Think Haiku

“Nightfall

Too dark to read the page

Too cold”

         Jack Kerouac

Jimbo, Izzy Young, and Toni in Stockholm, Sweden, June 1996 

When Toni and I went to Sweden in 1996 for an oral history conference, we spent several days with folklorist and, like Jack Kerouac, former Beat poet Izzy Young, who took us on a walking tour of Stockholm that included frequent stops at coffeehouses.  He and Toni bonded, and before we parted, Izzy read a Haiku that he had composed especially for her.  From a Japanese tradition consisting of three short lines, haikus generally contain colorful imagery and capture insightfully a moment in time.  Several years later, while Izzy was Ron Cohen’s houseguest, we took him to dinner at The Spa in Porter and afterwards he noted that his steak was the best he had eaten in years.

In the epilogue to “Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History” (2010), Yunte Huang described visiting legendary detective Chang Apana’s gravesite during a visit to Honolulu, and he reprinted a poem of his that employs poetic diction modeled after Charlie Chan’s pidgin English.  Entitled “Think Haiku, Act Locu: An Experiment in Back-Translation,” it includes references to ping pong, hot and sour soup, and being shanghaied and contains these lines:

take it

with a grain of MSG

what’s the memory size

of your abacus?

speak

in a chopsticked tongue

another day

another yen

the yin-yang

of base and superstructure

On December 8, 1933, the day Chang Apana died from a severe case of diabetic gangrene, Mauna Loa volcano erupted.  Historian Gilbert Martines wrote: “The molten lava was Madame Pele’s way of shedding black tears of anguish over the passing of Apana.”  Huang added, “In Chinese it is called tian ren gan ying – the sympathy between heaven and human.”  Earl Derr Biggers, author of the Charlie Chan series, had died just eight months earlier.  Huang concluded: 

The most unlikely of comrades, they together had given birth to an unforgettable character who is strangely American apple pie and Chinese chop suey.  Despite their sudden and untimely deaths, the American folk hero Charlie Chan would live on, immortalized as a symbol of both racial bias and cultural fantasy.

Bridge partner Dee Van Bebber revealed that her Florida duplicate club used to meet at a biker bar that featured live entertainment later in the evening, including occasional male striptease performances by Chippendales. Tom Rea wondered if Dee stayed around for the show.  I mentioned a time when our family was having lunch at the Golden Coin in Miller, Phil’s favorite restaurant due to the ribs when women participating in a private lingerie party came sashaying past.

 Eddie Sadlowski and Studs Terkel, 1977

Union activist Ed “Oilcan Eddie” Sadlowski passed away on June 10 at age 79, and NWI Timesreporter Joseph Pete asked for a comment. Elected in 1975 as Director of District 31, encompassing Chicago and Northwest Indiana and representing 130,000 steelworkers,  Eddie was very charismatic, militant, and principled.  I enjoyed his company at a Labor History conference in Youngstown, Ohio.  The featured speaker was oral historian Alessandro Portelli, and after Eddie asked him a pointed question and identified himself, Portelli insisted on doing a taped interview with him.  Fifteen years ago, I sat with Eddie at a Stand Up for Steel Rally at RailCats Stadium (officially U.S. Steel Yard).  I recall him being cynical about US Steel management (those sons of bitches, he called them) wanting union help when normally they’d do everything possible to screw the working man.  Mike Olszanski wrote:

Eddie was an environmentalist. As District 31 Director, he set up the first Environmental Committee in a USWA District, Paul Kaczocha and I were members. And he debunked U.S. Steel's Environmental Blackmail, when they falsely asserted the shutdown of their Open Hearths was due to EPA regulations. Actually, as Eddie told the newspaper, they shut down the Open Hearths because they could make more steel faster WITH FEWER WORKERS, with the (then) new Basic Oxygen Process BOP shop.

During a dull moment during a Cubs telecast, Len Kasper and Jim Deshaises started talking about crossword puzzles.  One of them was stumped by the clue, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,”calling for a six-letter answer.  Recalling a series of drawings Toni did called “Old Saws,” I knew the answer before they said it.

 Portage students protest termination of Kevin Giese; Times photo by Joyce Russell

Dave, Angie, and the kids attended a Portage School Meeting, joining more than 50 others, to protest the termination of popular auditorium director Kevin Giese, a wonderful role model who developed the talents of James and countless others and whose plays were always polished and enjoyable.  Having held the position for nine years, Giese received no reason for his dismissal, only a vague letter stating that the district had decided to go in a different direction for the position.  Angie wrote afterwards:

Why would they fire such a dedicated, hard-working and highly respected man who has been the backbone of Portage High School's theater department when he has done nothing wrong?!  Then when the community shows up to voice their discontent at this injustice at the public school board meeting they refuse to allow anyone there to address the board about the theater department! Unbelievable! These cowardice board members need to go!

NWI Timesreporter Joyce Russell wrote that eventually 2018 graduate Andrea Vance managed to speak briefly and received a standing ovation after saying, “You are taking away a person who makes a difference in our lives. You take his job, we are taking yours.”  Superintendent Amanda Alaniz admitted, “Mr. Giese has done a phenomenal job”but claimed that the school is seeking a certified teacher to fill the position.

As part of a fund-raising effort, IUN’s Office of Development shared this letter from Business Administration student and Strack Family Scholarship recipient LaKisha Vance:

When I graduated from high school, the odds were against me.
I grew up in the housing projects and had a baby at 16.
While my life was a struggle at times, I am now proud to say I have a thriving son and a great job.  I knew in order to make a better life for my family and
to advance in my career, I needed a college degree.
That’s why I decided to attend IU Northwest. And, thanks to the generosity of others, like YOU,  I am achieving my goals and fulfilling my dreams. I am proof that your support can make a huge difference…it can change someone’s life.

The Quest

“It is the mission of each true knight

His duty, nay, his privilege

To dream the impossible dream.”

         Don Quixote, “Man of La Mancha”

photo by Bettie Wilson

Thanks to an invitation from librarian Scott Sandberg, I participated in a community discussion about Martin Luther King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech.  It took place on the second floor of IUN’s Anderson library on the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination.  The panel also included ministers, attorneys, and Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy (who was great).  Discussion facilitator Junifer Hall, head of the Katie Hall Educational Foundation, asked us to elaborate on statements from the address, such as King’s contrasting contemporary technological achievements with what he termed a “poverty of spirit.” From past experiences in this setting, I knew how to concentrate on certain points I wanted to make - such as that King’s dream of a nonracist society was one that inspired people of all races and backgrounds, myself included.  I brought up Richard Hatcher’s civil rights activities using King’s tactics prior to his becoming mayor.  I emphasized that employing nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to protest unjust laws allowed King and his followers to assume the moral high ground and that his principled opposition to the Vietnam War was an act of courage that cost him support from President Lyndon Baines Johnson and probably hastened his death. Lutheran pastor Delwyn Campbell and Deacon John Henry Hall got into a doctrinal dispute over the relative importance of faith versus good works and love of self as opposed to love of others. NAACP attorney Barbara Bolling-Williams mentioned lawsuits by her organization against Republican efforts to infringe on poor people’s voting rights. Regarding prospects for the future, I stressed the need for inspired leadership and importance of studying the past.

Reminiscent of John Updyke in “Rabbit Run,” Richard Russo portrays ministers hilariously.  In “That Old Cape Magic” a Unitarian man of the cloth presides at Jack Griffin’s daughter’s wedding, unencumbered, Russo writes, “by liturgical obligation.”  He “clearly fancied himself a comedian and used those parts of the service that might otherwise be given over to prayer to relive memorable moments of the rehearsal dinner to a smattering of nervous laughter.”  When Griffin’s date “set upon the Unitarian comic on the dance floor,” he “looked everywhere but at Marguerite’s chest, unintentionally providing the very comedy that had eluded him during the wedding ceremony.”   I enjoyed “That Old Cape Magic” so much I decided to reread Russo’s “Straight Man,” about a professor at a mediocre Pennsylvania branch campus where getting promotion “was a bit like being proclaimed the winner of a shit-eating contest.”  The sentiment was similar to Griffin’s parents complaining of being stuck at as Hoosier college in the “Mid-fuckin’-West.” Hank has a white German shepherd named Occam (for Occam’s razor, the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the most valid) whose signature move is to put his wet pointed snout in a visitor’s crotch and tug upward.

The Cubs’ quest for a second World Series championship in three years got off to a rocky start, as they failed to score a run in 2 consecutive games, plus the final 14 innings of a 2-1 loss to the lowly Marlins.  They finally broke out of it in an 8-0 win over the Brewers and then took the series three games out of four.

Sergio Garcia

At bowling an overhead TV broadcast round one of the Masters from Augusta, and I watched Tiger Woods fight back from 3 over par with 2 birdies on the back nine.  When last year’s winner Sergio Garcia put five balls in the water for a 13 on a par 3 hole named Firethorn, I thought I was watching instant replay since the set was on mute. Sergio’s wife Angela recently gave birth to a girl named Azalea, nickname for the thirteenth hole at Augusta. When Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner quipped that Sergio won’t be naming his next kid Firethorn, Angela Garcia called him an idiot.  Lerner subsequently apologized, needlessly, I thought. 

The annual Portage High School (PHS) variety show lasted 3 and a half hours and featured 37 acts, culminating in a number from the spring musical, “The 25^thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  James appeared in it as William Barfee (“That’s Bar-FAY!”) Administrators had put the kibosh on plans to stage “The Drowsy Chaperone” because of alcohol references but did not censor a group singing “Californication” by Red Hot Chili Peppers.” Go figure!  Must have slipped through the cracks.  Thirty years ago, when Dave and friends performed “Cretin Hop” at a similar PHS show, the brochure left out the name Sex Pistols.   I recognized Meghan Trainor’s “Like I’m Gonna Lose You,” sung by Lailah Abdulla and Danny GoShay as the number Becca did at Alissa wedding. Highlights included Angelo Turner singing Coldplay’s “Everglow,” Jaden Vandever crooning the John Legend number “All of Me,” and a dance number by multi-talented Andrea Vance, who also sang with the PHS Dance Group and PHS Thespians.

 Andrea Vance

Larry Lapidus, "Vintage Couple"

Gregg Hertrieb

Over the weekend two exhibit receptions took place, “Straight Shooters: Photographs by Larry Lapidus” at the Munster Center for the Arts, and “Time Ghost,” curated by Lapidus and featuring surrealistic watercolors and acrylics by Gregg Hertzlieb at Gardner Center in Miller.  A brochure for “Time Ghost” stated: “Enter a world inspired by nature and art, where characters and elements exist as fantasy or metaphor.  Hertzlieb’s message is one of peace, delight, and joy in the possibilities of the imagination.”  I told Gregg, VU’s museum curator, that he had a fertile mind.

“Scandinavia,” a travel book by Rick Steves, asserted that nearly every educated young person in Finland, where Dave and I will be going in two months, “speaks effortless English – the language barrier is just a road turtle.”  I’d never heard the phrase “road turtle” and subsequently learned it stands for raised pavement highway reflectors sometimes called road studs or cat’s eyes.  While our destination is Jyväskylä, virtually the entire chapter dealt with things to do in Helsinki, the only European capital without a medieval history.  Its most distinguished buildings were constructed during the nineteenth century when Finland was part of the Russian empire and modeled after architecture in St. Petersburg. Steves wrote:

  In 1917, Finland won its independence from Russia and enjoyed two decades of prosperity until the secret Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 assigned them to the Soviet sphere of influence.  When Russia invaded, Finland resisted successfully, its white-camouflaged ski troops winning the Winter War of 1939-1940 and holding off the Russians in the Continuing War from 1941 until 1944.

  After WW II, Finland was forced to cede territory to the USSR, accept a Soviet naval base, and pay huge reparations.  The collapse of the Soviet Union has done to Finland what a good long sauna might do for you.

At Gino’s in Merrillville for a book club meeting, I enjoyed a free plate of raviolis at the bar to go with my 8-dollar pale ale 16-ounce draft. Two guys in their sixties talked about having to deal with a catheter and urine bag, one due to a kidney stone and the other after prostate surgery.   Sitting nearby, Debra Dubovitz commented that it’s tough growing old.  On the TV were shots of snow falling at Wrigley Field, forcing cancellation of the Cubs home opener.

 J.D. Vance

Joe Gomeztagle talked about J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” a surprise best-seller in the wake of the 2016 election, frequently comparing and contrasting Vance’s background and his own and Middletown, Ohio, with Gary, Indiana. While it is primarily a work of self-congratulation by one who overcame a rough childhood (with a drug-addicted mother and 15 stepdads) and made it out of a former Ohio steel town by joining the marines and then going on to graduate from Yale Law School, conservatives have touted Vance as the voice of the rustbelt and the book as the explanation why Trump is so popular with Appalachian whites.  Though proud of his Scotch-Irish hillbilly roots, Vance admonishes those who “spend their way into the poorhouse and choose not to work.”   Like his Yale mentor Amy Chua, author of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Lady,” Vance preaches a message of tough love and personal responsibility.  Vance now works for a Silicon valley investment firm, and many Republicans want him to run for political office, perhaps an Ohio Senate seat. He seems content making an obscene amount of money from speaking engagements.

During the discussion Brian Barnes mentioned that the Scotch-Irish have tended to be tribal and violence-prone, dating to when they relocated to Catholic Ireland and later emigrated to the American frontier.  Debra Dubovitz said that her Irish family considered it a “mixed marriage” when she married someone Polish, even though they were both Roman Catholic. Lee Christakis did her one better, claiming that his folks disapproved of a Greek girlfriend because she was from a different island.  I mainly criticized “Hillbilly Elegy” for tending to blame poor people for their own economic plight and criticizing welfare state programs that at least ameliorated their situation rather than corporate capitalists who exploited and then abandoned them.  Citing David Goldfield’s “The Gifted Generation,” I concluded that the primary cause of their work ethic decline was not moral failure, or what Vance calls “learned helplessness,” but unhealthy corporate concentration, the weakening of organized labor, and governmental neglect.