And those XXS are going fast...

 

   

     I settled into bed with the this week's New Yorker, admired the front cover, glanced at the back and paused, puzzled, then looked closer for a more careful examination. There was something odd about the photo. Not your standard fashion shot — a smiling woman, maybe a bit more crinkled around the eyes, with deeper crow's feet, than is usual. Is that it? Her hair, a sort of ginger pink, with a few loose strands flying off. Normal, rather than high-style. Wearing a white t-shirt that took up a third of the page. No text, except a faint pair of scribbled words, "The Row," written in the upper right hand corner.

     "I don't even know what this is an ad for," I told my wife, listing my first three guesses: 1) the shirt; 2) her teeth ("The Row") 3) some TV show.
     Choice #1.
     The Row is a $1 billion luxury fashion house, founded in 2005 by former tween movie stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (long-time readers might remember my post confessing to producing their first three movies).
     I found The Row web site, and see the all-cotton white t-shirt that I think is depicted costs $550. It comes in XXS, XS, S, M, L and XL.
     I'd never heard the term XXS and, wondering who it is intended for, checked out the "Size Guide" and see it corresponds to a 22 inch waist, which is the average waist size of an 8-year-old child. Golly.
     Funny. I'd actually purchased a t-shirt for myself this week. My wife was putting in an order at Land's End, and asked if I wanted anything. I do wear their t-shirts, so looked at the colors and, throwing caution to the wind, bought one in a sky blue, thinking I could pair it with a light blue L.L. Bean summer shirt that is a particular favorite. On sale, it was $17.
     Later in the evening, I had second thoughts — I really have enough t-shirts to last me the rest of my life — and asked my wife if she could perhaps cancel her order, or somehow strike my shirt from it. Why load up on t-shirts? My wife, used to this, said no, she couldn't, and if I didn't want the shirt, she would give it to Goodwill. I said I would make room for it, somehow.
     $550 for a white cotton t-shirt. And the kicker is, five of the six sizes are already sold out, with XXS no doubt going fast.

An open letter to Pope Leo XIV on cancer and how to survive it

Debbie Dana

Dear Pope Leo:

     Whenever a friend gets cancer, I usually buy them a copy of “Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors,” by Evan Handler. The actor’s 1996 memoir is an excellent guide to navigating cancer, full of practical tips, such as making sure your nurses wash their hands.
     It’s funny, honest, and best of all — spoiler alert! — Handler survives, to this day.
     While I did consider shipping a copy to Rome, I immediately envisioned the package being tossed into one of dozens of huge canvas-sided rolling postal carts jammed with goodwill offerings: prayer cards and inspirational books and charms from the spectrum of faiths. You’re a popular guy, as I’m sure you already know.
     So I figured, better to drop my advice into this newspaper bottle and toss it into the electronic sea. Perhaps a favorable breeze will nudge it your direction. If not — the sure bet — it might help someone else in a similar position.
     My apologies about giving advice. I have a few rules regarding friends plunged into sickness or misfortune, and Rule No. 1 is: “Don’t try to fix things,” a rule frequently broken. It’s hard to resist trying to help, and handwashing is so important. People forget, and nice guys such as ourselves, we have a hard time greeting a nurse striding into our room with: “Did you wash your hands?”
     I imagine the pope gets first-class treatment, something to be thankful for. Gratitude is key in overcoming travails. My major health troubles have all been mostly mechanical rather than metastatic — spine, hip and now shoulder — which strikes me as far less severe than the Big C. I try to focus on how lucky I am to have access to advanced medical treatment, as opposed to most people in the world, who don’t. Attitude is important.
     “A cheerful heart is good medicine,” says Proverbs. But look who I’m quoting Scripture to. I’m not someone who believes in divine providence. But coincidences happen. Within hours of your lung cancer surgery Tuesday, my older sister, Debbie, arrived from Dallas. I don’t write about Debbie much, because she’s usually deep in the heart of Texas, arm wrestling the Angel of Death. But she’s here now, visiting, and as a true cancer warrior — she’s had three kinds over the last 14 years — I asked her for any wisdom she might share with a newbie such as yourself.

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Me and Debbie, circa 1963

   
 

'Look at Miss Ohio'

 

Berea, Ohio

 

    At the start of my morning stretches — have to push this rotator cuff repair back to normalacy — I called up Apple music on my iPhone where I'd left off last night, at Gillian Welch singing "Look at Miss Ohio." Usually I'd progress to the next song; instead I backtracked to the beginning:

Oh me oh my oh

Look at Miss Ohio
She’s a-running around with her ragtop down
She says "I wanna do right, but not right now"

     Not sure what the song is about, exactly, but the terminology evokes the Ohio I remember, with beauty queens and tiaras, fun times and convertibles. I actually went out, once, with a high school classmate who had a red 1965 Mustang convertible — her father's, I assume. I remember the car well; the date, not so much.
     I'm a sucker for Ohio songs, which are distinct from Cleveland songs, like Ian Hunter's "Cleveland Rocks," — pressed into service as the theme song for the Drew Carey show, with its joyful burst into downtown, though they, sadly, cheaped out when it came to paying rights for the vastly superior original and hired an imitator.

     Ohio songs, like the state itself, are good but idiosyncratic, both stuck in certain eras and timeless, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's classic protest ,"Ohio," 
      Lately, like "Look at Miss Ohio," Ohio tunes are vaguer, less defined. The National's "Blood Buzz Ohio" has a weird, somber quality to it over driving drums.

I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I never married, but Ohio don't remember me

     I like bees, and Ohio certainly doesn't remember me. As for marriage, well, you can't relate to everything. Though looking at the video, the song seems to be about the miserable trudge of active alcoholism, which might explain its appeal to me. 
     Chrissie Hynde feels like she deserves a category of her own, with many references to her hometown of Akron, and "My City Was Gone," her classic spin on Thomas Wolfe's edict about the impossibility of going home.

 I went back to Ohio, but my city was gone
 There was no train station
 There was no downtown

     As with Chicago, "Cuyahoga" is a Native-American word that started out describing a body of water — it means "crooked river" in a language thought to be Mohawk — and then gets attached to the place around it, now the name of both the county containing Cleveland, and the river that runs through it. I never listened hard to R.E.M.'s "Cuyahoga" beyond its nostalgic tone. 

This is where we walked
This is where we swam
Take a picture here
Take a souvenir

       The line that touches me now, seeing that my home state has slid into MAGAland, is "Let's put our heads together/And start a new country up." Someone has to.
     Just being about Ohio isn't enough to save a song. Patty Griffin's "Ohio" is a droning dirge. Not even the talents of Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant are able to save it.
     There's only one way to end this. I wouldn't be here without Ohio State University, where my parents met in 1954. "The Buckeye Battle Cry" might not touch on the University of Michigan fight song, "The Victors," but it's the best we've got, and it'll have to do. "Our honor defend/We fight to the end." That sounds like a plan.

Downtown, Berea

Trump weighs a public execution, which once elicited delight — and revulsion

     A reader writes, aghast at government plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army major who murdered 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009.
     “I am so upset, so disgusted and in disbelief,” she says. “What has happened to this country?”
     I want to sympathize, but can’
     “Disbelief?” I reply. “Really? You are paying attention, right? This is very on brand for them.”
     Between condemning children in Africa to death by denying food — and now vaccines — to shooting Americans in the street for failing to comply promptly to the orders of masked men, to the certain atrocities going on out of sight in windowless ICE prisons nationwide, the idea of the government beginning to ballyhoo their horrors has a certain appeal. At least we’ll be able to witness this one. And unlike most victims of official violence, Hasan bears undeniable guilt.
     I’m generally against the death penalty, because it is so misapplied, racially and economically. But I’m willing to make exceptions — I’m glad Timothy McVeigh is not still around, writing manifestos, enjoying cheeseburgers and watching Netflix in his cell. Hasan falls into that category.
     Which doesn’t mean his death should be served up as public entertainment? Or should it?
     We’ve fallen out of practice watching public executions. To get myself in the spirit, I pulled down a collection of William Makepeace Thackeray’s journalism and reread “Going to See a Man Hanged.”
     Writing in 1840, the future author of “Vanity Fair” spends pages setting the scene — his sleepless night before friends arrive in a carriage at 3 a.m., imagining the final hours of “the poor wretch” awaiting execution. The gallows set up in the street before Newgate Prison; the sight sends “a kind of dumb electric shock” through Thackeray. The “gentle and good humored” crowd of 40,000 — Charles Dickens is also there. The cursing ragamuffins and teenage prostitutes, “giggling, drinking, and romping.” The jokes, the rumors, the catcalls.
     The condemned man, François Courvoisier, a Swiss valet who slit the throat of his employer, regards the crowd with “a wild, imploring look. His mouth, contracted into a sort of pitiful smile.”

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Cornell: 'Where Men of Muscle Win Their Way'

Grove Street Cemetery Gatehouse, New Haven, Connecticut

 

     When I was a freshman at Northwestern, I kept a wooden paddle in my dorm room window with the image of a knight in armor holding his thumb to his nose and waggling his fingers along with the letters, "GDI," a parody of fraternity names, standing for "God Damn Independent." 
     I was mystified by frats, found their members, by and large, bullies and boors, and resented that they occupied the apex of social life at NU, enjoying the best housing, a series of ivied, lead-glasses structures along Sheridan Road, while I lived in the NU Apartments, a retrofitted apartment building, gigantic and grim, turned into a 600 person dorm that wasn't even on the college campus, but in downtown Evanston.
     So my reaction to events like the alleged Cornell gang rape that have been pinballing around the media for weeks would be a "What did you expect?" — except that might be seen as insufficient ire in the freefire zone of moral outrage that broke out over this event. Better to stay quiet than to put my hand into that thresher.
     All I can add is there must be something about Cornell. While having a generally positive effect on American culture — the design of Campbell's soup cans are based on Cornell's colors — when they are bad, they are very very bad.
     While my 1992 pranks book, "If At All Possible, Involve a Cow" limited itself to thoughtful, clever pranks, there was one so historically significant and awful I felt obligated to include it, in a box:

     The Chlorine Banquet.

     The most notorious prank of the 19th century was the infamous "Chlorine Banquet" of Cornell University. It was the height of interclass warfare, and though the class of '98 had tried to keep their February 20, 1894 banquet a secret, word leaked out, and the location was discovered ahead of time. By the time, the freshmen, protected by a vanguard of 30 juniors, arrived at the Masonic Hall where the banquet was to be held, the street was filled with sophomores "ready to pounce upon them and use every endeavor… to spoil the freshmen's evening," according to the next day's New York Times. Though the entire Ithaca police force was at hand, a riot ensued as the freshmen tried to enter the building, "faces were punched, hats smashed, and there was a general melee, in which the officers were tossed about like chaff." The freshmen eventually gained entrance to the Hall, and the banquet went ahead, graced by such talks as "Our Noble Selves" and "Where Men of Muscle Win their Way."

     Shortly after 11 p.m., an overpowering odor began to permeate a room that was being used as a kitchen by the caterer. Several waiters and two juniors who went to investigate, were overcome by fumes and had to be taken outside. The cook, Henrietta Jackson, died. Contrary to early lurid times reports, which  fantabulized two dozen freshmen were rushed outside at the point of death, the banquet proceeded normally, and the freshmen were not informed of what was going on in the kitchen. An investigation showed that someone – presumably a group of sophomores – had intended to pump gas into the banquet hall, but misjudged, and bored holes through the floor of the kitchen instead, piping in chlorine gas they created a large glass jug. There was a huge outcry, and a grand jury met to consider charges against several suspects, who fled the campus. But guilt was never determined, and no one was indicted. The negative publicity surrounding the Chlorine Banquet did not prevent foolish students at other universities from replicating Cornell's mistakes. At Montreal's McGill University, in March 1907, sophomores doused the lights at a freshman concert and poured ammonia down the ventilation shafts. Several freshmen were burned, and some nearly blinded.

   This might seem irrelevant trivia, unrelated to the current situation at Cornell, so I will highlight two key similarities — first, a legal investigation went nowhere and, second, it happened again at other schools. 

 

Flashback 1998: A Rush campaign for mayor would have familiar, hollow ring

     Occasionally I will meet someone who expressses surprise — so I'm still working? As a columnist? At the Sun-Times? A fact they might know if they read newspapers, or got information that wasn't delivered by some earnest talking head on TikTok speaking urgently into a camera, spin they're expected to believe because, well, just because.

      Sometimes the shoe is on the other foot. Reading Frank Main's Sunday piece about Wallace "Gator" Bradley's latest hustle, my first thought was, "He's still around?" This guy has been coming in and out of my orbit for over 30 years, using his long ago gang affiliation to make a buck. 

     Looking back over his various appearances in the column, I noticed this, perhaps of interest now that Chicago is facing yet another mayor's race that is still a gathering of the hopeful and the eccentric and the deeply unqualified. Twas ever so.

    William Beavers, the famously self-described "hog with the big nuts," died in 2024. Bobby Rush retired in 2023 and turns 80 next month. There is one word I use that I would never use today — considered racist by those keen to find racism. After the piece, I'll tell you what it was.

     While I don't want to embarrass Ald. William Beavers by suggesting that he and I think alike, news of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush's possible run for the mayor's office apparently sent our minds skipping down the same path.

Bobby Rush

    "It'll be Joe Gardner all over again," said Beavers, using a two-word code phrase meaning: doomed from the start.
     I, too, couldn't help but reflect on the late commissioner of the Water Reclamation District. He set the mold for quixotic, stillborn mayoral campaigns, a pattern that I can't help but imagine Rush will fall into; another fanciful quest designed to play to a select constituency rather than the kind of broad-based consensus-building that might have a chance of success against the popular and powerful Mayor Daley.
     Perhaps you don't recall the thud with which Gardner debuted his campaign. I happened to be at the big send-off picnic, four years ago, when he tossed his hat into the ring.
     It was not the sort of gathering one forgets easily.
     My first instinct was happiness. Daley struck me at the time as a desperate, entrenched underachiever with a dangerous itch to tie the city's hopes to casino gambling. Here was this Gardner fellow — pleasant, articulate, a comforting visage in round eyeglasses. Perhaps he would be just the right man to send Daley packing. Shake things up. Harold redux.
     And even if he wasn't, he seemed primed to put up a good fight. Nobody wants to have a ruler-for-life. It makes for careless, sloppy leaders. A strong opposition keeps the pols on their toes. At least the garbage gets picked up regularly.
     That warm and fuzzy feeling of hope lasted about a minute. And then I started to notice something strange about the crowd. They seemed a lot more hostile than you would expect from a campaign kick-off crowd, which is normally a pretty cheery bunch. A lot of young, angry guys milling around. I commented to a savvy photographer that I didn't realize so many young men in baseball caps and oversized pants took such a passionate interest in politics.
     "They're Gangster Disciples," the photographer said. While I didn't check for membership cards, it certainly seemed to me that Gardner was padding his crowd with gang members.
     And sure enough, there on stage, right next to Gardner, was the mother hen himself, Wallace "Gator" Bradley.
     Oh dear, I thought. This won't play well at all in Beverly.
     Afterward, at the news conference, I asked Gardner if he would be making a policy of actively seeking the support of Chicago's street gangs.
     He said: "I don't separate people on the basis of gang membership or non-gang membership as long as members and leadership are engaged in positive things."
     He went on to rhapsodize the high-minded civic goodness generated by the much-maligned street gangs, but it was drowned out by the sound of voters turning their backs on Gardner and embracing the mayor. Gardner got creamed.
     I can't say I expect Bobby Rush to do much better. Like Gardner, he pretends to be reaching out to the entire city, when in fact he is mugging for the folks back in the district. Rush has a track record of saying literally anything he thinks will cause a stir, and his recent claim to that he is a "coalition builder extraordinaire" shows that his grasp on reality has not particularly tightened.
     I have yet to see any individual come out strongly supporting Rush, never mind a "coalition" of individuals. Jesse Jackson Jr. spun a victory scenario for Rush that was so tentative and qualified that it might well have included an election-eve revelation that Daley was sneaking out at night to fan dance at the Baton nightclub.
     I'll share my favorite Bobby Rush memory. It was a cold Sunday, and he was holding a news conference outside City Hall. I can't recall what election it was, but Rush was accusing the mayor of forcing city workers to go around in his district and threaten voters to cast their ballots a certain way.
     It was such a wild claim that I couldn't quite believe he was making it. I kept running it by him in different wordings, to see if he still maintained it. "Let me get this straight," I'd say. "Mayor Daley is blackmailing city workers to go door-to-door, on city time, and threaten your constituents, in their own homes, that they'll lose their public services if they don't vote the way he wants?"
     It was a ludicrous charge, but he stuck by it. I kept pressing him; would he go to the state's attorney? Would he protect those constituents brave enough to come forward and testify? There had to be at least four crimes going on here.
     Only slowly did it dawn on me. Bobby Rush wasn't going to the state's attorney. He didn't even believe his own rhetoric. It was just some election-year spoodle he was spinning for, well, for reasons known only to himself. To please the fringe he is out to impress.
     He's still at it.

          — Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 19, 1998

    I called Gardner "articulate" which is read by some as the racism of low expectations. "You mean Black people aren't articulate?" It's a stretch, in my book, though I wouldn't use it today, just to avoid possible hassle, leading to the unfortunate outcome that whites can safely be described as articulate while Black folks can't. Which doesn't sound right to me.

Block 37 owner is new, but is the curse still the same?

In 2013, Block 37 brought in ringers to at least get folks to their doorway.

     News items: "Orland Park-based Edwards Realty Co. announced Wednesday that it purchased Block 37 for $30 million, with plans to revamp the consumer experience at the Loop shopping mall."

     That is one way to approach it.
     Myself, I would have gone with something along the lines of:
     "You bought Block 37?!?!?! Bwahaha! Are you INSANE?"
     A matter of tone, of course. The news can — perhaps should — reflect the dry facts set before the general public: leases and payments, business plans and company announcements.
     But there is such a thing as karma. As juju. We could debate whether curses are real and whether certain physical places can be cursed for all time. The Bible endorses that notion, in Genesis: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake," God tells Adam, ejecting him from the Garden of Eden for, in his own way, failing to follow market imperatives.
     How bad is it?
     In the long history of urban development failure, there is really only one city block in the country that can be described as truly infamous: the block immediately east of Daley Plaza. Otherwise prime downtown property that has been known since before the city's founding as Block 37, it has also been called not only “cursed” but a "fiasco" and “a boondoggle.”
     In 1996, a book was published chronicling earlier doomed efforts to make something take hold there. Ross Miller’s “Here’s the Deal,” cataloging years of lawsuits and protests over what he called a “gold-plated hole in the ground.” 

Another strategy: decorate the walls with
photos of customers who weren't there.

     Since then, a chain of false starts, bankruptcies, failures and foreclosures. Along with, to be fair, several modest successes: the studios of a once-respected television network, CBS on the southern half of the block. A popular restaurant, The Dearborn, on its northwest corner. Some offices and apartments.
     And yet. One hopes Edwards Realty of Orland Park did their due diligence. But if not, buckle up guys, and sorry (psst: note to regular readers. Not really sorry. In fact, I kinda dig it) to be the one to have to tell you.

In 1830, Block 37's tale begins

     Like a good campfire story, the tale of Block 37 starts a long, long time ago, in 1830, and might indeed involve a Native American curse. Not because of the usual disturbed sacred burial ground,. But close. On the original map of Chicago, the ancestral land of the Council of the Three Fires, the Potawatomi, the Ojibwe and the Odawa, was platted up into 58 blocks so it could be sold off by New York real estate speculators to pay for the I & M Canal, thus permanently ripping off and disenfranchising the defrauded Indigenous peoples, who no doubt resented it. On that fateful document, the block delineated by Randolph, Washington, Dearborn and the edge of the map where State would someday run is designated with a number, and that number is 37.

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