Pathogen

“Trumpism has infected the American polity like a foul pathogen. But it has also stimulated a powerful immune response that just may leave us stronger in the end,” Steve Chapman

Every so often, I come across an unfamiliar word, such as pathogen (a virus or other disease-causing micro-organism), in a column by Chicago Tribune editorial writer Steve Chapman titled, “Trump is Toxic: Americans Are Not.”  I’m so averse to thinking about our president that I find no pleasure in ruminating over our present political crisis.  Quite the opposite. Of course, it’s impossible to ignore Trump’s daily hate-spewing tweets and actions, such as calling refugees an infestation and smiling when a supporter at one of his rallies shouted, “Shoot ‘em.”  In my blog I generally let old friend from University of Maryland days Ray Smock speak for me.  Here’s Smock’s latest: 

    An Apology for the Enslavement and Racial Segregation of African Americans, H. Res. 194, passed the U. S. House of Representatives on July 29, 2008, on a voice vote. It was a long time coming but that resolution, which did not make a splash in the news media, is worth reading again.More importantly, and more timely, somebody should sit the President down and take his phone away long enough to read this resolution to him. He has no idea of American history, no idea of the history of African Americans, and not one iota of knowledge about the history of this nation of immigrants. Racism begins in ignorance and fear and then gets fueled by hate.

    An entire political party, the GOP, is currently enabling President Trump and not calling him out on such fundamental matters. I do not believe for a minute that all Republicans are racists. But the silence of this major party is deadly. Good men and women cannot remain silent on such a thing. No person in Trump's administration seems able to tell the president to stop tweeting racist and bigoted statements about black and brown people.

Russell Crowe as Roger Ailes

The mini-series “The Loudest Voice” concluded with Roger Ailes, (Russell Crowe) forced from Fox network in disgrace but with Trump’s being nominated for President, a phenomenon made possible by the dethroned evil genius.

Lane-Okomski gang

At the large family gathering over the weekend, there were a couple Trump supporters.  At one point I asked niece Andrea, who lives in Seattle and shares my lefty political views, whom she favored in the Democratic field.  Hostess Lisa almost immediately silenced me, emphatically stating that any discussion of politics was forbidden.  She got no argument from me.  Sunday afternoon Jackie Okomski’s well-read boyfriend Nick, a carpenter from New Jersey, asked what I thought of Trump and how anyone could support him.  On the latter point I mentioned one-issue voters, such as gun fanatics and those wanting to outlaw abortions.  Then without getting into specific political issues, I lamented Trump’s total disrespect for the political process or anyone who dared take issue with him. I briefly lost my composure contrasting his demagoguery with John McCain, who claimed Obama was a Muslim born, telling her that she was wrong, that he was a loyal American.  Draft-dodging Trump branded McCain, a POW for five and a half years (!!!) a loser rather than a war hero and had to be pressured into lowering flags to half-staff at his death. 

Schoolboy Q and Hanif Abdurraqib

In “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” Black essayist Hanif Abdurraqib wrote about rapper ScHoolboy Q (Quincy Matthew Hanby), who grew up in South Central L.A., encouraging white people concertgoers to sing along to “Yay Yay,” which contains these lyrics:

I'm a drug dealin' nigga, cause them grades ain't get me paid
My agenda for today is to make bread or get laid
See my daughter need some shoes and my mom work overtime
So I'm standin' by that stop sign with nickels and them dimes

As one totally uncomfortable with the “n” word, I’m still analyzing why ScHoolboy Q would make that request. Abdurraqib wrote: “The reclaiming of the slightly modified ‘nigga’ is a political act.” Yet, on the other hand, Abdurraqib sees it as bowing to the comfort of affluent white ticket holders. He introduced the essay with this quote from one of my favorite Philadelphia 76ers, Allen Iverson, criticized by the media for his postgame appearance: “You can put a murderer in a suit, and he’s still a murderer.” “ScHoolboy Q defended his position by saying, “It’s not like these white people are racists, they’re at a rap show.”  True, but “Howlin’ Wolf was in demand at Deep South, all-white fraternity parties.  In 1970 I discovered that blue collar longhaired hippies from white working-class neighborhoods were a different breed of cat from those from the East and West coasts.

In a eulogy to author Toni Morrison Time contributor Tayari Jones quoted her favorite Baptist hymn “May the Work I’ve Done Speak for Me.”  Nice sentiment.  When Ton Dietz said he was spiritual but belonged subscribed to no rigid set of beliefs, I explained that Reformation leaders such as Martin Luther and John Wesley broke off from the catholic church over the doctrinal issue of good works verses faith, that due to original sin, no amount of good works could get one to heaven, only belief in Jesus as redeemer. Like me, he thought that the silliest thing he’d ever heard.

Obama signing Affordable Care Act

On International Lefthanders Day WXRT morning jock Lin Brehmer noted that Cubs star Javier Baez, nicknamed “El Mago” (the magician), grew up lefthanded but wanted to play shortstop, considered a righthander’s position; so he simply started batting and throwing righthanded and now he has the strongest arm at that position in the majors, yet still eats and writes lefthanded.   I began eating and writing lefthanded after getting my right arm caught in an old-fashioned clothes wringer that one used before hanging wash out to dry.  I was about two at the time.  Our past three presidents, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, were lefties.

William A. Wirt in 1917

I introduced Ron Cohen prior to his Senior College talk on William A. Wirt and the Gary schools, noting that Ron came up with the ideas for the Calumet Regional Archives, Steel Shavingsmagazine, and our pictorial history of Gary. Although Wirt was a brilliant educator, he was a cold fish with virtually no friends and three troubled children.  Ron mentioned that the Wirt family summered in upstate New York; the car ride took three days, and Wirt forbade any talking during the trip.  Billy fled at first opportunity and became a merchant seaman.  Younger son Sherwood and daughter Eleanor spent years in mental institutions. Born on a farm near Markle, Indiana, Wirt disliked city life and was a staunch Republican whose capitalist ventures into banking and a car dealership went bust during the Depression.  

Lanes and Cohen in in IUN library courtyard

With Ron were daughter Alysha, whom I knew as a little girl, and granddaughter Eva, a history buff who asked a question about whether students learned cursive, at present controversial, as some schools are phasing it out.  Both were quite charming. Alysha asked how Phil and Dave were doing. 

Charlie Halberstadt had an excellent bridge week, finishing over 60% two days in a row.  Our 67.19% at Banta is almost always enough to win but Mary Ann and Norm Filipiak earned 68.23%.  In the hands we played them, we each had a high board, and on the third hand they tied for best board by making 3 No Trump while all other East-West pairs played in Diamonds, with only one of them making 5.  Terry Brendel asked if I wanted to teach Social Studies in a Michigan City middle school. The only catch, he added, was that I’d have to start tomorrow.  I demurred. When I mentioned Temple Israel in Miller, Helen Boothe wondered if Rabbi Stanley Halpern was still there.  He retired, I replied, but returned to preside at the wedding of Herb and Evelyn Passo’s son Alex to Bianca.

Rabbi Stanley Halpern

I was a guest on the WLTH afternoon “Drive” with Karen and Steve Williams, who’d heard that I would be speaking about Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records.  WLTH first went on the air in 1950, and during the 1970s broadcast from Glen Park. One of its talk show hosts back then was arch-conservative Warren Frieberg, who took exception to Ron Cohen’s anti-Vietnam War arguments. When Ron noted that the French finally realized that holding onto South Vietnam was hopeless, Frieberg called the French a bunch of pansies, or something to that effect. WLTH moved to Merrillville before returning to Gary in 2013 and presently located downtown.

 With WLTH afternoon co-hosts on the "Drive" Steve Williams and Karen Williams

Co-hosts Steve and Karen Williams, who are not related, greeted me warmly.  Steve was very knowledgeable about Vee-Jay Records, and Karen, a lifelong resident, about Gary history.  A Roosevelt grad and member of St. Paul Baptist Church, she recalled when her place of worship burned down, and Rev. L.K. Jackson going for help in his big Lincoln.  She described Sunday services as at least two hours long and for some women like a fashion show when they’d go to the front to take communion.  The wife of policy boss Fred Mackey wore a beautiful silver fox stole, she recalled.  Jazz saxophonist Art Hoyle goes to her church, as does Chancellor Lowe’s administrative assistant Kathy Malone.  Steve tested me by asking if I knew the former names of various doo wop groups. I knew that the Spaniels called themselves the Three Bees and that the Impressions were the Roosters, but he got me on the Dells (El-Rays) and Dee Clark’s original group, the Cool Gents.  As I was leaving, Steve said he'd expected me to be a nerdy professor with boring facts and statistics but could see how much the music meant to me.

Afternoon Delight

“There are few hours more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea,” Henry James

The lyrics of Starlight Vocal Band’s hit “Afternoon Delight” – i.e., “My motto’s always been; when it’s right, it’s right, why wait until the middle of a cold dark night” - make it clear that the delightful activity is sexual.  Nineteenth century Anglophile Henry James may have enjoyed sipping tea, but the American “Happy Hour” means good cheer and alcoholic beverages at reduced prices.  In Portrait of a Lady Henry James, using language that seems erotic, describes the charming Lord Warburton paying an afternoon visit to Isabel: “His smile was peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit the radiance of good feeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl’s first impression of him.  It surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather.”  Delightful.

In the final Gender Studies class of the semester Anne Balay asked if society should try to cure autistic or obese folks and if these were analogous to efforts in the past to “de-program” gay people.  Most students initially thought yes to the first, but Anne’s daughter Leah argued that while we should strive to help those with autism, it should not be at the cost of destroying their personality or treating them as pariahs.  One reading was about the “fat acceptance movement” and the National Association to Aid Fat Americans.  While the class agreed that fat people should not be stigmatized, most endorsed exercise, eating healthy, and intructing young people about proper dietary habits.  While racist and sexist jokes have become less acceptable, comedians still delight in making fun of fat people.  At Smith College, which Leah attends, the most frequently heard expression, according to an oft-repeated joke, is, “That’s not funny!”  The classroom went silent when Anne told everyone to read a new article.  As an experiment, I was tempted to see who would laugh if I said tastelessly, “I can’t believe a dozen women can keep quiet for five minutes.”  Discretion being the better part of valor, I censored myself.

Several women thanked me for adding a male presence to the class.  As a parting gesture, I gave away copies of my pink Shavings issue (volume 41) with Anne and Leah Balay in a Gary Gay Rights parade on the cover.  I showed them them copies of the full-page Post-Trib story about Anne from the day before and stated that her being denied tenure was an absolute travesty.  After class, with Anne and Leah at Abuelo’s, I ordered fajitas, beans, and potatoes (delightful and enough for me to take half home) and an 18-ounce Dos Equis on draft.  A Math whiz, Leah recently completed an internship in Wisconsin and this weekend will leave for Budapest for a semester abroad.  Sister Emma is in St. Louis for a job interview.

 Leah, Anne, and Emma at "Avengers" convention

Friday’s Post-Trib contained this “Quickly” comment: “I hope Professor Balay’s book becomes a best seller so IU Northwest regrets letting her go.  As one of her former students, she is one of the best English teachers IUN has.”  On Facebook Anne wrote: “I got the most emotional, genuine email from a student yesterday about what it feels like to see me on campus, and talk to me, and get support. What I want to know is: WHY DO THOSE VOICES NOT MATTER??? WHY ARE ONLY SOME PEOPLE"S LIVES VALUED??? That is what makes me angry about all of this. The very few students who are threatened by me are catered to, while the many who find me enlightening, and the few who find me quite literally a lifeline, don't count. Well, let me just say: even if you are silent and scared, you belong in college, and you deserve kindness.” 

All summer Anne was a trooper, giving her students, who had genuine affection for her and vice versa, her best effort, even coming to school on a day daughter Emma was having an operation in Chicago.  The main rap against Anne: she teaches to an “agenda,” code word for being an openly lesbian feminist. How is that different, I wonder, from a Keynsian economist, an existential philosopher, or a Jungian psychology professor or a deconstructionist in the English department?  Kimberly Ann Watta commented to Anne’s post: “Now that I have moved back to the area Anne, I was thinking of coming back to IUN to finish my lit degree, but because of you being let go, I say HELL NO, I'll go somewhere else to finish it. You helped me more than you can imagine and made a tremendous impact on my life.”

Times columnist Doug Ross questioned the fairness of sentencing former Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., to just 30 months behind bars for stealing $750,000 while Hammond Councilman Al Salinas got 42 months for accepting a $10,500 bribe.  Unsympathetic to either, Ross bode both, “Good riddance!”  I am less judgmental, reserving my scorn for the corporate tycoons who buy and sell their political pawns.  Sadly, Jackson’s apparently inherited love of luxury items such as watches and suits led him astray.  Salinas bought into a political culture that countenanced kickbacks from those receiving city contracts.  Smart politicians know how to turn such practices into “honest graft” in the form of billable hours or cushy consultantships.

In Harper’s, Nicholson Baker’s “Wrong Answer: The Case against Algebra II,” compares the widely hated Common Core subject (used to judge students and schools) to ancient Greek, once believed vital to a decent education.  “Useless torture,” Coleman Mccarthy termed it, yet Algebra II is an integral part of Obama’s Race to the Top and, before that, Bush’s No Child Left Behind.  Students need master, as Baker puts it, “square-rooted, polynomialed, horseradish clumps of mute symbology.  The homework is unrelenting, the algorithms get longer and trickier, the quizzes keep coming.  Sooner or later, many of them hit the wall.”  Here’s what Math teacher and engineer Arthur Dean wrote in 1930 about making Algebra a requirement rather than an elective:  “I cannot see that algebra contributes one iota to a young person’s health or one grain of inspiration to his spirit.”  How tragic that Math deficiency keeps students out of college or grad school.  A former marine and “A” student of mine, Charles Mubarak, received a C- in a required IUN Math course, which prevented from graduating.  True story.  I personally appealed in vain to the Math t chair.  Charles should have come to remedial study sessions, she argued, even though he had a full-time job.  Did he really need to understand polynomials to do well in law school.  We’ll never know.

My Algebra II teacher in eleventh grad, Mr. Lewis, sucked; when twelfth grade trigonometry teacher Mr. Taddei, who had taught us “A” section students the four years previously, realized we had learned nothing from “Louie,” I thought he was going to cry.

Retired geologist Mark Reshkin, working on his memoirs, was in the Archives seeking information about former Congressman Ray J. Madden.  He passed on a couple anecdotes about Madden securing passage of the legislation establishing the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as a federal park.  In one case he promised a colleague a desired earmark.  Madden was an ardent New Dealer who served in the House of Representatives for 34 years, beginning in 1943, the last four as Chair of the powerful Rules Committee.  Adam Benjamin defeated him in the 1976 Democratic primary.

above, Bart Letica, third from left

Bart Letica sent along more WW II photos of his ordnance crew on Tinian Island in the Pacific, including one depicting an airplane nicknamed “lady Be Good” with an image of a woman in bra and panties spreading her legs for the cause.  Boys will be boys in wartime in the South Pacific, or as the song goes, “There is Nothing Like a Dame.”

Miranda at West Beach with Jimbo and Jackie

Three welcome houseguests arrived, granddaughter Miranda from Michigan and 22 year-old niece Jackie and boyfriend Rob from Jersey.  Toni ordered carry-out from Applebee’s and we stayed up talking till 10:30 (11:30 East Coast time).  Friday I took them to West Beach, where a bride and groom were having pictures taken and a guy put a blanket over a hole he dug in the sand topped with crackers for seagulls.  They were smart enough to suspect a trap and walked around the edges before one landed, scooped up a bite and flapped its wings to prevent descending into the hole.  It was a delightful afternoon.  We stopped at Dirty Dog for ice cream cones before arriving home.  Dave’s family joined us for Chinese food, and I played Uno and ate a couple of Miranda’s just baked chocolate chip cookies before calling it a day.