Inequality

“Left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy.”  Barney Frank

In the Preface to “The Price of Inequality” Joseph Stiglitz states that growing up in Gary, Indiana, the heartland of industrial America, he witnessed firsthand “inequality, discrimination, unemployment, and recessions.”  When ten years old he wondered, in his words, “why the kindly woman who took care of me much of the day had only a sixth grade education, in this country that seemed so affluent, and I wondered why she was taking care of me, rather than her own children.”  Stiglitz’s dad, a Jeffersonian Democrat committed to civil rights, was an agent for Travelers Insurance and his mother a teacher and ardent liberal.  Growing up on Gary’s Northwest Side, Stiglitz was captain of Horace Mann’s debating team and valedictorian of the Class of 1960.  I’ve been trying to reach him to tell me some memories of Gary during the 1950s, but he is a very busy man, a world traveler.

A letter arrived from the Porter County Courthouse inquiring about my serving jury duty.  I seemed qualified but in the Remarks section mentioned that I needed frequent bathroom breaks in the morning.  I’ve never been on a jury, perhaps because when we lived on Maple Place, we had a Gary mailing address even though we resided in Porter County. So I fell through the cracks, so to speak.

Beverly Arnold passed along 20 trivia questions for the “over 60” generation.  The only one that gave me trouble was the Red Skelton hobo character, Freddy the Freeloader.  My favorite character of his was Clem Kadiddlehopper, a lovable country bumpkin who was wiser than he appeared.  Hoosier Skelton started out in show business as a clown and had an extremely expressive face.  He was born in 1913 in Vincennes, Indiana, and died in in 1997 Rancho Mirage, where my mother lives.  Some want to name an avenue after him, as is the case with two dozen other Hollywood celebrities who made the area their watering hole, most notably Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, and Dinah Shore.  Skelton’s CBS show ran for an unprecedented 17 years, as he retained his popularity despite the cultural revolution of the 1960s. 

I ran into Brian O’Camb, a regular Tuesday-Thursday lunch companion last semester who now has back-to-back classes until 12:45.  His right hand was messed up from flag football.  I told him to stick to Frisbee golf, at which he is very good.

Anne Balay posted photos taken while walking her dog to Lake Michigan.  One captures U.S. Steel mill spewing smoke; another shows ice mounds, much smaller than normal due to the mild winter.

In “Rabbit Remembered” Harry’s two offspring, Nelson and Annabelle, defend Bill Clinton against conservative family members who call him a sleaze.  Annabelle liked his “gently raspy hillbilly accent” and that he really seemed to care for people and not hold grudges, having grown up “poor in a crummy town, with an abusive stepfather.”  She concludes that it was too bad he needed a little affection (from Monica Lewinsky) but, in her words, “maybe he was entitled to some.  Aren’t we all?”  Dirty-minded Ronnie Harrison’s comeback: “I’ll say this for Slick Willie, he’s brought the phrase (blow job) out in the open.  When I was young, you had to explain to girls what it was.  They could hardly believe they were supposed to do it.”  Always envious of Harry, he has managed to marry his widowed wife.  Oh, how I wish Updike had lived to do yet another ten-year update about the Angstroms.

Mike Olszanski put online a Labor Studies paper he wrote entitled “The Rank and File in SWOC/USWA: A Social Movement Becomes a Bureaucracy.”  When he was President of Local 1010 in 1987, Inland Steel officials wanted to re-open negotiations mid-contract in order to revise work rules in a plant they were threatening to close unless they got their way.  Olszanski thought this outrageous and a dangerous precedent; but without support from his district director, he was defeated in his bid for re-election and the union ultimately succumbed to Inland’s demands. Since that time contracts have been negotiated in a top-down manner, to the detriment of the rank and file, Olszanski concludes.

Rich James’s Wednesday column advocated passage of a county income tax.  Even though he dislikes how state officials are forcing the issue, by threatening to discontinue $10 million in annual funding for the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, he believes it is time to “cry uncle” and bite the bullet.  Responding to a Jerry Davich column about aging, Millerite Jack Tonk, who is in his mid-seventies, mentions that he and his wife still run several miles each day, and he plays golf (when weather permits) and drinks wine with dinner.  If he has a few aches and pains and the golf ball doesn’t fly as far as it once did, he still feels in the prime of life rather than old.  He and Matt Diltz, one a Hoosier, the other a Boilermaker, get together whenever IU and Purdue compete.  Tonight’s IU win was no contest, the 37-point margin the biggest in the history of their rivalry.

The great Diane Rehm interviewed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on NPR about her autobiography “My Beloved World.”  Growing up with diabetes in a South Bronx housing project, she talked candidly about her alcoholic father, who was unable to channel his intelligence into meaningful outlets, though he did help Sonia with her homework until he died when she was nine.  He was a whizz at math, she recalled, and claimed she could still multiply any number by 11 in seconds thanks to a trick she taught him.

The Engineers lost game one by 190 pins, then stormed back to win the next two games and series by 15 pins.  For the third straight week I won the five dollars for most pins over average despite a poor start and a paucity of strikes.  I wish Bill Batalis were alive so I could have called him with details, but I did call Dick Maloney, who stayed home because his wife had the flu.  John Bulot made a surprise visit.  He had a serious cancer operation and the two phone numbers we had for him were disconnected, so it was a relief to see him apparently in remission.

I stayed up to see a country-oriented duo called Shovels and Ropes.  Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, both in the thirties, seemed at first glance an odd couple.  They met while playing in different South Carolina bar bands that played both punk and country rock; one critic compared their musical style to the L.A. Eighties alternative band X.  I liked them.

Elegy

“The cur foretells the knell of parting day;

The loafing herd winds slowly o’er the lea;

The wise man homeward plods;

I only stay to fiddle-faddle in a minor key.”

    Ambrose Bierce

Sardonic critic Ambrose Bierce’s motto was “Nothing matters.”  At age 71 he joined Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army as an observer revolution before disappearing somewhere in Mexico without a trace.  Kurt Vonnegut called his short story “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” based on his observations as a Union lieutenant during the Civil War, the work of a “flawless American genius.”

John Updike’s novella “Rabbit Remembered” is really an elegy to Harry Angstrom, the hero of his Rabbit trilogy, who died from a weak heart in “Rabbit at Rest.”  Now ten years later in 1999 his son Nelson and daughter Annabelle become friends and come to appreciate their dad for all his narcissistic faults and failings.  On New Year’s Eve they attend the movie “American Beauty” with Nelson’s estranged wife Pru and Nelson’s childhood friend Billy, and, surprise, the story has a sweet, happy ending.  It caused me to shed a tear for dear, departed Bill Batalis, whom I usually called after bowling if the Engineers do well.  Brother George sent an “Appreciation” card thanking me for coming to the hospice and wake.  May he long be remembered.

At lunch Performing Arts professor Mark Baer mentioned that his department will only be performing the annual children’s play during Spring Break and on Fridays so the students won’t miss class like in the past.  I wonder if Mark is any relation to 1930s heavyweight champ Max Baer.

In the 2008 film “Elegy” Ben Kingsley plays an aging professor and beautiful Penelope Cruz a Cuban student whom he lusts after, beds down, and ultimately befriends.  Feeling his mortality, Kingsley’s character quotes Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy that “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.”  Until seeing the credits I hadn’t realized Dennis Hopper was his lecherous colleague and failed to recognize former punk rocker Deborah Harry in a supporting roll. The film was based on the Philip Roth novella “The Dying Animal,” but director Isabel Coixet made some changes to portray the professor in a more sympathetic light.  Gone, for example, was a rough oral sex scene.

With Toni in Grand Rapids to help Alissa and Josh move, I spent much of the weekend proofreading and fine-tuning an index for “Calumet Regional Connections II.”  I did chat briefly with Sam Barnett, who spent Friday afternoon in the Archives.  I awoke Saturday to discover that I had scratched the side of my face with a fingernail overnight.  I hate when I do that. 

On the front page of the NWI Times was an article about a former student who went on to become a middle school teacher.  He was in jail charged with sending explicit photos of himself to girls who are now in high school.  I felt sick about it all day.

Fred and Diana Chary invited me to be on their Trivia Night team Saturday at Temple Israel in Miller, along with son Michael, Anne Balay, and Tanice Foltz. The Calumet Region category unfortunately concentrated on landmarks  rather than history.  I knew some, such as Marktown and the Lake George gazebo in Hobart, but half of them stumped me.  In the popular song category, I  recognized that it was Don McLain who sang “Vincent” (about Van Gogh), and in the 2012 Election category I persuaded the others that it was was Rick Santorum, not Romney, who won the Iowa Republican primary by 32 votes.  Robin Rich was an awesome mistress of ceremonies, and among the dozens of folks I knew was a History major from the early 70s, Jack Walter.

In the “Lives” section of a month-old Sunday New York Times magazine Edward Zuckerman, who started teaching in 1970, same year as me, went to update his address book.  Of the 836 names several dozen were a complete mystery as to their identity and an equal number were dead.  He decided not to delete the latter group, believing that seeing their names occasionally would keep memories of them alive.

Tom Wade brought over a delicious chicken dish with cheese and peppers for Sunday’s IU game against Michigan State.  In the final minute, up by two and with the shot clock winding down, seven-foot Cody Zeller dribbled to the basket from 20 feet out for a lay-up.  Seconds later, when a Spartan tried a similar maneuver, Zeller stood his ground and drew a charge, assuring his Hoosiers the victory.  They climbed to number three in the rankings, behind just Michigan and Kansas.

Despite a treacherous freezing rain Toni returned from Michigan and Dave’s family successfully made a trip to and from Chicago, where Becca auditioned for “America’s Got Talent.”  She’s great but just one of thousands of hopefuls.   The temp went into the mid-40s overnight, ridding the courtyard entrance to our condo of all snow.  Tomorrow is expected to be in the mid-60s.

In an article about “age stereotyping” entitled “Seeing aging through ‘Rose’ colored attitudes,” Jerry Davich profiled Tony and Patty Rose, who are in their sixties and in great shape.  Patty had just returned from winning a five-kilometer race for her age bracket.  The Post-Trib story mentioned Tony’s radio show “True Country," and Rose, a really nice guy, had been at the controls the last time I was on Davich’s Monday “Out to Lunch” show. 

                                                photo of Tony and Patty Rose by Andy Lavalley

On Lakeshore radio former Andrean and IU basketball star Dan Dakich talked about playing full-court games growing up with current Chesterton coach Tom Peller, married to IUN Chemistry professor Julie Peller, the daughter of my buddy John Ban.  Their Merrillville homes were across the street from each other, and each had a hoop at the end of the driveway, so center court was in the middle of 54^th Avenue.

With the death of investigative reporter Mark Kiesling, the NWI Times hired former Post-Trib columnist Rich James.  His January 27 effort goes after “brazen” Gary City Court Judge Deidre Monroe for paying $787 in taxpayer money for 500 Christmas cards.  When the State Board of Accounts questioned the expenditure, she agreed to pay for them but argued that she didn’t regard it as an excessive cost.  While most online readers agreed with James, several thought it silly to quibble about $787 when tens of thousands have gone for glossy booklets and flyers.  “Winston8724 wrote that “James would be better off making inquire on how millions of Hammond’s tax dollars seems to disappear.”

                                               Rich James

Ron Cohen introduced me to filmmakers from Utah who were making a documentary about the Gary schools.  They threatened to interview me next time they were in town but seemed satisfied with my gift of “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”  Also on campus were Lori Montalbano, who left IUN last year to take a better job in Illinois, and Charlotte Read, who retired last year but always asks about Dave, who she knew from when he was in UTEP (Urban Teacher Education Program) 20 years ago.  The guy who waited on me at Little Redhawk Café stuck a thermometer in a hot dog to see if they were ready.  My bun broke in half as I started eating; bummer.

A former student of mine who became a middle school teacher is in jail for sending an explicit photo of himself 13 months ago to a girl now in high school.  They were flirting by cell phone while she was with two friends, and he stepped way over the line.  How sad.  Now he is facing three felony charges and a life apparently in ruin.  It’s been front-page news for several days, complete with a mug shot of him.