Visiting Mayan ruins

Caracol

     "Caracol" is Spanish for "snail," our guide told us, and the Mayan ruins we were approaching in jolts and sways were so named, he continued, either because of the snails found on the ground there everywhere, or because of the jarring van trip over pot-holed roads to get there.
     A joke, that second part, certainly. Though I was glad he mentioned it, since I otherwise might have overlooked the pale dime-size shells that were indeed everywhere, and quite beautiful. While I'm all for not stripping natural locations bare of their treasures, I did bend over and select a promising shell as a souvenir of my a week in Belize at the end of January. Judge me if you wish.
    It's odd. I think of my life as pretty much an unbroken shuffle through unbroken routine and relentless work, and it is, for the most part. But there are exceptions, and as I wondered about subject matter for today, it occurred to me that I hadn't mentioned visiting Mayan ruins, which is perhaps the definition of out-of-the-ordinary. I suppose because I felt that doing so falls under the rubric of "travel writing" and thus of not much interest to anyone. You probably are never going to Belize so why would you care? I'd be like one of those oblivious hosts pulling out the slide projector and the screen and a few boxes of carousels for his squirming guests. The dimmed lights, that hot slide projector smell, the thunk of the machine cycling through the static, dull photographs.
     So I'll make it quick. Since it might be worth alerting people to their presence.  I certainly had no idea. I mean, I knew they were there, vaguely.  Hunkered down in Mexico, in Central America, the sort of thing that blissed-out spiritual types seek out, I don't know, to get closer to the sun or something.  Not something I'd ever act upon or even consider acting upon.
     But we had a niece's wedding to attend — at a small Mayan ruin — and being nothing if not a practical person, I decided I wanted to make the most of being in the vicinity and a) hike in the rain forest b) explore a coral reef and 3) visit a Mayan ruin. 
      Actually, we went to two. The first was called "Lamanai" Yucatec Mayan for "submerged crocodile," and yes, we saw those too, on a 25-mile boat trip down the New River to get there.  The trip itself was an adventure, the guide stopping to point out birds and sleeping bats and various spots of interest.
     Lamanai is in a nature preserve, and the hike in had much to recommend it—our guide plucked leaves from an all-spice tree and had us chew them—I always thought "all-spice" was a melange of spices but it's not: it's a tree that tastes like a mix of cinnamon,  nutmeg and cloves.

Lamanai

       The pyramids loomed ahead of us as we hiked. There is a lot of really steep climbing, expansive views and the collective weight of history. The Maya lived for over 3,000 years at Lamanai, from 1500 BCE to Spanish colonial times.
     After our trip to Lamanai, in the Northern part of the country, I felt a little bad that we planned to go to Caracol, near the country's western border with Guatemala. I blithely assumed that nothing could be more incredible than what I had already seen.
    I was wrong. Caracol far surpassed it — far bigger, first of all. Not just a pyramid or two but entire complexes, plazas, patrolled by Belize soldiers to guard against Guatemalan infiltrators. Carvings of priests and birds had been recovered, and were on display. The trip itself was an adventure, going and coming — on the way we stopped at the utterly fantastic Rio Frio Cave on the way in, and paused to swim in rock pools on our way back.
     It put everything in perspective, somehow, to stand in front of a carving that someone chiseled 1300 years ago and reflect just how effaced their history is, how lost: whether a period is recorded or lost might depend on whether a stone plaque toppled back, and was preserved, or forward, and had its writing washed away in centuries of rainfall. The mute, green covered hillsides of the pyramids seemed a kind of judgment. 
     We assume such places fell to Spanish invaders, but Caracol was abandoned around 1050 AD, a reminder that no outside force can hurt a society as much as it can hurt itself. A lesson  I knew already, but it was worth flying down to Central America to see it in such dramatic and beautiful fashion. Plus seeing all there was in Belize, a country I had barely heard of, reminded me of just how much world that I, a moderately well-traveled guy, had not only never traveled to, but never wanted to travel to. Better get busy.

Rio Frio Cave

   

‘Long Way Home’ turns ‘Odyssey’ into homage to Chicago

Chloe Johnson (photo courtesy of Chicago Children's Choir)

     “The Odyssey has always been with me,” Emily Wilson writes in a note at the beginning of her new translation of the epic Greek adventure — the first into English by a woman — explaining how her elementary school put on a children’s production when she was 8, which inspired her to eventually learn Greek and Latin and study at Oxford.
     On that scale, I’m late to the party, having only discovered the book in my mid-30s, when Robert Fagles published his masterful translation.
     Like many classics, The Odyssey is not only a thrilling adventure story, but a lens that can be used to view contemporary life.
     All the confusion over gun control, for instance, is clarified by a single, utterly true sentence at the beginning of Book XIX, “Iron has powers to draw a man to ruin.” (“Iron” refers to swords; the sentence is commonly translated: “The blade itself incites to deeds of violence,” though I can’t find where originally).
     And just to show how flexible the classics truly are, that exact same passage can also be used to support gun advocates, since it occurs as Odysseus is hiding the suitors’ weapons so he can more easily kill them.
     You’re allowed to use the classics however you please — that’s half the fun. They belong to everyone, and almost everyone has taken a crack at The Odyssey or its hero, Odysseus. Plato commented, Dante condemned (sticking Odysseus way down in the 8th circle, with the frauds, for “the ambush of the horse.”). The plot has inspired everything from Milton’s “Paradise Lost” to James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
     So my interest was piqued when I heard the Chicago Children's Choir has turned The Odyssey into a hip-hop adventure called "Long Way Home," being performed this weekend.
     How did that happen?
     It started with the Q Brothers.
     "We're a theater collective in the city," said JQ. "We've been writing hip-hop adaptations of classics for almost 20 years now."
     Mostly Shakespeare; Children's Choir director Josephine Lee saw their "Othello: The Remix."
     "She said, 'I've got to do this with my kids somehow, what can we do? We have to tell the most epic story ever,'" recalled JQ. "I said, 'Well, the most epic story ever is The Odyssey. Let's place it in Chicago and let's set teenagers as the main characters, the heroes."
     Odysseus became "Ody" and female, performed by 17-year-old poet and aspiring filmmaker, Chloé Johnson, a senior at Lindblom Math and Science Academy.
     "It's cool to take on the role," she said. "It's fun learning how to rap over a beat while saying a line."
     Some concepts move with surprising ease from ancient Greece to contemporary Chicago. Odysseus's crew becomes Ody's, well, crew.
     As with translator Emily Wilson, a student Odyssey has piqued Johnson's interest in the original.
     "The opportunity to be part of "Long Way Home" got me to research The Odyssey and learn about it," Johnson said.
     She has been in the choir of a decade, and gone with them to South Africa, Italy and Cuba.
     "It's been an amazing experience, to travel abroad," she said. "This summer we are traveling to Israel."
     Johnson speaks with infectious enthusiasm, sometimes bursting into snatches of song.
     "Next year I will be going to college," she said. "I would like to go into film studies. I'm trying to be an influential woman in film, I am very excited. I am ready to take on the world, ready to leave home, see how I can work independently."
     I couldn't help but think of the reputation burdening Chicago teens, and asked her about it.
     "It is very frustrating," Johnson said. "Chicago is painted as 'Chi-Raq,' people don't realize, our youth, what we are capable of. Chicago is a very segregated city. Not everyone has opportunities, but children who are interested in going into music have that opportunity, to sing and express themselves. My favorite thing about Chicago is the Chicago arts community, Louder than a Bomb poetry, Chicago Children's Choir, the Department of Cultural Affairs. That is what unites the city, its visual arts, its film, its poetry."
     "Long Way Home" has its world premiere at the Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan Ave., on Friday. It runs through Sunday.

Dueling hells

     "Faust" by Charles Gounod opened Saturday at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Tuesday 100 lucky winners of the Sun-Times "Night at the Opera" contest will enjoy it with me. It's one of my favorite operas—I love the music—and this production has a new twist: the old guy  who sells his soul to the devil is no longer a philosopher, but an artist. Noted contemporary artist John Frame does the scenery, some intriguing short films and most delightfully, masks for Mephistopheles's little helpmates.      This is the third Lyric production of "Faust" that I've seen. The first was in the early 1990s, when great bass Sam Ramey owned the devil role. The second was a decade ago, when the "Lyric" presented not one, but two "Fausts," a non-coincidence I couldn't help but explore in this 2009 column. 

     When this column is done, hot from the oven and ready to be served, I go over it one last time looking for repetitions, which irk me. A word can be repeated powerfully ("Yes I said yes I will yes") but it also can foul an otherwise serviceable sentence. ("I set the chemistry set on the table and was all set.") 

     Thus it seemed odd to me — if to no one else — that the Lyric Opera's upcoming 2009-10 season includes both "Faust," by Gounod, and "The Damnation of Faust," by Berlioz. 

     Two Fausts? How did that happen? There are hundreds of operas to chose from. 

     " 'Faust' was the first one we picked," said Lyric General Director Bill Mason. Scheduling operas is a delicate mix of art and commerce, based on what singers are available, what sets are free, and achieving the right blend of crowd-pleasing favorites and cutting-edge new productions. 

     "We wanted to do a Berlioz," said Mason, and they puzzled over which one. "The Trojans"? "A monster," said Mason. Others were considered and rejected before "Damnation" was suggested. 

     The coincidence did give them pause (that's a relief — I'd hate to think they first noticed after they printed up the posters). 

     "We thought, 'should we have two Faust stories in the same season?' " said Mason. "But the more we talked about it, the more we thought it was interesting and a good idea. You've got this great epic by Goethe, you see these two French composers, what elements they chose to use and how they fashioned their libretto out of it." 

     The basic story is the same — aging scholar Faust sells his soul to the devil to regain lost youth and score a pretty maiden. How they handle the tale, however, differs from the first moment. 

     "In 'Faust,' in the first scene, Faust sees a vision of Marguerite, falls in love with her and immediately consigns his soul to the devil," said Mason. 

     "As men will do. . . " I ventured. 

     "But in the Berlioz, Faust doesn't agree to give his soul to the devil until the very end when he sees she's in prison to be executed. The first one is pure lust, the second a more altruistic thing." 

     Mason pointed out that there is a third major Faust opera — "Mefistofele" by Boito -- and it would not have been unimaginable to include that one as well. 

     "The infernal hat trick," I said. 

     "I wish we could have done that," he said. "That would have been fun, too." 

     Too bad—can't you just see the posters? The Lyric's Satanic Season. 

                                         —originally published in the Sun-Times, June 1, 2009

Barbie: You always hurt the ones you love

     Saturday we revisited comforting the Ken doll on his 50th birthday. So it seems somehow fitting to pivot to Barbie, and I happen to have this article Forbes assigned me in 2009 on Barbie mutilation, part of a Barbie 50th birthday package. Approaching a story such as this requires a plan: should I quiz female friends? Present myself at playgrounds and try to talk to girls? That seemed a bad idea. I scoured academic websites and posted a request on Facebook, and was surprised at women lining up to tell me about cutting up their Barbies. An early lesson in Facebook's value as a widely-flung net.

     A young girl bakes her Barbie doll in the oven. A San Francisco bar invites patrons to have at the dolls with knives. A New York artist drives nails into Barbie, calling it sculpture.  

     What's going on here? How did Barbie, history's most popular doll, celebrating her 50th year as a beloved plaything for girls worldwide, become an object that females of all ages cut, burn, bend, spindle and mutilate? And what does it all mean?
     Let's start with girls. Barbie is, after all, supposed to be a toy. In 2005, researchers at England's University of Bath, conducting a study of how children play, were surprised at what girls do to their Barbies.
     "The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving," writes Dr. Agnes Nairn. "The girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity, and see the torture as a 'cool' activity in contrast to other forms of play with the doll."
     The study's conclusion--that the abuse means that Barbie is a "hate figure" among 7- to 11-year-old girls--sparked debate all over the world.
     Some felt that Barbie was merely getting her due as a poor role model; others argued that battering a Barbie is no different than, say, battering a red wagon--only with a cultural touchstone like Barbie, we notice.
     The study's conclusions "smack of academic overanalysis," Anastasia de Waal wrote in The Guardian, "of grown-ups getting too excited about the symbolism of child's play. ... Testing the versatility and robustness of one's toys is neither new nor sinister."
     While the study emphasized the hostility suggested by hacking something apart, the girls actually told researchers they didn't despise Barbie so much as feel they had outgrown her.
     "The most readily expressed reason for rejecting Barbie was that she was babyish and girls saw her as representing their younger childhood out of which they felt they had now grown," said Nairn.

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Trump flips the bird to Chicago business and American trading partners

      When we kids asked our mother which of us were her favorite child, she didn't tell the truth — me, obviously, I knew in my heart.

     Rather she would lie, spreading her hand wide, wiggling her fingers and asking which finger she loved most. They must teach that ruse in Mom School, though it doesn't make sense: Who wouldn't prefer their index finger over their pinkie?
     But we bought it; we were kids.
     The government pretends to take that same impartial attitude when it comes to American industries. All are valued; how could it be otherwise?
      But it is otherwise. Like the barnyard critters in "Animal Farm," all are equal, but some are more equal than others. To see the result of this favoritism all you have to do is go to 4656 W. Kinzie St. and survey the weedy expanse east of Cicero Avenue.
      The largest candy factory in the world used to be there. For almost a hundred years, the E.J. Brach plant had thousands of employees — over 4,000 at its peak — turning out millions of pounds of Chocolate Stars and Jelly Nougats, Candy Corn and Conversation Hearts, and my favorite, Sundaes Neapolitan Coconut, those sticky rectangles of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.
     All gone, a shadow on a map — the ghost plant sketched by a few streets that mysteriously vanish, such as Kenton north of Kinzie. The Brach factory closed down in 2003, thanks largely to congressional efforts to prop up the sugar industry, which is big in places like Minnesota (sugar beets) and Florida (sugar cane) but not so big in Illinois. Sugar in the United States costs two to four times as much as in the rest of the world, thanks to the U.S. government.
      So Brach is gone. (You can see part of the factory being blown up as Gotham Hospital in "The Dark Knight.") Wrigley exiled chewing gum production to Mexico and China in 2005.

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Everyone called her "Sis."

Tiffany dome inside the Chicago Cultural Center

     Met my wife at the Cultural Center Friday after work, to rendezvous before dinner and a show. I got there first, and poked around a bit—how can you not?—and was reminded, yet again, what a beautiful slice of 19th century opulence the place is. 
     When she showed up I resisted, manfully, telling her, yet again, how Richard J. Daley's wife saved the place, the only time she ever contradicted him in public, basically saying "The hell you will" after he announced it would be torn down and replaced with one of those godawful slabs of brutalism they were throwing up in the early 1970s.

     Between that, and today being Chicago's 181st birthday, I thought I would disinter this 2003 slice of Chicago history, which includes the story of Sis Daley saving of the Cultural Center (which might over-dramatize the case: Daley just said he wanted to tear it down. It wasn't as if the wrecking balls were on their way). 


     She was the mother of seven children, and she raised them right.
     That Eleanor Daley, whom everybody called "Sis," was also the wife of one Chicago mayor, Richard J. Daley, and the mother of another, Richard M. Daley, might be more important to the history books.
     But for Mrs. Daley, who died Sunday evening at the age of 95, family always came first, and the city loved her for it. She created the pedestal of solid home life that allowed her husband--and then her son, who lived at home until he was 27 years old--to reach great political success.
     "We cannot understand Daley unless we understand the love story, simple and old-fashioned, at the heart of his life," Eugene Kennedy wrote in his biography of the late mayor. "Eleanor Daley was not a person who complemented Richard Daley; she matched him almost exactly in conviction, devotion and toughness."
     In recent years, she remained physically active, going to museums and outings, and was the beloved matriarch of the expanding Daley clan, particularly her 20 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
     "When I talk to my kids, the first question is always, 'What's up with Grandma?" said son William Daley, who was then the U.S. secretary of commerce, at Mrs. Daley's 90th birthday in 1997. "It's amazing the way the younger kids are attracted to her. They seem to get such a big kick out of her and her out of them. She's been the rock of our family."

        Mrs. Daley was in the public eye for more than 40 years without a breath of scandal or even criticism. She was admired even by many of the Daley clan's most fervent political rivals. Mayor Harold Washington once called her "a wonderful person who is part of our history."
     In the 13 years between the time her husband died and when her son took office, four mayoral administrations kept the police guard outside her famed Bridgeport bungalow, long after real concerns for her safety had passed, almost as a symbol of the city watching out for its respected collective mother.
     This is not to say she couldn't be outspoken. The press wanted to know her opinion about everything, and, on rare occasions, she gave it. Asked about abortion in 1971, Mrs. Daley, like her husband a devout Roman Catholic, said: "I would rather have a baby on my lap than on my conscience."
     She also would sally to the defense of her husband when he was under attack, particularly in later years.
     "I'm telling it to you straight--there was no setback of any kind," she said to a reporter in 1972, after her husband's faction was ousted from the Democratic National Convention--perhaps the most humiliating defeat of his career--and Daley was said to be in seclusion at their Michigan vacation home. "He never did. How can you be in seclusion with seven children and your in-laws?"
     Eleanor Guilfoyle, the seventh of 10 children of an insurance agent and his wife, was born at 29th and Throop in Bridgeport on March 4, 1907. She was given the nickname "Sis" at an early age by her siblings, who had difficulty pronouncing her given name.
     She graduated from St. Mary High School and never attended college, though St. Xavier College awarded her an honorary degree in 1963.
     It was in Bridgeport that brown-eyed Eleanor met Richard J. Daley at a Sunday afternoon baseball game in Mark White Square in 1926. Her brother Lloyd, an old friend of Daley's, made the introduction. The future mayor squired her to a dance at St. Bridget's Hall that evening.
     The two courted for a decade, going to picnics and church socials. The future Mrs. Daley continued to live at home, working as a secretary at the Martin-Senour Paint Co. during the day and caring for her ailing mother at night. Meanwhile, Richard Daley was slowly earning his law degree, taking night classes for 11 years at DePaul University.
     "Daley had this great romance with Sis," the late Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz once said.
     "He was my first and only love," Mrs. Daley later said of her husband, the only man she ever dated.
     After Daley opened his law practice, the two finally married, on June 23, 1936, in St. Bridget's Church in Bridgeport. Mrs. Daley took a cool view toward her husband's 1955 bid for mayor.
     "I have never taken much interest in politics," she told the Chicago Sun-Times before the election. "I suppose if Dick is elected, I will have to be more active. Of course, I would be happy for him."
     Still, she had found a perfect match in Richard Daley, who, if more interested in politics than she, nevertheless shared her devotion to family. At exactly 10:15 the night of his first inauguration in 1955, the new mayor turned to Mrs. Daley and said, "Mom, we've got to get the youngsters to bed." And with that, the Daley family left the celebration.
     "My mother told me there was never a single day in her life that my father didn't tell her that he loved her," said their daughter Patricia. "There was never a day he didn't say, 'I love you, Sis.' "
     The Daleys lived first in an apartment at 3333 S. Union and then moved to a building, since torn down, at the northeast corner of 35th and Emerald. On Nov. 1, 1939, they moved into a red-brick bungalow, built to Daley's specifications, at 3536 S. Lowe in Bridgeport.
     There, in a house usually off-limits to reporters and most politicians, they raised their seven children: Richard, William, John, Michael, Patricia, Eleanor and Mary Carol. And there Mrs. Daley continued to live for the decades after Richard J. Daley died.
     When her husband became mayor, Mrs. Daley said, a reporter told her she would have to turn her children over to someone's care while she attended social functions as Chicago's first lady.
     "Dick and I sat down then," she said. "And we discussed whether I would have to attend all the social functions. 'No,' he said. 'It's up to you to decide if you want to attend.' And I said, 'Fine.' I attended many functions. But when my children were small, I couldn't get on that noon luncheon circuit. I had children coming home at noon, and then they'd come home at 3 o'clock, after school."
     The Daleys made another important decision.
     "We decided," said Mrs. Daley, "that any social functions with politicians, or visitors coming to the city--[the mayor] would entertain them downtown. You wouldn't open up your home to have it a showcase or an open house, people dropping in at all hours. This was a home for our family."
     If she ever yearned for the limelight, for a career beyond her family, she never admitted it publicly.
     "For a mayor's wife, Sis Daley is a rare species," the Chicago American's Lois Baur declared in 1965. "She is not a joiner, a politician or a social butterfly. She is a wife, a mother, a homemaker, and, you suspect as you observe her quiet manner and lovely brown eyes, sometimes the soothing leveler to Hizzoner after a hard day at City Hall."
     One social occasion Mrs. Daley did take pride in was the brief visit of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip to Chicago in 1959. She made sure her children were presented to the queen during her 14-hour sojourn here, and afterward kept an oil painting of the Daleys' encounter with royalty above the mantle in their home. She also attended John F. Kennedy's inaugural and later met the president.
     Mrs. Daley earned a reputation of being fiercely loyal to her husband and bristled at any news item the least bit derogatory. One of her pet peeves during his early days as mayor was the way commentators described him as "fat."
     "He's not fat. He photographs much larger than he really is," she told a reporter in 1960.
     She was also affected when her husband's policies led to protest in front of their bungalow, such as the civil rights picketing of the Daley home in 1965. In 1966, Mayor Daley delayed announcing his candidacy for re-election citing concerns, perhaps genuine, for his wife's health.        

     The biggest stir involving Mrs. Daley took place in 1971 when, shopping at the National food store near her home, she noticed a display of paperback copies of Boss, the highly-critical biography of her husband written by Mike Royko, then a columnist with the Chicago Daily News.
     She considered the book "trash" and "shallow, secondhand hogwash" and wasn't about to let it be sold in her local grocery store. She turned a cardboard sign promoting the book face down and arranged all the books so their covers did not show.
     Then, Mrs. Daley sought out the store manager and said that if the book wasn't removed from the store, she would take her business elsewhere. The next day, the chain pulled the book from all of its 200 stores. The ban became national news--fueled by a gleeful Royko--and the company later rescinded it.
     Mrs. Daley made local headlines again in February 1972 when she appealed for the restoration of the 83-year-old main library building just days after her husband had announced that he favored tearing it down and building a new library on the site. The mayor eventually relented, announcing that the library building--at Randolph and Michigan--would be restored and used as a cultural center.
     On Dec. 20, 1976, the last day of her husband's life, Mrs. Daley accompanied him to the annual mayor's Christmas breakfast with city department heads at the Bismarck Hotel. The department chiefs had kicked in to send the Daleys on a trip to Ireland, land of their ancestors. The couple, married 40 years, spent most of the event deep in conversation with each other, "like young lovers," a waiter recalled.
     That afternoon, at his doctor's office, Daley collapsed and died. Mrs. Daley rushed to the office with several of her children. Informed that her husband had died, Mrs. Daley said: "Now we all have to kneel down and thank God for having this great man for 40 years," and led the children in prayer.
     For the next two years, Mrs. Daley spent most of her time with her family and was rarely seen outside her Bridgeport home. But in 1979, when her son Richard ran for the office of Cook County state's attorney, she ventured out on the campaign trail. She attended political functions, shook hands all around and agreed to her first interviews in years.
     She drew crowds of admirers wherever she appeared, and it became apparent she was a political asset. At President Jimmy Carter's request, she campaigned for him in his failed 1980 re-election bid.
     After the campaign, Mrs. Daley said she was planning to write a book about her and her husband, using diaries and scrapbooks she had kept since 1955. It would recount their public and private lives, she said, and it would be "a love story."
     She never wrote the book, however.
     Mrs. Daley re-entered the spotlight when her eldest son was elected mayor in 1989. She was greeted at his first inauguration with "thunderous" applause, and appeared at a variety of political events.
     In 2002, a teary-eyed Mayor Daley marveled at his mother's resilience, memory and indomitable spirit after a health scare that saw Mrs. Daley rushed to the hospital amid fears of a stroke.
     "She always recalls; she's got 99 lives. I mean—it's amazing," he said.
     Survivors include six of her seven children—her daughter, namesake and close companion Eleanor Rita Daley died early in 1998—as well as her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times Feb. 17, 2003

Welcome to 50, Ken; now the fun begins

    One benefit of the steadily fluttering calendar pages is that Facebook serves up columns from years past, based on whatever today's date happens to be. 

     Another is that time's effacing hand scrubs clean, allowing me to experience my own writing with the fresh eyes of any other reader. They're both suited to my biase s— they should be, I wrote them — yet also new discoveries. 

     I would envy anyone who thought to view the Ken doll's 50th birthday through the lens of that bard of lumpen middle age, Philip Larkin. That the writer was me, well, age is not without its compensations. 

     Ken, you're 50? My God! Welcome to the club, old bean. I reached the big 5-0 last June. Where does the time go? I hope you finally scored with Barbie and didn't just spend the past half century squiring her from prom to mall in her pink Mustang, only to be shown the gate of that Malibu Dream House as soon as G.I. Joe stops by. Barbie seems the type.
     That would be hard to take: 50 years since Mattel introduced you, 50 years dwelling in the shadow of the world's biggest clothes horse, the doll world's Stedman Graham.
     But then accepting the disappointments of life ("the unbeatable slow machine that brings you what you'll get," as British poet Philip Larkin calls it) is what 50 is all about.
     Or least our 50. Everyone's 50 is different. Barack Obama's 50—coming this August means being president of the United States, which must soften the sting somewhat.
     Maybe not so different. President or poet or plastic doll, the cumulative story of your life drains the bitterness out of 50, or should, as it dawns on you: This Is It, good and bad.
     At 50, you begin to notice the husks of used years, discarded behind you. "I have started to say/'A quarter of a century'/Or 'thirty years back' " Larkin writes. "It makes me breathless/It's like falling and recovering."
     Not to me. To me, there is a wonder to gazing back that far. Thirty years ago? 1981—the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Approaching each story as if it were a difficult ring puzzle, shaking it. Parading my 21-year-old self by the disinterested, flanneled Wisconsin lovelies.
     Bleh, I'm happier now, doing this. There are two ways to view doing the same thing for 30 years. 1) You can wonder why you haven't gotten it right yet or 2) You can realize: Gee, I've been doing this for so long; I must like it.
     Work strikes me as essential to a tolerable 50, Ken, old sport. I know you've been through many professions — airline pilot, actor, whatever. I suppose that makes for a rich life. Me, I find myself contemplating that Noel Coward line, "Work is more fun than fun."
     At 32, work for Larkin was a day job he pictured as a toad and resented. "Why should I let the toad work/Squat on my life?"
     By 50, employment had changed for him. "Toad Revisited," begins, "Walking around in the park/Should feel better than work" and ends, "Give me your arm, old toad/Help me down Cemetery Road."
     At 50, old age, while still distant, has taken out the instruments of torture and displayed them before you. Yet somehow, this doesn't bring fear so much as focus. There is no point in getting all worked up over nothing, the way younger people do. Happiness studies reveal a U-bend in life — you're pretty happy in your 20s, get more miserable as you age, bottoming out at about 45 — on average, though I can vouch for that — and then progress steadily upward in contentment until 70-year-olds report they're happier than 30-year-olds. It turns out that wrinkles aren't so bad after all.
     Not an issue for you, Ken, is it? You seem a permanent — what? — 26? I remember 26, struggling, rudderless; I think being forever stuck at that age would drive a fellow mad.
     In "On Being Twenty-six," Larkin deems it the age "when deftness disappears," a fallen state requiring 54 somber lines to relate ("A last charred smile, a clawed Crustacean hatred, blackened pride...") while 25 years later, he dispatches 50 in 15 breezy lines: "The view is fine from fifty/Experienced climbers say" happily trodding downhill toward death.
     Ah death. Not a concern for you either, Ken, old squire. Nor, to be frank, for me.
     I've read enough Seneca to take the sting out of thoughts of being dead — you don't go around bewailing that you weren't here 200 years ago. Why beat yourself up because 200 years from now you won't be here either? That seems an ungrateful response to the gift of ever being here at all.
     Besides, 50 isn't as old as it once was. In "What Fifty Said," Robert Frost says "Now I am old" contrasting, how, when young he "went to school to age to learn the past," but "now that I am old my teachers are the young ... I go to school to youth to learn the future."
     That's the ticket, Ken. How you view what's to come is usually a good thermometer of how old you really are — if the future is a menacing blur, a scary fracture from the comfortable and decent past, then you aren't seeing it properly and need to look again.
     No rush. Robert Frost was 50 in 1924, meaning he had only another 39 years left to write poetry. I'd sign up for that. As for you, Ken, old chum, well, maybe it's time to give Barbie another go. To yearn for something, to try, despite past failure and slight hope of success, is not too far from being young again. You've been at it this long. Why quit now?

            —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 2, 2011