Texas Notes: Cracker Jack

        If, like me, you woke up this morning looking forward to what EGD Texas Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey has to say, that's testimony to how smoothly she has integrated into our little community. Now if I can just find six more correspondents like her, I can cough into my fist, put on my hat and tuck back into the shadows. Alas, I suspect she is sui generis, a thing unto herself, and the other six days will be my problem for the foreseeable future. Not that we HAVE a foreseeable future. But a guy can dream, right?

     Jane Addams, the mother of social work, is quoted as saying “the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” When I was 19 I started volunteering at Chicago House, in a hospice program for men and women dying of AIDS related illnesses. I was guided there during a class at DePaul University called God, Justice and Social Concern. It was taught by one of the most impressively humble, intelligent, witty and warm men I’ve met thus far in my life, Father James Halstead. Not a religious person myself, somehow I did not mind the required religion classes at DePaul. I dove right in and followed Father Halstead around, taking several classes with him and basking in his presence as often as possible. He had one of those auras that calms you down like a Quaalude might, without the side effects. He used to ride a bicycle around campus with upright handle bars and a basket, and either a gentle smile or a look of deep contemplation on his face, and his cheeks looked like apples. He reeked of goodness and health. I’m now thinking he and Mr. Rogers must have been distant cousins. To fulfill requirements for his classes I found myself bowing with the woman in the basement of a Muslim mosque somewhere off of North Elston, inhaling incense and the sounds of cantors at a Greek Orthodox church in the Gold Coast, and I felt most at home at a little Buddhist temple somewhere in Lincoln Park. I ended up becoming a yoga and meditation teacher after that—practices that have been a part of saving my life.  

    While volunteering at Chicago House I felt it was my duty to do this work. It was the most natural thing in the world to drive over to the near west side hospice house tucked in with all of the other red brick buildings, and find out who needed help that day—a ride to visit family members, company to walk to the neighborhood bodega, or a healthy friend to sit with tired bones and chat or play a game. One of the men asked me to take him out dancing at a club on Clark near Belmont in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood to celebrate his 34th birthday. He dressed up in a silky red shirt, tight black pants and Kenneth Cole wingtip shoes, and we danced to Chic and Stevie Wonder until he ran out of steam. I drove him home as we laughed like kids at the memory we had just made, talking smack about the man who had the nerve to dis’ him and the beautiful queen with the red lips and stilettos, putting everyone else to shame with her stunning presentation and countenance. When he was admitted to the so-called AIDS Ward at Cook County Hospital I sat next to his bed so he wouldn’t be alone if he woke up. He slipped away. I went to his funeral on the South Side of Chicago and his family greeted me with warm hugs as if I was a part of the family. I still have a thank you card they sent me for helping take care of their man.
     After that I continued to work in social services and loved trying to make this world a kinder and more equitable place. I felt I had a purpose. I worked in a program for drug-using pregnant women and we took care of them and their babies and gave them a chance to get well, and many of them did. One day years later I was walking down the street in Wrigleyville and a tall, robust, dark skinned young man came jogging up to me, “Ms. Caren! It’s me!” I did not recognize who I’d last seen as a chubby school aged boy whose mother was in and out of recovery and domestic violence shelters as she tried to piece her life together. He wrapped me into a bear hug, his friends giggling at the scene, and shared that all these years later his mother was doing very well, a leader in her recovery community in her home town in the South where she had moved. He was also thriving, a true delight. After that I worked with homeless teen moms with mental illnesses and found other roles that allowed me to serve the disenfranchised, of which there were and are many. I taught yoga and meditation and biked all over Chicago, year after year, and felt that I was really doing something.

 I found myself in a hospital job, since that’s where the money (if you can call it that) is for social workers. I proceeded to become the person I never thought I’d be, I swore I would never become, the burnt out hospital social worker with almost no hope left after long days with no thank yous and almost constant pressure and criticism for not working more magic. My career took on a life of its’ own and it seemed there was no getting out of the rut. Maybe I felt some kind of punishing duty in bleeding myself dry, and I missed the memo about self-care coming first. I’d waver between being a health nut and drinking my blues away, I could not find a balance.
     Sometimes I’d sit on the bench outside of the ER, numb and unable to make it any further after a particularly grueling shift where an abusive doctor asked me if I’d gotten my license in a Cracker Jack box when I did not do the unethical things he expected. On one such night a friend happened to call as I sat on the cold mental bench decompressing after work. She instructed me to get up, walk to my bike and get over to her house. I rode the ten miles or so to her cozy Evanston home where I started to come back to life. Friends routinely asked me why I didn’t quit that job, learn how to follow my heart, follow my bliss, do something that I loved. I’d think “and who will pay my bills? What else can I do? This is what I’ve been trained for.”
     In days to come I had to ignore the married nurse whose wife I knew, who would flirt with me and give me unwanted compliments. He’d say racist and classist things to spark my ire and called me the Socialist Worker as an insult. “You know, all of these patients are taking advantage of you. They should all be put on island somewhere so you can take care of the patients who really deserve it.” I ignored him, choosing not to pick this battle. I placed a blank look on my face and asked if the homeless unconscious 20 year old laying in the ICU bed, near death, has had any improvement. Then I walked past the nurse into the patient’s room and began to search his belongings to see if I could find a contact number to call amidst the wet and stained bunches of papers in his tattered bag.
     I finally mustered up the courage to walk away from hospital social work once and for all, and I was able to shape a career that I love once again. With impeccable self-care I enjoy my well-balanced life outside of work. I serve clients who’ve had unimaginable trauma in their lives, and I do it from an abundant wellspring. 

     I’ve come full circle. I started as young and idealistic and supported by fine people such as Father Halstead. Today I am older, wiser and hopeful that I can maintain a good life, and from that I can offer myself to others in a healthy way. I am surrounded by people who are doing good in the world and enjoy life. We prop each other up as needed. The COVID crisis has allowed me to give and receive help in an authentic and real way—the help we give and receive when we realize that we are mortal. As one of my favorite yoga singers Krishna Das says, we are “live on earth for a limited time only.”
     We have lost more lives to COVID-19 in a few months than we did in a span of over seven years due to AIDS related illnesses in the 80s. The Father Halsteads of the world help people lay a foundation of care that enables us to go forward with faith in good works. "The ultimate moral test of any government is the way it treats three groups of its citizens. First, those in the dawn of life—our children. Second, those in the shadows of life—our needy, our sick, our handicapped. Third, those in the twilight of life—our elderly,” said former Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1976. This still rings true today and so let’s make it happen, together. As my Buddhist teachers say, may we all be well, happy and peaceful and may we remember that we are not alone. 

Let Trump help you learn to be a better person

     A neighbor on Facebook, listing the joys of lockdown.
     “No school shootings,” she begins. “TRAFFIC is gone, GAS is affordable, BILLS extended ...”
     She goes on, quite a bit. Air is cleaner. “The world quieter.”
     The list ends with this confident assertion: “I’m pretty sure this was God’s way of telling us to slow down and focus on what is important!!”
     That old trickster, God. He does have His mysterious ways, doesn’t He? Setting the lives of millions on fire, just so we fortunate few can enjoy the warm glow and toast marshmallows on their burning homes.
     Unlimbering the rhetorical bazooka I always keep conveniently slung over my shoulder, I squinted into the gunsight, seeing the tiny figure of my neighbor, smiling over her freshly-coined public wisdom. My finger tensed.
     Then I sighed, lowered my weapon, and decided to demonstrate my wit and humanity in a novel fashion: by saying nothing.
     Sure, I could have archly pointed out that hiding in the basement could be fun, provided you have a comfortable, well-stocked basement. But not everybody does. These are excruciatingly tough times, and if the scythe hasn’t swung in your direction, yet, the least you can do is not crow about it.
     But you can’t scold a joyful person into silent gratitude. Just as you can’t shame a sad one into abandoning their sorrow as insignificant. It’s graduation time. My neighborhood is festooned with college flags, congratulatory signs, balloons, big orange and blue Illini I’s painted on lawns. Online, bursts of milestone festivity, shadowed with a definite sense of loss. No commencement. No prom. It’s not fair! After seeing a few, I considered creating a meme: a soft sepia passport photo of Anne Frank, with the tagline, “Not every teen got to go to prom.” That’ll show ‘em. Think of the retweets! Dozens!
     I also held that back. I’m not the coronavirus mullah, wandering cyberspace in my long white beard and black robes, taking a reed switch to the legs of anybody who dares be too happy or too sad. I don’t want to show up at the virtual wake for high school life and castigate the mourners.

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The pancakes aren't the important part

     Sophomore season is usually toughest. So as satisfied as I was with my first effort for Northbrook Voice two months ago, I'm even more pleased that my second essay, appearing in the current issue, hits the sweet spot, that narrow intersection between sentiments the village of Northbrook will happily publish, and prose I'd be glad to sign my name to. 
    The highlight was talking to Village Presbyterian Church's Rev. Lundgaard, who instantly grasped what I was doing, swung smartly and hit the ball exactly where it needed to go. This was not his first time at bat.
    It helped that the assignment—something about community—coincidently meshed with the COVID-19 crisis, which arrived just as I began work on this. People on my street are hard hit—jobs lost, companies crumbling, kids' bright futures suddenly clouded. But we're keeping our spirits up, mostly, and sticking together as neighbors should. And that's something to be proud of.

     Every February, the Village Presbyterian Church hosts a pancake breakfast run by the Boy Scouts. And every February we walk over, even though we aren’t Presbyterian, my sons were never Boy Scouts, and I’m not particularly fond of pancakes. 

     Why? There are people and fun — two things that often go together. Music, and prizes. The festivities only cost $8 a head, the money goes to charity. Yes, you are expected to eat pancakes, but nothing’s perfect. 

     You run into old friends and make new acquaintances. The Village President pours you a cup of coffee. You immerse yourself in your community, which may be the most important-yet-routinely-neglected aspect of our lives. Few people go a day without brushing their teeth, or a week without a shower. But they’ll let a month slip by and never deviate between work and home, with the occasional quick detour into a store or restaurant thrown in for variety’s sake. Or two months. Or six. 

     At least that was the case before the COVID-19 crisis seized Northbrook, along with every other place on Earth. Suddenly even those small dips into public life were off the table. We couldn’t sit for 10 minutes in Starbucks and silently drink a cup of coffee and glance at the person at the next table. It’s as if fate had sent us to our rooms like naughty children, to think about the importance of interconnection. A fact of life that some of us never stop thinking about.

     “We talk about community all the time,” said Rev. Spencer Lundgaard, senior pastor of Village Presbyterian Church. “The heart of the church is this notion of belonging to one another. That is so important. When we are at our best is when what we do is through relationships, when we are bound together. I’m better off because I’m with you; you’re better of because you’re with me. Something incredible, something beautiful takes place.”
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Testers want tests, but let’s test the testers

Simple Laboratories testing for COVID-19 in Harwood Heights (photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin Garcia)

     This was held from Wednesday's paper—space issues—but since it's already online, I don't see the harm in sharing it here. It should run Thursday.

     Testing. What’s that all about? I understand, they scrape inside your nose with a giant Q-tip, send the tip off to a lab to determine whether you’ve been infected by COVID-19.
     But toward what end?
     If you’re really sick, doctors need to know if it’s coronavirus to guide treatment. No confusion there. But what’s the goal of testing the general population? To track the pandemic’s spread? Important, but that isn’t why people are jamming National Guard drive-thru locations. Fear? Mere curiosity?
    The general idea, as best I understand it, is that you may have been infected but had no symptoms — many do not — and once you learn you were already infected but are OK now, then you can then breathe a big sigh of relief and go about your business, packing into bars, jamming into church pews, secure in the knowledge you can’t get sick because you already have been.
     You’d think that, desperate to get the economy back, both the dithering federal government and people protesting the lockdown would unite in one voice to demand those tests, now.
     But they’re not. The federal government hems and haws like Hamlet, then shrugs and tells the states to figure it out — all while Fox News types cram statehouse steps to decry any organized attempt to save their lives as fascism.
     Even municipalities are trying to get people tested, as are businesses like Simple Laboratories of Harwood Heights, a relatively new (founded 2014), relatively small (200 employees) diagnostic lab reaching over the paralyzed health care system to the public, sorting out the general confusion as it goes.

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J. Crew catches fire.

     Maybe it was all the surgery—spine in summer, hip just before New Year's. Maybe it was just the time of life. A young man can sleep in his skivvies. An old man needs pajamas. Anyway, sometime in the fall my wife, who has good instincts about this kind of thing, ordered for me an attractive blue cotton pair of J. Crew pajamas. So light and comfortable I ordered a second pair in January. That way, I'd have two.
    Okay, not quite the life-long attachment of a Marshall Field's. But enough that when J. Crew declared bankruptcy on Monday, trying to deal with its $1.65 billion debt by shutting its nearly 500 stores, I thought sadly, "Oh gee. I like those pajamas...."
     That wasn't why I snapped the above picture back in January. It was that tag urging, in bold red, "KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE."
    There had to be a story there. I figured it had to be the sleepwear aspect and plunged into the arcane world of consumer safety. It was educational. The concern over burning pajamas is mostly related to children—that's why children tend to have form-fitting PJs, and not baggy ones like mine, so they'll set themselves on fire with less alacrity. Fire retardants were added, but they bring up an entire new set of concerns regarding cancer risk.
    I got about that far, then was sidetracked by the issue of Jarts—lawn darts. I remember them well from my Ohio youth in the 1960s. Remember watching the neighbor kids fling them about and thinking, "Those look dangerous..." What I figured out at 9 eventually dawned on adults. Lawn darts were initially banned in 1970 by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, but the companies producing them sued, and the things were winked at until 1988, when David Snow, the grieving father of Michelle Snow, a 7-year-old who died after a lawn dart thrown by her brother hit her in the head the year before, lit a fire under lawmakers. Sometimes all it takes is one grieving parent, at least when the topic is not guns.
    Speaking of which. When the lawn dart ban came up for renewal in 1997, a number of people wondered: why are lawn darts banned after a handful of deaths (and thousands of injuries) while handguns are sold so freely?  Good question; the answer has to do with soothing your fears with weaponry.
    Thus the pajama thread was completely lost. I let the matter drop until J. Crew went up like the Hindenburg, the first major retailer to collapse in our COVID-19 world, but most assuredly not the last. Sears, J.C. Penney's, the list of brown leaves quivering on the branch is long.
     I have to say, wearing pajamas still doesn't feel completely natural. I'll do it for a few days, then forget for a month, reverting to form. Maybe I'm not quite old enough yet. But that's coming. 
    In the meantime, the label is a handy reminder. These warning labels, needless to say, were fought by industry, though studies show that consumers don't seem to mind them, and almost a quarter said they would be more inclined to purchase clothing with such labels. Myself, I find the labels sort of cool, not to mention inspirational. I've interviewed several people who were badly burned, and they were surprisingly happy, just to be alive, and forgave themselves for the series of missteps typically required to set yourself on fire. I figure, if those people, having done that to themselves, can be happy and accepting of their lot, our doing the same for our unburnt state should be a piece of cake.
    In theory.
     

      

Jesus Christ isn’t running, so we’re stuck with Joe Biden

     Ever wonder how Donald Trump did it?
     Skated into the White House. Despite his long record of empty bravado. A notorious con man and fraud, liar and bully. Undeterred by his sexual misdeeds that came out right before the 2016 election. “Grab ’em by the pussy.” Paying off porn actresses. Serial infidelity with three wives.
     Water off a duck’s ass. And he knew it: “I could shoot somebody in the middle of 5th Avenue ...”
     Ever wonder how Trump continues to do it? Hold onto his solid 40% support? Despite focusing almost exclusively on his own interests, self-dealing in a naked fashion, whether shaking down Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden or blackmailing states to clamp down on immigrants in exchange for medical masks. Unashamed, unapologetic.
     Ever wonder how he does that?
     That’s easy: His supporters don’t care. Didn’t care before, don’t care now and won’t start. Ever. Nor can you pin them down for their not caring. Believe me, I’ve tried.
     Go to a religious person, secure in their faith, awash with the love of Jesus Christ. Ask that person: How is it you can go to church on Sunday, down on your knees, worshipping your idea of moral perfection, then on Monday stand up and cheer for this grotesque slab of immorality?
     This man who seems like a character Rabelais created to illustrate the result if all seven deadly sins — lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride — were jammed into one sordid human vessel?
     How can you see that monstrosity in front of you, then clap your flippers together and bark for joy? How is that even possible?

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Strange interlude 2003: Synagogue symbol of a larger ruin

     Several times over the years I searched for this unsettling column, but couldn't pull it out of Nexis. It had simply vanished. Then, a few months back, I tried a different system, and found it. But I still wasn't ready to post the column. I knew I had taken a photo of the moldy, rotting books, but couldn't lay my hands on it either. It was taken back in the day of film, and wasn't on my computer. I figured, "Wait." Then Thursday, I was pulling down some books in my office, and this picture was, for some unfathomable reason, in a stack of photos tucked between the books. I'm glad to finally be able to share it, after 17 years. I think the reminder is timely at this political moment: others can't hurt us as badly as we can hurt ourselves.

    The floor crunched. Each footstep made a sickening noise, like treading on masses of broken eggshells, the sound of crushing crumbled floor tiles, shards of fallen plaster and pieces of collapsed ceiling. There were enormous Rorschach blot patterns of black and brown mold all around, delicate, almost beautiful curled sheets of peeling paint clinging to the walls, and a wide greenish puddle in the center of what was once Rebecca Kranz Crown social hall. It was chilly and dark, and the air had a fungal smell.
     Each room had a fresh horror. In the kitchen they had left the food, in the cupboards, in the refrigerator, to suppurate for years. I gingerly touched a blue canister of salt that was puffed up on the counter. It was soft as a sponge.
     This was Congregation Beth Sholom of Rogers Park, or at least had been, once, before it was abandoned nearly five years ago. My brother-in-law, Alan Goldberg, a community activist, had mentioned he was trying to save an abandoned synagogue, and I asked to see it.
     I like old synagogues. They're hard to find. Chicago Jews did not invent white flight, but they mastered it, and most of the grand old synagogues in the city have been converted to churches or schools or torn down. When East Rogers Park "changed," Beth Sholom's future lit out for the suburbs.
     "The membership literally died out," said Joseph Gold, whose father was the rabbi there from 1958 to 1975. "There were not enough younger families moving into the neighborhood. It used to be a very viable congregation. They had a bowling league, and a men's club, and a ladies' club. Over the course of time, the young people moved away, and they weren't replaced."
      When I suggested a visit, I anticipated a musty old building, dim and dusty and enigmatic. I hadn't expected a ruin. I didn't expect dissolving books. I didn't expect a ruined sanctuary, with its rose walls and cream plasterwork of lions and pillars, the cushions of the maroon plush seats rotted away, exposing skeletal coils of rusty springs. The thick velvet curtains, embroidered with gold, were still hanging. Books left on the seats, as if people had rushed away, mid-service, were turning black and melting. In a small room off the pulpit, a once-fine upright piano had warped itself to pieces, the keys shedding their ivory, swelling together, crazing like a mouthful of broken teeth. I tried to tap one, and it didn't move.
     Parts of the ceiling came down in the heavy snows of 1998, and water rushed in like a pack of vandals. You could hear it everywhere, even though it hadn't rained for days, dripping and plunking, like muffled drumbeats. Most of the books were protected, sort of, in cabinets, piled by the dozens. Prayer books, Torah studies, but a few historic books. I picked up a yellowed thin volume, in Yiddish, a book published in Vilnius, Lithuania, in the 1920s, Various Important Prayers for Women Written by Women. Think of the inferno this volume escaped, to come here to die in the damp in Chicago. Why?
     "Unfortunately, a couple of years ago we had an unscrupulous rabbi who wanted to sell the building," said Lynne Bloch, president of the board of trustees, such as it is. "He actually sold the thing--imagine the chutzpa of him--and it was a whole big fight."
     That didn't make sense--rabbis are the employees of their boards. They don't own buildings and can't sell them, not without committing fraud. Slowly, I teased out a tale of a conflict on the board-- some wanted to sell the building, others to keep it. It seemed quite beside the point. How could they leave the books? How could she let this happen?
     "Believe me, I called people," she said. "I didn't wait. I tried all along, but I myself didn't know anyone influential."
     There was an inertia that disgusted me. A waiting on rich people, on people of "influence," to ride in and save the day. You didn't need Jay Pritzker to gather up the books and take them somewhere dry. You didn't need Lester Crown to spread plastic tarps over the seats in the sanctuary. It would have been an hour's work for two people.
      I asked to talk to other members of the board, and she put me in touch with her daughter, Helen Bloch, who denied being on the board--worried about liability, she said, since the building has no insurance--and shrugged off questions of ownership and legality.
     "I never really thought about it too much," said Bloch, a lawyer for the City of Chicago, who advised me not to get "bogged down in legal details" and instead focus on the possible redemption of the synagogue--as a place of worship, or perhaps as a Jewish center.
     A nice thought. I don't want to fault the Blochs too much. It seems they have, in their own limited way, been trying to keep the building alive. And who knows, perhaps the community activists gathered by my brother-in-law can perform a miracle. He's saved other buildings in the area that were overrun with drug addict squatters and stray dogs.
     But this would require a miracle, and miracles are in short supply of late. The chill gloom of the ruined synagogue stayed with me for hours, for days. I feel it now. No marauding enemies did this. This was a self-inflicted wound. As bad as the decay was, worse was how it, to me, symbolized a larger spiritual ruin. The demographic time bomb of half of all American Jews marrying outside their faiths, producing ever-more casual semi-believers in a gradual decay that threatens to eradicate the religion with an efficiency the Nazis could only dream of.
     Outside, in the parking lot, one of the men I was with produced a prayer book and turned to the special prayer to be said upon viewing a destroyed synagogue. Of course. We would have such a prayer, wouldn't we? History demands it. The prayer was the standard blessing, beginning "Blessed art thou, Lord our God, king of the universe . . ." the benediction that could veer off into wine, or bread, or whatever else was needed blessing. Just as the Mourner's Kaddish never mentions death, so the prayer for destroyed synagogues never mentions either destruction or synagogues, but merely praises God as a true judge. That, to me, was the coldest realization of all--not the rotting books, not the molding walls, but the understanding that this loss was deserved. A self-inflicted wound. I'm certain of that. Whether the enormous effort needed for redemption will take place is another matter. But I have a hunch.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 18, 2003