Flashback: Lincoln relic or just old hat?

Abraham Lincoln, by Alexander Gardner (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     My former colleague, Ray Long, reports in the Tribune that the financially-troubled Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield is considering unloading some of its stuff. I've never been a fan of the library, which cast itself as more of a cut-rate Disneyland for downstate rubes than a serious institution dedicated to scholarship, and their intellectual laziness over their expensive piece of old haberdashery is a perfect example of why. Long puts its this way: 
        "The Taper collection included a beaver fur stovepipe hat that library officials are satisfied that Lincoln wore, though some critics are not convinced there is empirical evidence of an attachment to Honest Abe."   
      Which to my ear is a study in understatement, akin to, "Many critics consider 'Harry Potter' to be a work of fiction." The moment I heard the topper might be up for sale, I thought of this old column. Let's put it this way: were I you, I would think twice before spending too much for that hat. 

     People lie. They dissemble and prevaricate. They fool themselves and others.
     The history of fraud is long. One of the best passages in Loyal Rue's "By the Grace of Guile: The Role of Deception in Natural History and Human Affairs" involves the explosive popularity of holy relics in the Middle Ages: 

Response to the 'discovery' of these relics was so intense that even more spectacular finds followed: the staff of Moses, manna from the wilderness, the bodies of Samuel the prophet, St. Peter, St. Paul, Mary Magdalene, hanks of hair from the Virgin Mary, vials of her milk, blood from the birth of Jesus, pieces of the cross, the crown of thorns . . . eventually there were enough fragments of the cross about to build a battleship, and enough of the Virgin's milk to sink it.

     Just as those who "found" these relics had to deal with impolite questions—such as "How did Mary Magdalene's body come to be buried in France?"—so possessors of more recent relics go through contortions trying to justify their venerated objects. In the wake of Dave McKinney's stories in the Sun-Times, it has been joy to watch the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield shimmy, trying to escape the obvious conclusion: that no real evidence links the top hat they claim was worn by Lincoln to the 16th president. 
     Yes, it is his size, and yes, it comes from the Springfield hat shop that Lincoln patronized. But to accept that as proof of anything is to believe that every 7 1/8 hat sold in Springfield back then must have belonged to Lincoln. That's like saying that every sandal from Roman times was worn by Jesus.
     The library claimed, at first, the hat was given to an Illinois farmer, William Waller, during one of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates. This ran into a problem when the Sun-Times pointed out a 1958 affidavit claiming that the hat was given to Waller "during the Civil War in Washington." Now they had two stories, a conflict, like the three churches that each claimed to own a head of John the Baptist.
     We need to remember that, as with holy relics, Lincoln memorabilia is an area famous for fraud and forgery—I once watched as the late Ralph Newman, a renowned Lincoln expert, dashed off a convincing Lincoln signature, to show how easily it could be done.
     In November, Dominican University gave a seminar, "Lincoln Fakes & Forgeries," where speakers addressed deception in the wake of a portrait that for decades was thought to be of Mary Lincoln but turned out to be a fake.
     "Not just paintings, but handwriting, photographs, printed documents, stories, and supposed family relics of the Lincolns have been passed off as authentic since Mr. Lincoln became president," the university noted. "Some of these items show chutzpah; some show greed; and some, a sincere yearning to be associated with greatness."
     These words were printed next to a photo of James Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Lincoln Presidential Library, who spoke at the seminar. Thinking he must be an expert in this, I phoned him, and had one of the more unpleasant conversations I've had with anyone in recent years.
      "I've already said all I have to say," he snapped. He must be referring to his limp remark to Dave McKinney that the hat's provenance "cannot be proven or disproven."
      I hope they engrave that on the plaque. Cornelius did not sound like a confident man in proud possession of a national treasure. He sounded like a man running from truth.
     "If this hat came into my shop with that story, to be consigned, I wouldn't do it because I could not prove it," said Dan Weinberg, owner of Abraham Lincoln Book Shop.
      I can see why the Lincoln Presidential Library folks are snarly—they spent millions on an old hat whose link to the 16th president is at best notional. (The whispered, more-likely story is that the hat morphed into a Lincoln relic 50 years ago, during the Civil War centennial). That can't be helped now without going back in time, and the proper time travel technology just isn't here yet.
     What happens next is what worries me. The museum is committed to passing off the hat as genuine, perverting the idea of historic scholarship. We cannot tolerate that. My late colleague, Steve Neal, insisted that qualified professionals run the library. He fought to keep it from being a nest of George Ryan cronies. It is sad that it takes a Chicago newspaper, again, to remind them that, as tempting as it is to tap dance around their mistake, they risk turning the museum into a P.T. Barnum cabinet of dubious wonders. And once they go down that slippery road, the sky's the limit. If they display this hat as Lincoln's own now, someday they'll be displaying feathers from Lincoln's angelic wings collected in heaven. The millions wasted are still too cheap a price to sell our state's soul.
     "You have to be true to history if you're going to be in this business," said Weinberg.
     Do we honor Lincoln by fetishizing this expensive old hat? Or by being true to history?

                           —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 27, 2013

Flashback 1998: TV's latest 'British invasion' is putting children in a trance

     My older son Ross graduates from college in a couple days. I haven't seen him in ... more than five months, as he used the past two school breaks to study in London and travel in Israel. There was a time when I worried about not seeing him for five minutes, as this column, almost exactly 20 years old, is a reminder. 
     The Teletubbies show began in England in 1997 and came here the next year. There doesn't seem much to be thankful for in our media world, but we can thank providence that the Teletubbies came and went—production ended in 2001— without leaving much of a lasting impact, though they did have their uses. As it is, having not seen a show in nearly 20 years, sometimes when I notice a couple rabbits on a green lawn I'll flinch, remembering.

     "Bye-bye Ross. Bye. Daddy's going to work now. Bye. See ya."
     Nothing. My 2-year-old son's head doesn't turn. His face doesn't deviate a degree from staring directly at the object of his affection: "Teletubbies."
     I walk over to his chair, lean down low, and whisper in his ear: "Bye-bye. See you. Have a good day!" Nothing. Eyelock. He doesn't even blink. The Teletubbies dance and sing.
     And here's the horrible part. I glance up from the slack, inert face of my mesmerized son to see what he is watching. Then I start watching the Teletubbies. Tinky Winky. Dipsy. Po. La-La. They bump their pear-shaped bodies together. They tumble. A baby face smiles down from the yellow sun. Periscope-like speakers rise up from the lawn and make ringing, Orwellian pronouncements.
     That was the week before last. Day One, their debut in Chicago, on Channel 11, Baby-sitter to the World. I linger for a minute or two, compelled by the bright colors, the endless repetition. It is all . . . so . . . weird. I almost sit down, my mouth hanging open, and take in the entire show.
     Instead, grabbing myself by the nose, I manage to jerk my head away. My gaze torn from the set. I flee the house, stumbling toward work, another concerned parent confronting the Teletubby menace, the most ominous development out of England since bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
     Yes, children aren't supposed to watch TV. Never watch TV. Never eat sugar. Never a minute unobserved. Instead they should spend their days capering creatively with their devoted caretakers: a full-time mother, two white-haired grandmothers, a few doting aunts, and a groom to look after the pony.
     But whose life is like that? I feel lucky that my wife is a stay-at-home mother. If occasionally (OK, habitually) Ross ends up parked in front of Channel 11 for an hour or three during the mad morning rush to care for him and his younger brother, to get me out of the house and do 1,000 other things, well, it's better than leaving the boys to scrabble for themselves in some Lord of the Flies day care center or subject them to the questionable mercies of an unemployed teenager plucked off the street.
     A little "Theodore the Tugboat," a little "Arthur" and the day is well under way. Why shouldn't Teletubbies join our pharmacopeia of TV Tot Narcotics?
     Yes, I find their blinking eyes and gaping mouths off-putting. But the show isn't designed for me, is it? If it were, there would be dancing girls. (Now there's an idea: a show for kids where the alphabet, counting and colors are taught by a cast of scantily clad models from Victoria's Secret and Chippendales. Something for everybody.)
     Like anything new, the Teletubbies offer the agonizing question of whether this is an unacceptable invasion that must be resisted, or just something new that we will eventually come to love.
     Perhaps I'm influenced by all the commotion that preceded Teletubbies. It was the biggest deal in Britain since Diana went for a drive in Paris. There were controversies -- one actor was fired for not being sufficiently Teletubby-like. There was the issue of whether the Teletubby with the purse is gay. (It was an echo of when a minister here demanded to know just what the heck is going on between Bert and Ernie on "Sesame Street." Stupidity knows no borders.)
     Day Two. Ross actually complains when "Barney" comes on— "Teletubbies! Teletubbies!" he says, demanding that I conjure them up "Right now!" I actually feel a sympathetic pang for the now-scorned purple dinosaur, whom I certainly hated as much as anybody when he first debuted.
     But enough viewings can adjust you to anything. I suppose I'm sympathizing with my captors, the TV version of the "Stockholm Syndrome." Having seen every single "Barney," by now I can actually sit through a show without having to entertain myself by imagining I am part of the gang of "Clockwork Orange" thugs who corner Michael in a gritty high school breezeway on his way home from the Barney set.
     Day Three. My worries that the Teletubbies are Video Heroin are replaced by a sort of Bad Parent Epiphany. With my wife having bolted for the supermarket—supposedly—an hour before, and the time of my departure for work drawing near, I prop Ross before the shrine of the Teletubbies, set a bowl of oatmeal in his lap, and tiptoe off to take a shower.
     I would never have done this before, but my confidence in the hypnotic power of the Teletubbies is that great. I trust them with his life.
     As quick as the shower is, I have plenty of time to imagine my beloved boy snapping out of his trance the moment the bathroom door shuts. I see him hopping to his feet and racing directly to the nearby, tragically available a) lye; b) sharp kitchen knives; c) dry-cleaning bag; d) open window.
     I return to find him in the same position I had left him. His hand is on the tablespoon, but he hasn't raised it to his lips. A Teletrance. I look at the set. Hmmm, what a pleasant little band of happy fellows!
     It is too late for me and my family. But you, who haven't yet seen the show, can still save yourselves. The Teletubbies are coming! They're here! On the air now! The toys will soon be in stores! Do something before it's too . . .
              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 19, 1998

Today in Trumpland

     Notice how ineptly Donald Trump paints himself into a corner by assuming the success of his negotiations with North Korea. Putting himself—and the country he leads, unfortunately—in a position of weakness before talks, scheduled for mid-June, even begin.
     Trump says he'll walk away if it doesn't go well. But how can he do that when he is already taking a victory lap for something he hasn't yet done and might never do? As is his habit.
    One of the many problems with living in a fact-free world: you can pretend you've already done what you will never actually do.
    And people believe him. 
    A reminder that to focus on Trump and his flaws are wrong. There will always be another Trump in the wings, and if we continue susceptible to people like that, there will be no salvation of us.

    In the meantime, Trump has to make whatever concessions he will make, elevate the North Korean pariah to an international respect he doesn't deserve—Trump's already done that—and declare the whole thing part of his unbroken, if imaginary, chain of triumph.
     Freeing three American hostages is all well and good. But that shouldn't overshadow his alienating our closest allies while embracing the strongman dictators he yearns to become. Did you notice how Trump mentioned that the men he had just freed supported him? That's how hungry for any shred of validation. Look! These guys I just sprang from a North Korean prison approve of me!
     You can see by how Trump made a spectacle of the hostages' arrival—being personally on-hand at 3 a.m. and genuflecting before the dictator who finally released them.
     “We want to thank Kim Jong Un, who was really excellent," Trump gushed.

     It is Kim Jong Un who should be thanking Trump, for all the favors and benefits bestowed. I suppose that's coming.

Autocrat of Time

     Few notions regarding history are more mistaken than the idea that we are on a descending spiral of laxity, where more and more is permitted, and standard after standard of taste and decency are abandoned. 
      I think this is because we assume that certain trends in some areas apply to all manifestations of expression. Yes, obscenity spreads and becomes more common. Moviemakers fretted over Rhett Butler saying "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn," at the end of "Gone With the Wind," in 1939, while now all TV channels except the big three broadcast networks relish whatever dirty words they see fit. 
   But there are sub-currents. For instance, nudity was more acceptable in general media in eras gone by than it is now. I remember seeing microfilm of the Sun-Times original coverage of the 1955 Schuessler-Peterson killings, where the paper published photos of the naked bodies of the boys in a ditch, lightly airbrushed. Something we would never do today, out of consideration for the families of the victims and the knowledge that the paper would be torn down brick by brick by outraged readers if we did. 
    On the other hand, clothed corpses are another matter. I noticed that the CBS Evening News, once the platinum bar of excellence, didn't hesitate last month to flash a photograph of Prince's body, sprawled in his Paisley Park mansion, to illustrate a minor story about how no one was being charged for providing the drugs that lead to his death. I don't believe that would have happened a decade ago. I'm not pleased it happened now, but I am of an earlier age.

    Turn your attention to this watch advertisement, which I glimpsed on the back cover of the July, 1927 issue of American Magazine, a popular, mainstream general interest publication at the time similar to The Saturday Evening Post. Notice anything unusual? Try to imagine Timex or Hamilton running it now, and the outcry it would evoke, as much for the sexism as the nudity.
     Although I should point out a detail about this ad, if you can tear your eyes away from the windblown flapper: the watches are for both sexes, men and women. The ad is designed to appeal to both and, indeed, advertising studies show that women look longer on a photo of a naked woman than men do. Gloria Steinem said it's because the women are automatically comparing themselves to the picture.
     So are we better now, having shelved this kind of thing? I tend to disapprove of anything that reins in creativity. Rules are generally made to be broken. And standards change quickly. When this blog started, almost five years ago, I would encounter people who were troubled by its slightly risque title. Now I never do. Which means either tastes are changing; or my circle is narrowing. Or both. 

     
     

‘O nation miserable!’ — ‘Macbeth,’ prophecy and the Chicago mayor’s race

Ian Merrill Peakes as Macbeth

     You don't have to be Harold Bloom to analyze Shakespeare. Anyone can do it. For instance, I believe the entire character of Othello and the root of the play's tragedy can be comprehensively summed up in two words: he's stupid.
     His subordinate Iago, envious and bitter at being passed over for promotion, lays a crude trap and Othello falls in, eyes open.
     A critique which Bloom, famed literary critic and scholar, agrees with, in more ornate terms: "He so readily seems to become Iago's dupe...Othello is a great soul hopelessly outclassed in intellect."
     In other words, he's stupid.
     The details can be parsed in any play, which is also part of the fun. With "Macbeth," for instance, now on stage to great effect at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, we can argue whether Macbeth is undone by the witches' prophecy; fresh from victory, noble Macbeth encounters the Weird Sisters, who tell him he'll be king of Scotland.
     Are the crones predicting Macbeth's certain future or merely goading him toward it?
     Bloom considers Macbeth a pig trussed for slaughter, forced along the chute that fate and his scheming wife have set for him. I'm not so sure. Maybe I just don't like predestination. But any resistance Macbeth might have felt is undercut by that fatal prediction, "All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king!"
     The prediction dooms Macbeth as much as his wife does. He's supposed to be king, so naturally goes about the bloody business. I flashed on that augury while reading the Sun-Times front page Tuesday: "LIGHTFOOT'S BIG STEP" it trumpeted, with Fran Spielman's careful analysis of why the former police board president seems to be joining the pack baying after Rahm Emanuel's job.
     First I felt the tickle of hope. Is Lightfoot the chosen one to deliver Chicago from the clutches of Rahm Emanuel, that charmless man, who can be easily imagined wandering the fifth floor of City Hall, trying to rub Laquan McDonald's blood from his hands. "Out, damned spot! ... What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?" (Since vagueness allows anyone to interpret wildly and then criticize the product of their imaginings, let me be plain: Emanuel didn't kill McDonald, just sat on the evidence of his killing for a year, either through willful ignorance or desperate complicity).
     But we cannot wish Emanuel's opponents into having a chance against him. I'm not sure whether media attention doesn't magnify them to a stature they don't deserve and, like the witches' augury, drive lambs toward the cash buzzsaw slaughter that Rahm Emanuel has for them. If a high school squad challenged the Bulls to a game, would we treat them as serious contenders and put them on the front page? Are we not confusing intention with result?
     Fran's story is illustrated by seven tiny photos of dabblers already running, and a more apt graphic could not be imagined. Dorothy Brown? Really? She can't run the clerk's office, never mind the city. Garry McCarthy? (McCarthy, McDonald, it's like we have our own set of shabby minor characters cut from "Macbeth.") A true villain out of Shakespeare, slouching back to Chicago to avenge his lost manhood, Falstaff-like Mike Ditka, in fool's motley, jingling after him, goading him on to higher folly. Willie Wilson? The man needs an expensive hobby—he should buy a boat—so as to keep him from these expensive forays into politics. Paul Vallas? We've already got one rebarbative figure-spouting white insider murmuring in the mayor's office; why go through all this only to swap for another?
     The rest aren't worth the breath to ridicule. Let's exit today's stage with the bard, as we entered it. The paper ran a lukewarm review of Chicago Shakespeare's "Macbeth" Tuesday. I won't contradict expertise, but my wife has been raving about it for a week. The powerful performances of Macbeth and his lady, played by Ian Merrill Peakes and Chaon Cross, are reason enough to see the play, forget the special effects. I thought it magnificent.
     Than again, I viewed "Macbeth" as perfect for these Trumpian times, particularly when Macduff scoffs:

Fit to govern! No, not to live. O nation miserable,With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd, When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?

     Not this year, not next. Maybe 2021. Maybe not.

Flashback 2007: Delightful and unexpected; Family vacation to Tennessee -- yes, Tennessee

     I was puzzling over what to write in the paper Wednesday and, through some random brain circuitry quirk, got to wondering what Eddie Montgomery is up to.
       Montgomery is the surviving half the Montgomery Gentry country music duo—his partner Troy Gentry died in a helicopter crash last September. I saw them on stage twice, and admired their powerful performance and honest, intelligent music. 

     Turns out that in February, Montgomery issued an album they had finished just before Gentry died, and not only has been touring, solo, but as chance would have it is coming to Bloomington, a mere 140 miles from Chicago, this Saturday night, playing at the Grossinger Motors Arena. Tickets are available.

     That seemed reason enough to dig deeper. So much of concert music is canned bologna  nowadays, I thought the Kentuckian's performances in the wake of Gentry's death might be more genuine and heartfelt than the standard fare.
    "I know I'm supposed to be a big badass outlaw or whatever," Montgomery told Rolling Stone in March. "But when we hit the stage a couple weeks ago without him, I was so nervous. I was like 'Oh my God' – I thought I was gonna get sick. But finally I felt him in there, and I started smiling."  
     Monday I contacted Montgomery's management and asked to talk to him for a few minutes about how he's holding up without the man he's been harmonizing with for so long—the duo officially formed in 1999, but they played together for decades before that. Maybe I'll hear from him Tuesday, most likely I won't on such short notice, but as I tell the boys, "It's called "trying.'"
     There aren't many groups that I like, but Montgomery Gentry songs are a few cuts above, and I quote them from time to time in the column. Now that I think of it, I would have included the recovery anthem "Some People Change" in my recent book, "Out of the Wreck I Rise," but after going through the time and expense of tracking down Beth Nielsen Chapman and paying her a fortune for "Save Yourself," I didn't have the heart.
     No matter, in checking what I wrote when I first encountered the group, I came upon this travelogue to Tennessee, and thought it merits posting.

     The day before we left, I walked a cigar down Wacker Drive.
     Why go on vacation at all, I wondered, when it is so very pleasant right here? What sights could be possibly better than these? Especially in Tennessee, of all places?
     Ah, well, I concluded, with a melancholy puff. People do these things. The boys and the wife are looking forward to it -- she has her heart set on climbing some mountain and staying at a lodge there. Might as well go without complaint and see what happens.

                                                                  - - -

     Nashville has its own Parthenon. Who knew? A full-scale replica, not of marble like the one in Athens, but concrete-studded with pebbles, smack dab in the center of a city park. It's huge.    

     Inside, a 42-foot-tall statue of Athena, facing a pair of 24-foot-tall, 7.5-ton bronze doors so skillfully hung you can move one with your pinkie.
     Delightful and unexpected -- here, in the Bible Belt, where people put Ten Commandments magnets on their SUVs, they erected an enormous pagan temple with a gilt Greek goddess in the center.
     And this was just the first morning of the first day. 

                                                      - - -

     My experience with country music began and ended 20 years ago with "Coal Miner's Daughter." But we were here, so why not go to the Grand Ole Opry?
     A great show. Impressive how they draw the audience into their 80-year tradition with a short film and a Minnie Pearl imitator revving up the crowd. They welcomed us to their 4,252nd consecutive performance, then got down to business with a blast of fiddle and a brace of blur-legged dancers.
     Acts came and went. White-haired pros with half a century at the Opry mixed with ingenues making their debuts.
     "This song is going to be on my new album, and I'd like to do it for you," said Jennifer Hanson, a leggy lass, touchingly sincere, introducing a tune called "73" that outlines the fracture of her family, its title referring, courageously, to the year she was born.
     Then a duet called Montgomery Gentry burst onstage. A driving beat, great lyrics -- especially "Lucky Man" -- sharp showmanship and twangy music. I had never heard of them before but instantly could tell that these guys were good. We bought their new CD and couldn't stop listening to it as we drove across the state.

                                                              - - -

     Homemade biscuits. Moon Pies. Sweet tea. Goo-Goo Clusters. Fried strawberry pie. Fried banana pudding. Turnip greens.
     Carthage. Alexandria. Tennessee's ancient world motif isn't limited to the Parthenon -- 170-year-old wallpaper at Andrew Jackson's home shows scenes from mythology. No doubt an attempt back then to lend classical luster to a frontier nowhere.
     Fishing barefoot in a river. Riding horses through dense woods. We spent three days hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, whose beauty defies words—trees covered with delicate lichen and moss, banks of wildflowers, 10-mile-wide mountain vistas. The boys, whom I expected to drag their feet and pine for TV, instead surged ahead, particularly the older kid, as if he had been waiting his whole life for this. We went from worrying he'd refuse to climb to worrying he'd skip off a cliff.
     We stayed at the place my wife dreamed about—LeConte Lodge. No electricity, no roads, it's supplied by pack llamas. Toward evening, we watched the mist roll eerily up the mountainside, just like smoke.

                                                                   - - -

     After the park, Pigeon Forge, a godawful, endless strip of chain restaurants and go-kart tracks that makes Wisconsin Dells seem like the Garden of Eden. One could easily juxtapose it to the Smokies and make a compelling argument for the extinction of the human race.
     Too easily, and just as Tiger Woods doesn't practice two-inch putts, so I don't traffic in the obvious. I made the best of it and taught Kent how to shoot pool.
     Besides, that's where we saw the Dixieland Stampede, Dolly Parton's revival of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Any experience that includes live thundering bisons and a piglet race supposedly redeciding the outcome of the Civil War cannot be all bad.

                                                                       - - -

     "Martin Luther King stayed in a motel?!" marveled Ross, as I tucked him into bed in our room at the Peabody. Ironic -- to him, King is a famous person, so of course he would stay somewhere fancy, like the Peabody, with its famous lobby-dwelling ducks and its duckmaster with his red jacket and gold-headed duck cane.
     I was explaining that tomorrow we'd visit the National Civil Rights Museum, cleverly carved out of the shell of the Lorraine Motel, where King was murdered in 1968.
     Like the whole state of Tennessee, the museum far exceeded expectations -- a vivid, throat-clenching, eye-misting experience. We spent three hours there -- the boys learning the saga for the first time, me picking up information I didn't know: For instance, King was stabbed by a deranged black woman in 1956. He later laughed off the incident, which seems the right approach to such situations.

                                                                       - - -

     Much of the country is still woods, and driving across its vastness was supremely reassuring. During the trip, the London terror plot unfurled, and the standard crew of flag-waving cowards took to the airwaves to announce that the only way to combat terrorism is to preemptively renounce the freedoms that terrorists oppose.
     Fools. It's a great country, and while we certainly can be harmed, we'll win in the end, if we keep faith in ourselves.

                                                                     - - -

      Memphis has a pyramid. Who knew? And of course Graceland. I went; how can you not? And since the place has been picked clean, culturally, there didn't seem any point to criticize. So I just went and enjoyed. It actually was interesting, and I learned stuff. His life, despite all the buffing, seemed hollow. By the time Elvis was my age, he had been dead for five years, and I decided that, all things being equal, I would rather be me than be Elvis, a revelation worth driving 1,900 miles to receive.

                                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 15, 2007

'Don't give advice' and other useless, unheeded commencement suggestions

     Welcome friends, family members, residents of Chicago and environs.
     This is the commencement season.
     They have already begun, these solemn ceremonies, grand processions and groaning brass overtures, at institutions great and small, and will continue for a month and a half, from Loyola University Chicago, all this week, until ... Northwestern University, bringing up the rear, Friday, June 22.
     I'll be at NU, seeing the younger boy off into the world. But first, I'll be at Pomona College in California. Two boys, two commencements, boom-boom, one after another. Because the younger lad flashed through college in three years, itself a lesson on the value of paternal advice, since, when he raised the idea, I urged him to linger and enjoy college. You'll have a lifetime to work.
     He shrugged and did what he wanted. That's what kids do.
     Leading to my first piece of advice for commencement goers: don't give advice. Really, don't. The grads don't want to hear it, probably won't hear it, and you're giving it anyway, not based on their lives, but yours. We pretend we're trying to spare them our mistakes, but what we're really doing is trying to pick the music for a party we're not invited to.
     No matter. Advice will be given. Speakers famous and obscure will don black robes and puffy velvet hats, and share wisdom. Dream dreams. Live life.
     But what about the audience? Who speaks of our hopes?
     Nobody. Maybe we don't need it; our hopes are right in front of us, a snaking line of black-robed almost-graduates, taking selfies.
     To be honest, the person needing advice is me: fashion advice, first. Pack a sport coat? I consulted the video of the 2017 Pomona commencement to assess what the audience was wearing. A few old coots in jackets, but mostly men in their shirtsleeves.
     "Wear what you're comfortable in," my wife suggested. "It's California."
     Everywhere is California now. So my next bit of advice is: wear clothing. For an audience member to even ponder fashion inflates yourself to a significance you don't enjoy. You're a speck of color in the crowd.
     Bring mints. They help the time go by.
     Try not to cheer your graduate. Because every single graduate has family, and a brief delay after each makes the ceremony even longer than it already is. However, for some families, this graduation represents not the latest step on a perpetual victory lap but a revolution, a stirring breakthrough. They have to cheer, to scream out the names of their babies.
     I always thought the stern warnings against cheering reflect white privilege. What do they expect? Everyone in the audience to pat fingertips against palms and whisper, "Oh look, Muffy, junior is reaching another summit ..." So don't cheer unless you have to. If you do, go crazy. You earned it. Well, technically, your kid earned it, but that kid would have been selling drugs on a street corner if you didn't ride herd over him 24/7, and you know it and I know it even if the kid doesn't know it. So you earned it, too.
     I already know what I'm going to do, and I didn't realize this until I started to watch the Pomona video. I'm going to cry, and I'm not even sure why.
     Relief? No. If I could close my eyes, call out "One more time!" and open them to find myself standing at Evanston Hospital, awkwardly clutching a red-faced bundle wrapped in a soft blankie, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Even if it meant once more having to squeegee up all that vomit in the white-tiled restroom at Zephyr ice cream parlor. It was on the ceiling.
     Pride? Maybe that. The boys turned out far better than I ever imagined, so far ahead of what I was at their age I can't even take credit. I was present, said stuff that nobody listened to, paid for things, but in the end, I feel like a rooster crowing at the sunrise, marking an occasion that I did not actually bring about.
     Maybe confused amazement. That sounds right. Really, it's as baffling as if I stepped out of pre-school orientation and returned to find my sons magically grown, grinning adults in neat beards, patting me once on the shoulder as they hurry off. Huh? What? How did that happen?