Goodbye, Columbus

“I’m going home

I’m going to Palestine

Goodbye, Columbus.”

  1920s Yiddish song

The screenplay for the 1969 hit film “Goodbye Columbus” starring Ali McGraw and Richard Benjamin was based on a 1959 novella by Philip Roth that dealt with a romance between a young Jewish couple from different economic backgrounds.  The title comes from a ditty sung by graduating seniors at Ohio State, located in the largest of at least 20 American cities named for Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, whose mistreatment of indigenous people has caused a reconsideration of his place in history.  At Notre Dame, for example, university officials announced plans to cover up nineteenth-century murals by Italian Luigi Gregori depicting Indians and African Americans in submissive poses with the cruel conqueror.  They ultimately will be moved to a museum and exhibited for purposes of teaching and research.

In her Ayers Realtors Newsletter column “Home on the Range” Judy Ayers included a recipe for Apple Crisp that a friend gave her after they bought apples at Garwood Orchard in La Porte.  She recalled sharing the back seat of the family car with sister Jane during the 1950s in the days without navigation features, temperature control, and hand-held entertainment devices: 

  There was no air conditioning, and we traveled with all the windows rolled down.  Shouting was not only allowed but required.  Jane and I fiercely enforced with military precision a dividing line between her space and mine.  Even short trips required our mother to come up with activities to keep us occupied and less likely to bicker with one another.

Lane family trips from Fort Washington, PA, to visit relatives in Easton and McKeesport found brother Rich and I squabbling when not preoccupied with games involving passing vehicles’ license plates.  Sometimes, in a surprisingly low bass voice, Vic would sing multiple verses from a fraternity drinking song he learned at Pitt featuring a battle between a Russian and a Turk, Czarist warrior Ivan Skavinsky Skivar and Abdul Abulbul Amir (“The son of the desert, in battle aroused, could spit 20 men on his spear.  A terrible creature, both sober and soused, was Abdul Abulbul Amir”).  Vic would rest his left elbow on the open window (that part of his arm had a deeper summer tan) and have the vent window at an angle for increased ventilation, a feature now sadly unavailable on most automobile models. Whenever we approached a two-lane road, Vic would joke that two of us would have to get out.  Taking James to Liam’s house in Portage, we came upon a bridge on Samuelson Road that narrows to a single lane.  For old times’ sake, I quipped, “Looks like you’ll have to get out.”  He’d heard me use the line before but obligingly chuckled.

Ron Cohen showed me a new book by Penn State professor Gary S. Cross, “Machines of Youth: America’s Car Obsession,” that contains several references to my Fifties Steel Shavings, “Rah Rahs and Rebel ’Rousers,” published in 1994 and containing oral histories of Calumet Region residents who were teenagers during the era when Baby Boomers were becoming old enough to drive.  I got my license while still in tenth grade and picked up prom date Mary Delp in my parents’ yellow-and-white 1956 Buick. In the back seat were Vince Curll and Pam Henry. On bethleham Pike, a three-lane highway, I attempted to pass a slow-moving vehicle only to have the driver speed up and not let me in as a car bore down on me from the other direction.  I barely made it.  I’m not sure the three passengers realized how close we’d come to a head-on collision.  Weekends I’d cruise in Bob Reller, Pete Drake or Skip Pollard’s car; we’d often end up at a drive-in theater or diner hoping to hook up with girls.  

I emailed Gary Cross to tell him how delighted I was to be in the book and ask where he had come across “Rah Rahs and Rebel ’Rousers.”  He answered within the hour, informing me that Steel Shavings was at Penn State library and calling the interviews in it priceless and invaluable for his book.  Pretty cool!  Other books by Cross include “Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood” (1999) and “Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity” (2008).

A right-winger responded to Ray Smock’s indictment of Trump by claiming Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff were evil and that God would punish them, adding “How I miss the USA of the 50s.”  Smock replied sarcastically:

Yeah, I sure miss Joe McCarthy, hunting for communists behind every tree. I miss the duck and cover exercises while the world went mad with nuclear bombs tested in the atmosphere. I miss the old days of the colorful crime bosses who made murder seem so cool. And I sure miss Jim Crow America. But I was a kid then, and I lived in a kid world, oblivious to such things. I am not a kid anymore. I live in the present. I will oppose the corruption of Donald Trump because I love my country and want to see it do so much better than it is doing right now. He is killing the Constitution every day of his presidency. This is the worst crime of all. He insults everyone who has ever defended the Constitution and stood up for the rule of law. 

Liz Wuerffel (left) with Valpo candidates for mayor, council & clerk/treasurer; below, Pete Visclosky

My friend Liz Wuerffel lost a race for Valparaiso city council to the outgoing mayor’s son, as Republicans, running scared, outspent Democrats by a four-to-one margin.  Congressman Pete Visclosky, 70, announced he would not seek another term as Indiana’s First District Representative on the 35th anniversary of his upset win over incumbent Katie Hall and Lake County prosecutor Jack Crawford.  During that campaign Visclosky, son of Gary’s interim mayor after George Chacharis went to prison, solicited our votes in person at our remote Maple Place residence within the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  Roy Dominguez met Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg while in South Bend and wrote on Facebook: “We are so proud of his accomplishments, and he would make a great President of the U.S.A.!!!”

 Pete Buttigieg and Roy Dominguez

In “Amy and Isabelle” novelist Elizabeth Strout, so skilled at revealing the inner lives of everyday people, attributes office worker Bev’s addiction to cigarettes to loneliness.  Strout wrote:

  Bev knew why she smokes.  She smoked for the same reason she ate: it gave her something to look forward to.  It was as simple as that.  Life could get dull, and you had to glook forward to something.  When she was first married, she had looked forward to going to bed with her husband Bill, in that hot little apartment on Gangover Street. Boy, they used to have a good time.  It made up for everything, all their squabbles over money, dirty socks, drops of pee in front of the toilet – all those little things you had to get used to when you married someone.

  Funny how it could wear off, something that good.  But it did.  Bev kind of lost interest after the first baby was born.  She began to resent how night after night he’d still want to do it, that rigid thing always there.  It was because she was exhausted and the baby cried so much.  Her breasts were different too after that tiny angry baby had sucked them till the nipples cracked; and she had never lost the weight.  Her body seemed to stay swollen, and by God she was pregnant again.  So at a time when her house, her life, was filling up, she had experienced an irrepressible feeling of loss. They still did it once in a while, silently, and always in the dark.

The opening paragraph of Stroud’s new novel “Olive, Again” re-introduces a unique, unforgettable character, whom I came to love, nonjudgmental in matters of the heart but one who did not suffer fools - and played in an HBO mini-series by Frances McDormand:

  In the early afternoon on a Saturday in June, Jack Kennison (Bill Murray in the mini-series) put on his sunglasses, got into his sports car with the yop down, strapped the seatbelt over his shoulder and across hos large stomach, and drove top Portland – almost an hour away – to buy a gallon of whiskey rather than bump into Olive Kitteridge at the grocery store here in Crosby, Maine.

Chesterton bridge partner Joel Charpentier and I are on quite a roll, finishing first, third, and first in the three weeks since first pairing up. On Tuesday second-place finishers Chuck and Marcy Tomes cleaned our clock the final two hands, so edging them out came as a surprise.  I asked Terry Bauer, whose daughter is working in Hong Kong, whether she still is staying clear of the anti-government protests.  For all the publicity they’ve generated, he noted, not a single person has died.  It's more like street theater, with each side getting its point across.

This poignant letter from Ray Andersen of Newburgh, IN, appeared in the November 2019 Bridge Bulletin:

  My wife and I have participated in all of The Longest Day promotions to raise funds to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. About two years ago, she began to change.  Once a good bridge player, the last time we played bridge as partners (about four months ago) she could no longer recognize even simple things such as Jacoby transfers (responses to a 1 No Trump bid). I hope that ACBL (American Contract Bridge League) will continue The Longest Day promotions to fight this wicked disease, and that all of our members will participate and contribute.  Now it’s personal.

 Lucy Mercer

Leafing through Jean Edward Smith’s FDR biography that Jim Pratt will be discussing at my upcoming book club, I enjoyed the account of Roosevelt’s romance with Lucy Mercer that blossomed during World War I.  After giving birth to five children, Eleanor decided that they’d practice abstinence.  Acerbic cousin Alice Roosevelt Longworth quipped, “Franklin deserved a good time.  He was married to Eleanor.”  On July 16, 1917, anxious to have Eleanor away from Washington, DC, for the rest of the summer, Roosevelt wrote her, “You were a goosy girl to think that I don’t want you here because you know I do.  But honestly you ought to have six straight weeks at Campobello.” In a chapter covering the emergence of 1940 Republican Presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, a Democrat until just months before the nominating convention, former Republican Senator James E. Watson said of his fellow Hoosier, “If a whore repented and wanted to join the church, I’d personally welcome her and lead her up the aisle to a pew.  But I’d not ask her to lead the choir the first night.”

  

Prior to the 1940 Democratic convention FDR had decided to seek an unprecedented third term due to the war in Europe but, according to Jean Edward Smith, only on the condition that Secretary of Agriculture be his running-mate.  He believed Wallace’s candidacy would help him carry farm states and that Wallace would support liberal programs in the event anything happened to him, in contrast to Vice President John Nance Garner or House Speaker William B. Bankhead of Alabama.  It took determined arm-twisting by Jim Farley and Jimmy Byrnes and a moving convention speech by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to carry the day.  

In July 1944 FDR traveled on the cruiser Baltimore to Hawaii to meet with military leaders Douglas MacArthur and Chester Nimitz to finalize strategy for defeating Japan and to quiet rumors that his health was failing.  While in Honolulu the President toured military bases and requested that he be photographed with Nisei (Japanese-American) soldiers.  He also visited an amputee ward, his only public appearance ever in a wheelchair.  Jean Edward Smith wrote: “The President stopped at one bed after another, chatting briefly.  He wanted to show his useless legs to those who would face the same affliction.”

Mayor Pete

“The function of education is to teach us how to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of education.”  Martin Luther King

photo by April Lidinsky

South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg officially announced his candidacy for President.  On the strength primarily of his brilliant appearances on network news shows, the openly gay former Rhodes scholar and Afghanistan war veteran has polled third among the crowded field of Democratic hopefuls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, behind only septuagenarians Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.  On MSNBC Joe Scarborough asked Buttegieg to describe himself in a single word; “Millennial,”the 38 year-old replied.  A decade ago, Robert Blaszkiewicz, then working for the NWI Times, encountered him when he ran for state treasurer.  Robert told me to keep an eye of him, that he was really impressive and heading places.  Tom and Darcey Wade have read his book “Shortest Way Home,” and son Brady has been working for him without pay. Tom displayed lawn signs he hopes to distribute to supporters. Throwing his hat in the ring at a refurbished complex formerly owned by Studebaker Corporation before an overflow crowd, Buttigieg embraced his husband Chasten and gave him a kiss.  Tears flowed freely.

In “Mayor Pete has caught Republicans’ attention” Times columnist Brian Howery wrote that Vice President Mike Pence, pouncing on a moving statement Buttigieg made at a LGBT Victory Fund brunch, shamefully accused him of breaking a pledge to run a civil campaign and attacking the former Hoosier governor’s Christian values.  Poppycock!  Addressing his sexual orientation, Buttigieg said, “It’s hard to face the truth that there were times in my life that, if you had shown me exactly what is was inside me that made me gay, I would have cut it out with a knife.  If you had offered me a pill to make me straight, I’d have swallowed it before you had time to give me a cup of water.”  Then he added: “That’s the thing that I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: that if you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me, your problem, sir, is with my Creator.”    

Brian Howery’s column cited these observations by Andrew Sullivan of New York magazine about the 2020 election, emphasizing the differences between Buttigieg and the White House incumbent:

 Trump would be the oldest president in history; Buttigieg would be the youngest at 39.  Trump landed in politics via his money and celebrity after years in the limelight; Buttigieg is the mayor of a mid-size midwestern town, unknown until a few weeks ago.  Trump is a pathological, malevolent narcissist from New York, breaking all sorts of norms.  Buttigieg is a modest, reasonable pragmatist, and a near parody of normality.  Trump thrives on a retro heterosexual persona; Buttigieg appears to be a rather conservative, married homosexual.  Trump is a coarad and a draft dodger; Butiegieg served his country. Trump does not read; Buttigieg does.  Trump’s genius is demonic demagoguery.  Buttigieg’s gig is careful reasoning.  Trump is a pagan; Buttigieg is a Christian.  Trump vandalizes government; Buttigieg nurtures it. To put it simply, Mayor Peter seems almost designed to expose everything that makes the country tired of Trump.

Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal, believing the political system is at a crossroads, put it this way: “As different as the two men are in most every way, Candidate Buttigieg might not exist without the example of President Trump, who shattered expectations and the old paradigms in 2016.”My dream ticket for 2020 include Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete, with whomever prevails in the primaries choosing the other as running mate.

Adra Young and Hobart H.S. students Brandon Marciniak and Tyler Schultz; photos by Kyle Telechan

Big doings at IU Northwest over the weekend.  Several motivational speakers appeared at a Youth Violence and Drug Prevention conference, including Indiana Parenting Institute COO Jena Bellezza and Northwest Indiana Heath Department Cooperative tobacco prevention coordinator Cynthia Sampson. Adra Young’s keynote address linked bullying and substance abuse.

Leaving John Will Anderson Library Friday afternoon, I noticed a job fair in progress involving area schools.  In the lobby were tables for Merrillville, Gary’s 21st Charter School (located across thestreet from the ruins of City Methodist Church), and others.  A greeter directed me to the East Chicago Central table in the conference center. Two comely administrators, who introduced themselves as Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Hogan, greeted me.  Both knew son Dave and raved about what a great, caring teacher he is. Mrs. Hogan, now a vice principal, is an IUN grad whom Dave mentored when she was in the UTEP program.  She recalled taking a course from me and reading a Steel Shavings article about a Region resident overcoming numerous obstacles.  Her son Carrington Frank is presently a student of Dave’s.  I gave both copies of the latest Shavingsand directed them to a section titled “Twin City” that contained photos of Dave with the E.C. Central  girls tennis team, league champs with a 10-2 record.  Also in that section were photos of NBA basketball player E’Twuan Moore, a Central grad, putting on a summer basketball camp.  Along with Kawaan Short and Angel Garcia, Moore was part of the 2007 state championship team coached by Pete Trgovich that defeated Mr. Basketball Eric Gordon and North Central, 87-83, in the exciting final.

 Lorrell D. Kilpatrick

IUN Minority Studies professor Raoul Contreras and Rene Nunez of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies hosted a two-day Participatory Democracy conference centering on the theme “Democracy is in the Streets.”  I missed the Friday evening events but attended a Saturday workshop titled “Active resistance of racial and social injustice” chaired by Dr. Patricia Ann Hicks and featuring Lorrell D. Kilpatrick, adjunct professor of Sociology and co-organizer of the Gary chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM).  On Twitter Kilpatrick describes herself as a Marxist Black feminist, environmentalist, and disability rights advocate.  Kilpatrick asked the several dozen participants their initial impression of Black Lives Matter.  Most decried police brutality but were less certain about such BLM tactics as stopping traffic.  When a person identified himself as half white, half black, Patricia Hicks explained that categories of race are meaningless and that we all share common ancestors. 

Kilpatrick made clear she didn’t want excessive speech-making or participants talking more than once until everyone had a chance to make their views known. That didn’t sit well with three men, one of whom spent ten minutes merely introducing himself as , among other things, an agent who booked strippers for the “Jerry Springer Show.”  He argued that activists should be addressing black-on-black crime rather than the police.  A second pontificator excoriated the justice system; a third claimed Moors were the first Americans and that pre-Columbian tribes deserved their land back.  While all may have had some valid points, Lorrell wisely did not let allow them to take over the agenda. 

Yu Zhang, second from left

During the workshop and at lunch I sat with Yu Zhang, a personable IUN actuarial science grad student who is taking a class with Raoul Contreras.  She’s been in the U.S. 13 years, speaks perfect English, has a three-year-old, and works at Methodist Hospital, both in Merrillville and Gary. She had not heard of Cubs pitcher Yu Darvish and told me that Yu can be either a male or female name depending on the pronunciation and inflection.  Googling her name, I discovered that she was part of a team, including Steven Rynne, Anthony Zuccolo, Jacob Jakubowicz, and Jillian Milicki, that competed last year in an international competition and out of 70 universities worldwide was the only U.S. team to reach the finals.  They called themselves the Redhawk (Pi)rates.

Angie and Becca; in audience Toni and Beth (right), Tamiya, Dave, Jimbo (below) 

At Chesterton H.S. Becca sang Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” at the Duneland Exchange Club Talent Show.  Since we skipped the primary and junior divisions, the program was a decent length and the dozen acts quite good, especially granddaughter Becca (it goes without saying).  My two other favorites were a dance group featuring Ellery Brunt, Barbara Holslaw (rhymes with Cole slaw), and Mackenzie Simmons performing to Lady Gaga’s “Shallow” and Ally Christian playing guitar and singing to “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones with drummer Colin Campbell accompanying.  Winner of the ACE (Accepting the Challenge of Excellence) Award was Elias Hanna, a Syrian immigrant who knew very little English when he started at Chesterton as a freshman.  By senior year he was making straight A’s in mostly honors courses and preparing to go to Icollegeand major in pre-med.  Coming up from Fishers, Beth brought me a delicious blueberry pie as a belated birthday present.  After the show, Dave and Tamiya Towns dropped in for pie and in Tamiya’s case Toni’s beef stew, which she had enjoyed at dinner.  Toni gave her a bowl to take home.

above, Elias Hanna; below, Guetano Givens on left at Ball State

While Mayor Pete’s candidacy was front page news, the Times Forum section contained a column by IUN Chancellor William J. Lowe touting the fiftieth anniversary of IUN’s Minority Studies program and the Black Student Union (BSU) members, including Jerry Samuels, whose pressure helped bring it about.  He cited present BSU member Guetano Givens, who persevered against numerous obstacles to receive a degree after six years.  In October 2017, Givens attended a Diversity Research Seminar at Ball State, where the keynote speaker, Angela Davis, bemoaned the nation’s unjust prison system. Last year Givens was with a group that visited Atlanta on the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination.

I spent a snowy Sunday afternoon watching the thrilling climax to the Masters tournament.  Tiger Woods entered the final round two strokes behind Italian Francesco Molinari and caught him when Molinari put a tee shot in the water and settled for a double bogie.  Another half-dozen players were within a stoke of the lead, including reining PGA champ Brooks Koepka.  The issue was in doubt until Tiger putted to within inches of the cup on the eighteenth green.  Listening to the crowd roar “Tiger, Tiger, Tiger”and watching him embrace his two kids and Thai mother was unbelievably emotional.  Afterwards, Koepka and several others who grew up idolizing Tiger waited to offer their congratulations.

Dean Bottorff posted these kind words on Facebook:

  Thanks to James Lane for the shout-out in the new edition of Steel Shavings. For those who may not know, Steel Shavingsis a publication by Indiana University that records the daily lives of those living in Northwest Indiana. Jim, ever the historian, publishes Steel Shavings that will be an invaluable reference for future historians who will want to understand the rise of America's industrial heartland cities such as Gary, IN, and the issues such places faced in the 21st Century. Unlike most historical references Steel Shavings will provide future historians an intimate view of everyday life of ordinary people. So if anyone in the 25th Century wants to know anything about Ann Bottorff’s role in a scavenger hunt, this is where he or she will find it. My personal thanks goes out to Jim for publishing this picture of me.

Arriving early for book club at Gino’s, I ordered an APA on draft and Jimmy the owner placed a plate of delicious mushrooms in front of me.  On TV was coverage on the 850-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral ablaze, with its iconic spire collapsing.  With a stone foundation all indications are that it will be restored eventually.  Bar mates were speculating whether it was a terrorist act.  

 Barbara Wisdom and Rock Fraire

Barbara Wisdom’s excellent book club presentation on “A Slave in the White House” was succinct and thought-provoking.  We learned that it was Paul Jennings, not Dolley Madison, who rescued the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington before the British sacked the White House during the War of 1812 and that Dolley gave the diminutive fourth president piggy back rides.  All agreed that Dolley was heartless toward her slaves, even selling her faithful mistress of 30 years to enable her spendthrift son to buy a new suit.  At the conclusion of the talk I declared that as a descendant of Harriet Lane, I now proclaim her the best First Lady of the nineteenth century.  Learning I was related to President James Buchanan, Jim Pratt suggested I report on a book about him.  “There’s only one,”Brian Barnes quipped.

Rockin' in the Free World

“There’s a warnin’ sign
On the road ahead.”
Neil Young

Before I gave the eulogy paying tribute to Bill Neil at IUN’s Faculty Organization, retired historian Fred Chary gaveled the meeting to order and mentioned the cohort of “Young Turks” that Bill hired between 19655 and 1972 – Ron, Paul, Rhiman, Fred, and I - being mainstays of the department for 35 years. Since I was going out afterwards to Three Floyds Brewery in Munster with colleagues Jonathyne Briggs, Jerry Pierce, and Diana Chen-lin, I stayed for the entire meeting. The main agenda item was revising the promotion and tenure guidelines. Alan Barr explained the proposed changes, which included faculty having less recourse to appeal negative committee votes, something Alan said he had opposed in committee. After Barr argued that Research and Teaching are by far the most important component in the process and disparaged certain guidelines in the Academic Handbook, Ken Schoon rebuked him in a passionate appeal to allow faculty to be able to make a case for near excellence in any or all three categories of research, teaching, and service and that the latter is especially important in departments such as Education, SPEA, Business, and Nursing. With the vocal backing of many in the audience he concluded that faculty who won’t follow Handbook guidelines should disqualify themselves from serving on promotion and tenure committees. Schoon, the author of “Calumet Beginnings,” has impeccable research credentials, so his arguments were not self-serving. Still angry about a colleague having been denied tenure despite his obvious worth to the campus, I stifled an impulse to get in my two cents worth. Fortunately an appeal process was available to him.

The reviews for Three Floyds Brewery were either five-star raves (“great beer and food”) or one-star disgust (at the rude waiters and doorman). I’ve heard ads for a service that gets rid of unwanted negative comments about one’s business – Three Floyds should look into it. While our waiter wasn’t exactly friendly, he was efficient. Anne Balay and two other young English lecturers joined us as well as Sociology professor Kevin McElmurry, who lives in Miller and praised realtor Gene Ayers for helping him find a house. Anne mentioned going to last year’s Oral History Association conference in Atlanta and meeting Alessandro Portellli. We sampled each other’s beers, and I had two delicious Alpha Pale Ales. By the time we left the place was packed, with more folks in the lobby and outside waiting for tables. Diana was so sweet to come and so complimentary about the Neil eulogy that I gave her a hug as I left and told her I loved her.

Took a short nap before heading to L.F. Norton’s in Lake Station to hear Dave sing with Blues Cruise, featuring Bruce Sawochka and prodigy named Steve, who wore a Joe Perry “Have Guitar Will Travel t-shirt and clearly relished playing with his former teacher (Bruce) and jamming during a break with Dave on Neil Young songs. Introducing “Rockin’ in the Free World,” Dave said it was one of “my dad’s” favorites and dedicated it to Marianne, whose late husband Tim (“Big Voodoo Daddy”) played a scorching lead guitar on what had been Voodoo Chili’s signature song. Fred McColly graced us with his presence, as did Robert Blaszkiewicz, who works for The Times and is helping me obtain high quality photos of Sheriff Dominguez. He is very impressed with 29 year-old Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic candidate for state treasurer last year who is running for mayor of South Bend. He’s a comer, Robert predicted. I danced with Lorraine Todd-Shearer, Marianne Brush, and Angie and talked with Ken Gagliardi, a Hobart policeman and old classmate of Dave’s who bowled with us in a mixed league (Sunday Night Rowdies) several years ago. On Facebook Lorraine wrote: “Saw the band tonight, great. I need Steve’s last name, he is talented to say the least. Get some Aerosmith in you set list, you can tell that kid wants to let it go!”

Following an exchange of Facebook messages with Lorraine, hubby John Shearer requested that we be friends. I confirmed. Meanwhile a couple dozen others have requested that we be friends, including several people I don’t recognize, but I’ve held off adding them because I send so few Facebook messages. If I didn’t get an email notice that someone had commented about me, I’d almost never check my wall.

Teachers and steelworkers in Indiana and Wisconsin are protesting en masse against proposals by Republican governors to pass right-to-work laws and prohibit collective bargaining by public employees. Old friend Alice Bush, divisional director for SEIU Local 73, was on the cover of The Post-Tribune addressing angry comrades at McBride Hall. “This is an orchestrated effort on the part of the powers that be in this country – a well-placed, well-planned all-out attack on all of us who are working people,” she asserted. Another photo showed a grey-haired, bearded middle age worker identified as Dario Llano. Twenty years ago I had a student by that name who wrote about his father growing up during the Sixties. It has to be either the father or son, I wonder which. Indiana governor Mitch Daniels has been trying to bust teachers unions for years. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker rode to victory three months ago with Tea Party support and his attempts to railroad anti-union legislation into law has caused to Democratic legislators to flee to Illinois to prevent the necessary quorum. Tom Wade is thinking of joining demonstrators at the state capitol in Madison. Talking with Sheriff Dominguez on the phone, I expressed gratitude that he was making common cause with public employees; organized labor will remember those who stood by them in this hour of crisis.

Kids in the “Annie” cast performed a couple songs at Southlake Mall. Because the girl playing “Annie” was in Wisconsin, Rebecca, her understudy, got to be Annie, complete with red wig. During the “Tomorrow” number she was holding a dog on a leash. Right at the end the dog bolted from the stage. Angie posted the performance on Facebook.

Anne Balay wanted to meet gay and lesbian steelworkers at Leroy’s Hot Stuff, so I joined her and three friends Saturday. We listened to the band, C 4, for a bluesy set and then moved to the restaurant side where we could hear each other. I told Anne that I wished the band had played a good rock ‘n’ roll number so we could have danced.

Tom had a good day gaming, winning three of five. My lone victory was in Stone Age by a mere three points. I bought two double hut cards that Tom needed more than I and played a starvation strategy, concentrating on purchasing huts.