Newspaper memories at Christmas

     Ah, Christmas memories. Crouched in the back of a CPD squad car cruising through Englewood. Diners crowded into a busy River North Thai restaurant. The great rose window of the Rose of Sharon Community Baptist Church, backlit by flame.
     Not your average Christmas memories. Then again, I am not your average Christmas celebrant. In fact, I've never observed the holiday in my life. Never woke up and scampered downstairs to see what Santa left me. Never lived in a house with a tree. Not once. I'm a Jew. We don't do Christmas.
     Okay, not generally. Some Jews do. They figure, the holiday is secular enough, why not join the party? Why miss out on fun, even if it's somebody else's fun? And I don't judge them.
     Okay, maybe I judge them a little. Cookies and carols are one thing. But a tree? Really? A "Hanukkah bush"? It's like wearing a medal for a battle you didn't fight in.
     What I have done, quite religiously, is work on Christmas. This year, needing to blow off a week of vacation or else lose it — and never losing vacation is close to holy writ for me — I deliberately took off the week of the 15th, so as to be back now, to lighten the load for my colleagues who have presents to wrap and mistle to toe and whatever else it is must be done to commemorate Jesus's birth.
     When I started at the Sun-Times, I'd work the night shift at Christmas, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., grumbling mightily, trying to hide the fact that being in the newsroom on Christmas was begin italgreatend ital. You got paid double-time. There were platters of cookies and cold cuts. Not many people around. Often a bottle tucked somewhere. I remember sitting at the slot — the U-shaped central news desk — with ... thinking hard ... Jim Merriner, maybe? Silently sipping bourbon in white styrofoam coffee cups. Listening to the police scanner crackle at midnight.
     Being me, I tried to take advantage of the opportunity, wondering: who else works Christmas? I spent Christmas eve, 1986, riding around Englewood in the back of a police cruiser with a pair of rookies. Writing the story gave me a lot of respect for police officers — I was scared, running up the stairway of a pitch black six-flat, and I was with two cops.
     Another Christmas I visited Asian restaurants and interviewed Jews — and Muslims — happily chowing down. One said that eating Chinese food on Christmas is a Jewish tradition. Prompting a rabbi to phone me a couple days later to express outrage that I had somehow maligned Jewish traditions. I said something along the lines of "Rabbi, don't you see that you complaining is a worse insult to Judaism than the thing you're complaining about?" Leading to further complaints, meetings and apologies, teaching me a valuable lesson: save candor for people you respect.

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'Celebrating you on your special day'

 

    Modern life is jammed with decisions. Do this, buy that. Or don't do that, don't buy this. Being married, my wife and I typically make decisions together. In the past, big decisions — buying a condo; having children. Lately, small decisions.
     A friend of her family, Bobby, turned 100 over the weekend. He was a classmate of her mother's —used to dip her pigtails in the inkwell, he used to say. There was a party, at his apartment in Arlington Heights. A card seemed in order. The Hallmark shop in Northbrook closed long ago — sending cards is not the thing it used to be, I suppose. So we went to Osco, which has a wide selection of cards.

     The birthday section offers age-specific cards, intended for children turning 1, 2, 3, and such. We speculated, as we hunted, whether there would be a "So you're 100!" card. My  hunch was there would not be — think of how small that market is. But there it was. An elegant-yet-lighthearted, gold-lettered card —you wouldn't want something too jokey, or too serious, or leering. I examined it.

      "This one is pretty," my wife said, showing me another card, cheerful, arty, with cut-outs of balloons. A nice card. But also, I felt, a missed opportunity.
     "How often do you get the chance?" I said, making the case for the 100 years card in my hands. My view carried the day, and we bought the card. My wife had me make copies of two photos of Bobby and his wife, posing with her parents and other friends, at some long-ago occasion, maybe 60 years ago, and we tucked them in the card.

     The tough part about decisions is there are usually multiple factors involved, and you can't consider everything, try though you might. My wife, sharper than me, saw the problem minutes later, in the car.

     "I wonder how many people will buy that exact card?" 

     Produced by American Greetings, it was probably in every Osco in the city. 

     We arrived at the party. I could not resist looking about and noticing three of our card's distinctive blue envelopes, piled atop gifts. And two more on the piano. Plus one identical card that had already been opened. And ours. Making seven in plain sight. No doubt more elsewhere.

     No big harm. Repetition is a key part of growing old, routines you cherish, and those you don't. The birthday boy and his family may have even had a laugh over the seven identical cards. That's a present in itself.

The Chicago City Council fights an inferno with squirt guns

 

     Well, it took 'em long enough.
     Where was this City Council spirit of rebellion when Richard M. Daley was giving away the city's parking meter concession in 2008? Cutting off a major revenue stream for the next 75 years, leaving $4 billion on the table, a blunder called "the worst privatization deal in U.S. history."
     A few days of review, and the Council rubber stamped the folly, 40 to 5.
     No more. In a rare Saturday vote, the council voted 30 to 18 to send Mayor Brandon Johnson its own budget plan, rejecting his spending plan as unworkable.
     Is it? Heck if I know. The details of municipal planning are a nosedive into the weeds.
     But maybe we should peer into the undergrowth anyway. Given the entire future of Chicago is teetering on the edge of a cliff, ready to plunge into bankruptcy and ruin, we are obligated to put on our thinking caps and consider it, once again.
     When I wrote about this in 2014, as Rahm Emanuel grappled with the issue, the unfunded pension obligation was $32 billion. Now, it's more than $50 billion.
     That's the central problem. The city is on the hook for more pension debt than 44 states — Chicago has a bigger pension burden than Florida.
     How did that happen? Politics. Chicago has 32,000 city workers. Whether those workers vote for you or an opponent can decide an election. Easy to promise them gravy you don't have.
     And that isn't the only problem. COVID hollowed out the city's economic life while ramping up expenses. Texas started sending busloads of undocumented immigrants, and while housing them was the right thing to do, it still cost money.
     Chicago sure needs the people. The city's population is 2.7 million. You know what it was in 2020? 2.7 million. In 2010? 2.7 million. The city population has roughly plateaued for the past 45 years. Chicago has has fewer people now than it did 100 years ago. Can't tax people who aren't here.
     That's the deficit side. Now let's look at the proposed solutions.
     The mayor wants to put a head tax on business — that, plus his lack of even a flicker of political savvy, stirred the Council to act against him. But their proposal is just as weak as his. Increase fees on plastic grocery bags. Sell advertising on city light poles. Video poker.
     Do you see a difference in scale? The problems are enormous, involving billions of dollars in forced payments, hundreds of thousands of people wandering off or staying away. The proposed solutions are so feeble. The house is on fire, and the mayor and City Council are fighting over an array of squirt guns, arguing which will work best.
     Sigh.

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Getting hung up on art

"Lyra" by Jessica Joslin

     Context is important.

     I went to the West Town Chamber of Commerce in Ukrainian Village on Friday night. Some of Tony Fitzpatrick's artist friends had gotten together to put on a show, "Black Swan Elegies," in his honor, and invited me. The Metra schedule gave me the choice of being a little early or a little late, and I chose early, so I could leisurely walk a cigar up Western and then east along Chicago Avenue. 

     I was the first guest there, so had time to  admire the various artworks, such as Jessica Joslin's dramatic bird above. 

     After I'd looked at the pieces, I went into the hallway, toward the front room, where there was a bar, and a spread of cookies. The choice was wine, but the bartender kindly dug up a bottle of chilled water for me. 

     Passing back through the hall, I noticed this line of little birds — Tony did like his birds —and appreciated their crisp uniformity, so snapped a photo.

    I looked for the placard, for the artist's name, the piece's title. But didn't notice one, and didn't think much of that. An oversight perhaps.

     More people arrived. I talked to friends in the front room. Then decided to go back into the gallery, now filling up with people. 

     Only then did I realize my mistake. For a bright guy, I can be extraordinarily dense. Do you see it coming? I certainly didn't. I had a good laugh at myself. Those unfortunates who have to always insist that they're right, even when they're wrong, never know the pleasure — nearly a joy — of having a good laugh at your own expense. Not art. A coatrack.

 

Stray photo

 

     This is weird. So my wife and I have dinner on Wednesday. We light candles for Hanukah. We watch a little TV, endure the president's pathetic rant. About 10 p.m., I walk the dog.
     Back at home, I go to post my photo of the four candles on the blog — I figure, this is a year to be Jewish a little more prominently. Show we're not afraid. I'm not afraid, anyway. Not yet.
     I look at my photos, and there's the black and white photo above, the most recent photo. I didn't take it, didn't download it, don't know the person in the photo or how it got there.
     I asked Prof. Google to explain. The possibilities ranged across the board. Shared by somebody with access. Hacked somehow. I had a hard time believing it was something done intentionally. What would be the point? A test? Next time it'll be something vile. The cops will bust in, and the incriminating evidence will be spattered across my phone. 

     Nah. That can't be. Maybe the photo was transmitted years ago and somehow, through some alignment of the planets, congealed on my phone. Strange stuff happens.
      Several times in recent months, a random Facebook video was sent by me to my son. Only I didn't send it. This seems something like that. An artifact, a glitch. When you consider how pervasive these networks are, how omnipresent the phones, in our hands for hours, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. I am using an iPhone 12, and have been poised to get a new phone —the 16 or the 17, anybody notice a difference? They cost about the same.

     My wife urged me not to post the photo — it's not a kid we know, but someone's kid, unless it's an AI composite, and children should be kept offline as much as possible, lest their images be seized and put to unspeakable purposes. I made a pouty face, and she then suggested I do an image search, which I did. Turns out the photo was posted to X the day before I saw it, by the Paris Review, along with a quote from the poet Alice Oswald. A blip from a network I signed up for years ago but now seldom visit. 

     Oswald is an English poet of considerable renown. Of course I looked at her oeuvre, starting with "Severed head floating downriver," which seemed apt for this occasion. It begins:

It is said that after losing his wife, Orpheus was torn to
pieces by Maenads, who threw his head into the River
Hebron. The head went on singing and forgetting,
filling up with water and floating way.

And ends: 

    this is how the wind works hard at thinking
    this is what speaks when no one speaks

   I deleted the photo from my phone. But the unease lingers. These devices, they're cracks in our lives. Our light shines out, wanly and is largely ignored. Meanwhile, all sorts of stuff seeps in. 

600 percent more bullshit

     Yeah, I watched the speech Wednesday night. Switched away from a very satisfying "American Masters" program about Dick Van Dyke on PBS to do so. I had no idea Van Dyke's road to success was so rocky — the number of blind alleys he went down, the failed shows, the misfires, and then "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was cancelled at the end of its first season, and only an extraordinary effort by its producer saved the program at the last moment. Life is struggle.
     But I was curious. Of course I hoped for some kind of Captain Queeg quality gibbering breakdown. Icing on the cake of a generally lousy few weeks for the Orange Enormity, not that his base is paying attention or cares at this point. Maybe a few are feeling a flash of unease that something might not be perfect. But that ain't no revolution. Once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, as I always say, the precise nature of the reality being ignored hardly matters.
     I distracted myself by sending out quips on Bluesky. He launched into his diatribe, and I thought of a train. "All aboard …. for Crazytown!"
     Though it wasn't even that terrible, not by our sub-gutter standards. Just the usual lies. His greatest hits. I'll grant him this — his skin tone looked almost normal. That's something new.
     My wife couldn't stand it, and fled the room. Me, I marveled that he was reading — had someone written down a rambling rant, and he was repeating it? There wasn't an artful sentence in the whole spiel. It was like watching a baby cry from a script.
     What struck me was how expected, unsurprising, and dull it all was, more of the same, in the standard spirit that everything he says is a confession.
     “One year ago our country was dead, absolutely dead,” said the animate corpse, his soul a suppurating slab of putrefaction.
     “We are respected again,” said the international laughingstock.
     Prescription prices were falling “400, 500, even 600 percent,” said the innumerate moron. Math doesn’t work like that.
     I think I'll end here. But we shouldn't hurry past that math gaffe. He's done it before. A 10-year-old can grasp the reality: If an apple costs a dollar, and I give you a 90 percent discount, then the apple costs you a dime. If I give you a 100 percent discount, then it's free. I'm not sure a 500 percent discount even makes sense, in this context, but it could mean that I'm paying you $4 to take it.
     The pharmaceutical companies aren't paying you to take their drugs. And I'm not going to bother flagging all the other lies in the speech, except to note the media still does not call the lies. "Untruths" or "fabrications" or whatever. Which itself is idiotic. We descend to his level, or toward it anyway. 
     The whole thing left me sad — this is the man who is destroying America? This? This? Who might yet upend democracy? This thing? We shouldn't skate by the $1,776 payment to each soldier. Of course it might never be delivered — he said the checks were on the way, which means nothing. And it seems that the payments might be real, but have nothing to do with him. He's just taking credit for them, which is par for the course.

     Maybe he's trying to spin the payments into a bribe of some kind, to buy the soldiers' loyalty. Cheap, to sell out our country. But then Trump sold the entire United State government to Elon Musk for $274 million. Trump probably thought it was a lot, but it was selling us out for very little. I've seen a lot of corrupt officials in my day at the paper, and it's always shocking how little they get for their betrayals. America sold its soul for nothing.

Flashback 2013: Is Sandy Hook a shrine or a school?

9/11  Memorial, New York City.

    The slaughter in Australia and the murders at Brown meant that the faces of the first graders slain at Sandy Hook were popping up on social media again. I suppose that passes for reflection. This column ran a dozen years ago, an artifact when such killings sparked national conversation. With our democracy imperiled, musing on the uses of memory seems almost antique.

    "Cursed shall be the ground because of you.”
     Strong words, particularly coming from God, who utters them when he condemns Adam and Eve for eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
     The idea that the ground itself can be poisoned by the acts committed upon it is very old, and slumbers in a dark antechamber of the human heart, waiting for atrocities like the Newtown shootings to re-awaken.
     More than a month after 20 first-graders and six staffers were killed at Sandy Hook school, the question is: should the school be made into a memorial or returned to its intended use? The community has had several meetings, with more debate to come.
     You would think that the answer would break down along lines of impact — that the most affected, the devastated parents and loved ones, would push for a memorial, while the lesser-impacted town folk would pause over the cost of replacing an entire school.
     But it is more complicated. Some parents want their kids to go back, while outsiders insist they never be asked to return.
     In a way, they’re playing out, on a large scale, what individuals who suffer tragedies go through. They are torn between focusing on the bad thing and forgetting about it, or trying to. To forget too quickly feels wrong. As does lingering too long.
     Sadly, we have had enough atrocities that we can look to the past for guidance, although they offer a mixed bag. The scope of the bloodletting isn’t the issue — Columbine went back to being a high school, its name unchanged, after a dozen students were killed, while Brown’s Chicken pulled down the restaurant in Palatine where seven died. Gacy’s house was bulldozed but the apartment where Richard Speck killed eight student nurses in 1966 was later rented out.
     Cinemark reopened the Aurora, Colo., movie theater where 12 died, renaming and reconfiguring it. If you go to the Oriental Theater* on Randolph Street, you are at the exact site of the Iroquois Theater, where the worst theater fire in American history occurred, killing 600 people, many children.
     To me, the Iroquois offers up the key to the what-to-do puzzle, one people overlook during these discussions. Newtown gives every thinking person a visceral shudder, while the Iroquois Theater doesn’t, because the fire happened a long time ago — 100 years exactly, later this year. Time heals. Pearl Harbor still means something jarring to us but the Argonne doesn’t, even though 2,000 Americans died at the former and 26,000 died at the latter, a battle in World War I.
     All this talk of remembering the Newtown massacre forever shows that people don’t realize what forever means. Ford’s Theatre was seized by the United States government after Lincoln’s assassination, announcing that no public amusements would be held there, forever. But in the late 1960s, Ford’s was restored and returned to a theater — “Our Town” is playing there now.
     What do I think? Every time I hear someone say, “No child should be asked to go back to Sandy Hook Elementary School,” I reply, “Because you wouldn’t want to ask anyone to confront something terrible?”
     Our nation fails that way. From the symbolic fiddling we’re considering, briefly, regarding gun control, to our habit of kicking the economic can down the road, we are a people too hot to build memorials for tragedies and too timid to address their causes.
     Is the ground cursed because of the killings or sanctified because of the deaths? If it’s cursed, tear the school down and put up a granite monolith; if it’s sanctified, what better memorial to slain students than a school?
     I don’t believe in curses. The whole debate has a tinge of the irrational. How does the impulse to raze the school square with the common sentiment that mass killers’ names shouldn’t even be put in the papers, in the flimsy theory that doing so rewards their desire for fame? (People always assume these murders are done for notoriety, based on nothing but their own desire for glory).
     I will admit my bias. Londoners kept going about their routine during the Blitz, to shake their fists at the Nazi bombers. The Israelis, at the height of the Intifada, when suicide bombs were going off in coffee shops and at falafel stands, would quickly hose away the gore, replace the windows, right the overturned chairs and reopen for business.
     That seems the path of the hero. To say that kids will be traumatized re-entering the school both insults the kids and implies that people should simply avoid their fears — that is a bad lesson. If one of my children were killed at that school, I’d vastly prefer his tribute to be a ban on high-capacity clips over any marble megalith. The best honor for the kids who died is to do whatever we can to keep the kids we still have alive. But that won’t happen, because it’s easier to light an eternal flame than to take daring action.

          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 25, 2013

* The name of the theater was changed to Nederlander in 2019.