When I was back in Chicago the other week, staying in Evanston to be nearby relatives, I drove a few times through Glencoe where I grew up. And as I passed the Village of Glencoe sign that welcomes one to town, I noticed that it said -- "Established 1869." Which meant that this year, it's 150 years old. So, I figured that that deserves at least some recognition. It's not a shabby achievement. I'm not sure of the population, but it's always been around 10,500, so we'll go with that. If you want to see about the town's festivities, you can check it out here. But I'm going to keep this fairly simple and dive in here on my own. I thought that when a town hits 150 years, especially if you grew up there, it's entitled to fairly good-sized photographic presentation. So here are a dozen or so to help commemorate the occasion. Most of these come from about 40 years back when I wandered around town and took some pictures. To be fair to the town, Glencoe isn't always covered with snow -- it actually can get lush green from the late Spring through the Summer, with brilliant colors in the Fall -- but that's when I chose to walk around and take the photos. That's the old library on the left, which is probably my favorite building in town, as much for the outside (it just looks like a library is supposed to) as what's inside -- especially the wonderfully magical downstairs shelves that felt like you were in a hidden cloister -- although the train station is a very close second. Behind the library, this is the town hall, which I always like for its old world, colonial style, though I still think of as one of the more "modern" of the significant buildings since it's only about 60 years old or so. And this the turn-of-the century train station. A few years ago I rented the movie Flag of Our Fathers, that Clint Eastwood directed, about the six soldiers who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. At one point in the film, the soldiers have returned to the U.S. and go on a cross-country tour to raise money for the war effort and are in Chicago. Eastwood needed a venue that looked out of the 1940s, and when the scene came up I though, "Gee, that looks like the Glencoe station. Afterwards I did some reserach -- and it was.. I've always loved this photo, not so much for the visual imaging of it -- though I do like that -- but almost entirely for the sign with states which is significantly the obvious. The sign and its helpful notification aside, here's a better look at Lake Michigan, and the lovely shores of the Glencoe public beach. Fun fact: it's more sandy in the Summer. Okay, just one more, because this is one of my handful of all-time favorite pictures I've taken. Although the beach was closed, you'll note that the gate still has an opening, so I headed down to the shore of Lake Michigan. And some of the ice formations were magnificent. But this one stood out. In fairness, no, the snow wasn't this high, nor were the drifts. From the plows clearing the streets downtown, this was the result. By the way, Weinecke's was a beloved hardware store, in town for probably half a century. The building is still there and -- as a landmark and to keep the tradition, so is the sign -- but it's now a high-end restaurant. (This was taken during the early afternoon, but the glare off the snow was SO bright that the camera auto-compensated and made it look darker...) That was then, this is now. This is Weinecke's today -- now the Guildhall restaurant. And no, this is not one of my photographs. Here's a much better, full view of my fave, the venerable old Glencoe Public Library. Since the vegetation is lush and green, that's the first hint I didn't take the photo. I've written often here about the acclaimed Writers Theatre in Glencoe, which began life in the back of the bookstore, Books on Vernon, just down the street from Weinicke's, with about 50 seats -- but still got critics from the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times to review of their productions, and even on occasion the New York Times. It then moved to the far-more special Women's Club a few blocks away, which had a theater space designed for about 120 seats. (This is where I saw the Harnick and Bock musical She Loves Me I've written about here often that I set up to attend along with Harnick and my aunt, who was his childhood friend and Northwestern classmate, and which starred Jessie Mueller before she went to Broadway and won a Tony Award as Best Actresses.) A few years back the Wall Street Journal (which has sent critics to review plays here) named it the top regional theater in the country. The company built up such a following that a few years ago, they did a major fundraising project and built a new, major structure on the spot. Grand as it is, they still kept the theaters intimate. The main stage still only seats around 125 people, and the small stage holds only about 70. It's further designed so that hey can also convert the lobby into a theater if needed. Side note: last year I saw the world premiere of an interesting little play called Witch on the small stage, and in a few months the excellent Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles is presenting the play. When some friends who attend a lot of the Geffen productions asked if I was thinking of going to see the play, I was able to tell them I already had... And said it was quite good. This is how far it's come from the back of a book store in a little over 25 years. For the record, their photographer makes it look far better than I ever could. Happily, I do have a few photos that I took during the summertime, so I think I should include at least one that shows how lush the forest is in Glencoe, as opposed to all the snow scenes. This is the Turnbull Woods, part of the Cook County Forest Preserves, which I could reach a very short walk from our house, and where sat the Double Killer Cave my friend and I named and explored as kids. I've written occasionally of the spectacular Chicago Botanic Garden, which I call the Disneyland of botanic gardens because it's set up into different "lands" and is so expansive that it has trolley tours and a miniature children's train set-up during the Summer. But though it has "Chicago" in its name, it's actually located in Glencoe. No single picture can do its magnificence justice, but here are two that I took that gives at least a hint of an idea. And what the heck, we'll end on a picture of the homestead where I grew up. That was my brother and my room on the left until we got old enough that he got his own room in the back, and I kept this one. In many ways, this also served as Elisberg Stadium. My brother and I played what we called "Fastball Tennis Ball in the driveway against the garage (our version of two-man baseball). There was a basketball hoop on the garage rather than a standalone backboard -- this was fine, with one caveat: many of the houses in the neighborhood like ours were designed by the Keck firm, who were disciples of Frank Lloyd Wright (who designed some houses in Glencoe. That meant that the rooftops were flat -- so if a shot went way-wild and landed on the roof, it didn't roll off. You had to get the ladder to climb up. However, this help train you to take as good shots as possible and not just fling the ball up in hopeful prayer. Finally, the front yard served as our football field -- though the tree in the center of the yard made it a wee bit of an obstacle, however if you built it into your strategy it worked well as a high-end blocker. Happy 150.
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.The guest contestant -- not from the archives, but an actual new one! -- is Tim Rogers from Austin, Texas. As weird as the music is, I'd be shocked if one doesn't get the hidden song. As for the composer style, this is one of those who (for me) is always a toss-up between a few people. I took a guess on who struck me as closest -- and was wrong. Still, it's fun to hear arranger Bruce Adolphe describe his choices for what made it this composer.
On this week's Al Franken podcast, he goes pure entertainment, though is still able to mix in an aspect of politics, with his guest Dana Carvey. As the site describes, "Al and Dana discuss political comedy and how some of the greatest moments in SNL’s political satire were created. Al promised Dana to blow smoke up his ass during this interview, and, indeed, smoke is blown. Al opens with a monologue in which he assesses the relative talents of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Hint: Reagan could read a speech."
The guest contestant for the 'Not My Job' segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! is Tiera Fletcher, who is a 24-year-old rocket scientist working on a mission to Mars, after first helping establish a NASA gateway on the moon. The interview with host Peter Sagal could go one of two ways -- mind-numbingly boring or great fun. Happily, it's the latter.
When I went to Chicago the other week, it was for my regular mid-year trip there. But I timed it specifically so that I could get a ticket for a production of Meredith Willson's The Music Man (to give its full and correct title under the circumstances...) that the acclaimed Goodman Theatre -- a Tony-winner for Best Regional Theatre -- was doing, moreover directed by Marry Zimmerman who is an Artistic Associate of the Goodman, as well as a professor at Northwestern University -- and herself won a Tony Award for directing in 2002. I was really interested in what they -- and especially she -- would do with the show. To put this in proper perspective, I not only love The Music Man, which is one of my top-favorite shows, but it was the first professional musical I ever saw when I was a real little kid, performed at the Shubert Theater in downtown Chicago. It enthralled me then, and has continued to. I wouldn't precisely call myself an aficionado of the show, but the details matter to me. (Among the productions of the show I've seen include a memorable one in Los Angeles around 1980 that starred Dick Van Dyke as Prof. Harold Hill. I wrote about it here, and embedded a video of him performing the song, "Marian the Librarian.") So, as much as the trip was about going to Chicago, the timing was entirely about The Music Man. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The style was quite different from most productions. Rather than treating the people of River City and the world of the show as archetypes, Zimmerman played it all quite low-key and realistic. And the staging and set design were almost bare bones, with the production looking somewhat like a painting by Winslow Homer or Grant Wood (the artist of "American Gothic," which is actually written into the number "Iowa Stubborn" as a joke).. It was very effective and added great charm and believability to the show. This realistic quality, in turn, impacted the role of Harold Hill, played by Geoff Packard. There are largely two main ways to play the con man Professor. One, as performed in the original Broadway production and movie by Robert Preston, is as an out-of-town big city hustler who's come in to steamroll over the small town hicks, and the other is to slyly and deceptively "aw-shucks" ingratiate himself into the town as a good-old-boy one of them. (This is the interpretation Dick Van Dyke took, as did Matthew Broderick in the TV movie remake.) I personally prefer the former, because the startk contrast of a fast-talking Hill to the bucolic townspeople is dramatically more effective to me. Surprisingly, Zimmerman and Packard had an uncommon third way, one that fit the overall low-key realism of the production. And that's to play Prof. Hill pretty straightforward and present him unapologetically for who he is -- an out-of-town traveling salesman who very openly wants to sell something that no one has expressed any interest in. It was very intriguing and works quite well in many ways being thoroughly believable -- Packard most definitely does a good job -- though for my taste I think in the end it's not the right way to go. When Harold Hill is played as a big city hustler, tries to overwhelm people with exuding charm. When being slyly ingratiating, he wins over people with his presumed close kinship. But a traveling salesman selling what you don't need, while fun, isn't overly likable. And while that works okay for him being able to ultimately sell band uniforms and instruments to a town that becomes convinced by his bamboozling that they need them, it's doesn't work as well when believing that Marian the Librarian will fall in love with him. We accept that they fall in love because not only does the great structure of the show push us there effusively, but also because we see how moved she is that Prof. Hill has brought her shy, silent little brother Winthrop out of his shell. So, it works -- but for my taste it doesn't work on every level, because "appreciation" and "admiration" are not the same as love. That said, the performances were generally extremely good. Those who stood out for me were Monica West as a terrific Marian Paroo, in a rich, lovely performance (seen below). Mary Ernster was a wonderful Widow Paroo, her mother. And Ron E. Rains did a particularly nice job as the blustery Major Shinn. On a personal level, I also enjoyed seeing Heidi Kettenring chewing up the scenery as the Mayor's wife, Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn (at times a bit much, but it was fun and fit well) -- particularly since I'd seen her eight years ago in a much-more understated and wonderful performance of Harnick and Bock's She Loves Me at the Writers Theatre in Glencoe, a production that starred Jessie Mueller who soon after went on to win a Tony Award as Carole King in Beautiful. As I said, overall, I thought the production was fresh, unique and very good. My only real quibbles (beyond how the more realistic style affected the character of Harold Hill) center around two specific directorial choices. There are perhaps two especially-famous moments of High Musical Theater Drama in the show. The first is when Harold Hill jumps into the town's Fourth of July rehearsal to convince them all that what they most need is a band that would be filled with "76 Trombones." And the sequence begins with one particular, dramatic flourish where he brazenly dazzles the staid townfolk by suddenly changing himself -- from an out-of-towner into a mesmerizing bandleader -- and he inverts his very-ordinary sportcoat inside-out which immediately becomes a flashy, bandleader's uniform and punches out the top of his straw hat, turning it into a plumed bandleader's cap. Here, though, seemingly to be more realistic is my guess, he didn't do that. He simply had his friend Marcellus open his suitcase, take out a coat and give it to him. And then picked up a splashy hat. It was realistic, but it wasn't especially interesting, and wouldn't have galvanized anyone in the gym to follow this,"snake oil salesman," as Mayor Shin calls him. He doesn't magically transform himself. He put on a coat and hat. The other is one of the famous High Dramatic moments in musical theater, in a league with when Eliza Doolittle first is able to speak English properly and slowly ekes out the phrase, "The rain in Spain...stays mainly...in the plain" from My Fair Lady. It comes in The Music Man when little Winthrop, whose lisp and loss of his father has made him near-totally withdrawn and silent, suddenly BURSTS through the entire town, runs to centerstage down by the footlights, and all alone in the spotlight, for maybe the first time in his life, sings with utter, explosive joy about the Wells Fargo Wagon that's about to come to town might actually have "thumthin' thpecial" just for him!! It's a galvanizing moment in the show (and musical history), which helps cause Marian to fall in love with Harold, as her little brother races over to her afterwards to embrace one another. Here, though, to be more realistic, he's far off to the side, waiting with everyone for the wagon to arrive, and just takes a steps forward -- stage right, amid the crowd -- to sing his song. It's a nice moment -- there's no way it can't be -- and realistic and believable, but I don't think it sends the bolt of excitement through the audience which made the moment a classic. He's happy. But it's not "thumpthin' thpecial." I missed those big, and I think important moments. I also missed having a bit more of the attraction between Harold and Marian that builds their romance. But...I loved the realism of the production, the overwhelming charm that that brought, the excellent performances and the general joy of such a terrific show. It worked very well. And I'm pleased to know that the audience loved it enough for the Goodman Theatre to extend the run. Here's a good behind-the-scenes look at the show with director Mary Zimmerman and the two leads, along with a bit of "76 Trombones." And here is a very abbreviated version (which they clearly trimmed themselves to fit their two minutes on TV) of "Trouble" performed by the cast on a daytime syndicated show, Windy City Live. There are a couple of article today, including one from the respected Cook Political Report that note how Trump could lose the popular vote by 5 million and still win re-election.
I think it's great that people are aware of this and defend against it happening. But the reality is that if Trump is SO unpopular to lose by 5 million votes, he's in big trouble. After all, "could" is a wide word that cuts a huge path. And therefore the article is a math hypothetical. And hypothetically, Trump could lose by 25 million and still be re-elected. That's profoundly unlikely, but it's also not likely he'd lose by 5 million and be re-elected. Just mathematically possible. And important to be aware of. Furthermore, hypothetical math aside, keep in mind that this "5 million vote loss" scenario presupposes the Democratic candidate getting an even greater number of votes in states that he or should would win anyway -- like in California, New York and Illinois -- compared to what the party got in 2016. But for that to happen, it would seem likely that most of those new votes would not be Democratic ones (since most Democrats who voted in 2016 voted Democratic), but rather from Independents and disenfranchised Republicans. Yes, some Democratic votes did go to Trump in 2016, but it wasn't two million. And if you're picking up Independent votes and disenfranchised Republicans in various states, there is no reason to presume that that wouldn't happen across the board, most especially those three states (Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania) that Trump squeaked by in 2016 by a total of 70,000 which gave him the election. The short version is that for the Democratic candidate to win the popular vote by 5 million, he or she will most likely have to pick up votes that aren't Democratic to begin with, since those votes in 2016 almost all went Democratic already. Which would be a major problem nationally for Trump. Significantly more problematic for a candidate, however, is to go into an election where you may lose the popular vote by 5 million. For that to happen, the bottom really has to have fallen out of your campaign, and all those squeaker-thin wins you had the first time as a result of disenfranchised voters who wanted change are *likely* to totally disappear and be landslides for your opponent. "Could" Trump lose the popular vote by 5 million and still get re-elected? Absolutely. And Democrats have to be aware and fight against it. But is it likely? I think such a possibility of losing the popular vote by 5 million would be far more terrifying to Republicans, who not only would *likely* lose the presidency, but also the House again and Senate, in droves. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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