Trying to be real in Uptown

Marc Kelly Smith is your genial, and sometimes not-so-genial, host at the Uptown Poetry Slam.

     A good poem messes with your head. Or should. It sneaks in there, starts grabbing fistfuls of wires, yanking out some, jamming in others, making new connections like the operator at a telephone switchboard. You come away not quite thinking the same as before.
     Not every poem for every person, of course. That’s why there are so many poets and so many poems. Even a poet you love can leave you cold. I’ve read T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” again and again. The cat poems? Once is plenty.
     And as much as I love some of Jeffrey McDaniel’s previous books, his new one, “Thin Ice Olympics” wasn’t really registering with me until page 67 when I got to “Dad Museum,” which begins:

     ‘You live and work in a room filled with your dead father’s memories,’ my wife says as I lean over to write...

     You too? I mean, my dad’s still alive, sort of, but I sit writing this in my office with the framed photo of my father’s ship, the Empire State, sailing past St. Mark’s Square in Venice, and his chrome-plated Vibroplex telegraph key and crested Turner microphone and tubes of Winsor & Newton paint ... there’s more, but you get the idea.
     “Dad museum.” How could I have not thought of that before? Maybe because I’m not a poet.

To continue reading, click here.

The computer stumbles

   Look at these four photos. A mixed bag. Above left, you have a clown lamenting over voting machines. Above right, people walking by garbage cans.
       To the right, a woman sitting on a train. And below, another woman having a private moment outside a courtroom downtown.  They are among the 48 photographs that Apple Photo scraped together out of my 66,000 or so shots stored therein. So, my question is ... what do you think was the one search term was that kicked up these four photos? An engine designed by Apple, mind you, one of the premiere tech companies in the world. Take your time. Look closely. I'll give you a hint. It isn't "people." Or "streets." Or "voting machines." 

     (Nor could I break up the above paragraph into two, since sitting next to the photo somehow stopped that from happening. When I think of how buggy Blogger, the system where I write this I shouldn't be surprised (nor complain. It is free. I suppose you get what you pay for).

     I was searching for something to go along with Caren Jeskey's post last Saturday, and ended up having to use the Dall-E AI program (named as a riff on the movie Wall-E) to draw what I needed: suitcases. These four photos came up when I searched for the word "suitcase." 

     To be fair, there were also photos containing suitcases. But too many others, like these, that didn't. Only voting machines, garbage cans, purses and radiators that looked like suitcases, to a computer. There are still a few bugs in the system, which I suppose is a good thing. Not our overlord quite yet.

  

Ready for their close-up

     "Most self-published books are crap," I told author Mark Houser, dubiously, when we first spoke. "If I write about this, it'll be the first self-published book I've written about since 'Leaves of Grass.'" Then I saw those photos...

    They are domed or stepped back or crenelated, like castle towers. With illuminated clocks or fierce gryphons or flying buttresses. Urns and eagles, ladies liberty and neon signs.
     In Chicago, there is the azure blue of the American Furniture Mart, whose windows seem to float against perfect summer skies. Or the white summit of Mather Tower, a reminder that the top four stories started crumbling and were lopped off, only to have the city eventually force the owner to helicopter in a replacement. The glittering gold crown of the Carbide and Carbon Building.

     Chris Hytha, a 25-year-old Philadelphia photographer, calls them simply “Highrises” on his sleek online project presenting stunning high-resolution photographs stitched together from close-up drone shots of grande dame buildings across the country.
     But I prefer “antique skyscrapers,” the term coined by his collaborator, historian Mark Houser. I learned of the project when Houser’s self-published 2020 book, “MultiStories: 55 Antique Skyscrapers & the Business Tycoons Who Built Them,” fell into my hands.
     Not just a valentine to lovely old structures, the book is a scholarly attempt to puff off the dust and view them afresh.
     “Imagine if you never saw a building taller than five stories, when the tallest thing you ever saw is a church steeple,” said Houser. “This technology was mind-bending.”
    And as photographed by Hytha, it still is. The book put Houser on Hytha’s radar.

To continue reading, click here.

Is bullfighting a sport?

     This ran in the Sun-Times Sports Saturday section. Why? They have all that glorious space. Really, it's like a Sports Illustrated-quality magazine wrapped around a newspaper. They happily gave this story room to stretch its legs and run.

     Jane Addams went to a bullfight in Madrid and it changed her life, for the better.
     More about that later.
     I toss out that fact not to use the famed Chicago reformer and social worker as a human shield to cover my own attendance at a bullfight — which did not prompt me to devote my life to good works, at least not yet. But as a reminder that morality is complicated.
     Though the reason I went to a bullfight is fairly straightforward: I found myself in Madrid on a Sunday afternoon in early October, toward the end of bullfighting season. In fact, when my wife declared we were going to Spain, attending a bullfight was the first activity I thought of, before the notion of Prado artworks or Gaudi architecture crossed my mind.
     Honestly, it was the one thing I really wanted to do, fulfilling the cliche and touchstone of Spanish culture, plus a hangover from a lifetime reading the works of Ernest Hemingway, with his idolization of machismo, hunting, fishing and the confronting of angry cattle.
     My wife is not a fan of Hemingway and was not enthusiastic about the idea. Really? A bullfight? A few hours of bloodletting and sadism? On our vacation?
     She didn’t speak those words, but I drew them out of her expression, and I mustered two arguments. First: “We have to go, we don’t have to stay.” It wasn’t hugely expensive. Tickets are as cheap as 5 euros — about $5 with the strong dollar. Go, pop our heads in, take a look, flee in revulsion if need be. I think my primary goal was to tell people that I had been to a bullfight, not quite grasping the head-shaking censure I would eventually face. (“How could I not?” I flustered to one friend. “Because it’s the 21st century,” he answered, coldly.)
    Second, and this addressed the moral objections: “Those bulls are dying whether we go or not.” Bulls have been fought in public spectacle since Roman times. The practice isn’t going to crumble because my wife and I take in a flamenco show instead. Leave virtue signaling to smug zealots.

To continue reading, click here.

Northshore Notes: I love you, Gene Hackman

     And if you suspect I was pleased to find a photo that includes both Gene Hackman AND luggage, well, you're right.

By Caren Jeskey

     “The Nanny costs $29.95 and is available at Chicago Trunk and Leather Works.” Somehow, this electronic babysitter that beeps when your child wanders too far never really took off, as far as I know. Luckily, Chicago Trunk and Leather Works at 12 South Wabash also sold Tumi suitcases and leased-out aluminum Halliburton briefcases. The shop opened back in the days when local phone numbers started alphabetically: 312-FR2-0845. By the time I found them in the late 80s, the store was owned and run by Ken and Ron Levine, whose grandfather created the business.
     Selling luggage and leather wallets in an old-school storefront on Wabash was the ultimate Chicago job as a teen. I felt urban and cool when the Red Line screeched towards downtown from my north side digs. “Watch the closing doors!” the ever cheerful conductor Michael Powell called out. (Yeah, so I was groped once in a CTA station, but I'd say just once counts as fortunate). Exiting somewhere on State, piss soaked tunnel air — tinny and cold in the winter and acrid in the summer — chased me from the platform all the way up the escalator. Mouth breathing was worse because then you could taste it. The reward came as olfactory senses yielded to the aroma of Garrett’s popcorn at street level. The fetching aroma of caramel and real cheddar cheese beckoned me into the shop to bag up and weigh out a portion. If I was sad, the bag was bigger. If I was happy, just a nibble would do. 

     The store hosted a gang of misfits, sitcom style. There was Betty, who seemed quite mature to me at all of 30. Her daily costume included perfectly coiffed finger waves, matte red lipstick, and a smart two piece suit à la Mad Men. There was Tom, who mostly stocked but would pitch in wherever needed. Tom and Betty (not their real names; I wouldn't want to injure somebody, even at this far remove) would fly apart from each other if I climbed the stairs to the storage loft too quickly and caught them in a tangle.
     Brad was the sweet, funny guy with smiling eyes. A member of the family. My kind boss Ken seemed to bring the best out in everyone. Ken and his wife Shelley took me under their wing and we became friends. When the store opened a second location, I happily took my station at 900 North Michigan in the new Bloomingdale’s Mall, as we called it. One day Ken, always looking out for others, pulled me aside. “Caren. We have a very special guest here. Gene Hackman. I want you to take care of him. Focus on what he wants, and don’t make too big a deal of it.” I did as I was told. Parents out there, I BET you wish your teens listened to you as willingly as I did to Ken.
     I helped the poised and respectful Mr. Hackman — who knew how to treat the help — pick out a wallet for his wife. As I handed the star his bag, I said “Mr. Hackman. My mother always tells my father that you are the only man she’d leave him for.” He laughed, of course, and offered “would you like me to write her a note?” We found him an 8x10 lined piece of notebook paper. He wrote “Dear Myra. I love you. Gene Hackman.” I wrapped it up and gave it to her as a gift for Christmas.

     "Dear Friends: As one who has experimented extensively with life in the home and community, using real people in true-life situations, I doubt that any playthings could prepare a child for one millionth of what is going to hit him in the teeth, ready or not." 

              —Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

‘Ask for a little help’

Reg and Shana McCutcheon

     Reg McCutcheon grew up poor in southern Indiana, his father a disabled Korean vet.
     “I learned to appreciate government cheese,” said McCutcheon, who went into the Air Force in 1980, right out of high school. “Going into the military was my escape.”
     He became a satellite systems operator, and was sent to Afghanistan in 2011.
     “I thought I’d be looking at a computer screen and saying, ‘There’s a bad guy behind that rock,’” recalled McCutcheon, with a chuckle. “Turns out, they didn’t need that.”
     He found himself much closer to ground action than is typical for the Air Force.
     “I lost a good friend my fourth day there,” he said, of an engagement that killed eight other soldiers. “Outside the wire, all the time, you see things. It hit home pretty quick.”
     McCutcheon got hurt too — “pretty beat up” is how he puts it — earning the Bronze Star, a chest full of medals and 19 operations. But he put those memories away when he retired as a lieutenant-colonel in 2014, after 34 years of service. He became a therapist, working with vets struggling to readapt to civilian life.
     Then last July, he recognized an unexpected patient who needed professional help: himself.
     “He was struggling,” said his wife, Shana. They’d been married for two years, a second marriage for both.
     “A lot had been amazing, but also difficult,” she said. “We have lots of kids.”
     Eight between them.

To continue reading, click here.

It glows above and we glow below

  

     A third of the way into November, and gorgeous, summery, mid-70s weather. How lucky then to be able to attend an event that requires you to be outside, and in the velvet darkness at that, punctuated with glorious festive light and music?

     My wife and I attended Employee, Family & Friends Night at the Chicago Botanic Garden Wednesday, the opening of their holiday Lightscape show. Rather than go in the usual main entrance we were directed in off to the left, and that plunged us immediately into unfamiliar terrain. It was dark, about 6:30 p.m., and I had the delicious experience of being somewhere I was vastly familiar with — we'd been to the Botanic Garden hundreds of times — yet didn't know where we were, passing under an enormous wreath, marveling at distant spotlights sweeping the sky in unison. There were neon rings and blazing torches, hanging lamps and trees illuminated in gorgeous rust orange and electric purple and bright green. It was marvelously disorienting and fun.
     The music ranged from Christmas classics to contemporary orchestral music, stirring, celebratory, soaring. There were lots of people — I can't recall the garden ever being so crowded — but as we were all moving in the same direction, it wasn't a problem. And the people added to the experience, toddlers bouncing forward and the elderly in wheelchairs, young people talking, all of us journeying forward through light and color and music.

     "We're in the Rose Garden!" my wife marveled, breaking the spell. The tendency was to keep moving, but we had the presence of mind to occasionally step to the side and just watch. We grabbed a hot pretzel and some holiday cookies and stood at a table, watching light play off a fountain of mist in the lagoon.

     We passed through a tunnel of large stars, with Disney's "When You Wish Upon a Star" playing. Another time I might have found that too literal, but it's one of my favorite songs, particularly apt the day after the midterms giving democracy a well-deserved break.

Fate is kind.
She brings to those who love.
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing in.
Like a bolt out of the blue.
Fate steps in and sees you through.
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true.

    Somewhere an objection stirred. No, that is actually not how fate typically operates, current welcome events notwithstanding. But that seemed small and nitpicky observation, and I didn't actually say it. Shutting up is an art form. Toward the end — and it took maybe 90 minutes for us to go through — there was a long, lit arch, like the lancet window, the Winter Cathedral, and I looked up at it, beaming, glowing myself, my mind empty of all but the most inarticulate childlike wonder.

     Lightscape runs evenings at the Chicago Botanic Garden from Nov. 11 through Jan. 8. Tickets are $32 for adults, $16 for children, $2 less for garden members, and can be ordered here.