Sizwe Banzi Is Dead

Toni and I went to a theater at the University of Chicago Sunday with the Hagelbergs to see the 1971 play “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead.” It deals with two South Africans living in Cape Town during a time of apartheid, when blacks were not free to move about without the proper credentials. One of them did not have a proper Passbook and came upon a dead man, whose identity he took so he could remain in the city to earn money to provide for his family. The play was very moving, and the two actors, Chiké Johnson and Allen Gilmore, were fabulous. It starts out with a man commenting on news events he’s reading about in a newspaper. Evidently when it was first performed, the actor John Kani would improvise based on whatever the headlines of the day were about. Sometimes he’d go on and on. The play reminded me of being in Durban and Pietermaritzburg eight years ago to attend an International Oral History Association conference. The first night I ventured out from my five-star hotel, located a block from the beach, in search of a restaurant or sports bar and found the neighborhood mostly deserted and palpably unsafe. The next morning a colorful open market had materialized outside and dozens of black kids were playing on the beach or in the water, many just in their underwear. I went on a day trip to the highest point in South Africa, officially crossing into the country of Lesotho, where families lived in cone-shaped tents. During the conference at the University of Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) female teenage Zulu dancers performed topless, which left some of the feminist historians nonplussed. The campus was surrounded by walls and gates, and people claimed carjacking was widespread, but I walked into Pietermaritzburg and felt quite safe. Nelson Mandela remains my biggest hero, and I got the shivers watching Morgan Freeman portray him in “Invictus.” After the play Corey Hagelberg got us to go into the U. of C.’s Smart Museum of Art that featured 60s surrealistic, campy work, including use of grotesque cartoon characters, by members of the Chicago Imagist school, including Ed Paschke, who I’d heard of. One faction called themselves Monster Rooster, another the Hairy Who. Pretty cool. We topped the day off with a great meal at Shaw’s Crab House.

In the car Dick turned on the end of the Blackhawks hockey playoff game with the Sharks. They were up 2-1 with a minute to go, but San Jose was on a power play plus pulled their goalie for a two-man advantage. The Chicago goalie Antti Niemi was great, however, and the Blackhawks won. It was a banner weekend for Philadelphia. The Phillies swept a three-game series with Milwaukee, and the Flyers became just the third team in history to come back from a three-game playoff deficit. On Friday they actually fell behind 3-0 against the hated Boston Bruins before scoring the final four goals. Last night they won game one from Montreal 6-0. Even though they were the seventh seed, they have the home ice advantage. To think, back when I was in Punta Gorda, they needed a victory in a shootout on the last day of the regular season to even get in the playoffs.

I’ve traded a couple emails with Lisa Hartlund, who initially wrote: “Hi James! I like your blog! I thought maybe since you are a history professor in Gary you might have some idea what this photo is. It's my grandfather who lived in Gary from some time just before WWI until he died in 1947. He was Italian and lived on Tyler Street. No one in the family knows about him being in any kind of band. I'm wondering if you know of any bands this photo could be associated with in Gary? I think his hat says Marandos Band. He looks to be about 20 something in this photo so I put it sometime right after he got out of WWI and maybe in the early 20's? I'd appreciate any insight you might have!” Unfortunately, all I could offer Lisa were a couple theories, the most likely being that Marandos was a Gary band, perhaps put together by a local person or family named Marando. In the photo Loreto Manna is in a band uniform holding a musical instrument (a trombone, I think). It’s possible but not probable that he went to a photo studio and decided to use these as props.

Emails also awaited me from old girlfriends Pam Tucker (upset over the latest eliminations on “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars”), Judy Jenkins (who I’ve been trying to convince to come to our fiftieth reunion), and Suzanne, who was pleased to learn that I was “one of the few among us who was able to stay married” (and who appreciated that I didn’t say anything shocking in my last note). Today is Alissa’s twenty-second birthday, and she is coming down from Michigan and will go with us to a play James is in.

There’s a scene in “Straight Man” where Hank is with his secretary who is 22 years younger than him and, with battle lines being drawn among English department members, repeats the Buffalo Springfield lyric, “Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” She doesn’t catch the reference, causing Hank to say, “Ours is a fragmented culture. If I wrote another book, who would read it?” On the other hand, Hank’s buddy Tony is in a bar dancing with young reporter Missy, and both are singing the chorus to “Gimme Some Lovin’,” a Sixties song by the Spencer Davis Group featuring Steve Winwood that was later covered by the Blues Brothers in the movie of the same name. Hank suffers from what he terms ellipses, where he blots out the world and goes into a trance or reverie. He quotes the Everly Brothers line, "Whenever I want to, all I have to do is dream." The department’s junior faculty member (Orshee) compares the sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes” to “Huckleberry Finn” and calls it white America’s great race fantasy: “young black males, nonthreatening and loving. Old white guys who care about the black community. It’s great stuff.”

In the news: Rioting continues in Thailand, and BP is claiming they are catching a fraction of the spewing oil with a mile-long straw. Former Gary West Side graduate became the first African-American valedictorian at Notre Dame. She has a radiant smile and is the kind of person that makes old teachers pr oud. Jim Spicer taught many years in the Gary schools and may have had her. Son Dave has an East Chicago Central student heading for Harvard in the fall. He and Angie chaperoned the prom on Saturday, and we had the grandkids overnight. James has been reading “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and brought along the audiotape.