Plague Journals

 Indiana Historical Society is encouraging Hoosiers to document what it’s like experiencing this unique moment with an initiative called “Telling Your Story: Documenting COVID-19 in Indiana.”  In a sense, this is what I’ve been doing in my blog and occasional Facebook ramblings.  Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich has endorsed the concept and publicized a Facebook site urging a similar practice. Former Valpo teacher Jerry Hager suggested starting by writing down 20 thoughts about something or someone. 

 

“Dear Amy” devoted her advice column to coping with the new reality and urged readers to provide anecdotes on plans postponed, cancelled or otherwise upset and creative activities substituted for them. She wrote:

    When you have so many externals stripped away, it is the basics that quickly emerge as daily blessings: Good neighbors.  Mostly reliable wireless service. Drive-thru Dunkin’

    For me, visits to the gym 10 miles away have been replaced by solitary walks in the woods.  Yesterday I saw the first signs of fiddle-head fern breaking through the forest floor.

    Faced with an empty facility, workers at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago released the penguins to roam the halls – and filmed their adorable escapades, as they went on a “field trip” to meet other animals.

 

Several people are posting photos of places they’ve traveled to, such as San Antonio (Dave), Iceland (Lisa Teuscher), Cabo observing humpback whales (Shannon Bayer), and a Long Beach Pow-Wow (John Attinasi).  Stay-at-home massages are prominent: Ray Gapinski showed Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” farm couple inside and a pitchfork lying unattended outside. Paul Kaczocha is still posting shots of Comet and Tamale romping by themselves on Sullivan Street beach. I have not yet mastered posting photos with my borrowed laptop (should have gotten a MAC if one were available).  I’m happy to do what I can, thanks to IUN’s Help Desk folks, Larry, Missy, Tony, Roger, and others.

 

My life has settled into a routine that includes watching daily a free OnDemand movie (preferably one with Scarlett Johansen, Ethan Hawke, or Richard Gere) and a documentary.  ESPN has some good ones; one I enjoyed documented the NBA Celtics-Lakers rivalry of the 1980s.  It helped that I had forgotten which team won the 3 featured championship series.  Having rooted against Boston during the era when Bill Russell-led teams almost always triumphed over Wilt Chamberlain’s squad, I naturally was pulling for L.A., especially since the Celtics employed dirty play to make up for being less talented than Kareem Abdul Jabbar and company.  What made it especially compelling was that both Magic Johnson and Larry Byrd were such great players and fierce competitors.

Toni has started a puzzle of Van Gogh’s “Starry Starry Night” that looks to me to be impossible.  She has completed the outside pieces and one corner.  I have contributed exactly one piece despite poring over it on several occasions.


I have completed the two books I got from Banta Center, B.B. King’s excellent autobiography and Len O’Connor’s “Requiem: The Decline and Demise of Mayor Daley and His Era.”  The latter got somewhat repetitive, as if the author had put the manuscript together from columns. Demonstrations of Daley’s oversized ego took priority over analysis, and even though Hizzoner suffered humiliation over Democrats faring badly in the 1976 election (Jimmy Carter losing Illinois, for example, to Gerald Ford), Daley’s grip on Chicago remained strong despite grumbling in black wards. Next up: rereading John Updike’s “Rabbit” series

 

Here’s hoping and knocking on wood that most journals, including mine, avoid having to document actually coming down with the virus.  Many years ago, Newsweek columnist Stewart Alsop wrote about living with a terminal disease.  My friend Dave Malham reported on learning h had ALS.  As instructive as these were, not to mention brave, I do not wish to travel down that path.

 

Turkey Season

“What do you call a cluster of featherless turkeys?  A cluster pluck.”

             (First Thanksgiving by Jennie A. Brownscombe)

Renditions of the first Thanksgiving in 1621 are based on based largely on speculation and myth.  The separatists (later designated Pilgrims) who arrived  on the Mayflower the year before were indeed aided in the cultivation of corn, beans and squash by the Wampanoag Tisquantum (Squanto).  In 1614 he had been captured and sold into slavery before returning to America as a translator and finding his Patuxet band virtually wiped out by a smallpox epidemic.  There is no evidence that turkey was served at the three-day harvest celebration and certainly no pies, but fowl were plentiful in the area, so wild duck or turkey may have been available, and the Wampanoag (“People of the Dawn”) visitors probably provided venison.  Some might have perished in the 1637 Pequot massacre, others (or their descendants) in King Philip’s War during the mid-1670s.

At bridge Terry Bauer mentioned that a daughter was visiting her sister in Hong Kong and found it easy to get around and shop because there were virtually no tourists due to the continuing anti-government protests.  She was surprised to find mountains and hills with plentiful hiking trails.  On one such excursion 25 years ago, I recall encountering a beautiful waterfall and a troop of monkeys that, Dean Bottorff warned, loved to steal cameras from careless tourists.  Don Geidemann and Judy Selund had a final round sit-out.  As they left, Don said, “Happy Thanksgiving, turkeys” – as in jive turkeys. They were amazed to find out later that they scored a 73.61 percent, earning an acknowledgement in Barbara Walczak’s Newsletter.  Geidemann told her: 

  The super game was overdue.  Some may apply the idioms, “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometime” or “Every dog has its day” but we believe that we have graduated from “The school of Hard Knocks” both in our personal lives and at the bridge tables. Judy and I initiated our partnership 13 months ago.  Our agreement includes tolerance for missed bids and missed plays.  We are still learning as we go.

Judy added: “Our objective is to minimize the bonehead mistakes.”

 Don Geidemann and Judy Selund, photo by Charlie Halberstadt

We had a great time at Evelyn and Herb Passos’ for Thanksgiving as did Don and Judy, a former gym teacher and longtime friend of Evelyn’s.  I enjoyed chatting with sons Max Passo, who started medical school in August, and Alex, a former student and now an attorney.  Next day, we had 23 family members and guests at the condo for our belated Thanksgiving, almost half of whom spent the night.  Toni served turkey, ham, and a tofu turkey roll that I did not sample, saving room for daughter-in-law Beth’s cherry and blueberry pie.  During the course of the day I played Lost Cities, Acquire, Perudo, and Werewolf.  I was about to turn in when Phil, Alissa, and Beth persuaded me to watch Super Troopers 2, the sequel to the 2002 campy cult classic.  After a hilarious dream sequence, it went downhill but was good for cheap laughs and groan-worthy puns.  Obnoxious Rodney Farva (Kevin Hefferman) tells fellow troopers, “You know they have Eskimo hookers up here [in Canada]?  When they have sex, they really get ‘Inuit.’”  It was fun spotting cameos by Rob Lowe (as minor league hockey legend Guy LeFranc), Lynda “Wonder Woman” Carter, grown up “Wonder Years” star Fred Savage, and black comedian Damon Wayans Jr.

The Memorial Opera House Holiday production, Meredith Wilson’s “Miracle on 34th Street,” was originally a 1947 movie.  In eighth grade at Barnum Junior High in Birmingham, Michigan, I saw the film 30 minutes at a time during a week of lunch hour.  The musical, first titled “Here’s Love,” opened on Broadway in 1963.  Set at Macy’s in New York City, the play references Macy’s competitor Gimbel’s. In the early 1960s when I worked in a law firm mailroom in Philadelphia’s center city, department stores appeared to be in their prime. There was no Macy’s but Gimbel’s, Wanamaker’s, and Strawbridge and Clothier were three of the grandest, with holiday window displays to attract shoppers.

"Miracle on 34th Street" photos by Ray Gapinski

The strong cast included charismatic Thomas Olsen as Kris Kringle (who co-starred in “La Cage Aux Folles”), Frank Allen as a drunk Santa and a fictitious R.H. Macy (the family sold the business in 1895 shortly after founder Rowland Hussey Macy died), and several talented youngsters, including preteen Goldie Samardzija in a prominent role as the store manager’s daughter.  Portage attorney Dan Whitten played several characters, including the Governor and the D.A. While the dialogue was dated (for example, the romantic lead referred to his love interest as a dame), the music and dance numbers were  great.  During intermission I spoke with bowling buddies Dorothy Peterson and Gene Clifford.  During turkey hunting season Gene, 82, arrived at Hobart Lanes sporting a black eye.  When a wild turkey surprised him, he fired his weapon and it recoiled while it was too close to his face. At the curtain call Kris Kringle (Olsen) asked the audience to join in an encore of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”
                  Dan Whitten, fourth from left

Chancellor Lowe and F C Richardson

At Pesko’s I ordered a Yuengling on draft and steak salad, enhanced by onions Dick Hagelberg discarded and several slices of delicious bread. Brian Barnes noted that he’d attended the annual IUN Chancellor’s Medallion banquet as guest of former dean F.C. Richardson and wife Bernice who were honored for their many years of service to the university.  After serving as Chancellor of IU Southwest, Richardson returned to Northwest Indiana and became an advisor to Chancellor Lowe, whom Brian briefly met. The citation stated:

    Only the second African-American to join IU Northwest’s faculty, F C is celebrated for his advocacy for Black rights during the Civil Rights movement. One of F C’s most important career contributions was his role as advisor for IU Northwest’s Black Caucus, now known as the Black Student Union. 

    F C’s wife, Bernice, earned degrees in elementary education from IU Bloomington in 1968 and IU Northwest in 1973 and spent most of her career in Gary schools, primarily in the roles of assistant principal and principal.  Bernice also served as an IU Northwest Alumni Association board member for several years.

 muddied up Andrew Weil with rosemary and mint plants

In “Food for Dissent” (2019).  Maria McGrath seemed conflicted about self-health guru Andrew Weil, a onetime hippie who kept alive counterculture precepts (i.e., the revolution must begin inside each person’s head) but profited by hawking of all sorts of products purportedly leading to physical well-being. I came across the name of Mike McGrath, editor of Organic Gardening during the 1990s and wondered if he was related to Maria.  The final chapter discussed Ron Dreher, author of “Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counter-Culture and Its Return to Roots” (2006).  McGrath concluded:

  Conservatives’ presence in the hippie-left movement surprised and disturbed natural foods proponents with countercultural biographies and affinities. It should not have. Cultural preservation, pastoral sentimentality, and moralistic consumerism – the movement’s fundamentals – were always there, ready for conservative adaptation.

I came across Rodger McDaniel’s “Dying for Joe McCarthy’s Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt” (2013).  Hunt, a former Democratic governor elected to the Senate in 1948, was an outspoken opponent of the Wisconsin demagogue Joseph McCarthy.  Rightwing Republicans Styles Bridges of New Hampshire and Herman Welker of Idaho attempted to blackmail him into not seeking re-election after Hunt’s son Buddy was arrested for soliciting sex from a male undercover cop in Washington’s Lafayette Park.  Normally, first offenders got off with a warning and notification to the family, but Bridges and Welker pressured District of Columbia law enforcement authorities into prosecuting Buddy and warned Hunt that they’d publicize the case unless Hunt retired from politics.  Hunt subsequently shot himself at his Senate desk.  The day before, McCarthy hinted that he’d make the sex offense public.  Senate reporter Allen Drury used a fictionalized version of the incident in the 1959 novel “Advise and Consent.”

Facebook

    “Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Despite Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s protestations that the company’s mission is benign -  to make the world more connected and build community across boundaries, his creation has become intrusive, a threat to privacy, and a polarizing force politically.  Aside from those criticisms, Facebook accounts inevitably become littered with advertisements and other annoying messages.  Today’s crop, for instance, included MLB, art.com, Humana Pharmacy, Bob Rohrman Auto Group, and Empire: World War 3. Even so, for me it continues to provide illustrated links to friends, relatives, former students (i.e., Jonathan Rix, George Sladic, Chris Daly, Bob Fulton, Amanda Board) and old acquaintances that I find invaluable. For example, here is a sample of what I found when opening my account this morning:

Miller Town Hall, built in 1910, used a firehouse after annexation

This from Gary historian Steve Spicer: “On February 17, 1919, the Gary Common Council passed ordinance No. 754 annexing the Town of Miller. One hundred years ago today. Approved by the mayor three days later.”  Spicer also posted a photo taken from his house on Miller Ave. of a full moon at 4 a.m. Steve was one of many area residents who expressed satisfaction that, thanks to efforts by Congressman Peter Visclosky and many others, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is now one of 61 national parks. 

Dave Lane, E'twain Moore, Dee Atta Wright; below, Miranda 

Son Dave posted photos while at Purdue University with students invited as guests of former East Chicago Central basketball star  E’Twaun Moore to celebrate aday in his honor in Lafayette and enjoy a Boilermakers game against Penn State. Dave wrote that Moore “epitomizes class and it was a great honor to be there to celebrate with him. He continues to make his hometown proud!”  Other new family photos included James visiting Valpo U. for an overnight experience and Miranda vacationing in Florida.

Professional photographer Ray Gapinski attended the same play, “Shrek: The Musical” that we enjoyed on Sunday and took numerous photos of the performance that will surely become collectors’ items for cast members. Photographer and community organizer Samuel Love documented a tour of sites in Gary to collect sights and sounds for a genealogy podcast.  Betty Villareal got together with “girlfriends” from Lew Wallace’s Class of 1967, while my 1960 Upper Dublin classmate Bettie Erhardt posted photos of a gathering at Giuseppe’s, a local steak sandwich and pizza joint, when Thelma Joy Van Sant visited.  Replying to one of Thelma and Eddie Piszek, Alice Ottinger employed the title of a 1956 Chordettes doo wop hit: “Eddie My Love.” Whenever I return to Fort Washington, I alert Bettie and she arranges for a similar mini-reunion.

Ray Smock announced the publication on President’s Day of his new book on the Trump presidency, “American Demagogue,” which drew many positive comments and a sarcastic photo from follower Katherine Ryan Walsh. Anne Balay shared this article by Brooke Nagler that appeared in the University of Chicago magazine:

 Anne Balay, AB’86, AM’88, PhD’94, has worked as a mechanic and a trucker. “I love the mental state long drives put me in; they’re pretty much the only time I feel relaxed,”she writes in Semi Queer. “I love that feeling, and almost every trucker I’ve talked to does too. That’s what we mean when we say trucking is addictive—it’s not just a job but a lifestyle.” 

 Balay herself worked as a trucker after being denied tenure, a decision she believes was motivated by homophobic discrimination. Jobless and panicking, she entered trucking school because she’d always liked driving. There she found that sitting in the cab of a truck was transformative. “Suddenly all of the anger and bitterness just flowed away. I felt like this is something I could do that would be meaningful and productive,” she says. (Balay has since returned to academia and now teaches at Haverford College.)

 Her experience was not uncommon. Mastering an 80,000-pound piece of machinery offered many of Balay’s interviewees a sense of power. As one driver told her, “the fact that people hate me ’cause I’m trans, well then they’ll hate me, but say hello to my truck.”

 With its constant motion and cycles of departure and arrival, Balay writes, the everyday life of a trucker is well suited to individuals whose gender identities are also in flux. Trucking offers a way for these individuals to express their shifting identities more openly. “Out here on the road I live authentically,” explained Alix, who is trans. “I am kind of leading a double life because when I go home, I’m kind of mom to the kids. … So when I get back into the truck, it’s liberating, because I don’t have anyone’s expectations to live up to.”

 But the profession has drawbacks. Nonwhite truckers experience racism from the carriers that employ them, other truckers, and customers. For all drivers, “trucking is incredibly dangerous,”Balay says. Apart from the risk of accidents, drivers are frequently alone in remote areas or at truck stops, which can be magnets for illegal activity. Sexual assault was common among the women she interviewed, both cisgender (those whose gender identity matches the sex on their birth certificates) and transgender. Nearly every trucker Balay interviewed carried a gun.

 Then there are the looming existential threats. Technology has transformed trucking, adding new forms of employer surveillance, such as cameras and speed sensors, that many drivers feel are needless micromanagement. The most dramatic change awaits as self-driving vehicles threaten to upend the industry. Balay worries for the marginalized truckers for whom “there are no other decent jobs available.”

 But until autonomous trucks hit the interstate, truckers will remain essential, linking even the most remote parts of the country to the web of American industrialism. That sense of connection to how things are made is one of the reasons Balay found satisfaction in driving a truck. Her work took her to the mills where toilet paper is made, the Nabisco factories where Oreos emerge from conveyer belts, the fields where fruit is grown and picked. She saw it all, and took it where it needed to go next.

Anne Balay by Riva Lehrer