Lamentable Tragedy

“Let me show you my FATAL FLAW

It’s the best thing you never saw.”

         “Fatal Flaw,” Titus Andronicus, from “The Most Lamentable Tragedy”

“The Most Lamentable Tragedy,” a rock opera by a New Jersey band named after the Shakespeare tragedy that often opens shows with Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are back in Town,” contains 28 songs, including “Stranded,” “More Perfect Union,” and “No Future.” NPR’s Jason Heller praised its “Replacements-worthy hooks” and compared the triple album favorably to such punk classics as “London Calling” by The Clash and “Zen Arcade” by Hüsker Dü. 

Last time I visited longtime Lake County surveyor George Van Til in federal prison the Paris bombings occurred.  This time it was the Brussels bombings during a soccer match and Eagles of Death Metal concert by ISIS terrorists that killed three dozen innocent people at the Belgium capital’s airport and metro center.  “Lyin’” Ted Cruz, as Trump has dubbed him, whom “Low Energy” Jeb Bush inexplicably endorsed, has recommended special police surveillance in Muslim neighborhoods and slammed President Obama for attending a baseball game in Havana with Raul Castro rather than focusing on a response to the tragedy.  Obama replied: “I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance. Which, by the way, the father of Senator Cruz escaped for America. The land of the free. The notion that we would start down that slippery slope makes absolutely no sense. It's contrary to who we are. And it's not going to help us defeat ISIL.”

To help Cruz win the Utah caucus an anti-Trump PAC distributed a racy photo of Trump’s wife Melania in a flyer asking voters whether they could imagine such a person as First Lady.  Trump fired back with an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife Heidi next to one of Melania after first threatening to “spill the beans” on Heidi.  In 2005 Heidi suffered from such severe depression that Austin, Texas, police found her by the side of a highway, head in her hands.  After the National Enquirer claimed Cruz has had five mistresses, the reactionary Texan blamed Trump for planting the “garbage.”  Denying the charge, Trump stated: “While they were right about O.J. Simpson, John Edwards, and many others. I certainly hope they are not right about Lyin’ Ted Cruz.”  Only in America!

Terre Haute is an hour ahead of Northwest Indiana, like most of the state even though west of Gary.  The Drury Hotel served complimentary hot dogs, chili, salad, baked potatoes, meatballs, and pasta.  The IU-North Carolina game didn’t start until 10 p.m. so I catnapped after a dip in the pool and hot tub.  Sadly the Hoosiers were no match for the Tar Heels. After turning onto Bureau Road (as in Federal Bureau of Prisons) the following morning, a guard advised coming back in an hour.  When I did, there was another 20-minute bureaucratic delay before George Van Til entered the visitors room.  We talked pretty much nonstop for the next three hours.

A couple weeks ago, George, feverish, fell to the floor getting out of bed.  He’d been cold all winter and developed chills.  Hospitalized with pneumonia, he shared a ward with hardened criminals.  Guards shackled his ankles, first in uncomfortable stainless steel devices and finally on the third day more tolerable plastic devices.  George still has dizzy spells, and I suggested a cane, but he isn’t ready for that, fearing ridicule or, worse, being the object of pity.  When a prison photographer took our photo and showed it to George, the septuagenarian noted, “I look old.”  As chiropractor Manuel Kazanas retorts when I tell him I feel old, “You are old.”  With his many health issues it’s a lamentable tragedy that George is in prison.

With less than 90 days remaining on his sentence Van Til was in a less somber mood than last time and looking forward to playing the piano at next day’s Easter services.  He’s been reading “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America” by Rick Perlstein and noted the similarities between America in 1972 at present in terms of polarization.  We traded anecdotes about 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern, who spoke at Gary West Side High School during the campaign, and Lake County politicians we both know, including IU Northwest grads John Petalas and Roy Dominguez.  Both of us admire former mayor Richard Hatcher and hope his dream of a civil rights Hall of Fame in Gary matterializes.  George hadn’t heard that Gary civic leader Dolly Millender had passed away and told me he had participated in many Christmas programs of the Gary Symphony Orchestra that she had founded.  As I was leaving, he gave me a hug and told me that this was the highlight of his week.

In 2009 I reviewed “Nixonland” for Magill’s Literary Annual, summarizing the book as “an insightful examination of forces that polarized America, commencing with the mid-1960’s urban riots and the escalation of the war in Vietnam, making possible the amazing political comeback of cunning, tormented Richard M. Nixon, and culminating in his 1972 landslide reelection.”  Even so, “Tricky Dick” Nixon had become so paranoid about how he’d fare against chisel-faced Maine senator Edmund S. Muskie that he gave the green light to reckless criminal activities that derailed Muskie’s presidential bid but ultimately destroyed his own presidency and place in history.  Here’s a paragraph from my review:

  Nixonland documents in chilling detail the widening rift that made the rest of the country more and more like the rebel South.  Boston “Southies” defied the law, hoping to keep their schools all-white.  New York City Italian Americans formed SPONGE, the Society for the Prevention of Negroes Getting Everything.  In New Mexico, vigilantes harassed “longhairs” and burned down hippie communes.  Rogue cops in Newark and Detroit beat with impunity black people trapped in riot zones.  The liberal press glamorized “Woodstock Nation” and the “New Morality” – but ignored the “blue collar” envy of privileged collegians and poked fun of “Decency” rallies attended by thousands of “Middle Americans” in Miami, Cleveland, and Baltimore.  Hundreds of New York City construction workers went on a rampage after Mayor John Lindsey ordered the flag lowered to half-staff in the wake of the Kent State killings.  Nixon, who had recently called student protesters “bums,” confided to an aide, “Thank God for the hard hats,” and invited a delegation to the White House.  Here was an opening to create a permanent Republican majority.  Armed with the power of the Oval Office, he ordered aides, as he privately put it, to “get down to the nut-cutting.”

 Gary Martin and Roy Dominguez in 2002; NWI Times photo by John J. Watkins

Driving home from Terre Haute, I passed a sign designating a stretch of Route 63 as Gary L. Martin and Gary Dudley Memorial Highway.  Ten years ago, Lake County deputy sheriff Gary Martin, one of IUN’s most beloved professors, and Indiana State Police Lieutenant Gary Dudley were on Highway 63 participating in a bicycle rally to raise funds for families of officers killed in the line of duty.  A tractor-trailer plowed into a bread truck, which ran over and killed Martin and Dudley.  Lake County sheriff Roy Dominguez, who considered Martin his closest friend and most trusted adviser, arranged for a procession to transport Martin’s casket from Burns Funeral Home in Merrillville to St. Mary’s Cemetery on Ridge Road.  In “Valor” Dominguez wrote:

  As it passed by the county government complex, we had the vehicle he had driven while chief in front of our police memorial along with a replica of the bike he had been riding.  There was an honor guard, and the county helicopter flew overhead.  Pipes and drums units from several communities met the hearse near the cemetery entrance, and the sound of bagpipes greeted those arriving at the gravesite.  It had been showering off and on all day; but as the officers started with the 21-gun salute, it started to pour.  It was a deluge, but nobody left.  I told people, “I’m sure Gary is upstairs and turned on the water faucets to have his last laugh.” Those who knew Gary concurred.

The entire IUN History Department turned out for Nicole Anslover’s talk on women and politics at the Birky Women’s Center.  She asked the audience to guess when women Senators first could wear pants.  The answer: 1993, after Barbara Mikulski, Democrat from Maryland, and Nancy Kassabaum, Republican from Kansas, defied the upper body’s rules.  Mikulski, lamentably retiring at years end, recalled: “You would have thought I was walking on the moon.  It caused a big stir.”  Nicole mentioned that FDR’s Labor Secretary Frances Perkins initially felt too uncomfortable to speak up at cabinet meetings, leading one colleague to speculate that she might be speech-impaired.   Nicole asked if we knew which country had the first elected woman leader.  Jonathyne speculated that it was India (Indiri Gandhi became prime minister in 1966), and I guessed Israel (Golda Meir took power in 1969).  The answer was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, a year after her husband Solomon was assassinated in 1959.

I passed out copies of Steel Shavings, volume 45.  Audrea Davis hugged me for including a photo and brief portrait of sister Beverly who died after a brave fight with cancer.  When I identified it as my noncontroversial issue, Chancellor Lowe quipped, “Is that possible?”  Arts and Sciences administrative assistant Mary Hackett replied to my claim, “Are you serious?”  Diana Chen Lin praised my magazine for informing her about Gary past and present.  Several folks expressed surprise their names were in the Index and, in the case of my bowling teammates, photos from last year’s banquet. 

below, Wanda Fox and kids

At Hobart Lanes the Engineers swept Spare Me to pass them in the standings. Opponents included three of the friendliest bowlers we’ve faced, Wanda Fox, Dorothy Peterson, and Dave Melvin.  Their teammate, Doug Reno, is, like me, not a happy camper when things aren’t going well.  I started with a 184 and then struggled, leaving seven-pins on apparently perfect hits.  Final frame was no exception, but I picked up the spare and ended with a strike; we won the game by a mere 8 pins.

Elizabeth “Liz” Lapovsky Kennedy, a pioneer in the field of Women’s Studies, wrote a glowing review of Anne Balay’s “Steel Closets” for GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.  Kennedy wrote:

  Balay makes the steel mill come alive as a key shaper of the conditions of work and gender and desire.  The mill emerges as a behemoth, lumbering into the contemporary world, engulfing all who cross its path.  Balay links the mill’s physical isolation from broader societal movements, through such things as the massive physical structure that workers enter through a gate, or the labor practice of the swing shift, which prevents workers from socializing with outsiders, or the practice of showering before leaving to wash the plant off one’s body.  The separation is reinforced by the overwhelmingly timeless quality of the mill, since many of the processes and therefore the building designs are over one hundred years old.  Change does not seem to be on the agenda.

Thanks to Balay’s efforts, change, in fact, took place at last year’s USW convention.

On Spring break, James and Becca spent much time at the condo, culminating in Easter egg decorating and a Vernal Equinox dinner featuring spring rolls.  Afterwards, we played Apple to Apple.  Dave and I watched Syracuse upset Virginia in the NCAA tournament.  Brady Wade came over for Acquire and Puerto Rico; we hadn’t played Puerto Rico in quite a while and, rusty, I got off to a fatally slow start.  When the UNC-Notre Dame contest turned into a rout, I picked up Richard Russo’s novel “Mohawk,” which I found in a “free books” table.  Every couple pages were penciled grammatical corrections from a previous reader, such as one indicating that “what ever” should be a single word.

egg decorating in Michigan: above, Tori; below, Anthony and Miranda 

Helicopter Parents

“A lot of parents will do anything for their kids except let them be themselves,” Graffiti artist Banksy

Parents can’t win.  Whereas in the past they elicited criticism for neglecting their kids, now self-appointed experts have coined the phrase “helicopter parents” for those who allegedly try too hard to shield children from failure and disappointment.  For example, in “How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kids for Success” Julie Lythcott-Haims warns that over-helping “can leave young adults without the strength of skill, will, and character that are needed to know themselves and to craft a life.”  The goal of parents, she argues, should be to make offspring self-sufficient – in her words, “to put ourselves out of a job.”

 

The pejorative phrase “helicopter parent” suggests hovering, lingering near loved ones in a stifling, over-protective way by closely monitoring all manner of activities.  On the other hand, a case can be made for involved parents who are supportive of their kids’ need for independence but wish to keep them from harm until they are better prepared to protect themselves. As one wrote on the website bleuwater: “I monitor computer and TV viewing. I check book bags daily and stay in communication with their teachers. I ask questions about their day and try and spend one-on-one time with them every night…wait a minute…Does that really make me a helicopter mom or an involved mom?!”

Although the ideal of a close-knit, happy family unit was central to my parents’ Fifties suburban middle-class existence, Midge and Vic did not keep tabs on everything I did or everywhere I went, so long as I was home for dinner or at a decent hour on weekends.  They did not, for instance, press me to take piano lessons or play organized sports.  On the other hand, they did encourage me to join the Cub Scouts (Midge was my den mother), and it was understood that I should make good grades in order to get into college.  Above all, I was not to bring shame upon myself or to the family.

Christian Science Monitor quiz questions to determine if one is a helicopter parent ranged from how much to help a child with a science project to whether to use a GPS tracking device to know where a teenager is at all times.  In groan-inducing “Helicopter Mom” (2014) overbearing Maggie Cooper outs her sexually ambiguous son to make it easier for him to win an LGBT college scholarship – only it turns out he falls for a girl. 

Katy Steinmetz’s Time cover story about childrearing practices of the so-called Millennial Generation stated:

  Helicopter-parented, trophy-saturated and abundantly friended, they’ve been hailed by loved ones as ‘special snowflakes’ and cast as the self-centered children of the cosseting boomers who raised them.

Passing Chuck Gallmeier on his way to class, I asked what he’d be teaching, and he answered, “social stratification.”  I assume he’ll discuss the hierarchical division of societies pertaining to the “holy trinity” (Nicole’s Anslover’s phrase) of race, class, and gender.  Structural functionalists have argued that social inequality has beneficial consequences for the smooth operation of a society, but most sociologists realize that stratification benefits the few at the expense of the many and in extreme cases leads to oppression.

Jeff Manes, whose Post-Tribune SALT column on me will be in his forthcoming book, interviewed Carlyle Edwards, until recently project manager of the East Chicago nonprofit agency Bridges of Care.  Originally from western Pennsylvania, Edwards believes Region cities should emulate Pittsburgh by diversifying.  He told Manes:

            The leadership of Northwest Indiana needs to leave. Not permanently, but temporarily. They need to visit other places, other living space programs that have turned around cities. They need to bring some of those ideas back.

With the Cubs behind 8-3, after Daniel Murphy homered in his sixth consecutive postseason game, a Wrigley Field sign read: “We Need a Miracle.”  Alas, it was not to be.  Though the Cubs went 7-0 against the Mets in the regular season, there was little truth to the die-hard White Sox fans’ claim that they choked.  The Mets had better pitching and clutch hitting.  Winning 101 games gives Chicago fans optimism for the future.  I had hoped to be watching game 5 Thursday at Hobart Lanes, where I had my first decent series of the season, 450.

In the Chicago Sun-Times Michael Sneed wrote that the Billy goat whose owner supposedly put a curse on the Cubs in 1945 was named Murphy, as was the unpopular Cubs owner in 1908 who cursed his players when they wouldn’t let him come to their celebration dinner. Both the general manager and broadcaster for the 1969 Miracle Mets were Murphys, and the Cubs three-game NLCS collapse in 1984 took place in San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium.  Sneed summed up the Cubs-Mets series by citing Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

At my reunion two weeks ago Donald Stroup mentioned frequently passing through Terre Haute, Indiana, on western trips.  When I expressed hope to visit a friend who was incarcerated there, he and Joe Ricketts wanted to know more about the case but a third classmate just made a sarcastic comment about politicians and walked away.

I’ve been approved to visit George Van Till at the federal correctional camp in Terre Haute on November 14.  He wrote: “You might not recognize me in geeky prison glasses and having lost a hundred pounds and [with] a depressed look on my face.”  He signed the letter, “Warm regards, G.V.T.”  How sad that one who dedicated his life to government (g.v.t.) service should be a victim of selective and arbitrary law enforcement.  Federal prosecutors commonly charge their victims on so many counts (i.e., wire fraud for pays staff members using direct deposit) that they virtually blackmail their prey into a plea bargain.   Regarding over-criminalization, retired law school professor John Baker has written: “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.”  Civil rights attorney Harvey A. Silverglate estimated that the average American unwittingly commits three felonies a day.

Ron Cohen alerted me to Rick Perlstein’s article in The Washington Spectator about a Bernie Sanders house party in Griffith, Indiana, where the candidate spoke by live feed.  Hostess Gypsy Milenic told Perlstein: “This home is paid for by union dues.  That matters. Keeping it in the family; that matters.  Being able to have a small town like this that is a mix of blue-collar and white-collar matters.”  A young conservative told Perlstein: “I approve of some of the stuff that Bernie stands for - like appealing to more than just the one percent and trying to give everyone a leg up who’s needing it these days.”  Another told the crowd:

            Both my parents together made barely over the poverty line, and I can tell you that life sucks. I have no financial support from my family. I get very little from the government. I am on my own, trying to make it, trying to thrive, just like everybody behind me. And it’s hard. And I am currently about 50 grand in debt between student loans, car loans. . . and I am trying so damned hard. And working so damned hard.  I see all my friends who suffer the same way I do, and they can’t make ends meet. They work three jobs. . . and they still struggle! And it just burns me. Because it wasn’t like this! Now, you go to college for four years and you’re in debt 20, 30 years, sometimes for life. I want to see change. And I believe Bernie Sanders is the one to do it.

African American retiree Martha Harris first took notice of Sanders when Black Lives Matter advocates confronted him at a rally in Phoenix.  Harris told Perlstein: “I saw him flub. And like any white man, his staff put him out there without his underwear on. So he ran home and he got his long johns on. And I’m okay with that. He’s learning.”  At the house party Harris was so impressed that she opened a “Sanders for President” storefront in Hammond. 

In a poetic essay entitled “Le Your Hand be Strong” IUN Physical Plant worker Hollis Donald praised his boss Otto Jefimenko.  Don’t tell him you can’t do something, Donald wrote, “because one thing he will always ask is ‘why not?’  He himself can do every job at Physical Plant; some years ago Dr. Otto saw a vision of a renewed Gary.  He would not let anyone tell him the power of regeneration did not exist in the almost forgotten territory of Gary.”

Environmentalist Lee Botts and film producer Pat Wisniewski invited me to a “final cut” screening of the one-hour documentary “Shifting Sands” at the National Lakeshore Visitors Center. Other guests included archivist Steve McShane (who provided many of the visuals), Miller historian Steve Spicer, geologist Mark Reshkin, SALT columnist Jeff Manes, and about 60 others, Including environmentalists and business leaders.  I appeared a half-dozen times talking about the intrusion of U.S. Steel and the city of Gary to the pristine dunelands. At one point the film stuck with my image on the screen, like at the Black International Film Festival showing of “My Name Is Gary.” Hope I’m not a jinx.  Ken Schoon mentioned that sand was mined for export to Chicago and for use in making blue Ball canning jars in Muncie, Indiana.  The film summarized recent cooperative conservation efforts, such as the Grand Calumet River Task Force.  One turning point was when the federal government gave polluters the option of paying hefty fines or using the money in cleanup efforts.

Afterwards Botts solicited comments.  Outspoken curmudgeon Herb Read said the product was improvement over a previous cut but still lacked material about the origins of the dunes and details about the role Save the Dunes Council played in bringing about the creation of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  Twice Botts tried to move on to someone else, but that only seemed to spur him on to continue the diatribe.  Clearly suspicious on corporate good will gestures, Read in the film describes how Bethlehem Steel destroyed the central dunes – employing heavy machinery 24 hours a day within ear-shot of his house – before environmentalists could save them.  I recommended including material about the Bailly Alliance, a mass movement that prevented the building of a nuclear power plant on the Lake Michigan shoreline.  In the film former Local 1010 president Mike Olszanski discusses activities of a steelworkers environmental committee - a perfect place to add the material.

After the show I went looking for Park Ranger Amanda Board and found the IUN grad with a customer in the gift shop.  Despite her new hairstyle and glasses, I recognized her sweet smile and soft voice and we chatted for a few minutes, after which she called me Jimbo, warming my heart.  She said her life was going well and that she hoped for a career with the Park Service.  I once again suggested that she look into Hawaii, where there are numerous national parks.