This went out Monday. Obits appeared in Sun-Times and Daily Southtown Tuesday, the day of the wake. Ed & Pete were my parents-in-law.
Obituary: MABEL WINGATE SWIFT MOORE and DANIEL EDWIN MOORE, JR.
Contact: Jim Bowman, 708 383 4850
Jimbowman@Ameritech.net
O’Donnell-Bartz-Schultz funeral home, 773 233 0551
John Schultz Sr. or Kevin Costello
Mabel Wingate Swift "Pete" Moore, 88, and Daniel Edwin "Ed" Moore, Jr., 91, husband and wife for 61 years, died within a day of each other in their Evergreen Park home, Aug. 14 and 15. They had been in hospice care for several weeks, attended also by many of their 11 children and other family members. They are survived by the 11 children, 29 grandchildren, eight great grandchildren, Mrs. Moore’s sister, Elizabeth "Betsy" Coyle, of Tucson, Arizona, Mr. Moore’s sister, Marietta Moore O’Hara, Chicago, and dozens of nieces and nephews.
Both were Beverly natives, graduates of Morgan Park High School. Mr. Moore attended U. of Notre Dame 1930–1933, then Armour Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology), where he graduated in 1935 in electrical engineering. He worked 1936-1982 for Chicago Wilcox Manufacturing Company, South Holland, as a purchasing agent, closing his career as vice president, with time out for military service in World War 2, 1942-1945.
In the Army as a first lieutenant with supply responsibilities, he was also a rifle instructor, drawing on skills that won him numerous marksmanship awards in the 1930s, including the "President’s Hundred" in 1931 in national matches sponsored by the U.S. Army Small Arms Firing School at Camp Perry, Ohio.
Mrs. Moore attended Lasell [sic] College (then Junior College), Newton, Massachusetts; the University of Chicago, where she earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics in 1937; and Chicago Teachers College, where she earned a Master of Education degree in 1941. On graduation from Lasell, she was specially honored for achievement in "sports, scholarship, and personality," according to The Chicago Daily News, and was chairman of the school’s endowment fund committee. She was a direct descendant of four signers of the Mayflower Compact of 1620.
Her family was her life. Their six sons and five daughters attended the parish school, Most Holy Redeemer, Evergreen Park. She was known for her chocolate chip cookies and big family parties for birthdays, first communions, graduations, and anniversaries. As a young mother she gardened with her sister Betsy, a mother of five, often with the help of all 16 children on Coyle property in Midlothian. She and Betsy canned and preserved fruits, vegetables, jams, and jellies and often planned ahead by buying a half steer which they froze for parties and family meals. She was very well organized, from family picture-taking of children lined up in a row to getting ready for Sunday mass.
Asked a few weeks before her death how she managed to raise her children so well, she said, "I always treated each of you as if you were an only child."
Mr. Moore was "not only a professional in the world of manufacturing, but a skilled tradesman and hobbyist," with a basement "full of tools," said his son Frank, of Castle Rock, Colorado. Possessed of an "unfailing work ethic," he was "constantly building things." In parish and neighborhood, he is remembered for doing things for others – repairing electricity, pumping out a flooded basement, shoveling snow.
Mr. & Mrs. Moore will be waked at O’Donnell-Bartz-Schultz Funeral Home, 10525 S. Western, Tuesday, 3-9. Their bodies will lie in state at Most Holy Redeemer Church, Evergreen Park, from 9:30 Wednesday morning. Mass will follow at 10:30. Burial will be at Holy Sepulcher cemetery, 111th and Ridgeland.
BLITHE SPIRIT
A Weekly Commentary
Jim Bowman, Editor & Publisher
Copyright Jim Bowman, 1996
Vol. 1, No. 1
March 6, 1996
FEELING NOSTALGIC . . . Look up. That’s how the first issue was headed, minus the address, which has changed. Now for:
Blithe Spirit, Friday, August 13, 2004.
LOVE THAT MONSTER . . . "Collateral" shows us the human side of mayhem. "I didn’t kill him," says the Tom Cruise hit-man character after his first of many kills of this otherwise pleasant Los Angeles night. "The bullet did, and then the fall out the window." Atop the Jamie Foxx character’s cab, leaving blood stains that Foxx later has to explain to two cops whom Cruise would have shot if Foxx hadn’t lied.
Complicated stuff, presented as more complicated than it is, what with Cruise (obligatorily) explaining that his father had been mean to him. Yes! Instant psychology for the masses, who may not have been asking but must be told why this guy is homicidal to the Nth degree, killing federal witnesses for money in very cold blood and by the way reminding the horrified, powerless Foxx of Rwanda, where many more died before breakfast than Cruise killed in his whole horrifying life.
From these and other verbal ploys and an overall clever and personable delivery, not to mention sheer lethal efficiency and stick-to-it-iveness, the Cruise character comes off as almost likable. We don’t mind watching him. He does not excite revulsion. There’s a trick to that. Very clever movie.
A LIFE POLICY . . . The deacon preached Sunday, likening death to retirement. We plan at length for the latter, but are we ready for death? Do we help people in need, for instance, including family members, such as an aged p? In time, often in unexpected fashion, comes the final retirement. Then what?
This is one-size-fits-all preaching (the best kind), right out of Luke 12, where Jesus tells us to "provide money bags" for ourselves "that do not wear out" and to build up "a treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy." Get ready, in other words. Us too? asked Peter, one of the inner circle. Look, Jesus told him, "much will be required" of you. Yes it means you.
BULLETIN: Dog walked by Yard With Barking Dog across the street, and the yard dog did not bark! Call in Sherlock Holmes. Mystery here. Maybe he’s been relegated to the storm cellar, his natural home.
INOCULATED . . . Terrorists had "impunity" in the ‘90s, said Richard S. Williamson in 7/26 Sun-Times op-ed, meaning they got away with terrorism.
Try immunity. Having it, they acted with impunity.
FROM ATLANTA WITH LOVE . . . Chi Trib 7/6/04 had page-one story about a Dallas-based minister who gave a 90-minute sermon in Atlanta as part of his crusade. This is T.D. Jakes, who is a bishop though apparently not of any denomination. Trib's Dahleen Glanton does not say who consecrated him. Apostolic succession, anyone?
Contributing to the confusion is his name, Jakes, which is also the name of a prominent Chicago South Side minister, in the news a lot as a Reverend Protestor and even once-mayoral candidate. Glanton, Chi Trib's gal in Atlanta, makes no mention of the Chicago Jakes, nor did a Trib copy editor supply such a mention.
This Jakes of Atlanta and Dallas is "one of the most powerful religious figures in America," Glanton sloppily tells us, attributing the judgment to no one and in effect calling on us to recognize her as one of the most astute observers of the religious scene in America.
In any case, Bishop Jakes on the road draws audiences of "sometimes triple the size" of his 28,000-member Dallas church. In Atlanta, for instance, he pulled more than 130,000, says Glanton – Charlotte Observer said more than 100,000 – to his four-day Mega Fest last month. The city was expected to pick up $100 million in business from it, said Glanton.
These thousands are boomers without ties, not afraid of mass meetings as the WW2 generation was, according to Emory U. sociologist Nancy Eiesland, whom Glanton quoted without mention of crowds who turned up to see the Pope in the last 25 years. Has Glanton heard about them?
The ties in question would be those that bind to a local church. This mega event, a gathering of people of various or no affiliation, was a religiously mixed crowd, Eiesland pointed out. They came for "lively worship [in a] more evangelical setting" -- more than what they find in their churches, apparently, but Glanton does not probe.
She says Jakes is called "in the media" a new Billy Graham. Can't she think of one such reference with which to regale us?
Jakes also "stretches the line too far between the secular and the spiritual," she tells us ("some say so"), but we are not told what it means to stretch a line too far between two things. What does Glanton have in mind? Does she realize a metaphor is supposed to make sense? Or is she just mouthing stuff she has heard that looks as if it belongs here?
She speaks of "those who have studied" Jakes who "say he fully understands his influence" on listeners. Who are they, and how do they know this? And so what? You'd think she was protecting a source.
Jakes "carefully crafts his words" -- "chooses them" would do -- "as well as his positions." That is, he watches what he says and is careful about positions he takes.
He's not the only one. Glanton does not report Jakes's anti-gay views mentioned in the 7/7 Southern Voice, a gay-oriented publication, which criticizes Atlanta’s Journal Constitution for, booster-like, failing to report on his hostility to homosexuality.
Neither does Glanton, representing not a local newspaper emphasizing the positive, but one with national-coverage pretensions. If she could think harder-headed and in a more detached manner about her subject, readers of her paper would hear more of the story.
DEAD POETS . . . On Wednesday, June 23, I found myself writing in my Father’s Day gift note pad with my Father’s Day gift rollerball pen. Bliss. I was eating bran cereal topped with skim milk and peach and strawberry cuttings. Yet more bliss! It was nine in the morning on a (what is so rare as?) day in June. Now if ever come perfect days, when heaven tries earth if it be in tune. And over it softly her warm ear lays. Etc.
From what poem? "Vision of Sir Launfal." By whom? Scott? Tennyson? Nope. An American, James Russell Lowell (1819-91), one of the Fireside or Schoolroom Poets, among whom also were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. OP had a Lowell School, but it’s gone. Schools named after the other three remain.
Two other OP schools, named after Hawthorne and Emerson, have been renamed, Hawthorne for a black scientist, Emerson for a black poet, Gwendolyn Brooks. This was like renaming Yankee Stadium after the Toledo Mudhens and demonstrated the power of politics. As for honoring the scientist, Percy Julian, at least he was an Oak Parker, and scientists must have their day too, I suppose.
STARS IN REVIEW . . . "Fahrenheit 9/11" is more "dramatization" than "expose," says Roger Ebert in 6/24/04 Sun-Times. Accurate or not, he doesn’t say. Ebert makes much of the look on Bush's face when he heard of the attacks on 9-11, calling it "odd indeed." Which is devastating indeed, coming from America's Movie Critic.
Ebert credits Moore with bringing "fresh impact to familiar material by the way he marshals his images." I'm sure he does. He's been compared to Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s world-class movie propagandist.
F-9/11 is "compelling, persuasive," says Ebert. That is, Ebert was compelled and persuaded. Bush "comes across [to E.] as shallow, inarticulate . . . simplistic. . . inauthentic," confirming Ebert’s deepest suspicions.
Moore had been "sobered by attacks on the factual accuracy of elements" of "Bowling for Columbine." Sobered, eh? E. reported this? "Moore sobered by attacks," read all about it? Ebert credits this new-found sobriety with Moore's "maybe" being "more cautious" in this film, producing "an op-ed . . . not stand-up comedy." A good op-ed? Accurate and well argued?
"But," and here the real Roger Ebert stands up, "he remains one of the most valuable figures on the political landscape, a populist rabble-rouser, humorous and effective." The film is "exhilarating," thanks to its "determined repetition of . . . sound bites."
Doesn’t that depend on what you mean by exhilarating?
SCHOOL DAZE . . . In Chicago we have "failing schools," never failing teachers, parents, and students. One expedient, an experiment in parental control and parent-school cooperation known as Local School Councils, has flopped. Nine years of Daley-era reform went down the drain. Reformist (call them reformers if things get reformed) Julie Woestehoff says the schools scene is a "shambles."
Sun-Times tells of charter schools where kids toe the line and have longer school days and tight discipline – apparently a real character-molding program. Daley, thrashing about as usual, says he wants more like these. But they make heavy demands on students and parents, and one wonders how many would put up with that.
A NAME’S A NAME, FOR ALL THAT . . . When is a liberal not a liberal? When he's a Republican, in which case he's a moderate. Ask Dave McKinney of Sun-Times, who 6/27/04 has the GOP Ryan-replacement story – Jack Ryan the nominee had to pull out when Chi Trib got hold of sex-club allegations in his divorce proceedings, Repubs had to scramble for a replacement.
Idea: provide standard check list: voting record, campaign statements, the usual items – and compare a well-known moderate with a well-known liberal. Or five mods with five libs, to allow for varieties of records, and see what the difference is.
STARS . . . Two great Dems addressed their convention on the same night – the one who was there when Mary Jo Kopechne drowned and the one who championed Tawana Brawley, who said she’d been raped but wasn’t. Ted and Al took bows, but not for those performances.
GUESS WHAT? . . . Mary Mitchell in Sun-Times had this just in during the convention: Hillary full of praise for Obama’s talk. How does she get those scoops?
RIGHT BANK NOVEL . . . The French novelist Michel Houellebecq, author of Platform (Knopf), is "in many ways just another eccentric scion of the cerebral café culture and rive gauche [left bank], where everything is perennially analyzed in the most advanced ways down to the ultimate destruction of mankind, an outcome that is [viewed as] richly deserved. In this case [Platform], for once, the analysis is from a rightist perspective," says reviewer Tom Wilhelmus in Hudson Review, Spring, ‘04. Indeed, Houellebecq "appears to have rejected the postmodernist" viewpoint.
Can he do that?
MY KIND OF GUY . . . The poet WB Yeats remained "blithely self-composed" when a pet theory or doctrine was proven wrong, laying it aside "with childlike equanimity, giving no sense of retreat . . . preserving all his larger certainties," says Brian Philips in his essay, "Everything and Nothing in Yeats," Hudson Review, Spring, ‘04.
HELLO? . . . Here’s an idea for the "L" or Metra passenger annoyed by loud, extended cell phone conversation: Take notes on it, and as you or the talker leave the train, give her your notes.
OF HEAVY IMPORT . . . Had some delicious "dzem malinowy" on my toast. The "dzem" (Polish) not only sounds like jam but means it, and "malinowy" means raspberry without sounding like it. The lady of the house buys it at Caputo’s on Harlem. I have always said that once cars and radios were sold by foreigners here, dzem malinowy would not be far behind.
UNLOCKING KEYES . . . Sun-Times man Mark Brown dismissed Alan Keyes, Republicans’ great black hope for the coming senate race, as a "conservative talk-show host," saying nothing of his Harvard Ph.D. and UNESCO appointment (ambassador) and even more contemptuously comparing him to Mike Ditka: "He’s no Ditka, but he could get there from here." From Harvard, no less!
Mary Mitchell said Republicans played the race card in slating Keyes, amateurishly citing "political observers," as if to remove it from the realm of what she thinks. She decried the dearth of "white lambs" for sacrifice in this election. Keyes’s role is "to limit votes" for Obama. Really?
Keyes was picked for "his national presence, his talk show, and his wit." How dare they?
She worries that blacks may see in him a black candidate of whom they can be proud – and he will be a right-winger!
Dem consultant Don Rose told her Keyes is "fanatical" and has no "relationship ideology to the black community." Relationship ideology? Moreover, Keyes has gotten votes in his presidential campaigns from the Bible Belt. Saints preserve us.
ADVICE . . . They are upset. Alarms have gone off. This guy will drag out horses libs think they have beaten to death: Is abortion murder? Do we belong in the UN? Should immigration laws be enforced? Keyes will try to force issues, but getting himself fully reported may not be easy.
Reporters who can’t stomach him should lay out his most egregious arguments, fairly and squarely, assuming he will hang himself. His supporters will love it, even as his opposition feels vindicated.
I did that once for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Sox Park 35 years ago, when 40,000 of them gathered there for a week. Our first editions were hawked outside the park as they arrived.
I hesitated at first to report fully what they were saying – their elaborate cosmogony, for instance, sounded so silly. Why make these nice people look bad? But the killer instinct took hold, and I decided to feature their wildest asseverations, punching up the story with what they gave me.
Next day, I showed up at the press box, the day’s paper already in thousands of hands, unsure of my reception. Lo and behold, they greeted me effusively, delighted at the coverage. I had accurately represented their thinking. Most readers presumably clucked and shook their heads, but not they.
One thing newsies should not do is worry about Keyes being "divisive." That’s for the Dem senator, Durbin, and others to stew about. K is "of the right wing of the right wing," says Durbin. His approach is "divisive." Hang on to your wallets, by the way, when an odds-on favorite inveighs against division.
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Available at Xlibris.com: Priests at Work: Catholic Pastors Tell How They Apply Church Law in Difficult Cases, by Jim Bowman. $18.69 in paper. (Formerly Bending the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics)
LISTENING TO HOULIHAN AND OTHERS
Wednesday Journal column, 8/4/04
By Jim Bowman
County tax assessor James M. Houlihan was lucky no one said "Hear, hear" the other day at the Carleton Hotel when after telling how hard it is to reform the tax code he said, "The only alternative is to throw up our hands and say it can't be done." He had made his points too well about tax code intractability, among other things citing Dawn Clark Netsch's proposal made when she ran for governor (and lost) -- 10 years ago.
But he couldn't say it's hopeless, even if he thought so and even if by normal calculation it is. No political figure says that sort of thing in the presence of more than one or two listeners, and it helps if these are close relatives. Indeed, the much-heralded tax-swap idea (tax income more, property less) looks good to Netsch, now a law professor, this paper reported, but it's also a good way for its supporter to lose an election.
Nonetheless, Houlihan was a good presenter, as they say in the business world, and was easy to listen to even if he praised retired Sen. Phil Rock as an "icon" for his legislative civility -- "model" yes, "icon" no -- and said such-and-such "made some stigma to [a] project." Maybe "cast a shadow" on it?
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Are there not two kinds of restaurant when all is said and done, where the menu says it all and where it doesn't? At the first you may have to inquire the soup of the day or whether toasting the bagel beats nuking it. But by and large, what you see is what you will get if you can work up the nerve to ask for it. At the menu-is-not-enough restaurant, on the other hand, there are "specials" that must be explained, down to the last splash of herbed mushroom gravy. How many times have you readers sat patiently or otherwise while entree and other options are rehearsed? No wonder waiting table is a standard day job for underemployed actors,
At your standard bagel place, on the other hand, such as Einstein Brothers, you have the toast-vs.-nuke question answered with a word from one lady and approving nod from another. It's settled: toast it. Indeed, Einstein B. offered a sort of bonus the other day -- watching window washers finish their excellent job of making all things clear and beautiful. This at about lunch time on a week day. Task completed, the two washers sat down to their lunch, brought to the table by one of the aforementioned ladies. Very nice. Homey, in fact.
They were what we call clean-cut fellows, workers worthy of their hire AND lunch. One wore a do-rag. No one I knew wore a do-rag when I was their age. That's a fact. But do-rags have come a long way. Also known as head wraps, they come with a tail and without it, in many colors. There's a Dale Earnhardt Jr. do-rag, for auto-race fans. The "Sport 'Long Tail/No Tie' DO-RAG" sold at SparklingEarth.com "is perfect for today's athletes and active people . . . great for sports, wave control, under helmets, bad hair days and more." Etc. So next time you see one, think NASCAR, football, hairdo.
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What about that two-month-old tiger nursing at a dog after his own mother disowned him in a French zoo? Good deal for the tiger, nice of the dog. It will last until the first tiger tooth nips the first dog teat. It's a problem with breast-feeders all over, and I have it on good authority, as if I needed any, that it hurts.
The once famous psychologist Erik Erikson told of how the Yuroks of the American Northwest handled that problem. The nipple-nipped mother gave the kid a sharp crack the first time he did it, making it the last time. The Yuroks also taught water safety by pitching a kid overboard at a young age and not plucking him out of the water until he got a good idea of what a careless move would get him. Some lessons never get unlearned.
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Finally, I was more than usually happy to find my using "fecklessly" commended last week in this paper. It's one of my favorite words, applicable far oftener than used, even by me. And speaking of me, to send a message try jimbowman@ameritech.net. The line is never busy.
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Available at Xlibris.com: Priests at Work: Catholic Pastors Tell How They Apply Church Law in Difficult Cases, by Jim Bowman -- $18.69 in paper. (Formerly Bending the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics)
