Back to School?

 "Going back to school--

Something I looked forward to.

Now, I would fear it."

  Don Coffin

Despite Trump’s empty threat to withhold aid to schools that didn’t fully open, and his idiotic tweet, quickly taken down by Twitter and Facebook, that kids don’t contract Covid-19, educators and school boards across the country are moving cautiously. Typical of the mixed signals from Republican governors, in the absence of federal leadership, is Indiana’s Eric Holcomb, whose state superintendent of education claims classrooms will be safe while local communities do not agree.  Many have delayed the start of classes or switched to distance education; others are offering options but with strict guidelines regarding face covering sand social distancing. Most have cancelled contact sports.  IU Northwest keeps pushing back the date the university will reopen and encouraging online courses. Becca will begin her freshman year at home, while James, for the time being, plans to live on campus unless things change.

 


Teacher Charles Halberstadt wrote:

    The state of Indiana is now threatening to take 15% away from school systems who operate virtually due to the pandemic. For systems such as MC, Duneland, and Valpo that’s between $5-6 million per year, or put another way around 100 teaching positions. If you support teachers PLEASE do me a favor and contact our local representatives to tell them this unacceptable. Thanks!

I emailed incoming IUN chancellor Ken Iwama: 

    I look forward to meeting you.  Although I am an emeritus History professor, I have continued to serve as co-director of IU Northwest’s Calumet Regional Archives, which Ronald Cohen and I founded nearly 50 years ago.  While the pandemic interrupted plans to hire a successor for longtime archivist/curator Steve McShane, Cohen and I hope to meet with you at the Archives to stress its importance

    I wish you well and believe your background to be a good fit for our institution.  Previous chancellors have benefited from consulting with former faculty and administrators.  Two in particular I recommend that you seek out: former vice chancellor F. C. Richardson and former head of admissions Bill Lee.  Chancellor’s assistant Kathy Malone is also wise in the ways of the university and a pillar of the Gary community.

    Finally, I have written histories of IU Northwest (with Paul Kern) and the city of Gary and would be flattered should you request copies.

 

Chancellor Iwama wrote back:

    Thank you so much for your email. Among my many endeavors, I have worked closely with the archives at my previous institution and I value its importance.  I look forward to the opportunity to meet with you to learn more about the Archives. 

    I also thank you for providing me with several references regarding individuals with valuable knowledge. I have already experienced the value of Kathy Malone's institutional history with IU Northwest. 

    Finally, yes, I would love a copy of your written histories. I have much to learn about Gary, and I will read them with much enthusiasm and interest.  

 

I’m ready to get back on campus, not only to deliver my Gary and IUN histories to the Chancellor but to mail out magazines to scholars who’ve requested them and to work on volume 50 of Steel Shavings, tentatively titled “Calumet Region Connections in the Plague Year, 2020.”

The title of Michael C. Dorf and George Van Dusen’s biography of Illinois Congressman Sidney Yates, “Clear It with Sid,” reminded me of a 1944 Republican slogan, “Clear It with Sidney,” used against Franklin D. Roosevelt to link him with Jewish CIO leader Sidney Hillman.  House Speaker Tip O’Neill supposedly uttered the quote in reference to the Chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.  A liberal Democrat and son of a Lithuanian blacksmith, Yates was first elected in 1948 and retired in 1999; during that time he cared deeply about the environment, Israel, and federal support for the arts.

Knowing the film received rave reviews and that Scarlett Johansson was in it, I watched “Jojo Rabbit”,” about a ten-year-old German during WW II who admires Hitler and believes Nazi propaganda about Jews.  Then he befriends a teenage Jewish girl his mother is hiding in the attic.  An added bonus was a great soundtrack, including, in German, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles, the David Bowie number “Heroes,” and the Tom Waits song “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up,” which the Ramones famously covered.

Kirsten's family

This from Kirsten Bayer-Petras:

  Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow many friends of ours begin school in a way we have not navigated as parents.  Sadako Sasaki believed folding paper cranes would grant a wish and protection.  Our uncertainty, anxiety, and fears as parents sending kids to school all come from wanting to protect each other from something that still is somewhat unknowing.  As a symbol of protection, I share a paper crane with all of you.

    Peace and love

Sad Days

“Connections are what fascinate me, the connections of history and of individual lives,the accidents, incidents, and intentions that rip people apart and sew them back together.” David Maraniss

Bill Pelke was a steel mill crane operator from Gary when he learned that teenage girls had murdered his grandmother Ruth after getting into her home in Glen Park under the pretense of wanting Bible lessons. The were quickly caught and the supposed ringleader 15-year-ld Paula Cooper eventually tried as an adult and sentenced to death by electrocution.  Bill Pelke and his family were gratified by sentence. One day, while at work in his crane Pelke had an epiphany: his grandmother telling him that she didn’t want Paula to die. Much to his dad’s chagrin, Bill joined an effort to save Paula from the electric chair that ultimately succeeded thanks to millions of signatures and statements from religious leaders, including the Pope. Bill also reached out to Paula herself in letters and finally face-to-face visits.  Paula became a model prisoner, was released three decades later, and tragically, killed herself, perhaps out of guilt that she could never completely shed.

 

Despite this terrible blow, Bill Pelke has continued his work with an organization he founded, Journey of Hope . . . from Violence to Healing. Its central purpose: opposing the death penalty. No in his 60s and living in Anchorage, Alaska, Pelke spent a frustrating week striving unsuccessfully to prevent the execution of three federal prisoners brought to Terre Haute, Indiana, to await the lethal injection. Pelke led protests at the Supreme Court building in Washington as the high court rejected, 5-4, pleas to halt the first such executions in 17 years.  The first, Daniel Lewis Lee was convicted of taking part in the murder an Arkansas family.  The family’s relatives objected to his execution, and the man most responsible for the crime avoided the death sentence by cooperating with the authorities at Lee’s prosecution. One of the other two suffered from dementia.  All three had committed heinous crimes, and all three were white, perhaps selected to dispel any hint that race was an issue.

 

Bill Pelke posted this statement from Ruth Friedman, attorney for Daniel Lee and Director, Federal Capital Habeas Project

    It is important for everyone to understand exactly what happened last night to our client, Daniel Lewis Lee. At 2 AM on July 14, while the country was sleeping, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision vacating the injunction that had been in place against the first federal execution in 17 years. Within minutes, the Department of Justice moved to re-set Danny Lee's execution--for 4 AM, summoning media and witnesses back to the prison in the very middle of the night. When it was brought to the government's attention that a court stay still remained in place, the DOJ first maintained that that stay presented no legal impediment to executing Danny Lee, but then filed an "emergency" motion to lift the stay.

    Over the four hours it took for this reckless and relentless government to pursue these ends, Daniel Lewis Lee remained strapped to a gurney: a mere 31 minutes after a court of appeals lifted the last impediment to his execution at the federal government's urging, while multiple motions remained pending, and without notice to counsel, he was executed.

    It is shameful that the government saw fit to carry out this execution during a pandemic. It is shameful that the government saw fit to carry out this execution when counsel for Danny Lee could not be present with him, and when the judges in his case and even the family of his victims urged against it. And it is beyond shameful that the government, in the end, carried out this execution in haste, in the middle of the night, while the country was sleeping. We hope that upon awakening, the country will be as outraged as we are.

Before I came to know Bill Pelke, I wouldn’t given these executions much thought.  Since inviting him to speak at IU Northwest on two occasions, I have become a strong advocate for abolishing the death penalty. It has proved not to be a deterrent and costlier, given the extended appeal process, than life without possibility of parole.  What’s more, modern DNA analysis has shown numerous prisoners on death row to have been innocent.  Most important, I believe it morally unjust for the state to put someone to death.  Bill Pelke is a man of faith who believes all souls are redeemable. One executed man’s final words were, “Holy Mother, mother of God, pray for me.”  I couldn’t bring myself to sympathize with him but did say a prayer of thanks to crusader Bill Pelke, who is keeping the faith in our troubled times.

The country lost another man of faith, Democratic Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights pioneer involved in the 1960 sit-ins, 1961 Freedom Rides, 1963 March on Washington, and the 1965 Selma march, where a trooper fractured his skull. Like his mentor Martin Luther King, for him an open, just, integrated society was not just a Black issue, it was a goal we should all embrace.  He championed the cause of gas, Latinos, poor people, native Americans, women – and he worked within the political system, making friends across and aisle. Tributes were so nonpartisan even the President was pressured into lowering federal flags to half-staff.  Son Dave wrote:

My heart is saddened. Last night John Lewis died, but for 80 years he showed us how to truly live.  Our hero is with God.  May we be his legacy. “May we love as courageously; serve as humbly; and until justice rolls down like water, may we always cause Good Trouble.” - Cory Booker. “Not many of us get to live to see our own legacy play out in such a meaningful, remarkable way. John Lewis did” - Barack Obama

 

This from former IUN colleague Don Coffin

Native village.

Hidden in the bamboo, cannot

Escape the summer storms

    Japanese haiku

Frank Certa in 1950s with sons Mike and Jerry

This from former IUN colleague Mike Certa:

    It's a sad/glad couple of days. A year ago on 7/19 our friend George passed away. On 7/20/91, my parents died in an auto accident. Thinking of them reminded me of all of the friends and relatives who have passed away. The glad part of these two days comes from the literally thousands of good memories that I have of those folks that we made when we were together. If I've learned anything, it's to never take anyone for granted. Everyday is a gift! Live it like you mean it! Stay safe.

Old Man

“I miss my old man tonight

And I wish he was here with me.”

  Steve Goodman, “My Old Man”

 

Phil and Jimbo Father's Day, 2020

Dave and Jimbo, Finland, 2018

I spent a memorable Father’s Day at the condo with great food, a loving family, and games of Telestration (seven of us) and Space Base with sons Phil and Dave and namesake James.  In a note Dave called me his best friend and the wisest man he knows – pretty special.  As my stepfather Howie used to say, I’m a lucky man.  Several Facebook friends posted photos of their late fathers, including Linda Lawson, Hammond’s first female cop and a former legislator running for lieutenant governor, and Kay Westhues (with her dad’s friend Tom Walter), who recalled white water rafting in Colorado with her “old man.”  Roy Dominguez wrote: “My Pa was Jesus Abelardo Dominguez, his father, my paternal grandfather, Abelardo Saenz Dominguez, and my maternal grandfather Hinijio Mata were all great men who put family first.” When we were writing a book together, Roy told me that his father’s family had lived in four different countries – Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, and the U.S. – without ever moving. 

 

“My old man, I know one day we'll meet again as he's looking down
My old man, I hope he's proud of who I am, I'm trying to fill the boot of my old.”

    Zac Brown Band

 

My old man, Victor Cowan Lane, died in 1966 at age 50 of a massive heart attack.  When I decided to leave Virginia Law School, despite having received a full scholarship, to attend grad school in History at the University of Hawaii, I didn’t tell him beforehand, knowing he’d try to talk me out of it; and he was very disappointed.  One of the last things he said to me, however, was that it would be good to have a doctor in the family, his way of validating my decision. Two years later, he knew Toni was pregnant (with Phil) and had bought property in the Poconos on which to build a retirement home that hopefully grandchildren would enjoy.  Alas, it was not to be.  Though we frequently had political arguments (he was a rock-ribbed Republican who idolized Ike) and competed no holds barred in ping pong and card games, he was someone whose love and support I could count on. I still miss him.


Toni’s dad Tony, whom we all called Pop, was a tool and die maker by trade who helped make molds in the manufacture of containers and boxes for companies such as Tasty Kake.  When his company moved from Philadelphia to Doylestown, PA, he commuted 90 minutes each way to provide for his family of seven.  His namesakes, Toni and grandson Philip Anthony, share endearing aspects of his personality: patience and the ability to fix things and stay calm during times of adversity.  Pop was great with kids and I always enjoyed being in his company. Here are a couple of my most cherished memories: He and I were paired in pinochle against brothers-in-law Steve and Sonny. They won three games in a row and Steve kept crowing while Sonny knew not to push his good fortune.  Sure enough, we won the next four as every bid worked perfectly. After each such hand, Tony gave me a wink and a smile.  The first time Tony and Blanche drove to see us in Indiana, Pop got off the tollway a stop late but, knowing our address was 53rd and Maryland, followed street signs from 3rd to 53rd and, realizing the streets east were named for states, found our house before dawn.  Blanche insisted they go back onto the tollway and take the correct exit.  An hour later, they pulled up at the exact same house, ours.  He never complained or rubbed it in.

 

Carter G. Woodson

In the wake of the furor over statues of Confederate generals and military bases bearing the name of rebel leaders, IU’s President McRobbie announced that the university is reviewing the names of all its buildings.  One scheduled for change is currently named for former IU president David Starr Jordon, a believer in eugenics and that “inferior” races were breeding too rapidly and might be candidates for sterilization. The intramural center previously named for segregationist trustee Ora Wildermuth has already been renamed in honor of Bill Garrett, the first African-American Big Ten basketball player.  The library in Miller was once named for Wildermuth, credited with being Gary’s first librarian, until it came out that he opposed African Americans living in Bloomington’s dorms.  For a short time it became the Wildermuth-Woodson branch, with Ora’s name paired with the “Father of Negro History.”  I loved it.  Now it is simply the Woodson branch.

The Beths

left, War on Drugs

Someone challenged me to list 5 decent songs recorded in the past 5 years, so here goes: “Pain” by The War on Drugs (which nephew Bobby and I saw at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown, California); “Missed Connection” by the Head and the Heart (Bob, Dave, and I saw The Head and the Heart there, too, at a midnight show after the Michigan Lanes and I caught them in Grand Rapids); “Future Me Hates Me” by The Beths; “Gloria” by The Lumineers; “Hey, Ma” by Bon Iver.  Also, anything by Tame Impala.

 

Daimaruya Miyuki on left

I've been trading emails with Daimaruya Miyuki, whom I met in Salt Lake City at an oral history conference.  She teaches at Yamaguchi University, located near Hiroshima, and is researching Japanese-American Nisei who fought in the Korean War. Two haikus, translated from the Japanese and courtesy of Don Coffin, fitting considering the current heat wave:

 

A huge ant crawling

Across the reed mat

Slowly, in the heat

 

Oppressive heat,

My mind in disarray,

Thunder in the distance

Better Days?

“O, yes, I say it plain

America never was America to me

And yet I swear this oath

America will be!”

  Langston Hughes, from “Let America be America Again,” quoted by Martin Luther King and the epilogue to Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods”

 

scene from "Da 5 Bloods"

Interviewed by Joy-Ann Reed for Time magazine, film director Spike Lee, he recalled sitting on his Brooklyn stoop at age 11 when he heard his mother screaming hysterically, “They killed Dr. King!  They killed Dr. King!” What followed were cities across the nation going up in flames. I was a teaching assistant at the University of Maryland and a day or so later stopped class when I heard a crowd headed to the chapel and joined them.  No words could soften the bitterness I felt.  Directed to hold hands with people near me and sing “We Shall Overcome,” when we came to the words “Black and white Together,” I could feel the anguish in my heart and imagined how empty those sentiments must have felt to people of color. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination not long afterwards seemed confirmation that America was no longer blessed, that King’s hopes of a multiracial society living in harmony was a pipe dream.

 

With most movie theaters still closed or shunned, first-run films are debuting on Netflix or some other streaming service.  So far, I’ve found enough free movies on premiums channels I get such as HBO or Showtime, and I got hooked on the TNT series “Snowpiercer,” set during a time in the future when scientists, hoping to counter the effects of global warming, caused a new Ice Age so severe that the only survivors were on a thousand-car train that must keep circling the globe in order to keep everyone alive.  On board is a class society, with the very rich segregated from others, including “tailies” in the last car who managed to get on board without a ticket.

 

The country has gone without major league sports since March, and the greed of baseball owners threatens to derail plan for an abbreviated season without fans.  Philadelphia Inquirer reporter David Murphy compared the deadlock to past labor wars, writing: “There are few things more American than the battle between capital and labor.  The national league was founded the same year as the Molly Maguire trials, the American league two years before Mother Jones led her march of Mill Children from Philadelphia to New York.”

 

In “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens, a wildlife scientist, Kya, the so-called Marsh Girl, came upon the term “Sneaky Fuckers” in a scientific digest, a term first coined by evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith to explain that subordinate males often take advantage of the opportunity to mate attracted to a dominant male that is already occupied. Owens provided this example: “Pint-sized male bullfrogs hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates.  When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others.  The imposter males were referred to a ‘sneaky fuckers.’”  Kya also learned about competition between males to inseminate females:

    Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other’s flesh.  Though very ritualized, the conflicts can end in mutilations.  To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods.  Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removed sperm by a previous opponent before he supplies his own.

Some male inseminators aren’t so fortunate.  A female praying mantis eats the head of the male while mating and then for nourishment devours the rest of his body.  Such sexual cannibalism led to several species of Latrodectus being nicknamed black widow spiders.

 

Union stalwart Bill Carey posted a poem by Imelda May, a singer/songwriter most famous for recording “Tainted Love.”  “You don’t get to be racist and Irish” recalls a time when Irish immigrants were discriminated against.  It begins:

You don’t get to be racist and Irish

You don’t get to be proud of your heritage,

plights and fights for freedom

while kneeling on the neck of another!

You’re not entitled to sing songs

of heroes and martyrs

mothers and fathers who cried

as they starved in a famine

 family of Heath Carter

Heath Carter’s second talk on the history of religion in America dealt with protests over the forced removal of Cherokee Indiana from Georgia in the age of Andrew Jackson. As Carter stated, history holds no easy answers and some Christian believers had deeply flawed beliefs; but the church-led opposition to Indian removal generated the largest national protest movement up to that time.  Many petitioners were assimilationists who urged Native Americans to adapt to white man’s ways.  Most Cherokees did just that, taking up farming, drawing up a constitution modeled after the U.S., and even converting to Christianity. Missionaries who championed their cause were incarcerated by Georgia authorities and put in chains.   Even though the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, the federal government forced them west along a “Trail of Tears” that saw 5,000 perish. Even though the anti-removalists failed to stop this atrocity, many who heretofore had favored resettling former slaves in Africa changed their position and joined the ranks of abolitionists demanding an immediate end to slavery.

 

Don Coffin wrote this haiku while peering out his back door:

Sunset approaches,

Clouds shifting in the wind and

I need only watch.

Photo by Don Coffin taken from his back door

When I’m down, lyrics to The Head and the Heart’s “Library Magic” give me a small measure of hope:

I can see the sunshine's rays gleaming through the clear waters
Telling me you gotta hop in for this chapter's ride
There will always be better days

Remarkable Hoosier

“I had the good fortune to be able to right an injustice that I thought was being heaped on young people by lowering the voting age, where you had young people that were old enough to die in Vietnam but not old enough to vote for their members of Congress that sent them there.” Birch Bayh

Former Senator Birch Bayh passed away at age 91. Moving to Indiana in 1970, I was proud that he was in Congress representing the Hoosier state.  During a remarkable 3-term career beginning in 1962 at age 34 with an upset win against Sen. Homer Capehart, he championed civil rights legislation, helped make the 25th and 26th amendments a reality regarding presidential succession and lowering the voting age to 18, and sponsored Title IX, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded educational and sports programs.  The father of 13 year-old Dianne Murphy (below) from Valparaiso, a national wrestling champion in a competition that included boys, credited Birch Bayh for making possible sports opportunities for females of all ages. 

   Sen. Bayh in 1968 on Coast Guard cutter investigating alewives infestation of Lake Michigan with mayors Frank Harongody (Whiting), John Nicosia (East Chicago), Richard Hatcher (Gary), and Joseph Klen (Hammond)

In 1964 Bayh was traveling with Senator Ted Kennedy in a small plane that crashed near Springfield, Massachusetts.  Kennedy suffered a broken back, and Bayh helped pull him out of danger. In 1972 Bayh called off plans to run for the Democratic Presidential nomination when his wife Marvella was diagnosed with cancer.  Bayh successfully led the opposition to  confirming Nixon’s racist Supreme Court nominees Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, paving the way for Justice Henry Blackmun’s elevation, and unsuccessfully supported ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and abolition of the electoral college.  

I first met Bayh in 1974 when he was in a tough re-election battle against Indianapolis mayor Dick Lugar.  In the morning he addressed the IU Northwest Young Democrats.  Shaking hands with him afterwards, I noticed Bayh’s intense blue eyes, how comfortable he was interacting with everyone in the room, and that he seemed to give each well-wisher his total attention.  From the Terre Haute area, he was down to earth without phony folksiness.  That evening at a house party in Miller, after campaigning all day in Gary, he still looked energetic and spoke passionately about the need for Congress to stand up against executive overreach.  When he shook my hand, Bayh said, “Hi, Jim, good to see you again.”  I was impressed. 

On Facebook Connie Mack-Ward wrote: “I campaigned for him when I was in college. It broke my heart when he was swept out during the horrible Reagan election. His fundamental decency as a human being was reflected in his political service. He was arguably the best federal elected official Indiana has ever had.”  Local Democrats Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, George Van Til, Charlie Brown, and Roy Dominguez effusively praised him, as did Republican Governor Eric Holcomb and Sen. Todd Young.  Congressman Pete Visclosky noted: “He lived a life dedicated to serving others.”Tennis great Billie Jean King called him “one of the most important Americans of the twentieth century.”

The Remarkable Book Store on Taft Street in Merrillville is closing on the fortieth anniversary of its birth.  Pretty much a one-man operation through the years, Ken VanderLugt started out in 1979 stocking both new and used books, but during the time I’ve known him, the concentration, with a few exceptions, has been on the latter.  He sold dozens of Ron and my “Gary: A Pictorial History,” however, and always was willing to take 5 or 10 copies of new Steel Shavingsissues.  When I’d stop in, I’d pick up science fiction novels for Toni and a history book or two for myself.  Lately VanderLugt  saw just a handful of customers a day, but after Jerry Davich wrote a laudatory column, old customers began returning, nostalgic and saddened by the looming closure of such a welcoming place.

“This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women” (2007), edited by NPR producers Jay Allison and Dan Gediman, contains contributions by both the famous (novelist John Updike, feminist Gloria Steinem) and relative unknowns– a part-time hospital clerk, for example, and a member of a state parole board.  In 1951 distinguished journalist Edward R. Murrow hosted a five-minute series by that name on CBS radio with appearances by such scholars as anthropologist Margaret Mead and scientist Charles Galton Darwin, grandson of the famous naturalist. Allison and Gediman revived “This I Believe” a half-century later.  These words of praise come from a Publisher’s Weeklyreview

  “Your personal credo”is what Allison calls it in the book’s introduction, noting that today’s program is distinguished from the 1950s version in soliciting submissions from ordinary Americans from all walks of life. These make up some of the book’s most powerful and memorable moments, from the surgeon whose illiterate mother changed his early life with faith and a library card to the English professor whose poetry helped him process a traumatic childhood event. And in one of the book’s most unusual essays, a Burmese immigrant confides that he believes in feeding monkeys on his birthday because a Buddhist monk once prophesied that if he followed this ritual, his family would prosper. This feast of ruminations is a treat for any reader.

High school teachers often assign some form of “This I Believe” essays, and questions in a similar vein often show up on college applications.

I’m not very adventuristic when it comes to taking care of my body or automobiles. In my 49 years living in Northwest Indiana, I have had just two head mechanics (Frank Renner and Tom Klaubo, head of Lake Shore Toyota service), two barbers, two regular doctors, and four dentists (including one who committed suicide and another who I nicknamed “the gouger”)  I’ve been a patient of dentist John Sikora’s for probably 30 years.  He grew up in Glen Park, is an IU grad and big Hoosier sports fan, loves the White Sox, and plays music to my liking when cleaning teeth and fixing cavities.  

While replacing a filling and waiting for the area to get numbed up, Dr. Sikora asked what I thought of the college admissions scandal that involved rich folks paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their kids into elite universities.  The scheme included bribing coaches and administrators and having  ringers take the applicants’ SAT or ACT exams.  I hope they throw the book at both the parents and the fixers behind the racket and told Dr. Sikora that under-achieving teens would be better off at institutions such as IUN.  Undergraduate diplomas at elite schools, in my opinion, are overrated compared to graduate degrees, especially if a student makes mediocre grades.

 Don Coffin

Over 50 people have been charged with federal crimes, and some ringleaders have pleaded guilty and are looking to plea bargain.  Coaches have been fired, and adversely affected students are bringing class-action suits. Former IUN professor of Economics Don Coffinoffered this perspective on what he termed “the bribing-your-kids-way-into-college thing”:

It all feels like morbid and unwelcome confirmation of my oft-repeated line that community colleges struggle because they’re trying to create a middle class for a country that no longer wants one.  The wildly wealthy live in their own world; what Christopher Lasch called “the secession of the successful”has so desiccated our sense of community that colleges for whom community is their middle name are left aside.

Electrical Engineers moved into first place by one point by taking two games and series from Just Do It Again while Duke Cominsky’s Pin Heads swept Pin Chasers to move within 6 points of us.  When I thanked Duke for helping the Engineers get into first, he said,” Not for long.”  I rolled a 440 series, just a point from my average, while Joe Piunti got hot and ended 90 pins over his.  After I picked up a 1-3-5-6 spare, opponent Wanda Fox commented, “Show off.” In the very next frame Wanda converted the exact same pins.  Of course, I said, “Show off”as she left the alley. Marge Yetsko, carrying a 137 average, threw a good ball but so slowly she rarely got a strike and more often a split. She picked up four straight 10-pins, a feat befuddling some 200 bowlers.  Husband George’s ball has good velocity but goes straight and inconsistent, befitting his 125 average.  Just Do It Again is one of the few teams the Engineers spot pins.

Jim Spicer’s weekly witticism:

  A teacher asked her 6th grade class: “Who can tell me, which human organ becomes 10 times bigger when it’s stimulated?”
  Maria stood up, bright red and angry, and said “How can you ask such a question? I’m telling my parents and they’re going to get you fired!”
  The teacher was shocked by the outburst, but decided to ignore it. She asked the class again, “Who can tell me, which human organ becomes 10 times bigger when it’s stimulated?”
  This time Thomas responded, “The answer is the iris in the human eye.”
  “Very good, Thomas. Thank you,”replied the teacher who then turned her gaze on Maria.
 “Maria, I need to tell you three things. First, you obviously have not done your homework. Second, you have a dirty mind. And third, I fear that one day you will be very, very disappointed.”

Chilling News: An Australian gunman mowed down 49 Muslims worshipping in two nearby mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, one of the most peaceful nations in the world.  Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern (above) vowed to change her country’s gun laws.  Were such progress possible in the U.S.?  The assassin, a Trump admirer, claimed he chose new Zealand to show that Muslims weren’t safe anywhere in the world.

Marianne Brush got me four tickets to see Dave Davies and his band on April 19 at the Art Theater in Hobart, of all places. Voted one of the hundred best guitarists of all time by Rolling Stone, Davies and brother Ray founded the Kinks, and Dave was responsible for the distorted power chord on the Kinks’ first hit, “You Really Got Me,” by slitting his speaker with a razor blade.  The two brothers had a stormy relationship. Toni, Phil, Dave, and I saw the Kinks at the Star Plaza 30 some years ago.  “Lola” (1970), about a young man and a transvestite, became a classic. When we saw them, they teased the audience by starting the first chord and then morphing into another song before finally performing it as an encore.

Barbara Walczak’s bridge Newslettercongratulated Barbara Larson and Carol Miller for their remarkable 76.39 % at a recent Dunelands Bridge Club event.  Barb stared the article by stating: “This is not a typographical error.”  Both are very friendly people.

I finished “Unexampled Courage,” about a recently discharged soldier beaten so badly by a South Carolina sheriff in 1946 that he was permanently blinded. Author Richard Gergel concluded: 

 In the midst of what seemed to be an unsolvable crisis in American government and character, courageous citizens, recognizing the demands of the times, stepped forward to challenge the racial status quo.  Most had little to gain and much to lose.  Although to the modern observer the collapse of the Jim Crow world may be viewed as the inevitable consequence of a growing and prosperous postwar nation, the truth is that in 1946 America’s racial future was uncertain.  This band of diverse, courageous citizens, some prominent, others from humble backgrounds, altered the course of American history, displaying what Judge J. Waties ascribed to the Briggs plaintiffs, “unexampled courage.”

Briggs v. Elliottbegan in 1947 as a challenge to the school segregation laws in South Carolina. It ultimately became combined with other cases as part of brown v. Board of Education.  Plaintiffs Harry and Eliza Briggs, a service station attendant and a maid, both lost their jobs and moved away from South Carolina.  Reverend James De Laine, who led the fight in Clarendon County, was fired from his teaching job, had is church burned to the ground, and survived an assassination attempt before leaving the Palmetto State.

The flags at IUN are at half-staff.  At first I thought it might be for the Muslims slain in new Zealand but then remembered that the Governor had ordered it in honor of Birch Bayh’s death.