Better Days?

“O, yes, I say it plain

America never was America to me

And yet I swear this oath

America will be!”

  Langston Hughes, from “Let America be America Again,” quoted by Martin Luther King and the epilogue to Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods”

 

scene from "Da 5 Bloods"

Interviewed by Joy-Ann Reed for Time magazine, film director Spike Lee, he recalled sitting on his Brooklyn stoop at age 11 when he heard his mother screaming hysterically, “They killed Dr. King!  They killed Dr. King!” What followed were cities across the nation going up in flames. I was a teaching assistant at the University of Maryland and a day or so later stopped class when I heard a crowd headed to the chapel and joined them.  No words could soften the bitterness I felt.  Directed to hold hands with people near me and sing “We Shall Overcome,” when we came to the words “Black and white Together,” I could feel the anguish in my heart and imagined how empty those sentiments must have felt to people of color. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination not long afterwards seemed confirmation that America was no longer blessed, that King’s hopes of a multiracial society living in harmony was a pipe dream.

 

With most movie theaters still closed or shunned, first-run films are debuting on Netflix or some other streaming service.  So far, I’ve found enough free movies on premiums channels I get such as HBO or Showtime, and I got hooked on the TNT series “Snowpiercer,” set during a time in the future when scientists, hoping to counter the effects of global warming, caused a new Ice Age so severe that the only survivors were on a thousand-car train that must keep circling the globe in order to keep everyone alive.  On board is a class society, with the very rich segregated from others, including “tailies” in the last car who managed to get on board without a ticket.

 

The country has gone without major league sports since March, and the greed of baseball owners threatens to derail plan for an abbreviated season without fans.  Philadelphia Inquirer reporter David Murphy compared the deadlock to past labor wars, writing: “There are few things more American than the battle between capital and labor.  The national league was founded the same year as the Molly Maguire trials, the American league two years before Mother Jones led her march of Mill Children from Philadelphia to New York.”

 

In “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens, a wildlife scientist, Kya, the so-called Marsh Girl, came upon the term “Sneaky Fuckers” in a scientific digest, a term first coined by evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith to explain that subordinate males often take advantage of the opportunity to mate attracted to a dominant male that is already occupied. Owens provided this example: “Pint-sized male bullfrogs hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates.  When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others.  The imposter males were referred to a ‘sneaky fuckers.’”  Kya also learned about competition between males to inseminate females:

    Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other’s flesh.  Though very ritualized, the conflicts can end in mutilations.  To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods.  Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removed sperm by a previous opponent before he supplies his own.

Some male inseminators aren’t so fortunate.  A female praying mantis eats the head of the male while mating and then for nourishment devours the rest of his body.  Such sexual cannibalism led to several species of Latrodectus being nicknamed black widow spiders.

 

Union stalwart Bill Carey posted a poem by Imelda May, a singer/songwriter most famous for recording “Tainted Love.”  “You don’t get to be racist and Irish” recalls a time when Irish immigrants were discriminated against.  It begins:

You don’t get to be racist and Irish

You don’t get to be proud of your heritage,

plights and fights for freedom

while kneeling on the neck of another!

You’re not entitled to sing songs

of heroes and martyrs

mothers and fathers who cried

as they starved in a famine

 family of Heath Carter

Heath Carter’s second talk on the history of religion in America dealt with protests over the forced removal of Cherokee Indiana from Georgia in the age of Andrew Jackson. As Carter stated, history holds no easy answers and some Christian believers had deeply flawed beliefs; but the church-led opposition to Indian removal generated the largest national protest movement up to that time.  Many petitioners were assimilationists who urged Native Americans to adapt to white man’s ways.  Most Cherokees did just that, taking up farming, drawing up a constitution modeled after the U.S., and even converting to Christianity. Missionaries who championed their cause were incarcerated by Georgia authorities and put in chains.   Even though the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, the federal government forced them west along a “Trail of Tears” that saw 5,000 perish. Even though the anti-removalists failed to stop this atrocity, many who heretofore had favored resettling former slaves in Africa changed their position and joined the ranks of abolitionists demanding an immediate end to slavery.

 

Don Coffin wrote this haiku while peering out his back door:

Sunset approaches,

Clouds shifting in the wind and

I need only watch.

Photo by Don Coffin taken from his back door

When I’m down, lyrics to The Head and the Heart’s “Library Magic” give me a small measure of hope:

I can see the sunshine's rays gleaming through the clear waters
Telling me you gotta hop in for this chapter's ride
There will always be better days

Let America Be America Again

 "O, let America be America again –
The land that never has been yet –
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME”–

    Langston Hughes (below)

 

I had this email interchange with East Chicago graduate Denzel Smith (above), whom son Dave mentored:

     Denzel: They made me stand up every morning and pledge my allegiance to a flag that is rooted in the OPPRESION, MARGINALIZATION, DISCRIMINATION, and HATRED of my people. That’s crazy!!!

    Jim: Our country's roots, certainly flawed, as you point out, also includes valuable guarantees of liberties, fragile as they given our political situation. Please give "the system" another chance in November.

    Denzel: Jimbo, you will always be one human being that I love and respect and because of that, I have to be honest and say, I don’t think we have it in us to give it another chance. I could be wrong but I believe we need to go back to the drawing board and figure out a system that works for all people, not just some. Let’s build a new table of brotherhood.

    Jim: OK but make sure to vote and stay safe, we want to keep your voice and passion around for a long time

   Denzel : Thank you and I hope to see you guys when I come home next month. Be safe.

    Jim: For sure. My political hero Richard Hatcher's greatest legacy was to continue to work within the political system in the late-1960s, when most black power advocates had given up on it. Hatcher's 1972 National Black Political Convention inspired young African Americans, including Barack Obama; in his seventies Hatcher tirelessly campaigned for Obama prior to the crucial 1908 Iowa primary. Hatcher's father Carleton escaped from a Georgia overseer and didn't learn to read or write until old age. Several of his offspring died as a result of the hovel they were forced to live in during the Great Depression. Carleton, understanding the importance of education, made sure others had the opportunity to attend college. Denzel, you can be a future mayor of East Chicago or anything else you set your mind to. Teacher? preacher? I see both of those traits in you. As Maryland History professor Sam Merrill told me during the 1967 March on the Pentagon, stay safe, you can be a much more important force for good as a teacher than as one of thousands in a crowd. But he was marching beside me, realizing the need to be there.

Denzel: Thank you and I hope to see you guys when I come home next month. Be safe.

Visclosky, Millsap, Mrvan

Toni and I were surprised and delighted to learn that Frank Mrvan upset Hammond mayor Tom McDermott to gain the Democratic nomination to succeed First District Congressman Peter Visclosky.  Though outspent four to one and overcoming numerous “spoiler” candidates, Mrvan received approximately 26,000 votes to former Republican McDermott’s 22,000. None of the other 11 candidates garnered as many as 8,000.  Mrvan credited endorsements by Visclosky and the United Steelworkers as key factors, as well as hard work by hundreds of volunteers, including former lake County sheriff Roy Dominguez, whose opinion helped sway us.  Let’s hope this bodes well for November and a resounding repudiation of Trump.

 

Gregg Hertzlieb referenced John Mellencamp’s “Scarecrow” album and the song “Minutes to Memories” that opens with these lyrics:

On a Greyhound thirty miles beyond Jamestown
He saw the sun set on the Tennessee line
          He looked at the young man who was riding beside him
He said I'm old kind of worn out inside

I worked my whole life in the steel mills of Gary
And my father before me I helped build this land
Now I'm seventy-seven and with God as my witness
I earned every dollar that passed through my hands
My family and friends are the best thing I've known
Through the eye of the needle I'll carry them home

Final Curve

“When you turn the corner

And you run into yourself

Then you know that you have turned

All the corners that are left”

    “Final Curve,” Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes

 Langston Hughes

In “Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto” Camilo Vergara illustrates how specific buildings change over time, a practice he has employed when photographing in Gary.  The Korean Toy Store that in 1996 was located at 319 West 125th Street had previously been the Baby Grand Bar and by 2007 had become Radio Shack.  Similarly, the Smoke Shop at 65 East 125th had previously existed as a bar and a fish-and-chips joint and would later morph into a mattress store and then a storefront church.  As parts of Harlem gentrify, some residents fear that it is losing its distinct feel.  In New York Review of Books Darryl Pinkney wrote: “Part of what can seem like a sanitizing process is that Harlem’s black history is now a heritage tour.  Hardly anyone pays attention to the old-style black nationalists on Harlem’s streets haranguing passersby on weekends, while European tourists – Vergara doesn’t neglect to include shots of them – line up around the block to gain entrance not to the Apollo but to gospel services at the Abyssinian Baptist Church.”

photos by Camilo Vergara

While Vergara is most interested in physical structures, his new book, according to Pinkney, contains photographs of “old black women in their church hats, pastors, a street evangelist, the new African immigrants, the evicted, the addicts, newly released prisoners, the homeless, cooks, video salesmen, liquor store customers, corner basketball players, a Chinese woman selling pet turtles, police arresting a black women in front of Samuelson’s Restaurant, the Red Rooster, and of course subway riders.”

The title of Vergara’s book is a take-off on Gilbert Osofsky’s classic “Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto” (1966), a publication that influenced David Goldfield and me when we co-edited “The Enduring Ghetto” (1973).  A half-century we concluded that for European immigrants ghettoes were way stations whereas for most African Americans they resembled permanent colonies. We concluded: “To remove the scar of the ghetto and transform America into an integrated society, a new urban ethos and total commitment to pluralistic cultural values are required.  The solution is not to make it possible for everyone to flee the inner city – blacks, Latins, immigrants, Appalachian whites, and the like – but to work to create a palatable urban setting as well as an open society everywhere.  The advice given by urban reformer Jacob A, Riis over a half-century ago is even more relevant today: ‘I know of but one bridge that will carry us over safe, Riis stated, “a bridge founded upon justice and built of human hearts.’”

 cast of "The Signal: A Rhapsody"

The Post-Trib’s Bob Kostanczuk sent me articles about Vee-Jay Records and Henry Farag’s “The Signal: A Rhapsody,” which he termed “a salute to Gary’s music,” in advance of Sunday’s Gardner Center performance, adding: “Entertainment royalty is to be represented at the show in the person of Willie Rogers, an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame through his membership in the Soul Stirrers.”

At the IUN Redhawks athletics banquet Mary Lee received a Staff Member of the Year award.  Mary enjoyed chatting with former athletic director Linda Anderson, a 2014 Hall of Fame inductee.  Three basketball players who won academic awards are carrying perfect 4.0 grade point averages – Justin Dexter, Rebecca Theriault, and Bernadette Grabowski.

Copies of my new Steel Shavings arrived with Anne Balay’s book on the cover and a rear view of her on the back cover under the caption: “Thanks for eight exciting years!”  In two weeks she will be unemployed.  I’ve given out a dozen free copies so far, starting with Ryan Shelton, who helped me through problems laying it out.  He asked me to sign it, as did Mary Lee and Will Radell.  There are photos of Mary dancing the salsa with me and in the Archives with French filmmakers Frederic and Blandine.  I also used a shot of Civil War re-enactor Will Radell in uniform at Gettysburg last summer.  I also mailed copies to IU Board of Trustees member Philip N. Eskew, Jr., Vice President John Applegate, and IU South Bend Women and Gender Studies chair April Lidinsky.

Balay posted an article by Rebecca Schuman that called student evaluations biased and absurd – in short, useless.  Those faring best are easy graders; those faring worst challenge students to view things in unaccustomed new ways.  Schuman writes: “Only in the rarest and most politicized cases do even scathing evaluations harm tenured big shots – who, unsurprisingly, often care about undergraduate teaching the least.”  On a site called Rate My Professors one such IUN big shot was criticized for being sarcastic, showing favoritism, and demeaning students by making bad jokes at their expense.  Unfair to judge him on this basis? – surely – as others found him to be a fun guy who was very knowledgeable and helpful.

It’s been 50 years since I first saw my favorite movie, “Dr. Strangelove,” while on a date with Toni.  It was both hilarious and scary as hell.  According to David Bromwich, Peter Sellers was scheduled to play B-52 pilot Major “King” Kong, in addition to President Merkin Muffley, British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, and mad German scientist Dr. Strangelove but broke a leg falling 15 feet from the fuselage.  Slim Pickens, a former rodeo cowboy, was perfect in the role.  Bromwich called director Stanley Kubrick’s war room set “an immaculate profane sanctum, with its polished Formica floor, its enormous circular table, and the suspended halo of florescent light above.” It symbolized what Bromwich termed “the bureaucratization of terror.”