Social and Political History

 

“The facts fairly and honestly presented, truth will take care of itself,” William Allen White

 

When I was in grad school more than a half-century ago, political history was still “in” while social history was generally disparaged as the study of pots and pans.  Nonetheless, a growing number of historians attuned to the tumultuous events of the 1960s began advocating studying the past “from the bottom up,” that is, concentrating on ordinary people and marginalized groups too often neglected in traditional histories, such as workers, minority groups, immigrants, women, and queers (although that word only came into widespread use recently).  The field of social history included a growing number of young scholars investigating family dynamics, gender issues, and popular culture.  As a social historian, I was pleased to see the tide turning but still respected political history.

 

 In the current Journal of American History (JAH) there are multiple reviews of social histories for every book on politics.  Examples include Alison Lefkovitz’s “Strange Bedfellows: Marriage in the Age of Women’s Liberation” and Jaime Harker’s “The Lesbian South: Southern Feminists, the Women in Print Movement and the Queer Literary Canon.”  How delightful to come across my University of Maryland buddy Don Ritchie’s friendly critique of “Crusader for Democracy: The Political Life of William Allen White” by Charles Delgadillo.  Well-respected as editor of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette and a nationally syndicated columnist, White was a progressive Republican who helped Teddy Roosevelt form the Bull Moose Party in 1912 and broke his vow never to seek elective office by running for governor of Kansas in 1924 as an independent after both major candidates had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. Ritchie wrote that while White “conducted a lifelong crusade for democracy, social justice, and economic fairness, his editorials were usually more emphatic than his politics.” When White supported Alf Landon against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, the President quipped that he could rely on the editor’s support for three and a half out of every four years.  Ritchie concludes: “Delgadillo provides a suitable study of this politically-minded journalist and liberal Republican, whose once forward-minded political faction is now virtually extinct.”

 

Despite the flattering subtitle of Arnold A. Offner’s Hubert Humphrey: The Conscience of the Country,” JAH reviewer Danial Scroop wrote that the author presented the Minnesota liberal as “a flawed, and not entirely likeable figure who talked too much and neglected his family while pursuing a policy of compromise that owed as much to his vaunting personal ambition as to political pragmatism.”  Examples include timidity in the face of McCarthyism and as President Lyndon B. Johnson disastrously escalated the war in Southeast Asia.  As LBJ famously said of his vice president, “I’ve got Hubert’s pecker in my pocket."

David Maraniss’s Pulitzer Prize winning “A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father” (2019) combines political and social history.  Elliott Maraniss, the son of Eastern European immigrants, was a baseball-loving, patriotic World War II veteran who in 1939 had written columns for the University of Michigan student paper praising the Soviet Union. Although the author’s father never talked about whether or not he had been a member of the Communist Party at that time, he came under FBI scrutiny and in 1952 was called to testify before the notorious House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC). Instead of acting contrite and “naming names” of those he suspected to be former Communists, Elliott Maraniss refused to cooperate with the committee, which refused to allow him to read a statement defending his patriotism; it was buried in HUAC files until discovered by his son decades later.  That stance cost Maranisss his job with the Detroit Times and, hounded by the FBI wherever he sought work, it was several years before the editor of the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, hired him.  Rather than allow the experience to embitter him, Elliott, according to his son, remained an optimist and eventually regained his reputation as a fair-minded newspaperman respected by both Democrats and Republicans

 

Trump has been browbeating governors who are facilitating constituents being able to vote by mail ballot, claiming without a shred of evidence that it will lead to fraudulent returns. His constant downplaying of an epidemic that has killed upwards of a hundred thousand citizens gets more disgusting with each passing day as do the racist appeals to his base.  Dean Bottorff wrote: “Sadly, Trump supporters are like brainwashed cultists. No amount of reason, irrefutable facts or even common sense will influence their beliefs. If you try to persuade them of even the simplest fact (say, how Trump's two-month denial marathon about Covid-19 has caused tens of thousands of needles deaths) they will either not listen, claim the media and scientists are lying, throw up false equivalencies or simply go down a rabbit hole of flawed logic and conspiracy theories.”

 

In the Chesterton Tribune Betty Canright and Kevin Nevers reported on these events that took place 100 years ago: two-year-old Loraine Bedenkop died after swallowing a three-eighths iron washer; pickerel were abundant in the Kankakee River due to high water in Illinois lakes and streams; New York Central railway officials are ignoring demands by town officials to safeguard the Calumet Road railroad crossing; and this item: “forced to descend on account of heavy fog, U.S. mail aviator Carr Nutter escaped injury after crash-landing his machine in a soft field on the Ralph Peterson farm a half mile north of Crocker.”  The following day, I was mentioned in the “Ten Years Ago” section of the column for speaking to the Dunes Historical Society, and Becca’ photo appeared on the front page for winning a Chesterton music award.

 

Historian Ray Boomhower wrote that Hoosier homemaker Juliet V. Strauss (1863-1918), whose weekly column in the Indianapolis News was titled “The Country Contributor.”  Strauss also enjoyed a wide readership from a monthly column, “The Ideas of a Plain Country Woman,” published in Ladies Home Journal, played a major role in the establishment of Turkey Run State Park.  Boomhower posted this quotation by Strauss that captured her zest for life: “I lived my own life.  If I wished to ride a horse, or to play a game of cards, or to go wading in the creek with the children, I always did it. I never strained my eyesight or racked my nerves trying to arrive at small perfections. I avoided rivalries and emulations. In short, I lived.”

Embrace the Mess

“The messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.” Daniel J. Boorstin

Joe Madden and Don Ritchie; "c'est du vent" means "it's all hot air"

“Embrace the mess”sounds like a gimmicky motto thought up by Chicago Cubs manager Joe Madden, whose motivational sayings include “Try not to suck”and “Do simple better.” Two articles on pedagogy in the current Oral History Review (OHR)are titled “Embracing the Mess,” one about “Conflict Studies Classrooms” and the other on “Untidy Oral History.”  Both take a postmodernist approach, regard uncertainty of validation as a given, and discuss such concepts as deconstruction, dialogic relationships, indeterminacy, and intersubjectivity. Methinks these scholars created an unnecessary messiness themselves. I’m so grateful for fellow Marylander Don Ritchie’s “Doing Oral History,” which advocates plunging in armed only with a few practical words of advice and leaving the analysis until later.“

I am one of countless oral historians who have benefitted from Alessandro Portelli’s sage insights and example.  In “Biography of an Industrial Town: Terni, Italy, 1831-2014” (2017), now available in English, he distinguishes between memory and imagination and regards his craft as a creative endeavor.  His “symphony” of working-class voices (in the words of OHRcontributor William Burns) weaves a narrative similar to many post-industrial towns and cities. In “They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History” (2011) Portelli wrote:

  I have always admired the way in which people fight back under great odds and survive, especially in the United States, where one is not supposed to be up against impossible odds.  Harlan County [KY] does not display much pursuit of happiness.  But you see there the persistence of life in the face of danger and death.

  The handling of poisonous snakes in church is a test of faith and grace, just as catching them in one’s yard is a test of prowess and courage.  The deathly presence of the snake parallels the daily danger of the mines, and the culture takes a sort of ironic pride in its ability to handle it.  The snake is both something radically other and a household presence.

The most interesting article in the special OHR section on pedagogics, Leyla Neyzi’s “National Education Meets Critical Pedagogy: Teaching Oral History in Turkey,” views oral history as an alternative to “methodologically conservative nationalist history.”Neyzi’s mentor was folklorist and historian Arzu Öztürkmen of Bogazici University, who at the 1998 International Oral History Association (IOHA) conference in Rio de Janeiro presented a splendid paper entitled “The Irresistible Charm of the Interview.”  Phil and I danced with Öztürkmen at the U.S. Consulate’s gala for IOHA members.  I learned that the Turkish belly dance is similar to the Hawaiian hula except for the arm motion. 

Leyla Neyzi and Arzu Ozturkmen

In 2000, thanks in part to Öztürkmen, Bogazici University hosted the IOHA conference.  I was there when grandson James was born. In Istanbul I gave a talk about Inland Steel’s “Red Local” 1010 and the Steelworker’s Fight Back 1977 USWA election. One conference session was on the Armenian genocide during and after World war I resulted in the Turks extermination of approximately a million people.  When governmental officials threatened to prevent it, the IOHA threatened to hold the conference elsewhere.  An overflow audience included many people who were not IOHA members.  Neyzi wrote that this neglected episode in Turkish history illustrates “the silences and contradictions of public history”:

  When mentioned in history textbooks, Armenians tend to be referred to as “traitors” who were “relocated” during wartime for raison d’etat.  The prevalent view is that the (“so-called”) Armenian genocide is a myth Turkey’s internal and external “enemies” fabricated. Given that young people are raised with this public narrative (which masks an “open secret” only discussed in private), what are the implications of introducing the Armenian genocide as a historical event in the classroom, along with the memories of survivors as recorded by oral historians?”  

Neyzi broached this controversial subject in “’Wish They Hadn’t Left’: The Burden of Armenian Memory in Turkey,” a chapter in the 2010 book “Speaking to One Another: Personal Memories of the Past in Armenia and Turkey.”

Regal Beloit’s threat to move its Valpo operations to a plant in Monticello, Indiana, is shameful blackmail. All striking workers demand is a 75-cent hourly wage increase and health insurance not to exceed $15,000 a year. NWI Timescorrespondent Joseph S. Pete wrote: “The bearings manufacturing operation has a long history in Valparaiso and is even older than U.S. Steel's Gary Works. Regal Beloit, a multinational electric motors manufacturer, has only owned the former McGill Manufacturing Co. for five years.” Mayor Jon Costas released this statement:

  This decision would impact approximately 110 union workers and another 50-60 nonunion management positions. As a community, we are disappointed that Regal is considering shutting down this productive facility and urge them to reconsider this unfortunate option. 

Employees agreed to return to work while negotiations continue regarding the dispute and the company’s heartless position.

Anne Balay wrote:

Memories. Ten years ago today, at a faculty meet and greet, James Lane suggested to me that I do oral histories of gay steelworkers. I was telling him about my interest in blue collar queers, and he said this was an interesting and fun opportunity. I was an English professor with no background in ethnography or interviewing. I was an introvert. I never looked back and the people I know now because of that work are the greatest gift anyone could have.

Last October, in Montreal for an OHA conference session Anne Balay organized, I teared up at lunch with one of Anne’s Haverford students, Phil Reid, describing my suggestion that she interview LGBT steelworkers and how her department chair held that against her, preferring that Anne keep churning out largely unread children’s lit articles.

Ray Smock photographed the Milky Way near Spray, Oregon and wrote:

   The Milky Way this time of year dominates the sky from horizon to horizon. We had two nights of crystal-clear sky with stars so bright it was easy to see in total darkness. Spray, Oregon a town of 150 was six miles from our viewing site and blocked by a mountain. No light pollution!  We got lucky in the high desert with beautiful days and star filled nights. We went to a country store where we were the only ones not wearing camouflage. It was opening day for elk hunting for bow hunters.

On the second week of bowling I rolled a 473 (148-152-173) as the Electrical Engineers took two games and series by a mere 12 pins.  In the tenth frame of game three Ron Smith doubled, I struck and spared, setting the stage for 87-year-old Frank Shufran, our clean-up man, who needed to pick up a ten-pin, normally his nemesis, in order for us to prevail.  He nailed it and flashed four fingers, signifying the number of times he had converted it.  On an adjacent alley, 82-year-old Gene Clifford, a former Valpo H.S. bowling coach, rolled a 236 despite missing a couple spares.

Steve and Wanda Trafny

Historian John C. Trafny gave me a copy of his latest Arcadia “Images of America” volume, “Downtown Gary, Millrats, Politics, and US Steel,” co-authored by his sister Diane F. Trafny.  On the cover is a Calumet Regional Archives photo of a parade float provided by Gary Works passing the Lake Superior Court Building during the 1931 Gary Silver Jubilee celebration.The book includes several photos of the Trafny's parents, Steve, who saw action in the Pacific during World War II, and Wanda, a refugee from Poland.  In the introduction they paint a vivid picture of Gary’s downtown commercial district during its 30-year heyday beginning in the 1920s, which drew shoppers and pleasure seekers from throughout the Calumet Region despite stores being closed on Sundays prior to the 1950s except for gas stations and pharmacies:

 Shoppers were offered a host of stores. Large national chains like Sears, J.C. Penney, Florsheim, and S.S. Kresge Co., and Chicago-based stores like Goldblatt Bros. became popular with blue-collar families, especially those who wanted a good deal on furniture or appliances.  H. Gordon and Sons, which opened on Broadway in the early 1920s, became one of the area’s premier clothing stores.  Others included Pearson, a women’s clothing store, and Henry C. Lytton and Sons, menswear.  Baby boomers may recall Comay’s Jewelers with its record shop, Tom Olesker’s, W.T. Grant, and Robert Hall clothing on East Fifth Avenue.  No matter the store, sales associates asked shoppers, “May I help you?” 

  Along Fifth Avenue visitors could patronize Olsen Cadillac, Baker Chevrolet, and Baruch Olds. Bakeries such as Cake Box and Sno-White provided delicious baked goods. Slicks Laundry, the Blackstone, the Lighthouse, Walts, and Gary Camera were other businesses located along the street. In addition, there were plenty of taverns in the area.They included Parkway, Cozy Corner, Trainor’s, the Spitfire Lounge, the Ingot Inn, and a host of others.  On payday Mondays, the saloons did good business as steelworkers cashed checks there instead of the banks.  It was, after all, a steel town.

Ron Cohen treated Steve McShane and me to lunch at Captain’s House in Miller.  The main order of business was doing whatever necessary to hire Steve’s replacement before he retires in a year.  As Archives co-directors, Ron and I agreed to write Library dean Latrice Booker and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Vicki Roman-Lagunas to urge authorization so a search can commence.   Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy had brought me a copy of the Gary Crusaderthat contained an article about the third edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History.”  Ron told me that the Katie Hall Educational Foundation has been selling them at a brisk pace.

Rolling Stone National Editor Matt Taibbi’s article “Trump 2020: Be Very Afraid” compares the President to a “mad king” whom “most people would not leave alone with a decent wristwatch, let alone their children.”  Here’s a description of him at a rally in Cincinnati: “His hair has visibly yellowed since 2016.  It’s an amazing, unnatural color, like he was electrocuted in French’s mustard.  His neckless physique is likewise a wonder. He looks like he ate Nancy Pelosi.” He scolds Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being disrespectful to “Nancy.”  Taibbi writes: 

 Nancy!  The lascivious familiarity with which Trump dropped her name must have stung like a tongue in Pelosi’s ear.  The Speaker, from that moment, was cornered.  A step forward meant welcoming the boils-and-all embrace of Donald Trump. A step back meant bitter intramural surrender and a likely trip to intersectionality re-education camp.

If “race, class, and gender” was once the politically correct historians’ Holy Trinity, “intersectionality” has become its unitarian synthesis. Coined by black feminist scholar Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, it’s the assertion that aspects of political and social discrimination overlap with gender.

 intersectionality

In “Chances Are” novelist Richard Russo introduced memorable minor characters such as closeted American History professor Tom Ford, who gave students the lone final exam question on the first day of class: “What caused the Civil War?” Michael, Sr., Mickey’s father, “like so many workingmen, always carried his money in a roll in his front pocket, no doubt comforted by the weight, the illusion of control you couldn’t get from a flimsy credit card.”A pipe fitter with a heart murmur that he neglected, one day he remained in the restaurant booth when his buddies got up to leave, his heart having beat for the final time.  When I told Gaard Logan that “Chances Are” was named for the 1957 Johnny Mathis song, she recalled that the brother of the African-American crooner (the secret heartthrob to many suburban young women I knew) was rumored to be a toll booth attendant in San Francisco when she moved there. 

Finland Trip

 “Finland, arise, for to the world thou criest

That thou hast thrown off thy slavery
Beneath oppression's yoke thou never liest
Thy morning's come, O Finland of ours!”

         Jean Sibelius, “Finlandia,” lyrics by V.A. Koskenniemi

abstract Sibelius monument in Helsinki by Eila Hiltunen; user duress the bust of Sibelius was added

After enduring an hour-long line for the purpose of having our passports and boarding passes checked and double-checked, Dave and I flew on a Finnair Airbus to Helsinki.  During the overnight flight I watched two great movies, “Lady Bird” (Laurie Metcalf deserved an Oscar as the mother of a disgruntled teenager) and “The Post,” starring Meryl Streep as Katherine Graham and “The Americans” co-star Matthew Rhys as Pentagon Papers pilferer Daniel Ellsberg. The film begins with Ellsberg on a disastrous patrol in Vietnam and ends with Watergate watchman Frank Wills discovering something amiss at Democratic National Headquarters. After turning our watches ahead eight hours, we went through customs easily and rented an Opel Signum from Avis with built-in GPS.  Despite little or no sleep, Dave drove 160 miles (257 kilometers) to Jyväskylä for the twentieth biennial International Oral History Association (IOHA) conference. At the Scandic Hotel’s Moe’s Café we had Karhu beer on draft and, at Angie’s prior suggestion, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches on delicious toast before calling it an evening.

 first Finland photos

Registering for the IOHA conference at the University of Jyväskylä, I inquired if Dave could attend a few sessions; organizer Tiina-Riitta Lappi, learning he was an inner city high school teacher, gave him a lanyard that entitled him to attend all events.  I ran into Anna Green, whom I remembered from a NOHANZ conference in Wellington, New Zealand.  Toni is still in touch with Beverly Morris, who with husband Peter hosted us.  During the opening ceremony, University of Helsinki prodigy Zipora Oyola played native folksongs on a kantele, a 39-string Finnish instrument.  Aussie Paula Hamilton’s  keynote address, “Rethinking Oral History and the Landscape of Memory” opened with a video on a large screen of the Crystals performing “Then He Kissed Me.”  That got our interest and me singing along.
IOHA opening reception

I recognized South Africans Sean Field, a dorm mate in Istanbul, on the program and Philippe Denis, organizer of the 2002 Pietermaritzburg conference.  Sipping champagne at the opening reception hosted by the city of Jyväskylä, I chatted with Sean and a scholar from Australia, Cate Pattison, while old friend and fellow Marylander Don Ritchie struck up a conversation with Dave about, among other things, Elmore Leonard mystery novels.  Cate was also on our tour of the Alvar Aalto Museum, which not only highlighted Aalto’s architectural achievements but also his  and wife Elissa's design of furniture and other decorative items.

Over the next two days I attended a half-dozen sessions. “Troubling Trauma” included talks about the 1994 Rwandan genocide, women combatants in the Mozambique anti-colonial struggle, and memories of the apartheid era in South Africa, a subject Dave covers extensively in an advanced English course.  In the “Arts and Music” session Michael Kilburn’s “Hey Ferdo, it’s only rock and roll: Antipolitical politics and antipoetical poetics in the Czech underground,” featured commentary on the punk band The Plastic People of the Universe and the album “Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned.”  Kati Kallio spoke movingly about Finnish folk songs and then sang two of them, a nice touch.  One about young men conscripted into the Russian army during World War I contained these lines:

So the boys are picked

The white-heads are chosen

Who gets the lot

The lot leaps to the unlucky

According to Kallio, entire villages bid conscripts farewell in an elaborate ritual.

Irish scholar Jamie Canovan opened the “Difficult Childhood” session discussing abused foster children consigned to Irish state care. Sally Zwartz summarized the shocking findings of Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.  Slightly more uplifting was Spyridoula Pyrpyli’s account of working children’s memories playing for a legendary Greek football (soccer) team.  Chairing a session entitled “Different Oralities,” Don Ritchie expressed bewilderment at the subtitle devised by conference organizers: “Documenting the Human Experience of Conflict through the ‘I’ and the ‘We.’”  Claire Kotnes introduced the audience to Polish immigrant Mia Truskier, an advocate for both Jewish and Haitian refugees.  Husband Andor Kotnes spoke about Baltimore community organizer Juanita Jackson Mitchell, the first African-American woman recipient of a University of Maryland law degree and a protégé of Thurgood Marshall. 

I met interesting young scholars during meals and coffee breaks, including Niels Rebetez from Switzerland, Shatarupa Thakurta from India, and South African Tshepo Moloi.  I was talking about Gary mayor Richard Hatcher being arrested during a 1985 anti-apartheid demonstration in front of the South African embassy when Don Ritchie joined us.  Historian of the U.S. Senate at the time, Ritchie was demonstrating with a group of Academicians against Apartheid on a day when singer Stevie Wonder showed up and got arrested.   

Wednesday’s keynote speaker Shelley Trower spoke about studying British seniors’ reading habits during childhood and adolescence, citing such motivations as self-improvement and desire for vicarious adventure.  Kate Moore, whom I’d palled around with in Rio, Istanbul, and Pietermaritzburg, noticed my hand up during the Q and A.  I told her of my intent to bring up the seeking of sex information as a motive, citing the popularity of “Peyton Place” and “Playboy” during Baby Boomers’ formative years.  She quipped: “I’m glad you weren’t called on.  Maybe she wasn’t joking?  She recalled a rhinoceros charging our vehicle during a Pietermaritzburg conference field trip, something I had forgotten.

The much anticipated keynote by Alessandro Portelli did not disappoint.  Concentrating on the current plight of refugees, he opened with Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” whose opening lines were based on an English song of Italian origin.  Emphasizing the evolution of folk songs in a global context, he described discovering a Bob Dylan café in India.  Portelli enlivened his talk with anecdotes about recording a Senegalese immigrant’s lament similar to Dylan’s “blue-eyed son” only the darker-skinned sojourner could not return to the land of his birth.  Portelli recorded a Bulgarian street performer who showed up with a boom box and sang “Oh Solo Mio” and a Beyoncé hit.  When he inquired about gypsy folksongs, she promised to learn some and return in a couple weeks.

 lake cruise 

Bad Ass Brass band entertains

Weather was perfect for our cruise on Lake Päijänne followed by a Midsummer holiday celebration that included dinner, champagne, and music provided by the super-cool Bad Ass Brass Band, whose impressive repertoire ranged from jazz to punk.  We sat with Rommel Curaming from Brunei and South African Tshepo Moloi, who was impressed with Dave’s knowledge of his country’s history.  Don Ritchie introduced me to Czech republic scholar Pavel Mücke, and wife Anne informed me of Maryland grad Charles Walker’s new book on the 1968 Washington, D.C., riot, the results of which we often drove by on research trips to the Library of Congress.  Near evening’s end, I spotted Kate Moore on the dance floor with a tall, friendly Norwegian and joined them. Afterwards, Kate acknowledged, “You can still dance.”

 Dave at Seuassari Island

Driving to Helsinki, we found Joe and Davidow and Jaana-Maria Jukkara’s place on a road, Tinasepantie, that we subsequently dubbed “Tina’s panty.”  Thanks to their generosity, we had the house to themselves while they spent the weekend in the country, like most Helsinki residents.  Following their suggestion, we visited an open-air museum on Seuassari Island, where tar was harvested during the nineteenth century for use on ships. The Midsummer festivities included folk dancing and the lighting of a huge bonfire off shore.  

Helsinki Cathedral (Lutheran), a stop on Hop On, Hop Off Bus route

Over the next five days, by car, train  and bus, we hit many popular attractions including Helsinki Cathedral, the downtown market, and a huge fortress on the island of Suomenlinna that was built in the mid-eighteenth century as protection against Russian expansion when Finland was under Swedish control.  An entrance-way called King’s Gate was designed to welcome King Adolf Frederick, who died after consuming a meal that included lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, kippers, champagne, and 14 servings of his favorite desert, a sweet roll named semi served in a bowl of hot milk.  The fortress became a Russian possession in 1808.  

fortress on Suomenlinna; Hard Rock Cafe

In addition to these tourist spots, Dave and I also visited Sea Life, Linnamaki Amusement Park, Korkeassaari Zoo (I loved the uncaged peacocks and the brown karhu polar bear whose likeness is on cans of our favorite Finnish beer).  We enjoyed out Finnish meal so much at Bryggeri Pub and Brewery that we each bought t-shirts.  Lunch at the Hard Rock Café was also on out to-do list.  

Joe and Jaana returned during our last two days in Finland.  By the time we left, we considered them to be dear friends.  Mike Bayer’s half-brother, Joe recalled many of our “lefty” friends from visits to Gary.  He directs films about American civil rights struggles for Finnish TV.  Joe was impressed with Dave’s knowledge of black intellectual James Baldwin and how well the two of us got along.  After hearing him call me Jimbo, he did, too. Our last night in Helsinki, Joe cooked salmon over a fire and Jaana contributed a delicious salad.  Joe’s friend Jeremy Gould, an anthropologist whose has spent many years in Zambia, brought the makings for guacamole and prepared a fire for a sauna, a common Finnish custom that Dave experienced with his two companions.  Both Joe and Jaana are soccer fans, so we caught an exciting World Cup match between Argentina and Nigeria.   

              Joe making fire for salmon dinner                   

 Jimbo and Jaana; below, Joe, Jaana, Dave, Jeremy

The flight home was uneventful. I watched “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and enough of “Black Panther” to appreciate its appeal to black moviegoers and fans of Marvel Studio productions.  We encountered seemingly endless lines going through customs at O’Hare, but limo driver Darryl got us home in record time considering Friday rush hour traffic.  After filling Toni in on trip highlights, I hit the sack for 12 hours straight. While I was away, Michael Jackson’s father, a Gary native and brutal task master, died.  In Lexington, Virginia, Red Hen Restaurant  owner Stephanie Wilkinson asked Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave after learning that her staff was uncomfortable serving her.  The ensuing bruhaha produced a typically ill-mannered presidential tweet, to wit: “The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.”  Suck wind, Mr. President, off to meet his pal Putin in Helsinki in two weeks.

Skyline Pigeon

“Turn me loose from your hands

Let me fly to distant lands

Over green fields, trees and mountains

Flowers and forest fountains

Home along the lanes of the skyway.”

         Elton John, “Skyline Pigeon”

 Ryan White; hospital visit by Elton John

The March 2016 issue of Indiana Magazine of History contains Allen Safianow’s “The Challenges of Local Oral History: The Ryan White Project.”  A teenager in Kokomo, Indiana, White, a hemophiliac, contracted AIDS from contaminated blood transfusions and in 1985 was prevented from attending high school after protests from parents.  When his mother fought the School Superintendent’s decision, her car tires were slit and malicious rumors spread that Ryan had caught AIDS from her.  Another falsehood claimed that Ryan had spat at adversaries who shunned or insulted him.  At Easter services members of his congregation refused to shake his hand and consigned him to the back pew. At Ryan’s request, the family ultimately moved to Cicero, Illinois, a community that welcomed him.  During the lengthy legal fight, Ryan became nationally famous and befriended by singers Elton John and Michael Jackson and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. Elton took Ryan on a private tour of Disneyland, paid the down payment on their house in Cicero, and started the Elton John AIDS Foundation.   At his funeral in 1990, which 1,500 people attended, including TV host Phil Donahue and First Lady Barbara Bush, Elton sang “Skyline Pigeon,” whose last lines go:

I want to hear the pealing bells

Of distant churches sing

But most of all please free me

From this aching metal ring

And open out this cage towards the sun.

Oral historian for the Howard County Historical Society’s Ryan White project, Allen Safianow’s scholarly article makes reference to insights by oral history heavyweights Mary Larson on making ethical judgments, Linda Shopes on challenging contradictions and inaccuracies, Alessandro Portelli on memory as an active process of creating meanings, and Donald Ritchie on the multiple ways of doing oral history.  Safianow concludes with this quote from Ritchie’s classic how-to book “Doing Oral History”(2003), noting:

the tendency of oral history to confound rather than confirm our assumptions, confronting each of us with conflicting viewpoints and encouraging us to examine events from multiple perspectives.  Oral history’s value derives not from resisting the unexpected but from relishing it.  By adding an ever-wider range of voices to the story, oral history doesn’t simplify the historical narrative but makes it more complex – and more interesting.

 Donald Ritchie in 2011

Five years after the Howard County Historical Society created a Hall of Legends, Ryan White name was finally added to the list.  His mother, Jeanne White-Ginder, spoke at the induction ceremony, saying that Ryan, who lived five years longer than doctors predicted, would have wanted her to attend.  In a subsequent interview Jeanne told Safianow: “He would want that fight to be over and say, ‘You know, you’re all forgiven.  You helped me live.’  And I don’t think Kokomo realizes that, but they did, they helped him live with AIDS because of the fight.”  Ironically, had the town not shunned Ryan, he might never have become, in reporter Patrick Curry’s words, the “beacon of hope [who inspired] millions toward understanding and personal growth.”

Shortly after Ryan White’s death I attended a Colts-Redskins game in Indy, and everyone received a free CD containing Elton John’s tribute.  On the twentieth anniversary of Ryan’s death, Elton addressed these remarks to him:

I remember so well when we first met. A young boy with a terrible disease, you were the epitome of grace. You never blamed anyone for the illness that ravaged your body or the torment and stigma you endured.

When students, parents and teachers in your community shunned you, threatened you and expelled you from school, you responded not with words of hate but with understanding beyond your years. You said they were simply afraid of what they did not know.

When the media heralded you as an "innocent victim" because you had contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion, you rejected that label and stood in solidarity with thousands of HIV-positive women and men. You reminded America that all victims of AIDS are innocent.

Ryan, you inspired awareness, which helped lead to lifesaving treatments. In 1990, four months after you died, Congress passed the Ryan White Care Act, which now provides more than $2 billion each year for AIDS medicine and treatment for half a million Americans. Today, countless people with HIV live long, productive lives.

Allen Safianow in 2005

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Allen Safianow has conducted oral histories with Kokomo residents about the Ku Klux Klan, a powerful hate group in that community during the 1920s.   Safianow was the 2005 recipient of the Indiana Historical Society’s Emma Lou and Gayle Thornbrough award for an Indiana Magazine of History (IMH) article entitled “You Can't Burn History': Getting Right with the Klan in Noblesville, Indiana.”  IMH editor Eric Sandweiss noted:

Safianow's carefully researched study sheds light on not one but two periods in Indiana: the 1920s and our own time. By unearthing the reactions of early Noblesville residents to the presence of the Ku Klux Klan in their community, he tells us a great deal about how racism incorporated itself into the lives of ordinary Americans.

[Safianow recounted] the sensitive issue of how a community deals with the fact that its most respected citizens, its esteemed forefathers, embraced an organization which now is commonly regarded as an anathema, a gross antithesis of the fundamental ideals of this nation.

The Engineers took 5 of 7 points from the Pin Heads.  My best game was a 167 despite four splits.  In consecutive frames I picked up the 5-7 and 5-10.  After I missed a ten-pin, Ken Cichocki quipped, “Had the five-pin also been standing, you’d have converted the spare.”  Ron Smith had a chance to win $50 if he knocked down exactly five pins on his first ball and another 50 if he then converted the spare.  He did the difficult part, leaving the 1-2-3-4-5, for $50 but then left the 5-pin on his second ball.  His team’s name, the Pin Heads, reminded me of a party during the late 70s when we invited softball teammates, who favored heavy metal, and friends who liked punk bands.  When someone put on a Talking Heads album, my softball battery mate yelled, “Who’s the pinhead who put that crap on?”

A joke from Jim Spicer, who wrote, “Apparently it’s no longer politically correct to direct a joke at any racial or ethnic minority. So”:

An Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Ghurkha, a Latvian, a Turk, an Aussie, two Kiwis, a German, an American, a South African, a Cypriot, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Mexican, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Swede, a Finn, an Israeli, a Dane, a Romanian, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian, a Libyan, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, and an Ethiopian went to a night club.       

The bouncer said, “Sorry, I can’t let you in without a Thai.”