Going to Kensoha

 "I grew up in Kenosha on the edge of a forest.  It wasn’t a big forest, but it was enough.  When you’re a kid, it feels gigantic.” Mark Ruffalo

POTUS made a brief trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the wake of the police shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake (seven times in the back) and resulting protests.  Defying pleas from state and local officials, he fanned the flames of discord by refusing to meet with Blake, paralyzed from the waist down, or members of his family.   He compared the tragedy to a golfer choking on a three-foot putt and failed to criticize the 17-year-old vigilante who killed two demonstrators and wounded a third.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Blake’s grandfather, Reverend Jacob Blake, was a Gary steelworker and Indiana University graduate who was arrested in 1948 for making a speech outside Gary Works in support of Progressive Party candidate for President Henry Wallace. In the late 1950s he became youth pastor at First African Episcopal Methodist Church in Gary’s segregated Midtown district. Reverend Blake worked for churches in East Chicago and Chicago prior to moving to Evanston in 1967 and becoming pastor at Ebenezer AME Church, taking part in fair housing struggles. Reverend Blake’s widow, Patricia Goudeau Blake, is still living in Park Manor; her father, L’Ouveture Goudeau was a union activist who worked with A. Philip Randolph and an air force pilot who during Aorld War II instructed Tuskegee Airmen. Patricia told Chicago Tribune reporter William Lee that her grandson helped feed homeless people at a mosque, that older folks loved him, and that “he had a magnetism.”

Paul Kern

When I spotted the Northwest Indiana Times headline “Trump Goes to Kenosha,” it reminded me of this anecdote that IU Northwest student Dave Malham told about history professor Paul Kern; it appears in Kern and my history of the university:

    Paul Kern was a born storyteller, combining passion with the delivery of an actor.  At the podium sometimes his eyes would narrow or his teeth clench. He had a slight lisp, and his s’s would sound like sh.  His account of a power struggle between a Holy Roman Emperor and Pope Gregory mentioned how in order to get back into the pope’s good graces the emperor humbled himself by going to Canossa as a penitent. Centuries later, when Chancellor Bismarck was involved in a similar power struggle, he uttered the symbolic line, “I will not go to Canossa.” Meaning, “I will not submit to this.” When Kern uttered the line, it sounded like Kenosha, like in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I though to myself, “Shit, I wouldn’t go to Kenosha either.” But the sh in Canossa did not mar from Kern’s power as a storyteller. He knew how to deliver a line. 

Today Joe Biden went to Kenosha, visited Jacob Blake in the hospital, and met with his family, doing what he does best, empathizing with those suffering.


Valparaiso resident and former Post-Tribune sports reporter John Mutka wrote;

    Trump's unwanted visit to Kenosha was nothing more than a cynical attempt to foster divisiveness, spread his not so subtle message to white privilege at the expense of African Americans, whose pleas for equality he continues to ignore. Instead of being presidential he is campaigning for reelection when he should be healing a nation he has recklessly divided. This man is a fear monger, trying to frighten people into voting for him by blaming Democrats for all the problems he has created during his four years of mismanagement.

 

After Miller historian Cullen Ben-Daniel somewhat facetiously called Valparaiso a suburb of Gary, Liz Wuerffel, co-director of the VU Welcome Center’s Flight Paths Project, replied, “Kind of, but not in the same way as Merrillville.  Not to say there weren’t many people who lived in Valpo and worked in the mills – certainly there were and still are. But I’m guessing it was much more a center for rural Porter County than a commuter town for people who worked in Gary.  I’d be curious what percentage of Valpo residents commuted to Gary back in the 60s and 70s and the percentage that commute to Chicago today. Chicago commuters seem to be increasing pretty rapidly.”  Liz is correct in the sense that many more Gary residents moved to Merrillville than to Valpo, first so-called white flight and then middle-class black flight.  The motivation in both cases was both push and pull factors - a safer environment, better schools, lower tax base and insurance rates, and the like. Linda Hazelton interjected: “When I graduated from VHS, it was common for people who weren’t headed to college to go to work at the mills.  They could support their families well without a college degree. I think it was the late 60s, early 70s, when “outsiders” started moving into Porter County from Pittsburgh and Baltimore to take management positions in the mills.”  

Mets Hall of Famer Tom Seaver, known as “The Franshise” and “Tom Terrific,” died at age 75.  In the mid-1980s I saw Seaver pitch seven shutout innings for the Chicago White Sox at age 40.  His catcher was Carlton “Pudge” Fisk, another Hall of Famer.

Juneteenth

 "If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to how far you can go.”

    James Baldwin

 

On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, Union General Gordon Grange informed former slaves that they were free. Almost immediately, freedmen began celebrating Emancipation or Jubilee Day with festivals featuring food, songs, parades, and speeches.  Most states have declared Juneteenth a Day of Observance, and, ironically, Trump’s idiotic determination to hold a rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth brought national attention to the date and furthered a movement to have June 19 declared a national holiday.  Better, methinks, to press for national health insurance, a living minimum wage, and election day being a national holiday with no more voter suppression.

Chesterton Juneteenth march by John Luke

 

Robert Cotton

Angel Smith

An impressive crowd numbering in the hundreds participated in a Chesterton Juneteenth march from the police station to Centennial Park.  Organized by Chesterton High School English teacher Becky Uehling and others, it featured speeches by African-American Valparaiso city councilman Robert Cotton and a poetry reading by CHS grad Angel Smith, now a senior at Stanford. Though the temperature was in the mid-90s, I marched the final four blocks and found a seat in the shade.  Cotton recalled neighbors in the Chicago projects, where he grew up, mourning the deaths of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King.  Now in his 60s, he substitute teaches in several communities, including Chesterton, in order to expose himself to students who may never have had a black teacher. Attesting to the importance of history, Cotton confessed he didn't know about Juneteenth until he was in his 30s.

 

Richard Russo’s 2012 memoir “Elsewhere” describes growing up in a New York mill town that, in miniature, mirrored Gary, Indiana’s sad fate in the face of deindustrialization, mechanization, and globalization.  Russo’s hometown of Gloversville manufactured not only top-quality gloves but other leather goods. By the 1970s Gloversville commercial district had become, in Russo’s words, “a Dresden-like ruin,” but during the 1950s on a Saturday afternoon “the streets downtown would be gridlocked with cars honking hellos to pedestrians.” Like Gary’s Palace Theater Gloverville’s Glove Theatre would be packed with adolescents.  Russo recalled:

    Often, when we finished what we called our weekly “errands,” my mother and I would stop in at Pedrick’s.  Located next to City Hall, it was a dark cool place, the only establishment of my youth that was air-conditioned, with a long thin wall whose service window allowed sodas and cocktails to be passed from the often raucous bar into the more respectable restaurant.  Back then Pedrick’s was always mobbed, even in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Mounted on the wall of each booth was a minijukebox whose movable mechanical pages were full of song listings.  Selections made here – five for a quarter, if memory serves – were played on a real jukebox on the far wall. We always played a whole quarter’s worth while nursing sodas served so cold they made my teeth hurt. Sometimes, though, the music was drowned out by rowdy male laughter from the bar, where the wall-mounted television was tuned to a Yankees ball game, and if anyone hit a home rum, everybody in the restaurant knew it immediately.

Russo lamented that by the time he graduated in 1967, “you could have strafed Main Street with an automatic weapon without endangering a soul.”  The restaurant area of Pedrick’s had closed, and the bar was “quiet as a library.”

 

Ray Smock wrote:

One of the news items that did not get a lot of attention but that drove home the depths of systemic racism, and the many guises it can take, was the announcement by Walmart that it would no longer keep black cosmetics and beauty supplies under lock and key. The following is from a story in the New York Times of June 10: “Walmart will end its practice of locking up African-American beauty care products in glass cases, the retail giant said on Wednesday after a fresh round of criticism that the policy was a form of racial discrimination. Hair care and beauty products sold predominantly to black people could be accessed at certain stores only by getting a Walmart employee to unlock the cases, some of which featured additional anti-theft measures.”

When Sears closed its Gary store during the 1970s, it was making a handsome profit; but with South Lake Mall opening, corporate executives figured African Americans would come to Merrillville whereas most whites wouldn’t shop in Gary.  The lame excuse they gave Mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher: shoplifting, something easily remedied.

 

Ray Boomhower referenced an article Robert L. Sherrod wrote for Time about the heroism of African-American marines during the invasion of Saipan in June 1944.  Although most were serving as ammunition carriers and in beachhead unloading parties, many found themselves forced into combat.  Boomhower wrote:

    When the Japanese counterattacked the Fourth Marine Division near Charan Kanoa, twelve African Americans were thrown into the defense line and offered a stiff resistance, killing fifteen of the enemy. Sherrod quoted a white marine lieutenant from Texas as commenting on the incident: “I watched these Negro boys carefully. They were under intense mortar and artillery fire as well as rifle and machine gun fire. I saw no Negro running away. They all kept advancing until the counterattack was stopped.”

    Other black marines volunteered to carry badly needed ammunition to frontline units and joined fellow marines in hunting down snipers. Sherrod added the African Americans were credited with being “the workingest men on Saipan, having performed prodigious feats of labor both while under fire and after beachheads were well secured. Some unloaded boats for three days, with little or no sleep, working in water up to waist deep.”

    What did not make it into Sherrod’s published Time article was a remark one of the black marines made upon seeing army troops begin to land on the island: “It must be safe. Here comes the army.” Later, Sherrod learned that Admiral Chester Nimitz’s command in Hawaii had refused to allow such a statement, remarking that “no correspondents’ stories will be approved which reflect on Army in comparison with Navy or Marines,” and his story had “flagrantly violated” the restriction. For his part, Sherrod said he had included the quote to show the “high state of morale among Negro Marines.”

 

Anne Koehler wrote:

The current storm over statues and what to do with them brings me to another story from my childhood. The Aschberg is the highest elevation for our area, which is just under 100 meters or roughly 300 feet. Here stands the 21-foot tall statue of Otto von Bismarck. He was the Reichschancellor under Kaiser Wilhelm II and played a significant role in the fact that my home area remained German and did not become part of the Danish Kingdom. The statue was built and first erected on the Knivsberg in North Schleswig. When that part of Schleswig-Holstein was ceded to Denmark in 1919 as a result of a plebiscite, the statue was dismantled and moved south. The head was sawed off to make it fit into the railroad carriage for transport. A lengthy odyssey ensued; at times it was stored in a warehouse, at others in a barn. Different locations competed for the statue. In 1930 it was erected in its current spot. Bismarck proudly leans on his sword, looking into the hilly landscape, marked by fields surrounded by hedgerows. The hedgerows prevent soil erosions from wind and house birds and animals as well as provide firewood. The Aschberg and Bismarck were favorite outing locations. Sports and other events took place there. As children we would climb up on the side of the statue and sit on the crown to the right side. After the second World War precious metal was stolen from the sword for scrap.

 

Paul Kern replied: “Bismarck’s unification of Germany through three wars and his authoritarian rule left a dubious legacy. The Second Reich was based on Prussian domination of the rest of Germany. Bismarck liked to have internal enemies, first the Catholics in the Kulturkampf and then the Social Democratic Party in the anti-socialist law, policies that left Germany deeply divided religiously and politically. It was no accident that the fifty-five years after Bismarck were catastrophic for Germany.”

 

In the Chesterton Tribune “Echoes of the Past” column this item from June 18, 1895, a time when the country was in the throes of a Depression as devastating as the 1930s disaster: “The tramp element is getting thicker than ever.  It is not an uncommon occurrence to se 125 or 20 men lying around the water tower and living off the fat of thase land.”  Prior to 1895 most social reformers, such  Jacob A. Riis, thought tramps were lazy bums who shirked work.  The economic calamity convinced him otherwise.

Homestead

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of comfortable living from a small piece of land.” Abraham Lincoln

When President Abraham Lincoln signed the 1862 Homestead Act as the Civil War raged, opening up a half-million square miles of western land offering 160 acres to citizens settling on the land and farming it for five years, the American myth of a country of independent farmers had not yet died.  Nonetheless, most of the free land was inhospitable to small farmers and America was becoming an industrialized nation.  Forty years later in Homestead, PA, site of a state-of-the-art steel mill owned by Robber Baron Andrew Carnegie, the crushing of a strike by military troops demonstrated that the egalitarian dream had turned into a nightmare for the working man.

Although the word homestead is defined as one’s residence and adjoining land (I sometimes use the word as a synonym for home, especially when we lived atop a sand dunes on Maple Place), the word is commonly associated with old farmhouses and their outbuildings, such as the Buckley Homestead southeast of Lowell in Lake County or the old Bailly Homestead in Porter, site of the area’s first permanent residents, Joseph and Marie Bailly, and now part of Indiana Dunes National Park. In “Rabbit Is Rich” John Updike described the fictitious Albrecht Stamm Homestead built in the mid-1820s in eastern Pennsylvania and restored by a historical society.  Updike wrote:

    Even though a young hippie couple lives upstairs and leads visitors through, to Harry the old Stamm place is full of ghosts, those old farmers lived weird lives, locking their crazy sisters in the attic and strangling the pregnant hired girl in a fit of demon rum and hiding the body in the potato bin so that 50 years later the skeleton comes to light.

 

An example of Updike’s propensity to poke fun of ministers is seen in the depiction of Episcopalian cleric Archie “Soupy” Campbell, officiating at Rabbit son Nelson’s shotgun wedding.  He writes

    In a black cassock and white surplice and stole “Soupy” flashes his “What? Me Worry” grin, those sudden seedy teeth [but] the voice welling up out of this little man is terrific.  Soupy bats the eyelids between phrases, his only flaw.

The NWI Times Saturday Stumper crossword puzzle seems impossible to anyone but Toni, but I was able to help her for once.  A clue asked for the Avenue next to Reading Railroad in eight letters.  The reference was to Monopoly and the first letter O since the word across was Sacco (1920 anarchist).  Aha – Ontario, one of the light blue properties six spaces beyond Go and next to the Reading (which some Hoosiers pronounce as if one was reading a book).

Final Jeopardy on the category Historical Names was looking for a Hungarian-born editor who in 1904 said that a free press was a prerequisite for representative government. It had to be Joseph Pulitzer, but only one contestant knew it.  Another said Hearst, the purveyor of slanted news or “Yellow Journalism.”

Having finished my latest Shavings, Paul Kern sent a long email discussing, among other things, old colleagues and students as well as region high school sports events and other memories. He attended the 1975 state championship football contest where Valparaiso defeated Carmel 14-13 with star single wing tailback Mark Allen, one of the few African-American families living in Valpo at that time.  Allen moved from Cabrini Green at age 12 and after a football career at Arizona and the USFL lived in Valpo working in construction until he died at age 51. In the late 1960s Paul lived in Glen Park and recalled an Italian neighbor complaining about black students being bussed to neighborhood schools. He wrote: “His dire predictions of decline came true even though bussing was not a cause of the economic woes of Gary.  Neither one of us had a premonition of the global and technological changes that would devastate Gary.”  Being a couple years my senior, Paul has a few World War II memories, including seeing his father in uniform and on VJ watching a kid bang on an upside-down wash tub.

 

Paul Kern, seeing my post on Terrence Malick, said they were classmates at a small Texas boarding school and that he was then considered a genius and good guy. The most intriguing guy in my high school class was Bob “Buck” Elliott, who was witty and seemingly fearless. I first encountered him in a ninth grade.  When a new teacher called the roll, after the guy behind him said his name was Vince Curll, he claimed his name was also Vince Curll.  The next guy said his name was also Vince Curll, and the teacher, a big former wrestler, was dumbfounded on what to do. Soon the class was totally out of control, with a few students trying to pay attention amidst the chaos.  The poor teacher was gone within a month. At a party Buck went into a bathroom with a girl and asked guys to guard the door until they came out. He left it to our imaginations to decide what might have transpired.  In high school he organized a squad of male cheerleaders and knew how to charm most teachers, as well as the girls. I never much noticed homeroom teacher Mrs. Davis until he said she had quite a nice trim figure. He had a really cool mother, and at a party in his house I recall the Father of eleventh grader Fern McCullough barging in when he got wind that a daughter was there and supposedly rescuing her from the den of iniquity.  Elliott became a school principal, of all things, in Hawaii.  I’m sure he was a good one. He was confident and comfortable around everyone. At a reunion he regaled us with wonderful memories.

Commenting on one of my nostalgic posts was a woman with the same name as a childhood friend’s mother.  It turned out to be his kid sister Teena, who recalled playing hide-and-seek at night in our two-story garage during which her cousin hit someone over the head with a hammer. Teena was three years younger than I; when she was in seventh grade I drove her and a 13-year-old friend somewhere.  In my flawed memory (I have no memory of the hide-and-seek game) the friend asked me if I knew what a soul kiss was and I gave her one. She was cute and alluring but considered back then too young to date, like robbing the cradle, in the parlance of the time.  Likewise, Teena, a cute redhead now 75, would have been off limits.

From an obit I learned that Angela “Gigi” Morgan Medved of Valpo died at age 57. She was born in Gary in 1963, the year Democratic machine candidate A. Martin Katz, hand-picked choice of jailed Boss George Chacharis, was elected mayor and attorney Richard Hatcher won a seat on the city council. By the time Gigi graduated from Andrean, most white students had left Gary or, if not, sought schooling elsewhere. A coach and volunteer, Gigi, the obit read, “had a passion for cooking, the Chicago Cubs, hosting pool parties, and vacations to Clearwater, Florida.” How sad to die so young, in these times when friends cannot gather to mourn her passing until, hopefully, a later date.

I played five-person Acquire online.  Dave, the winner, had talked me through have to use Google Chrome to get to the Facebook site. I could see and talk with the other players, and gamemaster Jef Halberstadt held up tiles for us while others didn’t watch.

“Glory Road” may not be a great movie, but it tells a great story of Texas Western, a team with five black starters, upsetting a favored all-white Kentucky squad coached by a legend, in the 1966 NCAA championship.  On the team were two players from Gary, co-captains Harry Flournoy, an Emerson grad, and former Froebel star Orsten Artis, who subsequently became a Gary police officer.

Area Chinese joints were closed for business, but Wagner’s Ribs was still serving carry-out, seven days a week, eight hours a day, at least for the time being. Sunday was a beautiful day, brisk and sunny and at night a full moon shining between a couple clouds above the roof looking east from our homestead.

I Found Out

“It's not the love that's in your mind
It's the love that you might find
That's gonna save our lives”

    The Head and the Heart, “I Found Out

On September 11 the Head and the Heart performed at 20 Monroe in Grand Rapids, where 8 of us saw them last year.  They put on such an awesome show then that Phil, Dave, nephew Bob, and I traveled to Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown, California, my favorite roadhouse, for a special midnight show prior to their appearance at the Coachella Valley Music Festival.  Phil offered to go with me again, but both of us have been busy. I love the band’s new CD “Living Mirage,” especially “Missed Connection” and “I Found Out,” whose chorus is in my head. John Lennon recorded a different song by the same title on the 1970 “Plastic One Band” album that Red Hot Chili Peppers covered on the tribune CD “Working Class Hero.”  Expressing disillusionment with false idols and panaceas, Lennon wrote this lyric:

I've seen through junkies, I been through it all
I've seen religion from Jesus to Paul
Don't let them fool you with dope and cocaine
No one can harm you, feel yer own pain

I finished first in duplicate two days in a row, partnering with Charlie Halberstadt in Chesterton and Don Giedemann in Valpo, with whom I’d never played. Returning after long stints on the DL were Dee Browne and Karen Fieldhouse. Partnering with Pam Missman was a woman who introduced herself as Sarabel Nowlin, adding it rhymes with Clarabell – the mute clown on “The Howdy Doody Show” that aired afternoons between 1947 and 1960 during my childhood and teen years.  Sarabel’s niece, Marcia Carson, had brought delicious, home-bakes chocolate chip cookies to the Chesterton game the previous evening. One weird hand, Don opened a strong 2 Diamonds (18 or 19 points with even distribution), and I responded 2 Spades, indicating 7 or more points.  He bid 4 Clubs, asking for Aces, and when I signaled none, he bid 4 Spades, meaning I’d play the hand, being the first to bid that suit, despite holding just a Spade singleton. Don lay down Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and 2 other Spades, but one opponent was void in trump and the other had 6, as many as were in the dummy.  I ended up down one but tied for high board as 3 No Trump twice got set 2 and 6 Spades went down 4 doubled.

 Judy Selund and Don Geidemann at Portage Riverwalk; P-T photo by Carole Carlson

Corey Hagelberg dropped off posters announcing a “Northwest Indiana Youth Rally” at Portage Open Air Pavilion, organized by an IUN freshman who graduated from Portage High.  One consequence of global warming: rising water levels have eradicated Lake Michigan beachfront Portage Riverwalk.  I gave one to Raoul Contreras, adviser to the Public Affairs Club.  

 homeless man in Boulder; below, Willie Baronet

Several posters adorn faculty office windows reading, “This Is Awkward For Me, Too,” publicizing an IUN gallery exhibit titled “We Are All Homeless.” Willie Baronet, a creative advertising professor at Southern Methodist University, collected the signs used by indigents begging for help over a 20-year period.  Many were featured in the 2014 documentary “Signs of Humanity.” 

The Valparaiso University Invisible Project “Stories of Home and Homelessness” contains interviews with victims forced to seek shelter wherever they could. Co-directors Alison Schuette and Liz Wuerffel wrote, “Homelessness does not always look the way we imagine, and the homeless are important and valuable members of our community.”  A woman who suffered a nervous breakdown and lost her job, the use of the trailer she’d been living in, and custody of her children, told them:

I was in a car. And not wanting to ask for any help whatsoever. But finally I had to stay at my parents’ house, and my parents were trying to take the discipline type of road with me because I was acting out. They didn’t understand mental illness at the time. So, I slept on the couch, and I had a laundry basket with just my possessions. That was it. And I did that for an entire year. Which was very difficult, because I was in a household that didn’t understand what was going on with me. And then Housing Opportunities saved my life. They were fantastic, but I was on a waiting list for about a year. But they were wonderful, they talked to me. They were compassionate and helpful. The application process was painless. It’s sad that I had to wait a year, but they actually checked on me, also, to see, you know, how my situation was going and everything.

Housing Opportunities, a community-sustained nonprofit, provides a variety of services for the homeless in Porter and LaPorte counties. Its website states: “Some of our clients are not able to work due to crisis or disability. Some clients are professionals with college degrees who’ve hit hard times. Many clients are working or underemployed at minimum wage, struggling to support themselves or their families.”

As part of Indiana University’s Bicentennial Celebration, an IUN program will highlight faculty research projects, with professors speaking just 8 minutes.  My offer to report on “A Queer History of IU Northwest” was summarily rejected, as friends predicted, despite “queerness” currently being a hot topic in academia. I had been cautiously optimistic, if the decision was left to faculty and out of the hands of administrators.  In a form letter, Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Cynthia Odell wrote: “The selection committee, composed of representatives from the academic units, was very impressed with the breadth and depth of the proposals and had a difficult time making their final selections. Regretfully, your proposal was not selected for presentation this year. However, we hope to make this an annual event and encourage you to apply again in the future.”  I replied: “People told me my topic, “A Queer History of IU Northwest, was too controversial and certain to be turned down, but since I vowed not to mention names, I had hoped IUN had advanced into the twenty-first century.”  The shadow of queer scholar Anne Balay’s nemesis still looms large despite his recent retirement.

Fifteen years ago, when Paul Kern and I published “Educating the Calumet Region,” we mentioned the short-lived existence of the Gay/Lesbian/Bi-sexual Alliance during the 1980s and Pride Alliance in the 1990s, but did not mention that virtually all non-tenured gay faculty were closeted.  We also decided to leave out an incident when a professor rumored to be gay was removed from the classroom on spurious grounds.  Clearly the time has come to explore in depth this subject despite what others might think. “Educating the Region” contains this testimony by former librarian Ellen Bosman, now head of technical services at New Mexico State (below):

  During the late-1990s IUN’s handbook mentioned the existence of a club for gay and lesbian students but listed no adviser.  Its club statement implied a degree of secrecy I thought unnecessary and demeaning. I offered to be faculty adviser, and we rewrote the club description to make it more positive and inclusive.  One of our goals was to get people to embrace a concept of diversity that included sexual orientation.

  When the club was functioning, a good turnout would be maybe eight people.  We got to know each other and realized we weren’t so isolated.  We had a variety of activities, including a photo display, “Love Makes a Family,” that showed gay and lesbian couples with their children. One guest speaker talked about his bisexual experiences.  He was married, and his wife was aware of his lifestyle.  We brought in high school students from Evanston, including one who was transgendered, to talk about their experiences.

  We wanted people to realize our presence on campus.  For National Coming Out Day, we got big buckets of chalk and marked up the sidewalks with sayings, such as “Oscar Wilde was gay.”Some students were offended when we used African-American names such as Bessie Smith and Langston Hughes. They’d say, “How do you know they were gay?”  We’d say, “We didn’t make this up.  It can be verified in the library.” Sometimes when we put up signs, they’d be taken down. Eventually we got them put in locked cabinets.  Others claimed we were going against God’s will and expressed disappointment that such a club existed at IUN.

  After years of haggling, IU approved a domestic partner benefits program.  It allows same sex partners to register with the university and have their partners eligible for health coverage.
 

Noticing students and staff staring out windows in the Arts and Sciences Building, I found out that a careless driver had turned onto Broadway and plowed into someone legally in the crosswalk.  Next day, a female African-American IUN police officer told me the victim, likely in shock, originally claimed to be all right but was taken in an ambulance to be checked out.  It brought back memories of English professor George Bodmer struck and badly injured jaywalking near the accident site – one reason traffic signals were installed.  Until fairly recently, IUN’s police force was all-male and employed mostly white former Gary men in blue.  Researching “Educating the Region,” I interviewed African American Don Young, who endured hazing as a rookie and patrolled make-out areas in the evening such as Raintree Auditorium, isolated spots in the library, and far edges of parking lots (a dead giveaway that he’d find a couple in a compromising position).  I’ll mention Young’s experiences in explaining to Jon Becker’s freshmen seminar students the difference between a social and administrative history.
  

In the third week of bowling the Engineers salvaged one game against the Boricuas (the name indigenous Puerto Ricans called their island) mainly due to Ron Smith’s 213 in the finale.  Opponents Melody and Jaime Delgado brought a well-behaved baby. The Hobert Lanes manager wouldn’t switch channels to the Cubs game (causing me to miss Yu Darvish’s 6 shutout innings and 14 strikeouts); he claimed to be too busy juggling myriad duties at the counter and tending bar.  Instead we were stuck with a soap opera, mercifully on mute

 below, Zander Delgado; right, proud parents

Jim Spicer’s weekly witticism:

  Upon hearing that her elderly grandfather had just passed away, Katie went straight to her grandparent’s house to visit her 95-year old grandmother and comfort her. When she asked how her grandfather had died, her grandmother replied,“We were making love on Sunday morning.” Horrified, Katie told her grandmother that two people nearly one hundred years old having sex would surely be asking for trouble. “Oh no, my dear,”replied her grandmother. “Many years ago, realizing our advanced age, we figured out the best time to do it was when the church bells would start to ring. it was just the right rhythm. Nice and slow and even. Nothing too strenuous, simply in on the ding and out on the dong.”She paused to wipe away a tear and continued, “He’d still be alive if the ice cream truck hadn’t come along.”

 monuments in Marysville (left) and Sacramento

Prepping for Chris Young’s upcoming book club talk on the Pony Express, I found out that monuments exist in towns along the mail route from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.  One pictured in Jim DeFelice’s “West Like Lightning” is in the Marysville, Kansas, town square.  Sculpted by Richard Bergen, it depicts Jack Keetley, who traveled a trail leading to Big Sandy, located in Woodson County, where a pony truss bridge over Big Sandy Creek was recently removed but a cemetery contains the remains of several riders.

On September 11, 2001, watching the Today Showat breakfast, I witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center towers right before leaving to teach a U.S. History class at IUN’s Portage Center. From the car radio I found out that planes had rammed into the Pentagon and mysteriously crashed in western Pennsylvania. In class, one I’ll never forget, I talked about events that live in infamy, including the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor and JFK’s assassination, as well as meeting a Shiite family in Saudi Arabia while teaching in IU’s overseas program during the mid-80s.  One student had suggested I dismiss them.  I replied that anyone was free to leave, but nobody did. Colleague Rhiman Rotz, who was adviser to the Muslim Student Association, was critically ill at the time, and his last thoughts were concern for those students.

Network commentators are treating Trump’s dismissal of National Security adviser John Bolton as yet another example of a dysfunctional White House. Thoughtful liberals should be shouting hosannas. As Trump himself said, Bolton was a relentless hawk who would have the country warring on fronts from Venezuela and Cuba to Iran and North Korea. If I could cheer Nixon on the day he recognized China, I can breathe a sigh of relief with Bolton gone, whatever the cause.  Trump, first and foremost, is an America Firster, isolationist in foreign policy but unfortunately the ally of predatory capitalists and white supremacists.  A rank opportunist, he assumed this image for political gain and is beholden to those MAGA faithful that remain his base of support.

Toni was cutting up basil, and the aroma reached me in the basement. In Fort Washington neighbor Herb Sadtler, who shared our two-car garage, loved to brag about his herb garden, so we pronounced his name with the “H” silent, like “erb.”  Toni served basil atop a hamburger patty, and it was quite tasty when, at Toni's urging, I got around to eating it.  Ray Arredondo emailed me the obit he wrote for wife Trish, a good friend and collaborator on “Maria’s Journey.” He wrote this poignant remembrance: “Her love of nature and gardening brought her joy and she spent many long days outside, creating her garden “rooms.”  Although she would often comment about the deer and bunnies eating her blooms, she never did one thing to deter them.”

Trish, Maria, Ray Arredondo

Sandy

“And Sandy, the aurora is risin' behind us
This pier lights our carnival life forever
Oh love me tonight for I may never see you again
Hey Sandy girl

My, my baby

. . .
I just got tired of hangin' in them dusty arcades 

bangin' them pleasure machines
Chasin' the factory girls underneath the boardwalk 

where they all promise to unsnap their jeans”

Bruce Springsteen, “4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”

Within the first 30 minutes WXRT’s Saturday flashback show on the year 1973 featured great songs by Bruce Springsteen (“Sandy”), The Who, Patti Smith, Faces, Jackson Browne, and Elton John (“Grey Seal” from the double album “Beyond the Yellow Brick Road”).  I can’t recall ever hearing “Sandy” but the others were familiar.  Four-year-old Dave loved seeing Elton John, a great showma, on TV.  At an IUN History Department meeting Bill Neil referred to “the yellow brick road,”meaning from the movie, and Paul Kern said afterwards, “I was surprised Bill knew the Elton John album.” 1973 was an eventful year, with the Watergate hearings exposing Nixon’s criminality, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigning in disgrace, the Vietnam War ending in ignominy, the CIA overthrowing Chilean President Salvador Allende on behalf of international business interests, and the Supreme Court ruling on the controversial abortion case Roe v. Wade.

With Dorian in the news all week, finally wreaking havoc on the Carolina coast, I heard numerous references to Hurricane Sandy, which in 2012 battered the Jersey shore after first leaving destruction in its wake in the Caribbean. Dorian caused massive flooding in Nag’s Head, NC, not far from Kitty Hawk, where we spent a weekend while I was in grad school at Maryland.  I recall on the way trying to follow Dave Goldfield as he drove at high speeds beyond the capacity of our VW bug. One-year-old Phil ran into the Atlantic Ocean surf, got knocked down, and wanted no part of the beach the rest of the day, so we stayed by the motel swimming pool. In the news back then was an incident still vivid in my mind where a motel manager dumped chlorine in a pool when African Americans attempted to use it.

Hearing Bruce Springsteen’s“4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” reminded me of Sandy Sanders, softball teammate Ivan Jasper’s girlfriend during the 1970s.  She was blond, beautiful, a former high school track star, and warm and friendly. Sandy and Ivan eventually broke up because she wanted kids and he didn’t, having taken care of younger siblings most of his life after his mother deserted the family. In 1979 Ivan and Sandy took one last trip together to the Bahamas (last week devastated by Dorian) along with several other Portage Acres couples, including the four Lanes. Phil and Dave, then 10 and 11, loved Sandy, as did all of us. One afternoon by the pool she was lying on a beach chair when Ivan noticed them looking their way and briefly unsnapped and lifted her bikini top.

Steve Rushin of Sports Illustratedcan make any subject interesting.  Writing about the phasing out of tickets to sports events, as most folks receive them on mobile devices, Rushin admitted the technological advancement has its advantages but also, “like Dylan going electric, its drawbacks and consolations.”  Soon, Rushin quipped, nobody will know the meaning of,“I’ll take a rain check.” Collectors wax nostalgic over such items as tickets shaped like pineapples or catchers’ mitts.  Quite valuable would be one from Sandy Koufax’s last game as a Dodger in the 1966 World Series.  Koufax went 27-9 that season despite suffering from a sore arm that hastened his retirement as age 30.  I got a good laugh reading this paragraph:

  One U.S. Open golf spectator was given a replacement ticket after persuading officials that his dog had really eaten his pass. But the Michigan State season-ticket holder who inadvertently threw his tickets into his fireplace while burning old files was SOL.  His tickets did not rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes.

It took me a few seconds to realize that SOL stood for “shit outta luck.”Toni got it immediately.

Bob and Rhea Laramie

I cheered when Phil’s former soccer coach Bob Laramie, who identified himself as 49-year Portage resident posted this raffle ticket and wrote:“I hope these weapons being raffled off by the FOP do not come back to haunt the department or the citizens of Portage. In the future when they come wanting donation, they will be reminded about this. The Mayor supporting this will also lose my vote in the upcoming election. I have no problem with guns just weapons of war that people use to slaughter others.  Robert Laramie, 49-year resident of Portage

John Fraire, who I’ve known for many years and whose brother Rocky is a good friend, sent me this email:

  Some of my research on the Mexican community in NW Indiana was the collection of oral histories of some of the original Mexican residents in the East Chicago. They were collected under IRB guidelines at Western Michigan University and then were approved for use by the IRB office of Union Institute and University where I completed my doctorate. The narratives have all been transcribed and printed. I would like to donate the following to the Calumet Archives:  print copy of the transcribed narratives, release forms from the individuals interviewed, original transcriptions with handwritten notes, flash drive with all the interviews.

What a treasure trove! I responded: “I’m very excited at your choosing the Calumet Regional Archives as the repository for your valuable collection.  By the way, I see your brother Rocky when our book club meets every two months at Gino’s in Merrillville.” He emailed back: “Thank you Jim. And thanks for all your help over the years. I will let you know when I am headed back to Crown Point with the materials. It will be great to go over them with you.”  Fraire has written extensively about women’s baseball teams in Indiana Harbor and California.

photo by Marty Bohn

At Gardner Center in Miller Marty Bohn’s exhibit “Definitive Moments,” featured striking photos taken in Nepal, India, Morocco, and Cuba.  I’d love to visit Nepal and Cuba, not so much India or Morocco. This from Anne Balay, who misses living in Miller but was denied tenure at IUN due to blatant discrimination on the part of her immediate superior:

  My face is on this truck. The couple who drive it designed the truck to represent trucking as it was and at it is now. They wanted my book and the stories it tells represented. Given the number of closed doors that I have met with, this recognition feels so affirming. The audience I really care about gets it and I am so damn grateful.