1. The following content is not beautiful.
But reading Timothy Egan's book, A Fever in the Hearland, is a great pleasure because he's a dedicated researcher and an elegant writer. If you read on, as you'll see, the content of this book is violent and unnerving.
In the first half of the 1920s, as the membership of the Ku Klux Klan swelled in Indiana and other states in the Midwest, the region's Grand Wizard, D. C. Stephenson, had no real commitment to the KKK's agenda of pure living. The KKK, ostensibly, stood for temperance. Stephenson was a drunk. The KKK stood for sexual monogamy and its vigilantes aggressively hunted for and punished men and women having sex outside of marriage or who were unfaithful to their spouses. Grand Wizard D. C. Stephenson was a philanderer, sadistic woman batterer, adulterer, and a man who abandoned his first wife and not only openly cheated on, but nearly killed his second wife by beating her.
He saw in the rise of the KKK a way to grift people, to make a ton of money, taking a cut of followers' membership fees, a cut of the money they laid out for robes and other KKK accessories, by commanding a generous salary, and by other means.
Grand Wizard D. C. Stephenson fed and exploited people's fears and twisted ideas about Blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants, spoke persuasively about what it means to be a true America, argued for white ethnic purity as central to the idea of a true America, and succeeded wildly in attracting white men, women, and children from all walks of life into the Ku Klux Klan while he enjoyed multiple residences, a yacht, a small fleet of of automobiles, and other luxuries. With all of law enforcement under his sway, he also, despite Prohibition, enjoyed access to fine imported whiskey. He preyed upon any woman he wanted to. If she didn't consent to his advances, he tried to rape her. Sometimes the women escaped his assaults, other times not, and usually he got away with his violence. When he didn't, the fact of his assault, at least in the first half of the book, had no negative impact upon his popularity. The KKK in midwestern non-Confederate states continued to grow.
2. In May of 1924, D. C. Stephenson orchestrated a Ku Klux Klan attack on the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. Students organized and frustrated the attack and, as a result of their determined efforts to protect their university and turn back the KKK, newspaper accounts referred to the students as "The Fighting Irish", a nickname born out this clash and that has endured to this day as a nickname, most famously, for Notre Dame athletic teams. The University officially adopted this nickname in 1927.
3. I had Greek chickpeas and eggplant with tomato and onions left over from last night's Trader Joe's family dinner blow out. This evening, I cooked a small pot of Trader Joe's basmati rice, roasted a handful of raw almonds, and topped the rice with the nuts and the chickpeas and eggplant. It was a delicious and satisfying way to make good use of the leftovers and to continue the enjoyment of Monday night's family dinner.
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