Mike Ditka is not a Chicagoan

     When someone denies the real pain of another, there’s always a selfish reason. Maybe, like right-wing radio hosts claiming the Sandy Hook schoolroom slaughter was a hoax, they can’t bear to consider the cost of their gun infatuation. Maybe, like Holocaust deniers, they are utterly unwilling to see the subjects of their hate in a sympathetic light.
     Then there’s former Bears coach Mike Ditka, in the news again, rejecting the idea that black players who take a knee during the national anthem have anything to protest.
     “I don’t see all the social injustice that some of these people see,” Ditka said Monday. “There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of.”
     Where to begin?
     First, we can recognize his honesty. I’m certain he doesn’t see social injustice. Though a glimmer of the blindness of what he just said may have flashed through even his eyes, because, Ditka added, “Now maybe I’m not watching it as carefully as other people.”
     Ya think? Too busy running from camera to camera, flapping your gums, coasting off your victory (well, really Buddy Ryan’s) 32 years ago. A third of a century. How come you couldn’t find time to curl up with a book of American history?
     For Iron Mike, and those freshly arrived from Mars, a quick synopsis: Our country was built on slavery, which coined much of its wealth. That was followed by 100 years of Jim Crow serfdom and horror that ended . . . what time is it now? I’d feel uncomfortable suggesting it ended at all, but slid into a new, more opaque phase where the economic system itself takes the place of hooded night riders and snapping German shepherds.

To continue reading, click here.

Obit week #1: Ronald Reagan: "From movie star to political star"

     The Society of Professional Obituary Writers is holding its fifth annual conference—"ObitCon 2017—in Evanston this weekend. I have been invited to attend and though I typically avoid all professional groups—I find them more dispiriting than inspirational—I think I'll stop by. I've enjoyed writing obituaries for 20 years, generally of famous people with connections to Chicago. It's interesting to learn about people's lives, and to send them off with the proper fanfare. I thought I would feature a few of my favorites today, Thursday and over the weekend.

    I'm particularly proud of is this one, for President Ronald Reagan, because I despised Reagan when he was in office, not realizing there was far worse to come. Despite this, I kept my own feelings in check—one definition of "professional"—and wrote a piece I believe was thorough and fair.

    

     Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, whose career glided with apparent ease from Hollywood stardom to the White House, died Saturday.
     He was 93.
     The only native Illinoisan elected president, Mr. Reagan exuded a folksy charm and warm humor that delighted supporters and infuriated opponents. A former corporate spokesman, he embraced big business and was a staunch opponent of communism and the Soviet Union, which he famously dubbed the "evil empire."
     "The Great Communicator" never lost an election. When he left the White House in 1989, public opinion polls showed him to be the most popular president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Like Roosevelt, Mr. Reagan also had his impassioned detractors, who dubbed him "the Teflon president," for his ability to deflect criticism, and found his immense charm hollow in the face of his policies regarding Central America, AIDS, the environment and defense expenditures.
     Mr. Reagan was the nation's oldest president—just two weeks shy of his 78th birthday when he left office—and he suffered from Alzheimer's disease in recent years that kept him mostly out of the public eye, though his name and legacy were invoked at the 1996 and 2000 Republican National Conventions.
     Ronald Wilson Reagan was born Feb. 6, 1911, above a bakery in tiny Downstate Tampico, the second son of Nelle and John Reagan. His father, a shoe salesman, was also an alcoholic, and more than one historian has suggested that Mr. Reagan developed his relentless cheeriness as a defense against his father's frequent drunken lapses.
     His family moved around frequently. Briefly, as an infant, he lived on the South Side of Chicago, and then in Galesburg, Monmouth and back in Tampico. When he was 9, his family moved to Dixon, where he went to high school.
     Mr. Reagan graduated in the class of 1928. "Life is just one grand sweet song," his yearbook caption read, "so start the music."
     He went to Eureka College on a partial football scholarship. There, he became active in student politics and was elected student body president.
     He graduated in 1932, with a degree in sociology and economics. The same year, he was hired as a sports announcer for WOC in Davenport, Iowa. He worked his way to WHO in Des Moines and became a local celebrity for his broadcasts reconstructing games from telegraph reports.
     In 1937, Mr. Reagan took a screen test, and Warner Bros. offered him a seven-year, $200-a-week contract.
     His first film, "Love Is on the Air," was a disposable B-movie trifle that set the pattern for most of his 50 or so films. Mr. Reagan was seen as a dependable, workmanlike actor, often playing clean-cut, all-American roles.
     He did act in several critically acclaimed movies, notably "Kings Row" (1942) and "Knute Rockne—All American" (1940). In the latter, his portrayal of dying football star George Gipp led to one of his presidential nicknames, "the Gipper." He made his last Hollywood movie in 1964.
     In 1940, Mr. Reagan wed actress Jane Wyman, whom he met while they were filming "Brother Rat" (1938). They had two children, Maureen and Michael (a third, born premature, died the day after birth in 1947). They were divorced in 1949. He was the first and only president to have been divorced, but it was not an issue in his campaigns.
     In the divorce proceedings, Wyman blamed Mr. Reagan's involvement with the Screen Actors Guild–and his wanting her to share his interest–as putting a strain on their marriage.
     Mr. Reagan honed his political skills in the guild, serving as its president from 1947 to 1952 and from 1959 to 1960.
     He entered the Army in 1942 as a second lieutenant, rising to the rank of captain by the time he was discharged in July 1945. While his opponents made much of the fact that he spent the war making training films, Mr. Reagan's poor eyesight—he wore contact lenses his entire professional life—kept him out of combat.
     In 1952, he married another actress, former Chicagoan Nancy Davis. Mr. Reagan had met Davis when, alarmed that her name had gotten on mailing lists for left-wing organizations, she appealed to him for help.
     They had two children, Patti and Ronald, and appeared in several productions together. Nancy Reagan was to have a tremendous influence on her husband's life and was a powerful figure, both in public and behind the scenes, after he became president.
     Mr. Reagan's movie career slumped in the mid-1950s, and he signed on to host television's "General Electric Theater." His experience as a corporate spokesman, more than anything else, is thought to have influenced his switch from liberal Democrat to right-wing Republican—a move he did not formally make until the early 1960s.
     When "GE Theater" ended in 1962, he switched over to the TV series "Death Valley Days," which he hosted until 1965.
     By then he had become a political powerhouse. He co-chaired California Republicans for (Barry) Goldwater in 1964 and delivered a televised speech in support of the GOP presidential nominee that established Mr. Reagan as a major fund-raiser and rising Republican star.
     Despite his Hollywood success, Mr. Reagan tended to downplay his experience as an actor. When he first ran for the California governorship in 1966, he listed his occupation as "rancher."
     The first public office Mr. Reagan held was governor of California. He won handily, defeating incumbent Pat Brown by nearly a million votes.
     Mr. Reagan was a conservative governor, reining in spending and cutting the size of government, raising taxes and reducing welfare rolls. Talk of his running for president was almost immediate. He was put forward by the party's right wing in 1968 and won 182 delegate votes at the convention, third behind Nelson Rockefeller and Richard M. Nixon.
     Mr. Reagan was re-elected as governor in 1970 and support built for him to run for president if Nixon didn't run for a second term. In 1971, Mr. Reagan was the top pick among voters asked who should run if Nixon stepped aside.
     But Nixon ran for re-election.
     Mr. Reagan did not try for re-election as governor of California, leaving office in 1975. He spent several months on the lecture circuit, then announced his candidacy for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination.
     He narrowly missed pulling off a coup, receiving 1,070 convention votes, 60 short of what he needed to deny President Gerald R. Ford the party's nomination. Still, he delivered a stunning speech, ostensibly in support of Ford but of such power and vision that many in the hall saw it as confirmation that they had just nominated the wrong man.
     Mr. Reagan had a lock on the 1980 nomination, sweeping the primaries and driving out all rivals.
    He showed his rhetorical power in debating incumbent President Jimmy Carter, already handicapped by the dual woes of a miserable economy and the hostage crisis in Iran. Brushing aside charges that he would undermine world peace with a genial, "There you go again," Mr. Reagan delivered his famous question: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"
     The country answered a resounding "No." Mr. Reagan carried 44 states -- 90 percent of the electoral vote -- and received 8.5 million more votes than Carter, his margin of victory a full 10 percent of the popular vote.
     Mr. Reagan's inauguration was a day of high drama. As he finished his brief inaugural address, the Islamic revolutionaries who had been holding 52 American hostages in Iran finally freed them.
     His first formal act as president was to declare a national day of thanksgiving for the return of the hostages.
     Mr. Reagan's eight-year presidency nearly was cut short at the start. Seventy days after he took office, he was shot in the chest by a deranged man outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.
     He was rushed to George Washington Hospital, where he walked into the emergency room. He had lost three pints of blood, and doctors later said that had treatment been delayed for five minutes, he probably would have died.
     Even at such a moment of duress, Mr. Reagan displayed his quick wit. "Honey, I forgot to duck," he told Nancy when she rushed to his side.
     A vibrant man who enjoyed horseback riding and cutting wood at his California ranch, Mr. Reagan surprised everyone with his quick recovery.
     Significant occurrences of the Reagan years include the nomination of the first woman to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor, and a brand of supply-side economics that was dubbed "Reaganomics."
     Mr. Reagan addressed the faltering economy that had helped elect him with a combined three-stage tax cut and slashed federal spending.
     The nation responded by going into severe recession—by late 1982, unemployment was at 10.6 percent, its highest since before World War II.
     But the economy gradually responded—whether on its own or in reaction to Mr. Reagan's medicine—and by 1984, matters were healthy enough for Mr. Reagan to win a landslide victory over Carter's former vice president, Walter F. Mondale.
     During the first debate between the two, Mr. Reagan seemed faltering and uncertain, and his age became an issue in the campaign. But once again, he used humor and a deft delivery to defuse the issue, quipping in the second debate: "I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience."
     People bought it. Mr. Reagan's electoral victory—525-13—was the most lopsided in history. He also carried 59 percent of the popular vote.
     The recovery that helped re-elect Mr. Reagan was built on borrowed money, however. Mr. Reagan's budgets added more than $1 trillion to the national deficit.
     Foreign relations under Mr. Reagan were marked by his firm anti-communist stand. His "Star Wars" defense program, which called for constructing a laser-guided anti-missile shield around the nation, was much discussed. Billions of dollars was spent toward its development, though many doubted that the system was technically feasible, and in the end it came to nothing.
     While Mr. Reagan had declined to meet with a Soviet leader during his first term, upon re-election, the Soviets softened their stance toward the United States, and Mr. Reagan embraced Mikhail Gorbachev when he rose to power, meeting with him four times at summits in Geneva, Reykjavik, Washington and Moscow.
     Mr. Reagan considered his resilience against the Communists as responsible for the fall of communism across Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.
     The culmination of Mr. Reagan's Soviet policy was the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty in 1987, slashing the stockpile of nuclear weapons and providing for on-site inspections.
     Mr. Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada in 1983 and provided money, arms and training to the contra rebels in Nicaragua in an attempt to overthrow the Marxist Sandinista government.  
     The president clashed repeatedly with Congress over his support for the contras, and Congress' withholding of funding led to the great scandal of the Reagan administration, the Iran-contra affair.
     In late 1986, it was revealed that the Reagan administration had sold arms to Iran in exchange for Iranian assistance in freeing hostages in Lebanon.
     This embarrassment turned into full-blown crisis when it became known that the Iranians were overcharged for the arms, with the profits illegally funneled to aid the contras.
     Though Mr. Reagan claimed not to know of the activities, he was harshly criticized by the Senate commission formed to look into the affair, and several members of his administration went to prison.
     After he left office, Mr. Reagan busied himself at his California ranch. In late 1994, he announced to the nation, via a handwritten note, that he had Alzheimer's disease, a progressive neurological disorder that erodes the mind and memory.
     Even after being found to have Alzheimer's, Mr. Reagan continued to go to his office at Los Angeles' Century City, exercise, chop wood at his ranch, golf and attend church on Sundays.
     In 1995, the Reagans allowed their names to be used by the Chicago Alzheimer's Association, which renamed its grantmaking division the Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute
     While his family reported that Mr. Reagan remained physically strong and kept the good-humored "twinkle" so characteristic of him, his memory deteriorated severely in recent years as his disease progressed, and he often failed to recognize family members and close acquaintances, and was kept almost entirely out of the public eye.
     Reagan's oldest daughter, Maureen, died in August 2001 at age 60 from cancer. Along with Nancy Reagan, his three other children survive.
               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 6, 2004

After Cook County scraps soda tax, try a tax on deceit

 
     When ordinary politicians lie, and the lie blows up in their faces, do they shake their fists to the sky and exclaim, "But it looks so easy when Donald Trump does it!"?
     I should call Toni Preckwinkle and ask.
     The Cook County soda tax was never about battling obesity or diabetes. Rolled out Aug. 2, the penny-an-ounce tax was met with public outcry stoked by ferocious advertising by the soft drink industry.
     The Cook County Board president kept insisting that, rather than a bald cash grab, the tax was instead a basic health measure, like flossing. Your kids are too fat, Preckwinkle told voters, and since you can't keep the little brats from guzzling Mountain Dew, I'm going to help you by picking your pockets.
    And to think people objected.
     But all those TV commercials, some $5 million worth paid for by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ignored one simple fact, and I wish I had thought to check this a month ago: These taxes don't cut obesity.
     Cook County isn't the only fiefdom to attempt this stunt. About five years ago, over in Europe, nanny-state governments made a push to cut obesity. Turns out —who knew? — Europeans are also too fat, just like Americans. So Britain, France and other nations dabbled with jacking up taxes on fats and sugars, closely observed by an army of clipboard-wielding academics.
     What did they find?
     "The overall impact of a soft drink tax on calorie consumption is likely to be small," concluded "The Effects of A Soft Drink Tax in the UK" published in the May 2015 issue of Health Economics.
     Not only don't the taxes cut obesity but—and this is so delicious, were it not so sad—when it comes to poor consumers in particular, increasing taxes on unhealthy foods like sweetened soda has one of those counterintuitive effects that make human nature such a delight to ponder.
     A new study found that increasing tax on unhealthy food decreased the consumption of . . . wait for it . . . healthy food, as low-income consumers cut down on lettuce so they can continue to enjoy the junk they like best.
     "A nontrivial number of respondents in the low-income group (39 percent of the total) behaved in a manner opposite to the intention of the policy," noted "Distributional Impact of Fat Taxes and Thin Subsidies," published last month in The Economic Journal, referring to a study in France. "They allocated a larger share of their budget towards unhealthy food and a smaller share towards healthy food"
     Ah people, God love 'em.
     Of course there are lots of studies and, not being a politician, I must be fair and mention some studies support such taxes; Denmark, for instance, seems to have blunted butter consumption with a high tax. But still, it's most pronounced effect is not improving health but raising money.
     And that's an important effect. Cook County is broke, and somebody has to pony up money to run the place. Though why the burden should fall unduly on the shoulders of poor people who bring pleasure to their lives with Coca-Cola on a hot day is beyond me. Plus, I have to mention, from firsthand knowledge, that the tax was also a logistical and PR nightmare for groceries, who had to administer the tax.
     Customers were alienated. I still can hardly slink guiltily into Sunset Foods without feeling like the assistant manager is giving me the stink eye for trying to get back the Cook County tax they unfairly charged me on a case of flavored, though not sweetened, bubbly water.
     Now the soda tax is pretty much cooked, with 12 of the 17 commissioners on the County Board Finance Committee pledged to repeal the tax when the it meets Tuesday. The full board is scheduled to vote Wednesday.
      I guess the finance committee will just have to find something else to tax. A shame they can't conjure up a way to tax lying; the receipts would be enormous, though I imagine our political leaders would complain of their cost to their pocketbooks. To which we say: Well boo-hoo, just suck it up. It's for your own benefit.

Sixty-four thousand

Drug users, Lower Wacker Drive, December, 2016

      64,000.
      You aren't supposed to start a sentence with a number, never mind a stand-alone sentence or paragraph. 
      Maybe it should have been:
      Sixty-four thousand.
      Either way it looks wrong, which is fitting, since 64,000 is the number of Americans who died from drug overdoses last year. That just seems wrong, and is, though the figure is accurate.
      News to me. I'd have guessed the number half as much. But deaths from drug overdose have shot up—compare that figure to some 40,000 Americans who died in highway accidents in 2016, and that was a particularly bad year on the road, due to more texting and more driving in general, because of lower gas prices.
    The figure popped out of this fine New York Times story about Dr. Thomas A. Andrew, the former medical examiner in New Hampshire, the state hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, who quit his post after 20 years and entered the seminary in the hopes of steering young people away from using and dying from drugs instead of cutting them up after they already have.
      Overdoses, the article pointed out, are the leading cause of death among people under 50, and the problem is so severe that OD deaths have actually cut two months off life the average life expectancy for Americans.      
     As terrible as was the killing of 58 people a week ago in Las Vegas, that is the death toll from drug overdoses about every eight hours in America, 365 days a year. If only we could focus our attention on the daily, pervasive problem as intently as we focus on this relatively rare one. But that is our way—scared of sharks while shrugging off heart attacks. 
     And as with gun deaths, drug overdoses have powerful financial interests, in this case pharmaceutical companies, that encourage pervasive use while ignoring, more or less, inevitable misuse of their products
     The problem can only be expected to get worse, as our government tries to fight drug use through increased punishment, and because of our general inability to admit to social problems, never mind do anything about them. 

Metra raises a stink

     Two stories:
     1) Twenty-five years ago, my wife and I were in Paris, getting ready to take the TGV down to Cannes for a mid-winter sojourn at the Carlton (I've been waiting a quarter century to write that sentence). 
     The evening before, we thought we would buy some provisions for the trip, some bread and cheese, and went to Fauchon, the great supermarket. I bought a can of lime tea, my tribute to Proust, which I still have, and we tried several cheeses and settled on one.
     Then we returned to our hotel.
     Within an hour or two, the cheese we had bought began to reek. The odor filled the room. We had to put the cheese in a garbage can and set it in the hallway.
     The next day, settling into our seat for the high speed journey to the Cote d'Azure (TGV stands for "Train à Grande Vitesse" or "very fast train") when we took a breath and recognized the smell of the same cheese from the night before, the meal of the people directly behind us. 
     We looked at each other and laughed.
     2) Then last week, I was getting onto the Metra train, pressed the black oblong on the door, stepped into a train and caught the distinctive miasma of McDonald's—McStench. I looked down, saw a woman digging into a big red cardboard pouch of French fries. Feeling nothing toward the woman but pity, I span 180 degrees on my heel and found another car. 
    These two episodes would never had emerged from the bog of memory and fused in my mind were it not for this sign, glanced stepping off of the 5:12 at Northbrook on Friday. If you can't read the words, the message from  P. Ewe says "Ticket. Check. Stinky food. Check. Annoyed fellow passengers. Check!" 
     Granted, Metra is famous for confusing, pointless and counter-productive communications—from announcements of trains arriving that have already arrived to the garbled station announcements to various glyphic signs and symbols. 
    But this one takes the cake, so to speak. Four flaws come to mind:
    First, this sign, to the degree it is directed at anybody, is intended to shame would-be carriers of stinky food, encouraging them to consider their fellow riders. Question: who thinks of their food as "stinky"? Answer: nobody in the world. "Stinky" is an assessment that others, who are not consuming the food in question, make. The people eating the food like that kind of thing. They don't notice anything objectionable, or they wouldn't be eating it.
    Second, the most common offender, the smelliest food found on Metra trains is ... what? The aforementioned McDonald's of course, whose oil is as rank and distinctive as a corpse. And where do Metra passengers typically buy their putrid-smelling food? At the McDonald's at Union Station. Metra is urging you not to buy the food they're selling at the train station (which, I know, is not owned by Metra, as the railroad always points out when some part of it falls on the heads of commuters. But still. Why put up signs? Go yell at Amtrak.)
     Third, punctuate much? How about "Ticket? Check. Stinky food? Check. Annoyed fellow passengers? Check!" Question marks are free.
     And finally, have you ever been annoyed at somebody on a train because of how their food smelled? Oh, as in 25 years ago in France, you might notice it. You might even be bothered by it, like last week. But trains are big, long places. There's always somewhere else to go. No need to expend energy getting angry at somebody. So the posters are appealing to people who don't know they're being addressed, for the benefit of easily-annoyed parties who might not even exist. Nice work Metra. Your dollars at work. 

Rich Cohen's "Story of a Curse" captures Cubs glory

Rich Cohen, right, at Harry Caray's on Kinzie.

     Rich Cohen is having a better life than I am. He's younger, handsomer and his books sell better. Keith Richards thinks Rich Cohen is cool. The only whisper of coolness I can claim is that I know Rich Cohen.
     Most galling, he's a better writer than I am. His recent book — he's written 11 — was about the Rolling Stones. I ate it up, even though I have no interest in the band. That's the definition of a good writer: someone who can hold your attention on a topic you otherwise care little about. I had zero curiosity about Lyndon Johnson until Robert Caro hooked his fingers into my nostrils and led me through three thick books about LBJ like a drover pulling an ox with a ring through its nose.   

     Before the Stones, Cohen wrote "Monsters" about the 1985 Bears. I enjoyed that, and know little about football and care less. I spent more time reading Cohen's book about the team than I've spent watching Bears games over the past decade.
     How does he do it? Sharp writing spiked with fascinating facts, like the unexpected connection between the name "Bears" and the Cubs, the topic of his latest book, published Wednesday, "The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse.
     In it, he offers three things: first, a history of the team filled with amazing trivia — Zachary Taylor Davis was the architect of both Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park — and unexpected juxtapositions. I knew Hack Wilson lost a ball in the sun, and I knew he had a great season, hitting 56 home runs. But I didn't realize one followed the other, that the standout season was poor, sodden Wilson's desperate attempt to erase the shame of missing that ball.
     Second, Cohen, who grew up in Glencoe, chronicles his own lifelong love of the Cubs, despite their curse, "a futility that lasted so long we turned it into a religion."

To continue reading, click here.

"Thoughts and prayers ain't enough"

 

    Cynicism comes so easily nowadays. The country is divided by hatred and mutual incomprehension, our divisions longstanding and entrenched, our leaders paid off or impotent. Lies spewing from corrupted news sources, with no agreement which is fair, which foul. Our president is a superannuated infant, reflecting the worst among us, astounding even the most jaded every single day with his bottomless baseness and continual bad faith. 
     What hope for progress is there? Haven't we been steadily deteriorating for years, decades? 
     Umm no, not really. Fifty-eight Americans were killed Sunday by mindless violence. When I was growing up, that was a good week's casualty list in the Vietnam War. The last administration did actually catch the will-o-the-wisp of health care, not in an ideal form, but one much improved, available to millions of people, heretofore cut-off. The unexamined hate that used to be just accepted, the stage convention of our public life, the curtains and the scenery, now seems glaring wrong, in many quarters, and is challenged. We can't avoid the horrors, they fill our vision. But the good is there too, if we look for it.
    Or bumble upon it. I was walking the dog Tuesday morning and there was Lee Goodman, who lives a few blocks down my street. Writing on his garbage can. Which is something he does, getting the word out. Lee quit his practice as a lawyer a couple years back to devote his energy, full time, along with his wife Nancy, to repealing the 2nd Amendment.
    A quixotic quest, in an era when even discussion of the possibility of discussion is shouted down by paid lackeys in government and their duped constituents. But he's doing it. He wrote a book, outlining his ideas. Tuesday he emblazoned his garbage can with a sign: "Thoughts and prayers ain't enough," a rebuke to the hypocritical pro forma pieties that our leaders mouth in lieu of actually doing or saying anything. 
     In one light, a futile act. How many people go down Center Avenue and see a garbage can? In another, a testament of faith in the ultimate victory of rationality, of goodness. The internet has raised communication to a howl, where reaching a million pairs of eyes is nothing. Only a start. Still, there are those quiet voices speaking to anyone who will listen. Even an empty street.
     We talked a bit. The new Dick's Sporting Goods on Skokie Blvd., he said, is carrying long guns. He led a protest there the night before, and was pleased with the turn-out. Hunting rifles and shotguns are not the problem, in my view, and opposing them only gives credence to the right wing canard that the left wants to ban all guns everywhere. Lee goes over the line, sometime, in my view, such as when he protested the installation of an old Army howitzer by Village Hall. 
     But Lee's committed anti-gun, no half measures thank you very much, and I understand the purity of his stand. If all the people pushing for silencers and armor-piercing bullets can cash their checks and mail out their hyperventilating fundraising appeals, then Lee can organize his quiet protests and deliver his trash day messages. If there were more people like him, then maybe our country wouldn't be in the mess it's in.
     He isn't bowing his head in resignation at our national disgrace, but is doing whatever he can to combat it, and I have to respect that, and add what little boost I can, barely more than a sign on a garbage can, but it's all I've got.
     After I wrote the above, I noticed this tweet, from my friend Rory Fanning, which sums up what I was trying to say better than I could manage: