Black Lives Matter

"We all need to learn.  We all need to listen.  We all need to be a part of the solution.  We can do it peacefully together.” Tony Dungy

 

Those who disparage the slogan “Black Lives Matter” and counter with the argument that “All Lives Matter” don’t comprehend the necessity of making dramatic the point that the toll of African-American victims of police violence - and murder even – has become totally unacceptable.  Of course, all lives matter but until these killings cease the message of “Black Lives Matter” needs to be heard loud and clear.  As veteran Post-Tribune reporter John Mutka has written, in America all citizens are supposed to be created equal, but “unfortunately some are created more equal than others, especially where civil rights are concerned.”

Denzel Smith

On Facebook son Dave performed the Buffalo Springfield protest song “For What It’s Worth,” written by Stephen Stills, and dedicated it to Denzel Smith, a thoughtful, intelligent East Chicago Central grad now attending Bethune-Cookman University who has been grievously affected by the murder in Minneapolis of “gentle giant” George Floyd.  Calling Denzel a “brother from a different mother,” Dave introduced the song with these words: “It’s time to love each other, it’s time to listen to each other.  I stand with the young people in the streets.  Denzel Smith, I love you.”  “For What It’s Worth” begins with the line, “There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Another couplet goes, “A thousand people in the street, singing songs and carrying signs.”  And this verse:

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

 

Granddaughter Alissa called, conflicted about attending a peaceful rally in Grand Rapids scheduled to begin at 7 P.M.  In Valparaiso an 11 A.M. rally went peacefully, but both Toni and I counseled against being part of something at near dusk, when agitators on both the right and left were likely to foment trouble.  We called a few hours later and, finding nobody at home, left a message hoping to hear from her.  She called soon afterwards, having venture downtown with Josh and witnessed the rally from a distance. Next day, we learned that the protest had turned ugly with looting and the torching of police vehicles.  We were happy she was not caught up in it. Alissa posted this message:

    Don't be silent about the murder of George Floyd (and countless other black/brown people) and outraged at property damage. Be outraged at a justice system that has failed so many times that it makes people feel like rioting is the only choice. Be outraged at the silence from so many who should use their privilege for good.  I was proud to stand in solidarity with my city yesterday (from a social distance) and inspired to see all the protests around the country. Please everyone be safe (COVID is still here) and we need each other more than ever. Also, don't let the news coverage on the damage distract you - yesterday was a 99.9% peaceful gathering of people coming out in solidarity

After a couple days of uncertainty, authorities in Minneapolis and elsewhere are cracking down on protests, which continue to take place all over the nation. Even so, in many communities, officers have taken a knee to show solidarity with those mourning Floyd’s unnecessary death.  Locally, peaceful vigil took place in several other locations, but demonstrations that continued into the evening hours sometimes got ugly.  In Hobart stores got looted at Southlake Mall and demonstrators surged onto Route 30, stopping traffic.

Southlake Mall photo by Marc Chase

 In Hammond, Indiana, county police were on hand to prevent protestors from blocking the Frank Borman expressway (80/94). Former IUN colleague Linda Anderson reported:

Since this morning things have been other-worldly here.  From my window I have watched as police showed up to block access from Illinois into Hammond. Lots of police cruisers! Then an hour later came the big yellow road building equipment to block the road, and shortly after, they began placing large concrete barricades across the road. Then, arrived the National Guard. I could whistle and get their attention if needed, but other than assuming my sleep tonight will be punctuated with more sirens and the flashing red and blue lights through my windows, right here things seem calm, with an occasional driver honking in annoyance when they discover their route is blocked. My kids have offered I can come stay with them, but actually I feel fine being here. This morning there was rioting and looting at a shopping mall near here in Illinois so this is our city's response. Yesterday, tear gas/pepper spray was directed at a peaceful protest march in town. Very disappointing. I am hoping things cool down but not optimistic. I am in support of the protests and speaking out. Yet, as every newscast reports this is a systemic problem that must be solved I hear no real solutions and with the pandemic, unemployment sky high and a political stage that presents as a nightmare, it is going to take more effort and listening than this country has ever had to collect. Sadly, I am not sure we are up to the task. Too many politicians, religious leaders and educators unfortunately must have majored in "talk".

Hammond photos by Kyle Telechan

Trump continues to tweet incendiary comments about shooting looters and unleashing vicious dogs on citizens.  While he claimed to have talked to George Floyd’s family, a brother said the President never let them get a word in, whereas Joe Biden’s call lasted more than 30 minutes and was a true interchange. Floyd had worked as a bouncer at a conga Latin club and several people described him as a “gentle giant.”  The owner of the store where Floyd bought a pack of cigarettes with a counterfeit bill, not on the premises at the time, told reporters that Floyd was a regular customer who was unfailingly friendly and never gave anyone a hard time.  Vice President Mike Pence claims to believe in peaceful protest, drawing this retort from Ayo Edebiri: “Remember, Pence, when Colin Kaepernick peacefully protested and you stood your ass up and walked out of the stadium?”  Many have pointed out this hypocrisy and compared the NFL quarterback subsequently blackballed by NFL owners taking a knee to the Minneapolis cop killing George Floyd with his.

 

Evan Davis toured his neighborhood in the Fort Wayne area with a “Black Lives Matter” sign and reported:

  The Maplecrest walk with my Black Lives Matter sign went well. A former newspaper colleague and I walked for about half an hour and got no responses on the first half, but several on the way back, when we were facing oncoming traffic more directly. We got what we interpreted as three or four friendly beeps, plus a plea for All Lives Matter, a muttered reference to bovine feces and a long, loud beep accompanied by the middle-finger salute. If I do this again, I need to make a sturdier sign, but, otherwise, I figure at least a hundred people got to see two somewhat elderly (masked) white folks walking for racial justice in the heart of St. Joe Township. I hope we gave them something to talk about. ... Meanwhile, I think a couple of my Aboite Township friends were doing a neighborhood walk near their home. I'm looking forward to their report.

 

Brittany Schoel filed this report from Flint, Michigan:

    We weren't sure what to expect. With everything we have been seeing on the news, it wasn't clear what would happen but as we were walking, it was beautiful to see people of every race, age, demographic come together and unite.

    When we reached the police station, the officers were lined up and everyone immediately took a knee.

    The Sheriff asked one question...

    “We are mad, too! What can we do?"

     And the crowd responded, "Join us.’”

 

WLS news team, Coleman on left

 We’ve had ideal weather over the weekend, sunny, low humidity, and in the low 70s – perfect for getting out of the house and joining a Black Lives Matter demonstration.  As legendary ABC Chicago meteorologist John Coleman would say, “Today was one of the ten best weather days of the year.” During the 1970s the Channel 7 news team of Fahey Flynn, John Drury, Joel Daly, and sportscaster Bill Frink (plus my favorite Mark Giangreco) was number one, even surpassed the Channel 2 team of Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson. They had so much rapport that some accuse them with popularizing a news "happy talk" format. After playing a major role in launching the Weather Channel, Coleman was chief meteorologist on ABC’s “Good Morning America” before ending his career at a San Diego station. Coleman is credited with creating the first chroma key weather map. He died in 2018 at age 83.

 

 Walt Whitman

Ray Boomhower passed on this advice from poet Walt Whitman:

  This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

The Shot

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretzky

Bryce and Homer Drew after "The Shot"

With the NCAA tournament in progress, it was inevitable that “The Shot” twenty years ago by VU’s Bryce Drew would come up.  I watched at Dave’s house on Lake Shore Drive in Miller the day before he and Angie got married.  A March blizzard had blanketed the area with snow and left our Maple Place house without electricity all week.  Seeded number 13 against Ole Miss, Valparaiso was down 69-67 with 2.5 seconds to go when Jaime Sykes in-bounded the ball to Bill Jenkins, who tapped it over to Drew, whose desperation shot from 23 feet went in for a 70-69 upset.  Coached by Bryce’s father Homer Drew, the Crusaders went on to win the next game before losing in the Sweet Sixteen to Rhode Island. 

Sports historians have ranked Drew’s last-second shot one of the five best in NCAA tournament history, along with heroics by Cristian Laettner (Duke 1992), Kris Jenkins (Villanova 2016), Lorenzo Charles (North Carolina State 1983) and Michael Jordan (North Carolina 1982),  In Chicago “The Shot” refers to Jordan’s bucket against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the deciding game of the 1989 Eastern Conference finals or, for hockey fans, Jonathan Kane’s 2010 Stanley Cup winning goal against the Flyers that went in and out so fast it had to be confirmed on replay.

 Clayton Custer and Sister Jean

Over the weekend quite a few miracle shots occurred, including one that put Michigan in the Sweet Sixteen and two enabling Loyola to register upsets against no.6 seeded Miami and no. 3 Tennessee.  The first was a desperation 3-pointer as time expired; the second, an off-balance jumper by Clayton Custer, hit the front of the rim, ricocheted off the backboard, rolled around, and appeared to be coming out before swishing through the net.  In attendance was 98-year-old Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, who has become a media star.  In 1961 she began teaching at Mundelein College, which merged with Loyola, and has been team chaplain for a quarter-century.  The Ramblers had not been to the “Big Dance” since 1985.  In 1963 Loyola upset two-time champion Cincinnati in overtime with an unprecedented four African-American starters.  In 2013 President Obama invited those still alive to the White House.

For the first time ever, a number 1 seed, Virginia, lost their opening round, not on a miracle shot but by an unbelievable 20 points to obscure University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  For me, the biggest disappointment was a four-point Bucknell loss to Michigan State.  Bison star, Zach Thomas, who had scored 27 points, was assessed a technical with six and a half minutes remaining that caused him to foul out of the game.  On several consecutive plays Spartans had mugged the Bucknell center Nana Foulland without fouls being called.  Backpedaling after one such no-call, Thomas said, “What are you watching?”  Most referees would have ignored the remark because Thomas hadn’t been demonstrative nor used foul language.  I doubt a Michigan State player would have gotten the same treatment.  In fact, MSU Coach Tom Izzo acts much worse with impunity dozens of times each game.

On St. Patrick’s Day I wore a green shirt to Abuelo’s Mexican restaurant on bridge night and finished first at Connie and Brian’s helped by Toni making a small slam as my partner.  For years when my mother lived in Bradenton, we’d be in Florida this time of year and go to a great beachfront seafood restaurant.  One year I ordered their St. Paddy Day special and regretted it.  I’m Scots-Irish on my father’s side, while Brian Barnes’ Irish ancestors include a Molly Maguire and a mine union organizer in Iowa. He and Connie, raised Protestant, were teen sweethearts, but parental disapproval and separation during college caused them to drift apart until their fortieth high school reunion.

 Aaron, Tom, Jimbo and Jef playing Railways Through Time

Evan Davis and Anna; photos by Chuck Halberstadt

Evan and Aaron Davis made the trip from Fort Wayne for Jef Halberstadt’s four-day Game Weekend.  On Sunday I played an expansion version of Railways of the World called Railways Through Time.  Railroad lines can go from one dimension to another, ranging from the Stone Age to the future, where cities are named after the likes of Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and Kurt Vonnegut.  I got off to a good start against Tom Wade (the winner), Jef, and Aaron, but my inexperience at constructing long lines and upgrading trains caused me to fade. Nearby, Evan and Chuck Halberstadt were playing Terraforming Mars with two-year-old Anna looking on.  On the food table was a tray of Sue Halberstadt’s delicious brownies with Kelly green icing.

 Sandpipers at Cracker Barrel; Becca second from left

When I told Chuck about Becca’s Chesterton show choir, Sandpipers, being named Grand Champions at the Watseka invitational and thus qualifying for nationals, he mentioned that he was in Chesterton marching band, which was invited to play at the Orange Bowl.  Members needed to raise $500 for the trip, similar to Sandpipers.

In “Stormy Weather” Ray Smock put Trump’s decade-old tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels in historical perspective:

      One part of me says I really don’t care who Donald Trump had sex with in the past or in the present. I believe that even public officials should have the benefit of a private life. Another part of me says the Stormy Daniels case has a lot more to it than just extra-marital sex.

      The press and the public did not start prying into the sex lives of current and former presidents or of presidential candidates until the perfect storm that became the Gary Hart saga in 1987. Hart was emerging as a John Kennedy-like candidate, young, talented, and handsome. But his political world came crashing down when the press went after his private life.  Hart was having an affair with a beautiful young woman named Donna Rice and among their shenanigans was sailing on a yacht named Monkey Business. You could not make this stuff up. It was too good for the tabloids to pass it up.

      Perhaps only Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman, Barack Obama, and one or two others may be free of some extra-marital affairs among recent presidents. I claim no particular expertise or insights into the private affairs of public officials. It is fairly well documented that Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy all had such affairs. But while rumors occasionally circulated, the press, the old-fashioned print press, the radio, and the early network TV press usually left this sort of thing alone. A lot of reporters knew about these affairs, but they did not write about them.

      The careers of Hollywood moguls, TV moguls, members of Congress, and other prominent American celebrities have been ended abruptly in recent months. How is the case of the President of the United States any different? Why should he keep his job while so many others have lost theirs? Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution and nowhere in American law does it say that just because your name is Trump and just because you were elected President of the United States, that you are entitled to be above the law.

The topic in Nicole Anslover’s Diplomatic History class was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and she asked what my reaction to the threat of a nuclear confrontation had been at the time.  A junior at Bucknell, I wasn’t as alarmed as I probably should have been; but watching John Kennedy’s “Quarantine” speech on TV was pretty unnerving, especially when he warned that a Soviet attack would be met with an overwhelming nuclear response.  When a Soviet missile downed a U-2 spy plane over Cuba piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson, JFK’s military advisers recommended retaliatory airstrikes.  Kennedy, suspecting correctly that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev had not given authorization for its employment, sent brother Bobby to meet secretly with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and offer a deal (pledges to remove American missiles in Turkey within six months and not invade Cuba) that ended the crisis.

Dee Van Bebber and I earned 1.75 master points finishing second to Terry Bauer and Dottie Hart in an 11-couple duplicate bridge game.  As usual, what I most vividly recall is a bid I should have made.  Facing a 5-0 trump break in Hearts, I failed to draw out the final trump.  Great chocolate chip cookies were on hand.  Most everyone assumed Dottie Hart had baked them, but they came from Sally Will.  When I mentioned attending Nicole Anslover’s class, Sally said she was reading “The Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War” (2010) by Karl Marlantes, about a company of marines forced to deal not only with the army of North Vietnam and monsoon weather conditions, leeches, fungus, disease, and malnutrition but also racial tensions and duplicitous superior officers.