Day of Facts — Scientists and researchers speak truth to power

Robert Martin, emeritus curator of the Integrative Research Center at the Field Museum, from a video created for Day of Facts.

     Facts can delight: A car dashboard is so named because buggies and wagons had a tilted board in that position to block mud kicked up by horses’ hooves.
     Facts can warn: Smoking cigarettes will, on average, shorten your life by 10 years.
     Facts can inspire: If you quit smoking by age 35, you can claw those lost years back.
     A relevant fact is a powerful thing. In that spirit, Friday, Feb. 17, has been dubbed the “Day of Facts” and 270 cultural institutions in the United States and 13 other countries have signed up to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media to share important facts.  

Turkish manuscript from 1600, showing a map of the Americas
with the south at the top, illustrating the long history of cultural
exchange between Islam and the West (Newberry Library)

 
    “The idea is for libraries and museums and archives across the country and around the world to post mission-related content as a way of reassuring the public that, as institutions, we remain trusted sources of knowledge,” said Alex Teller, director of communications at the Newberry Library. “It reflects recognition among a number of different institutions that while our missions haven’t changed, they’ve taken on a new significance in an era of alternative facts.”
     Those words sound carefully weighed. And for good reason. In this atmosphere of official vindictiveness, there is a real risk of payback. So I asked directly: Is this a reaction to Donald Trump?
     Teller sighed....

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The big wind at the center of the storm

     This week's Time magazine cover, even more apt in light of Thursday's detached-from-reality Trump press conference. It's by Tim O'Brien, who readers of the blog might remember as the artist behind this Little Golden Book parody. 
     Afterward, colleagues, their jaws hanging open, came by my office to ask if I had seen it. I hadn't—I was prepping my column for tomorrow. And given that I know that Trump is a pathological liar and bully, egomaniac and incompetent, somehow forcing myself to view each new example of these qualities, live and in real time well, it can seem like self-flagellation. I just want whatever damning evidence there is of his utter corruption to the Russians to come out, so he can be swept from office, the sooner, the better. Until then, comfort in the arts. 

It isn't April 1st yet, is it?

     On the first April Fool's Day this blog was in existence, I pretended to be in the midst of Kittens in Yarn Week. A comment, I suppose, about the dumbing down of the media.  So it was with a flash of recognition that I got this in my in-box late Wednesday. The heart breaks. And just as newspapers are boldly stepping up in the epic battle to bring down the unfit bully and Russian catspaw, Donald Trump, our own local media conglomerate, tronc (for readers elsewhere: the once respected Tribune Publishing renamed itself "tronc," well, I suppose, because that sounds more like something that would be the source of what regular reader Jakash immediately dubbed a "kitty newslitter.")
     Yes, I know. We're all cooking in the same pot. And newspapers always have had the trivial. The comics weren't exactly The Pentagon Papers either. The Sun-Times prints big posters of sports stars, though I might argue that top athletes are still news figures as opposed to, say, a Pekinese with a bowl of spaghetti dumped over its head. Papers do what they must to survive. Still. Must the Tribune's parent do this? The email went on to inform potential subscribers:

    Which leads me to this question: Do we need the editors of the three of the top newspapers in the country to scour the web for cute animal stories? Isn't that what Facebook is for? And what aren't these editors doing while they're culling "inspiring animal news"? (And inspiring in what way? Just the idea inspires me to want to bite a towel and scream). 
     Sigh. Power to them. I'm sure it'll be very successful. In fact, the question isn't "Do we need newspaper editors to pick our cute kitty stories?" The question is, "Once we're being force-fed our steady stream of 'endearing pet stories and inspiring animal news,' will we need anything else?" Consume too much fluff and you're not hungry for dinner.

U.S. sells more corn than anybody; guess who buys it?

     It's time to play The Fact Game!
     How do we play? First, throw out a fact:
     Corn is a kind of grass.
     Just like rice, wheat, oats, or other cereal grains. Don't let the large seed head — the corn cob — fool you.
     Is that true? Untrue? Well, I read it in a book, Midwest Maize: How Corn Shaped the U.S. Heartland by Cynthia Clampitt.
     "Corn is big grass," writes Clampitt, early in her charming, engrossing book. "It grows faster than other grasses. Its large leaves make it better at capturing sunlight than other grasses. . . . So it's really impressive grass, but it's still grass."
     It sounds right, is written by a noted food historian and printed in a book published by University of Illinois Press, confirmed by a second source (". . . of the grass family" says the Enyclopaedia Britannica).
     I'd say: Fact!
     Again, again! Let's have another "fact":
     The United States is the No. 1 producer of corn in the world.
     Do we accept that as fact? It's good to be No. 1. So yes, we do!

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Unhappy Valentine's Day, for those who lost loved ones

     I have been fortunate, in that I've seldom had to resort to the shadier practices of the journalistic profession. No sneaking photos of the deceased off the mantle during a wake, no pretending to be an assistant coroner to get information.
      The sketchiest thing I ever did, in my opinion was for this story: lurk in a cemetery and accost mourners communing with their dead loved ones. I had heard that cemeteries were busy on Valentine's  Day, and that seemed the best way to go about researching it. To be honest, the bereaved didn't seem to mind the intrusion. It didn't bother them nearly as much as it bothered me.

     "I love you," Ed Caldario said, out loud, in front of the stone marking his wife's grave. Weeping, he set down red tulips.
     "I always brought her flowers on Valentine's Day. She loved flowers. I used to send them to her at work."
     For the fortunate ones to whom Feb. 14 meant only kisses, romantic dinners and funny valentines, it might be good to pause and remember that for other Chicagoans Valentine's Day was a bittersweet time of fierce love tempered by loss and sorrow.
     By noon Sunday, Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside was dotted with big heart-shaped arrangements of flowers, plastic valentine decorations and poignant valentine's cards.
     "For the one I love," read the cheery preprinted valentine affixed to a stick before the grave of a woman who died in her 70s. To the generic message of affection, her husband added: "We love & miss you very much."
     Pasquale D'Andrea took his hat off and crossed himself as he joined his wife Angela in front of the grave of her parents.
     "Valentine's Day is a day to remember loved ones," said D'Andrea, of Berkeley.
     Isabel Riveria and her sister, Mary Mendez, brought along a gardener's trowel to tidy up the grave of their nephew, Efrain Perez, who died nearly five years ago at age 18. They also brought some liquid laundry detergent, to clean off the reddish marble marker.
     Riveria said the Valentine's Day visit to Perez's grave is a yearly tradition, as is the visit to the grave of her brother. She said it doesn't detract from their other Valentine's Day festivities because they don't have Valentine's Day festivities anymore.
     "We don't party since they passed away," she said. "We don't celebrate the occasions like we used to."
     "Special days like this, it makes my mother real sad," said Mendez, who brought a red plastic heart reading "Happy Valentine's Day" to plant by the grave. "We try to keep it real quiet."
     Not too far away was the grave of a baby who lived for three days in 1986. Someone thought to bring a heart-shaped helium balloon, with metallic silver on one side, "I Love You!" on the other.
     The balloon was tied to the grave by a ribbon, and it twisted and struggled against its mooring in Sunday's strong breeze, as if trying to break free from earth and fly away.
              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 15, 1993

Love, soldiers, gypsies and free tickets to 'Carmen'

  

Associate choreographer Sarah O'Gleby at rehearsal for "Carmen" (photo by Andrew Cioffi) 

     "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle . . ."
     "Love is a rebellious bird," Carmen sings, during her famous entrance in the beloved opera, "Carmen," which opened at the Lyric Opera of Chicago on Saturday.
     Just in time for Valentine's Day.
     What does "love is a rebellious bird" even mean? Later she explains: Love; you wait for it, it never comes. But stop waiting, there it is. Think you've caught it? It's gone.
     Sounds about right.
     This is the ninth year the Sun-Times and the Lyric have joined forces to bring 100 lucky readers to "A Night at the Opera," and this is perhaps the most exciting yet because, well, it's "Carmen." Spain. Handsome soldiers. Saucy gypsies. Men fighting with knives. Women fighting with knives.
     And the music. The soul of Spain distilled as only a Frenchman, Georges Bizet, could do it.
    We're going Feb. 28, and there's a party beforehand. Details about how to enter to win one of 50 pairs of free tickets are online. You can enter every day, and if I were you, I would.

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When you see a Bob Falls play, you remember it

Robert Falls directing "Don Giovanni" at the Lyric.

     What I really wanted to do was ... direct. No, kidding. What I really wanted to do was conduct the interview with Bob Falls to mark his 30th anniversary at the Goodman. But my colleague Miriam Di Nunzio snagged that plum. As a consolation prize, though, she kindly allowed me to write about some of my favorite Falls productions. This is in the Sunday Sun-Times.

     It has been more than 30 years since I saw my first Robert Falls' production. While I haven't seen most of his output, I've seen many, and remember them all. They lodge in the mind because, well, he takes the raw material of a playwright's art, whittles it to a point and thrusts it into your eye. I could discuss 15 hugely memorable Falls' productions, but I have room for five.

     1. "In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison" (1984): Performed in the small Goodman Studio Theater, you almost had to dodge William L. Peterson's spittle as he ranted and bashed his head against a filing cabinet. The lights came up after, and my friends and I blinked at each other, amazed to find ourselves back in the real world, in a theater, apparently, after having been hijacked into another realm by Falls' powerful staging.

     2. "Hamlet" (1985): Aiden Quinn walked onto the stage with a can of spray paint and, back to the audience, methodically began to paint "TO... BE... OR ... NOT... TO... BE..." He turned to the audience, jerked his thumb at the dripping paint. "That's the question!"

From the opening scene, in total darkness, the guards on the castle ramparts, cutting the night with their flashlights, to Gertrude, gazing at the king on a green room monitor, her face a Nancy Reagan mask of adoration, to Del Close's Polonius, a bumbling alderman, the play was one daring directorial choice after another.  My favorite: Ophelia, late in the fourth act, drawing on her face with makeup, hiking up her dress. My immediate thought was "She's crazy!" and then — duh! — it's Ophelia. Of course she's crazy. Falls makes the familiar new again...

Brian Dennehy with Pamela Payton-Wright in Goodman Theatre's 2002 production of "Long Day's Journey Into Night." | LIZ LAUREN PHOTO

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