"Riding that storm runnin' through my veins"

 

Luke Combs

     Music is medicine. Not that it literally heals you. Unfortunately. Rather it inspires, bolsters the will, injects courage to push forward and do what must be done. 
    For me anyway. I've always listened to music, especially when I exercise. It's almost impossible for me to work out in silence. Music helps pass the time and encourages me to do better. Particularly on the stationary bike, when I not only listen, but sometimes watch videos. I've watched Andra Day's "Rise Up" — the version using video from the 2012 London Olympics — 50 times if I've watch it once. Always gets the blood going.
    If you read Monday's column, you know I was diagnosed with diabetes at the end of September. It's been a slog. I'm going to write about it again in the paper Wednesday and maybe Friday, "I don't know," to quote Indiana Jones. "I'm making this up as I go."
    I don't want to write about it too much. Nothing is more dreary than to hear some sick person complain. On the other hand, it is new, a body of knowledge I have to master. As any Dante fan knows, if you go to hell, take notes. Not that this is hell. Far from it. I keep reminding myself that his is Affliction Lite. Some people have it much, much worse. I'm blessed to have health insurance, a skilled, compassionate doctor, and a knowledgeable, compassionate diabetes educator. Still, it does suck; writing about it makes it suck less.
     It helps to have a song. When I was in recovery — well, you're always in recovery — when I was in rehab, music was key. Someday when I take a week off I plan to write a weeklong series, "Songs about Sobriety" highlighting some essential tunes. "Fallen" by Sarah McLachlan or "Mr. Hurricane" by Beast. "Can you imagine even one more day, with a beast right up in your face?"
     When I got drop-kicked into DiabetesLand, I found myself turning more to country music. It has a passion, a raw human emotion, and an honesty that I've been drawn to more anyway, but is extra valuable in a time of distress. Hard not to relate to a song like Jelly Roll's "I Am Not Okay" when you are, you know, not okay.
     A little too dire to be useful, though, as a shovel to dig out of this mess, however. For that, I've settled on Luke Combs' "Ain't No Love in Oklahoma" from the "Twisters" soundtrack as my Official Diabetes Theme Song. An infectious opening guitar riff, then: 

I keep chasing that same old devil
Down the same old dead end highway
Riding that storm runnin' through my veins
Like a shot down, tail spun airplane
Scared of nothin' and I'm scared to death
I can't breathe and I catch my breath

    No shit, Luke. Storm running through my veins indeed — it couldn't be more spot on if it mentioned glucose levels and epipens.  I listen to it every single day, sometimes more than once a day. 

    Enough. My gut tells me I might be straying into oversharing territory. Maybe you can make me feel less exposed by mentioning music you turn to for comfort and inspiration.
       

The algorithm will see you now

     People are troublesome. And expensive. We've seen the steady exile of problematic, costly wetware, replaced with vastly more efficient — and a whole lot cheaper — computer programs. Out with telephone operators, in with phone loops. Out with cashiers, in with self-checkout kiosks.
     I get that. And go along, grudgingly. If I pulled into a gas station, and one way went to self-service pumps and the other to an attendant in a freshly starched uniform and peaked cap hustling out to pump the gas, wash my windows and give me a stick of Doublemint gum, I'd certainly opt for him. A few times. But if his gas cost 25 cents a gallon more, it wouldn't be long before I'd find myself guiltily edging into the self-service line, avoiding the attendant's gaze.
     How reluctant I was to use those self-checkouts, at first. As if it were stealing from the cashiers. Which of course it is. Then the grip loosens, and tradition tumbles into the abyss. Technology wins.
     Still, each time you encounter the shift anew, it's jarring. The past month I've been going through ... let's call it a medical crisis, for now. In September, I lost 10 pounds without trying. Then I was thirsty at night. Really thirsty. Up every hour, tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. My eyes were dry. I'd gulp a few Dixie cups of water, put in eyedrops, go back to bed.
     After the second night of this, my wife urged me to get a blood test. So I went to a Quest Diagnostics, the McDonald's of blood testing. I found myself in a crowded waiting room, but no attendant. People lined up in front of a computer terminal and entered their information, then sat down.
     This struck me as something new, the unattended waiting room — the next step with AI and Zoom medical exams. Someday you'll get your full checkup, be poked and prodded and weighed by robots, without ever seeing a living person. There was one at Quest: Every so often, a woman would open a door and bark someone's name. At least machines don't yell at you. Yet.
     Turns out my test wasn't in their system. My doctor's office was a few steps away — I hadn't gone there first due to an insurance conundrum impossible to express in words. So I walked over, planning to get my blood work order and return. But once in the comforting office of a doctor I've been seeing for 20 years, I decided to just get my blood drawn there.
     That evening I received a brisk email titled, "Test result available on Portal." Half the time I can't even log into these things but somehow managed. Checking your results can be fraught — I'm not a doctor, and interpreting raw data can be confusing and scary. I began on my "Comp Metabolic Panel" and didn't have to get far. Front and center, the first item was: "GLUCOSE 318" while the "REFERENCE RANGE" was "60 - 99 (mg/dL)."
     That was all too clear: My blood sugar was triple what it should be. Part of the advice Dr. Google gave was to proceed to a hospital immediately. "Do not delay."

To continue reading, click here. 

It isn't ALL lies....

Roman toy shop

     Credit where due.
     Donald Trump is a very honest liar. 
     Hear me out. Yes, he vomits forth an endless spew of self-aggrandizing untruths. I can't begin to allude to them specifically, there are literally tens of thousands. A recent favorite: he is "the father of IVF."  WTF? It instills a sense of near wonder. For its pure daftness. He can't believe it himself, can he? Delusion or lie? An interesting question, but also a distinction without a difference.
     Yet through the cracks between the lies shines candor. Trump sometimes says exactly what he will do, pointed truths even more shocking than the lies.  He avows his unwavering support for despots in general and Vladimir Putin in particular. He outlines his intention to use the government to harass enemies, squash the media, subvert elections so his followers never have to vote again.  His passion to expel immigrants, even legal immigrants. 

     He could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose a vote. He said it. And it's true. At this point, he could go to 5th Avenue and shoot someone, to illustrate his point. How shocked would we be and for how long? Not much on either account.
     Said it almost a decade ago. Compare that to Saturday night's calling Kamala Harris a "shit vice president." Which pales next to his truly bizarre ramble about golfer Arnold Palmer's manhood. This is the past and perhaps future president. Someone with a coin toss's chance of being re-elected in a little more than two weeks. 

       None of this is new. Facebook served up a comment of mine from 2016:

So let's review, shall we?

Donald Trump refuses to accept the basic mechanism of our democracy, the orderly transition of power after an election, citing imaginary voter fraud. He closes his eyes to Russian manipulation of our election, denying the evidence endorsed by 17 government agencies. He calls his opponent, stolidly accepting his blather and insults, "a nasty woman." Yet millions are voting for him. I just don't get it.

     Sound familiar? 
     Lately I've seen friends online marveling what the appeal of Trump could possibly be. Really? You haven't figured it out yet. C'mon. Get with the program: his followers are grievance junkies. Their lives are the fault of dark forces beyond their ken. Period. In their view, they are not responsible for their setbacks and wrongs. Others are. If they can't find a job, it's because some Venezuelan who walked across the Darien Gap and can't speak English and is a criminal in a gang nevertheless managed to show up and take it. 
    Even the "can't find a job" trope is generous. Giving others the benefit of the doubt is murdering democracy. A lot of Trump supporters aren't suffering unfortunates, but the gilded upper 1 percent, trying to maximize their advantage. Elon Musk, richest man in the world, prancing around Trump like a cast member from "Godspell." I reviled him before. But the sun will go out and be a cold ember and Musk's infamy for his daft Trump push will still be fresh in my mind.
    Trump might win. If he does, the nation will go to the dark place his backers occupy and the United States of America will certainly fail, or slide closer to failure. For a very long time. The future is dim. When was the last time you saw something made in Russia? They  don't even lead the world in the production of vodka.  
    There is hope Trump won't win. That's as far as I'll go. Trump might lose, both the election and his clown coup that will come afterward. I hate that the media says it "might" happen or he "seems" to be laying the groundwork. It will happen. Take it to the frickin' bank. Strap in. It's going to be a wild ride. Another wild ride.

Katsura tree

     No matter how many times I visit the Chicago Botanic Garden, I always notice something new. Friday afternoon — sunny, mild, in the mid-60s — it was this katsura tree, caught by the afternoon light in full autumnal splendor.  I'd swear I've never seen it before. One of only two members of its family, cercidiphyllaceae, so named because the leaves, apricot-colored in fall, look like those of a redbud, cercis, though the two are not related.
     The katsura hails from Asia. An ancient Chinese legend places a katsura tree on the moon. As the "katsura man" prunes it, the moon wanes (I haven't found an explanation of what happens when the moon waxes — maybe the leaves grow back). 
    Though Asian cultures tend not to put men on the moon, in the Western fashion, but rabbits. As to why the rabbits don't trim the tree, since they're there, well, nobody says these myths must be consistent. 
     Wood from the katsura tree is used to make Go and chess boards, for its warm hue and beautiful grain, like ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond. 

     Tree experts praise the katsura for being interesting to look at in all four seasons, even in winter, due to "handsome winter branch architecture." I'll have to make sure to circle back and confirm that. The scent of the leaves in autumn is also said to smell like caramel, or cotton candy, or "freshly baked muffins." I photographed the leaves up close, but didn't know enough to come in close and take a whiff. Now I do; good reason to go back to the Botanic Garden soon, as if another reason were needed.

Books on the nightstand: The Whore of Akron

     Really? It's been seven years since I offered up a new installment of "Books on the Nightstand"? Negligent of me — or of you. You're supposed to keep me on my toes, chide me about such things. "Hey Neil! Aren't you reading anymore? Spending all your time watching clips of 'Young Sheldon' on Instagram, are ya?"

     No. Still reading, still researching. Which is how I stumbled upon Scott Raab's "The Whore of Akron: One Man's Search for the Soul of LeBron James." Published in 2011, the book is an example of that once common, now rare literary form: a philippic, a screed against an individual, an ad hominem attack, in this case keelhauling LeBron James, NBA superstar and the titular whore, roundly damned him for abandoning his Cleveland Cavaliers and flouncing off to Miami in search of championship rings.
     Not the sort of book you'd imagine me reading; me, who nearly asked Michael Jordan who he was when I met him. But I am working on something related to our mutual hometown, came across the book, and figured it would fill holes in my knowledge base.

     Boy, has it ever.
     Frankly, I was a little surprised I hadn't heard of Raab previously. We share at least half a dozen common characteristics, being both: 1) from Cleveland; 2) Jewish; 3) alcoholics in recovery; 4) prone to fatness; 5) associated with Esquire; 6) experience drinking with Wright Thompson, the ESPN scribe. It's a big world, I suppose; you can't keep track of everything. 
     Though Raab far surpasses me in #4 (topping out at 388, while I never weighed more than 225) and #5 (he started as a writer-at-large for Esquire in 1997, while I wrote one profile and contributed a few items to the "Dubious Achievement Awards.")
     What makes "The Whore of Akron" well worth seeking out is Raab's voice. I sincerely couldn't give a shit about LeBron James or his championship hopes in the first decade of the 21st century. But Raab performs the same magic trick that Robert Caro does — taking someone you'd otherwise care nothing about and turning him into a font of fascination, though the book is about Raab far more than LeBron. The author is virtuosic at plumbing the queasy mix of pride and resignation that afflicts all who harbor a little patch of Cleveland in their hearts, starting with his Lost Eden, the 1964 Cleveland Browns championship, which he had the misfortune — in my view — of attending as a 12-year-old.

     "That flag still flies in my soul," he writes. "The roar still echoes in my ears. The vision — of Cleveland triumphant, of Cleveland fans in communal thrall to a joy beyond all words, of a Cleveland team lifting the town's immortal heart to heaven — still fills my eyes."

     Me, I'd observe that success is an addiction too, like anything else, and if you find yourself wanting something too much, and chasing it too relentlessly over the years, maybe it's time to forswear it and find satisfaction elsewhere.  But I am not a sports fan. A guy who has written every day for 11 years plus shouldn't lecture anybody on abandoning oneself to pointless pursuits.
      Raab is a searing, fearless writer. I thought I was candid, having written a frank book about sailing with my father. Raab writes about trying to kill his father: "Once, my brother David and I tried to kill the old man. While he was at shul, we wedged the front and side doors tight, waited on the upstairs back porch until he came around the back door,and then fired every knife in the house down at himi the hope of poleaxing his yarmulked skull with one of them."
      I deploy my cute little metaphors like paper boats in a bathtub. Raab rakes his cheeks with his fingernails and scrawls his thoughts in blood on a white wall. Reading Raab, I felt an emotion that I can't recall ever feeling reading another writer: shame. I felt kinda ashamed, of myself, and my own weak tea craft, compared to the high-octane heat he brings to cavailing James as a loser and headcase. My favorite passage, the one I read out loud to my wife, is:

"I'm calling my wife now. As ever, I get rolled into voicemail. I try the landline. Hope. I try her cell again. Nada. Landline. Cell. Landline. Cell. Landline. Cell. She is unavailable. Unreachable. I miss her. I want her to be there for me every time I want her to be there for me. I want to whisper in the small pink shell of her ear that as our years together have unfolded, the mystery of our love grows ever more unfathomable, especially the mystery of where the fuck she is or why the fuck she doesn't answer her fucking cell phone."

     That last sentence, the pivot it makes, is brilliant. Though speaking of his wife, the book does have a notable flaw — in my view. And to give you an idea of the gap between us, I can hardly articulate the sin he commits. But here goes. His beloved, respected, wife makes her first appearance in the book when he calls her over for a handjob, an act which is almost a leitmotif in the book. That doesn't seem respectful. While I'd never judge another man's relationship with his wife, I do know that if I presented my wife in that fashion in a book of mine, she would rip my heart out and taunt me with it as I died. So if you do read the book, and you should, know that's waiting in there.
     Otherwise, it's all pain and Cleveland fandom, set out in Hunter S. Thompson level prose that snaps between Los Angeles and Miami and Cleveland. There are descriptions of basketball games, but not too many. A book should create a world, and as someone who only vaguely knew that James eventually won a few of those championships — I think, I'll have to check (four; quite a lot, really) — it's a joy to see him portrayed as a quitter and a crybaby. 

     Yes, I wish Raab could put some distance between himself and the salmon-to-spawn desire for a championship that so animates sports fans, step back, and explore why the self-worth of an individual — many individuals — can rise and fall on the record of a team whose efforts, really, have nothing to do with them. To him, it's a given.

     "I truly believe that Cleveland's collective soul will be redeemed on that great and glorious day," he writes. "Nothing less." 

      Trust me, as someone associated with a city whose baseball teams have won a World Series apiece in the past 20 years: redemption is elusive.

     Plus I wish he could have considered how a guy supposedly in recovery can take that much Valium and Vicodin. 
     But those are quibbles. October hasn't been the best month, and "The Whore of Akron" is one of those books I opened with gratitude and read with pleasure, an escape from grim reality hanging all around like fog. I've already picked up his second book, "You're Welcome Cleveland" and will turn to that next.
     Sometimes, when someone accuses me of being successful, I point out that I'm not even the most successful writer living in Northbrook — that would be Bob Kurson, author of best-selling "Shadow Divers" and other wildly-popular volumes. Now, with the discovery of Scott Raab, I can say I'm not even the most successful alcoholic Jewish writer from Cleveland with a troublesome family. Still, given what Scott Raab has gone through, and how excellent he is at conveying it, I do not begrudge him the title one bit. Okay, well, maybe a little.

Ten years after

 

Unarmed, 2016, by Nick Cave (Museum of Contemporary Art)

     Blog posts and newspaper columns are a different species of beast. The blog can be more freewheeling. It can be either more in-depth or more trivial. Whatever the tone, I try to bring the same professional chops to everything I write, blog or paper. So it's flattering when the Sun-Times notices something on the blog and asks me to rework it into column, as with the piece below.  If you want to see how I changed it to run in the paper, you can read Friday's print version here. 

   One traditional job that the media used to do faithfully is to keep track of the passage of time. It's been 10, 25, 50, 100 years since such-and-such an occasion. 

    I almost began the next sentence, "This is important because..." but I'm not sure it is important. Maybe. Anniversary stories do allow readers to mark the passage of time, remind themselves of important events, and I suppose tell those new to the scene what they've missed.      Newspapermen used to roll their eyes at the obligatory Pearl Harbor anniversary stories — readers would scream as if we'd bombed the USS Arizona ourselves if we missed one — but I bet at least a few readers looked at the stories and thought, "The Japanese attacked us? Really?"
     Despite their frequent eat-your-peas quality, as a writer, these stories can still be worthwhile, if you take the time to do a deep dive into the subject. I learned a lot from the piece I wrote in 2017 for the 50th anniversary of the unveiling of the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza. The reason I dug into the topic more than usual is because I really hated the Picasso sculpture — it seemed a wiley Spaniard's cruel joke on the artist pretensions of Midwestern rubes — but that didn't seem the route to take when celebrating the half century of the iconic ornament. So looking for someone to tell my why the hunk of junk didn't suck, I talked to everyone from curators at the Museum of Contemporary art to mirrored balloon dog artist Jeff Koons, combed archived, reading oral histories with Gwendolyn Brooks who wrote a poem for the occasion despite thinking the thing "looked stupid." The money was good.
     Or such stories can provide small pauses, a dip of the head in recognition of something significant that happened, and a glance at what has happened since because of it. This Sunday, Oct. 20, is the 10th anniversary of ... what Chicago event? Does anything come to mind? See, this is why these pieces have value. I'd be pressed to cough up an occurrence from 2014 unprompted. The Obama presidency ... that happy world before Donald Trump went down that escalator. And...
     What else? Any guesses? A significant, city-shaking moment. National news.
This is how I describe it in my book, "Every Goddamn Day":
     On the dashcam video you can see squad cars, one, two, three of them. You see Laquan McDonald, 17, walking down the center of Pulaski Road, a little hop in his step before Officer Jason Van Dyke, within two seconds of exiting his car, gets into his shooter's stance and fires 16 shots into the teen, who spins to the ground. 

     That's enough. Van Dyke became the first Chicago police officer in 35 years to be charged with first-degree murder in connection to a duty-related shooting. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and got out after serving three. Detained a thousand days for executing a teen who was walking away from him, carrying a three-inch knife.
     There was other fallout. Mayor Rahm Emanuel decided, well, maybe he didn't love the city as much as he was continually professing, and decided not to run for re-election, leading to a pair of sub-par replacements, first the grim Lori Lightfoot, now the feckless Brandon Johnson. Emanuel slunk off to become the American ambassador to Japan, which is about as far from Chicago as you can get without leaving the earth's magnetic field.
     So a life lost — Laquan McDonald would be 27 now. A competent if jerkish mayor exiled. A city pushed down a bad road. The teen himself part of a skein of wrongly killed Black victims whose recorded deaths would rattle everything — sort of a dry run for George Floyd in 2020. Yet another reminder that there are few situations a gun can't make worse.
     The anger that the Laquan McDonald shooting sparked seems to have run dry lately. Now Black men are drifting away from Kamala Harris because, well ... she's a woman. Or something. Shrugging their way toward a candidate who'd see to it that the Jason Van Dykes of America are never again held accountable. That's the downside of looking back. You hope to find progress, but too often all we see is decay.
   

I don't understand = space aliens did it

 

     People are so stupid. You don't need me to tell you that. Particularly with the election bearing down on us. The news is one endless festival of idiocy. 
     Spend five minutes scrolling ... just about anywhere. X, Instagram, Facebook. Hardly matters. People leaping to establish their "I'm a dope" credentials.
     I don't go around fact checking lies on the internet — if I made a habit of that, it's all I'd ever do.
     But sometimes I can't help myself, and give in. Curiosity gets the better of me. I was on Facebook, the other day, and it served up the post on the right. A huge, well-made stone wall, from antiquity apparently. Since it's posted by "Real UFO's And More" they don't even have to come out and say it. Their readers  do it for them.
     "Aliens," concludes one. "HUGE GIANTS," another. "Proof that our religions and history books are bullshit" (I actually agree with half of that one)
     To be fair, some state the obvious. "Once again this has absolutely nothing to do with aliens or UFOs."
     "Who knows how this was accomplished?" the caption asks.
     Archeologists, I assume. I plugged the photo into Google Image, and instantly found the wall is at an Inca site in Peru called "Saqsaywaman." 

     Among the sites offered was "EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SACSAYHUAMAN FORTRESS." 

     The site explains:
     "Despite the Incas being an advanced civilization, they didn’t know the wheel. So they used a technique of hard-work movement. First, the colossal lime rocks were carved in the same quarries of Muyna Waqoto and Rumiqolqa situated 32 kilometers far away. Next, they situated the giant carved stones over oiled logs. These stones were tied down by thick ropes by several people who pulled them. In this form, the stones were sliding over the wooden reeds. Please note that the Incas re-carved these stones, refining them even more, in the same place of construction.
     "According to the chronicler Pedro Cieza de León, more than 20,000 people participated in the construction of this Inca complex, and its construction lasted a century, approx. The process was slow, but the result endured over time to the present."
     Eyewitnesses, watching the thing built. Not aliens. People. 
     I never thought of this before — and as a rule, I try not to see racism crouching under every bush. But maybe part of this whole "aliens had to have made this!" nonsense is ignorant white people who can't conceive of brown folks long ago doing something with a high degree of skill. A problem that plagues us to this day.

"Troubling on all counts"

   

Protester, Republican National Convention, July, 2016

     Readers sometimes write with interesting questions. This, from Alexander B. was slugged, "Israel and the Election."
     "This troubles me," he begins. "First, why is the presidential election apparently so close?"
    Why indeed? Well — and thank you for asking — a number of reasons. 

     First, the dupes are invested in the fraud. That's why there's so little erosion of the Trump base. They've punched the ticket, gotten on the train. They won't get off. They can't. Subsequent developments and revelations do not affect them. Or as I keep saying: Once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, the exact nature of the reality being ignored hardly matters.
     They are joined by various newcomers, dopes on the left. Latinos willing to support the most anti-Latino president in history because they've convinced themselves he isn't talking about them, personally. Blacks who are more comfortable with a bigoted, mean, white man than a joyous woman of color. Palestinians, doing that cutting off their future to spite their past thing that Palestinians are so good at, supporting Benjamin Netanyahu's best friend in the world and a hardened Muslim hater over a member of the current administration. 

     Plus a confederacy of the ugly and malicious, the toxic and terrified. Fear junkies and rage addicts of every race and nationality. Subjugated if pious women who want all their sisters to join them in permanent second class citizenship.

     And never forget the cowardice and short-term self-interest of Republicans, who handed their party over to Trump and grovel in a way that will shame them someday, if our country has a future, and mainstream Christians, who violated every tenet they supposedly embrace in service to their army of imaginary zombie babies.  

     Rich asshats like Elon Musk, who in my dream world will be forever tarred by prancing around Donald Trump, jamming a dagger at the heart of his adopted country when it needed him most. Catiline, Judas, Elon.
     "Second," Alexander continues, " polling seems to show that we don't necessarily favor Harris to handle foreign affairs, wars etc."
     Policy doesn't matter here. This is a tribal issue. It's cute, to me how old line media will publish a chart comparing how Trump and Harris stand on the Law of the Sea and the sugar import tax, when most of America made their irrevocable choice long ago based on their grandparents' political leanings and their own cerebellum lizard brain. 
     "Third, Israel is getting hotter and we're sending weapons systems and troops to help."
     And a good thing too. Israel is our ally, sadly in the grip of a leader as bad as Trump. He won't be there forever. It will only seem that way.
     "Fourth, Netanyahu loves Trump and the feeling is mutual."
     Dictators always support each other. Remember, the World War II axis of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and, for a time, Stalin.  Birds of a feather ... When you abandon human values, the first thing you do is look for is company, backup. To pretend your perversion is A-OK.
     "So, is Netanyahu helping Trump because the ignorant voter mass would prefer him to handle war issues?"
     Which ignorant voter mass? Israel's? They did elect Netanyahu, though their parliamentary system led to him making common cause with their right wing religious crazies and die hard fanatical settlers — which is going into the weeds, foreign policy wise, for most Americans, speaking of ignorant voter masses, who view Israel as the place where Jesus was born and will return after the welcome arrival of Armageddon. Which, I have to admit, feels a lot closer today than it did last year. It hailed Tuesday morning. Burning frogs might be next.
     "Troubling on all counts," Alexander concludes.
     No argument here. 

Fall color

     When our house was built, around 1905, it was surrounded by an apple orchard that continued to the north and west. At some point the property was divided up into lots, and the line between our land and our neighbor's was marked by a sugar maple tree.
     We bought the house 24 years ago, and one of the countless arborists we hired over the years observed that a root that had grown wrapped around the maple's trunk. It would eventually strangle the tree and kill it, he said, but we couldn't cut the root, because that would kill the tree too.
     Sad, because it's such a beautiful tree.
     Well, nearly a quarter century later, predictions of the tree's demise turned out to be premature. It was particularly beautiful Sunday morning, with the sun first striking the leaves. I snapped a few photos, then just stood there in the center of the street, admiring the colors.
     I appreciated the beautiful colors, spontaneously, then was glad that, despite everything going on, I could appreciate them. A sort of double gladness, soon replaced by pedestrian concerns. But I had it for a moment. Sometimes, a moment is all you get.

     Autumn is upon us; enjoy it while it's here. Who knows what life will be like for any of us come winter?

The Stag at Eve

     It's been a while since I thought a New Yorker cartoon was funny.
     In fact, I can't remember when that last happened.
     I almost said, "It's been a while since a New Yorker cartoon was funny." But I have that superpower of stepping out of my own perceptions and realizing that I'm not the only person in the world. They still print them, after all. Young people might find them hysterical. They probably do. I sure hope so. Me, I just find them strange.
     Once, New Yorker cartoons were great fun. I just pulled seven large format New Yorker cartoon collections off my shelf, looking for a certain cartoon I mentioned in the comments Thursday in my cri de coeur about the New York Times muffing its coverage of our gathering national disaster. 

     Flipping through the pages, I was immediately reminded just how fleeting humor can be. Lots of bosses chasing secretaries around desks. Not so funny anymore. All the Black people were jungle tribesmen or servants. Not so funny anymore. A reminder that we communicators have got to change with the times. I try to keep my frame of reference current, but sometimes it feels like I'm always rushing to keep up with some change I don't care for in the first place. Sometimes I envy those guys who just fold their arms and stop adapting. Staying on top of things is exhausting. There are so many ways to screw this up. But I have a professional interest not to let myself be stuck in the 1990s.
     A couple rarities. "The Seventh New Yorker Cartoon Album" was published in 1935, 10 years after the magazine was founded. I can't find any information about it online, but my hunch is it's the first album and the "Seventh" is a joke, or an attempt at one anyway. Not to disparage that brand of chuckle — senior year of college, the humor magazine published its 50th anniversary issue, crafting a half century of clips to highlight, even though it wasn't four years old. We thought it a bravura performance at the time and maybe it was.
     And "The Stag at Eve," a thin, softcover 1931 volume of mildly risque cartoons, mostly prurient, a few vaguely anti-Semitic, by top New Yorker artists, including several by William Steig. "Trouble with you, Baby, is you need awakening," says a pint-sized Steig lothario, leering at a female pal with a big ribbon in her hair as he arches toward her on a sofa.
     My guess is an attempt to monetize cartoons that couldn't make it into the magazine — something New Yorker artists also did that in more recent years — see 2006's "The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker."

     The title, "The Stag at Eve," is worth noting, a reference to the male deer that often pops up in the background of paintings of Adam and Eve, a reminder of the introduction of sin into paradise and the, umm, need for redemption through Christ. A sly reference to the off-color jokes within).
     Oh, the cartoon. I was trying to capture the strange way the East Coast media is clinging to the rituals of a normal presidential election, even while covering the campaign of a liar, bully, fraud and traitor who very clearly will tear apart American democracy and impose a dictatorship if given the chance. And I thought of this cartoon. Odd, in my memory, the view of the boat was closer up, and I could see it in the style of Edwin Booth, a New Yorker cartoonist known for his daft, complicated eccentrics. But it wasn't.
     It was drawn by Bruce Petty, and ran Nov. 28, 1959.
     I did not learn that flipping through my stack of cartoon collections, of course, as pleasant an interlude as that was in the pre-dawn dimness of my office. But in three seconds searching online. The reality, once I finally tracked it down, wasn't as impressive as it had been in memory. That happens a lot.

It's my truth and I'm sticking to it!

Matt Chorley

     Lies are durable. They are waterproof, shock resistant. They are tungsten. They persist. resisting all attempts to chip away or efface them. Particularly when they flatter or comfort people. Then they adhere to the lie, barnacle-like, and nothing, nothing, nothing can dislodge them.
     How can we ever deceive ourselves otherwise?
     A perfect example on Friday. A BBC5 show in Manchester, England has a segment called "The politics of..." and wanted to do hats. My book, "Hatless Jack," came out in England 20 years ago, and someone there caught whiff of it. I knew nobody related to the show had read it because they never do.
     I talked with a 23-year-old producer Thursday, as a sort of pre-interview, and laboriously explained to him that Kennedy didn't kill hats, that hats had died 50 years before his inauguration when he did, contrary to popular opinion, indeed wear a hat — he was the last president who wore a silk top hat to his inauguration.
     He seemed to understand. But either kept the information to himself or said it but was not perceived by whoever wrote the introduction, which was read to me as I waited to go on the air: "Neil Steinberg is a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and author of 'Hatless Jack,' a book about how John F. Kennedy killed off men's hats by not wearing one to his inauguration.' Or words to that effect.
     No, I said, "Make it 'a book about the untrue myth that John F. Kennedy killed off men's hats.."
     Of course the host, Matt Chorley, introduced me repeating the untruth about Kennedy, which I then corrected. No quicker way to turn off a host than contradict him, and he shifted to some British fashion historian for so long I thought he wasn't going to return to me. If you tapped him on the shoulder, I guarantee you the substance of what I said would vanish, and he'd just say I was a bad guest. He didn't seem interested in that his premise was utterly wrong.

     If someone is bound so tightly by an untruth that has no bearing on them — I assume nobody at the BBC particularly cares whether John F. Kennedy killed off hats. Rather, it was inertia at work. They came in with this belief. They were jolly well going to go out with it.
     I hold the BBC in reverence. Or did. We grew up with a Hammarlund Super Pro short wave radio in my father's den and would use it to listen to Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America," Who knows — I was a child — maybe that was a tissue of error too.
     It made me very sad. That said, I can't pronounce factuality dead. Maybe, as with hats, concern for veracity died long ago, and only now we are noticing. Some of us anyway. That sounds about right.

   

These hot wings will make them talk!

Jenna Ortega, right, fields questions from host Sean Evans ((Photo courtesy of First We Feast/Hot Ones)

     When he was growing up, my younger son and I did the usual dad and lad activities. We attended the opening night gala at the Lyric Opera and visited fun places across the country, from the Morgan Library in New York to the Getty Villa in Los Angeles.
     OK, we also did normal stuff too. Baseball games and camping. We went fishing, once. We fired weapons. I even swallowed hard and took him to see a hockey game — the one time I attended a Blackhawks game in a nonprofessional capacity.
     All fond memories. But one I cherish above all others, because it was his idea and was, by far, the most normal guy thing I have ever done in my life. We went to a Buffalo Wild Wings and sampled hot wings. I'm serious here. He asked me to go, and I went.
     Did I sense a trap? Sure. Did I go anyway? You betcha.
     Did my lips burn for three days afterward? Absolutely. Would I ever do it again? Never. But I remember thinking to myself, as we slid into the garish plastic interior of our local B-Dubs, that this must be what regular dads do all the time. No arias. No Gutenberg Bibles. Just a couple of regular Joes, mano a mano, ingesting fiery foodstuff.
     This is a long way of saying that I was primed when my cousin Harry mentioned "Hot Ones," a talk show where A-list celebrities are grilled while eating progressively hotter wings. At first I couldn't believe it was real; it had to be some feature of a dystopian novel presented as fact and accepted by a gullible public.
     "Hot Ones" has been on YouTube for nearly a decade. They've produced 339 episodes.
     While I couldn't pick most guests out of a lineup, "Hot Ones" regularly snags big names: Ricky Gervais, Chris Hemsworth, Gordon Ramsay, Scarlett Johansson, Conan O'Brien. One must begin somewhere, so I started with Will Ferrell — star of one of my favorite movies, "Stranger than Fiction."
     The 10 progressively hotter wings, lined in a row, really jar these celebrities out of their comfort zones.
     "I enjoy spicy food, to an extent," Ferrell said at the start, already uneasy.
     As the conversation progressed, I was impressed with host Sean Evans, an Evanston native with a genius for carefully crafted questions and unexpected lines of inquiry. He asked Ferrell how he discovered sportscaster Harry Caray.
     "I just couldn't believe the stuff he would say in the middle of a game," Ferrell replied.
     Then on to exotic foods Ferrell ate in Sweden. How was that grilled reindeer eyeball?
     "The eyeball was slimy and gelatinous, and then you crunched down on the cornea, and then you get into that middle squishiness," said Ferrell, who obviously has a knack for placing himself in culinary distress.
     Plunging into the oeuvre, I watched "Wednesday" star Jenna Ortega's episode. She was remarkably composed.

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Sean Evans (Photo courtesy of First We Feast/Hot Ones)

The New York Times misses the forest behind the tree

 

     The New York Times downplayed the Holocaust. I assume everyone knows that, but maybe they don't. For a variety of reasons — the Times's Jewish owners didn't want to seem to be going to bat for the Jews. The Roosevelt administration didn't want the considerable portion of America that harbored sympathies for Hitler to think the war was being fought to save Jews. And, in the Gray Lady's defense, no one could quite believe what was happening. The NYT wasn't alone in getting things backward — check out the Milwaukee Sentinel above.

     At least the Holocaust was semi-hidden. What is harder to understand how the Times can now botch reporting on the latest manifestation of evil — Donald Trump's quest to retake the White House and destroy democracy. There's no other way to say it. The man is a traitor, lapdog of Vladimir Putin, would-be buddy of tyrants and strongmen everywhere, whose ruthless authority he envies. Liar, bully, fraud and felon. That isn't an opinion. It's mere fact. Obvious fact. 
     It amazes me how the Times just doesn't get it, even when they act like they do. Their front page story Oct. 6 on Trump's "extensive cognitive decline" might be reassuring if it were news. But it isn't. It's what I call "Napoleon escaped from Elba" news. News that isn't new. Trump has been full-blown batshit crazy, a raving loon since Day One. On Wednesday, they ran a story spotlighting a single, minor lie, "Trump Says He Visited Gaza, but There's No Record of It." At this point, that is like sharing news that Hugh Hefner went on a date. The miss-the-forest-behind-the-tree aspect is staggering.
     A scrupulous journalist — oh for instance me — might frame that story differently. "Donald Trump lied about visiting Gaza, which is no big shocker because he lies CONTINUALLY about EVERYTHING! But we thought we'd share this latest mote of falsehood anyway, a drop of water in a torrent, in the name of thoroughness."

     Why not print that sentence? Is it not utterly true? In the same edition of the paper, Jess Bidgood's On Politics "Trump's Ugly Closing Argument" column ends with this: "Democracy experts have expressed deep concern that Trump is seeking to stoke doubt in the result of the election, laying the groundwork for him to contest it if he does not win."
     Really, "deep concern"? Is that what the "Democracy experts," whoever the fuck they are, have? Let's recast that sentence to better reflect reality. "Anyone with eyes in their head and brain behind them has watched with growing horror as Donald Trump vigorously stoked doubts regarding past and present elections like a blacksmith at his bellows, laying the groundwork when he tries to overthrow the result of the election, again, which he absofuckinglutely will do if he doesn't win outright."
     Which version do you feel better reflects the true situation? Maybe this is a minor point. The people voting for Donald Trump aren't reading the New York Times. Or me for that matter. But why not speak the truth plainly? Because we sure as hell won't be able to after he is elected.

Brandon Johnson's public spectacle of grievance is getting old

 

     Respect the mayor. No matter what he says or does.
     I'm semi-serious here. As Brandon Johnson boils and accuses and flails about, a certain clarity sets in among the onlookers. Well, me, anyway.
This is not a guy charting a course, but someone reacting to the chaos going on around him, much of his own making. He isn't building bridges, but burning them. How else could he snap at every single shiny lure dangled in his face?
     Respect is earned. I can't recall ever saying "Respect me!" to anyone who wasn't a pair of mischievous preschool boys. But I do sometimes preface a statement with, "As someone who's been on staff for 37 years ..." Meaning, "You know, sport, I've been doing this since before you were born. Perhaps, before you explain to me your keen new system cooked up in a meeting yesterday, you might consider what I have to say."
     Since he brings up the governor, let's imagine JB Pritzker — a deft politician — answering a question the same way.
     "So you're going to Japan, Gov. Pritzker — plan on eating any sushi while you're there?"
"Why do you insult me so? Oh sure, ask the big guy if he's eating something healthy, huh? Ask the Jew if he's going to chow down on smoked salmon."
     It would never happen.
     It never works anyway, and I don't demand respect from new associates or random strangers because I respect myself, plenty, and try to always consider the source. I couldn't check my email otherwise.
     So when Brandon Johnson is served up an obvious gotcha question — do you really want to be going to London for a Bears game this weekend? — he could have stayed cool, could have pivoted onto a topic most Chicagoans can relate to — our 3-2 Chicago Bears.
Did he do that? Eventually, yes. But caught off guard, as always, this is what he prefaced it with:
     "It's disrespectful and condescending that the Black man is going to London for a game. It's disrespectful. It is. The governor went to Tokyo to attract business. And I'm going to London to attract business."

     The same weekend the Bears are playing. What a cool coincidence. One even Johnson eventually acknowledged.

     "And while I'm there, I'm going to root for the Chicago Bears."

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Don't rush; you'll die soon enough.

 

     I am a man burdened by thought. Truly. Things that are obviously not supposed to be thought about much, or even at all, well, I think about them. When I was a little boy, my mother would say, "Neil! Don't think so much." She really did. I didn't not listen, then or now.
     Take this sticker. Noticed at the excellent Newberry Library book shop. Now I love the Newberry Library and its book shop. A beautiful little shop. Very well curated. Maybe even too well curated, in that they don't carry any of my books, not even books researched right upstairs at the Newberry Library, where I am a scholar-in-residence. That is their right. Though I mean, really. It wouldn't kill them to carry a book of mine.
     Speaking of dying. Look at the above sticker, on sale at the Newberry Library bookstore, one of the many fun products they carry that isn't one of my books.  A skeleton, sprouting flowers, attended by a friendly snail, snake, spider. The motto: "Honk if you are excited to return to the earth & be one with nature again."
     Let's think about that. What does that mean? It means, I'm fairly certain, "Honk if you're hot to die." Or am I misinterpreting that? I do not think I am.
     A curious sentiment, yes? Particularly one to put ... well, I assume on your car, though I suppose you could put it in your dorm room or tarot shop or messenger bag. The young are so cavalier about life, they invite death as sport. What the Shakespeare line? "He jests at scars that never felt a wound." Romeo and Juliet.

    Then again, maybe it's sarcastic and I'm just missing it. That happens. The thoughtful can be overly serious. Which is scary. I used to be a humorist....
     I went to look at the website for catcoven.com, the name tucked into the corner of the sticker,  to see if this is par for the course, or extraordinary. A handsome selection of pins and stickers, t-shirts and such. They have a statement of purpose:

     "If you are looking for unique gifts with a creepy cute vibe, welcome to Cat Coven! Cat Coven is proudly a queer woman owned business based out of Harrisburg, PA. Cat Coven is a shop for the weirdos, witches, and warriors. All artwork featured is by me, Kjersti Faret. My designs are influenced by a love of nature, medieval art, Halloween, witchy things and cats. It is my mission that you feel empowered, confident, and inspired. My products are produced in small batches to ensure quality. Shop thoughtfully made products like art prints, T-shirts, embroidered patches and more."
     "Thoughtfully made." So we're birds of a feather then. In all honesty, I like the Witchy Worm and its purple hat. Cute. I looked around and didn't even see the above sticker, so maybe it was made in one of those small batches and then discontinued out of respect for old people who don't like mortality being trifled with since they hear its hoofbeats thundering ever closer and it scares us. I seem to recall not minding "Don't Fear the Reaper" when Blue Oyster Cult put it out 48 years ago, and that's practically a musical advertisement for self-destruction.

     Although, I do see, along with the Grumpy Toad Witch and the Halloween Frogs, a "Free Palestine" vinyl sticker. The "...of Jews," unvoiced, but implied in that statement, didn't fit, apparently. Maybe not so thoughtful after all.  It's almost funny, to see this smorgeboard of cutsy items, jack-o-lanterns and cats and unicorns and gnomes. And then this oblivious hate message, prettied up in red and green, with a serene dove, for use by cosplay sorceresses. Five for $12. I'm sure the owner — a lovely person, no doubt — has no idea why it's wrong, and I wouldn't dream to stepping up to be the person to try to explain it to her. Maybe that's why I do so much thinking — trying to make up for those who do so little.

I should post the sign being discussed in the comments below; it topped the blog Oct. 8.

 

'Unfathomable' — one father's tale of his son, murdered in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack

Ruby Chen

     If Ruby Chen had not closed his talk by mentioning the anniversary, I'd never have thought of writing this on Oct. 7. But he did.

     Ruby Chen does not have to speak to drive his message home. He wears his sorrow etched upon his face, his mouth set in a firm flat line.
     When he does speak, at a breakfast for the Israeli ambassador during the recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he speaks plainly.
     "We are 240 families," he begins, explaining that he will avoid politics. "We are not spokespeople for the state of Israel. We're just people who have this tragedy. We are families. Our loved ones have been abandoned, and have to come back."
     Chen, 55, outlines his story. 

     "I am a U.S. citizen, grew up in New York City," he says. "We moved to Israel about 25 years ago. Have a family, three sons. My eldest is here with me, also in the IDF" — the Israeli Defense Forces, aka, army. "That's how we taught our kids. To give. To commit, when you can. My wife's dad is a former IDF Air Force fighter. He fought in the 1967, 1973 wars."
     He is holding up a large plasticized photo of his son, Itay Chen, bearded, grinning slyly, 19, along with the imperative, "Bring them home now!"
     "When the time came, at age 18, to join the IDF is mandatory. In the Israeli army, he joined the tanks division. He excelled, as he has always been as a kid. He is the 'sandwich,' the middle one that needs to always find his path. A lot of extracurricular activities, from singing, dancing, climbing on walls. Playing professional basketball. Being in the Israel Boy Scouts, so he was big on giving back," Chen says.
     "He excelled as well inside the tanks division. He was in a special tank, with special capabilities. On the morning of Oct.7, he called — not us, he has a girlfriend. She got the last call from him. He said 'They're here now,' he said. ... He was being operationalized. He was at a base, the one with the female soldiers who had their tragedy as well."
     "At the time, it was hard to figure out what was going on. The videos started coming out and we knew it was something different. We were not able to get in contact with him. The day after, state of Israel, the police created a lost and found, a lost people compound."
     "He is not physically identified. Not in one of the hospitals. We, as U.S. citizens, said 'OK, let's go to the U.S. embassy.' I don't want to get into politics. We are very much bipartisan. But I do have to say, we have been blessed by this administration. After four days, Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken came in, sat with all the U.S. families. President Biden had a call with the U.S. families on the first Friday. It was supposed to be a 15-minute call. He stayed on the phone an hour and a half."

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The burned decry the fire they started

     Monday is the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, and the protests have already begun. Palestinians activists shut down Lake Shore Drive Saturday afternoon. More are scheduled over the next few days.

    A person from Mars considering the situation afresh might be forgiven for wondering what the Palestinians are protesting — the attacks that their own elected proxy, Hamas, carried out against their neighbor Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping another 200 more? What exactly is their point of grievance there?
     And the answer is, Oct. 7 is passed by with barely a glance. They are upset about the war sparked by the attack, and the 42,000 Palestinians killed in the war in Gaza against Hamas, which exists in an extensive network of tunnels and safe buildings in civilian areas.

    The attacks should never have happened, the thinking seems to be, because Israel should never have been there in the first place. The Jews who have lived there for thousands of years, well, don't count, as Jews tend not to, and should instead be thriving at that magical place where all Jews everywhere are supposed to go, far away from where they actually are.
     So, in retrospect, do Palestinians think the Oct. 7 attack was a good idea? If pressed, they explain that the attacks are "resistance" against the colonial occupation of Israel in 1948, when people who never lived there somehow just showed up and took possession of the land while the original residents fled. Can you really blame someone for seizing a nation that was so easy pickings? A fruit trembling on the vine, so ready to fall that a bunch of emaciated DPs can show up from Europe, pick up a few sticks and seize the place?
     That isn't true. But it's the premise used to justify the attacks. The Palestinian strategy for a long time has to be commit yet another brutal terror attack, rationalized as resistance, then point to the reaction to that attack as evidence of the depravity of the people they've just attacked, ignoring of course the provocation. The story begins Oct. 8. The story always begins the hour after the terror attack. I punch you, then fall to the floor howling when you punch me back. This approach hasn't gotten them very far, but they're all in. Mistaking attention for success, they're going to think it worked, and do it some more. Which is one reason the war continues (the other is that Benjamin Netanyahu is the worst prime minister in Israeli history).
     The questions that would come to that Mars visitor — Gee, if these people are such brutal monsters, why do you keep attacking them in strategically unsound ways that always blow back on you far worse than they do on the Israelis? And the answer, again, is, because resistance. Because, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. They have a dream, and this is the way they are going about trying to get it. How's that workin' for ya?  Because from my perspective, not all that well.
     Okay, it is not working for them at all. That a certain swath of left-leaning Americans buy it is not the endorsement they think it is. Because the kids will  rush over to some new cause. They already have. The war grinds on, and campuses are ... well ... pretty quiet. 

     There is no end to this conversation, so I'll just stop. Final thought: imagine this for a moment: in the year 2200, Israel is still a nation, most likely. Where will the Palestinians be? In a place they hope to find themselves? And is their current strategy bringing them closer to that place, or further away?

Entire Chicago Board of Education quits

"The Free Stamp," Claes Oldenburg, Willard Park, Cleveland.

     The administration of every Chicago mayor ends up expressed in shorthand. Years pass, extraneous details evaporate, and the story concentrates, becoming a reduction of its basic elements. Richard J. Daley, The Boss.

     With his son, Richard M. Daley, it's either the Bean and the 1996 Democratic National Convention — if you like him — or the midnight destruction of Meigs Field and the disastrous parking meter deal, if you don't. Rahm Emanuel is either the River Walk (pro) and Laquan McDonald (con). Harold Washington is the First Black Mayor and, if you want to go into details, Council Wars paralysis — there is really nothing else to talk about. Jane Byrne was Chicago's first woman mayor. Her train wreck of a single term was marked by three strikes in three months:  the transit workers, public school teachers and firefighters. Boom boom boom. 

      And now Brandon Johnson has his albatross — the entire Chicago Board of Education resigned Friday, en masse, effective later in the year. Don't underestimate the importance of that "entire." All of 'em. Seven of seven. If only five members quit, it wouldn't have been quite the same. Instead, we can really get our backs into it: "Johnson's ennnntiiiiiiiire school board quit. Hook. Line. And sinker. The whole ball of wax."

      That's never happened before, and there's something about a new problem that catches the attention, lodges in mind. "Unsatisfied with screwing up in the traditional manner, Brandon Johnson explored new subcellars of blundering..."

      Johnson was having a hard time already, besieged and bewildered. He demanded his CPS CEO Pedro Martinez quit. Martinez said, "No." 

    And these are Johnson's people. He picked the seven last July. This is some next level dysfunction.

      Johnson wants a high-interest loan to kick CPS budgetary woes down the road — worked for every other mayor. Martinez said no, Chicago will only go broke faster, and right now it's Wile E. Coyote hurtling toward the canyon floor. 

    Nor can I explain how the board went from Johnson appointees, new to their jobs, going over the employee handbook, beholden to the mayor, to the Rebellious Seven, walking out the door rather than do his bidding. Maybe they looked at the books and decided to take their jobs seriously. That's not the Chicago Way. But I suppose it can happen. It just did.

    Sure, you could say the mayor wins. On Monday he'll announce a new and, one assumes, properly pliant school board, having rounded up more dependable puppets with stronger strings. But what kind of authority will this board have? The pawn is the lowest piece on the chess board. Brush seven off the board and replace them with — oh I don't know — subpawns, and the game, well, is off into uncharted territory.

     Such an unprecedented mass resignation has to be an embarrassing slap in the face to a mayor whose whole term has been a continual Stations of the Cross punishment and humiliation. Remember, the board bailing out are already his own team of hand-picked progressives. "In October 2024, Brandon Johnson's entire school board quit." Roll the presses on the history books now. There's your epitaph right there. "The board was expected to be Johnson's rubber stamp," the Sun-Times wrote. Guess not. 

Joseph Epstein's Lucky life

     An East Coast magazine asked me to review Joseph Epstein's new book. I tried to be generous — in making the assignment, the editor informed me that Epstein was a friend. Despite my efforts, the publication rejected what I turned in. Bad for me, but good for you, in that you don't have to wait for this to work its way through the innards of a magazine and be deposited on subscribers' doorsteps, but can enjoy it right now, a scant few days after it was baked, tasted and spat back. 

     I'm not sharing the publication's name, since I've written for them in the past and hope to continue our relationship, this miscue notwithstanding. And to thank them for paying me anyway, which came as a welcome surprise. They're good eggs, politics notwithstanding — and I understand that the bonds of friendship can blind. I feel blessed with a sense of candor that overpowers fraternal feelings. When I wrote a book about my father, he didn't talk to me for a year.

Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life, Especially If You've Had a Lucky Life 

by Joseph Epstein 

(Free Press: $29.99) 

     It takes chutzpah to critique the curtain call of a show you missed.

     So when an editor asked me to review Joseph Epstein's recent autobiography, I felt compelled to inform him that I had never heard of Epstein, 87, not even in the four years I went to Northwestern while he was teaching there. Nor have I read any of his 33 previous books, nor the intellectual journals he stewarded. This must be a lapse on my part.      

     Lack of familiarity, I suggested, either makes me totally unqualified to evaluate, "Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life, Especially If You've Had a Lucky Life," (Free Press: $29.99) or its ideal reader. Someone who brings fresh eyes to a book that should not be placed on the pedestal of his previous writings, but judged on its own merits as an independent work. 

     Go for it, the magazine said. I'm glad they did. Handing the work to an Epstein novice turned out to be apt, because notoriety is a leitmotif running through it.

     Epstein begins with laudable modesty. "Over what is now a long life, I did little, saw nothing notably historical, and endured not much out of the ordinary of anguish or trouble or exaltation," he writes. "What, then, is the justification of this book?"

     His answer: chronicling the milieu he grew up in — "petit bourgeois, Jewish, Midwest America." And the formation of his right-of-center-views which, I'd describe as a soft revanchism — decrying the present, dreading the future, keening for the past. Plus frequent potshots at the left. The biggest ripple Epstein has sent out lately was in 2020, when he decried Jill Biden using her educational doctorate honorific as "fraudulent, not to say a touch comic." Prompting Northwestern to put out a statement observing that he hasn't taught there since 2003 and the university "strongly disagrees with Mr. Epstein's misogynistic views."

     Epstein briefly limns Chicago of the 1940s and 1950s, the ugly corduroy knickers, and Chicago Cubs pitcher Johnny Klippstein working in a sporting goods store in the off-season.      

     Doing this affords him ample opportunity to pivot from his own life to the world at large. The child of inattentive parents — the style at the time — he turns neglect into a positive attribute. Epstein rejoices that he himself did not become "one of those fathers who these days show up for all their children's school activities, driving them to four or five different kinds of lessons, making a complete videotapes record of their first eighteen years, taking them to lots of ball games, art galleries, and (ultimately, no doubt) the therapist."

     Setting aside the anachronism of videotape, the reader has to wonder whether the road to a shattered psyche is truly paved by dads showing up at their kids' events. In case the reader misses the point, Epstein decries "the almost crippling, excessive concern for the rearing of children." I wish he had shown his work here, perhaps revealing a few sources. I'm a fan of Lenore Skenazy and her Free-Range Kids. Yet I still went to my sons' games and concerts, and they seem to have emerged from childhood unscarred.

     The trait that bothered me most is Epstein's tendency, as he marches methodically through his stints at various magazines, to tar his long ago coworkers in passing, by name, as drunks, incompetents, closeted gays (decrying, of course, the use of the word "gay" as it sullies a term for the kind of happiness he would enjoy if only nothing ever changed). He notes that a beloved Cub infielder married a prostitute, a needless jab that only confirms Epstein as reflexively vindictive, someone who can't pass a reputation without clawing at it. I'd credit him with candor, if I thought he were intentionally revealing himself as a score-settler abusing the corpses of his former colleagues as payback for their slights. But my hunch is this will come as unwelcome news to him. 

     Epstein mourns the loss of the word "Negro," as "once a term of great dignity." Yes, and "idiot" was once a neutral medical term. But times change. Epstein clutches at "Negro" twice — manfully restraining himself from daubing a tear for minstrel shows — never devoting a second's thought to the churning racial dynamics that drive such changes. I like nothing more than to hear a good argument, even for positions I don't hold. But Epstein views his opinion as so patently obvious, there's no need to make a case. He utters his opinion and QED.

     Every book has a moment where its author either gains a reader's loyalty, or loses him entirely. Epstein lost me when, shortly after unspooling a dozen pages of detailed description of his pledging to Phi Ep at the University of Chicago, he delivers this sentence: "I went to poetry readers given by T.S. Eliot and Marianne Moore." That's it. A dozen words. If those two giants offered anything notable, he should have noted it. Otherwise Epstein is just dropping names, something he does a lot. I've met and interviewed my share of late 20th and early 21st century greats — including one that Epstein is quite proud to have regularly played racquetball with — but I'm going to withhold them all here, preferring to stand or fail on my own merits, without conjuring up a Justice League of the Famous to rub my elbows until I, too, ascend into their empyrean. 

     I blame his editor, for letting Epstein off-gas contempt for the current world leading to all sorts of wrong-footed moments. He meets his wife, they sleep together, then Epstein raises a finger and apologizes: "In our-hyper candid age, I suppose I ought here to describe in some detail our sex."

     No, he ought not. No reader imaginable looks up from the book at this point, rattles its pages and cries, "Details! Tell us all about having sex with your wife!" Particularly a reader drawn to Epstein's work, who no doubt is nodding along in agreement at the deterioration all around, with Black culture being taught in once-noble universities as if it had merit and was not just victimhood rampant, to paraphrase his sentiments.

     A meticulous editor would also have noticed that twice he shares his jokey fantasy headline about imagining Saul Bellow's death during their racquetball games. Once is plenty.

     Here's a suggestion for Epstein's future books, sure to come so long as he draws breath: if you actually care about being embraced by readers in the future, perhaps you should avoid reflexive dismissal of every change that occurs on the way toward that future. Just a thought.

     I've been panned by non-entities who rear out of the mist to plant a harpoon in my side, so do not relish filling that role for a far more accomplished writer. The best I can say about "Never Say You're Lucky" is it inspired me to want to seek out Epstein's other books and get a better sense of his work. His latest collection of essays, "Familiarity Breeds Content," begins with a rapturous introduction by Christopher Buckley, who compares Epstein to James Boswell, Christopher Hitchens and Philip Larkin. He also says Epstein's readers are no mere readers, but devotees, cult members. I apologize to them all. I must be slow on the uptake. Perhaps I will warm to him; though considering he calls society's triumph over tobacco "health fascism," maybe not.

     Credit where due. At an age when many writers have furled their sails and found safe harbor, Joseph Epstein has bound himself to the helm, tacking against the future that will swamp all of us, like it or not. Joseph Epstein's long, well-lived life offers up yet another very readable and thought provoking book. I know I will think of it whenever I am tempted to drop a name or deliver an unmerited kick, and thank Joseph Epstein quite sincerely for that.