The Sun-Times regrets the error.

   Grr. Urg. Other expressions of visceral, teeth-grinding frustration.
     Monday morning. All is right with the world. Or right enough, if you squint. The vanhoutte spirea are in their puffy white glory. There are fresh blueberries to put atop my Shredded Wheat. The big challenge of the day is to get downtown and go to Gene & Georgetti for lunch. Maybe get something going for Wednesday, columnwise, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel Tuesday morning.
     Rinse the blueberries. Pour the cereal and the milk. Flip open the Sun-Times to page two — "Every day I'm on page two is a good day," I often tell the wife. There is my lighthearted riff on yo-yos. The story begins:

     “No," I said, puzzled, slow on the uptake, figuring she was coming out of a dream. "Why do you ask?"

     Well, that's how the story begins in the physical newspaper. The actual column, as written, has three paragraphs before that. Bowl of cereal in my hands, I rush upstairs to the computer, to see whether the opening was also sliced off online, or whether it was a print issue. I'm worried that, in copying the opening to post on my blog, I somehow cut it instead, and the mistake was carried unnoticed into the paper. An actual impossibility with the system, but still...
     The story was fine online. Whew, so not my fault. But somebody's. I instantly see what had happened. They put in a big "OPINION" bug as a subtle hint that what you are reading is not the just-the-facts-ma'am impartial news the paper prides itself with, but slant, bias, perspective. Whoever went to grab the copy to put into the paper took the part below opinion and didn't notice the part above, and no sentient eyes gazed up the result.
     Forty years writing for the paper, I can't recall that ever happening to one of my stories. A first for everything.
    I fire off a note to my editor saying as much. Then wait, checking my email for befuddled "Huh?" notes from readers. Instead, I get people enthusiastically upping their subscriptions and donating to the newspaper, which seems an odd reply to a blunder. Then it hits me. Ohhh. The marketing department had asked me to write a letter, rattling the cup. The same morning that my decapitated column hit the street, the letter asking for donations also went out, the type of ironic coincidence which makes life the rich pageant it is. The species of minor indignity that follows me, quacking, like a pull-toy duck. Some journalists won the Pulitzer Prize on Monday, others have their mangled work tossed out into the world with a shrug.
     I knew immediately that I would not be inundated with puzzlement. Readers tend to plow on. And as my wife points out, even the few who notice something amiss, well, most people do not write to newspapers. The physical paper itself goes to, what?, 50,000 readers. Maybe. Not 2 percent of the population. Online is where it's at. Online we draw a full ... well, several multiples of 50,000. I think. Or hope.

     I call my editor, not seeking explanation, more just to have some someone to talk to about this. "The trick to journalism is to both think what you're doing is the most important thing in the world and know that it actually doesn't matter much," I say.  You thunder in a column against Donald Trump, liar, bully, fraud and traitor, as if doing so is the difference between America continuing on in freedom or sliding into a slough of fascism and oppression. And know that you could have written every single article highlighting the Oort Cloud of crimes and errors surrounding him and he would still be right where he is now, poised to retake the presidency. Raising your voice is the most important thing you can do, and nothing.

     The paper is actually doing something surprising. It's reprinting the column today, with the top three graphs in place (I'm told. I haven't seen it yet. It would be funny if the three paragraphs got lopped off again). I didn't ask for that — in fact, almost pointed out that it really isn't necessary. But they feel it was, and I decided not to question their judgment. Besides, I can't ever think of that ever happening in a Chicago paper — a column running Monday, then its corrected version Wednesday. Kinda cool, really. A distinction, almost. I'll take it.
    Onward, as Rick Kogan says.  Apologies for the inside baseball, but that's what I got today. Honestly, when they said they were reprinting the column, my first thought was I'd have a day off, which I can use. No biggie. Mistakes happen. To write is to err or, as I sometimes spell it, "Too right is two air." Even noble Homer dozed. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes... Okay, you understand. We'll try again tomorrow, and hopefully get it right this time.

Rattling the cup

     So we moved my mother and father, a week ago Monday. The next day I asked my mother how she liked the new place.
     "I'm not getting my paper," she complained.
     Ah, right, the paper. Did not take care of that. But I will, immediately, I told her. Jumped online to use the subscriber app. It's hard enough to change the address of your own subscription, never mind someone else's, and I was thwarted.
     But I had a Plan B. Last year we donated our van to the paper, and I got to know our membership director. She owed me a favor. Perhaps, I asked, she could point me toward someone who could change my mother's subscription. She did, and it was handled easily. While she had my attention, however, she said, in effect, You know ... we've been sending out these emails, fundraising, and perhaps you'd like to write one. For World Press Freedom Day, Friday. This was, oh, Wednesday.
     Too soon. Next time, I said, not wanting to rush something out half-baked. Not really wanting to do it at all. But she asked nicely, so gave the old Boy Scout try and wrote this:

Dear reader:

Almost 40 years ago, I visited the Chicago public high school located in Cook County Jail so incarcerated teens could go to school. One lesson I watched taught where to put the stamp on an envelope. Later I asked the teacher: is this really necessary? He looked at me pityingly and replied that while students here may have killed someone, may have fathered children, they often did not know where the stamp goes because they'd never written a letter because they can't read.

That stuck with me, and decades later I decided to go back and check up on the place. Yes, I'd written about it before, but no readers rattle the paper and say: "Hey...I read about this 30 years ago!" The Chicago Public Schools didn't want to let me return. But I kept badgering them. Finally, they relented, and when I went back I found out why they didn't want me there, after several teachers pulled me aside and said that, trying to goose the numbers, the school was graduating students who had left the jail long ago. Some had died. The inspector general investigated for a year. The principal was fired.

Exposing corruption and making changes is the heart of what the Sun-Times does, and what gets mentioned on days like World Press Freedom Day. While that's crucial and I'm all for it, done by others, in my career here — now in its fifth decade — I've always emphasized the visit-interesting-places part. To show readers something they didn't know was there. So I've gone down the Deep Tunnel and up the western spire of 875 N. Michigan, then the John Hancock Building, with the workmen changing the lightbulbs on the antennae. I've watched a heart transplanted, a manhole cover forged, and Wilco record a song. It's important to uncover hard truths and confront the powerful with them. But it's also good to have institutional memory and to go places, uncover intriguing truths and share them: the first blood bank in the world opened in Chicago, as did the first public school for children with disabilities. To pray toward Mecca in Chicago, you face northeast.

SUPPORT A FREE PRESS

This is a very long way of saying that my daily column, which has appeared for 28 continual years in the Sun-Times, shines a light in the odd corners, sometimes afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. Sometimes merely being interesting, which is also important. While my colleagues uncover corruption and hold elected officials' feet to the fire, I'm wondering where Fresca went during COVID, who opens Cologuard jars, and what goes on at the dominatrix dungeon on Lake Street, three blocks from the governor's office. One column examined how blind people pick up after their dogs. 

Asking questions that readers might never think to ask, but nevertheless enjoy learning about. I've always found Chicago an infinitely fascinating place, and feel lucky to be able to explore it three times a week in the Chicago Sun-Times. People who don't read the paper literally do not know what they're missing — theirs is a smaller, drier, blander, paler, scarier world. 

Since October 2022, the Chicago Sun-Times has been community-supported, funded by readers like you. If you haven't contributed to the paper, please consider doing so — reflect on how much poorer the city would be without us, not just the crimes that would go undetected, but the wonders that would go unheralded. Then dig deep. To me, you need the Sun-Times the way people need glasses: in order to see properly. You'd think nothing of spending a few hundred dollars on an extra pair. I hope you consider contributing the same to Chicago's preeminent newspaper for the past 76 years. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely, 

Neil Steinberg
Columnist
Chicago Sun-Times

     That brought in thousands of dollars. But more importantly, to me anyway, a cascade of letters like this:

Hi Neil,

I don't have much, but I wanted you to know I just donated to the Sun-Times because of you.
When I lived & worked in Chicago, the Times was my favorite paper and you were my favorite columnist.

I thought it only fair to show a little respect.

Thanks, Neil.
You have taught me & entertained me a lot.
peace,
Eric R.
Kissimmee, Florida

     Maybe I'm a little shell-shocked lately. But there was something very moving in seeing people I'd never met dig into their pockets, inspired by my column, and say nice stuff on top of it. Anyway, thanks to everybody who pitched in or is going to pitch in. They gave out the Pulitzers on Monday — never getting one of those. But these emails were a suitable consolation. Odd to think it all came about from getting my mother's paper delivered to her new address.

Yo-yos are back, someday, maybe

Boys in a Chicago schoolyard play with yo-yos. (Photo for the Sun-Times by Bob Kotalik)

     My wife sleeps late while I wake early.
     "I'm going to walk the dog," I explained a few weeks back, after she stirred while I was putting on my shoes.
     "Do you have a yo-yo?" she asked, sleepily.
     "No," I said, puzzled, slow on the uptake, figuring she was coming out of a dream. "Why do you ask?"
     "'Walk the dog,'" she explained. Ah. A yo-yo trick.
     My next thought — I kid you not — was: I should get a yo-yo and learn tricks to entertain our future grandchildren. Then I wondered: Are there people who teach yo-yo tricks? Are yo-yos even still a thing? Or has technology completely killed them?
     "Our demographic is 6 to 15 years old," said Josh Staph, CEO and president of the Duncan Toyscq Company, manufacturer of yo-yos for nearly a century. "There's smartphones, there's TikTok. A lot of elements that can provide immediate gratification to kids. A yo-yo does not provide immediate gratification. You have to try it a few times."
     That you do. My only childhood memory of yo-yos is never being any good with them. "Walk the dog" is a trick where you throw the yo-yo down, hard, and it remains at ground level, spinning — like a dog on a leash — until you summon it back up with a snap of the wrist. My string tended to break.
     Yo-yos are another classic plaything to emerge from Chicago, along with Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and Raggedy Ann. Not that they were invented here — basically a vertical top with the string attached, yo-yos can be traced to antiquity. Women play with yo-yos on Grecian urns.
     Donald F. Duncan was a Chicago entrepreneur in the 1920s who started a parking meter company. He visited California in 1928, where he saw Pedro Flores demonstrate a yo-yo. Flores was from the Philippines, where yo-yos were big, and had already trademarked the word "yo-yo," Tagalog for "come come." Duncan bought the rights then got busy, joining forces with newspaper titan William Randolph Hearst to get newsboys pushing yo-yos.
     Yo-yos were a craze in Chicago in the summer of 1929 — newspaper columnists complained you couldn't enter a Loop building without fighting your way through crowds gathered to watch experts perform tricks. People grew annoyed.

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Flashback 1998: Gays victimized by our silence

     

     Odd that the same year, more than a quarter century in the past — 1998 — would pop up under two completely unrelated contexts this week. Yesterday I traced the origins of "Snoopy in a blender" to a 1998 story. And today's post is prompted by a long overdue shift in policy by the United Methodist Church of Christ last week. Turns out gays are okay after all. Or at least they can serve as clergy.

     Reminiscent of "I Believe," among the funniest songs in the very funny musical "Book of Mormon," basically a rendition of actual Mormon doctrine. It contains the line, "I believe ... in 1978 God changed his mind about Black people." Really meaning that the Mormon Church changed its mind about Black people, and decided, upon 130 years of deliberation, Black ministers were okay after all.

     And now God, as represented by the United Methodist Church, has welcomed the LGBTQ community into the ranks of the chosen, i.e., themselves. A little late, surely, but better late than never. I tried to tell them back in 1998:

     I live in a gay part of town. Not the gayest — that would be about two blocks west and maybe four blocks north of our place. But gay enough. Every summer the Gay Pride Parade rolls past my block, which has a small, sedate gay bar on the corner.
     I've never been in the bar. When I pop out of the house for a beer — say, on the pretext of picking up the milk, I pass by the corner gay bar and walk another block to a straight bar, there to drink straight beer. Birds of a feather . . .
     That said, once or twice, I will admit, I have ventured into one of the local gay bars for a quick drink to see what they are like inside and to prove to myself that there is nothing to be afraid of. They served me a beer; they took the money. The TV blared. I finished my beer, unmolested, and emerged with my heterosexuality intact.
     It isn't the sort of thing I tell everyone (well, until now), but it didn't strike me as the biggest deal, either. I think it's important to not be afraid of things unnecessarily. Ignorance is fertile soil for hate.
     For instance, before I moved to the neighborhood, I had to pause to seriously ask myself whether I really wanted to live in a gay area. I worried it would become oppressive in some way I couldn't foresee. But after a little thought, I decided it probably wouldn't be a bother. And it hasn't been.
     Then again, I'm lucky. I've always felt pretty secure about myself. I don't feel threatened. Strolling with my sons through the neighborhood, I don't worry that the boys will somehow be infected by gayness. When we're on the street and a group of laughing, young, fit men — a group I assume to be gays headed toward the bars — passes, I don't shield my kids' eyes. I don't worry I'm exposing them to some toxin. The mighty edifice of heterosexuality doesn't crumble that easily, in my view. And while I'd rather my boys not grow up gay — that seems like a tough road, at least for the parents — I figure the die is pretty much cast, and I'll find out one fine day.
     None of this strikes me as extraordinary. In fact, it seems the basic attitude of liberal American decency at the end of the 20th century.
     But obviously, people must feel otherwise. The Methodist Church is holding a trial in a few months to see if the minister at the Broadway United Methodist Church — just a few blocks up from me — should be booted out of the clergy for performing a rite marrying a gay couple.
     The immediate reason — it's against the Bible — grows pale the more you look at it. Many things are banned in the Bible, from dishonoring your parents to eating lobster. Going hammer and tongs after gays, the way organized religion feels compelled to do, seems awfully selective. Why boot out just gays, and the ministers who unite them, and not, say, adulterers? Why not those who swear? They're banned, too.
     I suppose the quick answer is that gays are targeted because they can be. The Methodists can't very well toss out a minister for marrying an interracial couple, or a Methodist and a Baptist, or a liar and a thief. Gays are one of the few subgroups left that can be openly persecuted. The awning of law and custom we've built up doesn't quite cover them yet, and certain people are horrified at the thought that it someday might. Who would be left to openly loathe?
     Part of it is that the rest of society is so quiet when gays are persecuted. Yes, we cluck our tongues when young gay men are brutally murdered, as if to say, `Well, we don't want to kill them now, do we?" But the fear of being labeled gay is so strong that it is easier to be silent or look away.
     Let me get this straight: God cares about our sexuality, but not about our moral courage. Right . . .

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 27, 1998 

Note: The minister, whom I did not not name, was Rev. Gregory Dell. He was tried by the United Methodist Church in 1999, found guilty, and given a year suspension. He returned to the Broadway UMC until 2007, when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He and his wife moved to North Carolina, where he died in 2016.

Flashback 1998: "Snoopy in a blender"

    

Photo by "DiscoverWithDima."

     "Didn't you originate that?" my wife asked at breakfast earlier this week. "'Snoopy in a blender'?"
     She was reading about Dubuffet's 29-foot-tall, black and white monstrosity, Monument with Standing Beast, being removed from in front of the Thompson Center. I thought hard.

     "I might have been the first person to put it into print," I said. "But I think I was quoting someone else."
    Generally, claiming to be the first to coin a word or phrase is a fool's game. You're usually wrong, an earlier citation is quickly found and pinned on you like a Christmas ornament. Even if you're correct, it's a prize not worth winning. Nobody cares. I remember the pride Bob Greene took in coining ... what? "Yuppie" I think. A term that hasn't stood the test of time. It's like being proud of coming up with "daddy-O." 
     The Monument with Standing Beast Wikipedia page claims, "The sculpture is affectionately known to many Chicagoans as 'Snoopy in a blender.'" Though looking at the references cited I had to ask, incredulously, "How would they know? Did they conduct a poll?"   
      I searched "Snoopy in a blender" on the Sun-Times database and came up with the first reference in "Guide to Chicago Cruises," a fun, June 28, 1998 report written by yours truly about the various boats offering cruises from Navy Pier and the Chicago River — talk about a tough assignment. (It had to be an assignment; even I lack the chutzpah to suggest something like that: "Yeah chief, why don't I take every boat tour offered on Navy Pier? That's the ticket! And when I'm done, I can evaluate every fruity drink sold on the pier...").
     The structure of the story was sort of fun. Here's an example:

Seadog I
Owner: Sea Dog Speed Boat Rides, (312) 822-7200.
Other boat: Seadog II
Location: Navy Pier, 3rd berth
What you pay: $13
What you get: 30-minute tour with a powerful, 2,000 horsepower boat zipping around the lake at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour.
Where you go: Up to North Avenue Beach.
The good part: Loud music, the feeling of going really fast.
The bad part: Abrasive, Ed-Debevic's-waitresslike shtick on part of crew. Also, morbid thoughts of that poor woman who got her lower leg cut off.
Kids? Tots only if being punished. Great for thrill-seeking teens.
Noteworthy error in tour: Claimed the Lindbergh Beacon "guided Lindbergh into Chicago on his flight around the world."

     The line about a "poor woman" referred to Kathleen Rooney, 35, who was swimming off North Avenue Beach in 1997 when the Seadog powered over her, amputating right leg mid-calf. In 2001, a Cook County jury awarded her $10 million for her injuries.
     The guide sails aboard 14 boats — geez, I was energetic — and weighs in at nearly two thousand words. I'll spare you the details of long-vanished cruise experiences. The phrase in question is said during a tour, not off Navy Pier, but aboard Dells-like duck boats on the North Branch of the river:

Mallard
Owner: Chicago Trolley Co., (312) 461-1133.
Other boats: Huey, Louie, Howard and Disco.
Location: Clark and Ontario (the parking lot of the Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's).
What you pay: $20 for adults; $10 for kids.
What you get: a 90-minute land; water tour of the city on a World War II-vintage amphibious craft.
Where you go: Down Clark Street, through the Loop, down Michigan to Burnham Harbor, into the water down to McCormick Place, then back up Lake Shore Drive.
The good part: Friendly employees exhibit occasionally flashes of actual humor (guide referred to the Thompson Center's Dubuffet as "Snoopy in a blender.") Novelty of an amphibious vehicle.
The bad part: Faux-Letterman shtick grew weary after a while; supposed 90-minute tour clocked in at about an hour.
Kids? Just make sure they keep their arms inside when the boat passes close to those wooden uprights at the Burnham Harbor ramp.
Noteworthy error in tour: Claimed Christopher Columbus was born in Chicago, though in jest.

     It's hard to prove a negative. "Snoopy in a blender" didn't appear in the Tribune until 2014. Maybe the nameless tour guide made it up. Maybe he read it or heard it somewhere else. If the EGD Irregulars want to have at it, to try to dig up an earlier reference, well, go for it. The monstrosity first went up in 1984. It's on its way to the Art Institute of Chicago now, supposedly. But if they choose to stash it in a warehouse, well, they'll get no complaint from me. 

Student protesters hold their breath, turn blue, waiting for the intractability of Gaza to resolve itself

"Untitled, 2018," by Nick Cave.

     In an ideal world, I'd throw down my yo-yo story today, with a firm snap of the wrist. I've done my interviews and research, plus hands-on practice. There's both a strong Chicago connection, and an unanticipated tie-in to Asian American Heritage Month — "yo-yo" is Tagalog for ...
     Then again, in an ideal world, life would be proceeding uneventfully in Gaza and college students in the United States would be doing what students usually do in May: study, party, and pack their steamer trunks for home.
     But we do not live in that ideal world, obviously. Even a person as determinedly trivial as myself can't laud yo-yos with all this sound and fury across the country.
     I should say something. But what? What have I to add on this topic beyond the same unwelcome question I've been asking for years? Or as I wrote over a decade ago:
     "What happens next?
     "A child’s question, really, something naive, blurted out when the tale goes on too long. Cut to the chase, Daddy. How does the story end?
     "The last time I bothered talking to Israeli leaders in Chicago — more than two years ago — I sat down with the then consul general and trotted that question out, my device for cutting through the endless seesawing of blame. Forget blame, forget history — that’s done, the rope both sides use to play tug-of-war as the years roll by and nothing happens. Stipulate history as having occurred; what about now?"
     The students shutting down colleges coast-to-coast certainly have their candidates for what should happen, right now, before they turn blue: a cease-fire and divestment from Israel. They're so vigorously insisting this must happen, the question of whether those steps would do any good never seems to cross their minds.
     A cease-fire, while helpful for getting food to a starving population and stopping slaughter, temporarily, won't mean much if it's a brief break before the killing resumes. A cease-fire with Hamas still in power just lights the fuse on the next attack. Not a concern to protesters, some of whom don't seem to think Israel should exist in the first place — and why is that? — never mind defend itself now.
    Students can show long-term strategic thinking when it comes to their own lives— all the face coverings remind us they'll be looking for jobs in the fall — but fail at granting the empathy they lavish on themselves to anyone else.
    And disinvestment is a very long-term solution to an immediate crisis — like sitting on the curb while your house burns down, thumbing your phone, ordering fire extinguishers on Amazon.

     The hard truth is divesting wouldn't even help much down the road. Do the math. In 2023, the cumulative total of American university endowments was $839 billion. And the stock market is worth $50 trillion. Making the investments held by U.S. colleges about 1.6% of the total U.S. financial markets. So if every single American university immediately pulled every single dime of their investments from companies involved with Israel or the Israeli military, it would affect the economic health of Israel not much, and the war in Gaza even less. Years in the future.

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An apology to Mrs. Gifreda

My tulips were particularly lovely this year.

      Mrs. Gifreda lived at the end of our street, at the corner of Carteret Court and Whitehall. She had a beautiful lawn, thick like a green hairbrush, without weed or brown patch or blemish. I have a vague memory of Mrs. Gifreda crawling across this verdant carpet, deploying garden tools. Maybe a hat of some sort, tied with  a scarf. I don't believe I ever stepped on her lawn, not once in 20 years of walking past. We weren't afraid of her. We were in awe.

     That's it. I'm sure she had a first name, but never knew it, and Prof. Google is no help finding anything more now, beyond serving up a single matchbook for Gifreda Shoes, "The footwear of successful men." Perhaps she was a relation — how many Gifredas could there be in a small town? Maybe a reader in Berea, Ohio knows, but I doubt it. My sense is she was a solitary person — no husband, no family I can recall, which doesn't mean they didn't exist. A child is not a reliable witness.

    I asked my sister Debbie, older by three years, if she had any recollections of Mrs. Gifreda, and her memory mirrors mine:

   "Just how the only time I ever saw her was on her hands and knees on her lawn," she replied. "She was clearly obsessed with her lawn."   

     A common failing. Or maybe the failing was ours — the natural mistake of assuming that the visible part of other people's lives are all that's there. Maybe Mrs. Gifreda was a former WAC, with five grown kids. Maybe she baked pies and played the mandolin. We have no idea.

     While I am not obsessed with my lawn, yet, I am concerned, and people walking past my house might have seen me, on my knees, trying to get ahead of the springtime, digging up weeds, pulling the Creeping Charlie, planting grass seed — a very satisfying experience. And sometimes, if I am out there, salaaming as if in prayer, applying my energies lawnward, someone will pass by, one of the unknown persons who increasingly populate our neighborhood. 

   I do wonder how I appear to them. Weird old lawn guy. I know my house, with its piebald siding and homemade spire, sometimes frightens local children. "The Boo Radley House" is how one frank neighbor described it, referring to the enigmatic bogeyman/hero of "To Kill a Mockingbird." I bet they don't think that Mr. Lawncare has written nine books and might even write a 10th, once he gets this spurge out of his yard.

    Fastidiousness in grass nurture might not be the best thing to be remembered for. But it isn't the worst either and, despite not knowing her, I like to imagine that Mrs. Gifreda would be pleased that her diligence has taken on a life of its own, far beyond her own mortal passing. And if she actually wouldn't be pleased at seeing her life reduced to a single quality — who would? — well, my sincere apologies. 

    Correction: Through a production error, the caption of the photo atop today's blog might imply to some readers that I was somehow involved with planting the gorgeous bed of tulips depicted. While my tulips indeed did look lovely this year, those are not my tulips; they belong to the Chicago Botanic Garden. Reminding me of my favorite movie bits: Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau is checking into a hotel in a German seaside town. There is a dog resting by the clerk. "Does your dog bite?" he asks, reaching out to pet the beast. "No," the pipe-smoking clerk says simply. Clouseau reaches toward the dog's head. "Nice doggie," he says, as the beast leaps up, snarling and bites him. "I thought you said your dog did not bite!" Clouseau complains. "That is not my dog," the clerk replies.

These were the tulips in the box in front of our house.

Imaginary hells easier to escape than real ones.

A scene from "Dante: Inferno to Paradise," a film by Ric Burns.

     Dante Alighieri was in charge of widening roads in Florence at the end of the 13th century. I wish more people knew that. His masterpiece "Commedia" — the "Divine" part was tagged on much later — is so dominant in the public mind that the more practical aspects of his life are overlooked. He was a soldier, too.
     WTTW is trying to wave the flag for Dante, airing a two-part, four-hour film, "Dante: Inferno to Paradise." Several readers, knowing of my fondness for the dour Florentine poet, urged me to watch.
     Hmm ... I'm tempted to invoke Samuel Johnson's line about women delivering sermons and dogs walking on their hind legs: "It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."      My general takeaway is, as with the Dante video game, anything that puts him on the radar is good.
     That said, I don't understand why the big budget CGI movie magic put behind flogging every minor character in the Marvel universe can't be spared for a story that has stayed firmly in the public eye for over 700 years.
     The production values are adequate on "Dante: Inferno to Paradise" in the way this past season the Lyric Opera diluted the grandeur of ancient Egypt into a stained green wall and three florescent lights. A generous audience can overlook it; but why should we have to?
     The trouble with Dante's book is that it is written with such verisimilitude that it's easy to think of him as a guy who went to hell and took notes. The WTTW movie slides into this trench, with a sulfurous, ooo-scary mood that reminded me of "Dark Shadows," the 1960s vampire soap opera.
     Given how few readers will run to watch the movie — I haven't finished watching and probably never will — I wouldn't take up your time had not one specific date been mentioned in the program.
     For those unfamiliar, the Commedia is the story of Dante's journey through hell, up purgatory's mountain and into heaven, accompanied by the Roman poet Virgil, at the behest of Beatrice, his celestial love.

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Matzo brei: The treat that comes but once a year.

Matzo brei prepared properly, aka hard, on the left, and that other way, to the right.

     The electric company ended Passover early this year. Well, at least in one tweet yesterday, claiming the holiday ended Monday night — 24 hours ahead of when the holiday actually ends. Eight days. It's a wonder the lights stay on at all. 

     A forgivable lapse — though one they did not correct themselves, even when I politely pointed the error out to them. Few corporations do; they tend to blunder on instead. 

     Not a failing that can be written off to ComEd being a gentile company — Jews have a way of rushing their own holidays, whether convening sundown at mid-afternoon on Yom Kippur. Or returning to bread a few days before Passover officially ends. Tuesday night. One misses bread. 
    Myself, I actually need that full eight days, for a reason I've never seen committed to print, so this might be a first. The full eight days are required to get your matzo brei in. 

    Allow me to explain. Matzo brei is a traditional dish of eggs and matzo — not to be confused with egg matzo, which is matzo baked with egg in it. Matzo brei — also called "egg matzo" — is a breakfast dish.   It isn't intrinsically heavy, but is so good, you tend to eat a lot. I do, anyway. So while you are tempted the first few mornings of Passover, the idea is dismissed — everyone's too full from the night before (there are two Seders, on consecutive nights; don't ask why; it's complicated) and, besides, there are all those leftovers to eat.
     But — and this is a rule of my own — you only eat matzo brei during Passover, because otherwise the foodstuff would escape into the rest of the year and a) lose its specialness and b) you'd eat it continually, the way I do Bays Raisin and Cinnamon English Muffins. (although, they never lose their specialness, because they're so super special, and since I haven't had any the week of Passover, when I do, Wednesday morning — pay attention, ComEd! — they'll be doubly extra special). 
      Suddenly Tuesday and Wednesday — impossible, due to the Seders the night before — slip into Thursday and Friday. The matzo brei doesn't get eaten then because preparing it is a production and after the ordeal of preparing for the Seder one craves normal, eat-and-run life. The canyon floor was rushing up. Finally Sunday we dove in and had our matzo brei.
     Although — and this is why I'm writing this — this year my wife and I parted ways when it came to matzo brei preparation. Matzo brei is prepared by wetting matzo in water, mixing it with scrambled eggs then frying it. And my wife likes hers well-soaked in water, so it's soft. Which I suppose is fitting under strict literal interpretation: matzo brei translates out as "matzo porridge." 
    Me, I like the matzo just kissed by the water, so it's hard, or hardish. A quick rinse, then broken into the eggs, stirred a bit, then into the hot pan.
     In past years, we've compromised by eating matzo brei twice — one made her way, aka  wrong. And once my way, preserving the dish's delightful tactile firmness. But this year we decided just to each prepare our own meal. Which struck me as slightly dubious, like couples having separate bank accounts or taking separate vacations. We're sort of joined at the hip, my wife and I, and preparing separate meals, not our style.  Generally.

     But I only eat the stuff once a year, and want matzo brei the way God intended, aka, my way. As did my wife.  Although we did not  — Israelis and Palestinians take note — kill each other over it. We made accommodations to our divergent claims on reality.
     We didn't consult beforehand — my wife just set out two cast iron pans — and I noticed differences. I used three pieces of matzo while she used six, which took me aback. When I inquired, she said she planned on having extra to take to work Monday, another practice I'd never consider —you don't reheat matzo brei, but consume it all, immediately after being prepared. She used vegetable oil. And I used butter because, as Napoleon said, if you're going to take Vienna, take Vienna.  One doesn't skimp on a meal you eat once a year. With lots of sugar. Though she uses salt. Which is also wrong. 

      We each did sample one anothers preparation — I found hers soft.  She tried mine and did not remark upon it. Being polite, no doubt. Frankly, she could have spat it into a napkin. I didn't care. This is my annual matzo brei.
      As we ate, we discussed that. She mentioned that we could, you know, enjoy matzo brei at other times of the year. "We have turkey when it isn't Thanksgiving," she argued. Yes, well, that's turkey, and this is matzo brei. Once a year. No more. To do otherwise would be crazy.

Three matzos + two eggs = one plate of delicious matzo brei as God intended.

Into the ward of memory

 

     One day the hiring hall agent that is Fate will read your name off a card. He'll shake the card in your direction, smirking, while you desperately look around for somebody else to take it. But nobody will, so the job falls to you.
     We put off moving my father downstairs to the locked memory ward as long as we could. Not that it mattered much to him. My father doesn't care what couch he sits on.
     But my mother cares. Very much. She met him when she was 18 and a freshman at Ohio State. Now she is 87. Do the math. They married in 1956. She wants him on the sofa next to her.
     They'd lived together for two years at a senior residence facility in Buffalo Grove. He had been having ... umm ... issues. Behavior that no dynamic lifestyle community is going to tolerate in the general population. Memory care ward level stuff. They pressed, we delayed.
     But there was another episode, and suddenly the ground was gone from under us. They were moving him whether we agreed or not.
     Or more accurately, I was moving him. Now was the time. My brother and my wife provide continual, crucial help. But not today. Today Fate handed me the card.
     Time to walk my father's downstairs to his new home. I checked with the staff to determine their role. Just do it, they said. I returned to their room 216. He was on the couch, watching TV with my mother. Time for the earth to shift.
     "Lets go, dad," I said, helping him stand up and setting his walker before him. I'd take a few steps, his pillow under my arm. then pause, waiting for him to catch up. "How you doing, Dad?" I'd call back, turning to check on his progress. We went downstairs. I pressed a doorbell. They saw us through the narrow window and buzzed us in.
     The dementia patients were together, having snacks when their new associate arrived. Quesadilla or yogurt? I went to put his pillow in his room and returned. My father was talking to the people around him.
     "You don't get older in Boulder," he was telling them. His standard quip. He thinks he's still in Colorado. Rhyme is the last thing to go. Along with obscenity.
     Leaving him with his snack, I went back to my mother, sitting in her wheelchair, alone in her room.
     "Hug me," she said when I walked in. I did, leaning over.
     "No one to talk with ..." she sang softly. "All by myself."
     "No one to walk with," I joined in. "But I'm happy on the shelf."
     My mother sang with the USO. Flew to Europe on an Army Super Constellation with the Coca Cola Radio Nanigans when she was 16 to entertain the troops. I know 1950s hit songs by heart the way a child raised in France knows French.
     "Ain't misbehavin', I'm saving my love for yooouuuu ..." we crooned together.

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The whole world is watching ... us

     Actually, I have sympathy for those protesting against the war in Gaza. They see the images of suffering, the children, the hunger, the death. How could you not be moved? How could you blame anyone for raising their voice? For trying to do something.

     Besides, they're students, mostly. They have the energy, and time on their hands. Why not set up tents and conduct a kind of ongoing public temper tantrum, holding their breath until world events reorder themselves to their liking? Live deeply.
     Yes, they are young. The young get worked up, carried away. In damning the war, they also damn Israel — should never have been founded in the first place! — and Zionists and even Jews who sometimes are Zionists, at least when they're not contorting themselves, trying to outdo the Palestinians in taking a one-sided, 0 or 1, right v. wrong view of the situation. 

     Rather than blame Benjamin Netanyahu — I'd be in agreement, if not right beside them — they decry the existence of the country itself, and demand "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." The "...of Jews" part is unvoiced. Which means, they aren't against genocide, per se, but simply prefer the world stick to the traditional victims. They aren't radicals, but conservatives, playing an old game. Although that part gets said out loud more and more. Juden raus. Worked for great-granddaddy, works for us. Forgetting that a nation's existence isn't a global referendum or campus popularity contest — if it were, the United States would have blinked off the world map long ago. 

     Here's what I feel obligated to point out: the main change being demanded by all theses springtimes protests is not that Hamas accept a cease-fire — odd that they never ask that, maybe because they know Hamas doesn't give a fuck what they think — but that the universities they attend must divest from investing in companies involved with Israel. A rather long-term solution to an immediate crisis — kind of like holding hands around a house that's burning down and demanding that deeper wells be dug. Maybe that would help, down the road. But right now...

    And in truth, divesting wouldn't even help down the road. As always with the young, they wildly exaggerate their own place in an indifferent world. 

     Being adults, let's do the math, shall we? In 2023, the cumulative total of American university endowments was $839 billion. And the stock market is worth $50 trillion. Making the investments held by U.S. colleges about 1.6 percent of the total U.S. financial markets. So if every single American university immediately pulled every single dime of their investments from companies involved with Israel or the Israeli military, it would affect the economic health of Israel not much, and the war in Gaza even less. The change they demand is like leveling a fine of $100, payable in 2047.

     Not that protests are without merit. They do pressure Joe Biden to in turn pressure the Israelis to wrap this up already. Which is probably a good thing since destroying Hamas doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon. At least it's an open question whether Israel is killing Hamas fighters faster than its recruiting new ones. Meanwhile, all those innocents are still suffering and dying. Though speaking of suffering the protests risk running into the summer, undercutting the Dems, and helping to elect Donald Trump, who is Benjamin Netanyahu's best buddy and moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem simply as a big Fuck You to Palestinians. It's odd to demand other people consider the consequences of what they're doing while at the same moment ignoring the consequences of what you're doing. But that's people for you.

    Besides, they aren't protesting for the Palestinians, but for themselves. The protests are engaging street theater, allowing a number of college students to feel they are working the treadles and warps of current events, weaving the fabric of history. That has to put a spring in their step. Plus their classes are about done, though you have to wonder, watching certain students coping with the fallout of their murderous rhetoric, what their job prospects are going to look like when they flash their Northwestern resumes at white shoe law firms. "The summer of 2023 I was interning at the Children's Legal Center. Then summer 2024 I stood in Deering Meadow chanting 'Death to Jews'..." The internet is forever.

    Until then, it's a sideshow, a distraction. Almost ironic. The public is sort of thick, and it could be argued that the protests draw attention away from the war they're supposed to be ending. Counter-intuitive things happen, and it's somehow fitting that kids in Evanston and Morningside Heights and Los Angeles would find a way to make this all about them, and the suffering they endure at the hands of police. Am I wrong to reserve my sympathy for the children of Gaza?

Flashback 2008: Fading into oblivion, Jackson not interested in being an elder statesman

Still Life of Fruit and Nuts, by Giuseppe Ruoppolo (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Rev. Jesse Jackson was in the news this week, as his putative replacement took a powder. I was tempted to pile on, but Jackson, to me, is something of a pitiable figure by this point. I've had my say over the years. One moment that stayed with me is when he showed up at the editorial board to make his case for getting the credit for Barack Obama.

OPENING SHOT

     "Nuts," like "balls," is one of those words whose acceptability shifts dramatically depending on the context — perfectly fine when referring to dense, oily fruits (yes, nuts are actually fruit) such as almonds or pecans, but much squishier, so to speak, when used as the vulgar slang for testicles, as the Rev. Jesse Jackson did, into an open microphone on Fox News.
     "I want to cut his nuts out," the minister said, referring to Barack Obama.

FORGIVE ME FOR WHAT I WILL SAY . . .

     In a rare switch, the usually edgy Sun-Times dashed the word in its Thursday edition, 

"n - - -" as if it were an obscenity, while the more staid Tribune unblinkingly ran the cheery little term, and on its front page, no less.
     Such confusion is natural, since threatening castration blazes new territory in political discourse — I was intrigued by the use of the adverb "out," which seems more suited to talking about removing an embedded object, such as a heart. "Off" seems to be preferable when discussing something so pendulous.
    This kerfuffle was probably inevitable. It seemed odd and out-of-character when Jackson made the rounds a few weeks back, head bowed, quietly lobbying for recognition of his role in the historic ascension of Obama. An ego as massive as Jackson's could not remain in a humble supporting role for long.
     Of course he'd slip and grab at the curtains. Dreams die hard and dreams of power die even harder. The old guard seldom quietly departs, and it was too much to hope that Jackson could age gracefully into an elder statesman for the black community. Rather, he seems set on becoming the crazy uncle in the attic, the guy you can't introduce to your friends, because he has evil thoughts and a dirty mouth.
     The other noteworthy thing about Jackson's humiliating gaffe came about because Fox was the only news outlet in possession of the tape of his crude remarks, and held onto it to hype Bill O'Reilly's blabfest in the evening.
     This led to the unusual situation of the apology preceding the insult, as Jackson, savvy enough to know what was coming, leapt to say he was sorry even before the offensive words became public.
     This breaks his previous apology record, where news of his out-of-wedlock child was followed almost immediately by his plea for forgiveness and an announcement that he had gone into seclusion for several minutes of soul-searching and was now ready to resume his place as guardian of the nation's conscience.
     Perhaps this will be the start of a trend, as politicians gaze into the future, imagine what slurs they will utter or excesses they will commit, and apologize for them ahead of time.

    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 11, 2008

Trumpet story post mortem

 
     As someone who loves his job, I don't keep scrupulous tabs on my hours. The penumbra between working and not working is so gradual and hazy, that doing so would be impossible. Am I on the clock lying in bed in the darkness, thinking about the lede to a story? Sitting in Orchestra Hall listening to a symphony? Life and work are like two ballroom dancers, in tight embrace, gliding across a polished floor. Best not to try to pry them apart.
     Technically, I'm scheduled Monday through Friday. But every Sunday morning I'm prepping Monday's column. Not that I'm complaining. Monday afternoon might find me working in the garden. Both the Sun-Times and I seem satisfied with the arrangement.
     I'm expected to turn in three columns a week, to run Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Before the blog, I used to smile, inwardly, when somebody said they read me "every day," thinking, "What are you doing the other four days — hallucinating?" But now of course there is this blog, where that is possible.

      Though sometimes circumstances dictate that I write one or two extra columns in the paper, reacting to breaking news events, and I don't mind those —it's good to be wanted. Though last Sunday's epic about trumpets was something of an exception, because involved so much work — what with driving to Elkhart and three trips downtown connecting with Conn Selmer and the CSO. I was ready to involve Schilke, another trumpet company in Chicago, and a guy who makes mouthpieces in the Fine Arts Building, when I realized I had gotten far beyond anything that could reasonably be put into a newspaper. The column got shifted to Sunday, because there is more real estate to fill, which was fine, but I didn't want to then disgorge an extra column too.
     The original plan was to miss Monday. But then I decided to break off the two Morgan Park High School students from their reduced role at the end and let them shine a bit in their own column. So that ran Monday. And Tuesday, batting out a blog post about the Seder, I fluttered my fingers over the keyboard and thought, "You know ... this is good ... maybe it should run in the paper." So we ran it Wednesday, and I'm glad, as a lot of readers seemed to really appreciate the column.
     But I did take Friday off, mostly to show I can. I d0n't want to be one of those guys who can't not work, can't step off the treadmill. Though it left me with the question of what to run here. My first thought was the picture above, a Conn Selmer worker checking the straightness of a length of tubing. And a few words to go with it. A whole lot of words, now that I look at it.  One does tend to go on. And on.
    There was something about the photo that appealed to me; the pose, obviously, something almost triumphant about his attitude, like the Bowman and the Spearman, the deco Native-Americans on horseback at Michigan and Ida B. Wells, with their straining bows. Maybe it was his goggles, or the red — his shirt, some kind of scoop device in the foreground, and that beam — cutting the industrial gray.

     There's something appealing about photos of people in protective gear — masks, gloves, helmets. They must appeal to the little boy in me. Like this stooped fellow with his blue balaclava and ear cups. When I see guys who have jobs like this, grinding burrs off trumpets eight hours a day, I remind myself once again to try to appreciate the job I have, one that takes me wherever I want to go, when I want to go there. Because sometimes I forget.

     There are difficulties. A story like the trumpet piece, you are so immersed, it can be hard to stop. I get used to working on them, and hate to just let the subject drop. As it is, I plan to circle back to the CSO. 

     I hadn't planned on stumbling across the voodoo hacks — Bud Herseth's silver bridge ending up as patches on the bell of Esteban Batallan's trumpet — but in giving space to that, I had to lose some cool details of the production process. I woke up Sunday morning thinking. "I didn't mention the Crisco." The factory lubricates one of the 490 steps to make a trumpet with Crisco oil, which I found charming, the out-of-place foodstuff in a manufacturing process, like discovering that deep at the stern of a diesel ship is a collar of lignum vitae, a dense, oily wood;  the shaft passes through it, from the engine room, outside the hull, connecting to the propellers.
     Nor did I mention the workers who go over the finished trumpets, circling dings and scratches in a red china marker so they can be buffed out — nobody wants to spend $3,000 for a trumpet that arrives with a ding or scratch in it. Imagine doing that all day.
     There were two interesting errors in the original story. At first I called the organ on stage at the CSO "a church organ," which prompted two readers to observe that church organs are found in churches. I changed that to "pipe organ." And originally I hyphenated Conn Selmer. I had asked Mark Dulin, the artists' rep, whether it is hyphenated or not, and he said it wasn't. But working for the company didn't necessarily make him the final word, and looking over the corporate material, the hyphen seemed to be used more often than it wasn't, so we went with it, because the crown in the logo seems to be a hyphen. Then after the story ran, the Conn Selmer folks asked if we could take it out and, since it's their company and they should be called what they want to be called, I laboriously plucked all those hyphens out.

      I've gone into the weeds, haven't I? Time to wrap this up. I need the day off.

      You might wonder why I take photos at all — with ace photographer Ashlee Rezin right there. Three reasons, I suppose. One: force of habit; the paper was without a photo staff for many years, I just got used to taking my own photos. Two: it's quicker to take a photo than jot down the details of a scene, and I use them in constructing my story; and Three: to use here. I don't want to seize the work of my photographer colleagues, and so take my own shot to illustrate my blog posts, though the pro shots are always better, and I often seek permission to use them. Nobody has ever said 'No.'

    Anyway, a bit of background, in case anyone's interested. If not, well, there's always tomorrow.

Jim Dwyer buffing trumpets at Conn Selmer.

Flashback 1995: Landmark Deli Serves Its Last Meals

     I was never an admirer of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, but that can be chalked up to ignorance. Every time I went was to write about something else — its opening ceremonies, or police cadet training, or one of the museum founders. My complaint was that they had watered down the horror of the 20th century into a lesson for 5th graders about bullying. 

     That wasn't fair, as I learned when I actually went through the place, and for the strangest reason. My wife had never gone at all, but they had a special exhibit about Jewish delis. Who doesn't love a Jewish deli? She wanted to see it. 

     The show seemed an odd fit, the sort of thing I'd criticize without actually experiencing. But it got us there a few weekends ago, the day before the show closed. 

     We saw the deli show first, which was smart. It was well done, adroitly tying the rise of the deli to Jewish immigration, and linking specific Chicago delis, like Kaufman's, to Jewish refugees arriving here immediately after the Holocaust. 

    Then we saw the museum itself. Not the full nine-ring plunge into Dantean hell like the one in Washington. But a thoughtful representation, well worth the, oh, three hours we spent there. The most sober aspect is how current the 1930s feel today.

     In the deli exhibit, I noticed a sign for Nate's, which sparked a memory. I visited before they closed it down, and bought a jar of herring from the last batch. This is my brief report.     

     The smell of dill pickles, the rhythmic kathuck-kathuck of the corned beef slicing machine, fresh rye bread, the murky green jars of pickled tomatoes and kosher dills and, above all, the happy fluttering of human voices.
     "This is all you want, young man?" says Robert L. Williams, from behind the ancient counter. "You want some hot peppers? You said mustard? Why certainly you can. Thank you, sir."

     The smells, the sounds, the voices — all this will disappear when Nate's Delicatessen closes its doors forever today, after 74 years at 807 W. Maxwell.
     "It's going to be sad to walk out of here after 48 years," says Nathan Duncan, 64, who has worked at the deli since 1946, and owned it since 1972. "I've never had another job."
     The deli is a true anachronism — an artifact from the days when Maxwell Street was a sprawling Jewish ghetto. The Jews have moved away, but Nate's, and its hearty Jewish fare, has remained.
     As humble as the deli is — with its decrepit tin ceiling, hand-cut wooden floor rails and seating for, maybe, six — it has known its share of fame. Blues legends such as Muddy Waters and Hound Dog Taylor have eaten there, as well as a range of celebrities from Red Skelton to Sen. Everett Dirksen. A scene from "The Blues Brothers" was filmed there.
     But Nate's isn't about fame. It isn't even about Jewish food. It's about people — meeting, talking, eating together.
     Duncan points to a bespectacled gentleman sitting by the stove.
     "Frank has been coming here since he was a little boy. He'd rather sleep in that chair than sleep at home."
     "It's a tremendous loss," says Frank Williams, 45. "This place is a relic. Politics was discussed here. It was a meeting place, people met here and talked."
     Unlike the old Maxwell Street Market, Nate's was not forced out. But Duncan realized it was just a matter of time. So he sold to the University of Illinois at Chicago, which plans to build a parking lot and an athletic field.
     Displaying a jar of pickled herring, Duncan says, "I just made my last batch. This is a Russian dish."
     He savors the irony.
     "A black guy making a Russian delicacy." He smiles. "I learned the recipe from the mother of the former owner. You know, the Jewish ladies, they tried to get the recipe out of me. They tried to con it out of me. But I never did tell them. They still don't know."
       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 15, 1995

Passover during wartime

     Being Jews, of course Monday night's Passover Seder veered onto tangents. Non-standard digressions based on the concerns of those present: salaams toward mysticism and solemn recognition of Oct. 7 and the ongoing war in Gaza. So much that the usual tug-of-war over gender equity mostly fell by the wayside.
     I was not involved with any of these flourishes, my lone suggestion — place an olive on the Seder plate as mute representation of Palestinian suffering — steamed away in a glare of reproach. No olives, no oranges — keep it simple. It was as if I suggested the egg on the plate be replaced by a sheep's eye, to represent social media. I get that. Each group cherishes its own injuries while diminishing those of everybody else; that's why the world is the way it is.
     Instead there was an empty chair affixed with a picture of a hostage, Naama Levy, 19, and a reading describing her many fine qualities. A poem explaining that Elijah will not be coming today. He usually shows up, notionally. We always open the door to greet him. The kiddies love that, and in years past would sneak out beforehand and present themselves as Elijah, disguised. Not this year; we didn't open the door to greet the tardy prophet because he's too busy tending to the truly bereft, supposedly.
     "We're never eating," I muttered to my wife, about 8:30 p.m., with the show barely begun.

     Mostly, I'm a go-along-to-get-along type of host, so I smiled and nodded at almost anything anybody brought to the table. Though the smile grew tight as the Seder progressed. At one point I felt compelled to point out that this is not our first rodeo, suffering-wise, that Jews held Seders in concentration camps, and that while I'm all for recognizing the crisis, I would hate for Passover, at heart a celebration of freedom, to lose its sense of joy, obscured by current events. We should still appreciate the bounty before us and the company of each other, loved ones whom history has, through some uncharacteristic oversight, failed to murder, so far.
     "We're still singing 'Chad Gadya,'" at the end," I observed, referring to a strange song about "one little goat my father bought for two zuzim." That's my favorite part.
     Much went as it always does. My wife's matzo balls were the ideal cannonball density. The chicken was excellent, despite having to linger in the oven for longer than was strictly necessary as the various sharp edges of the present were flashed. The children still played under the table as if the world were a wonderful place to explore, ready to welcome all with open arms.
     My life can be broken into three 20-year Seder blocks. From 1960 to 1980, there were Seders at my grandparents in Cleveland, with my grandpa's machine-gun, Polish shtetl Hebrew, that always sounded like "hamma-humma-wumma-chumma."
     Then 20 years at my in-laws in Skokie, with Irv whooping over the hotness of the horseradish and Dorothy fussing over everybody and the repurposed cleaning lady in the kitchen, doing dishes. I sometimes wondered about her: What did she make of our singing "Dayenu?" The chorus sounds like "Die! Die! Anu!" Did she think the Jews were chanting for death? Because that's how we're viewed in some quarters. I used to sometimes wish we actually were the hard, unified, bloodthirsty people we are made out to be — though looking at current events, I'm reminded that you should be careful what you wish for. Because sometimes you get it.

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