DuSable aiming for ‘somewhere better and different’

     A recent Saturday morning found me standing in front of the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center in Washington Park, waiting for a man who, due to a miscommunication, was at that moment waiting in North Lawndale.
     A quick phone call sorted the confusion out, and rather than race across town, we postponed. The remainder of my morning suddenly freed just as the museum’s revolving door was being unbolted. I sensed an opportunity.
     I’d be more reluctant to admit that up to that point I’d never visited the DuSable museum if I thought it made me some kind of freakish anomaly. To be honest, I consider myself exceptional in that I sincerely wanted to see the place but never had an occasion to go, never heard of any exhibit that caught my interest and seemed worth making the trip.
     I imagine a number of Chicagoans must succumb to the racism of low expectations when it comes to the DuSable, picturing something akin to the House on the Rock, up in Wisconsin, an aggregation of random artifacts, maybe with slightly skewed typewritten cards explaining them.
     Frankly, I was content to stay away. What if I went to the museum and didn’t like it? What then? Volunteer myself as the White Guy Who Didn’t Like the DuSable Museum? No upside there. Or worse, cough silently into my fist and say nothing, itself a kind of racism?
      Turns out, my fears outstripped reality, as fears often do. The museum has an in-depth exhibit on Black soldiers in World War I, with original letters and a real rifle. An interesting display on Civil Rights and redlining. A movie that places you in the 1963 March on Washington. Professionally done. A newish interactive display about life in an African village — albeit an idealized, Black Panther-ish village — held my attention.

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Learn something every day

 

     The Groupon Building is at 600 West Chicago Avenue. North and west of Union Station. So when the cab I jumped into Friday morning immediately proceeded south and east, I immediately wondered if he knew where he was going. Cabbies sometimes don't. First day on the job perhaps. 
    I kept quiet, for an uneasy moment, then repeated, slowly, clearly, "600 West Chicago Avenue." He laughingly explained that this little dogleg was faster, and he was eager to get back to Union Station quickly to catch those arriving on the 9:25. We had a good conversation about cabbies, and passengers, and the city.
     When he arrived, he didn't turn left, onto Chicago Avenue, as I expected, but took me a little past and pulled over on Larrabee Street. I got out, and began to walk to the corner, and saw a view of the Montgomery Ward Building I had never seen before. Pictured above, from the southwest corner of the intersection of Chicago and Larrabee.

From the west it looked like a trumpet

     Oh.

     Up to that point, I usually saw the statue in profile, from the west, driving down Chicago Avenue into downtown. It looked like a figure brandishing a horn. Somehow, because it was on the Montgomery Ward Building, I assumed it was the Angel Moroni, with his trumpet, because ... ah ... Montgomery Ward was a Mormon, perhaps. 

     Wrong. Ward wasn't a Mormon. Coming from an unfamiliar angle, I could see it wasn't a trumpet, but some kind of caduceus, a wand entwined with snakes. The statue, I quickly found out, is the Spirit of Progress, placed atop the building in 1929. 

     Rather than focus on my error — a reminder that no matter how much you know there is always much more you don't know — let's zero in on that caduceus. The only reason the ancient wand-like object isn't completely obscure is that the U.S. Army Medical Corps adopted it as its symbol in 1902, leading to its being picked up by the American Medical Association adopted it as the group's symbol, on its way to becoming representative of all things medical.

    So what is it doing on a statue above a purveyor of dry goods? 

    Turns out, in addition to being the staff of Hermes, the God of Messengers, it is also associated with merchants, which makes sense, since they, like messengers, also travel to conduct their business. This economic usage is widespread enough that some doctors and medical organizations shun the caduceus as tainting the purity of their calling with the stink of commerce. Giving away the game. In closing, will I be needlessly provocative if I draw your attention to the photo below, and observe that it is an ugly statue, too big for its perch, that right arm wrapped weirdly around the torch? 

     

     

Northshore Notes: Finding Peace

     One beauty of my job is I never have to weigh in on any particular subject. Much bad writing comes from obligation. So after a blog post and a column on the initial shock of the Highland Park massacre, I could draw away and look at matters less horrible.

     A valid reaction. Still, I'm glad that our Saturday correspondent, Caren Jeskey, who has been working with survivors of the shooting, has kept a steady gaze on the situation, which is easier to bear filtered through her compassionate worldview. I appreciate her sharing, and her photos, and know EGD readers do too.

By Caren Jeskey

     Walking past Ross’s in Highland Park yesterday, where the shooter perched on July 4th, stopped me in my tracks. A small and unassuming store, just sitting there on a hot summer’s day with the blue sky and innocent cirrus clouds above, oblivious to the evil it hosted.
     As a psychotherapist with more than two dozen clients each week, I am humbled to be privy to the inner machinations of a varied group of people. This gives me a snapshot of a particular collective consciousness. As we all grapple with the meaning of our lives in these tumultuous times, where do we find peace?
     For Carl Jung, “we cannot change anything unless we accept it.” To those who rail and rally against “them,” with shaking fists (as I’ve done, plenty, in the past) — there is no “them.” Sure, there are those in public office and those with power in other ways who make decisions that we feel go against the grain of our very beings. “They” are not sitting somewhere in a secret room, picking their teeth and cackling at the rest of us.

     At least I don’t believe they are — though sometimes I wish it was all just a misguided experiment, these past five years or so. “They” were just studying human behavior amidst terrible stress. Those who were lost to violence would be returned to us. Our traumatic memories would be wiped, and global warming would cease to exist. We’d all be set free to live on a green earth with the ability to share, commune in peace, and preserve our planet together.

     “One love. One heart. Let’s get together and feel alright.”                                                               —Bob Marley 

     What I think is more likely is that relatively small groups of “them” sit around and use doublespeak to justify their egoistic agendas. They step over and on top of each other to win. They are pure id. Agendas that have little to no bearing on the health, happiness, and safety of the little guy. And us little guys are not well-resourced enough to turn it around. Swashbuckling sickos often win, characters in an imaginary pirate movie who fancy themselves the heroes.

   We have to have a purpose in our rage, or it becomes neurosis or worse. “Behind a neurosis there is so often concealed all the natural and necessary suffering the patient has been unwilling to bear.” Also Carl Jung.
     We don’t want to become numb. We don’t want to become disconnected from those around us. We want to be in the flow of life. We don’t want to live a life where we shake our fists at “idiot drivers,” “those jackass neighbors making all that noise,” or people who have “wronged” us. That’s not fun at all, now is it? Nor do we want to live a life of pure comfort, ignoring the plight of the rest of the world while we live off of the fruits of their labors.
     We need to learn to sit with our feelings — all of them — even those that are not comfortable.
     It’s important that we allow ourselves to feel fear and grief about things that are terrifying. From there, we can emote genuinely. We can stay human. We can receive comfort. We can make a plan. A plan that makes good sense rather running in circles and screaming, isolating, or giving up.
     We can also plunge into hell like Sylvia Plath, feeling fatalistically alone. “I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.” 

     Between 2015 and 2020, an average of approximately 46,000 people in the U.S. died by suicide each year.
     What I notice (and I have acted out, mostly in the past) is an epidemic of inauthenticity. We polish ourselves up and burst into the world with our best faces on. We hide our pain. We keep secrets. In the recovery community it’s said “we are only as sick as our secrets.” We put on a face and we have “so much fun.” We collect experiences. But how do we feel when we lay our heads down on our pillows? How do we feel when we wake up?
     For many these days, it’s dread. Exhaustion. Fear. Or maybe excitement about that next big thing we’ve planned that never turns out just how we thought it would. Luggage gets lost. Flights get delayed. Hopefully for most of us here, we feel okay. We are a bit more balanced. We know the value of simple things, which Jung astutely observed that we are in need of, as we are “suffering in our cities. Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counter-pole to happiness.” It’s okay to feel it; better to let it out in healthy ways, than try to keep in it.
     I’ve always been drawn to Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Carl Jung. Lore has it that Dickinson was forbidden to read the heathen Whitman’s work, yet as you read them you’ll see that their minds were incredibly similar. Jung made a hedonistic mess of his life at one point, but that certainly does not define him. Plath ended her life. Dickinson was a recluse who fell into a state of “nervousness” towards the end, after she endured a series of losses in her life.
     We are more alike than different, and none of us are ever truly alone. Reach out and text a friend you are worried about, just to say you’re thinking of them, or to tell them of your pain from time to time. Then find ways to heal. I’ve been really into meditations that utilize the incredible gift of neuroplasticity to alter the size of different brain lobes. Here is a 23 minute high for you to enjoy if you so chose. It might seem odd to a beginner, but it may be a better use of time than that 2nd (or 3rd, 4th, or 5th) episode of our favorite binge-worthy shows. Take care this week.  

Pain — has an Element of Blank —
It cannot recollect
When it begun — or if there were
A time when it was not —
           —Emily Dickinson

Here we go again

Gov. Pat Quinn signing law allowing gay marriage in Illinois, November, 2013.

      Death was one rite of passage that could not be denied gay people. Back when they weren’t allowed to get married or adopt children, or sometimes even hold jobs, unless they concealed their true selves, they would still die, just like regular folks. Newspapers were then sometimes called upon to write their obituaries.
     Which posed a problem, back in the 1980s. Because their unofficial partners, the people who loved them and knew them best, their spouses without paperwork, while very real, could not be included in the printed summations of their lives. Newspapers had standards to maintain. We had rules, policies.
     That began to chafe, as AIDS scythed through the community. Barring their loved ones, who often cared for them while their disapproving blood relations turned their backs, seemed too cruel, even for daily journalism. Dodges were found. “He was a wonderful man,” said his “close friend,” or “longtime companion,” or “roommate.”
     The effort to catch government attention and actually fight AIDS helped break the silence — “Silence = Death,” remember? As the LGBTQ community stepped out of the shadows, it became harder to marginalize. It turned out that a significant part of the population is gay. They were brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers.
     And all the reasons — haters always have reasons, they lack the courage, the honesty to admit their own bottomless fear and baseless loathing — for denying them regular rites of passage turned out to be nonsense. Allowing gays to marry did not destroy the institution for straights any more than allowing them to die undercut the solemnity of funerals. What legal same-sex marriage meant was less insecurity, more happy families, less abuse, more children with two-parent homes.

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Flashback 2010: Voltaire's satire; nicks ox of paralyzed, fading America

Voltaire, by Jean-Antoine Houdon (National Portrait Gallery)

      You never know what is going to stick in a reader's mind. After a colleague approvingly retweeted my Wednesday column on Loredo Taft's "Fountain of Time" scupture, a Twitter follower observed that while I am a readable fellow, a certain aesthetic opinion I expressed 12 years ago diminishes everything I've written since. I immediately checked the original he quoted from, and found this review, which I think bears re-reading. I'll let you guess which opinion indicted me, in his eyes, and tell you after.

     If I had to point to one single historical episode to explain the entire human condition, I would highlight the little-known fact that a number of survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945, fled to Nagasaki in time for the second bomb dropped three days later.
     This out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire quality, so horrible that it becomes comic — at least when happening long ago to people far away whom you don't know — flashed as I sat in the Goodman Theatre Monday for opening night of "Candide."
     Leonard Bernstein's 54-year-old musical version of Voltaire's 250-year-old satire should not feel current. But something about its deep cynicism, its chain of self-interested rogues, puffed up rulers and luckless victims, makes it perfect for these times, when we stumble from natural disaster to pointless bloodletting to political upheaval. The randy Jesuits Voltaire parodies, well, let's say they did not have the dust of the ages upon them.
     I loved it.
     Then again, I'm an odd mix of deep cynicism and childlike innocence. I enjoyed the way the play's characters were casually butchered, its cities destroyed, sailors drowned, maidens defiled, all with director Mary Zimmerman's full palette of cute theatrical devices — ships on sticks, stoic red toy sheep, ribbons as blood — sugar-coating the three hours of musical mayhem. How many plays are there where the line "Throw the Jew into a ditch" draws a hearty laugh from the audience?
     For those unfamiliar with the story, Candide is a pleasant young simpleton who gets evicted from the idyllic palace where he was raised. He's forced to wander our world of endless outrage, misery and atrocity, searching for his lost love, Miss Cunegonde (played with show-stealing zest by Lauren Molina).
     No experience, no matter how awful, blunts Candide's optimism — I hate to say it, but he is very Barack Obama-ish in his tendency to place his trust in obvious enemies and his reluctance to let a steady rain of betrayals dampen his worldview.

'A CHAIN OF ASTONISHING CALAMITIES!'

     The music, alas, is not memorable. Bernstein wrote it, but "West Side Story" this ain't. Though when you have lyrics like "What a day for an auto de fe!" who cares about melody? Several of my associates, more experienced theatergoers than myself, complained that Zimmerman's bag of stage tricks has grown stale, so maybe enjoyment reveals a Candide-like naivete on my part. But how could you not love a musical with a number celebrating the transmission of venereal disease, sung by a character with a silver nose? ("Untreated syphilis destroys the cartilage in your nose," I explained to my 14-year-old, eager to show off knowledge that I never thought I'd have the chance to use. "People really did wear those noses.")
     That either intrigues or repels you. Now that every new musical seems designed to help 12-year-olds feel good about themselves, it's bracing to be reminded that theater used to be something adults did to make our scary world seem less so.
     A few who fled Hiroshima to Nagasaki survived both, by the way, living to face life's fresh horrors. Which is the message of the play. You survive; well, some do.

                   —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 29, 2010

     It was the backhand to the melodies of Leonard Bernstein that stuck in his craw, a judgment he found "stupid." To me, there's no accounting for taste, but I do know that others hold their own opinions so highly they come to believe they're absolutes. They're not. If you prefer Salieri to Mozart, well, I would not want to imitate the monks Voltaire decries who "who burn people that are not of their opinion."

Voltaire, by Jean-Antoine Houdon (National Portrait Gallery)

Fountain suffers lash of time

     Chicago is a big place — 234 square miles. Not only is the city big, but there’s a lot of stuff in it: buildings, parks, statues. So nobody can be faulted for missing any one particular thing. No shame there.
     I hope.
     So I was driving aimlessly around Washington Park Saturday, and passed Lorado Taft’s Fountain of Time, a 126-foot long tableau of 100 people plodding along from birth to doom, located at the west end of the Midway Plaisance.
     I pulled over and put on my flashers.

     Maybe you live on the South Side. Maybe you have passed this sprawling display all your life. Maybe, to you, not knowing about Fountain of Time is like not knowing there is a ballpark at the corner of Addison and Clark. You feel like giving a “harrumph” in superiority — go ahead, get it out. A key pleasure of city life is mocking the newbies. That’s what the whole ketchup-on-hot-dogs thing is really about: the joy of belittlement, harder to exercise nowadays without consequences.
     The sculpture is so big it’s hard to photograph. An enormous pool of water with one figure — Father Time, obviously — contemplating the human parade. Huge, yet strangely unimpressive. Maybe I saw it before and then forgot. Parts of its facade are cracked, missing, streaked.
     Blame the Art Institute for it being there, which approved money for the work in 1913, through its administration of the Ferguson Fund.
     “Undoubtedly the largest undertaking ever attempted in sculpture” Taft said. It was supposed to be part of an even larger beautification scheme, a companion Fountain of Creation, just as big, slated for the other end of the Midway.

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Because they're there.

     I've been doing this long enough to know that a column like yesterday's, about a summer camp for children with a parent who has died, won't get much reaction. There's nothing to object to, no way for reactionaries to beat their chests or whine about themselves as victims. So they fall into a sullen silence, biding their time.
     Mostly. I glanced into my spam filter, and there was a chronic complainer with this reaction:
     "This is the type of organization that should get help via taxpayer money," which for him was sparkly generosity. Then he reverted to form: "But why add 'binary child' in the article?"

     The standard argument against gays standing up for their rights was that they were somehow flaunting themselves in the face of the public. When in fact they were just agitating to be allowed to do what everyone else enjoys — hold jobs, get married, raise families. 
     The same criticism is now applied toward trans people who manifest themselves and then are  slammed for existing, the idea that people innocently pursuing their own inclinations is somehow intolerable. The easiest way to try that is by pretending that their living causes some kind of harm to you, that stocking books urging tolerance is by definition recruitment, since your own kids' orientation is so lightly held, apparently, that a picture book about a penguin with two dads can send them crashing into the abyss of gender confusion.
     I considered my response, and then offered up: "Because the child was there, whether you like it or not."