State of the Blog III

Jim Bachor's mosaic "Thrive," installed at the Thorndale 'L' station in 2014.

    When I mentioned to my wife that I was sorting through the numbers for my third year end State of the Blog report, she replied, quickly and, I thought, rather emphatically, that I shouldn't. That nobody cares about the stats but me, and my doing so is unseemly, a personal flaw, and I should resist the urge. 
     To which my unspoken answer was: Yeah, and a pony for the children.
     Meaning, in some ideal world, it wouldn't matter if a piece of writing influenced one person or a million. Emily Dickinson's poems were just as good, written on sheets of paper and bound with thread into little booklets and jammed into a drawer at her home in Amherst as they'd be splashed across the cover the Ladies Home Journal. 
     But at some point somebody had to read them.
     And in the 24-hour-a-day roar, the howling free-fire zone that the Internet is, numbers seem to count for something. Anyway, the machine keeps track of them, and I do try to pay attention.  On days when I get 2,000 hits, such as today (assuming you're reading this on the day it's posted, Dec. 30, 2015) I feel as if I've accomplished something. If that is sin, then it is my sin, and I own it.

    Onward, as Rick Kogan would say. 
    The news is good, well, goodish. Last year I suggested that 50,000 hits a month would be some kind of success. I hit that mark for January-- 51,780--and surpassed it two more times, topping out at nearly 60,000--59,986--in August, almost 40 percent higher than the 2014 high of 43,000.
     In 2013, the daily average was 918. In 2014 it was 1200. This year it was 1539 a day.
     Not Kim Kardashian's ass breaking the Internet. But steady progress.
     The blog reached a million hits this year, averaging 47,718 hits a month. And while I estimate that 10 percent of those are Spambots, still a milestone of some sort. I held an on-line party the day we passed a million, with music and mingling, and several hundred readers showed up. That was fun. 
     Not the skyrocketing success that some blogs find. But not bad either, I'm told. We're going for the long term here. The blog is part life raft, part archive, part hobby, part unpaid job. 

    I can't pretend that stopping is an option at this point, for a variety of reasons. First, I get more control over the blog. Last May's post on performance artist/singer Amanda Palmer sticks in mind. I thought it an interesting encounter, and had pictures, and asked the paper for a page, which I'd thought I'd get. Then late in the day, pressing news intruded and I had my usual 750 words, and I had to cut the column in half, clumsily, at the last minute. Which would have really irked me, but it remained the same on the blog, and that is what would be available the next day. Palmer's husband, fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, retweeted it to his 2 million followers, meaning it reached far more people through Twitter than through the paper. The print edition is becoming an increasingly mooted, momentary paper interlude, and that trend will only continue.
    Which is the second reason the blog is important. It's about he only way you can find archived columns of mine. The newspaper, for some unfathomable reasons, yanked its archive off line, and you can either pull them out of Nexis, or find them here. Several times I've tried to refer people to columns which, though only a few weeks old, have already vanished. So having them here is important, to the degree that my columns being available is important, and that conversation I will leave to you.
     I'm skipping the poster this year. The 2015 poster sold eight copies, and while I enjoyed making wheat paste and slapping them up in the West Loop, that isn't reason enough to commission a new one. Maybe for the book, which comes out in the fall. I'm also thinking of creating a coffee cup instead for 2016, to give out as prizes.
     What else? Marc Schulman of Eli's Cheesecake returned sponsorship of the blog for the holidays and through January, and I am grateful to him for that, and urge you to show your appreciation as well by sending the gift of cheesecake to yourself or a loved one.
    Finally, as always, thank you for reading this stuff. Without you, I would be talking to myself. 

Accidents will happen

    

"Untitled," by Robert Gober, Art Institute of Chicago

     Whoops! 

     How clumsy of me. Almost spilled my coffee.
     Well, accidents happen. We've all dropped cups, tripped on rugs. So when the Chicago Police Department says that Bettie Jones was shot "accidentally" by police last Saturday, what else to do but nod our heads in sympathy for the poor officer, who took out his gun and spilled some bullets on a grandmother as she opened the door to let him in. Could have happened to anybody.

     Of course, accidents must be put in context. If I drop my coffee cup every other day, something might be wrong with me. Maybe a neurological condition. Maybe I should see somebody.
     Something is definitely wrong with the Chicago Police Department, though lest we be accused of picking on long-suffering, abused, misunderstood and bullied CPD, we should leap to point out it seems to be the same thing wrong with lots of city police departments. Being an officer is a dangerous job, one made safer by shooting first and then analyzing the situation later.
     Safer for the police officer, that is. For the teenager stumbling down the middle of the street or the woman opening the door, not so safe.

     To continue reading, click here.

 

The Star Wars effect on Israel

   

    I will admit it, quietly: I found the reception of the latest installment of Star Wars disturbing.

    Not the film itself. That was the most ordinary Insert-Tab-A-Into-Slot-B example of formulaic filmmaking. I even enjoyed parts: Daisy Ridley's ability to compose her face to reflect what was going on around her, seeing Harrison Ford as Han Solo. A cute spherical robot. 

     Rather, it was the reaction to the film that rattled me. Not that it was popular. Who didn't expect that? That it was lauded. The American Film Institute was declaring it one of the 10 best films of 2015. The New York Times was talking about Oscar buzz for Best Picture. I thought I had lost my mind, in an Emperor's New Clothes sense. It was as if Kim Kardashian had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her ass's contribution to global harmony. 

    Then again, I've never liked Star Wars, particularly. Seen all the movies, many times, of course. As requisite a part of parenthood as changing diapers. Dueled lightsabers with the boys. "Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father...."

    But I didn't love the things.  In all my years at the paper, I've only written one column about Star Wars: eight years ago, for the 30th anniversary of its premiere. And that wasn't so much about the movie, as an admittedly-far-fetched theory as to its impact on our collective national psyche. 

     The first "Star Wars" movie opened 30 years ago this Friday.
     It didn't strike me as much at the time, even as a callow 17-year-old.
     I remember thinking: Geez, here you have a movie where half the action is a running gun battle at close quarters, between this scruffy band of rebels, one of whom is 8 feet tall, and the supposedly fearsome, supposedly skilled storm troopers. Yet the Wookie never so much as gets his ear singed.
     As the years went on, and the movies kept coming, I learned to dislike the series for a variety of other sins -- its feel-instead-of-think anti-intellectualism, its wooden, Perils-of-Pauline acting, its cutesy, lunchbox-ready Ewoks, its crazed army of zealous fans and the blizzard of branded crap they insist on buying, collecting and cherishing.
     No doubt the anniversary will bring a media storm of What-It-Means-To-Us baby boomer thumb-twiddling.
     But I have a theory about "Star Wars" I've been developing, a hunch forming over the years that I'd like to float by you. It's a tad far-fetched, but perhaps worth considering.
     Could the "Star Wars" movies have had some impact on the American view of Israel?
     Bear with me. What was the American view of "a rebellion" before "Star Wars"? Some South American banana-republic revolution where the Castro manque rebel leader was as likely to be worse than the dictator he fought to replace?
     Before "Star Wars," Israel was the feisty underdog, facing a hostile ring of Arab countries whose overwhelming material superiority was checked only by their disunity and blundering.
     Then the movies started coming, and suddenly "rebels" were freedom-loving fighters facing enormous odds against an evil empire, a role that Israel was all too easily pushed into.
     That may explain why so many "Star Wars"-loving American college students chose to embrace the Intifada -- a nihilist blend of suicide and murder that might not normally appeal to the sort of people obsessed with the well-being of harp seals.
     Yet the Intifada, a machine perfectly designed for the weak to lash out at the strong, played to our rebellion fantasies, the Arab nations sponsoring it faded into invisibility, and the state of Israel became an organized, powerful conspiracy of Darth Vaders, practically an empire, at least compared to the struggling Palestinians.
     Perhaps I'm being fanciful -- I'm sure a lot of it can be blamed on good old-fashioned anti-Semitism, which had to be the reason a dozen rigid totalitarian Muslim theocracies can go unchallenged while Israel's being a Jewish state is damned as "apartheid."
     But there needs to be some explanation for the puzzling American indifference -- Hamas lobs hundreds of rockets into Israel, failing to kill civilians by mere chance, and our public lolls in utter indifference. Why? A bit of the blame might go to "Star Wars," for making us forget that one can be a rebel, one can be the underdog, and still be in the wrong.

—Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, May 20, 2007

The Moody Bible Institute finds me venomous

    Riddle: If you walk into an ice cream  shop and order a vanilla milkshake,  and I follow you in and order a chocolate cone, how many ice cream shops have we entered? 
    Does it change your answer if I email my order in ahead of time, or if you order in Spanish?
     I would still answer "one," arguing that differing choices in frozen comestibles, ordered in different fashions, does not demand that we be in different shops. 
    But then,  I am not a Christian theologian. 
    I received plenty of emails reacting to my column last Monday on Wheaton College sociology professor Larycia Hawkins being suspended for trying to show support for our beleaguered Muslim-American fellow citizens by wearing a headscarf and quoting the pope claiming that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.  
    What struck me was the genius the replies showed for vigorously missing the point. 
    Take this typical example, from Chris Northrop:

Wheaton College has sent students and staff all over the world to help people in many ways . Even the Mideast. Maybe you remember these words " let's roll". Deeds speak louder then words at Wheaton College.

     That sort of thing was easy enough to answer. I replied:

You must have read today's column to mean that nobody from Wheaton College ever did anything good, since that seems to be the argument you're making. That wasn't what I was saying at all. My point is that they're failing now, in this case, as they so often have in the past. If you believe that a Wheaton College graduate having done something good at some point in history excuses the college from honoring those who take uncomfortable moral stands in the face of unarguable evil now, well, I would suggest you revisit that opinion. Thanks for writing.

    I'd not bother to post any of it here  — the joy of my job is that I get to move on, a luxury not enjoyed by everybody.  Then the Moody Bible Institute weighed in.  Founded in 1886 by Dwight Lyman Moody, the institute has long inveighed against what it perceives as the evils of secular Chicago, and I was thrilled to be added to a long list that includes dancing, gin,  jazz and desegregation.  I was Exhibit A of an otherwise unnamed crew of critics who "shifted into overdrive" to criticize Wheaton College.
    "The school is being castigated for Islamophobia, hatred, discrimination, and intolerance," wrote Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer, the senior pastor at Moody, in an essay posted on the Moody Church online newsletter on Dec. 22.
     At first I thought he was agreeing with me. Then I realized that this was merely an example of the "venom" that Wheaton College has had to endure from those such as myself who labor under "only a superficial understanding of both Islam and Christianity."

When Hawkins, quoting the pope, says that "Christians and Muslims worship the same God," she appears to have no understanding of the radical difference and contradictions between the two faiths. Christianity affirms the Trinity, a doctrine which lies at the heart of biblical teaching, and the entire concept of redemption. The Christian teaching is that in Christ, God Himself redeemed us; the Son, in agreement with the Father, made atonement for our sins. God Himself supplies the Redeemer we need.    

 In Islam, Allah does not supply a redeemer; humans themselves pay for their own sins by trying to have their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, always unsure of how to keep score. In Islam, God is capricious and does not have fellowship with human beings. No Muslim would ever call God "Father." 

      Notice how deftly Lutzer has moved from what Hawkins, and myself, were saying—both faiths worship the same God—to what he chooses to rebut, the idea that both faiths are the same. His bringing up the "differences and contradictions" in the two faiths is, to return to our ice cream shop analogy, my laboriously explaining the differences between a milkshake and an ice cream cone. "One shop? A milkshake isn't even ice cream at all. It isn't solid! And chocolate is a vastly different flavor than vanilla. We're ordering completely different desserts!"
     Having gone to great lengths to establish that Christianity and Islam are indeed different religions, though no one suggests otherwise, Lutzer then pretends he's proved his point, concluding, tellingly:

...we can befriend Muslims and show them hospitality, respectfully sharing our beliefs and traditions, and learning from one another. Perhaps in God's good timing, we can share with them that while Muhammad claimed to be a prophet, Jesus claims—and had the credentials to prove—that He is actually the Savior of the world, able to take away our sin and bring us all the way to the Heavenly Father.

We can be good and helpful neighbors without sacrificing the very truths that bring sinners into the presence of God. Jesus affirmed, "Love your neighbor," but He did not say that we had to agree with them doctrinally.   

     Let's take a step back and put the situation in plain English:
     The world is filled with religions. Each worship in its own particular way. (See Dr. Lutzer? Not so ignorant after all). For centuries, each thought they would eventually overcome the rest. Now, in modern times, we know that the only hope for peace and survival is to imagine a multi-cultural world where people of varying faiths, races, nationalities and sexual orientations deserve respect and can dwell in harmony.
     Some chose not to believe that. ISIS is one. Wheaton College is another, and if they find the comparison unfair, I would suggest they ponder the company they keep. It's their choice. Nothing in Christian doctrine forbids a woman from wearing a scarf in solidarity with her neighbors. Nothing in Christian doctrine excommunicates you if you suggest Muslims believe in God.  Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church—not an institution known for its nimble shifts in doctrine—somehow managed the task. 
    The sticking point is that Wheaton, and Moody, and Lutzer, don't believe it. They hold out that the sect they were born into is the only true and legitimate mode of existence. Which is their right, let me be quick to point out, before they collapse to the ground, proclaiming themselves the victims here. Their right, until they try to put that attitude into operation in the public sphere, and their tolerance is revealed to be a false face, a mask worn until, as Lutzer slips in, "we can share with them that ... [Jesus] is actually the Savior of the world."
     Jesus ain't the savior of the world. Certainly not the savior of my world and, to drag out an inconvenient fact, not the savior of the vast majority of people in the world. Never was, never will be. Which is why I care about this issue. Muslims are now getting the crap that used to be saved for Jews, and in some quarters (including, alas, many Muslim ones) still is. Muslims are being abused for the same reason anybody gets abused; because the abusers feel the need and think they can get away with it. 
     They're wrong. Jesus is not the savior of most people's worlds. Tolerance is. We must all live together. A Wheaton College professor, under the illusion that she lives in America in 2015, took a mild symbolic stand in favor of tolerance. The small school she works for — or did, before they showed her the gate — chose to view it as a violation of their dogma, and punish her.  And fellow Bible thumpers at Moody chimed in their approval not realizing that the whip being used on Muslims today could be used on them tomorrow. 
      Not just blind, but hypocritical too. They're the first to cry religious tolerance when it's their religion compelling them to do something out of the mainstream, like harass gay people.  Then we all are ordered to cough into our fists and ignore the demands of human decency so they can serve their Lord in the way they've convinced themselves He wants to be served.  Then a religious moral stand is a beautiful thing. Not for Prof. Hawkins though. Because she's suggesting the two faiths share a sense of the divine when, viewed through the keyhole of Christian fundamentalism, only one deserves God's favor.
     The odd thing is, they are in harmony with the my-way-or-the-highway extremism of radical Islam. Not killing people, of course. Not anymore. They stopped that a couple hundred years ago. But the same small, shameful, selfish, hostile, blindered quality that does nobody any good, especially not them. 
     Despite the "differences and contradictions" Lutzer points to, the problem here is that the approach to religion taken by fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam is the same. Just as radical Muslims lash out at differences, tarnishing their faith in the eyes of many, so does Wheaton College and, as they leap to point out, the Moody Bible Institute. They insist that they are at odds with heterogenous modern life and the people in it. Not just science, but the fabric of society itself, which they consider a necessary evil that must be endured until that happy day when they can completely get their way. A reminder that the reason religion is dying out so quickly in this country is not due to venomous secularists like myself, but because the pious stewards trusted with its survival are killing it.

Rainy day at the Botanic Garden

     Saturday dawned wet and cold, upper 30s with a drizzly rain.  A perfect day to potter around the office, picking up papers, glancing at them throwing them away, when possible. 
    Yet when my wife suggested we go for a walk in the Chicago Botanic Garden, I jumped at the chance. 
    Which might seem strange. We had just walked there for an hour Friday, in the sun. It was now gray and rainy. And there was that office full of papers to sort. 
    But walking is one of my favorite activities. And the rain gave it an air of novelty. So many people use the weather as an excuse—"We wanted to go but it was raining"—when all that is required are a few adjustments, like umbrellas.  I was pleased she asked and pleased that I agreed, the exchange one of those countless welcome reminders that we'd each married the right person.
    At the Botanic Garden, we wandered here and there, as always, one asking the other, "left or right?" and the other answering, and randomly taking paths and directions we hadn't taken in a while, seeing new things, such as this Weeping Norway Spruce, that Edie was taken with. While the entrance was crowded, with families hurrying toward the Wonderland Express train display, which is indoors, the rest of the grounds were fairly deserted. I suggested we go to the English Walled Garden—that seemed in harmony with the weather—and it was.
     "I like it better in the rain," Edie said, at one point, and I replied, with genuine curiosity, "Why?" While it certainly was different at 38 degrees and a steady rain, I couldn't say that I preferred it to, oh, 68 degrees and sunny.
     "It's the sound," she said, surprising me again. "The sound the rain makes." I would have never focused on that.  Though I had to agree that the rain did make a rather pleasant pattering, soft and subtle, and I was glad she drew my attention to it.  I felt the need to reply in that vein, and told her that, to me, the rain was "atmospheric."  It altered the geometry of the place, almost added another dimension, making you aware not just of the trees and plants and grounds, but the air between them. It also changed perception of the landscape, and turned the bricks and stones into mirrored surfaces. I thought of how movie producers were always watering down streets to give them a dramatic sheen.  It works.
   We did at one point duck into the greenhouses, to gaze at orchids and cacti and rubber plants — the Orchid Show begins in mid-February— and, not incidentally, warm up. In between the greenhouses, there is a display of homemade wreathes in the Regenstein Center, and while I was admiring their construction, of pine cones and fir boughs and seed pods, I had the surprising experience of seeing myself in one of the wreaths. 
    It was this wreath, the creation of Sharon Nejman and Tim Pollak, Botanic Garden employees who had a hand in raising "Titan" and "Alice," the corpse flowers which drew an estimated 100,000 visitors to the garden this summer. My attention was first drawn to the primitive, rather tumescent yellow rendition of the flower at the center, and then started to look at the photos sprayed around it, and quickly recognized a certain guy taking pictures of the flower. Over the summer, I had gone several times to check on Titan's progress, and was there snapping pictures when the giant flower, which failed to spray its ghastly scent, was cut apart by botanists. 
    A slight balm to the old ego. Nobody becomes a writer because they don't enjoy seeing themselves manifested. But also a reminder of one of the many benefits of tromping around a place like the Chicago Botanic Garden on a regular basis. You think you are going to see plants, and by and large you are. But I'd say the conversations I have with Edie are as rewarding as the most gorgeous bloom or aged oak. And every so often, you discover something of yourself in an unexpected place, though usually not in such a literal manner. 

     

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     Betcha forgot about this contest, right?
     I sure did.
     But I had this photo laying around, and felt that Lucy-and-the-football tickle of suspicion. "I wonder..."
     Besides, I promised that I would bring the contest back, now and then. 
     So where is this sedate living room? With 2015 about to run out, I thought I would hold one last contest for the year, dispatch one last poster. No 2016 posters in the works—it was a cool prize, and fun to mix a batch of wheat paste and slap them up around the West Loop. But not staggeringly effective as a marketing tool. I'll have to think of something else.
    So post your guesses below. I imagine this'll get solved at 7:01 a.m. But you never know. There's a first time for everything.  Have fun. Good luck. 

Trouble at Christmas: #4. Street corner preachin'

     Well, it's Christmas Day, finally. Hope you woke up to lots of presents, or your kids did. Or if you don't celebrate, hope you at least wake up to some happy circumstance, such as I did. No tree, no trimmings, but my boys home for the holidays, and my wife off work. Christmas Eve spent pleasantly, with Chinese food, Settlers of Catan, and a movie ("Love Actually") with the prospect of a day of vigorous relaxation ahead of us.  
     Too much fun to spend time cobbling together more prose quilts. So one last Christmas chestnut plucked from the Bottomless Vault of Columns Past. We'll return to something fresh and fantastic tomorrow.
    Well, fresh anyway. 
    Merry Christmas. 

     A busy mid-December State Street. Lots of shoppers. Amateur bands flailing away at their instruments, producing sounds very similar to Christmas carols. And, inevitably, the corner preacher, screaming hoarsely into a microphone, his voice further distorted by the cheap and blown-out speaker, warning the indifferent passerby about the perils of damnation.
     I haven't yet walked up to him, smiling. I haven't yet gently taken the microphone from his hand. He would seem to understand and step aside, demurring.
     "Brothers, sisters," I would shout, eyes wide and glittering, holding high an outstretched hand, fingers spread. "Brothers and sisters! Change your evil ways. Repent, repent!"
     I point toward a middle-aged woman scurrying by. "You, madam! Do you fail to use your turn signal when driving? The lever is right there, an inch below your hand. Use it, madam! Use it, or risk the peril of hell!"
     Then she is gone. I grab a man by the arm, tightly holding his coat as he struggles to pull free.
     "And you, sir, do you drink coffee? Do you work in an office? Do you take the last cup in the office coffeemaker and not make more? Do you leave a teaspoon of coffee in the carafe to smoulder and blacken, forcing somebody like me to scrub it out and make a new pot? Repent! REPENT! Or . . . you . . . will . . . go . . . to HELL!"
     He breaks free and is gone.
     Nobody thanks you for trying to make the world a better place. Nevertheless, the work must be done.
     A comfortable executive type—nice tie, cashmere scarf—happens along. I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, closing my eyes hard.
     "Woe!" I bellow in my lowest tones. "Wooooe, woe to executives who don't take time to be pleasant to their workers. Be nice! Be nice! It doesn't cost anything to be nice. And the alternative is the fiery purgatory of EVERLASTING FLAME!"
     A gigantic, bulky sport/utility vehicle idling at the curb catches my attention. I wheel around, spreading my arms wide, trying to puff myself to Moseslike stature.
     "The slopes of the Pit are slippery! Four-wheel drive will not keep you from sliding down, down, down, down. Do not imagine fog lights will illuminate your path to heaven. Come to a complete stop at stop signs. Watch your speed. Woe to the arrogant. Woe to the Lincoln Navigator owner. Woe to Land Rovers. Ride high now, but remember, you are on a highway straight to HELL!"
     Something feels as if it is snapping in my throat — a vocal cord, maybe. But I keep going. The word must get out.
     "Telemarketing is Satan's work!" I yell. "Devilish tendrils of anonymous greed reaching into our homes, destroying our equanimity of mind, interrupting dinner! Repent! Stop bothering people. Get a real job! Lest you wake up one day and find yourself twirling in HELL!!!"
     I'm reaching a groove. "Look in the mirror! See if the evil mark has been set upon you! Rude clerks? Hell! Reckless cabbies? Hell! Those WTTW people begging for money every time I turn on Channel 11? Hell, Hell, HELL!!!!"
     A small crowd has gathered. I soften my tone, take it down a few notches.
     "People," I implore quietly, looking from face to face. "The hour is late. But there is still time. Renounce your evil ways. Join the family of humanity. Return phone calls. Keep appointments. Tip generously. Do not create a hell on earth for others while reserving a spot in it yourself."
     There is light applause as I hand the microphone back to the minister. The hubub continues. At least I tried.

       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 10, 1998