Destroying Meigs Field

      Fifteen years already? That went by fast. When Richard M. Daley dug up Meigs Field in the dead of night, on March 31, 2003, it seemed an unhinged, illegal act, the worst thing the mayor had done during his administration—we didn't realize then just how badly he was mismanaging the city's finances, digging a hole that Chicago struggles to crawl out from to this day.
     I loved Meigs Field, and was lucky enough to take off the tiny lakefront airstrip once, in Susan Dacy's stunt biplane, to do barrel rolls and loop-de-loops over Lake Michigan.   
     This column ran in 2012. What impresses me most is that, six years ago, I'd actually phone the mayor's office to try to get his reaction on something. Now that's inconceivable, because I can't imagine him giving a candid response on any subject whatsoever, nor anybody caring if he did.

     Rahm Emanuel is a controlled, close-to-the-vest kind of guy. Despite his reputation when elected, there are no spontaneous explosions from him, alas. No colorful sputterings of public outrage for us in the media to have fun with. Especially when it comes to the various chronic urban problems created by his predecessor, the unlamented former mayor, Richard M. Daley. Emanuel has gotten quite good at addressing some inherited problem while pretending it just popped spontaneously into being, as if an act of nature, and wasn't dumped into his lap by the carelessness and folly of his old pal.
     So it was odd to see Emanuel this week seem to defend Daley's biggest lapse while mayor: the surprise, probably illegal 2003 destruction of Meigs Field, the city's downtown airport that . . . well, why re-invent the wheel?
     "Meigs Field was an urban jewel and a unique lakefront asset that will never be replaced," the Chicago Sun-Times wrote in 2005. "As tragic as its loss was to the vibrancy of downtown Chicago, worse was the dead-of-night manner in which Mayor Daley destroyed it two years ago, without question the most extreme abuse of power he has committed in a decade and a half in office - well, as least the most extreme we know about."
     OK, OK, it was me who wrote that in the Sun-Times in 2005. But wait, we're coming to the best part:
     "Even if it were a good move—and it wasn't—he did it the wrong way. I might want an omelet for breakfast, but that doesn't mean I want Mayor Daley to break into my house and prepare it while I sleep."

 Granted, I'm an airplane fan. What man with a pulse isn't? I've always rejected the argument that you had to be a bigwig using Meigs to jet from deal to deal in order to benefit from the field. Many, particularly kids, liked to see the aircraft come and go. The terminal was a small gem of late 1950s modernism. The place had a lot of history. Going for a ride with Bill Lear, who was showing off his new Learjet, a Daily News reporter looked out his window and said that scant Meigs runway looked "like a stick of gum."
     The city has mile after mile of underutilized lakefront park, and it made no sense to destroy Meigs just to add a few hundred yards more.
     So ruining Meigs was a mistake, and Daley doing it in his I'm-the-King-of-Chicago-I-can-do-what-I-please manner made it worse.
     Time is a balm, however. Asked if digging up Meigs was the right thing to do, Emanuel initially said, "It is right, yes, on this level, this way: Meigs Field is no longer there."
     But that seemed to be saying that the ends justify the means. Whatever works, just do it.
     "I'll leave it to others to make that judgment," Emanuel continued. "I think it was the right thing to do."
     Which is it? Since I wasn't there, I thought clarification was in order. Perhaps the mayor was flustered by my colleague, Fran Spielman—a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails, Front Page, honed-razor of a newspaper reporter who will cut out your heart and make you comment on it as you die. If she asked me the time, I'd start to cry. I thought, to be fair, I had better check with Emanuel's office. So he approves of Daley's most power-mad act?
     "No way, no how," his office replied.
     Well, that's a relief. So does that mean—follow-up question!—that the mayor is not laying the groundwork for his own extra-legal, unilateral acts? That he won't, oh, decide to fill in Belmont Harbor? Because really, who enjoys that? A handful of rich boaters. That's all. Why indulge them when the city could seize the lagoon and fill it in. More campground for poor kids! And the Water Tower—it really jams up the intersection. Why not pull it down in the dead of night and reassemble it south of Roosevelt Road, where congestion is not such an issue? And why go through all the bothersome hearings and preservationist thumb-sucking and hobbyhorsing that are the hallmarks of a free country, or were, when a powerful mayor can simply decide it's the best thing to do and then command his quivering underlings to see that it is done while nobody's watching?
     Again "No." Emanuel is celebrating his ill-gotten gains, but not the act that got them.
     I suppose he can't, at this point, put the airport back. Too late for that. And, looking forward, as he wants us to, transforming Northerly Island to prairie might turn out wonderful. The idea of camping there, with the stunning cityscape arrayed before you, is enticing. I'd sure give it a try, for a night.
     But I think it's too early for anyone to shrug off what happened to Meigs. It was a crime. Daley ripped up the runway while planes were still parked next to it. It cost the city more than a million dollars in fines, and sent a chill down the back of Chicagoans, or should have. The city kept re-electing the guy, and now it's got another mayor for life, whose office insists he is definitely not, no way, no how, testing the waters to see what the public will accept. Let's hope not.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 19, 2012

Chicago company makes big things that are seen but seldom noticed

Bob Doepel and Remi at Chicago Scenic Studios

     So here's the riddle:
     What business makes something big that you see all the time but seldom notice?
     These very large, custom-made products are usually unique: built once and never again. Each can cost millions of dollars only to be used briefly, sometimes just for a few hours, then thrown away.
     Hint: you don't see their work often because your attention is focused on the people in front of it.
     Give up?
     Chicago Scenic Studios creates stage sets, museum displays and the physical contours of public spaces at trade shows, conventions, parades, and at least one war.
     Their Cermak Road headquarters is an enormous, sleek industrial building, with 165,000 square feet of clean, soaring space that looks like someplace NASA would use to assemble communications satellites.
     So big, you hardly notice the 50 full-time employees.
     It was started 40 years ago by Bob Doepel, whose flat-coated retriever Remi has the run of the place.
     Born in Chicago, Doepel came out of Carnegie Mellon with a master's degree in fine arts and an interest in theater production. He started at a small theater in Lake Forest, and grew to focus more on arts than commerce.
     "So many people do trade shows, we decided we'd rather be a big fish in a smaller pond," he said. "There are not that many theatrical shops. We do a lot of environmental branding. We do a tremendous amount of museum work."
     Environmental branding?

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Beth Smith, head of the metal department at Chicago Scenic Studios, uses a water jet to cut through half-inch thick aluminum plate to make supports for a truss arch that will decorate Northwestern's April 21 Starry Night gala. 

Hospitals are too cheap to train nurses to care for rape victims

     The myth is that if only people knew about a particular problem, it would be halfway solved.
     The reality is that the status quo has an inertia, that change is hard, and outrage tends to fade.
     The Tribune ran an article this week about how few nurses in Illinois are trained to handle rape kits. I read it with interest, because I wrote a similar article six years ago. It isn't the sort of piece I usually write, but the issue is particularly galling, and the attorney general's office was unusually helpful—Lisa Madigan wanted this fixed. The paper gave it prominent play. Maybe the Tribune will have better success in lighting a fire under the public and the medical profession. But I'm not holding my breath.

     After Katie Feifer was raped at knifepoint by a man who pushed his way into her Oak Park home, her assailant tied her up in the basement and left.
     She freed herself and called police, who took her to the emergency room at West Suburban Hospital.
     "It's funny how vivid the memories are, even after all these years," Feifer says of her treatment after the 1988 attack. "A resident came in, and had this rape kit, and started opening envelopes and vials. He was fumbling around and he was very, very nervous. He did a pelvic exam, and kept apologizing. 'I'm sorry I have to do this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'
     "I remember feeling I had to comfort him and make him feel OK. This guy was supposed to be examining me and helping me, and he didn't know what he was doing."
     There is no shortage of jarring rape statistics.
     Illinois State Police data reported 5,300 rapes statewide last year—more than 14 a day—though experts believe the actual number is triple that. Most go unreported, in part because the majority of rape victims are children—54 percent, according to the Illinois Attorney General's office.
     Another reason rapes go unreported is that the process of seeking medical care after a rape can itself be traumatic, since the vast majority of nurses at most hospitals fail to undergo the training needed to properly treat a rape victim.
     Even though in Illinois such training is free through a program called SANE, or Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, a course designed to teach nurses to handle sexual assault cases and make sure they are paired with victims as they arrive at the hospital.
     Of the more than 200 hospitals in Illinois, how many fully participate in the SANE program?
    Two.
     "The baseline we're at is two programs, for the state, where a victim is guaranteed to have a specially trained SANE," said Shannon Liew, SANE coordinator at the Attorney General's office.
     The two are Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville and Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana.
     Two hospitals and neither is in Chicago. The other 200 don't take part because the training takes too much time, and, in the hospital's view, not enough people are raped to justify the trouble.
     "There's just not a community need for it," said Michelle Ruther, emergency department nurse manager at Loyola University Medical Center's Emergency Department. The Loyola ER has 80 nurses; two have SANE training.
     "We don't get the amount of rape cases here you'd think," she said. "The program itself is nice. You go through how to talk to these people, to help with the grieving process. It's a really great program, and we'd love to have it at Loyola if they could make the requirements less stringent."
     Hospitals in other cities manage to run SANE programs.
     "Milwaukee has a SANE program, Los Angeles does, Houston does, Indianapolis does," said Liew. "The reasons we hear from hospitals is that one hospital might get 40 victims a year, and they say we can't create a program around 40 patients. I believe every single patient every single time deserves the best possible care they can at a hospital."
     The SANE training takes 40 hours: 24 in a classroom, 16 online.
    "A lot of time, to send nurses for a whole week," said Edward Gutierrez, in charge of patient care management at the adult emergency department at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "It's a huge financial commitment."
     And that is just the formal training; to be certified, a nurse needs to put in hours more of clinical training: pelvic exams, courtroom observation.
     But without training, an ER nurse who might have never administered a rape kit has to figure out what to do on the spot.
    The kits are designed to collect evidence. There are complicated instructions, and the nurse must guide the victim while she or he—10 percent of rape victims are male—disrobes over a plastic mat.
     "When you are a busy ER nurse and you are untrained, it's very difficult to read through all the instructions while you are trying to do this exam and then get through your other three or four patients," said Liew. "But that is what happens. Sometimes nurses are actually reading the instructions in front of patients, if they are untrained, or they skim the instructions and do the best they can."
     Untrained nurses contaminate evidence. They scoff at rape victims. "They literally can say things like 'I don't know if this person was really assaulted,' " said Liew.
     Training is so spotty that volunteers try to fill the gap.
     "Our advocates step in to navigate the situation," said Sharmili Majmudar, executive director of Rape Victim Advocates, which works with 11 Chicago-area hospitals. But advocates are not trained nurses.
     "Having a SANE nurse is extremely important," Majmuder said, pointing out that not only is the nurse treating the patient before them, but also is gathering evidence that could help prevent future rapes.
     "It's connected to overall public safety," she said. "It really does make a difference when it comes to the criminal justice piece, absolutely. The SANEs are in a position to make sure the kit is completed. They're available as an expert witness, to testify. How victims are responded to makes a difference in what victims do, whether or not they choose to report the rape to the police."
     "SANEs are seen as that critical link between the survivor and putting forward a case, because you are also trained to testify," said Natalie Bauer, a spokesperson for the Attorney General's office.
     The program began in Memphis in 1976. The first pilot program in Illinois started in 1999 at Carle Foundation Hospital, which still runs it.
     "One of the things a lot of hospitals have missed is that you have to have someone that coordinates the program," said Patty Metzler, SANE coordinator at Carle. "We've incorporated it into our staff, which makes a difference."
     "It takes a hospital commitment, it absolutely does," said Jody Jesse, director of emergency medicine at Condell, the other Illinois hospital in the SANE program. "The second issue many hospitals face is, you need physician support."
     Lack of this coordination keeps most of the 650 or so nurses who have had SANE training from using their skills—their hospitals don't have a system to call them when rape victims arrive.
     Metzler said that though the training takes time, SANE "actually saves the emergency department time, because when we have a sexual assault come in, we have somebody who can do it. It doesn't take hours and hours. The doctors don't have to disrupt their whole practice. Our physicians love it. Police officers love it because they know they're not going to be here for hours and hours. Our administration has supported it since 1999. We have really good results, really good feedback."
     As with any hospital that emphasizes a medical speciality, running a SANE program draws patients. Carle saw 125 rape victims last year, more than were seen by the University of Chicago Medical Center.
     "This gets repaid by the state," said Majmudar. "The Sexual Assault Survivors Emergency Treatment Act—SASETA—governs what the victims' rights are. One thing we run into is hospitals that didn't even realize they were supposed to comply with SASETA."
     When Lisa Madigan took office as attorney general in 2003, she began to learn more about the program.
     "It sounded like a no-brainer," Madigan said. Her first priority was getting the rape kits tested—it doesn't matter how skillfully evidence is collected if the police crime lab lets it sit unexamined for years.
     "Two years ago, we passed this bill ensuring that all rape kits are being tested by state police," said Madigan.
     Only recently has she realized how neglected the SANE program is.
     "And I'm talking to people about the training, they're giving me feedback, and they say, we need to let you know, virtually none of us become certified," Madigan said.
     Of the 650 nurses with SANE training, only 75 completed the follow-up component of clinical work and courtroom observation.
     "I was really drop-jawed in front of these nurses," said Madigan. "I said, 'You're kidding me?'"
     Last summer, the Attorney General's office announced a goal of trying to bring 15 more hospitals into the SANE program.
     The good news is that hospitals are realizing the importance of SANE. The University of Chicago plans to put the program in place.
     "This is a program we would like to start," said Gutierrez. "Our goal is to have SANE nurses on the unit 24/7. Evidence shows greater prosecution rates, more compassionate care to patients."
     "We have taken anti-violence as one of our big umbrella projects," said Vikas Ghayal, U of C's director of emergency services. "We really are taking on, as a hospital, this concept of trying to end violence in the community, and this is just one component."
     "It's really the right thing to do for these victims," said Jody Jesse. "The bottom line is hospitals, to me, have a certain commitment to their community. This is the right thing for the community."
     The man who attacked Katie Feifer was arrested within three hours, pled guilty and spent 15 years in prison. He got out, murdered a hotel worker, and is currently serving life without parole in Nevada. Feifer lives in California and is research director for The Voice and Faces Project, which encourages survivors to talk about their experiences.
     "I'm happy to talk about what was done to me," she says. "Survivors need to tell their stories in order to change public policies about rape."
                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 5, 2012

Good to be alive: Medical museums in Philly and Chicago challenge the curious

Mutter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

      A wall of skulls. A black gangrenous hand. Many babies, pale as snow, slumped in glass jars. A wax arm showing the ravages of smallpox. A pair of desiccated children’s corpses, arms outstretched as if crucified. The skeletons of fetuses, some fantastically deformed — two tiny bodies sharing the same bulbous head — delicate as the bones of birds.    
      Yes, the Mutter Museum of The College of Surgeons of Philadelphia is ... ah ... challenging. But I had been to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Barnes Foundation, the Museum of the Constitution and the Rodin Museum. I only had one morning free, and the Mutter is a short walk across the Schuylkill River from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where I was to spend the afternoon researching a story.
     "This collection would not be able to be assembled today," a guide told a tour group. "With the laws we have on the books to protect folks."
     No kidding. Nowadays, Albert Einstein would have to agree to have his brain removed from his body. But when he died in 1955, somebody just took it, cut into segments and put on slides, a collection of which are on display at the Mutter.

International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago

     The gap between a medical display and a circus side show is not very wide, as evidence by the giant skeleton posed next to the dwarf's (their term). No Bearded Lady, but there is the "Soap Lady," a saponified body dug up in Philadelphia in 1875, the body fat turned into adipocere. It was something you'd pay a quarter to see behind a tent, as well as the 70-pound ovarian cyst. Or 50 cents not to see.
     While there are coherent exhibits, such as one on Civil War battlefield injuries, the permanent displays have a randomness that adds to the unease. On the right side of a cabinet are shrunken heads; on the left, kidneys and gall bladders. Why? What's the organizing principle?
     "The cases around the walls of this gallery are somewhat organized by part of the body (genitalia to the right, internal organs to the left, for example), although the gallery also evokes a 19th century 'cabinet of curiosity,'" replied Gillian Ladley, the Mutter's media and marketing manager. "Many of the cases and displays from the museum are authentic to the museum's original opening—the museum opened in 1863, but in 1909 in this location—so that the museum itself is a historical artifact."
     Fair enough.
     We have something similar in Chicago: The International Museum of Surgical Science, 1524 N. Lake Shore Drive. I hadn't been there since 2002, so a refresher visit seemed in order. I headed over.
     The IMSS is emptier, duller, without the chamber of horrors aspect in bloom at the Mutter—no human skin tattoos, no wax faces illustrating syphilis. Just a few skulls and two fish bowls filled with gallstones.
     That said, it held my interest. I particularly appreciated the iron lung, a green steel cylinder that breathed for people paralyzed by polio. I wish I could round up a village of anti-vaxxers and march them past, the way Eisenhower forced German citizens to tour nearby concentration camps at the end of World War II. This is what your ignorance leads to.
     Beside trephined skulls—skulls with holes cut in them, early surgery done by the Incas—is a fascinating display worth pointing out because it's easy to miss: a looped color movie of Peruvian doctors reproducing the technique in 1953, using 2,000-year-old obsidian saws and bronze chisels, on loan from Peru's National Museum of Archeology. The operation was a success.
     The two museums left me with a pair of thoughts:
     First, we should be very, very, grateful for medical advances over the past 100 years. To have a gruesome medical condition that some pill can clear up today, not know it, and instead die — or, worse, see your children die — had to be a horrible thing, and the Mutter is really a memorial to that horror, preserved in formaldehyde and lovingly displayed. Appreciate medicine's advances, and fight the rise of ignorance as a social lubricant.
     Second, it's really, really good not to go straight into the jar, but to be permitted our brief span in the living world. To look up with feeling at the wall of skulls and not down blindly from it.

Back when Facebook was new, to me.

     Last month I sailed without comment past my 10th anniversary on Facebook — the system of course tells you. It's big on anniversaries, birthdays, anything to keep you using it, plugged in. There was something bittersweet, thinking about how much time I've dumped into that sinkhole. What could I have done instead? Learned to play the piano and well too, probably.

    That said, I have to admit, the latest data-mining scandal hasn't affected me much. I'm not sure I understand it, not sure how my "liking" Tom Waits' page somehow helped the Russians elect Trump.

     But Monday I found myself wondering what Facebook felt like when I first joined. I wandered back into the past, and found this, from a decade ago, when Facebook having 61 million members seemed a lot. 

    It was back when my column filled a page, had subheads and was 30 percent longer than it is today. The original headline was, "Trying to save Face; Don't know if social network thing will work -- but can't be a Willy Loman."

OPENING SHOT . . .

     What new consumer product puzzles Willy Loman early in Arthur Miller's 1949 masterpiece, "Death of a Salesman"?
     Whipped cheese.
     "Willy, dear," says Linda, his patient wife, trying to cheer him after an abandoned sales trip. "I got a new kind of American-type cheese today. It's whipped."
     Willy launches a tirade because he prefers Swiss. "I just thought you'd like a change," Linda implores. "I don't want a change!" he rails. "I want Swiss cheese!"
     Half a page of dialogue about other matters ensues before Willy pauses, out of the blue, to marvel: "How can they whip cheese?"
     "Salesman" has to be the most perfectly constructed play in the English language. The past and present mingle seamlessly, everything meshes together — even the lilting flute music turns out to echo the hand-carved flutes Willy's lost father sold on the prairie.
     Reading it anew, to check my memory, I was struck by the great degree that technological change is part of Willy's gathering confusion and collapse — the windshields of cars not opening as they used to, elms replaced by apartment blocks, fan belts in the new refrigerators and that wire recorder Howard, Willy's much younger boss, toys with as he fires Willy, playing meaningless bits of childish gibberish on the wonderful new machine while Willy desperately tries to talk to him, man-to-man.

PAUL GENCIUS IS NOW MY FRIEND . . .

     As you have gathered by now, the newspaper has sent its columnists, with an enthusiastic, "Everyone into the pool!" whoop, skittering into Facebook, the vast Web social interaction behemoth that is currently the bee's knees, as the kids once said.
     To be honest, I was dubious. "So we're supposed to take time away from writing for our 1.3 million readers in order to tell three or 30 or 300 people what we had for lunch?" I asked. The answer — 60 million people are on Facebook! — also had an obvious retort: maybe, but they're on 61 million different pages.
     But I try to guard against creeping Willy Loman befuddlement. "What do I do?" he despairs. Dismissing the new without trying it is a bad habit. Times surge forward, and if you don't keep up, the next thing you know you're babbling in the hall, moaning, "The woods are burning."
     So into Facebook we go. Easy as pie to set up a page. Post an old column photo. Trot out a few likes ("Master and Commander") join a few groups — fans of Dante, of Mencken, of Thurber — and then go out hunting for friends.
     Fun. Though I'm still puzzled as to how this drives people toward newspapers. If anything, it pulls them away. Reading is a leisure activity, and you only have so much time, and each minute you spend catching up on the doings of people in your network, giving them virtual pokes and backrubs, is a minute you can't be absorbing the news of the day.
     At the top of your profile, you post your status — sleeping, working, whatever — and keeping it current is a constant chore that reminds me of 10 years ago, when they introduced that Giga-Pet electronic toy and the editor-in-chief thought I should try one out.
     It was a little key-ring device, with a crude liquid crystal doggie — I called mine "Butch" —that pooped and slept and retrieved a stick. You had to play with it and you had to feed it, and if you didn't, your dog had a tendency to die. I would actually get up, out of bed, in the middle of the night, to feed the thing, lest I wake in the morning find to electronic carrion.
     Facebook has the same potential as a meaningless time sinkhole — fun at first, and then a grim responsibility as you gather your growing brood of "friends" and try to stay informed of their doings while keeping them abreast of yours.
     Some have made their pages complex menus of items — slide shows, Easter Eggs, posted gossip. You can tickle your friends, or encase them in a block of ice with your new superpowers.
     I found myself stroking Katy McDermott's cat — electronically, of course — via "Catbook" where you can create a Web world for your pets in case your own electronic world and, oh yeah, the real world, aren't quite demanding enough.
     I'd write Facebook off as a trend — this year's Giga-Pet writ large. But I wrote a column in 1983 that dismissed cell phones as an inexplicable fad, and after that I try not to predict the future.

HE COULD PLAY THE GUITAR WITH HIS TEETH

     Let me tell you what the entire Facebook experience left me thinking: I should call Kier.
     He was my college roommate. This fall it'll be 30 years since we met. He lives with his family in Naperville, and while we all get together, from time to time, it's been a few months and a phone call is long overdue. He keeps up with me through this column, but I don't have a similar way to keep up with him, since Kier's too busy actually living his life to dangle an electronic marionette of himself on Facebook.
     Kids might like trolling the electronic sea for companionship, but my guess is most adults can hardly give their old friends the time and attention they deserve, never mind start culling hordes of new ersatz friends out of the online millions. Facebook doesn't mirror life. Co-workers who shun me in person — who blow by, averting their eyes lest they be drawn into conversation — have pledged their palhood on Facebook. It's all very curious, but then perhaps I'm treating it more seriously than it's meant to be treated.
                                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 22, 2008

Can a guy with a Bronx accent be elected mayor of Chicago?

     It isn't that the mayor of Chicago can't be from New York.
     In fact, the city's first and arguably most significant mayor, William B. Ogden — who pushed for a new, disruptive technology called the railroad — was born in New York City, and six of the first 10 Chicago mayors came from New York State, part of the invasion of East Coast sharpies who rushed here to fleece the Indians and make a killing in real estate.
     But that was then. The last person elected mayor of Chicago who wasn't also born here was Anton Cermak, an immigrant from Bohemia, in 1931. (Frank Corr, who replaced Cermak for three weeks after his assassination was born in Brooklyn. But he was never elected, nor was Eugene Sawyer, from Alabama, who finished Harold Washington's term).
     Being born here matters. Chicago is called a city of neighborhoods, but that is an abbreviation. The full phrase is "Chicago, City of Neighborhoods Where You Don't Belong." So the bar is extra high for Garry McCarthy, the former superintendent of police, who announced last week he is running for mayor of Chicago even though he reveals his Bronx birthplace every time he opens his mouth.
     Remember the protracted, almost medieval, debate over whether Rahm Emanuel somehow voided his birth in Chicago by leaving for a few years to serve as chief of staff for the president of the United States? Or the claims that his roots here didn't matter because he contrived to be brought up in Wilmette?
     This is not to go all squishy over Rahm (I can't call him "Emanuel," it's awkward, like calling Elvis "Presley"), an unloved and perhaps unlovable figure whose profile has been dirt low since release of the 2015 video of 16 bullets being pumped into the prone figure of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Rahm, who at best was willfully ignorant, fired McCarthy to create the illusion of action.

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Triangle fire still burns

     The March for Our Lives was inspirational, as people across the country, mostly young, gathered Saturday to refute the culture of death that our leaders have allowed to take hold of our country.

     While it was certainly historic, it is also a reminder that change is seldom easy, and that common people ALWAYS have had to win basic human conditions under which to live by protest and action. 

     Sunday happens to be the anniversary of one of the most horrendous workplace tragedies in history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City. Many of the safety changes in place today—the sort of standards threatened by the Trump administration—were put in place in the wake of the fire.

     I wrote this piece to commemorate its centennial. Note the third paragraph from the end, and remember that promising to enact change, and actually changing, are two very different things.

     At 3:40 p.m. today, Chicago time, it will be exactly 100 years to the minute since someone tossed a cigarette into a bin of scrap cloth on the 8th floor of the Asch Building on New York's Lower East Side, touching off what for the last century has been known as the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

      It was a Saturday, so only 600 of the usual 1,000 employees—500 women and girls and 100 men—were working. Their 12-hour shift over, they had put their street clothes on, collected their pay envelopes—$6 a week—and were waiting for the bell. Ten minutes later the place would have been empty.
     The fire raced through the eighth floor, fed by piles of lint, linen hanging on wires from the ceiling and oil stored in the open to keep the machines running. It spread to the ninth and 10th floors, sending panicked workers running to the two fire escapes. One was anchored to the outside of the building, down into the alley. The other was inside.
     The building was 11 years old, considered both "modern"—it was served by four elevators —as well as "fireproof." But the ladders between the levels of the outside escape were missing—those who fled there couldn't get down. And the doors to the inside fire escape were locked, to prevent theft.
     The first fire engine company to respond arrived in minutes, firemen dodging what at first they thought were bolts of cloth being tossed from the burning building.
     They weren't bolts of cloth, but workers leaping to escape the flames. The firemen raced to set up their ladders, but they needn't have hurried—their ladders fell 20 feet short.
     The streets filled with onlookers watching in horror as those trapped above were squeezed between burning and falling to death. Most were teenage girls from immigrant families—Italians, Russians, Germans; most "could barely speak English." The weight of the women on the back fire escape tore it from its moorings and sent it crashing into the alley, killing everyone on it.
     The crowd on the street shouted "don't jump!" but the seamstresses had little choice.
     Five girls watched from one window as the firemen tried to work a ladder to them but couldn't reach. "They leaped together," the New York Times reported the next day, "clinging to each other, with fire streaming back from their hair and dresses."
     A 13-year-old girl hung by her fingertips for three minutes from a 10th-floor ledge before dropping to her death.
     There was heroism. Three of the four elevator operators kept at their posts, making repeated runs to the smoky eighth floor, returning packed with survivors. When one operator finally fled screaming "fire!" into the street, a New York University law student took over and made four more trips before the flames destroyed the shaft.
     It was all over in half an hour—146 workers had died. Examining the charred bodies, the New York City coroner was seen "sobbing like a child." There had been warnings aplenty, which the factory owners ignored.
     "This is just the calamity I have been predicting," said the city's fire chief. "Look around everywhere; nowhere will you find fire escapes. . . . Only last Friday a manufacturer's association met on Wall Street to oppose my plan [for a] sprinkler system, as well as the additional escapes."
     That night at the morgue, another hellish scene unfolded as bereaved relatives gathered to identify loved ones, "the sobbing and shrieking mothers and wives and frantic fathers and husbands of those who had not been accounted for." Many victims, burned beyond recognition, were identified only by the heel of a shoe or the scar on a knee.
     The next day, the police at the morgue turned away many curious New Yorkers: well-dressed businessmen and groups of schoolgirls who came to "see the sights."
     Ironically, the year before, the International Ladies Garment Workers had struck the Triangle, demanding higher wages and better working conditions, the first mass strike by women in the United States. The owners promised to meet their demands, and the strike ended. No changes were made, of course—instead, one by one, those involved in the union were fired, and so were not there that fatal day, but lived to press for the reforms that came in the wake of the disaster.
     The Asch Building was indeed fireproof—largely undamaged by the fire, it stands today, part of New York University.
     Triangle owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were charged with manslaughter but acquitted. Their insurance company compensated them handsomely for their loss.

                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times March 25, 2011