2001

It got farther than most designers do - it was approved by the City Planning Commission and was this close to breaking ground before the funding finked out last August. While David Roeder of the Chicago Sun-Times reported in March that two new parties have called 7SD head man Adrian Smith, nothing came of it. Roeder says by e-mail that 7SD is now "quite a longshot," adding, "It's all up to the economy."

And the economy right now isn't as sunny as when 7SD was dreamed up. While there would be glory for Chicago in reclaiming the World's Tallest title from Malaysia (with its Petronas Towers, as seen by dozens of moviegoers in Entrapment), you still need people to fill the record number of offices and apartments, which fewer people do in an economic downturn. Besides, any pure Chicagoan, including my host at the Chicago Architecture Foundation on Michigan Avenue, hastens to point out that while the Petronas Towers have taller spires, the Sears Tower still has the highest occupiable floor in the world, the 110th.  

With the next economic boom, though, keep an eye out for a renewed attempt to settle things more decisively, with 7SD.

Thank you for not kissing butt
April 25, 2001

Spotted while reading the Chicago Tribune on a downtown bench overlooking the Chicago River this afternoon…

• Much to-do about a new FAA report that says O’Hare International Airport is overflowing its capacity (stop the presses!). A political snag is fouling things up, however. Mayor Daley wants to slap down another runway or two at O’Hare, while Governor Ryan wants to build a new suburban airport. Daley says a new airport would facilitate urban sprawl, while Ryan says the governor’s office, not the mayor’s, has the authority to make the call. The Trib editorializes that the FAA itself should come in and fix things as the two heavyweights continue to squabble.

• When kissing butt is not the modus operandi: As the courtship of Seattle-fleeing Boeing continues among Chicago, Dallas, and Denver, Dallas VIP’s bragged in the Trib’s business section about their restraint upon Boeing’s visit compared to the extravagant dinners and art exhibitions of the Windy City trip last week. Boeing wanted modesty as they took a peek, which may count against Chicago.  “We got asked to do this in a particular way,” Texas Governor Rick Perry is quoted as saying. “Did Chicago follow instructions? That’s not for me to question.” No word on whether the Texas trip included PB&J, the entrée of choice of the state’s former governor. 

• Some boys never outgrow their love of toys. Page A3 prominently features a Taiwanese parliament delegate in an Uncle Sam hat holding a toy apache helicopter, demonstrating his glee at the U.S. agreeing to sell Taiwan such goodies. 

• Bob Greene reports President Bush’s senior advisers are, among themselves, calling their weekly meeting the “Strategery Group,” in a nod to Saturday Night Live’s parody of the Malaprop President. Insert jeremiad here about the merger of politics and entertainment.

Old-fashioned road rage
April 24, 2001
Took a perfect spring drive to the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing today. Attendance should be required for state citizens. Among the curious tidbits: Grand Rapids was a haven for women’s suffrage in the 19-teens, Ramona Park by Reeds Lake had an amusement park that was GR’s answer to Coney Island, and many of the Apollo rockets were made in Michigan. Another highlight: an early car advertisement urging people to abandon horse-drawn carriages pointed out that horses have “an uncertain temper and unruly disposition.” Actually,when you look at drivers in many cities today, cars didn’t rid the roads of that at all. 

Of Martians and Cadillacs
April 19, 2001
Tidbits from around the Web today

• Intergalactic conspiracy theory from British columnist Robert Matthews: There is life on Mars, or why else are all our probes disappearing there?

"Since the first attempts were made more than 40 years ago, about two-thirds of all probes sent to Mars have either exploded, malfunctioned or simply vanished. It is a failure rate unparalleled in any other area of space exploration."

Hmm. Martians stashing visiting land rovers? Maybe they're just mad when we mess up their TV reception.

• The Detroit News speculates that Cadillac may be running out of gas, a la Oldsmobile. Sales have steadily declined since the 70's. Part of the problem: a dwindling customer pool - the average Cadillac buyer is 63. Time to change the slogan to "Generation Next." 

• Scott Ostler in the San Fransisco Chronicle:
"The retractable roof on Miller Park in Milwaukee leaks. The retractable roof on Toronto's SkyDome is raining hunks of metal and insulation onto the field. Is God trying to tell us something?"

• And finally, my own two cents: Whenever George W. Bush reads a speech he obviously didn't write and only questionably comprehends, he sounds like a junior high student called on to recite in a social studies class.

Crouching China, Hidden Bully
April 11, 2001
So now that we pretty much faked an apology and China gave us our pilots back, things are back to normal, right?

Not so fast. There's still hell to pay. Actually, there's the IOC to pay. In July the International Olympic Committee will decide which city will host the 2008 Summer Olympics. Beijing is one of the leading candidates. In a rare demonstration of its own good sense, the IOC should send the Games elsewhere. 

China has never hosted the Olympics and desperately wants to. But why, then, such crummy treatment of our air crew when they were rammed into and forced to emergency land? Why abduct a Chinese native American University professor in the Beijing airport for supposed subversion? Are these the gestures of a nation asking for the favor of the international community? Or of the Same Old China, which mistreats people and then wants to trade with Western nations as though nothing ever happened? 

The IOC should settle on the latter, and send the Games to Paris, Toronto, or Istanbul. (My personal favorite: Toronto. Just because it's closest.) 

Confession is getting old
April 7, 2001
Why are fewer Catholics going to confessional these days? Terry Mattingly’s column this week examines why attendance has been steadily declining over the century. Some interesting theories out there, all with some merit. People are content with weekly mass as an opportunity to unfurl their guilt. Priests are less fire-and-brimstone, prompting less guilt in the first place. A theory I’m most interested in: females are increasingly uncomfortable confessing to males (which, invariably, priests are). Is this in conjunction with society’s gradual validation of women as authority figures in practically every area except religion? Does it have anything to do with an increase movie and television portrayals of priests as flawed and perverted men? In the background, we have a culture with its deluge of litigation, therapy, and tolerance that constantly assures us we’re OK; bad things are other people’s fault.

A Stunning Senator
March 31, 2001
• I sent this to U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell by e-mail at senator@mcconnell.senate.gov I hope you want to send him your thoughts as well.

With my own strong and fairly liberal political convictions, I'm trying to discipline myself to look carefully for all sides of the story as I go into journalism. No, I scold myself, not all Republican party leaders are callous, overweight, and harnessed to wealthy corporations. That's just a stereotype, I tell myself. 

Then Mitch McConnell, senator from Kentucky, takes the floor this week to oppose the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. For the record, the bill is one of the most inspiring to hit the Senate in years. It not only is a rare event of Congressmen willing to bite, for noble reasons, the hand that feeds them, and to bring integrity back to the legislative process by eliminating corrupting "soft money," but it is sponsored by a Republican who has done more to knock down my Republican stereotypes than anyone, and a Democrat whose cooperation has signaled a rare instance of partisan harmony on Capitol Hill.

McConnell wasn't so impressed. He boomed that campaign finance reform "is right up there with static cling" among the concerns of Americans. He allowed himself to stoop to grade school-quality discourse, calling the idea "stunningly stupid." 

Well, something here is stunningly stupid, all right, and to me it's the Kentucky senator. Don't those Republican leaders get it, or are they too distracted by the corruption they're swimming in? Campaign finance reform isn't an issue like taxes or welfare. It's about the integrity of the process, about the atmosphere in which all other issues are marinated. 

You can't talk about Social Security without talking about the influence of the AARP. You can't talk about gun control without talking about the influence of the NRA. Find me a citizen who thinks groups like these don't have too much influence and aren't making politics a game of the rich at the expense of democracy. 

Senator McConnell, your remarks, your indifference, and your childishness are what's stunning. Most of the rest of America is behind John McCain because of leaders like you.

Down To Earth
March 26, 2001
Writing a book is one of the most advanced forms of arrogance. I can only appeal to Toni Morrison's writing credo: "I write because I can't not write." 

I can't not write this book. First, because it is in part my story of faith. I grew up in a thoroughly religious home, school, and church, but my faith was shallow until I grasped this vision of what faith means in daily life. (Hint: Not just a feel-good spiritual high, as too many people believe, but a broad social vision, a "worldview.")

Second, because the topic is of self-evident importance: heaven. If the days of this current age are numbered, and heaven will be forever, isn't it odd how fixated we are on the most minute details of our present lives, largely oblivious to the afterlife?

The diagnosis for me was beautiful in its simplicity: I needed to see, for the first time, the true biblical picture of heaven as painted in Revelation 21: heaven on earth, not up in the clouds. The Bible says that heaven will be on earth, this earth, a purified and perfectly restored version of God's original creation. Rather than floating around in the clouds and playing harps (as I used to imagine the afterlife), we will have physical bodies, walk around on this very ground, and engage in the same activities we do now - art, music, politics, sports, and so forth. 

This vision has been described, and biblically buttressed, by wise theologians such as Anthony Hoekema, Richard Mouw, Andrew Kuyvenhoven, and Cornelius Plantinga. I write not to replicate their work, but rather to try to put it in layman's terms, to try to go beyond a theological audience. After all, this biblical vision of heaven, largely lost on most Christians amid the clouds-and-harps stereotypes (not to mention the current Left Behind nonsense), can and should seep in to our lives at the most basic level, shaping all our work and activities in the current world.

• Revelation 21 Page


Breaking Ranks
March 23, 2001
Save your sun-gobbling spring breaks, your bacchanalian orgies, as seen on MTV from the state of Florida. While the majority of my college classmates trotted south as if on command last week for spring break, I was perfectly happy with the chance to go to one of my favorite places in the world - the city of Chicago. It's just three hours away from Grand Rapids, but a far more intriguing destination than the white-bright beach. 

This is an old picture of the Marina towers - there are new Chicago pix en route to the Gallery - but I learned something new about them on my most recent pilgrimage. Not only were they built in the middle of the mid-1950's suburban exodus to revive interest in the dowtown area, but their creator was a student of the architect of the neighboring IBM building - a thoroughly unremarkable black rectangular structure. Clearly, some "thinking outside the box" going on here. 

Window to America
March 10, 2001
Per my pursuit of the bigger picture of sports in America, I've taken up something of an amateur interest in anthropology and cultural studies, especially 20th Century American history. So my first visit to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland was absolutely transfixing. What a probing look into American life and ideals, and what a record of our country's history. From its blues and gospel roots to its perfect merger of Motown urbana and Memphis rockabilly, of Jimi Hendrix' counterculture and the Beatles' British class, rto its modern pop worship of Michael Jackson and Madonna, rock 'n roll is a cultural soundtrack that, like sports, breaks down barriers in a way other societal structures cannot. 

A list of names would be enough to get my 20th Century cultural juices flowing, but the RNRHOF devotes entire displays to Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson and, until October, the brilliant visionary John Lennon. What you don't expect are the odd items, like the couch where Jimi Hendrix learned the guitar and the original draft of John Lennon's classic 'Imagine' scrawled on yellowing paper - eerie connections to the men and their haunting lives and deaths. The RNRHOF is packed with such stuff, delivering more than just the boilerplate pictures and songs. The museum has made the job of future anthropologists of American culture considerably easier.

Gloom and glamour by the lake
March 9, 2001
On my first trip to Cleveland, covering the Mid-American Conference basketball tournament for WBBL, I've been struck less by the city's renaissance and more by what prompted it - there's still more Detroit-esque dismal-ness than Chicago-esque Midwest glamour and glistening. 

The Gund Arena, which is hosting the tournament, and Jacobs Field next door, are the exceptions - they're splashes of uninhibited architecture and light shades of color that pop out of the street, just a few blocks from the equally innovative Winking Lizard sprawling sports bar. And tomorrow I'm headed to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was founded on the premise of washing Cleveland's blues away.

Athletic Eschatology: Sports Forever
March 5, 2001
What I didn't get to in my chapel talk on sports and religion today was the end. Literally, the end. What will sports be like eventually, someday in the afterlife, after this temporary and imperfect world is history? 

I believe that in the new heavens and new earth, the fullness of life will be a celebration of the Creator. We can only speculate, but I doubt that sports will have an official religious ceremonial function as it did for the Ancient Greeks, nor a sort of unofficial religious function as it does today. Rather, sports will be one strand of a rich tapestry of cultural life – art, music, books, politics, archtiecture, and so on – all of which gives glory to God. Revelation says there will be no temple in the New City, for the Lord is its temple. Maybe if there is no one building where we have church, we won’t confuse church buildings and sports buildings as we do today, as with Promise Keepers. We'll be more likely to see the bigger picture of how human existence is, in general, an offering of worship. 

For the time being, I think we should have more of this "fullness" frame of mind when it comes to sports. Sports are not irrelevant and useless; they are integral to cultural expression. Nor can we assign a narrow agenda to our involvement in them, as proselytizing athletes and other believers in "Muscular Christianity" often do. Sports are our physical and cultural expression that reveal the character of the Creator behind them.

More on Promise Keepers and the too many functions of our temporary temples in the full text of my talk.

A Fast Food Nation
February 22, 2001
I flipped on the radio in the middle of an interview with Eric Schlosser, the author of the new book, Fast Food Nation.Which was very spooky, since I was in the act of polishing up my essay on McDonald’s for my America Series. Last week I sat down in a McDonald’s for an hour and a half, then came back and wrote nearly 3,000 words. I say this not as a nod to my effluvious (hemorrhoidal?) writing, but rather how rich a subject McDonald’s is. G.K. Chesterton once quipped, “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” I would say something similar about the topic of McDonald’s and American culture, and I’m glad Schlosser broke the silence.

Schlosser’s book sounds like a gem. If the excerpt in the recent Atlantic Monthly – about the artificial flavoring of French fries – is any indication, this will be a pleasant read. On NPR today he was talking about, among other things, McDonald’s advertising assault on children, and his tour, a la Upton Sinclair, of a slaughterhouse where burger places get their beef. Schlosser says the experience was enough to bring a halt to his (previously prolific) personal consumption of ground beef. While devoid of any such behind-the-scenes investigations, my own hour and a half will likewise make me think twice next time I pull into the drive thru. 
The America Series: McDonald's

'Hoax' is a hoax
February 19, 2001
I’m shamed to admit joining, however briefly, the ranks of Fox’s “When Pets Attack” faithful – that beer-bellied, odorous bunch that can barely be distinguished from the rabid animals they’re watching. 

The occasion was Fox’s pseudo-documentary about whether the moon landing was a hoax. The show was transparently ridiculous, as can be expected of basically anything on Fox during sweeps month. But two thoughts stuck with me: 

First, the story line is perfect. We were scared to death of the Soviets going into space, we were panicking about JFK’s moon deadline, and NASA controlled the only television feed from the moon – it’s not as though CBS had a crew waiting among the moon rocks. The atmosphere and logistics were perfect for NASA to feel the need to fake it, and to be able to. People will believe anything when an American flag is waving – just look at the Reagan presidency. 

Second, the show raised a lot of different questions, rather than just blowing one lone one out of proportion. And at first, I couldn’t answer them. Why is the flag flapping? Why do some pictures show the lander obscuring the crosshairs etched into the camera lens? Of course, Fox could have found out the simple answer to these with a few phone calls, or by allowing their token NASA skeptic to specifically address them, rather than limiting him to vague, general rebuttals. But in the meantime, I couldn’t explain everything. 

Well, time to come back down to earth. Astronomer Phil Plait has done the homework Fox didn’t want to do. He assures us that an astronaut turning the flag pole as he planted it, along with a horizontal rod holding the top of the flag, accounts for all of that flapping, and that sheer bad exposure explains the problematic photographs. He goes on to systematically debunk every other ‘hoax’ detail on the Fox show. Interesting reading, and a good science lesson: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

Valentine's Day backlash
February 14, 2001
Is it just this year, or am I just noticing it more? A backlash against Valentine’s Day. I’m hearing about it all over the place – even from a poem a friend found on the Internet, one of whose verses reads, “The guys act real nice, but this will fade/All they’re doing is trying to get laid.” 

USA Today ran a feature on Feb. 14th horror stories from readers that turned up some humorous disasters, or disastrous humor. The nervous girl who threw up in the hot guy’s car. The travel agent whose client dumped her, asked her to arrange a cruise for him and his new girlfriend, and came in to pick up the tickets on Valentine’s Day. The guy who doesn’t quite get it who wrote in: “Last year I took my wife out for a romantic dinner and all she did was complain. Next time I eat at Hooter’s, I’ll go by myself.”

The undisputed winner was the woman who hurried home from work on Valentine’s Day, got all dressed up, and waited for her fiancé to return from out of town. He never came; she later found out he went to Las Vegas and married another woman. 

I should feel more uneasy about this phenomenon this year, given that last 14 February I had broken up with my girlfriend, and this year we’re back together and plan to get married. Call it all those residual years of star-crossed middle school crushes, but I still sympathize with the backlash. Valentine’s Day has too many grimy handprints of Hallmark all over it, and is too sentimentalized by the public. At Thanksgiving the pastor always says that Thanksgiving should be celebrated year-round. Similarly, expressions of affection should be constant and subtle, not an annual one-day eruption of florist visits.

The alleged good old days
February 12, 2001
One of my favorite periods in history is the 1950’s in America. It sounds so monotone at first – just a bunch of complacent middle class suburbanites occupying their rigid social roles and watching this new invention, whaddyacallit, television. But beneath the “Velveeta” surface lies a bubbling brew of fascinating social trends – the birth (or at least burgeoning) of American consumption, the uneasy atomic age, the anti-communist witch hunts, the hypnotic power of radio, the debut of televised mass culture, the undercurrents of resentment as women are booted out of the factories they kept open during the war and told to go back to the kitchen. All is covered in intriguing detail in Paul Boyer’s Promises to Keep, which I enjoyed reading today, in spite of a usual enjoyment killer: the fact it was required reading for one of my college classes.

Some tidbits:
• Speaking of the 50’s (or thereabouts), did you know Strom Thurmond got 39 electoral votes in the 1948 election?  I didn’t. He headed a party split from the unpopular Truman, and Truman still pulled it out! (No matter what the Chicago Daily Tribune said…)

• Is Homer Simpson today’s Willy Loman? Arthur Miller, before writing The Crucible partly in response to his own implication in the communist witch hunts, penned the truly American Death of a Salesman, which, as Boyer writes, “searingly portrayed a bewildered loser caught up in fantasies of success pathetically at odds with the realities of his defeated life.”

Homer is, in fact, today’s loser, with one key difference – Homer has no such desperate fantasies of glory. He’s too numb from all that television and beer. Might this difference between Willy and Homer say something about America in the 50’s and America in the 90’s? In the 50’s we were unsatisfied but pretended not to care. In the 90’s we are unsatisfied and truly don’t care. 

• Boyer says it all, about how much things have changed: “When the Senate in 1946 failed to muster the necessary two-thirds vote to pass an equal rights amendment, the New York Times intoned approvingly, ‘Motherhood cannot be amended.’”

Accepting the Floridian fantasy
February 6, 2001
When I first heard of the job opening, the part about moving to Florida was inconsequential. Florida was just a place where the job happened to be, as is Detroit, Baltimore, Indianapolis, and other places where I’m looking for jobs. 

Then I thought it over. It’s a year-long program and it pays well. It could start right after my college graduation, and after my wedding, meaning a year-long honeymoon in the sun. Plus, no more stowing away the golf clubs in November. It was starting to look a lot more golden.

The more I thought about it, the more I also got selfish. I deserve to live in Florida, I reasoned. After all, unlike 99 out of 100 Americans, until now I harbored no fantasies about the Sunshine State. I was the only one in my second grade class who hadn’t been to Disney World, and the only one who didn’t care. I’ve never been below the Mason-Dixon line for spring break, the bachannalian orgy of choice for most college students. I’ve seldom watched the Daytona 500. I’ve only mildly envied my grandparents when they make their annual escape from winter. You’d think I’d know better, living in Michigan.  But this year, after Florida residents Elian and Chad became household names, my apathy towards our national fantasy state only festered. 

So the way I figure, I’m entitled to seeing that fantasy fulfilled now. Until now, I’ve never been greedy, and the content should inherit the earth. 

And I’ve paid my dues. I’ve had enough rounds of golf called on account of snow, enough arctic driving, enough slush-sloshed pant legs, all without any Floridian alleviation, ever, except that one afternoon we drove through Pensacola, that I have dibs on a year in the sun. I won’t feel the least bit guilty.  After 20 years in Michigan, I wouldn’t see what there is to feel guilty about.

I admit I’m beginning to feel a little conformist, joining in the great American fantasy of a permanent vacation. But, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, a cold drink tastes best when you’re thirsty. Sun feels the warmest when you’ve been the longest without it.

America, America, this is you
January 15, 2001

Remember the jingle from "America's Funniest Home Videos"? I'm tempted to intone it when describing my latest project for NBierma.com: America, this is you. Here's a look at what it means to be American, going beyond the boilerplate items of freedom and rights and taking a more cynical look at our ideals of materialism and individualism. I call it The America Series, just my personal scrapbook as an American citizen. 

One of my favorite essays to write for the site was the story of 19th Century U.S. Senator Edmund Ross. As this Saturday we trade one teleprompter-reading, swaying-in-the-polls centrist president for another, it's heartening to hear the story of one of the most quietly courageous acts in American politics.

Super Bowl take: I'll admit to bemoaning the lack of parity in baseball after the A-Rod contract, but if this is the opposite phenomenon - the Ravens and Giants in the Super Bowl, the third and fourth straight teams to go from out of the playoffs to the big game in just one season - I'll give it a second thought. Especially since the beneficiary in this case is weasel Art Modell. In a game that will have to go a long way towards matching last year's thriller, I'll take the Ravens 17-13.

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