Imagine

“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

 

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one”

    John Lennon, “Imagine”

 

Dave performed “Imagine” on piano and dedicated it to Toni. As a kid, he’d play our piano in the basement rec room to relax, learning by trial and error.  A recent rightwing Facebook post called the song “Marxist” - can you imagine?  If it is a pipedream to imagine a world without war, government and religion, it is certainly not to be treated as dangerous enemy propaganda, only the wise words of a musical shaman too fragile for this world.

 

I had a relatively busy day compared to most during this pandemic.  Mike and Janet Bayer spent the night after visiting son Brenden and is family.  After breakfast I donned a face mask and got my toenails clipped at nearby Aqua Spa, first time in months.  They checked my temperature, squirted sanitizer onto my hands, and took me to a station that had a barrier between me and the young woman servicing me.  In the afternoon Dave and Angie stopped over, and in the evening I played Space Base via Zoom with Tom, Jef, Dave, Evan and Patti. With a scoop of ice cream I watched the news about Covid-19 spreading rapidly in Red states that re-opened precipitously and Trump denying he knew about Russian payoffs to Taliban terrorists who killed American soldiers. Also: Trump railed against Chief Justice John Roberts for striking down a Louisiana anti-abortion statute.

 

Suzanna Murphy wrote about living in a secure environment while her dad would soon be risking his life in the Korean War not long after surviving harrowing experiences in the Far East during World War II:

    The year was 1949. I was a few months past four. My mother and I had recently moved in with my grandparents in Wyncote, Pennsylvania in a beautiful old Victorian home.  We had been living in Lancaster before in an Amish home. My father had been sent overseas again and was soon to go to Korea for a very long time. I have vivid memories of my time at Grama and Grampa's home. One crisp morning, Grama was fixing oatmeal for breakfast and cooking cinnamon toast in the oven. WOR, from New York, was blaring on the small wooden radio on the kitchen cupboard. Their theme song was cheerfully playing: "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile." I went down in the basement with Grampa to watch him stoke the furnace with coal. I heard a new voice in the kitchen and came up to find the milk man visiting with Grama and my mother. The milk was in glass bottles of course. I helped Grama feed the birds out the window. After breakfast I went down in the basement with her and helped her with the wringer washer and then went outside to hang the clothes on the line.  She said I could watch her sew a dress for me on the treadle sewing machine too. I had been sick a few days and was home from school. Grampa was going to Beaver College to teach, as usual. Later he would work on his sermon for the church where he was pastor. I would help Grama in the garden and then go for a walk with my mother down to Station Park. Those were the morning plans I was told. One thing I always knew. It would be peaceful and quiet and orderly and I would be safe and loved.

 

Suzanna was my first serious girlfriend. We met at an end-of-the-school-year party soon after I graduated from Upper Dublin and she from tenth grade.  I drove her home and received a kiss as my reward. We went together until I left for college. That summer I caught a terrible case of poison ivy on my arms working on an estate right around the time I was ready to put some serious moves on her.  Her dad was home all the time dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome but I don’t recall ever meeting him. At a state fair with Suzanna and her mom, I saw Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong perform.  Now platonic Facebook friends despite and her being a Mennonite and our political differences due to her anti-abortion beliefs, Suzannah prays for me and tolerates my caustic comments to her most outlandish political posts.  To one conspiracy theory labeled “scary shit,” I replied, “Shit all right – bullshit.”  She chastised my vulgarity until I pointed out that I was using the same word as the caption.

 

Classmate Connie Heard Damon, who volunteers each year at a health clinic in Africa, posted this notice:

    While walking my dog at Trewelyn Park recently, I lost my key fob and was unable to get back in my car to drive home. Despite retracing my steps, I was unable to see the black fob in the advancing darkness. Several people stopped to ask if I needed help. One man even offered to drive me home to get my reserve fob. While I was waiting for my sister to come "save" me, a female runner stopped to ask if I needed help. She quickly offered, despite my protestations, to look for me and headed back through the woods.

    The next morning at daybreak I returned to the trail and started looking again- to no avail. When I got back to my car, there was a note on the windshield: I FOUND YOUR KEY. There next to the note was my key fob which I never thought I'd see again. I was in tears. No one was around.

    I wish I knew who found it so that I could express my gratitude. In these days when we seem to hear of so much negativity, what a joy it is to know there are generous, kind people who are willing to help a stranger. So, whoever you are, I hope you read this.  Thank you, and God bless you!!!

 

Nic

Gabriel

Ezkiel

Several Kenyans who appreciate Connie’s work were among the many commenters.  Gabriel Wafula responded: “What a good testimony.  When you plant goodness you will reap goodness.  You have been good to people who were strangers.  You have touched lives in Kenya.  The water borehole in Living Hope High school is serving a whole community. Don’t be surprised, a lot of good things are coming to you.  You shall flourish!” Nic Simiyo wrote, “Wonderful testimony, mum; good work rewards.” Ezkiel Shimbira added: “You always help many, you’re reaping what you plant.”

Valparaiso University curator and artist Gregg Hertlieb’s drawing elicited this comment from Sandy Appleby: “For sure . . . Covid the dreadful in the Southern swamps looking for those who believe they are invulnerable.”  I first met Sandy Appleby when she worked for Tri-City Mental Health Center in East Chicago and asked me to be an oral history consultant on a grant funded project dealing with Aging.  That led to similar collaborations on projects dealing with ethnicity, Alzheimers caregivers, and laid off steelworkers. Along with her colleague Olga Velazquez, who later became mayor of Portage, we took part in several scholarly conferences.  I hadn’t heard from Sandy in years. She introduced me to matriarch Maria Arredondo family, which led to the publication of “Maria’s Journey.”

Sandy and friend

Michael jackson

“Sit down, girl!
I think I love you!
No!
Get up, girl!
Show me what you can do!”
Michael Jackson, “A B C”

Connecticut filmmaker David Gore interviewed me at the Archives for a documentary about Michael Jackson. At the Jackson ancestral home a couple cousins wanted money in exchange for allowing him to film. He asked me to summarize Gary’s history up to 1969 in a few minutes. I may have been too negative in describing the city as a polluted, segregated (till the mid-Sixties) blue-collar mill town. In an email thanking me he wrote: “I think it went very well even though I didn’t ask many questions. I was pretty pooped and still angry about my morning encounter.” I told him I’d heard the Jackson 5 finished second in a Roosevelt High School talent show to a bunch of popular jocks who did a silly bit and then got the most applause. Gore had heard the story before, but Michael’s father Joe denied it ever happened. Omar Farag told me that the Jacksons played at his West Side prom. Joe also booked them into some unsavory clubs in Gary’s Central District. There’s an apocryphal story that Diana Ross discovered them at a 1967 fundraiser for Richard Hatcher during his successful run for mayor, and that’s how they came to be signed to a Motown contract. Even though Michael never did much for his hometown after he moved to California, I have never held that against him. What, after all, have I ever done for Fort Washington, PA.

Sandy Appleby sent me a DVD of the Pass the Culture, Please project that we worked on together 30 years ago. It included excerpts of an Arredondo group interview I did at a family meal. Ray and Trish were to show excerpts prior to their talk at the Hammond library. The original finished product was a narrated slide show. Unfortunately when I played it on my computer, it stuck in various places. To make matters worse, while trying to remedy the problem, I must have hit a function key while my Microsoft Entourage email program was on, and it messed up the setting. Technician Velate Sullivan saved my butt, as she has done so many times in the past. When I played the DVD on the Archives TV and DVD player, it worked fine.

Kimberly Palmer complained that Robin Henig’s New York Times magazine’s August cover story on 20-somethings infantilized her generation by leaving the impression that they are too dependent on their parents. In a more positive vein Bill Dingfelder wrote: “Like many baby boomers, I took the college, career, marriage and children route with barely a detour or reflection. I love my life, and I have few regrets, but to follow a path so mandated by external pressures and internal expectations perhaps cheapens the essence of ‘choice.’ In contrast, many adults in their 20s are making thoughtful life choices that exemplify flexibility, creativity and courage.” That’s an apt description of 22 year-old granddaughter Aliss, the love of our lives. At her age I somehow got the courage to quit law school and go to Hawaii to start grad school.

Karren Lee is looking for items worth at least 50 dollars for a silent auction to benefit Nazareth Home in East Chicago that serves as a foster home for medically challenged kids. I donated a framed poster of labor leaders Jim Balanoff and Ed Sadlowski from their 1977 campaigns to become president and district director of the steelworkers union plus perhaps someone will want a set of Steel Shavings, volumes 31-40.

Watched the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode where Larry buys marijuana from actor Jorge Garcia, who played Hurley (the fat guy) on “Lost.” It’s for Larry’s father, who has glaucoma. Given a choice between hydraponic weed (grown indoors) for $500 or schwag for $200, Larry settles for the low grade stuff, then picks up a hooker on the way to a Dodgers game so he can use the fast lane on the expressway. After the game the three of them light up a hydraponic joint that the hooker had on her, and his dad can suddenly see well enough to realize that the lady in his living room is a prostitute.

In the news: Facebook went off line for four hours, allegedly causing widespread panic among young people. PBS censored a “Sesame Street” appearance by Katy Perry with the tickle-me puppet Elmo singing “Hot ‘N’ Cold,” supposedly because she showed too much cleavage. The video is YouTube and was played on all the morning shows. If Katy had been singing her hit “I Kissed a Girl,” I could understand the fuss, but the scene did not even deserve a PG rating. Katy had even cleaned up the lyrics from being about sex to a game of chase.

How am I supposed to play with you?

You're up and you're down

You're running around

You're fast and you're slow

You're stop and you're go.
G-rated version of Katy Perry’s “Hot ‘N’ Cold”

Robert Blaszkiewicz from the Northwest Indiana Times asked me to fact check a piece about Lake County mayors who have been convicted of a felony while in office. This was in anticipation of a guilty verdict against East Chicago mayor George Pabey, accused of using city funds and workers to refurbish a house in Miller. It’s pretty petty compared to the huge sums mayors “legally” give favored law firms; but being of Puerto Rican ancestry, Pabey should have known that his every move would be scrutinized, especially since he postured as a reform candidate when he ousted longtime mayor Robert Pastrick. I met Pabey when I was with Clark Metz at a political function in Glen Park. He took out a large bill and bought a round of drinks for everyone at the bar. Gary’s Greek-born mayor George Chacharis was convicted in 1963 of income tax evasion as part of a plea bargain that resulted in charges being dropped against others. Chacharis had received kickbacks from contractors doing business with the city but later told me that those things happened before he became mayor while working for Mayor Pete Mandich. Chacharis and Pabey were simply playing the game the way others before them did, but both made enemies in high places.