Socail Distortion

Social Distortion

 

“Beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact and the distortion inevitable caused by my seeing only one corner of events.”  George Orwell, “Homage to Catalonia

 

D.T. is threatening to deny help to states whose governors aren’t nice to him and apparently stalled supplies intended for Washington and Michigan out of pique. Some TV stations have ceased carrying his press conferences live because his statements are so misleading and unsettling. Of Trump and his cult of supporters, as Jonathan Swift wrote centuries ago, “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

 

 Indiana’s governor has declared gun stores to be essential businesses, and customers are lining up around the block in some places. Teachers have paraded in cars to boost the morale of students at home, a practice ridiculed by cynics but apparently welcomed by those inside.  Some communities at a certain time of day open windows or doors and cheer hospital workers risking their lives to treat coronavirus victims.  Area golf courses remain open although only one person to a golf cart and no removing the pin on the green. In neighboring Michigan and Illinois marijuana stress also remain open, but weed remains illegal in Indiana. One of my board game buddies posted a cartoon of a guy hoarding games.

 

It seems like an appropriate time to play Social Distortion - a Seventies California punk band that with Mike Ness is still recording albums from time to time. My favorite numbers are “Ball and Chain,” “Bad Luck,” and the Johnny Cash number “Ring of Fire.” Ness, like Cash, has a deep, gruff voice.  The first two re on "Somewhere between Heaven and Hill," along with favorites "King of Fools" and "Cold Feelings."

 

David Ritz, who collaborated on B.B. King’s autobiography, had previously worked with Ray Charles, Marvin Gay, and Etta James.  A lover of the blues, Ruiz found King less moody and more cooperative.  “Blues All Around Me” is amazingly candid.  We learn that B.B. had 15 children by 15 different women and that he got circumcised in his 60s.  A compulsive womanizer, gambler, and performer, he was still on the road playing 250 one-nighters a year as he neared 70. His career had appeared to be at a dead end until an adroit agent, Sid Seidenberg, took him under his wing and English rockers such as the Rolling Stones and John Lennon of the Beatles extolled him. King admired Nat King Cole for his impeccable style and talent and praised Stevie Ray Vaughan as the greatest bluesman of his generation.

 

I’m halfway through Chicago reporter Len O’Connor’s book on the demise of Mayor Richard Daley, the last of the big city bosses. Interviewing a blueblood Republican, Dr. Oldberg, who served many years on the Board of Education, O’Connor noted that Chicago’s social and business elite feared that when Daley became mayor in the mid-50s, it would signal the return of widespread corruption.  Daley proved not so horrendous as they feared but no advocate of good-government either. Oldberg referred to Daley’s Irish underlings as primitives. After Daley suffered a stroke in 1974, he spent several months recuperating at his seven-acre lakefront retreat in western Michigan.

 

IUN has a new chancellor, Ken Iwama, an administrator from City University of New York Staten Island.  I had hoped Vice Chancellor Vicki Roman-Lagunas would be selected since she is a supporter of the Archives and I tend to favor inside candidates familiar with the campus, but I took no part in the search, knowing I’d have no impact on the decision.  I wish Iwama well; he seems to be committed to diversity and hasn’t hopped around from position to position like some administrators.

 

Popping up on Facebook are questionaires asking such things as who you are named after and favorite deserts (Darcy Wade answered dive bars, meaning dove bars, prompting a friend to reply that she also loved both dive bars and dove bars).  Darcy was named for a great-aunt, I for a failed president.  Kirsten Petras answered Kiki for favorite nickname; mine would be JBo.  For last movie seen in a theater, my answer was “Little Women,” the 2019 update.

 

At Jewel during senior hours the other day, I tripped on a rolled-up mat that someone had neglected to move out of harm’s way.  I turned right to head to the deli and went down, landing on my side and bruising the area near my hip.  I was fortunate not to break anything and am on the mend, putting an ice pack on every few hours.  I missed a step on the way to the basement when we first moved to the condo and tripped over a wire in the side garden, but the latest mishap reminded me of falling in Michigan and cutting my ear. Intending to bring Phil’s garbage bin, in from the street, I didn’t notice the lid on the ground and it tripped me up.  Getting out of the car, Phil yelled, “Jimbo’s down!”  Indeed I was. Gotta be more careful.