PULSE of America

"No act of hate or terror will ever change who we are or the values that make us Americans." President Barack Obama

A gunman who claimed allegiance to ISIS and apparently hated LGBTs  killed 49 patrons and injured over 50 others at PULSE, a gay dance club in Orlando, Florida, before members of a SWAT team took him out.  Perpetrator of the worst mass killing in recent American history, the disturbed killer was American-born whose parents were from Afghanistan.  Inside the crowded main room of PULSE on Latin night, Jackie Smith said of the 29 year-old killer, "He had an automatic rifle, so nobody had a chance."  Jon Alamo added: "You ever see how Marine guys hold big weapons, shooting from left to right.  That's how he was shooting at people."   Several victims huddled together in a bathroom texted loved ones that they were about to die.  President Obama said, "How easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or house of worship or a movie theater or in a night club."  Omar Mateen was evidently on an FBI watch list, but at present such suspects can still purchase automatic weapons.  Even Ronald Reagan came out against semi-automatic weapons and for tolerance towards gays.

Unlike Stonewall in 1969, whose patrons generally concealed their identities, PULSE party-goers were generally proud of their identity and not all were gay.  Hell, if I were 50 years younger and in Orlando, I'd have checked it out.  President Obama put it this way: "[PULSE] was a place of solidarity and empowerment where people came together to raise awareness, speak their mind, and to advocate for their civil rights."

Just two night before in Orlando not far from Disney World a gunman fatally shot singer Christina Grimmie as the former runner-up on "The Voice" was signing autographs following a concert.  When Grimmie's brother accosted the killer, he fatally shot himself.   Christina had a YouTube following in the millions and was friends with Selena Gomez, who stated that she was devastated over the incomprehensible incident.  Meanwhile, in Chi-town over the weekend, shootings took seven lives and sent a dozen others to the ER.

Carmella Saraceno; below, Will Miller & the Jazz Gang; photos by Jerry Davich

At Miller Market two guitarists were performing "Psycho Killer." I ran into precinct committeeman Michael Chirich while in line for a taco.  There to distribute flyers about a September block party along Lake Street, he raved about Will  Miller and the Jazz Gang featuring Willie Fultz, which performed at Carmella's Cafe on the Lake,  located at Marquette Park.  In the Post-Trib Jerry Davich recently profiled Carmella Saraceno, who also runs Carmella's Stage on Shelby Street in Miller.  A native of Allentown, PA, Carmella told Davich, "Of all the places I've visited - Singapore, Italy, Thailand, New York City, you name it - here I am in Gary.  Why?  I've found my tribe here."

Paul V. Dudley, "The Magic Hour" (1950); below, James Pringle Cook, "Willow Crest" diptych (1992)

Taking place at South Shore Arts Gallery in Munster was John Cain's opening reception for "Sand and Steel: Visions of our Indiana Shore," curated by VU's Gregg Hertzlieb.  I was pleasantly surprised the brochure containing my historical essay was completed in time for the show.

Joshua Jebb, "Two Ottawa Chiefs from Michilimackinac" (c. 1813-1820)

Michael A. McDonnell's "Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America" focuses on the Odawa (Ottawa) Indians, whose most important homeland was near the straits of Michilimackinac and who for at least 200 years flourished by forging alliances through marital ties with such other Anishinaabeg tribes as the Chippewa (Ojibwe) and the Potawatomi and even Huron, Lakota, and Iroquois bands - plus Frenchmen, including Joseph Bailly, the first permanent resident of Northwest Indiana..  Referring to their extensive trade with the French, McDonnell asserts that it was on their terms, and New France existed on their sufferance. Los Angeles Times reviewer David Treuer wrote: "By keeping the balance of power between the French and the British, and later the British and the Americans, the Indians themselves functioned as a kind of swing vote.  A little pressure here, a little room there, and they swung the course of history in major ways, including but not limited to the Seven Years War, the French and Indian War, and the Revolutionary War."

sand hill crane family near IUN; photo by Kathy Hall

According to IUN biologist Spencer Cortwright, thousands of sand hill cranes once migrated through Northwest Indiana, but with the destruction of most marshlands few, if any, stayed to breed.  Recently, a few pairs are at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and one pair is raising its offspring close to IUN's main parking lot.  Cortwright explained:
Ever since the levee was built in the late 1990's, the site has not been physically altered.  Prior to the levee there were football fields in there and even golf was tried, neither of which produced stable habitat (but were flooded a lot).  In addition, our restoration efforts have doggedly removed nonnative weeds from the wetland areas, which provide an opening in the marsh vegetation that the cranes seem to enjoy.  This nonnative weed removal is ongoing, but clearly presented a view to this pair of flying cranes that IU Northwest is nature friendly and a good place to raise a family!  

I'm getting comfortable driving my new Corolla.  Strangely, however, when the engine's off, a lock icon flashes constantly, whether or not the car is locked.  Worried that this unnecessary nuisance (perhaps intended to thwart thefts) drained the battery, I asked a Toyota serviceman if the device could be put on a different setting.  Nope, he replied, adding that icons in every car in the lot were flashing. 

True Colors

“Don’t be afraid to let them show

Your true colors

True colors are beautiful

Like a rainbow.”

    “True Colors,” Cyndi Lauper

LGBT rights activist Cyndi Lauper, who turns 61 this month, recorded her breakthrough hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” 31 years ago.  She helped put together a 2007 True Colors Tour featuring such performers as Deborah Harry, Erasure, and Dresden Dolls.  The following year, Joan Jett, Rosie O’Donnell, Indigo Girls, Joan Armatrading, and The B-52s signed on.

At a ceremony celebrating St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church being designated an Indiana Historic Landmark, a choir directed by Ball State professor Andrew Crow performed several stirring numbers, including “True Colors.”  The 35-member group calls itself Musica in Situ (Music on Site) and features both university students and Muncie area residents performing seven concerts during a three-week period, five of them in churches but also at Monroe County Courthouse and Indiana War Memorial Museum.

After greetings from Father David Hyndman (nephew of Cold War radical Kathryn Hyndman, a political prisoner held for a year in Crown Point jail), Indiana Landmarks representative Tiffany Tolbert introduced speakers Matthew Seymour and Gretchen Townsend Buggeln, who talked about distinguished architect Edward Dart, a modernist who designed Water Tower Place in Chicago and many churches, especially those for small congregations on a limited budget.  The program lasted more than three hours.  Starving by the time it ended I was pleased to spot sandwiches, pastries, and punch on basement tables.  One server was Eric Reeves, active in the Miller Beach Arts and Creative District. An elderly choir member went to serve herself and was told to wait till the food was blessed.  Ignoring, or perhaps not hearing the injunction, she started through the line.  After two others followed, I joined them, just ahead of many others.  Leaving, I spotted a photo of Garrett Cope, whose funeral service took place last year in the sanctuary.  Paula DuBois, largely responsible for organizing the event, said that she had taken dance lessons from him.

At Chesterton’s European Market were IUN’s Bob Beilfuss and Mark Hoyert with family members.  I suggested to Mark’s son Matt, off to Rose Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute in the fall, and he check out the Eugene V. Debs house.  Mark asked if the Clabber Girl Museum was worth visiting.  Dunno.  In 1879 grocer Herman Hulman marketed baking powder products that in time became known as Clabber Girl.  Railroad builder Chauncey Rose was one of ten founders, and for 90 years, until 1971, when the Hulman family foundation donated over 11 million dollars, the college was called Rose Polytechnic Institute.

To help celebrate Wrigley Field’s hundredth anniversary, the Cubs invited the last living member of their 1945 World Series team, 97 year-old Leonardo “Lennie” Merullo, to sing “Take My Out to the Ball game” during the seventh inning stretch.  In the broadcast booth beforehand, Merullo was a riot, mentioning being one of 13 children born to Italian immigrants, saying that his son got nicknamed “Boots” because on the day he was born, Merullo made four errors in a single inning.  Had another ball been hit to me, he mused, it would have been even more.  Beaten in seven games by the Tigers in 1945, the Cubs were led by Andy Pafko, Stan Hack, and Merullo’s roommate Phil Cavarretta.  After Merullo finished singing, he tried to get the organist to do it a second time.  In a rare move TV announcers Len Kasper and Jim Deshaies kept Lennie in the booth an extra half-inning.

For his seventieth seventieth birthday celebration at Beach Café, Mike Chirich had his sister, a former opera star in Austria, sang several numbers with great emotion and musical range.  Retired union official Rolland Beckham introduced me to buddies who recalled three Miller watering holes - Wilson’s, Jackson’s and Golden Coin - that hosted high stakes poker games in back rooms.  Lobster dinners at Wilson’s, reputedly mob controlled, were delicious and reasonably priced.  Phil loved the ribs at Golden Coin, and we were having lunch there when scantily clad models walked through on the way to a gentlemen-only lingerie show.  At Jackson’s Steak House one evening former mayor George Chacharis arrived, stopped at every table, and appeared to know by name everyone in the room, including me since I had recently interviewed him for my Gary book “City of the Century.”  By the late 70s Jackson’s had become a meat-market disco joint.

Gene and Judy Ayers stopped by our table, and Rolland Beckham mentioned that both had wrestled at Indiana State.  Former U.S. Steel public relations executive Miles Stipanovich, whom I hadn’t seen in 25 years after he was transferred to Pittsburgh, greeted me warmly.  He was visiting his mother, who lives in Chesterton and whose watercolor painting hangs in our basement.  Dick and Cheryl were having dinner inside; they’d hoped to be in the outdoor courtyard, but Chirich’s friends, many of them smokers, had taken it over.

Dr. Mary Leuca, a 1944 East Chicago Washington grad and expert on Romanians in Northwest Indiana, passed away.  She served as principal of Gary’s Melton School and taught courses at IUN when people referred to the institution as “The Extension.”  An astute historian whom I deeply respected, Mary wrote the chapter on Romanians for the encyclopedic “Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience,” emphasizing social and cultural activities and making good use of oral testimony.  It  begins: “In 1913 a father with his 16 year—old son who had recently joined him in Muncie, moved to Gary where better jobs could be found.  They arrived by train in the evening and went in search of a Romanian boardinghouse.  As they passed a large two-storied wooden structure, they heard Romanian being spoken within.  When the two of them entered, they found to their amazement that ‘in about 15 minutes the whole saloon was filled with people from our village [of] Viisoara.’”  Concerning the scarcity of eligible brides, one early resident recalled: “When an unmarried girl came to town, she never got a moment’s peace.  Some of the young men would fight over the girls.  When there was a dance, she never got to sit down.”

Sunday Dick and Cheryl came over for an Italian sausage, sauerkraut, and potatoes meal and bridge (I was the big winner).  Later Tony Awards host Hugh Jackman noted that Neil Patrick Harris, who performed in drag to sing “Sugar Daddy” from “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” had hosted four times, one less than Angela Lansbury.  Jackman joked that when he was named host, he got a note from Harris saying, “Wow, that’s fantastic.”  Then Jackman said, “At least that’s what I think he meant by WTF.”

Reading the “Scarlet Sisters,” I am especially enjoying parts about Victoria Woodhull’s sister Tennessee Claflin.  In 1870 the two of them went to fashionable Delmonico’s and the owner reminded them that they needed a male escort, so Tennie got their coachman, dressed in high boots and crimson coat, and told the startled proprietor, “Three for soup.”

David Lane with Juve Enriquez

Son Dave Lane read the names of East Chicago Central graduates during commencement ceremony.  He’s been going to graduation parties.  Students stagger them so they are not all on the same date.

After last week’s shocking ending, I was looking forward to “Games of Thrones.”  Instead of taking up the fate of Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) or Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen), banished by Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), it deals only with the Night Watch defense of the Wall.  During the bloody battle Jon Stark’s former love interest Ygritte dies in his arms

Steel Shavings subscriber Dick Tumpes has resumed his comic series Steel City Phantom.  I’ll work on him to give a complete set to the Archives.  We already have “Blackman” comic books by former Post-Trib photographer Tom Floyd.

Anne Balay put a link to my “Casual Fridays” radio appearance Friday on Facebook and reported seeing a snake and a toad on a Miller Woods run.  Jerry Davich offered two contrasting views about the recent rash of school massacres: “For comedic relief on such dire subject matter, here are two opposing jabs from each camp on the gun-rights issue. First the old joke attributed to Hollywood cowboy John Wayne: ‘Gun control requires concentration … and a steady hand.’  And here’s another one that reflects the antithesis of what Wayne stood for, from The Onion. The satirical news organization posted this tweet after the recent killings near the University of California Santa Barbara: ‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.’”  Suffice it to say, The Onion was right on.