Post-Tribune

Humanity’s story lines don’t change much

Sun, 19 May 2013 02:01:51 -0500

Strange as the news sometimes seems, the dramas unfolding around us often replicate story lines old as the hills and just as familiar. Everyone who once read Sophocles’ “Antigone” in a western civilization course could have predicted that the people of Massachusetts wouldn’t allow the burial of Tamerlan Tsarnaev within their borders. Something deep in the human psyche makes us want to cast traitors so far out of the human family that they can’t even sleep in the same dust where we will one day rest. Those who remember Antigone might also have wagered that someone, probably a woman, would …

Heaven’s not behind walls, it’s out in the community

Sat, 04 May 2013 02:04:07 -0500

At a recent gathering of newly ordained pastors serving in their first ministerial posts, I heard all kinds of “stories from the trenches.” Many of these tales give me hope for certain staples of civilization that seem endangered in today’s world. One story in particular, shared by an inner-city pastor who looked pretty much like one of my undergraduate students, has me rethinking everything from the meaning of “community” to the difference between heaven and hell. On the weekend prior to our gathering, the young cleric’s congregation and members of several nearby churches had completed a major service project. The …

Niedner: Do humans get a second act after life?

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:45:26 -0500

We’ll hear plenty of talk about miracles, devotion, death and resurrection in the next stretch of days, especially in houses of worship where Christians of the western tradition observe “holy week” and Easter. The press will continue its close watch on Francis, the new pope, as for the first time he leads the world’s Roman Catholics through their most sacred season. The peculiarly American religious activity one reads about on the sports pages will also generate a share of pious talk. The annual rites of spring include the return of baseball, with its early-season metaphors of new life, hope and …

Niedner: The good and bad of living 150 years

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 06:37:59 -0500

“The first person to live to 150 is alive today,” declares a current billboard near O’Hare Airport. Below, in smaller letters, a major financial company offers assistance at planning for longer retirements. Perhaps because the journey that took me past that advertisement would end in Florida, I thought first of Ponce de León, who long ago traveled there looking for the fountain of youth. Back in elementary school, we laughed at him, a grown man who believed such fanciful things. Ridiculous or not, his quest obviously continues. My 2-year-old granddaughter came next to mind. If that billboard prophesies truly, she …

Those with the guns must be the most scared

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 06:28:13 -0500

Players and fans alike fought back tears as schoolmates of children slaughtered in the Newtown massacre sang “America the Beautiful” at the Super Bowl last weekend. What did the tears mean? And what signal did those who planned this moment wish to send? That the conversation about guns in the wake of Sandy Hook will not go away? Or that, thank goodness, we have put this tragic episode behind us, crowned our good with brotherhood, and once again life goes on peacefully from sea to shining sea? Had anyone sought my advice about televising this moment, I’d have suggested that …

Niedner: When athletes became heroes, the plot lines changed

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:08:50 -0500

Like many baseball fans raised west of the Mississippi, I lost my first real hero this week. We knew of Mantle and Williams, and our dads told us about Ruth and Gehrig. But until the Dodgers and Giants left New York for California in 1957, St. Louis had the western-most major league franchise, so we faithfully followed the Cardinals. The brightest star in our pantheon was Stan “the Man” Musial. Since Musial’s death last weekend at age 92, I’ve read a score of tributes to the modest, classy lefty who played outfield and first base for 22 years and whose …

Fred Niedner: Sports often another version of David and Goliath

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:06:22 -0500

“Sometimes Goliath stomps all over David,” mused a Notre Dame fan quoted in one of Tuesday’s anguished attempts to explain Alabama’s dominance in the BCS championship. The plot line this analogy conjures up works well around here. When a local underdog challenges a distant, hulking brute who has left many a vanquished carcass in his wake, the world joins in pulling for the “little guy.” When the David character prevails, we deem the universe properly tuned. When the chosen one loses, we witness martyrdom. The preferred version of this ageless type scene did not play out this time. The 1,300 …

As in biblical times, we seem all too ready to sacrifice our children

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 21:13:24 -0500

This Christmas season, more than any other I’ve witnessed, should have included observances of a holy day that passed Friday with little notice even among churches. For 1,600 years, Christians have observed Dec. 28 as the “Feast of the Holy Innocents.” The “innocents” commemorated on this occasion are the infants and toddlers of ancient Bethlehem whom Herod the Great slaughtered after roving astrologers, otherwise known as Magi, brought word of a new king born in his land. Shrewd and powerful, Herod systematically eliminated potential threats to his reign. Historians of the era report that he ordered several of his own …

Niedner: Hard to find time to make things holy when sales call

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 06:08:01 -0500

As surely as December follows November, right-thinking critics among us have ramped up their annual lament over the secularization of Christmas. A slick publication that arrived this week decried Black Friday’s encroachment on Thanksgiving, the triumph of “Jingle Bells” over Advent’s penitent tones, and the near-total eclipse of anything genuinely sacred or theological about Christmas. The culprits in this scenario? Socialist revolutionaries, said this writer, a movement bent on running God out of America and capturing the minds of its youth. I have my own objections to rampant secularization, but can we really blame “socialist revolutionaries”? Most advertising for Black …

No matter the dessert, be thankful for the company you eat with

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:57:35 -0500

Tradition will pretty much dictate the guest lists and menus many of us will enjoy during the annual season of feasting we’ll enter in these next days. It goes without saying that most who can afford it will sit down to a meal of turkey Thursday, but every table also has its own, unique requirements. In my home, we wouldn’t think of having Thanksgiving dinner without Carrie Klein’s cranberry-raspberry relish or Aunt Gracie’s pecan pie. We have a few options, of course, although they generally involve such things as the attitudes we’ll choose this time around when this cousin or …

Thank goodness it will all be over soon

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 06:08:45 -0500

By this time next week we will have fallen further into the clutches of a crypto-Maoist operative hell-bent on driving our nation into a state of totalitarian perdition, or we will have sold ourselves into the hands of same plutocrats whose inept policing and criminal conniving triggered the recession that cost common folks their savings and jobs even as they stashed vast fortunes in secret, offshore accounts. Either way, we’ll have little to celebrate, except perhaps that our television sets will finally be liberated from involuntary servitude in the propaganda corps. Lately, 24-hour sports channels remained the only sanctuary for …

Niedner: Tales of truth-tellers, and those who speak less than truth

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 06:05:56 -0500

It may no longer surprise us when one of our heroes falls from grace and becomes a cautionary tale, but that doesn’t make it easy to watch. Plenty among us truly wanted, perhaps even needed, to trust Lance Armstrong as he consistently and assertively denied the constant trickle of accusations that he cheated. This wasn’t merely Superman. Armstrong had risen from the dead. He’d beaten the Big C as well as the mountains and had dodged the multiple hazards of cycling on his way to seven consecutive victories in the Tour de France. He served as living proof of our …

Niedner: Remaining optimistic about our planet’s future

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 06:05:30 -0500

Color me worried, although you might not want to get too close. My clothes may yet smell of the smoke that filled the beautiful valley in Washington’s Cascade Mountains where I attended a conference last week. In a hikers’ and photographers’ paradise, we mostly heeded warnings to stay indoors between sessions. In the few outdoor photos some of us bothered to shoot, people stand about wearing safety masks, clustered like survivors of a quiet apocalypse. On Sunday, 6 miles above that valley in an airplane headed home, one could see the many fires burning throughout the region and follow the …

Niedner: The world’s oldest story told again by a wrong number

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 06:06:32 -0500

My telephone number differs by one digit from several local business lines, so at our house we routinely handle wrong number calls and occasionally help the dazed and confused to reach their intended parties. When I answered the phone absent-mindedly one evening last week with a simple “Hello,” a young woman’s voice declared, “I wanted you to be the first to know. I’m pregnant!” The voice did not sound familiar. My mind raced. What friend or relative might want us to hear such momentous news before she told anyone else? When no names came to mind, I said, “Wonderful! Congratulations! …

Solution needed for wasted food problems

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 06:05:02 -0500

Like many children of my generation, I sometimes finished a meal to avoid shame, not satisfy hunger. “Think of the starving children in India or Africa who would love to have what’s on your plate,” my parents chided. Occasionally we replied, “Take it! Wrap it up and send it to them.” Then we heard the speech about how it’s not that easy, although we youngsters truly wished it were. Recent news has resurrected that old regret. Several sources reported last week that approximately 40 percent of the food the United States produces goes to waste. A second statistic, that one …

Niedner: Are we becoming the Divorced States of America?

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:03:31 -0500

While viewing “Hope Springs” at a movie theater last Sunday, absorbed in the marital woes of Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as they play a couple sitting tensely on opposite ends of marriage counselor Steve Carell’s office couch, I couldn’t help thinking about the shouting match I’d overheard that morning. It so happened my car radio was tuned to one of those Sunday morning public affairs programs. The guest panelists were likely meeting the press or facing the nation, but they talked over one another at decibel levels that made it sound more like the “Jerry Springer Show.” I …

Niedner: Fear motivates and fear-mongering pays

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:59:30 -0500

Soon after James Holmes sprayed a Colorado cinema audience with bullets, authorities announced that this deadly rampage did not appear to be an act of terrorism. The tone of the statement suggested that listeners should find this reassuring. If a foreign national or some subversive agent had killed a dozen movie-goers and wounded scores more, we would have reason to worry. If, however, the perpetrator was merely another kook with a newly purchased arsenal, we needn’t get our knickers in a twist. These things happen occasionally. They’re no big deal. Indeed, Holmes will soon enough slip from our collective memory, …

Never a dull moment when we generate our own scripts

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:55:37 -0500

Imagine 400 people of all ages gathered at dusk on the 4th of July in an old high school gymnasium, the kind that doubles as an auditorium with a stage on one end. To the accompaniment of Sousa marches played on a boombox, a projector casts images of exploding fireworks on a pull-down screen. With each slide a drum sounds, children squeeze bubble-wrap to approximate the report of firecrackers, and the assembly issues a communal “Oooooooh” or “Ahhhhhhh.” After a volunteer orator offers a spirited tribute to our nation’s founders, folks depart with a sense that they’ve gotten a little …