Closings

     “The loss of newspapers may be, ironically, the most important under-reported story of our time.” Evan Davis

The Chesterton Tribune is poised to cease publication in 10 days after 136 years. It was owned most of those years by the Canright family and came out five times a week. Toni and I sent our regrets to the publishers:

If the Chesterton Tribune ceases publication, which appears inevitable, it will be an incalculable loss. The paper has truly been a community newspaper, skillfully reporting on doings ranging from the mundane to the unusual, from town board meetings to a Black Lives Matters march. Reporter Kevin Nevers has a particular felicity with words, and whenever his byline appeared, the story was must reading. With a granddaughter who recently graduated from CHS, we looked forward to reading about events she participated in, often accompanied by photos. The Tribune carried more state, national, and international news than any other paper in Northwest Indiana. Its history columns, especially “Echoes of the Past,” were a special delight. Of all the area closings that have taken pace during the pandemic, this will, in all likelihood, have the most long-lasting effect. Journalism has suffered numerous hits over the past 20 years, and our country, as a result, is much the worse for it.

Sorrowfully, James and Toni Lane

Chesterton resident Darcey Wade wrote: 

    The paper printed my first letter to the editor, 1976, our class reunion discriminated against single people by charging them more to attend. I am going to miss so much about it. I even have a copy of an old letter to the editor from Mr. Dave Sanders, a local character who ran Saturday’s child, the hippest place in Porter.

Former Post-Tribune editor Dean Bottorff wrote:

    I am always saddened to hear about the death of yet another newspaper, especially small community newspapers that, without other media, have been the mainstay of (if not the only) reliable source of local information. Who’s going to be left to watch over the likes of town boards, zoning commissions, the sheriffs, courts and school districts? Who’s left to honestly broker the truthful information that a viable community needs to function. Who’s left to record our daily lives, births, graduations, weddings and funerals? Who’s left to record the mundane of clubs, bake sales and bingo? Certainly not the Internet or social media which have evolved into cesspools of gossip, deceit and – too often – divisiveness. Sadly, when a community loses it’s newspaper, it loses part of it’s sole and the citizens there are thrust into bleak darkness.

IUN emeritus professor Don Coffin added:

  When I was a kid, there were four newspapers in Indianapolis--the Indianapolis Star, the Indianapolis News (both owned by the same company), the Indianapolis Times, and the Indianapolis Recorder (weekly; published since the 1890s, clientele mostly in the Black community; I subscribed to it when I worked in the Division of Planning and Zoning-I was a planner--in the 1970s). Only the Star and the Recorder have survived, and the Star has shrunk considerably over the past decade. It's not just small towns.

3 Floyds Brewpub, closed since March due to the pandemic, announced that it had no plans to reopen. Located in a nondescript industrial park in Munster, it became a hot spot after its craft brews, including Dark Lord, became critically acclaimed. I went there only once, with History colleagues Jerry Pierce and Jon Briggs on a mid-afternoon Friday, and by the time we finished our meal, there were dozens of people outside hoping to get in. NWI Times reporter Joseph Pete interviewed veteran Douglas Hathaway, who said he wore a 3 Floyds shirt to a DC craft brew fest and “got fan-boyed into oblivion - You've been there. Wow.”

 

Julius "Groucho" Marx (1890-1977) was a master comedian whose humor encompassed slapstick, satire, clever word play ("Time wounds all heels"), wise cracks, puns, and farce. A vaudevillian who debuted at 15 in Grand Rapids, MI, he played Gary's Palace Theater with his brothers in his 20s and reached Broadway not long afterwards, The Marx Brothers starred in 13 films beloved by generations of comedians. Groucho hosted the unique game show “You Bet Your Life,” first on radio and, beginning in 1953. on network TV. I was an instant fan. He once said, “A man is only as old as the woman he feels" and before he died quipped, "Bury me next to a straight man.”

I prefer writers (Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Richard Russo) that have a comic rather than tragic outlook on life. In Russo's "The Risk Pool" the author's alter ego lives in upstate New York, where his grandfather divides the year into “Fourth of July, Mohawk Fair, Eat the Bird, and Winter.” A drunk accosts his ne'er do well father Sam Hall and insists he must know a fighter from Syracuse named Hall. “That's the name my wife and I fight under,” Sam said.

Caste

 “The price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly. And the least that a person in the dominant caste can do is not make the pain any worse.” Isabel Wilkerson, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” (2020) 

In “Caste,” which compares America’s race-based class pyramid to India’s caste system and Nazi Germany’s persecution of “undesirables, Isabel Wilkerson traces the unequal treatment of African Americans back to1619, when a Dutch man-of-war brought two dozen black men captured from a slave ship bound for Spanish New World colonies to Point Comfort in Virginia. Especially horrific are her descriptions of lynchings that became common in the decades following the Civil War, even in places outside the South such as Coatesville, Pennsylvania and Marion, Indiana.  In 1919 in Omaha, Nebraska, for example, a mob numbering in the thousands set fire to the courthouse, seized packinghouse worker Will Brown, accused of molesting a white women, stripped him naked, strung him up, riddled his body the bullets, and dragged the corpse through the streets. Wilkerson compares such atrocities to German villagers living near Death Camps who went about their daily tasks as ashes from Jewish human remains floated down from the sky.

 

A woman told Wilkerson, “I find that white people are fine as long as I stay in my place.  As soon as I get out of the ‘container, it’s a problem.” In a chapter discussing survival skills blacks developed in the face of racism, Wilkerson cites the examples of Charleston church members forgiving the young white supremacist who murdered nine parishioners attending a Bible study class and of a black man in Dallas hugging in court the former cop who mistakenly broke into his brother’s apartment and killed him, writing: “Black forgiveness of dominant-caste sin has become a spiritual form of having to be twice as good in trauma, as in other aspects of life, to be seen as half as worthy.”  As Roxanne Gay put it: “Black people forgive because we have to survive . . . time and time again while racism or white silence in the face of racism continues to thrive.”  Hanif Abdurraqib furnished this explanation: “This expectation [of forgiveness] feels fueled by a perverse need to see harmed people demonstrate nobility because it’s how we believe the myths that political suffering builds character, and that righteousness rather than power will eventually triumph.”

 

Wilkerson attributed Trump’s political ascendency to fear by members of the dominant caste that their exalted status in the hierarchy was being threatened.  The author concluded: “The 2016 election would set the United States on a course toward isolationism, tribalism, the walling in and protecting of one’s own, the worship of wealth and acquisition at the expense of others, even the planet itself.”

 

Emiliano Aguilar posted an article about fearless labor organizer Emma Tenayuca, first arrested in 1933 at age 16 for demonstrating in support of cigar factory workers.  She fought against the repatriation of Mexicans and in San Antonio organized a 1938 strike on behalf of pecan shellers. Time magazine described her as “a slim, vivacious labor organizer with blackeyes and a Red philosophy.”

Majority Rule?

 “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

The topic of Saturday Evening Club speaker Terry Brendel's talk was "Majority Rule." The main focus was on how gerrymandering has subverted democracy in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures. Brendel noted that during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, George Washington presided from a chair that depicted the sun, causing Ben Franklin to quip, “I have often looked at that without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting.” Franklin chose to believe it was rising, and Brendel hoped that was still the case.

 

Most participants slammed Trump's refusal to accept election results as a threat to democracy, our federalist system, and public order. Former IUN colleagues Pat Bankston and Richard Whitman, citing their experiences as poll watchers, ridiculed the notion of a fraudulent election. Referencing Jill Lapore's "These Truths," I mentioned that in 1789 no successful government had existed based on the three cornerstone principles of natural rights, sovereignty of the people, and political equality, Skeptical that pure majority rule was workable in a diverse nation, the Founding Fathers created checks and balances, separation of powers, and a federal system that retained state and local control over elections. I quoted cynic H.L. Mencken's prediction that “on some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright moron.”  I added that Trump is certainly no moron but has historical amnesia and no respect for the Constitution. Bankston cited the erosion of political parties and the rise of social media as factors enabling a conservative populist demagogue to become president. I concluded by a quote attributed to Winston Churchill: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

 

“"If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster, The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced, not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory," Reinhold Niebuhr, quoted in Julie Lapore's "These Truths”

 

In an essay entitled “Trump’s Coup Attempt: Losing Power While Raking in the Loot,” Ray Smock wrote:

    After four years as president, Donald Trump still does not know a thing about how government works or how elections work. He thinks they work by the force of his will. He has squandered his entire presidency with little to show for it except his constant campaigning to keep the Trump brand before the public. The fecklessness of Donald Trump is staggering. His denial of Joe Biden’s victory is a form of mental illness. He lives in another reality, where he remains in power and is loved by the people. His pseudo-coup is so obviously frivolous that a smart ten-year-old could probably come up with a better plan to stay in power. Trump has only one game plan, the same one he has used his entire adult life. He hires lawyers to win for him what he is incapable of winning for himself. 

    At his own admittance on multiple occasions, Trump has claimed that the election might end up in the Supreme Court, where the results would be decided by just nine people, three of whom he appointed, regardless of the results of the elections in 50 states and the District of Columbia that resulted in a clear and decisive victory for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The election was conducted with fairness and accuracy.  Not so, says President Trump. The election was rigged. It was fraudulent. The fix was in. He continues to engage in mask-less rallies since his defeat and gets the crowd to yell: STOP THE STEAL. Before we get to the inauguration next month, we could see violence as Trump continues to whip his hard-core followers into a frenzy. 

    Despite the pathetic squeals of the president, despite the dozens of embarrassingly frivolous lawsuits in battleground states, the president is shrinking before our eyes. Those state officials who conducted the presidential election, whether the states were run by Republicans or Democrats, are a solid phalanx against the president’s Rudy-suits. The Supreme Court refused to even touch a suit brought to overturn the Pennsylvania results. They dismissed it unanimously in one sentence and slammed the door. 

    One of the last pathetic attempts to make this pseudo-coup work is the effort of the Attorney General of Texas to throw the election to Trump by having the Supreme Court determine how the electors in the Electoral College are selected. He has been joined by 17 other states, all with Republican Attorneys General. I have read this filing and the thing that struck me is that it is a complete parroting of the unfounded claims of voter irregularities that Trump has been spouting at every rally. A section of the complaint, called “FACTS” consists of unproven allegations, many of which have already been laughed out of court in other lawsuits. There should be some kind of sanction or serious penalty that stops such blatant partisanship and such a raw power grab to overturn a presidential election.

These elected officials are not upholding the laws or the constitutions of their own states. They are henchmen in Trump’s pseudo-coup. They are engaged in sedition and they should be impeached for it. They are hiding behind a curtain of law in an attempt to overturn the law. 

    Trump has run out of challenges. The process of certifying this election, despite Trump’s efforts, did not derail the process from being on schedule. This train will arrive on time.

    What Trump has done since the election in terms of using the occasion to continue to campaign and raise money is another unbelievable degradation of the electoral process. People keep sending him money. His aggressive money machine never stopped when the election was over. He has collected more than $250 million dollars from his loyalists since November. He has, in effect, created a Super-Pac that will put money in his own pocket for his own purposes. “Help Keep Donald Rich!” This should be the slogan. Trump’s money grab is the greatest swindle in the history of political chicanery. Trump’s pseudo-coup has worked for him; not to keep him in office beyond his term, but to make him vastly richer on the way out the door. 

 

I replied: “ In These Truths historian Jill Lapore concluded: “Between the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the election of Donald Trump 15 years later, the U.S. lost its way in a cloud of smoke. The party system crashed, the press crumbled, and government imploded.” Let's hope Georgia sends 2 Democratic Senators to Washington and that the Biden/Harris team is up to a momentous task ahead.”  Ray responded, “Amen brother.”

 

 

The so-called runoff debates were very telling. Republican incumbent David Perdue was a no-show, claiming he'd already debated challenger Jon Ossoff twice. Addressing an empty stool, Ossoff said, "Your Senator feels entitled to your vote He is so arrogant that he is not here today to answer questions." Perdue and Republican colleague Kelly Loeffler had unloaded stock worth tens of millions of dollars after a closed-door briefing about the nascent coronavirus. Loeffler did square off against Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the 11th of 12 children raised in public housing and an advocate for programs on behalf of the poor. Taking excerpts from Warnock's sermons out of context, all Loeffler could offer were wild accusations that Warnock was a Marxist "radical liberal" who was anti-military, anti-police, and had an arrest record stemming, it turned out, from a sit-in at the State Capitol on behalf of expanding Medicaid. Although he provided examples of why he believed in the free enterprise system, I was disappointed that Warnock didn't give as good as he got; but as Ray Smock has told me, a better strategy is for a candidate to speak directly to voters and basically ignore specious charges.

 

Even though the Supreme Court unanimously refused to overturn Biden’s victory, by a 6-3 vote they denied a petition to stop the rash of executions the federal government is rushing through during Trump’s final days, including that of Brandon Bernard, just 18 when he and four others robbed and then killed youth ministers Stacie and Todd Bagley.  The former prosecutor in the case and five jurors went on record opposing his death, and Trump turned a deaf ear to pleas from Kim Kardashian, who released this statement: “While Brandon did participate in this crime, his role was minor compared to that of the other teens involved, two of whom are home from prison now.”  Bernard last words were, “I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t.”  The family of Stacie and Todd Bagley issued this statement: “We pray that Brandon has accepted Christ as his Savior, because if he has, Todd and Stacie will welcome him into heaven with love and forgiveness.” 

 

On December 13, 1895, the Chesterton Tribune declared: “Everyone in Crocker hustles, which is why it is such an enterprising town, situated in a good farming locality.”  Located in Liberty Township, the unincorporated community was founded in 1892 upon the arrival of a rail line. A post office began operations the following year but closed down in 1905 when the predicted growth proved illusory.  The local paper also carried, tongue in cheek, this bit of town gossip: “Houses are so scarce and rents so high that Mr. Rice, our blacksmith, and Mr. Sphade, our electrician, have concluded to couple up.  One furnishes the provisions and  the other prepares the meals, and they live as happy as cats and dogs.”

These Truths

“The past is inheritance, a gift and a burden.  It can’t be shirked.  You carry it everywhere.  There’s nothing for it but to get to know it.”  Julie Lapore

With Terry Brendel due to speak on “Democracy” at our upcoming Saturday Evening Club zoom meeting, I have been reading Harvard historian Julie Lapore’s new book “The Truths,” suggested to me by Gaard Logan, who is perusing it for her book club.  The title harkens back to “self-evident” truths emanating from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: natural rights, political equality, and the sovereignty of the people. Taking a cue from Gaard, after looking over the introduction, I skipped to the recent chapters, entitled “The Brutality of Modernity” and “The Machine, 1946-2016.”  More than most such works, Lapore emphasizes the revolutionary importance of the internet, especially in a political context. Great strides in the development of supercomputers were made during World War II in hopes of breaking the Japanese code and estimating the altitude of missiles.  During the 1940s computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper, a Yale graduate, invented a linker that converted English terms into an A-O machine code system understood by computers.  Hopper was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC 1 giant computer. I recall NBC bringing Univac into its TV studio supposedly to predict 1952 election results as votes were being tabulated (I was a political junkie even then). In 1977 the microcomputer was first marketed, and within a decade home and office computers were increasingly common.

 

Lapore traced how Franklin D. Roosevelt’s welfare state goals eventually gave way to “the national security state,” as Cold War defense spending took priority over social programs.  While the GI Bill of Rights ushered in postwar affluence, African Americans and women were denied equal access housing and educational benefits.  Conservatives used propaganda provided by consulting firms, such as Campaigns Inc, founded by Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, to defeat liberal proposals for national health insurance, first in California and then at the national level.  The scourge of McCarthyism, Lapore concludes, was not an aberration but a harbinger of guilt-by-association tactics used by Republican politicians to this day. Reviewing “These Truths” for The Guardian, John S Gardner wrote:

    Lapore offers an unabashedly liberal perspective but seeks to be scrupulously fair to the modern conservative movement, devoting numerous pages to its intellectual origins as well as to its nativist and conspiratorial elements. Ideas do have consequences, as wrote [University of Chicago intellectual historian] Richard Weaver, a conservative intellectual for whom Lepore has sympathy.

 

I recall being cool toward computers initially until fully understanding their merits and limitations.  I loved it when a computer competing on Jeopardy against two champions inexplicably missed what seemed like a very easy Final Jeopardy – what city has two airports with names that refer to World War II (answer: Chicago, with O’Hare and Midway). Ironically, given my rudimentary knowledge of computers, after writing an article for the Journal of American History on industrial heritage museums, I was asked to be a paid consultant for a proposed museum in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, that came to house some of the country’s fastest supercomputers developed by Cray Research, a company founded by Seymour R. Cray, called “the Thomas Edison of the supercomputer industry.”  During the 1950s Cray had worked on the UNIVAC division of Remington Rand (later Sperry Rand) before forming his own company.  My main suggestion was that the Chippewa Falls museum include an oral history component.

 

Julie Lapore’s previous best-seller, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman,” revealed that the cartoon’s creator, William Moulton Marston, was an avid feminist who was married to suffragette Sadie Holloway, engaged in sex parties during the mid-10920, and included among his lovers Olive Byrne, the niece of birth control advocate Margaret Sanger.  He had four children, two with Sadie and two with Olive, who were good friends. Lapore notes that after Marston’s death in 1947 at age 54, All Star Comics hired new writers who had the Amazon princess conform more closely to women’s traditional roles, a development that infuriated the women the creator left behind.

 

In the Post-Tribune a “Quickly” commenter wrote that it was incorrect to say that Trump was one of the few presidents not to have a pet in the White House because he had lap dog Mike Pence, only it was the Vice President whose job it was to clean up his master’s messes, not vice versa. Columnist Leonard Pitts reported that after Mrs. Iddy Kennedy in North Little Rock, Arkansas, put up a Black Santa in her yard, a racist told her to get rid of the “Negro elf.” It made the woman initially question whether she wanted to raise her daughter in that neighborhood; but when neighbors heard what happened suddenly Black Santa appeared on lawns up and down the block.  Pitts concluded: “ People also sent money, over $1,000, which the family has redirected to the Arkansas branch of Ronald McDonald House Charities. Speaking to The Washington Post, the charity's executive director, Janell Mason called it ‘humanity doing good things.’ And so it is.”

IU Northwest Faculty Org

“Every institution has two organizational structures.  The formal one is written on the charts, the other is in the everyday relationships of the men and women in the organization.” 

Former ITT President Harold S. Geneen

 

When asked to pay tribute to my late colleague Fred Chary at November’s virtual Faculty Organization meeting, I agreed with one caveat: that my appearance be near the top of the agenda.  Last time I spoke, to honor retiring Sociology professor Chuck Gallmeier, I was called to the podium with just two minutes until automatic adjournment and had to cut my remarks short. Another unspoken reason was that such gatherings can be deathly boring, with tedious committee reports and unimportant announcements by administrators and events planners. Whereas once the Faculty Org played an important role in university matters, its power has been diluted by, among other things, an all-university Faculty Council and the establishment of a Chancellor’s cabinet.

 

In Paul Kern and my history of IU Northwest, “Educating the Calumet Region,” we wrote that the first recorded faculty meeting took place in 1952, when the campus, known as the “IU Extension,” met in Seaman Hall in downtown Gary, and that a constitution was drawn up four years later. Here are memories of meetings that took place in the 1960s after IUN moved to its present Glen Park location:

  Angie Komenich: I liked watching the rhetorical give and take.  Bill Neil, George Thoma, and Jack Gruenenfelfer were very good.  Director Jack Buhner encouraged discussion. 

    Ken Stabler: Several people saw the meetings as an opportunity to get up and expound.  Leslie Singer and George Roberts enjoyed telling everyone what they thought in a colorful language.  They were an entertaining part of the décor.

    Mary Harris Russell: My first meeting was nothing like expected, coming from Berkeley, where Noam Chomsky and other luminaries debated pressing issues of the day.  Discussion went on interminably over whether Sophie could bring over coffee on a cart from the cafeteria.  I thought, “I have better things to be doing.”

 

While an untenured professor during the 1970s, I attended meetings out of obligation and in order to meet some of the important players that might be controlling my fate.  Old timers exuded a certain gravitas, and gadflies George Roberts. Les Singer, and Gary Moran could be counted on to rail against those they considered to be administrative toadies.  Moran got his comeuppance when he asked Regional Campus director and future IU President John Ryan a question and made the unforgivable faux pas of referring to the mother campus as the University of Indiana.  Business professor Bill Reilly’s forte was coming up with Latin phrases that half the time went over my head. Over the years I can recall a handful od exciting meetings.  I missed by one year the 1969 debate over establishing a Black Studies program but was part of efforts to gain approval for Chicano/Riqueno and Women’s Studies programs as well as a resolution to ban smoking on campus.  I was on the losing end of one to have student transcripts simply be a record of progress toward a degree, eliminating needless W’s, I’s, and F’s. 

 

One ongoing debate, I learned, has been whether to tape meetings and have them then made available to those unable to attend. Opponents pointed out that written minutes already serve that purpose while protecting individuals’ anonymity, whereas recording meetings might stifle debate.  Sureka Rao noted that if professors really cared about what went on, they could make more of an effort to attend.  Zoran Kilibarda drew laughs when questioning whether anyone would spend hours watching the proceedings.  The motion was tabled. My remarks appeared to be well received (I subsequently received warm, congratulatory emails from all history faculty. 

 

I stayed around to hear retiring Computer Information Systems professor Bill Dorin praised by Faculty Org chair Mark Baer. Once a lunchtime fixture at the cafeteria faculty table, Dorin spent many hours helping me make a DVD companion to Ron Cohen and my “Gary: A Pictorial History.” Each photo appeared on the screen for approximately 30 seconds, sometimes with Bill panning in on certain details, while I recited the captions. While not terribly exciting, the DVD was used in some Gary classrooms during units on local history. Ever the comic, Dorin said he was looking forward to having time to catch up on his reading and then held up a child’s coloring book as an example.

Fred Chary, R.I.P.

“Change Is in the cards, 

but this time it will be hard.”

“Wrapped Up in Books,” Belle and Sebastian

 

My good friend and former IU Northwest colleague Fred Chary, 81, passed away; his daughter EllaRose called with the sad news. Unable to get around much for the past few years, he remained intellectually active, leaving behind a mostly completed Russian historical novel. In the hospital for a procedure, he was rehabbing at a facility when he tested positive for the coronavirus and never made it home. He didn't suffer serious symptoms, but wife Diana could only see him through a glass window and one night he went to bed and never woke up. So he evidently died peacefully.

 

Graduating from Penn, located in his hometown of Philadelphia, he received a PhD from Pitt in 1968 and published the critically acclaimed "The Jews and the Final Solution, 1940-1944" (1972), which found that Bulgaria was the only German ally during WW II where the entire Jewish community was able to avoid Hitler's gas chambers. His lively history of Bulgaria was published in 2011.

We lived just a few blocks from the Charys in Miller during the 1970s and frequently got together for cards, board games (i.e., Risk), dinner, special occasions, and holidays. While his family spent a year in Bulgaria (sons David and Michael attended Ho Chi Minh School there), a bunch of us at a New Year's Eve party made an audio tape for them. It apparently didn't get through the Communist censors, probably because it was considered too raucous, although Fred later suspected the reason was political.

 

In those years we had several brilliant students in common who became our good friends, including David Malham and Milan Andrejevich, who went on to earn a PhD, work for Voice of America, and teach at both IUN and Ivy Tech. Milan would host student-faculty parties when his parents were away that produced many memorable moments. In faculty-student touch football games Chary was a fearsome lineman.

 

Once, teaching a Historiography seminar, I asked other department members to talk about their areas of specialization in Fred's case, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. I'd never seen Fred teach, and he did not disappoint, interweaving a perfect blend of content, personal anecdote, and Q and A.

 

For many years Fred and Diane Chary would have a table at Temple Israel in Miller's Trivia Night. She'd decorate around a theme and often provide hats, wigs, or other costumes. I was expected to handle Gary history and pop music questions. On hand usually were Chary sons David and Michael and friends Jack Bloom, Karen Rake, and Sue Darnell.

 

Both Freddy and I were ardent Philly sports fans. In 1974, the year the Flyers first won their first Stanley Cup, we were at a party during the crucial fourth game against Boston and found an empty bedroom for the final minutes, a victory that put the Flyers up 3 games to 1. In the mid-70s the Phillies finally had worthy playoff teams with Larry Bowa, Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, and Dick Allen. We'd both tune in WFIL in the evening (sometimes in my car) and call when one of us could pick up the signal. One of our favorite Eagles games was when the hated Giants could have run out the clock had the quarterback just taken a knee, but he inexplicably tried to lateral to his running back and an Eagle intercepted it and ran untouched into the end zone. Two years ago, when the Eagles finally won the Superbowl, he was the first one I called. I'll miss him and think of him often.

 

Among the many faculty responding to my tribute to Fred was historian Paul Kern, who wrote: “Very sorry to hear this. Fred was a brilliant linguist and had an encyclopedic knowledge of history. He had an ironic sense of humor. And he was a very good chess player. He was my colleague for 38 years, part of an IUN history department faculty generation that flourished for four decades.”  Sculptor Neil Goodman noted: “It was a great department and I had a huge respect for Fred as well as all of the members of your department. It set the bar high for excellent scholarship and collegiality.” Among the student responses was this from Jim Reha: “Jim, please express our condolences to Fred's family. I always enjoyed his class and used information from him throughout my teaching career.”  Old friend Susan Darnell wrote:

    Thanks much for this Jim; Fred would have enjoyed it. Glad he had his big 80th Birthday party...he sure loved parties, mainly his own, especially the food (wife Diane is a gourmet cook and spoiled Fred often), the gifts and cards! It was touching to see him engaging with his peers that day...he was in his element relishing the special IU comradery. Diane will be lost; they were a team and she tried desperately to protect him from exactly what happened. I hope to be there for her as needed. Ella Rose and David (Michael too) you had a great dad, the best! He was beyond proud of you all. I, as a forever friend of roughly 45 years will remember all the parties, Trivia Nights and the many meandering conversations and sage advice when solicited. I'll miss Fred often, his brilliance, his gentleness and his humble joy. I am so blessed to have wandered into his circle to share some time and oh so many memories. My love to you all...you just always think there will be more time. Godspeed dear, sweet Fred. 

Embarrassment (Nov. 13)

 "When asked where I was from, I substituted upstate New York for Gloversville, a deft maneuver that allowed me to trade embarrassment for guilt, which, having been raised Catholic, I was used to." Richard Russo," "The Destiny Thief"

Richard Russo

Many Gary natives refer to where they're from as the Chicago area or Northwest Indiana. I don't fault them, but I'm "STRAIGHT OUTTA GARY," if not by birth nor my present address but spiritually, in my heart. 

A product of WASP suburbia, embarrassment was to be avoided at all costs, while guilt seemed a wasted emotion. The one time I shop-lifted - two .45 records from Woolworth's in Ambler- my fear was that I'd be caught, not that I'd sinned. Farting in class, seen with your fly open, your dad asking if you'd had a BM in the presence of friends - all things to be avoided lest you'd be ribbed mercilessly.

 

Trump's refusal to act gracefully in defeat is a horrific embarrassment to the nation and a threat to the peaceful transfer of power - yet another hallmark of our system that the grifter is willing to jeopardize for his own self-interest.

 

The Doobie Brothers are 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, along with T. Rex, Nine Inch Nails, Whitney Houston, and Notorious B.I.G. One of my favorite Seventies bands, the Doobies, from San Jose, California, had such great hits as “Listen to the Music,” “Jesus Is Just Alright,” “Long Train Runnin’,” and my favorite, “China Grove.”  Michael McDonald joining the group in 1976 extended the band’s career in the spotlight, and he has a great voice; but I like the early Doobie output the best. A few years ago, they started touring again, and 2020 marks their fiftieth anniversary.

 

The Hall of Fame honored musicians that we lost in 2020, including the immortal Little Richard, guitar genius Eddie Van Halen, balladeer John Prine, Ric Ocasek of the Cars, Tex/Mex rocker Trini Lopez, plus Helen Reddy (“I Am Woman”), Bill Withers (“Lean on Me,” “Ain’t No Sunshine”), Southern rocker Charlie Daniels, and many more including Adam Schlesinger from one of my favorite bands, Fountains of Wayne.  

 

Jeopardy host Alex Trebek succumbed to pancreatic cancer.  Taping shows until near the very end, he left us seven weeks of new shows to enjoy.  While once he could be quite arrogant to contestants who missed an easy question, or especially a clue about his native Canada, in recent years he mellowed and often seemed genuinely sorry for those who don’t know the answer to a “Double Jeopardy” or final question. Among his many strengths was pronouncing foreign names or phrases or imitating the author of the clue being quoted.  When good buddy Clerk Metz was alive, afternoons I’d stop at his place in time to watch Jeopardy with him. Since then my reaction time to answer has slowed down, but I’m still good at history and sports questions.  A recent “Final Jeopardy” I blanked out on had to do with word origins.  The clue was “Hall erected to honor nine Greek deities” and the answer: museum.

Aggie and Perry Bailey

Eleanor Bailey wrote:

    My Grandma had a broom, a dustpan and a linoleum floor. She had a wooden mop handle with a metal spring clamp that held a piece of an old blanket or a piece of towel. She had a galvanized mop bucket. That's what grandma had.

What she didn't have was an upright vacuum cleaner and a swifter wet-jet and a swifter dry-floor duster and various kinds of disposable dust cloths and several kinds of cleaners in spray containers.

    She didn't have a plastic, made in a foreign country, purchased in a big-box-store, shop-vac that falls apart all by itself and dumps its contents down the basement stairs when you least expect it to happen.

    She had a dust rag and when she cleaned windows and mirrors, she would make a mixture of vinegar and water, wipe that on the windows and dry with old newspapers.

    In the outhouse she had a Sears and Roebuck catalog for the readers and the wipers. And, the outhouse was scrubbed out every week, using some of the wash water on laundry day. 

    And a smile for everyone, that's what Grandma had. 

Janet Smith noted that her mom also had a mop with a wooden handle with the old towel attached, adding: “I thought we had become millionaires when the first sponge mop was used.”

NHC Zoom Session

“Today’s panelists all work to amplify the voices of traditionally marginalized communities and to challenge the historical narratives that excluded or minimized their experiences.” “Crossroads to Shared Authority: Amplifying Voices” session introduction

 

Instead of convening in Indianapolis, as originally scheduled, the National Humanities Conference was a virtual affair.  As our session’s “fearless moderator” (Allison Schuette’s phrase), I requested those who joined us to describe the nature of their humanities work and where they were located.  The large group hailed from all parts of the country. Then I introduced the speakers- Northwestern grad student Emiliano Aguilar, Indiana State Museum curator Kisha Tandy, and Valparaiso University Welcome Project co-directors of the “Flight Paths” initiative

Emiliano Aguilar 

Aguilar focused on a 1970 student walkout at East Chicago Washington, sparked by an assistant principal’s alleged comments about Mexicans being lazy and stupid. When demonstrators rallied at Mayor John Nicosia’s residence, he evidently punched one, adding fuel to the fire. Tandy dealt with preserving the history of Bethel AME Church in Indianapolis, founded in 1836 by an itinerant preacher and a barber. During its early years Bethel was part of the Underground Railroad and recruited black soldiers for the Union cause during the Civil War. Located beginning in 1869 on Indy’s downtown canal, the church offered a full range of social, educational, and religious services.  Vacant since 2016, the historic building is being restored for use as a hotel. Kisha played excerpts of an interview of church historian Olivia McGee Lockhart and showed illustrations from the Virtual Bethel Project coordinated by the Indiana Historical Society. 

The overall goal of the Flight Paths initiative, Schuette and Wuerrfel explained, is to collect oral testimony about the history and unfolding of white flight from Gary as well as black empowerment in Gary and Northwest Indiana. Told from the point of view of those who fled to the suburbs, it is a story of declension that accompanied the election in 1967 of Richard Gordon Hatcher as the first black mayor of a significant-sized city. One push factor was fear – of black neighbors moving in and the resultant decline of property values.  Adding to the individual biases were legacies of systematic racism, such as redlining by government agencies, block busting by realtors, and inadequate funding of public schools and city services.

 

Panelists intentionally kept presentations brief to allow ample time for questions and comments.  Initially none were forthcoming, so I stepped into the breach and asked Emiliano about bilingual education (one of the Concerned Latins Organization’s main goals), inquired of Kisha whether the proposed hotel would exhibit Bethel church artifacts and memorabilia (it will), and solicited Al and Liz’s opinions on how interviewers should react if a narrator stated something that was palpably false.  Allison claimed she took her lead from Studs Terkel, who while interviewing unapologetic racists in a Mississippi barbershop maintained a friendly demeanor, even promising to return the next day for a haircut. “Kind of like Borat,” I interjected, referring to the Sacha Baron Cohen film persona who plays along with all types of weirdos.

 

The questions that started arriving in the chat room were rather theoretical, such as Ken Dinitz from Pennsylvania Humanities asking what we thought the difference was between public memory and public history.  Traditionalists commonly define history as the written record of change over time, while memory is often meant to be synonymous with the oral tradition, as with pre-literate societies preserving their culture through legends, stories, and folklore. To a contemporary oral historian, public memory suggests a variety of divergent voices while public history, incomplete without such input, implies some degree of consensus.

2017 Chester/Gary cultural exchange

Afterwards Ken Dinitz sent this email: “We've been thinking about those issues for a long time at PA Humanities, so it is always fascinating to see how others are approaching these unanswerable questions. That you are working with Gary is so interesting to me and to Pennsylvania Humanities. We facilitated artist and activist exchanges between Chester, PA and Gary a few years ago.”   I  emailed back that I’d be happy to send Ken a free copy of “Gary’s First Hundred Years.” 

 

I emailed Oral History Association heavy hitter Michael Frisch, author of the acclaimed book “A Shared Authority,” that I participated in a National Humanities Conference zoom session with Allison Schuette and Liz Wuerffel, whom he mentored at the 2019 OHA conference in Salt Lake City.  I wrote: “They named our session “Crossroads of Shared Authority: Amplifying Voices.”  Wonder where they got “shared authority” from. 

Dancing in the Street

“They're dancing in Chicago (dancing in the street)

Down in New Orleans (dancing in the street)

In New York City (dancing in the street)”

Martha and the Vandellas

Finally, the wait is over.  Joe Biden is President-elect, having carried Pennsylvania, which put him over the necessary 270 electoral votes.  Winning Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia upped the total to above 300, so Trump’s empty threats to go to court have apparently sunk in, to everyone but him and his most head-in-the-sand supporters.  After the cautious networks finally called it after four tense days, crowds across the country began dancing in the street, celebrating the fact that Trump’s nightmarish regime is nearing an end.  In Paris church bells tolled, and throughout the world demonstrators toasted America’s election outcome, including Kamala Harris’ ancestral village in India.  Progressive Democrat Doug Rees emailed George Van Til: “I could go on about Joe Biden’s links to the establishment.  But when I saw those crowds dancing in the street, I had the feeling that something fundamental had changed in this country.  Joe Biden should follow the path of the better angels of his nature and dare to be great.”

 

Philly photos by Chris McGrath

On MSNBC former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill admitted breaking out in tears watching people’s pure joy over the result.  On CNN Van Jones broke down as he explained: “It’s easier to be a parent this morning. It’s easier to be a dad. It’s easier to tell your kids character matters. It matters. Tell them the truth matters.” The teary-eyed Jones hoped that the county could reset and finally get some peace.

More tears flowed that evening in Wilmington, Delaware, as Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris gave victory speeches. Especially poignant were mothers hugging young daughters.  Harris took the stage to strands of “Work That” by Mary J. Blige (“Read the book of my life and see I've overcome it/ Just because the length of your hair ain't long and they often criticize you for your skin tone/ Wanna hold your head high cause you're a pretty woman/ Get your runway stride home and keep going/ Girl live ya life”). It’s a tribute to Biden’s character that he gave Harris the spotlight, and she shined, wearing white in honor of suffragettes and her black sorority pin and crediting civil rights pioneers – black, Latina, native American – on whose shoulders she stood.  Her expression was incandescent as she exclaimed that while she was the first vice president-elect of color, she certainly will not be the last.

Biden literally ran onto the stage preceded by a medley of songs that included Tom Petty’s “I Won’t back Down.” Finally on the brink of achieving a goal that he has worked for decades to achieve and enduring family tragedies that would have destroyed many a man, he called for unity and promised to be a president for all the people, including those who supported his opponent, and to be a healer who will end the “grim era of demonization.” In closing he referred to the Catholic hymn “On Eagle’s Wings,” which, he said, brought him comfort when his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.  He went on: "It captures the faith that sustains me, which I believe sustains America. And I hope I can provide some comfort and solace.”  Then he recited these lyrics: “And he will raise you up on eagle's wings, bear you on the breath of dawn. Make you to shine like the sun and hold you in the palm of his hand.” Biden concluded: "And now, together — on eagle’s wings — we embark on the work that God and history have called upon us to do.”

Ray and Phyllis Smock

As the Harris and Biden families filled the stage, a massive fireworks display ensued.  As it neared an end, one could hear Coldplay’s “Sky Full of Stars,” Beau Biden’s favorite song, played at his funeral service (“you're a sky full of stars 'Cause you light up the path . . .  in a sky full of stars, I think I saw you”).  On Facebook I told Ray Smock: “Watching Kamala Harris' awesome speech, I thought of Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic convention.”  He wrote: “We are so proud to fly our flag again as a symbol of hope and pride, and with great respect to all who have fought for and defended our nation and our Constitution.”  Dave got out his guitar, poured a glass of champagne, and performed the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want ("But if you try sometimes, well, you might find/ You get what you need”). Tom Wade posted a photo of a red rose blooming below their Biden-Harris sign. As FDR’s 1932 campaign song stated, indeed, let’s hope “Happy Days Are Here Again.” 

Chances Are

 Chances Are (Nov. 3)

  Take a walk in the park, take a valium pill

 Read the letter you got from the memory girl

 But it takes more than this to make sense of the day

 Yeah it takes more than milk to get rid of the taste”

  “Sleep the Clock Around,” Belle and Sebastian”

In the Richard Russo novel “Chances Are,” about three college friends who reunite in 2016 at age 66, Mickey Girardi, a musician and sound engineer still into late-Sixties style Rock and Roll, ridicules his buddies’ musical tastes, labeling Lincoln’s phone choices of Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis elevator music and Ted’s alt rock favorites – The Decembrists, Mumford and Sons, and Belle and Sebastian – faggot music. As one who’s into alt rock, I dig The Decembrists and Mumford and Sons but had never heard of Belle and Sebastian, a Scottish band that’s been around, I learned, for over 20 years.

Sarah Martin

Checking YouTube, I discovered several music videos for such tracks as “I Want the World to Stop,” “Another Sunny Day,” “Sister Buddha,” and “I’m a Cuckoo,” plus a 2014 full “Austin City Limits” concert and a live 2015 appearance at Lollapalooza, Berlin. Among the many members are several keyboardists, with the vocals mostly featuring co-founder Stuart Murdock and Sarah Martin (below).  Belle and Sebastian even put out a song called “Piazza, New York Catcher” that makes an illusion to rumors about Mets backstop Mike Piazza possibly being bisexual (“San Francisco’s calling us, the Giants and Mets will play, Piazza, New York catcher, are you straight or are you gay?”) The band’s name comes from a French novel, “Belle et Sebastien,” about a six-year-old boy and his dog.

Thanks to Richard Russo, whose favorite is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, I’ve discovered a rich vein of excellent music. In fact, I found three Belle and Sebastian CDs at Chesterton library.

Mickey, Lincoln, and Ted calll each other by their colleges nicknames, what Russo calls “avatars of their younger selves.”  In high school I went by Jimmy; in college best friend Rich Baler (“Bakes”) called my Lanezer.  During my softball career it was Dr. J.  Now, close friends and family call me Jimbo or JBo.  For a guy fast approaching 80, I’ll take it.

College was the site of my brief pugilistic career. Bucknell had a freshman Phys. Ed. requirement that included a boxing component with extra-large gloves that when sparring were supposedly less likely to cause injury (that was the claim).  An interfraternity tournament was part of year-long sports competitions involving the dozen frats.  I had pledged Sig Ep, which had no hope of beating out the so-called jock houses, yet wanted to avoid the indignity of finishing near the bottom in the standings.  So not to be penalized, Sig Ep needed to have a full slate of contestants; thus pledges were consigned to be the guinea pigs. I dispatched my first opponent, another luckless pledge, due to having longer arms. Bout number two, I found out later, was against the defending champ.  I landed a few soft left jabs without much resistance for about 30 seconds before getting decked by a hard right.  More stunned than hurt, I decided to stay down for the count rather than prolong the mismatch.  Thus, my unwanted boxing career came to an end.

The Chicago Bulls have signed Maurice Cheeks as assistant coach to Billy Donovan, whose assistant he was with the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Chicago native graduated from DuSable High School, starred at West Texas A & M, and was drafted in 1978 by the Philadelphia 76ers. He was point guard for the 1983 NBA champs, whose star-studded team, coached by Billy Cunningham, included Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Andrew Toney, and Bobby Jones. When he retired after 15 years (the first 11 with the Sixers), the future Hall of Famer was first in career steals and fifth in assists. He was head coach for three NBA teams before joining the Thunder in 2015. Cheeks once said, “Execution down the stretch is the key,” and with the game on the line his teams wanted the ball in his hands. 

In 2003 young contest winner Natalie Gilbert started singing the National Anthem prior to a Sixers game when she suddenly got confused and lost her composure. Head coach Mo Cheeks joined her at the mike and began singing with her. The crowd and players joined in and by the end Natalie was belting out the final verse and the crowd erupted, many with tears in their eyes, in a standing ovation. Google it, and I guarantee it will get you choked up. Welcome back to the “Windy City,” Maurice Cheeks.

Untethered 

    “When did America become untethered from reality?” Kurt Anderson, “How America Went Haywire,” The Atlantic (2017)

Election Day has morphed into election week. The initial results were absolutely disheartening, as Trump appeared ahead in key battleground states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. As votes came in from urban areas and the counting of mail ballots began, Biden gained the upper hand in Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowed the gap in the Keystone State.  Even so, the expected Democratic gains in the Senate and House were not happening, as Trump’s lies – that Radical Democrats would defund the police, take away private health care, threaten white suburbs, and fraudulently steal the election, combined with Republican scare tactics, appeared to be having an effect. Bright spots were Arizona, where Biden and Senate candidate Mark Kelly (below) are ahead, and Nevada, where the former vice president has an apparently safe lead. After three full days, Biden’s leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia are growing, and most remaining votes are from urban Democratic strongholds.  Trump’s strategy, to get the vote stopped where he was ahead and continue the count where he was behind, has hopefully failed.  Twitter has even begun to prevent his baseless tweets from appearing. In contrast, Biden is urging calm and acting presidential.

Anti-Trump Republican Kurt Anderson traced America’s “lurch toward fantasy” to aspects of the American character, such as belief in rugged individualism, extreme religious beliefs, an anti-intellectual strain, and susceptibility to conspiracy theories and con artists from B.T. Barnum to Trump, in Anderson’s estimation, an amoral grifter resentful of the establishment. In the 1960s, the postwar mainstream consensus collapsed, with the radical Right gaining a foothold in the Republican Party with Barry Goldwater’s nomination in 1964, and the Vietnam War fracturing Lyndon B. Johnson’s liberal coalition.  In academia the postmodernist belief that truth is relative became the precursor to Trump apologists’ defense of “alternative facts.”  By accusing the mainstream media of disseminating fake news, attacking Congress and the courts, and now threatening to refuse to abide by the election results, Trump has become a threat to America’s political system.  As Josh Barro wrote:

 The problem is that the Republicans have purposefully torn down the validating institutions.  They have convinced voters the media cannot be trusted; they have gotten them used to ignoring inconvenient facts about policy; and they have abolished standards of discourse.