Cut to the Chase

“The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct.” William of Ockham

William of Ockam

I first learned about medieval philosopher William of Ockham (1287-1347) reading Richard Russo’s “Straight Man,” whose antihero has a dog named Occam, named after Occam’s Razor, the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the most valid. The Franciscan friar disagreed with Thomas Aquinas that faith and reason can be reconciled.  According to Phrases.org, “cut to the chase,” which has become synonymous with “get to the point,” originated in Hollywood and referred to moving quickly to exciting chase scenes in silent movies rather than dwelling too long on the background story line.  Michael Warwick’s “Theatrical Jargon of the Old Days” (1968) reported on a similar phrase “cut to Hecuba” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that refers to shortening plays, especially for matinees, by leaving out long orations.

With all the pontificating about the Mueller report, Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky exposes in the simplest of terms the embarrassing nature of his presidency.  He believes that the wrath of what he brands the “fake” news media is worth the price of tarnishing the reputation of Joe Biden, in his opinion his most formidable potential opponent in 2020. In fact, he’s quite open about his nefarious actions, now suggesting China should open a similar investigation.  His apologists simply say he was being sarcastic and didn’t really mean what he said.   

Trump’s near-total domination of the news cycle is maddening. The Post-Tribune failed to report the sentencing of former Dallas cop Amber Guyger to ten years in prison for murdering Botham Jean after mistaking his apartment for her own and believing the native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia to be a burglar.  While protestors were chanting “no justice, no peace” outside the courtroom, Botham Jean, the victim’s brother, took the stand and said to Guyger, “If you are truly sorry, I forgive you.”  Then he asked the judge, “Can I give her a hug?  Please.”  What happened next, according to the Dallas Morning- News,was that “Guyger hesitated for just a moment, and then she rushed toward Jean and wrapped her arms around his neck.. . . Both were in tears when they finally broke away.”  Witnessing the scene on CBS morning news, I thought of Bill Pelke, who forgave Paula Cooper for murdering his grandmother and subsequently founded Journey of Hope . . . From Violence to Healing, an organization dedicated to abolishing the death penalty.  Similarly, essayist Hanif Abdurraqib learned that Dylann Roof, who killed nine black people in a Charleston, SC, church, was sentenced to be executed, he wrote, “My desire for his death had long passed” since “the insidious spirit of his motivations” would sadly endure.

I had a good couple of days in duplicate bridge, finishing second at Chesterton Y out of 12 couples (58.33%) partnering with Helen Boothe and third out of 15 couples (59.52%, top among East-West pairs) at Banta Center with Ric Friedman despite playing only a couple times with each.  Helen is liberal to the hilt while Ric is quite conservative, but they get along.  Helen is working on him.  Helen ran into 88-year-old Frank Casario who was on his way to a Zumba class and still teaches tap dance.  Mary Ann Filipiak complimented Ric’s pink shirt that he claimed his wife had purchased to support breast cancer prevention.  It shows off your feminine side, I said; he laughed and didn’t take offense.  I had a hand containing 29 points and took all 13 tricks after bidding 6 No Trump doubled for second high board. Only Fred Green had the nerve to bid 7 No Trump, playing with Terry Brendel. It was a virtual laydown.

above, Gary Book Club; photo by Jerry Davich; below, Felicia Childress in 2018; NWI Times photo by John Luke

Gary Booklovers Club dates from 1921 when African American women teachers started holding monthly meetings. Shirley Thomas told Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich: “When I was invited to join over 30 years ago, we always met in members’ homes.  As younger members replaced the older ladies, they decided it was less work for the hostess if our meetings were held in a restaurant.”  Stalwart Felicia Childress, 102, came to Gary in 1946 and taught several of the current members, including Carolyn Dillon, who grew up poor in a Gary housing project.  “Books saved my life,” Dillon told Davich.  Others whose names were familiar to me included Jacquelyn Gholson, Jenell Joiner, Gloria King, and Loretta Piggee.  September’s speaker at Asparagus Restaurant was Purdue Northwest philosophy professor David Detmer, author of “Zinnophobia: The Battle Over History in Education, Politics, and Scholarship.”  It deals with attempts by Governor Mitch Daniels, who became President of Purdue, to ban books by radical Boston University historian Howard Zinn.

Marion Merrill with photo of Sam

What I admire most about Hanif Abdurraqib’s “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” essays is that they cut to the chase. Almost without fail, the initial paragraph sets the tone and conveys the theme, something my Maryland faculty adviser Sam Merrill drilled into his grad students.  Another of Merrill’s rules was never write in the passive voice.  Abdurraqib opens “On Future and Working Through What Hurts”: “My mother died at the beginning of summer.  What this meant more than anything was that I didn’t have school or some other youthful labor to distract me from the grieving process.”  Here the first sentence of “They Will Speak Loudest of You After You’ve Gone”: “What I got to experience in moving to the Northeast after living my entire life in the Midwest is the different masks that racism wears.” As critic Kiese Laymon concluded: “No writer alive writes first sentences like Hanif.”  Or, for that matter, last sentences. “They Will Speak Loudest,” about racism, ends: “And the impossible weight of it all.”

Billie Eilish songs get straight to the point about flawed relationships with menacing humor.  In “Wish You Were Gay,” about one who doesn’t respond to her overtures, she pleads:

To spare my pride

To give your lack of interest an explanation

Don’t say I’m not your type

Just say I’m not your preferred sexual orientation

The lyrics of “Watch” reflect disillusionment with unreciprocated love:

When you call my name
Do you think I'll come runnin'?
You never did the same
So good at givin' me nothin'

The final line of “Watch”: “Never gonna letcha back.”

Under Suspicion

“The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted.” Mahatma Gandhi

The dispiriting reports of high crimes emanating from the White House continue unabated.  What Senator Lindsey Graham dismissed as a “nothing burger” may be a tipping point in our nation’s history, one way or another, depending whether or not he gets away with it.  Ray Smock provides a historian’s perspective on what is a total disregard for the truth by Trump and his apologists.  Ray (below) wrote:

    Suspicion Always Haunts the Guilty Mind: so said Gloucester in Shakespeare’s King Henry VI, written centuries ago but still a keen observation on human behavior. In modern parlance we call this “consciousness of guilt,” where a person who has lied or otherwise committed a wrongful act, lashes out at accusers, blames others, and concludes that he or she is being persecuted unjustly and is the victim of a conspiracy.

    In the case of President Trump, the single best way to lash out at his critics and accusers, most of whom have been members of the American press, is to universally declare all news reporting (other than Fox News) to be Fake News reported by “enemies of the people.” But now, in light of the Ukraine revelations, even Fox News is taking a more aggressive and critical stance. So who is left for Trump to blame? It is forces within his own government, a giant conspiracy against him called the Deep State, which is supposedly run by holdovers from previous Democratic administrations, especially from the dreaded Obama administration.

    On the basis of the information we have learned about the telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky on July 25, President Trump used the power of his office to withhold almost $400 million in military aid from Ukraine and used this as a lever to extract a “favor” from Zelensky to get dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. It violates American law, and it brings a foreign power into our presidential election. This information became such a bombshell, such a smoking gun, that Trump and his supporters have been dumbfounded by the public reaction as well as the new impetus in Congress to formalize an already on-going impeachment inquiry.

    This new political reality came from two sources. The whistleblower report that said the president was engaged in conduct that was of such a serious nature that the whistleblower was compelled to file a formal complaint. The Trump administration immediately set out to discredit the whistleblower.

But it was the second source of information that doomed the president. In response to the whistleblower report, President Trump released a summary transcript of the July 25 call with President Zelensky. In that report, the substance of the whistleblower’s report is totally confirmed. Donald Trump, for some unknown reason, blew the whistle on himself! 

Toni and I attended the wedding and reception of Roy and Betty Dominguez’s daughter Maria to Matt Ostrowski.  At our table were four friendly couples who are Roy and Betty’s Lake Dalecarlia neighbors. Young at heart Hessville native Dan, who like humorist Jean Shepherd attended Warren G. Harding school, told Toni she must be my daughter.  Sitting next to me, a Chicago contractor named Randy introduced me to an older guy also named Randy.  Their wives were Denise and Dorothy, so they referred to themselves as R2-D2, like the Star Wars robot. Roy, addressing me, as always, as Dr. Lane, told the group that he could not have written his autobiography, Valor, without my help. The elder Randy had not known about the book and immediately ordered it on Amazon.  Learning that I had published a history of Cedar Lake (near Lake Dale), they had many questions. One I couldn’t definitively answer pertained to pylons still noticeable in the lake, possibly remnants of the ice harvesting industry or a boardwalk. They were amazed at Cedar Lake’s rich history and familiar with the disparaging nickname “Cedar-tucky,” dating to the influx of Southern white World War II defense workers unable to obtain housing in Gary or East Chicago. I told of Crown Point snobs calling Cedar Lake students “lake rats.”  IUN grad Bob Petyko was proud to be one.

I was not surprised that Roy chose “Ave Maria” for the traditional first dance with Maria.  As he wrote in “Valor”: “Maria was born August 23, 1988.  At first I wanted a son, but after my sister Maria died in 1986 [at age 36] after a long battle with leukemia], I prayed for a daughter whom we would name Maria Virginia.” The deejay played “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis Presley, followed by a combination of electronic music and traditional wedding reception numbers such as “Twist and Shout.” Despite my gimpy right knee and Toni’s weak lungs, we danced to “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins, whom we saw years ago with Phil and Delia at the Holiday Star.  

I spoke to Patrick O’Rourke, who I’ve been interviewing about his union career representing teachers.  He was seated next to Lake County Prosecutor Bernard carter, a close friend of Roy and Betty. At the family table I greeted Roy’s brother Hector, who for many years worked with Nancy Cohen and Gloria Metz as a bailiff for a Gary city judge.  They’re all still in touch, Hector told me.  Roy introduced me to Betty’s siblings, and I noted how their father, a former Philippine army officer skilled in martial arts, had been a role model to Roy, who in “Valor” called him a Renaissance man. The photographer had set up a booth and funny hats for candid shots.  Good sports that he is, Roy accommodated several groups and people, myself included who wanted one with him.

I started David McCullough’s “The Pioneers,” about the settling of the Northwest Territory, but to my disappointment it concentrates almost entirely on Ohio and contains virtually nothing about pioneer Hoosiers.  I also picked up Billie Eilish’s 2017 CD, “Don’t Smile at Me.” My favorite cut, “(I’m Not Your) Party Favor,” about a break-up phone call, begins:

Hey – call me back when ya get this

Or when you’ve got a minute

We really need to talk

My favorite lines go:

Look, now I know

We coulda done it better

But we can’t change the weather

When the weather’s come and gone

The “Don’t Smile at Me” album cover reminds me of someone at the Lake Michigan beach huddling under the lifeguard stand on a cool, windy day.  “Ocean Eyes” repeats the verse, “No fair, you really know how to make me cry when you gimme those ocean eyes.”  Eilish appeared on SNL’s season debut hosted by Woody Harrelson.  Both were great. Eilish was born Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell 18 years ago in L.A. Her latest album, “When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” contained a single “Bad Guy,” which replaced Lil Nas X’s 19-week run at number one with “Old Town Road.”

Rehashing weekend activities with high school friend Gaard Murphy, I mentioned that hearing an Elvis Presley number at the wedding reception reminded me of a party where drummer Doug “Duff” Roberts, Robert Hosfeld, and a couple other guys banged out hits by Presley and other original Sun Records artists that sounded fantastic to one who had never before heard live rock ‘n’ roll music in such an intimate setting.  Scanning my 1960 yearbook, I noticed that Roberts hoped to become a professional musician and signed his photo, “To a nice guy and fellow bowler.”  I have no recollection of ever bowling with him, but who knows?  Memory works in strange ways. After school a bunch of us often jumped in Bob Reller or Pete Drake’s car, drove up Bethlehem Pike to Flourtown, picked up the latest WIBG Top 50 sheet at the record store, and either went bowling or played miniature golf. Doug Roberts must have been part of the group. I found Doug’s email address in the last reunion booklet and inquired about where the party might have taken place.  He responded (our first contact in 59 years) that he didn’t recall the specific gig but added: “Bob H. and I and several other players did do a short performance at our Class Night. There is even a picture in our yearbook attesting to our short-lived claim to fame.”

Before I spoke to Nicole Anslover’s Post World war II class about the civil rights movement in Gary and the rise of Richard Hatcher to become America’s first black mayor, she discussed the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, emphasizing Robert Kennedy’s moderating influence and back channel negotiations with the Russian ambassador in resolving the standoff.  A student asked why the U.S. hadn’t simply made Cuba a colony after the Spanish-American War, Nicole cited the Teller Amendment and noted that military occupation was a lengthy one.  I added that the U.S. kept control of the island but without taking responsibility for the welfare of Cubans, only American business interests.