Rolling Thunder

“You might as well expect rivers to run backwards, as any man born free to be contented penned up.  Let me be a free man and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.” Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain (Chief Joseph) 

Young Chief Joseph

Rolling Thunder

Operation Rolling Thunder represented a dramatic escalation of the Vietnam War, as Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965 ordered an intense bombing campaign against North Vietnam that lasted four years and though ineffective in shortening the war resulted in untold Vietnamese casualties andmany American pilots, including John McCain, being shot down and taken prisoner.  It became the name of a Vietnam veterans advocacy group. In the mid-Seventies Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue toured extensively with a supporting cast that included Joan Baez and Roger McGuinn.  Rolling Thunder is also the name of a Six Flags roller coaster.

Garrett Peck’s “The Great War in America” argues convincingly that World War I (as the conflict was called only after World War II) was the most momentous event of the twentieth century, breaking up the Ottoman and Austria-Hungarian empires, spawning Bolshevism, destabilizing the Middle East to this day, killing millions, sparking Third World nationalism, and, due to defects in the Versailles Treaty, sowing the seeds of World War II. It marked a vast increase in the power of the federal government and America’s “coming of age” in world affairs despite an isolationist backlash domestically and led to postwar runaway inflation, strikes, race riots, a Red Scare, and an ignoble experiment, Prohibition. In the introduction Peck wrote:

  War leaves a scar on a nation’s psyche, one that never fully heals. . . Arlington, Virginia, is my home, and every Memorial Day it witnesses tens of thousands of Vietnam war veterans who descend on the nation’s capital in the motorcycle caravan known as Rolling Thunder.  The veterans seek an answer to unanswerable questions: What good is war, and is the sacrifice worth it?

General William Westmoreland (Waste-more-land) once claimed with unintended irony that life was cheap in Asia.  During the World War II Japanese occupation of Vietnam, approximately 4 million peasants died of starvation because their crops went to feed foreigners.  Never again, nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh vowed, would Vietnam be at the mercy of a foreign power.

Charlie Halberstadt and I finished fourth in bridge with 52 percent, just one bad hand from second place.  In another we scored an unbelievable 2800 points.  An opponent opened one Heart and Charlie overcalled a Spade. The player to my right bid 2 Diamonds.  I held 8 points, including three Spades and five Hearts, King, Queen, Jack, nine, deuce. I bid 2 Hearts, alerting Charlie that I had that suit covered in case  he wanted to bid No Trump.  The player on my left, thinking I was indicating a void in Hearts, eventually bid 4 hearts, doubled and re-doubled.  We set the contract down 5. 

I gave Dee Browne a copy of Barbara Walczak’s Newsletter that paid tribute to Dee Van Bebber.  She was grateful, feeling she needed closure since there were no funeral services for her friend.   Terry Bauer, who finished first with partner Dottie Hart, mentioned that a car dealer asked him to fill out a survey that included this surprising question, “Do you identify as male, female or other?”  Earlier in the day I got my driver’s license renewed, needing a passport and multiple documents showing my social security number and proof of where I lived.  Ridiculous. The Bureau of Motor Vehicles folks were very nice and, after all, didn’t make up the stupid regulations.

Miller’s Aquatorium Society will show movies as part of its 2019 fundraising efforts, including the 1927 film “Wings” (the first ever to win an Oscar, starring Clara Bow and with a minor role for Gary Cooper), “Red Tails” (about the Tuskegee Airmen), and Fellini’s “Strada,” starring Anthony Quinn. According to Greg Reising, when Myrna Loy received her award for best actress, she claimed that the statue resembled her Uncle Oscar, and the name stuck.  The ten=dollar contribution will evidently include free popcorn.

A New York Times puzzle clue was “one keeping a secret metaphorically.”  Toni got it: clam.

Chicagoan Barbara Proctor died, Maurice Yancy informed me.  Before founding the largest black-owned advertising agency in America, Proctor worked for Vee-Jay Records writing liner notes. In 1962 she negotiated a contract with EMI Records in London obtaining for Vee-Jay the rights to 30 songs by the Beatles, then an unknown commodity. She grew up in a “shotgun shack” without electricity or running water in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Also dead at age 71 is Hobart H.S. and Notre Dame football great Bob Kuechenberg, a six-time All-Star guard with the Miami Dolphins who played on the 1972 undefeated team that went on to beat the Washington Redskins, 14-7, in Super Bowl VII. Washington’s only points were the result of a blocked field goal attempt in the final minutes.  In 2013 when President Barack Obama invited the 1972 Dolphins to the White House, Kuechenberg declined to attend, citing political difference.  What a jerk.

At bowling, with Melvin Nelson being on the DL with a bum shoulder, Terry Kegebein in Florida, and Frank Shufran serving as a pallbearer at a friend’s funeral, half-blind Dick Maloney filled in admirably, as did sub Bob Fox, wearing a Marvin Harrison Colts jersey.  After splitting the first two games, we were up 13 pins when the final bowlers, Bob Fox and Larry Hamilton bowled in the tenth frame.  Hamilton struck out, meaning Fox needed to mark and then pick up 8 pins for us to prevail.  He left the 6-10 but converted the spare and ended the series with a strike.

After summarizing a multitude of connections between Trump and the Russians in an essay titled “An American President as Russian spy,”  Ray Smock concludes:

  Trump may not even comprehend that he has acted as a tool of the Russian government. He sees Russia as a cash cow. I do not think national security concerns ever entered Trump’s head. He was and is thinking about personal riches from Russia. He thinks in transactions, not in long-term strategies. He likes the exotic thrills of a country where the rich and powerful don’t have to play by all the rules and laws of the United States. He sees himself as the American version of an unfettered Russian oligarch. He likes people who bully their way through life with their money and their power. He has a natural affinity for Russia. Russia treats him nice.

 front, Wayne Carpenter, Laverne Niksch; back, Yuan Hsu, Dave Bigler

Laverne Niksch achieved the rank of Ruby Life Master, having accumulated over 1,000 master points. Fellow bridge players celebrated with a cake provided by Trudi McKamey.  His partner Wayne Carpenter told Newsletter editor Barbara Walczak: “We started out playing bridge in college and played party bridge for over 30 years with our long-time friends. After graduating with a degree in “retirement,” we play as partners two or three times a week and plan on playing until we get it right. This has been a great ride, and I can’t think of a more deserving person.”

 Portage lakefront erosion by Kyle Telechan

Meteorologists are predicting that a monster blizzard is on its way over the weekend, with snowfall reaching 12 inches including lake effect.  So far, ice mounds have not formed on Lake Michigan’s southern shore but that may change with temperatures plunging into the single digits.  Lakefront erosion has already decimated beaches in Portage and Ogden Dunes, with man-made development hindering the ability of nature to replenish itself.

I might teach a once-a-week Fall History seminar at Valparaiso University dealing with the Calumet Region.  I have already spoken to VU classes taught by Liz Wuerffel and Heath Carter and will be lecturing this semester in a Sociology course and next semester in one of Allison Schuette’s.  I’d assign Powell A. Moore’s “The Calumet Region: Indiana’s Last Frontier” and Ramon and Trisha Arredondo’s “Maria’s Journey” and give students Shavingsissues on Gary, Portage, Cedar Lake, and Hammond.  They’d do a paper on a key event in one particular community’s history.  A second paper, a family history, would cover three generations and fit in with VU’s Flight Paths project, of which I am a consultant. I envision first summarizing topics such as the Region’s place in Indiana history and the coming of industrialization, and then have sessions on Gary, Hammond, East Chicago, Whiting, Cedar Lake, Chesterton, Portage, and Valparaiso with guest appearances and student presentations.  There will be a class devoted to family history and a possible field trip to Gary and perhaps Cedar Lake’s museum at the old Lassen Hotel.  

Jonathyne Briggs invited me to attend a History department meeting.  I replied in the affirmative and added that whenI saw him and others at the December Holiday celebration, it hit me how much I missed running my old colleagues on a regular basis at Hawthorn Hall. I also plan to bring up these two topics:

1.   Calumet Regional Archives: As I’m sure you know, the Archives is in disarray due to plans to fix the antiquated library heating and cooling system, but plans are afoot to open up some space for researchers on the second floor.  This is the latest from Steve McShane:

Due to the high costs of moving to Arts on Grant, that plan has been scratched.  The latest plan is to move the entire Archives to the library's second floor.  We mapped it out yesterday, and there appears to be enough square footage.  Physical Plant would create two "rooms", one very large, and one somewhat smaller.  They would be secured with locked doors and accessible, including a small space for our researchers to use the materials.  Before that plan can be enacted, however, the folks at IUB have to be satisfied that the temperature/humidity environment would be acceptable for archival materials.  Our head of Physical Plant, Gary Greiner, said he can provide data on the second floor's environment, but he hasn't sent it out yet.  Also, the space person from Bloomington is coming up next week, along with a rep from Iron Mountain, a company specializing in moving archives, to look over the situation.

2.   Indiana History course: I was disappointed that Steve McShane decided to cease teaching the course and that the replacements are only of the on-line variety.  Neither instructor has bothered consulting McShane or me regarding the content or research possibilities in the Archives, and I suspect that there is no longer emphasis on Northwest Indiana, as before.  I may be teaching a History seminar on the Calumet Region at Valparaiso University in the Fall.  Several instructors have made Gary and nearby communities an integral part of their course and already have had me as a guest lecturer.  Perhaps in the future I might consider teaching a similar course at IUN, maybe in conjunction with Chris Young,  although a previous effort to offer a Liberal Studies course died on the vine.  It had been my hope that Young’s interest in Hoosier history might eventually lead him to teach that subject, but his present duties apparently make that impractical, given the need to offer other upper division courses in his area of specialization