How can Americans support Trump? How can they smoke?

Femme a l'orchidee, by Edgard Maxence

     Smoking is wonderful. That’s why people do it. It’s one of life’s joys. You pause from grinding routine, slip away to some quiet spot, tuck your favorite brand between your lips, spark fire, and inhale a big soothing lungful of your friend, nicotine. Ahhhh. Relaxation. The tightened bolt in your head loosens, anxiety ratchets down, and your brain squeezes out a single drop of pleasure.
     Smoking is vile. An addiction that will kill you. Cancer, emphysema, heart disease. Awful deaths. Half a million Americans a year die from smoking. Smoking is expensive. It makes you stink.
     Smokers, it is safe to say, endorse the first paragraph; non-smokers, the second.
     A phenomenon I call “framing” — you portion off the reality you prefer, the one that resonates with your life, and gaze fixedly at that.

     I mention framing a lot to my aghast friends, who can’t understand how anyone can support Donald Trump. They considered him a liar, bully and charlatan the day he was elected, and it’s only gotten worse. Trump fired FBI director James Comey last week, at first claiming it was because he bungled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails then admitting he didn’t like Comey investigating how the Russians influenced the campaign.

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Happy Mother's Day

     Whistler's mother was aware of her son's love of art. But she still wanted the young man to go to military school, so as to have a career, and not shame the family name. 
    He forgave her, as sons invariably do.
    James McNeill Whistler's "Arrangement in Gray & Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Artist's Mother)" is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago for another month—the 1871 painting goes back to the Musee d'Orsay on June 11.

"Napoleon's Mother" by Antonio Canova

      Anna McNeill Whistler had moved to London in 1863, joining her son's household and forcing his mistress to find new lodging. He did not hold that against her either, however, painting this portrait: at first she was to be depicted standing, according to the placard. But the old woman grew tired and was allowed to sit and Whistler, sensing an opportunity, and influenced by Antonio Cadova's sculpture "Napoleon's Mother," went with it.
      Having just written about why the Mona Lisa is famous, it would be worthwhile to consider why Whistler's Mother, as it is commonly called, is also iconic.  It was immediately popular, which helps: Swinburne praised it. Thomas Carlyle commissioned Whistler to paint his own portrait after seeing it. 
Always a francophile, Whistler quipped, after the nation bought painting in 1891, that now he truly was a son of France now that the nation "owned his mother."
     In popular culture, she became motherhood personified. Or perhaps, rather, idealized. Maybe because the woman seems so placid, so pleasant, calm, silent, in repose, not glaring angrily at the viewer, but looking placidly away. Who we would all like our mothers to be, at least at times. The artist, who considered this one of his best paintings, agreed that his mother looks swell here. "Yes," he once said. "One does like to make one's mummy just as nice as possible." 

Colleges should supervise hazing instead of trying to ban it

  
     Last year, when my younger son told me he was joining a fraternity, I was pleased, but had one concern.
     "Good, I said. "I'm proud of you. Just don't let them kill you during the hazing," I said.
     "Dad," he replied. "Frats don't haze anymore. It's banned."
    "Of course it is," I said. "So when they're not hazing you, don't let them kill you. Just say, 'I'm sorry, but my father forbids me doing this.' You can blame me."
     That conversation came back last week, as charges were filed over a horrific incident at Penn State. Eighteen members of Beta Theta Pi were charged with manslaughter and other crimes for letting pledge Timothy J. Piazza, 19, die after drinking excessively, falling down stairs, and then being neglected for 12 hours.
     When I was his age, fraternities were a mystery. "You spend 18 years under the thumb of your parents," I'd say. "You finally get a taste of freedom and what's the first thing you do? Run to join an organization that demands you crawl across the quad at midnight, blindfolded, rolling an egg with your nose."
     Belonging to a frat wasn't a point of pride, it was an indictment. I felt this so strongly, I put a frat paddle in my freshman dorm window, bearing a decal showing a coat of arms— a knight holding his thumb to his nose and waggling his fingers, blowing a raspberry—and the letters GDI, meaning "God Damn Independent."

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Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     Last week's return of the Saturday Fun Activity was supposed to be a one-time event. But so many readers were glad it was back, and since I have utterly nothing to say otherwise, I figure, well, why the hell not? 
     This is an architect's model that I noticed Friday. It struck me as the sort of thing that King Dale would immediately dredge out of the internet. But since he is sidelined this week, because he won last week, the challenge falls to you. Can you do it? It might be unfair to ask you to locate something that hasn't been built yet, but my gut tells me you're up for the task. 
      Still, I imagine some brainwork is in order, so a suitable gift is necessary. How about ... a signed, hardback copy of "You Were Never in Chicago," my memoir of the city. Place your guesses below. Good luck. 

Deploy the big chicken

     The restaurant business is tough. You need good food. A good space. Good service. Good publicity. And a big heaping serving of good luck. Over and over and over. It's a wonder any of them ever work, and most don't. The pudding never sets, the miracle never arrives.  It's unfair to go to a place too soon, before they've worked out the kinks. But wait too long and it may be gone. 
     Who doesn't want a good restaurant a few steps from home? So I've been following with more than passing interest developments at the corner of Shermer and Walters in Northbrook, ground floor of a rounded brick office building just around the corner from where we live. Hope mingled with disappointment, rooting for something to work, invariably let down. 
     My Pie, a branch of venerable Chicago pizzeria, opened in 2009. The place had fans, though we were not one of them. We went twice. It wasn't bad, but Lou Malnatti's is practically across the street. I just wasn't willing to forgo a single Lou Malnatti's pizza in order to support this new place. Do that, and I'd always be short one Lou's pizza. I would never catch up. It lasted a little more than two years.
     In 2015, Agave, a generic Mexican restaurant opened. I knew it was doomed right away before stepping foot inside, because the sign was mounted crooked. They didn't even bother taking down the Mi Pie sign brackets. Really. If you can't get your damn sign straight, what can you do? 
    Charitable soul that I am, I went anyway. Ate some expensive, utterly unremarkable Mexican chow, set down by an indifferent waitress, in a room that was nearly unadorned.  
    Kind soul that I am, I held my tongue, until after it failed. Which took about a year.
     The spot is not even a block from my house. You have to have pity on your neighbors. Pity on restaurants. They're hanging off a cliff; don't jump on their fingers.
     Then, six months ago, Drumstix. I immediately went with my younger son and we happily fed. Moist chicken. Homemade baked beans. Mmm. We were satisfied but then, we are boys and boys tend to like food that can be chewed and swallowed. I hurried back with my wife, a far more discerning eater than I. She pointed out that the friend chicken breast that I celebrated for being juicy was in fact soggy. 
    "Fried chicken is supposed to be crispy," she said.  That wasn't a factor for me, because I scraped off the skin off before eating it.  But I saw her point.
     I was tempted to give the place another try -- sometimes restaurants take time to find their groove, and you need to give them a chance. Support the home team. But my wife was underwhelmed, end of story. There are many other places to eat. I almost pressed. But their signs are paper, tucked inside the windows. Really? Is that the best you can do? The My Pie lighting bracket is still up, illuminating nothing. I know I shouldn't, but I put an almost talismanic importance onto restaurant signs. They reveal the soul within. Months passed.
     And that might have been it. But a couple days ago, this 7-foot-tall chicken arrived out front, set off by his own little wrought iron fence.  "Did you see the chicken?" my wife said. Of course I did. Nothing more really needed to be said between us. We knew what we had to do immediately. You must respect effort like that. Particularly in Northbrook. I wish I had been at the zoning meeting where they finessed the chicken past the board. (Actually, it is on private land, the owner tells me, so zoning approval was not necessary. That explains its presence). 
      We saw the chicken Tuesday. On Thursday night we were at Drumstix for dinner. My wife liked her fish and chips far more than she had liked the chicken. I tried a half slab of ribs. And while it is no Green Street Smoked Meats, no Smoque, Not sweet, as I like ribs, but peppery, I also had no trouble polishing them off, sucking the bones. The place was sunlit and populated with diners, with families. The guy bussing our table was a kid we've known since kindergarten, and we caught up happily. The music was lively, trains passed by outside. We both felt pushed over the hump. We weren't smitten with the food, not yet anyway, but we'd give it another try. You sort of have to -- I mean, look at that chicken. It's a very big chicken.
     Or is it a rooster? The saying "If it crows, it's a rooster, if it lays an egg, it's a hen" is not enormously helpful in this situation. I'm sticking with a chicken because, frankly, a chicken is funnier. 
     Either way, exactly the sort of thing Northbrook so desperately needs.
    "Maybe I'll really like the chicken pot pie..." I said, hopefully. They also have red velvet cake on the menu. It is very hard to wreck red velvet cake. 
     Most people push at their dreams but feebly. A first draft, shopped around a few publishers and then consigned to a drawer forever. A half-assed effort, success fails to arrive immediately, then straight to collapse, surrender and bitterness. But some people roll up their sleeves, cock their heads, squint one eye, and deploy the big chicken. You have to respect that.

 

Lucky

The Adams Memorial, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

     So much of life is mere luck. We work hard, and do our best, and are careful as we go about our business. We urge our children to be cautious too, then send them out into the world with nothing more protective than a flimsy veil of good wishes and sincere prayers. When the truth is, it's all out of our hands. Sometimes life comes down to how the dice tumble, to where you are sitting when the shadow falls. 
     A classmate of our older son's was killed last week in Denmark, someone he knew, in his circle of close friends freshman year, someone my wife and I had met at school, a dynamic 21-year-old young woman. Through no fault of her own -- the small boat she was riding in on in Copenhagen harbor was hit by a jet ski, killing her and another student from Massachusetts. A senseless, tragic accident. 
     I was talking to a friend at work about it, about the complex feelings of muted sorrow, general unease, and inexpressible sympathy for her parents, of not being able to imagine what it must be like for them, of not even being sure whether it is something others should presume to think about. She shared this poem with me, and I am sharing it with you.

Any Case

–  by Wislawa Szymborska

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Closer. Farther away.
It happened, but not to you.

You survived because you were first.
You survived because you were last.
Because alone. Because the others.
Because on the left. Because on the right.
Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.
Because a shadow fell.

Luckily there was a forest.
Luckily there were no trees.
Luckily a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A frame, a turn, an inch, a second.
Luckily a straw was floating on the water.

Thanks to, thus, in spite of, and yet.
What would have happened if a hand, a leg,
One step, a hair away?

So you are here? Straight from that moment still suspended?
The net’s mesh was tight, but you? through the mesh?
I can’t stop wondering at it, can’t be silent enough.
Listen,
How quickly your heart is beating in me.         
    —translated from the Polish by Grazyna Drabik and Sharon Olds

Time to revise ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’

     Chicago was founded by Frenchmen.
     A fact so little recognized, it looks strange in print. But true. The city began with Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette, born in France, arriving in 1673 to preach le bon Dieu to Native Americans. His canoemate was fur trader Louis Jolliet, born in French Quebec. And don't forget Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the city's first permanent resident. He is usually thought of as black and Haitian, period, ignoring that Haiti was, at the time, like a third of the United States including Illinois, under the control of France.
     Even the word “Chicago” is a French mash of the Algonquin name for the place, having to do either with onions or bad smells (the word “skunk” is related).
     Why this history? Facebook erupted in cries of “Vive la France” at Sunday’s victory of centrist Emmanuel Macron over nationalist Marine Le Pen. Half of America rejoiced, congratulating French friends.
     “I think everybody in America was quite relieved, even more than in France,” said Marie Weber, brand specialist at the Alliance Française, a Chicago cultural center.  

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