Chicago

I did an entry some time ago on how strange it was to move back to Chicago after a forty-year absence and the mind games it tends to play. But it wasn’t until my friend and webmaster Gary moved here from Texas and I began seeing it from his perspective that it struck me exactly what a truly amazing city Chicago is.

Yesterday, we walked five blocks to our nearest elevated station (the station a block from my apartment is being rebuilt after nearly 100 years, and will be closed until mid-2008), and took the Red Line into the Loop so that Gary—okay, and me, too—could see the traditional Christmas window display at Marshall Field’s.

Field’s was recently bought out by the Macy’s conglomerate, and after 150 years of being a symbol of Chicago, they renamed the store “Macy’s on State.” I don’t think they had any idea of the impact of that action on Chicagoans, who refuse to call it “Macy’s.” Immediately after they announced that all signs, including that Chicago landmark, the Field’s Clock on one corner of the building, would be removed, business plummeted, and Macy’s has been scrambling ever since to find some sort of balance.

Field’s is one of the last of the marvelous old Grand Dames of department stores. The main atrium soars 12 stories high; one of the several dining rooms sports a 50-foot tall Christmas tree (sadly, the tradition of having a live tree had to be replaced by an artificial one for fire safety); there is an immense Tiffany ceiling in one part of the building. The Furniture floor once had—I didn’t check yesterday—an entire house which would be redecorated periodically.

The windows were, as always, a children’s delight, with an animated version of the Nutcracker; each window holding a different scene. The interior glitters with holiday ornaments: in one interior court, huge strings of gigantic silver balls swoop up several stories.  Tree ornaments up to four feet across are placed around the floors.

And Field’s is just one store…sadly the last…of the gigantic State Street stores. The beautiful old Carson Pirie Scott, Field’s traditional rival located just a few blocks south on State, is being gutted to make room for trendy boutiques and Starbucks and Old Navy-type stores. Sorry, kid, it just ain’t the same.

There’s far too much to be said about Chicago to fit in just one blog entry: the spectacular lakefront views, the impressive downtown skyline which I can see clearly from my living room window (though I have to stand pretty close to the window and look to my right); Millennium Park with its incredible pavilions and monuments; the Art Institute; the Field Museum; the Museum of Science and Industry; the Shedd Aquarium…Lordy, I sound like a Chamber of Commerce brochure. But it’s all true.

And anyone can see it all using public transportation…possibly the best in the country. Busses, elevated trains, and subways crisscross the entire city, with almost anywhere you might want to go less than three blocks from public transport. 

As I say, a wondrous city, and I’d encourage you to come experience it for yourself.

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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.

Words, Part I

I love words. Always have. My mom tells me my first word after “mama” and “dada” was “Constantinople,” though I suspect she may have misinterpreted a post-bottle belch.

The title of this entry says “Part I” because there is no way anyone could possibly cover the subject in one or one thousand blog entries. This will be just the equivalent of a flat stone tossed across a pond, skipping and bouncing from thought to thought (as do so many of my blogs).

I find it fun to contemplate that any discussion on the subject of words consists, by necessity, entirely of...words, and that while pictures don’t create words, words in the right combination can paint vivid mental pictures.

I love the sound of words. “Onomatopoeia” is a delightful word and has always been my favorite, both for its sound and for its definition. I am also partial to multi syllabic words, the more syllables the better. “Anti-disestablishmentarianism” is always a crowd pleaser. “Supercalifragilisticexpialodocious” doesn’t count, since it was totally made up, just for a movie.

I have nothing against made-up words…I frequently do it myself. I still cannot accept the fact that “store” is not acceptable as the past tense of “stare”. And Lewis Carrol’s “The Jabberwocky” is an absolute joy of made-up words: “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ did gyre and gimble in the wabe….”  I can easily close my eyes and see the slithy toves gyring and gimbling.

It amazes me that so few people are aware of the true meaning of words. How many people realize that “breakfast” literally refers to “breaking the fast” of the preceding night?

My personal cause célèbre word is “president,” and I wave my banners and mount my soapbox whenever the opportunity presents itself…like now…to decry the mispronunciation of the word and the fact that not one person in a hundred and one has the slightest idea that its mispronunciation totally obscures its clear meaning.

I’ll bet my bottom dollar, and borrow a few more, that our founding fathers did not establish the office of a “Prez-i-dent.” The office is of a “Pre-ZI-dent”…the man holding the office presides over the government. Even dictionaries, which certainly should know better, seem to have overlooked this grievous error, and I will not rest until it has been rectified! (I don’t think you need to wait up, though. I’ll call you when it’s done.)

English is the most expansive and fluid of all languages, and continues to grow and expand. The Oxford English Dictionary contains some 616,500 entries. The average English speaker is estimated to have a vocabulary of somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 words—most of them seldom if ever used. The dictionary is the most fascinating book we have, though its lack of plot and character development rather limit its general appeal.

See? We’ve come to the end of the average space allotted to each entry, and we haven’t come any further than one one-thousandth of the thickness of an angel’s whisker in discussing the topic. Well, I’m sure I just might get back to it at some point.

[If there is a Part II, I have been unable to find it.]

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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.

No!

Before we begin, if you are intending to see the Israeli/Palestinian film “The Bubble,” stop reading right now.

I knew going in that the film was about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but I can’t resist movies with gay themes (a hangover from the decade upon decade during which there were no films with gay themes), and I’d read a review which indicated that it had a positive ending It’s a moving film effectively demonstrating the myriad of problems and mutual hostility between Jews and Palestinians. But its emphasis was on a sweetly romantic tale of an Israeli soldier who meets a young Palestinian at a checkpoint between Israel and the west bank. They fall in love despite the problems all around them, and effect live in a bubble of their own. On this level, the film is truly moving and uplifting.

I was therefore totally unprepared for the last fifteen minutes of the movie, in which the Palestinian’s sister is accidentally killed by Israeli troops and, in the last terrible scene, he blows himself and his lover up in a suicide bombing.

No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!! I’m sorry, but I’m out’a here. I do not need this. I do not need an agonizingly slow-motion close-up of the two young lovers in the final instant of their lives, the one looking confused, the other infinitely sad.

I left the theater furious at being cheated out of hope. It’s been several days now, and I’m still furious. I have thought of the film almost constantly since I left the theater, which is, I suppose, exactly what the people behind the film intended. To that end, they most certainly succeeded.

It certainly isn’t as though I had no idea of what is going on in the world. I haven’t been living in a vacuum all these years. I am already far more than sufficiently aware of all the madness in the world, all the pointless stupidity and hatred and cruelty and pain and sadness. They are impossible to avoid. It is simply that I see absolutely no need to run out and deliberately expose myself to more. And while there are undoubtedly many people who somehow have been sleeping through the past 50 years of history who need to be reminded of the harsh realities of the world. I am not one of them, and I truly resent having gone to the film. I am not a puppy who has just peed on the carpet and needs to have his nose rubbed in it.

I cannot live without hope; without the belief that despite often overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there is more good than evil in the world. In a voice-over at the very end of the film, the Palestinian says that someday, perhaps, things will change. And he is right. But seeing him die did little to encourage this belief.

I hope you will excuse the brevity of this post, but I think I’ve said just about all that needs to for today. 

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