“Education
is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” William Butler Yeats
The first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature
(in 1923), poet William Butler Yeats composed “The Second Coming” during a time
of widespread disillusionment following World War I. Much quoted during the 1960s, it goes:
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
. . . .
And what rough beast, in its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
According to Anya Kamenetz’s article “Student Course Evaluations
get an ‘F,’” statistics show that difficult graders receive more criticism than
easy instructors. Utilizing evaluations
for tenure and promotion purposes, therefore, discourages rather than encourages
rigorous teaching. Kamenetz wrote: “Say one professor gets ‘satisfatory’ across
the board, while her colleague is polarizing.
Perhaps he’s really great with high performers and not too good with low
performers. Are these two really
equivalent?” Cathy Billinger
commented that Anne Balay was “a hard
teacher but the one I learned the most from.”
The September 2014 issue of Indiana Magazine of History (IMH) contains Elsa F. Kramer’s Letter
to the Editor expressing thanks for publishing an exchange exposing the
hypocrisy of Mitch Daniels, who when governor tried to censor Howard Zinn’s
works from a teacher-training program.
Kramer wrote: “One measure of an
educated mind is a willingness to acknowledge and fairly examine the views of
others.” Kramer includes this quote
from Aristotle: “It is the mark of an
educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” She concluded that the controversy was
less about Zinn’s understanding of history and more about Mitch Daniels’ misunderstanding
of the role of education. On IMH’s editorial board with me are two
other Calumet Region researchers, Katherine Turk, now at University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Paul O’Hara, still at Xavier.
Alissa, with green and blue lollipop
Miranda took a selfie with Les Gold, the Detroit
pawnbroker featured on truTV’s reality series “Hardcore Pawn.” Also on Facebook were pictures of Alissa at a
2014 Grand Valley State “Alumni Reunion” of Overseas Program students that she
planned. Sunday I viewed the first half
of Bears versus Packers (the last 30
minutes weren’t worth seeing, I learned later).
The Hagelbergs took us to Memorial Opera House for a production of the
1971 Neil Simon play, “The Prisoner of Second Avenue.” It wasn’t my cup of tea (non-musicals rarely
are), but I admired co-stars John Sanchez and Pegg Sangerman and enjoyed the
recorded music beforehand and during intermission, including songs by Gordon
Lightfoot, Credence Clearwater Revival, and the Beatles’ “Long and Winding
Road”
In “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” 47 year-old Mel Edison
loses his job and copes poorly with noisy neighbors, faulty air-conditioning,
snobby siblings, and his Manhattan apartment being robbed. Radio news bulletins (i.e., a Polish freighter
rams into the Statue of Liberty) parody the perils of living in “The Big Apple.” In the summer of 1971 a stifling heat wave
and prolonged garbage strike took place in New York City, so Neil Simon was not
off the mark to suggest that tenants like Mel might smell the aroma on the
fourteenth floor.
Kate and Corey Hagelberg joined the four of us at
Popolano’s Italian Restaurant in Chesterton.
The weather was perfect for dining outside, where singer-guitarist Mike
Bruccoleri was skillfully performing mainly Fifties hits for the silver-haired
customers – several Elvis and Everly Brothers numbers and, my favorite,
“Silhouettes,” a 1957 doo-wop tune by the Rays.
Cover versions by the Diamonds and Herman’s Hermits subsequently made the
Billboard charts. Bruccoleri has played with Peter Noone’s
Herman’s Hermits and recently performed a set with Buckingham guitarist Bob
Abrams. While the best-known Hermits song is the silly, “I’m Henry the Eighth,
I Am,” “I’m Into Something Good” is first rate. When I saw Herman’s Hermits at the Star Plaza,
the Buckinghams were also on the bill.
A Carole Carlson Post-Trib
feature on Gary’s City Methodist Church made use of my account (in “Gary’s
First Hundred Years”) of its construction 90 years ago. A shrewd fundraiser, Reverend
William Graham Seaman persuaded U.S, Steel to donate $385,000 for a
state-of-the-art Skinner organ. An integrationist
who, in Carlson’s words, “dreamed of an
interracial church where black and white parishioners shared church pews,”
Seaman proved too liberal for his patrician congregation and in 1929 got shuffled
off to a small parish in Ohio. His
ashes, however, are in the church sanctuary.
Seaman Hall adjacent to the worship area was once home to IUN’s predecessor,
the IU “Gary Extension,” whose faculty included the unforgettable Bill Neil,
Les Singer, and George Thoma.
Parisian filmmakers Blandine Huk and Frederic Cousseau
got together with Jonathyne Briggs and Jamie.
Because Jon frequently does research in France on that country’s punk
scene, I introduced them last year, and they exchanged email addresses. Blandine wrote: “They are really nice people. We
spent a good time together.”
Back at Valpo University for Heath Carter’s race-relations
seminar, I passed around James Madison’s “Hoosiers,” pointing out a photo of a
dapper Mayor Hatcher, just 34 at the time of his first election. I stated that white flight began pre-1967
when federal law mandated that black students be bussed to schools citywide. Gary was no Shangri la before then, with
ethnic gangs prominent and wide-open prostitution flourishing in the “Red Light
District” along Washington Street. I showed
them my Alex Karras Traces article and
told about his throwing food onto the floor during the 1950s when a Miller
restaurant refused to serve his African-American friend and fellow Iowa Hawkeye
teammate Earl Smith. A student expressed
surprise that Karras, the best NFL player not in its Hall of Fame, played Mongo,
the dimwit who punches a horse in “Blazing Saddles.”
Students reported on Shavings
stories about Region race relations during the 1960s. The only black people some suburban kids knew
were maids or rivals in athletic competitions.
African Americans were becoming more outspoken during the 1960s; that’s
what scared white bigots, as well as , bluntly pout, fear that their daughters
might marry one. Gary did not experience a race riot, ubiquitous during that
turbulent decade, in large part due to Hatcher being elected. There would have been one, I told the class,
had the Lake County Democratic machine managed to steal the 1967 contest.
Heath Carter examined what Hatcher meant by referring to
Gary as like a colony. A former
Chicagoan, he compared white opposition to Hatcher to what Walter Washington
experienced. He cringes when neighbors
say he must be relieved to be in Valparaiso, whose motto is “Where Living Is
Better.” Better than what, I
wondered. The implication is pretty
clear. Carter, very comfortable and popular,
invited students (and me!) to his house for dinner in a couple weeks. Would a 12-pack be welcome? Probably not, but maybe I’ll ask. Most students appear to be right around 21. The only black student in the class is from
Gary, and her mother has taken several classes with IUN Minority Studies
professor Earl Jones. Next spring Carter
is taking 50 students to Selma with stops in places like Memphis in connection
with events commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery
March.
Time ran out before I could read this quote from Gary
community activist Jean Thurman, a dear friend who was married to radical
lumberjack and poker buddy Fred Gaboury:
“We didn’t push the white
people out. They decided on their own
that they wanted to go. I remember
hearing people saying on talk shows that they were moving because they couldn’t
raise their children in a city where the mayor was black. This was disheartening.
I really don’t think Mayor
Hatcher expected that. You know, we can
talk about how awful racism is but you never really want to believe it. You want to think that, deep down, people are
decent. That came as a rude
awakening. He didn’t even get a chance
to get in office before people were getting ready to leave.”
During the final 30 minutes VU political scientist Larry
Baas (above, moonlighting) discussed an ongoing project of his Community Research and Service Center
to document bias motivated incidents, such as cross burnings and swastika
vandalism since 1999 in Valparaiso and throughout Northwest Indiana. Lacking a Hate Crime statute, local police until
recently didn’t aggressively investigate these incidents or keep records of
complaints. Baas has done research about
drug addiction in the Region, and frequently speaks to local groups, where, he
joked, some have nicknamed him “Bad News
Baas.” Larry definitely is someone
I’d like to know better.
I walked around campus for a bit, taking in the
atmosphere. I’ve been “slouching towards Valparaiso,” as
William Butler Yeats and Joan Didion might say, shopping at Best Buy and
Penney’s, attending movies at Cinemark, and eating at downtown restaurants
after plays at Memorial Opera House.
James and Becca have performed at VU’s chapel, where a steady stream of
residents were heading for some sort of service. Nearby three young men were speaking in
Arabic. I wondered if they and other
international students (of which VU apparently has many – it’s a moneymaker)
feel comfortable venturing into downtown, away from the shelter of the
university.
Going into Monday night’s game between New England and
Kansas City, all I needed in my Fantasy match against Garrett Okomski was for
QB Tom Brady to earn me 5 more points than the Patriots kicker. Barring an injury, it seemed a cinch, only
Brady had a horrid game, with a fumble and two interceptions. I barely
won by a single point – too close for comfort.
Brady’s back-up with a few minutes to go engineered a TD drive. Had New England kicked a field goal instead, I’d
be 0-4 now instead of 1-3. Ten years ago,
Chiefs coach Andy Reid was with the Eagles, who with Donovan McNabb at
quarterback, made a Superbowl appearance against Brady and Coach Bill Belichick. New England won 24-21, their third
championship in four years, but last night Reid got his revenge.
below, first ore boat arrives at Bethlehem Steel; by David Mergl
For years Archives volunteer David Mergl provided
drawings touting safety procedures for area steel mills, in addition to duties
as a photographer. He has compiled several
bound volumes, in addition to hundreds of photos documenting steelmaking, including
Bethlehem Steel’s Burns Harbor facilities in is infancy.
