Impressions

“People, get ready
There's a train a-coming
You don't need no ticket
You just get on board”

         “People Get Ready,” Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions

The Impressions’ recorded the classic “For Your Precious Love” on Vee-Jay Records with Jerry Butler heading the group.  After Butler left the Impressions to embark on a solo career, Curtis Mayfield wrote and sang lead vocals on subsequent hits, including “Gypsy Woman” and “It’s All Right.”  The gospel-influenced “People Get Ready” came out in 1965 and quickly became an anthem of the civil rights movement.

 Meek Mill with Joel Embiid

Fresh from prison, rapper Meek Mill attended a Philadelphia 76ers playoff victory over the Miami Heat to the cheers of the crowd and Sixers players.  At age 18 Meek Mill, born Robert Rihmeek Williams, was arrested for illegal possession of a firearm and, although beaten by police, was charged with assaulting the officers. Two years later, he was apprehended on charges of dealing drugs, although one of the arresting officers apparently lied under oath in this and other cases.  In November 2017, the Philadelphia rapper was sentenced to 2 to 4 years for parole violation, which civil rights activists charged was excessive and an example of the judicial system discriminating against minorities. Black ministers criticized Meek Mill’s hit “Amen” as profane and urged parishioners to boycott it.  One of the few lines devoid of sexual references goes:

I’m on probation, when they test me I just pee Rosé 
Cause last night, I went hard, Peach Ciroc, Patron and all

Prior to Julius Erving (“Dr. J.”) becoming my favorite basketball player, I became a huge fan of an Upper Dublin center named Meekins.  Eddie Piszek and I buddied up to him on the school bus and became his unofficial fan club. Eddie’s father founded Mrs. Paul’s Frozen Seafood, and before we could drive, his chauffeur would take us to away games, where we cheered wildly Big Meek's on-court heroics.  

At Temple Israel in Miller, the League of Women Voters sponsored a debate between Ragen Hatcher and Jessica Renslow, each bidding to succeed longtime Third District State Representative Charlie Brown. Beforehand, State Rep. Linda Lawson, a former student who, lamentably, is also retiring, greeted me with a hug.  I gave free copies of my latest Steel Shavingsto old friend Omar Farag and Communication professor Eve Bottando, who used hers to prop up a sign on stage between the two seated candidates. Afterwards, Ragen told me that seeing her father on the cover inspired her.

Both Ragen and Jessica are progressives in their thirties who agree on most issues and performed admirably.  Ragen spoke mainly about her service on the Gary City Council and opposition to state legislation that discriminates against African American school children, voters, and prisoners.  Jessica, a Miller community activist for Neighborhood Spotlight, made references to  Lake Station and Hobart, part of the Third District.  With TV cameras on hand, the debate started promptly at six and ended exactly an hour later. While I don’t live in the Third District, I believe that, of the two, Ragen would have more clout downstate. 

The Carsons and Wills returned from an African trip and at bridge talked about touring Capetown, observing Victoria Falls, and going on safaris that took them into Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia.  They flew in and out of Durbin, where I stayed for two days 16 years ago before attending an oral history conference in Pietermaritzburg. Sally Will noted that one British guide seemed to regret the consequences of de-colonialism and had a patronizing attitude toward African self-rule.

I was disappointed to find no history sessions scheduled for the annual Student Research Conference, but one titled “Writing in the Region” included a paper by Arts and Sciences administrative assistant Mary Hackett on impressions of Northwest Indiana upon moving from Chicago.  She mentioned deaths from traffic accidents, Lake Michigan drownings, drug overdoses, and gangland gun battles, and domestic tragedies.  She contrast that with environmental splendors of the dunes and remnants of prairies.  She concluded by referencing to depopulated urban areas, victims of de-industrialization and automation.

Fine Arts professor Lauren DeLand moderated a session on contemporary art.  Kimberly Variot focused on Robert Smithson, who created Spiral Jettywithin Utah’s Great Salt Lake and Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Surrounded Islandsin Biscayne Bay near Miami, with the land encircled with floating pink woven polypropylene fabric.  More controversial was Xakilah Daniel’s “Racial Fetishism: The Studies of Kara Walker and Robert Mapplethorpe.”  Daniel claimed that both objectified black people, Walker with cutouts of black female slaves with exaggerated features and Mapplethorpe with explicit photographs of male nudes.  When a shot of an erect penis appeared on screen I avoided looking to where Chancellor Lowe, gallery director Ann Friitz, and Fine Arts secretary Sherry Sweeney were seated.  Daniel contributed to the Gary Poetry Project “Made in Gary” city poem coordinated by Samuel Love and Corey Hagelberg.

 above, Robert Mapplethorpe nude; below, Kara Walker at work

Keynote speaker Victoria Wittig, project coordinator for Save the Dunes, urged everyone to start a garden with plants native to the area, especially those that attract butterflies and bees.  Both species having suffered dramatic population loss due to pesticides, the draining of wetlands, and other environmental disasters. Karner Blue butterflies, for instance, feed only on wild lupine leaves.  Global warming and harmful chemicals have led to the destruction of milkweed plants, the lone food for Monarch caterpillars. 

above, Karner Blue butterfly; below, Victoria Witting

This from Jim Spicer:

  A certain private school was faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. Afterwards, they’d press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night, the maintenance man would remove them, and the next day they’d be back. Finally the principal decided to call all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian. To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.  Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

Getting ready for an upcoming Finland trip, I read about the bloody 1918 civil war between the Reds and the Whites in the wake of Finnish independence.  The former were allied with Russian Bolsheviks and pro-worker while the triumphant Whites included German sympathizers and wealthy capitalists opposed to social change, who slaughtered thousands and allowed many others to starve in concentration camps. Historian Tuomas Tepora wrote: 

The victors called the Finnish Civil War the "War of Liberation," denoting freedom from Russia and the Bolsheviks. The victors claimed their opponents had been under Bolshevik influence and overemphasized the role of Russians in the conflict. These divisions started to dissipate in the late 1930s but were not overcome until the Second World War. The true scale of the White terror was not acknowledged until the 1960s.

For four months during the winter of 1939-1940, “Brave Little Finland” resisted a Soviet invasion and inspired British leader Winston Churchill to declare on January 20, 1940: “Only Finland, superb, nay sublime in the jaws of peril, Finland shows what free men can do.”  A year later, however, in an effort to regain lost territory, Finland fell within the German orbit, became, in the eyes of many, “Hitler’s handmaiden,” and suffered the consequences at war’s end.  Even so, Finland retained its independence at a period when its Baltic neighbors got swallowed up by the Soviet Union.

In My Childhood,  Toivo Pekkanen (1902-1957), a Finnish stoneworker’s son, recounted a traumatic childhood memory of being stuffed inside an empty coffin by kids staging a mock funeral service. He screamed so loud, someone opened the lid and he ran sobbing into his mother’s arms.

above, Grace Teuscher; below, Lisa (left) with driver and Andrea

At Chesterton H.S. I watched Grace Teuscher and a sterling Penn band performance at a state qualifying event.  Grace, playing French horn, had recently returned from Germany while her mom, my niece Lisa, spent several weeks on safari in Africa.  I arrived during a performance by the Concord Community Band and was told not to enter the auditorium until they finished.  One woman claimed she was only going to peer through the glass on the door and then tried to sneak in but was nabbed before she could get far.  The Penn band performed Serenadeby Tchairkovsky, Jupiter: Bringer of Lightby Holst, and Finlandiaby Jean Sibelius, composed in 1899 as a covert protest against censorship by Russian imperial authorities. Critic David Dubal described Finlandiaas a tone poem whose rousing, turbulent music evokes the national spirit on Finns.  A serene melodic sequence exudes an impression of optimism in the Finnish national destiny.  The entire show was awesome. Near the end, Penn’s brass section rose from their seats and blasted away for a fitting finale.

Here are some of Ray Smock’s impressions of James Comey’s new book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership”:

     Comey, a prosecutor of major crime figures, described the president as projecting that same style that crime bosses do. Everything must be about them and for them. Crime bosses demand personal loyalty. The first thing Trump asked of Comey was that he be personally loyal to him. But as the title of Comey’s book suggests, a president must have a “higher loyalty” to the Constitution, to the rule of law, and to the American people. You cannot be loyal to the people of this nation if you lie to them day in and day out about things large and small.

   When I was growing up in Harvey, Illinois, an industrial suburb south of Chicago, I heard stories about the mobster Al Capone, who was still a folk hero to some people in the 1940s and 50s. Capone operated on the South Side, and in places close to where I grew up. Everyone knew Capone broke the law, that he was a crime boss, but if they weren’t personally hurt by his actions, they often liked the guy.  Capone ran booze during Prohibition. How could you fault that? I heard stories about how kind Capone could be to the down-and-out poor during the Depression. He started a soup kitchen to feed the needy. He gave out turkeys at Thanksgiving. I had an uncle who borrowed money from the mob on the South Side and lived to tell about it. People said, if you stayed out of Capone’s business he wouldn’t hurt you. 

   I have nagging thoughts that some Americans have already made Trump into a mobster-like folk hero. He is an anti-government guy who talks and thinks the way a lot of Americans do. Some Americans admire the way Trump bullies the government. They like his swagger. They like his gaudy displays of wealth. They liked the image of Trump from the “The Apprentice,” a most unreal reality show. Some Americans like (unfortunately) that Trump is not afraid to say African countries are shit-holes. People will overlook a lot of faults if you give them a turkey at Thanksgiving or a small tax cut at Christmas time.

Earth Day

“The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it,” Barry Commoner

First celebrated on April 22, 1970 by 20 million Americans and countless millions more in 193 countries around the globe, Earth Day domestically was a reaction to such environmental disasters as the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Blowout and Ohio’s Cuyahoga River bursting into flames.  It began as a bipartisan effort.  President Richard Nixon’s 1970 State of the Union address noted: “The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water.”  By year’s end, Congress had passed the Clean Air Act, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) director William Ruckleshaus had launched an investigation of DDT that resulted in the pesticide being banned.

 Jim Spicer posted a photo of Fifth Avenue in Gary, circa 1970, before passage of the Clean Air Act
below, granddaughters Tori and Miranda on Earth Day nature walk

Hoosier native Ruckleshauswrote to the New Yorkerabout Margaret Talbot’s scathing piece on current EPA director Scott Pruitt.  He declared that the environment is far healthier than 47 years ago when the EPA was established but warned:

  Pruitt is systematically attacking both the EPA’s budget and its scientific framework. If he is successful, the very reason for the EPA’s creation – illness and disease from pollution – will reemerge, and we will have to start from square one.  The country must challenge the Trump Administration’s war on science. Otherwise, as a result of actions taken by Pruitt and this Administration, the uncontrolled pollution that we have greatly reduced in the past 5 decades will return.

Toni and I attended a ninetieth birthday celebration for Rhea Laramie at Innsbrook Country Club in Merrillville, called the Gary Country Club when founded a century ago.   Allegra Nesbitt told me from personal experience that the liquor flowed despite Prohibition laws.  Little wonder, since that is where the Steel City’s movers and shakers hung out.  Rhea Laramie seemed to be doing well, but Bob was using a portable breathing device due to a recent health setback. When we started swapping soccer memories, however, his memory proved to be as sharp as ever.  Out our window, golfers were teeing off despite the inclement weather.  I sat next to 56-year-old Mark, who graduated from Kankakee Valley High School, while his wife went to North Newton.  He once played in a rock and roll band that had a gig at Ponderosa Sun Club, a nudist camp in De Motte. Mark currently lives in Bradenton, Florida, and goes to Flamingo’s in Miller for the Friday lake perch special whenever up for a visit.  Also at our table was Rhea’s 71-year-old son, who races sled dogs.  He once had several dozen but is down to 19 and not planning to add replacements once they are too old to run.

At Miller Beach Aquatorium Sociology professor Tanice hosted a memorial service honoring her sister Patricia, who lived a productive life despite being crippled since childhood.  One photo on display showed her in a wheelchair holding a sign at an antiwar demonstration.  A contingent of IUN faculty and staff came, including Dean Mark Hoyert, as well as Lori Montabano, who attended and then taught Speech at IUN before moving on to Governors State in Chicago. At Tanice’s December cookie-trading party many years ago, I danced with her two kids.

In Richard Russo’s “Straight Man” English professor Hank Deveraux runs into a student relieving himself outside and says, “I’m curious.  Why is it necessary to turn your cap around backwards in order to pee forward.”  Russo writes: “Bobo entertains the question with high seriousness, as if I’d just asked him to explain the disappearance of the Fool after Act 3 of King Lear.”  Bobo becomes a History major, and the last time Hank saw him, he “had in his possession, incredibly, a Garcia Marquez novel, the corner of a page turned down about halfway through.”  Chances are it was “Love in the Time of Cholera” (1985) that Russo had in mind.

James as William Barfee with Kenzie Moore, Sayer Norrington, Isabelle Minard, Andrea Vance, Jessica Cretors, Jake Ryan, Victor Ramisez; photos by Ray Gapinski

James shined in the Portage H.S. presentation of “The 25^thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee” as nerdy William Barfée, who spells out words with his foot as a way of visualizing them.  Someone spills pop near the microphone to foil him, and James was a riot pretending to cope with it.   Several dance numbers required nifty footwork; because James had sprained an ankle during an early rehearsal, we all held our breath but he was great.  Barfée eventually triumphs by correctly spelling Weltanschauung,German for worldview.  Half the words I’d never heard of.  I was surprised to find the first two letters of chimerical pronounced like a k whereas I always thought the ch was like in church.  At Applebee’s afterwards, I admitted as much and added that until recently I pronounced the ch in machinations that way.

I watched Maudie (2016) on HBO because it starred Sally Hawkins, whom I loved so much in “The Shape of Water,” as Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis.  Thought to be retarded by a despicable brother and aunt, Maud had her baby taken away and sold to a wealthy couple after being told that it was born dead and deformed.  The always superlative Ethan Hawke played reclusive fishmonger Ev, whom she first worked for and then married. Gazing outside, Maud says to Ev: “How I love a window.  A bird whizzin’ by, a bumblebee.  It’s always different.  The whole of life already framed.  Right there.”

Dave’s passport for our Finland trip arrived in the mail. Deborah Swallow’s travel guide opened with this Marcel Proust quote: “The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Swallow described our destination as an environmental paradise, with pristine forests, crystal-clear lakes, huge quiet skies, and, in Lapland during the winter, spectacular views of the aurora borealis.  Finns, she noted, can initially seem aloof but have good sense of humor and humility. To illustrate that last point she repeated this joke:

  An American, a German, and a Finn are looking at an elephant.  The American wonders if the elephant would be good in a circus, the German wonders what price it would get if he sold it, and the Finn asks himself, ‘I wonder what the elephant thinks of me.’”

Brenda Ann Love’s latest report of “Sounds from the South Shore”:

       Church ladies talking smack about other church ladies who may or may not be having an affair with Pastor John.

       Dude listening to Pantera so loudly I can hear it over my podcast and he’s three rows away.

                Woman complaining about how much weight she’s gained while drinking some Starbucks concoction with whipped cream on top.

Being Charlie

“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Rose

Until forced off the air after being accused by eight women of making unwanted sexual advances, CBS co-host Charlie Rose was my favorite morning newsman.  In a New York Reviewessay about David Friend’s “The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido,” entitled “Being Charlie,” Laura Marsh concluded that the 1990s were a time of sexual fads and experimentation, when many powerful men believed that to be sexually daring was their prerogative and even part of their appeal.  Marsh wrote:

“That’s just Charlie being Charlie,” a senior producer reportedly told an employee on The Charlie Rose Showwho complained of harassment,  “Being Charlie” was perhaps an essential part of his professional persona: a profile of Rose in Newsdaytitled “The Love Cult of Charlie Rose,” was one of many to note his “famously seductive gaze.”  The seductiveness may be why many people thought at the time that a lot of the behavior now being called out and condemned was not so bad, and why some of the men accused made little effort to hide it.

I’ve always been fond of the name Charlie – it seems to imply a genial and unassuming person, less formal than Charles and more intimate than Chuck.  It’s been used effectively as the name of the “Peanuts” cartoon character Charlie Brown, John Steinbeck’s canine companion in “Travels with Charley,” Edgar Bergen’s puppet Charlie McCarthy, detective Charlie Chan, and silent movie star Charlie Chaplin.  In high school Vince Curll and I befriended the dour iconoclast Charles Thomas and got him to loosen up by calling him Charlie, as in “good time Charlie.” During the mid-Fifties my favorite baseball player was Tiger Charlie “Paw Paw” Maxwell.  Later I had a good-natured brother-in-law nicknamed Charlie that fit him to a T.  One of my closest friends is Charlie Halberstadt.  Retiring Indiana State Representative Charlie Brown  believes using that nickname was a political asset.

Laura Marsh wrote:

In her book The Hearts of Men (1983), Barbara Ehrenreich traces this change in masculinity through the twentieth century, detailing the dissatisfactions many men felt at having to marry early and support their wives, who secured what Playboy sourly called “an Assured Lifetime Income”through marriage. To be a husband and a father in the 1950s meant being a provider—getting a job and, in order to keep it, submitting to the conformity of the office. A successful man was the one who could mold his personality both to the corporate culture at work and to domestic ideals at home. For such men the promise of sexual liberation was that separating sex from the responsibilities of traditional marriage would release him from crushing expectations, freeing him to be whoever he wanted to be.

In sixth grade a classmate’s mother called the house and told Midge that I had deliberately brushed against the her daughter’s breasts, as we called them then.   I was floored since I had no idea what she was talking about and had no interest in the girl or her newly sprouted tits, as we referred to them then.  Now had it been farmer’s daughter Thelma Van Sant, the accusation would have been more plausible, albeit untrue.  My mother believed me, and nothing further came of the matter, other than my being wary not to get too close to the girl.  Years later, as a college professor, I never took advantage of my positon nor was ever accused of improper sexual behavior but knew enough to keep my office door open after an incident involving a colleague.

I offered to send my latest Steel Shavings to former Post-Tribunecolumnist Jeff Manes and he replied, “If you hand deliver Shavings, I'll fry us some fish. Let me know. Bring McShane. The levee broke on Feb 22. Went 42 days without NIPSCO. I put up a sign: ‘Welcome to Ramsey Road. We are the Puerto Rico of Jasper County.’ - The Kankakee Ki.”  Great nickname for the sage of the Kankakee River.

Coach Vic Bubas with Duke players

1944 Lew Wallace grad Vic Bubas passed away at age 91. The high school basketball star, who helped Wallace win its first sectional and regional championships, played for North Carolina State and between 1963 and 1966 coached Duke to 3 Final Four appearances.  He is credited with transforming the ACC into one of the top conferences in the county and being one of the first coaches to scout high school prospects prior to their senior year.  In 1969, after ten years at the helm, Bubas retired from coaching and became an administrator.  In 1976 he became the first commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference.

Post-Tribune photos of IUN hearings by Kyle Telethon

Area lawmakers Charlie Brown, Vernon Smith, Lonnie Randolph (East Chicago) and Eddie Melton (Merrillville) held hearings at IUN on the dwindling number of African-American students (down to 17 percent) and faculty. Approximately  80 people attended, including former Labor Studies professor Ruth Needleman, who pointed to the lack of relevant programs.  A partial explanation for the problem is that many qualified minority students obtain scholarships and go away to college and that the market for black faculty is tight.  I would also argue that the shabby treatment of former vice chancellors for academic affairs Kwesi Aggrey and Mark McPhail, both sensitive to the problem but unable to convince others to make minority hiring and enrollment diversity a top university priority, is also responsible.

 George and Betty Villareal at IU Day

At bowling the Pin Chasers swept the Electrical Engineers to finish the season ahead of us in the standings.  In the crucial game, all we needed was for our lefty anchor Dick Maloney to mark.  After leaving the 3-6, he seemed to have it covered, but his ball flattened and went straight at the 3-pin and left the 6-pin – chopped wood, as the saying goes.  I told aviation buff Gene Clifford that my bridge buddy Tom Rea had recently attended an air show in Florida.  “It must have been the Lakeland Sun’n Fun Fly-In,”he replied.  Opponent George Villareal, who the day before had attended IUN Fun Day.  One of the attractions was a six-ton steam-whistle-playing calliope located outside Hawthorn Hall, which could be heard in my Archives cage and acted sort of like a pied piper.

Toivo Pekkanen 

I have started Toivo Pekka’s 1953 autobiography about his Finnish Childhood, “Lapsuuteni,” which contains this elegiac fantasy:

One of these mornings

One spring morning

When the sun rises in the sky

I will mount my steed

           . . . . . 

Only for a moment

Shall his hoofs thunder over the rooftops

Only for an instant

Shall my shadow flash against the skies

Already I shall be far away, set free.

 Mathew Brady

Samuel A Love and I had lunch at Flamingo’s and worked on captions that will go with his photos of Gary poetry projects that Ron Cohen and I plan to include in the third edition of our Gary pictorial history. V Sam told me that when he was a kid, the first edition that his parents bought was one of his favorite books, along with one about the Civil War photos of Mathew Brady.

Teachers Fight Back

“Students, because you’re mine, I walk the line.”  Sign at West Virginia rally of teachers during 9-day strike, borrowing a Johnny Cash line

 Oklahoma state Capitol on third day of nine-day strike

Teacher walkouts and strikes have occurred in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arizona – red states, for the most part -  to protest low salaries, large class size, inadequate supplies, including obsolete textbooks and lack of computers, plus threats to teachers’ pensions.  In Kentucky, Governor Matt Bevin claimed that the walkout led to a student being sexually assaulted, then was pressured into apologizing for the outrageous remark. He vetoed a bill that included a hefty budget increase for education, but lawmakers managed to override his action. The situation for teachers in Indiana is also dire.  In fact, the state appropriates less money per pupil than where walkouts have occurred. Since the 1990s, when Dave started at East Chicago Central, teachers’ salaries have been stagnant and lost ground to inflation.  What a sad commentary on America’s priorities that teachers are so underpaid and burdened by policies that force them to respond to unrealistic guidelines intended to undercut public education in favor of for-profit charter schools.

 Hedy Lamarr

Bridge was at Herb and Evelyn’s in Ogden Dunes, where granddaughter Alissa and their son Alex used to play in their swimming pool.  The huge Passo dog would get so excited when company came that they’d have to keep the friendly beast in the garage, where he’d bang against the wall in frustration.  After a few loud barks, current dog Hedy Lamarr, named for a Forties movie siren was friendly.  When Dick Hagelberg noted that he had Finnish ancestors, I mentioned reading a history of Finland because of my upcoming trip to a conference in Jyvaskyla and that their language is different from neighbors Sweden and Russia.  Connie Barnes noted that one of her great-grandmothers boarded a train to get married only to discover that her fiancée already had a wife, so she wed someone she met on the train.  It was her second marriage and lasted a lifetime.  Evelyn Passo, a kindergarten teacher, is planning to retire soon.  There’s even pressure at that level for teachers to drill stuff into their charges instead of making their first year of school mainly a socializing experience.

In “Straight Man” Richard Russo compares a situation to the plot of “Scuffy the Tugboat,” Gertrude Crampton’s 1946 best seller.   Bored with being confined to a bathtub, Scuffy embarks on a great adventure but in the end realizes he’d rather be back home. Russo also references Brobdingnag, the land of giants in Jonathan Swift’s eighteenth-century satire “Gulliver’s Travels.” When Hank, an English Department chair under duress from both professors and administrators, muses that he must be Porthos to others’ Athos and Aramis, the reference is to “The Three Musketeers” (1844) by Alexander Dumas.  A literary allusion I particularly liked was saying that someone, like Oliver Twist in the Charles Dickens novel, went from a poor home to an even worse one.  One section begins with lines from English poet Stephen Spender, who wrote about social injustice and class struggle:

What I had not foreseen

Was the gradual day

Weakening the will

Leaking the brightness away

Two interesting words Russo employs are dudgeon(a feeling of deep resentment) and ellipsis(the omission of obvious or superfluous) words. Reviewing “City of the Century,” historian James Madison called my Gary book elliptical, which I took to mean, rather than obscure or ambiguous, that I left readers to draw their own conclusions. 

Like Hank, there was a time in academe when I went a little crazy – in my case, soon after achieving promotion and tenure.  I decided to revive the near dormant IUN student newspaper by teaching a History of Journalism course and becoming adviser to the Northwest Phoenix.  Under my guidance it came out weekly and didn’t shy away from controversy.  I was sensible enough, however, to leave editorial decisions to student editors John Petalas and Joe Salacian and discourage articles about professors’ personal lives, such as one about Economics professor Les Singer being a practicing nudist. While I took pride in my teaching and influenced a fair share of students, my impact was miniscule compared to son Dave at East Chicago Central.

There are so few movie comedies worth seeing that, after deciding I didn’t have an appetite for the spy knockoff Beirut, which received mediocre reviews, I debated between Blockers(about parents trying to keep daughters from getting laid on prom night) and Girls Trip(four old friends reconnect in New Orleans),  I opted for the latter since Queen Latifah was in it, I could watch it free on HBO, and it got a 90% Rotten Tomatoes rating. It was  quite raunchy, but Queen Latifah didn’t disappoint, and I enjoyed musical cameos by Ne-Yo, Sean Combs, and New Edition and the dirty dancing scenes. Critics evidently loved Tiffany Haddish as an impulsive party animal, comparing her performance to Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids (2011).

 Cindy Bean

Emerson interior ruins

Cindy C. Bean granted Ron Cohen and me permission to use her photo of Lake Michigan and area steel mills for our new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History.”  It originally appeared in Jerry Davich’s “Lost Gary.”  Cindy and husband Larry frequently visit abandoned buildings in Gary, such as City Methodist Church, Union Station, the Palace Theater, and Emerson School.   Its disgraceful present condition is a sad testimony to the city lack of resources. According to historian Kendall Svengalis, an Emerson grad, the latter cannot be demolished due to it being on the National Register of Historic Places, but Cohen disputes this. 

In “The Defeat of Black Power: Civil Rights and the National Black Political Convention of 1972” (2018), Leonard N. Moore described how Jesse Jackson stole the spotlight at the West Side black summit in hopes of becoming Martin Luther King’s successor as the leader of African Americans. Following is Moore’s account of Jackson and the three conveners, poet Amiri Baraka, Detroit Congressman Charles Diggs, and Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher, at the opening press conference:

All four men were dressed in garb appropriate to their constituency: Diggs in a conservative suit as representative of the National Black Caucus; Hatcher in an expensive tailor-made suit exemplifying the new generation of young, educated, urban mayors, controlling black-majority cities; Baraka in his dashiki representing black nationalists; and Jesse Jackson dressed like Superfly – wide-collar shirt, vest, with a large medallion engraved with the image of Martin Luther King, Jr. hanging from his neck.

Ray Smock wrote tongue-in-cheek about Stormy Daniels showing up at Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s court appearance in an attempt to block authorities from seeing his email correspondence:

     While I have not made a scientific study of the phenomenon, it did appear to me from video clips of the event that there were more reporters, cameramen, and paparazzi at Stormy Daniels' court appearance today than there were people at Trump's inauguration.

     Since we know that Trump's inaugural crowd was the largest in history, according to our highest authority, I will settle for Stormy's crowd as being the second largest.

     For those of you who may feel I am exaggerating a bit, let me find a way of stating this that cannot be disputed. The crowd at the courthouse to see Stormy Daniels today was the largest crowd in history ever to gather for the purpose of seeing a porn star who had an affair with a President of the United States.

 Chase Utley heroics in 2008 World Series

At bridge Dee Van Bebber and I finished second with a 63.89 percent and finished second despite my twice being too cautious in not pushing us to game.  Having lived many years in Florida, Dee is a Tampa Bay fan and resented Joe Madden leaving the Rays to manage the Cubs.  Commenting on last Saturday’s atrocious weather at Wrigley, Madden mentioned that his worst experience was the deciding 2008 World Series game 5 in Philadelphia. A Phillies fan, I vividly recall it being suspended in the sixth inning with the Phils holding a one-run lead and being resumed next day.  I was at the bowling alley with the TV on mute when, with the score tied, Philly second baseman Chase Utley knocked down a grounder headed for centerfield, faked throwing to first, and then nabbed the lead runner at the plate, thanks to a great tag by Carlos Ruiz.  At the time I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, but, by all accounts, it saved the Series for the Phillies.  I also recall the on-field celebration after closer Brad Lidge, a perfect 48 for 48 for the season, struck out the final batter with a nasty slider, causing me to let out a whoop.