Freethinkers

“There's one thing I want to know: What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding?”  Elvis Costello

        Kirsten (second from left) at Circle City Indiana Pride event

Kirsten Bayer-Petras emailed: “I’m sitting here listening to the Clash and Elvis Costello thinking of you. Thank you for my musical education. Love ya like my dad.” Kirsten lived with us part of her Wirt H.S. senior year after her parents moved to Vermont; she is like a daughter to us. I responded that my favorite Clash song was “Clampdown” and my favorite Elvis Costello song was “Veronica,” supposedly written about a lady with dementia “who used to have a devilish eye” until she lost her lover:

Is it all in that pretty little head of yours?
What goes on in that place in the dark?
Well I used to know a girl and I would have
sworn that her name was Veronica
Well she used to have a carefree mind of her
own and a delicate look in her eye
These days I'm afraid she's not even sure if her
name is Veronica

Elvis Costello album cover

“Clampdown,” from “London Calling” and written by Joe Strummer, is about oppressive leaders to cracking down on freethinkers:

We will teach our twisted speech
To the young believers
We will train our blue-eyed men
To be young believers

    . . .

Yeah, I'm working in Harrisburg
Working hard in Petersburg

working for the clampdown
Beggin' to be melted down

Scary stuff in view of recent events.

Robert Ingersoll 

The most prominent nineteenth-century American freethinker was Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), a lawyer, Civil War veteran, politician, agnostic, and orator who lectured on such myriad subjects as Shakespeare, women’s rights, freethought, humanism, and Reconstruction.  He made Peoria, Illinois, his home and founded the American Secular Union.  Poet Walt Whitman said of Ingersoll: “I see in Bob the noblest specimen – American flavored – pure out of the soil, spreading, giving, demanding light.”

The current issue of Indiana Magazine of History (IMH) contains a delightful article by James H. Madison about visiting the recently opened Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture.  Representing Hoosier history are imaginative exhibits on the free black community of Lyles Station, beauty products entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker, and teenagers Tom Smith and Abe Shipp, who died in 1930 at the hands of a Marion lynch mob. Madison noted that exhibits about Gary Mayor Richard G. Hatcher and the 1972 West Side National Black Political Convention “exemplify responses to changing forms of racism from the later civil rights era.”  Madison added: “Curators have focused a great deal of space on entertainment, particularly music.  Jackson 5 artifacts are there, not far from Chuck Berry’s red Cadillac.” (below)

In my review of Stephen Meyer’s “Manhood on the Line: Working-Class Masculinities in the American Heartland” (published in the same IMH issue) I, like James Madison, concentrated on information pertaining to Indiana; one wishes David Morgan’s review of “Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation” by Leigh Eric Schmidt had done the same. There were plenty of such freethinkers in Indiana, as pointed out by Robert M Taylor, Jr., in the 1983 IMH article “The Light of Reason: Hoosier Freethought and the Indiana Rationalist Association, 1909-1913.”  One member: Clemmons Vonnegut, an Indianapolis hardware company proprietor. Village atheists resided in such disparate Indiana communities as Philomath (Jonathan Kidwell), Monroe (Jasper Roland), Muncie (George H. Koons), and pioneer Gary, whose first mayor, Tom Knotts, hobnobbed with self-proclaimed agnostic Clarence Darrow.

In his IMH review of “Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal” by John P. Bowes, Daniel P. Barr summarized the author’s conclusion that Indian removal was “a steady, sustained, and altogether messy process, . . . as aggressive westward-moving settlers, voracious land speculators, and unsympathetic political leaders utilized any means necessary.”   Characterizing Indian removal as “an act of all-encompassing violence,” Bowes described the process, which Potawatomi tribes faced in the 1830s, as a continuation of 18th-century policies “that attacked indigenous religions, subsistence patterns, and landholding practices.”

 Terry Bauer and Dottie Hart

Karen and John Fieldhouse

At bridge in Chesterton I gave Dottie Hart and John and Karen Fieldhouse copies of Barb Walczak’s Newsletter that contains their photos.  Dottie, with regular partner Terry Bauer, received congratulations for scoring a rare 71.88 percent recently.  Bauer told Walczak: “I have always been amazed when others have reached that level and just hoped to accomplish it at least once some day – now we have done it!  Dottie was my first regular partner at Chesterton and always made me feel welcome and comfortable at the bridge table.”  Dottie told Barb: “Being Terry’s partner is a blessing, as he continues to put up with me.  The 71-88 game?  WOW!!!” Regarding the Fieldhouses, who met Barb at a Monday game in Highland, the newsletter stated: “They’re snowbirds with a winter home in Naples, where they find all kinds of bridge going on.  They have a combined total of 380 masterpoints but play the game as though they have many times that amount.”

With nine couples competing, Chuck and Marcy Tomes finished second to the Fieldhouses, who finished with 70.83 percent.  In a hand against us, Dottie opened a Spade, and I responded 2 Hearts, holding Ace, King, Queen and two others, plus a Queen of Clubs.  John doubled, and after Dottie bid 2 Spades, Karen bid Diamonds.  I bid 3 Hearts, everyone passed, and I took all but one trick.  I should have gone straight to game in Spades (Dottie had indicated she had six of them, and I had the ten and three), but John’s double threw me off and got them high board.

On the last hand of the evening, Chuck Tomes bid 1 No Trump over my opening 1 Heart and ended up in a 3 No Trump contract, holding the Ace, Queen, spot of Hearts over my King, 9,8,6,3.  Dottie led the Jack of Hearts, which he took with his Queen.  After Dottie got in again when a Club finesse failed, she led the ten of Hearts, I played my King, knowing that if Chuck didn’t cover the ten, Dottie lacked a third Heart to lead.  Chuck took the trick, but when I got in with one of my two Aces, I had three good Hearts.  Chuck went down two, and the low board probably cost them a chance at catching the Fieldhouses.

Jeff Manes invited former IUN secretary Dorothy Mokry and me to do readings of his interviews with us and others when he makes a Portage Historical Society appearance.  Despite bad memories of sparse attendance when I addressed the group, I agreed, heeding Toni’s advice that even if only a single person attends, it will be worth it if he learns something.  Actually, a good crowd showed up, and Jeff sold 28 books.  Legendary Portage football coach showed up and was a big hit.   Dorothy Mokry refused to stay on script but was entertaining and Jeff made the best of it.  He has been writing a history of the Kankakee Marsh. He is one of my favorite characters and always puts on a good show.  Anne Koehler, who arranged for Jeff’s appearance, played the ghost of Alice Mabel Gray (aka Diana of the Dunes) in a fictitious interview Jeff published one Halloween.  While reciting the interview Jeff Manes published of me, the only time I adlibbed was to say I failed at retirement.