A shameful moment in American history.

    The way I explain the need for some kind of national health care—not that anyone is listening, but assuming people were—is like this:
     Say a baby shows up on the curb in front of your house. Your wife—or husband—looks out the window, says, "Hey hon, there's a baby on the curb." You go out and bring it inside. How could you not? Six months old. Wrapped in a blanket. Flushed in the face. Looks sick. Croupy cough. Sounds sick.

    What do you do? You don't say, "Well, I guess we better raise it as our own." You don't shrug and go put the tot back on the curb. Someone needs to take care of this sick baby that appeared on your curb. Someone who is not you. 
     And who may that someone be? Well, you probably dial 911, which brings, the police, or an ambulance, or both. Which are representatives of—stay with me here, this is the big leap—the government. Now if the police officer, or ambulance driver, looked at the baby, and said, "Gee, we just do crime. Sick abandoned babies aren't our problem," and turned to go, you would be shocked. Because you think you live in a nation that cares about that kind of thing. Because you expect the government to do its job. Which at the moment includes doing something about this baby.
     That's about my mindset right now. I'm shocked. I'm shocked that such a minimal, meat and potatoes, in-every-country-but-ours health insurance plan like Barack Obama's is being met by this collective Republican mental breakdown. There is no other term for it. I hate condemning the other side so roundly—the Tea Party has given that practice a bad name—but it is the only way to describe what is happening here. The Republican House has doused the whole country with gasoline and lit a match. The government is shutting down over something every other industrialized country has wholeheartedly embraced, years ago. Even the Republicans, who hate Obama with a fierce and undying passion, at some point, you think they'd say: "Okay, we despise him, but the country really needs this. People get sick, they need insurance. It's immoral otherwise. And it's the law—passed by Congress, approved by the president, who not only won in 2012, but thumped us. The Supreme Court said it was okay."  
    Political rancor is nothing new, though it feels like we have sailed into new and unwelcome territory. The Republicans hated Franklin D. Roosevelt, too, but they still helped fight the Nazis. Would they do so again today?
    The baby, of course, is unfair; it puts a thumb on the scale of your judgment, because it's a baby. An appeal to your emotions. What if it were a 4-year-old girl? Same thing, right? How about a 12-year-old boy? You'd leave him to die on the curb? No, you take him in too, give him cocoa. How about if he's 14? 18? What if he's black? 
     You can shift the specifics of exactly what kind of person is out there, sick on the curb and feel your sympathy and concern drain away. Or maybe not. In my view of the world, whoever is out on that curb, sick, you want to live in a society that tries to take care of that person, at least a little. That's what makes me a left wing wacko liberal. Or maybe just less of a hypocrite than the Republicans. They'd sure want to live in that caring society if the sick person were their precious selves. Or their families. I have yet to hear anyone say, "You know, I lost my job, and lost my health insurance, so now I'm digging graves in the backyard for myself and my family because when we get sick we'll be too weak to. Nobody to blame but ourselves."
     Maybe they never think it through that much. Maybe they never wonder how they can be so fiercely certain that unchecked gun ownership is a basic civil right, but health care isn't. That seems a moral inversion.  
     The shutdown of the government is shameful and the pending default on our financial obligations is shameful. The hypocritical, unfair blame that the Republicans pour on their opponents make flinging the same back at them sound hollow, as much as they are worthy of it. Their wild partisanship corrupts the very idea of one side being wrong, and forces the thinking person toward an undeserved balance. Though in the end, there is no reason to divide the blame by party. That is our entire government shutting down, our collected leaders who are doing it, the Republican side pushing the crisis, the Democratic side weak enough to permit it. We can all agree on that, can't we? It's happening. It's happened, with no end in sight. Who's at fault doesn't ultimately matter. The American people are at fault. The buck stops there. It is we who elected these guys, who will re-elect most of them. It is we who should be disturbed and aghast, but somehow, incredibly, we aren't. It is we who hardly seem to notice or care, at times, which is how we got into this mess in the first place. Though I bet we will start noticing now. I hope we do.

Divvy Diary: A bike is a time machine.

Up to this point, my interest in the Divvy bikes was purely business. But Friday I started to really have fun with them. The latest entry in my Divvy Diary, running in the paper Monday:

     The 6:50 rolled into Union Station at 7:34 a.m. Friday. The plan was to stroll to the Hotel Palomar, 505 N. State, for an 8 a.m. breakfast economic talk.

     But I had my Divvy helmet with me.

     I realized I could jump on a bike at Canal and Madison, stop by the office, drop off my briefcase, noodle around online for 10 minutes, then bike to the hotel. So I did.

     Biking is about three times faster than walking. Distances shrink while time expands. I’ve milked Divvy for humor; anything that combines physical exertion, ridiculous headgear, public display and constant exposure to the very real possibility of being creamed by a bus, is inherently funny.

     But there is a practical, even joyous side.

     At the hotel, the Economist magazine’s U.S. economics editor, Greg Ip, painted the global scene: guarded optimism if Congress doesn’t explode our economy, with China’s state capitalism maybe running out of gas. I stashed my helmet under my chair.

     Next stop, Aqua Tower. Last time biking there, I made the mistake of taking Kinzie to Columbus, which I had forgotten goes underground. Pedaling furiously south along the lower span of the Michigan Avenue Bridge, taking a left onto Lower Wacker, this is a bad idea! gonged in my brain. But what can you do at that point? You're stuck. I took the first ramp up toward daylight, curving onto Stetson. It gave a pang of sympathy for the Divvy cyclists mocked for showing up on places like Lake Shore Drive. You don't plan that — I hope — it just happens.   Wiser, I took Wabash to Randolph.

     Leaving the Aqua — my third Divvy trip of the morning — I felt something unexpected: a kind of happiness. It bites to grow old. Life's opportunities dwindle. The future dulls, narrows.
     Then the city of Chicago abruptly installs this cool bicycle network and invites everybody to use it for nearly nothing (20 cents a day, if you join for a year). You get places fast. Your legs move, your heart pumps. Your senses grow keener because you're keeping an eye for doors about to be flung open, for pedestrians bumbling into you, for trucks bearing down. Nothing keeps you alert like terror, and alert is akin to young, and youth does stuff for the heck of it.
     At 4 p.m., the president of Mongolia was opening the country's honorary consulate. I might have skipped it, but a Divvy map showed a dock at Huron and Sedgwick, close to the new consulate at 368 W. Huron.
     By the time I got butt on bike it was 20 to 4. But cycling ate up the seven blocks. On Huron, I admired the Mongolian flags hanging off the consulate but didn't see a dock. Here is where I wished I had loaded the Divvy map app on my phone (note to self: load map app). Luckily I thought to double back, figuring there might be a rack on Chicago Avenue. A right on Sedgwick, 3:50 p.m., returning to the consulate. The dock was directly across the street. I was so busy ogling the flags, I missed it the first time.
     Chicago media did not turn out in force to meet President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj. It was just me, plus local Mongolian cable TV. The new consul, William Pintas, is a personal-injury lawyer. He took a moment to explain that his IT guy, a Mongolian, got him to visit Mongolia. The consulship followed.
     It was a small office, jammed. I found myself next to a woman who said she was one of the first Mongolian immigrants to Chicago, a community now of 8,000. She came to join the Ringling Bros. circus and dance upon elephants. How does that work? The trick, she said, is holding on until your hands bleed.
     "The Golden Swallow of Democracy" arrived and signed some papers. A bowl of beige milk was produced, which the consul gamely sipped. At one point the media, a k a me, was ushered up. I asked the president his take on Chicago. "I think I know Chicago from the movies," he said, then requested another question. Groping, I asked about Mongolia and neighbor China; are they concerned about being swallowed up like Tibet?
     "That is a stupid question," he replied, to general merriment. Interview ended, I figured my work here was done, skipped the toasting, retrieved my helmet and exited. I hopped a bike and headed down Kingsbury.
     I stopped back at the paper, retrieved my briefcase, shut the office down for the weekend. It was 5:10. I could make the train speedwalking. Or . . . I grabbed a Divvy at 333 W. Wacker. All I needed to do was shave a few minutes off the trip and I'd make the 5:25. But would there be an open dock at Canal and Madison? I stood on the pedals, flying, wondering: what are the odds?
     Eight spaces awaited. I glided my bike into one, saw the dock light go green and strolled to the train with time to spare.

Photo atop blog: Moon through the Picasso, Daley Plaza, 9/25/13.

You Pay For What You Get

This column is why people hate the media. It started innocently—I met a Freebie employee taking a Divvy bike out of the dock at the Mart. Of course I was interested in writing about Freebie.   Everybody wants to be present at the creation, and with fortunes being made in the tech world, nothing seems more exciting than to be working at a start-up. My idea was to see what the company's about, and I sat down with the founders. We had a fun talk—smart guys, going places—but Friday, as I was writing the column, I thought: I better try this thing, see if it works. The experience at the restaurant wasn't bad, but there was a gap between the aloof reception I received trying to cash in my Freebie, and the enthusiasm after I revealed myself as writing for the paper. Maybe I'm an unusual customer—maybe the average person would love a free lunch, even delivered with a bit of chill and followed by a Twitter blast disguised as a personal message. Still, I felt bad for ending on such a down note—I go in all glad-handy to write about the company, and end up sneering at them. I had to fight the urge to phone Ben Rosenfield Friday afternoon and apologize—it's nothing personal, it's just business, and my responsibility is to the readers, not to you—but thought better of it, and figured, maybe he knows that all publicity is good publicity. And indeed he did, emailing me a friendly note after the story ran—this is the first article ever written about his company, he said, and they appreciate it. Which was a relief, to me, and a good sign for his future. It takes a tough hide to get ahead in any business.

     What is money, anyway? A unit of worth, printed on paper or tallied in electrons, given in return for something: your time working, usually.

     You can earn money in other ways. Interest on a loan. Selling something you’ve made. If you’re a celebrity, you can sell your endorsement. Michael Jordan sold his image to Nike for millions, allowing Nike to sell shoes for more than it would otherwise get because their sneakers came coated in the invisible aura of fame and victory linked with Jordan.

     Thanks to social media — Facebook, Twitter, et al — we are all stars of our own little or, in some cases, not-so-little universes. As with real celebrities, there will be chances to cash in on our popularity, the latest being a fresh-from-the-box Chicago startup called Freebie.

     “Everybody’s social connectivity has value,” said Ben Rosenfield, who founded the company in February. “What we do, is we’ve figured out how to automate word of mouth, the most powerful form of marketing. We’re a lead generator.”

     "Allow the product to market itself," added Hank Ostholthoff, the co-founder, at their Aqua Tower headquarters. "How many times do you hear businesses say, 'If I could only get somebody to try my product.' "
     Chicago is home to a miniboomlet of tech startups, the most famous being Groupon, another lead generator, offering a small bribe—$20 worth of pizza, say, for $10—to lure new customers through the door.
     Freebie thinks it has a better idea, first because you get stuff, not cheap, but free.
     "We believe discounts are bad," Rosenfield said. Those who get discounts expect them in the future, while no one given a free meal expects all their meals to be free. "That's against the psychology."
     Another advantage of Freebie is that while anyone with cash can buy a Groupon, even—shudder—old people with scant social media presence, Freebie is based on a person's social media popularity.
     Freebie takes the measure of just how big a ripple you make on online media, gives a rating based on who your friends are, then uses its mobile app to nudge you toward businesses that want people such as you.
     Rosenfield, 33, a Deerfield native, said the challenge for marketers in our media-saturated world is to find new ways of reaching customers. TV isn't working.
     "We know, we're all fast-forwarding through commercials, and no one's . . ." Here Rosenfield caught himself, showing surprising tact for one so young, and changed direction midsentence, ". . . and unfortunately less people are reading the newspaper to decide what they're going to buy. They're looking at the Internet."
     Alas, true. What Freebie is doing is taking the old invite-the-press-in-and-feed-'em-in-return-for-hype dynamic and democratizing it to regular folk, who can cash out their connectivity. If it works, maybe you didn't waste all that time on Facebook after all.
     A test seemed in order. I downloaded the Freebie app to my phone, giving it access to my Facebook and Twitter (something I wouldn't usually do, but this is work). It told me what my social media footprint is worth. Having posted on Facebook for five years with the plangent urgency of a lost baby opossum crying for its mother, and tweeting continuously, earned me a 477; enough, I was told, for a "Small Plate" at the Hubbard Inn.
     That's it? But free's free, right? I toddled off to the Hubbard Inn, which I had never heard of, and why would I? It's right next door to the excellent Slurping Turtle, which has served me many a steaming bowlful of fine chow that I was all too happy to pay for.
     At the Hubbard Inn—and this is the weak link in the system—I tapped my app telling Freebie I was here (prompting it to automatically inform all my friends, unbidden). I showed the phone to poor Tammi, the hostess, a week on the job. "I never heard of it," she said. "I just know how to seat people." She appealed to Jason Felsenthal, director of operations, at a booth. He did not leap up, emitting a Zorba-like cry of joy, and embrace me as a new customer. Rather, he took a menu with the grimness of man being robbed and ticked off the three small plates I was entitled to. The house-made ravioli. The chickpea crepe. The mussels.
     For all the eulogies being said over the pulpy media, Felsenthal certainly perked up when I identified myself and asked him whether Freebie is working out for him.
     "It's a pretty interesting app," he said. Is it driving in business? "Time will tell."

"Throwing the old pepper"

     Last Saturday's post was writing about studying Latin with my son. Groping for a way to convey that I understood that drilling Latin declinations together is not the standard dad-and-lad activity, I wrote, "Okay, it wasn't throwing the old pepper around in the front yard, but it would have to do."
     In my mind, "the old pepper" was a 1930s, Red Barber kind of slang for a baseball. It was like calling a lefty "a southpaw."
     I was certain of that.    
     A reader tweeted me that it wasn't so. John K. wrote, "Actually, playing pepper involves a bat. But don't sweat it."
     But of course I did sweat it. Someone was saying I was wrong. I hate to be wrong, just like most people.  Experience tells me, often it is the person offering the correction who is wrong. Or so I hoped, hopping onto Nexis, the newspaper data base. Nothing under "throw the old pepper."  Nothing under "toss the old pepper." Almost as if I had made a mistake.
     Plus "play pepper" and 'bat" drew over 100 hits.
     No, no, no. Determined to be right—the usual sin, common as dirt—I fled to the Internet. "Throwing the old pepper" drew one hit--mine. Hmm, maybe I could recast my mistake as a neologism, the creation of a word or, in this case, a phrase. If it were a mere mistake, other people would have made it too. Being unique, it could count as creativity. I could try to make that argument work...claim it was hapax legemenon, to trot out a $5 term -- a word or phrase that appears only once. 
     A little voice said: Yes, unique because it's wrong. There were a few other hits connected to "tossing the old pepper pot" but that obviously was a different matter altogether.
    I kept trying.  "Toss the old pepper" drew exactly one hit -- this rather sweet photo, posted May 14, 2009, of a Little Leaguer. I'd hesitate to post it -- people are paranoid about their kids -- but the mitt manages to obscure most of his face and besides, four years on, he's probably halfway through high school and unrecognizably slouchy and stubbly.
     Why does any of this matter? I suppose the short answer is, it doesn't. But if you care about language, you care about how it's used. I'm not sure if I'm admitting a mistake—okay, I'm admitting a mistake, in a round-about way— but also appealing for "throwing the old pepper" to become a phrase attached to playing catch with a baseball. It sounds right, doesn't it? Maybe I'm not mistaken, just ahead of the curve. 
     Or maybe I'm not. Maybe I've become unhinged, and should just acknowledge the gaffe and move on. Maybe I should have just moved on without a word. Still, c'mon.... No more throwing the old pepper? Don't seem right...

The plot thickens: 

Barry Aldridge offers the following. At 3:14 Bugs Bunny says, "That's the old pepper!" So at least I'm in good company.  Okay, I feel vindicated. And petty for feeling vindicated. The short, by the way, "Baseball Bugs" is from 1946.

To watch the cartoon, click here.

Photo atop blog: a stairway in the Merchandise Mart; Above: throwing the old pepper in Northbrook, summer.

A Prayer to the God of Bad Illinois Republican Candidates

A spontaneous prayer, uttered, from the heart, upon hearing that Jim Oberweis is considering yet another run at high public office -- this time the U.S. Senate, again.

Heavenly father 

Who sent us Alan Keyes, carpet-bagging from Maryland

Fresh from his appearance in "Borat" 
To gladden our hearts and amaze us 
to the depth of our souls

Who delivered unto us "Internet Powerhouse" Andy Martin

Again and again and again
Moving us to something close to pity

Who doth cause to be Ray Wardingly

Also known as Spanky the Clown

Who ran for mayor four times

And even got on the ballot once

Garnering 2.8 percent of the vote

Lord, who createth the sky, and the sea and

for some mysterious reason

limned these really bad Republican candidates

Who regularly appear in our state

Then linger
Year after year
Election upon election

Smile down upon the king of them all
Jim Oberweis

He of chocolate milk fame

Elected to the state senate last year
Finally, a handful of something
After all that expensive grasping

Only to discover how empty that can be
Must be

Who, bored with governance already

In the classic Peter Fitzgerald fashion

This week fixeth

his eternally-hungry gaze upon Dick Durbin's senate seat.

Despite his five, count 'em, five electoral defeats

For Senate, governor, Congress

"If I believe or am convinced," Oberweis told the Sun-Times

"I will run for the Senate seat."

Strengthen his belief, Almighty One

Convince him, God, convince him utterly

Shield his lack of merit from his eyes

If not from anybody's else's
Yet again

Unleash his spigot of milky campaign cash

For one more tilt at one more windmill.

For one more chance to prove to himself
That he is truly needed.

Do it for your disheartened people of Illinois

Trembling under pension woes, civic and state

These are dark political days

Our hearts are heavy with dysfunction

Though the Republicans sink low in Washington

Let them rise up here. 

In the spirit of Al Salvi, radio host

And Rosette Caldwell Peyton

Send Jim Oberweis helicoptering above us

To warn us, yet again, of the peril crawling northward

As if we had forgotten the first time. 

Let us see him, and be gladdened.

Do it for your fractured press

Growing soggy in the pelting rainstorm

Of social media and economic decline

Warming ourselves with fading memories of Jack Ryan

Visiting sex clubs with his 7 of 9

It would have looked tawdry in fiction

So improbable, yet somehow true
How could we doubt Your power after that?

Return to us our missing milkman

You can do it
You who fanned within Andy McKenna
Sincere gubernatorial hopes
And sent us all those other mopes
Let us smile one last time
Before we blur and vanish ourselves.

Grant us, Lord, the gift of Jim Oberweis

A man with the common touch of Mitt Romney
The lightning wit of George Ryan

A candidate with the energy of Ryan Chlada

Dan Lipinski's straw man opponent

Who forgot to campaign

Give us another Bernie Epton

Before it's too late.

We raise up our voices, imploring, we join

The earnest prayers of Sen. Durbin who

Will be a challenge, even for a real candidate 

Grant him, and us, the gift of Jim Oberweis.

The joy of his candidacy

The certainty of the result

If not for our sake, then for Yours
Since it must get dull at times in Heaven
And even you must appreciate your little jokes.
Deliver Jim Oberweis to our doorsteps
Like a pint of sweet cream
One more time, Lord
One more time
And in return
We shall sing your praises

Thank you God. 

Thank you for the fields
And thank you for the animals of the fields
Thank you for the seasons wheeling around
To return us to this autumnal harvest
As it was, so shall it be again.
The past returneth
The burned field brings forth fresh seedlings
No defeat is ever final
Thank you God
For this unexpected promise of future gladness.
We praise You
And thank you
For the candidacy of Jim Oberweis
Again.
Hallelujah.

Divvy Diary -- If you have a brain, put a helmet over it.

Update: Looks like Divvy peddled in the right direction after all.

    A story on the Atlantic magazine website about the toll that vandalism and theft has taken on the Paris bike sharing system—nearly half the fleet is out of commission— seems to validate how the Chicago program was set up. When Chicago first rolled out Divvy over the summer, the city was roundly criticized for focusing on the downtown and upscale areas, while generally ignoring the poorer regions of the city. But this comparison of Paris to London bike programs suggests that Chicago was smart—the Brits were able to avoid the problems plaguing the French because their system also kept the bikes mostly in the well-monitored core downtown areas. So as much as the do-gooders wish Divvy were all over the metro area, that approach isn't working out in the City of Light.

Thursday's Divvy Diary:

     This column didn't turn out quite the way I intended.  As I rode the Divvy bike around town, sometimes it was convenient not to use a helmet. So I figured it would be good to have the exact risks I was taking before me. That way I could keep riding, bareheaded but informed. Sort of the way that my wife, mixing chocolate chip cookies, will caution me about salmonella poisoning, warnings I then wave off with a "The chances of a raw egg having salmonella are 50,000 to 1," before taking a big wooden spoonful of cookie dough. Knowledge is power.  But I couldn't get my hands on the proper helmet risk numbers, and I ended up committing myself to carrying my helmet around as a facile way to end the column. The pitfalls of opinion journalism.

     The luncheon at the Standard Club went well. My talk rocked. I walked out in maximum good spirits into a gorgeous early autumn afternoon, way the heck across the Loop from the newspaper. But right there is a Divvy stand, at Jackson, with a shiny chorus line of baby-blue Divvy dreadnoughts, lined up and waiting.

     My Bell helmet is back in my office, perched atop the Selectric II. But the fob is in my pocket. A 20-minute walk versus a 5-minute ride. Hmm. I deploy the fob, yank out a bike and ride back, in my business suit, tie flapping over my shoulder like a flag.

     Reckless? Many Divvy riders obviously don’t think so. Last week I counted five Divvy cyclists in a row, all without helmets. The Divvy folks caution you to always wear one, but you’re supposed to floss daily, too.

     When you roll out of bed, you assume risks. The National Safety Council estimates the chances of dying from a fall is 1 in 163, twice as likely as dying from a handgun. Yet we get up, take showers, stroll around. People cross the street without helmets.
     I believe in statistics, but trying to find a simple helmet/no helmet risk breakdown proved impossible, and what stats exist are subject to all sorts of political spin, as wind-in-our-hair bicyclists, frantic to avoid legal mandates, argue that helmets are optional, even dangerous (by inspiring false sense of invulnerability, which sounds nuts, but that's what they say). In raw numbers, walking is far more deadly: 4,432 pedestrians killed in 2011, versus 670 bicyclists. But then, there are far more people walking than riding. If you're going to use stats as your guide, you'll avoid crosswalks, because that's where most fatal pedestrian accidents occur.
     Seeking clarity, I abandoned stats for a different approach: anecdotal evidence.
     "As an emergency room physician, we are huge advocates for helmets because of what we see," said Dr. Rahul Khare, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for the past 10 years. "It's lifesaving, there's no question about it."
     No debate that if you hit your head on the sidewalk, you want a helmet. But is the risk of not wearing a helmet an acceptable hazard, like the risk of dying from salmonella when you lick chocolate-chip cookie dough off a wooden spoon? Or is it foolish?
     "It's in the literature, how much it saves lives," said Khare, who admits to sometimes jumping on a Divvy without a helmet. He faulted the Divvy program for making the bikes available to novices without also stressing the need for helmet safety.
     "It's a problem," he said. "Look around: People that don't usually ride are on Divvy bikes, and they don't have helmets on. It will become an issue, a public health concern."
     This is an area where peer pressure helps. While I don't think yelling "Get a helmet, idiot," is the way to go, the fact is, the more people wear helmets, the more others will follow. I'll tell you what nudged me off the fence into the helmet camp. I was on the train Tuesday and noticed a helmet dangling off the backpack of Jerry Duan.
     "My wife insisted," said Duan, 43. "I came from China, and no one does this. Initially, I saw so many ride bikes without it, I figured, I can do this too." But his wife persuaded the financial systems developer that a helmet is "a necessary safety measure."
     "I just got used to it," Duan said.
     That isn't what persuaded me, though. I asked Duan where he rode to from Union Station — I assumed the helmet was for a Divvy bike downtown. No, he corrected me. His office is close; the helmet is for his ride between home and the Glenview train station. That gave me pause. If this guy finds a helmet necessary riding his bike across the echoless voids of the Northwest suburbs, with their wide roadways and generally less-crazy drivers, how could I not wear one in the sensory overload, peril-coming-at-you-from-all-directions, Popeye-cartoon-lunacy of the Loop?
     A few days later, I had an appointment at Aqua Tower. I'd never consider showing up for an interview toting a helmet, but times change and we change with them. I carried my helmet. No one seemed to mind.
     The next day, I left 17 N. State, helmetless, and hopped a bike at the Daley Center for the quick jaunt to the paper. Suddenly, my huge Mardis Gras parade character head felt exposed. Back at my office, I lifted my helmet off the Selectric II - imagine "2001: A Space Odyssey" theme music playing in the background - and had a moment similar to when the apemen realize a bone is a club. I zippered open a compartment in my big, expandable, soft-sided briefcase. I jammed the helmet in. I zipped the briefcase shut. I gave it an exploratory lift. You don't even know the helmet is in there. Smart.

Banned Books Week

    Banned Books Week is this week.

    That might be seen a non-event, an occasion for clever  library displays, such as this one at the Northbrook Public Library. Good library marketing, and a reminder that great literature is what shakes us up, and that being shaken up is a good thing, except to those unfortunate fearful few who rather suppress books than think about them. 
    While I usually enjoy the frisson of superiority that Banned Books Week encourages, a chance to sneer inwardly at the distant flyspeck towns where Huck Finn is harassed and Judy Blume novels are snatched off the shelf by clench-faced rural housewives looking to ensure that the interior lives of their children are as arid as their own, this year it feels a little forced. 
     Perhaps because we in the Chicago area had our own brush with the censor's thick-fingered hand just last spring, when the Chicago School Board cack-handedly pulled  Marjane Satrapi's well-respected graphic novel Persepolis off the library shelves (or out of the seventh grade curriculum; once the CPS went into damage control, it was difficult to determine exactly what it had done or was doing, which is par for the course).   
     Yes, it was hard to give much weight to the flap, given the continuing chaos of the Chicago Public Schools. With almost half the students never graduating at all, what's one book more or less that they aren't reading before their slink off to their constricted lives? Who can parse the seventh grade curriculum while buildings are being closed by the dozen and kids shepherded under guard through free-fire zones? You just can't get too worked up about kids having to wait until 8th grade to skim a picture book about a girl's coming of age in revolutionary Iran.
      But that doesn't mean we should forget about it. The incident displayed, not so much any incipient censorship problem in cosmopolitan Chicago, as the general poor health of the school administration. The mechanism at work seemed to be, a lone parent complains about a book -- or, rather, a single panel in the book, depicting torture in a cartoonish fashion -- and the the school system, rather than standing firm for what it supposedly believes, plucks the book out of the hands of every seventh grader, as if that solves the problem.
    Was that smart?
    The harm lingers. Chicago is prominently featured on this year's Banned Books Week web page; one dumb administrator makes one dumb decision, and the city is the poster boy for oppression. You can read the deputy general counsel's case law ridden letter defending CPS's actions, if you have the stomach for it, by clicking here. It isn't the work of somebody with a soul.
     We are fortunate, in that in the United States in general censorship is not an issue. Government isn't in the book-burning business, and while individuals would no doubt love to step in, they generally don't. The isolated book banners -- religious fanatics and the sexually terrified, mainly -- usually do little more than bring attention to worthwhile books. In that light, we should thank them. Perhaps even for something more. Not only are they more to be pitied than feared, but they are at least acting out of a warped concern for their children's welfare. With so many parents in Chicago caring too little, we shouldn't condemn anybody who cares too much, even if they care too much about the wrong things. At least their hearts are in the right place. At least they're trying to do something to help their children. How many parents in Chicago can say the same thing? Too few. 


Photo atop blog: Morgan Library, New York City.