Rock of Ages

“I gotta take a little time

A little time to think things over.”

    “I Want to Know What Love Is,” Foreigner

Trish and Ray Arrendondo did a reading from “Maria’s Journey” at Ivy Tech’s De La Garza Center in East Chicago.  Angie Komenich introduced them and quoted from my Foreword, saying, first in Spanish, that Maria believed “God helped those who helped themselves.”   Eva Mendietta led off with historical background about Latinos in Northwest Indiana.  Beforehand, she whispered, “You should be doing this,” but she did an excellent job.  It reminded me of when Diana Chen-Lin was asked to talk about Chinese-Americans.  Even though it wasn’t her field, she, being conscientious like Eva, did lots of research.  Rather than accept an honorarium, Ray and Trish used the money to provide a dozen free books to audience members.

The music and acting in “Rock of Ages” were first-rate, but the plot was typical of musicals originally on Broadway – pretty shallow.  I was surprised that Tom Cruise played the aging rock star as a rather despicable character with few redeeming qualities.  In many cases the Eighties songs sounded better than the originals, especially the Journey numbers.  I especially liked Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is.”  Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin are hoots as an unlikely couple.

At Chesterton library I found a “Vanity Fair” article about the 1967 “Summer of Love” and a free autobiography of folk icon Richie Havens, who opened the Woodstock festival. 

At the European Market I bought two tacos from the family that cleans our condo and enjoyed a watermelon flavored icy free sample.  Then it was on to Becca’s dance recital, a Toni’s Dance Academy production of “Working 9 to 5.”  In one skit Becca had on a coal miner’s outfit dancing to “16 Tons,” one of the few songs I know the words to, including “another day older and deeper in debt” to the company store.  Early in the second act the curtain closed just as a number was starting.  A kid had run into a table, knocking out a tooth and necessitating a rush to the ER to get stitches.  Becca was great, as always.

At James’s twelfth birthday party was a tall, self-confident girl named Molly, who was reading “The Covenant (Abram’s Daughters)” by Beverly Lewis about Amish sisters living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  I told Molly about my friend Suzanna, who is living the simple life of an Amish woman, gardening, canning, quilting, painting, and the like.  Molly was equally at ease with kids and adults and reminded me of childhood friend Molly Schade, also tall and willowy, who charmed virtually everyone she met. I talked White Sox baseball with Kevin Horn, how college was going with wife Tina (wisely, with three kids, she took the summer off), and politics with Robert Blaszkiewicz.  Angie gave her dad, John Teague, and me matching t-shirts that stated, “This is what a cool grandpa looks like.”  Marianne Brush mentioned that Cracker will again be performing at Hobart Jaycee Fest on June 29, but I’ll be in California then.

In the news: Obama issued an executive order declaring that the federal government will no longer seek to deport illegal aliens who have been in America nearly their whole lives and will establish procedures for renewable work permits and the like. Romney, already doing poorly with Latinos, grumbled that the President’s motivation was political but refused to take a stand on the merits of the action.  Braving the wrath of fellow conservatives, old friend Pat Zollo wrote, “This is a reasonable proposal to a very difficult problem.”  One of his Facebook friends warned him that a Democrat had hacked into his identity and a nephew expressed great disappointment.  When I commented that even arch-conservative William Crystal of the Weekly Standard supported the policy, the nephew claimed Crystal was a RINO (Republican in Name Only), an epithet he used about John McCain.  It’s guys like him who purged the GOP of Dick Lugar. 

                                       Pat Zollo (right), circa 1950 and 2012

On the Sunday shows several pundits noted that the Watergate break-in occurred 40 years ago.  George Will opined that only a paranoid president (read: Richard Milhous Nixon) would order former CIA agents to burglarize the Brookings Institute and wiretap the Democratic National Headquarters.  “Tricky Dick” might have gotten away with it had not he played such a central role in the cover-up.

Tiger Woods started out so poorly on the final round of the U.S. Open that I quickly lost interest and got much proofreading done while flipping from golf to baseball to the NBA finals.  I also watched an HBO documentary entitled “Hitler’s Pawn: The Margaret Lambert Story” about a high jumper whom Hitler promised to allow on the 1936 German team to avoid an American boycott, only to go back on his word once the U.S. contingent set sail for the games.  Anti-Semitic U.S. Olympic official Avery Brundage was one of the heavies in the story, which featured interviews with Lambert, born Gretel Bergmann in 1914, both in the U.S. and on a trip to her hometown of Laupheim, which had recently named an athletic facility in her honor.

After obtaining Dale Fleming’s mailing address from Norm Carr, I sent him checks for the four drawings I sold at Pop Up Art.  Then it was off for a check-up to get my blood pressure medicine refilled and then a haircut from Anna in preparation for my California trip next week.