U.S. Blues

“Son of a gun, better change your act

We’re all confused, what’s to lose,

You can call this the United States Blues.”

         Grateful Dead, “U.S. Blues”

Ray Smock posted,The Truth Emerges: Bob Woodward’s, “Fear: Trump in the White House”:

  This is not an easy book to read. Not that the language is a problem. Woodward’s narrative on the chaos inside the Trump White House is top-notch professional reporting. We would expect nothing less from this distinguished journalist.

  The book is hard to read because it is so painful. There is no let-up in the account of the president’s ineptitude and lies. There is no comedy relief in this book. This story is an unmitigated tragedy. It is uncomfortable to read, even for those of us who follow the Trump presidency closely and think our hide has been toughened now that we are more than 600 days into the Trump presidency.

  Trump seems incapable of shame. His lies don’t bother him. He may not even see them as lies. And some of those Woodward interviewed believe Trump can’t help himself. It seems to be in his DNA somewhere. Gary Cohn, Trump’s economic adviser, until he left the White House, kindly called Trump a “professional liar.”Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, used the vernacular,“Trump is a f**king liar.”

Journal of Urban History editor David Goldfield, like Smock an old friend from Maryland grad school days and Wobblies softball teammate, knowing I’d published “Jacob A. Riis and the American City” soon after we collaborated on “The Enduring Ghetto: Sources and Readings,” asked me to review an article about the Progressive reformer’s work on behalf of creating small parks in New York City.  I strongly recommended the article and had only a few suggestions to improve it, including better opening and closing paragraphs.  Here is part of my critique: 

      The article might begin with this anecdote, in the author’s words, taken from James B. Lane’s “Jacob A. Riis and the American City”: “The formal opening of Mulberry Bend park took place on 15 June 1897.  Despite his eight-year struggle toward this end, Riis received no invitation to attend the dedication.  He had argued with city officials about trespass signs which forbade residents from walking on the grass. In fact, one day he had disobeyed the edict, and a policeman put a cane to his back and ordered him off. Attending the ceremonial opening with Lincoln Steffens, Riis noted with pleasure that policemen allowed the thousands of spectators to gather on the grass to hear the band and speeches by politicians and community leaders.  The moment he cherished most, however, was when Colonel George E. Waring led the crowd in saluting Jacob Riis with three cheers.”(see also New York Sun, 16 June 1897; Riis, The Making of an American, pp. 283-4)  Regarding the author’s account of the Mulberry Bend fight, I suggest he move the information in a footnote about a deadly accident involving two children to the main body of the paper (go for maximum emotional impact, as Jacob Riis would have wanted it).  

    On Riis and ethnic stereotypes, mentioned on page 5 and footnote 35, the Danish-American’s attitude evolved, especially after interacting with Southern and Central European immigrants at Jacob A. Riis Settlement and becoming friends with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. 

    I’d also suggest a concluding paragraph mentioning Riis’s work in his later years on behalf of providing slum children with healthy, open air spaces, such as supporting the Jacob A. Riis Settlement, the Fresh Air Fund, the Boy Scouts, Sea Breeze Tuberculosis Hospital, and other Progressive endeavors of that ilk.  In line with Riis’s belief in the curative powers of fresh air and sunlight, it might be fitting to mention that in his later years Riis frequented spas and sanitariums for his health and purchased a money-draining potato farm in Massachusetts. 

A woman has come forward to accuse Trump’s Supreme Court nominee of sexual battery when he was 17 and stumbling drunk. Republicans are crying foul but used similar tactics 20 years ago when they impeached Clinton on smarmy stories and innuendoes.  Heartless Trump is claiming that opponents are inflating the number of Puerto Ricans, estimated to be at least 3,000, killed in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and is blaming California’s numerous deadly megafires not on global warming but bad environmental laws that prevent “readily available water”from being used against the blazes (“wingnut drivel,” the L.A. Times countered).  Dominating the headlines: devastating flooding caused by Tropical Storm Florence, which continues to affect much of North Carolina, not only coastal areas but inland, due to rivers expected to crest at record levels.  Toni and I vacationed in Kitty Hawk, NC, with Dave Goldfield when Phil was a toddler and flew into Wilmington (now virtually under water) en route to Dick and Donna Jeary’s Myrtle Beach condo 20 years later, where we learned Alissa had been born in Raleigh.

 1963 Hobart varsity basketball team; Dave Bigler, top, second from right

Alan Geller, presenter Alan Yngve, and Dave Bigler, top local pair at World Wide Bridge Contest

With Samantha Gauer’s help, I interviewed Dave Bigler at the Calumet Regional Archives.  Beforehand, Steve McShane gave him a tour of our facilities. I first met Dave when he partnered with Lynn Bayman in Chesterton.  Evidently Lynn had bid on playing with him at an Alzheimer’s fundraiser, but he has since returned to play with her several times.  A 1963 Hobart and IUN grad with a degree in Special Education, Bigler worked over 30 years at U.S. Steel.  He and four other supervisors, dubbed the Loose Cannons, when asked to trouble-shoot a thorny problem, often met at Hank and Casey’s taproom in Glen Park near the old Shaver Chevy dealership to thrash out tactics and strategy. While Bigler learned bridge from his parents at a young age and played related games in college, including euchre, bid whist, and a similar Serbian version, he didn’t take up the card game seriously until invited to join a bridge o rama in Portage.  Henceforth, in retirement he and Chuck Briggs formed a successful partnership.  Dave enjoys teaching bridge to beginners and introducing them to area games; he’s been involved in Little League baseball for almost 30 years and has been a member of the Hobart School Board since 2003.

At Hobart Lanes an opponent’s grandson ended up under a table above us and spotted the dimes and quarters I had spread out nearby for doubles and tenth-strike pots.  I spotted the rascal just as he appeared ready to make away with some coins.  Friday Toni arrived home after spending five days with sister Marianne in Granger, Indiana, visiting from Florida.  James slept over, as bowling season commenced, and I made pancakes and Polish sausage and then took him to Culver’s for lunch after his match at Inman’s.  He’s chosen Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbitt” for an assignment in Advanced English; I told him I’d assigned the novel in my History class on the 1920s and described the author’s other satirical best-sellers, “Main Street” and “Elmer Gantry.”  Dave spotted Ron Cohen and my new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History” and noticed three photos by Guy Rhodes, his former student at E.C. Central,including an aerial shot of spectators at Marquette Park for the 2010 air show taken through the open back doors of a Golden Knights Team plane.

 above, photo by Guy Rhodes; Paul and Oz, August 2017

Toni and enjoyed Paul Kaczoha’s retirement picnic. As the invite stated, “after 48 fun filled years of working in the a steel mill, he is no longer a wage slave.”  In the garage hung a quilt made from old t-shirts bearing inscriptions (i.e., “Labor creates all wealth”) and photos of labor radicals.  We helped ourselves to delicious food, including ribs and chicken.  Toni’s salad disappeared fast, and my dill pickles from Jewel were also popular. We sat with Bill and Dorrean Carey (still active in Save the Dunes), Sue and Oz (my Wednesday lunch companion), and labor activist Alice Bush, there with son Mike Appelhans, who teaches Math at Ivy Tech. Mike met IUN Chancellor Bill Lowe at the Arts and Sciences Building dedication (the two institutions share use of the facility) and discussed the Irish revolutionary period of 100 years ago, Lowe’s academic specialty. 

I finished John Updike’s “Rabbit Remembered” with reluctance, realizing there’d be no sequels.  Harry’s offspring turned out just fine, each with characteristics inherited from him.  Son Nelson referred to death as a freeze-frame.  Grandson Roy, a computer nerd, described net-surfing in 1999 as “all Boolean logic.”  At Bucknell in 1962 a Math instructor attempted to explain (without much luck) George Boole’s nineteenth-century algebraic system wof variables based on 1 and O.  Updike referenced 1999 TV ads for Nicoderm and Secret Platinum (“strongest deodorizer you can buy without a prescription”)and the sci-fi satire “Galaxy Quest,” containing a scene where the extraterrestrial turns into an octopus when sexually excited. He compared a disappointing turn of events to a kid undressing a Barbie doll and finding no nipples nor vagina and legs that don’t bend, much less spread.

Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest; Matt Burns as Aristotle 

Although my favorite NFL teams, the Eagles and the Skins, suffered upsets, Jimbo Jammers Fantasy team kicked butt, as Ben Roethlisberger and Todd Gurley racked up a combined 67 or my 105 points.  Sports Illustrated’s Charlotte Wilder wrote about 29 year-old Matt Burns (a.k.a. Airistotle), two-time air guitar world champion who in August finished second to Nanami “Seven Seas” Nagura in Oulu, Finland.  How I wish Dave and I were there at the time.  Thirty years ago, he, Jimmy Satkoski, and I won a TV in a similar contest doing “Cretin Hop” by the Ramones.  Our secret: get on and off the stage quickly.  Performances at championships last just 60-seconds and are judged on stage presence, technical merit (do contestants appear to be playing the proper notes?), and “airness,” an intangible akin to originality.  Like in roller derby, competitors assume such alter egos as Shreddy Mercury, Nordic Thunder, Hot Lixx Hulahan, and Windhammer. Burns compared the scene to drag shows, “but for frat bros.”

A September 2018 Journal of American History article by Andrew Pope titled “Making Motherhood a Felony” opened by mentioning that in 1960 Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis proposed a segregation package that would have barred black women from giving birth in the state’s charity hospitals and imprisoned women for up to one year who conceived a child out of wedlock.”  These measures failed, but lawmakers passed measures that denied the vote to women who had given birth while unmarried and prohibited AID (Aid to Dependent Children) payments to mothers who gave birth out of wedlock, lived with a man, or whom caseworkers considered “promiscuous.”   Over 98 percent of the approximately 30,000 poor people denied funds in the first few years were African American.