A thing happened at a place, maybe

“Yet why not say what happened?”
— Robert Lowell

The tiniest detail can reveal something bad. A strangely-shaped freckle. The crack in the foundation, spreading.

A small story popped up at the end of last week and was forgotten. The Museum of Science and Industry abruptly closed last Wednesday afternoon, sending visitors home “as staff moves military artifacts from archival storage” to allow a bit of “unplanned maintenance.”

“Out of an abundance of caution, and to ensure proper and safe removal, we have specially trained military personnel as well as local officials on-site,” the museum statement read.

What does that mean? “Military artifacts?” They aren’t talking about old uniforms and mess kits. That has to be … what? Hand grenades? Unexploded shells? What else requires “specially trained military personnel” to handle? You don’t bring in the Army to remove a canteen.

I waited for updates. Nothing.

Fine. I’m a reporter, I’ll do it. I phoned and emailed Museum of Science and Industry spokesperson Kelsey Ryan.

Hours passed. I called its current president, Chevy Humphrey. When she arrived in 2021, the newspaper sent me to greet her with the big hurrah-for-Dr.-Humphrey profile. She had no trouble talking, then, about the new “Marvel: Universe of Super-Heroes” exhibit. Surely she’d explain what happened now.

“Chevy doesn’t take phone calls” said the MSI receptionist. I waved the Sun-Times like a paper flag and she put me through to her voicemail. Nothing.

OK, work the other side of the story, the “special trained military personnel” and “local officials.” Who could that be? I called with the U.S. Army. It wasn’t them. I put in the ritual calls to the Chicago police and fire departments — crickets chirping in a field. I texted Alexi Giannoulias, the Illinois Secretary of State. His office has its own bomb squad.

Giannoulias is old school, in that he still believes in an open democracy where information is freely shared. He got back immediately, reminding me that the world where we’re heading — a world where major Chicago institutions abruptly eject visitors and shut their doors, calling in unspecified military units to cope with unnamed threats — is also a world where libraries that dare feature books about a penguin with two dads receive bomb threats. Twenty-two in Illinois last summer alone. He cited HB 4567, passed out of committee in the Illinois House of Representatives last Thursday, to better protect libraries against being silenced by people who, like the MSI, are allergic to the unfettered flow of information.

“Our librarians and libraries have faced an onslaught of threats of violence and ideological intimidation for simply serving their communities,” said Giannoulias, who also serves as the official state librarian. “We have seen an escalation of violence seeking to censor and restrict information.”

His office wasn’t involved, but he still helpfully pointed me toward the U.S. Air Force Explosive Ordnance Group.

“The 434th Civil Engineer Squadron from Grissom Joint Air Reserve Base, IN, responded to a call from the museum last Wednesday,” wrote Maj. Sara Greco, public affairs officer at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. “The items they were asked to assess were free of explosive material and remained at the museum.”

A sad day when it’s easier to dig information out of the Pentagon than from a Chicago museum.

As to what the items were, specifically, Maj. Greco said I’d have to ask the museum.

Ha! Easier said than done.

Before hearing from the Air Force, I had pressed the museum, trying to goad it into comment:

“I’m still running a column that assumes you thought you had discovered a live hand grenade and are for some unfathomable reason embarrassed by the fact that you appear to have dealt with it in a responsible manner, so are covering it up with reflexive secrecy and bland generalization, forgetting that you are supposedly an educational institution devoted to diffusing knowledge and existing in a free and open democratic society. … Any response to that?”

None. And I hate to make a big deal out of it.

Except, like that freckle, like that crack in the foundation, for what their silence represents. The Museum of Science and Industry doesn’t really have a reputation to lose, with its history of being beholden to corporate donors. Heavy on the industry, light on the science.

But the rest of us do have something very valuable to lose, if we get too accustomed to institutions getting away with reflexive secrecy. This is nothing new. Totalitarian states around the world keep their populations in the dark, forcing them to read between the lines, puzzle over vague official statements, decipher buzzwords, trying to figure out what is really going on. Trust me, you won’t like it. I sure don’t.