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.