Cut to the Chase

“The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct.” William of Ockham

William of Ockam

I first learned about medieval philosopher William of Ockham (1287-1347) reading Richard Russo’s “Straight Man,” whose antihero has a dog named Occam, named after Occam’s Razor, the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the most valid. The Franciscan friar disagreed with Thomas Aquinas that faith and reason can be reconciled.  According to Phrases.org, “cut to the chase,” which has become synonymous with “get to the point,” originated in Hollywood and referred to moving quickly to exciting chase scenes in silent movies rather than dwelling too long on the background story line.  Michael Warwick’s “Theatrical Jargon of the Old Days” (1968) reported on a similar phrase “cut to Hecuba” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that refers to shortening plays, especially for matinees, by leaving out long orations.

With all the pontificating about the Mueller report, Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky exposes in the simplest of terms the embarrassing nature of his presidency.  He believes that the wrath of what he brands the “fake” news media is worth the price of tarnishing the reputation of Joe Biden, in his opinion his most formidable potential opponent in 2020. In fact, he’s quite open about his nefarious actions, now suggesting China should open a similar investigation.  His apologists simply say he was being sarcastic and didn’t really mean what he said.   

Trump’s near-total domination of the news cycle is maddening. The Post-Tribune failed to report the sentencing of former Dallas cop Amber Guyger to ten years in prison for murdering Botham Jean after mistaking his apartment for her own and believing the native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia to be a burglar.  While protestors were chanting “no justice, no peace” outside the courtroom, Botham Jean, the victim’s brother, took the stand and said to Guyger, “If you are truly sorry, I forgive you.”  Then he asked the judge, “Can I give her a hug?  Please.”  What happened next, according to the Dallas Morning- News,was that “Guyger hesitated for just a moment, and then she rushed toward Jean and wrapped her arms around his neck.. . . Both were in tears when they finally broke away.”  Witnessing the scene on CBS morning news, I thought of Bill Pelke, who forgave Paula Cooper for murdering his grandmother and subsequently founded Journey of Hope . . . From Violence to Healing, an organization dedicated to abolishing the death penalty.  Similarly, essayist Hanif Abdurraqib learned that Dylann Roof, who killed nine black people in a Charleston, SC, church, was sentenced to be executed, he wrote, “My desire for his death had long passed” since “the insidious spirit of his motivations” would sadly endure.

I had a good couple of days in duplicate bridge, finishing second at Chesterton Y out of 12 couples (58.33%) partnering with Helen Boothe and third out of 15 couples (59.52%, top among East-West pairs) at Banta Center with Ric Friedman despite playing only a couple times with each.  Helen is liberal to the hilt while Ric is quite conservative, but they get along.  Helen is working on him.  Helen ran into 88-year-old Frank Casario who was on his way to a Zumba class and still teaches tap dance.  Mary Ann Filipiak complimented Ric’s pink shirt that he claimed his wife had purchased to support breast cancer prevention.  It shows off your feminine side, I said; he laughed and didn’t take offense.  I had a hand containing 29 points and took all 13 tricks after bidding 6 No Trump doubled for second high board. Only Fred Green had the nerve to bid 7 No Trump, playing with Terry Brendel. It was a virtual laydown.

above, Gary Book Club; photo by Jerry Davich; below, Felicia Childress in 2018; NWI Times photo by John Luke

Gary Booklovers Club dates from 1921 when African American women teachers started holding monthly meetings. Shirley Thomas told Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich: “When I was invited to join over 30 years ago, we always met in members’ homes.  As younger members replaced the older ladies, they decided it was less work for the hostess if our meetings were held in a restaurant.”  Stalwart Felicia Childress, 102, came to Gary in 1946 and taught several of the current members, including Carolyn Dillon, who grew up poor in a Gary housing project.  “Books saved my life,” Dillon told Davich.  Others whose names were familiar to me included Jacquelyn Gholson, Jenell Joiner, Gloria King, and Loretta Piggee.  September’s speaker at Asparagus Restaurant was Purdue Northwest philosophy professor David Detmer, author of “Zinnophobia: The Battle Over History in Education, Politics, and Scholarship.”  It deals with attempts by Governor Mitch Daniels, who became President of Purdue, to ban books by radical Boston University historian Howard Zinn.

Marion Merrill with photo of Sam

What I admire most about Hanif Abdurraqib’s “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” essays is that they cut to the chase. Almost without fail, the initial paragraph sets the tone and conveys the theme, something my Maryland faculty adviser Sam Merrill drilled into his grad students.  Another of Merrill’s rules was never write in the passive voice.  Abdurraqib opens “On Future and Working Through What Hurts”: “My mother died at the beginning of summer.  What this meant more than anything was that I didn’t have school or some other youthful labor to distract me from the grieving process.”  Here the first sentence of “They Will Speak Loudest of You After You’ve Gone”: “What I got to experience in moving to the Northeast after living my entire life in the Midwest is the different masks that racism wears.” As critic Kiese Laymon concluded: “No writer alive writes first sentences like Hanif.”  Or, for that matter, last sentences. “They Will Speak Loudest,” about racism, ends: “And the impossible weight of it all.”

Billie Eilish songs get straight to the point about flawed relationships with menacing humor.  In “Wish You Were Gay,” about one who doesn’t respond to her overtures, she pleads:

To spare my pride

To give your lack of interest an explanation

Don’t say I’m not your type

Just say I’m not your preferred sexual orientation

The lyrics of “Watch” reflect disillusionment with unreciprocated love:

When you call my name
Do you think I'll come runnin'?
You never did the same
So good at givin' me nothin'

The final line of “Watch”: “Never gonna letcha back.”

Nelsons

 “Someone opened up a closet door and out stepped Johnny B. Goode

Playing guitar like a-ringin' a bell and lookin' like he should
If you gotta play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang, I rather drive a truck

And it's all right now, learned my lesson well
You see, ya can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself”

    “Garden Party,” Ricky Nelson 

Ricky Nelson (1940-1985) began an unlikely career as an actor and pop singer at age eight on the radio program “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” starring his parents (a former band leader and vocalist) and also featuring older brother David.  Five years after the show became a successful TV series in 1952, Nelson made his singing debut, a cover of Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’,” and the following year enjoyed his first of 19 Top Ten hits, “Poor Little Fool.”  In 1959 Nelson co-starred in the Howard Hawks Western “Rio Bravo” with John Wayne and Dean Martin. One summer when in high school, I caught a glimpse of him leaving a concert at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier mobbed by fans.  A girlfriend told me I looked like him, quite a flattering comment, I thought, if perhaps an exaggeration. Around the time of the 1964 British Invasion, the hits stopped coming for Nelson, except for 1972’s “Garden Party,” which he wrote in disgust after being booed at an Oldies show when he sang new country-oriented material rather than stick to mostly lame former hits. 

Rick Nelson died when his private plane, a DC-3 formerly owned by Jerry Lee Lewis, crashed bear De Kalb, Texas while his band was en route to a concert during a “Comeback tour" after a fire erupted in the cabin.  After toxicology reports found drugs in Nelson’s body, rumors spread that the fire was due to passengers free-basing cocaine; but the likely cause was a faulty in-cabin heater. Rick’s twin sons Gunnar and Matthew subsequently formed a band called Nelson.

The name Nelson, of English, Scottish, and Scandinavian origin, has been both a first and surname; in some cases, it literally denoted son of Nels. Examples of the former include South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller; famous people with the last name range from British naval hero at Trafalgar Viscount Horatio Nelson and actor Judd Nelson to performers Nelson Eddy and Willie Nelson. Sports stars include infielder Nellie Fox and grappler Battling Nelson.  Two popular wrestling holds are the half and full nelson, which involve locking a hand on an opponent’s neck in an effort to turn and pin him.

On the way to Jon Becker’s freshman seminar on the fourth floor of IUN’s Hawthorn Hall, I dropped in the offices of poet Bill Allegrezza and Brian O’Camb, now English department chair and a former lunch companion, along with Jonathyne Briggs and Anne Balay.  Becker gave me an inscribed copy of “The Flunked-Out Professor: Six Steps for Turning Big Failure into Bigger Success” about turning his life around after then girlfriend and future wife Kate warned she didn’t want to marry a bum.  The book contains inspirational advice by the likes of Star Trek’sCaptain Jean-Luc Picard (“Let’s see what’s out there”)and Martin Luther King (“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the entire staircase”).Heading a section advising students to start a reading program was this quote from President Harry S Truman: “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers”- sadly inapplicable in rudderless America at present.

 Becker family in 2016

Becker introduced me as his Vietnam War summer class professor 32 years ago in which he received a “D.”  He’d just gotten married, Jon explained, and had other things on his mind. In discussing the history of IUN, I explained how “Educating the Calumet Region,” which I had given each of them the previous week, was in large part a social history employing oral testimony by students, staff, faculty, and administrators. I spoke of Ruth Nelson’s 60-year stint with the university, beginning as secretary for Gary College director Albert Fertsch and continuing after retirement as a library volunteer.  In 1970, my first year at IUN, Nelson was IUN Bookstore manager.  By then directors of admissions, registration, and financial aid had been hired to oversee functions she once handled for a tiny fraction of their combined salaries. I first interviewed her for a Post-Tribune column later included in my history of Gary, “City of the Century.”  Ruth told me:

    In 1934 I graduated from Horace Mann and after my father broke his neck at a July Fourth picnic became secretary to Director Albert Fertsch.  The salary of $55 a month was paid by the New Deal agency FERA and helped put food on the table. When my father got a job as a watchman, my wages were reduced by ten dollars.  The only time I spoke to Superintendent William Wirt was to request a raise.  He turned me down, saying, “The class of people you are dealing and working with should compensate for the lowly salary.”

    Tuition was five dollars for the first five hours, four dollars for the next five, and three dollars for any over that.  The father of Alexander S. Williams, who became Lake County’s first black elected official, walked from Gary’s southside every week to pay part of the tuition.  Sometimes he’d pay as little as 50 cents.  A student once asked Mr. Fertsch whether he had a physical education program. He replied, “Do you walk to school?  That’s your hour of physical education.”

    Gary College had a picnic at Marquette Park.  A policeman interrupted the festivities and ordered the lone black student to leave.  I just couldn’t believe it. It hurt me so much that I said to him, “Wait a minute.  If you have to leave, I have to leave.”  So we left together.  The picnic went on without us.

    Indiana and Purdue both vied for Gary College when it was about to cease functioning, but it was no contest. Mr. Fertsch had no love for Purdue because of the negative survey their educators did of Dr. Wirt’s work-study-play plan.   

I traced the careers of historian Bill Neil (a part-time student at Gary College who became Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs) and Chancellor Peggy Elliott (a former Horace Mann English teacher who started at IUN as a lowly adjunct) as exemplifying changes that took place during their long tenures with the university.

Bill Neil and Peggy Elliott

groundbreaking at new campus site, August 29, 1957, President Herman Wells at microphone

From the outset I encouraged discussion of such matters as why a century ago Bloomington started offering “extension” courses” in the Region, reasons behind demands for programs in Black, Latino, and Women’s Studies, and how much independence should be given editors of university newspapers. Turning to photos in “Educating the Calumet Region,” I explained that President Herman Wells, shown at a groundbreaking ceremony for the initial building (Gary Main, later renamed Tamarack Hall) at the present Glen Park site, ended segregation on the main campus and took heat for supporting Alfred Kinsey’s sex research. On the cover was a 1967 shot of IUN’s first commencement as a four-year institution. It took place outdoors, a practice that ended soon after Jon Becker’s graduation in the late-1980s.  Pointing out an illustration showing Chancellor Elliott holding Mary Ann Fischer’s baby during a visit by child psychologist T. Berry Brazelton, my voice broke slightly as I told of Peggy spotting Toni on campus holding granddaughter Alissa when she was an infant and breaking away from Bloomington muckedy-mucks to gush over how cute she was.  Students were amazed at how inexpensive tuition once was compared to the present and asked why no student dorms, something legislator Charlie Brown fruitlessly advocated for years.

In my latest Steel Shavings, Becker came across a photo from Halberstadt Game Weekend of Jef and Evan Davis playing Terraforming Mars, Jon’s favorite board game.  He mentioned owning the many upgrades to Ticket to Ride.  When I told him the version using the map of Pennsylvania was my favorite, he exclaimed, “Mine, too.”  He hadn’t noticed his being mentioned in “Educating the Calumet Region,” where former Mathematics professor John Synowiec lamented 15 years ago that most administrators held Arts and Sciences in low esteem but that his department seemed in good hands because of excellent young faculty such as Iztok Hozo, Vesna Kilibarda, and “an IUN graduate, Jon Becker.”

Lorraine Hansberry and Chance the Rapper (Chancelor Jonathan Bennett)

In advance of music critic Hanif Abdurriqib’s speaking engagement at the university, IUN is holding discussions on “They can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.”  The first will deal with the first five essays, including “Chance the Rapper’s Golden Year” and “The Night Prince Walked on Water.” about the “Purple Rain” genius’s incandescent Superbowl XLI performance that included renditions of Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” and Foo Fighter’s “Best of You.”  A common theme is the search for moments of joy in “the vicious and yawning maw”of a country where mass murders have become commonplace and a “xenophobic bigot”occupies the White House.  The author quotes Chicago native Lorraine Hansberry: “I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.”Abdurraqib compared Chance the Rapper’s album “Coloring Book” to the poetry of fellow Chicagoan Gwendolyn Brooks, who also captured the triumphs and failures of ordinary black folk.  In an endless and sometimes unbearable age, Abdurriqib wrote, “we are nothing without our quick and simple blessings, without those [like Chance the Rapper] willing to drag optimism by the neck to the gates of grief and ask to be let in, an entire choir of voices singing at their back.”

One of Abdurraqib’s essays is “Carly Rae Jepsen Loves You Back,” about the Canadian singer’s concert appearance at Terminal 5 in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood singing selections from the 2015 album “E-MO-TION.” Abdurraqib credited Jepsen with being able to convince a room full of people – teenagers, hipsters in their early 30s, blacks in their 20s, couples kissing passionately during “Warm Blood,” to, in his words, “set their sadness aside and, for a night, bring out whatever joy remains underneath – in a world where there is so much grief to be had, leading the people to water and letting them drink from your cupped hands.” I picked up “Dedicated,” Carly Rae’s most recent CD, at Chesterton library and especially enjoyed “No Drug Like Me” and “Right Words Wrong Time,” which contains these lyrics:

Took a million miles to feel the final separation

Don’t you tell me now you know what you need

I need to find a love to love me with no hesitation

Don’t you tell me you’re ready for me.

At bridge 87-year-old Dottie Hart had a new partner.  I held Dottie’s arm and said, “I hope you are in good hands.”  "I am now,” she joked.  At Charlie Halberstadt’s urging I tried  a new system called “Reverse Drury,” used after two passes and with a hand containing just 10 or so points but with good Spades.  The experiment did not end well. At bowling the following day, Jerome Tashik, on the DL last season, rolled a 715 series, winning the pot for high game over average all three games.  As Frank Vitalone announced after the final game, “We have a triple winner”– unprecedented in the years I’ve been in the league.  A 715 is a hundred pins higher than my best series ever.

Toni and I represented IU Northwest at the Dunes Learning Center’s annual banquet, “A Dunes Affair,” held at Sand Creek Country Club (only a mile from us as the crow flies), as did IUN Dean of Education Mark Sperling and wife Sandy, where Gary native Ken Schoon was the recipient of the Green Apple Award; the citation stated:

 Ken is a Northwest Indiana native and professor emeritus of science education at IU Northwest.  After 22 years as a middle and high school teacher, he joined the faculty at IUN, retiring 23 years later as a full professor and associate dean.  His research interests center around science misconceptions and local studies.  Ken is a founding board member and past president of Dunes Learning Center, an adviser to Shirley Heinz Land Trust, secretary of Munster Education Foundation, a member of the IUN Science Olympiad steering committee, and a member of the Indiana and Munster historical societies.  He has published three books about regional geology and history.

One of his publications is a book about Swedes who settled in Indiana’s Lake and Porter counties, which includes several Nelsons, including one of the founders in 1874 of Bethel Lutheran Church in Miller, Christina Maria Nelson, prohibited from signing the original charter due to her sex.

Ken Schoon at IUN, September 2017

Greeting us at the door was event committee member Bill Payonk, a former nontraditional IUN student who wrote a Northwest Phoenixcolumn called “The Old Guy.”  Diane Brown introduced herself to Toni as a former next-door-neighbor to Evelyn Passo’s mother, and recalled meeting her when Toni and granddaughter Alissa were visiting with Evelyn and her two sons.  A short film showed children visiting Dunes Learning Center, including  a group from Marquette School with teacher Tom Serynek, a friend and former president of Save the Dunes Council.  In accepting the award, Ken related having been a history major at IUN when he took a class with Mark Reshkin and became hooked on geology and dunes preservation. He credited Lee Botts as a mentor to whom one does not say no. Several items were auctioned off that each went for over a thousand dollars, including a ten-course meal for 8 prepared by chefs who came to your home and “Before the Sun Goes Down,” a painting by Porter, Indiana, landscape artist Mark Vander Vinne.

 below, Hakim Laws

Former Philadelphia firefighter Hakim Laws helped rescue babies from a burning apartment by catching them when they were tossed down to him.  Afterwards he told reporters that he was more sure-handed than Eagles receiver Nelson Agholor, who dropped several passes in a loss to the Detroit Lions.  The comment went viral, and Agholor called him a hero and offered him tickets to Philadelphia’s next home game.  Classy.

Friendsgiving

 “There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

Michael and Jimbo; photo by Kirsten Bayer-Petras

Since the 1970s it’s been a tradition to have Thanksgiving with our oldest Gary friends, Michael and Janet Bayer.  We missed some years after they moved to Vermont but revived the tradition upon their relocating to the Indianapolis area.  In the past couple years we realized having our families together on Thanksgiving was impractical, so we moved it to an earlier date. This year August worked best because we could take advantage of Kirsten and Ed’s pool.  The weather was perfect, sunny and in the low 80s, then cool enough after sundown for a fire to make smores.  Grilling burgers, brats, hot dogs, chicken, and corn of the cob and eating outside was more relaxing than a sitdown meal of turkey and ham with all the trimmings. Our group of 20 ranged in age from 4 to 77.  Though the eldest, I played two games of cornhole with Phil as partner and went 1-1against tough competition.  Kirsten made delicious cherry cobbler from a recipe she got from me.  Brenden Bayer, a Great Lakes boat captain, gave Toni an International Longshoremen’s Association sweater, which she’ll treasure.

 Kravitz family; below, Chez Roberts and friends (Kirsten on right)

Several folks had watched season 2 of “Little Big Lies” and, like me, were blown away by Meryl Streep and the other actresses, in particular Zoë Kravitz, the daughter of singer Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet – talk about cool parents! Joining us was Chez Roberts, one of Kirsten’s oldest friends who manages an Italian restaurant and soon will open a place of his own.  He is from Columbus, Ohio, as is Hanif Abdurraqib, author of “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.” Abdurraqib describes his hometown with bittersweet candor, avoiding nostalgia:

  The mission of any art that revolves around place is the mission of honesty.  So many of us lean into romantics when we write of whatever place we crawled out of, perhaps because we feel like we owe it something, even when it has taken more from us than we’ve taken from it.  The mission of honesty becomes a bit more cloudy when we decide to be honest about not loving the spaces we have claimed as our own.

We spent the night at Mike and Janet’s in Fishers and then were back at Kirsten’s in Carmel for breakfast.  Recently retired, Janet talked about taking a “gap year” (a phrase I became familiar with recently and now seemingly hear all the time) before pursuing another phase of her life.  She’s thinking about starting a blog and hopes to write about famous people she’s met as an activist over the years, and I mentioned some I interacting with Bayard Rustin and Julian Bond.   Brenden, who lives just a few miles from us, suggested we go back on routes 31 and 30 instead of taking I-65, so we followed his advice.  It took about the same amount of time and was much more relaxing, with fewer trucks and traffic.  Summer construction is unavoidable but not so much a hassle on the new route.

                                               Buck Swope and Roller Girl

Home in time to catch the Cubs getting swept by the Washington Nationals, whose hitters were more disciplined than the strike out-prone Cubbies.  I finished watching “Boogie Night,” depressing but with a cool scene where a drug-crazed cokehead is dancing and singing along to “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger and Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl,” which contains the line, “Jessie’s got himself a girl and I want to make her mine.”  In fact, I enjoyed the music throughout, including “Got To Give It Up” by Marvin Gaye and “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. The two most sympathetic characters were Buck Swope (Don Cheadle), a porn star who dresses like a cowboy and hopes to open his own stereo store, and Roller Girl (Heather Graham), a nightclub waitress who ultimately goes back to school.

First day of Fall semester at IUN, I was fortunate to find a parking space in the lot adjacent to the Arts and Sciences Building.  I couldn’t hear my phone messages so Rogelio “Roger” Torres from Tech Services came to my rescue.  He was impressed I could pronounce his name, so I showed him my book with former Lake County sheriff Rogelio “Roy” Dominguez.  Reminding me he’d taken my Vietnam war course 32 years, Jon Becker asked me to speak about the history of IUN in his freshman seminar.  I ran into old family friend Mike Applehans, who teaches math for IVY Tech, which shares the new building with IUN.  I delivered 20 Shavingscopies to Liz Wuerffel at VU, whose podcast students I’ll be talking with next week.  I may see if James wants to show me his dorm room and go to Culver’s afterward.  

Miranda spent the night after picking up a friend’s cat Duke in Chicago, who’s visiting her husband’s Syrian relatives in Saudi Arabia.  The person they first left Duke with left him in a dark room all the time. Last weekend Miranda went to a festival featuring rap and electronic music, and thieves made off with hundreds of cell phones, some worth up to a thousand dollars.

Liz Wuerffel (above) and Miranda Lane

One reviewer called Richard Russo’s new novel, “Chances Are” an elegy for the Baby Boom generation.  Three 66-year-old best friends in college, Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey, reunite on Martha’s Vineyard. Russo introduced the prologue with these lines from “Miss Atomic Bomb” by The Killers:

For a second there we were.

Yeah, we were innocent and young.

Teddy, editor of a failing university press, Lincoln, a real estate broker, and Mickey, a musician, were self-described hashers who had served food at a college sorority.  Arriving on a Harley, Mickey mocked his buddies’ taste in music. He labeled the alt rock groups Teddy favored – Mumford and Sons and the Decembrists – as faggot music and the selections on Lincoln’s phone – Herb Alpert and Jonny Mathis (including “Chance Are”) – as elevator music.  Mickey had nicknames for everyone, in Teddy’s case, Tediosli, Teduski, and Tedmarek.

Cerebral and cautious, Teddy, the son of high school teachers, was susceptible to sudden mood shifts and described his goal as avoiding Sturm und Drang(storm and stress).  Ordering a second IPA at a tavern, he rationalized that he had no place to go, this weekend of any other. Haunted by recollections from his past, he lamented, “Wasn’t memory, that bully and oppressor, supposed to become soft and spongy?”His dim-witted high school basketball coach called him a pussy because he wouldn’t play dirty.  Russo wrote:

  The coach, attempting to free a stick that had become wedged between the blade and the frame of his lawnmower, without first turning the motor off, managed to slice off the top joint of what he always referred to as his pussy finger. Teddy, when he heard about it, couldn’t help smiling.

Barb Walczak’s Newsletter reported a 72-50% game by Claire Murvihill and Harry Dunbar (above).  The tight end on my seventh-grade football team was Bill Dunbar, a handsome African American with red hair.  Harry praised Claire’s good attitude and added: “I like to hear her sing religious songs even though I am not a religious man.  She makes herself available in giving me rides in a very pleasant way.  She’s become an expert at finding my house on a dark night.”

At Chesterton Judy Selund mentioned that she is about to embark on a two-week trip to Poland with 6 friends, three of them bridge players.  They’re taking a limo to the airport large enough for seven women and their luggage. For a going away dinner Don Geidemann made noodles Warsaw, with kluski noodles, sausage, cabbage, and spices.  He described the hotels they’re staying at as palatial.

Gator Robb, the Florida man who trapped Chance the Snapper in Chicago’s Humboldt Park, is back in the news.  While in the Windy City he met Kadi Flagg, and the two have been dating ever since. “She’s the total package,” he told reporters after they toured Shedd Aquarium, adding: “Most people see those animals and they kind of get the heebie jeebies.  That wasn’t a problem she had. She seemed to be all about it.”

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