Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Foxx and Fioretti in the same race — what’s not to love?



     Oh Kim Foxx, Kim Foxx ...
     There are so many reasons not to write about you, ever.
     First, the race thing. Why risk provoking the Carol Moseley Braun defense? You know, when pointing out obvious deficiencies of public officials who are black is portrayed as a form of bigotry.
     Thus, if I observe, oh, for instance, that Foxx wasn’t ready for the job — her main qualifications being a law degree and a cozy spot under the wing of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who elevated her for reasons mysterious — then suddenly I’m Bull Connor tightening my grip around an axe handle.
     When in reality, the defense itself is racist: the racism of low expectations, the unsupportable notion that certain public figures are exempt from the careful scrutiny that any full-fledged adult must expect when entering the political arena.
     To be safe, let’s bend over backward with Foxx.
     A definite improvement over Anita Alvarez — Javert from “Les Miserables” would have been a definite improvement over Alvarez — Foxx so thoroughly botched the Jussie Smollett case that it overshadowed her record, particularly when, as if for an encore, to show what she is really capable of, Foxx even more acrobatically botched the fallout to her botching the Smollett case.

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Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Flashback 2005: The House on the Hill




     Holy coincidence, Batman. 

    Friday I was collecting my parents from the Sheraton in Northbrook. I parked the car  and noticed The House on the Hill, as I called it when I first moved here. I snapped a photo, and later tracked down the column mentioning it: exactly 14 years ago.
     The column was much longer back then—a whopping 11oo words—and filled an entire page. I'll trim out some dated topical fluff about Blago trying to ban junk food in schools, but leave in the non-House on the Hill prelude about immigration—our perennial national hobby horse—and Google's view of the word "googling."
Or if pressed for time—and who isn't?—you can just skip to the "Closing Shot" at the end. 

OPENING SHOT

     The president says we need to guard our borders. I say we need to look to Japan, where well-guarded borders have led to retirees overwhelming workers in a gerontocracy crumbling toward economic ruin. If we had a functional immigration service, we wouldn't have so many illegals and people could openly come here to keep our economy humming and our nation vital. Besides, most concern over immigration is our old friend Racism wearing his Sunday best and trying to pass in polite society.


GOOGLY EYES ARE OK, THOUGH

     Near the end of the 19th century, Germany's Friedrich Bayer and Company discovered acetylsalicylic acid was useful in treating pain. "Acetylsalicylic acid" is a mouthful, so the new product was marketed under the brand name "Aspirin."
     Over the decades, Bayer failed to zealously guard the name of its popular product, and it was seized by other companies, so that now any fly-by-night pill company with a few sacks of acetylsalicylic acid can start selling it as "aspirin" and Bayer can't say boo to them.
     This story haunts big business to this day. That's why if you write about "xeroxing" something, the Xerox Corporation will send you a starchy letter, scolding you that the proper verb is "photocopying," thank you, preferably on a "Xerox brand photocopier." Even the DayGlo Color Corporation—who knew?—of Cleveland will chew you out if you pretend their brand is a mere type of hue.
     Sometimes, these efforts border on the futile. "Rollerblading" is just too apt a word, and will never be replaced by "inline skating," no matter how hard Rollerblade USA of Hamilton, N.J., tries.
     With this in mind, I wondered how the popularity of the word "googling" was sitting with Google Inc., the California-based search engine company that suddenly is the biggest thing on Earth.
     They are supposed to be a young, hip, with-it company too busy changing the world to worry about wubbly old workadaddy worries such as trademark law. Yet they are still a company (by now worth more than all the other companies combined, I believe). Don't they see a risk that, without vigorous protection, soon people will be googling with Microsoft or Websites-R-Us or whatever? Do they fear the fate of aspirin? And if they do, how does Google, a company all too happy to push the boundaries of copyright law by offering pages from other companies' copyrighted books on the Web for free, go about protecting itself?
     Very quickly—as befits an enterprise that went from two guys in a dorm room to a world-bestriding behemoth in seven years—I found myself talking to Rose Hagan, senior trademark counsel at Google. I asked her if "Google" becoming a popular verb is a danger sign.
     "All trademark owners do have to worry their marks will become generic," she said. "It's not [a problem], if a mark is used as a verb. The test is what does the public perceive when they use it. We want to make sure, when people talk about googling, they mean searching on Google, as opposed to any other search engine."
     Clever—I bet Xerox is kicking itself for pushing "photocopying" all those years, instead of trying to define "xeroxing" as "using a Xerox machine."
     Hagan said that, like Xerox, Google has "a nice little letter" it dispatches if somebody starts manhandling the Google trademark. Foreign dictionaries, which tend to ignore the niceties of American intellectual property laws, have been a particular problem.
     So what about those who—hard as it is to imagine—use a search engine other than Google to surf the Internet? What verb should they use if not "google"?
     "'Search' is a nice easy word," said Hagan. "I don't think we need to complicate anything."
     Isn't that what lawyers are for?

CLOSING SHOT

     Sometimes it's better not to know.
     For five years, ever since I moved to the old leafy suburban paradise, whenever I would drive up Waukegan Road, after admiring the grandeur of Techny Towers, I would sneak a covetous glance to my left, to what I called The House on the Hill.
     The House on the Hill was a single building silhouetted against the horizon, utterly alone. A comfortable house, too far away to make out clearly, but in my imagination it had been there a long time, back when the area was undeveloped woodland, before it was sold off and fell to ferocious development (including a gated community, complete with a guardhouse, though what it could possibly be guarding against out here I can't imagine. Wolves, perhaps).
     Anyway, with big earth-moving equipment working toward The House on the Hill, with sprawl closing in day by day, I thought it time to drive up to the house and end the mystery. Maybe commiserate with its longtime owner, who I imagined to be a cross between Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost, a white-haired gent who might recall when the only disturbance was the clop of horse hooves and the creak of cart wheels.
     The road was difficult to find—tucked by the new Costco and the hivelike Glenview commercio-residential metroplex. But I found it, and slowly worked my way up a rather big hill -- almost a mountain, really, quite improbable for this flat part of Illinois. When I got to the top, I found The House on the Hill wasn't a house at all; it was the Willowhill Golf Academy. And the hill wasn't a real hill, either, but an enormous mound of landfilled trash.
     As I said, sometimes it's better not to know.

                —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 30, 2005

Monday, December 2, 2019

‘The more, the merrier’ — why we need babies and immigrants

New Americans show off their citizenship documents, Chicago 2013

     Did you have a nice Thanksgiving? I hope so. We sure did. One for the record books, actually. Two turkeys, one roasted, one fried. Three types of cranberry sauce. Four pies, that I tasted personally — slivers of pumpkin, pecan, cherry and key lime.
     Twenty-seven guests, from California to New York. Ranging in age from 87 (my dad) to 5 (the youngest of eight nieces, six of whom were there). Not counting my first great-nephew waiting in the wings, courtesy of a niece eight and a half months pregnant. Anticipation of the Big Event gave Thanksgiving 2019 extra sparkle.
     A baby is an increasing rarity nowadays — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last Wednesday that the U.S. birth rate slipped again in 2018: down 2 percent, the lowest in 32 years.
     Why? Good question. Journalists immediately rounded up the usual suspects.
     “The birthrate is a barometer of despair,” one demographer suggested. Unemployment is low, but the jobs available tend to be marginal, benefitless, future-free gigs that don’t encourage those grinding away at them to take up the task of starting a new generation in between driving Uber fares and pulling lattes.
     Children are the ultimate luxury, more expensive than any vacation or car or most houses. Little howling money sponges, not to forget time-consuming, emotionally draining and physically demanding, if you do it right.
     That frank assessment should not discourage anyone from having kids. They’re the best. Like any difficult endeavor — climbing Mount Everest, flying to the moon — the satisfaction is commensurate with the difficulty. Now that old age is setting out its tools of torture and the standard markers of success —money, status, career — flicker and fade into insignificance, kids matter more than ever.

To continue reading, click here.
 

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Fatherhood



                               A military hair brush
                               My good friend Cate gave to me 
                               As a token of esteem
                               More than 35 years ago
                               Boar bristles. oval walnut handle
                               Form and function, a thing of beauty
                               For decades I used it to align
                               My gently thinning hair
                               Regularly admiring
                               Its solidity in my hand
                               Its understated elegance
                               Feeling rather elegant myself.
                               Just by proximity
                               The firm command of its bristles
                               Keeping me presentable
                               Through courtship and marriage
                               To someone else
                               Home, children.
                               An elder son, grown to manhood
                               And took a fancy to the brush
                               I can assume.
                               Because he brought it to college
                               Without a by-your-leave
                               Or perhaps fancy wasn't involved
                               Maybe it was the casual assumption
                               Of the well-loved
                               That the world will offer and he accept
                               Or not, as is his pleasure.
                               Anyway, I politely inquired after the brush then
                               Discovering its fate
                               Let the matter drop
                               "I would have given it to him,"
                               I told my wife.
                              "Had he asked."
                              Shrugged
                              And bought another brush
                              A six-dollar rubberized 
                              Bed, Bath & Beyond Conair brush
                              Neither cheap nor luxurious
                              Functional nylon bristles
                              Still up to the task of tending
                              My gently thinning hair.
                              Frankly, I forgot about my wooden brush
                              Until it reappeared, along with my son
                              For the Thanksgiving holiday.
                              He, a fine, sleek, 24
                              The brush, at least a decade older
                              On the lip of the sink upstairs
                              Showing its age, the wood dry 
                              Mottled, water-worn
                              The bristles thick with his own blond
                              Gently thinning hair
                              Did I consider swapping the brushes?
                              I did.
                              But that is not what happened.
                              What I did was bring up a bottle of furniture oil
                              And a soft cloth
                              Then gently rubbed the oil in the walnut handle
                              Twice, until it shone fresh
                              I took a comb and carefully removed
                              His gently thinning hair
                              And set the brush, renewed
                              As quality will do
                              Back upon the sink
                              And quietly slunk away
                              With a smile of paternal happiness.
                              I cannot give him much
                              In the way of stocks or bond or real estate
                              Few business contacts
                              Fewer objects worth inheriting
                              But I can give the gift of 
                              A military hair brush.









Saturday, November 30, 2019

‘My name is Bryce Weiler’ — blind broadcaster helps teams to see the disabled


 Bryce Weiler talking to the Arkansas State women's basketball team.


     The Arkansas State’s women’s basketball team has had a long day: the 70-mile drive from Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Memphis, Tennessee. The flight to O’Hare. The journey downtown. Now they are on the second floor of Giordano’s on Rush, waiting to try that institution’s notion of the famed Chicago deep-dish pizza.
     But first-year coach Matt Daniel has one more hurdle for his Red Wolves.
     ‘‘I didn’t tell my kids at all. I wanted it to be a surprise,” Daniel says. “I wanted to catch them off guard.”
     The surprise is his dinner guest, a 28-year-old man from Downstate.
     ‘‘Everybody listen,” says Daniel, standing up. “This is Bryce. Bryce is a friend of Coach D’s. He’s also going to do radio tomorrow with Mr. Merritt. He has an interesting story about his background. Listen to what he’s saying, OK?”
     ‘‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” the young man begins, speaking over the clatter of the busy restaurant, his shoulders hunched, arms straight down at his sides. “My name is Bryce Weiler. I was born four months premature. I was born at one pound, two ounces. Being born at such a small weight, doctors first thought that I wasn’t going to be able to survive at such a small weight. But after they realized I was a fighter, they decided to . . .”
     His friend Maggie Walsh silently steps behind him, takes him gently by the shoulders and repositions Weiler two steps to the right.
     ‘‘. . . They were going to do whatever they could do to try to save me. I became blind, maybe too much light, maybe too much oxygen, caused the retinas to detach.”
     The team listens attentively, even as the spaghetti course arrives, prelude to the cheese tire that Giordano’s considers deep-dish pizza. When Weiler asks for volunteers to try his collapsible white cane, two players leap up.
     Blind sports fans are not unknown — Craig Lynch was a blind Cubs fan who ended up reporting from the press box for 30 years. Others are scattered across the country. 


To continue reading, click here.

Bryce Weiler, right, and Keith Merritt broadcast a DePaul-Arkansas State women's basketball game.

Friday, November 29, 2019

Flashback 2007: A boy's best friend; Drew's mother might not know best when it comes to his guilt or innocence

     Need a Day-After-Thanksgiving lift? An overcast November Friday pick-me-up? Here you go: Drew Peterson is both forgotten and still in prison. Remember when it seemed like the newspaper couldn't publish an edition without the spouse-slaying suburban cop's fat florid mug all over the front page? Ah, good times. I happened upon this old column with a poignant, post-Thanksgiving Chicago scene and, rather than just run the item, I thought I would give the entire page-spanning epic, just in case you've got time to kill today. while your body tries to digest the offense committed against nature yesterday. Remember Michelle Shocked's words of wisdom: "Except for the holidays, it's a fine time of year."

OPENING SHOT . . .

     Once I found myself on a ship, sailing to Martinique, chatting with the South African golfer Gary Player. He seemed an affable fellow, and so I was emboldened to ask him how he could go around the world representing his country's vile apartheid system. Player's answer stuck with me: "Nobody ever asked Arnold Palmer how he could be an American golfer with the Vietnam War going on."
     Good point—you can belong to something, take pride in it, and yet not be personally responsible for its every flaw. Sort of my reaction when readers challenge me about a particular aspect of this newspaper. I tell them that I don't run it, and that my ability to influence its decisions is pretty much limited to writing this column.
     Take Tuesday's front-page expose on Drew Peterson's mom, Betty, who—stop the presses—is not only certain that her boy is innocent of any misdeed, but felt moved to lecture the putative victim that she's ashamed of her for causing this mess for her dear son.
     "I could swear on a Bible that he would never hurt anyone at any time," she added.
     Is that not the classic lamentation of the mom of the accused? Is there a felon in prison today whose mother isn't convinced he's not guilty? Peterson's mother being certain of his innocence is not only not front-page material, but instead is completely without any significance whatsoever. God bless mothers everywhere, but their opinions on the guilt or innocence of their offspring must be taken, not with a grain of salt, but with the entire jumbo blue canister tucked under the arm of the Morton Salt girl.

Not that anybody asked me.


     The per capita quota of purple-hooded jackets, pink backpacks, and sippy cups shot up in the Loop this week, as the annual Children's Crusade hits downtown, a juvenile tsunami created by the combination of Thanksgiving break, the beginning of the holiday season, and early onset cabin fever.
     There were six children on my train car this morning, and I slid into the open seat behind a mother and daughter—the seats around children on Metra trains are invariably vacant, as my fellow commuters cringe in disgust away from the prospect of their reverie on charts projecting market data for flummox couplings in fiscal 2011 being perchance interrupted by a childish squeal of glee.
     I always flop gratefully into those empty seats. Because I have been annealed in the furnace of my own two boys, and enjoy nothing better than to park behind some toddler and her escort and wait, patiently, until she inevitably sends up a wail, and her haggard parent, trying in vain to quiet the tot, eventually looks up with that tentative expression of entreaty, her curiosity over how her offspring's fit is going over on those nearby overwhelming reluctance to perceive the newspaper-ruffling tut-tutting of the heartless commuters. At that moment I like to smile sympathetically and say, "Been there." (Dante says half of heaven is made up of Jews; this is how they get there.)
     The girl in the seat in front of me wasn't crying, but sat on her mother's lap, perfectly composed, taking in her surroundings with huge blue eyes that matched the blue bow in her hair and were a shade darker than her blue cable knit sweater and whale-studded dress.
     "This is your first time on a train," her mother asked. "How do you like it?"
     "It's so beautiful," said the girl, flapping her hands in all directions, as if to take in the entire car. Then her attention shifted to her mother, and she flapped her hands at her.
     "But you're more beautiful," she said.

Kids at church

     Going south on Des Plaines Street in Ed McElroy's Cadillac, the Great Chicagoan himself at the wheel. The rococo splendor of Old St. Patrick's Church looms to the right.
     "The oldest church in Chicago," says Ed, of the structure, completed in 1856. "And the prettiest. Ever been inside?"
     I think for a moment.
     "Steve Neal's funeral," I say.
     "Right," says Ed. "I was there. I gave you a lift."
     A red light at Adams. I turn to look at the church, batting away somber memories. At that moment, the front doors of the church fly open and children -- boys and girls, about 5 or 6 years old -- pour down the steps. They are in uniform, white shirts, blue pants or dresses, some in scarlet jackets. The boys are wearing paper Pilgrim hats, with the big buckle on them, the girls, more demure folded blue caps. There are a lot of them -- it's Grandparent's Day at Old St. Pat's—600 kids from Frances Xavier Warde School, attended by 400 admiring grandparents.
     The new priest, Father Tom Hurley, takes his position on the sidewalk, resplendent in his cream-colored robes with colorful embroidered trim, nodding and smiling. But it's hard to even look at adults with so many bright, boisterous children, each face aglow with a look that can easily be translated as "Thanksgiving!!!" as they are shepherded toward the buses.
     "They don't know what's ahead of them," says McElroy, 82. Now there are several ways to interpret that statement, but I detect a touch more somberness than I'm used to from the glib speechmaker and master of ceremonies, and so I take it to mean: Life hits you upside the head like a sap filled with lead shot.
     "Well," I say, unexpectedly sallying to the defense of the future. "There'll be good things, too."
     The light changes. We take a right on Adams, and head toward Carmichael's and lunch.

Today's chuckle
     We need a sour sorbet to get all that child-induced sweetness off our palates. This is from Kathleen Madigan:
     Kids? It's like living with homeless people. They're cute but they just chase you around all day long going, "Can I have a dollar? I'm missing a shoe! I need a ride!"

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 21, 2007 

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Candor is a privilege



     Aunt Marsha and her daughters won't be at our Thanksgiving this year. They're from the New York branch of the family, have never come to visit and never will. Too good for us, I suppose.

     But if they were there, or we there, I would not delve into their support of Donald Trump, which I learned about from my mother. "Hey Aunt Marsha, you're an idiot carrying water for a traitor" does not seem something that the hospitable host would say, particularly not to an aged relative. I don't even say that to strangers, not much, not anymore.  Why bother? If they were open to suasion, they wouldn't believe as they do. No need to descend into abuse; they're better at it. They have more practice.
     This simple truth seems not to be so easy for people to grasp, based on the number of articles in what was once called the popular press—and now is what? The unpopular press?—on how to talk about the Trump enormity over the holiday table.
    Here's a thought: don't.  Not to offend my colleagues in the news trade, but why? Candor is a privilege, not a right. I have to respect you to spend time birddogging your errors. So if you are lost in some delusion: astrology, religion, an unmerited faith in con men and traitors like-oh-for-instance-Donald-Trump, I will not take your hand and try to lead you away from your folly. Why bother? You're lost, and if it were in my power to guide you out, I would. But I can't. It would only upset you and annoy me, like the old joke about teaching pigs to sing ("Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.")
     Sure, it's annoying for some loudmouth uncle to channel whatever psycho-fucking-bullshit was featured last night on Fox News. It can be difficult, I imagine.  But not as difficult as snapping at the bait. Because that's what those opinions are: traps, dug for anyone careless enough to fall in. That's what most of the Trump dynamic is about: finding someone to abuse and bully so you can feel better about yourself. 
      Let me tell you a trade secret: there's no need to play along. You can completely ignore the mean, the crazy, the ignorant. Let them find their victims elsewhere. I have a spam filter filled with harsh people talking to themselves, like lunatics sitting in windowless cells, howling, gabbering to the wall. You know when I read their emails? Never. Almost never. Only if I'm stumped and want to reach in and find something stupid to set upon a plinth for people to laugh at.  My eyes don't fall on one in 50.
     This might hurt their feelings. Boo fuckin' hoo.They might feel neglected. I wouldn't know. They might complain. No doubt they will complain, that I'm just too timid to behold the wonder of their magnificent truths. That's fine. Let 'em complain. I won't read those either. Because between the frictionless malice of social media and the validation for caustic lunacy that comes with Donald Trump, we find ourselves in a Carnival of the Mean and Dumb. But just because they're dancing doesn't mean we have to clap. Time is finite; don't waste it on fools.
     You have to protect your boundaries, to not let the poison in. 
     Not a very Thanksgiving-like sentiment, I know, and I'm sorry. The truth is, I had a full, fun day Wednesday, finishing up a special, double-length sports column for Saturday, then picking the boys up at the airport, collecting my parents and hanging around, having fun, going out to a festive Greek dinner. Conversation ranged from whether a contract carries extra weight because it's written in blood (no, there's case law; California, naturally) to what kinds of soup would make good names for children (Chowder for a boy, Jambalaya for a girl) to who Sloopy is in the song and why she needs to hang on. Nobody was mean. Nobody was stupid. Everybody played nice together like a string quartet. Thursday is one of my favorite days: Thanksgiving, starting with me whipping up stuffing for 27 guests. I hope you have an enjoyable one, and thank you for reading this past year. I hope you are not saddled with a crazy, mean person, or are that sort of person yourself. If you are, and you're reading this, and since I am in essence a hopeful man, I will observe that just because everyone is staring into their plates as you prattle on doesn't mean they are awed by your eloquence. Perhaps some reflection is in order if only you could, you know, do that sort of thing.