Up for Debate

In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, nor an unjust interest.” William Penn

 Several of my friends from high school re-post rightwing messages on Facebook that I mostly ignore but sometimes offer a brief rebuttal – as when, for example, they imply that Democrats are anti-police, pro-rioters or unpatriotic.  Frequently they bring up some local incident and ask why it wasn’t widely reported on the mainstream media.  Recently I came across an image of William Harvey Carney, the first African-American Medal of Honor winner, who, though badly wounded, “refused to let the American flag touch the ground.”  Above Carney’s photo were these words: “Maybe the NFL should put this up in every locker room.”  Carney (1840-1908) was born a slave.  After his father escaped with the aid of the Underground Railroad, he purchased his wife and William’s freedom.  Enlisting in the 54^th Massachusetts Colored Regiment, as did two sons of Frederick Douglass, Carney performed the heroic deed in 1863 at the Battle of Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina.  Angry that Carney’s admirable action was being politicized, I commented: “No NFL player is allowing the flag to touch the ground.”  Someone (not my friend) replied: “They just burn it.  Man, you pop up everywhere like a lib-in-a-box.”  Ignoring the fact that the person was not distinguishing between taking a knee during the National Anthem and flag-burning, I suggested, figuratively, that it was better to wash the flag than burn it.

Chesterton High School has a long, storied Debate Club tradition.  Jim Cavallo (above), a Speech and Debate teacher for38 years beginning in 1971, was the third CHS Debate Program Director inducted into the National Speech and Debate Hall of Fame.  His predecessors were Joe Wycoff and Bob Kelly.  Cavallo coached CHS to five consecutive national championships beginning in the late 1980s.  According to a NSDA press release, Cavallo was one of the first coaches to break from the “boys club” mentality and recruit females to do Policy Debate.  It concludes: “To Cavallo, every kid had talent, potential, and the ability to contribute to constructive argumentation.”

With a national debate raging over whether to take down monuments of rebel slaveholders, Anne Koehler passed on this statement by Kerri Smilie:

    I really didn't want to talk about concentration camps tonight. But today I've seen a certain post going around saying something to the effect of "Germany didn't take down their concentration camps, so why should we take down Confederate statues?”

 

   Whew. Deep breaths.

 

    In 2004 I went to Germany (one of a few trips I took there). Part of the trip entailed visiting some historical sites related to WWII. I sat in the courtroom in Nuremberg where Goering and crew were tried and condemned for their actions. I can tell you, there was NOT ONE BIT of honor for them in that room. We watched a graphic video in English, German, and Hebrew detailing the atrocities these men were condemned for. The theme of the lecture was "What they did was horrible. We as a nation stood behind it. We own it. And we will never allow it to happen again." Know what we didn't see? A single freakin' statue of a Nazi.

    But while we're talking statues, let's talk Dachau. The Dachau visit was the day after we went to Nuremberg, and my heart just couldn't take it. So my dad went, took lots of photos, and told us about it. It is completely saturated in remorse and resolve. There is nothing honoring any soldier. There is no glory in the Germany of WWII. There are no "alternate story lines." The statues there glorify those who were tortured and killed by the Nazis. One of the most famous statues at Dachau portrays skeletons strewn across barbed wire because so many of the prisoners ended their lives by throwing themselves into the fences and being shot, rather than suffer another day at the hands of the SS.

    This particular statue though is the one I want to talk about. It is called "The Unknown Prisoner." He stands tall and proud- because the prisoners were required to keep their heads bowed and eyes averted. He has his hands in his pockets- because the prisoners were forbidden to do so. He is not wearing a hat- because the prisoners were required to wear a hat on penalty of death. And his inscription reads "To Honor the Dead, To Remind (or warn) the Living." This statue is brazenly defiant. And I love it.

So if you want to compare the way Germany has kept their history alive with the way the South has, don't look at it in statues and memorials. If we want to follow Germany's lead, every plantation would be a solemn memorial to a dark time in our nation's history. There would be no weddings there- just like there are no weddings in Auschwitz. There would be no nostalgia for days gone by, but only reminders of the horrors of those enslaved.

    If we want to follow Germany's lead, then every statue of a Confederate general should be replaced by a statue of a slave breaking free of their chains, or standing proud in defiance of the slaveholders.  Don't make comparisons if you're not willing to follow them through all the way.

Ryan Askew

I enjoy reading personal items I find in obituaries, such as that Arthur Catenazzo, 88, a Korean War veteran and former U.S. Steel shift manager, walked six laps around South Lake Mall six days a week and was known as Mayor of the Mall. Former East Chicago firefighter and hospital security guard Edward Kowalski, 96, loved Hostess Twinkies and Ho Ho’s and during holiday celebrations “took the carving knife to baked hams like no one else.”  The obit for Ryan Askew, 59, a 1978 West Side grad, former Lake County police officer, and security guard at Community Hospital in Munster, gave no hint that he was shot and killed by another officer while attempting to restrain a patient who had him in a chokehold. In addition to mentioning Ryan’s wife Fonetta, daughter Da’Ja’Nay and other relatives, the notice mentioned eight “special friends,” including Gary residents Perry Gordon, Willie Stewart, Aaron Stuckey, Armon Stuckey, and Ernest Goodwin. When he first learned of Askew’s tragic death, former Sheriff Roy Dominguez, who promoted him to Commander, told The Times: “He was a nice guy, very professional, and extremely well-liked by the troops.”

Valentina

I’ve been playing the board game Space Base, both with Dave, Phil, and James at the condo and online ever since Angie ordered it for me on Amazon. Each player assumes the role of a commodore in charge of a fleet of ships purchased on one’s turn and named after astronauts such as Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins or Russian cosmonauts like Valentina Tereshkova and Pavel Popovich.  Tereshkova was the first woman in space, orbiting the Earth 48 times in 1963 on a solo flight aboard Vostok 6.  I won a couple games prior to everyone knowing the fine points of the game, but on Zoom last evening winner Tom Wade and runner-up Dave Lane left me far behind.

 

As reported by the Chesterton Tribune’s Kevin Nevers, the Chesterton Town Council discussed the Juneteenth march.  Police Chief David Cincoski announced that it was peaceful and went very well, with participants wearing masks and practicing social distancing.  He thanked the Fire and Street departments for their assistance and officers from the neighboring towns of Porter, Burns Harbor, and Ogden Dunes. Council member Jim Ton added:

    I believe the major goal of the march was to protest institutional racism and the unjust treatment of black citizens in America.  I also believe that the goal of law enforcement was to provide for the free exercise of the right to do so in a safe and secure environment.  Both of these goals were met last Friday afternoon.  Chesterton should be proud of that.

In the Tribune’s “Voice of the People” Reverend Aaron Ban of St. Jon’s United Church wrote: “Chesterton is a town where people of all races are proclaiming, ‘Black Lives Matter!.’  The Juneteenth Celebration and demonstration lifted my spirits and made me proud to live and work here.”

 

Casey King wrote:

    We are in the midst of a revolution...rise with the change or fall...and fade. I’ll be selling prints to raise money for Gary, Indiana art programs. I am a proud recent fine arts graduate of Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Indiana. Gary was once known as the “magic” city and the very foundation of the American school system, The Wirt System, began here. I would like to make a difference through my art and this is one means of doing so.  Art is universal and healing, a language that not all have to speak but one that all can understand if one tries to. To underprivileged youth, art can serve as a powerful tool to push through trying times and life’s struggles. There is comfort in creating and liberation in being able to express oneself. Keep your eyes open for when I list these on my shop. Your support is greatly appreciated.

 
I  thought of the Seventies community group The Concerned Latins Organization when reading this email post by John Fraire:

 I recently gave the keynote address for the Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) in Washington. I told the students that the Chicano student movement was an under-appreciated part of the civil rights movement and that programs like the LLI owe their thanks to the Chicano Student movement. Many parents were in the audience. Like many other times, many of them remained expressionless during my talk. After my talk, one of the fathers, a man in his 50's, approached me, shook my hand and said "Gracias, Soy Chicano."

Martha Bohn  posted  storm clouds reaching Miller Beach, and octogenarian Barbara Mort shared a phot  taken at her recent wedding to Ascher Yates

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

The Old Man

“The old man had his high point every Wednesday at George’s Bowling Alley, where he once bowled a historic game in which he got three consecutive strikes.” Jean Shepherd, “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash”

Jean Shepherd

The old man of Jean Shepherd’s best sellers was a cranky but somewhat endearing middle-aged curmudgeon, while his real father felt trapped in a drudge existence and deserted the family when Shep’s younger brother turned 18. From such experiences came the bard’s sardonic humor, what he labeled not nostalgia but anti-nostalgia.  In 1995, thanks largely to IUN archivist Steve McShane’s efforts, Shepherd received an IU honorary degree at age 74.  At a banquet beforehand, Shep had unsuspecting invitees rolling in the aisles as he described returning to the Region from Korea and taking an aptitude test at IU’s East Chicago extension center. Prior to his enrolling for classes, administrators revealed that the tests indicated that he should go into dentistry.  With a twinkle in his eye, Shep concluded his 20-minute bit by saying, “I walked out of that building and never looked back.”  What a tribute to a Region university, making it the butt of a brilliant comedy bit.  It was his way of acknowledging how honored he was to be receiving an honorary doctorate.  Four years later, Shep was dead, estranged from all blood relatives, unable to excise ghosts from the past or forgive old hurts.

In “A Fistful of Fig Newtons,” a unique blend of fiction and memoir, Jean Shepherd writes from the point of view of an urban sophisticate born in Northwest Indiana.  From a high-rise apartment, Shepherd wrote, he ripped the cover off New York magazine and “with smooth, adept, practiced skill quickly folded the cover into a paper airplane, an art not used in many years, perfected grade after grade at the Warren G. Harding School.”  He described the Midwestern public university he attended on the G.I. Bill as the result of a “charitable outpouring of public monies which has led to the psychic downfall of multitudes of erstwhile worthy garage mechanics and plumbers helpers.” Shepherd wrote of returning to Hammond and passing by his old high school:

       It was all there, even the weedy athletic field with its paint-peeling goal posts where I had once played the role of an intrepid defensive lineman and I had irrevocably shattered the ligaments of my left knee, which now began to throb sympathetically as we passed the old battlefield. Ghostly voices of my teachers of that golden time moaned in my subconscious: Miss Bryfogel, her high, thin bleat intoning facts about Bull Run and Appomattox, Miss McCullough’s birdlike chip squeaking something about gerunds or whatever they were, old red-faced Huffine, our coach, barking, “I don’t want to kick no asses but . . .”

        The long winters I had spent in this red brick mausoleum, its echoing halls, clanging lockers, its aromatic gym and cafeteria, scented forever with the aroma of salmon loaf and canned peas.  The roar of thousands of students surging up and down the stairways.

In my 1990s Steel Shavings, “Shards and Midden Heaps” (volume 31, 2001) I eulogize Jean Shepherd and reflect on in my 50s celebrating a twentieth-fifth wedding anniversary with my first grandchild (Alissa) and seeing sons Phil and Dave graduate from IU, commence productive careers as TV producer/director and teacher, and marry (in Dave’s case during the Blizzard of ’98).  I bragged about softball and bowling feats and winning tennis trophies in father-son and Senior tournaments. I still had a full had of hair, but it was turned grey.  Twenty years ago, a vicious home invader kept calling me an old man.  Now at age 78 I feel my age in my right knee, rotator cup, left ankle and need for frequent bathroom trips and nine hours of sleep.  Homebound during the pandemic, my main exercise comes from getting the mail and picking dandelions from the front garden in 10-minute intervals, stopping when the knee starts aching.

In this time of social distancing, when millions of young people are missing out on commencement ceremonies, Jean Shepherd wrote this account of graduating from Warren G. Harding School in Hammond:

      The despised glee club sang the Warren G. Harding fight song, accompanied by Miss Bundy, her crinkly straw-colored hair bobbing up and down, her huge bottom enveloping the piano stool. Then an undertaker and Chevrolet dealer delivered a mind-numbing oration on how his generation was passing the torch of civilization from its faltering hands into our youthful energetic and idealistic hands.

       But I got my diploma.  Clasping the sacred scroll there on the stage I felt myself growing wise and dignified, a person of substance, well equipped to carry torches, best foes, to identify the parts of speech, including gerunds, to draw from memory the sinister confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates.  And that Bolivia exports tin.

      At last we were free.  Warren G. Harding and its warm embrace, its easy ways, stood forever behind us.  On the way home the old man, his clean shirt cracklng with starch, said: “Whaddaya say we celebrate by pickin’ up some ice cream at the Igloo.  Ecstatic, I sat in the back seat of the Olds with my kid brother, clutching the precious document on which my name had been misspelled, in Old English lettering.

Casey King passed his IU Northwest senior review with flying colors, exhibiting drawing having to do with a long abandoned Miller drive-in, the Frank-N-Stein.  I’m pretty certain I’d convinced him to attend his commencement ceremony that won’t happen due to the pandemic.

The coronavirus outbreak is wreaking havoc at Westville prison, as well as Porter County jail and other area correctional facilities.  The Chesterton Tribune published the transcript of a phone call from a Westville inmate provided by Indiana Prison Advocates.  It stated:

      The inmates here, including myself, man, are very sick.  A lot of people have tried to get medical attention but are refused.  Things are getting worse, there was a riot.  If my 56-year-old roommate doesn’t get medical attention, then he’s probably not going to live.  Staff are coming in sick and inmates have been asked to keep an eye on these guys the minute they quit breathing to let somebody know. I don’t know how to describe the misery that has taken place here.  People are moaning in pain and some are hoping to die to relieve the suffering.  Commissary’s been taken away.  Governor Holcomb claims there’s a strike team here at Westville, but I haven’t seen anyone offering to help anyone do anything.

Censure?

“The readiest surest way to get rid of censure is to correct ourselves.” Demosthenes

At bridge Terry Brendel argued that Congress should censure Trump for his actions regarding Ukraine rather than go through an impeachment trial that will inevitably end in him remaining in office and hand him an issue in his re-election bid.  A Los Angeles Times editorial laid out the rationale:

    A House vote to impeach President Trump appears inevitable. So how can the country be spared the further division that would come from a wrenching impeachment trial? One solution would be for House Democrats and Republicans to take an unprecedented step in American history: Adopt a joint resolution censuring the president for improper conduct. Such an action would put presidents on notice that manipulating foreign governments to extract personal political gain is unacceptable. In return, Democrats would agree to drop impeachment articles.

    Censure is neither endorsed nor prohibited by the Constitution, which makes it a good escape hatch. And it’s not a completely novel idea. Former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, two great public servants of different political stripes, courageously advocated for censure in December 1998 to ward off a trial in the Clinton case. The country would have been better off if Democrats and Republicans had embraced the idea.

The only problem with this scenario is that the Republicans remain in lockstep with Trump, the Constitution be damned. Dean Bottorff replied to my post:

    Your argument makes sense. However, in the words of H.L. Mencken: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." I will posit that a simple censure is wrong, if only because the facts of what Trump did are undeniable and present a fundamental threat to American democracy. Obviously, the Republicans, who have become the Party of Party (not unlike the former Ba’ath Party of Iraq or the NSDAP of Germany), act only as sycophants of their leader. Conventional wisdom says you are correct about the outcome. But I would argue that even if impeachment ultimately fails, it is not necessarily a given that this will improve Trump’s re-election prospects; and, quite possibly, will weaken the re-election prospects of the Republican senators who vote to acquit despite overwhelming and damning evidence of wrongdoing clearly within the scope of what the framers considered “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Moreover, this modern Republican party should forever be damned by history.

Ray Smock

Ray Smock also disagreed with the L.A. Times, arguing:

Censure is a joke. A slap on the wrist with no consequences. Why would we censure a president for committing high crimes and misdemeanors when the Constitution provides the remedy?  The Democrats have the high moral and legal ground no matter what happens in Mitch McConnell’s Senate.

Anne Koehler Wrote: “Another way out would be for Trump to resign like Nixon.  Fat chance.”

Trump reached a new low, if that is possible, with a fake orgasm mockery of former FBI lawyers Lisa Page (above) and Peter Strzok at a campaign rally. On a lighter note Senator Kamala Harris responded to Trump’s sarcastic tweet that he’ll miss her now that she’s dropped out of the Presidential race by answering, “Don’t worry, Mr. President.  I’ll see you at your trial.”  During a House impeachment hearing, after Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan stated that under our current system a President may name a child Barron but cannot anoint a nobleman, the White House put out a statement under Melania’s name chastising her.  Karlan subsequently apologized, something foreign to Trump’s DNA.

In a Banta Center club championship game Norm Filipiak and I, partnering for the first time, finished fifth out of fifteen with 53.2%, good for.83 of a master point.  After working as a manager for JC Penney and Sears in several locations, including Jackson, Michigan, he purchased a bakery and an entertainment center in Michigan City.  On the way home at Route 49 and the tollway entrance I got caught in a horrendous traffic jam due to the light being out.  There was no cop on the scene to direct traffic.  Because my rotator cuff has been giving me problems, I asked Joel Charpentier to bowl for me. Joel, who hadn’t bowled in three years, struggled for seven frames, then tripled and finished with a 169. I left early and got a holiday haircut from Anna in Portage.  At Nativity Church I picked up two packages of oplatki Christmas wafers, a Polish tradition, one for our family and the other for Toni’s sister Marianne. In Nativity’s office was a former student named Guernsey from my Vietnam war course.

 oplatki wafers; below, Sandy and Sara Carlson at Valparaiso University

Neighbor George Schott hosted the annual condo owners meeting, my first since serving as secretary for eight years.  Three longtime board members, former president Ken Carlson, Treasurer Kevin Cessna, and President Sandy Carlson, all announced their intention to retire, and only one person was willing to serve in their place.  Sandy tried to get me to come back onto the board, and I offered to do so in two years if she served another term.  She reluctantly agreed and persuaded two women to jointly serve. The issue of snow removal came up.  The company charges $400 each time it plows and $350 to shovel sidewalks.  Most residents enter their units through their garage and don’t mind taking caring of their own sidewalks, but the condo could be liable if someone delivering packages has an accident.

Jimbo Jammers finished the regular Fantasy Football season 10-2-1, usually good enough for first place, but Phil edged me out by a half-game.  We both have a bye in the initial round of the six-team playoff and hope to meet in the finals.

The guilty pleasure HBO series “Mrs. Fletcher” stars Kathryn Hahn as Eve, a horny divorced housewife suffering from empty nest syndrome after her lunkhead son Brendan (Jackson White) goes off to college.  It opens with Eve, a senior center administrator, hearing loud moans emanating from the common room where folks are knitting and playing checkers.  The source: an old man’s computer. The geezer’s son tries to stick up for him by telling Eve, “He has no pleasures in life.  You have any idea what that’s like?”  After a friend calls her a MILF (Mom I’d Like to Fuck), Eve looks up the definition on the computer and becomes attracted to porn, has rough sex with a stranger, tender sex with a woman, and fantasizes about being serviced at a massage parlor, participating in a threesome, and starting an affair with a teenager bullied in high school by Brendan (I was relieved that she did not act upon that urge). Labeling the series a “fascinating misfire,”Sophie Gilbert, reviewer for The Atlantic, wrote: “Like her biblical namesake, Eve senses she’s been missing something crucial. It isn’t porn that is fascinating Eve so much as the idea that, in her mid-40s, she can reject every assumption she or anyone else has ever had about herself and start over.  For Eve, porn is freedom.”  “Mrs. Fletcher” is a bleak commentary on contemporary life when people, to quote Gilbert, “are too busy tapping their phones to forge meaningful connections.”

I was asked to teach an IUN second semester History class and be a consultant on a Valparaiso University grant to contribute material to the Flight Paths interactive documentary website.  I declined the offer to return to the classroom but accepted the latter.

At the first annual IUN Artist Collective Holiday Pop-up Market in Savannah Gallery, I was delighted to find Casey King’s work and that Casey was on hand to show me his most recent work, including a mock ad for the Frank N Stein Drive-In that once attracted crowds to the Miller Beach neighborhood when Dunes Highway was a heavily traveled route between Chicago and the Lake Michigan dunes communities prior to construction of the Tri-State expressway.  Corey Hagelberg’s environmental coloring book was also on display.   

Mueller Report

“Attorney General WilliamBarr is not fazed by the demands of Congress. An aspiring autocrat like Trump, a would-be King of America, has at last found a man who understands his need for protection.” Ray Smock

 Robert Mueller and William Barr

After a 22-month investigation and 27 days during which Attorney General William Barr has withheld the report from the public and Congress in order to redact material he deems appropriate, the public finally got a look at the Mueller Report.  Trump has already declared “total exoneration” and Barr weeks ago issued a four-page brief instead of Mueller’s summary putting the best possible spin on things embarrassing to the President.  The primary Republican arguments seem to be that if Trump did things openly, such as pressuring officials to resign, or suggested actions that people under him ignored, these should not be considered collusion or obstruction of justice.  We shall see.

Here is an excerpt from Ray Smock’s essay, “The Barr Blunder.  Or is it a pattern?”:

   Who is William Barr and how has he managed so far to stonewall the entire federal government in his protection of the president? He served for about 18 months as George H. W. Bush’s attorney general back in 1991-92. He is a staunch conservative Republican with the typical views of the Constitution that come from places like the Federalist Society, where the “original intent” of the Founders should determine our views of the Constitution.

    Barr supported Trump’s ban on Muslims entering the country, the one the courts threw out. He claims the Founders didn’t think abortion was a good idea, even though they never wrote or spoke about the issue. Beware of people who tell you what the Founders said and thought unless you can find documentary evidence. Barr says Roe v. Wade is settled law and he was not going to challenge it. But given his views on abortion, why wouldn’t he find an opportunity to open this again, especially if President Trump wants this as a campaign issue in 2020?

    In his earlier stint as AG, Barr took a hard line on criminals and believed the United States, the nation with more people incarcerated than any other, should lock up even more criminals to deter crime. We have seen in subsequent decades the bitter fruit of his position with the massive expansion of incarceration and the rise of a private, for-profit jail system that depends on a steady stream of inmates to make it profitable. Whether we like it or not, this is the prevailing attitude of the Republican Party and most Republican senators, and even some Democrats seem unwilling to buck Barr’s hard-liner positions and his narrow view of constitutional law.

                                          IUN student Iris Contreras and Helen Boothe

above, bridge exhibit at IUN; below, Joe Chin bridge lesson

After a run of bad luck, Helen Boothe and I finished strong in duplicate bridge to finish slightly above average (53 percent).  She mentioned a clip on MSNBC where a Parisian reporter asked Pete Buttigieg a question about the Notre dame cathedral fire, and he answered in fluent French.  We bid and made a small slam, as, holding a Diamond singleton, I got the King of Diamonds to fall on my third lead from the board, making my Queen good.  Against a top couple I held 6 Clubs and 6 Hearts and was doubled in five Clubs.  I made an overtrick for top board. Googling Helen’s name, I came across these photos and an article entitled “Sharing bridge and Oral History” in the Unit 154 “Recap Sheet” edited by Kim Grant in Fort Wayne:

    Bridge players and an IU Northwest Oral Indiana History class have been paired together during this fall semester to share bridge experiences and Northwest Indiana days of yore in a weekly correspondence. The students’ journals will be filed in the IU Northwest Calumet Regional Archives as part of the bridge collection. Dr. James Lane is spearheading this unique plan to involve university students in the bridge experience and bridge players to become more familiar with Indiana’s past.  Joe Chin has spoken to the IU oral history students and has given them a beginning lesson about bridge. Joe’s lessons are sprinkled with humor and always have the participants enjoying his thoughtful and worthwhile presentations. We hope that some students will be encouraged to develop an interest in this intriguing game. We have seen several IU students coming to our games — shadowing their assigned partners from the bridge community.

In “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments” Saidiya Hartman used the expression “bull dagger” to describe black butch lesbians.  From Sasha Goldberg’s paper at the Oral History Association conference in Montreal last October I learned that it was Southern slang for what some crudely call bull dikes.  Describing the “beautiful anarchy” on the corner of Seventh and Lombard in Philadelphia, where W.E.B. DuBois did field work for “The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study” (1899), Hartman wrote:

 Slick, fresh-mouthed boys, comely, buxom girls, policy runners, ne’er-do-wells, petty gangsters, domestics, longshoremen, and whores – the young and the striving, the old and the dissipated – gathered. The air was thick with laughter, boasts of conquest, lies bigger than the men who told them.  Idlers loud-talked one another in an orchestrated battle of words.  Pimps crooned, “Hey girl, send it on” to each and every woman under thirty who strolled by. Bull daggers undressed the pretty ones with a glance. . . .  Free association was the only rule and promiscuous social life its defining character. Newcomers refreshed the crowd; strangers became intimates.

 Diana Chen-lin (left) promoted to full professor, 2017

Leaving IUN’s library, I ran into Diana Chen-lin, attending a luncheon honoring faculty whose years of service were multiples of five, in her case 25 years – hard to believe.  Next year will mark 50 years I’ve been associated with the university. I told Diana that if I’m not invited, being officially retired, I plan to come anyway. Coincidentally, Diana had sent me this email earlier in the day:

 Thanks for the latest issue of Steel Shavings! I am going through it slowly and savoring the details about people I know and about the region. It was good to see Toni's picture--she looks really good! And it was good to see Ron Cohen mentioned. I am on a page where you were discussing Tiger Woods' second place finish in the Valspar Championship last year, which seemed to promise Woods would be making a bigger comeback, which he just did. I also found your quote on David Letterman very interesting, having watched Letterman on and off for years. I will continue slowly through the journal and enjoy the reading.

 Kerns at Lake Junaluska, July 10, 2016

Paul Kern, back in Florida after a cross-country drive to see son Colin in California, sent a much longer response; here are highlights:

  I enjoy the references to students from the early days: Jim Reha, Al Renslow, George McGuan, Fred McColly, Dan Simon.  They’re old men now.  I was sorry to see that Tom Eaton died. I didn't know him, but saw him often at Gary high school basketball games in the 70s. He stood out because he never took off his coat, no matter how hot it was in the gym. Lance Trusty was another person I did not get to know, but wish I had.  Every once in a while an event shakes me to the core. Phil turning fifty is one of those events

  McKinney Springs, where your friend Aaron Davis camped on his bicycle trip, is in the Big Bend National Park, our favorite Park. We went there twice and encountered bicyclers both times. Sanderson, where I lived for a few years (first through third grades), is nearby. It was a railroad town and when the Southern Pacific pulled the plug it no longer had any reason to be. Only a few railroad retirees are left. No Country for Old Men was filmed there, but I never watched it because I heard it was very violent. I did read Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy.

  I was glad to read that the Gary Public Library is reopening and sad to hear that Wirt-Emerson is closing. Is Westside the only public high school left in Gary? The gutting of public schooling in America is sickening to watch.

  Allow me to come to the defense of Maximilien Robespierre, not the “architect” of the Terror but, as the spokesman of the Committee of Public Safety in the Convention, it did fall to him to defend the policy, something he did very ably. In the 1950s, inspired by NATO, some American historians, most notably R.R. Palmer, rejected the contrast between the “good” moderate American Revolution and the “bad” radical French Revolution and argued that there had been an age of “Atlantic Revolutions” that had established modern western political values. He called Robespierre one of the great democratic prophets of the eighteenth century, pointing to his belief in equality, including for the slaves in the French West Indies (whom the French Revolution emancipated in contrast to you know who), his belief that democracy required some degree of economic equality that anticipated the modern welfare state, and his suspicion of representative democracy, insisting that elected officials had to be held strictly accountable to the people through frequent elections, recalls, etc. Without quite approving of the policy of Terror, Palmer and others pointed to the relatively small number of deaths and cautioned against exaggerating its violence.

  Vic Bubas may have started Duke's basketball greatness, but more important to the ACC was Everett Case who coached NC State from 1946 into the 60s. Case had coached the Frankfort Hotdogs to four Indiana state championships in the 20s and 30s before he went to NC State. He brought Indiana players to NC State, forcing arch rival North Carolina to hire Frank McGuire from New York and Duke to hire Vic Bubas (one of the Indiana basketball players Case had recruited to NC State) to keep pace.

  I'll have to warn Colin about the pick pockets in Barcelona. He and his girlfriend Kelly are going there for a conference in July. Like you, Colin has become quite the international scholar, having attended conferences in Ireland and Australia the last two years. It sounds like you and Dave had a great trip to Finland.  Reading in “Air” Keller's journal that she has a collection of manga reminds me that Chris had a large collection of manga also. When he graduated from Ohio State, he donated them to the library. They cataloged them as the “Chris Kern Collection.”

  You mention the specter of an unaffiliated historian at the OHA meeting and use the words ominous and tragic to describe the tight academic job market. Exactly. Chris is on a treadmill of one-year gigs and is beginning to wonder if he will have to pursue some other career path. No one wants someone in pre-modern Japanese in an atmosphere in which everyone is paranoid about enrollment. He starts a three-year non tenure track appointment at Auburn in the fall and if nothing pans out by that time it could be his last hurrah.

  There was this period of time during the 1970s when the old sexual morality embodied in the concept of moral turpitude had died but the new morality embodied in concepts of sexual harassment had not been born. You attempt to exonerate faculty who married students by saying that the students took the initiative but by today's standards the relationships would have been highly suspect.

Here is part of my reply: “Thanks so much for the comments about Steel Shavings.  It was great reading names I had not thought about in many years, like student Phil Oretsky and English professor Richard Hull.  I’m always interested in how your sons are doing.  I exchanged emails with Chris after the student wrote about manga. Thanks for telling me about North Carolina State coach Everett Case; I’ll have to learn more about him.  Interesting take on Robespierre; I planned to audit Jonathyne Briggs’ course on the French Revolution but he taught it on line, an unfortunate trend in higher education. Did I write about running into our old colleague Mark Sheldon on campus, dressed nattily as always?  He poked fun of my winter coat (“Are you going hunting?”he said); I replied, “Are you wearing a hat because you’ve gone bald?”  He took it off and was indeed bald.  Later I worried needlessly that he had cancer.

Because of bowling, I missed Billy Foster’s Senior College talk on Big Band vocalists and the film noir event at Valpo U that Peter Aglinskas hosts.  He’s showing “Nightfall” (1957), which co-stars the still lovely Ann Bancroft as a model whose life is in jeopardy after she gives someone wanted by hit men her address. According to reviews, “Nightfall” featured innovative work by cinematographer Burnett Guffey and the skillful use of flashbacks by director Jacques Torneur.  The Engineers won just one game but got free beers because we all struck during the fifth frame; I didn’t even know about that since it’s never happened to us before. Terry Kegebein, a Steel Shavingsrecipient last week, asked how I knew Game Weekend host Jef Halberstadt.  They worked together at Bethlehem Steel (now ArcelorMittal). He took my summer Sixties class 40 years ago and invited me.  I’ve been a regular ever since.

 art by Casey King; below, "Norman the Animal"

IUN student Casey King dropped by to pick up Steel Shavings, which includes excerpts from his journal about being an artist and and examples of his work.  When I mentioned the upcoming Dave Davies concert in Hobart, he said his work was on display right next to the Art Theater at Green Door Books (below).  I dropped by there on the way to bowling and was impressed with the variety and cleverness of Casey’s work. The used books all sell for a dollar, and I hope to drop in before the concert with Josh and Alissa. The owner is an IVY Tech professor.

 Bogazici University overlooking Bosporus

Former IUN Chemistry professor Atilla Tuncay joined Mike Olszanski and me for lunch at Little Redhawk Café.  During the 1960s Tuncay received a degree from Roberts College in Istanbul, renamed Bogazici (Bosporus) University in 1971.  I stayed on its campus 19 years ago while attending an International Oral History Association conference.  Each morning I’d walk down a steep incline, buy coffee at a MacDonald’s, and, seated on a bench, look out on the Bosporus Strait.  When a student, Tuncay said, he’d often see Soviet ships passing by from the Black Sea on their way to the Mediterranean.  Every so often a sailor seeking asylum would jump overboard and attempt to swim to shore.  At its narrowest point the body of water was just a few hundred feet wide.

Jeopardy champ James Holzhauer, a sports gambler, won a one-day record $131,131, breaking his own former total. Having accumulated more than $71,000 prior to Final Jeopardy, he could wager $60,000 without fear of being dethroned after nine days.