Work in progress: Jack Clark on the No. 93 bus

     Not living in the city, I probably like buses more than Chicago residents do — familiar enough to grab one when convenient; not familiar enough to be thoroughly schooled in their shortcomings. Like them enough to show up toward midnight at the Kedzie Avenue garage once, near midnight, to watch one being cleaned. 

     Thus I'm happy to present the latest contribution by Jack Clark, a deep dive into a particular bus route. My guess is this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but that some will appreciate it, if only for its granular look at part of a city we all love.

     I’d write to the CTA if I could figure out a concise way to express my thoughts, which aren’t about important issues like crime on the system or whether Donald Trump will figure out some way to cut funding. Mine are closer to home: the route of the CTA’s 93 North California/Dodge bus, which comes out of Evanston and was recently rerouted so it now connects the Purple Line in Evanston, the Brown Line at Kedzie Avenue, and the Blue Line at Logan Square.
     Now before I go on, I should tell you that I can see Kedzie Avenue out my kitchen window. (I just looked. It’s still there.) And, at first, I assumed that my desire to have the extension of the 93 go straight down Kedzie on its way to Logan Square was nothing more than typical selfishness. I did a bit of research and changed my mind.
     There are two California buses, the 93, which I mentioned above, and the 94 California bus, which goes south from Addison Street all the way to 74th and Damen. Until recently, the two buses did not meet. Most of this can probably be attributed to the blockade put up by Ravenswood Manor, where California becomes a narrow side street and only runs for a single block in the half mile between Lawrence and Montrose Avenues.
     The old 93 didn’t try to get around this gap. It just gave up on California, took Foster to Kimball, went down to the Brown Line terminal at Lawrence, and started back north for Evanston.
     The new route takes Foster only as far as Kedzie where it turns south and connects with the Brown Line. A few blocks later, at Montrose Avenue, the bus makes a wrong turn. The CTA could have sent the bus the direct and logical way, straight down Kedzie, (past my kitchen window) a little over two miles, to the new end of the line at Logan Square. Instead, they decided to add a mile to the trip and go east, back to California.
     Now this makes sense on paper. It’s the California bus after all. Shouldn’t it be on California? Confusion starts as soon as the bus makes that turn. Montrose Avenue already has a bus. People have been taking it for decades without having to check to see if it’s the right one. If a CTA bus came along it was the Montrose bus. So now, of course, you have people getting on the wrong bus only to discover their mistake once the bus turns south.
     South of Montrose, California is a quiet street. There’s an ordinary residential neighborhood on the right. On the left, is first Horner and then California Park. Mostly what you see from the bus are parking lots. Beyond those, there are playgrounds, baseball diamonds, a nature walk along the river, a dog run, a swimming pool, and a bike, walking, and running path that goes under the Irving Park bridge, over the river and into Clark Park, and all the way to Belmont Avenue. There’s also an indoor sports center with tennis courts and an ice rink.
     In my several fact-finding trips, I haven’t seen anybody getting on or off the bus who looks like a park patron. I haven’t seen many riders at all. It’s a pleasant trip during daylight when you can actually see what you’re passing. At night, with the tinted windows, what you mostly see is your own reflection.
     The parks end just north of Addison where DePaul College Prep--the recently renamed Gordon Tech High School — sits, and this is also where the 94 California bus turns the corner from Addison and begins its long, 13-mile journey, south to 74th Street. The two buses, the 93 and the 94, now run together for a mile, both with California in their name, which must cause a bit of confusion. At Diversey, the 93 turns west, causing even more confusion as it drives a half mile down a street which already has a bus, and goes right back to Kedzie where it turns south for a block or so, to the end of the line at Logan Square.
     So the bus went a mile out of its way on two streets that already have buses, just so it could go two miles down another street, a mile of which is already covered by another CTA bus with a very similar name. Mass transit turns to mass confusion.
     The CTA apparently wanted to connect those two California buses, probably so passengers could transfer from one to the other. This makes sense, of course, but believe me, there are better ways to do this.
     Here’s what the 93 missed by not staying on Kedzie all the way to Logan Square. The Auto Zone auto parts store at Cullom, which is right next door to the Easy Clean laundromat. The Cermak Produce grocery store at Berteau, which is right across the street from Sanabel Bakery and Grocery, which is full of Middle-Eastern baked goods and other products.
     The next block, Belle Plaine, is where you would get off for the Village Discount, a huge thrift store. At Irving Park, there’s a currency exchange, a full-service Chase Bank, a Walgreens, and Fuller’s Pub which has live music many nights of the week and is not a bad place to watch the Bears.
     At Byron there’s another laundromat with a dry cleaners attached, and at Grace there is the Daniel J. Doffyn Post Office, which is the main post office for zip code 60618. This appears to be the only post office in the entire city that is not serviced by the CTA. Yes, you can walk two blocks from the Irving, Kimball, or the Addison bus, or four blocks from California, where nothing at all is still going on.
     I’m sure there are plenty of people who would appreciate a bus that would take them right to the front door. Of course, this would lead to even longer lines inside the post office. Well, I don’t really mind the lines. In this busy world, it’s sometimes nice to have nothing to do but think about CTA buses ambling down that orderly grid of Chicago streets. Orderly Grids. That sounds like some boring, generic breakfast cereal. What’s really needed here is a bit of sex, some drugs, and rock and roll. 

     Now Kedzie Avenue is not much on that first diversion. To my eyes, it’s one of the least erotic streets in town. You want rock and roll? Go right back to Fuller’s Pub at Irving Park. Drugs? Straight ahead on the left just past Addison. That’s where you’ll find the BLOC Dispensary. According to Google “it is a Latino- and woman-owned social equity dispensary…” They also sell marijuana and related paraphernalia. You have to go around the back to get in. I think this is to remind you how much fun you used to have sneaking around when drugs were illegal and much, much cheaper.
     Wait a minute, can you get a contact high just writing about reefer? I missed the White Castle which is kitty-corner on the other side of Addison, and the big Jewel/Osco, which anchors a big shopping center across Elston Avenue with a bunch of other stores including, believe it or not, another currency exchange and another Chase Bank. Kedzie Avenue, the financial center of the North Side. Who knew?
     From here on out, Kedzie is just about as boring as California. So, dear CTA, if you really think these two buses must meet on California itself, you could send the 93 down Elston. The two buses could kiss when they meet at Belmont, and then proceed south a half mile to Diversey where the 93 could wave goodbye and turn back to Kedzie to get to Logan Square.
     But this brings up another issue, one which I’m sure the CTA in its insular way has never even considered. The California exit from the inbound Kennedy Expressway is one of the worst exits in the entire city. It frequently backs up onto the highway. This happens because cars wanting to go east on Diversey must make an immediate left turn when they come off the exit ramp. If more than a couple of cars are attempting this, it generally blocks everybody else trying to get off and the exit backs up. I’m sure there have been plenty of accidents on the ramp and on the expressway itself because of this backup. Adding a second CTA bus to the confusion cannot help matters.
     But I have a simple solution. Let’s just send the 93 straight down Kedzie Avenue (and by my kitchen window) to Logan Square. This was how it went until the route was cut back to Lawrence Avenue in 1982, which in my mind is still sort of the recent past.
     Now the other California bus, the 94, is going all the way to 74th Street. That’s so far away it sounds like another galaxy (and let’s face facts, if the numbered streets didn’t make the South Side layout so easily understood, for most of us on the North Side, it might as well be). The bus already has to make a detour at Chicago Avenue to get around the Metra yards, which cuts off California between Grand Avenue and Fulton Street. So one more diversion on the way out of the Milky Way is hardly going to matter.
     My suggestion — after 1500 words — send the 94 down Logan Boulevard to Logan Square? It’s only a half mile. The two buses could do their little kiss, people could transfer from one to another, and then the 94 could go right back out the boulevard to California and continue on its way.
     Of course, now it’s the 94 that’s going a mile out of its’ way. But Logan Boulevard is a wide street without much traffic, so this diversion will take much less time than the one currently in place. There hasn’t been a bus on Logan since the early 1950s when the old boulevard bus system was taken over by the CTA. So there won’t be any confusion with other buses as there is on Montrose, California and Diversey.
     And the last time I looked, there was even an old sidewalk-to-nowhere left over from one of the old boulevard bus stops. So the CTA could bring back a bit of transit history too.
     Before I finish, I should tell you that I rarely take the CTA. I usually get around by bicycle, unless it happens to be really cold or it’s raining or snowing, like it’s been for the last several months.
     Now how ironic is that?

 

 

JustFoodForDogs

  

    No column in the paper today. I was on assignment for the Sunday editor, and wrote a larger piece that's running this weekend.

     "I wonder if they have any food for cats," I mused, as my wife and I drove to Highland Park. "Maybe I'll ask them."
     We don't have a cat, not anymore, having lost our Natasha last June. So no need for cat food. But my odd comment becomes less mysterious when you understand our destination: a shop called "JustFoodForDogs" in Highland Park. I guess I was trying to be funny, and failing.             
     Our Kitty, who is a dog, for new readers, or longtime readers slow on the uptake, is pushing 16 years old this summer and has been suffering from what we call a wanky stomach. As have we. I will spare you the details. Let's just say instead of taking her out three times a day, I've been taking her out five or six. This morning, my wife took her out at 1 a.m. And I went at 2:30 a.m. We know to do so because she starts crying. It's like having a newborn.  This also necessitated several visits to the vet — three, maybe four — a variety of tests, including x-rays. An expenditure, I estimate, of some $500. At least.

     We'd given her medications. We'd mixed canned pumpkin into her food. Now the vet's suggestion was to go to this JustFoodForDogs — not sure what happened to the spaces between the words, but that's how they present themselves — and secure some balanced remedy food. No problem. Had Dr. Jones suggested we go to Lourdes and wash her in the water at the Grotto of Massabielle, well, that's what we would do. We love her that much.

     I must admit, I was taken aback by the store, particularly its sparseness. The place reminded me of the Parachute boutique on Oak Street in the 1980s, when "you're going to pay a fortune on this rags" was conveyed by having just a few exquisite garments hanging from a hook or two. Or the Richart chocolate shop in Paris. Swanky dog food.

     I let out a mental slow whistle.

     Our entrance tripped some secret signal, in the back, and a young man hurried out and curated our high end dog food needs. He was a handsome young man, tall, with his face obscured by a mass of hair, and I considered taking his photograph, then thought better of it.

     We bought two forms of the food, a frozen slab and a small box of what was, in essence, cooked turkey and rice with a bunch of oils and vitamins in it , and took it home.

     Kitty zupped the stuff up. And while the unmentionable problems got only a little better, if that, we were encouraged enough to return. This time I bought three frozen slabs, each weighing 18 ounces, for a little over $30, and took them away in a little white bag, the sort of thing you'd expect at a jewelry store or expensive boutique, which I guess this is.

     Yes, it occurred to me we could whip up some turkey and rice and mash it up and save ourselves about 90 percent. But we could also make our brooms out of sorghum. "We cook our dog's food ourselves," is not a sentence that I ever want to utter. 

     JustFoodForDogs was founded in 2010 to offer "human-grade food" to canines without all the filler, sawdust and ground up horses and whatnot that must be in commercial dog food.  In addition to the stand-alone stores, they're available in PetSmart — also no space; I'm beginning to see a trend here,. Maybe the pets eat the spaces between the words.

     When I made the cat joke at the beginning of today's post, I immediately realized that I was re-working a joke David Letterman made when he visited a store called "Just Bulbs" for his show. Doing my due diligence, I dug up the sketch, and was a little shocked to see the bit was aired in 1982. 

     "Do you have any sandwiches here, do ya?" a shockingly young Letterman asks the proprietor. "So besides bulbs, what do you have here? How about shades here? Can you get shades?" She suggests he go to a store called "Just shades." And he does. "Do you sell bulbs?" he asks her, earnestly.

     That's the thing with these jokes. A good one can stick in mind for a long, long time.

     

     

Flashback 2011: 'You get a little heartbroken'

      A central hazard of aging is the risk of beginning to notice what isn't there more than you notice what is. I pondered  this last week, when I was downtown (and wrote a post about thinking the Harlan J. Berk coin and antiquity store had vanished). It wasn't just that. My general mood was, I felt like I was walking through a Ghost City of places now gone. Such as this blank storefront on Madison Street, which I had written about a couple of times when it was a tiny but scrappy cupcake shop. I have sympathy for small fry flogging their dying dreams, particularly if they are battling behemoths. The original headline was "Corporate cupcake giant moves in on 2 tough cookies." If you make it to the end, I provide an update.

     People come into the Cupcake Counter all day long, looking for cupcakes. Some even buy them at the tiny shop on Madison Street.
     Others are just asking for directions to Crumbs Bake Shop, a New York cupcake chain that opened in Chicago at the end of December. 

     They haven’t far to go; it’s right across the street from the Cupcake Counter — just turn around and walk out the door, having bought nothing, leave the little bakery that Samantha Wood and her mother, Holly Sjo, began in 2009 and keep afloat by working grueling 16-hour days, turn left, go 60 paces, crossing Franklin Street, and there you are at the 34th Crumbs branch nationwide.
     “Your spirit ...” says Wood. “You get a little heartbroken.”
     The Cupcake Counter, 229 W. Madison, is perhaps the smallest retail establishment downtown. The storefront is 9 feet wide, the total space, including the kitchen in back, is 290 square feet. For Valentine’s Day it is decorated like a kindergarten, with big red hearts cut out of construction paper.
     Crumbs is more than twice the size, a difference also reflected in its products. It’s decorated with a lovely golden graphic of a jester juggling cupcakes.

   Cupcake Counter cupcakes weigh about 2¾ ounces and look exactly like the cupcakes your mother would bake and bring to your first-grade classroom in a tinfoil-lined shoebox to celebrate your birthday. The icing can be spare — sometimes it doesn’t even cover the cupcake top, but leaves a gap of bare cake rimming the crinkly paper wrapping.
      Decoration might be a single tiny red candy heart, set directly in the center. I would describe Cupcake Counter cupcakes as simple, classic cupcakes with a certain quiet dignity; solemn cupcakes, maybe even a little sorrowful; cupcakes as Wayne Thiebaud would paint them.
     Sometimes only a handful are on display.
     Across the street at Crumbs is a different story altogether. The display case is jammed with cupcakes, ranging from 1-ounce minis to the “Colossal Crumb” intended to feed eight people. The “signature” cupcakes are 7-ounce, 500-calorie behemoths the size and shape of grapefruits, domed high with icing, studded with candy, drenched in chocolate, crusted with sprinkles. Circus-like cupcakes. Mardi Gras cupcakes.
      “Most people don’t eat them by themselves,” said Crumbs district manager Sara Fina. “They share them, because you want to try everything.”
     Its “library of varieties” are produced at an outside bakery. “We give them the recipes,” said Fina, adding that Crumbs plans to open four more outposts in the Chicago area, the latest squalls in a cupcake downpour.
      “Cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes,” said Sarah Levy, founder of Sarah’s Pastries & Candies, a Chicago bakery. “We are definitely being bombarded. You think it’s going to be gone but it’s still going.”
      Levy said high-end cupcake boutiques first got recognition with New York’s Magnolia Bakery in “Sex and the City” and Sprinkles in Beverly Hills.
      “Lines out the door,” Levy said.
      Sprinkles opened its first shop in Chicago last July. Magnolia is planning to open here this spring.
     Cupcake Counter cupcakes are $3 apiece; Crumbs’ signature cupcakes are $3.75. I bought a few from each store to take home, taste-test and compare, and here my David-and-Goliath story falls apart.
      Though Cupcake Counter chocolate icing has a delicate cocoa note I savored, there was no night-and-day difference. The made-from-scratch-by-mom cake and the made-by-some-faceless-contractor cake tasted pretty much the same, and my family preferred Crumbs, which does give 250 percent more cupcake for 25 percent more in price.
     Not that there aren’t reasons beyond cupcakes to patronize the Cupcake Counter.
     “It was always a dream to do a business together,” said Wood. “Mom went to culinary school; I worked in advertising. That was our dream, to do something little and have it be real. We never had the interest to have 10 locations.”
      They have a tough enough time running one.
     “Food retail is so laborious,” she said, noting they arrive at 3 or 4 a.m. and stay until 7:30 p.m..
     “That’s a day,” she said.
     As for Crumbs.
     “You want to believe that people can see through it,” she said.
     Wood looked tired. What are the chances that she and her mother will hold up against a national chain?
     “Mom and I are fighters, we will never not survive,” she said. “Someone else in our shoes, I would really be concerned. We will not compromise our integrity.”
     Her mother has not stepped foot in Crumbs since it opened.
     “Why would I?” said Holly Sjo. “It’s of no concern. I’ve been to them in Beverly Hills and in New York and they’re all the same.”
     Is she concerned because they’re across the street?
     “Concerned?” she said. “A little disappointed. We have completely different products. We make everything by scratch, by hand. We do it just like your mother would do for your birthday. Every single thing we sell goes through my hands. It’s a very long day, but for me, I have no interest to do it any other way.
     “I think our recipes are different, our visual appeal, our personal commitment, you will sense that, if you were actually lucky enough to have a mom or grandma who did that. That’s what a baker is supposed to do.”
     — Originally published Feb. 13, 2011

     

    Update: The Cupcake Counter won. All 65 Crumbs stores went out of business in 2014. Sprinkles closed its Chicago operations last year. Magnolia Bakery still has a State Street location, as well as outlets in New York, California, India, Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey and the Philippines. 

     But what giant cupcakes could not kill, COVID did, and the Cupcake Counter went out of business in April, 2020. Samantha Wood moved to Florida where she formed the Sjo Agency — named for her mother — which does support work for UHNW, or "ultra high net worth" individuals.

Judge comes out swinging in nude women's spa case

Judge Lawrence VanDyke of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (YouTube)

     I wrote this assuming that the paper would dash out the word "dicks." To their credit, they did not. Score one for candor.

     Context is important.
     For instance, before we dive into today's topic, I would ask you to consider the respectable business establishment, Dick's Sporting Goods, which I patronize and recommend for its wide selection and affordable prices.
     Now, imagine a roomful of detectives, hunting for clues. We could refer to them colloquially as "dicks."
     Have I softened you up for the opening line of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Lawrence VanDyke's dissent in "Olympus Spa v. Andretti," which dropped last week, setting the legal world abuzz? Let's see.
     "This is a case about swinging dicks," VanDyke began. "The Christian owners of Olympus Spa — a traditional, Korean, women-only, nude spa — understandably don't want them in their spa. Their female employees and female clients don't want them in their spa either. But Washington State insists on them. And now so does the 9th Circuit."
     The case is relevant in our world where a basic fact of nature — some people born male want to live as women, and vice versa — has become a political hobbyhorse that will only see more use as the mid-term elections approach and the Republicans seek to light a fire under their base, chilled by the skein of jaw-dropping disasters their policies have wrought.
     Back to VanDyke, who recognizes the shock value of his language. He continues:
     "You may think that swinging dicks shouldn’t appear in a judicial opinion. You’re not wrong. But as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to merely encounter that phrase in this opinion, I hope we all can agree that it is far more jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women at Olympus Spa — some as young as thirteen — to be visually assaulted by the real thing."
     Shock is a funny thing. While it seems natural, to those shocked, it also is very specific to certain times and places. White Southerners in the 1950s were shocked at the thought of Black people sharing their swimming pools. Meanwhile, in Japan, men and women bathe naked together in public baths without batting an eye. It's cultural, not natural.
     Conservatives, remember, are capable of amazing feats of imagination, when the spirit moves. They have no trouble confabulating a fetus the size of a grain of rice into a full grown "baby," nor any hesitation dictating the most intimate decisions of biological women based on that feat of fantasy. Considering trans women as women should be a piece of cake.
     Instead, we have VanDyke deploying words like "woke" and "man" with barely concealed contempt — to me, that is the shocking part. There is no question there are slivers of life where the existence of trans people pose challenges to be sorted out. Girls high school athletics come to mind. It's that sense of angry grievance that is sad and puzzling. Why must MAGA always be the victims?

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Restaurant field notes: Mariscos San Pedro

     The rain raised a question: should we stay home?
      Actually, it was my wife who posed it, as dinnertime approached Sunday night and the rain pelted down. She asked twice, in fact: once before we got in the car, a second time as we drove along Shermer, toward Dundee and the expressway, the wipers swishing furiously.
     Though I am a committed fan of staying home, I also like to get out, now and then. True, we'd met friends for dinner the night before, to soak up the St. Patrick's Day fun at Hackney's on Lake. 
      But our younger son and daughter-in-law had suggested dinner at a new seafood place, Mariscos San Pedro, 1227 W. 18th St., in Pilsen. New to us; they'd been there several times, always a good sign. The twin lure of their company, plus experiencing a new restaurant, drove me forward. Plus I really like to go to Pilsen, and pondered whether Panaderia Nuevo Leon might be open so late on a Sunday and, if so, could we make a pit stop to load up on ginger pigs.

     Well, all that, and not becoming the sort of old boot deterred by rain. "We'd love to actually do what we said we'd do, but it was wet out..." My wife had edited herself out of the equation. Had she asked, "Should we go?" I might have given it more careful consideration. "Do you feel up to it?" was a challenge, and must be answered with a Teddy Roosevelt like thump of the fist on the steering wheel. "By jove yes! Capital day! Onward into the maelstrom!" I have my pride.

     "If April showers bring May flowers," I asked, "what do March showers bring?" To which my wife answered something along the effect of, "March monsoons bring doom and gloom."
     Prior to the rain question, she had asked, "Do we need to dress up?" A charming thought that, now that I set it down, seems plucked from a fairy tale. I called up the Mariscos San Pedro web site on my phone and showed her a video of the place. A guy in a baseball cap and half-zip. 
     "You'll be fine," I said. "It's just expensive. Expensive doesn't mean 'fancy' anymore."
      What does "expensive" even signify nowadays, particularly in regard to restaurants? During the traditional scope-out-the-menu session we'd held earlier in the day — part of the fun of going out is strategizing dinner ahead of time — I'd settled on the "Whole Dorade with Red & Green Adobo" for $48, which is $31 more than I'd spent on my Hackney Burger with cheese the night before.

Ceviche and tuna tostadas.

      So out of the comfort zone. But I'm shifting from a careful-conservation-of-resources approach  toward a fuck-it-we're-all-gonna-die-someday attitude toward life, which, after all, is to be lived.
     Though like most well-laid plans, that got scrapped in the restaurant. My son and daughter-in-law have not only been to Mariscos San Pedro before, but honeymooned in Mexico City with the express purpose of chowing down at Michelin star restaurants on a budget. So they know.
     "We'll put ourselves in your hands," I told my son. Sharing adds to the fun. He ordered.
     We started off with a snapper ceviche, served on crispy rounds, and a pair of tuna tostadas that were bright and refreshing, the serviche sprinkled with toasted coconut, the tostadas emboldened by chunks of orange.

Duck confit tamales, and pan de elotes.

      The next round was a pair of duck confit tamales with mole — rich and tasty — and a pan de elotes, which my wife found far too sweet to consume. 
      For the main course, we dug into that whole dorade — Spanish for sea bream — piling it on small green tacos. I can't say I was bowled over by its complicated panoply of flavors; it was good, and I ate it.
     Service was brisk and efficient — not a lot of chit chat. I wash down dinner with a lot of water, and they kept it coming. I'd have plunged in and grabbed an NA margarita, but nobody else at the table was drinking, beyond my son's Topo Chico mineral water, and plain water worked fine.

     One doesn't usually notice the table at a restaurant, but this one had these deep grooves radiating out from a center circle, and I pointed this out as an obvious design flaw. "They can never get that clean," I said, and we fell to discussing various solutions. We saw they had tried. One of the grooves had been filled in, with a kind of clear resin, which looks hideous, and explained why the rest weren't attempted. Maybe the tables were acquired cheaply second-hand from Dusek's, a beloved gastro-pub that occupied the space previously. But my heart went out to the person who thought, "Hey, cool tables, I'll get them for my restaurant."

Dorado

     The room, located in Thalia Hall, was long and festive, with cartoony paintings of seafood, laid out like a long-ago bar retrofitted into a hip new restaurant, or maybe a pair of bars, as there is a long second room off to the side, for overflow. The place wasn't crowded, but then it was Sunday night in a downpour.
     What most impressed me — and I hope this isn't damning by faint praise — is the wallpaper in the bathroom. Really fun, with crawfish. Once when the waitress swept by, I opened my mouth, ready to say, "I love the wallpaper in your bathroom." But she was not the talkative sort, as I've mentioned, and I try to tamp down embarrassing my progeny when I can all avoid it, so said nothing, shutting up being an art form I struggle to master.
    They had some small dessert bites — a $4 macaron, a petite scoop of ice cream. I was seduced by a horchata tiramisu — I have a powerful love for horchata which was eaten by the table, though without particular enthusiasm. I considered taking a picture of the pastry, but it didn't strike me as worth the effort. We later decided it didn't taste very horchata-like.
     I thanked my son for the venue selection and told him I'd go back — the highest praise I could muster, not adding the implied "...with you." Left to my own devices in Pilsen, I'm still making a beeline for 5 Rabinitas. Grilled chicken in garlic honey marinade. Now that's something worth going out in a rainstorm for. 

     

One hundred years young, Shannon Rovers are newbies in the venerable story of bagpipes

Danny Boyle (from left to right) Noreen Boyle, and Marty McAndrew. 

      The Shannon Rovers Irish Pipe Band are new to the bagpipe scene, being only 100 years old this year.
     To put that in perspective, bagpipes are mentioned in the Bible, in Daniel, and were common throughout the ancient world.
     "When Rome was burning, Nero was not fiddling," Noreen Boyle said. "He was playing the pipes."
     Boyle has a bit of history herself. She played at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, twice, and this past weekend at the Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade.
     "I've been in the band for 62 years," said Boyle, 74. "I was 12 when I started. That's where I met my husband."
     That's Danny Boyle, in the band only 58 years, whose parents hailed from Donegal. "We were born into it," he said.
     The Great Highlands pipes they play have four parts: a bag, providing a continual supply of air; a blowpipe, to puff air into the bag; a chanter, with holes to finger the melody; and three drones, providing that distinctive continuous wail, called a "skirl."
     "They'd 'send in the Irish,' hoping to scare the enemy, by having the pipes drone," said Rovers manager Marty McAndrew. "It's an unusual sound and carries in the mist. It was considered an instrument of war by the English — some people today still don't want a bagpipe in a church."
     The bagpipes were indeed viewed as weapons of war — an English judge ruled so in 1746, condemning a man to hang for wielding them. They were deployed in battle in World War I, with Scottish pipers leading charges out of the trenches, suffering terrible casualties.
     Nor can we overlook Bill Millin , who went ashore on D-Day, June 6, 1944, in kilt and bonnet, armed with his pipes and dagger, marching up and down Sword Beach, playing "Highland Laddie." German snipers later reported they had him in their sights the whole time but did not fire, out of respect for the courage of the madman.

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"Mister, your book ... your book ... your book ... saved my life."

Tin man folk art (National Portrait Gallery)

     As Artificial Intelligence blooms and social media spreads, filling every crevice of our culture, those of us who still care what is true, and what is not, are going to have to lean more and more on what can be considered "common sense."

     So I am happy to present another contribution from Jack Clark, the former cab driver turned prolific mystery writer. I think he points at a phenomenon we're going to see more and more of, the sinking, "Is this a person or is this AI?" dilemma.

     Before you read it, I want to give you the perspective I brought to Jack's piece. I have been a published author for more than 30 years, maybe one click better known than Jack (meaning, on a scale of 1 to 100, if 100 is Stephen King, then I am 3 and Jack is 2). In all that time, I heard one comment from a more prominent author, unbidden (I'm not counting those ahead of me on the greased pole who I reached out to, begging for blurbs, and kindly complied). 

     After my book on failure came out, I got a phone call from Harlan Ellison, the renown science fiction writer, to tell me  he really liked the book. At least I thought it was Harlan Ellison. Now that I read Jack's piece, I can't really be sure anymore.

   

     I recently got an email which claimed to be from best-selling author Karin Slaughter. She was writing to tell me how much she enjoyed my book ‘On the Home Front,’ which I wrote with my mother Mary Jo Clark. “I felt compelled to reach out and express my admiration for the quiet strength and restraint that seem to define this remarkable work.”

     Well, that made my day. There are best-selling authors, mid-list authors, and then there are guys like me (and my poor mother, I guess) who are so far down the list that publishers, probably to avoid causing embarrassment, don’t even bother to categorize us. To hear a best-selling author call my book, which was published nearly 25 years ago,  remarkable, well, that in itself is truly remarkable.

     I kept reading: “What strikes me most is the refusal to mythologize. In revisiting the years from Prohibition through World War II, the book appears to focus not on grand speeches or sweeping heroics, but on lived experience: shiny new shoes in a butcher shop, sawdust underfoot, the intimate texture of childhood memory. These private moments feel just as historically significant as the news of Pearl Harbor or the tragedy of the Dorchester. It’s in that balance between the domestic and the historic that real life emerges.”

     Well, that burst my bubble. I went to my archives and picked up the latest edition of ‘On the Home Front,’ and read this on the back cover: "The book itself is a marvel of writerly restraint... Some are private moments--being 4 years old, getting shiny new shoes and remembering looking down at them as she toed circles in the sawdust on a butcher shop floor. Other brush against history — news of Pearl Harbor, or the Dorchester, a World War II troop ship sunk off the coast of Greenland. It was famous for the four chaplains who gave up their life vests to other sailors, but Bill, who was dating Mary Jo's younger sister, wasn't one of the lucky survivors... The books strength is that it doesn't stoop to Greatest Generation mythologizing. The Clarks are real people, and Mary Jo doesn't try to make them heroes." —Chicago Sun-Times

     Back to Karin: “There is something profoundly moving about honoring ordinary people without turning them into symbols. By allowing Mary Jo’s voice to remain natural and unembellished, the narrative seems to trust the power of memory itself. That kind of writerly restraint requires confidence  and deep respect for the truth of a life as it was lived.”

     You’re probably asking the same questions I did. Could this be A.I. talking? And what exactly were they trying to sell me?

     Karin seemed to know what I was thinking: “There is no agenda behind this message, only sincere appreciation for a work that reminds us of history is carried not just in headlines, but in kitchens, shop floors, and family stories. Thank you for preserving such an authentic portrait of American life. I would be delighted to stay in touch.”

     But she wasn’t quite done. “I would be honored for you to take a look at my own novel, which you can find here:”

     There was no way I was clicking on that link. Who knew where it might take me?

     Instead I found Karin Slaughter’s website and wrote a note mentioning that I had received the letter, that it kind of looked like it might have been written by A.I., and that I wondered if she had actually sent it. My suspicion that this was just another scam did not come out of the blue.

     I’ve been hit by several of these in the past few months. Book clubs that want to feature one of my books, a TV show that would like to feature another, someone in Ireland who wants to feature a book in their Christmas Anniversary Spotlight Event, whatever that might be. They always start out by telling me how much they enjoyed my book, and they always seem to use the exact same words that you’d find in about three seconds by checking the Amazon listing. There’s always a catch, of course, and it always involves me sending them money. Thank you for thinking of me but no thanks.

     When I decided to write this, I thought I better click on the link first. If you’re going to be a writer, you have to be willing to put yourself in danger now and then. And I was right to be hesitant. The link led me to a dark corner of the universe, Amazon, and Karin Slaughter’s 2015 book “Pretty Girls.”

     What caught my eye immediately was that the book had 151,070 ratings for an average of 4.2 stars. On Goodreads, it only got 4.0 stars but this was based on 728,923 ratings. Now that is a best-selling author! My most popular book is knocking on the door of 200 ratings on both Amazon and Goodreads, (4.2 and 3.8 stars) and I’ve been looking forward to the day it crosses that threshold. I thought that would make me sort of a big-time writer. I now see that I have many more miles yet to travel.

     The other thing that caught my eye was that the book was first published in 2015. Why would an author who publishes a book every single year, and sometimes three books in the same year, send me to one that’s ten years old? Was this her favorite?

     So what’s going on here? It seems highly unlikely that Karin Slaughter became a best-selling author by trolling the internet for bottom-of-the-list writers, and trying to entice them into spending a few of their precious dollars to buy one of  her books? According to Google, Karin has already sold 40 million copies of her books. If that’s how she did it, one writer at a time, that would make her the most successful troll in publishing history. Which makes no sense at all, of course, and aren’t trolls supposed to be sitting in the darkness under bridges? How could she possibly write all those books down there?

     I looked at the email address the letter came from and it was a Gmail account. Now I use Gmail as my writer’s address but I haven’t sold anywhere near 40 million books. I’m lucky if I’ve sold 40,000, and that’s over the last 30 years. I promise when I reach one million, Gmail will be history.

            I took another dangerous leap and wrote back to Karin:

Hey Karin,

Thanks for writing. Glad you liked the book. I ordered yours at my local library and look forward to reading it.

All the best,

           

     When I’m feeling optimistic I think, well, maybe Karin really did read and like my mother’s book. I got a letter years ago from another writer who told me how much she liked the book and how helpful it was to her when she was writing a novel set during the Depression.

     Anyway Karin, if by some chance that really was you, thank you very much for reaching out, and I’m sorry for being suspicious. But that’s the world we are currently living in. And I do understand, after selling 40 million books, you probably don’t have time to personally answer all your mail. So A.I., if that’s what your letter was, is probably a very valuable tool. Hell, I’d use it myself if I had all those fans.

     If you really want to do something nice for my mother’s book, tell your fans about it. That would be greatly appreciated. And if you’re going to rely so heavily on a single newspaper article, it would be nice if you credited the paper. The Sun-Times, like most other newspapers, needs all the help and credit it can get.

     Speaking of that article, it was written by none other than my host here, Neil Steinberg, but I had to drag it out of him.

     I sent him an advance copy of the book and he said he would try to write something about it, but months passed, the publication date passed, and he never did. Now I’m the kind of guy that usually will take no for an answer. But in this case, I thought I owed it to my mother to keep pestering Neil. He eventually wrote back to tell me the reason he hadn’t written about the book was because he didn’t think it was very good.

     That’s one of the dangers of dealing with Neil, he believes in honesty.

     But I knew what had happened. The original edition of the book starts slowly — which is my fault, but that’s another story — and Neil had given up before he’d gotten to the really good stuff.

     So I wrote Neil back and asked him to read certain stories. I know I mentioned “The Coloring Business,” and the “Sinking of the Dorchester.” Those are two of my favorites. There are 80 stories all together. To my eyes, they’re all good, even the slow ones, and a dozen or so are really, really great.

     Sometimes being a pest pays off. Neil was open enough to look at the book again and change his mind. He wrote an entire Sun-Times column on the book. Two years later, I called him once again, and he was kind enough to write my mother’s obituary.

     The book went out of print after a few years, and I took the rights back and published it myself. I reordered the stories to get rid of that slow beginning. I started off with the story that Neil had highlighted in his review. It’s from my mother’s fourth birthday in 1918, where she remembered drawing circles in the sawdust on the butcher shop floor. At 200 words, it’s one of the shortest in the book, which I think sets a nice opening pace.

     Now getting back to Karin Slaughter, which I hadn’t planned on doing but, after I’d written this entire piece, she responded to my email.

Hi Jack,

Thank you so much  that truly means a lot to me. I’m really glad you ordered the book through your local library. There’s something special about stories finding their way into libraries and new hands that way.

I’m so pleased you enjoyed my book, and I genuinely look forward to hearing your thoughts once you’ve had a chance to read it. I’d love to know what resonates with you most.

Wishing you continued success with your work  and many more readers discovering it.

All the best,

 

     So now I feel like a heel. She didn’t ask for money or try to sell me anything, just my thoughts on that single book, which I just this moment ordered from the library. Yes. I lied in that last email when I thought I was responding to a scam.

     I still have reservations, of course. Could this be just another small step in a long con? That second paragraph is a bit incoherent but, hell, I’ve written plenty of those myself. If that’s an A.I. letter, it’s an early-stage one. The programs will keep getting better and better — sucking up more and more water and electricity — and pretty soon no one will be able to tell who or what wrote anything.

     This is not a good development. I’m sure you agree. But you’re just a small group of readers and I’m just another down-the-list writer. Nobody cares what we think.

     Maybe Karin does. I sure hope so. And I hope she forgives me for this story. I’d already spent two days on it by the time she wrote back. I couldn’t just throw it away.

     I suppose A.I. would have been able to write it in minutes. And that’s supposed to be progress. I don’t know. I had a lot of fun writing this — just like I had fun driving taxis and over-the-road trucks — and I got to talk to my friends Steve, Mary, and Robin, and my wife Helene, who all took a look at various drafts and shared their thoughts and suggestions. Like most of my writing, it was in many ways a team effort.

     What would I have done with all that time A.I. could have saved me? You can only watch so much TV, or soak in the bath for so long. Maybe that’s how A.I. will finally do us in. They’ll suck up all the water and drain all the electricity. We won’t even be able to take baths or watch TV and we won’t have to work because A.I. will do everything for us.

     I’ve got a pretty good idea how it’s going to end. It’s already boring me silly.