End of the Line

“Unions aren’t just about making more money.  It’s about having a seat at the table, having the ability to talk to your employer and be respected, having some dignity in work.” Dave Green, President of United Auto Workers Local 1112 

 UAW officers Dave Green and Michael Aurillo

An article in New York Times Sunday magazine asked, “What happens to a factory town when the factory shuts down?” Mahoning Valley, which encompasses the Youngstown area, suffered the loss of steel industry jobs a generation ago, now faces an even bleaker future.  Six months ago, General Motors head honcho Mary Barra announced that the corporation would “unallocate” its Lordstown, Ohio Chevrolet plant, thereby eliminating thousands of jobs – the term.  G.M. came up with the term “unallocated” in a blatant attempt to circumvent a union agreement forbidding plant closings during the life of the contract.  A state-of-the-art facility when built in 1966, with two dozen robot welders part of its assembly line, the plant has produced over 16 million Chevys – Impalas, Vegas, Sunbirds, Cavaliers, and since 2011, 2 million Chevy Cruzes.  In 1972, when workers had considerably more leverage, employees staged successful wildcat strikes over a three-week period to protest speed-ups that would have resulted in worker exhaustion and job eliminations.  Despite a multi-billion-dollar bailout a decade ago, generous UAW givebacks in 2017, and the facility generating a healthy profit, G.M. decided to focus domestic production on S.U.V.s and trucks rather than sedans.  Dan Kaufman wrote: “The last Cruze came off the line on March 6, two days ahead of schedule. It had come to symbolize much more than a car.  It was a token of the most coveted working-class possession: a secure, well-paying job with health insurance and a pension.”  G.M. recently sold the Lordstown plant to Workhorse Group, maker of electric vehicles and drones, whose present work force numbers less than one hundred. 

Rohinton Mistry’s historical novel “A Fine Balance” takes place in India during the time of “The Emergency” when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ruled by decree, using the pretext of internal subversion to curb civil liberties and imprisoning political opponents. Asked to explain its meaning to tailors whom she has recently hired, widow Dina Dalal says, “Government problems – games played by people in power.  It doesn’t affect ordinary people like us.”

 Jesus Nazareth Fajardo; Times photo by John J. Watkins

Speaking at IUN’s commencement, held at Gary Genesis Center, was Jesus Nazareth Fajardo.  A decade ago at age 12, Fajardo moved with his family to the Chicago area knowing “not one drop of English.”Now with plans to attend medical school, he told classmates, friends, and loved ones: “Although we may come from different places and speak in different languages, it is our differences that make us special, that make us strong.”  NWI Timesreporter Carley Lanich wrote: “In his native language Nazareth Fajardo paused during his commencement address to thank his family.  He emphasized the importance of those who supported him throughout his studies.”  Chancellor Bill Lowe cited the accomplishments of three nontraditional students (half the graduating class being at least 26 years old), including Paulina Ugalde, who emigrated from Mexico less than three years ago.  IU President Michael McRobbie praised recently deceased Gary football star George Taliaferro, who when a student at Bloomington was unable to eat in the cafeteria or live in a dorm but became a respected professor and administrator in Bloomington, as an example of one who overcame formidable obstacles and became an inspiration to those who followed on his shoulders.

After playing a role in Gary mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson’s defeat at the hands of Lake County politician Jerome Prince, NWI Times editorial writer Marc Chase piled on in a column heralding what he termed a “spring awakening.”  Chase brought up Freeman-Wilson’s election as President of the National League of Cities and claimed that she “at times seemed more concerned with a national profile . . . than with her city’s struggle.”  Hogwash!

Two legendary performers are dead, Norma “Queen of Swing” Miller, 99, and Doris Day, 97, who transitioned from Big Band “siren” to wholesome star in such films as “Calamity Jane” (1953) and “Pillow Talk” (1959).  Growing up in Harlem, Miller was a member of the Lindy Hoppers and starred in stage shows starring Redd Foxx and Sammy Davis, Jr., among others.  In her later years Doris Day became an outspoken animal rights activist.

Raptor Kawhi Leonard and Robert Smith of the Cure

Over the weekend the Cubs took two of three from Milwaukee, thanks in part to Wilson Contreras’s fifteenth inning walk-off home run. In the NBA playoffs the 76ers lost the seventh game finalewith Toronto:  Kawhi Leonard ( sank a last-second shot that bounced four times on the rim before falling through the net – as one writer put it, “Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Swish!”  It reminded me of the sound (“Doink, doink”) of the missed field goal that cost the Bears a playoff victory.  The 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction program aired on HBO.  Highlights were performances by Stevie Nicks and The Cure.  Robert Smith looked like an ancient goth but shined during a five-song set that included favorites “Shake Dog Shake,” “Just Like Heaven,” and “Boys Don’t Cry.”

   

works by Mary Cassatt and Marison Escobar

Bridge buddy Marcia Carson was Monday’s Art in Focus speaker at Munster Center for the Arts.  It being the first decent day in a week, husband Jim was on the golf course.  After director Micah Bornstein brought up the current gallery exhibit featuring birds, Marica mentioned that a downy woodpecker has been waking Jim and her up by tapping on an aluminum gutter outside their bedroom – evidently a mating ritual.   A Hammond teacher for 39 years, Marcia showed examples of “Mothers and Children in Art” (the title of her talk) from ancient Egypt and the Renaissance (i.e., Michelangelo’s “Pieta”) to modern Impressionists (Mary Cassatt’s “The Child’s Bath”) and photographers (Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother”).  The most fascinating piece was “Mi Mama y yo” by French sculptor of Venezuelan ancestry Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), whose mother committed suicide when she was 11.  A child is shielding her mother with an umbrella full of holes.  I hadn’t heard of Escobar but was familiar with her haunting statue of Father Damien, minister to a leper colony, located at the entrance to the State House in Honolulu, Hawaii.

photo by Nicki Seibold

High school classmate Dave Seibold replied to my sending him the latest Shavings,which contained a photo of him in Africa with a Massai chief.  He noted that the guy had three wives, each with her own hut that she built herself.  He recalled playing basketball on our garage court in Fort Washington after he was old enough to drive, his home being on the other end of Upper Dublin Township. We and Eddie Piszek were on a Babe Ruth baseball team coached by Ron Hawthorne’s father (Eddie liked to call him Mr. Haw-the-Haw).  Ronnie was our shortstop.  In a game with Dave playing first base and me at second, he fielded a swinging bunt and tossed a perfect throw to me covering first.  In the dusk I never saw it.  The umpires immediately called the game on account of darkness, with our team ahead and thus victorious.  Not long afterwards, an eye doctor determined that I needed glasses.  When my pair arrived, I admired blades of grass that heretofore were just a green blur.

At Gino’s in Merrillville for book club, I ran into old softball buddies Dave Serynek and Rocky Fraire at the bar while talking to Louis Gerodemos, owner of the Paragon Restaurant in Hobart and father of Jimmy, Gino’s manager.  Presenter Ken Anderson was speaking on a subject book to his heart, Richard Striner’s “Father Abraham,” written as a rebuttal to revisionist historians who claimed our sixteenth president was a white supremacist and a reluctant emancipator.  Ken pointed out that Lincoln’s moral opposition to slavery was unwavering but, a practical politician his views regarding Presidential power evolved, especially during wartime.  The end of the line for Lincoln came on Good Friday, 1865, just as the bloody Civil war was ending.  I pointed out the importance of Lincoln’s relationship with black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who eulogized Lincoln as “emphatically the black man’s president, the first to show any respect for their rights as men.”  I read this 1876 assessment by Douglass: “Viewed from genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of the country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.” 

Harold Johnson in 2015; Times photo by John J. Watkins

The Post-Tribune profiled 97-year-old veteran Harold Johnson as he prepared to embark on a legacy tour of World War II sites in connection with the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day. An army paratrooper who enlisted at age 20, Johnson participated in a half dozen battles and received two Purple Hearts.  Just 20 years my senior, I can hardly imagine what Johnson went through – or, for that matter, what my contemporaries endured in Vietnam at an even younger age.  A couple years ago in Rochester, NY, I witnessed veterans de-planing from a legacy flight that had taken them to the nation’s capital for a tour of war memorials.  It was a moving sight; some rose from wheelchairs and others merely saluted when greeted upon arriving inside the airport terminal.

Perfect World

“Well, I know what it is

But I don’t know where it is.”

    “Perfect World,” Talking Heads

I’ve been listening to the Talking Heads “Little Creatures” album in anticipation of a documentary about the band at Gardner Center Saturday.  Rolling Stone named the album cover, designed by Howard Finster, the best of 1985.

 Anne Balay discussing "Steel Closets" at IUN's Savannah Center; photo by Amanda Board 

At the request of the student LGBT group Connectionz, Anne Balay discussed and read passages from “Steel Closets” at IUN’s Savannah Center as part of “Week of Silence,” a takeoff on the “Day of Silence” custom in certain high schools of students not speaking for a day to call attention to bullying of those thought to be LGBT.  They carried cards that explained why they were mute.  Although only a couple professors showed up, there were probably 30 or 40 students, staff members, and outside guests, many of whom purchased the book.  Since nobody was prepared to introduce her, I volunteered and mentioned the grave injustice of her being denied tenure and promotion.  Afterwards, Mathematics professor Axel Schulze-Halberg expressed disbelief that such a travesty occurred.

Anne stressed how isolated the mills are and how she got inside one by joining a group of Eastern Europeans being given a tour.  The spirited 90-minute program produced much audience feedback.  Librarian Audrea Davis pointed out that virtually everyone in her family went into the mill after high school despite it being a very dangerous environment.  One man asked Anne about her views on same-sex marriage.  She said that she’s been married twice, to a man and to a woman -  and it’s not for her.  She added that if couples want to get married, the government should not stop them.  Furthermore, same-sex couples deserve the same benefits and protections as married couples.  If a gay or lesbian steelworker gets injured on the job, for instance, his mate ought to be told and allowed hospital visitation.  Asked about her future research plans, Anne is considering a book on why people, including LGBTs, choose to live in places like Gary that seem to be inhospitable environments.

The Associated Press picked up Joseph Pete’s NWI Times article about Anne; as a result, it has appeared in several other newspapers throughout Indiana, as well as the Wisconsin Gazette. I hope it catches the attention of IU administrators and trustees as well as possible future employers.

In the cafeteria Beth LaDuke was having a late lunch; I told her about the program, Anne’s party, our Lakeshore radio appearance, and Emma’s latest idea of possibly attending an Episcopal seminary in Ireland so she can work with homeless people.

John, Tom, and Jane Kreuger

Stopping by the Archives with a treasure trove of family photos and memorabilia was John DeGan, nephew of Tom Krueger, whose WW II letters home were the basis of a book Steve McShane and I edited, “Skinning Cats.”  I gave him a copy of Steel Shavings, volume 41 (2011), which contains three references to the Krueger family.  In the Carl Krueger Collection, named after Tom’s father, are 600 pages of letters that Helene Roames wrote to sister Catherine while living in postwar Japan and Korea.  Helene’s daughter Judy discovered online that they were in the Archives, and volunteer Maurice Yancy made copies for her.

 Zuong Zedong

“Ping-Pong Diplomacy” by Nicholas Griffin documents the much-publicized 1971 visit to Beijing by an American team, which helped bring about a thaw in the Cold War by preparing the way for President Nixon’s visit the following year. During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese champions such as Zhuang Zedong had been beaten, abused, and humiliated.  With Mao’s approval Zhou Enlai brought them back into favor.  The rapprochement between the two countries was primarily the result of fear of the Soviet Union.  Rumored to have been Madame Mao’s lover, Zedong again fell out of favor after the Chairman’s death when she and other members of the so-called “Gang of Four” were purged.  After four years in solitary confinement, he got an obscure job in a Beijing sports school.

Zedong’s flamboyant American counterpart, Glenn Cowan, fared even worse.  In New York Review of Books Roderick MacFarquhar wrote: “Cowan entered China wearing his ‘Let It Be’ t-shirt, purple tie-dye pants, and a floppy yellow hat and carrying a bag of dirty clothes, condoms, and marijuana.”  Appearing afterwards on the “Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson and “Dinah’s Place” with Dinah Shore, he had ambitious plans for his own talk show and to launch table tennis centers around the country.  Neither panned out and, suffering paranoid delusions, Cowan eventually was living out of his car and then on the street.  He died in 2004 at age 51.  As Nicholas Griffin wrote: “Cowan’s trajectory had been very American.  He had been shot into the stratosphere, tested against the market without a safety net, and then cracked in two by a hard fall.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “The Bully Pulpit” contains an interesting portrait of muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell, whose father’s oil refining business was destroyed by John D. Rockefeller’s securing secret rebates from railroad companies for Standard Oil Company.  As a teenager, Tarbell vowed never to marry and graduated from Allegheny College, the lone female in her class.  After writing for The Chautauquan magazine, she journeyed to Paris at age 33 and enjoyed the bohemian lifestyle of an American expatriate.  She wrote articles that caught the eye of publisher S.S. McClure, who convinced her to join the staff of McClure’s Magazine.  Tarbell avenged his father’s misfortune by exposing Rockefeller’s ruthless business practices in a series of articles later published in book form as “The History of the Standard Oil Company.”

Northwest Indiana enjoyed (finally) a nice spring day as East Chicago Central’s tennis season began with a match against Griffith.  Coach Dave Lane (my son) said the team was deep but had no natural ace.  They prevailed, 3-2, winning the two doubles matches and number 2 singles.

Dave said his students enjoyed the Sandra Cisneros event.  Several years ago a surly kid refused to do any work until Dave persuaded him to read “The House on Mango Street.”  Now the young man is in grad school.  On Facebook senior Denzel Smith posted photos plus this tribute to my son: “I honestly wouldn't have had the birthday I had without this man! You truly are a huge blessing to me. Thank you for the lunch, the laughs, and most of the love. You have been a great teacher, uncle lol, mentor, and most of all friend! East Chicago is a better place because of you! I love you Lane!”

Keon Kendall Brown; NWI Times photo by Damian Rico

Keon Kendall Brown, East Chicago Central senior class president, likely saved Dialma Diaz’s life after she suffered a seizure and her vehicle crashed into Brown’s home.  After securing his siblings safety, Brown pulled a five year-old and Diaz from the car.  Then, noticing that Diaz was choking on her tongue and having had an EMT class, he pulled the tongue out of her throat.  Police chief told NWI Times reporter Damian Rico: “This kid is inspiring.  I don’t know many adults that could have been that cool under pressure and handled the situation so heroically.  This community is a special place that really cares, and Keon is a prime example.”

Facebook lately has been sneaking ads into my stream of messages.  I found out how to “unfollow” them, but it still seems an intrusion.  On the up side I received friend requests from two old Upper Dubliners, Dave Seibold and Nancy Schade, Molly’s younger sister who we all called Sissy.  Nancy recently got married; Dave posted a photo with a sheephead or “convict fish” he caught off a dock.

Rhiman Rotz’s mother bequeathed a nice sum to the Rotz memorial scholarship fund set up by wife Brenda.  Diana Chen-lin informed that amount given annually has ballooned in the 13 years since Rhiman passed away.

IUN’s School of Education contretemps has resulted in Health and Human Services Dean Pat Bankston becoming interim dean until a replacement is found for Lora Bailey, who remains a professor in the department.  It might be a pyrrhic victory for those who wanted a return to the previous dean’s hands-off leadership style because Bankston is a no-nonsense type who shook up and straightened out the School of Public and Environmental Affairs under similar circumstances.

The wife of fellow bowler Jim Carson being an Education adjunct professor, we discussed the shake-up, which evidently goes deeper than just deposing the dean.  One wonders, could the Women’s and Gender Studies faculty have saved Anne’s job had they marched to the Chancellor’s office demanding her retention and threatening to stop participating in the program?  If Vernon Smith was leading them, as was the case last week, probably so.

 John and Doris Ban (behind Doris is Julie Peller)

Chemistry professor Julie Peller had Anne Balay sign her copy of “Steel Closets” at lunch, and I told her how much fun it was to hear her dad, former Education professor John Ban, talk about music during World War II at Reiner Center and how touching it was when he and wife Doris danced to one of the songs.  Prior to the talk, Julie joked, her dad needed help on how to do a power point presentation.  He ended up quite adept at playing music and YouTube clips whereas I generally get someone to do that for me when I’m speaking to groups.

After two games in the 180s I had just 53 going into the sixth frame but then spared out to finish with a 144 and a 517 series.  Unbelievably I picked up 6-7 and 4-7-10 splits, earning high fives from Valpo Muffler bowlers John and Denny (who rolled a 700 series).  We squeaked out one game against a superior team.

IUN Off-Campus Instructional Sites Coordinator Lori Weed called from Portage University Center to ask if the Archives wanted a flyer from the 1950s advertising IU classes at Seaman Hall in downtown Gary.  Concrete worker Clifton Driver discovered it while refurnishing a building.  During the 1980s Weed worked for Communication and Fine Arts and remembered Garratt Cope, Jim Tolhuizen, and Gary Wilk.  Down the hall was receptionist Shirley Karageorge, a former student, contributor to my Fifties Shavings, and department secretary.