Nathan's Notebook
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Nathan Bierma
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Monday, January 27, 2003
IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT THIS BLOG: I'm excited to report my weblog is being partially absorbed into BooksandCulture.com, as part of my new position as editorial assistant for Books&Culture magazine. That means a reduced output here, and a transfer of certain features like Places&Culture to the new digs. It will be up every Monday at B&C, and I'm eager to try out some new features, including a new twist on History&Today. I start this week with my Super Bowl diary, a sort of cultural critic's play-by-play: http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/weblog/030127.html Thursday, January 23, 2003
My latest Tribune article: Former winners from the original "Star Search": Where are they now? http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0301230006jan23,1,7083566.story • My Tribune archive Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Mayor Daley responds to a 3-part Tribune investigation to which I contributed, on the demolition of designated historical buildings. What specific measures will he take to address the problems the Tribune found? Said Daley: "Gee, I don't know." http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/mchenry/chi-0301170280jan17,1,9100.story Monday, January 20, 2003
• Quote of the Day "I've gone from being the stone thrower to the glass." Gilberto Gil, Brazil's counterculture pop star who has been appointed the country's minister of culture. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/arts/music/31GIL.html • Number of the Day: 11 Percentage of American girls who are Girl Scouts, for a total of 2.8 million girls, a 20-year high. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/25/nyregion/25SCOU.html • Previous Quote and Number • Places&Culture File from 
• Previous P&C The promise and perils of driving via Mapquest, from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/16/technology/circuits/16mapp.html Who knew? There's an organization called the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers with a website at AAML.org. It was cited in a Wall Street Journal article on the recent increase in divorce filings; although research on the divorce rate always lags a few years behind, 78 percent of AAML lawyers report an increase in case loads for last year, WSJ said. I came across these sites while looking for Christmas movie trivia for my Dec. 20 Tribune article on Christmas sites. ESLnotes.com uses It's a Wonderful Life and other movies to teach English idioms and expressions: http://www.eslnotes.com/movies/html/its-a-wonderful-life.html (I recently clipped an NYT article about Seneca Falls, presumably the real-life Bedford Falls: click here) This site culls enough stacks of TV and movie trivia from IMDB to kill four lunch breaks: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/movies/trivia-faq  Astronomers have discovered three new moons around Neptune, the BBC reported earlier this month.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2656959.stm Speaking of space, the Chinese government reported it retrieved its robot space capsule from a space trek, and hopes to become the third country to send an astronaut into space later this year, the AP reported earlier this month. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/06/international/asia/06CHIN.html Unique New York (say that five times fast...): NY Magazine sums up the city's character in a list of phrases, along with its year-end NY awards. What kind of lower life form do you need to be to loot a national park? Understaffing and sticky fingers spell doom for the purity of the National Park System, reported USA Today last month: http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20021212/4694601s.htm • Money&Culture File from
In the basement of his Standard Oil Building, just steps from Wall Street, where the Museum of American Financial History celebrates the wonders of capitalism, an exhibit wall is papered with gaily colored stock certificates carrying names like Enron, WorldCom and ImClone Systems. It's the dark side of the American dream. But the dot-com debacles and infamous bankruptcies of the infant millennium are as much part of the nation's financial heritage as scandals of the past and the stock market crash of 1929, says the museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.Exhibits about that Black October Friday that ushered in the Great Depression, and accouterments like the plunging ticker tape record, have long been the biggest draw of this low-profile and literally underground museum, in its 15th year at 28 Broadway, where Rockefeller first moved into a smaller building in 1883, on same the site where Alexander Hamilton's law office once stood. • Previous M&C Alberta is becoming a porn haven--not so much for its weather as its libertinism, according to the Calgary Herald: Often considered to be a bastion of social conservatism, Alberta's lack of regulation has proven to be fertile ground for retailers selling explicit pornography that would be illegal in other provinces, according to industry officials. http://www.canada.com/calgary/story.asp... • Urban Issues Watch
• Previous U.I.W. What could make an already overpriced, undersized Manhattan apartment even more of a rip-off? When the stars move in next door, says the NY Times. • Technology&Culture File from
• Previous Technology&Culture Revisiting Lewis&Clark: It's the 200th anniversary of their trek. Earlier, I linked to a couple features celebrating their exploration, and another questioning their importance (here). • Latest History&Today • Etymology Today from M-W: lethargic \luh-THAHR-jik or leh-THAHR-jik\ *1 : of, relating to, or characterized by drowsiness or sluggishness 2 : indifferent, apathetic In Greek mythology, Lethe was the name of a river in the underworld that was also called "the River of Unmindfulness" or "the River of Forgetfulness." Legend held that when someone died, he or she was given a drink of water from the river Lethe to forget all about his or her past life. The name of the river and the word "lethargic" both derive from "lethe," Greek for "forgetfulness." similarly sluggish: stoic \STOH-ik\ 1 capitalized : a member of a school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium about 300 B.C. 2 : one apparently or professedly indifferent to pleasure or pain Zeno of Citium was a Syrian merchant who lost his fortune at sea. In Athens he was consoled by the Cynic philosopher Crates, who assured him that money didn't bring happiness, and he was so impressed that he founded his own school of philosophy and began teaching at a public hall called the Stoa Poikile. Zeno's philosophy, Stoicism, took its name from the hall where he taught, and it preached self-control, fortitude, and justice; passion was seen as the cause of all evil. By the 14th century, English speakers had adopted the word "stoic" as a general term for anyone who could face adversity calmly and without excess emotion. • Previous E.T. Friday, January 17, 2003
Relevant links for my Wednesday story: Marx Brothers house: http://www.chicagotribute.org/Markers/Marx.htm Kennedy-Nixon debate at the former Chicago Riding Club: http://www.bulley.com/history/1920html.html#1920#2 http://www.museum.tv/debateweb/html/history/1960/discussions.htm story link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0301150213jan15,1,703330.story • My Tribune archive Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Alongside Part 3 of the Tribune's investigation of the destruction of historical buildings in Chicago, I wrote a story on the most prominent buildings that remain at risk, including the Marx Brothers' house and the site of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0301150213jan15,1,703330.story Monday, January 13, 2003
I was a contributing reporter to a Tribune investigation on the destruction of designated potential landmarks by the city of Chicago. The 3-part series began this morning. www.chicagotribune.com/landmarks Saturday, January 11, 2003
Voit trial update: The woman I wrote about in an investigative feature at NBierma.com was found guilty yesterday in a trial that took less than one week. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/lake/chi-0301100185jan10,1,3308776.story http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/lake/chi-0301080230jan08,1,4816109.story Read my feature here on the background of this family living the idyllic Chicago suburb of Golf. • Places&Culture File from
• Previous P&C The NYT reviews the new book Measuring America: Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Hamilton wanted the mapping done by decimal measurement. The flood of settlers and speculators already spilling westward meant that there was no time to work out the new and still disputed system. Measurement would be made by a device already in use for some 150 years: the surveyor's chain, 66 feet long and 80 chains to the mile. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/26/books/26EDER.html • Money&Culture File from
• Previous M&C • Etymology Today from M-W: marmoreal \mahr-MOR-ee-ul\ : of, relating to, or suggestive of marble or a marble statue especially in coldness or aloofness >William surveyed Agnes with marmoreal coolness, his features rigid and disapproving. Most marble-related words in English were chiseled from the Latin noun "marmor," meaning "marble." "Marmor" gave our language the word "marble" itself in the 12th century. It is also the parent of "marmoreal," which has been used in English since the mid-1600s. "Marbleize," another "marmor" descendant, came later, making its print debut around 1859. E.T. bonus: Greek phraseology, also from M-W: omphaloskepsis \ahm-fuh-loh-SKEP-sis\ : contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation; also : indisposition to motion, exertion, or change >Mystics of the Middle Ages practiced omphaloskepsis, believing that concentrating on a single focal point such as the navel would help them experience divine light and glory. Greek mythology holds that Zeus released two eagles, one from the east and one from the west, and made them fly toward each other. They met at Delphi, and the spot was marked with a stone in the temple of the oracle there, a stone they named "omphalos," Greek for "navel" (it supposedly marked the center of the world). Mystics have been practicing omphaloskepsis for centuries, but it wasn't until the early 1920s that English speakers combined "omphalos" with another Greek term, "skepsis" (which means "examination," not "skepticism"), to create a word for studying one's own middle and thinking deeply. • Previous E.T. Monday, January 06, 2003
Latest article: The Tribune killed this piece so I'm publishing it through NBierma.com. I spent six months investigating the salacious story of Sharon Voit, a suburban Chicago homemaker who is charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill her dentist husband. The trial begins today in Skokie. You can’t find a smaller, quieter, leafier suburb than Golf, the lush village north of Chicago. Railroad baron Albert J. Earling put Golf on the map in the early 20th Century by ordering his trains stop there so he could play golf at what is now Glenview Country Club. Today, with a population of a few hundred, and without any stores, mailboxes, or gas stations, Golf is home to little more than the stately red brick colonial building that houses the Western Golf Association, which runs the PGA Western Open, the annual professional golf tournament played in Lemont, Ill. In this tranquil setting—a village with no annual crime rate—prosecutors say Sharon Voit plotted her husband’s demise. http://www.nbierma.com/writing/030106.html Saturday, January 04, 2003
My latest Tribune article: On the merits of the Weatherbug and other weather forecasting via the Web: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0301010309jan01,1,7130455.story • My Tribune archive • Places&Culture File from
If there is a national symbol of French cuisine, it has to be the cook who searches for the freshest of ingredients at the best prices and then lovingly transforms them into hearty stews and delicate sauces. But the French, like household chefs nearly everywhere, have steadily cut in half the time they spend in the kitchen. In recent years, with varying degrees of passion and stealth, they have embraced frozen foods, too. In 2001, for example, the average Frenchman consumed 66 pounds of frozen food products, compared with only 4 pounds in 1960. A poll cited in Le Figaro last January revealed that 75 percent of respondents believed that "one can eat right if one eats frozen." Not that this has eliminated the stigma. Picard, France's best-known frozen food retail chain, is so closely associated with, well, the ordinary, that it can never aspire to the cachet of a gourmet emporium like Fauchon or Hédiard. • Previous P&C • Sports&Culture File from
-The often-asserted but widely ignored assertion that the dubiously educational football program is a college's pact with the devil in terms of both money and principles is applied to one small college in football-crazy Florida in this NY Times Magazine piece by MIchael Sokolove: "Football is the S.U.V. of the college campus: aggressively big, resource-guzzling, lots and lots of fun and potentially destructive of everything around it." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/22/magazine/22FOOTBALL.html • Previous S&C Say what? An ad in Museums Chicago magazine proclaims, "You haven't seen Chicago until you've seen Bloomingdales." Huh? Chicago is one of the most eclectic conglomerations of distinctive cultures in the world, and this bland department store claims a corner on the city's unique cultural identity? B-dales needs to get a life--as does the corpse-like pale model clutching a plain gray shawl in the ad, leering but lifeless. • Architecture Watch from
• Previous A.W. • History&Today What will 2003 be remembered for? The Tribune assembled a panel of educated guessers in various areas of life. The edcuation entry is provocative: John Katzman, CEO of the Princeton Review: -Benjamin Franklin biographer Edmund S. Morgan on Franklin and New Year's resolutions: Perhaps it is basic to our national character, this habit of giving ourselves instructions for living right. ... In his autobiography, Franklin tells how he molded his career with a set of resolutions that he drafted as a young man (and adhered to more successfully than most of us ever do for one short year). He ... declares that he has "conceiv'd the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection." ... He sums it up in a list of 13 virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility. Except for chastity, what do these have to do with what most people mean by morality? The whole list sounds more like today's New Year's resolutions than it does like a redaction of the Ten Commandments. But Franklin took it seriously, and since it has earned him so much opprobrium from the likes of D. H. Lawrence and Mark Twain, it is worth asking why. • Previous H&T • Etymology Today from M-W: munificent \myoo-NIH-fuh-sunt\ 1 : very liberal in giving or bestowing : lavish 2 : characterized by great liberality or generosity "Munificent" was formed back in the late 1500s when English speakers, perhaps inspired by similar words such as "magnificent," altered the ending of "munificence." "Munificence" in turn comes from "munificus," the Latin word for "generous," which itself comes from "munus," a Latin noun that is variously translated as "gift," "duty," or "service." "Munus" has done a fine service to English by giving us other terms related to service or compensation, including "municipal" and "remunerate." Continuing an optimistic, can-do etymological start to 2003... E.T. bonus: Latin phraseology, also from M-W: factotum \fak-TOH-tuhm\ 1 : a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities 2 : a general servant "Do everything!" That's a tall order, but it is exactly what a factotum is expected to do. It's also a literal translation of the New Latin term "factotum," which in turn traces to the Latin words "facere" ("to do") and "totum" ("everything"). In the 16th century, "factotum" was often used in English as if it was a surname, paired with first names to create personalities such as "Johannes Factotum" (literally "John Do-everything"). Back then, it wasn't necessarily desirable to be called a "factotum"; the term was a synonym of "meddler" or "busybody." Now the word is more often used for a handy, versatile individual responsible for many different tasks. • Previous E.T. Tuesday, December 31, 2002
This is my last chance to wish readers Happy Holidays, or, as one of my favorite Christmas cards of all time (thanks Ruth!) put it: To Whom It May Concern: Today I am reminded that 2002 wasn't any old year in my life. I graduated from college, married Andrea, moved to downtown Chicago, started working for the Tribune, wrote the first two chapters of my book. I have known the highest thrills of my life along with the darkest, loneliest moments that mark such transitions. It's as hard to believe that both fit so tightly in the span of one year as it is to consider that tomorrow begins another 365-day cycle of life (however artificial a distinction it is). And so my hope for 2003 is profoundly different from this day last year: I hope for more of the same--more of the same fulfillment in my writing, my living downtown, my marriage. I hope Andrea and I adjust to living with each other and function more smoothly, and I similarly hope for some measure of stability in the occasionally frustrating relationship I have with the Tribune as a freelancer. And as with last year, I hope for a sense of direction in the midst of the questions and choices that face Andrea and me. I can only return to my entry for my 23rd birthday this year, September 26, to sum up my thoughts on New Year's Eve: "[It] humbles me [to see] the blessings God has granted. If my life contributes in some small way to his kingdom, year in and year out--only then (in addition to the worth he grants through grace) does this meager milestone of the universal speck of my life count for anything." Nobody writes like Steve Rushin. Nobody uses words like he does; nobody sees things the way he does. You can't say, as you can with most great writers, that he writes like so-and-so, or his style is reminiscent of such-and-such. Rushin is truly unique. He embodies what a professor of mine calls presticogitation--sleight of mind, or thinking that is so swift and impressive that it baffles the observer. An SI editor I showed my college clips to said I was ruining myself by trying to write like Rushin, and he was right. Still, if there's one other writer I'd want to be reincarnated as other than G.K. Chesterton, it would be Rushin. And despite the SI editor's comments, I was innappropriately proud of how Rushinian I thought this piece of mine this summer turned out: http://metromix.com/top/1,1419,M-Metromix-Home-X!ArticleDetail-18015,00.html All of which is an introduction to saying that CNNSI.com finally has a link up to Rushin's columns: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/archives/steve_rushin/ I was about to re-subscribe to SI with Rushin in mind; now I don't have to. Still, I feel the same way about this as I do about Catherine Zeta-Jones doing cell phone commercials--it's like filet mignon being served at Wendy's. A higher form of something in a cheapening context. Zeta-Jones ruins any semblance of big screen mystigue by having her image splattered over TV screens. Rushin's words have an aesthetic transcendence when affixed to the glossy page--now, he's one of 4,971,342 Americans writing on the Web about sports. Still, I'm thrilled. I proposed a story on gerund newsspeak to Columbia Journalism Review while in New York, but it didn't materialize. I was just referred to an excellent story on the distasteful phenomenon in the NY Times: temporary link from nytimes.com • Etymology Today from M-W: gormandize \GOR-mun-dyze\ : to eat greedily "Gormandize" entered English in the mid-1500s as a modification of "gourmand," a noun borrowed from French in the 15th Century. "Gourmand" is a synonym of glutton and was originally fairly disparaging in tone. Likewise, "gormandize" was an unflattering term when it first came into use. But since the 19th century the meaning of "gourmand" has softened (probably under the influence of "gourmet," which is quite complimentary). "Gourmand" now usually suggests someone who likes good food in large quantities but is not necessarily a slobbering glutton. "Gormandize" is still not especially flattering, but it can imply that a big eater has a discriminating palate as well as a generous appetite. 'Tis the season. Incidentally, M-W.com has finally put up a link to its e-mail Word-of-the-Day newsletter: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/mwwod.pl • Previous E.T. |
PARIS, Jan. 5 — These are dark days in the City of Light. It is a cruel trick played on those who are not forewarned. Paris is a northern city, on about the same latitude as Seattle and Vancouver. New York, by contrast, sits on a level with Madrid and Naples. So when winter comes, Paris's northern position combines with humidity, above-freezing temperatures, the absence of fierce winds and a location at the bottom of a basin to rob the city of sun and light. ... Daylight arrives well after 8 a.m. and leaves only eight hours later. Even as the days begin to grow longer now that the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, has passed, the demons of darkness linger. ... The darkness has such an effect that the French government's generous medical insurance program covers medical consultations for those who grow depressed because of the waning light of winter. The syndrome — clinically known as seasonal affective disorder, more commonly as the winter blues — affects as much as 20 percent of the population, according to studies.
