“Got no food in the kitchen
I can’t afford the rent
I had some money yesterday
I don’t know where it went.”
Willie Nile, “Hard
Times in America”
The 2015 Imagine concert series lineup at
Memorial Opera House in Valpo will include Willie Nile, a folk rocker from
Buffalo, New York, who moved to Greenwich Village in 1971 and hung out both at
CBGB’s (to hear Television, Patti Smith and the Ramones) and Kenny’s Castaway
on Bleeker Street. His best songs, such
as “One Guitar,” stress the need for peaceful protest against economic and
racial injustice. Another verse from
“Hard Times in America goes:
“They
say it’s getting better
But those of you in this house
You know as well as I do
That’s just a load of crap.”
Last week the Smithereens played to a
sellout crowd at the Opera House. Other
2015 bookings include Bottle Rockets and Roger McGuinn. I was disappointed the Shoes aren’t making an
encore performance.
Beulah Bondi in "Wagon Train," 1961
In 1896 seven year-old Valparaiso native
Beulah Bondi performed the title role of “Little Lord Fauntleroy” on the
Memorial Opera House stage. The VU grad had a memorable stage, movie, and
television career. Four times she played
the mother of James Stewart, most notably in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and
“It’s a Wonderful Life.” The
white-haired grand dame appeared in episodes of “Wagon train” and “The
Waltons.” She died at age 91 from
complications after tripping over her cat.
Other notables who performed at the Opera House were John Philip Sousa
in 1898 and the Marx Brothers in 1919.
photo by Jerry Davich
In The Price of Inequality
Gary-born economist Joseph Stiglitz fears that America is becoming a society of
haves in gated communities and have-nots who “live in a world marked by insecurity.” He wrote:
“At the bottom are
millions of young people alienated and without hope. I have seen that picture
in many developing countries; economists have given it a name, a dual economy,
two societies living side by side, but hardly knowing each other, hardly
imagining what life is like for the other. Whether we will fall to the depths
of some countries, where the gates grow higher and the societies split farther
and farther apart, I do not know. It is, however, the nightmare towards which
we are slowly marching.”
Riots have resumed in Ferguson, Missouri,
after a grand jury failed to indict the cop who killed Michael Brown. County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, whom critics
charged with being in bed with the police rather than building a case against
Officer Darren Wilson, made the announcement at the worst possible time, after
dark. Rather than employing the National
Guard at appropriate spots, police presence was inadequate to stop looting and
arson. Angry protestors flipped over
police cars, setting some on fire.
Demonstrations broke out from coast to coast, most peaceful but
sometimes accompanied by the blocking of traffic.
A New York Times editorial noted: “President Barack Obama was on the
mark last night when he said, ‘We need to recognize that this is not just an
issue for Ferguson, this is an issue for America.’ The rioting that scarred the
streets of St. Louis County — and the outrage that continues to reverberate
across the country — underlines this inescapable point. It shows once again
that distrust of law enforcement presents a grave danger to the civic fabric of
the United States.”
In the Post-Trib
Jerry Davich wrote, “I kept staring at
the first police car set afire in Ferguson, Missouri. . . . I couldn’t take my eyes off the roiling
inferno in a city I never knew existed until three months ago. The live video
feed showed what most Americans expected to see after the grand jury findings
were announced.” Sadly, his readers
seemed divided along racial lines on whether Michael Brown’s killer was
culpable or just doing his duty.
Writing in New York Review of
Books about Kwame Anthony Appiah's "Lines of Descent: W.E.B. Du Bois
and the Emergence of Identity," Nicholas Lemann reiterated the importance
of the two years Du Bois spent studying in Germany. Supposedly the idea
for "Souls" came from philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder and the
concept of "double consciousness" from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
His mustache and goatee emulated Kaiser Wilhelm's and his dandified
manner and dress the German academicians of that time, who were analyzing themes
that became Du Bois' life's work: nationalism, race, folklore, culture, and
community, as well as the role of intellectuals in society and the contours of
the welfare state. Noting his considerable character flaws, Leman added: "He led a life of feuds, firings,
resignations, and ruptures. He wasn't an easy man.” Too bad Du
Bois couldn't find common ground with black leaders whose views differed from
his.
Ray Smock, who recently published a biography of Booker T.
Washington, agreed that Dubois could be an obnoxious snob. He wrote:
“Nobody
ever said great men have to be great guys to have a beer with. Du Bois’ saving grace, as far as history is
concerned, is that he made an important transition from pure academic to public
intellectual, to protest against Jim Crow. Booker T. stayed an educator,
a political boss, but never made the transition to public protest, which was
needed. I like them both for who they were. Neither of them was able to
undo Jim Crow, but they both tried, each in his own way. Since Du Bois lived 50
years beyond Booker T., he was a survivor as far as history was concerned,
leaving Booker T. in the past as an Uncle Tom.”
Lemann’s W.E.B. Du Bois essay mentions the protests in
Ferguson, which have been ongoing since Michael Brown’s death on August 9. The
shooting provides, he wrote, “a vivid
example of the continuing need for a politics of protest of the kind that
W.E.B. Du Bois engaged in his whole life.”
above, Joe Gutierrez; below, brother Mike in Vietnam
Joe Gutierrez wrote a guest NWI Times column about the government’s seeming indifference to his
brother Mike’s health problems. Exposed
to Agent Orange while a medic in Vietnam, in 1987, he was diagnosed with stage
4 squamous cell cancers. Mike has had
numerous operations and by 2009, Joe wrote, “could no longer eat or drink.
He survives by nourishment from a tube inserted into his stomach. But few are
aware of his condition, because he doesn’t let on.” Still the government has
turned a deaf ear to his disability requests.
Willie and Beverly Jackson
SALT columnist Jeff Manes profiled retired
Inland steelworker Willie Jackson. Married
39 years, Jackson proudly announced that all five of his and Beverly’s children
are college graduates. Jackson grew up
in Gary’s Small Farms neighborhood, a nice place to live until the Kangaroo
gang moved in. At Calumet High he played
basketball for legendary coach Chris Traicoff.
In 1969, Jackson’s senior year, he was sixth man on a team that went
18-3. Having worked in the coke plant, Jackson
stressed its injurious environment, telling Manes:
“It wasn’t
just the fatalities that happened in the mill.
It was the cancer. Kunnie,
Weasel, O’Connor, Willie Holland had to retire because of the cancer. [They’re all] gone now. For years, we didn’t wear respirators. Guys would heat up their
lunches wrapped in aluminum foil on the coke oven doors with that yellow toxic
gas just floating around their food. We washed our tools with benzene. I’m
thankful I got out in one piece.”
The Jacksons live in Hobart near Maria
Reiner Center. Willie told Jeff: “I do the treadmills, lift weights,
shoot baskets and play chess. Me and Beverly took Spanish lessons there. We did
Zumba, too. It costs $25 a year for seniors who are residents.”
Claiming that he tried not to run up the
score against Savannah State en route to a 87-26 victory, Louisville coach Rick
Pitino explained: “I tried everything.
We played four white guys and an Egyptian.”
Visiting the Archives this week were VU
students Christina Crawley (researching Roosevelt School) and Tori Binelli (examining
the Valparaiso Builders Association papers).
New neighbor George and his sister
stopped in for a drink, and I showed them our finished basement. He is expecting 11 guests for Thanksgiving,
as are we. They were surprised the layout of our condo is so different from
his.
Against a team of 200+ bowlers that were
short a man, I struck the first two frames and we were holding our own. Near the end of the fifth frame, at the last
possible moment, Jason Schieffer, the best bowler in the Region, who wasn’t on
their eight-man roster, replaced the blind and proceeded to roll games of 258,
259, and 275 – taking all the fun out of the competition. It was legal but not very ethical. Marv, the only friendly opponent, had on a
Tuskegee Airmen jacket and said he flew one of the two planes that participated
in the dedication of the Aquatorium statue a few weeks ago.
I finally got to give Duke the photo I
took of him with Kalene Runions and Kerry Smith a Camelot Lanes. He told me that before he left hat day he
gave Kalene raffle tickets he had bought, and she won $96.
