Juggling Acts

“Most of us have trouble juggling.  The woman who says she doesn’t is someone I admire but have never met.” Barbara Walters

The earliest historical record of juggling goes back 4,000 years to a panel found in an Egyptian tomb thought to have religious significance, with the round objects possibly signifying solar objects. In ancient China a military leader, according to legend, used his juggling prowess to overawe enemy troops. Juggling acts became staples in circuses and a way of entertaining audiences between acts during vaudeville shows. Common props are balls, rings, and clubs, as well as more dangerous objects such as swords, flaming torches, and even chainsaws.  The records for most soccer balls juggled simultaneously is five, first achieved by Argentinean Victor Rubilar in 2006.

 Monica and Edgar in Mexico

In the spring of 2018 a pregnant Monica Verduzco juggled work, school, and family obligations while struggling with serious health issues.   She wrote:

January 29, 2018:I have been going back and forth and finally decided to have a first birthday party for Joaquin. I’ll rent the Riverview Park cabin in Lake Station.  It is inexpensive and hopefully big enough for our families. I gave my sister-in-law Maggie $150 for the deposit. She lives in Lake Station and I’m in New Chicago, which has a Hobart mailing address and pays Lake Station for water, sewer, trash, and police service; but somehow I don’t qualify as a resident.  I had a doctor appointment. My fiancé Edgar was able to go with me to see the ultrasound. I am 29 weeks pregnant and, oh, so high risk since I’ll turn 40 in March. This is my second child; it’s a girl. We haven’t decided on a name yet. 

January 30:Last fall I went back to school to become a history teacher. I am in UTEP (Urban Teacher Education Program) working towards a Master’s Degree in Secondary Education. There is a shortage of teachers in Indiana. I can only assume it’s because of the crappy pay and hostile environments of recent years.

February 5:Oh my goodness, so much homework, I feel like I may have to drop a class.  My boss scheduled me to work 45 hours for the next three weeks. This means it will be 50 because I never get out on time. I also do taxes for friends. I didn’t like to charge, but most insist on paying something, such as a case of Modelo beer or diapers. 

February 12:It’s my miracle child’s first birthday. Unfortunately, I have so much stuff going on that we aren’t going to celebrate until his party. I have 2 more taxes to get done this week. Edgar is laid off, and so is his uncle. They are fence erectors and probably won’t get work until April. 

February 14:Valentine’s Day is nothing special because I am so stinking busy. My boss has been gone and left us understaffed and without a proper schedule. I’ve even been asked to work two Sundays. 

February 19:At an appointment with the high risk doctor, everything went well. Even so, my thyroid is overactive, and the medication that I take is basically poison. It could cause low birth weight and a lot of growth issues for the baby. Edgar asked the nurse if there was still a possibility that it was a boy. The nurse reacted like he’s crazy. All I could do is shake my head; even the genetic test came back as a girl. Edgar is still hopeful that they are wrong. He is nervous about having a girl, I think; it’s funny how much he is over-reacting. 

February 24:At Sam’s Club we spent $200 on stuff for the baby’s birthday party on March 11, the first weekend day available, and we have a lot more to go. I did save a bunch of money by ordering a super cute Mickey Mouse cake and 28 cupcakes for $30. 

February 27:Edgar and I have talked about just going to the Justice of the Peace and getting married on my spring break before the baby is born. It makes me want to cry every time I have to tell someone my last name and then my son’s and they aren’t the same. The most important reason is that I almost died giving birth to Joaquin.  The nurses all talked about how scared the doctor was and how he stayed with me in recovery until I woke up, something he virtually never does. I am so worried about this delivery. I need to make sure that my family is taken care of. Everything that Edgar and I own is in my name. I have way better credit than Edgar and I have worked at the same place for 24 years. I have also owned my home for ten years. We have three vehicles and two are paid off. If anything happens to me,  he can sell them.  I need to make sure that he has a legal right to everything.  I have a friend who is an ordained minister and I might see if she’d marry us at Joaquin’s birthday party as long as Edgar is down for it. 

March 2:   Edgar liked the idea of one of my BFF’s marrying us. As long as we can get our license and his ring, we’ll do it at the birthday party. We ordered the ring and they said it should be here by in time. 

March 5:After my doctor appointments Edgar, Joaquin, and I went to Lake County Government Center for a marriage license. Edgar was super frustrated because we went into the wrong building three times.  He is really impatient. I feared he was going to leave, but he followed through. We haven’t told many people that we are getting hitched. We have been living as if married for almost seven years. We both come from Mexican backgrounds and our families are super Catholic, so they probably won’t think this is good enough since it wasn’t through the church.

March 10:I took today off. I usually work Saturdays but need to get everything done for the birthday party. Edgar’s ring came. We picked it up and went to Sam’s Club for last-minute items and to pick up Joaquin’s cake. At home I made pasta salad, broccoli salad, and a few desserts. The weather forecast is for tomorrow to be sunny and in the forties but snow in the evening. By then hopefully everyone will be home tucked in their beds. 

March 11:Everything turned out great. The decorations looked awesome, the food was great, and about 120 people came. The seating was a little tight, but we managed. Most of the kids played outside, so that gave us additional room. Amanda, my ordained minister friend, was pretty nervous with the size of the crowd.  Edgar and I were, too. I checked over the vows that Amanda printed off the internet and cut several paragraphs, telling her short and sweet was better. Then the three of us walked to the front, I grabbed the microphone from the DJ (because what first birthday party doesn’t have a DJ), and made the announcement. There were a few unexpected gasps and cheers from the crowd. Then we exchanged vows. Amanda was shaking so bad that it calmed us down. The whole thing lasted 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

Joaquin cried almost the whole afternoon except when he napped and when Edgar was holding him. He wouldn’t eat his smash cake or open his presents. Thank god, Edgar is an amazing father and now husband.  If everyone knew my story, how hard it was to get pregnant, stay pregnant and then stay alive during and after the delivery, I think they would understand why he is so pampered. 

March 12:It’s my birthday. I will say I am in such a better place in my life at 40 than I was at 30. I slept in and am in a lot of pain from yesterday.  My birthday present is that Edgar went back to work. I am excited because we need to keep saving for my upcoming maternity leave. Edgar, Joaquin, and I will go out for dinner. No big deal.  I have to take a three-hour glucose test tomorrow and need to fast for 12 hours, so I won’t be able to eat anything after 7 pm. I also need to watch my sugar intake, so no cake for me. 

March 13:After the torture of the glucose test at St. Anthony’s in Crown Point was over, I ate a footlong Firehouse sub. It was delicious. 

March 15:  I worked an 11-hour shift. My body is killing me. At least I am on Spring Break and don’t have class. I work across the street from the Key West Inn. Today they pulled another body from the motel. This time it was a murder, a woman with a daughter from Wheatfield who’d been missing. 

March 16: On my way to work I had to pass the motel.  A bloody mattress had been thrown in the dumpster for the whole world to see.  How horrific that they would do this. It is disgusting. I pray that none of her family pass by and see this. The place should be shut down. 

March 17:It is St Patrick’s Day, and I would love a nice cold green beer or just a regular beer for that matter. Being pregnant, I can’t have one for a few more months. I did make corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and carrots for dinner. There were no leftovers, so I would say it was a hit. I am half Mexican and half Irish, two red hot combinations. I have a really bad temper, by the way. 

April 2:Joaquin was really, really bad.  Edgar has him so spoiled. He only wanted to go with him. That annoyed Edgar, who wanted to leave my sister’s house earlier than normal.  My health issues and all the expenses for medications are seriously stressing me out. 

April 21:My family threw Edgar and me a surprise shower for Mila, our baby girl. We finally decided on a name. Everything was perfect. I was really surprised and almost cried. Lina, my cousin and sister-in-law (she is married to my husband’s brother), coordinated everything. She thought out every detail and even bought me a dress in case I showed up in jeans and a hoodie. 

April 22:After I worked on homework, we went to my nephew’s soccer game. I wore a sun dress and flip flops, not a good idea. I froze my butt off. Joaquin slept almost the entire time. Joaquin loves soccer. He kicks the ball around with assistance, since he is such a chicken to walk on his own. We then went to El Capitan in downtown Hobart to get something to eat after the game.  I am due a month from today and hope I make it that long. This way I’ll get more time off in August when the weather is nice. I was a week late with Joaquin; he just didn’t want to come out. Maybe Mila will be late. I am really nervous.  My doctor is insistent that I try for a vaginal delivery instead of the C-section. I just have this sickening feeling that something is going to happen and I might die, leaving Edgar a widow with two children under the age of two. Edgar would go crazy parenting alone and I pray that he doesn’t have to. Hopefully, I am paranoid. 

 Mila

Perhaps due in part to heavy rain, we just had three tables at bridge.  The hand I wish I had bid differently began with the person on my left opening one Heart.  Joel, my partner, bid 2 Clubs and the person to my right bid 2 Spades.  I held six Diamonds to the Ace-ten and 3 Clubs to the King.  After much hesitation, I bid 3 Diamonds and everyone passed.  Joel had a singleton Diamond King, which wouldn’t have been too bad except I encountered a 5-1 split and went down 2.  Had I bid Clubs, we would have made the contract.  My reasoning was that since I had a singleton Spade, the six Diamonds would be more valuable, but I should have supported Joel’s Clubs.

 James A. Haught

Helen Booth will be attending her seventieth high school reunion in West Virginia, saying that she attended a Catholic school although not religious.  Her brother-in-law, James A. Haught, is the author of many books, including: “2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt” (1996); “Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness” (2002); “Fading Faith: The Rise of the Secular Age” (2010); and a memoir “Fascinating West Virginia: Wild, Memorable Episodes from the Longtime Editor of the Mountain State’s Largest Newspaper, The Charleston Gazette.” (2011).  Amazon.com included this biography:

  James A. Haught was born in 1932 in a small West Virginia farm town that had no electricity or paved streets. He graduated from a rural high school with 13 students in the senior class. He came to Charleston, worked as a delivery boy, then became a teen-age apprentice printer at the Charleston Daily Mailin 1951. Developing a yen to be a reporter, he volunteered to work without pay in the Daily Mailnewsroom on his days off, to learn the trade. This arrangement continued several months, until The Charleston Gazette offered a full-time news job in 1953. He has been at the Gazetteever since - except for a few months in 1959 when he was press aide to Sen. Robert Byrd.
    During his six decades in newspaper life, he has been police reporter, religion columnist, feature writer and night city editor. Then he was investigative reporter for 13 years, and his work led to several corruption convictions. In 1983 he was named associate editor, and in 1992 he became editor. He writes 400 Gazette editorials a year, plus occasional personal columns and news articles.
    Haught has four children, 12 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.For years he enjoyed hiking with a trail club, participating in a philosophy group, and taking grandchildren sailing off his old sailboat. He is a Democrat and longtime Unitarian Universalist.

Chancellor Lowe claimed he was spending more time than intended reading Paul Kern and my history of IUN, “Educating the Calumet Region.”  I told him I had spoken about it at an oral history conference and that the moderator got a kick out of descriptions of IUN’s History department during the 1970s when, to quote David Malham, the professors were a bunch of “Young Turks.”  Paul Kern recalled: “Faculty parties usually involved students and weren’t tea parties.The cultural milieu was more beer and Rock ‘n’ Roll than tea and classical music. It was more a case of the Sixties generation setting the tone.  Nobody would have dreamed of wearing a coat and tie to a history party. It was more casual than it might have been a few years before.” Interviewed by Andrew Bodinet, 1971 Horace Mann grad Milan Andrejevich, recalled a party where I blew a speaker playing a Rolling Stones album at such high volume.  At Tom Pancini and Al Sterken’s place on 35^thAvenue in Glen park we wore out Pink Floyd’s album “Dark Side of the Moon.”   

I didn’t tell Lowe the title of my Oral History Association talk: “The Professor Wore a Cowboy Hat (And Nothing Else): Ethical Issues in Handling Matters of Sex in Institutional Oral Histories: IU Northwest as a Case Study.”   During the 1970s, faculty on average were much younger than today, and both the sexual revolution and the feminist movement were in full swing. Divorce was rampant.  Though regretful that she went straight from living at home to marriage and family obligations, thankfully, Toni stuck with me during those hazardous times.  Not so, four of my colleagues, who ended up remarrying students, although in most cases the women initiated the relationship.  My thoughts were often on preparing for class, writing scholarly articles, and doing what I deemed necessary to get tenure rather thinking about Toni’s needs.  We had just one car, hard to imagine, which often left her stranded at home.  I found time to play sports in the back yard with Phil and Dave but not always quality time with her.  Meanwhile, she was juggling various responsibilities while taking Fine Arts classes at IUN.

Joe Glowacki; Times photo by David P. Funk

Joe Glowacki, 29, won two gold medals in bowling at the Special Olympics in Seattle.  He has a 135 average but rolled a high game of 171. For seven years, he has been working at LARC (Learning Assistance Resource Center, serving people with developmental disabilities), folding and gluing boxes for BMW.  Joe once bowled a 201 and also swims and runs relays.

At lunch Mike Olszanski filled me in on the memorial service for union leader Eddie Sadlowski, evidently a three-hour affair at a former union hall converted into a church.  Roberta Wood, active in the Women’s Caucus when Eddie was district director, gave an eloquent speech.  We reminisced about “Old lefties” active in the rank-and-file steelworkers movement and the anti-nuke Bailly Alliance.  Oz Googled Joe Franz’s name and discovered he’d died after hitting his head while working out at a gym.  His wife had been married to a rather dour IUN Sociology professor until she became enamored with Joe during the Bailly fight.  In Steel Shavings (volume 16, 1987) Chicagoan Ed Gogal recalled first meeting Franz: 

  In 1977 a group us “no-nukers” came out to Indiana and met Herb Read and Ed Osann, who took us on a trek through the proposed nuclear plant site.  We trespassed on NIPSCO’s land, and Herb showed us how NIPSCO was ruining Cowles Bog. We wanted to get one demonstration under our belt before the weather got too cold.  We held a rally in a Chesterton park, and then people paraded to the NIPSCO offices and put a wreath, to symbolize the death and destruction from nuclear power, on the door there.

  That winter we started saying, “This is crazy.  We have a lot of nuclear plants in Illinois that have to be fought.”So we started calling ourselves the Bailly Alliance-Illinois..  But we kept meeting labor leaders, such as Mike Olszanski and Joe Franz, at our literature table.  They’d say, “We really support what you are doing, but we’re too busy trying to get the coke ovens cleaned up, we don’t have the time to get involved.”  Then a few months later, they jumped in with both feet and that’s really when the Bailly thing took off.

Toni and grandson James at Grand Valley State, August 2018