Blandine and Frederic

“La critique est aisee, et l’art est difficle (criticism is easy, art is difficult),” Philippe Nericault Destouches

Blandine Huk and Frederic Cousseau at Corey and Kate's; photo by Jeff Manes

Jeff Manes used a quote by the Frenchman Philippe Destouches, an eighteenth-century actor and playwright, to introduce his brilliant SALT column about Frederic Cousseau and Blandine Huk, titled “French filmmakers’ next project is in Gary.”  Destouches also coined the expression “Les absents ont toujours tort (the absent are always in the wrong)”.  Jeff said to Blandine: “Frederic wears the map of France across his face.  With your blonde hair and blue eyes, not so much.”  Of Polish ancestry, she mentioned being impressed that Gary residents were so open and friendly.  They attended a Baptist service; the pastor, Frederic remarked, “was a young man who could sing like an angel.”  Blandine added: “There was so much warmth and emotion, I was almost crying.” In a humorous exchange Frederic asked, “Is that a reel-to-reel tape recorder you are using?  I did not think they made them like that anymore.”  Jeff replied, “Listen, Frenchie, this very machine was good enough for my Grandpa Vito, so it’s good enough for me.”  I, too, prefer an old-fashioned reel-to-reel.  Blandine and Frederic, Jeff learned, are not married but have been lovers for 15 years and live in separate apartments because they both value their freedom.

I can be pretty dense.  On an elevator I heard a woman tell her friend, in reference to not studying, “I pulled a U yesterday.”  After they got off, I asked the one remaining passenger whether she knew what that meant.  Interpreting the “U” as “you,” she thought the woman meant she did the same thing her friend did, took the day off.

Corey Hagelberg called to thank me for urging him to apply for a teaching position at IUN.  On Facebook he added: “I am reading a textbook for the first time in several years. This time it is one that I will be teaching from. I was just asked to teach "Art Appreciation" at and am very excited for the great opportunity.”

above, Corey Hagelberg; below, Anne Balay

Having worked outside between proofreading her forthcoming book, Anne Balay complained about getting poison ivy on her hand.  Anthropologist Esther Newton wrote this blurb for “Steel Closets: “Too much of current popular culture and academic literature either omits any mention of working class queers, or dismisses them with stereotypes.  [Anne] Balay gets right down to work, letting LGBT steelworkers speak for themselves and bringing to their voices her own coherent, readable perspective.”  One of Newton’s books is an intellectual autobiography titled “Margaret Meade Made Me Gay.”  I must read it.  One chapter deals with how a university can make itself more hospitable to queers.  IU administrators could benefit from it.  Anne wrote: “As I was leaving work today, I heard another of the women dismissed by our institution asked how she felt about the school, and she said ‘I'm like a bird sitting on a branch. I don't care about the branch because, y'know, I've got wings.’ Thank you for this well-timed reminder.”  Both women have so much to give to IU Northwest, if only they had been treated better.

Michael Chirich’s brother-in-law passed the last hurdle toward receiving a PhD degree in theology in Austria.  Over the years I have obtained books for him at the Anthropology Club dollar sale.  Two days a week Michael is charge of prisoners on work release.  They are very well behaved, he reports, because they do not want to be locked up all day and their quarters, eight to a room, are an improvement over the jail.

On a brilliant, sunny autumn afternoon with the temp at 57 degrees I drove by Lake Michigan.  Speedway was selling gas for $3.07 a gallon, lowest in months, if not years. 

In “Kennedy, the Elusive President” Jill Abramson of the NY Times laments the absence of great JFK biographies.  Robert Dallek, author of the best of them (“An Unfinished Life”), told her: “The mass audience has turned Kennedy into a celebrity, so historians are not really impressed by him.  Historians see him more as a celebrity who didn’t accomplish much.”   Abramson praises Norman Mailer’s 1960 Esquire article “Superman Comes to the Supermarket” and William Manchester’s “The Death of the President” as incisive contemporary character studies.

Dave Lane with Kim Hauber and Veronica Garcia

Dave’s East Chicago Central seniors created a popular Haunted House at the school.  Student Denzel Smith wrote: “Tonight was so amazing, and I’m glad the [class of] 2014 pulled it off.  Show them and the rest of the Cardinal family even more love tomorrow night at 6.  It’s really scary!!  Special s/o to David Lane for being a truly all around great guy and for sacrificing his time, money, and sometime sanity for his kids.”

Nicole Anslover’s students were excited about her appearance on “First Ladies.”  She said she didn’t meet her male counterpart until the program started because the producers didn’t want them talking beforehand, thinking it might inhibit what they said on the air.  She said it was neat having a limo meet her at the airport.  During a discussion of student protests, I pointed out that one objective was to get America’s war machine off campus – including ROTC, military and industrial recruiters such as Dow Jones, which made napalm, and an end to fat defense contracts to academic departments and researchers developing, for instance, cluster bombs.

Eating a hamburger in IUN’s cafeteria I heard Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on WIUN.  Nicki French’s version is so much better.  Engineers won all seven points, as all five of us bowled above average.  For Halloween eve Shannon McCann had on a hat whose ears lit up like an elf.  I was saddened to learn that Joe Piunti’s son Ray, a charming guy, was in a car crash and suffered facial injuries.

On Letterman Clive Davis spun interesting stories about Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Lou Reed, and others the music mogul worked with.  After the Avett Brothers did a great number from their new album “Magpie and the Dandelion,” Dave said to them, “I can introduce you to Clive Davis.”

Calumet Heritage Partnership

“A hussle here and a hussle there

New York City’s the place.”

    “Walk on the Wild Side,” Lou Reed

Rock pioneer Lou Reed died at age 71.  A former member of the Velvet Underground and protégé of Andy Warhol, he transformed himself from street smart New Yorker to glitter rocker to punk innovator.  His distinctive voice will live on.

Steve McShane drove me to Pullman, Illinois, for the Calumet Heritage Partnership conference, held in the old Pullman Clock Tower Factory Building.  The place was without heat, and the temp inside was in the 40s, so despite keeping my winter coat on, I never really warmed up.  Even so, I had fun and sat at a table with filmmaker Pat Wisniewski and former student Jack Walter.  The first speaker, Arthur Pearson, was restoring an original Pullman house and was able to learn about the original architectural design and the names and occupations of previous owners from the Pullman Archives.  Next on the agenda,  four authors, including Ken Schoon, discussed how archival resources aided their research.  The neighborhoods examined by Michael Innis-Jimenez, author of “Steel Barrio: The Great Migration to South Chicago,” were similar to the Mexican-American enclaves in Gary and Indiana Harbor during the 1920s.

above, Pullman Clock Tower; below, Hotel Florence at Pullman

Steve chaired my session, entitled “Nodes and Networks,” and he opened with the joke about where Noah kept bees on his ark (in the ark hives).  I talked about starting the Calumet Regional Archives with Ron Cohen after saving records of Gary Neighborhood House.  Panelist John Beckman mentioned salvaging a piece of furniture from the very same abandoned building.  Active 40 years ago in the Calumet Community Congress, he knew several mutual acquaintances, old radicals whom I had met at Staughton Lynd’s Labor Workshop.  Indiana Landmarks representative Tiffany Tolbert asserted that the first books she read upon moving to the Calumet Region were my “City of the Century” and Ken Schoon’s “Calumet Beginnings.”  Diane Banta of the National Park Service twice started sentences with the phrase, “I’m not the smartest person in the room but. . . .”  Did she hone that phrase, I wonder, from frequently interacting with academics?  She has been one of the mainstays in furthering the goals of the Calumet heritage Partnership.

The 20 free copies of my latest Shavings that I brought were gobbled up.  When I did something similar at the last Indiana Association of Historians conference, I had a few left over, much to my surprise.   Waiting in line for lunch (delicious Mexican food), I spotted an old poker buddy, Scottie Marshall, whom I hadn’t seen in several years.  He was at a SOAR (Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees) table passing out buttons reading “Keep It Made In America.”  We chatted about mutual friends, and I was pleased that he had picked up a copy of volume 43.

On the drive back to Indiana I thought of the road trip Steve and I took 20 years ago to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, as consultants to folks launching a Museum of Industry and Technology.  While there we toured the Jacob Leinenkugal Brewing Company and enjoyed several 4-ounce samples of their beer products.

Dave and Tom came over for our first board game session in several weeks.  After enjoying Chinese food, we talked Alissa (down from Michigan) into a game of Acquire with us.  She had played once before with folks who really didn’t understand the rules or strategy but finished second to Tom.  I won Amun Re and Priests of Ra, both by a single point over Dave, who triumphed in St Petersburg.

Due in part to the many commercials during NFL games I finished “Another America: The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It.”  The Reagan administration’s supported the brutal and corrupt Samuel K. Doe after a bloody coup that the CIA may have abetted.   Ronnie once introduced the Liberian head of state by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, Chairman Moe (as in Moe, Larry, and Curley of the Three Stooges)) of Liberia is our visitor here today.”  By alienating most native tribes and living lavishly, Doe was forced to rig the 1985 election that kept him in power until overthrown five years later and tortured and killed.  Former ally Charles Taylor succeeded him after a bloody civil war.  Taylor is now in prison for committing crimes against humanity.

The World Series has been a comedy of errors.  St. Louis won game three due to a wild throw by Boston’s catcher Jarrod Saltamacchia and a rare obstruction call because third baseman Will Middlebrooks, sprawled on the ground, put his legs up to slow down runner Allen Craig.  I’d never seen a play like that.  Last night’s contest ended suddenly when, with St. Louis down two runs and the tying run at the plate rookie Kolten Wong got ignominiously picked off first by pitcher Koji Uehara.

Richard Baker

When the NWI Times reported that the Historian of the Senate spoke at an event sponsored by Purdue North Central, I thought it might be my buddy Don Ritchie.  It turned out to be former Senate historian Dick Baker.  Speaking on the topic “A Body in Motion: The Evolving U. S. Senate,” Baker characterized present relations among lawmakers as “awful” but added: “Relations among senators have always bordered on the frosty.  There is simply too much at stake and differences of opinion are too intense to keep intact.”

Samuel A. Love took the MLK mural prints to Culture Shock, sponsored by ARISE Gary, the final event of our two-month tour of Camilo Vergara’s posters.  The affair was supposed to be at IU Northwest, but some stupid rule prevented venders from bringing in food on campus, so it took place at the Live Arts Studio on the 4700 block of Broadway in Glen Park. 

above, 4700 block of Broadway; below, Anne Balay

Anne Balay participated in the half-marathon at Marquette Park Sunday morning and posted a photo on Facebook that daughter Emma took of her.

I took over Nicole Anslover’s while she was in DC to appear on the C-Span “First Ladies” series speaking about Bess Truman.  Steve went with me to put photos and short video clips on the screen.  I discussed Vietnam, in particular the experiences of veterans interviewed for my Shavings issue – how they got there, their experiences in country, and what lasting effects it had on them.  Because Jay Keck had sent me multiple copies of his book “Poems from the Bogeyman,” I gave them to the students and read “Vietnam Bogeyman,” which begins: “The Vietnam Bogeyman is in my head/ He’ll probably be there until I’m dead.”  Repeating Jim Tolhuizen’s caveat from when he spoke to my class, I said that soldiers’ experiences depended on when they were there, what their function was, and what part of Vietnam they were stationed.  I read to them Tolhuizen’s description of his best friend Paul’s death.  The students had scads of questions, especially about how the draft worked; several shook my hand or told me well done  when class ended.

Nicole Anslover was awesome facing the camera for 90 minutes along with host Susan Swain and historian William Seale.  The show was so seamless one would never have guessed it was live and unrehearsed.  Even with NFL, World Series, and Black Hawks games competing for my attention, I watched the entire 90 minutes without once flipping channels.

I knew when Seattle beat the Rams that I’d finished tied with two others in the football pool.  The tiebreaker was closest to total points scored in Monday’s game.  I had 38, three more than Kathleen Kuti, who is the apparent winner since only 23 points were scored.

 Frederic, Blandine, Jimbo, Jim Fowble

Frederic and Blandine sent me a photo taken when we bowled at Cressmoor Lanes and wrote: “We miss very much our friends from Gary.  It is so strange not to see you.”  It was signed, “Big kisses.”  I really miss them, too, but it nice we’re in close touch.