Broke in two

“The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts,” Willa Cather

“Born into a life with no control

Being thankful and grateful for the flow

A fool tries to control what he did not make

Deceiving others about who he is”

         “I Owe You,” Hollis Donald

For the “Lost Generation” that came of age in the wake of World War I, Willa Cather’s assertion has a certain validity.  Anthropologist Margaret Meade, in a reference to the dawning of the nuclear age, separated the generations into those born before and after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For millennials, the 2001 World Trade Center attack was a defining moment. For untold millions, the breaking point is realizing the impossibility of realizing their hopes and dreams coming true. Looking back, 2016 may be the time when our political system broke in two.

 Miss DuPont

Robin Hood poster

In 1922, the dawn of the “Roaring Twenties,” over 500 American radio stations began broadcasting. Songs signaling a “New Era” regarding manners and morals included Paul Whiteman’s “Three O’clock in the Morning” and Trixie Smith’s “My Man Rocks Me (with a steady roll).”  F. Scott Fitzgerald published “The Great Gatsby” and coined the phrase “Jazz Age.”  A best-selling Christmas present was “Playing Doctor” kits. The discovery of King Tut’s tomb helped popularize eye liner for women and Art Deco design style. Popular silent movies included “Foolish Wives” starring Miss DuPont (AKA Patricia Hannon) and Douglas Fairbanks in “Robin Hood.”  A riot broke out in New York City over the wearing of straw hats (boaters) past September 15, after young toughs tried to knock the hats off dock workers wearing them.

 D.H. Lawrence

Novelist Willa Cather’s quote introduces William Goldstein’s “The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year That Changed Literature” (2017).  It explores the lives and literary careers of modernist English writers associated with the so-called Bloomsbury Group (although a St. Louis native, Eliot became a British subject, renounced his American citizenship, and cultivated an English accent).  They (and Irish writer James Joyce, author of Ulysses) profoundly affected the course of American literature in their sexual candor and use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.  I recall babysitting at a young couple’s house while a college freshman home on semester break, coming across D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and searching for the dirty parts.  Though the scenes between Lady Ottoline Morrell and a young stonemason were quite explicit, they paled in comparison with the salacious passages in Peyton Place by Grace Metalious.

I was babysitting kids before I turned 13, hard to believe that parents would trust children to someone that young and a male, to boot. In a married grad student dorm at Maryland, there was a baby-sitting exchange system in place based on the number of hours the children were awake and asleep.  Some couples would put kids in bed as early as 6 or 7 only for them to emerge from the bedroom soon after the parents left. 

 Perry Wallace blocks shot by LSU's "Pistol" Pete Maravich, circa 1970

Andrew Maraniss’ biography of Perry Wallace, Vanderbilt’s first black basketball player, notes that there was no “Pee Wee Reese moment.” Seemingly oblivious to his discomfort and peril, Wallace’s white teammates failed to stand by him in the face of racist taunts, threats, and assaults heaped on him at Ole Miss and Mississippi State. Though he persevered, Wallace later declared that had he known how lonely his ordeal would be, he’d have attended a different school.  Walking past fraternities on Saturday nights, he could hear black bands performing at parties where he was not welcome.  Sometimes drunken revelers would bring dates back to the dorm, and he’d be careful to avert his eyes.

In a chapter about a 1967 Vanderbilt “Impact” symposium, featuring such disparate speakers as Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, poet Allen Ginsburg, and segregationist Strom Thurmond, I found quotations by historian Paul K. Conkin, who taught American history at Maryland.  In 1985 Conkin published “Gone with the Ivy: A Biography of Vanderbilt University.”  When riots erupted in Nashville on the night of Carmichael’s Impact speech, the Black Power advocate became a convenient scapegoat.  As Conkin concluded: “It is impossible to relate Carmichael’s Vanderbilt speech to the riots except insofar as publicity about him increased racial tensions.” The incident almost cost the Vanderbilt’s progressive chancellor Alexander Heard his job.

 Paul Conkin

Paul Conkin had a profound influence on my intellectual development.  I still recall his insight about the Puritan ideal being to steer a middle path between piety and spirituality.  Though I l loathed John C. Calhoun, Conkin explained how the South Carolinian conceived a political system that would have kept the Union together, albeit with the “Peculiar institution” intact. In a book about FDR, Conkin characterized the effect of one New Deal program as solving some problems, ameliorating others, and causing new ones but added that it was about the most the American people could expect from their political representatives. In “Big Daddy from the Pedernales,” Conkin described President Lyndon Baines Johnson as a larger than life figure who, due to the Vietnam War, transformed into a helpless, pitiful giant.

 Alissa and Josh at Grand Canyon

Werewolf players

euchre players

Thanksgiving at the condo occurred a day late although Toni, Beth, and Angie spent much of Thursday baking pies.  Despite Alissa and Josh away at the Grand Canyon, we had well over a dozen guests, including Angie’s dad John Teague, who brought champagne for mimosas and two plates of shrimp as appetizers.  The feast included a ham and turkey, as well as two types of vegetables (baked beans and corn), cranberries (canned and homemade), potatoes (sweet and mashed), and sliced cucumbers (with and without onions).  That evening we played cards (euchre, pitch, and a new game Phil called 331) and the role-playing game Werewolf. I got Tori and Miranda on the phone with nephew Bob, wife Niki, and daughter Addie in San Diego, whom they’ll be visiting the first week in January.    

Saturday morning, I took James to Inman’s and bowled two games with Phil and Dave after the completion of youth league play.  Kevin and Kaiden Horn stayed around to watch, and I told James’ teammate that 20 years before, I had been on a first-place team with his dad, Uncle Tom, grandfather, and Dave.  Phil rolled a 200, doubling in the tenth and then picking up 9 pins on his extra shot.  Dave stayed right with him even though he hadn’t bowled in so long that there were cobwebs were on his bag and a spider scurried awau when he retrieved it from the garage. My ball was curving more than at Hobart Lanes, but I managed to hold my own with a 129 and 156.  That afternoon, at Jef Halberstadt’s gaming party I played the Ticket to Ride expansion version Pennsylvania with Jef (the winner) his brother Charlie, daughter Sheridan (with nine-month-old baby Sloane crawling under the table), and Naomi Goodman.  In touch with her former Purdue Northwest colleagues whom I know, including Bernie Hollicky, Lance Trusty, and Rich Gonzales, she filled me in on how they were dong health-wise.

above, Sheridan and Sloane; below, Vernon Smith

Gary State Representative and IUN Professor Vernon Smith again provided a free holiday meal at Shiloh Baptist Church in honor of his mother, the Reverend Julia Smith. The Post-Trib’s Carole Carlson wrote:

      Smith and a small band of volunteers fed more than 100 people during the Harvest Feast, which featured an altar laden with cabbages, squash, carrots, onions and potatoes to signify the bounty of the harvest, which Smith said is proclaimed to Israelites in the Old Testament as a celebration.  They dined on chicken, roast beef, potatoes, greens, mostaccioli and a variety of pies.  The feast serves as a preamble to a free Spirit of Christmas dinner that draws about 600 people to Gary's Genesis Center. Besides the meal, each guest receives a Christmas gift that Smith shops and plans for all year.

      Faith and his mother's legacy are at the center of Smith's service.  His mother planned the first harvest dinner at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, a Gary church that no longer exists, where she served as pastor.   “When she did the first one, I was 10 or 11. She and other church members did all the cooking in my house. Back then, food could sit on the back porch,” Smith said.

      When Smith's mother died in 1991, he knew she'd want her tradition to continue.  “Her death was very traumatic for me because I was momma's boy,” said Smith, her tenth child. “I knew how much this meant for her.”

 Rachel Carson

Appearing on Face the Nation with John Dickerson was a panel of distinguished historians who had chronicled the lives of FDR, Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci, Ulysses S. Grant, and Rachel Carson.  The latter was born in Springdale Pennsylvania, and began her academic career at the University of Maryland.  A marine biologist and environmentalist, Carson completed the path breaking book Silent Spring (1962) while battling cancer and being caretaker for an ailing parent and a guardian to orphaned children. . 

The Eagles improved their record to 11-1 by slaughtering the lowly Bears 31-3.  The NFL has begun to allow end zone celebrations.  After Alshon Jeffery scored, his ten Philadelphia teammates on offense pretended to be bowling pins and fell down when he simulated rolling a strike. On another score, they lined up for a pretend group photo.  After an interception, the defensive backs did a soulful version of the electric slide.  I was the winner of the weekly CBS poll, successfully picking 12 of the 13 pro games, including Arizona’s upset of Jacksonville, plus I only put 5 points on Kansas City, which has stumbled after winning its first four games.

The title of Ken Schoon’s Art in Focus talk in Munster was “Duneland Dynamics.” As advertised by Jillian Van Volkenburg, Schoon described “controversies, struggles, battles, and scams that have come along with having this natural wonder in our region’s back yard.” Had I been asked to introduce Schoon, I would have mentioned that his years as a high school teacher before joining the IUN Education division, where he mentored future teachers.  Trained as a geologist, he has written “Calumet Beginnings,” about the origins of area towns and cities. Like me, he is a recipient of the Indiana Historical Society’s Hoosier Historian award. His talk was well received, and he donated profits from book sales to the Center.

Ray Smock has completed a book called “Trump Tsunami” and will publish it through Kindle unless he gets a better offer.   In “An Apology to Native Americans” Smock wrote:

    Today I apologize to all Native Americans for the gross insensitivity of the President of the United States, who met with Native American's who served as code talkers during World War II. This was supposed to be a ceremony honoring them for their great service to the nation in a time of war.   The President chose to stand before his favorite portrait, that of Andrew Jackson, who led the removal of Native Americans from the Southeastern part of the United States, especially during the Trail of Tears, when thousands of Cherokee died.

    During his remarks President Trump went out of his way to use his old campaign attack on Senator Elizabeth Warren who he calls "Pocahontas." This belittles the Senator but what is far worse is that it used the honorees, representing the last three living code talkers from World War II, who served this nation with distinction, as a mere backdrop for a presidential insult. Our president has no sense of decency on any subject.

    Twice in the past year and a half I have felt compelled to apologize to Muslims worldwide for totally gross and insensitive remarks and actions made by the President of the United States. I am sure I have not apologized to all the groups that this president has insulted. I feel compelled to speak out because we all must speak out against the obscenity that currently occupies the White House. He does not represent the best interests of the American people and he certainly does not speak for most Americans with his racial, ethnic, and religious slurs, and worst of all his actions against whole peoples for their skin color or their religion. 

    Trump's next gambit will be to remove from the United States thousands of Haitians who came to America after the devastating earthquake of 2010 that killed more than 230,000 people and left Haiti in shambles. Trump has no feelings whatsoever that he will break up families, destroy careers built in the United States, and create yet another kind of Trail of Tears.