Readable History

"No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.” David McCullough

Historian Ray Boomhower has been sharing quotations from distinguished members of his profession, including David McCullough (above) who has written acclaimed biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams and, my favorite, “The Path Between the Seas,” about how the Panama Canal came about. Another statement I subscribe to that Boomhower referenced is by Samuel Eliot Morrison: “With honesty of purpose, balance, a respect for tradition, courage, and, above all, a philosophy of life, any young person who embraces the historical profession will find it rich in rewards and durable in satisfaction.”

Historians I most admire, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and David Maraniss, write for a large audience rather than just specialists in a particular field.  When my Maryland PhD advisers Sam Merrill and Louis Harlan said that my dissertation, “Jacob A. Riis and the American City,” was very readable, I took that as a compliment. The only boring chapter, in my opinion, albeit necessary, was the one analyzing “How the Other Half Lives” (1890), the urban reformer’s famous study of New York City Tenement House Conditions and their immigrant dwellers.  My history of Gary, “City of the Century,” was based on weekly newspaper articles intended to reach a wide readership and elicit feedback. Nothing against journal articles (I’ve written my share of monographs), but I believe that serving Clio, the muse of history, includes striving to educate an informed citizenry.

 

One of the striking characteristics of the era of Coolidge Prosperity was the unparalleled rapidity and unanimity with which millions of men and women turned their attention, their talk, and their emotional interest upon a series of tremendous trifles -- a heavyweight boxing-match, a murder trial, a new automobile model, a transatlantic flight.” Frederick Lewis Allen, “Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s”

F. L. Allen

The Gold Standard of contemporary popular history is Frederick Lewis Allen’s “Only Yesterday,” published soon after the “Roaring Twenties” ended.  The title is a perfect encapsulation of the belief that anything in the past – even seconds ago – is worthy of study by historians even if dissecting a larger perspective must wait.  “Only Yesterday” remains a pathbreaking example of the importance of social history, covering manners and morals, Prohibition and the rise of gangsterism, sports, advertising, automobility, and entertainment as big business, plus fads, dance crazes, and headline-making trials  such as Sacco-Vanzetti, Leopold-Loeb, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial and the most widely covered – Hall-Mills, about the murder of two lovers, a minister and his choir director.

Flappers

As a practitioner of contemporary history from the bottom up who is writing a blog, I ask myself how best to cover this plague year of pandemic, an unhinged president, economic disaster, and total disruption of one’s daily routine.  A believer that the personal is political, I try to describe the effect of this “new normal” on myself (a senior citizen to whom Covid-19 could be a death sentence), my family (including grandchildren still in school), my university, community, region, and, by extension, the country and world. Wish me luck.

Kaiden Horn (above), the former bowling teammate of grandson James made The Times by virtue of winning a state USBC scholarship.  The 2020 Wheeler graduate told Karen Callahan that he grew up in a bowling family and that was something he and his dad Kevin bonded over: “He’s coached me my whole life. We always talk about bowling and watch bowling. Without that, a major part of myself would be missing.”

 

Post-Tribune correspondent Carole Carlson wrote about the legacy of Richard Gordon Hatcher as a civil rights leader and urban mayor for 20 years beginning in 1968. She interviewed some of his most faithful supporters, including former adviser Carolyn McCrady and Dena Holland Neal, daughter of Deputy Mayor Jim Holland, who recalled passing out lollipops with Hatcher stickers in 1967 on her school bus at age 14.  Hatcher instilled Gary’s black citizens with a sense of pride but could not prevent the city’s economic decline despite obtaining millions of federal dollars for programs that benefitted the poor. By setting an example and encouraging others to seek public office at a time after Martin Luther King’s death when many Black intellectuals were despairing of the political system, Hatcher was responsible for inspiring many Black elected officials who emulated his example. I spent over a hundred hours interviewing Hatcher, my political hero and intellectual mentor.  I wanted the final product to be his autobiography, but, ever a humble man, he preferred it to be guideposts on how Blacks should proceed in the face of systemic racism, a phrase Hatcher never used.  A devout Christian, unlike me, he never gave up believing that all souls were redeemable.

 

I’ve been binge watching the Showtime series “Homeland.”  Discovering that it was about to embark on a ninth season, I started at the beginning.  When the original storyline didn’t end after 12 episodes, it seemed the denouement was imminent, but it seems further from the end as I approach the midway point of season three.  Nonetheless, I love the main characters, CIA agents Carrie (Claire Danes) and Saul (Mandy Patinkin), and the peripheral one as well. And each episode features unexpected twists and turns.

 

Former IUN colleague Don Coffin, whose field was economic history, believes that the current pandemic will be most devastating on middle-tier colleges. Elite institutions such as Harvard and Yale will have the prestige and endowment resources to ride the situation out, while affiliates of public universities and community colleges, in his words, “are about access and affordability; they’re the Honda Civics of higher ed. There’s always a market for that.”  Four-year schools in non-metro areas with regional reputations and high tuition, he predicts, may face widespread closures: they were fragile before the pandemic, often offering discount rates of 50 percent or more; the pandemic simply removed what little cushion they had left.”  To make matters worse Trump is threatening to cancel student visas and deny them access to online courses.  Coffin wrote:

These rules are unconscionable. Students should not be used as hostages to force colleges to be complicit in accelerating the spread of a pandemic, either to enhance somebody’s perceived shot at re-election or to satisfy a lust for racism. It’s wrong. Colleges have to protect their students -- all of their students -- as best they can. In a pandemic, that’s hard enough already. Now we have to add “political predators” to the list of dangers. But is in decent financial shape.

 

I responded: IUN has been developing quality on-line (distance education) courses for almost a decade (too much so I’ve argued).  On the other hand, wonderful middle-tier schools like Valparaiso University are suffering, and 45 (I won’t repeat his name) is making the situation worse by fucking around international students, the lifeblood of many universities since, in most cases, they pay full tuition.

 

As the temperature again exceeded 90 degrees, power went out in Dave’s Portage subdivision and his family spent the night.  That evening James won a close Space Base game, his second in a row.  Next morning, he was trying to adjust his fall VU schedule in the face of one cancellation and the other class now on-line.  I got my first haircut in four months at Quick Cut.  Longtime barber Anna gave 20-year-old James his first haircut.

Legend Mourned

“This community has lost a giant.  I am humbled to be a recipient of his wisdom and guidance and will always be grateful for his influence on my life.” Gary mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson on the death of Richard Gordon Hatcher at age 86

Phoning from Florida, Paul Kern called to commiserate on the passing of Richard Gordon Hatcher, a civil rights icon and the first African-American mayor of a significantly sized city. That’s how I learned that a heroic figure was dead. The Post-Tribune, which had demeaned Hatcher during his 20 years in office, ran an excellent in-depth piece titled “Pioneering Gary leader mourned” that was free of rancor and contained tributes from Lake County and around the state.  My name appeared in a section describing his decision to challenge the entrenched, corrupt local Democratic machine:

  Hatcher saw the inequality in a city whose population in the 1960s was already half African American, according to James Lane, but took steps during his time on the City Council to push for civil rights and equality for all Gary residents.

Congressman Peter Visclosky stated: “Mayor Richard Hatcher was a historic and exemplary leader for civil rights and racial equality in our nation, and he was always a true public servant for the City of Gary and the Northwest Indiana region.” From Governor Eric Holcomb: “Mayor Hatcher was a state and national trailblazer who committed his life to serving and helping his community.” Longtime Calumet Township Trustee Dozier T. Allen, described as both an ally and adversary, recalled:

    Richard and I met in 1959.  He was a student at Valparaiso University selling Hoover Vacuums on the side, and I was a liberal arts, business, and political science major working for my dad.  We lived in the same dorm, and we were the only two black men in it.  We had a great many things to talk about, and he always had great thoughts about civil rights, open occupancy, voting rights and fair employment.  He also believed that the only way to challenge belief systems was at the ballot box.  I miss those talks on the stairwell.  I also remember his car, a lavender and purple convertible.  I used to put gas in his car when times were tough.

 Hatcher in the White House with Jimmy Carter, 1980

The most heartfelt comments came from former Lake County surveyor George Van Til, who told The Post-Tribune:

    He was like a rock.  It’s just a real sense of loss. He was a good a decent man, a man of real faith.  A lot of people didn’t know that. I never heard him swear, see him drink or smoke or behave inappropriately.  He was a devoted family man and a faithful churchgoer and, but he never talked about it.  He just lived it.  That’s kind of what I admired about him.  He had strong political beliefs, but he never talked bad about those who disagreed with him.

  

In “African-American Mayors: Race, Politics, and the American City,” edited by David R. Colburn and Jeffrey Adler (2001) I wrote:

    Rarely has the advent of a mayoral administration taken on the symbolic importance of the inauguration of Richard Gordon Hatcher on January 1, 1968, in Gary, Indiana, the self-proclaimed “City of the Century” of approximately 170,000 people.  To the chagrin of the local political establishment and economic elite, and to the delight of African Americans and liberal well-wishers across the country, Hatcher, a 34-year-old community activist, had captured city hall after a bitter grassroots struggle.  At his inauguration Hatcher referred to the special problems and opportunities he faced and vowed to bring about a “healthy black nationalism.”  Sympathetic federal bureaucrats were eager to embrace the new mayor by turning on the faucet of Great Society funds, so that Gary would prosper as a truly multiracial city and a model of black empowerment.  Major changes in the racial and political climate of the United States and in its antiurban biases would have to take place, however, before this could occur.

In “Gary’s First Hundred Years” I wrote this epitaph on his 20 years in office: “Hatcher survived five terms as mayor despite unrelenting opposition by those who, in all likelihood, would have relocated to suburban environs no matter who controlled City Hall.  He left office as he had entered it, unbossed, unbought, and with head unbowed.” Hatcher once summed up his political philosophy in this manner: “All other considerations are secondary to this moral requirement; that there must be opportunity for all Americans, regardless of race, regardless of status.”

CBS Sunday Morning aired a segment about humorist Mo Rocca, whose “Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving,” contains portraits of personages ranging from Founding Father Thomas Paine to black entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr, as well overlooked forerunners such as Elizabeth Jennings, a black woman on a Manhattan streetcar who refused to give up her seat a century before Rosa Parks’s similar action.  

Rocca profiled singer Laura Branigan, whose 1982 pop hit “Gloria” became the theme song of the St. Louis Blues during the 2018-19 season.  The team had finished in last place the previous year but won the Stanley Cup in game 7 against the heavily favored Boston Bruins and celebrated by singing “Gloria.”  Branigan died in her sleep, probably of a brain aneurysm at age 52 in August of 2004.  A close friend said that if Laura were alive, she would have loved performing “Gloria” at the final Blues home game and the victory celebration.  First recorded by Italian Umberto Tozzi as a love song, Branigan’s “Gloria” portrayed a party animal running too fast for her own good.  Initially, it became the rage at gay dance clubs.  I first heard “Gloria” at Marcy Velasquez’s son’s wedding reception where, responding to audience demand, the deejay played it several times.  It’s still one of my favorite songs and a worthy successor to Van Morrison’s garage band “Gloria,” Patti Smith’s “Gloria” anthem and forerunner to the Lumineers unsettling contemporary hit of the same title about an alcoholic.

I am in the Lane Fantasy Football finals against Phil, barely surviving the semi-final round against Dave despite scoring 171 points. His 165 is probably a record for a losing effort.  Drew Brees would have won it for him had I not played the New Orleans kicker Wil Lutz.  Phil’s team is loaded with talent, starting with QB Lamar Jackson and running backs Saquan Barkley and Dalvan Cook.

Perilous Journeys

“The thing that has gotten me going is discrimination. I tried to be equal to, and as good as, the Anglos. I wanted to make as much money, speak as well, and have all the goodies as the dominant society. But no matter what I did, I was always a ‘Mexican’.” Julian Samora (1920-1996)

Julian Samora (above) was a pioneer in the field of Mexican-American studies.  He grew up in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, whose public park had a sign at its entrance reading, “No Mexicans, Indians or Dogs.”   He was a History major at Adams State College and received a PhD in Sociology and Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis. Samora taught for two years at Michigan State and spent the rest of his academic career at Notre Dame.  In addition to his academic accomplishments, he helped found the National Council of La Raza, the leading Mexican-American civil rights organization.  I read his book “La Raza: Forgotten Americans” (1966) in grad school.  Ed Escobar and I included an excerpt from his 1967 publication with Richard Lamanna “Mexican-Americans in a Midwest Metropolis: A Study of East Chicago" in our 1987 anthology on Latinos in Northwest Indiana, “Forging a Community.”

 Rita Perez and daughter Maria Arredondo, circa 1922

I’m putting the final touches on “The Journeys of Maria Arredondo,” a talk I’ll be delivering at Michigan State during a conference celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Julian Samora Institute.  Maria came to America from Mexico at age 7, 19, and 32, the final time after her mother had been deported.  Describing a confrontation with customs official on the third border crossing, I’ll quote this passage from Ramon and Trisha’s “Maria’s Journey”: 

    Early in the day they reached customs.

  “My children and I are going home to Indiana to join my husband,” she explained to the guard at the border. 

  “I think not, Senora,” replied the guard gruffly. “Nobody goes across without passports.”

  It was true.  She had no documents.  She had left them at home.  When she hurriedly left the States, her discouragement was such that she believed Mexico would be her home until she died; why bother with documents? She saw now that she had acted without thought, but it was too late.

  She explained again her intentions, but with no proof of her story, no papers supporting her claim, she was turned away once more.  Just when she was ready to abandon all hope, another border guard, noticing her distress, walked over to her.  He took in the desperation on her face and the 8 wide-eyed children who clustered around her.  “Go sit over there,” he pointed to some shade, “and wait until evening.  The guards are no so hard then.  They may let you cross, but be careful.  Don’t make them angry.”

  With that small amount of encouragement, Maria resolved to make one more attempt.  She prayed hard to her saints, pleading for a miracle.  That night the bedraggled little band tried to cross once more.  At first demands for documents were repeated.  As the night wore on, the guards relented somewhat and asked for proof that Maria had only been in Mexico a short time.  Did she have some receipts or other evidence that their stay had been less than six months?

 Tangible proof, however, was simply not to be had, no matter how hard they searched the two pathetic suitcases with their meager cache of clothes and sundries.

    Another guard gazed at the mother and her children.  Seeing the hopelessness in Maria’s lovely face, he cleared his throat and spoke for the first time since the border drama had begun: “I’ve been talking to this boy here [Pepe], and he’s answered every question in English.  He knows his name, his age, and where he lives.  He says his Dad is waiting for them in the States,” he said to his colleague.

  “So what?” replied the other customs man, disgusted with the delay caused by the family.  “They have no proof!”

  “Let them go,” answered the other.  “There’s no way this little boy could speak such good English if they’d been in Mexico any length of time.”

  Pepe had been discussing his life with the second guard in great detail and with enthusiasm.  His talkativeness proved the family’s salvation.  

  “Oh, very well, go.  Take those snotty-nosed kids and get out of my sight before I change my mind,”said the officer, tired of the aggravation.  It was late, and he wanted to relax and drink his coffee, not hassle with a nearly hysterical woman and her brood of sad-eyed kids.

  The guard motioned for them to cross.  Maria hustled the children into one of the many taxis stationed at the border before the guard could change his mind.  They were squished into the hot car before Maria allowed herself to believe they were truly going home.  

  As they crossed the long bridge to stateside, Jenny looked back.  “Wow, ma, look how long this bridge is!”

  “Don’t turn around!” Maria admonished her.  “What if they call us back?”  Wiser than Lot’s wife, Maria stared fixedly forward until they were safely delivered onto America’s soil.

Young Pepe (José Arredondo, 1934-2017) went on to earn a doctorate in Education from IU and be elected sheriff of Lake County. This is my final paragraph: “Finally, I’d like to acknowledge my intellectual debt to Julian Samora whose 1967 book about East Chicago, Indiana, “Mexican-Americans in a Midwest Metropolis” (with Richard Lamanna) was the starting point for my intellectual journey into this subject.  Samora proclaimed that family was the bulwark of Mexican tradition.  Maria would have agreed.”

 José Arredondo

Conservative commentator George Will criticized Republicans as “vegetative” for their “canine obedience” to that “scofflaw” Trump.  Well put.

Ray Smock wrote:

    President Trump likened the impeachment process to a lynching in the hopes of elevating the emotions of his supporters.  He wants us to believe that impeachment, a provision of the U.S. Constitution that gives the sole power of impeachment to the House of Representatives, and the sole power of conducting an impeachment trial to the Senate, is the same as a lynching, a word forever etched in American history with the most illegal acts of violent murder suffered mostly by African American men during a hundred-year war with terrorists in organizations like the Ku Klux Klan.

      Trump is accusing duly elected members of the House as being nothing more than vigilantes taking the law in their own hands just because they don’t like him and want to un-do the 2016 election.  This emotional narrative is the kind that demagogues like Trump thrive on. In Trump’s case, it is the only kind of narrative he can use.  He lives in a maelstrom of conspiracy theories, where everyone is out to get him.  His current narrative is but an extension of what we have heard for three years, that any and all investigations of the president are part of an extensive witch hunt with no basis in fact.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other members of the GOP have not described the process as a lynching. Indeed, most have eschewed such comparisons, except for the mercurial and inconsistent Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who agrees that Democrats want to lynch Trump.

Going on TV to announce that an American special operations raid resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr-al-Baghdadi, Trump couldn’t resist taking swipes at leakers and whistleblowers, thanking Russia for its cooperation, bragging that this was more important than the mission Obama ordered that killed Osama bin Laden, and claiming that before blowing himself up, Baghdadi was “whimpering and crying.” The latter was palpably untrue and certain to inflame Islamic extremists.  Replying to comments by columnist Jerry Davich, Robert Malkowski wrote: “Donald was rushed to the hospital for dislocating his own shoulder while patting himself on the back for 45 minutes.”

Michael Frisch emailed that it was good seeing me at the OHA conference, meeting Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette, and learning about their Welcome Initiative and Flight Paths project.  He added, in a reference to my longstanding magazine: “Glad to know Steel is still being Shaved, and I look forward to seeing the current issue.”  I replied that one was on its way.

In the Journal of American History Dylan Gottlieb’s “Hoboken Is Burning: Yuppies, Arson, and Displacement in the Postindustrial City” wrote that nearly 500 fires set by arsonists-for-hire in Hoboken’s Puerto Ricanbarrio killed at least 50 people and drove displaced residents to leave the city permanently, paving the way for a yuppie “rebirth” for the traditional blue-collar city (hometown of Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants), situated just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.  Similar trends occurred in Chicago and Atlanta, the author concludes, as the arrival of yuppies signaled the beginning of a new phase of exploitation and profit-seeking.

I informed University Advancement that former trustee James W. Dye passed away and invited Media Specialist Erika Rose to make use of an interview I conducted last year published in Steel Shavings, volume 48.  My email stated:

    At the request of IU’s Bicentennial Committee, I interviewed James Dye, 87, a retired builder and major university donor. I showed Dye the Rev. Robert Lowery library study area funded by the James and Betty Dye Foundation.  It also offers scholarships to many IUN students. 

  Manager for IU’s football and basketball squads in the early 1950s, Dye recalled a Sigma Chi fraternity party that lasted 48 hours after the Hoosiers beat Notre Dame and then Kansas for the 1953 NCAA championship. He joked that IU probably gave him an honorary degree for attending so many losing gridiron contests.  

  Dye was an imaginative entrepreneur who built his first house by himself at age 20.  His company, the Landmark Corporation, built Mansards Apartments in Griffith.  On its tennis courts Dye competed with former Gary mayor George Chacharis and driver John Diamond.  Dye praised past IUN chancellors Dan Orescanin and Peggy Elliott and asked me about Chancellor Lowe.  I lauded Lowe’s participation in community affairs, History Department functions, basketball games, and student functions. 

 Gary Crusader collage

Jonathyne Briggs mentioned that he might include a unit of IU Northwest in his Spring seminar covering the year 1968.  I suggested he expand the project to concentrate on the city of Gary and wrote him this explanation: 

    Early in the morning of January 1, 1968, Richard Gordon Hatcher was sworn in as mayor and became the first African American to serve as chief executive of a significantly sized city.  During a year of riots (but not in Gary), assassinations, antiwar protests, and white backlash, Hatcher played a major role in national events, meeting with President Lyndon Johnson as Washington, DC, went up in flames, launching imaginative War on Poverty programs funded by the federal government, campaigning with Robert F. Kennedy as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination, and attracting major grants from foundations eager for his administration to be a success.  On the other hand, white flight and business disinvestment escalated, fueled by fear, racism, and corporate decisions beyond Hatcher’s control. Detractors turned the slogan “City on the Move” on its head, adding the words, “Yah, moving out” and asking, “Will the last [white] person to leave, please turn out the lights?”

    Students could make use of my Gary publications (“Gary’s First Hundred Years,” a Sixties Steel Shavings that includes an oral history of Hatcher’s first two years in office, a chapter in “Black Mayors”) as well as magazines, material in the Calumet Regional Archives, the Post-Tribune (on microfilm), as well as interviews on the Valparaiso University website Flight Paths and oral histories that students themselves conduct.  Perhaps the entire class could produce a podcast or documentary as a final project.  What was happening at IUN regarding Black Studies would fit within the context of Gary, regional, national, and international events.

In Elizabeth Strout’s “Amy and Isabell” daughter Amy resents her distant, nagging mother and enjoys the lunchroom chatter in the factory where she has a summer job.  Stout wrote:

  Everything talked about was interesting to her, even the story of the refrigerator gone on the blink: a half gallon of chocolate ice cream melted in the sink, soured, and smelled to high hell by morning.  The voices were comfortable and comforting; Amy, in her silence, looked from face to face.  She was not excluded from any of this, but the women had the decency, or lack of desire, not to engage her in their conversations either.  It took Amy’s mind off things.  

  Fat Bev hit a button on the soda machine and a can of Tab rocked noisily in place.  She bent her huge body to retrieve it.  “Three more weeks and Dottie can have sex,” she said. “She wishes it were three more months,” and here her soda can was popped open.  “But I take it, Wally’s getting irritated.  Chomping at the bit.”

  Amy swallowed the crust of her sandwich.

  “Tell him to take care of it himself,” someone said, and there was laughter.  Amy’s heartbeat quickened, sweat broke out above her lip.

  “You get dry after a hysterectomy, you know,” Arlene Tucker offered this with a meaningful nod of her head.

  “I didn’t.”

   “Because you didn’t have your ovaries out,” Arlene nodded again she was a woman who believed what she said.  “They yanked the whole business with Dot.”

  “Oh, my mother went crazy with hot flashes,” somebody said, and thankfully irritable Wally was left behind; hot flashes and crying jags were talked about instead.

Authenticity

“Soul is about authenticity.  Soul is about finding the things in your life that are real and pure,” John Legend

Migos

In “Johnny Cash Never Shot a Man in Reno. Or, The Migos: Nice Kids from the Suburbs” (2016) essayist Hanif Abdurriqib addresses his barber’s criticism that Migos are not authentic rappers because Offset, Takeoff, and Quavo grew up in the suburb of Lawrenceville, Georgia, north of Atlanta. Proverbial sword drawn, the hair stylist sneered that they’re “rapping about all this trap shit and they ain’t never even been to the trap.”  Trap houses are successors to crack houses and refer to places where kickback parties take place young participants go to get high, perhaps have sex, and play video and bondage games.  Abdurraqib wrote:

  Culture is the album that is set to be the group’s coronation.  The first single, “Bad and Boujee,” is the country’s number one song.  It’s being sung in trap houses and minivans.  They have entered the realm of many rap acts who have had number one songs in recent months: fascination in the suburbs.  And in the hood, a gentle resentment.

The previous year, after a Migos concert at Georgia Southern University, Offset was arrested for possession of narcotics and a loaded gun and incarcerated for eight months due to a previous criminal record. Abdurraqib wrote:

The members of Migos are what they are and what they’ve always been. Like Johnny Cash in the mid-1960s, they spent time getting too close to the fire.  It is hard to build a myth so large without eventually becoming part of it. I’m less interested in what happens in the hood you’re from and I’m more interested in how you can honor that place, especially for people who might not know that history.  Migos, more than anything, are still North Atlanta’s party starters; now it’s the rest of the world that is catching on.

  Back on stage in New York, Offset yells to the crowd.  Something about how good it is to make it out of where they are from alive. The word “from” hangs in the air.  The lights fade to black.

Regarding the question of whether Migos’ music is authentic, Abdurraqib concluded: “I do not know what it is that makes a person real, but I imagine it is the way they can convince you of the things they have not done.”

Being from the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington, I’ve never felt the need to apologize for my  WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) legacy or background. Nor, I believe, does it make me less authentic when I have long embraced black music, not rap necessarily but rhythm ‘n’ blues and soul, from Ray Charles to John Legend.  If part of growing up is rebelling from one’s roots, I’m thankful for the security my parents provided.  Besides, guilt, liberal or otherwise, is a wasted emotion and a poor substitute for helping the less fortunate.  That said, it’s frustrating being powerless to prevent our White House mad hatter from carrying out unconscionable actions.  His latest, dwarfing all others: giving Turkish leader Recap Erdogan the green light to wage war against the Kurds, America’s staunchest ally against ISIS.  He has put to rest the veneer of American exceptionalism and exposed the worst features of the axiom that power corrupts.

 Kurds fleeing bombing by Turks

In the Northwest Indiana suburbs of Chesterton and Valparaiso, I enjoyed two successful bridge games partnering with 76-year-old Joel Charpentier, who still referees high school soccer matches and volunteers at a food pantry.  I had trouble pronouncing his name until learning that it was French and the correct pronunciation was in four syllables with the accent on the second, like French actor and cabaret singer Maurice Chevalier. I continued my innocent flirtation with 89-year-old Dottie Hart, massaging her shoulders during a break.  “Can I take you home with me?” she joked. “Only if your daughter is not home,” I replied.  With the treats I found a napkin inscribed, “Make your rap about the day.” I’m totally without imagination and couldn’t even contribute a simple line to Corey Hagelberg’s group poem about Gary.  At Strack and Van Til the check-out out lady, Dominique, asked if anyone had told me I resembled novelist Stephen King.  Actually, the answer is yes. It must be the hair.  I almost replied that people used to say I looked like Rick Nelson and now it’s Bob Barker. I envy Stephen King’s fertile mind.  I couldn’t begin to write fiction.

above, Stephen King; below

Harris and Parton

The next-to-last Country Music episode profiled Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton.  Harris quit college to pursue a music career in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Performing folk songs in coffeehouses and small clubs, she met Gram Parsons, a Floridian who came to love country music while at Harvard.  Emmylou’s Grammy-winning “Roots” album “Blue Kentucky Girl” (1979) contains standards by the Louvin Brothers (“Everytime You Leave”) and Willie Nelson (“Sister’s Coming Home”).  Parton, born in a one-room cabin in East Tennessee, joined Porter Wagoner’s TV show at age 20 and had a huge hit with “Jolene,” about a woman who begs another not to steal her man (“Please don’t take him just because you can”).  Dolly claimed she modeled her image after a hot-looking town prostitute (Jolene?) whose style she admired. She dismissed “dumb blond” jokes by countering that she’s neither dumb nor blond.  She moved on to pop and acting success, co-starring with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in “9 to 5” (1980), but never forsook her image as a country girl at heart.  Parton’s astute business sense led to a line of Dolly dolls and the water park Dollyland.

 NWI Times photo of Hatcher below by Lauren Cross

At the unveiling of a bronze statue near City Hall of five-term mayor (1968-1987) Richard Gordon Hatcher Gary Crusader publisher Dorothy R. Leavell eulogized: “When nobody will disturb the norm, a disruptor who knows what it ought to be will come in and speak truth to power.  It’s is the greatest compliment I can give you.”  Carolyn McCrady thanked Hatcher for caring about the less fortunate: “When NIPSCO was throwing people out of their homes in the middle of winter because they couldn’t pay their bills, Hatcher used the power of his office to let people know that NIPSCO was wrong, and the people were right.”  I don’t have many political heroes, but Hatcher is the most authentic officeholder I’ve ever met.  He remained true to his ideals and endured 25 years in the arena unbossed, unbought, and with head unbowed.

 IUN Police force; Roy Dominguez top, second from left; below him are Brady Ratcliff and (seated) Chief Lazar

Lake County sheriff Roy Dominguez was another authentic public servant who I came to know well when collaborating on his autobiography “Valor.”  He recently posted a photo of the IUN police force in 1975, (he was a cadet), asking how many I recognized.  Right away, Chief Andy Lazar and African-American officer Brady Ratcliff stood out in civilian clothes. Former campus cop Don Young recalled: 

  Chief Andy Lazar never yelled or screamed and talked to me like I was his son.  He made you realize that mistakes happened but that one should learn from them.  Brady Ratcliff had spent 20 years in the military, never wore a uniform, and made it a point to socialize with students. He was a great mechanic and a stickler for being on time. If I came in a minute or two late, he’d say, “You see that clock? You’re late.  Don’t let it happen again.”

Roy remarked: "Andy and Brady always elected to wear the blazer. Andy retired from Gary PD, and I guess he had his fill of the regular police uniform. He always preferred the softer approach to his job and life. He was a wonderful mentor and taught us all that public service included politeness and patience until it was to no avail. Of course, Andy was a pretty big man and no one in their right mind wanted to test his patience.  We would say Andy should have been a priest and his equally, beloved brother, Father Lazar should have been the cop in their family."  

A judge sentenced Sherquell Magee (above) to 40 years for shooting an 11-year-old bystander while defending himself after being jumped by several kids from a rival East Chicago neighborhood.  Magee had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter.  The judge chastised Magee for showing no remorse, but the defendant’s attorney claimed he advises clients not to apologize during the trial.

Karen Toering, founder and director of the ninth annual Gary International Black Film Festival, greeted me with a VIP pass since I donated 20 copies of the latest Steel Shavings.  Friday highlights included “Bakoso: Afro Beats of Cuba” and the feature film “Truth” written and directed by Gary Roosevelt grad Charles Murray, about a man whose cousin took her own life after an affair with the church pastor. Tomorrow I plan to wear my black “Straight Outta Gary” t-shirt while viewing a documentary about the Sin City Disciples, a biker club founded in Gary in 1967, the year Hatcher was first elected mayor.  Karen told me that a hundred Sin City Disciples have purchased tickets and that the filmmaker will be in attendance. I’ll be happy to give the t-shirt to any biker who considers my wearing it inauthentic and wants it in exchange for one of theirs (fat chance) – or, more realistically, a selfie. The inspiration was the N.W.A. CD and biopic “Straight Outta Compton.”

In 1991 N.W.A.’s Eazy-E received an invitation from President George Bush to a White House lunch fundraiser.  Paying $4,000, he showed up in a suit and L.A. Kings cap.  Fifteen years later, Hanif Abdurraqib wrote: 

  I watched as a child who only knew that Eazy-E was a part of a rap group that scared people. But there he was, in the White House, with businessmen, senators, and a president who would likely prefer his music to be banned. It was at the time a rare access granted to any rapper, but especially one who was seen as too intense for some of rap’s younger, more eager fans.  Not everyone was impressed.  For some it was an item of shame and ridicule.  In the diss track “No Vaseline,” Ice Cube opens the final verse, repeating the same line, a thinly veiled shot: “I’d never have dinner with the President.”

  Above my desk now, a picture of Barack Obama, surrounded.  Rappers on every side of him, dressed however they chose to dress. Rappers with their honest sings about the people who live and die in places often used as political talking points, standing proud in front of their proud president.  All those smiling black people in the Oval Office.  Miles away from a past where none of them, I imaging, ever thought they’d get to make it this far. The door that Barack Obama pushed open for rappers to be seen and comfortable in his White House presented a new type of power dynamic.  What strikes me is that it may never be like this again.

The latest Traces magazine contains an article titled “The Weird and Wondrous Fiction of C.L. Moore.” Indianapolis native Catherine Moore (1911-1987) had an amazingly fertile imagination.  Most famous for stories published in the fantasy horror magazine Weird Tales, she also delved into science fiction and wrote TV scripts for the Warner Brothers series Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip.

Jim Spicer’s joke of the week:

    A new pastor was visiting in the homes of his parishioners. At one house it seemed obvious that someone was at home, but no answer came to his repeated knocks at the door. Therefore, he took out a business card and wrote “Revelation 3:20” on the back of it and stuck it in the door.
    When the offering was processed at the next worship service, he found that his card had been returned. Added to it was this cryptic message, “Genesis 3:10” Reaching for his Bible to check out the citation, he broke up in gales of laughter. Revelation 3:20 begins “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Genesis 3:10 reads, “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid for I was naked.”