Chicago

Sing the Carillon Bells

/ Shane / Leave a comment

A short walk from our house lives the “single largest musical instrument ever built”. I guess it’s one of those things that’s too close to home, so you never appreciate it.

It was the last weekend of their summer concert series, and Sara said we should go check it out. I have to admit, I was a little reluctant. It just sort of seemed like a big to do, packing a picnic lunch and climbing all those stairs, not to mention that the kids were in particularly bad moods that day. All that just to see some bells?

I have to say, I totally had to eat my words.

Hiking up to the tiny little “performance room” to see the bells played was totally worth carrying Oliver up the 271 steps it took to get there. Seeing it played really was amazing. The tour guide said that the Carillon Bells were a “percussion instrument” and that was absolutely correct. I imagined someone playing a simple keyboard, but in actuality there are little mechanical wooden levers that must be struck. In order to play, you are literally striking the bells, and the harder you hit the levers, the louder the note.

The carillonist, James Fackenthal, did an amazing job, pounding away the 100 tons of bronze at an absolutely frantic pace, fists and sweat flying. I can’t really describe what is like seeing such an interesting and masterful performance in such an intimate room, high above the city of Chicago, for the price of $3. (that’s $3 total for all of us)

Even the kids enjoyed it, especially Oliver. At first we were sitting in front of the control console, and Oliver kept leaning around back to sneak peeks at Mr. Fackenthal playing. Evie enjoyed it, but after a few songs she was ready to move on. I think Oliver would have stayed and watched the entire concert.

Afterwards, we hiked up a few more stairs to the very top of the bell tower for some amazing views, before going back down to the bottom and listening to the rest of the concert from the ground. Even that seemed intimate, since the immense Rockefeller Chapel dwarfed the picnickers spread out in the grass below.

For anybody in the neighborhood, make sure you make it up to the top to see the performance at least once. Highly recommended.

Should I be concerned?

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Based on Sara’s giddy attitude for the last two days and the fact that she asked me if she “looked alright” before leaving tonight, I’m fairly certain she’s cheating on me with the Chicago Yarn Crawl.

And judging by the credit card statement, they had a pretty good time!

Hey, look kids!

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Hey, look kids! A firetruck is going by!

Wow, look it’s coming right by us!

It’s turning on our street.

Hey, look, it’s stopping in front of our building…

Hey, look kids! The man across the street got stabbed!

#chicago

(I didn’t actually say the last part, I just told them the nice firemen were helping a man who got hurt. I didn’t specify how.)

Sara shares a moment with a fugative

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Sara heard some yelling from outside, but didn’t think too much of it. Still, she was mildly curious, so as she was going downstairs she peered out one of the windows to see what was going on. Our basement has those little half windows up at head level, so when Sara looked out she was eye level with a man on the ground with a police officer on top of him. For several long moments they made direct eye contact, not more than ten feet apart.

“Shane,” she said, “uh…you might want to come here and see this.”

I wonder what he was thinking as he stared into Sara’s eyes? Was he silently pleading for help? Was he feeling remorse from some crime? Was he ashamed to be seen in such an awkward position? Did he feel contempt to see someone who hadn’t had to deal with the kinds of things he’s had to deal with in his life peeking out from behind the curtains?

After he was handcuffed and taken away, scores of plain clothes police officers in bullet proof vests loitered about in front of our condo, more arriving every minute. I wasn’t sure why they were all still there until a canine unit arrived. When the dog came out of the car, it went nuts. Quickly the officers retrieved something from the alley (Drugs? A gun?), after which all of the officers packed up and left.

A little exciting, no doubt, but it turns out this was just the beginning.

As we were driving to the store later, we saw this:

(Picture courtesy the excellent Eric Allix Rogers)

“Do you think this has anything to do with our fugitive?” I asked. It’s not every day that you see a car up over the sidewalk and crashed into an elementary school. What are the odds that it was unrelated to our earlier close encounter?

Well, when you have questions like these, there is only one place to turn: the Internet. Unfortunately, I didn’t turn up much. However, I did stumble upon something I hadn’t even considered: all of this happened while the Farmers’ Market was going on! The car crash pictured above is mere feet from the market, and the street is as crowded during the market as it ever is. It is extremely lucky that nobody was standing there at the time of the crash (I myself spend some time standing on that spot on the way to and from the market).

So what happened? I had to resort to witness interrogation to get what little information I could.

This silver car tried to evade the police. It sped east on 61st Street, leaving a trail of smoke behind – and a large number of police in hot pursuit. It attempted to turn right on Dorchester at speed, narrowly missing plowing into the 61st Street Farmer’s Market and crumpling into the fence by Carnegie School. The driver fled on foot while police apprehended an injured passenger. No other cars or people were injured, amazingly.

That’s right, an honest to goodness high speed police chase which almost ended in extreme disaster for the farmers’ market!

(Picture courtesy farmers’ market shopper Eric Allix Rogers)

At least two people told me that they were forced to drive for cover from the out of control vehicle, so some of the details are a little scarce. Did the fugitive try to run down the alley or down the street? We’re not sure:

I was busy running in the opposite direction in case the car plowed straight into the market.

I was also told that the chase started west of Washington park, closer to 55th and King, which means that there must be a lot more people who saw this (and that makes sense anyway, since you don’t pick up a police escort as depicted above without a little running room).

I pride myself on my Internet detective skills, so it is absolutely killing me that I can’t find any more information about who the guy was or what prompted the chase. Why isn’t this all over the news? A high speed police chase, followed by a crash into an elementary school of all things, a foot race, a flying tackle and arrest, and a canine unit finding evidence hastily discarded into an alley, with dozens of shaken up farmers’ market witnesses to boot! Surely that has to be a bigger story than, “A milestone for Maggie the orangutan at Brookfield Zoo” or “Police see lit cigarette as loaded weapon in statewide drought“, right?

Nobody knows nothin’?

Ben Folds

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Just to finish off the week of “things we’ve been doing lately”, two weeks ago today Sara and I actually got a babysitter (*gasp*) to go see the man, the myth, the legend: Mr. Ben Folds.

I have been a fan of Ben Folds for such a ridiculously long period of time (though not quite as long as Sara, who claims I “stole” Ben Folds from her, despite the fact that I had a couple of pirated mp3s before I met her!) that it’s almost hard to remember a music landscape without him. Actually, I just remembered that “Whatever and Ever Amen” was the first thing I ever bought off this crazy new website called eBay. Sara and I danced to “The Luckiest” at our wedding. My mom liked the song so much, that years later she danced to “The Luckiest” at her wedding.

Previous to this concert, I’ve seen Ben Folds four times, and each one was unique and totally awesome. I sat in the front row of the balcony at the University of Illinois in a venue so small that I probably could have sweat on him. I saw him at a true college show at Purdue as part of my bachelor party, where he was hilarious in between songs. He was very chatty, telling all kinds of stories about growing up when we saw him in his home state of North Carolina. And finally, we had the truly unique concert experience when we saw him with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Still, through all of that, I had never actually seen Ben Folds Five together in concert (Sara saw them once in the ’90’s). So when our friend Dabu informed us they were coming to Chicago for the “World’s Largest Block Party”, we knew we had to go. It was every bit as awesome as I could have hoped it would be. They played all the best old stuff, and I heard every song that I hoped I would hear.

(They don’t look this young anymore)

I believe we have 16 Ben Folds or Ben Folds Five CDs (technically four of them are just EPs, and one is a DVD), and every one of them is awesome, start to finish. I love the old, ironic nerd rock, Ben Folds Five stuff. I love the slightly more serious solo Ben Folds stuff. Even the very newest stuff is good, the last new album “Lonely Avenue” is one of my favorites. And the new retrospective “The Best Imitation of Myself” is probably the best compilation I have ever heard from any artist. I even loved Mr. Folds on the now-defunct acapella show The Sing Off.

You know the old saying, you have to know the rules to break them? I think Ben Folds’ deep understanding (intuition?) of music is what allows him to get away with the things he does. Like writing a beautiful song about something ugly, or an upbeat song about something sad, or to have a harmony-driven-piano-centric-with-no-guitars pop band, or to call three musicians “Ben Folds’ Five”.

I don’t know what it is exactly about the music, but the best I can say is that it’s just beautiful. It’s beautiful when it’s about the human condition, but it’s also beautiful when it’s talking about Americans over-consuming. It’s beautiful when it’s talking about love, but it’s also beautiful when it’s talking about breakups, or relationships gone wrong, or abortion, or a bad acid trip, or people who wear fanny packs. It’s just always, unceasingly, heartrendingly beautiful.

Ben Folds Five is preparing to release a new album, and you can pre-order it here. In fact, if you do, you instantly become a “Vice President of Promotion”, which you should go ahead an do, so we can be co-Vice Presidents together. It will be very nice working with you.