Last Straw

 "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Nineteenth-century clergyman Theodore Parker, made famous by Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

The phrase “last straw” comes from the Arab proverb, “It is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.” That’s what happened when the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd, whose life got snuffed out when a cop pinned his neck with his knee for 8 minutes and 43 seconds.  The entire world reacted with shock and anger. What a contrast with Barack Obama. Days later, Trump’s toadies ordered troops to assault peaceful demonstrators to make way for the President to hold up a Bible at a nearby historic church.  That was too much for decorated military leaders past and present and a few Republicans of good will, sadly a vanishing species

 

Chris Kern wrote: The rhetoric from Trump, Barr, Cotton, and the right wing media about "antifa" is more dangerous than people might realize if they don't follow any right wing media at all. Antifa does exist, but it has nothing to do with what Trump and cohort mean by the term. The right-wing world uses it to mean a vast network of Al-Qaeda like terrorist cells, funded and controlled by people like George Soros, Obama, Clinton, and other right wing boogeymen. This allows to them to label any protester as antifa no matter what they're doing. And when you have people in government calling the military to kill "antifa terrorists", what they really mean is use the military against anyone they don't agree with. Trump, as usual, is clueless and just flailing around trying to appeal to his base. But Barr is smart enough to know that this "antifa" doesn't really exist, but evil enough to understand how this can be used to increase his concept of the powerful executive branch.

From Casey King: “The black figure floating out of symmetry on the right was not intentionally placed. My intention was to create a perfectly mirrored image. I noticed it after I had shared the full artwork last night. Sometimes unplanned mistakes and imperfections are serendipitous. I believe my mistaken addition of that black figure on the right is saying something. I think the senseless and racist killing of George Floyd was a grandiose mistake: yet a spark that has ignited fires that will settle and ideally bring humanity closer to peace and understanding. I believe negativity breeds negativity. There is enough of that going around. Therefore, this is my means of caring and expressing empathy towards the matter at hand. I am also a recent Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate and I feel that responding to such a pivotal moment in our nation’s history through visual art is absolutely necessary. I cannot...not respond in such a way. I should not: not respond in such a way.”

I watched lectures by Hoosier Historians Jim Madison and Ray Boomhower online. Both discussed World War II, Madison covering the Indiana home front and Boomhower the wartime correspondence of Ernie Pyle. Though most of what they said was familiar, I enjoyed seeing them in action and envied them.  To of my spring talks were cancelled and two October conference appearances are in doubt as well as my maiden Saturday club lecture.  I might be emulating them, delivering my remarks via zoom.


Here are two other reasons I like Facebook:

Ava Meux, Chives and dillweed

Jim Spicer, dunes swallows nests

Old Man Teepee Pole

“Hold on to what is good

even if it is a handful of dirt

Hold on to what you believe

even when it is a tree that stands by itself”

         Traditional Pueblo poem

I ran into IUN Anthropology assistant professor Michelle Stokely, whose contract was not renewed despite her being a popular teacher and respected scholar who has published in such journals as Great Plains Quarterly and is the author of “My Father’s Name Was Zahtah: Constructing the Life History of Alfred Chalepah, Sr.” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003).  Evidently IUN plans to run the Anthropology degree program with adjuncts. When Bob Mucci retired, he was not replaced either.  Michelle also taught Intro to Sociology, but students increasingly are taking that class on-line.  Michelle will probably lose her home and, like Anne Balay, is on the lookout for a job.  For years, the Anthropology Club has been one of the most active on campus, but I doubt it can survive without a faculty adviser. 

Cache Creek Cemetery

Archives volunteer Martha Letko showed me how to access Findagrave after I inquired whether she had written about her ancestors.  On that site I discovered this information on Native American Alfred Chalepah, Sr.:

  He was born Nov. 2, 1910, in Boone, on the allotment of Old Man Archilta, to Alonzo and Rose Maynahonah Chalepah. He received his name from his grandfather, Apache John. His Indian name is "Soo-tho-sche-yon," meaning Old Man Teepee Pole. He married Leota Evelyn Apoyatt on Sept. 26, 1934, in Hobart. He spent 42 years serving the government of the tribe, and after his retirement, participated as a cultural consultant and respected role model. He served as chairman of the tribe from 1978 to 1980. He also served as translator for the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Business Committee in the 1930s. He was knowledgeable about the Blackfeet Military Society, Apache language and Native American Church. At 97, he still participated in all Apache Ceremonials and participated in consulting the government of the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma. He was the father of 16 children, and elder to 121 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren.  A smoking ceremony will be held at the Chalepah home.  Prayer service will be at the Comanche Community Center, followed by an all-night wake.

If I changed my name, a top candidate would be Old man Teepee Pole.  In Native American culture, old men are venerated, and a teepee pole is like a pillar of one’s home and family.

Hollis Donald paid tribute to the recently deceased mother of Clyde Robinson, who works with Anne Koehler in IUN’s library’s inter-library-loan department.  Donald wrote:

  Her touch was so tender; the voice will forever linger.  The honor that you built your lives upon, the sound that renewed your spirit – those days of joy will never be forgotten.  She was the family’s favorite dancer and singer – how could you forget?

Cal Bellamy

Rick Hug was on campus for a meeting of Cal Bellamy’s Shared Ethics Advisory Commission.  I mentioned having appeared on radio show panels with Bellamy, and Rick told me that Bellamy had written an award-winning article 16 years ago in the prestigious journal Public Administration Review.  I looked it up, and its title is “Item Veto: Dangerous Constitutional Tinkering.”  Bellamy frequently writes guest columns for the NWI Times.  In a 2014 effort he summarized the work of his commission:

  Northwest Indiana has always been a heavy industry, meat and potatoes type place. Our people come from all backgrounds and points of view. Sometimes, we are a little rough around the edges. Over the years, our families, churches and schools have helped to polish us, but more could be done. As president of the Shared Ethics Advisory Commission, I preside over a group of volunteers who train municipal employees on ethical decision-making.

Eve Gomez

Friday evening I attended a community forum sponsored by ALMA, IUN’s Latino student organization, entitled “Defending Immigrant Rights.”  Ably moderated by WLTH radio host Eve Gomez, the panel included IUN Minority Studies professor Raoul Contreras, former UBM (Union Benefica Mexicana) president Tony Barreda, and Reverend Cheryl Rivera, representing the Northwest Indiana Federation of Interfaith Organizations.  Barreda and Rivera have been active in protests that forced GEO Corporation to withdraw its proposal to build a for-profit immigrant detention center on property near Gary Airport.  The speakers pointed out that the existence of such a facility would lead to raids against undocumented people in order to fill its cells and maintain its profitability and inevitably split up families.  Rather than provide good-paying jobs for local residents, most work inside GEO prisons is carried out by inmates making about 13 cents an hour.  Tony Barreda emphasized that Mexican immigrants are not taking people’s jobs away.  He talked about growing up in Texas and working alongside immigrants hauling boxes of pineapples and bananas and picking cotton from sunup to sundown in hundred degree temperatures.  Eve Gomez said that she hated the designation “illegal alien” and that her father had once been an undocumented worker.

Tony Barreda and Rev. Cheryl Rivera

I was looking forward to hearing Reverend Rivera, who is from East Chicago and knows my son Dave, and she did not disappoint.  She talked about growing up in segregated Georgia and first encountering discrimination at a picnic when a policeman tried to separate her mother from her family, thinking she was white.  She identified herself as descended from slaves as well as a German Jew and that her husband is a first generation Puerto Rican immigrant.  She said she became an activist at age 15 when high school administrators tried to prevent a classmate from becoming homecoming queen because she was an unwed mother.  Rivera and others, including members of the football team, threatened to boycott homecoming unless school officials relented. 

I donated copies of my latest Steel Shavings to attendees and was pleased that student Ava Meux was in the audience, who’s in volume 44 several times.  She wants to do an independent study project with me, and I suggested doing an oral history of her grandmother, an accomplished pianist and youth choir director.  Representing ALMA was the son of Eugenia Arredondo, and I introduced myself as one who had helped edit “Maria’s Journey,” about his family’s matriarch.  Samuel A. Love, who first fought GEO’s scheme to locate a prison in Hobart, was pleased to see me.  He and Ava Meux appeared together on Jerry Davich’s radio show during that fight.

Bread and Roses

“What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist – the right to life, and the sun and music and art.  The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.” Feminist labor leader Rose Schneiderman

photo by Lewis Hine

On Labor Day Northwest Indiana Times ran a long (thousand-word) article by ace reporter Joseph S. Pete entitled “Book on gay steelworkers prompts national union changes,” along with a shot of Anne Balay and “Steel Closets” by award-winning photographer John J. Watkins.  Pete wrote:  “As part of her extensive research, Balay met with the USW’s civil rights coordinator in Pittsburgh and found GLBT steelworkers had not filed a single complaint about discrimination – ever. ‘They were too scared to come forward,’ she said.”  “Steel Closets” documented the need for policy changes, so Balay worked with USW’s civil rights division to bring forward a proposal at the national convention in Las Vegas to protect LGBYs from discrimination and ensure for them equal health benefits.  Beforehand locals in Northwest Indiana and four other states endorsed such a resolution.  At the constitutional convention, Pete wrote:

  “The resolution met with some resistance from southern delegates, but President Leo Gerard shouted them down, saying there would be no discrimination in the union.  For the first time the union’s constitution adds gender identity to the list of protected classes.  The USW resolution provided an immediate psychological boost for LGBT steelworkers who had long felt invisible and finally got recognition, Balay said.  But the true test will be in what changes in the mills take place over the next ten years, and whether protections are written into contracts and harassment is discouraged.”

Pete reported that Balay has dropped a discrimination complaint against IU Northwest that she filed with the EEOC over being denied tenure and concludes with this statement by her:

  “You would expect universities to be more receptive to this issue [discrimination against LGBTs] than steel mills.  But the USW listened, and the university made it clear they didn’t care.  So I’m just going to move on.  I’ve got so many cool things to move on to.”

I am certain IU administrators are breathing a huge sigh of relief that Balay is dropping her suit. Hopefully they will experience a tinge of, if not guilt at the unconscionable way she was treated, first by her immediate superiors and then by administrators overly deferential to those detractors, then regret at the lost opportunities to brag about her accomplishments.  On Facebook Anne wrote:

         “Labor Day.  Thanks to everyone who works, especially those doing dirty, dangerous work from which we all benefit.  And thanks to those who organize so workers can be safer, and have dignity.  To celebrate Labor Day, I’m going off to trucker apprenticeship in Wisconsin, and then Over the Road.”

above, Alyssa Black; below, Ned Vizzini

Meanwhile Alyssa Black is house-sitting for Anne Balay’s dog and two cats.  Recently Alyssa listed her ten favorite books, starting with the first one she memorized (“ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book” by Dr. Seuss), her favorite high school novel (“Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens”), and the first Young Adult fiction she identified with (“Be More Chill” by Ned Vizzini).  Also on the list are authors Harry Potter, Stephen King, Chuck Palahnuik (“Fight Club”), and Chinese American Maxine Hong Kingston’s (The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts”).  “Be More Chill” is a science fiction story about Jeremy, a high school nerd who takes a supercomputer pill that allows one to communicate directly to one’s brain.  Jeremy becomes a stud but gets caught up in a world of falsehoods and violence.  In 2004, the year “Chill No More” was published, author Ned Vizzini had suicidal thoughts and checked himself into a psychiatric ward, an experience he recalled in “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” first a book and then a topnotch movie with Zach Galifianakis and Keir Gilchrist.  Last December, sadly, at age 32, Vizzini killed himself.

Saturday grandson James, who spent the night and downed eight of my pancakes, rolled a 154 after getting a new ball drilled.  In the car we discussed colonial American history, an eighth grade subject he is studying.  He was very knowledgeable about the Pilgrims and Jamestown.  I asked if he knew the origin of the colony’s name, Virginia.  He guessed it was because of Virginia Dare or due to the Virginia Company financing the enterprise.  I told him the colony was named for Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen.”  That afternoon, seven of us, including both sons, feasted Toni’s ribs with all the trimmings; afterwards Phil, Dave, and I played Acquire and Shark.  I won Acquire and made a dumb move in Shark that allowed Phil to win, but Dave took it very well.

 above, Grace and Sophia; below, Nicholas, Oliver, Anthony

Sunday we traveled to Lisa and Fritz’s in the South Bend suburb of Granger with Phil and 16 year-old Anthony, who couldn’t get over how much his cousins Grace and Sophia had grown up since he last saw them.  Anthony played lacrosse with Nicholas and Oliver, and then the three biked off for ice cream.  Grace took the ice bucket challenge in a bikini, with Sophia dousing her. Lisa contrasted Grace and Oliver’s recent overnight parties.  The girls were relatively well behaved, while the 12 year-old boys were “wild things,” staying up all night and then sneaking out to use a neighbor’s trampoline.  Toni opined that she didn’t think there were differences between boys and girls until granddaughter Alissa came to live with us.

Victoria Lane

While James and Becca have been in school for two weeks, today is Anthony and Tori’s first day, although Anthony has already had three varsity soccer games.  With four roommates Miranda moved into a house near Grand Valley State campus and is working part-time at the building where Phil’s PBS station is located.

Monday I made breakfast for Toni and Phil, who filled us in on Robert Blaszkiewicz’s Fantasy Football draft party before heading home.  We enjoyed a chicken dinner at Hagelbergs, followed by bridge.  The highlight was bidding and making a small slam.  Missing two kings, I needed one of two finesses to succeed.  The first failed, but, leading to the dummy, which contained the ace and queen of clubs, I successfully played the queen, since the king was in the hand on my left.

Dave, left, third row; below, Jahaira Perez

Dave attended East Chicago Central’s class of 2004 tenth reunion.  Jahaira Perez thanked Dave for coming and wrote: “You are an honorary alum of 2004.”

 Rosemary Quinones (r) with LaTasha Richardson,Chief Patricia Nowak and Chris Sicinski; photo by Danielle Prusynski

At lunch Office of Diversity director James Wallace and police officer Rosemary Quinones, whom I hadn’t previously met, discussed efforts to create a women’s organization similar to Brother2Brother, open to students of all ethnic backgrounds.  I suggested they get student leaders to spearhead the recruitment drive.  Joe Gomeztagle, teaching a SPEA course, told me how impressive the Times article about Anne Balay was.  He met Anne at a History Book Club meeting when I led a discussion about “The House on Mango Street.”  April Lidinsky reported that the Balay article ran in the South Bend Tribune and added: “I’m proud to know Anne and inspired by what her excellent book is accomplishing.”  The AP picked up the story, and it has appeared in newspapers as far away as Danbury, Connecticut.

Roy Dominguez called about Balay’s lawsuit and the Times article.  He said he has never been as upset over the resolution of a case as this one.  The Chicago attorney he consulted told him that since Indiana has no law pertaining to discrimination against LGBTs, the odds against successfully suing the university were formidable and the case could drag on for many years, something Anne did not want, having suffered enough mental anguish.

In the mail was this plea from IU Foundation Vice President John T. Keith: “I hope you will once again support Indiana University at the Leader level of the 1820 Society with a generous gift of $10,000 or more.”  For several years I have donated $10,000 and had it earmarked for my Steel Shavings account to cover the cost of publishing my annual magazine.  This year my request was denied, as IUN disassociated itself from Steel Shavings on the flimsy grounds that it was no longer serving its original purpose of featuring student work.  I was even denied access to the existing funds in the account.  The real reason for the university’s action is that the magazine contained material sympathetic to Anne Balay’s tenure case and her appeal of a truly unjust decision.   

The original purpose of Steel Shavings was threefold; in addition to highlighting student work it was dedicated to documenting the social history of the Calumet Region and publicizing holdings of IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives.  Leafing through the issue (volume 43) IUN administrators were so offended by, I highlighted the student work of Alyssa Black, Ava Meux, Seamus McColly, Marla Gee, Larissa Dragu, and Taylor Jo Thompson, plus the activities of former IUN students Henry Farag, Jef Halberstadt, Robin Halberstadt, Nancy Hrnjak George, Pennie Bozetarnik, Roy Dominguez, Vernon Smith, Scott Fulk, Mike Brown, Blanca Lopez, David Lane, and Mike Olszanski.  And that is just in the first 30 pages!  In declining to contribute to IU Foundation I also argued that historians will look back on the Anne Balay tenure case as one of the most important issues of our time regarding discrimination against LGBTs and for me as editor not to have covered it would have been a dereliction of my duty as a Regional historian.   In addition, Balay's path breaking book "Steel Closets" is an important addition to the holdings of the Calumet Regional Archives. If IUN reconsiders its asinine policy concerning my magazine, I’ll reconsider my decision about donating to IU Foundation in the future.