Bad statuary continued

 

     As a rule, I'm proud of Illinois. An placid lake of humane, rights-affirming blue in a sea of frothing red, with Indiana, the Mississippi of the Midwest, to the east, Iowa, the scourge of trans citizens, to the west, and Confederate manques Missouri and Kentucky to the South. Gov. J.B. Pritzker gives back to Trump as good as he gets, and if he rode that river of sarcasm to the White House, it would be fine by me.
     But Illinois can't be on the ball all the time. Taxes are high, residents are fleeing, and we've really flubbed our chance to put on pride and joy on display at the Capitol. Twice.
     Saturday's post was about presidential statues, using some photos reader Tony Galati kindly sent. A reader asked if I knew what two Illinoisans are honored in the Capitol — each state gets two, thanks to a law signed by Lincoln. 
    I was tempted to go with Grant. But he wasn't the greatest president. I figured, go literary, and guessed Carl Sandburg, the pride of Galesburg, and, assuming a woman would have to be in the mix, Jane Addams, of Hull House fame.
    Wrong and wrong.
    The answer: deeply obscure 19th century politician James Shields, and Frances Willard.
    Who are they? 

   Shields is the only man to be a senator from three states — Illinois, Minnesota and Missouri. He also was a general, though his claim to fame seems to be that he challenged Abraham Lincoln to a duel in 1842 that was nearly fought until cooler heads prevailed.
     Frances Willard I actually knew — well, not personally. I knew her name, because her home is still standing in Evanston, where she founded the Women's Christian Temperance Union. There is a Willard Hall at Northwestern, and the NU Apartments used to have "We're behind the WCTU!" on their t-shirts, as the teetotalers' headquarters was next door.
    She was also active in pushing for the vote for women, and other laudable social issues.
    So they're not exactly anonymous mopes. But not the sort of historical figures the knowledge of whom cause you to swell with pride either. I'd say time to swap them out for someone more worthy — I nominate Ida B. Wells and Studs Terkel — but honestly, given our historic moment of peril, I would save mere symbolism for another day.

Who is this man?

 

   Take a look at the man above.
   Recognize him?
   I knew who he is supposed to be, because I read regular correspondent Tony Galati's email, sent in response to Thursday's post on the Dick Tracy statue. It's supposed to be Harry Truman. The statue is located at his presidential library and museum in Independence, Missouri. While there is, I suppose, a vague resemblance, and though Tony finds it "good," I would say more like "close but no cigar." There are photos to back me up.

     Maybe it has something to do with Truman himself. Another statue at the library, out in front, of Truman doffing his hat to visitors, which is fitting — the 33rd president worked in a men's clothing shop — is hardly better. 

     Maybe something about Truman's folksy charm resists monumental rendering — an enormous sculpture outside the Jackson County courthouse is also pretty bad. Although a fourth statue of Give 'Em Hell Harry, in the U.S. Capitol, is an improvement.

     Tony likes to visit presidential libraries — an enviable pastime for sure — and sent along snaps of several other presidential statues. He considers the George H.W. Bush statue at right "the best of the lot" and I agree. Maybe its something intrinsic to Bush's patrician looks — there is also a passable bronze of him outside the United States embassy in Berlin. Then again, Bush pere generally looks better and better as the years go on.
     Tony also likes the Gerald Ford statue, though deeming it "too thin." Sudden weight loss is a common flub when constructing statues — Roger Ebert's statue in front of the Virginia Theater in Champaign makes him so svelte as to be almost unrecognizable. 

     It's not like presidential statues can't be rendered effectively — Samuel Chester French's Abraham Lincoln comes to mind. (As opposed to the sitting Lincoln, who looks like he's waiting for a bus, sculpted by Gutzon Borglum, the man responsible for Mount Rushmore, whose all four faces, though substandard, at least have the excuse of being carved out of a mountainside. People treat Mount Rushmore like it's an American mecca. It's not. It's a tourist trap sprayed so thickly with the mist of unfocused patriotism that people can't see what it is).    
    As for Lyndon Johnson, Tony writes, "I don't know what they did to LBJ." That kind of modernist scuptural pointilism popular in the 1960s and 1970s. The statue of botanist Carl Linnaeus at the Chicago Botanic Garden suffers from the same stick-clumps-together-until-you-have-a-guy technique. 

    Anyway, Tony, thanks for the photos. Made me want to get on the road and visit some presidential libraries and museums. I've only been to two — the recently opened Obama Center, and the Kennedy Library over 20 years ago, when I was researching my hat book. I remember the staff being extremely helpful, and the museum being quite well done. I don't remember any statues of Kennedy. Probably just as well.

    

How are kids supposed to learn anything if AI does their work for them?

 

     "The technologies are now able to credibly complete most undergraduate assignments."
                                              — Washington Post

     I bumbled into the job. A colleague knew I had interviewed celebrities for a magazine, and asked if I could talk to his journalism class at Loyola about the challenges of writing profiles of the famous. So I leaned on the lectern for an hour and prattled about walking a golf course in Jamaica with Arnold Palmer and talking jazz over dinner with trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie.
     "You're better at this than I am," my colleague said, afterward, suggesting I teach. So I ambled over to the dean's office and he gave me a class teaching feature writing.
     I started the students off with writing profiles, the most basic story. You've got your material — someone's life — already assembled. You've got the narrative arc — their career path — waiting to guide you. I signed up 20 real Chicago personalities — TV journalist Carol Marin, firebrand Rev. Michael Pfleger, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas — put their names on index cards, and handed them out to the class.
     We moved slowly. First the kids developed questions for their subjects, based on their life stories. I reviewed those. Then the interviews. Eventually, I had 20 finished profiles before me.
     Nineteen students understood the assignment. But reading one, on entrepreneur Leslie Hindman, suddenly the tone of the writing shifted dramatically. The profile was describing her business, a Chicago auction house, and it was like moving from gravel to asphalt.
     "This is boilerplate," I thought. "She took this off the internet." I plugged a paragraph into a search engine. Up it popped, on the auction house site. Word for word. It took 30 seconds to find.
     On the first day of class, I had made a little speech: "I know you can steal stuff from online. Don't do it. Because I'll find out and you'll fail."
     I didn't want to confront the student alone, so dragged the dean in with me, as backup. I expected the student to be in trouble, maybe expelled.
     That didn't happen. He explained to me that the dire consequences for plagiarism that Loyola warns about were more notional than real. The customer is always right. So together we gently tried to explain to the student who swiped copy why what she did was wrong. It was a struggle.
     I thought the student might be ashamed, at least apologetic. She wasn't. She was defiant. This was research! She was a single mother! She needed this class credit! She needed this degree!
     I pointed out that, yeah, you need the degree because it means something. If the only thing a Loyola degree represents is that you can deftly swipe other people's work, then it doesn't mean much, does it?
     The solution I generously offered — redo the profile without plagiarizing this time — was batted away as draconian. She dropped the course, and huffed off in search of a less rigorous instructor.
     Turns out, my student was years ahead of the curve. Now the great engines of technology align to help everyone farm out the creative process. Only suckers do the work.

To continue reading, click here.

"Plain Clothes Tracy" wouldn't do.

      Statues must be hard. Because it's so easy to get them wrong. In June, I observed how significantly off the statues of Barack and Michelle Obama are at the new Obama Presidential Center. Not a lot. But enough, and what was extra surprising was that no one else remarked upon it, not that I heard anyway. Maybe it's considered impolite. Maybe pointless — the statue is cast in bronze and there. Not a lot anybody can do about it at this point.
     Because I am such a critic of statues — I tend to speak up when I find one lacking — I should take a moment to say how much I admired this statue of Dick Tracy, which I noticed earlier this summer strolling the hopping Riverwalk in Naperville after dinner with friends. Maybe cartoons are, counterintuitively, easier to render in three dimensions. Also notable is who the artist is — Dick Locher, the cartoonist who took over drawing Dick Tracy from Chester Gould,  creator of the strip. I actually spoke to Gould, once, asking him to draw the cover of a magazine I worked for. He agreed.
    Now that I think of it, I have a vignette about Gould developing the strip in my recent book, "Every Goddamn Day.' This might be an apt time to share it.

     Oct. 4, 1931: He was supposed to be a modern version of Sherlock Holmes. The deerstalker hat swapped for a snap brim fedora. But the same sharp nose for clues, the same determined jaw. The idea came the previous May to Chester Gould, an artist for the Chicago Daily News who draws other people's comics and illustrations of oriental rugs. All these headlines about gangsters murdering each other, only to go smirkingly free. Law-abiding citizens are fed up. Criminals ought to be caught. Somebody ought to catch them. Gould drew up some sample strips of what he called “Plain Clothes Tracy” and sent them off to the Tribune Syndicate — his 61st comic idea sent over the past decade. On Aug. 13, he received a telegram. “Your Plain Clothes Tracy has possibilities. Would like to see you when I go to Chicago next.” Two days later he was in Joseph Medill Patterson's office. “I think the name is too long,” Capt. Patterson said, promptly solving the problem himself. “John Tracy ... Fred Tracy ... Dick Tracy. Let's call this fellow 'Dick Tracy.' They call detectives 'Dicks.'” Patterson also suggested the backstory: the murder of his fiancé's father prompts Dick to join the force. That plot line runs today in the debut Sunday strip, kicking off a saga that will continue unbroken for 90 years, spawning radio spin-offs, movies, toys. The comic becomes famous for its rogues' gallery of villains whose appearance reflects their criminality: Pruneface, Flattop, Wormy. And of course that prescient two-way wrist radio. Gould will keep this first strip framed on his office wall for the rest of his life, along with the telegram delivering the good news.

Voting is being wrecked. Voting is being wrecked. Voting is ...

"One Vote Can Change the World" by Bisa Butler

     I try not to repeat myself.

     Let me say that again.
     I try not to repeat myself.
     Why? Well, for starters, it becomes dull. The second time never carries the punch of the first. You've read it before, maybe. The impact lessens.
     Even if I try to switch things around.
     Repeating myself is something I try not to do.
     But what if the same thing keeps happening? Something important. And any other topic, well, pales in comparison.
     On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court said to President Donald Trump, in essence: "Sure, go ahead and mess with the mail-in ballots, part of your general campaign to undermine and muddy elections, in case your side loses and you have to toss over the game board and cry 'Unfair!' your go-to move for years and years."
     In October 2016, when it looked liked the tide might be turning for Hillary Clinton, Trump fired off a series of tweets.
     "Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day."
     And ...
     "The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD."
     And ... speaking of repetition.
     "Election is being rigged by the media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign ..."
     Then he won, and ... poof ... suddenly the election was fine. Though Republican candidates, in parroting Trump's claims, would insist that elections that they themselves won were also rigged. Which would be funny if the situation weren't so terrifying.
     In the 2020 election, which Trump clearly and definitively lost to Joe Biden, the only dramatic attempts at election fraud were the president's, demanding that Georgia election officials "find" votes to put him over the top. Since then, he has machine-gunned lies about the election.
     Not to forget the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. After which the nation reelected him anyway, which tempts a person to give up, sit back and declare we deserve whatever we get.
     Maybe we do.

To continue reading, click here.

Cats want to be naughty

Casper, in action.

      We have a pair of houseguests, Casper and Boo, taken in for a month. Our son's cats, now ours, temporarily. 
    The cats have been here before. We know the drill. Before they arrived, away went the Venetian glass atop my wife's dresser. Out came the napkin rings.
    Napkin rings?

Boo

     

     Any idea? That is the difference between you and me, and the genius of my wife. Cats can leap. Even onto the upper shelves of our hutch. And cats can knock things over. In fact, they seem to enjoy it. So rather than park all our stuff in a box for a month, my wife has taken to setting out golden napkin rings. For the cats to knock over — well, cat, singular. Boo is a sedentary cat, with no tail and a tiny head, the size of a ping pong ball, and hardly moves, never mind leaps anywhere. She's like a little feline cow. Occasionally she will pad over to my office, and hurl herself toward my lap, reaching it, with an assist from me. There I stroke her until I have a kitten of fur in my fingers. But that's it.
    Every morning, when I get up, I collect the napkin rings off the floor and return them to their places. Really, sometimes, I feel like we work for the cats. 
    But this is the genius part. If she catches him in the act, my wife scolds Casper. For knocking off the rings. That she placed there for him to knock over. Because she knows cats. And knows that cats want to be naughty. Want to piss you off. So she does a bit of play-acting. To keep the cat happy. 

White Sox might bring in popular Japanese mascot to pinch hit

 

Kumamon, at his birthday party in 2016

     Readers make suggestions. Some are anatomically impossible and best ignored. Some are for stories that deserve consideration. This idea immediately caught my attention, even though it is not only about sports — never my strong suit — but about the White Sox, specifically, their rookie first baseman.
     “I noticed that Munetaka Murakami was born and raised in — Kumamoto! Home of your favorite mascot,” Peter Erdelyi wrote in mid-July. “Kumamon is almost all black — a Sox logo would look great on him. Kumamon Night with free little Kumamons to the first 20,000 attendees, along with a mascot race with Kumamon, with the person behind it all with his brilliant suggestion to the Sox, Neil Steinberg, throwing out the first pitch.”
     Never heard of Kumamon? He is, to quote Tom Waits, “Big in Japan.” Kumamon is what the Japanese call a yuru-kyara — or “loose character.” That traditionally gets translated as “mascot,” though it doesn’t do the reality justice. They’re far more complicated. Kumamon is to Southpaw, the White Sox mascot, as Anna Karenina is to Raggedy Ann.
     Ten years ago, I traveled to Kumamoto, in southwestern Japan, to attended Kumamon’s birthday party, along with 50,000 other guests. It was nuts.
     As if reading my mind, the team held a bobblehead night for the slugger, bringing his parents over to throw out the first pitch. I thought that might moot my reader’s idea. But there’s always next year. I reached out to Brooks Boyer, in charge of marketing for the Sox, who I found in a good mood. The team is doing great this year, particularly compared to the three previous, especially-awful, 100-plus losing-game seasons.
     “I can expect us to be fighting for a division in late October,” Boyer said, “These guys are super likable and competing their butts off. So it’s been a lot of fun.”
     Fun is the operative word in baseball lately. As illustrated by the recent Banana Ball phenomenon, fun is very big at the old ballpark. As are Japanese players. In case you’re paying even less attention to sports than I am, the biggest star in baseball is the insanely skilled Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers. I told Boyer that keeping far-from-home Japanese players happy seems a challenge for teams.
     “You try to keep all of your players happy,” replied Boyer. “When we signed Murakami, we asked him if there are things from Japan that maybe we don’t have here that would create a more comfortable experience. We were thinking about rice cookers. But the very first thing he said was, ‘Could we get a washlet — a bidet — in the clubhouse?’”

To continue reading, click here.