No More Free Lunch

“There is no such thing as a free lunch,”

  nineteenth-century industrialist and philanthropist John Ruskin

physicist Ernst Ising

During America’s era of rapid industrialization saloons near factories often advertised free lunch to workers who patronized their establishment.  In 1934 Mew York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia kicked off his campaign against graft and corruption by proclaiming, “No more free lunch.”  In our time pharmaceutical companies often treat doctors’ offices to sumptuous buffets in order to pitch their newest drugs.  Big tech companies commonly provide free lunch as a perk and device to develop loyalty and camaraderie.  Despite widespread skepticism by Saturday Evening Club (SEC) members, thanks to the efforts of Larry Galler the SEC met electronically for a talk by Tom Ising introduced by the phrase, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”   Ising began by mentioning that his father Ernst Ising (1900-1998) remains famous from developing a century ago what is known in physics as the Ising model of ferromagnetism.  The son of wealthy Jews and University of Hamburg prodigy, Ernst saw a brilliant career cut sort with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.  Barred from teaching in 1933, he became headmaster of a school for Jewish children until forced to flee to Luxembourg in 1939 and took a series of menial jobs until the end of World War II. In 1947, after an eight-year struggle, the Ising family was able to emigrate to America. That summer seven-year-old Tom improved his English skills at Tapawingo Farm Camp in Gouldsboro, PA.  After a year in North Dakota, Ernst secured a professorship at Bradley University in Peoria.  He and his wife became naturalized citizens in 1953.

Thomas Ising’s talk was on free market economic theory and the benefits of unfettered capitalism. Afterwards, he received much pushback from the dozen or so members linked through web.zoom.  I argued that capitalists generally try to diminish competition, leading the growth of monopolies.  Income inequality, the inevitable result of unregulated capitalism, led to the Great Depression and has become even more pronounced since the 1980s.  Under Trump's crony capitalism his buddies get a free feast while the other 99% get crumbs. Mike Baird mentioned that he’d once been a Milton Friedman acolyte but that his work with nonprofits had convinced him of the need for governmental safety nets.  Several people reiterated that corporations guided by the profit motive would seek to exploit cheap labor if left unfettered and lauded social welfare states such as Finland where access to free medical care was universal. Others brought up Jean Jacques Rousseau’s social contract and the Declaration of Independence as championing of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  As President Terry Brendel stated, “All things considered, things went much more smoothly than he expected.”

Consumed by a desire to open up the country in order to win re-election and help his business interests, Trump has squelched reports from his own experts to go slow and encouraged governors to open stores and return to business as usual.  Republican governors, including West Virginia’s Jim Justice, for the most part are obeying him even though Covod-19 deaths are still on the upswing. Outbreaks are especially worrisome at prisons, nursing homes, and meat packing plants that are reopening after Trump issued an executive order relieving companies of liability in the event that stricken employees seek legal redress.  Regarding testing, what initially seemed like incompetence on the federal government’s part now appears to be foot-dragging due to fear that widespread testing would reveal that the virus has infected many more people than would support reopening the economy. Now, as a Presidential food server and the Vice President’s press secretary have tested positive, Trump supporters are claiming that hospitals are exaggerating the numbers of casualties and things not as dire as they appear.  Dr. Anthony Fauci and two other health experts have tested positive and are self-quarantining.  “It is what it is,” as immunologist Anthony Fauci, borrowing a quote from Martin Scorcese’s “The Irishman,” is fond of putting it.

Ray Smock wrote about venturing out to Lowe’s during the pandemic in an essay titled, “Simple Tale from West Virginia, a State NOW OPEN.”

I was out of propane for my Weber. I am a 79-year-old guy in the high-risk category for many reasons, but I wanted to grill while in quarantine.

I risked going to Lowe's in Martinsburg. Propane tanks are outside the store. But I was told I needed to go in to see a cashier to get my refill tank paid for. I asked to give the credit card over the phone so I could stay outside the store. No dice. So I suited up with my mask and safety goggles and surgical gloves and went to the store.

The store had re-routed entry to one entrance so a counter could check off the people going in. I walked in the only entrance and was immediately confronted by a group of unmasked customers waiting at the return desk. They were all standing in a tight cluster. I tried to go around them. But all other aisles were blocked to route traffic in a certain direction. I squeezed by the unmasked customers coming within 2 feet of them because they were blocking the aisle.

I went to the first person I saw with a register who had no customers only to be told that I needed to go to one of the "regular" check-out lanes to pay for my propane. I walked half the length of the store passing a dozen customers not wearing masks.

The young woman at the check-out was wearing a homemade mask that kept falling off her nose. She constantly touched her face to get the mask in place.

She was a most friendly West Virginian, who called me honey. I put in my credit card and punched the keys to enter my pin. I got my receipt and exited the store. The clerk had to call someone to go out and unlock the propane tanks.  So I waited by the entrance while dozens of unmasked customers went in. The person with the key to the propane cage never showed up. Luckily for me, the propane delivery guy in a big truck pulled up. He was a very friendly guy, although unmasked. He took my empty and gave me a new canister right off the truck. He even offered to carry it to my car. I joked with him that steaks always tasted better when the propane was fresh. He had, I'm sure, heard that one before and replied, "we made this propane fresh this morning."

So it goes in Wild and Wonderful, and Wide Open West Virginia. By the way, the county in which I live and shop is a current Covid hot spot. We are the second largest metropolitan area in a mostly rural state of 1.6 million souls. Metropolitan is too big a word to describe the Martinsburg area. But the virus has no idea of what urban and rural means. It just likes people in close proximity.

A historian, Smock added: “We haven't learned a single lesson from the flu pandemic of 1918-19. Those cities and states that bit the bullet and practiced self-distancing, and quarantine, fared so much better than those who tried to open too soon.” 

More cautious than most Republican governors, Indiana’s Eric Holcomb has kept controls on Lake and Marion counties, given the alarming increase of cases in the Gary and Indianapolis areas, and recommended safety procedures regarding masks and social distancing elsewhere.  When Toni and I have gone to grocery stores or pharmacies, the vat majority of shoppers and clerks are wearing masks.  Stores have designated shopping lanes one-way and marked off six-foot distances in check-out lines.  While people flocked to Lake Michigan beaches last weekend and a few disgruntled ministers and protestors urged defiance, most Hoosiers are exhibiting common sense. Let’s hope that continues to be true.

Former Lake County sheriff Roy Dominguez dropped off “Frank Mrvan for Congress” t-shirts for Toni and me after I told him we were supporters.  He was wearing gloves and kept six feet away from me as we chatted but responded to my offer of an elbow bump.  We both agreed that the endorsement of outgoing Congressman Peter Visclosky was encouraging, given Hammond mayor Tom McDermott’s clout among county officeholders. Mrvan has the support of most labor unions and seems most likely to represent the interests of the entire Congressional district.

Scene from The Visitor

I’m a big Richard Jenkins fan after loving him in the mini-series “Olive Kitteridge” (2014) as a gentle small-town druggist and husband of the indomitable Olive.  He was a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in “The Shape of Water” (2017). Coming across “The Visitor” (2007), for which Jenkins received an Oscar nomination playing a burnt-out professor who forms a bond with a Syrian and Senegalese immigrant couple, I was hooked.  It was a tear-jerker, and I found it incredibly moving.  If it had ended more happily, I’d have gotten Toni to watch it again with me. Roger Ebert wrote:

    Richard Jenkins is an actor who can move his head half an inch and provide the turning point of a film. That happens in "The Visitor," where he plays a man around 60 who has essentially shut down all of his emotions. A professor, he has been teaching the same class for years and cares nothing about it. He coldly rejects a student's late paper without even enquiring about the "personal problems" that made it late. He makes an elderly piano teacher figure out for herself why she will not be needed again. His lips form a straight line that neither smiles nor frown. Jenkins creates a surprisingly touching, very quiet, character study. Not all actors have to call out to us. The better ones make us call out to them.

Toni received a half-dozen Mothers Day calls and Dave’s family arrived with Chinese food at mid-afternoon. There were no hugs or kisses and separate tables for dinner, but we didn’t always observe the six-foot admonition.  It was great to have them over.  On Facebook Dave posted a photo of Toni and Angie and wrote how important Toni had been in his life.

Dunes Pageant

“Sandland in shadow or shining in the sun

What care you for the fame of men or what their wars have won?

For Duneland is dearest because no place is there

For echoes of the battlefield or scars its victims wear.

“Song o’ the Dunes,” George E. Bowen

 Frank V. Dudley, "Dunes Pageant," 1917

At VU’s Brauer Museum opening reception for “The Indiana Dunes Revisited: Frank V. Dudley and the 1917 Dunes Pageant,” classical guitarist Peter Aglinskas provided musical stylings, ranging from Bossa nova to doo-wop.  I ran into VU professor Liz Wuerrful and grad student Marla Gee, a friend from when we were in an IUN Sixties class together. Curator Gregg Hertzlieb gave me for the Archives a copy of a beautifully illustrated exhibition catalogue featuring a biographical essay by James R. Dabbert.  Born on a Wisconsin farm to deaf parents, Dudley and brother Clarence opened an art supply store and gallery in Chicago.  Clarence was a chief organizer of the Dunes Pageant.  Four years later, Frank built a Lake Michigan beachfront log cabin residence and studio with north windows and devoted the rest of his life to painting dunes scenes.  His art became part of an effort to preserve the dunes by establishing a national park, something that came about in 1967, ten years after his death at age 88.

Here’s how Thomas W. Stevens, who wrote the script for “The Dunes Under Four Flags: The Historical Pageant of the Dunes, 1917,” summarized the event:

On Memorial Day in 1917, Prairie Club members staged a massive festival on Waverly Beach in the Dunes in an effort to generate public support for a national park. Attracting an audience of more than 40,000 enthusiastic supporters from throughout the region, the pageant represented the pinnacle of early Dunes preservationists' optimism. In an amphitheater of sand, nearly a thousand actors portrayed Indians, European explorers and fur traders, U. S. soldiers, and city planners, while dancers performed the roles of waves, wind, nymphs, birds, and “tree hearts,” in a representation of “the march of civilization to and through the region.” The final scene, in which the developers of City West (a city founded in the 1830s to compete with Chicago) realize that their dream city is doomed to failure, concludes with a clear message on behalf of Dunes preservation. “I never believed down in my heart,” one of City West's developers admits, “that we could tame these sands to city ways . . . They're beautiful, but God made them just to play in the breeze.”

 Frank Dudley

In 2006 Gregg Hertzlieb curated a Frank Dudley retrospective that contained works in possession of Brauer Museum, including the undated “Shadows and Sunlit Silence.” Hertzlieb offered this description:

While savoring the sound of the title in his mind,
the viewer sees the dunes in Dudley's painting
standing beside the unseen lake, impressing
with their mass but also threatening to disappear
at any moment like a ghost composed
of a material both substantial and insubstantial. 

For the present exhibition, over a dozen lenders, including the Bernie Konrady family, provided works not commonly exhibited.  On LinkedIn, Konrady Plastics co-owner Bernie Konrady playfully listed his occupation as janitor.  He is a birder and son of Bernard Konrady, 1967 Gary mayoral candidate, whose entry into the Democratic primary enabled Richard Hatcher to win the Democratic primary over incumbent A. Martin Katz.  His company is an outgrowth of a family-run Gary coal company founded in 1919 by former steelworkers John and Andrew Konrady.  Andrew’s wife Julia kept the books.

birders Bernie Konrad and Ken Brock

In Steel Shavings volume 12 (1985) IUN student Dorothy Konrady wrote:

At the outset, Konrady Brothers Corporation almost went bankrupt.  Most coal companies then didn’t deliver much coal.  Instead, peddlers with wheelbarrows went to the coal companies, bought coal, and resold it to consumers.  At first the peddlers all dealt with a competitor.  The brothers tried everything they could to lure them to their establishment.  Finally, for reasons still not known to surviving family members, the peddlers started getting their coal from Konrady Brothers Corporation.

 Walter Becker (left) and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan

Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker passed away.  I saw the jazz rock band live at the Star Plaza a couple years ago.  With Donald Fagen on keyboards and singing most numbers, Steely Dan (named for a strap-on dildo in William Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch”) played the 1977 album Asa straight through as well as such favorites as “Reelin’ in the Years” and “Riki Don’t Lose That Number,” which begins:

We hear you're leaving, that's okay
I thought our little wild time had just begun
I guess you kind of scared yourself, you turn and run
But if you have a change of heart

Rikki don't lose that number

Meanwhile, can’t do everything and missed the Bodeans at Valpo’s fortieth annual Popcorn Fest, where I’ve seen Crackers, Gin Blossoms, Spin Doctors, and Poi Dog Pondering.  I saw the Bodeans live at Valpo University about 25 years ago at VU and have followed the native Wisconsin band closely ever since. Their biggest hit was “Closer to Free” (1993).  The name came from Bo Diddley and James Dean, although the band jokes that they were inspired by Beverly Hillbillies character Jethro Bodine

I attended the Saturday Evening Club at Phil-B’s in Valparaiso as the guest of longtime educator Terry Brendel, whose talk was titled “Broken Bootstraps.”  He lamented the “dumbing down” of higher education exemplified by grade inflation and the reluctance of teachers to criticize student work.  He stressed how low salaries and over-emphasis on standardized test scores are causing talented college students to shy away from the teaching profession.  Citing books about anti-intellectualism in America, he contrasted John F. Kennedy’s advisers (i.e., John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur E. Schlesinger, Robert McNamara) with the buffoons serving Trump.  Each attendee was expected to participate in the discussion. I noted that Kennedy’s “best and the brightest” were virtually all macho white men who tended to disparage “egghead’ intellectuals such as Adlai Stevenson and admire the type of can-do activism that led to Vietnam.

Old friends Janet and Michael Bayer spent the night after a family function in LaPorte, so I stayed up talking several hours later than normal.  We all knew friends and relatives in harm’s way of Hurricane Irma and next morning kept checking the latest news from the Sunshine State. Celeste and Michael Chirich had us over for an afternoon lunch; his sister Diana and husband Harold Henery are in for their yearly visit to Miller Beach.  Diana was lead soprano for the Volksopera in Vienna, Austria; Harold has an advance degree in Religious Studies and his present interest is art history.  We were expecting a light lunch, but aftertasty au d’oeuvres Diana served a chicken and mushroom gravy dish with rice followed by tiramisu for dessert.  I gave Harold a copy of “Maria’s Journey” and pointed out my Foreword and IU historian John Bodnar’s introduction; he’s planning to start it immediately, having just finished a tome on art.

 Pablo Picasso

Driving to Munster for an Art in Focus program on Pablo Picasso, I took Ridge Road from IUN due to construction on 8-/94, passing Ridge Lawn Cemetery (IUN Professor Gary Martin’s final resting place), Bootleg Liquors, Bone Dry Saloon, a Long John Silver’s near Burr Street where we’d take the boys after a movie (the nearby theater has been long gone), and Wicker Park (where IUN once held faculty/staff picnics).  I reminded Marcia Carson, an Art History professor, about my upcoming 1957 “Dance Party” and told her to bring Jim.  She joked that they almost split up over dancing. I thought it would have been over bridge, I quipped. “He’s much more competitive than I am,” she replied.

Art in Focus hostess Jillian van Volkenburgh announced that she hated Picasso (a notorious womanizer) but appreciated his momentous contributions to modern art. She noted that the Picasso sculpture in Chicago’s Daley Plaza was assembled at American Bridge Company in Gary using steel from Gary Works.  Picasso’s cubism affected fashion, advertising, music, literature, and other aspects of popular culture.  Even the style of his signature has been copied by the Radisson Hotel chain. Active for more than 7 decades, he left behind over 43,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, and pottery.  Afterwards, I checked out the South Shore Salon Show exhibition and found an interesting assemblage by Jillian, who listed as Gary as her hometown. 

Arriving early at Gino’s for Brian Barnes’ talk on the evolution of homo sapiens, the manager placed two free chicken wings in front of me when I ordered a draft beer at the bar.  They were spicy but delicious. When I told Ken Anderson about speaking to Jonathan Briggs’ World War I seminar students, he inquired about auditing classes after he retired. Someone said that DNA tests showed that she had Neanderthal ancestors.  I brought up the thesis of Ronald Wright’s “A Short History of Progress,” to wit, every advancement has bad unintended consequences.  The industrial revolution, for example, led to weapons capable of destroying the earth as we know it.  War seemed unthinkable prior to World War I, which produced over 40 million casualties; with Trump in the White House, all bets are off.

 above, Neanderthals; below, Antonio Brown

I am 1-0 in LANE Fantasy Football after beating Pittsburgh Dave by 11 points.  I had expected to lose after a Seattle safety intercepted an Aaron Rogers pass for an apparent pick-six, only to have a referee nullify the TD with a questionable penalty.  My top wide receiver, Antonio Brown, outscored Dave’s (Jordy Nelson) by six points; even though my quarterback, Kirk Cousins, had a mediocre day, his (Russell Wilson) did even worse.  The clincher: my kicker, Baltimore’s Justin Tucker, had 8 points compared to Steeler Chris Boswell’s 3.