Chicago Bloggers is a marvelous Web site. The site charts bloggers based on each blogger’s specific location in the public transportation grid of greater Chicagoland. Bloggers list their blog not by content type, but by CTA stop or Metra stop. Thus, one can hear what the neighbors are blogging on about. Or one might make an inquiry into the “blog tones” of a certain neighborhood, and see how they differ from one another.
I’m fascinated by Frank Lloyd Wright. He was a radical artist who dared to be great at all times. But like any genius, he was also but a man, sometimes susceptible to the lower impulses. After attaining much success in his architecture practice, marrying well, and raising six children, Wright grew restless. He looked to a client’s wife and neighbor in Oak Park, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah held a Masters degree from Ann Arbor and was an outspoken suffragist, feminist, and free-love advocate. She also translated foreign texts on these subjects. Mamah was also said to be quite beautiful. For certain, she deeply enchanted Wright, as he dropped everything–family, reputation, and career–to flee to Europe with her.
Upon returning to the states, Wright built Taliesin on his maternal ancestor’s land in south central Wisconsin. In part, as a defense against Chicago and the conventional values held universally therein. Taliesen also was a natural refuge, a place in the sun where Wright and Mamah could live life their way, masters of their rural, but progressive kingdom. All was well until one day in 1914 when Wright was away in Chicago working on Midway Gardens, a household servant went mad and burned the place down, waiting at the one available door with an axe, where he murdered each escaping person, including Mamah and her two children, plus four others.
As Truman Capote knows, this kind of stuff really happens. Here again we see, no inventor of fiction can easily compete with sad reality.
The Cubs somehow managed to drop the National League Championship Series to Florida’s fish. Not good. Even worse is this absurd campaign to humiliate the fan who mistakenly prevented Moises Alou from catching a foul ball. The Cubs gave up eight runs in one awful inning and it’s the fan’s fault? I don’t think so. Grow up, people! And place the blame where it belongs–on our beloved Cubs and their young pitching staff.
On a more positive note, dK and Anina were here for a visit last week. I played tourist and joined them on a boat tour of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. Here’s a photo I snapped, prior to our nautical launch.
Few displays of American consumerism can compete with Chicago’s Miracle Mile. Pretty much every high-end retailer one can think of has a slot on this fabulous stretch of N. Michigan Avenue. Given that I’m not currently in the market for more material accumulation, it was oh so pleasant to drop out of the hustle-bustle in favor of high culture. Terra Museum of American Art, with its free admission, is an artful sanctuary in the midst of this commercial district and well worth investigating.
The show that brought us in, “Debating American Modernism: Stieglitz, Duchamp and the New York Avant-Garde” proved to be fascinating. It contains works by Max Weber, Man Ray, Georgia O’Keeffe, and several artists I was previously unfamiliar with. Then, as we descended stairs and explored other exhibits we came across the marvelous ethno-photography of Edward S. Curtis. I’ve often admired his images of Native Americans in books, but had never been afforded the opportunity to see 65 master prints up close. Incredible stuff!
Spider’s have held a somewhat holy place in my world since childhood and Charlotte’s Web. Spiders get ushered out of the house, not crushed in a Kleenex, for instance. Anyway, it occurs to me how knowledge itself is spider-like. One discovery leads to the next in an infinite progression.
Last Saturday night we dodged out of the German-American beer swilling festival, a.k.a. Germania, which had overtaken our lovely Lincoln Square streets, for the somewhat saner climes of Old Town School of Folk Music, where Roy Book Binder and Ramblin’ Jack were performing a late show. Both artists are consummate storytellers–noted weavers of dialectic yarns.
Roy told a tale of how Katherine Dunn’s novel, Geek Love influenced him as a blues player. And also the work of Florida writer, Harry Crews. In this tale told between songs, Roy spoke of how he once asked a young songwriter from Indiana if he had read those books too. The young man said no, which Roy found hard to believe since aspects of these literary lions’ writing were clearly present in the young man’s songs.
My point is there is so much to discover by simply following these threads. It requires that one capture these everyday references and follow them to a suitable conclusion. In the case of writers and performers, the acquisition of their published work is often a suitable conclusion.
Time is mostly a human construct, thus time can be made to bend to the will of the people. Daylight savings is one example of time’s transient nature. Another ironic twist to the time tale is our tendency to think of the city as being fast-paced, when what the city truly requires is a slowing of one’s internal clock, for things take longer in the city.
Chicago’s hurried pace is teaching me to exercise more patience. To lose patience in this environment is a pure waste of energy. Traffic will snarl. Lines will form. And with patience and grace I will be a citizen of this highly energized civilization, and wait my turn.
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea? _Dylan
It’s on. I’m moving to daWindy, a.k.a. Chicago, which means “plentiful onions and garlic” in the native American tongue. I lived in the Chicago suburbs from 1975 to 1980, finishing grade school in Wheaton, and attending junior high and my freshman year of high school in Elk Grove Village. These were pivotal years in so many ways. My mom got remarried. I developed an interest in girls. I played basketball and baseball non-stop and developed my allegiances to the Cubs, Bears, and Bulls at this time. So, this is a homecoming of sorts, and I must say I’m thrilled to be moving back to the Midwest, the region where I am most at home.
Chicago inspires me. The architecture. The lake. The neighborhoods and all the global citizens who reside therein. The food. The El. Chicago, like San Francisco and New York, is a great American city.
I often like to analyze things from the geo-cultural perspective, and if I look at my career path through this lens, it’s plain to see that I have been charting a course for The Loop and North Michigan Ave. for some time. Portland > Salt Lake City > Denver > Omaha > Chicago. No need (for me) to go further east. Along the sands of Lake Michigan, I make my play.