Global Warming

 “Which hands get to turn the final page?

In whose throat belongs the swan song

Crisis, warming, denial, change?”

         Parquet Courts, “Before the Water Gets Too High”

An article in New York Times Sunday magazine listed “Before the Water Gets Too High” by Parquet Courts as one of 25 songs that matter right now.  Robert Blaszkiewicz turned me on to the Brooklyn indie punk band, and I saw them live at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown, CA during a trip to see my mother timed around their appearance at my favorite watering hole.  One verse goes:

Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back

Favorite band Weezer’s “Can’t Knock the Hustle” also made the “songs that matter right now” list.  According to critic Lydia Kiesling, the tune is “relentlessly bouncy” but dark commentary on the gig economy, with such morbid lines as, “The future’s so bright I gotta poke my eyes out/ Running up my credit cards/ Selling lemonade by the side of the road.” 

Popular songs warning of environmental catastrophe date back at least to 1971, with Marvin Gaye’s lament “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology),” which included the lines, “Ah things ain’t what they used to be, no, no/ Oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas, fish full of mercury.”   In 1989 Frank Black and the Pixies predicted that “Everything Is Gonna Burn” in “Monkey Gone to Heaven.” As Pixies composer Charles Thompson put it:

There’s a hole in the sky

And the ground’s not cold

Though scientists have long been warning of the consequences of inaction and the first Earth Day occurred a half-century ago, troglodytes in the Trump administration persist in minimizing the crisis.  As Bill Clinton’s former vice president Al Gore put it, “There is an air of unreality in debating these arcane points when the world is changing in such dramatic ways right in front of our eyes because of global warming.”

“Funny Man” author Patrick McGilligan claimed that many of Mel Brooks’s comedic ideas sprang from childhood experiences.  The farting scene in “Blazing Saddles,” for instance, came from observing scenes in Western movies where cowboys ate beans and drank black coffee around a campfire.  Chosen to play dimwit Mongo, who knocks out a horse, Gary football great Alex Karras nailed the part in his film debut.  McGilligan wrote: “Karras would make the mentally challenged enforcer lovable as well as fearsome.”  At age 91 Brooks was planning a musical stage production of “Blazing Saddles.” Climate change doubter Ronald Reagan once blamed rising temperatures on cows farting.

Herb and Charlotte Read

Bridge partner Helen Boothe attended the memorial service for Save the Dunes activist Charlotte Read, whom the Post-Tribune’sAmy Lavalleyaccurately labeled a “fierce advocate for the Indiana Dunes and an ‘unstoppable force.’”  From a young age Charlotte and husband Herb were indefatigable in fighting to protect the environment.  In addition to serving as the first director of Save the Dunes Council, Charlotte held a similar position with Shirley Heinz Land Trust and was active in the Izaak Walton League.  Jeanette Neagu, who traveled to Washington with Charlotte to testify on behalf of creating a national park, told Lavalley:“She and Herb and Dorothy Buell and all the dunes people made an impression on me. They taught me that even if it seemed pie in the sky, if you work hard and organize, you can achieve.”

I got to know the Reads as a result of my involvement in protests by the Bailly Alliance during the 1970s and early 1980s to prevent NIPSCO utility company from building a nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan near Bethlehem Steel’s Porter County mill and lakeside communities such as Dune Acres. A combination of legal challenges and direct action delayed the project long enough to convince NIPSCO to scrap it as cost prohibitive.  My sons’ Little League coach, Vince Panepinto, a local building trades union officer, grimaced upon seeing them carrying a sign reading “No Nukes!” During the mid-1990s I chaired an Oral History Association conference session about the Bailly fight titled “Hell, No, We Won’t Glow.”  On the panel were a representative from Greenpeace and Inland Steel union leader Mike Olszanski, who had opposed the plant while head of Local 1010’s environmental committee.  

Adam Higginbotham’s “Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster” is a searing critique of the Soviet bureaucrats responsible for overseeing the nuclear plant that exploded in 1986. Not only were they criminally negligent in ignoring known defects in the reactor but refused to accept the extent of the emergency once the meltdown occurred, exacerbating the damage and increasing the number of casualties.  Higginbotham sees a correlation between that calamity and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.

1981 Bailly Allance rally; Mike Olszanski second from left

 Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette

Toni reminded me to vote.  In Chesterton there was only one contested Democratic primary race, but I was interested in supporting a school referendum.  In neighboring Valparaiso, both Heath Carter and Liz Wuerffel, VU professors and friends on mine, triumphed and will be Democratic candidates for City Council in November.  I was disappointed that Gary mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson lost a bid for a third term to Lake County Assessor Jerome Prince, a seasoned politician with close ties to county clerk John Petalas and Sheriff Oscar Martinez, both of whom showed up at his campaign headquarters to congratulate him.  Apparently, a plurality of voters (there were nine candidates) believed city improvement projects were moving too slowly.  Just as the prospect of new casino money being available was an incentive for Scott King to run for mayor in 1995, recent developments permitting a land-based casino and development of Buffington Harbor made controlling City Hall seem more worthwhile.

Jerome Prince 

Ray Smock wrote: 

  Here We Go Again. Trump Exerts Executive Privilege Over Everything. Just Like Nixon, except this time Trump is too defiant to resign and he is challenging the House to impeach him because there are no Republicans in the Senate who will go down to the White House, like they did in 1974, and tell the president its time for him to go, and the Republicans will not vote to convict Trump in an impeachment trial. 

  Trump thinks he can win this one in the courts, and he thinks he can brand Democrats as sore-losing socialists and win a big re-election in 2020. He has the arrogance and audacity to hide behind the Mueller Report, the very report that shows he has broken the law. He and his defenders forgot what happened in the election of 2018. The investigations will continue. Why the GOP is hanging with Trump is beyond me. Where is there to go but down with this clown? Who can pick up the pieces at put the Republican Party together again?  

Leeah Nicole Mahon, an IUPUI oral history intern, sought information about former Dean of Student Services Golam Mannon, who a half-century ago was an IUN Educational Psychology professor.  I replied:

  I did not know Dr. Mannan, but he appears twice in a History of IU Northwest that I wrote with Paul B. Kern, “Educating the Calumet Region” (Steel Shavings, volume 35, 2005).  The first is in connection with the establishment of a Black Studies program in 1969, incidentally the second in the nation.  He served on a joint task force consisting of 4 faculty and 4 student members of IUN’s Black Caucus to implement the program.  Secondly in 1973 he helped establish a process for evaluating Chancellor Robert McNeill that led to the ineffective administrator’s resignation.

Chancellor McNeill proved incapable of leadership and, as George Roberts put it, “had some kind of emotional or nervous breakdown – he just fell apart.”  Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs William Neil put it more bluntly, calling McNeill a “wacko”:

 McNeill’s secretary’s typewriter drove him crazy, so at great expense he ordered a door with cork lining to seal out the sound. I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did.  He would accept no responsibility.  He was what in the army we called, to put it politely, poultry excreta. He pushed things off on everybody else and abhorred the thought of getting in trouble with the people in Bloomington.

 McNeill disliked business manager Gene Nacci.  He said, “Who hired that greasy little dick?”  Gene was very Italian-looking and effervescent. McNeill finally fired him. He also zeroed in on Education chairman Don Huddle, an overweight, very cocky operator. McNeill couldn’t stand him and set out to destroy him. 

  I had been asked to fill in for a semester, which lengthened to three and a half years.  It was fulfilling just as my 50 combat missions were fulfilling. I’ve got scars to show from both.

Latonya Hicks; below, Dave with E.C. Central league champs; Nayeli Arredondo third from right 

During an impressive program at East Chicago Central son Dave was honored as the school’s Teacher of Excellence for the sixth time in 25 years.  Dave arranged for his tennis team members and senior class officers to attend.  Introducing Dave, East Chicago Public Library public relations director Latonya S. Hicks said that she was a shy student who lacked confidence until motivated in Dave’s class.  Valedictorian Nayeli Arredondo, on the tennis team and the daughter of immigrants, praised Dave’s commitment to all students, including some that others’ might have given up on.  In the course of his thoughtful remarks, Dave quoted Socrates and from “The Big Lebowski,” to wit “The Dude abides.”  An elementary school recipient was thankful she’d found a job she’d gladly do for free, echoing a sentiment expressed by author Richard Russo in a commencement address.  Among the many people congratulating Dave was Richard Morrisroe, who during the 1960s was almost killed while a Freedom Fighter in the Deep South.  One of the most moving scenes I’ve witnessed occurred in 1979 when Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) was speaking at IU Northwest on the subject of Pan African socialism. Spotting Morrisroe in the audience, the Black Power advocate went over and embraced him.

 Richard Morrisroe

Arriving home as Cubs relievers blew a one-run lead in the ninth, I saw favorite player Jason Heywood hit a walk-off home run in the eleventh, second time that happened in two days (the previous night’s was a 3-run shot by Kris Bryant). When Marlins pitcher Wei-Yin Chen took the mound, announcer Pat Hughes was unsure how to pronounce the name, then added: “As George Carlin once said, one name that never caught on in China was Rusty.”

Miller resident Omar Farag posted a photo taken from his property and asked, “Where’s the beach?”  Neighbor Michael Greenwald responded: “They took it away from us when they built the Port of Indiana pier and changed the flow of the Lake. This was predicted in the 50s. The zero beach point is at Ripley or Pine.”