Where is Eugene V. Debs when we need him?

I don’t know that there is anyone who can step into this role. And I don’t know of anyone who could do what he did.

Debs, from Indiana, was the grandaddy of the Democratic Socialism you are hearing about as the left of center Democrats push on toward the midterm elections.

What is it?

The most important thing for everyone who cares about these things is that it is most certainly not Communism, which is a red flag Republicans have been waving since the McCarthy era.

Well, there’s two problems right there, we don’t know what Democratic Socialism is and most of us don’t know enough about history to know what McCarthyism was all about.

Two big gaps on our path to wisdom.

Some help.

McCarthyism was a scourge used to paint anyone at hand as a “Communist” or “fellow traveler if they disagreed with whatever it was Sen. McCarthy was up to. There were Communists, even spies, but not everywhere.

Joe McCarthy was looking for some way to get re-elected to the U.S. Senate from Wisconsin when he stumbled, along with lots of other people, over Communism. He claimed they were everywhere, from universities to the military and even into the halls of government.

Historically, it is known as the “Red Scare.” It was actually bullshit. But the noise it created has tainted politics on the right to this day.

Get anyone running as a Democratic Socialist on a ticket today, right wingers immediately smear them as noveau reds...Communists!

For the record, there has never been an even distantly successful political thing called Communism. Despite its spies, the Soviet Union is gone, and the Chinese are a lot warmer to classical capitalism than almost everyone else.

I’m typing on a damned Chinese-made keyboard, after all, and checking my history on a Chinese-made iPhone or the nice iPad I always have sitting just over there! (A little right of the keyboard.)

So, no communism Karl Marx would recognize in sight anywhere.

As for Debs and socialism, he died about a century ago and spent time in a federal prison on a treason charge because he opposed the draft in World War One.

He served his time and on the day he walked out of prison, turned and doffed his hat to the thousands of felons who had known him. The cheer they gave him could be heard a half mile away.

His creation of socialism and theory was not complex, although it caused a lot of trouble.

It amounted to people should be treated fairly, paid fairly and have equal access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

What a novel thing.

In his time, he saw America at its worst. Depending on where you stand, you might think we are heading there now.

At his trial on sedition charges, he passed on having a defense. All he wanted was a few words.

He spoke for two hours.

The journalist Heywood Broun, not a Debs supporter or defender, called it “One of the most beautiful and moving passages in the English language.”

Among other things, Debs said this:

“I am thinking of the men in the mills and factories; I’m thinking of the women, who for a paltry wage, are compelled to work out their lives; of the little children, who in this system are robbed of their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon, and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed machines while they are starved of body and soul.”

He asked for no mercy for himself.

“I can see the dawn of a better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of time, they will come into their own.”

He went to prison. As for the awakening, you be the judge.

But we still have a chance to come into our own.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years and a professor for ten. He lives in Evanston and writes his blog “Lightningwriter”, displayed on Substack and Facebook.

Lake Ontario becomes Lake America?

Really?

One of the unfortunate realities of having a president whose head is like a bag of hammers is you can never be certain of what he is up to. I wanted to refer to him as scamp, but that diminishes immensely the nature of his behavior .

Any of you who have raised children know this feeling.

You are absolutely certain the kid’s okay and then a cop shows up with a child who decided to see what it would be like to scale a building, or perhaps walk across the top of a bridge over the Chicago River.

Or who knows what else?

You forgive them, always, because you love them. You try to correct their behavior.

You sit down to a good meal and lots of trouble evaporates because, after all, they were your kids. A voice echoes in your head, your own father telling you there is nothing brighter in the middle of the night that the headlights of a state police car.

What was that about?

You later learned that was what happened when you ran a car full of bootleg hootch from up the mountain down to the big city. It was during prohibition. No charges. The cops just seized the alcohol and did what local law did with things up in the mountains.

They sold it.

And you recall your own adventures, that time the railroad policeman sat in front of your house to tell your father he found you in a scrap yard trying to steal what looked like giant Slinkies

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The follies of you, sometimes not pretty, but follies just the same.

That can’t apply to Donald J. Trump. Just because he acts like a spoiled child, that doesn’t mean we can afford to think of him that way.

He has ordered the murder of countless dozens of people in boats who may or may not have been smuggling drugs. We have due process to handle problems. Law enforcement doesn’t start with the execution part. It might end that way in some states, but only after crimes have been identified, investigated and prosecuted.

We have scores of authorities on hand to await a boat’s arrival, the technology to follow it from the minute it starts into the ocean and the legal authority when it lands to grab what cargo and prosecute, if that is necessary.

But we don’t just shoot everyone on board and dump their bodies into the ocean. A criminal might do that but...wait a minute! The president already is a criminal. Courts have said so.

Now he is killing people at sea.

Illegal? Yes. Immoral? Yes.

Presidential?

I don’t think so.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years at United Press International and The Chicago Tribune. He lives in Evanston and writes the Lightningwriter blog on Substack and Facebook. Find more at charlesmadigan.com.

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How many times have you come across a problem and muttered to yourself, “Someone should do something about that” and then drove right on past without even stopping to take a look?

If you are honest, the answer would probably be “Well, every day,” because life is beset by problems of all kinds, some apparent and some so quiet you move through them without knowing they are there.

A question: When was the last time you were very hungry?

You might not remember because one of the things comfortable people do is eat when they want to, sometimes so much they must stop eating just to shed some pounds for health’s sake.

But you drive past this problem all the time, most likely oblivious, unaware it’s even happening.

If you drive down Darrow Street in Evanston to 1930 you will see a jolly little shed with lots of multi-colored handprints on it. If some construction is done when you are there, it will have a door. Open it, and there sits...A REFRIGERATOR!

Yes, fresh healthy food for free if you need it. And containers outside so you can donate to help people who will use this place.

“Hearts and Hands Fridge is at St. Andrews Pentecost Church.

I dropped by the other day with my wife, who is part of the effort to help feed the hungry. We watched a minister with a brass pot of holy water sprinkle the building and the fridge.

“We dedicate this Heart and Hands Fridge to extend God’s love,” the minister prayed. The 40 or so people in attendance replied, “May God bless the hands that and the hands that receive from it.”

I’m 77 years old and as as cradle Catholic, I’ve been to lots of blessings. I’ve seen baptisms, blessings of pets, blessings of couples in weddings, farewell blessings at funerals.

I have never seen the blessing of a refrigerator, at least until now. You might want to take a little ride and have a look at it. Bring a can of something healthy to leave outside.

Better yet, write a check to United in Welcome, St. Matthews Evanston, 2120 Lincoln St. Evanston, 60201. Check out www.stmatthewsevanston.org on line to see what’s up.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor at United Press International and The Chicago Tribune for 40 years. He lives in Evanston and writes a blog called “Lightningwriter.” Find him at Charlesmadigan.com.

There is a lovely church on Lake Street in Evanston that has what was once the highest spot in the city, a Celtic cross sitting atop a tall, graceful spire.

If you were around in 1954, you could have watched a process that seems to stretch far back in history, the placement of copper sheathing, sheets individually tailored to the spire, installed by steeplejacks, a trade that might seem to have disappeared with the passing of time.

Today, the copper comes from an architectural sheet metal company and the steeplejacks are right up there putting it on.

Right now, you can grab a sandwich and a coffee and go to the lovely park across from the church and watch master craftsmen installing a new copper cover to protect the steeple on the oldest public building in Evanston.

It is a dangerous job that requires meticulous attention to the needs of the spire and the safety of the workers.

Each piece of copper, is scaled to its place on the tower and shaped to resist the elements.

A company called “Inspired Heights,” which provided the details for this article, is completing the work. When it is done, the steeple will be protected into the late 21st Century.

The steeplejacks working on the tower are crew leader Alec Harden and crew members Noah Grimes and Sam Campbell. Just now, much of the tower is shrouded in a dark grey material, a waterproof membrane that seals around nail heads and screws.

That’s important in a city by Lake Michigan, where high winds might drive water beneath the surface of the copper.

That’s a concern for the crew, too. They are working 160 feet in the air in a city where storm winds can easily knock down and break the limbs from big old hardwood trees.

Set of ladders strapped to the top of the tower is used to remove the Celtic cross on top, which will also be restored. This is the first time this crew has removed a cross like this one.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for United Press International and The Chicago Tribune for 40 years. He lives in Evanston and writes “Lightningwriter,” his blog. Find him at Charlesmadigan.com

The huge problem at the White House isn’t going to go away without some heavyweight intervention from Congress. At last check, there were no heavyweights available to address the problem…so on it goes.

Donald Trump certainly has his defenders, but at this stage there is no way anyone can conclude they are on the right side of history. If the Republican Party isn’t quaking in its boots at this point, it doesn’t have the right pair of boots. And it’s probably too late in the game to go out to Carhartt and buy some new ones.

In his mind, he is trying to beautify Washington, which obviously is a great distraction from the fact that he is waging an undeclared war against Iran, presumably so it can’t build its own nuclear bomb. But there is even all kinds of trouble with that. The shedding, algae pool of a reflecting pond is a metaphor for what’s happening all over the place. It’s rotten.

And, too, he has completely undermined the value of gold plating.

If you thought his hilarious hair was the only aesthetic embarrassment in sight, Google up some snaps of the Oval Office. It looks like the bathroom of a late 19th Century whore house somewhere in the California gold fields.

And it seems he just underlines the vast disconnect with reality every time he tries to put his name on something, whether it’s a new fleet of battleships that are already outdated before their keels are put down in shipyards or his signature on a slab of something somewhere in the capitol.

Conditions on aircraft carriers are so bad sailors are considering literally jumping ship. That may just be anti-Trump fiction, but you have to admit, a good image.

Keeping Iran from getting its very own nuke, that’s a nice idea, but all it has achieved so far is an unleashing of many conventional missiles and drones that are very effective. There are a lot of weapons at hand, obviously, despite Trump’s bombing campaign. They are killing U.S. military all over the place.

Clearly, Trump has not learned the lessons of Ukraine’s struggle against the Russians. One is that a multi-million dollar battle tank or bombers very distant from the action can be destroyed by a drone you can build in your garage.

Even Russian troops are being hunted down and attacked on a personal basis.

Putting steam back into aircraft carriers isn’t going to help any of that. Building new “Trump Class” battleships, like this was World War II, that’ not going to help, either. Still, he proceeds.

To be sure, the Russians have been very effective with their own drones and missiles. Despite the damages and the human cost, the Ukrainians persist! Slava to that.

All of which is proof warfare has moved info a new era, one defined by technology’s triumph over cast iron and foot soldiers.

Does he get that?

Clearly not.

The man is coal fueled and full of steam.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor at United Press International and the Chicago Tribune. He writes a blog, “Lightningwriter,” and you can find him at Charlesmadigan.com.

I know, I write a lot about the cat. You would, too. It’s not because he is cute. He is not. If that were the case I would just post endless videos of him rolling over and stretching. Quite a sight! Just now he is about a 10-pound top of the food chain predator and likely to get bigger. He is now about a year old. Yes, he will get close, but when he reaches out to touch you, the message is, '‘Hey, great to see you...Don’t fuck with me!” Meow indeed.

A favored place these days is behind my

computer, which is better than his previous favorite place, on top of the keyboard. I don’t know what to think about this other than that he is now completely comfortable in our house. That’s flattering because until they get to this point, it can be very bloody. Went to see my doctor today who also has a cat. We both concluded if you fell dead on the floor, your dog would sit and weep and whine until someone showed up.

Your beloved cat, on the other hand would ponder eating you.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years. Now he writes a blog under the name “Lightningwriter.” Find him at charlesmadigan.com.

Writing Books and AI. Devil’s Bargain?

I have written scads of books in my time. Collaborating on business books was the most profitable, but also the most difficult. You had to find a way to get the CEO of a big company, Sears, for example, or a big bank, Morgan Stanley, to sit comfortably with you and tell you how they and their businesses became successful.

Then you got stuck in something of a shit sandwich, because on the other side of the contract was a publisher you didn’t know who was paying for the project.

Despite this, it paid a couple of college tuitions and a batch of medical bills and spread my name around in the business world, where it was clear to everyone I simply did not fit.

But there were lessons.

Famous people NEVER pay for their own books. Publishers do that because they want to use their names to sell the books everywhere.

It wasn’t journalism and it wasn’t really biography because nothing about it could be negative in any way. And basically, you were spending a lot of time with subordinates because, in some cases, the CEO’s knew nothing about nuts and bolts of what they were running.

They were just very good at running things.

It worked about five times for me. Then I had medical problems that bumped me out of that market place.

But not out of writing books.

Because I had a brain infection that wrecked most of my skills, my neurologists advised me to get back to writing as soon as I could. It would be therapeutic.

But writing what?

I started with a blog and a promise to myself I would not let opportunities pass. If I got an idea, I wrote about it. President Trump has been a wonderful gift to me because he is such a lying grifter the themes for writing never seem to go away.

It wasn’t enough.

So, I got into writing fiction. My first book was “Mine” and it loosely followed my family’s experiences in the bituminous mines of western Pennsylvania. It took a lot of research and in the end, I published it myself because I had no patience with publishers or agents.

At that time, it cost about $4,000 to self-publish a book.

My second novel, “Operation Bingo,” is a fiction full of robust characters who decide bingo is the solution to the declining finances of the Catholic Church in a declining railroad town.

Also, lots of research on that one.

Third fiction is about 200 pages just now, perhaps 100 more pages to go. I have no idea what I will do with it. It’s science fiction and mystery mixed, all set in an antique barn in central Pennsylvania in the 1960s. It’s called “Bud Lowes’ Barn.”

The history of the battle of Gettysburg is its backdrop.

So, to the point.

I would NEVER consider using artificial intelligence in delivering a book, even though that would be very handy as a tool to create histories.

The other problem with AI in literature is what it will do to the nature of books of all kinds.

Tell a publisher he can craft a book perfectly suited to a marketplace for next to nothing and I suggest a couple of things will happen: Too many books aimed at very specific markets will show up everywhere and book writers will gradually disappear as technology replaces them.

Even big-name stars and business leaders can use AI to write their books, then sell them direcly to the reading public.

There is no handy solution to this problem.

But I know what I am going to do when “Bud Lowes’ Barn” is finished. I’m going to break it into sections and publish it on Substack.

It might be hard to promote it, but God knows there are lots of venues.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years for United Press International and The Chicago Tribune. He writes “Lightningwriter”a blog. Find him at Charlesmadigan.com.

The new Trump Focus: Aircraft Carriers

Let’s redesign aircraft carriers?

This is one of President Trump’s most ridiculous ideas. He believes, for reasons that seem to escape most people, that modern electromagnetic launch systems should be replaced by old fashioned steam launch systems on new aircraft carriers.

First of all, it takes 5 to 8 years from the laying of the keel until completion of sea trials for a new aircraft carrier.

So, what does that mean?

Steam launched systems were great in their day, given the fact there are no ships long enough to create a runway for a modern jet warplane.

You literally had to find a way to toss them off the end of the ship to get them into the air. So, something like a steam-powered slingshot was invented.

How does it work?

Not a clue here.

I just know a pilot in a hot jet with engines at high force waves at someone on deck, points to where he is going, then everyone on the outside gets down or takes cover and there goes your warplane zooming off toward wherever.

Later, it returns and is snagged buy a steel rope to keep it from smashing into other planes or zipping right off the end of the carrier.

It worked well for decades but was a little tough on the jets. So, someone came up with a smoother way to do it, electromagnetically! Complex, very high tech, smoother and easier on the jets.

What could be better?

Steam again, in Trump’s mind.

He visited an aircraft carrier and some blabbery sailor told him the modern system was too complicated and hard to repair.

Or so he says.

You can never tell about anything a thieving liar says, no matter where he sits.

The likelihood with this president is someone bribed him or some shipbuilder coughed up a campaign contribution.

Or the thought just settled on him for no apparent reason, a naval thought beyond the last one, which was about ice breakers.

So, we have an aircraft carrier under construction and it would take billions of dollars to change plans now.

All that aside, apparently aircraft carriers are not such happy places these days, at least that is the word in some corners of the U.S. Navy.

Somebody tried to abandon ship a little prematurely, perhaps jumping into the ocean. Or trying.

My question is bigger.

Do we need them at all?

The Russians and the Chinese have aircraft carriers, of course, but the more efficient counter to all that is a cruise missile from a faraway destroyer, or better, a torpedo from a submarine.

They are not small targets.

Learn from Ukraine. What you can effectively target you can kill.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 yeara at The Chicago Tribune and United Press International. He lives in Evanston and writes the blog, “Lightningwriter.” Find him at charlesmadigan.com.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has announced she is leaving her position to “Spend more time” with her family.

That’s noble. It’s also the most cliched reason for leaving a job of all of them. What we need is a rule telling people the real reason. Or at least trying.

Criminals abandon their felonious efforts to “spend more time with the family, “the family” cited being an organized crime family.

“I’m leaving this position to spend more time with reality,” could be a good one.

“I’m leaving this position because I don’t fancy going to prison when the president’s term is finally over.”

“I’m leaving this position because, despite my connection to modern politics, I have decided I don’t actually enjoy lying through my lovely TV-appropriate teeth!”

Because Donald J. Trump is destined to have lots of press secretaries in his future (It’s a good platform for diving into the real money as a “communications specialist” for someplace that does something it thinks everyone should know about (A Big Corporation) or someplace that doesn’t want anybody to know what it’s doing. (A Big Corporation.)

So, a good reason could be, “Because I’m going for the real dollars!” That’s something most of America could understand and accept.

“Of course she is,” the nation would respond in unison. “Would that we could do that, too!”

Another good one:

“This goddamn ship is sinking and I’ll be damned if I’m going down with it, too!”

And this...

“I would rather fry burgers at a fast-food dive on a major turnpike than spend another minute up here in front of a pack of barracudas disguised as reporters.”

Or you could say, “I want to spend more time helping my family make arrangements to bring in some help while I’m out doing something else!’

That would be honest.

I have quit jobs lots of times, usually to get better jobs. That always worked for me. I never once said “I need to spend more time with my family.”

And I have never had an employer tell me, “You need to spend more time with your family!”

Mostly I said, “I’m leaving because I need to spend more time at a better job.”

Mostly they said, “We’re closing. Your job has disappeared.”

The one thing you don’t want to tell your mate and your kids is, “I’m leaving to spend more time with my career.”

That might mean you lose the family you are going to need in the future to say, “I need to spend more time with my family.”

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years at United Press International and The Chicago Tribune. He has gone both ways on the “leaving job...leaving family thing,” but fortunately, the latter never worked. He lives in Evanston and writes the “Lightningwriter” blog. Find him at Charlesmadigan.com. Reach him at Charlesmadigan@gmail.com.

s in bloom. The fruit trees lost their blossoms a long time ago. As always happens,

squirrels raced up the apple trees, knocked everything down and ate them on the ground. When we had a good aggressive dog, that didn’t happen as much. Now that we have a premiere cat, we keep it inside because it would kill everything it can catch, and it couldn’t catch a squirrel if its place in the house depended on it.

The downside is the dog would bite anyone who wasn’t us. She wasn’t a bad dog in the traditional sense. But if she didn’t know you, bad things could happen.

So, there we are on the fruit front.

Flowers are a different matter. Lots of those! Here’s a bunch.

I hope you have some, too.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years. He writes novels, plays music and blogs now as Lightningwriter

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Yes, it is a Bitter Melon! It looks like a cuke with a bad mole problem.

Lest we forget, ages ago a couple of musical friends and I recorded an album we called “Cracks in the Foundation” down in the basement home studio of Bruce Roper in Chicago. He is the guitar repair man at Old Town School and writer, singer and guitar player in Sons of the Never Wrong, a wonderful folky, harmony drenched group that has been fantastic going on 35 years now.

We wrote and played the songs on our album, a burst of creativity for sure.

“What should we call ourselves?” became a primary issue.

The “we” was Al Day, Randy Lee, me and whoever else wanted to show up. An actress with a wonderful presence, Sally Craige Christiansen, helped us.

Anyhow, we settled on Bitter Melon because a couple of us had Type 2 diabetes and someone thought it would lower blood sugar almost miraculously! Also, someone’s neighbor grew them on a fence in his yard.

So, Bitter Melon it was, and Bitter Melon Music became the company behind it all.

Advocates of bitter melon say it’s good for lots of problems and is respected the world over for its immense quotient of vitamin C and other health benefits.

Unadulterated, it tastes AWFUL!

We did not intend it, but our album was quite bitter, too.

All about brutal labor problems and hopelessness...everything but a dead dog, although two of us knew grand dead dog songs we chose not to use.

The album was so dark radio stations that had folk music shows would not touch it. We argued that Woody Guthrie was not a chipper, cheery song writer and he got lots of air time and we suggested they could please just go screw themselves.

That was probably a tad earthy for them, (also we didn’t say screwed) but we are emotional artists, you know?

That went nowhere.

We sold tens of CD’s, and I know that because I have a couple of hundred of them in a box downstairs. I also have a bunch of neat green T’s that were designed by my son, Eamon, a fine artist and interpreter of artistic messages.

We thought our followers would snap them up at $10 a pop.

Ummmm....no.

It was a great object lesson.

There is a lot of fun in music, and music itself is its own blessed reward.

But NOT a lot of money. At least not for 99.9999 percent of people who start bands. Put a couple of thousand dollars into great “gear,” and don’t hold your breath until you pay it off.

I write books, and I know what it’s like to not make money in the arts.

You can do it, of course, but not without persistence.

Why am I writing all of this now?

Because right there in the Farmers Market on Saturday morning was a bitter melon! MY wife bought it. Why? I guess for the humor of it. if you look up bitter melon recipes, most of them seemed aimed at taking the bi

tter out of the melon.

I saw a great bitter melon and flank steak stir fry recipe in a Chinese cookbook. The only line missing was, “Then throw out the bitter melon, find some wonderful Chinese sauce to put on the meat, and eat that!

My friend gave us one quite a while ago.

My wife did what any sensible person would do with it...she sliced it up, put it in a jar and pickled it! Wasting food is a sin. Pickling it is not. After many years on a lonely shelf in the basement, I gave it to one of my musician friends, who said it was just fine.

You can try that at your own risk

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I still think Bitter Melon Music was cool, and you might be able to find it up there in the cloud someplace.

I can sell you an album for cash, but you can’t return it.

Perhaps it will pickle well.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for United Press International and The Chicago Tribune for 40 years. He lives in Evanston

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be noticing more and more of these delightful looking plants. Some people think of them as weeds, but then some people think of anything that doesn’t look like it’s from Better Homes and Gardens as a weed.

Milkweed is an important plant, which is w

hy it is protected in Illinois. It’s a valued stop along the path of life for the monarch butterfl

y. There was a time when the government collected its fluff to put into life jackets

.Those pods will also soon welcome little armies of orange and black bugs, called milk weed pod bugs. They are orange and black. I can’t look at them without thinking of Halloween.

The point is this: Do not pull them out, cut them down or damage them. They are an important part of the life cycles of lots of critters. They will open in the fall and release clouds of fluff-carried seeds looking for a place to settle. They can ride the wind for a long time and end up far, far away.

Also, if you fool with them when they are green, you will note they have a very sticky white fluid inside you will want to avoid. It is NOT a good treatment for poison ivy or other skin eruptions. It can make things much worse.

Once they unleash their seeds, the pods dry to a nice brown. You can use them as supplies for art projects. Ask kids what they look like, give them some glue and see what they can come up with. Think Christmas ornaments!

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Everybody wants to show pictures of their cats. Why? Because they are so much more interesting than any other animal you are likely to have around.

I gave my parents a monk parakeet once. It was smaller than a parrot and bigger than a parakeet and roughly as settled as a nest of wasps. What that bird wanted to do most was bite you as hard as it could. I still have a scar between my fingers where he latched on one day and would NOT let go.

My mother loved him. She would put on a heavy rubber glove and run him under the faucet for a bath when she thought he was looking dingy. When we had spaghetti, he would sit on my father’s shoulder and eat it one strand at a time. He would follow you around on the floor as you walked around the house. Even with all that, he was NOT as interesting as our cat. Our cat’s idea of affection is to bite you or stick his claws into you until you bleed. Then he just meows and scrambles away. He is a big cat, so his feet are heavy on the hardwood floors. He could sneak, but he seems to enjoy thumping around like a horse, particularly when he is playing. One of my friends has a cat who looks just like Ulysses, but smaller. Very calm. Very friendly. We have have had 5 dogs in our 54 years of marriage. Most of them were great. One hated men with long hair and would

bite them if they leaned over for a pet. Still, not as interesting as our cat. So if you are thinking of a good pet, go rescue a cat. There are lots of them available. I know, they are born to kill. But then, so are we.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for United Press International and The Chicago Tribune for 40 years. He lives in Evanston and writes the “Lightningwriter” blog. Find out more at charlesmadigan.com

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One of the delights about living in Evanston is the lake front walk, which runs from one end of town to the other and never fails to impress. Sunday the weather was perfect, clear skies, light winds, dozens of young people boarding and sailing, kids on the beach, a United Nations, to be sure, with people of every nationality having picnics, family events, or just hanging out.

We took a long walk to enjoy the day and to survey the impact of the recent storm, with its heavy rains and 100 MPH winds. Nature makes the beauty of that walk, and nature breaks it, too. It’s a heart break to see so many huge trees brought down, their roots sticking up perpendicular to the ground.

Without tapping them and counting growth rings, it’s hard to say how long those trees have been standing there. But I imagine they were around when Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees” was mandatory reading for junior high kids.

“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

“A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

“A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

“A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

“Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

“Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.”

Okay, not the best poem ever written.

In fact, it verges on being terrible. Except for its closing line.

So take a walk on Evanston’s lakefront and say farewell to some genuine giants. God surely can make them. He can also take them. And that’s my own terrible little poem.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years at United Press International and The Chicago Tribune. He lives in Evanston and writes the Lightningwriter blog. The photos are his, too.

Of course I have had a bad attitude about Donald J. Trump since he first blathered his way on to the scene way back when.

I can’t believe he wants to spend more billions of dollars on ice breakers the U.S. COAST GUARD will have very little use for.

Is there ice in the USA? (The frozen water, not the law enforcement types).

Why yes there is.

Happens every winter in all our cold places. Sometimes thick and impossible to get through. Unless you have an ice breaker. We currently have three big polar level icebreakers and and unknown number of smaller regional ice breakers.

But do we need a fleet of giant Finnish ice breakers to bust through whatever local ice forms on U.S. waters?

Demonstrably not because a. It’s only here for a while, and b. It always melts.

So we probably have enough ice breakers, thank you very much. This does not matter to our child-man president. He played golf with the president of Finland some time ago and walked away convinced we need lots more ice breakers.

Just like we need a new ballroom, another refurbished reflecting pool, a big Trumpian arch sticking in the middle of everything in historic Washington and a lot of faux gold plating and shiny vases in the Oval Office.

One thing i need to point out here is I am biased, heavily biased, toward Finland. My second child was born in Helsinki and let me tell you, Finnish midwives know all about having babies. And their nurses love to talk to people who speak English, so they can work on their English.

Finland itself is fantastic.

They have reindeer there and they aren’t shy about eating them.

Nothing more wonderful than sautéed reindeer meat spread around the base of a little mound of mashed potatoes with a pat of butter and some lingonberries on top.

I ate as much of that as I could afford.

“Oooo…how could you? Those darling little reindeer! What about Santa?”

Screw that.

He’s a marketing myth in the first place. A reindeer in my book is just a deer with a better reputation, a steer that can sprint, an antelope that goes very well with the right condiments. Jaysus…I would go back to Finland for that, alone. Give me a blank check and a couple of days in any department store that has survived. Stockmann, the greatest, was so valuable to my family we have paintings of it hanging in the living room.

But I digress!

I say we should outsource all our warship building to Finland! It’s gritty work and we don’t do much of that here anymore.

Are they a cheery people?

Probably enough for folks who spend a lot of the year in frigid darkness. I had a friend who had some dates with a stunning Lapland woman. She was a vision of beauty who had very little to say. Kind of drawn to long, pensive silences. It was not good for my friend, an engaging, intelligent Texan.

Anyhow, welding together our warships would give the Finns something to brag about even as it drives the Russians nuts. And what could be better than driving the Russians nuts?

But back to the issue.

Our flabbergasted president wants these these ships because Russia has lots of them, and they are huge. Of course, Russia is mostly ice much of the year, so it needs them to keep the harbors opened so it can move its most valuable exports, young men headed into the meat grinder that is the Ukrainian war.

But we don’t have ice like that.

The suggestion is we will use these Finn ice busters to work on frozen hegemony at the poles.

Note. The Coast Guard will of course accept anything that hints at largess, but it really doesn’t need them and probably doesn’t want them. No one knows how to sail them. No one knows how to use them to bust up ice.

The U.S. Navy will go batshit about it and won’t want those big things rusting anywhere near its own collection of floating rusting big things.

So parking will be a problem, too.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter, editor and foreign correspondent for 40 years. He worked for United Press International and The Chicago Tribune. He lives in Evanston, Ill.

What is to be said about butterflies?

They have become so common in my life over 76 years I don’t think much about them. Well, at least I didn’t think much about them until about 4 p.m. Wednesday in a lovely little park attached to what is now known as an Endeavor Swedish Hospital on Chicago’s North side.

Because the thought behind all of this is private, there is not much I want to say about it. Hospital chaplains put it together. They wanted to pray for women who had lost babies over the past year.

It was not a huge event, just some quiet people coming to honor some sad memories.

One of the organizers, Rev. Amy Carlozo, asked me to come to play some music for the ceremony. Not an easy thing. What do you sing and play on your guitar to take note of this kind of a moment?

I chose “Just A Closer Walk With Thee,” mainly because it’s about the only religious song I know that isn’t in Latin from my days very long ago as a diligent choir boy in Catholic schools. I played “Shenandoah” too, and a very old Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts.” But very quietly.

I was very much in the background, exactly where I belonged. I told people something I remembered from a nun in the 8th grade. “When you sing,” she said, “You pray twice.”

In the foreground were the chaplains, women who had lost babies and some of their families , some hospital staff, and many dozens of butterflies in little triangular packages. After prayers, the little envelopes were opened and the butterflies flittered off, like souls raising to heaven, which was just the point, although a lot of them needed some help getting into the air or headed right for the flower garden.

So, I have a suggestion.

When you see a butterfly in your garden this summer, think of it as a baby’s soul headed for heaven. Say a prayer for the mother, for her loss. I thought that would sound corny, but believe me, it is not.

You can also buy some butterflies of your own and release them anywhere you wish and for any reason you can think of.

There are plenty of souls that deserve the recognition.

You might want to think about encouraging your own hospital to set up this kind of service. In a big and sometimes impersonal business, this is a heart touching gesture full of just the kind of symbolism a person needs in a time of loss.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for The Chicago Tribune and United Press International for 40 years. He was also a professor at Roosevelt University for a decade. He lives in Evanston and writes his Lightningwriter blog when the notion strikes him.

There has to be a point at which President Trump just shuts up about losing to Joe Biden back in the day and quits fiddling with national monuments.

Also, I’ve been to places where election results are suspect, and ours are not.

Are there bumps?

Surely. It’s run by humans.

Duh!

So let’s put that one to sleep.

Enough said about the latest big speech. Shows the nets were right in declining to broadcast it live. News is something that didn’t happen yesterday, and this man is sooooo very yesterday.

Now, moving on.

Stop fucking up national monuments. Your friends screwed up the reflecting pond by applying the American flag blue stuff wrong. Driving over it in your huge vehicle so you could inspect it probably didn’t help.

We went from having a leaky pond with algae in it to having a leaky pond with more algae in it!

What part of still water, blistering sun and algae growth don’t you understand?

Of course, it’s being fixed again! I can’t wait!

I also can’t wait for the new ballroom and the Trumphial Arch and whatever else this man comes up with. The place is going to look like a narcissists’ version of a Walt Disney set when the man is done.

We can’t turn the clock ahead to his departure point. And by that, I mean ANYTHING that gets him the hell out of there, standing up or not.

In the interim, we can take notes on everything. Also keep on reading. I just finished a great Rolling Stone article on why Trump is exactly what the founding fathers were afraid of. It’s troubling that people anticipated his in the 1790s, but it does show you how smart they were.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years at United Press International and The Chicago Tribune. He lives in Evanston and writes blog, “Lightningwriter.” Find him and his work at charlesmadigan.com.

This is the latest example of handwringing on the part of the elite. Folks in the U.S. are said to be reading less and have hence, lost an important tool for preserving our “Way of Life.”

I don’t even know what that “way of life” means.

If you are a retired member of an elite that collects pension money and social security (ME!) you are probably better off than a man or woman imported from Haiti to follow the harvest from Florida north to do the kind of work white people sneer at, but I really liked this Sam Cooke song, which pared high ignorance with the thought that love is more important.

“Don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology, don’t know much about the science books, don’t know much about the French I took, but I do know that I love you and I know that if you love me true, what a wonderful world it would be...”

Well, of course that is the case.

I’m all for love of any kind. I am also for reading of every kind, but I don’t think that has been as important to most people as it is to me, a writer of all kinds of things, this blog among them.

But critics of this reading development should think hard about the idea reading is in steep decline and what that might mean.

The gathering of knowledge has been an evolving constant for centuries, and a universal identifier in all cultures.

But reading isn’t the only way to get information anymore. I still have some of the yellowing clips I collected from 40 years in journalism. But I am not delusional. The newspapers I worked for don’t live on paper anymore and they aren’t the cash cows they were a few decades ago.

But they still report and circulate the news. Young people who want it can find it all online, along with a mountain of damaging and diminishing bullshit from racists, haters and fools.

You would think we were getting smarter over time, but then someone like Donald J. Trump gets elected president and all our assumptions about being well read and smart shatter like crystal dropped on a marble sink.

We elect a proven buffoon, and a huge chunk of the population thinks he is just fine. How many serious readers are there in the MAGA movement?

Its gusto comes from a strange fixation on a strange clown man and its spite for the snooty elite that constantly diminishes them.

But things evolve.

My lovely old newspaper building in Chicago is a condo for the very wealthy now. My friend’s old newspaper in Philadelphia is now the headquarters for the police department.
But both The Chicago Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer continue their search for truth. They are just no longer the thumping ideological tools manipulated by the McCormick and Annenberg families.

And so, it goes all over the place.

I miss all that printing, but I still have more information than ever. My own books have never flown off the shelf, so there is that. And nothing prevents anyone with the bucks from self-publishing, not the way to eternal fame, but satisfying enough for me.

Everything evolves, you know?

Pretending the old days were full of diligent folks who just couldn’t stop reading is simply wrong. An educated elite did most of the reading and most of the creating.

That remains as true now as ever.

(I knicked Sam Cooke from his website. Thank you Mr. Cooke!)

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years, a professor for a decade and now writes his “Lightningwriter “blog, books and music in Evanston, Ill. Find him at Charlesmadigan.com.

(What’s a Fourth of July Parade without bagpipers? Like them or not, they are at least loud! Here is how it was on Central Street in Evanston.)

So, another Independence Day come and gone. Happens every year, so there’s that. And we still have our independence, so there is that, too.

It was a busy day for us. We went early for a long walk to see what was happening at Gillson Park, one of our favorite walking places.

Then we went to our favorite coffee place, St. Roger’s Abby cafe in Wilmette. To our delight, it was open, with the same collection of dedicated women serving up great coffee and pastries you can’t pass up.

I had a chocolate croissant, heated so the chocolate inside was just melting. I am aware I don’t need a lot of those, but it being a holiday, what the heck?

Then my wife and I had a long, serious conversation about what is happening in our country. It was so serious we both got a little teary, then my retired college professor/journalist imp popped up and I started lecturing.

Is our independence, our democracy, in danger? We have a terrible president and a divided country. Should we be shuddering and looking for a place to hide? Should we go back to where we came from? Germany, Ireland…wherever?

History says no.

Despite the media drumbeat (I always found it hard to type when I was wringing my hands and weeping and being negative), we have survived much worse. But because one of our national essences is a capacity to not know much about history, not know much about biology and not know much about the French we took (David Bromberg still does the best version of this classic confessional piece of rock pie), let’s look at ourselves a bit.

It’s refreshing and affirming.

1. It has always been a divided nation! If you want to see the worst of it, visit Gettysburg and think about all those graves in the National Cemetery. We were never more divided than that.

2. We have passed through disaster and come out, bruised but smarter, on the other side. Wars, the Great Depression, all kinds of economic headaches, epidemics, change in “traditional values,” name it, we have survived it!

3. We went from a nation that built much of its wealth on the backs of slaves. By law, that has been abolished. We still face the struggle with racism, sexism and a load of other “-isms” that settle on us like zits on the cheeks of teenagers (Right there is one of them, agism...I had zits, too, FYI).

We helped defeat fascism in Europe and united to respond to the horrors of Holocaust. We crushed the Imperialism of Japan but unleashed the horror of atomic war at the same time.

Good, bad, great, awful, righteous, unfair, uncaring, smart, stupid compassionate, sinful, blessed.

It has all been here for 250 years now.

Having an asshole as a president simply doesn’t stand up to these other challenges.

Donald J. Trump will be gone before you know it.

If you didn’t vote, you helped elect him.

Independence, Democracy and, believe it or not, The Gulf of Mexico, will all remain.

Finally, I know fireworks are important to lots of people. I got hit in the face with one when I was just a kid. No damage but very scary. I’ve hated them ever since. Call me a pussy, but I still hear very poorly on one side. But you pyromaniacs have at it. It’s still a free country. Just not in the middle of the freakin’ night.

In my old age (76) I view it as a metaphor for the nation itself. Despite explosions and turmoil, here we are.

Embrace it. No one has ever had anything like this. It is ours to enjoy.

Along with bagpipe bands, marching bands, drum and bugle corps and every other wonderful thing that defined Evanston’s Fourth of July Parade, which marched on under the threat of violent storms, high winds and lightning.

Nothing could touch it, or us!

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for United Press International and The Chicago Tribune for 40 years and a professor at Roosevelt University for a decade. He lives in Evanston and writes the “Lightningwriter” blog on Substack and Facebook and wherever else it shows up.

As a Christian, Can You Hate Donald Trump?

There is a real temptation here to simply check “Of Course” and move along. I would argue that would be wrong. Your option on Donald Trump and his ilk is expressed in voting, not in hating.

Hating doesn’t consume anyone but yourself.

Do you want that to happen?

Of course not.

What is prompting all of this?

I have been having conversations about the Lord’s Prayer and what it means in a non-spiritual, material world. People seem to have a very hard time forgiving.

There is one part of the discussion I can’t get past.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

As a man who has done plenty of trespassing in his time, I appreciate that. But I can’t expect forgiveness unless i offer the same to those who damage me.

That’s very simple, a promise to forgive no matter the offense we suffer. But it’s a hard dictate to follow.

Let me give you an example.

My reaction to Donald J. Trump, our president, is literally visceral. I can’t watch him, shut down at the sound of his voice, despise his felonious behavior and corruption.

He sickens me.

But can I hate him?

The Christian response would be “no”, I can’t.

And that is a great challenge.

Do you know how to resolve this?

Tell me, tell everyone.

It can’t just be my problem.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for United Press International and The Chicago Tribune for 40 years. He was a professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago for a decade. He lives in Evanston and writes the “Lightningwriter” opinion blog. Find him at Charlesmadigan.com