Showing posts with label Marshal Field. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marshal Field. Show all posts

Monday, January 19, 2015

So, You Wanna Have a Library and Museum, Lads? " Go Scrutin!!"


                                   OB wans a libray and KaNobi Wans a Museum

"Scrutiny? What else do you want? Do you want to take my shorts? Go scrutinize yourself. I get scrutined every day." -Mayor Richard M. Daley

Colonel Lucas: Your mission is to proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Bha, follow it, learn what you can along the way. When you find the Colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the Colonel's command.
Willard: Terminate... the Colonel?
General Corman: He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.
Jerry: Terminate... with extreme prejudice.


A Library - " A library is an organized collection of sources of information and similar resources, made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing. "

A Museum- "A museum is an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary."

Libraries go back to the Sumerian dynasty when collections of cuneiform tablets were stored by the perky blonds in horn-rimmed glass of that time. That library was in Ninevah, which is near Mosul, in northern Iraq. ISIS, it will be recalled, holds human artifacts in same high regard it holds for human life.

The oldest museum is the Capitoline built with a grant from Pope Sixtus IV, back around 1471. To be sure, there were collections of artifacts looted and held in great care by rich guys going back to all ancient civilizations, but Pope 6-tus gets the props on this one.

Rich guys are not always bad guys - pirates, foot-pads, warlords, or creeps.  I know many very rich people and they tend to eat M&Ms by the handful just like everyone else.

Some rich guys are creeps.  Chicago greatest creep has a museum of natural history named for him - The Field Museum.  He was the 19th century purveyor of 'nice things.' Marshall Field knew what nice was when he saw, but had much to do with 'nice.'  He took credit for the work and words of others, especially his hard-working clerk Harry Selfridge, whom Field managed to run off to London.  Everything that Marshal Field & Company means to a Chicagoan was created by Harry Selfridge.

Field was a been counter and shrewed claim jumper ( from Potter Palmer to Harry Selfridge) who always knew that just up the next street was a some hard-working slob to be courted, hustled and discarded.

Field's kids built a museum for old Dad.

Chicago is home to many libraries. Public libraries are in every neighborhood, but seem as empty as a Quaker Meeting house in Morgan Park on non-election days.There are the magnificent private libraries,  University Club od Chicago Newberry and Ryerson & Burnham, where membership and access is a privilege.

Well, now, it seems that a 21st Century Presidential  library and a Hollywood & Science museum are meeting some hostility -

Emanuel’s office is helping secure rights to 10 acres at two possible locations, in Washington Park and Jackson Park. Winning those rights would require votes by the Chicago Park District Board and the City Council. The Chicago Park District will hold two community hearings next week. The third possible site, the South Shore Cultural Center, has been taken off the table because it’s not big enough.
“I want to make sure that, if there’s any issues, that we resolve those so we’re competitive against New York and this becomes an easy decision for the president to pick his hometown for where his presidential library, in my view, belongs,” Emanuel said at a Monday news conference, Sweet reported. Emanuel promised to play an “active role” in getting the Chicago bids up to speed.
The land deal is far from certain: A local community group, Friends of the Parks, is already suing the city over another proposed museum, funded by filmmaker George Lucas, that would sit on 17 acres of parkland. The group has succeeded in slowing down the Lucas museum, and they could throw up additional roadblocks to the presidential museum, too.

George Lucas and President Obama want a museum and a library which will stands as testament to their fascinating and exclusive lives.

Barack Obama, when I first met him in 1995, is a rather full-of-himself man of limited abilities.  He was led by the hand to the White House, without any scrutiny. He was never scrutined

Obama made his career in Chicago and some career it has been.  Everything was just Jake, until Barack Obama became jumped into the driver seat of America's most important vehicle of change - The Presidency.
Everything is over his head, but not his pay grade.  No one seems interested in helping President Obama carve-out brick and mortar pyramid to himself. Private funds?  Barack Obama lifted every friendly wallet in the nation; so, he must turn, once again to our pockets as tax-payers and our public lands as Chicagoans.

George Lucas? Never met him; never will.  He'd sic the Wookies on me, were I to ever ring the bell to his outer-gate and ask, " Wanna buy some World's Finest to help the poor kids at Leo High School?"

George Lucas became as much of Chicagoan as Rahm Emanuel.  He married a gal with Chicago clout.

George thought, "Chicago deserves a museum dedicated to me! . . .well, Star War, Ewoks, Darths and Skywalkers!" George Lucas wants prime public land that Daniel Burnham and his guys actually re-created from the malarial swamps and sand dunes God created.

My feelings are these projects?  Terminate is too weak a word  - Scrutin (sic) both projects, in cold, ice-water-for-blood and with extreme prejudice.