Flashback 2013: Reviewing movies was the least of it

Roger Ebert comments on NPR in 2006 (Photo courtesy of Sound Opinions)

     Shakespeare wrote, in "Julius Caesar," that "the evil men do lives after them, but the good is oft interred with their bones." That might be generally true — I'm not in a position to tell. But not always. Not with Roger Ebert, whose kindness and wisdom — and excellent writing — extend far beyond his time on earth, or the after-echo experienced by even the most successful journalists. 

     Certainly he lives on in my writing — I mention him from time to time, and recently started a column  with his lecturing on "La Dolce Vita." Facebook served up this piece, that ran 13 years ago today, and it's too enjoyable not to share.

    As is one moment that I mention on Facebook — truly, it's the part I remember best, as I was practically cringing. Here's how I describe it:

     "Roger Ebert's funeral at Holy Name was quite beautiful — my column will be posted [soon]. There was a bit of levity, before. I was sitting with the Sun-Times crew and the Holy Name, pastor, Msg. Mayall, came over to me, directly. 'You're not going to escort me out, are you?' I said, in a small voice. No, he wanted to thank me — I had helped raise money for repairs after their fire (I had forgotten). Nice guy."

 

     In the end, the movies weren’t the important part.
     Oh, being a film critic certainly made Roger Ebert a rich, famous, influential man.
     But — and as with all good surprise endings, I didn’t see this coming — when his loved ones, his friends, colleagues, regular readers and admirers gathered at Holy Name Cathedral Monday to say goodbye to Roger on what started as a rainy, gray, chill Chicago morning and ended in warm, golden sunlight, the world of box-office numbers and star-fueled glamour and good reviews and bad reviews felt very, very far away.
     What mattered was his noble soul, his quick mind, his big heart, his brave pen, his loyalty to his profession and his city. “We know he loved Chicago and Chicago loved Roger,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “He was the most American of American critics in the most American of American cities.”
     Mass was officiated by a trio of priests — Monsignor Daniel Mayall, parish pastor of Holy Name, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, St. Sabina’s firebrand and the Rev. John F. Costello, special assistant to the president of Loyola University, who delivered a homily that showed off his Jesuit training by explaining — without ever drawing attention to the fact he was explaining — a question perhaps on the mind of many: how Chicago’s most famous agnostic and public doubter of all doctrines ended up being delivered up to heaven at the city’s preeminent Catholic cathedral.
     The answer: He found God — well, a version of God, Costello said, “a new God, one of ironic compassion, of overpowering generosity, of racial love” — at the movie theater.
     “I am convinced from our conversations that Roger found in darkened places, especially theaters, just such a God,” Costello said. “In that discovery in the darkness, Roger found a Jesus very different from the one he had been handed as a young Catholic child growing up in the Heartland of our great country. This Jesus was an ironic one with unquenchable love, even for — especially for — people who betrayed him.”
     Costello cited the 1966 novel “ Silence,” by Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. Its main character, Father Sebastian Rodrigues, is a 17th century Portuguese Jesuit priest who learns that his beloved former seminary teacher has been captured in Japan, tortured and forced to renounce Christ.
     “Finding it impossible to believe that his mentor and teacher chose apostasy over ‘glorious martyrdom,’ ’’ Costello said, Rodrigues travels to Japan, where he finds himself in similar straits — captured by a Shogun warlord, who demands that he also condemn his faith — only there is a cruel twist this time. It is not Rodrigues who will be tortured, but three Christian peasants who will suffer in his place unless he renounces his belief by trampling upon an image of Jesus.
     “In the dark night of the soul, Rodrigues choose to apostatize for the love and compassion of those suffering,” Costello said. “In praying to the heretofore silent Jesus, Rodrigues hears from the face of Christ that he is about to defile, ‘Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into the world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.’ ’’
     In other words: Sometimes official doctrine has to be set aside in order to help people. Not a message the church is saturating the airwaves with. But then, that was Roger. He could bring out the best in anybody.
     “Roger loved being part of the humanity he embraced all of his life,” Costello said. “He, like Rodrigues, felt the compassion and love he saw among the shadows in the celluloid darkness, for the people in the stories, the viewer in the theater, and the hearts which meekly yet unwavering seek their Author.”
     Gov. Pat Quinn called Ebert “a great and humble man with a servant’s heart” who had “a passion for social justice, Catholic social justice.” If you’re wondering what reviewing movies has to do with social justice, the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s middle son, Jonathan, explained how Ebert was a passionate advocate for African-American filmmakers.
     “He took us seriously,” Jackson said, reading a note from director Spike Lee. “ ‘He saw young black children not as problems, but as people . . . Roger Ebert was a champion of my work and other black filmmakers at a critical time in American film history.”
     The last speaker was Roger’s widow, Chaz Ebert, moved by her daughter’s words, she said, to spontaneously take the pulpit.
     “He would have loved this, the whole thing,” she said. “Loved that you were all here. . . . He really was a soldier for social justice. He had the biggest heart I’ve ever seen. It didn’t matter your race, creed, color, level of ability, sexual orientation. He had a heart big enough to accept and love all.”
     Funerals are for the living, and Roger Ebert’s not only made being alive seem more precious, but sent those attending into the day wondering how to do a better job of it.

           — Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 9, 2013 

Ye facing the music over idiotic embrace of Nazism

Illinois Holocaust Museum

     Did you notice, in Monday's column, how I copped to not knowing about the Greek god Artemis before the current moon mission, despite all my talk about being educated? How can I do that? Because one of the things I learned is that the world is big, filled with stuff, and most people know absolutely nothing about almost everything. The shame is in pretending otherwise.
     So I can confess that it wasn't until Monday, reading my Sun-Times with my morning Nespresso, that I learned, on Page 12, that Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, last year released a song called "Heil Hitler." If, like me, you just found out about it now, what is your reaction?
     Are you offended? Incredulous? I hope not. As one of my cherished readers, I'd prefer your reaction to be curiosity, mirroring my own response: an enthusiastic, "I gotta hear this song."
     Easier said than done. One of the worst aspects of our current dilemma is the idea of gatekeepers preventing supposedly vulnerable populations from having their sensibilities seared. Whether the right, vindictively trying to purge life of people they hate. Or the left, timidly trying to pretend that hate doesn't exist. One is worse; neither are commendable.
     I started at YouTube. Nothing but criticisms and parodies. Then Apple Music. The same. So I did a Google search, and found the full song — of course — on that slop sink of hate, X, nee Twitter.
     I stopped using X regularly when Elon Musk went full fascist — his Nazi salute, his blowing kisses at European neo-Nazi groups. Kind of a giveaway. But I didn't quit, for eventualities like this.
     "With all of the money and fame I still can't get my kids back," Ye trills. "So I became a Nazi, yeah."
     Stop right there. Offended yet? Of course not. At this point, if you are like me, you feel sorry for Ye, who has four children with his former wife Kim Kardashian.
     Imagine connecting those two thoughts — complaining about not being able to see your children, then using that as an excuse to embrace Nazism. Is Ye expecting that to help? "Your honor, I need to see my kids. I know I had troubles in the past — never should grabbed that microphone from Taylor Swift. But I've worked hard to improve myself. I'm a Nazi now ..."
     Not a smart strategy, right?
     I shouldn't jest. Ye has admitted to being bipolar, and nobody disagreed with him. He also apologized for the song, though that's a tough one to claw back. Hard to argue it was a gaffe; he also sold Nazi merchandise.
     I think it's important to recognize that people still embrace the Nazis. It's valuable to be reminded of their error, which sadly is not confined to the 1930s. To embrace Nazism is to be lulled by a strong start — great uniforms, bold iconography, massive Nuremberg rallies, the Blitzkrieg, those diving Stukas — but ignore the bad end. Your nation bombed to total ruin, the Nuremberg trials.

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Little life

     I've reflected previously on the Latin term, memento mori, literally "remember to die," but interpreted as, "remember that death is coming." A goad to use the time you have, as best you can, even as it slips through your fingers and is gone.
     But that's a tad bleak, on a sunny spring day. So I'd like to flip it around, to memento vivere, or "remember to live." Something I tell myself, continually particularly in the mornings, facing the prospect of what can seem isolated, dull days after the commotion of the holidays. 

     How to remember to live? Moving the great engines of commerce and literature, of science and government and politics, are well beyond my scope and I imagine yours too. So we notice the little things, like these fat pink magnolia blossoms, dappled with dew, Monday morning. They are full for so short a span — a few days really, a week at most — and then are blown away by winds or burnt brown by a frost. 

     The blossoms, and the little dog — almost 16 — playing in the yard beyond. I can drop her leash and she doesn't run off anymore, but dutifully trots ahead, or busies herself with her own exploration of the tiny world immediately in front of her.

     And beyond that, the moon, 3/4 illuminated, at the "waning gibbous" phase, for those who care, a chalky smudge against a painfully blue sky that Artemis II is even now about to swing around.

     You can view this two ways, each illustrated by its own song. There is Isabel Pless' "Little Life," a vindictive stab at a former lover after the Nashville-based Vermonter realizes, "forgiveness isn't working." It begins, "I hope hell's hotter than you thought it'd be/I hope people stop listening when you speak" after "you realize you're just some guy."

      I hope karma's the bitch she's always been 
      I hope the regret eats you from within

     That's one route, and I admit, most mornings I start there. But there's another, encapsulated, fittingly enough, in a Cordelia song, also named "Little Life" that I strive toward emulating, Monday more vigorously than usual. A lilting melody from the British folk pop singer that went viral in 2023, asking the question, "How would you have me described?"

     A little bit more
     A little bit less
     A little bit harder than I thought they said.
     A little fine
     A little bit stressed
     A little bit older than I thought I'd get.
     But I think I like this little life. 

     Amen to that. You have to like your life, make yourself like it, whatever it happens to be — it's a requirement — because otherwise you just waste your precious time over things that didn't happen and people who aren't there. The acceptance that a certain program of my acquaintance goes on about. It isn't easy. In fact, sometimes it's hard. But like many hard things, it's also worthwhile.

      Others appreciate it too. I couldn't help but notice that the Isabel Pless "Little Life" video has gotten 95 views in the past two years, while Cordelia's has had 868,000 views in the same span. Negativity grows tiresome. Trust me on that one.

NASA, of all people, gets back into the space biz

 

Artemis II crew.

     Too bad some of the fame attached to remarks made on humanity's first landing on the moon, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed," on July 20, 1969, and the even more renowned, "One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind" was never extended to the enthusiastic, if ungrammatical, burst at the last moon landing, Apollo 17, on Dec. 11, 1972.
     "We is here!" cried rookie astronaut Harrison (Jack) Schmitt. "Man, is we here."
     Now we are returning to the neighborhood for the first time in nearly 54 years. All exploration is grounded in the time when it occurs, and just as the Apollo program was an artifact of the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, so Artemis II, expected to swing closest to the moon on Monday, can be seen through a lens of 2026 and a nation in turmoil.
     A time when actual reality can be lost in the fun house of social media — for instance, we're skimming past, not landing on, the moon. Artemis II will fly about 5,000 miles above the lunar surface; to put that in context, the International Space Station orbits about 250 miles above the earth.
     Is the public enthralled by this latest foray into space? Hard to say. Boredom with the assumed wonder of space exploration is a theme almost as old as space exploration itself.
     If you remember Ron Howard's excellent movie "Apollo 13," interest in what would have been the third moon landing was tepid until an explosion damaged the ship and forced a dramatic skin-of-their-teeth return. Before the crisis, while Jim Lovell does a live broadcast from space, the guys at Mission Control in Houston sneak glances at the Astros game, and none of the networks chose to carry Lovell's show.
     When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Chicagoans were almost as amazed by the fact they could watch it live on television.
     ”We were all there, bound together by the miracle of communication that intertwined all the other miracles of technology that marketed man’s first step on a celestial body,” the Chicago Daily News said in an editorial.
     The Chicago Tribune, with characteristic modesty, editorialized that their coverage of the event was an achievement on par with the landing itself.
     To me, half the wonder is not the journey but who's doing it. After years of headlines about private space ventures, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX, I reacted to the Artemis II mission with a surprised, "Does NASA still do that kind of thing?" 
     To add context, Artemis II took off Wednesday night. On Friday, the Trump administration proposed chopping the NASA budget by 23%.
     I had two questions. Apollo used a three-man crew. So why does Artemis need four astronauts?
     The short answer is the Orion spacecraft is designed to be flown by four astronauts — it has 50% more living space than the Apollo command module — but reading the NASA release announcing the crew, you can't help but suspect there's some Biden-era diversity going on as well:

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Recessional

 

Winged bull from the throne room of Sargon II (Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures)

     Saturday dawned quiet.  The big pots were scrubbed and back on a high shelf.  The extra tables, back down in the basement, along with the dozen folding chairs. The living room furniture was returned to its proper place. The dishwasher, going non-stop for a while, stilled. The rain continued, off and on, and a chill gray set in, as if spring were having second thoughts.

     Friday the older boy and his growing family had departed for Michigan. The younger and his growing bride, back to their dozen daily concerns in Hyde Park. I missed them more than I savored the silence, and thought, for some reason, of a dusty line from Rudyard Kipling.

    "The tumult and the shouting dies, the captains and the kings depart." 

     From "Recessional," written after Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. (A recessional is the hymn chanted in church after a service as the choir and clergy depart). I don't remember ever reading "Recessional," but found the poem online easy enough. It's out of copyright, and brief, so I can share the whole thing. I think it merits a read:

                              God of our fathers, known of old,

                                 Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

                              Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

                                Dominion over palm and pine—

                              Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

                              Lest we forget—lest we forget!

                             The tumult and the shouting dies;

                               The Captains and the Kings depart:

                             Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

                               An humble and a contrite heart.

                             Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

                             Lest we forget—lest we forget!

                             Far-called, our navies melt away;

                              On dune and headland sinks the fire:

                             Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

                               Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

                             Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

                             Lest we forget—lest we forget!

                             If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

                              Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

                             Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

                              Or lesser breeds without the Law—

                             Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

                             Lest we forget—lest we forget!

                             For heathen heart that puts her trust

                               In reeking tube and iron shard,

                             All valiant dust that builds on dust,

                              And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

                             For frantic boast and foolish word—

                             Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

         That seems an apt sentiment for Easter Sunday. Britain was at the height of its power and Kipling, the bard of colonialism and the White Man's Burden, tacked against type, invoking humility and God.

         Not entirely, of course. There's a lot to unpack in the poem. Did you notice "an humble." Correct once upon a time in England, where the "h" was unpronounced. 

         The expression "lesser breeds" pokes a 2026 reader in the eye.  But notice what makes someone a lesser breed: being "without the law." A condition that we are flirting with. Or swan diving into. Or already drowning in. Give "lesser breeds" credit — at least it's spoken plainly. We embrace the attitude while avoiding the candor. Which may be even worse.

         To his further credit, the "heathen heart" putting its faith in smoking guns and shattering shells is clearly Kipling's countrymen. And ours.

         "Drunk with sight of power." Ain't that the truth? Worth remembering, as former attorney general Pam Bondi slinks off into whatever eternal ignominy awaits those who make their devil's bargain, leap willingly into the sucking maw, serve their shameful span, then are shitted out Trump's enormous backside. As much as I'd like to let out a faint "yippee" at her being cashiered, it strangles in my throat, realizing why she was canned: for not being skilled enough at covering up Trump's crimes, nor successful enough when twisting the Justice Department to persecute his enemies. Expect her replacement to try harder.

         In critiquing the poem, I overlooked the most important part. Notice it? "Lest we forget." It must be important, he says it eight times. Lest we forget ... what? That power, like life, is fleeting, and when it ebbs all we have left is the memory of how we conducted ourselves — in honor, honesty, humanity. Or with greed, violence, shame. 

         It is worth realizing that Great Britain ain't so great anymore, yet still exists. If the United States is in decline — and the warning bells are flashing, the needles red-zoning, the sirens whirring — then we were not defeated by an outside foe, but we destroyed ourselves, by turning our backs on our supposed values and groveling before a golden calf that would embarrass the folks in Nineveh and Tyre, great cities in Biblical times. Not such a big deal anymore. It happened to them, then. It's happening to us now. 

Work in progress: Jack Clark on giving books titles

     Regular contributor Jack Clark has been on a roll. Readers like him, I like him. To be honest, I might not even have thought that today's contribution was "a bit of a self-promotion" unless he himself worried aloud about it. Maybe so. But as I tell young writers, — or would, if any of them ever asked, which they don't — if a writer doesn't care about his own stuff, then nobody will. If it's a plug, then Jack has earned it.  I don't pay him for his contributions to EGD. But maybe you can take the plunge and order his book. 

     When self-driving trucks take over the highways, the long-distance furniture mover will probably be the last to climb aboard.
     I wrote that a couple of years back as the introduction to a proposal for my book Honest Labor. The subtitle back then was, Adventures in the Moving Trade. The proposal led nowhere. I recently gave up and published the book myself with a new subtitle, Writing & Moving Furniture.
     I worked on the book for more than a decade. Not continually but here and there between other writing projects. It’s had several titles along the way. Big Trucks and Taxicabs may have been the first. But then I decided to cut the taxi. I’d already covered that subject in a couple of novels. We Haul Anything Cartage Company, I got that one from The Man with the Golden Arm, Nelson Algren’s novel. This is what he dubbed Hebard Storage, the moving company that hauled the unclaimed bodies from the county morgue to potter’s field. I spent most of my 15-year moving career at Hebard. One of my first published stories was about the same trip that Algren had written about.  

     A Writer Behind the Wheel. That might have been the worst title of all. 48 States. I still kind of like that one, and I have been through all of them. Over the Road. That one’s not too bad.
     My favorite title was Longhaul and I probably would have published the book under that name but Finn Murphy beat me into print with his book The Long Haul, which, like mine, is the memoir of a long-haul furniture mover.
      I heard about the book before it came out and then tracked down Murphy via email to ask how he’d managed to find a publisher. He was nice enough to tell me the truth. A brother and a sister were both well-established writers. He’d used their agent.
     One of my friends suggested that Murphy might have stolen not only my title but my idea. Well, I’d queried widely looking for an agent so it’s possible he’d heard about my book. But coming from a literary family, I think writing about the kind of work you're doing is a pretty obvious thought. You can’t steal ideas anyway. They’re like air and also, like titles, non-copyrightable.
      Now you might think one book from a furniture mover is more than enough. But the two books are nothing alike. They are completely different takes on the same long-distance world.
     I was first inspired to write mine by a John McPhee article in The New Yorker. He went along on a cross-country trip with a hazardous material (HazMat) tank truck driver. It’s a good story but that’s due to McPhee’s skill as a writer. I can’t think of a more uninteresting form of trucking. The only excitement might come if something bad happened along the way. But if the truck explodes, who would be left to write the story?
     Other than that, it’s a trip from one tank to another, from a hose to a nozzle.
      I guess the real trucking is all those miles between tanks. To a furniture mover, those same miles are when you’re relaxing and letting your body heal. The real work happens when the engine is off and the truck is sitting still. We sometimes called the driving part of the job windshield time. You could sing along to the radio and glance at the passing scenery, but you could never take your eye off the road. And yes, Windshield Time, I used that as a title for a while too.
     Sometimes I took a notebook along on my trips. But when I finally sat down to write, the only one I found had a single entry. “World’s largest prairie dog,” it said, alongside an exit number. I think it was off of Interstate 70 in Kansas. One way or the other, I never stopped to see the dog.
     Without notes, I had doubts that I could write the book. Maybe that’s why it’s one of my favorites.
      What I did find was an entire box full of moving paperwork, old log books and trip settlements. These came with bills of ladings attached, which showed pick-up and delivery addresses, the weight of the shipment and other details. Once I put those in order, much of my memory came back.
     What brought all this to mind was a New York Times article about self-driving trucks plying the highways in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, among other places. They’re having a problem with phantom braking. Well, I did a bit of that myself, in days of old. In a big truck, if you think you see something, you don’t wait to make sure. You have to slow down immediately, in case it’s not just another highway hallucination. It takes a very long time to stop those heavy vehicles.
     Anyway, this is an enticement for you to pick up a copy of my book and enter a world that could soon disappear.
     You might think, why would I want to read about moving furniture? Well, you’ve read this far. What’s another 70,000 words?

Birthright citizenship opposition puts the lie to 'illegal'

Haters pretend they have no problem with legal immigrants, when of course they do.

     Thursday morning, when I was having coffee in the kitchen and talking with my sons and daughters-in-law, with regular pauses to make sputtering noises at the baby, I was really, really glad I took the day off. Good for me, bad for you: no column in the Sun-Times today. Though I do have thoughts on one of the nine big stories of the week.   

     Bullies are cowards. They rarely are willing to face consequences for holding and expressing their stunted souls. They rarely come out, anymore, and say, "I need to hurt people to feel good about myself,: or "I have to hate ..." and then add whatever group has stuck in their craw.
     So they speak in code.
     For example, D.E.I., the effort to break the lock on society that white culture had, by including marginalized groups, was turned into a negative buzzword, almost a slur. You aren't against Blacks, or women, or gay people. Oh no! You are anti-DEI — against Blacks, women or gay people being admitted into universities, or included in histories, or partaking in society in almost any way other than subservience. The same trick that turned fighting fascists such as our president  into the scary imaginary group "antifa."
     Consider "illegal." People who hate immigrants often take pains to explain they are against illegal immigration. Ignoring a) their concern for illegality stops at immigrants. It certainly doesn't extend to our president and his administration of corruption and crime.
     And second, that they're really against all immigrants, illegal or not, as illustrated by ICE yanking law-abiding immigrants off the street, people who came here legally and were, in some cases, attending their hearings in courts of law, or trying to. "Illegal" is a figleaf, like calling Jews Communists and international cosmopoles. Ya hate 'em anyway, yer just fishing around for reasons, as a dumb show of rationality. 
     The easiest way to illustrate the lie of waving illegality is birthright citizenship. Children born in this country are citizens, thanks for the 14th amendment, put in place to make sure that children of freed slaves would became citizens, just as their parents were. That's both the law and good social policy. Among the many good effects of birthright citizenships is it prevents the legal limbo that immigrants find themselves in from being extended into perpetuity, as it is in other countries.
     So while the children of non-citizens became citizens, legally, for 160 years by being born in this country, the Donald Trump tried to scrap it anyway by declaring, basically, the law is wrong, he's right. It's been misinterpreted by everybody, he suggests. Good thing he came along...
     Opening arguments were heard Wednesday in the Supreme Court, and shockingly — a word worn down to a nubbin at this point —Trump showed up, in person. The first president ever to do so. I was reminded of when he hovered menacingly behind Hilary Clinton during a presidential debate in 2016. (If only she had spun around and snarled, "Back off creep!" The election might have turned out very differently. Alas, she wasn't the sort. That eight second delay of hers).
      Anyway, Trump's presence did not have its desired effect. The justices picked apart the government's argument that what worked for the children of slaves somehow doesn't work for the children of immigrants. Another what I consider "ruby slipper moment" with Trump. So many people submit to him, out of a mix of misguided self-promotion, fear, star-struck wonder, whatever. Only later do they find the advantage momentary, the harm permanent, as they are chewed up and spat out, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, being the latest to take the Walk of Shame. They could have refused. The power was in their hands all along. 
     Expect the ruling in June. But every legal mind worthy of the term is certain Trump will lose because the notion is ludicrous, the Constitution, clear. Trump is losing a lot in courts of law, lately. Which is good and bad. Good because every ounce of power taken from him is returned to the American people, where it belongs. And bad because a beast is most dangerous when it is wounded.