Needlework

 

    "NEIL I," CVS informed me, via email, my middle initial making me seem like some kind of dynastic monarch, "your prescription(s) are ready for pickup at your pharmacy."
      Prescription, singular. For insulin pen needle tips. Taking between one and five injections a day, I go through them quick. One doesn't want to run out.   So when I get down to a couple dozen, I want a fresh box ready. I've been waiting for CVS to automatically fills my pen needle prescription.

    With prescriptions at both Walgreens and CVS, it's hard to keep everything straight, and CVS doesn't tell you what any given prescription will cost until it is filled — in this case, 100 needles for $41.60.

    I sighed. I'd been hoping they'd be free — sometimes they are, sometimes not, according to some logic. I have not yet mastered (my hunch is, different types of prescriptions from different doctors).

   So instead I went on Amazon and bought two 100 count boxes of a nearly identical needles — 32 G, 4 mm — for $11.99 apiece, almost a quarter of the cost at CVS. I could have gotten them for $9.99 apiece, but didn't like the looks of the box quite as much. They were pink. The boxes I got were green, like the prescription needle boxes. Green seems a mark of quality for me. 

   The only difference I can tell is the $41 boxes have foil covers on the little plastic cone holding each individual needle tip — those seem sturdier, and feel better while being stripped off than the little paper covers. 

     It's nuts, right? But when you do something continually, such minor considerations take on greater weight. I've shrugged, at CVS or Walgreens, and paid the $40 plus, thinking a) I'm here, might as well get more; b) those foil covers do strip off more satisfyingly and c) the box is green.

     But that seems wasteful. When I was in Portugal, I worried I hadn't brought enough needle tips — we were eating a lot of carbs — so thought to buy another box. That involved walking into a pharmacy, asking, and putting down 7.39 Euros — about $8.45, no prescription needed (actually, you never need a prescription to buy insulin needles at a drug store in Illinois either).

    Actually, by buying two boxes on Amazon, I might be in violation of the Illinois Hypodermic Needles and Syringes Act, which clearly states that a person may possess 100 such needles. Though it doesn't say you can't possess more, so perhaps it's a gray area. If it is indeed illegal, I would point out that sometimes these pieces on EGD veer into fantasy and fiction, and one can't be certain this isn't some wildly exaggerated medical dream sequence. No need to kick in my door.

     Looking into law and diabetes in general, Illinois and I see eye-to-eye regarding injection. When I first came down with diabetes 1, if I'd be out to eat in a restaurant, I'd excuse myself and go administer insulin in the restroom. A process that had a cool, Keith Richards vibe, to me, which shows you what a straight arrow I've become.

     Nowadays, anyone I know well enough to eat lunch with can be trusted to gaze off in the middle distance while I hike my shirt and jab myself in the stomach. This practice is endorsed by the 2025 Public Self-Care of Diabetes Act, which notes, "The General Assembly finds that forcing diabetics to administer their personal insulin injections out of public view is unnecessarily restrictive" going on to state, "A person with diabetes, or parent or legal guardian of a person with diabetes, may self-administer insulin or administer insulin for his or her child in any location, public or private, where the person, or the person's parent or legal guardian, is authorized to be, irrespective of whether the injection site is uncovered during or incidental to the administration of insulin."

     "In any location..." Hmm. "Irrespective of whether the injection site is uncovered." That makes a person think. Being a wisenheimer, I'm tempted to read this to mean I can drop my pants in the middle of Orchestra Hall in order to administer insulin into my backside and be fully supported by the law. That would certainly inject some excitement into some lugubrious piece by Mahler. 

   

Flashback 1989: Waiving the flag - American ideals come out the winner in artwork furor

"What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?" by Dread Scott

     Having pretty much exhausted what I have to say about the 25oth birthday of our country on Wednesday and Friday, I thought I'd fish something out of the vault for Fourth of July itself. I came upon this curious artifact that revolves around essential American attitudes and freedoms. 

     Curious for several reasons: first, it was written for the editorial pages six years before I became a columnist, when I was a general assignment reporter. Second, it brings up one of the more notorious artworks ever displayed in Chicago, Dread Scott's "What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?" Third, it is 1700 words long, more than twice the length of my regular column. I hope the piece merits the time it takes to read.

     I did write in the ledger — not standing on the flag, but leaning far over the corner. I've never been tempted to renounce an old opinion, but I will note that I winced reading the "Go try that in South Korea..." BS I trot out, twice, in this. Immature of me — I was 28 years old at the time. Anyway, Happy 4th of July. Stay safe around fireworks.

     Along with the tang of apple pie, the pop of Fourth of July fireworks and the satisfying crack of a bat at Wrigley Field, the flag flap at the Art Institute has to be seen as something purely American, a symbol of what makes this country great.
     All the participants in this brouhaha did exactly what they were supposed to:
     The young artist, Scott Tyler, did what young artists have been doing throughout time: tossing wrenches into the orderly workings of complacency.
     The veterans, for their part, filled the role of military men: defending the flag and honor of the country.
     And even the School of the Art Institute, which shamed itself during the seizure of David K. Nelson's cruel lampoon of Harold Washington last spring, scraped together newfound courage to fulfill its own role: providing a place for students to test their artistic wings, for good or ill.
     Not only did they all do their various duties, but they did them in a distinctly human way, meaning they were each in the right, but less than they might think, and each in the wrong, though they might not realize it.
     Begin with Tyler, the artist, working under the name "Dread Scott" (which the historically minded will recognize as a misspelling of the name of the slave involved in the 1857 Supreme Court case legally upholding slavery).
     On the positive side, Tyler's artwork, "What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?" is not as gratuitous as Nelson's meaningless jab at Washington, but has a defendable message: America does bad things sometimes and many people dislike it for a variety of valid reasons. That analysis may give Tyler more credit than he is due, but assuming the work has a message and is not just a backhand insult, it is a message all but the blindly patriotic can appreciate.
     "In this case, this student not only is making an artistic or esthetic point, but it is very clear he is making a political point," said Professor Sheldon Nahmod, a law professor at IIT-Chicago Kent College of Law. "It's very clear that the flag is first and foremost a political symbol; it represents national unity and patriotism. In my view, whatever one does to the flag is indeed a political statement."
     When put in the context of performance art, Tyler's work seems more impressive. Performance art is a sort of ritualized recklessness that commonly sees artists inciting people to do illegal things. One artist's work featured a gun, set to a timer so that it would fire at some random point. Viewers were invited to sit in a chair with their heads beside the gun, and some of them did. Another artist lay on the floor, surrounded by buckets of water and live, frayed electrical cables, and implor ed viewers to kick over the buckets and electrocute him. Tyler's invitation to violate flag laws seems almost tame by comparison.
     To Tyler's discredit, however, the manifesto the self-named "proletarian internationalist" wrote to justify his artwork shows him to be as blindly zealous in his condemnation of America as patriots can be in their praise.
     "Rambo, Reagan and Bush all love this sacred cow whereas the masses worldwide hate it," he said, referring to the flag his art piece invites viewers to trample and ignoring the fact that the masses hating the United States tend to be those who can't themselves get here, while few U.S. citizens hide under loads of fish trying to start a new life in Cambodia or Peru.
     He points to Iran, Vietnam, South Korea and South Africa as homes of oppressed people who hate the United States, but he fails to recognize the irony that the country he has chosen to relentlessly attack is one of the few places in the world free enough to allow him to make the criticism in the first place.
     The veterans, too, both displayed and departed from the ideals they fought for. To their credit, they generally conducted themselves in an American way - exercising their own right to free speech by protesting, pursuing redress from the courts. The statements of their lawyer, Joseph A. Morris, give more respect to Tyler than Tyler gives to the nation he ridicules while exploiting its freedoms.
     "The display all by itself may be a work of art; you can depict flag desecration, you an put a flag on a clean floor," said Morris, general counsel for the Mid-America Legal Foundation, which represents the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "It may not be great art, but it is a certifiable expression. The problem is an ordinary person looking at this exhibit cannot but draw the conclusion that this is an invitation to walk on the flag."
     The veterans want only to stop people from walking on the flag, not to close the exhibit, punish the artist, or even remove Tyler's work.
     On the other hand, while responsible as a group, individual veterans decided to imitate Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who issued a death sentence for author Rushdie, and go after the blasphemy themselves. One Purple Heart vet attempted to remove the flag (perhaps because he was not an alderman, a Chicago policeman detained him and not the flag). And Thursday a pair of veterans tried storming the school, which had closed the exhibit to the public in the face of numerous threats of violence.
     The school, as well, managed to be both more timid than some would want but bolder than it had been when it groveled apologies after several alderemn seized Nelson's painting. (Too bad the aldermen didn't take umbrage at Van Gogh's self-portrait in the Art Institute. The city could use the money.).
     It did, after all, allow the show, a display of the work of minority artists, one of the concessions made in the wake of the Nelson affair.
     The school also stood by the artist, after a fashion, keeping the exhibit open to students, professors and staff and controlling hostile vets.
     On the negative side, it begged Tyler not to show the work after it was selected for inclusion in the show. The school also closed the exhibit to the public and the press, citing "security concerns," the same excuse offered by bookstores yanking Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.
     Perhaps the confusion of those involved is a reflection of the muddiness of the central issue: Is Tyler's artwork legal?
     For all the mention of First Amendment Rights, this is not a First Amendment case, at least not yet, because the government is not involved. The First Amendment says the government cannot infringe your right to free speech. A private group — such as the School of the Art Institute — can, to the extent that it has control over what is displayed in its galleries.
     A 1972 case of a Downstate artist who displayed a work called "The Flag in Chains" reached the Illinois Supreme Court. In this case, the artist displayed an American flag, literally wrapped in chains, and the court ruled that the piece did not violate any laws, since the flag itself was not subject to destruction and the meaning of the piece was ambiguous.
     The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled, several times, that the flag can be humiliated in a variety of ways without involving any illegality.
     But both the Illinois and U.S. Supreme Courts have said the flag cannot be burned or mutilated, and people who have done so have been sent to jail.
     Which leaves the question of whether treading on the flag is destruction or merely abuse, a moot point in the eyes of the veterans, who view Tyler's display as worse than mutilation.
     "The artist's conduct is more egregious than a flag burning," said Morris. A flag burning is brief but the artwork is ongoing, he said. "The Art Institute has a flag desecration every day, with the invitation to come and see it, come and do it."
     But is inviting someone to do something illegal in itself illegal?
     "Nobody is forced to see the exhibit, and those who see the exhibit are not forced to stand on the flag," said Nahmod.
     Cook County Circuit Judge Kenneth L. Gillis agreed with Nahmod and rejected veterans' requests to bar viewers from treading on the flag.
     "This exhibit is as much an invitation to think about the flag as it is an invitation to step on the flag," said Gillis.
     All told, the flag flap — assuming that some unbalanced person does not inject violence into the situation — is a good indication that something possibly bad — the trampling of the U.S. flag — can have unintended good results, if people keep their heads about them.
     What sort of unintended good results?
     The artist, if he is fair, could see that his work sparked much sincere debate and soul searching among the citizens of the country he detests. As a performance artist, he might consider going to countries he seems to prefer — Iran, South Africa, South Korea — and present his display using their flags. Should he survive, he might learn additional lessons.
     The veterans, imbued with zeal for flag etiquette, might notice and do something about the tattered rags which are flown, unprotested, in front of businesses all over Chicago. They might also realize that respect for the American flag is not a product of flag laws, but a product of the country's greatness, a greatness whose vital core is the freedom of speech.
     The School of the Art Institute may learn not to be so fast to betray its more daring students. The scorned renegades of today are the grand old masters of tomorrow (to prove this, all they need to do is stroll next door to the Art Institute and look at the works of such art hellions as John Singer Sargent, who had to flee France in the uproar caused by one of his elegant portraits, or Henri Rousseau, whose whimsical forests were barred for years from the French Salon, too staid to see his genius).
     As onlookers, we can pat ourselves on the back. With all the scorn the we've been heaping on Iran for its reaction to The Satanic Verses, we can take pride that when it was our turn to have our sacred cow - the flag - trod upon, we held true, for the most part, to the greater ideals which that flag - dirty or clean, on a pole or on the ground - represents.
    — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 5, 1989

The enemies of American freedom also had the upper hand on July 4, 1776

Eric Slauter

     Three lifetimes. Laid end to end.
     Not so very long, in those terms. Between Saturday, July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, and the event being celebrated.
     Take an 83-year-old — about the life expectancy of an American woman — and go back to her birth, 1943, the middle of a global war against fascism, aptly enough.
     Tag another 83-year old. Trace back to his birth — talk about ironies — in 1860, the brink of our epic Civil War, fought to extinguish slavery, the devil’s bargain hard-wired into our Constitution to draw slave-holding Southern states into a risky new national enterprise.
     One more lifetime — 84 years — puts us back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, an empire-shattering document that echoed around the world, and down to this day, with its still-stirring assertion:
     “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
     And that is only the second sentence. The Founders hadn’t yet gotten to the point.
     “We’ve become obsessed with the second paragraph,” said Eric Slauter, the University of Chicago professor who curated an exhibit on our nation’s foundational document at the Newberry Library, standing before an enormous blow-up.
     “What we know is most contemporary readers glossed over that. They cared a lot about the charges against the king. This is an indictment. The real meat of the declaration, what made it a declaration of independence and not a declaration of rights, was this part. You can tell it was important because it’s in capital letters.”
      The part, toward the bottom, declaring, in all-caps, that the now former colonies are “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.”

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Flashback 2009: Fortified by faith in a foreign land

    One way Jews are reacting to rising antisemitism is by manifesting their Jewishness in public more. To show they're not afraid. Not an issue for me. I've never been afraid to write about my religion, and may be the only daily newspaper columnist in the country who regularly explores Judaism (of course, some days it feels like I'm pretty much the only daily newspaper columnist in the country, period, so that might not be saying much). 

     Though even I'm trying to stand a little taller lately — I recently flagged down a pair of cheder boys and put on tefillin in the parking lot of Sunset Foods, which is not my style. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures....

     Anyway, I was looking through the vault for Fourth of July columns, and found this.

     While many a sailor finds religion crossing the stormy seas, my faith tends to tap me on the shoulder while I'm safe in foreign ports. When I travel, I find myself visiting synagogues.
     Perhaps "faith" is too strong a term; maybe it is mere curiosity, but I've been to temples from Bridgetown to Vilnius, attended services from Charleston to Taipei. Oddly, I never intend to go, it seems to just happen.
     Last Saturday morning, I was checking the map to go shopping at Harrods and noticed that the Western Marble Arch Synagogue was a few blocks from my hotel. Services were just beginning; Harrods could wait — on went the dark suit, and I walked over, worried about being 45 minutes late.
     "I have to ask you a few questions," said a man — security — standing at the synagogue door. "What is your Hebrew name?"
     "Yitzhak ben Rachkmiel ben Schmuel," I said, and he waved me in. I entered, thinking it was sad that this is necessary, but not too sad — police with machine-guns guarded the synagogue I went to in Rome, and worshippers had to pass through a narrow, L-shaped security airlock designed to thwart bombers.
     Inside, a man held me back until the prayer ended. "Whoever you are," he said, "wherever you are from, welcome."
     The sanctuary was large, rectangular — the traditional set-up — with the ark holding the Torah scrolls at one end and a raised platform where the service is conducted — the bimah — in the middle.
     I almost made a beeline for an empty part of the room — and there were many, the place was sparsely populated. But that seemed to defeat the purpose of coming, so I forced myself to take a seat among the knot of men sitting in the center.
     And it was all men. Women — I counted three — were exiled to the balcony above.
     Marble Arch, whose congregation traces its roots to 1761, comfortably seats 1,000 worshippers. I counted 27 men at prayer. Most were older, their hair gray or white. Maybe three men were under 50.
     Rigorous attention to the services seemed optional. The men occasionally stood up, strolled around, visiting with each other, shaking hands, talking, laughing. At times, it seemed like a tableau from a Rembrandt painting, these older gentlemen in their capacious wool prayer shawls, leaning over pews, whispering to one another.
      More congregants walked over and shook my hand during the first hour at Marble Arch than in my sporadic attendance at various synagogues around Chicago over the past 25 years.
      I was jotting in my notebook until someone stopped me. "We're Orthodox," he said. "It isn't done."
      Just a few notes, I pleaded, to help me remember.
     "God will help you remember," he replied. I put the notebook away.
     All religions are melting under the bright light of modern society, but Judaism is melting quicker, as it was so small to begin with and faces, besides assimilation, the added challenge of enemies periodically trying to kill us.
     There are roughly 13 million Jews in the world today — a sum equal to the population of Zambia. Nowhere near the number in 1939 — 17 million — and since our population growth hovers at zero, we may never get back to where we once were.
     That is the grim view, but one of the benefits of religion is it can cast a positive spin on grim reality. About 10:30 a.m., a small boy in a white yarmulke and linen shirt came charging across the sanctuary, running full speed, fringes flying, exuberant. There was a change in the room; the boy was like a rocket announcing the start of a festival. Suddenly, more people began arriving. It turned out that, at Marble Arch Synagogue, 45 minutes late is early, and by 11 a.m. another 50 people had arrived.
     Howard Richenberg, the "warden" of the synagogue, announced the birth of a granddaughter, Hadar, to the rabbi, Lionel Rosenfeld, and the men on the bimah began an impromptu dance of celebration, holding hands, arms raised high.
     After that, I slipped over to Richenberg to check the new arrival's name, and he wondered if I wished to participate in the service.
     "Would you have objections to saying a prayer for the royal family?" he asked. "You do speak English?"
     I said that yes, I speak English and no, I would have no objection to asking our distracted God to bless the British royal family. A few minutes later, I was gestured to come up.
     "May the supreme king of kings in His mercy preserve the Queen in life, guard her and deliver her from all trouble and sorrow," I read, slightly startled to find myself addressing a congregation in London.
     The men of Marble Arch synagogue seemed to get a kick out of that — a big joke, to get the American to bless the queen. While we in this country have gotten past the whole Revolutionary War unpleasantness, it stings here, apparently.
     "I still have trouble being in the United States on the Fourth of July," one man told me when I returned to my seat.
     The service complete, we repaired to a small social hall — which the group filled nicely — and went at a spread of gefilte fish, herring and other masterworks of our faith.
      I stayed a while, eating, talking, and left much more confident than I had been mid-service. Yes, the demographic slide is a true worry. But when did the Jews not face worries?
          — Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 4, 2009

Ringing liberty out of a cracked bell

 

     You’re familiar with the Liberty Bell, right?
     Big bell with a crack in it. On display in Philadelphia. Long associated with the American Revolution, though there’s no evidence it was rung at any significant event. One of those confused quirks of history, like George Washington’s mythic chopping down a cherry tree.
     Do you know what’s written on the Liberty Bell? I won’t keep you in suspense: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
     A line from Leviticus 25. A passage that, in some ways, is about farming. Every seventh year is to be a “sabbath” — the land will not be planted, but lie fallow — a smart agricultural practice, essential before advanced fertilizers.
     And every seventh sabbath, 7 x 7, the 50th year would be a “jubilee.”
     What was a jubilee? Big party? Lots of back-patting? Maybe. The Hebrew word for jubilee, yovel, means ram’s horn, or trumpet, the way news was blasted across the desert. A cue taken in English: jubilee is from the Latin jubilo, or “shout of joy.” That’s where we get “jubilation.”
     They weren’t shouting general self-praise, nor self-assigned greatness, but about something real. Something big. The jubilee year was sort of a societal reset, when all debts would be forgiven, slaves freed, seized lands returned. A fresh start for those downtrodden by life. It was about humbling the mighty, not building them up further.
     “Do not take advantage of each other,” Leviticus urges.
     Not quite, I feel comfortable saying, the spirit we find afoot in the land today, during our American quintuple jubilee, the 250th anniversary of a country, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” No need to spell it out. Either you understood long ago or you never will.

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Evanescent

    Years ago, I went to an impressive production of "The Elephant Man" at the Theatre Building on Belmont Avenue. In a big top setting, with sawdust on the floor. One line particularly moved me, carried on a card by one of the circus girls who came out between acts: "Art is nothing as to nature." 
     That said, art can still enhance nature, whether it is hanging enormous Chihuly glassworks at the Garfield Park Conservatory in 2001, or, as the Chicago Botanic Garden did for its 50th anniversary, inviting artists to create site specific works, such as Patrick Dougherty's Rookery, which was so marvelous, they kept it for a second year.
    This year features giant bubbles or, to be more precise, "Evanescent" by Atelier Sisu, a Sydney-based art and design studio founded by Peruvian sculptor Renzo B. Larriviere and Australian spatial architect Zara Pasfield. It was installed June 6.  
    The rainbow spheres were not created particularly for the Botanic Garden, but have been seen in 22 cities across 12 countries, from Auckland, New Zealand to Toronto, Canada. They fit in nicely. Of course, we go to the garden a lot, and while we say that it is different every time we visit, with the giant orbs, it's really different. Or as the great Irish writer Brendan Behan once said, "A change is as good as a rest."
    The word "evanescent," as you may know, means, according to my OED, "that which quickly vanishes or passes away; having no permanence." In this case, the show is up until Sept. 20. Which will be here quickly enough, as summer fleets too.

Technology gives women upper hand in abortion battle

     Technology is a friend to women. Oh, it helps men, too, with its laser levels and Helix 5 Fishfinders. But society places particular burdens on women, through the constraints of religion and marriage, the treadmill of family obligation. Technology levels the field, a bit, with its way of swinging open the cage door. Advances we think of as benign today, like the bicycle, were revolutionary for women when introduced, allowing them a path out of the house, unchaperoned mobility and a reason to wear pants, all in one fell swoop.
     Particularly medical technology. For centuries, the prospect of pregnancy went arm-in-arm with the harangues of moralists. Until Chicago's own G.D. Searle released Enovid, the first birth control pill, in 1960, and suddenly women could do what they want instead of what they're told. Spoiler alert: they wanted to have sex without worrying about babies.
     There's an entrancing book on the subject, "The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution," by my pal Jonathan Eig. He gives a great early history of the battle to wrest control over women's bodies from pious men, spotlighting Margaret Sanger, who popularized the term "birth control" and opened the first clinic in 1916, later shut down by police, since even a pamphlet describing contraception was considered obscene, and illegal to send through the United States mail.
     We are steadily sliding back toward those days. Moralists have hitched their wagon to would-be totalitarians, with restricting the right of a woman to control her own body — and the "babies" hereby saved — being the central plum used to rationalize depriving everybody, male and female, of all sorts of other basic rights, such as the ability to cast a ballot unhindered.
     Four years ago, the Trump-packed Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal throughout this country. Thirteen states promptly banned it, even in cases of rape or incest. The same religious zealots in a lather because a 12-year-old might check out Judy Blume's "Forever" from the public library would force her to have a baby.
     And what was the result of banning abortion for 40% of American women? The practice is way up, 21% since 2020, because of our old friend, medical technology, in the form of the RU-486, a two-drug regimen that is safe, effective, and can be sent through the mail.
     You would think this failure might humble those hot to impose their religion upon others; which is what banning abortion is, the enforcement of Christian morality through law. But nothing humbles them, and now some on the anti-abortion crowd are considering this exciting next step: charging women who have abortions with murder.
     This hasn't yet been done for two reasons. First, because the whole "killing babies" bit is just a religious construct, like Santa Claus. Rhetoric used because it works so effectively. The tell, the giveaway, is that while doctors can be prosecuted for performing abortions, and friends for driving the women to clinics, the actual murderess herself, putting this supposed crime in motion, is generally left alone.

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