“You can call me
the breeze
I keep blowing down
the road
I ain’t got nobody
I ain’t carrin’ me
a load.”
J.J. Cale, “Call Me the Breeze”
Terri Hemmert on
WXRT played J.J. Cale’s “Call Me the Breeze” at noontime and announced that Eric
Clapton was planning a tribute album of Cale’s songs. Clapton has covered “Cocaine” and “After
Midnight” by the country blues and rockabilly giant, who died in July of 2013
at age 75. Among those who have recorded
“Call Me the Breeze” are John Mayer and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
At IUN yesterday
Indiana governor Mike Pence provided details of his Medicaid alternative,
Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0. He opposed
Obamacare while in Congress but hopes to obtain $17 billion in federal support
for the 450,000 able-bodied Hoosiers without medical insurance. There’s nothing wrong with states being
laboratories to test practical alternatives to providing health care for the
poor, and it is nice to see a trace of pragmatism in the probable future presidential
candidate. State Representative Charlie
Brown introduced Pence, who said: “This
is an exciting and dynamic campus. With
the medical school and all that’s happening here and the Redhawks, there is
great leadership at IU Northwest.” Could
he have been referring to basketball’s Lady Redhawks, who have excelled under
Coach Ryan Shelton?
According to NWI Times reporter Vanessa Renderman, IUN Chancellor William J. Lowe concluded, "Presentations like we've had today both enable citizen engagement
with critical public policy questions and make the health care leaders of
tomorrow more aware of and better prepared for health care needs, challenges
and opportunities.”
Eric Shinseki
resigned in the wake of the Veterans Affairs crisis after firing the top
administrators at Phoenix medical center, where a waiting list was kept hidden
so managers would receive bonuses.
Before forced out during a face-to-face meeting with President Obama,
Shinseki lamented “a systemic, totally
unacceptable lack of integrity” within the VA.
Vietnam veteran Jay
Keck, the self-proclaimed “Vietnam Boogieman,” composed “DAMN WAR” in May 2009,
while attending what he labeled the “Marion, IN, V.A. hell hole.” It starts
pessimistically but ends hopefully:
DAMN WAR TORE A HOLE IN MY HEART
DAMN WAR NEVER COULD GET A FRESH START
. . . .
DAMN WAR BACK IN THE 1960’S THEY
SANG “EVE OF DESTRUCTION”
DAMN WAR IN 2009 WE WILL REJOICE AND
BEGIN RECONSTRUCTION
PS. AND HOLD ON TIGHT TO YOUR DREAMS
SEE YA PFC. JAY E. KECK
GOTTA BOOGIE
THE VIETNAM BOOGIEMAN
WAS HERE
Jerome Ezell
thanked me for mentioning his deceased mother, Corrine Joshua, in my latest Shavings. He sent copies to sister Geraldine and several
grandchildren. A prize student, Corrine
supported her family by cleaning houses in Miller, including that of Chancellor
Hilda Richards, who had no idea she attended IUN.
Laurie Shields (l) and Tish Sommers
The March 2014 Journal of American History contains Lisa
Levinstein’s “’Don’t Agonize, Organize!’: The Displaced Homemakers Campaign and
the Contested Goals of Postwar Feminism.”
Its leader Tish Sommers, gravitated to feminism during the late 1960s
after years of leftwing activism.
Joining the Berkeley chapter of NOW, she eventually became national
chair of its Task Force on Older Women and labored for public policies
recognizing the economic value of housework.
Disappointed by NOW’s tepid support, Sommers and Laurie Shields formed
the Older Women’s League.
Fellow Republican
James Watson thought Teddy Roosevelt too impetuous and agreed with Senator
“Dollar” Mark Hanna that it was a mistake in 1900 to have him be William
McKinley’s running mate. After an
assassin’s bullet put “that damned cowboy” – Hanna’s phrase – in the White
House, Watson hoped that Hanna would challenge TR for the 2004 nomination, but
the Ohio Senator fell ill and died before the Republican convention. Among TR’s sins, in Watson’s view, were lack
of respect for the Constitution during the anthracite coal strike and lack of
deference toward Congressional prerogatives.
Contrasting TR’s policies toward industrial giants Standard Oil and
United States Steel, headed by his good friend Elbert H. Gary, Watson wrote in
“As I Knew Them”: “Teddy was vigorously
in favor of those he liked and who stood by him and violently opposed to those he
disliked and who defied him.”
Patricia P. Buckler’s
final chapter in “Bloody Italy: Essays on Crime Writing in Italian Settings” is
“Michael Dibden’s Peripatetic and Puzzling Aurelio Zen.” Appearing in eleven of Dibden’s
anti-formulaic crime novels, Zen, according to Buckler, is a “very human police detective who can be, by
turns, whimsical, loving, erratic, sad, unethical, and, too often, clueless as
he negotiates, usually alone, the dangerous sliver of territory among corrupt
officials, the invidious rich, and murderous organizations.” Now that I’ve completed Buckler’s excellent
book - inscribed “To Jim, for our shared
values” - I’m passing it on to Chancellor Lowe along with a note pointing
out that Buckler, like Balay, was a victim of misogynistic treatment by those
who clearly poisoned IUN’s tenure and promotion process.
My letter stated: “The recent disparity between the fate of
male and female tenure and promotion candidates has been nothing short of
scandalous and is precipitating a nascent revolt against the ‘old boy’ network
of operations (witness the recent challenges to those seeking re-election to
Faculty Org positions) that sadly may be too late to retain the services of two
sterling teachers and scholars. For a year, whenever I have spoken out against
the unjust treatment of Balay, who received neither mentoring not adequate
warning about her alleged teaching deficiencies, I was told to let the process
play itself out. Well, even though the
Faculty Board of Review recommended an extra year severance pay, this has not
happened. Neither has Balay received an
answer to her final appeal to IU President McRobbie. An obvious compromise would have been to
transfer Balay to Women and Gender Studies (now gutted with the departure of
Balay and Buckler) for an extra probationary year and have Associate Executive
Vice Chancellor Cynthia O’Dell and CISTL director Chris Young mentor her. Maybe this is still possible. How tragic (and embarrassing for IU
Northwest) that instead of celebrating the publication of ‘Steel Closets’ and
‘Bloody Italy,’ we are allowing Anne and Pat’s detractors to rid the university
of two of its most valuable faculty. In
two weeks, in order to support herself, Balay will start an apprentice program
at a truck driving institute, a bleak fate for one who gave so much of herself
to an institution I dearly love.”
Anne appeared on
WBEZ with narrator Jan Gentry and interviewer Michael Puente. I listened to the 12-minute segment by
computer. Jan kept quiet about her
sexuality on the job but sometimes would run into a co-worker at a gay
bar. She had fewer problems with male
steelworkers, who treated her basically as one of the guys, than with women,
who tended to gossip and spread rumors about her. One asked her if she were a lesbian. “Does it matter?” Jan responded. The co-worker said, “No, I’m sorry I
asked.” After that, they became friends.
Secretary Dorothy
Mokry told me that former Arts and Sciences dean John Kroepfl attended the
farewell party for Dorothy Greer and Diane Robinson. She was wearing a French Lick shirt. She and her friends started going there
rather than an outdoor music fest in Memphis because the weather in Tennessee was
so bad in May. Once Hall and Oates were
barely into their set when everyone was ordered to leave due to a tornado
warning. The first time I was in French
Lick – for a FACET retreat – there was a fierce thunderstorm and tornado
warnings.
At the student art
show in Savannah Gallery guitarist Red Woodville, who performed when Ron Cohen
spoke about Woody Guthrie, teamed with Seamus McColly. Jesse Johnson, whom I met at a Brother 2
Brother banquet, had several pieces on display.
Katherine VanDrie and Cathy Freeman, whom I knew from Nicole Anslover’s Sixties
course, received the top awards. VanDrie
used wallpaper as background for a photo collage. Third prize went to Richard Contreras, no
relation to Raoul, but he has taken courses with him. Impressive sculptures by Seamus and Macrina
Lopez won no awards. One of Macrina’s friends recognized me from Anne Balay’s “Steel Closets” party. I told her Anne
was entering an intern program to learn to drive large trucks, and we both
lamented her treatment by the university.
Lee Botts and Pat
Wisniewski showed an eight-minute trailer of t “Shifting Sands,” about the
history of Lake Michigan’s southern shore and and present sustainable efforts
to preserve and improve its fragile environment. I arrived at 6:50 to find the two of them and
Ken Schoon waiting for someone to let them into the Gardner Center. Within 15 minutes about 50 people showed up,
including Dorreen Carey, who, like me, appeared in the 8-minute clip, as did
Botts herself, geologist Mark Reshkin, and Save the Dunes founders Sylvia Troy
and Charlotte Reed. I discussed heavy
industry coming to the Region while Dorreen spoke about the Grand Calumet Task
Force. Among the suggestions afterwards
was George Rogge’s idea of zooming in on the area like Google maps can do
starting with a view of Earth from space. I asked whether the finished product will
include mention of the Bailly anti-nuclear fight (yes) and reiterated that
public pressure is vital in getting corporations to behave. Still passionate at age 86, Botts said that
things are improving but the pace of change could be faster.
The Blackhawks won
game six to tie their series with Los Angeles.
They went ahead 2-1, fell behind 3-2, and scored the final two goals,
including a thing of beauty by Patrick Kane.
