Friday I got an email from the source of the planter story below, inspiring me to take a look at the column and decide to post it today. The opening item about the Suburban Cook County Tuberculosis Sanitarium District might be a reminder that government can always use some cutting, though of course not the wholesale hacking that even the Orange Enormity is now having second thoughts about. The TB district was finally dissolved in 2013.
DEI might be on the ropes, but I should probably point out that the second item, while considered funny at the time, counts as fat shaming now. So if that kind of thing bothers you — and people do get bothered — please skip today's offering and avoid the need to write in, scolding me. This is when the column filled a page, and I've included the original headings and the joke at the end.
DEI might be on the ropes, but I should probably point out that the second item, while considered funny at the time, counts as fat shaming now. So if that kind of thing bothers you — and people do get bothered — please skip today's offering and avoid the need to write in, scolding me. This is when the column filled a page, and I've included the original headings and the joke at the end.
The case of Jeffrey Speaker, the Atlanta attorney flying about the world with his case of untreatable tuberculosis, of course brought to mind my favorite entity of local government: the Suburban Cook County Tuberculosis Sanitarium District.
"We're still here," said Dr. Susan Marantz, medical director of the district, a living monument to the ability of governmental entities to outlast the problems they were created to address.
We may not have sanitariums anymore, but we have a district, with offices in Oak Park and satellites in Harvey and Des Plaines, all battling the scourge of tuberculosis.
"We see patients every day," said Marantz. "About 125 active cases a year, though we need to screen two or three times as much in suspect cases."
So far, they have not had to forcibly quarantine patients.
"We have been lucky," she said, explaining that usually people voluntarily agree to quarantine.
If not, "there's a whole system set up," she said. "I literally need [only] to make a phone call."
Times change, even in Cook County government, and the sanitarium district, redolent as it is of spittoons, cane-backed wheelchairs, and Eugene O'Neill in a straw hat, is being absorbed, at long last, by the Cook County Health Department.
"I don't know if we're going to be division or a program," she said.
BIG LOOK HUGE FOR MEN IN SPRING
The following is the result of reading a fashion column immediately before walking across the Loop:
Morbid obesity is bigger than ever this spring season, and men are showcasing their beer keg bellies with bold horizontal stripes or seeking to camouflage them with enormous tent-like tropical shirts.
Size 48 waists are girt with woven belts, disappearing under waterfall shelves of fat, and sport big black plastic holsters where BlackBerrys would go were they ever removed from their owners' ears.
Security cards are de rigueur, jangling jauntily at mid-sternum, with creative souls customizing their own brightly colored lanyards that tell the world, "I'm not a corporate drone, I'm not! I'm not!"
Not everyone is 100 pounds overweight, yet, and the pre-obese set is hitting the boulevards in tight polyester shirts, untucked and matched with sandals and over-the-shoulder rice planter's bags for the popular "Saigon 1975" look.
With June upon us, men of all sizes are leaving their suitcoats at home, creating a dramatic Q-Tip effect for the narrow-shouldered, while the necktie-sans-jacket ensemble boldly states: "I won't be in this cubicle forever!"
Dark pinstripes aren't just for British bankers anymore. Pinstriped navy suit pants are being worn with clashing broadly striped shirts of brown, purple and green, and not just by those who dress in the dark.
Meanwhile, the entire concept of fashion, if not civil society, is being challenged by beefy young technocrats showing off the mandala tattoos on their swollen sausage calves by wearing big-pocketed cargo shorts and Cubs T-shirts.
So whether your look is elfin Lord-of-the-Rings refugee in a child's hooded sweatshirt and neon Crocs, or hip hippo proudly clearing the sidewalk with your blend of plaids, stripes and floral prints, spring is here, time to let it hang out and celebrate the glory that is you!
SOMETIMES YOU JUST GOTTA KNOW
There it was. A small advertisement in the Reader: "Myopic Fine Books" at 1564 N. Milwaukee.
It stopped me cold.
"Myopic?"
Doesn't that mean "shortsighted?" "Shortsighted Books"?
With a sigh, I reached for my Oxford American.
"my-o-pi-a — n. nearsightedness; lack of imagination, foresight, or intellectual insight. . . . my-op-ic adj."
I dialed the store's phone number.
"It's shrouded in mystery," said store manager Catherine Behan.
There was a pause. I thought there'd be more, but there wasn't. That was it.
"Shrouded in mystery — it really is," she continued. "There's different theories, if you read too much. . . ."
The store is 16 years old. Behan has worked there for six years and no, she doesn't know if she's related to the Irish playwright either ("I'm not really much help, am I?" she said).
"The logo is a big, huge occult-looking eyeball," she said. "So maybe that has something to do with it."
Another why-don't-you-hang-up-now? silence, which I filled with questions.
She said the owner, Joseph Judd, was not available to elaborate.
"He's farming," she explained. On Mars, apparently, or some place beyond the reach of modern communications.
"Just say, 'It's shrouded in mystery.' That's the best answer," she persisted.
I don't argue much, but I argued here. "Shrouded in mystery" isn't the best answer for my curious readers.
She laughed an I-don't-care laugh.
So there you have it: It's a mystery. Some things are mysteries. The Easter Island statues. The Loch Ness monster. Myopic Books.
TAKE GOOD CARE OF MY BABIES
It isn't as if the police are going to drop everything and start pounding on doors.
But the loss of the planters rankled Smith, and he printed up this sign, both to tweak the conscience of the thief and to see after the well-being of his purloined plants. Who knows? It just might work.
Russia is much in the news, eager once again to lock horns with the United States. Which means it's time to recall Calvin Trillin's timeless assessment:
TODAY'S CHUCKLE
I have read about those Russian tractor factories where vodka-sodden workers fulfill their monthly quota in a frantic last-minute push that can succeed only if they attach the transmission with Scotch tape. So why have I always taken it for granted that those goofballs would be so good at annihilating continents?
TODAY'S CHUCKLE
I have read about those Russian tractor factories where vodka-sodden workers fulfill their monthly quota in a frantic last-minute push that can succeed only if they attach the transmission with Scotch tape. So why have I always taken it for granted that those goofballs would be so good at annihilating continents?
— Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 1, 2007
It was much easier to be a downtown courtroom lawyer because the dress code was simple-suit and tie. Still true today.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Russian incompetence, I would have mentioned that the final item sounds a bit like the saying "they can put a man on the moon, why can't they fix [insert mundane inconvenience]" It's not the same people that work on tractors and nukes. But! I recently read the book "The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned" by John Strausbaugh, it's fascinating and highly recommended and recounts just how barely and at how much peril the Soviet space program's milestones were achieved. Also remembering how the Russian's initial thrust at Kyiv early in the Ukraine invasion was halted basically by a flat tire. Chances are not high that the Russian intercontinental nukes are at all functional. They are not zero though and no one sane would test those odds.
ReplyDeleteThat's because the stupidly corrupt Russian generals made a lot of money by pocketing all the money that was left over for tire buying when they bought crappy Chinese made truck tires, instead of their own, South Korean, Japanese, American or Western European truck tires.
DeleteIt turns out the Chinese ripped off the Russians really good!
I'm in the building trades And I firmly believe that the Chinese are screwing us real good It used to be that you bought a magnetic tip for your driver and the screws would stay on the tip because they had iron in them I don't know what they make the screws out of now but there's not enough iron or the magnets not strong enough so the screw falls off over and over again this is just one example of the many things that either don't fit or break when they're brand new that I've encountered that I think has an overall effect on productivity in America We do a lot of business in the hotel industry and they all buy furniture from China It used to be that we could refinish and reupholster the furniture from hotels but now it breaks when it's brand new and you can't fix it they use some kind of soft wood that won't hold the weight of a person if you strip the furniture you find out that the finish that was put on it is to imitate wood oak or cherry or walnut but that's not what it's made out of it's like balsa wood and you can't refinish it it's a real race to the bottom with them
DeleteWonderful photo of the Picasso. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYes. It just screams out "Winter in Chicago!" ((And early spring).
DeleteLived through too many of them. Have never been a fan of snow.
The Myopic Bookstore is still on Milwaukee Avenue, all three stories of it!
ReplyDeleteMaybe Myopic is a front for the Russian tire business.
Deletejohn
If only the suit & tie could be outlawed forever!
ReplyDeleteI consider it a success story when a health agency like the TB district can be closed down for doing its job so well. Though TB has not been eradicated like smallpox, we should still credit the TB district for pushing down the prevalence rate in the US sufficiently such that school children are no longer routinely tested for the disease. When I was headed off to college in the late 1970s, TB tests were still required to live in the dorms. I never expected my test to be positive! I did not have active illness, but was exposed while working in a Nursing home in the NW suburbs of Chicago. I had to take isoniazid for a year, and then got an annual chest x-ray at my regional TB site, in lieu of the mandatory Mantoux test (annual testing was required of health care workers back then). My regional TB district clinic was always busy because they provided mass employee screening for industry. But the prevalence rate of TB back then was 4x what it is now. Screening is now only done for high risk groups. Even so, rates of TB have been inching up again. I suspect the days of mandatory health screening for any illness are long gone, never to return. Yet on a personal level, I'm grateful I was screened and treated before there was active illness.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, some houses in my neighborhood resemble those in the photo Mr S posted a couple days ago. Many homes from this era have 'sleeping porches' on the 2nd floor, which were made popular by both TB concerns, and the lack of air conditioning. Sleeping in fresh air was considered restorative during convalescence from TB.
Your closing "chuckle" reminds me of a story bandied about in Russia when I was there in the early 1990s. After seeing the Tsar Bell and the Tsar Cannon inside the Kremlin, my Russian translator offered the following observation: This is the world's largest bell and it never rang. This is the world's largest cannon and it was never fired. And [while pointing at the Palace of Congresses] this is the world's largest government that never worked.
ReplyDelete