Why the Fourth of July?

   What do we celebrate when we celebrate the Fourth of July? Independence Day, we tell ourselves.  But was it really? On July 4, 1776, our nascent nation was a long way from being free of British tyranny. 

     We weren't independent of anything, yet, and it says something about the American genius for optimism that we mark as the birth of our country, not the actual achieving of our break from Great Britain, but the first announcement of our hope to do so. And we've been confusing intent and accomplishment ever since. 

    So when did independence occur? In stages. On June 7, 1776, at the meeting of the Second Continental Congress, Virginian Richard Henry Lee offered a resolution to publicly declare "that these United States are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown."  There was a recess of several weeks, so the colonies could talk among themselves. Then the founders reconvened, and approved the declaration on July 2, John Adams, famously predicted "the Second of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival ... solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games and sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore." 

     Except for the exact date, he was right about the details of the festivities. Even though, on that day, we had been fighting the British for not quite 15 months, since the shot heard round the world at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.  We still had five years of bloody, often desperate conflict to endure.    

     Contrast America's approach to pinpointing our moment of national origin with that taken by the other superpower in the world, China, which marks its National Day on Oct. 1, commemorating the day in 1949 when a ceremony was held in Tiananmen Square marking the birth of the People's Republic of China, formed the week before.  At that point, the communists had been fighting the nationalists for 15 years, and were a few months away from the complete collapse of Chaing Kai-shek's forces and their flight to exile on Formosa. Victory was at hand. 

    We tend not to juxtapose the intellectual nation-building that Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the other founding fathers were sweating over in July, 1776 with the grueling struggle George Washington and his ragtag army were suffering through at the exact same moment. Another American quality -- historical myopia. Not one American in 50 realizes that while the Declaration of Independence was being debated, an enormous British force commanded by General William Howe was bearing down on New York. The Declaration of Independence was officially adopted on July 4. Only John Hancock, president of the Congress, and secretary Charles Thomson actually signed it that day. By the time the bulk of Congress put their name to it, in early August, 32,000 British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries were camped on Staten Island, plus 10,000 sailors and 2,000 marines on 30 man-of-wars and 400 transport ships in the harbor.  (The patriots would have been well served had they paused from talking airily about liberty long enough to focus on a few gritty details, such as speeding  cannons to Sandy Hook to defend the port. Instead, we basically let the Brits sail into New York harbor unhindered). New York only had 28,000 residents at the time, which meant that the British military force surpassed the local population. The Brits had triple the men Washington had under him. More New Yorkers were signing up to fight for the British than were joining the Continental Army. While copies of the declaration were being read aloud in colonial squares, Gen. Howe was sending envoys to Washington, brusquely demanding his immediate surrender.

     It got worse. By month's end, Washington's forces had been butchered at the Battle of Long Island, a slaughter that had Washington's men panicking and bolting for their lives.  

    "In general our Generals were out-generaled," Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail. Even then, Washington dithered, remaining on Manhattan, refusing to admit defeat and retreat to safety, a decision universally hailed by historians as "militarily inexplicable and tactically suicidal."  The only thing that saved him -- and American hopes -- was that Gen. Howe, who could have easily destroyed the Continental Army, carelessly declined to do so.  Another saving American grace -- however badly we blunder, our foes always seem to do just a little worse. 

    Why bring this up? Is it not a dark cloud on this joyous summer celebration of fireworks and picnics and fun? I don't think so. We do ourselves a disservice by remembering the past as unmitigated glory, because it makes our country's achievements seem easy, and they weren't easy. We should remember that our country was born in struggle, that nothing was given to us, if only to make our trials now more bearable. Our politicians today engage in political backbiting and gridlock that is near-treason -- at best a betrayal of all who suffered and died to bring us to this point. We could do better -- we have done better in the past, despite great setbacks and at an enormous cost -- and must do better in the future.

     Sorry. This is becoming the standard Fourth of July oration. Historian Merle Curti analyzed July 4 speeches over the first 80 years of the country's history and found "the typical oration began with a recital of American history in the colonial era ... glorified the heroism of the struggle for independence, expressed reverence for the Revolutionary leaders, urged the importance of attacking existing problems in their spirit ... and expressed loyalty to the nation and faith in its future."

    And why not? So, maintaining that tradition, let us end with praise for our country. Maybe the secret to America's great success is its persistent ability to underestimate the difficulties that lie ahead, a tendency to declare the thing done when it's only started, and to press on when other nations would sigh and give up. As always, the antidote to finding fault with the United States on any given subject is to glance around the world. Yes, China takes a more clear-eyed approach to its moment of its birth, marking nationhood closer to when it actually occurred. But it was only 64 years ago. And other countries are even more premature than us about declaring nationhood.  The French celebrate their country on Bastille Day -- July 14, 1789, when they still had 10 years of blood-soaked revolution ahead, a butchery that makes the American Revolution seem absolutely tame. 

    And the Canadians -- though it is unfair to compare the United States with Canada in almost any regard -- they do celebrate Canada Day on July 1, marking the July 1, 1867 union of British colonies Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Province of Canada into a federation -- a federation that would remain under the thumb of Great Britain, to a decreasing extent, for another 115 years. Talk about jumping the gun on your independence. Have a safe and sane Fourth of July. Be careful with fireworks.

Talking dirty in Rockefeller Chapel

     "Moist" will be an obscenity in the future. Or so Jason Riggle, associate professor of linguistics, told several hundred parents and students attending a day-long open house at the University of Chicago last April. I was there because my 17-year-old wanted to kick the tires of the school. A variety of sample classes were offered, and I attended Riggle's class on the anatomy of swears. Being a writer, I have a professional interest.
     Riggle appeared before his audience in a white lab coat—as if he had just arrived from the frontiers of science—and casually, almost as if talking to himself, began lecturing about the ever changing landscape of taboo language.
     "Swearing is natural and people freaking out about it is totally natural," he said, playing a recording of the garbled 1963 hit "Louie Louie," by the Kingsmen, displaying some of the filthy lyrics that the public imagined they heard, then summarizing the intense, almost insane official reaction, including an 18-month FBI probe.
     The rise of technology has been a boon for his field—Google Books allowed him to trace "motherfucker" through 100 years of publishing. He flashed a chart showing increased usage of "fuck," "fucking" and "shit."
     "Toto," I said to myself—my teen was gone, having opted for a class on Vietnam—"we're not in Kansas anymore." I don't know which was more eyebrow-raising: that a professor was giving this off-color presentation in the magnificent medieval cathedral-like setting of Rockefeller Chapel. Or that the University of Chicago chose this particular class to present. The idea that the frank subject matter might be off-putting to potential customers seemed a relic of some hazy yesteryear, and I felt slightly embarrassed even posing the question, mentally. I wasn't offended; I didn't even mind. It just seemed odd.
     Not to be too hard on myself. The shifting landscape of obscenity is difficult to navigate because "it changes all the time," Riggle said.
     For instance, "oriental." Not long ago it was a neutral adjective evoking a certain part of the world—now the preferred adjective is "Asian," and "oriental" smacks of colonialism and condescension and is well on its way to being an insult.
     "Oriental" I don't mind losing. I'm a little more conflicted about "moist." All my associations with "moist" are positive—moist towelettes, moist cake. No matter. The professor assured us that, according to his research, "moist" will be increasingly linked to the nether regions of excited ladies, the way "gay" lost its sense of cavorting joy long ago and became wedded to sexuality.
     Myself, I'd have gone with "damp." But maybe that word is too general purpose. If "damp" became a a sexual taboo word, what we would call basements after a hard rain?
     Word change is generational—my boys immediately object if I slip and use "oriental." But my parents don't. Meanings linger, and word usage can haunt you. Former Food Network star Paula Deen didn't even need to use a certain racial slur—all she had to do was admit she once used it, years ago, for her career to shatter like a glass Christmas ornament hit by a brick.
     Okay, in Deen's case, it's more complicated than that—a variety of jaw-dropping lapses, though most were committed, not by her, but relatives and employees, aggregated in one lawsuit. Yet what caught the public's attention was that word.
     Certain bad words you can repeat with impunity. "Fuck" is sung from Broadway stages. I noticed that Thomas Dyja uses it repeatedly in his carefully-researched, indexed, footnoted history about Chicago in mid-century, The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream, not just in quotations, but in his authorial voice. Simone de Beauvoir hung around with Nelson Algren because he was "a brilliant, sensitive man who loved to fuck." That strikes me as something new.
     "Fuck is the best word," Riggle enthused at the University of Chicago, "because it means everything. 'I was fucking furious.' 'I lost my fucking laptop...'"
     Certain words you can't say, though, even in the dirty words lecture. Riggle avoided the word that got Deen in so much trouble, at the moment the most toxic obscenity in the English language, unique, quarantined in a category by itself.
     Should it be? I don't think so. This utter radioactivity of what people call—timidly, in my view—"the n-word" is fairly new. As recently as 2009, I thought it could be published in a daily newspaper, when I wrote a column about the racial aspects of "Porgy & Bess" and tried to mention exactly what word lyricist Ira Gershwin cut from the opera in 1954. No go. We had to deploy fig leaf dashes: "n----," as if seeing the word uncloaked would sear the eyes of the reader.
     I don't believe it. Nobody seems to mind when black entertainers say and sing and shout the word. So it isn't so much the offending word, itself, as the people using it, a complex socio-racial dynamic that could keep a dozen academics like Riggle busy.
    Originally, I uttered the word itself two paragraphs above—once, as a protest of sorts, to insist that it can still be used, that context still matters. But doing that seemed like handing a cudgel to potential enemies and lowering my head for the blow. Making it too easy for them. And then maybe I'd be cashiered, too, like Paula Deen, gibbering apologies and explanations as I'm duckwalked away from my career, weeping. So I removed it. Is that respect? Or is that timidity? You lose either way.
     A strange game. Even if you could obliterate the offending word—and you can't—it would neither repair the past nor improve the future. Some sensitive souls might feel more comfortable, but I'm not convinced that is a good thing. The past is often a bad place; it shouldn't make us comfortable to contemplate it. We whitewash history at our peril.
     Our brains are machines for language, and since words are the gears of that language, it makes sense that humans should jam their fingers into them with all the clumsy irrationality we bring to everything else. Riggle could utter all the "fucks" and "shits" he liked in Rockefeller Chapel. Paula Deen couldn't admit to having used a certain racial epithet in the past—ironically—not because it's obscene, but because it's racial, race being the third rail of American life. Not because we care so much about race but, ironically, because we don't. Her blunder rudely called attention to the big problem we prefer to ignore. Besides, Deen wasn't hounded out of her livelihood by black outrage but by corporate cowardice. Wal-Mart might not be able to cure its own institutional racism, but it sure can fire Paula Deen, as if you need moral purity to force feed sticks of butter down the throat of an ever-fatter nation.
     The whole exaggerated reaction is transference, the outrage that should be put on real problems but isn't, because they're too real, too unmanageable. Society shrugs as black children are gunned down almost daily on the South and West sides of Chicago. Entire communities fester in dysfunction and ruin. But we get into a lather over an offensive word.
     That too is expected. Riggle explained how obscenity is bound up in the body's limbic system, hardwired into the left side of the brain.
     "Entire phrases are stored, like motive action, like kicking or punching," said Riggle. "We are built to swear, literally."
     People who have had massive strokes and can't otherwise speak, he said, can still rattle off strings of obscenities, almost as a physical reflex. Our minds can be dying, but they can still cuss. Or react to cussing, which must involve a similar automatic response. We just can't stop ourselves.

Squirming on the fat man's chair

     There’s Facebook and there’s real life, and no confusing the two.
     Right? Your Facebook friends aren’t real friends, in that they won’t loan you $20 or help you move in return for pizza. They’re more like a Greek chorus, echoing your comments, emitting an occasional “Woe!” or hurrah, sharing photos of their grandkids and of their lunch.

     But the two worlds, Facebook and real life, do collide. A reader of mine in Norway, a nurse, announced in 2009 she was coming to Chicago, to the consternation of my wife. Until it turned out she was arriving to pitch woo with some guy she met on my Facebook page — as soon as they met, they decided to get married, and I tossed them a wedding atop the Willis Tower.

    That was real, sort of. The marriage only lasted a couple weeks. Real for a short while.

    Or the time my boys and I found ourselves stranded in Salt Lake City. "What do we do now that we've seen the Mormon Temple?" I appealed to the "hive intelligence," as I call it.   
     "Go to Ruth's Diner," a Facebook friend suggested. So we did. Twice. Red trout and eggs. Chocolate malt pudding.  Yum. That was real, too.

     Last week, another collision between Facebook and tangible reality struck me as so odd, it qualified as some kind of augury, a glimpse into the future.

     I went to Evanston Hospital to escort my wife to a medical test which, while routine, would render her unable to drive home. Thus my job was to take her there, wait, and take her back. Simple. I brought a newspaper.

     At the hospital, a jumbo chair in the Gastroenterology department caught my eye. Not quite a love seat — room for one and a half people. Or one really big person. 

     “What is this, for really fat people?” I asked aloud, knowing the answer.

     “It’s for bariatric patients,” the receptionist said, diplomatically.  The surgery where they cut part of your stomach out to help you lose weight. I had never seen a chair like this before, so I took a picture and, almost automatically, posted it to Facebook. Other people might not have seen a chair like that either. Share the wonder. I like sharing with my Facebook pals. I like Facebook. It is, to quote Luna Lovegood, "like having friends."

    My wife went in for her test, and I wandered toward coffee. On my way, I encountered a few other curious sights — a sign listing, along with “Fetal Dianostics” and “Center for Women’s Health” the decidedly non-Marcus Welby “Spiritual Care and Music Therapy.” What could that be? “My God, this man’s soul is in shreds! Administer 25 cc of healing crystals and 15 minutes of whale song STAT!”  A sign for "Epic Training" "No, no, no! Strum the lyre after you chant, 'Sing to me of the man, muse, the man of twists and turns...” I shot pictures of those, too, and posted happily away. I did this without fear or reservation, almost without thinking, the way you'd pause to drink from a water fountain.

    Sated, I took a seat by the self-playing grand piano in the hospital's three story lobby with the wall-sized waterfall (a thought: maybe if they didn’t make hospitals look like swanky resorts, then health care wouldn’t be so damn expensive).  I rattled the newspaper and dove into the news.

     The lobby was empty. The occasional doctor or visitor or patient. And guards. One guard, then two, conferring. A third guard. More guards than seemed warranted. Walking back and forth. Calling to each other, words I couldn't catch. Something was up. I studied my paper, harder, sank a bit in my chair. The slightest knot of dread formed in my stomach.

     “Mr. Steinbock?” said a solid, clean-cut Jack Armstrong kind of guy in a navy blazer with an American flag pin framing a little gold star. Behind him, a guy in purple shirt and tie hovered,  looking vaguely official. Backup. 

      “Yes?” I said. Steinberg, Steinbock—close enough. 

      “Our PR department hears you’re posting pictures of the hospital to Facebook,” he said.

     I told him I wasn't trespassing — I had business at the hospital, and of course wasn’t including any patients in the photos — a chair, a couple signs.

     “This is a public place,” he replied. “We just wanted to make the connection.”

     Well, ho-ho, that's what we're all about, right? Making connections. We chatted a bit. I stressed my bottomless goodwill toward Evanston Hospital — both my sons were born here, we were patronizing the place right now. Steady customers. He went away, wishing my wife well on her test — sincerely, but I was so rattled it almost sounded like a threat. He did not say, "I hope nothing UNFORTUNATE happens to your WIFE." But I sorta heard that. I went back to reading, or tried to.

     I’m not sure what the encounter meant — maybe nothing. But there seems a vague welcome-to-the-future aspect I can't quite put my finger on, heralding a more seamless union of online and physical spheres. Facebook flashing upon the land of the living.

      Will we like that world?  Posting a picture of a fat man’s chair shouldn’t send security searching for you in real time. Or should it? Just to be defiant, I took a shot of the lobby — it has trees, and a concierge (a thought: maybe if they didn't make hospitals ... no, I've said that already) and added one more update: "Less than an hour after I started posting to Facebook, Evanston Hospital had the guards scouring the place for me," I noted. "Were I their PR flack, I'd have gone down myself and said hello, before I called out the muscle."

     That was designed to sting and did. When I got back to my office, there was a very nice phone message from Jim Anthony, senior director in public relations at North Shore University Health System. 

    "I wasn't sure if you were there as a member of the media or a visitor or a patient or what have you," he said.  

    I wasn't sure either, now that I look back on it. That's the thing about this world we're entering into — what's public? What's private? None of us are sure anymore.    

   

The resisting moment versus the overturning moment

     We are used to wonders in Chicago. So much so that often we don't even notice them in front of us. For example, the 32 bridges spanning the Chicago River. They are solidly in place, most of the time, and we hurry across, doing the Point A to Point B two-step, barely registering that we are walking on water, nearly. Walking above water anyway.
     But the bridges are not always where they are supposed to be. In summer they go up—our normality twisting, the street rearing into the sky, light poles tilting at a crazy angle. And even then, we tend not to be thrilled. A routine part of city life; happens all the time. We're used to it. If anything, we're mildly irritated, or else merely wait, docile as cows, swishing our tails, the more romantic among us maybe sneaking a glance over the rail, down at the river to see the sailboats or a gravel barge going by. The rest peck a few "moos" into our phones.
       Who stops to wonder, "How do they do that?" Lift an enormous bridge? A motor of some sort, right? Yes, but there's also something more. Something hidden; a secret.
      These downtown Chicago bridges are called bascule bridges, "bascule" being French for "seesaw," and they raise with relative ease because the bridge leaf tilting into the air is only half the story, literally. While each half of the bridge lifts up, another half, not of equal length but of equal weight, heavy with concrete and iron, drops down, unseen, into a watertight pit.
    Bascule bridges were developed here -- the first Chicago Style Trunnion Bascule Bridge opened March 24, 1902, at Cortland Street, then Clybourn Place. It's still there. 
     "Trunnion" is another old French word, originally meaning "tree"(we get our word "trunk" from the same root). Originally, it described the stumpy pins that stick out of either side of a cannon so it can pivot on its carriage. With a bridge, the trunnion is the massive steel shaft that the span teeter-totters on. It bears the structure's entire weight.
     As with new tires, new bridges must be balanced—just as lead weights are added inside a tire rim so it spins true, so cast iron cubes, one foot on a side and weighing 445 pounds each, are added to or removed from special "pockets" within the bridge until the span is balanced. The process demands attention to detail. For instance, the fiber reinforced polymer sidewalk decking used in the new Wells Street bridge is lighter than wood, so the counterbalance had to be lightened, while other elements of the bridge were made heavier to compensate—the pedestrian railings are typically fiberglass, but Wells Street uses cast steel. Fine-tuning the balance is important—an out-of-whack bridge can abruptly snap up, as the Michigan Avenue Bridge did with near-disastrous results in 1992, toppling a crane onto the riverbank, tossing a wrecking ball into a parked car, injuring six people.
     The riverbank below is a reminder why we need bridges that open, because the Chicago River is relatively low banked and narrow — the giant suspension bridges in New York City wouldn't work here. The East River is 2,000 feet across where the Brooklyn Bridge crosses it; the Chicago River, at Michigan Avenue, only about 250 feet wide. We invented bascule bridges out of necessity. 
     The bridges are designed to balance at two points—when closed and when open — the motors doing the work of nudging them from one state of equilibrium to another. Bridge engineer Dipal P. Vimawala expressed this in a lovely sentence: "Balancing occurs," he wrote, in a report to the city, "when the Resisting Moment equals the Overturning Moment."
     Yes, exactly. A similar process occurs in people. Being ourselves out of balance, we try to compensate by making it a habit to hurry.  We come upon an open bridge, and even though it doesn't happen too often, our first instinct is annoyance—damn!—followed by an urge to scoot a block down and cross there, so as to waste time rushing instead of waste time waiting. This is the resisting moment. But, if you're lucky, you immediately realize that the delay isn't all that long, the thing being rushed toward not all that important, and rather than resist what fate has served you by fleeing, why not just linger and enjoy it? This is the overturning moment, when you upend whatever momentary concern is prodding you forward and just be. Shrug and admit, really, there is no better way to pass a few minutes in the summer in Chicago than to accept this momentary leap of ordinary life. Study the bridge going up. Appreciate it more by remembering the hidden part, the secret that most people don't even know is there. The mystery within. To seize this uplift and welcome it, leaning on the rail, at ease, watching a clutch of sleek white sailboats drift by. For a moment—maybe the best moment of the day— equilibrium is restored.

Pictured above: The Lake Street Bridge.