Needlework

 

    "NEIL I," CVS informed me Saturday, via email, my middle initial making me seem like some kind of dynastic monarch, "your prescription(s) are ready for pickup at your pharmacy."
      Prescription, singular. For insulin pen needle tips. Taking between one and five injections a day, I go through them quickly. One doesn't want to run out of needles.   So when I get down to a couple dozen, I want a fresh box ready. I've been waiting for CVS to automatically fills my pen needle prescription.

    With prescriptions popping up regularly at both Walgreens and CVS, it's hard to keep everything straight, and CVS doesn't tell you what any given prescription will cost until it is filled — in this case, 100 needles for $41.60.

    I sighed. I'd been hoping they'd be free — sometimes they are, sometimes not, according to some logic. I have not yet mastered (my hunch is, different types of prescriptions from different doctors).

   So instead I went on Amazon and bought two 100 count boxes of a nearly identical needles — 32 G, 4 mm pen tips— for $11.99 apiece, almost a quarter of the cost at CVS. I could have gotten them for $9.99 apiece, but didn't like the looks of the box quite as much. It was pink. The boxes I got were green, like the Nano prescription needle boxes. Green seems a mark of quality for me. 

     The only difference I can tell is the $41 boxes have foil covers on the little plastic cone holding each individual needle tip — those seem sturdier, and feel better while being stripped off than the little paper covers. 

     That's nuts, right? Paying more for the little strip you pull off. But when you do something continually, such minor considerations take on greater weight. I've shrugged, standing in line at CVS or Walgreens, and paid the $40 plus, thinking a) I'm here, might as well get more; b) those foil covers do strip off far more satisfyingly and c) the box is green.

     But that seems wasteful. When I was in Portugal, I worried I hadn't brought enough needle tips — we were eating a lot of carbs — so thought to buy another box. That involved walking into a pharmacy, asking, and putting down 7.39 Euros — about $8.45, no prescription needed (actually, you never need a prescription to buy insulin needles at a drug store in Illinois either).

    I do worry, by buying two boxes on Amazon, I might be in violation of the Illinois Hypodermic Needles and Syringes Act, which clearly states that a person may possess 100 such needles. Though it doesn't say you can't possess more, so perhaps it's a gray area. If it is indeed illegal, I would point out that sometimes these pieces on EGD veer into satire, fantasy and fiction, and one can't be certain this isn't some wildly exaggerated medical dream sequence. No need to kick in my door. I'll say I sold the other hundred to my wife — they're her needles now. I just own 100.

     Looking into law and diabetes in general, Illinois and I see eye-to-eye regarding injection. When I first came down with diabetes 1, if I'd be out to eat in a restaurant, I'd excuse myself and go administer insulin in the restroom. A process that had a cool, Keith Richards vibe, to me, which shows you what a straight arrow I've become.

     Nowadays, anyone I know well enough to eat lunch with can be trusted to gaze off in the middle distance while I hike my shirt and jab myself in the stomach. This practice is endorsed by the 2025 Public Self-Care of Diabetes Act, which notes, "The General Assembly finds that forcing diabetics to administer their personal insulin injections out of public view is unnecessarily restrictive" going on to state, "A person with diabetes, or parent or legal guardian of a person with diabetes, may self-administer insulin or administer insulin for his or her child in any location, public or private, where the person, or the person's parent or legal guardian, is authorized to be, irrespective of whether the injection site is uncovered during or incidental to the administration of insulin."

     "In any location..." Hmm. "Irrespective of whether the injection site is uncovered." That makes a person think. Being a wisenheimer, I'm tempted to read this to mean I can drop my pants in the middle of Orchestra Hall in order to administer insulin into my backside and be fully supported by the law. That would certainly inject some excitement into the second movement of some lugubrious piece by Mahler. 

   

Flashback 1989: Waiving the flag - American ideals come out the winner in artwork furor

"What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?" by Dread Scott

     Having pretty much exhausted what I have to say about the 25oth birthday of our country on Wednesday and Friday, I thought I'd fish something out of the vault for Fourth of July itself. I came upon this curious artifact that revolves around essential American attitudes and freedoms. 

     Curious for several reasons: first, it was written for the editorial pages six years before I became a columnist, when I was a general assignment reporter. Second, it brings up one of the more notorious artworks ever displayed in Chicago, Dread Scott's "What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?" Third, it is 1700 words long, more than twice the length of my regular column. I hope the piece merits the time it takes to read.

     I did write in the ledger — not standing on the flag, but leaning far over the corner. I've never been tempted to renounce an old opinion, but I will note that I winced reading the "Go try that in South Korea..." BS I trot out, twice, in this. Immature of me — I was 28 years old at the time. Anyway, Happy 4th of July. Stay safe around fireworks.

     Along with the tang of apple pie, the pop of Fourth of July fireworks and the satisfying crack of a bat at Wrigley Field, the flag flap at the Art Institute has to be seen as something purely American, a symbol of what makes this country great.
     All the participants in this brouhaha did exactly what they were supposed to:
     The young artist, Scott Tyler, did what young artists have been doing throughout time: tossing wrenches into the orderly workings of complacency.
     The veterans, for their part, filled the role of military men: defending the flag and honor of the country.
     And even the School of the Art Institute, which shamed itself during the seizure of David K. Nelson's cruel lampoon of Harold Washington last spring, scraped together newfound courage to fulfill its own role: providing a place for students to test their artistic wings, for good or ill.
     Not only did they all do their various duties, but they did them in a distinctly human way, meaning they were each in the right, but less than they might think, and each in the wrong, though they might not realize it.
     Begin with Tyler, the artist, working under the name "Dread Scott" (which the historically minded will recognize as a misspelling of the name of the slave involved in the 1857 Supreme Court case legally upholding slavery).
     On the positive side, Tyler's artwork, "What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?" is not as gratuitous as Nelson's meaningless jab at Washington, but has a defendable message: America does bad things sometimes and many people dislike it for a variety of valid reasons. That analysis may give Tyler more credit than he is due, but assuming the work has a message and is not just a backhand insult, it is a message all but the blindly patriotic can appreciate.
     "In this case, this student not only is making an artistic or esthetic point, but it is very clear he is making a political point," said Professor Sheldon Nahmod, a law professor at IIT-Chicago Kent College of Law. "It's very clear that the flag is first and foremost a political symbol; it represents national unity and patriotism. In my view, whatever one does to the flag is indeed a political statement."
     When put in the context of performance art, Tyler's work seems more impressive. Performance art is a sort of ritualized recklessness that commonly sees artists inciting people to do illegal things. One artist's work featured a gun, set to a timer so that it would fire at some random point. Viewers were invited to sit in a chair with their heads beside the gun, and some of them did. Another artist lay on the floor, surrounded by buckets of water and live, frayed electrical cables, and implor ed viewers to kick over the buckets and electrocute him. Tyler's invitation to violate flag laws seems almost tame by comparison.
     To Tyler's discredit, however, the manifesto the self-named "proletarian internationalist" wrote to justify his artwork shows him to be as blindly zealous in his condemnation of America as patriots can be in their praise.
     "Rambo, Reagan and Bush all love this sacred cow whereas the masses worldwide hate it," he said, referring to the flag his art piece invites viewers to trample and ignoring the fact that the masses hating the United States tend to be those who can't themselves get here, while few U.S. citizens hide under loads of fish trying to start a new life in Cambodia or Peru.
     He points to Iran, Vietnam, South Korea and South Africa as homes of oppressed people who hate the United States, but he fails to recognize the irony that the country he has chosen to relentlessly attack is one of the few places in the world free enough to allow him to make the criticism in the first place.
     The veterans, too, both displayed and departed from the ideals they fought for. To their credit, they generally conducted themselves in an American way - exercising their own right to free speech by protesting, pursuing redress from the courts. The statements of their lawyer, Joseph A. Morris, give more respect to Tyler than Tyler gives to the nation he ridicules while exploiting its freedoms.
     "The display all by itself may be a work of art; you can depict flag desecration, you an put a flag on a clean floor," said Morris, general counsel for the Mid-America Legal Foundation, which represents the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "It may not be great art, but it is a certifiable expression. The problem is an ordinary person looking at this exhibit cannot but draw the conclusion that this is an invitation to walk on the flag."
     The veterans want only to stop people from walking on the flag, not to close the exhibit, punish the artist, or even remove Tyler's work.
     On the other hand, while responsible as a group, individual veterans decided to imitate Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who issued a death sentence for author Rushdie, and go after the blasphemy themselves. One Purple Heart vet attempted to remove the flag (perhaps because he was not an alderman, a Chicago policeman detained him and not the flag). And Thursday a pair of veterans tried storming the school, which had closed the exhibit to the public in the face of numerous threats of violence.
     The school, as well, managed to be both more timid than some would want but bolder than it had been when it groveled apologies after several alderemn seized Nelson's painting. (Too bad the aldermen didn't take umbrage at Van Gogh's self-portrait in the Art Institute. The city could use the money.).
     It did, after all, allow the show, a display of the work of minority artists, one of the concessions made in the wake of the Nelson affair.
     The school also stood by the artist, after a fashion, keeping the exhibit open to students, professors and staff and controlling hostile vets.
     On the negative side, it begged Tyler not to show the work after it was selected for inclusion in the show. The school also closed the exhibit to the public and the press, citing "security concerns," the same excuse offered by bookstores yanking Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.
     Perhaps the confusion of those involved is a reflection of the muddiness of the central issue: Is Tyler's artwork legal?
     For all the mention of First Amendment Rights, this is not a First Amendment case, at least not yet, because the government is not involved. The First Amendment says the government cannot infringe your right to free speech. A private group — such as the School of the Art Institute — can, to the extent that it has control over what is displayed in its galleries.
     A 1972 case of a Downstate artist who displayed a work called "The Flag in Chains" reached the Illinois Supreme Court. In this case, the artist displayed an American flag, literally wrapped in chains, and the court ruled that the piece did not violate any laws, since the flag itself was not subject to destruction and the meaning of the piece was ambiguous.
     The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled, several times, that the flag can be humiliated in a variety of ways without involving any illegality.
     But both the Illinois and U.S. Supreme Courts have said the flag cannot be burned or mutilated, and people who have done so have been sent to jail.
     Which leaves the question of whether treading on the flag is destruction or merely abuse, a moot point in the eyes of the veterans, who view Tyler's display as worse than mutilation.
     "The artist's conduct is more egregious than a flag burning," said Morris. A flag burning is brief but the artwork is ongoing, he said. "The Art Institute has a flag desecration every day, with the invitation to come and see it, come and do it."
     But is inviting someone to do something illegal in itself illegal?
     "Nobody is forced to see the exhibit, and those who see the exhibit are not forced to stand on the flag," said Nahmod.
     Cook County Circuit Judge Kenneth L. Gillis agreed with Nahmod and rejected veterans' requests to bar viewers from treading on the flag.
     "This exhibit is as much an invitation to think about the flag as it is an invitation to step on the flag," said Gillis.
     All told, the flag flap — assuming that some unbalanced person does not inject violence into the situation — is a good indication that something possibly bad — the trampling of the U.S. flag — can have unintended good results, if people keep their heads about them.
     What sort of unintended good results?
     The artist, if he is fair, could see that his work sparked much sincere debate and soul searching among the citizens of the country he detests. As a performance artist, he might consider going to countries he seems to prefer — Iran, South Africa, South Korea — and present his display using their flags. Should he survive, he might learn additional lessons.
     The veterans, imbued with zeal for flag etiquette, might notice and do something about the tattered rags which are flown, unprotested, in front of businesses all over Chicago. They might also realize that respect for the American flag is not a product of flag laws, but a product of the country's greatness, a greatness whose vital core is the freedom of speech.
     The School of the Art Institute may learn not to be so fast to betray its more daring students. The scorned renegades of today are the grand old masters of tomorrow (to prove this, all they need to do is stroll next door to the Art Institute and look at the works of such art hellions as John Singer Sargent, who had to flee France in the uproar caused by one of his elegant portraits, or Henri Rousseau, whose whimsical forests were barred for years from the French Salon, too staid to see his genius).
     As onlookers, we can pat ourselves on the back. With all the scorn the we've been heaping on Iran for its reaction to The Satanic Verses, we can take pride that when it was our turn to have our sacred cow - the flag - trod upon, we held true, for the most part, to the greater ideals which that flag - dirty or clean, on a pole or on the ground - represents.
    — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 5, 1989

The enemies of American freedom also had the upper hand on July 4, 1776

Eric Slauter

     Three lifetimes. Laid end to end.
     Not so very long, in those terms. Between Saturday, July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, and the event being celebrated.
     Take an 83-year-old — about the life expectancy of an American woman — and go back to her birth, 1943, the middle of a global war against fascism, aptly enough.
     Tag another 83-year old. Trace back to his birth — talk about ironies — in 1860, the brink of our epic Civil War, fought to extinguish slavery, the devil’s bargain hard-wired into our Constitution to draw slave-holding Southern states into a risky new national enterprise.
     One more lifetime — 84 years — puts us back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, an empire-shattering document that echoed around the world, and down to this day, with its still-stirring assertion:
     “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
     And that is only the second sentence. The Founders hadn’t yet gotten to the point.
     “We’ve become obsessed with the second paragraph,” said Eric Slauter, the University of Chicago professor who curated an exhibit on our nation’s foundational document at the Newberry Library, standing before an enormous blow-up.
     “What we know is most contemporary readers glossed over that. They cared a lot about the charges against the king. This is an indictment. The real meat of the declaration, what made it a declaration of independence and not a declaration of rights, was this part. You can tell it was important because it’s in capital letters.”
      The part, toward the bottom, declaring, in all-caps, that the now former colonies are “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.”

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Flashback 2009: Fortified by faith in a foreign land

    One way Jews are reacting to rising antisemitism is by manifesting their Jewishness in public more. To show they're not afraid. Not an issue for me. I've never been afraid to write about my religion, and may be the only daily newspaper columnist in the country who regularly explores Judaism (of course, some days it feels like I'm pretty much the only daily newspaper columnist in the country, period, so that might not be saying much). 

     Though even I'm trying to stand a little taller lately — I recently flagged down a pair of cheder boys and put on tefillin in the parking lot of Sunset Foods, which is not my style. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures....

     Anyway, I was looking through the vault for Fourth of July columns, and found this.

     While many a sailor finds religion crossing the stormy seas, my faith tends to tap me on the shoulder while I'm safe in foreign ports. When I travel, I find myself visiting synagogues.
     Perhaps "faith" is too strong a term; maybe it is mere curiosity, but I've been to temples from Bridgetown to Vilnius, attended services from Charleston to Taipei. Oddly, I never intend to go, it seems to just happen.
     Last Saturday morning, I was checking the map to go shopping at Harrods and noticed that the Western Marble Arch Synagogue was a few blocks from my hotel. Services were just beginning; Harrods could wait — on went the dark suit, and I walked over, worried about being 45 minutes late.
     "I have to ask you a few questions," said a man — security — standing at the synagogue door. "What is your Hebrew name?"
     "Yitzhak ben Rachkmiel ben Schmuel," I said, and he waved me in. I entered, thinking it was sad that this is necessary, but not too sad — police with machine-guns guarded the synagogue I went to in Rome, and worshippers had to pass through a narrow, L-shaped security airlock designed to thwart bombers.
     Inside, a man held me back until the prayer ended. "Whoever you are," he said, "wherever you are from, welcome."
     The sanctuary was large, rectangular — the traditional set-up — with the ark holding the Torah scrolls at one end and a raised platform where the service is conducted — the bimah — in the middle.
     I almost made a beeline for an empty part of the room — and there were many, the place was sparsely populated. But that seemed to defeat the purpose of coming, so I forced myself to take a seat among the knot of men sitting in the center.
     And it was all men. Women — I counted three — were exiled to the balcony above.
     Marble Arch, whose congregation traces its roots to 1761, comfortably seats 1,000 worshippers. I counted 27 men at prayer. Most were older, their hair gray or white. Maybe three men were under 50.
     Rigorous attention to the services seemed optional. The men occasionally stood up, strolled around, visiting with each other, shaking hands, talking, laughing. At times, it seemed like a tableau from a Rembrandt painting, these older gentlemen in their capacious wool prayer shawls, leaning over pews, whispering to one another.
      More congregants walked over and shook my hand during the first hour at Marble Arch than in my sporadic attendance at various synagogues around Chicago over the past 25 years.
      I was jotting in my notebook until someone stopped me. "We're Orthodox," he said. "It isn't done."
      Just a few notes, I pleaded, to help me remember.
     "God will help you remember," he replied. I put the notebook away.
     All religions are melting under the bright light of modern society, but Judaism is melting quicker, as it was so small to begin with and faces, besides assimilation, the added challenge of enemies periodically trying to kill us.
     There are roughly 13 million Jews in the world today — a sum equal to the population of Zambia. Nowhere near the number in 1939 — 17 million — and since our population growth hovers at zero, we may never get back to where we once were.
     That is the grim view, but one of the benefits of religion is it can cast a positive spin on grim reality. About 10:30 a.m., a small boy in a white yarmulke and linen shirt came charging across the sanctuary, running full speed, fringes flying, exuberant. There was a change in the room; the boy was like a rocket announcing the start of a festival. Suddenly, more people began arriving. It turned out that, at Marble Arch Synagogue, 45 minutes late is early, and by 11 a.m. another 50 people had arrived.
     Howard Richenberg, the "warden" of the synagogue, announced the birth of a granddaughter, Hadar, to the rabbi, Lionel Rosenfeld, and the men on the bimah began an impromptu dance of celebration, holding hands, arms raised high.
     After that, I slipped over to Richenberg to check the new arrival's name, and he wondered if I wished to participate in the service.
     "Would you have objections to saying a prayer for the royal family?" he asked. "You do speak English?"
     I said that yes, I speak English and no, I would have no objection to asking our distracted God to bless the British royal family. A few minutes later, I was gestured to come up.
     "May the supreme king of kings in His mercy preserve the Queen in life, guard her and deliver her from all trouble and sorrow," I read, slightly startled to find myself addressing a congregation in London.
     The men of Marble Arch synagogue seemed to get a kick out of that — a big joke, to get the American to bless the queen. While we in this country have gotten past the whole Revolutionary War unpleasantness, it stings here, apparently.
     "I still have trouble being in the United States on the Fourth of July," one man told me when I returned to my seat.
     The service complete, we repaired to a small social hall — which the group filled nicely — and went at a spread of gefilte fish, herring and other masterworks of our faith.
      I stayed a while, eating, talking, and left much more confident than I had been mid-service. Yes, the demographic slide is a true worry. But when did the Jews not face worries?
          — Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 4, 2009

Ringing liberty out of a cracked bell

 

     You’re familiar with the Liberty Bell, right?
     Big bell with a crack in it. On display in Philadelphia. Long associated with the American Revolution, though there’s no evidence it was rung at any significant event. One of those confused quirks of history, like George Washington’s mythic chopping down a cherry tree.
     Do you know what’s written on the Liberty Bell? I won’t keep you in suspense: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
     A line from Leviticus 25. A passage that, in some ways, is about farming. Every seventh year is to be a “sabbath” — the land will not be planted, but lie fallow — a smart agricultural practice, essential before advanced fertilizers.
     And every seventh sabbath, 7 x 7, the 50th year would be a “jubilee.”
     What was a jubilee? Big party? Lots of back-patting? Maybe. The Hebrew word for jubilee, yovel, means ram’s horn, or trumpet, the way news was blasted across the desert. A cue taken in English: jubilee is from the Latin jubilo, or “shout of joy.” That’s where we get “jubilation.”
     They weren’t shouting general self-praise, nor self-assigned greatness, but about something real. Something big. The jubilee year was sort of a societal reset, when all debts would be forgiven, slaves freed, seized lands returned. A fresh start for those downtrodden by life. It was about humbling the mighty, not building them up further.
     “Do not take advantage of each other,” Leviticus urges.
     Not quite, I feel comfortable saying, the spirit we find afoot in the land today, during our American quintuple jubilee, the 250th anniversary of a country, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” No need to spell it out. Either you understood long ago or you never will.

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Evanescent

    Years ago, I went to an impressive production of "The Elephant Man" at the Theatre Building on Belmont Avenue. In a big top setting, with sawdust on the floor. One line particularly moved me, carried on a card by one of the circus girls who came out between acts: "Art is nothing as to nature." 
     That said, art can still enhance nature, whether it is hanging enormous Chihuly glassworks at the Garfield Park Conservatory in 2001, or, as the Chicago Botanic Garden did for its 50th anniversary, inviting artists to create site specific works, such as Patrick Dougherty's Rookery, which was so marvelous, they kept it for a second year.
    This year features giant bubbles or, to be more precise, "Evanescent" by Atelier Sisu, a Sydney-based art and design studio founded by Peruvian sculptor Renzo B. Larriviere and Australian spatial architect Zara Pasfield. It was installed June 6.  
    The rainbow spheres were not created particularly for the Botanic Garden, but have been seen in 22 cities across 12 countries, from Auckland, New Zealand to Toronto, Canada. They fit in nicely. Of course, we go to the garden a lot, and while we say that it is different every time we visit, with the giant orbs, it's really different. Or as the great Irish writer Brendan Behan once said, "A change is as good as a rest."
    The word "evanescent," as you may know, means, according to my OED, "that which quickly vanishes or passes away; having no permanence." In this case, the show is up until Sept. 20. Which will be here quickly enough, as summer fleets too.

Technology gives women upper hand in abortion battle

     Technology is a friend to women. Oh, it helps men, too, with its laser levels and Helix 5 Fishfinders. But society places particular burdens on women, through the constraints of religion and marriage, the treadmill of family obligation. Technology levels the field, a bit, with its way of swinging open the cage door. Advances we think of as benign today, like the bicycle, were revolutionary for women when introduced, allowing them a path out of the house, unchaperoned mobility and a reason to wear pants, all in one fell swoop.
     Particularly medical technology. For centuries, the prospect of pregnancy went arm-in-arm with the harangues of moralists. Until Chicago's own G.D. Searle released Enovid, the first birth control pill, in 1960, and suddenly women could do what they want instead of what they're told. Spoiler alert: they wanted to have sex without worrying about babies.
     There's an entrancing book on the subject, "The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution," by my pal Jonathan Eig. He gives a great early history of the battle to wrest control over women's bodies from pious men, spotlighting Margaret Sanger, who popularized the term "birth control" and opened the first clinic in 1916, later shut down by police, since even a pamphlet describing contraception was considered obscene, and illegal to send through the United States mail.
     We are steadily sliding back toward those days. Moralists have hitched their wagon to would-be totalitarians, with restricting the right of a woman to control her own body — and the "babies" hereby saved — being the central plum used to rationalize depriving everybody, male and female, of all sorts of other basic rights, such as the ability to cast a ballot unhindered.
     Four years ago, the Trump-packed Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal throughout this country. Thirteen states promptly banned it, even in cases of rape or incest. The same religious zealots in a lather because a 12-year-old might check out Judy Blume's "Forever" from the public library would force her to have a baby.
     And what was the result of banning abortion for 40% of American women? The practice is way up, 21% since 2020, because of our old friend, medical technology, in the form of the RU-486, a two-drug regimen that is safe, effective, and can be sent through the mail.
     You would think this failure might humble those hot to impose their religion upon others; which is what banning abortion is, the enforcement of Christian morality through law. But nothing humbles them, and now some on the anti-abortion crowd are considering this exciting next step: charging women who have abortions with murder.
     This hasn't yet been done for two reasons. First, because the whole "killing babies" bit is just a religious construct, like Santa Claus. Rhetoric used because it works so effectively. The tell, the giveaway, is that while doctors can be prosecuted for performing abortions, and friends for driving the women to clinics, the actual murderess herself, putting this supposed crime in motion, is generally left alone.

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Flashback 1999: We need some cartoonists who can draw straight

     The Gay Pride Parade is today. Which is a relief. Normally there is quite a bit of advance hoopla, and this year was so quiet I began to worry the LBGTQ+ crowd had gone to ground, hunkering down to ride out the grim, no-end-in-sight night of rights-shredding oppression inflicted upon the United States by our Republican friends.

     As the above paragraph pretty well sums up my thinking on the topic, rather than grind something out on a beautiful Saturday that really called for a long walk in the Chicago Botanical Garden followed by an even longer nap, I reached into my cupboard of oldies and dug out this. It's interesting for several reasons. First, notice that I never even mention the TV show featuring the out-of-the-closet character, Tinky Winky. That's how famous they were — I'd written about their mesmeric influence on my children the year before. Second, it's satire — I'm writing in the voice of the keyhole peering moralists, trusting my readers to be in on the joke. I wouldn't do that nowadays, when it can be hard to tell whether someone posting an opinion is sharing what they assume will be read as an exaggerated, ludicrous mockery, or just sharing how they actually feel. Anyway, thought you might like this. Happy Pride!

     So Jerry Falwell thinks Tinky Winky is gay.
     Well, of course, he is. Aren't all beloved childhood characters gay? Batman and Robin? What was that about? What was going on with them? "Youthful ward Dick Grayson" indeed. Obviously gay.

Tinky Winky

     Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble? Gay. The Lone Ranger and Tonto? Gay. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Gay, gay, gay, gay.
     I won't even start with Bert and Ernie, on "Sesame Street," whose blatant and undeniable gayness was well-documented five years ago by the Rev. Joseph Chambers, a North Carolina Pentecostal minister who blew the whistle on the pair's unnatural arrangement:
     "They're two grown men sharing a house and a bedroom," he said in his radio telecast. "They share clothes. They eat and cook together. They vacation together and they have effeminate characteristics."
     Heck, using that standard, what comic character isn't gay? Listen to Mickey Mouse speak lately? Obvious. And whom does he pal around with? Goofy. Donald Duck. Not exactly what you would call he-men.
     Don't for a moment be swayed by the surface glibness of the response by the Children's Television Workshop to Chambers' timely and helpful observations about the Sesame Street sodomites: "Bert and Ernie have no sexual orientation. They're cloth puppets."
      Puh-leeze. People such as ourselves, intelligent people who have the sophistication to uncover the vast global United Nations conspiracy to undermine our country and sap it of its vital bodily fluids are not duped easily by such sophistries.
     Granted, Tinky Winky, as Falwell points out, is more over the top than most, with his red patent leather purse, triangular symbol of gay acceptance stuck to his head, and purple color (that actually was new to me Falwell explains that purple is the "gay-pride color." Who knew? I thought it was the rainbow).
     Goodness, if purple helps make Tinky Winky gay, then what about Barney, the Purple Dinosaur? He must be really, really gay. Not only is he purple, but he hangs around kids and his first name is Barney, exactly the same first name as openly gay congressman Barney Frank!!!
     How clear do they have to make it before we are willing to see?
     The more I study the evidence, the more I realize that this conspiracy has been going on for years. I grew up on Bugs Bunny. Now, who was Bugs, really? A single male, without wife or family. A bachelor, prone to witty quips. Sort of an Oscar Wilde type, really. Often wearing women's clothes dressing up like Carmen Miranda with fruit on his head and lipstick to foil Elmer Fudd.
     Elmer Fudd! Good Lord, are we blind? The lisping Fudd (I don't buy that "speech impediment" cover story for an instant) is a living catalog of the personality traits that Southern ministers associate with gayness, so Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd are obviously a feuding gay couple, a veritable "La Cage aux Folles" of the cartoon world. It's amazing any of us grew to maturity with our precious heterosexuality intact.
     Now, I will admit that not every single children's character is gay. Some are merely satanic. How anybody could watch even five minutes of "The Big Comfy Couch" and not be overwhelmed by the images of sex and devil worship is a mystery. You have Loonette, this clown; girl lounging about on her sofa of indolence, talking to a doll, Molly, who acts like a living person. The dead that live. Shades of unnaturalism. In nearly every show Loonette fails to please Molly so obviously her master, so clearly a Beelzebub figure and has to try to soothe her "doll's" inflamed "feelings."

     Because this is a family newspaper, I cannot fully analyze the Major Bedhead character, other than to mention his form-revealing costume and the lubricity of his name. ("Bedhead" "Major Bed Head." It couldn't be any clearer if they named him "Mister Hot Sex on the Sofa Right Now with Satan.")
     What I would like to propose are some new children's shows that are not gay. When you see how easily it could be done, you'll realize how brainwashed we have been:
     MR. NORMAL'S WORKHOUSE: Enjoy processing insurance claims with Joe Normal, who talks sports with his office mates Bill, Pete and Steve. All have families. Children are home, where they belong.
     REV. MIKE DAGGER, MAVERICK MINISTER: Karate kicks and Bible verses fly as Father Dagger manly and unashamed of it teaches his Sunday school class a new lesson each week by pounding the daylights out of drug dealers, liquor salesmen and any other wrongdoers.
     SPOT THE FRIENDLY BALL: Spot avoids the pitfalls of most affectionate children's characters by being a simple beachball. He doesn't talk, doesn't sing, but children love him anyway and learn important lessons, like cooperation, by tossing him around.
     I could easily fly to Los Angeles right now and make big money by selling these ideas to television. But I'm not. Too much is at stake. I'm offering them freely, to whoever wants them, in the hopes of salvaging our beloved way of life before it's too late.
       — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 14, 1999

Sunlit leaf

    God, these computer systems are maddening.

    So Thursday night my Apple iMac asks me, in a little box in the upper right corner of the screen, if I want to download the new version of the Tahoe software. Sure, why not? What do I have to fear, with my smokin' new computer, bought this year? Keep all the fixes and security patches up to date. I hardly thought about it.

    This morning, I wake up, and my photos are gone — oh, they're up in the Cloud, safe. But I want them on my iMac, where they were yesterday, so I can scroll through them at my leisure. Sometimes the iCloud is balky. And who said they could take them? By what right? Is this the future? High tech creeps in the back door and rearranges your pantry?

     You'd think human agency could make it happen — and maybe it can, because I dealt with a variety of robots on Apple support, walking me through useless stuff I'd already gone through.  It drove me crazy that I couldn't make it work. At times, it seemed so close. I didn't spend the day doing it. But I thought about what to do. A lot. I'm a solver, a figure-it-outer, and when things won't solve, it preys on my mind.

     Okay, big deal, so I'll use the Cloud instead of Photo. Shrug and move on. Rub your smarting nose and stride toward the next rake, prongs up in the grass. Half the readers probably won't even know what I'm talking about. But what galls me is Apple never even asked. Click this button and we'll give you a day — and counting — trying to undo the mess we made. 

    Ah well, shouldn't complain. Look at this lovely gingko leaf, backlit by the setting sun. I've passed that tree for a decade, since I planted it, and never saw it lit like that. I handed the leash to my wife, and snapped a single picture — still safe up in the Cloud, those Apple bastards ... 

    A living fossil, the gingko.  Two hundred and twenty seven million years old — predating the dinosaurs — and not one second spent slogging through this balky computer system bullshit. Must be nice.

      

Wellness doesn't just happen — it requires effort

 

     Consider the information you ignore. The pages swiped away in a blink. The emails — for old fogies like us that even use email — hundreds a day, real, fake, urgent, irrelevant, scams, skipped over with hardly a glance. Plus ignored text messages, bulletins, alerts, pings. I’d hesitate to guess how much communication is filtered out, unprocessed: 90%? 99%? 99.9%? It’s amazing anything gets through.
     Meanwhile, random stuff snags your attention. It wasn’t the poetry of the subject line, “Wellness Wednesday: Mental Health and Self-Care Week 7" that hooked my interest. Maybe because I had just gotten an MRI on my torn-up left shoulder. A little wellness might hit the spot. And what is “self-care” anyway? It sounds almost raunchy.
     I opened the message.
     “Self-care is the practice of taking care of your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health,” wrote Chicago Public Media human resources manager Stephanie Sferra Bassill. “While many people view self-care as a form of selfish indulgence, prioritizing yourself is an essential component of overall well-being.”
     Hmm... I thought... let me get this straight: my employer is urging me to set aside this work nonsense, these bothersome interviews, the endless tappity-tap-tap on a keyboard, and just live a fuller, healthier, happier life?
     Well yeah. I can do that.
     Where to begin?
     For some reason I skipped the first, physical health aspect, and went straight for mental and emotional, dialing the number of a friend I’d been meaning to call. Isolation is a modern plague — we think we’re so connected by social media, when we’re really staring at a screen alone. I got his voicemail. A second friend. Also voicemail. A third. Again voicemail. No wonder we’re all so frazzled. A fourth call. Any guesses? Voicemail.
     People really don’t use the telephone anymore.

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Artificial intelligence overlords still a work in progress

 

Saint Jerome and the Angel, by Simon Vouet

   
     My wife went to the White Sox game Wednesday. Which caused a twinge of envy, both for her belonging to an office that socializes together, and because the Sox were playing the Guardians, the Cleveland team.

     It was rainy day. And first thing in the morning, I was concerned that the 1:10 game would be rained out. So I plugged what I thought was a very simple, very direct question into Google: "Is today's white sox game cancelled?" I didn't think it would actually be cancelled so early in the morning, but it was supposed to rain all day, and I was curious to reach some site that would keep me posted. This is what AI served up:

     Could she have the wrong day? That happens. I checked the White Sox Schedule site. Nope, there was indeed a game that afternoon, stated bold as brass. Though a jillion dollars worth of AI couldn't seem to take that into account, couldn't figure out if the Sox had a game scheduled in a few hours or not. A fairly straightforward question.

     I know this is my self-flattering bias at work. AI seems to be working just fine, helping students undercut the value of their educations, and allowing office grinds to be fired en masse, replaced by puffs of electrons up in the Cloud. And yes, I will probably still be savoring examples of AI incompetence up to the moment the robot guards herd me into the camp. But before people are going to pay money for this shit, it has to at least work, right? Forget amazing, or essential, or impressive, or even useful. This is bush league stuff. 

It's right between Shangri-La and Wakanda

 

Chicago Public Schools board member Ellen Rosenfeld.

     With the state of Israel being continually mugged in the court of public opinion, I decided to check out Monday's celebration of the nation's 78th birthday, held by the Consulate General of Israel in Chicago. See how they are holding up.
     The location was kept secret, as is the Israel practice, a reminder that, for all the menace assigned to Jews, they're still the ones who have to lurk in the shadows, worrying about being killed, which anyone who has visited Europe must notice. Church doors are wide open for anyone to walk in off the street, while with synagogues, you find yourself being buzzed through one of those 90 degree security pens after being sniffed for explosives.
     Plus the prospect of disruptive protesting. The We Love Bunnies of Israel Club at Northwestern, should one exist, couldn't hold "Pet a Soft Bunny Day" at Deering Meadow without being shouted at by passersby, if not organized mobs.
     Expecting something fancy, I put on my blue blazer and khakis.
     "These are Israelis, right?" said my wife, whose point of reference is when you could take a taxi from Israel to Egypt and sleep on the beach. But I read the room in advance correctly. Some of the 500 guests actually wore neckties.
     Security had to be cleared. "You want to hear my Torah portion?" I asked the stern man giving me the once over, referring to the passages read at my bar mitzvah. "Yes," he said, and I began to rattle off the beginning of Leviticus 25, in Hebrew. He waved me through.

      The first partygoer I recognized was comptroller Susana Mendoza. I hurried over, and watched her show off a photo of a map of the Middle East that her son brought home from Smyser Elementary School, where the nation that since 1948 has been known to the world as "Israel" is labeled "Palestine" in that odd performative denialism that some seem to imagine moves the ball of justice forward.
     "All these kids think Israel is Palestine because that's what they're being taught," said Mendoza. "It's everywhere."
     I asked her if she felt strongly about Israel.
     "I wouldn't be here if I didn't," she said. "Everyone should feel safe in this city. It's scarier for Jewish people."
     I suppose. Contemplating that map, I'd be tempted to say, with a brisk wave of the hand, "Well, look at that! They have their country, right there. So what are you bitching about?"
     But that's callous, and there's enough callousness going around without adding more. Harshness is the rule of the day. One way to understand Israel now is the former deep bench of peaceniks have been swept away by years of frustration, not to forget the Oct. 7 massacre. Now they've got the same rigid nationalists that are plaguing this country, busy blowing Gaza to smithereens, a gift to anti-Zionists everywhere. Strange times indeed, when the Mayor of New York is a more vocal enemy of Israel than the king of Saudi Arabia.

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Flash: Eli's Cheesecake makes non-cheesecake cake

     Imagine, for a moment, a friend says, "I'm going to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs play." You process this information, then observe, benignly: "It's a nice day for baseball." And your friend replies, "Oh no, I'm not watching the Cubs baseball team, but the Cubs soccer team. They also have a Midwest Premier League soccer team."
     You'd be gobsmacked, right? You'd think, "How did I possibly miss that?!"
     Now you are in the mindset to share an experience I had this week. I'd mentioned in my column that it was my birthday, and my friends at Eli's very kindly sent a cake. Made me feel special. But opening it, I was confronted with a surprise: it wasn't one of the ne plus ultra Eli's cheesecakes I've been rhapsodizing on this blog for the past 13 years, next week. No. It was a chocolate layer cake, specifically an Old-Fashioned Triple Chocolate Cake. 
    We served it Sunday at our Father's Day grill out, and let me tell you, the results were extraordinary. "I want THIS cake at my next birthday!" my wife enthused. Twice, lest I miss the hint, as I sometimes do. She even explained why: she likes the frosting — especially the frosting, elaborating that this is unusual because she is generally is not a fan of frosting. Often, with cake, she skips the frosting, sliding it aside. Too sweet. But not this frosting. This frosting, however, has that essential quality of being Not Too Sweet. I don't want to say that the consensus among my guests was that Eli's is hiding its light under a bushel by making all these fine cheesecakes when it is also capable of making such a superfine, magnificently dark, dense and rich but not too sweet chocolate cake that is not a cheesecake. But conversation unfolded among those lines.
     They also make a tiramisu and a classic carrot cake, as I learned after checking on the Eli's web site, curious as to whether the company actually sells this non-cheesecake cake, or if it is, I don't know, something experimental, or maybe something special their bakers whipped up in a fit of whimsy just for me. (A hint of how my mind works and why life can be so frequently disappointing). 

     The good news is, they do sell this truly excellent chocolate cake, for $64, which might seem a lot, but then again, you have not yet tasted the cake. I will also point out that they claim it serves 12, and while I would not accuse Eli's of false advertising, I will observe that we were 15 and we only managed to finish less than half the cake. Yes, we were filled with my wife's superlative tilapia ceviche and flank steak and good Romanian garlic dogs and potato salad. That said, I believe 1/12 of a cake this dense and rich and fantastic would kill any average adult after any decent meal because, believe me, I wanted more than anything else to dive in for more cake, and kept scraping up various bits left on the plate, but just couldn't physically do it. That damn Ozempic perhaps. We froze the rest for the next happy occasion.
    My bone deep honesty requires that I remind you that Eli's does spend a fortune advertising on this blog between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day, and the cynics among you might consider this log-rolling, though you would be wrong. Were the cake just ordinary cake, were it cake consumed by my guests with an indifferent shrug and a few benign comments ("I am eating this cake now") I would have let the experience pass unremarked upon. But the twin facts that a) Eli's makes non-cheesecake cake and b) it is really very, very good cake, obligated me to share this exciting news with you, in my capacity as a full-service blogger committed to sharing with my readership the wonders of the world.
     What you do with that information is your concern, though I would recommend the scoffers among you to order the cake here — it ships across the country — and then you can tell EGD readers your own honest, uninfluenced-by-the-application-of-money impressions, though I am certain they will be no different than mine.

     Meanwhile, my wife was still talking about it the next day.

     "That was incredible cake!" she said, holding my hand and gazing deeply into my eyes. "You have to tell them how much we liked that cake."

     I promised her that I would.

Dirty politics, dirty soda and dirty Mormon wives

     The trouble with trying to keep tabs on what's happening, politically, is we've reached such a thunderous crescendo of jaw-dropping ineptitude that the only way to even touch upon it is with cursory glances. Over the long weekend, no fewer than five earth-shaking shocks reverberated, starting with our nation basically surrendering to Iran. Space is tight, so let's jump right in:
     1. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, less than 24 hours after ...
     You know what? I'm not doing this. Either you long ago grasped the full-blown disaster that hourly unfolds, or you never will. No reason to rub it in, for the former, nor annoy the latter by pointing out colors they can't perceive.
     Not when we can talk about dirty soda instead. I'd heard, vaguely, of the beverage, as some kind of mania in liquor-challenged Utah. The Sun-Times of course has been keeping up on the trend. But I never gave it much thought, until dirty soda arrived Saturday on Center Avenue in the form of an ambitious 11-year-old neighbor who, taking advantage of garage sale traffic jamming the street, set up a stand selling what I assumed was lemonade.
     Children's lemonade stands are my Achilles' heel. I have no defense against them. I could be bleeding, profusely, driving to the hospital with a tourniquet around my arm and, spying a stand, would still pull over and hurry to press money on the young entrepreneur.
     For one simple reason: When my younger son was a lad, he once set up such a stand at the foot of our driveway, on our little-traveled suburban block. The sight of my boy sitting there, with his pitcher and his cups and his handmade sign, wanly calling "Lemonade. Lemonade for sale" to the empty street broke my heart — truly, part of me died, right there, and my restless ghost seeks redemption for indifferent humanity by patronizing lemonade stands.
     So when, during weeding Saturday, I noticed the activity next door, I immediately stood up, pulled off my gloves, ran inside, grabbed cash and raced over.
     Only it wasn't lemonade. It was dirty soda — pop mixed with whipped cream and a variety of flavored syrups, garnished with a cherry and a gummy. The mom explained that dirty soda is a thing on a television show, "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." Mormons don't drink, generally, so they've taken to guzzling 44-ounce egg creams on steroids.
     Fortunately, my industrious neighbor child had Diet Coke — I'm dancin' with Mr. Diabetes, remember — so I took my dirty soda back to my office. It was actually quite delicious, though I only nibbled the gummy shark swimming in it — and began my research with Season 1, Episode 1 of "Mormon Wives."
     OMG. I'm not sure I can express the plot of the reality show in words. Four young Mormon women started making TikTok dance videos and, apparently, having unspecified sexual escapades with each other, or each other's husbands, or both. But that's like saying "Hamlet" is about a prince who is sad. It doesn't come near to capturing the spirit of the thing. "Mormon Wives" is a show about humiliating yourself and your friends online for profit.

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The glass elephant

      The glass elephant was in my mother's purse when she died, one year ago today. 
      She'd had it most of her life — taken it to Europe with her when she went to entertain the troops, at 16, as a good luck token. I should have asked her the story of how she got it. It's two and a half inches long, pressed glass, cheap. Something won at a carnival in the early 1950s, perhaps. So let's say a boy won it for her or ... reflecting current sensibilities ... that she won it herself. Though frankly, I prefer the won-it-for-her version.
     She lent it to my father as he circled the world as a government scientist. Europe. Africa. Asia. Australia. Carrying the elephant guaranteed safe return. Nobody ever lost it. 
      My brother got to the hospital first, and ended up with the purse, and the elephant. Less sentimental than myself, he didn't want anything of hers. When we cleaned out her room at the dynamic senior living facility in Addison, we divided her effects between things to throw away, and things I was keeping. I envied him his strength. I'll throw it all away too, eventually. Or someone will. But not now.
     I let six or nine months go by — and how quickly time seems to pass, while crawling — then did ask  him for the elephant. At one of our regular lunches he delivered it. Though I was almost sorry I had. Back home, regarding it, I felt a deep pang, almost a shock, as truly sad about her passing as I ever was, because I realized, in that moment, that its locus of significance rested with me and me alone. Nobody else would ever know, or care. Like the glass trinket, her entire world, really, rested in the palm of my hand or, rather, some clump of neurons nestled somewhere in my head. Talk about a fragile weight, a glass elephant. Someday, it would be gone, and before then, I, or someone, would release this glass animal into the slipstream of life, and it would rush away to be, at best, treasured by someone who appreciated its  ... 
     I plugged the picture above into Google Image Search and — to my surprise — learned it is an L.E. Smith pressed glass elephant, made by a Pennsylvania glass company. Twelve dollars and twenty-five cents on eBay and it's yours. We have so much knowledge now.
     Not that it would be her glass elephant, which I added to a little menagerie of her elephants  set up on a shelf in my office. She collected them or, rather, expressed a fondness for this one, and elephants became our father's go-to gift. I moved the group to a better spot, to take a picture, and realized that one member of the herd was missing, a fine green stone elephant that my father bought in South Africa. I hunted for it longer than I should — so much crap in my office — trying to tamp down the almost frantic urgency by thinking of something she used to say when we'd lost things as children: "You'll find it when you're not looking for it."
     That never quite worked — I remember being more annoyed than anything else. And it didn't work very well now, as I hunted around in places I'd already looked. Finally I went off to do other things and, distracted, found some critical distance, and moved on. It occurred to me that I was frantically trying to keep my world together a little longer, in face of the great scattering sure to come. In the end, one less elephant might even be a good thing. Though I still hope to find it. When I'm not looking for it. My mother was a smart woman, in many ways.

'God's chosen vessel'

Barack Obama talks to the Sun-Times editorial board in 2004.

 

    Friday was the official opening day of the Obama Presidential Center, and the internet was alive with clips from the celebration of the evening before, with Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder and, of course, stirring speeches by the former president and his wife.

      It got me wondering what I wrote about Obama back in the day, and I dug up these three fun chestnuts from when he was running for, and then newly-elected to, the U.S. Senate. The headline is a nickname I sometimes applied to him.

Race against nobody

     Senator-to-be Barack Obama stopped by Friday. I give him credit for going through the motions of campaigning against Alan Keyes, who, once the media got bored with the freak show aspect of his candidacy, has sunk into utter oblivion. I picture Keyes alone in some muddy Downstate boondock somewhere, lecturing chickens about how Jesus would vote.
     Beyond that image, I haven't decided yet if Obama is Jack Kennedy or Chuck Percy. You remember Percy, the "Wonder Boy from Illinois." He was also going to be president, but fate disagreed because — cue the "Twilight Zone" music — Percy turned out to be too liberal.
     I don't think that is going to be the problem with Obama. He's sharp enough to shave with — as Percy was — but he also has a steely practicality. I asked him to lay out his hit-the-ground-running plans for when he takes over in Washington, and rather than the "Gee, I'll have to get my sea legs and learn from the old hands" line of claptrap I expected, he carefully explained how his Democratic star status translates into fund-raising power, which in Washington translates into real power, which means he should have a lock on the plum committee assignments. Smart.
     Obama might have benefitted from the complete collapse, in quick succession of a) Peter Fitzgerald, b) Jack Ryan and c) the Illinois Republican Party. But he didn't blunder into where he is today, nor does he seem capable of blundering any time in the near future. Think of him as our ace in the hole. No matter how the presidential election turns out, we're still trading in the broken pull-toy duck of Fitzgerald for the souped-up Corvette of Obama. We should be glad of that.
         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 4, 2004

Honeymoon's over

     Abraham Lincoln did not, to my knowledge, pepper his speeches with the tales of individuals — specific brave soldiers and such. While certain presidents later would inject their dogs — FDR's Fala, Nixon's Checkers — the trend of dragooning individual average Americans to lend luster to addresses began with Ronald Reagan.
     Now it's almost a duty. No politician can open his yap without it. Sen.-elect Barack Obama, in his as-always moving victory speech Tuesday night, evoked a 105-year-old supporter, marveling that her birth year, 1899, was before such modern conveniences as telephones and automobiles.
     Those present applauded, while I thought, "Wrong, pal."
     The Chicago Historical Society has not one but two city phone books going back to 1883 — white for homes, yellow for businesses.
     I don't fault Obama, particularly. Most of us labor under the impression that, prior to our enlightened age, our forebears crouched in caves and smeared themselves with berries. Not so. Phones were invented in 1876 and became almost immediately popular. And an 1899 Oldsmobile cost the princely sum of $650, but you could buy one. There were thousands of cars on the road then.
     Just like 74 percent of Illinoisans, I think Obama is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and that he will one day rule a unified and peaceful world. But, as he will quickly learn in the Senate, you ignore the small stuff at your peril.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 5, 2004

AND THEY'RE OFF . . .

     One of the sillier political questions is whether Obama will run for president. He already is running, right now, in front of our eyes. What they mean by the question, I think, is, will he officially announce his candidacy? But that too is silly, like standing at the five-mile mark at a marathon, watching the runners pound by, and wondering whether a leading athlete will decide to finish the last five miles of the race. Sure he will, assuming he doesn't collapse. Few fit marathoners — and Obama, if nothing else, has proved himself a political greyhound — shrug and give up after 10 miles. He might not win. But he sure is running.
     The politician that Obama is compared to the most is John F. Kennedy — similarly young (or, if you prefer "inexperienced"). Similarly eloquent. Similarly dynamic and beloved. Both Harvard men.
     And both men had a millstone around their necks that supposedly precluded them from the highest office in the land. In Kennedy's case it was his Catholicism. We view this as a dusty bit of history, but we should remember how real and raw it was, how many Americans were unashamed in their anti-Catholic bigotry.
     "Our people built this country," a Protestant lady in West Virginia told a reporter. "If they had wanted a Catholic to be president, they would have said so in the Constitution."
     Obama's supposed handicap is not that he's inexperienced, but that he's black. Not that his enemies will come right out and argue this directly. Rather, they hint around the edges. Just last week, a longtime Republican Party hack drew attention to Obama's middle name — "Hussein" — as if that were a secret, or significant. It isn't.
     This is right on schedule, and — unknown to those who would derail him — plays right into Obama's hands. Again, think of Kennedy, and his primary victory against Hubert Humphrey in West Virginia in May 1960.
     West Virginia was 95 percent Protestant, many of them sharing the mind-set of the old lady quoted previously.
     Rather than ignore his supposed handicap, Kennedy drew attention to it — just as Obama is drawing attention to his heritage, visiting Africa and such. Kennedy shocked people by talking about his religion — something one just didn't discuss — and how it was part of his personal life but didn't affect his political decisions. He wasn't going to take orders from the pope. Kennedy cleverly made the West Virginia primary into a referendum on the social progress of the state. A vote for Kennedy became a vote for a clear-eyed, unbiased future, while a vote for Humphrey was practically a vote to confirm West Virginia as a nest of Hillbillies. Naturally, Kennedy won.
     Obama could do the same thing — the more his enemies try to undercut him as a guy with a funny name and a Muslim grandfather, the more they allude to the fact his dad was black, the more Obama will seem to offer a fresh start from bias. You can vote for him and vote for a nation that unifies its diverse strands into one powerful whole. Or you can support his opponents, and surrender to the narrow bigotry that inflames so much of the world, and contribute to our nation's downfall.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 4, 2006

Beatrice Lumpkin, workers’ rights leader and 'rock of the movement,' dies at 107

     

Beatrice Lumpkin addresses striking Starbucks workers in 2024 (Roberta Wood/People's World

Beatrice Lumpkin wasn't just liberal, or left-leaning, or a secret communist sympathizer. She was an open, enthusiastic, dues-paying member of the Communist Party for nearly 90 years, whose passion for workers' rights put her on the front lines of post-World War II labor struggles in Chicago, from working with Black Panther Fred Hampton to the fight to compensate employees abruptly fired at the closing of the Wisconsin Steel plant in 1980, to the recent unionization of Starbucks employees.
     "Bea was born and grew up and lived her life in the Communist Party," said Roberta Wood, former secretary-treasurer of the Communist Party USA.
    Lumpkin, 107, died in Hyde Park on Sunday.
     Mayor Brandon Johnson, who declared Aug. 3 as "Beatrice Lumpkin Day" in Chicago, called her "a towering figure in the labor movement, an unwavering advocate for fully funded education, and a continued source of inspiration for us all."
     "Spanning almost an entire century of public engagement, Lumpkin was deeply involved in movements for workers' rights, civil rights, and educational justice. She advocated for the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively, supported efforts to advance racial justice, and fought for policies that protected vulnerable communities," Johnson continued, in a statement.
     "As a teacher and organizer, Bea brought the lessons of solidarity into the classroom. As a math teacher in Chicago Public Schools and at Malcolm X College, she inspired generations of students while remaining deeply engaged building worker power. Through her leadership in the Chicago Teachers Union Retiree Committee and Climate Justice Committee, she built bridges between generations, reminding us that strong schools and strong communities are built through collective action and a steadfast commitment to justice." 
     She was born in New York in 1918. Her parents, Dora and Morris Shapiro, were Belarus radicals who emigrated to America after the failed Russian revolution of 1905 and ran a laundry. Lumpkin would say she was born "knowing which side I was on." By age 9 she was marching with striking textile workers.

     In her mid-teens, she joined the Young Communist League, and since then, she "never had a moment when there was nothing to do," she wrote in her 2013 autobiography, "Joy in the Struggle: My Life and Love." "There were always picket lines for workers on strike, demonstrations to demand food for a hungry family, knocking on doors to sell The Daily Worker, or bring people out to vote."
     She made speeches denouncing Hitler and fascism, was involved in the effort to free the Scottsboro Boys, the case of nine Black teens framed for a rape in 1931. She was first arrested leading a demonstration in front of a New York department store in 1935.
     She went to Hunter College in Manhattan, but found "union work was too important and too exciting" to waste time in school. She later returned and graduated.
     She moved to Buffalo in 1942 to work for Sylvania Radio. There she met a force in the Buffalo Communist movement, Hattie Lumpkin and, more significantly, her son Frank. They married on Oct. 22, 1949.

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Curious creatures

  

     The other day we had dinner at Kie Gol Lanee — the one in Logan Square, not the one in Uptown.  The name struck me as vaguely Korean, though it's a Mexican restaurant. "Kie Gol Lanee" is the phonetic spelling of Quiegoloani, a small mountain village in the southern highlands of Oaxaca. It means "old stone" in Zapotec.

     Dinner was pretty good. I enjoyed the spicy grasshoppers — how often do you get the chance? My wife didn't, though more for the heat than the insect aspect. The pork chop with tamarind sauce over grilled onions had a nice flavor as well. I can't say I'd hurry back, but wasn't sorry we went.
     Though what really caught my attention was the yard near where we parked, a block north of Diversey. Someone had put a lot of effort into crafting a variety of robots and beasts. The result somewhere between art and craft. Folk art, I suppose. The robots were angry, the dragon, in full cry. I wondered if I would want to be greeted by this distressed menagerie every time I came home. Probably not. Though I'm not sure I'd ever get around to removing them either. It would take a lot of physical effort to haul the pieces away. Plus the psychic toll of effacing somebody's art. I'm not sure I could do it.