of sand at Mount Baldy (it was the result of decomposing forest under the sand).

Among the 14 students “poised to change the world” was IU Northwest’s Laila Nawab, a pre-med chemistry major and recent graduate. The brief bio stated: "From a self-proclaimed shy high school student, Nawab grew into a confident leader, serving as president of the Student Government Association and in leadership roles with the Muslim Student Association and Student Activities Board. With the support of the Minority Opportunity for Research grant, this aspiring physician worked on a multidisciplinary research project related to hydroponics. Nawab said, 'This experience has not only increased my interest in science but also reinforces the impact chemistry has on everyday life and how small changes can greatly impact the final results.'" 

Jon Cameron

IUN Chancellor Ken Iwana hosted a “Meet and Greet” in the library courtyard and introduced me to his pleasant wife Joanne.  I enjoyed a turkey wrap lunch before hurrying to my office to attend an OHA zoom session that included a paper by IU’s Jon Cameron (left), service manager of the libraries digital collections, about the IU Bicentennial; oral history project.  As someone who interviewed former IU Northwest students, faculty, and staff, I was somewhat disappointed that the presentations were about technical issues rather than why the project was worthwhile or issues relating to the reliability of the remembrances.  I was impressed at how access to the digitized interviews has greatly    increased (scholars can utilize them long distance) due to modern technology and the use of browsers such as Aviary and Avalon. 

Orality

 “Print encourages a [false] sense of closure, a sense that what is found in a text has been finalized and reached a state of completion,” Walter J. Ong, “Orality and Literacy”

Orality is a buzzword frequently used by oral historians to mean verbally communicated in the belief that written documents are not the be-all and end-all for researchers and that oral testimony can fill in necessary gaps, especially in studying marginalized groups and investigating sensitive subjects such as child abuse, sexual identity, and the like.

 

I’ve been participating by zoom in the 54th annual Oral History Association conference originally scheduled to take place in Baltimore. The theme, “The Quest for Democracy: One Hundred Years of Struggle,” is a reference to passage a century ago of the Susan B. Anthony women’s suffrage amendment.  Other than workshops, the session I was speaking at, “Profiles and Journeys of Identity, Recovery, and Be(longing),” was at the very first time slot, 12:30 (Central Standard Time) on Tuesday.  Unable to connect to “Addendify” on the laptop at home, I hurried to IUN and logged on successfully, although I had to wait until the session was “launched” before knowing for certain that things were a go. One of the participants had dropped out, so the three of us had a leisurely 20 for our presentations, in my case, “The Journeys of Maria Perez Arredondo.”

 Izumi Niki

Because I had read up on Japanese Canadian Kimura Kishizo, the subject of Izumi Niki’s paper, I was familiar with Kishizo’s unenvious task of selling the possessions of Issei fishermen interned during World War II. Interviewed by editors of his wartime journal, Kishizo used phrases such as “could not be helped”and “there was no other way” to indicate his lack of control over governmental policy.  He expressed sorrow that the younger generation could not understand how he could have done what he carried out or why his generation was so passive in the face of blatant discrimination. He claimed that the authorities he dealt with were unfailingly respectful and was unwilling to criticize the policy as blatantly racist.  It reminded both session chair Annette Henry and me of WPA slave narratives of the 1930s where the aged interviewees refrained from emphasizing the barbarity of involuntary servitude, especially when the interviewer was white.

 

A University of British Columbia professor, Henry (above) discussed the social lives of two Black Canadian women caught between two cultures and experiencing feeling of “in between-ness” or “un (be)longing.” “Andrea,” who emigrated from the U.S. at age five, experienced racism in school and didn’t see a Black teacher until she became one.  While a research librarian in Vancouver, Andrea told Annette, “I haven’t dated a Black man since I got here.” Dr. Henry made the point that even though Vancouver has many more biracial marriages than elsewhere in Canada, this is mainly due to the large Asian population and does not necessarily indicate to a colorblind society.

 

Maria Arredondo becomes a U.S. citizen in 1978 at age 70

My talk was similar to one I delivered last year at the Julian Samora Research Institute at Michigan State except I had time to elaborate on the background to Ramon and Trish Arredondo’s 2010 publication “Maria’s Journey.”  Forty years ago, as oral historian for the grant-funded project “Pass the Culture, Please,” sponsored by Tri-City Mental Health Center in East Chicago, I first interviewed Maria with son Ramon acting as translator.  Then I conducted a group interview at an Arredondo family Saturday lunch presided over by Maria. Ray and Trish took it from there and produced an oral history biography of the family matriarch that I edited and wrote chapter introductions for that ultimately found a wide audience thanks to Indiana Historical Society Press, now working on a Spanish translation.

 

Steven High

Although not able to socialize in person with old OHA friends and recent acquaintances, I made plans to attend their sessions.  Steven High of Concordia University, host of the 2018 OHA conference in Montreal, both chaired and delivered a paper, “The Unexpected Interview: Florence Richard, Sexual Violence, and the Disruption of Local History.  At age 20 High was hired by Thunder bay Historical Museum Society to do interviews.  Without any training and left to find subjects on his own, he arranged to interview Florence Richard, whom he knew through his family to have been a Communist activist in the Seaman’s International Union.  Instintively, he took a life history approach, and two minutes into the conversation Florence revealed that she was molested by older men as a child and the horrors of those encountered affected her the rest of her life.  In fact, examining the transcript later, High discovered that these traumatic experiences took up 12 of the 15 minutes about Florence’s childhood. He went on to say that he might have stayed on the subject as long as he did because he himself had been molested and if conducting the interview today might be more reticent. Actually, I would have thought the opposite would have been the case and said so.

 

Afterwards I emailed Steven High:

Very powerful and enlightening talk.  Your explanation of your personal reason for being interested in the effects of  Florence’s traumatic childhood experience reminded me of when IU Northwest’s LGBTQ club held a program after a gay N.J. college student killed himself because his roommate outed him in a shameful way.  The Chancellor, the son of a NYC cop, read the campus policy on bullying and then said he was there for a more personal reason, that his brother committed suicide at age 27.

       Nowadays the issue of child molestation endured by previous generations seems infinitely more important than radical politics of the 1960s-1970s but, as you mentioned, probably not something an untrained 20-year-old should dive into.  One thing I loved about Anne Balay’s “Steel Closets,” about gay and lesbian steelworkers, was not only the light it shed on an unexamined subject (until the book came out the steelworkers union even denied there were gay steelworkers or that harassment was a problem) but the specificity.  I learned, for example, that “straight” steelworkers would have gay colleagues give them blow jobs ( a “lube job,” in the parlance) and not consider that being gay.

 Steven High emailed back: “Thanks so much for your comments. I also very much enjoyed the "Steel Closets" book, also for its grounding in everyday lives.”

Jon Cameron

Wednesday after attending IUN Chancellor Iwana’s Meet and Greet at the library courtyard and eating a turkey wrap meal with chips and cookie, I joined an OHA session on oral history archives because one of the speakers was Jon Cameron discussing the IU Bicentennial Oral History Project that I took part in, interviewing numerous former students, faculty, and staff. I was disappointed that all three talks dealt with technical matters of accessibility of interest to archivists rather than content or the value of such projects.  I had hoped to mention something about the participation of regional campuses in the project but, unlike yesterday’s sessions, the chair elected only to take questions from “chat” that dealt with access forum such as Avalon and Aviary that were of no interest to me.  Even so, I learned that digitized oral histories are much more accessible than ever before and much more widely used without the need to visit archives in person.

Court Packing

    “The switch in time saved nine.” Humorist Cal Tinney in 1937 after Justice Owen Roberts changed his position and allowed a Washington state minimum wage bill to stand.

With Republican Senators prepared to confirm Amy Coney Barrett as the 2020 election is in full swing, after blocking President Obama’s ability to fill a vacancy for almost a year, both parties are raising the issue of court-packing. Democrats have charged Trump with packing the court with nominees who passed his litmus test of vowing to overturn Row v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act. Republicans are attempting to make a big deal over Biden’s refusal to disavow court reform, including legislation to increase the size of the court should the Court undo longstanding precedents.

 

In 1937 Republicans made “Court-packing” a rallying cry after President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed for legislation, The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill, that would have added up to six additional justices should incumbents fail to retire within six months of their seventieth birthday. Since the Constitution does not specify the number of Supreme Court justices, this would have been perfectly legal. At the time there were four reactionaries on the high bench, three progressives, and two “swing votes,” those of Owen Roberts and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, sophisticated in the ways of politics, being a former New York governor and Presidential candidate. In a series of 5-4 decisions the Court had invalidated many New Deal measures and threatened to nullify Social Security and the Wagner Act, the latter that protected labor unions’ right to bargain collectively. While FDR failed to get Congress to pass the bill, it had the desired effect of convincing Roberts and Hughes to pay more attention to public opinion and political realities. In Roberts’ case, while in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital he had voted to strike down a New York minimum wage law, in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish he reversed course.

 

Supreme Court in 1937; Chief Justice Hughes, center, front

During the Barrett hearings Democrats, fearful of alienating Roman Catholics, treaded lightly when bringing up Roe v Wade while emphasizing the damage, especially during the pandemic, to the uninsured and folks with previous medical conditions should Obamacare be struck down. In my view, this was cowardly and wrong. Should Democrats win the Presidency and both houses of Congress, they could save and even improve on the Affordable Care Act. On the other hand, the main threat to a woman’s right to choose – to control her own body – is emanating from Red states over which Congress has only indirect control. As John F. Kennedy stated in 1960 when a candidate for president, an officeholder’s religious faith should not dictate his position on issues of state. Amy Coney Barrett, who is on record as being morally opposed to abortions, calling them barbaric, at the very least should have pledged to recuse herself from decisions involving this issue on which she holds rigid religious beliefs.

 

Furthermore, it would be foolhardy for Joe Biden to make any pledges that would diminish his freedom of action once in the White House. During the Democratic primaries he made clear that he is cool to the idea of expanding the court, and hopefully that will not be necessary. Chief Justice John Roberts has shown that he cares deeply about the integrity of the Court, and there are indications that he has an unlikely ally in Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch even if both are expected to give conservatives a 6-3 majority. An overwhelming Democratic victory in November is vital in protecting the integrity of all three branches of government.

 

Dean Bottorff commented:

    It occurs to me that despite lofty aspirations to the contrary, the Supreme Court does not operate in a political vacuum. I suspect that the justices, particularly Chief Justice Roberts, fully understand that any decisions rendered that are far distant from the will of the majority of Americans will, ultimately, undermine the power of the court. If the majority of Americans, say 74%, support Roe v. Wade, and if the Supreme Court were to overturn this, the faith of the majority in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court will, to a degree, vanish. Ultimately, no court has the power of enforcement. That power rests only with those who accept the legitimacy of a court’s decisions and have the ability to enforce them. Therefore, if the Supreme Court becomes seen as only the tool of a political party it will be seen as little more than the judicial system of Germany in the 1930s when all judges were required to be members of the NAZI party. Were such the outcome, no one would see the court’s decisions as valid or enforceable. Sadly, although the long-time justices on the court may understand this, the appointments selected by Trump, especially Amy Coney Barrett, seem to be intellectual lightweights whose limited acuity and devotion to right-wing dogma, will lead to lasting damage to the courts and, by inference, the rule of law.

photo by David Lane

We celebrated Angie’s fiftieth birthday at the condo with a scallops and crab clusters meal that Toni prepared followed by French silk chocolate pie and ice cream.  James had a dance rehearsal that included hip hop (which he first learned at IUN’s Kids College a decade ago) but found time to play Space Base with Dave and me.  Next day, I watched the Bears edge out Carolina; meanwhile both Washington and Philadelphia lost heartbreakers when last-minute two-point conversions failed.

IUN Dean of Student Services Beth Tyler (above) polled freshmen on their first semester experiences.  Despite dislocations caused by the pandemic, most responses were upbeat.  In addition to balancing schoolwork and obligations at home and work, the biggest problems seemed to mastering the technology and taking subjects like math and a foreign language online. Here’s a sample of the 87 responses:

 

1.     This is my first semester attending IUN, and I absolutely love it! I am doing well in all my classes and I enjoy being here. The biggest challenge would be trying to remember what days are on zoom and in person. I am glad to be attending this school and I am looking forward to the next four years! 

 

2.     I’m a little stressed with homework and classes. I feel like I’m having to teach myself some things.  I’m struggling with asking teachers questions because most respond a while after I email them. I also feel I’m bothering them because I’m asking so many questions.  I don’t know many people so I don’t know who to reach out to for help.

 

3.     The only challenge is getting used to Canvas; it is very new to me and I have never used it before. To be a student now it is really fun actually;  so far all the students and all the staff are extremely nice and happy to help when I get lost on campus or have trouble getting in a zoom meeting. All of my professors are great; they are very kind and always asking questions to make sure that everyone is doing well, if people can hear them, if they need to go slower, and much more. 

 

4.     I am feeling burnt out already, so that is worrisome. Being a student right now, at IUN or anywhere else I'm sure, is exhausting. I feel like I am teaching myself everything, even more so than usual. That in combination with the workload is rough, plus outside factors like money and stressors of the world. I am pushing through but it is hard. I am hoping that once I get through these first exams, I will have time to refocus and feel better. 

 

5.     I am doing fairly well all things considered. I didn’t know if I wanted to go back to school with the uncertainties this year has brought, but I am glad I did.  Finding out the other day that my best friend is hospitalized with Covid has made it hard to concentrate, but I am managing.  I love the fact that all my classes are online; if I have had a question, my professors have gotten back to me in what seems like record time.

 

6.     The university is really enjoyable.  I even found out there’s a Muslim Association and in the library an Islamic room.

 

7.     I'm doing ok. The things that are super challenging right now is balancing work and school and not having childcare still due to Covid, 

 

8.     It's a really weird time to be a student, and I'm sure it's just as weird to be faculty as well. I would say my biggest challenge this semester is stress. Balancing work and school, surviving pandemic culture, all of that. The only challenge outside of that is transportation. I can't afford a car and live a bit far from campus, so getting there for things like picking up shirts from orientation, or for campus events just can't happen right now so I miss out on that. 

 

9.     In one course the professor is oblivious to how technology works. I have personally attempted to help the 2 days we've been able to have in person classes but some profs need a little extra assistance. 

 

10.  It definitely has become a very un-easy time as my personal life has frequent turns of unfortunate events, not knowing if my job is secured, and completing a practicum with virtual barriers. While the unfortunate events are not something I can control, I leave it to God to handle what is out of my control. 

 

11.  IUN has gone above and beyond to make sure that everyone is learning in a safe environment. At this point I do not have a challenge being a student at IUN. Last semester my challenge was my math class. I do not like math and at the age of almost 50, some things do not always "stick" with me. This semester I was able to take the class online and I'm able to go at my own pace which helps a lot. I pray that I do better this time around. My second class, Career Perspectives, was also offered online this semester. I could not go further with my studies until I completed this course. I'm a single mom to two teens who are very active in sports and other groups at school and I work full time, so being on campus half of the day was not an option for me. 

Early Voting

Toni and I voted at Chesterton Town Hall. Arriving around 10:15, we found approximately 20-25 people ahead of us. The line extended outside the building, and a nonpartisan candidate for school board stated that it will get longer as the day goes on. The first couple days last week were evidently a madhouse. Everyone, including kids accompanying their mothers, wore masks and obeyed social distance guidelines. One young mother took a selfie with her kid to mark the occasion. Arriving at the table to sign in and obtain the ballot, we were asked to use thin paper to write our signature with our finger on a machine and then sign the envelope with a pen. Four voting machines were in use, and a couple voters seemed to take forever. Since I was voting straight Democrat, all that remained was to vote whether or not to retain judges and vote in a handful of local races. As always, I felt good about going to the polls.

Allison and Liz

Indiana governor Whitcomb rejected automatic mail-in voting but allowed 28 days for early voting, which is a fairly recent phenomenon. I’ve only done it once, also at Chesterton Town Hall. Our normal election day place, Brummitt Elementary School, has never been crowded, but this year might be an exception.

 

Red state line

In Red states such as Texas and Georgia, where the polls indicate close races, Republicans are doing everything possible to make it difficult for nonwhite voters to cast ballots, drastically reducing the number of polling places and drop-off sites. In some places voters waited over five hours. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are rushing through confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Any Coney Barrett, who has refused to recuse herself if Trump contests the election results. She would not even concede that a President cannot delay an election. Republicans are claiming without evidence that Democrats are attacking Barrett’s Catholic faith and warning that Democrats intend to “pack the court” if they gain control of the Upper House.

 

Congress has voted to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the World War II jungle fighting unit known as Merrill’s Marauders, nicknamed for their commander, Brigadier General Frank Merrill.  In 1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave permission for the army to assemble a ground force (officially the 5307th Composite Provisional Unit) charged with a secret mission involving long range penetration operations in enemy territory in Burma (now Myanmar) to cut off Japanese communications and supply lines.  The ultimate goal was to capture an enemy-held airfield in the town of Myitkyina.  Over a five-month period the Marauders journeyed about 800 miles on foot through heavy jungle and over rugged mountains, along the way fighting five major engagements and 30 minor ones, during which time their ranks were depleted from 3,000 to 200 men still able to fight.

 

This was part of a three-pronged Pacific strategy to defeat Japan.  In addition to the Admiral Chester Nimitz’s’s island-hopping efforts General Douglas MacArthur’s campaign to recapture the Philippines as a location from which to invade the Japanese home island, General Joseph Stilwell (above, with Gen. Merrill, left) advocated opening an air route over the Burma “hump” to supply Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese forces for their eventual invasion of Japan. Unfortunately, the Chinese leader had less interest in fighting the Japanese than in eradicating Chinese communists.  

According to Russ Bynum of the Associated Press, Gilbert Howland (above), 97, one of the few marauders still alive recalled: “It was a hard job, but we did our best.”  Sleeping on the ground, down to one K-ration per man a day, soldiers were susceptible to malnutrition and various jungle diseases, including malaria and dysentery.  Corporal Howland, in charge of a machine gun unit, was wounded by artillery fire and evacuated to a hospital in India; but when Myitkyina airfield was in danger of being re-captured, he rejoined his outfit.  Bynum wrote: "The airfield was thick with mosquitoes, and Howland soon came down with malaria.  He remained at his post until he passed out with fever.  He was evacuated on a stretcher and flown back to India, then sent home to the United States."  Howland remained in the army for another 25 years, serving with combat units both in Korea and Vietnam. 

Among My Souvenirs

    “There’s nothing left for me

Of days that used to be

They’re just a memory

Among my Souvenirs”

    By Edgar Leslie and Horatio Nicholls

First recorded in 1927 and a number one hit for the Paul Whitman Orchestra the following year, “Among My Souvenirs” was covered in the 1940s by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra. The song had special meaning for Saturday Evening Club (SEC) zoom meeting speaker Melvin Bohlmann (above).   It resonated with young Bohlmann returning to America after World War II. Now it can be seen as encapsulating memories of a long life.  A 1959 version, which I was familiar with, became a smash hit for Connie Francis, and a tear jerker for countless teens who’d gone through recent breakups. The final verse mentions that among the souvenirs was a broken heart.

Learning that the title of Bohlmann’s talk was “Mindful Dreaming,” I found books with that title by David Gordon (subtitled “Guide for Emotional Healing Through Transformative Mythic Journeys”) and Clare Johnson (“Harness the Power of Lucid Dreaming for Happiness, Health, and Positive Chance”). The latter promised advice on turning nightmares into healing devices, so I prepared to bring up common student and faculty nightmares (i.e., being unprepared for a test or lesson, showing up in the wrong or empty room). Bohlmann’s main subject, it turned out, was daydreaming, which Sigmund Freud, he said, labeled a form of wish fulfillment. Mel regarded daydreaming as a boredom-relieving exercise that he developed while recuperating at an army hospital in postwar Japan. One of Mel’s enduring childhood memories was watching daredevil pilots do the Lomcevak Maneuver, tumbling toward the ground rotating in a clockwise direction before at the last moment pulling out of free fall. Mel concluded with a moving recitation of “Wings” by World War I pilot and poet David Hay. It begins:

    Oh, to catch the winds of flight

 And soar where eagles go,

 To leave the woes of troubled souls

 Behind me far below.

 I’d listen to the song of birds

 And sail in endless flight,

 Then chase the sun through cloudy paths

 And play with stars at night.

I can imagine Mel daydreaming of pulling off the Lomcevak Maneuver. The final lines of Hay’s “Wings” go: “And when my wings could fly no more, I’d take the hand of God.”

Reacting to the presentation, Hugh McGuigan (on right), longtime coordinator of Valparaiso University’s overseas program, commented that he sometimes daydreams about winning the lottery and using the money to shore up support for international students and contribute to other worthy causes crippled by the pandemic. My fantasy daydream is winning the MacArthur Genius Award (for Steel Shavings) and owning a residence near IUN large enough for me and needy students that I’d eventually bequeath to be the Chancellor’s residence (none presently exists). Jim Albers brought up learning about the meaning of dreams from a VU Martin Luther King Day speaker. I interjected that I’ve been attending Martin Luther King Day at Valpo since IUN simply treats it as a holiday and once heard a moving talk to an overflow audience by Richard Morrisroe, who in 1965 was jailed for protesting segregation and then grievously wounded by a Lowndes County, Alabama, deputy sheriff upon his release. Imagine the nightmares that episode must have produced. Morrisroe almost died and walks with a limp to this day.

Richard Morrisroe then and now 

Mercy Mercy Me

   “Whoa mercy mercy me

  Oh things are not what they used to be, no, nn’

  Oil wated in the ocean and upon ourselves, fish full of mercury”

    “Mercy Mercy Me (the Ecology),” Marvin Gaye

 

Marvin Gaye (above) grew up in a Washington, DC, housing project and after a stint in the air force, had a string of hits with Motown Records.  On June 1, 1970, inspired by Earth Day, he recorded “What’s Going On,” but Motown mogul Berry Gordy refused to release it, claiming it was too political.  After Gordy finally bowed to Gaye’s ultimatum a year later, the song and album reached number one and yielded the hits “Mercy Mercy Me” and “Inner City Blues.”  Known as the “Prince of Soul,” Gaye continued to have success, including the 1982 smash hit “Sexual Healing.” In 1984, on the eve of his forty-fifth birthday, his father shot him dead after a physical altercation in his parents’ home.

 

Earth day 1970 was a response to several recent environmental disasters, including the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catching fire and a huge oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California.  While Earth Day had broad popular support, a few antiwar activists were skeptical, believing it was an establishment effort to distract from protests over the Vietnam War.  Nevertheless, inspired by Rachel Carson’s 1962 bestseller “Silent Spring” and the civil rights movement, an estimated 20 million people took part in demonstrations across the country. The movement led to bipartisan legislation regarding air and water quality as well as the banning of certain insecticides and the protection of endangered species.  Earth Day has continued annually, and Trump’s efforts to roll back health and safety standards, combined with fires and flooding attributed to global warming, has brought increased attention to the impending dangers to planet Earth.

 

High school friend Gaard Murphy Logan turned me on to Jane Fonda’s “What Can I Do? My Path from Climate Despair to Action.” Fonda offered to hold zoom meetings with small groups to discuss her new publication, and Gaard’s book club has scheduled one for later this month. Dedicated to “the next generation of climate activists,” Fonda wrote that when young she believed activism was a sprint; in middle age she learned it was a marathon; and at 82 she realizes that it is a relay race.  Well put.

 

Sixty years ago, a week at Big Sur Hot Springs with Human Potential Movement activists who later founded Esalen Institute transformed Fonda’s life and gave it meaning being a successful actress.  After a decade in the antiwar movement she became devoted to environmentalism. In recent years she was feeling impotent in the face of public apathy despite overwhelming warning signs until she read Naomi Klein’s “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.” Klein profiled 16-year-old Swede Greta Thuunberg, who launched a Friday for Future movement involving student strikes on behalf of climate change.  Because Thunberg was autistic, upon learning the stark facts about the destruction of the planet’s ecological balance, she was unable to compartmentalize or cope with the public’s seeming indifference and her first reaction was to stop eating or speaking. In time she single-mindedly devoted her life to the cause. 

Inspired by Thunberg, Fonda decided to move to Washington, DC, and, in conjunction with Greenpeace, organize Fire Drill Friday activities for several months in the nation’s capital.  The events included teach-ins and rallies, sometimes culminating in arrests of prominent celebrities, such as Ted Danson and Sally Field, for trespassing on government property.  During a Greenpeace planning meeting Fonda met young Vietnamese artist Vy Vu and asked where she was originally from.  “Hanoi,” Vy Vu replied.  When Fonda said she’d been there several times, Vy Vu asked the reason why.  Fonda wrote:

    I loved it.  There was no reason Vy should know all I had done to oppose the Vietnam War, decades before she was born, or for her to know that because of my trip in 1972, in some political circles they still refer to me as Hanoi Jane.

Fonda’s unforgivable sin in the eyes of many was to pose for a propaganda photo on an anti-aircraft vehicle, for which she has since continually apologized.  A false rumor spread that Fonda had even fired at American pilots dropping bombs on Hanoi.  Some folks continue to refuse to watch her movies, and at Cressmoor Lanes in Hobart urinals contain “Hanoi Jane Urinal Targets” for bowlers to piss on.

 

“What Can I Do?” features a dozen essays by experts of all political stripes, including “The Plight of Sea Turtles” by Whitney Crowder (on left), sea turtle rehabilitation coordinator at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, Florida. I learned that young sea turtles are starving to death due to their stomachs being clogged by plastic. Some turtles become entangled in discarded fishing nets; others develop tumors on their flippers and eyes, blinding them and rendering them unable to swim. Crowder declared: “Sea turtles are an indication of the health of our oceans. Without healthy oceans, life on earth cannot exist.”