Electrical Storms

 “The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.” Horace, Roman poet during the reign of Augustus

One hundred years ago, according to the Chesterton Tribune’s “Echoes of the Past” column, a severe electrical storm struck Northwest Indiana. Hawley Olmstead, President of the Prairie Club, was struck by lightning near his group’s clubhouse in the Lake Michigan dunes and died instantly. His friend Kenneth Ross, was caught in an undertow and drowned. A bolt of lightning struck a horse belonging to Chesterton resident Mrs. Joseph Wozniak, knocking it to the ground and rendering it unable to walk for some time. Mail service aviator Frederick Robinson took off from Gary, but the dire weather conditions forced him to make an emergency landing in a field near the Porter Swedish Lutheran Church.

When we lived atop a sand dune within the Indiana National Lakeshore, now a national park, we frequently observed lightning storms nearby over Lake Michigan. If they were accompanied by loud thunderclaps, we grew apprehensive. Usually, the worst consequence was losing power, though sometimes we’d be without electricity for hours or even days. Once, however, a bolt of lightning hit our house. While in the kitchen we smelled a worrisome odor emanating from the fireplace room. Our record player had been damaged; the smell was an electrical fire, and sparks were coming from the appliance. Toni quickly unplugged the device from the power source (the socket) and, except for the foul odor, averted greater damage. Later we found evidence out back that our house had been struck.

Golden Gate Bridge and orange sky

Thunderstorms are causing hundreds of wildfires throughout the west coast that have burned millions of acres, forced the evacuation of thousands of residents, and left the air quality in cities such as San Francisco so poor that breathing it into one’s lungs for a sustained length of time is the equivalent to smoking a carton of cigarettes. Fierce winds, draught conditions, and intense heat due to global warming have created near-apocalyptic conditions. As California governor Gavin Newsom declared, the future climatologists warned us about is upon us.

Oregon blaze

Jerry Pierce wrote that his mother in Oregon is living less than 30 miles from one of the many out-of-control fires.   Ray Smock recalled:

    I can remember when the skies in Gary, IN and Pittsburgh, PA looked forest-fire orange most of the time, sometimes depending on the wind, or when a stagnant inversion layer held smokestack emissions low. And the smell was awful. We got rid of a lot of the industrial pollution, only to succumb to our global failure to keep the planet's atmosphere from carbon dioxide pollution. Carbon dioxide is an invisible gas, but burning forests make it all too visible in other ways.

    As the physicist George Feynman reminds us, trees come from the air. They take in carbon dioxide from the air. They take in water that falls from the air. They convert carbon dioxide into a carbon-based thing called wood. They exhale some of the oxygen. When they burn, they release all their carbon dioxide, all their wood, and return to the air and leave a residue of ash.

    The fires will get worse. The skies will be orange more often. The CO2 in the air will increase. Nature is out of balance already. Not from the old industrial pollution, which helped, but from our current disregard over the last 30 years to stop the imbalance. This is so far beyond the old industrial pollution. Humans have just about changed the planet enough that we have basically ruined it for future generations. Even the trees, from which our species evolved, have turned on us because we have made it too hot for them to keep helping us.

When a teenager living on Third and Fillmore in Gary, Dorothy Mokry recalled trying to cross Fourth Avenue when it started storming and having her hands upright when she got a shock on her left hand and actually noticed sparks coming off her fingers.  It freaked her out and ever since, she worries about being outside during a lightning storm. She added: “Plus, now I have hardware in my ankle and always worry that it’s like an electrical conductor.” 

Before delivering a talk on “Novels as Social History” to my Saturday Evening Club (SEC) colleagues via zoom, Dave helped me get set up so the lighting and background were adequate.  After mentioning books I read on my own, such as “Peyton Place,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Advise and Consent,” “Hawaii,” and “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash,” plus so-called nonfiction novels by “New Journalists” Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, and Norman Mailer, I cited novels I assigned in twentieth-century American history courses, such a “The Jungle,” “Babbitt,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Native Son,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” “Breakfast of Champions,” and “Rabbit Is Rich.” Finally, I read excerpts from my three favorite current favorite writers: Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, and Elizabeth Strout.

Larry Galler and Pat Bankston; below Vonnegut self-portrait 

As customary, each SEC member reacted to the talk for 5-10 minutes.  Most were complimentary.  Former IUN colleague Pat Bankston, now living in Florida, brought up having read the nineteenth-century William Thackeray novel “Vanity Fair” in college.  VU emeritus professor Hugh McGuigan noted that Charles Dickens and other English novelists first published their works in serialized form in magazines. Ben Studebaker brought up the current vogue for fantasy novels such as the Harry Potter series.  Larry Galler quipped that I was the first SEC speaker to use the utter the phrases mother fucker and blow job.  I had observed that many libraries banned Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” (1969), supposedly because it contained dirty words.  In one scene in question G.I. Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut’s alter ego, froze under fire, prompting Roland Weary to yell, “Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker!”  Then Vonnegut added: “The last word was still a novelty in the speech of white people in 1944. It was fresh and astonishing to Billy, who had never fucked anybody – and it did its job. It woke him up and got him off the road.” I also quoted from John Updike’s  novella “Rabbit Remembered” where grandson Roy joked about Bill Clinton’s sexual proclivities during the Senate impeachment trial:

   One wisecrack went: “President Clinton was visiting Oklahoma City after the May 3rd tornado and a man whose house was demolished put up a sign: HEY BILL HOWS THIS FOR A BLOW JOB.” His father thought to himself, “After this Lewinsky business, even kindergarten kids know about blow jobs.”  

Then and Now

“As albums go, Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” was probably my favorite of the year, with Ra Ra Riot’s “The Orchard,” The New Pornographers’ “Together” and Titus Andronicus’ “The Monitor” as close runners-up.” Robert Blaszkiewicz”

I put on Robert’s favorite songs of 2010 CD to see how the selections hold up a decade later. Most seem particularly fitting in this, our plague year.  Robert led off with “A More Perfect Union,” by Titus Andronicus, the Civil War theme hopefully not a harbinger of things to come with a sociopath in the White House sowing sedition.  Spoon’s “Trouble Comes Running” follows, then “Crash Years” by New Pornographers and, two tracks later, Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You,” served with a figurative raised middle finger. The middle verse goes:

Yeah I'm sorry, I can't afford a Ferrari,
But that don't mean I can't get you there.
I guess he's an Xbox and I'm more Atari,
About the way you play your game ain't fair.

 

Robert always broadens my musical horizons, and 2010 was no exception, with “Boyfriend” by Best Coast, “10 Mile Stereo” by Beach House, and “Glass Printer” by The Besnard Lakes. I hadn’t recalled that the 2010 Mix contained “The Weekenders” by The Hold Steady, one of my favorite bands since Alissa’s husband Josh introduced me to “South Town Girls,”; also, Arcade Fire, whose 2010 “The Suburbs” CD, which contains “Rococo,” I presently have on heavy rotation. The finale: “Talk on Indolence” by the Avett Brothers, whom Robert and I saw at Merrillville’s late, lamented Holiday Star with the Nitty Ditty Dirt Band opening for them. “Talk on Indolence” could be a lamentation for our current time

Well I've been lockin' myself up in my house for some time now

Readin' and writin' and readin' and thinkin'

And searching for reasons and missing the seasons.

The Autumn, the Spring, the Summer, the snow.

The record will stop and the record will go

John and Lorraine Shearer discovered numerous Petroskey stones during a recent expedition to Lake Michigan by Sleeping Bear Dunes. They live in Traverse City in one of the few areas where the pebble-shaped fossilized coral can be found.  According to Wikipedia, “Such stones were formed as a result of glaciation in which sheets of ice plucked stones from the bedrock, grinding off their rough edges and depositing them.” It is the state stone of Michigan.
Neil Goodman sculpture at IUN

On campus during Indiana University Northwest’s registration for Fall semester, I found my building and the library virtually deserted.  The process is apparently all automated.  In contrast, when I began my IUN teaching career, registration was a chaotic affair with heavy faculty participation; in order to successfully enroll for a particular course, a student had to maneuver in lines in order to pick up IBM computer card from department representatives situated in a huge room filled with students, faculty, and harried Admissions staff hoping to provide guidance to bewildered freshmen.  Working registration, I socialized with colleagues whom I might not otherwise have been with at any other function.

 

Numerous people identified with my description of past registration.  Janet French wrote: “That’s how it was at VU when I began in 1974.  In the gym heavy canvass was spread out on the floor.  If you didn’t get in line quick enough, for a class, you lost out. Chaos, but I miss that.”  IUN grad liked the socializing aspect of registration, adding: “It appears that part of the college experience has disappeared.”  Former IUN History professor Jerry Pierce recalled:

    Had something similar when I started at Oregon. We had to go to the basketball court in the arena, get cards, and stand in line. While waiting for a science class that was filling too fast, I struck up a conversation with a grad student at the Religious studies table and decided to register for Intro to the study of the Bible, which set me on my career trajectory. And it was a much better class than Physics of light and color.

 

First day of Fall semester at IU Northwest was unlike any I can remember. Normally the parking lots are filled to overflowing; not this year. No sign of student groups recruiting new members at tables set up near the student union. The cafeteria was almost devoid of customers.  With so many online offerings, less than 20 percent of courses are in classrooms, and the Zoom website was so overwhelmed, it crashed for a couple hours. Those students I encountered were wearing masks inside buildings but not always while outside. Only a few professors appeared to be around, but Philosopher Gianluca Di Muzio asked if I’d attend his freshman seminar next month to talk about the history of IUN, a course component. I agreed but am unsure whether I’ll need to keep a mask on during the entire 75 minutes.  I plan to give students my latest Steel Shavings beforehand, something that sparked discussion when I spoke in Jon Becker’ class last year. I’ll begin by mentioning that IU is celebrating its bicentennial, IUN its hundredth anniversary, and that I have been at the university exactly half that time - 50 years. In 1970 fully a third of the classes were in the evening, and most students were from steelworker families and first-generation college students whose parents or grandparents were immigrants.

My Oral History Association conference session is all set, chaired by Dr. Annette Henry of the University of British Columbia, who will also speak about two Black-Canadian women she interviewed.  Also on the panel is Izumi Niki, who will discuss Japanese-Canadian Kishizo Kimura, a west coast fisherman interned shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, similar to what happened in the United States.  Some 22,000 Japanese-Canadians, 90 percent of them Canadian citizens, were order to evacuate British Columbia and move inland into relocation camps.  The Canadian government also deported others and would not allow those relocated to return to the west coast until 1949, four years after World War II ended.  What is unique about Kimura is that he served on government bodies charged with disposing of the property holdings, including fishing vessels, of people he formerly had worked with and kept n extensive diary, which has been edited and published under the title “Witness to Loss.”  Were it not for the pandemic, I’d be looking forward to meeting Annette Henry and Izumi Niki.  As it is, we’ll be at home rather than in Baltimore.

 

David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” (1996) takes place at a future time when years will have a corporate sponsor similar to sports stadiums.  Thus, most of the action takes place in the “Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.”  Other years are named for the Whopper, Perdue Wonder chicken, and, my favorite, the Trial-sized Dove Bar.

The Republican convention is un-watchable.  Among the despicable things that has transpired is approving a platform branding the Southern Poverty Law Center, which catalogs the nation’s hate groups, a “radical organization.”  Co-founded by Julian Bond and dedicated to the rule of law and ideals of Martin Luther King, it is an organization that we have supported for decades.

The Republican convention is un-watchable.  Among the despicable things that has transpired is approving a platform branding the Southern Poverty Law Center, which catalogs the nation’s hate groups, a “radical organization.”  Co-founded by Julian Bond and dedicated to the rule of law and ideals of Martin Luther King, it is an organization that we have supported for decades.

Transcending Racism

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  Martin Luther King, March on Washington, 1963

Stephon Clark

In Sacramento, California, demonstrators gathered after the funeral of 22-year-old Stephon Clark. On March 18 police shot Clark 20 times after they suspected him of breaking neighbors’ windows.  They tracked him to his grandmothers’ backyard and claimed he had a gun that turned out to be a cellphone.  The Trump administration has termed what happened a purely local matter.   Attorney-General Jeff Sessions has blunted Justice Department efforts from the Obama years to investigate police brutality and stated publicly that local polices forces would be more effective if subjected to less federal scrutiny.  Reverend Sharpton, speaking at the funeral and afterwards, disagreed, saying: “They've been killing young black men all over the country, and we are here to say that we're going to stand with Stephon Clark and the leaders of this family.   This is about justice. This is about standing with people with courage.”  According to the Los Angeles Times, “In police videos, an officer is heard saying, ‘Hey, mute,’ before the sound cuts off, indicating that the audio recording had been stopped. Sacramento's police chief said the request to mute ‘builds suspicion’ and is part of the investigation.”

 Martin Luther King in London, 1961

IUN Librarian Scott Sandberg invited me to be a panelist on a program to discuss Martin Luther King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize address “The Quest for Peace and Justice.”  It will take place on the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee.  I shall talk about the relevance of King’s goal of transcending racism and his tactical use of nonviolent forms of civil disobedience.  I was 14 when King came to my attention as elegant spokesman during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  Neighbors from the South claimed that outside agitators were stirring up  the trouble and that most Alabama Negroes were content with the status quo.  The Boycott gave the lie to that argument.  I marveled at King’s bravery, tested by racist threats and being jailed in Montgomery for driving 30 miles per hour in a 25-mph zone.  In college I was deeply moved by King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” where he declared: “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

I still recall hearing the news of Dr. King’s death and watching on TV Bobby Kennedy informing supporters in Indianapolis.  Next day, as riots erupted in nearby Washington, DC, and around the country, I attended a University of Maryland chapel service, where folks were asked to hold hands and sing, “We Shall Overcome.” At the line “Black and white together,” I could only imaging the bitterness black people must have been feeling.  Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael called the assassination “white America’s biggest mistake.”  Indeed, King’s vision of a post-racist society was mine as well and, hopefully, all people of good will.

At Ron Cohen’s to work on a third edition of our Gary pictorial history, I learned about a new book by Leonard Moore, “The Defeat of Black Power: Civil Rights and the National Black Political Convention of 1972.”  Ron ordered it for the Archives although annoyed that there was no mention of Mayor Richard Hatcher, the convention host and convener, in this synopsis:

      In March of 1972, civil rights activists and black power leaders met for three days in Gary, Indiana, looking to end their intense four-year feud that had effectively divided Black America into two camps: integrationists and separatists. While these tensions always existed within the black freedom struggle, the situation escalated in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination.

      National Black Political Convention would bring together 8,000 of America's most important black leaders. The convention's attempt to develop a national black agenda would merge competing ideologies under the theme "unity without uniformity." Over the course of three intense days, the convention produced a document called "The National Black Political Agenda", which covered areas critical to black life. While attendees and delegates agreed with nearly everything within the document, integrationists had fundamental issues with certain planks, such as the calling of a constitutional convention along with the nationalist demand for reparations. As a result civil rights activists and black elected officials withdrew their support less than ten weeks after the convention. Since nationalists did not hold elective office, have a broad constituency, nor have access to levers of real power in pragmatic ways, their popularity within black communities rapidly declined, leaving civil rights activists and black elected officials holding the mantle of black political leadership in 1972 and beyond.

 Black G.I.s at post exchange in Huachuka, AZ, 1942

In the March 2018 issue of Journal of American History is Thomas A. Guglielmo’s “A Martial Freedom Movement: Black G.I.s’ Political Struggles during World War II.”  Protest against humiliating Jim Crow practices took numerous forms, including the stoning of the post exchange at Huachuca, Arizona in June 1944 at army camps in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, blacks stormed supple rooms and fired weapons in response to physical abuse at the hands of white officers, military police, and civilians.  Boycotts against segregation took place at Freeman Field officers’ club in Tuskegee, Alabama (Quentin Smith of Gary participated), segregated chapels at Fort Clark in Texas, at a USA show in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and a dance at Camp Gordon Johnson in Florida.  Future Mississippi civil rights activist Aaron Henry organized boycotts of a segregated movie theater on a troop transport shop en route to Hawaii.  Citing Sherie Mershon and Steven Schlossman’s “Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces” (1998), Guglielmo concluded: “Jim Crow’s prodigious wartime inefficiencies, some of which were a direct result of the martial freedom movement, helped push America’s military and civilian leaders toward integration.”

 Matt Atherton and Dennis Norton

Tony Sanchez

Jerry Davich wrote about Portage teacher Matt Atherton  of Willowcreek Middle School inviting mentor Dennis Norton, 78, to speak to his class.  Davich’s favorite instructor was Tony Sanchez, who taught him at Kennedy-King School in Miller.  After reading Davich’s Post-Tribune column, Sanchez wrote:

Thanks, Jerry. You made me cry again. My spirit is so uplifted that I think I could go another ten years!  I wish there were stronger words to express my gratitude for your kind words. Let’s say that you’ve made an old teacher very happy.

My favorite Upper Dublin  history teacher was H.M. Jones, who, I later learned in college, was fired for propositioning male students.  Jones coached varsity baseball and was a scout for the L.A. Dodgers.  I first got wind of his sexual proclivities when he made a play for a friend on a scouting trip.  At first I was totally devastated but probably shouldn’t have been surprised.  He hung out quite a bit in the boys locker room, where guys showered after gym.  In his classroom, if a girl took off a shoe at her desk, anyone was free to throw it out the window.  He took particular delight teasing minister’s daughter Vicki Vroom, who needlessly worried she’d done poorly on tests.  H.M. would hand exams back going from best to worst and commonly keep Vicki’s till near the end.

 LeeLee Devenney in 2017

Former Upper Dublin classmate LeeLee Devenney and husband Robert are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary by embarking on a two-week guided tour to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.  They met in Afghanistan while she was in the Peace Corps.  LeeLee wrote: “Our kids think we are a bit crazy but well aware we love an adventure.”  My response, that my upcoming adventure was going to Finland in June, must have sounded pretty lame.  Toni and I love Middle Eastern Kabob, Pilau (a rice dish), and Naam (flatbread), as well but know where to get it closer to home.

IU Press sent me an annual statement pertaining to my 1978 book “City of the Century,” of which they have sold 4,375 copies, including 8 in 2017.  My share of earnings: $0.00.  There was a time when the press offered to pay my royalties in books, either mine or by another author.

Brenda A. Love’s Facebook message reminded me of a neighbor kid who’d occasionally take target practice at the back of our house:

      Usually, I am awakened by one of the cats around 2:30 am. I then will pet them or feed them then go back to sleep for a few hours (if I’m lucky). Today, however, I was awakened by the sound of a B.B. gun. Perhaps a Rough Rider B.B. gun, I’m not sure. So, because I’m an idiot, I decide to go outside to investigate. Some dipshit to the east of our house was shooting a B.B. gun at about 2:45 am. I became quite alarmed when a B.B. struck the siding of our house (I actually ducked).  Not being a complete idiot, I went inside and debated calling the police. But not knowing exactly who was doing the shooting and being incredibly tired, I just went back to sleep for an hour.  So, to the person or persons having fun with B.B. guns this morning: I hope you shoot your eye out.

I bowled a 510 series, my best effort of the year.  In the final game, a 189, after a split and a blown tenpin, I made four strikes in a row, including one where I apparently left the 6-10 only to have the tenpin fall backwards and knock down the 6-pin.  On an adjacent alley George Villareal did a little jig whenever he struck.  Gene Clifford showed me a flight tracker app that his grandson had put on his iPhone that shows images of every plane in the Chicago area, including those overhead.