By Patrick F. Cannon

Well, another year has passed, so I thought I’d bring you all up to date on my family as the holidays approach. As usual, there wasn’t a dull moment. First the bad news: old Uncle Abner won’t be with us again this year – the Parole Board turned him down. He didn’t help his case this time when he got caught running a dice game behind the mangles in the laundry and compounded the felony by being caught with loaded dice.

            I guess he’ll have to serve the full sentence, unless he gets smart and lets the screws share in the take. But heck, he’ll only be 70 when he gets out. If he watches his health, he ought to be able to enjoy some of the cash he has stashed away. He still refuses to tell me where it’s hid, despite me telling him inflation is eating away at it, regardless of what that fella Trump says. and I’d be happy to invest it for him. Oh, well, he’s as cantankerous as ever. The color did drain from his face when I told him Amazon was building a new distribution center on that flat land near Dismal Seepage Creek.

            Daisy Mae is pregnant again. Not sure who the father is this time either. As you know, all her kids look just a little different. I call them the rainbow coalition. She’s a worker though. Took an online course in beauty culture, using money borrowed from the government. She says no one ever pays off them loans, so it’s like a free education. Aren’t these young folks smart? Anyway, she’s got everyone in the holler sporting green, red, purple, or pink hair (even yours truly).  

            As you know, young Georgie is in the army. He made it all the way to corporal before he got busted back to private for drinking on duty. At least they didn’t give him a dishonorable discharge like his brother Amos. I guess they treat drunkenness and attempted murder different. Anyway, he’s determined to stick it out for 30 years and retire so’s he can be the richest man in Dog Patch.

            You probably heard that Aunt Nellie got married again. You kinda lose track, but I think this might be number seven. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that her former husbands all died suddenly.  At least they all left her some money. Maybe she’ll have better luck this time. Last year’s new husband looked healthy enough, but I guess he was on the clumsy side; he managed to fall off the balcony in that luxury Miami condo he bought her as a wedding present. Her new hubby is the building maintenance man, so that should be handy for her. Lately, he’s looking a bit peeked; maybe it’s that Covid thing again.

            I’m proud that the family remains on the cutting edge of social change. Cousin Charlie announced that he was changing his name to Charlene. Guess we’ll all have to bone up on our pronouns. I suggested to Charlene that the beard might be considered odd for a lady, but he’s (she’s?) quite fond of it, reminding me that the carnival that comes through town still features a bearded lady. So, it looks like a career change might be in the offing too.

            I’m sure you’ve seen all those stories about son Ralphie. As you know, he’s the only member of the family to graduate from college – and Harvard no less. He’d already graduated by the time they found out he’d phonied up his transcripts and ACT scores to get in, and by then were too embarrassed to go public. Ralphie says the trick is to get in. After that you don’t have to do much, since they think you’re already smart enough.

            Anyway, Ralphie’s now got the record for the greatest Ponzi scheme in history. Unlike old Madoff, he got away to Russia with the dough before it was discovered, so all that education sure paid off.  That picture of him and Putin riding those white horses bare-chested made all the papers. Funny though, when we tried to get a passport to visit him, we got turned down. I complained to our congressman, and he told me he was surprised too, since he thought they would be happy to see us leave the country. Not sure what he meant by that. Anyway, we might not need to go to Russia. Ralphie tells me  he’s being considered for a pardon by President Trump and may also be in line for Secretary of War if that fella Hegseth gets fired.

            I hope you won’t believe that story about wife Rosie being found naked with the preacher. She told me it was just a new way of praying; something about going back to the innocence of Adam and Eve before they ate the apple. She said it made her feel so good she might try it again.

            As for me, my run for Congress didn’t work out so good. I thought for sure having President Trump’s endorsement would do the trick, but those crooked Democrats foiled me by going to the polls and voting. I was wrongly criticized for not having any political experience, which I thought was a plus. I also thought it was unfair to bring up those accusations of sexual misconduct, especially since the statute of limitations had already expired.

            Anyway, if the president of the United States can play grab (censored), why not your humble servant? I guess I’ll just have to go back to selling used cars salvaged from the recent hurricanes. I always hate to see stuff go to waste. Of course, if my new book, Hillbilly Theology, takes off like my publisher thinks it might, I understand a senate seat might come open!

            My brother Caleb says he won’t be attending any of the family’s Christmas gatherings again this year. Says he can’t afford to, since he claims I borrowed $5,000 from him some years back and never paid him back. He’s the eldest you know, and it’s sad to see his memory starting to fail him.

            Well, that’s all for this year. You have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. As for me, I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for the Yokum family.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

When you reach my age – I’m 87 now – you sadly get used to your contemporaries dying, both friends and relatives. After all, life expectancy in 2022 was 74.8 years for men and 80.2 for women. So, when my cousin James Mark Goldstrohm died on December 2 at age 89, he beat the odds. Still, for me, it was hard to accept.

            “Jimmy” to many of his relatives, “Goldie” to many of his friends, but always “Jim” to me, for most of our lives, we were not just cousins, but friends. We attended the same school, St. Peter’s in McKeesport, PA, for a few years, and even had the same jobs: setting pins at the McKeesport Elks Club; and working in the restaurant at nearby Kennywood Park, Pittsburgh’s legendary amusement park. After my brother Pete died, Jim was the person I knew the longest.

            I went  to my first concert ever with him, Jazz at the Philharmonic at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh. Appearing were legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, and Gene Krupa. A highlight was Ella’s 10-minute-long version of “How High the Moon.” After the concert, we had a couple of drinks at a nearby bar. We were underage – I was probably 17 – but wearing jackets and ties, so weren’t carded. I drank screwdrivers!

            The last time I saw him was at this summer’s Donnelly family reunion, held for many years in Western Pennsylvania’s beautiful Laurel Highlands. No one there bore the Donnelly name, but they were all descendants of my grandparents, Frank and Catherine Donnelly, and their seven surviving children (one boy and six girls). He was the second oldest of 20 first cousins and was eventually the patriarch. With his death, I am now the oldest of six  survivors.

            When we were kids, at family events he would gather the cousins and perform (the best word I could think of) movies he had seen. Movies were a lifelong passion, and he would describe the plot and action, and even quote dialog. He was an only child, and he lived next door to our grandparents with his parents Vernal and Clare in North Braddock. We went to the movies weekly in those days, and he often went with Grandfather Frank, who also loved them.

            When we were teenagers, I remember talking about a particular movie, one of whose cast members we couldn’t remember. It drove us both crazy, but the name escaped us. So, when I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered it, I picked up the phone and called him. It must have been 3:00 am, but when he groggily answered and I said “Franchot Tone,” he was happy I called.

            He was a handsome man, but on the thin side, and not at all athletic. But he had courage. One day when we were about 12 or 13, he lured my brother Pete and me to the nearby Westinghouse Bridge, which carried US Route 30 over Turtle Creek, Braddock Avenue and East Pittsburgh. On one side was the Westinghouse factory; on the other the Edgar Thompson Works of US Steel in Braddock, the mill where his grandfather was general foreman, his father an electrician and where Jim himself  would work for 35 years.

            At one time the longest concrete-arch bridge in America with a total length of 1,598 feet, its center span of 460 feet is 240 feet above the valley floor. Underneath is a cat walk, put there I imagine for maintenance and inspection. I’m sure there was a hatch of some kind to provide access, but we reached it by gingerly walking across a 2×10 board suspended over a gap. Looking at a photo now, I see that had anyone fallen off the board, there would have been a steep drop into the valley below. We walked all the way to the other side on the cat walk, and the views were impressive, but lurking in my mind was the reality of going back over that board! Jim, of course, had done it before!

            We walked to the bridge from the later Goldstrohm family home in North Versailles Township, a new house they had moved to from North Braddock. After his parents died, Jim lived and raised his own family there until he and his wife Rhoda moved into an apartment created for them in the home of his daughter, Emily Belchick, and her husband Tom. He was also loved and supported by his other children, Paul Goldstrohm and Claire Pingree, and his seven grandchildren.

            He spent his last years doing what he enjoyed most – watching his beloved movies, reading the great fiction of all eras, and listening to the jazz and classical music contained in his extensive record collection. While he was able, he was a prodigious walker, even often walking many miles to and from work. As I mentioned, he worked at US Steel for 35 years. He made many friends during those years and told wonderful stories about the characters he worked with. Of all the people I’ve known, he was the purest in spirit. He had no animus, but much love and loyalty to his beloved relatives and friends.

            For some reason, I’m reminded of the story in John’s gospel of Jesus asking the crowd about to stone the adulteress: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Had Jim been among the crowd, he likely would have been that one without sin, but he never would have cast that stone. He was buried on December 8 at St. Joseph’s Cemetery, joining my parents and other members of the Donnelly clan. I know he will rest in peace.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

If you watch football at the professional or major college levels, you are aware that the length of a game is often extended by penalties and disputes over them. The broadcast teams that describe the action almost always have a rules “expert” on call to unravel the intricacies of a particular situation.

            When I played midget and high school football in the 1950s, most of the penalties called now didn’t exist. There was one called “unnecessary roughness,” but not one called “roughing the passer.” The former covered all instances of using extraordinary methods (punching, clawing, strangling, etc.) in your dealings with the fellows on the other team. The first penalty ever called on me was for using most of these techniques to get to a quarterback who was taking his own sweet time deciding where to throw a pass. As I recall, I never actually got to him, being too busy abusing his blockers. The penalty was 15 yards, and my coach counseled me to use more forbearance in the future.

            In those days, there was no such thing as “roughing the passer.” If you bumped into, tackled or shoved him after the ball was thrown, it was rarely called, one reason being that it was rare for the team to pass more than 10 times during the usual game. While the cheerleaders thought more highly of him than they did of grunts like me,  the quarterback wasn’t coddled like a rare flower.

            A penalty for being “offside” was common. I imagine that “encroachment”  is just another way of saying the same thing, but a bit fancier. There was no play clock to speed things up because I don’t recall slowing things down on a regular basis. If you did dawdle, the referee would bark at you to “speed up a bit gentleman,” or was it in saltier language?

            By the way, the refs’ decisions were final. This didn’t stop the coaches from complaining loudly and at length, but to no avail. The only red handkerchief he could use was to blow his nose. How could you have a video replay when video hadn’t been invented?

            I don’t recall many holding penalties. As I’ve suggested, the forward pass was not as common in my day, so most blocking was designed to shove the defenders out of the way to create holes for the running back, not to prevent them from getting to the quarterback. Another reason for fewer penalties was there were fewer officials. I think we may have had four or five; now, in the NFL and major colleges there are eight on the field and a few in the booth.

            “Face mask” penalties are common now, but in my day the face was just as vulnerable as the rest of the body. You could always tell a lineman of extensive experience by the condition of his nose. Various other offenses were often committed out of the ref’s views, including the occasional bending of a finger or two. Flattened noses and gnarled fingers were both badges of honor for the interior linemen.

            Strangely, the actual official time of the game hasn’t changed. There are still four quarters of 15 minutes each, or one hour of actual play. As late as the 1980s, the average length of a pro football game was 2.5 hours; now, it’s about 3.1 hours. In my high school days, the band would strut its stuff during about a 20-minute halftime. The evening’s festivities (we played on Friday nights) would take no longer than two hours.

            Our games were broadcast on the local radio station. I’m sure they mentioned the sponsors when they could, but the station and its sponsors didn’t control the game. Today, the average NFL game includes 50 minutes of commercials. While this is annoying enough for the fans at home, imagine watching the game in an open stadium in the dead of winter?  Nevertheless, football has become the national passion, eclipsing that old national pastime, baseball, whose average game takes only about 2.5 hours. Maybe they should do away with the pitch clock to give fans more for their money.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon 

By Patrick F. Cannon

If you run into a bear in the wild, especially a Grizzly, your first reaction is bound to be stark terror. And rightfully so, as they have been known to not only attack humans but make a meal of them too. So, it’s more than a little incongruous that little tykes (and sometimes their elders) have long cherished their Teddy Bears, named after a Black Bear that Teddy Roosevelt – who bagged thousands of animals in his hunting trips – spared for reasons too complicated for our limited space.

            Smokey the Bear and goofy Yogi are also a legendary creatures, as are increasingly the blue (and sometimes red) bears that constantly extoll the virtues of Charmin toilet paper in television commercials. Who can resist this family of loveable bears as they face their bathroom visits with confidence and even joy? As the commercials remind us: “Everyone has to go. Why not enjoy the go?”  We may make fun of their escapades, but Charmin is America’s best-selling brand of toilet paper.

            It’s a product of Procter & Gamble, founded in 1837 in Cincinnati – where its headquarters are still located – by William Procter and his brother-in-law James Gamble. Their first products were soap and candles. In the most recent year, their total sales were approximately $85 billion, with a net profit of $16 billion. They have paid a dividend to their shareholders for 135 continuous years. They employ 110,000 people worldwide.

            It’s almost impossible to avoid buying their products. In addition to Charmin, here is a selection of  their brands that are the best-selling in their category: Tide, Pampers, Gillette, Bounty, Febreze, Bounce, Dawn, Cascade, and Head & Shoulders. I still remember the simple slogan they used for Tide: “Tide’s in, dirt’s out.”

            Their products are omnipresent around the world. For example, years ago I arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand and discovered I had forgotten to pack my Head & Shoulders shampoo. I found what we would call a “mom and pop” grocery store down the block from the hotel. I would have been happy with any shampoo they might have had, but there was Head & Shoulders and other American brands prominently displayed.  Kind of like Coke, that universal thirst quencher.

            Are Procter & Gamble products better than those of their competitors? I have no idea. But I do know that they are master marketers. And not only because of their relentless advertising. Back to Charmin. Although I have never had a problem with the straight edge tear, they have now introduced a wavy edge, which they claim makes this tedious chore much more bearable (sorry). This  amazing advancement in bathroom equipment has rightfully been named best new product of the year.

            Choice is big with them. If you go to the shampoo aisle at your local drug or grocery store, you will find Head & Shoulders in a bewildering variety of formulations – regular, regular with conditioner, bare (no perfumes or other additives), extra strength, dry scalp, oily scalp, for men – well, you get the idea. Perhaps they even have one for dogs. I must make it a point to check the pet supply aisle the next time I go shopping. Perhaps after I count the many variations available with Tide.

            American consumer products companies like P&G have made us the cleanest and best smelling people on earth. Just one more thing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day 2025 (I bet you were wondering how I’d sneak this in – anyway, Happy Thanksgiving!).

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

You must be wondering, since I make so much fun of “found object” art, if there’s any stuff I like. Quite a lot as it happens. A common thread that runs through it is this: It can’t be easy to accomplish, and the artist must participate in its creation.

            One of the reasons I don’t value Andy Warhol highly is that most of his stuff is just the manipulation of other’s work. The anonymous designer of the Campbell’s soup cans labored in obscurity, yet Warhol copied it on a canvas and became famous. His even more famous paintings and silk screens of Marilyn Monroe are based on a publicity still taken by Gene Korman to publicize the 20^th Century Fox 1953 film, Niagara. He neither paid Korman for nor even sought permission for its use. Nor did he ask Campbells.

            Andy called his studio the “factory,” and those that labored there did much of the actual work. Jeff Koons is another artist who creates art on an assembly line basis and happily admits that he’s the idea man. “Create giant metal ballon animals,” he decrees, and the factory springs into action. Or “give me a giant puppy covered with flowers,” and one duly comes to life outside Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

            Defenders of Warhol and Koons often point out that many of the “old masters” had assistants who did some of the work. If you look at the immense production of Peter Paul Rubens, you know he must have had others do canvas preparation and other background work. But no one doubts that he did the major figures in his voluminous works.

            If someone asks me who my favorite artist is, I will have to say I don’t have only one. Among those I most admire are Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Titian, Monet, Caravaggio, El Greco, Rodin, and Valazquez. I also have a grudging admiration for Picasso, particularly his work before World War II. I have been fortunate to see many of their works in museums. Seeing a photo of Michelangelo’s David is a poor substitute for seeing the towering original in Florence. Rembbrandt’s The Night Watch at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum is approximately 14×12  feet; and Valazquez’s famous Las Meninas at the Prado in Madrid is 10.5×9 feet. Neither can be given full justice on a 12×9-inch page.

            One of my favorite Valazquez paintings is somewhat smaller, his 1640 Aesop, pictured here. I’ve seen it twice, the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was on loan and exhibited next to  Edouard Manet’s 1859 The Absinthe Drinker, which was clearly influenced by Valazquez’s work. Both figures are life size. I saw Aesop again at its usual home, the Prado.

            As you can see, Aesop is holding a book of his famous fables. The model is said to have been a beggar that the artist saw many times on the streets. Whoever it was, a lifetime of pain and experience are written on that face. While there may be pain within a color-field abstraction by Mark Rothko, it can only be in the eye of the beholder. Years ago, I heard a physiatrist claim that looking at a Rothko painting had reduced him to tears. He claimed that it had nothing to do with his knowledge of the artist’s suicide. I didn’t believe him.

            I don’t suggest that Rothko lacked skill or didn’t work hard. If you look at his paintings, you can see the skill and rigor it took to create his effects. As with so many purely abstract paintings, I’m just not convinced it was worth the effort.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan – he of the $6.2 million banana sold at auction last year – is back in the news. Sotheby’s auction house in New York has announced that his solid gold toilet titled “America” will go on the block on November 18 with a starting price of $10 million, which happens to be the current scrap value for the 223 pounds of gold it contains.

            Originally created in 2016, it was one of two. The other had been installed in Great Britains Blenheim Palace, ancestral home of the Dukes of Marlborough and birthplace of Winston Churhill. My visit to the palace predated its installation, so I couldn’t do the golden go. In 2019, thieves pried it from the wall, and although caught, it was not in time to prevent the fixture from being melted down and sold.

Prior to adorning a loo at Blenheim, the toilet had been at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. It’s been reported that the museum offered it to President Trump during his first term after he requested a Van Gogh painting for the White House. Knowing his love of gold stuff, it must have seemed a reasonable tradeoff, but it seems not to have worked out.

The toilet is in the great tradition of everyday objects being promoted as works of art. That renowned artist/humorist/charlatan Marcel Duchamp started the ball rolling by exhibiting a urinal as a work of art. Not a urinal he had himself sculpted, but an off-the-shelf item (or one he swiped from a public loo. I can’t remember which). That was about 100 years ago, but the trend obviously has legs.

I first made note of this new avenue for budding artists in the early days of this series in 2016. For you newer readers, and those whose memory is something like mine, I reprint it here in part:

“Is it a Caddy, Daddy?

There was great jubilation at the University of Chicago recently when a work of art that many had feared might have been lost forever was returned to its rightful place on the University’s Hyde Park campus.

            Titled “Concrete Traffic,” it was by the well-known German modernist Wolf Vostell (1932-1998). Vostell was a leader in the early days of video art and in organizing the “happenings” that were such a feature of the art world in the 1960s and 1970s. In this case, he took a 1957 Cadillac Coupe Deville and encased it in concrete. Commissioned by the fledgling Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (now celebrating its 50^th anniversary), it was finished in 1970 and parked in a nearby parking lot. It was there for some time and apparently accumulated numerous parking tickets. Who paid the tickets seems lost to history. As for me, I wondered how they were attached, since there were no windshield wipers. Perhaps the cops taped them on the concrete, artfully one hopes.

            Anyway, the sculpture was eventually donated to the University of Chicago, where it graced the campus until moved into storage to make way for the construction of the Logan Center for the Arts. In storage it may have remained – slowly crumbling away – were it not for art historian Christine Mehring. She heard about it and arranged a visit. What she found appalled her. Here was this splendid work of 20^th Century art molding away from public view.  Hunks of concrete were actually missing, as if it were merely a public sidewalk or something!

            It was a challenge, and one that Professor Mehring has heroically met. At a cost of some $500,000, “Concrete Traffic” has been restored and proudly placed in a stall of honor at the University’s main parking garage. You may wonder how it could have possibly cost that much to do a bit of concrete patching. Instead of going to Craig’s List for a local concrete guy, they sought out the experts who had restored the concrete at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. While the niceties might be lost to the layman, there is a significant difference between a concrete conservator and a concrete repairer. The former usually has a beard and charges more. I should mention that the only visible parts of the Caddy are its white wall tires. As you might expect, expert opinion was also sought on the proper tire pressure.

            The result, according to Mehring, is a work from an “important transitional period from the happenings in the 1960s to the monumental sculptures and environments of the 1970s.”  Since Herr Vostell is no longer with us, his intended meaning is lost to us. Most people think it was an ironic comment on the wasteful consumer culture of America, typified by the land yachts that floated over the (concrete) superhighways that connected our car-mad cities, towns, villages, and hamlets.

            Europeans in the 1960s, burdened as they were by astronomical gas taxes, tended to drive around in cars like the VW Beetle and the iconic French classic, the Renault 2CV, which, I recall, had a suspension that consisted of husky rubber bands and tore down French roads at a breathtaking 50 miles per hour.

 Alas, there aren’t too many Caddy convertibles of that vintage to be seen here anymore. Those that survive are cherished; many are housed in museums. But, thanks to Professor Mehring and her colleagues, you can at least sense the existence of a 1957 Coupe Deville beneath the concrete at the University’s parking garage at 55^th and Ellis. If you want to park near it, it will cost you four bucks an hour. But walk-ins are always free. At the cost of a little shoe leather, you can relive the ironic “happenings” of a bygone era. And wonder, as I have, how they’re going to change the tires when they inevitably collapse under the 34,000-pound weight of German irony.”

So, the gold toilet is just the latest in a lengthy line of everyday objects posing as works of art. Given his lust for gold, I find it hard to believe President Trump passed it up back in long ago 2019. I see a new opportunity now though. Since he’s remodeling the bathroom in the White House Lincoln bedroom suite, maybe one of the president’s unselfish donors can spring for the toilet. Just imagine the thrill of flushing a golden toilet!

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

If you watch sports on TV, you will see countless commercials for online betting services, some of which are “official” partners of one league or another. Many of them extoll the glories of “prop” bets. In the interests of public education, I investigated this and found that “prop” is short for “proposition.” While the possibilities are almost endless, you can place a bet on how many innings the starting pitcher lasts in a baseball game, how many touchdown passes a quarterback throws, which team scores first (any number of sports), how many home runs are hit, how many three-pointers a basketball player hits – well, you get the idea.

As for me, last weekend, I bet $32 on 14 Breeders Cup horse races. The top race, the Breeder’s Cup Classic, had a $7 million purse, with the others at least $1 million. When it was all over on Saturday evening, I lost $14.60. I can afford it.

            I am unlikely to make another bet until the end of the year, since all the major races  have been run, both in this country and in Europe. Except for one day early this year at Tampa Bay Downs during a visit to my son, all my bets are made online. There are off track betting sites in the Chicago area, but the only thoroughbred track left is Hawthorne, where purses are low and the amenities subpar. As you may know, the once wonderful Arlington International Race Course is now an empty lot.

            Other gambling opportunities in Illinois abound. In addition to the two remaining race tracks, the state has long had the lottery and now has 17 casinos. Add the taxes on sports betting, and state and local tax income exceeds $2 billion. Nationally, that number is closer to $20 billion. There are now 30 states and the District of Columbia that permit online sports betting. This ease of betting on the whims of chance has exacerbated gambling addiction. While it’s impossible to know with any exactitude, it has been estimated that more than 10 million Americans have some level of addiction.

            Regular readers will know that I was born in Pennsylvania. Although the state has long since joined the legal gambling bandwagon, when I was a kid, all gambling was illegal. What we did have was something called “the numbers.” It involved picking three numbers and betting a buck or two that those three numbers would match the last three numbers on that day’s Dow Jones industrial average. Chicago had a similar game called “policy.” Bets could be placed at the candy store, tavern, or other retail locations. My father was a regular player. Occasionally, he won a few bucks, always a cause for great celebration.

            I went to my first horse race in 1957, a year after I moved back to Chicago. The only legal gambling was at one of the Chicago area’s six tracks. On rare occasions, I placed a bet illegally with the runner for the local bookie, who happened to be LaSalle Street Station’s freight elevator operator. Most office buildings in Chicago’s Loop had someone who could take bets. You could, of course, also bet illegally on most sporting events. Later in my career, I participated in the weekly NFL office pool, where I put up $5 every week, and occasionally in World Series pools.

            Now, all this is perfectly legal. I can even drive a few minutes to a community that has legal slot machines in bars. A full-scale casino is operating in downtown Chicago, and another suburban casino is only 30 minutes away. I can buy lottery tickets by walking one block, although I can also buy them online. The same site I use to bet on horses (not only here but in many other countries), would also take my bets on other sports.

            Whether legal or not, people are going to gamble, so governments at all levels have decided they want a cut of the action instead of some shady bookie. Sports leagues ban their players from betting on their sport but are happy to name “official” betting site sponsors. Commercials for these betting services punctuate televised coverage of the games. At the bottom, if you look fast, there will always be an 800 number to call if you have a gambling problem. But, really, it’s just a bit of PR. Without the problem gambler, their bottom lines would suffer, and you can bet on that. Even the occasional scandal like the recent one involving the NBA won’t cause more than a little flutter (by the way, “flutter” is slang for a small bet, but also the name of the world’s largest online gambling company).

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

President Trump is building a ballroom on the old site of the East Wing of the White House, now just a pile of rubble. It will apparently have a capacity of 999 guests. A strange number. You would have thought they could squeeze in just one more to make it an even 1,000. To give you an idea of how it stacks up with a local venue, the Grand Ballroom at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago can host a dinner for 1,250.

            Larger than the White House itself, the new ballroom wing was designed by architect James McCrery in the Neo-Classical style favored by Trump. The entrance portico will have 6 massive columns with Corinthian capitals. The rendering doesn’t show any decoration in the pediment, so we’ll just have to wait and see. If it emulates the White House itself, the pediment will be plain, but it’s hard to imagine President Trump missing an opportunity to inserting some gold doodads to fill the space. Speaking of gold, the ballroom interior will be festooned with enough gold leaf to require sunglasses for sensitive eyes.

            The president is not a fan of modern architecture. Nor is King Charles III, although to be fair he has a taste for the Georgian, while Trump’s tends more to the Rococo. As you may know, he has festooned the Oval Office with enough gold to rival Fort Knox. Of course, it’s his office, and the next resident can feel free to hire his or her own decorator. Could it someday be filled with Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chairs?

            In fairness, it must be said that grafting a modernist wing onto the White House would have been a mistake, although something less showy would have been better. Apparently, the cost of the addition will be borne by private donations, not us beleaguered taxpayers. The president says he’s going to donate some dough too, but I don’t believe it for a minute. This is the man who has the chutzpah to seek $230 million from his own Department of Justice to reimburse him for legal fees he claims to have paid to defend himself against what he says were politically motivated indictments. Lest we forget, most or all of  these fees were paid with money donated by his supporters.  

            In an August executive order, President Trump has reinforced his love for classical architecture by mandating that it be the preferred style for new federal buildings across the United States. In D.C. it will be mandatory. This is a curious decision for the president who wants to Make America Great Again. Apparently, we do that by copying the architecture of the Greeks and Romans.

            I’m a great believer in context, and I think new government buildings in D.C. should be glad in granite or marble, regardless of style. I would suggest a purely American style like the Prairie Style of architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and those associated with him. As it happens, there is a recent revival of the style, and not only for homes. Within 20 miles from my home there’s a major hospital in Prairie-Revival style, and even a local post office I could walk to if I weren’t so lazy.

            The Prairie Style has the great advantage of simplicity and is easily adaptable to local materials. But I believe in choice, so the American versions of Art Deco and Art Moderne should be added to the mix. And there’s always Cape Cod, but it does have its limitations. Anything but that imported Greek and Roman stuff.

Copyright 2025,  Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

I have always thought of composer George Gershwin as the American Mozart, and not only because they both died young, Gershwin at 38 in 1937 and Mozart at only 35 in 1791. They both had that magical and mystical gift for melody.

            I’m not sure  how you define “melody.” In simple terms, it’s a pleasing sequence of musical notes that helps you remember a composition,  making it easy to hum or whistle, or even hear in your mind (sometimes when you’d rather not!). Mozart and Gershwin were by no means the only composers with this gift – off hand I can name Schubert, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Foster, Berlin, Kern, Lennon, McCartney – well, you get the idea.

            One remembers the lyrics to some songs only because of the melody. Although I might get a word or two wrong, I can recite the lyrics to songs I have rarely heard recently. On the other hand, I once knew many poems by heart but can now only recall snatches. For example, I once memorized a good deal of Shakespeare and could recite The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  Now only snatches remain: “It is an ancient mariner, and he stoppeth one of three…”   If only Coleridge had set it to a catchy tune!

            It’s difficult to say who was more prolific. Mozart composed 41 symphonies, 22 operas, and 27 piano concertos among his more than 600 published works. Gershwin composed far fewer symphonic works and only one opera, Porgy and Bess, but he composed over 500 songs, many of which were featured in the dozens of Broadway  and Hollywood musicals for which he wrote the scores. His melodies have also been the basis for interpretations by Jazz artists from around the world.

            If I am wrong, please do correct me, but I doubt that any major university requires a course in music history as part of the core curriculum. Like so many other aspects of our culture, young people can graduate with little or no knowledge of their artistic heritage, unless they major in one of the arts. To too many people, music history consists of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The performers they idolize, the Taylor Swifts and Beyonce’s, wouldn’t even think of mining the great American song book, preferring to write songs targeted at the emotions of teen age girls, whose parents seem happy to pony up fortunes to send their kids to concerts, often in faraway cities.

            I think no harm and much good would be done if our schools set aside part of every day to expose children to their artistic heritage. And not, and I want to emphasize this, as a credit course, but simply as a part of the day when they can open their ears and eyes to what their fellow human beings have accomplished. No grade pressure. What if they could hear Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 one day, and the next hear Ella Fitzgerald singing “But Not For Me,” followed by Fred Astaire’s version of “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” Or perhaps Lester Young playing anything by Gershwin, or Leadbelly singing the blues. On another day, they might be shown a sequence of paintings and etchings by Rembrandt or hear a series of poems by Frost.

             Of course, I realize this may be a vain hope. But in an era of tawdry public and political discourse, aren’t such reminders needed more than ever?

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

President Trump may have been disappointed not to have been given the Nobel Peace Prize this year, despite very public lobbying by his adoring minions. Nevertheless, if the peace agreement he negotiated with Israel and Hamas holds, I say give it to him. After all, it’s been given to some pretty dodgy characters over the years, including Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, and even the United Nations.

            He would be the fifth American president to be honored – starting with Teddy Roosevelt, and including Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama. Roosevelt won it in 1906 for brokering peace between Japan and Russia to end the Russo-Japanese War; Wilson for his famous 14 Points peace plan (it didn’t work in the end) and for helping to found the League of Nations (which we refused to join); Jimmy Carter for his achievement in getting Egypt and Israel to bury the hatchet at Camp David and for the achievements of the Carter Center; and Barack Obama for being the first black president, a good speaker, having a photogenic family, and saying nice things about world peace..

             Despite changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, sending troops to frighten shoppers on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue (a city with a declining crime rate), and saving court costs by killing drug traffickers on the high seas, President Trump  has always styled himself as a man of peace. This would certainly explain his avoiding the draft during the Viet Nam years with a diagnosis of bone spurs by a podiatrist whose office was conveniently located in a Trump-owned building in Queens.

            Being nominated for the Peace Prize next year will also give Trump an opportunity to broker a peace between Russia and Ukraine. You may recall that he claimed he would end both the Gaza and Ukraine wars the day after he took office, but of course that was his usual hyperbolic bluster. But if he manages to broker a peace in Ukraine too, that should seal the deal.  

I’m afraid I’m not on the list of those who can submit a nomination. You can nominate if you’re a head of  state (but alas you can’t nominate yourself); member of a national assembly or government; member of the International Court of Justice; a professor of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology or religion; university rector or director; past Peace Prize recipient; or member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

            Don’t despair if you’re not on the list. You can always write and encourage those on the list to do the deed for you. For example, you could write to your representatives in Washington to submit nominations. In my case, it would be Congressman Danny Davis and Senators Tammy Duckworth and Richard Durbin. I’m sure they would be willing to put patriotism above partisanship for this worthy cause.

            One American who should have been awarded the Peace Prize was former Maine Senator Geoge J. Mitchell, who brokered the deal that ended the so-called “troubles” in Northern Ireland with the Good Friday  agreement of 1998, ending (at least so far) the armed fued between Roman Catholics and Protestants that dated back to 1542, when Henry VIII was declared King of Ireland. The immediate cause of the Arab/Israeli conflict was the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, a mere 77 years ago compared to the 456 years it took to bring peace to Ireland.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon