Love and Mercy

   “I was standin' in a bar and watchin' all the people there
Oh the loneliness in this world well it's just not fair

Hey love and mercy that's what you need tonight
So, love and mercy to you and your friends tonight”

    Brian Wilson, “Love and Mercy” 

The 2014 movie “Love and Mercy” about musical genius Brian Wilson’s struggles with mental illness starred John Cusack and Paul Dano, both portraying the Beach Boys troubled leader, with Paul Giamatti as Wilson’s tyrannical quack therapist. The flashbacks centers on the making of “Pet Sounds” (1966) after Wilson ceased touring with the band, which cousin Mike Love ridiculed as not having the Beach Boys sound.  Love had a point, but it was unrealistic to expect Wilson to write about being true to your school, long for surfer girls or ruminate about when he grew up to be a man. More realistic was “In My Room,” where “I lock out all my worries and my fears” – in fact, for several years to come Wilson would largely confine himself to his bedroom.  “Sloop John B” has the old Beach Boys sound but ends: “I want to go home, why don’t you let me go home.” “Pet Sounds” was a commercial failure in the U.S. but hailed in Europe. The track “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is one of my favorite songs and describes an ideal world where we could “live together in the kind of worlds where we belong”  -  a pipe dream in the Chinese sense of the word. Two decades later, Wilson meets his future wife, who helps him on the road toward getting his life back again.  As credits roll, there’s a concert performance of Wilson singing “Love and Mercy,” first recorded in 1988, which bemoans violence and pain in the world.  Bono called it “one of the great songs ever written.”   

At bridge Dee Browne and I finished with a 61.81 percent, normally enough to win, but George and Sally Will scored 67.36.  We took two high boards from them or they’d have had a rare 70 percent game.  On the other hand, Lila Cohen and Pam Missman, who finished third, cleaned our clock or we’d have prevailed. Terry Brendel spoke of meeting his wife of 50-plus years at a Purdue computer dance.  The date Terry got matched up with didn’t show and Terry’s wife information wasn’t  computed, so  he took the initiative upon spotting her.  

Bowling opponent Ami Luedke recently retired after delivering mail for 40 years in New Chicago and Hobart.  We took two games from Dorothy’s Darlings; I rolled a 189 in the second one.  Then they got hot, but we held on for series.  Gene Clifford intends to drive to New York City with Dorothy Peterson to visit the maritime history museum by the Hudson River to see the USS Intrepid, a navy aircraft carrier that his brother served on during World War II.  Commissioned in August 1943, the Intrepid participated in several Pacific Theater operations, including the Battle of Leyte Gulf. After being torpedoed and hit by four kamikaze planes, crew members nicknamed it the Decrepit.  Prior to being decommissioned in 1974, the Intrepid participated in rescue procedures for the Gemini 3 crew and several Vietnam deployments. 

Dave and Nicole; below, Traymon Ray

Toni and I were Dave’s special guests at two East Chicago Central Black History Month back-to-back programs, which he coordinated with the assistance of women’s basketball coach Nicole Ford-Moore and teacher Aaron Duncil, the latter, like Dave, mentored by John Bodnar at Portage High School.  When Taymon Ray and Arceli Timajero sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the “Negro National Anthem,” I turned to see if students were standing, as often happens at Gary events. Poetry selections, chosen by Dave, included Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again” and “What If I Am a Black Woman?” by an unknown author. The first show featured African dance (I recognized Taymon Ray from ”Lift Every Voice”) and hip hop in the second hour.  Dave played guitar with students A. Silvas, J. Gutierrez, and K. Sparks on numbers by the Temptations and Bill Withers that he selected and for the finale sang “Johnny B. Goode,” complete with Chuck Berry’s trademark strut, breaking a guitar string in the process but carrying on as if nothing were amiss.  I needlessly worried the broken string would hit him in the face.  In the program he thanked Toni and me for our support, as well as numerous colleagues, Malcolm X, and Randall P. McMurtry of Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” played by Jack Nicholson in the film.  Afterwards, we chatted with School Superintendent Dee-Etta Wright, whom I had met last summer at James’s graduation party.

EC Central students & chaperones

The night before, Dave had chaperoned a school trip to the Chicago Bears training facility.  Friday evening, he participated in a “Dancing with the Stars” fundraiser.  We had planned to watch James’s former teammates bowl next morning and then have lunch at Culver’s like old times, but Daveput it off a week because he was exhausted after three school events within 28 hours. 

At Chesterton library I picked up a double-CD of classic rock selections; most I hear as much as I want to on the radio; but it included, incongruously, Don McLean’s “American Pie,” which I plan to mention during my Munster talk on Rock and Roll, 1960 next week in reference to the plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper (“the day the music died,” as McLean put it). Other tracks that attracted me were the Allman Brothers Band’s “Midnight Rider” (bringing back ancient memories of getting high with late-great artist Larry Kaufman) and “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart (ubiquitous emanating from boom boxes on Wells Street Beach in the early Seventies with the pungent smell of coconut tanning oil in the air).

Tara Westover’s memoir “Educated” didn’t get less traumatic once she enrolled at BYU in Salt Lake City; family crises kept pulling her back into dangerous and humiliating situations that left her badly in need of therapy, as her bipolar father judged her to be a menace in need of redemption for straying from Mormon practices and not submitting to his complete domination.  I started Charles Kuralt’s autobiography, “A Life on the Road” (1990), which contained anecdotes from when he and his CBS Sunday Morning crew logged more than a million miles “on the road.” For example, in Dillon, Montana, he asked a barber sweeping the floor: “Are you free?” “Nope,” was the reply, “I charge seven dollars.” On an Iowa truck stop men’s room prophylactic machine was scratched: “This gum tastes like rubber.” A wizened North Dakota farmer married over 40 years told Kuralt: “Kissing don’t last, but good cooking does.” Roger Welsch explained that the wind blew so hard on the Great Plains that farmers didn’t need weathervanes, “They just look out the window to see which way the barn is leaning.”

Kate Elizabeth Russell received a million-dollar advance for her debut novel, “My Dark Vanessa,” about a high school student’s affair with an English teacher.  When Kate began writing 20 years ago, she thought of it as a romance.  Three years earlier, she had been at dinner with Wallflowers front man Jakob Dylon (her dad was a local deejay) and learned that his favorite book was Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.  She found a copy and for years was attracted to much older men.  When the Me Too movement arose, Kate reread Lolita and realized the exploitative nature of many such relationships.  Nabokov himself told a Paris interviewer who found the protagonist “touching: “Humbert Humbert is a vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear ‘touching.”  To New York magazine writer Lila Shapiro, Russell pointed out this passage from Lolita after Humbert first seduced his 12-year-old prey:

    Humbert fantasizes about painting a lavish mural to depict what happened in the hotel room. “There would have been a lake.  There would have been an arbor in flame-flower.  There would have been nature studies – a tiger pursuing a bird of paradise, a choking snake sheathing whole the flayed trunk of a shoat . . . There would have been poplars, apples, a suburban Sunday.  There would have been a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging, red, smarting pink, a sigh, a wincing child.

Russell explained: “It’s just gorgeous prose and then the last image of a wincing child.  It’s so easy to skim over.”  How I wish I could discuss Lolita with former IUN English professor George Bodmer, once a good friend, who assigned the book in an upper division course but stopped speaking to me over a university matter.

In researching the history of Gary Roosevelt for a Post-Tribune feature, Carole Carlson discovered that its origins stemmed from the aftermath to the infamous 1927 Emerson School Strike.  After Superintendent William A. Wirt transferred 14 honors students seeking college prep courses from the non-accredited Virginia Street School, approximately half the white students boycotted classes.  The Gary school board subsequently voted to oust both the newly enrolled students and several African-Americans living in the Emerson neighborhood who had already been at the school.  The NAACP represented three students who protested their dismissal, but both local judge Grant Crumpacker and the Indiana Supreme Court ruled against them. Carlson consulted my “City of the Century” as well as publications by historian Ronald Cohen and Dolly Millender, plus interviewed DeLynne Exum, the granddaughter of ousted student Hazel Bratton, and Vernon Smith, the son of victim Julia Allen.  While some classmates traveled to Chicago to continue their education, Smith said that his mother never finished her schooling: “They were spit on, pushed, and called the “N’ word. We always tried to get her to go to night school, but she began a family.  I think the pain [of what happened] continued until death.” How awful.  

Before her death in 2009 at age 96 Hazel Bratton Sanders told a Post-Trib reporter:

    The white students would line upon both sides of the sidewalk and stretch their arms over us.  We had to walk under them like under an arch.  They yelled out, “Go away, darkies.  This isn’t your school.”

Granddaughter DeLynne Exum told Carlson: “It was the indignity of how they were dismissed.  It was inhumane.  These were bright students.  It traumatized her.  When she was dying, she had nightmares of going through that gauntlet; she would relive it.”

above, Laura Gorski & Jeremiah Mellen; below, Reagan Smedley, Gorski, Luke Housman, photo by Ray Gapinski

Toni and I saw the final, sold-out performance of “Mary Poppins” at Memorial Opera House with the Hagelbergs, followed by dinner at Pesto’s.  As always, the production was well done with an excellent cast that included several familiar actors, including Jeremiah Mellen (Quasimoto in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”) as chimneysweep Bert, Thomas Olsen as the policeman, and talented seventh grader Reagan Smedley (Susan Waverly in “White Christmas”) as Jane Banks. In the program Smedley revealed that when not on stage she enjoys singing, playing the piano, and hanging out with her friends – and added that now, given that major role, she can cross playing Jane Banks off her bucket list.  When we first saw Reagan on stage, she’d to sob at the final performance curtain call. It was touching watching her bravely fighting to smile and hold back the tears.

Darrow & Bryan, below, Fats Waller

Nicole Anslover invited me to her class on the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial.  She first explained the rise of rural-urban tensions during the 1920s and the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.  I brought out how strong the KKK became in Indiana, especially in small towns such as Crown Point and Valparaiso, and that it was anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, not just anti-black.  After she noted that the ACLU sought a test case and described what transpired in the aftermath of the Tennessee legislature passing a law forbidding the teaching of evolution, I noted that the 1920s being an age of urban boosterism, Dayton, Tennessee, business leaders hoped to draw large crowds  that would put Dayton on the map.  Crowds came, but the publicity wasn’t exactly what the city fathers had hoped for.  This was the heyday of daily newspapers whose publishers loved lengthy trials, continuing sagas that could be hyped over days and weeks.  Students gave brief reports on Harlem Renaissance celebrities Cab Calloway (a Cotton Club bandleader who wore zoot suits), Fats Waller (we were treated to a YouTube of “Honeysuckle Rose”), and Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, who played trumpet in Joe “King” Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in Chicago before moving on to Harlem.

Near our condo a car bore a license plate beginning with a 3-digit number ending in zero followed by ORV. It sure looked like ORGY.  Dave and Angie refused a plate ending in NRA, the initials of the National Rifle Association.

Turning 76

“Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been,” David Bowie

 Toni gets cookie at Ivy's Bohemia House from Amy Mackiewicz

Toni’s birthday falls on February 14, and we normally celebrate the day after so not to compete with the Valentine’s Day crowd.  Patrick O’Rourke treated me to lunch at Asparagus Restaurant, whose Vietnamese owners are friends of his, to talk about my next interview with him, so I took Toni an order of lobster and mango spring rolls.  We arrived home within minutes of one another, as Dave and Angie had taken her to lunch at Ivy’s Bohemia House.

Next day, granddaughters Alissa and Miranda arrived with Miranda’s boyfriend Will, whom we’d never met. He’s in Nursing administration and going for an MBA.  He’s been working with Spanish-speaking hospital out-patients in Grand Rapids on such matters as ensuring that they have a procedure in place for taking prescriptions at the proper dosages and times. At Toni’s request we dined at Craft House so that she could introduce our Michigan visitors to the beignet pastry fritters served with chocolate, strawberry, and caramel dipping sauces.  Beforehand, we shared an appetizer of Brussel sprout chips tossed with garlic parmesan butter and candied bacon; my entre, BBQ pork shanks, a haystack of onions, and Cole slaw, was delicious.Home in time for the conclusion of Maryland-Michigan State basketball.  Down by seven with minutes to go, the Terrapins scored the final 14 points, including 11 by Anthony Cowan (3 threes and 2 free throws), to beat the Spartans 67-60.

Sunday, I played board games with Dave and Tom Wade, including, at Dave’s request, Stockpile, which I’d only played a couple times but really enjoy, and Space Base, which I’d observed  at Halberstadt Game Weekend.  We said goodbye to our overnight house guests and prepared for a birthday party for Toni, which grew like Topsy, as the expression goes – originally referring to a slave girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1851) – to 20 people, including four of Becca’s Chesterton classmates.  Dave and Angie picked up Chinese food from Wing Wah and a chocolate cake from Jewel.

At bridge the previous Wednesday I partnered with Vickie Voller, whom I’ve known since she was an IUN student in the 1970s.  She’s an animal lover whose emails contain the quote, “Love is a four-legged word.” We finished above 50 percent.  She’ll be bringing her husband to my Art in Focus talk on Rock and Roll, 1960, and they plan to dance. I’ll start with “Hard-Headed Woman,” on the soundtrack of “King Creole” and Elvis Presley’s last recording before entering the army for two years in March of 1958 and subsequently reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

At Hobart Lanes 83-year-old Gene Clifford told me his bowling career was over, doctor’s orders, due to COPT.  In our final game against Fab Four, the Engineers finished with a 1053, 173 pins over our handicap.  Joe Piunti, carrying a 130 average, rolled a 223. I finished with a 160 and 472 series, 30 pins over my average.

Over the weekend the August Wilson play “Fences” (1985) attracted a large audience at IU Northwest.  Directed by IUN alumnus and visiting professor Mark Spencer, it deals with an embittered former Negro League baseball player (Troy Maxson) now working as a garbageman in Pittsburgh and starred Darryl Crockett and Rose Simmons.  James Earl Jones appeared in the original Broadway production and Denzel Washington in a 2010 revival, with Viola Davis as wife Rose Maxson. 

While most high schools were off for President’s Day, both IUN and Valparaiso University held classes, having honored Martin Luther King Day.  My interview with Chancellor Bill Lowe was delayed a few minutes because of a fire alarm in Hawthorn Hall (caused by a faulty toaster, it turned out) that kept Samantha Gauer from getting the videotape equipment.  She thoughtfully alerted the Chancellor and me from her cellphone.  Lowe grew up in Brooklyn; his father was a police officer.  He majored in History at Michigan State and was in Ireland doing research during a time of civil rights demonstrations that became known as the Troubles. His administrative career took him to the Rust Belt cities of Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and ultimately, Gary.

 confiscating bootleggers equipment in Gary (1926)

Invited to speak in Nicole Anslover’s class about Prohibition in Gary, I described the city in 1920 as containing 50,000 residents, mostly steelworkers, many foreign-born and often single men laboring 12 hours a day, seven days a week.  The year began with Gary under martial law occupied by army troops ordered to crush a two-month-old strike and jail union leaders whom General Leonard Wood branded as Reds.  Prohibition was anathema to men for whom the saloon was the center of their limited social life, where they drink, ate, and, in may cases, procured establishments that refused to pay off corrupt police officials.  At the Gary Country Club, the watering hole of the affluent, liquor flowed freely with no interference from law enforcement.  Some years, due to its reputation as an “anything goes” city, Gary attracted more tourists than Indianapolis, disparaged as “Naptown” or “India-no-town.” By 1930 former mayor R.O. Johnson, convicted in 1923 of violating the Volstead Act and sent to Atlanta federal penitentiary, was back in City Hall as mayor.

 partying at Gary Country Club (1926); Allegra Nesbitt standing, 2nd from right

Students asked me about race-relations in Gary during the Twenties, a time when Mill officials aimed to keep the labor force divided, and whether U.S. Steel built housing for workers as in Pullman, Illinois.  While the corporation provided home ownership opportunities on the Northside for managerial personal and plant foremen, unskilled workers were left to fend for themselves. Many boarded in bunk houses, sharing a cot with someone working the alternate 12-hour shifts. Nicole invited me back anytime; I thinking of returning in two weeks when the class discusses the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial featuring Clarence Darrow for the defense and William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution.

Bob Greene (above), author of “When We Get to Surf City,” emailed:

     What a nice letter, Jim-- thank you.

    I really liked the excerpts from the book that you chose to include in your blog-- I'm especially glad that you took note of my observations about Jerry Lee Lewis.  No one has ever specifically mentioned that part of the book to me, but it's one of my favorites, and I'm pleased that you saw in it what I did.

    Just sang again the other night in Florida with a band called California Surf Incorporated-- all former Beach Boys musicians.  Randell Kirsch, from Jan and Dean, was playing with them, and one of the guitarists wasn't feeling well and didn't want to do his vocals, so they invited me to fill in.  It never gets less fun.

    Thank you again for what you said, and especially for the way you said it.  It means a lot to me.

I wrote back:

    Thanks for the nice response.  I saw Jerry Lee Lewis live in Merrillville, IN in 1980 (what a showman!) and recall him appearing a few years ago on Letterman with Neil Young, the only time Neil agreed to be on the show.

    I’m glad you’re still jamming with old Beach Boys.  My son was in a band until a few years ago and would invite me on stage to sing the chorus of Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.”

Having enjoyed the new Of Monsters and Men CD, I checked out their earlier album “beneath the Skin” (2015) and discovered “Slow Life,” which hardly describes the past hectic days.  One verse goes:

We're slowly sailing away
Behind closed eyes
Where not a single ray of light
Can puncture through the night

With my 60th high school reunion scheduled for October, I told planners Larry Bothe, John Jacobson, and Connie Heard that I’d work on classmates who don’t normally attend. Rehashing weekend highlights with Gaard Logan, a gourmet cook who claims she has no interest in the reunion but is always interested in hearing about Upper Dublin classmates, I described the beignet pastry fritters, Brussel sprout chips, and lobster and mango spring rolls.  Signing off, I called her sweetie, eliciting a chuckle and, “Take care , my friend.”

Green Feather

“Rise and rise again until lambs become lions,” Robin Hood

seventeenth-century woodcut

During the 1950s Red Scare a zealous anticommunist on the Indiana textbook commission demanded that public schools purge any books that mentioned Robin Hood.  Reason: the heroic outlaw of English folklore and his merry band robbed the rich to give to the poor and must have been commies.  In reaction, Blas Davis from Gary and four other students, Ed Napier, Bernard Bray, Mary Dawson, and Jeanine Carter, belonging to a Baptist youth group, Roger Williams Fellowship, rose to defend free speech and academic freedom. In the Indiana University bicentennial magazine 200, Mary Ann Wynkook wrote:

   They began their campaign in Spring 1954, by dyeing some chicken feathers green (a reference to Robin Hood) and attaching them to white buttons with slogans like “They’re your books; don’t let McCarthyism burn them” that they handed out to students across campus.

While supported by the campus newspaper and local American Civil Liberties Union chapter, the Bloomington Herald-Telephone labeled the ringleaders “dupes,” “puppets,” and “long hairs.” Students at several other campuses, including Purdue, took up the cause. McCarthy’s popularity suddenly plummeted in the wake of the Army-McCarthy hearings. By year’s end, the ludicrous efforts to eradicate the legend of Robin Hood ceased.

IU’s bicentennial magazine also contained Dina Kellams’ article on Preston Eagleson, Indiana University’s first African-American football player, beginning in 1883.  Son of a prominent Bloomington barber, Eagleson apparently was accepted by teammates but mistreated by opposing players and fans during contests at Butler and Wabash College.  Traveling to Crawfordsville, the team was turned away at two hotels. Eagleson’s father successfully sued the racist owners.

above, Preston Eagleson; below, Herman Wells

200 editor Sarah Jacobi asked if I’d write an article about IU President Herman Wells and the censoring of sociologist Edwin Sutherland’s White-Collar Crime (1949).  Under pressure from Wells and his publisher, the Bloomington professor deleted material referring to several prominent corporations as criminals. Finally, in 1983, Yale University Press published a third edition which restored the excised chapter, “Three Case Histories,” that named American Smelting and Refining Company, Pittsburgh Coal Company, and United States Rubber Company as lawbreakers.  Being unfamiliar with the exact  role of Herman Wells in the matter, I offered instead to submit a sidebar about Wells pressuring IUN director Jack Buhner to fire English professor Saul Maloff, who had once been active in an organization that detractors claimed was a communist-front group. Though staunch in his support of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey and efforts to desegregate campus facilities, Wells was fearful that reactionary IU trustees and legislators might retaliate and bowed to Hoosier Red Baiters.

After a week away from duplicate bridge competition, I finished first partnering with Joel Charpentier and in the middle of the pack with Charlie Halberstadt.  Charlie and I were doing great until Terry Brendel and Fred Green cleaned our clock in four straight hands – through no fault on our part. At Hobart Lanes I struggled the first six frames until opponent Gene Clifford advised facing the pins on spares.   I promptly converted four in a row and then rolled a 182, causing Gene’s teammate Gregg Halaburt to joke, “Don’t give him any more tips.”

above, Gene Clifford; below, Cora DuBois

In the “What I’m Reading” section of Bucknell’s alumni magazine Anthropology professor Michelle Johnson cited Susan Seymour’s “Cora DuBois: Anthropologist, Diplomat, Agent.”  An expert on East Indian tribes, DuBois (1903-1991) served during World War II with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA.  In 1950 she turned down an offer to head up Berkeley’s anthropology department because state law would have required her to sign a loyalty oath. She went on to teach at Harvard and Cornell and enjoyed a long-term lesbian relationship with Jeanne Taylor, whom she met in 1944 in Sri Lanka.  DuBois was the first tenured woman professor at Harvard and only permitted to enter Harvard’s faculty club through a side door. Imagine.

At Chesterton library I added my name to a list of those wishing to reserve Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive Again” (a sequel to her acclaimed “Olive Kitteridge”) and checked out her first novel, “Amy and Isabelle.”  Set in Shirley Falls, a New England mill town, it begins:

  It was terribly hot that summer.  Mr. Robinson left town, and for a long while the river seemed dead.  Just a dead brown snake of a thing lying flat through the center of town, dirty yellow foam collecting at its edge.  Strangers driving by on the turnpike rolled up their windows at the gagging sulfurous smell and wondered how anyone could live with that kind of stench coming from the river and the mill.

I also picked up the Lumineers’ new CD, III, which includes their smash hit “Gloria” and the bonus track “Democracy.”  One verse goes:

Sail on, sail on

O mighty ship of state

To the shores of need

Past the reefs of greed

Through the squalls of hate

Sail on, sail on, sail on

And these lines: “I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean/ I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.”

 Natasha Varner, Geoff Froh and Micah Mizukami at OHA session

OHA member Micah Mizukami, whom I met at a session on Hawai’ian customs and cowboys, wrote to say he enjoyed meeting me and hearing about my time at the University of Hawaii, where he teaches at the Center for Ethnic Studies.  He stated: “Although I had only met the Hawaiʻi panel just an hour earlier, I could feel their aloha. Here’s a photo of me with the presenters from Denshō -- they had a great session about the mass incarceration of the Japanese-Americans (at Topaz internment camp in Utah) and how to incorporate it into classroom curriculum.”

Close to 20 oldtimers attended the Chancellor’s annual emeritus faculty lunch.  I sat next to John Ban, looking fit at age 87, and Mike Certa, who recently ushered his 365th Chicago theatrical production (an average on one every ten days since his retirement).  Other usual suspects in attendance were Rick Hug, Ron Cohen, Margaret Skurka, and Ken Schoon.  Lowe announced he’s retiring in eight months but is presently teaching a seminar on Irish history and plans to return after a year’s leave.

 above, Margaret Skurka; below, Joe Madden

Angels manager Joe Madden said his pipe dream is that his new team defeat his former employer, the Cubs, in the World Series.  Sports jock Mike Mulligan of The SCORE blasted Madden for using a word that initially derived from opium-inspired visions not long after Angels player Tyler Skaggs died from a drug overdose.  How dumb of “Mully” to bring such a thing up!

Do You Realize?

“Life goes fast

It’s hard to make the good things last

The sun doesn’t go down

It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round”

                            “Flaming Lips, “Do You Realize?”

Listening to music on WXRT from 1974, I was unfamiliar with many selections since back then I was listening to “Top 40” fare on WLS, but I did sing along to “Takin’ Care of Business,” “The Bitch Is Back, and “Bad Company.”  I enjoyed Brian Ferry’s rendition of “The In Crowd,” recorded ten years earlier by Dobie Gray and the jazz group Ramsey Lewis Trio. WXRT touted that evening’s Taste of Chicago Flaming Lips concert, which Marianne and Missy Brush attended.  I put on the Lips’ “The Soft Bulletin” (1999) CD, which contains “The Spiderbite Song” and “Waiting for a Superman.”

 above, Wayne Coyle of Flaming Lips; below, Flaming Lips fans

In a Time review of “Eighth Grade” was the acronym ASMR, which stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.  The reference was to online videos evidently popular with teens and meant to relax viewers. Examples are gentle whispering, lip smacking, nail tapping, and rhythmic hand movements.  I hope “Eighth Grade” comes to Portage or Valpo.  In all likelihood, it’s more sophisticated than current hits “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.”

At Memorial Opera House VU student  Carley Kolsch starred as Elle Woods in the lively musical “Legally Blonde,” based on the 2001 Reese Witherspoon movie.  The far-fetched plot has a California sorority cheerleader being accepted to Harvard Law School.  The boyfriend she wanted to impress turns out to be more shallow than she, once she gains self-confidence.  Westville theater teacher Erin Sharpe played lesbian law student Enid; two minor characters danced and kissed passionately once exposed as gay lovers.  There were cameo canine appearances by tiny Bruiser Woods and huge Rufus MacDonald. In the sold-out audience were bowling buddies Gene Clifford and Dorothy Peterson, who recently returned from a road trip to the Grand Canyon and will soon depart for the Florida Everglades.  “Mamma Mia!” is on the 2019 schedule!

above, Pussy Riot protest; below, Mbappe

 

In Moscow France leading Croatia, 2-1, in the World Cup when four Pussy Riot protestors dressed as law enforcement officials ran onto the field, protesting illegal arrests of dissidents, including Oleg Sentsov, sentenced to 20 years on bogus charges of conspiring to commit terror acts for opposing Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.  The TV announcers made no attempt to explain the interruption.  One protester gave 19-year-old French star Kylian Mbappe a double high-five.  A few minutes later Mbappe connected on a brilliant shot from 25 yards, the youngest player to score in the final match since Brazilian soccer god Pele in 1958 at age 17.  Phil, Delia, Alissa, and Josh watched at Grand Rapids Garage Bar and Grill.

Helsinki, Finland was the site of a meeting between Trump and Putin, as well as the scene of anti-Trump protests.  CBS correspondent Major Garrett appeared to be reporting from Market Square, as I recognized Helsinki Cathedral and government buildings in the background.  Dan Rather posted: “The President trusts the word of a former KGB agent over the consensus of the American intelligence community.  This is a shocking reality.  Everyone who excuses Trump’s behavior must answer that now, and when history inevitably judges.”Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Russia’s past and continuing interference in our election process, despite a dozen recent indictments of Russian operatives by the Mueller investigators, produced this diatribe by Ray Smock:

For the first time in American History the United States has TWO presidents: Vladimir Putin and his puppet Donald Trump. This is appalling and unconstitutional. This was not a Summit it was an American capitulation! Do we have ANYONE in Congress who is still an American patriot? Anyone in Congress with Courage? This was grounds for IMPEACHMENT!

According to IUN student Brenda “Kay-Kay” Auxier, Lauren Winicky grew up in Glen Park and was the youngest of three. At age 19 she married Bruce Unland, and they got into bowling as a hobby they could enjoy together. Winicky wrote:

       They joined a Sunday night bowling league at Hobart Lanes and went out and bought bowling shoes the night before. The first week they used house balls and shebowled a 112, the lowest score in the league that night.  Humiliated, she decided to start taking bowling seriously. On Tuesdays and Fridays, she and Bruce worked on their bowling skillsat Hobart Lanes. A few weekslater,they bought their own balls. Since Kay-Kay had trouble keeping her wrist straight, she bought a brace for better ball control.  Seven weekslater, Kay-Kay bowled a 178, a huge accomplishment for the young bowler. 

      What started as a casual hobby turned into a family lifestyle. In the late 70’s and 80’s, Bruce and Kay-Kay found themselves in bowling alleys most nights of the week. Their children competed in youth leagues. Daughter Brenda recalled, “My favorite thing about growing up in the bowling alley was always being around my friends. The regulars up at Hobart Lanes were pretty much family. It was such a great community feeling.”In addition to Sundays at Hobart Lanes, the couple also joined other leagues, which Kay-Kay believes made her a better bowler. She explained, “Every alley will oil their lanes differently. You have to bowl on a lane for a bit to see where you have to place your ball.” 

      Kay-Kay described  reacting to her husband’s first 300: “I could not believe it at first. Then all of a sudden, over the loud speaker, the owner announces that Bruce Unland just bowled a perfect game. He ran over to me and spun me around. I was so happy for him but a bit jealous.”Her highest game was a 298. 

Jake and Kay-Kay

      Kay-Kay’s grandson Jake was present for Bruce’s second 300 at Camelot in November of 2004. He and brother Dustin were bowling in a youth league before the adultleague started. Jake recalled: “When I saw my grandpa get his second 300, I knew that I wanted to be just like him. He had gotten pretty big around the area. When he walked into bowling alleys in the region, everybody knew him.”Seeing Jake’s passion for bowling andwatching him improve each weekled Kay-Kay to apply for a bowling coach position at Thomas A. Edison Junior-Senior High School in Hobart. She was hired on the spot. Kay-Kay coached girls bowling at Edison for four years and turned the program around. She said, “When I first got there, the team was not even practicing together. They would practice on their own and an honor system was in place. The first thing I told the girls was that from now on, we practice three times a week as a team.”  Sometimes Jake came to the practices and later bowled varsity for Portage, following in Dustin's footsteps. Her third and fourth year at Edison, they were sectional runners-up. Unfortunately, Kay-Kay had to resign from coaching at Edison when Bruce got sick. “I am so proud to be a part of what that program is today. I have been able to coach so many great kids. It makes my heart warm to know how many lives I have influenced,”Kay-Kaysaid, adding, “The whole dynamic changes when you start coaching. You start thinking about strategy. It becomes more than just trying to throw strikes.” 

      Kay-Kay continued to coach Jake through high school. She recalled: “It was hard his senior year because Bruce had passed away the year before.  But we knew that Bruce would be looking down on us and watching us do what we love. In the sectionals Portage upset Michigan City, winning just by one spare. The tension was insane. No one said a word as we watched both teams tie up with one another over and over.”She admits shedding tears when she saw her grandson garner individual honors and his team win the match. 

In Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs” Lou Lynch wonders, “Who cares about a single life beyond the one whose task is to live?  Why scan the past for the shapes and meanings it surrenders so reluctantly, if you mean to suppress some and exaggerate others?”  Tess, Lou’s mother, was strong and practical while his dad was a dreamer whom Lou invariably sided with, to the extent that she sometimes believed he didn’t love her. Lou Senior’s had a brother named Declan (Elvis Costello’s given name), who knew Tess during her wild teenage days and whom young Lou rightly regarded as an untrustworthy scamp.In Bridge of Sighs” 

Waterfront Inn before and after fire; Post-Trib photos by Carole Carlson and Craig Lyons

Fire destroyed Waterfront Inn, a former bar and dance hall located in New Chicago on the banks of Deep River just days before the eyesore was scheduled to be demolished to make way for a park. The fire may lead to a more rapid demolition since the site is now a health and safety hazard.  Located in Hobart Township, tiny New Chicago, whose total area is less than one square mile, has fewer than 2,000 residents.  New Chicago’s website contains this information:

New Chicago boasts its own police station, a volunteer fire department, water department, three small parks, one gas station, Pizza Hut, [La Ranchero] Mexican Restaurant, and many other businesses.  Up until 1977 there was one police officer in town and the dispatcher answered the phones from his home day and night. New Chicago has Interstate 80/94 to the North, Route 6 (Ridge Road) to the South, Interstate 65 to the West, and Indiana Route 51 to the East.  We are a small blue-collar community where everyone knows your name.  According to a former barber in town, there were 30 drug store licenses in New Chicago at one time.  During Prohibition, if you had a drug store license, you could set a bottle of aspirin on the shelf, call yourself a drugstore, and sell wine and beer.  It was quite a bootleg place in those days.

Barbara Mort and History student Courtney Nagel communicated by email before they met in person at her home in Chesterton.  Barbara showed Courtney photos of her family, friends, and beloved pets, and provided her with the following information:

       Born on September 1, 1935, Barbara grew up in North Manchester, Indiana.  An only child, she was very close to her maternal grandfather John, who passed on to her his love of horses.  Her grandmother Cora ran a kennel and bred show dogs. Thus, Barbara grew up around horses and dogs.  She could teach a pony to sit and lay down like a dog and got her own horse when just nine.  Soon after high school Barbara got married and by the age of 22 had three children, Penny, Kathy, and Greg.  She went on to have a successful career in banking, eventually rising to the position of vice president.  In 1983, she moved to Chesterton when a bank manager offered her twice the salary she was earning downstate.  She loves to travel and is very active in Rotary.  Her toughest challenges were undergoing a divorce and losing both her daughters to cancer just nine months apart.  She said if she could change anything in her life, she would not have gotten married so early and gone to college instead.  Barbara passed on her love of horses to granddaughter Brogan, who has competed in jumping shows.

      A large part of Barbara’s life involves bridge.  She grew up playing euchre, which uses a 32-card deck (nine through Ace) and involves winning tricks and playing with a partner. She didn’t learn bridge until she and her husband were living in Tampa, Florida.  A military couple taught them on condition that they’d agree to play at least two times a week.  Later Barbara had a boyfriend named Fred who played gin rummy, and Barbara persuaded him to take bridge lessons with her at Woodmar Country Club.  She said that in bridge one never stops learning.  On Tuesday evenings she and bridge partner Kris Prohl compete in duplicate, and most Mondays they get together at her home to practice bidding.  Barbara often makes soup or a salad for the occasion. 

I had another mediocre night at bridge, being too cautious when I should have been bold and vice versa.  One hand, I was in 6 No-Trump and needed either for Diamonds to break 3-3 or, failing that, a Club finesse to succeed.  Diamonds broke 4-2 and Chuck Tomes covered my Club Queen with the King for the setting trick.  Terry Bauer’s daughter arrived in Hong Kong to start a new job just as a typhoon was threatening the island.  I told him that pet birds are popular among Hong Kong residents who lived in tiny apartments.  On TV recently forced I saw a Japanese man forced evacuate his apartment being interviewed and he had a caged bird with him.