It's right between Shangri-La and Wakanda

 

Chicago Public Schools board member Ellen Rosenfeld.

     With the state of Israel being continually mugged in the court of public opinion, I decided to check out Monday's celebration of the nation's 78th birthday, held by the Consulate General of Israel in Chicago. See how they are holding up.
     The location was kept secret, as is the Israel practice, a reminder that, for all the menace assigned to Jews, they're still the ones who have to lurk in the shadows, worrying about being killed, which anyone who has visited Europe must notice. Church doors are wide open for anyone to walk in off the street, while with synagogues, you find yourself being buzzed through one of those 90 degree security pens after being sniffed for explosives.
     Plus the prospect of disruptive protesting. The We Love Bunnies of Israel Club at Northwestern, should one exist, couldn't hold "Pet a Soft Bunny for Day" at Deering Meadow without being shouted at by passersby, if not organized mobs.
     Expecting something fancy, I put on my blue blazer and khakis.
     "These are Israelis, right?" said my wife, whose point of reference is when you could take a taxi from Israel to Egypt and sleep on the beach. But I read the room in advance correctly. Some of the 500 guests actually wore neckties.
     Security had to be cleared. "You want to hear my Torah portion?" I asked the stern man giving me the once over, referring to the passages read in Hebrew at my bar mitzvah. "Yes," he said, and I began to rattle off the beginning of Leviticus 25. He waved me through.
     The first partygoer I recognized was comptroller Susana Mendoza. I hurried over, and watched her show off a photo of a map of the Middle East that her son brought home from Smyser Elementary School, where the nation that since 1948 has been known as "Israel" is labeled "Palestine" in that odd performative denialism that some seem to imagine moves the ball of justice forward.
     "All these kids think Israel is Palestine because that's what they're being taught," said Mendoza. "It's everywhere."
     I asked her if she felt strongly about Israel.
     "I wouldn't be here if I didn't," she said. "Everyone should feel safe in this city. It's scarier for Jewish people."
     I suppose. Contemplating that map, I'd be tempted to say, with a brisk wave of the hand, "Well, look at that! They have their country right there. So what are you bitching about?"
     But that's cruel, and there's enough cruelty going around without adding to it. Harshness is the rule of the day. One way to understand Israel now is the deep bench of peaceniks have been swept away by years of frustration, not to forget the Oct. 7 massacre. Now they've got the same rigid nationalists plaguing this country, busy blowing Gaza to smithereens, a gift to anti-Zionists everywhere. Strange times indeed, when the Mayor of New York is a more vocal enemy of Israel than the king of Saudi Arabia.

To continue reading, click here.

Flash: Eli's Cheesecake makes non-cheesecake cake

     Imagine, for a moment, a friend says, "I'm going to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs play." You process this information, then observe, benignly: "It's a nice day for baseball." And your friend replies, "Oh no, I'm not watching the Cubs baseball team, but the Cubs soccer team. They also have a Midwest Premier League soccer team."
     You'd be gobsmacked, right? You'd think, "How did I possibly miss that?!"
     Now you are in the mindset to share an experience I had this week. I'd mentioned in my column that it was my birthday, and my friends at Eli's very kindly sent a cake. Made me feel special. But opening it, I was confronted with a surprise: it wasn't one of the ne plus ultra Eli's cheesecakes I've been rhapsodizing on this blog for the past 13 years, next week. No. It was a chocolate layer cake, specifically an Old-Fashioned Triple Chocolate Cake. 
    We served it Sunday at our Father's Day grill out, and let me tell you, the results were extraordinary. "I want THIS cake at my next birthday!" my wife enthused. Twice, lest I miss the hint, as I sometimes do. She even explained why: she likes the frosting — especially the frosting, elaborating that this is unusual because she is generally is not a fan of frosting. Often, with cake, she skips the frosting, sliding it aside. Too sweet. But not this frosting. This frosting, however, has that essential quality of being Not Too Sweet. I don't want to say that the consensus among my guests was that Eli's is hiding its light under a bushel by making all these fine cheesecakes when it is also capable of making such a superfine, magnificently dark, dense and rich but not too sweet chocolate cake that is not a cheesecake. But conversation unfolded among those lines.
     They also make a tiramisu and a classic carrot cake, as I learned after checking on the Eli's web site, curious as to whether the company actually sells this non-cheesecake cake, or if it is, I don't know, something experimental, or maybe something special their bakers whipped up in a fit of whimsy just for me. (A hint of how my mind works and why life can be so frequently disappointing). 

     The good news is, they do sell this truly excellent chocolate cake, for $64, which might seem a lot, but then again, you have not yet tasted the cake. I will also point out that they claim it serves 12, and while I would not accuse Eli's of false advertising, I will observe that we were 15 and we only managed to finish less than half the cake. Yes, we were filled with my wife's superlative tilapia ceviche and flank steak and good Romanian garlic dogs and potato salad. That said, I believe 1/12 of a cake this dense and rich and fantastic would kill any average adult after any decent meal because, believe me, I wanted more than anything else to dive in for more cake, and kept scraping up various bits left on the plate, but just couldn't physically do it. That damn Ozempic perhaps. We froze the rest for the next happy occasion.
    My bone deep honesty requires that I remind you that Eli's does spend a fortune advertising on this blog between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day, and the cynics among you might consider this log-rolling, though you would be wrong. Were the cake just ordinary cake, were it cake consumed by my guests with an indifferent shrug and a few benign comments ("I am eating this cake now") I would have let the experience pass unremarked upon. But the twin facts that a) Eli's makes non-cheesecake cake and b) it is really very, very good cake, obligated me to share this exciting news with you, in my capacity as a full-service blogger committed to sharing with my readership the wonders of the world.
     What you do with that information is your concern, though I would recommend the scoffers among you to order the cake here — it ships across the country — and then you can tell EGD readers your own honest, uninfluenced-by-the-application-of-money impressions, though I am certain they will be no different than mine.

     Meanwhile, my wife was still talking about it the next day.

     "That was incredible cake!" she said, holding my hand and gazing deeply into my eyes. "You have to tell them how much we liked that cake."

     I promised her that I would.

Dirty politics, dirty soda and dirty Mormon wives

     The trouble with trying to keep tabs on what's happening, politically, is we've reached such a thunderous crescendo of jaw-dropping ineptitude that the only way to even touch upon it is with cursory glances. Over the long weekend, no fewer than five earth-shaking shocks reverberated, starting with our nation basically surrendering to Iran. Space is tight, so let's jump right in:
     1. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, less than 24 hours after ...
     You know what? I'm not doing this. Either you long ago grasped the full-blown disaster that hourly unfolds, or you never will. No reason to rub it in, for the former, nor annoy the latter by pointing out colors they can't perceive.
     Not when we can talk about dirty soda instead. I'd heard, vaguely, of the beverage, as some kind of mania in liquor-challenged Utah. The Sun-Times of course has been keeping up on the trend. But I never gave it much thought, until dirty soda arrived Saturday on Center Avenue in the form of an ambitious 11-year-old neighbor who, taking advantage of garage sale traffic jamming the street, set up a stand selling what I assumed was lemonade.
     Children's lemonade stands are my Achilles' heel. I have no defense against them. I could be bleeding, profusely, driving to the hospital with a tourniquet around my arm and, spying a stand, would still pull over and hurry to press money on the young entrepreneur.
     For one simple reason: When my younger son was a lad, he once set up such a stand at the foot of our driveway, on our little-traveled suburban block. The sight of my boy sitting there, with his pitcher and his cups and his handmade sign, wanly calling "Lemonade. Lemonade for sale" to the empty street broke my heart — truly, part of me died, right there, and my restless ghost seeks redemption for indifferent humanity by patronizing lemonade stands.
     So when, during weeding Saturday, I noticed the activity next door, I immediately stood up, pulled off my gloves, ran inside, grabbed cash and raced over.
     Only it wasn't lemonade. It was dirty soda — pop mixed with whipped cream and a variety of flavored syrups, garnished with a cherry and a gummy. The mom explained that dirty soda is a thing on a television show, "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." Mormons don't drink, generally, so they've taken to guzzling 44-ounce egg creams on steroids.
     Fortunately, my industrious neighbor child had Diet Coke — I'm dancin' with Mr. Diabetes, remember — so I took my dirty soda back to my office. It was actually quite delicious, though I only nibbled the gummy shark swimming in it — and began my research with Season 1, Episode 1 of "Mormon Wives."
     OMG. I'm not sure I can express the plot of the reality show in words. Four young Mormon women started making TikTok dance videos and, apparently, having unspecified sexual escapades with each other, or each other's husbands, or both. But that's like saying "Hamlet" is about a prince who is sad. It doesn't come near to capturing the spirit of the thing. "Mormon Wives" is a show about humiliating yourself and your friends online for profit.

To continue reading, click here.

The glass elephant

      The glass elephant was in my mother's purse when she died, one year ago today. 
      She'd had it most of her life — taken it to Europe with her when she went to entertain the troops, at 16, as a good luck token. I should have asked her the story of how she got it. It's two and a half inches long, pressed glass, cheap. Something won at a carnival in the early 1950s, perhaps. So let's say a boy won it for her or ... reflecting current sensibilities ... that she won it herself. Though frankly, I prefer the won-it-for-her version.
     She lent it to my father as he circled the world as a government scientist. Europe. Africa. Asia. Australia. Carrying the elephant guaranteed safe return. Nobody ever lost it. 
      My brother got to the hospital first, and ended up with the purse, and the elephant. Less sentimental than myself, he didn't want anything of hers. When we cleaned out her room at the dynamic senior living facility in Addison, we divided her effects between things to throw away, and things I was keeping. I envied him his strength. I'll throw it all away too, eventually. Or someone will. But not now.
     I let six or nine months go by — and how quickly time seems to pass, while crawling — then did ask  him for the elephant. At one of our regular lunches he delivered it. Though I was almost sorry I had. Back home, regarding it, I felt a deep pang, almost a shock, as truly sad about her passing as I ever was, because I realized, in that moment, that its locus of significance rested with me and me alone. Nobody else would ever know, or care. Like the glass trinket, her entire world, really, rested in the palm of my hand or, rather, some clump of neurons nestled somewhere in my head. Talk about a fragile weight, a glass elephant. Someday, it would be gone, and before then, I, or someone, would release this glass animal into the slipstream of life, and it would rush away to be, at best, treasured by someone who appreciated its  ... 
     I plugged the picture above into Google Image Search and — to my surprise — learned it is an L.E. Smith pressed glass elephant, made by a Pennsylvania glass company. Twelve dollars and twenty-five cents on eBay and it's yours. We have so much knowledge now.
     Not that it would be her glass elephant, which I added to a little menagerie of her elephants  set up on a shelf in my office. She collected them or, rather, expressed a fondness for this one, and elephants became our father's go-to gift. I moved the group to a better spot, to take a picture, and realized that one member of the herd was missing, a fine green stone elephant that my father bought in South Africa. I hunted for it longer than I should — so much crap in my office — trying to tamp down the almost frantic urgency by thinking of something she used to say when we'd lost things as children: "You'll find it when you're not looking for it."
     That never quite worked — I remember being more annoyed than anything else. And it didn't work very well now, as I hunted around in places I'd already looked. Finally I went off to do other things and, distracted, found some critical distance, and moved on. It occurred to me that I was frantically trying to keep my world together a little longer, in face of the great scattering sure to come. In the end, one less elephant might even be a good thing. Though I still hope to find it. When I'm not looking for it. My mother was a smart woman, in many ways.

'God's chosen vessel'

Barack Obama talks to the Sun-Times editorial board in 2004.

 

    Friday was the official opening day of the Obama Presidential Center, and the internet was alive with clips from the celebration of the evening before, with Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder and, of course, stirring speeches by the former president and his wife.

      It got me wondering what I wrote about Obama back in the day, and I dug up these three fun chestnuts from when he was running for, and then newly-elected to, the U.S. Senate. The headline is a nickname I sometimes applied to him.

Race against nobody

     Senator-to-be Barack Obama stopped by Friday. I give him credit for going through the motions of campaigning against Alan Keyes, who, once the media got bored with the freak show aspect of his candidacy, has sunk into utter oblivion. I picture Keyes alone in some muddy Downstate boondock somewhere, lecturing chickens about how Jesus would vote.
     Beyond that image, I haven't decided yet if Obama is Jack Kennedy or Chuck Percy. You remember Percy, the "Wonder Boy from Illinois." He was also going to be president, but fate disagreed because — cue the "Twilight Zone" music — Percy turned out to be too liberal.
     I don't think that is going to be the problem with Obama. He's sharp enough to shave with — as Percy was — but he also has a steely practicality. I asked him to lay out his hit-the-ground-running plans for when he takes over in Washington, and rather than the "Gee, I'll have to get my sea legs and learn from the old hands" line of claptrap I expected, he carefully explained how his Democratic star status translates into fund-raising power, which in Washington translates into real power, which means he should have a lock on the plum committee assignments. Smart.
     Obama might have benefitted from the complete collapse, in quick succession of a) Peter Fitzgerald, b) Jack Ryan and c) the Illinois Republican Party. But he didn't blunder into where he is today, nor does he seem capable of blundering any time in the near future. Think of him as our ace in the hole. No matter how the presidential election turns out, we're still trading in the broken pull-toy duck of Fitzgerald for the souped-up Corvette of Obama. We should be glad of that.
         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 4, 2004

Honeymoon's over

     Abraham Lincoln did not, to my knowledge, pepper his speeches with the tales of individuals — specific brave soldiers and such. While certain presidents later would inject their dogs — FDR's Fala, Nixon's Checkers — the trend of dragooning individual average Americans to lend luster to addresses began with Ronald Reagan.
     Now it's almost a duty. No politician can open his yap without it. Sen.-elect Barack Obama, in his as-always moving victory speech Tuesday night, evoked a 105-year-old supporter, marveling that her birth year, 1899, was before such modern conveniences as telephones and automobiles.
     Those present applauded, while I thought, "Wrong, pal."
     The Chicago Historical Society has not one but two city phone books going back to 1883 — white for homes, yellow for businesses.
     I don't fault Obama, particularly. Most of us labor under the impression that, prior to our enlightened age, our forebears crouched in caves and smeared themselves with berries. Not so. Phones were invented in 1876 and became almost immediately popular. And an 1899 Oldsmobile cost the princely sum of $650, but you could buy one. There were thousands of cars on the road then.
     Just like 74 percent of Illinoisans, I think Obama is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and that he will one day rule a unified and peaceful world. But, as he will quickly learn in the Senate, you ignore the small stuff at your peril.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 5, 2004

AND THEY'RE OFF . . .

     One of the sillier political questions is whether Obama will run for president. He already is running, right now, in front of our eyes. What they mean by the question, I think, is, will he officially announce his candidacy? But that too is silly, like standing at the five-mile mark at a marathon, watching the runners pound by, and wondering whether a leading athlete will decide to finish the last five miles of the race. Sure he will, assuming he doesn't collapse. Few fit marathoners — and Obama, if nothing else, has proved himself a political greyhound — shrug and give up after 10 miles. He might not win. But he sure is running.
     The politician that Obama is compared to the most is John F. Kennedy — similarly young (or, if you prefer "inexperienced"). Similarly eloquent. Similarly dynamic and beloved. Both Harvard men.
     And both men had a millstone around their necks that supposedly precluded them from the highest office in the land. In Kennedy's case it was his Catholicism. We view this as a dusty bit of history, but we should remember how real and raw it was, how many Americans were unashamed in their anti-Catholic bigotry.
     "Our people built this country," a Protestant lady in West Virginia told a reporter. "If they had wanted a Catholic to be president, they would have said so in the Constitution."
     Obama's supposed handicap is not that he's inexperienced, but that he's black. Not that his enemies will come right out and argue this directly. Rather, they hint around the edges. Just last week, a longtime Republican Party hack drew attention to Obama's middle name — "Hussein" — as if that were a secret, or significant. It isn't.
     This is right on schedule, and — unknown to those who would derail him — plays right into Obama's hands. Again, think of Kennedy, and his primary victory against Hubert Humphrey in West Virginia in May 1960.
     West Virginia was 95 percent Protestant, many of them sharing the mind-set of the old lady quoted previously.
     Rather than ignore his supposed handicap, Kennedy drew attention to it — just as Obama is drawing attention to his heritage, visiting Africa and such. Kennedy shocked people by talking about his religion — something one just didn't discuss — and how it was part of his personal life but didn't affect his political decisions. He wasn't going to take orders from the pope. Kennedy cleverly made the West Virginia primary into a referendum on the social progress of the state. A vote for Kennedy became a vote for a clear-eyed, unbiased future, while a vote for Humphrey was practically a vote to confirm West Virginia as a nest of Hillbillies. Naturally, Kennedy won.
     Obama could do the same thing — the more his enemies try to undercut him as a guy with a funny name and a Muslim grandfather, the more they allude to the fact his dad was black, the more Obama will seem to offer a fresh start from bias. You can vote for him and vote for a nation that unifies its diverse strands into one powerful whole. Or you can support his opponents, and surrender to the narrow bigotry that inflames so much of the world, and contribute to our nation's downfall.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 4, 2006

Beatrice Lumpkin, workers’ rights leader and 'rock of the movement,' dies at 107

     

Beatrice Lumpkin addresses striking Starbucks workers in 2024 (Roberta Wood/People's World

Beatrice Lumpkin wasn't just liberal, or left-leaning, or a secret communist sympathizer. She was an open, enthusiastic, dues-paying member of the Communist Party for nearly 90 years, whose passion for workers' rights put her on the front lines of post-World War II labor struggles in Chicago, from working with Black Panther Fred Hampton to the fight to compensate employees abruptly fired at the closing of the Wisconsin Steel plant in 1980, to the recent unionization of Starbucks employees.
     "Bea was born and grew up and lived her life in the Communist Party," said Roberta Wood, former secretary-treasurer of the Communist Party USA.
    Lumpkin, 107, died in Hyde Park on Sunday.
     Mayor Brandon Johnson, who declared Aug. 3 as "Beatrice Lumpkin Day" in Chicago, called her "a towering figure in the labor movement, an unwavering advocate for fully funded education, and a continued source of inspiration for us all."
     "Spanning almost an entire century of public engagement, Lumpkin was deeply involved in movements for workers' rights, civil rights, and educational justice. She advocated for the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively, supported efforts to advance racial justice, and fought for policies that protected vulnerable communities," Johnson continued, in a statement.
     "As a teacher and organizer, Bea brought the lessons of solidarity into the classroom. As a math teacher in Chicago Public Schools and at Malcolm X College, she inspired generations of students while remaining deeply engaged building worker power. Through her leadership in the Chicago Teachers Union Retiree Committee and Climate Justice Committee, she built bridges between generations, reminding us that strong schools and strong communities are built through collective action and a steadfast commitment to justice." 
     She was born in New York in 1918. Her parents, Dora and Morris Shapiro, were Belarus radicals who emigrated to America after the failed Russian revolution of 1905 and ran a laundry. Lumpkin would say she was born "knowing which side I was on." By age 9 she was marching with striking textile workers.

     In her mid-teens, she joined the Young Communist League, and since then, she "never had a moment when there was nothing to do," she wrote in her 2013 autobiography, "Joy in the Struggle: My Life and Love." "There were always picket lines for workers on strike, demonstrations to demand food for a hungry family, knocking on doors to sell The Daily Worker, or bring people out to vote."
     She made speeches denouncing Hitler and fascism, was involved in the effort to free the Scottsboro Boys, the case of nine Black teens framed for a rape in 1931. She was first arrested leading a demonstration in front of a New York department store in 1935.
     She went to Hunter College in Manhattan, but found "union work was too important and too exciting" to waste time in school. She later returned and graduated.
     She moved to Buffalo in 1942 to work for Sylvania Radio. There she met a force in the Buffalo Communist movement, Hattie Lumpkin and, more significantly, her son Frank. They married on Oct. 22, 1949.

To continue reading, click here.

Curious creatures

  

     The other day we had dinner at Kie Gol Lanee — the one in Logan Square, not the one in Uptown.  The name struck me as vaguely Korean, though it's a Mexican restaurant. "Kie Gol Lanee" is the phonetic spelling of Quiegoloani, a small mountain village in the southern highlands of Oaxaca. It means "old stone" in Zapotec.

     Dinner was pretty good. I enjoyed the spicy grasshoppers — how often do you get the chance? My wife didn't, though more for the heat than the insect aspect. The pork chop with tamarind sauce over grilled onions had a nice flavor as well. I can't say I'd hurry back, but wasn't sorry we went.
     Though what really caught my attention was the yard near where we parked, a block north of Diversey. Someone had put a lot of effort into crafting a variety of robots and beasts. The result somewhere between art and craft. Folk art, I suppose. The robots were angry, the dragon, in full cry. I wondered if I would want to be greeted by this distressed menagerie every time I came home. Probably not. Though I'm not sure I'd ever get around to removing them either. It would take a lot of physical effort to haul the pieces away. Plus the psychic toll of effacing somebody's art. I'm not sure I could do it.