A-line dress

     I went to the Obama Presidential Center Museum on Monday, for an interview and to accompany my sister, visiting from Texas — it was the one place in Chicago she asked to see. I just was there in June, so didn't give the place the most careful once over. 

   However, we did pause in front of the display of the First Lady's couture — I thought Debbie might like it — and noticed something I'd missed before. This sleeveless A-line dress that Michelle Obama wore on vacation a few times while her husband was president. What makes it noteworthy is not the designer, but where it was purchased: Target. The dress cost less than $40, and she wore it between 20o9 and 2013.
     It seemed to symbolize a lot more than a piece of discount clothing. I probably don't need to point out the yawning gap between that sensibility — a celebration of the dignity and worth of ordinary Americans — and the current plutocratic crew in the White House. We are so far from that, with the Oval Office festooned with gilt loving cups and faux gold crap and half the White House being ripped up, it seems, to satisfy whatever shrieking midget dictator-manque is crouched at the back of what's left of Donald Trump's decaying mind, I figured, it might be worth remembering that not so long ago we had a First Lady who wasn't a contemptuous Eastern European courtesan and a president who wasn't an odious liar, bully, fraud and traitor servicing Vladimir Putin and betraying democratic Ukraine along with most closely held American ideals and interests. If you're paying even the scantest attention, you don't need me to explain why this is horrendous. The New York Times editorial page did a good job of that Wednesday. Here's the gist:
     "He is aiding an autocratic leader and dangerous adversary of the United States who is waging a brutal war against a democratic neighbor. Mr. Trump is doing so partly in the faint hope that gas prices, which have jumped because of his reckless war in Iran, will fall over the next two weeks and help Republicans avoid big losses in the midterm elections. He is damaging America’s national interest, and likely sacrificing Ukrainian lives, for his own political interests."

     Not much else worth saying beyond that. I have no idea if the elections are going to help, or if Donald Trump will merely declare himself king while the military seizes control and a third of the country applauds like seals. Whatever happens, we must remember that we weren't always like this — that isn't an opinion, but a fact. And I believe we won't be like this forever. That is an opinion, a hope really, but one that I'm sticking with and sharing because the alternative is just too horrible to contemplate. We will not be like this forever, but oh boy, it sure fucking feels like forever right about now.

Polish poet turns words of Holocaust victims, perpetrators into shards of 'memory activism'

 

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski 

during the war we laid out bodies like wood
but after the war we laid out wood in the forest
like bodies freshly felled.

     Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is not Jewish, but reads his poetry like an Orthodox Jew praying, bending at the waist, rocking forward and back.

I went with my child to the forest and cried helplessly with him
tears dripped from my eyes and the child wiped them away with his hand
and I so regretted I had brought him into the world

     He’s in a third floor conference room at the University of Chicago, reading to about two dozen people, gathered on Monday morning to hear him.

they didn’t know where to run since it was an open field and they ran in circles
how we laughed
and before we killed them
we even whistled some tunes

     Kwiatkowski is reading — loudly, with little inflection — from his book “Crops,” translated from Polish by Peter Constantine. More a pamphlet than a book: 19 small, hard, stone-like poems over 32 pages.

my father
a decent office worker in the railways
never took part in any of the shootings
he was just doing his job
organizing transports
eastward and westward
north and south
back and forth

     The poems are his, but the words aren’t — he gathered them from taped testimonies, combining victims, perpetrators and bystanders.
     “I didn’t change any of the words,” he says. “But still I’m framing it. I’m choosing the fragments. I’m responsible.”
     I’m here because he sent me “Crops.” I read it in less than 10 minutes, but the book rearranged my brain, providing necessary starkness, a counterpoint that I’ve been missing. Over the years, we’ve seen the Holocaust transformed into entertainment, especially on social media. Once there was one Anne Frank. Now there are 6 million. The Holocaust has been retrofitted into a bracing tale of courage, resistance, and redemption. The Holocaust is not a tale of courage, resistance and redemption. It is an epic of cruelty, obedience and horror.
     Kwiatkowski agrees.
    “Most art about the Holocaust is kitsch,” he says.
     Kwiatkowski gathers words, but doesn’t mince them, which makes him a controversial figure in Poland, where depictions of the Holocaust that don’t relentlessly depict the Poles as either victims or heroes are highly unwelcome. The Polish government once demanded that the Sun-Times take down a column of mine suggesting otherwise and, when the paper refused, we were sued. We won, because this is America. Whether it stays America...

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Quite radiant

     Any Sunday worth the name should include time spent sprawled on the sofa with the Sunday papers. 

     But this Sunday saw a house full of family, here to see my sister. My brother and his wife stopped by bearing a shopping bag filled with peppers from their garden. My son and daughter-in-law brought their dog Virginia and my grandson. My wife grilled up an excellent flank steak, the baby was passed around and admired, and a good time was had by all. 

     So the papers didn't get read. Nothing is perfect. When Monday morning I found myself going to Hyde Park again — second time this week, to the University of Chicago, something you'll read about tomorrow — I grabbed the Times Book Review to read on the train. I figured, the news could wait. 
     The section included A.O. Scott's review of "The Radiance," by Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. Scott calls the book "autofiction," a term I hadn't heard before — not stories about cars, but a fiction/nonfiction blend about "a man named Ayad, who shares many traits with the real-world Akhtar."       

     While Scott couldn't quite tell what he was reading — "Is this a campus comedy? A novel of ideas" A medical mystery? A spiritual quest narrative?" — the bottom line is, he liked it. "Whatever this book is, it's alive."
     But that's not why I'm sharing this with you. The campus section draws this description. "Ayad's class is stocked with the kind of overmedicated, trauma-curious, identity-obsessed youngsters who have figured in countless op-eds and magazines stories over the past couple of decades. The fluctuating power dynamic between them and their instructors, and the overall climate of hypersensitivity, ideological conformity and bureaucratic surveillance that hovers over the college, are by now commonplaces of fiction and creative nonfiction alike."

     Scott might read a lot more than I do, so he seems to think these are stock descriptions. To me, they don't seem very commonplace at all — certainly not nearly commonplace enough — and I wanted to share them. Identity-obsessed. Hypersensitivity. Ideological conformity. It is really refreshing to see someone just come out and say it. 

'I look forward to reviewing your proposal and learning more about The Quest for Pie.'

     Scams suck. You don't even have to be taken in by them. Just the fact of their existence. They're so depressing.
     It was such a beautiful fall afternoon Sunday. We took my sister to the Chicago Botanic Garden and just wandered around. The air was fragrant, the light, golden, the colors varied, the crowd, happy.
     Yet I was grimacing, mulling over an email I had gotten the day before. It began:

In Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life, what stands out is the refusal to treat recovery as a simple turning point between a troubled past and a better future. Your account of loving your work and family while remaining attached to alcohol captures the contradictions that make addiction so difficult to confront...

     Do you see the markers of AI in that? The lack of a salutation. Using the full title, including sub-title, of the book. The generic summation of the book's reception — in 2012. I should have just deleted it and kept going. I've received a number of similar book marketing scams before.
     But this wasn't a shill for book marketing. It was, supposedly, from the executive publisher of a London imprint. Another sign. Why would someone that high up be trolling around for mid-list authors? Over the weekend. They wouldn't. I should have just deleted it.
    But hope is a funny thing. I checked online, on the publisher's web site. She was a real person. Only this email wasn't from that person. I was fairly sure of that. The email ended in ".gmail." Another giveaway. I wrote back: 

Thank you for your kind note. There are so many AI scams related to book publishing, I hope you don't mind my asking you a question: how did "Drunkard" come to your attention? Thanks.

       She replied, beginning:

I came across Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life on Amazon, and I was drawn to the candour and perceptiveness with which you examine addiction, recovery, and their effects on personal and family life.

     The "u" in candour was good. English spelling. But again, the subtitle. Still — and here I did the part I'm embarrassed about — I took 10 or 15 minutes and composed an email about where my career is right now, and what project I'd like to see published: the unpublished memoir I wrote about going out West with my boys, "The Quest for Pie." That means a lot to me. I sent the email Sunday morning. She wrote back immediately.
     Another tip-off. What publisher is writing to anybody Sunday morning? Or Sunday evening, assuming she's in England? Which she — if it's a "she" — is not. Things move slow in publishing.
     I'll spare you the rest. We went back and forth a bit. I made it clear I'm not paying for anything. "There are two things a man should never pay for," I wrote. "One of them is editorial direction." She said that is fine. 
     But as I walked around the garden, I realized. "This isn't real. This is someone in Ghana using AI to mimic an editor." I should have known that. I did know that. Yet proceeded anyway, on the slimmest, most pathetic hope. What really bothered me, I think, is that I couldn't figure out what the scam is. Maybe this is like a romance scam, only targeting authors. We'd go over the book for six months and then she'd spring the trap. 

     That might have been what really saddened me. The knowledge that this is our future, being forced to decide, again and again, if something is real, is human, or just another attempted rip-off, a little better disguised than previous attempts. Email has become a street jammed with pick-pockets and muggers, with fewer and fewer actual pedestrians in between. The ability to see through this, to decide who's who, to determine if something is the work of humans, or not, is going to be increasingly important. And exhausting. My gut told me: this isn't right. Listen to your gut. And to experience. 

     The lesson of experience is clear. In 34 years since my first book came out from St. Martin's, no publisher has ever reached out to me with this kind of query. Never. When something has never happened before, the odds that it is happening now go way, way down. Truth might be a hard road, but allow yourself to stray from it and you quickly go into the bog. I wrote back, and said what we need to do is set up a Zoom call to discuss this further. I assumed that will be the end of it.

   Not quite. When I got that first email on Saturday, I did, immediately write to the publishing house itself, an interesting group called Bookouture, to see if their executive had indeed written to me. I'm not a complete fool. They wrote back early Monday:

Good afternoon Neil,
Thanks for getting in touch. We are aware of emails currently circulating that are impersonating our editorial staff, and our cyber team is investigating this issue. Please be advised that the email you received was not sent from Ruth, or anyone at Bookouture – we would suggest reporting the message and blocking the sender.
Thanks so much again for alerting us.

Best regards,
The Admin Team

    Well, there you have it.  

    

 

Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, the Prairie State and… America’s Pumpkin Capital. Here's why.

John Ackerman, in a pumpkin field in Morton, Illinois.

     This story began in mid-August, when the Chicago Teachers Union sued the Illinois Policy Institute for being critical of them. In looking at the IPI web site, I noticed a story on how Illinois is head-and-shoulders the top pumpkin producing state in the nation. My column on the lawsuit mentioned pumpkins, but didn't answer the question: why Illinois? Why not Iowa or Indiana? The answer is easy — because Libby's is here. But my hunch was there was more here, that if I dug a little, my efforts would be rewarded, and I believe I was right. 

     A pumpkin seed weighs about 1/100th of an ounce, when planted in April. By late September, through an unappreciated conspiracy of miracles: the balm of time, the embrace of Midwest weather, the kiss of rich soil and the careful application of husbandry — fertilizer spread, pests thwarted — managed by Illinois farmers, some who have been at this for generations, that little oval the size of a fingernail can increase in size 18,000 times, into a 12-pound pumpkin, ready for picking.

     “There are days, when the conditions are right, I’m pretty sure I can hear them grow,” says John H. Ackerman, a fourth-generation farmer in downstate Morton, which, about two hours southwest of Chicago, is the self-proclaimed pumpkin capital of the world.
   Morton seized the title, though Illinois could easily dub itself “Pumpkin Heaven.” It must be because the state grows so many of the distinctive orange fruit, the icon of the fall season. (Botanically, a pumpkin is a fruit because it contains seeds and grows from a pollinated flower, though cooks treat it as a vegetable, for its savory qualities.)
     Fruit or vegetable, or both, in 2025, our state grew 535 million pounds of pumpkin, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More than the next four top pumpkin-growing states — California, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania — combined.
     Why? What makes Illinois so pumpkin-friendly?
     “The region offers the optimal combination of soil composition, climate and geography, with about 120 days of summer heat, warm nights and moderate rainfall that create great growing conditions,” says Jacqueline Jimenez, senior director, brand marketing, culinary and confectionery for Nestle, the owner of Libby’s, which has an enormous pureed-pumpkin processing plant in Morton.
      “However, what sets the region apart is our deep roots here, including not only our factory but our multi-generational partnerships with the local farmers who grow our Libby’s pumpkins. Some of these farming families have grown Libby’s pumpkins for 60 years. We know them by name, and they understand this land and climate in a way that’s irreplaceable.”
     More than soil or climate, the presence of the Libby’s canning operation in Morton is responsible for Illinois’ pumpkin preeminence. About 90% of the canned pumpkin produced in the United States is grown within a 60-mile radius of Morton. And most of that goes to Libby’s, though there also is another cannery, Seneca Foods, in Princeville, about 33 miles away.

To continue reading, click here.

And those XXS are going fast...

 

   

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

     "I don't even know what this is an ad for," I told my wife, listing my first three guesses: 1) the shirt; 2) her teeth ("The Row") 3) some TV show.
     Choice #1.
     The Row is a $1 billion luxury fashion house, founded in 2005 by former tween movie stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (long-time readers might remember my April 1, 2019 post confessing to producing their first three movies).
     I found The Row web site, and see the all-cotton white t-shirt that I think is depicted costs $550. It comes in XXS, XS, S, M, L and XL.
     I'd never heard the term XXS and, wondering who it is intended for, checked out the "Size Guide" and see it corresponds to a 22 inch waist, which is the average waist size of an 8-year-old child. Golly.
     Funny. I'd actually purchased a t-shirt for myself this week. My wife was putting in an order at Land's End, and asked if I wanted anything. I do wear their t-shirts, so looked at the colors and, throwing caution to the wind, bought one in a sky blue, thinking I could pair it with a light blue L.L. Bean summer shirt that is a particular favorite. On sale, it was $17.
     Later in the evening, I had second thoughts — I really have enough t-shirts to last me the rest of my life — and asked my wife if she could perhaps cancel her order, or somehow strike my shirt from it. Why load up on t-shirts? My wife, used to this, said no, she couldn't, and if I didn't want the shirt, she would give it to Goodwill. I said I would make room for it, somehow.
     $550 for a white cotton t-shirt. And the kicker is, five of the six sizes are already sold out, with XXS no doubt going fast.

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

Debbie Dana

Dear Pope Leo:

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

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Me and Debbie, circa 1963