Gustave Caillebotte: Painting MEN, goddammit!

"Man Drying His Leg"

        If you read this stuff and think, "Man, that Steinberg, he's a genius. He knows everything!" I would like, right here and now, to disabuse you of that notion. I am now, and have always been, a flawed, limited man, blundering about his business in a shambolic fashion, filing oddball reports in order to make a sort of living. I've never pretended to be anything else.

    And yet, some people must consider me the all-seeing-eye. Any omission must be a deliberate part of my master plan, such as failing to address a certain controversy related to the Caillebotte show mentioned in Monday's column. 

     "You left out the whole issue of the Art Institute changing the name of the exhibit from its name at the other two institutions hosting the exhibit," writes John S. "Seems the Art Institute whitewashed the issue of Caillebotte’s being gay. [At] Musee d'Orsay and Getty museums, it’s titled 'Painting Men' That’s the major story here and you missed it completely. Ask the Art Institute why they changed the title of the exhibition?"

     No need to quiz the Art Institute as to their motives, as the Trib already did that in a comprehensive story on the issue last week, the spark that, I assume, ignited John's outrage. The museum said that a) there's a lot of pictures of other subjects besides men in the exhibit and b) "Painting His World" tested better.

     I missed that story, so didn't know about the controversy. Had I known, I still would have not joined in the chorus of condemnation over the name change. To be honest, I considered slicing the top of my story, the part about Caillebotte, off  — focusing entirely on Raqib Shaw's "Paradise Lost," the painting taking up the last two-thirds of the column. Ignoring Caillebotte would give me more room to stretch my legs.

     But I liked the bit about my never before considering what Caillebotte had painted beyond "Paris Street; Rainy Day." Part of my comic, ostensibly befuddled, in-print persona that happens to correspond exactly with my not-all-that-funny, actually befuddled, real life persona. 

     The Trib story said the change "has led some to accuse the Art Institute of queer erasure."

     I bet it did. I had fancied that the silver lining of the Trump monstrosity was that finely-tuned liberal sensitivities might not be quite so hair trigger, given the general scuppering of democracy, the free press, personal bodily autonomy, LGBTQ rights, and such.  I'm amazed some people have the psychic energy to parse such fine points. They changed the exhibit title? Oh, the humanity...

     I mean, the Art Institute did put on the show, did they not? And if their intention was to obscure gayness, they did a pretty poor job of it. Any reasonable intelligent person, such as myself, spending a moderate amount of time strolling the exhibit, as I did, would come away with the impression that Caillebotte was probably gay — it's not like he left a statement — and, freed by his family wealth, felt no disinclination about reflecting that perspective, at least when it came to celebrating men with a gaze that mostly, then and now, was reserved for women.

     Had I known about the issue, I might have given it a nod, to show that I was in the loop. That not being the case, I'm not interested in joining the mob beating up a fine Chicago institution for not perfectly celebrating an often neglected segment of the population. 

     This is a strange cultural moment — I guess they all are. But in 2025, while the government struggles to return to the 1950s, high culture institutions such as museums and theater companies fall to angels-dancing-on-a-pin debates over fine points of inclusions. They seem to think we're in the 2050s, or at least often get ahead of their skis, regarding the public they ostensibly serve. That the Art Institute might not have checked the right box, in this instance, well, that is their brand, going for the artistic over the political. Institutions, like people, have a right to be who they are.

'Paradise Lost' is a sprawling artwork defying description. You just have to see it.

“Interior, Woman Reading,” an 1880 painting by Gustave Caillebotte

     For a smart guy, I can be pretty thick.
     Let me explain.
     For decades, I've been admiring Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street; Rainy Day" at the Art Institute. It's hard not to.  

      A huge painting of pedestrians hurrying through Place de Dublin, it's got the realism I like, softened by the stirrings of Impressionism, circa 1877. You can stand far away and absorb the whole scene, or swoop in to notice the woman's delicate black veil.

     Yet never, in all the years I gazed at it, did I ever pause to think, "Heyyyy ... this guy's pretty good. I wonder what ELSE he's painted?" Not once.
     That lapse was made painfully clear seeing the Caillebotte show — a sprawling, comprehensive exhibit, shifting Caillebotte from one-trick-pony to significant, complete artist, introducing a world that you — OK, me — never imaged.
     I won't review the whole show — my colleague Kyle MacMillan did that marvelously. Just go.
     Be sure to study the placards. Otherwise, you'll miss what's going on. Look at the picture above, "Interior, Woman Reading."
     What's striking is the woman is the dominant figure, in the foreground, studying a newspaper, then a typically masculine activity. While the man is sprawled on the sofa, holding a novel, considered at the time a feminine vice. Caillebotte is playing with us, toying with our expectations.
     The more things change ...
     The Caillebotte exhibit, "Painting His World," is reason aplenty to visit the Art Institute. But there's an additional surprise that hasn't gotten the publicity it deserves.
     I'm tempted to leave it at that. Stop reading now, go as a blank slate and then return after you've encountered it ...
     I'll play the "Jeopardy" music:
     Doo doo doo, doo-dah, doo doo doo...
     You're back? Already?

     On your way to the Caillebotte show, you usually pass through the Asian gallery. And there, along 100 feet of the south wall, is Raqib Shaw's "Paradise Lost." You stopped in your tracks and gaped. Don't feel bad. Everybody does.
     How to describe it for those who cheated and kept reading? The life's journey of the Calcutta-born, Kashmir-raised, London-based artist. Conveyed in a wild allegorical explosion that defies description. The museum tries: "An epic and tumultuous journey that represents the very nature and breadth of human existence ..."
     Raging seas, collapsing palaces, a horse wrestling a zebra, leopards, bears, placid baboons in a cherry tree — well, placid except the one strangling a fawn. Bejeweled, painted in automobile enamel using syringes and porcupine quills.
     Dozens of visitors crowd around, stepping back, drawing in close. I'm deliberately not publishing photos.

     "You have to see it," said Madhuvanti Ghose, associate curator of arts of Asia at the Art Institute. "Because no amount of photography actually captures the kind of details that your eye picks up."

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Flashback 1998: Architecture often soars in spite of its occupants

      On Friday, I made what turned out to be an unnecessary plug for the Aug. 21 Chicago River boat tour I'm conducting with our architecture critic, Lee Bey. A commenter referred to the mistaken information often given out on such tours and I mentioned once calling up Chicago architectural icon Adrian Smith and running some of the patter by him. Which led me back to this chestnut. I was confident about my familiarity with river tours because editor Nigel Wade had tasked me that summer to go on ALL of them.
    If Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer don't ring a bell — thank you, grindstones of oblivion, you do some good work — they were bottom-dwelling talk shows mining human misery for ratings points.  Adrian Smith went on to design the Trump International Hotel and the Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, and, as far as I know, is still going strong at 80.  I fired off a note to his firm, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, suggesting its time to check in again. Not holding my breath, but I'll let you know if something develops.

     I imagine, between now and the 21st, you'll see a lot of architecture as I prep for my 90 minutes going mano-a-mano with Lee Bey. Your indulgence, as always, is appreciated.

NBC Tower

     Every few minutes, every day, one of the dozens of boats, or buses, giving those popular architectural tours of Chicago floats or drives by the soaring art deco edifice of NBC Tower.
     Every single time — I can confidently state, having taken about a dozen such tours recently — the guide gestures to the building, located on a plaza east of Michigan Avenue just north of the river, and says something like: "And here is NBC Tower, home to Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer."
     A few of the guides left off Springer, in deference to his split with NBC. But Jones was cited every time, as if her name were on the building. The discordant clank of that pairing has been sounding in my head ever since. I happen to particularly love NBC Tower. I remember the moment I first saw it, half constructed, peeking out between the gothic monstrosity of the Tribune Tower and the generic glass box of the Equitable Building. My knees got weak. That's a cliche, but in this case it is the absolute truth. I thought I was going to kowtow.
     "NBC Tower, home to Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer."
     Forget about the specific programs; enough dirt has been heaped on Jones and Springer. But finding their atrocity, so consistently, used as the tail that wags the building they fester in, led to an intriguing question: Why does architecture soar so high above the rest of the creative arts? It isn't just NBC Tower. Many buildings dwarf the enterprises within them. Is any cutesy brand mascot churned out by Leo Burnett as impressive as the lofty grey building the company occupies? Is there an artwork in the lobby of the classical, pristine Donnelly Building that adds to, instead of distracts from, its setting?
     What does architecture have going for it? Why can't you walk through the Museum of Contemporary Art or flip through the TV channels, or browse through a bookstore, and find the kind of steady series of complete, soul-stirring creations that you can see just by strolling along Wacker Drive?
     I put the question to Adrian D. Smith, the partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who designed NBC Tower. He laughed and laughed. Then he said:
     "Architecture first of all is an art, but it's not only an art. It's also a science; it also deals very heavily with urban planning. It has to have a functional quality to it."
     Smith talked about how NBC Tower was carefully crafted to fit in and complement the classic Chicago buildings around it.
     "I want my buildings to feel connected to the city and add to the fabric of the city and to the quality of public urban spaces they are creating," he said.
     He suggested, modestly, that I was overestimating the craft of architects by focusing on outstanding exceptions such as NBC Tower. He said that "easily 50 and probably 70 to 80 percent" of what gets put up is not architecture at all, but merely "building."
     Smith wouldn't condemn specific designs — architecture is one of the more politic professions — though some of his dismissals were gloriously oblique. He called the Equitable Building "a reasonable example of modern commercial architecture of its time." When I asked him if the addition he is designing for the 311 S. Wacker Building will be capped with anything near that building's giant blazing white water tank blinding those unfortunate enough to gaze upon it at night, he said, "The top will be lit, subtly. Yes. Much more subtly."
     Smith said that good architecture should have "a delightful quality" to it, and that such a quality is reached, not only by caring how your building will be received, but by plain old-fashioned mental labor.
     "When architecture reaches a high art, it has an incredible amount of thought that goes into it," Smith said, adding that nearly a dozen people worked two years to design NBC Tower.
     But caring and hard work can't be enough. Plenty of lousy TV shows were assembled through the intense efforts of people desperate to succeed. I asked Smith what his role, personally, was in the design of NBC Tower.
     "I established the basic concept of the building," said Smith, 53. "I worked with a team of architects at SOM, and I led the team. My responsibility is the way the building finally looks. Sometimes I'm the editor of ideas. Sometimes the generator of ideas. Sometimes the director of ideas."
     The phrase "my responsibility" sticks out. That probably explains the difference right there. Remember how Jones came off during the trial of that guest of hers who murdered another guest? As a confused bystander barely involved with the workings of her own show. How Springer admitted his own program is unwatchable? Maybe knowing that something you're doing is going to cost $100 million and last for a century inspires a person to reach for the stars.
     Wouldn't it be something if people approached more endeavors — more TV shows, more books, more paintings — with the same sense of responsibility, the same expectation of permanence, the same yearning after greatness?

        — Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 5, 1998

Works in progress: Michael Cooke

Michael Cooke, 2019, Magallanes, Chilean Antarctic region.

     Michael Cooke introduced himself over the phone. Exactly 25 years ago. Hollinger had just bought the Sun-Times; their editorial team hadn't even arrived in Chicago. But I had written a column about Leanna Dorsett, a 13-year-old who collapsed and died in front of her class, a girl I had held as a premature infant born with cocaine in her system. Michael, the new editor-in-chief, liked the column, wanted to know if I was on staff. I told him I was.
     We formed a sort of mutual admiration society. He respected my work. I admired his editorial brio and general joie de vivre. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attack, I wanted to run a necessary illustration with my column without securing expensive permission. "Fuck 'em," he said, telling me to go ahead. "We're a newspaper. Let 'em sue us."
     Not an attitude I encounter much lately.
     I could fill 10 pages with my relationship with Michael. When he moved to the New York Daily News, he brought me with him. For a crazy half year, I wrote columns in both papers. The most astounding thing is that, while most friendships tend to fade with time and distance, ours has survived. Six years ago he invited me to accompany him on a scientific cruise up the Antarctic Chilean coast, and we spent a delightful two weeks inspecting glaciers from Zodiac boats and hanging out in tango clubs. I don't have many friends who'd do that. In fact, only one, the sui generis Michael Cooke. He mentioned that, at 73, he's heading back to school, and I asked him to write a Works in Progress post. His report:

     As a boy, I loved the drama of the Bible. The parting of the Red Sea. Or when the slaves unfurl that big red carpet and out pops Elizabeth Taylor.

     I love it still, and am moved by its power and occasional relevance. The phrase “threescore and ten” stands tall in the King James Version — my old school Bible — with the glory of a royal decree: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten.”
     And then that’s it. Curtain drop. Maybe a sad encore if you’re lucky.
     What terrifies me isn’t the precise number — I’m 73 — it’s the nightmare fear of squeezing out a few more encore years and then one random Friday morning in the “residence”getting strapped naked into a mechanical hoist and being slowly lowered to death in a tub of scalding water by a caregiver busy texting a boyfriend.
     So every day is bonus time. There are still things I want to see:

     • a baby being born.
     • the opening of a big archeological find
     • a woman bursting out of a cake. Don’t ask why. It’s a classic. Doable. Let me have this.
     OK maybe those are a bit cliche-y so here’s another: the older I get the more I realize I have so much to learn. That’s why I’m going back to school this fall. Online but serious. Call it a work in progress.
     I was a poor high school student. At least according to five years’ of term reports from a variety of teachers at Lancaster Royal Grammar School in the northwest of England, where I struggled from 1963 to 1969 … the teachers were called "masters" and nothing says pedagogical gravitas like a medieval job title.

      The school was founded in 1256 when beer was safer to drink than water and carrots were in their original color – purple. My school held on to as many traditions as possible over the centuries, including using blackboards not whiteboards and discipline was delivered with a cane rather than a conversation. (Thank you for asking: several times actually, mostly for “impertinence.”) The masters swept about in black gowns and the buildings today still look like the ones you see at Hogwarts.
     I loved that school. That school didn’t love me. To them I was the Band-Aid on the bottom of the pool. The headmaster pulled the plug and tossed me out at 16, never to sit in a classroom again.
     Here are some of the zingers the masters wrote about me in the reports sent to my mother and father:

Age 11:
     English class: “He is always ready with an answer in class but it is rarely the right one. He never seems to grasp the essential point of any piece of work because he has already decided what the lesson is about before it begins.”
Age 12:
     Geography: “Loquacious but illegible. He is very knowledgeable on agrarian matters but his written work has not shown the same keenness.”    
      Form Master: “He has an impudent manner which gets him into trouble.”
Age 13:
     Latin: “He is very reluctant to work. Progress is therefore slight.”
     Form Master: “He is a pleasant boy. He is always lively in class.”
Age 14:
     Chemistry class: “He has made little effort to learn anything and so has had little success.”"
     Form Master" “He remains a cheerful character and has done well as Class Captain.”
Age 15:
     Form Master: “He can produce sound work when he tries.”
Age 16:
     Form Master: “Interest is shown in some subjects and a lack of it in others.”  

     When I was 50 — a full score shy of my King James–allotted threescore and ten — and Editor-in-Chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, the old school summoned me back to England to deliver the annual Speech Day address.
     To tell you the truth, I got off a few zingers myself as I grinned from the podium, the ancient hall filled with teenage versions of myself — all fidget, ambition, and barely concealed boredom.
     But I swear a few boys grinned back.
     Now I’m going back to class, going deep on the King James Bible where so many of today’s phrases come from such as ….
     Bite the dust
     To put words in someone’s mouth
     A wolf in sheep’s clothing
     Dozens and dozens first in English in that Bible: A law unto themselves/ A stumbling block /A thief in the night / A thorn in the side / Den of thieves / Eat, drink and be merry / Fell flat on his face / Fight the good fight / In the twinkling of an eye / Land of Nod / Money is the root of all evil / Out of the mouths of babes / The blind leading the blind / The signs of the times / The skin of my teeth and, well, etc. etc.
     King James’ language and cadence has shaped literature, music, political speeches, and idioms since 1611. Lincoln was a serious student so I’ll be in good company. His Gettysburg address is drenched with the King’s style and themes, starting with “fourscore and seven years ago.”
     Shakespeare was deeply influenced too. Check it out.

     I missed Shakespeare completely at school but I plan to get to him. Threescore and ten is stretchable.

Going up river with Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey, plus another guy

     "Even if it's just you and me and Lee, we'll have fun," I told my wife, of the architectural river tour I'm hosting Aug. 21. An indication of my mindset when writing this — tickets were expensive, and we needed to sell a bunch of them. So I crafted the best sales pitch I could. 

     Completely unnecessarily, as it turned out. What I never contemplated, not for a second, was that all the tickets would sell out in a couple hours on Thursday, when they opened sales for supporters of Chicago Public Media. I was shocked, and unsure if the column should even run. But I played with the ending, and we decided to go ahead. The response was very gratifying, and I appreciate everyone who signed up.

     So. July melts into August. Summer about half over. Are you having fun? What is fun, anyway? There’s small fun: drinking coffee on your porch fun. Tossing cards into a hat fun.
     And big fun. Big Chicago fun. Enjoying the unique activities that only a city like Chicago can provide.
     Such as? What are peak Chicago summer experiences? A Cubs game at Wrigley Field. A hot dog and fries at Gene & Jude’s. To me, it isn’t summer unless I stop by MingHin, grab some dim sum and then meet my wife at the Gehry bandshell in Millennium Park to listen to ... well, honestly, I don’t really care what we listen to. Music. Blues, jazz, opera. Whatever.
     A Chicago River cruise fits perfectly into the mix. Frankly, the Water Taxi works for me. But the ideal, full, peak cruise experience is the Chicago Architecture Center cruise. Because the buildings along the Chicago River, well, they’re Chicago's glory, aren’t they? I can’t tell how many times I’ve taken that cruise. Filling my pockets with informational coin that I can dole out for years to come.
     Although, the last time — I had trouble. The docent, she was very nice, and, ah, informed, in a gentle, volunteer, small town librarian sort of way. And it isn’t as if the information she was telling us was wrong, per se. But I found myself almost biting my hand, struggling not to interject the sharper facts she was overlooking.
     How can you point out the Tribune Tower and not use the phrase “Gothic horror show of a building”? (Okay, neo-Gothic horror show ...) How can you mention the 1922 architecture contest that selected this mess of flying buttresses — the best the Middle Ages have to offer — and not observe that the truly innovative design, Eliel Saarinen‘s far superior and influential, though never built, tower, came in second?
     Or that Tribune publisher Robert McCormick — a world class xenophobe and Hitler bootlicker — sent his correspondents to beg, borrow or steal chunks of the great landmarks of the world, the Parthenon and Taj Mahal and such, to embed in the outside wall at ground level in his monument to American exceptionalism. A staggeringly misguided display of architectural homeopathy that would revolt us if we weren’t so familiar with it.
     See how fun this is? Musing on how I could both enjoy the summer and raise some money for my financially struggling newspaper, I cooked up what we’re calling the Sun-Times Roast of the Chicago Skyline. A gloves-off, no-holds-barred, sharp, adult architectural river cruise. Not for the faint of mind.
     Although. Since I do like to have an adult in the room — someone who really knows the topic, and can backstop me if I go blank, plus share the inevitable blame — I invited Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey to join me. And in a very uncharacteristic bit of recklessness, he agreed.
     Lee, who worked for both Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and the city, brings a granular knowledge of the buildings we'll be drifting past, and will keep things from getting too negative. I’m with him there. I mean, I got married at the Intercontinental Hotel. It isn’t that I don’t like it. But the former Medinah Athletic Club, well, it’s also very strange, with those big Assyrian bas reliefs of bulls and kings and whatnot. What were they thinking? We'll tell you. For 90 minutes.
     In a city like Chicago, there's a lot to keep track of. I was talking Saturday to a young lady of my acquaintance, who conflated the Willis Tower and the John Hancock Building, now 875 N. Michigan.
     When I pointed this out, she said, “Aren’t they the same building?”

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Flashback 1997: It's all water into the crib

Harrison crib, left, built in 1900; Dever crib is to the right.
(Chicago Department of Water Management photo)

    I was chatting Saturday with a young person about, ahem, stochastic mathematics, when the subject strayed to the water intake cribs, the purpose of which she'd recently discovered. I mentioned that I'd visited several of the cribs, years ago, and would dig up that column and share it.

     Five big cement trucks floating two miles offshore. A cellular phone with a rotary dial. Gas-powered toilets. Solar electric panels near what might be Chicago's last coal bin still brimming with deep black cubes.
     Welcome to the strange world of the Chicago Water Department's six intake cribs, a string of whimsical, round, fortlike structures studding the lake horizon. Cribs that not only serve as the business end of the drinking straw from which the city and 118 suburbs thirstily suck, but offer an odd blend of contradictions: old and new, latest technology and relics of the past.
     From north to south, the cribs are: Wilson Avenue, Carter Harrison, William F. Dever, Four-Mile, 68th Street and the Edward F. Dunne. Only Dunne is now drawing from the lake, feeding to the 79th Street water treatment plant.
     The Dever crib also was working until July, feeding to the Jardine Treatment Plant north of Navy Pier. Then the 106-year-old tunnel of its adjoining Harrison crib collapsed, threatening the quality of Dever's water and, in the bargain, closing two lanes of northbound Lake Shore Drive until early spring so the shore end of the damaged tunnel can be sealed off.
     That's where the cement trucks come in. Not only is the tunnel being bulkheaded off at Chicago Avenue, but also at the Harrison crib, 2 1/2 miles out. The cement workers accompanying the trucks on a barge seemed slightly dazed to find themselves in the middle of the lake.
      "This is an extremely odd job, once-in-lifetime job," said Dave Potter, a driver escorting 350,000 pounds of concrete.
     Harrison and Dever — the two are connected by a spindly, 30-foot metal walkway — are crawling with activity. Not only do divers wait to funnel the concrete 100 feet down, but electricians are updating the living quarters on Harrison.
     Though no longer drawing water, the Harrison crib is being renovated because it still will serve as living quarters. For decades, people lived nearly full time on the cribs — a two-man crew in summer and a four-man crew in winter, plus a cook. The rooms seem from another age: iron beds, a rotary phone (albeit one hooked up to a cell site). The cribs always have been bypassed by time: In 1953, a visiting reporter noted the presence of a tulip-horn Victrola.
     In summer, the men scraped debris and hapless crabs and fish from the screens. In winter, they dynamited ice from the intake ports. And year-round, they provided security and monitored a weather station.
     The live-in crews are gone now, their duties no longer needed.
     Zebra mussels forced the removal of screens over the intakes (debris is now screened out at the treatment plants, where chlorine spray keeps the zebra mussels at bay). Motion detectors provide security.

     The weather stations are gone.
     Still, the living quarters are used, mainly by workmen on major repair projects and those caught on the cribs by storms.
     Ice is still a problem, but rather than stay out full time, workers travel to the cribs on the icebreaker James J. Versluis. Ice is kept from the intake ports with the same technology used 100 years ago: one-third sticks of dynamite, lowered on a chain.
     Usually the man on the other end of the chain is Ray Perkins, the city's head crib keeper.
     "He's our only crib keeper," said Francis Blake, deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Water Pumping. "Our only holdover from that group of guys who used to live on the cribs."
     "It was boring," said Perkins, 65, who joined the department in 1956. "Fun at times. When we first started, there was no TV. Mostly radio, and crossword puzzles. Some guys painted. A week out here could be a lifetime."
     The history of the cribs is anything but boring, however, rather a wonderful tale of rescues, fires, explosions, high drama and odd events.
     Coast Guardsmen with rifles were posted at the cribs during World War II to prevent sabotage. One day in March, 1914, a crib keeper who had drowned the previous November and his successor, who drowned in February, washed up together at Oak Street Beach.
     In 1929, a storm so caked one crib with ice that the men inside had trouble breathing. "We were trapped like rats in a caulked barrel," said the keeper.
     Then there was the huge alewife assault in the early 1960s.
     "Billions of fish out here," remembered Perkins. "We were taking them out in wheelbarrows. Finally there was no place to put them."
     Perhaps the dramatic highlight of the cribs occurred in the frigid January of 1948, when single-digit temperatures forced the crews into a 30-hour losing battle with ice. Despite the detonation of 55 sticks of dynamite, the Wilson crib intakes froze completely, cutting water pressure to the North Side.
     Just to give an indication of the vital role of the cribs, that drop in water pressure forced schools to close, hospitals to take emergency measures and all Chicagoans north of Fullerton to boil their drinking water.
     Until the Harrison tunnel is sealed, the Jardine plant is drawing its daily 750 million gallons of water directly from the lakeshore - the water is dirtier there and costs more to process, which is why the aging cribs, in the relatively clean water several miles out, are still valuable.
     Perkins gazed at the small vortexes of water forming on the surface of the interior of the still-active Dunne crib and summed up what all the fuss is about. "You can't do anything without water," he said.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 16, 1997

When the news isn't new

"Napoleon's Return from Elba," by the Charles de Steuben.

     This Epstein thing, just goes on and on and on.
     Which is so puzzling.
     What about it is new? There are all these photos of Donald Trump partying with creepy pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. We've seen them for years. They're not in any way inconsistent with everything we know about Donald Trump, and his pussy-grabbing, porn-star-schtupping, daughter-sexualizing ways.  The man's a major creep, scuzzball and swine. Married three times, most recently to an Eastern European soft porn model.
    Suddenly, some part of the MAGA world, indoctrinated for years to the Epstein saga, looks up from its silage and snaps to the fact that the Epstein files they were promised, whatever they are, aren't materializing. That Trump and his henchmen, who had promised to release some kind of explosive information, or list, or whatever, aren't doing so. 
    My God, it's almost as if the man were a liar!

    Or at least the liberal media is viewing it that way.

    "Because of Epstein, Americans are Finally Seeing Donald Trump," the Lincoln Square newsletter headlined Wednesday morning, going on to observe. "For all his talk about making American great again, people are noticing that he has instead pulled us all down into his sewer of lust, power, ego, betrayal, greed, pettiness, and cruelty."

    Are they? Really? Noticing. Pretty to think so. Or even if they are? Noticing, that is. And then what?
    This isn't something I'd normally react to. I don't traffic in the obvious.
    So why comment now? Well, my column for tomorrow got held Tuesday afternoon — something about necessary insurance forms not being signed, believe it or not. It'll make sense when you read the column.  Friday.
    Nothing in the paper today. But this space here can't be left blank. 
    So returning to Trump, and Epstein, and the latest developments, and my only reaction, which is a phrase I sometimes use in conversation:
     And Napoleon escaped from Elba.
     What does that mean? Napoleon, the emperor of the French, was undercut by his disastrous Russian campaign, then sentenced to exile in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. He arrived to the island off the coast of Italy on May 3, 1814, brooded there about 10 months, and escaped.
     What does that have to do with Trump?
    Well, Napoleon's escape was big news, obviously. At the time. Two hundred years ago. Now it seems, to me, as symbolic of something which isn't really news anymore, because everybody already knows about it, or should.
     Hence Trump and Epstein. If you are discovering the president is a liar and a perv, well, welcome to the party. But pardon me if I don't share your excitement, because you're discovering the painfully obvious.
    I would struggle to muster some enthusiasm if I thought this might change the situation. And while anything is possible, this just seems to be setting up yet another limbo bar for the MAGA faithful lower themselves beneath. However this works out — there could be videos of Trump committing some unspeakable illegal perversion — and his faithful end up face down on the floor, salaaming, as always.