Love and Mercy

   “I was standin' in a bar and watchin' all the people there
Oh the loneliness in this world well it's just not fair

Hey love and mercy that's what you need tonight
So, love and mercy to you and your friends tonight”

    Brian Wilson, “Love and Mercy” 

The 2014 movie “Love and Mercy” about musical genius Brian Wilson’s struggles with mental illness starred John Cusack and Paul Dano, both portraying the Beach Boys troubled leader, with Paul Giamatti as Wilson’s tyrannical quack therapist. The flashbacks centers on the making of “Pet Sounds” (1966) after Wilson ceased touring with the band, which cousin Mike Love ridiculed as not having the Beach Boys sound.  Love had a point, but it was unrealistic to expect Wilson to write about being true to your school, long for surfer girls or ruminate about when he grew up to be a man. More realistic was “In My Room,” where “I lock out all my worries and my fears” – in fact, for several years to come Wilson would largely confine himself to his bedroom.  “Sloop John B” has the old Beach Boys sound but ends: “I want to go home, why don’t you let me go home.” “Pet Sounds” was a commercial failure in the U.S. but hailed in Europe. The track “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is one of my favorite songs and describes an ideal world where we could “live together in the kind of worlds where we belong”  -  a pipe dream in the Chinese sense of the word. Two decades later, Wilson meets his future wife, who helps him on the road toward getting his life back again.  As credits roll, there’s a concert performance of Wilson singing “Love and Mercy,” first recorded in 1988, which bemoans violence and pain in the world.  Bono called it “one of the great songs ever written.”   

At bridge Dee Browne and I finished with a 61.81 percent, normally enough to win, but George and Sally Will scored 67.36.  We took two high boards from them or they’d have had a rare 70 percent game.  On the other hand, Lila Cohen and Pam Missman, who finished third, cleaned our clock or we’d have prevailed. Terry Brendel spoke of meeting his wife of 50-plus years at a Purdue computer dance.  The date Terry got matched up with didn’t show and Terry’s wife information wasn’t  computed, so  he took the initiative upon spotting her.  

Bowling opponent Ami Luedke recently retired after delivering mail for 40 years in New Chicago and Hobart.  We took two games from Dorothy’s Darlings; I rolled a 189 in the second one.  Then they got hot, but we held on for series.  Gene Clifford intends to drive to New York City with Dorothy Peterson to visit the maritime history museum by the Hudson River to see the USS Intrepid, a navy aircraft carrier that his brother served on during World War II.  Commissioned in August 1943, the Intrepid participated in several Pacific Theater operations, including the Battle of Leyte Gulf. After being torpedoed and hit by four kamikaze planes, crew members nicknamed it the Decrepit.  Prior to being decommissioned in 1974, the Intrepid participated in rescue procedures for the Gemini 3 crew and several Vietnam deployments. 

Dave and Nicole; below, Traymon Ray

Toni and I were Dave’s special guests at two East Chicago Central Black History Month back-to-back programs, which he coordinated with the assistance of women’s basketball coach Nicole Ford-Moore and teacher Aaron Duncil, the latter, like Dave, mentored by John Bodnar at Portage High School.  When Taymon Ray and Arceli Timajero sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the “Negro National Anthem,” I turned to see if students were standing, as often happens at Gary events. Poetry selections, chosen by Dave, included Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again” and “What If I Am a Black Woman?” by an unknown author. The first show featured African dance (I recognized Taymon Ray from ”Lift Every Voice”) and hip hop in the second hour.  Dave played guitar with students A. Silvas, J. Gutierrez, and K. Sparks on numbers by the Temptations and Bill Withers that he selected and for the finale sang “Johnny B. Goode,” complete with Chuck Berry’s trademark strut, breaking a guitar string in the process but carrying on as if nothing were amiss.  I needlessly worried the broken string would hit him in the face.  In the program he thanked Toni and me for our support, as well as numerous colleagues, Malcolm X, and Randall P. McMurtry of Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” played by Jack Nicholson in the film.  Afterwards, we chatted with School Superintendent Dee-Etta Wright, whom I had met last summer at James’s graduation party.

EC Central students & chaperones

The night before, Dave had chaperoned a school trip to the Chicago Bears training facility.  Friday evening, he participated in a “Dancing with the Stars” fundraiser.  We had planned to watch James’s former teammates bowl next morning and then have lunch at Culver’s like old times, but Daveput it off a week because he was exhausted after three school events within 28 hours. 

At Chesterton library I picked up a double-CD of classic rock selections; most I hear as much as I want to on the radio; but it included, incongruously, Don McLean’s “American Pie,” which I plan to mention during my Munster talk on Rock and Roll, 1960 next week in reference to the plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper (“the day the music died,” as McLean put it). Other tracks that attracted me were the Allman Brothers Band’s “Midnight Rider” (bringing back ancient memories of getting high with late-great artist Larry Kaufman) and “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart (ubiquitous emanating from boom boxes on Wells Street Beach in the early Seventies with the pungent smell of coconut tanning oil in the air).

Tara Westover’s memoir “Educated” didn’t get less traumatic once she enrolled at BYU in Salt Lake City; family crises kept pulling her back into dangerous and humiliating situations that left her badly in need of therapy, as her bipolar father judged her to be a menace in need of redemption for straying from Mormon practices and not submitting to his complete domination.  I started Charles Kuralt’s autobiography, “A Life on the Road” (1990), which contained anecdotes from when he and his CBS Sunday Morning crew logged more than a million miles “on the road.” For example, in Dillon, Montana, he asked a barber sweeping the floor: “Are you free?” “Nope,” was the reply, “I charge seven dollars.” On an Iowa truck stop men’s room prophylactic machine was scratched: “This gum tastes like rubber.” A wizened North Dakota farmer married over 40 years told Kuralt: “Kissing don’t last, but good cooking does.” Roger Welsch explained that the wind blew so hard on the Great Plains that farmers didn’t need weathervanes, “They just look out the window to see which way the barn is leaning.”

Kate Elizabeth Russell received a million-dollar advance for her debut novel, “My Dark Vanessa,” about a high school student’s affair with an English teacher.  When Kate began writing 20 years ago, she thought of it as a romance.  Three years earlier, she had been at dinner with Wallflowers front man Jakob Dylon (her dad was a local deejay) and learned that his favorite book was Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.  She found a copy and for years was attracted to much older men.  When the Me Too movement arose, Kate reread Lolita and realized the exploitative nature of many such relationships.  Nabokov himself told a Paris interviewer who found the protagonist “touching: “Humbert Humbert is a vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear ‘touching.”  To New York magazine writer Lila Shapiro, Russell pointed out this passage from Lolita after Humbert first seduced his 12-year-old prey:

    Humbert fantasizes about painting a lavish mural to depict what happened in the hotel room. “There would have been a lake.  There would have been an arbor in flame-flower.  There would have been nature studies – a tiger pursuing a bird of paradise, a choking snake sheathing whole the flayed trunk of a shoat . . . There would have been poplars, apples, a suburban Sunday.  There would have been a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging, red, smarting pink, a sigh, a wincing child.

Russell explained: “It’s just gorgeous prose and then the last image of a wincing child.  It’s so easy to skim over.”  How I wish I could discuss Lolita with former IUN English professor George Bodmer, once a good friend, who assigned the book in an upper division course but stopped speaking to me over a university matter.

In researching the history of Gary Roosevelt for a Post-Tribune feature, Carole Carlson discovered that its origins stemmed from the aftermath to the infamous 1927 Emerson School Strike.  After Superintendent William A. Wirt transferred 14 honors students seeking college prep courses from the non-accredited Virginia Street School, approximately half the white students boycotted classes.  The Gary school board subsequently voted to oust both the newly enrolled students and several African-Americans living in the Emerson neighborhood who had already been at the school.  The NAACP represented three students who protested their dismissal, but both local judge Grant Crumpacker and the Indiana Supreme Court ruled against them. Carlson consulted my “City of the Century” as well as publications by historian Ronald Cohen and Dolly Millender, plus interviewed DeLynne Exum, the granddaughter of ousted student Hazel Bratton, and Vernon Smith, the son of victim Julia Allen.  While some classmates traveled to Chicago to continue their education, Smith said that his mother never finished her schooling: “They were spit on, pushed, and called the “N’ word. We always tried to get her to go to night school, but she began a family.  I think the pain [of what happened] continued until death.” How awful.  

Before her death in 2009 at age 96 Hazel Bratton Sanders told a Post-Trib reporter:

    The white students would line upon both sides of the sidewalk and stretch their arms over us.  We had to walk under them like under an arch.  They yelled out, “Go away, darkies.  This isn’t your school.”

Granddaughter DeLynne Exum told Carlson: “It was the indignity of how they were dismissed.  It was inhumane.  These were bright students.  It traumatized her.  When she was dying, she had nightmares of going through that gauntlet; she would relive it.”

above, Laura Gorski & Jeremiah Mellen; below, Reagan Smedley, Gorski, Luke Housman, photo by Ray Gapinski

Toni and I saw the final, sold-out performance of “Mary Poppins” at Memorial Opera House with the Hagelbergs, followed by dinner at Pesto’s.  As always, the production was well done with an excellent cast that included several familiar actors, including Jeremiah Mellen (Quasimoto in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”) as chimneysweep Bert, Thomas Olsen as the policeman, and talented seventh grader Reagan Smedley (Susan Waverly in “White Christmas”) as Jane Banks. In the program Smedley revealed that when not on stage she enjoys singing, playing the piano, and hanging out with her friends – and added that now, given that major role, she can cross playing Jane Banks off her bucket list.  When we first saw Reagan on stage, she’d to sob at the final performance curtain call. It was touching watching her bravely fighting to smile and hold back the tears.

Darrow & Bryan, below, Fats Waller

Nicole Anslover invited me to her class on the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial.  She first explained the rise of rural-urban tensions during the 1920s and the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.  I brought out how strong the KKK became in Indiana, especially in small towns such as Crown Point and Valparaiso, and that it was anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, not just anti-black.  After she noted that the ACLU sought a test case and described what transpired in the aftermath of the Tennessee legislature passing a law forbidding the teaching of evolution, I noted that the 1920s being an age of urban boosterism, Dayton, Tennessee, business leaders hoped to draw large crowds  that would put Dayton on the map.  Crowds came, but the publicity wasn’t exactly what the city fathers had hoped for.  This was the heyday of daily newspapers whose publishers loved lengthy trials, continuing sagas that could be hyped over days and weeks.  Students gave brief reports on Harlem Renaissance celebrities Cab Calloway (a Cotton Club bandleader who wore zoot suits), Fats Waller (we were treated to a YouTube of “Honeysuckle Rose”), and Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, who played trumpet in Joe “King” Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in Chicago before moving on to Harlem.

Near our condo a car bore a license plate beginning with a 3-digit number ending in zero followed by ORV. It sure looked like ORGY.  Dave and Angie refused a plate ending in NRA, the initials of the National Rifle Association.

Buffington Park

“The most successful attempts at industrial social betterment are those furthest removed from the suspicion of domination or control of the employer.” Illinois Steel Company President Eugene J. Buffington

 above, Sean O'Donnell and James Powell; below, Siblings Collin and Shawn Hendron; photos by Kale Wilk

Rich Reuth near splash pad

Both local dailies, the Post-Tribune and the Times, ran stories about two dozen members of IIAF (International Association of Fire Fighters) Local 359 undertaking a major project to spruce up Gary’s Buffington Park.  It had been neglected by the undermanned Parks Department, which has only 3 full-time maintenance workers and 8 seasonal employees to care for 57 parks under the city’s auspices.  In 2012 the Bridgette C. Kelly Foundation adopted Buffington Park and made considerable improvements; a month later vandals knocked down fences, ripped out plants, and set playground equipment on fire. Volunteers repaired the damage, but at present Buffington Park, in the words of Post-Trib correspondent Carole Carlson, was “down on its luck again.”Local 359 secretary Jimmy Siciliano told Times reporter Emily Schnipke: “This was going to start as lawn cutting and tree trimming and now it’s turned into a huge thing with landscaping companies [involved].” Local businesses have donated equipment and supplies to the firefighters.  In the park an impressive stone memorial contains the names of over a thousand residents who served in World War II. Plans are afoot to place mulch and plants around the memorial and sandblast the historic structure to remove dirt and other foreign substances.

 Eugene Buffington freighter in 1962

Few Gary residents have any memory of Eugene J. Buffington other than to recognize the name from the Gary harbor and park dedicated to him.  At the turn of the twentieth century, when United States Steel Corporation decided to build an integrated, state-of-the art plant (Gary Works) on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, Eugene Buffington played a central role during its planning stages. Determined to avoid pitfalls encountered by palace car magnate George M. Pullman after he established the company town of Pullman, Illinois, Buffington opted not to have the corporation provide housing for steelworkers, preferring to sell plots of land through a subsidiary, the Gary Land Company.  In 1909 Buffington asserted: “Gary is nothing more than the product of effort along practical line to secure right living conditions around a steel-manufacturing plant.” Unfortunately, Steel officials failed to pay the majority of its work force a living wage; hence, a home ownership on Gary’s northside was beyond the means of unskilled immigrant laborers. Furthermore, residents suffered from pollution from the mill and had very limited access to Lake Michigan or public recreational space.  Two exceptions were Buffington Park at Seventh and Connecticut east of Broadway and Jefferson Park on the westside – both rumored to attract gay men. 

 Jefferson Park

A near-record 13 couples turned out for bridge at Chesterton Y.  Competing against 12 others, Charlie and I finished fourth, behind three much more experienced pairs that play several times a week.  Seated near the door, we could hear Latin music emanating from the exercise room.  After finishing our two hands against Dottie Hart and Terry Bauer ahead of most other tables, I asked Dottie if she wanted to dance the Bossa Nova in honor of legendary Brazilian composer, singer, and guitarist Joao Gilberto, who recently died at age 88.  She was ready to take me up on it.  Gilberto’s most famous song was “The Girl from Ipanema.”  Summing up the results, director Alan Yngve wrote: “Dave Bigler and Trudi McKamey finished as the best with a nice 64.5% game; a lot of their success was from play of the hand, both declarer and in defense.” 

 above, Joao Gilberto; below, Dilma Rousseff

Brazil’s political situation is in shambles due to revelations that Justice Minister Sergio Moro had used heavy-handed, illegal methods while a magistrate overseeing a corruption investigation that resulted in former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva convicted of bribery and barred from running in the 2018 election at a time when he was heavily favored to win.  Previously, Da Silva’s Workers’ Party ally and successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from office by the ultra-partisan Brazilian Senate.  The scandal call into question the legitimacy of probes against prominent Workers’ Party members.  On the NPR’s “Democracy Now” Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of the investigative group Intercept, whose reportage unearthed the palpably unjudicial conduct of Sergio Moro, charged that the Justice Minister, in cahoots with the far-right regime currently in power, has launched an investigation intended to intimidate him. Greenwald has received numerous death threats. Moro’s heavy-handedness is reminiscent of Special Prosecutor Ken Starr relentless vendetta against Bill and Hillary Clinton. 

After a ticker tape parade for the victorious U.S. women’s soccer team, New York City mayor Bill De Blasio presented the World Cup champs with keys to the city as people chanted, “U-S-A! Equal Pay.”  Megan Rapinoe, a self-described proud lesbian (a Sports Illustrated cover story called her “a purple-haired lesbian goddess”),boasted,“This group is so resilient, is so tough, has such a sense of humor, is just so badass.  There is nothing that can faze this group. We’re chilling.  We’ve got pink hair and purple hair. We’ve got tattoos and dreadlocks. We’ve got white girls and black girls and everything in between. Straight girls and gay girls.”  No word yet about a White House invitation, which co-captain Megan Rapinoe has vowed to refuse.

 Christine Jorgensen in 1969

The May 2019 issue of The American Historian, a publication of the Organization of American Historians, is devoted to “Queer History.”  In “Queering the Classroom” Eric Gonzaba argues that introducing LGBTQ subject matter helps students understand the dynamics of power at play in a society and appreciate the struggles of people on the margins.  Gonzaba writes: “For those teaching gender and sexuality, it’s the story of male flight attendants at the dawn of the Jet Age . . . or about those entrepreneurs who ran sex-based businesses like porn cinemas.” Gonzaba glibly predicts: “Focus on the queerness in whatever you teach. Your students will love it.” An article on the history of Trans Activism begins with World War II veteran Christine Jorgensen’s 1952 sex reassignment surgery and celebrity status as a “blond bombshell.”I was disappointed to find that an article titled “We are what we eat” had nothing to do with food.  I did discover, however, an ad for a new book titled “Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America.”  

Missing from the special issue on Queer History was an article on LGBTQ laborers, such as steelworkers, long-haul truckers or sex workers, something former IUN scholar Anne Balay could have provided.  An open and outspoken lesbian denied tenure at my university, Balay’s fate exemplifies the perils of nontenured scholars coming out of the closet.  I am planning to present a paper next year in Singapore titled “A Queer History of Indiana University Northwest.”  In September as part of the IU Bicentennial celebration, IUN has scheduled a program featuring 8-minute faculty presentations about current research projects.  Here is an abstract of my proposal, which Toni predicts will be rejected.  I am more optimistic:

Fifteen years ago, Paul Kern and I published a history of IU Northwest entitled “Educating the Calumet Region.”  While it included material concerning campus policy regarding inappropriate faculty behavior toward students and information about LGBTQ (an acronym not in common use then) student groups on campus, we avoided probing deeply into sensitive areas regarding LGBTQ students and faculty. The latter, for the most part, were closeted, at least those without tenure.  My brief presentation, without mentioning names of specific people, will revisit the subject of ethical issues in handling same-sex matters in institutional histories in light of the fact that the study of what now is commonly called Queer History is a hot topic in academia.

In “The Woman Who Got Away,” originally published in the New Yorker and included in the 2000 anthology “Licks of Love,” John Updike, a keen observer of social norms, described faculty life fifty years ago at a small New England liberal arts college: 

 We survived by clustering together like a ball of snakes in a desert cave.  The Sixties had taught us the high moral value of copulation, and we were slow to give up on an activity so simultaneously pleasurable and healthy. Still, you couldn’t sleep with everybody; we were bourgeoisie, responsible, with jobs and children, and affairs demanded energy and extracted wear and tear.  We hadn’t learned yet to take the emotion out of sex. Looking back, the numbers don’t add up to what an average college student now manages in four years.  There were women you failed ever to sleep with; these, in retrospect, have a perverse vividness, perhaps the contacts, in the slithering ball of snakes, were so few that they have stayed distinct.

Fascinating Rhythm

“Got a little rhythm that pitter-pats through my brain

So darn persistent, the day isn’t distant

When it’ll drive me insane”

         “Fascinating Rhythm,” George and Ira Gershwin (below)

It’s annoying when you can’t get a certain tune out of your head, especially one especially inane such as “Who Let the Dogs Out?” by Baha Men.  Published in 1925, “Fascinating Rhythm” was recorded by countless by vocalists such as Fred Astaire, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, and Judy Garland, as well as Big Bands led by Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, and Percy Faith. There are Latin versions (i.e., by Xavier Cugat), country-flavored recordings (Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards), a mellow one by Hawaiian steel guitarist Sol Ho‘opi‘I, and a snappy Motown release by The Four Tops.

Charleston Gazette editor James A. Haught characterized “Fascinating West Virginia” as containing “wild, wonderful episodes – and some not so wonderful.”  “Institute rose from epic love story” traced the antecedents of West Virginia State to the antebellum Samuel I. Cabell plantation located nine miles southwest of Charlestown.  Cabell took slave Mary Barnes as his lifetime mate and eventually freed their 13 children, provided for their education in Ohio, and took elaborate steps to insure they’d have full legal rights and inherit his 900 acres of property along the Kanawha River.  In July 1865, seven neighbors fatally shot Cabell, in all likelihood because, in Haught’s words, “of white resentment toward his integrated family life.” A jury acquitted the perpetrators within minutes.In the 1890s daughter Marina and other Cabell heirs sold 80 acres of land to the state for the creation of West Virginia Colored Institute, forerunner of the present university. In 1970, when Haught published the column about Samuel Cabell and Mary Barnes, he wrote: “Strangely, this story isn’t recorded in any West Virginia history book, even though it was a minor sensation at the end of the Civil War.”

 Belle Boyd, "the Cleopatra of the Confederacy"

Haught wrote that  Civil War Charles Town changed hands four times.  In 1863, the western counties broke off from Virginia, and until 1870 the capital of West Virginia was Wheeling.  Haught mentioned that Shepherd University’s Center for the Study of the Civil War contains information on Martin Delaney, a free black who fled Charles Town and recruited volunteers for a famed Massachusetts colored regiment and that 17-year-old beauty Belle Boyd served as a Confederate spy for fellow West Virginian Stonewall Jackson.  World War II general George S. Patton’s grandfather, a native Mountaineer, was a Confederate colonel under Jackson’s command killed during the Battle of Winchester.

 Wirt bust by Emory Seidel, photo by Steve McShane; below, Jack Tonk, P-T photo by Carole Carlson

Among the 78 William A. Wirt High School items auctioned off on orders from Gary Emergency Manager Peggy Hinckley was a 21-inch bronze bust of the city’s first School Superintendent and school’s namesake by Chicago artist Emory Pius Seidel.  Ron Cohen bought it for $6,800 and has donated the impressive work to IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives.  Post-Tribunecorrespondent Carole Carlson noted that former guidance counselor Jack Tonk paid $75 for a student painting he had purchased 30 years before for his office.  He told Carlson, “I bought it twice.”

 Coach Fisher in 2016 with Brianna Joiner; P-T photo by Jim Karczewski

“Fisher firing fishy” pronounced Post-Tribune columnist Mike Hutton, lamenting the sudden dismissal of legendary Gary West Side girls basketball coach Rod Fisher, 68, who notched 674 wins during a 41-year career, second in the state to Scottsburg’s Donna Cheatham with 699.  Two years ago, administrators tried to terminate Fisher but at that time needed school board approval, and former players rushed to his aid.  Now with the state having emasculated the board’s authority, petty academic officers carried out the dirty deed.  I recall Coach Fisher was a gym teacher at Marquette School during the early 1970s when sons Phil and Dave were in first and second grade (one taught by Linda Bonner, now Fisher’s wife).  He was a hardnose, but Jackie Gipson, who played for Fisher, asserted that he really cared for the players, often buying them meals out of his own pocket. His replacement, Shanee’ Butler, has no head coaching experience, Fisher’s wife claimed.  Envy and nepotism are possible explanations.  Former West Side star Dana Evans, now playing for Louisville, told reporter John O’Malley: 

  It's really horrible. I’m surprised and I’m really upset. It’s just so unfair and it’s not right. He’s one of the best coaches in the area and around the state. He was always willing to work hard and put extra time in with the kids to help make them better.  After everything coach had done, they just should have let him decide when he wanted to give up coaching and retire. It’s really not right. Gary can never have anything good. They try to destroy anything positive in the city, or anything that’s something, that really helps Gary. They (school officials) have been wanting coach Fisher out for years. I saw it, and I never understood that. It makes no sense. Why would you want a person like him out?

Roosevelt athletic director said the decision was a terrible way to end something so special for so many people. Unfortunately, this continues a trend, following shabby treatment of other Gary coaches, including Marvin Rea, Ted Karras, Jr., and Renaldo Thomas

In “Rabbit Remembered” Harry Angstrom’s son Nelson met half-sister Annabelle for lunch at the upscale (for Brewer, PA) Greenery (Salads, Soups and Sandwiches)and described their Dad as a narcissist who never grew up, nor did he seek to, and, like many men of his generation, was scared of his homoerotic side. He was better with grandchildren than his own son, though Nelson recalls them playing catch in the back yard and going to a Flyers ice hockey game in Philadelphia. The son claimed the only job he ever cared about was working the linotype at The Blast, next to his Old Man, Earl Angstrom (1905-1976).  When the family brought Rabbit’s ashes back from Florida in a square urn and stopped at a Comfort Inn, 9-year-old granddaughter Judy insisted that they bring it in from the trunk and had wanted to open it and look inside.  Next morning, Nelson drove off without the urn until Judy remembered it two exits up the road. Author John Updike wrote: “Afterwards, with schooled hindsight, Nelson saw that there had  been a certain unconscious vengeance in their leaving Dad behind, as he had more than once left them behind.”  Nelson’s Aunt Min, upon hearing she had a niece, replied, “Life is wild.  When it isn’t, a total bore.”

above, Jamrose Band; below, Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum

Over the weekend, Jamrose Band rocked out at Miller Pizza and Soul Asylum at Valpo Popcorn Festival.  Ron Cohen met Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame conference and concert honoring Woody Guthrie.   The Cubs sat through ten hours of rain delays.  The Friday game lasted a mere inning, wasting a start by ace Jon Lester.  Saturday they lost a twin bill, with rain interrupting a performance by pitcher Cole Hamels.  Sunday they cooled their heels at the D.C. ball park for over 4 hours before it was cancelled. That night, the Bears blew a 20-point lead against Green Bay in the final 18 minutes with QB Aaron Rodgers directing the comeback on a gimpy knee and girlfriend Danica Patrick in the family box.  Old friend Terry Jenkins attended last week’s Phillies game when the Cubbies beat Aaron Nola on Home Runs by Baez, Rizzo, and Murphy. We’re both huge Eagles fans, and I mentioned that when Falcons QB Matt Ryan threw into the end zone on the final play of Thursday’s contest, I wanted it to be incomplete but if caught, by Julio Jones, who’s on my Fantasy team.  It was an incompletion, but Jones still got me 17 points, enough, combined with 19 by Todd Gurley, to allow Jimbo Jammers, to easily beat Pittsburgh Dave’s Bruisers.  

At bridge on Saturday Toni finished first, 90 points ahead of Brian and Connie Barnes, who tied for second.  Beforehand, I had a burger at Bulldog Restaurant in Ogden Dunes, which I couldn’t finish after eating a salad and rolls.  I wish that, like Toni, I’d just ordered the bacon-wrapped scallops appetizer. Monday night, Connie and Brian attended the Gino’s book club talk on “Valiant Ambition.” Beforehand, on the bar stool next to me, Bill Walton was discussing IU professor Peter Guardino’s new book, “The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War.”  Centering on the experiences of ordinary Mexicans and American soldiers, this social and cultural study claims that the United States underestimated the strength of Mexican nationalism and ferocity of their resistance to being conquered, resulting in thousands of American casualties and at least twice as many Mexican combatants and civilians. Evidently, young Irish recruits endured buggery and rape and witnessed atrocities inflicted by U.S. troops on Mexican civilians. (Guardino below)

Record Low Temperatures

“It’s so cold they had to use an ice scraper on John Boehner’s face to get the tears off.” David Letterman

Porter County winter scenes; photos by Tom Coulter

With subzero weather and more lake effect snow probable, I stayed home Thursday except for brief stops for gas, a Subway cold cut sandwich, and something to read.  Chesterton library’s two copies of Anne Tyler’s new novel “A Spool of Blue Thread” were both checked out (I’m first on the reserve list), but I found “Captive Paradise,” an interesting history of Hawaii by James L. Haley.  Captain James Cook, who discovered the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, was the son of a farmer and apprentice to a coal merchant.  His first taste of seafaring life was aboard a coal vessel, the collier Freelove.  He had a unique talent for surveying and during the French and Indian War, as commander of HMS Pembroke, mapped the entrance to the St. Lawrence River.  The feat led to the capture of Quebec City. 

Captain Cook’s initial contact with native Hawaiians at Waimea Harbor in Kauai went well, but on a second voyage, after being thought to be an incarnation of the god Lono, Hawaiians stole a cutter vessel, and Cook was killed during efforts to retrieve it.  Most historians believe that his crew infected the native population with syphilis, but Haley speculates that contacts with Japanese seamen (pun intended) predated Cook’s arrival and may have been the culprits.  He claims that Cook tried to prevent carnal intermingling but that the native women were sexually aggressive (desiring to be impregnated by good-like creatures) and his crew horny after weeks at sea.  Cook noted with dismay on his fateful return trip telltale signs of the infection.

Future king Kamehameha met Captain Cook and was impressed with the English weapons, recognizing that they could provide the means to unify the islands under his leadership. Kamehameha’s mother, High Chiefess Kekuiapoiwa II, had two husbands, both of royal blood, a not uncommon practice known as poolua (two heads) intended to abate rivalries and cement alliances.  During his rule Kamehameha recognized only one, and mention of the other was punishable by death.

 Broadway in downtown Gary; photo by Carole Carlson

Carole Carlson’s Post-Tribune cover story, “Gary waging blight fight,” summarized a University of Chicago Public Policy survey that identified 12,393 blighted structures, including about 7,000 vacant houses that needed to be demolished.  The near west side and Midtown had the most blight, according to Redevelopment Director Joseph Van Dyk.  Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson vowed to hold property owners accountable and noted that squatters setting fires for warmth constitute a public health danger.  Appearing on Channel 2 news in Chicago, Freeman Wilson said her goal was for residents young and old to have pride in their city, as she does, and to create opportunities for college graduates who might otherwise seek greener pastures.

In the latest episode of “The Americans,” set in 1982, an est (Erhard Seminars training) instructor tries to draw out Stan, the FBI agent, by having him imagine conversing with his estranged wife.  Frustrated by the simulation of intimacy, Stan says, “That’s bullshit!”  The instructor applauds and others join in.  Weird!  Soviet spies Phillip and Elizabeth argue about whether to recruit daughter Paige, who declares her desire to be baptized.  Philip buys Paige a Yaz album after learning about the British synthpop duo from the daughter of a CIA agent, who he is snuggling up to as part of his work.

With Vince Clarke on keyboards and vocalist Alison Moye, Yaz (Yazoo in Europe) were the rage in 1982-1983 with hit albums “Upstairs at Eric’s” and “You and me Both.”  It was fun hearing bits of “Don’t Go” and “Winter Kills,” the latter including this verse” “Pain in your eyes makes me cruel, makes me spiteful, tears are delightful, welcome your nightfall; winter kills.”

 Chris Brown (l) and E'Twaun Moore; photo by Al Hamnik

NWI Times columnist Al Hamnik characterized East Chicago Central grad E’Twaun Moore, now a Chicago Bull, as friendly, soft-spoken, and “a good kid from the mean streets of a city battling drugs and gangs on a daily basis.”  Appearing with longtime friend Chris Brown at Bridges’ Scoreboard Lounge in Griffith, Moore credited his parents Edna and Ezell Moore with keeping him out of trouble, insisting, for instance, on a nine o’clock curfew while his buddies often hung out until 1 a.m.  Moore told Hamnik, “We used to argue, bicker, and have fights all the time, but my parents saw the big picture and I understand now.”   Brown’s younger brother Donte, E’Twaun’s closest friend in school, got killed six years ago.  Moore said, “I think about him all the time.  He had the same potential I had as far as athletic ability.  If he had stayed on the right path, the same thing could’ve happened to him.”  Son Dave, who taught them both, agreed, adding that Donte was a good kid.  At Donte’s funeral E’Twaun gave the father his first Big Ten championship ring as a token of his love for Donte.

Becca’s friend Alex, who was adopted, believes her parents hailed from Azerbaijan, a Eurasian country on the Caspian Sea that at various times was part of Iran, Turkey, Armenia, and the Soviet Union. Since breaking off from Russia in 1991, the republic has undergone civil war and ethnic tensions resulting in tens of thousands of casualties and more than a million people displaced.  Azerbaijanis comprise about 16 percent of Iran’s population.  There are an estimated 800,000 Azerbaijanis in Turkey and about 400,000 in the United States.

Marla Gee reported on her intern experiences as the Indiana state legislature enters its climactic stage:

  “Next week the rubber meets the road.  Second Reading of House bills has a Tuesday deadline; Third Reading deadline is Wednesday, 11:59 p.m. (interns have been warned to bring ‘Spam and a tent’ next week).  Bills that pass are then sent to the Senate, and we in turn receive theirs, and the process starts all over again.  Fortunately, we are being rewarded with a FREE DAY next week, Thursday or Friday, our choice.  Most interns are grabbing the Friday and doing a 3-day weekend, but I am thinking about how nice it will be to SLEEP IN following next week’s brutal Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night marathons; with that in mind, I will be taking off THURSDAY!

 Rep. Gail Riecken

I especially enjoyed the Glenda Ritz supporters showing up en masse here at the Statehouse, non-violent, but noisy and colorful with their signs and placards.  So far it has been the highlight of my internship.  One of my tasks is replying to E-mails received by Rep. Gail Riecken (D-Evansville), and I have responded to more than 300, all in support of Superintendent Ritz and in opposition to the Governor’s move to hamper her authority.  The other big story has been House Bill 1624 (Sunday sale of alcohol).  Even when not in Chambers, interns can listen to the proceedings via intercom while in our offices.  The ‘alcohol bill’ debate had our undivided attention!  This Session has seen bills on everything from the regulation of midwives (HB 1548) to the dissolution of human remains (HB 1069). 

A Taste of Home last week when the House issued Resolution 18 honoring West Side’s track team, who won the state championship last spring.  You know I’m homesick when I, a Roosevelt Panther, cheer on the West Side Cougars!  I told the Mayor her how good it was to see ‘home folks’, and she replied I should ‘come on back!’  I assured her that I would, the minute my internship was over!

Last week the interns met with our State Treasurer in her office, formerly a bedroom.  An exquisite corner sink, porcelain and marble, had very old faucets.  I am constantly amazed and delighted at the antique artifacts that surprise you at every turn in this stately old building.  We visited The Vault Room where old, massive safes are contained. It reminds you of something you would find on the set of an old western, the safes just sitting there, waiting for the bad guys to set off dynamite and blow them up - although, I can’t imagine anything short of an atomic blast making a dent in these safes.   A 200-pound person would have to use all his body weight just to budge those doors a few inches.”

Praising her reportage, I told Marla that the guy who sat next to us in Nicole Anslover’s Sixties class and sang aloud to songs from that decade, was in Anslover’s Women History class.

I planned an April visit to Palm Springs to see my 98 year-old mother around an appearance by The War on Drugs at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown.  Tickets went on sale a $25 a pop and got gobbled up almost immediately by scalpers who wanted up to $200.  I told the owner of my plight and sent her a the Steel Shavings issue that describes my experiences at “Cracker Campout” and extols the roadhouse’s many virtues.  Lo and behold, she agreed to save two tickets for me.  In gratitude I wrote this website review:

“I always plan trips to the Palm Springs area around a visit to Pappy and Harriet's, which has fantastic food at very reasonable prices, a friendly staff, a diverse clientele, and live music every night.  I attend Cracker Campout every September and have seen some of my favorite bands there, including Parquet Courts and Camper Van Beethoven.  Walking among buildings once used in Gene Autry and Cisco Kid westerns is also a special treat, as is the breathtaking view of rock formations and Joshua trees on the drive up from 29 Pines Highway.  Recommended for people of all ages - and children are welcome.”

Every time I’ve been to Pappy and Harriet’s, I could have added, I’ve met interesting folks of all ages, many of the counter culture persuasion.

An email announced “Darwin Day Today,” celebrating Charles Darwin’s 206th birthday.  Talks by biologist Peter Avis (“Mushroom Look-a-Likes, but Evolution Knows Better”) and historian David Parnell (“Generals Gone Wild: Why Byzantine Emperors Condoned the Misbehavior of Generals”) looked intriguing.  Alas, at the conference center site, I peered in and learned that the event took place the previous day.  Seated around a half-dozen tables were department chairs, including Anne Balay’s old nemesis, looking old and dour now that his facial hair has turned white.

My friend Omar Farag knows how to escape the Region’s coldest weather in memory.  He’s in Brazil at Carvaval!

Omar Farag at Copacabana Beach in Rio