Facebook

    “Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Despite Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s protestations that the company’s mission is benign -  to make the world more connected and build community across boundaries, his creation has become intrusive, a threat to privacy, and a polarizing force politically.  Aside from those criticisms, Facebook accounts inevitably become littered with advertisements and other annoying messages.  Today’s crop, for instance, included MLB, art.com, Humana Pharmacy, Bob Rohrman Auto Group, and Empire: World War 3. Even so, for me it continues to provide illustrated links to friends, relatives, former students (i.e., Jonathan Rix, George Sladic, Chris Daly, Bob Fulton, Amanda Board) and old acquaintances that I find invaluable. For example, here is a sample of what I found when opening my account this morning:

Miller Town Hall, built in 1910, used a firehouse after annexation

This from Gary historian Steve Spicer: “On February 17, 1919, the Gary Common Council passed ordinance No. 754 annexing the Town of Miller. One hundred years ago today. Approved by the mayor three days later.”  Spicer also posted a photo taken from his house on Miller Ave. of a full moon at 4 a.m. Steve was one of many area residents who expressed satisfaction that, thanks to efforts by Congressman Peter Visclosky and many others, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is now one of 61 national parks. 

Dave Lane, E'twain Moore, Dee Atta Wright; below, Miranda 

Son Dave posted photos while at Purdue University with students invited as guests of former East Chicago Central basketball star  E’Twaun Moore to celebrate aday in his honor in Lafayette and enjoy a Boilermakers game against Penn State. Dave wrote that Moore “epitomizes class and it was a great honor to be there to celebrate with him. He continues to make his hometown proud!”  Other new family photos included James visiting Valpo U. for an overnight experience and Miranda vacationing in Florida.

Professional photographer Ray Gapinski attended the same play, “Shrek: The Musical” that we enjoyed on Sunday and took numerous photos of the performance that will surely become collectors’ items for cast members. Photographer and community organizer Samuel Love documented a tour of sites in Gary to collect sights and sounds for a genealogy podcast.  Betty Villareal got together with “girlfriends” from Lew Wallace’s Class of 1967, while my 1960 Upper Dublin classmate Bettie Erhardt posted photos of a gathering at Giuseppe’s, a local steak sandwich and pizza joint, when Thelma Joy Van Sant visited.  Replying to one of Thelma and Eddie Piszek, Alice Ottinger employed the title of a 1956 Chordettes doo wop hit: “Eddie My Love.” Whenever I return to Fort Washington, I alert Bettie and she arranges for a similar mini-reunion.

Ray Smock announced the publication on President’s Day of his new book on the Trump presidency, “American Demagogue,” which drew many positive comments and a sarcastic photo from follower Katherine Ryan Walsh. Anne Balay shared this article by Brooke Nagler that appeared in the University of Chicago magazine:

 Anne Balay, AB’86, AM’88, PhD’94, has worked as a mechanic and a trucker. “I love the mental state long drives put me in; they’re pretty much the only time I feel relaxed,”she writes in Semi Queer. “I love that feeling, and almost every trucker I’ve talked to does too. That’s what we mean when we say trucking is addictive—it’s not just a job but a lifestyle.” 

 Balay herself worked as a trucker after being denied tenure, a decision she believes was motivated by homophobic discrimination. Jobless and panicking, she entered trucking school because she’d always liked driving. There she found that sitting in the cab of a truck was transformative. “Suddenly all of the anger and bitterness just flowed away. I felt like this is something I could do that would be meaningful and productive,” she says. (Balay has since returned to academia and now teaches at Haverford College.)

 Her experience was not uncommon. Mastering an 80,000-pound piece of machinery offered many of Balay’s interviewees a sense of power. As one driver told her, “the fact that people hate me ’cause I’m trans, well then they’ll hate me, but say hello to my truck.”

 With its constant motion and cycles of departure and arrival, Balay writes, the everyday life of a trucker is well suited to individuals whose gender identities are also in flux. Trucking offers a way for these individuals to express their shifting identities more openly. “Out here on the road I live authentically,” explained Alix, who is trans. “I am kind of leading a double life because when I go home, I’m kind of mom to the kids. … So when I get back into the truck, it’s liberating, because I don’t have anyone’s expectations to live up to.”

 But the profession has drawbacks. Nonwhite truckers experience racism from the carriers that employ them, other truckers, and customers. For all drivers, “trucking is incredibly dangerous,”Balay says. Apart from the risk of accidents, drivers are frequently alone in remote areas or at truck stops, which can be magnets for illegal activity. Sexual assault was common among the women she interviewed, both cisgender (those whose gender identity matches the sex on their birth certificates) and transgender. Nearly every trucker Balay interviewed carried a gun.

 Then there are the looming existential threats. Technology has transformed trucking, adding new forms of employer surveillance, such as cameras and speed sensors, that many drivers feel are needless micromanagement. The most dramatic change awaits as self-driving vehicles threaten to upend the industry. Balay worries for the marginalized truckers for whom “there are no other decent jobs available.”

 But until autonomous trucks hit the interstate, truckers will remain essential, linking even the most remote parts of the country to the web of American industrialism. That sense of connection to how things are made is one of the reasons Balay found satisfaction in driving a truck. Her work took her to the mills where toilet paper is made, the Nabisco factories where Oreos emerge from conveyer belts, the fields where fruit is grown and picked. She saw it all, and took it where it needed to go next.

Anne Balay by Riva Lehrer

Twin City Tales

Hey you, don’t help them bury the light

Don’t give in without a fight

         “Hey you,” Pink Floyd, from “The Wall”

 "The Wall" album cover

The protagonist in “The Wall,” Pink Floyd’s 1979 double album rock opera, is a jaded rock star whose father perished in World War II.  He was reared by an overprotective mother, tormented by abusive teachers, and betrayed by an unfaithful wife.  These metaphorical “Bricks in the Wall” made him depressed and, pumped up by hallucinatory drugs, he performs on stage in the manner of a fascist dictator.  Side 1 ends with “Mother” (one of my favorites), side 2 with “Goodbye Cruel World,” side 3 with “Comfortably Numb,” and side 4 with “Outside the Wall.” The final couplet of “Hey You,” which opens side 3, offers a slither of hopefulness: 

Hey you, don’t tell me there’s no hope at all

Together we stand, divided we fall

Given the many contributions of Mexican-Americans who grew up in the Indiana Harbor section of East Chicago, nicknamed the “Twin City” (at one time a vast railroad yard and industrial canal separated the immigrant neighborhood from the more affluent western section), it is maddening that Trump has demonized Mexican immigrants and turned the issue of welcoming newcomers into a political football.  He has categorized Region native Judge Gonzalo Curiel as a Mexican and a hater who should have recused himself from a case involving bogus Trump University because of the then-candidate’s vow to build a border wall. How much poorer culturally the Region would be without its legacy of ethnic diversity.

2016 E'Twain Moore basketball camp at East Chicago Central

A column by veteran NWI Timessports reporter Al Hamnik featured NBA star E’Twuan Moore in advance of a summer basketball camp in his hometown of East Chicago.  In 2007 Moore led East Chicago Central to a state championship in a 87-83 victory over North Central, whose leading scorer Eric Gordon now plays for the Houston Rockets. Moore tallied 28 points; as Coach Pete Trgovich exclaimed, “Big players set up in big games; that’s what he did.” Moore bemoaned the recent death of 11 year-old David Anderson, struck by a stray bullet while in a park where he frequently shot hoops.  Moore said: “I remember seeing him walking the halls, on the court with instructors, joking around. It was pretty tragic what happened to him.” Moore grew up in a third floor apartment on Guthrie Street in a rough neighborhood where, as Hamnik wrote, “gangs, drugs, sirens and gunshots were a common occurrence.”  Parents Ezell and Edna Moore insisted that he and his two siblings be home before dark and get good grades.  All three became college grads, E’Twaun from Purdue on a basketball scholarship.  He was drafted by the Boston Celtics, played with the Chicago Bulls, and in 2016 signed a four-year contract with the New Orleans Pelicans for $34 million.  On his biceps are tattoos reading “Ezell” and “Edna” honoring his parents’ sacrifices.

On the tennis courts of Moore’s alma mater I witnessed the Lady Cardinals’ Sectional victory, 5-0, against Hammond Noll.  The Dave Lane-coached league champs finished the regular season with a record of 10-2. After Areli Enriquez won at number 1 singles, 6-0, 6-0, I moved closer to a doubles contest.  Down 5-1 in the first set, Cresencia Alvarez and Abigail Pozo won 6 games straight and then prevailed in set 2, again by a score of 7-5.  They were aggressive at the net and virtually never double-faulted, in contrast to their opponents.  Dave introduced me to players afterwards, as well as talented athletic director Monica Maxwell, a 1995 Central grad who led Louisiana Tech to 2 Final Four appearances and starred in the WNBA with the Indiana Fever, leading the Eastern Conference in 2000 with 62 three-pointers.

 above, Monica Maxwell; below, East Chicago Central student Carolina Delgado with Mr. Lane and Mr. Trey at Teacher Appreciation Night

Several students asked if I taught Coach Lane tennis. My reply: I got him started at a young age.  A Noll player complimented my East Chicago Central t-shirt that contained the saying “Tennis, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.”  It was good to see Ashley Pabey, star of the team four years ago, who recently graduated from Purdue Northwest with a Nursing degree. A senior said that he’d be attending IVY Tech in the fall and earlier in the day was in the new building IUN shares with that institution.  When his friend who has received scholarship money from the University of Indianapolis found out I was a History professor who’d written about East Chicago, he lamented the demolition of so many buildings in the old ethnic wards.  I met Math teacher Gunnson Trey, who was born in Taiwan and returned for a month last summer, which afforded me an opportunity to describe my two days in Taipei in 1994 after lecturing in Hong Kong.  When my Taiwanese taxi driver guide drove past a statue of President Chiang Kai-shek, he cursed out the interloper for slaughtering thousands of native Taiwanese after fleeing Communist forces on mainland China.

William Drummond, Jimbo, Bob and Sheryl Burrell

At the Archives I interviewed 90-year-old William Drummond, who hired in at Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company (now Arcelor Mittal and before that LTV), located in East Chicago’s Indiana Harbor district, during the late 1940s. Assigned to a labor gang, he boarded with relatives in North Hammond until he could afford to bring up his wife and kids from downstate Illinois.   William received union support when a plant superintendent unjustly sought to punish him. William bowled with his dad as a kid at a four-lane alley and joined a coke plant team in a league composed entirely of Youngstown employees.  He finally gave up bowling last year due to bad eyesight and periodic dizziness but sometimes accompanies daughter Sheryl Burrell to Hobart Lanes when she competes as a member of Fab Four in my seniors league.  Husband Bob, a U.S. Steel retiree came with them and found reading material in the Archives to keep him busy. William’s great-grandson is an IUN student. 

 Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe, author of “The Right Stuff” (1979) and “Bonfire of the Vanities” (1987) expired at age 88.  I’ve long admired has hyperbolic prose  that made no pretense of objectivity.  Like other exponents of the so-called New Journalism, such as Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and Hunter S. Thompson, Wolfe employed elements commonly associated with fiction to explore personal foibles and idiosyncrasies.  In a Sixties class I used Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” about Ken Kesey and his hippie band of Merry Pranksters traveling the country on a 1939 school bus dubbed Furthur.   Omar Farag made a presentation on Wolfe’s 1965 book of colorful essays, “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” that contained chapters on customized cars, auto racing, and deejay Murray the K, who billed himself as the “Fifth Beatle.” Wolfe coined the phrases “Radical Chic” for Manhattan socialites who hosted fundraisers for Black Panthers and “Me Decade” for the 1970s. The difference between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, he bantered, was that one wanted to hold your hand while the other wanted to burn down your town.

Understanding Finnish words and phrases may come in handy during my upcoming trip.  I finally learned how to pronounce the city of Jyvaskyla (like it begins with a Y), where Dave and I will first stay.  We’ll be in Helsinki for Midsummer (Juhannus). Heiis hello and Nakemiinor Moi Moimeans goodbye.  Joo (pronounced yoh) or Kylla (Kuul-la), is yes while Ei means no.  Kiitos (Kee-tohss) is thank you and Ole hyva(OH-lay-va) is you’re welcome. A phrase I might need is Missa on vassa?– where is the toilet (or WC)?

 Cedar Lake Museum, once Lassen Resorts

At a workshop next week sponsored by the Cedar Lake Historical Society, I’ll note that I first heard about the “Lake of the Red Cedars,” as the Potawatomi named it, from self-styled “Region Rat” Jean Shepherd’s fishing tale “Hairy Gertz and the 47 Crappies.”  Shepherd recalled being in a rowboat knee-deep in beer cans with his Old Man and seven others:

   It is 2.A.M.  The temperature is 175, with humidity to match.  And the smell of decayed toads, the dumps at the far end of the lake, and an occasional whiff of Standard Oil, whose refinery is a couple miles away, is enough to put hair on the back of a mud turtle.  Seventeen thousand guys clumped together in the middle, wishing for the known 64 crappies in the lake.

    The surface is one flat sheet of used oil laying in the darkness, with the sounds of the Roller Rink floating out over it, mingling with the angry drone of the mosquitoes and muffled swearing from the other boats.  A fistfight breaks out at the Dance Hall (Midway Ballroom).  The sound of sirens can be heard in the Indiana blackness.  It gets louder and then fades away. Tiny orange lights bob over the dance floor.

Ray Smock, who introduced me to Jean Shepherd and grew up in Harvey, Illinois, called Cedar Lake in the 1950s a blue collar mecca where he spent many idyllic summer days.  One time he decided to swim to the other side for bragging rights. Part way across, he got tangled up in thick weeds and before he could struggle free, a half-dozen leeches were attached to his body. He recalled:

When I finally got to the other side, the first thing I did was to scratch off those damn bloodsuckers.  I had to walk back to the other side of the lake. That was the hard part. I had no shoes on and it took me a lot longer than I had planned.  This was the beginning and end of my long-distance swimming career.

I’ll also read this paragraph from the 1990 novel Blossom by Andrew Vachss

    The Chevy blended into the terrain, at home on the back roads.  I followed Rebecca’s directions to Cedar Lake. Found Lake Shore Drive.  A resort area, mostly summer cottages.  I stopped at a bench set into a wooden railing across from a funeral home.  Smoked a cigarette and waited.  The sigb said Scenic Overlook.  Told me the lake was 809 acres.  Three miles long, a mile and a half wide.  Twin flagpoles on either side of the bench.  Electricity meter on a pole.  I stood at the railing.  Somebody had carved Steve & Monica inside a clumsy heart.  I traced it with my fingers.  Three bikers went by on chopped hogs, no helmets.

below, "Far From the Maddening Crowd" by Tom Brand

Driving to the Gardner Center for an exhibit featuring the work of Michigan City artists Tom Brand and Carole Stodder, I found Lake Street to be a mess and the lane adjacent to my destination blocked off by big equipment.  Persevering, I enjoyed the abstract pieces.  Some of Stodder’s images reminded me of jigsaw puzzle pieces, and Brand’s suggested multiple possibilities of meaning.  Spotting artist and VU curator Gregg Hertzlieb, I had him explain to me how Stoddard achieved her surface texture.  Tom Brand’s bio indicated that he had once been a printer and in the 1960s had produced the original Hairy Who comic books by the Chicago Imagists.  He was surprised when I told him I’d seen the documentary about them at a Munster Art in Focus event.

from a 1968 Hairy Who comic book