Facebook

    “Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Despite Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s protestations that the company’s mission is benign -  to make the world more connected and build community across boundaries, his creation has become intrusive, a threat to privacy, and a polarizing force politically.  Aside from those criticisms, Facebook accounts inevitably become littered with advertisements and other annoying messages.  Today’s crop, for instance, included MLB, art.com, Humana Pharmacy, Bob Rohrman Auto Group, and Empire: World War 3. Even so, for me it continues to provide illustrated links to friends, relatives, former students (i.e., Jonathan Rix, George Sladic, Chris Daly, Bob Fulton, Amanda Board) and old acquaintances that I find invaluable. For example, here is a sample of what I found when opening my account this morning:

Miller Town Hall, built in 1910, used a firehouse after annexation

This from Gary historian Steve Spicer: “On February 17, 1919, the Gary Common Council passed ordinance No. 754 annexing the Town of Miller. One hundred years ago today. Approved by the mayor three days later.”  Spicer also posted a photo taken from his house on Miller Ave. of a full moon at 4 a.m. Steve was one of many area residents who expressed satisfaction that, thanks to efforts by Congressman Peter Visclosky and many others, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is now one of 61 national parks. 

Dave Lane, E'twain Moore, Dee Atta Wright; below, Miranda 

Son Dave posted photos while at Purdue University with students invited as guests of former East Chicago Central basketball star  E’Twaun Moore to celebrate aday in his honor in Lafayette and enjoy a Boilermakers game against Penn State. Dave wrote that Moore “epitomizes class and it was a great honor to be there to celebrate with him. He continues to make his hometown proud!”  Other new family photos included James visiting Valpo U. for an overnight experience and Miranda vacationing in Florida.

Professional photographer Ray Gapinski attended the same play, “Shrek: The Musical” that we enjoyed on Sunday and took numerous photos of the performance that will surely become collectors’ items for cast members. Photographer and community organizer Samuel Love documented a tour of sites in Gary to collect sights and sounds for a genealogy podcast.  Betty Villareal got together with “girlfriends” from Lew Wallace’s Class of 1967, while my 1960 Upper Dublin classmate Bettie Erhardt posted photos of a gathering at Giuseppe’s, a local steak sandwich and pizza joint, when Thelma Joy Van Sant visited.  Replying to one of Thelma and Eddie Piszek, Alice Ottinger employed the title of a 1956 Chordettes doo wop hit: “Eddie My Love.” Whenever I return to Fort Washington, I alert Bettie and she arranges for a similar mini-reunion.

Ray Smock announced the publication on President’s Day of his new book on the Trump presidency, “American Demagogue,” which drew many positive comments and a sarcastic photo from follower Katherine Ryan Walsh. Anne Balay shared this article by Brooke Nagler that appeared in the University of Chicago magazine:

 Anne Balay, AB’86, AM’88, PhD’94, has worked as a mechanic and a trucker. “I love the mental state long drives put me in; they’re pretty much the only time I feel relaxed,”she writes in Semi Queer. “I love that feeling, and almost every trucker I’ve talked to does too. That’s what we mean when we say trucking is addictive—it’s not just a job but a lifestyle.” 

 Balay herself worked as a trucker after being denied tenure, a decision she believes was motivated by homophobic discrimination. Jobless and panicking, she entered trucking school because she’d always liked driving. There she found that sitting in the cab of a truck was transformative. “Suddenly all of the anger and bitterness just flowed away. I felt like this is something I could do that would be meaningful and productive,” she says. (Balay has since returned to academia and now teaches at Haverford College.)

 Her experience was not uncommon. Mastering an 80,000-pound piece of machinery offered many of Balay’s interviewees a sense of power. As one driver told her, “the fact that people hate me ’cause I’m trans, well then they’ll hate me, but say hello to my truck.”

 With its constant motion and cycles of departure and arrival, Balay writes, the everyday life of a trucker is well suited to individuals whose gender identities are also in flux. Trucking offers a way for these individuals to express their shifting identities more openly. “Out here on the road I live authentically,” explained Alix, who is trans. “I am kind of leading a double life because when I go home, I’m kind of mom to the kids. … So when I get back into the truck, it’s liberating, because I don’t have anyone’s expectations to live up to.”

 But the profession has drawbacks. Nonwhite truckers experience racism from the carriers that employ them, other truckers, and customers. For all drivers, “trucking is incredibly dangerous,”Balay says. Apart from the risk of accidents, drivers are frequently alone in remote areas or at truck stops, which can be magnets for illegal activity. Sexual assault was common among the women she interviewed, both cisgender (those whose gender identity matches the sex on their birth certificates) and transgender. Nearly every trucker Balay interviewed carried a gun.

 Then there are the looming existential threats. Technology has transformed trucking, adding new forms of employer surveillance, such as cameras and speed sensors, that many drivers feel are needless micromanagement. The most dramatic change awaits as self-driving vehicles threaten to upend the industry. Balay worries for the marginalized truckers for whom “there are no other decent jobs available.”

 But until autonomous trucks hit the interstate, truckers will remain essential, linking even the most remote parts of the country to the web of American industrialism. That sense of connection to how things are made is one of the reasons Balay found satisfaction in driving a truck. Her work took her to the mills where toilet paper is made, the Nabisco factories where Oreos emerge from conveyer belts, the fields where fruit is grown and picked. She saw it all, and took it where it needed to go next.

Anne Balay by Riva Lehrer

Minions

    Minion: a servile underling, sycophant or crony to someone powerful or, put more crudely, an ass-kisser, toady or suck-up.

Originally from Middle French meaning darling, it was adopted by the English in naming filet mignon. Appearing in Shakespeare’s MacBeth,it came to refer to a subordinate favored due to his cloying loyalty. Merriam-Webster.com uses this quote from Boston Globecorrespondent John Powers to illustrate: “Rocky Marciano came into his prime and popularity in the early 1950s when boxing, now both televised and controlled by mobster Frankie Carbo and his minions, hadn’t had a white champion since James Braddock in 1937.”

 “Minions” (2015) is a prequel to the “Despicable Me” animated movies.  Evolving from single-celled organisms, the diminutive yellow creatures, according to the premise, have been at the service of villains throughout history and in 1968 follow the bidding of Scarlet Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock) until they get on her bad side and end up following a scoundrel called young Gru (Steve Carell).

Barbara Walter, representative for The Papers, picked up the camera-ready files for volume 48 of Steel Shavingson a DVD-R plus a print-out of the 324 pages.  A big Bob Seeger fan like me, she will soon turn 65 and retire but may keep a few favorite clients, me included. My final 2018 blog entry contains these words: “Trump has shut down the government over his damned wall.  So many senior Republican Senators have retired, the only one apparently left with half a spine seems to be Utah’s Mitt Romney, perhaps hoping, like Ike 70 years ago, to save the GOP from extremists.”

On the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, following a long telephone conversation with Trump, announced that the president would reluctantly sign the compromise Congressional legislation funding border security but then declare a national emergency in order to expedite construction of his wall.  McConnell has been against this tactic, believing it would set a terrible precedent, but caved rather than stand up to the White House bully. Perhaps he’s hoping the judicial branch has more guts in stopping this fiasco than his Republican colleagues.  On “Morning Joe” a New York Times analyst compared to McConnell’s performance to one of the yellow-bellied creatures in “Minions.” Here’s Ray Smock’s take on these troubling events:

    President Trump just snatched Nancy Pelosi’s purse. Over on the Senate side, Mitch McConnell handed over the Senate’s wallet without a struggle. If the president gets away with this constitutional grand theft, you can kiss the American Republic goodbye. The only thing standing between a Banana Republic president and rule by presidential decree is the power of the purse, which belongs to Congress, not to any president.

    In one of the most rambling and embarrassing performances of an American president, Donald Trump spoke for 53 minutes about his declaration of a state of emergency on our border with Mexico. His stream of unconsciousness in the Rose Garden today undermined his own case when this gets to the courts. He said on several occasions that he had more money than he knew what to do with. He lamented the small amount Congress appropriated for wall building and repair, but readily admitted Congress gave him more than he asked for in other parts of border security, including funds for better monitoring of ports of entry.     

    Virtually every member of Congress and the officials of the executive branch know that drugs are smuggled mainly through ports of entry and that it is a huge multi-billion-dollar enterprise conducted by sophisticated criminals, not families seeking asylum. Just this week the most notorious drug kingpin of recent times, El Chapo, was sentenced to life in prison. And just last week two large shipments of drugs were stopped at ports of entry. Trump fails mention such things.

    In questioning from the press, Trump said, in effect, that he is declaring a national emergency to deliver on a campaign promise. That is his emergency, not the nation’s. He will use this national emergency declaration, win or lose, to show why he needs to be re-elected. He deserves another term so he can continue to fight for the wall. The wall is the symbol for stopping the browning of America. It is an appeal to racism and fear, which were the hallmarks of his campaign and his presidency.

 John Dowd

Bob Woodward’s “Fear,” about Trump’s first year in office, concludes with loyal attorney John Dowd resigning from the Mueller probe defense team.  Even though Dowd believed that the president had not colluded with Russia nor obstructed justice, he knew that if he agreed to be interviewed by the special counsel under oath, he’s likely end up in “an orange jump suit.”  Woodward, whose 1999 book “Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate,” dealt with past abuses by special prosecutors, wrote:

After 47 years, Dowd knew the game, knew prosecutors look for the perjury trap.  They built cases, could string things together, something that would look bad. And in Trump he had seen the tragic flaw.  In the political back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, crying “Fake news,”the indignation, Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew he could not bring himself to say to the president: “You’re a fucking liar.”

“Fear” rings true even though Dowd and other Trump advisers have denied saying things attributed to them.  John Kelley, for instance, claims he never called Trump an idiot. Rightwing past Trump supporter Ann Coulter recently did just that, quite publicly.

 Mark McPhail

Former IUN administrator Mark McPhail spoke at Miller’s Gardner Center about his upcoming book “Shades of Crimson and Cream: A Diverse People’s History of Indiana University.” A couple years ago, he resigned as Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs when frustrated at every turn by an Old Boys network of senior faculty anxious to hold on to their power.  It will be interesting to see if he takes his revenge out on them in print.  On the program with Mark was the South Shore Dance Alliance.

At bowling a woman was giving away cookies topped with heart-shaped icing, and several others were exchanging Happy Valentine’s Day hugs, including Sheryl Burrill and Mikey Wardell. “Giving away hugs?”I asked Sheryl.  After a slight hesitation, she opened her arms and gave me a squeeze. Even though the Engineers bowled above average, we only won a single game from We’re Here, as Steve Huffman rolled a 632 series with 2 games well over 200.

 James and Deborah Snyder

Portage has a new acting mayor, Sue Lynch.  A jury found Jim Snyder not guilty of accepting a bribe in return for putting a company on the towing list, the originally rationale behind the federal government probe at a time when their main target was Lake County sheriff John Buncich.  The jury did find Snyder guilty of receiving $13,000 that he claimed was a consultant’s fee from a company that sold the city five garbage trucks.  At the time Snyder was financially strapped, owing back taxes, and did not adequately report the income, hence a second conviction for obstructing the IRS.  Snyder is facing up to ten years in prison for something that normally would have resulted in a fine had not the U.S. Attorney chosen to go after him with both barrels and coerced others, including his own brother, to testify against him or face stiff penalties themselves.  The government paid informants to secretly record conversations where they tried to get Snyder to make incriminating statements.  Perhaps Snyder’s being a Republican entered the equation so the prosecutor could not be accused of partisanship. 

I only met Mayor Snyder once, at a Portage Historical Society banquet, and was not impressed but figured the guy, not yet 35 years old, must have had something to offer the voters. While I admired Snyder for supporting steelworkers during a 2015 dispute with management and volunteering Portage snow plows to clear streets in Gary’s Miller neighborhood after a huge storm (they shop in Portage was his retort to critics), I would not have voted for him.  Still I resent the U.S. Attorney having the power to pick and choose whom to go after regarding political fundraising methods that are virtually universal. Compared to consultant fees paid Republican law firms downstate or bribes Trump paid Hoosier lawmakers in order to secure a casino boat in Gary, $13,000 is chump change.  Snyder may have been a scumbag and acted ill-advisedly, but I admire his decision, foolhardy in retrospect, to defend his reputation even though the odds were stacked against him. U.S. Attorneys, after all, win over 95% of cases that go to trial.   I took it as a bad sign when Snyder did not take the stand to defend himself.  He could have vigorously rebutted the main charges and admitted misrepresenting his income to the IRS while under great duress, to which he sincerely regrets. After the trial, one juror indicated that Snyder mishandling the $13,000 consultant fee caused them to conclude that he really didn’t earn it.  The jurors admitted having trouble getting used to not being able to use their iPhones.  

A full weekend.  Friday Dave’s family arrived with Wing Wah carry-out and a cake to celebrate Toni’s 75th birthday; later we played Bananagrams and dice games.  Saturday after dining at Craft House we hosted our four-couple bridge group.  Sunday I had breakfast with Anne Balay at Sunrise Restaurant up the street from our condo, which was very crowded but handled the rush with great efficiency. Anne is a finalist for a teaching position in St. Louis, where older daughter Emma lives.  Like Anne, Avi (whom I first knew as Leah and Anne refers to as they) lives in Philadelphia. According to several sources, “they” applies when someone has adopted a non-binary gender identity rather than identifying exclusively with either gender.

We saw “Shrek: The Musical” at Memorial Opera House, which I loved, much to my surprise. Based on the 2001 movie, “Shrek: The Musical” opened on Broadway a decade ago.  The acting was terrific, from Jonathan Owens as Shrek and Robert Starks as the donkey to the many young folks who played Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and other characters from childhood tales.    

above, Alex Voeller; below, Emmie Reigel, photo by Ray Gapinski

Alex Voeller, who played 3-foot-tall Lord Farquaad on his knees, turned out to be the tallest cast member.  Emmie Reigel as the Wicked Witch danced with such abandon, reminding me of Tanice Foltz, that I could hardly take my eyes off her during the production numbers.  The Sunday matinee was a sell-out, with many youngsters were in the audience.  The musical numbers were delightful, culminating in the Monkees hit “I’m a Believer” by the 33-member cast.  At Presto’s Restaurant afterwards, I noticed former Geology professor Bob Votaw at the next table with three young people who turned out to be his grandchildren.  I recall a Votaw cast member being in a previous play, so they must have come from the theater.  Bob taught until age 75 and was in great shape; in fact, he gave me a big hug that almost took my breath away. My lasagna entrée was delicious and so huge I barely made a dent in it.

 Bob Votaw

Prior to book club at Gino’s I reread parts of British author Helen Rappaport’s “The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra.” The Czarina’s refusal to split up the family or consider fleeing into exile proved to be a tragic one: according to Rappaport, Alexandra’s “abiding virtue – and one that, perversely, destroyed them all in the end – was a fatal excess of mother love.”  Here’s how “The Romanov Sisters” begins:

  They day they sent the Romanovs away the Alexander Palace became forlorn and forgotten – a palace of ghosts.  All 40 doors of the rooms inside had been sealed, the palace kitchens were closed, everything was locked.  Only the 3 cats remained in a deserted Alexander Park, the last remnants of a family now heading hundreds of miles east into Siberia.

Here’s how the book ends:

  In 2007 after considerable and protracted legal wrangling, the Russian Prosecutor General’s office finally saw fit to rehabilitate Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia Romanov, their parents and brother, as “victims of political repression.”

Helen Rappaport has written about Russia during the last days of the Romanovs in “Caught in the Revolution” and “The Race to Save the Romanovs.”  Thus it was understandable, albeit disappointing, that “The Romanov Sisters” did not go much into detail about events that caused the Czar to be called “Nicholas the Bloody” (anti-Jewish pogroms, the  Khodynka stampede killing 1,300 at his coronation, and the mass shooting of peaceful demonstrators during the 1905 revolution). Speaker Nancy Kevorkyan provided information about these tragic events.  Severe losses during the Great War precipitated the forced abdication of Czar Nicholas and a subsequent civil war that compelled the Bolsheviks to liquidate the entire royal family.  Lecherous faith healer Grigory Rasputin figures prominently in the narrative, as the Czarina became convinced that his alleged powers were essential in treating son Alexey’s hemophilia.  The Observerreviewer Lara Feigel wrote:

 What is most surprising in this story is quite how unsuited the family is to power. They all live chiefly for each other. Alexandra finds the business of state “a horrid bore”that keeps her husband away from her. Nicholas comes home for the children's bath-time every night and records episodes of teething and weaning in his diary. When Nicholas abdicates, his first thought is that now he can “fulfil my life's desire – to have a farm, somewhere in England.”

  Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia are bright, willful girls who are devoted to their parents and to their precious little brother Alexey. For all four sisters, the ideal life would be one of quiet middle-class domesticity with a soldier husband. Infantilized by Alexandra, they are allowed to run wild with the soldiers who escort them on their annual holiday to Crimea. Even as teenagers, they play boisterous games of hide and seek with the handsome young officers; at one stage 10 people crammed into a wardrobe. Everything changes in the first world war when Alexandra, Olga and Tatiana train as nurses (typically modest, they take the titles of Sister Romanova numbers 1, 2 and 3). Now at last the girls have the contact with the outside world they have longed for as they change dressings and help with operations. But again it's the ordinariness they most love. “It's only at our hospital that we feel comfortable and at ease,” Olga tells one of her patients.

Former History major Marcel Gonzalez aspires to attend grad school at Indiana State and sought advice on possible thesis topics and a letter of recommendation.  He took a seminar I taught on the history of police in America after Ed Escobar left for a job in Arizona.  Marcel recalled that becoming a cop was a path to upward mobility for the Irish and other immigrant groups.  He took most History offerings from Rhiman Rotz but asked about Fred Chary, Ron Cohen, Paul Kern, and Diana Chen-Lin.  I suggested he do a family history and gave him a copy of Ramon and Trisha Arredondo’s “Maria’s Journey.” He presently is a ballroom dance instructor.
  

Cat's Cradle

“Cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little girl blue and the man on the moon
So when you're coming home?
Hey yo, I don't know when
We'll get together then.”

         Harry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle

Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” being one of my favorite songs, whenever Dave gets out the acoustic guitar, I press him to sing it.  Chapin’s point is that parents can become so busy that they don’t have time for their children.  Fortunately, that cautionary tale didn’t apply to me.  Born in 1942 (same year as me), Chapin died at age 39 after his Volkswagen collided with a truck, setting it aflame; five years later he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his work combatting world hunger.  Chapin also recorded “Taxi,” “Mail Order Annie,” and “Sunday Morning Sunshine.”

James is reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” for an English class assignment. I recall Toni’s father, Anthony Trojecki, demonstrating how to take string and form a pattern known as Cat’s Cradle.  Editor Sidney Offit called “Cat’s cradle” “an icy black comedy”and Vonnegut “an acidly funny Midwestern fabulist whose anger and sorrow at the way things are is equaled only by his love for the best we can be.” In Vonnegut’s novel, Felix Hoenikker, one of the scientists who worked on developing the atom bomb, was playing with a loop of string and creating that formation while Hiroshima was being bombed, incinerating close to 100,000 Japanese.  His son Newt recalled:

  He went down on his knees on the carpet next to me, and he showed me his teeth, and he waved that tangle of string in my face.  “See?  See?” he asked.  “Cat’s cradle.  See the cat’s cradle.  See where the nice pussycat sleeps?  Meow.  Meow.”  And then he sang, “Rockabye catsy, in the tree top, when the wind blows, the cray-dull will fall.  Down will come cray-dull, catsy and all.”

Like in the Harry Chapin song, Hoenikker’s three children are badly neglected, and their attempts to gain his attention have tragic consequences. Elsewhere in “Cat’s Cradle” Vonnegut wrote this dialogue:

  “No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . .”
  “And?”
  “No damn cat, and no damn cradle.” 

When I went to check out “Cat’s Cradle,” a Chesterton library staff member informed me that they were holding Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House” for me.  When I first requested it months ago, I was eighth on the list.  It opens with this quote from The Donald: “Real power is – I don’t even want to use the word – fear.” Spineless Republican legislators certainly fear crossing him and possible losing the 30% or so of the electorate who apparently believe he can do no wrong. In the opening scene of “Fear” presidential adviser Gary Cohn removes a letter from Trump’s Oval Office desk that would have set in motion U.S. withdrawal from a trade agreement with South Korea that would have risked interrupting sensitive spy operations on North Korean missile capabilities and thus jeopardized national security. Woodward wrote: “In the anarchy and disorder in the White House and Trump’s mind, the president never noticed the missing letter.”   

Mike Olszanski was a guest speaker in Philosophy professor Anja Matwijkix’s Business Ethics class.  At lunch Oz told me he enjoys the opportunity to get on his soap box and represent the perspective of organized labor’s rank-and-file.  I know the feeling and in two weeks will be talking about the Gary Homefront in Nicole Anslover’s World War II course.  She’s currently discussing wartime propaganda.  I told her how the government made use of African Americans, including heavyweight champ Joe Louis and naval hero Dorrie Miller, for propaganda purposes – ironic in view of their treatment in the segregated military.  Despite Louis raising millions in war bonds, the IRS unfairly claimed he owed more back taxes than he could ever hope to pay.  Dorrie Miller was a mess attendant working in the laundry on board the USS West Virginia anchored in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941.  Miller rushed on deck, shot down two planes with a machine gun, and rescued a wounded officer.  The War Department was reluctant to honor Miller until the black press publicized his actions.  Miller died in 1943 on board the USS Lissome Bay when a Japanese torpedo struck the escort carrier near the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific.  A Gary housing project was named in Miller’s honor.

Since Nicole told me to visit her class whenever I could, I decided to sit in on one on propaganda.  After she showed brief excerpts from the German film “Triumph of the Will” and a Frank Capra produced episode of “Why We Fight,” she led a lively discussion comparing and contrasting them.  The latter included a quote by Vice President Henry Wallace depicting World War II as a battle between the free world and slave world. When she elicited opinion on what affect propaganda had on Americans, I commented that it spurred civil rights leaders to demand an end to racist practices on military bases, at defense plants, in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere and led to the Double V campaign for victory against tyranny both abroad and at home.  One student mentioned Japanese-Americans being put in internment camps, and Nicole pointed out how anti-Japanese propaganda was blatantly racist.  Nicole’s next class will deal with comic books and Disney cartoons.

Larry David and pregnant mother

On an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Larry’s lunch companions are congratulating a women on becoming pregnant with her tenth child.  Larry pipes in, “Isn’t that a little selfish?” Later at her father-in-law’s barbershop, Larry learns she’s had a miscarriage and makes a quip about her already having nine kids, causing the barber to start beating him with a towel.

According to WXRT’s Mary Dixon, February 13 is Galentine’s Day where women celebrate intimate friendships with other women.  The sun finally came out after many days but the wind chill is still around zero. In the past few weeks ice mounds along the lake have expanded rapidly, as demonstrated in a photo by Samuel A. Love, taken during a Douglas Center Sacred Wanderings tour.

The sun finally came out after many days but the wind chill is still around zero. In the past few weeks ice mounds along the lake have expanded rapidly, as demonstrated in photos by Samuel A. Love, taken during a Douglas Center Sacred Wanderings tour.

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.