About

First, a little preface: ya just cannot overemphasize the importance of the "About" on any website today. With 70 million blogs and counting, it's become essential. Today, differentiating between credible reality and lunatic ravings is increasingly difficult. Nothing wrong with lunatics, mind you. I often invite them as well as assorted sinners to my table. Just don't want them freely walking in my front door and inadvertently peeing in my soup.

The problem is that the net is freedom gone wild. People come and go as they please and say whatever they want, all sensational bluster and bravado, all in a world of very little authority and no consequence.

The net appears to be a race to display the ugly side of democracy. Best thing about democracy is that everyone has a voice; and worst thing is that everyone has a voice. With web publishing now all the rage, the unwashed, uncouth and unruly mass now has the microphone. They are a teeming mob of geeks, predators and spokesweasels all hidden behind the computer's veil. Some sit in their underwear while others don Armani suits; everyone's got their skirts hiked hawking something. So much porn; so little time.

The question is, “just what isn't porn?” I guess I'll know it when I see it. Here is my little attempt to provide it.

And that’s what this is all about. "About" gives us context. "What" as told by "whom;" and "Whom" as inextricably related to one's proximity to the subject. There are infinite examples. Suffice to say, "Well of course she'd say that, she's the PR rep for Consolidated Fuzz. But I'd bet you my last nickel, she doesn't eat the stuff." Today, nearly everyone’s a PR guy; so it seems.

With that in mind, here is the context of what you'll likely find here at Views from the Tower. I am a 50-year-old recluse living on the 30th floor of a high rise in downtown Chicago... looking West. On a clear day, I can see twenty miles or more.

But of course that clarity, distance, depth of field... all comes with a certain bias, however subtle. See, I am held captive here. I am an upper-middle-class detainee. Here at this point in my life, location tends to define a man. We take root. Take the guy who buys the million dollar home and is then strapped with carrying its mortgage. His location owns him.

And with that in mind, this white high-rise tower is a modern-day “White Tower of London.” It served as fortress, armory, treasury, mint, palace and observatory… but is remembered as prison and place of execution. Treason was the charge and "sent to the Tower" meant to your death. It was a place where people lost their heads literally: William Hastings, Anne Boleyn, Margaret Pole, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Robert Devereux, to name a few.

Figuratively, it’s here I wait like Pablo Ibbietta in Sartre’s “The Wall.” Death lazily meanders on his way to claim his prize. I live in the meantime, an oppressive existential angst (ängkst as my German friends pronounces it) that nearly crushes me into oblivion.

It is in that context you might guess what you may or may not find here.

You won’t find: “Traffic and Weather on the Eights” or today’s lead story slug, “Hilary Swank and Husband Chad Lowe Split.” But you may find other topical essays and humor. Today, the muse nags me about “Mysery Breeds Company: The Dramatic Rise of Unhappiness in the Last Decade” and “PR firm announces Ethics Practice." I am eager to hear what he has to say.

Lastly, before you think this an exorcise in the morose, you may be missing the point. I am reminded of the story of Jesus’ last words to Peter. His death imminent, Jesus on the cross calls out to Peter, “Peter, come here!” Peter tries to get past the Roman centurions but is thrown back and falls to the ground. “Peter, Peter!,” Jesus calls out again. And again, Peter tries to break through but this time is severely beaten back. On the third try he breaks through and runs to embrace the foot of his master. “Lord, I am here,” he cries. And Jesus looked down on him and said, “Peter… I can see your house from here.”

Here find various Views from the Tower. It's all about perspective. I can see your house from here.