Look at me now

“I stretch my arms into the sky

I cry Babel!  Babel!  Look at me now

Then the walls of my town,

They come crumbling down.”

    “Babel,” Mumford and Sons

The Mumford and Sons CD “Babel” is on top of the charts.  You gotta love that banjo sound by “Country” Winston Marshall.  Recently they performed “I Will Wait” on SNL.  In Genesis is mention of Babylonians building a “Tower of Babel” in a vain attempt to reach the heavens, causing an angry god to scatter them and take away their common language.  As the saying goes, god (if there is one) works in mysterious ways.

Making national news is a statement Indiana Republican candidate for Senator Richard Mourdock made in a debate with Joe Donnelly defending his opposition to abortions for rape victims because, in his exact words, “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.”   By that logic an omnipotent god must have willed the rape to occur as well, though Mourdock denies that.  Commentators are comparing this idiocy to the “legitimate rape” remarks by Missouri Republican Todd Akin; Romney distanced himself from Akin but recently endorsed Mourdock, who ruthlessly went after moderate incumbent Richard Lugar in the spring primary.  IU Political Science professor Marjorie Hershey commented: “Gaffes make a difference when they fit into a pattern that has already formed in people’s feelings about a candidate.  This comment about rape fits into a perception that Mourdock is an extremist – a charge that Rep. Donnelly has been making for months.”

I told archives volunteer Dave Mergl about my talk Thursday at Reiner Senior Center in Hobart and he intends to come.  I’ll discuss Portage Township, Gary, and Cedar Lake during the 1920s, then talk about Hobart and have ten folks read excerpts from “memory books” compiled by Hobart History Museum mainstays Dorothy Ballantyne and Elin Christianson.  Franklin Rhoades described skinny-dipping and fishing in Lake George B.S. (“before silt,” which killed off aquatic life and polluted the water).  I wonder how much it would cost to clean up Lake George.  It would be worth it on many levels.

Geologist Bob Votaw entered the Redhawk Café wearing a field trip hat.  At age 70 he started teaching again and this semester has two classes.  He taught a TV course that came on at 7 a.m. Toni watched it faithfully, and I found it very interesting as well.

Dunelands Historical Society board member Lynn Welsh thanked me for the “great” program on Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records, concluding: “It was a real stroll down memory lane.”

Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy helped prepare announcements for Tuesday afternoon’s Glen Park Conversation by attaching date, time, and place to poster blowups of the cover of “Valor” that I had saved from last month’s Soup and Substance event.  Public Relations assistant Terry Defenser lent me two easels for the Conference Center lobby and the second floor of the library, where the program took place in the Reverend Robert Lowery Study Area.  Attending were both Garrett and Barbara Cope, as well as Chancellor Lowe, Ron and Steve, librarians Tim and Betty, CURE administrative assistant Sandra Smith, and about 15 others, including two of Roy’s former teachers, Mrs. Brown (Art) and Anne Thompson (English).  When Anne made a comment using perfect diction, I recognized her as someone I worked with one summer 20 years ago in connection with IUN Kids College.  Host Garrett Cope raffled off items, including “Valor” and “Gary’s First Hundred Years,” which were the first ones selected.  I won a fancy red artificial wreath with green sparkles that will be perfect for Christmas.

Roy talked about his forebears, growing up in Gary (Cudahy, Tolleston, Brunswick, and Junedale), racial tensions during the late 1960s, attending IUN, becoming the first Latino state trooper, overcoming Guillain-Barré syndrome, and recently returning to his alma mater Valparaiso Law School to speak to minority students.  Roy’s first visit to Valparaiso was one summer to go shopping when as a teenager he was picking crops with his mother’s family, who were migrant workers up from Texas.  Also on the program was city official Ben Clement, author of “Giants on My Shoulder,” about Frank Steele, George Foreman’s sparring partner prior to the “Rumble in the Jungle” against challenger Muhammad Ali.  Fired after he got the best of the champ, Steele then gave pointers to Ali that helped him win the contest.

                                   above, Jimbo, Barbara Cope, and Roy Dominguez; below, Roy and Mrs, Brown

Afterwards I got Sheriff Dominguez and Mrs. Brown, his Ivanhoe art teacher, to pose for a photo on Barbara Cope’s smart phone, then had a student take a shot of Barbara and the two of us. Son Garrett, Jr., helped get them sent to my email address. 

On the cover of Rolling Stone is President Obama, interviewed by historian Douglas Brinkley, who labeled him the Progressive Firewall – the last line of defense in preventing America’s hard-won social contract from being defunded into oblivion.  Consequences of his defeat could include another Middle East war, disastrous Wall Street deregulation, ecological disaster, and the reversal of Roe v. Wade.  So the in this election stakes are high.

With the weather in the high 70s I stripped down to a “World’s Greatest Grandpa” t-shirt, inspiring a quip from Vice Chancellor Malik when he ran into me returning easels to TerryAnn Defenser.  It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about.

I’ve been in contact with IUN alum and kids’ lit author Donna Rae Rendina about the December 8 PopUp Art event at Lake Street Gallery.  She’ll bring copies of “The Golden Leaf” and inquired: “I usually have my characters with me in costume.  Is that something I could do?”  I replied, “Characters in costume would be fine.”  In “Valor” Roy talks about the Rendina brothers being ushers at Holy Rosary Church when he was a kid and that these” scary physical specimens” would demand instant respect when they’d say, “Hey boys, sit here and be quiet.”

Eighty five years ago Franklin Pierce Admas, whose witty newspaper columns, written in diary form, appealed to New York and Chicago sophisticates, wrote of having a new radio set installed and not having any idea how it worked, as was the case with his electric lights or telephone.  He found the advertising, in his words, “pretentious and silly, as when one man spoke many times of the slogan of a company being “You might as well have the best.”  He wondered how many conferences it took to come up with that bromide.

In bowling the Engineers won an exciting game when Melvin Nelson doubled in the tenth.  I discussed my upcoming Hobart talk with Jim Fowble, whose father Don’s reminisces I plan to make use of.  Game one of the World Series was such a rout I tuned in a documentary about Ethel Kennedy.  When husband Bobby was Attorney General, she and the kids liked to visit the shooting range in the basement of the FBI building.  Spotting a Suggestion box, Ethel wrote, “Get a new director.”  Director J. Edgar Hoover hated RFK and vice versa.