Something in the Air

  “Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right”

    “Something in the Air,” Thunderclap Newman

When I first heard “Something in the Air,” I had no idea who Thunderclap Newman was but loved the song. It appeared on the album “Hollywood Dream” (1969) and reminded me of the Beach Boys if they had decided to make a political statement.  The original title was “Revolution,” but the Beatles had used that name for the B side of “Hey Jude.” The brainchild of the WHO’s Pete Townshend, who played bass guitar under the assumed name Bijou Drains, Thunderclap Newman consisted of Speedy Keen (who wrote “Something in the Air”), Andy Newman, and Jimmy McCullough.  Even though the single was a smash hit in the UK and U.S. and featured in such movies as “Easy Rider,” “The Strawberry Statement,” and “Almost Famous,” the group never recorded another album. “Something in the Air” was coved by many others, most famously Tom Petty in 1994.

    “We are prepared to spend the rest of our lives if necessary to save the dunes,”

  Save the Dunes founder Dorothy R. Buell

Shirley Roman touched countless lives during her 92 years.  Born in western Pennsylvania in the Ohio River town of Coraopolis, she grew up in Racine, Wisconsin and graduated from Gary Emerson High School.  While at DePauw University, she started dating Frank Roman, who’d been the star quarterback at Emerson when she was an undergraduate and after serving in World War II was attending Wabash College. They married in 1952 and became Miller mainstays, active in Save the Dunes, Marquette Park Methodist Church, scouting, the MCC (Miller Citizens Corporation), and, in Shirley’s case, gardening and knitting clubs. Shirley taught elementary school in Gary and first grade at Portage’s Crisman, where granddaughter Alissa started school, for over 20 years.  I met the Romans at a party that Tom Eaton hosted.  I recall them as strikingly handsome and personable octogenarians. Shirley loved the beach and as her obit states, “was a force for good and change in her community and fierce protector of the lake, dunes, and woods, and the unique Miller community.”  The obit added:

   Shirley and Frank loved cross-country skiing and to travel and were very social, celebrating anything they could think of with their famous cocktail parties. Later in life, they moved to Rittenhouse Senior Living.  The family (Meg, Frank, Jr., Leah Shelby, and others) thanks the staff there, as well as the staff of Harbor Light Hospice, for their gracious care given to Shirley and for laughing at her jokes until the end.

The Chesterton area establishments in Porter County are not practicing social distancing in a uniform manner. Some restaurants are open, others still closed, and many serving drive-thru or carry-out only.  The Chesterton library opened for curbside service.  One calls ahead, has books and DVDs or CDs (in my case by the Beths and Night Ranger) and then goes to one of five reserve parking spaces and calls inside for delivery.  Gaard Logan recommended a trilogy by Hilary Mantel that takes place in Tudor England.  Those novels weren’t available, so I checked out one of Mantel’s early works, “Beyond Black” (2005).  Ron Cohen also loaned me a John Williams novel, “Stoner” (1965) and “They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America October 1967” (2003) by one of my favorite authors, David Maraniss.  That should keep me busy.  Nancy greeted me at the door wearing a mask, as was I, and had a bag of books and periodicals plus three homemade chocolate chip cookies.  After a 30-minute visit, I gave Nancy an elbow bump and said, “Guess no hugging or kissing.”



“They Marched into Sunlight” focuses on two main events, a Vietcong attack on an American division on a search-and-destroy mission and an antiwar sit-in at the University of Wisconsin protesting the university allowing Dow Chemical Company, makers of napalm, to recruit in campus.  The title comes from Vietnam vet Bruce Weigl’s “Eulogy,” about a patrol suddenly under fire.  Here are the poem’s opening and closing lines”

into sunlight they marched,

into dog day, into no saints day,

and they were cut down

. . . .

The bullets sliced through the razor grass
So there was not even time to speak.
The words would not let themselves be spoken.
Some of them died.
Some of them were not allowed to.

Heartbreaker

You belong among the wildflowers

You belong in a boat out at sea

Sail away, kill off the hours

You belong somewhere you are free.”

         Tom Petty, “Wildflowers”

As if the worst massacre in American history wasn’t bad enough, Tom Petty passed away suddenly at age 66. What is sad beyond belief is that the Las Vegas killings were less shocking than the Rock icon’s death.  The Republicans claim to believe in a federal system but are lockstep behind the NRA’s demand that cities like Gary, Chicago, and Las Vegas have the same gun laws (or lack thereof) as Montana or rural Alabama.  As my nephew Beamer Pickert put it: “Just because bad people will do bad things doesn't mean we have to make it easier for them kill more people more quickly. We CAN do something about the access to rapid kill weapons.”

The first I knew about Petty’s condition was driving home from IU Northwest and hearing a complete set of Tom Petty songs on WXRT. At Chesterton library, someone was checking out Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers CDs and commiserating with the person behind the counter.  Talking by phone to Marianne Brush, I learned the story might be false only to have his death confirmed later.  Rather than play more familiar CDs in my collection, I put on his 1994 solo album “Wildflowers,” whose only hit single was “You Don’t Know How It Feels.”  In their tributes to Petty, Brenden Bayer and Corey Hagelberg referenced the Traveling Wilburys song “End of the Line,” which concludes:

Well it's all right, even if you're old and grey
Well it's all right, you still got something to say
Well it's all right, remember to live and let live
Well it's all right, the best you can do is forgive

Well it's all right, riding around in the breeze
Well it's all right, if you live the life you please
Well it's all right, even if the sun don't shine
Well it's all right, we're going to the end of the line

Tom Petty is one reason the late 1970s is one of my favorite musical periods; and the Traveling Wilburys – bringing him together with Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne – was pure magic.  When “American Girl,” “Free Fallin’,” and other Petty classics come on the radio, I turn the dial up and sing along.  Dave’s band Voodoo Chili played several of his songs, including “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” Petty was beautiful when he began his career and beautiful in spirit until the end – still at the top of his game, for instance, at Wrigley Field this past summer.

 photo by Steve McShane

Steve McShane and I put together a Unit 154 Contract Bridge League glass case exhibit in IUN’s library hallway, using items donated or loaned by Barbara Walczak, Joe Chin, Anna Urick and Carol Osgerby.  Some date back to the 1890s and Whist, the forerunner of bridge.  Barb Walczak designed the backdrop.  Recent Newsletters on display contain photos of former IU Business professors Dan Simon and Ed d’Ouville. I encouraged Steve’s students to invite their assigned bridge players to visit the exhibit and to take selfies with them when they do so.

Austin Rogers

High school history teacher Justin Vossler won $65,000 on Jeopardy in a single day.  Comfortably in the lead, he made a huge wager on Final jeopardy with the category being American artists.  The clue asked what Iowa native once claimed he got his inspiration from milking cows.  Voila!  The Pitchfork man, Grant Wood.  His competitors guessed James Whistler (a New Englander), but Vossler, who ran his five-day total to $110,000, nailed it. The following day, Vossler lost to another history teacher.

Alan Yngve in 2014

Dee, my bridge partner, was indisposed so I partnered with director Alan Yngve; we finished second, pretty good for never having played together.  In one hand, Carol Miller, who with Mary Kocevar finished first, preempted 3 Spades, and I held five Spades to the Queen.  Alan doubled, wanting me to name my strongest suit.  I passed, ordinarily a cardinal sin, but we set them 2, doubled, for high board. Another hand, Alan opened 1 No-Trump.  I had four Hearts to the Queen, Jack, a singleton spade, and an Ace of Clubs.  I bid 2 Clubs, indicating a four-card major.  He bid 2 Hearts, and I passed.  He made 4 Hearts and afterwards said that, with the singleton Spade, I could have said 3 Hearts.  When Dottie Hart asked if Alan would then have gone to game (4 Hearts), he said no, getting a laugh out of all of us since our score would have been the same either way.  He had a point, however, since, not knowing how strong his hand was, I should have left the decision to him.

 

In a Rolling Stone article entitled “The Madness of Donald Trump” Matt Taibbi ruminates about America’s past:

      We Americans have some good qualities, but we're also a bloodthirsty Mr. Hyde nation that subsists on massacres and slave labor and leaves victims half-alive and crawling over deserts and jungles, while we sit stuffing ourselves on couches and blathering about our "American exceptionalism." We dumped 20 million gallons of toxic herbicide on Vietnam from the air, just to make the shooting easier without all those trees, an insane plan to win "hearts and minds" that has left about a million still disabled from defects and disease – including about 100,000 children, even decades later, little kids with misshapen heads, webbed hands and fused eyelids writhing on cots, our real American legacy, well out of view, of course.

      Nowadays we use flying robots and missiles to kill so many civilians and women and children in places like Mosul and Raqqa and Damadola, Pakistan, in our countless ongoing undeclared wars that the incidents scarcely make the news anymore. Our next innovation is "automation," AI-powered drones that can identify and shoot targets, so human beings don't have to pull triggers and feel bad anymore. If you want to look in our rearview, it's lynchings and race war and genocide all the way back, from Hispaniola to Jolo Island in the Philippines to Mendocino County, California, where we nearly wiped out the Yuki people once upon a time.

      This is who we've always been, a nation of madmen and sociopaths, for whom murder is a line item, kept hidden via a long list of semantic self-deceptions, from "manifest destiny" to "collateral damage." We're used to presidents being the soul of probity, kind Dads and struggling Atlases, humbled by the terrible responsibility, proof to ourselves of our goodness. Now, the mask of respectability is gone, and we feel sorry for ourselves, because the sickness is showing.

The final song on Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers” album, “Wake Up Time,” ends with these lines:

'Cause it's wake up time
It's time to open your eyes
And rise and shine

If only!