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.