Fretting (As Usual) And Strumming July 14, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Ben Joravsky, Big Mike, Chicago Reader, Coping With The Cubs, Cubs, Joe Satriani, Keith Richards, Michael G. Glab, Milo Samardzija, Richard M. Daley, Schoolboy.2 comments
I’ve been too busy to rant in these precincts the last few days mainly because I’m hustling to accomplish a couple of other things right now.
I’m Learning!
My family’s picnic is coming up on August 3rd. I hope to have the book, “Coping With The Cubs: A Life of Depression, A Year of Hope” completed and published online before then so I can crow about it to all my kin. Also, I’ve been working on getting down the main guitar part for “Brown Sugar,” perhaps my favorite pop song of all time, so I can play it for my nephew Doug, the aspiring musician of the clan. Doug loves the acrobatic-fingered virtuosos like Joe Satriani, whereas I prefer rhythmic kings like Keith Richards.
I bought my first guitar in January and have been teaching myself how to play. My pal Skip Frank, the trombonist and former Louisville-area high school music teacher, has given me a few theory pointers but mainly I’ve depended on instructional books and You Tube vids. It’s a slow learning process but I’m taking tiny steps forward all the time. One obstacle is that my fingers are sausage-like and I have the genetic misfortune to have been born with spatulated digits, meaning my fingertips are abnormally flat and rounded. That makes it only slightly easier for me to master a musical instrument than for an arthritic butcher to become a neurosurgeon.
A Normal Human Hand Over A Big Mike Hand
Still, I’m pretty proud of myself for taking on the challenge in my 50s.
As for the book, my feelings about it are baffling. I love it and hate it. Sometimes I read what I’ve written and think I’m one of the finest scribes who’s ever trod the Earth. Other times I fear my mother won’t even take the time to read it. I suppose that’s the emotional lot of all writers. Then again, I saw Joyce Carol Oates on a panel discussion yesterday and wondered why I couldn’t be more like her. Oates has written 49 complete novels and eight novellas and has published 32 short story collections, at least eight plays, and countless essays, poems, young adult books and children’s stories. What the hell kind of coffee does that woman drink?
Books Written By Oates Last Week
Oates has been quoted as saying, “I’m drawn to failure. I feel that I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.” My response, with all due respect, is “Joyce, shut up.” I can give her lessons in failure.
Failure, oddly enough, has been missing from the Wrigley Field world this season. We go into the mid-season all-star break with the Cubs tied with the Los Angeles Angels for the best record in baseball. The team is clicking on most cylinders and has about 47 players on the all-star team. How weird and unlikely would it be for the Cubs to end their World Series victory drought precisely at the one-hundred-year mark? Not that I’m betting on it, of course. As I’ve moaned here previously, the Tampa Bay Goddamned Rays will win the Fall Classic this year, defeating the North Side boys. It’s only fitting.
“Apres moi…,”
Ben Joravsky continues to lambaste the Farouk of the Fifth Floor (aka: Mayor Richard M. Daley) in the Chicago Reader. If you’re not up on Bennie’s work on the Mayor’s power grabs and tax-financed war chest you’re missing some of the finest muckraking journalism in the country today.
I understand the Immortal Milo Samardzija has just about completed yet another novel, this one with a science fiction tinge. Sheesh, he must be drinking Joyce Carol Oates’ brand of coffee. Anyway, get on “Schoolboy” right now so you can read this new tome when it comes out. The guy sure knows how to splotch a piece of paper with ink.
Oh, and keep a block of time open for “Coping With The Cubs.”
Big Mike
The City Of Green Shoulders April 1, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in 1968 Democratic National Convention, Ben Joravsky, Big Mike, Chicago Reader, Chicago Sun-Times, City of Chicago, Earth Hour, Green Roofs, Michael G. Glab, Richard J. Daley, Richard M. Daley, The Bright One, Vanity Fair.add a comment
~ Richard J. Daley of Chicago (above); the chip off the old block (below, right) expressing himself at the 1968 Democratic National Convention
How about a round of applause for my home town, Chicago? The Windy City skyline went noticeably dark Saturday evening during Earth Hour. Neither New York nor Los Angeles could say the same.
Thumb through the photo gallery on the Earth Hour link for terrific pix of the lights going out in the spectacular skyline .
Say what you will about the sins of Mayor Richard M. Daley (and my good pal Ben Joravsky will oblige each week in the Chicago Reader,) he has been a champion for environmentalism. The Windy City has more green roofs than any other metropolis in the nation. Daley insisted that City Hall (the actual structure) lead the way in that effort.
Little Richie even had his portrait taken for Vanity Fair’s inaugural green issue (May 2006) along with several other like-minded metro chief executives. It was implied that Daley leads the way among big-city mayors in terms of the environment.
During my years in the tourism industry in Chicago, the most common comment visitors would make was that the city was the cleanest they’d ever seen.
Richie Daley has made it a top priority to clean Chicago’s streets and sidewalks of litter as well as ensuring its air and water are something less than toxic.
As a teenager making my first forays into the Loop, I’d stroll down the LaSalle Street canyon, craning my neck and gawking at all the skyscrapers like a rube from Lebanon, Kentucky. The venerable Northern Trust Bank building always caught my eye because it was clad in black stone.
I’d wonder why its designers chose black stone. I also tried to guess what that stone might be. Slate? Some exotic mineral I’d never heard of?
One day, workers began to erect scaffolding around the building. A few days later, I read in The Bright One that the Northern Trust was preparing to scrub some eight decades of soot and grime off the facade of its then-headquarters. The job took a long time. To the best of my recollection, it lasted throughout the spring and summer.
When the scrubbing was finished, I was amazed. The stone on the Northern Trust building wasn’t black at all. In fact, its external cladding was pink-flecked granite.
Since the place had been built in 1905 until the last couple of decades of the 20th Century, the Northern Trust’s facade had been turned ebony by the smoke from thousands of soft-coal burning downtown furnaces as well as the belching exhaust of countless lead-gas burning cars.
That revelation was key in the development of my environmental awareness.
I wonder if Richie Daley noticed the same thing when he passed the old Northern Trust Building back in the 1980s.
Next time,
Big Mike
