In today's English classes, kids often read just snippets of novels — and that's a shame

     Confession: I never read “The Grapes of Wrath.” Not until now. Most people are forced to read it in high school. It was taught in American Tradition, “AmTrad” we called it. I scorned the plebe English course, and took Honors AP Literature. We read “Great Expectations.”
     I might have never read “The Grapes of Wrath"— something about migrant farm workers in the 1930s; sounded dreary — without a prod from technology. I signed up for Audible, years ago, because I wanted to read all 21 volumes of Patrick O’Brian’s “Master and Commander” seafaring series. Listening to books is easy, especially when you walk a dog.
     But Audible is a stern taskmaster. You pay your $14.99 a month, permitting you to download one book. Those months snap by, particularly when you’re signing up for bricks like “Don Quixote.”
     Desperate to knock back a credit, I grabbed “The Grapes of Wrath” just because it seems like one of those books that a person such as myself ought to have read. Honestly, I came to it so unfamiliar, I thought William Faulkner had written it, until I saw that no, it was John Steinbeck. I come clean about that because a person who puts on airs the way I do, with my Dante and my big words, ought to bring himself down a notch or two, from time to time.
      The book is almost 500 pages long — 30 hours of listening. The plot is simple. The good though poor Joad family loses their Oklahoma farm and goes on the road to California, where they expect to pluck oranges off the trees and enjoy life. Complications ensue. 

     While I was in the midst of this, in one of those moments where the news becomes a sort of Greek chorus, the New York Times reported on a survey of 2,000 parents, teachers and students, whose findings were neatly summed up in the headline: "Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class."
     "By the time teachers get through their required curriculums and prep students for exams, they often have little or no time left to guide classes through a whole book," the paper reported.
     Instead they read AI summaries —the modern version of Cliff's Notes — and selected slices.
     This is a shame because a great book is like trekking through a foreign land. A 15-minute segment just won't cut it. It's like looking at a postcard of a national park versus spending the day hiking there.

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Jan. 6, 2021 + Five

 

Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment,
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (National Gallery of Art)

     It isn't as if nobody saw it coming.
     Just the opposite. You could see it a mile away. On Jan. 5, 2021, I jotted in my journal: "We're quite worried about tomorrow. Yes, Trump will probably fail. But there's always that chance. History has its thumb on the scale for tyrants."

     Does it ever. 

     The boys were home —schools closed for COVID  — watching the Congressional hearings on television. I joined them. Mitch McConnell gave a laudable speech, backing the orderly transition of democracy. At first. Then he slid into the partisanship ditch, as if by force of habit. Ted Cruz stood up and tried to use the suspicion he sowed as a reason to delay the outcome. 
      Then the mob that Trump had egged on stormed the Capitol. 
     My column in that day's Sun-Times, Jan. 6, 2021, ran under the headline, "The South shall fall again. And again. And again." It groped back to the previous enormous division in our country,  the Confederacy, and how it was doomed to lose. Why is the Civil War relevant now? Because...

      "It’s still unfolding. The Confederacy lost the war, but never gave up the fight — its baked-in bigotry, the proud ignorance required to consider another human being your property, marches on, from then to now. Manifesting itself plainly in the Trump era, his entire political philosophy being the slaveholder mentality decked out in new clothes, trying to pass in the 21st century. They even wave the same rebel flag. Kind of a giveaway, really.
     "The Lost Cause marches on, as we will see Wednesday, when Congress faces another ego-stoked rebellion: Donald Trump’s insistence that his clearly losing the 2020 presidential election in the chill world of fact can be set aside, since he won the race in the steamy delta swampland between his ears."

    I had no idea just how big that rebellion would be. A shocking moment of chaos and violence and absent leadership. Trump watched the disaster unfold, and smiled. 

     Nor could I have imagined its eventual success. How 1,600 wrongdoers would be pardoned without repercussions of any kind. The event itself vanishing in a swirl of lies and forgetfulness. Historians will pick over until the end of time is how, caught in such obvious sedition, Donald Trump could possibly be re-elected. How Americans could care so little for their country, its institutions and traditions, that they would blindly follow a liar, bully, fraud and traitor. 

     Yet they did. He won the 2024 election, fair and square. That's why I can never hate him — he didn't put himself in office. Half the country did. Or as I sometimes explain it, "If we elected a dog as president, would you hate the dog?"
      The structural damage done to our nation in Trump's second term will take years to grasp, never mind reverse. Harm to the rule of law. To the federal bureaucracy that millions of American depend upon. To our health care system. To our standing in the world. To the future of science. 

     Not that it can be reversed. We can't go back to what we were before. Honestly, given where it took us, I don't think we'd want to. The question now is: what new thing are we going to end up? Something better? That seems a long shot, particularly now, as we daily decay into something worse. As awful as 2025 was, I'm certain of this: we have not had the bad part yet. That's coming.

     In my Jan. 6, 2021 column I ended, as I often try to do, on an optimistic note: 

     "The fight continues. In the spring of 1861, the Tribune called the Southern secession 'the most senseless and causeless rebellion of all history.' Until now. We may have surpassed it with Trump’s frantic tearing at our democracy, supported by a cast of cowards and traitors, hailed by the eternally duped. And for what? Lower taxes? A wall? Their fetus friends? An embassy in Jerusalem? I will never understand it.
     "No matter. They’re losers. They lost in 1865, lost in 2020. Evil always loses, eventually. Since they continue to fight, desperate to go back to the plantations of their dreams, they’ll continue to lose. Not every battle. But their war against the future is futile, doomed. Drowned out by the swelling ranks of diverse, accepting Americans, facing actual problems with courage and candor, dedicated to helping our nation become what she is destined to be."

     Do I still believe that? Yes, I do. For one, as bad as our current situation is, it could be — and might yet be — far worse. Plus there is much to be positive about. Ordinary Americans stood up to the masked thugs of ICE. The courts beat back attempts to put the military in our streets as a dry run. Some of Trump's most devoted acolytes have bolted from him. It can be done.
     The second Trump term is worse than the first, and we have not yet reached the bottom. But we will. We will hit bottom, eventually. And then bounce back up, rise again. Until then, the only option is to watch, speak out, resist, hope, and wait. 

 

      

Edith Renfrow Smith, a 'memory keeper' and living link to history, dies at 111

 

Edith Renfrow Smith (photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin)

     In 2021, a former CPS teacher named Greg Lopatka asked me if I wanted to go with him to visit a former colleague who was about to turn 107. My reflexive response — "God no, why would I want to do that?" — immediately struck me as not exactly the path of the hero. If there is one truth in my business, it's "If you don't go, you never know." So I overcame inertia, and agreed to go. I did not expect much, and showed up at Edith Renfrow Smith's apartment without so much as Googling her name. Was I in for a surprise, almost a shock, as I asked my questions, and her extraordinary life unspooled.  I feel very blessed to have known this amazing woman.

   Edith Renfrow Smith was born in Iowa two weeks before the start of World War I. Her earliest memories involve the end of the war in 1918 and a neighbor who came home having lost both legs. She met aviator Amelia Earhart while an undergraduate at Grinnell College, where she became the first Black female graduate, class of 1937. After graduation, she came to Chicago to work at the YMCA and was living in the city Friday when her long, extraordinary life ended.
     Mrs. Smith was 111. She had celebrated Christmas with family but then stopped eating.
     "She felt it was time," said her daughter, Alice Frances Smith, 80. "She said she was tired."
     Mrs. Smith was one of perhaps a thousand "supercentenarians” — people who live to 110 — in the world, and a living link to history. She clearly remembered her grandparents, born in slavery, her memory so sharp she was included in the SuperAging Research Initiative at the University of Chicago, a similar study at Northwestern and a genetics study in Boston.
     Mrs. Smith was revered at Grinnell, honored as a pioneer and role model to young women.
     "To be in her presence was to travel through time and space because Miss Edith was a memory keeper," said Dr. Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, the chair in gender, women’s and sexuality studies at Grinnell. "With ease and pride, she recounted two centuries of her family’s history, dating back to the 1830s. ... We followed her meticulous recollections to explore her extended family’s deep Iowa roots, which were laid before the Civil War. She guided our knowledge of other Black families who called Grinnell home in the early 20th century, and she made visible the Rosenwald Scholars. This handful of Black men attended Grinnell in the 1920s and ate Sunday dinner at her family home. Although all of her five siblings were college educated, it is from the Rosenwald Scholars that Miss Edith first 'caught a vision' of attending Grinnell College specifically."
     Mrs. Smith was granted an honorary doctorate in 2019.
     “Grinnell has been my life," she told the audience.
     In 2022, a dorm was named after her — Renfrow Hall, a new facility designed to encourage interaction between students and community residents.
     "We have much to learn from her steadfastness and perseverance, her excellence and her belief that we can do better," Grinnell President Anne F. Harris said at the ceremony. "She has taught so many over generations. It is deeply meaningful and fitting that this building focused on students, their residential and learning experiences, and situated at the intersection of the town and the college, will bear her name,”
     She was born July 14, 1914, in Grinnell, the fifth of six children. Her father, Lee Renfrow, was a chef at the Monroe Hotel. Her mother, Eva Pearl, took in laundry.
     In 1940, she married Henry T. Smith, a milkman for the Borden Milk Company. They had two daughters, Edith Virginia and Alice Frances.
     The family moved to Bronzeville, where they lived across from Wayman Hancock, a meat inspector.

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Insults, spoiled food and no bedding — inside a Chicago landscaper’s ordeal with ICE in Broadview

 

Rey Estrada and Liz Soto

     “It was a little bit hard, the words they were saying...” began Rey Estrada, in Spanish, when asked about being seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 21 as he did landscaping work in Rogers Park, ticking off terms that hardly need translation: “Illegal. Gordo. Negro.” Illegal. Fat. Black.
     “That’s why they stopped me. My skin. “
     Estrada was one of about 4,000 Chicagoans swept off the street beginning in September under Operation Midway Blitz, the federal government deportation campaign targeting immigrants in the Chicago area. While labeling the people they were seizing as “the worst of the worst,” most of the immigrants arrested — more than 60% — had no criminal record whatsoever. Estrada never had so much as a parking ticket.
     He spent three hours in the back of an SUV, and was taken to ICE’s detention facility in west suburban Broadview. He spent the next 48 hours in a large room with 150 other men — in a room he was told was intended for 80 people. There were three metal toilets. The lights were always on.
     “They never turned it off,” he said. Estrada had no bed, no mattress, no blankets. He folded his jacket as a pillow. Sleep was impossible anyway — every half hour the door was opened and various names were screamed.
     It was also hot — the detainees begged the guards to keep a slot open for ventilation. They were fed Subway sandwiches that had spoiled — Estrada picked the black moldy meat off and ate the bun.
     He said the Spanish-speaking guards were harsher than the English speakers.
     “The guards yelled at us and called us pigs,” he said. “The guards who spoke English, I have nothing bad to say about them.”
     He was allowed to call home the afternoon he was detained.
     “We were worrying about him,” his wife, Liz Soto, said. “I was driving to go pick up the kids from school. He asked me, ‘How are you?’ and I asked him, ‘How do you want me to be?’”
     He told her they were offering him self-deportation money to go to Mexico.

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Bob Dylan's 'unaccustomed subjunctive' case

Bob Dylan at the Chicago Stadium, Jan. 3, 1974

    The New Year made me think of my 2022 book, "Every Goddamn Day," with its 366 little essays on Chicago history.
      Some dates were easy to match to an event — Oct. 8, the Great Chicago Fire, March 3, the incorporation of the city, Aug. 15, the unveiling of the Picasso. 
      Then there was Jan. 3. Nothing really happened on Jan. 3 — the best I could come up with was a Bob Dylan concert in 1974. Which was a fact, not a story. So I started to dig. It was his first solo show since he nearly died in a motorcycle accident in 1966. Trivia, not a story. 
     Eventually I found a set list, mentioning the debut of a certain song. And a stuffy Tribune review. And I was on my way.

     Jan. 3, 1974: The concert at the Chicago Stadium is almost over. Bob Dylan's first in eight years, since he stopped touring in 1966, blaming a motorcycle accident. He has sung his own classics, “Lay Lady Lay,” and “The Times They Are A Changing.” He has sung “Stage Fright” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” penned by the group backing him, The Band. After their “Rag Mama Rag,” Dylan launches into a song never before heard in public: 
      “May God bless and keep you always,” he begins. “May your wishes all come true.” 
      Even the Chicago Tribune's Thomas Willis—a classical music critic in his mid-40s who sometimes lowers his gaze to contemplate contemporary artists— notices. In his review, he first tut-tuts Dylan's use of obscure words. Then dismisses his singing ability. “Dylan will never win any performance prizes.” And his harmonica playing. 
      Finally, Willis gets down to picking apart one specific song.

      “He introduced, among others, one presumably titled, 'Forever Young,'” Willis writes. “It is highfalutin' in its diction and full of words like 'courage,' 'truth,' 'righteousness,' and 'joy.' Over and over, in unaccustomed subjunctive, it repeats the line, 'May you be forever young.' Make of it what you will.” 
      Artists make a lot of it, despite that grammatically unusual "may you stay" (which Williams misquotes in his review). The song will be covered at least 75 times, by artists from Joan Baez to Peter, Paul and Mary, Chrissie Hynde to Diana Ross, Harry Belafonte to Johnny Cash. All seem untroubled by the unaccustomed subjunctive, use of which will not prevent Dylan from winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016.

Honey Bear Bites

      In the 25 years I've been coming to Sunset Foods, I've encountered lots of people promoting new food products. My heart goes out to them.  Most new companies fail, and most one-person food companies fail extra fast — undercapitalized. 
      Usually they're at a table in some aisle deep within the store. But Ryan Schaul positioned himself standing right by the check-out lines. A bit inconvenient to step around, but points to him for getting in people's faces. You couldn't avoid him, not if you wanted to pay for your groceries.
     Not that I need much encouragement.  I am both a striver and a foodie, so when I meet someone who is pushing a new food product, my heart naturally goes out to them. I tried one of his Honey Bear Bites. Soft. Tasty. Not too sweet. 
     Nor cheap. At $9.99 for eight. But sweetened with honey and dried maple syrup. Ninety calories, it seemed the sort of thing I might eat if my blood sugar was trending low. I told him that I am a diabetic, and he steered me toward the bites that come with dark chocolate chips.

   "This one has less sugar because it doesn't have raisins," he said. "In each big bite, only six grams of sugar. That one would probably be the best for you."
    I asked him a few questions: what industry he was abandoning to sell the bites? (tech). Where were the bites made? (an industrial kitchen in Highland Park). It seemed ungracious to quiz the man and not buy something. 

    He's 43, a graduate of University of Wisconsin — Madison, with a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.  
    He also sells his own Sleeping Bear honey.
   "The honey helps you sleep at night," he said. "I'm very passionate about health  and wellness, and sleep is the keystone to being being healthy. That's why I started the company."
     He only flubbed one question: where does the name "Sleeping Bear" come from? He said, in essence, that it's a name he came up with and doesn't mean anything in particular. I'd advise him to work on that reply.
    I took a package home, and liked them. So much so I had to establish a personal rule — only one a day. Which I found difficult to enforce, and polished them off quickly Next time I was in Sunset, I bought another box. That tells you everything you need to know. Luxury you can afford.

      

New Year's Day, 2026

 

Suburban Clock & Repair, Berea, Ohio

      Thinking about New Year's Day and seeking inspiration, I looked at the past few years on EGD — not bad  — then did a deep dive, pulling my Waterstone's Literary Diary for 1986 down, to see what I was up to 40 years ago.
     My brother and I were in Berea, where my parents were holding one last New Year's Eve party before moving to Boulder, where they would live for 35 years. On Dec. 31 we made the rounds of our hometown, going to the barber shop where we had gotten our first haircuts, sitting on a board that had a horse's head on it, to bring us up to proper height for cutting.
     "Sam & I —shaven at barber's, drinks at Ledge's, nice small town feel," I wrote. "Barbers —Tony, Tom —wished us 'boys' well, shook hands."
     My father must have been force-feeding me tales of his youth, as was his practice, and I was taking notes that would become "Don't Give Up the Ship" a dozen years later.
     "My father told of being a young boy in New York and wanting to go to Europe ... running down the Grand Concourse, thinking self a light cruiser in a world of battleships and heavy destroyers."
     I don't believe that image made the book — a pity, because it is a sweet one, a defining quality of youth, that nimbleness, darting around lumbering obstacles. I guess I'm a dreadnaught now, blasting my low horn at the speedy cigarette boats as they flash past.
     I was 25, living in Oak Park, writing a novel, working at Graham Hayward & Associates, a tiny  Lincolnwood advertising agency, a "curious pace. Sales reps have full bar. Music in each room. Little pressure to produce." 
     Best not to get lost in the minutia of the past. The red Waterstone journal had quotes every week — hence a "Literary Diary" — and I, fond of snippets from minds sharper than my own, would write more down on the endpapers or, in this case, save time by snipping out a newspaper clipping and taping it on the page. From "Man and Superman" by George Bernard Shaw:

     "This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

     The key phrase in the above "recognized by yourself." You can't expect the world to countersign what you find important. You have to know it, in your own heart, and proceed with confidence. Maybe they catch on. Maybe they won't. Probably they won't.

      That's a thought to hold close as we boldly march into a new year. Or timidly tiptoe. Or somewhere in between.