Characters

“Always remember, don’t worry about anything,” Robert “Bobby Z” Zemburski

Bobby Z on drums

 

1963 East Chicago Washington grad Bob Zemburski passed away.  While still in high school he played drums for the Starlighters, a three-piece polka band.  When a keyboardist and guitar player joined, they concentrated on Rock and Roll and, since a New York City house band, Joey Dee and the Starlighters, scored a huge hit, “The Peppermint Twist,” the Starlighters changed their name to the Blue Angels. In the summer of 1963 they were in such demand they were often playing gigs five days a week at VFW and Legion Halls plus other popular venues, including Midway Ballroom in Cedar Lake and Maduras Dance Land in Whiting. At a local club the Jackson Five shared the stage with them. The Blue Angels scored a minor hit, “Fame and Fortune,” and even backed up Chuck Berry at a 1965 New Year’s Day Hammond Civic Center show. The Rivieras, a band from South Bend whose hit “California Sun” made the Top Ten, was scheduled to play for Berry, but the guitar legend was so impressed with the Blue Angels, known for donning blue outfits and blue hair, the guitar legend demanded they play with him, an anecdote Billy Z never tired of repeating, often with such embellishments such as that the Rivieras wouldn’t talk to them for months.

After a stint in the marines as a combat engineer, Bob Zemburski worked for a railroad company for 25 years and then continued his education, eventually earning a master’s degree and mentoring at-risk adolescents as a member of the Lake County Juvenile Justice Task Force.  Among his favorite expressions were “Who loves you more than me?” and “What’s the best day of my life – the day I was born.” As he realized, guilt was a wasted emotion, love makes the world go ‘round, and it’s great to be alive.  RIP, good mentor. According to the Burns Funeral Home obit:

    He loved magic and doing his tricks for anyone who would give him an audience, even if the tricks themselves didn’t turn out the way he intended.  He was an amazing man and a wonderful human being.  There will never be another “Bobby Z.”

Koekkoek

For the first time since the Superbowl I watched almost an entire sports event, a Chicago Black Hawks playoff victory over the Edmonton Oilers. After winning three Stanley Cups during the past decade, the Black Hawks had fallen on hard times and wouldn’t even have reached the playoffs save for an expanded format due to Covid-19.  The team is composed of veteran stars Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, and Duncan Keith, plus frequently injured Corey Crawford and a slew of untested young players, including Slater Koekkoek (whose name is pronounced koo-koo or cuckoo).  The score was 2-2 until midway through the third period when the captain, Jonathan Toews fed a perfect pass to Dominik Kubalik, who fired a shot past the shoulder of goalie Mikko Koskinen.  Crawford made several key saves as the Oilers furiously tried to tie the score.

 

I was slightly disappointed to discover that the title of favorite author Anne Tyler’s new novel, “Redhead by the Side of the Road” refers to a fire hydrant that Micah Mortimer passed during his morning jog without his glasses on.  A self-described Tech Hermit whose humdrum life admittedly was in a deep rut, Mortimer (whose name in the Old French meant stagnant pond or dead sea; his given name in Hebrew meant faultless or like god) finds his routine complicated by a visitor who believes he might be his son. One gray Monday morning the news on Mortimer’s clock radio is as bleak as his mood:

    There’s been a mass shooting at a synagogue; whole families are dying in Yemen; immigrant children torn from their parents will never be the same, even if by some unlikely chance they are reunited tomorrow.

A client wanted Micah to strip his son’s computer of porn files and install a blocking mechanism:

    Micah got a kick out of the titles the son had given the files: Sorghum Production in the Eastern States, Population Figures Dayton Ohio.  They reminded him of those hollowed-out books designed to hide people’s valuables (or flasks), always with the driest possible titles imprinted on the spines so outsiders weren’t tempted to open them.

Nephew Chad Donahue

Hurricane Isaias caused flooding in the Philadelphia area where I grew up. In 1954 during Hurricane Hazel the street by our house, Fort Washington Avenue, became a river.  Our dog Smokey got caught in the rapids and finally managed to escape a block later.  Toni’s pet bird got swept outside when somebody opened the door and was never seen again.

According to Glenn Frankel’s “High Noon,” Gary Cooper was a natural to play Sheriff Will Kane.  Born in 1901 Frank Cooper in Helena, Montana, once called Last Chance Gulch, he spent summers on a family-owned ranch near where Lewis and Clark had camped a century before. Moving in with his parents in L.A. after three years of college, he hoped to become a commercial artist but found work as a Hollywood stuntman in westerns.  When he was in demand, his father hired an agent, Nan Collins, for him; because another actor already used his name, Nan suggested Gary, the name of her Indiana home town.  Appearing in “The Winning of Barbara Worth” (1926) with Ronald Coleman, who, unlike most silent film stars, used minimal gestures, such as raised eyebrow, pursed lips, or a sigh, Cooper modeled his stoic persona after the British actor. Tall, handsome, and a ladies’ man despite being married, Cooper was a legendary lover whose conquests included Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, and Tallulah Bankhead, who told reporters that she’d come to Hollywood to fuck Gary Cooper and after the fact, said, “Mission accomplished.”  Having turned 50, Cooper was eager to play what became the role of his career.

Changing of the Guard

"Eden is burning, either getting ready for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage

for the changing of the guards

    Bob Dylan, “Changing of the Guards,” 1978

“Changing of the Guards” literally refers to sentries being relieved of duty by another contingent at such places as Buckingham Palace in London and Arlington National Cemetery.  I’ve witnessed both, the latter while working summers during the late 1960s at Boys Village of Maryland.  Even the young teenagers under my watch during the annual field trips were impressed.

There’s been a changing of the guard – without fanfare or ceremony, unfortunately, due to the pandemic - at IU Northwest: Chancellor William J. Lowe has retired after a decade of steady-at-the-helm leadership. He inherited a situation where after his predecessor had gone through several vice chancellors of academic affairs in quick succession, Bloomington had selected one of their own, strongman David Malik, to oversee IUN’s academic policy-making.  While in theory IUN has home rule, the mother campus still has preeminence over budgetary and tenure decisions.  As a result, Lowe, for the most part, deferred to Malik and concentrated on other duties, such as interacting with the outside community, lobbying for a new Arts and Sciences building, and attending campus events.  He was a fixture, for example, at Redhawk basketball games, academic events, and student functions and even dressed as Elwood Blues for a fundraising commercial. The son of a New York City police officer, he tended to administer with a velvet glove rather than an iron fist and apparently did not hold grudges, which cannot be said of some previous chancellors.  Lowe taught a seminar on Irish History last year and officially is taking a leave of absence with the intention of returning as a professor in my old department.  Incoming chancellor Ken Iwama has addressed faculty at a zoom town hall and appears to be a good choice, given his background and credentials, in this uncertain age for higher education. 

 

IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives has lost its longtime curator/archivist Steve McShane, whom Ron Cohen and I hired some four decades ago.  As I wrote in Steel Shavings, volume 49, which I dedicated to him, while I have learned that nobody is indispensable, it is hard to imagine the Archives without Steve.  His stellar service and unfailing patience and good humor sustained what has become a vital resource and repository under his leadership.  The pandemic derailed our plans to have a successor in place for him to mentor, and a top priority will be to convince Chancellor Iwama to authorize the search to continue with all deliberate speed.

Becca and Denzel Smith

Becca’s graduation party Sunday at the Chesterton American Legion Hall was a success despite participants wearing masks except for when they ate and a brief rain shower that interrupted outdoor activities.  We enjoyed house guests who began arriving Friday.  Good friend Tom Wade told me about a podcast on revisionist history that I’d enjoy. Jef Halberstadt recalled that his father worked for the Budd Plant in Gary, once the second largest employer I the city next to US Steel, until it closed four decades ago. When he noted that his father had developed several patents for the Budd company, I said that Vic, who died at age 50, had been a chemist for Penn Salt who had done the same thing regarding the use and treatment of chlorine. We talked about March of Dimes drives when we were in school, and Jef speculated that FDR was on the Roosevelt dime, first minted in 1946, because he started the organization in 1921 after he contracted polio.  It was great seeing Dave’s former student Denzel Smith, now a college graduate and playwright about to take a production on the road. He told me to check out Johnny Cash’s rendition of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt,” one of the last songs he recorded, about an old man’s regrets.

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

For Dave’s birthday number 51 we had Chinese food from Wing Wah in Miller and cake left over from Becca’s graduation open house.  Although everyone was somewhat weary from weekend events, Dave and I got in to games of Pitch, and James joined us for Space Base.  I eked out a win just in time; another round and Dave would have run away with it.

 

A new book by Aram Goudsouzian, “The Men and the Moment,” about the 1968 election and the rise of partisan politics, describes how third-party candidate George Wallace’s blend of racist populism and resentment against mainstream elites gave birth to a new conservative movement that Trump successfully exploited.  Goudsouzian wrote:

    To his followers, Wallace was both hero and outlaw.  He promised order while delivering chaos, dismissed charges of racism while associating with bigots, and championed traditional morality while crushing dissent.  Slipping back and forth from country preacher to the macho bad boy, he applied the modern tools of a national movement to the rituals of an old-fashioned barnstorming tour.  In the process, he forged a near mystical connection with his followers.

Trump becomes more reckless and incendiary as his poll numbers drop; a changing of the guard in the White House has become imperative for the republic’s institutions to survive intact. An increasing number of articulate Republicans have come out against him, and lackeys in Congress and the media are reduced to anti-anti-Trump rationalizations, i.e., seizing on something off-the-wall a Trump opponent might have uttered and attributing the sentiment to Biden and all Democrats.

 

Because Trump is a pathological liar, he has no credibility.  Even if an anti-corona virus vaccine miraculously appeared before election day, few voters would believe the claim. He recently signed a long overdue bipartisan conservation measure, the Great American Outdoors Act, funding neglected national parks, giving no credit to Democrats, mispronouncing Yosemite as Yo-Semite, blaming Obama for past policies going back 20 years, and bragging that it was the greatest conservation measure since Teddy Roosevelt was president.

I’ve just started “Redhead by the Side of the Road” by Anne Tyler.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, social realism is no longer in vogue among Literary Modernists, but I love novelists whose books are firmly root in time and place, in Anne Tyler’s case, Baltimore. Tyler’s previous novel “Clock Dance” is about 61-year-old Willa, whose temperamental mother sarcastically called her father St. Melvin.  Her younger sister became a rebellious teenager whose eyes in 1977 “were so heavily outlined in blush that she resembled a pileated woodpecker.” A poster in her bedroom read “Nobody for President.”  Willa’s son wanted to quit school and hitchhike around the country to meet people.  Her self-indulgent husband died in an auto accident driving recklessly in anger.

Twenty years later, Willa (named for lesbian Willa Cather, one wonders, whose forte was depicting loneliness) receives a call that lures her to Baltimore to care for a nine-year-old girl, Cheryl, that someone mistakenly thought was her granddaughter.  Remarried to an overbearing man and bored with life in Tuscan, Arizona, Willa is ready for a change of scenery.  Tyler writes: “She knows the world, which has largely ignored her, expects her now to coast along that deferential rut into oblivion.”  Aware her time clock was ticking, she had always conformed but now was open to adventure, ready to dance. 

 

Coming to prefer an eccentric new “family” to a lonely life in Arizona, Willa heeds the insight of an elderly Baltimore neighbor who tells her: “Figuring out what to live for.  That’s the great problem at my age.” Willa thinks to herself, “Or any age.”  Reviewer Ron Charles concludes:

   The bond between this lonely child and this obliging woman forms the emotional heart of “Clock Dance,” radiating what Tyler calls a “sweetly heavy, enjoyable kind of ache.” But there’s a steelier theme here, too, an existential sorrow cloaked by the embroidery of Willa’s grandmotherly demeanor. “Sometimes Willa felt she’d spent half her life apologizing,” Tyler writes. “More than half her life, actually.” She knows that the world, which has largely ignored her, expects her now to coast along that deferential rut into oblivion.

Clock Dance

“If Willa were to invent a clock dance, it would feature a woman racing across the stage from left to right, all the while madly whirling so that the audience saw only a spinning blur of color before she vanished into the wings, pouf!  Just like that.  Gone.” Anne Tyler, “Clock Dance” (2018)

In Anne Tyler’s most recent novel, again set in Baltimore, nine-year-old Cheryl and two friends invent a routine where they stand behind one another and move their arms to resemble the hour and minute hands of a clock. Flying from Arizona to care for Cheryl while her mother Denise (ex-girlfriend of son Sean) is hospitalized with a gunshot wound, Willa enters a world inhabited by characters much more appealing than found in her over 55 community, including her boorish husband.  Visiting Denise, she notices a nurse wearing a pajama-type uniform printed all over with teddy bears.  In the hospital commissary were tiny Saguara cacti on sale, looking forlorn and out of place compared to stately 15-foot ancestors back in Arizona. Surprised when Denise expresses hopes to marry, explaining that people are supposed to go through this world two by two, Willa thinks the sentiment resembles a line from Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” When Denise comes home, a neighbor named Sergio (Cheryl calls Sir Joe) carries her from the car to a couch, from which she watches “Space Junk” on TV and plays “I Doubt It,” only she and Cheryl say “Bullshit! to Willa’s feigned shock

Until age 61, Washington Post reviewer Ron Charles wrote:

  Willa always does what she’s told, always shifts the attention away from herself. Raised by a moody, histrionic mother, she coped by becoming exceedingly responsible at a young age. She takes after her father, a man “so mild-mannered that he thought it was impolite to pick up a telephone in mid-ring.” A peacekeeping jedi, Willa detects and soothes the first flutter of anyone’s irritation or disappointment.

Coming to prefer an eccentric new “family” to a lonely life in Arizona, Willa finds a true soulmate in precocious, ersatz granddaughter Cheryl.  She heeds the insight of an elderly Baltimore neighbor who tells her: “Figuring out what to live for.  That’s the great problem at my age.” Willa thinks to herself, "Or at any age."  Ron Charles concludes:

   The bond that develops between this lonely child and this obliging woman forms the emotional heart of “Clock Dance,” radiating what Tyler calls a “sweetly heavy, enjoyable kind of ache.”But there’s a steelier theme here, too, an existential sorrow cloaked by the embroidery of Willa’s grandmotherly demeanor.“Sometimes Willa felt she’d spent half her life apologizing,”Tyler writes. “More than half her life, actually.” She knows that the world, which has largely ignored her, expects her now to coast along that deferential rut into oblivion.

Charlie Halberstadt and I were runners-up in bridge at Chesterton Y to Rich and Sally Will.  My moment to shine came when Charlie overcalled I Diamond and bid a Heart. I only had 4 points but held 6 Spades to the King and a couple Hearts.  I passed, the person on my left bid 2 Diamonds, and after two passes, I bid 2 Spades. Charlie raised to 3 and I made the contract with a trick to spare despite him having only 10 high card points. Barbara Mort, who got married last week to 87-year-old Korean War veteran Ascher Yates, said that he is going on an Honor Flight to tour DC war memorials.  

Next day in Valpo Australian-born Naomi Goodman and I finished fourth (the Wills had 70.24 %) despite never having played together.  We meshed; when Charlie asked how things were going, she said, “I haven’t had a hissy fit yet.”   Once an exclusively American expression, now, thanks to films shown abroad, the saying is now more common elsewhere.  I called Chuck Tomes Mr. East when Naomi inquired whether it was he or his partner sitting west was playing a hand.  When I adding, “like the Merrillville basketball coach,” Chuck said, “He was a good one, his record speaks for itself.”  Chuck noted that Cardinals Hall of Famer Bob Gibson wanted to play basketball at IU but Coach Branch McCracken already had his quota of one, so Gibson went on to star for Creighton.

Phil picked up our 2004 Corolla from Dave because Tori’s old Saturn died.  Toni made a seafood feast, and my sons and I got in a game of Acquire, first time in months.  At a party in Grand Valley Phil and Delia ran into IUN public relations staff member Terry Ann Defenser, who told them she sees me almost every day.  At the time we both parked in the same lot and arrived around the same time, but since then I’ve moved to the A and S Building due to library renovation so park elsewhere.

 Paul and Jean at Miller beach

At Paul and Jean Kaczocha’s Fourth of July picnic were huge pans of grilled chicken, ribs, beef tips, hot dogs, and hamburger patties even though Paul and Jean are now vegetarians.  I gave him Steel Shavings, volume 48, which contains his moving eulogy to rank-and-file steelworker Eddie Sadlowski.  Sue O’Leary, whose delicious mac and cheese was from a Queen Latifah recipe, recalled Toni and Alissa eating orange day lilies at a previous July 4 party.

Kaczocha and brother Tim are big White Sox fans. Paul has a framed Carlton Fisk No. 72 jersey on his garage wall along with union posters.  At a table with Sue and Mike Olszanski, Tim recalled one of Oz’s relatives telling about working for Sox owner Bill Veeck and getting dressed down (but not fired) in 1979 for having endorsed what became known as Disco Demolition night, which ended in a riot and forfeiture of game 2 of the scheduled doubleheader.  I became a Sox fan in 1972 when my favorite player, former Philly Dick Allen, joined the team and had an MVP season, batting .308 with 37 home runs.  Five years later, after Allen was released by Oakland, I phoned Veeck to suggest he bring him back to Chicago.  His secretary put me right through, and Veeck told me he’d spoken to Dick, but he preferred to retire to his Pennsylvania farm and breed race horses.

Famed drummer Henry E. “Riggs” Guidotti, who moved to Highland, Indiana 70 years ago with wife Ella, is dead at age 96.  According to an obit, Riggs’s career spanned 60 years and that after touring with several famous big bands, “he spent 17 years with WGN Radio, playing for Orion Samuelson's Country Fair and on a few occasions filling in with the Bozo Show's Big Top Band. In the mid-1960s he was invited to play the Calgary Stampede and returned every year for the next 29, performing for Queen Elizabeth II when she opened the Stampede in 1973.”

In Chesterton Strack & Van Til’s parking lot was the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile but without Little Oscar. A 1952 model came to Fort Washington when I was a kid with Gary native George Molchan the likely “Little Oscar,” passing out the hot dogs – at least that’s my memory. One came to Toni’s north Philadelphia neighborhood, and kids only received little whistles shaped like hot dogs.   Molchan enjoyed a 36-year career until retiring in 1987, his last 16 at the company’s Disney World restaurant.  When Molchan hung up his Chef’s Hat, Oscar Meyer retired the character.  Molchan died in 2005 at age 82 while living in Hobart. According to Timesreporter Myrna Oliver, a Wienermobile appeared at the Merrillville burial site, and mourners sang the enigmatic jingle, “I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener.”

Inside Stracks, a man was wearing an East Chicago Washington t-shirt.  I told him my son Dave taught at EC Central, and he said that he knew him. When I brought up Pete Trgovich, who led the Senators to a state title and coached the 2007 state champions, he said he was a friend of the family.  A 1964 graduate named Jerry Craven, he played for legendary coach Johnny Baratto. Dave recently had a memorable student whose last name was craven, so Jerry was likely his grandfather.

                                         Senators Foote and Sunmer

Virtually all students of American history are familiar with South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks’s brutal 1856 caning of Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor. Joanne Freeman’s “The Field of Blood” reveals that at least 70 other violent outbursts occurred in the chambers of Congress in the 30 years leading up to the Civil War.  The Congressional Globemade no mention of such pushing, shoving, knife-wielding and pistol-waving incidents.  During debate on the Compromise of 1850, for instance, according to a New York Review of Books essay by James Oakes, when Mississippi Senator Henry Foote pulled a pistol on Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, “Benton defiantly bared his chest and dared the would-be ‘assassin’ to shoot.”

Gary ruins photographer Cindy C. Bean posted a shot taken from inside the to Emerson School, captioned “Grand entrance to one of my favorite buildings.  Lyn Pellett replied: “We had to stop on the stairs with one foot on each step, if necessary, and stand perfectly still when the bugle played each morning. Emerson was the grandest of schools in her prime.”

Home Alone Redux

“You bomb me with one more can, kid, and I’ll snap off your cajones and boil them in motor oil.” Harry (Joe Pesci) to 8-year-old Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) in “Home Alone” (1990)

Adria-Joi Jackson from Evanston and Miriam Espinal from Spain at Jackson home; photos by Kyle Telechan

I thought of “Home Alone” when reading about the Maxwell family renting the lame sequel from Blockbuster in Stewart O’Nan’s “Henry Himself.”  Despite the unlikely premise, the original had its comic moments, as well as a few comments (the reference to snapping off a kid’s balls, for one) and scary scenes that earned the film a PG rating.  Michael Jackson befriended child star Macaulay Culkin, who stayed at Neverland Ranch numerous times, often sharing a bed with the pop icon. He steadfastly claims Michael was never sexually inappropriate and apparently is Paris Jackson’s godfather.Crowds gathered at Michael’s childhood home in Gary to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his tragic drug-induced death.

Home alone for the weekend as Toni went with Dave and Angie to attend Becca’s recital at the University of Cincinnati, I took the opportunity to invite James to lunch.  When we arrived at the Portage Steak and Shake, we found it shut down, according to local scuttlebutt, by the Board of Health. We settled for a nearby Culver’s, our favorite destination after bowling.  I got a kids meal for $5.99 that included a scoop of frozen custard topped with chocolate syrup for desert.  James asked if we could swing by Game Stop and emerged with Super Mario Maker 2, which, he explained, allows the operator to set the preferred level of difficulty.   It was the first day the video game was for sale.  I asked James if the place sold board games; the answer was no although James reported that young people still participate in role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons.

I interviewed Lori Montalbano for IU’s Bicentennial project.  The youngest of seven who attended Warren G. Harding School in Hesville (made famous by Jean Shepherd) and then Hammond Morton, Lori was the first in her family to attend college, enrolling at IU Northwest in 1981.  I had thought her name was Mexican, but her dad, who died when she was ten, was Sicilian.  With Reagan in the White House, Pell Grant opportunities evaporated, but financial aid director Leroy Gray put a package together for her.  A theater major with a minor in communication, Lori recalled Garrett Cope, Dorothy Ige, and Jim Tuihuizen as mentors and role models. Forced to take two semesters of Western Civilization, she admitted Rhiman Rotz was formidable but a good teacher, as was Paul Kern, who lectured with no more than a glance at his carefully prepared notes. Awarded a PhD from Southern Illinois University, Lori taught at IUN for 17 years, including in the Women’s Studies program and stints as Communication Department chair and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences under Dee Dee Ige.  The two co-authored a textbook, “Public Speaking and Responsibility in a Changing World.”  Lori was reluctant to say anything negative about IUN other than to intimate that a glass ceiling existed.  She is presently Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at IUPUI in Columbus.

Megan Rapinoe; Alissa and Josh in foreground

Alissa called during the waning minutes of America’s World Cup match, as the French were trying to tie the score 2-2. Half in jest, I admitted hoping they succeeded (call me unpatriotic).  Co-captain Megan Rapinoe announced she’d turn down a White House visit if the Americans won the World Cup.  Go girl! Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez invited her and teammates to tour Congress instead.   Alissa sent a photo of members of her soccer team, including hubby Josh and poppa Phil. A rainbow is in the background.

Avi Gupta won the JeopardyTeen Tournament after surviving a tiebreaker in the semifinal round.  He and Jackson Jones each finished with $39,200.  The extra category was American History, and the clue was, “Types of it you could find in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773 included souchong and bohea.”  As easy as the answer, tea, was, I’m certain Jackson knew it, but Avi buzzed in first.  On day two all three finalists knew Final Jeopardy, an Ancient Lore question about Lancelot and Camelot, but the others couldn’t catch Gupta. 

The Sports Illustrated“Where Are They Now?” issue with nattily-dressed Alex Rodriguez on the cover included a montage of stars from 50 years ago, including Arnold Palmer, Joe Frazier, Joe Namath, Hank Aaron, and O.J. Simpson – all senior citizens now if still on the right side of the grass, as bowling teammate Terry Kegebein likes to say.  In Rolling Stoneveteran moviemaker John Waters, whose films include such gems as “Pink Flamingos” (1972) and “Hairspray” (1988), claimed that the secret to aging gracefully is staying away from nude beaches.  He declared: “If you go to the gym every day, people still don’t want to see you nude at 70.”Claiming that political correctness can go too far, Waters, a frequent guest on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” said: “When I hear about ‘theybies,’ where you don’t tell your child what sex they are until they decide, I had to roll my eyes.  Give me a break.  That child will be in a psychiatric unit early.”  Maybe, maybe not.

 John Waters

posted by Anne Koehler

Without mentioning Trump by name, Pete Buttigieg told a Rolling Stonecorrespondent, “It is the nature of grotesque things that you can’t look away.”  Attending a G20 summit in Osaka, Japan (In 1994 I flew in and out of Kansai International Airport for a speaking engagement in nearby Kyoto arranged by colleague Roberta Wollons), Trump met with pal Putin, who declared liberalism obsolete and in its death throes.  When a reporter asked a beaming Trump whether he planned to bring up Russian meddling in the 2020 election, he smiled and repeated question to a smirking Putin smirked, who said of course not.  Ha, ha, ha. Trump couldn’t resist tweeting about the Democratic Presidential debates, pronouncing them “BORING!”  He prefers bombast and ridicule to serious policy discussions. After Jimmy Carter asserted that Russian meddling determined the 2016 election outcome, Trump called him a poor president.  Reporters should press him on why he thinks so.

I have to admit I fell asleep both evenings after the first hour but caught the highlights on “Morning Joe.” Elizabeth Warren’s strident style attracted attention, as did Kamala Harris confronting Joe Biden, claiming he opposed school bussing during the 1970s (only forced, not voluntary, he countered).  While Bernie Sanders, Warren, and Harris enunciated valid arguments, the electorate, I believe, seeks restoration of civility, not revolution.  The most poignant moment was when Rachel Maddow asked Pete Buttigieg about the worsening race relations in South Bend in the wake of a white cop shooting a black man, and the Mayor replied, “I couldn’t get it done.” What a powerful admission that politicians cannot solve every problem.  I’m still for Amy Klobuchar and either Buttigieg or Julian Castro as her running-mate; all three acted more Presidential than pretentious Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker, who showed off their knowledge of Spanish.  Klobuchar reminded voters of her Midwestern roots, where the general election will be won or lost, and that the women on the stage had been fighting for women’s rights longer than many Johnny-come-latelies. Biden is still paying dearly for disrespecting Anita Hill decades ago.  Ray Smock wrote: 

    Joe Biden took it on the chin from Kamala Harris's attack on Joe's comments about working with segregationists in the past. She took a good shot and it worked in the glare of the TV lights. Today, in news coverage around the nation she stands out as a "winner" of this preliminary encounter. This may be a good indicator of her rise in the polls, but I will reserve judgment about the long-range importance of this exchange. 

    [California Congressman] Eric Swalwell, who I admire for his work on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees investigating Trump, and his public efforts to educate the public about Trump's transgressions, fell flat in my opinion for his attempt to grab the torch from Joe Biden's generation. Pass the Torch, he said. Give his generation a chance. This campaign may turn out to be a generational feud.  Joe Biden is one of the politicians I have admired since he first entered politics. His is a remarkable, positive career and it is still ongoing. Joe's age shows in this kind of rapid fire, gotcha TV reality contest that our debates represent. His experience, his character, his knowledge of government would be an asset in the White House. It would be an asset in his knowledge of the world and its leaders. It would be a tremendous asset in uniting his own party and bringing unity to the nation. Without unity, without defusing political extremism, the Harrises and the Swalwells will not be able to get things done. Trump proved that emotion alone can elect a president. But all he had was hate and division. 

    Whoever gets the Democratic Party nomination should be a healer, a unifier, not just a new brand of fiery rhetoric carrying a new red hot torch that fizzles and goes dark in a divided nation.

Anne Tyler’s 2018 novel “Clock Dance” about a 61-year-old woman provides vignettes about her early life.  Willa’s temperamental mother sarcastically called her father St. Melvin, similar to Toni branding me St. James when I become self-righteous.  Her younger sister became a rebellious teenager whose eyes in 1977 “were so heavily outlined in blush that she resembled a pileated woodpecker.”A poster in her bedroom read “Nobody for President.”  Willa’s son wanted to quit school and hitchhike around the country to meet people. Her self-indulgent husband died in an auto accident driving recklessly in anger. Twenty years later, Willa (named for lesbian Willa Cather, one wonders, whose forte was depicting loneliness) receives a call that lures her to Baltimore to care for a girl that someone mistakenly thought was her granddaughter.  Remarried to an overbearing man and bored with life in Tuscan, she is ready for a change of scenery.  Tyler writes: “She knows the world, which has largely ignored her, expects her now to coast along that deferential rut into oblivion.”  Aware her time clock was ticking, she had always conformed but now was open to adventure, ready to dance.

NY Knicks Barnett, Frazier, Bradley, DeBusschere, Reed in April 1970

New York Knicks fan Spike Lee’s memoir “Best Seat in the House” lists his favorite teams as the 1970 and 1972 NBA champs, regarded by many as representing the American melting pot.  Knick players included Princeton blueblood (and future Senator) Bill Bradley, sons of immigrants Dave DeBusschere and Mike Riordon, plus, in Lee’s words, “the brothers, ranging from deep southern rural to Midwestern to Chicago slick to Gary, Indiana, hard.”  These included Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Willis Reed, Walt “Clyde” Frazier (Lee’s favorite) and Gary Roosevelt grad Dick “Skull” Barnett. By 1978, when Phil Jackson left to play for a rival, there were hardly any white players left, causing racists to label the team the “Niggerbockers.”

 E'Traun Moore basketball camp photos by Kale Wilk

IUN coaches Javier Heredia and Eric Roldan participated in E’Twaun Moore’s summer basketball camp at East Chicago Central, by now an annual tradition.  So did 6-foot-11 Angel Garcia, who starred on the 2007 championship Cardinals with Moore and Kawann Short.  NWI Timesreporter James Boyd wrote that the New Orleans Pelicans guard wowed the kids demonstrating his typical shooting warmup, draining 9 straight 3-pointers, including one from nearly half court.  Kids begged Moore to dunk the ball, but he deferred to professional dunk artist Jordan Southernland.  Boyd wrote: “Southerland pulled off a variety of rim-rocking jams and ended his showing by jumping over former E.C. Central center Garcia, who stands 6-foot-11, and nine participants.”
                                                        Gabrielle Frigo at IUN graduation 

Simone De Beauvoir photos by Art Shay

At Miller Beach Aquatorium Nelson Algren Museum director Sue Rutson hosted a French-themed event that included Eve Bottando as Simone De Beauvoir, George Rogge as Father Marquette, French champagne and buffet, plus talks on French-American engineer Octave Chanute and novelist (and Miller summer resident) Algren’s relationship with French feminist De Beauvoir and African-American émigré to France Richard Wright.  One presenter showed nude photos of Simone that Algren buddy Art Shay took after she’d showered. She sun-bathed in the nude, scandalizing some neighbors, and never closed the bathroom door.  A free spirit, Simone sun-bathed in the nude, scandalizing some neighbors, titillating others.  I was delighted to discover that recent IUN grad Gabrielle Frigo had received a museum internship.  I told Nancy Cohen that I had heard Gabby (as I know her) recite poetry at a Women’s Studies conference and that she is bright and self-confident.

 Terry Hemmert on XRT float; photo by Marianne Brush

As Pride Month concluded, Chicago’s annual parade attracted record crowds.  The South Shore ran extra trains to and from Northwest Indiana.  Marianne Brush waved at peerless dejay Terry Hemmert, who recently announced her impending retirement, aboard the XRT float.  With her was Lin Brehmer, whose favorite expression is “It’s great to be alive.” I thought of them listening to CDs by Widespread Panic and Night Ranger. Track 6 of Widespread Panic’s “Earth to America” album, which I found at Chesterton library, is “When the Clowns Come Home.” It begins”

One of these days my back won't bend
My fingers might hurt swollen
Live another day, get lucky that way
Sound of thunder when the gods go bowling

I listened to “Eddie’s Comin’ Out Tonight” for homoerotic hints in the Night Ranger song about a guy who “likes to rock it all night long.”Here are the first two verses:

He wears his trousers real tight
And his skin is so white
He lives beyond his means
He wear Italian shoes
. . .

He live a tenderloin life
The street's his type
In the alley's where he's king
He got a grin on his face

Thirty years ago at Sociologist Jack Bloom’s end-of-the-semester party, I danced to an entire Night Ranger album with Phil, Dave, Jimmy Satkoski, and Tom Horvath, and we rocked – at least that’s my memory.

 Kaden Alexander 

Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich profiled 24-year-old F to M transgender Kaden Alexander, a recent IUN grad who will attend IU Law School in the fall.  The article began:

   Kaden Alexander is so comfortable with his body these days he went to a local nudist resort to hang out while letting it all hang out.

    “I wasn’t any more uncomfortable than the best man from my wedding who went with me,”Alexander said with a smile.

Davich added, unnecessarily, in my opinion: “Alexander has no plans in the near future for gender reassignment surgery to alter his genitals. It’s too expensive, too risky, too complicated, costing tens of thousands of dollars for multiple procedures and revisions.”  Last year Kaden confided that he was uncomfortable attracting attention because intolerant folks might resent his lifestyle, yet he granted Davich permission to photograph him and even provided a picture of when he was 16 and known as Kaitlyn.

Toni was home earlier than expected, and I saw on Angie’s cell phone a number Becca performed a number at musical theater camp in Cincinnati from “Jawbreaker,” based on a 1999 film about three girls who accidently kill the prom queen with hard candy.