Hey, Sox fans, 'Don't count the time lost'

     My mother is 88. She faithfully reads the Sun-Times (hi mom!), flips through the books I bring and sits in her chair next to my dad, who's 92.

     She does not own the Chicago White Sox — that would be another 88-year-old, Jerry Reinsdorf. Now that the historically awful 2024 season mercifully ended Sunday, it's time to assess the twisted, smoking wreckage. To ask: Why was the team so lousy?
     I bring up my mom as evidence that I am not biased against the sainted old. Ricky Gervais observes how hypocritical it is to sneer at old people, in their diminished state, given how desperate we all are to join them. I know I'm dancing as fast as I can.
     So I am reluctant to say the White Sox were unprecedentedly lousy because their owner was born in 1936. That's ageism. It is entirely possible to be old and on the ball. There must be other 88-year-old double octet seniors who rock their jobs. There is ... um ... looking for anyone ... Wall Street investor Carl Icahn, also 88.
     Though his company has lost $20 billion since 2022, .; 75% percent of its value. Maybe not the best example.
     And my mother, God bless her, well, — sharp as a tack, of course — though I think she'd agree, not up to stewarding a professional baseball team.
     In his defense, Reinsdorf must have managers and staffers, coaches and assistants. Whom he hired.
     So who's at fault?
     No need to guess. There is the crack Sun-Times sports section. Let's see ... Rick Morrissey puts the blame squarely on Reinsdorf.
     "I've said in the past that Reinsdorf doesn’t care anymore," he writes. "That was wrong. He cares about sticking it to people. It’s really the only explanation for his behavior."
     I don't have a dog in this race. I don't follow the Sox. If you put a gun to my head and demanded I name a single player on Sunday's roster, I'd be a dead man.

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Old candlesticks for sale

 

  

     Anyone born a Jew is considered a Jew forever, no matter how little regard they have for their own religion or how few rituals they practice. Our enemies see to that. I suppose a few drop out to embrace other religions, but their original Jewish skepticism adds an asterisk to any conversion. 
     No particular practice is required. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to put my finger on what  a defining core Jewish ritual would be — there are so many: services, prayers, study, charity. I suppose if I had to pick one, I would choose lighting the Sabbath candles, the Friday night ushering in of the Sabbath day of rest. Resting is a very Jewish concept — who do you think was pushing for a 5-day-work week?
     There is something central about Sabbath candlesticks. A concept of Sabbath, home, family, tradition that can be passed on. Part of that essential trio: candlelight, challah and wine. Displayed in our living room are our grandparents' brass candlesticks — or who knows, great-grandparents, it's not like they have a label. I hope to someday give them to our kids, though aren't 100 percent sure either boy will want them. Should have thought of that when I was manifesting my conflicted, weak tea view of faith all those years. Whoops. Sorry. Though I couldn't have ginned up an exaggerated belief just to find an eventual home for candlesticks.

     I'm not alone. Assimilation is thinning the ranks of Jews with an efficiency that Hitler couldn't dream of. Most American Jews intermarry. More than a third of Jews told a Pew Research poll that it is unimportant to them whether their grandchildren are Jewish or not. 

     I knew that already. But somehow, seeing these cast off silver candlesticks, in a jewelry store on Lexington Avenue and 80th St on our recent visit to New York, stopped me short. The abandoned objects of Jewish families that petered out and had no one to give them to. It was like seeing huddled orphans through the slats of a truck, for one second, before the truck pulled away.  The tangible evidence, the piles of eyeglasses, the cast-off baggage, jettisoning the faith that got their forebears through 2,500 years. That strikes me as unfortunate, maybe even careless. Faith is funny. It's something you don't need at all, until you do, very much. 

Fun with maps

 

    Who doesn't love maps? I went to the Newberry Library Friday morning to see the Mike Royko exhibit — I felt obligated — then I slid over to the new Indigenous Chicago exhibit in the main gallery space. We think of Chicago as a relatively new city, founded in 1833. But it was a community long before, for people who until recently didn't register on our civic consciousness as much as they should. There it is, above, on a 1718 French map, labeled "Les Checagou." Notice that the future Lake Michigan above it, called Lac des Illinois at the time, a reminder that our state is named for a confederation of Native-American tribes, known at the time as the Illiniwek or the Illini. I believe sometimes we forget that.
      Talk about continuity. To get to the library, I took the No. 22 bus up Dearborn. And if you look closely at the 1833 map below, there aren't many streets in the little grid of Chicago, but there's Dearborn, right next to Clark Street, right where it belongs. 

    The bulk of the show is about Native-American communities in Chicago, and it might say something bad that I gravitated toward the brightly colored maps and not the photographs of people. Drawn to the shiny object. But you have to be who you are.

    The Royko show closes Saturday — it's small, and I can't say it contained any surprises, but I couldn't miss it. The Indigenous Chicago show runs until Jan. 4. It might not be for everyone. The school group that was visiting when. I was there seemed to be staring off into space more than at the exhibits. But it behooves us to remember the people who were here before us — and who are here right now, still. Part of the show emphasizes that, despite enormous hardships, indigenous Chicagoans are right where they've always been, in Chicago, carrying on their traditions as best they can.

     

Immigrants: hardworking, Samaritans, not the enemy

Venezuelan family at Sullivan High School Thanksgiving Dinner 2023

     People are more or less the same. Whether they wake up in a mansion or a hovel, a condo or a shelter, they worry about making a living, raising their children. The details vary.
     That shared humanity doesn't sit well with some folks. They get rattled by exterior aspects — skin color, language, ritual, clothing — so they want to try to squash those whose existence upsets them.
     This is where the lying comes in. Since the target groups are not in fact demonstratively worse than anyone else, crimes must be imagined and assigned to them, and any actual crime committed by an individual must be conflated into a general group attribute.
     On Monday, I invited readers to share their direct personal stories about immigrants, bad and good, worried I'd be in for some horrific tales, which I'd then have to print. There were none. Those who believe immigrants are bad didn't share anything severe. Someone's father's home was burgled; they didn't like seeing people they assumed were immigrants gathered on the street. Otherwise, they regurgitated what Fox News force-fed them the day before. I shared a taste on Wednesday.
     Today, I want to turn the floor over to those who believe immigrants help this country. What impressed me first was the range of respondents.
     "I served 12 years as Mayor of Grand Rapids, MI.," writes George Heartwell. "During that time (2004-2016) we welcomed many immigrants from all over the world, but primarily from Central America. A study was commissioned by the Dyer-Ives Foundation that showed that immigrants to Grand Rapids were 1) more likely than native born to start a business; 2) purchase a home; and 3) get involved in civic organizations, than were native born Americans. I say, bring on the immigrants!"
     "Hi Neil, I am a truck driver," writes Howard Grimberg. "I go to many warehouses in the area. I know of fairly recent immigrants that work there. They all work hard and do a good job loading and unloading my truck. I agree they are a benefit to this area."
     Weigh those two real observations against, "They're eating the dogs."
     Have you been to a hospital? A nursing home? Immigrants carry the weight of the American health care system on their shoulders. My parents' caregivers are from Ghana.
     Martin Stewart can relate. He writes:
     "I welcome immigrants because of the time an immigrant(s) helped me. Almost 2½ years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. Throughout this journey, including my chemotherapy and care, Hispanic, Asian, and members of other incredible ethnic groups of doctors, PAs (physician assistants), nurses, techs and other highly talented individuals helped ease me down the road. I wouldn’t be where I am today, enjoying life, without them!"

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Pro-immigrant readers see what's in front of their eyes

Mason Sergio Mejia shows up at short notice and saved us last year during the great mothball debacle. 

     Monday's column, "Show me where the immigrants hurt you" rang a lot of bells. The floodgates opened. On Wednesday, I printed a few few of the anti-immigrant replies, mostly Fox News lies chewed a few times and spat back by their well-trained viewers.
     But lots and lots of pro-immigrant comments came in as well, and as Friday's column can only run 750 words, I thought I would jump the gun and run a few today as well.
     You know how I like a good historical argument, and Alan Rhine, of Glenview, offered this:

     In your Monday column you reference a letter that you received that asked what the founding fathers would have thought about the immigration trends from the past 30 years? This reader should consult the Declaration of Independence to see what was stated by the founders who signed this document. In discussing the repeated injuries and usurpations of the King of Great Britain, one of the points made was that:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

     The same Declaration of Independence did not speak favorable about the native Americans, who were the indigenous people that were already here. Another complaint against King George was:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

     Immigration reform is not a new issue. To me it appears that if the founders had responded to your assignment, they would have been more concerned about harm from the indigenous people than from immigrants. 
   P.S. Alexander Hamilton was not born in the 13 colonies. If he had not immigrated from the Caribbean Island of Nevis, we would not have the play about his life.

      Unlike the nebulous imagined generalities of the antis-, supporters of immigrations have almost universally actually met immigrants. Bill O'Connor of Lake Geneva writes:

     Thank you for this opportunity. The youngest of our three was a sophomore in high school, and I knew from experience he would be around less often. I attended classes, learning to teach English as a second language.
     My first volunteer assignment was on the southwest side of Chicago. Spanish speakers, male and female, working jobs all day and arriving for tutoring on time and enthusiastic. Aquilo, a fortyish male student wanted to learn English so he could communicate better with his teenage children as well as his co workers. After about a year, I gave him a final assignment. Write a presentation on any subject and present it to me the following week. The following week he appeared all smiles and with a single construction bolt about ten inches long. His company makes these and he explained the process thoroughly. His closing statement with a huge smile, “ and these are the bolts that anchor the new street lights on 294”.
     I retired and moved to Southeast Wisconsin. A new setting but the same enthusiastic, prompt students. Elana is a single mother of two sons and was working fifty hours a week at her factory job, 6 am to 4:30. She showed up every session at 4:45, willing to work. On one occasion she was troubled. She had heard of another mass shooting at a school and feared for her sons. I suggested we compose a letter with her concerns and send it to a politician. Several weeks later, she walked into our session beaming.In her hand was a letter from Senator Tammy Baldwin, sympathizing with her and outlining her gun control efforts.
     I do not know if these people and many others I tutored, are legal and I do not care. They are doing the same thing my ancestors did, working hard and trying to improve. These are two, there are thousands and thousands just like them.

     A frequent theme is the hard-working nature of immigrants.

     This is Mike Shawgo from Second Pres. My experiences with immigrants have all been from them stopping by at the church. The first time, a group of about six guys showed up on a Saturday, when the church is open for tours. One of the tour docents came to get me to see if I could help them. The church has various supplies that we use for our lunch bag program, which wasn't open at the time. They were trying to talk to me, but my Spanish is limited. Then one of them got their phone with the Google Translate app. They were asking if we had any food. I brought out some sandwiches from lunch bag refrigerator, and also retrieved a bunch of plastic shoe boxes that had toiletry articles, wheeled them out on a cart and set them out on a table so they could take anything they needed. They picked out just a few things, then a couple of the guys started putting the lids back on the boxes, stacked them up and put them back on the cart, which I thought was nice. Then as they were leaving, saying "gracias" over and over, one of them offered to help me get the Google Translate app on my phone, which he did.
     Another time, again on a Saturday, an immigrant showed up at the church. I was there because I had volunteered to help re-set and screw down pews in the balcony that had been moved for scaffolding. This guy was sitting in a pew, and as I walked over he got out his phone with Google Translate and said he just came in to pray. I tried to speak with him a bit, and he said he had just recently arrived, and was looking for work. That gave me an idea, and I checked with the other volunteers who were working on the pews and asked what they thought about asking him to help with screwing down pews. I said I would pay him something. They said that would be great, so using my translate app, I asked if he would like to work on a project here at the church, and I said I would show him what it was. He was very enthusiastic after I showed him what we were doing, and he started screwing down pews with a passion (this was just using a regular screwdriver). He was really going to town, so one of the other guys and myself just quit working on it. One other guy had a power screwdriver, and after a while the immigrant went to him asking for the power screwdriver, which he gave him, then that guy also sat back and let him do the work.
     A group of ladies were having a meeting in the church hall and had ordered pizza for lunch. After their lunch, they had leftover pizza and came in to the sanctuary and asked us if we wanted leftover pizza. I told the immigrant we were breaking for lunch, and to come back to the church hall. Luckily one of the ladies could speak Spanish, and she described the pizzas. He said at the table with us, and was telling us (with the app) about his wife and daughter, and how he was trying to make enough money to bring them to the US. When we tried to get him to eat more pizza, he said no thanks, he was getting to fat (gordo). Then he went back to work. Meanwhile, I went to an ATM and took out $100 to pay him. When he was finished, I asked him how much pay he wanted for his work. He didn't want to take any money, and said, I think, something about that he had done the work out of the goodness of his heart (I recognized "mi corazon", and he put his hand on his chest). I said no, he did the work so he had to be paid. I gave him the $100 but it was folded up bills so he didn't know right away how much it was. But he immediately crossed himself, put his hands on his chest and looked up "to heaven." We never saw him again after that.

     There is no limit online, but I realize I can't go on forever —  I have dozens of these. One more and we'll wait til Friday. Paula Hyman, whose 3rd grade CPS classroom I visited in 2006, writes:

     I was in charge of helping my brother-in-law clean and declutter his condo. I hired a decluttering company, and she brought along three Venezuelan immigrants to help, one man and two women. Neil, I have never seen cleaning people work so hard! They spoke little English, so we used our phones to translate. They happily got right to work cleaning, scrubbing, mopping, and organizing everything in the condo. Although they worked fast, it took two all day sessions for them to finish. The condo has not been that clean since he moved in twenty-five years ago. Everything was shining, immaculate and looked like new. These people were not afraid of hard work. You could tell they had pride in their job and were grateful to make some money. It took two days, but my brother-in-law’s place place took on a whole new life. (I won’t give you details on how disgustedly filthy and cluttered it was.) I am going to hire them to do jobs at my house where I can use some help 
     Each of the immigrants had spouses that worked and kids in school. The kids all loved school here in Chicago, which was good to hear. They were each living in a decent apartment in the nicer part of East Rogers Park. I have been telling everybody that I encounter about my positive experience with these “lazy, criminal migrants.” Although I do not speak Spanish, their enthusiasm for the USA was palpable. They were so grateful to be safe in the United States. I really enjoyed working with them and gave them each a grateful hug when we parted. I plan on staying in touch and I am hoping to help them in some way.

     That'll do for today. Thanks everyone for writing in. It's a relief to remember that there are still good, decent people here, people who are able to see what's in front of them, instead of surrendering to fear and fantasy. 

Readers offload bad feelings about immigrants

     At the end of Monday's column on candidates stoking fear against immigrants, in a fit of madness, I made two requests.
     First, these slurs are so general — someone somewhere doing something — that I invited xenophobic readers to send in specific stories of harm that actually happened to them, the real life incident that turned them against immigrants.
     Then, impulsively, I asked readers who are not hot to deport millions of hard-working would-be Americans why they look upon immigration positively, despite the suffering immigrants' presence supposedly brings.
     That second request was a last-minute afterthought, which is ironic, because the response ran 5-to-1 pro-immigrant.
     The original idea was to present the pros and cons in one column. But given the massive response, I decided to run the "Immigrants Bad" responses today, and the "Immigrants Good" sampler on Friday.
     Those opposed to immigration, as a rule, didn't understand the assignment — share something that actually happened to you — instead, like Tom Howard, regurgitating Fox News talking points. He came in hot:
     "I dislike the immigrants who break our law entering our country while thousands of immigrants doing it the right way waiting in line!
     "I dislike immigrants that enter illegally, who are taking over hotels and schools and disrupting American life.
     "I dislike immigrants that enter illegally and are bringing diseases and death to innocent Americans."
     There's more, but you get the idea. This passion for the rule of law —breathtaking, really — is a common thread.
     What struck me is how readily the bile is ingested, then regurgitated back. Consider this, from Tony Zucchero, a perennial correspondent:
     "We are Not Talking Legal Immigrants! We are talking about Criminal Illegal Aliens! You Ready, here we go! The Following are Facts! They are Raping, Murdering, Child Trafficking, Selling Drugs, Stealing, Beating, Robbing, Abusing American Citizens, Overwhelming Our Health Care System, Hospitals, Schools, Our Welfare System, Lowering Wages, They are Eating Our Pets, They are Taking Away Benefits, Housing and Medical from Our U.S Veterans, They are Raising the Cost of Insurance because they are Given Drivers Licenses Without the Requirements that American Citizens Have to go through to Obtain a Drivers License, Record Number of Automobile Accidents ..."

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The Erotic Waffle

     We stayed in a hotel called The Evelyn, 27th Street and 5th Avenue, on our recent visit to New York. I liked the place: the room was so small it couldn't become messy. There was a serviceable little gym in the basement that I used several times. The front desk handed out free bottled water and tangerines. When we left the bellman gave us directions to take the subway to LaGuardia that were better than the mess Google Maps offered.
     My wife picked The Evelyn for its location — convenient to Jersey City and our son and daughter-in-law, to Brooklyn, where the wedding festivities (the son of a college buddy, not one of mine, this time) were held. We walked as far north as Times Square and as far south as the Battery, to the West Village and nearby Madison Park.
     But one aspect of its location had not been anticipated, an adjacency I neatly summed up upon arrival.
      "You booked us next door to the Museum of Sex," I observed. We went about our business. Saturday night, got back to the hotel about 10 p.m. after coffee and cheesecake at Caffe Reggio. Investigating the place seemed in order — here, you enter through the gift shop. We were greeted by a woman holding a large dildo — this is New York City after all — who said that tickets to the museum itself cost $36 and included the special exhibit, "Super Funland: Journey Into the Erotic Carnival."
     Had I been wearing my columnist hat, I of course would have ponied up to experience the wonder. But I was wearing my frugal traveler after a long day hat, and so we both saved the $72 and skipped the place. It is expensive — you can get into the Met for only $30.

     I did think of EGD earlier, passing the shuttered Erotic Waffle cart above. Maybe because we parsed the word "waffle"here previously. Though honestly my curiosity centered around the word "erotic" — not heard in popular culture as much, lately. My guess being that it's like "oriental" — a term that once described a certain realm of exotism that has been banished in our world, fragmented into a hundred identities. Fifty years ago Bridget Bardot in a French maid's outfit could be described as "erotic" — now of course that would reflect cisnormative supremacy. What would erotic even mean anymore? The "to whom?" part is too immediate and variable.

     Not that "erotic" hold much interest, etymologically. From eros, obviously, the Greek god of love, though I'd better confirm, since it's what you think you know that trips you up. "Of or pertaining to the passion of love," is how my OED puts it, tracing the word, not to any divinity, but to the Greek word for "sexual love," no gods involved. That's why you always check.

     Perhaps damningly, I did not wonder what an erotic waffle could possibly be. In fact, I wondered whether the cart could be a mere decoration — a prop that did not actually open and serve commestibles.

     Wrong again. It did, and leaving the Museum of Sex, we saw what the an erotic waffle consisted of. Rather binary of them, now that I think of it. I took a few photos, though my wife worried that social media, which can be astoundingly prudish when it isn't peddling pure smut, would permit its posting. We'll see. You have to look closely; too close, I hope, for an algorithm to notice and take offense.

Show me where the immigrants hurt you

"Mobile Construction, Trees, 2000" by Nick Cave (Museum of Contemporary Art)

     Chicago's population was 2.7 million in 1990. It's 2.66 million now.
     That's bad. Fewer people means fewer taxpayers and a city in decline.
    What's good is when those busloads of Venezuelans started showing up, courtesy of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. A political thumb in Chicago's eye for daring to call itself a "sanctuary city" and welcoming immigrants the way America has — grudgingly — since the Pilgrims landed in 1620.
     Sure the new arrivals were a hassle. Finding them temporary shelter at a moment's notice — actually, no notice at all. Getting them food and warm clothes and enrolling their kids in school.
     It was expensive, in the same way building a house or putting money in a 401(k) is expensive. An investment in the city's future. Because many of those Venezuelans are going to stick around.
     We are at a moment of anti-immigrant frenzy in this country — another anti-immigrant frenzy, as common as dirt in American history, almost like saying "Today is a day ending in a 'Y.'" A good time to take a breath and assess the facts.
     Maybe it would help to look around the world. Across the globe is an industrialized nation called Japan. Japan's population in 1994 was 125 million. Today, 30 years later, it is ... still 125 million, having slowly peaked in 2008 and begun to steadily fall. The Japanese Health Ministry projects that by 2060 it will be 86 million.
     So ... a good thing? Less crowding? No. A bad thing. Population decline and economic ruin go hand in hand. You can buy a Japanese house for $1 in towns that are emptying out. Let me teach you a Japanese word, "kodokushi." It means "lonely death" and is used to describe individuals who die at home and nobody notices, sometimes for weeks or even months. Cleaning up is a chore.
     There are several reasons for this precipitous decline. Japanese couples are getting married later, if at all, and having fewer children. But the stake through the nation's heart is immigration, or lack of it. which.
     Japan welcomed 175,000 immigrants in 2022. The United States let in 2.6 million. See a difference? Immigration is saving America. Immigration is why the population of the United States is not declining, and it's also much younger. The median age in the United States is 38.5 years. In Japan, it's 50. Younger is good.
     Immigrants are younger, work harder, commit less crime and bring the range of cultural diversity that our nation is so proud of — at least those who don't wet themselves if they hear Spanish spoken in the break room.
     That's why some folks prefer to imagine crimes and assign them to immigrants. The whole Haitians-are-eating-pets slur. As astounding as it was to hear that calumny spoken at a presidential debate, the true shock is that even after it was firmly established as a complete lie, vice presidential candidate JD Vance shrugged and kept repeating it. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.

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Flashback 2004: Disabled vet's battle with VA over benefits was news in '73 too

Folk art, Smithsonian Institution, Museum of American History

 

     We went to Wicker Park Friday night and saw Mitchell Bisschop's one-man show, "Royko: The Toughest Man in Chicago" at the Chopin Theater. I liked it, while at the same time felt my colleague Bob Chiarito nailed its shortcomings in his review. Both can be true because I'm the rare audience member who is also a working newspaper columnist.  I actually choked up when, as the Chicago Daily News folded, Royko cast his reaction in the voice of a kid on the last day of summer pleading to play just a little bit more. C'mon guys! Don't end this yet. Just one more hour. I feel that way every day.

     Royko's widow, Judy, was there — she said it was her fourth time seeing it — and when a friend introduced us, her frosty, "I know who you are," before turning on her heel and walking off reminded me how her late husband hated younger columnists and treated us like crap at every opportunity — apparently deputizing his family members to carry on the tradition for him, from beyond the grave. Nice to see you too, Mike, and thanks for the reminder — that's why I'm always elaborately kind to whatever ambitious young journalist comes my way. Not that many do.

     The play highlights a Royko column about Leroy Bailey, and I mentioned it to a friend who invited me to see the play that I dredged up Bailey 20 years ago when the VA was in the news for treating its veterans shabbily. She expressed interest in seeing it, and I said I would post it here. It's from when the column ran a thousand words and filled a page, and I kept the other items here , in case you're interested. The really cool part is that, after it ran, Tom McNamee tracked down Bailey and visited with him. Alas, that column isn't online.

Opening shot

     Of the several thousand columns written by Mike Royko, the absolute best is easy to pinpoint: It was published Dec. 10, 1973, in the Chicago Daily News and told the story of Leroy Bailey, the man without a face.
     Bailey had had a face when he went into the Army and was shipped to Vietnam. Then a rocket slammed into his tent and exploded. Eyes, nose, teeth, gone. He was living in his brother's basement in LaGrange, knitting wool hats, when Royko found him. The doctors at Hines Veterans Hospital had told him nothing more could be done for him. But an Oak Brook doctor thought he could reconstruct Bailey's face enough so that he could eat solid foods, instead of taking his nutrients by squirting them down his throat with a syringe. The doctor began the series of operations that would allow Bailey to eat normally. But the VA had refused to pay because they decided that the treatment was for something "other than that of your service-connected disability." Eating like a person, the VA decided, was a needless luxury.
     This will sound grimly familiar to readers who were aghast this past week as the Sun-Times detailed the delay and indifference of the VA here, how vets have to struggle for benefits they have already paid for with their blood, and how Illinois is among the most stingy states in the nation when it comes to helping vets. Not only is it a disgrace, but — as Royko's piece reminds us — it's nothing new.
     Americans fall over themselves to pay lip service to our military. We love a parade, and act like anybody who doesn't support our troops is a coward and a traitor. And then we turn our backs on the most deserving — the wounded vet — not by accident, not individually, but en masse, as a matter of policy.

Whoops! Hey, sorry . . .

     I know you're not supposed to think about the stuff on television. That, for the most part, it's moronic mush designed to roll unchallenged over viewers too tired and numb to extend critical thought. But my God. Perhaps the Orwellian name "The Learning Channel" implies some kind of higher, educational standard, but the lurid fare it serves up as entertainment gets under my skin. I was flipping the channels last week, and I settled on a TLC program. In my memory it was "Medical Miracles," but it could have been "Surgical Surprises" or even "Hospital Hootenanny."
     The story was of a 6-year-old girl, severely burned after her father thought it would be a good idea to use gasoline to jump-start a fire in the fireplace. The story focused on the medical challenges, on the skin grafts and surgeries, introducing the heart-tugging aspect of the twin sister, who at age 6 consented to have some of her own skin stripped away so that her sister could live, complete with poignantly plinking pianos over photos of the pre-burn sisters hugging each other. While dad did address his judgment error that sent a fireball rolling out of the fireplace, burning his daughter over 80 percent of her body, the term he used, I believe, is that he felt "bad" (though he might have said he felt "very bad" or even "terrible." But that was it).
     Call me a cynic. (And the choice nowadays seems limited to "cynic" or "idiot.") But if I had the members of this star-crossed family in front of a camera, happily re-creating their nightmare for a moment of TLC fame, I would have given another 30 seconds to the issue of dad setting little Mandy, or whatever, ablaze, and not just dismiss it with a two second kiss-off. And if I were that dad, I don't think I could bring myself to blandly sit in front of the camera and rehash my moment of bottomless stupidity that had so wrenched my child's life.
     Funny. We relentlessly censor the bloody images of real carnage streaming in daily from Iraq because the public squeals if forced to see the handiwork of our policies. Then we fill the void with the wildest Grand Guignol TV can get away with. If there isn't an Autopsy Channel, it's not because somebody hasn't tried to start one. Maybe next year.

Yeah, that's us

     Last week, I wrote about the unique Canadian ability to fixate and complain about the United States. Canadian sympathizers sent in a lot of flak (including a charmingly succinct if unpersuasive "You're wrong!"). But after the column was reprinted in the Nagging Neighbor to the North, a number of its denizens recognized truth when they saw it, such as Montreal radio host Ted Bird, who writes:
     "Saw your Canada piece this week, reprinted in the Montreal Gazette. I'm no self-loathing Canadian, but man, have you got us pegged. It's actually quite embarrassing. Please be advised that the self-styled intellectual left doesn't speak for all of us, and there is a silent majority of Canadians who still consider America to be their closest friend and ally, and a force for good in the world. Most of the rest are system-sucking crackpots like welfare recipients, erstwhile flower children whose grandkids wish they would get a haircut, and students with heavily subsidized tuition practicing their right to free speech that was bought with blood in epic battles detailed in history books that they've never bothered to read. I wish they would find the energy to mobilize mass protest every time our outrageous income taxes take another jump, but then, they'd actually have to have jobs [to] be affected by taxes."

Was the sponsor Guinness?

     Americans would rather be bored than offended; most places, it's the other way around. Thus, 500 art world types in Britain, surveyed by Gordon's Gin, sponsor of that country's prestigious Turner Prize, just voted Marcel Duchamp's 1917 "Fountain" — an ordinary porcelain urinal the artist signed — as the most influential work in modern art. They're right, sadly. The idea that an artwork should be finely wrought or — God forbid — beautiful went out along with sock garters. What I want to know is this: If the idea of art as whatever shocking item you can pluck out of the junkyard, is 87 years old and counting, and is aped in every museum and gallery in the world, doesn't that mean we can move on to something else? Something new? Or — dare I say it — old?

Neil Steinberg will discuss his new book, Hatless Jack, from 9 to 11 p.m. Tuesday with Milt Rosenberg on WGN-AM (720).

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 6, 2004

"I just don't understand it"

     How can the election be this close? A dead heat in the polls. How can Americans look at the two candidates and pick the one whose election would literally mean the dismantling of democracy? How can anyone be undecided? Scratch their heads and go, "Ooo, I don't know...they're both so similar?"
     Future generations will look back — assuming they can, assuming history is allowed — and wonder what the appeal could possibly have been. And all I can do is keep repeating my mantra, "The duped are invested in the fraud." They've punched the ticket, gotten on the train to Crazyworld, and nothing, full stop, nothing is going to pry them out of their seat. Not when the scenery they tell themselves they must be seeing is so shiny and glittery. Golden, not orange. Thrilling. Not nauseating.

    "The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” one candidate said — I'll let you figure out who. My first thought: "Let's fucking hope so; I'm trying to do my part." But that's the bright spin. Already pre-emptively blaming the Jews. Which might come as a surprise to Jewish supporters but, as I've said many times, once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, the specific details of the reality being ignored hardly matters. 

     And in a sense the details don't matter. Hate is fungible. Mexicans, Muslims, Jews — who the fuck cares? The point is to demean somebody, lord yourself above somebody. The precise sort of person is of no consequence. Anyone will do.
     Notice, I don't mention any names. Even on my own personal blog. I think that's months of trying to jump through the paper's 501(c)3 charity hoops wearing off on me. Or rather, grinding me down. We're not supposed to express a preference when it comes to candidates. A reminder to never forget the fiscal motive in all this. As Marge Gunderson says in "Fargo"  — "And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it."

Who's going to get shot with your gun?

"Coming through the Rye," by Frederic Remington (Art Institute of Chicago)

     Black women have a higher suicide rate than white women. Rich or poor, doesn't matter — Black women in the highest income bracket kill themselves 20% more often than white women in the lowest.
     When they do, they generally use handguns — most U.S. suicides are with handguns, because guns are such efficient killing machines.
     This kept flashing in my mind reading Bob Chiarito's piece in Wednesday's Sun-Times, "Surprised Kamala Harris owns a gun?" This is not a criticism of Bob's article. He recounts the stories of real Chicago women who purchase guns to feel more secure and talks to a gun safety instructor, who says that of her 3,000 students, none has ever had to use her gun. He mentions the risks.
     Rather, I am writing to air the other half of the equation Bob cites only in passing. Guns get great PR in America. Yes, there is the increasingly muted horror at increasingly common school shootings. Some obscure town is projected into the news, parents race to the scene, terrified kids rush out with their hands on their heads. It all fades in a day.
     How can that compete with Clint Eastwood? "Dirty Harry?" The movie opened on Christmas 1971, and more than half a century later, we all know the message: The man — or woman — with the gun gets the drop on the bad guys. "Go ahead, make my day." Add all those surveillance videos of robbers getting gunned down on X. We never see videos of kids shooting each other.
     I don't want to ignore the value of guns as comfort objects. You may live in a dangerous area. You have a gun locked in a drawer, it gives you a sense of security. I live in quiet, safe Northbrook, am neither Black nor a woman. Who am I to have an opinion on this? To call guns "teddy bears with bullets?"
     Well, someone whose job it is, in part, to warn people of perils they might otherwise overlook. If you buy a gun, the chances of you, or your family, being killed by a gun jump. Yes, you tell yourself, if you hear someone breaking in, you can calmly go and unlock the drawer and protect yourself until the police come.
     But what if that break-in never happens? What about the rest of the time? Years and years? That gun sits there and is a menace only to the people in the vicinity — aka, you and your loved ones. You might have a dark night of the soul you never anticipated and use it on yourself. Or you might leave the drawer unlocked and your overly inquisitive nephew finds it.

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Those in sympathy with terror disagree

     I grew up in what can be considered the golden age of Israeli ingenuity. From defeating the massed Arab armies in the Six-Day War in 1967, to rescuing its hostages at Entebbe, Israel had the intelligence, the daring, the knowledge, to do what had to be done. 

     It wasn't perfect. In 1973, Israel was caught napping in the Yom Kippur War. Once I visited the Golan Heights, and asked an Israeli officer escorting us, gesturing toward the north. "You can see 30 miles into Syria..." I said. "How did the tanks sneak up on you?"

     He gave an answer I'd always remember. "We saw them coming," he said. "We just didn't know what it meant." 

Ald. Brendan Reilly tweeted, then deleted, 
this.

     That myopia also permitted Oct. 7. The Israelis were warned, but let themselves become so complacent, so preoccupied dealing with Benjamin Netanyahu's mishigas — craziness — that again they were caught off-guard. A thousand Israelis died, and another 250 were kidnapped to a fate worse than death. Plus those who want the Jews magically gone and the nation handed over to a group who never actually lived there were emboldened to think that their dream of genocide might have a chance if only they couch it in the right terms and enlist enough American college sophomores and armchair Marxists to sign on.

     On Oct.7, the Palestinians demonstrated that they, too, could pull off a clandestine caper, particularly when the Iranians were providing the money, the equipment, and pulling their strings. Israel discovered it wasn't the only one who could hatch a decent surprise attack.

     Tuesday's beeper attack against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon delighted fans of Israel, reminding them of its past genius, while those who believe the nation should quietly allow itself to be destroyed bewailed the civilian casualties and the use of violence that isn't directed toward Jews.

     And why can't such ingenuity be applied by both sides toward working out a lasting peace? 

Good question. I wish I could offer a glib answer, but I can't. Well, one does come to mind, but I'm not sure I should say — my only guess is that both sides haven't suffered enough. For all the talk of genocide and the constant carnage, Hamas won't agree to a ceasefire because they don't like the details — I hint that the supposed genocide might not actually be one, given that its victims don't want to stop it because of the status of a crossing. 

     And Israel, for all its pretense of freedom and humanity and Jewish love of justice, obviously feels it can ignore the Palestinian problem, nibbling away more land, letting the years trickle by. Neither side has a sense of urgency. Even now. You'd think Oct. 7 would have done the trick. Obviously not. The one year anniversary looms. The beeper caper will hearten those who've grown disillusioned watching Israel botch things so badly. But it's only a passing distraction. The real problem can't be disposed of with execution of a clever plan.

They're eating the plantains!

Figurines at the 2014 Haitian vaudou show at the Field Museum. 

     Haitians eat plantains.
     I must rush to add that Haitians eat other things too. I remember langouste, from my visits to Haiti, a kind of spicy French lobster dish. In "Breath, Eyes, Memory," Edwidge Danticat's lovely, meticulous novel, they eat cinnamon rice pudding, on special occasions.
     In all the continuing fallout from Donald Trump's shocking slur about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, uttered during his debate with Kamala Harris — "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the pets" — I have not seen mentioned what Haitians actually do eat. Understandable — with the state police being called out to protect children going to school in Springfield, dozens of bomb threats and the Proud Boys boldly marching, cuisine would naturally get pushed aside.
     Pity. Food has a way of bridging divides. I remember the coffee — I'd never had such excellent coffee — and of course the rum, Jane Barbancourt. Best in the world.
     It goes without saying — well, no, actually, I have to say it — that Haitians also eat sushi and meatloaf and apples and every other food that anybody else eats. Culture is a guide, not a rule.
     As to why the spurious pet-eating claim should shock, coming from Trump and his wingman, JD Vance, that's on me, on all of us. We should expect it by now. But something must make people — regular, non-bigoted people — assume the best about others. Like Anne Frank, we believe people are basically good at heart; a dangerous notion, given how that worked out for Anne.
     Never forget that racism is a form of ignorance. Stupidity rampant. People imagine bigots come to their beliefs the way most of us do, through experience and consideration. They don't. What happens is they try to mold their real life experience to fit their narrow, poisonous personal beliefs. As Vance said, they make stuff up to prove a point.
     Prejudice also is a form of cowardice. Nobody is a bigot because they are brave. Thus, hating people directly is rare: "I hate the Dutch and their stupid wooden shoes." Instead, harms must be postulated to justify the hatred: "The Dutch are running over children with their careless bike riding."
     This is where the lying comes in. False rumors, that bulwark of medieval villages, transfer directly to 21st century technology. "The Jews poisoned the wells" finds a direct corollary in, "They're eating the pets." People we hate are doing something awful! So it's safe to hate them.

To continue reading, click here.

Keep Trump safe so he can lose Nov. 5 and go to prison

Portrait of Napoleon (Rijksmuseum)

      Nah, I don't believe these feeble assassination attempts — two and counting — are deliberately staged by Donald Trump to distract from whatever shitshow he's neck deep in at the moment. He isn't cunning enough. Rather they are convenient occurrences that can be immediately capitalized on, dialing up the fundraising, self-pity, distraction, and of course blame-shifting.
     "The constant drumbeat of hate directed toward Donald Trump by liberal Democratic media, entertainers and politicians is yielding results," reader Thomas Murray wrote Monday. "The hysterical dog whistle to the demented has resulted in two assassination attempts ... so far. This is the real 'death of democracy!'"
     Of course there is no "drumbeat of hate" directed at Trump. Maybe he means news reportage. Or moral horror at his swan dive into racism and white supremacy. Blaming the media for reflecting his vile statements is like blaming the mirror because you're ugly.

     I can't speak for the entire media, but I made it clear almost half a dozen years ago that I absolutely do not hate Trump. How could you hate someone so broken and pathetic? No liberal wants Trump dead; we want him to live, be crushed by Kamala Harris Nov. 5, and then go to prison. He can't do that if he's killed. Frankly, I can't imagine a worse punishment that can be inflicted on Donald Trump than for him to wake up and be forced to be himself for another day.
     No, Republicans just see the assassination attempts, even though both have been done by Trump supporters, as a way to ascribe something bad to people they don't like. It's strange. After an assassination attempt, they worry that calling Trump a would-be dictator, a liar, bully, fraud, felon and traitor might trigger some disturbed individual with a gun. Otherwise, they don't seem to worry at all that he is being called a would-be dictator, liar, bully, fraud, felon and traitor because he IS a would-be dictator, liar, bully, fraud, felon and traitor. That doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest.    

     I was tempted to write Murray back, asking he pretend that instead of a disturbed Trump voter being discovered with a gun and never even getting a shot off — never even being within sight of Trump — it was half a dozen elementary school kids murdered. Then he could demand that nobody politicize the unavoidable tragedy, and I could mentally project my thoughts and prayers in his direction.

In search of black licorice

    I've never met anyone who didn't like chocolate. Who waved off a proffered square of Ghirardelli with, "I'm sorry; not a big chocolate fan."    

     Licorice is different. Some people cringe from licorice. It is an acquired taste. An adult taste. Not a lot of 9-year-olds pine for licorice.

    There's also a connoisseurship to licorice. While chocolate certainly has a range — from the best, L.A. Burdick, to the semi-best, See's, down through Fannie May, all the way down to Snickers. Like the barnyard denizens of "Animal Farm," some chocolate is better than others. 

    That said, I'll still shrug and eat a Hershey's bar. Any port in a storm....

    That isn't true for licorice. Those strawberry whips? I'd rather eat the packaging. I not only want licorice, but I want really good licorice, and by really good licorice, I mean Kookaburra Australian licorice. Other types of black licorice aren't as strong, or as soft, or as fresh. They're also rans, not worth the effort of chewing.

     Okay, that's not entirely true. In Copenhagen I made a point of visiting the Lakrids by Bulow outlet in the basement of the Magasin department store — samples of licorice, perfect spheres were handed out with a tongs by a pair of lovely shop clerks. The place resembled a jewelry store and the candy cost about as much. Salt licorice is a thing in Denmark, and we had to be careful, because some varieties tasted like congealed Morton salt. But we bought slabs that were so good they never made it out of the country.

    Later, in Amerstam, we tracked down the Het Oud-Hollandsch Snoepwinkeltje — "The Old Dutch Candy Store" — and bought a paper cone filled with licorice. Some very chewy, the some almost as good as the Kookaburra I could buy at Sunset Foods back home in Northbrook.
     Only that was about to change. Had I known what was coming, I'd have shipped a crate home. I've have cleaned the shelves of Kookaburra, disappeared from Sunset, replaced by lesser brands. I tried a few. Pheh. Plastic. Bland. Heck, I tried Good & Plenty. Like a man dying of thirst sucking on stones. I was that desperate. I bought a pack of Chuckles for the black piece.
    The Kookaburra web site is there, the company based in Washington State. But it was out of licorice. Months went by. Out of stock. I sent them an inquiring email. I phoned. Nothing. Which is not surprising — during COVID, Coca Cola wouldn't tell me what happened to Fresca without weeks of hammering. Corporations can suck that way.
   But persistence is my superpower. I circled back. Tried again.  finally tracked down a Kookaburra employee. She said that the two owners of Kookaburra are fighting and the company has ground to a halt.
     So it's in limbo?
     "Very much in limbo," she replied, explaining that the two are nearing retirement, and questions of transition have hobbled them. "I don't know what's happening with them. I've tried to figure it out. In the meantime, we're just stopped."
     While I had her on the phone, I had to ask: why is Kookaburra so much better than other licorices?
     "It's batch cooking," she said.
     "Like Graeter's ice cream?" I replied. "They make French pot ice cream in small batches."
     "Like a brownie. Other stuff is cooked more continuously, and it gets rubbery."

     I told her that I had been able to buy a tub of licorice that claimed to be Kookaburra at a high end supermarket in Boston in May, and she said that other companies use their factory, and directed me to Nuts.com. I hurried there, immediately ordered a pound of "Black Australian Licorice, made by the manufacturers of Kookaburra." I ordered some English All-Sorts while I was at it.
     That was Thursday at noon. Within 24 hours, a box was sitting on our front stairs, its cheery, chatty branded packaging carrying over from the box to the bright blue bags inside.

    Through supreme will, I resisted tearing open the bags on the spot and finding out. First, lunch.  Then I parceled out a serving of the licorice, which was appropriately sticky. I tried some. This was it. My wife concurred. "This is very good licorice!" she enthused.    

     If the moral of this story doesn't leap out, I'll spell it out: we have these fantastic online commercial systems, these websites and delivery chains. But you sometimes need that ghost in the machine — the living Kookaburra employee — to birddog a solution. 

     A business only works as well as the people running it work, and it was a little heartbreaking to contrast the leaping efficiency of Nuts.com — which sold me a pound of Kookaburra-quality licorice for $8.99 — to the we're-so-conflicted-we-can't-operate collapse of Kookaburra itself.  They should put something on their website. Licorice is important; how much would an explanation cost?

     Thank you Nuts.com for picking up the dropped ball. As for the Kookaburra owners — c'mon guys, people are depending on you. Figure it out. Because otherwise the world will march on without you. At least put something on your website. Don't your customers deserve that respect?

     I remembered a song from elementary school — an Australian nursery rhyme written in 1932 — and found it quite apt:

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Eating all the gumdrops he can see
Stop, Kookaburra, Stop, Kookaburra
Leave some there for me.

     I assume those are licorice gumdrops.

Flashback 2007: Found in translation —The sexy side of 'Georgics'

     I'm still on vacation — lots of accumulated days to burn through. Here is the companion review to yesterday's look at Virgil's "Aeneid." I enjoyed reading "Georgics" probably more than a person should — if farming isn't your thing, you might prefer to read the 2014 piece of about the Gaza War written exactly 10 years ago. The more things change ... 

      Though "Georgics" is worth a glance. Or more. I can't believe I didn't mention that Virgil has different hives of bees battling each other in a parody of The Iliad. I like to quote his line about bees being stout warriors in their waxen kingdoms whenever the subject of bees come up. Judge me harshly if you must.

Fiction
Virgil's Georgics
A New Verse Translation
By Janet Lembke
Yale, 114 pages, $15 (paper)

     'Georgics" means "farming" in Greek and no, Virgil isn't tackling an original subject here, either. There was a lost poem by Nicander of the same title, and maybe others the great Latin poet knew about.

"The Works of Virgil: Containing his Pastorals, Georgics
and Aeneis," 1697 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     No matter. We modern readers are so removed from the mechanics of food production, there is fresh joy in this ode to the bounty of the earth. At heart it is a practical guide — when to plant, how to handle livestock, the proper care of bees — and a celebration.
     "I'd have my ox groan as he pulls the plow deep and my plowshare glisten, polished by the furrow," Virgil writes.
     Despite the specific subject, there is no lack of universality.
     "Every last species on earth, man and beast alike, the vast schools of the sea, the cattle and bright-colored birds fall helpless into passion's fire," begins a famous passage that holds as true for humans as horses.
     Lembke's translation is fresh and readable, almost sexual in parts, such as when "in spring, Earth swells moistly and begs for bursting seed."
     She wisely modernizes some of the more obscure references — "Parthenope" becomes "Naples" and "Chaonian acorns" become "wild acorns."
     Sometimes the result is jarring, as when Bacchus becomes "The Body Relaxer," which makes the wine god sound like a device hawked on cable TV.
     Still, she generally improves on past translations — Virgil describes bees as stout-hearted warriors in "their waxen kingdoms," a phrase lovely enough to send me skipping back to my Loeb Classical Library translation by H.R. Fairclough, where "waxen realms" just isn't as nice.
     Lembke's translation delivers Virgil's salute to agrarian life hay-scented and bleating at your doorstep. Pour a draught of wine — there is also a memorable tribute to winemaking here — and enjoy.

        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 7, 2007

Flashback 2007: What's old is new: Homer translator takes a whack at Virgil's 'The Aeneid'

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro, London, 1654 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     The Sun-Times once had a book editor, and an excellent one: Henry Kisor, who not only reviewed books, but wrote them, also excellent. One of my favorite titles of all time is attached to his memoir about growing up with deafness: "What's that Pig Outdoors?" Henry's retired to the Upper Peninsula, but writes in from time to time, and it's always a pleasure to hear from him.

     If a melancholy one. We once had a book editor, heck, we once had an assistant book editor, and an entire book section. All long gone.

     Occasionally, I'd draw a plum assignment — or heck, knowing me, maybe I volunteered, I don't recall — such as reviewing a new translation of "Aeneid." To show you how sincere this review was, I later read it a second time, out loud to my older son. Tomorrow I'll post the sidebar, a review of Virgil's "Georgics," his book about farming and so much more.

Fiction
The Aeneid
By Virgil
Translated by Robert Fagles
Viking, 486 pages, $40

     It takes guts to recast a classic. The rewards are great -- a guaranteed audience, a familiar tale. The perils are also great.
     Sometimes the experiment works: Gregory Maguire's Wicked was a commercial success and ended up on Broadway. Sometimes it doesn't: The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall's slave's-eye view of Gone With the Wind, is interesting only for its legal woes.
     Homer's The Iliad, an epic of Achilles and the Trojan War, and The Odyssey, about the homeward agonies of Ulysses, would seem beyond adaptation. Honed by centuries of re-telling, speckled with familiar tropes — the long black ships, the wine dark sea — revisiting it would seem an act of hubris. A challenge nevertheless taken up by Roman poet Publius Virgilius Maro, whose new book, The Aeneid, takes the story of the fall of Troy and tells it from the perspective of a vanquished Trojan, Aeneas, adding moments that Homer left out — the sack of the city, the creation of a giant wooden horse — turning the epic into a tale of the creation of Italy.
     OK, The Aeneid is not a new book —Virgil penned it in the decade before his death in 19 B.C. But its benefits and problems are the same as those of any other adaptation.
     The first question is why anyone who doesn't fear getting his knuckles rapped by nuns would even contemplate reading The Aeneid.
     The answer is because it is newly translated by Princeton scholar Robert Fagles, whose translation of The Iliad (1990) and The Odyssey (1996) were surprise bestsellers. Readers who savored those works are eager to see what he does with Virgil.
     How well does Fagles do? Look at the death of Priam, the aged king of Troy who, as the city falls, throws himself at his son's killer and is slain. Here's how John Dryden, the 17th century poet, describes the scene:

Now die!' With that he dragg'd the trembling sire,
Slidd'ring thro' clotter'd blood and holy mire,
(The mingled paste his murder'd son had made,)
Haul'd from beneath the violated shade,
And on the sacred pile the royal victim laid.
His right hand held his bloody falchion bare,
His left he twisted in his hoary hair;
Then, with a speeding thrust, his heart he found:
The lukewarm blood came rushing thro' the wound,
And sanguine streams distain'd the sacred ground.
Thus Priam fell ...

     Fagles puffs away the dust:

Now — die!'
That said, he drags the old man
straight to the altar, quaking, slithering on through
slicks of his son's blood, his right hand sweeping forth his sword —
a flash of steel — he buries it hilt-deep in the king's flank
Such was the fate of Priam...

     Fagles loses a strong image — the killer's hand, twisting in the old man's hair — but the passage is a third shorter, and falls more harmoniously on modern ears.
     Despite Fagles' best efforts, Aeneas is not the most appealing hero. Virgil was considered a proto-Christian — that's why Dante chose him as his guide in his Inferno, and there is something very Ned Flanders about Aeneas — he's a heroic goof, not nearly as complex as Achilles, and lacking the ingenuity of Odysseus, not to mention the good plot line.
     Which is the second problem. Rather than returning home after 10 years, Aeneas is leaving it forever, off to found Italy. He does so with such brio that you expect The Aeneid to be underwritten by the Italian Tourist Board, which in a sense it was; Virgil was commissioned to write it by the Roman emperor. It was as if George Bush hired Maya Angelou to rewrite Moby Dick with an eye toward promoting New England tourism.
     So why read The Aeneid? There is no question that reading it is work, if only to keep skipping back to the nearly 1,000-name glossary to find out who Penthesilia is or where Crustumerium might be located. The ancient Romans were haunted by the fear they were merely pale imitators of the Greeks, and to compare Virgil to Homer, you see why.
     The bottom line is, if you're unfamiliar with Fagles' work, yet want to dive into the classics for their poetry, their power, their eternal themes and deathless imagery, then you'd do better starting at his The Iliad and The Odyssey. They're superior works. If you've already read Homer, then you're probably ready for The Aeneid.
     Yes, there are long eat-your-peas stretches to trudge through — you'll never want to read about another unblemished white ox being slaughtered again. But there also are moments of drama and heartbreak — Queen Dido bewailing her doomed love — plus a queasy familiarity as you read about a previous costly, ill-conceived war.
     You'll be reading a book that enthralled the great minds of our culture. The Aeneid inspired Dante to write his masterpiece.
     "It is from you alone that I have taken/The lofty style for which men honor me," Dante gushes when he meets Virgil in The Inferno.
     Shakespeare, too, was a fan of the book, and that is not true of every best seller thumping down upon the tables at Borders this month.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 7, 2007

"I saw it on television"

 

      I'm on vacation all this week, since coming back from New York on Monday. It's been nice. In fact, I don't remember enjoying just being at home quite so much. Doing whatever I feel like doing.
     I've pretty much stepped away from social media — that alone made the week pleasant. Surprisingly so. I didn't realize what a pain in the ass it was, just how much Twitter is the death of a thousand cuts, and what a time sink Facebook can be. I'm going to try to dial back my presence there permanently. Let the groundlings have at each other without me.
     I did dip my toe back into Twitter Thursday, and noticed the above, which I had reposted. It's the sort of dry wit that can redeems social media, sorta. Not a criticism of The Economist, I rush to add. I like to tell people that reading The Economist is like having an extra brain. But a reminder that when one writes something, there is always, or often, an aspect that is not considered. In this case, the hard right have previously guided Germany, into the greatest catastrophe and bloodletting of the 20th century.
     Odd that they would flirt with it again. Then again, there's a lot of oddness going around. It's odd that nearly half of all Americans would stand solidly behind the clown we saw on rampant display at the presidential debate Tuesday night. "They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets." What an imbecile. And then, when challenged, for him to say, "I saw it on television." What a moron. I have a hard time understanding how even one person can vote for this guy. Then again, as I've said before, once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, the exact nature of the reality being ignored hardly matter. 

     Speaking of ignoring stuff, I think I'll wrap up here. No law says these posts have to go on and on. One may be brief.