Educated

“I believe, finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience: that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing,” John Dewey

At bridge in Valpo Vickie Voller and I finished in a tie for first with Dee Browne and Sharon Snyder.  Opponent Jim Bell sometimes bangs on the table when he’s uncertain what to bid.  Vickie jokingly asked if he was signaling to partner Fred Green.  On the final hand Fred opened 4 Diamonds; after two passes I bid 4 Hearts.  Jim raised to 5 Diamonds and I doubled.  We set them 2 vulnerable for 500 points and high board.

 Tara Westover at Cambridge U., 2018

Lila Cohen loaned me Tara Westover’s “Educated: A Memoir,” a 2016 best-seller that she had reported on at her AAUW book club. It’s a harrowing coming-of-age account of breaking away from Mormon survivalists in southeastern Idaho and, specifically, a paranoid, despotic father preparing for the end of the world, who kept Tara from attending school or seeking medical help when needed.  New York Times reviewer Alec MacGillis wrote:

    She learned to read from the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the speeches of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The only science book in the house was for young children, full of glossy illustrations. The bulk of her time was spent helping her parents at work. Barely into her teens, Westover graduated from helping her mom mix remedies and birth babies to sorting scrap with her dad, who had the unnerving habit of inadvertently hitting her with pieces he’d tossed.

In the Prologue Westover introduces herself:

    I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn.  The wind soars, whipping my hair across my face and pushing a chill down the open neck of my shirt.  The gales are strong this close to the mountain, as if the peak itself is exhaling.  On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping.  I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school.  We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom.

Emboldened by the example of a brother, who read whatever books he could lay his hands on and left for college, Tara did well enough on an ACT test to be admitted to Brigham Young at age 16.  MacGillis wrote:

    There, she is shocked by the profane habits of her classmates, like the roommate who wears pink plush pajamas with “Juicy” emblazoned on the rear, and in turn shocks her classmates with her ignorance, never more so than when she asks blithely in art history class what the Holocaust was. (Other new discoveries for her: Napoleon, Martin Luther King Jr., the fact that Europe is not a country.) Such excruciating moments do not keep professors from recognizing her talent and voracious hunger to learn; soon enough, she’s off to a fellowship at Cambridge University, where a renowned professor — a Holocaust expert, no less — can’t help exclaiming when he meets her: “How marvelous. It’s as if I’ve stepped into Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion.’”

 The 1913 George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion was the inspiration for My Fair Lady. 

Miller's Sullivan St. lakefront illustrating beach erosion and mild winter, by Paul Kaczocha

Bob Seeger’s “Roll Me Away” came on the car radio and I just had to turn the volume way up and sing along.  On the surface it’s such a celebratory “on the road” anthem that the wistful final verse, not unusual in Seeger compositions, always comes as a sobering reality:

I'm gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin', gotta keep ridin'
Keep searchin' till I find what's right
And as the sunset faded I spoke
To the faintest first starlight
And I said next time
Next time
We'll get it right

I attended Valparaiso University professor Allison Schuette’s interactive workshop at IUN sponsored by the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE) and titled “Flight Paths: Mapping our Changing Neighborhoods.”  Allison acknowledged my participation in the Indiana Humanities project and since the featured interactive map was on Gary’s Tolleston neighborhood, she passed out a brief history of Tolleston that I had written for Flight Paths. Allison played excerpts of interviews with three people who grew up in Tolleston.  One man described the ethnic mix prior to the 1960s as a blend of Slovak, Polish, Czech, and German.  His father had black friends; when he drafted Jimmy Scott, a black kid, for his Little League team, people phoned to complain and called him a “nigger lover.”  He recalled:

    Realtors would come into a neighborhood, say to the whites, “Better move now while your property is still worth something because when this neighborhood starts changing, property values will decrease and you’ll lose out on a lot of money.” And that eventually became illegal, but for quite a while these white folks just felt, “Well, I’d better do as they say and turn my house over to the realtor and get rid of it while I move elsewhere.”

    So many people just heard about these problems or these issues; they didn’t really experience them. They were watching television, seeing all kinds of marches and rebellions across the country, and they just got the impression that the black culture was antisocial, and they were a people that just didn’t understand the needs of the white person.

    When we watched on television the funeral of Martin Luther King, my uncles in particular would say, “Oh, man, we can’t have this, what is going on here? What’s happening to our society?” All they saw was the violence. They did not see the peace. They did not see the change. And the violence, they thought, was going to be widespread. It was going to come into Gary.

And I guess the whole idea of being in the same neighborhood, in the same church, in the same organization with black people was just something that they could not understand or tolerate.

When Karen Freeman-Wilson’s parents moved to Tolleston, it was rapidly becoming a black neighborhood, due to white flight.  Her father was a steelworker and her mother worked for Neighborhood Settlement House, which became Gary Neighborhood Services.  The building housed recent migrants from the South and helped integrate them into the community.  It also offered child day care and activities for teenagers and seniors. Freeman-Wilson recalled:

  I was a 4-H member there. We had a very vibrant program. I learned how to cook and to sew.  I can probably still do a pretty good hem with a sewing machine, and I still slipstitch.  We skated on a floor that was really wobbly, but it made you a good skater.  When you went to a real nice rink, you were a pro because if you could make it through the wobbles and the buckles in the floor at the neighborhood House, you could skate anywhere.

Councilwoman Mary Brown praised the resilience of Tolleston residents:

Just look around at people in my community. Retired doctors, retired teachers, retired professionals who have stayed. They’ve continued to pay taxes and pay into the city because they still believe that we can come back. They believe in the city and believe that it can work.

To illustrate Tolleston’s rapid racial transformation, Allison opened a section on St. John’s Lutheran Church, which predated the Gary’s founding by a half-century.  In 1962 Reverend Norman Brandt became pastor and visited the homes of new African-American residents, urging them to come to St. John’s.  A succession of church confirmation photos dramatically illustrated the rapid transition from all-white to all-black.  Reverend Brandt founded an alternative school in Glen Park that Phil and Dave attended for six years.  Rebecca Brandt was a classmate, as were good friends Clark and Gloria Metz’s girls.

(left; below, confirmation classes: 1962, 1964 & 1974) 

The large crowd included IUN colleagues Joseph Gomeztagle, Kathy Arfken, Lanette Mullin-Gonzales, Chris Young (with son Robert), Ellen Szarleta, Suzanne Green, Sue Zinner (with students from her Ethics class, including Munster clerk/treasurer Wendy Mis), Kay Westhues (from IU South Bend), and people from the community.  Allison posed questions that prompted small group discussions.  When the entire group shared insights, I remained quiet except to note the redlining by banks and government agencies not only prevented minorities from owning homes but also discriminated against black entrepreneurs.  African Americans in the audience shared experiences of growing up in segregated neighborhoods and encountering institutional racism.

Seeking more information about St. John’s Lutheran Church on Google led me to Michelle McGill-Vargas’s website, where I was cited in an article about Gary during the Prohibition era.  McGill-Vargas wrote:

    James Lane’s City of the Century led me to real-life gangster Gasperi (or Gaspari) Monti who ruled the city’s Little Italy section until his violent death in 1923. According to local newspaper reports, Monti is best known as the government’s star witness in a corruption case against more than sixty judges, prosecutors, policemen, and even then-Gary mayor Roswell Johnson, all for violating Prohibition laws. At the time, the Gary Police Department had a special enforcement arm called the Sponge Squad that arrested bootleggers, and then would sell liquor confiscated in the arrests to line their pockets and the pockets of everyone else up the law enforcement chain in Lake County. Monti made a deal with federal prosecutors to expose the corruption, but was gunned down in broad daylight by two unknown assailants on March 13, 1923, just days before he was scheduled to testify.

    Monti was no stranger to violence and attempts on his life. In 1922, he’d been shot through the mouth by a man who’d shot him a year prior. He owned and operated the Black and Tan Club in the 1700 block of Adams Street where shooting deaths were commonplace. Even Monti’s wife, Mary, was into the rackets. After her husband was killed, police found illegal liquor and several pounds of explosives in her home.

So-called “Black and Tan” establishments were saloons where African-American and Caucasian clientele intermingled. Scandalous to blue-blood Northsiders, the Gary “dive” was known for “debauched” activities such as interracial dancing and prostitution.

On a mute TV screen at Hobart Lanes was an ad for Lawless Auto Repair in Valpo.  Love the name.  Terry Kegebein will be attending a sixth family funeral within a year.  Since the price of obits in local newspapers has skyrocketed, many only use funeral home websites.  My great-aunt Ida Gordon, who lived with us when I was growing up, subscribed to the Easton (PA) Express for the obits about people she may have known.  I scan obits for personages of local significance or that illustrate Gary’s former ethnic diversity.  For example, from February 20 obits in the NWI Times I learned that Alice Geraldine Kiefer, 82, worked at USS Gary Sheet and Tin, met husband Carl at the Midway Ballroom, and the two were married at Holy Angels.  Robert Joseph, 96, played tackle for Gary Emerson and at IU, was a member of the 1945 Big Ten champions, and met wife Mabel at Calumet High School, where he taught for many years and founded its football team.  Here’s an excerpt from the obit for Mihailo Kostur, 77, like Robert Joseph a Gary Emerson grad:

    Mihailo was born in Vrlika Dalmatia Croatia.  He immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15.  He worked as an operator for Arcelor Mittal for37 years. Mihailo enjoyed being outdoors, gardening playing bocce ball, many different card games, making homemade wine following Serbian traditions, and spending time with his grandchildren. Mihailo was a member of St. Elijah Cathedral in Merrillville as well as the Chetnik organization.  He was preceded in death by parents Bozo and Andja Kostur.

Historian Jerry Pierce found a humorous cartoon on Facebook, and Ray Gapinski posted photos of an abandoned asylum near Terre Haute. Larry Bean, who like wife Cindy pseeks out historic ruins, responded, “Looks like it’s worth the trip.”

Laborers

“Unions were created to make living conditions just a little better than they were before they were created, and the union that does not manifest that kind of interest in human beings cannot endure, it cannot live.”  USWA President Philip Murray

 Philip Murray in 1936

Scottish-born Philip Murray (1886-1952) came to America in 1904 with his father, a coal miner. Young Philip also went to work in a mine, first in Scotland and then in the Pittsburgh area but was fired in 1904 for punching a manager who tried to cheat him by altering the weight of the coal he had mined.  He went on to become the president of a United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) local and in time a close associate of UMWA president John L. Lewis.  When Lewis formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), he tapped Murray to head up the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC).  He went on to succeed Lewis as CIO President and in 1942 transformed SWOC into the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), serving as its first president. 

 Lowell Labor Day parade photo by Post-Tribune's Suzanne Tennant

Becca as Mary Poppins; below, Dunes National Park site by George Sladic

The town of Lowell held its hundredth annual Labor Day parade, with Teamster Local 142 president Ted Bilski (also a Lake County Councilman) one of the planners.  Phil came in for the Labor Day weekend to attend a fantasy football draft at Robert Blaskiewicz’s. Toni hosted a sixty-ninth birthday party for Angie’s dad John Teague, who arrived with a cooler of beer left over from James’s graduation party. Beth, up from Carmel, contributed a rhubarb pie.  Toni served ribs, corn of the cob, and rice, plus special meals for Angie (a vegan) and Charles, who doesn’t eat pork.  Becca borrowed my umbrella for an upcoming benefit at which she’ll sing a number from “Mary Poppins.”  In the Hoosier Star vocal competition in LaPorte, next week, she’ll perform “At Last,” made famous by Etta James and covered by Beyonce. Sunday would have been a perfect beach day only I opted to watch the Cubs get shut out for the second day in a row.  Dave stopped in after dropping Phil off, and we got in Acquire and pinochle games – first time in quite a while.

steelworkers on strike in 1949 (above) and 1952 (below)

left, shooting pool at union hall

Philip Murray Building

John and Diane Trafny’s “Downtown Gary, Millrats, Politics, and US Steel” contains photos of Gary Works employees picketing during the 1949 and 1952 steel strikes, as well as two of Philip Murray union hall (exterior and interior) at Fifth and Massachusetts, headquarters for Local 1014 until the 1970s when replaced by McBride Hall on Texas Street near I-65.  In 1959 a 116-day strike ended after President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked the Taft-Hartley Act. While those three job actions yielded beneficial resulted for workers, by the time of the 1986-87 USX lockout, the longest in steel industry history, union workers were on the defensive.  

Betty LaDuke

On the way to Valparaiso University’s College of Arts building to speak to Liz Wuerffel’s podcast class, I ran into Brauer Museum director Gregg Hertlieb and had time to check out the current gallery exhibit, entitled “Social Justice Revisited” and featuring the impressive work of Betty LaDuke.  The 86-year-old Oregon artist has traveled to 19 African nations and many other so-called Third World countries to learn about and portray regarding food production and migration.  

The podcast class met in a graphic design lab, and the 18 students had their own work stations. I introduced myself and asked each their name and where they from.  One said Peru – Indiana, not South America, I found out later. I discussed oral history as a vital tool for researching workers, immigrants, minority groups, and seniors.  The students’ first assignment is to interview someone from the Calumet Region, so I suggested talking to Regal Beloit workers who had been on strike since late-June or perhaps seniors who go to Banta Center.  I stressed not going into the interview with a long set of questions but rather engaging the subject in a conversation and being flexible and open to the unexpected. I cited mistakes I’d made such as failing to check my equipment and not asking my subject to turn off his TV.

Questioned about doing oral history and other matters, one student who had read the portions of Steel Shavings magazine I had assigned asked if I wrote persuasively.  I said that as a historian, I sought the truth but didn’t try to disguise my point of view.  As Alessandro Portelli put it, oral history must have as one purpose the advancement of social justice; otherwise, what’s the point?  A Korean-born student wondered what, if anything, scholars would find relevant about our present age.  I noted the climate change crisis, the changing nature of work, and ever-increasing advances in technology.  Asked if I thought Trump would get us into a war with Russia or China.  I declined to discuss Trump other than predict that if he thought he needed a war to get re-elected, he’d pick on a nearby weak country (like Reagan invading Grenada) rather than a superpower. I made several references to the VU Flight Paths Project, whose co-directors are Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette.

from left, Liz Wuerffel, Rebekah Arevalo, Christina Crawley, Allison Schuette

I showed a short clip from my interview of Martha Azcona, whose parents were migrant workers who moved to Gary in the early 1950s when she was a pre-schooler. The eldest of seven, Martha talked about hours spent cleaning her sisters’ cloth diapers, insisting on diaper service for her own children, and using disposables for the next generation.  Now that’s social history at its essence! Next came the main reason I brought the DVD.  Suddenly, Martha said, “I don’t know if I should say this but when I was 15, my parents split up because of another woman.” She explained that the “nice Jewish grocers”her dad worked for told him, who had relatives who perished in Nazi “Death Camps” and believed in family above everything, that they’d have to let him go if he didn’t reconcile with his wife.  He refused, and as a consequence, Martha had to delay graduating from Horace Mann high school to join her mother as a migrant worker.

I noticed a German-born student wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jacket.  He had enjoyed the section in Steel Shavings,volume 48, about the Eagles, led by QB Nick Foles, defeating Tom Brady and the New England Patriots to win the Superbowl and the raucous celebration afterwards.  I included this paragraph from a Sports Illustratedarticle:

  The Crisco that state police had lathered onto street poles two weeks earlier had been replaced by hydraulic fluid – so fans simply uprooted the poles from the ground and carried them down the streets on their shoulders.  Others climbed atop traffic lights and surveyed the unprecedented scene unfolding beneath them. Some 2,000 college students marched from Walnut to 30th Street and, en masse, chanted “Fuck Tom Brady” and “Big Dick Nick.”  Other revelers stood atop cars and threw dollar bills into the air.  One man dressed as Santa – a costume that evokes the most ignominious moment in franchise history – crowd-surfed down the road, not too far from where a Christmas tree was set afire. A police horse was stolen and trotted through the city.

I told the student that my fantasy football draft was that evening, and he nodded with approval. I stuck pretty close to what the experts recommended but consulted with Dave and took a couple personal favorites such as QB Carson Wentz and Bears running back Terik Cohen).  Nephew Garrett tried to persuade me to trade Wentz to him, but I replied, “No dice.”

Karen Freeman-Wilson (r) with Joe Buscaino, Kathy Maness, 
and NLC predecessor Mark Stodola, Mayor of Little Rock

IU Northwest hosted a three-day National League of Cities meeting of mayors, as Gary’s Karen Freeman-Wilson is finishing out her one-year term as president of the organization.  I saw nothing about it in either local paper.  In fact, The NWI Times, which opposed her bid for a third term, egregiously claimed it was a distraction from her mayoral duties. 

At Banta Center for duplicate bridge a guy with a guitar setting up to entertain seniors at lunch told me he mainly played upbeat 60s and 70s numbers.  Bridge opponent Ric Friedman recalled some good local bands back then.  I brought up Styx, and Ric claimed he bought a car previously owned by one of the band members with all sorts of special gadgets, including remote control for music. Dottie Hart and I each earned half a master point, finishing with 54% despite a couple hands I wish I could bid or play over.  When opponent Ed Hollander got set and said, “I was screwed,”Dottie replied “And you weren’t even kissed.”  I’d never heard that expression before.  Chuck Tomes mentioned a LaSalle College basketball player, and I noted that NBA great Tom Gola starred for the Philadelphia school when I was a kid and went on to lead the Philadelphia Warriors to a championship in 1956, six years before the franchise moved to San Francisco.

Learning that bridge opponent Don Giedemann was a bowler and that his partner, Judy Selund, was vacationing in Poland, I talked him into subbing for the Electrical Engineers since we were in desperate need for a fifth bowler.  He already knew many Mel Guth Seniors league bowlers. He started slowly but rolled a 230 second game and finished with a 198 average.  Don once carried a 210 average but took several years off when his wife became critically ill.  A 1955 Bishop Noll graduate, he recalled Noll’s basketball team barely losing to Indianapolis Attucks in front of 5,000 fans at Hammond Civic Center.  Led by Oscar Robertson, Attucks would go on to become state champion by defeating Gary Roosevelt, 97-74.  When he heard I’d spoken in a Valparaiso University class, Don said that for seven years he participated in one on public speaking for an exercise of one-on-one disputation.  The Purdue graduate was a manager at LTV and retired in 2001 after 44 years.

Jim Spicer, elated over Green Bay’s NFL victory, 10-3, over the pathetic Bears, posted his joke of the week:

    Doug lived all his life in the Florida Keys and while on his deathbed, knowing his life’s end was near, spoke to his wife, his daughter, two sons, and his doctor. He asked for two witnesses to be present and a lawyer so that he could place in record his last wishes.

    “My son, Andy, you take the Ocean Reef houses. My daughter, Sybil, take the apartments between mile markers 100 and the Tavernier. My son, Jamie, I want you to take the offices over in the Marathon Government Center. Sarah, my dear wife, please take all the residential buildings on the bayside on Blackwater Sound.”
    The lawyer and witnesses were blown away as they didn’t realize his extensive holdings. Doug slipped away and the lawyer said, “Mrs. Pender your husband must have been such a hard-working man to have accumulated all this property.”
    The wife replied, “No, the jerk had a paper route.”

Ron Cohen and I sent the following memo to Vicki Roman-Lagunas, IUN Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, and Latrice Rosana Booker, dean of the Library

  In the summer of 2020 IU Northwest Archivist Steve McShane will be retiring.  As co-founders and co-directors of the Calumet Regional Archives (CRA), we feel it is imperative to guarantee that he will be replaced by a full time, professional archivist in order to maintain the CRA’s excellence and importance as the most extensive professional Archive in Northwest Indiana, as well as implement plans to establish an IUN campus administrative archive. In order to make sure that Steve (right) will be on hand to acclimate his successor to the job, we are writing to urge that authorization for the position be made as soon as possible in order for a search to commence.        

   Note: Professor James Lane and Ronald Cohen (on left) joined the IUN History Dept. in September 1970. They soon began doing research on Gary and the Calumet Region’s history, which led to collecting historical materials that were initially stored in their offices. When the university began planning the new Library/Conference Center the administration agreed to include a space for the newly created Calumet Regional Archives (CRA). In 1982 the CRA was officially launched with the hiring of Stephen McShane as the full-time archivist. Lane and Cohen have long remained the CRA’s Co-Directors.  Over these last almost forty years the CRA has grown into a massive collection that has been used by countless historians, genealogists, and others from around the world in researching local history, as well as students and faculty. During this time the CRA also expanded its space on the 3rd floor to accommodate the always increasing number of collections.

Living Mayors Forum

“I’m glad to be participating in a panel of ‘living mayors.’ For me, it could have gone either way.” Richard Gordan Hatcher, Mayor of Gary, 1968-1986 

 Richard Hatcher, Tom Barnes (holding "Gary: A Pictorial History) and Karen Freeman-Wilson; 

Post-Trib photo by Kyle Telechan

Close to 200 people came to IUN’s Bergland Auditorium for a “Living Mayors” 90-minute forum featuring Richard Hatcher, Thomas Barnes, Scott King, Dozier Allen, and moderator Karen Freeman-Wilson. Beforehand, I presented copies of “Gary: A Pictorial History” to the former Gary mayors. In his opening statement Hatcher mentioned meeting an audience member who was a Hatcherette during his 1967 grassroots campaign and explained that local candidates commonly attended up to a dozen neighborhood get-togethers in a single evening.  The Hatcherettes would show up first to let people know that Hatcher was on his way.  Mayor Freeman-Wilson’s first exposure to America’s first black Mayor was when her parents set up folding chairs in their unfinished basement and hosted such an event.

 Scott King and Dozier T. Allen

Dozier Allen said he first met Hatcher when the two were virtually the only African-Americans at Valpo University, Dozier an undergraduate and Hatcher in law school. With other young black professionals they helped found Muigwithania, which became their political base, and Dozier was a candidate for city council when Hatcher ran for Mayor.  “When I told my friends about my plans,”Hatcher added, “they told me to lie down until I came to my senses.”  Post-Tribreporter Carole Carlson quoted him as saying, “When I decided to run for mayor, it wasn’t something that was easy. During course of the campaign, there were threats, and the city itself was extremely polarized.”  He talked about staying up all night traveling around town to urge people to remain calm in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 and being summoned to the White House to meet with President Lyndon Baines Johnson as riots were erupting in most major cities (but not Gary), including the nation’s capital. When the President suggested that black leaders urge ghetto residents not to riot, Hatcher bluntly told him that they were not the cause of the crisis. 

Mayor Freeman-Wilson asked her predecessors to talk about the importance of networking downstate and in Washington, DC.  Hatcher complimented her on having been elected head of the National League of Cities and expressed displeasure that a local newspaper criticized her for seeking the post, adding: “I could empathize with that. I would go to Washington and negotiate millions of dollars in grants for our city, and by the time I got back to O’Hare, the local paper was criticizing me. You have to go out of town.”  Hatcher noted that former Indianapolis mayor Richard Lugar was sympathetic to Gary’s problems and helpful when a U.S. Senator. Dozier Allen brought up working with Republican governor Otis Bowen, a physician, on funding to combat sickle cell anemia.  Scott King recalled meeting with Bill Clinton’s attorney-general Janet Reno and securing some $4 million annually for the Community Oriented Policing (COPS) program, which got reduced to almost nothing after Republican George W. Bush took office.  

Thomas Barnes, a classmate of Freeman-Wilson’s mother in Roosevelt’s rowdy Class of 1954, got a big hand when he revealed that his administration rejected awarding Donald Trump’s company a riverboat casino (my friend Clark Metz headed the search committee) “because his record at that time was not a good one” but state officials overruled him.  Scott King, whom Freeman-Wilson first encountered in the courtroom when he was a defense attorney and she was a young lawyer on the county prosecutor’s staff, emphasized that public safety, both the reality and perception, was his top priority when he took office in 1996.  All four mayors emphasized roadblocks from state officials regarding public education, tax and assessment policies and emphasized that, compared to Indianapolis, Gary has been short-changed.

 audience members at Living Mayors forum; Pst-Trib photo by Kyle Telechan

Sitting next to Paul Kaczocha and Mike Olszanski, I brought up needing to renew my driver’s license, which now requires several identification documents (a Republican voter suppression measure, many believe). Oz had problems since he did not use his first name, Sylvester, on his passport of driver’s license.  Until Sylvester Stallone came along, Oz explained, the name got him in several playground fights.

 Harriet Lane portrait at Coast Guard Academy

Belated Christmas presents from the Hagelbergs included a Kidstuff Playstations hoodie that came in handy as the temperature dipped into the teens and a children’s book about Harriet Lane, my great-great-great Uncle James Buchanan’s First Lady.  In her early 20s when hostess for the future bachelor president, who was appointed U.S. Minister to the Court of St. James in 1853, she favored low-cut dresses then fashionable in Europe that showed off her ample breasts, attracting the attention of the Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne, and many suitors.  Authors Ginger Shelley and Sandie Munro wrote:

  Harriet was enormously popular. Uncle James and the famous poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, were to receive the honorary Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University.  Harriet accompanied her uncle to the grand festivities.  When the students at Oxford saw Harriet, they greeted this fashionable woman with cheers and much whistling.  She became the center of attention at an event which was supposed to be for her uncle and the English poet.

Grandson James’ paper on Sinclair Lewis’ “Babbitt,” titled “A Midlife Psychoanalysis,” is beyond awesome.  It begins, “Most people experience what is known as a midlife crisis in their lives.  Doing the same mundane routine day after day can cause someone to desire change and/or excitement.  Thoughts like these can cause people to make rash decisions in an attempt to, as they say, ‘make up for lost time.’”  In the case of George F. Babbitt, this includes, James points out, questioning both his political views and bourgeois lifestyle.  He quotes Babbitt as thinking, “I’ll be 50 in three years.  60 in 13 years.  I’m going to have some fun before it’s too late.”  His new personality led to friends and business acquaintances shunning him, forcing Babbitt to realize, James wrote, “the hopelessness of not having any choice, making his return to his previous beliefs and social acceptance bittersweet.”  James used the word exegesis (meaning critical interpretation), which he said was a word the class had recently learned. 

I binge-watched Sally4Ever, an English comedy series on HBO co-starring Catherine Shepherd, whose life is in a rut until she has a torrid affair with Emma (Juliette Davis), a free-spirited bohemian actress whom she meets on a commuter train.  When her boyfriend of ten years asks why she is leaving him, she replies that she found their sex life boring for the past seven.  One reviewer wrote: “This is a portrayal of a woman's midlife crisis going horribly wrong but in a hilarious fashion. Julia always likes to go way beyond the boundaries and that is what black comedies are all about. Julia Davis does it so well and really you need to just accept the dark and shocking humor or just don't watch it if you are easily offended. It's as simple as that!”  I loved Davis in “Camping” as the free-spirited Jandice and her portrayal if Emma is similar on the surface but much, much darker and controlling.

 scene from "The Day the Earth Stood Still"

Trump seems eager to exploit the government shutdown as a means of proclaiming a national emergency in order to build his stupid wall at our Southern border.  Ray Smock wrote:

  When the classic science fiction film of 1954, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was in theaters, the nation was experiencing the frenzy of the fear of communist infiltration of our government, led by the demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was the Cold War and we were in an atomic arms race with the Soviet Union. In the film, a spaceman comes to Earth to warn us that if our petty squabbles and war-like tendencies spread too far, our planet would be reduced to a cinder.  To demonstrate his awesome power, Klatu, the spaceman, made the world come to a complete halt for 30 minutes to get the attention of Earthlings. Our military forces, shocked and dismayed by their impotence, announced that the president was going to declare a state of national emergency! 

I watched the film again as the president seems on the verge of declaring a national state of emergency, as if the aliens were indeed from outer space and only his unilateral action to find the money to build a wall to stop the hordes would solve the problem and save the nation. Never mind that it might take ten years to build the wall, we need the money NOW! We need the money because President Trump wants it to prove he is boss of America. 

  Trump, like Klatu the Spaceman, thinks he can stop the world to make his point. Well, maybe not the world. But Trump has stopped the government of the most powerful nation on Earth for a political whim. As the scientist in the movie, played by Sam Jaffe, says to the spaceman, “I didn’t know such power exists.” 

  To think that a single man, even though he may be the President of the United States, can shut down the government to score a political point. I thought the job of the president was to run the government, not shut it down.