Check your attic: any Rembrandts?

 

Rembrandt, "Christ in the Storm," stolen March 18, 1990

    Today is the 25th anniversary of the largest art theft in United States history, the looting of the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston. I have a special interest in the crime, as I visited the museum five years before it was robbed, even though at the time I found it a "weird, debilitating collection of dark, gilt baroque pieces, artlessly assembled in dim corridors and mocked by bright flowers assembled in hideous inner courtyard like Sears Garden Center." I still like the place, and went back when I was touring the East Coast with the family, to gaze sadly at the empty frames the museum keeps hung in their places, waiting for their masterpieces back. The FBI marked the anniversary by saying it is closing in on the culprits, but we've heard that before. This is from 1997, when I met with Dr. Walter McCrone, "the Father of Modern Microscopy," to investigate some potential clues. Dr. McCrone died in 2002.

The saga of the biggest art heist in modern history made a pit stop in Chicago last week, in the form of a thimble's worth of paint flecks arriving under escort at the Michigan Avenue laboratory of Dr. Walter McCrone.      The flecks may or may not be from a pair of Rembrandts that were slashed from their frames by two crooks who strolled into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum dressed as policemen seven years ago and strolled out with $300 million worth of art, including works by Degas, Manet and Vermeer.      If you're not the sort who haunts art museums, then Isabella Stewart Gardner might sound like the name of just another rich benefactress. She was, but an especially charming and egocentric one. She handed over her mansion, built in the style of a 15th century Venetian palace, filled with hundreds of art treasures, with the stipulation that the artworks never be sold, never be loaned, and nothing change in the home she had enjoyed.      And nothing did. I was lucky enough to visit before the thefts. The Gardner wasn't so much like a museum as like the mansion of some dotty rich aunt who had stepped out for a cup of elderberry tea. The place was dark, the guards antiques themselves. Black velvet clothes covered glass cases of medieval rarities—visitors were expected to pull the velvet aside, get an eyeful, then push it back. The place was very low tech, very old and very lovely.      The theft of the dozen artworks shattered this sealed-off little world and made it mournful. The spots where the paintings had been displayed were left empty, marked by placards reading "Stolen March 18, 1990."      The police were stymied. The trail grew so cold that when the Gardner offered a cool $1 million reward, no questions asked, for the return of the paintings, it emphasized that the thieves were welcome to collect the money.      The paintings had been insured for damage, but not for theft.      The flecks of paint under McCrone's microscope were offered up by a pair of characters named Myles Connor Jr. and William Youngworth III, who say they know where the paintings are and will arrange their safe return in exchange for immunity from prosecution and the reward from the museum, now swelled to $ 5 million. And they want one other thing, too: Connor's release from prison. He's in for—guess what? -- art theft.      As evidence that they have the Rembrandts, they turned some chips of paint over to the Boston Herald. The delegation in McCrone's office was from the Herald, with a TV crew in tow, to see if the flecks were indeed the real McCoy.      Authenticating a Rembrandt is tricky stuff even when you have an entire painting to work with. Approximately half of all the pictures that have been called Rembrandts and hung in museums later were determined to be the work of students or disciples or out-and-out forgers.      Ever the cautious scientist, McCrone won't say the chips are from a Rembrandt, only that they aren't not from a Rembrandt. That was enough to cause a whoop of joy in Boston.      "The Boston Herald came out with a headline saying I said it is a Rembrandt, but that isn't what I said in my report to them," McCrone said. "I can say I can't find any reason to think it is not by Rembrandt, and there are lots of positive indications it may well be."      McCrone is one a handful of microscopy experts in the country who aid law enforcement and art curation by gazing at evidence, micron by micron. He debunked the Shroud of Turin—among all but the most die-hard believers—by amassing evidence that it is a 13th century creation.       The key to his work is knowing the history of paints and looking for hues that came into being at a certain time. Prussian blue, for instance, was created in 1704, and since Rembrandt died in 1669, finding that particular blue in a purported Rembrandt is like finding a bar code on a Ming vase.      The flecks were all smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. McCrone, using an optical microscope (he scorns those fancy electron jobbies), looked for colors of paint that would rule out a painting as Rembrandt's.      "Those were all absent," he said. "And the ones there were very typical of the form and composition Rembrandt did use."      McCrone's work is time-intensive, and while he employs a dozen associates at the lab, he still puts in long hours. On a typical day he arrives by 3:15 in the morning and stays until after 6 p.m.      He walks every day, the two miles from his home in the Lake Meadows development by Michael Reese Hospital. "I don't own an overcoat or hat," he said with a certain pride. McCrone is 81 years old.      "Work is my hobby—I've got a lot of interesting things to work on," he concluded. "I've been lucky."     Maybe a bit of McCrone's luck will rub off on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and  they'll get those paintings back.      —Published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 19, 1997

Why not ponies to go with those 1,000 extra police officers?

     Don't underestimate Chuy Garcia's strategy of not having any idea of what he'd do if elected.
     It worked for Bruce Rauner.
     Besides, the commissioner isn't really running on a platform of what he'd do. Doing stuff is Rahm Emanuel's speciality, and look where it got him. If Emanuel hadn't done so much — closed schools, cut deals — he might have spent more time sitting at community meetings, being screamed at, and maybe he wouldn't be facing such a serious challenge now.
     Rather, Garcia is running on who he is: an earnest, neighborhood guy who has the benefit of not being rich. To fear he'd botch running the city underestimates the roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-the-job-done ingenuity of the regular folk of this great country of ours. He'd do fine. At least he'd do his best.

     Not that Emanuel isn't also doing his best, within his limits as a human being, assuming he is one. A consigliere to two presidents, pin-balling around the halls of power, Emanuel is not a get-your-hands-dirty type of mayor. No pie-eating contests for him. Though he's had his moments among the herd.
     It was four years ago, during Ed Burke's hare-brained scheme to get Emanuel's candidacy spiked because he didn't actually live here, that the mayor-to-be spent a day in a windowless room listening to regular Chicago Joes' crazy conspiracy theories. Emanuel took it well, never losing his famous temper, and you could feel his prospects rise afterward.
     Too bad he didn't absorb the important lesson — you lead people, you have to sometimes set yourself among them, letting them ramble on, wasting your time, time that you could be using to raise more millions. Riding the L occasionally just isn't the same.
     From a newspaperman standpoint, Garcia winning would be more fun. We'd have a First Hispanic Mayor cup to put in the trophy room next to our First Woman Mayor and First Black Mayor. Not an actual tangible accomplishment, of course — not cash money we can put toward Chicago's unpayable pension burden — but there is real value in such a milestone. The axis of power would indeed shift. Harold Washington certainly got public works going in neighborhoods that Jane Byrne had never heard of — when people speak of his main accomplishment in office, they tend to mention sidewalks — though Harold also spiked Jane's elitist dream of a 1992 World's Fair (there was a 1992 World's Fair; any idea where? Any at all? Seville, Spain).          

     But wishing is not enough, as Garcia will discover. Facts butt in. For every African-American voter who supports Garcia for not being Emanuel, for instance, there might be two who don't want Hispanics "cutting in line" and receiving the benefits they still somehow expect. To me, the only question in this election is: Which candidate has the best chance of avoiding the pension time bomb about to blow the city up? Garcia or Emanuel? Which works better with figures?
     Emanuel has trouble with people, true, but Garcia has trouble with numbers. Take his castigating Emanuel for not fulfilling his 2011 promise to hire 1,000 police officers. Riveting campaign theater. The mayor reneged, Garcia shouts, but Chuy will do it! While offering no hint of how to pay for these officers, as if the sticking point were not the cost, but the concept. ("More police officers! Ah. Of course. Great idea. Why didn't we think of that? Thanks commissioner!") To be honest, I could get behind Garcia wholeheartedly, the way I yearned for Mayor Carol Moseley-Braun in 2011, if he promised, along with the thousand cops, to provide a pony for every child in Chicago. Kids love ponies, and taking care of a pony encourages responsibility. Ten thousand ponies cost far less than a thousand cops (the kids can share). Besides, campaigns are for dreaming big, aren't they? We can sweat the details after he's elected.

More than just green beer and cabbage

     Happy St. Patrick's Day, though the actual Tuesday holiday seems an anticlimax and afterthought following the weekend of heavy pre-Paddy partying. I walked from the Sun-Times to the Four Seasons Saturday night, through a city of drunk people, one vast beery queue of guys and gals draped in green beads and wearing green t-shirts and green deely boppers, waited to get into the next bar.  Not a good look. 

     My sympathies to the actual Irish.  Being Jewish has its downsides, true,  but at least we don't have to put up with a lot of crude expropriation of our religion (by people other than ourselves, I mean). I wouldn't want to walk to synagogue for Yom Kippur through a crowd of rowdies swilling Manischewitz from blue and white plastic cups, wearing fake beards and rubber noses and big black foam Borsalino hats, chanting, "Re-pent! Re-pent!" 

     I don't know how the Irish do it. How year in and year out they watch their proud and long and tragic history get put through the meat grinder of American culture. "Kiss me I'm Irish!" It breaks the heart. But I guess the Irish experience is a machine designed to break the heart, so why should this be any different? Still, resistance is both futile and necessary. Nearly 20 years ago, the Sun-Times published this guide, the idea being that the St. Patrick's Day revelers packed into Irish pubs and faux-Irish pubs might glimpse these portraits on the wall, through the crush, and be puzzled as to who those old guys might be, and it wouldn't detract from their celebrations, and might even help, if they were informed, and equipped with a bit of verse to recite once they are really in their cups, around noon. 

     One mark of a real Irish bar is the inevitable shrine of portraits of Ireland's greatest writers. Some are easy to identify -- George Bernard Shaw with his big beard, Eugene O'Neill with his cadaverous cheeks (he started writing plays in a tuberculosis asylum). But some are a puzzlement to the average Chicago bar crawler of today. Here is a quick guide:

William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939                          

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

W.B. Yeats

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

     "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry," W. H. Auden said of Yeats, the towering figure of Irish literature. Yeats seems to bring together all the threads: 19th century dreams of romance, 20th century slaughter, mysticism and fascism, Greek history and the "mere anarchy" of the new. Unlike every other poet who ever lived, Yeats blazed brighter and brighter as he aged, dictating brilliant poetry even hours before his death.

James Joyce, 1882-1941

. . . and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

     Joyce left Dublin when he was 22 and, like so many expatriates, spent the rest of his life looking homeward. To the narrow-minded censors of his day, Joyce was a pornographer whose writing stank of sweat and dirt and sex. His masterpiece, Ulysses, was banned from the United States until 11 years after its publication, which only drove the curious to read it.  E. M. Forster, a Brit, called the book "a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud."


Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989

Pozzo: . . . One day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (calmer) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instance, then it's night once more!

Samuel Beckett

     Beckett was a 51-year-old obscure poet and novelist who had only recently stopped working as a shop clerk when, in 1953, his play "Waiting for Godot" took Paris by storm. The haunting words and dark wit of his masterpiece immediately hurled him into the company of Kafka as a bard of disjointed and menacing modernity. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1969.


Brendan Behan, 1923-1964

I am a cowardly man by nature, and to go there I had to take a couple of drinks and when I saw her so small and lonely in that stark, ether-smelling ward of the hospital, I knew that I loved her very deeply.

Brendan Behan

     Behan was 16 years old when he was sent to a British prison for his activities in the Irish Republican Army, and, like Oscar Wilde, he used his time in prison to feed his muse. His play "The Quare Fellow" rocketed him to fame in 1956, and he divided his few remaining years writing amusing memoirs and drinking everything within reach.

         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 15, 1996

              

Sweet (not) home Chicago

     On the afternoon of Jan. 20, 1961, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower slipped away from the Inauguration Day festivities, piled into their 1955 Chrysler Imperial and famously drove to their farm at Gettsyburg, Pa. Contrary to myth, they were not alone — two servants and a chauffeur, Leonard Dry, were with them, but even then, the ex-president felt "an eerie loneliness about the absence of motorcycle escorts and caravans of Secret Service and press cars" according to Ike's grandson, David.
     It was about to get lonelier.
     "When the Eisenhowers approached the entrance to their Gettysburg farm," David Eisenhower wrote, "the Secret Service honked the horn and made a U-turn, heading back to Washington."
     Ex-presidents didn't get security. His predecessor, Harry Truman, didn't even receive retirement pay — he had to live, at least initially, on his $112.56 Army pension, and took out a bank loan in his last week in office to tide himself over.
     Not issues that will face Barack Obama, who will leave office Jan. 20, 2017, a rich man, the way politicians tend to. He'll head, not back to Chicago, but to New York City, to join the claque of rootless wealth.
     That has to raise some tangled emotions here.
     If I had to categorize it, I'd say a disappointment but not a surprise.
     Reading Mike Sneed's column Friday on how the Obamas are set on living in New York, which means their library will probably be set there too, has to sting.
     Though Chicago was never really Obama's home, despite his house in Kenwood. That notion was just another spoonful of a politician's honey, and shame on those who swallowed it. Born in Hawaii — really, get over it, join us in the fact-based world — gone to school in Boston, Obama didn't set eyes on Chicago until his late 20s. Chicago was a way station and not really, as it turns out, his home. A means, not an end.
     At least not to Michelle Obama, and a husband goes where his wife wants to go, if he knows what's good for him. When people were aghast that I would move to Northbrook, I told them, "If I didn't follow my wife's lead, I'd still be a single guy living in a one bedroom apartment in Oak Park..."

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Sunday Puzzler No. 3

                                          Last week was elegant but not hard.
                                          This is less elegant but, I hope, harder.
                                          Though doable.
                                          I think. 
                                          Good luck.
                                          Have fun.
                                          The winner gets a 2015 EGDD blog poster.
                                          Post your guesses below.

                                          Two thousand fifteen years ago
                                          Using our system 
                                          Not that they would then
                                          But only two digits
                                          Plus the Latin, abbreviated
                                          And          
                                          John Candy and Judy Holiday
                                          Had this in common
                                          All together now, a kind of code
                                          Plus
                                          He preferred being an unhappy fellow
                                          To being a porker smiling in shit
                                          Not that he was given the choice.

                                          Where is this?

Round, tasty & a tad more than 3.14

    Happy Pi Day, and a special one at that. This is the day where, once in the morning and once in the evening, it will be 3/14/15 9:26:53, the exact digits of pi (which, for my far right wing readers, is the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter, whether you like it or not). 

     I can't believe I wrote this, two years ago, without mentioning that my older son Ross used to organize his friends into "Pi Offs"—competitions to see who could memorize the non-repeating digits of pi the most. I believe he usually won.

     Enjoy the day, eat some pie, do some math. Just remember the specific events in this story cannot be attended without going back in time, and the necessary time travel technology isn't here yet. But I'm sure some of the same people excited about Pi Day are working on that.  

     How do you turn a million dollars into a quarter?
     Easily. Behold the power of math.
     Years ago, I was this newspaper's charities, foundations and private social services reporter—which in today's attritted media landscape seems a luxurious title on par with the Royal Keeper of the King's Slipper.
     Despite my arch title, I was still me, and I liked to shake up the routines of the charitable beat. Thus when the MacArthur Foundation doled out its annual "genius" grants, rather than dutifully track down the various local batik artists and Icelandic clog dancers who had won and convey their esoteric interests, I wrote a piece about how those grants sometimes ruin people's lives, focusing on all the resulting suicides and divorces, the creative blocks formed and faculty spats ignited, seeking out all the butterflies crushed by this brick of money falling squarely upon them.
     I was proud of that.
     Or there was the time that the foundation of some company—I believe it was Standard Oil—called to share their big news: They were giving a million dollars to the Chicago Public Schools!
     I think they expected me to clear the front page. Instead I asked a question:
     "What's the time frame?"
     Pardon?
     "Over how long a period is the grant being given?" One common dodge to make largess seem larger is to dole it out over time.
     Papers shuffling. "Ten years."
     "Okay," I said. "There are 400,000 Chicago school kids. What are you doing with your money, giving each one a quarter a year?"
     Thus can a million dollars be turned into a quarter. By doing math to put the figures in some perspective. The same way a bargain can, with a bit of quick figuring, be identified as a scam. Math is indispensable to this job—to any job really—and considering all the attention given to utter triviality, to celebrity woes and political tugs-of-war, we don't focus on that fact nearly enough. To not stop and estimate, to not look at the numbers, is to forever doom yourself as a boob and a sap.
     Which is why I want to draw attention a nifty holiday being celebrated Thursday: Pi Day, the calendar's only mathematical holiday, since March 14—or 3/14—is also the first three digits of pi, the ratio between the circumference of a circle (the curving part around its edge) and its diameter (the line straight across the circle, dividing it in half) or 3.1415926... and on into infinity, represented by the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet.
     The Illinois Science Council is ringmastering a number of goofy events Thursday, a Pi Day Fun Run/Walk downtown—all sold out, sorry—and has enlisted several area restaurants and bakeries to offer up specials.
     Evanston's Bennison's Bakery is selling individual pies in Boston cream, strawberry-rhurbarb or apple for $3.14. (Since skepticism and math go together, I checked to see what the pies normally cost, expecting it to be $3—nope, normally $6.99, so this is a bargain.)
     "We do this every year," said manager Samantha Griggin. "It's always a fun day."
     Pleasant House Bakery on W. 31st Street is participating, as is Sweet Cakes Bakery on North Damen and Sweet Pies Bakery in Skokie. Swirlz Cupcakes on West Belden is offering "Pi" and "Einstein" cupcakes. (In one of the coincidences bound to occur with billions being born on a limited number of days, March 14 is also Albert Einstein's birthday.)
     One of my favorite spots, Artopolis Bakery, 306. S. Halsted (I can't walk past without stopping in for an espresso) is participating Thursday—they're offering their trademark savory pie for $3.14, instead of the $4.50 it usually costs. Ina's, 1235 W. Randolph, has a Chicken Pot Pi on its menu (come early—the place is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.) but no pi pricing here: Pony up $10.49.
     "Chicken pot pie can be such a dense, mucky kind of dish," said manager Seana Monahan. "Ours is lighter version so people can feel good about eating it."
     It is round, though, correct?
     "Our pie is round," she said. "I don't know exactly what the diameter is." (Keefers has a shepherd's pi pie, but it is not round).
     This is the fifth year the Illinois Science Council has hosted Pi Day, which reminds us not only of the value of 3.1415926 etc., but "there is a real value to learning this stuff," in the words of ISC executive director Monica Metzler. From designing bridges to buying aspirin, it helps if you feel comfortable doing the numbers. You don't have to be a genius—just keep math in mind, and realize it can be fun, especially two years from now.
     "In 2015, it will be 3/14/15," Metzler said, noting the year will coincide with the next two digits of pi. Of course their race will start at 9:26 in the morning: 3/14/15 9:26 a.m.
     "We're going to have pi to seven digits [to the right of the decimal point]," she said. "We'll be totally geeking out."

              —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, March 13, 2013

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     The whole idea seems impossibly quaint, now. 
     There would be these little private rooms, these booths, scattered about in public spaces, so people who wanted to make a telephone call could go inside, and hide themselves away, and conduct their business without being overheard.  
     In private, as it were.

This one's in Michigan

     Now phone booths have vanished so completely that their disappearance isn't even noticed anymore forget about being mourned. You can't miss what you never knew existed. You rarely see even the half glassed-in booths that would be found on busy streets, never mind the full booth, with accordion door, I noticed, still, downtown, as it were, in the Upper Peninsula Michigan town of Ontonagpn. 
     Rarer still are fancy wooden booths, such as the ones above, with their own gold leaf numbers and yes, working telephones still inside. Think of them as the original phone case.
    I suppose the idea of privacy will go next. People all yabber away, oblivious to each other. Even cupping your hand around your mouth seems a needless nicety. You certainly wouldn't expect someone to step away, to suggest that their conversation isn't public information. Heck, everything is public information. Why be discreet  about something your going to post on four different forms of social media just as soon as you can? Just the thought of popping into a phone booth for some privacy while you klaxon your news to the world seems hopelessly convoluted. 
    But we still understand the rough outlines of privacy.  It doesn't puzzle us. Quite yet. Until that inevitable day, where did I see this quartet of ancient phone technology sarcophagi? 
     The winner will receive—speaking of old methods of communication—one of my hand-typeset blog posters, printed on century-old equipment at the famous Hatch Show Print shop in Nashville, Tennessee. Remember to post your guesses below. Good luck.