Flashback 2012: Museum’s trains are no small deal

William Davidson Jr., 2012 (Photo for the Sun-Times by Brian Jackson)

     The Museum of Science and Industry welcomed a new president Monday, the first in 23 years. I'm hoping to get the chance to watch Chevy Humphrey in action, grappling with a singularly difficult museum environment. While I wait, I thought about the last MSI employee I visited with, train wrangler William Davidson Jr.

     William Davidson Jr. did not see the train derail. He heard it.
     “An emergency!” he said, with complete earnestness, snapping into action, hurrying to where a John Deere tractor had tumbled off a flatbed car, onto an adjacent track, where it knocked aside an oncoming train.
     Usually such an accident would be more than a one-man clean-up job. But these were not actual trains in the full-size living world, but miniature HO-gauge trains endlessly plying the tracks at the Great Train Story, a well-loved display that the Museum of Science and Industry has operated for 71 years in its Hall of Transportation.
     As for Davidson, well, there are two crucial things you need to know about him.
     First, making sure the MSI’s trains run on time — well, at least making sure they run — is his job, one he begins four days a week at 6:30 a.m. when he dons black rubber gloves and wipes the 1,400 feet of track with lint-free rags and denatured alcohol, to remove the dust that would foul the trains’ delicate electrical contacts.
     “It is important to do it every day,” he said. “When tracks get dust on them you start losing the conductivity and get a lot of arcing.”
     When he’s finished with that, and fired up the electrical system, the 16 iPods providing ambient train noise and ringing bells and twittering birds, after the 26 trains running at any given time — freights, passenger trains, 'L' trains, Metra commuter trains — start to roll, he retires to his cluttered workshop to fiddle with the various worn-down, burned-out, busted engines and cars that demand constant repair because toy trains are not designed to run 40 hours a week.
      “No manufacturer had that in mind when they made these trains,” Davidson said. For instance, inside each motor is a worm gear. Once they were brass. Now they’re plastic, and last about a month.
     All this is a lot of grueling work, or would be, for someone else. Which brings up the second key point to realize about William Davidson: He loves trains.
     “I’ve always loved trains,” he said. “I find them magical.”
     If ever there was a man in his dream job, Davidson is it. A member of the Windy City Model Railroad Club, he got his first toy train at age 2 and yes, he still has the engine and tender. Nor is that all he has. To put Davidson’s passion for model trains in perspective: the 79-year-old museum has 200 to 300 toy train cars in its collection. Davidson, 49, has 437 train cars at home. The museum has perhaps 70 engines. Davidson has 77.
     The $3.5 million, 3,400-square-foot diorama has 1,400 feet of track divided into three mains lines, tracing the route that containers take after being off-loaded from a ship in the port of Seattle, across the United States, to a detailed rendition of Chicago’s Loop.
     HO scale trains are built on 1/87, meaning that one inch on the model equals 87 inches in a real train. But the buildings were built on 1/100th scale so the Willis Tower could fit under the wing of the Boeing 727 suspended above it. Few visitors notice the discrepancy, though Davidson once heard a schoolteacher informing students that the iconic Chicago skyscraper is the World Trade Center.
     And yes, he corrected the teacher, a devotion to verisimilitude that you would expect in a man who takes a razor blade and scrapes off the tiny plastic hand grips molded on his boxcars so he can install little metal hand grips. At home. In his spare time.
     According to the Chicago Office of Tourism, the MSI is the sixth most popular attraction in Chicago, with 1.5 million visitors a year. Given that flow, and the open expanse of the train display, naturally there are issues. Davidson keeps three large amber prescription bottles filled with coins tossed at the trains. People lean over the railing to take pictures and drop their cell phones, cameras and purses.
     He digs into a pile of stuff in his workshop and comes up with Ariel — a bendable figure of the Disney mermaid. She’s surprisingly heavy. “Feel that, it’s like it has lead in it,” Davidson said before displaying the pieces of the building she shattered.
     People who love trains understand the appeal. But those who don’t might find them a mystery. What is it about toy trains?
     “In the modeling world, you’re imitating real life,” he said. “You have different types of rail modelers — some try to run them as realistically as possible, keeping track of where they’re going, the loads they’re carrying. Some just have fun of watching the trains run, I’ve always liked the miniaturization, the details, the little towns, the signaling, the grade crossings. I love modeling,”

                                —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 6, 2012

Problem is, he represents the cops too well

 

     Saturday morning: coffee, sunshine and an email with the subject, “John Catanzara, Chicago FOP President, IMMEDIATE REMOVAL FROM OFFICE.”
     Hmmm, thought I, must be from a retired police officer.
     It was, Richard W. Sanchez Sr., “CPD Retired.” I knew it!
     In retirement, Chicago police officers go through this marvelous metamorphosis. They serve for decades, mute caterpillars of the silent brotherhood. Then they disappear into their retirement cocoons, to emerge in the sunshine of Florida or Arizona or, in this case, Valparaiso, Indiana, as these glorious butterflies of opinion, their colorful views on display for the world to admire.
     Not Catanzara, of course. As you know, he is the bigmouth president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the one CPD job where the gag comes off. He’s made it his personal mission to remind the public at every opportunity just how touchy and reactionary police officers can be, how passionately devoted to serving and protecting themselves.
     Self-regard and bottomless grievance make them the ideal Trump fan demographic. One of the least surprising fallouts from Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol is how many police officers from around the country joined the mob. Wonder why Catanzara wasn’t there; maybe he was busy, talking.
     While you and I and every decent person were slack-jawed in horror at the sight of the mob sacking the seat of democracy, someone at WBEZ had the presence of mind to stick an open mike in front of Catanzara’s eternally flapping yap, and he justified away.
     “There’s no, obviously, violence in this crowd,” he began.

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Flashback 1998: Coverage of crisis elevates Internet

     This is fortuitous. I was looking at the Sun-Times from Jan. 29, 1998, searching for something related to the book, and stumbled upon a column by me on how the Monica Lewinsky scandal was a turning point for the coverage of news via Internet. We've moved on, of course, where the online world is seamlessly meshed with our own, not only in the reporting of news, but as we've seen with the pillaging of the Capitol Wednesday, in the creation of it.

     After ethical qualms kept Newsweek magazine from breaking the Monica Lewinsky story, the torrid tale was quickly spread anyway in a media that never has qualms, ethical or otherwise: the World Wide Web.
     "Because the magazine did not have enough time for sufficient independent reporting on Lewinsky, her credibility, and her alleged role in the drama . . . Newsweek decided to hold off publishing the story," the magazine explained in a posting hurried onto the Internet, which future historians might argue came into its own with this sex scandal, much in the same way that the Persian Gulf War established CNN and the idea of 24-hour news coverage.
     Exactly 24 hours after Newsweek's hesitation, the Drudge Report, an online gossip sheet written by 31-year-old California muckraker Matt Drudge, posted its "World Exclusive" of a story he predicted, accurately, was "destined to shake official Washington to its foundation."
     It did. The news exploded throughout the electronic intricacies of the Internet, and the informed, misinformed, opinionated, outraged and just plain confused leaped to express themselves on the scandal.
     "Clinton to step down this weekend," insisted an anonymous posting on the Excite political bulletin board. "I have been assured that Clinton will announce his resignation by the beginning of the new week. Count on it."
     The Washington Post was the first "mainstream" news source to go with the story, breaking it the night of Jan. 20, and the next morning the outline of the scandal hit the national papers, including the Chicago Sun-Times.
     That evening, Time magazine launched its "Clinton Scandal Supersite" as a clearinghouse for news on the affair. Newsweek posted a long "Diary of a Scandal," both recounting the complex saga and rationalizing its failure to publish it first. The Sun-Times coverage is posted on the "Clinton Under Siege" page.
     Although the Internet helped spread the wildfire of the scandal, journalism experts note that it did not strike the initial spark.
     "This is not a scandal caused by the Internet," said Neil Chase, an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, who pointed out that Drudge's site wouldn't have had anything to go on without the Newsweek digging. "If they weren't doing it, he wouldn't have had it."
     Chase said that credibility is key. Drudge, by establishing himself as a source of frequently accurate (and sometimes not) rumors, has made himself a must-read among media and political insiders.
     "What's really important to understand is that I could have put up a Web page and said this woman may have had something to do with Clinton and nobody would have paid attention," Chase said. "Drudge . . . put up something particularly juicy, and it got a lot of attention. Which shows that the Internet is a very viable mechanism for delivering information to people. But it isn't a story caused by it."
      The importance of reputation, authenticity and reliability was demonstrated by "Monica's Place," what appeared to be Lewinksy's Web site, which was yanked off America Online after being noticed by the media.
     But news outlets hesitated presenting the page as authentic. The page ends with a "personal quote" from Lewinksy that is either a subtle suggestion of a hoax, or an irony of the first order:
     "Oh, what a tangled web we weave."
        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 29, 1998

Texas notes: Thoughts

     Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey files her Saturday report:

   

     So much to talk about— where to start? First of all, happy new year to you. I sincerely hope you are doing well, and if not let’s get you some support. In the past week, clients have told me “I passed on your wisdom. It has been a game changer for me.” Also, “I channeled you.” Of course I reminded them that I am simply offering them cognitive behavioral therapy techniques grounded in research. Neuroplasticity is real. We can change the tune in our heads. Yes, it takes work, but it works. Our minds play the same thoughts over and over again. They are like the grooves of a record playing the same song on repeat. We can, however, lift the needle and change the song. We can stop ruminating about the same goddamn thing every day, and ch0ose new thoughts.
     Our resentments can stack up if we let them. We don’t have to let them. I watched the third season of Cobra Kai this past week. (Such fun, in the words of Miranda, a BBC show you must watch if you want to laugh your butt off). I learned from Ralph Machio that if we choose to seek revenge, we must start by digging two graves.
     I tried to be mad at a friend group recently. Then I realized that we are here on earth for a time delineated period. Do I want to spend another day engaging in egotistical gymnastics that will catapult me into righteousness? No. I’d rather take it easy, express my concerns, work them out if possible, let it go if not, and move on.
     I wanted to quote from this poem but I can’t leave any of it out:

Thoughts
Walt Whitman - 1819-1892

   1.

Of the visages of things—And of piercing through
to the accepted hells beneath;
Of ugliness—To me there is just as much in it as
there is in beauty—And now the ugliness of
human beings is acceptable to me;
Of detected persons—To me, detected persons are
not, in any respect, worse than undetected per-
sons—and are not in any respect worse than I
am myself;
Of criminals—To me, any judge, or any juror, is
equally criminal—and any reputable person is
also—and the President is also.

   2.

Of waters, forests, hills;
Of the earth at large, whispering through medium of
me;
Of vista—Suppose some sight in arriere, through the
formative chaos, presuming the growth, fulness,
life, now attain'd on the journey;
(But I see the road continued, and the journey ever
continued;)
Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time
has become supplied—And of what will yet be
supplied,
Because all I see and know, I believe to have purport
in what will yet be supplied.

3.

OF persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies,
wealth, scholarships, and the like;
To me, all that those persons have arrived at, sinks
away from them, except as it results to their
Bodies and Souls,
So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked;
And often, to me, each one mocks the others, and
mocks himself or herself,
And of each one, the core of life, namely happiness,
is full of the rotten excrement of maggots,
And often, to me, those men and women pass unwit-
tingly the true realities of life, and go toward
false realities,
And often, to me, they are alive after what custom has
served them, but nothing more,
And often, to me, they are sad, hasty, unwaked son-
nambules, walking the dusk.

   4.

OF ownership—As if one fit to own things could not
at pleasure enter upon all, and incorporate
them into himself or herself;
Of Equality—As if it harm'd me, giving others the
same chances and rights as myself—As if it
were not indispensable to my own rights that
others possess the same;
Of Justice—As if Justice could be anything but the
same ample law, expounded by natural judges
and saviors,
As if it might be this thing or that thing, according
to decisions.

   5.

As I sit with others, at a great feast, suddenly, while
the music is playing,
To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral,
in mist, of a wreck at sea,
Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations,
founder'd off the Northeast coast, and going
down—Of the steamship Arctic going down,
Of the veil'd tableau—Women gather'd together on
deck, pale, heroic, waiting the moment that
draws so close—O the moment!
O the huge sob—A few bubbles—the white foam
spirting up—And then the women gone,
Sinking there, while the passionless wet flows on—
And I now pondering, Are those women indeed
gone?
Are Souls drown'd and destroy'd so?
Is only matter triumphant?

   6.

OF what I write from myself—As if that were not the
resumé;
Of Histories—As if such, however complete, were not
less complete than my poems;
As if the shreds, the records of nations, could possibly
be as lasting as my poems;
As if here were not the amount of all nations, and of
all the lives of heroes.

   7.

OF obedience, faith, adhesiveness;
As I stand aloof and look, there is to me something
profoundly affecting in large masses of men,
following the lead of those who do not believe
in men.

It’s Timmy’s fault! He caused the Capitol riot!

From "Treasures from the Wreck of the Incredible"
by Damien Hirst

     The news was bad. Sit in front of the television all day bad. Wake up the next morning and it hits you in the face bad.
     The United States Capitol stormed by a pro-Trump mob. Americans rampaging through the marble halls. Senators and representatives cowering in fear.
     Hard to believe bad. For some, impossible to believe, because believing might lead them to suspect maybe all this Trump business has been a mistake.
     So a segment of the American public simply doesn’t believe. They immediately decided the insurrection didn’t happen, at least not the way it clearly unfolded before our shocked eyes on Wednesday. Because disbelief when convenient is what they do.
     Sean Hannity leapt for his go-to move: fantasy.
     “Then we had the reports that groups like Antifa, other radical groups — I don’t know the names of all of them — that they were there to cause trouble,” Hannity said.
     There’s a clever dodge built into that, a cowardly little wiggle. I’m sure he did get reports. From deludedpatriot.com and Cletus the Avenger and such. He’s just passing along their concerns.
     “Some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters,” lickspittle Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said on the floor of Congress, a desecration less visual than the mob but no less real. “They were masquerading as Trump supporters, and in fact were members of the violent terrorist group Antifa.”

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"This god-awful display today"

 

    I had planned to run an old column today about the man who oversees the model railroad at the Museum of Science and Industry.

     But events interceded.

     And while I'm not someone who feels the need to wedge myself into every big story, the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol Wednesday seemed to demand comment. 

     Marathon political theater not being my thing, I had no plans to watch Wednesday’s certification of the presidential election in Congress. Toward what end? The Trumps-in-training, hoping to catch the fancy of his followers, and the votes and dollars that go with it, lining up to lie to them from the floor of Congress for up to 24 hours. Then Joe Biden still gets sworn in Jan. 20.
     Pass.
     But there was lunch to think about. So I headed downstairs, where my boys, in their mid-20s and still interested in absorbing the details of any picturesque train wreck, were watching CNN. There was Mitch McConnell, majority leader of the U.S. Senate. While I had seen his startled mouth-popping, wattle-waggling grouper mug a thousand times, I couldn’t remember actually hearing him speak. I found a spot on the sofa.
     “We’re debating a step that has never been taken in American history,” he began gravely. “Whether Congress should overrule the voters and overturn a presidential election. I served 36 years in the Senate. This will be the most important vote I ever cast.”
     To my amazement, he said the right thing. Time to put on our big boy pants, using a tone approaching contempt when he mentioned “sweeping conspiracy theories.” McConnell outlined the emptiness of the election fraud claims.
     “Nothing before us proves illegality anywhere near the massive scale that would have tipped the entire election, nor can public doubt alone justify a radical break when the doubt itself was incited without any evidence.”
     I applauded. That’s the Democratic superpower — we can find value, even in those we generally oppose.
     I couldn’t have said it better myself. Mitch McConnell, Republican, Trump supporter, American hero.

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The South shall fall again. And again. And again.

 

Robert Gould Shaw memorial, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (National Gallery of Art)

     The South was never going to win the Civil War.
     If you consider the resources of the North, the moment the first Confederate cannon fired on Fort Sumter, the South’s doom was sealed. A week later, the Chicago Tribune ran a prescient editorial explaining why.
     “It is a military maxim of modern war that the longest purse wins,” it begins, outlining the North’s advantages in manpower, manufacturing, maritime strength and, most of all, money. “The little State of Massachusetts can raise more money than the Jeff Davis Confederacy.”
     The conclusion may have been foregone, but it took four years and 620,000 American lives to play out.
     It’s still unfolding. The Confederacy lost the war, but never gave up the fight — its baked-in bigotry, the proud ignorance required to consider another human being your property, marches on, from then to now. Manifesting itself plainly in the Trump era, his entire political philosophy being the slaveholder mentality decked out in new clothes, trying to pass in the 21st century. They even wave the same rebel flag. Kind of a giveaway, really.
    The Lost Cause marches on, as we will see Wednesday, when Congress faces another ego-stoked rebellion: Donald Trump’s insistence that his clearly losing the 2020 presidential election in the chill world of fact can be set aside, since he won the race in the steamy delta swampland between his ears.
     No way. Not as long as there are Americans, like the Chicagoans rushing to sign up to fight in April 1861, who are true patriots and willing to stand up for democracy.

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