Strange Days

“Strange days have found us
Strange days have tracked us down
They're going to destroy
Our casual joys”

    “Strange Days,” The Doors

The Doors

Lori

James

People are putting all sorts of weird stuff on Facebook to relieve boredom during the pandemic.  One fad is melding one’s photo into an avatar look-alike.  Lori Montalbano was more successful than James Wallace, methinks.  Political commentary abounds, the latest batch debunking Trump’s threats to force governors to open churches on Sunday – this from a man pandering to the Christian right who only worships himself.  Fortunately, friends have not lost their sense of humor, as evidenced by this post by Cindy Bean:

I’ve finished posting album covers on Facebook but am enjoying choices by others, including Fred McColly (Warren Zevon), Chris Daly (folk and bluegrass singer John Hartford), and Gregg Hertzlieb (Steve Hackett, former lead guitar player for Genesis.  Brenden Bayer introduced me to School of Fish, an alternative rock band from L.A. who in 1991 recorded “3 Strange Days.”  Brenden also suggested posting a list of five people, four of whom you’ve met or been within a few feet of and one you haven’t and see if friends can guess the correct one.  Here’s a list of civil rights leaders: Julian Bond, Andrew Young, James Farmer, Jesse Jackson, Stokely Carmichael.  Here’s a second list of famous people: Dick Clark, Jesse Owens, Frank Borman, Muhammad Ali, Lyndon B. Johnson.  Can you identify one from each list I’ve never met?  Spoiler alert: answers are Andrew Young and Muhammad Ali. Surprisingly few people guessed Young but most guessed Ali (I thought more would select LBJ, who I saw speak in Lewisburg, PA, in 1960 when he was JFK’s running mate, or track star Jesse Owens, whose hand I shook when the Gary NAACP honored him at a luncheon at IUN).

 

Julian Bond

I met Julian Bond, who was then teaching at the U. of Virginia, at an Oral History Association conference. I heard Carmichael speak at IUN in 1979 on Pan-African socialism when he went by the name Kwame Ture. Richard Morrisroe was in the audience, and the two former freedom fighters embraced.  James Farmer, a founder of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and a 1961 Freedom Rider on a bus attacked by racists, spoke at IUN and I got him to sing one of the songs that calmed people on the bus - he had a great voice and it's on an episode of "Eyes on the Prize."  I first saw Jesse Jackson in 1968 speak on Solidarity Day in DC. Richard Hatcher brought him to IUN when he was running for President in 1984, and I spoke with him at a Genesis Center event on the 40th anniversary of the 1972 West Side National Black Political Convention. Ali visited Gary several times while Hatcher was mayor, but I never met him.  Janet Bayer wrote: “Mayor Hatcher's Evenings to Remember were great for meeting people. I actually was in line with Julian Bond behind me waiting to get to the Campaign Fountain. He was charming. Another year Rev Jesse Jackson came in to do some fund raising. The Black National Convention that was hosted by Mayor Hatcher had everybody. I was one of very few white people invited.  We were so fortunate to live in Gary.”

 

Brenda Ann Love suggested opening a book to page 45 and seeing what the first thing you read tells you about yourself.  Why not?  Pamela Roorda-Barnett wrote: "There was a clear sense that the school had invested in us, which I think made us all try harder and feel better about ourselves." Michelle Obama - “Becoming.” This was on page 45 of Hilary Mantel’s “Beyond Black” – of all things, a one-night stand with a bookstore manager, who sold her a book on tarot and the cards as well:

    He had a room in a shared flat.  In bed he kept pressing her clit with his finger, as if he were inputting a sale on a cash machine.  In the end she faked it because she was bored and getting a cramp.

This on page 45 of Jean Shepherd’s “A Fistful of Fig Newtons”: “The roar in the driveway meant the old man was home from bowling.  Our Oldsmobile made a distinctive, loose-limbed, gurgling racket that came from 120,000 hard miles and gallons of cheap oil. “YER LOOKIN’ AT A GUY THAT JUST ROLLED A SIX HUNDRED SERIES!”  He strode through the kitchen ten feet tall, smelling of Pabst Blue Ribbon and success.”  Moral: every dog has its day.

On a positive note Facebook has connected me to online board games and bridge with friends and allowed me to learn about the doings of family members such as Dave, who’s been able to order appropriate masks for East Chicago Central seniors and volunteers.  Also Anne Koehler has taken the opportunity to write her memoirs. Here’s the latest installment:

In late 1957 I took the train from home in northern Germany to Sweden to meet a friend in Goeteborg. I had been an exchange student earlier in the year at Asa Folkhoegskola in Skoeldinge. In the beginning I did not know a word of Swedish, but became fairly fluent by the end of the Summer. People would ask "Aer Ni fran Skone?" (are you from Schonen, a southern part of Sweden) because of my accent. I considered that a compliment.  Back then the Danish isles were not all connected by bridges and tunnels as they are now. One had to get off the train or car and onto a ferryboat. Topside at the railing I started to talk to a young man from America who spoke German. He was a GI on vacation with a German family. After the 15-minute crossing it was time to get back to our respective modes of transportation and we exchanged addresses. His time of enlistment was up in 1958 and I did not see him again until 1960 when I came to the USA. We had corresponded for three years. Since Richard was fluent in German, the Army used him to spy on East German radio stations. He had a car and got to travel up and down the border separating East and West Germany. His mission was secret and he very reluctantly told me about it.- Two weeks after arriving in the USA we got married.

 

Desperate to find a decent movie I hadn’t already seen On Demand I discovered a category labeled Indie films – evidently in contrast to mainstream blockbusters and entered into film festivals – and found “Ophelia” and “Tumbledown.”  The latter was about a professor and a grieving widow collaborating on a book about  Hunter Miles, a dead folk singer whose songs in the movie were sung by Seattle folkie Damien Jurado.  “Ophelia” was a remaking of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” from Ophelia’s point of view, starring Daisy Ridley (below), who reminded me of high school redhead Gaard Murphy.

"Tumbledown" takes place in Gaard’s home state, Maine, where fans come to put momentos, including bottles of Jack Daniels, by their hero’s gravesite. Seen teaching a music pop culture class, Andrew (former SNL cast member Justin Sedeikis) appears to be a snob.  Lecturing on the music of The Notorious B.I.G., he asks the class, “Fiction or autobiography, pose or confession?” adding “Biggy was as much defined by as he was killed by his 10 crack commandments; what does that mean, to hinge your street cred on your own moral evanescence?” Say what?  As class ends, he asks students to analyze the assigned music in terms of cultural appropriation.  Boring!   In the course of the film Andrew drops his phony pretenses, shows endearing and vulnerable sides of his personality, and falls in love with Hannah (Rebecca Hall).  Highly recommended.

Global Warming

 “Which hands get to turn the final page?

In whose throat belongs the swan song

Crisis, warming, denial, change?”

         Parquet Courts, “Before the Water Gets Too High”

An article in New York Times Sunday magazine listed “Before the Water Gets Too High” by Parquet Courts as one of 25 songs that matter right now.  Robert Blaszkiewicz turned me on to the Brooklyn indie punk band, and I saw them live at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown, CA during a trip to see my mother timed around their appearance at my favorite watering hole.  One verse goes:

Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back

Favorite band Weezer’s “Can’t Knock the Hustle” also made the “songs that matter right now” list.  According to critic Lydia Kiesling, the tune is “relentlessly bouncy” but dark commentary on the gig economy, with such morbid lines as, “The future’s so bright I gotta poke my eyes out/ Running up my credit cards/ Selling lemonade by the side of the road.” 

Popular songs warning of environmental catastrophe date back at least to 1971, with Marvin Gaye’s lament “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology),” which included the lines, “Ah things ain’t what they used to be, no, no/ Oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas, fish full of mercury.”   In 1989 Frank Black and the Pixies predicted that “Everything Is Gonna Burn” in “Monkey Gone to Heaven.” As Pixies composer Charles Thompson put it:

There’s a hole in the sky

And the ground’s not cold

Though scientists have long been warning of the consequences of inaction and the first Earth Day occurred a half-century ago, troglodytes in the Trump administration persist in minimizing the crisis.  As Bill Clinton’s former vice president Al Gore put it, “There is an air of unreality in debating these arcane points when the world is changing in such dramatic ways right in front of our eyes because of global warming.”

“Funny Man” author Patrick McGilligan claimed that many of Mel Brooks’s comedic ideas sprang from childhood experiences.  The farting scene in “Blazing Saddles,” for instance, came from observing scenes in Western movies where cowboys ate beans and drank black coffee around a campfire.  Chosen to play dimwit Mongo, who knocks out a horse, Gary football great Alex Karras nailed the part in his film debut.  McGilligan wrote: “Karras would make the mentally challenged enforcer lovable as well as fearsome.”  At age 91 Brooks was planning a musical stage production of “Blazing Saddles.” Climate change doubter Ronald Reagan once blamed rising temperatures on cows farting.

Herb and Charlotte Read

Bridge partner Helen Boothe attended the memorial service for Save the Dunes activist Charlotte Read, whom the Post-Tribune’sAmy Lavalleyaccurately labeled a “fierce advocate for the Indiana Dunes and an ‘unstoppable force.’”  From a young age Charlotte and husband Herb were indefatigable in fighting to protect the environment.  In addition to serving as the first director of Save the Dunes Council, Charlotte held a similar position with Shirley Heinz Land Trust and was active in the Izaak Walton League.  Jeanette Neagu, who traveled to Washington with Charlotte to testify on behalf of creating a national park, told Lavalley:“She and Herb and Dorothy Buell and all the dunes people made an impression on me. They taught me that even if it seemed pie in the sky, if you work hard and organize, you can achieve.”

I got to know the Reads as a result of my involvement in protests by the Bailly Alliance during the 1970s and early 1980s to prevent NIPSCO utility company from building a nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan near Bethlehem Steel’s Porter County mill and lakeside communities such as Dune Acres. A combination of legal challenges and direct action delayed the project long enough to convince NIPSCO to scrap it as cost prohibitive.  My sons’ Little League coach, Vince Panepinto, a local building trades union officer, grimaced upon seeing them carrying a sign reading “No Nukes!” During the mid-1990s I chaired an Oral History Association conference session about the Bailly fight titled “Hell, No, We Won’t Glow.”  On the panel were a representative from Greenpeace and Inland Steel union leader Mike Olszanski, who had opposed the plant while head of Local 1010’s environmental committee.  

Adam Higginbotham’s “Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster” is a searing critique of the Soviet bureaucrats responsible for overseeing the nuclear plant that exploded in 1986. Not only were they criminally negligent in ignoring known defects in the reactor but refused to accept the extent of the emergency once the meltdown occurred, exacerbating the damage and increasing the number of casualties.  Higginbotham sees a correlation between that calamity and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.

1981 Bailly Allance rally; Mike Olszanski second from left

 Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette

Toni reminded me to vote.  In Chesterton there was only one contested Democratic primary race, but I was interested in supporting a school referendum.  In neighboring Valparaiso, both Heath Carter and Liz Wuerffel, VU professors and friends on mine, triumphed and will be Democratic candidates for City Council in November.  I was disappointed that Gary mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson lost a bid for a third term to Lake County Assessor Jerome Prince, a seasoned politician with close ties to county clerk John Petalas and Sheriff Oscar Martinez, both of whom showed up at his campaign headquarters to congratulate him.  Apparently, a plurality of voters (there were nine candidates) believed city improvement projects were moving too slowly.  Just as the prospect of new casino money being available was an incentive for Scott King to run for mayor in 1995, recent developments permitting a land-based casino and development of Buffington Harbor made controlling City Hall seem more worthwhile.

Jerome Prince 

Ray Smock wrote: 

  Here We Go Again. Trump Exerts Executive Privilege Over Everything. Just Like Nixon, except this time Trump is too defiant to resign and he is challenging the House to impeach him because there are no Republicans in the Senate who will go down to the White House, like they did in 1974, and tell the president its time for him to go, and the Republicans will not vote to convict Trump in an impeachment trial. 

  Trump thinks he can win this one in the courts, and he thinks he can brand Democrats as sore-losing socialists and win a big re-election in 2020. He has the arrogance and audacity to hide behind the Mueller Report, the very report that shows he has broken the law. He and his defenders forgot what happened in the election of 2018. The investigations will continue. Why the GOP is hanging with Trump is beyond me. Where is there to go but down with this clown? Who can pick up the pieces at put the Republican Party together again?  

Leeah Nicole Mahon, an IUPUI oral history intern, sought information about former Dean of Student Services Golam Mannon, who a half-century ago was an IUN Educational Psychology professor.  I replied:

  I did not know Dr. Mannan, but he appears twice in a History of IU Northwest that I wrote with Paul B. Kern, “Educating the Calumet Region” (Steel Shavings, volume 35, 2005).  The first is in connection with the establishment of a Black Studies program in 1969, incidentally the second in the nation.  He served on a joint task force consisting of 4 faculty and 4 student members of IUN’s Black Caucus to implement the program.  Secondly in 1973 he helped establish a process for evaluating Chancellor Robert McNeill that led to the ineffective administrator’s resignation.

Chancellor McNeill proved incapable of leadership and, as George Roberts put it, “had some kind of emotional or nervous breakdown – he just fell apart.”  Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs William Neil put it more bluntly, calling McNeill a “wacko”:

 McNeill’s secretary’s typewriter drove him crazy, so at great expense he ordered a door with cork lining to seal out the sound. I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did.  He would accept no responsibility.  He was what in the army we called, to put it politely, poultry excreta. He pushed things off on everybody else and abhorred the thought of getting in trouble with the people in Bloomington.

 McNeill disliked business manager Gene Nacci.  He said, “Who hired that greasy little dick?”  Gene was very Italian-looking and effervescent. McNeill finally fired him. He also zeroed in on Education chairman Don Huddle, an overweight, very cocky operator. McNeill couldn’t stand him and set out to destroy him. 

  I had been asked to fill in for a semester, which lengthened to three and a half years.  It was fulfilling just as my 50 combat missions were fulfilling. I’ve got scars to show from both.

Latonya Hicks; below, Dave with E.C. Central league champs; Nayeli Arredondo third from right 

During an impressive program at East Chicago Central son Dave was honored as the school’s Teacher of Excellence for the sixth time in 25 years.  Dave arranged for his tennis team members and senior class officers to attend.  Introducing Dave, East Chicago Public Library public relations director Latonya S. Hicks said that she was a shy student who lacked confidence until motivated in Dave’s class.  Valedictorian Nayeli Arredondo, on the tennis team and the daughter of immigrants, praised Dave’s commitment to all students, including some that others’ might have given up on.  In the course of his thoughtful remarks, Dave quoted Socrates and from “The Big Lebowski,” to wit “The Dude abides.”  An elementary school recipient was thankful she’d found a job she’d gladly do for free, echoing a sentiment expressed by author Richard Russo in a commencement address.  Among the many people congratulating Dave was Richard Morrisroe, who during the 1960s was almost killed while a Freedom Fighter in the Deep South.  One of the most moving scenes I’ve witnessed occurred in 1979 when Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) was speaking at IU Northwest on the subject of Pan African socialism. Spotting Morrisroe in the audience, the Black Power advocate went over and embraced him.

 Richard Morrisroe

Arriving home as Cubs relievers blew a one-run lead in the ninth, I saw favorite player Jason Heywood hit a walk-off home run in the eleventh, second time that happened in two days (the previous night’s was a 3-run shot by Kris Bryant). When Marlins pitcher Wei-Yin Chen took the mound, announcer Pat Hughes was unsure how to pronounce the name, then added: “As George Carlin once said, one name that never caught on in China was Rusty.”

Miller resident Omar Farag posted a photo taken from his property and asked, “Where’s the beach?”  Neighbor Michael Greenwald responded: “They took it away from us when they built the Port of Indiana pier and changed the flow of the Lake. This was predicted in the 50s. The zero beach point is at Ripley or Pine.”

Already Gone

“Remember this, when you look up in the sky

You can see the stars and still not see the light,”

         “Already Gone,” Eagles

Glenn Frey of the Eagles passed away at age 67.  Although “Already Gone” is about a guy breaking up with his girlfriend after hearing she planned to leave him, it’s the headline many newspapers used to announce his death.  “Already Gone,” sung by Frey, was the first cut on the classic 1974 album “On the Border,” which also contained “James Dean” and “Best of My Love.”  In addition to a solo career after the Eagles broke up in 1980, Frey appeared in episodes of Miami Vice and as an agent in Jerry Maguire.

At Inman’s where James now bowls, a thin layer of ice almost caused me to fall in the parking lot.  James rolled a 440 series, better than my average these days, and I was happy to see many familiar faces, including Chris Lugo’s and Tom Dick’s families.  A couple Christmases ago at Inman’s I couldn’t find my car for some anxious minutes, as I exited from a different door than the one I first entered.

 

above, cast of "Young Frankenstein"; below, Angie and Becca

Sunday we braved arctic conditions to see the Mel Brooks musical “Young Frankenstein” at the Star Plaza.”  Becca was in the chorus and had several tricky dance numbers, including “Puttin’ On the Ritz.”  Ribald songs included “Deep Love” and “Roll in the Hay” featuring sexy Inga (Rachel Livingston) and Frederick Frankenstein (Justin Williams).  The show, first presented at Valpo’s Chicago Street Theatre, so impressed Star Plaza CEO Charlie Blum that he booked an enhanced version into the much larger venue.  Before the curtain went up Robin Halberstadt introduced me to a half dozen friends, including the sister of the person from whom we bought our condo, and I chatted with Stevie Kokos, a former softball teammate who has worked at the Star Plaza since majoring in Performing Arts at IUN.

On Jeopardy all three contestants bet everything on the final question and guessed incorrectly, leaving them with no money.  The category was State Capitals and the clue was: A 1957 event led to the creation of a national historic site in this city, signed into law by a president whose library is now there too.  Guesses were Atlanta, Montgomery, and Springfield.  Realizing that the desegregation of Central High School took place then and that Bill Clinton’s Presidential library is in Little Rock, Arkansas, I knew the answer.  None of the contestants would return.  Two of them had tied for the lead, so their bets were understandable, but the third person really blew it.

 above, Debra Dubovich; below, Daddy King

On Martin Luther King Day at Gino’s Debra Dubovich ably reported on Taylor Branch’s “Parting the Waters,” volume one of the 2,912-page trilogy “America in the King Years.”  King’s first name was originally Michael, and he became Martin Luther King, Jr., after “Daddy” King changed their names when he was five.  Married to Alberta Williams, the daughter of the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the elder King restored it to financial solvency after Reverend A.D. Williams died in 1931.  Dubovich concentrated on the Montgomery Bus Boycott and mentioned the role E.D. Nixon played as President of the Montgomery NAACP whom Rosa Parks worked for.  Jailed, Nixon acted like it was a badge of pride, inspiring others not to fear the many harassment tactics.  Brian and Connie Barnes mentioned that Richard Morrisroe spoke at Hobart Unitarian Church the previous day about being gravely wounded in Lowndes County 50 years ago.  Morrisrroe figures prominently in Taylor Branch’s “At Canaan’s Edge: America during the King Years, 1965-1968.”

Explaining to Steve McShane’s students to explain their oral history assignment -  to interview someone from Northwest Indiana who was a teenager during the 1980s -  I read excerpts from two articles in my Eighties Shavings (volume 38, 2007), “The Uncertainty of Everyday Life.” Rebecca Sanders wrote about 1989 Hammond High grad Jered, whose dad took him to wrestling matches at Hammond Civic Center.  Jered enjoyed going to Woodmar Mall, where he and his best friend hung out at Radio Shack and a record store and tried to pick up girls. Stephanie Short wrote about LaCretia Tucker, who got pregnant her senior year after a December turnabout dance.  Short wrote:

  LaCretia had planned to go into the marines, and her biggest regret is the derailing of those plans.  She kept her pregnancy secret even from her parents.  At graduation they gave her a dozen roses in a presentation bouquet.  As she sat through the ceremony with the flowers on her lap, she watched them move around as the baby was going “kick, kick, kick.”

        

Duplicate bridge partners with Charlie Halberstadt at Duneland YMCA in Chesterton, my low point was going down four in four spades.  It turned out, however, that it was a good sacrifice bid because it kept our opponents out of game.  Seventeen people showed up, so director Alan Ynve played with someone without a partner and one of the nine pairs sat out each round.   If 16 or 20 folks show up Alan doesn’t play.  If there are 18, he calls our neighbor Janice Custer, who lives minutes away, and plays with her.  If there are 15 or 19, Alan plays and no team has to sit out.

Jeff Manes profiled Miller Beach mainstay George Rogge, president of the Miller Citizens Corporation and active in a half-dozen other civic groups.  Rogge discussed the threat to homeowners a decade ago when U.S. Steel’s tax assessment got reduced from $248 million to $113 million, the epitome of corporate irresponsibility.

  All of a sudden, people were about to get a bill for 9 percent of their assessed valuation for their market price. Some people bought their houses for cheaper than that.

  I put together a small group, and we put together a three-pronged plan. The first prong was that we would sue the state. The second prong was the legislature. I said that we should cap the rate at 2 percent, which was higher than the rest of what the state was paying, anyway. We settled on that.

  I went down to Indianapolis and actually bought a condo. I spent the entire time down there. The third prong was we put together a group that was really affected, liked retired teachers. 

The bill eventually was written up: 1 percent for homeowners, 2 percent for rental, and 3 percent for commercial. Those were the caps. The bill was passed, and it is now in the state constitution. It's the biggest thing I ever did.

At a condo owners meeting the hot topics were tree trimming and how to stop woodpeckers from drilling holes in people’s units.  One person recommended buying plastic owls and filling them with sand.  Another suggested pie tins that reflected.  By the time I got back home Golden State was blowing out the Bulls.

I was unable to edit my blog or make a new post until Augie Reyes from IUN tech services connected it to the Foxfire.  It appears that the latest Safari update made the blog incompatible with my MAC.

I started reading Sean Wilentz’s 2005 biography of Andrew Jackson, shorter but more scholarly than Jon Meacham’s “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.”  Wilentz wrote that “the charismatic general and hero of the War of 1812 embodied the hopes of ordinary citizens” and that his presidency was “a hinge between the founding of the republic and its rebirth in the Civil War.”

I bowled my best game all season, a 190, enabling the Engineers to win game two, and finished with a 483 series.  Opponent Judy Sheriff threw a ball that broke sharply to the left, necessitating that she throw it perilously close to the right gutter.  After one of her strikes, the octogenarian exclaimed, “I’m a happy hooker.”

Gary Roosevelt student Cary Martin protests conditions at school; NWI Times photo by Carmen McCollum

Gary Roosevelt students protested the lack of heat and other problems that have kept the school closed much of the time since Christmas.  He once-proud school has fallen on tough times, exacerbated by being taken over and run as a charter school.

Edge of Canaan

“Life does not consist only of what you have.

The bigger part of life is what you can give."

         “In the Presence of a Gift,” Hollis Donald (November 2015)

The source for titles of Taylor Branch’s three-volume history of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement in America is the Old Testament book of Exodus.  “Parting the Waters” refers to crossing the Red Sea; “Pillar of Fire” allegedly was a miracle that allowed Israelites to travel by night; “Edge of Canaan” refers to nearing the Promised Land that Moses was able to see but, like Martin Luther King, did not survive long enough to enter.  “Edge of Canaan” contains details about the near-fatal shooting in 1965 in Lowndes County, Alabama, of Richard Morrisroe, whose wife worked at E.C. Central.  The Morrisroes met after Richard was assigned to a Puerto Rican congregation.  Ring bearer at their wedding was her nephew Bernabé “Bernie” Williams Figueroa, who as a Yankee centerfielder won four championship rings.

According to the Bible, after the death of Moses, Joshua conquered the Canaanites, who were descended from Ham, the son of Noah and worshipped the false god Baal.  Around 1200 B.C. in the aftermath of the battle of Jericho, Joshua’s army, supposedly following revengeful Yahweh’s orders, slaughtered their foes and burned the city to the ground.   Following the death of King Solomon, a spendthrift with a harem of a thousand wives and concubines, the 12 tribes of Israel split into two groups.  In 722 B.C. the Assyrians overran the northern kingdom; in 585 B.C. the Chaldeans under King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and marched remnants of the two southern tribes to captivity in Babylon.  Some Israelites eventually returned to Jerusalem but were annihilated in 70 A.D. by Roman troops under Titus, the son of Emperor Vespasian.

At Lakeshore Toyota due to an airbag recall (a scandal of momentous proportions involving Takata Corporation), a fellow asked, “Are you Dr. Lane?”   It was Jason Kontos, who had interviewed steelworker Clarence Ashley for my “Steelworkers Tales” Shavings issue (1990).  In “Silo” Kontos wrote:

  The worst accident Clarence B. Ashley remembers at U.S. Steel was when a huge silo exploded.  His job was to load chunks of lime onto a conveyor belt, which transported them to a silo that was at least 300 feet high and 50 feet wide.  One morning when Ashley arrived at work, the silo had seemingly vanished.  Water had somehow gotten into it, causing a chemical explosion that left several people dead or injured.

  Ashley’s worst personal injury occurred in a less dramatic way.  He slipped on a piece of taconite and his own shovel hit him on the head, requiring more than 20 stitches.

Jason grew up in Miller near Wells Street Beach and is friends with Bob Wilcynski, my Seventies tennis partner.  For years a special ed teacher, Kontos presently is in real estate.  His favorite teacher, Rhiman Rotz, was such a showman that he’d be drenched in sweat by the end of class.  Several times Jason brought guests who were mulling over whether to attend college.  Rotz was faculty adviser to IUN’s Muslim Student Association.  He died of cancer in 2001 shortly after 9/11.  The last time I talked to him he was worried about its members.

 from Anne Balay's "Steel Closets"

After Anne Balay spoke at Illinois Institute of Technology on “Tradition and the Individual Steelworker,” Andrea Zeffiro, interviewing her for “Nomorepotlucks,” asked about putting together the “Steel Closets” appendix, titled “The Narrators,” which provided pseudonyms and descriptions of the 40 LGBT steelworkers.  Balay answered:

  My publisher and readers made me do that. I resisted for a long time. Why? I was nervous about making the narrators visible. I had learned so much about how vulnerable they were at work that I was very anxious not to add to their struggles. But they don’t lack courage, certainly, and they agreed with the publisher that readers would want some outline of a body and life to tie the stories to, so I settled on the approach you describe. Even the aliases are chosen to conceal identity (for example, narrators with “black” names are white, etc.), and specific mills or job sites within mills are sometimes changed. I had a hard time guessing their age, also, since the mill affects your body.

Andrea asked how “Steel Closets” was received.  Balay first mentioned that it helped prod the United Steelworkers of America into guaranteeing contract protections for LGBT members, then turned her attention to academia:

         The academy has no respect for activism, though they give it lip service. I was denied tenure, and haven’t found permanent academic work. Most departments have their hearts in the right place, but when they go to hire, they think more about the existing classes they need to cover than about what needs to be added, or even changed in their course roster. Most departments don’t find themselves asking who will teach their courses on blue-collar queers, or courses that will send students out to the community to meet local folks, hear their stories, and encourage them to change their worlds.

A colleague who once relished my company skedaddled as I was about to join him in the cafeteria, fallout a year later, amazingly (professors do carry grudges, as Anne also discovered), from my defending Anne Balay, denied tenure on patently specious grounds.  The lie her enemies spread was that she had favorites and was insensitive toward black students.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as I witnessed auditing her class for an entire semester. Anne was a rigorous grader who encouraged her best students to present papers at academic conferences.  Some students assumed incorrectly that her Children’s Literature course would be a piece of cake.  In an incident that her boss seized on, several flunking students attempted to get their money back one day before the withdrawal deadline by claiming outrage at being exposed to “Nappy Hair.”  Written by African American Carolivia Herron, the book’s main point was for black kids to be proud of their African heritage.

Niece Lisa Teuscher posted a photo of her with younger sister Mary Ann and my son Dave taken during the blizzard of 1979, which caused Chicago mayor Michael Bilandic to lose election the following month to Jane Byrne.  Lisa’s family, visiting from New Jersey, had left for home but turned around due to the storm.  Commenting on the “huge DD jug” in Lisa’s left hand was hubby Fritz.  Mary Ann joked, “I noticed Dave and I holding hands.  It must have been a good visit since we were usually arguing!!! LOL.”

 above, Maurice Yancy; below, Liz Wuerffel, Rebekah Arevalo, Christina Crowley, Allison Schuette

A NWI Times article about VU’s Welcome Project mentioned partnering with IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives and included a photo of Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy.  Project co-director Allison Schuette told correspondent Rob Earnshaw: “We edit interviews into short video or audio stories.  Then we facilitate conversations around those stories in various venues.” Co-director Liz Wuerffel added: “Rather than let the dominant narrative narrow our ideas about who we are or what kind of regional relationship we can have, we hope that, through storytelling, research, and conversation, we can start to tell a new story about who we are and what we can become.”

In the mail was “Indiana’s 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State,” a handsome tabletop volume celebrating the state’s 2016 Bicentennial.  I wrote the essay on Vee-Jay Record Company founder Vivian Carter.  Other Gary natives include “King of Pop” Michael Jackson, World War II combat photographer Johnny Bushemi, and Roman Catholic Bishop Andrew Grutka.  Actor Karl Malden and Mayor Richard Hatcher didn’t make the cut, but I was happy to see dunes artist Frank Dudley and Region humorist Jean Shepherd represented.  On the back jacket are quotes by Theodore Dreiser about Hoosiers being dreamers and Kurt Vonnegut alleging that “wherever you go, there is always a Hoosier doing something very important there.”  The essays are in alphabetical order, beginning with landscape painter J. Ottis Adams (1851-1927), part of the so-called Hoosier group.

"Poppy Garden" by J. Ottis Adams (1914)

Steve Glazer, a self-described Jean Shepherd historian, inquired if I knew anything about the humorist attending IU after graduating from Hammond High in 1939.   He ended the email using a favorite Gene Shepherd word, “Excelsior.” I wrote back: “I cannot directly answer your query, but in 1995, before Shep received an honorary IU degree, he spoke for 20 minutes at a luncheon and joked about going to IU’s East Chicago site after he got out of the army and being given an aptitude test.  Upon being told the results indicated that he'd make a good dentist, he claimed that he walked out of the building and never went back.  I'll leave it to you to decide how much of the story was apocryphal.”

In Steve McShane’s Indiana History class I’ll have students read excerpts from my 1980s Steel Shavings volume on that decade, “The Uncertainty of Everyday Life” (2008), in particular my oral history of the Richard Hatcher administration.  The issue is dedicated to the late IUN senior lecturer Gary L. Martin, who while Lake County chief of police under Sheriff Roy Dominguez rammed into during a bicycle rally to raise money for widows of police officers.  It contains an article by Jillian Adams about Bob Hechlinski, a Dyer businessman who for 13 years beginning in 1986 mentored interns for IUN’s Career Beginnings program directed by SPEA professor Phil Rutledge. He was initially reluctant to participate due to an onerous workload, but wife Nancy reminded him that his former boss at Bendix Corporation, Dick Cordell, had pushed him to finish college. Of the original 115 mentors, after two years Hechinski was the only white male left.  Jillian Adams wrote:

  The obstacles were great, but the rewards made up for it, Bob recalled.  One student named Malcolm had around a D average going into his senior year.  Bob was determined to prove he wasn’t a complete washout and to get him into college.  At their weekly meetings he worked to change Malcolm’s study habits and to stress that schoolwork came before phone calls to girls and other leisure activities.  The reward came when Malcolm called with news that he had made the honor roll.  After Bob hung up, he realized that he was crying tears of happiness.

  The following year, he had an intern who seemed sullen and angry to be paired with a white man.  Throughout the relationship the student kept his distance and didn’t open up to Bob, but he didn’t break off the relationship.  Bob even talked to Malcolm about the situation.  At commencement the student was standing with family and friends when he spotted Bob and much to Bob’s amazement threw his arms around him and embraced him.  Said Bob, “That alone made the experience worthwhile.  Everything was pushed aside, race and all.”

Bob and Nancy Hechlinski presently live in Bloomington.  He’s the author of “Honey, I Bought An Airplane: Stories, Histories and Recollections of 597 Flights in the Midwest.”  In 1991 NWI Times correspondent Phil Wieland covered the final flight of Hechlinski’s “quixotic quest to land his airplane at every airport in Indiana.”  He touched down at Grissom Air Force Base during an air show witnessed by 100,000 people.  Hechlinski told Wieland, “I’d do it again.  I guess there are two crazy men of the dunes – me and [aviation pioneer] Octave Chanute.”

Daughter-in-law Angie prepared a pre-Thanksgiving turkey dinner with all the trimmings.  In the front yard honoring East Chicago Central grad Tamiya Towns was the sign, “Proud Parents of a U.S. Soldier.”  Sweet.  Angie’s dad John Teague gave Becca an acoustic guitar that he’d bought 40 years ago but hadn’t played for years.  Dave tried it out and sang several Replacements songs, including “Talent Show.”  John spent four years in the military, mostly stationed at area Nike missile sites, including one in Porter.  We drove home through a snowstorm, but the four inches in Chesterton paled in comparison to the record amount for November at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

left, Bernie Williams; right, The Ronnettes

In “Leaders of the Pack,” Sean MacLeod noted that girl group “songs were the musical expression of that transitory stage between the wonders of childhood and the realities of adulthood, while endeavoring to bridge the gap between innocence and knowing, between dependency and independence, and between self and other.”  Fame was fleeting, as the singers were at the mercy of an exploitative industry.  Two exceptions, Ronnie Bennett of the Ronnettes and Diana Ross of the Supremes, were pursued romantically by producers Phil Spector and Berry Gordy.

Adele shined on Saturday Night Live, as did Justin Bieber in the American Music Awards finale.  IU blew a nine-point lead against Wake Forest in the Maui Classic.  I finished first in the 15-person CBS Sports pool despite selecting the pathetic Eagles to beat Tampa Bay. Bo Reyes, my closest competition, incorrectly picked Minnesota over Green Bay.

 photo by Luke Waters

Once nearly extinct in Indiana, wild turkeys are now a common sight.  In the Chesterton Tribune Kevin Nevers wrote about several dozen landing on I-149 and stopping traffic for 30 minutes.  They appeared to be afraid of jumping over the guard rail until steelworker Luke Waters and another driver started gobbling and flapping their arms.  Nevers wrote: “Together the two men led the rafter [i.e., flock] to freedom, to the Canaan beyond the guard rail.”

Under Coach Ryan Shelton the Lady Redhawks are 6 and 1, the only loss coming when NAIA All-American Nicki Monahan was out with an injury.  In the Viterbo NAIA Showcase Classic IUN fell behind by 17 but defeated Saint Ambrose on a last-second shot by Monahan, who finished with 34 points.