“It is the
responsibility of all Americans -- of every faith -- to reject discrimination.
It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this
country. It’s our responsibility to reject proposals that Muslim Americans
should somehow be treated differently. Because when we travel down that road,
we lose.” Barack Obama, Address to Nation, December 6, 2015
Sadly but predictably, no Republican endorsed the
President’s sensible statement. When
columnist Jeff Manes argued for taking in Muslim as well as Christian refugees,
he wrote, “Let the hate mail begin.” He interviewed Tony Burrell, director of the
Chicagoland Immigrant Welcome Network, a faith-based organization that connects
refugees with churches willing to provide help for them. Burrell, who lives in Munster, told Manes:
The Refugee Resettlement Program
has been around for decades. Since the 1970s, we've resettled more than 3
million refugees into this country. Not one of them has ever committed a terrorist
act — zero. Our government highly vets
them despite what some people are saying.
None of the 9/11 terrorists [who came in as tourists] or the brothers
behind the Boston Marathon bombings went through the refugee program. Is the system perfect? No. But it's not
Obama's system. In fact, it was thoroughly revamped after 9/11 under George W.
Bush. People like the 33 governors who say Syrian refugees are not welcome in
their respective states are politically posturing and not very well informed.
We no longer subscribe to the Post-Trib because its parent Tribune Company evidently fired all
its deliverers and attempted to use NWI
Times deliverers. Some rebelled or
quit. The upshot was that we got no
paper for weeks. Thankfully Manes posts SALT columns on Facebook and wrote this
about his own ethnic background:
I'm second-generation Italian. You
go back far enough, Albanian. My people grew rocks. But the Turks were
slaughtering them so the Manes family and six other families sailed around the
boot of Italy (purposely taking the long way around the barn fearing they would
be followed) and settled on a mountain they named Falconara in Calabria. For
500 years, they lived in Italy. In 1910, at the age of 10, my grandfather, Vito
Manes, came to Ellis Island, then Chicago, and eventually hacked it out in Lake
Village during the Great Depression.
Irma Miranda-Anaya came across my blog while seeking
information about Jeff Manes’ new book.
She compared my entries to letters written in days of old. Referencing Henry David Thoreau (come to the
end only to discover one hasn’t even begun to live) and Jerry Garcia (what a
long strange trip it’s been), she wrote: “As I see my life go through its own
metamorphosis, your blog shows me how important each and every day is. I
work hard but truly can say that I live harder. I’m fortunate to still have my
parents and, true of many Hispanics, fortunate to have lots of relatives.” Irma is married to Juan Anaya, a mentor to Dave
when he started teaching at East Chicago Central. I was on Juan’s Indiana State PhD
dissertation committee. I wrote back:
“It's so nice to hear from you. From time to time I ask Dave what he's
heard about Juan, and I thought of him during a recent trip to Terre Haute. I
recently wrote about community organizer Richard Morrisroe, who I recall
meeting at your home. I'd love to see you all some time.”
Connections
magazine contains an article Steve McShane and I wrote about the
Calumet Regional Archives. Part one,
Steve’s contribution, started off:
Established in
1973 at Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Indiana, the Calumet Regional
Archives (CRA) pursues a tripartite mission to collect, preserve, and make
available records from organizations and individuals documenting the history of
Indiana’s Calumet region for use by students, scholars, and the general public.
I wrote part two, titled “The Michael and Susanna Guba
Family of Gary, Indiana,” making use of a 46-page manuscript by four Guba
daughters that described life at 1310 Buchanan Street between the two world
wars. Calling the memoir a “treasure trove for understanding the tight
primary bonds that existed within working-class immigrant families,” I
noted that daughter Marion, born in 1922, remembered one Buchanan Street neighbor,
Mrs. Danielovich, giving the girls homemade root beer and baloney and letting
them look at her newspaper funny pages.
When Mrs. Ellis, confined to a wheelchair, needed an item at the store,
according to Marion, “she’d open a window
and holler and we’d come running.” I
was hoping to see on the magazine cover a family photo we provided, but instead
the editors went with a Ku Klux Klan statue on a pedestal inscribed with the
initials KIGY, evidently meaning “Klansmen
I Greet You.”
above, Albion Fellows Bacon; below, Flossie Bailey
On the back cover of the Indiana Historical Society publication
was an ad for “Indiana’s 200.” I learned about Albion Fellows Bacon, whom
Robert G. Barrows called “Indiana’s
Municipal Housekeeper.” Active in Progressive
Era tenement house reform, Bacon corresponded with New York City urban reformers
Jacob A. Riis and Lawrence Veiller.
Albion was named after her father, and her husband was Hilary Bacon. Weird.
Disliking the spotlight, Albion reluctantly agreed to lobby for a state
measure, recalling: “I took the leap with
the desperate deliberation of a suicide who jumps into the icy water.”
“Indiana’s 200” Contributor James Madison wrote about
Katherine “Flossie” Bailey, an NAACP leader and indefatigable organizer from
Marion, Indiana. After two young African
Americans, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, were lynched there in 1930, Bailey
pressured the state legislature into passing an anti-lynching bill that, among
other things, mandated the dismissal of law enforcement officials who failed to
protect prisoners from mobs. Making use
of a quote by an NAACP official, historian Madison titled an earlier Traces article on Flossie Bailey “What a
Woman!” Indeed. The NAACP official added: “If only we had one in every town.”
Dick Hagelberg, who plays French horn in the Hobart
Area Concert Band, provided two tickets to attend its Winter Concert. The first part featured holiday music such as
a Christmas medley and “Sleigh Ride” by Leroy Anderson. After intermission the band, directed by
Susan Williams, started with the Twentieth Century Fox “Fanfare” by Alfred
Newman and then played selections by John Williams (arranged by Robert W.
Smith) from “Star Wars” episodes. Members of the Northern Darkness Garrison of
the 501st Legion dressed as “Star Wars” characters walked down the aisle, came
on stage, and posed in the lobby afterwards for photos. Dining at Longhorn Steakhouse, Cheryl
Hagelberg mentioned seeing a video of me speaking on Mexican Repatriation at
Porter County Museum while attending an exhibit featuring work by her son
Corey. The video was part of a display
that student’s in VU professor Heath Carter’s History class put together.
below, Porter County Museum
In “Reckless: My Life as a Pretender” Chrissie Hynde
admits to sleeping with legions of rock stars and bikers and ingesting enough
booze and drugs to leave her frequently in bed with virtual strangers. Johnny Rotten got his last name due to the
condition of his teeth, she claimed, and Iggy Pop resembled the Mad magazine fictional character Alfred
E. Newman when not in his stage persona.
As the Pretenders took off on the road to fame, the deaths of lead guitarist
Jimmy Honeyman Scott and bass player Peter Farndon left Hynde shaken. Giving birth to a daughter, Chrissie cleaned
herself up and went on to enjoy 30+ years of success.
Iggy Pop by Peter Hujar
Anne Balay wrote:
Last night I
went to see a Drag King show, and the man sitting behind me saw my “Steel
Closets” jacket and took me aside to tell me that he works in the merchant
marine, where he is closeted and scared. He sees gay people in places like
Philadelphia, and thinks it’s just a whole other universe. I saw his face wash
with relief when I described the experiences of my narrators. Sometimes I feel
so alone as an academic, never really one of the "in crowd" -
marginally employed. Moments like that, where my work lessens the isolation of
just some regular person, I hope is what defines me.
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