Epictetus

“To the rational creature, only the irrational is unbearable; the rational he can always bear.” Epictetus

The Greek Stoic Epictetus, who was born into slavery and lived in Rome until banished by Emperor Domitian in A.D. 93, was a philosopher who believed that self-knowledge is the foundation of all quests for wisdom and that the rational man, being responsible for his own actions, had a moral duty to live an honest life and eschew flattery or frivolous things.  In the “Discourses,” written by one of his pupils from notes he took, he argued: “We have no power over external things, and the good that ought to be the object of our earnest pursuit, is to be found only within ourselves.” In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy I found this statement: “An engagingly satirical portrayal of the potential impact of Epictetus’s philosophy in contemporary American literature may be found in Tom Wolfe’s 1998 novel “A Man in Full.”

I just finished Wolfe’s 742-page novel, admittedly skipping over some parts.  Wolfe writes about a half-dozen people whose lives ultimately come together in Atlanta as a result of a wealthy white coed accusing an African-American Georgia Tech football star of raping her.  My favorite character comes across a book titled “The Stoics” while in prison and vows to live a life according to the teaching of Epictetus. While working for a wealthy entrepreneur, he convinces the man to live by the principles of stoicism with unexpected consequences.

Phil Arnold wrote a tribute to the late, great Little Richard on his Elvis blog.  He bought his first Little Richard in 1957 for 79 cents and at one time had more Little Richard 45s than Elvis records and enjoyed the B sides almost as much as the hits.  He joined a Little Richard fan club, “Rock Bops” and years later got to see him perform live.  Almost all his contemporaries, from Elvis to James Brown idolized him and “American bandstand” host Dick Clark called him “the greatest Rock and Roll legend of our time.”  R.I.P. Richard Penniman.

The heyday of record albums being from the mid-1960s until the mid-1990s, most of my “10 favorite albums” selections came from that era.  No record got more play at 9649 Maple Place than “Duke” (1980) by Genesis. Early Genesis albums had featured vocals by Peter Gabriel; drummer Phil Collins filled in ably on “Duke.” The songs were for the most part a collaboration between Collins, keyboardist Tony Banks and guitarist Mike Rutherford. Every song is a winner, but I particularly like “Misunderstanding” and “Turn It On Again.” The album has numerous long instrumental interludes and a 10-minute finale, “Duke’s Travels,” which harks back to Genesis’s prog-rock roots.

Becca, who will attend Belmont University in the Fall, performed “Teddy,” a song she co-wrote with keyboardist Alec Malenfant and three Chesterton classmates singing the chorus (Emma Kitchel, Jackie Neely, and Alex Wierzbicki) at a coffeehouse special carried live on the Internet.  The group called themselves Probs Finger Guns. “Teddy” is about a break-up and contains the line, “All the little things were just not working.”  It was an awesome performance.

I played Air Lords on-line with Jef Halberstadt, Tom Wade, and Evan Davis, who invented the board game.  Because it involves lots of math and we were using our own map and cards, it took four hours, twice what an in-person game usually took.  It was fun, and I finished second to T. Wade.

IUN library staff member Anne Koehler wrote: “Sixty years ago on May 14 I entered the United States in Newport News, Virginia. Had come over from Germany via a modern freighter from Hamburg. I was wearing warm clothing and the hot humid air of Virginia greeted me. Stayed with friends in Camden, New Jersey and took the bus from there to Chicago where my husband to be was waiting for me. My huge trunk had to be shipped by train as the bus could not accommodate it. Arriving in Chicago the von Steuben Day parade walked past on Michigan Avenue as if to welcome me. I have lived here ever since.”

Cinco de Mayo

"Nothing to show but this brand new tattoo

But it’s a real beauty

A Mexican cutie

How I got it, I haven’t a clue”

    “Margaritaville,” Jimmy Buffet

For Cinco de Mayo (fifth of May) son Dave performed “Margaritaville” on Facebook and received over a hundred likes or comments.  I told him that while he nailed it, “La Bamba” (popularized by Ritchie Valens, Trini Lopez, and Los Lobos) would have been my choice.  The traditional Mexican folk song originated among African slaves imported into Veracruz who were referencing the MBamba peoples of Angola. “Margaritaville” was also appropriate, however, given that the unofficial holiday was popularized during the 1980s by beer companies and sales supposedly surpass even those during Superbowl weekend.  Cinco de Mayo commemorates a Mexican victory over a much larger French force at the 1862 Battle of Puebla under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza.  After President Benito Juarez declared a moratorium on Mexico’s foreign debt, Napoleon III had used the default as an excuse to invade the Central American country at a time when the U.S. was unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine due to the Civil War. After Zaragoza’s death, Mexican forces suffered setbacks, Mexico City fell, and Napoleon III installed a Frenchman, Emperor Maximillian, as his puppet. By 1867 the ill-fated Maximillian was ousted and President Juarez back in power. Historians have speculated that without the Mexican victory at Puebla, the French probably would have recognized the Confederacy and the American Civil War might have had a different outcome.

Tom Wolfe’s novel “A Man in Full” (1998) takes place, for the most part, in Atlanta, and the African-American mayor bears a large resemblance to Mayor Maynard Jackson, who served between 1974 and 1982 and again in the 1990s. Both were members of the city’s black elite, graduates of Morehouse State and members of the same fraternity.  Jackson, son of a preacher and a university professor, is credited with expanding Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport into the nation’s busiest and establishing affirmative action guidelines that led to more minority policemen and other municipal workers. As I learned from the “Atlanta Child Murders” documentary, however, the vast majority of Atlanta’s black residents found the quality of their lives, if anything, deteriorating in the past half-century as a result of gentrification and the construction of freeways that destroyed viable black neighborhoods.

Wolfe’s most appealing, albeit tragic, character is blue-collar worker Conrad Hensley.  His parents were old hippies who raised their son in a squalid domicile that reeked of pot and unwashed dishes piled high in the sink.  A high school teacher convinced Conrad to attend college, where a prof poked fun at a bourgeois lifestyle that sounded idyllic to Conrad.  Forced to quit school when a Catholic girlfriend got pregnant and refused to abort the fetus, he went to work for a food conglomerate, filling out meat orders in a refrigerator car dubbed “the suicide freezer unit.”  The job conditions were deplorable, but the pay adequate.  He was saving toward a down payment on a house in the suburbs when laid off on the very day he saved a coworker’s life – one of the many self-described crash ‘n’ burners.  When the flunky assistant night manager delivered the news, the man whose life Conrad had saved told him:
    Who’s the shit fer brains, Nick?  You’re laying off the best man in this whole fucking Place?  He was gonna buy a condo, Nick.  He’s got a wife and two kids!  He’s worth more’n the whole buncha you fuckin’ neckties put together!”
No matter. The die had been cast.

In an HBO documentary the great Studs Terkel claimed he didn’t consider himself an oral historian but rather an intimate interviewer and conversationalist.  Blacklisted while hosting a successful TV program during the McCarthy Red Scare for failing to say he had been duped into signing petitions against racism and economic inequality that had the endorsement of the Communist Party, he went on to have a 45-year career on a Chicago radio station and write acclaimed books on American history from the bottom up on the Great Depression, World War II, and many other subjects.  When a school board attempted to censor “Working: People Talk about What They Do All Day and How They Feel about What They Do,” he attended a jam-packed school board meeting and convinced the board to change its position.  He told one critic he was interested in understanding why someone would read a 700-page book simply looking for so-called dirty words. Born in 1912, the year, he said, that the “Titanic” sank and he rose, he died at age 96 and expressed the wish that his epitaph read: “Curiosity did not kill this cat.”  

Twin City Tales

Hey you, don’t help them bury the light

Don’t give in without a fight

         “Hey you,” Pink Floyd, from “The Wall”

 "The Wall" album cover

The protagonist in “The Wall,” Pink Floyd’s 1979 double album rock opera, is a jaded rock star whose father perished in World War II.  He was reared by an overprotective mother, tormented by abusive teachers, and betrayed by an unfaithful wife.  These metaphorical “Bricks in the Wall” made him depressed and, pumped up by hallucinatory drugs, he performs on stage in the manner of a fascist dictator.  Side 1 ends with “Mother” (one of my favorites), side 2 with “Goodbye Cruel World,” side 3 with “Comfortably Numb,” and side 4 with “Outside the Wall.” The final couplet of “Hey You,” which opens side 3, offers a slither of hopefulness: 

Hey you, don’t tell me there’s no hope at all

Together we stand, divided we fall

Given the many contributions of Mexican-Americans who grew up in the Indiana Harbor section of East Chicago, nicknamed the “Twin City” (at one time a vast railroad yard and industrial canal separated the immigrant neighborhood from the more affluent western section), it is maddening that Trump has demonized Mexican immigrants and turned the issue of welcoming newcomers into a political football.  He has categorized Region native Judge Gonzalo Curiel as a Mexican and a hater who should have recused himself from a case involving bogus Trump University because of the then-candidate’s vow to build a border wall. How much poorer culturally the Region would be without its legacy of ethnic diversity.

2016 E'Twain Moore basketball camp at East Chicago Central

A column by veteran NWI Timessports reporter Al Hamnik featured NBA star E’Twuan Moore in advance of a summer basketball camp in his hometown of East Chicago.  In 2007 Moore led East Chicago Central to a state championship in a 87-83 victory over North Central, whose leading scorer Eric Gordon now plays for the Houston Rockets. Moore tallied 28 points; as Coach Pete Trgovich exclaimed, “Big players set up in big games; that’s what he did.” Moore bemoaned the recent death of 11 year-old David Anderson, struck by a stray bullet while in a park where he frequently shot hoops.  Moore said: “I remember seeing him walking the halls, on the court with instructors, joking around. It was pretty tragic what happened to him.” Moore grew up in a third floor apartment on Guthrie Street in a rough neighborhood where, as Hamnik wrote, “gangs, drugs, sirens and gunshots were a common occurrence.”  Parents Ezell and Edna Moore insisted that he and his two siblings be home before dark and get good grades.  All three became college grads, E’Twaun from Purdue on a basketball scholarship.  He was drafted by the Boston Celtics, played with the Chicago Bulls, and in 2016 signed a four-year contract with the New Orleans Pelicans for $34 million.  On his biceps are tattoos reading “Ezell” and “Edna” honoring his parents’ sacrifices.

On the tennis courts of Moore’s alma mater I witnessed the Lady Cardinals’ Sectional victory, 5-0, against Hammond Noll.  The Dave Lane-coached league champs finished the regular season with a record of 10-2. After Areli Enriquez won at number 1 singles, 6-0, 6-0, I moved closer to a doubles contest.  Down 5-1 in the first set, Cresencia Alvarez and Abigail Pozo won 6 games straight and then prevailed in set 2, again by a score of 7-5.  They were aggressive at the net and virtually never double-faulted, in contrast to their opponents.  Dave introduced me to players afterwards, as well as talented athletic director Monica Maxwell, a 1995 Central grad who led Louisiana Tech to 2 Final Four appearances and starred in the WNBA with the Indiana Fever, leading the Eastern Conference in 2000 with 62 three-pointers.

 above, Monica Maxwell; below, East Chicago Central student Carolina Delgado with Mr. Lane and Mr. Trey at Teacher Appreciation Night

Several students asked if I taught Coach Lane tennis. My reply: I got him started at a young age.  A Noll player complimented my East Chicago Central t-shirt that contained the saying “Tennis, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.”  It was good to see Ashley Pabey, star of the team four years ago, who recently graduated from Purdue Northwest with a Nursing degree. A senior said that he’d be attending IVY Tech in the fall and earlier in the day was in the new building IUN shares with that institution.  When his friend who has received scholarship money from the University of Indianapolis found out I was a History professor who’d written about East Chicago, he lamented the demolition of so many buildings in the old ethnic wards.  I met Math teacher Gunnson Trey, who was born in Taiwan and returned for a month last summer, which afforded me an opportunity to describe my two days in Taipei in 1994 after lecturing in Hong Kong.  When my Taiwanese taxi driver guide drove past a statue of President Chiang Kai-shek, he cursed out the interloper for slaughtering thousands of native Taiwanese after fleeing Communist forces on mainland China.

William Drummond, Jimbo, Bob and Sheryl Burrell

At the Archives I interviewed 90-year-old William Drummond, who hired in at Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company (now Arcelor Mittal and before that LTV), located in East Chicago’s Indiana Harbor district, during the late 1940s. Assigned to a labor gang, he boarded with relatives in North Hammond until he could afford to bring up his wife and kids from downstate Illinois.   William received union support when a plant superintendent unjustly sought to punish him. William bowled with his dad as a kid at a four-lane alley and joined a coke plant team in a league composed entirely of Youngstown employees.  He finally gave up bowling last year due to bad eyesight and periodic dizziness but sometimes accompanies daughter Sheryl Burrell to Hobart Lanes when she competes as a member of Fab Four in my seniors league.  Husband Bob, a U.S. Steel retiree came with them and found reading material in the Archives to keep him busy. William’s great-grandson is an IUN student. 

 Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe, author of “The Right Stuff” (1979) and “Bonfire of the Vanities” (1987) expired at age 88.  I’ve long admired has hyperbolic prose  that made no pretense of objectivity.  Like other exponents of the so-called New Journalism, such as Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and Hunter S. Thompson, Wolfe employed elements commonly associated with fiction to explore personal foibles and idiosyncrasies.  In a Sixties class I used Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” about Ken Kesey and his hippie band of Merry Pranksters traveling the country on a 1939 school bus dubbed Furthur.   Omar Farag made a presentation on Wolfe’s 1965 book of colorful essays, “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” that contained chapters on customized cars, auto racing, and deejay Murray the K, who billed himself as the “Fifth Beatle.” Wolfe coined the phrases “Radical Chic” for Manhattan socialites who hosted fundraisers for Black Panthers and “Me Decade” for the 1970s. The difference between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, he bantered, was that one wanted to hold your hand while the other wanted to burn down your town.

Understanding Finnish words and phrases may come in handy during my upcoming trip.  I finally learned how to pronounce the city of Jyvaskyla (like it begins with a Y), where Dave and I will first stay.  We’ll be in Helsinki for Midsummer (Juhannus). Heiis hello and Nakemiinor Moi Moimeans goodbye.  Joo (pronounced yoh) or Kylla (Kuul-la), is yes while Ei means no.  Kiitos (Kee-tohss) is thank you and Ole hyva(OH-lay-va) is you’re welcome. A phrase I might need is Missa on vassa?– where is the toilet (or WC)?

 Cedar Lake Museum, once Lassen Resorts

At a workshop next week sponsored by the Cedar Lake Historical Society, I’ll note that I first heard about the “Lake of the Red Cedars,” as the Potawatomi named it, from self-styled “Region Rat” Jean Shepherd’s fishing tale “Hairy Gertz and the 47 Crappies.”  Shepherd recalled being in a rowboat knee-deep in beer cans with his Old Man and seven others:

   It is 2.A.M.  The temperature is 175, with humidity to match.  And the smell of decayed toads, the dumps at the far end of the lake, and an occasional whiff of Standard Oil, whose refinery is a couple miles away, is enough to put hair on the back of a mud turtle.  Seventeen thousand guys clumped together in the middle, wishing for the known 64 crappies in the lake.

    The surface is one flat sheet of used oil laying in the darkness, with the sounds of the Roller Rink floating out over it, mingling with the angry drone of the mosquitoes and muffled swearing from the other boats.  A fistfight breaks out at the Dance Hall (Midway Ballroom).  The sound of sirens can be heard in the Indiana blackness.  It gets louder and then fades away. Tiny orange lights bob over the dance floor.

Ray Smock, who introduced me to Jean Shepherd and grew up in Harvey, Illinois, called Cedar Lake in the 1950s a blue collar mecca where he spent many idyllic summer days.  One time he decided to swim to the other side for bragging rights. Part way across, he got tangled up in thick weeds and before he could struggle free, a half-dozen leeches were attached to his body. He recalled:

When I finally got to the other side, the first thing I did was to scratch off those damn bloodsuckers.  I had to walk back to the other side of the lake. That was the hard part. I had no shoes on and it took me a lot longer than I had planned.  This was the beginning and end of my long-distance swimming career.

I’ll also read this paragraph from the 1990 novel Blossom by Andrew Vachss

    The Chevy blended into the terrain, at home on the back roads.  I followed Rebecca’s directions to Cedar Lake. Found Lake Shore Drive.  A resort area, mostly summer cottages.  I stopped at a bench set into a wooden railing across from a funeral home.  Smoked a cigarette and waited.  The sigb said Scenic Overlook.  Told me the lake was 809 acres.  Three miles long, a mile and a half wide.  Twin flagpoles on either side of the bench.  Electricity meter on a pole.  I stood at the railing.  Somebody had carved Steve & Monica inside a clumsy heart.  I traced it with my fingers.  Three bikers went by on chopped hogs, no helmets.

below, "Far From the Maddening Crowd" by Tom Brand

Driving to the Gardner Center for an exhibit featuring the work of Michigan City artists Tom Brand and Carole Stodder, I found Lake Street to be a mess and the lane adjacent to my destination blocked off by big equipment.  Persevering, I enjoyed the abstract pieces.  Some of Stodder’s images reminded me of jigsaw puzzle pieces, and Brand’s suggested multiple possibilities of meaning.  Spotting artist and VU curator Gregg Hertzlieb, I had him explain to me how Stoddard achieved her surface texture.  Tom Brand’s bio indicated that he had once been a printer and in the 1960s had produced the original Hairy Who comic books by the Chicago Imagists.  He was surprised when I told him I’d seen the documentary about them at a Munster Art in Focus event.

from a 1968 Hairy Who comic book