Life Cycles

“You’ll know what you had when it’s gone

The only thing left of what used to be is you

I saw the world

You saw my parents grow old”

    Cam, “Redwood Tree

“The Beekeepers” by Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel (1525?-1569), who often depicted peasant life, contains workers whose protective gear is suggestive of our present plight during the pandemic.

 

Toni and I spent the weekend in Grand Rapids, Michigan, our first such trip in months, to celebrate the birthdays of granddaughter Miranda and daughter-in-law Beth.  At a rest stop we were in the majority of those wearing masks.  We arrived at Josh and Alissa’s, where we were spending the night, and exchanged hugs with faces turned away but no kisses. I had generous amounts of Beth’s guacamole before we headed to Miranda and Will’s place for an outdoor party. I enjoyed watching badminton games, only slightly envious that my rotator cuff forced me on the sidelines.  All four of Phil’s kids are doing great and traded stories about each other’s old flames and other memories. Tori helped me change my Facebook profile photo, first time ever, and said she hoped to attend grad school in North Carolina.

 

The following morning Alissa made pierogis and Josh put on albums of Brazilian, Japanese, and Portuguese musicians.  Nice.  Phil and Delia arrived, and Delia trimmed Toni’s hair and my eyebrows and ear hair.  I mentioned starting marriage in Hawaii, where Josh and Alissa honeymooned, and Josh noted that his parents lived there for three years while his dad was in the navy.  Then he worked at a naval base near Saginaw, Michigan, located on Lake Huron and not far from where two dams recently gave way, causing massive flooding in the Midland community.  Josh’s uncle had recently purchased a lakeside retirement home. First the floodwaters reached his house; then the next day the lake had disappeared, leaving only a mucky mess.

John Attinasi informed me that 90-year-old jazz trumpeter Arthur Hoyle, whom I interviewed not long ago, passed away.  The obit stated:

    Arthur received his first trumpet on his eighth birthday in rural Oklahoma. He moved to Gary, Indiana with his Mother at age 13. He began playing in local clubs and ballrooms at the age of 15. Arthur's excellence as a jazz trumpeter earned worldwide admiration. After a four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force, Arthur joined the Sun Ra Arkestra. He next worked with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, touring the United States, Canada, Europe and North Africa. Arthur's music career included the Art Hoyle Quintet and studio work as both a voiceover talent and musician on TV, radio, commercials and movie sound tracts. He has worked with some of the greatest musicians of our time including Lee Konitz, Gene Ammons, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Woody Herman, Billy Eckstine, Frank Sinatra and many others.

 

I watched the 1998 Spike Lee film “He Got Game” for the first time.  It was unnerving seeing Denzel Washington play a flawed character whose hot temper results in the death of his wife.  Ray Allen, now retired after a long NBA career, shined in the role of his estranged son. Wrote critic Roger Ebert:

     Spike Lee brings the spirit of a poet to his films about everyday reality. "He Got Game," the story of the pressures on the nation's best high school basketball player, could have been a gritty docudrama, but it's really more of a heartbreaker, about a father and his son.  Lee uses visual imagination to lift his material into the realms of hopes and dreams. Consider his opening sequence, where he wants to establish the power of basketball as a sport and an obsession. He could have given us a montage of hot NBA action, but no: He uses the music of Aaron Copland to score a series of scenes in which American kids--boys, girls, rich, poor, black, white, in school and on playgrounds--play the game. All it needs is a ball and a hoop; compared to this simplicity.  Jerry Seinfeld observes, when we attend other sports we're cheering laundry.

 

Louise Erdrich

Historian Ray Boomhower often posts quotations by those whose birth date it is, such as this advice from baseball great Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back – something may be gaining on you.”  Boomhower repeated these words by prolific author Louise Erdrich: “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

from left, Dorothee, Anne, Lynn

This from Anne Koehler: “Upon popular request here is another part of my life story. I had just turned 41 in early 1975 and was working as store manager for Jacobsen's Office Supply in Portage, Indiana, when I noticed a lump on the lower part of my stomach. Concerned that it might be a tumor, I went to see the company doctor, located in the downtown Gary Hotel. After checking my vitals, the doctor put his stethoscope on my stomach, looked at me and said, “I hear a heartbeat.” This came as a total surprise and I could not believe it. I was in my fifth month of pregnancy. I was happy. When I went downstairs to go home with my husband he had already left, evidently thinking that it had taken too long. The suspected tumor Linda was born August 25, a beautiful and healthy girl. She is 43 years old now and the joy of my life.”

 

 

Times photo by Marc Chase

NWI Times correspondent Lauren Cross interviewed 16-year veteran Hobart police officer Monte White, an African-American husband and father of five, whom a few Black Lives matter protestors thoughtlessly called an “Uncle Tom.”  In tears an Hispanic woman said she was demonstrating for him and his kids and asks if he didn’t worry about them.  White remained silent but told Cross: “I wanted to talk to her and say, ‘Hey look, I am a black father.  I have kids.  And I do worry about them coming home.’ If I ever have the chance to see her again, I would tell her I appreciate the things she had to say.”  White grew up in Gary and had encounters with police, some of which did not go well.  He told Cross, “I never thought I’d be in this type of situation, standing in the front lines of a protest in regards to how police treat black people and other minorities.”

 

Republican Mitt Romney marched in a protest rally and, asked why, said, “Black Lives Matter.”  Critics are rightly pointing out Trump’s long history of racist antipathy to his predecessor, but he was far from a lone voice among Republicans, who commonly accentuated Obama’s middle name, Hussein, ridiculed his having been a community organizer, and questioned the color of his suits, the absence initially of a flag on his lapel, and even his fist-bumping the First Lady.

East Chicago Central grad Guy Rhodes attended the pandemic commencement and posted this photo and caption: “East Chicago Central High School senior class sponsor David Lane enjoys his golf cart as students participate in a dcrive through graduation ceremony held at the school in East Chicago, Ind., Sunday, June 7, 2020. The ceremony, normally held in the school's gymnasium, was held outdoors to encourage social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Plague Journals

 Indiana Historical Society is encouraging Hoosiers to document what it’s like experiencing this unique moment with an initiative called “Telling Your Story: Documenting COVID-19 in Indiana.”  In a sense, this is what I’ve been doing in my blog and occasional Facebook ramblings.  Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich has endorsed the concept and publicized a Facebook site urging a similar practice. Former Valpo teacher Jerry Hager suggested starting by writing down 20 thoughts about something or someone. 

 

“Dear Amy” devoted her advice column to coping with the new reality and urged readers to provide anecdotes on plans postponed, cancelled or otherwise upset and creative activities substituted for them. She wrote:

    When you have so many externals stripped away, it is the basics that quickly emerge as daily blessings: Good neighbors.  Mostly reliable wireless service. Drive-thru Dunkin’

    For me, visits to the gym 10 miles away have been replaced by solitary walks in the woods.  Yesterday I saw the first signs of fiddle-head fern breaking through the forest floor.

    Faced with an empty facility, workers at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago released the penguins to roam the halls – and filmed their adorable escapades, as they went on a “field trip” to meet other animals.

 

Several people are posting photos of places they’ve traveled to, such as San Antonio (Dave), Iceland (Lisa Teuscher), Cabo observing humpback whales (Shannon Bayer), and a Long Beach Pow-Wow (John Attinasi).  Stay-at-home massages are prominent: Ray Gapinski showed Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” farm couple inside and a pitchfork lying unattended outside. Paul Kaczocha is still posting shots of Comet and Tamale romping by themselves on Sullivan Street beach. I have not yet mastered posting photos with my borrowed laptop (should have gotten a MAC if one were available).  I’m happy to do what I can, thanks to IUN’s Help Desk folks, Larry, Missy, Tony, Roger, and others.

 

My life has settled into a routine that includes watching daily a free OnDemand movie (preferably one with Scarlett Johansen, Ethan Hawke, or Richard Gere) and a documentary.  ESPN has some good ones; one I enjoyed documented the NBA Celtics-Lakers rivalry of the 1980s.  It helped that I had forgotten which team won the 3 featured championship series.  Having rooted against Boston during the era when Bill Russell-led teams almost always triumphed over Wilt Chamberlain’s squad, I naturally was pulling for L.A., especially since the Celtics employed dirty play to make up for being less talented than Kareem Abdul Jabbar and company.  What made it especially compelling was that both Magic Johnson and Larry Byrd were such great players and fierce competitors.

Toni has started a puzzle of Van Gogh’s “Starry Starry Night” that looks to me to be impossible.  She has completed the outside pieces and one corner.  I have contributed exactly one piece despite poring over it on several occasions.


I have completed the two books I got from Banta Center, B.B. King’s excellent autobiography and Len O’Connor’s “Requiem: The Decline and Demise of Mayor Daley and His Era.”  The latter got somewhat repetitive, as if the author had put the manuscript together from columns. Demonstrations of Daley’s oversized ego took priority over analysis, and even though Hizzoner suffered humiliation over Democrats faring badly in the 1976 election (Jimmy Carter losing Illinois, for example, to Gerald Ford), Daley’s grip on Chicago remained strong despite grumbling in black wards. Next up: rereading John Updike’s “Rabbit” series

 

Here’s hoping and knocking on wood that most journals, including mine, avoid having to document actually coming down with the virus.  Many years ago, Newsweek columnist Stewart Alsop wrote about living with a terminal disease.  My friend Dave Malham reported on learning h had ALS.  As instructive as these were, not to mention brave, I do not wish to travel down that path.

 

Dispatches

“Only the wild ones,

give you something and never want it back.”

         “Only the Wild Ones,” Dispatch

Leading off Dispatch’s new album, “America, Location 12,” “Only the Wild Ones” references Beat poet Gregory Corso and the anti-establishment Sixties Michigan band MC5.  The final chorus lines go:

Only the wild ones, are the ones you can never catch
Stars are up now no place to go... but everywhere

After playing “Only the Wild Ones” on WXRT, Marty Lennartz mentioned that Dispatch recorded “America, Location 12” at Panoramic Studio in Stinson Beach, California, where The Head and the Heart recorded “Signs of Light.”  Formed in 1996, the indie rock band Dispatch, originally from the Boston area, took a decade-long hiatus before re-forming six years ago and finally now coming into its own.

The word dispatch can mean killing someone, like when Myrtle Bennett shot her husband Jack over a bridge dispute, but it most commonly refers to sending off a report, such as dispatching a news story or communiqué.  Prolific novelist Stephen King wrote: “When I was a kid I believed everything I was told, everything I read, and every dispatch sent out by my own overheated imagination. This made for more than a few sleepless nights, but it also filled the world I lived in with colors and textures I would not have traded for a lifetime of restful nights.”

On “Final Jeopardy” contestants had to deal with this question: “A landmark 1957 New York Times story called him ‘a powerful six-footer, olive-skinned…with a straggly beard.’”  Everyone got it right: The answer, in the form of a question: “Who is Fidel Castro?”  On February 24, 1957 (my fifteenth birthday), New York Times correspondent Herbert L. Matthews filed a dispatch that included an interview with the Cuban revolutionary from his hide-out in the Sierra Maestra mountains.  Matthews wrote:

  The personality of the man is overpowering.  It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island.  Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.

  Castro is a great talker.  His brown eyes flash; his intense face is pushed close to the listener and the whispering voice, as in a stage play, lends a vivid sense of drama.

1957 was the year that the Russians launched Sputnik into space, causing critics to question whether America had fallen behind the Soviet Union in its dedication to math, science, and space exploration.  The accomplishment led to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev becoming Time’s Person of the Year. 

Elizabeth Eckford being jeered on way to Central High School

On September 23, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered National Guard troops to be deployed to Little Rock, Arkansas, with orders to protect 9 black students integrating Central High School in compliance with the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. The Montgomery Bus Boycott had come to a successful resolution just months before, signaling that Sothern Blacks were no longer willing to tolerate segregation. The photo of brave Elizabeth Eckford being jeered on her way to Central High School moved millions around the world.  Many American leaders realized this was no way to win the Cold War propaganda battle with the Soviet Union.  Harry Ashmore of the Arkansas Gazette was one of the few Southern newspaper editors who supported federal intervention: a boycott cost the paper millions of dollars.

Michael Herr’s “Dispatches” (1977) brilliantly captures the tragedy of the American military presence in Vietnam in 1967.  The two best Vietnam war movies, “Apocalypse Now” and “Full metal Jacket,” employ plentiful quotes from “Dispatches” that mock the folly of unleashing a deranged killing machine on a country and its people that, in Herr’s words, “could do everything but stop.”  Or win hearts and minds – just the reverse.  I can still visualize the Peace signs and mottos mentioned by Herr that marines painted on their helmets: Hell Sucks, Far From Fearless, Born To Raise Hel, and Avenger are but a few.  “Dispatches” begins: “There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, coming back late to the city, I’d lie out on my bed and look at it, too tired to do anything more than just get my boots off. That map was a marvel, especially now that it wasn’t real anymore.”  Herr compared being in Saigon to “sitting inside the folded petals of a poisonous flower.”  The “Paris of the East” had become a cesspool of corruption.

Just lying there tracking the rotations of the ceiling fan, reaching for the fat roach that sat on my Zippo in a yellow disc of grass tar. There were mornings when I’d do it before my feet even hit the floor. Dear Mom, stoned again. In the Highlands, where the Montagnards would trade you a pound of legendary grass for a carton of Salems, I got stoned with some infantry from the 4th.

Distinguished NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel, 44, speaks Arabic fluently and has covered wars in Iraq and Syria as well as the “Arab Spring” in Libya and Egypt.  The show “On Assignment with Richard Engel” recently characterized Russia as a Mafia state fueled by graft and corruption, where enemies of Vladimir Putin are silenced, sometimes with extreme prejudice.  Engel was recently in Mosul covering the Iraqi victory over ISIS. Like with Vietnamese cities such as Hue, it became necessary to destroy the city in order to seize it from the caliphate.

 Puvungna Pow Wow at Cal State Long Beach

John Attinasi

I took Ronald Loewe’s “Of Sacred Lands and Strip Malls: The Battle for Puvungna” (2006) to former IUN colleague John Attinasi, a professor of Linguistics and Education at Cal State Long Beach and is back in Miller.  According to a publisher’s statement:

  A 22 acre strip of land—known as Puvungna—lies at the edge of California State University’s Long Beach campus.  The land, indisputably owned by California, is also sacred to several Native American tribes. And these 22 acres have been the nexus for an acrimonious and costly conflict over control of the land. Of Sacred Lands and Strip Malls tells the story of Puvungna, from the region’s deep history, through years of struggle between activists and campus administration, and ongoing reverberations from the conflict. As Loewe makes clear, this is a case study with implications beyond a single controversy; at stake in the legal battle is the constitutionality of state codes meant to protect sacred sites from commercial development, and the right of individuals to participate in public hearings. It is a compelling snapshot of issues surrounding contemporary Native American landscapes.

The main fight to save Puvungna took place during the early 1990s; Indian activists adopted the slogan, “PUVUNGNA: SAVE IT DON’T PAVE IT.”  Plans for a strip mall were eventually scrapped.  Attinasi greeted me wearing a Puvungna t-shirt and told me that Native Americans from all over the country attended the forty-seventh annual Pow Wow in March. He and Lillian had been back from Long Beach only a month but had a terrific garden in back, featuring corn, tomatoes, and other vegetables.

 Bill Buckley in 2008

Poet Bill Buckley brought me a batch of poems for the Archives, including “White Pines”:

I have always lived

in a house

if a white pine

grew nearby.

Today I have one in my front yard,

the only one

on our shady street.

Witness to my life,

I ask you:

“Do you absorb memories

in the embrace of your branches,

in these winds off Lake Michigan?”

In Upper Michigan,

there is the last

virgin white pine forest in North America.

I took my nine-year-old son there,

and watched his eyes widen

under the cathedral of those trees,

as if they were speaking to him.

Tonight, I wait,

for the pine tree in my yard

to speak to me,

in its witness to the births, marriages,

and deaths on my block,

where funerals parade up to a cemetery,

two blocks up,

and from where this silent pine

has lived

for 100 years.

When I saw HBO advertising “The Birth of a Nation,” I feared that it was the racist 1915 D.W. Griffith film, but it actually was about Nat Turner and the 1831 slave insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia.  Watching slaves being raped and brutalized reminded me of a July 4th address Frederick Douglass made in Rochester, New York, in 1852, which David Remnick used in a New Yorker article castigating Trump for eroding the dignity of the Presidency. Douglass told members of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

 

It’s been months since I’ve gone to the movies, but with, Toni out of town, I saw “Baby Driver,” starring Ansel Elgort as a getaway driver forced to go on one final job for a crime boss (Kevin Spacey).  Elgort came into prominence for playing a cancer patient with a prosthetic leg in “The Fault in Our Stars” (2014).  I’m no fan of car chase scenes, but Rolling Stone gave “Baby Driver” three and a half stars. Its campiness reminded me of Fargo without the kooky accents. It was a hoot seeing Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Lanny Joon, and Flea playing thugs Buddy, Bats, JD, and Eddie.  One laugh-out-loud moment is when Buddy listens on one of Baby’s ear plugs to Queens’s “Brighton Rock.”  Another is when JD, told to buy Michael Myers masks from the movie “Halloween” for a heist, comes back with Mike Myers masks from “Austin Powers”:

Eddie: [complaining about his mask] I said Michael Myers! 

JD: This is Mike Myers. 

Bats: It should be the “Halloween” mask. 

JD: This is a Halloween mask! 

Bats: No, the killer dude from “Halloween.” 

JD: Oh, you mean Jason. 

Eddie , Bats: No!