Everybody gets the no-no
Hear it ringing in their ears
Lots of ways that you can go GO!
Look around NO disappears
Hear it ringing in their ears
Lots of ways that you can go GO!
Look around NO disappears
“The
Beat Goes On/Switching to Glide,” The Kings
Pulling
into an IUN parking lot, I heard
the 1980 double-A-side hit “The Beat Goes On/Switching to
Glide,” for the first time in a long while. Of
course, I stayed in the car for its entirety, singing along. It’s pure rock and
roll, with perhaps a philosophical message about keeping on keeping on that
seemed appropriate as I stared my 76th birthday in the face. After bowling two above-average games at
Hobart Lanes, a hip muscle began hurting, but I foolishly toughed out the third,
which we would have lost even had I rolled a 200. I am paying the price. Yet, as the song says, this geezer can go-go. Here’s hoping I’m ready to go next Thursday,
as teammate Dick Maloney is on the DL, perhaps permanently, with macular
degeneration.
On
a birthday card signed by the Michigan Lanes, Phil called me “Daddio” (in
person it’s usually Pop or Poppa, like in the movie “Breaking Away”) Miranda claimed
she couldn’t imagine life without me, and Tori addressing me as J-bo,
referred to me as “the light”
(hopefully not dimming). Toni made steak with all the trimmings as Dave’s
family came over.
On Facebook came birthday greetings
from many sources, including high school classmate Suzy Hummel Slack, whom I hadn’t
heard from in years. Conservative Phil
Arnold posted an image of Trump saying “Happy
Birthday, Jimbo,” causing good liberal LeeLee Minehart Devenney to retort
that her mom taught her that if she couldn’t say anything nice, to say nothing
at all. Arnold then sent one of House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi with the message, “Like this one better?” causing Barbara Ricketts to write, “Gag.”
More uplifting was a note from anti-death penalty advocate Bill Pelke,
who wrote: “Help me in 2018 to continue to say to the World that the
answer is love and compassion for all of Humanity.” On Suzy Slack’s Facebook
site I found this article by Martin Gould about Marjory Stoneman Douglas:
If you've been wondering why so many
students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become such effective
political activists, so quickly, it's probably because they got it directly
from their school's namesake, who made political activism her calling right up
until the day she died at the age of 108. Her father owned the Miami Herald and
she became a reporter there, way back in 1912. She fought for women’s suffrage,
joined the Red Cross to take care of wounded soldiers in World War I, and then
refugees in Paris after the Great War ended. But her greatest works came
much later. In 1947, she wrote the groundbreaking book, River of Grass, the story of the Florida Everglades. In it she explained
how the Everglades functioned and its vital importance to our entire ecological
system. She was the primary activist who rose up to protect the Everglades from
destruction. She fought Big Sugar on dumping toxic waste water into the
Everglades. She fought the Army Corps of Engineers to block the straightening
of the Kissimmee River, explaining how the wandering, winding river filtered
water on its journey from Central Florida to the Everglades. The
"ditch," as she called it, eliminated that filtering system and
turned the Everglades into a toilet of sorts.
She
fought the South Florida Water Management District when they allowed water
levels in the Everglades to rise dangerously high, killing off the native deer
population and other species of wildlife. She was a fighter and an activist for
protecting things valuable to our planet and its inhabitants.
She would be proud of the students who
are now standing up to fight for a cause in which they deeply believe. She
would have been standing right with them, demanding action and action now. She
would have carried those kids on her back to Tallahassee and Washington, DC to
make sure those in power use that power for the greater good. It was in her own
DNA, now transferred to these courageous students.
Former neighbor
and Post-Trib editor Dean Bottorff
posted a 40-year-old photo, along with this note: “Another picture from the
far, far away and long, long ago file. Who says the internet can't haunt you
for the rest of your life! Not sure who these people are but this looks a lot
like James Lane and some hippie girl.”
Environmentalist
Lee Botts celebrated her 90th birthday.
Switching to glide, she recently moved from her home in Miller (above) to an assisted living
facility in Illinois near her daughter.
She told Post-Tribune reporter
Amy Lavalley that one of her proudest accomplishments was helping to establish Dunes
Learning Center on National Lakeshore property in Miller, which enabled many
Gary school children to explore the dunes for the first time. As soon as the weather warmed up, she vowed
to organize a dunes trip for the seniors at her new home.
Awaiting me at the Archives was this
email from Flemming Just:
Dear Professor Lane,
Perhaps
this mail will reach you as a bit of surprise, but I want to let you know that
I’ve just read your book about Jacob A. Riis. It is indeed a well-researched and
well-written analysis and narrative about Riis, and I fully agree with your
characterizations.
I share
your former interest in the social reformer. I’m director of Museum of South
West Jutland, which also encompasses wonderful Ribe, the hometown of Riis. In
his childhood home we are now about to establish a Jacob A. Riis Museum. It
will not be a memorial museum – the less so as we only have very few artefacts.
Instead we will focus on his achievements and legacy. Thus, the ground floor
will have the theme: How the Other Half Lives, whereas the first floor will
concentrate on the theme: The Making of an American with focus on (national)
identity and his background in small town Ribe.
The museum
will be oriented towards an international audience and will open June 2019. We
have received funds for restauration of the old and adjacent buildings and to
establish an exciting museum. Through the years I have done my own research on Riis
and am about to write a book about him. And this brings me back to your book. A
lot has been written about Riis, however, your book rates among the best two.
I
thanked Flemming Just for the nice note and told him visiting Ribe, Denmark was
on my bucket list. Riis was a true
environmentalist, both in terms of what molds a person’s character and the
vital importance of respecting nature.
He helped start the Boy Scouts and the Fresh Air Fund, which provided
camping vacations for slum children.
This 1975 Kirkus Review ably
summarized “Jacob A. Riis and the American City” although Riis believed
immigrants could be proud both to be an American and of their native roots and culture:
An
earnest, straightforward biography of Jacob Riis and his lifelong efforts to
focus attention on the plight of urban slum dwellers. Riis, a Danish immigrant
who spent several years living from hand to mouth and working at a series of
manual jobs, became fascinated and appalled by New York's Lower East Side
tenements when he became a police reporter for the Herald working out of
Mulberry Street. In 1890 he published How The Other Half Lives, a stark and
moving account of the overcrowded, unsanitary and rat-infested tenements where
babies died of malnutrition and exposure. A muckraker before the word was
coined, Riis was convinced that environment, not innate vice, caused urban
crime and depravity. Yet he was a product of his age, sharing the prejudices of
reformers and Progressives of the day. Lane admires him but recognizes his
""partial acceptance of racial stereotypes"" -- he
slandered the Chinese in particular -- and his middle-class burgher values
which stressed hard work and self-help. ("As to the man who will not work,
let him starve.") As portrayed by Lane, Riis was a contentious, effusive
but compassionate man who mixed sentimentality and outrage in about equal
portions.
Siobhan Neela-Stock,
a Northwestern journalism professor, wants me to provide background information
for a documentary about the pollution crisis in East Chicago at the former West
Calumet Housing Complex. I offered to talk
about the industrialization of the Calumet Region during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries and have written about Local 1010 rank and file
unionists at Inland Steel and Latino steelworkers who settled in Indiana
Harbor. I gave Siobhan the name of
Whiting historian John Hmurovic; too bad Region historians Archibald McKinlay
and Lance Trusty, both recently died.
Jacqueline
Russell visited the Archives hoping to find in our Post-Tribune collection an obit of her mother, who died in the
early 1970s when Jacqueline was 10 or 11.
She learned about the Archives from volunteer Maurice Yancy, a frequent bus
companion. The first day she fruitlessly
searched for several hours; she struck pay dirt on day two and broke down in
tears.
With
Samantha Gauer on camera I interviewed IUN grad Wayne Carpenter, who between
1965 and 1974 completed a BA degree while working as a U.S. Steel supervisor. He witnessed the construction of Moraine Student
Union and Raintree Hall and had classes in temporary facilities that he
described as frigid in winter. Majoring
in Theater and Communication, Carpenter recalled charismatic Speech teacher Lee
Martin and memorable Theater professors Colin Black and Bob Foor. The latter also provided valuable counsel as
his adviser. Learning set design paid
dividends later when he built a house and appearing on stage in several
productions buttressed his confidence as a leader in the mill. In IUN’s Gary Main cafeteria, he and his
friends played bridge for a quarter of a penny a point. They didn’t know the finer points of bidding
and would do things considered cheating - for instance, say one Club meaning
one thing and “a” Club signifying something else. One of the area’s best duplicate bridge
players, Carpenter directs games in Portage and Michigan City.
For
“Education the Calumet Region: A History of Indiana University Northwest,” I interviewed Bob Foor, who became Dean of
Students on condition that administrators hire a full-time Theater department replacement. He recalled:
Colin Black, who had worked for me, had gone
off to the University of Texas to get an MFA.
He was looking for a job. So he
moved into my slot. A year later he
directed Marat/Sade. It was the first nudity we had in the
theater. There was no negative reaction
as far as I know.
Around
this time, Ken Schoon joined the IUN chorus and had a small role in the musical Kiss me Kate after an
actor suddenly quit. He recalled:
I had a 45-second solo, my brief moment in the spotlight. My sophomore year I did lighting and other backstage duties under Bob Foor, a fun person. My social life was tied to the theater. There were Sunday dinners at professors’ homes and cast parties. Sally and Colin Black were very active. Some dress rehearsals conflicted with my classes, and grades suffered a bit. Lee Martin was an exceptionally able Speech
teacher who emphasized that it was up to the speaker, not the listener, to make
sure he’s understood. If there is
miscommunication, the speaker needs to change the vocabulary or do whatever
necessary so the listener understands.
That advice helped me tremendously.
Unfortunately, some professors didn’t practice it.
Unable
to find Oscar-nominated “Lady Bird,” “The Post,” or “Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri” at local theaters, I settled on Guilermo del Toro’s “The
Shape of Water,” a science fiction tale about a lonely maid bonding with a
sentient amphibious creature held captive at a top-secret government
facility. What really shined were
performances by Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins (both Academy Award nominees). Michael Shannon, agent Van Alden in Broadway Empire, was the heavy,
Strictland, in ways that made you want to both cringe and laugh. A couple inept
Russian agents provided comic relief, so I was entertained despite the rather
pedestrian plot and ambiguous and implausible denouement.
We dined
at Captain’s House in Miller prior to bridge at Dick and Cheryl
Hagelberg’s. As always, owner-chef
Angela McCrovitz provided a delicious and bountiful feast. I
started with delightful pastry appetizers and salad with croutons that
literally melted in your mouth, barely put a dent in my meatloaf entry, and
ended by treating my palette to berry-flavored gelato. Leftovers fed both Toni and me the following
day with enough left for lunch. I ran
into Ruth Needleman, still recovering from a nasty spill but present at
Friday’s Gary Airport demonstration against the deportation of undocumented
workers. She groused that the press
misrepresented the crowd size.
Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson; NWI Time photo by Marc Chase
scene from "The Wiz" at IUN
Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson’s State of the City
address at the Genesis Center touted IUN’s new Arts and Sciences Building. That
evening she was in its theater to attend a production of “The Wiz.” Sunday she was at the Aquatorium for the
premiere of “Gary, Indiana,” an upbeat, 90-minute documentary. Filmmaker Brandon Bowens, a Gary West Side
grad, said he was tired of his city being portrayed simply as a collection of
abandoned buildings. The opening scene
showed the Aquatorium, with its statue of Octave Chanute and model of a plane
flown by Tuskegee Airmen.
Bowens interviewed Rozelle Hammonds on camera,
who for over 70 years worked at Esquire Men’s Store at 1536 Broadway, first as
a stock boy and eventually as its owner.
In Gary’s heyday, shoppers from as far away as Michigan City and South Bend
would patronize the store. Bowens
himself was wearing a hat from Esquire, which went out of business a year ago
when Hammonds retired. The film contained clips from the Calumet Regional
Archives of Village Shopping Center 60 years ago when crowds flocked to its
many fashionable store, including Montgomery Ward and JC Penney. I was pleased to see both my name and Steve
McShane’s in the credits.
Aquarium audience; David Hess and Mayor Freeman-Wilson in back row, Jimbo in front, left, near curtain
Host
Greg Reising had promised some “pretty
good cookies and pretty bad punch,” so I partook of the former but not the
latter. Gary librarian David Hess
invited me to the newly re-opened Indiana Room downtown, and George Rogge
informed me of an upcoming event at the Nelson Algren Museum. I complemented Judy Ayers on her latest Ayers
Realty Newsletter column about snatching
an abandoned car seat near someone’s trash when a little girl. When Phil was
young, he loved to rummage through others’ garbage and once found Christmas
tree ornaments and a Ku Klux Klan hood and pin, which I foolishly insisted he
throw away rather than save for the Archives.
When we took the boys to the circus at Chicago Stadium, Phil loved
seeing all the trash by the neighborhood street curbs.
Driving
through Marquette Park and past soon-to-be-closed Wirt/Emerson High School, I thought
of “My Name Is Gary” (2014), by French filmmakers Blandine Huk and Frederic
Cousseau, which used multiple images of Lake Michigan beach scenes and trains passing
through the city to and from the mill.
It struck me that, having been denied access to Miller beaches until the
mid-1960s, African Americans, by and large, don’t have as close a kinship with
the lake as whites. Even those black
residents in the audience who moved to Miller, in all likelihood, were
motivated by more important factors than a desire to be near the lake. Both
films stressed, as did Greg Reising in his introduction, that Mayor Richard
Gordon Hatcher’s election in 1967 was a pivotal event the city’s history, and
both portrayed Hatcher in a positive light.
Bowens included a wonderful scene of historian Dolly Millender speaking
at a Gary Historical and Cultural Society event and emphasizing that Hatcher
did nothing to drive away whites. Vernon
Smith explained how Gary became landlocked to the south when racist Indiana
legislators allowed the town of Merrillville to incorporate despite the
existence of a buffer zone law.
No comments:
Post a Comment