Menorah as middle finger

     Hanukkah began Sunday night. It's a more subdued holiday in our household, with the boys away at school. We did put up decorations, a kind of muscle memory. And exchanged gifts — Rolling Stones tickets! And we lit a menorah, which we stick in the window. That's actually my favorite part of the holiday. The world pushes hard against Jews, sometimes, and it's a small joy to push back in a small way, as I tried to describe in this column from 2004.

     Perhaps I'm just not in the holiday mood. But am I the only one to think that Hanukkah is a pretty second-rate holiday? A minor festival which, due to its unfortunate proximity to Christmas, has grown to enormous proportions, somewhat hideously, the way the frogs in the pond at a nuclear power plant might grow to the size of footstools. Hanukkah music is tinny compared to the beauty of Christmas carols — we're grinding out "Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel" while they've got "Silent Night." Those chocolate coins taste lousy. Dreidel is not a fun game. There's no tree. Ordinarily, Hanukkah would have the cultural significance of Tu B'shvat — Jewish Arbor Day, which you probably never heard of but would be a huge event if it and not Hanukkah fell in December.
     The only reason Hanukkah gets celebrated the way it does — with gifts and decorations and fuss — is to ape Christmas hoopla, as a sop to the kiddies, who otherwise would drive their parents crazy out of gift envy.
     Yes, I'll munch my share of latkes. And yes, lighting the menorah can be a nice moment, if the kids muster the self-control to stop yammering "presents, presents, presents" for a few seconds.
     And there is one aspect I truly savor, something very personal: when I take the lit menorah and set it in the front window, which I've always considered a vigorous "Up yours, we're still here" to all the anti-Semites over the centuries and prowling the outside world today.
     I softly mutter my own little blessing to those people, a two-word benediction I won't repeat here, as I set the brass menorah on the windowsill. A small, triumphant moment.
     So maybe Hanukkah isn't so bad after all. It must be my mood.
              —Originally published in the Sun-Times Dec. 10, 2004

Flashback 2010: "The rich subtlety of sign language will knock you out"

  

     On a dare from a reader, I wrote an obituary for myself four years ago, and posted it yesterday on Facebook, part of my routine of tossing up old blog entries on their anniversary to garner a few dozen extra clicks. The piece mentioned, among the stories I had written, one about translating a show tune into American Sign Language, and another reader, with a deaf child, said he'd like to read that. I remembered liking the piece and dug it up.

     You never know when the gray thunderheads of routine will part and a beam of something bright shine through; call it grace, beauty, whatever. Something that lingers.
     It isn't in the overheated, windowless office of the director of the International Center on Deafness & the Arts in Northbrook, listening to a detailed rendition of her career. Nor on a tour of the center. Nor seeing many photos of famous alumna Marlee Matlin. Nor even watching deaf students choreograph a dance from "West Side Story," being staged at the Centerlight Theatre this February.
     Just as I start wondering when I can politely grab my coat and bolt, we come into a cluttered work room. At a table sit Christine Erickson, the theater program director, Gina Matzkin, a costumer and longtime program participant, and a teenage girl, Lauren Holtz.
     Each has a ring binder open in front of her. They are in the midst of translating the lovely lyrics to "Somewhere" into American Sign Language.
     "Right now, we're struggling with the first two lines; 'There's a place for us/Somewhere, a place for us,' " says Erickson. "We're trying to give that a really nice picture."
     There is no American Sign Language sheet music for "West Side Story." Translating word-for-word doesn't work, because ASL is not a mere visual approximation of English, but a distinct language (popular, too -- about as many Americans speak ASL as speak Italian).

EACH WORD HAS TO BE LABORED OVER
     "The words, 'There's a place for us,' " says Erickson. "The girl singing the song is not talking about it being for her and somebody else. What we're trying to figure out is, should she be signing 'us' meaning 'me and you,' or for 'them,' Tony and Maria, or for 'all of us.' It gets complicated."
     That it does. Take the third line, "Peace and quiet and open air." "This is going to be tricky. 'Peace' and 'quiet' are the same sign," explains Erickson, dusting her hands together and then spreading them apart, palms down.
     "I would prefer to keep 'peace' and do something else for 'quiet,' " Erickson says, suggesting the index-finger-to-lips gesture librarians are famous for, one that means, unsurprisingly, "hush" in ASL.
     "I like it," says Matzkin. Then there is the matter of keeping up with the beat. "Take my hand" is three syllables. The ASL symbol—one hand clapped over the other at your sternum —is one beat. The solution: break the gesture into three separate parts; the lower hand is presented, the upper hand claps over it, and the pair are drawn to the chest: Take my hand.
     "'Time to look, time to care,'—what does that mean?" asks Lauren, 15.
     "Life goes by so fast," says Erickson, shifting gears. "You have to stop, look around, spend time with the people you care about. What do you think it means?"
     "That," Lauren said, earnestly.
     We get into a discussion of ASL. There are regional accents—"Halloween," is signed differently in different parts of the country. People can sign loudly, softly, gently, strong. Men sign differently than women.
     In spring 2009, they did "Grease," which has a song going over various car parts.
     "I had to go home and ask my husband," says Matzkin (both are deaf). She signs "pistons"—a vigorous gesture of two fists driving up and down.
     "Somewhere" ends with a plaintive "Somehow/Someday/ Somewhere." They puzzle.
     "You guys overuse the word 'some,' " Matzkin tells me (By "you guys" she means the hearing world. Deaf society is the most militant of the various groups with disabilities, and if anywhere here I give the impression that ASL is pretty, I apologize for the insult).

     They consider "True how, true day, true where."
     "I'm not in love with the 'true,' but it might work," says Matzkin.
     They end up with "Possible. Future. Out there"—each gesture a double pump that echoes the two syllables of "Somehow, someday, somewhere."
     "From the top," said Matzkin.
     Lauren stands up, an elfin girl in a purple leotard. The freshman at Hersey High School in Arlington Heights is a quick study, and nails the lyrics they have just worked out while the song plays on a boom box, gesturing faster than I can write it down: a finger to her lips for hush, signing "together" by making O's out of her thumbs and forefingers and locking them together, then the big finish.
     "Someday"—she signs "future," palm at her temple, then slicing out.
     "Somewhere"—she signs "out there," thrusting her right arm, straight out, then her left, a gesture of Evita-like triumph.
     That the above description does not drop your jaw in delight, if you are not struck by the moment's charm, the fault is mine, limited as I am to the written English language. If you saw Lauren Holtz sign "Somewhere" in ASL, you'd know what I mean.
     But we all must labor under our limitations.
                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 28, 2010

The world keeps turning for Illinois manufacturers

  

     So how does a reporter keep his job during an era of newsroom downsizing? One way, I believe, is to be useful beyond your allotted tasks. Thus I had two stories on the front page of Sunday's Sun-Times, neither stemming from my actual job, that of being a daily news columnist.
     The first was the obituary of George H.W. Bush. Writing obituaries was a practice I started back when I was on the night shift, because it allowed me to a) pass the time; and b) get myself on the front page writing a story that was both important and wasn't going to be touched by anybody else. Nobody asked me to write Bush's obit, I just did it, because I knew he had a Chicago connection—I pick subjects who are national figures with Chicago roots.
     The second was this essay on Illinois manufacturing, in one of the special little magazines that the paper has been inserting in the Sunday edition. My boss asked me if I would do a general piece celebrating Illinois manufacturing, in conjunction with the 200th anniversary of the state, and I said, "Sure!" I love visiting factories and poking around.  The challenge was finding a few that would let me in on short notice. I first thought I should slide over to Caterpillar or John Deere. But my window of opportunity was very narrow—the paper said, in essence, do it now—and both plants were dark for re-tooling.
     So I picked Replogle, for the simple reason they moved to Indiana and came back. Plus I had been to their old factory years ago. I selected Plochman's, because I adore mustard. And PCB because I'm a hard-ass, and thought going to a bearing plant would bring unexpected wonder, and was right.

    Lucina Miguel has a job unlike any other performed by Illinois’ 571,800 other factory workers. She glues strips of a map of the Earth onto large plastic spheres for Replogle Globes, one of 13,000 manufacturing companies in the state.
     That task once fell to founder Luther Replogle, who started making and selling handcrafted spherical creations out of his Chicago apartment in 1930. Success followed over the next several decades and Replogle eventually became one of the largest globe manufacturers in the world.

     But times change — strapped school systems just don’t buy globes in bulk like they used to — and the ailing company was purchased in 2010 by Herff Jones, and relocated to Indiana. The Indianapolis maker of yearbooks, class rings and diplomas didn’t quite know what to do with a retail supplier like Replogle and was about to shut down the business before a group of its former executives bought it back.
     And returned it to Illinois.
     That transaction is a single snapping twig in the whirlwind of acquisitions and divestitures, growth and contraction, and openings and closings that have blown across the Illinois manufacturing landscape since long before it became a state.
     In 1702, the state’s first documented manufacturer, a buffalo skin tannery started by Frenchman Charles Juchereau de St. Denys, opened. The area was hit by an epidemic almost immediately and the tannery was abandoned the next year.

To continue reading, click here.

George H.W. Bush: last in a line of American presidential military heroes

     The first president of the United States was a military man. General George Washington not only led the Continental Army but as a young soldier fought in the French and Indian War for the British.
     We get that much in elementary school.
     What might be news is that most American presidents were in the military: 26 of the 44 men who have served as president also served their country in uniform in some capacity. (Because Grover Cleveland’s two terms were interrupted by the election of Benjamin Harrison, Cleveland is considered both the 22nd and 24th presidents, thus the number of men who were president always lags one behind the number of the presidency; Donald Trump, therefore, is the 44rd man to hold the office and the 45th president.)
     With the death Friday of George H.W. Bush, the most recent American president who fought, this is a good moment to examine the link between the military and the Oval Office.
      Washington might have set the precedent of serving two terms, but his military background certainly wasn't a model: he was followed by two decades of non-veterans. Washington left office in 1797, the next military man to be in the White House was in 1817, with the swearing in of James Monroe, who had dropped out of William and Mary College to fight in the American Revolution in 1775 and was wounded in the Battle of Harlem Heights (though James Madison, while not in the military, saw more combat than many who were, as we will see).
     Military heroism helped a number of presidents win office. Andrew Jackson was of humble origins — he was the first president born in a log cabin —and gained fame by his victory against the British in the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the war of 1812. William Henry Harrison was so linked to a particular battle that it could serve as his name — his 1840 campaign slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” refers to an 1811 battle against a confederation of Native Americans at the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash rivers in Indiana.
     Many presidents not generally remembered as soldiers in fact served — Abraham Lincoln was a captain in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War. And sometimes “service” is a broad term — seven American presidents claimed to have fought during the Civil War, though that includes Andrew Johnson, who was military governor of Tennessee in 1862.
     As the presidency is by definition a political position, the issue of exactly what kind of military service a president tendered becomes important. Seeing combat is the general measure of worth, but not always. Dwight Eisenhower, the first World War II vet elected president, graduated West Point in 1915 and was never under fire in his nearly 40-year military career, yet that was not held against the Supreme Allied Commander.

To continue reading, click here.

2006 flashback: "People, it's just Gerald Ford"

Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt, by Charles Sprague Pearce (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

     Maybe I'm getting old. 
     That thought crossed my mind as I was lecturing someone on Facebook Saturday. He had posted a photo of George H. W. Bush throwing up in the Prime Minister of Japan's lap, after falling ill at a banquet. "Really?" I asked, sincerely miffed. The man had died 12 hours earlier.
     We lose perspective, and have to spin our spin constantly, like dervishes. Bush was a blue blood and a former CIA director and didn't snap to the AIDS crisis, and those flaws have to be pushed forward, lest we consider anybody respected, anybody admirable, anybody beyond reproach, as if any of us could have done better.

     I can't really get behind that. It's Trumpspeak. Our current president needs to portray everyone as suspect, everyone as guilty, everyone as bad as he is, to mask his own inadequacy. He can't be truly loathsome is everyone else is loathsome too. 

    Untrue. Everyone is not the same. Yes, we all succeed in some ways and fail at others. But some do better. George H.W. Bush wasn't perfect but he wasn't Donald Trump either, not by a long shot, and that is why his passing is causing more commotion than it might otherwise. Genuine affection. Real respect. To the man, not the office. Wednesday is a national day of mourning for George H.W. Bush. He will lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda beginning tomorrow, the first former president to do so since Gerald Ford did it, a dozen years ago.

     Gerald Ford, Gerald Ford...that brings back a memory. When he died, in 2006, the media also went all solemn. They also closed the markets, as they're doing for Bush  Wednesday. Back then, it struck me as overblown and ludicrous, and I wrote the following protest. Now, doing so seems not-quite-so-ludicrous. Maybe Bush was a better president than Gerald Ford. Maybe his example of dignity, the Japanese prime minister notwithstanding, and adherence to American values is something we need to go out of our ways to honor in the age of Trump. To remind ourselves what we were and what we might become again, if our nation is not already irredeemably poisoned. 
     Or maybe I'm just getting old. 

     Tell me I'm not alone here. Please. Tell me that, like me, you were slightly taken aback to wake up Tuesday and find it a national day of mourning, with the markets closed and mail delivery suspended.
     All for Jerry Ford.
     Don't get me wrong. Good guy, Ford. Served his moment on the world stage well, or well enough. Deserving of our respect.
     But c'mon! The man was 93. A ripe old age. I'd sign up for 93 right now, and so would you. All these ceremonies—seven full days of tribute and prayer, pomp and circumstance. And this is the stripped-down version, supposedly, streamlined at Ford's request. I'd hate to see what they would have done otherwise—flown in the pope, tolled the Liberty Bell, dressed George W. Bush in sackcloth and ashes.
     This is un-American, this groveling at the feet of lost kings, and I blame Princess Di—her funeral left us, like the Victorians, addicted to cemeterial splendor. Votive candles flickering in the rain and black crepe, pipe organ dirges and riderless horses. I wouldn't be surprised if they raise an obelisk to Ford, surrounded by statues of veiled ladies, sprawled with grief and labeled "Sorrow" and "Loss" and such.
     Let's not even go into the grim specifics—George H.W. Bush telling mourners how Almighty God spared Ford in World War II so he could eventually lead this nation. (A bad road to go down, since it raises the question of why couldn't the Lord also have had pity on the 50 million or so who perished in World War II while He was mucking about in human affairs, looking out for Jerry Ford.)
     The presidency is worthy of respect. But this is beyond respect and into pageant and excess. I kept thinking: Geez, don't spend it all, every time. You need to hold back a bit, sometimes. Maybe it's the media's fault. TV took what are in essence private moments—the movement of the casket—and made them into public display.
     If we do this for Ford, dead at age 93, what'll we do for the next Lincoln?
                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 3, 2007

George H.W. Bush, 41st U.S. president, dead at 94

   

     

George H.W. Bush

    He was the last of a string of eight consecutive American presidents who wore a uniform during World War II, a teenage volunteer who learned to fly bombers at Chicago’s Navy Pier and at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Glenview.
     George Herbert Walker Bush, 94, the 41st president of the United States and father of the 43rd president, died Friday night. He had been hospitalized three times in recent years, and his health took a turn for the worse after the death in April of his wife of 73 years, former first lady Barbara Bush. They were married longer than any other presidential couple.
     A combination of two heretofore distinct American types — East Coast patrician and Texas oil man, Yale blue blood and Houston wildcatter — Bush presided over what many remember as indeed being the “kinder” and “gentler” era he envisioned, both in U.S. politics, just before the polarizing Bill Clinton years, and in a world where the Soviet Union fell apart, seemingly of its own accord; when apartheid neared its end in South Africa without the expected bloodbath, and war — the Gulf War — was brief, relatively painless, and victorious. 

     With his passing there are now four living former presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the oldest, Jimmy Carter.
     The current occupant of the White House, President Donald Trump, issued a statement Friday night praising Bush’s “essential authenticity, disarming wit and unwavering commitment to faith, family and country … His example lives on, and will continue to stir future Americans to pursue a greater cause.”
     Bush was the first sitting vice president elected to the nation's highest office since Martin Van Buren in 1836, and the first vice president since John Adams to serve two terms then immediately win the presidency, defeating Michael Dukakis in 1988.
      Also like John Adams, George H.W. Bush lived to see his son elected president. Together with son George W. Bush, they formed the second of two father/son presidential pairs in United States history, one requiring a retrofitting of his middle initials to tell them apart. While in office, he had been simply "George Bush," a president distinguished by his energy, athleticism and basic decency, a man, in the words of his friend James Baker, "who never learned to sit still."
     Yet despite his successes, Bush seemed not excite the passions stirred by other presidents. His four years in office were an economically troubled interlude between two of the most popular politicians in 20th century American history: Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. While his administration had noteworthy moments, from dispatching troops to capture Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega early in his presidency to joining with Russian President Boris Yeltsin to announce the conclusion of the Cold War, overall the one-term Bush presidency left an "indistinct mark on America," according to Northwestern history Professor Michael Sherry, who wrote that "except for the 100-hour Gulf War, it featured no grand event, great speech, dismaying scandal, ideological crusade, or decisive political turn."
     Perhaps that was inevitable, given Bush's background of privilege and orderly achievement. He was born in Milton, Mass., on June 12, 1924, related to four previous American presidents. His father, Prescott Bush, was a banker and future U.S. senator, an avid golfer who headed the USGA and married Dorothy Walker, whose father created golf's Walker Cup. When George, whom everybody called "Poppy," or his four siblings were naughty, Bush later recalled, his father's regular punishment was to spank them with a squash racquet.
     The family moved to Connecticut shortly after Bush's birth. He was an athletic boy, but not a particularly studious one. Asked during the 1988 campaign to name a few of the books he had read in childhood, he replied, "I can't . . . I don't read that much." At 12, he was sent away to an elite boarding school, Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.
     Hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bush, then 17, resolved to enlist, but his father, who had fought at the Argonne in World War I as an artillery captain, strenuously objected, and the two squared off for six months. Bush signed up for the Naval Air Reserves on the day after his 18th birthday, later recounting it was "the first I had ever seen my dad cry."
      In August 1943, he became one of 15,000 pilots to learn to fly by taking off at Glenview Naval Air Station and landing on a pair of carriers anchored at Navy Pier. Or not landing on those carriers: 300 World War II-era planes still rest on the bottom of Lake Michigan, put there by pilots attempting a skill they had not yet mastered.
     The youngest pilot commissioned in the U.S. Navy, Bush was assigned to a torpedo squadron, stationed aboard the light aircraft carrier USS San Jacinto. Planes that Bush was flying in were twice forced to ditch at sea. The second time, during an attack on the Bonin Islands, Japanese anti-aircraft fire set Bush's Avenger aflame. He dropped his bombs, then bailed out. Two other crewmen were killed. Bush ended up in the water where, fearing atrocities, he "swam like hell" to get away from Japanese boats trying to pick him up, snagged his sea pack and ended up bobbing anxiously in an inflatable raft in the South Pacific for four hours until he was rescued by a submarine, the USS Finback, performing "lifeguard duty."
     He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for that action, and he ended up flying 58 combat missions, earning three Air Medals, before being reassigned to Norfolk to train pilots.
     In January 1945, he married Barbara Pierce-a distant cousin of President Franklin Pierce-whom he had met at a dance when she was 16. The Bushes had six children, George, Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Dorothy and Robin, who died of leukemia at age 3 in 1953. Bush carried a token, a heart with her name on it, in his wallet for 40 years.
     After the war, Bush went to Yale, as his father had and his son later would. He pledged to the Skull and Bones secret society, another family tradition, and graduated in 1948 with a degree in economics.
     The family settled in Midland, Texas, where Bush joined the oil boom, forming the Bush-Overby Oil Development Corp.-with a helpful investment of half a million dollars by his grandfather. That company became Zapata Petroleum, named for the Mexican revolutionary. It gambled nearly all its capital on an enormous expanse of land in Texas. The first 71 wells Zapata drilled struck oil.
     His fortune made, Bush felt the urge to follow his father into public service, becoming active in the Republican Party, first as chairman of the Harris County Republicans, then as a delegate to the 1964 National Convention. He was elected to the House of Representatives from Texas' 7th District in 1966 and in 1968, running unopposed. At Richard Nixon's urging, he resigned his safe seat to try for the Senate in 1970, but was defeated by Democrat Lloyd Bentsen.
     As a consolation prize, Bush went on to serve in a variety of jobs under Nixon, first two years as ambassador to the United Nations, where he described that organization as doomed to be "a reflection of, rather than a solution to, the tensions that exist in the world." In 1973, he became chairman of the Republican National Committee. The next year, during the height of the Watergate scandal, Bush formally requested that Nixon resign, for the good of the party.
     Under Ford, Bush filled two yearlong posts, first as an unofficial ambassador to China- unofficial because the United States did not yet have relations with Communist China-sometimes surprising Chinese officials by arriving to meetings on a bicycle instead of in a limousine. Then he became director of the Central Intelligence Agency, from January 1976 to January 1977, helping guide it through the aftermath of a particularly scandal-plagued period.
      He decided to run for president in 1980 but instead ran smack into the political phenomenon that was Ronald Reagan, who crushed him in the primaries, then turned around and picked Bush as his vice president.
     Bush was a steady, reliable vice president, distinguishing himself by his calm and appropriate conduct in the difficult days after Reagan was shot in March 1981 (as opposed to Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who doomed his own political future by storming the microphone during a White House briefing and announcing that he was in charge).
     Bush also served as temporary president during Reagan's term, briefly. On July 15, 1985, surgeons operated on Reagan to remove a cancerous polyp, and Bush became the only vice-president to become acting president in accordance with the 25th Amendment, filling that role for just under eight hours.
     Of the rest of Bush' eight years as vice president, little need be said, beyond that he did the typical officiating over events too trivial to demand the president's presence. Bush was away from Washington more than he was there, visiting all 50 states and 68 foreign countries during his tenure. When he was in Washington, he would have weekly lunches with Reagan, who liked to bounce jokes off him. A Secret Service agent taught Bush horseshoes, and he had the free time to become proficient at it, joining the National Horseshoe Pitchers Association. As president, he installed a professional horseshoe pit at the White House, another at the family home in Kennebunkport, and a third at Camp David, where he played against Mikhail Gorbachev.
     As for politics, he once said, "I'm for Mr. Reagan blindly."
     In 1988, he edged ahead of Republican rivals Bob Dole, Jack Kemp and Pat Robertson to win the nomination in New Orleans. The Reagan revolution-shrink government by starving it of money-was in full swing. "Read my lips, no new taxes" Bush promised the convention. He chose Indiana Senator J. Danforth Quayle as his vice president and slid rightward during the primaries, championing the exact policies he had condemned as "voodoo economics" in 1980.
     An unenthusiastic, squeaky-voiced campaigner, Bush spoke of a nation illuminated by "a thousand points of light." While Newsweek raised what it called "the wimp factor"- particularly unfair considering his war heroism-Bush came from behind in the opinion polls to defeat Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis after a blistering campaign that saw Bush castigate Dukakis as a "liberal" and a "card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union." He campaigned for harsher punishment of criminals, criticizing Dukakis for opposing the death penalty, and running notorious TV commercials featuring Willie Horton, a black man who committed a rape while on a weekend furlough from jail in Massachusetts. In an election that set a new post-World War II low for voter turnout, Bush won decisively, with 54.6 percent of the vote and 426 electoral votes.
     Democrats retained control of both the House and the Senate, placing him in a difficult political situation.
     Bush, in his inaugural address, said "a new breeze is a blowing and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn." And indeed, huge changes, though not of Bush's doing, occurred during his term, particularly the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of its domination of Eastern Europe, and the rise of Solidarity in Poland (the spring after Bush took office young people in China, trying to catch the winds of freedom in their own sails, misread their government and staged the ill-fated uprising that ended in Tiananmen Square.)
      One international change Bush refused to tolerate occurred Aug. 2, 1990, when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded his neighbor, Kuwait, conquering the country in two days. Bush worked through the United Nations to build a coalition to thwart this "naked aggression," sending 500,000 American troops to the region. After six months of preparation, Operation Desert Storm began with six weeks of bombardment followed by a 100-hour ground war that won Kuwait from the Iraqis with a loss of 147 American lives. Though urged to continue on to Baghdad, Bush resisted, a decision much criticized at the time.
     Not all of his international efforts worked so well. In December 1992, just before leaving office, Bush ordered 28,000 American troops to Somalia to support famine relief efforts there, a move that set the stage for the infamous "Black Hawk Down" battle in October 1993 that cost 18 American soldiers their lives and prompted Bill Clinton to withdraw American forces.
     There was trouble, too, at home. Bush's term was defined by financial difficulties, primarily the savings-and-loan scandal, a result of Reagan's passion for deregulation. Bush pledged $166 billion to close the failed savings and loans. The 1991 budget forced him to renege on his "read my lips" pledge.
     He also nominated Clarence Thomas to fill Thurgood Marshall's seat on the Supreme Court, leading to his dramatic Senate confirmation hearings featuring testimony from Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment. The Senate nevertheless confirmed him, barely, by a vote of 52-48.
     A milestone of progressive American government occurred during the Bush presidency - the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in July 1990. Physical activity, a focus for Bush since he was a boy, was a hallmark of what one wit called "an aerobic Presidency," though his healthful lifestyle did not, famously, include broccoli.
     The faltering economy scuttled Bush's chances for a second term. Sixteen months before the 1992 election, Bush's approval rating had soared above 90 percent, but financial bad news eroded his popularity. Just as he had in the primaries with Ronald Reagan in 1980, in 1992 he faced another force-of-nature politician, this one from the left, Bill Clinton. Clinton's decisive victory-he won by more than 5 million votes-shocked Bush, a man who had named his speedboat "Fidelity."
     "He, a family man and a wartime hero, had been defeated by a womanizer and draft dodger," wrote University of Illinois at Chicago history Professor Robert V. Remini.
     Bush's 20 years out of office were softened by seeing his legacy grow in light of subsequent events. His son's disastrous foray into Iraq showed just how prudent-to use a word satirists welded to Bush- is decision to hold back from pushing on to Baghdad had been. He kept a low profile during George W. Bush's eight years in office, never criticizing his son publicly.
     That was not a courtesy extended toward our current president, however. Bush told author Mark Updegrove that he does not like Donald Trump, and considers him "a blowhard."
      Bush parachuted again, of his own accord this time, to celebrate his 75th, 80th, 85th and 90th birthdays, his "hip-hip-hip hooray enthusiasm about life still undiminished" the New York Times noted. The last jump made despite losing use of his legs to a form of Parkinson's disease. Bush made a total of eight parachute jumps in his life, once as part of a fund-raiser to pay for construction of his presidential library at Texas He is the only American president to jump out of a plane.
      In retirement, he also forged an unlikely friendship with former rival Bill Clinton, the two taking seven trips to work on humanitarian issues together.
     "I do think our friendship has sent a message around the world that just because you disagree on something doesn't mean you can't work together," Bush said.
     Working with Clinton, Bush helped raise $100 million to aid survivors of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and set an example for our present leaders.
     "Because you run against each other, that doesn't mean you're enemies," Bush said at the time. "Politics doesn't have to be uncivil and nasty."

The Saturday Snapshot #17

     What is it about middle children? I'm a middle child, and like to cause mischief when I can, compared to my more responsible siblings. So is Maddy, who lives down the street with her brother and sister. I've enjoyed getting to know her, and her parents, Randi and Tom, since they moved into the big yellow house on the corner.  When I saw this marvelous photo on Randi's Facebook page, I asked her if I could post it here, and she agreed. I also asked that she write something about it, and she wrote the following:

     “Maddy, Maddy? Where are you?” These were words that I have spoken often over the years so, it was not a total surprise to me that she had disappeared while we were shopping. Maddy has a knack for wandering. Not because she is angry or does not want to hang out with her family, but because she finds it hysterical and gets a kick out of hearing us (especially her mom) scream throughout the store, “Maddy, where are you? Maddy, come out now, Maddy this is not funny anymore.”
     Maddy has always been able to locate amazing hiding spots. Whether it was way in the back of our coat closet—so far back that it does not even matter that coats had fallen off the hangers and lay on the closet floor. Maddy would find those fallen coats and hide under them and not be found. There was another time she hid inside our dryer. That was a bit frightening. She also disappears in between racks of clothing in stores. When she is finally found, she giggles and smiles and says, “I got you” or “I am so funny!” I should probably tell you that Maddy is 14 and has Down syndrome.
     We were shopping at Northbrook Court and I took my eyes off of her for what seemed like only a minute. That was plenty of time for Maddy to wander off. She was nowhere to be found. I searched the clothing racks, the dressing rooms, looked underneath pillows and cushions and asked the staff if anyone had seen “the little girl with Down syndrome who was wearing a blue coat.” I walked outside of the store, looked left then right. No Maddy. I could begin to feel my heart beat faster and I was beginning to feel a bit queasy. I was ready to run to the other end of the mall when I happened to look into the store window display. I realized that the girl with the blue coat who had Down syndrome was sitting in the display window smiling, raising the roof and waving at people walking by the store. My irritation with Maddy quickly softened as I smiled and waved back at her. She was so happy in that display case. Who could blame her—she found another great hiding spot!

     Raising a child with special needs is exciting, scary, heartbreaking, intimidating and motivating. Like it or not, there is nothing boring about my beautiful daughter. She brings laughter and joy to anyone that meets her and enriches our lives every single minute of our day… even in a window display.