Life Cycles

“You’ll know what you had when it’s gone

The only thing left of what used to be is you

I saw the world

You saw my parents grow old”

    Cam, “Redwood Tree

“The Beekeepers” by Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel (1525?-1569), who often depicted peasant life, contains workers whose protective gear is suggestive of our present plight during the pandemic.

 

Toni and I spent the weekend in Grand Rapids, Michigan, our first such trip in months, to celebrate the birthdays of granddaughter Miranda and daughter-in-law Beth.  At a rest stop we were in the majority of those wearing masks.  We arrived at Josh and Alissa’s, where we were spending the night, and exchanged hugs with faces turned away but no kisses. I had generous amounts of Beth’s guacamole before we headed to Miranda and Will’s place for an outdoor party. I enjoyed watching badminton games, only slightly envious that my rotator cuff forced me on the sidelines.  All four of Phil’s kids are doing great and traded stories about each other’s old flames and other memories. Tori helped me change my Facebook profile photo, first time ever, and said she hoped to attend grad school in North Carolina.

 

The following morning Alissa made pierogis and Josh put on albums of Brazilian, Japanese, and Portuguese musicians.  Nice.  Phil and Delia arrived, and Delia trimmed Toni’s hair and my eyebrows and ear hair.  I mentioned starting marriage in Hawaii, where Josh and Alissa honeymooned, and Josh noted that his parents lived there for three years while his dad was in the navy.  Then he worked at a naval base near Saginaw, Michigan, located on Lake Huron and not far from where two dams recently gave way, causing massive flooding in the Midland community.  Josh’s uncle had recently purchased a lakeside retirement home. First the floodwaters reached his house; then the next day the lake had disappeared, leaving only a mucky mess.

John Attinasi informed me that 90-year-old jazz trumpeter Arthur Hoyle, whom I interviewed not long ago, passed away.  The obit stated:

    Arthur received his first trumpet on his eighth birthday in rural Oklahoma. He moved to Gary, Indiana with his Mother at age 13. He began playing in local clubs and ballrooms at the age of 15. Arthur's excellence as a jazz trumpeter earned worldwide admiration. After a four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force, Arthur joined the Sun Ra Arkestra. He next worked with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, touring the United States, Canada, Europe and North Africa. Arthur's music career included the Art Hoyle Quintet and studio work as both a voiceover talent and musician on TV, radio, commercials and movie sound tracts. He has worked with some of the greatest musicians of our time including Lee Konitz, Gene Ammons, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Woody Herman, Billy Eckstine, Frank Sinatra and many others.

 

I watched the 1998 Spike Lee film “He Got Game” for the first time.  It was unnerving seeing Denzel Washington play a flawed character whose hot temper results in the death of his wife.  Ray Allen, now retired after a long NBA career, shined in the role of his estranged son. Wrote critic Roger Ebert:

     Spike Lee brings the spirit of a poet to his films about everyday reality. "He Got Game," the story of the pressures on the nation's best high school basketball player, could have been a gritty docudrama, but it's really more of a heartbreaker, about a father and his son.  Lee uses visual imagination to lift his material into the realms of hopes and dreams. Consider his opening sequence, where he wants to establish the power of basketball as a sport and an obsession. He could have given us a montage of hot NBA action, but no: He uses the music of Aaron Copland to score a series of scenes in which American kids--boys, girls, rich, poor, black, white, in school and on playgrounds--play the game. All it needs is a ball and a hoop; compared to this simplicity.  Jerry Seinfeld observes, when we attend other sports we're cheering laundry.

 

Louise Erdrich

Historian Ray Boomhower often posts quotations by those whose birth date it is, such as this advice from baseball great Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back – something may be gaining on you.”  Boomhower repeated these words by prolific author Louise Erdrich: “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

from left, Dorothee, Anne, Lynn

This from Anne Koehler: “Upon popular request here is another part of my life story. I had just turned 41 in early 1975 and was working as store manager for Jacobsen's Office Supply in Portage, Indiana, when I noticed a lump on the lower part of my stomach. Concerned that it might be a tumor, I went to see the company doctor, located in the downtown Gary Hotel. After checking my vitals, the doctor put his stethoscope on my stomach, looked at me and said, “I hear a heartbeat.” This came as a total surprise and I could not believe it. I was in my fifth month of pregnancy. I was happy. When I went downstairs to go home with my husband he had already left, evidently thinking that it had taken too long. The suspected tumor Linda was born August 25, a beautiful and healthy girl. She is 43 years old now and the joy of my life.”

 

 

Times photo by Marc Chase

NWI Times correspondent Lauren Cross interviewed 16-year veteran Hobart police officer Monte White, an African-American husband and father of five, whom a few Black Lives matter protestors thoughtlessly called an “Uncle Tom.”  In tears an Hispanic woman said she was demonstrating for him and his kids and asks if he didn’t worry about them.  White remained silent but told Cross: “I wanted to talk to her and say, ‘Hey look, I am a black father.  I have kids.  And I do worry about them coming home.’ If I ever have the chance to see her again, I would tell her I appreciate the things she had to say.”  White grew up in Gary and had encounters with police, some of which did not go well.  He told Cross, “I never thought I’d be in this type of situation, standing in the front lines of a protest in regards to how police treat black people and other minorities.”

 

Republican Mitt Romney marched in a protest rally and, asked why, said, “Black Lives Matter.”  Critics are rightly pointing out Trump’s long history of racist antipathy to his predecessor, but he was far from a lone voice among Republicans, who commonly accentuated Obama’s middle name, Hussein, ridiculed his having been a community organizer, and questioned the color of his suits, the absence initially of a flag on his lapel, and even his fist-bumping the First Lady.

East Chicago Central grad Guy Rhodes attended the pandemic commencement and posted this photo and caption: “East Chicago Central High School senior class sponsor David Lane enjoys his golf cart as students participate in a dcrive through graduation ceremony held at the school in East Chicago, Ind., Sunday, June 7, 2020. The ceremony, normally held in the school's gymnasium, was held outdoors to encourage social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”