Exceedances

“Another sad day for Lake Michigan.  Industry still using the lake as its own dumping grounds!” Jim Brown

 IDEM officials checkoff dead fish near Portage marina, NWI Times photo by John Luke

A malfunction at ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor plant has resulted in thousands of fish dying in the East Branch of the Little Calumet River and in nearby Lake Michigan. Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) officials have used the euphemism “exceedances” to characterize the chemical spill of cyanide and ammonia-nitrogen.  Indiana Dunes National Park superintendent Paul Labovitz closed the Portage beach area and told Kevin Nevers of the Chesterton Tribune, “It was a broad-spectrum kill.  It was not species-specific.  Anything close to the source was killed.  It even killed catfish, and catfish are pretty hard to kill.”  Labovitz was rather cavalier in concluding, “I put this in the category of ‘Shit Happens in an industrial community.’”  He praised Arcelor-Mittal for accepting blame for the environmental disaster and communicating results of their ongoing investigation far faster than was the case with U.S. Steel when a deadly carcinogen spilled into Burns Ditch from its Portage facility 30 months ago with dire consequences. Republicans being in control of state and federal regulatory commissions, it is doubtful that Arcelor-Mittal will receive more than a slap on the wrist.

Post-Tribune photo byZbigniew Bzdak

Cha Meyer reacted to Portage Beach being closed until further notice: “We are canaries in the coal mine of the world that our society has polluted and squandered away.”

Portage officials contradicted Superintendent Labovitz’s charitable assessment.  A spokesman noted: “While reports show many, including IDEM, knew of the concerns as early as August 12th, the City of Portage was not informed of this concern until August 15th.” Commenting on the Portage Indiana Municipal Facebook site, Diana Dempsey Bartkus wrote: “It’s cheaper for them to pay the fine than dispose of properly, I’m sure. Throw down! Make an example out of them! There should be zero tolerance! Beach goers were not turned away from any of these beaches on Thursday! They already knew of the situation for more than 24 hours! This is awful and infuriating!!!” Tammie Klym added:“How is any level of these deadly chemicals allowed to be near our water supply? How are these companies allowed to have any vessel that allows anything to be dumped into water? I can see intake. This is why our ecosystem is failing. This company makes millions if not billions of dollars. Put in a filtration system and make sure it works.” This from Jonathan Fronczak: “Forget a fine, some people need to be locked up. You can get a felony and jail for hunting and fishing unlawfully. The only way to stop future events is criminal prosecution. Make an example!!!”

George Takei at Rowher and at present

Rohwer Internment Camp

Veteran actor George Takei, best known as Hikaru Sulu in the “Star Trek” series, is in AMC’s “The Terror: Infamy,” which takes place in an internment camp where Japanese-Americans were consigned during World War II. In a Timeinterview Takei tells of his family being interned when he was just five. Soldiers showed up at their home in Los Angeles and took them to Santa Anita racetrack, where a chain-link fence surrounded the entire facility.  Takei recalled:

  We were unloaded and herded over to the stable area. Each family was assigned to a horse stall.  For my parents, it was a degrading, humiliating, enraging experience to take their three kids to sleep in a smelly horse stall.  But to me, it was fun to sleep where the horses slept.

One stall had been home to the famous racehorse Seabiscuit, winner of the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap less than two years before. From Santa Anita the Takei family was sent to Rohwer internment camp in Desha County, Arkansas.  Takei recalled: 

  We were plunked down in the swamps of southeastern Arkansas.  To me, it was an exotic, alien planet.  Trees grew out of the water of the bayou that was right next to the barbed-wire fence. I remember catching pollywogs and putting them in a jar. Dragonflies, which I’ve never seen before.  The first winter, it snowed. I was a Southern California kid.  To wake up one morning and see everything covered in white, it was a magical place.

  For my parents, it was a series of goading terrors, one after the other.  But children are amazingly adaptable.  We adjusted, and we got used to what would have been a grotesque thing – lining up three times a day to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall, or going with my father to bathe in a mass shower.  When I made the night runs to the latrine, searchlights followed me.  I thought it was nice that they lit the way for me to pee. It wasn’t until later that I learned about the reality, the horror, the terror, and the injustice of the incarceration.

Toni and I attended a RailCats baseball contest against the Milwaukee Milkmen.  While the game itself was rather boring, afterwards there was a spectacular fireworks display, like a grand finale that lasted a good 10-15 minutes.  In“They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” essayist Hanif Abdurraqib admitted to being a fan of his hometown Triple-A Columbus (Ohio) Clippers, and watching a Fourth of July fireworks display at Huntington Park:Over the weekend:

  You’ll roll your eyes when “Born in the U.S.A.” plays while the fireworks fly screaming into the sky, tucking all its darkness into their pockets.  I still go to watch the brief burst of brightness glow on the faces of black children, some of them have made it downtown, miles away from the forgotten corners of the city they’ve been pushed to. Some of them smiling and pointing upwards, still too young to know of America’s hunt for their flesh.  How it wears the blood of their ancestors on its teeth.

Music critic Abdurraqib, it turns out, is a big Bruce Springsteen fan.  He has attended several of The Boss’s concerts and is particularly fond of “The River” album, which celebrates the small pleasures of blue-collar culture and, as Abdurraqib put it, “the ability to make the most of your life, because it’s the only life you have.”  Catching Bruce and the E Street Band at a sold-out show in Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center, Abdurraqib observed:

  As I looked around the swelling arena, the only other black people I saw were performing labor in some capacity.  As the band launched into a killer extended version of “Cadillac Ranch,” I looked over to the steps and saw a young black man who had been vending popcorn and candy.  He was sitting on a step covered in sweat and rubbing his right ankle.  A man, presumably attempting to get back to his seat, yelled at him to move.

  In Bruce Springsteen’s music, I think about the romanticization of work and how that is reflected in America.  Rather, for whom work is romantic, and for whom work is a necessary and sometimes painful burden of survival. In my decade-plus of loving Bruce Springsteen’s music, I have always known and accepted that the idea of hard, beautiful, romantic work is a dream sold a lot easier by someone who currently knows where their next meal will come from.

I woke up disoriented, then realized; no electricity.  Most of Chesterton suffered the same fate.  Dave took us to breakfast.  After encountering long waits at Round the Clock and Bob Evans, we were about to settle for Culver’s when Dave noticed that, it being 11 o’clock, AJ’s Pizza Company was just opening.  They served great coffee, and the lunch menu included a tasty steak sandwich and homemade chips. I called Ron Cohen on Dave’s cellphone, and, back at the condo, he and Nancy picked me up for Fred Chary’s 80th birthday celebration just as our power returned.   

EllaRose

As always, Diane Chary prepared a bountiful buffet.  Having recently eaten, I was pleased to discover a vegetable plate and chunks of mangoes in a salad.  Later I went back for other delicacies.  Fred’s daughter EllaRose, a playwright, came from New York City.  Missing were regulars Karen Rake and Milan Andrejevich, as well as recently retired English professors Alan Barr and George Bodmer. Both attended ten years ago but not for Fred’s 75th, by which time they were shunning me – a case of letting academic differences take priority over friendship.  Not surprisingly, right-winger Jean Poulard and lefty Jack Bloom, both still teaching despite being well past retirement age, argued over Trump separating immigrant families.  Bloom is teaching a Fall course on the Vietnam War and is eager to see my old syllabus.  Its reading list included Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, Ronald J. Glasser’s 365 Days,Michael Herr’s Dispatches,and Robert Mason’s Chickenhawk. I talked with Fred about the Phillies’ recent sweep of the Cubs and told him that the Steel ShavingsI gave him contained descriptions of the Eagles’ Superbowl victory and the raucous celebrations afterwards. EllaRose opened a bottle of champagne Poulard had brought from his home village in France, and we toasted the guest of honor and vowed to gather again five years hence.  Diane insisted I take food home for Toni, so I opted for slices of vegetarian lasagna and chocolate cake.  On the birthday cake were figurines depicting a Phillies pitcher and catcher and a Cubs batter striking out.

Like Fred, I am a loyal Philadelphia sports fan with a couple all-time favorite players in each major sport – Richie Ashburn and Dick Allen in baseball, Eagles Chuck Bednarick and Sonny Jorgensen, Flyers Bobby Clarke and Bernie “Kid” Parent, and 76ers Julius “Dr. J” Irving and Allen “AI” Iverson.  Iverson is also a favorite of Hanif Abdurraqib, who wrote an essay titled “It Rained on Ohio On the Night when Allen Iverson Hit Michael Jordan with a Crossover.” The memorable event took place in 1996, AI’s rookie season, when “he hadn’t yet grown out his soon-to-be signature cornrows and was several tattoos short of where he would end his career.”  At the top of the key facing his idol, AI pulled off a double crossover, then nailed an easy jump shot.  While in high school, Iverson had been incarcerated in the aftermath of an interracial bowling alley brawl in Hampton, Virginia (only black kids were arrested). Accused of throwing a chair, Iverson told the judge, “What kind of man would I be to hit a woman in the head with a damn chair?”  Sent to a correctional farm, Iverson couldn’t play basketball his senior year and scholarship offers dried up.  Only Georgetown’s coach John Thompson took a chance on him.

Beloved by 76er fans and self-described “punk kids” like Abdurraqib, Iverson gave his all on the court, “throwing his body all over the place for the city of Philadelphia and dragging lackluster teams to the playoffs and then [in 2002] to the finals.”  The day after watching AI fake out Jordan, Abdurraqib was on a still-slick playground in Columbus “in baggy jeans that dragged the ground until the bottoms of them split into small white flags of surrender”dreaming “of having enough money to buy my way into the kind of infamy that came with surviving any kind of proximity to poverty.”  Of Iverson Abdurraqib concluded:

  He was a 6-foot wrecking ball, who wouldn’t practice hurt, but who would play hurt for what felt like half of the season.  The era of witnessing Allen Iverson was the era of learning a language for your limits and how to push beyond them.

 Ray Smock in Nebraska

I heard from old friend Ray Smock from Maryland days, traveling through the Great Plains states, and Paul Turk, whom I met when my family moved to the Detroit area in the mid-50s.  He’s a Cleveland Indians fan and, to a lesser degree, the Washington Nationals, now that he’s living in the DC area.  Daughter Kat, a grad student in archeology at Vanderbilt, “spent much of the summer in the Fish River Canyon in Namibia, scratching for the fossil record of the very earliest animals in the Ediacaran Period, 450+ million years ago.  Dinosaurs are SO nouveau and come-lately.” According to the online Encyclopedia Britannicathis was the latest of three periods of the Neoproterozoic Era marked by considerable tectonic activity and the rapid retreat of ice sheets associated with the Marinoan glaciation.

                            Kat Turk; fossil from Ediacaran period found in Australia                                                                           

Tree of Life

“All theory is gray, gut the golden tree of life springs ever green,” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nanai people Tree drawing 

Mentioned in Genesis, the tree of life has come to symbolize the sustaining and enhancement of humanity.  Virtually all cultures have a tree of life myth growing from the center of creation, with branches sometimes containing magical fruit representative of layers of existence and understanding. The 2011 Terence Malick film “The Tree of Life,” starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, and Sean Penn and taking place in a Fifties Texas town, dealt with such universal themes as evolution, spirituality, and generational conflict.

 Bianca and Alex, 2017

Toni and I attended the wedding ceremony of Herb and Evelyn Passo’s son Alex to Bianca Angarola at Temple Israel in Miller in front of a stain glass window depicting the Tree of Life.  The invitation contained its image and the words, “Share love.  Spread light.”Our boys attended pre-school at the Temple; one day, after meeting the Rabbi, Dave thought he’d seen God.  We’ve known Alex, now an attorney, since he was a kid.  He took my survey American History course, performing brilliantly but often appearing to be lost in thought.   Rabbi Stanley Halpern, who had presided over Alex’s Bar Mitzvah, returned from Zionsville, Indiana, to perform the service.  Many friends were in the overflow audience. Cantorial soloist Sean Egan, a Hammond charter school principal and co-cost with Robin Rich of Temple Trivia Night, sang a haunting rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during the Processional.  The theme being renewal and continuity, Alex’s cousin Hayden Adam was flower girl, a task her mother Michelle performed 36 years ago at Herb and Evelyn’s nuptials. 

The reception was at Allure on the Lake, minutes from our condo.  We sat next to Judy and Steve Tallackson, who left early because early next morning Steve was taking Calumet College History students to Tippecanoe River State Park.  They will observe a replica of a Shawnee village, interact with Voyageur re-enactors, and visit the 1812 battlefield site of the massacre that propelled William Henry Harrison (“Old Tippecanoe”) to the Presidency.  Robin Rich told me that she and Rebecca Hanscom interviewed Fred Chary for the Temple Israel Newsletter and that he is home again after rehabbing after an operation at Rush Memorial Hospital.  Here are some answers Fred provided:

  I moved here in 1966 to take a job at Indiana University Northwest. Prior to that I worked on my degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of Pittsburgh. I’ve been a member of Temple Israel since 1967. I was very attracted by the diverse community. 

  [My Jewish identity] led me to Bulgaria. My uncle was in the military during WW2, when Bulgaria was an ally of the Germans, but Bulgaria protected their Jewish population. In 1939, before Bulgaria joined the Axis, there were 44,000 Jews in Bulgaria; after WW2 there were 50,000. The Jewish population actually increased. [During my frequent visits] I found no discrimination against Jews in Bulgaria. I never had any difficulties there. The most significant fight in Bulgaria was a religious battle: the Greek Orthodox vs the Bulgarian Orthodox. 

  I’ve traveled extensively, of course in Bulgaria, but also Germany, Poland, the former Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Israel.  I’d love to visit Central Asia and Africa.  I collect stamps and like old movies—especially from the 1940s. I am working on a historical novel about 17th century Russia. I look forward to research, reading and writing—those are my favorite things to do.

Fred is a huge Philadelphia sports fan.  Last time I visited him, he invited me over to watch the Eagles as soon as he got home.  Confirming that he was home, I rang him up. He sounded great and repeated the offer.

 at Konrady Plastics table

Toni and I were Bernie Konrady, Jr.’s guests for One Region’s annual luncheon at Avalon Manor Banquet Center in Merrillville.  His daughter Leah is its President and introduced dynamic guest speaker Tom Murphy, formerly mayor of Pittsburgh (1994-2005) and presently with the Urban Land Institute, planners of city revitalization.  At the Konrady Plastics table, a company Bernie and wife Sue founded now located in Portage but originally on Arthur Street in Gary, I introduced them and cousin John Konrady, an IUN Business and Economics major who studied under Leslie Singer, to IUN Chancellor Lowe, a former chairman of the One Region council. Seated to my right were Bernie’s sisters Dee Gee, a Delta Airlines stewardess (now called flight attendants) for 30 years, and Ronnie, who had former IUN chancellor Peggy Elliott as a teacher at Horace Mann and recalled her coming to class with a bandaged hand from burning it getting something out of the oven.

At the Archives two documentarians from IU interviewed me about Vee-Jay Records co-founder Vivian Carter.  I stressed Vivian’s Gary background, segregated but with opportunities for talented and ambitious African Americans during the 1920s and postwar years. I emphasized how influential Vee-Jay hits such as “Goodnite, Sweetheart” and “For Your Precious Love” were on 1950s teenagers like myself and credited Vivian, with her gospel background, for helping give birth to the emergent soul music. Henry Farag, whose musical “The Signal” deals with Vee-Jay doo wop groups, arrived next. We both encouraged producer Adam Carroll to videotape the next live presentation of “The Signal.”

I spoke to Kenny Kincaid’s Purdue Northwest history class on Latinos about Ramon and Trisha Arredondo’s “Maria’s Journey,” which they’re reading, and talked about editing it and helping them find an appropriate publisher (i.e., Indiana Historical Society Press).  I brought up oral histories I had conducted with Mexican-Americans Jesse Villalpando, Louis Vasquez, Abe Morales, and Paulino Monterrubio.  Since in addition to “Maria’s Journey,” students were also assigned articles by John Fraire and Dan Simon, I noted that John’s mother was a star baseball player on an Indiana Harbor team (the Chicks) and that Dan was a retired Business professor with a lifelong interest in history. I gave Kincaid the current copy of Tracescontaining an article about a family of agricultural workers who settled in Southern Indiana.

Kenny and his students are angry over the Purdue Board of Trustees intending to change graduates’ diplomas to read Purdue University Northwest rather than simply Purdue (IUN sheepskins say Indiana University without designating the campus).  The change was triggered because students and faculty on Purdue’s Lafayette campus were upset upon learning that online graduates attending former Kaplan University, now labeled Purdue Global, would receive diplomas identical to theirs. During the break I chatted with a bright student named Frank Rodriguez, a Munster resident who had located my blog on-line.  His dad was a union elevator repair worker.

I found the HBO documentary on Jane Fonda fascinating.  She once again apologized to Vietnam War veterans still upset over her misguided actions while visiting POWs and an anti-aircraft battery in Hanoi while under the influence of second husband Tom Hayden, who succeeded French film director Roger Vadim and preceded billionaire TV network founder Ted Turner.  Currently active in feminist causes, Fonda co-stars with Lily Tomlin in the comedy TV series “Grace and Frankie.” The 80-year-old was looking forward to an upcoming bedroom scene with Sam Elliott.

Novelist Sinclair Lewis’ creation George F. Babbitt regarded himself as a Solid Citizen and Regular Fellow and addressed Zenith Athletic Club lunch companions by such jocular epithets as “old Bolshevik” and “old horse thief.”  While talking to grandson James about best friend Paul Reisling, whom Babbitt often called Paulski or Paulibus, I brought up Paul Turk, who befriended me after my family moved to Birmingham, Michigan at Barnum Junior High (now a park with only the entranceway remaining) after entering eighth grade undersized and knowing nobody.  We played wiffleball and football; his mom was a great cook and his dad took us to an Indians-Tigers game. After my family moved back to Fort Washington we corresponded throughout high school and college.  His envelopes often employed clever take-offs on my middle name Buchanan (Buckmeister and Buckmillian were two of the shorter ones). In January 1965, Paul drove through a snowstorm from Ohio to attend our wedding. We still exchange occasional phone calls, usually after a sports event, but unlike me he does not like to reminisce.

Sports Illustrated writer Tim Layden’s “Fists of Fury” profiled Cahn Carlos and Tommie Smith 50 years after their clenched fist protest on the victory stand at the Mexico City Olympics.  Most photos only show winner Smith and Bronze Medalist Carlos from the waist up, which misses elements of their symbolic statement.  Layden explains:

    Their appearance on the stand remains riveting to this day.  Single shoes and bare feet covered only in black socks, signfying poverty at home. Carlos’s beads, recalling the lunching of black men.  Smith’s black scarf, highlighting a deep identity with his race.  The gloves, the fists shoved upward for the world to see, suggesting defiance and unity.

    The form of the protest came together only after the 200-meter race, in the well of the stadium.  “In the dungeon,”says Smith.  Smith’s wife Denise had brought a pair of black gloves. Carlos’s wife Kim had brought beads with her from the U.S. 

                                              

I’ve been listening to the Dandy Warhols, a Nineties alternative band from Portland.  One of their tracks, “Get Off,” refers to escaping everyday burdens and feeling a rush akin to sexual climax, not literally being on top of someone, like now-confirmed Justice Brett Kavanaugh allegedly hoisted himself onto Dr. Christine Blasey Ford at a high school party. In his day (and mine) dry-humping was considered within bounds – but not if met with resistance.  The Dandy’s most famous song, “Bohemian Like You.” Features this exchange between a customer and a waiter

So, what do you do?
Oh yeah, I wait tables too.
No, I haven't heard your band,
'Cause you guys are pretty new.
But if you dig on vegan food
Well come over to my work
I'll have them cook you

Years ago, Doc Lukas helped me lay out an issue of Steel Shavings,I gave him a Dandy Warhols CD after hearing that the band had a big gay following.  Turned out Terry was into electronic music. My bad.  Even more embarrassing was when I noted that he was wearing his “trademark pink shirt.”He shot me a hurt look. One time, seated across the gym floor at an amateur Mr. Bodybuilding contest at IUN, I waved and he waved back.  In 2013 Atlanta began hosting a world transgender bodybuilding competition. What I wouldn’t give to attend next year’s competition with Terry and Anne Balay.

Ray Smock wrote the latest example of Trump’s “ceremonial arrogance of power”:

  Donald Trump could not accept victory quietly, or gracefully. He had to rub it in. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in immediately after his confirmation. He went to work at the Supreme Court. But this was not enough for our president. There were some scores to settle and some salt to pour into wounds. He needed to do this on national television.

  In an unusual nationally televised ceremonial swearing-in at the White House the President took the opportunity to gloat and campaign for next month’s elections. Trump said the occasion was historic. There was nothing historic about it, except for the minor fact that this was the first time a former Justice of the Supreme Court, was able to swear in one of his former law clerks.

  It was retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy who conducted the oath ceremony. Kavanaugh had clerked for him twenty-five years ago. I have no idea why Justice Kennedy was and is so outwardly friendly with Trump. Maybe it was because Kennedy’s son, Justin, had dealings with the Trump Organization as an official of Deutsche Bank. Kennedy said he was retiring to spend more time with his family, a standard Washington cliché. It gave Trump the opportunity to appoint his second Supreme Court justice.

  This event was the only time I ever heard Trump apologize for anything. And when he did, it was all wrong, it was ugly, and uncalled for. The president said that on behalf of the nation he apologized for the way that Brett Kavanaugh was treated during the hearings. Trump had no business declaring Justice Kavanaugh to be innocent of all the charges against him or to say that he was vindicated and proven innocent. He never once thought of apologizing to Dr. Ford, who has been humiliated by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the president.

  Early in the Kavanaugh hearings President Trump called Dr. Ford a credible witness and described her as a nice person. As the hearings heated up he mocked her shamelessly at campaign rallies and now calls her whole testimony, her personal anguish at coming forward, to be nothing but a hoax orchestrated by Democrats. Dear Dr. Ford, I humbly apologize to you for the way you were treated in your testimony and the way you have been so unfairly maligned by the President of the United States.

I’ve completed an essay John Cain requested for a South Shore Arts exhibit catalogue to go with “Urban Legend: Haunts,” opening in Munster.  Because I have included a paragraph on acclaimed photographer Camilo Vergara, who for a quarter-century has been documenting Gary ruins and am hoping he will include photos I’ve sent him of the Blackstone Hotel taken in 1993 titled “Survivor in a tough city” and City Methodist Church at dawn taken in 2004, titled “Rise of a City.”  My final paragraph rebuts the “Gary as abandoned city” stereotype:

  Outsiders sometimes mistake Gary for a ghost town.  To the contrary.  Often regarded downstate as a Hoosier stepchild and by suburbanites as a place to avoid at all costs, Gary has numerous viable neighborhoods.  True, signs of declension abound, but residents have demonstrated grit and resiliency. While the recent edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History,” covering the years 2004-2018,  includes photos of demolition efforts on the 800 black of Virginia St., most pages exemplify Gary’s ongoing spirit, diversity, and cultural life and are filled with signs of activity – church celebrations, sporting events, school activities, urban gardens, steelworker rallies, protests against locating an immigrant detention center adjacent to Gary Airport, crowds assembling at Michael Jackson’s family home, Calumet Artist Residency poetry workshops, Gary Air Show beach onlookers, and the IU Northwest campus, my intellectual home for 48 years.  Though Gary has lost much of its tangible heritage and remains a tough environment, especially for those  struggling to find work and raise families, potential exists for a brighter future not only in the development of the lakefront, airport, and academic corridor along Thirty-Fifth Avenue but even in downtown revitalization, with Gary’s alluring ruins hopefully surviving. Meanwhile, remarkable activities continue to occur in schools, churches, and community centers, some literally in the shadows of haunts that reflect its former glory.

Redevelopment

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”  Buckminster Fuller (below)

Best known for the geodesic dome and Dymaxion car, futuristic architect Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was a nonconformist who twice got expelled from Harvard.  An environmentalist concerned about sustainability, he coined the word “ephemeralization,” which basically meant doing more with less.  The concept Dymaxion derived from the words dynamic, maximum, and tension.   Fuller liked people to call him Bucky and kept a diary (he called it a Dymaxion Chronofile) throughout his life, explaining: “I decided to make myself a good case history of a human being going through the era from the Gay 90s, as far into the twentieth century as I might live, and it meant that I could not be judge of what was valid to put in or not. I must put everything in, so I started a very rigorous record.”

At the Gary YWCA I spoke to about 75 UIC grad students in Urban Planning whose class project is to come up with redevelopment ideas for Gary’s Midtown District.  Professor Janet Smith, who studied under Earl Jones, invited me for pizza beforehand and was pleased to receive a copy of “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”  Kyle Terry, who works part-time as a “Policy Fellow” for the city of Gary, greeted me warmly, as did Carol Brown of the University of Chicago abandoned buildings project.  There were a total of nine speakers.  Janet Smith put me in a group with Indiana Landmarks field director Tiffany Tolbert and Reverend Chet Johnson of New Tabernacle Baptist Church, who discussed Fuller Center for Housing, which has built or rehabbed several local dwellings and has ambitious plans to revitalize the neighborhood where Michael Jackson grew up.

After describing resources at the Calumet Regional Archives, including Dolly Millender’s pictorial history of Midtown, I mentioned that nearby was the site of one of the most famous schools in the world, Froebel, “Gary’s immigrant school.”  A few blocks to the east, I added, was one of the most innovative social settlements for African Americans, Stewart House, which aided “Steel City” newcomers during the 1920s and victims of the Great Depression during the 1930s.  I touched on Roosevelt School’s fabled history and Vivian Carter’s career as deejay, record storeowner, and founder of Vee-Jay Records.  I mentioned how Richard Hatcher dreamed big when he ran for mayor against the Democratic machine and described his vision for a Civil Rights Hall of Fame for Gary. 

I expressed the hope that they, too, would dream big and not only try to save landmarks still in existence such as St. John Hospital but even perhaps champion the building of replicas of Froebel and Stewart House for use as museums and community centers.  Though Midtown has suffered from middle class black flight, many Froebel and Roosevelt graduates still care about their roots and return for church and school functions.  Identifying myself as a practitioner of history from the bottom up, I exhorted them to involve the community and solicit its perceived needs.

I joined Fred and Diane Chary’s Trivia Night team at Temple Israel, along with  David and Michael Chary and Communication professor Evelyn Bottando.  We finished fifth out of 24 tables and would have won “survivor” had we known the number of states that have legalized marijuana (4 – we guessed 7) or the name of the former FBI director who died last year (James Schlesinger).  I wasn’t very helpful but did know Don and Phil Everly, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” and the three brothers who were catchers in World Series games, Puerto Ricans Yadier, Jose, and Bengie Molina.  Jack Weinberg and Valerie Denney were on a team called The Marxists, while the Spicer brothers’ table dressed as Trivia Knights of the Roundtable.  Regarding a question about the three families (Adams, Roosevelt, and Bush) who produced two presidents, Ron Cohen and I both pointed out that the Harrisons, William Henry and Benjamin (both Hoosiers), deserved recognition.

Alexis Bratsakis, Steve Spicer; below, Martha Bohn, Jim Bratsakis, Gabriel Staht

As Judge James Moody prepares to sentence former Lake County surveyor George Van Til, Rich James of The Times, in a column entitled “Van Til has suffered enough already,” argued that he should not have to go to prison for something virtually every officeholder does and that it would serve no purpose.  He wrote:

He won’t be remembered for the many drainage projects that have some living without fear of future flooding.  He won’t be remembered for bringing towns together to solve water woes that a single town couldn’t handle on its own.  He’ll be remembered as a politician who departed on the wings of public corruption. That’s sad, especially given his life’s work.

Last May James asked, “Why did the Feds make a spectacle of [George] Van Til?” He wrote:

“I have covered dozens of these arraignments over the years. From a news standpoint, they are routine and boring.  For Van Til, it was dehumanizing.   Instead of being allowed to routinely walk into the courtroom, Van Til was offered up for public ridicule.  After being held in a jail cell, Van Til was shackled hand and foot, connected to a chain around his waist, and led into the courtroom.  Yeah, he was pretty much treated like Hannibal Lecter – the worst of the worst.

The guy who put on the shackles said it was ‘procedure.’ He lied.  In all the many arraignments I have covered in federal court, no defendant was ever been brought into the courtroom in cuffs and leg irons.

I don’t know about Van Til’s guilt or innocence.  But, I do know the feds owe him an apology. They owe the rest of us an explanation.”

The question remains: who had it in for Van Til?  He had many friends who’ve written testimonials on his behalf but at least one enemy who had the ear of the U.S. Attorney.

In class Nicole Anslover discussed why western states such as Wyoming and Utah allowed women to vote a half-century prior to passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.  She showed part of a documentary about sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who hunted game to support her impoverished family and became a headliner in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show. 

If time allowed, I’d have mentioned “Stagecoach Mary” Fields, born a slave and just the second female postal service mail carrier.  Six feet tall, a cigar smoker, and skilled marksman, Fields, according to one admirer, “fought wolves, trudged through freezing rain, drank hard, brawled harder, and revolted against every cultural stereotype the planet had to offer.”  When Montana passed a law to forbade women from entering saloons, the Mayor of Cascade granted her an exemption.  Some historians claim she was a lesbian, but hard evidence of that is nonexistent.  Unlike some western women, she did not try to pass as a man.

Ann Fritz held a gallery reception for talented ceramist Mathew Groves, who teaches at Loyola, was on hand to talk about his sculptures.  They were colorful, expertly done, and engaging.  Also there was fellow ceramist Amber Ginsburg, who had a "Tea Party" show last year.