Facebook

    “Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Despite Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s protestations that the company’s mission is benign -  to make the world more connected and build community across boundaries, his creation has become intrusive, a threat to privacy, and a polarizing force politically.  Aside from those criticisms, Facebook accounts inevitably become littered with advertisements and other annoying messages.  Today’s crop, for instance, included MLB, art.com, Humana Pharmacy, Bob Rohrman Auto Group, and Empire: World War 3. Even so, for me it continues to provide illustrated links to friends, relatives, former students (i.e., Jonathan Rix, George Sladic, Chris Daly, Bob Fulton, Amanda Board) and old acquaintances that I find invaluable. For example, here is a sample of what I found when opening my account this morning:

Miller Town Hall, built in 1910, used a firehouse after annexation

This from Gary historian Steve Spicer: “On February 17, 1919, the Gary Common Council passed ordinance No. 754 annexing the Town of Miller. One hundred years ago today. Approved by the mayor three days later.”  Spicer also posted a photo taken from his house on Miller Ave. of a full moon at 4 a.m. Steve was one of many area residents who expressed satisfaction that, thanks to efforts by Congressman Peter Visclosky and many others, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is now one of 61 national parks. 

Dave Lane, E'twain Moore, Dee Atta Wright; below, Miranda 

Son Dave posted photos while at Purdue University with students invited as guests of former East Chicago Central basketball star  E’Twaun Moore to celebrate aday in his honor in Lafayette and enjoy a Boilermakers game against Penn State. Dave wrote that Moore “epitomizes class and it was a great honor to be there to celebrate with him. He continues to make his hometown proud!”  Other new family photos included James visiting Valpo U. for an overnight experience and Miranda vacationing in Florida.

Professional photographer Ray Gapinski attended the same play, “Shrek: The Musical” that we enjoyed on Sunday and took numerous photos of the performance that will surely become collectors’ items for cast members. Photographer and community organizer Samuel Love documented a tour of sites in Gary to collect sights and sounds for a genealogy podcast.  Betty Villareal got together with “girlfriends” from Lew Wallace’s Class of 1967, while my 1960 Upper Dublin classmate Bettie Erhardt posted photos of a gathering at Giuseppe’s, a local steak sandwich and pizza joint, when Thelma Joy Van Sant visited.  Replying to one of Thelma and Eddie Piszek, Alice Ottinger employed the title of a 1956 Chordettes doo wop hit: “Eddie My Love.” Whenever I return to Fort Washington, I alert Bettie and she arranges for a similar mini-reunion.

Ray Smock announced the publication on President’s Day of his new book on the Trump presidency, “American Demagogue,” which drew many positive comments and a sarcastic photo from follower Katherine Ryan Walsh. Anne Balay shared this article by Brooke Nagler that appeared in the University of Chicago magazine:

 Anne Balay, AB’86, AM’88, PhD’94, has worked as a mechanic and a trucker. “I love the mental state long drives put me in; they’re pretty much the only time I feel relaxed,”she writes in Semi Queer. “I love that feeling, and almost every trucker I’ve talked to does too. That’s what we mean when we say trucking is addictive—it’s not just a job but a lifestyle.” 

 Balay herself worked as a trucker after being denied tenure, a decision she believes was motivated by homophobic discrimination. Jobless and panicking, she entered trucking school because she’d always liked driving. There she found that sitting in the cab of a truck was transformative. “Suddenly all of the anger and bitterness just flowed away. I felt like this is something I could do that would be meaningful and productive,” she says. (Balay has since returned to academia and now teaches at Haverford College.)

 Her experience was not uncommon. Mastering an 80,000-pound piece of machinery offered many of Balay’s interviewees a sense of power. As one driver told her, “the fact that people hate me ’cause I’m trans, well then they’ll hate me, but say hello to my truck.”

 With its constant motion and cycles of departure and arrival, Balay writes, the everyday life of a trucker is well suited to individuals whose gender identities are also in flux. Trucking offers a way for these individuals to express their shifting identities more openly. “Out here on the road I live authentically,” explained Alix, who is trans. “I am kind of leading a double life because when I go home, I’m kind of mom to the kids. … So when I get back into the truck, it’s liberating, because I don’t have anyone’s expectations to live up to.”

 But the profession has drawbacks. Nonwhite truckers experience racism from the carriers that employ them, other truckers, and customers. For all drivers, “trucking is incredibly dangerous,”Balay says. Apart from the risk of accidents, drivers are frequently alone in remote areas or at truck stops, which can be magnets for illegal activity. Sexual assault was common among the women she interviewed, both cisgender (those whose gender identity matches the sex on their birth certificates) and transgender. Nearly every trucker Balay interviewed carried a gun.

 Then there are the looming existential threats. Technology has transformed trucking, adding new forms of employer surveillance, such as cameras and speed sensors, that many drivers feel are needless micromanagement. The most dramatic change awaits as self-driving vehicles threaten to upend the industry. Balay worries for the marginalized truckers for whom “there are no other decent jobs available.”

 But until autonomous trucks hit the interstate, truckers will remain essential, linking even the most remote parts of the country to the web of American industrialism. That sense of connection to how things are made is one of the reasons Balay found satisfaction in driving a truck. Her work took her to the mills where toilet paper is made, the Nabisco factories where Oreos emerge from conveyer belts, the fields where fruit is grown and picked. She saw it all, and took it where it needed to go next.

Anne Balay by Riva Lehrer