Kittens in Yarn Week: Day 2

     My post yesterday on kitties and why they're so cute was really meant to be a one-time deal, sharing the recent Scientific American story on the topology of cuteness. But the reaction from readers was so intense — extraordinary, really — that I decided to continue the theme and make this into Kittens in Yarn Week.
     For those who missed yesterday, not only did I explore the spatial-dimensional qualities of what makes a creature adorable, based on the Golden Section of antiquity, but I further realized that, because the news of late is so grim, and we spend so much time in negativity, bickering over meaningless political differences, some relief is in order. Isn't it nice to just sit back and look at a cute kitty and smile?  In searching for more images of playful puddy-tats with balls of colorful yarn to run for the rest of this week—and there really aren't enough of them, online, so as soon as I can I'm going to hire a photographer, buy some kitties and get busy — I ran into this kitten and yarn joke on cat joke web site.
    Q: Did you hear about the cat that swallowed a ball of yarn?

    A: She had a litter of mittens.     
    Now I suppose that joke itself could be seen as a little mean — it could be very dangerous for a cat to swallow a ball of yarn. She could choke. So while I should point out that the joke is fictional, and thus no actual cat ingested any potentially fatal yarn, I think by passing along that joke, "edgy" though it be, I'm showing that, under this "Kittens in Yarn" business you'll be reading here for the next five days, I'm still the same old Neil Steinberg I've always been, just mellowed and gratified by yesterday's enormous upswell of readership, not to mention commencement of my support of the good folks at Chik-fil-A. (Which is why, as you read here yesterday, that's I've changed the blog's name — "Every g*ddamn day" was so harsh, so negative. Places like WBEZ were reluctant to mention it, and the name scared off potential advertisers. "Every gosh darn day" is just as effective, and has more the spirit of sharp yet forgiving humor I'm now striving for, with none of the off-putting allusions to the deity. Chik-fil-A in no way was responsible for the change; it was just something I happened to do at the same time their ads went up).
      Just so you know the schedule, tomorrow, for Day 3, I'll be serving up three special recipes for cat food, for those of us who just don't trust commercial cat food because of all the waste water created by cat food production. Thursday we'll look at the yarn side of the equation — I've found several veterinary studies that suggest certain colors and types of yarn are preferred by certain varieties of cats. Friday, I will review the top 10 web sites dedicated to showing photos of kittens in yarn. Saturday I look at the hidden history of posters featuring, not only kittens in yarn, but cats with bowls of spaghetti dumped over their heads, or cats hanging by their paws over a cord with inspirational sayings like, "Hang in there!" And Sunday, being the Lord's day, I'll examine whether kittens can be said to have souls — of course they do! — and why we can be certain, based on hard, Biblical evidence, that our cats and kittens will be purring beside the Pearly Gates, waiting for us when we get to heaven. I'll also share some of the outpouring of comments I've received from yesterday's posting.
     Thanks again for all your enthusiasm, welcome to my new readers of "Every gosh darn day," and I hope you enjoy Kittens in Yarn Week, and will stay on for next week, when I focus on UFOs, ESP and Other Amazing Real Phenomena. For next week's full schedule, just click here.

Everygoshdarnday.com welcomes Chik-fil-A.

Why debate details when big issues divide?

     Were I to ask you what color seat you would like on your bus trip to Cleveland, you would probably reply, “But I’m not going to Cleveland.” 

     Were I to insist, fanning a few fabric swatches before you — maroon, a powdery blue, hunter green — you would answer, “It doesn’t MATTER what color, because I don’t want to take a bus to Cleveland!”

     Sadly, this simple logic escapes us when it comes to matters political. We fall to debating specifics — the color of the seat — ignoring a key overarching fact: Some of us want to take the trip; others don’t. 

     The original intention of this column was to look at the state of Illinois with a cool, dispassionate eye and ask: Is Bruce Rauner right? Are we really much worse off under Gov. Pat Quinn? Rauner points to our 8.7 percent unemployment, second highest in the nation. The Quinn people, however, observe that when he took office, it was 11.4 percent. Rauner focuses on the bloat of government, Quinn on how much has been cut.

     Who’s right? The bottom line is, for purposes of conversation, that it doesn’t matter. These stats are specifics: the color of the seat. And no number or group of numbers is going to make Rauner supporters shift to Quinn, or Quinn supporters decide that a rich guy with no experience in government is qualified to run the state. I won’t say which side I’m on, but you can guess. 

     What decides our default, which bin, Republican or Democrat, we live in? I could be a cynic and say it’s your parents’ political party. Most follow the leanings of their parents and never question it.    Having been born blinking into one particular camp, we just shrug and spend our lives there, plucking reasons to justify it as they float by. 

     But pretend, for a moment, that we could actually make the choice. What puts us in one party or another is not pegged to the unemployment levels in Illinois or what the tax rate is, but how you answer the following simple, Cleveland-or-no, five-word question: Is government good or bad?

     Not just Illinois government. All government. If you think government is a good thing, in the main, then you’re a Democrat. You want preschoolers to get that cup of free morning gruel, want rehab clinics for drug addicts. A disaster strikes — and Illinois has been hit with 11 natural disasters since   Quinn took office — and you want the government to show up with backhoes and fresh water. If companies are selling tainted meat, then you want the USDA to be on them like a cloud of hornets.

    If you don’t like government, you’re a Republican. You want to cut taxes and slice deficits until there isn’t any money to fund all those programs that only help people you wish didn’t exist anyway. If companies are selling tainted meat, well, then people should be savvy enough not to buy it. 

     The situation is more complicated. Some government programs bug Democrats: farm subsidies for instance. And Republicans embrace Medicare, out of self-preservation, and blow kisses at the military, as if it weren’t as purely a government function as the National Endowment for the Arts.

     Me, I’m Democratic by breeding — my parents are Democrats; my father, in fact, worked for the government, NASA, for most of his career. And by choice. I make that decision by what I call the Baby Conundrum. If you find a baby on your doorstep, you either a) raise it yourself b) take it to the nearest church or c) call the cops. 

     To me, a) is strange and nobody would do it; b) is theoretical and while Republicans pay lip service, they never call their church to report a fire. The rational person answers is c). You want a government that cares for abandoned babies (fetuses aren’t babies, your Pavlovian bell isn’t ringing) and schools them and treats them when they’re sick. I’ve never heard an argument that explains why that logic falls apart as they get older. To me, the Republican stance against the Affordable Care Act is a shameful nadir of cold-hearted wrongheadedness that someday will be seen as being in keeping with their stance on race and women, and the entire litany of wrongheaded, selfish notions they’ve clung to until the second they’re pried out of their soft little hands. 

     Getting back to Illinois. I would be for Quinn because he fixed the pension mess that grew under his forebears of both parties, and he signed marriage equality into law even though his faith dictated otherwise. That’s another dividing line: Is religion a private matter? Or a whip to make your neighbors/employees do what they don’t want to? Dems to the left, GOP to the right. Oh, and consider a trip to Cleveland. Friendly folk, remodeled art museum. It’s very nice. 

Welcome back to the Steinberg Bakery

     

     Ting-a-ling.

     "Welcome to the Steinberg Bakery. May I help you?"

     "Yes, some rye bread please..."

     "Seeds or no seeds?"

     "Umm..."

     "We use only the finest Hungarian caraway seeds. You can't buy them in this country. A friend's nephew is with the Hungarian consulate. He brings them over in the diplomatic pouch. Rich, pungent, meridan fennel seeds..."

     "Okay, seeds then..."

     "Sliced or unsliced? The unsliced loaf stays fresh longer. But we offer sliced as a convenience for the customer."

     "Sliced please ... "
     "Of course. Always with the easy way. The convenience. Good for sandwiches. Planning a to serve sandwiches at a special gathering, are you?"
     "Isn't Gabby here today? I thought she works on Sundays."

     "Normally yes. But today she has her ... little visitor."

     "Her little visitor?"

     "Yes, you know, her ... ah ... time of the month."

     "Her period?"

     "Shhh, yes. If you insist, but please, I've got angel food cake rising."

     "What does that matter? Does it make her too ill? Tell her Mrs. Mendelssohn was in and asked about her and hopes she feels better."

     "No, not that. Not ill. She feels fine. The intru...visitor. It renders her unclean."

     "Unclean?"

     "Unclean. Leviticus 15, verse 19: 'Whenever a woman has her m-m-menstrual period, she will be ceremonially unclean for seven days.'"

      "I don't see how that..."

     "''If you touch her during that time, you will be defiled until evening. Anything on which she lies or sits during that time will be defiled...'"

     "But isn't that..."

     "Look around you, Mrs. Mendelssohn. Look at the Steinberg Bakery. What do you see? Everything is clean. Everything. Clean. Do you think that is by accident? No. It is not an accident. The floors, swept twice a day. The coolers, the racks, the shelves. We pride ourselves in that."

     "Couldn't she..."

     "Now yes, the actual Biblical passages do not technically forbid a woman who is in that way from working in a bakery...oh, here's your rye bread, with seeds, sliced. Anything else?"

      "Oh thank you. Yes. You have kolatchke?"

      "Raspberry, apricot, strawberry..."

      "Let me have ..."
      "Apple, blueberry, cherry..."
      "A half dozen cherry please."
      "Lemon, cinnamon, cheese..." 

      "Six cherry. Please."
      "... and prune. Six cherry it is. Anyway, it not being specifically forbidden. I tried to be accommodating. But look how narrow it is behind the counter. People bump into each other. One touch and I am defiled, Mrs. Mendelssohn. So many rules, with the women, and it falls to the man to enforce them; hiring them hardly seems worthwhile sometimes. Still, I told Gabby she could work if she didn't sit down.  But it's a long shift, and she kept sneaking rests on the chair."

     "Is that so..."

     "The chair had to be burned, in the Biblical fashion. It got expensive. Have you ever tried to find acacia wood? It isn't easy, and not cheap, I'll tell you that. So now she just doesn't work those days. A week a month I lose her. I keep track on this chart here."

     "That doesn't strike me as fair to her."

     "Not fair? What is not fair to her? She has a job. Nobody put a gun to her head and forced her to work in the Steinberg Bakery. Our reputation is pristine. People line up to work here. Men anyway. Women, not so much. Still, what about fair to me? Why is it the religious for whom fairness is always forgotten? Why do the men always suffer? Should I pay good money, pay a woman good money, so she can pollute and poison the Steinberg Bakery in the eyes of God once a month? Why should I pay for anything that undermines my sincere religious beliefs? The folks at Hobby Lobby certainly don't do that. The Hobby Lobby machers don't feel the need to pay for things that go against their faith. If Hobby Lobby, a store that sells pipe cleaners and glitter and styrofoam balls can withdraw from the government insurance program, can sue the United States of America, the country that we all love, claiming that some crazy contraception device that only a kurveh would use and that doesn't even affect a fertilized egg, not really, if they can decide it is in fact abortion, if they can play around with the health care of thousands of employees based on their own farkochta religious beliefs, why should my sincere and actually-endorsed-by-the-Lord-God-Almighty-instead-of-cooked-up-later-by-frauds beliefs be held in any less regard?"

    "Well, I should be going now..."
     "I mean, God forbid they should pay for anything of which they don't approve. God forbid that one penny of their money earned selling pots of paste should go to anything that doesn't reflect their own whims happily back so they can nod and smile, admiring them. Because they're special, Mrs. Mendelssohn, they're the one true religion that the entire nation was designed to coddle and flatter. They are they stars of the show. The rest of us, we're nobody. We're the scenery. The chorus. Even though the government certainly asks the rest of us to pay for things we don't necessarily like. Oh ho, yes! Churches pay no tax. But the grips and the stage hands and the supernumeraries, we pay the freight. The Steinberg Bakery, we pay tax — plenty of tax. Am I not then, in a very real sense, underwriting those churches? With my cash money? My taxes also pay for the schools, schools which teach kids all sorts of nonsense that I do not subscribe to—schools that serve their kids Chips Ahoy Cookies at lunch time. I have seen it with my own eyes! That serve them white bread puffed full of air. Bread that tastes like nothing. A slander on the word 'bread...'"
     "If I could just..."     
     "Yet I support that. It seems this Lobby Hobby wants it both ways: part of society, when it serves them, when it comes to having their streets plowed so that more big trucks full of stickers and glass beads and woodburning sets can get to their enormous warehouses full of crap. But when government policy strays against their reproductive whims, they sue." 
     "Ah yes, well, I had better be going. That's all today." 

      "Of course, Mrs. Mendelssohn. Right away. The bread, $3.99, the kolatchke, $5 for the half dozen and I put in an extra one.  That's $8.99, plus 80 cents tax to buy public school lunches made of bread I wouldn't use to wipe the counters at the Steinberg Bakery. That'll be nine dollars and seventy-nine cents, please. Out of ten."

     "Well tell Gabby that I said hello."

     "I will, when she returns, five days from now. Twenty-one cents is your change. And believe me, Mrs. Mendelssohn, I'm not happy about this either. I have things to do today. But faith is faith, and either we honor it or we don't. I am the true victim here, being forced to handle both the front of the shop and to mind the ovens in back. Last month, I lost eight pies—blueberry pies, the best, made from the choicest Michigan blueberries, grown especially for the Steinberg Bakery at sun-kissed blueberry patches outside of Ludington. These pies burned to cinders because Mr. Helmholtz came by for his weekly order, and we got into a conversation, a fascinating conversation about Psalm 119 and the need to constantly be mindful of God's law. I will be honest with you: I forgot about the pies. If Gabby had been here, she would have whisked those pies out of the oven at the precise moment of golden crusted perfection. Very good, she is, about timing the pies. But when she is not here, she is not so good. I should have garnished the cost of the lost pies from her wages. But I try to be a considerate boss. Though in matters of faith, there are no considerations to be made. God is very clear about that. I really should not hire a woman at all. You lose one week out of four, at least until they reach a certain age. But I try to run the Steinberg Bakery in the progressive fashion."
     "Umm, yes, right. Well goodbye then."
     "Yes, goodbye. And you'll see what I mean about those caraway seeds. Such seeds you have never seen."

      Ting-a-ling.   

  

Saturday fun activity — name the palindromes

   

     People assume that the hard part about writing books is the writing part. And there is a certain challenge there. But having written, gee, eight books now, with the ninth on the way, I can tell you that writing books is difficult in the same way that dieting is difficult: it isn't any one moment that's especially challenging, but doing what you need to do to accomplish the task, day in and day out, and persisting even when results seem slow in coming. 
     No, the hardest aspect of "writing books," is not the writing part, but the books part, when the tangible object is published. The new book comes into physical being, and then you have about two minutes to make something happen, to generate buzz and heat and interest during the brief window when the book lingers in stores -- what stores are left — and at the top of web sites, before your book, your baby, your joy and heartbreak, sinks into the slurry of forgotten tomes, never to be seen again. 
     It engenders a certain sense of, well, panic. The moment is now. You've done all this work. You love the result. The clock is ticking. 
     A nightmare really. I used to say that having a book published is like having your children kidnapped and held for ransom at bookstores. They're tied to a chair, whimpering into their gags, struggling against the ropes, waiting for you to do something. You can, diabolically, see them. But you can't rescue them, not by yourself. Someone has to help you. Now. Under these circumstances the slowness of friends to react can be maddening. "What, your book?" they drawl, scratching, stretching, as if they had forgotten. "Oh yeah, man. that's right, I umm, meant to, ah, slide over to the Book Hutt and get it, but these old egg cartons needed to be painted..." and you just want to grab the person by the shoulders and shake them, then draw their face close to yours and shriek, "Buy my book, buy my book ... or, or, or... I'm going to kill you right now."
    Thus I traipse off to book signings, buy books I have no interest in, and in fact will never read, and can't get rid of, because they're signed to me. I remember, years ago, walking down Wabash Avenue to the old Kroch's & Brentano's book store, where Roger Ebert was signing his novel, The Phantom's Mask. The co-worker I had dragged along, to boost the show of support, quizzed me: Why were we doing this? Roger was already rich, already famous. Lots of people would be there. He didn't need us.
     That's not the point, I replied. Friends buy friends' books. It's a moral duty. They're splashing around in the lake, drowning, dying. You've got the rope. Throw them the rope.
     And because I'm a newspaper columnist, that adds an additional level of responsibility. Friends also promote friends' books, or try to. They at least look at them. Thus I found myself, with a bit of gee-I-hope-no-one-is-watching-me apprehension, sitting on the Metra 5:12, opening Carol Weston's new novel, Ava and Pip (Sourcebooks: $15.99). The novel is intended for junior high school girls, which kinda puts me out of its target demographic. No matter. I have known Carol for 32 years, since I walked into her lilac-colored farmhouse on North Ashbury Street in Evanston and rented a room to live in during my senior year at Northwestern — and what a glorious senior year it was, full of sophistication and fun, thanks to Carol and her husband, the playwright Robert Ackerman. Champagne brunches. Dinner parties. Drama. 
     Opening the book's package,  shrugging and sliding it on the shelf, unread, was just not something I was willing to do.
     "DEAR NEW DIARY," the book begins. "You won't believe what I just found out."
     What follows is a witty, warm, wonderful story about Ava, a smart 5th grader in a family addicted, as families sometimes are, to puns and wordplay and palindromes—words and phrases spelled the same way, backward and forward, such as the first man's introduction to the first woman in the Garden of Eden: "Madam I'm Adam." 
      I might have opened the book due to the obligations of friendship, but I kept reading on the book's own merits. I was drawn into Ava's world, her problematic older sister, Pip—why ARE older sisters always such trouble? Her well-intentioned dad, her too-busy mom. Especially her voice, her mind, the way Ava puts things. Here's her description of a boy new to school: "He has as many freckles as Pip and is the kind of boy who's cute if you're the kind of girl who notices. Which I'm not." I love those last three words; the girl doth protest too much, methinks.
      Reading a friend's book is obligatory—finishing is not. Books get started and set aside; I don't write about them all. I can't. I know a lot of writers and, besides, my internal value system is such that, if a book disappoints, I can't stand on a chair and sing its praises insincerely. That doesn't do anybody any favors. I remember my late pal, Jeff Zaslow, gingerly inquiring about The Girls From Ames. I had written about his previous books, but not that one. A silence. "Too many girls from Ames," I finally confessed, as kindly as I could. "I couldn't tell them apart." He seemed to understand. 
     So while I started the book out of one kind of duty, I finished it out of another—it's a good book, with real characters and a compelling story. I had to finish it. As with all good books, I was both eager to find out, and reluctant to have it over, noting with sorrow the dwindling pages. Maybe I don't read enough novels — the last one I read was The Circle by Dave Eggers. But I was charmed to spend time with the 5th grader created by Carol—the advice columnist at Girl's Life for 20 years, she knows of what she speaks—as Ava navigates her world of slumber parties and mean girls and a library writing contest she enters with a tale ... well, I don't want to give too much away.
     Lest my judgment be too constricted by the cords of friendship, whenever I write about a friend's book, I require myself to dig up a criticism, and with Ava and Pip, that is easily done: I thought things worked out perhaps a little too well, a little too neatly. Not to reveal the ending, but let's just say Ava isn't left weeping on her bedspread, neglected by her mother, nor do we see older sister Pip muscled into a straight jacket and dragged off to a mental hospital, writhing and screaming like Frances Farmer. Everybody turns out to be really nice, even supposed mean girl Bea. My impressions of family and school life and life in general are a bit more fraught and unresolved than what Carol presents, so if you are looking for Death of a Salesman, this ain't it. But few 5th grade girls are, I imagine, and I am sincere in that, in the flaw department, that was about all I could come up with. 

     Being a writer, I found the palindromes like little gifts, scattered throughout the book, and rather than puzzle you with a mysterious location today—which keep getting solved before I wake up on Saturday—I thought I'd share three examples from the book, represented by these three pictures. Had I been able to find a photo of some very old cats, I'd have gone with "Senile felines"— I think that was my favorite— but I couldn't, so I offer up these three. Your only hint: the guy in the white suit is Teddy Roosevelt. Figure them out—remember, your answer will be spelled the same, backward or forward—post the answers below, and the first one who gets all three correct will receive one of my blog's limited edition, hand-set, signed and numbered posters, which are going fast. Good luck.

Religious freedom doesn't mean being free to force people to follow your religion

   

     The arc of history bends toward freedom. If you want to understand what has happened over the past decades and centuries, what is happening now, keep that premise in mind. In the past, people were controlled by institutions, which dictated the details of their lives, telling them how to worship, work, dress, think, behave.

     Then gradually, individuals stood up and claimed the right to make those decisions.

     Look, to take one example from Chicago history, at Pullman, the South Side neighborhood that once was the company town for the Pullman Palace Car Co., which manufactured luxury railroad sleeping cars.

     If you worked for Pullman, you lived in Pullman’s town by Pullman’s rules. George Pullman chose the books in the library you could read; he decided what church you could attend. He didn’t like drinking, so residents could not buy liquor. The only bar was at the Florence Hotel, named for his daughter — the idea being that visitors might want to drink, but his workers could not.

     Few today would cast an envious eye on Pullman. We in the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook don’t say: “You know, Allstate is big here. Let’s let them decide what kind of birth control we use.” That wouldn’t fly.

     Yet, right now, in 2014, a case is being discussed by the United States Supreme Court whether Hobby Lobby, a chain of 500 arts and crafts stores, can decide for its 13,000 employees what kind of birth control they use. The company is required to provide health care under the Affordable Care Act and is trying to opt out because some employees would make decisions that are not in keeping with their employer’s religious beliefs. That is a given in most places, but the owners of Hobby Lobby consider it oppression.
     In case you think this matters only in far regions, there are 23 Hobby Lobby stores, plus one opening soon, within 50 miles of Chicago, and if the law goes in the company’s favor, it could affect not just employees but everyone with a boss.
     The company is owned by zealous Christians, who argue that by letting their employees have full health care coverage, which includes such contraception as IUDs and morning-after pills, which the company owners view as a kind of abortion, it would violate the company’s religious rights.
     The company’s religious rights. Versus the rights of the people employed by it.
     Wonder how the case will work out?
     Repeat after me: The arc of history bends toward freedom. (A familiar ring to that; maybe I’m channeling Martin Luther King’s “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” That too).
     Funny. If the issue were something far less significant — say, the type of toothpaste Hobby Lobby workers could use under their dental plan — there would be clarity, and the case would have been laughed out of court. But the issue becomes more clouded because it involves a religious scruple — abortion or, in this case, contraceptives — and because the restraint is being forced on women, a group whose rights are still open to debate.
     The women on the court see this clearly. Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked, could not employers object to any medical procedure: blood transfusions, say, or immunization?
     The Hobby Lobby lawyer said the courts would evaluate each case, which is no doubt true, and a glimpse of chaos.
     “So one religious group could opt out of this and another religious group could opt out of that, and nothing would be uniform,” Justice Elena Kagan observed.
     Exactly. There are many religions in this country. Some people are so in thrall to their own faith they forget that and try to claim that the nation should favor one, invariably their own, oblivious that to favor one would be to favor all. If a Muslim-owned company tried to insist its female employees wear veils, Hobby Lobby would respond in vibrating horror. Yet it would blithely force its own will on employees. Hypocrites.
     You don’t have to go back to Pullman’s day to find companies dictating the details of employees’ lives. If a flight attendant grew too old, or gained weight, or had children, an airline would simply fire her.
     Little by little, freedoms were won — first for men and, then, lately, obviously only partially, for women. The battle continues.
     This case is really very simple to decide. Ask this question: Should individuals be allowed to make their own religious choices? Or should their employers choose for them?
     A toughie, I know. It’s so hard to give others the freedom you demand for yourself.
     How does this end? Hobby Lobby loses. Maybe not this case, now, but eventually. Because, as I said at the start, the arc of history bends toward freedom.

I

Chicago Stuff You Don't Know #2: City Hall and the County Buildling

The County Building to the left, City Hall to the right.

     Things are not always what they appear in Chicago. The statue of Grant is in Lincoln Park, while Grant Park boasts a statue of Lincoln. If you're looking for the Wrigley Company, don't look in the Wrigley Building, Wrigley Field or Wrigleyville. It's now on the north end of Goose Island. Wacker Drive goes north, south, east and west. 
      It can get confusing. 
      When people say they're going to City Hall to get married, they're really going to the County Building—they're attached. The two buildings looks monolithic, a single structure comprising an entire city block, bounded by Randolph and Washington streets, to the north and south, and Clark and LaSalle, to the east and west.  
     But they aren't. They are actually two completely separate mirror image buildings, built at different times.
      Approach from the northeast and you'll see a cornerstone that says "ANNO DOMINI 1906" -- the County Building, built first, after its predecessor, one day in 1905, suddenly sank 10 inches, ruptured its gas lines and exploded, due to shoddy construction from corrupt, corner-cutting contractors. Its replacement was built and occupied before the City Hall was even begun -- you can see its cornerstone on the southwest, that says "ANNO DOMINI 1909."  Though identical, the County Building cost 50 percent more to construct.
     The whole often mind-boggling story is laid out in a surprisingly good book, Glory and Government: Chicago's City Hall 100, by Edward M Burke and Thomas J. O'Gorman (Horto Press).  Chicago's City Hall has been on that spot, at the corner of Randolph and LaSalle, since the 1840s. And while Burke—yes, that Ed Burke, the city's longest serving alderman—and O'Gorman can be entertaining about the scandals and corruption of years past, for some reason, when they reach the present day, a certain discreet silence settles over them.   To be expected, I suppose. 
     

Chicago Stuff You Don't Know #1: The naked baby

    Last November, I was writing a profile of Rahm Emanuel for Esquire, so spent time sitting around the mayor's outer office, waiting to see him. Eventually, after sifting through the boostery pamphlets scattered around and chatting up the cops and bodyguards who were also waiting, my attention was be drawn to the Seal of the City of Chicago, a big disc of bronze behind the security desk. It is the usual melange of symbols that must have appealed to early 19th century types: an Indian, peering off into the distance, a ship under full sail, a sheaf of wheat, a shield, a Latin phrase ("Urbs in Horto" or "City in a Garden"). All ordinary and expected.
    But one feature seemed downright strange. Right at the top center, floating above the

rest: a baby. A naked baby on an open shell. A massive helmet of hair on the tot, but a baby nonetheless. What's with that? Venus as a infant, perhaps? No digging was necessary to solve the baby mystery. The plaque to the lower left spills the beans: "The Nude Babe In The Shell Is the Ancient And Classical Symbolism Of the Pearl, And Chicago, Situated At The Neck Of The Lake, Signifies That It Shall Be 'The Gem Of The Lakes.'"
    Okay then. And you thought the online world had capitalization problems.
    Not everything about the seal is on the plaque. When it was created, at the city's founding in 1837, the design committee named by William B. Ogden, the city's first mayor, explained that the ship symbolizes "the approach of white man's civilization and commerce." (A reminder that symbolism has always been a high priority in Chicago, often to our eventual detriment. It isn't as if Ed Burke invented the practice). The ship must have somehow must have come to the attention of aldermen Allan Streeter and Robert Shaw—perhaps while waiting to see Harold Washington— who in 1987 condemned the ship for representing "institutionalized racism." (As opposed to the more individualized racism practiced by a guy like Shaw, currently running a Quixotic campaign for mayor, who once told the Chicago Defender that a white person should not lead Chicago because whites "don't know how to be fair"). The two demanded the ship be replaced with a cameo of Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the black man who was Chicago's first permanent settler. Never happened. 
    Still, the seal could use a makeover. The City Council might want to appoint a committee. Sign me up. I see some kind of bold graphic blue and white "C" set against a neon background.  Or, better, scrap the rest and just keep the baby. People love babies. But lose the strange hairdo. 
    This baby-on-the-city-seal business is not the most practical information, true, but you never know when it may come in handy.
    "Honey, guess what!!! We're going to have a baby!" 
     "Funny you should mention babies—did you know that there is a baby, nude, in repose, and resting on an oyster shell, on the official seal of the ..."
    Well, maybe not.