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.   

I Found Out

“It's not the love that's in your mind
It's the love that you might find
That's gonna save our lives”

    The Head and the Heart, “I Found Out

On September 11 the Head and the Heart performed at 20 Monroe in Grand Rapids, where 8 of us saw them last year.  They put on such an awesome show then that Phil, Dave, nephew Bob, and I traveled to Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown, California, my favorite roadhouse, for a special midnight show prior to their appearance at the Coachella Valley Music Festival.  Phil offered to go with me again, but both of us have been busy. I love the band’s new CD “Living Mirage,” especially “Missed Connection” and “I Found Out,” whose chorus is in my head. John Lennon recorded a different song by the same title on the 1970 “Plastic One Band” album that Red Hot Chili Peppers covered on the tribune CD “Working Class Hero.”  Expressing disillusionment with false idols and panaceas, Lennon wrote this lyric:

I've seen through junkies, I been through it all
I've seen religion from Jesus to Paul
Don't let them fool you with dope and cocaine
No one can harm you, feel yer own pain

I finished first in duplicate two days in a row, partnering with Charlie Halberstadt in Chesterton and Don Giedemann in Valpo, with whom I’d never played. Returning after long stints on the DL were Dee Browne and Karen Fieldhouse. Partnering with Pam Missman was a woman who introduced herself as Sarabel Nowlin, adding it rhymes with Clarabell – the mute clown on “The Howdy Doody Show” that aired afternoons between 1947 and 1960 during my childhood and teen years.  Sarabel’s niece, Marcia Carson, had brought delicious, home-bakes chocolate chip cookies to the Chesterton game the previous evening. One weird hand, Don opened a strong 2 Diamonds (18 or 19 points with even distribution), and I responded 2 Spades, indicating 7 or more points.  He bid 4 Clubs, asking for Aces, and when I signaled none, he bid 4 Spades, meaning I’d play the hand, being the first to bid that suit, despite holding just a Spade singleton. Don lay down Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and 2 other Spades, but one opponent was void in trump and the other had 6, as many as were in the dummy.  I ended up down one but tied for high board as 3 No Trump twice got set 2 and 6 Spades went down 4 doubled.

 Judy Selund and Don Geidemann at Portage Riverwalk; P-T photo by Carole Carlson

Corey Hagelberg dropped off posters announcing a “Northwest Indiana Youth Rally” at Portage Open Air Pavilion, organized by an IUN freshman who graduated from Portage High.  One consequence of global warming: rising water levels have eradicated Lake Michigan beachfront Portage Riverwalk.  I gave one to Raoul Contreras, adviser to the Public Affairs Club.  

 homeless man in Boulder; below, Willie Baronet

Several posters adorn faculty office windows reading, “This Is Awkward For Me, Too,” publicizing an IUN gallery exhibit titled “We Are All Homeless.” Willie Baronet, a creative advertising professor at Southern Methodist University, collected the signs used by indigents begging for help over a 20-year period.  Many were featured in the 2014 documentary “Signs of Humanity.” 

The Valparaiso University Invisible Project “Stories of Home and Homelessness” contains interviews with victims forced to seek shelter wherever they could. Co-directors Alison Schuette and Liz Wuerffel wrote, “Homelessness does not always look the way we imagine, and the homeless are important and valuable members of our community.”  A woman who suffered a nervous breakdown and lost her job, the use of the trailer she’d been living in, and custody of her children, told them:

I was in a car. And not wanting to ask for any help whatsoever. But finally I had to stay at my parents’ house, and my parents were trying to take the discipline type of road with me because I was acting out. They didn’t understand mental illness at the time. So, I slept on the couch, and I had a laundry basket with just my possessions. That was it. And I did that for an entire year. Which was very difficult, because I was in a household that didn’t understand what was going on with me. And then Housing Opportunities saved my life. They were fantastic, but I was on a waiting list for about a year. But they were wonderful, they talked to me. They were compassionate and helpful. The application process was painless. It’s sad that I had to wait a year, but they actually checked on me, also, to see, you know, how my situation was going and everything.

Housing Opportunities, a community-sustained nonprofit, provides a variety of services for the homeless in Porter and LaPorte counties. Its website states: “Some of our clients are not able to work due to crisis or disability. Some clients are professionals with college degrees who’ve hit hard times. Many clients are working or underemployed at minimum wage, struggling to support themselves or their families.”

As part of Indiana University’s Bicentennial Celebration, an IUN program will highlight faculty research projects, with professors speaking just 8 minutes.  My offer to report on “A Queer History of IU Northwest” was summarily rejected, as friends predicted, despite “queerness” currently being a hot topic in academia. I had been cautiously optimistic, if the decision was left to faculty and out of the hands of administrators.  In a form letter, Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Cynthia Odell wrote: “The selection committee, composed of representatives from the academic units, was very impressed with the breadth and depth of the proposals and had a difficult time making their final selections. Regretfully, your proposal was not selected for presentation this year. However, we hope to make this an annual event and encourage you to apply again in the future.”  I replied: “People told me my topic, “A Queer History of IU Northwest, was too controversial and certain to be turned down, but since I vowed not to mention names, I had hoped IUN had advanced into the twenty-first century.”  The shadow of queer scholar Anne Balay’s nemesis still looms large despite his recent retirement.

Fifteen years ago, when Paul Kern and I published “Educating the Calumet Region,” we mentioned the short-lived existence of the Gay/Lesbian/Bi-sexual Alliance during the 1980s and Pride Alliance in the 1990s, but did not mention that virtually all non-tenured gay faculty were closeted.  We also decided to leave out an incident when a professor rumored to be gay was removed from the classroom on spurious grounds.  Clearly the time has come to explore in depth this subject despite what others might think. “Educating the Region” contains this testimony by former librarian Ellen Bosman, now head of technical services at New Mexico State (below):

  During the late-1990s IUN’s handbook mentioned the existence of a club for gay and lesbian students but listed no adviser.  Its club statement implied a degree of secrecy I thought unnecessary and demeaning. I offered to be faculty adviser, and we rewrote the club description to make it more positive and inclusive.  One of our goals was to get people to embrace a concept of diversity that included sexual orientation.

  When the club was functioning, a good turnout would be maybe eight people.  We got to know each other and realized we weren’t so isolated.  We had a variety of activities, including a photo display, “Love Makes a Family,” that showed gay and lesbian couples with their children. One guest speaker talked about his bisexual experiences.  He was married, and his wife was aware of his lifestyle.  We brought in high school students from Evanston, including one who was transgendered, to talk about their experiences.

  We wanted people to realize our presence on campus.  For National Coming Out Day, we got big buckets of chalk and marked up the sidewalks with sayings, such as “Oscar Wilde was gay.”Some students were offended when we used African-American names such as Bessie Smith and Langston Hughes. They’d say, “How do you know they were gay?”  We’d say, “We didn’t make this up.  It can be verified in the library.” Sometimes when we put up signs, they’d be taken down. Eventually we got them put in locked cabinets.  Others claimed we were going against God’s will and expressed disappointment that such a club existed at IUN.

  After years of haggling, IU approved a domestic partner benefits program.  It allows same sex partners to register with the university and have their partners eligible for health coverage.
 

Noticing students and staff staring out windows in the Arts and Sciences Building, I found out that a careless driver had turned onto Broadway and plowed into someone legally in the crosswalk.  Next day, a female African-American IUN police officer told me the victim, likely in shock, originally claimed to be all right but was taken in an ambulance to be checked out.  It brought back memories of English professor George Bodmer struck and badly injured jaywalking near the accident site – one reason traffic signals were installed.  Until fairly recently, IUN’s police force was all-male and employed mostly white former Gary men in blue.  Researching “Educating the Region,” I interviewed African American Don Young, who endured hazing as a rookie and patrolled make-out areas in the evening such as Raintree Auditorium, isolated spots in the library, and far edges of parking lots (a dead giveaway that he’d find a couple in a compromising position).  I’ll mention Young’s experiences in explaining to Jon Becker’s freshmen seminar students the difference between a social and administrative history.
  

In the third week of bowling the Engineers salvaged one game against the Boricuas (the name indigenous Puerto Ricans called their island) mainly due to Ron Smith’s 213 in the finale.  Opponents Melody and Jaime Delgado brought a well-behaved baby. The Hobert Lanes manager wouldn’t switch channels to the Cubs game (causing me to miss Yu Darvish’s 6 shutout innings and 14 strikeouts); he claimed to be too busy juggling myriad duties at the counter and tending bar.  Instead we were stuck with a soap opera, mercifully on mute

 below, Zander Delgado; right, proud parents

Jim Spicer’s weekly witticism:

  Upon hearing that her elderly grandfather had just passed away, Katie went straight to her grandparent’s house to visit her 95-year old grandmother and comfort her. When she asked how her grandfather had died, her grandmother replied,“We were making love on Sunday morning.” Horrified, Katie told her grandmother that two people nearly one hundred years old having sex would surely be asking for trouble. “Oh no, my dear,”replied her grandmother. “Many years ago, realizing our advanced age, we figured out the best time to do it was when the church bells would start to ring. it was just the right rhythm. Nice and slow and even. Nothing too strenuous, simply in on the ding and out on the dong.”She paused to wipe away a tear and continued, “He’d still be alive if the ice cream truck hadn’t come along.”

 monuments in Marysville (left) and Sacramento

Prepping for Chris Young’s upcoming book club talk on the Pony Express, I found out that monuments exist in towns along the mail route from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.  One pictured in Jim DeFelice’s “West Like Lightning” is in the Marysville, Kansas, town square.  Sculpted by Richard Bergen, it depicts Jack Keetley, who traveled a trail leading to Big Sandy, located in Woodson County, where a pony truss bridge over Big Sandy Creek was recently removed but a cemetery contains the remains of several riders.

On September 11, 2001, watching the Today Showat breakfast, I witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center towers right before leaving to teach a U.S. History class at IUN’s Portage Center. From the car radio I found out that planes had rammed into the Pentagon and mysteriously crashed in western Pennsylvania. In class, one I’ll never forget, I talked about events that live in infamy, including the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor and JFK’s assassination, as well as meeting a Shiite family in Saudi Arabia while teaching in IU’s overseas program during the mid-80s.  One student had suggested I dismiss them.  I replied that anyone was free to leave, but nobody did. Colleague Rhiman Rotz, who was adviser to the Muslim Student Association, was critically ill at the time, and his last thoughts were concern for those students.

Network commentators are treating Trump’s dismissal of National Security adviser John Bolton as yet another example of a dysfunctional White House. Thoughtful liberals should be shouting hosannas. As Trump himself said, Bolton was a relentless hawk who would have the country warring on fronts from Venezuela and Cuba to Iran and North Korea. If I could cheer Nixon on the day he recognized China, I can breathe a sigh of relief with Bolton gone, whatever the cause.  Trump, first and foremost, is an America Firster, isolationist in foreign policy but unfortunately the ally of predatory capitalists and white supremacists.  A rank opportunist, he assumed this image for political gain and is beholden to those MAGA faithful that remain his base of support.

Toni was cutting up basil, and the aroma reached me in the basement. In Fort Washington neighbor Herb Sadtler, who shared our two-car garage, loved to brag about his herb garden, so we pronounced his name with the “H” silent, like “erb.”  Toni served basil atop a hamburger patty, and it was quite tasty when, at Toni's urging, I got around to eating it.  Ray Arredondo emailed me the obit he wrote for wife Trish, a good friend and collaborator on “Maria’s Journey.” He wrote this poignant remembrance: “Her love of nature and gardening brought her joy and she spent many long days outside, creating her garden “rooms.”  Although she would often comment about the deer and bunnies eating her blooms, she never did one thing to deter them.”

Trish, Maria, Ray Arredondo

Homefront

 “Baby baby baby, what's wrong with Uncle Sam?

He's cut down on my sugar, now he's messin' with my ham
I got the ration blues, blue as I can be
Oh me, I've got those ration blues”

         Ration Blues,” Louis Jordan

In Nicole Anslover’s World War II class I passed out copies of Steel Shavings, volume 46 in preparation for my appearance next week to discuss the Gary Homefront. I pointed out short sections for them to read beforehand on Pearl Harbor memories, civil rights activist L.K. Jackson, and Gary in 1942 as portrayed in Kendall Svengalis’ novel “The Great Emerson Art Heist.”  The Pearl Harbor section makes mention of Vic and Midge, 25 on Pearl Harbor Day, and awaiting my birth some two months later.  A fourth selection by IUN student Jessica Nieman about farm girl Jean Schultz Ellis demonstrated that much of Lake and Porter County was rural in those days.  Nieman wrote:

 The youngest of six, Jean gathered eggs, fed the chickens, and brought in the cows.  When Jean was 14, she had her eyebrows done for school picture day, and they swelled up.  “My mom was pissed,” she recalled.  Jean was first in her family to graduate high school.   She said, “At 16 you could stop going.  My older sister would buy me clothes to keep me in school. She wanted me to succeed.”  She was one of 28 graduates in Chesterton’s class of 1943.  Jean had started waitressing at Edward’s Barbecue when just 14.   She learned to drive in her mother’s 1934 Ford.   A Chesterton movie theater had midweek dime shows, which made for an affordable evening out. Jean also loved roller-skating.

above, Jean Shultz at 14; below, Jessica Nieman with "Pally" and Jean

Next I read several passages to demonstrate the city’s wartime blue collar nature and being home to dozens of ethnic groups, as well as Southern white and black newcomers needed in the mills and defense plants.  First I recited Robert Buzecky’s “Steel City, Stone City,” which begins: 

Buzecky, Militich, Rodriguez, Kowalak,

Thousands of Somebodies

From all over the planet.

Names make them different

Blue shirts and steel made them family.

I read brief excerpts from student articles by Lori Van Gorp (about Florence Medellin living in the heart of Gary’s red-light district) and Kristin MacPherson, who learned about her Italian grandparents Wilbur and Margaret from her father Donald Rettig.  Wilbur worked at a title company, drove a taxi, and kept the books for a bowling league.  Margaret worked part-time in the bowling alley kitchen and was famous for a cinnamon streusel coffee cake.  Donald told Kristin:

    My mom loved Dean Martin and Perry Como. The aroma of food was always in the air, with a pot of spaghetti sauce or soup on the stove. Noodles might be drying over chairs or homemade ravioli scattered over the dining room table. I will never forget my mom wringing a chicken’s neck and nailing it to the garage to clean it.  We had the biggest garden in the neighborhood. Everyone helped.  Mom canned tomatoes, beans, and beets and made pickles, jellies, and jams.  At Easter there’d be a lamb cake, and at Christmas containers of cookies were on each step going upstairs. No one ever left hungry.  

    My mother’s sisters would come over to play cards.  They’d speak Italian and laugh for hours.  We’d sneak under the big dining room table in hopes they’d drop some coins.  After bedtime we’d peek through the floor grate and watch them.

 Wilbur, Margaret and Don Rettig

Since Vee-Jay Records co-founder Vivian Carter was on the cover, I explained that during the war she joined the Quartermaster Corps and was stationed in Washington. D.C., broadening her horizons and discovering  musicians that she later recorded.  I explained that many black performers in the 1940s had crossover hits and were popular with white audiences, not only jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington but vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole (my father’s favorite) and harmony groups such the Mills Brothers and Ink Spots that influenced Gary’s own Spaniels, pictured on the back cover. Up-tempo band leaders such as Cab Calloway (who appears in the 1980 “Blues Brothers” film performing “Minnie the Moocher”) and Louis Jordan belted out “jump” music that presaged rock and roll. I had Nicole play YouTube excerpts from “If I Didn’t Care” by the Ink Spots and “Caldonia” by Louis Jordon and the Tympany Five.  The latter begins:

Walkin’ with my baby she's got great big feet
She’s long, lean, and lanky and ain’t had nothing to eat
She’s my baby and I love her just the same
Crazy ’bout that woman cause Caldonia is her name

Next week, I’ll play “Ration Blues” by Louis Jordan, which contains this verse:

They reduced my meat and sugar
And rubber's disappearing fast
You can't ride no more with poppa
'Cause Uncle Sam wants my gas

Speaking about the war in the Pacific, Nicole brought up the army’s use of Navaho code talkers (above) to communicate in the field, since almost nobody outside the tribe could speak their unique language.   The Japanese could never crack it.  After class a student named Heather had the magazine open to a page containing a photo of M to F transgender Dakota Yorke, a 2016 Portage High School homecoming queen finalist.  “Dakota’s my best friend,”Heather exclaimed, and showed me that she had sent a photo of the page to Dakota, who texted back that she was really excited and anxious to read what I’d written.

above, Dakota; below, woodcut by Corey Hagelberg

At bridge Dick and Cheryl had noticed a photo of son Corey’s woodcut “We All Share the Same Roots” in the new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History” and inquired about obtaining it.  I offered to trade one for an out-of-print copy of the “Tales of Lake Michigan and the Northwest Indiana Dunelands” Steel Shavings (volume 28, 1998), which they produced three days later.  It contains an interview with a former bowling acquaintance whom I nicknamed “Slick Tom” where he talked about picking up girls along the Lake Michigan shoreline in his cabin cruiser.  The steelworker bragged:

 In the summer I’d trade with everybody to get on straight midnights so I could cruise the beach to see who I could pick up.  A good spot was Lake Street.  Usually I’d take a friend.  By 11 or 12 o’clock, girls would be out sunbathing.  You might pick up one, two, three or four girls.  It was easy.  You just looked to see who was waving their arms.  When a girl starts flagging down a boat, it usually sends a signal that they are ready to party.  You pulled in, and if they weren’t good-looking, you pulled back away.

 Once my cousin and I picked up two pretty-looking girls.  We thought they were in their mid-20s.  We zoomed out about a mile and a half and started drinking some wine.  We were getting out of our bathing suits when I asked one girl how old she was.  I found out the two girls were 14 and 15 years old.  Needless to say, we got them dressed very quickly and rushed them back to shore.

 If we saw a good-looking girl who didn’t wave, we’d get out the inner tube and tie it to the back of the boat. I’d get on it.  Then my buddy would race in close towards shore and spin the boat and make the tube go right into the beach.  I’d stumble up on shore and say, “Hey, my name’s Tom.  We need three people to water ski.  Would you like a boat ride and be an observer?”  That worked like a champ.  Initially, they might say no, they were engaged or married.  Once they were on the boat for a few hours, after some persuasion and some drink, the changes in their demeanor were amazing.

“Tales of Lake Michigan” also contains my interview with Region Dunes artist David Sander (1923-1999), who told me:

 I was in the navy during World War II. After my discharge, I went back to the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill.  I met and married a classical language student, who was not familiar with the Dunes.  One day we drove to have a look at them.  It just happened that we parked next to a station wagon that had a Chesterton real estate address.  We asked the lady to show us some land.  The first place she showed us, we bought, a 40-acre tract in Beverly Shores at the end of a road that had a house, a barn, and a set of batteries because we were too far for city electricity.

 The former owner was an old Hungarian farmer.  He and his wife lived in a little milk house for several months after we purchased the land. She used to walk to Chesterton and try to sell articles they no longer needed, like a butter churn.  She’d be saying things in Hungarian, and people thought she was crazy.  Finally their son came and rescued them.

 I started painting again.  Lake Michigan became part of my nature.  Mostly I painted the Dunes.  Without people.  People-less dunes. I found the less I put into a painting, the more original it was.  After all, a painting is a rendering of a subject, not the subject itself.  The details are not the subject of a painting. The true artist creates something which is an amalgam, different and presumably greater than either him or his subject.

I vividly recall scores of dunes paintings scattered all over Sander’s home, seemingly discarded, and not having the nerve to ask him for one or two.  Not long afterwards, he was dead.

 Marcus Brown; photo by Beverly Brown

After winning the first game from 2 L’s and 2 R’s, the Engineers had only one strike in the entire second game and lost by 70 pins, as Marcus Brown bowled in the 240s,well above his average.  I had felt a twinge in my upper leg and briefly considered sitting out the finale.  Then, after a spare, split and missed 10-pin, I strung six strikes in a row and then converted a a spare, finishing with a 221, my highest score since I started at Hobart Lanes.  I got several fist bumps from bowlers nearby.  The Engineers picked up an amazing 17 strikes in that one game to win handily and garner 5 of 7 points.  I edged Joe Piunti, who won game one for us, for most pins over average by a mere 2 pins for the four-dollar pot.  Afterwards, I asked Dorothy Peterson and Gene Clifford how they liked “Shrek: The Musical” Sunday. They enjoyed it, but a woman near them with a young girl was complaining about hearing three curse words.  That was news to me.  They must have been pretty inoffensive.  Gene and Dorothy have tickets for “Million Dollar Quarter” at the Munster Theater.

Dorothy Peterson

Zion Williamson on ground

Nike stock fell more than 1% after Duke star Zion Williamson’s sneaker imploded 33 seconds into a game with North Carolina and he injured a knee.  Nike had signed a lucrative deal with the university that mandated players wear their brand even though they received nothing but free sneakers while Coach K’s annual salary rose to in the neighborhood of 10 million dollars. What a farce.

Mad Dog

“The essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp”

Camp, according to Susan Sontag is a sensibility of reducing that which others take seriously to frivolity.  Examples include John Waters’ “Hair Spray,”  RuPaul’s “Drag Race,” and the science fiction spoof “Dr. Who.”  The purest forms of Camp take themselves seriously.  Thus TV shows such as the 1960s “Batman” series that intentionally strive to be funny are “campy” but not true Camp, according to Sontag’s standards. Mad Dog is a Marvel Comics super-villain and also the nickname of Jack Martin of the Deadly Dozen and evil Joe Fasinera, who appeared in a 1981 “Moon Knight” Marvel comic series episode. 

“Mad Dog” has been used both literally and in a campy context as the nickname for gangsters, rock stars (such as Joe Cocker, whose 1970 “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tour was his path to fame)  and many pro wrestlers, rugby players, and other athletes. One of my favorites, Greg Maddux, pitched for the Cubs both at the beginning and near the end of a long career. Also known as the Professor, Maddux won four straight Cy Young awards and, according to legend, once deliberately yielded a home run to Astro slugger Jeff Bagwell so that when they faced each other in the upcoming playoffs, Bagwell would be looking for the same pitch but never see it.

The HBO series “Camping” straddles a thin line between Camp and campy.  Created by Lena Durham and starring Jennifer Garner and David Tennant as Kathryn and Walt Jodell, the premise is that four couples (plus a teenager) go camping to celebrate Walt’s 45th birthday.  Kathryn is an over-the-top control freak who won’t have sex with Walt but, when he is horny, offers to use her hand (he refuses). Kathryn’s carefully scripted arrangements go awry when free spirit Jandice (Juliette Lewis) shows up, the new girlfriend of one of Walt’s pals.  Another character is a recovering alcoholic who gets drunk and calls an African-American camper “Little Chocolate,” causing her husband to rush to her defense only to have his mate berate him for his trouble.  

Phrases.org describes “mad dog syndrome”as the capacity for unpredictable, dangerous actions, sometimes applied pejoratively for leaders like Saddam Hussein or admiringly for leaders like Civil War general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.  Phrases.org mentions the usage of “mad dogging” as a strategy of feigning outrageous or crazed behavior in order to stick a restaurant with the bill, something Toni and I once witnessed, a sorry spectacle indeed. Urban dictionary defines mad dogging as staring in an intimidating manner to convey disdain and a warning that fisticuffs are likely to ensue. “Mad Dog” is sometimes used ironically as a nickname for gentle folk.

Trump’s Secretary of War James Mattis, whose nickname “Mad Dog” emanated from the marine general’s exploits in Iran and Afghanistan, appears to be on the outs with his commander in chief. Mattis opposed the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, protested budget cuts that hindered his department’s ability to monitor climate change, and favors a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Once thought to be, along with Chief of Staff John Kelly, one of the few “adults in the White House” minding the store, Mattis allegedly once said that the President had the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader. Recently, Trump seems bent on insulting African-American women, including former First Lady Michelle Obama, Representative Maxine Waters (whom he’s labeled “Crazy Maxine” and “Low-IQ Maxine”), and several distinguished reporters, including Abby Phillip, April Ryan, and Yamiche Alcindor, who asked him perfectly legitimate questions.  He’s a disgrace.

R.I.P.: Billy Leo “Mad Dog” Madison, 71, born in Evarts, Kentucky, millwright at U.S. Steel for 41 years, married for 59 years to Virginia (nee Mann), great-grandfather to Lara and Emerson, and “Best Buddy,” according to his obit to brother-in-law Al Piunti.  On the Rees Funeral Home Guest Book Marshall Gjebre wrote: “I loved that man like a father. He was a gift to the world and will surely be missed.”

The Engineers won two games but lost series to Dorothy’s Darlings, named for octogenarian Dorothy Peterson, absent due to an outing with, to quote teammate Gene Clifford, her “church ladies.” I rolled a mediocre 430 but did pick up 3 splits, including a 3-6-7 and a 5-6-10.  More important, on a strike and facing a 6-7-10 split in the tenth frame of the one close game, I picked up the 6- and 7-pins for four points, exactly our margin of victory.  Opponent Ed Fox rolled a 686, the highest series all season.

In “‘I’m Not Gonna Die in This Damn Place’: Manliness, Identity, and Survival of American Vietnam Prisoners of War” (2018) Juan Coronado described the rise of Chicano militancy during the 1960s at a time when they were negotiating their American identity that also influenced who they were:

  Chicanos rallied behind an array of concerns ranging from addressing social inequality, along with police brutality, to supporting los pintos(Chicanos in Prison), to backing the struggles of farmworkers, to promoting cultural reaffirmation.  Chicanos were also adamant in endorsing their Mexican cultural and indigenous roots, which to a certain extent had faded due to forces and voluntary acculturation.  Cultural plurality became a key component as Chicanos embraced their heritage along with their identity as “Brown people” or “people of color.”  Chicanos took their pride to the streets during protest marches carrying signs that read “Brown Is Beautiful” and “Brown and Proud.”

In a chapter titled “The Manly Ideals of Machismo, Duty, and Patriotism,” Coronado writes that in captivity Latino POWs had their manliness tested in terms of how much torture they could endure.  On the other hand, by the late 1960s, many had begun to question the legitimacy of the cause they supposedly had been fighting for.

At the Gary Public Library doing research looking at back issues of the Gary American, a black weekly, on heavyweight champ Joe Louis’ participation in Par-Makers golf tournaments, I checked out Felix Maldonado’s mural depicting the history of Gary.  The Gary Crusaderphotographed visits by two Steel City natives depicted by Maldonado, “Peanut Man” Joe Mays and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.  For a half-century Mays hawked his wares on the corner of Twenty-First and Grant.  An adept juggler, he once toured with the Harlem Globetrotters and appeared several times of “Bozo’s Circus.”  One person I was unfamiliar with was builder Marcello Gerometta, whose structures included the Hotel Gary, the Palace Theatre, Holy Angels cathedral, and homes for 280 National Tube Works employees and their families. 

At the Hagelbergs for bridge Saturday, Brian Barnes mentioned receiving a letter from his 70-year-old brother in Bangladesh, who evidently was quite a hell-raiser in his youth but then joined the Roman Catholic Maryknoll Order of lay missioners. Known as the “Marines of the Catholic Church,” they move into impoverished areas and live side-by-side with indigenous people, not proselytizing but ministering to practical needs.   Brian’s brother travels by bicycle to remote villages and tries to help folks with no access otherwise to medical care.  He told Brian about asking an old paralyzed Muslim man who was dying if he could bring him a radio so he could listen to music.  The man shook his head no but whispered that he could do him one favor, bless him.

Cheryl Hagelberg told me that son Corey’s show at Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City was very successful except he had a severe allergy attack afterwards at the home of someone who owned a long-haired cat and was hospitalized for two days.  She also gave me an issue of Ball Bearings magazine that featured a write-up by Katie Savage who compared his work to social realists Ben Shahm and Philip Evergood. She wrote: 

  One of Corey’s woodcut prints, The Hoosier Slide, depicts a famous 200-foot sand dune that once sat in Michigan City, Indiana. Over a 30-year period beginning in the 1890s, the dune was dismantled and its sand hauled as far away as Mexico. In Muncie, the Ball Brothers used some of this sand to make their iconic blue-green canning jar. The logging of trees and removal of sand in the area destroyed a diverse habitat. More than 13 million tons of sand were taken from the Hoosier Slide until it was no more. Afterward, a coal-fired energy plant was built on the site and has been in operation for decades. Corey’s woodcut print depicts the sand dune and the ecosystem that once thrived there. The image includes a zigzag path, showing carts hauling the sand away.

A memorial service for Naomi Millender took place at Gary Genesis Center.  This eulogy appeared on Valparaiso University’s Welcome Center site:

  Today we mourn the loss and celebrate the life of Naomi Millender, our friend and collaborator. Naomi was an important person for the growth of our Flight Paths initiative – always connecting us to good people to interview and keeping us in the loop about important city events and historical preservation efforts. She was a Renaissance person - a musician, writer, educator, and advocate. She ran a summer camp that kept kids engaged with learning and creativity. Three years ago when her mother, Dolly, passed, she took on the work of preserving the rich history of Gary. Always generous with her time and wisdom, this photo of Naomi is from when she hosted Allison Schuette’s “Who's My Neighbor?” class at St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Gary.  We will miss you, Naomi. Thank you for all the good you brought into the world.

At Gino’s I ordered a draft beer at the bar, and the manger brought me a large plate of delicious plate of angel hair pasta.  When a woman nearby turned down the bar food, claiming she needed to get home and cook dinner for her children, he went to the kitchen and returned with a a container filled, I’m certain, with enough to feed her entire family. Book club member Keith Anderson spoke on “John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War and Seeded Civil Rights” by David S. Reynolds.  The author insisted Brown was not insane, as many detractors have alleged, and compared him to Old Testament prophets and seventeenth-century English Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell.  Like Ulysses S. Grant, who finished that Brown started, he had failed in almost every economic endeavor he’d tried.  Reynolds pronounced the raid on Harper’s Ferry to be a “doomed, heroic effort”and explained the slaughter of five Missouri “Border Ruffians” with broadswords at Pottawatomie Creek as understandable retribution for acts of terrorism committed against anti-slavery “Free-Staters” Kansas.  Brown’s only role in the actual massacre itself was to administer the coup de graceto a victim dying of grievous wounds.

During discussion of whether slavery would have eventually been abolished had there not been a Civil War, I brought up Maryland professor George Calcott’s thesis that the spread of democracy in the antebellum South hastened secession.  Patrician plantation owners tended to be loyal to the Union while the firebrands, for the most part, were young “man on the make” who dreamed of an expanding slave empire that extended in Cuba and Central America. As I was saying my good byes, former Emerson grad and attorney Paul Giorgi introduced me to a friend as a Gary historian who had written about his grandfather, Dr. Antonio Giorgi, having founded a medical clinic that treated African Americans and poor people, often free of charge, at a time when blacks were prohibited from using the facilities of Methodist or Mercy hospital.