On the Basis of Sex

 “I ask no favor for my sex, all I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, quoting Sarah Grimké during her first oral argument before the Supreme Court

 Sarah Grimké  

Sarah Grimké (1792-1873) and sister Angelina were prominent abolitionists and feminists.  Born into a prominent South Carolina family, Sarah sympathized with slaves she grew up with and resented that her own education was inferior to her brother’s due to social norms of the day.  She moved to Philadelphia, became a Quaker, and lectured about two issues dear to her, the immorality of slavery and discrimination against women. She once wrote: “I know nothing of man’s rights, or woman’s rights; human rights are all that I recognize.”

 Ruth Bader Ginsburg portrait

 “On the Basis of Sex” follows the early career of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of just nine women in her 1956 Harvard Law School class. At the time, the building lacked a woman’s bathroom. Despite her academic credentials, no New York City law firm would hire her as an associate, so she began teaching at Rutgers and then Columbia Law School.  The film highlights a case Ginsburg successfully argued with her husband, a tax attorney, before the Tenth Circuit of Appeals of a man denied a tax deduction for hiring a nurse to care for his mother so he could continue working.  She wrote the brief in the 1971 Reed v. Reedcase in which the Supreme Court extended the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to women.  In 1972 she became general counsel for the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.  Felicity Jones played Ginsburg as iron-willed, extremely intelligent, and compassionate. I loved Sam Waterston as unctuous Harvard Law School dean Erwin Griswold and Kathy Bates as veteran civil liberties activist Dorothy Kenyon.

A graduate of New York University Law School, Dorothy Kenyon (1888-1972) was an important feminist and New Deal liberal who worked with the ACLU, NAACP, and agencies offering legal services for the poor in New York City.  When Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy falsely accused her of being connected to subversive organizations, Kenyon (above) called him a liar and a coward hiding behind Congressional immunity.

In “I’m Not Taking This Sitting Down” (2000) humorist Dave Barry described donning the lizard costume of the Miami Fusion soccer team mascot P.K. (for penalty kick) and learning to his chagrin the fine line between being an object of affection and ridicule. He discovered that children “love to run directly into mascots at full speed and tend to hit you” right where one would be well-advised to “wear a cup.”  Barry was at a gala where Mick Jagger made an appearance, looking “like Yoda wearing a Mick Jagger wig” and probably the only one in the room his senior.  In high school Barry’s band attempted to play Rolling Stones songs, such as “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Under My Thumb” but could never get the chords right.  Barry wrote:

    He seemed like a pleasant enough person, as near as I could tell from watching a crowd of avant guard people trying to get as close to him as possible while pretending not to.  I considered trying to push my way in there and start up a conversation with Mick, maybe try to find out the correct chords to “Under My Thumb.”

Former student Fred McColly stopped by on the way to the Archives to drop off two new journals about working at South Lake Mall on Macy’s department store’s loading dock.  He enjoys his co-workers but fears that Amazon and other direct mail giants will soon render stores like Macy’s obsolete.  Cosmetics appears to be Macy’s most important big-profit item. For Sears, mail order pioneers who lost their way, in its last days as a department store the main sellers had been paint and kitchen appliances until new competitors undercut them.

To celebrate bridge player Joe Chin becoming an Emerald Life Master, having accumulated 7500 master points, over 70 people gathered in Gary to honor him, including nonagenarian Jennie Alsobrooks, who, in Chin’s words, “started a lunch-hour foursome at Gary West Side High and taught me bridge basics.”  Barbara Walczak, who planned the event, presented him with a 50-page illustrated book citing some of his accomplishments and tributes from former partners and opponents.  Walczak’s Newsletter reported on the death of Claire Murvihill, noting that at Claire’s request the last hour of her funeral celebration was devoted to bridge; seven full tables participated. Back playing after a two-week hiatus,  Dee Browne and I finished third out of ten couples with 58%.

Terry Brendel, in charge of the Valpo game with Charlie Halberstadt in Arizona, complimented my letter to the NWI Times complaining about Gary and its political leadership.  The editor had left out some of my supporting material, but Terry reminded me of the policy limiting letters to 250 words or less.  I did like the headline: “Positive solutions needed to Gary’s problems.”  It fit with my final sentence: “What is needed in the face of Gary’s present travail is regional cooperation and positive solutions, not ugly stereotyping by those who, in my opinion, long ago ceased wishing the city well.”

In the Banta center library was “Baseball Forever” by Ralph Kiner, my first sports hero growing up in Easton, PA.  Kiner’s father, Ralph, Sr.,  had been a steam-shovel operator in the New Mexico copper-mining town of Santa Rita who died when Ralph was just four.  Mother Beatrice moved the family to Alhambra, CA, worked as an insurance company nurse for $125 a month, and, in Kiner’s words, kept a clean house and close eye on her son, sending him to military school for a semester when he lied about his after-school activities.  Kiner played for Pittsburgh, my dad’s hometown, and led the National league in home runs a record six years in a row, twice hitting over 50.  He briefly played for the Cubs and Cleveland Indians before a bad back ended his playing career.  Chicago oldtimers fondly recall Kiner in rightfield, slow-footed HR hitter Hank Sauer in left, and Frank Baumholtz in center, expected to cover most of the outfield. Beginning in 1961, Kiner became a New York Mets announcer until his death in 2014.  

At bowling, after overhearing Jim Daubenhower and I discussing Gary, George Yetsko mentioned that he was a 1951 Lew Wallace grad (he recalled French teacher Mary Cheever’s murder, which led to women protesting crime and corruption tolerated by the Democratic machine).  Wife Marge was a Horace Mann grad.  Her grandfather, a dentist, lived in a large house with a spiral staircase that was later torn down to make way for RailCats Stadium. 

 Tim Vassar

Daubenhower brought me Timothy Vassar’s autobiography “Jeremiah Wasn’t Just a Bullfrog: A Story of Passion, Pursuit, Perseverance . . . and Polliwogs.”  Vassar, a Butler University grad, taught special education, coached track and field at Lake Central High School, and is presently Director of Student Teaching at IUN. A Highland native, Vassar attended Mildred Merkley Elementary School, a name Region humorist Jean Shepherd (whose style Vassar’s resembles) would have appreciated.  Tim father worked at the mill plus two weekend jobs to provide for his family of six.  Vassar wrote: “My Dad used to say that Northwest Indiana was one of the only places on earth where you could run your furnace and central air on the same day.  Since we didn’t have central or any other type of air conditioner, I had to take his word for it.”  

Tim Vassar played centerfield on a Highland team coached by Andy Domsic that competed in the 1970 Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA after winning state and regional tournaments.  In Williamsport Vassar noticed Taiwanese players eating with chop sticks and met Pirate great Pie Traynor and 1968 Olympic medalist Chi Chang, the first woman to run 100 yards in ten seconds flat.  Tim’s moment of glory came when he fielded a line drive on two hops and threw out a runner jogging from first to second. After defeating a German team consisting mainly of sons of American servicemen, Highland lost in the semi-finals to eventual champ New Jersey.  The town of Highland threw a parade for the returning heroes, and players rode in convertibles.  The following year, 1971, a team from Gary, led by Lloyd McClendon, reached the Little League finals, losing to Taiwan in the longest game, nine innings, in tournament history. After McClendon homered in five consecutive at-bats, opposing coaches intentionally walked him every time he came to the plate.

Princeton professor Imani Perry was the featured speaker at VU’s Martin Luther King Day celebration.  Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1972, she is the author of six books, including “Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry” and one on the history of the Negro National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Perry’s keynote speech lamented the “Disneyification of Dr. Martin Luther King” and urged students, my grandson James, a VU freshman among them, to overcome the rancid present political climate. NWI Times correspondent Doug Ross quoted her as saying, “Hope is not an organic feel for me at this moment.  I don’t just feel it, I create it, and we all have to do that.”

Jim Spicer’s latest senior citizen joke:

  An elderly man in Louisiana had owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond in the back. It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees.
    One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond and look it over, as he hadn't been there for a while. He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond. He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end. One of the women shouted to him, “We're not coming out until you leave!” The old man frowned, and proving that some seniors still think fast he said, “I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim or make you get out of the pond naked. I'm here to feed the alligator.”