South Shore Journal

“Grimy streets lined with dirty, hard ice and crusted drifts covered with that old familiar layer of blast-furnace dust,” Jean Shepherd, “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash”

Chris Young was proud and relieved to announce that the South Shore Journal he edited is finally online.  Among the contributors are IU Northwest professors Subir Bandyopadhyay, Chuck Gallmeier, Mark Hoyert, Glenn Lauzon, Anja Matwijkiw, Cynthia O’Dell, Ju Park, Jean Poulard, Raj Selladural, and Chris himself.  (http://www.southshorejournal.org/index.php/issues/volume-5-2013) 

Chris led off with three Region articles, mine entitled “The Dune Fawn: Diana of the Dunes’ Male Counterpart,” a photo essay by Gary Cialdella, and “Public Memory in Gary, Indiana: An Examination of the Elbert H. Gary and Michael Jackson Memorials,” by IUN students Amalia Shanks-Meile and Elizabeth LaDuke.  The latter begins with a description of City Methodist Church (“the epitome of urban decay”), where Shanks-Meile and LaDuke found spray-painted on an inside wall, “M.J.’s home.”  The Judge Gary statue adjacent to City Hall was dedicated in 1958, the year of Michael Jackson’s birth.  It now receives scant attention compared to the monument placed in front of Jackson’s boyhood home at 2300 Jackson Street following his death.  The authors concluded: “Michael Jackson’s early life, in many ways, resembles much of the Gary community’s present.   As a boy, Michael Jackson struggled within the same city that is experiencing similar struggles over 40 years later.  Elbert Gary’s connection to the city, quite simply, is no longer relevant or visible to the Garyites of today.”  The Judge never lived in Gary and only visited a handful of times.

With charming candor Gary Cialdella introduced haunting photos having to do with “The Making of the Calumet Region: An American Place.”  “When I was growing up in the Region, it was one of the country’s largest and most prosperous industrial centers,” he wrote.  “By the time I began photographing the area, it was already sinking into its long decline.  When I left for college in the 1960s, I could not imagine the changes to come, nor the hold this place would have on me.”

above, Gary Cialdella; below, Steve Tesich

Cialdella employs quotes by Region bard Jean Shepherd and screenwriter Steve Tesich (“Four Friends” and “Breaking Away”), who also authored “Summer Crossing” (1982).  Cialdella writes: “Throughout the novel, the Region’s presence hangs over the characters like an unseen hand pressing down on them.”  He quotes this passage from “Summer Crossing": “The air was getting misty and smoggy . . . You could smell the steel mills and the refineries. . .  On certain days you could watch the soot fall like black snow.”  The main character drove his girlfriend to Whiting Beach, where, Tesich wrote, the lights of Inland Steel were visible in the distance and “the water smelled of industry and jobs.”  Cialdella concludes, “With every passing year, pieces of the Region’s distinctiveness disappear.  The familiar is erased, covered over diminishing public memory.  Yet even as the Region has changed, a visit there today puts me in two worlds: the place it is becoming, and the one of my childhood when three shifts comprised a routine day.” 

Gary Cialdella photos: above, Amoco Park, Hammond; below, 129th and Schrage, Whiting 

Fascinated with homes located literally in the shadows of industrial behemoths, Cialdella wrote: “One particular brick facade home on Schrage Avenue in Whiting was emblematic. More than any other single home, it spoke to me of domesticity in the midst of the industrial landscape. The house faced west, its backside to the refinery, a cared for lot and dead end street flanking its sides. The owners took fastidious care of the place, from the perfectly kept yard to the carefully patched driveway. A feature of the house was a Madonna statuette resting in a niche below the draped front windows. Later, it was moved to a garden spot below the garage window. Over the years I have made a ritual of driving past the house. I was reassured seeing it, cared for, stout against the bleak refinery landscape.”    In 2010 Cialdella returned and found only an empty lot.  His hands suddenly trembled, and he felt as though he had lost an old friend.

Mark Hoyert and Cynthia O’Dell examined parallels between public memories and personal “flashbulb” memories of unexpected events, such as the death of loved ones or celebrities such as JFK or Princess Diana.  I have no recollection of hearing about Princess Di’s death but recall vividly first learning that Kennedy had been shot and getting a phone call in 1967 that my dad had died of a massive heart attack at age 50. Hoyert and O’Dell cite as a reference J. Talarico and D. Rubin’s “Confidence, Not Consistency Characterizes Flashbulb Memories,” published in Psychological Science.

Chuck Gallmeier’s review essay, “Civil Religion, and Public Memory,” notes that Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy have entered America’s pantheon of martyred saints, unlike two other murdered presidents, James A. Garfield and William McKinley. Robert T. Lincoln was present at his father’s death bed, witnessed Garfield being gunned down , arrived in Buffalo moments before Leon Czogosz shot McKinley, and rests in Arlington Cemetery in a location within sight of JFK’s gravesite.  Candace Millard’s “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President” blames Garfield’s doctors for the President’s death from infection.  A decade later, as described in Matthew Algeo’s “The President Is a Sick Man,” a competent medical team treated a malignant growth the size of a quarter in Grover Cleveland’s mouth in a clandestine operation aboard a yacht.  After reporter E.J. Edwards broke the story two months later, presidential lackeys vilified him.  H. Samuel Merrill (my Maryland PhD adviser) wrote in “Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party,” “One of the doctors who assisted in the operation later said that he did more lying then than in all the rest of his active life put together.”

Anne Balay’s students discussed how girls are trained to be quiet and conforming in school while boys are encouraged to speak up and their aggressive behavior is generally tolerated. The subject of cooties came up, an insult hurled most often at girls, especially those poor, shy, disabled or different.”  I’m still ashamed that I didn’t defend Louise Jester against such harassment.  This still goes on, according to students.  I made the point that the modern classroom is much different than when I was in school and that good teachers (I mentioned son Dave and E.C. Central music director Leon Kendrick) can make a big difference in breaking down gender stereotypes, despite the over-emphasis on standardized testing.  Students recalled teachers who had made a difference in their lives; Anne recalled a lesbian ex-nun in seventh grade who encouraged her to be outspoken.  My favorite teacher, H.M. Jones, turned out to be a pervert, sad to say.

Dick Meister was in the Archives seeking material for a pictorial history of Ogden Dunes.  I suggested he check out the Brown Museum and Westchester Library in Chesterton, and the files of the Chesterton Tribune.  Meister’s PhD dissertation on Gary during the 1930s was very valuable when I was researching “City of the Century.”

Ron Cohen sent along Michael Hirsch’s review of Penny Lewis’ “Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory.”  The “myth” is that blue-collar America supported the war.  Hirsch agrees with Lewis’ conclusion that, while the movement began on elite campuses with support from pacifist and leftist organizations, it grew to encompass “mid-level trade union officials and rank-and-file union members bucking their war-abetting union leaders.”  Here’s how Hirsch, who once attended a party at our Maple Place abode, described himself: “Michael Hirsch, the first in his family to attend college, was a campus antiwar leader, a college professor in Boston as long as he could stand it, then a steelworker in Indiana until the mass layoffs of the early 1980s. Since 1985, he has worked as a labor editor and writer for three New York-based labor unions, as well as a contributor to numerous publications.”

Dave, who started teaching today, asked on Facebook, “Where the hell did the summer go?”  Mike Darrow said it was in Arizona, while Nephew Bob said it was in California, where the living is easy.  Beamer Pickert wrote, “Winter is coming,” causing Tatiana Brito to quip, “I really hope that was a Game of Thrones reference.”  My wake-up call about summer’s end came from Frank Shufran, who reminded me that bowling starts a week from Wednesday.

A statue in IUN’s Library Courtyard of a young woman entitled “Dance of Awakening Day” had bird droppings on the woman’s face, breasts, and left leg, leaving it looking rather obscene.  Fortunately the Pino Conte sculpture “Woman in the Sun” in front of Raintree Hall, donated by Alvina and Saul Cohen, is unsoiled.

Ann Fritz held a reception at Gallery Northwest for Ken Schoon’s new book featuring photos and paintings by contributors to “Dreams of Duneland.” Those in attendance included Chris Meyers, David Larson, and Carol Wood from Technical Services, who took a photo of ice mounds along Lake Michigan.  Ken used two photos of Mount Baldy by biologist Zoran Kilibarda, showing sand accretion or movement over a two-year period.  Many photos are by Ron Trigg, a frequent visitor to the Archives.  In fact, Ken used much material from the Calumet Regional Archives.  Ken thanked organizations whose financial help allowed the price of the coffee table book to be, at $30, so affordable, mentioning that Cara Spicer of the Legacy Foundation was on the phone with him from her hospital bed shortly before she died. He had no idea she was critically ill.

photos of Mount Baldy by Zoran Kilibarda in November 2008 (above) and November 2010

Attending the reception with Bookstore textbook manager George Klepper were former IUN students Bob Wilcynski and Mike Halpin.  Bob played tennis with Paul Kern, John Haller and me in the 1970s, and his daughter was one of my best students.  When I was chair of the History Department, the Nursing Division invited me to its annual pinning ceremony.  Knowing Bob’s daughter would be there, I accepted, only to discover that the invitation wasn’t for dinner.  Bob insisted I sit with them anyway.  I kept waiting for no-nonsense Hazel Malone to grab me by the ear and drag me out. 

Mike Halpin, now an attorney, was a founder of IUN’s Student Unity Movement that formed in 1970 following the Kent State and Jackson State killings.  The group lined up speakers for a week long event called Relevancy Week and as the culmination of a march down Broadway presented a petition to U.S. Steel demanding that the company stop discriminating against blacks and polluting the environment.  Mike lived in Edgewater, and his dog Charlie frequently visited us; in fact, Charlie often roamed as far away from home as Jackson Steak House on U.S. 12.  Angie once let Chuck inside their house on Shelby and Lake Shore Drive, thinking it was lost until I told her he could find his way home.

Drove home on Route 12 to avoid construction on 80/94.  Temperature was 88 at IUN at 6 p.m., 76 at Burns Harbor close to the lake, and 81 at our Chesterton condo.  Popped a beer and listened to Joe Jackson’s “Friday” and the Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love.”

Infinite Hope

“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope,” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King died 45 years ago, killed most likely by racist escaped con James Earl Ray with a helping hand from J. Edgar Hoover’s damnable FBI.  Agents had previously tried to blackmail King by threatening to expose his marital infidelity if he didn’t end his activism, and they shamed him into staying at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis rather than one in a safer location.  I still recall how shattered I was upon hearing the news and attending the chapel service next day at the University of Maryland.  I was teaching a class when a procession passed by, and I decided to join it.  Holding hands and singing “We Shall Overcome,” I wondered if such optimistic sentiments could survive America’s blood lust.  Bobby Kennedy was still there (in Indianapolis) to exhort us not to give up the dream, but before long he, too, was gone, leaving the political field open to Richard Nixon and his cries for law ‘n’ order.

Spent an hour starting at 7:30 at Toyota due to a recall of 2003-2004 Corollas – something to do with the electrical system.  I arrived at IU Northwest in time to catch most of the COAS Conference session on “Perspectives on Politics and Urban Life.”  Brandy Lyn Eddy talked about Congressman Jim Jontz, whose papers she has been organizing in the Archives.

Liberal Studies grad student Dustin Allen Durbin discussed Lyndon B. Johnson and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  He looked familiar, and I discovered that he wrote an article entitled “Craziest Experience” for my 1980s Shavings, “The Uncertainty of Everyday Life.  He interviewed someone involved in a violent incident that took place in Glen Park.  I used a photo of Dustin in the index.

Frequent Archives visitors Amalia Shanks-Meile and Elizabeth LaDuke titled their paper on City Methodist Church “The Cake is a Lie.”  Showing photos of its interior, they discussed how the gothic ruin had changed during the year before their two visits.  The title is from graffiti found on a wall.  They first thought it was an expression about the impossibility for young ghetto residents of achieving the American Dream.  They discovered that the phrase was popularized by the X-Box game Portal, as a false promise of a reward for completing a mission.  At game’s end GlaDos, the artificially intelligent guide sings, “There’s no sense crying over every mistake, you just keep trying till you run out of cake.”

Two of Anne Balay’s students participated in a session chaired by Performing Arts professor Mark Baer entitled “All the World’s a Stage.”  I had previously heard a version of Brenna Echterling’s “Gender and the Outsider” at a Women’s Studies conference but learned more about S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders.”  The 1967 novel deals with two gangs, Greasers and Socs, divided by social class. Brenna was particularly interested in the female characters Cherry and Marcia.  Jennifer Tepavcevich discussed the crime novels of Sara Paretsky, whose private eye heroine, V.I. Warshawski, transformed the image of women in detective fiction, a genre usually portraying them as femme fatales or evil bitches.  Jennifer worked in photos of performance artist Amanda Fucking Parker allowing folks to paint her nude body.  Formerly part of the musical group Dresden Dolls, Amanda is touring with a group she calls The Grand Theft Orchestra.  She started out panhandling as a living statue, an eight-foot bride.  In talking with Jennifer afterwards, it was obvious that Amanda, below, was someone she greatly admired.  One Dresden Dolls song, “(Who could ask for more than a) Coin-Operated Boy,” includes the line, “I can even f--- him in the ass.”  

I skipped Psychology professor Ralph Erber’s keynote speech, “From Idea to Research: An Idiosyncratic View,” fearing I’d embarrass myself by falling asleep (I’d been up since six), but returned for the screening of Jeff Manes and Pat Wisniewski’s fascinating documentary on the Kankakee Marsh, “Everglades of the North.”  Jeff had donated a copy to the Archives two weeks earlier.

On Facebook Sam Barnett wrote that in 1974 his Aunt Sandra Roorda-Novak, who recently passed away, “saw KISS in 1974 at the Parthenon in Hammond, IN. The opening act was Rush, with new drummer Neal Peart.  So you'll see what endeared her to me.”  He added: “No amount of rock ‘n’ roll will lift my heart today.”  I replied: “That year (1974) I paid 20 bucks to see the Ali-Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" at the Parthenon.”  Before the fight management showed a softcore porn flick.  The audience was quite boisterous.

Michael Bayer, above, recommended an article on Alter Net by Chris Hedges attacking the liberal elite for being too willing for purposes of career self-preservation, especially in times of war or national emergencies, “to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status.”  He quotes Leslie Gelb, who wrote in Foreign Affairs, “We must redouble our commitment to independent thought, and embrace, rather than cast aside, opinions and facts that blow the common—often wrong—wisdom apart. Our democracy requires nothing less.”  Hedges claims that the silence is especially egregious when it comes to the plight of Palestinians or any position that might bring trigger the wrath of  Israeli supporters

The Cubs held on to take the first series of the season from Pittsburgh despite another shaky ninth by Carlos Marmol, who gave up two runs in the 3-2 win.  Pittsburgh Dave wondered, “How long can Carlos Marmol hold on to that closers job?????”  I recommended he add present set-up man Kyuji Fujikawa to his Fantasy roster.

Dean Bottorff wrote: “File this under phrases you don't hear anymore: ‘This room looks like the wreck of the Hesperus,’ which is what my mother used to say to me when my room reached a particularly untidy stage.”  “The Wreck of the Hesperus” was a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about a ship captain who had brought his young daughter on board his schooner and, when a hurricane approached, tied her to the mast so she wouldn’t be swept overboard.  The ship crashed on the reef of Norman’s Woe off the coast of Gloucester, Mass., killing all on board.  Next morning a fisherman came upon the body of the maiden in the surf still lashed to the mast.  Longfellow wrote: “The salt air was frozen on her breast, the salt tears in her eyes; and he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, on the billows fall and rise.”