A Dad’s Notes

Chicagoland Cliffhanger

May 7, 2008 – 7:20 am

The marathon Democratic nomination battle came down to the late results in Gary, Indiana, which is just a few minutes east of Tinley Park on I-80. I’d been monitoring the returns on The New York Times’ politics blog “The Caucus.” Gary, a declining steel town still best known as the home-town of the Jackson 5, became the fulcrum of U.S. politics. “The world is waiting, Gary. Not Louisiana, Paris, France, New York, or Rome, but Gary, Indiana.”

Some commentators think there’s something rotten in the state of Indiana:

As the results of Indiana’s close primary election were delayed by Lake County’s prolonged vote-counting, the network news commentators were starting to question the integrity of the ballot-count in Hammond, Gary and environs.

Jeff Toobin, the legal analyst turned political commentator, was openly suggesting on CNN that this unusual release of the tally smacked of Chicago-style vote-counting: Withholding the results of a county likely to favor Sen. Barack Obama until the rest of the close count in the state was completed.

Here’s the assessment of Clinton’s Indiana squeaker, “by a bare 22,000 votes, or 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent,” from Andrew Sullivan:

Clinton gets bragging rights for Indiana. But it’s basically a tie. Overall, counting both states, Clinton won 1,273,696 votes; and Obama won 1,528,897. It was a 55 - 45 percent win for Obama in the popular vote. And it’s now basically impossible for her to make a popular vote argument, even with Florida and Michigan. After the last month of unremitting Freak Show attacks, that’s a remarkable show of strength and resilience. Obama’s delegate lead grows. He will have the majority of the popular vote. He has far more money and far more donors. The logic of Clinton’s remaining in the race dwindles to the point of vanishing altogether.

Will Clinton concede today? It’s being reported that she’s cleared her morning calendar:

“The campaign may go on but the contest is now over: Obama is the Democratic nominee for president,” said Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist who was a senior adviser to the Gore and Kerry presidential campaigns. “Now the decision for her is how she wants to end this.

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Weekly Top Five (05/05/08)

May 5, 2008 – 12:04 pm

Image details: 13th Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Day 2 served by picapp.com
“Thirty One Today” is the addictive advance track from Aimee Mann’s next record @#%&! Smilers, due out on June 3. The hook is a queasy sounding retro synthesizer which frames Mann’s unsettling character study of someone turning 31. “Drinking Guinness in the afternoon / Taking shelter in the black cocoon / I thought my life would be better by now / But it’s not, and I don’t know where to turn.” Mann reflects on the song in a recent interview:

What was it about the age 31 that inspired you to muse on it on the new record in the song “31 Today”? Was it a significant year for you, or was it an arbitrary age for an unsettled character?

It’s not an arbitrary age. I sort of felt like that was an age when people really start to take a really hard look at themselves and their lives, and take an honest look at where they are. I mean, turning 30 or 40 or any of the big numbers—you always think that’s going to be the hard part. But I think it really comes a year later when you start to think, “Oh, right, I’m not going to turn around and go back the other way.”

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A Girl With A Dream

May 5, 2008 – 9:40 am

With apologies to my wife and the nice folks at Tom’s who cut what’s left of my hair, I had my most diverting conversation in ages with a charming eight year-old girl who often plays with our kids at the local park. My son, a born indoorsman like his father, was moaning to go home after about fifteen minutes yesterday. I thought, mistakenly, he might want to use the “stinky” porta-potty that the park district so thoughtfully provides.

This exchange inspired a flight of fancy from our young friend, who mused that the “port” in the name of the noxious convenience might mean it was a teleporting device. You could step inside and emerge a moment later in “Hawaii or Alaska.”

Now that the topic had turned to travel, and a flight to or from nearby Midway airport zoomed overhead every ninety seconds or so, I asked if she’d ever flown on a plane.

“No,” she replied, “but I’m going to Vegas.” An odd destination for a family vacation thought I.

“When are you leaving?” I blithely asked.

“When I’m 21.”

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PicApp

May 3, 2008 – 12:02 am

I’ve been cavalier and unrepentent when it comes to finding and posting uncredited images on the blog. I always include pictures with posts and usually look long and hard for them. By scrupulously linking borrowed text to source web-sites, I suppose I’m privileging writers over photographers but it’s much harder to apply captions and photo credits than hyperlinks. The text editors I normally use, like Windows Live Writer, don’t have a user-friendly method of labeling photos, let alone giving credit where its due. One of the benefits of blogging for Tinley Junction (perhaps the only one because I’m convinced that no-one has found my posts) is the ease of applying captions to photos within their editor.

An imperfect solution has presented itself. The legal photo web-site PicApp offers free images which can be embedded in posts along with captions and credits. The drawbacks are limited selection and the piggy-backing of self-promoting ads within the image frames. It’s a small price to pay for a clear conscience.

Here’s an example:

Image details: Obama Campaigns Ahead Of Indiana And North Carolina Primaries served by picapp.com

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Hip Hip Hooray!

May 2, 2008 – 9:32 am

Word has gotten out in Henry’s class that I plan to reward (bribe) him with a return trip to Chuck E. Cheese’s if he has a clean sheet at school this week - no assaults on “friends” or open revolts against female authority. His classmates are pulling for him and plan to take up a collection to fund his “video-game” spree. The bus-driver said they even made up a song and cheered Henry at the end of a “great” day, as reported by his teacher in the daily assessment sheet that he carries home.

Henry must have turned a corner because he told his teachers that he loved them and didn’t want to go home. This may be just another example of Henry’s reluctance to “transition.” He never wants to go anywhere but once there he doesn’t want to leave. Oh - and Amy found out last night at an open house for next year’s classes, which will be in a different school due to construction, that Libby has a boyfriend and that they are inseparable. The little minx hasn’t told us anything but the kids hardly ever provide details when their mom quizzes them about the day at school.

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Dancing In The Street

May 1, 2008 – 12:04 am

Libby’s happy to get her scooter (a Christmas present) out of mothballs. Henry’s just … happy.

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The Breakfast Club

April 30, 2008 – 11:45 pm

Amy has a new breakfast companion. Maggie used to pester her mother for scraps, so it became difficult to concentrate on the morning Tribune. Time for Maggie to pull up a booster seat and eat her own breakfast.

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Echoes Of Obama

April 30, 2008 – 9:02 am

At the moment I’m reading Journals (1952-2000) by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the noted historian and presidential aide who passed away last year. It’s an unexpected page-turner. He seems to have known everyone of consequence and his zest for the political game is infectious. Schlesinger was famously (or notorously) a keeper of the Camelot flame but his remarks about Adlai Stevenson, whom he served before JFK, are pertinent to all the hand-wringing about Obama and Clinton’s extended contest.

In his time, the nominee was rarely decided before the convention. Schlesinger records a conversation with Stevenson in 1952 just before he won the nomination:

[H]e said it now looked as if he might get the nomination with the ill-will and abuse of the other candidates. I said that he must understand that the irritation on the part of the other candidates was only natural and that it need not harden into a permanent grudge.

Some of his reflections about Stevenson wouldn’t be out of place in contemporary accounts of Obama:

He is the one man in politics today who strikes an authentically new and fresh note. Eisenhower utters the cliches of the right. [Averell] Harriman the cliches of the left … Stevenson promises the possibility of adjourning the tired old debates … [H]e is an original personality in our national life; he is the start of something new.

Stevenson, of course, ran against a monumental war hero, after twenty unbroken years of Democratic rule, during the stalemated Korean War (America still has a garrison in South Korea). This year’s Republican war hero carries the baggage of an unpopular presidency and an equally intractable war.

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The View From Our Window

April 29, 2008 – 1:25 pm

We were wondering why the bird-feeder dangling over the back deck had been emptying so quickly. Now we have our culprit. It does attract some birds on occasion.

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Weekly Top Five (04/28/08)

April 28, 2008 – 10:41 am

Image details: BAM 2008 Spring Gala - Performance served by picapp.com

News from the Paul Simon-athon, a month-long series of concerts at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music which concluded last night, refreshed my interest in the Brazilian jazz singer Luciana Souza. I was busy unpacking last fall and overlooked her latest album The New Bossa Nova. This is the latest attempt to launch her as an adult-contemporary artist singing in English. Producer and husband Larry Klein (dude!), Joni Mitchell’s ex, selected songs from Sting, Steely Dan and The Beach Boys. She is brilliant and deserves to be a star but her best efforts are the two Brazilian Duos records, which are unadorned voice and acoustic guitar performances sung in her native Portuguese.

According to Nate Chinen of The New York Times, another highlight of Simon’s residency was the “stunning” performance of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings:

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings struck the evening’s best balance between faithfulness, care and reinvention. With their impeccable vocal harmonies and effervescent guitar playing, they made “Gone at Last” into an edge-of-the-seat bluegrass romp. And their quieter take on “Duncan” was stunning, as Ms. Welch sang in a warm and weathered tone and Mr. Rawlings keened above her, at hairline intervals.

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