Tuesday Morning in Hyde Park

I woke up at 5:00 this morning, hours earlier than usual. Something had awakened me, and after a quick check, I determined that it was not Webster, groaning because he had to go outside. No, Webster was unconscious, at my feet. But something was making unwonted noise.

Couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up and checked my e-mail; no, no one had sent me anything since 11 PM last night. Except for Barack; I am definitely on his list. I scrapped that one, as usual, without reading it --do you suppose that was a mistake? Will those pixels be worth something someday? serves me right for sending him a couple of contributions.

The papers came. When I opened the front door to collect them, I knew what the noise was. There was a helicopter hovering over my house. Outdoors, it was quite noisy; it seemed to be about 500 feet overhead, but surely they can't do that, can they? Just hover there, that low? It hung there. I looked up and down the block, and in the park at the end of the street I saw 2 TV sound trucks and a police car parked so as to block the path into the park.

Well, Webster and Dickens need their walk; Congressman Doyle is just another fire hydrant to them. So we headed towards the park; there's a particular lamppost down there that would surely wither but for Webster's personal watering. I walked fifty feet or so, and realized that Shoesmith School, in the park, where I vote, was also the place where the Obamas vote. That explained the helicopters --turned out there were two of them, and the sound trucks --I counted five, surrounding the park on the 49th, 50th, and Dorchester sides.

There was yellow crime-scene tape roping off most of the baseball diamond closest to the school gymnasium entrance, where the voting booths are always set up. Twenty or so cops were scattered in ones and twos all over the park. A woman ran straight across the park, from 49th street towards Bill Ayers's house on 50th (see? we must be important here! We even have our own terrorists, including Bill's wife Bernadine, whose sister dated David Brighton our first year), with a guy following her carrying one of those industrial strength cameras with the enormous lens. The usual 3 or 4 dog walkers and their pooches were there, too, looking a little lost, though all the dogs obviously loved the excitement. Two or 3 SUVs and a couple of black sedans had pulled up onto the grass, a big no-no, and were being guarded by guys with wires in their ears.

I realized where I had seen this before: this was a Verizon commercial, the one where the nerdy guy says he has his network, and steps aside to reveal 300 or 400 people, some just standing, some on bikes, one or two swinging in from cables attached to cranes somewhere overhead. I was suddenly glad I had voted ten days earlier, after waiting 45 minutes in a very friendly line at the community center at 43rd & Cottage. All this celebrity rubber-necking is exciting, for about 5 minutes. Then you realize that when the Great Man comes in, if you're inside, you stay inside, until after he has gone; no matter if you're ready to leave. And things like that. Wonderful to see Bill Clinton up close, until you realize you are hopelessly stuck in a line of cars of 59th street when all you wanted to do was drop off your kid at Lab and beat it downtown to the meeting you will now miss.

The dogs pooped; I picked it up like the citizen I am (besides, who knows but that I'd be on the news, letting my dogs poop on ground suddenly hallowed?), tossed it into the waste bin and turned back up Kenwood the way we had come, waving as always to the woman with the dog so well-behaved that it's never even on a leash, as she strolled ten feet in front of her dog, smoking a placid cigarette. I think she shares the dogs' opinion of Congressman Doyle.

Obama's not in Kansas anymore. And tonight on returning home in my tux (still fits, barely!) from a formal election party down on 57th, I could hear another helicopter overhead. Still, I doubt if the country's going to experience any sudden Hyde Park-ization. Although there is a lot of excitement, of course, about Obama here, at least ten percent of the population in this neighborhood thinks he's too conservative, me included. I just hope that, unlike Jackson Hole when Cheney's there (as my daughter Jessica informs me), our cell phones won't stop working every time Barack comes home to clear brush or something at the Greenwood Avenue White House. And I hope I can get used to those helicopters.

And what an amazing night! The scene in Grant Park, after the speech, with the Biden and Obama extended families mingling, was enough to make me wonder if, at last, I was seeing the beginning of America.

PS. In Memoriam: Studs Terkel, dead on Friday at age 96.

More About Fathers

So, DNA testing reveals that Al Sharpton’s ancestors were owned by Strom Thurmond’s ancestors (or maybe by Thurmond himself –he was old enough to have been a slaveholder, wasn’t he?) back in the day.

For once, Sharpton seemed a little subdued. You can imagine him thinking, sheee-it! If it weren’t for Abe Lincoln I’d probably have been pushing that old fart's wheelchair through the Senate for the past fifty years. Call me “boy.” Have to get my hair processed, like those old Pullman porters. Chattanooga choo-choo. Hoo, boy! Old mutha fucka, Thurmond. Ugly white guy, too. Damn! Good thing he’s dead; I can just hear the sanctimonious shit he’d be sayin’. “Those old days are past.” And “I don’t b’lieve in some Dee-‘n’-A, anyway.” But he’d be thinkin’ “that Sharpton doesn’t look like he could mix a decent mint julep. Looks like he’s better at drinkin’ ‘em! B’longs behind a mule anyhow, plowin’ his forty acres.” And some such. Sayin’ it to all those honkies in the Senate cloakroom. But they can’t say it to my face; fixed ‘em on that! Old Bastards. Maybe my picture’s never gonna be on a quarter; but at least I don’t have to listen to that shit.

But I wonder, now that DNA testing can tell us all which mudhole our ancestors crawled out of, how long it’ll be before people start suing one another because someone’s remote ancestor did something to someone else’s remote ancestor.

The Thurmond-Sharpton connection is too good to have been dreamed up. But, to wrap up this particular bit of idleness, here are my favorite future DNA “finds:”

Mahatma Ghandi – ancestor of Scottie Pippen.
Moses – DNA tests prove he was an ancestor of Charleton Heston. Recall the moment in Exodus where Moses tells Pharoah, “You’ll have to take this staff from my cold, dead hand!”
Dick Clark – DNA testing reveals he is a direct descendant of Dick Clark.
George W. Bush – Testing reveals only DN. No “A” anywhere in his background.
Dick Cheney – His ancestors were owned by the Hudson Bay Company, and were distributed as stock options to the ancestors of Jon Stewart.
Walt Whitman – ancestor of one of the “Queer Eye” boys.
Hillary Clinton – direct descendant of Carmen (from the opera).
Former Secretary General of the UN Boutros Boutros Ghali – DNA tests reveal he’s a direct descendant of Boutros Boutros Boutros. “Golly!” he says.
Jim Carrey – a direct descendant of Moses “Rubberface” Maimonides.

And so on.

Dry Bones

Today comes a reprise of news that has surfaced periodically since the discovery, in the early 1980s, of a burial site near Jerusalem. The site contained “ossuaries” (bone repositories or successor coffins used after the original body had decayed down to a more, well, compact, state) of a family. Their names, carved on the stone, were Jesus, Mary, and Jethro. The producer of the movie Titanic concludes, rather noisily today, that these are the remains of the Christs –Jesus, wifey Mary Magdalene, and little sonny.

So many questions: Did Mary Magdalene keep her “maiden” –insert here your favorite ironic comment about her job, pre-Jesus—name when they got married? And why did she, apparently alone among all the Jews in the New Testament, have two names? If Jesus had a wife and kids, did he have a mortgage, too? Strike that; I mean, did his kids have kids? Are there thousands of people running around who have the DNA of the Eternal One? And (see next story) did any of it get into Strom Thurmond? Al Sharpton?

And, by the way, given Mary Magdalene’s rather, um, colorful past, was Jesus sure those kids were his? Didn’t it seem like, every time he came home for lunch from the carpentry shop, that neighbor guy Morty had just been helping Mary sacrifice turtle doves, or something?

A Catholic priest, interviewed on NPR, was asked if he thought of giving any credence to the argument that Jesus and his family were buried in boxes beneath a Palestinian tire-repair shop. He said (this is only an approximate quote), “for two thousand years we’ve known that Jesus died, that he rose up, and ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of the Father. There’s nothing that could change my mind about that.”

Oh, really? What if the heavens opened up to reveal Jesus sitting at, say, the left hand of the Father? How many hands does the Father have? Did that finger he broke as a kid ever heal straight, and is that ugly scar any less noticeable –it’s been eons, now. What if the “Father” is really a Mother? I can hear Her now: “That Jesus, what a lazy kid. Sits at my right hand all day. Think he’d clean up his room? All the time with his stupid water into wine tricks! He’s a lush. He’s a bum!” And so on. Don’t even get Her started about that tramp of a wife he brought home!

But those bones! Now there’s something you really want to sink your teeth into, metaphorically speaking, of course. Do you suppose they found his wallet, too?

Response to "No Smoking"

You know, this story reminds me of my outrage at mandatory insurance laws, which I vehemently expressed in a letter to president Clinton at age 10 (I think my reasoning on this issue was directly opposed to that of the "non-smoking" kid- down with big government, I say!). But my own political activism aside, I think this kid needs to focus his energy elsewhere, say on the very real and present danger of Little Debbie snacks and Hostess cupcakes which are significantly more dangerous to a child's health (compare the number of kids suffering from lung cancer to childhood obesity) not to mention a MUCH more tempting indulgence.

On a side note, I have been spending enormous amounts of time in the library in the past week and I have several issues to address. First of all, what kind of University library is only open from 8:30am to 11:45pm? aren't those the hours when college kids are supposed to be sleeping? Second, circulating air makes people cold! can't we get some nice, stagnant, stale warmth in here? Third, anyone looking for book-material should head to the nearest library. The number of crazy things I have seen is truly amazing.

-jkw

News From the World of Fruit

My favorite quote of the past week: Ronald Reagan, sweating out the narrow passage of some crucial (to him) piece of legislation, was said to have fervently breathed, "Thank God!" when news of its passage was received.

But a recent article in The Atlantic informs us that, according to an aide who was actually there, what Reagan said was, "Whew! I feel like I just crapped a pineapple!"

Big News

So poor (or rich, depending on which court you believe) Anna Nicole Smith has died, the latest in a generation-long series of personal tragedies brought on, at least in part, by our pop culture obsession with blondes, fame, and, well, the subject of this note.

Every story on the telly, and there've been plenty of them, shows Anna Nicole in her heyday, smirking, winking, posing --okay, sometimes tearful, as when testifying, or, right after the birth of the baby with a thousand fathers, a little bedraggled, for which she can be excused--, usually in some flamboyant costume. And the news stories focus on her storied career, her marriage to Methuselah, inevitably asking some variant of the question, why are we so fascinated by this? It's a rhetorical question, of course: everyone knows, and no one is going to say, at least on the air.

It's her breasts, folks. They were (hell, probably still are!), um, huge. No matter how. It is, to put it mildly, fascinating to behold such a sight. She was a pretty woman, but those traffic-stoppers, well ... it's like slowing down when passing the site of a car wreck. You know you shouldn't, but you just can't help looking.

None of which diminishes this private tragedy that we will insist on making a public spectacle. Hm ... I wonder if on the web I can find ...

No smoking

So, on ABC News tonight, a 10 year-old boy was the "person of the week." His achievement was to suggest legislation in his state to prohibit smoking in cars. Children in those cars get second-hand smoke, he reasoned, which is bad for them.

Well, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. The next step, obviously, is to ban smoking in houses, because children ... You get the point. At the risk of sounding like some Republic* fuddy-duddy harping about personal responsibility, I must say that people have the responsibility from protecting their own kids from second-hand smoke, sharp knives, the poisons under the kitchen sink, and Rush Limbaugh. This has to stop somewhere. It's enough to make me start smoking in protest. If I could stand the first-hand smoke.

*from Bush on down, the party of fuddy-duddys insists on calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat" Party. So, until they stop, it's "Republic" Party. Why be civil to jerks?