Earth Day

“The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it,” Barry Commoner

First celebrated on April 22, 1970 by 20 million Americans and countless millions more in 193 countries around the globe, Earth Day domestically was a reaction to such environmental disasters as the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Blowout and Ohio’s Cuyahoga River bursting into flames.  It began as a bipartisan effort.  President Richard Nixon’s 1970 State of the Union address noted: “The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water.”  By year’s end, Congress had passed the Clean Air Act, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) director William Ruckleshaus had launched an investigation of DDT that resulted in the pesticide being banned.

 Jim Spicer posted a photo of Fifth Avenue in Gary, circa 1970, before passage of the Clean Air Act
below, granddaughters Tori and Miranda on Earth Day nature walk

Hoosier native Ruckleshauswrote to the New Yorkerabout Margaret Talbot’s scathing piece on current EPA director Scott Pruitt.  He declared that the environment is far healthier than 47 years ago when the EPA was established but warned:

  Pruitt is systematically attacking both the EPA’s budget and its scientific framework. If he is successful, the very reason for the EPA’s creation – illness and disease from pollution – will reemerge, and we will have to start from square one.  The country must challenge the Trump Administration’s war on science. Otherwise, as a result of actions taken by Pruitt and this Administration, the uncontrolled pollution that we have greatly reduced in the past 5 decades will return.

Toni and I attended a ninetieth birthday celebration for Rhea Laramie at Innsbrook Country Club in Merrillville, called the Gary Country Club when founded a century ago.   Allegra Nesbitt told me from personal experience that the liquor flowed despite Prohibition laws.  Little wonder, since that is where the Steel City’s movers and shakers hung out.  Rhea Laramie seemed to be doing well, but Bob was using a portable breathing device due to a recent health setback. When we started swapping soccer memories, however, his memory proved to be as sharp as ever.  Out our window, golfers were teeing off despite the inclement weather.  I sat next to 56-year-old Mark, who graduated from Kankakee Valley High School, while his wife went to North Newton.  He once played in a rock and roll band that had a gig at Ponderosa Sun Club, a nudist camp in De Motte. Mark currently lives in Bradenton, Florida, and goes to Flamingo’s in Miller for the Friday lake perch special whenever up for a visit.  Also at our table was Rhea’s 71-year-old son, who races sled dogs.  He once had several dozen but is down to 19 and not planning to add replacements once they are too old to run.

At Miller Beach Aquatorium Sociology professor Tanice hosted a memorial service honoring her sister Patricia, who lived a productive life despite being crippled since childhood.  One photo on display showed her in a wheelchair holding a sign at an antiwar demonstration.  A contingent of IUN faculty and staff came, including Dean Mark Hoyert, as well as Lori Montabano, who attended and then taught Speech at IUN before moving on to Governors State in Chicago. At Tanice’s December cookie-trading party many years ago, I danced with her two kids.

In Richard Russo’s “Straight Man” English professor Hank Deveraux runs into a student relieving himself outside and says, “I’m curious.  Why is it necessary to turn your cap around backwards in order to pee forward.”  Russo writes: “Bobo entertains the question with high seriousness, as if I’d just asked him to explain the disappearance of the Fool after Act 3 of King Lear.”  Bobo becomes a History major, and the last time Hank saw him, he “had in his possession, incredibly, a Garcia Marquez novel, the corner of a page turned down about halfway through.”  Chances are it was “Love in the Time of Cholera” (1985) that Russo had in mind.

James as William Barfee with Kenzie Moore, Sayer Norrington, Isabelle Minard, Andrea Vance, Jessica Cretors, Jake Ryan, Victor Ramisez; photos by Ray Gapinski

James shined in the Portage H.S. presentation of “The 25^thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee” as nerdy William Barfée, who spells out words with his foot as a way of visualizing them.  Someone spills pop near the microphone to foil him, and James was a riot pretending to cope with it.   Several dance numbers required nifty footwork; because James had sprained an ankle during an early rehearsal, we all held our breath but he was great.  Barfée eventually triumphs by correctly spelling Weltanschauung,German for worldview.  Half the words I’d never heard of.  I was surprised to find the first two letters of chimerical pronounced like a k whereas I always thought the ch was like in church.  At Applebee’s afterwards, I admitted as much and added that until recently I pronounced the ch in machinations that way.

I watched Maudie (2016) on HBO because it starred Sally Hawkins, whom I loved so much in “The Shape of Water,” as Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis.  Thought to be retarded by a despicable brother and aunt, Maud had her baby taken away and sold to a wealthy couple after being told that it was born dead and deformed.  The always superlative Ethan Hawke played reclusive fishmonger Ev, whom she first worked for and then married. Gazing outside, Maud says to Ev: “How I love a window.  A bird whizzin’ by, a bumblebee.  It’s always different.  The whole of life already framed.  Right there.”

Dave’s passport for our Finland trip arrived in the mail. Deborah Swallow’s travel guide opened with this Marcel Proust quote: “The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Swallow described our destination as an environmental paradise, with pristine forests, crystal-clear lakes, huge quiet skies, and, in Lapland during the winter, spectacular views of the aurora borealis.  Finns, she noted, can initially seem aloof but have good sense of humor and humility. To illustrate that last point she repeated this joke:

  An American, a German, and a Finn are looking at an elephant.  The American wonders if the elephant would be good in a circus, the German wonders what price it would get if he sold it, and the Finn asks himself, ‘I wonder what the elephant thinks of me.’”

Brenda Ann Love’s latest report of “Sounds from the South Shore”:

       Church ladies talking smack about other church ladies who may or may not be having an affair with Pastor John.

       Dude listening to Pantera so loudly I can hear it over my podcast and he’s three rows away.

                Woman complaining about how much weight she’s gained while drinking some Starbucks concoction with whipped cream on top.

Sinful World

“The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world. Reinhold Niebuhr

New Jersey governor Chris Christie is in hot water after aides arranged to have several lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge closed for several days, causing a massive traffic jam, in retaliation against Democratic officials.  After first denying everything, now Christie says he’s humiliated and fired the person responsible, Bridget Anne Kelly.  The original story claimed the cause was the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, refusing to endorse him in last November’s election.  While that seems far-fetched, Rachel Maddow claims that it had to do with a fight between the Governor and the Democratic leader of the State Senate, Loretta Weinberg, who represents Fort Lee.  In 2011, in an unprecedented action, Christie refused to reappoint N.J. Supreme Court justice John E. Wallace, an African American.  Since then, the Senate has refused to confirm any Christie nominees.  The email requesting “traffic problems in Fort Lee” occurred just a day after Christie blew up at a press conference and called the Senate Democrats “animals.”  It will be interesting to see if this derails Christie’s presidential ambitions.

 William Ruckelshaus sworn in as EPA administrator

I drew a blank when a researcher who came across my blog inquired whether I had information on William Ruckelshaus and connections to Northwest Indiana.  Best known for being one of the Saturday Night Massacre victims while serving as Richard Nixon’s Deputy Attorney General, moderate Republican like fellow Hoosier Dick Lugar, Ruckelshaus was born in Indianapolis in 1932 and after twice losing Congressional bids (including garnering an impressive 48% of the vote against Birch Bayh in 1968), he served as EPA administrator and Acting FBI director.  A staunch environmentalist, he answered a call from President Clinton to be American envoy in the implementation of a Pacific Salmon Treaty.  Ruckelshaus endorsed Barack Obama for President in 2008.

 Soul Stirrers

Henry Farag has put together a musical entitled “The Signal: A Rhapsody” about his lifetime fascination with doo wop music starting with hearing Vivian Carter on WWCA radio playing songs by the Spaniels and Dells.  Members of The Souls Stirrers, The Spaniels and Stormy Weather have already participated in rehearsals, and Henry is hoping to put it on for free at IUN’s theater on Grant Street, where managers of larger venues could preview it.  I promised I’s contact David Klamen, head of Performing Arts.  It would be great to get students interests and possibly visiting theater scholar Mark Spencer.

Making use of Mardi Gras beads, Stephan Wanger brought his Bead Town exhibit to Gardner Center in Miller.  To raise money for the Miller Beach Arts and Creative District Sue Rutsen and George Rogge are hosting a Mardi Gras Party at the Vigo Street mansion.  Corey Hagelberg, who installed Wanger’s show, dropped by to chat, as he was on campus getting ready for his Fine Arts class next week.  I invited him to have lunch Tuesdays and Thursdays with Anne Balay, Jon Briggs, and me at the Little Redhawk Café.

I started Mary Bosenquet biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to get ready for Monday’s History book Club.  A Lutheran theologian, Bonhoeffer participated in a 1943 plot to assassinate Hitler and was executed just three weeks before Germany surrendered to the Allied powers.  During a yearlong stay in America Bonhoeffer studied under Reinhold Niebuhr and heard rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., preach, an experience that made him sensitive to economic inequality and social injustice.

The National Museum of the American Indian sent us six bookmarks honoring notable Native American leaders, including warrior Quannah Parker.  One is told (and I only learned about the Commanche leader a couple years ago) that “Parker wore his hair in traditional braids, had 8 wives – 5 at one time – served as ceremonial leader in the Native-American Church, and opposed privatization of tribally held lands.”

Ira Katznelson’s provocative “Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time” discusses compromises FDR made with Southern segregationists to enact economic reforms and wartime measures.  As a result, segregation prevailed in Southern relief agencies and in the military during World War II.  In addition, the origins of the Red Scare can be found in committees such as HUAC championed by Southern legislators. Writing in New York Review of Books, Nicholas Lemann concludes: “Katznelson argues persuasively that the basic political order of the United States was remade during the New deal: government’s role expanded, but only up to a point, domestically, and expanded almost without limit militarily.”

Now that the weather reached the mid-30s meteorologists are warning of flooding and ice fog, whatever that is.  The roads, thank goodness, are clear for now despite more snow Thursday.

I talked with Paul Kern on the phone and promised to take his eulogy to Jack Gruenenfelder's son and daughter at Burns Funeral Home.