The cat that broke things.

Gizmo liked to show up where he wasn't expected, like this laundry basket.

     Gizmo was a naughty cat. And demanding. He liked to drink at night from the faucet in our bathroom. But insisted that one of us open the tap, set to a precise trickle, while he watched, at night. That last part was vital. We couldn’t just set the trickle before bed and go to sleep. He’d wake us anyway.
     Gizmo was a regal cat. He would regularly summon us downstairs to give him food. Even when his bowl already had food in it. I would troop after him in the middle of the night, knowing the bowl was already full. I would lean over, groaning, lift the bowl of kibble, and give it a ceremonial shake. Then Gizmo would deign to eat. Maybe. Sometimes he would just sniff and turn away. This went on for a decade. At least.
     Gizmo was a punitive cat. Ignore him and there would be consequences. If one of us didn’t appear in the bathroom in what he considered a timely fashion, Gizmo would begin knocking things into the sink: cups, toothbrush stands, shaving cream cans. Anything that would make a loud, booming noise.
     Gizmo was a destructive cat. Refuse to conduct the food bowl ceremony, and he would leap upon the hutch and nudge valuables — cups, saucers, a handmade ceramic Scott Frankenberger pie plate I had commissioned as a present for my wife’s birthday — off the shelves. Had I accidentally dropped that pie plate I would have been mocked forever after. But Gizmo’s act of deliberate vandalism was immediately forgiven. “A sweet cat,” my wife said.
     Gizmo was a sensual cat. He enjoyed frequent and vigorous carnal relations with the stuffed tiger my younger son had won in Las Vegas. Gizmo liked to rendezvous with the object of his affections on the landing outside our bedroom door, letting out a piercing yowl that sounded like a cat being torn in half. I tried to ignore it, best I could.
     Gizmo was a loyal cat. He slept at the foot of our bed, on my wife’s side, next to our other cat, Natasha. They would groom each other.

To continue reading, click here.

And lo, God sent a vision of brisket

     A restaurant must achieve three key qualities to be the sort of place you can revisit or recommend. Good food, of course. A space that you want to eat in—an element that a surprising percentage of eateries botch. And third, that most elusive of attributes: friendliness.
     Not forced friendliness. Not going through the motions of being polite. But something warm, genuine, sincere. Otherwise, you can eat at home.

     Being a social person, I especially hunger for this third quality. If I'm patronizing a place, I expect them to be nice to me. 

      To celebrate my younger son graduating from University of Virginia Law School, we of course went out to celebrate. I told him to pick anywhere that tickled his fancy, and he selected Fleurie, a French restaurant off the Charlottesville mall offering a prix fixe menu at $75 apiece. Not cheap, but heck, he flew through law school without causing me to furrow my brow once. He's earned it. The meal was fine; they brought a variety of little appetizers and special touches, all with a quiet deference, and while I misordered—I didn't realize my venison would be quite as gamey as it was, tasting somewhere between liver and a corpse—my son, who had been here before, and ordered the venison before, told me I should have expected this.
     So Fleurie was ... fine, my meal notwithstanding. ("They should have warned you," said my wife, who tasted my venison and spat it into her napkin). 

      But the next night stood out in a better way. My boy knows that I like barbecue—who doesn't?—and so perhaps to make it up to me, he suggested we go to a new place in a strip mall called Vision BBQ. Frankly, the name worried me. "Vision?" We walked in, the only patrons. Another bad sign. But too late now. A man with a bandana around his face, the smoke master I assumed, told us he had just taken a marvelous pastrami off the smoker.
     "My people's meat," I said, and we adjusted our platters, pitching the pork for the pastrami. While we waited, I had to ask where "Vision" came from.
     "That's odd for a BBQ place, "I said. "You expect 'Leon's' or something."
     Michael, one of the owners, said that it's because the idea of starting a barbecue restaurant came in a vision.
     "A vision ... from God...?" I said.

     That's how you want your barbecue to happen. Divine inspiration. 
     I paid the bill—it was the sort of place where you order and take a seat. About a sixth of the cost of the night before. The computer asked if I wanted to tip, and I didn't. I usually do, the pandemic and all. Because they were just handing the food over the counter and, to be honest, since I was still stinging and so perhaps a little parsimonious after the bill at Fleurie, which had grown considerable with add-ons and drinks and such. We took a table outside.
     Then three things happened to seal Vision in my affections. First Michael came outside where we were sititng, with a new bill, explaining that he had miscalculated. "A heavy finger" I believe is the term he used. This bill was $15 less. I walked inside to pay the new bill, in and explained I had made a mistake of my own, and handed over $8 as a tip. The food came out, in hearty metal trays lined with wax paper; a nice touch. The corn muffin was very moist. "Almost a souffle," my son said. The brisket had a hearty bark on it. The red sauce was suitable piquant—a very minimal tablespoon in a little plastic cup, true, though the meat was good enough that it didn't need it. Not Smoque. Not Green Street Smoked Meats. But not bad. In fact, good,
     Then the last thing happened. The smoke master, who had been scurrying back and forth to the smoker in the parking lot, came by with three chunks of burnt ends, for us to try, knowing we were from out-of-town and apt never to come back—I talk a lot—but delivering a little treat anyway.
     I like that. Not just the little extra, but the consideration that inspires it. The friendliness. The pride. So Fleurie if your kid requests it, but for the love of God don't order venison. If you find yourself in the vicinity of Charlottesville, Virginia, and are looking for barbecue, slide by Vision BBQ and fill up. You can tell them I sent you.

‘You fight alone, you’re dead.’

Photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin Garcia

     Memorial Day, on Monday, honors the fallen, as opposed to Veterans Day, in November, which honors living vets. That must be complicated, because some folks always point it out. Which must also be necessary, since others still get it wrong.
     I want to lump the two together and focus on the “honor” part. What does that mean exactly? What does honoring vets, living or dead, look like? Fly the flag, say the pledge —that’s what I do. Post on Facebook old photos of family members who served? Lots of that. Share stories of military bravery on social media, waved under the noses of other people, almost as a rebuke. I double-dog dare you to share this!
     And all this honoring helps ... who exactly? It certainly feels good for the person doing it. Nothing wrong with that. I like flying the flag. Going through the motions of respect has gravitas and the illusion of significance. 

     But honor, in itself, is overrated. Honor is so easy. A solemn nod. A ginned up tear. And back to the TV or barbecue. Everyone is so happy to congregate again; I’m hosting one barbecue and attending another.
     It’s also easy for the holiday’s purpose to be overlooked entirely.
     This at a time when the military is more important than ever. You can argue whether the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq made us safer. But I believe to the bottom of my heart that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Mark Milley, and other career soldiers saved American democracy last fall. They never fired a shot, but they stood shoulder to shoulder and kept us from becoming a dictatorship. We don’t know the full scope yet. But we will.
     In the meantime, entertain the idea that all that moist-eyed flag waving might wound the very people it is supposed to uplift.
     “It upsets me when so-called Americans go and fly these flags on these various holidays, Memorial Day and Veterans Day,” said William Hooks, who served for 20 years in the Marine Corps. “They play the game, when the time to be compassionate toward veterans is when one needs bus fare. Who needs a second chance or a job."

To continue reading, click here.

Popping into Sunset Foods.

 

Ron Bernardi

     Ron Bernardi's four uncles, the Cortesi brothers, started Sunset Foods in Highland Park in 1937. He started bagging groceries there at age 16 in 1959, the year before I was born, and was still at it Friday morning when I stopped by the Northbrook Sunset to pick up some cranberry juice.
     Not that Bernardi, 77, hasn't risen above grocery bagging in the ensuing 62 years. He became not only the manager of the Northbrook store — there are five Sunsets in the Northwest suburbs, all still family-owned — but has been the chain's public face as community liaison, and is perhaps the most well-known, and certainly the most well-liked, person in Northbrook.

     He doesn't officially have a role in running the store, but is still there a lot, and certainly was playing a role Friday.
     Just seeing him is fun. We always pause to chat. A proud Italian, he introduced bocce ball to Northbrook Days, and my family enjoyed many a fierce match because of it. He wasn't around the store much during COVID, for obvious reasons. Or he might have been; we weren't there. After a few quasi-terrified forays into the store early in the epidemic, which had the feel of hurrying into an abandoned and leaking nuclear reactor to grab provisions and rush out, we took to having our groceries delivered to the trunk of our car like many others in the leafy suburban paradise.
     Just shopping in person again felt joyous, and to the cranberry juice I added Zayde cookies from Leonard's Bakery, a pint of blueberries (only $2.99) and a few containers of Arctic Zero ice cream-like substance. Seeing Ron there, bagging away, made the visit complete. I already knew why he was doing it — businesses of all sorts have been scrambling for help lately — but supposition is a fraught endeavor in my line of work, so I had to ask him. I could see he was reluctant to be yanked from the bagger's rhythm, but when he saw it was me behind my mask he paused to answer.
     "It's Memorial Day; don't want customers bagging their own groceries," he said, jumping the gun a bit. "It's called one-on-one leadership. We're a team."
     That's true. I've had more friendly, one-on-one interactions with management at Sunset than I have with all the other stores in Northbrook combined. We live in whatever the opposite of a food desert may be. A food oasis, I suppose. Besides Sunset, within 10 minutes of our house is a Jewel, a Mariano's, a Trader Joe's, a Whole Foods, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something. With apologies to Sunset, I admit I will visit those stores, under certain specific situations. If I happen to pass by for instance. I accompanied my son to get shoes at the DSW near the Trader Joe's, and suggested we stop in and grab a few jars of this tremendous dark fudge sauce they sell, nearing Margie's Candies quality. But the kid wasn't interested so we didn't. Mariano's has an extensive flower section, and I slid by there to grab a bouquet for my wife's birthday. Jewel sometimes has killer sales, or a certain item—say Bays Brioche English Muffins — that Sunset doesn't stock. And Whole Foods, well, I never go in for any reason, on shifting principles: originally because of its mendacious, these-products-were-coaxed-from-Mother-Earth-by-Pueblos pretensions, lately because Amazon gets enough of my dollar without me seeking them out.
     But Sunset is our go-to store. It's close. I love walking over, even though that limits what I can buy. I walked there Friday, though it was raining. It's friendly, and they understand that food is an essential to human existence, and the acquiring of it more than a mere economic transaction. Emotions are involved. The last time I was at Jewel, picking up those English muffins, I also grabbed some Peet's Coffee, on sale for $8.99 a bag instead of the usual $10.99. I double-checked the price on the shelf because sometimes they slap the sale price under any old bag and you don't find out until I'm in front of the cashier. Yup, Major Dickinson's blend. Two bucks off. I almost took a photo of the sign, to show the clerk after I failed to get the two bucks off, but didn't, and regretted it. Sure enough, the discount never appeared when she tallied my groceries up. When I pointed their error out, the clerk said, flatly, "Are you sure it's on sale?"
     I did not have the courage to say, "No, I just like having my ability to perceive numbers and my basic honesty questioned by a cashier." But instead I brightly told her I would gladly go check and snap the photo that I should have taken in the first place. But she mutteringly took the $2 off with the huffy air of someone indulging a fraud, even though I was the one almost cheated and then forced to point out their screw-up. That would never happen at Sunset. Not that a mistake could never happen; they're human. But when one does, they're sincere and apologetic and accommodating, because they're happy you're there, and so are you.

Chicago notes: Trouble at home.

Part of going home is seeing the things you love, like the
Chagall windows at the Art Institute of Chicago.

    Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey is back in Chicago, on the Northwest Side. But that doesn't mean everything is as it should be, yet. Her Saturday report:

                                         Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around

                                         once in a while, you could miss it.                

                                                                                 — Ferris Bueller.

     Ferris and his girlfriend Sloane stood before the stained glass window pictured here at the Art Institute of Chicago after being transformed by the art they took in that day. You may know that it was created by Marc Chagall, nee Moishe Shagal, whose montages have inspired so many of us over the years.
     A local filmmaker, Hart Ginsburg, says “the power of montage is to create a fluid experience where the heart can open, the mind can wander, and the imagination can run free, untethered by judgment or logic.” You can view Hart’s work at digitaltapestries.site, and I recommend it. There you can enjoy short, beautiful film montages as well as other tools for inner growth and self-soothing.

                              If I create from the heart, nearly everything works;

                              if from the head, almost nothing.
                                                                       — Marc Chagall

     As I tumble back to Chicago looking for grounding, I discovered my new place near Elston & Milwaukee is under a very loud point of O’Hare’s flight path. Friends suggest “ear plugs!” “sound machines!” “you’ll get used to it!” They didn’t realize I have been wearing ear plugs, have two sound machine’s going, and also took hydroxyzine (which I do not like to do), and even so I get woken up at intervals throughout the night to the walls shaking and a big jet engine.

     I have not slept through one night since I moved in last Sunday. I’ve had to take today to just stop. I have decided to clear out— thank goodness I have not yet signed a lease. Given what’s happening I’ve taken today to just stop. I have learned over the years when things get this stressful the only thing to do is chose a different path rather than hammering over and over the same one.
     Watching my thoughts each time I woke up last night was a salve. “I don’t have to think about this right now. It’s time to rest,” I told myself. I put a sound meditation from Insight Timer on to soothe me back to sleep after one ominous rumble. The next time I woke up I caved and took more hydroxyzine (similar to Benadryl, but specifically for sleep).
     We would all prefer things to be peaceful and serene, but that’s not how life goes. Meditation is a tool I use to quiet my mind at the worst of times, and in the best of times. It’s a muscle that grows with use. The purpose of meditation is to find moments of respite from our active minds, and to become fully present in the moment. We often live in thoughts of the past and the future, which can exhaust us and prevents us from enjoying life as it is. Our thoughts can rob us of time. Sure, we have to set goals and solve problems to the best of our ability, but we can also immerse ourselves in the good things around us. Last night I spent hours with my nephew and recognized all along the way how grateful I was for this time with one of my favorite people.
     As Ram Dass says in his meditation called Imagine (available on YouTube; I like the one with music by Boreto), as long as we are locked into our thoughts we are always just one thought away from here. So as I sit here in the chilly apartment I will leave soon (once I figure out alternate lodging), I feel my cold feet in wool socks, cold hands and nose (my winter clothes are packed somewhere in a suitcase in my car), I decided to re-write this blog as a means of finding clarity. Pulling my mind out of the actions I will need to take, and instead placing fingers on keys and clicking away. As I told a client today, if we can get to a place of self-soothing and problem solving we will have more peace of mind. We are all getting older and one day will be in bed and we won’t get out. How will we feel OK through the natural process of life if we cannot feel OK when things really are, relatively, OK?

     According to the Mayo Clinic website, some of the benefits of meditation include reducing negative emotions, increasing imagination and creativity, increasing patience and tolerance, managing symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, chronic pain, sleep problems, tension headaches, and more.
     I will now find my space heater if I can, take a hot bath, rest, and regroup. Be well and see you all next week.

A rapist and slaver who did other things

 

     Thomas Jefferson had six children with Sally Hemings. At least. Quite a lot, really.
     How that fact eluded me through a lifetime of reading history speaks to the sort of history I’ve been reading. I knew about Hemings, but not the half-dozen kids.
     If they’re old news to you, apologies. Nothing is duller than being told what you already know. I’m genuinely uncertain whether I need to further identify Hemings as Jefferson’s property. Or ID Jefferson as the third president. It’s true, he was.
     The Hemings story, once a whispered calumny, has been embraced, even celebrated by those running Jefferson’s planation home of Monticello. I visited there last Friday while hanging around Charlottesville, Virginia, waiting for my youngest to receive his law degree. We travelled 800 miles to watch him walk across the stage and be handed his diploma.
      Or so I believed, until reality intruded, as reality will do, eventually.
      I’d been to Monticello several times, and every time the history of the enslaved persons who worked there becomes more prominent, as does scrutiny, given the evil that Jefferson tried and failed to ban at our nation’s founding. Decades ago, the 600 Black people owned by Jefferson were called “servants.” Then they became “slaves,” but that was seen as ... what? Too reductive, perhaps. “Enslaved persons” is now their preferred term, perhaps to finally work “person” into the description.
     Touring Jefferson’s home, I felt as if I were myself two different people admiring the gardens and staring into the wine cellar. One who went to grade school at a time when Blacks show up only fleetingly in American history in the form of Crispus Attucks, who arrives just in time to be gunned down at the Boston Massacre, then submerge until John Brown and the origins of the Civil War.

To continue reading, click here.

Unoverwhelmed.

 

     "I'm glad we decided to work Saturday," I said Monday, humping yet another bag of trash out of my son's Charlottesville apartment and toward the complex's dumpsters, 100 yards away. "If we hadn't, we'd be overwhelmed. Now we're just whelmed."
     It was pointed out to me that the last word isn't a word. I promised I would check at the first opportunity, suspecting that "overwhelmed" is what etymologists call an "unpaired word"—a word that doesn't exist without their negative (or positive) prefixes. We become "disabled" but not "abled."
     Three days and nearly 800 miles later, back at my home office, I checked my Oxford English Dictionary. Wrong. "Whelm" is parsed for a full column and a half. "1. intr To overturn, capsize. obs." with a variety of related meanings. "To cover completely with water or other fluid so as to ruin or destroy." 

     So in a sense, "overwhelm" is redundant, as "whelm" seems to serve nicely. "To engulf or bear down like a flood, storm, avalanche, etc; hence to involve in destruction or ruin" such as the challenge of condensing the contents of a student apartment into the back of a Honda Odyssey.
     Indeed, many terms which seem to the untrained eye like unpaired words actually have long-forgotten roots. You can be both "gruntled" and "kempt," for instance. Or could be at one point.
     So maybe "overwhelm" is another pleonasm, like "batshit crazy," piling on words for added effect. "Overwhelm," like "overlavish," does means pretty much mean the same its root word. "1. To overturn, overthrow, upset" with a second meaning, "2. To cover (anything) as with something turned over and cast upon it; to bury or drown beneath a superincumbent mass; to submerge completely (usually implying ruin or destruction)."

    "Superincumbent"—this process never ends—means, "Lying or resting upon, or situated on the top of, something else; overlying." It strikes me as a handy euphemism for ... well, never mind. 
     That said, "overwhelm" was simply the wrong word, as we were not ruined, but coped handily. Yes, I felt a pang of guilt—the plan had been to spend Saturday hiking in the Shenandoah National Park. But the temperature was in the mid-80s, we were semi-tired from several hours strolling around Monticello, and the task had begun to grind us down already. We had to conserve energy, achieve our end, return the key and drive home, eventually. Packing instead of hiking wasn't a mistake, as I sometimes say when a reader points out to a word they don't like, it was a choice.

      Though there was a moment of moral victory I have to share. Much pre-trip conversation centered upon whether or not his mattress would fit, perhaps folded, in the back of the van. My wife insisted it would not. My son, imbued with all the optimism and endless possibilities of youth, countered that we would easily get it in. We saw there was no point in even trying, and  dragged it to the dumpster too. Just before we left, he considered the Odyssey and observed "I get the sense the mattress wouldn't have fit anyway." I get the sense he's right.