Flashback 1994: Keeping a last promise.

Michael Thurson before surgery (Photo by Robert A. Davis; used with permission)

     I had rotator cuff surgery Wednesday afternoon, and will have my left arm in a sling for about the next six weeks. As for EGD, it doesn't seem a good idea to park myself in front of the computer right away, even to give you good folks something diverting to read, pecked out with my right hand, or dictated, if I can make that work. 

     Luckily, I have both a deep bench, and the ability to plan ahead. We're going to be reading chestnuts mined from the archive for a few days, and then some of my media pals will pinch hit. My apologies but, heck, you get what you pay for. 

    Regarding today's topic, naturally I first thought of surgery. This is from the days when I worked with the great photographer Robert A. Davis. I still remember the shock of standing in that operating room, learning ... well, you'll see. As for the end, that was all Bob, going the extra mile, a practice that has taken him very far.

     Eloise Heatherly made a promise.
     A registered nurse at Wyler Children's Hospital, she became friends with Michael Thurson, a slight 15-year-old boy with cystic fibrosis, struggling to breathe and looking forward to a better life with a new set of lungs.
     We'll toast with champagne, Heatherly said, when you turn 16.
     Michael was a kid who needed a promise, a reason to look ahead.
     Dragging an oxygen bottle around St. Francis de Sales High
     School, lying on a board while his mother pounded his back to loosen the phlegm that was suffocating him, his average day wasn't a cakewalk.
     It was a long wait for lungs — at 4 feet 6 inches tall and 71 pounds, not many pairs would fit his narrow chest.
     He was already sick, taking treatments at Wyler, when lungs became available after an accident.
     Around midnight Jan. 29, Michael was awakened by a nurse who asked him what his greatest wish was.
     "I want to see Jordan," said the sleepy boy.
     The nurse told him that no, Michael Jordan wasn't here. But his new lungs were on the way.
     "One out of two ain't bad," he said.
     The operation did not go as smoothly as it could have. The lungs were caught in traffic.
     "Where are they now?" a surgeon asked. "Naperville," somebody holding a telephone replied. Two nurses gasped in unison: "Naperville!?!"
     "We probably opened the chest too soon," Dr. Alvaro Montoya said afterward. "We should have waited two more hours."
     But Michael survived the surgery. He clung to life for 10 days.
     "I'm going to wait until I heal, then work out a lot, so I can get better at basketball," he had said.
     Michael Thurson died Feb. 9 from complications following the surgery. He never got the chance to improve his basketball.
     When the news hit his school, students were so upset that classes were dismissed early. The basketball team, for whom Michael was a scorekeeper, wore black bands on their jerseys and headbands reading "Mikey" for the rest of the season.
     Saturday, Michael would have been 16. Heatherly kept her promise.
     Heatherly, Michael's mother, his sisters and a few friends gathered at his grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Calumet City. They took birthday balloons, flowers and, yes, champagne, the good stuff.
     Michael would have loved it.
             — Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 30, 1994

A root canal AND rotator cuff surgery? Lucky me.

     My dentist's office called after a routine cleaning and x-ray. Could I, they wondered, come back? Tomorrow. I got the sense if I said, "I can rush over now," they'd have replied. "Good, hurry." It was a matter of tone.
     The news was bad. An enormous cavity, growing hidden beside my upper right wisdom tooth. Maybe even invading the jaw bone. Requiring a root canal and crown. Probably lose the wisdom tooth too.
     "I like how you're so grim," I told the dentist, after he explained the situation. "It shows you care."
     Off to the endodontist. Two hours in the chair for the root canal. Honestly, it didn't hurt — well, my left arm did, quite a lot, fallout from my ripped-up left shoulder. Holding it still for so long. I'd occasionally extend it, taking care not to upset a tray of tools or grope the dental hygienist.
     Then there was the enforced silence. Although, being me, I still tried to speak, with a dental dam plus dental instruments in my mouth. I wanted to tell the endodontist how important Chicago is to the history of fluoridation. The initial experiments held in Evanston in 1946, with Oak Park as the control. Because he's a tooth guy. He'd be interested. Shutting up is an art form I struggle to master.
     But that isn't the most embarrassing part.
     The root canal was the first act. My next step was back to the dentist, to create a crown to go over the afflicted tooth, shaved down to a stump.
     More than three hours in that chair, including the wait while the crown was being sculpted by a high-tech medical printer. When I could speak again, this is what I said:
     "You know what I was thinking for the past two hours? And this will sound like I'm blowing smoke ... but I was thinking about how lucky I am to have access to high quality medical care like this."
     I really said that. And I meant it. Some 100 million Americans don't routinely see a dentist, usually because of the cost. Half the world's population suffers from untreated oral diseases, according to the World Health Organization.
     A reminder. You know what's much worse than a root canal? Not having a root canal.
     Honestly, the root canal/crown was plenty to hone my medical gratitude. But life has a way of laying it on. A couple weeks later, I went to get an MRI on the shoulder that has hurt me since I tripped and fell on a train platform in Portugal. I was hoping the doctor would say it was strained, perhaps prescribe warm healing oils be massaged into the area while listening to whale song.
     Badly torn rotator cuff. Which I could ignore, going to physical therapy, building up the muscles around the torn and useless muscle.
     Or I could have repaired by arthroscopic surgery. Cut a few holes in my arm, poke in a camera, set some anchors in the bone, sew the muscle back in place, out in an hour. Not even a night's stay in the hospital.

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Willis wall covering

     Downtown Chicago is rich in public art. You don't need me to tell you that. The instantly-beloved "Bean" — okay, "Cloud Gate" for you sticklers. Anish Kapoor's mirrored blob of stainless steel in Millennium Park. The artwork it supplanted in Chicago's heart, the rusty baboon/praying mantis — okay, it's really a woman — in Daley Plaza, the only large-scale sculpture by Pablo Picasso, called by locals, with a Chicago directness, "The Picasso."
     Plus all sorts of lesser lights — the orange "Flamingo" in Federal Plaza, which Calder thought was put in the wrong place (he wanted it further from the building). "Miro's Chicago," which also goes by a popular name, versus its official mouthful "The Sun, the Moon and One Star," jammed into a gap between the Cook County Administration Building and the Chicago Temple (and directly across the street from the Picasso — I imagine many lock their eyes on the Picasso and never even notice the Miro). The Chagall mosaics, "Four Seasons" at Chase Tower Plaza.
     So many, I feel fairly confident the above might be new to you.
     It's called "Atmospheric Wave Wall, 2020." Honestly, I walked past it half a dozen times, registering its presence, not being particularly impressed, until I noticed the plaque and saw who created it: Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.
     EGD readers met him in 2020, when I reposted a 2009 column outlining what I called "The Curator Effect." Museum of Contemporary Art director Madeleine Grynsztejn had walked me through their Eliasson exhibit. I'd been impressed, but also wondered if I could recommend it to readers, who would not have the benefit of the MCA director walking them through the challenging artworks — moss stuck to a stone wall; various rooms of light and color. Would they also be impressed?
     I haven't decided what I think of this piece, made of stainless steel tiles coated with enamel. The typical artist's statement on the piece's web page doesn't add much light.
     "Motion is the central principle behind this public artwork, planned especially for Willis Tower," it begins. "The dynamic pattern on the wall is activated by the motion of people walking, driving, or biking past; by the motion of the earth in relation to the sun as light moves across it; and by changes in the season and weather."
     The Sun-Times never mentioned the installation. The Tribune did so in 2022, with the slightest reference in a larger story about Willis Tower's $500 million renovation.
     Have you seen it? What do you think? Valuable addition to Chicago's public art landscape? Or textured wallpaper gone berserk?

    

One bad Apple (update) can spoil the whole week

 

     Apple sneaks into your living room at night and rearranges the furniture.
     In the morning, you come downstairs and see the couch is not where it belongs, the chairs turned facing the wall, the hutch, askew. You go to put your everything back in place, and can't.  The couch is too heavy. The chairs, somehow bolted to the floor. The knicknacks are missing.
     So you call Apple. Together, virtually, you push furniture this way and that. For nearly an hour. But when you're done, the living room is somehow still not right. You could live with it this way. But why should you have to? You want it the way it was.
     Welcome to my week with Apple, a company I've been patronizing with canine devotion for nearly 25 years, since the first sleek lozenge of a iPod came out. You could store lots of music on it. "This makes me proud to be a human being," I'd tell friends, showing it off.

     I own a Macbook Pro, an iPad, two iPod Pros, one old and tinny, one brand new, a iPhone 17. I have two 24-inch iMacs, the one the paper issued me 18 years ago, and a new one, since you can't have one that old. Bought last January. Paid for the extra memory.

     So when a little notice appears that it is time for the Tahoe 26.5.1 update, I do not feel a protective frisson of fear. There was no premonition. I didn't jerk my head to the right, as if hearing a sharp noise. These updates are necessary, for security.I have a brand spankin' new iMac I click my approval and go to bed.

      I awake to a changed world. My screen saver, for years a view of the Grand Canal in Venice, now replaced by some rock strewn aqua lake. The icons on my desktop are not in their familiar disarray, but assembled in neat rows, as if by some sociopath.

     But that isn't the bad part. The bad part is when I open my photos, I find 1,640. Not the 88,000 possessed the day before.

     No problem. Up into iCloud. There they all are. Whew. And I could leave it like that. But clouds blow away. Things happen. I paid extra for the terabyte of memory on my machine because I want the photos at hand, where I can edit them, which you can't do in the cloud. So I begin to download the photos.

     Only they won't go. I get to 10,000 or so, and the thing freezes up. I try various strategies, guided first by AI, then phoning, reaching a very realistic voice. We try this, then that ,then this again. Only it doesn't work. Nothing works.

     Eventually, I 'm passed along to an actual human. Very nice. We work together for another hour. No luck.

      Throughout it all, I tell myself: The photos are in the cloud. Human agency will get them out. On Day Four, another human has me download a new update, 26.5.2. I wonder if it has just been issued to address the nest of bugs caused by the last update.

     So I contact Apple media relations, and that is really why I'm writing this — well, that and to complain.

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This is the crucial moment

      Sure, I watched the president speak on Thursday night.
      How could you not? 

      "This is the historic moment," I told my wife.

      And I wasn't wrong. 

      Still, I haven't commented on it yet.
      And frankly, am not sure why I'm commenting on it now.
      What's there to say?

      It's painfully obvious.
      There's nothing new. 
      The same lies — he won the 2020 election, the Chinese, Joe Biden, blah blah blah. What a crybaby. 
      And argument so flimsy, so transparently fictional, that an ounce of thought puffs the whole thing away.
      But even to take the framework of fact — and I can't take credit for noticing this, but read it on social media and am happy to pass it along — Donald Trump is saying that the election of 2016, the one that took place when Barack Hussein Obama was president, was fair and fine. 

     And the 2024 election, the one that occurred when Joe Biden was in the White House, went off without a hitch.
      But that 2020 election, the one taking place when he, Donald Trump, was president, was utterly corrupt, influenced by Venezuela and China and Russia and the Club of Rome, that was thoroughly rigged. Right under his nose. Yet he, the guy who sat back and did nothing, apparently, in the dark while it occurred, oblivious, clueless, now wants to take full control of the process, ram through all sorts of unprecedented, extensive, illegal action in the four months between now and November to make sure it doesn't happen again.  

     Which, for the record, it can't — happen again — because it never happened in the first place.

     His solution? Throttling Americans' right to vote. Demanding proof of citizenship. Which, in case you don't know, is not on your driver's license. It's on your passport. If you have a passport. And 50 percent of Americans don't. It's on your birth certificate. If you can lay your hands on it.

     Tens of millions of Americans would be disenfranchisted.
     This is the line in the sand. The excess that cannot be ignored, cannot be tolerated, cannot be normalized. All the tariffs and executive orders and Qatari jets were child's play in comparison. This is where it ends. It's him or us. Trump or America. Trump will either be thwarted in his attempt to corrupt the 2026 election — either the states will resist — or democracy will die. Because if you can't vote because ICE thugs are roughing you up, or because you don't have documentation that you never needed before, then voting becomes merely symbolic, a gesture toward the country we once were and now only pretend to be. The traitor has shown his hand, completely. Which, as I said, is no big revelation, because he's been building up to this for years. For a chronic liar, he can be very candid. 

     Enough about him. It's up to us now to accept or reject what he plans to do to this country. But who will rally us? Where is Paul Revere when we need him? Maybe it'll have to be all of us, inspiring ourselves. The stakes couldn't be higher.
      

Smoke gets in your eyes

   

     The air downtown tasted bad on Thursday. I had to go over to police headquarters at 35th and Michigan to pick up my new press credentials — good for getting into museums in Europe, if nothing else — and then decided to go to Navy Pier, to the Sun-Times office, to collect my mail. Followed by lunch at the Cliff Dwellers Club with an old boss.
     How did the air taste, exactly? Part wet campfire, part vinegar. A sour, mineral odor. On John Williams Show on WGN, "brisket" was suggested, prompting me to think, "not my wife's brisket, that's for damn sure. That smells incredible." For a time, the worst quality air of any major city in the world, according to one source. I was grateful that all my public transportation connections were smooth — step out of Union Station, cross Jackson Street, and the 124 bus practically rolled up.
     Huge wildfires in Canada, trapped by a temperature inversion, causing the haze. The new normal, we are told. More fallout from that global warming that doesn't exist, according to Republicans. I tried to smile when posing for my press pass.
     "See you in two years," the police officer running the camera said cheerfully.
     "I won't be here in two years," I replied, perhaps with more glumly than I intended.
     Caught the Green Line north. Waiting on the Bronzeville Platform, the city didn't look particularly hazy. The field at De La Salle High School awaited an infusion of Meteors. Alma mater of both Daley the father and Daley the son.
     Stepped out at Washington and Wabash, walked a little west and the 124 rolled up. Something was going right. I walked through the pier — a colleague greeted me warmly. At the office, I collected my mail, chatted with my bosses, complimented the new managing editor, whom I had taken to lunch — also at Cliff Dwellers — when he showed up, as a kindness. It's hard to show up at a new office, not knowing anybody.

     "I didn't realize I was sucking up to the future managing editor at the time," I said. We laughed. 

     Caught the 124 back to Michigan.
     Cliff Dwellers is not the fanciest club — no Union League, no Casino, no University. But it has a million dollar view, across the street to the Art Institute, north to the Bean. I'd planned on sitting outside, on their big deck. But the windows were white, like we were in a cloud. I should have taken a picture.

     "I usually ask for a table outside..." I said, to the maitre d'. "But today..."
     Waiting for my guest, I did something unusual — went directly into the bathroom and scrubbed the atmosphere off my face. That helped.
      After lunch, I made the mistake of hoofing it 15 minutes down Adams Street to Union Station. It didn't leave me feeling ill, but rather like having smoked the worst cigar in the world. When I read about all the tiny particulate matter in the smoke, I believed it.

Lincoln Park Zoo: lots of people, not so many animals.

     The lion enclosure was empty. The gorillas, gone. The rhino, which can typically be found standing stolidly in the old elephant enclosure, looking like a beast from mythology, was standing somewhere else, out of view.
     My wife and I were strolling the Lincoln Park Zoo late Saturday afternoon, a beautiful day, the zoo crowded. With people, that is. With animals, not so much.
     “Is it me,” I wondered aloud, “or is something missing?”
     We’d seen a scattering of pink flamingos. And that’s about it.
     Suddenly, the animal art the zoo has on display everywhere took on a malign significance — here are the sort of beasts you might see. If they were here. There were plenty of privacy hedges, barriers to keep the crowds back. I knew that while you might want to see animals, animals don’t necessarily want to see you.
     “Maybe because it’s late in the day,” my wife speculated.
     The animals were tired from a long day of flaunting themselves to their endless stream of guests, capering and cavorting. They were resting now, renewing themselves for tomorrow’s efforts. I thought of that Charles Addams cartoon showing a disappointed man and boy at the front door of a zoo, while a bear, ostrich, moose and gorilla exit a side door, the gorilla putting on his hat.
     “Sorry, folks,” the zookeeper says, “we quit at five.”
     One way to find out. I queried the zoo.
     “A somewhat unique feature about Lincoln Park Zoo is the commitment we’ve made to giving all animals in our care the choice and control over where they want to be at any point in the day,” wrote Anna Cieslik, PR and communications manager. “This means that if the weather isn’t great, or if they’re just not feeling like being around people for the time being, they can always retreat to their indoor habitats. As Chicago dives headfirst into the hottest days of the year, as was the case Saturday during the daytime, animals might be choosing to spend more time indoors. While that’s a bummer for someone hoping to see a lion or brown bear, it means they’re receiving the best welfare possible.”

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