Whole Lotta Shakin'

“We got the bull by the horn,

We ain’t fakin’”

    “Whole Lotta Shakin’ goin’ on,” Jerry Lee Lewis

I napped in preparation for the Blues Cruise concert Friday at Camelot Lanes Lounge.  The big crowd included Fred McColly, living temporarily in a rented house since a kitchen fire ravaged his Lake Station residence.  His son-in-law is in a band with Steve Termini, lead guitar player for Blues Cruise.  Kevin Horn introduced me to Dan Schmitt, formerly an IUN geology lab instructor who met his wife in Bob Votaw’s class.  I talked politics with Robert Blaszkiewicz, who will do online election analysis with fellow Times reporter Doug Ross next Tuesday.  We are both pleased Tea Party Senate candidate Robert Mourdock appears to be sinking fast.  I told band member Bruce Sawochka that I quoted from his Portage article in a recent speech.  When Blues Cruise played “Rockin’ in the Free World,” I hugged Maryann Brush, widow of Big Voodoo Daddy, who performed it so well.  Their daughter Missy did a great job singing with the band.  Dave called me up to dance to a Jerry Lee Lewis medley, and it seemed almost like old times with Voodoo Chili, whose t-shirt I was wearing.  Dave had on a Robert Griffin III Redskins jersey.

above, Dave at Camelot Lounge; below, Missy as Harley Quinn from arkham asylum

Saturday I returned to Camelot Lanes to drive James to bowling.  On his team was Kevin Horn’s son Kaiden, so we rehashed about the night before and, along with Dave, who despite three hours sleep brought teammate Josh, tried not to look disappointed over gutter balls.  As Dave liked to say, “It’s all about having fun.”  Even though still recovering from the flu bug going around, James bowled his average.

Ray Boomhower sent me a copy of “The People’s Choice: Congressman Jim Jontz of Indiana,” inscribed “With thanks for all you do for Indiana history.”  Nice.  In the preface he thanked me for my “encouragement, support, and lunchtime companionship.”  When he was utilizing the Jontz papers in the archives, I took him to Country Lounge one day and to Thrill of the Grill the next. I first met Jontz at a Bailly Alliance demonstration opposing construction of a nuclear plant on the shore of Lake Michigan, a fight the antinuclear forces won.  Jontz was first and foremost an environmentalist, and Boomhower appropriately introduces the first chapter, “A Large and Courageous Heart,” with this quote from “The Lorax” by Dr. Seus: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not.”  In “The Lorax” factory owner Once-ler fails to heed warnings not to cut down Truffula trees until a single seed is left and the landscape barren and polluted.  “The People’s Choice” contains many Calumet Regional Archives photos, including one of Jontz with members of the Save the Dunes Council on Earth Day, 1990. 

Jontz attended IU during the early 1970s.  A Geology major, he was active with an environmental group called Crisis Biology.  While Boomhower does not mention his involvement in antiwar activities, he includes a photo of IU students participating in the first annual Earth Day and two photographs depicting the Kent State shootings that occurred two weeks later.  The most recent Sports Illustrated has an article about Penn State one year after revelations broke about Jerry Sandusky. One alum noted that just as people still link Kent State with the National Guard troops opening fire on unarmed students, so shall Penn State be associated with the cover-up of Sandusky’s crimes for the foreseeable future.

During the 1970s Jontz had two dogs (Birch and Vance, named for Indiana’s Democratic senators), two cats (Brother and Sister), and two failed marriages, due, Boomhower concludes, to his single minded devotion to public service.  During the Bailly fight he dated my friend Anne Minor, who worked tirelessly for him.

On Saturday I kept switching channels to view the exciting finishes to the IU and Notre Dame football games (both victories for the Indiana schools).  In Bloomington Antwaan Randle-El was honored at halftime; at South Bend an errant field goal by a Pitt kicker allowed the Fighting Irish to remain undefeated.  Sunday I watched the Bears and went to bed confident that I had rebounded from my lone defeat in Lane Fantasy League on the strength of Adrian Peterson’s 188 rushing yards and two TDs and above-average performances by everyone else.  Unfortunately Tampa Bay’s running back Doug Martin got an unheard-of 51 points, rushing for 251 yards and scoring four TDs. As Tweeters would say, “WTF?”

On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” conservative George Will was the lone panelist to predict a Romney win.  Asked what she’d be watching for on Tuesday, Donna Brazile replied, “Evidence of voter fraud.”  Already there are signs in Florida of dirty tactics being employed to prevent poor folks and minorities from voting.  With Republican administrations in power in key Midwest states, Obama’s people should be taking nothing for granted, but early voting may prove a godsend.  This post by Dave got 48 “likes”: “As a pacifist, it is difficult for me to have hatred in my blood, but Mitt and all his cronies inspire so much vitriol in my heart, I feel sick to my stomach.”

For the past several years Jeff Manes and Patty Wisniewski have been working on a documentary about the Grand Kankakee Marsh.  The meandering, 250-mile stream got converted into basically a 90-mile ditch to make way for farmland.  The process destroyed wetlands that were home to beaver, river otter, and huge numbers of migratory birds. Native American tribes lived on its shores, and explorers such as LaSalle marveled at its beauty.  Presidents Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison hunted the plentiful waterfowl.  In the twentieth century farmers developed the drained land, and today less than five percent of the marshland survives. The documentary is sweeping in scope and both tragic and fascinating.  What once seemed like progress came at a price.  As Jeff Manes told Post-Trib reporter Mark Taylor, “This was a million-acre swamp and an ecological marvel.  Now that much of that is gone, we realize the importance of wetlands.  They’re nature’s kidneys.”

I’m doin’ a whole lotta shakin’ worrying about a possible Republican outcome tomorrow.