Imagine If

“Can you imagine what I could do if I could do all I can,” Sun Tzu

It was a bittersweet weekend. We received word that Toni’s big sister, Mary Ann, passed away, a victim of pancreatic cancer. She’d been given last rites four days before and had not been expected to live through the night but, though on morphine, rallied enough to talk to us on the phone, dance with her son Joey, and smile when her daughters told stories about her rich life. She was a rebel who loved family and was a huge influence on us and her large family.

It being Phil’s 53rd birthday on March 26, he, daughters Alissa and Miranda, Miranda’s friend Will and dog Raffy, and Alissa’s mother Beth came for the weekend. With everyone having been vaccinated, we didn’t need to be masked and, in fact, it was the first time we’d seen Phil in nine months. I was in charge of breakfast, and for the main meals Toni made her ham bologna specialty on Friday and ribs on Saturday, when Dave’s family joined us.

March 26 was also longtime friend Michael Bayer’s birthday, and his daughters arranged for close friends and family to honor him long distance, which they turned into a 25-minute tribute. I told Mike, as did others, including Alice Bush and Paul Kaczocha, that he was my political mentor and that he taught me that without strong union organizations, the working class will face exploitation and that without a strong progressive political tradition, true democracy is impossible, no matter how well-intentioned leaders such as Barack Obama, whom we both admired, are.

Saturday evening, we played two social games previously unfamiliar to me, Codenames and Imagine If. In the former there were two teams of four each. Some 25 cards are dealt out on a rectangular grid with words on each, such as Hollywood, undertaker, sub, bed, etc. A clue giver from each team gives a one-word clue in an effort to get teammates to guess the cards that belong to them; if they guess one of the other teams, it works to their disadvantage, and one “death” card” means instant loss for whatever team is unfortunate to guess it. There are several other subtleties that make the game harder that it first appears.

More relaxing was Imagine If, which grandson James had played with friends at Valpo U. Everyone is on his own. People in turn read questions, such as “Imagine that [one of the players] is a bumper sticker slogan, which of [six possibilities, such as "Peace" or "Keep on Truckin'"] would it be?” We all had cards with numbers from 1 to 6 on them. We’d each guess what option seemed most appropriate, and whichever answer got the most votes, everyone who guessed that got a point. One question was, “Imagine if Jimbo were a movie? Which would he be.” Phil, Dave, and I all opted for “The Natural,” about a gifted baseball player, and each got a point. Anther went, “Imagine Toni was a song” and one answer was “My Way.” Everyone laughed when it was read, including Toni, and only kindhearted James guessed a different answer (“Let It Be”), perhaps thinking “My Way” would be seen as an insult. The final question: “Imagine if Dave had run over a neighbor’s cat when backing out of his driveway, how would he react?” Answers ranged from “Bury it without telling the owner” and “Put it in the street” to “Blame the owner for being negligent” to “Buy another cat that looked exactly like the dead one.” Everyone laughed at that possibility, but three people, including Phil, the winner, guessed it, while I went with “Blame the owner.”

The New Abnormal

“The deeper I get, the less that I know

That’s the way that it goes.”

“Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus,” The Strokes, “The New Abnormal”

Assisted by Hall of Fame producer Rick Rubin, the Strokes recorded the Grammy-winning rock album of 2020, in fact, their best effort since their 2001 debut “Is This It,” which featured the catchy hits “Last Nite” and “Some Day.” Critic Danielle Tiernier called the post punk, garage band flavored songs on “The New Abnormal” both magical and nostalgic. Helen Brown asserted that the lead track, “The Adults Are Talking,” is charged with a tense ennui that provided a perfect fit for the year-long lockdown. The same might be said for my favorite selection, save for "Bad Decisions," “Why Are Sundays So Depressing?” I have “The New Abnormal” on heavy rotation in the basement along with CDs by Tame Impala, Steve Earle, Cracker, and The Beths.

For the past two days IU Northwest Chancellor Ken Iwama has hosted a “Swing into Spring” lunch, similar to past “Thrill of the Grill” events but free of charge and inside the Savannah Center rather than in the library courtyard and with boxes containing sandwiches (ham, turkey, and vegetarian), oranges, and cookies rather than burgers and brats. Despite Tuesday’s effort being sparsely attended (most classes are still virtual) I saw a few colleagues for the first time in a while, including geologist Zoran Villibarda and poet Bill Allegrezza, both of whom appear in Steel Shavings, volume 50, and thanked me for sending them copies. Allegrezza recently had the following poem, titled “Webs,” published in Oddball Magazine:

count

as a way to hold it down

a broken flag broken

a web dark

hanging from a limb.

we have been raped by

a generation (and I am hiding

so that you cannot claim it is me)

of green woven.

still we could be useful if

briefed with the long words quickly.

With the temperature in the 60s I’ve enjoyed the flowering yellow and purple crocuses near IUN’s Anderson Library and the buds of spring plants such as daffodils popping out of the ground. My favorite, the first signs of spring to appear in our side yard, are foliage from naked lady lilies, in particular three plants that I have transplanted two different times. They belonged to a friend who was moving, so they first went to our National Lakeshore home and then to our present condo. They are the first things that come up in our side yard, very prominent, and then disappear, so when the flowers arrive sometime in August, the foliage is gone.

With COVID cases decreasing and vaccines more available, Indiana governor Eric Holcomb, under pressure from his Republican base, has rescinded the mask mandate and promised that vaccine shots will be available to everyone over the age of 15 beginning on March 31. Nursing homes are allowing visitors, many for the first time in a year. I fear that this rush to reopen is too precipitate. Toni and I have remained cautious despite having had our second Moderna shot over two weeks ago. We are, however, hosting family over the week to celebrate son Phil’s birthday.

Negro national League

 “We are the sky, all else the sea.” Andrew “Rube” Foster, founder of the National Negro league 

Reading a biography of baseball legend Leroy “Satchel” Paige loaned to me by Ron Cohen, I became fascinated with the life and legacy of William Augustus “Gus” Greenlee, owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, a club Paige pitched for during the early 1930s when it was the most dominant team in the Negro National League, which Greenlee resuscitated after Rube Foster suffered a mental breakdown. Born in Marion, North Carolina, Greenlee moved to Pittsburgh in 1916, lured by the prospect of work in the steel mills. He served with distinction in the decorated all-black 356th regiment during World War I.  During the 1920s, after working a variety of jobs, including shining shoes and operating a jitney, he became a numbers runner and eventually gained control of Pittsburgh’s lucrative policy racket.  At a time when doors were closed to African Americans in most legitimate fields, enterprising Black entrepreneurs such as Greenlee turned policy wheels into a million-dollar business built with the nickels and dimes of working-class customers. Like prostitution and the booze business (Greenlee also had a hand in the latter), demand remained high even during the Great Depression. 

 

Greenlee’s showcase was the Crawford Grill, a posh “mixed race” (“black-and-tan) nightclub that featured such entertainers as Cab Calloway, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, the Mills Brothers, and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Former heavyweight champ Jack Johnson enjoyed the Crawford Grill’s amenities, as did white customers such as Art Rooney, founding owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Greenlee rebuffed efforts by Italian gangsters to take over his numbers operation, unlike Gary policy boss Louis “Buddy” Hutchinson, who was gunned down in 1948, allegedly on orders of the Chicago Outfit. 

 

In 1931 the main rival of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, nicknamed the Craws, was a nearby team known as the Homestead Grays. In 1932 Greenlee signed several Grays stars, including slugger Josh Gibson, and, led by Satchel Paige, assembled the greatest Negro League team ever. Greeenlee also built at a cost of nearly $100,000 a brick ballpark that seated 7,500 and thus was not dependent on getting access to the home field of the Pirates when they were out of town. Greenlee also lent out Paige to other teams playing exhibitions and on barnstorming tours during the off season. The Negro National League finally disbanded after the 1948 season, as Black players, beginning with Jackie Robinson, broke the major league color barrier. In fact, that year, Paige, signed by Bill Veeck, pitched for the World Champion Cleveland Indians.

 

Greenlee became widely respected for his philanthropic efforts on behalf of the African-American community, offering college scholarships to gifted students and financial help to would-be homeowners unable to secure loans from white banks. He died of a stroke in 1952 at age 58.  The venerable Crawford Grill survived another half-century.

Mass Shootings

“My grandmother was an angel, to have her taken in such a horrific manner is unbearable to think about.  As an immigrant, all my grandmother ever wanted in life was to grow old with my grandfather and watch her children and grandchildren live the life she never got to live,” granddaughter of murder victim Suncha Kim, 69

First it was an attack on three Asian-owned spas in the Atlanta area on march 17, taking the life of eight people, six of them of Asian descent.  Yesterday a man armed with an assault rifle entered a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, and murdered ten victims, including a police officer arriving on the scene. These atrocities occur with such frequency that, while shocking, they are hardly surprising, given the widespread ownership of firearms and the absence of gun control laws.  The city of Boulder passed an ordinance banning assault weapons, but a judge ruled it unconstitutional. Similar rulings in Indiana and elsewhere have prevented local communities such as Gary from directly confronting the epidemic of gun violence.

 

The man who attacked the three spas claimed that he acted because of a sex addiction, but all signs point to the fact that he singled out Asian establishments, some of which he may have visited. Asian-American groups and lawmakers believe that what transpired was a hate crime. While police in the past conducted raids against two of the businesses, claiming that undercover cops had been offered sex, at least half of the Asian victims were over 50 years of age, in contrast to the popular image of sex workers associated with massage parlors. I go to the Aqua Spa in Chesterton to get my toenails clipped, where most customers are women, and the atmosphere is totally on the up and up.  According to a relative of victim Xiaojie Tan, South Korean-born owner of two spas, she would throw out any customer who expected sex as part of the service.

 

Experts have concluded that the motives behind mass shootings, almost always carried out by white men, range from mental illness to political grievance.  Even though a large majority of Americans favor rational gun control measures, ranging from background checks and waiting periods to outright bans on weapons of war, the political will is lacking, combined with impediments from reactionary judges, the number of which ballooned during the Trump presidency.  After the first atrocity, Indiana governor Eric Holcomb, following President Joe Biden’s recommendation, offered prayers and that flags be flown at half-staff.  All well enough and good, but that won’t do to prevent the next tragedy.  If the deaths of 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut didn’t shame lawmakers into action, I fear nothing will. Given the state of political polarization, it’s a frightening prospect.

Deadeye Dick

 “To be is to do,” – Socrates

“To do is to be,” – Jean-Paul Sartre

“Do Be Do Be Do,” – Frank Sinatra

Kurt Vonnegut, “Deadeye Dick,” graffiti scrawled in an airport bathroom

The phrase “dead eye” was an expression used in the nineteenth century to denote an expert marksman, a sure shot. A series of dime novels featured a character named “Deadeye Dick,” and the Gilbert and Sullivan production HMS Pinafore (1878) featured a character called Dick Deadeye. In gay culture “dead eye” was slang for anus, and “Deadeye Dick” became a derogatory term for a sodomite. During the 1990s a Louisiana alternative trio took its name, Deadeye Dick, from the Kurt Vonnegut novel of that name. Its single “New Age Girl” became a hit after it appeared on the soundtrack of “Dumb and Dumber.” The main character in Vonnegut’s satire, Rudolph Waltz, got the nickname from the residents of his fictitious hometown, Midland City, Ohio, after firing a rifle from a roof top whose bullet mistakenly struck a pregnant woman miles away, Eloise Metzger, right between the eyes and killed her instantly.

In “Deadeye Dick” Vonnegut employs colorful, descriptive words I wouldn’t think to use, like rapscallion (a mischievous person), swain (a suitor), flippery (showy, frivolous) and blathered on (talked incessantly about little of consequence). In the intro he wrote: “I will explain the main symbols of this book: There is an unappreciated, empty arts building in the shape of a sphere. This is my head as my sixtieth birthday approaches. The neutered pharmacist who tells the tale is my declining sexuality. The crime he committed in childhood is all the bad things I have done.” Several characters in “Deadeye Dick” are ruined due to prescription drugs; Vonnegut concluded: “The late twentieth century will go down in history, I’m sure, as an era of pharmaceutical buffoonery”

Last Saturday I referenced “Deadeye Dick” after Larry Galler spoke about a James Thurber book, mentioning that Vonnegut admired Thurber’s wit and wisdom. In “Deadeye Dick” Rudolph Waltz became a pharmacist but penned a play called “Katmandu” about a hometown hero who sought enlightenment and disappeared in Asia on the way to the land of Shangri La. Vonnegut wrote:

I [Rudolph Waltz] was permitted a certain number of electives when I enrolled as a pharmacy major at Ohio State. And, with nobody watching, so to speak, I took a course in playwriting in my sophomore year. I had by then heard of James Thurber, who had grown up right there in Columbus, and then gone to New York City to write comically about the same sorts of people I had known in Midland City. And his biggest hit had been a play, The Male Animal.

“Katmandu” opens and closes on Broadway in one night, a complete and utter flop.

I’ve been emailing back and forth with a high school classmate about characters from our teen years. Here’s a couple stories I recalled about a guy nicknamed Buck: Once at a party Buck entered a bathroom with his date and told several people to guard the door to see that nobody interrupted him. I’m sure now that what went on inside was less scandalous than our teenage minds imagined. On the first day of class in tenth grade a new math teacher, Mr. Summerville (a big strong former wrestler), was taking the roll by asking students their names. After the first person answered “Vince Curll,” Buck answered “Vince Curll,” and then a third guy said “Vince Curll.” And so on. Summerville was so flustered he just went on without taking the culprits to task and within a week had lost control of the class; he was gone within a month. At the time we all thought it was hilarious, but in retrospect I find it very sad. Of course, if the guy was not cut out to be a teacher, maybe it was good he immediately found that out.

Celebration of IUN Faculty Research

 “[Participatory Art is]…an artistic orientation towards the social…to overturn the traditional relationship between the art object, and artist and the audience. To put it simply: the artist is conceived less as an individual producer of discrete objects than as a collaborator and producer of situations.” Claire Bishop, “Artificial Hells”

The second annual celebration of IUN Faculty Research, where a dozen professors summarize their current projects in eight minutes each, took place via zoom. I was particularly interested in ethicist Anya Matwijkiw’s talk on Danish efforts to criminalize the wearing of Islamic headscarves (I have mixed feelings on the subject, believing bourkhas are a way men subjugate wives) and historian David Parnell’s take on “Why Ancient Authors Conducted Smear Campaigns against Powerful Women.” The 90-minute program also gave me a chance to hear about innovative projects by faculty whom I had not met before, such as Yllka Azema in Marketing, Psychologist Maureen Rutherford, who spoke on anxiety disorders, and Chidiebele Constance Obichi in Nursing, who asserted that up to 400,000 preventable medical errors occur annually in the U.S., usually due to the lack of a collaborative health care system.

In his welcome remarks Chancellor Ken Iwama noted that a year ago he was at another institution but was so impressed with IUN’s first annual celebration of faculty research that he looked forward to coming to our university. Vice Chancellor Vicki Roman-Lagunas referenced how the entire campus community came together in 2017 on the first day of Fall semester to observe through “funny glasses” the solar eclipse (I recall how awesome it was as the sky darkened) and she looked forward to this coming fall when hopefully the campus would be back to a semblance of normality.

Fine Arts professor Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford gave a fascinating presentation on “Floating Museums,” that are meant to bring art and cultural artifacts to the people by taking place in common spaces. One such “pop-up pavilion” in Chicago honored Haitian-born French fur trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and his Potawatomi wife Kitihawa, the first residents not only of the “Windy City” but also of Gary, with an inflatable sculpture, something Hulsebos-Spofford specializes in. Another piece recreated the scene at Chicago’s Logan Square during the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests when someone (rumored to be an undercover agent) planted a Viet Cong flag atop the statue.

Focusing on the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, whose “Secret History” dealt primarily with the military campaigns of Roman general Balacarius during the reign of Emperor Justinian, David Parnell noted that the objects of the writer’s sexual smear campaigns were two strong women indispensable to their husbands but resented by embittered men, Empress Theodora and Antonina, the wife of Balacarius. Proccopius claimed that Theodora was enslaved by lust and seduced up to ten men a night, while Antonia controlled Balacarius by sex and black magic and had incestual carnal relations with her own son. Parnell drew parallels between Roman and contemporary times, using salacious and slanderous rumors about Hillary Clinton and other strong women as examples, a trend that has become more pronounced during our age of social media.

The Sea Wolf

 “Wolf – ‘Tis what he is. He’s not black-hearted like some men. “Tis no heart he has at all,” Jack London, “The Sea Wolf” (1904)

Most famous for the adventure novels “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang,” one about a dog that is forced to call on its primordial instincts to survive and the latter about a domesticated wolf-dog rescued from a brutal owner who saves his new master from death, Jack London (1876-1916) lived an amazingly full and prolific life in his too brief time on Earth. Sailor, tramp, would-be Klondike prospector, and member of Jacob Coxey’s “Army” that marched on Washington, D.C., during the Depression of the 1890s, he was a socialist, a naturalist, and a best-selling author of short stories and novels, many based on his own adventures. London went by the nickname Wolf, wrote about wolves with reverence as noble creatures of nature, and named the title character in “The Sea Wolf” Wolf Larson.

Though familiar with the author’s nonfiction indictment of capitalist America, “The People of the Abyss,” I can’t recall ever reading a Jack London novel. After learning that London was Susan Sontag’s favorite writer as a child and coming across references to him in Jess Walter’s “The Cold Millions,” I checked out “The Sea Wolf” at Chesterton library. Combining, as critic John L. Cobbs noted, frenzied action and philosophical ruminations, like most of London’s books, “The Sea Wolf” pits idealistic sailor Van Weyden against rugged individualist Captain Wolf Larsen, whom Cobbs sees as representing the dark side of the author’s alter ego. Though in the end good triumphs over evil, the fortuitous denouement owes as much to good fortune – luck – as individual accomplishment. Like his literary contemporaries Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris, London grappled with the question of whether free will was possible given the implacable forces of modern life.

“The Sea Wolf” contained a dozen beautiful illustrations by W. J. Aylward, who was born in Milwaukee, honed his craft at Chicago’s Art Institute, illustrated Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” was a highly respected combat artist during World War I, and outlived London by 40 years.

Rebel Girl

“Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor

And her dress may not be very fine

But a heart in her bosom is beating

That is true to her class and her kind

And the grafters in terror are trembling

When her spite and defiance she’ll hurl

For the only and thoroughbred lady

Is the Rebel Girl”

Joe Hill, “Rebel Girl” (1915)

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964), eulogized by Wobbly troubadour Joe Hill and called the “East Side Joan of Arc” by novelist Theodore Dreiser, joined the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), journeyed out West in 1907 to organize miners, and two years later took part in the Spokane, Washington, Free Speech movement, the subject of Jess Walter’s 2020 novel “The Cold Millions.” She chained herself to a lamp post to delay being taken to jail and accused the police chief of turning the women’s prison into a brothel by forcing arrested prostitutes to engage in sex. Though just 19 when she took part in the Spokane demonstrations, the “Rebel Girl” had gotten married and was seven months pregnant. Walter quotes her as declaring, “I fell in love with my country – its rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, cities, and people . . . . It could be a paradise on earth if it belonged to the people, not to a small owning class.”

Other real characters that appear in “The Lost Millions” include socialist lawyer Fred Moore (whom Flynn named her son after and who later defended anarchist martyrs Sacco and Vanzetti), James Walsh (who led an “overalls brigade” on a 2,500 journey east to Chicago to attend the 1906 IWW convention), and Frank Little (later dragged through the streets of Butte, Montana, and lynched). Elizabeth Gurley Flynn went on to be a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and supported the March 7, 1932 Detroit hunger march of auto workers that ended with Dearborn police and Ford security guards firing upon demonstrators, killing a half dozen and injuring 60 others. While living in Portland, she spoke out in support of the 1934 Western Longshoremen’s Strike. In 1936 she joined the Communist Party, spent two years in prison during the Red Scare, and died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she received a state funeral attended by 25,000 people.

March 7 is not only the anniversary of the Detroit hunger march but also of “Bloody Sunday” when in 1965 Alabama troopers mercilessly beat peaceful demonstrators attempting to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the way from Selma to Montgomery. This week also marks the one-year anniversary of when the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in panic selling on Wall Street, the hoarding of sanitizer, toilet paper, and other consumer items, and recognition that a potentially deadly virus had reached our shores and nearly every part of the country. Though the increasing distribution of vaccines has raised hopes that things will eventually come under control, still nearly 2,000 people are dying daily, and several Republican governors are making “neanderthal” decisions (President Joe Biden’s word) that disregard admonitions by health officials to wear masks and practice social distancing, especially in indoor facilities. In Boise, Idaho, some idiots even held a mask burning ceremony. 

Wild Iris

 “Some of us make our own light: a silver leaf like a path no one can use.” Louise Gluck, “The Wild Iris”

Wild irises are beautiful and colorful but don’t last long and are endangered due to dwindling habitat and a decline in bumblebees, their pollinator. Usually I don’t read the New York Times Sunday magazine poems, but “Wednesday Poem” by Joel Dias-Porter caught my eye and caused me to shed tears for all the young lives snuffed out too soon, not only in inner cities such as Gary and East Chicago, where Dave has too often mourned the loss of former students, but just the other day in Valparaiso, where 19-year-old former Valpo High School football star Noah Beller was shot in the chest following an argument over a paternity test.

Wednesday Poem

By Joel Dias-Porter

I pass through the metal detector,

inside the front doors of Cardozo High,

with xeroxed poems and a lesson planned

to introduce my students to the wild iris.

After signing my name in the visitors’ log,

I bop down to flights of steps.

Outside the classroom things are too quiet

and Mr. Bruno

(who’s Puerto Rican and writes poetry)

takes ten minutes to answer the door.

There’s a student snapshot in his hand.

One of our kids got shot last night,

Remember Maurice? Maurice Caldwell.

He didn’t come to school much.

A Crisis Response Team has the kids in a circle,

and I’ve never seen them sit so quietly.

Every computer in the classroom is dead.

A drawing of Maurice is taped to the board,

a bouquet of cards pinned under it,

Keisha (who writes funny poems in class)

says Maurice would help her with math,

she liked him but never told him.

The Crisis lady says It’s OK to cry.

Keisha says she been ran out of tears.

Mr. Bruno tells me Somebody called him

from a parked Buick on Thomas Place NW.

When he walked up, they fired three times.

I freeze. That’s a half block from my house.

There are four crackhouses on that block

and I never walk down that street.

I wonder why he approached the car,

was he hustling crack or weed?

Or did he recognize the dude and smile

before surprise blossomed across his face

and the truth rooted into his flesh.

His face flashes before my irises,

I see him horseplaying with Haneef,

his hair slicked back into a ponytail.

He wrote one poem this whole semester,

a battle rap between cartoon characters.

Mr. Bruno asks if I still want to teach.

I open my folder of nature poems,

then close the folder and slump in a chair.

What simile can seal a bullet wound?

Which student could these pistils protect,

here where it’s natural to never see seventeen?

“Wednesday Poem” reminded me of former Gary teacher John Sheehan’s “Gary Postscript, 1989, which begins:

The schools I taught in were noisy but friendly

the jiving was mostly merriment

the gangs mostly clubs

the learning more than you’d think

though six of my students were shot to death

out of six thousand

Notes on Camp

“The essence of camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp”

After reading Benjamin Moser’s biography of Susan Sontag, in my opinion an intellectual snob who hid her insecurities by embracing a chic, amoral postmodern aesthetic sensibility in vogue among fashionable sixties bohemian circles and is most famous for abstruse essays on photography, fashion, popular culture, and illness, I have attempted to understand her much-debated “Notes on Camp,” which first appeared in the left-leaning periodical “Partisan Review.” As J. Bryan Lowder asserted in “Postcards from Camp,” “Her intoxicating brew of detached authority, stylistic showmanship, intimidating intellectual name-dropping, and mysterious subject matter ensured that Sontag would corner the market on camp.”

The connoisseur of camp, Sontag believed, finds pleasure “in the coarsest, commonest pleasures, in the art of the masses.” For Sontag camp was something frivolous that was appealing ironically. She wrote: “Camp turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. It doesn’t argue that good is bad, or that bad is good. What it does is to offer for art a different – a supplementary – set of standards. It’s essential point is to dethrone the serious.” A good example is the 1972 John Waters film "Pink Flamingos," part of his "Trashy Trilogy," starring drag queen Divine. Pure camp is unintentionally artless, while something campy, such as the “Batman TV series of the 1960s, is purposely, absurdly exaggerated to get laughs or produce shock.

In 2019 New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art had an exhibition titled “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” which displayed outfits by such renown houses as Gucci and Dior. As Sontag once wrote, “Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of a million feathers.” Lady Gaga, to many the embodiment of camp, appeared at an awards show, appropriately, in a meat dress. Pop artist Andy Warhol, whom Sontag admired and posed for but later claimed to despise, brought a camp sensibility to his portraits of the banal (Campbell soup cans) and the beautiful (Marilyn Monroe). Sontag biographer Benjamin Roser believed that while Ronald Reagan was a reinvigorated conservatism’s rebuff to the debauched sixties, he was also a product of his age for whom image was interchangeable with action. Some have said the same thing about Trump, Reagan’s evil doppelganger. Roser wrote:

In some ways, Reagan represented the triumph of Andy Warhol: famously unable to distinguish between image and reality, metaphor and object, experience filmed and experience lived. Reagan told, with apparent conviction, a story about his father “ lying on the doorstep in a drunken stupor” that turned out to be lifted from a novel; he claimed that during World War II he had filmed Nazi death camps for the Signal Corps whereas he had spent the entire war in Culver City, making training films for Hal Roach studio. The living exemplar of Warholian celebrity was a former middling actor whose sensibilities derived from Hollywood, and in whom a sense of irony was never detected: unable to distinguish between an atrocity and a photograph of an atrocity. His presidency was defined by this notion of politics as role-playing, as camp. 

Turning 79

“Treasure all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age.” Booth Tarkington

After a breakfast of Rice Krispies with banana slices, bacon, coffee, and a small slice of cake left over from when Dave’s family visited on Sunday to celebrate both Toni and my birthdays, I got a call from Alissa and Josh, who serenaded me. On the computer were over 50 Facebook “Happy Birthdays,” some with photos or jingles, and emails from friends, IUN, and Franciscan Heath, where I recently had PSA blood work. The Toyota salesman who sold me a Corolla five years ago even called.

I share my birth date with Winslow Homer (b. 1830), Steve Jobs (b. 1955), and George Thorogood (b. 1950), whom I saw put on a stellar performance at the Holiday Star. I had thought Henry Wordsworth Longfellow was born on February 24 as well, but I was off by three days. On my birthday I tend to think of people I admire who are ten years older than I and still going strong, but the numbers are diminishing. One role model: bowling teammate Frank Shufran, whom I may be reuniting with if things become semi-normal by the fall and the knee holds up. I am in apparent good health as Bucknell history professor William Harbaugh told me a year or two before he died, just arthritic in the right wrist, shoulder, and hip.

This morning I picked up a few items at Strack and Van Til’s and withdrew cash from Horizon Bank in Chesterton. At noon I made myself a turkey sandwich and walked out to pick up the mail without my winter coat, it being in the high 40s. On the afternoon to-do list: bridge online with Charlie and Naomi and pick up Jess Walter’s “The Cold Millions,” recommended by classmate Gaard Murphy Logan; it takes place in 1909 Spokane and features Wobbly organizers such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. I’m currently reading Benjamin Moser’s biography of essayist Susan Sontag, the child of an alcoholic mother who at a young age consumed the popular travel books by Richard Halliburton, such as “The Royal Road to Romance” (1925) and “The Complete Book of Marvels” (1941), published posthumously two years after Halliburton vanished somewhere in the Pacific attempting to sail a Chinese junk christened “Sea Dragon” from San Francisco to Hong Kong.

I got an email from high school classmate Chuck Bahmueller, first time in 30 years. Larry Bothe spread the word that Upper Dublin was honoring Chuck and had his current email address. We were last together in 1990 at our thirtieth reunion and argued politics for an hour beforehand. If I recall correctly, one topic was affirmative action, which he felt had cost him a future in academia (instead he worked at a conservative think tank). During the 1960s, graduate school enrollment ballooned, causing the job market to dry up by the time he completed his PhD and then published a book on Jeremy Bentham. When job openings did occur in the 1970s, formerly all-white, male departments naturally either wanted to hire women or minorities or were under pressure to do so. My friend Pete Daniel, who had written a pathbreaking book on peonage in the South, “The Shadow of Slavery,” was also a casualty, as departments wanted African Americans to teach Black history.

In my email I told Chuck that I regretted anything I might have said that annoyed him if it were a cause of our losing touch for so long. I recalled some ancient memories, such when he, Vince Curll, and I went to a Cavalcade of Stars show in South Philadelphia starring Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, the Flamingoes, Dion and the Belmonts, and many other 50s rockers. Chuck had an old beater Buick from the 1940s that we rode to sports events; it was both a gas and oil guzzler, and we had to rock it to get more than a gallon of fuel in the tank. The summer after we graduated, Chuck, Vince, and I decided to visit “Old U.D.” after consuming a few beers. We first stopped to see guidance counselor Mr. Dulfer, always good in a pinch for a hall pass; he wisely gave us mints before we proceeded to sexy French teacher Renee Polsky’s room.

I’ve been corresponding with Merrillville H.S. teacher Rob Bedwell, who sought my advice about a proposed Masters degree thesis on the Calumet Region during the Great Depression. My main suggestion: pare down the scope, perhaps concentrating on a single city or incident, such as Mexican repatriation or the Little Steel strike. Rob had read my Gary books and even used in class a special Steel Shavings magazine I’d published in the late 1980s featuring John Letica’s memoir “Totin’ Ties in the Region,” a coming-of-age tale about two brothers growing up in East Chicago. The issue also contains an interview John’s older brother Bart Letica, who brought me the manuscript after Bruce and Linda Amundsen got us in touch. Their father worked at Inland Steel and took part in the 1937 strike. Here’s part of the interview where Bart talked about hauling junk:

We kids would take old buggies and make wagons for hauling junk. We could get good wheels with wood spokes. We’d pick up bottles and rags and go door-to-door for old newspapers and magazines. A lot of young ladies liked it. To them it was a nuisance getting rid of the stuff. They’d tell us to come around every Saturday. It was our route. It was how we got show money or money for Christmas presents. Newspapers were something like 15 cents for a hundred pounds. Magazines would be 20 cents. Rags would be 30 cents. Milk bottles were four for a penny.

I made a small wheelbarrow, and we’d go along the tracks and find car blockings and wood. Along we’d also find wood that drifted in from the barges. We’d haul it home and use it for kindling. We didn’t burn railroad ties but a lot of people did. They would cut them into foot-long blocks. They were saturated with creosote. On a Saturday if you were playing and spotted coal, everything stopped. Somebody would walk ahead and keep making little piles. Somebody else would go and get a wheelbarrow to haul it home. We also gathered up coal along the railroad tracks.

In the Harbor there were two or three junk yards. The junk men mainly dealt with kids. You’d quibble with them. Sometimes if you felt you got cheated, you’d get even by putting a little iron or sand inside the squashed-up aluminum. It all evened up. Junk dealers would go to various stores to gather cardboard. In the process they would find all this candy and just put it aside. We found out about it and go there in the evening to get some of this candy. It was totally without permission.

We used to pick up cigarette butts and smoke them once in a while and get sick. Or chew tobacco. During the Depression pre-packages cigarettes were a luxury. Mostly my dad rolled his own: Bull Durham, Golden Grain, Prince Albert – brands like that. People didn’t smoke as much. It was too much trouble and the cigarettes – when they finally got down to them – there wasn’t too much to them.

Alissa arrived in time to dance with me to The Beth's "Whatever" and for my birthday dinner of pizza with many toppings followed by anecdotes about past experiences and the opening of presents from Beth, in my case a novel ("The Goldfinch") and coffee mug with images of Joe and Kamala. 

Indiana Landmarks provided grants to install steel doors at North Gleason Park Community Building ($8,000) and roof and chimney repairs for St. Augustine Episcopal Church ($10,000). Both historic buildings came about as a result of the city’s segregationist legacy. Built during the 1920s, North Gleason was the site of a nine-hole Negro golf course. Unlike the 18-hole whites-only South Gleason course, the area reserved for Black golfers frequently flooded in the spring as a result of overflow from the Little Calumet River. During the 1940s the clubhouse was used as a community center for dances and receptions, and until a few years ago was a Police Athletic League training center for boxers. In 1927 St. Augustine was chartered after Black congregants found themselves unwelcome at Christ Episcopal. Designed by acclaimed Chicago architect Edward D. Dart, the present building, completed in 1959, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives provided historical documentation to church historian Paula DuBois and the university’s Center for Urban and Regional Excellence in championing efforts to preserve and refurbish these sites. I recall seeing the North Gleason clubhouse when using the Gleason Park driving range nearby, and I was inside the magnificent Episcopal Church for the funeral service of beloved colleague Garrett Cope.

Republican lawmakers recently booed longtime Gary Representative Vernon Smith as he was speaking in the Indiana General Assembly in opposition to House Bill 1367, that would allow predominantly white Greene Township to leave the South Bend school district. This followed similar treatment toward Indianapolis legislator Greg Porter. When Smith recounted evidence of discrimination he has encountered personally as an African American, several lawmakers left the chamber. Smith told reporters, “People stood up and tried to stop me from speaking. And I wasn’t going to get stopped.” Afterwards, Republican Alan Morrison followed him into a restroom and launched into a tirade, calling him a bully and a coward.” When Smith quickly left without engaging him, Morrison continued to berate him in the hallway. Smith, an IUN Education professor, said: “I just don’t feel that I should be in a situation where I’ve got to fear physically for my safety.” In a Post-Tribune column Lake County Democratic chairman Jim Wieser wrote that Smith is “a fierce advocate . . . [but] the epitome of civility, gentleness, and respect in the Indiana General Assembly.” As one who has known Vernon for many years, I can attest that Wieser is absolutely correct. In 1927 Smith's mother was forced out of Emerson School after striking racist students demanded her and a dozen other Black students' ouster. I've never known Vernon to express bitterness over the past, only determination to move forward with love, hope, and charity.