Pogo no go

      Random thoughts bubble out of nowhere.

      Such as:

     Are pogo-sticks fun?

     Is there anybody out there who has pleasant memories of an hour — or a minute — spent entertaining yourself with a pogo stick? 

     Because I remember encountering them as a child, and giving them a try. Maybe I was too heavy. But they didn't spring up the way they were supposed to. The pogo stick rider tended to fall over. And abandon the effort very quickly, if one were smart. 

     Not sure what prompted the pogo stick thought. Some chaotic firing of neurons. The question certainly would have never seen the light of day. But shortly after I had it, I was walking down the block, and saw this pair of pogo sticks set out for the trash. No, I didn't try them. Or take them. Or knock on the door and pose my question to their former owner. 

     Coincidence, surely. What else could it be? I didn't summon the sticks up. It wasn't foreshadowing. Not augury. The linear universe glancing ahead, warning me through telepathy of the approach of discarded pogo sticks.

     But it seemed one of those odd coincidences that some consider fate. You contemplate pogo sticks. And here they are in the living world. I should ponder a bag of money next.

     Pogo sticks are a reminder that all the hand-wringing over phones and video games and such. Do you remember how kids passed the time? We twiddled our thumbs — boy, I bet more than one minor pundit has stretched that observation into an entire column. We bounced a tennis ball against the garage. We folded newspapers into boats. And I suppose some bounced on pogo sticks, or tried to. 

     The history of the toy is complicated, and while on another day I might dive in with a whoop, I think I'll shield you from the minutia on this one, the competing claims as to who first invented it and where "pogo" comes from. We don't have to plunge down every rathole, right? All you need to know is that it was a craze in the 1920s, with Ziegfeld Follies presenting chorus girls on pogo sticks, and came back in the 21st century as a kind of extreme sport.

     I don't want to let my own experience blind me. But I just can't imagine the things being fun. Correct me if I'm wrong. 

New novel reopens cold case death of Kup's daughter

     Celebrity is the cheapest coin, the shakiest currency. Debased to begin with, it loses value quickly. Today’s Taylor Swift becomes tomorrow’s Taylor Dayne. Sound impossible? It’s not; it’s inevitable.
     The stars themselves are burdened by fame’s presence, then tormented by its absence.
     “You used to be big,” Norma Desmond is told in "Sunset Boulevard." It is not a compliment.
     The rest of us ordinary folk hoard the briefest encounter with celebrity, our personal cache of fool’s gold. I catch myself tossing a few chips on the table, bragging how Barack Obama once called me on the phone to complain about a column, how I chatted on TV with Oprah Winfrey and sat in the Bulls locker room, talking with Michael Jordan. I used to be big.
     But it fools no one, not even myself. "Self-praise is self-debasement,” as Cervantes writes. These flashes mean close to nothing, three pebbles to suck on in the long forced march through the desert of non-entity.
     Now Irv Kupcinet, he was truly big, a star in his own right. The columnist shared tidbits of the famous we all hunger to read, sparkling in their reflected glow. He didn’t vanish, but left behind a quite-good statue on Wacker Drive, a sign on the Wabash Avenue bridge, and fading memories of those like myself who knew him.
     The Kup story I like to tell is that he once parked his Cadillac on Wacker Drive in front of the Lyric Opera before a performance. Lincoln Towing promptly hauled it away. Back at their yard, they ran the plates, realized whose car they had taken, and brought it back before the final curtain. That’s power.
     Just as the past isn’t past, the dead don’t stay dead. There is Kup, his wife, Essee, their daughter, Karyn, the whole Sun-Times circa 1962, the rock upon which Peter Orner builds his new novel, “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter.”
     Orner takes a footnote in Chicago history — on Nov. 30, 1963, a week after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Karyn Kupcinet, who everyone called “Cookie,” was found dead in her West Hollywood apartment. Foul play was suspected but never proved.
     The subplot involves an English professor who may or may not resemble Orner, a native of Highland Park who now chairs the English and creative writing programs at Dartmouth. Orner is an elegant writer who has his character's low-rent milieu down cold:
     “I hunker in my windowless cube at Loyola ... maybe at this point an English department is lucky to be housed at all. Our enrollments are in the toilet. This office has a Soviet Brezhnev-era feel. A solid kind of nowhere. It’s very quiet. Aside from the medievalist across the hall, who turns up every once in a while, nobody comes in to work anymore. Coming into work is a relic, an abandoned social practice.”
     “A Solid Kind of Nowhere” — I might have to swipe that as my autobiography title.

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Holy Earth

    

     Over the past six weeks, I've been to three funerals. My mother; the son of my wife's late parents' last living friend; and Lori Cannon. All at Shalom Memorial Park in Arlington Heights. I'm getting thoroughly sick of the place.

     Which is not a criticism. Shalom Memorial Park is very nice. The funerals are run briskly and efficiently. The place is beautiful. True to its name, quite parklike. There are no headstones — the grave markers are bronze, flush to the ground.
     No headstones, but a few monuments there are — scattered benches, a mausoleum or two — more testaments to the futility of wanting to be remembered than any kind of aggrandizement of the wealthy.

    A sylvan setting. Just not the place I want to keep circling back to. Though I suppose, if I have to contemplate the brevity of human life, it might as well be here.
     To be honest, I didn't have to go to the last two. But my wife was going to the second, and I go where she goes. And Lori's, well, I considered it a sign of respect. She always showed up.
     In each ceremony, after the casket is lowered, there comes a piece of funereal business where a packet of "Holy Earth" from the Mount of Olives is produced by the funeral director or rabbi, and scattered on the coffin lid. It is explained to the gathered mourners that since the Jew can't be buried in Israel — the ideal, apparently, though I don't remember a vote — a bit of Israel is brought to them.
     Despite all the pre-ritual conversation, nobody told me this would be done at my mother's funeral, and while I wasn't about to object, I wasn't entirely comfortable with it either. She would have preferred dirt from Rocky Mountain National Park. 

    What does "Holy" even mean? "Touched by God" by sounds right. Infused with the divine. Using that definition, either every square inch of the planet is holy, along with each and every one of us. Or none of us is. 

    The alternate, selective holiness, well, we see how well that's working out.

     I'm reminded of last time I was in Israel, over 20 years ago. I took a tour of the Temple Mount, led by an Israeli of the type I usually associate with Israelis — brash, irreverent, candid. He told us that the Western Wall — it used to be called "The Wailing Wall" — is not actually part of the destroyed second temple, but a remnant of the retaining wall used to create the mount on which the temple stood. He also reminded us that there is nothing holy about it. "The stones there are as holy as the stones in my backyard," he said. "A stone is a stone is a stone. Jews don't worship stones."
     Or dirt, for that matter. After the second and third funerals, I considered breaking off from the line of cars, finding where my mother is buried and ... I don't know, standing there, feeling sad. But the second time, we were heading to the shiva at the apartment of the father of the deceased, to pay our respects. And the third time, after Lori's funeral, I just wanted to get out of there. My mother could wait.
     "She isn't going anywhere," I told myself. 

'We know what's best for the people'

Danielle Carter-Walters

     The president sat in the Oval Office Friday, praising the National Guard. In mid-August, he deployed the D.C. guard to Washington, where they patrol the National Mall, keeping a careful eye on tourists — what tourists there are, considering the number of visitors to the United States is down by 22%, a loss of $12.5 billion, thanks to America's performative hostility to foreigners.
     Fresh from that triumph, he said Chicago is next.
     Why us? Why are we so fortunate?
     "The people in Chicago ..." the president said, "are screaming for us to come."
     They are? Did I miss that? Who in Chicago, exactly, is screaming?
     The president gave hints. Chicagoans who "are wearing red hats, just like this one."
     He himself was wearing a jumbo baseball cap emblazoned "TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!" Part of his new line of Trump merchandise that includes "Trump 2028' and "4 More Years" hats. There are photographs.
     "They are wearing red hats," the president continued. "African American ladies, beautiful ladies, are saying, 'Please, President Trump, come to Chicago, please."
     They are? I was about to laugh this off as mere mendacity. But for all the slander directed at the media, we still do that truthy-facty thing. Before I could ridicule the notion of Black Chicago women begging for troops to frisk them at bus stops, I had to go looking.
     I quickly found Danielle Carter-Walters, a personal fitness trainer. She indeed has been pleading for precisely this.
     "We knew he had been listening to us," said Carter-Walters, a co-founder of Chicago Flips Red, a group of Trump supporters. "When I saw it, I said, 'Oh, wow.' We've been asking for it in our videos. Now, he's doing it."
     So I asked: She sincerely believes Chicago will benefit from the National Guard patrolling its streets?
     "Yes, I do," said Carter-Walters, who lives in Marquette Park. "Our communities are out of control. The destruction. The devastation of what's happening. We are being displaced out of our homes by illegal aliens.
     "I stay on the South Side of Chicago. I'm living the experience. You can't sit in your car without worrying about being robbed, mugged, shot, carjacked. We definitely need something to be done."
     She said her group has only eight members, but more are out there.
     "There's a lot of us, thousands, silently supporting us," she said. "People think that Black women can't be MAGA. People are starting to see there's a lot of us."
     I did not start writing today's column intending to platform a Trump fan. But the story led me there.

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Hug that job!

     

     Hang around long enough, you may even become fashionable.
     I have that thought every time I read something about the new hot trend toward non-alcoholic cocktails.
     "Look at me, I'm a trendsetter," I'll tell Edie. "Beat 'em by about 20 years." (Next month, in fact. How the time does fly).
     I meant to get a six-pack of NA White Claw — aka flavored seltzer — so I could write something using Wood Allen's bit about buying the rights to "My Fair Lady," removing the songs and turning it back into "Pygmalion." 
     But that seemed a lot of effort to recycle a joke

     Saturday I glanced at my email and saw that clinging to your job has finally become fashionable.

     "Job hugging" is the fab new Gen Z term for not hopping from employer to employer.     

     Next they'll be discovering monogamy.

     "The newest career trend," FastCompany reveals, citing a report from "global organization consultancy" Korn Ferry, which seems agitated at the prospect.

     “At an alarming rate, more and more employees are displaying what is colloquially known as ‘job hugging’—which is to say, holding onto their jobs for dear life,” the report reveals.

     Korn Ferry never explains why the pejoratives — "alarming," "dear life." Perhaps we're all supposed to instinctively understand why staying in one position is inherently not a good thing, though they go on to limn those.

     "Experts say that employees putting down roots is not all doom and gloom, and can in fact bring companies some opportunities, beginning with a financial boon: Without pressure to match outside salaries, organizations face less of a need to raise wages. At the same time, with less turnover, recruitment and training costs dwindle."

    You can pay barnacles less, and don't have to constantly explain to newcomers where the bathrooms are.

     Myself, I'm going to miss the job-hopping trend — not that I ever partook. But ... choosing my words carefully ... there was always a certain comfort in knowing that, should you bump up against a bumbling manager — and sometimes there doesn't seem to be any other kind — that if you wait three years, they'll be on the road again, heading for another gig.

     Still. The arrival of "job hugging" does make me feel a little stupid for staying at the same job for ... 38 years and counting. In my defense, I do like my job, most of the time. And did quit, once, though allowed myself to be lured back. And was poised to quit another time, when the New York Daily News started running my column in 2005, which focused the attention of my bosses at the Sun-Times in a good way.

     Plus I took almost two years away from the paper, aggregate, between paternity leaves, time off to write a book, rehab and various surgeries.  Absence makes the heart grow founder, in both directions.

     Still, loving your job (and, if I may, being extraordinarily good at it) does make one vulnerable to experience the pain of job hugging. Sometimes when I really should have at least pretended to be poised to split. But I just couldn't do it.

     I remember some head hunter pairing me with some executives who were — if I recall — breaking away from Sunbeam and forming a carbon monoxide detector company. We had a lovely lunch at RL and afterward they offered me the job as a the communications head of the new enterprise. In on the ground floor, as Sam Wainwright would say.

      I told them I'd need to discuss it with my wife (again, what George Bailey does in "It's a Wonderful Life") and as we were leaving one of them said how impressed they were that I had worked for the Bohle Company in Los Angeles. 

     I froze, like Jimmy Stewart shaking Mr. Potter's hand. I'd hated the Bohle Company.

     I'm sorry, I said. I don't need a day. I don't need to talk with the wife. I can't go work for you. I can't sell carbon monoxide detectors. 

     I walked down Michigan Avenue to the paper, kicking myself, I was a slave. I didn't even try to wrangle a raise out of it. Some of us were designed to stay put. No point in beating myself up over it now.

Flashback 2007: Satisfaction guaranteed

     I was searching the archive and noticed this. Too much fun not to share. The good news is that Archie McPhee is still in business, and still promises to return unsatisfactory or defective items. Alas, the pig catapult must have caused too much trouble, as it is no longer offered among their line of novelty products. No do they notionally employ the fictive Molly Primrose to interact with the public. David Wahl, however, still works at the company. 

SATISFACTION GUARANTEED

     My older son's pig catapult broke. Not surprising, considering the workout he gave it, stalking about a family gathering, peppering his aging relatives with small pink plastic pigs.
     Behavior that a judicious parent would quickly halt — or so you might imagine, until you try actually saying the words, "Stop pelting people with pigs!" Easier to just ignore him. Besides, they're very small pigs, less than an inch long. It isn't as if they hurt.

     The device — sort of a blue plastic handgun with a contraption for flinging — broke very quickly anyway.
     Here the tale might have ended.
     But his mother, always ready to rally behind her cubs, noticed the lad still had the cardboard packaging from the catapult — saved because it has a "Pig Bull's Eye" on the back, to aid in honing his pig-pelting skills.
     She went online, to the manufacturer's Web site.
     "My son recently purchased a pig catapult made by your company," her note began. "The toy was quite fun. However, about one week after he purchased it, the portion that holds the pigs snapped off after the catapult was fired. It appears to have snapped off where the tension rod places pressure on the plastic catapult. Can you please replace this faulty pig catapult?"
     Here again the saga might have ended. One reason our world is so vexing is that companies build their bottom lines by shaving away customer service. It's hard enough to find anyone at Apple to care about your busted $400 iPod, never mind receive satisfaction for a broken $4.95 pig catapult made in China.
     Yesterday, a box arrived. It contained not only a new pig catapult, but this letter:

     "Dear Edie:
     "I am so sorry to hear that your Pig Catapult was defective. Here is a new one for you. Also here is a small gift to say we are sorry for any trouble this may have caused you. Thank you for bringing this to our attention so we could fix it for you!"

     Not quite a second sun appearing in the sky, but close.
     The gift, by the way, was a box of bandages designed to look like strips of bacon. My wife loved it.
     Here too, the tale might have ended. But there was one more paragraph.
     "I have enclosed an Archie McPhee Catalog for your enjoyment. Archie McPhee is our retail business."
     The catalog "of surprising novelties, good jokes and useful articles" hit our household like a t-bone steak tossed into a tank of piranhas.
     How to describe the product line? Simple toys and toys with an edge. Plastic ants and "Just Like Dad!" brand bubble gum cigarettes. Rubber ducks and gummy banana slugs.
     Bacon is fun, apparently. In addition to bacon bandages, there is bacon air freshener, a bacon wallet ("Not made from real bacon"), bacon tape, bacon gift wrap and Uncle Oinker's Gummy Bacon.
     Jesus too, must be amusing, in certain circles. There is the classic dashboard Jesus, plus a bobblehead Jesus, Jesus gift wrap and not one but two Jesus Action Figures, one with wheels "for smooth gliding action," another, deluxe set, complete with plastic loaves and fishes and "glow-in-the-dark miracle hands."
     An invigorating blasphemy pervades the enterprise. Beyond the Jesus goods, there are Last Supper After Dinner Mints ("Tasty & Religious"), a boxing rabbi puppet, Buddha pencil toppers and, so nobody feels left out, Nihilist Chewing Gum ("No flavor -- We don't believe in flavor.")
     Here, again, the curtain might fall. But the letter was signed "Molly Primrose." Must be a made-up name, I decided. A blanket identity to personalize customer service off-loaded to India.
     I wanted to take the catalog to work with me, but any possible argument ("Boys, it's my job") seemed feeble in the face of the passion with which they were selecting and discarding various items from their imaginary orders, toting up the balances so as to absorb every last penny in their possession.
     "Dad," said Ross, as I was leaving, "do you think I should get a Monkey Groan Ball? When you squeeze it, it's like a monkey groaning . . ."
     "Sounds great," I said.
     My morning's work became tracking down Molly Primrose. Such a pretty and unusual name — there is only one person named "Primrose" in the Chicago White Pages — it had to be a fiction.
Hadn't it?
     I contacted the company and waited. Carol Marin envisioned Molly as an older woman, walking a bunny on a leash — a lovely image. I thought of her as mid-20s, tattoos on both arms, bravely trying to keep her poetic soul alive while answering letters complaining about pig catapults.
     Finally David Wahl, Archie McPhee spokesman, called. I could tell he didn't want to say it, so I said it for him.
     Molly Primrose isn't real, is she?
     "It's our contact name for customer service,'' he said, reluctantly. "It's a rotating series of people who do it. We take it very seriously for a company that sells such stupid, useless things."
      Of course, one shouldn't pull back the corporate skirts too much. Still, upon reflection, it struck me that the only thing more wonderful than there being an actual Molly Primrose is there being a business in this day and age that feels compelled to make one up.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 24, 2007

An apology to Poland: Smithsonian scrubbing humbles once great nation

 

     Pride goeth before a fall, the Bible says.
     Well, not really. Like many widely-quoted phrases, that's an improvement on the original, polished smooth by longtime use. The actual line in Proverbs 16 in the King James Bible is "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."
     Either way, a reminder to tack toward humility. 
     I try to bear that in mind. But sometimes I get carried away.
     Such as in February, 2021. The future was bright. The Trump era had seemingly ended the month before. If you told me the guy who sicc'd a mob on the U.S. Capitol would sweep back into office in four years, I'd have laughed. America was back, and what better way to celebrate than to brag about our freedom?
     It being Black History Month, I chose our nation's bleakest chapter. My column began: "You know the great thing about centuries of slavery in the United States? The big positive that gets 
overlooked ... ?"
     A tease — what could be good about slavery? — to draw readers in, leading to the reveal. The good thing about slavery was:
     "That we can talk about it now, honestly, openly, write and discuss, and contemplate our nation’s difficult and tortured past, unafraid. That is an undeniable greatness of America, one to be proud of. Because not every country can manage it."
     To provide an example, I decided to kick Poland, because that winter, two historians, Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski with Warsaw's Polish Center for Holocaust Research, were hit by a lawsuit by the government-funded Polish League against Defamation, which sued the authors, as I put it, "for recounting history that contradicts their sense of unmitigated national glory."
      The column I wrote was peppered with translated quotes from Yiddish letters from my great uncle, Zalman Bramson, about life in Poland in the 1930s. Let's just say Poles didn't need the Germans to teach them to abuse Jews. 
     “The Holocaust is not here to help the Polish ego and morale,” said Grabowski. “... which seems to be forgotten by the nationalists.”
     Not forgotten. Actively suppressed. Nationalists have a way of pushing the nations into the abyss. History teaches this, so must be prettied up so as not to give away the game.
Feeling myself on safe ground, I indulged in some analysis.
      "Like our own country for the past half decade, and nations around the world, Poland fell in the grip of resurgent nationalism. A shameful political philosophy that believes a country becomes great, not by actually doing great things, but through talk, threats and pressure. Their greatness is declarative — tell everybody “We are great!” Over and over and over."
      The nation of Poland, through its embassy in Washington, demanded the column be taken down, while finding nits to pick — this supposed "historians" I cite, his degree was in sociology!

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