tfl: The Flatiron Life

If you live in the Second City and have not voted yet, I encourage you to do so. I also strongly encourage you to make an informed choice. In Chicago an informed choice is anything but a vote for Richard Daley or your current Alderman. If you want more than my word, read about the Mayoral election and the Aldermanic election.

Remember, Chicago is a Democracy. Stop acting like a battered wife.

If we elect a bum worse than the one we threw out, we can vote for someone else four years later. Democracy’s not that complicated. If we don’t start behaving like we live in one, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves for the consequences.

Last week I saw Letters from Iwo Jima with some guys from church.  The movie is well done, but can be brutal to watch.   It is in Japanese and from the perspective of the Japanese.  I knew clearly how the battle was going to turn out for the majority of the heroes of the story.  However, their stories are very compelling and the movie effectivly humanizes them.  I hoped these characters might be some of the ones to live.

At work we were chatting about the movie.  My boss wondered if I thought people who fought the Japanese in WWII would find themselves connecting to the characters as I did.  I suspect many will not.  Japan was portrayed as inhuman during the war and at times they were.  However wars are so brutal because they are fount by humans.  My impression of most media about Japan during the war continues to portray them as something other than fully human.

George Will has an article today that refers to the Washington Post movie critics assertion that “of the more than 600 English-language movies made about World War II since 1940, only four — most notably “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957) — ‘have even acknowledged the humanity’ of Japanese soldiers. ”

I recomend the movie and the article.

Last year, 15000 people applied for 400 jobs at a new Wal-Mart on Chicago’s west.  Now the greedy bastards thinks other people in high decity, low employment areas might want jobs and stores to shop at.  They are planning to open 9 more Wal-Marts as what they call “jobs and opportunity stores.”

Bastards!