Event: Information. Where to Get It and How to Use It.

EVENT

Information on National and Local Races.

ILLINOIS - COOK COUNTY
MICHIGAN - GENESEE COUNTY
NEW YORK - KINGS COUNTY

Congress.org: My races.

This website is a great, nonpartisan tool; it contains each candidates' statements of their own positions. Input your address and zip code and it will tell you which races are contested in the executive and legislative branches. Illinois residents can learn about their judicial candidates here.

Michigan voters should also consult the well-edited and comprehensive League of Women Voters guide.

Newspaper endorsements can be great as well. They have the benefit of knowing both the candidates and their immediate public thoroughly. Still, take a few minutes to scrutinize how they back up their assessments. Many editorial boards have at least a subtle partisan bent; it is telling this cycle that so many Republican-leaning rags have voiced support for Obama.

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I personally, believe that it is very telling when a candidate won't provide a direct statement to surveys such as these; this is as close as we can get to direct, concise policy statements. It speaks volumes for a candidate to remain silent.

Additionally, each candidate deserves scrutiny on the basis of not only the particular office and policy positions they will hold, but on the political baggage they will bring to the position. Don't get me wrong; personality is important in any elected office. But in positions of national prominence, such as countrywide, congressional, or statewide posts, we should consider very carefully what a candidate's affiliations are, where their campaign money comes from, and who they are likely to appoint. These are at least as important as how likeable or reliable or even responsible the candidate is.

More locally, a small number of votes are more likely to make a big difference, and the cost of campaigning is low enough that it doesn't require candidates to take as many favors with strings attached. Often at this level personality is more important and party affiliation is less. Judicial races, city/township/town/village and county positions, school board governorships and so forth are all ideal for independent votes. They can give third parties and independent candidates a chance to assert and argue for their platforms without undermining a progressive coalition nationally, and liberation of such votes from compromise reduces the level of unnecessary baggage politicians tend to pick up early in their careers.

If you want to cast a protest vote in a national level race (I will be doing so, voting Green for Illinois' 9th congressional district), that can be effective, but please do so in an uncompetitive race. We need to acquire a large Democratic majority in this cycle.

If you consider yourself Independent, but want to vote Republican in a national level race, I urge you to consider very carefully why you are doing so. Parties change with time, and the last twenty years has made the Republican Party into a much uglier and more unfriendly entity than it has been in decades. These are not the Republicans who will cut your taxes or help small businesses, and they are certainly not the Republicans who will keep government out of your dining room and bedroom. Policy-wise, Eisenhower has more in common with Clinton and Obama than with Bush or McCain, and Gerald Ford spent the last several years of his life appalled at the behavior of his own party's leadership. An Independent who believes that extremes in government are destructive, and that policy-decision dictated by ideology and not a sober assessment of human nature and the world is an independent that should vote for Democrats this cycle.

Finally, it is a truism that when one party dominates government, it leads to a mess. However, the Republican party has pushed the U.S. so far to the right, and has drawn so much of the left towards center, that we need a Democratic supermajority in the senate and a large majority in the House to pass the needed changes. We will have to hold these Democrats accountable and make sure that they behave responsibly and answer to their constituencies, but there is a lack of both credibility and policy soundness in the Republican Party that cannot enjoy rational and reasoned discourse.

This doesn't mean that we should call off discourse; conversation with friends and enemies is essential, to paraphrase one of our presidential candidates in a different context.

But we shold be honest in confronting politicians and their organizations for what they are and how they have behaved.

The Republican Party does not deserved to be called sound or responsible this decade.

It deserves to be treated for the radical, reactionary, xenophobic position it has staked out in the world.

In this election, in national races, we need to look to the Democratic Party for leadership.

Diary: The Year of the Magnet Castles

YEAR 30 was THE YEAR OF THE MAGNET CASTLES

Soundtrack:

1. Doris Henson, When You Go
2. Funkadelic, Cosmic Slop
3. Smashing Pumpkins, Starz
4. Smashing Pumpkins, Bring the Light
5. M.C. Breed, No Frontin' Allowed
6. Eminem, Evil Deeds
7. Ladytron, Cease 2 Exist
8. Mazzy Star, Unreflected
9. Elisabeth Blair, Secret
10. Unkle, War Stories
11. J.T., Murder Mitten
12. Nova Moturba, Burning Rain
13. Sufjan Stevens, Chicago
14. Tori Amos, Black Swan
15. Radiohead, House of Cards
16. James Brown, There Was a Time
17. Joy Division, Love Will Tear Us Apart Again
18. Miles Davis, All Blues
19. Bjork, Mouth's Cradle
20. Bjork, One Day
21. Tori Amos, Girl Disappearing
22. The Velvet Underground, Heroin
23. Kansas, Carry on Wayward Son
24. R.E.M., Hollowman
25. Ladytron, Discotraxx
26. Radiohead, Iron Lung

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Navel Gazing:

What a weird year... I always listen to the music and then make up my mind about what the year should be called, but it's never premeditated, and if I have an inkling beforehand the result usually isn't what I expect. As a result, the name may be more intuitive than allegorical.

I don't know exactly what a magnet castle is.

I do know that the last year felt sort of like an add one extension to my MFA eduction... I felt that I was learning and in a very structured and deliberative way. However, whoever was deliberating wasn't me, because most of the plans I made this year didn't quite pan out as expected. A little spooky. The year itself was vivisected between two cities, cut up with numerous weddings and funerals, I broke a lease so I wasn't living where I expected, and I didn't get the job I expected. In fact, I've worked three different jobs in the last twelve months, and soon I will be working the fourth. I spent the hottest summer and fall of my life in New York only to arrive in Chicago just in time for the coldest winter and spring since 1995-1996. My very capable wife is finishing up her career education, and I am in the role of breadwinner for the first time ever. The permutations on the Gothic Funk enterprise have been... interesting. And my big literary achievements this year have been a few successful readings, more way-pre-dinosaur time travel stories, an adaptation of Beowulf more violent than a Frank Miller comic, and the publication of a naughty poem. Still no word on Hungry Rats. I've been with such a fog that I haven't gone to church or posted here in months. Kind of strange: I have gotten a lot of reading and writing and exploring done.

One thought, though, does strike regarding the name: "Magnet Castles." Could they be cities? After all, cities, and specifically city centers are concentration fabricated metal things that could be more conveniently magnetized than an arbitrary patch of countryside. Or perhaps more meaningfully, cities are metaphorical social magnets, siphoning resources and human beings and repelling each other, with tension in both directions. In the second instance, this has certainly been the case for me this year. One of the last substantive posts I published here was a 21 point comparison of New York and Chicago. I still buy most of the arguments I made there, but in another way they seem frivolous, silly, kind of missing the point.

Of course, maybe it's frivolous and silly to compare cities so obsessively from any angle. But I can't escape the impression that moving back to Chicago transformed New York for me, and utterly changed Chicago itself. When I first moved to New York, I disliked the city. I was going there because a good, solid MFA program had accepted me, but I wasn't thrilled about New York itself. When I left last November, I had come to accept a grudging affection for that city. Now, in June, there's nothing grudging about it: I can be almost as full-throated in my praise of New York as I am of Chicago. This is in spite of the fact that the same things that bugged me about New York before (the crowdedness, the speed and impatience, the pretension, the Yankees) still bug me. Chicago does seem smaller than it did before, but I do not know that this is significant either. The most enduring impression I've ever had of Chicago is that it is a fundamentally lonely place, and maybe that's part of my affinity for it. I feel that maybe I am a fundamentally lonely person, which doesn't mean that I'm always feeling lonely or sad, nor does it mean that I revel in the melodrama of isolation. But solitude motivates me, stimulates me, and brings things into clarity. I've always felt that I do my best reading and writing alone in diners, when I am at a booth and all of the other booths are crowded and noisy, or when I'm up alone at five in the morning when the rest of the neighborhood is quiet and dark. That is one thing I've always loved about Chicago. The Red Line is lonely, the skyscrapers are lonely, as is the lake fading into nothing far away, empty and blue, and gray in cracking ice through the winter. Anyone who has seen the Loop at night (giant quarter-mile high shadows fall across empty alleys and streets) knows how lonely it can be, and it is a far cry from Midtown Manhattan. Blue and still and peaceful. The Blues radiated from here, after all.

On to the final point on magnets and castles and cities and things. If one accepts the notion of a human soul (and I do) and accepts a definition of city preferring institutional and social interaction at one place as opposed to the physical shape of the place itself, it is quite reasonable to say that a city has a soul. This is true in almost as literal a sense as can be said of a human. Comparing one city to another is a lot like gossiping about our friends and enemies: we may make honest and worthwhile observations, but we can never quite touch on the substance of what they are in such a conversation. Maybe that is why I am so touchy and invested in Flint, although I have not lived there for a substantial time since 2003: it is a soul that I've felt that I've known. Maybe I've been a bit of a hypocrite when it came to Chicago and New York.

Anyway...

A long and short year... an chopped and trunchated year... all sorts of meanderings. I do feel like I've grown a lot, but can't really pinpoint how or when.

Concept: Chicago vs. New York in 21 Subjectively Determined Categories.

1. WORK
NEW YORK.
Easier to find, easier to keep.


2. HOUSING
CHICAGO.
Easier to find, won't rob you blind. Although you aren't as likely to be able to make a cassarole while sitting on your bed.


3. PUBLIC TRANSIT - EFFICIENCY
NEW YORK.
One late Sunday night, not long after I'd started living in New York, I got annoyed for waiting fifteen minutes for a subway. Then I remembered that in Chicago, I'd be blessed to have a train arrive after so long at such a time. Likewise, my apartment is a twenty minute walk to the subway, and a further twenty minutes to Union Square; my New York friends consiter this forty-minute public transit commute a great inconvenience. Now it does have to be acknowledged that New York stations are much dirtier than those in Chicago, but who cares? You're not spending as much time in them.
Exception: Chicago has two airports and two trains serving them. New York has two airports and zero trains serving them. What gives?


4. PUBLIC TRANSIT - ELEGANCE
CHICAGO.
Of course, I've read plenty about the train wreck that the CTA has become. And, of course, it is the job of public transit to be "efficient," not "elegant." But let us consider the potential here, for what could be if both systems were fully updated and maxed out on efficiency. On the one hand you have New York's bewildering spaghetti plate of letters, numbers, colors, dashed, solid, and dotted lines, and geographic morphing... it's taken almost two years to figure all this out, and I still make mistakes from time to time. Chicago's transit map, on the other hand is a work of art. Bright colors radiate from the core of the city like bicycle spokes, intersecting between the center and the periphery with the neat, solid black lines of bus service. Together, on a to-scale map that (shows streets and major features to boot), it presents a service that is immaculate, accessible, and seemingly comprehensive. If only the reality were so!


5. NEIGHBORHOODS.
CHICAGO.
New York neighborhoods are more conspicuously different from each other; they look different... the Brownstone isn't endemic to New York like the Brick Tenement is endemic to Chicago. But in Chicago the roots are deeper and more penetrating, more lasting, so that the difference between Bridgeport, Canaryville, and McKinley Park might as well be the difference between day and night.


6. PIZZA
CHICAGO.
Frankly, I don't even know why this is a debate. I once heard a compelling argument that New York style pizza is celebrated around counters by commuters on their way to work, and hence a source of camaraderie. A nice thought, but doesn't reliance on such an argument instead of the taste of the thing betray the point in the first place? New York style can be a soupy sweet snappy crunchy treat, but it is literally and figuratively crushed by the dense, rich, complex, and visually mighty Chicago-style.


7. MAYOR
NOT-A-TIE.
Now this is a difficult call. Since I've been reading Medieval history lately, I'll ask a comparable question: who do we like more, Charlemagne or Emperor Justinian of the Byzantines? Charlemagne was a able diplomat and something of the maverick true believer. His efforts managed to create a short-lived cultural Renaissance among subjects locked into mutual acrimony, but they also led to the creation of that most illogical and aberrant of all political institutions: the Holy Roman Empire. His greatest contribution in the long-term was probably the lower-case alphabet, and Bloomburg's will probably be Midtown traffic tolls. Whereas Emperor Justinian (and his successors, and theirs) integrated religious orthodoxy with state theology, autocracy, and political purges. He reinforced one of Byzantium's chief weaknesses: that provinces existed only to pay homage to the glittering capital. In doing so he was able to preserve a civilization that, by all logical rationales, ought to have died out eight-hundred years sooner than it did. J. Daley destroyed much of what was great about Chicago in the name of keeping it peopled and thriving, and his son is doing the same. If you read between the lines, I think you know both who I favor, and the massive reservations I have about that choice.


8. MUSEUMS - ART
NEW YORK.
I did expect New York to walk with this one, but I didn't expect it to be such a rout. The Met (which it took me six days to take in) has four times the square footage of the Art Institute and ten times the collection. Though what really hurts my feelings is the diversity and expansiveness and eclectiveness of the Met... after all, the Art Institute's pride and joy are their Impressionist works, which comes as close to boring me as any school of art really can. Also, just as Chicago has three museums to go toe-to-toe with the Museum of Natural History, MoMa has a right to take on the Art Institute, and doesn't do poorly in the contest. Both cities have, of course, numerous smaller collections of quality, but those in New York (the Frick, the Guggenheim, the Whitney) appear to be somewhat better endowed. I have to confess: I think I will miss this about New York more than any other single thing.


9. BASEBALL TEAMS (AND THEIR FANS) THAT I OBJECT TO
CHICAGO.
The Cubs have the most obnoxious fanbase on the planet, but Yankees fans are almost as obnoxious, with the added penalty of being frequently psychotic.


10. BASEBALL TEAMS (AND THEIR FANS) THAT I KINDA DON'T MIND.
NEW YORK.
If Cubs fans are frequently obnoxious, and Yankees fans are frequently obnoxious and psychotic, then White Sox fans are a generally decent non-obnoxious bunch, who nevertheless tend to go a little bit psycho. Whereas I've never even met a Mets fan I didn't like.


11. MUSIC
TIE.
To be fair, this, more than anything (for me, at least) comes down to a few key battles. Blues vs. Jazz, for instance (I go with Blues, and therefore Chicago). Or House vs. Hip Hop (which just rips me apart). I would have to go with the idea that New York does, in the end, represent a more diverse array of music on the whole, but the kinds of music that I love the most were perfected (and remain so) in Chicago. So there is no way to resolve this. It is a tie.


12. MUSEUMS - SCIENCE
CHICAGO.
Decisively, though not overwhelmingly. The comparison has to begin with the American Museum of Natural History vs. its equivalent, the Field Museum. Not only is the AMNH larger, but its execution is fresher, bolder, and its exhibits are more astonishing. The Cladographic exhibition of fossils is brilliant, and the Rose Space Center is visually striking and intricate. But unfortunately, that's the bulk of what New York brings to this question. The Museum of Science and Industry steps in on Chicago's behalf. As does Adler. And together, these three institutions, any of each could easily absorb one or several days exploring, do trump the AMNH. As for Shedd vs. the New York aquarium, there's simply no comparison. It's ironic that an aquarium so far from the ocean could display sea life with such panache. But then, it is situated on the world's most colorful deposits of Silurian marine life.


13. GRAFFITI
NEW YORK.
Unless one wants to lean heavily on Pilsen murals (which might be against the rules), this particular comparison is probably the worse spanking Chicago gets. In New York, there's graffiti everywhere, and a lot of it is awesome.


14. THEATER
CHICAGO.
I've seen some great theater in New York. But what I've never seen in New York a brilliant blackbox multimedia political parody of Scooby Doo in which $5 buys admission plus all the PBR you can drink.


15. SKYLINE
TIE.
Too different to compare. Early and changing building ordinances in New York imposed many different requirements on buildings for setbacks and spacing. This, combined with Manhattan's density, its irregular streets downtown, topographical variation, and the lack of alleys has created a rugged, craggy skyline that looks like mountains eroded over hundred of millions of years. Chicago, by comparison, is stark, austere, monolithic. There appears to be more of a plan to its layout, with the neat grid and fixation with clean rectangles. At the same time, Chicago has managed to avoid a lot of the explicit commercial construction that plagues New York, and despite the recent construction of (what a friend calls) "architrocities" on the periphery of the Loop, the Loop itself seems more quintessentially American: sharp and angular. Mountains rising from the prairie.


16. PARKS
NEW YORK.
Millennium Park is a marvel... let's just admit it. It looks like one of those awesome computer-generated cities-of-the-future we saw in the early 90s. And all of Chicago's flagship parks have something to offer. It's just that New York offers a lot more of this. How many worlds have been driven into and through Central Park? And how has Prospect Park been impacted so thoroughly by rolling meadows right there between Park Slope and Crown Heights? Hell, even Corona Park, with its lakes and lagoons and the Unisphere seems like this dreamy thing that half-Queens and half-Martian as envisioned by Ray Bradbury.


17. COFFEE
NEW YORK.
I'm sure the cities are neck-and-neck for fancy schmancy gooey deluxe coffee treat stuff. But I've never cared about that. Small coffee black no sugar is my poison. You can get it on any busy street corner in Manhattan for about a dollar. You don't even get it that cheap in Flint!


18. WATERFRONT
CHICAGO.
Now this is perhaps the most obvious of all. In fact, the New York waterfront has a nice level of diversity, being some 1 part pretty park space, 3 parts industrial sprawl, 3 parts highway/roadway, 4 parts other. What is truly objectionable about the New York lakefront is the lack of access in most cases. Not only does Chicago have twentyish miles of beautiful parklike setting, with dripping grass and black oaks, beaches, rocks, waves and sky, but most importantly, it's all public! For the last two years I've lived about two blocks from the East River, but I have to walk over a mile if I actually want to touch the water.


19. NEW YORK'S LEGITIPAPER (NEW YORK TIMES) VS. CHICAGO'S LEGITIPAPER (CHICAGO TRIBUNE)
NEW YORK.
No contest.


20. NEW YORK'S RANKING TABLOID (NEW YORK POST) VS. CHICAGO'S RANKING TABLOID (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES)
CHICAGO.
No contest.


21. CITY.
CHICAGO.
What can I say? I'm a Midwestern kid. More on this tomorrow...

Concept: Exploring the South Bronx.

I had my camera, but since I mostly just take street shots anyway, and there are plenty online (for example, through the Bridge and Tunnel Club, I've tried just to walk and take in the scenery. I started out at Yankee Stadium, since the main reason I'd come up here was to exchange last years rained-out Tigers tickets for this years hopefully-sunny Tigers tickets.

I didn't get to see as much of the Bronx as I wanted; my original plan was to follow 161st street to Southern Blvd., take that north and poke around Crotona Park, then follow Third or Boston back to Melrose. But the Bronx is a bit more complicated than Manhattan, and after following 161st for almost two miles, I though I had passed Southern, and turned around and headed back. Most of what I saw on this stretch was, as I understand it, the boundary between Melrose and Morrisania.

The South Bronx was more hilly and craggy than what I've seen of the other burroughs, and this area was split between government buildings (to the west) and public housing (to the east), with some residential and commercial strips intersperced. It was very mysterious... probably a lot like historic parts of Detroit or Chicago where the urban wash has overpowered the gloss we're used to finding in historical plaques. This area developed very quickly in the 1930s, and then declined just as rapidly, and the Bronx has had the most troubled reputation of any of the burroughs. That said, the South Bronx specifically, was where hip hop was born (known by me in the form of Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five), and we all know what a driving cultural force that has become.

When I'd gotten back to Grand Concourse, which was just as grandiose as anything in Brooklyn or Manhattan, but on a more intimate scale, I continued onto Jerome street, where I found a tall serpentlike stairway climbing to some apartment buildings above.

I counted about 130 steps. There was a nice view up top.