Illinois gave us a low-key Bicentennial

Illinois officially turns 200 years old Monday, and there will be a celebration.

In fact, there have been activities taking place during the past year leading up to this day that are meant to make us fully aware of what a truly intriguing history our state has experienced during those two centuries of existence.

YET I WOULDN’T be the least bit shocked to learn that most of you weren’t the least bit aware of that – or of the activities that will take place at Navy Pier in the name of giving Illinois a proper birthday celebration Monday night.

For perhaps it is the result of the fact that Illinois isn’t exactly the most-unified of states. We’re certainly not Texas, with a strong self-awareness of who we are. Those of us from Illinois most often identify with the particular region of the state that we come from, rather than the notion of Illinois as a whole.

I suspect that has inhibited any true appreciation of Illinois’ existence through all those years. Too many of us probably wonder why any attention is being paid to the rest of Illinois, and not just our home region.

I’m sure I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. I’m not only Chicago-born, I’m specifically of the South Side (the South Chicago neighborhood, to be exact). I’m just as likely to think of a West Side neighborhood as alien turf as much as something in Southern Illinois.

Bicentennial celebration location historic in its own right

WHILE SOMEONE FROM central Illinois, I’m sure, thinks all of us are alien to his/her experience of what our state is all about.

Personally, I’m inclined to think the significance of Illinois’ existence is the way it has managed to incorporate all these different experiences into a single way of life. Almost as though what makes Illinois unique is that we have figured out a way to incorporate a bit of everybody into our state existence.

From an urban Chicago experience to parts of the state that aren’t too different from Appalachia – and to parts of central Illinois that actually give us those corn fields that too many people think are the entirety of the rural Midwest.

A long-gone part of what made Chicago and Illinois so significant

Then, there’s always the land of Forgottonia – as in the rural western part of the state that got that label as almost a joke of just how isolated it is from the rest of us.

THIS IS THE experience that will be in display Monday night at Navy Pier – where the program will try to give us a taste of bipartisanship (if such a thing can actually exist in Illinois these days). Both Gov. Bruce Rauner and Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker are expected to be on hand for the festivities.

Unless someone decides to have a political hissy bit and not show up – which always is a possibility.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon (which got its beginnings as just a band on the local music scene in Champaign) and bluesman Buddy Guy all will be amongst the performers.

We’ll even get acknowledgement of the musical “Hamilton” including Chicago as being amongst the places where it is being performed, and a historic program narrated by Bill Kurtis – whose deep voice is to a certain generation the sound of a quintessential Chicago newsman (unless you’re of the type who was watching Fahey Flynn) instead.

AND SATURDAY NIGHT Live, of sorts, will be included, what with George Wendt and Robert Smigel giving us a riff off their old “Superfans” sketches. Too bad that Mike Ditka himself couldn’t be on hand, what with him still recovering from a recent heart attack.

As for edibles, it should be noted there will be a 1,000-pound birthday cake from Eli’s – the place that many of us think is the ultimate for cheesecake.

Which could lead to questions about why we can’t have deep-dish pizzas – which some like to think is the ultimate local food item. Yet I can already see the problem with its’ inclusion.

We’d get into a serious quarrel over whether or not thin crust is truly more representative of Illinois, and whether it should be cut into slices or squares – a debate that likely will linger on to Illinois’ tricentennial some 100 years from now.

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How lacking we are in a legitimate comprehension of our very own history

Major ideologue shift from "Honest" Abe … 

It is an argument I often hear from ideologues about how the Democratic Party (although they usually leave off the “ic” out of a lame attempt to diminish the Dems image) is the one that gave us segregation and bigotry.

The ones who argue that the Republican Party is the so-called “Party of Lincoln” that freed the slaves and is the one that has done far more for black people than the open hostility they have received from Democratic politicos.

… to "Fake News" Donald

BUT IT IS one I heard again Tuesday from someone who felt compelled to turn to Facebook to say that that, “a vote for a Democrat is a vote for the party that fought a war to keep my ancestors enslaved.”

That same African-American individual also felt compelled to write, “even an illiterate, newly-freed slave knew not to vote for a Democrat.”

Writing as one who just over a week ago went to an early voting center in Cook County and cast a ballot that deliberately went against every single Republican option as a way of undermining President Donald Trump’s influence for the next two years, I’d have to retort that some people truly are dangerous in the way they try to use historic allusions to defend nonsensical historic claims.

Figures such as FDR, along with … 

Yet this woman’s Facebook ramblings are not unique. I’m sure I will hear similar nonsense-thoughts expressed again even after “Election ‘18” is long over-and-done with.

NOW I’M NOT about to deny that the original Republican Party that our state’s very own “Honest Abe” was a part of was eager to maintain the “union” of our nation, and was the opposition to the segregationists who were more than willing to engage in war to preserve the “Southern Way of life” that included chattel slavery.

… JFK and LBJ (below) influenced Dems shift … 

After our nation’s (very un-)Civil War, it was the structure of the Democratic Party that elected government officials who tried to evade the spirit of the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th amendments to the Constitution that essentially granted equality to all regardless of race by giving us the policies of “Jim Crow” throughout the South.

… away from segregation ways, … 

But anybody who thinks that’s the extent of the story is spewing nonsense more fake than anything Donald Trump has tried to proclaim as truth.

The reality is that the political parties began to shift back in the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president – who expressed some support for more progressive ideals and made them a part of the Democratic platform. Although one could honestly say FDR’s support for such ideals were more the doing of first lady Eleanor who got him to do things he might not otherwise have bothered with.

THEN CAME THE Civil Rights years of the 1950s-60s, which John F. Kennedy gave lip service to, but became reality with Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964.

… so naturally, Trump admires Jackson

That act passed with an off-beat combination of Democrats and just enough Republicans who didn’t oppose integrationist ideals to overcome those political people who seriously thought there was truth to the slogan, “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow, and Segregation forever!”

As for those who thought there was legitimacy to the “old ways,” they were the ones who made the shift from the Democrats to the Republicans, led largely by the influence of Richard Nixon and later by Ronald Reagan who made the "seggies" feel welcome to the point where their grandchildren now run the GOP and make it quite less grand every time Trump opens his mouth.

Which means those people who try to claim that Democrats are the party of segregation and the old horrid ways are ignoring the massive transformation that occurred in our political structure.

NIXON: Won on a 'Southern' strategy

WHAT MAKES IT more ridiculous is when those same people try to argue that the reason the Democrats no longer represent what they view as “real” people is because of this shift. As though Dems gave up public interests to focus on these racial issues.

I also find it odd that Trump himself has often tried to claim a bipartisan nature of his own political ideology by claiming support and admiration for the presidency of Andrew Jackson. That early 19^th Century figure who was one of the first Democrats to be elected president and who often was backed by those who saw a sense of legitimacy to the old segregationist ways of our society.

Personally, I think people are entitled to vote how they want to. I comprehend that some black voters find a sense of hypocrisy in backing Democrats who seem more concerned with their own self-interests than anything involving the electorate.

So if this woman doesn’t want to vote for Democrats, that’s her business. Just realize that I (and just about anybody who’s ever read a history book of any type) are going to disregard her thoughts as the nonsense-ramblings of an ideologue – which actually is what she has in common with our incumbent president.

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Will signs of businesses past cause confusion for future Chicagoans?

I suppose people will argue it’s a matter of historic preservation, but there’s a part of me that thinks it’s ridiculous that the giant letters of gothic type spelling out “Chicago Tribune” will remain in place on the building the newspaper no longer uses.

Sign to be restored around 2020

Tribune Media (the division that operates the television stations) sold the nearly century-old tower that was corporate headquarters, and the newspaper that had been housed there for decades made its move just over a month ago.

Dominant sign near Tribune's new digs

IT SEEMS THE company that bought the building (and has plans to convert it into condominiums) thought it was buying the rights to the building, as-is. Including the eight-foot-high letters that spelled out the newspaper name.

While the newspaper thought they had the right to take their sign with them to their new offices in the one-time Prudential Building just a few blocks to the south.

In the end, it appears the sign will remain in place – with the argument being made that it is a part of the historic character of the structure that the company thought it was buying along with the structure itself.

Retail rivalry signs live on, even though Field's … 

The sign itself will be taken down later this year when the construction work needed to convert the structure into high-end condominiums for the ridiculously-wealthy of Chicago residents. When that work is complete (sometime around the year 2020), the sign will be restored.

WILL WE HAVE future generations of out-of-towners who get confused about where exactly one of our city’s newspapers is located?

… & Carson's are no more

Particularly because it seems that there isn’t anything excessively prominent to let people from outside know that the Tribune is located where it is now.

I took a recent day trip downtown just to walk around, and checked out the Prudential Building area because I wanted to see for myself just how prominently the newspaper had put its stamp on its new digs.

I found nothing. I had to have it pointed out to me where exactly the Tribune’s new home is. The Tribune hasn’t let its professional ego take over its new site.

IF ANYTHING, THE huge sign marking the building as the corporate headquarters of The Prudential Insurance Company of America is still all-dominant. Just as a few blocks once one crosses the Chicago River and one-time site of Fort Dearborn, the gothic type of the Chicago Tribune will be a very visual reminder of what once was.

Maybe that’s not too confusing. Take a little trip along State Street just a few blocks away, and you’ll see the signs remaining on Marshall Field’s and Carson, Pirie, Scott – even though it is Macy’s and Target that now do business in the one-time downtown flagships of Chicago’s classic retailers.

Past newspapers live on only as Mich. Ave. plaque

Maybe it’s evidence of my increasing age (I’m on the ‘experienced’ side of the half-century mark), but I’m at the point where every time I head into the city, I notice something else missing.

I’m starting to develop in my memory an entire city that no longer exists in quite the same form.

I ONCE THOUGHT it odd that a part of me still expects to see the brick, whitewashed building at 35^th Street on the Dan Ryan Expressway, instead of the pale pink concrete paneled structure that replaced it as the Chicago White Sox ballpark some 28 years ago.

Of course, it also makes me realize there are older generations of people who would regard themselves as life-long Chicagoans for whom my Chicago of memory would be a whole lot of nonsense – none of it existed when they were around.

How many think Macy's Frango Mints the  same? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

We have a city of perpetual change. It may be a sign of continued development. Because stagnation is not something we’d want to occur.

Although I also noticed that when I used the search engine of bing.com to confirm the new Chicago Tribune address, it persisted in telling me the newspaper is at Tribune Tower north of the river. Perhaps the Internet is confused by the sign’s remaining in place – and may be evidence we shouldn’t put too much trust in anything we find on these computers.

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July 4 about more than a weenie roast

Call it one of my biggest pet peeves – the people who think of the holiday we celebrate Wednesday as the “Fourth of July,” and who think the term “Independence Day” is nothing more than that ridiculous film from some two-plus decades ago.

For the holiday that celebrates the events of some 242 years ago on this date is supposed to celebrate the events upon which the one-time English colonies of North America declared themselves an independent nation.

OF COURSE, I’M sure many people think that’s “boring!” and nothing more than ancient history. They prefer to think of this as the day we’ll dig out the barbecue grills, roast a few hot dogs and watch an explosive spectacle in the skies as we go out to our local park in the evening for a fireworks display.

That, and we find a way to turn this into an extended weekend – taking time off from work to make for an unofficial vacation.

If anything, the Independence Day holiday of 2018 will be unique because the actual “day off” comes on a Wednesday. We can actually pick if we want it to be the end of an extended weekend, or the beginning.

Or, for some incredibly lazy types, it will be a double weekend. A whole slew of time off – because why try to work when so many of your colleagues have disappeared.

I DOUBT MANY people will be giving history much thought. Which really is a shame.

Because at a time when our nation and our society is split so seriously, what I think we most are in need of is a history lesson. If anything, I think our “commander in chief” could most use such a lesson – since his sense of ego is such that I think at times he truly has no comprehension of what his campaign slogan truly means. Either that, or his sense of history comes entirely from those “Schoolhouse Rock” cartoons of the 1970s.

I’ll be honest; I don’t know exactly how I’m spending the day on Wednesday. A part of me thinks it would be useful to spend the day in historic meditation. Pondering the many sacrifices that generations past have made to create a nation and a society that so many from around the globe are eager to be a part of, while trying to calm the family dogs down as they endure an evening of explosives.

Instead, it could turn out to be little more than an over-glorified weenie roast, with me getting all outraged over my other pet peeve – people who persist in slathering their hot dogs in ketchup. Now that’s a truly un-American concept!

  -30-

It’s Cinco de Mayo; What’s your point?

I don’t live these days in a Spanish-speaking enclave of any sort, yet I could – if I wished – take part Saturday in a neighborhood Cinco de Mayo party.

How many people think this is cute?

It was just the other day that one of my neighbors had their young daughter go door-to-door around the neighborhood, handing out invitations to the party they’re planning to have Saturday afternoon into early evening.

THE WHOLE BLOCK, it seems, is invited to share in a joint celebration featuring Mexican-themed food and drink, along with some music.

Did I say this isn’t a Spanish-speaking neighborhood? I may well be the lone Latino living on the block. Do I think this means my neighbors have some particular sensitivity to ethnicity and culture and history?

I sincerely doubt it.

I wouldn’t be the least bit shocked if the fact that Saturday has some sort of holiday attached to it is merely a chance for them to party – and perhaps they think it will be a novelty to offer up margaritas; along with food items that will make the servings at a standard-issue Taco Bell franchise seem to have a touch of authenticity.

WHICH IS WHY I doubt I’ll be out amongst my neighbors – that, and I do have a touch of anti-social behavior in me. If I did go out there, I’d probably be the crackpot who’d want to turn the whole thing into a history lesson.

And I don’t doubt in the least that many of the people who will be doing something to mark Saturday, the Fifth of May, probably have no clue (or any interest in learning) the significance of the date in Mexican history.

What it is is the 156^th anniversary of the date that a Mexican resistance group attacked a military garrison in Pueblo (a city located near the capital of Mexico City) and actually managed to drive the troops from the city.

Maximilian I, the Austrian puppet for France who tried ruling over Mexico

This was during the time when France (which regretted the Louisiana Purchase that sold off its North American colonies to the United States) wanted to re-establish a military presence in the Americas.

WHICH LED THE French to think they could confiscate Mexico (which had declared its independence from Spain in 1810 – Independence Day is Sept. 16) and claim it for themselves.

Cinco de Mayo pays tribute to those Mexicans who were willing to stand up for the idea of their home nation as independent and were able to beat what was back then one of the world’s great military powers.

Those modern-day cynics eager to berate Mexico for any reason they can conjure will point out that the French eventually retook their garrison, and that the conflict between the French-backed Mexican emperor (Maximillian of Austria, a French puppet) and the Mexican people lingered on into a stalemate for several years.

But in the way the United States and Mexico intertwine, the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 resulted in military aid to the Mexican resistance – which resulted two years later in France giving up its colonial dreams and pulling out their military. The end result was Maximillian being put before a firing squad on June 19, 1867.

U.S. OFFICIALS felt compelled to back Mexicans because the official Mexico government of Maximillian was a Confederate-supporting one – and one that likely would have sent the French military across the Rio Grande into the so-called Confederacy to fight for the cause of splitting the country they helped create some 80 years earlier.

Mexicans enjoy beisbol too

Not that I expect many people today to have any knowledge, or interest, of these events. All too many think Cinco de Mayo is the equivalent of Fourth of July and are more interested in where they can find the cheapest margarita or burrito deal.

Personally, I’d think more highly of them if they followed my lead – taking time out to watch this weekend’s series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres.

Which is being billed informally as the “Mexico Series” because the regular season games are being played at the home ballpark of the Monterey Sultans of the Mexican League.

  -30-

Are we overreacting? Or do we really need to quit living with past hostilities?

There’s a site on Facebook I enjoy checking out from time to time called Original Chicago. Basically, it’s a place where long-time city residents (and others who no longer live here) can reminisce about the way things used to be.

The Maxwell Street of old, as memorialized in this pre-World War II postcard. Image provided by Chuckman's Chicago Nostalgia

Favorite roller rink? Is the novel, “The Devil in the White City” (set during the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1892) accurate? Things like that.

BUT THINGS GOT a little more serious Thursday when the site’s administrator felt the need to post a critical note about people who referred to the old Maxwell Street district as “Jew Town.”

It’s a sign of “racial disrespect” that “will not be tolerated” at the site, the administrator wrote.

Which is an attitude I can respect because I often think it cowardly for website operators who refuse to control the content of their own sites – trying to claim that letting people randomly post their often stupid and ridiculous comments encourages free expression of thought.

Actually, it just encourages the idiots of our society to engage in bullying behavior. My own thought to people who want to make such rants is they ought to create their own sites (I’ll gladly offer them technical advice on how to do so). Although I suspect what they really want to do is undermine other peoples’ activity online.

BUT BACK TO “Jew Town,” which triggered an extensive series of responses from people who want to think the phrase has significant historic character to Chicago. Of course, most of them will go on to tell tales of all the stolen goods that wound up being resold there.

How dare we want to think it is wrong to use the phrase to describe a part of Chicago that once upon a time contained a heavy presence of people who were Jewish in religion and were the operators of the original businesses that existed in the area (which now is an upscale area by the University of Illinois at Chicago campus).

Some people literally are claiming that “Jew Town” is no different than “China Town” or any of the nicknames given in the past to enclaves of Polish immigrants (don’t forget Chicago used to brag there were more Poles, not Polacks, living here than in any city on Earth except Warsaw – the capital of Poland).

I don’t doubt that people in the past used “Jew” freely when referring to Jewish people, the same way that “Jap” used to be openly used when referring to Japanese.

THE LATTER ALSO is a slur that was meant to make those from the Asian island nation sound less than human – which I’m sure seemed right to those who came of age during the Second World War and wanted to forevermore think that Japanese people were worthy of derision.

But just as now we think it ridiculous whenever some old coot complains that we need to “Remember Pearl Harbor!” because they’re not willing to let go a war our government ended many decades ago (and rebuilt Japan in our own capitalist image), somehow, the idea of somebody thinking that “Jew Town” isn’t absurd is the real ridiculous notion.

The notion is that we need to let go our old obsessions and terminology that we used to justify them. It’s called advancing as a society. Even though some are going to complain it’s “political correctness run amok.”

The latter concept always struck me as being the thought process of old bigots who don’t want to be called out for the stupidity of their thoughts.

Is Chinatown similar to Maxwell Street in history, meaning?

SERIOUSLY, WHEN WAS the last time you ever heard anybody call a police squadrol a “Paddy wagon?” Even though I can recall that once was a commonly accepted term for the vehicle used to haul large loads of arrestees (a batch of drunken Irish?) from a crime scene – or take corpses to the morgue.

It’s time for some people to get with the program. Jewish people are “Jewish,” and “Jew” is only used by people who feel the need to think derogatory thoughts. Consider the dictionaries that give an alternate definition for “Jew” as “someone tight with their money or not very generous.”

Who still uses the old slur?

That certainly doesn’t sound like somebody trying to think seriously about an issue. It sounds like pure religious-motivated bile to me, which ought to be further reason to dump “Jew Town” from our city’s lingo. It’s embarrassing to our civic memory, and it’s not like people using the term now are trying to illustrate how absurd we used to be.

Better to get back to debates such as the man who asked Original Chicago readers what to do about the girlfriend who persists in putting ketchup on her hot dogs. Largely because I don’t put ketchup on anything, I say, “Dump her!”

  -30-

Thanksgiving – a holiday diminished?

Thanksgiving Day! Our national festival where we’re supposed to be thankful for what we have, and can gorge ourselves to gluttony with promises that we’ll exercise or diet of the excess poundage in coming weeks.

Wishing my brother and I could be together again

I’m never quite sure what to make of this date, and not because I’m someone feeling the need to identify with the saga of native peoples to this continent having their land stolen from them by the white man!

PERSONALLY, A PART of me wants to take a can of cranberry sauce and shove it down their whiny throats when they start spewing out this tale. Then again, I say a can of cranberry sauce and not a turkey leg because I despise cranberry sauce (whether canned or made fresh) and because, personally, the leg is my favorite part of the bird.

I often hear of people for whom Christmas or Easter or other holidays get diminished for them because of the loss of someone in proximity to the so-called festive day.

For me, that has become Thanksgiving during the past seven years.

My mother, Jenny, died in early November 2010. I still remember the last time I heard her voice – my brother (also since departed) had taken her to a hospital because she wasn’t feeling well and he called me via telephone to tell me they were actually sending her home.

DURING THAT PHONE call, I could hear my mother’s voice in the background almost haranguing him with a list of stores she had to visit and tasks she would have to do in order to prepare for a Thanksgiving Day meal with my brother and I.

For all I know, her last thoughts may well have been of all the work she would have had to do for the upcoming holiday. Because on the car ride home, she suddenly lost consciousness (her final words, I’m told, were “I’m going to pass out”).

She wound up never regaining consciousness, and was pronounced dead a couple of hours later.

This Munsters mutant almost seems appetizing

Since then, Thanksgiving has become a holiday I have spent with my step-mother’s family – specifically, her sister lives in the Beverly neighborhood, and I expect to convene there with my father and others as we try to express what we’re thankful for.

ACTUALLY, THINGS USED to be worse on Thanksgiving. Because not only would I have to juggle both of those events on the actual Thursday, my father would always insist on having a post-Thanksgiving meal on the following Saturday.

Which he said was necessary so we could have all of our own personal favorite dishes – although I mostly remember them as dishes he liked that nobody else was particularly fond of.

The point being that in past years, these next few days would have been an edible orgy of heavy, fattening foods. I most assuredly would have felt more stuffed than the turkey by the time the weekend was over.

But perhaps it’s evidence my father is getting up there in years – even he doesn’t seem to want all the hassle of a post-Thanksgiving meal.

NOT THAT I’M complaining. It actually feels like a relief not to have to ration out how much I eat at each stop so that I don’t make myself ill from over-eating.

How many people really identify with this version of the Thanksgiving tale

I’ll be able to enjoy the meal, which my step-mother’s brother-in-law will prepare. And with the exception of one year when his turkey came out incredibly dry, his past experiences are such that I’m expecting to enjoy myself in a culinary sense.

Although I have to make a confession – there’s a part of me that wouldn’t mind enduring a bit of overeating if it meant I could have a few more moments with my mother.

On this day, more than most others, I find myself missing my mom.

  -30-

Taking pride in not going to parades?

I didn’t go to the Pride Parade held Sunday. I’m also likely to ignore the slew of parades that will take place in a couple of weeks related to the upcoming Independence Day holiday.

The parade route I chose to ignore

None of this is intended as a political statement of any sorts. It’s actually that I just don’t get any enjoyment from the idea of a parade – regardless of what the event or cause is that’s being celebrated.

SOME PEOPLE LIKE the spectacle. They take a certain sense of glee from the largesse put on display to celebrate whatever cause happens to be the reason for a parade.

Personally, I find it to be a lot of noise and racket and standing around doing nothing while other people go marching by.

And quite frankly, if you’ve seen one parade, you’ve seen them all. There’s no reason to relive the experience.

So I didn’t feel compelled to head up to Boystown – that sub-neighborhood that combines with the Wrigleyville set (gay people wishing to live openly combined with Chicago Cubbies fans) to make the Lake View neighborhood one of Chicago’s most unique places to be.

NOR AM I eager to see what many may view as the anti-Pride parade – an Independence Day holiday filled with pomp and circumstance and lots of images of fireworks and explosions and much right-wing rhetoric.

Even though personally, I find much of that rhetoric to be a skewed view of what our nation is supposed to be about. In fact, a part of me thinks that the public spectacle that was the Pride Parade is about as “American” as we can get in the 21^st Century.

Even though with all its kitschy value of watching Chicago’s gay community come out into the open will bother some. That very “openness” and willingness to express oneself publicly is most definitely what we as a people are supposed to be about.

Although I’m sure the type of people who comprised the 46 percent of the electorate that voted for Donald Trump to be president are amongst those who were most offended by Sunday and can’t wait until July 4 so they can present their own bombastic view of what they think we, the people, are truly all about.

Is "believing" about fireworks explosions?

NOW I KNOW there are people who claim the Pride Parade is something that everybody ought to experience firsthand – if only for the kitsch that can provide many a laugh for the public.

It certainly isn’t any worse than the garishness of red, white and blue that we’ll be subjected to in nine more days – all in the name of “patriotism” and “America.” Although will be espousing that old hard-hat line of logic – “Love it, or leave it!”

Or, “Shut up, and Do what you’re told!”

Does that make Independence Day the anti-Pride parade for some types of people in our society – the ones who wish we were still back in the 19^th Century? Which is ironic, since many of these people are the same ones who criticize certain elements of the Islamic religious faith for refusing to accept the realities of modern-day life.

ARE THEY JUST jealous that our society isn’t still behind the times?

For those who are now ranting and raging about what I’m full of for bad-mouthing Independence Day, keep in mind it’s the garishness that I find mind-numbing.

I have always thought the upcoming Independence Day ought to be the most solemn of occasions -- one in which we respect the ideals of our national existence. Instead, we’re usually more interested in seeing who can light off the most obnoxious explosions into the sky – to the point where I know my father’s dog, Rocco, will wind up barking up a storm come the night of July 4 as he’ll be freaked out by all the, “bombs bursting in (the) air.”

So I’m not into the parade scene, which seems to me to be a whole lot of loitering by the masses. Except nobody felt compelled to call the cops to complain – unless the fireworks being set off by neighborhood kids get real obnoxious next week!

  -30-

Did Belushi/Ackroyd give Chicago history lesson w/ The Blues Brothers?

I’m honest enough to realize that “The Blues Brothers” isn’t classic cinema.

It came out the summer following by first year of high school – a time in life when I had the time to watch the many movies that were made. The film based off the Belushi/Ackroyd “Saturday Night Live” characters was long (and would have been longer if director John Landis had had his original vision approved), over-convoluted and in some points nonsensical.

BUT THERE IS one reason why I will never tune away from a showing of the film if I happen to stumble across it – the film depicts a segment of Chicago that just doesn’t exist any longer and never got much attention paid to it when it was around (unlike “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” which shows us the official take on touristy Chicago).

As someone who was born in the South Chicago neighborhood and who was raised in suburban Calumet City, The Blues Brothers was the film that was made in my home neighborhoods (although to be honest, there never was a Our Lady of the Blessed Shroud orphanage in Cal City that needed saving).

In fact, the closest to Calumet City that the film came was when they used the remains of the old Dixie Square shopping mall in Harvey (two towns to the west) for the chase scenes involving the Illinois State Police.

But the 95^th Street bridge, the Baptist church that served as the “Triple Rock Church” and home of the Rev. Cleophus James (a.k.a., singer James Brown) and the “Curl Up and Dye” hair salon where the late Carrie Fisher’s vengeful hair stylist plotted the Belushi character’s death.

ALL ARE PLACES I could take you to in the old neighborhood and show you where movies were made nearly four decades ago.

Even outside of the city’s 10^th Ward, the film gives us the sight of what was once the old Maxwell Street market where one could easily repurchase any item that might have been ripped off from you.

Or that flophouse of a residency where Ackroyd’s character lived (and which Fisher’s character took a bazooka to)? It was under the “el” tracks down on Van Buren Street in the South Loop (back when the area was decrepit), and I still remember one of my first assignments for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago was to report on the fire that destroyed the building for real.

So what brings all of this to mind? The city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events likes to show movies on a giant screen in Millennium Park. Tuesday night will be a showing of The Blues Brothers. Admission is free and you can sit outside and get a laugh (unless you’re so politically uptight that you can’t bear the thought of watching a film in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and Great Lawn).

MEANING BELUSHI (the native of suburban Wheaton) AND Ackroyd will live on, as will the music of the late Brown and Cab Calloway (“Minnie the Moocher” will never die because of this film).

And even that moment when we learn that Bob’s Country Bunker features both kinds of music – country AND western. Where we’re also subjected to a ludicrous Belushi/Ackroyd take on the Tammy Wynette classic “Stand By Your Man.”

The combination of elements of current Chicago and bits that are long past are something that always amuse me and make the film (along with “Medium Cool” from 1969).

The latter film showed us the Grant Park of the past that became the site of anti-war protests back in the Vietnam era, the Uptown neighborhood of old, and the lengthy shot early in the film of a man on motorcycle rushing videotape from an auto accident scene back to the TV studios downtown (riding along the length of Lake Shore Drive into the Loop) is one that captivates me because of the number of times I’ve made a similar drive during my life.

THERE'S ALSO THE Chicago of "Call Northside 777," but much of it is before my time, and was long ago subjected to the bulldozer. What a shame.

Yet those don't compare to the compare to the bit in The Blues Brothers when Illinois Nazis (yes, we all “hate” Illinois Nazis) wishing to kill the musical duo drive off the end of an incomplete bridge, and wind up soaring thousands of feet into the air before crashing down into a car-sized Chicago street pothole.

Which the Blues Brothers conveniently happen to drive right over in their one-time Mount Prospect police squad car. Silly? Ridiculous? Totally absurd? Of course.

But didn’t I warn you the film was nonsensical!?!

  -30-

How little were people paying attention back in high school history class?

I was a student of history while in college; my Bachelor of Arts degree is with an emphasis on U.S. foreign policy and much of the reading I have done during the three decades since I last was a tuition-paying student is of history and biography.
 

What would U.Penn history profs say of Trump vacuousness

I feel like I spent four years of college taking courses in subjects that interested me, and that I have continued to learn on my own. I probably will keep doing so until the day I drop dead – and someone’s going to have a heck of a time weeding through the personal library I’ve accumulated throughout the years.

I REALIZE I am the exception. Many people haven’t taken the time to study history any farther than they did during that mandatory U.S. history course they took in high school – where I remember one of my old classmates saying history would be okay if we could study cool stuff, like the 1960s.

They only remember a few generic concepts, and probably forgot most of the details. Which is something I’m sure that President Donald J. Trump counts on every time he opens his mouth.

I don’t think the one-time economics student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business deliberately lies about historic facts whenever he tries to use them to emphasize his politically partisan spin on issues.

I think it’s more likely that Trump truly doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and would be much less likely to embarrass himself if he didn’t try to make historic allusions.

BECAUSE THEY’RE THE kind of thing that can come back to haunt you, even though he tries to dismiss those who catch him as being smart-aleck, know-it-alls, and who really cares what they think?!?

Trump, most recently, stirred up a mess when he talked about how former President Andrew Jackson could have averted the nation feeling the need to split and go to war with itself.

Not taking into account how Jackson was dead before the Civil War began in 1861.

 

Would Jackson think Trump a part of the problem?

Jackson used to be a favorite image of Democrats for his rhetoric about the “common man,” and the need to fight against a “corrupt aristocracy.” But he also was a slaveholder, and any serious look at how the man would have come down on the issue of Civil War, slavery and abolitionism would conclude that a “President Jackson” would have wanted to preserve the “peculiar institution” at all costs.

I DOUBT THAT Trump is seriously supporting the idea of slavery. I just think he hasn’t thought it through before shooting his mouth off.

Besides, I can’t help but think that Jackson would have viewed people with the wealth of Trump as being the “corrupt aristocracy” that IS THE PROBLEM our society faces.

Maybe a Jackson-like political person would be leading the fight to allow us all to see the Trump income tax returns so that we can all see for ourselves just how financially UNLIKE all of us The Donald truly is?

I think a lot of Trump’s problem is that he probably wasn’t paying much attention as a prep school student during history class when they talked about the Civil War’s causes,

ALTHOUGH PERSONALLY I think that the simplest explanation I ever heard of that war’s cause came from Shelby Foote, the Greenville, Miss.-native who wrote a three-volume series of books about the war and also was a prominent face in that now 27-year-old documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns.

 

I wonder if GOPers now ashamed of Lincoln

Foote, on video, said that one of the great strengths of U.S. democracy is our ability to reach compromise on just about any issue. But that in the case of slavery, we failed – which led to bloodshed.

Which is a fact I keep in mind whenever the modern-day partisan rhetoric is boosted up a notch or two – things could be worse. We don’t have Southern good ol’ boys taking up arms against the United States and all it stands for.

Even though I’m sure many of them were amongst the 46 percent of voters who last year created the Electoral College majority that put Trump into the Oval Office and gets more and more riled up every time the man misspeaks with historic fact.

  -30-

PAWAR: Visiting all 102 counties w/ 'New Deal'

EDITOR'S NOTE: Illinois gubernatorial hopeful Ameya Pawar likes to make references to the "New Deal," the grand plan by which former President Franklin D. Roosevelt got the United States out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although his references are usually vague enough that he doesn't make factual errors that would harm his campaign's slim chances of achieving victory.