Progress

“A culture is no better than its woods.” W. H. Auden, “Bucolics” (1953)

While in Michigan, I borrowed British historian Ronald Wright’s “A Short History of Progress” from Sean Michael, in part because an upcoming history book club report (by Brian Barnes) is on “Sapiens: A Brief History of Human Kind” by Yuval Noah Harari, first written in Hebrew.  Harari separates the evolution of Homo Sapiens, which came into being about 150,000 years ago, into four periods:  the cognitive revolution (about 70,000 years ago) when Sapiens developed imagination; the agricultural revolution (about 11,000 years ago); political unification (starting about 4,000 years ago); and the scientific revolution (beginning about 600 years ago). What is unique about Sapiens, Harari argues, is the ability to think abstractly and cooperate in large numbers. Harari does not necessarily equate evolution with progress, calling the agricultural revolution “history’s biggest fraud” (leading to famine, overcrowding, longer working hours, and poor diet) and modern farming one of the greatest crimes in history.

 Ronald Wright in 2003

In “A Short History of Progress,” Ronald Wright references the Neanderthals to illustrate the point that disaster often is a consequence of progress.  Improved Stone Age hunting techniques, for example, led to the extinction of big game, while the successful cultivation of crops produced overpopulation.  In modern times, industrialization caused global warming, while development of nuclear weaponry could well destroy the world.  Wright makes this point: “If we blow up or degrade the biosphere so it can no longer sustain us, nature will merely shrug and conclude that letting apes in the laboratory was fun for a while but in the end a bad idea.”  Thus, a society’s blind faith in progress can have catastrophic consequences.  Wright ends on this somber note:

 We have the tools and the means to share resources, clean up pollution, disperse basic health care and birth control, set economic limits in line with natural ones.  If we don’t do these things now, while we prosper, we will never be able to do them when times get hard.  Our fate will twist out of our hands.  And this century will not grow very old before we enter an age of chaos and collapse that will dwarf all the dark ages in our past.

  Now is our chance to get the future right.

Mark Ruffalo and Meg Ryan in "In the Cut"

On HBO I watched the murder mystery “In the Cut” (2003), mainly because it starred Meg Ryan as horny English teacher Frannie Avery and Mark Ruffalo as Detective James Malloy, Frannie’s lover, whom she learns not to trust.  Ten years before, New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion directed and wrote the screenplay for “The Piano” (1993).  Like many Film Noir classics of the 1940s and 1950s, “In the Cut” exudes moods of cynicism, menace, and sexuality.  Kevin Bacon plays an out-of-control medical intern who, as reviewer Roger Ebert put it, “works 18 hours a day, needs someone to walk his dog, and takes it very badly when Frannie breaks up with him.”  I expected him to be the murderer, but Noir films seldom have predictable denouements.

 Michael Ruff as Joseph

I saw Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” at Memorial Opera House with Angie, James, and Becca.  The choreography was completely different from the when I’d seen it before, and with no dialogue or set changes, the musical took less than two hours, including intermission.  I especially loved the Elvis number by the Pharaoh (Aaron Duncil), the French café ballad “Those Canaan Days” by Reuben (Eric Evory) and Joseph’s 10 other brothers wearing berets, and the “Benjamin Calypso,” during which Portage grad Brandon King did nifty swaying moves. 

The splendid cast got a standing ovation – no sure thing, from past Memorial Opera House experiences.  All nine performances during the three-week run sold out; at curtain call some in the chorus could barely hold back tears. Among them was Kendall Rinehart, whom I thought might be from the famous Merrillville thespian family, only they spell their name “Reinhart.”  Of course, it could be a typo in the program.

Fellow theater season ticket holders Dick and Cheryl Hagelberg, back from a family vacation at Glacier National Park, joined us at Red Robin.  Dick was annoyed that both TVs had the last-place White Sox game on rather than the first place Cubbies, who, we learned when Dave arrived, edged out Milwaukee.  My guacamole bacon burger was delicious but hard to handle until I dissected it with a knife.  Dave informed me that beloved and respected Portage theater teacher Bill Bodnar had passed away. A month ago, diagnosed with terminal cancer, he had attended the “Addams Family Musical” without hair but in an apparently upbeat mood.  Thirty years ago, he directed Dave in “Grease.”  This obit was on the Internet:

William C. “Bill Mad Dog” Bodnar, age 68, of Hobart, IN passed away on July 26, 2017. He was born in Gary, IN and was a longtime resident of Hobart. Bill was a 1967 graduate of Hobart High School and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from IU Bloomington and his Master of Liberal Arts from Valparaiso University. He retired from Portage High School, where for 38 years he devoted his life to fighting ignorance and illiteracy and directing plays and musicals. Bill also served as an adjunct professor of theatre and communications for 20 years at IU Northwest. His stage experience included more than 150 productions as an actor or director. Bill was an avid golfer, Bears fan, and never missed Jeopardy. He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Laura; two daughters: Megan and Samantha; his mother, Elizabeth; one brother, Jerome; two sisters: Patty (Jon) Ford, Peggy Bodnar (Michael Miller); numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. Contributions may be made to a fund being established in Bill's name for an annual scholarship for a senior thespian student at Portage High School. 

 Bhaskar Rao Kopparty

Candace Clark

James spent the night, and I took him to IUN STEM camp.  Designed for minority groups, it was made possible by a National Science Foundation grant.  Program director Bhaskara Rao Kopparty had promised to let me know if there was a vacancy. Last Friday, administrative assistant Candace Clark notified me that there was room for James. Participants received hands-on experiments in biology, chemistry, computer information systems, informatics, math, and geology. On day one, James and lab partners examined the DNA of a strawberry and did a chemistry experiment about flavor and smell, using a banana.  Eating pizza at lunch while watching the Lee Botts-Pat Wisniewski documentary “Shifting Sands,” James couldn’t believe it when I came on the screen discussing the coming of industrialization to Northwest Indiana. The film is upbeat regarding progress in controlling pollution, but I’m less certain.  As Dean William R. Inge wrote: “There is no law of progress. Our future is in our own hands, to make or to mar.”

NWI Times Stem camp photos by Jonathan Miano

Chemistry bottle rocket project

On day two of STEM camp, when I met James, he was carrying a model of a rocket ship that he’d made.  He’d been able to launch it into the air for four seconds.  He also learned how to use a Python computer drawing program.  Day three will involve geology and matt probability.  Eight years ago, when I drove James back and forth to IUN’s Kids College, I’d make up Pet Detective stories featuring dogs Sammy and Maggie and our cat Marvin.  When I told him that I had thought up a few more, he rolled his eyes. He is 17 years old, after all.  I feigned disappointment, and, sweet guy that he is, James said that they were fond memories.

Ron Cohen and I had a lunch meeting with four Bloomington archivists in connection with IU’s upcoming Bicentennial in 1820.  They were particularly interested in the origins of the Calumet Reginal Archives, which Ron and I co-founded in the early 1970s when we both became concerned that important records were being lot as whites were abandoning Gary.

My bridge partner at Chesterton YMCA was Joel Charpentier, a high school soccer referee.  Unfamiliar with each other’s bidding system, we did OK but were too cautious on a couple hands where we would have needed to take 11 of 13 tricks to make game in minor suits.  Joel said that the Portage soccer program had gone downhill in recent years, as Valparaiso and Chesterton have become the dominant teams in the Duneland Conference.  I speculated that Portage missed youth coaches like Bob Laramie who schooled kids at a young age in the fundamentals.  Without a good feeder system, it’s difficult to compete with elite suburban teams, something that handicaps tennis programs, as well, in schools such as East Chicago Central.

When Ronald Reagan, hosting “General Electric Theater,” bragged of his corporate employer, “Progress is our most important product,” I thought, “What was a dumb, nebulous statement.”  I still think so.  Are nuclear power plants progress?  Why not admit profit is GE’s most important bottom line.  Perhaps the country would be better off if we nationalized the power industry. I particularly like the George Bernard Shaw quote: “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”