Intolerance

“Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice,” Somalian feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali (above)Alfred Paget as Belshazzar in "Intolerance"

“Intolerance” was a three and a half hour 1917 epic silent film by D. W. Griffith, who denied he was seeking redemption for the racist glorification of the Ku Klux Klan in “The Birth of a Nation” (1915). “Intolerance” consists of four parts, including the Persian King Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Babylonia, the religious persecution of Jesus, the massacre of French Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day 1572, and the exploitation of American mill workers in Griffith’s own time.
Janet Bayer and grandson Nick at protest

A Catholic priest in the wealthy Indianapolis suburb of Carmel, Theodore Rothrock, branded Black Lives Matter organizers “maggots and parasites feeding off the isolation and addiction of broken families and offering to replace any current frustration and anxiety with more misery and resentment.”  This outrage caused a thousand protestors to gather at St. Elizabeth Seton Church demanding that Father Rothrock be suspended, including Janet Bayer and grandson Nick, eagerly chanting “Black Lives Matter.”  A small number of counter-demonstrators defended the priest.  Bishop Timothy Doherty not only suspended the offender, who subsequently half-heartedly apologized, but ended the announcement by saying, “Black Lives Matter.”Times photo by Kyle Telechan

Vandals spray-painted a racial slur on a bakery and café that Black entrepreneur Sameka Coaxum was attempting to launch in a predominantly white neighborhood in Hammond.  Mayor Tom McDermott denounced the act of racism and had city officials remove the ugly remark without delay. The Times obtained this statement from the victim: “In order to make a change, someone has to be a trailblazer and take a hit and I feel I have taken that hit,” Sameka Coaxum said. “There’s no other African American businesses in this district and Hammond needs to change with the times. It’s time to transition over to 2020.”

The Chesterton Tribune received letters to the editor denouncing the peaceful Black Lives Matter (BLM) march that I participated in, claiming the BLM organizers are Marxist revolutionaries.  Answering this rubbish in “Voice of the People” was Rich Hawksworth in words less diplomatic and more sarcastic than I’d have chosen but no less effective:

    Heaven forbid black folk – Marxists no less! – descend on Chesterton and threaten that snuggly-safe feeling that white folk have come to expect.  I’m sure the angst experienced by local residents during the recent Juneteenth rally was awful, just awful.  Surely, George Floyd, in his last moments on Earth, would have empathized with your discomfort.  No doubt, Ahmaud Arbery, as he was being hunted down and assassinated by white vigilantes, would have identified with your fear. And surely, Breonna Taylor, in the moments before she was murdered in her own home by police officers would have recognized the utter terror you experienced as “leftists” gathered in Thomas Park.  Perhaps it is time to shelve the pathetic white privilege and strive for the equality that our founders promised, but never delivered.
circa 1922

IU historian Jim Madison appeared on the radio program “All In” in connection with 1925 Ku Klux Klan records from Hamilton County recently made available to scholars. Found in a trunk 25 years ago, they include dues receipts from about a thousand Klan members from the Noblesville area. Madison has a forthcoming book titled “The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland” that will document how powerful this hate group was in Indiana during the 1920s.  He quoted the book’s first line: “The Klan was as dark as the night and as American as apple pie.”  Members, both men and women, considered themselves good, God-fearing, 100% Americans whose enemies were Catholics, Jew, immigrants, and African Americans in that order.  He debunked the idea that many were coerced into joining or that Klaverns (local chapters) quickly faded away after Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson was convicted of murdering a young woman he’d raped. Several Klan members were on the jury that found him guilty. Americans want “comfort history,” Madison stated, but the truth is that Hoosier history isn’t always noble.  Unlike a century ago, the modern Klan consists of a few misfits, white supremacists who nonetheless can cause mischief.

Four years before, in the summer of 1963, 15 Blacks girls in Americus, Georgia, attempted to buy tickets at the front entrance of a movie theater and got locked up for 45 days in a Civil War-era structure. The so-called Leesburg Stockade Girls were discovered a month into their captivity by photographer whose photo alerted their parents to where they were captured public attention.

RIP: Chesterton resident Bobbie Dean “Injun Bob” Gajdik, 77, whom I knew as the friendly bouncer at Leroy’s Hot Stuff when Dave’s band Voodoo Chili played there. Tim “Voodoo Daddy” Brush won him over and he loved the classic rock songs they played.  Even though there was officially a cover charge, anyone who told him they were friends of the band he’d let in free.  Leroy’s was a biker bar; and, as Dave once told me, bikers are great supporters and don’t start fights but know how to finish them.  The obit mentioned that Gaidik was an avid motorcycle rider and that “his stories will be missed.”  Sadly, I never heard those anecdotes but recall that he was a tolerant man and proud of his Native American ancestry.  I wish I’d known him better and was happy to learn that longtime companion Carol Mitchell and many close friends, including Dave Shivalec, were with him when his health declined. I first went to Leroy’s with Mike Bayer to see Hoosier blues artist Duke Tomatoe.  Stevie Van Zandt played an incandescent set there.  Their Mexican food is so good Kevin Horn often orders it for the Horn’s New Year’s Eve parties.  It’s a friendly place, and something will be missing with Bobbie Dean gone.

Reading about the antiwar protests against Dow Chemical Company at the university if Wisconsin in October 1867 in “They Marched into Sunlight” by David Maraniss, I was saddened by the enmity between protestors and police, who were ordered to clear a building as a result of administrators’ incompetence.  Maraniss mentioned English grad student Michael Krasny, who was disgusted by Johnson’s escalation of the war but who had grown up in a working-class neighborhood in Cleveland and had friends and relatives who were soldiers and cops. Music major John Pikart, who opposed the war but feared his friends obstructing the building might be arrested and expelled, felt conflicting emotions in the heat of the confrontation.  Maraniss wrote:

    He was furious about the police attack, by their use of nightsticks, by the fact that the administration had allowed the confrontation to take place, yet he was also disturbed by the mass psychology of the angry crowd. That night he wrote a friend: “It was a terrible sight.  Than the students by the door starting spitting on the police and screaming at them.  The police charged with their clubs. . . . I have never seen such hysteria and hatred in so large a group of people. On my way out, I looked back to se the whole crowd screaming “Dirty Fascist Honky” at the police.

Strange Days

“Strange days have found us
Strange days have tracked us down
They're going to destroy
Our casual joys”

    “Strange Days,” The Doors

The Doors

Lori

James

People are putting all sorts of weird stuff on Facebook to relieve boredom during the pandemic.  One fad is melding one’s photo into an avatar look-alike.  Lori Montalbano was more successful than James Wallace, methinks.  Political commentary abounds, the latest batch debunking Trump’s threats to force governors to open churches on Sunday – this from a man pandering to the Christian right who only worships himself.  Fortunately, friends have not lost their sense of humor, as evidenced by this post by Cindy Bean:

I’ve finished posting album covers on Facebook but am enjoying choices by others, including Fred McColly (Warren Zevon), Chris Daly (folk and bluegrass singer John Hartford), and Gregg Hertzlieb (Steve Hackett, former lead guitar player for Genesis.  Brenden Bayer introduced me to School of Fish, an alternative rock band from L.A. who in 1991 recorded “3 Strange Days.”  Brenden also suggested posting a list of five people, four of whom you’ve met or been within a few feet of and one you haven’t and see if friends can guess the correct one.  Here’s a list of civil rights leaders: Julian Bond, Andrew Young, James Farmer, Jesse Jackson, Stokely Carmichael.  Here’s a second list of famous people: Dick Clark, Jesse Owens, Frank Borman, Muhammad Ali, Lyndon B. Johnson.  Can you identify one from each list I’ve never met?  Spoiler alert: answers are Andrew Young and Muhammad Ali. Surprisingly few people guessed Young but most guessed Ali (I thought more would select LBJ, who I saw speak in Lewisburg, PA, in 1960 when he was JFK’s running mate, or track star Jesse Owens, whose hand I shook when the Gary NAACP honored him at a luncheon at IUN).

 

Julian Bond

I met Julian Bond, who was then teaching at the U. of Virginia, at an Oral History Association conference. I heard Carmichael speak at IUN in 1979 on Pan-African socialism when he went by the name Kwame Ture. Richard Morrisroe was in the audience, and the two former freedom fighters embraced.  James Farmer, a founder of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and a 1961 Freedom Rider on a bus attacked by racists, spoke at IUN and I got him to sing one of the songs that calmed people on the bus - he had a great voice and it's on an episode of "Eyes on the Prize."  I first saw Jesse Jackson in 1968 speak on Solidarity Day in DC. Richard Hatcher brought him to IUN when he was running for President in 1984, and I spoke with him at a Genesis Center event on the 40th anniversary of the 1972 West Side National Black Political Convention. Ali visited Gary several times while Hatcher was mayor, but I never met him.  Janet Bayer wrote: “Mayor Hatcher's Evenings to Remember were great for meeting people. I actually was in line with Julian Bond behind me waiting to get to the Campaign Fountain. He was charming. Another year Rev Jesse Jackson came in to do some fund raising. The Black National Convention that was hosted by Mayor Hatcher had everybody. I was one of very few white people invited.  We were so fortunate to live in Gary.”

 

Brenda Ann Love suggested opening a book to page 45 and seeing what the first thing you read tells you about yourself.  Why not?  Pamela Roorda-Barnett wrote: "There was a clear sense that the school had invested in us, which I think made us all try harder and feel better about ourselves." Michelle Obama - “Becoming.” This was on page 45 of Hilary Mantel’s “Beyond Black” – of all things, a one-night stand with a bookstore manager, who sold her a book on tarot and the cards as well:

    He had a room in a shared flat.  In bed he kept pressing her clit with his finger, as if he were inputting a sale on a cash machine.  In the end she faked it because she was bored and getting a cramp.

This on page 45 of Jean Shepherd’s “A Fistful of Fig Newtons”: “The roar in the driveway meant the old man was home from bowling.  Our Oldsmobile made a distinctive, loose-limbed, gurgling racket that came from 120,000 hard miles and gallons of cheap oil. “YER LOOKIN’ AT A GUY THAT JUST ROLLED A SIX HUNDRED SERIES!”  He strode through the kitchen ten feet tall, smelling of Pabst Blue Ribbon and success.”  Moral: every dog has its day.

On a positive note Facebook has connected me to online board games and bridge with friends and allowed me to learn about the doings of family members such as Dave, who’s been able to order appropriate masks for East Chicago Central seniors and volunteers.  Also Anne Koehler has taken the opportunity to write her memoirs. Here’s the latest installment:

In late 1957 I took the train from home in northern Germany to Sweden to meet a friend in Goeteborg. I had been an exchange student earlier in the year at Asa Folkhoegskola in Skoeldinge. In the beginning I did not know a word of Swedish, but became fairly fluent by the end of the Summer. People would ask "Aer Ni fran Skone?" (are you from Schonen, a southern part of Sweden) because of my accent. I considered that a compliment.  Back then the Danish isles were not all connected by bridges and tunnels as they are now. One had to get off the train or car and onto a ferryboat. Topside at the railing I started to talk to a young man from America who spoke German. He was a GI on vacation with a German family. After the 15-minute crossing it was time to get back to our respective modes of transportation and we exchanged addresses. His time of enlistment was up in 1958 and I did not see him again until 1960 when I came to the USA. We had corresponded for three years. Since Richard was fluent in German, the Army used him to spy on East German radio stations. He had a car and got to travel up and down the border separating East and West Germany. His mission was secret and he very reluctantly told me about it.- Two weeks after arriving in the USA we got married.

 

Desperate to find a decent movie I hadn’t already seen On Demand I discovered a category labeled Indie films – evidently in contrast to mainstream blockbusters and entered into film festivals – and found “Ophelia” and “Tumbledown.”  The latter was about a professor and a grieving widow collaborating on a book about  Hunter Miles, a dead folk singer whose songs in the movie were sung by Seattle folkie Damien Jurado.  “Ophelia” was a remaking of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” from Ophelia’s point of view, starring Daisy Ridley (below), who reminded me of high school redhead Gaard Murphy.

"Tumbledown" takes place in Gaard’s home state, Maine, where fans come to put momentos, including bottles of Jack Daniels, by their hero’s gravesite. Seen teaching a music pop culture class, Andrew (former SNL cast member Justin Sedeikis) appears to be a snob.  Lecturing on the music of The Notorious B.I.G., he asks the class, “Fiction or autobiography, pose or confession?” adding “Biggy was as much defined by as he was killed by his 10 crack commandments; what does that mean, to hinge your street cred on your own moral evanescence?” Say what?  As class ends, he asks students to analyze the assigned music in terms of cultural appropriation.  Boring!   In the course of the film Andrew drops his phony pretenses, shows endearing and vulnerable sides of his personality, and falls in love with Hannah (Rebecca Hall).  Highly recommended.

Contemplations

“If there is a special Hell for writers, it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.” John Dos Passos

I’m almost done laying out Steel Shavings, volume 43, but I need Ryan Shelton’s help adding columns to the Index in order to confine the manuscript to 304 pages (the longest yet).  On the inside of the back cover, under the headline “Season’s Greetings 2013” will appear eight photos that came with Christmas cards, featuring friends who once lived in Northwest Indiana, including Kentuckian Kathy O’Rourke Voorhees and Californian Don Price.  I’ll read it once more for typos and factual errors and try not to make more revisions than necessary.

Make and Janet Bayer spent the night.  Due to cancer, Mike lost his voice box but can still talk with a device in his throat.  Looking over the NWI Times obits at breakfast, Janet found one that asserted that two families loved the deceased.  Was the guy a bigamist, we wondered?  Mike made a reference to prison escape artist Willie “The Actor” Sutton, and I asked if he knew what book police found in Sutton’s apartment after his apprehension.  Answer: “USA” John Dos Passos.

 Willie Sutton with cops

Arriving at IUN later than usual, I pulled into the 33rd Avenue lot and almost collided with a vehicle driven by a young coed who drove through a stop sign while speaking on her cell phone.  Close call!   Anne Balay told me that Emma and Roy Dominguez’s wife Betty are accompanying the two of them downstate on the day before the EEOC hearing.  I told Anne that she and Emma will love Betty, an effervescent and loving soul who used to work in a juvenile court judge’s office.

My review of Jacqueline Foertsch’s “Reckoning Day: Race, Place, and the Atom Bomb in Postwar America” appeared in Choice.  The title refers to the world’s end and Biblical Second Coming.  A while back, an editor chastised me for including the 190-word review in my blog prior to its appearance in Choice.  Most of my review deals with the depiction of African Americans in survivalist novels and films.  The author refutes the myth that African Americans were unconcerned about the threat of nuclear catastrophe.  For Langston Hughes, "Reckoning Day" became a source of macabre humor; characters in his Chicago Defender "Simple" columns worry about eating radioactive tuna, joke about Jim Crow bomb shelters, and fantasize about fallout killing only whites.

Dave Serynek, Paul Van Wormer, and I raised our glasses to dear, departed Timm Coughlin at Village Tavern in Porter.  A biker and Porter Acres teammate, Paulie had amazing speed for his size and in high school was both a high hurdler and shot putter.   When he slid into a base, the fielders generally backed away, he was that intimidating.  Once he hosted a barn burning and afterwards felt both relief and disappointment that a fight never broke out.  In the Bahamas, a hotel hostess met with a dozen of us and after a short spiel asked if there were any questions.  Paulie promptly asked for more pitchers of the mixed drink she had served us.  She complied.  Dave’s silver hair was very long despite wife Barb’s protestations.  They are normally in Florida this time of year but Barb’s mother is ailing.  Dave vowed he’d get a haircut as soon as they are back in Florida.  He’d been cleaning out his dad’s place and found numerous issues of Life, including one from 1965 and a 1976 special bicentennial issue.  The bar was full and so smoky that I stripped upon arriving home, and did laundry and took a bath.

I’ve selected a dozen jpegs of photos for my upcoming Gary Chamber of Commerce talk on the year 1955, including shots of Vivian Carter, the Spaniels, and Mayor George Chacharis honoring Olympic gold medal winner Lee Calhoun. Someone from Instructional Media Center will go with me to make sure they get flashed on the screen at the proper time.  After receiving an announcement about the event, Rick Hug emailed that regretably he’d be out of town.

Samuel A. Love reports that he “learned tonight that my pops saw Pete Seeger perform in 1964 at Purdue.  Can I get anymore jealous? Here's the man that saw Muddy Waters (in Gary), shook hands with Howlin Wolf, saw the Rolling Stones, Stevie Ray Vaughn... wait, he took me to those last two gigs.”  Sam’s mother posted that she “was actually touched by Alice Cooper and met Ted Nugent ( ok, well maybe I shouldn't share that one). My friend's brother ran the lighting at "Dex Card's Wild Goose" at the Scherwood Club in Schererville and a lot of later famous acts appeared there before they were famous so I got to meet them.”

Steve Spicer posted a 1940s photo of himself with big brother Jim wearing cowboy outfits.  Back then boys were programmed to play with toy guns and imagine shooting bad guys – or Indians.

On a site called Imgism Alan Brightside cited ways young “millennials” are changing the sexual landscape: they are likely to regard masturbation, kinky sex, and watching pornography as normal behavior, and in increasing numbers they support gay marriage, same-sex experimentation, and coupling with more than two people. 

Bob Mucci informed me that somebody donated a rare 1977 volume of Steel Shavings, volume 3, on the 1930s to the Anthropology book sale.  He offered to trade it for numerous books I have for him.  Corey Hagelberg dropped by my office to say he wouldn’t be a lunch and is taking students to the Gregg Hertzlieb exhibit at Savannah Gallery.

Cousin Sue Stone is organizing a July “Lane Reunion” in Lancaster, PA, that will include a visit to Wheatland, James Buchanan’s estate.  I told her to count me in.