“It was rainy and it was
cold and that was 15 years ago. They
brought you from California – a new name to make in a new place. People never know what they’re getting
into. They never think their past will
follow them. But we all do wrong
sometimes, don’t we girl – don’t we girl?
And they all said, ‘a little baby boy is born.’” “Almost Persuaded,” Hollis Donald
IUN poet laureate
Hollis Donald, a Gary Roosevelt grad, composed this funeral eulogy, “Almost
Persuaded,” on November 1, 2014:
“Where do you stand, where
do you stand Superman?”
A king on a throne, don’t
need to do wrong, now do you know where you belong?
And if love is shown, all
is known, and a baby is grown on its own
And if love is shown, all
is known, and a baby is grown on its own
“Where do you stand, where
do you stand Superman?”
There was a time and you
knew it, when it all came to you,
That life was put on your
shoulders.
Deep inside was the call of
man and the responsibility
Of the mission of your life
was yours to understand.
There was a fork in the
road, a choice to be made. Which way did
you chose?
It seems like it was just
yesterday we talked.
“When you think you’re
right, you’re wrong – Think you’re big, you’re so small.”
Today we think back over
your life filled with strife!
You and your gun and knife
didn’t mind taking a life,
What’s more, today life has
taken yours.
A fate we tried to avoid by
telling you the trouble you needed to avoid.
Today, in a bed in a box,
you lay slain in the place where you gave your heart.
It’s so sad we can no
longer hear the sound of your voice.
A fate we tried to avoid by
telling you the trouble you needed to avoid.
All we can say, as we look
back over this day that’s ended,
As we think back over your
life, a life of strife,
The many times we
pretended, but you never really meant to change anything:
“You were almost persuaded.”
At Miller Bakery
Café Anne Balay and I both of us ordered steak salads. She’s been traveling all over the East Coast
and Midwest, so I hadn’t seen her in quite a while. Nobody has ever been more deserving of tenure
and promotion than Anne. In the two
years I argued her case on my blog, were any administrators, I wonder, almost
persuaded? It might have been different if they weren’t
all men or if Anne weren’t am open lesbian.
Forced to put her house up for sale, Anne is working on articles about
transgender truck drivers and women boxers.
I told her that George Rogge manages “Merciless” Mary McGee.
Also having lunch were
recently retired Steve Spicer and skilled fiber artist Marianita Porterfield,
who as always, asked about the family. Sporting
a black eye from a recent cataract procedure, Marianita assured me that her
husband (WBBM TV anchor Harry Porterfield) didn’t do it. Harry should profile Anne on his “Someone You
Should Know” segment. My guess is that
Steve and Marianita were planning an upcoming Gardner Center event. I’ve almost persuaded Spicer to become an
acquisitions liaison for the Archives, starting with a collection about his
beloved late wife Cara.
I finally got
around to checking out the Valparaiso U. Welcome Project. Categories range from ethnicity, sports, and
Greek life to gender, sexual orientation, and transgender (for which there were
three entires). The featured story, “I
Just Can’t Pick,” was by a bisexual woman who recalled as a kid thinking, “some Disney princesses were absolutely
beautiful, but the princes were really cute, too.” Her mother, worried about what others might
think, asked why she couldn’t date just men.
The author claimed straight people were more understanding than gays,
who were often condescending, believing bisexuals to be in denial or afraid to
admit they were queer.
Peter Aglinskas is
hosting a Film Noir series at the
Brauer Museum at VU. The last
presentation was “Murder, My Sweet” (1944).
Next up: “The Big Combo” (1955), which features Cornel Wilde as a police
detective on the trail of a crime boss played by Richard Conte. Character actor Lee Van Cleef is a hoot as
Fante, a gay gangster. Director Joseph H. Lewis, best known for “Gun Crazy”
(1949), and cinematographer John Alton created an eerie mood. As critic Ed Gonzalea wrote: “Shadows and lies are the stars of ‘The Big
Combo,’ a spellbinding black-and-white chiaroscuro with the segmented texture
of a spider’s web.”
Electrical Engineers
took 5 points from Bobby McCann’s team and came within 8 pins of winning all
three games. Opponent John Kell finally
mastered the hook his new ball produces and bowled well over average. Melvin Nelson, on fire, finished with a 554
series. When I told Melvie that it had
been snowing at the university, John Kell joked, “Are you still in school?” I
told sports reporter Steve Gorches that I missed him at the East Chicago – Thea
Bowman game, but he recently left the Times
and now works for the Michigan City
News-Dispatch. I talked Big Ten
basketball with Bob Robinson, like other original Engineers a Purdue fan happy
that the Boilermakers swept their series with IU. He recently visited Haiti and Jamaica on a Caribbean
voyage but only saw enclaves owned by the cruise company.
Lake effect snow
covered the Corolla after bowling, and slippery roads delayed my ride home by
40 minutes. The sun was out Thursday
morning when I headed for school, but a sign on 80/94 alerted me to a crash
near Mile 11, so I got off at Portage.
On Route 12 I ran into near whiteout conditions before reaching I-65. A long line of trucks clogged the ramp
leading to 80/94, so I drove to the next exit and took Ridge Road to an
unplowed Madison Street that led to IUN’s lot.
Jonathyne Briggs
invited me to his class on the effect of the American counter-culture on
European youth and, in turn, the influence of British bands on youth culture
worldwide. Even in the Soviet Union, for
example, young people were discussing the Beatles’ “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band” album. Jonathyne
pointed out that he’d learned from me that the first Beatles records sold in
America were on a locally owned label (Vee-Jay, founded by Gary’s own Vivian Carter). I found out about Teddy Boys (rowdy English
teens who loved rock and roll, which they called “beat music” and heard on
pirate stations at sea. Conservative
leaders in power in France (Charles DeGaulle), Germany (Konrad Adenauer), and
Great Britain (Edward Heath) looked askance at counter-culture manifestations
as a threat to public order.
Briggs explained that
what people regard as “The Sixties” didn’t start until after the death of JFK and
the rise of Beatlemania. For me, 1967
was a pivotal year. A Maryland grad
student, I recall gawking at a poster in the teaching assistants’ room
advertising a Human Be-In and “Gathering of the Tribes” at San Francisco’s Golden
Gate Park. That led to the rise of
psychedelic (acid) rock and the media fixation on Hippies, many of whom
attended the Monterrey Pop festival and (like me) the March on the
Pentagon.
New Republic reprinted Graham Greene’s account of traveling
from Mexico to Cuba in November 1963.
The author of the brilliant satire “Our Man in Havana (1958) noted that “the delay at the airport is prolonged
beyond the limits of plausibility.”
In Mexico passengers were photographed as if they were subversives. Greene assumed it was the work of the
FBI. He added, tongue-in-cheek: “I was
lucky when I returned; I was cleared in a mere two and a half hours (the
passenger list numbered 60). Every book
that comes out of Havana is closely regarded – even my “Pickwick Papers” (by
Charles Dickens) – and on a counter the
pile of confiscated material rose to a height of two feet.”
Steve McShane’s
next class is on immigration to the Calumet Region and the 1919 Steel Strike. I’ll speak briefly about Paul P. Glaser, a
Russian Jew. Both push and pull factors,
primarily economic, caused a floodtide of newcomers to enter America early in
the twentieth century. Some Russians
were escaping pogroms similar to modern ethnic cleansing, but in Glaser’s case
the reason was political. In 1905 he
took part in a failed revolt against Czar Nicholas II and, sentenced to prison
in Siberia, fled to England and then America.
After receiving a
law degree from DePaul, Glaser opened a private practice in Gary in 1909 and
became an American citizen four years later.
During World War I Glaser served on local Red Cross and Liberty Bond
committees; after the Armistice he became disillusioned with President Woodrow
Wilson’s hostility toward the Soviet Union and American workers. During the 1919 Steel Strike he served as
attorney for the union workers. After
federal troops arrived to crush the strike, Glaser was interrogated relentlessly
for 24 hours while government agents ransacked his home, then claimed he was a
Red because they found books on socialism. Glaser’s troubles did not end with the failure
of the strike; he became a victim of the Red Scare, a plot by reactionaries to
persecute labor organizers and alleged radicals. A judge stripped him of his citizenship,
claiming he could not in good faith have pledged an oath to support the
Constitution. It took ten years of appeals
to regain his citizenship. Meanwhile,
the Gary Bar Association prohibited Glaser from practicing law, citing a
statute that required attorneys to be U.S. citizens. Daughter Marguerite and son-in-law Albert
Block took over his practice; ironically, Marguerite was later elected
president of the Gary Bar Association.
Meyer Adelman (standing) with attorneys Lester Collins and Paul P. Glaser (right)
Searching the
Internet for a photo of Paul P. Glaser, I found one of a CIO lawyer dated
1948. Since Glaser died seven years
previously, it must be his son, representing labor leader Meyer Adelman, who
was sentenced to 240 days in jail for defying a court order to end a sitdown
strike against Fansteel Corporation in Waukegan, Illinois.
On “Final Jeopardy”
only contestant knew what author took exception to the title of a 2004 Michael
Moore documentary. The answer was Ray
Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451,” who objected to Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911,”
chronicling Bush administration machinations after the September 11 attack on
the World Trade Center to push the country into war with Iraq instead of
focusing on the actual culprits, mainly Saudis.
R.I.P. Leonard
Nimoy, dead at 83, best known as Mr. Spock of “Star Trek.” Saying goodbye on
Facebook were Jerry Pierce, Beamer Pickert, Samuel A. Love, Jerry Davich, Sarah
McColly Weaver, and others. Steve Spicer
lamented: “One of the greats of American
TV is gone to another dimension in the space-time continuum.” Charles Halberstadt said, “I just want to watch Spock all day and
cry. Live long and prosper.”
