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

By Patrick F. Cannon

I have a long history of travelling from the Chicago area to Wisconsin. I first crossed the border in (I think) 1948 with my brother Pete to attend summer camp at Camp McLean in Burlington. In hindsight, the idea was to get rid of us for a couple of weeks of peace for our parents. We took a bus from the Irving Park YMCA, with foot lockers full of required gear, some of which never made it back to Chicago.

            It took about half the day to get there on those pre-expressway roads. For someone born and raised in or near big cities, it was like travelling into the wilderness. For much of the way, there were actual trees lining the two-lane highways. The camp itself seemed to be in the middle of a primeval forest. Actually, it was on the outskirts of Burlington, now a city of some 11,000 souls. But the camp was on the shores of a lake! Among other skills I picked up was how to row a boat! I learned to live in a barracks-like setting with little privacy. Life in the Army later in life was no shock to me.

            My next foray to the Badger state came with my first wife Mary’s family, who owned a cottage near Lake Geneva. It was largely built by my father-in-law, but never quite finished. We fondly called it “Grizzly Acres.” It had the great advantage though of being part of an association that owned frontage on Lake Geneva, so it had a beach, picnic area, and docks for a few boats. You could also walk along the lake front and see the  summer mansions of the Chicago rich, including the Wrigley’s, Swift’s, and Schwinn’s. To give you some idea of their scale, the former Harris mansion (of Chicago’s Harris Bank), later owned by Richard Driehaus, sold for a state record $36 million. No wonder Lake Geneva was called “The Newport of the Midwest.”

            My late wife Jeanette’s father’s family was from the Manitowoc/Two Rivers area, so we often travelled there for family events. It wasn’t much further to Door County, which we visited several times. Surrounded by Green Bay on the west and Lake Michigan on the east, and full of charming little towns, it’s famous for its “fish boils.” Well, you have to be famous for something!

            Milwaukee is only 90 minutes from Chicago, and I’ve been there many times. My wife Mary and I had friends who moved there from Chicago, and we often visited. More recent trips have included visits to the spectacular Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava with 217-foot sunscreen “wings” that open and  close twice a day. It must be seen to be believed.  One holiday season Jeanette and I stayed with my daughter Beth and son-in-law Boyd at the legendary and holiday-decorated Pfister Hotel.

            Just this last weekend, Beth, Boyd, and I attended a birthday event in the Devil’s Lake area for his brother Bart and Bart’s father-in-law Duane, and their families. The three of us stayed at a farm B&B, whose residents, in addition to  host Adam, included many chickens, ducks, one turkey and a pot-belled pig. Because of the unusually warm weather, the Fall color was minimal, but the landscape thereabouts is glorious.

            On Saturday, many in the group visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, the home he built when he left Oak Park in 1910. Taliesin means “shining brow” in his mother’s family’s Welsh language, and the stunning house does indeed sit on the brow of a hill. It’s instructive to visit the home of America’s greatest architect, but another highlight of our trip was breakfast at Candy’s Café in Merrimac (pop. 527). When we arrived, only one table was occupied, by a group of local farmers (I think). They had obviously known each other for years and probably gathered regularly.

            Only the cook was there when we arrived. She may have been Candy. Or Candy may have been the waitress who arrived about 10 minutes later. Everyone there, except us, knew one another. The food was great, and breakfast was about $5 cheaper per plate than the Chicago area. To top it all off, Merrimac has the only free ferry in Wisconsin. It crosses Lake Wisconsin, which is  really just a widening of the Wisconsin River. Inexpensive breakfast, free ferry. How can you go wrong?

            On the way back to Chicago, we stopped in Middleton (just outside of Madison) to have breakfast at Sofra Family Bistro with our old friends from Oak Park, Helen, and Paul Julius, who now live in the area. Sofra’s specialty is Albanian sausage and eggs. Quite tasty, and still a couple of bucks cheaper than Chicago. I can’t wait to tell my barber, Frank the Albanian. He probably thinks you must go back to the old country to get a taste of home.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

When I was a kid, we had a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post. It came every week, and its contents included non-fiction, fiction, and cartoons. It was famous for its covers, many of which were created by the legendary Norman Rockwell. In its heyday, it was America’s favorite magazine. Over the years, it published fiction by Jack London, Edith Wharton, Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse, Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis (these last three all Nobel Prize winners), and Kurt Vonnegut. But my favorite writer was an Englishman named C.S. Forrester.

            Forrester (1899-1966) wrote a series of 11 novels detailing the exploits of Napoleonic era British naval officer Horatio Hornblower (I kid you not). Several of them were serialized in the Post and were illustrated with full color battle scenes (the illustrator’s art flourished in those days).  Hornblower was a quirky character, but a master seaman and brave as a Lion! The books are pure adventure, entirely accurate in naval detail, and still readable. As far as I can tell, they’re all in print.

Only one Hollywood movie was made, starring Gregory Peck as Hornblower (1951). A later British TV series starred Ioan Gruffudd as our hero (1998-2003). There were seven episodes based on several of the novels. I believe all of them are available on screening services. As I recall, they’re reasonably good in production quality.

Covering roughly the same historic period, but on an entirely different level of literary distinction, are the novels that have come to be called the Aubry/Maturin series by the late English writer Patrick O’Brien. In 20 novels, O’Brien not only tells exciting stories of naval warfare, but manages at the same time to make vivid the reality of  living in that time of radical social, political, and scientific change. We see all of this through the lives of naval officer Jack Aubrey and his friend Steven Maturin. They couldn’t be more different – the bluff, hearty, physical Aubry, and the introspective medical doctor, naturalist (and spy!) Maturin.

The supporting cast of characters includes Jack’s long-suffering wife, Sophie (Jack is known to stray and is at sea for months and even years at a time); and Steven’s wife, the “dashing” but wayward Diana. Actual historical figures like Joseph Banks, King George III and his son and heir, the Duke of Clarance, occasionally appear and many others are mentioned, most notably Horatio Nelson, Jack’s hero.

While there are 20 books in the series, taken together they are really one novel of 6,451 pages! I know that because my son gave me a boxed set of five beautifully printed and bound volumes that include all the finished novels and one that was unfinished at O’Brien’s death. The pages are numbered as if it really is one long novel. But believe me, each of the 20 can be read separately with pleasure. It somehow doesn’t seem nearly as daunting as reading War and Peace, which has a mere 1,136 pages in the edition I own.

Only one movie has been made from the novels, Master and Commander, directed by Peter Weir and starring Russel Crowe as Aubrey and Paul Bettany of Maturin. Crowe was perfect, but I thought Bettany a bit too good looking. I always thought the Irish actor Steven Rea would have been a better choice. The plot is a combination of elements from the title novel and The Far Side of the World. Great pains were taken to provide an accurate portrayal of shipboard life, and the battle scenes are terrific.

If you’re interested in taking on this magnificent work, start with Master and Commander. If you’re hooked, you’ll have begun a voyage through a great work of history and literature.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

Like most bullies, President of the United States Donald John Trump – thanks to some of your fellow citizens, and maybe even you, that’s what he is – loves to dish it out but doesn’t seem to be able to take it.

            Just as a reminder, here are some of his more familiar insults:

• Former President Biden is “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Joe.”
• Hillary Clinton is “Crooked Hillary.” (He’s obviously enamored of “Crooked.”)
• Nancy Pelosi was “Crazy Nancy” to him.
• Before he became Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio was “Little Marco” or sometimes “Liddle Marco.”
• Because she claimed some Native American blood, Elizabeth Warren became “Pocahontas.”
• That constant thorn in his side, Bernie Sanders, became “Crazy Bernie.”
• Fellow Republican Michael Bloomberg – who was on to Trump early – became “Mini Mike,” a reference to his short stature.
• Pete Buttigieg was called “Alfred E. Neuman” after the Mad Magazine cover boy. (Trump is not now known to read anything, including the Constitution, but perhaps he did read comic books as a child.)
• Illinois Governor Pritzker is a “slob,” a not so subtle reference to his weight.

Because turnabout is fair play, I thought I might return the favor and give Trump a few nicknames to call his very own.

• Teflon Don comes to mind. The conventional wisdom among his supporters is that all his legal problems – including a felony conviction and numerous indictments — were purely political. I agree. It’s inconceivable to me that the current Republican party would ever even investigate him. And, of course, his credulous supporters believe his every word. I have a theory. Trump knows he’s guilty, so he’s determined to remove from office anyone who knows and could prove it. So far so good on that front.
• Lyin’ Donald. During his last term, The Washington Post kept a tally of his lies; the total was about 40,000. To be fair, someone pointed out to me that they counted the same lie every time he uttered it. So, let’s reduce that number to 20,000, still a Guiness Book of World Records kind of number. Jeff Bezos now owns the Post and stopped it from endorsing Kamela Harris for president. Trump used to call Bezos “Jeff Bozo.” Now they’re pals.  
• Multiple-Mulligan Trump. The president is a fairly good golfer, so his well-documented cheating is just another example of his essential corruption. I have dabbled in the game for most of my life. I used to play in a group that agreed that we were allowed one “mulligan” per round. For those of you who think golf is “a walk in the park ruined,” a mulligan is being able to take a bad shot over. They are forbidden by the rules of golf but widely practiced if agreed by all before the round begins. Trump just takes as many as he needs. If you’re playing a match (for dough often), it is also legal to concede a short put to your opponent.  You may not, however, concede a put to yourself, a common Trump practice. Keeping a proper score in golf is a matter of honor, a concept foreign to him. I won’t bore you with how golf handicaps are computed, but Trump is known to record only his best scores.
• Free Speech President. In his inaugural address, President Trump promised to “stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.” He also said that “never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.” Well, in my view, this was a reasonable response to the efforts of his predecessors to shut him and others up, his suspension from Twitter being the best example. Almost all speech is protected, even so-called “hate” speech. You can lie to your heart’s content if you don’t do it under oath. But like most politicians, Trump doesn’t really believe in free speech for anyone but himself. And he is himself using “the immense power of the state” to punish people who dare to criticize or make fun of him.
• The Great Emancipator. He has made himself a hero to the approximately 1500 people convicted for taking part in the January 6, 2020, attack on the U.S. Capital building. The majority pled guilty for their role in damaging public property and injuring police officers. The rest were convicted by juries of American citizens, who must wonder why they bothered. But President Trump is of a forgiving nature.

Let me conclude by noting that the Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives since January of 2023, and both houses of Congress since this January. With full investigative and subpoena powers, and a compliant Justice Department, they have yet to indict any of those “crooked” or “crazy”  Democrats. But have faith – they may yet trump up some charges.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

The residents of my Forest Park condominium building and its almost identical (but smaller) neighbor next door were all atwitter (or aghast or even appalled) early this week as an episode of the NBC series “Chicago Fire” was shot in and around us. The big day was Tuesday the 16^th, although set up began the week before. The entire 200 block of Elgin Avenue was closed on the big day, with no parking permitted.

            As it happens, our neighbors on the block are a series of detached single-family houses, small two flats and a row of attached town homes. I can’t imagine they were all pleased to have their street thus occupied, but art must have its way. For those of you not familiar with “Chicago Fire,” it is now in its 14^th season. It is part of a franchise that also includes “Chicago PD” and “Chicago Med.” Unlike some “Chicago based” series and film, which use only some exterior images, they are filmed entirely in the city.

This episode will air on Wednesday, October 29 on NBC at 8:00 pm. Since they have decorated some of the balconies in our buildings and the exteriors of some of the other houses on the block for Halloween, the date seems meaningful!

             While it has been interesting to experience the filming process, it’s nothing like as important or exciting as my experience 67 years ago watching the filming of Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. I was a young man of 20 then and working as a clerk for the New York Central Railroad at LaSalle Street Station in Chicago. Both are long gone, but I swear it wasn’t my fault. As I recall, the crew came the day before the filming to set up cameras, lighting, and sound equipment.

            Of the stars (including James Mason) only Eva Marie Saint (still with us at age 101) and Cary Grant appeared. I never actually saw him, although I caught a glimpse of Saint. I did see more of  Hitchcock – and he was as roly poly as you may remember him. He was dressed in a suit and tie, and left before the scene was actually shot, apparently satisfied that all was well. If you remember the movie, Grant stows away on the 20^th Century Limited, the New York Central’s legendary train from New York to Chicago. All the set up was for the briefest of scenes. Grant knows that the police (and bad guys) might be waiting on the platform to see if he’s on the train. So, he bribes a Red Cap and changes into his uniform, and escorts Saint and her luggage down the platform.

            Thus disguised, he makes his escape. Among the extras they used were actual LaSalle Street Station Red Caps. They were delighted to do this and even got paid. Another Chicago location was the Ambassador East Hotel, where nabobs and movie stars often hung out at the famous Pump Room restaurant before catching Santa Fe’s Super Chief to La La Land. If you haven’t seen the movie, I can highly recommend it. Pay particular attention to the LaSalle Street Station scene. It brings back memories for me.

            The 20^th Century Limited, which in its heyday had a barber shop, a stenographer (look it up), a dining car with gourmet food, and two cars where you could get a drink or two, made its last run in 1967, victim of the speedy jet air liner. LaSalle Street Station itself was torn down in 1981, replaced with a bare bones Metra station.

            One of my jobs as a junior clerk was to meet the 20^th Century every morning at 9:00 am (it was rarely late). I would swing on to the baggage car before it fully stopped, open the door and fetch the company mail bag, which every other Friday contained the Chicago staff pay checks. As the years went by, and more people flew, the number of celebrities sighting dwindled. The last one I remember seeing was Victor Mature. You remember him, don’t you?

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon