Me again...
I quit writing a column for the Chicago Tribune at the end of June, and now I'm coming to readers directly through a weekly newsletter.
9-9-2021 (Issue No. 1)
Just before I left the Chicago Tribune on June 25 earlier this year I put out the call in my column and various other forums for readers to send me their email addresses if they wanted to keep up with whatever I might do next.
I was overwhelmed by the response, both the volume and in many cases the friendly content of the messages that arrived. I’ve been able to answer just a handful of them personally, but I read them all and really appreciate the friendly words. The feedback made me even more determined not to settle into retirement and instead to try to further the relationships that I’ve generated with many of you over the years.
So here’s my plan: I’m going to write a weekly journal titled “The Picayune Sentinel” and deliver it directly to the email inboxes of subscribers. If you received this email, you are pre-enrolled as a subscriber (no charge, don’t worry!) either because you wrote asking me to keep in touch or because you and I have had interactions over the years that made me think you might want at least to give this effort a look (It’s really easy to unsubscribe at any time -- just click on the link at the bottom of this email).
It will feature the same mix of commentary, idle observations, tirades, interesting links and curated quips that was the hallmark of my “Change of Subject” blog from 2003 to 2014 at chicagotribune.com. I enjoyed the flexibility of that ill-defined, wide-ranging format and was sorry when the Tribune changed publishing platforms and finished the job of all but killing blogs that Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms had already started.
I have two goals at the outset: To see if I like generating the Sentinel once a week and to see if people enjoy reading it. If either answer is no I’ll quit with no hard feelings. I realize that we’re all deluged with info-tainment opportunities -- streaming video and audio, mainstream and alternative news sites and an ever expanding array of social media platforms -- and earning your time will be a challenge.
This newsletter will include the Tweet of the Week poll, updates on my other endeavors such as --these days — Songs of Good Cheer, highlights from reader responses and information about the latest Mincing Rascal podcast as well as the usual mix of argyle bargle (sic) and jiggery pokery. I also plan to indulge my interest in promoting traditional music by sharing a tune or song I’ve had on repeat, but I’ll stick it at the end to make it easy to skip over if for some weird reason old time isn’t your jam.
The title “Picayune Sentinel” is a nod to my late grandfather, Max A. Zorn, who for many years in the pre-Internet era distributed a mimeographed newsletter titled “The Piccayune Sentinel” to his colleagues in academia and interested friends and family. (“Change of subject” was his all-purpose segue).
The spelling error in the title was in all probability one of the many in-jokes that peppered the one-page publication, some couched in foreign languages and many of them so obscure that only my grandfather understood them.
His tagline, as you see, was “Beautiful Thoughts Beautifully Expressed” but the following representative passage does not persuasively make that case:
If you do not know how an inner function which is singular at an isolation point comma behaves, you better disregard what follows. (It tends to zero faster than any Hardy-Lebesgue f tends to infinity).
My aim is to make this revival more accessible and less eccentric, while maintaining the spirit of friendly communication.
Look for it Thursday mornings. If you have Gmail there’s a decent chance it will end up shunted into your “promotions” tab, so you need to drag it out of there. The LA Times explains why in this story.
So here we go with Volume 1, Issue 1:
Tweet of the week
I’m reviving this feature, which many of you told me was the main reason you subscribed to my Tribune newsletter. I’ll list the finalists and if you’d like to vote in the poll, follow this link.
Pro-tip: Never tell your partner to “deal with it” unless the “it” you’re referring to is your own dead body. …@iGreenGod
I want an emergency cyanide capsule to bite when someone’s about to explain bitcoin …@FredTaming
You lose interest in pop music in your 40s and 50s because there aren’t a lot of pop songs about stuff you love now — like birdfeeders, tax free savings or really nice cheese …@lloydrang
The next time you're feeling pretty smart just remember that they put food coloring in dog food and it obviously ain't for your dog …@MelvinofYork
Sliced bread has had its time. Let’s start saying “the best thing since ‘skip intro.’” … @roastmalone_
Congratulations to the anti-vaxxers who took the gold medal in mental gymnastics … @RickAaron
My date keeps sending signals she wants to go to bed with me. The old “won't-stop-yawning” routine. … @kipconlon
I’m not a professional actor, but I have successfully pretended to care how coworkers’ weekends were for decades … @JayMindX
This grocery cart handle tastes like hand sanitizer …@bartandsoul
Back in our day we’d ride through deserts on horses and never find out their names, but we didn’t take their meds …@calluptome
Instructions: Follow this link then click the box next to each tweet that amuses you -- no limit to the number of choices. I’ll note the winner next week. Some tweets are lightly edited to improve punctuation, diction or clarity. If you see a plagiarized tweet, let me know via email -- ericzorn@gmail.com -- and send a link for evidence! I'll change the attribution or make it "unknown” or attribute it to “various” sources. If your tweet is included and you'd rather it not be or you object to how I may have edited it, let me know and I'll remove it as quickly as I can. If you know the Tweet is not original with you, email me and I’ll change the attribution. Some of the tweets are old, but if they’re new to me, then they qualify for inclusion. Answer order is randomized in the poll each time. Click here to vote.
Cheerful news
Since 1999, my friend and former colleague Mary Schmich and I have hosted Songs of Good Cheer, an annual series of holiday singalongs at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. An all-star band of singers and instrumentalists join us All I’ll say is it’s way cooler and way less corny than it sounds. Nearly every show has sold out the 450-seat auditorium in Lincoln Square so we long ago stopped cajoling people to attend and instead took to simply announcing that tickets were on sale and braced ourselves for the complaints and pleas from those who waited too long.
This video from the 2019 shows is representative — it’s a Christmas song you’ve probably never heard before but will want to hear again.
The pandemic made a live show impossible in 2020 so we put together a Zoom-ish version that was shot mostly in our homes and then stitched together.
By early May this year we were pretty sure that the worst of the pandemic was over and that we’d be able to resume SOGC as usual in December. But by late June, with the Delta variant of COVID-19 running rampant, we were having serious doubts.
RIght now we’re planning for all contingencies. Tickets are going on sale this week (Wednesday for members, Friday for the general public) for a run of shows on December 10-12. That’s two fewer shows than we’ve been doing in recent years because we suspect a fair portion of our usual audience will be hesitant to gather in an intimate space and share the droplets that fly when people are singing, even though attendees will have to be fully vaccinated.
My understanding is that if the Old Town School has to postpone this or any other show, ticket buyers have the option to hold onto the tickets for when the show does go on (in our case that would be December 2022) or get a refund. And whether or not the shows do go on live this year, we’re still hoping to do a virtual version — last year’s proved popular with people who live at a distance, and we’re trying to work out the funding and other details for that.
Our first major cast meeting is this Sunday. I’ll keep you posted.
Minced words
This week’s Mincing Rascals podcast panel consisted of host John Williams, Brandon Pope, Heather Cherone, Austin Berg and me. We didn’t discuss vaccines and viruses for the first time in a long time, not that the story is going away but that it sometimes feels as though we’ve said all we can say about it.
I would simply second the sentiment expressed with such vigor in this McSweeney’s essay on the importance of getting vaccinated. Particularly now that it’s decorative gourd season.
(After I tweeted out a link to the McSweeney’s essay, local Republican consultant Chris Robling tweeted “Obscenity is not eloquence.” I would call this essay vulgar and profane, not obscene. I would also defend its eloquence. Sometimes, only certain words will do.)
Major topics covered:
Members of the Chicago City Council are getting a raise. My view is that, adjusting for inflation and considering the breadth of their duties and responsibilities, the raises are reasonable. We want these legislative positions to pay well enough that you don’t have to be rich to hold office. Austin and the others countered that we should therefore at least ban them from holding outside jobs, perhaps even shrinking the size of the Council and delegating some of their more routine duties to bureaucrats.
Police Supt. David Brown’s remarks after the shooting death of 4-year-old Mychal Moultry Jr. At a news conference Monday addressing the tragic, sickening slaying of a boy shot when sitting inside his father’s apartment, Brown said:
Likely there are very few if any circumstances where our young people are directly being targeted. It's always some other offender, gang member, criminal network, some beef, and they’re targeting some adult and young people are nearby and they are shot as innocent bystanders. Some things we can do -- I would like to share this more from a personal standpoint than professional, being a person of color, being a black man, many of these offenders and victims are people of color -- it’s s too high a number, it is unacceptable . And I have family members that I don't invite over for family gatherings just because of some of the issues that come with that family member that is living a life of crime.. I don't want to bring (that) into my home and I would just, not in a condescending way, encourage you as a family to protect your children from people in the family that are on the wrong side of the law.
Brown said he was generalizing, but the question we kicked around for quite some time on the podcast was whether he was in effect victim blaming. I take many of the points of my fellow panelists — they landed on Brown pretty hard — but do think it’s important to underscore to those who do run in gangs and participate in violence that it’s not just themselves whom they are putting at risk and that when they are targets for retribution, those physically near them become targets as well.
John, me, Heather and Brandon in a recent screen grab.
Secretary of State hopeful Alexi Giannoulias’ plan to allow drivers license applicants to pay have extra photos taken in order to get a more flattering image and/or to bring in their own ID photo. Heather noted that another candidate in the Democratic primary field, Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd), argues that establishing digital licenses that could be stored on smartphones would be a far better reform than pick you pic. I agree with that, but clearly these proposals aren’t mutually exclusive. Both and, anyone?
What are we looking for in a Secretary of State, anyway? Austin proposes that the job go to the biggest nerd.
Alexi’s last name is pronounced gi-NOO-lee-us, by the way.
Thoughts on Saturday’s 20th anniversary of 9/11. Brandon and Austin were in 4th grade when terrorists struck the U.S. in 2001. I was in — *counts on fingers* — 37th grade. We discussed survey results that show 46% of poll respondents now say that day changed the country for the worse, while 33% say it changed the country for the better. On the one-year anniversary, in contrast, 55% said the attacks had improved the country and 22% said it had made things things for the worse.
I hold with the 21% who now say it didn’t make much difference either way — that we are no more or less divided, patriotic or purposeful than we would have been if the attacks had been thwarted. Yeah, we have to take off our shoes at the airport and get patted down going to sporting events, but while some routines have changed, I don’t think hearts and minds have.
Anti-Muslim bigotry may now be worse than it would have been — I would defer to others on that — but as far as seismic changes in the country? No.
The estimable Steve Chapman has a more nuanced take on the legacy of 9/11, writing in his syndicated column appearing in Thursday’s Tribune that they “catalyzed a wave of fear and anger that permanently reshaped our foreign and domestic policies — or, rather, warped them.”
The new abortion law in Texas. It was all Heather could do to maintain her objectivity when discussing the dystopian, Gilead-adjacent anti-choice law at least temporarily in effect in Texas. Austin noted that delegating enforcement of abortion restrictions to vigilante citizens is a horrible precedent that true conservatives ought to be blanching at.
By the way, as John notes during the podcast, the Rascals will be making their first live appearance for many years on the morning of Oct. 30 at the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove. We’re the warm-up act for John’s interview with Thomas Jefferson interpreter Clay Jenkinson, but the time will come when he’ll be opening for us!
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Good talk
I’ve picked up a couple of fill-in radio gigs in the last few weeks on WCPT-AM 820. Tuesday I sat in for former Mincing Rascal Patti Vasquez, who has a one-hour shift during afternoon drive.
I covered two topics that I thought were pretty meaty.
In the first half hour I advanced my theory that “16 Shots and a Cover-up!” — the battle cry of those seeking justice for Laquan McDonald who was shot to death by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke on Oct. 20, 2014 — is hard to reconcile with political reality.
Had Emanuel really been aware of the gravity of the case, it would have been smarter for him to try to get out in front of it, so “16 Shots and Some Negligence” strikes me as the more accurate battle cry. But I’m hoping that his upcoming Senate confirmation hearings to become ambassador to Japan shed more light on this issue than has yet been shed.
In the second half hour I revisited the case of one of the most disturbing murders in recent Illinois history.
On June 14, 2007, Kimberly Vaughn of suburban Oswego and her three children were found shot to death inside the family’s Ford Expedition on a I-55 frontage road near Joliet. Found wandering dazed near the vehicle with a bullet wound to his leg was Kimberly’s husband, Christopher, the kids’ father. He said he thought his wife had shot him, but otherwise he had no memory of what had happened.
Investigators and prosecutors quickly concluded that he’d staged an attempted murder suicide in order to escape a troubled marriage, rid himself of family obligations and escape into a new life.
It looked like a slam dunk, especially when it developed that Vaughn had had a sexual fling while on a business trip, had dropped thousands of dollars on strippers, had been communicating online with survivalists about how to live off the grid in the wilds of Canada and had even been to the gun range the night before the murders. And indeed a jury quickly convicted Vaughn.
But now a new podcast, Murder in Illinois, is making the case that Vaughn is innocent and that his wife was the killer. I interviewed private investigator Bill Clutter, featured prominently in the podcast, who walked me through the evidence.
Listen to the whole hour here.
Tune of the Week
Forgive my use of paternal privilege, but for my initial tune of the week I’m going to offer up “Cullom’s Reel,” a 2019 composition in the key of G by my son Ben.
Shelby Moore Cullom was the governor of Illinois from 1877 to 1883. Cullom Avenue is an East/West street near our house on the Northwest Side of Chicago. Ben is now the fiddler for the River Valley Rangers bluegrass band.
See you next week, I hope!