Cool Way Up, Fast Way Down

Unfortunately they've muted the music from Loveland Pass Street Luge due to a copyright beef. I like something that starts out smooth and tasty and then gets whipping. Like this.

God damn I miss Colorado.

Indian Summer

We're having one of those October days in Chicago, the kind that make Snowbirds homesick.



As I was driving to the shop, I thought this might be a great opportunity to get started on that "Doors of Park Ridge" poster.

East of the Pickwick Theater, any turn north off of Touhy Ave. brings you through the older section of town. Some of these houses have been here for a century. In most cases, the old houses that remain were the larger houses back in the day. Nice big Georgians and Mediterraneans and Victorians, houses with some fucking charm. There are some modest sized homes that remain, but they were fairly large back when they were built.




Sadly, almost all of the Cape Cods are gone. My favorite.

Late in the 20th century, and through the first decade of this century, it was decided that small houses are stupid. Everyone had to have 3800 sq ft. Everyone needed 6 bedrooms, 4 baths, a "Great Room" with a vaulted ceiling to greet visiting heads of state or some fucking thing, oh and don't forget the solar frickin' greenhouse.

So now, the old section of my adopted home town is a mix of great old homes, and McMansions.

And I watched it happen. Outside of my brief foray into the glamorous world of executive transportation, I have worked on the homes of this community since the day I graduated from high school in 1978. With absolute honesty I can say that I treat all my customers the same way, but I take extra satisfaction when I work on an old house. I pay more attention to details. I hate McMansions. Every time I saw another old, smallish home torn down I got bummed out. Whenever I get a call from a McMansion owner, I just shake my head.

It's not that I half-ass my way through a McMansion window replacement job, but I am also well aware of the fact that those windows should not need replacement. Not yet. They're only 20 years old. The windows on the older homes, the hundred year old homes, are still functioning beautifully. Wood prime windows protected by wood storm windows that were manufactured with such quality that it still boggles the minds of the wonks at Pella.

And the doors, they had character.

They had stories. Like this one here.





Can't you just feel the history? Imagine the thousands of times children ran up those steps and dashed in the door with great news or a cut knee.




Or that one. I picture some pimple faced kid carrying a flower in a box, wearing his first tux, got the old man's 57 Chevy idling on Elm, nervously edging his way up that sidewalk.


A look across the street, and I know with certainty that history lives there. I know now that a young girl, and then a young woman walked through that very door, every day of her life, loaded with ambition, and visions of greatness. That was 40 years ago, and I'll bet you a trillion dollars that if Hillary found her way to my little blog here, the memories would come flooding back.

Doors.

Back in 1992 we flooded Chicago. Well, I didn't but the people at Great Lakes Dredge and Dock did. While working on the Kinzie St. Bridge, near the Merchandise Mart, they punched a hole in the floor of the Chicago River, and we all learned that our high-rises have basements. We also learned that if you have a series of antique coal delivery tunnels connecting all of the basements, and if you allow the Chicago River to begin flowing into those tunnels, the result is chaos. Bedlam.

There's a chapter of Behind Black Glass devoted to an evening I spent driving a man named Witt Barlow from local TV station to local TV station. It was the night of The Flood. That charter was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Mr. Barlow was the boss at Great Lakes Dredge and Dock. The honcho. I had Satan in my car.

Witt was in defensive mode. He had 3 young publicists traveling with him, and they had charts and graphs and all kinds of visual aids that were being passed around the back seat of my car.

Oh, and I was totally eavesdropping.

At one point Witt motioned towards the blowup up a picture taken in the flood zone and said "But you can see right there that those are the creosoted piles. We didn't drive those! Here's the ones we drove right here. THOSE AREN'T OURS!"

And one of the publicists said, "Yeah. Yeah. Say that. That sounds good."

And Witt said, "It's the truth."

And the publicist said, "Even better."

I'll never forget that exchange for as long as I live.

Shortly after that, although not shortly enough thanks to Richie and his merry band of morons, a man named James Kenny and another guy named John Kenny came along and made a management decision.

While Daley and his fellow criminals cowered in the corner of an office at 121 N. LaSalle, the kids at Kenny Construction decided to stuff a very large fucking cork in the hole in the floor of the Chicago River. Then, they went upstream and sealed off the tunnels thataway, and then they went downstream and sealed off the tunnels down there, and with that the basements of Chicago stopped taking on water.

Genius. Pure, simple, stupid, genius. Grace under fire.

Kenny Construction became local heroes. Kenny Construction took its place in the history of Chicago. Rightly so. Kinda.

Some years later, a man walked in my shop, looking very much like Arnold Palmer.

Dude dripped class, although he tried to hide it. Jeans, blue oxford, Polo windbreaker, Johnston and Murphy loafers. Looking closer to 50 than 70.

"Are you related to the people that saved the city from the flood?" he asked with a strange grin.

"Uh, no, I spell it differently."

"Bet ya get asked that all the time."

"You have no idea. I hear James Kenny got the Irish Ambassador gig."

"He did. He's a friend of mine."

"Then why did you ask...."

Just grinned at me. He was testing.

"Ah."

His name is John O'M. Turns out he worked for the company that laid the foundation for Trump's new tower by the river. Actually, he's sort of in charge at that company, but you'd never know it unless I told you.

"What can I do for you Mr. O'M?"

"Call me John."

"Thank you."

"I need you to fix my door. It's on an old house, and I don't want to replace it."

"I can do that."

"I know. How's your dad?"

"He just retired."

"I know."

The son-of-a-bitch was testing me the whole time, the bastard. I guess I passed because John and I have become friends. Not like every day friends, but in the last decade I've spent many hours sitting at my desk and talking with him. Not exactly a father figure, I have one of those, but a real solid guy who has seen far more than I have. I'm lucky to know him.

I told him my Witt Barlow story.

(For awhile John, I drove a limo. My dad and I were fighting..... "I know." Fuck!)

Turns out that my friend John and his company had plenty to do with plugging the leak too, although they didn't carp about Kenny Construction getting the face time on WGN.

Oh, and he trusted me enough to let me work on his door. He wanted to keep the old wood, but put modern storm protection over the entryway to keep the elements at bay.


That's John's front doorway. The side-lites and the storm door were easy. The transom window not so much.

And they have a great tree on their parkway that always goes code red around now. It's one of the reasons I took this picture. The girl walking up the sidewalk with her lab tried to step out of the picture while I tried to include them.



"Beautiful tree isn't it?"

"It sure is."

"Hi buddy!"

"That's Riley."

"Hi Riley. Gooooood dog. Stop sniffing my balls Riley. I've been watching that tree turn colors like this for over 30 years now. I never get used to it. I love the house too. Friends of mine."

"What a shame. Terrible news."

My fucking heart sank. Oh no. Don't tell me this. Not my friend.

"They moved."

"Oh."

My Stockholm Syndrome

Seems pretty clear to me that there's something very interesting about Scandinavia, something that I'd ignored for far too long. And that includes the kids in Finland and Iceland in my world, although for some reason some people want to give the cold shoulder to the Finlandians and Icelanderinos.

While I now acknowledge that Danes, Swedes, and Norwaychkins should consider themselves the cream of the human crop, the hippest people on earth, I must insist that we toss the Finnies and Icers in that same hopper of hipness.

Fair is fair. If you have to tell someone you're from a place that got its name from ice, or you come from a land that sees 45 minutes of sunlight every third year, you're a Scandinavian.

For the better part of my life, Scandinavia meant hot blondes, smoked fish and cross country skiers.

But pasty, both the hot blondes and the skiers, sometimes both. Very pasty people, the Scands. It's from the lack of light, and yet they never get Seasonal Affective Disorder. That's because they're the coolest people.

I can see that now.

You never hear about anybody from up there starting a fucking war, do ya?

No.

Well, not lately.

So I started getting this warm feeling for my frosty friends just this past week. I'm well aware of the fact that the Olympic voters flew to Copenhagen from all over the planet, but the fact remains that the Dennish were the hosts of the party, and they set the tone that ultimately resulted in the resounding victory we Chicagoans, for the most part, celebrated on Friday October 2nd.

Thanks Copenhudlians.

I figured that was the end of my passing fondness for people from the Land of The Midnight Snowmobile Ride, but no, they've drawn me in deeper now.

A Nobel Peace Prize?

You kiddin'?

Another Nobel for the University of Chicago?

A Nobel Peace Prize to former Illinois state rep, former Illinois Senator, and current US President Barack Obama?

He's from Chicago too! Not originally, but after Kenya and Hawai'i, he moved here. He did community service here. His wife's from here. You could look it up.

44 is Nobel Prize #84 for the University of Chicago?

Two Nobels in one week for the Maroons.

These people are really too kind.

I'd like to say that it might be a bit premature, but I won't. I figure the Nobel people are going for overall effect here. Certainly Barack is a terrific guy, a hell of a speaker, and yes he's from Chicago, but he really hasn't had the chance to fulfill most of his promise. Right now he's potentially great, but I'd like to see him actually withdraw our troops from several dozen places, and THEN give Chicago our Barack his Nobel.

But again, I'm from here and not from Stockholm, Denmark or Helsinki, Iceland. In those places, I can certainly imagine that Barack Obama is seen as the guy who took the first steps in undoing everything that his predecessor had screwed up. They must see Barack as the dude who stopped the naked agression practiced by the man before him, and they probably see that as a form of bringing peace. They must think of America as less threatening now. I'm good with that.

I could easily throw a few caveats out there, but I don't want to have anything negative to say to, or about, my new Scandinavian friends.

I'm captive to them now.

Alone in The Wilderness

Caught a video when it was first released in 2003 on WTTW, Chicago's PBS station, about a man named Dick Proenneke, and was reminded of Dick while watching The National Parks: America's Best Idea.

A most remarkable man, and a most remarkable story.

The documentary is entitled Alone in The Wilderness, and is based on the book Dick and Sam Keith released in 1973 called One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey.

Dick was born in 1916 in Primrose, Iowa. After joining the US Navy in 1942 and serving as a carpenter, Dick contracted rheumatic fever and was given a medical discharge. He went to school to study diesel mechanics, and became certified. He plied his trade briefly in Iowa, and then moved to Oregon in 1948.

It was in 1950 that Dick moved to Shuyak Island, Alaska and began servicing heavy equipment and diesel engines for the gang at Kodiak Island naval base. He spent the next 18 years as a highly sought after mechanic, as well as a salmon fisherman. Finally, he took a job with the US Fish and Wildlife Service at King Salmon on the Alaska Peninsula.

In 1968, Dick retired and moved to Twin Lakes, Alaska which is where the real story starts.

I was delighted to discover that the documentary has been uploaded.

Thank God for YouTube.



Bob Swerer and his son Bob Jr. flew in to see Dick in the early 90s, and Bob has graciously added this video as something of an epilogue to Dick's amazing story.



In 1999, at the age of 82, Dick Proenneke left Alaska to live out the rest of his life with his brother in California, and in April of 2003 Dick passed away after a stroke.

He left his cabin to the US Park Service. It is a popular place for tourists to go and marvel at the man's skill, and it has become something of a symbol to dreamers like me.

One of the narrators of Ken Burns' incredible parks documentary made the most wonderful observation about Denali, and the other vast Alaskan National Parks: " I may never visit Alaska, but it is important to me to know it's there."

I feel the same way about Dick Proenneke's cabin at Twin Lakes.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea

He has done it to me again. At some point, I'm going to have to come right out and say it; Ken Burns is a national treasure. I guess I just did.

My first exposure to Ken's work was in 1990, The Civil War , a mind boggling look at how our country almost destroyed itself, with impartial analysis by some of the greatest historians alive (and in the cases of Shelby Foote and Steve Ambrose, sadly gone now.)

Then, in 1994, came Baseball, a marvelous 9 part historical romp through the national sport starting in the mid-1800s and progressing to the modern era.

In 1997, Ken produced and directed Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, and I officially became a Ken Burns disciple. I have watched this thing at least 10 times, and each time I find something new. That, I think, is the greatest quality of Ken's work. The visual effects are so stunning at times, that you almost forget to listen to the narration. But the effort that Ken puts into his research, the little background stories that he somehow digs up, are a delight in and of themselves.

Ken and his longtime bud Dayton Duncan, another Lewis & Clark scholar and all around cool dude, somehow manage to find the perfect readers for their scripts. From David McCullough, to Ken Olin, to Matthew Broderick, ...Burns always picks the right people to play the right characters, and you find yourself forgetting that's Ferris Beuller reading the part of John Ordway.

It's obvious now, that high profile Hollywood types have no problem checking their egos at the door when Ken Burns asks them to take part in one of his productions.

Hal Holbrook, doing the narrative for Lewis & Clark, was obviously inspired. You could hear it in his voice. He was the perfect choice.

Other works by Burns include: Jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mark Twain, World War II, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

What I would give to spend a few hours over a few bottles of wine with Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan. And oh to be able to step back in time and invite Ambrose and Foote.

Well, they've done it again. This time, Ken and Dayton given us a real gift, an absolutely wonderful look into the National Parks of the United States. It's only been 2 installments so far, but it's spellbinding.

You simply must set aside time to watch The National Parks: America's Best Idea.

In the usual Burns style, he blends astounding cinematography with his trademark slow-pans across old black & white photographs, and weaves them together so seamlessly that the 150 year age difference between HD video and monochrome doesn't even occur to the viewer.

I am delighted that Ken and Dayton have chosen our National Parks as their newest subject, and have not been disappointed in their angle of delivery. Again, Burns and Duncan have found a way to transport viewers back to the late 19th Century, and allow us to almost talk to John Muir.

By touching on the enormous opposing political pressure being exerted on Teddy Roosevelt while he was unblinkingly setting aside enormous tracts of land to be protected forever, we come to better understand the true greatness of TR. TR understood the meaning of the word forever.

But besides the obvious players like Muir and TR, Burns and Duncan have, again, found the lesser characters to be a large part of the story. Bit players become major heroes, and villains.

In the case of Yellowstone buffalo (Titonka), they tell of a guy who was out in the dead of winter poaching the shit out of these symbols of the American west. He had piles of dead buffalo laying all over a snow covered plain and was busy removing their heads, which he planned on sending to a taxidermist in Omaha.

Phil Sheridan and some of the US Cavalry were patrolling the park, because Congress could not be convinced to allocate funds for a permanent park service. They came upon this fucking scumbag, who was so busy chopping heads that he didn't even hear them approach. Looking up, he was somewhat surprised to be looking into the muzzle of a gun pointed at his head.

As the poacher laughed it off, he told them that the worst thing that could happen was he'd be fined a couple of thousand bucks and he'd lose some hides. No biggie, as he was making a bundle.

He knew that the great herds that once covered the plains had been all but eradicated. He knew that the herd in Yellowstone were all we had left. And, in a warp of American logic that is all too common, this jagoff decided he wanted to be sure to kill them off before someone else got them, ...before they were all gone.

Unbeknownst to the shithead, a writer was accompanying the Cavalry patrol that day, doing an article on Yellowstone during the winter. Shocked and appalled, he wrote a scathing article that appeared in papers across the country, discussing the plight of the almost extinct American buffalo. Public outcry! People wrote their congressmen. People demanded action. And the buffalo was saved from extinction.

The commercialization of Niagra Falls made the US a laughingstock across Europe in the 1800s, and people like Muir and TR wanted desperately to prevent profiteers from taking over Yosemite Valley, Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon, and Mount Rainier among other national treasures. They considered the billboards circling Niagra to be a national embarrassment, and they didn't want it repeated as Americans spread westward.

For instance, in a legislative loophole that allows the president to sidestep congress, Teddy Roosevelt thwarted Arizona politicians efforts to keep the Grand Canyon for themselves. He couldn't call it a National Park without congressional approval, so he exercised his presidential power of decree, and declared the Grand Canyon a National Monument.

There are some sad moments, where we learn of politics of reality trumping the politics of idealism. The arguments about whether we should allow our parks to be completely wild and free, or to be simply protected places whose resources could be utilized if need be.

Shows like The National Parks: America's Best Idea are the types of productions that cause the viewer to stop and think. It causes us to give thanks for the people who came before us, and who left us the wonderful gift of our National Parks. A gift we all own together. Programs like this remind us of how important it is to understand our own history.

And nobody does history like Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan.

Going downhill fast

The day started off great. The day after a Bears win always starts off great.

First, my dear friend Queen Noor of Jordan sent me an e-mail. I don't usually post private e-mails, but Lisa specifically asked me to share this with all of my friends.

Queen Noor is very very excited, okay?,,.and she has great news. She just attended a UN Security Council special session on nuclear proliferation and disarmament, chaired by President Obama. Seems they unanimously passed a resolution to rid the world of nukes. Here, I'll let Lisa tell you, it's only a 53 second video and, as usual, is well worth watching.

So that was very nice, but then I learned that not only does Barack have time to discuss nukes with Lisa, he also has time to climb aboard Air Force One on Thursday night and fly to Denmark. This is big news in Copenhagen, and the Danes are beside themselves with anticipation.The purpose of the trip, in the middle of the most serious financial crisis in most Americans' lifetimes, and with the health care debate raging white-hot, is to pitch the city of Chicago for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

First Lady Michelle Obama will be traveling there tomorrow to warm up the crowd, and Bouncy McOverdraft plans to pop in late Thursday, check out the Tivoli Gardens and help with a Viking ship excavation, and then attend the final meeting prior to the selection announcement on Friday. Back on the plane, and shoot on home.

It should be noted that Denmark has consistently finished first in surveys ranking the happiest places in the world, it has the world's highest level of income equity, and along with New Zealand is rated the most peaceful country on the planet. Also, along with Sweden and New Zealand, Denmark possesses the least corrupt politicians on earth.

Happy, peaceful, financially robust and non-corrupt Denmark. That's where Barack Obama is going to tout unhappy, violent, bankrupt and ultra-corrupt Chicago, as a good choice for a world gathering.

Good idea. Hey, it can't cost that much to bounce across the pond and back on AF1 can it? It's a short hop. Garment bag only. He can bring the little shampoo bottle and the mini toothpast tube.

The four finalists are Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Madrid, and Chicago. Rumor has it that it's going to come down to Rio and us.

In the words of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley "They just had games in Beijing which is close to Tokyo, London has already gotten 2012 and Madrid is right there, and Rio has the soccer thing which is even bigger than the Olympics." (translation: "Japanese look pretty much like Chinese, Spaniards live pretty close to the Brits, and let's face facts, they only care about soccer in Brazil so they should be happy with that soccer thing." [The 2014 World Cup]}

Rio de Janeiro deserves to win the competition. There's never been a South American olympic games, and that time has come. Besides, it's Rio. Rio has great beaches, and tons of Brazillian chicks wearing those little dental floss bikinis. I'm rooting for Rio.

But Obama is going to Copenhagen to pitch for Chicago. Oprah is already there. Jordan isn't going, but he already voiced support for the games coming here. Oh gawd, I think we might win the fucking 2016 Summer Olympics.

I'm moving.

Doors Around Town

The Heurtley House in Oak Park~ Frank Lloyd Wright



The Great Hall~ Columbian Exposition-1893


Another one of Frank's





Park Chapel~ North Side





River Forest




Frank Lloyd Wright- Oak Park



Ditto





Andersonville- Near North Side


The Chicago Historical Society




Park Ridge



Park Ridge



Bond Hall- University of Chicago



State Street in The Loop



Gold Coast
(one of my all-time faves)



Bucktown Duplex


Another one of Frank's- Oak Park