Defeating ISIS one mom at a time

Zarine Khan/AP photo

     The mother of the accused can be safely ignored.
     Usually.
     All those outraged “Not my baby!” protests.
     The inevitable “I know he’s innocent” oaths, dripping with ginned-up indignation.
     They must seem powerful when the mothers of boys gone wrong are saying them, with tears and nods.
     And the media passes it along as if it means something.
     But there is always an unspoken dismissive “uh-huh,” a tongue click: Maybe mom, we think, if you were paying more attention, then Junior wouldn’t be duck-walked through 26th and California in shackles, and you wouldn’t have to tell the indifferent world what a good kid he is and how he couldn’t have done what all the evidence points toward him doing.
     With most moms of the accused, this is true.
     Now Zarine Khan is a different case.
     Mother of Mohammed Hamzah Khan, the Bolingbrook teen who in the fall managed to retire the 2014 prize for Top Suburban Youthful Screwup, leaping over being caught with a joint or wrecking the car or missing his curfew, and landing straight into the realm of treason as he was arrested at O’Hare on his way to join the Islamic State group.

       If you don't recall, in October, Khan, 19, his 17-year-old sister and 16-year-old brother were blocked from boarding a plane to Vienna, on their way to Istanbul, then to Syria to help with the beheadings and civilian massacres that the Islamic State is committing in the name of Islam.
     "An Islamic State has been established and it is thus obligatory upon every able-bodied male and female to migrate there," Khan wrote in the note he left behind. "Muslims have been crushed under foot for too long. ... This nation is openly against Islam and Muslims. ... I do not want my progeny to be raised in a filthy environment like this."
     He was charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. On Tuesday, Khan pleaded not guilty.
     Expected. But the really interesting statement was made by his mother, in the lobby of the Dirksen Federal Building:
     "As parents we feel compelled to speak out about the recent events in Paris, where we saw unspeakable acts of horror perpetrated by the recruiters for jihadist groups in the name of Islam," she said. "The venom spewed by these groups and the violence committed by them find no support in the Quran and are completely at odds with our Islamic faith.
     "We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms. We condemn the brutal tactics of ISIS and groups like it. And we condemn the brainwashing and the recruiting of children through the use of social media and Internet."
     Normally, I consider demands for Islamic condemnation of terror an insult to the world's 1.6 billion Muslims. Chicagoans weren't called upon to denounce John Wayne Gacy, to prove they weren't in sympathy. Yet whenever there's an Islamic radical attack, those who fear Muslims anyway demand some sort of collective denouncement from them, as a body, a situation best summed up by Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations in Chicago.
     "We are held account for the choices of the worst among us," he said, pointing out that one of the attackers of the kosher market in Paris and a bystander who tried to help were both African Muslims.
     "Should the guy who saved lives have to apologize for the guy shooting?" Rehab asked.
     But the situation with mothers, and fathers, is different.
     It is possible to discount what Zarine Kahn said. She is, after all, the mother of a teen facing years in prison. And I would never suggest she is heroic for saying that.
     But that process - speaking out against this - is important for the parents of other teens, who certainly might harbor feelings such as those that sent Mohammed Khan packing. A million French in the street is one piece of the puzzle getting us toward the world that most of us want to inhabit. And mothers against the romantic lure of jihad, both in public and in private, is another.
     Zarine Kahn is not the only one; her desperate situation made her brazen. But many parents are in a similar desperate situation and might not even know it. They, too, need to speak to their children. As a parent of a 17- and a 19-year-old myself, I know that they don't always seem to be listening. In fact, sometimes it seems they're never listening.
     But some part of them is listening. And the message sinks in.

Puppetry Week #3: The persistence of puppet opera

 

Photos from "Faust," above, and "Lakme," atop blog, courtesy of Opera in Focus.

      Puppetry Week hit a speed bump today. I had a thoughtful conversation with Blair Thomas, founder of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, all set to go, when my boss asked me Tuesday afternoon to weigh in on the latest developments of this Bolingbrook teen who tried to fly to Turkey and join ISIS.
     I considered replying, “But my puppetry opus is ready!” But that didn’t seem the path of the hardened journalist, and since the paper hasn’t run the puppet story yet—I’m shooting for Friday—it wouldn’t be right to post it here first and scoop my own paper.
     So, to keep the week going, I’ve disinterred this 2010 visit to one of the oddest landmarks of Chicago puppetry, Opera in Focus, a rod puppet operation improbably located in Rolling Meadows. No pictures, alas. I’ll post the kid-in-trouble column at 6 a.m. If you want to learn more about Opera in Focus, you can click here. Its season begins Feb. 4 with, fittingly, a program that includes "Aida."
     Whew.

     Opera is a grand art form, and Verdi's "Aida" is the grandest opera 
of all, a tale of forbidden love amongst the pyramids. Its 
Triumphal March is opera's famed flourish, a pageant that sometimes 
includes chariots, horsemen and live elephants.
     So when I heard that not only is opera performed by puppets in 
Rolling Meadows, but in May the show on the 4-foot-wide stage was 
"Aida," I had to be there.
     Chicagoans of a certain age will remember the Kungsholm Miniature 
Grand Opera, performed at a Swedish restaurant at Rush and Ontario. 
That closed in 1971, but puppeteer Bill Fosser, who began working 
at Kungsholm at 14 in 1943, continued the tradition. He kept his 
Opera in Focus going at various storefronts, and even in a Magic 
Pan restaurant, until his puppets found a permanent home in the 
basement of the Rolling Meadows Park District headquarters in 1993.
     This "Aida" was abbreviated, but still over two hours long, with 
four intermissions, plenty of time to wonder: a) exactly how did 
Rolling Meadows become the permanent host to puppet opera? And b) 
how did this blending of puppetry and song -- unique in the world, 
apparently -- find new enthusiasts after Fosser's death in 2006?
     In the early 1990s, Rolling Meadows was looking for ways to spur 
cultural interest -- courting a children's museum, a youth theater, 
waging a "battle" with Park Ridge over the puppet opera.
     "I had just been assigned by city of Rolling Meadows to work on 
economic development, and we had nothing in the form of 
entertainment," said Linda Liles Ballantine, executive director of 
the chamber of commerce, who had read about the puppets. "I 
happened to say to the city manager, 'Oh shoot, this would be 
something unique.' "
     Unique it is. As tempted as I am to assume a straight face, hold up 
the puppet "Aida" to the Lyric's and find it wanting ("The artistic 
decision to present a recorded 'Aida' using only four puppets 
underscores the Lyric's wisdom in using a full orchestra and 100 
live singers . . ."), the truth is, it is beyond critique, a visual 
and musical gem in a separate realm of sweetness that you either 
appreciate or you don't.
     My wife loved it. "This is such a little treasure," she said. I'm a 
harder case, so did recall Samuel Johnson's line about women 
preachers and dancing dogs -- the issue isn't whether it's done 
well, "but you are surprised to find it done at all." That said, I 
was charmed by the effort.
     The puppets are not marionettes, but rod puppets, operated from 
below, 16 inches tall and finely crafted, with lush costumes.
     Wisely, every half hour there is an intermission, with a spread of 
food—hors d'oeuvres, cookies, candy and pop—in the small lobby. 
My boys appreciated that.
     Afterward, the puppeteers invite the audience backstage, so you can 
see how they maneuver the puppets, while sitting on low rolling 
chairs, and view their work room, with sets and costumes and 
puppets from other operas at the ready.
     You also meet the puppeteers -- brothers Justin and Shayne Snyder, 
Barry Southerland and Leilani Narcisco. All in their 20s, it is 
remarkable to find a quartet of young people devoting themselves to 
this obscure realm of low-tech entertainment. Why?
     "To keep the tradition alive," said Narcisco.
     "We do what we do because we love it!" said Justin Snyder, who was 
an apprentice under Fosser and got the others involved. "It's a 
labor of love. We're the last remnant of a beautiful art form that 
is unique to Chicago."
     That they are. Unlike the Lyric, which, like an exhausted bear, 
hibernates half the year, Opera in Focus performs year-round, if 
sometimes sporadically and not usually single operas, but 
highlights. Call to make reservations -- (847) 818-3220, ext. 186. 
Adult tickets are $12, a buck less for seniors, children are $7.
        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 31, 2010

"Make not Allah's name an excuse"

     The first issue of Charlie Hebdo published after last week's massacre is coming out tomorrow, and in recognition of the free speech it represents, I thought I would dig this column out of my files. I wrote it March 30, 2006, when Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll was released after nearly three months of captivity in Baghdad. 
     But it was never published. 
     Reading the Quran had seemed like a good idea. All sorts of bad things were being done in the name of Islam—a driver had just plowed an SUV into a crowd and credited the Quran. So going to the source struck me as being worth trying. I tried to be moderate and respectful.
     My editor refused to print it, I remember him spooling out a variety of objections: I wasn't a religion expert.  I wasn't putting the Bible under similar scrutiny. 
     But it was bullshit; he was just afraid. 
    There was a lot of that going around, then and now. Despite all the "I am Charlie" bluster, the media have become timid on this subject, out of fear. 
     An unnecessary fear, I believe. Nobody is going to come kill you. Charlie Hebdo was an aberration. Not the new rule, or at least not a rule I care to live under. 
     The thing about a blog is, there's no editor, no permission to get, no one to blame for timidity. I'm posting the original column now because there's nothing objectionable in it. Not that person couldn't in theory object, but I don't write for that person. The only change I made is that originally I called the book the "Koran," but common usage is now "Quran" or "Qu'ran." The subheads are because the column ran over a full page.
     
     Opening shot
     "Fight in the cause of Allah..." the Quran tells us. "But do not transgress limits, for Allah loveth not transgressors."
     Thus not only should the West celebrate the freeing of Jill Carroll, the reporter held captive in Iraq for the past three months, but Muslims should be pleased as well, as her release is in keeping with their faith as laid out in their holy book.  
    Or as the commentary to the lines above elaborates: "War is permissible in self-defense, and under well-defined limits...Strict limits must not be transgressed: women, children, old and infirm men should not be molested."

     Go to the Source
     Like most non-Muslims, I had never read the Quran. Never considered reading it. Then a North Carolina man drove his sport utility vehicle into a crowd, injuring nine people, and justified his actions by citing the Quran.
     "Allah gives permission in the Quran for the followers of Allah to attack those who have waged war against them, with the expectation of eternal paradise in case of martyrdom and/or living one's life in obedience of all of Allah's commandments found throughout the Quran's 114 chapters," he said.
     Somehow, I doubted that the Holy Book of Islam tells believers to plow their SUVs blindly into crowds. But I really didn't know, because I had never read it and had no idea what it says, a void that called out for correction.
     So I trekked to the library, perched like a gleaming white spaceship in our leafy suburban paradise. As with the Bible, there turns out to be numerous editions and translations of the Quran, and I picked over them.
     While I was inclined toward a paperback version, for portability, my sense of aesthetics forced me to selected, despite its heft, a big royal blue, ornately decorated copy, in English and Arabic,
    "The Holy Qur-an, revised and edited by The Presidency of Islamic researchers, IFTA," printed in Saudi Arabia and donated by the Islamic Cultural Center in Northbrook—a good omen, as I've been a guest there for prayers, and as pleasant a bunch of regular, peaceful folk trying to live their lives and practice their faith you can't ask for. It also had a blue ribbon, for marking one's place. I like those ribbons.  
     I must admit, as I stood comparing the various versions longer than necessary, I realized I was hesitating. I was afraid. I tend to take a joshing view of life, and a joshing view of the Quran can get a person killed. Give credit to the respect-us-or-you're-dead approach to faith: it works.
    It struck me there were reasons for a certain respectful approach. As anyone who has ever read the Bible knows, it is filled with harsh assessments about people being stoned and cast into lakes of fire, and it would not be fair to view someone else's scriptures with a literalness that we don't view our own—except that the old Judeo-Christian ethic hasn't been stoning Sabbath-breakers much lately, having slipped into a more go-along-to-get-along approach. Since at least part of the Islamic world hasn't quite joined us there yet, it makes sense to at least see what's motivating some of them.
     Resolving to be as serious as possible—admitting at the get-go that I'm not scholar—I checked out a copy.
    I knew I had done the right thing when, arriving home, my wife seized the book and began eagerly reading it herself. For at least half an hour. She had never sen one before. I finally pried it away form her, and began to read myself. 
     The Quran begins like this:
    "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the World's Most Gracious, Most Merciful; Master of the Day of Judgement."
    So far so good.
     Grace. Mercy—twice each. That's a promising start. The most noteworthy thing, to me, is that while the Bible begins by addressing the question, "Who are we and where did we come from?" the Quran takes great pains to define who Muslims are not, separating themselves from unbelievers—Christians and Jews—though the initial treatment begins benignly enough.
     "Those who believe (in the Qur-an) and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures) and the Christians and the Sabians, any who believe in Allah, and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord on them, shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve."
     No fear, no grieving—I'm all for that. But it doesn't stop there. Christians and Jews, while showing initial promise, are quickly shown as betraying their own faiths and losing the right to exist, their legacies taken over by Muslims.
    Jews, basically, deserve what they get:

Miserable is the price
For which they have sold
Their souls, in that they
Deny (the revelation)
Which Allah has sent down
In insolent envy that Allah
Of His Grace should send it
To any of His servants He pleases:
Thus have they drawn
On themselves Wrath upon Wrath.
And humiliating Chastisement
Of those who reject Faith.

None of this 'Son of God' stuff
     Christianity hardly fares better—its very existence is an insult to Islam.
    "They say: 'Allah hath begotten a son, Glory be to Him.' Nay, to Him belongs all that is in heavens and on earth; everything readers worship to Him."  
     A footnote to that passage explains: "it is a derogation from the glory of Allah—in fact, it is blasphemy—to say that Allah gets sons, like a man or an animal. The Christian doctrine is here emphatically repudiated. If words have any meaning, it would mean an attribution to Allah of a material nature, and of the lower animal functions of sex."

Don't be pals with other faiths
     The official, American administration, rose-tinted-glasses view of Islam is that terror is an aberration, and while there is support for that, as mentioned above, there is also plenty to back up the idea of a besieged Islam battling a hostile world.:

Never will the Jews
Or the Christians be satisfied
With thee unless thou follow
Their form of religion 

     I haven't found anything about plowing your sport utility vehicle into crowds—but I've read only the first 100 pages, with a couple thousand left to go. Some of it is tough sledding, but given how the conflict between Islam and the West has defined the past five years, and might very well define the next 50, it seems worth trying.
     My hunch is that like the Bible, like the Torah, like technology, or any other human artifact, the Quran can be used for good, or can be used for evil, depending on what is in a person's heart.
     Even the Quran seems to recognize this, and to speak to those who might have argued in favor of cutting off Jill Carroll's head instead of releasing her:

Make not Allah's name an excuse in your oaths against doing good or acting rightly. 
Or making peace between persons; 
for Allah is One who heareth and knoweth all things.

    No argument here.

     
   

Puppetry Week #2: Puppet Helps Deliver Baby

     With the International Puppet Theater Festival beginning Wednesday, I'm presenting Puppetry Week on Everygoddamnday.com, looking at aspects of this often-ignored art. Today's is a more personal tale, which could have been titled: "How Do You Make a Woman Laugh During Childbirth?"

     There are four things I remember about Lamaze class.
     First, we all had to bring pillows, to help position the pregnant mothers-to-be and make them comfortable. But toting the pillows added a strangely apt sleepover/kindergarten vibe to the experience, of a dozen or so couples meeting in a hospital conference room, the women large-bellied, the men, beetle-browed, trying to focus, clutching pillows.
     Second, there were several breathing mantras ground into us so thoroughly that I can repeat them today: "Ah-hee, ah-hee, a-hee, ah-blow!" Almost like sailor shanties, now that I set one down. Designed to keep the woman breathing during the pain of contractions. Breathing is important. We spent a lot of time practicing this.
     Third, there was a lot of talk of things that could go wrong. Which was supposed to help prepare us, to be ready for any complication, which childbirth can certainly serve up. But these precautions also terrified us. Terrified me anyway. I remember thinking Lamaze was like driver's ed: they're supposed to be teaching you how to make a left turn, instead they're showing you movies of mangled bodies being pried out of wrecks. Gee thanks, State of Ohio Department of Transportation. I don't think our Lamaze instructor actually showed us a video entitled "Coping With the Death of Your New Baby." But that's the sense I took away from some of these scenarios.
     And fourth, the focal point. You were supposed to bring in a tangible object that the woman could concentrate on while pushing, while breathing. I have no idea how that helped, or why a thumb wouldn't do, but they told us to bring something, and we did. It didn't matter what. I suggested we use a hand puppet, so I could make the puppet deliver Lamaze instructions to her in a falsetto puppet voice. But she made a face, and we didn't have a hand puppet, so we settled on a small, sort of phallic orange toy dinosaur that I won as a consolation prize at a fair, if I recall properly. Stuffed, a few inches high. 
     We used the dinosaur. "A hand puppet would really work much better," I'd say, now and then, and she'd roll her eyes, because that was stupid. 
      In the weeks leading up to her delivery date, we prepared, laid in supplies, got a backpack filled with clothes and essentials. On Broadway there was a toy store, "Toyscape," that carried the high end playthings we Boomers loved. No Barbie dolls, but tin wind-up toys and imported Swedish trucks and handmade knit items. I picked up this pink-nosed hand puppet whom I dubbed, in my mind, "Mayor McCheese," even though he looks nothing like the McDonald's character. I think because of the top hat; it gave him an air of officialdom.
     I did not show the puppet to my wife, but tucked him into a pocket of the backpack.
     Now it is Oct. 25, 1995, the day our oldest son Ross was born, or will be born, as soon as my wife can get him out. We've had to rush to hospital because my wife picked one way the heck up in Evanston and I stupidly went to work to cover a bus tragedy in Fox River Grove—she was having contractions, but we figured it was a false alarm. It wasn't.  We raced to the hospital, just barely got Edie to the emergency room (the advice I give to prospective mothers is, if they find themselves in an ER but not receiving the immediate service they expect, drop to their hands and knees and let out a scream: it focuses the hospital staff's attention magnificently).
      We were rushed to a room, where labor began in earnest. Edie paced around a bit, but as the big moment approached, and she had to start getting this baby out in earnest, I whipped out this ridiculous puppet.
     "Now we're going to count to three and push!" I had the puppet say, in a high, piping voice, out of the corner of my mouth, waggling his white felt hands for emphasis.
     Edie laughed.
     Over the 32 years we've known one another, I've made my wife laugh many times during a wide variety of circumstances. It's why she married me, she always says. But I think that one laugh, guffawed through clenched teeth behind damp hair hanging in her face, is the one I'm most proud of. Of course, I can't take all the credit. The puppet helped too. 
     

The Don Quixote of the Highway Sign

     

     Steven J. Bahnsen is on time, of course. His 2009 Chevy Cobalt with 329,000 miles on it pulls up in front of the newspaper at exactly the appointed hour.
     "I'm a man that's on time," he says.
     Bahnsen is also a man who knows how to file a Freedom of Information request, how to comb public records and master federal guidelines, how to attend public meetings, persist with government officials and nag media representatives.
     He also gives a good tour.
     "I'm looking for Interstate 90/94. Where is it?" he demands, as we sweep toward the expressway.
     I point out a green "90/94" sign just up ahead, to the left.
    "That's one of the signs," he replies. "They're supposed to have a sign that says 'Junction 90/94' before it. You don't just pop up all of a sudden and say, here's an interstate. You're supposed to have a sign that says there's a junction there."
     A fine distinction perhaps, but you are not Steven Bahnsen, a man in relentless pursuit of his passion: to make sure that the street signs of Chicago are exactly as they should be. It's a big job: in 2014, IDOT repaired or replaced 35,000 street signs and installed another 3,000 new ones.
     We are on our way to Englewood.

     "The bulk of these are on the South Side," he says of missing and deficient signs.
     "Why the South Side?" I ask.
     "Why does the South Side get garbage all the time?" replies Bahnsen, who lives at Michigan and 29th Street.
     Bahnsen is 62. He wears a coat and tie, a blue raincoat and a fedora. Born in Iowa, he has a well-developed sense of How Things Should Be, maintaining a simmering indignation over a variety of government lapses that most people barely notice. Nor are missing signs the only official misdeeds that stick in his craw. Chicago Police driving their squads in Schiller Park, which is definitely not in Chicago, is another. He mentions it several times.
     Bahnsen is no stranger to government himself; a retired postal carrier, he navigates the city effortlessly.
     "I delivered mail in Garfield Park," he says. "Once you can handle that, you can handle anything. The rest of the city is Disneyland."
     Not that he is engaged in a purely altruistic pursuit. At some point, his sense of personal grievance, built up over years of pursuit of the quest, competes with the quest itself.
     "There are two factors at play here," he says. "One is the bad signs. The other is IDOT's attitude about me. It's a toss-up about which one is worse."
     And what is that attitude?
     "We are discussing a letter instructing him to cease all contact with IDOT," William R. Frey, then-acting director of highways at IDOT, now retired, wrote on Dec. 5, 2011, in an email obtained by Bahnsen through an FOI request. "His claims are frivolous, take up staff time and cost the taxpayers money. He's been doing this for years."
     Forty years, according to Bahnsen.
     In an hour with him, I did not find outrageous signage voids. More like missing details. An "Exit" sign on the Ryan that's supposed to include the exit number. Vague signage pointing out an expressway obviously in front of you.
     Although he does have a point about all the signs pointing to the "22nd Street" exit on the Dan Ryan. "There is no 22nd Street!" he exudes, almost joyously. "It's Cermak Road!"
     The name was changed in 1933: apparently not everyone has gotten word.
     The Illinois Tollway is also on the receiving end of Bahnsen's endless queries, though it doesn't have a problem with Bahnsen.
     "We've been corresponding with Mr. Bahnsen since 2011 on the placement of exit signs on the Tollway," says Wendy Abrams, chief of communications for the Tollway, calling Bahnsen "helpful." "He has been a patient and persistent advocate—writing to us from time to time and attending public meetings."
      Bahlsen never tires of pointing out the problem.
     "Now this is 31st Street," he says. "Say you're coming from the west on 31st. And you were told to take I-94 to go downtown. What do you do? Where do I turn? Are there any signs for I-94? There used to be [signs] over there but they got knocked down and they won't put them back up."
     Why is this important to him?
     "It just shows to me the way government's not working," he says.
     As reluctant as I am to invite so diligent a man into my world, I have to admit that I like Bahnsen, though I could see that changing as the years wore on. Most people care about themselves only: their jobs, their family. Rare is the person who cares about much beyond themselves, and then it is a passing, hobbyist interest. To care deeply about something as abstract as proper highway signage, well, I'd say that there is a certain purity to it, one that demands respect, if not awe. Yes, what Steven J. Bahnsen cares about passionately might strike you as trivial. But what do you care about that's more important? Not only care about, but act upon? What?

Puppetry Week #1: "Puppets are fighting for respect"

     

Cynthia VonOrthal displays a shadow puppet at her puppetry studio in Evanston.

     Puppets are the ambassadors of the obscure and the uncanny. The history of the art form is "easier researched in police records than in theater chronicles" according to Peter Schumann, founder of the Bread and Puppet Theater, an entertainment forever mired in "its own secret and demeaning stature."
     Puppets are by definition low-tech: if there isn't a person with his hand up that sock, or manipulating those strings, or running the show somewhere, then it isn't really a puppet, it's a doll or a robot.     

     This odd subcellar of culture, part sculpture, part folk art, part vaudeville, also has personal appeal to me. There is a kinship between journalism and puppetry. Both require dedicated craftsmen, albeit in dwindling numbers, practicing a profession that neither thrives nor vanishes, but somehow remains perpetually defunct. Both are rough simulacra of life; both had some legendary moment in the cultural spotlight in the hazy past—Hayden composed puppet operas for the royal court, a popular puppet dinner theater was steps off Michigan Avenue—but now linger on in the margins, practiced by various oddballs and misfits. I've never told anybody who asks me what I do for a living that I'm a puppeteer, but were I to, I'm certain it would be met with the exact same blank look. mixing pity and indifference, that "newspaper columnist" elicits.

     My take on puppets wasn't always so complicated. When I first joined the paper, puppets were merely the kind of marginality that caught my interest. I would flip through the phone book, looking for strange subjects to write about. A scribe. Chicago's last coal hauler. I was entranced that there was a Chicago Puppetry Guild, and a number of puppet theaters, which led to this article 20 years ago. I didn't even have any kids yet.

     On Wednesday, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival kicks off in Chicago. And while theatrical puppetry has an airiness that I generally shun—I'd rather see a "Punch and Judy" show on a portable stage in a public park than "Oedipus Rex" performed by marionettes at the Goodman—I thought I would dub this week "Puppetry Week" on EGDD and feature a puppetry-related post every day for the next seven days. I will talk to the festival's founder, attend what events I can, publishing new stories and photos and reprinting old articles written over the years about Chicago puppetry.

     I'll also remind you of recent puppet posts, such as my visit to the deeply-strange Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky over the summer.

     And for those who just can't bear the prospect of that much puppetry, I won't neglect the non-puppeting world: Monday's column from the Sun-Times will be posted here at 12 noon, and each afternoon of Puppetry Week, I'll make sure there is an update from elsewhere. But at least give the puppet stuff a nibble. It's a surprisingly compelling realm, or so I've long thought. 

     As always, thanks for bearing with me. 


      You've probably never seen one of Dave Herzog's marionettes take a bow. It does not snap forward at the waist, jerkily, the way the adjective "puppetlike" would suggest. 
    

     Rather, the bow is a graceful sweep downward, head inclined just so, with one hand fluttering modestly in the vicinity of the mouth, the other trailing behind, arched, a bit of suppressed theatricality. 
    

     Many might be surprised to still find puppets at all—bowing, juggling, leaping, dancing - in the small AnimArt Puppet Theater on North Kedzie, one of half a dozen puppet theaters and troupes making a living in Chicago. 
    

     The puppets, today a circus of mice, go through their paces in front of 60 squealing, delighted schoolchildren who, despite the deadening impact of video games and VCRs and cable television, still enjoy this ancient entertainment. 
     
     "Puppetry is probably the oldest theatrical art form in the world," said Herzog, also is president of the 75-member Chicagoland Puppetry Guild. "There is not any culture in the world, any race of people that does not have a form of puppetry." 
     
     The children are first- and second-graders, prime age for most puppet audiences. 
    

     "The performance window is getting much smaller; by the time they are 9, 10 years old, they have been exposed to so much high-tech entertainment that anything requiring the use of imagination has less appeal to them," said Herzog. "Puppets are not high-tech." 
    

     Yet puppetry is not just for children. The first thing a puppeteer will tell you — after explaining that, no, these puppets are not store-bought, they are meticulously handcrafted — is that puppetry is an art that can be enjoyed by adults. 
    

     "Puppets are fighting for respect," said Michael Schwabe, artistic director of Hystopolis Puppet Theatre, 441 W. North. While kiddie shows are the theater's "bread and butter," Hystopolis also performs work for grown-ups: plays such as Elmer Rice's "The Adding Machine," or its new production, "King Ubu" by the French surrealist Alfred Jarre. 
    

     Bill Henderson, president of AnimArt, is working on the production of an evening of Becket plays. He admits that the notion of puppetry as kiddie entertainment is difficult to overcome. 
    

     "I once did a production of Ibsen's `Peer Gynt,' and people would call up wanting to bring their children," he said. "I would tell them that the opening scene is a rape, that there is full frontal nudity, and they would say: `It's a puppet show; I'm bringing my kids.' " 
    

     The very adult taste of opera is the sole repertoire of William Fosser's "Opera in Focus," a lush production of fantastically detailed puppets acting out famous operas on a splendid gilded stage. 
    

     Fosser was once artistic director of the Kungsholm Miniature Grande Opera, which Chicagoans of a certain age will remember as having once occupied the space where Lawry's restaurant is today. Kungsholm closed in 1971, and Fosser went on to a career in movie set design, on such films as "The Sting" and "Home Alone." But after retiring from the movie business he revived the puppet opera, which has now found a home, a bit incongruously, in the basement of the Park District building in Rolling Meadows. 
    

     After each performance, Fosser leads the audience backstage, where elaborate Egyptian costumes from "Aida" wait on tiny mannequins, and sets from "La Boheme" are protected by custom-made twill dust covers. 
    

     "I'm interested in their realizing this is an art form, and what goes into it," said Fosser, 65. "Some say the trip backstage is as exciting as the performance." 
    

     A puppet endures a lot of wear and tear—once, during "Lohengrin," the swan's head fell off in mid-performance. Constant maintenance is essential. 
    

      Before an afternoon practice run-through of "Faust," 
Fosser's assistant, Paul Guerra, carefully applies clear nail polish to Cho-Cho-San, the heroine from "Madame Butterfly." 
    

     "That way," he explains, evenly, lest his hand shake, "when the light catches her just right, people swear the lips move." 
    

     As much as Herzog, Henderson, Fosser and Guerra have to scrape by to make a living, they are the puppetry elite in the sense that they have permanent spaces to perform. 
    

      The majority of puppeteers are like Steven Finnegan, traveling to birthday parties, church picnics and senior centers. 
    

     "It's a dying breed. If I had to just make my living as a puppeteer I probably couldn't do it," said Finnegan, 45. "I'm also a clown." 
    

     Finnegan said he wished that parents looking to entertain their children would consider puppets, instead of automatically turning to magicians and clowns. 
    

     "Think about clowns," said Finnegan. "There are a zillion clowns and all of them work. I know a guy who charges $120 to bounce around in a Barney costume. I come in, set up a theater and a sound system and do a full production for 45 minutes — a much better entertainment value — and I can only charge $135 for a birthday party." 
  

      "People don't understand that it's a profession," said Herzog. 
                                                   

                     —Originally published in the Sun-Times May 29, 1994

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"Life Never Becomes Dull..."

     A Medill student came by my office the other day to research a paper—drawn, I was amused to note, not through the column, but through the blog—and asked why I became a writer. I thought about being a kid, staring out the window of Fairwood Elementary School, bored and trying to conjure up wonders to distract myself. I told him that I became a writer because I was trying to keep life interesting. 

      As I got older, however, I realized that life is always interesting. Endlessly complex and fascinating. It is we who either notice it or, all too frequently, don't.

      That is the theme of the 2015 Everygoddamnday.com poster, which I am happy to unveil. Like last year's, it was produced by Hatch Show Print of Nashville, Tennessee, with the help of Carl, one of their six, count 'em, six steampunk designers on staff.  I should also give a thanks to James Smith, our own award-winning designer at the newspaper. I assumed I would change the color scheme this year—shake it up—particularly after a reader objected that the black-and-red made him think of the Nazi flag.

One of my favorite spots, the Book Bin, 1151 Church St.
in Northbrook, was the first place to display the poster.

      But James argued against that, conjuring up McDonald's and the value of consistency in branding. Works for them, or did. So black and red it is, at least for another year.

     While last year I did get them up in store windows around Chicago, I balked at actually pasting them to walls outdoors—except outside Powell's Books in Hyde Park, which encourages it. It's harder to actually do that than you might expect, and after I passed a guy on a stepladder, vigorously taking a razor blade to a handbill stuck to a brick wall in an alley, I realized: everywhere belongs to somebody, and I wouldn't want anyone to see one of these posters and think, "Oh shit." 

      But I see areas in Wicker Park that are crammed with posters—it seems permitted—and I'm going to make greater effort to get more up this year. As with last year, if you have a business, a place of public accommodation, and want one, let me know and I'll not only send you one, I'll post a picture of it on display in your establishment. Publicity for the both of us. 

You can still buy the old one

    Otherwise, you can also buy them. I've decided to keep the price the same—a reasonable $15, plus $6 for shipping and handling. The poster will arrive in a handsome, sturdy, re-usable cardboard tube manufactured right here in the city at Chicago Mailing Tube, 400 North Levitt. 

     Mail your check to Neil Steinberg, 2000 Center Ave., Northbrook, IL 60062. The poster is suitable for framing, and I've appreciated when readers have sent me photos of their photos, decorating their libraries and dens. 

    I thought perhaps I should stop selling the old posters, out of principle, but I've still got a few, and so those will remain on sale for the time being.  

     I think the new poster conveys a useful message. Life is a long time (as T.S. Eliot said). Its joy and fascination can sometimes fade, particularly as the years grind on. It is incumbent upon ourselves, if we want to lead happy lives, to realize it is ourselves, not life, that occasionally loses its edge, and thus we need to renew ourselves, to sharpen ourselves. I like to think this blog can help in that process. I know I need it.

The poster in the window of Turn The Tables, a delightful upscale consignment furniture shop at 1955 Cherry Lane in Northbrook that also features the lovely refinishing work of its co-owner, Melly Schwartz.