Social Distancing

“Put simply, the idea of social distancing is to maintain a distance between you and other people — in this case, at least six feet. That also means minimizing contact with people. Avoid public transportation whenever possible, limit nonessential travel, work from home and skip social gatherings — and definitely do not go to crowded bars and sporting arenas.” New York Times

below, "Let the online teaching begin" Liz photo of Al

Coronavirus pandemic updates are totally dominating the news.  Hoarders are panic-buying items such as toilet paper while others, often Trump supporters, believe news reports to be a hoax or an anti-Trump conspiracy. Democratic frontrunners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders debated on CNN without an audience, and the candidates did an elbow bump rather than shake hands.  Illinois is closing bars and restaurants for the foreseeable future (Indiana followed suit the following day) except for carry-out, yet at O’Hare Airport passengers returning from overseas had to stand in crowded lines for up to four hours in order to pass through customs. Students at every level from preschool to grad school will be working from home. Overseas programs, such as those Alissa directs at Grand Valley State, are in chaos.

In the past 24 hours Banta Center closed and Chesterton Y drastically limited services, so no duplicate bridge. I called off bowling, and teammate Frank Shufran’s knee surgery got cancelled at the last moment. According to a CBS anchor, Isaac Newton apparently invented calculus while working in isolation during the plague years of 1665-1666.  With Trinity College, Cambridge closed, Newton returned to his family estate and worked on his own so successfully that he later referred to that period as the annus mirabilus or “year of wonders.”

After watching Willie Geist discuss binge-watching a TV series on NBC Sunday Today, I checked out “Better Things” on FX, which New York magazine had praised.  Pamela Adlon portrays a single mother and sometime actress with three precocious daughters and an unbalanced mother who likes to swim naked uninvited in a neighbor’s pool.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t get the first couple episodes free On Demand and that commercials interrupted the action every few minutes but nonetheless watched the three available shows with growing interest.  With a husky voice and gravelly laugh, Adlon looked and sounded familiar; I learned that she had been a regular on “Californication.”  Season 3 of “Better Things” almost didn’t happen because  original co-star Louis C.K. was banished after multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.  

Sociologist Chuck Gallmeier studied social distancing, not as a way to prevent catching contagious diseases but as a means of avoiding unwanted interchanges in public places.  Examples are checking email messages while on elevators and closing your eyes seated on airplanes.  I need to consult with Chuck on latest developments, as Americans keep readjusting their lives.  Whereas government officials recommended avoiding crowds of over 100 and then 50, now the number is down to ten.  

In Richard Russo’s “Chances Are,” about three college buddies (Teddy, Lincoln, and Mickey) reuniting 45 years later on Martha’s Vineyard, squeamish Teddy faints dead away when a singer he recognizes as the daughter of a long-lost girlfriend joins Mickey’s band on stage and belts out the opening lines to “Nutbush City Limits.”  

A church house, gin house
A school house, outhouse
On highway number nineteen
The people keep the city clean
They call it Nutbush

Written in 1973 by Tina Turner about her hometown of Nutbush, Tennessee, so small it doesn’t appear on most state maps, at a time when she was suffering at the hands of an abusive husband, “Nutbush City Limits” has an ironic tone, as seen in these lyrics:

No whiskey for sale
You get caught, no bail
Salt pork and molasses
Is all you get in jail

  . . .

Quiet little old community, a one-horse town
You have to watch what you're puttin' down

Rock critic Rick Hasted wrote: “’Limits’ is the key word, as she artfully sketches a circumscribed life [in a place] more like somewhere to escape [from] than like a rural idyll.”      

Buddy Johnson orchestra

Riley “B.B.” King’s autobiography, “Blues All Around Us” describes growing up in a Mississippi Delta sharecropping family. His first vivid memory: braiding his mother Nora Ella’s hair after she had worked all day picking cotton.  From his great-grandmother, a former slave, he learned that blues songs unburdened the soul but also served as a survival mechanism, for example, warning that “massa” was near.  Attending a one-room schoolhouse, Riley had a bad stutter and was more interested in girls than learning.  Nonetheless, teacher Luther Henson impacted his life, convincing him that justice would ultimately prevail over evil.  Hanson’s nephew Purvis performed in Buddy Johnson’s nine-piece orchestra, evidence of the possibility of reaching brighter horizons.  In 1944 the Buddy Johnson Band had a number one rhythm and blues hit, “When My Man Comes Homes,” with Buddy’s sister Ella Johnson on vocals.

 

Toni and I saw B.B. King, who died five years ago at age 90, headline a “House Rockin’ Blues” show at Merrillville’s Star Plaza.  Also on the bill: Buddy Guy, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Albert King.  At B.B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis with the Migoski’s on the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, the performer on stage announced she wouldn’t be playing Elvis songs for tourists but made a reference to Elvis admiring the Blues that was not uncomplimentary.

High school classmate Phil Arnold called and asked if I were a history buff.  As a historian, I replied, I might be called that.  Rummaging through decades-old possessions, he unearthed a map showing Montgomery County, PA, during the period of the American Revolution, including places where General George Washington stayed.  I was familiar with Valley Forge, of course, my home town, Fort Washington, and Whitemarsh, where our Cub Scout Memorial Day parade would end, but not Camp Hill or other places he mentioned.  He’s planning on mailing it to me. As always, I asked Phil to say hello to Bev, unfailingly upbeat despite myriad health concerns.

Phil and Bev Arnold, 2009

According to university scuttlebutt making the rounds, a few longtime professors have never interacted with students via the internet and don’t intend to start, despite expectations that they do so during the current crisis. When I retired a decade ago, rudimentary methods of contacting students online were in place, and I had begun to post assignments and other important messages.  It’s hard to believe that a handful of old-timers are resisting the inevitable. Distance learning is certainly better than none at all.

Looks like no more guest appearances in history colleagues’ classes this semester.  In the fall, if all returns to normal, Nicole Anslover will offer a class on Women in Politics.  Unlike 1990s governors Ann Richards (Texas) and Christine Todd Whitman (NJ), most early women governors and members of Congress succeeded deceased husbands and only served out the remainder of their terms.  Two exceptions were Texan Miriam “Ma” Ferguson and Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas. Ferguson’s husband had been impeached while governor and barred from holding future public office, so “Ma” ran in his place, winning a two-year term in 1924 and again in 1932.  Making no secret that she would lean on her husband for advice, Ferguson used this campaign slogan: “Me for Ma, and I Ain’t Got a Durned Thing Against Pa.”

Hattie Caraway took over husband Thaddeus’’s Senate seat in 1931 and the following year threw her hat into the ring, proclaiming, “The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept these only while someone is groomed for the job.” Senator Huey Long of neighboring Louisiana campaigned for her, and she became the first woman U.S. Senator to serve a full term.  In 1938 Hattie got re-elected after surviving a primary challenge from Representative John McClellan, whose slogan was, “Arkansas Needs Another Man in the Senate.”  Caraway lost a bid for a third term against Congressman J. William Fulbright, a former Razorback star football player and Rhodes scholar.

Industrial Sunset

“Survival’s a victory to be counted,” Machinist-poet Sue Doro, “Blue Collar Divides”

"Industrial Sunset" by Cindy C. Bean

In “Industrial Sunset: The Making of America’s Rust Belt, 1969-1984” Steven High asserts that heartland cities such as Gary that were dependent on a single industry or employer were more susceptible to decisions made at the distant headquarters of multinational corporations, whose self-serving policies often conflicted with local needs.  The purging of labor militants during the Cold War and union leadership’s support of the Vietnam war had weakened union solidarity at a time when collective resistance was vital in struggles that faced overwhelming odds.  Canadian workers had better success in stopping plant closings than their American counterparts, in part because the issue was framed within a nationalist context much more compelling than “Buy American” campaigns.  Canadian historian High concludes: “In spite of the aura of inevitability that surrounds industrial transformation, working people can and do make a difference.”  He references former IUN Labor Studies professor Bruce Nissen’s “Fighting for Jobs: Case Studies of Labor, Community Coalitions Confronting Plant Closings” (1995), which focuses on Northwest Indiana and the Calumet Project for Industrial Jobs, and IUN guest lecturer Staughton Lynd’s “The Fight against Shutdowns: Youngstown’s Steel Mill Closings” (1982).  While “Industrial Sunset” makes valuable use of personal narratives gleaned from oral histories, Steven High warns that they sometimes leave the impression that job loss is an individual rather than a collective experience and minimize past union struggles that garnered widespread popular support.  Although some Region plants closed (i.e., Blaw-Knox Steel Foundry in East Chicago, LTV Steel Bar Mill in Hammond), Northwest Indiana mills still produce steel in record amounts but with a skeleton labor force compared to a half-century ago.  

Flex Maldonado, Jackson 5 mural on cover of "Indy Windy"; Ish Muhammad (right) painting on "Aerosol Wall" (2009)

At a South Shore Arts gallery reception for “Indy Windy: A Love Story,” the first of a two-part “Urban Legends” series, I talked at length with curator Ish Muhammad, a member of CISA (Crazy Indiana Style Artists).  The exhibit booklet, still at the printers when Toni and I visited three days before, contains my essay “Gary Haunts.” After a quotation about urban ruination by Marxist scholar Marshall Berman, my opening paragraph states: “Gary’s haunts lie dormant near Lake Michigan and the steel mills responsible for their creation, sometimes inhabited by the homeless and visited by curiosity seekers and photographers fascinated by urban ruins. Still beautiful, they are representative of the grand illusions of early 20th-century city builders and symptomatic of a throw-away society with a short historic memory.”  Good friend Gloria Biondi asked if I were making any money from them.  The booklet contains “Broken Down Palace” by Chicagoan Eric Hollow (below), a poignant shot of the once-grand Palace Theater, which seated nearly 3,000 when it opened in 1925.  

below, City Methodist, 1960

"Abandoned" by Joey Lax Salinas

“Urban Haunts” curator John Cain grew up in postwar Gary and remembers fondly the way things were when the city “was perhaps at its apotheosis,”before “the great white migration out of the city.”  He wrote:

  City Methodist was where my family went to church. My mother, famously, attended on only three occasions: her wedding day, August 26, 1953; my baptism; and once to play the Virgin Mary in a Christmas Eve pageant in the sanctuary.  I was an angel.  I remember standing beside her, both of us shivering, as she smoked a cigarette on the steps outside waiting for our cue. 

John Attinasi brought 89-year-old jazz horn player Art Hoyle to the Archives for me to interview him.  The previous week, Hoyle had fallen down 12 steps and landed on his head, causing memory problems plus he was shaken by the recent sudden death of longtime friend Robert Shy, drummer in the Art Hoyle quintet. Nonetheless, he had great stories about moving to Gary at age 13 with his mother during the World War II boom years. They resided with his maternal uncle, Dr. Dudley Wellington Turner, who delivered over 300 babies one year and once treated boxer Jack Johnson. Turner needed a housekeeper after losing his wife, and she thought Art could use better discipline and educational opportunities.  Hoyle played freshman football for Roosevelt and scrimmaged against future IU All-American running back George Taliaferro, who, he said, ran over him and most everyone else. Musical influences included Roosevelt instructor Ernest Bennett and Gary band leader Thomas Crump.  Playing in Crump’s band at a Calumet City strip joint, he recalled that they were behind the curtain.  His biggest career mistake, he believed, was quitting the Earl Hines orchestra to join a traveling rock and roll show featuring Lloyd Price and Bo Diddley.   There were no trumpet solos to such Lloyd Price hits as “Stagger Lee” and “Personality,” he lamented.  With Lionel Hampton’s orchestra his long riff to “Smoke gets in Your Eyes” earned a three-minute standing ovation. Hoyle did radio voiceovers and recorded a narration of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” doe a CD.  He donated one to the Archives.  After the hour-long interview, camera operator Samantha Gauer shook hands with Hoyle, honored to have met him. 

At IUN’s Faculty Organization to honor to retiring Sociologist Chuck Gallmeier, I sat next to former head of Technical Services Paul Sharpe, now at IU South Bend but back filling in for an ailing Carol Wood.  “I saw a recent copy of your magazine,” he exclaimed enigmatically.  Several faculty stopped to greet Sharpe, including the Chancellor, who turned to me and said, “What are you doing here?”  Long reports followed on eTextbooks, online courses, and new classroom technology (yawn). The only saving grace was that presenters Dean Mark Hoyert and Director Aaron Pigors were witty.  By the time I was introduced there were less than 2 minutes remaining until adjournment.  I skipped all but my final two paragraphs, telling the audience they could find additional anecdotes on my blog, and concluded by emphasizing that Chuck never let differences on university matters interfere with our friendship.  He later said I had him in tears and joked that, with all the accolades, maybe he’d change his mind and not retire.

 Melba Liston

John Attinasi had told me that he and Art Hoyle would be attending jazz pianist Billy Foster’s 3 p.m. Senior College class.  The timing was perfect, after the Faculty Org but prior to the South Shore Arts reception I thoroughly enjoyed Foster’s commentary and musical selections by bands led by the likes of Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, and Quincy Jones, who not only collaborated with jazz greats but such pop singers as Leslie Gore, Aretha Franklin, and Michael Jackson.  A clip of the Earl Hines group included Art Hoyle playing trumpet; another featured jazz trombonist Melba Liston with Clark Terry’s band.  According to Foster, women band members were uncommon, but Melba’s talents both as a soloist and as an arranger silenced doubters.  Melba formed an all-female quintet and composed for Diana Ross and Tony Bennett.

 Joel Henderson at Campbell Friendship House remains

The Unwanted Collective

naked lady by Veronica Napoli 

After driving through snow and popping a beer, I discovered in the exhibit booklet a photo urban explorer Joel Henderson took of St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital for a series called “LOST to TIME.”  On Comeuppence Network are Henderson'sphotos of abandoned Campbell Friendship House and what’s left of Memorial Auditorium. Also in the booklet were photos by IUN students who formed The Unwonted collective.  Chancellor Lowe used one by Richard Contreras on a Holiday card; Veronica Napoli’s nudes portraits were disconcerting when I saw them in the exhibit and equally unsettling in the booklet.

below Becca and Josh

Granddaughter Becca had the starring role of Maria in the Chesterton H.S. production of “The Sound of Music.”  Near the beginning, she sang the title song walking down the aisle, every few moments stopping to make eye contact with the audience.  My heart melted, I was so proud of her.  Fellow junior Paige Fowler had the role of eldest daughter Louisa, whose little sisters were played by freshman Isabelle Maddex and Maddex’s real-life siblings, sixth grader Jane and second grader Annie, a natural who brightened every scene she appeared in.  Senior Danny Schmiegel, Captain von Trapp, was Seymour in last year’s “Little Shop of Horrors.”  Becca’s friend Josh Sweet was in the ensemble but also played a priest and a Nazi.  At intermission I ran into bridge friend Barb Mort, whose face was blackened from a fall (it looked worse a few days ago, she claimed), there to see Elle Hodge as Countess Elsa, whom von Trapp dumps for Maria.  In the program Elle thanked Danny, her “Turtle King” of four years (was she jealous, I wondered, when Danny kissed Becca on stage?  Not if she’s a true thespian, Toni opined).  The variety of cast members’ first names fascinated me.  The only ones appearing twice were Katie, Emma, and Kayla.  James slept over with bowling buddies Andy English and Liam Craven, along with Phil, in from Grand Rapids, and Beth, up from Carmel.

 Khalil Mack sack

I made pancakes and kielbasa Sunday for our guests and perused “Industrial Sunset” after Arkansas edged IU in basketball by a single point despite Hoosier freshman sensation Romeo Langford’s 22 points. Worse yet, New Orleans was slaughtering the Philadelphia Eagles, and I heard about the career-threatening injury to Redskin QB Alex Smith.  In the evening, however, the Bears proved they were for real, defeating Minnesota despite a mediocre performance by QB Mitch Trubisky, thanks to amazing play by the defense.  Michael Chirich had friends over whom, he said, spent as much time looking at “Gary: A Pictorial History” as the game.  Dan Vance discovered himself in a 1985 Post-Tribphoto by Chuck Dillard taken at the Alibi Lounge on Miller Brews Brothers Night, Monday, December 2, 1985. That evening the Bears suffered their only loss of the season, 38-24, to the Miami Dolphins.

 Coach Jerry Vlasic

Longtime Bishop Noll football coach (1971-1996) Jerry Vlasic died at age 81.  His 1975 squad went undefeated, and in 1989 the Noll Warriors won the Class 3A championship, beating Indianapolis Roncalli 20-14.  Former player Joe Angyus recalled: “Coach Vlasic became the person to whom I needed and looked to for direction.  He was larger than life, had a way of having fun, yet was a fierce competitor and had a similar effect on so many.”  Players recalled him always donning shorts at practice, regardless of the weather. When I was a Portage Little League coach, he was often at games, in shorts that showed off his muscular legs. He was big handsome, charismatic guy. Wish I had known him better.

Being Thanksgiving week, a surprisingly large number of couples, nine, showed up for duplicate bridge at Chesterton YMCA.  People brought up the bridge Newsletter photo of Jim and Marcia Carson wearing crowns as Barbara Walczak noted their monster 76.39% game.  I wondered if Walczak might have doctored the original, but on vacation in the Alps they had been dubbed king and queen of the Matterhorn.  Charlie Halberstadt and I finished first with a 68.75%, worth .90 of a master point.  Chuck and Marcy came in second with a 66.67%, usually enough to win.  The margin of difference was that we made a small slam against them, thanks to Charlie’s bold bid of six Diamonds.  All evening we got favorable trump splits.  Marcy brought up that classes were cancelled all week both at VU and IUN.  She attended IUN when the university even held classes the day before Thanksgiving, including Wednesday evening.  When the issue came up for debate in the Faculty Org, Rhiman Rotz and Jack Bloom were defenders of the status quo while most of us sympathized with faculty who needed to be home preparing for next day’s dinner. Many simply cancelled class.

Kidding

“Please don’t use a bad word when you can use a good word,” Jeff Pickles (Jim Carrey) in “Kidding”

The Showtimeseries “Kidding” was a tour de force for versatile actor Jim Carrey, who plays Jeff Piccirillo, host of a children’s TV show, “Mr. Pickles’ Puppet Time,” modeled after “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”  In the course of ten episodes Jeff struggles to keep his sanity as a son dies in a car accident, his wife leaves him, and a second son starts smoking pot and displaying dangerously aggressive behavior.  When he tapes an episode about loved ones passing away, his father Seb, the show’s producer (a marvelous Frank Langella) refuses to air it because it might upset his young audience. One of the show’s fans is a killer on death row whose execution Jeff attends; the lethal injection enters the condemned man’s arm in the center of his tattoo, a fly modeled after a puppet on the show.  Later, when Jeff destroys his father’s office, we see that he now has the same tattoo on his arm.  I’ve re-watched every episode of “Kidding” and find subtleties I missed the first time, like all the witnesses to the execution having red hair like the victims. Voxreviewer Karen Han summed up the series perfectly when she called Carrey a marvel and “Kidding” “wonderful, terrifying, and heartbreaking at the same time.”  Mr. Pickles’ final advice to parents before his show went off the air: listen to your children.

 above, Ish Muhammad; below, Felix "Flex" Maldonado, Times photo by Joseph Pete

Toni and I attended John Cain’s 25th annual Holiday Reading, Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory,” at South Shore Arts in Munster.  Beforehand, we enjoyed the gallery exhibit “Windy Indy,” curated by self-taught artist Ish Muhammad and featuring several pieces by graffiti artist Felix Maldonado.  Donna Catelano, my book club companion and South Shore special projects director, greeted me. The second part of the Urban Legendsseries, “Haunts,” will open in February and highlight guerrilla explorers of such Gary architectural ruins as City Methodist Church, Union Station, Horace Mann School, and the Palace Theater.  Since I wrote the catalogue essay, Cain provided free tickets and wants me to return for a February talk and gallery tour that is part of the Art in Focus series.  I chatted with friends from IUN and Miller, including Al Renslow and Judy Ayers.  I told Nick Mantis, who is producing a documentary on Region bard Jean Shepherd, I was looking forward to his February Art in Focus lecture titled “The Making of Shep: A Filmmaker’s Progress.” 

below, Jim West and John Cain

Buddy and Sook

Cain told Post-Trib feature writer Philip Potempa: “I never met or saw Truman Capote in person. However, one of my prized keepsakes came when I was 30 years old and I purchased a used copy of ‘A Christmas Memory’ from a book store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The book not only turned out be a first edition, it was also signed by Capote, making it extra special.”Potempa summarized “A Christmas Memory” in this manner:

  Originally published as a feature article in Mademoisellemagazine in December 1956, “A Christmas Memory” captures the folksy atmosphere of Capote’s youth with the aroma of pecan pies and the flickering of candles in the windows of homes back in December of a 1930s Alabama. It follows the dreams of a young boy named Buddy (the name Capote used as a youth) and his friendship with his eccentric relatives, including his much older cousin and best friend, "Sook."  Capote lived with “a spinster aunt,” and one of his favorite traditions was helping mail fruitcakes [he helped Soot make] to everyone from actress Jean Harlow to President Franklin Roosevelt, as a means to feel a connection to the famous names of the day.

One humorous highlight is when Buddy accompanies Sook to a menacing bootlegger’s den in order to buy a bottle of whiskey for the fruitcakes. After finishing their labors, the cousin pours the remaining liquor into two glasses and they celebrate, much to the chagrin of uptight relatives.  At Christmas Soot imagines Mrs. Roosevelt serving their fruitcake at the White House.  Shortly after that holiday, Capote’s family sent him off to a military academy, but over the years he continued to receive fruitcakes from his beloved childhood companion.

I moved into a first-place tie in Fantasy Football by defeating nephew Garrett Okomski on the strength of 26 points from Eagles tight end Zach Ertz.  Needing a substitute kicker with mine on a bye week, I lucked out with former Bear Robbie Gould, who kicked 3 field goals for San Francisco, including one over 50 yards, on a weekend when Bears kicker Cody Parkey missed 2 3-pointers and 2 extra points.

The granddaughter of Elbert H. Gary’s brother visited the Archives in search of information about Bishop Herman Alerding, who founded a Gary settlement house for foreign-born Catholics that bore his name.  In 1920 Alerding wrote to U.S. Steel Board Chairman Elbert Gary appealing for money, using this rationale: “A Catholic settlement house would result in more and more amicable relations between employer and employee.  Americanization would be a good investment, an insurance not only against atheism, but against communism.”Judge Gary responded by donating $100,000.

On Jeopardy none of the high school contestants knew the sport African-American heavyweight champ Jack excelled in.  Incorrect answers included baseball and golf.  On the other hand, unlike me they knew all the Bodies of Water answers, but only one in three recognized that it was Betsy Ross ousted by the Quakers when she married an Episcopal upholsterer and subsequently took over his business after his death.

 Sara Teasdale

Post-Trib columnist Philip Potempa was judged a poetry recital at La Lumiere school in LaPorte. Winner Lauren Jordanich chose “Let It be Forgotten,” a 1924 poem by rebel and suicide victim Sara Teasdale:

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,

Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,

Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten

Long and long ago,

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall

In a long forgotten snow.

Another student recited “The Days Gone By” by Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley. Its final verse goes: 

O the days gone by! O the days gone by! 

The music of the laughing lip, the luster of the eye; 

The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin’s magic ring— 

The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything,— 

When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh, 

In the golden olden glory of the days gone by.

 James Whitcomb Riley

In “The Winter of Trump’s Discontent,” Ray Smock wrote about the President’s latest display of embarrassing behavior:

  The president went to Paris to join other world leaders in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Unfortunately, he could not muster enough energy to go to an American cemetery where more than 6,000 American soldiers, mostly Marines, are buried in sweeping semi-circles of white crosses interspersed with rose bushes. These honored dead were the casualties of the Battle of Belleau Wood about 50 miles from Paris during the month of June 1918. President Trump blamed his absence on the rainy weather. Somehow other world leaders got there just fine. Later he blamed his protocol people for not telling him that a no-show was bad for his image. When he returned to the United States, this same president who castigates the patriotism of NFL players who kneel during the playing of the National Anthem in protest of civil rights violations could not muster the strength to visit Arlington Cemetery, just 2.1 miles from the White House, on Veteran’s Day. Clearly, the president is distracted by other things right now. 

From Martinsburg, West Virginia, Ray Smock attached this caption to a photo: “It’s elementary Watson! The suspect walked down the driveway, picked up the Washington Post, went to the mailbox, back-tracked to the garbage can, and wheeled it back to the house.”

Wildfires are out of control in California and a nor’easter has blanketed the East Coast. Back home in Chesterton, I shoveled two inches of wet snow (heart attack snow, Toni calls it) from the sidewalk and drove to IUN in preparation for a big day Friday.  In the morning I’ll interview 89-year-old jazz horn player Art Hoyle, who moved to Gary at age 13 with his mother and lived with an uncle, a pediatrician who insisted on discussing books Art was reading by the likes of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens at the dinner table.  At Gary Roosevelt Art came under the tutelage of music teacher Ernest Bennett and played in a jazz band that performed at school dances. His future wife attended Froebel and was part of a greeting committee that met Frank Sinatra prior to his performance at a Tolerance concert during the Froebel school strike.  At age 19, prior to joining the air force, Hoyle played in Thomas Crump’s orchestra in Calumet City and learned how properly to back up vocalists.  During a 70-year career that included stints with bands led by Sun Ra and Lionel Hampton and gigs in Europe and at Chicago’s best venues, Hoyle is still going strong. In 2010 he told Chicago Jazz Magazine: “I’m still working enough to keep the flies off.” 

 Alessandro Portelli

Preparing for the Art Hoyle interview, I re-read Sandro Portelli’s Oral History Review essay “Living Voices: The Oral History Interview as Dialogue and Experience.” Portelli wrote: “Our task is not only to extract information, but to open up narrative spaces.”  He argues that an interview is an exchange of gazes -  a co-created moment in a relationship between the past and the time of the telling.  Portelli recalled interviewing Kentucky civil rights activist Julia Cowans in 1983, who began by saying that she didn’t trust him because he was white and then spent many hours explaining why that was so.  Here is Portelli’s final paragraph:

  “Never trust a white school teacher,”says Baby Suggs, a character in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. So here I am, a white schoolteacher who learned the meaning of oral history because a black woman did not trust me, and because she trusted me enough to tell me why. 

 Ish Muhammad collage

In the evening I’ll attend an artists’ reception at South Shores Arts gallery for the exhibit “Indy Windy: A Love Story” and hope to give free copies of “Gary: A Pictorial History” to Ish Muhammad, who curated the show, and other Region artists who are in the book and the exhibit.  Beforehand, I’ll pay tribute to retiring colleague Chuck Gallmeier at an afternoon gathering of IUN faculty.  This is what I plan to say:

  The first time I recall conversing with Chuck was at a 2-day retreat Chancellor Peggy Elliott arranged at Avalon Manor in Chesterton.  I hadn’t known what to make of this tall, handsome, long-haired ladies man.  From our very first conversation I realized this was someone I wanted to know better. At lunch on the final day of the retreat, after a rather tedious morning, faculty and administrators dined in two adjacent rooms.  Chuck and I opted for the one without the bigwigs.  A waitress came to take drink orders; most folks ordered coke, sprite or lemonade.  Chuck and I opted for something stronger; immediately almost everyone else switched to beer, wine or a cocktail.  Five or 10 minutes later, a waiter entered carrying a tray of soft drinks.  “That must be for the other room,”Gallmeier said deadpan, drawing hearty laughs all around the table.  

  During the next quarter-century Chuck established himself not only as IUN’s most popular teacher but as one of the very best, right up there with Sociologist Bob Lovely, my former colleague Jerry Pierce, and English profs George Bodmer and Anne Balay.  When I talk with alumni about memorable professors, these names come up most frequently. 

  Chuck was much in demand to teach Swing Shift courses to steelworkers. Labor Studies staff member Mike Olszanski taped classes for those unable to attend.  Oz confided to me that Gallmeier normally let it all hang out and frequently used salty language; but one evening he noticed that Chuck had really toned things down.  During the break he realized why – a student had brought her 8-year-old daughter. That’s typical of his concern for students.

  Chuck once asked me to take over his class because of university obligations in Bloomington.  Beforehand, I watched him in action and found the experience scintillating.  When my turn came, a fair share of students had read the assignment -  about the Central Park 5 case - and were both eager to hear what I had to say on the subject and prepared to engage meaningfully with each other.  Chuck had primed them to assume an active role in the learning experience but to stay within the boundaries of mutual respect. 

  As a longtime chair of the Faculty Organization Gallmeier was a worthy successor to such distinguished predecessors as “Founding Fathers” Jack Buehner and Bill Neil, soft-spoken Fred Chary and John Ban, union activists Lew Ciminillo and Esther Nicksic, erudite Bill Reilly, curmudgeons George Roberts and George Bodmer, no-nonsense IUN grad Linda Rooda, and diplomat Mary Russell. I can think of nobody who has devoted more time and energy than Chuck in providing necessary faculty input to administrators.  He and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye on university matters – he was more the pragmatist while I was more outspoken in criticizing questionable actions of our “Old Boys” network.  While faculty can often be petty about holding grudges, Chuck never, ever let university matters ruin our friendship.

   Several years ago, Bill Neil, IUN’s first elected Faculty Org chair, who hired me, spoke to this body about a recently deceased colleague, George Thoma, I think, or perhaps Herman Feldman.  Bill confessed that what he most missed about the university was the collegiality.  So do many of us, and that is one reason why I suspect that we will continue to see my good friend around campus for many years to come.  Let’s hope so. I can’t imagine IUN without him.