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.