Better Days?

“O, yes, I say it plain

America never was America to me

And yet I swear this oath

America will be!”

  Langston Hughes, from “Let America be America Again,” quoted by Martin Luther King and the epilogue to Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods”

 

scene from "Da 5 Bloods"

Interviewed by Joy-Ann Reed for Time magazine, film director Spike Lee, he recalled sitting on his Brooklyn stoop at age 11 when he heard his mother screaming hysterically, “They killed Dr. King!  They killed Dr. King!” What followed were cities across the nation going up in flames. I was a teaching assistant at the University of Maryland and a day or so later stopped class when I heard a crowd headed to the chapel and joined them.  No words could soften the bitterness I felt.  Directed to hold hands with people near me and sing “We Shall Overcome,” when we came to the words “Black and white Together,” I could feel the anguish in my heart and imagined how empty those sentiments must have felt to people of color. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination not long afterwards seemed confirmation that America was no longer blessed, that King’s hopes of a multiracial society living in harmony was a pipe dream.

 

With most movie theaters still closed or shunned, first-run films are debuting on Netflix or some other streaming service.  So far, I’ve found enough free movies on premiums channels I get such as HBO or Showtime, and I got hooked on the TNT series “Snowpiercer,” set during a time in the future when scientists, hoping to counter the effects of global warming, caused a new Ice Age so severe that the only survivors were on a thousand-car train that must keep circling the globe in order to keep everyone alive.  On board is a class society, with the very rich segregated from others, including “tailies” in the last car who managed to get on board without a ticket.

 

The country has gone without major league sports since March, and the greed of baseball owners threatens to derail plan for an abbreviated season without fans.  Philadelphia Inquirer reporter David Murphy compared the deadlock to past labor wars, writing: “There are few things more American than the battle between capital and labor.  The national league was founded the same year as the Molly Maguire trials, the American league two years before Mother Jones led her march of Mill Children from Philadelphia to New York.”

 

In “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens, a wildlife scientist, Kya, the so-called Marsh Girl, came upon the term “Sneaky Fuckers” in a scientific digest, a term first coined by evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith to explain that subordinate males often take advantage of the opportunity to mate attracted to a dominant male that is already occupied. Owens provided this example: “Pint-sized male bullfrogs hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates.  When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others.  The imposter males were referred to a ‘sneaky fuckers.’”  Kya also learned about competition between males to inseminate females:

    Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other’s flesh.  Though very ritualized, the conflicts can end in mutilations.  To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods.  Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removed sperm by a previous opponent before he supplies his own.

Some male inseminators aren’t so fortunate.  A female praying mantis eats the head of the male while mating and then for nourishment devours the rest of his body.  Such sexual cannibalism led to several species of Latrodectus being nicknamed black widow spiders.

 

Union stalwart Bill Carey posted a poem by Imelda May, a singer/songwriter most famous for recording “Tainted Love.”  “You don’t get to be racist and Irish” recalls a time when Irish immigrants were discriminated against.  It begins:

You don’t get to be racist and Irish

You don’t get to be proud of your heritage,

plights and fights for freedom

while kneeling on the neck of another!

You’re not entitled to sing songs

of heroes and martyrs

mothers and fathers who cried

as they starved in a famine

 family of Heath Carter

Heath Carter’s second talk on the history of religion in America dealt with protests over the forced removal of Cherokee Indiana from Georgia in the age of Andrew Jackson. As Carter stated, history holds no easy answers and some Christian believers had deeply flawed beliefs; but the church-led opposition to Indian removal generated the largest national protest movement up to that time.  Many petitioners were assimilationists who urged Native Americans to adapt to white man’s ways.  Most Cherokees did just that, taking up farming, drawing up a constitution modeled after the U.S., and even converting to Christianity. Missionaries who championed their cause were incarcerated by Georgia authorities and put in chains.   Even though the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, the federal government forced them west along a “Trail of Tears” that saw 5,000 perish. Even though the anti-removalists failed to stop this atrocity, many who heretofore had favored resettling former slaves in Africa changed their position and joined the ranks of abolitionists demanding an immediate end to slavery.

 

Don Coffin wrote this haiku while peering out his back door:

Sunset approaches,

Clouds shifting in the wind and

I need only watch.

Photo by Don Coffin taken from his back door

When I’m down, lyrics to The Head and the Heart’s “Library Magic” give me a small measure of hope:

I can see the sunshine's rays gleaming through the clear waters
Telling me you gotta hop in for this chapter's ride
There will always be better days

Do the Right Thing

“Don’t worry be happy was a number one jam

Damn if I say it you can slap me right here.
    Public Enemy, “Fight the Power”

 

I vaguely recall seeing Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989) at IUN but observed many things watching it again that I had missed or forgotten.  It opens with a saxophone rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and stars Spike Lee as pizza delivery man Mookie (after 1986 Mets hero Mookie Wilson), first seen wearing a Dodger uniform with 42 and Robinson on the back. Samuel L. Jackson is spot-on as a mellow, hip deejay who plays everything from jazz and soul to hip hop. Throughout the movie we hear Public Enemy on Radio Raheem’s boom box, which provokes the climactic riot, during which the crowd chants “Howard Beach,” a white neighborhood where a black man was murdered in 1986. There’s also references to Michael Stewart, killed while in police custody after being arrested for spray painting graffiti on a New York City subway wall.

 

“Don’t Worry be Happy,” referenced by Public Enemy, was a surprise number 1 hit in 1988 for Bobby McFerrin, who claimed the slogan came from Indiana guru Meher Baba (1894-1969), who was in vogue in the 1960s and whose following included the Who’s Peter Townshend.

 

Self-isolated for the better part of a month, I’ve been averaging a movie a day OnDemand. Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” was disappointing except for a brilliant performance by Jack Nicholson as a Boston mob boss and strong performances by Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio, who have such a resemblance to one another it was hard at first to tell them apart.  Much more moving was “Blinded by the Light,” about a young Pakistani immigrant, Javed Khan, living in England during the 1980s whose life is transformed after someone introduces him to Bruce Springsteen.  Set, like “Do the Right Thing,” in the late 1980s, it shows the racism Muslims encountered in Great Britain.

 

Two good movies about lonely people are “The Station Agent” with Peter Dinklage (of “Game of Thrones” fame) and Bobby Cannavale (so good in “Boardwalk Empire”) and “The Yellow Handkerchief” (2008) starring William Hurt as an ex-con and Kristen Stewart before the “Twilight” series.  I first saw Hurt in “Altered States” (1980), and he played a scarred Viet vet in the 1983 classic “The Big Chill.”   I’ve looked forward to any movie he’s in ever since although for the past dozen years he’s mainly wasted his talent in “Avenger”-type flicks.  Born in 1950, Hurt’s only eight years my junior.

 

In addition to TV watching, I finished John Updike’s “Rabbit Is Rich” and am deciding whether to tackle the sequel, “Rabbit at Rest” or start a 700-page Tom Wolfe novel that takes place at the end of the century, “A Man in Full.”  Updike summarized the Texas culture of “money, booze, and broads” with these words: “God didn’t go west, He died on the trail.”  Describing Harry’s elderly mother-in-law, Ma Springer, looking shrunken and bent at the Philadelphia airport, Updike wrote, “Her former look of having been stuffed tight with Koerner pride and potential indignation has fled, leaving her chin collapsed in random folds and bloodless.  Deep liverish gouges underscore her eyes, and her wattled throat seems an atrocious wreck of flesh.” Ma Springer uses a Pennsylvania German word, ferhuddled, that means confused or befuddled.

“What you lose when you age,” Updike wrote, “is witnesses, the ones that watched you from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand.” My dad, Vic, died at fifty, Midge lasted till age 99.  Last year best childhood pals Terry Jenkins and Wayne Wylie died.  Grandstand nearly empty.

Through the magic of Facebook I’ve been getting likes on my posts from Kimberley McGrath, the daughter of high school classmate Susan McGrath and the sister of Maria, whom I met at a history conference in Montreal and have been friends with since.  Recently Maria posted an Alfred Camus quote that accompanied photos taken during a walk in the woods.  I commented: “As Camus wrote, even if the world is absurd, we must proceed as if our lives are meaningful.”  Kimberley responded, “Exactly.”

 

Robert Blaszkiewicz forwarded a post from Doug Ross recommending that people keep plague journals, something I’ve already been doing with my blog. Buying groceries at Strack and Van Til, I noticed disinfected shopping carts were ready for use, and additional hand wipes were by the door. The aisles were marked so as people would only go down them one direction. While there was a limited toilet paper supply, I did find a roll of eight and a three-pack of facial tissues.  About half the customers and staff were wearing masks, and shoppers were keeping a good distance from one another.  Tom from Toyota called with an offer to pick up my Corolla in regards to the airbag recall, then called to say my oil change was due in 800 miles and if I wanted them to do that plus rotate the tires.  Another call to suggest new tires, which I agreed to since a sale was going on and I trusted Tom, who’s been wit the company for over 30 years.  Next day I was able to pay the cashier by Discover card over the phone, and an hour later the car was back in the driveway. 

 

WW II vet James Forsythe, 95, of Crown Point passed away two weeks after his wife of 73 years Marge.  Growing up during the Great Depression from a family of eight that barely scraped by, he was drafted in 1944 at age 19 after failing to get into the navy and merchant marine. He served in England as a dental technician, met Marge while at Camp Atterbury in 1946 where he was a medical photographer, and served again in the Korean War.  He worked for many years for Indiana Bell and became active in veterans groups and Crown Point politics, serving two terms as mayor (1984-1991) after retiring from the telephone company. He was especially proud of leading efforts for the restoration of Crown Point courthouse (the Archives came into possession of nineteenth-century Land County land records when it had been scheduled for demolition).  Forsythe often dressed up as Abraham Lincoln for Fourth of July parades and, dressed as “Honest Abe,” recited the Gettysburg Address in front of the Indiana General Assembly.  Year ago, I was at the Portage library listening to a talk on Lincoln when a man arrived dressed as Abe and sat in the front row.  He never said a word and got up and left silently when it was over.  Could have been Forsythe.  NWI Times reporter Mary Freda wrote:

    James Forsythe always had a corny joke or silly song at the ready for any occasion, his children recalled. “There was always music, whether he was playing his guitar or music on the radio, or whistling – he whistled all the time, his daughter Margaret Wood said.

The obit added that Forsythe’s first job was delivering milk from a horse-drawn carriage at age 15 and that 77 years later, James, 92, was still jamming on guitar at Crown Point farmers market.

Home Alone Redux

“You bomb me with one more can, kid, and I’ll snap off your cajones and boil them in motor oil.” Harry (Joe Pesci) to 8-year-old Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) in “Home Alone” (1990)

Adria-Joi Jackson from Evanston and Miriam Espinal from Spain at Jackson home; photos by Kyle Telechan

I thought of “Home Alone” when reading about the Maxwell family renting the lame sequel from Blockbuster in Stewart O’Nan’s “Henry Himself.”  Despite the unlikely premise, the original had its comic moments, as well as a few comments (the reference to snapping off a kid’s balls, for one) and scary scenes that earned the film a PG rating.  Michael Jackson befriended child star Macaulay Culkin, who stayed at Neverland Ranch numerous times, often sharing a bed with the pop icon. He steadfastly claims Michael was never sexually inappropriate and apparently is Paris Jackson’s godfather.Crowds gathered at Michael’s childhood home in Gary to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his tragic drug-induced death.

Home alone for the weekend as Toni went with Dave and Angie to attend Becca’s recital at the University of Cincinnati, I took the opportunity to invite James to lunch.  When we arrived at the Portage Steak and Shake, we found it shut down, according to local scuttlebutt, by the Board of Health. We settled for a nearby Culver’s, our favorite destination after bowling.  I got a kids meal for $5.99 that included a scoop of frozen custard topped with chocolate syrup for desert.  James asked if we could swing by Game Stop and emerged with Super Mario Maker 2, which, he explained, allows the operator to set the preferred level of difficulty.   It was the first day the video game was for sale.  I asked James if the place sold board games; the answer was no although James reported that young people still participate in role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons.

I interviewed Lori Montalbano for IU’s Bicentennial project.  The youngest of seven who attended Warren G. Harding School in Hesville (made famous by Jean Shepherd) and then Hammond Morton, Lori was the first in her family to attend college, enrolling at IU Northwest in 1981.  I had thought her name was Mexican, but her dad, who died when she was ten, was Sicilian.  With Reagan in the White House, Pell Grant opportunities evaporated, but financial aid director Leroy Gray put a package together for her.  A theater major with a minor in communication, Lori recalled Garrett Cope, Dorothy Ige, and Jim Tuihuizen as mentors and role models. Forced to take two semesters of Western Civilization, she admitted Rhiman Rotz was formidable but a good teacher, as was Paul Kern, who lectured with no more than a glance at his carefully prepared notes. Awarded a PhD from Southern Illinois University, Lori taught at IUN for 17 years, including in the Women’s Studies program and stints as Communication Department chair and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences under Dee Dee Ige.  The two co-authored a textbook, “Public Speaking and Responsibility in a Changing World.”  Lori was reluctant to say anything negative about IUN other than to intimate that a glass ceiling existed.  She is presently Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at IUPUI in Columbus.

Megan Rapinoe; Alissa and Josh in foreground

Alissa called during the waning minutes of America’s World Cup match, as the French were trying to tie the score 2-2. Half in jest, I admitted hoping they succeeded (call me unpatriotic).  Co-captain Megan Rapinoe announced she’d turn down a White House visit if the Americans won the World Cup.  Go girl! Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez invited her and teammates to tour Congress instead.   Alissa sent a photo of members of her soccer team, including hubby Josh and poppa Phil. A rainbow is in the background.

Avi Gupta won the JeopardyTeen Tournament after surviving a tiebreaker in the semifinal round.  He and Jackson Jones each finished with $39,200.  The extra category was American History, and the clue was, “Types of it you could find in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773 included souchong and bohea.”  As easy as the answer, tea, was, I’m certain Jackson knew it, but Avi buzzed in first.  On day two all three finalists knew Final Jeopardy, an Ancient Lore question about Lancelot and Camelot, but the others couldn’t catch Gupta. 

The Sports Illustrated“Where Are They Now?” issue with nattily-dressed Alex Rodriguez on the cover included a montage of stars from 50 years ago, including Arnold Palmer, Joe Frazier, Joe Namath, Hank Aaron, and O.J. Simpson – all senior citizens now if still on the right side of the grass, as bowling teammate Terry Kegebein likes to say.  In Rolling Stoneveteran moviemaker John Waters, whose films include such gems as “Pink Flamingos” (1972) and “Hairspray” (1988), claimed that the secret to aging gracefully is staying away from nude beaches.  He declared: “If you go to the gym every day, people still don’t want to see you nude at 70.”Claiming that political correctness can go too far, Waters, a frequent guest on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” said: “When I hear about ‘theybies,’ where you don’t tell your child what sex they are until they decide, I had to roll my eyes.  Give me a break.  That child will be in a psychiatric unit early.”  Maybe, maybe not.

 John Waters

posted by Anne Koehler

Without mentioning Trump by name, Pete Buttigieg told a Rolling Stonecorrespondent, “It is the nature of grotesque things that you can’t look away.”  Attending a G20 summit in Osaka, Japan (In 1994 I flew in and out of Kansai International Airport for a speaking engagement in nearby Kyoto arranged by colleague Roberta Wollons), Trump met with pal Putin, who declared liberalism obsolete and in its death throes.  When a reporter asked a beaming Trump whether he planned to bring up Russian meddling in the 2020 election, he smiled and repeated question to a smirking Putin smirked, who said of course not.  Ha, ha, ha. Trump couldn’t resist tweeting about the Democratic Presidential debates, pronouncing them “BORING!”  He prefers bombast and ridicule to serious policy discussions. After Jimmy Carter asserted that Russian meddling determined the 2016 election outcome, Trump called him a poor president.  Reporters should press him on why he thinks so.

I have to admit I fell asleep both evenings after the first hour but caught the highlights on “Morning Joe.” Elizabeth Warren’s strident style attracted attention, as did Kamala Harris confronting Joe Biden, claiming he opposed school bussing during the 1970s (only forced, not voluntary, he countered).  While Bernie Sanders, Warren, and Harris enunciated valid arguments, the electorate, I believe, seeks restoration of civility, not revolution.  The most poignant moment was when Rachel Maddow asked Pete Buttigieg about the worsening race relations in South Bend in the wake of a white cop shooting a black man, and the Mayor replied, “I couldn’t get it done.” What a powerful admission that politicians cannot solve every problem.  I’m still for Amy Klobuchar and either Buttigieg or Julian Castro as her running-mate; all three acted more Presidential than pretentious Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker, who showed off their knowledge of Spanish.  Klobuchar reminded voters of her Midwestern roots, where the general election will be won or lost, and that the women on the stage had been fighting for women’s rights longer than many Johnny-come-latelies. Biden is still paying dearly for disrespecting Anita Hill decades ago.  Ray Smock wrote: 

    Joe Biden took it on the chin from Kamala Harris's attack on Joe's comments about working with segregationists in the past. She took a good shot and it worked in the glare of the TV lights. Today, in news coverage around the nation she stands out as a "winner" of this preliminary encounter. This may be a good indicator of her rise in the polls, but I will reserve judgment about the long-range importance of this exchange. 

    [California Congressman] Eric Swalwell, who I admire for his work on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees investigating Trump, and his public efforts to educate the public about Trump's transgressions, fell flat in my opinion for his attempt to grab the torch from Joe Biden's generation. Pass the Torch, he said. Give his generation a chance. This campaign may turn out to be a generational feud.  Joe Biden is one of the politicians I have admired since he first entered politics. His is a remarkable, positive career and it is still ongoing. Joe's age shows in this kind of rapid fire, gotcha TV reality contest that our debates represent. His experience, his character, his knowledge of government would be an asset in the White House. It would be an asset in his knowledge of the world and its leaders. It would be a tremendous asset in uniting his own party and bringing unity to the nation. Without unity, without defusing political extremism, the Harrises and the Swalwells will not be able to get things done. Trump proved that emotion alone can elect a president. But all he had was hate and division. 

    Whoever gets the Democratic Party nomination should be a healer, a unifier, not just a new brand of fiery rhetoric carrying a new red hot torch that fizzles and goes dark in a divided nation.

Anne Tyler’s 2018 novel “Clock Dance” about a 61-year-old woman provides vignettes about her early life.  Willa’s temperamental mother sarcastically called her father St. Melvin, similar to Toni branding me St. James when I become self-righteous.  Her younger sister became a rebellious teenager whose eyes in 1977 “were so heavily outlined in blush that she resembled a pileated woodpecker.”A poster in her bedroom read “Nobody for President.”  Willa’s son wanted to quit school and hitchhike around the country to meet people. Her self-indulgent husband died in an auto accident driving recklessly in anger. Twenty years later, Willa (named for lesbian Willa Cather, one wonders, whose forte was depicting loneliness) receives a call that lures her to Baltimore to care for a girl that someone mistakenly thought was her granddaughter.  Remarried to an overbearing man and bored with life in Tuscan, she is ready for a change of scenery.  Tyler writes: “She knows the world, which has largely ignored her, expects her now to coast along that deferential rut into oblivion.”  Aware her time clock was ticking, she had always conformed but now was open to adventure, ready to dance.

NY Knicks Barnett, Frazier, Bradley, DeBusschere, Reed in April 1970

New York Knicks fan Spike Lee’s memoir “Best Seat in the House” lists his favorite teams as the 1970 and 1972 NBA champs, regarded by many as representing the American melting pot.  Knick players included Princeton blueblood (and future Senator) Bill Bradley, sons of immigrants Dave DeBusschere and Mike Riordon, plus, in Lee’s words, “the brothers, ranging from deep southern rural to Midwestern to Chicago slick to Gary, Indiana, hard.”  These included Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Willis Reed, Walt “Clyde” Frazier (Lee’s favorite) and Gary Roosevelt grad Dick “Skull” Barnett. By 1978, when Phil Jackson left to play for a rival, there were hardly any white players left, causing racists to label the team the “Niggerbockers.”

 E'Traun Moore basketball camp photos by Kale Wilk

IUN coaches Javier Heredia and Eric Roldan participated in E’Twaun Moore’s summer basketball camp at East Chicago Central, by now an annual tradition.  So did 6-foot-11 Angel Garcia, who starred on the 2007 championship Cardinals with Moore and Kawann Short.  NWI Timesreporter James Boyd wrote that the New Orleans Pelicans guard wowed the kids demonstrating his typical shooting warmup, draining 9 straight 3-pointers, including one from nearly half court.  Kids begged Moore to dunk the ball, but he deferred to professional dunk artist Jordan Southernland.  Boyd wrote: “Southerland pulled off a variety of rim-rocking jams and ended his showing by jumping over former E.C. Central center Garcia, who stands 6-foot-11, and nine participants.”
                                                        Gabrielle Frigo at IUN graduation 

Simone De Beauvoir photos by Art Shay

At Miller Beach Aquatorium Nelson Algren Museum director Sue Rutson hosted a French-themed event that included Eve Bottando as Simone De Beauvoir, George Rogge as Father Marquette, French champagne and buffet, plus talks on French-American engineer Octave Chanute and novelist (and Miller summer resident) Algren’s relationship with French feminist De Beauvoir and African-American émigré to France Richard Wright.  One presenter showed nude photos of Simone that Algren buddy Art Shay took after she’d showered. She sun-bathed in the nude, scandalizing some neighbors, and never closed the bathroom door.  A free spirit, Simone sun-bathed in the nude, scandalizing some neighbors, titillating others.  I was delighted to discover that recent IUN grad Gabrielle Frigo had received a museum internship.  I told Nancy Cohen that I had heard Gabby (as I know her) recite poetry at a Women’s Studies conference and that she is bright and self-confident.

 Terry Hemmert on XRT float; photo by Marianne Brush

As Pride Month concluded, Chicago’s annual parade attracted record crowds.  The South Shore ran extra trains to and from Northwest Indiana.  Marianne Brush waved at peerless dejay Terry Hemmert, who recently announced her impending retirement, aboard the XRT float.  With her was Lin Brehmer, whose favorite expression is “It’s great to be alive.” I thought of them listening to CDs by Widespread Panic and Night Ranger. Track 6 of Widespread Panic’s “Earth to America” album, which I found at Chesterton library, is “When the Clowns Come Home.” It begins”

One of these days my back won't bend
My fingers might hurt swollen
Live another day, get lucky that way
Sound of thunder when the gods go bowling

I listened to “Eddie’s Comin’ Out Tonight” for homoerotic hints in the Night Ranger song about a guy who “likes to rock it all night long.”Here are the first two verses:

He wears his trousers real tight
And his skin is so white
He lives beyond his means
He wear Italian shoes
. . .

He live a tenderloin life
The street's his type
In the alley's where he's king
He got a grin on his face

Thirty years ago at Sociologist Jack Bloom’s end-of-the-semester party, I danced to an entire Night Ranger album with Phil, Dave, Jimmy Satkoski, and Tom Horvath, and we rocked – at least that’s my memory.

 Kaden Alexander 

Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich profiled 24-year-old F to M transgender Kaden Alexander, a recent IUN grad who will attend IU Law School in the fall.  The article began:

   Kaden Alexander is so comfortable with his body these days he went to a local nudist resort to hang out while letting it all hang out.

    “I wasn’t any more uncomfortable than the best man from my wedding who went with me,”Alexander said with a smile.

Davich added, unnecessarily, in my opinion: “Alexander has no plans in the near future for gender reassignment surgery to alter his genitals. It’s too expensive, too risky, too complicated, costing tens of thousands of dollars for multiple procedures and revisions.”  Last year Kaden confided that he was uncomfortable attracting attention because intolerant folks might resent his lifestyle, yet he granted Davich permission to photograph him and even provided a picture of when he was 16 and known as Kaitlyn.

Toni was home earlier than expected, and I saw on Angie’s cell phone a number Becca performed a number at musical theater camp in Cincinnati from “Jawbreaker,” based on a 1999 film about three girls who accidently kill the prom queen with hard candy.

All in Good Humor

“These are the saddest of possible words:

“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

         F.P. Adams, “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon”

In 1910 New York Evening Mailcontributor Franklin Pierce Adams, a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, penned a couplet for his “All in Good Humor” column that was destined to become, next to “Casey at the Bat,” the most famous baseball poem of all time. The Cubs had just defeated their archrival New York Giants, thanks to a rally-killing, shortstop to second to first double play. At the behest of a copy editor, Adams added six lines, making use of a medieval Italian word – gonfalon -  meaning a banner or flag:

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

Tinker and Evers and Chance.

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double-

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:

“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

F.P. Adams in the 1920s was a charter member of the Algonquin Round Table, matching wits with the likes of Dorothy Parker, who once said, “One more drink and I’ll be under the host,”  and Robert Benchley, who quipped:“I know I’m drinking myself to a slow death, but then I’m in no hurry.” Adams once defined middle age as “when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net.”  Hard to imagine that golf was once considered an old man’s sports.  F.P. Adams probably never dreamed that thousands of fans would pay to watch 43 year-old Tiger Woods finish second to 28 year-old Brooks Koepka in the hundredth annual PGA Open.

Baseball’s first matinee idol, according to David Rapp’s “Tinker to Evers to Chance,” was Michael “King” Kelly, who during the 1880s led the forerunner of the Chicago Cubs, the White Stockings, to five pennants. A charismatic showman and vaudeville performer during the off-season, Kelly was the first sports celebrity to sign autographs for fans.  He invented the hook slide and inspired the 1889 hit “Slide, Kelly, Slide.”  Prints of a painting showing Kelly sliding head-first into second adorned countless Windy City saloons. A catcher when not playing the outfield, he kept up a line of patter to distract hitters, a favorite tactic of my old Porter Acres battery mate Omar Farag, whom I ran into at Miller Sunday Market, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

As the contestants on Jeopardy’s 2017 Tournament of Champions, a summer rerun, were introduced, one covered his eyes, the second his ears, and the third his mouth, referencing the 3 wise monkeys who embodied the proverb, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”  Nobody knew Final Jeopardy, the state capital since 1805 whose first four letters were the same as the state’s last four letters.  Answer: Montpelier, Vermont.  Final Jeopardyin this week’s initial college Tournament of Champions was: which twentieth-century U.S. president was inaugurated twice within 14 months?  Easy: LBJ. Two young folks (a math and a science major) got it incorrect, guessing TR and Grover Cleveland.

In Richard Russo’s “Voice” a brilliant but mute college student with Asperger Syndrome suffers a breakdown in an English seminar.  Nate, the instructor, is blamed for the incident and replaced in mid-semester.  Given Russo’s comic sensibility, “Voice” contains humorous asides, such as comparing a jealous husband to a neighbor’s dog who bit you once and acts like he’s still got more unfinished business.  And this: “Next year, in place of the Jane Austin seminar, he’d been offered a section of comp, an indignity that put him in mind of e.e. cummings’s Olaf, who from his knees declares there is some shit he will not eat.”  Sensitive Nate has an obnoxious brother, Julian, who calls him “Prof” in a pejorative manner (Nate: “How the word rankles”),uses words likeuncuntedand befucked to describe him, and is seldom right about anything but, according to Russo, never in doubt, much less self-doubt.  On a tour in Venice, Nate comes upon a so-called art piece that, in essence, is a half-ton of dirt poured onto the floor, which gay guide Klaus, whom Julian continually mocks, calls provocative.

“FOX and Friends” commentator and former Trump aide David Bosse told African-American Joel Payne, “You’re out of your cotton-picking mind.”  Payne responded: “I’ve got some relatives who picked cotton, and I’m not going to sit here and allow you to attack me like that on TV.  You better watch your mouth.” Just months before, FOX sports announcer Brian Davis was reprimanded for using the exact phrase to describe Russell Westbrook’s high level of play. And that was meant as praise while Bosse’s intent was clearly ridicule.

On the cover of Time: Spike Lee, director of “BlacKkKlansman,” based on a true story about African-American policeman Ron Stallworth going undercover to join the KKK. “BlacKkKlansman” stars John David Washington (Denzel’s son) as Ron Stallworth. It opens with a scene from “Gone with the Wind” and closes with the 2017 alt-white Charlottesville riot.  At times bitingly funny, like the 1963 Cold War critique “Dr. Strangelove,” the film, to quote critic Simon Miraudo is also “stunningly effective as a call to arms” – as is true of most all Spike Lee pictures.

Joaquin Phoenix assumes the role of quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan in the biopic “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” the title a punchline from a cartoon panel showing a posse coming across an empty wheelchair in the desert. Before he killed himself, Robin Williams was set to play the part in tribute to his friend Steve Reeves.  Disabled at age 21 due to an auto accident, Callahan employed a unique brand of “sick humor” in such publications as the New Yorkerand Penthouse.Callahan’s first published cartoon was of a panhandler holding a sign reading, “I am blind and black but not musical.” A subsequent one had the caption, “Refuse to have a nice day.”   In one depicting two cowboys in wheelchairs an old-timer draws a gun on the other and says, “This town ain’t accessible enough for both of us.”  New Yorker cartoonist Sam Gross recalled this Callahan anecdote:

  He was waiting for the light in his electric wheelchair, and some evangelical comes along and goes, “Boy, boy – believe in Jesus and get up and walk!”  And John looks at him and says, “I have five thousand dollars invested in this chair!”

 Sean Penn as Spicily

On TV I watched two Eighties comedies, “Back to the Future” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” the former with only mild interest and the latter with my interest piqued upon learning that it was written by Cameron Crowe.  Sean Penn played stoner Jeff Spicoli, whose character reminded me of Jam in “Detroit Rock City,” my favorite comedy of all time, along with “Fargo,” the Coen brothers darkly comedic murder tale.  While Roger Ebert called “Fast Times” a “scuz-pit of a movie,”it had its funny moments and the music was great, especially numbers by the Go-Gos, Don Henley, Jackson Browne, the Ravyns, and, of course, the Cars’ “Moving in Stereo” during the pool fantasy scene.

Former Cubs hurler Rick Sutcliffe, 16-1 during the memorable 1984 season, was in the broadcast booth prior to singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” He recently worked a game with Cubs 2016 World Series hero David Ross, who evidently takes frequent bathroom breaks.  One inning Ross got back late and Sutcliffe asked, “And what do you think of that, David?”Ross had no idea what he was referring to. Sutcliffe got a laugh, but I didn’t think it was funny.  In the rubber game of a series with Washington, Billy Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins sang during the seventh inning stretch. The Cubs trailed 3-0 in the ninth when Jason Heywood scratched out a hit and, with two out, Nationals closer Ryan Madson plunked two batters in a row.  Then rookie David Bote hit a 2-2 pitch into the bleachers for a walk-off grand slam. I immediately called Dave, who said he’d almost turned off the TV when Washington scored 2 runs in the top of the inning. Next morning on AM 670 Lin Brehmer played Vince Lloyd’s dramatic home run call, culminating with these words: “It has a chance.  Grand slam. Cubs win. (pause) Listen to this place.” Pretty moving.

High school friend Vince Curll sent me an article by historian William H. Thiesen that appears in the current issue of Sea History entitled “First Lady Harriet Rebecca Lane and the Cutters That Have Borne Her Name.”  The first Harriet Lane, commissioned for the Revenue Cutter Service in 1858 while Harriet’s Uncle James Buchanan was President, was an 180-foot side paddled steamer that fired the first naval shot of the Civil war in Charleston Harbor near Fort Sumter. Harriet Lane II was commissioned in 1926, designed to interdict whisky smugglers during Prohibition and later a Coast Guard air-sea rescue vessel.  During the 1990s Harriet Lane III helped rescue thousands of Haitian and Cuba migrants and is still in use, primarily in counter-drug operations but also, sadly, to catch Latin Americans fleeing from poverty and tyranny.

 USS Harriet Lane forces USS Nashville to show its colors in 1861

Harriet Lane III

I haven’t seen Vince Curll in over 50 years, but he obviously recalled that President Buchanan was my ancestor (great-great-great uncle).  His accompanying note indicated that his politics differed from mine, as he wrote: “In your own inimical way, feel free to use the enclosed material to exaggerate, embellish or create however you deem appropriate.  I have yet to encounter an avowed “Lefty” that allowed confirmable facts to interfere with the attainment of his target.  Lineage be damned.” I replied: 

  As you were my good friend and mentor in high school in the ways of the world, I must defend “Lefty” historians.  I believe our quest is for the truth, and where politics enters the equation is in the choice of subjects to research: poor people, minorities, immigrants, women, environmental inequalities, etc.  Most classmates that I’m in touch with are, lamentably, conservative, including Skip Pollard, Phil Arnold, Wayne Wylie, even onetime bad boy Pat Zollo.  That doesn’t prevent me from enjoying their friendship.  Chuck Bahmueller broke off communication with me after we argued politics at our thirtieth reunion (how sad).  Among the few liberal exceptions are LeeLee Minehart, a Peace Corps grad whose father was a Democratic officeholder, and Gaard Murphy, whom I talk with weekly and shares my distaste for our current administration.  

I’d like nothing more than to rekindle the friendship with Vince.  He taught me that it was more important to be yourself than to follow the crowd. In the late 1950s, while we were in high school, the swampland where Vince used to trap muskrats (I occasionally tagged along) became an industrial park.  One summer  the two of us made the rounds looking for employment and we got hired by the company that published the weekly Ambler Gazette to work the overnight shift once a week during the press run. In tenth grade, after I had my driver’s license, we double-dated and ended up on adjoining couches in my date’s rec room.  Vince seemed so self-assured, I copied his every move.