A trip to Chicago and the aftermath

Obviously a mistake...

Last weekend we drove up to see Chelsea and Chris in Crystal Lake and attend a friend's daughter's wedding in Naperville on Sunday. It was a beautiful weekend and the further north we drove the more lovely the fall colors became.

After stopping for some much-needed refreshment at Chick-fil-A  (I don't know any other restaurant that offers carrot and raisin salad) we visited the newlywed's condo. They have fixed it up and it looks fantastic -- I guess that's what you get when you marry an architect. The only flaw was the sign next to the dumpster. No walkers, really?

Not Amy Grant...

We went to downtown Crystal Lake and walked around but it was really cold, something that didn't deter the Amy Grant fans who were beginning to assemble for a concert that she was going to put on later that evening. It was wonderful to see Chelsea looking so happy.

After attending the wedding on Sunday, we drove home. It wasn't until I was getting ready for bed that evening that things got interesting. I taken off my brace (my first mistake) and fell in the back bathroom, cutting myself on the shower. As I lay on the floor with blood flowing into my hair, I was thankful that a) I didn't appear to have broken anything and b) Ron was around. After a fruitless trip to an emergency department (we couldn't even get into a room), we came home to get a few hours of sleep.

If only George Clooney had been on staff

Next morning, somewhat refreshed, we  went to a different emergency department, hoping for a better experience (wouldn't be hard). The wound had re-opened and blood started gushing out at the check-in. This seemed to make a big difference -- I was whisked into a room immediately. An army of nurses and the doctor attended to me quickly. It was just like on TV!

The rest of the week was less dramatic -- I nursed my five stitches and watched my face turn different colors. The wound doesn't hurt, but I have a feeling that small children may cry and run away after seeing me. I'm going to venture out though -- this place is driving me bananas!

The Evolution of My Face

10-8-12

10-13-12

 

10-10-12

I get the stitches out Monday and should be less colorful this time next week. A nasty end to a great weekend!

The Election and Gilbert and Sullivan

With the presidential election coming up again (it seems like we just had one), the political heat has been turned up a notch. As the lone liberal at the conservative McDonald family table every Sunday, I try to stay quiet. I figure we are all products of our upbringing and since my parents were dyed-in-wool FDR Democrats, the chances of me turning out conservative were pretty slim. I'm not outspoken, but I'm firm in my stance and I'm certainly not going to piss off a whole tableful of Romneyites over roast beef. Wouldn't be prudent...would it?

Anyway, I often think of a classic Gibert and Sullivan song from the comic opera Iolanthe (something else my parents owned was a complete set of G&S albums). Iolanthe's story concerns a band of immortal fairies who find themselves at odds with the House of Peers. The opera satirises many aspects of British government and law. Iolanthe was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth hit in a row, and the first of the operas to premiere at the new Savoy theatre. It goes without saying that it was hugely popular and continues to be performed to this day.

Very little has changed since 1882 when the ditty "When All Night Long" was performed for the first time in London. Here's an excerpt of the lyrics:

Charles Manners and Alice Barnett in Iolanthe, 1882

When all night long a chap remains
On sentry-go, to chase monotony
He exercises of his brains,
That is, assuming that he's got any.
Though never nurtured in the lap
Of luxury, yet I admonish you,
I am an intellectual chap,
And think of things that would astonish you.
  
I often think it's comical--Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive--Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!

--From Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan, 1882





For your listening pleasure, here's a recording of the song made by the D'Oyly Carte company featuring Sydney Granville as Private Willis. Enjoy!

John Wayne reconsidered

Ron in front of The Duke's birthplace

 Even though I grew up in Creston, Iowa, a town less than an hour from John Wayne's birthplace in Winterset, I hadn't visited this landmark until Labor Day this year. The fact that Ron's father is a big John Wayne fan and coming close to running out of things for Ron to do on long trips to and from Creston made me decide that the time was right to visit the John Wayne birthplace.

When I was growing up John Wayne had long since become a caricature of The Great American Cowboy, starring in movies such as True Grit, The Cowboys and The Shootist. He also happened to be an outspoken conservative, supporting the Vietnam War and to me he represented many of the things that I felt were wrong with the US.

In 1968, he was the driving force for and starred in The Green Berets, a movie which was criticized for glorifying the Vietnam War. My brother Jon had the album which featured a former Green Beret speaking (not singing) the title song for the movie. In part the lyrics were:
"Back at home a young wife waits/ Her Green Beret has met his fate/ He has died for those oppressed/ Leaving her this last request.

Put silver wings on my son's chest/ Make him one of America's best/ He'll be a man they'll test one day/ Have him win the Green Beret."

Stirring? Well, not really, at least not to me. Although the song was hugely popular, I couldn't really get behind it (of course I didn't like The Carpenters either). It seemed a little too sentimental and extremely manipulative.  I had very little love in my heart for John Wayne.

But that didn't seem to matter last week when we visited the birthplace. There was a gift shop where you could buy pretty much everything John Wayne including beef jerky, thermometers, memorial plates and cookie jars. We got Ron's father a coffee cup featuring The Duke's mug and the immortal saying "A man's got to do what a man's got to do" (supposedly said by Wayne in Stagecoach or Hondo, but regrettably unconfirmed by our tour guide).

Abbie Hoffman

Wayne is long since dead (he passed away in 1979) and my days of being a fuzzy-headed liberal have been diluted by almost 25 years of marriage to a Republican. So the John Wayne birthplace was kind of a blast from the past. The years have gifted me with moderation and respect for the character of individual even if they don't agree with me politically. Like Abbie Hoffman said "I like Wayne's wholeness, his style. As for his politics, well — I suppose even cavemen felt a little admiration for the dinosaurs that were trying to gobble them up."
Well said.

White Castle, Monks Mound and carrying dirt

For almost 30 years, as long as I've lived in Illinois, I've driven past Cahokia Mounds on the way to St. Louis. Monks' Mound rose impressively on the left of the highway, but I never visited the state historic site. However, last Monday after a doctor's appointment in St. Louis, Ron and I decided to break with tradition.

Ron hadn't been there either so after lunch at White Castle (one of Ron's favorites but not mine -- those little onions on the sliders do weird things to my digestive tract) we drove to Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville. Leaving the interstate, we ventured into what appeared to be substandard commercial area. There were a lot of businesses with bars on the windows, never a good sign, but we pressed on and soon were rewarded with a sign pointing to the Cahokia Mounds visitor center.

Pulling into the parking lot, we were surrounded by many mounds of various sizes. The landscape was beautiful, tree-lined and rolling, no surprise that the ancient people decided to settle here way back in 900 A.D. Of course, the fact that Cahokia sits at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers doesn't hurt its desirability as a location either.

Monks Mound back in the day

 We watched a movie that told us some backstory including:

• Between 10,000 and 20,000 people lived here at the height of Cahokian influence, around 1250 A.D.
• The city covered 6 miles and contained 120 mounds made of earth. This earth was carried in baskets to make the mounds. Now that's manual labor! Some were used as burial mounds but the majority had ceremonial uses and were bases for temples or the homes of leaders. If you were important you lived on a mound, looking superiorly down at the rank-and-file.
• The inhabitants of Cahokia didn't even get credit for building Monk's Mound! Even though they spent 300 years hauling 814,000 cubic yards of dirt, the largest man-made earthen mound in North America was named after some Trappist Monks who lived on one of the nearby mounds. I think something like Generations-of Indians-Who-Worked-Their-Butts-Off-Carrying-Dirt Mound would have been more appropriate, but no one asked me.

Note the subdivision in the lower part of the photo.

The Big Mound in St. Louis

The site has had a chequered past and briefly was both a subdivision and a state park. Nearby St. Louis used to be known as The Mound City because of its abundance of Indian mounds (all sadly destroyed). The largest Native American mound in St. Louis was the Big Mound, which stood at least 30 feet high, was 150 feet in length, and had three terraced approaches facing the river for religious ceremonies. At one point in the 1820s, a small resort building was constructed at the top of the mound.

Ron climbs Monks Mound

Kukulkan Pyramid

After the movie, we walked around and Ron decided to climb Monks Mound. I would have too, but there was no accessible trail so I contented myself with taking photos. Monks Mound looks like the Mayan pyramids that were built about the same time. El Castillo (The Kukulkan Pyramid) at Chichen Itza in Mexico is a 75-foot-high stone pyramid, shorter than the 100-foot-tall Monk's Mound and built earlier, between 550 and 800 AD. The Great Pyramid in Giza is bigger, 481 feet, than either and was built around 2500 B.C. Still, they all three have similar shapes, triangles pointing up to heaven. Even 2,500 years before Christ man had a need for to worship.

Don't bring your sled to Monks Mound!

Now when we drive by Monks Mound on the way to St. Louis I can say I've been there.

Snow White and fairy tales

Fairy tales have always fascinated me -- they were a staple at bedtimes growing up, maybe because my mother was a children's librarian before she married and had a particularly good grasp on storytelling. The dark scariness and happy endings where good triumphed and the princess married the handsome prince shaped my expectations about life. Yes, it would be hard but in the end, justice would win out.

When the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was reissued in 1987, I took my oldest daughter, who was all of three years old. She was bored with the trilling singing and simplistic animation (she loved The Little Mermaid, which Disney released in 1989). We continued to read fairy tales and, even though she's all grown up now, she's still a devotee.

Modern-day evil queen on Once Upon A Time

These days fairy tales seem to be enjoying something of a resurgence.  The story of Snow White has been made into two movies this year and is the basis for the current TV show Once Upon a Time. In the first movie, Mirror, Mirror, Julia Roberts played the Evil Queen, while Charlize Theron was cast in the juicy role of the queen for Snow White and the Huntsman. I missed the first movie but loved the second movie's interpretation of the classic story. It was less than faithful, but enthralling for its visual and special effects.

There are scary parts to most fairy tales, like when the evil queen makes the poison apple for Snow White. But, in the end, the evil person meets with an often grisly death and the good people live happily ever after. Snow White and her handsome prince marry, but the evil queen is forced to put on white hot iron slippers and dance until she drops down dead.That's the way life is too -- we live in a fairy tale and just don't know it. Time to start reading ...

Maybe the best TV show ever -- Dark Shadows

Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins

Barnabas Collins, the middle-aged vampire star of the gothic soap opera  Dark Shadows, was my adolescent crush in the late 60s. I was captivated, nay obsessed, by this series, a half-hour TV show that ran from 1966 through 1971. Since this was long before DVR (or even VHS) to record shows, I seldom got to watch the 3 p.m. soap, since school didn't let out till 3:30. But this didn't keep me from following the adventures of the Collinwood gang, even buying cheesy books about their world.

In reality, the daily soap opera was plagued by extremely low production values that often resulted in shaking sets, muffed lines and mike shadows. However, none of this could mar the high drama of the Collins family's uncountable time changes, assortment of supernatural beings or the high romance of the story. I wanted to be Angelique, the beautiful witch doomed to love, but not be loved, by the erstwhile Barnabas.

Tim Burton

So I was overjoyed when I discovered that Tim Burton, director of such classic movies as Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, was making a 2012 version of Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas.

Depp apparently wanted to become Barnabas when he was growing up, although he hardly seems old enough. The previews I've seen for the movie place it in the realm of high camp, exactly where it belongs. The special effects of 1966 are woefully inadequate today, but the premise of a dysfunctional family, an old house, and various vampires witches and ghosts is timeless.

I can hardly wait till May 11 when the movie is due to hit the big screen. You can be sure that I will be there -- popcorn and soda in hand -- ready to be 13 again!

Regionalism put to the test

Working at an international company based in the Midwest made me aware of just how small the world has become. I learned that when it's 8 p.m. in Springfield, they're just getting into work in Singapore, and morning for us is mid-afternoon for a writer in Great Britain. It gave me a glimpse of how much alike we are. It doesn't matter if you live in Australia or Germany -- people want to be treated with respect as the individuals they are.
But I wondered about regionalism. There seem to be a marked difference in the way that I talked with an ad rep in New York City and a magazine editor on the West Coast. One was hyper and one was so laid back I thought she might fall asleep.It seemed to me that how you acted was highly dependent on where you grew up.

I didn't coin the term "regionalism." It came about back in the 1930s when a group of artists including Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton painted scenes of romanticized rural settings. These were oddly reassuring to the American public, waist-deep in the Great Depression, and showed them that there was still a place where life was good and that place was the farm.

Regionalism was short-lived, dying out in the mid-30s. Perhaps someone found out that farms are just regular places to live, only with animals. But I still wondered if pockets of regionalism had survived, so the other night I asked one of my friends for her opinion, since she's lived on both coasts as well as here in the Midwest. She didn't hesitate with her response -- by and large she didn't see much regionalism in people. No matter where they live, the overriding factor was individual personality.

It's a small world and the web is pulling us even closer. When before would it be possible for grandparents to Skype their grandchildren in China from small-town Illinois?  A schoolteacher get a video off YouTube to supplement next week's lesson on the water cycle? A woman with MS connect with so many others with this disease from around the world? It's good because we're sharing. And because we're all basically alike and because, in the end, we've got each other.