Routines

“The nicest thing about fussy people is, they have their little routines,” Anne Tyler, “A Patchwork Planet”

I don’t consider myself a fussy person but do have a normal weekday routine that includes getting dressed, putting coffee on, fixing grapefruit slices and juice, retrieving the Post-Triband Times, having cereal (usually Rice Krispies) and bacon or Kielbasa, and fixing a half-sandwich and veggies for lunch at IU Northwest, where I’d eat with Mike Olszanski on Wednesdays and leave early Tuesday for a nap before bridge.  Routine also means unexceptional, such as a routine fly ball.

Saturdays I’d normally to take James bowling at Inman’s and beforehand cook kielbasa and pancakes (with chocolate bits for him, blueberries for me).  Afterwards, we’d have lunch at Culver’s, using newspaper coupons Toni found for us.  Last week, however, he had play practice, and this weekend is competing in a tournament in Indy.  In the car I usually listen to WXRT’s “Saturday Morning Flashback” show, this week featuring the year 1973, when the Watergate scandal caused Nixon to say plaintively, “I am not a crook.”  Hearing “Ramblin’ Man” and “Dark Side of the Moon” reminded me of getting high listening to the Allman Brothers at Larry Kaufman’s and Pink Floyd at Al Sterken’s. “Long Train Running” was on my favorite Doobie Brothers album, “The Captain and Me,” which Milan Andrejevich would put on for me at his parties.  Many 1973 songs contained long instrumentals jam, such as Steely Dan’s “Bodhisattva.” In Buddhism the word bodhisattva refers to one who delays reaching nirvana in order to help suffering beings.

In Mary Kate Blake’s Urban Sociology class to discuss Gary’s recent history, I passed out  the new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History” showing photos of Tyrell Anderson and the Decay Devils, whom they will meet at Union Station on their tour Friday.  Then I exhibited the front page Post-Tribstory about Bill Pelke’s Monday IUN appearance, featuring photos of Bill with Paula Cooper and a photo of “Nana” Ruth. They had read about the murder in Glen Park of Pelke’s grandmother at the hands of four Lew Wallace ninth graders including Cooper, initially sentenced to death, and how it contributed to white flight. A student asked whether Richard Hatcher’s election in 1967 caused whites to move to the suburbs.  I discussed contributing factors that took place before Hatcher assumed office, such as passage of an omnibus civil rights ordinance and federally-mandated bussing of black students to Glen Park schools. I described scare tactics unscrupulous realtors used to induce rapid turnover in “changing” neighborhoods.  When I discussed middle class black flight, someone asked if I felt they were abandoning their people.  I replied that families shouldn’t feel guilty about doing what’s best for themselves and that many retain connections with their old neighborhoods and churches.  A Mexican international student asked how long it took to put together Steel Shavingsissues and was incredulous when I answered yearly.  He had not yet found any area authentic Region Mexican restaurants but seemed unfamiliar with East Chicago.  I recommended Casa Blanca, where Lorenzo Arrredondo recently took me.  I told him about “Maria’s Journey” and when he asked the spelling of Arredondo, promised to give him a copy Monday.

At the library I picked up the Weezer album containing covers of their favorite Oldies, including “Africa,” “Take On Me,” and “Billy Jean,” among others. Even though I’m already reading three other books, I couldn’t resist Saidiya Hartman’s “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval,” about young black women living in New York and Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century who found Victorian standards of behavior irrelevant to their lives.  Hartman wrote: 

 Few, then or now, recognized young black women as sexual modernists, free lovers, radicals, and anarchists, or realized that the flapper was a pale imitation of the ghetto girl.

 The wild idea that animates this book is that young black women were radical thinkers who tirelessly imagined other ways to live and never failed to consider how the world might be otherwise.

Having done lots of walking, I must have grunted loud enough going down IUN’s John Will Anderson Library steps for a student to turn around.  Driving down Broadway, I noticed English professor George Bodmer lugging what appeared to be items from his office as he nears retirement. I felt a pang of regret that this once close friend no longer speaks to me over a university matter that occurred several years ago.  Despite his cantankerous disposition, I’ve missed having lunch with him. He was never boring.

 Gary NAACP leader Jeanette Strong in 1963 Fair Housing protest, virtual museum photo from Calumet Regional Archives

On the front page of the Post-Trib was an article about scholars from Ball State starting a virtual museum about Hoosier civil rights history.  Recipients of a $50,000 grant from the Interior Department, the Ball State team includes professors of history, anthropology, and archaeology and a team of grad students.  Reporter Nancy Webster wrote that representatives met with Steve McShane and me at the Calumet Regional Archives and David Hess at Gary Public Library.  They will be holding a forum in East Chicago in order to solicit community input.  I alerted Lake County clerk Lorenzo Arredondo since his family deserves being featured as in the documentary “Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana” based on the book by historian James Madison.

 Sam, parents, and Sam, Jr.

 

Patrick Chase emailed a couple dozen photos of grandfather Carl, who built a golf course on the grounds of American Bridge, and Patrick’s father Sam, who as a student opposed the 1927 Emerson School Strike.  He recalled his father saying that he and others opposed to the walk-out – perhaps Principal E.A. Spalding or even Superintendent William A. Wirt -  got on Emerson’s roof to speak to the rebellious students, urging them to stay in school.    

Trump supporters love to use the word “snowflake” against the President’s detractors, ridiculing their alleged hypersensitivity toward political incorrectness.  Charles Palahniuk’s “Fight Club” (1996) may have coined the pejorative term when a character says, “You are not special, you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.” On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Mika Brzezinski, defending Joe Biden against those who have taken issue with his admittedly “tactile” campaign style, claimed not to be a snowflake and would welcome Biden with a big hug.  Fox commentators who ignore Trump’s truly abhorrent behavior have begun calling Biden “Creepy Uncle Joe” after Trump mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway criticized his “creepy” behavior.

                                                

above, Mika Brzezinski; below, Freddie Gray

What a bummer was the final episode of the HBO documentary about convicted felon Adnan Syed, who has spent 20 years in prison for a murder he may not have committed – allegedly strangling a fellow high school student, Korean-American Hae Min Lee, and burying the body in Baltimore’s Leakin Park.  On a related note, a recent New York TimesSunday magazine article entitled “The Tragedy of Baltimore: How an American City Falls Apart” traces the uptick of violent crime (309 homicides in 2018 alone) since the death of 25 year-old Freddie Grey while in police custody.  Stung by criticism and upset over new procedures that restrict their freedom, Baltimore’s men in blue drastically reduced their police presence in high crime neighborhoods.  At a community forum Renee McCray spoke of visiting Baltimore’s tourist-friendly Inner Harbor.  She recalled:

 The lighting was so bright.  People had scooters. They had bikes.  They had babies in strollers.  And I said: What city is this?  This is not Baltimore City.  Because if you go up Martin Luther King Boulevard we’re all bolted in our homes, we’re locked down.  All any of us want is equal protection.

 Lonnie at Kentucky and in West Side uniform

Reporter Chase Goodbread, researching a feature story on University of Kentucky cornerback Lonnie Johnson, Jr., projected to be a first round draft choice, wanted background information on his hometown of Gary.  A two-way star at West Side, in addition to his defensive skills Lonnie rushed and caught passes for over a thousand yards.  Coming from a close-knit steelworker family, Johnson helped West Side win the 2014 state track and field championship, winning the long jump and the 4x100 relay.  What Goodbread knew about Gary came from Wikipedia and a two-day visit that included interviewing his grandmother and parents Nora and Lonnie.  I told Goodbread about Gary’s proud high school football tradition that produced Hall of Fame coach Hank Stram and such NFL players as George Taliaferro, Les Bingaman, Alex Karras, and Fred “The Hammer” Williamson.  During the past half-century basketball has attracted most local athletes, as Gary schools can no longer field gridiron teams that can compete with Region suburban powerhouses with squads 3 or 4 times that of West Side or Roosevelt.  Gary’s public schools have suffered from the state’s funding of charter schools.  Goodbread told me that Nora Johnson had been a track star and praised Mayor Richard Hatcher’s support for youth sports programs.  At his request I mailed him “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”

Mrs. Garrison, Mr. Slave & Big Gay Al

IUN hosted Indiana University’s annual Women’s and Gender Studies Research Conference.  Noticing that Kaden Alexander was presenting a paper on queer stereotypes in the satirical Comedy Central adult cartoon “South Park,” I decided to attend.  He was great, not reading his paper like most undergraduates and speaking in a loud, clear voice about something that obviously interested him.  The enthusiasm was contagious and his observations enlightening.  He spoke about ornery Mr. Garrison who transitions into Mrs. Garrison and receives a “fancy new vagina” as well as breasts but then is remorseful because she doesn’t ovulate or become pregnant like a “real woman.” In a clip Mr. Slave and Big Gay Al (one a body builder, the other a “bear”) ridicule Mrs. Garrison and call her a fag.  I sat next to David Parnell, whose student Emily McLean spoke on religion and LGBTQ identity.  During Q and A I asked Em Beard, who had referred to Simone de Beauvoir in her talk “Defining Gender,” about the use of “lesbian” becoming less common compared to “queer.” The latter, she replied, is more inclusive.  SPEA lecturer Jacqueline Huey lamented the insinuation that “lesbian” was an old-fashioned concept.  Even the honorific Ms. is giving way to Mx. among many millennials.

At lunch I received hugs from former IUN professor Lori Monalbano, presently a counselor at IU South, and IU South Bend Gender Studies professor April Lidinsky, who, like me, testified on Anne Balay’s behalf when she was unjustly denied tenure and promotion.  Kaden Alexander introduced me to his wife Terry, who was wearing a Lambda Delta Xi shirt.  Rather than call the organization a fraternity or sorority, she used the word diaternity. Terry told me that it replaced the LGBTQ group Connectionz disbanded and has ten members of various gender identifications and a campus adviser, Beth Tyler.  It’s only the second such chapter in the country, the Alpha chapter being at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.  A former Valparaiso University student, Terry knew Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette, whom I’ll be in an oral history session with in Salt Lake City in October.

                   Danish women after Niqab banned 

Keynote speaker Sherene Razack, who teaches at UCLA and whose many books include “Looking White People in the Eye,” spoke on the topic “The Racial/Spatial Politics of Banning the Muslim Niqab.”  While I’m opposed in general to government bans on certain types of clothing, Razack condemned Canadian prohibitions against their use by police, teachers or women testifying in court.  Not sure I agree, but I guess the state should not prevent it if those doing the hiring are aware of that beforehand.  In the court case the woman had shown her face when applying for a driver’s license but didn’t wish to confront defendants on trial for raping her. When someone mentioned Niqabs being symbols of oppression and indicator of the plight of women in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Razack claimed that as a feminist she had little good to say about Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women but equated Niqab bans with western cultural imperialism.

Shared Heritage

“Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control people’s minds.” Thurgood Marshall

William E. Scott, "Maker of Goblins"; "Night Turtle Fishing in Haiti"

Examining past Traces magazines in search of articles on Northwest Indiana, I came across Arthur S. Meyers’ “Democracy in the Making: Max Bretten and Hammond’s Beth-El Open Forum” in the Winter 1996 issue. Founded in 1924, the Beth-El Open Forum hosted such distinguished speakers as civil rights advocates W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson.  That sameTraces issue contained Indianapolis museum curator Harriet G. Warkel’s “A Shared Heritage: The Art of William E. Scott, John W. Hardrick, and Hale A. Woodruff.”  The three African Americans flourished during the New Negro movement of the 1920s and 1930s.  Scott was a renown muralist, Hardrick primarily a portraitist, and Woodriff an Early American Modernist influenced by Cezanne and Picasso, but all three were wary of labels and interested in capturing the dignity of black working class subjects. 

John W. Hardrick, "Little Brown Girl"; "Xenia Goodloe"

I took the 2016 Corolla in for a 35,000-mile check-up and was surprised that it did not require an oil change, an operation that at one time was performed every 3,000 miles.  Now it’s either after 12 months or 10,000 miles.  I was in and out in 30 minutes, as the main task   was tire rotation. The charge was $19.95 for .4 hours labor.

 above, Veronica Napoli; below, The Unwonted, Eric Roldan fifth from left

“Windy Indy,” curated by Ish Muhammad, opened at Gardner Center in Miller. On hand were John Cain,executive director of South Shore Arts, who first hosted the exhibit at the Munster Center.  John introduced me to Valparaiso University geography professor Michael Longan, who is in charge of VU’s Urban Studies minor.  I told him grandson James would be visiting VU’s campus the next day and I’d be speaking in Sociologist Mary Kate Blake’s class in April. Having written an historical essay for the exhibit booklet and attended the “Windy Indy” show in Munster, I was familiar with the works on display but delighted to meet several artists, including members of the Unwonted Collective Eric Roldan and Veronica Napoli, an IUN grad. I told Bobby Farag that recent Archives visitor Peter Mandich Jr. (son of a former Gary mayor) would soon be publishing a book on golf courses.  Mandich once worked for Farag when he managed a golf course.

Saturday I dropped James off at VU’s Mueller Hall, where he learned about Christ College, the university’s honors program, during a five-hour orientation.  Its website states: “Christ College offers an honors environment where faith and learning are cherished, where interdisciplinary education fosters critical thinking, and where virtues such as charity, humility, and courage are nurtured. Students in Christ College find a spirited, inclusive learning community that prepares them to pursue their individual callings.”  While I’m not certain how the program is connected to specific fields of study that James may wish to major in or what role religion plays, VU being a Lutheran school, the program is highly regarded and the interdisciplinary approach one I admire.

I was able to catch most of the IUN men’s basketball game, an exciting one-point win over Silver Lake College.  Two transfer students from Illinois Central College sparked the comeback victory, Chris Dixon-Williams with 16 points and Chris Bolden, whose three-point shot from the corner put the Redhawks ahead late in the game.  To my surprise someone named Eric Roldan was on the Redhawks bench, an assistant to Coach Javier Heridia.  He resembled the Unwonted Collective artist enough for me to bring up the Gardner Center exhibit only to get a puzzled look in return.   After the game Mary Lee thanked me for having given her “Gary: A Pictorial History.”  I asked Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Alexis Montevirgen, who at halftime had scooped out the popcorn I’d paid a dollar for, whether that was part of his job description.  Earlier, I’d used the same line when assistant athletic director Anna Villanueva was mopping up someone’s spilled drink with towels.

above, Coach Roldan; below, artist Roldan

I finished Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” which includes a scene where time traveler Billy Pilgrim attends a 1960s seminar on the future of the novel.  One intellectual scoffed that the books would make colorful decorations for rooms with all-white walls; another said novels would provide a platform for artistic descriptions of blow jobs.  Billy Pilgrim found himself an old man in 1968 berated by daughter Barbara for claiming to have been kidnapped by space aliens; Vonnegut wrote poignantly: “It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.”

I read quite a few novels after graduating from high school in 1960 and subsequent summers while home from Bucknell.  Prior to that, the only books I can recall reading on my own were “Catcher in the Rye” and “Peyton Place.”  Best sellers in 1959 that I eventually read included “Exodus” by Leon Uris, “Hawaii “by James Michener, “Naked Lunch” by William Burroughs, and “Advise and Consent” a political novel by Allen Drury.  The latter centered on Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell, who allegedly once had a connection to the Communist Party (a character named Leffingwell appears in the best-selling novel of 1906, “Coniston” by American Winston Churchill). In addition, to discovering John Steinbeck, I enjoyed 1960 novels “To Kill a Mockingbird” by  Harper Lee and John Updike’s “Rabbit Run.”  The following year, J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” was the rage on college campuses. 

My first exposure to Calumet Region humorist Jean Shepherd was when Ray Smock gave me “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash” in 1970 upon learning I’d be teaching in Gary.  In “Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters” is Shepherd’s description of the air Hammond residents breathed: “The molten egg smells of the Grasselli Chemical Works mingled with the swamp-gas exhalations of the Sinclair refining plant and the smoldering, metallic miasmas of the blast furnace dust.”  In my Fifties Steel Shavings(volume 23, 1994) I included this excerpt from “The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski”:

  A prime universal belief among my peers was that the girls in the next town, East Chicago, were fantastic and that the most fantastic of all were Polish girls. Sometimes when Flick got his old man’s car, we’d go to East Chicago to ride around with the windows open just lookingat Polish girls walking around the streets. We’d holler out at them and ride around and around the block, jabbing each other in the ribs, swigging Nehi orange, gulping down White Castle hamburgers and blasting the horn.  We never actually talked to a girl, of course, or really got near one, we just hollered, gunned the motor and stared.

In high school I often went cruisingaround Philadelphia's southern suburbs

in cars usually driven by Bob Reller, Skip Pollard or Pete Drake.  Often we’d check out Montgomeryville Mart, a giant flea market and end up at a drive-in restaurant, where we’d admire the waitresses and hope to run into girls.  Our next town, Ambler, PA, provided occasional sightings of hot Italian girls we’d fantasize about and speculate about bra size and how far they’d go when on a date. 

After buying doughnuts at Jewel and fixing breakfast Sunday, I did laundry and watched the 76ers defeat the L.A. Lakers, and LeBron James, 143-120, as MVP candidate Joel Embiid of Cameroon scored 37 points.  Recent acquisition Tobias Harris added 22 and JJ Redick 21, mainly on deadly 3-point shots.  That night I stayed up for most the Grammys, which featured an emotional appearance by Michelle Obama.  I particularly enjoyed songs by Lady Gaga and Kacey Musgraves, whom I hadn’t seen before, and performances by Dolly Parton (who sang “9 to 5” with Miley Cyrus) and Diana Ross on her seventy-fifth birthday.  Toni and I saw Ross with the Supremes while at the University of Maryland; Stevie Wonder was the warm-up act. Critics harped on Jennifer Lopez leading the Motown tribute, but the whole point of the Motown sound was to accentuate a shared heritage and create soulful music for all people.  Smokey Robinson came to her defense.

 Tyrell Anderson at Union Station

I went to an Art in Focus talk at the Munster Center, as Decay Devils founder Tyrell Anderson spoke of his group’s history and work beautifying Union Station in Gary. Introducing Anderson, John Cain read this paragraph from my “Gary Haunts” exhibit essay: 

  Gary’s haunts lie dormant near Lake Michigan and steel mills responsible for their creation, sometimes inhabited by the homeless and visited by curiosity seekers and photographers fascinated by urban ruins.  Still eerily beautiful, they are representative of the grand illusions of early twentieth-century city builders and symptomatic of a throw-away society with a short historical memory.  Six decades after its birth in 1906, victimized by corporate greed, federal neglect, race tensions, and the allure of suburban living, Gary underwent middle-class flight, business disinvestment, and the erosion of its tax base.  

Anderson was inspired by developments that have taken place in downtown Detroit.  The Decay Devils are also concentrating on sprucing up area adjacent to Union Station, including Gateway Park, where the Gary Land Company Building sits, Gary’s first permanent structure.  In the audience I spotted Jan Trusty, who agreed to donate husband Lance Trusty’s papers to the Archives.  After the interesting talk we visited the exhibit, which had just opened.  Particularly moving was a photo of the once-grand Palace Theater in ruins.  Cain recalled sitting in the balcony Saturdays eating giant Nestle’s candy bars. I told John that Henry Farag’s “The Signal” contains colorful anecdotes from those years about going to the movies: In a chapter titled “Come Go With Me” he wrote:

   The Palace Theatre at 8th and Broadway was a gothic, Moorish, heavenly place with surreal stars twinkling over a lighted blue ceiling.  Sunday afternoons it was a gathering place for teens – the adults came in the evening.  Hoosier James Dean, star of Rebel without a Cause,” was becoming my generation’s symbol of undefined alienation.  The musical movies said the most to us, however, like “The Girl Can’t Help It” with Little Richard or Alan Freed features.  In one movie or another, we saw Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, the Platters, the Treniers, and many more. There were two movies, sometimes three – the latter usually being Westerns. At this point we’d make the usher’s life miserable.

John Cain, who curated the exhibit, used a wonderful 1993Camilo Vergara  photo of Gary’s Blackstone Hotel at Fifth and Madison from the Calumet Regional Archives collection. In my “Gary Haunts” brochure essay I wrote:

  A quarter-century ago, Peruvian-born photographer Camilo Vergara, first introduced to Gary’s ”Haunts” while attending Notre Dame, invited me on one of his frequent excursions that provided material for “The New American Ghetto” (1995), “American Ruins” (1999), and other acclaimed publications.  Making selections for our “Gary: A Pictorial History,” Ronald Cohen and I included shots Vergara took of City Methodist Church, the Blackstone Building at Fifth and Madison (titled “Survivor in a tough city” but subsequently demolished), children playing basketball among the ruins of a gas station (one begged Camilo to let him change into his Michael Jordan jersey), a “Donate Plasma TODAY!” billboard on a vacant corner of Fifteenth and Monroe, and a photo display of Martin Luther King in murals located in a dozen inner cities adorning Four Brothers Market at 1139 East 21^stAvenue, which Vergara has revisited on almost all of his forays into Gary. Vergara initially wanted them placed inside City Methodist Church, but community organizer Samuel A. Love and I convinced him to agree to a traveling exhibit. Stops included the former site of Stewart Settlement House.

If City Methodist is refurbished and made part of a ruins garden, I’ll ask Vergara if we can have a permanent photo display of his shots of Martin Luther King in murals.

above, John Cain; below, ArtHouse: A Social Kitchen

VU Sociology professor Mary Kate Blake asked for suggestions on where to take students on their Gary tour, in addition to Union Station and the downtown library. I told her that both those stops were good ideas and to check out Flex Maldonado’s mural on the history of Gary near the library’s Indiana Room. She’s planning to go to Miller, and I suggested they check out the Aquatorium with statues honoring Octave Chanute and the Tuskegee Airmen. She wanted suggestions for lunch, so I called up the ArtHouse: A Social Kitchen, located near RailCat Stadium. Old friend Scott Williams answered. The Portage City Councilman and wife Vickie are evidently working there as managers or volunteers.  Summers, they take in several RailCat baseball players. While ArtHouse doesn’t have a restaurant per se, Scott offered to hire a caterer who’d prepare a meal for the 20-25 visitors.  I passed the information along to Mary Kate.  Described as a culinary incubator/art gallery, ArtHouse was funded in part through a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Decay Devils

“We plan on being in the forefront of protecting and preserving historical landmarks throughout Northwest Indiana. Through our travels and connections with our partners, we believe we can be the catalyst for change.” Decay Devils

 Union Station photos by Anthony Zaragoza

below, Decay Devils president Tyrell Anderson

When Anthony Zaragoza of Evergreen State in Tacoma, Washington, visited the Calumet Region this week, he photographed the work that the Decay Devils have done to beautify Gary’s long-abandoned Union Station.  Formed in 2011 by 14 photographers, artists, and urban explorers who enjoyed visiting urban ruins, the Decay Devils took on the mission of attempting to beautify and ultimately restore Union Station. Here’s a statement that appears on the Decay Devils website:

In order to support the thousands of workers moving in from around the country, the city of Gary immediately needed a new passenger and freight rail station. Architect M. A. Lang designed and built the two-story Union Station in 1910, between the railways of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway and Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Constructed in a "Beaux-arts Style” which utilized the cast-in-place concrete method in which, after pouring, the steel reinforced concrete was scored to resemble stone. Union Station was closed sometime in the 1970s. Since then it has been featured in an episode of Life after People, and the movie Original Gangstas and Appointment with Danger.  Several plans have been made in efforts to reuse the facility, including some plans that called for the station to serve as visitor center and gateway to the National Lakeshore as the station’s strip of land connects to the Indiana Dunes to the East. 

On the Decay Devils website is a list of “what we achieved":

·       Transforming Lake County Grant through John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Donor Advised Fund at Legacy Foundation

·       Downtown Gary History Walking Tours

·       Gary, IN Blight Day Participant

·       Gary Union Station Revival Project

·       St Monica St Luke Oral History Time Capsule Project

·       Marquette Beach Clean-up w/ the Alliance for the Great Lakes

 Thomas Frank; Post-Tribune photo by John Smierciak

Zaragoza at oil spill near Gary Airport; photo by Thomas Frank

BP tar sands  photo by Anthony Zaragoza

abandoned West Calumet Housing Complex; photo by Anthony Zaragoza

Indiana harbor shipping canal; photo by Anthony Zaragoza

Prior to arriving at the Calumet Regional Archives, Zaragoza hooked up with environmental activist Thomas Frank, 53, who took him on a “Toxic Tour” of area industrial sites. Formerly director of Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal and a member of East Chicago’s redevelopment commission, Frank has participated in protests at BP refinery and West Calumet Housing Complex.  Steve McShane and I told Zaragoza about our many environmental collections, and he promised to send me “Toxic Tour” photos.

IUN History professor Jonathyne Briggs is teaching a Fall seminar on World War I and is considering an Archives assignment.  Steve McShane mentioned that the Fosty Bela Papers contain Gary Works Circle publications going back to 1916 that include references to wartime Americanization campaigns.  If we could borrow from Gary Public Library microfilm of Gary newspapers (the Evening Post and the Daily Tribune) during the war years, student could each tackle a month’s worth of issues for war-related references.  Even though the downtown Gary library remains closed, in the past we’ve either been able to use their material on campus or at the nearby W.E.B. DuBois branch. I also suggested that students could peruse material in Steel Shavings issues on Portage, Cedar Lake, and Gary.  Census figures for 1910 and 1920 may also be useful.  Jonathyne invited me to attend class as often as possible.

Gary Galloway’s wife Paula donated a large collection of the former Post-Tribune reporter’s writings.  During the 1970s and 1980s Galloway was the paper’s star columnist, whose specialties were crime and corruption.  He hung out at a Glen Park biker bar, where his beer of choice was Stroh’s (“fire-brewed in the Motor City”).  He once interviewed me in the Post-Trib conference room, using a tiny pad that held no more than two of three sentences per page.  He kept scribbling down quotes and flipping pages. Playing to a white suburban audience, Galloway turned virulently (and unfairly) anti-Mayor Hatcher, much to my chagrin.  In 1984 Galloway won the Baltimore Sun’s prestigious H. L. Mencken Award. Post-Trib metropolitan editor Paula L. Ellis (presently married to Galloway) said at the time:

He’s a hot poker in the seat of politicians.  That’ exactly what he does every day and we’ve got the lawsuits to prove it.  He knows the sub-terrain of this area, a place with an old political culture.

Calling Galloway’s forceful work reminiscent of Mencken, Sun managing editor James Houch claimed: “He calls the police chief a liar.  He calls the mayor a fake.  The man is brave and gutsy and has remained out of jail.”  Now 81 years old, Galloway is suffering from Alzheimer’s.

In “Trajectory” Richard Russo wrote about Nate, a semi-retired professor in his 60s who speculates that he might have been happier had he embarked on a different career path, such as construction worker.  Regarding his shallow, narcissistic brother, Nate ruminates: “Say this for Julian, a career salesman: he’s lived the life he was meant to live and followed the only trajectory that truly suits him, from start to finish.”  Toni’s father’s last name was Trojecki, and sometimes I’d call her “Trojectory” until she began objecting.  She and other women in her family went by Trojecka with an “A” and pronounced it “Tray-yet-ska.”  Try as he might, my father could never master the pronunciation. 

 I Love my Librarian winners (Barbara Weaver second from right)

The most moving recitation during the Portage Historical Society program was between Jeff Manes and librarian Barbara Weaver, who suffered 90 percent hearing loss upon contracting meningitis at age three.  She worked at Lake County Public Library, at IVY Tech, and was a recipient of the national I Love My Librarian Award.  Growing up, she learned to play the piano (“I can feel the music through me hands”), loved Nancy Drew mysteries (“every Saturday with my allowance I’d buy another story for $1.25”), and became a big Indy 500 fan (“Mario Andretti signed a life-sized poster I had purchased”).  When Barbara applied to library science grad school, an admissions officer questioned whether she could succeed in the profession.  Barbara recalled telling her:

  I’ve done well in school.  I’m an avid reader who graduated sixth of 123 and was on the National Honor Society.  I had great role models.  My parents loved me, and I have a brother I look up to.  I don’t see why I cannot achieve my dream of becoming a librarian.

I reread Manes’ column in volume one of “All Worth Their Salt” and learned that Weaver broke down in tears when she first related that information.

 Richard Goldstein in 1967 and 2015

In an issue of Rock Music Studies given to me by Ron Cohen (he’s on the editorial board) appeared “Present at the Creation” by Richard Goldstein, who wrote about rock music for The Village Voice for five years beginning in1966. He was in a limo with the Rolling Stones when girls hurled themselves onto the hood, got stoned on LSD with the Beach Boys, sat in the front row at the Monterey Pop Festival, and hung out with Janis Joplin at a New York City kosher restaurant frequented by hippies.  And much more.  Admitting to spectacular errors in judgment, he initially panned the Doors’ “Light My Fire” and the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and wrote (with only slight hyperbole) that a Judy Collins performance “would put Jesus to sleep on the cross.”  When he heard that Janis Joplin had died from a heroin overdose in 1970, he recalled, “I was so traumatized that I became unable to write, and that block lasted several years.”