Flashback 2009: Lump of coal from Keillor — His 'Christmas' gift won't keep on giving

     Garrison Keillor is coming to the Park West on May 4. I can't go — previous commitment — but I've seen him perform several times, at Ravinia and elsewhere, and know he always puts on a good show. That prompted me to look back at what I've written about him over the years — I interviewed him once, but that was already posted.

     Sidelined in 2017 over accusations of unwarranted sexual advances, none of then seemed as consequential as any given dozen crimes attributable to our president. I particularly appreciate the work he did promoting poetry, both in print — his "Good Poems" collections are priceless — and on the radio.

     This is an oddity — a pan of a little Christmas volume of his. A reminder that even the mighty — and I consider him the greatest American humorist since Mark Twain — have their lapses. I present it for the pure joy of a good pan. 

 
A CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD

By Garrison Keillor

Viking, 180 pages, $21.95

     This coming April, Mark Twain will have been dead 100 years, and were you to throw a cocktail party for all the American humorists since his demise who have created enduring fictional worlds, it would a very small gathering indeed:
     James Thurber, standing alone by the mantle, swilling his scotch and complaining how he never could manage to write a novel. Neil Simon, picking cashews out of the nut bowl.
     And that's about it. Robert Benchley and S.J. Perelman would have sent regrets — already sucked into the maw of obscurity that took Bill Nye and Josh Billings and everyone else whose work is too topical or too minor to withstand the grind of time.
     Of living authors, there would only be one: Garrison Keillor, well-loved for his long-running radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," but also respected for his short stories, novels and essays. His Lake Wobegone might not quite shine equally alongside Twain's Hannibal, Missouri, but if our progeny are still reading any comic fiction writer of our era a century from now, odds are it'll be Keillor. 

     Of course Keillor can't be expected to knock one out of the park every time — even Thurber started churning out those testy complaints about grammar as he aged — and A Christmas Blizzard, Keillor's latest, is a holiday trifle that will be relegated to the scrap heap of misfires by otherwise good authors, though many of his fans no doubt would rather read a mediocre book by Keillor than a good book by anyone else.
     A Christmas Blizzard is a tall holiday tale that rolls merrily along, crammed with inventive riffs on popular culture and quirky characters, all limned in Keillor's distinctive voice. We meet James Sparrow, a fabulously rich Chicagoan with a butler and a private jet, and his wife, Joyce, and if having the two main characters named James and Joyce is too much of a sly wink for you, you better get used to it, because the Hawaiian home where James longs to spend the holiday is called Kuhikuhikapap'u'maumau and the stand-in for Minnesota where our hero gets stranded when he goes to visit his prosaically named but dying Uncle Earl is called Looseleaf, North Dakota, and there is the standard contingent of Floyds and Elmers you'd expect with Keillor.
     Despite the cute names that are more Soupy Sales than Thomas Pynchon, Keillor's wit is generally sharp and intact, and along the way he skewers Americans, from blissed out New Agers to Right Wing conspiracy fanatics. Easy targets, maybe, but it's impossible to completely dislike a holiday book that refers to "the sheer horror of 'The Little Drummer Boy.'" Though by the time we get to the talking wolf, A Christmas Blizzard assumes a random, hallucinogenic quality that makes it feel longer than its 180 pages.
     Early on, Keillor's describes Joyce's writing this way: "She was clever and facile and could spackle bright words on a page in the shape of a poem but she lacked heart." The same could be said for this novel, where Keillor revisits favorite tropes — the indignity of middle age, the quirkiness of small towns, the melancholy of love — grafting them onto a miracles-and-redemption Christmas tale that flirts with incoherence.
     Keillor's 19 previous books are listed in the front, and any one of them would probably provide a richer, more nuanced experience than A Christmas Blizzard. But if you've read them all and enjoyed them all, then you'll probably enjoy this one too, at least a little.

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 29, 2009

Trump feuding with the pope? I thought he was the pope

 

     By now you know what happened.
     President Donald Trump, up to his neck in the Iran quagmire and thus perhaps more angry than usual, lashed out at Pope Leo XIV for doing what popes do: urging peace, while pointing out that the efforts of the Trump administration to paint its war as the Ninth Crusade was not Christianity in its highest form.

     "Pope Leo is WEAK ON CRIME, and terrible for Foreign Policy," Trump began, in a long tirade posted on his Truth Social network.
      No doubt you've read all or part of it.
     So the "what" being established, I want to explore an aspect that is being lost in the noise and thunder:
     Why?
     Why would a struggling and isolated leader, having failed to lure his erstwhile allies into saving his butt in Iran, start tongue-lashing the pope, a beloved figure internationally, but particularly in the United States, and especially in his hometown, Chicago? A pope who, remember, wasn't doing anything beyond normal pope stuff — promoting harmony, encouraging brotherhood. That's like blasting Mr. Rogers for being neighborly.
     You would think that anyone with half a grip, his back against the wall, closing the Strait of Hormuz himself because Iran won't open it, would not pick this battle. It's like a man in a blazing room setting fire to one sofa that isn't burning.
     Again: Why?
     If the answer isn't crystal clear — and really, it should be, by now — here's a clue:
     Last May, when Leo was named pope, Trump distributed an AI picture of himself, Donald Trump, in the garments of the Vicar of Christ. Because — and forgive me, this is obvious, but so much so that it gets overlooked — it's all about him. He is the subject of all sentences, the cynosure of all eyes, and anyone else — anyone else — who isn't actively groveling before him is an insult and a threat. There is no Congress. No courts. No law. No pope. He is the pope. Donald Trump, pontifex maximus.
     In his own mind To me, Donald Trump is a morality tale about the futility of ego. He suffers from a grandiosity so bottomless that being immensely rich, the president of the United States, adored by millions, the golden spoon stirring the world pot for the last decade, are not enough. Nothing is ever enough. He is King Midas, breaking his teeth on gilt apples, starving in a room full of food.
     That's the only way any of this makes sense. It explains his every action.

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Freedom and coffee go together

Coffee break, Amsterdam

 

     Honest question:
     Have you ever gone to a coffee shop for a cup of coffee?
     I don't mean, have you ever gotten a cup of coffee at a coffee shop. Everybody has. I mean, have you ever thought, "I need coffee!" and then gotten up and gone out to a Starbucks or Intelligensia or whatever and bought a cup?
     Because I haven't. And I love coffee. But coffee is very easy to make. You rinse out the pot — or if there's a cup left from the day before, just heat that up and drink the day-old coffee, a skill I learned from my years at the Northwestern Anthropology Department. I'm doing that now. It's fine. It tastes like coffee.
     As I did that, thinking toward the future, I popped in a filter, add the coffee, the water. For more coffee. Coffee: the one addiction you never have to give up.
     That said, coffee shops are social places. You meet people there, Last week I wanted to talk to a man I might write a profile about, so I asked him to meet me at Bean Bar, a new coffee shop that is now the beating heart of Northbrook. Opened in an old bank, the place is enormous, and every table was filled — fortunately, there's usually room at the high tops way in the back.
     Should not be surprising. The importance of coffee shops as places where people gather is well-chewed over in academia. The American Revolution? Plotted in coffee shops. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels getting together to hatch communism? A coffee shop, Café de la Régence in Paris in August 1844.

    It should not be surprising that totalitarian regimes across the globe and throughout history have banned coffee and coffee shops. King Charles II banned both in 1675, considering such places a challenge to his regal authority. The ban didn't last — coffee proved stronger than kings.
     So it's interesting to see a coffee shop forget this heritage and botch the social aspect as badly as Philz Coffee has. To be honest, I never heard of Philz, nor saw one, to my knowledge. But according to Saturday's story in the Sun-Times, they prided themselves in their, well, pride, and displayed the gay pride flag until recently, when the company abruptly ordered all of them pulled.
     No skin off my nose. I'm fairly impartial about the pride flag — I don't own one or fly one, though consider myself an ally. I only have one flagpole at home, and only fly one flag, Old Glory, bought from W.G.N. Banners. Trying to imagine what might prompt me to fly one, I suppose, were social to clamp down on LGBTQ+ even harder than its doing now, I might fly one, in solidarity, the way I posted a green Islamic banner with a star and crescent as my Facebook profile picture in 2017 when Donald Trump first took office and started banning immigrants from Muslim majority countries.
     The whole thing would be beneath notice were it not for one word Philz CEO Mahesh Sadarangani used in explaining why banners had to be purged from the store.
     "We are working toward creating a more consistent, inclusive experience..."
     "Consistent" is meaningless here — you could also achieve consistency by demanding that all Philz shops display the flag. The giveaway is "inclusive" and by that, he means he wants to encourage MAGA world sorts creeped out the the idea of welcoming gays to nevertheless buy coffee there.

     That is a tactic the intolerant right has been deploying a lot lately, because it works. Tolerance is intolerable, to them, because certain groups are forbidden by their religion, their politics, their inclination. So to include the hated group is to exclude them. Acceptance is prejudice, and Orwell is achieved.

      Never forget the bottomless cup of selfishness that is prejudice: everything is about them, their bias, their fears. So out with the pride flag, and — the theory is — everyone will flock to their coffee shop.

      Except they won't. I don't see MAGA sorts as the type who will pop $5 for a cup of coffee. So Philz is alienating their own clientele while appealing to a group that isn't about to start patronizing them. It's stupid. But prejudice is stupidity in action, ignorance rampant. Of course they have a right to fly whatever flag they want. And potential customers have a right to never go there. 

    In the fall of 2013, Glenbrook North High School students from Glenbrook North's Gay-Straight Alliance, decorating windows in downtown Northbrook, put a pride flag in the window of the Caribou Coffee on Shermer. The owner, aghast, washed it off. I described the result in my blog:

     The Caribou Coffee in Northbrook is radioactive. You can't go in. A dead zone, our own Chernobyl. Oh, the building is there, a block from our house, but it no longer exists as a place a person could walk into and get coffee and a sweet roll and go online.

    The Caribou coffee in Northbrook closed down a few months later, part of a general retrenching by Caribou — dozens of stores closed. Today Caribou has about as many outlets as they did a dozen years ago. A reminder: hatred is not only wrong, it's bad business.

     

      

Older, sicker Americans waiting longer to get into crowded hospitals

     An endocrinologist is a doctor specializing in hormone-related diseases, such as, in my case, diabetes. When first diagnosed in late September 2024, I got a crash course in the huge demand for that profession's services. The first endocrinologist I approached wouldn't see me for a year. The second wouldn't see me at all; he was refusing all new patients.
     Figuring I would have to engage another gear if I didn't want to sit around, doing nothing, waiting to go blind, I grabbed my notebook and decided, if I couldn't meet with an endocrinologist as a patient, I'd find out what I needed to know by writing a column. Diabetes affects 40 million Americans; it isn't as if it's a personal affliction.
     That third endocrinologist not only spoke with me immediately — barred doors fly open for publicity — but put me in touch with a colleague who, either through a sea change in my luck or, I suspect, some kind of secret doctor-to-doctor dog whistle, took me under her wing as a patient.
     If this strikes you as morally squishy — the journalist pushing to the head of the line — I worried about that, too. But I didn't misrepresent anything; the column ran in the paper.
     Besides, with health care, you have to be a strong advocate for yourself. Faced with the prospect of letting my condition go unchecked while I hunted with increasingly numb fingers for an endocrinologist with an open slot, I did what I could. At that point, if meeting Morgan Finley in a Cicero motel room and handing over an envelope of cash would have gotten me an appointment, well, I certainly would have considered it.
     I thickly assumed this was a problem inherent to endocrinology. Getting diabetes is easy — I just woke up one morning with Type 1. Medical school is hard. Of course, there's a shortage. Now it turns out I was encountering, not a diabetes-specific bottleneck, but a generalized, widespread condition.
     This week, The Economist published a story with the musical title, "Hospitals are stuck in a deadly doom loop." Turns out the 2020 COVID crisis not only killed millions worldwide and shut down society, but it also "did lasting damage to health-care systems."
     Where? Everywhere, all over the world. What's been damaged? In a nutshell, everything.
     "From admission to discharge, hospital care is now harder to access, takes longer and is of worse quality," the magazine reports. "The resulting toll includes avoidable deaths. Almost everyone is affected: across 18 rich democracies, satisfaction with health-care quality fell sharply after the pandemic and remains well below the pre-pandemic norm."
     Getting an appointment takes forever. As does getting admitted after showing up in the emergency room. Last year, one in 10 patients visiting an emergency room in England had to wait 12 hours or longer before being shown a room.
     And in Chicago, an NBC News Channel 5 report found that Chicago has longer wait times to see a doctor than most American cities — a month to see a primary care doctor. For specialty care, like neurologists, up to five months.

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Flashback 2011: Maybe that pain in your gut is cancer

     Sometimes one aspect of life can have an odd resonance with another. I was looking through the archive, noticed this story, and figured it might have the same potential positive effect now that it was intended to have 15 years ago. Then later in the day, I read the obituary of a woman who died from the same ailment that's spotlighted here. Which I took as a nudge to actually post it. Not as fun as dental floss, but perhaps of far more value.

     Even in the heyday of journalism, when newspapers were known for lavish expense accounts, the Sun-Times always embraced a distinct frugality, an attitude I expressed this way: “Before they issue you a new pencil, you have to turn in the stub of the old one.”
     The make-the-most-of-it mind set carried over to reportage. I remember 10 years ago wanting to accompany a team of Chicago surgeons from Shriner’s Hospital to Lithuania, despairing at my chances of being granted a full week for the journey, never mind the associated cost, and rejoicing when I realized the president of Lithuania at the time, Valdus Adamkus, had lived for 47 years in Chicago before renouncing his U.S. citizenship and going back to lead his country. Interviewing him at the palace would add heft to my plea — two birds with one stone! — I cooked up a few more angles: should Lithuania join NATO? What about Catholicism? By the time I was done piling on, we ran a weeklong series that fellow reporters still shake their heads over.
     The travel story was perhaps a stretch — I admitted that few Chicagoans were going to scrap their Disney World plans, but if you were of Lithuanian extraction, or had become bored with the typical European vacation spots, you could do worse than visit Vilnius.
     That story was written sincerely. Yet I was shocked — taken aback, almost frightened — when I later heard from a family who read the piece and were persuaded to go to Lithuania, had a great time and wanted to thank me.
     Somehow I managed not to blurt out, “You went?! To Lithuania?! On my advice!? What, are you crazy?!” But that’s what I thought.
     I felt responsible. Sure, it worked for them. But what if it hadn’t? What if they had a bad time in Lithuania? It would be all my fault.
     I shouldn’t say this: but occasionally, the messing-with-other-people’s-lives aspect of this job unnerves me. You try not to think of that part too often, try not to think of families shlepping to Eastern Europe on your say-so. But sometimes the fact clicks into focus.
     For instance . . .
     The day after Sun-Times owner Jim Tyree died, like everyone who knew him, I was upset, and wanted to write something appropriate. He was fighting stomach cancer, and since the public is not that familiar with stomach cancer, compared to, say, breast or lung cancer, I thought it might be a fitting tribute to use the tragedy to educate others. Tyree would have liked that.
     So I called Loyola University Medical Center and asked for a stomach cancer specialist.
     But by the time Dr. Gerard Aranha, a professor of surgery, called back the next day, I had already written something about Tyree. Still, the doctor was on the phone. It wouldn’t do to just say, “Column’s done, goodbye.” The polite thing was to talk with him for a while.
     “There were 21,000 new cases of stomach cancer reported in 2010,” Dr. Aranha said. “It is the sixth overall, much less common than esophageal or colon, but holding steady.”
     The connection between smoking and stomach cancer is weak, as opposed to charred foods and nitrates, which encourage it. Heredity is also an important factor.
     “There is a familial connection,” said Dr. Aranha. “I always like to ask which family died of gastric cancer — it was Napoleon and his mother.”
     What are the warning signs?
     “A feeling of getting full easily,” he said. “More often pain, like a patient has an ulcer, the sort of pain that doesn’t respond to the usual antacid therapy or, when it does, say with Prilosec, when you stop the Prilosec the pain comes back. Then you’ve got a problem.”
     Also “unease after eating, dyspepsia, bloating, belching, gas that persists for two weeks, are all clues.” Males get stomach cancer about 50 percent more than females do.
     What should a person with symptoms do?
     “See a doctor,” he said. “The doctor will put an endoscope — a tube — down your throat and look at the esophagus and stomach and, if he’s seeing any abnormalities, take a biopsy.”
     Early detection, as with all cancer, is key.
     In Japan, Dr. Aranha said, where use of the endoscope is more common, some 30 percent of stomach cancers are caught in the more treatable early stage. Here, where people are less aware, only 9 percent are found early.
     I almost let this subject drop — who wants to read about stomach cancer? But then I remembered that family going to Lithuania and realized that, once I had this information, it was my duty to pass it along. There might be one guy — maybe you — who looks up from the paper and says, “Geez, I’ve got those warning signs, I better see a doctor.” For me, it’s just another column. But for somebody, it could be a matter of life or death, and once you have that in mind, there’s only one thing to do.
      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 29, 2011 

Flashback 2012: Stealing bases? Just buy them

Not a bad view from the former section 219 in 2012. 

     April, warmer weather, finally, and a man's thoughts turn to baseball. Well, some men. Not me. That ship has sailed. Whatever residual fandom is left has boiled down to a single, quivering neuron that annually squeaks. "Maybe this year you should take in a game at Wrigley." Where all my happy memories are of: a) walking up to the park along Addison from the Red Line b) seeing that expanse of green as you rise from inside a tunnel and c) biting into a warm, moist Vienna frank. 

     Notice what's missing? The actual baseball part. Players playing the game. Never a priority. Nor a memory. I couldn't recall a single play at Wrigley if you put a gun to my head. But I do still go, every few years, usually squiring visitors, as in the story below. I just like the ballpark.

     A little update. The dog that cost $5 in 2012 will now set you back at least $9. Game-used bases cost $100 more than 14 years ago. You can also buy infield dirt for $20. The only thing the same is that you could have bought the cheapest tickets to Friday's game against the Pirates on Stubhub for $8. There is no section 219 anymore — it goes from 218 to 220, thanks to a re-numbering to squeeze in more luxury boxes — but with an assist from Cubs maven Bill Savage, we know that the old 219 would be around 215 today, where tickets were going for $11 on game day. (Perhaps an unfair comparison, as game day tickets tend to plunge).

     The really good news is that kids under 13 — the first thousand to get a wrist band anyway — can still run the bases for free at Wrigley after most Sunday games. 

     No need to steal second base anymore. You can just buy it.
     The ballplayers can’t, of course. They still get to second base the old fashioned way. But now, in our let’s-monetize-everything world, you can skip all those years of honing your batting skills and, for $250, purchase second base ­— or first, or third ­­— used during a game at Wrigley Field. Pay for the base beforehand in the concourse behind home plate; it’ll be swapped out with a fresh base after the fifth inning and delivered to your seat.
     At U.S. Cellular Field, you can’t buy a base, but you can pay to be the guy swapping them out, or dragging the infield, or sitting in the dugout during batting practice, or having dinner with Jerry Reinsdorf (though if they really wanted to clean up, they should sell the chance not to eat with Reinsdorf).
     Economics aside, Sunday was still a beautiful day for baseball, on my first visit to Wrigley in years, squiring around my cousin Harry from Boston and his family. As regular readers know, I’m the sort who, left to my own devices, shuns sporting events. But I am a genial host, and Harry suggested we might take in a game, the way people speculate about travel to Mars — as a remote, wouldn’t-it-be-something possibility, colored by his experience trying to get into Fenway Park, where you must plan to spend a fortune to buy the precious tickets passed from hand to hand, generation to generation.

Section 219 is now gone.

     Not so at Wrigley. Jump online the day before, eight tickets in section 219 — back under the upper deck, but with a great view of the field — for $33 apiece, plus change. I hate to be one of those columnists who discover regular life and starts gibbering in amazement. But I was taken aback by how cheaply you can get into Wrigley, thanks to dynamic ticket pricing. You can get seats for as low as $8, to see scrub “bronze” level teams like the Brewers or the Astros — the same ticket would cost you $29 to see the Red Sox or Cardinals.
     This isn’t to suggest things are inexpensive at Wrigley. Far from it. A non-jumbo hot dog costs $5. My wife went for a cup of vegetable sticks, a hummus-like dip paste, and a small bottle of water, for — place your guesses ­— $10.75.
     Someone has to pay for those player salaries, though judging from this year’s lineup, Cubs owner Tom Ricketts is not yet coughing up the elephant dollars for superstars. While no baseball expert — the thought “So Mark Grace isn’t here anymore?” popped into mind early in the game — I’ll admit, I didn’t recognize any of the players’ names. Brian LaHair? Darwin Barney? They seemed to radiate a deep, Joe Shlabotnik-type obscurity. Not entirely a bad thing. There was a certain joy, a purity in seeing two teams of complete nonentities ­— the Washington Nationals are not exactly the 1927 Yankees either ­­— battle it out in a hard-fought game. The Cubs won, so maybe it’s a building year. 

Back when there was a 219 (Image courtesy
of the Bill Savage Collection)

     I sat back, munched peanuts, tossed the shells at my feet, and enjoyed my afternoon at the ballpark. Even my older son looked up from reading Jane Eyre from time to time to glance at what was happening on the field.
     After the game, I swung by the base-selling table behind home plate, and found they sold two bases to a pair of poor souls with more money than sense, plus one from the day before for $200. Although that might be harsh; the most surprising thing about the base-vending is, judging by mark-up, the bases are one of the bigger values at Wrigley, since a new base costs about $150 online.
     After the game, the Cubs invited kids to go down and run the bases. Of course, Harry’s girls ­— 7 and 10 — were eager to do it, but I was surprised when my two surly teens joined them, big happy grins on their faces. My wife thought being on the field was magical, and even though I had been there before, I admit that just laying eyes on Wrigley Field is worth a visit. The fact that they also put on a game is an added bonus. Maybe I shouldn’t give them ideas, but there was no extra, kids-running-the-bases fee, which is ironic, because that was the most valuable part of the whole day.
       — Originally published April 11, 2012

What are the 400 uses of dental floss?

     "Old age isn't a battle," Philip Roth once wrote. "Old age is a massacre."
     One certainly suffers losses. First, friends and loved ones are scythed down by jealous time. Second, your body acts up in ways I shan't catalogue.
     But there are also advantages. For instance, after decades of trying, I've finally gotten good at flossing. In my younger years, I'd begin with determination anew after every visit to the dentist. But weeks would pass, I'd skip a day, then two, and the little white box of floss would be pushed aside in the bathroom, ignored until the next visit.
     Not anymore. Lately, I've been a champion, floss-wise. I'm not sure why — probably with the mounting problems of age, I don't want to lose my teeth too. I almost look forward to flossing, which gives you an idea of how exciting my life has become.
     So when I got to the end of one spool Tuesday night, I immediately toddled off to my wife's bathroom to raid her supply, grabbing a package of GUM Fine Floss — mint, waxed, the good stuff.
     As I opened it, I read this bit of ballyhoo on the package:
     "UP TO 400 USES."
     Four hundred ways to use dental floss?! I marveled. That's a lot of uses. I honestly couldn't imagine what they might be.
     Finding your way out of a labyrinth? There had to be some very strange, esoteric, highly amusing suggestions from the GUM folks. I must know.
     Jumping online, I found GUM to be a local establishment — part of SUNSTAR, a Japanese company whose American operation is based in Schaumburg. But no official "GUM 400."
     I wrote to the folks at GUM (an abbreviation of "Gentle Uletic Massage," "uletic" meaning, "pertaining to gums") Tuesday night. Not expecting much. If you remember our bitter experience with Smuckers, trying to get them to explain why their natural peanut butter tastes so good, you'll know that my hopes for any given corporation deigning to comment on any given subject are slim.
     Impatient, I explored online.
     The first hit, "11 Surprising Uses for Dental Floss" by the American Association of Retired Persons (I'm telling you: old people, we love our floss). The first was not what I would call hip: "1. Remove skin tags" Were I composing that list, I'd lead with "7. Detach sticky cookies." From baking sheets if — what? — your spatula is broken?
     The problem with the AARP list is, it's all notional. Is there anyone who actually uses dental floss to slice cheesecakes? (Answer: yes. YouTube offers many videos of cheesecakes being smartly cut with dental floss "No drag, no mess, perfection," says Chef Dave Martin. Eli's Cheesecake does not use floss to cut their cheesecakes — the crispy shortbread crust interferes — but does use it to slice unbaked pies).
     The internet is alive with lists of ways to use dental floss other than to clean between your teeth. Hawaii's Kaua’i Hiking Tours offers "27 Survival Uses For Dental Floss," starting with (AARP take note) "1. Make a Lean-To" and including clotheslines, thread, shoelaces, and my favorite, as "dummy cord": a secure line to keep your knife or compass from tumbling out of your backpack and being lost.

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