Jews may not like life more than you do, but they talk about it more

Babylonian lion (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

   
     You know what's a primary Jewish value?
     Being alive.
     I hope I'm not spilling the beans here. Revealing some deep rabbinic secret. 
     But it's true.
     We like being alive. It's important to us. I can't say whether Jews like living more than gentiles, since I'm not gentile. I would assume everybody likes life equally. So maybe it's just that Jews make a bigger deal of it—"To life! To life! L'Chaim!" We talk about it more, perhaps because there's always somebody trying to kill us.
     Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon. Razed Jerusalem and took the Jews into captivity, more than 2,500 years ago. Various caesars. About 1500 years worth of Christian leaders. Assorted Russian czars. Don't forget Hitler, and his pal Stalin. After the formation of Israel, the Arab states. When they failed, the PLO and periodic freelance Muslim terrorists, cheered on by half the sophomores around the world.
     Let's not forget home-grown American haters, like the guy who murdered 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh Saturday.
     That didn't happen in a vacuum, but two years into the administration of Donald Trump, our own miniature Mussolini who uses prejudice of all kinds to stir up and distract his base.
     "I am a nationalist," Trump said. Actually, what he said was "I am a white nationalist" but the "white" is unvoiced, like the "p" in "psalm." And if you didn't hear it, his far right supporters certainly did.
     Still. Mass shootings happen so frequently in the United States now—at churches, schools, music concerts, workplaces—that I don't feel inclined to join the chorus connecting this one to the anti-Semitism that Trump winks at. (Jews are the "globalists" that Trump refers to. Hitler called them "internationalists." And people claim there is no progress)

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S

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

     I wrote this in mid-September, when I heard that Elton John would be playing the United Center at the end of October. I intended to put it in the paper Friday—heck, he might even see it. But October sped by, and I forgot. Maybe just as well...

     When I find myself in front of a piano keyboard—something that seems to happen less and less as time goes by—I will sometimes, if the mood strikes me, lay my hands on the keys, standing there, or maybe even pull the bench out and sit down, then begin to play the opening chords of "Your Song," by Elton John. Surprising—I imagine, if they noticed or cared, which of course they don't—anyone who happens to be around, because I do not know how to play the piano.
     But I can play "Your Song," or now, after the corroding years, the first few seconds, because when I was 17 I laboriously taught myself to play it, note by note, chord by chord, first the right hand, then the left, then together, as a present for my girlfriend on her 16th birthday.
     She loved Elton John. Loved him, with that singular intensity and passion that teenage girls direct toward certain singers, certain fashions and certain boys. I can't say that her attraction to Elton John and to me were unrelated: we both were guys in glasses, prone to heaviness, adept with words, though of course Elton got his, famously, from lyricist, Bernie Taupin, while I was on my own.
     At 17, I was more into Bob Dylan—"Blood on the Tracks"—had just come out, and viewed her extraordinary fondness for Elton with amusement, at first. But then, in the gravity that our loves hold for us, was pulled in too, and her interest became mine.
     What Elton John is now—big glam stadium rocker, dressed as Donald Duck, churning out the hits—wasn't how he was then. He had done a pensive, Western-themed album, "Tumbleweed Connection." (ahead of its time; issued three years before the Eagles decided to be desperados). Quiet, trickling love songs, that I didn't realize it, would come in handy when our romance fizzled out, five years later. "Lately, I've been thinking, how much I miss my lady..."
     Elton John was performing in Chicago this weekend. I was tempted to go, even though the last concert I attended was years and years ago: Tom Waits at the Chicago Theater, really, because I couldn't not go.
     But Elton John, bidding goodbye to his performing career? That's tempting.
     "I thought maybe we should go to the United Center and see Elton John," I said to the wife, in mid-September.
     "Have you seen him before?" she asked.
     "Yes," I replied. "1979. At the Auditorium Theater."
     "That would be the time to have seen him, then," she replied, with finality.
     Yes, yes it was.
     I was in college then, beginning of sophomore year. You had to enter a lottery and the lucky few would have the privilege of coming downtown to buy tickets. I won, and remember the trip to the box office for the newness of going downtown, as well because Steve McQueen was jumping a car off the parking garage at Marina Towers for his movie "The Hunter," and I joined the throng cordoned across Wacker Drive, waiting for the great moment.
     But watching a movie being made is like watching paint dry. I had tickets waiting at the Auditorium box office, and eventually gave up waiting and moved on. I can still see the pair of tickets—good seats—in their little envelope. I photocopied them and sent them to her, without any explanation, a tacit invite. The letter, I'm sure, is in the big bag, tied with thick blue piece of yarn, sitting in the basement, the letters she handed back to me when she dumped me in 1982. I could dig into the bag and find it, but I'm not touching the thing. I opened the bag exactly once, read a sentence or two, then closed it and never opened it again. It is not a place I want to go.
     The ploy worked. She came to Chicago, my college roommates were banished, and we camped out in the back bedroom of Northwestern Apartments 210, except the night of the concert, a Chicago nightlife whirlwind. Dinner at Jimmy Wong's—the exotic pu-pu-for-two platter, and a big fishbowl of a drink that had, in my memory, a little flame in the center of the glass. Or was that was the night before. Because the night of the concert, staying at what was then the Pick-Congress Hotel, a dark, sub-par refuge, then and now, we ordered a room service cheeseburger and a Heineken. I can still see the tray in the dark room....
     The show was Elton solo—that was a big deal, I recall—though, halfway through, a giant clamshell opened behind him, and there was Ray Cooper, his drummer, looking maniacal, hunched over his kit, playing timpani. It was a dramatic effect.
     The part of the show I remember was during "Rocket Man," Elton John improvised, "I'm burned out, I'm faded away, I'm a fucking Rocket Man," he sang, and we all cried "No! No!"
     He was 32 years old then, though I suppose a decade on the road made him feel that way. I can't imagine how he feels now, after nearly a half century of mega-stardom and enormous fame and wealth. My guess is it can all seem pointless—the drawback of doing what you love every day, day after day, month after month, year after year.
     So I thought I would remind him, that beyond the sea of people, there must be an army of duffers, of lower grade Rocket Men, slightly singed, smelling of cordite, looking wearily at the nearly-drawn parabola of our lives, "that shape of no surprise, no second chances, no return," as Thomas Pynchon put it.
     Countless people, like me, like maybe her—I couldn't say and wouldn't dream of trying to find out—who didn't go to the show. Who asked themselves what they were trying to find that was worth $500 for a pair of tickets, and decided, no matter how good the performance, what we were looking for wouldn't be there. But who still carry all that music around, and know all the words to "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." For all his glitter, nobody celebrated the ordinary like Elton John, "just someone his mother might know." It is probably meaningless to a star like him but, for what it's worth, the ordinary salute him, and say, "Thanks." It meant something.

 

The Saturday Snapshot #12

     When a photograph is being taken, the person in the picture usually poses, smiling.
     Not in this case.
     Last week I was visiting Plochman's Mustard factory in Manteno, for a future story, when the tour came to the assembly line. This worker checking newly capped mustard bottles and plucking off the jars whose caps were skewed seemed to be a process worth photographing. I took out my phone and snapped ... this.
     The moment I took it, I felt bad for her. Normally, I'd ask permission, but with a worker in a factory, permission is assumed. I already had permission, from her bosses. 
   Bad, but not too bad. I also knew this was an arresting shot, far more than had she just acquiesced to the photo. That blue glove, like an exclamation point. The photo seemed to speak to the intrusiveness of modern life. All these cameras, the immediate worldwide attention found 24 hours a day online. Who among us doesn't shrink from that? 
    Is that why she's hiding her face? I didn't ask—my interest was in the production line, not her, specifically. I shouldn't speculate as to her motives, but it reminded me of about 15 years ago when I visited Lithuania. There used to be, oh, 50 synagogues in Vilnius, before World War II, but now there is just one left. The moment I arrived, with a photographer, and walked into the sanctuary, there was  a single Jew there. We went to take his picture, the last Jew in the last synagogue, against the large Hebrew prayer boards they have, or had, in Eastern Europe.
    "No," the man said, twisting away from the camera and shielding his face. "I don't like myself."
    There seemed a bitter irony in that. We absorb the poison around us.
    As I said, I don't know what her motive was and shouldn't guess: hiding from the law, not wanting a malicious ex-boyfriend to see her, concern an image would steal her soul, a variety of possible explanations. Who knows? But I have to lean toward the one offered by that lone Lithuanian Jew as explaining the motive of most people in these situations: they don't like themselves, don't like how they look, don't want pictures taken of this unattractive person who they happen to be. 
    She seemed to relent, after this first protest, and in other pictures of the line, her face does appear. But I didn't use those, didn't pass them along to the newspaper—trying to respect her obvious wish not to be seen. But I decided it was okay to post this one, in the smaller sphere of my blog, since you can't recognize her. I see it as a dramatic statement from those who feel this way. 

Got 40 seconds? Good, then do I have part of a column for you!

  

     Forty seconds.
     Not a lot of time. I'll have to work fast. Stick with me.
     Standing in the newsroom Wednesday I did something I don't often do: study one of the big monitors hanging from the ceiling, showing how our stories are doing.  Checking on my Mega Millions column. Top 10; good, good—people love the lottery. Nodding in contentment, I let my eye wander rightward to "engagement time," how long the average reader spends absorbing this finely wrought argument.
     Forty seconds.
     Ouch. You can't read a column a 40 seconds. Most people must bail out. Looking at the other stories, I saw 40 seconds is actually a long time. One had a time of seven seconds.
     You see why. People are on their phones, flicking here and there. They're like my dog, three steps forward—SQUIRREL!—another three steps—SMELLY SPOT ON THE GROUND!
     It can take her a while to get anywhere.


     The above can be read in 40 seconds—I just did, auctioneer-style, with a stopwatch. So you distracted folks, you've put in your time. I unclip your leash. For the rest, let's continue. Ripping through the above made me think of a Woody Allen joke: "I took a speed-reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia."
     Doesn't everything nowadays?
     And no, I don't take the 40 second average as an indictment of this little 719-word parcel left on your doorstep three times a week. Don't bother writing to sneeringly claim that if only I'd respect our president more, well then, readers would just sprawl before the column, sipping sweet tea, lingering indolently over what I have to say as shadows lengthen on the veranda.
     Thank you for your valuable input.
     Not that I am decrying the speed of modern life, something every writer since Seneca has done. What's the point? Technology wins. Always. It proceeds forward at its own imperative, and we lope after, changing as we go. We are not the same people who flustered in indignation at installing a telephone in our homes where complete strangers might interrupt us during the dinner hour. Those people were not smarter or kinder or better than we are—certainly not when you consider the hideous wrongs they accepted.
     The past is a terrible place. All its jaw-dropping folly was committed at a snail's past, relative to ours. Blundered into after years of careful debate. After endless speeches written in longhand, our country broke in half and started killing each other in the Civil War. Maybe it's better to be distracted: heck, half the people are reading on their phones, and if they don't look up regularly they'll blunder in front of a bus. Distraction is protective.
     I certainly distract myself. Walking somewhere without listening to an audio book seems so 20th century. Also on Wednesday I finished "Oliver Twist" on Audible—17 hours, 12 minutes. Time well spent? I'd say yes. Not because of the story. Oliver is perhaps the most inert hero in literature, buffeted through the tale like a cork in a stream, falling into the clutches of Fagin the Jew here, being rescued by good Christian folk there. He barely acts or speaks, beyond his famous request for "More."
     But Dickens' depiction of grinding London poverty is moving, a reminder that before Western society had minorities to hate, it scorned their own kind, based on wealth and social position.
     One scene resonates. Teen heroine Rose Maylie is visiting Oliver's benefactor, Mr. Brownlow, and his pal Mr. Grimwig. Learning Oliver is downstairs, Brownlow races from the room:

When the room-door closed behind him, Mr. Grimwig ... rose and limped as fast as he could up and down the room at least a dozen times, and then stopping suddenly before Rose, kissed her without the slightest preface.

     "Hush!" he said, as the young lady rose in some alarm at this unusual proceeding. "Don't be afraid. I'm old enough to be your grandfather. You're a sweet girl. I like you. Here they are!"
     That moment is never referred to again, nor does it affect Mr. Grimwig's status as a colorful crank. It was written by Dickens in the late 1830s and could have just as easily been written in the 1930s. But in 2018 it jars. That's progress.
     Thank you for your time and attention. You may go now.

Or if you have to play the lottery, don't play Mega Millions

The Lottery, Sèvres Manufactory, circ. 1757 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

      When I finished yesterday's column on the Mega Millions lottery, it was 1408 words—twice as long as could fit into the newspaper. A few things I thought worth saying ended up on the cutting room floor (and a good thing too; I'd hate to think it was all superfluous tap-dancing and thumb-twidding).
     The part I want to take an extra day to pass along regards the Mega Millions game, and its 302-million-to-one chance of success. There are other lotteries, lots of them, most with far, far, far better odds. If you really just have to throw your money away so you can hope for things, and the idea is you want to win, you should throw your money away on those. You still won't win, but at least you'll have a better chance.
     Since mere argument is ineffective, I tried backing it up with this:

     Think of it this way: If I offered you one of two games, a chance to pick a number between 1 and 1000 with a prize of $1,000, or to roll a die and win $10 if a six comes up, it would be foolish to pick the former game, based on the bigger prize you won't be getting, and not the latter, with its far, far better 1 in 6 odds. You're still probably going to lose either game, so go for the one you have the best chance of winning.
     But people don't think that way, in part because the media doesn't challenge them to. We ignore that not only does the vast, vast, vast vast vast majority lose, but that winning is also overrated. We see the lucky souls clutching the giant check, and then they disappear into the blasted lives.

     Lots of conversation about this—people love the lottery, and I don't want them to think I'm some anti-lottery fanatic. I just think the lottery is stupid and, though as a rule I don't like to meddle in another person's fantasy, with the vast engine of the media banging garbage cans over its head and huzzahing for the lottery, I feel morally obligated to cough the truth into my fist a few times, just for appearance's sake.
     A common argument is that the lottery offers hope that money worries would be at an end. That's a particularly pernicious fantasy, and I replied to a person on Facebook with this metaphor: it's as if you have one cow, and are insisting that if only you had another thousand cows, well then your concerns over cattle would be at an end. Just the opposite. They would only be beginning.
     To this line of thinking, I was accused of being an elitist. Blessed with a good job (though not a particularly secure one) I can't relate to those who struggle to pay rent and buy food. Though those are the very people least in a position to spend money on the lottery. If your plans for dinner involves hitting the Mega Millions on your way to the supermarket well, buddy, plan on being hungry.
     The truth of the matter, I think, the the final word, was offered up by this reader, who observed the following, which I will leave with you. Thanks to everybody for the interesting conversations:

     Neil, you are not a gambler are you? Any degenerate gambler will tell you that the end game is not the win or loss, it’s the action and anticipation. The most exciting moment to any gambler is the moment before the card turns over, the dice stop, the ball falls on a number or the wheels stop spinning. That is the thrill and the reason people keep coming back and the reason some get addicted. Same with the lottery, that $2 or $20 is not about actually winning, but the action of the winning numbers coming up and the fantasy about what you could do if by some miracle you did win. It’s a much needed distraction from every day life and is harmless as long as you don’t start betting the rent or grocery money.

Be happy you didn't win the Mega Millions lottery

   

"The Lottery," by William Hogarth (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  
     Friday, 4:30 p.m., stand up, coat on, hat too, quick glance at the desk before I flick off the lights and head for the train.
     There, something I hadn't noticed: a folded piece of paper: "I (HEART) MY AWESOME COLLEAGUES," A red heart. My own heart sank, I open the paper. A note of thanks from a coworker. And a lottery ticket to the Mega Millions $1 billion drawing that night.
     My first instinct was to give it back. The lottery is stupid.
     But I hesitated. What if the ticket I handed back won? Just my luck. Besides, what would I say to her: "Don't drag me down into your fantasy world?"
     What if I won? The first of an army of concerns waved its hand: my responsibility toward this co-worker. Well, I'd of course do the decent thing. I'll give her, umm, a million dollars.   
     That seems fair.
     No, actually, it's not fair. Not if you do the math. A million dollars is 1/10 of 1 percent of $1 billion. Giving her $1 million in gratitude for my $1 billion windfall would be the same as rewarding somebody who returns a dropped $20 bill with a tip of two pennies. The ratio is the same.
     See, you enter the lottery world and, "I'll give my coworker a million dollars" becomes ill-considered cheapness.
     I tried not to think about it. That night, at dinner, recounting the day, I mentioned the burden of this lottery ticket dropping into my lap.
     "Oh good!" my wife bubbled. "I meant to buy a ticket!"
     My mouth opened closed a few times, goldfish-like.
     Ah heck, why not? We fell to fantasizing about the money, or trying to.  The boys would be ruined, I observed. Why study hard, forge a career, with hundreds of millions of dollars waiting? If we gave them a share, they'd squander it. But if we held it back, they'd hate us.      My colleague would hate me if I didn't give her enough, and my relatives would hate me if I did.
     See? You're supposedly paying for the chance to dream, but it's more like paying for new worries.
     Coverage of the lottery is the media at its worst. I didn't win Friday's drawing. Nobody did, though good luck finding stories that pause from panting "Rollover!" to note that it means had you bought every single ticket sold you'd have still lost. We ignore that not only does the vast majority lose, but that winning is vastly also overrated.

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Give me a lever and a place to stand

Bronze steelyard, Roman (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

    "Give me a lever," Archimedes said, "and a place to stand, and I will move the world."
     Only he didn't say that. That is the final version, the gradual improvement, cleaned-up over the centuries, as everyone from Lord Byron to Thomas Jefferson to John F. Kennedy grabbed the thought and started polishing.
      So I don't feel bad, faced with one of those lingering household tasks, left undone due to its difficulty, I thought of Archimedes' supposed line (compounding the error by ascribing it to Aristotle—they both begin with A!—until I drew upon my journalistic training, and checked).
     So what did Archimedes say? Nothing. His writings are lost. The sentiment comes to us from Plutarch, in his Life of Marcellus (14:7):

    And yet even Archimedes, who was a kinsman and friend of King Hiero, wrote to him that with any given force it was possible to move any given weight; and emboldened, as we are told, by the strength of his demonstration, he declared that, if there were another world, and he could go to it, he could move this. Hiero was astonished, and begged him to put his proposition into execution, and show him some great weight moved by a slight force

    Which he proceeded to do, Plutarch says, by moving a ship with little effort, using a system of pulleys. 

Cigarette card, 1888 (Met)

      I myself resorted to a species of lever, a hand truck—a vastly useful tool to have around the house.  And it worked.
     Maybe I should outline the situation:
     My younger son wanted to be a writer. I, in that automatic error that parents make, used my life as the lens through which to see his, and though this ambition meant he needed a roll top desk to write upon. Because that's what writers have, roll top desks. I still have the one I bought with my paper route money in the early 1970s, for all the good it did.
     Thanks to the wonder of Craigslist, a sufficiently massive oaken roll top desk was stuck into his room, where it sat neglected for five or 10 years, until he made it known we could get rid of that thing at any time.
     Oh that it were that easy.
     My wife automatically assumed that her husband, with his balky back and bad hip, could never move the thing. Perhaps neighbor boys could. Perhaps a lawn care crew could be waylaid at their work and lured inside our home. She spoke, several times, made several calls. But burly men or boys were not available. I pondered what to do, even phoned 1-800-GOT-JUNK. No wonder they're so cheery on those radio ads; they're expensive.
    "Give me a lever," I thought, "and a place to stand, and I will move the world."
     Monday after my writing was done, I dragged the hand truck upstairs and tipped the desk onto it. Then bumped the chunk of oak slowly but controlled down the stairs, out the front door, and into the van. I was afraid they wouldn't take it, but the folks at Goodwill were happy to have it. "We have a lot of people who want these things," the guy at Goodwill said.
     "I hope it finds a good home," I said, driving off with relief. And people think the classics are without practical use.