“Please don’t use a bad word when you can use a good word,” Jeff Pickles (Jim Carrey) in “Kidding”
The Showtimeseries “Kidding” was a tour de force for versatile actor Jim Carrey, who plays Jeff Piccirillo, host of a children’s TV show, “Mr. Pickles’ Puppet Time,” modeled after “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” In the course of ten episodes Jeff struggles to keep his sanity as a son dies in a car accident, his wife leaves him, and a second son starts smoking pot and displaying dangerously aggressive behavior. When he tapes an episode about loved ones passing away, his father Seb, the show’s producer (a marvelous Frank Langella) refuses to air it because it might upset his young audience. One of the show’s fans is a killer on death row whose execution Jeff attends; the lethal injection enters the condemned man’s arm in the center of his tattoo, a fly modeled after a puppet on the show. Later, when Jeff destroys his father’s office, we see that he now has the same tattoo on his arm. I’ve re-watched every episode of “Kidding” and find subtleties I missed the first time, like all the witnesses to the execution having red hair like the victims. Voxreviewer Karen Han summed up the series perfectly when she called Carrey a marvel and “Kidding” “wonderful, terrifying, and heartbreaking at the same time.” Mr. Pickles’ final advice to parents before his show went off the air: listen to your children.
Toni and I attended John Cain’s 25th annual Holiday Reading, Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory,” at South Shore Arts in Munster. Beforehand, we enjoyed the gallery exhibit “Windy Indy,” curated by self-taught artist Ish Muhammad and featuring several pieces by graffiti artist Felix Maldonado. Donna Catelano, my book club companion and South Shore special projects director, greeted me. The second part of the Urban Legendsseries, “Haunts,” will open in February and highlight guerrilla explorers of such Gary architectural ruins as City Methodist Church, Union Station, Horace Mann School, and the Palace Theater. Since I wrote the catalogue essay, Cain provided free tickets and wants me to return for a February talk and gallery tour that is part of the Art in Focus series. I chatted with friends from IUN and Miller, including Al Renslow and Judy Ayers. I told Nick Mantis, who is producing a documentary on Region bard Jean Shepherd, I was looking forward to his February Art in Focus lecture titled “The Making of Shep: A Filmmaker’s Progress.”
below, Jim West and John Cain
Buddy and Sook
Cain told Post-Trib feature writer Philip Potempa: “I never met or saw Truman Capote in person. However, one of my prized keepsakes came when I was 30 years old and I purchased a used copy of ‘A Christmas Memory’ from a book store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The book not only turned out be a first edition, it was also signed by Capote, making it extra special.”Potempa summarized “A Christmas Memory” in this manner:
Originally published as a feature article in Mademoisellemagazine in December 1956, “A Christmas Memory” captures the folksy atmosphere of Capote’s youth with the aroma of pecan pies and the flickering of candles in the windows of homes back in December of a 1930s Alabama. It follows the dreams of a young boy named Buddy (the name Capote used as a youth) and his friendship with his eccentric relatives, including his much older cousin and best friend, "Sook." Capote lived with “a spinster aunt,” and one of his favorite traditions was helping mail fruitcakes [he helped Soot make] to everyone from actress Jean Harlow to President Franklin Roosevelt, as a means to feel a connection to the famous names of the day.
One humorous highlight is when Buddy accompanies Sook to a menacing bootlegger’s den in order to buy a bottle of whiskey for the fruitcakes. After finishing their labors, the cousin pours the remaining liquor into two glasses and they celebrate, much to the chagrin of uptight relatives. At Christmas Soot imagines Mrs. Roosevelt serving their fruitcake at the White House. Shortly after that holiday, Capote’s family sent him off to a military academy, but over the years he continued to receive fruitcakes from his beloved childhood companion.
I moved into a first-place tie in Fantasy Football by defeating nephew Garrett Okomski on the strength of 26 points from Eagles tight end Zach Ertz. Needing a substitute kicker with mine on a bye week, I lucked out with former Bear Robbie Gould, who kicked 3 field goals for San Francisco, including one over 50 yards, on a weekend when Bears kicker Cody Parkey missed 2 3-pointers and 2 extra points.
The granddaughter of Elbert H. Gary’s brother visited the Archives in search of information about Bishop Herman Alerding, who founded a Gary settlement house for foreign-born Catholics that bore his name. In 1920 Alerding wrote to U.S. Steel Board Chairman Elbert Gary appealing for money, using this rationale: “A Catholic settlement house would result in more and more amicable relations between employer and employee. Americanization would be a good investment, an insurance not only against atheism, but against communism.”Judge Gary responded by donating $100,000.
Post-Trib columnist Philip Potempa was judged a poetry recital at La Lumiere school in LaPorte. Winner Lauren Jordanich chose “Let It be Forgotten,” a 1924 poem by rebel and suicide victim Sara Teasdale:
Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.
If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.
Another student recited “The Days Gone By” by Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley. Its final verse goes:
O the days gone by! O the days gone by!
The music of the laughing lip, the luster of the eye;
The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin’s magic ring—
The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything,—
When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh,
In the golden olden glory of the days gone by.
James Whitcomb Riley
In “The Winter of Trump’s Discontent,” Ray Smock wrote about the President’s latest display of embarrassing behavior:
The president went to Paris to join other world leaders in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Unfortunately, he could not muster enough energy to go to an American cemetery where more than 6,000 American soldiers, mostly Marines, are buried in sweeping semi-circles of white crosses interspersed with rose bushes. These honored dead were the casualties of the Battle of Belleau Wood about 50 miles from Paris during the month of June 1918. President Trump blamed his absence on the rainy weather. Somehow other world leaders got there just fine. Later he blamed his protocol people for not telling him that a no-show was bad for his image. When he returned to the United States, this same president who castigates the patriotism of NFL players who kneel during the playing of the National Anthem in protest of civil rights violations could not muster the strength to visit Arlington Cemetery, just 2.1 miles from the White House, on Veteran’s Day. Clearly, the president is distracted by other things right now.
From Martinsburg, West Virginia, Ray Smock attached this caption to a photo: “It’s elementary Watson! The suspect walked down the driveway, picked up the Washington Post, went to the mailbox, back-tracked to the garbage can, and wheeled it back to the house.”
Wildfires are out of control in California and a nor’easter has blanketed the East Coast. Back home in Chesterton, I shoveled two inches of wet snow (heart attack snow, Toni calls it) from the sidewalk and drove to IUN in preparation for a big day Friday. In the morning I’ll interview 89-year-old jazz horn player Art Hoyle, who moved to Gary at age 13 with his mother and lived with an uncle, a pediatrician who insisted on discussing books Art was reading by the likes of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens at the dinner table. At Gary Roosevelt Art came under the tutelage of music teacher Ernest Bennett and played in a jazz band that performed at school dances. His future wife attended Froebel and was part of a greeting committee that met Frank Sinatra prior to his performance at a Tolerance concert during the Froebel school strike. At age 19, prior to joining the air force, Hoyle played in Thomas Crump’s orchestra in Calumet City and learned how properly to back up vocalists. During a 70-year career that included stints with bands led by Sun Ra and Lionel Hampton and gigs in Europe and at Chicago’s best venues, Hoyle is still going strong. In 2010 he told Chicago Jazz Magazine: “I’m still working enough to keep the flies off.”
Alessandro Portelli
Preparing for the Art Hoyle interview, I re-read Sandro Portelli’s Oral History Review essay “Living Voices: The Oral History Interview as Dialogue and Experience.” Portelli wrote: “Our task is not only to extract information, but to open up narrative spaces.” He argues that an interview is an exchange of gazes - a co-created moment in a relationship between the past and the time of the telling. Portelli recalled interviewing Kentucky civil rights activist Julia Cowans in 1983, who began by saying that she didn’t trust him because he was white and then spent many hours explaining why that was so. Here is Portelli’s final paragraph:
“Never trust a white school teacher,”says Baby Suggs, a character in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. So here I am, a white schoolteacher who learned the meaning of oral history because a black woman did not trust me, and because she trusted me enough to tell me why.
Ish Muhammad collage
In the evening I’ll attend an artists’ reception at South Shores Arts gallery for the exhibit “Indy Windy: A Love Story” and hope to give free copies of “Gary: A Pictorial History” to Ish Muhammad, who curated the show, and other Region artists who are in the book and the exhibit. Beforehand, I’ll pay tribute to retiring colleague Chuck Gallmeier at an afternoon gathering of IUN faculty. This is what I plan to say:
The first time I recall conversing with Chuck was at a 2-day retreat Chancellor Peggy Elliott arranged at Avalon Manor in Chesterton. I hadn’t known what to make of this tall, handsome, long-haired ladies man. From our very first conversation I realized this was someone I wanted to know better. At lunch on the final day of the retreat, after a rather tedious morning, faculty and administrators dined in two adjacent rooms. Chuck and I opted for the one without the bigwigs. A waitress came to take drink orders; most folks ordered coke, sprite or lemonade. Chuck and I opted for something stronger; immediately almost everyone else switched to beer, wine or a cocktail. Five or 10 minutes later, a waiter entered carrying a tray of soft drinks. “That must be for the other room,”Gallmeier said deadpan, drawing hearty laughs all around the table.
During the next quarter-century Chuck established himself not only as IUN’s most popular teacher but as one of the very best, right up there with Sociologist Bob Lovely, my former colleague Jerry Pierce, and English profs George Bodmer and Anne Balay. When I talk with alumni about memorable professors, these names come up most frequently.
Chuck was much in demand to teach Swing Shift courses to steelworkers. Labor Studies staff member Mike Olszanski taped classes for those unable to attend. Oz confided to me that Gallmeier normally let it all hang out and frequently used salty language; but one evening he noticed that Chuck had really toned things down. During the break he realized why – a student had brought her 8-year-old daughter. That’s typical of his concern for students.
Chuck once asked me to take over his class because of university obligations in Bloomington. Beforehand, I watched him in action and found the experience scintillating. When my turn came, a fair share of students had read the assignment - about the Central Park 5 case - and were both eager to hear what I had to say on the subject and prepared to engage meaningfully with each other. Chuck had primed them to assume an active role in the learning experience but to stay within the boundaries of mutual respect.
As a longtime chair of the Faculty Organization Gallmeier was a worthy successor to such distinguished predecessors as “Founding Fathers” Jack Buehner and Bill Neil, soft-spoken Fred Chary and John Ban, union activists Lew Ciminillo and Esther Nicksic, erudite Bill Reilly, curmudgeons George Roberts and George Bodmer, no-nonsense IUN grad Linda Rooda, and diplomat Mary Russell. I can think of nobody who has devoted more time and energy than Chuck in providing necessary faculty input to administrators. He and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye on university matters – he was more the pragmatist while I was more outspoken in criticizing questionable actions of our “Old Boys” network. While faculty can often be petty about holding grudges, Chuck never, ever let university matters ruin our friendship.
Several years ago, Bill Neil, IUN’s first elected Faculty Org chair, who hired me, spoke to this body about a recently deceased colleague, George Thoma, I think, or perhaps Herman Feldman. Bill confessed that what he most missed about the university was the collegiality. So do many of us, and that is one reason why I suspect that we will continue to see my good friend around campus for many years to come. Let’s hope so. I can’t imagine IUN without him.
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