WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

You have never seen his name on the jackets of the many, many books he was essential in bringing to life.

Jim Agnew is the name and he was a lively character on the writers’ saloon circuit for many years until giving up booze nearly two decades ago. But he was ever one of the literary scene’s unseen and unsung masters. He was a researcher and a great one, one of the last of a breed that disdained the ease (and unreliability) of the Internet to dig the old-fashioned way.

Mike Royko called him, simply, “the best crime researcher in America.”

Agnew died on last week and there is an obituary in the Sun-Times Wednesday.

In the wake of his death emerge all manner of memories and appreciations. I recall sitting with him at the bygone Riccardo’s or O’Rourke’s, or the still-thriving Old Town Ale House, and listening to him tell me stories about having gotten to know one of the former cellmates of Nathan Leopold who, along with University of Chicago classmate Richard Loeb, killed 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924, in what would be called the “crime of the century.”

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Most of the Cambodians in Chicago came here as refugees in the years following 1975, when the brutal Khmer Rouge regime seized control of Cambodia. In that country, there began a four-year reign of terror in which millions of Cambodians were killed.

Peter Jennings once told me about that place, “So much suffering. Such a tortured history…”

He also said, ``The Khmer Rouge are the most genocidal people on the face of the earth. These people are maniacs.”

And so the people came here. With limited education, most Cambodian refugees sought jobs in factories, crafts and blue-collar service jobs. English as a second language and other educational programs helped Cambodians adjust to American life—but poverty remained a major problem, with 49 percent of Cambodians here living beneath the poverty line at the end of the 1990s.

There are only 5,000-some Cambodians in Chicago now and yet they—all of us—have a most amazing museum. Opened in 2004 and located at 2831 W.

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There have been over 16,000 books written about every aspect of Abraham Lincoln’s private and professional life. In 2009 alone, the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, 249 Lincoln biographies were published. The total number of Lincoln biographies, 5,796, is nearly double the number of biographies written about George Washington, 2,972. And, according to Lincoln aficionado Andrew Ferguson, there have been more banks, bridges, schools, streets, roads and highways named after Lincoln than any other single president. As one political commentator put it, we love Lincoln because “he saved the dream, and he lived the American dream.”

Personally, Lincoln has long been one of my cultural heroes. He was a man of the people and a man of the soil, who rose from pioneer poverty to the presidency. And, he did this all with the power of his mind. Lincoln was a man who fell in love with the importance of words and the impact of ideas. For him, the life of the mind was the key to human progress and prosperity. His rise to power was based not on a large campaign war chest or the unwavering endorsement of his political party.

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It is 2002. Studs Terkel's hearing is shot. I am sitting with him in Stefani's 437, a restaurant at Hubbard and Rush streets, a place more familiar to Studs as Riccardo's; and for the last four hours we have been talking at such increasingly loud volume that a departing diner feels compelled to say, as he passes our booth, "What are you guys, deaf?" to which Studs replies, "What did that guy say? . . .Well, anyway, right after the war, World War II, Ric Riccardo opened this place for three straight days, noon to midnight. Everything was free--chicken, steak, booze--and everybody was here. I sat over there, where the booths used to be, near the window. . . . What a wonderful time that was. And then your dad, your dad and I were here one night and we were sitting with. . . " 

"Now, your dad was . . . He's in the book, the book The Good War, and he's got one of the best lines. Now this building was owned by Wrigley and I'll . . . I'll tell you about that later. Ric Riccardo, a very romantic figure.

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Tony Sarabia:

So now that President Barack Obama has been reelected to a second term, how will his final four years in the White House unfold? What will his ‘second act’ look like?

And what sort of reinvention will defeated Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh undertake?

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It’s over! It’s finally over! Thank God almighty, it’s over! No more newspaper, TV or radio ads! No more blitz of unending robocalls! No more sometimes-urbane-but-more-often-than-not-unbearably-pompous-post-debate-analysis by professional pundits! The votes are in, the count is official. The Electoral College has been given its marching orders. We no longer have two candidates, we now have a duly elected winner.

According to a number of sources, more money has been spent on this presidential campaign than ever before: Tally up the professional staff, organizing volunteers, neighborhood canvassing, major fund raisers, local bake sales, the kissing of random babies, the shaking of untold hands, the photos taken or the rubber chicken dinners eaten — the time and money spent on all sides has been staggering.

Then there are the candidates: Mitt Romney has almost exclusively devoted the last three years to running for the presidency; and, although President Obama’s day job prohibited him from being a full time candidate, the power of the bully pulpit kept his candidacy in the public eye.

But now it’s over.

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