Barbara Flynn Currie, 'trailblazer who opened doors for generations of women' dies

     This ran in the paper on Saturday. 

     After a vote in the Illinois House on a key part of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pension relief plan in 2016, Barbara Flynn Currie did something not often seen in these times of our divided, dysfunctional government. She crossed the aisle and shook hands with the three Republican lawmakers who broke ranks with the GOP and voted to override Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a measure deferring police and fire pension payments.
     That was Currie, 85, who died Thursday. She not only represented her Hyde Park district in Springfield for 40 years — 20 as majority leader and the first woman to hold that role in the Illinois General Assembly — she but was a tireless promoter of active, engaged, effective government. 

Barbara Flynn Currie (Wikipedia)

     "Last night we lost a giant," House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch, D-Hillside, posted on his Facebook page Friday. "Barbara Flynn Currie was more than a leader — she was a trailblazer who opened doors for generations of women in the Illinois House, many of whom continue her legacy today. ... She set the standard for what it means to serve with purpose. Her impact will be felt for generations."
     She was an enthusiastic advocate of clean air and clean water, and juvenile justice reform.
     “Barbara Flynn Currie was one of a kind," Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. "Her intelligence, decency, and absolute command of the issues were without equal in Illinois politics... Barbara was a passionate, tireless advocate for the people who needed one most. She delivered on issues like raising the minimum wage, early childhood education, gun safety." ... She lived a life of genuine public service and leaves behind an extraordinary record of accomplishment.”
     Her district encompassed Hyde Park, Woodlawn, South Shore and Kenwood, and she was a vigorous proponent of liberal causes, such as prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace and offering all-day kindergarten. She spearheaded a compromise on welfare reform and helped extend state contracts to minority- and female-owned businesses.
     In 2009, she chaired the special 21-member bipartisan committee that recommended the impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
     ”We stand here today because of the perfidy of one man: Rod Blagojevich,” said Currie. “To overturn the results of an election is not something that should be undertaken lightly.”
     Every member of the Illinois House and Senate, save one, voted to impeach.
     State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat, (14th) sat next to her on the House floor.
     "Every day was a master class in the work of the legislature," said Kelly. "She was unparalleled in debate, knew her bills inside out and backward, and could fire off a one-liner like nobody before or since."
     With women making up a record 32% of state legislatures across the country, it might be difficult to remember the male world that Currie entered. When she was elected in 1978, fewer than 11% of Springfield lawmakers legislators were women. When she announced her retirement in 2017, that figure was more than a third, and in 2025 the Illinois Legislature was 42% female.
     Then-House Speaker Michael Madigan's decision to name naming her as majority leader in 1997 was unexpected: Downstate Democrats felt they had a hereditary right to the position, didn’t like the powerful post to pass to a Chicagoan, a woman, and perhaps worst of all, a liberal. Women across the spectrum saw it as a milestone.
     ”Republican women gave me flowers,” Currie later recalled. “Secretaries and staff in the Capitol were thrilled. One of my girlfriends nearly ran her car off the road. The depth of excitement was really quite thrilling.”

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Do Chinese people pick up after their dogs?

Picture of Moyuli, a Chinese greyhound, from Ten Prized Dogs Album.

     This column is a rarity — one that I wrote for the paper, but failed to stand up to my own standards. I was in a rush, to make a train downtown, and so did what I could with a small incident that happened the night before. I turned it in — can't blow a deadline — but told my boss I worried it was "strange" and if he preferred, I'd take a swing at something else when I got back home. It wasn't the oddness that bothered him, but that it was a theme I've already taken a few bites out of recently. I leapt to write something else.

     But that doesn't make it unpostable, given the ... ah ... more generous standards of EGD. I hope you enjoy it.

     Pop quiz. Find the glaring error in the following paragraph:
     Wednesday afternoon, while strolling with my dog Kitty, I saw a Chinese lady walking her dog toward me along Center Avenue. The woman, who I've never met, was wearing a black baseball cap and black sweatshirt, and walking a black greyhound. I hoped she might stay on my side of the street, so we could exchange pleasantries while our dogs sniffed each other. I like doing that. But as we approached each other, she crossed the street, to avoid us.
     Can you spot the problem? I can't tell if it's glaring or not, but it did immediately occur to me, the moment after the above thought flashed across my mind. Any idea?
     Answer: if we've never met, how could I tell the woman was Chinese? Particularly with her large sunglasses. The fact is, I couldn't. I was just guessing, based on whim and appearances. She could have been Japanese or Korean or Vietnamese or really any other nationality.
     I certainly couldn't guess her immigration status from a distance. Which is what makes the ICE strategy of snatching people off the street who strike them as an immigrants, then figuring out later, over hours or days or weeks, whether they are citizens, particularly random, ineffective and cruel.
     The other thing I noticed is that she wasn't carrying a bag of poop. Which either meant that her dog hadn't answered nature's call yet, or, awful to contemplate, that she just didn't pick up after her dog. Which, as a responsible dog owner, is just reprehensible.
     As she passed, Kitty cast the woman's tiny-headed hellhound a look of entreaty. She's such a nice dog, she just wants to make friends. Sometimes, after similar snubs, I lean down, give her a comforting pat, and declare, loudly, "They're not friendly!"
     As the woman of unknown nationality and her dog passed, I had this flight of fancy.
     What if, in seeing her down the block, and pegging her birthplace from 50 yards away, I had also seen her dog assume the position, and then the two depart, without her bagging the result, as all responsible dog walkers must do?
     And furthermore, I then hurried to my iMac, flopped my fingers on the keyboard, and unleashed this opinion in the newspaper, based on the real world experience I had just experienced:
     Chinese people don't clean up after their dogs.
     I'd be lambasted, right? Keelhauled. Maybe not fired, but roundly ridiculed and rightly so. Readers, I hope, would leap to point out that one example is proof of nothing. That even if this one particular woman — who may or may not be Chinese — didn't pick up after her dog, there are 1.4 billion other Chinese people in China and maybe 50 million more living around the world, one of the largest diasporas. One instance, or a dozen, does not prove anything. She doesn't represent them all. You'd demand that I produce studies, surveys, news reports, some kind of factual basis for this outlandish claim.
     So why ... why why why why — do Republicans get away with slurring immigrants as violent criminals? It's a far more serious charge than failure to clean up after a dog. Yet the evidence presented is always, always, always, identical: a single case. Maybe two, which, taken together, prove nothing.
     The difference is, they always use highly emotional crimes. You're never going to hear someone rant on Fox News about a Venezuelan accountant embezzling from his client. What we get is some heartbreaking murder of a young white woman. "LOOK INTO THE FACE OF THIS YOUNG WOMAN, MURDERED BY AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT. ALL IMMIGRANTS MUST BE DEPORTED!"
     It ends all argument — ends all thought, really. For them. For us, if we try to muster a few general facts — immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes — they either run away or shake the case harder in our faces. . No one ever stopped, in mid-rant, "SAY HER NAME, YOU ... what? Immigrants are two to three times more law abiding than American-born citizens. Oh. Silly me. Sorry. Never mind."
     Speaking of facts. I must point out, people in China do pick up after their dogs. While scofflaws are a widespread problem there, not doing your duty, dog poo wise, is increasingly considered a lapse, which can result in lowering your all-important social credit score.
     Immigration has slid from our minds, momentarily, because of the Iran war and a dozen other distractions. But billions of tax dollars are being pumped into ICE, warehouses are being converted into prisons, though not without local opposition — thank you decent people of America. But do not be deceived. ICE will change strategy and be back. Maybe not in Chicago. But somewhere, soon.

Works in progress: Jack Clark in Paris

Paris, 2017

     Jack Clark spends his springs in Paris — talk about a good judgment call. This year he told me he was off for France with what struck me as an air of fare-thee-well-until-I-return. To which I responded, in essence, "not so fast, bub. Would you consider writing something from Paris?" Thankfully, he agreed, asking only that I remind you to visit www.jackclarkbooks.com.

     When I was 17 or so, I was in love with Christine who lived down the block. I never told Chris how I felt but she knew and she did like me, just not in the same way. Our block, on the far West Side, was Irish and Italian, Jewish, and Greek. I’m of Irish descent. Chris was the oddball. Her family was Lebanese. I probably couldn’t have found Lebanon on a globe back then.
     Four of us would spend hours night after night sitting on Patty’s porch. She lived across the street from Chris. Patty was Greek and her parents were strict. She couldn’t leave the porch. My friend TiTi lived next door. He was also Greek and was another Chris but we all called him by his nickname, which was pronounced "Tee Tee."
     We were all American kids. I’m pretty sure that most of our parents were born here too. Mine were. So were my grandparents.
     We talked about everything and anything, usually while a transistor radio played rock and roll with the volume down low. Most of that talk is now lost to the years. But one thing I remember clearly is Chris telling us proudly that Beirut was considered the Paris of the Middle East. I think her family visited relatives every few years.
     The neighborhood changed eventually and we all went our separate ways. Chris and I kept in touch for a bit over the telephone. I only remember seeing her one more time. She was working downtown and I was going to school out by Navy Pier, trying to figure out how to become a writer. We got sandwiches at Jerry’s Deli on Grand Avenue and carried them down to the river to have lunch. And that was it. A few years later, I heard she’d moved to Denver and we haven’t been in touch since.
     In the mid-70s a Civil War broke out in Lebanon with Beirut at the center. It went on for years and didn’t end officially until 1989. It’s never really ended, not for Beirut. There have been breaks here and there, otherwise it’s been one shock after another to the current dark days.
     Whenever Beirut made the front page, I’d think of Chris and our nights on Patty’s front porch and wonder what the Paris of the Middle East looked like after the latest round of troubles.
     Many years later, I fell in love again and ended up in the real Paris. And I don’t mean the tourist city, which I do my best to avoid. Hélène and I have pretty much been inseparable for the last 15 years, except for those long months when we’re living 4000 miles apart.
     Hélène lives in public housing. I like to joke that she’s in the Cabrini-Green of Paris. But Paris and Chicago are completely different worlds, and so is their public housing.
      Chicago is the larger city both by size and population. But Paris has over 250,000 public housing units. That’s close to 25% of total residences. By comparison, at its peak Chicago had around 40,000 units. It’s now down to 15,000 with an additional 35,000 families relying on Section 8 housing vouchers.
     The residents in Hélène’s building are mostly working people and their children. Her next-door neighbor is a woman named Thérèse. She’s Lebanese. I’m pretty sure that’s where she was born. She has three grown children. They’re French.
     If we run into Thérèse on the street or in the hallway, she and Hélène usually speak in French while I twiddle my thumbs. But if I run into Thérèse when I’m alone, we speak English and she almost always ends up apologizing for her lack of proficiency. I answer that I should be the one apologizing. I’ve spent almost half of the last 14 years in France and I still can’t speak the native tongue. I have zero proficiency and should probably apologize to the entire country. Although I will say, once I gave up trying to learn French, my Paris life has become much more enjoyable.
     I sometimes like to amuse myself by looking at the listings pasted in the windows of the real estate offices. A million doesn’t get you much anymore. Not in Paris. It’s only public housing that keeps the City of Light from turning into an amusement park populated exclusively by the rich. It’s still a livable place for people like Hélène and Thérèse, a couple of single moms who raised their kids next door to each other while working full time.
      Hélène is a retired social worker. I assume Thérèse is retired too. I know she goes to Lebanon for months on end. Unlike the typical vacationer, when she comes back she sometimes looks more distressed than before she left.
     We were on our way out last week while Thérèse was coming in. “Ça Va,” we all said, as both a question and a statement. Pronounced as "sava," this is one of my favorite French expressions. You ask, "It goes?" The standard answer is: "It goes." And then you ask back, "It goes?" It’s the equivalent of "How are you? Good. And yourself?" without all those extra words.
     And then Thérèse turned my way. “Ça Va aux États-Unis?” she asked with a bit of aggression in her tone. It goes in the United States?
     How could I answer that except to say no. It does not go in the United States. Not this year. Not this month. Maybe never again.
     Her expression changed and she brought her hand to her heart twice and bowed slightly. “Désolée. Désolée,” she said.
     Once again, I told her that I was the one who should be sorry. And I am, of course. I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been and also ashamed by the actions of my own country, but that doesn’t do her or anyone else any good.
     Decades back, when we were all sitting on Patty’s front porch, the Vietnam War was going full blast, while a couple of miles east of us, large sections of Madison Street and Roosevelt Road were going up in flames.
     Our families packed up their possessions and we scattered and moved away. The war finally ended. The riots burned themselves out. But everything was different. New neighborhoods. Lost friends. Still, life went on almost as before.
     Maybe that will happen again. This period will just become another one for the history books and life will go on almost like before. I tend to doubt it but I hope it’s so.
     In the former Paris of the Middle East, they’re not looking for life to go back to the recent status quo. That’s what they’re hoping to get away from, their own dark history.
     We might try that ourselves in the coming years. But I think we’ll probably find this an impossible task. Darkness doesn’t always lead to light. There’s no guarantee that the sun will rise, that a new morning will ever come.

                                                                       — Paris, April 2026

 

Technology always wins, but we can make our own magic until then

"The Hand & The Eye," $50 million worth of high end magic palace located in the old McCormick Mansion on East Ontario. It opens Saturday. 

     A lot of old people on Facebook wax nostalgic about drinking out of garden hoses, riding in the beds of pickup trucks without seat belts and the freedom of no cellphones.
     Count me out. I was there and recall a lot of boredom. Much thumb-twiddling, whistling and staring out of windows. As for seat belts — I was riding with Phil Flanigan in his mother's 1966 Ford Falcon when she hit the brakes and I went over the front seat and knocked out my front teeth on the dashboard — baby teeth, thank goodness. Still, I'm a big fan of seat belts. They save lives.
     As for iPhones, one question: Have you gotten lost lately? Me neither. Getting lost sucked. 
     Not to be confused with wandering. Wandering is great, I went Downtown twice this week, researching columns. Marching up the wide, sunny arc of Wacker Drive, marveling at the passersby, but also thinking how soon the striding pedestrians and zipping electric scooters (c'mon guys, pretend you have brains to protect and wear a helmet) will be forever joined by squads of little rolling robots, like the pair that took out a couple bus shelters in West Town and Old Town last month. These are the last days we can pad around without flocks of drones buzzing over our heads. 

     Yes, some complain about these robots. I'm glad I'm not so touchy as to feel violated by somebody's order of beef and broccoli trying to squeeze past on the sidewalk.
     Sorry, I know, lots of delivery workers out of jobs. And cabdrivers, by self-driving cars. And journalists.
     But not yet. Feeling lousy about it doesn't help. Every technological advance in history was greeted with howls of ambivalence. When Gutenberg created movable type, some worried that the personal connection of reading an author's own handwriting would be lost. The first programmable machine was not a computer, but a Jacquard loom, whose designs could be changed by switching punched cards. Outraged English textile workers attacked the looms. Got them nowhere. Robert Louis Stevenson complained in vain when gaslight was replaced by electric light, "a lamp for a nightmare," producing "ugly blinding glare." No matter. Technology always wins.
     I say this, despite AI coming for my job. But not yet. It can form words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs. But can AI do the footwork? How is AI at rambling? At wandering in a random fashion across an urban environment and stumbling upon interesting stuff?

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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.