Grandmothers to the rescue, with wisdom, patience and doughnuts

     Social media tears down girls. According to a UNESCO report, there is a direct correlation between how much time a girl spends online and increased emotional damage. A Facebook study found that a third of girls say when they feel bad about their bodies, Instagram makes them feel worse. Girls are 50% more likely than boys to report being cyberbullied. Plus — stop the presses! — TikTok is addictive.
     How to combat such a widespread, happiness-destroying influence? In Chicago, one of the most powerful forces for good known to humanity is being sent into battle, a voice of comfort and wisdom going back to the beginnings of time:
     Grandmothers.
     "I come here every Tuesday to sit with the young ladies and do different projects — planting flowers, or making different objects they like," said Delores Durham, 62, waiting in the office at Wendell Smith Elementary School on West 103rd Street in Pullman, bearing donuts. "Just having normal conversation to see where their mind is at. What goals they have in life. I'm just trying to be an encouragement to them. I raised two daughters on the West Side of Chicago myself."
     A volunteer who joined Grandmothers Circle last year, Durham was met by Erinn Boone, a licensed clinical professional counselor and coordinator of the program run by the Juvenile Protective Association, a venerable Chicago social service agency founded by Jane Addams in 1901. Originally the Juvenile Court Committee, its purpose was to provide probation officers to the first juvenile court in the nation, founded here in 1899 to keep children from being sent to adult jails.
     She hands around a piece of paper showing various emojis: happy, angry, bored, surprised.
     "I need you all to tell me how you're feeling," Boone says. "Pass it around."
     The girls warm up. They are happy and tired. Goofy and tired. Quiet and tired. Boone detects a theme.
     "Everybody's tired — is it the weather?" she asks.
     Or maybe something else. Students at Wendell Smith face troubles beyond social media — 94% live in poverty, according to the Illinois State Board of Education, and almost a quarter are homeless. The chronic truancy rate is 32%. And layered upon that, all the usual pressures facing middle-school girls.

     "I was having a conversation with another school and we started talking about friendship, and how you can tell someone is a friend," says Boone. "Then we started talking about rumors, and how rumors get started and drama — but I know that's nothing you all deal with here, right?"
     That challenge — preventing the adult world from getting its hooks into kids — continues.
Durham and Boone go to greet nine sixth grade girls, ages 11 and 12, just finishing lunch on trays — chicken fingers, applesauce, cartons of milk. The girls barely register their arrival.
     "Y'all energy seems real low today," observes Boone. "It's a very Monday kind of Tuesday."

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'People are still funny'

      People think of Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain as wits. And rightly so. But while they said a good many smart things, they didn't say everything attributed them; countless quotes are laid at their doorstep that they never said, sometimes never could have said. I'll see some powerful, contemporary thought tacked under a portrait of Hemingway, think "He never wrote that," and be halfway to fact-checking a meme before I realize that, once I plunge down that rathole there's no escape.
     But Dave Barry really did write, in a column of 25 things he learned at 50: "You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at the moment."
    I've quote that line for years, never realizing it was Dave Barry. Great advice, the general dissemination of which could spare the world countless awkward encounters, painful both for the blunderer and for the woman accused of being with child. 
     I asked Barry about it Tuesday morning, in an interview for Wednesday's column, and he said, yes, he believes he indeed coined that phrase. The conversation went all sorts of places I couldn't fit into the column and still say something about the reason we were talking: his excellent new book, "Class Clown," published Tuesday.
    What I really wanted to talk about with him was Gene Weingarten. The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist whose collection, "Fiddler in the Subway," should be pressed into the hands of every sentient human being. Reading it made me proud to be in the same profession.
     But he also wrote this, in a blog in 2021, destroying his career:

     The Indian subcontinent has vastly enriched the world, giving us chess, buttons, the mathematical concept of zero, shampoo, modern-day nonviolent political resistance, Chutes and Ladders, the Fibonacci sequence, rock candy, cataract surgery, cashmere, USB ports ... and curry.
     Indian foods are the only ethnic cuisine insanely based on one spice. If you like Indian curries, yay, you like one of India’s most popular class of dishes! If you think Indian curries taste like something that could knock a vulture off a meat wagon, you do not like a lot of Indian food. I don’t get it, as a culinary principle. It is as though the French passed a law requiring a wide swath of their dishes to be slathered in smashed, pureed snails. (I’d personally have no problem with that, but you might, and I would sympathize.)

     "Based on one spice." Is that ignorant? Sure, in the sense that there are all kinds of spices in Indian cuisine. I know that by direct, hand-over-fist experience. He did too. It was what we call in the profession "a joke." Not a particularly good one, true. But was Gene's crack the language of hate? I don't think so. Didn't matter — he was frog-marched out the door at the Washington Post. No party. No big farewell section. Hasta la vista, baby. It seems now a dry run for the kind of professional collapse the newspaper would do at the feet of Donald Trump.
     "That had to be scary  to someone whose written 1000 jokes more offensive than that," I said to Barry, who was edited for years by Weingarten. "It must have been sobering for you when Gene got the heave-ho."
       "Yeah, I kept going back over it," he said. "I've known Gene for 40 years. To see him shoved off a cliff over that. He makes it really clear, 'I'm an idiot but I'm pretending to be a genius.' It couldn't be more obvious. His schtick is, he starts out with this long thing how he respects Indian culture. I don't think if it happened that same thing would happen. That happened at the absolutely the height of 'Let's everybody be so sensitive that we really can't say anything,' mania. That was awful, to have Gene called a racist. Gene's not a racist." 
     I'd planned to highlight some other points we talked about, but honest, I want to shift over to something a reader in Florida, who had worked as a first responder, sent in on Wednesday. He wrote:  

     Our rescue crew were the one’s who responded to Dave’s son after he was involved in a bike vs. car crash. His column about the experience mentions us as ambulance guys. It is one of his very, very few serious ones.
     He rode with us to the hospital, certainly shaken (Who wouldn’t be?) but very humble and cordial.

     I read that column and thought, "Wow, what an excellent, excellent column." It made me regret not paying closer attention to the man's work over the past 40 years — I think it was conceited of me — and glad that I've been able to remedy that, a tiny bit, this past week. Better late than never. He's still humble and cordial.

Is nothing funny anymore? Dave Barry gets serious in a new book

     Humor's been on the ropes, for years.
     Between lingering cancel culture and an opera buffa administration that daily defies parody, you could be forgiven for thinking nothing is funny anymore. The Onion stuck in there for a while, but lately it seems to be crafting press releases for the Department of Government Efficiency.
     Even Dave Barry threw in the towel, retiring from his regular column 20 years ago.

     So the good news is that the wildly popular funnyman — once syndicated in 500 newspapers, with dozens of books under his belt — is back, with "Class Clown — The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up." (Simon & Schuster: $28.99).
     I'll be honest — as heir to the sophisticated urban wit of Robert Benchley, in my own mind if nowhere else, I generally avoided Barry's column and, jeez, 45 previous books, including "Boogers are My Beat," which neatly explains why.
     Plus Barry was syndicated in the Tribune, which for many years I refused to touch, since doing so seemed like laying flowers on the grave of its former publisher, xenophobe and Hitler bootlicker Col. Robert McCormick.
     But a publicist invited me to talk with Barry and I couldn't see why not. We newspaper columnists are a vanishing breed, and I rarely get the chance to talk with one. Heck, I hardly talk to anybody anymore.
     "I never set out to be an artist," Barry told me. "I set out to be a joke guy."
     Mission accomplished. Though "Class Clown" begins seriously, with his parents — alcoholic father, depressive mother — in vignettes that are moving and real. I admired the details. A Swedish friend of his father, also named Dave, pronounces his name "Dafe," which made me think of the tailor in "The Inferno" squinting in the twilight. Making me the first critic to compare Dave Barry to Dante.
     The book surprises, practically poking me in the eye.
     His father, Barry writes, "was a fan of the great humorist Robert Benchley and owned several books of Benchley's collected columns. When I was somewhere around eleven or twelve I read those books and became obsessed with them; they definitely influenced my writing style, and I still read them today."
     Ah. Did not see Benchley coming.
     "I was a huge fan — still am," Barry said. "It's definitely a sobering thing if you are humor columnist, to realize nobody read him anymore."
     I learned some unexpected facts about Barry, such as he attended Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington, once bumped into Bobby Kennedy, literally, the revered brother of JFK, not the anti-vax nutjob.
     Being a veteran journalist myself, albeit playing AAA ball compared to Barry's big big leagues, I enjoyed his recounting the profession, from his early days at the West Chester, Pennsylvania Daily Local News to his rise at the Miami Herald and the go-go 1980s. In 1987, he and a photographer spent $8,000 to rent a helicopter to get a photo of a garbage barge, adding that today "you cannot spend $8 without prior written authorization from at least three executives."
     That's not so much satire as dry reportage. Last month, in order to be compensated for a CTA bus ride, I had to secure a note from my editor, vowing that the expense is valid, and I wasn't just trying to steal $2.25 from the paper.

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Pistachio pudding

 

     Were someone to ask me about the surprising aspects of being a diabetic — and no one has, so I'll have to just jump right in — I'd say, "There's more pudding than I expected." The pancreatically-challenged can't always eat what we want, and yet life has to retain its savor, somehow. So I've been making a lot of sugar-free Jell-O brand instant pudding.

     The stuff isn't particularly low in calories, since I use 2 percent milk, for reasons too complicated to explain. But those are fat calories, which are our friends, as opposed to sugar calories — boo, hiss —  so I can use it for midday treats without having to shoot up insulin, which I try to avoid, as doing so tends to crash your blood sugar if you're not careful and, really, how careful can a person be? That's diabetics in a nutshell: being careful. All the time.

     So hurrah for pudding. Having sated myself on the chocolate and chocolate fudge varieties, I grew daring, and experimented with vanilla and banana cream, butterscotch (shunning only the cheesecake variety, out of loyalty to Eli's) and, as pictured above, pistachio. Which is one of those flavors, like almond, that doesn't actually taste like the nut itself, but some kind of confectioner's fantasy of what the nut must taste like in heaven. Though in an unexpected nod to the natural world, which doesn't have a whole lot of influence on a product like sugar free Jell-O brand instant pudding, there are actual bits of pistachio thrown in, for verisimilitude.

     At least I hope they're bits of pistachio. They're bits of something.
     There is also a lemon sugar-free flavor, which I'm keen to try, but haven't found it in the wild yet — not at Jewel, not at Sunset. I might have to break down and order it online, being a particular fan of all things lemon. I tried making the regular, full-sugar lemon Jell-O brand pudding version, cooked on the stovetop, just to see if I could eat it. 

      I really can't. You know you're reach some sub-hell of austerity when you take a cup of Jell-O from the fridge, eat a single teaspoon's worth, and put it back. I'm encouraging my wife to eat the stuff.

     Not to short-change pistachio. The nut itself is backed by no less authority than the Bible, Genesis 43:11, when Jacob tells his sons: "Put some of the best products of the land in your bags and take them down to the man as a gift — a little balm and a little honey, some spices and myrrh, some pistachio nuts and almonds."
     You're probably wondering about the maraschino cherry. I add them as a garnish, for festivity's sake, even though it's a more complicated process than you'd think. You can't just plop them in the setting pudding. They're wet, and the juice pools. So I dry them on paper towels while I'm whisking up today's batch. The things we do for aesthetics.

     Speaking of whisking. The box says to beat the pudding for two minutes, so I take out my phone's stopwatch app and whisk it for precisely two minutes. Not a second more, or a second less. Which my wife finds hysterical.  I suppose the daring man would just wing it. Beat the stuff until it's firm. But I am not that man. Have you ever heard the term "literal idiot"? That's me.

     The only thing left is to play my favorite game, "Name that Etymology." I guessed that "pistachio" had to be Italian, which it is, but that's just the start. The word sails off into the past. It's one of those words that cuts through time almost untouched. In Greek, it's pistakion, in old Persian pistah. There's something comforting to the thought that you could show up in ancient Babylon, ask for some pistachios, and reasonably expect to get what you've asked for. And at this point, I'll take all the comfort I can get.

A new pope? But we already have one!

     "Congratulations!" said my cousin Harry, calling from Boston Thursday afternoon.
     I frowned, wracking my brains. What had I done worthy of congratulation? Had the baby been born? And nobody thought to tell me? Now the happy news was percolating through the extended family, reaching me through this circuitous route. "Did you tell your dad and mom?" "Nah, they'll find out eventually ..."
     "For what?" I asked.
     "The pope," he said.
     Ah yes! Bragging rights to the pope. Or "Da Pope!" in another instantly classic Sun-Times headline (with an assist from WBEZ). Or Pope Bob, as a reader dubbed him, born in Chicago, grew up in Dolton.
     Chicago can use the boost. It's been a while since we've had a one-name celebrity to crow over. Michael and Oprah are specks in the rearview mirror. Obama ... well ... still fond of the man and looking forward to that presidential center. Though right now he's still the guy who walked us to the cliff's edge and coughed into his fist as we toppled into the abyss.

     Still. Isn't using the pope as an occasion for pride somewhat contradictory? With all the whoops and fist bumps, I've yet to hear anybody say, "The pope's from Chicago; we'll have to double our efforts to live justly and love our fellow man." All pomp and no obligation — is there too much of that already?
     Honestly, while there was genuine pride, news of the Chicago pope was often played for laughs. Jokes about deep dish communion wafers and baseball. Pope Leo XIV is a White Sox fan. Well, they need something. Jesus did say, "Whoever humbles himself will be exalted," and 121 losses last season is humbling aplenty.
     Harebrained, a local graphics outfit that can turn out a great logo faster then I can tie my shoe, immediately created one of their spot-on mashups.
     Innocent joy only lasted a few hours. The city's understandable pride was quickly used to revive the old "Windy City" charge of unseemly boosterism.
     "But in a place where civic pride is both a virtue and a way of life, Chicagoans need little help believing their city is among God’s favorites," the Washington Post sniffed, as if they weren't the same publication that refused to publish a cartoon that would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize because it suggested their owner fell short of his own lofty self-estimation by genuflecting before the orange enormity.
     I hate to be the bearer of bad news: But you put your lips on that guy's backside once, and it leaves a stain that will never wash off. Neville Chamberlain's entire life was an asterisk after waving that piece of paper and declaring "Peace in our time." Live with it.
     I'm reluctant to suggest it doesn't matter what the pope believes in. But we live in a leaderless moment — even President Donald Trump, who spins in the wind. As much as he pushes tariffs, I don't see the MAGA crowd yelling, "Yay tariffs! Double the cost of everything we buy! Shut down the global economic system!"

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Split the difference

     Kitty and I went for a walk shortly before 3 p.m. Saturday, a fine cloudless day in May. We strolled to the corner of First and Walters. To the left, my neighbor Lee Goodman, in his homemade concentration camp uniform, and a small knot of protesters. To the right, the usual expanse of empty sidewalk. I had just about convinced myself to go rightward, avoid the crowd, but my gaze lingered a fraction too long to the left, and Lee's wife Nancy waved. I might be able to slip away from a protest, but I'm not one to cut my neighbors. I ambled over.
     Lee's new sign struck me as non-controversial in a sane world. "Northbrook stands with migrants." This being a nation of immigrants, all of us or our forebears, at one point or another, I'd say we have to.
     But alas, we do not live in that sane world. Having written on the subject Friday, and gotten an earful from readers who have lapped up the immigrants = criminals cant for years, their brains sodden with the stuff, taut like a water balloon, bulging with fallacy. To see them sneeringly feed it back, the logic being, if only they could deliver the news with sufficient vehemence, why then they would win the day. 

     On some I used my line that the fig leaf of concern for legality does not cover their shameful bigotry as well as they seem to think it does. It would help if they viewed a Venezuelan dishwasher with parking tickets and the multiple felon presidents through the same prism of love for law. But that takes time to express, and what's the point?

     Which is sort of my view toward street corner protests. I'm glad they're there, support them fully, but don't see the effect. I chatted briefly with Lee, who mused how long it would take our neighbors — some of whom are far more devoted to the idea of free speech for themselves than they are to free speech for others — will linger before throwing paint at his sign. I figure, nightfall the second day. 
     Prying myself away, I strolled up First Avenue, back toward home, and paused to press my face into the lovely lilac bush below. At first I thought, "These lilacs will make a fine post for tomorrow," planning to ignore Lee, whom I've featured here in his concentration camp uniform in the not-too-distant past. But then I realized the challenge we face is to balance keeping track of and protesting the Trump enormity, while still enjoying the good things in life that his metastasizing presidency has not yet found a way to ruin. I figure, split the difference: start with blue triangles, end with purple lilacs.

Flashback 2005: High-tech world glued to Vatican smoke signals

 

    Maybe I really am getting old. When my editor called Thursday — a Chicago pope! Opinions to firehose at the flaming masses — I did not respond to the clanging bell by stirring on my straw. Did not stagger to my feet, shamble over to my cart traces, and wait to pull professional journalism to the latest fire. The way I always do. 

     I had gotten up at 4 a.m., written a column whittling a splintery stick and shoving it up Kristi Noem's backside. That column was more topical — i.e., apt to quickly lose whatever value it had. It would be stale in three days. Plus, joining the rush to ululate the new pope seemed off-brand.
    "He'll still be pope on Monday," is what I said, passing. Tom McNamee, an actual Catholic, did a fine job and besides, nothing in the paper could top our headline, "Da Pope." Classic.
     Beginning the musing process for Monday's pope column, I thought about the welcomes given pope in the past. Twenty years ago, I did open the the firehose and rinse the topic down. Reading it today makes me glad I waited. The column filled a page and was 1100 words long, 50 percent longer than today. Bring snacks.

Opening shot

     Being in the communications business, I am constantly amazed at the co-mingling of old and new methods of getting the word out. I'll never forget standing on the bridge of a ship crossing the Atlantic and noticing that not far from the high-tech video screen displaying the multicolored radar readout and global satellite positioning system information was a brass mouthpiece for the speaking tube to the captain's cabin.
     So perhaps I was alone in savoring, amid the mass of analysis and hoopla surrounding the transition between popes, that while the death of John Paul II was communicated to the world via an e-mail from the Vatican, the selection of the new pope was conveyed by a puff of smoke and ringing bells. That strikes me as something of a marvel.

If I stop talking I'll die!

     God, I hate TV. They have such a marvelous opportunity to bring a dramatic moment to the world and they blow it, almost every time. There were a few minutes of indecision Tuesday morning as to whether a pope had been selected, whether the smoke was white. We were glued to the TV, waiting. I was watching CNN. As the bells of Rome began ringing, the talking heads kept bloviating, and I wondered if we would be allowed at some point to just hear the bells, a faint background noise. Finally one commentator said something like, "The bells of Rome are pealing, answering the Great Bell of St. Peter; let's take a moment to listen." I leaned forward, relieved, thinking "it's about time." But they didn't listen. Instead Wolf Blitzer began talking as if his life depended on his never stopping.
     Yet another, more human commentator suggested a pause in the palaver to hear the bells, and again Wolf leapt in, yammering away nonstop.
     So sad. That's the worst thing instantaneous communications does to us; it seems to demand that we instantly communicate. Though the real culprit is the media star system where a Wolf Blitzer could never imagine that the viewers might prefer he zip his big yap for a moment and let us listen to the bells of Rome.

Nor will he take up hang-gliding

     One more bit of TV stupidity and then we'll move on — as soon as the 78-year-old Pope Benedict XVI was named, one of the talking heads speculated that it was unlikely he would match the 26-year-reign of Pope John Paul II.
     Gee, ya think so? Considering that it would make him 114 and the oldest man on Earth, I'd say that's a safe bet.
     Let's take a look at the old resume
     As soon as it was announced that the new pope was the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a German hard-liner, and before the new pontiff had even made his appearance, a sweet, older Jewish lady in my office whom I view as a kind of Greek chorus, wringing her hands and voicing the free-floating Semitic anxiety of the moment, drifted by my office.
     She spoke one sentence — "He was in the Hitler Youth" and then moved away.
     The next Jewish colleague I saw was on the down elevator.
     "Whaddaya think of the new pope?" I called after him.
     "German," he said, as he descended out of sight.
     Those are code words for unease. If anyone held out actual hope that the new pope would be in mesh with the liberal American tradition, the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger put the kibosh on that. As you must know by now, he is on record condemning virtually anybody who isn't middle-of-the-road Catholic — Muslims, other Christian denominations, gays, whom he called "evil." I didn't notice any slams against Jews, but that Hitler Youth item on the resume isn't exactly comforting, though supposedly he was in his early teens and forced to join.
     "That's what they all say," said a third Jewish colleague.
     Myself, I can't get too worked up about it. Everybody has baggage from childhood — heck, I was in the Cub Scouts, but I wouldn't want people to hold it against me. As far as his strict orthodoxy, it isn't as if the Catholic Church is an engine for radical social progress as it is, so a bit — or a whole lot — of traditionalism can be expected.
     I just don't feel any anxiety toward this new pope. My central attitude toward the Catholic Church is surprisingly benign: a hope that they do well, so we don't lose any more Catholic churches or schools in Chicago. I hate to see those go.
     Sure, mainstream America wants the church to be ever more liberal, because that's what we are, and like all people we are most comfortable dealing with those exactly like ourselves.
     That would be in our best interest. But the church is a religious group, obviously, and religions face a puzzle that can be thought of as the "Orthodoxy vs. Inclusion dilemma." If they are too strict, then they alienate people in our modern world and lose membership, but if they are too lax, then membership loses its meaning and the people who do belong fall away through indifference.
     Liberalism might be popular in our modern world, but it is orthodoxy that survives unchanged through the ages. Jews used to be 3 percent of the American population, and now we're 1.8 percent and shrinking, primarily because our leaders told us it was OK to practice as tepid a faith as we liked, so as a result, too many of our children ended up inter-marrying and the faithful basically wandered off. We could have used our own version of a Cardinal Ratzinger to keep us in line.

I haven't offended the elderly yet

     The biggest downside of Cardinal Ratzinger's nomination, in my view, is his age. I know that's why they picked him, so that he would not be expected to match Pope John Paul II's amazing quarter century tenure. But after watching the late pope's agonizing physical decline over recent years, are we ready to see it again in a soon-to-be octogenarian pope?
     Perhaps it's all planned out. A few years chaffing under the lash of a fading Pope Benedict XVI's harsh decrees and the church will be ready for whatever dynamic young South American cardinal they pick next. I hope so, because in my heart I'm rooting for the church to prosper.
     At least they believe in something, and while we can pooh-pooh religion, surrounded by our vast American wealth, there are many places on Earth where faith is all they've got — faith and a goat and a few earthen jars. A lot of people are depending on the church to keep going and work out its problems, and if the cardinals think this Ratzinger fellow is the man for the job, then I hope they're right.

           —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 20, 2005

Noem's fear roadshow plays a date downstate

    

Barbara Kruger, Art Institute of Chicago

     If you could be exiled from your home forever for a speeding ticket, how fast would you drive? If the slightest brush with the law might result in you being torn from your family and sent to a country you last saw when you were 2, how cautiously would you go about your day?
     I mention this because, in the first draft of this column, I began with the hard statistics demonstrating that immigrants, as a group, are more law-abiding than citizens born in the United States. It just makes sense; they have to be.
     But numbers are cold, while stories sizzle.
     This is not to suggest immigrants never commit crimes. Awful crimes. They do. They are, after all, still human beings — that privilege has not been snatched away from them, yet. Though according to the script we're following, that is coming next.
    But one example — or three — is proof of nothing. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is oblivious to that, and hopes you are too. She brought her Immigrants = Criminals Tour roadshow to Springfield Wednesday to complain about our state's policy of not helping federal immigration officers randomly pluck immigrants off the street and ship them to foreign countries to suffer fates unknown for the crime of not having their paperwork in order. Or having their paperwork in order and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
     “People are dying every day because of these policies. People are evading justice,” Noem told reporters during a news conference near the scene of a murder committed, allegedly, by an immigrant. As if "evading justice" weren't a contender for a chapter heading summarizing our current political nadir in some future history textbook. "Evading Justice — America in the era of blatant official criminality, 2025 — 2029."
     Assuming we have accurate history books, which right now is no sure bet.
     Noem went on to fire off the administration blunderbuss of false invective.
     “Governors like JB Pritzker don’t care if gangbangers, murderers, rapists and pedophiles roam free in his state," she said.
     Initially, I grabbed a handful of statistics to throw back. How immigrants are 60 percent less likely to wind up in jail than citizens born here. But figures are complicated, when you dwell in the world of fact, there are many asterisks — the figure could be 30%. Or 40%.

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Buoyed by birds

      Zoos make me sad.  There's no other way to say it. I'm not coming from a PETA, liberation, pity-the-captive-animals point of view. I'm not unhappy that zoos exist — at this point they have an important role in guaranteeing the future of species that might not always be found in the wild.
     I mean, just the experience of going to a zoo. We had a fun meal at North Pond, then walked south to Lincoln Park Zoo. 

     Boom, a nameless melancholy. So many people, so few animals. And the ones that are there are hiding, often. Best zookeeping practice demands that animals be allowed to escape the pressure of our prying eyes — zoos actually plant hedges and erect barriers — and more often than not the animals prefer privacy. It's like going to visit your neighbors only to have them hide inside their house and not answer the bell.
     Part might be nostalgia. For almost five years we visited the zoo pushing what I called "The bus" — a big double stroller holding the two boys. Every animal was a joyous discovery. So seeing the zoo, boyless, well, it's like going to Chuck E. Cheese with your wife, the two of you, for the pizza. Or so I imagine, having never done such a thing.
     The lions were beautiful. But like so much, they kept reminding us what aren't there — what goes with lions? Right, tigers. Wrong — gone, since 2016. At least there were bears, polar bears. Oh my.
     The rhino was sufficiently prehistoric. Like seeing a dinosaur. But the rhino also lives in what used to be the elephant area. Gone for 20 years now.  I'm sure it leads for happier, more productive lives for some herd of elephants, somewhere, enjoying a better place than the North Side of Chicago. But it blows for visitors. Nothing sets your spirits right like an elephant.
     And the gorillas. It was naptime when we went, and they were sprawled, listless, their eyes dull. The enclosures seem small. Hard not to pity them, while at the same time relating to their predicament. As these days of Trump 2.0 grind on, with no end in sight, it's difficult not to get a little glassy-eyes ourselves. How did we end up here? How could we have been so careless as to let ourselves be lured into that trap? By banana? As helpless now to alter our fate as animals in a zoo.
     "Yeah tell me about it, buddy," I want to say. "Not quite the rich pageant we were promised."
     We were about to drift disheartened out of the place, and begin our miserable crawl back to the suburban hellscape from whence we came, when I had an idea.
    "Let's see the birds," I said. 

Green Broadbill

     We made a beeline over, encountering a massive polar bear, pacing back and forth, along with a sign telling visitors not to be alarmed by the pacing. Perfectly natural. 

     Sure it is.
     The birds were a different story. We saw a bright Green Broadbill and a Tawny Frogmouth that looks like an owl. A pair of Luzon Bleeding Heart doves who immediately started to form what Othello called "the beast with two backs" — though in this case it as more a two-tier dove pile — the moment I looked at them. 
     The main bird exhibit doesn't have bars, and you can watch the birds at close range, including a pair of Inca Terns. I think it helps that the birds are relatively small, compared to apes. They have more room to roam. And there are so many different kinds.
     "I don't know what those birders are making such a big fuss about," I said. "Look at all the species of birds we're spotting, right here in Lincoln Park."

Nicobar pigeon

 

New book illuminates Wrigley Building

 

Photo courtesy of the Chicago History Museum

     Resolved: the Wrigley Building is a beautiful, beloved jewel of Chicago, though not great architecture. Discuss.
     "Beautiful" is a value judgment, one I endorse fully. Glazed terra cotta in six shades of white, shifting toward creamy yellow as it nears the top. Festooned with dragons, griffins, cherubs, rams. That four-faced clock, 20 feet tall.
     "Beloved" is not open to debate — any survey of popular Chicago buildings includes the Wrigley Building.
     "It was made to be liked," said Robert Sharoff, whose new coffee table book, "The Wrigley Building: The Making of an Icon," (Rizzoli Electa) with photographs by William Zbaren and commentaries by Tim Samuelson, shines a spotlight on a structure that's been well-illuminated for over a century.
     "The more I shot it, the more joyous it became," said Zbaren. "It's so playful."
     The Wrigley Building is just fun. Perched at the confluence of Michigan Avenue and the north bank of the Chicago River, the historic heart of Chicago — the outlines of Fort Dearborn are in brass across the street — the tower has always been a font of fascination, to me anyway,
     Starting with it being in reality two buildings, built at different times, with different addresses, 400 and 410 N. Michigan, connected at the 14th floor by that metal skybridge, a rococo detail that seems pulled from those dreamlike early 1900s fantasies of the urban future, with plump zeppelins and streamlined elevated trains and mustachioed gentlemen in bowler hats pedaling through the air on penny-farthing bicycles with wings.
     "The Wrigley Building" bristles with glorious facts that even I didn't know, starting with the clock initially being hand-wound by someone turning an enormous crank, winching up weights that once drove the mechanism.
     The authors come down firmly in favor of "great architecture," not surprising in a book bankrolled by Wrigley Building owner Joe Mansueto. Though they insist the Morningstar billionaire gave them a free hand, which they use to massage the life of the architect, Charles Beersman, who does not have a deep portfolio — his other building of note is Cleveland's Terminal Tower. Both of his signature structures are riffs on the Giralda Tower in Spain, with notes of New York's Municipal Building stirred into Wrigley.
     To me, he had one idea, and it was someone else's. But in this book, Beersman might as well be Michelangelo — we're given nine of his 11 childhood addresses in San Francisco, in a note.
     What we get far less of are the critics who lined up over the years to give the Wrigley Building the backhand. Lewis Mumford referred to its "safe mediocrity." The Wrigley Building is "just what the name implies," sniffed Frank Lloyd Wright — admittedly not famous for kindness toward other architects — noting it “illustrates the principle that an ugly building by day, if illuminated, will be ugly by night as well.”

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Restaurant field notes: North Pond

     The kids wanted to meet for brunch at North Pond on Sunday.
     Which itself is parking the ball onto Waveland Avenue, parenting-wise. Really, if your grown children, having successfully launched and escaped the paternal clutches, nevertheless regularly circle back and say, "Hey old people — are you free?" that's snagging the brass ring.
     As if we weren't buoyed enough just by the invite, walking into the lovely little Lincoln Park restaurant at 2610 N. Cannon Drive, with its gorgeous Arts and Craft interior, drove us to maximum good spirits. The hosts are excellent at welcoming — a lot of places fall down on this. Smiles, warmth, and took our coats.

     The place is so well-constructed you can be forgiven for assuming you're enjoying quality from an earlier age. Actually, though it was built in 1912 as a shelter for skaters on the pond and was nothing fancy. It went through a variety of incarnations — it was a hot dog stand for most of the time we lived three blocks to the northwest, before North Pond Cafe opened in 1998. It has to be the only restaurant to win a Michelin star that was once a homeless shelter. (The star has since been snatched back; but such glory, once conferred, lingers).
     True, my wife and I bobbled the first  challenge. Our server set down a "Hot Chocolate Menu" which the savvy dinner would have taken as a tip from the cosmos to order the hot chocolate. We did discuss it. But I've got that diabetes thing, and my wife has that preserving her girlish figure thing, so we opted for coffee. Though I presciently mentioned during our pre-ordering analysis  that higher end restaurants which nail every other aspect of the dining experience often botch the coffee part for reasons I do not understood. My theory is, in their frantic quest for excellence, fancy eateries forget to clean the coffeemakers regularly. My wife believes they opt for chi-chi coffee that is acidic.
     Anyway, the coffee arrived. I sipped, then silently dosed mine with cream, the international signal that the coffee is no good. My sharp-eyed wife noticed. Meanwhile, my daughter-in-law's hot chocolate arrived and she raved about it. I thought of quietly dipping into hers a spoon to try it, but she's new to the family, and that seemed, oh I don't know, an over-familiarity.
     Then I did an uncharacteristic thing. The next time the waiter swept past, I handed him my nearly full cup, said the coffee wasn't to my liking, and asked for a cup of cocoa. Typically, I wouldn't send a bowl of grease from the drip pan back if a place served it to me. But fortune favors the bold. And that hot chocolate looked so good.

     My wife did the same. It was worth the effort. Not too sweet, with all sorts of intriguing flavor hints including, another server tipped us off to, lime chantilly.

The cuts in the corn bread were my doing.

     Brunch is $59, and under any other circumstances than meeting our beloved son and D.I.L., that itself would have been a dealbreaker for my wife and, honestly, it almost was. She was inclined to suggest something more budget friendly. But I disagreed, observing that we had talked about going to New Orleans, but didn't. So this meal was far cheaper than buying a praline at a candy shop in the French quarter, if you figure in the flight and hotel. And mirabile dictu, that argument carried the day. Plus we could consider it an early Mother's Day Brunch, that being a holiday, like Valentine's, when the savvy restaurant goer dines at home.
     North Pond brunch is three courses, and I opted for the Tart Tatin, as appetizer, the "Beef, Pastry" for the main course, and Chocolate Cake for dessert.
     I stepped away to spread the insulin welcome mat for that feast, then had to take a phone call from the paper. During my absence, an unexpected trio of breads arrived — quite quaint and pretty, with jam and a pair of interesting butters.

It's hard to find a good tart, but this was.

     The tart is described as "Honeyed Carrots, Goat Cheese Ricotta, 'Pop Tart' Dough, Arugula Salad, Lardons" — that last ingredient being a term I wasn't familiar with. It means cubes of fatty bacon, and I did enjoy picking those out. The salad was a tad wet, but welcome. I'm a big carrot fan — I don't think I've mentioned it before. Truly, Bugs Bunny level. I order just about anything made of carrots, did so here, and didn't regret it.
     The Beef, Pastry — no, that comma is not a typo — is described as "Turmeric Pastry Wrapped Grilled Striploin, Sweet Potato Purée, Root Vegetable Pavé, Sherry Jus."
     I wish I had thought to complain about that comma between Beef and Pastry; it would have been the height of the meal. "Waiter — there's a comma in my Beef, Pastry." The sort of thing that enters into Steinberg lore, the way I once ordered the Happy Family plate at Szechuan Kingdom, and met the raised eyebrows — I always get beef and broccoli — with, "I've sampled the 'Happy Family' at every Chinese restaurant I've been to. To compare them. And do you know what I've found?" They gazed at me, puzzled. "All happy families are alike..." I said.

Beef, Pastry worked, despite the comma.

     Tumeric is the It Girl spice of the moment — our older son had been singing its praises recently. A relative of ginger, it is a deep golden orange. The accompaniments struck me as a tad greasy, but the meat was dense and satisfying.
     The Chocolate Cake was no wedge of standard birthday, but "Lapsang Souchong, Raspberry Curds, Sunflower Seed Crumble, Madagascar Vanilla Gelato." I looked up that first term (if I'm spending sixty bucks on brunch I want to know what I'm getting and getting into) and took away that it is a kind of tea.
     I like tea. But in this case, the cake was a reminder of the perils of insufficient research, because I didn't focus on the Lapsang Souchong definition long enough to grasp the "it's by far one of the boldest, smokiest teas out there." Truly,

The Laphroaig of cakes.

Lapsang Souchong is the Laphroaig scotch of teas, and while smoky tea chocolate cake might be an acquired taste, it is not a taste acquired on the first attempt, at least not for me, a judgment my wife confirmed. I mean, I ate it. But my wife's carrot cake was superior, a reminder that one should always, always order the carrot dish.
    Brunch was a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The kids adore North Pond — they've eaten there before — and for me, the setting and the service helped pull the food, which honestly I wasn't in love with, over the finish line. I enjoyed the experience sufficiently that I'd go back, if only for the joy of complaining about that comma. Plus the entire staff was truly first rate — the waiter didn't charge us for the misfire coffees, which is only smart service, but not a bar that every restaurant can clear. There was no unsettling 3 percent "because we can" fee. The place was surprisingly uncrowded for 12 noon on a Sunday, another sign recession is sinking in.
     Afterward, we walked to the Lincoln Park Zoo and ... well, we'll visit the zoo here on Thursday.

 

   Reminder: I will be one of the speakers at Chicago Fights Back, "An Evening of Stories, Poetry, History, and Music — focused on Chicago, on change, and on resilience." Wednesday, May 7 at 7 p.m. at the Hideout, 1354 West Wabansia. Raising funds for groups benefiting the homeless and the hungry that are impacted by cuts to the federal government. And yeah, it's a little discordant to mention this after a twee skip through a fancy restaurant. But time is running out — it's tomorrow — and one of my few writing rules is, Be Who You Are, and in addition to being a guy who meets his kid for an expensive brunch, I'm also someone who'll figure out some kind of presentation and drag myself to a gritty bar to help people I've never met. And if you are too, maybe I'll see you there. For more information, click here.

Mark Zuckerburg wants to sell you new AI friends

     Jim and I rode our bikes over to Wallace Lake to check out a lifeguard, Laura. I can still see her, 16 years old, in her white bathing suit, gazing over the splashing crowd.
     That sounds creepier than it actually was since, at the time, almost half a century ago, Jim and I were also teenagers. Jim and Laura have been married for 42 years and have two daughters and five grandchildren.
     Kier and I drove to New York City once. We had dinner at Thai Hut on Devon Avenue, then 12 hours straight east, hitting Manhattan at dawn, just as Little Feat sang, "Don't the sunlight look so pretty, never saw a sight, like rolling into New York City, with the skyline in the morning light."

Me, Cate and Robert, 1983

   And Cate, well, where do I begin? She wanted to be one of my groomsmen, but my wife-to-be put her foot down. I did throw Cate a bachelor party when she got married, with our mutual friend Robert, that involved securing a banquet room at the Como Inn, writing a script and hiring actors. Which was only fair, because Rob and Cate did the same for my bachelor party, at the old Get Me High Lounge in Wicker Park.
     Oh wait, that's four friends. I've gone over my limit, according to Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, who imagines the average American "has fewer than three friends" — where did he come up with that figure? — and could use AI buddies to hang around with. Which he will be happy to sell us.
     The idea being that we're going to pour out our hearts to our AI soulmates and they will — what? Reassure us? Suggest comfort food to buy on Amazon?
     Is that what friends do? Sometimes they're just there. I've been working on not trying to fix friends' problems. Just listen, nod or say, "That's terrible." Will that be any use coming from a silicon chip? Won't it be like writing "there there" on an index card and referring to it when you're blue?
     There are levels of friendship. Outlined above are the best kind: old friends. There are also new friends, work friends, friendly neighbors, Facebook friends, friends-with-benefits, fair weather friends. Friends who are always there when they need you.
     Those friends tend to be situational and transactional, to quote my friend Lynn Sweet's useful description of Barack Obama's approach to relationships. They can be quite real when we're all in the same lifeboat, furiously bailing. Then quickly fade back on dry land.
     Friends ideally are around your level on the struggle up the greased pole of life. I've had good friends who, inflated with success, float off, as if cash were helium. Loyal myself, I cargo cult them, staring at the patch of blue they vanished into. Sometimes for quite a long while. Years. But eventually I sigh, turn away, resigned they're never coming back. And they never do.
     Some friends are like comets — gone for quite some time, then suddenly back, illuminating the night sky again. My former college roommate Didier worked with Catholic Relief and never calls.

Me, Cate and Rob, 2024

     We would have the best conversations — when I phone. I used to say, it's because if he called me, he'd have to take the rag soaked in sugar water off the lips of whatever emaciated child he's succoring. If he ever phoned, a child would die.
     I feared he just didn't want to talk with me. But when my older boy needed to spend the summer at an internship in Washington, D.C., where Di lives, I called him to ask about the various sketchy neighborhoods my kid was considering. Is this safe? Is that?
     He kept saying, "I have a spare bedroom. He can stay with me." The third time he said that, I responded: If you make that offer again, I'll take you up on it, and you'll be sorry. He did. I did, and both parties seemed to enjoy a fun summer together.
     You go out of your way for your friends. Friendship is not, Zuckerberg take note, a moneymaking scheme. And they do the same for you.
     I only lived in Los Angeles for three months, but Jim and Laura, freshly married, came to visit. One night Laura stayed in, and I took Jim in my 1963 Volvo P1800 to go clubbing. At one point he said: "Neil — you're a writer in Los Angeles. You've got this sports car. I'm still in Berea, working for my dad. Why are we friends?"
     We were at a stoplight on Sunset Boulevard. I turned and looked closely at Jim, then gave an answer that stuck with me:
     "Because most people are assholes, and you're not."

To read the version in the newspaper, click here.

Ingenious device

     

     The tendency is to throw stuff away. So when I noticed a two-inch tear in the fabric at the collar of a blue pajama top, my first impulse was just to rip it open furrther, for good measure, and turn it into rags. I have plenty of pairs of J. Crew pajamas; this one is well worn, obviously. Move forward.
     However. I could also, I realized, sew it. Closing the rend, well, the top could last for ... quite a bit longer. I went to my wife's sewing box, removed one of those little sewing kits you get at hotels. There was a needle and white thread. The needle was very small and I had difficulty threading it. One, two, three, four tries.
     The needle was cheap, its eye very small. I thought I might have a better needle in my desk, with a bigger, more threadable eye, so pulled open the center drawer. There was a second kit, including a device I had never noticed before, nor realized existed. A diamond-shaped wire attacked to a small round metal tab depicting the profile of a woman's face. It was obvious what this thing did — you push the wire through the needle's eye, feed in the thread and pull it back.
   Worked like a charm. I stitched over the rend twice, to make sure it was securely sewn. When I finished I looked at the clock. It had taken exactly 10 minutes. A men's pajama set on J. Crew is $94. Ballpark the top as half that, $47. Factor in depreciation, let's say the value left in the top I repaired is $15. 
    Meaning, doing the math, that I earned more sewing an old pajama top than I earn writing a column for the Sun-Times, because there are 60 minutes in an hour, and six times $15 is $90 — the newspaper does not pay me $90 an hour.

    A sobering thought. Or a liberating one.  A lot of guys would never sew a rip — I wonder if they might now that they know how profitable it can be.
     Leaving me with only two questions: first, who's the lady? Prof. Google has no idea, guessing Arachne or Minerva, Greek gods skilled in needlework. My brother, drawn into the question, put it to Chat GBT, which came up with an answer that sounds right:

     The woman depicted on this item is not a specific historical or famous figure; it is a generic classical or Greco-Roman-style profile, commonly used in the design of needle threaders like the one shown in your photo.
     This image is a traditional decorative motif, not meant to represent an identifiable individual. The design has been used for decades by various manufacturers, often inspired by classical art or a stylized “seamstress” figure.     

     The second question was: who invented this handy gizmo? Searching patent records, the closest I found was the above, from 1859. If you look hard, it's not the same — a sort of tiny tongs, to pull the thread through, as opposed to a diamond shape wire, which is thinner, easier and cheaper to construct. I imagine it's there, in the records, as a later development, but don't feel particularly inclined to search it out. There were also indications it was cooked up in England a few decades earlier.

    As a rule, I assume that if I don't know about something, nobody knows. Though my wife knew about the threader, suggesting that its inventor was probably an unheralded woman. Though she admitted that, in the 19th century, many tailors were men, so a man could have developed the ingenious device as well. 

    Anyway, I thought, with intelligence hit upon hard times, almost any evidence of human cleverness is worthy of mention. 

Scam Likely

 

     I've carried a phone in my pocket for 23 years, ever since my wife bought me a little Nokia flip phone for my 42nd birthday. A gift that, at the time, seemed such an intrusion into regular life that I considered throwing it in the river.
     But I kept the phone, through increasingly complicated incarnations, to my latest iPhone 12, which I bought instead of a 15 because it does everything I want at a third of the price.
     In all that time, I've never felt the need to shut off notification of phone calls. But since I signed up for Medicare last month, the spam calls have been so frequent, they grew bothersome. Fraudsters from overseas now show a 312 area code, so I don't know if it's a basement call center in Africa or the official I phoned an hour ago, seeking a comment.

     Now, if you aren't in my contact list, then your call gets dumped straight to voicemail. Which itself is a theft — of time. Friday my mother's doctor's office called, going straight to voicemail, meaning that instead of just fielding the call and dealing with it, I got to play telephone tag for a few hours.  
     In the past, occasionally, Congress would provide some kind of relief from scam calls. Yes, enforcement was spotty and they'd find a way rear up again. 

    But now the problem is bad, and will only get worse, as Trump takes his chainsaw to regulatory agencies, that were already doing a subpar job, allowing us to sometimes carry phones unmolested by crude attempts to rob us. Consumer watchdogs. Regulations against spam. Prosecution of rip-off artists. Out the window.

     When the president is selling access and hawking bitcoin and monetizing fear in an administration that is one giant ongoing grift, it might seem petty to focus on a minor inconvenience like spam calls. But they are also the vanguard of more to come, and we must be constantly on our guard. Years of thefts, large and small, are on deck. We have to try not to fall in, ourselves as individuals, while doing what we can to help our poor country escape from the trick we played on ourselves, the pit we've ... not fallen into. Worse. Dove into, eyes wide open. Climbing out will take all we've got.

World Press Day, an ideal moment to back the media

      "We never make mistakes."
      A credo for totalitarianism, echoing in my brain like a clanking chain after seeing the latest MAGA red hat slogan, "Trump was right about everything," sported by President Trump's adviser, Elon Musk.
     Hard to believe people pay $19.99 to brand that on their foreheads. Points for candor, because belief in the infallibility of Donald Trump is the guiding principle of this American era. As if the flesh of modern democratic society suddenly melted away to reveal the grinning skull of 18th century monarchism that was always underneath.

     "We never make mistakes."
     The stock market disagrees. The American people increasingly disagree. To believe the past three months have been anything but a tearing down of American prosperity, freedom, influence, and prestige, you have to suspend all verifiable reality. Accept empty ports. Accept legal residents yanked off the street without due process and shipped to foreign prisons.
     Who will stop this? Not Congress, clapping like seals. Not the courts, already being ignored and ridiculed by Trump, undercutting anyone who points out that the law and whatever he says today are not the same thing, yet.
     “We cannot allow a handful of communist, radical-left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws,” Trump said. And by "our laws" he means, "my will."
     The only avenue open to resist what is happening is to tell the truth, as clearly and frequently and forcefully as possible.
     And who is doing that?
     The media, or what is left of it. Which is why World Press Day — Saturday, May 3 — is extra important. Because if unfettered and fair reporting is valuable during normal times, it is absolutely essential now, if there is to be any hope to thwart gathering authoritarianism. 
     "We never make mistakes."
     Everyone makes mistakes. Some acknowledge it. Tyrants can't. And a few seek to cast light on errors. Since 1948, the Chicago Sun-Times has been in the business of finding mistakes, of honestly assessing and analyzing the world, from the smallest community problem to the largest global crisis. Such as the one we're in right now.
     Like America, we've come on lean times. The Sun-Times has suffered losses — 20% of our staff in March as a cost-cutting move, including the editorial board. Our business model — sell ads and subscriptions — undercut by the digital revolution. Now we depend on donations, as part of the Chicago Public Media 501(c)3 nonprofit. 

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Flashback 2004: Too cool to cavort 'round the maypole? Your loss

 

The Maypole, British, 1770s (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     I smiled, reading this after 20 years. I don't think I could quite manage its tone anymore — late blooming maturity, perhaps, or creeping exhaustion, or sedimentary kindness. Maybe it's an improvement; maybe not. Walter Jacobson did leave Fox, in 2006, and Al Cubbage retired, still as vice president for university relations at Northwestern, in 2018.

     'It's May," I said to my wife. "Where are the maypoles?" She gave me a look of bewilderment. "What's a maypole?" she said.
     Now it was my turn to be bewildered.
     "What's a maypole!?!" I said, almost shouting, spreading my arms. "What's a maypole?" I repeated, lost in one of those bursts of boggled pedantry that people find so annoying in me. "You must know . . ."
     "I've heard of them . . ." she ventured.
     A maypole, I explained, is a tall pole, festooned with flowers and trailing ribbons from the top. You grab a ribbon and dance about the pole: here I did my version of a prance, leaping into the air as best I could and fluttering my hands, little birdie-like, at my sides.
     "They do it," I said. "To joyfully greet the spring." She gazed at me.
     I should probably pause here to explain the chain of logic that led to maypoles, lest readers think I've completely lost my mind. I mocked Fox news anchor Walter Jacobson in my last column and had expected his legions of fans to rush to his defense. So I was shocked when no one supported him. Nada. Not one kind word. Sad, particularly for someone paid big bucks supposedly because people like him. It seemed clear that his time is ebbing, and I wondered how Fox would mark the finish.
     Perhaps, I mused, they could put Walter in a tumbrel — a rough wheeled cart, for the dictionary-averse — and drag him past jeering mobs to the city limits. Tar and feathers might also be involved.
     Too busy watching TV to frolic
     Doubtful, I thought, given our reluctance toward public display. And not just derisive display . . . and here maypoles bubbled up. What a pleasant practice! People dressed in white, decorated in the flowers they collected in a process known as "maying." Gathering in parks and dancing, unembarrassed, around a beribboned pole.
     Before I pronounced the practice extinct, I thought I'd better check. If any place would have them, it is the sororities at Northwestern. I reached an "Ellen" at the sorority council. I tried to pry a few words out of her about maypoles, but she referred me to the NU public relations department.
     See? That's what's wrong with people today. Not just too uptight to prance happily in public. But unable to even talk about it . . .
     I understand why women don't dance around maypoles anymore — it smacks of that purity myth they spent centuries escaping. Though frankly, I think a sign of true liberation would be the ability to enjoy yourself without worrying that if it looks wrong you'll have to go back to corsets and slapping laundry against a rock.
     Not to put the onus on women. Men are even less inclined to giddy celebration — unless of course it's connected with sports. Make a touchdown, you get to do an idiotic, wobbly-kneed turkey dance on national TV. Without the touchdown, any cavorting will tar you as a siss as surely as appearing in leather chaps on the cover of the Windy City Times.
     I defy that. I would rather gambol down the center of Michigan Avenue tossing flower petals out of a basket than spend the rest of my life in lockstep with all the other grim, pasty-faced commuters I see trudging toward the grave through the urine-scented netherworld of Union Station.
     More than once — either after catching a glimpse of one of my steadily receding goals, or at the momentary defeat of an enemy — I have managed, if not quite a prance, then a happy sort of a skip through the newsroom. Frankly, I don't think anybody noticed. Then again, the young grinds who increasingly serve as my colleagues wouldn't look up if a calliope hitched to two circus ponies went bloop-bloop-bloopiting past.
     I found record of a few maypoles in recent years at street fairs and, hope blooming, called Al Cubbage, the vice president for university relations at Northwestern, to double check. He fondly remembered delivering May baskets back home in Dubuque, Iowa, and at least knew of maypoles at NU.
     "It was a big deal for years," he said. "There are archival photos, in the early 20th century, of entire groups of spring-clad women dancing around the maypole."
     Cubbage thought that a vestige survived in the school's annual "Maysing."
     "We had it Tuesday night this week," he said. "The men of the Greek houses serenade the women of the sorority houses."
     That sounded sweet. I imagined the guys, dressed in white linen, playing ukuleles and crooning "Harvest Moon" to their sweethearts. I asked him to check into it; he did, but the news was bad.
     College girls don't need wooing
     "They don't even go serenade the girls anymore," he said, I believe, with a trace of sadness. "They no longer dress up. "
     Of course not. They're too cool. We're all too cool to risk looking ridiculous — though why a grown man in spandex undershorts twirling a skateboard is hip, while the same guy manfully capering around a maypole is not, is one of those cultural insanities that defy understanding. Frankly, I'm sorry I brought the whole thing up.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 14, 2004