By Patrick F. Cannon
The good folks at Word Press, who host this blog, keep excellent statistical records. In checking them recently, I found that this piece is the 500th “Cannonnade.” The first one was published on November 10, 2015. Strangely, it appeared on a Wednesday; every one since has been posted on Thursday. You may not have noticed, but I have never missed a week, although I did cheat a few times by reprinting special favorites.
Early on, a few readers pointed out that the title “Cannonnade” had one too many Ns. As it the happened, “Cannonade” had already been taken. Later, I was informed that it was now available, but I didn’t want to change it and confuse my readers who by then were used to the quirky title.
The first few posts tended to be a bit longish, but I eventually came to my senses. The average length is now about 600 words. That translates to a total of 300,000 words. I’m sure it has been more, but it’s a nice round number. If I had a talent for fiction, I could have written three novels with the same number of words, but I don’t. I have managed to publish four books on Chicago architects and architecture with my partner Jim Caulfield during the same period, so you can add about 70,000 more words to the total.
When Ernest Hemingway published his collected stories in the late 1930s, he said he thought there were some good ones and some bum ones, although he wouldn’t have published them if he hadn’t liked them at the time. Looking back at mine, I feel the same way. But I can’t take them back, so I leave it up to the reader to pass judgement.
My blog has been contemporaneous with the rise, fall and rise again of Donald Trump. Not for the last time, I was proved fallible when I demonstrated with mathematical precision that he couldn’t win the Republican nomination in 2016. I still despise him with all my heart and soul, but you must give the devil his due. Anyway, I’m tired of writing about him.
I get the greatest satisfaction from making fun of my own and others foibles, of which there is no lack. More than once, I have deplored the modern tendency to deface the body with tattoos. I find them unsightly, but I happen to know several people who have them. If you like someone, you must accept their sartorial choices. I’ve never gotten used to men who wear earrings and never cut their hair, either.
My model for this blog – one that I’ll never live up to – is the great American essayist, E.B. White. Best known now for this children’s book, Charlotte’s Web, he was for many years a staff writer for the New Yorker. His little book on writing, The Elements of Style, is still in print. I still refer to my copy. Speaking of White, here’s what he had to say about writing in a 1942 interview with the New York Times upon publication of One Man’s Meat, his series of essays about his life on a coastal farm in Maine (which should be available through most libraries):
“The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can…I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he’s going to the trouble of reading what I’ve written…why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I’m trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.”
That’s what I’ve been trying to do for the last 500 weeks.
Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon
cannonnadedotcom 
Although you may never get recognition for it, five hundred columns, uninterrupted, ought to put you in league with such notables as — off the top of my head — George Will (not known for clarity), Mike Royko, John Kass, Erma Bombek, Jimmy Breslin and many others.
Apparently the record for the longest serving newspaper columnist goes to Hiroyuki Itsuki of Japan. He published a daily column, some 8000 in all, in the Nikkan Gendai for 32 years. I have no idea what he wrote about (rice futures? gardening? the Boy Scouts?) but I’m sure he had one of those PERSIST! stickers on the bumper of his Cressida.
These days most columnists seem to write about politics. There don’t seem to be many who write on subjects of general or human interest anymore. (The few that do seem to be humorists.) Bob Greene may have been the last of them.
So politics it is. Your animus toward Trump is somewhat understandable and certainly shared by many, particularly in journalistic circles. In Hollywood, anyone even hinting a positive thought about him is immediately blacklisted. He’s an odd character. He doesn’t seem to be so much an actual person as a branded persona whose interests are primarily material: real estate, profit, prestige. He lacks art and nuance. In their place are things big and shiny. He uses people (not unusual in politics or business, however) and his relationships with women seem strictly utilitarian.
And yet, against all expectations, including mine, he has been successful in politics. He hasn’t done this by appealing to lofty ideals or complex ideologies. Quite the contrary. Unlike most political figures, he has little use for the abstract or theoretical. If he is a king, he ain’t no philosopher king.
Instead, as in his businesses, his politics, foreign and domestic, focus on the concrete and tangible: gas and egg prices, tariffs, military enlistments, pipelines, inflation, interest rates, numbers of criminal illegal aliens deported. He is “friends” with most everyone and no one. He is his own favorite person (again not unusual in politics).
This drives cultured Europeans and NYT reporters, who learned their craft by reading novels and works on the human condition, insane. And what’s worse, not only does he violate sacred norms many of us hold dear, he’s consistent and open about it. The policies he advocates are the same ones he’s had even before he entered the political world.
It would be good if everyone decided to stop writing about him. The amount of invective we’ve been subjected to read these part few years far exceeds measure and reason. Like pervasive violence in movies and TV, it may be compelling but it’s really not good for one’s mental health.
So congratulations on hitting 500. That’s quite an accomplishment. I’ve read most of them and enjoyed all of them, and I look forward to more.
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I’ve always marveled at the scribes who did daily columns. Nowadays, three a week would be doing good. I remember looking forward to Art Buchwald when I was in the Army in France, and he worked for the Paris Herald-Tribune. Red Smith was always a pleasure to read in the old Sun-Times (he was eventually lured away by the NY Times). The Trib stll has “In the Wake of the News” in its depleted sports section, but it’s pretty much a traditional column now. In it heyday, it did have comment, but also bits and pieces of verse and stuff sent in by readers. Ring Lardner had it for several years. You’re right about too much Trump comment, but he seems to demand it!
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Wasn’t Bernie Lincicome who wrote In the Wake of the News for the Trib’s sports page? I understand he’s back in Chicago with the Daily Herald, and still doing sports columns.
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Yes, he did. I don’t read the Daily Herald. He was with the Rocky Mountain News, but it folded. While I’ve been a reader, the longest writer of Wake was Dave Condon. Most legendary was Arch Ward, who was promoter of Baseball and College Football All-Star games. The latter is of course defunct, killed by the NFL, who didn’t want to risk their draft choices.
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Bravo, Patrick! I enjoy your blog. Best, Dick Bragaw
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Thanks for all the good words, Pat!
I enjoy your easy style and sense of humor. E.B. White sounds like a great model!
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