Hyde Park Blvd

Many of us, whether in the jungles of Asia or on the streets of Chicago, had discovered that noble causes can lead to ignoble actions and that we were capable of sacrificing honor to a sense of efficacy.
(Linda Grant (b. 1949)

A Chicago specialty from a planet ever further away.

Given their popularity throughout the 60s, video of the Association seem scarce.  Here they are in 1967; almost the perfect 60s video.  Great clothes, great cheesy slo-mo film footage, great facial expressions.  Why Windy is in Chicago (at places like the Pickle Barrel in Old Town, Oak Street Beach, Grant Park) is never explained.  The obvious answer makes the video ever richer.

One of the great first lines in any rock song:  “Pack it up, buddy gonna shut you down.”

Given Mayor D’s closing speech (which still puzzles me) and the vote, it’s appropriate.

John Cochrane, Yntema Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business offers an appropriately terse reply to Paul Krugman’s much-discussed gloss on academic economics (an excerpt is reprinted on the NYT Economix blog by Catherine Rampell):

Imagine this weren’t economics for a moment. Imagine this were a respected scientist turned popular writer, who says, most basically, that everything everyone has done in his field since the mid 1960s is a complete waste of time. Everything that fills its academic journals, is taught in its PhD programs, presented at its conferences, summarized in its graduate textbooks, and rewarded with the accolades a profession can bestow, including multiple Nobel prizes, is totally wrong. Instead, he calls for a return to the eternal verities of a rather convoluted book written in the 1930s, as taught to our author in his undergraduate introductory courses. If a scientist, he might be a global-warming skeptic, an AIDS-HIV disbeliever, a stalwart that maybe continents don’t move after all, or that smoking isn’t that bad for you really.

Full text available at Cochrane’s web page.

Campus is still an undiscovered jewel.  Dan Dry’s quiet, late summer photograph of the old Harper Library, soon to be a new student Center.

Enjoy the inimitable voice of James Fitzpatrick and a reminder of how one explored the world pre-internet, -television, and -jet aircraft:  via a darkened movie theater waiting for the main attraction, or between double features, or as part of an all-newsreel program a compilation of short features offered downtown at the Adams Theater, a  special favorite of Abraham Rosenberg, grandfather).

Great perspectives:  the trolley cars still run and Old Heidelberg is the queen of Randolph Street.  Trains, bridges, pre-war skyscrapers, and no sign of modern architecture.  The tour heads south to Jackson Park and even stops at Lorado Taft’s Fountain of Time, but no mention of the University next door.

Thanks to WH for the link.

I’ve been remiss, will be posting more soon.  In the meantime, here’s local photog and friend Dan Dry’s take on summer in the city as part of a recent portfolio chronicling the South Side.

In case you missed it, Amity Shlaes in the Washington Post uses Obama’s Team and Perfect Mark Buehrle (courtesy of Steve Kaplan) to ’splain why pay caps for CEOs are a non starter:

After all, people hire for the long term, not just for one recession or recovery. And talent is rarer than we tend to think. “In a world where skill is in great demand and markets are large — when a lot of money is at stake, whether it’s baseball or finance — market forces insure that those skilled people get paid a lot,” says Kaplan. Pay caps, or even too much harassment from regulators, will drive the talent to jobs where there aren’t such obstacles. The result will be fewer perfect games in the corporate world: “You pay peanuts, you get monkeys,” says Kaplan.

Eddie Collins in a 1926 glass negative from the Chicago Daily News collection at the Chicago Historical Museum.  The note reads: Informal portrait of baseball manager/second baseman Eddie Collins, of the American League’s Chicago White Sox, sitting on a bench in front of grandstands on the field at Comiskey Park, which was located at 324 West 35th Street and bounded by West 34th Street, South Shield’s Avenue (formerly Portland Avenue), and South Wentworth Avenue in the Armour Square community area of Chicago, Illinois.

Having anticipated Kenny time, I waited a day before piping up about the Peavy trade. From the outside, it’s a puzzle.

Resuscitate a trade for a now-injured pitcher (giving up the same four pitchers offered before Peavy’s injury, the same four pitchers despite the fact that it’s later than the 11th hour and there’s no competition for a trade that must be made)?

Mess up the rotation for at least a month, maybe the rest of the year?

Commit the team to a big new contracts (for a pitcher no less) in an era or de-leverage?

Trade a terrific guy (Richard) who, having come from the land of no expectations, was beginning to resemble a super-sized Buehrle?

In the near term, the trade means that getting to September will be more difficult. More troubling, it’s a move that smacks of stones (neither the Mick Jagger kind nor the chronic, painful nuggets that afflict both Jenks and Williams himself), of big ego instead of baseball smarts, never a good sign.  And on the subject of Jenks, can the Sox go anywhere with a bullpen that can’t count on Dotel and Linebrink, let alone Bobby J?

Should we believe that this is proof that the Sox will be there with the big guys, gunning for the championship in the years to come? With so much parity in baseball, it’s hard to see the Gordon Beckham/Mark Buehrle/Carlos Quentin-led Sox of the years to come.

Readers know I’m a Kenny fan (remember, if baseball is about fun, he’s the best GM, maybe ever), my first reaction was consternation.

Current thinking: I’m hoping there’s knowledge assymetry afoot. Could Freddie Garcia be miraculously healed and about to be reanimated? Has Bartolo Colon gotten over his grief over Michael Jackson’s untimely demise? One can only hope.

Photo is of Eddie “Cocky” Collins, part of the Philadelphia Athletics famous “$100,000 infield” and second baseman for the champion 1917 and 1919 White Sox. According to Bill James, he was the greatest second baseman of all time. Posted because it’s a terrific photo that displays confident mien, how his mitts hang from his arms like Michaelangelo’s tools in repose.