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.”  

Keeping the Faith

“If we had more Charlie Kings, I’d be less worried about the future of the world.” Peggy Seeger

Protest singer Charlie King performed at an ACLU fundraiser at Temple Israel dedicated to the memory of social justice stalwarts Lotte and Seymour Meyerson. I first saw Charlie at a Bailly Alliance anti-nuke concert in 1979 and then again when Ron Cohen brought him to IUN.  Last year he was part of an anti-death penalty Midwest caravan that included Gary native Bill Pelke, who championed Paula Cooper’s appeals to avoid the electric chair even though Paula had killed his grandmother when 15 years old.  Many Miller mainstays were on hand, including Jim and Elaine Spicer, whom I sat with.  Learning that I had repeated on my blog Elaine’s story of how they met at Marquette Perk and went on a movie date that very evening, Jim revealed that driving to Valparaiso on Route 49, he’d missed his exit and then pulled onto a dark gravel road to turn around, which, he speculated at the time, must have given Elaine pause. When I he heard that I had used some of his Facebook jokes in Steel Shavings, he told me that when he taught at Gary West Side, every Friday at the end of class, he’d tell a funny story.

 In the Temple Israel audience for Charlie King; photo by Ruth Needleman

Rick Busse, Robin Rich, Larry Galler; photo by Ruth Needleman

Prior to the concert, former local ACLU presidents Steve Tallackson, Larry Galler, and Rick Busse discussed past causes that the organization had championed and the contributions of Lotte and Seymour Meyerson not only to free speech but to civil rights and the cultural life of the community - in particular, Temple Israel.  Toni worked for her at the Northwest Indiana Open Housing Center and during the 1972 George McGovern campaign, and we were invited to their home for dinner and folk dancing.  Robin Rich then introduced Charlie King as one who has kept the faith throughout his life as a troubadour for peace and freedom.

Charlie King at Temple Israel; photos by Ruth Needleman

Calling himself a musical storyteller and political satirist, Charlie King, like Pete Seeger, whom he resembles on stage, involved the audience in singing along to numbers such as “Mic Check” (about the aims of the Occupy Wall Street movement) and “Goon Squad” -  sung to the tune of “Moonshadow” by Cat Stevens - about George W. Bush henchmen refusing to let Yusuf Islam (Stevens) into the United States.  One of my favorite Charlie King songs is “Who Will Be Next on the Gallows?” - about our connivance in having Saddam Hussein strung up after he no longer served our government’s purpose. The final line references Kissinger and Cheney as war criminals and candidates for the gallows. Charlie chose Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” to go with the lyrics to his anti-war song “Send in the Drones.”  Fitting.  One number turned applied the epithet used against Sixties protesters – “Go back to Russia” – to Trump.

Charlie King’s most moving numbers dealt with civil rights issues such as the mass incarceration of black men and shooting victims in Ferguson and elsewhere. Taking a cue from a 2013 speech by Reverend Al Sharpton on the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, which he attended, he wrote lyrics about voter suppression in the South, evoking civil rights martyrs Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner.  He introduced me (and others, I’m sure) to Ohio State sprinter George Nicholas, who during the 1980s refused to compete in track meets until university trustees divested from South African bonds and financial holdings due to that government’s apartheid policies.  Eventually, his lone action sparked a successful campus protest.

On James’s final week of bowling I gave a copy of the new Steel Shavings to Kevin Horn, who reciprocated with a long-sleeved Inman’s shirt.  Dave noticed a Shavings photo of line dancers at DC Country Junction in Lowell, which closed last year, and noted that Voodoo Chili played there several times and that the owner loved them, especially when they played such Lynyrd Skynyrd numbers as “Free Bird” and “Gimme Three Steps.”  Eight of us had lunch at Round the Clock, including Miranda and Sean, who then took the South Shore to Chicago en route to Cancun, Sean’s first time in Mexico.

 Miranda and Sean at Chicago's "Bean" - nickname for "Cloud Gate" by Anish Kapoor

On the way to Red Lobster and then bridge at Brian and Connie’s we stopped at the Gardner Center where Pop Up Art was in progress.  Corey Hagelberg and Samuel A. Love were collecting one-liners at their poetry booth. I chatted with Nancy Cohen, Eve Bottando, Mark McPhail, and Gloria Biondi.  Gloria knows someone who took her boyfriend to a Charlie King concert, and the guy walked out after a few numbers, muttering, “He’s a goddam communist.”   Michael Chirich told me a hilarious story about when Gloria’s husband Clark lent him his Cadillac convertible for a Halloween party with a date he’d just met.  Michael didn’t realize that the fuel gauge was on empty and ran out of gas on the way to the Radisson Hotel.  He had to walk to get help dressed as Mickey Mouse.

Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis

After reading a favorable Rolling Stone review of the FX anthology “Feud,” I binge-watched the first four episodes about Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) and the making of the 1962 horror classic “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”  The series reveals the sexism and naked opportunism of the Hollywood studio system, personified by Jack Warner (Stanley Tucci), and highlights gossip columnists such as Hedda Hopper (Judy Davis) who thrived on scandal and catfights.  It was a treat spotting Alison Wright from “The Americans” as director Robert Aldrich’s assistant and Kiernan Shipka, the teenager in “Mad Men,” as the daughter of Bette Davis.

Bryan in California with AmeriCorps

In Steve McShane’s Fall 2016, Indiana History class Robert Humphreys interviewed Bryan Brown, who in 1995 quit college and joined AmeriCorps, a program started by President Bill Clinton. After training, he was sent to San Francisco and assigned to a project to eradicate invasive plants and plant those native to the area.  His crew lived in storage buildings.  He got to stay in Alcatraz for a night in the same cell “The Birdman” had occupied.  He also visited O.J. Simpson’s house before it was torn down.  In San Diego, the crew was doing something similar to an archeological dig, and Bryan dug up a whistle.  He blew into it and everyone around him was amazed.  Bryan turned 21 that year and decided he wanted to celebrate by himself.  He went outside and lay under the stars as the clock struck midnight.  On New Year’s Eve, his crew played a murder mystery game.   Working in AmeriCorps helped Bryan decide what he wanted to do next: work on computers. AmeriCorps made college possible without accumulating enormous debt.  Bryan went on to obtain a B.S. degree in Computer Science at Purdue Calumet in Hammond.

At Quick Cut hair stylist Anna asked about the family and vowed to come see James as Uncle Fester in “The Addams Family.”  On the way home, I stopped at a liquor store and picked up a case of Yuengling beer on the first day it was on sale in Northwest Indiana.