I travelled downtown Chicago today to hand-deliver my visa application to the Indian Consulate so that I may visit Hyderabad in a couple weeks and I had a couple of hours to kill before catching the Metra train back to Naperville.
I walked around Grant Park (See my annotated map above) (and I do mean AROUND as there was no ordinary privilege to pass through as a pedestrian today) with all the cops and fencing up already for the Obama Presidential Rally. That is the official name today of this venue formerly known as Grant Park. TV satellite trucks have long queued up on Columbus Drive and the ticketed and non-ticketed patron areas are clearly defined and defended.
Over the Millennium Park garage entrance off of Michigan Avenue there is a slick vinyl sign draped with red, white and blue bunting. The sign rechristens the underground car park today as a “Obama Presidential Rally Parking.”
It is days like this when I really love walking through downtown Chicago. I stood a few blocks away on LaSalle Street for the ticker tape parade of the World Series champion White Sox a few years ago. It was over on Orleans Street where I was eating at the Hard Rock Cafe the day mayor Harold Washington died. As a front page newsman for the Chicago Sun-Times I have been privileged to witness many other big days for this city.
Today, as an off-duty journalist I am reminded how Sandburg’s city of big shoulders shows the world where she gets that famous image. I am sure Phoenix, Arizona will look good on TV, too but the visage of Chicago’s muscular skyline under warm, clear skies is a tremendous backdrop for any one who wishes to stand on a world stage.
And what a stage has been set. You might, seeing it on TV, think this venue is artificial and too beautiful to be natural. You might be tempted to think Chicago is being “stage managed” by Obama’s campaign.
Sorry, world. Chicago really is this beautiful. But, please don’t tell anyone. We prefer to keep it a little bit of secret and a surprise to those who think they have visited the U.S.A. because they have stepped into New York City or Washington, D.C.
Of course Chciagoans know that this iconic lakescape and esplanade was long ago designed by Chicago visionary, Daniel Burnham. He inked the blueprints for this stage and indeed all of Chicago exactly 99 years ago.
I have stood at the Arc de Triomphe peering down the Champs-Élysées. And I have stood atop the dome of St Peter’s cathedral peering over Basilica di San Pietro at sunset and not felt goosbumps like I do standing on the Frank Gehry’s stainless steel serpentine bridge looking south over Grant Park on a clear fall morning.
True brilliance is immune to man’s man-made history and to the effects and ravages of time.
Photo by Lorianne DiSabato
I would have like to have stayed there another 14 hours to see what might transpire on this ground this evening but I retreated back to Naperville and my awaiting bicycle and back to my work here. Waiting in my e-mail was this posting reminding us of the utter predictability of presidential campaigns and the currency cultivated in promoting the politics of fear.
To wit, all things old again are born anew.
Negative campaigning — what’s new?
In 1800, Thomas Jefferson endured a presidential campaign in which supporters of his opponent, President John Adams, labored mightily to convince the public that the then-vice president was an atheistic coward hell-bent on ripping Bibles from the homes of God-fearing Americans. A Jeffersonian writer, in turn, called Adams a “hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and the firmness of a man nor the gentleness or sensibility of a woman.”
Source: Larry J. Sabato, Los Angeles Times story
Now, stop reading this and go vote.
As moving as the rally was last night.I was so proud and awed yet again at how beautiful my town is.