Flight Paths

I ran (so far away)

Space age love song

You can run

Don’t ask me.”

         “A Flock of Seagulls” (1982)

A Flock of Seagulls, a Liverpool synth-pop New Wave band formed b keyboardist and lead singer Mike Score, had a wildly successful self-titled 1982 concept album about an alien invasion featuring such hits as “Space Age Love Song,” “Modern Love Is Automatic,” and “I Ran (So Far Away).”  A recent critic wrote: “Of course, everyone remembers this group now for singer Mike Score's ridiculous back-combed haircut and the fact that they are mentioned in Pulp Fiction. So now they're kind of cool, but in the early 1980s it was a different story.”  A character in Pulp Fiction gets the nickname Flock of Seagulls because of his haircut.

VU professors Allison Schuette and Liz Wuerffel asked me to participate in an Oral History Association conference session in Salt Lake City in October dealing with their Flight Paths project, which envisions an interactive documentary website.  The proposal states: “[Wuerffel and Schuette] will play excerpts from their 26-minute audio documentary on the changing racial and economic demographics of Gary and Northwest Indiana. ‘Chorus of Voices’ re-presents residents’ memories of migration, neighborhood life, the rise of black political power and opportunity in the 1960s, the ‘flight’ of white residents and businesses to the suburbs, and deindustrialization. Voices in each chorus do not always agree; no single chorus is completely comprehensive. By interweaving the oral histories of black and white residents of Northwest Indiana—some of whose families stayed in Gary, some of whose left—the documentary suggests that remembered experience creates a conflicted historical portrait.” 

Wuerffel and Schuette began conducting oral histories of Valparaiso University students for a “Welcome Project” and then expanded its scope to include testimony from Valpo residents (many of whom had once lived in Gary) as well as those presently living in Gary.  I have spoken in their classes, taken them on a tour of neighborhoods in Glen Park and Miller, introduced them to community organizers, and welcomed them to IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives.  Recently, due to their interest in the history of Merrillville, I put them in touch with Lake County Auditor John Petalas, a former student who has intimate knowledge of that city on Gary’s southern border, formed in reaction to Richard Hatcher’s election, despite the existence of a buffer zone ststute designed to prevent such a development.  Speaking by phone to Petalas, I filled him in on “Flight Paths, and he reiterated his intention to donate an extensive collection of Region campaign buttons to the Archives.  They will make an excellent exhibit in one of the library/conference center’s first floor glass cases.  

Interviewed By Alison Schuette for Flight Paths, Brandi Casada spoke of being bussed to Glen Park during the 1960s:

    From about, say, 9th Avenue back to about 25th, and from the East Side of Gary up to Broadway was black area. That was where most of the black people lived. The West Side at that time was predominantly white. And Glen Park was predominantly white. So, blacks were kind of closed in in that one little area. We moved to the West Side of Gary, and Glen Park was still predominantly white because we were bussed from the West Side when there was forced integration. The first year I was bussed to Webster School in fifth grade. I was among the first group of students bussed for integration. A principal, Ruth Deverick, had two meetings: she called in the parents of the white students and the parents of the black students prior to school. And she said, “Now, we are coming together as a school—a united school—we are not going to have problems this year.”And that school year went smoothly. And then they got rid of her. And the next year, we had a new principal, and that was not his mindset. And it was chaotic almost the whole year. I often wonder now as I reflect on that, was that the mindset of the administration? Because they had to know that under her guidance, there were no problems, and they moved her, and moved him in, and he had a totally different mindset, and there were problems all year.  We went on from there to Bailly junior high school, and it kind of continued. You know, we were in school together, but we were separated.

    That was 1968, the year that Martin Luther King died, and we were very upset about it, and the school system kind of felt—we felt like it was just incidental to them. They did not care. So, we wanted some acknowledgment that this had happened, whether it be some type of assembly, even something said over the intercom. But they refused to do anything. They just acted like it had never happened, or like it was of no importance…. There were several of us who led a walkout, and we left. Now, Bailey School was quite a distance from where we lived because that was in Glen Park over on Georgia Street, and we were normally bussed home. But we walked that day. We walked home to show our solidarity behind the death of Dr. King. We were just happy that we were able—you know, we felt empowered by walking out and saying that we are showing how we feel about the death of Dr. King, whether or not you feel at all about it. There were no consequences. You know, no one was punished for it. I guess at that point, it was like, “If we don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen. And just go from there.”

 photo by Paul Kaczoha

I considered staying home because the temperature was right at zero, but reconsidered after noticing weather predictions for next week were even worse. I wore four layers and a scarf, first time in my memory – Toni had to show me how to wrap it.  I completed my final condo meeting minutes after 8 years as secretary on the board.  At the annual meeting we voted to reduce the board’s size from seven to five members. Since my term was up and we had volunteers, former president Ken Carlson and neighbor George Schott, to join the three remaining members, I was able to retire, at least temporarily.

Facebook is now being blamed not only for spreading misinformation that helped Trump win election but for allowing Russian agents to invent fake news that bore some responsibility for the Great Britain Brexit vote to quit the European Union. I still use Facebook, mainly to enjoy photos from relatives and keep in touch with high school friends LeeLee Minehart and Dave Seibold, but it has become increasingly littered with ads. Opening it, I found a “sponsored” (whatever that means) pitch from Salesforce, Choice Hotels, Medicare Supplement, and Ford Motor Company.  Fred McColly posted this comment (on Facebook): “2018 was a mess for Facebook.  In March news broke of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exposed the private data of 87 million users.  And in December headlines announced that private photos had been leaked for 6.8 million users.”  On the up side, virtually every week Jim Spicer posts a humorous tale.  Here’s his latest:

  A couple, both age 78, went to a sex therapist's office. The doctor asked, “What can I do for you?” The man said, “Will you watch us have sex?”The doctor looked puzzled, but agreed.  When the couple finished, the doctor said, “There's nothing wrong with the way you have sex,”and charged them $50. This happened several weeks in a row. The couple would make an appointment, have sex with no problems, pay the doctor, then leave. Finally, the doctor asked, “Just exactly what are you trying to find out?” “We're not trying to find out anything,”the husband replied. “She's married and we can't go to her house. I'm married and we can't go to my house. The Holiday Inn charges $90. The Hilton charges $108. We do it here for $50...and I get $43 back from Medicare.”

The government shutdown has now lasted over a month, thanks to Trump’s imbecility.  Unpaid air traffic controllers are further stressed by dangerous drones that have been spotted near airports, causing shutdowns recently in Newark and London.  Drones interfered with pilots fighting California wild fires; one almost struck a medical helicopter in Dallas.  Imagine drones in the hands of domestic terrorists. 

In a South China Evening Post article titled “Why the world’s flight paths are such a mess”   Marco Hernandez wrote: “Pilots cannot just fly wherever they want.  Apart from technical and practical matters like waypoints and the Earth’s natural jet streams, there are also man-made constraints such as political, legal and financial restrictions on airspaces and flight paths.”

 Ring-tailed gulls near BP refinery

Dylan Kerr’s New Yorker article “Birds of a Feather” included an interview with designer Rebeca Mendez, who curated a New York’s Cooper Hewitt Museum show featuring avian art. Mendez said, “We are setting our boundaries tighter and tighter – we are entrenching in our location.  Birds represent incredible freedom.”  Commenting on current world affairs, Mendez stated: “Bird migration is a constant flow. The earth is screaming at us in all possible ways, ‘Migration is the way to go.’”  Flocks of ring-tailed gulls found on the southern shores of Lake Michigan as well as area parking lots migrate south in winter to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

At Hobart Lanes my 480 series helped the Electrical Engineers win two games from Fab Four.  We started with a one-point lead over two other Mel Guth Seniors teams so we probably dropped out of first place, with our clean-up bowler in Florida for the next six weeks and Melvin Nelson on the DL.  Both teams had more splits than normal and left plenty of seven or ten pins on apparent strikes, but my ancient ball came through most of the time, so I finished well above my average.  Afterwards, Joe Piunti rushed off to watch his granddaughter Kaitland Cherry play in a Hebron High School basketball game that apparently got postponed due to inclement weather.

 Kaitland Cherry

U.S. Blues

“Son of a gun, better change your act

We’re all confused, what’s to lose,

You can call this the United States Blues.”

         Grateful Dead, “U.S. Blues”

Ray Smock posted,The Truth Emerges: Bob Woodward’s, “Fear: Trump in the White House”:

  This is not an easy book to read. Not that the language is a problem. Woodward’s narrative on the chaos inside the Trump White House is top-notch professional reporting. We would expect nothing less from this distinguished journalist.

  The book is hard to read because it is so painful. There is no let-up in the account of the president’s ineptitude and lies. There is no comedy relief in this book. This story is an unmitigated tragedy. It is uncomfortable to read, even for those of us who follow the Trump presidency closely and think our hide has been toughened now that we are more than 600 days into the Trump presidency.

  Trump seems incapable of shame. His lies don’t bother him. He may not even see them as lies. And some of those Woodward interviewed believe Trump can’t help himself. It seems to be in his DNA somewhere. Gary Cohn, Trump’s economic adviser, until he left the White House, kindly called Trump a “professional liar.”Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, used the vernacular,“Trump is a f**king liar.”

Journal of Urban History editor David Goldfield, like Smock an old friend from Maryland grad school days and Wobblies softball teammate, knowing I’d published “Jacob A. Riis and the American City” soon after we collaborated on “The Enduring Ghetto: Sources and Readings,” asked me to review an article about the Progressive reformer’s work on behalf of creating small parks in New York City.  I strongly recommended the article and had only a few suggestions to improve it, including better opening and closing paragraphs.  Here is part of my critique: 

      The article might begin with this anecdote, in the author’s words, taken from James B. Lane’s “Jacob A. Riis and the American City”: “The formal opening of Mulberry Bend park took place on 15 June 1897.  Despite his eight-year struggle toward this end, Riis received no invitation to attend the dedication.  He had argued with city officials about trespass signs which forbade residents from walking on the grass. In fact, one day he had disobeyed the edict, and a policeman put a cane to his back and ordered him off. Attending the ceremonial opening with Lincoln Steffens, Riis noted with pleasure that policemen allowed the thousands of spectators to gather on the grass to hear the band and speeches by politicians and community leaders.  The moment he cherished most, however, was when Colonel George E. Waring led the crowd in saluting Jacob Riis with three cheers.”(see also New York Sun, 16 June 1897; Riis, The Making of an American, pp. 283-4)  Regarding the author’s account of the Mulberry Bend fight, I suggest he move the information in a footnote about a deadly accident involving two children to the main body of the paper (go for maximum emotional impact, as Jacob Riis would have wanted it).  

    On Riis and ethnic stereotypes, mentioned on page 5 and footnote 35, the Danish-American’s attitude evolved, especially after interacting with Southern and Central European immigrants at Jacob A. Riis Settlement and becoming friends with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. 

    I’d also suggest a concluding paragraph mentioning Riis’s work in his later years on behalf of providing slum children with healthy, open air spaces, such as supporting the Jacob A. Riis Settlement, the Fresh Air Fund, the Boy Scouts, Sea Breeze Tuberculosis Hospital, and other Progressive endeavors of that ilk.  In line with Riis’s belief in the curative powers of fresh air and sunlight, it might be fitting to mention that in his later years Riis frequented spas and sanitariums for his health and purchased a money-draining potato farm in Massachusetts. 

A woman has come forward to accuse Trump’s Supreme Court nominee of sexual battery when he was 17 and stumbling drunk. Republicans are crying foul but used similar tactics 20 years ago when they impeached Clinton on smarmy stories and innuendoes.  Heartless Trump is claiming that opponents are inflating the number of Puerto Ricans, estimated to be at least 3,000, killed in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and is blaming California’s numerous deadly megafires not on global warming but bad environmental laws that prevent “readily available water”from being used against the blazes (“wingnut drivel,” the L.A. Times countered).  Dominating the headlines: devastating flooding caused by Tropical Storm Florence, which continues to affect much of North Carolina, not only coastal areas but inland, due to rivers expected to crest at record levels.  Toni and I vacationed in Kitty Hawk, NC, with Dave Goldfield when Phil was a toddler and flew into Wilmington (now virtually under water) en route to Dick and Donna Jeary’s Myrtle Beach condo 20 years later, where we learned Alissa had been born in Raleigh.

 1963 Hobart varsity basketball team; Dave Bigler, top, second from right

Alan Geller, presenter Alan Yngve, and Dave Bigler, top local pair at World Wide Bridge Contest

With Samantha Gauer’s help, I interviewed Dave Bigler at the Calumet Regional Archives.  Beforehand, Steve McShane gave him a tour of our facilities. I first met Dave when he partnered with Lynn Bayman in Chesterton.  Evidently Lynn had bid on playing with him at an Alzheimer’s fundraiser, but he has since returned to play with her several times.  A 1963 Hobart and IUN grad with a degree in Special Education, Bigler worked over 30 years at U.S. Steel.  He and four other supervisors, dubbed the Loose Cannons, when asked to trouble-shoot a thorny problem, often met at Hank and Casey’s taproom in Glen Park near the old Shaver Chevy dealership to thrash out tactics and strategy. While Bigler learned bridge from his parents at a young age and played related games in college, including euchre, bid whist, and a similar Serbian version, he didn’t take up the card game seriously until invited to join a bridge o rama in Portage.  Henceforth, in retirement he and Chuck Briggs formed a successful partnership.  Dave enjoys teaching bridge to beginners and introducing them to area games; he’s been involved in Little League baseball for almost 30 years and has been a member of the Hobart School Board since 2003.

At Hobart Lanes an opponent’s grandson ended up under a table above us and spotted the dimes and quarters I had spread out nearby for doubles and tenth-strike pots.  I spotted the rascal just as he appeared ready to make away with some coins.  Friday Toni arrived home after spending five days with sister Marianne in Granger, Indiana, visiting from Florida.  James slept over, as bowling season commenced, and I made pancakes and Polish sausage and then took him to Culver’s for lunch after his match at Inman’s.  He’s chosen Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbitt” for an assignment in Advanced English; I told him I’d assigned the novel in my History class on the 1920s and described the author’s other satirical best-sellers, “Main Street” and “Elmer Gantry.”  Dave spotted Ron Cohen and my new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History” and noticed three photos by Guy Rhodes, his former student at E.C. Central,including an aerial shot of spectators at Marquette Park for the 2010 air show taken through the open back doors of a Golden Knights Team plane.

 above, photo by Guy Rhodes; Paul and Oz, August 2017

Toni and enjoyed Paul Kaczoha’s retirement picnic. As the invite stated, “after 48 fun filled years of working in the a steel mill, he is no longer a wage slave.”  In the garage hung a quilt made from old t-shirts bearing inscriptions (i.e., “Labor creates all wealth”) and photos of labor radicals.  We helped ourselves to delicious food, including ribs and chicken.  Toni’s salad disappeared fast, and my dill pickles from Jewel were also popular. We sat with Bill and Dorrean Carey (still active in Save the Dunes), Sue and Oz (my Wednesday lunch companion), and labor activist Alice Bush, there with son Mike Appelhans, who teaches Math at Ivy Tech. Mike met IUN Chancellor Bill Lowe at the Arts and Sciences Building dedication (the two institutions share use of the facility) and discussed the Irish revolutionary period of 100 years ago, Lowe’s academic specialty. 

I finished John Updike’s “Rabbit Remembered” with reluctance, realizing there’d be no sequels.  Harry’s offspring turned out just fine, each with characteristics inherited from him.  Son Nelson referred to death as a freeze-frame.  Grandson Roy, a computer nerd, described net-surfing in 1999 as “all Boolean logic.”  At Bucknell in 1962 a Math instructor attempted to explain (without much luck) George Boole’s nineteenth-century algebraic system wof variables based on 1 and O.  Updike referenced 1999 TV ads for Nicoderm and Secret Platinum (“strongest deodorizer you can buy without a prescription”)and the sci-fi satire “Galaxy Quest,” containing a scene where the extraterrestrial turns into an octopus when sexually excited. He compared a disappointing turn of events to a kid undressing a Barbie doll and finding no nipples nor vagina and legs that don’t bend, much less spread.

Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest; Matt Burns as Aristotle 

Although my favorite NFL teams, the Eagles and the Skins, suffered upsets, Jimbo Jammers Fantasy team kicked butt, as Ben Roethlisberger and Todd Gurley racked up a combined 67 or my 105 points.  Sports Illustrated’s Charlotte Wilder wrote about 29 year-old Matt Burns (a.k.a. Airistotle), two-time air guitar world champion who in August finished second to Nanami “Seven Seas” Nagura in Oulu, Finland.  How I wish Dave and I were there at the time.  Thirty years ago, he, Jimmy Satkoski, and I won a TV in a similar contest doing “Cretin Hop” by the Ramones.  Our secret: get on and off the stage quickly.  Performances at championships last just 60-seconds and are judged on stage presence, technical merit (do contestants appear to be playing the proper notes?), and “airness,” an intangible akin to originality.  Like in roller derby, competitors assume such alter egos as Shreddy Mercury, Nordic Thunder, Hot Lixx Hulahan, and Windhammer. Burns compared the scene to drag shows, “but for frat bros.”

A September 2018 Journal of American History article by Andrew Pope titled “Making Motherhood a Felony” opened by mentioning that in 1960 Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis proposed a segregation package that would have barred black women from giving birth in the state’s charity hospitals and imprisoned women for up to one year who conceived a child out of wedlock.”  These measures failed, but lawmakers passed measures that denied the vote to women who had given birth while unmarried and prohibited AID (Aid to Dependent Children) payments to mothers who gave birth out of wedlock, lived with a man, or whom caseworkers considered “promiscuous.”   Over 98 percent of the approximately 30,000 poor people denied funds in the first few years were African American.

Beneficence

“One act of beneficence is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.”  Romantic novelist Ann Radcliff

Beneficence is an act of charity or kindness done without thought of receiving something in return, such as mowing a neighbor’s lawn perhaps or giving to the poor anonymously  In medical ethics beneficence means maximizing benefits while minimizing risks to the patient.  Two Indiana universities, DePauw and Ball State, exist in part due to the beneficence of nineteenth-century entrepreneurs who made fortunes in the glass business.  During the Gilded Age egotistical captains of industry such as Leland Stanford, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Carnegie – Robber Barons to their enemies – made similar gestures, not always with the purest of motives.

Washington C. DePauw’s grandfather came to America as an aide to Frenchman Lafayette, and his father was a Hoosier founding father.  Washington DePauw amassed windfall profits supplying grain and other supplies to the Union army during the Civil War and then took over a glass works that became the largest in Indiana.  Making shrewd investments in financial institutions, he had become one of the wealthiest men in the state when Depauw's largess resuscitated a failing Methodist school in Greencastle.  Anne Balay recently spent two weeks at a writers workshop on the campus that bears his name.

Five Ball brothers born between 1850 and 1862 – Lucius, William, Edmund, Frank, and George – transplanted the family glass works from Buffalo, New York, to Muncie, Indiana, in order to take advantage of the ample supply of natural gas needed for their operation.  Their most famous product was the blue home-canning Ball jar, but the company diversified into other ancillary products, including zinc lids, rubber sealing rings, and paper boxes.  Ball charitable interests in Muncie included not only Ball State (formerly a Normal teacher training school) but also the YMCA, a memorial hospital, that bears their name and Minnetrista gardens.  In 1937 Daniel Chester French's bronze statue “Beneficence” was unveiled on the Ball State campus. Five limestone columns representing the Ball brothers, truly pillars of the community.

Ball State students have nicknamed the statue “Benny,” and according to campus lore, if a couple kiss under "Beneficence" with closed eyes and hear Benny's wings flap, then they are truly in love. Another myth has it that Benny cries tears of blood when a virgin graduates from Ball State.   

 Jimbo, Toni and Oz in Paul Kaczoha's garage

Paul and Jean Kaczoha’s annual picnic afforded an opportunity to chat with Sue and Mike Olszanski, Ed and Monica Johnston, and Alice Bush accompanied by son Mike Applehans.  All Bernie Sanders supporters they are now for Hillary Clinton, now cleared of criminal charges by the FBI.   We all hope she will choose Elizabeth Warren as her running mate.  Lamenting all the free TV air time Trump gets, I used Sarah Palin’s pejorative phrase “lamestream media” but not in the way she intended.  Oz still works for IUN’s Labor Studies program, and Ed Johnston, a retired union organizer, delivers noontime Meals on Wheels.  Alice claims to have cut down on her USWA work but is in charge of planning an upcoming steelworkers picnic.  Paul was busy grilling meat for hours – chicken, ribs, burgers, brats, and hot dogs -  and insisted that guests take plentiful amounts of food home with them.

At Miller Market Sunday for a taco, my favorite vender was nowhere in sight. WTF?  In weeks past it did a brisk business. Two people that I didn’t immediately recognize greeted me by name.  One, I think, was a daughter of Meg Demakis and the other cross-dressing BobKat in male mode.

With the Cubs getting swept by the Mets in a one-sided contest, I watched several old “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episodes buoyed by the news that Larry David has agreed to a ninth season.  In one of them Larry calls an effeminate married guy a pussy when he drops out of a poker hand, and the guy subsequently quite his job and starts dating guys. 

“The Diary of a Teenage Girl” (2015) is about hyper-sexed Minnie (Bel Powley), growing up in Seventies San Francisco, who has an affair with Monroe,  her mother’s immature boyfriend.  Based on a novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, it features poignant performances by Alexander Skarsgard as Monroe and Kristen Wiig as a dysfunctional aging hippie who, at a concert, tells Minnie that if anyone asks, we’re sisters.  The film is shockingly candid but not smarmy, and I recommended it to Gaard Logan, who lived a counter-culture lifestyle in S.F. in the mid-1970s.  My favorite scene: Minnie and a girlfriend dancing on a bed to an Iggy Pop song and licking a poster of the punk idol's crotch.  The heavy in the film is stepfather Pascal, a university professor (who else?) who had claimed it was unnatural when five year-old Minnie snuggled with her mom.  Pascal bankrolled Minnie attending a progressive "hippie" school, but she was an indifferent student, passing notes to a guy she subsequently introduced to sexual pleasures while a black instructor was explaining the gay implications of "Catcher in the Rye."

 suffragette martyr Emily Davison

More somber was “Suffragette” (2015), about English feminists whose disruptive actions drew attention to the oppression of women.  Meryl Streep has a cameo role as militant feminist Emmeline Pankhurst.  The film focused on working class women who risked marriage, children, livelihood, even their lives,  for their beliefs.  Laundress Maud Watts, a composite of several working-class suffragettes, is force-fed in prison and present when Emily Davison jumps in front of King George V’s horse at the 1913 Elsom Derby.  Davison’s funeral attracted thousands and played a key role in the triumph of women’s suffrage.

 Becca and James singing with East Chicago choir at Unity concert

Becca’s fourteenth birthday on July 4 featured a cookout and fireworks at Dave and Angie’s.  I thought Becca was going on 15 since she was so mature and only a grade behind 16 year-old James.   Last summer in croquet both T. Wade and Dave had it in for me after I won three straight games, but I resisted the urge to send them when I had the chance and played what my son labeled a "cerebral game" while they were doing their best to send the other's ball into the street.   I had just a single wicket to complete before becoming poison only to have Robert Blaszkiewicz knock my ball into the post, eliminating me. In the next contest I pulled a similar trick on Brady Wade and survived until only Robert and I were left.  My effort to knock him out came an inch short due to a tuft of crabgrass, and he easily dispatched me.  Back at the condo, I observed neighbors on each side of us sending fireworks off into the sky as if dueling with one another.

July 4th in Michigan; Lanes in Wyoming; Lorraine, Missy and Marianne in Traverse City