From Joe Berrios to Carl Sandburg: Some thoughts about the past and coming year
What I've learned en route to wherever it is I'm heading in 2011:
• Just-installed Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios has always reminded me of the godfatherly type, in a political sort of way. He seems to relish being everybody's friend, mentor and/or sponsor.
When Berrios was recently criticized for handing a few highly paid positions in his new office to some relatives, he had quite a comeback.
“It's like beating a dead horse at this point,” said Berrios.
Was I the only one who envisioned that scene in the Godfather film when bedcovers are pulled back to reveal a dead horse head?
• The Ten Commandments are meant to cover every speck of the behavior spectrum, or so I thought.
Then Pope Benedict said that he was busy preparing a decree against money laundering.
What part of money laundering doesn't fall under “Thou shall not steal?”
• In one of his final official acts of 2010, President Barack Obama signed some tax benefits for horse owners and rum makers – clearly, two of the neediest groups of Americans that you could imagine.
Then Obama retreated to Hawaii.
• Later this month I turn 55, but while reading the January edition of Esquire magazine, I found some things in common with the reflections of men much older than me:
Actor Robert DeNiro, 67, said “I might laugh more now than when I was younger. I'm less judgmental.”
And actor Robert Redford, 74, said “Happiness is sporadic. It comes in moments and that's it. Extract the blood from every moment.”
I know, when it comes to DeNiro and Redford, philosophy is where the similarities end.
• I also liked a couple of quips from Esquire readers: “Always think fastball. You can adjust to an off-speed pitch.” And “Nobody remembers to check your election predictions once the results are in.”
Thankfully, that last item is especially true considering my prediction in October that Lisa Madigan would run for Chicago mayor.
• The best description of Christmas that I heard: When God cared enough to send the very best.
• The real Christmas “season” doesn't start right after Thanksgiving, when you decide to put up your tree and lights, or even on Dec. 24 at the 4 p.m. “vigil” church services that are so popular.
Indeed, as a suburban pastor reminded his parishioners a few Sundays ago, Christmas doesn't begin until Dec. 25. Advent, he said, is not Christmas. It's Advent.
The clock on the 12 days of Christmas started ticking after midnight on Christmas morning.
• An e-mail that circulates every Christmas describes the lyrics in the “Twelve Days of Christmas” as an underground catechism song aimed at enabling persecuted Catholics to express their faith in Protestant England.
The three French hens stood for faith, hope and love; four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John; eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes, 12 drummers drumming symbolized the 12 points of belief in the Apostles' Creed, etc.
Fascinating … but not true.
“Twelve Days” was – and is – just a children's rhyming song and has been since being published in 1789.
• You do see some long-gone practices and phrases in the great Christmas movie “It's a Wonderful Life.”
Rice is thrown outside the church when George and Mary Bailey emerge after getting married. Nobody uses rice anymore.
Happy couples believe birds will eat it and explode.
That too is an urban myth.
Rice is discouraged because guests might slip and fall on it.
George Bailey wears a black armband in the days after his father dies as a public symbol of his dad's passing. That practice is even before my time (or at least I don't recall ever noticing someone wearing a black armband.)
In the movie you hear the phrases “this is a pickle” to describe a tough situation and “reverse the charges” during a long-distance call.
Not only are those obsolete, but these days no one really distinguishes long-distance calls from any other kind of calls.
Also in the 1946 film, Italian-Americans are referred to as “garlic eaters” as an accepted figure of speech. That would hardly fly today.
• Finally, after years of making jokes about having a sore shoulder from having to carry golf partners and other slouches in my life, my right shoulder really is sore. Turns out it is from old baseball injuries, arthritis, etc.
While trying to figure out a clever way to write about the shoulder replacement I will have later this week, I looked up the origin of Chicago as the “city of big shoulders.”
I knew it was in a Carl Sandburg poem, but the work itself is anything but a glowing portrayal of Chicago.
The infamous poem beings:
“Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders: They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamp luring the farm boys
“And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
“And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
“And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
“Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.”
Makes me want to ask the surgeon for an XL shoulder.
• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie