Nick Cave fights racism with beauty

     Sometimes it feels like we’ve become a nation squatting in the ruins of our past. Living off scrounged philosophy and canned food discovered in wrecked basements, warming ourselves over the flickering fires of liberties ignited long ago and not quite extinguished. There’s so much stuff scattered everywhere, garish and contradictory, trash pushed up into enormous cliffs and walls. It takes focused attention to make any sense of it, and an act of rare genius to render the rubble into art.
     I almost missed the Nick Cave show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Why go? Well, I’d seen one of the artist’s quirky Soundsuits — a sequined costume topped with a kind of exaggerated pope’s mitre — at the Whitney in New York a couple years back. He’s a Chicago artist, and while I only recently realized he is a different person than the Australian singer of the same name, I try to keep track of Chicago artists. I also noticed friends on Facebook posting photos of hundreds of delicate foil spinners when the show opened in mid-May.
     I’ve long passed the get-to-the-show-when-it-opens phase of my life, and am now firmly trudging through the try-to-see-it-before-it-closes part. With the Cave show closing Oct. 2, the canyon floor was hurtling up at me.
     Still, not exactly a pitchfork at the back prodding me downtown. Perhaps key, my wife also wanted to go, and we paired a visit to the MCA Sunday with hitting the last day of the Chicago Jazz Fest. I’d point out how downtown was jammed with throngs of happy tourists, but that’s becoming cliche. Still, if only all those patriots edgily fingering their weapons downstate and projecting dire thoughts at a city they last visited in 1992 could muster the courage of a 4-year-old girl in a tutu to walk down Michigan Avenue. It might be an education for them. Or might not, given the current genius to see, not what’s in front of you, but what’s between your ears, projected upon the world like a slideshow.
     I’m glad we went. Because while the colorful Soundsuits, dripping with beads and buttons and bling, are weird and wry and engaging, what really struck me is how Cave takes ephemera, the kitsch you see sold on a blanket on city streets, and assembles it into tableaus of significance.

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Artifact

     What is our responsibility to the past? To preserve it, of course. Because if history isn't passed along, then it's lost irrevocably, and the present isn't always a good judge of what is important, what insignificant.
     The thing about the past, though, is there's so much of it. You can't preserve everything. What to hold onto? What to let go? Words and images can gather in an endless collection of files without jamming our capabilities. But not everything is stories and pictures. There is stuff, and lots of that, too. What to do with it?
     I met a neighbor for breakfast at Leonidas last week, the cute little Belgian chocolate shop a few blocks from my house. An almond croissant, a cup of joe, and all was right with the world. He came bearing a gift: a round plastic container holding the cookie above. With it, came a story, related to Ed Hanrahan, who 50 years ago was the Cook County State's Attorney. I knew the part about Hanrahan leading the Dec. 4, 1969 raid against the apartment where Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was sleeping, killing him and an aide, Mark Clark. My neighbor filled in some interesting details, such as that the cops on the raid were not regular Chicago police, but Cook County State's Attorney police, older, semi-retired, not particularly skilled at what they did.

     The murders — Hampton died in a fusillade of bullets, Hanrahan lied and claimed it was a fierce gunfight, pointing to nail heads in the wall and pretending they were bullet holes from Black Panther fire — scuttled Hanrahan's political career, in the way Rahm Emanuel's wrecked on the killing of Laquan McDonald. The then-powerful Democratic Party wouldn't slate him. 

     But he did not go quietly. He ran without party endorsement. As part of his efforts, Hanrahan marched in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, and arranged some piece of hokey business where he paused in front of Mayor Daley and doffed his top hat, whereupon a white dove of peace was to fly out. Only the poor bird, no doubt nearly smothered in its confinement, merely tumbled dazed to the street, a classic political moment if ever there were. 

     As part of Hanrahan's similar flailing efforts to rehabilitate himself, my fellow Northbrookite, then a wisp of a young operative, donned a white busboy tunic and slipped into the banquet hall where a Democratic dinner was about to be held and set one of these green fortune cookies at each place setting. I guess the idea was the party stalwarts would see the cookie, smile, and conclude that yes, indeed, Hanrahan is the man.

    It worked, kind of. Democratic voters, who can be a forgiving lot, gave the nomination to Hanrahan, who promptly lost to Republican Bernard Carey in the general election.

     Though notice how the story — which must no longer be familiar to many after the scouring hand of time rubbed it away for half a century — is evoked by the cookie, which he had guarded for 50 years. My friend was in the process of unburdening himself of such ephemera (And burdening me with it, I thought, accepting the token). He didn't intend on me to keep it, but his idea was for me to convey the cookie to Mike Sneed, the Sun-Times gossip columnist who at the time was a Tribune gossip columnist and, he said, reported on the cookie prank.

     I didn't find any evidence of that, though I did find mention of the cookie caper. With our office on North Racine shutting down next week, ahead of our move to Navy Pier and the Old Post Office, and rolling dumpsters being filled with crap, I couldn't see conveying this lone cookie to work and trying to find it a home. My colleagues would think I'd gone mad. My initial thought was to simply mail it to Sneed and be done with it. But that would require a small investment of time and money, so I dashed off an email: do you want this?

     "Good grief! He kept the molding cookie all this years?" she replied, neatly expressing my own thoughts. "Did he tell you what the gag was or just a campaign cookie at a political event? I can still hear Ed’s laugh. It was everything Irish back then. I think I was in my 20’s still when Ed was in office. .. Now in my dotage, I am trying to toss the dross of my newsie past. I will now choose to give the cookie a pass."

    Smart woman. Can't say I blame her. But I am nothing if not a conscientious steward of the past. I went online, where the Chicago History Museum has a form where you can offer to donate artifacts related to the city's past to the museum's collection. I'm not expecting them to send curator's with white gloves, but I could see this cookie being part of some exhibit on political mischief. Staffing being what it is, I figure I'll hear from the museum in a matter of weeks or months or never. Until then, my office at home is such an uncurated clutter of crap that another cookie more or less won't matter. Once it's gone, it's not like it could be easily replaced, and I imagine the city isn't silly with them after half a century. Though you never know.

‘You catch the moment’

 

   A criminal trial brings many people together in one room. It can get crowded and confusing, but there is a clear hierarchy to help make sense of what’s happening.
     First is the judge, of course, in this case U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, 85, set off not just by an elevated perch and flowing black robes, but his air of authority.
     He’s flanked by a clerk, a bailiff, deputies from the U.S. Marshal's office, and a court reporter, working that that odd stenotype machine with its 22 flat keys.
     There is the defendant who, if you were in Leinenweber’s courtroom last week, was R. Kelly, the singer already sentenced in June in New York to 30 years in prison for sexually abusing young girls. This latest trial, now in its fourth week, is expected to conclude in a few days.
     Kelly’s at a table with his attorneys. At the next table is the prosecution. There is the jury in their box, the press in its row, the public filling the rest of the room. Witnesses come and go.
     Then there is Don Colley, 68, bald with a neat beard. He typically holds a Stillman & Birn sketchbook, with grey or tan pages. He gazes at the proceedings, while sketching with colored markers, Pitt Artist Pens, by Faber-Castell. He likes them because they don’t have an odor, like some markers, which can give an artist away. Plus, you don’t have to stop drawing to sharpen them, as with pencils.
     You might naturally assume Colley is a courtroom artist — normally, there are two, working for TV stations. But Colley is something rarer than a courtroom artist: an artist in a courtroom.

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So now being the GOAT is all caps and a good thing...

     Summer's over?! And I never got the chance to lie under a cherry tree, a la Sydney J. Harris, and just muse. About the small mysteries of life. About writing and language. That's so unfair. 

     I blame the 24/7 news cycle. You just can't get in the proper musing fashion with your ex-president vigorously manifesting himself as a traitor, continually ramping up to tear the country apart violently to return himself to undeserved high office.     

     But you can try.
     I watched Serena Williams play in the U.S. Open — my wife is a tennis fan. And while it was thrilling and dramatic, one small aspects of her monumental success kept tripping me up. 

     Just look at it. 
     She's the goat. And not because Williams lost her bid for a 24th major title. Everyone was intensely gratified by how well she played, at 40, against opponents who sometimes weren't yet born when she began her professional career.
     No, Williams is the GOAT because that stands for "Greatest of All Time."
     You know that. I know that.
     And yet. It just doesn't feel right.

     To me. 
     Decades of habit cannot be abandoned in a moment. Up until fairly recently, a goat, in sports, was someone who failed in spectacular fashion. Boston Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner was perhaps the archetypical goat for letting Mookie Wilson's grounder go between his legs in the sixth game of the World Series. Charlie Brown was a goat. 

     (Note that, in this strip, Charlie despairs at being "the goat," which strikes me as unusual, since the definite article seems more used in the greatest sense. Blow a play and you risk becoming a goat, part of a braying herd. Rise to the summit and you achieve the rare distinction of becoming the GOAT.)

     Yes, I'm always the one, when some other old coots complain about changes in the language, who points out that language is supposed to be plastic. That's something of an in-joke, as plastic today refers to the artificial substance, while previously it evoked the ability to be formed, taken from the Greek word plastikos, to mold or sculpt (hence "plastic surgery.")

     Goat as a metaphorical term, and not just a barnyard animal, is traced all the way back to 1530, when William Tyndale translated the Bible from Hebrew and offered up "And Aaron cast lottes outer the gootes; one lotte for the Lorde, and another or a scape-goote."

      Hence "scapegoat," or animal upon which the people of Israel's sins were imposed upon, came into the language. "Scape" was coined in the 1300s as a shortened term to describe the act of escaping. Thus a "scapegoat" is literally an escaped goat, as opposed to the one that gets its throat cut. 

Metropolitan Museum

     The new meaning, "Greatest Of All Time," starts with Muhammad Ali, who used the term to refer to himself. It was abbreviated by LL Cool J, who put out an album, "G.O.A.T.," in 2000.

     This was all sorted out a couple years back by Sports Illustrated and others. I'm late to the party, I know.

      I wonder. Will the Charlie Brown sense be effaced by the Serena sense? I could say I hope not, because the Bill Buckner goat is such a useful term. What would its replacement be? A ... what? Loser? Clod? Blunderer? Nothing comes close. While GOAT, as in Greatest Of All Time, still has a whiff of the barnyard. At least to me, though that has to be my age, since few seem hesitant. "The most fierce GOAT = Serena Williams," former presidential press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted this week. The language changes, and time reminds us of the fact. When the Hindenburg zeppelin blew up at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937, Herb Morrison, broadcasting its arrival on WLS, described the disaster as "terrific," meaning "full of terror." It isn't terrific anymore.

Northshore Notes: That Thirteen Hoodoo

     I watched the president's speech Thursday night, and while I felt he did a good job, with the nation divided between those who see the existential peril to democracy all too clearly, and those clamoring for disaster to come quickly, I'm not sure what good his words will do. I was glad not to have to comment on it, and gladder that our North Shore Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey took up the challenge. 

By Caren Jeskey 

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
                       —F. Scott Fitzgerald     

     Nothing makes sense sometimes. President Biden is being criticized for speaking to Americans as though we are divided into two camps. What am I missing? We are — solidly ensconced into rigid fortresses at this point, as we should be. I am happy to be dug in on the right side of things.
     My tribe understands what the phrase “separation of church and state” means. We know that all instructional tomes, whether political, religious, or other, need to be revisited regularly, and amended to fit the current times. The Old Testament of the religion I was born into, Christianity, is hilarious. This text is also in the Orthodox Jewish Bible:

“The priest could not marry a prostitute, a defiled woman, a divorced woman, or even a widow. In order for the priestly line to be pure, he could only marry a virgin of his own people.”
                       —Leviticus

       Also Leviticus: 

     “For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach [the altar]: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, or crookback, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken. He shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries.”

     Stones are testicles.
     No wonder generations of people being spoon-fed this stuff have lost their ability to see the intrinsic dignity of all human life and the absurdity of a false sense of supremacy.
     An astute client commented that “progress is a pendulum.” As we watch years of growth being ripped away, she helped me remember that solace can be found in the idea that things will right themselves again. Especially with diligent efforts.
     Okay, some things make sense. It was my sister’s birthday this week. We sat on the patio of The Fireside Restaurant on Ravenswood, pausing for Metra trains loudly whooshing by. My Grandma Olive and Grandpa Carl were across the street at Rosehill.
     I've been thinking a lot about Olive lately. My mother’s mother. My sister and I have a bit of her in us. She got on a train from a boarding house in Wilmington, Delaware and headed to Chicago in 1927 at the age of 14. She was born on November 25, 1913, and lost both of her parents before she was one year old. 
     Lore has it that Olive’s folks were butchers. Since she left at such a young age with no mementos we lost the story of our ancestors, but they were Irish or Welsh. I perused the Wilmington Gazette and noticed a story from October or 1907 when Olive was not even a glimmer in her parents’ eyes. “Butchers Off to Chester: Members of the ‘Wilmington Butchers’ Association left this city at 1:30 o’clock over the Pennsylvania Railroad, for Chester, where they will be entertained by the butchers of Chester.” I pictured my great grandparents being entertained by men and women wrangling sows in white aprons on that journey.
     Joe Biden is often described as a scrappy Irish Catholic (and as you know, raised his family in Olive’s home city). I think his family and mine might have a thing or two in common.
To entertain myself further, I read a bit of the Evening Journal on the day of Olive’s birth. Strange random poems and musings pop up throughout the news of the day, such as oil lamp fires, bike thefts and murders. “The Thirteen Hoodoo: There are thirteen letters in the name Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson was the thirteenth president of Princeton. President Wilson was nominated on the thirteenth of the month. Adding 1, 9, 1, 2, the year in which he was nominated makes 13.” 

     They go on with other ways he can be associated with the number 13.
     I’m going to do my best to get my personal pendulum to swing into a simple time where little ditties like Thirteen Hoodoo can drown out the overwhelming amount of conflict and confusion we face in the world today.

Downstate wisdom doesn’t wash

Fairfield, 2016

     One traditional ritual of the media is the journey to the heartland to take the temperature of the decent hardworking folks there. I’ve done it myself, and it’s always enjoyable. Open roads, endless fields of grain, hot coffee, homemade pie.

     And the people are so friendly. Honestly. When I describe going downstate to Fairfield prior to Trump’s inauguration in 2016, to talk to the good citizens of Wayne County, who voted 84% for the fraud, liar and bully Donald Trump, the shorthand I use is, “It’s like a Richard Scarry book.” Remember: those big picture books like “What Do People Do All Day?” Busy neighbors rendered as friendly bears, dogs, cats, pigs, lions and such.
     I’d walk into the bank and the police station, unannounced, and talk to the bank president and the police chief. If I strode into a bank in downtown Chicago and tried to see the president, I’d probably be wrestled to the floor.
     Yes, there was a certain irony. Having driven 275 miles to learn what people think, I’d invariably be informed that Chicagoans don’t care what downstaters think. I managed to restrain myself from spreading my arms, running my gaze over my body, and announcing, “And yet I’m here.”
     I’ve done that kind of thing: You get a blank stare.
     That memory came back, along with a pang of envy, reading Tina Sfondeles’ excellent report Wednesday from Centralia, “Southern Discomfort.” It explains where the Trumpian campaign to undermine free elections comes from. If you live in a community of 12,000 people and are baffled and angry that the Chicago metro area, with a population of 10 million, can somehow drive policy choices and election results, you are by nature also yearning toward a system where the electorate doesn’t influence decisions.

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Flashback 1988: Jazz lovers remain upbeat despite rhythm of the rain

     Funny how early experience can set your opinion. For a long time, I'd say, "It always rains at the Jazz Festival." Because for the first few years I covered it, it did, sheets of monsoon. I remember looking out over the drenched Grant Park, seeing one guy sitting out in the middle of the lawn, in a downpour, sighing, and trudging out through the sodden field to talk to him, rain streaking the ink on my notepad. At least this weekend looks like clear skies.

     The Bud Freeman All Stars were just beginning their set, at a little after 6 p.m. Sunday, when Mother Nature decided to sit in for an impromptu duet at the 10th annual Chicago Jazz Festival.
     She began with a slight staccato of rain, building to a quick, pounding crescendo and followed by a fierce clarinet solo of wind, which sent dust and paper swirling across Grant Park and the less dedicated music fans scurrying toward their cars.
     The more dedicated, some of whom had traveled hundreds of miles for the famed festival, were not deterred.
     "It'll pass over," said Jane Davis, of Knoxville, Tenn., who attended every day of the festival and, when the rain came, sought refuge under a tree.
     Mark Stach sought protection by wrapping himself in a blanket and a sheet of plastic. Cindy Breithaupt wrapped herself in Mark Stach.
     "We're gonna stay," said Breithaupt, of Redbank, N.J. "The sound comes through."
     Though from out of state, she had a Chicagoan's disdain for those who were leaving.
     "They're not diehards," she said, simply.
     While some winced and cowered before the elements, Duke Newton, of Chicago, sat placidly at a small, neatly set table, its yellow tablecloth weighed down by strategically placed silverware. He said he was enjoying himself greatly.
     "Oh yes, we're die-hard aficionados," he said, drawing on a small cigar. "We wouldn't let a little weather like this run us off."
     One positive effect of the weather was to reduce the blanket-to-blanket crowding usually found at the festival. Through Saturday, the fest had drawn 280,000, but only 85,000 showed up on Sunday, far fewer than the 200,000 or so who usually attend the last day of the festival.
     "There's plenty of space to park yourself," said Rick Baumann, of Goshen, Ind. "We're not afraid of a little rain."
     The rain stopped, and the music started up again, but Patricia Roger, with her son Alvin, 11, in tow, headed for home anyway. She stopped to expound on the two unavoidable forces of nature that were taking her away from the festival.
     "The rain and my son," she said, adding that it was her son complaining about the rain, more than the rain, that sent her home. "He should be exposed to all forms of music. I wanted to see Herbie Hancock." Said Alvin, "My mother said I had to come."
     Roger had a word of advice for parents thinking of enriching their offspring at future festivals.
     "Leave the child at home," she said.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 5, 1988