Vanguards

“You need a vanguard organization in order to overcome the dangerous potential brought about by the uneven development of class militancy and class consciousness,” Marxist theorist Ernest Mandel  (1923-1995)

Mandel’s point is still true: when workers lack class consciousness, political torpor sets in unless exploited people are stirred into action by vanguard leaders.  When I wrote about the United Steelworkers of America District 31 Women’s Caucus that arose during the 1970s as a result of discrimination against women entering the steel work force after the 1974 Consent Decree, I characterized it as a vanguard movement organized by veterans of leftist groups who had joined the labor force because they believed the path to fundamental change lay in strengthening rank-and-file militancy within industrial unions.  The Women’s Caucus not only succeeded in obtaining more palatable job conditions for women but also played a prominent role in other fights, including the Bailly Alliance, which prevented the building of a nuclear plant on the shore of Lake Michigan.

 James Oliphant

As a self-described democratic socialist, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is in the vanguard of what he hopes will lead to a political revolution.  I am fearful, however, that he will turn out, if nominated, to be, like George McGovern in 1972, an easy mark for lies and innuendos from rightwing forces.  Even so, he was pretty funny on Saturday Night Live in a skit with Larry David about being on the Titanic.

A Gardner Center exhibit, entitled “Vanguards: Moving ‘out here’ to Miller,” featured portraits by Chicagoan James Oliphant of African Americans who, beginning in 1964, moved to Gary’s previously all-white Miller district.  Accompanying the photos were brief excerpts of oral interviews covering where the subjects previously lived, reasons for their move, and reaction by both their old and new neighbors.  Marianita Porterfield sought better educational opportunities for her children; others wanted a safer environment.  One woman, disparaged as uppity by former neighbors, wished that more whites would have given integration a chance before moving away.  Some white realtors resisted serving black clients, but several “pioneers” praised Bruce Ayers for helping them.

There was a large crowd at the exhibit and good food (especially the deviled eggs).  I chatted with Nancy Cohen (about the Bulls), George Rogge (about a SALT column Jeff Manes wrote about him), and Cindy Frederick (about vanguard pioneers we both knew).  I told Judy Ayers that I enjoyed her Newsletter column about living in Hawaii around the same time as Toni and me; we both listened to Hawaiian music coming from nightclubs while on the beach and saw Don Ho (whose hit song “Tiny Bubbles” came out in 1966) at Duke Kahanamoku’s, named for an Olympic medalist and father of modern surfing. I arrived early and didn’t stay long because James was spending the night.  With Dave and Toni being in Oklahoma for Tamiya’s graduation from Basic Training, I had gladly volunteered to take him bowling. After he rolled a 455 series (above my average) we ate at Culver’s, joined by Becca and Angie.  At the library I picked up a Lucinda Williams CD and “Hooking Up” (2000) by Tom Wolfe.

 Don Ho and Duke Kahanamoku

Gloria Steinem, 81 years young, appeared on the Bill Maher Show to plug her new book, My Life on the Road,” dedicated to a British abortionist who, after the procedure, told her to go have a productive life.  Asked to explain why most young women were supporting Bernie Sanders rather than Hillary Clinton, Steinem answered that women, unlike men, get more liberal as they age.  Then she added that it was also because that’s where the young men are.  Maher blurted out, “Had I said that, you’d have slapped me.”  Steinem retorted, “Are you kidding?  I thought you knew me better than that.”

In “Andrew Jackson” Sean Wilentz makes the point that “Old Hickory” was very controversial in his own time, then accepted for many years as a champion of democracy, but recently has become a subject of controversy as a slaveowner and ruthless champion of Indian removal.  There’s even a movement afoot to remove his image from 20-dollar bills, perhaps in favor of a black woman or Native American.  Wilentz asks readers to judge Jackson by the standards of his time, not ours.  It is interesting how little historians know about exactly where Jackson was born (probably in frontier South Carolina but perhaps in nearby North Carolina) or about Jackson’s father, who died before Andrew was born, perhaps due to a fatal accident while clearing trees.  By all accounts “Young Hickory” was a drunken rake who’d brawl or duel at the drop of the hat and loved cards, horse racing, loose women.

I enjoyed “The Revenant” despite many gory spots.  Leonardo DiCaprio plays 1820s frontiersman Hugh Glass, whose half-breed son pays the ultimate price for disregarding his advice to be invisible and keep his mouth shut because white people, “don’t hear your voice.  They just see the color of your face.”  The film portrayed Native Americans in a positive light, more in harmony with nature than the rapacious interlopers who slaughtered them with the connivance of federal officials, including Andrew Jackson.  Tom Hardy as villainous foil John Fitzgerald deserves an Oscar, as does Leonardo on this his sixth try, most recently for “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Kawaan Short; NWI Times photo by John Luke

In the NWI Times Al Hamnik wrote about Carolina Panther all-star defensive lineman Kawaan Short and Chicago Bulls guard E’Traun Moore as goodwill ambassadors for their hometown East Chicago.  The article stated:

   Many outsiders think of East Chicago, once a proud, productive city of oil and steel, as crime-ridden and politically corrupt.

They're dead wrong.

Yes, there are problems, just like any other diverse city today. And here is where the torch is passed. East Chicago's youth will have a big say in its future by building a positive image.

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Starring on East Chicago Central’s 2007 state championship basketball team and friends since childhood, Short and Moore often stopped at Columbus Drive Gyros after school for something to eat.  Owner John Troupis told them if they won state, he’d treat them to all they could eat.  Hamnik wrote: “E. C. Central prevailed, 87-83, against Indianapolis North Central, featuring high school phenom Eric Gordon.  It wasn’t long after when Moore and Short, holding the trophy, led the Cardinals into Columbus Drive Gyros and said: ‘We’re really hungry!”

At a Superbowl party hosted by Marianne Brush, I was rooting for Carolina but wanted Peyton Manning to do well.  He didn’t, but Denver’s defense overwhelmed Carolina’s QB Cam Newton.  The halftime show was spectacular but the commercials over-hyped and frankly pretty terrible, considering all the time and money wasted on them.  The worst one featured a creature that looked to be half monkey and half baby.  I did like one by a Doritos contest winner produced for a mere thousand dollars of dogs trying to sneak into a grocery.  One AM 670 sports jock claimed the highlight of the day was Lady Gaga singing the National Anthem.  He had a point.

Missy Brush arrived at the party with vinyl record albums from a Chicago record store by Lou Reed, Styx, Sex Pistols, and the Velvet Underground (with Andy Warhol’s banana on the cover).  I told Missy she could look through albums in our garage and take what she wanted; she eagerly took me up on the offer.  Our musical tastes are similar and in both cases, eclectic.

Masculine Studies

  “The ways of a superior man are threefold: virtuous, he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear.”  Confucius

My review of Molly Geidel’s “Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties” appeared in the February 2016 issue of Choice.  I wrote:

            This provocative, well-researched, theory-driven cultural history is on solid ground in asserting that Peace Corps volunteers were agents of a Cold War strategy designed to keep underdeveloped countries within the global capitalistic orbit but on shakier footing in attributing a motivation of US policy makers to gender anxieties and fantasies of masculine heroes achieving “homosocial intimacy” with indigenous protégés.  Exposing the impossibility of true brotherhood among unequals, Geidel quotes from Moritz Thomsen’s memoir “Living Poor” (1969).  When an Ecuadorian chicken farmer told Thomsen he should have more respect for local practices, the Peace Corps volunteer replied, “But that’s why I’m here.  To destroy your crazy customs.”  Disillusioned by the folly of the US imperialist venture in Vietnam, Peace Corps veterans belonging to the Committee of Returned Volunteers advocated abolishing the agency they once served.  In Bolivia, population control methods of sterilizing men and inserting IUDs in women led to the expulsion in 1971 of Peace Corps workers.  Though, in the eyes of many, exemplars of selfless US altruism, Peace Corps volunteers were mobilized, the author claims, under the rubric of a modernization agenda whose side effect was cultural eradication.  Recommended: for students of foreign policy, modernization theory, and masculine studies.

Geidel’s monograph is part of a growing genre of historic inquiry called Masculine Studies.  As Helena Gurfinkel has written:

            Masculinity Studies (or, as it is also often called, Men’s Studies) is many things, but one thing it is not: a rejoinder to, or repudiation of feminism. It owes to feminism an enormous intellectual and political debt. In fact, it would not have existed without feminism and its courage to question patriarchal power and privilege. Men’s Studies scholars do not say, as many expect them to, “Enough of those feminists; let’s say only good things about men from now on!” Instead, they collaborate with feminists and scholars of race, class, and sexuality in asking complex questions about the ways in which society constructs and controls us as sexed and gendered individuals.

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On the Internet are numerous syllabi for courses on Masculinity.  Books frequently appearing on reading lists include R.W. Connell’s “Masculinities” (1995), C.J. Pascoe’s “Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School” (2007), and Sociologist Michael Kimmel’s “Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men” (2008).  Kimmel has also co-edited with Michael A. Messner a reader entitled “Men’s Lives” (Eighth edition, 2010).  In his classes Kimmel often asks students to describe a “good man” and then a “real man.”  The contrasting responses are telling.  One wonders whether IUN’s Women’s Studies program evolves into Women and Men’s Studies like Black Studies became Minority Studies.  I hope not.

 Many universities offer classes dealing with masculinity in literature, film, television, and other aspects of popular culture as well as theoretical courses in the social sciences covering, among other things, changing perceptions of masculinity over time in various societies.  I’ve even come across one on "Gay Masculinities."  One of my favorite authors, bell hooks, has written “We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity’ (2003), “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love” (2004), and many other provocative volumes on race and gender.

Gwendolyn Brooks

The original “We Real Cool” was a 1959 Gwendolyn Brooks poem reminiscent of Langston Hughes in its simplicity and rhyming couplets, about seven dropouts at a pool hall rather than in school:

We real cool. We   

            Left school. We

            Lurk late. We

            Strike straight. We

            Sing sin. We   

            Thin gin. We

            Jazz June. We   

            Die soon.

Dave Lane and Tamiya Towns

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Toni, Dave and fellow East Chicago Central grad Denzel Smith flew to Lawton, Oklahoma, for Tamiya Towns’ graduation from Basic Training at Fort Sill.  Years ago, her presence might have been threatening to male cohorts, but, hopefully, no more.  A Fort Sill “Graduation Dress Code and Etiquette” website warned family and friends not to come with noise-makers, confetti, firearms, fireworks, alcohol or cigarettes and recommended bringing binoculars, sunscreen, a hat and, finally, “respect, support, and love for your soldier and his or her big accomplishment.”

The first episode of FX network’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson” opens with footage of L.A. cops beating Rodney King in 1991 and rioting a year later after an all-white jury acquitted the officers who assaulted him.  It is director Ryan Murphy’s way of demonstrating how Americans, for the most part, viewed the “Trial of the Century” through the prism of race.  I still vividly recall watching the O.J. verdict announced on a TV in IUN’s student union, where black people cheered while most whites seemed visibly shaken.  Not me – I suspected a cocaine dealer.  Actors John Travolta and David Schwimmer assuming the roles of attorneys Robert Shapiro and Robert Kardashian reminded me of the “Bizarro Jerry” Seinfeld episode where Elaine starts hanging out with guys with an eerie resemblance to Jerry, George, Kramer, and Newman.  The two most interesting characters so far are defense attorney Johnnie Cochran (Courtney R. Vance) and prosecutor Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulson).

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Slimy Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz finished first in the Iowa caucus by employing several dirty tricks, including spreading the rumor that Ben Carson was about to pull out of the race and sending out a mailer with the headline “VOTING VIOLATION,” claiming that people’s voting history is public record.  When Donald Trump cried Fraud, Cruz retorted: “We’re liable to wake up one morning and Donald, if he were President, would have nuked Denmark.”  Meanwhile Trump continues on a self-destructive path, employing the F word and the phrase “Don’t give a shit” in his latest rant and ridiculing Jeb Bush for dragging his 90 year-old mom out in the snow.

Mike Olszanski passed along this Indianapolis Star editorial:

   The General Assembly and Gov. Mike Pence’s refusal to extend the state’s civil rights law to include sexual orientation and gender identity continues to tarnish Indiana’s image and jeopardize long-term economic prosperity.

Last spring, after a firestorm from passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act blew up in their faces, lawmakers pledged to address legal protections for LGBT citizens in the next legislative session.

    But after meeting privately Tuesday, Senate Republican leaders decided to kill legislation that would have protected gay Hoosiers from discrimination. In doing so, they not only failed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Hoosiers but also their families, friends, coworkers and anyone else in our state who values equality.

    Polls show that Indiana’s elected leaders don’t accurately represent the will of 70 percent of Hoosiers, who support adding sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under the civil rights law. Lawmakers’ stubborn refusal to listen to the will of the people could come at a high cost in an election year.

    Indiana must be seen as a state that spurns intolerance and bigotry. Yet the failure of legislation this session means LGBT citizens can still be legally discriminated against in most of the state. Sexual orientation or gender identity can be the basis for a landlord to block housing, an employer to deny a job, or a business owner to refuse service. All of that is permissible under current law.

From California Paul Kern reported: “After a couple of mornings staring at our iPad and laptop at breakfast, we, old fossils that we are, decided we couldn’t get along without a newspaper and so we have taken out a two-month subscription to the Sacramento Bee.”

Learning that Assistant Director of Physical Plant Kevin Elmore (above) was leaving, Hollis Donald got several dozen IUN staff members to sign a card that wished him well and included this advice:

          Remember

Life is a multitude of travels,

Arrows that point in many directions,

Starts and stops taking in many lessons.

 

The Engineers took all seven points from a team named We’re Here, and I had a 668 series despite fading to 134 in the final game.  Bob Robinson, back from a ten-day Caribbean cruise, barely broke 100 in game one but finished with a 178.  Opponent Jaime Rodriguez wore a t-shirt with “Amistad” on the front – the name of his former team as well as a two-masted schooner on which slaves led by Joseph Cinqué in 1839 successfully revolted against a Spanish crew.

La Amistad

Concussed

  “We can’t last forever on the football field.  You get your head knocked a bit.  They’ve got to fix the helmets so your brains don’t get rattled like they do,” Ted Karras to Al Hamnik (2011)

The word concussed is now in common usage both as an adjective (suffering from a concussion) and a verb (to injure by means of a concussion).  Though the subject comes up most often in regards to football, recent research has shown it to be a problem in wrestling, soccer, and other youth sports.  The fear is that repeated hits to the head will result in long-term brain damage.  I recall a time when euphemisms like “he got his bell rung” and “he got dinged” were used to describe head hits glorified in highlight films.

Columnist John Doherty reported that, according to a recent report in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, college athletes who suffered concussions are more than twice as likely to experience a non-contact leg injury within three months of returning to action.  The report concluded:

Given the demanding environment in which athletes are required to execute complex maneuvers, it is possible that mild neurocognitive deficit may result on judgment errors and loss of coordination.

 above, Ted Karras in 2013; below, Ted and Anna

Ted Karras, starting left guard on the Chicago Bears NFL 1963 championship team, died at age 81.  Five years ago he told NWI Times correspondent Al Hamnik: “You lose your memory and everything else.  That’s my problem right now.  I got knocked around and I can’t remember things.  But I’m glad I’m alive.  I’m 77.  What the hell.”  Hamnik pointed out that the most Karras ever made for a season was $25,000, and his monthly NFL pension was just $975.  I had the honor of visiting Ted and wife Anna at their Miller home  on Shelby a couple years while working on an article about brother Alex Karras for Traces magazine.  Looking a old photos, Ted joked about his memory loss, but I could tell how frustrating it must have been.  He'd say each time that we needed to finish by 11 a.m. when reruns of Webster, an Eighties sitcom starring brother Alex, came on.

 Coach Ryan Shelton and IUN's Lady Redhawks

Friday in a NAIA contest, the 23rd-ranked IUN Lady Redhawks played the College of the Ozarks.  Up 34-32 at the half, IUN stretched the lead to 10 before the fourth-ranked Lady Bobcats rallied.  The turning point: two straight treys by opponent Cass Johnson to put her team up four.  IUN tied the score with two minutes to go, thanks to buckets by Nicki Monahan and Jayne Roach, but lost 80-76, first time this season on their home court to fall to 15-6.  A scary moment occurred when an opponent set an illegal moving pick, and an IUN player fell to the floor, hit her head, and remained down for several anxious minutes.

I paid my respects to the Karras family at Burns Funeral Home in Hobart.  In the crowded room were two photos of Ted in his Bears uniform, taken in 1963 and 2013, and several floral wreaths, including one for “papou” from his six grandchildren.  Anna told me Ted died surrounded by family and just weeks ago was singing  - as the obit noted, he had a beautiful voice and had appeared in numerous musical productions.  I said hello to sister Helene, whom I had visited while seeking information on parents Emmiline and George Karras, a Gary doctor, who ministered to working-class immigrant families, often gratis or for products in trade.  Helene said her brothers got their size from their dad and athletic ability from their mother.

Dave was announcing wrestling Sectionals at East Chicago Central, so I took James to bowling at Inman’s.  Teammate Josh Froman had a chance for a 279 game going into the tenth frame but left a seven-pin on an apparent perfect hit.  Bowling ended early, but we were pleased to discover that Culver’s opened at ten and had lunch.

 "Straight Outta Compton" cast

Of all the black actors snubbed by the Academy, Will Smith, who plays Dr. Bennet Omalu in “Concussion” is the most obvious.  Another travesty is that lightweight (in ability) Sylvester Stallone got nominated for again playing Rocky Balboa, now a trainer, in Creed, while Michael B. Jordon as Adonis Johnson was slighted.  African American F. Gary Gray directed the acclaimed “Straight Outta Compton,” but the film’s only nomination went to two white guys who wrote the screenplay.  Some want Oscar host Chris Rock to boycott the event, but I look forward to hearing his take on the subject.

 Party Animals, Trivia Night winners

I competed on Fred and Diane Chary’s team, “Presidents Gone Wild,” at Temple Israel’s eighth annual Trivia Night.  Diane had a white wig for me as well as a John Adams mask.  On our team were the Blooms (Jack as Abraham Lincoln) and Fred’s son Michael.   The Post-Tribune had won the past several years, and a big cheer went up when Party Animals beat them out.  Our table finished about eighth out of 24 entries.  I wasn’t much help: most questions I knew were pretty obvious – for example, “Hair” and Pete Seeger in the music category. I did know the song “Get Together,” and Jack Bloom came up with the name of the group, the Youngbloods, after I speculated that it was Young Rascals.  My best contribution was recognizing a glass art piece by Dale Chihuly.  I erred on what company produced the first plastic credit card. Diners Club issued credit cards starting in 1950, but the answer, to my dismay, was American Express, whose card made of plastic dated from 1959.

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Trivia Night was a chance to see many old Miller friends.  Greeting me when I arrived at Temple Israel was Bobbi Galler, whose son Andy got Phil interested in working at the IU campus TV station.  Bobbi and Larry Galler used to host New Year’s Day chili and beer parties; that’s where I watched the 1979 Cotton Bowl where Joe Montana led Notre Dame, down 34-12 late in the third quarter, to a 35-34 victory over Houston.  Saying hi were Linc Cohen, who had been at Woodstock in the summer of 1969, and Jack Weinberg, a leader of the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement and, closer to home, the Bailly anti-nuclear fight. Weinberg’s team last year was the Marxists; this year they were dressed as cyclists and went by the Cranks (there is a Calumet Crank Club in Northwest Indiana for bikers).  Gene Ayers and I commiserated over the passing of Ted Karras.  In a recent Ayers Realtors Newsletter Gene had written about working at Jack Spratt’s ice cream shop when Ted came in with two Bears teammates, tight end Mike Ditka and defensive end Ed O’Bradovich. 

Gaming with Tom Wade and Dave, I went one for four, winning St. Petersburg thanks to getting the Warehouse, which allowed me to keep four cards in my hand.  For lunch we made ham sandwiches on marbled rye bread, which reminded Dave of the Seinfeld episode where George’s parents take a loaf of marble rye to girlfriend Susan’s house and then his dad sneaks away with it when the hosts don’t serve it.  George then attempts to replace it with another loaf while they leave their apartment.  When Jerry goes to buy one, a woman in front of him purchases the last loaf.  After she refuses to sell it, he snatches it and calls her an “old bag.”  Of course, George gets caught trying to retrieve it from Jerry with a fishing pole.

 rye snatching scene from Seinfeld

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Rereading “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout, I’d forgotten some of the minor characters that weren’t in the brilliant HBO mini-series, such as hardware store owner Harmon, whose wife Bonnie one day announced that she was done having sex.  At the marina diner Harmon sat next to a young couple smelling like pot (he didn’t mind) and talking loudly about a friend being a bitch lately, upset because she found out her boyfriend had a “fuck buddy” – a sex partner to whom she had no emotional attachment.  Harmon heard the girl say, “I mean, who cares.  That’s the point of a fuck buddy.”  Later on the phone, Harmon asked his son if he’d heard of fuck buddies and was told, “That’s the thing these days.  Just what it says.  People who get together to get laid.  No strings attached.”  At the time Harmon was having sex with Daisy Foster on a weekly basis, courting her with donuts, but found himself falling in love and (to quote Strout) “waiting for the day, and he knew it would come, when he left Bonnie or when she kicked him out.”

The protagonist in Young Adult author John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” (2006) was fascinated with the final words of famous people, such as Frank Sinatra saying, “I’m losing it.”  The last words of benevolent Henry Kitteridge as he got out of the car at Shop ‘n’ Save to buy milk, orange juice and jam were “Anything else?”  The final line in “Olive Kitteridge” has Olive thinking: “It baffled her, the world.  She did not want to leave it yet.” 

Paul Kern posted several emails regarding his and Julie’s “California or Bust” trip:

  January 30: In Texas and New Mexico the Border Patrol was much in evidence. We passed through two check points with dogs sniffing our car, saw many Border Patrol squad cars as well as helicopters that we suspect were Border Patrol. I felt like we were in East Germany or Franco's Spain instead of the United States.

  January 31: Crossing the Mojave Desert, we were buffeted by high winds and then were blinded by a torrential downpour. Finally we were hit by a blizzard. We're holed up in a motel in Tehachapi, CA waiting out the storm.

  February 1 (a.m.): We're stuck in Tehachapi [in Kern County]. Highway 58 to Bakersfield closed because of icy conditions. May open later today, but may not.

  February 1 (p.m.): Highway 58 opened late this morning under police escort and we were able to escape Tehachapi. Made it to West Sacramento around six, ending a three thousand mile road trip. Colin brought us a Chinese dinner and now we are settling into the condo we are renting for the next two months.

Charley Halberstadt and I had our ups and downs in duplicate bridge, but, more often than not, how we did was out of our hands and dependent on how our opponents bid and played.  My worst hand: Charley over-called Chuck Tomes (above) with a good spade suit but nothing else.  With ten points and five spades I jumped from one to four spades, and Charley went down three, doubled.  My best moment: Charley opened light with an Ace, King, Queen of Hearts and little else.  I had just two little Hearts but 17 points and bid Two No-Trump.  Very reluctantly, Charley raised me to Three No-Trump.  We each had four Clubs, with me holding the Ace, King.  I made it on the nose for high board when Clubs split 3-2, allowing me to cash in a low Club.