Apocalypse Now!

“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot

Until now, with plenty of time to kill due to the pandemic, I’d never watched Francis Ford Coppola’s 153-minute epic “Apocalypse Now” (1979) in its entirety. I’d shown excerpts in my Vietnam War class of scenes depicting American troops under commander Kilgore on a Search and Destroy mission, uprooting survivors from their ancestral villages while a chaplain says a meaningless prayer.  I’d seen highlights of Marlon Brando as Kurtz reciting T. S. Eliot’s 1925 poem “The Hollow Man” but shrank from digesting the entire nightmarish action, based in part on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” which was required reading for an English course at Bucknell.  I was surprised to discover Dennis Hopper playing a hippie photographer at Colonel Kurtz’s Montagnard camp and moved to read “The Hollow Man” when learning its opening line was “Mistah Kurtz – he dead” and closing refrain “This is the way the world would end, not with a bang but a whimper.”

 

High school English teacher Delphine Vandling, I suddenly remembered, recited “The Hollow Man” to us very movingly. Like me a Bucknell graduate, she had the rare ability to convey an appreciation of things not immediately obvious. Mrs. Vandling told us that Eliot was born in St. Louis but became a British citizen and developed a British accent, so I tended to regard him as a phony, not understanding the depths of disillusionment that the Great War had caused. I never made it through “The Waste Land” and though I recall its opening line, “April is the cruelest month,” I have no idea why Eliot might have believed such a thing. Until now.

 

It was Upper Dublin English teacher Delphine Vandling who taught me to appreciate literature, not necessarily at the time (and I still don’t like Shakespeare, despite her best efforts) but that it had the potential to teach us about life and even hints about life’s meaning. Though poetry is not my cup of tea ordinarily, the keenest insights are often hidden in its verses.  When Vandling read “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, it hooked me.  Delphine used a Word Power book, and we learned ten new words each week. Not only did we have to use them in sentences, she made us say them out loud for emphasis.  I hated the I’s and still think of her when I use indomitable, indefatigable, inimitable, or ineffable. I was very envious when Vince Curll told me that he and Wendy had been at Vandling’s house and been offered wine.

 

Some years ago, I went on an Indiana Association of Historians conference tour of Indiana University’s Alfred Kinsey Sex Institute. Our tour guide was a fifty-ish woman in high boots and stylish clothes whose features reminded me of Mrs. Vandling.  As she showed the historians X-rated 8-pagers (one featured Mickey, Minnie and Goofy, another famous actors) and Japanese dolls meant for virginal brides on their wedding night whose private parts showed when turned over, her expression bore a resemblance to Delphine reading “Jabberwocky.”

    Beware the Jabberwocky, my son!

    The jaws that bite, the claws that catch

    Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

    The fruminous Bandersnatch!

After I posted these impressions on my blog, I received an angry email from the daughter of Delphine, who had recently passed away. I replied that I had nothing but respect for her mother, who was a great, passionate, dedicated teacher.  She thanked me and told me her mom would have enjoyed what I wrote.

 

John Prine is the latest coronavirus casualty after twice surviving cancer. I’ve been watching YouTube videos of sessions he performed two years ago at West 54^th. The former Chicago mailman was a truly great singer-songwriter, humble and wise who sang of “broken hearts and dirty windows,” of memories that couldn’t be bought and souvenirs that took him years to get.  Jerry Davich started a post with these lines:

    Just give me one thing that I can hold on to

    To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

A co-host of the CBS morning news, broadcasting from his home, recently interviewed Prine and said his favorite number was “In Spite of Ourselves.”  The last song on Prine’s final album is “When I Get to Heaven.”  He vows that after shaking God’s hand and thanking him for all his blessings, he’ll start a rock-n-roll band, smoke a cigarette nine miles long, and “kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl.”  Darcey Wade posted a video of a young John Prine singing “Hello in There” about an old couple living in an apartment in the city, there kids grown up and elsewhere or, in the case of Davy, “lost in the Korean, war, and I still don’t know what for.” The chorus includes these poignant lines

    Old people just grow lonesome

    Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in There.”

 

Also dead: Detroit Tiger outfielder for 22 seasons Al Kaline, a Hall of Famer who became my favorite player after my family moved to a Detroit suburb in 1955.  Kaline hit .340 that season, becoming the youngest batting champ (by two days over Ty Cobb) ever. A consummate team player, he finally was rewarded when Detroit became champs in 1968 with Kaline batting .379 in the World Series. He ended his career with over 3,000 hits and 399 Home Runs (it would have been 400, but one was erased due to a rainout). In retirement he became a Tiger broadcaster and mentor to young players.

 

East Chicago Central social studies teacher Michelle Horst sent a note thanking me for the copy of “Jacob A. Riis and the American City” that Dave passed on to her and wanted to send me a gift card as a token of appreciation.  I emailed back:

    Thanks for the nice note, which is better than any gift card you could give me.  The book was an outgrowth of my PHD thesis at the U. of Maryland.  My adviser suggested the topic because the Jacob Riis papers were located at the Library of Congress not far from College Park.  What I particularly admired about Riis was his concern for children and the environment and how he evolved into someone much more tolerant of other cultures than the common perception one gets only from reading “How the other Half Lives.”

High school friend Suzanna Murphy wrote:

  The year was 1919.  My grandmother Jane Hook Scott was in Hang Chow China with her husband Reverend Dr. Frank D. Scott serving a mission.  They had decided she should return to the United States because of the health of my mother who had been born the year before.  She was allergic to milk and had been needing to milk a buffalo daily! Needless to say that was tedious and dangerous. There were other dangers such as once being accused of killing a sacred pig when the rickshaw in front of them ran over it. Aside from that there were many wonderful experiences there which they shared with a companion couple, the Hales. My grandfather stayed on and my grandmother took a slow boat from China to California and then a train all the way from California to Pennsylvania and cared the children until she could return and pastor a church again.  She was very courageous indeed. 

 

Takin' a Ride

"Takin' a ride
But it's no damn good."
    The Replacements, from "Shiftless When Idle," 1981

Richard Russo's "Everybody's Fool" starts out with long-suffering North Bath (NY) Police Chief Douglas Raymer driving to a cemetery to attend the funeral of Judge Barton Flatt, who once called him a moron and made a play for his wife.  As a long-haired minister gave an irrelevant eulogy for the atheist magistrate whom he had never met, Chief Raymer thought of his old English teach Miss Beryl Peoples, who admonished her students in their essays of the importance of subject, audience, and speaker, often illustrating her point with a triangle.  Russo put this thought in Raymer's admittedly dim brain: "The old lady's triangle remained as deeply mysterious to him as the Holy Trinity's Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."  Later Chief Raymer ruminated about speaking at the dedication renaming a middle school in Miss Beryl's honor:
     He'd tell folks about all the books Miss Beryl had given him as a boy.  He'd tell his audience that Miss Beryl had held a far better opinion of him than he had of himself.  Further, he'd explain how the old woman kept scribbling "Who is Douglas Raymer?" in the margins of his essays.  And how she'd remain in his margins down through the years, like a good teacher will.

At Upper Dublin my two unforgettable English teachers were Mrs. Biles and Delphine Vandling.  The former taught me how to write a term paper, using footnotes and avoiding plagarism.  Mrs. Vandling not only instilled in me a love of literature (but not Shakespeare despite her best efforts) but also the importance of increasing one's "Word Power."  Each week we'd have to use ten new words in a sentence and then be tested on our understanding of them.

Retired English professor William K. Buckley gave me an autographed copy of "81 Mygrations" (1998), which included many poems about living by Lake Michigan and near the mill town of Gary.  Critic Csaba Polony called Buckley's poems "signposts, pit stops along dizzying spatial/temporal trip across the landscape/mindscape of America - an American road-miovie in verse."  Here are some lines from "Beach North":
     Lake Michigan stays clean around the edges.
     No ghosts of Conquistadores or sharks.
     No roiling of whales.  When you sail-out beyond USX
                                            you feel depths,
                and you know
     this lake can take down freighters, swallow families.

     If you swim, you feel the cut
     of slim surfaces, odorless and primitive
     If you dive, you see pig iron, iron bars,
             and clean shipwrecks.
     If you dig, you find only the smallest of shells,
     as if Nature had made a clean sweep of grandeur
              and settled out of court.

Edmund White, 1983 by Dominique Nabokov

In "The Quest for Gay Pleasure," a New York Review of Books essay on Edmund White's "Our Young Man," Diane Johnson notes that two main characters are twin brothers, one gay, the other straight.  Johnson notes:
         This note of volition more or less flew in the face of current orthodoxy that sexual preference is genetic or   predetermined in some other inescapable way but conforms to an orthodoxy of the 1950s, that homosexual tendencies were normal for everyone in adolescence but for most people were a phase and might modify or change.  This idea is out of fashion now, with today's almost political insistence on people coming out in grade school.
I have strong feelings against designating prepubescent kids gay, straight or transsexual and assume Diane Johnson does as well.  If I had a young son who wanted to wear girls' clothes or play with dolls, I think I'd be tolerant but still strive to interest him in sports and restrict his cross-dressing to inside the home, hoping probably that he'd outgrow the practice.

Nelson Algren photographed in Miller by Art Shay

A highlight of the Nelson Algren festival in Miller was the showing of the documentary "The End Is Nothing, The Road Is All."  The title is taken from a quote by novelist Willa Cather. The documentary included plentiful quotes from Algren's work and comprehensive treatment of the novelist's friendship with Simone de Beauvoir.

I loved watching "Breaking Bad" actor Bryan Cranston portray President Lyndon Baines Johnson in HBO's "All the Way."  The focus is on passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its effect on politics, but it touches on the war in Vietnam and the murder of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney in Mississippi during Freedom Summer.  As Nick Schager of the Daily Beast wrote, Cranston portrays LBJ as "simultaneously noble, brave, self-serving, insecure, and nasty - a collous prick prone to terrifying verbal abuse."

Every time I spot a Kevin Nevers by-line in the Chesterton Tribune I check out the article, even if the subject seems mundane.  In "Replacement of Morningside sewer system ready to start" Nevers touched on environmental issues as well as government red tape.  He wrote:
      The dilapidated aerial support columns for the Morningside subdivision's sanitary sewer main carry the main over and across approximately 300 feet of environmentally sensitive,officially designated wetland, on its way to the wastewater treatment plant on the other side of the Little Calumet River.
     For Chesterton Utility Service Board Member Andy Michel, it seems almost too good to be true, inasmuch as it's been more than 15 years since the Utility first identified the threat posed by the crumbling columns.
     Working in and around a designated wetland, however, entails a certain amount of bureaucratic hoop-jumping and over the years the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has required the Utility, among other things, to conduct surveys of flora and fauna and inventories of live trees and dead ones.  The Corps also required the Utility to submit a work-site plan under which temporary timber "matting" and silt fences would be used to protect the wetland from construction activities.
     Now, at last, all systems are go.

Derrick Rose is no longer a Bull, having been traded to the New York Knicks.  The former MVP has been a shell of his former self since injuries sidelined him the better part of three seasons.  With their fourteenth pick in the draft, the Bulls selected Denzel Valentine from Michigan State, not a bad choice if recovered from knee surgery.  Many sports jocks were hoping the Bulls would also trade their best player Jimmy Butler, and go into a rebuilding mode instead of what the front office has termed "re-tooling."

A majority of British voters have have advocated leaving the European Union, causing stocks markets to take a hit all over the world.  Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his intention to resign. In Congress, led by civil rights pioneer John Lewis, Democratic lawmakers held a 24-hour sit-in to protest the Republicans' refusal to hold a vote on measures to keep assault rifles out of the hands of terrorists.  Even those on the no-fly list or under surveillance by the FBI can legally purchase deadly weapons.

Here is former House historian Ray Smock's take on the sit-in:

As someone who appreciates and respects the traditions, rules and procedures of the House, part of me was opposed to such a blatant display on the floor of the House because such an event is a violation of the decorum of the chamber, something I believe is essential to the deliberative process. Just because the Republican majority chooses to Do Nothing does not give license to the Democratic minority to stage demonstrations on the floor. The Capitol grounds are the place for demonstrations. 

But the partisan part of me thinks Congress has not done its duty to the American people on a host of issues including regulation of weapons of war in the hands of civilians, and I was delighted to see this "reasonable" and limited action that called attention to the failure of the legislative branch to address even the most minimal gun regulation. It is, after all, an election year that is shaping up in a bizarre manner, given the rise of Trumpism. So a protest that is in violation of the rules of the House does not seem so far out of line with the general dysfunction of the chamber.

The part of me that is a congressional historian sees this as a useful signpost and a colorful narrative of the ongoing stress that comes from an obstructionist Congress that does as little as possible to help govern the nation. It is also a sign of the times from the standpoint of social media and its collective effect on campaigning and governing. This demonstration could not occur without social media once the House adjourned and the TV cameras were turned off. Lincoln said nothing can occur without public sentiment. Social media creates public sentiment, both positively and negatively. The Speaker can control the House television cameras, but he cannot control photos and videos from cell phones.

Congressman John Lewis, the distinguished champion of the Civil Rights movement, and other leaders of the sit-in were relying on a time-tested and largely respected device of peaceful disobedience reminiscent of the sit-ins of the 1960s. This gives the House sit-in an aura of moral urgency. Some of the participants in the sit-in were members who represent places that had experienced mass gun violence. To them this was not a stunt but a call to action.  It suggests that some things are higher in order and magnitude than mere House rules of decorum. The sit-in suggests that this moment in our history is one where we have to disenthrall ourselves of some conventions that hamstring progress and raise the stakes of the debate. Compared with Senator Ted Cruz’s recent Senate filibuster, where he read from Dr. Zeus, the House sit-in was a grace note. It has historical significance in this context.

How the Night Moves

“Started humming a song from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose.”
“Night Moves,” Bob Seger

The songs from 1962 that I hum sometimes are “If I Had a Hammer” by Peter, Paul, and Mary and “Loco-Motion” by Little Eva. One taught me social consciousness, the other soul. WDRV “The Drive” has album day once a month where you actually hear dead space between songs. Driving to and fro, I heard bits of Led Zeppelin Supertramp, Billy Joel, John Mellancamp, the Stones, and Bob Seger. The breakout 1976 LP (long-playing) record “Night Moves” starts with “Rock and Roll Never Forgets.” Seger’s songs often deal with loss of innocence and the passage of time – in other words, social history.

Christine Hinchman wants help finding the name of an African-American woman who danced at Chicago festivals like Taste of Chicago and Country Music Fest. Christine wrote: “She was really tiny and wore amazing outfits - I remember one in particular, a suit made out of faux cowhide. I actually met her a couple times. I worked at the Borders on State Street and she came in to order books that mentioned her. Turns out she had been a fairly well known stripper/ 'exotic dancer' in Gary back in the 60's at one of the clubs the Jackson 5 worked at. They had opened for her and we did find books that verified her story.” All I could help her with was give her the name and address of a Gary club, Mr. Lucky’s Lounge, where the Jackson (and strippers) performed.

I finished my South Shore Journal article, “The Dune-Faun: Diana of the Dunes’ Male Counterpart” after another visit to Westchester Museum. Eva Hopkins found me an article by A. F. Knotts about George Blagg, the so-called “Hermit of the Dunes.” Just a teenager during the Civil War, Bragg lived off his military pension plus whatever he could grow, pick, raise, catch or panhandle. A bit crazy, he feared that anarchists were after him but loved children and animals. Steve McShane made jpegs of Dale Fleming’s drawing of Blagg plus Earl Reed’s etchings of dunes characters Happy Cal and Catfish John to go with the nude but tasteful sketches of Diana and the Dune-Faun.

For an exhibit I’m planning with Steve Ray Boomhower sent a half-dozen past issues of Traces with covers of relevance to Northwest Indiana - Tom Harmon, Octave Chanute, Tony Zale, an Inland Steel mill, Michael Jackson, and a South Shore poster. Maybe my Alex Karras article, assuming Ray likes it, will rate the cover story treatment. I picked up a dozen family photos from Ted and Anna Karras, including one of Yia Yia (grandmother) Sophia and a studio shot of him, wife Susan Clark and “Webster” kid Emmanuel Lewis.

Time passes. Fifty years ago Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain scored 100 points in an NBA game played in Hershey, PA. There were no three-point baskets and players only got one free throw for a non-shooting foul. Brother-in-law Sonny Okomski swears he saw the game on TV although I’ve read the game was not televised. Wilt, a seven-footer, went to Overbrook, the same Philly high school as Fred Chary. I once saw him play for the Philadelphia Warriors against Boston. John Havlicek fouled him hard and Chamberlain started after him. Havlicek wanted no part of it.

My old high school English teacher Delphine Vandling died at age 99. Her daughter came across something I wrote about her on my blog and notified me. A classy lady, she loved reading poems and Shakespeare to us. And so it goes. I hope her eyesight and mental faculties remained until the very end.

I started proofreading Sheriff Dominguez’s autobiography “Valor.” The PDF version arrived electronically and the copy that we’ll mark up is supposed to arrive by FedEx mail on Monday. It’s pretty clean except for one thing that could have been major but that can be easily fixed.

I took in my annual basketball game with Dave, a Sectional battle at Gary West Side between East Chicago and Lake Central. Glenn Robinson III scored 27 points in leading Lake Central to victory. It was close until the final eight minutes. The Cardinals had a flashy freshman named Hyron Edwards that Division One coaches are already recruiting, but Coach Dave MIlausnic put Robinson on him and he didn’t score after that. In the front row with his ever-present scorebook, as always, was Louis Vasquez, author of “Weasal,” whose grandson was a student of Dave’s. Referee Mike Waisnora was officiating 35 years ago when the kids and I were rooting for Gary Emerson. It was fun seeing Dave interact with students and watching the Lake Central fans rocking out to music being belted out on huge speakers. Afterwards at Wing Wahs I just had a bowl of Won Ton soup and an order of pan fried noodles with extra onions but still couldn’t finish all of it. There was a time when all the staff recognized me; now they all know Dave.

A major storm dropped snow to the north and unleashed tornados south of us that killed over 39 people. We got rain, wind, and snow flurries. Knock on wood that winter is pretty much behind us. On Today were shots of Henryville, Indiana, virtually wiped out. One stunned resident talked about losing everything. It’s hard to imagine what that would be like. The worst would be the photo albums.

At Camelot Lanes James broke one hundred again. Teammate Ethan, wearing a cool Brazil soccer shirt, threw a ball that hooked to the left. Madalyn rarely bothered to watch her ball hit the pins but instead came back to where her grandparents were.

I proofread a PDF of “Valor” at school that IU Press editor Nancy Lightfoot sent and notified Sheriff Dominguez that the page proofs that we’re to mark up will be arriving via Fed Ex on Monday. Had a nice dinner and bridge evening with the Hagelbergs. I wore the Kidstuff Playstation shirt he gave me for my seventieth birthday.

After playing the normal trio of Amun Re, St. Pete, and Acquire, we got in a couple games of Revolution, which Dave hadn’t played before. I won the second one by using the strategy Tom employed successfully in the previous contest.

Sunday’s Post-Trib carried a sweet column by Carrol Vertrees about turning 90. Jeff Manes interviewed mental health advocate Mary Hodson. She works a suicide hotline and talked about her teenage son taking his own life. Jeff told her that he came real close to killing himself with a shotgun at that age. It must have been an emotional interview. At noon Manes showed up at the condo to interview Dave for a future column.

At L.A. Nails the lady who cut my toenails wore a mask, something that never happened before. Why, I wonder? A new policy? Foot odor? Fear of germs?

For several years the defensive coach of the New Orleans Saints paid bounties to players who knocked opponents out of the game. The player got more for a “cart off” or if the victim was the quarterback. Evidently the head coach and general, manager knew about it. The team had been warned and told to stop the practice. The league is expected to come down hard on those involved now that lawsuits are piling about involving former players maimed on the field of play.