Capital of the World

Kurt Vonnegut referred to New York City as “the capital of the world” in passing, in Palm Sunday. The United Nations is headquartered there, so it makes sense in that regard. Immigrants came to Ellis Island, seeing the Statue of Liberty. King Kong attacked the Empire State Building. Terrorists brought down the World Trade Center as a symbol of American financial power, but Wall Street still functions in New York City. Who hasn’t heard of its five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island? Or neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Harlem, Bed-Stuy, SoHo? Or Central Park, Chinatown, and so on.

You can feel you are in the most important city in the world when in New York City. As Sinatra sang, “If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere” in a “city that doesn't sleep.” It may not be the cleanest or safest place on earth, but you feel like things are happening there. New music. New ideas. New people. New technology. New adventures. I have visited New York City eight times, and each of them was an adventure. The cast of characters includes my family, friends, actors, comedians, musicians, artists, and authors. I will describe them all, spending the most time on my sixth visit in 1984. I hope you enjoy reading them at least a fraction as much as I did living them.

My first time in New York City was in February 1972 in honor of my younger brother Nathan’s tenth birthday. I was 11, and we took the train with our dad from Washington, DC, where we lived. (See Boys’ Trip: New York City 1972, which is a transcript of my handwritten diary of that trip.) My second visit was during my senior year of High School. I was editor of the Wilson High School Beacon newspaper and went with a group of journalistic classmates to a Columbia University conference on high school journalism. It was March of 1978, and we took the train from DC. My notes from that trip have references to partying we somehow found time to do. 

In December of 1979, I was a sophomore at Northwestern University, at home in DC for winter break. I took the train to New York to visit my new girlfriend’s family on Long Island. I went from the train station to meet her at a Manhattan hotel where her father had arranged a (possibly charity) concert by Tony Orlando and Dawn. I got to see a few songs before they finished, including “Knock Three Times” and “Tie a Yellow Ribbon.” It was weird because I went to see The Who the night before at the Capital Centre near DC. At her parents’ house, her father showed me the first Sony Walkman cassette player I had ever seen or heard of. I think he may have given it to me.

On July 6, 1981, my band, The Front Lines, played at The Ritz in Manhattan. We were on a self-booked “East Coast tour”. You can read about that at Strejcek.net/bands.

In July of 1983, I took a Greyhound bus to New York City, visited my high school friend Gabriel, whose family had moved to Brooklyn, then took the train to DC. I played The Front Lines single for Gabriel and his younger brother Jem. Jem was impressed and/or skeptical that it was actually my band. The band was almost history by then. In the evening, we walked around Greenwich Village with beer cans in paper bags, which was legal (or winked at). Concealed carry? We saw comedy elder statesman Henny Youngman (king of the one-liner) standing outside the Comedy Cellar or some such club. Gabriel said something to him and Henny’s retort was clever. Too bad I can’t remember either line. Walking near Times Square, I bought counterfeit batteries at a table on the sidewalk. It was a tourist rite of passage in NYC. To be clear, I didn’t know the batteries were counterfeit when I bought them. I can’t be sure this happened on that trip to the city. The last four lines sound like a joke without a punch line.

However, my most memorable – and at my age that means something – visit was in May of 1984. I was two years out of college. The band I had been in had broken up. My college roommate Neil had gone to LA for a PR job, and had returned to Evanston, having lost weight and gained a leather jacket, driving a Volvo P1800. Roger Moore drove one in the 1960s TV show The Saint. After some time, we both had somewhat stable jobs.

We decided to go on a road trip to New York City and Washington, DC. We would visit two friends separately. He would stay with his college friend Rob, and I would stay with Gabriel. We would continue to DC so I could attend the wedding of my friend John Berger. We didn’t have lots of vacation, so it would be a long Memorial Day weekend, leaving Tuesday night after work, returning on Memorial Day. Three vacation days, two weekend days, one holiday: almost a week!

However, we would not drive the P1800, but in Neil’s Chevy Citation, handed down by his aunt. It was just as well. Neil and I had a double date once, going in the P1800, my date and I sitting facing each other on the back seat, which was really a shelf. It was a sporty car designed for two, not four. 

   

Left: Neil and his P1800, c. 1983. Right: an old Chevy Citation ad, not Neil’s blue two-door.

Tuesday, May 22, 1984:

After our respective workdays, Neil picked me up in the Citation. I didn’t have a car. We both still lived in Evanston. We drove to the old Thai Hut on Devon Avenue in Chicago for dinner. We wanted some spicy food to keep us awake. We drove all night from Chicago to New York. I assume we took turns, sleeping fitfully in shifts, chatting, listening to mix tapes on the car cassette player.

As we approached the New York City skyline (which still had the World Trade Center), we listened to “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now,” by Little Feat, on the car tape deck:

Don't the sunrise look so pretty,
Never such a sight
Like rollin' into New York City
With the skyline in the morning light
Roll right through the night 

We had rolled through the night and were seeing that skyline in the morning light. It was really quite cinematic and still vivid in my mind’s eye. It was now:

Wednesday, May 23, 1984:

Neil and I separated in Manhattan at lunch time. He took the car and met Rob for lunch. I took the subway with Gabriel to Brooklyn, where he lived with his parents.

I think I slept on the couch. I don’t remember dinner. I think I was exhausted.

Thursday, May 24, 1984:

In the morning, Gabriel and I took the subway into Manhattan and Times Square. There was a tent-looking set-up with railings to keep people in line. It was TKTS, where you could buy same-day tickets to Broadway shows. Like standby airline tickets, you picked from whatever was left (or left behind). We ended up buying tickets to Noises Off for that night, at 8 pm, for us and Neil and Rob.         

Gabriel, though living in New York, had not been up the Empire State Building. I had been there in 1972 (see Boys’ Trip: New York City 1972), so I convinced him to go with me. We may have walked there, which is not too far, but maybe we took the subway. In New York, the subway goes everywhere, and in Manhattan, many things are walkable.

On the way, we saw Linda Hunt on the street. We didn’t greet her or anything. She had won the Best Actress Oscar in ‘82 for The Year of Living Dangerously. It was remarkable at the time because the role was a Filipino man, and she was neither a man nor Filipino. I later found out she was playing Audrey Wood in End of the World at Broadway’s Music Box Theater.

We arrived at the Empire State Building. It was a clear day, and we went up to the open-air observation deck. I don’t remember it costing anything, but it wasn’t the $44 they’re charging now.

We met the Six Million Dollar Man on top of the Empire State Building. A film crew was there. An assistant director walked over to us and said that they were filming a movie and that we could stay there, just don’t look at the camera. Up walked actor Lee Majors, tall, hale and hardy in a Texas cowboy outfit. He said “It’s called The Cowboy and the Ballerina. I’m the ballerina, ha ha!” He tipped his cowboy hat and went back to do his scene. We walked over to the railing and looked out at the horizon. When we heard “Action!”, we made sure not to turn around.

Months later, I saw the made-for-TV movie on CBS broadcast TV. Sure enough, towards the end of the movie, there’s a scene atop the Empire State Building. For a second, you can see Gabriel and me in the background. You might even recognize us if you know what we looked like from behind forty years ago. Trivia note: Christopher Lloyd was in the movie, with a small part, this being the year before his breakout hit, Back to the Future. He was not present the day we were there.

After all that, Gabriel, Neil, Rob, and I went to see Noises Off, which was a successful comedy, in that not only did we laugh, but it ran for hundreds of performances and was nominated for a Tony award. Of course, if it had won, I would not have mentioned that it had been nominated. (Similar to how a beer that is “one of the top three beers in Japan” must be the third.) Anyway, in the first act, you see a dress rehearsal of Act One of a fictional stage play (Nothing On) where many things go wrong. In the second act, you see the same Act One, but from backstage, where more errors occur and nerves fray. In the third act, the same Act One completely falls apart. “Noises off,” by the way, is a scripted stage direction for the audience to hear offstage noise.

In late-breaking news, I learned that Noises Off was running at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre through October 23. Coincidence?

Friday, May 25:

On Friday afternoon, we decided to go into the city to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which had just been released. It was also near Times Square, where we saw a commotion. A group of people looked to be surrounding a speech or rally there. We tried to shoulder our way into the crowd to get an idea of what was up. Gabriel sees someone in a brown uniform and says maybe it’s some neo-Nazis. We finally got to see through the crowd that it was Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in jumpsuits. There was a camera, and a small film and production crew.

It turns out they were filming part of the music video for the Ghostbusters theme song, a movie which would be released two weeks later, but of which we were unaware. Ray Parker, Jr. and the cast of Ghostbusters are in the video, which is mostly Parker and a female model and some scenes from the movie. At the end, Parker, Murray, Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Harold Ramis are walking in formation to the beat, lip synching. Murray does some fake break-dancing.

Then we went on to the movie theater. The second Indiana Jones movie was not as good as the first, in our opinion. Bugs instead of snakes. Kate Capshaw instead of Karen Allen. Thugees instead of Nazis. Child sacrifice instead of world war. A heart gets ripped out of a living person, which was different, and led to a new MPAA rating: PG-13. It was a prequel, and I have trouble now remembering the location. I had thought it was in China, but Wikipedia reminds me that it started there, but most of it took place in India. Like many sequels, it seemed to have a different purpose than the original.   

That evening, we saw Chicago’s Second City improv group perform at the Village Gate Downstairs. Their show was titled “Orwell That Ends Well.” It included some performers I had seen in Chicago: Meagan Fay, Rick Thomas, and John Kapelos; and Northwestern alum Richard Kind, among others. We thought we saw Treat Williams in the audience. Outside, I saw an old girlfriend and went over to say hi. She was there with her boyfriend, who was still inside. It was awkward. After we left, Gabriel says, laughing, “You are a wild man.”

“What?”

“You were humming ‘Torn Between Two Lovers’ while she was talking. More like singing it.”

Songs often subconsciously enter my mind at weirdly appropriate – or inappropriate – times. Sometimes it’s a blessing. Sometimes it’s a curse. I should have had that looked at.

Saturday, May 26:

Saturday morning, I said goodbye to Gabriel and his family and reassembled with Neil. Neil and I had planned to drive to DC, and Rob and another NU alum, Didier, decided to join us. It’s four to five hours to drive from New York City to Washington, DC. I had a wedding to attend in suburban Rockville, Maryland, that night at 7:30. We passed the time recounting our NYC adventures, then playing a memory game, which I don’t remember. However, Rob recently filled in the blanks for me. You start with a word, then each player adds a word, having to remember all the previous words, up to 100 words. One player sits out and writes down all the words as referee. My guess is that Rob was the winner.

The remaining memories of this adventure are sketchier, in the original meaning of sketchy, as in not fully drawn, but only in outline.

We arrived in northwest DC, near the border with Bethesda, Maryland. I directed us to a deli on Wisconsin Avenue there, named Booeymonger. In line, I said I would order a toasted poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese. Rob was doubtful that they could make it like the storied New York City delis. Would they use enough cream cheese? Yes, they laid a slab on each half. I dare say Rob was impressed.

I recommended the Jefferson Memorial, and we visited it. It’s a little away from the Mall, where the main attractions are – Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the reflecting pool. Putting aside Jefferson’s own slave-owning history, his words carved on the walls, including part of the Declaration of Independence, can still affect me. Knowing his slaving past, some of the quotes are just puzzling.

I borrowed my mother’s car to get to the wedding, I think. I remember being at the wedding in Rockville, Maryland, but recall nothing about a meal or drinking. John and I are pictured below. I think I stayed at my mom’s house in DC, and Neil may have stayed with Didier, whose family lived in DC. Maybe Rob stayed there too. 

John Berger and me at his wedding.

John was the original bassist for The Lines (later renamed The Front Lines), whose story is told with haphazard detail elsewhere. He left Northwestern after freshman year and continued later at the University of Maryland, and now is Dean of the Energy and Materials Program at the Colorado School of Mines.

Sunday, May 27:

On Sunday, I had lunch with my dad, Barry, and Yvonne, his second wife, and Brendan, my half-brother who was three at the time. We went to the Smithsonian and walked around the Mall and environs. Brendan, 20 years younger than me, seemed more like a nephew at the time.

Monday, May 28:

I think I took a bus back to Chicago leaving DC at 1:30 a.m. That would get me into Chicago at 9:30 pm. How did Neil get back to Chicago? Did he drive Rob back to NYC, perhaps with Didi? It would take over 12 hours to drive from DC to Chicago. He can’t remember either.

Further New York Visits

Since 1984, I have been to New York City several times. In October of 1987, I was working at Paul Baker Typography in Evanston. Paul, vice-president Katie Houston, and I attended Type 1987, held by the Type Directors Club at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. This was back when typography and fonts were valued as an art form and not ubiquitous and taken for granted. On an open evening, Gabriel and I went to see The Princess Bride, which had just opened. We had driven from Chicago to San Francisco in July of that year, so I brought him a second copy of all the photos I took from our western adventure. He told me that he wished he had taken more pictures on the rest of his quest, which circumnavigated the continental United States, starting in New Haven. I think Gabriel should write about that.

Gabriel at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, when we visited in 1987.

In July of 1988, I flew into New Haven, and with Gabriel, drove to New York. I had decided to attend the New Music Seminar, organized by College Media Journalism. I took demos of the band I was in then, Friendly Fire. I think I saw Northwestern classmate Scott Byron there. I picked up two promotional T-shirts of the Love & Rockets band. After that, we drove to Toronto, stopping at Niagara Falls, and stayed with a friend of his. We went to see Robert Gordon at a small club. My main memory is that Gordon arrived quite late, which apparently was normal for him. From Toronto, I flew back to Chicago, where my new girlfriend Cathleen was.

In April of 2009, I went to Long Island for the CA (formerly Computer Associates) Architect’s Conference. I never actually touched NYC, flying from Chicago to Philadelphia, then to Islip. There was a wonderful, somewhat unlikely, presentation by Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Among the things he tried convey to us were: that in the problem of connecting 9 dots with 4 straight lines, we are often told to think outside the box, however there is no box; that modern orchestras perform Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony slower than the allegro con brio instruction, which Zander conducts faster; that Bach signed his compositions “Soli Deo Gloria” or “for God’s glory alone.” He shared that last tidbit after he had a student cellist perform a Bach cello solo, live in the room. He related some moving life lesson stories. He closed by having us all sing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” a capella, and I think in German. He managed to loosely connect all of this to the creativity that software developers need to succeed. It was the most memorable workshop at the conference and one of the best music lessons I ever had.

Epilogue

Forty years later, Neil and I are still friends, still live near Chicago, and see each other now and again. At least once a year, except during lockdown. My wife Cathleen and I attended Neil and Edie’s first son’s wedding in July, and Rob was there too! Neil has had nine nonfiction books published, writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, and his daily blog Every Goddamn Day. Rob wrote and drew for years at Games magazine, and cartoons for The New Yorker. Gabriel has written one nonfiction and five fiction books, and teaches in the Writing Program at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, where he lives. Me, I went from studying journalism, to graphic arts and setting type, to database administration, to technical writer, to “technical materials developer.” I married Cathleen (see How I Met Your Grandmother), had two sons, and the first now has three sons, making us triple grandparents.   

References

Vonnegut, Kurt, Palm Sunday, Delacorte Press, New York, 1981, p. 319

Opening photo from iloveny.com.

Boys’ Trip: New York City 1972

My first time in New York City was in February of 1972 (Presidents Day weekend) in honor of my younger brother Nathan’s tenth birthday. I was 11-and-a-half, and our sister Mardi was only two-and-a-half, so she stayed home with our mother, Jody. We took the train with our dad, Barry, from Washington, DC, where we lived. I took notes, which are neither very deep nor descriptive, but I share them here verbatim, with a few bracketed explanations. Pictures of the diary follow the transcript. 

Diary of New York Trip.

Sat. February 19, 1972

AM 7:15 – We have boarded the train. Barry forgot the book on N.Y. and the map and schedule. Anyway we were lucky to catch the train. We thought there was going to be a blizzard the night before. The news said 6-12 inches of snow. In the morning it said 2-6 inches. Anyway it is snowing hard. 

Later\\ (8:30 ? 9:20) We went to the Snack Bar. Nathan stayed at seat. Barry got a coffee, and Nate and I got Cokes and Yankee Doodle cupcakes. I finished The Phantom of the Opera and read “The Magician”, from the book Ghouls. 

\\ We’re in the hotel now. In room 1240 and floor 12. It has 2 baths, 2 small beds, and a foldout couch – which Barry is sleeping on. 

\\ 10:00 now  The first place we went to was Polk’s Hobby Shop which we walked to from our hotel (Penn-Garden). Nathan got a B-24, a B-17 Flying Fortress, and a Lockheed SR-71. I got a B25B and a Tiger Shark [probably Revell plastic model warplanes]. Then we took a bus to FAO Schwarz. Then we went to a restaurant and had lunch. We walked to Lincoln Center. We saw a movie theater before (Paramount) and the movie was Patton. We decided to see the 7:00 show. After Lincoln Center we took a subway to 42nd St. We saw a lot of theaters. There was a movie called The Return of Count Yorga but we went to Playland [arcade of pinball, pachinko, animatronic fortune-tellers, and other pre-computer games] instead of it. We went to two of them and had a lot of fun. Then we went to see Patton. It was real good. Then we took a subway to the Hotel and ate in the Coffee Shop. Then we went to bed.

 

Sunday, February 20, 1972

We’ve checked out today. We’ve packed up. For breakfast I had an egg, toast, and grapefruit. Then we walked to the Empire State Building. It has 102 floors. [We did go to the observation deck.] Then we took a Taxi to South Ferry, where we took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. [We did climb up to look out of the crown.] When we came out I tripped and hurt my knees. [Snow was covering a short curb.] It hurt my right knee all day. Then, after we took the ferry back, we took the subway to 42nd St., then walked to the U.N. We took a 45 min tour there. We had a sundae in their Coffee Shop. We took a Taxi to 42nd. We watched a movie called Murders in the Rue Morgue. They did a lot of head-chopping. Then we took the subway to Penn Central Station. I had a hot dog, french fries, and a Coke. The 7:30 train came at 8:22. Good night.

\\\\    It’s 11:45 or something like that. Pretty soon we’ll be home. 

\\\\    It’s 1:30 now. The train didn’t get home till 12:30. I’m home now and I’m going to sleep. Bye-Bye

THE END

 

[Actual photos of diary follow]

 

Steve Albini and I

This is not another one of my profiles of Christians. Indeed, the final song on his Shellac album that was released just after he died on May 7 was titled “I Don’t Fear Hell.” Nevertheless, he was a compelling person.  

After Steve Albini died, I wanted to share my experiences with him, mostly from 40 years ago. Looking back, he seems so different than the Steve of recent years. What I did begin to see was that, in contrast to the attitudes of many today, people can be redeemed. I don’t mean in the Christian sense, but who am I to judge? 

I’m not qualified to write an obituary of Steve, nor can I claim him as a true friend. Many people who only superficially encountered him or his music tended to avoid him back in the day. He could be abrasive. And offensive. And not just to afflict the powerful. Punching up, but also down and sideways. Back then, I had tried to understand how deep that abrasive front was. And now I want to understand how that changed.

Why did I befriend such a person? My wife might say that I want everyone to like me, so I was working on getting him to like me. Neil Steinberg says he felt that Steve wanted people to hate him, so, he wouldn’t give Steve that pleasure, and instead was nice to him.

Steve Albini is very important to a certain group of hardcore punk fans. I had some experience with the punk movement back in the late 1970s and early 80s. My brother Nathan started one of the first punk bands in my hometown, Washington, DC. Ian MacKaye went to my high school, and Henry Rollins (né Garfield) was also around. (For my recollections of that time, see “Punk Turns 60” in Related Links below.) At Northwestern University, I was in a band (The Front Lines) that covered some punk songs, but many other songs as well.

When I first met Steve at Northwestern, I was working at The Comp Shop in the Norris University Center (student union), where The Daily Northwestern was composed. We also did other work for students, such as resume typesetting and photo enlarging. I was a junior in the fall of 1980, and Steve was a freshman. He wanted a reduction of a drawing he had done, and I happened to be the one to interact with him. He found our prices somewhat too high, and we debated the finer points of non-profit versus not-for-profit enterprises. Nevertheless, I didn't set the prices. His drawing was leaning to the style of Ralph Steadman if I recall correctly. He was definitely talented, and I would see more of his work later, as would readers of the Daily Northwestern.  

The next time I remember seeing him, he was playing a bass, which was duct-taped to his belt (or where a belt would be) instead of using a strap, outside on the Northwestern University lakefront, northeast of Norris Center. He was playing with a band which included Bob Orlowsky (a WNUR DJ) and the band’s name was - I would only recently find out - Small Irregular Pieces of Aluminum. They played a song I knew by The Stranglers, “Hanging Around,” and Bob would mime being crucified. I thought, is that what this song is about? 

Meanwhile, there was another NU band whose bass player liked to wear a “Punk Rock Sucks” T-shirt with a cartoonish screaming punk singer on it. I, on the other hand, appreciated punk as a musical genre or defiant statement, but it never became a way of life for me.

Sometime later, at an NU off-campus party, we discussed music. He said he wasn't a Beatles fan (maybe he said he hated them), but I listed some songs I thought he might like, given his taste. He admitted that he did like "I'm Down." I already knew he didn't like The Front Lines (“unoriginal” he wrote in the Daily Northwestern), but he said Sam Fishkin played him our first demo tape, which he did like. Sam had engineered our first demo, our 4-song E.P. and our single. Indeed, Sam had toured with The Front Lines as sound engineer in July of 1981, for seven dates out east. In 1982, Sam helped Steve record Lungs as Big Black by lending him a 4-track tape deck. 

I only vaguely remember Steve’s Big Black gig at the Paradise shack at Northwestern. I think he was playing loud distorted electric guitar by himself with a drum machine or tapes. Steve asked me after performing whether a certain young woman had shown up, but I didn’t know her, nor did I see any likely candidate. I vaguely remember him smoking Kretek “clove” cigarettes. Maybe not, but there was a subculture at NU that smoked them.

I would run across Steve from time to time in Norris. In May of 1982, he handed me an invitation that said “Throw Things at Steve Albini.” He said it was for an art class “performance art” assignment, and that he hated performance art.  

Invitation as it appeared in The Daily Northwestern on May 4, 1982

I had an idea almost immediately. Earlier that year, wandering home through an alley near the Evanston duplex I shared, I found a decrepit classical guitar sticking out of a trash can. Finders, keepers! I took it in hopes that I would find a use for it, maybe smash it on stage someday.

That Friday (May 7), I brought it to work at the Comp Shop. From some of the windows there on the 3^rd floor, I could see Steve and some buddies out back, setting up the acrylic “glass” framed like a door with 2x4s, based on perpendicular boards. The next time I looked though, there was a hole in the acrylic, and it wasn’t even time to start. I went out to ask what happened. Someone told me the first test was a grapefruit and it went right through the acrylic sheet. (I recently read Steve’s Daily Northwestern article of May 12, which stated that the first object was a bowling pin, which did indeed make a hole.)

I went back upstairs and got the guitar, which was still in one piece but not playable. Back on the lawn, I waited in line for my turn. Someone threw a baby chick, which someone else rescued. When my turn came, I hurled the guitar which, not having the heft of a solid-body electric, didn’t even make it to the base of the structure. I ran up, grabbed the guitar by the neck like an axe (like Townsend, Hendrix, and Simonon before me), and smashed it on the base of the structure, and tossed it through the already gaping hole in the acrylic. As I did this, Steve says “No cheating!” Cheating? What are rules to you, Steve? Anyway, I had no effect on the structure.

All in all, it was the best performance art piece I have ever seen or heard of.

Aftermath of the art. It's not quite a Christ-like pose. You can see my guitar neck in the lower right.  Photo courtesy Lori Montgomery.

In my senior year, I took two consecutive art classes with Ed Paschke. The first was Intermediate Painting, for which I had no collegiate experience, just high school art class. But I had a desire to learn from Ed Paschke, whose art I was familiar with, and an elective to fill. The second was Advanced Drawing, which I did better in than the painting class. Steve (then a sophomore) was in both classes.

Both classes were in studios, not classrooms. A lot of time in each class was devoted to discussion about art while sitting or working in front of our easels: creativity, styles of painting or drawing, improvisation or inspiration versus planning or purpose. Paschke led the class like a Socratic Mister Rogers, asking questions, gently guiding discussion, but not dictating or demanding assent. Sometimes it seemed like it was a friendly debate between Steve and me (the biggest mouths in the class) with Paschke moderating.

The Advanced Drawing class was more active. For example, there were a couple of assignments involving random chance. One involved starting with something random, then building upon it. I shook a can of Coke and let it spray on some drawing paper. After it dried, I used that as a basis for an alien planet landscape, in pencil.

Later in the quarter, Paschke invited the class down to his art studio in Chicago, on Howard Street. Sitting around with refreshments, we discussed planning versus improvising in art. Steve took up the improvised side. Paschke asked Steve if he preferred films directed by Robert Altman or Alfred Hitchcock. Steve said he hated Altman and loved Hitchcock. Paschke said that Altman was known for encouraging actors to improvise, while Hitchcock was known for storyboarding every shot. I think Steve was speechless. He may have been reassessing his opinion.

At one off-campus party we were both at – I think it was June 1982 because I remember Joe Jackson’s Night and Day album was playing – we discussed his unrequited affection for a female classmate. It was a remarkably normal conversation. 

Though I graduated shortly thereafter, I didn’t go far from NU. I continued living in Evanston until moving to Chicago in 1984 and worked in Evanston even longer. Still there in the summer of 1982, Steve asked to borrow $20 from me, partially to see The Gang of Four, which I was also going to, at Stages (a.k.a. Metro) in Chicago, on July 23, 1982. Sara Lee played bass and they had a back-up singer, touring to support the album Songs of the Free. Steve repaid the loan and gave me two cassette tapes: “Big Black songs 3-82/5-82” and The Cure, Pornography b/w "Dance or Die" mix. He wrote a long positive review of the concert for The Summer Northwestern on July 30, 1982.

In 1983 and 1984, we were both writing for the indie fanzine Matter: a music magazine, so I have some copies of it. Among the many harsh criticisms of bands, fans, and music scenes you might expect, there are occasional “homo” insults in his column, Tired of Ugly Fat? For example, “The Cure gave us Pornography [album] and a lovely live single, then went homo in a big way with the abysmal single ‘Let’s Go to Bed.’” (Matter No. 2). In Matter No. 5, he defended some transgressive bands:

“a joke’s a joke and nobody – not the anti-obscenity league, and certainly not some weekend punk philosopher – is going to call some of them off bounds. No rules means no rules.
     “That’s not to say that disgusto humor is the only answer, or that all disgusto humor is cool. In fact, I’m not crazy about a good deal of it, but if it’s funny or makes a point, it would be stupid to write it off because it doesn’t conform to somebody’s idea of acceptability.”

Around this time, I ran into Steve in Norris Center and he told me his second Big Black record would be titled “Hey N*gg*r.” Are you serious?!  He says “It’s not me saying it. It’s Bob and Billy Six-Pack.” So it’s supposed to be social commentary, not racist? I say, “Well, I wouldn’t blame some black guy for punching you in the face.” He considered it, and said, “I can see that.” Well, he didn’t title it that, but according to Wikipedia, his bandmates convinced him not to. The title became “Bulldozer” instead. I didn’t think he was serious, but thought he was just testing me: Would I be offended, or would I agree, or what would I say?

But Steve was beginning to listen to his critics. In Matter No. 8, in response to a letter to the editor criticizing his “hetero-white-boy smug bullshit”, Albini responds, “Several people have brought to my attention how much overt fag baiting I’ve been doing. Having re-read much of what I’ve written, I have to agree. That’s not why I do this, and I don’t want it to appear that way. It takes letters like yours to make people like me rethink old habits.”

I’m reminded of a discussion I had with someone else about a work colleague at that time. We mused over how much intolerance we should tolerate. How intolerant should we be of the intolerant? Today, many people act as though the answers are easy, but in the early 1980s it wasn’t that way. Reagan was president, the Moral Majority was ascendant, hardcore punk was still underground, and rap had only begun to take shape.

Steve in the 1984 Syllabus NU yearbook.
Before selfies, the yearbook had a wired remote camera feature called "Shoot Yourself."  

In the same yearbook, some 1984 Comp Shop staff: Kier, Lucille, Melanie, and Sheena.

I had not thought of Steve for some years, and not spoken to him in decades, then watched Sonic Highways, the 2015 HBO series featuring Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters in eight different cities (primarily because my brother was in the DC episode). In the Chicago episode, we find Steve, now married, somewhat mellower, running a beautiful recording studio that he built, and making money playing competitive poker. Albini had recorded In Utero with Nirvana (which included Dave Grohl as drummer) in 1993, famously forgoing producer royalties as he always did, charging a flat fee as an engineer. I already knew that. It showed him to be iconoclastic, serious, and principled, as well as famous. In 1995, Steve bought the building that would become Electrical Audio, which opened for business in 1997.

In the Sonic Highways episode, a couple of people recall the earlier Steve as a “cynical prick.” Former Big Black member and Naked Raygun singer Jeff Pezatti said, especially regarding Steve’s non-producer ethics, that Steve was “very righteous… to a fault.” LCD Soundsystem singer James Murphy tells how when he started in Brooklyn, no recording studio wanted to help him, so he wrote a letter to Albini asking how to create a recording studio. Steve responded with detailed instructions including diagrams of room acoustics, the generosity of which surprised Murphy, then an unknown. Another musician says that everything used to be black and white with Steve; now there’s some gray. Yet another says, “Now Steve can say ‘love.’”

By this time, I had become a Christian. I got the idea that it would be ironic to have a song I wrote recorded at Electrical Sound as performed by a gospel band. What I didn’t yet know is that Christian punk bands had already been recorded by Steve.

In March of 2021, I read a piece in Rolling Stone about a cat that Steve had taken a liking to. He wrote the introduction to a book about Lil Bub the cat (see Related Links, below). Reading that introduction and trying to ascribe it to the Steve of the 1980s is impossible. He had certainly matured. (Watching the Sonic Highways segment again, I noticed that he has Lil Bub with him in one shot.)

His wife, Heather Whinna, co-directed a documentary about Christian punk music, Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? She started the Letters to Santa program for Poverty Alleviation Chicago and in 2002 organized an annual 24-hour marathon Christmas benefit music and improv comedy concert with Steve, featuring the likes of Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. She had to have been part of his evolution.

In September of 2021, Neil Steinberg (my roommate freshman and sophomore year and friend ever since) called me from his car. He now writes for the Chicago Sun-Times (not to mention a daily blog and nine books). He just had to tell me what Steve had said about me in an interview he had just finished. After Neil told Steve he was my roommate at NU… here’s the transcript:

Steve: Kier Strejcek is actually an important musical figure. His brother, Nathan Strejcek was in The Teen Idles with Ian MacKaye who later started Minor Threat and Fugazi.

Neil: Can I tell him you said that?

Steve: He knows that. It’s his brother.

Neil: No, that he’s an important musical figure.

Steve: He was revered. He was the big brother, well literally, to the hardcore punks in Washington, DC who started a movement. He was sort of seen as the older brother who knew... he learned to play guitar before everybody else. He was in bands before everybody else. He moved away, he had a band when he moved out here. He’s a seminal though not necessarily critical figure."

Neil: He’s a nice guy.

Steve: A super nice guy. He worked at the print shop as well.

Okay, I believe that he said I was a nice guy. I did lend him money. But I seriously doubt that anyone was or is revering me back in DC. I was there in April and not one person showed me reverence. I would think Glenn Kowalski (in the band White Boy) might have been more “seminal.” At least I was in a band with him. Actually, if you ask me, The Razz and The Slickee Boys were proto-punk in DC. Steve did not get this idea from me. Maybe from Ian MacKaye? I doubt it. From some of the multitude of punk and other musicians who he has recorded? Maybe he connected the dots himself. When I first met him, The Teen Idles didn’t yet exist. It is true that The Front Lines, the band to which Steve referred, had already been covering some punk songs in our repertoire. I decided to call Steve. 

I called him after first looking at the Electrical Audio website and the whole studio environment which is beautiful. I told him I didn’t think of myself as the older brother of DC punk. He said he thought I was “patient zero” for punk in DC. I decided not to strenuously argue the point. If he wanted to believe that, it was all right by me. We chatted about ancient history briefly. I asked about the studios. He said he would only record in the analog studio, but there is also a digital studio. I asked about timing, both how far into the future they were booked, and how the days went there (from 10 or noon up to 10 hours), and they charge per day (not hourly). We both had to get back to work, and we never spoke again.

I had hoped to record at least one specific song there (not the aforementioned gospel song), maybe next year. Now it would have to be without him, unfortunately. Writing this piece, I kept wishing he was around to verify my recollections.

I see in Steve Albini artistic self-reliance and self-confidence, even in the face of daunting opposition. I see success as defined by the person, even in the face of social and economic pressure. He was a standard-bearer for DIY bands and the rights of musicians against record companies. We also see someone whose words (and some actions) needlessly antagonized, offended, or hurt people. Yet he seemed to have confessed and repented of many of the hurtful things. Some of us need more of that courage, and yet more of us need that humility.

Related Links

My blog about my brother Nathan: Punk Turns 60:

The Guardian, Aug 15, 2023: The evolution of Steve Albini: ‘If the dumbest person is on your side, you’re on the wrong side’

Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times on Steve Albini:

·       ‘I want the music to survive’ Sept 6, 2021

·       ‘Success means I get to do it again tomorrow’ Sept 8, 2021

·       Steve Albini: The last genuine punk rocker May 9, 2024

·       “I’m a weirdo; all my friends are weirdos” — more from Steve Albini May 14, 2024

Rolling Stone, Mar 23, 2021: Read Steve Albini’s Tribute to Lil Bub in New Book, Lil Bub: The Earth Years

Chicago Magazine, 1994: Steve Albini and the Life of the Iconoclast

Matthew Smith-Lahrman interview of Steve, 1993

New York Times, May 8, 2024: Steve Albini, Studio Master of ’90s Rock and Beyond, Dies at 61

The Front Lines: For details, see Strejcek.net/bands.html.

How I Met Your Grandmother

So, my grandchild, you want to know how I ended up marrying such a beautiful, intelligent, loving, caring woman, when I am… well, me. I’ll tell you the story.

Once upon a time, I went to Northwestern University. What I did not know was that your grandmother was there at the same time. We never met there. However, I did meet Phil, with whom I started a band, and who became my roommate in junior year. While we were at college, we went to parties, and at one party, I met her sister Mary Beth Cregier, whom I learned Phil liked. Nothing much came of that then, but several years after graduating (it was October 17, 1987), we were at the Beaumont, a bar in Chicago. Phil was ready to leave but I wanted to hang around a bit longer. Some minutes later, I nudged Phil and said “Don't look now, but Mary Beth Cregier” is here. I pronounced it Cree-ger, only learning later that it rhymes with Kier (which rhymes with beer), like “Creh-geer”. Mary Beth was there with her other sister Donna. I had not heard the term “wingman” before, but that's what I was doing. I tried to keep Donna entertained, who at the time was a gorgeous model and was sporting that bored, unimpressed look that so many beautiful women show when they are not interested. Phil and Mary Beth talked about her career in commercial photography, and his career trading options at the CBOE. Through some idea he had about making a calendar of the girls of the CBOE, he eventually started dating Mary Beth. I did not see Donna again for a long time. 

In the meantime, I dated some other women. At some point, Mary Beth tried to fix me up with a friend of hers. She, her friend, Phil, and I had a double date dinner. But we weren't really a match.

Phil and Mary Beth were a match and continued to date. When I was between girlfriends, I would be a third wheel out with them. Mary Beth would try to get me interested in her sister Cathleen. Sometimes it was a funny story. Sometimes it was how we were similar, or how I’d like her. But I wasn't very eager for another blind date. 

After another failed relationship, I was living in Chicago, on Broadway at Wellington, and decided to have a party. 

I invited friends, band members, and co-workers from Chicago and Evanston. I thought, here's my opportunity to meet Cathleen in a less pressured blind non-date situation. It was May 14th, 1988. She was gorgeous, which I don’t remember being told before. It should have been obvious because her sisters Mary Beth and Donna were too. Long, naturally curly reddish-brown hair, bright blue eyes, and a beautiful face accented by an effortless smile. What we talked about, I can't recall. She did later tell me that my long hair and interesting outfit made an impression. I was still in a rock band, so I had some interesting clothes. Anyway, the next thing that happened was a double date with Phil, me, and the sisters Mary Beth and Cathleen at the Charleston bar in Chicago.

When we met, I was working in Evanston as a typographer, reverse commuting via El train (with no car or place to park it). I was in a band named Friendly Fire. Cathleen had a Psychology degree from Northwestern, had worked as an ER unit clerk and a dispatcher at Regional Emergency Dispatch, then went to Rush University to get a Nursing degree. She was working as an RN at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, commuting in her used Dodge Aries K Car. (She would eventually get a Masters, then a Doctorate in Nursing, becoming a Nurse Practitioner specializing in Geriatrics.) 

Anyway, that first date went well, so we had some one-on-one dates, such as dinner at No Hana or Shiroi Hana. We went to movies. We had dinner with Mary Beth and Phil. My cousin Aaron was in Chicago, so we ate at The Yugo Inn and went to Max Tavern. Later in June, she took a longed-planned vacation to Ireland with her parents. For that, I made her a mix tape to miss me by, then I missed her for nine days. 

On my calendar for July 3, 1988, I wrote "Navy Pier" and "Love". We went for the fireworks. The next day, we went to Grant Park for a picnic with my cousin Aaron and Cathleen's sister Donna. Here we are:

By her birthday, July 12 (less than two months after meeting), she was ready for me to meet her parents. We went to their home in Harwood Heights for a birthday party. I don’t remember much about it, so it wasn’t a disaster. 

Sometimes I found myself looking for flaws in her beauty to try to explain why she was with me. Eventually, I learned that stunningly beautiful women attract narcissists and pathological liars, and otherwise normal men who will lie to impress someone they feel is out of their league. I was apparently not one of those, except for the out-of-their-league part. Or as my friend Neil, who was my roommate at NU freshman and sophomore year, said later about why our respective wives are with us, “because most men are a-holes.”

In time, I found myself writing “The Way I Do,” a love song for Cathleen. You can hear it on the Internet, assuming the website is still there. Just in case, here are some of the lyrics:

Is this feeling an illusory notion?
Do all my traumas fade away?
But they're the building blocks of my emotions
The past is always here to stay

The way I love you
I love you the way I do

Finally, an equilibrium of desire
An ideal intersection of our space
A symmetry in what we require 
Emotional progress at a logical pace

The last known romantic in a world full of cynics
Where everyone survives on his own
You're never more alone than when you've been together
You're never more together than when you've been alone

Okay, it's not a Shakespearean sonnet. I was in my twenties. One year later I wrote another song for Cathleen called "One Year Later," followed over the years by "I Still Need You," "Far Above Rubies," "Silver Lining," and the forthcoming "Nothing Can Separate Us." We even wrote songs together, such as “Healer of Our Hearts” and “Hope for You All.”

After we had declared our love for each other, I wondered if we should marry. I was somewhat leery because my parents had divorced. I mentioned that to my mother, and she said not to let that sway me, that anyway they had almost 20 years good years, plus three wonderful children to show for it. “Besides,” she said, “you’re not going to do better than her.” Neil echoed that sentiment. “You’re not going to meet anyone better who gives you the time of day.” 

Later I would marvel at how we had not met at Northwestern. Were we fated to meet? Was I always looking for her, but didn’t know it? Such is the romantic thinking of young lovers. 

So, I proposed to her in May of 1989, a year after we met. I knew she would say yes because we had already discussed who we would invite to a wedding if we got married. And planned the restaurant where I would propose. And the engagement ring. We then planned the wedding for the following year, on May 27, 1990. By the time of our rehearsal dinner, Neil said he had thought Cathleen was “one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, but that’s the least of her qualities.” We were wed in Chicago at the 2nd Unitarian Church on Barry Avenue, by a Catholic priest and a Unitarian minister. We had a wonderful two-week honeymoon in California: Half Moon Bay, San Francisco, Napa Valley, Yosemite National Park, and visiting my father Barry, his wife Yvonne, and my half-brother Brendan in Nevada City. 

Conor was born in 1992 and Liam in 1996. Your parents know the rest. 

Related Links

The Front Lines (the band)

Friendly Fire (the band)

"The Way I Do" 

"Healer of Our Hearts"

Fred (Mister) Rogers, Christian

Christianity seems like a hard sell these days. Some of its most visible spokespeople are blowhards, narcissists, charlatans, or criminals. As a Christian, I would like to present some alternative examples of Christians for your consideration. My first essay was about Martin Luther King, Jr. My second is about Fred Rogers, host of Mister Rogers Neighborhood…

Fred Rogers commemorative stamp unveiled on March 23, 2018.

It might seem obvious that Fred Rogers was a Christian if you know that he was an ordained Presbyterian minister. But if he was a Christian, wasn’t he hiding his light under a basket (Matthew 5:14-16)? Shouldn’t he have been evangelizing his faith?

I would say that Rogers was evangelizing, implicitly in his television show, but also personally to everyone he met. He ministered to interviewers, including Tom Junod, Tim Madigan, and Amy Hollingsworth. He cared for the spiritual needs of colleagues, musicians, and children and others that he met on the street, in restaurants, and elsewhere.

In fact, I would say that Rogers modeled Christ in his compassion for everyone he met.

The Basics

Fred McFeely Rogers was born to one of the richest families in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1928. Due to the difficulty of his birth, his parents did not have another child until adopting Elaine (“Laney”) as Fred’s sister when he was 11. His parents employed at various times, a chauffeur/butler, and a cook/maid. His mother Nancy was very active in church, helping the poor in the community, and in local philanthropy. Young Fred was “proud of his mother’s good works, and at the earliest age he shared the family devotion to the Presbyterian Church.” (King, p.22)

A formative experience in his early school years was being chased by bullies yelling “Fat Freddy!” Saved by a kindly neighbor, Fred said later that “the advice I got from the grown-ups was, ‘Just let on you don’t care, then nobody will bother you.’” Fred never accepted the advice that pretending not to care would work. (King, p.31) As an emotional outlet, he played piano and used puppets to work out conflict. He would put on shows for family and neighbors.

In high school, some thought of him as “a bit of a sissy” (King, p.32), until star athlete Jim Stumbaugh vouched that Fred was “OK.” Fred had, at his mother’s suggestion, taken Jim’s homework to him when he was hospitalized with a football injury. They got to know each other and see the substantial people behind the stereotypes.

Rogers started college at Dartmouth but transferred to Rollins College in Florida to pursue a music composition degree. He was greeted there by Joanne Byrd and friends, fitting in with the music students in a way he didn’t at Dartmouth. Joanne and he shared a sense of humor, and they dated each other some, but she graduated a year earlier and pursued a Master’s Degree at Florida State.

“I went home my senior year for a vacation in Latrobe, and I saw this new thing called television,” said Fred years later. “And I saw people dressed in some kind of costumes, literally throwing pies in each other’s faces. I was astounded at that.” Rogers understood the extraordinary power of the medium, even as others saw it merely as a diversion, and he understood its potential for education, perhaps more fully than anyone else at the time. (King, p. 66)

Fred had planned to tell his parents that he wanted to go to Seminary, but instead decided to move to New York city where he found a job at NBC based on his music degree, and with the help of his father’s connections. He was on the ground floor of the nascent medium, working hands-on as a gopher, making connections. In 1952, Fred proposed to Joanne by letter, flying to Florida to seal the deal. They were married that year.

In 1953, Rogers jumped at the chance to work on educational television on the newly established Pittsburgh public television station, WQED, 40 miles from Latrobe.  He soon became program manager there.

“I was just at the right place at the very right time,” Rogers later recalled. “I knew that the decision to leave New York and to come to Pittsburgh and launch in this place nobody had ever heard of was the correct one for me. It gave me a chance to use all the talents that I had ever been given. You know, I loved children, I loved drama, I loved music, I loved whimsy, I loved puppetry.” (King, p.92)

From 1954 to 1961, Fred Rogers and Josie Carey hosted The Children’s Corner on WQED. In 1955, while working full-time on the show, he enrolled part-time at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, earning a Master of Divinity in 1963. At first, the Pittsburgh Presbytery wanted to ordain Rogers as a minister to follow a traditional path to a pastorship in a church. But Bill Barker, another pastor who saw the potential of Rogers’ TV calling, told them:

Look, here’s an individual who has his pulpit proudly in front of a TV camera. His congregation are little people from the ages of about two or three on up to about seven or eight. And this is a whole congregation of hundreds of thousands if not millions of kids, and this is a man who has been authentically called by the Lord as much as any of you guys sitting out there. (King, p. 124)

Fred and Joanne had two children: James in 1959, and John in 1961. They all moved to Toronto in the summer of 1961, staying until the summer of 1964, for Rogers to host the new MisteRogers show on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). From late 1964 to spring of 1966, MisteRogers aired on WTAE, Pittsburgh’s commercial ABC affiliate. From late 1966 to spring of 1967, it was on the Eastern Educational Network (the EEN, a precursor to PBS). Finally, in 1968, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood debuted nationally on what would soon become PBS, airing 895 new episodes with Fred Rogers until 2001. Fred Rogers died in 2003.

Always Ministering

Rogers had left The Children’s Corner in 1961 to complete his M.Div, then was ordained with a special television ministry. However, the church declined to fund this endeavor, so Rogers had to find another avenue. He did film a special episode of The Children’s Corner for the church with co-host Josie Carey in 1960, titled “Sunday on the Children’s Corner.” This might have been what a church-sponsored series would look like, with its more pointed Christian messages. (Tuttle, p. 74) However, the trade-off would have been a smaller, religious audience confined to the church versus a wider, inclusive audience. Preaching to the choir versus subtle teaching without a religious overtone. As it was, the former was not an option.

Television reporter Bob Faw said, “The real Mister Rogers never preached, [never] even mentioned God [on his show]. He never had to.” (Hollingsworth, p. xxv)

While his on-air ministry may have been more subtle, his personal ministry was more direct. Fred Rogers had a unique capacity for relationship, what Esquire magazine writer Tom Junod once called "a fearlessness, an unashamed insistence on intimacy." (Madigan, p. 6) Rogers told Tom Junod “I’ve just met you, but I’m invested in who you are and who you will be, and I can’t help it.” (Junod, Esquire, p. 177)

Author and Rogers interviewer Tim Madigan tells Shea Tuttle:

In the first telephone call, at the end of an hour, a fairly long time for a celebrity to be talking to a reporter, he said to me - and it was a really amazing interview - but he said to me, “Tim, do you know what the most important thing in my life is right now?” And I said, “Well, Mr. Rogers, we just met. How could I possibly know that?” And he said, “Speaking to Mr. Tim Madigan on the telephone.” ... “He embodied the sacred presence from the moment he woke up in the morning until the time he went to sleep at night.” (Madigan, quoted in Tuttle, p. 33)

Rogers was especially concerned with ministering to children. For example, once while dining out with Joanne and a colleague, a little boy appeared at the table, his head just below the tabletop at Fred’s side. Fred looked down. “My dog died,” said the boy, simply, and in an instant Rogers was kneeling on the floor with the boy talking about pets and death and a little child’s struggle to understand. (King, p. 180)

Famed musician and guest on the show, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, said of Rogers “He never talks down to kids. It’s a relationship that’s based on love and respect, with boundaries…. I think Mister Rogers ‘gets it’ by creating the safe place on television, to actually make sure that the unsafe feelings that one has, well, let’s say, in exploring music or in exploring life, [are] in context of something that is supported, that is as basic as—well, the most precious thing, unconditional love.” (King, p. 283)

Another famous musician, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis grew up watching Fed Rogers’ show. “He was love” says Marsalis. (The Bible says in 1John 4:8, “God is love.”) “You thought that the show was not real, you know, ‘just a show. He’s not actually like that.’… Then when I met him… [as a guest on the show] it was an unbelievable pleasure to see that he was exactly as he was on the TV show. He was patient, calm, generous.” (King, p. 275)

Rogers’ appearances—predictably mobbed by fans—suffered logistically from the amount of time he felt compelled to give each child. (King, p. 289) This brings to mind Matthew 19:13-14, where people brought children to Jesus so that he would lay his hands on them and pray, “and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

King opens his biography of Rogers with this story:

In 1985, Rogers said he wanted no children to be present when he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Rogers knew that if there were children in the studio audience, he wouldn’t focus on Winfrey’s questions, he wouldn’t pay heed to her legion of viewers, and he wouldn’t convey the great importance of his work. The children and their needs would come first. But he found the audience composed almost entirely of families, mainly very young children with their mothers. Winfrey’s staff had decided that it would be fun to have him take questions from the audience. As soon as the children started to ask him questions directly, he seemed to get lost in their world, slowing his responses to their pace, and even hunching in his chair as if to insinuate himself down to their level. In the audience, Winfrey leaned down with her microphone to ask a little blond girl if she had a question for Mister Rogers. Instead of answering, the child broke away from her mother, pushed past Winfrey, and ran down to the stage to hug him. As the only adult present not stunned by this, apparently, Fred Rogers knelt to accept her embrace. Minutes later, he was kneeling again, this time to allay a small boy’s concerns about a miniature trolley installed on Winfrey’s stage. As the two conferred quietly, Winfrey stood in the audience looking more than a little lost. Seeing that the show was slipping away from her, she signaled her crew to break to an ad. For Fred Rogers, it was always this way when he was with children, in person or on his hugely influential program. (King, p. 1-2)

Pray without Ceasing

In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, the Apostle Paul nears the close of his letter with the seemingly impossible advice to “pray without ceasing.” Rather than try to summarize the various interpretations I’ve seen and heard, I’ll just say I think it’s like keeping open the lines of communication with God. Rogers appears to have done so.

Amy Hollingsworth, author of The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers, writes about “the importance of prayer” to Rogers. “Each morning he prayed for his family and friends by name, still offering his gratitude for those on his list who had passed away.” (Hollingsworth, p. 20)

Biographer King writes “Rogers’ [daily] preparation was not so much professional as it was spiritual: He would study passages of interest from the Bible, and then he would visualize who he would be seeing that day, so that he would be prepared to be as caring and giving as he could be. Fred’s prayers in those early morning sessions were not for success or accomplishment, but rather for the goodness of heart to be the best person he could be in each of the encounters he would have that day.” (King, p. 317)

Every day that Fred walked onto the Neighborhood set to film episodes of the program, he prayed the same prayer: “Let some word that is heard be yours.” (Tuttle, p. 159)

In 1992, Rogers gave the invocation at the Boston University commencement, saying, in part:

Now, you know prayer is asking for something, and sometimes you get a yes answer and sometimes you get a no answer. And just like anything else you might get angry when you get a no answer. But God respects your feelings, and God can take your anger as well as your happiness. So, whatever you have to offer God through prayer—it seems to me—is a great gift. Because the thing God wants most of all is a relationship with you.

When accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award Emmy in 1997, Rogers said at the podium, according to Tom Junod:

“All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are…. Ten seconds of silence.” And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, “I’ll watch the time,” and there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn’t kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked… and so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds… and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, “May God be with you” to all his vanquished children. (Junod, Esquire, p. 136)

To me, that was Rogers leading them in prayer.

When author Tim Madigan’s brother Steve fell ill, Tim told him “Fred prays for you by name every morning. Did you know that?” “You've got to be kidding me,” Steve said. “Mister Rogers prays for me?” “Every morning,” Tim said. “I know he does.” “God,” Steve said, and his eyes misted over. “That's so awesome.” (Madigan, p. 109)

Rogers is known to have had a constantly growing list of people to pray for every morning. He also prayed at other times and was often moved to reach out to people when he did so. If you want to be led by the Holy Spirit, you have to keep the lines of communication open through prayer.

Led by the Holy Spirit

What does it mean to be “led by the Holy Spirit”? Rogers told this story:

Last week I had this very strong urge to visit a young woman I know who is pregnant and unmarried. I haven't seen her in a long time. Yet, here was this exceedingly strong urge to see her. We had a good visit, a long visit. Very near the end of our visit, she said, “Mr. Rogers, did you know this was my birthday?” I said, “No.” She said, “I just wondered if that was the reason you stopped in.” When I left, I was thinking God really cares about people who might seem like the outcasts of society. Why did I stop in? If it’s mind reading, it needs to be called inspired mind reading. (Tuttle, p. 162)

Another time, Fred had visited Neighborhood employee Lisa Hamilton and her family when her husband had cancer and prayed with them. He did this regularly for months. On the morning her husband died, before Lisa told anyone, the doorbell rang, and it was Fred. “I was praying,” Fred said by way of explanation, “and I felt you needed some help.” Lisa said, “So Fred Rogers is the person who called the funeral home. And he wept with me over Scott’s body - the only person I remember weeping with me.” David Newell (Mister McFeely) said Fred had never mentioned his timely appearance at Lisa’s door to the staff. But this didn't surprise Lisa. “He did a lot quietly,” she said. “So, I feel that I am one of probably hundreds of people with stories like that.” (Tuttle, p. 163-4)

“Miracles”

Maxwell King quotes Elaine Lynch, secretary at Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, a group of Make-a-Wish children included a twelve-year-old boy who was autistic:

I tried to get as much information from the family as I could so Fred had an idea of what their problems were. This was a mother and father, and the autistic boy was, I think, the oldest of three. He had a sister, and he also had a younger brother, all of whom, they claimed, had never heard him speak. He grunted— “Mmm, mmm”—what he wanted, pointed to what he wanted. Fred, when he came out to visit with the family, had the King and Queen puppets on his hands, and he started talking to the family, and he finally got to the boy, who was almost as tall as Fred at that point. The child started speaking in full sentences to the King and Queen. Well, I don’t know whether you can imagine what the family was going through at that point, hearing their son speak for the first time. The father started blubbering.

Rogers said nothing as himself. He stayed in character as the voices of King Friday XIII and Queen Sara Saturday. And Lynch—who later referred to the whole exchange as a “miracle”—rushed upstairs to get the family their own King and Queen puppets from Rogers’s office. (King, p. 224)

In the “Hero” article, Tom Junod tells the story of a boy with cerebral palsy who had been abused and would harm himself. Sometimes he thought God must hate him. The boy’s mother sometimes felt that watching Mister Rogers was the only thing that kept him alive. Mister Rogers came to visit him, but he could not control himself:

Mister Rogers didn’t leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody…. He said, “I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?” On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said, “I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?” ... The boy was thunderstruck because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn’t know if he could do it, he said he would, he said he’d try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn’t talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean God likes him, too. (Junod, Esquire)

TV and Holy Ground

Shea Tuttle recounts that Fred attended a sermon which he found terrible, but the woman next to him said that it was exactly what she needed to hear. Rogers said:

I thought about that for a long time, and finally, I realized that I had come in judgment and my friend had come in need. The Holy Spirit was able to translate the words of that feeble sermon to speak to the need of my friend.... That experience changed my life. Ever since, I’ve been able to recognize that the space between someone who is offering the best he can and someone who is in need is Holy Ground. Even the space between the television set and the receiver in need (and who isn’t in some kind of need) is Holy Ground. (Tuttle, p. 158-159)

Rogers wrote in a letter to a friend: “What a tough job to communicate the gift of Jesus Christ to anybody. It can’t simply be talked about, can it? Jesus himself used parables – so I guess that’s our directive: try to show the kingdom of God through stories as much as possible.” (Tuttle, p. 105)

Rogers told Hollingsworth, regarding the relatively slow pace of his show, “It seems to me that our world needs more time to wonder and to reflect about what is inside, and if we take time, we can often go much deeper as far as our spiritual life is concerned than we can if there’s constant distraction. And often television gives such constant distraction—noise and fast-paced things—which doesn’t allow us to take time to explore the deeper levels of who we are—and who we can become.”  (Hollingsworth, p. 3)

Rogers’ Theology

While at Western Theological Seminary, Dr. Bill Orr’s Systematic Theology had great effect on Fred:

Oh, we learned about epistemology and Christology and eschatology and sanctification and justification and existentialism, but most of all we witnessed the unfolding of the life of one of God’s saints. Dr. Orr would be quick to remind me that we’re all saints, we believers; nevertheless, when you see someone go out to lunch on a winter’s day and come back without his overcoat because he had given it to a person who was cold, you have a growing understanding of “living theologically.” When we asked Dr. Orr about the coat, he said, “Oh, I have one other at home,” and that was all he said about it. (Tuttle, p. 57)

In a 1976 radio broadcast Rogers produced for The Protestant Hour, Rogers said “Christianity is a matter of being accepted as we are. Jesus certainly wasn’t concerned about people’s stations in life or what they looked like or whether they were perfect in behavior or feeling. How often in the New Testament we read of Jesus’ empathy for those people who felt their own lives to be imperfect, and the marvelous surprise and joy when they sensed his great acceptance.” (Tuttle, p. 24)

When Hollingsworth told Rogers of an upcoming interview, he wrote “How wonderful that you will be interviewing Cardinal Bernardin! He has been such a hero to so many. His forgiveness of his accuser is legendary and healing: a real reflection of Jesus. I often think of what my professor-friend Dr. Orr used to say: ‘The only thing that evil cannot stand is forgiveness.’”

Author Tim Madigan interviewed Rogers in 1995, and they continued corresponding by letter, email, and phone. In 1997, Madigan was contemplating divorce, but was afraid of what Rogers’ response would be, and said so. Rogers responded “Tim, please know that I would never forsake you, that I will never be disappointed with you, that I would never stop loving you.” This is reminiscent of Hebrews 13:5, “he [God] hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Rogers continued, “As for suffering: I believe that there are fewer people than ever who escape major suffering in this life. In fact, I’m fairly convinced that the Kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted. You write of ‘powerlessness.’ Join the club, we are not in control: God is.” (Madigan, p. 3) Later, Rogers says to Madigan about grief, “With grief there is, inevitably, some time of anger and you know, God can take our anger. I think God respects the fact that we would share a whole gamut of feelings.” (Madigan, p. 159) If you doubt that God wants to hear your true feelings, read through the Psalms.

Rogers said elsewhere, “Frankly, I think that after we die, we have this wide understanding of what’s real. And we’ll probably say, ‘Ah, so that’s what it was all about.’” (Hollingsworth, p. 147)

Was He Gay?

The short answer is “No.” No one who knew him, whether they were straight or gay, thought he was gay. No one ever accused or suspected him of any kind of unfaithfulness to his wife Joanne.

Rogers himself was often labeled a “sissy,” or gay, in a derogatory sense. But as associate Eliot Daley put it: “Fred is one of the strongest people I have ever met in my life. So if they are saying he’s gay because... that’s a surrogate for saying he’s weak, that’s not right, because he’s incredibly strong.” He adds: “He wasn’t a very masculine person; he wasn’t a very feminine person; he was androgynous.” (King, p. 207)

In Maxwell King’s 2018 biography of Rogers, he quotes a friend of Rogers who claims that Rogers said he had found both women and men attractive. (King, p. 208) This prompted some people to decide that Rogers was bisexual. I am not convinced that he was, and besides that second-hand quote, I’ve seen no other evidence. Rather than get derailed by the controversy, I link to a Snopes article that discusses it thoroughly and dispassionately: Was Mr. Rogers Bisexual? 

Rogers himself said “I’m not John Wayne, so consequently, for some people I’m not the model for the man in the house.” (King, p. 207) Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne, writes about John Wayne as a role model for some white conservative male evangelical Christians; those whose “evangelical militancy” and “warrior God” have a “Jesus more closely resembling William Wallace than either Mother Teresa or Mister Rogers.” (Du Mez, p. 174)

Did Mister Rogers Ruin Our Children?

Did Mister Rogers’ message that “There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are” spoil all those children watching his show? Clearly, some pundits and critics thought so, though without any evidence that I’ve seen, such as sociological investigation, longitudinal studies, surveys, or other systematic data.

In the spring of 2010, the Fox News Channel devoted part of its daily newscast to a segment entitled “Is Mr. Rogers Ruining Kids?” Fox & Friends took it all the way, describing Rogers as “this evil man” who taught kids that they are special, thereby sapping their will to work hard in school, or to improve themselves. (King, p. 357)

Don Feder, a nationally syndicated columnist for the Boston Herald, summed it up: “For over twenty-five years on his PBS series, Fred Rogers has been filling the innocent heads of children with this pap…. Under a self-esteem regime, America is becoming a nation of feel-good mediocrities.” (King, p. 291)

These opinions might reflect more on the pundits and their worldview, which I would not describe as Christian. Do Christian parents tell their children that God loves them? I hope so, though apparently, some teach them that they are dirty, rotten sinners, bound for hell.

In fact, Rogers never told children not to work hard. Quite the opposite. We own a Mister Rogers cassette with the songs “You Have to Learn Your Trade” and “You’ve Got to Do It.” The former says in part:

You have to learn your trade.
Everything takes practice.
When you see what you have made,
You’ll shout, “Look here, the fact is
With a fair amount of practice you can really,
Positively learn your trade.

The latter song states “make-believe pretending just won’t do it for you. You’ve got to do it.”

Rogers told Hollingsworth: “Self-esteem doesn’t come from a child hearing something that’s not true about him or her. If an adult does not believe that the child has done a good job with something, well, it’s not the least bit helpful to say so…. I would hope that you wouldn’t say ‘I’m proud of you’ if your child has done something that might be hurtful to him or her or to somebody else, because that just doesn’t help. I guess we’re coming right back to the very first thing we talked about, and that’s truthfulness—you know, being ourselves and allowing somebody to share in that.” (Hollingsworth, p. 65)

Actually, the idea of every child being special was not the entire thrust of Rogers’ message. With a theological background, and having studied child development at the University of Pittsburgh and the Arsenal Families & Children Center, he was most concerned with the spiritual and emotional growth of children. He wanted to teach them positive ways of dealing with fear, anger, pain, and doubt. 

Biographer King says “Fred repeatedly emphasized personal responsibility. The difference is that Rogers honed in on the cultivation of self-discipline.” Rogers said, “I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.” (King, p. 292)

Jared C. Wilson of The Gospel Coalition wrote in 2018 of Fred Rogers that “it should be clear to those who can make the connection with a Christian worldview that he was intent on treating every person he met as an image-bearer of God.” (Mister Rogers’s Deathbed Confession)

Was Mister Rogers Born Again?

Mister Rogers was an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA). It is not known as an evangelical denomination. Though I can find no documentation of a “born again” moment, in the aforementioned story about attending a sermon, Rogers says that “changed my life.” 

This is what Jesus says to explain the phrase “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” in John 3:3-6:

Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

In other words, it is the Holy Spirit that is born in you when you are “born again.” When you encounter someone who was not raised in the evangelical tradition, being “born again” might mean nothing, or it may have a negative political connotation. In evangelical circles, your testimony of being born again (or deciding to follow Christ) is held in high regard. When you encounter someone who is being led by the Holy Spirit, “by their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:15-20) To be more specific about the “fruit” (or results) of the Spirit, we can look at Galatians 5:22-23: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” I see all of these in Fred Rogers.

Reverend Burr Wishart, who worked with Rogers at the Pittsburgh Foundation, said “He [Fred] would take offense at it, but he was the most Christlike human being I have ever encountered.” (King, p. 120)

Conclusion

I did not focus on the Christianity of Fred Rogers when my younger sister or my children watched him. Only after seeing the two recent movies about him did Rogers’ Christian motivation become clear. (I reviewed those movies at Crossover Cinema, in Kindness Makes a Comeback.) As I asked in my overly long writing about Martin Luther King, Jr, what do I mean by “Christian”? Basically, that would be a follower of Christ, of Jesus’ teachings. Personally, I look for what the Apostle Paul called the “fruit of the Spirit” mentioned above (Galatians 5:22-23). I believe that I’ve shown here that Rogers was called by God, led by the Holy Spirit, and always ministering; in short, a Christian. Why do I feel a need to prove this? Because many unbelievers doubt that there are good examples of Christians, some not realizing that some of their own heroes, such as Fred Rogers or Martin Luther King, Jr, were Christians. 

Bibliography

I had read three books about Fred Rogers, so I thought I was ready to write this. Then I came across a fourth book with a slightly different perspective, so I read that too. There are other books about him with perspectives that are not pertinent to my purpose. Having four different perspectives reminds me of the four gospel writers, each having their own perspective. 

Hollingsworth, Amy, The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2005.
Hollingsworth writes from a more religiously conservative perspective than Tuttle. She also maintained an eight-year correspondence with Rogers in between interviews with him.

King, Maxwell, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, Abram Books, New York, NY, 2018.
This is the longest, most comprehensive, and most conventional biography of the four books I read about Rogers.

Madigan, Tim, I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers, Ubuntu Press, Los Angeles, 2012.
Madigan is a journalist who interviewed Rogers and whose life was changed by their ensuing friendship.

Tuttle, Shea, Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 2019.
Tuttle writes from a more religiously liberal perspective than Hollingsworth. She did not meet Rogers.

Junod, Tom, “Can You Say… Hero?”, Esquire, November 1998, pp. 132-138, 176-177.
This article was the basis of the movie starring Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which appeared 20 years later.

Junod, Tom, “My Friend Mister Rogers,” The Atlantic, December 2019.
Junod discusses his friendship with Rogers after the “Hero” article appeared, and the subsequent development of the movie based on the article.

Langmann, Brady, “Mr Rogers Changed Tom Junod’s Life. Here’s the True Story Behind A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” Esquire, November 22, 2019.
Langmann interviews Junod about keeping Fred Rogers’ message alive.

Du Mez, Kristin Kobes, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Liveright, New York, NY, 2020. 
The subtitle says it all. I had this book but didn’t read it until I read Rogers saying he wasn’t John Wayne.