Drowned in the Gulf of New Mexico

     John McPhee has been a pole star my entire professional life. From his choice of topics, like "Oranges," a book about ... wait for it ... oranges, to "La Place de la Concorde Suisse," where he goes on maneuvers with Switzerland's citizen army, McPhee has been a reliable font of fascination since I was in kindergarten. Brilliant structure — "The Search for Marvin Gardens" alternates a game of Monopoly with a tour of Atlantic City, whose streets line the board — coupled with detailed observation and gorgeous, unforgettable language and metaphor. In "Coming into the Country" he falls in a river in Alaska. The "gin-clear water cold as an ice bucket."
     When I was writing my first book, on college pranks, one chapter was to be about Ditch Day at Caltech. There was plenty on the annual student spree, and my first inclination was to save a bunch of time and money and assemble the chapter from published reports. Then I thought: "What would John McPhee do?"John McPhee would go. So I pried the secret date out of the senior class president, bought an airplane ticket, and flew to Pasadena. It was the right move.
     Yes, I have not read all 32 of McPhee's books — he took a detour into geology that left me behind. The fault, I assume, is my own. But now, at 92, he is offloading his lifetime knowledge, and it's a cold compress on the head of any fevered writer. Well me, anyway, but I assume others.
     Plagued by idiotic covers? John McPhee was plagued by idiotic covers. Tormented by typos? John McPhee let some doozies through. As did writers he knows or is related to.
     In "Tabula Rasa" in the May 13, New Yorker, he tells the story of a son-in-law, Mark Svenvold, who wrote a book called "Big Weather."
     "When 'Big Weather' appeared in hardcover, a sentence in the opening paragraph mentioned 'the Gulf of New Mexico,''' McPhee writes. "Where did that mutinous 'New' come from, a typo right up there with 'pretty' for 'petty'? Mark said it was unaccountable. For a start, I suggested that he look in his computer, if the original manuscript was still there. It was, and in that first paragraph was the Gulf of New Mexico. Remarkable, yes, but think where that paragraph had been. It had been read by a literary agent, an acquisitions editor, an editorial assistant, a copy editor, a professional proofreader, at least one publicity editor — and not one of these people had noticed the goddam Gulf of New Mexico."
     Some errors just lodge in your mind. I can't tell you how many times I've called the Edward Hopper masterpiece in The Art Institute "Nighthawks at the Diner." It's just "Nighthawks." "Nighthawks at the Diner" is a Tom Waits album. I make the error, Bill Savage corrects me, then two years pass and it happens again. Bill must be exasperated, but I can't stop myself.
     But that isn't the story I want to tell.
     Deep breath. Okay. The way participants in a 12-step program meeting will be emboldened by someone's tale of woe, I will now tell mine. I worked very hard to keep errors out of my most recent book, "Every Goddamn Day." I dragooned friends who were imbued in Chicago history to give it critical reads, invoking Lee Bey's classic dictum, "Read it like you hate me." Three, count 'em, three academic readers reviewed the book. I was feeling pretty confident as publication approached.
     Particularly about the introduction. That image of history not being a place or an artifact. Quite proud of that. I would read it for pleasure, to reassure myself, as publication loomed. Including this sentence on the second page:

     "History gathers at certain places — battlefields, coastlines, cities — and congeals around certain dates. The arrival of the shock: Dec. 7, 1941. Nov. 22, 1963. Sept. 11, 2001. Jan. 6, 2020..."

     Wait a second. That isn't right. It's 2021. Jan. 6, 2021. I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. A frantic email to my editor at the University of Chicago Press. Then a desperate phone call. I'm sorry, he said. There is nothing to be done. It's too late. The book has gone to press.
     That was unacceptable. I'll buy up the initial press run, I said, mulch it, and go to a second printing. We can't do that, he replied, because it would delay the publication by three months. We've set up events, publicity (plus it would have cost me, oh, $20,000 that I didn't have. But it's a sign of how desperate I was that I made the offer without even doing the math).
     This error was on the second page. It wasn't something readers would miss. People would see it, and would think, "This guy's an idiot. He can't even get the year of the insurrection right." The whole book was ruined. Two years' effort, kafloosh, down the toilet.
     As it happened, I was meeting my old NU classmate, Rush Pearson for sushi that day. You may know Rush as a skilled comedian, actor and longtime star of the Mud Show at the Renaissance Faire. I of course gave an agitated rendition of this terrible blunder, and how humiliating it was.
     "I dedicated that book to my boys!" I moaned. He smiled wickedly and raised an eyebrow.
     "Did you spell their names right?" he asked. That stopped me dead, and I laughed. A lot really. Being able to laugh at the disaster was highly therapeutic. I've always loved and respected Rush — he is a sui generis individual — but I love and respect him double for that.
     This is going on too long, but I can't stop here. There is a coda. That afternoon, Timothy Mennel, my editor at the University of Chicago Press phoned. "You're the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on the face of the earth," he said, or words to that effect. The editors at the Press were sitting around, saying how sad it was that this midlist nobody's book they were generously publishing was forever marred by this forehead slapping blunder. And someone looked at — in my mind's eye — a clipboard on the wall and said, "Actually ... you know ... they're pressing the big red button at three o'clock." Or words to that effect. The printing hadn't started, but was set to. In an hour. Calls were made. A few electrons rearranged. And the date became "2021" in print.
     So if I seem a little bit more grateful, these past two years, well fate has been kind to me. As has John McPhee, who generously shared a few of his own blunders and disappointments. If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone. I do not share much with John McPhee, in the talent or effort or reputation. But we both fuck up in exactly the same manner.

Never bang a drum, slowly or otherwise — a CSO percussionist takes center stage.

Cynthia Yeh

     Picture a symphony orchestra: the conductor, front and center, standing before the strings; violins to the left, violas and cellos to the right. Beyond that, woodwinds and brass. Then way in the back, off to the left, out of sight and pretty much out of mind, except for the occasional cymbal crash, are two or three percussionists hidden behind their elaborate kits — snare and bass drums, tubular bells, and timpani, aka kettle drums.
     Not tonight.
     Tonight — May 30 — is the world premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s “Procession,” written especially for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s principal percussionist, Cynthia Yeh.
     A drum set, plus vibraphone and glockenspiel — sort of a baby vibraphone — are to the immediate left of the conductor, where a guest violinist might stand.
     Sure, it felt odd.
     “I’m not up there often,” said Yeh, who had the unique position of being both inspiration and featured performer of the piece. “I’m never under his nose. I’m always surprised by how hot it is there.”
     Classical music does not serve up many drum concertos — major musical compositions featuring a specific instrument, usually piano or violin.
     So how do you get a concerto written for yourself? If you’re Cynthia Yeh, it’s simple.
     “I asked her if she would,” Yeh said. “She shockingly said ‘yes.’”
     Maybe not so shocking, considering Yeh’s reputation.
     “She is incredibly devoted to the passion of the music,” said Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor at the premiere. “She has a technique which is unbelievable. Really accurate. She knows everything, actually.”
     Montgomery has been composer-in-residence for three years at the CSO, and this piece caps off her tenure here.
     “I am forever grateful to Cynthia Yeh, who urged me to compose this work and who has been an extremely patient and thoughtful collaborator as I navigated my first large work for percussion,” Montgomery wrote in the program.

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Welcome the 9th most important Jewish holiday

 

   The cheder boys on scooters showed up Friday, as they always do, asking me to pray. I was upstairs, scrolling through social media, and almost sent them away. I'm too busy a man to be expected to go through this arcane religious ritual, and why? Because I paused to talk to them on the street at the end of March and foolishly pointed out which house is mine when they asked. 
     Send them away, tell them not to come back. Enough with the ritual already.
     But nowadays, it's smart to take what social connections presents themselves. I went downstairs.
     "Let's do this," I said, sticking out my right arm, while Elchonon indicated the left, proper arm, and wrapped it in a shiny leather band, while his partner, Mendel, busied himself with Kitty. Someday I'll get it right.
     I repeated the ancient words after him, managing to string a few together myself. Someday I'll get them down pat. Or, more likely, get tired and stop doing this entirely. He pointed out that Shavuot was coming.
     The regular reader might have perceived by now that I'm a Jewish person who is at least passingly acquainted with my faith, even the more arcane particulars. Not only do I knew what a pidyon ha-ben is, but my older son had one ("Redemption of the first born," an obscure ritual where the first son is purchased from God. Five pieces of silver are required, just like with Judas, and I went to a coin store and bought five old silver dollars to give to the rabbi. My in-laws were Orthodox). 
    But Shavuot? I'd heard the name. But for the life of me, it doesn't register. If I started reeling off Jewish holidays, given $100 for each one I could name, there would be Passover and Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah, Purim and Simchat Torah, T'Bhish Vat and Tisha B'Av. I don't think I'd ever get to Shavuot, unprompted.
    "What's Shavuot?" I asked. Elchonon explained that it celebrated being given the Torah 3,000 years ago on Mount Sinai. Which doesn't count, apparently, in attaching Jews to that particular spot on earth. But is true nevertheless. 
    "And what do we do on Shavuot?" I pressed.
     "On Shavuot we eat cheesecake," he said. My ears perked up. 
    "Why cheesecake?" 
    "It's nice, and fancy, and tasty," he replied and the yawning chasm between these pious teenagers and a fairly cynical and agnostic 63-year-old closed to a hairsbreadth. Eat nice, fancy, tasty cheesecake — if more religions came up with requirements like that, I think they'd fare better in this modern world. I shot off an email to Marc Schulman at Eli's — is this not a marketing opportunity — and circled the beginning of Shavuot, the evening of June 11. God knows I have enough cheesecake in the freezer. 

Put down the Colgate, honey.

     A thought experiment:
     Pretend, for a moment, that instead of nominating religious fanatics to the U.S. Supreme Court, Donald Trump had instead packed the high court with dentists.
     And instead of reversing Roe v. Wade, the ruling that for half a century protected the right of American women to make their own reproductive choices, this new court of oral activists allowed state legislatures across the country to mandate what brand of toothpaste women must use.
     Men, of course, would be free to continue using whichever toothpaste they like.
     Certain states, such as Illinois, would continue to allow their female residents access to the range of available brands. Crest. Colgate. Herbal toothpastes like Tom's. Sensodyne. Their choice.
     But other states would rush to make that decision for women and mandate a particular brand — or even bar toothpaste entirely. Use a rag and baking soda, honey, just like in the good old days.
     How would people react?
     Some would no doubt shrug and do whatever the state says. Freedom can be stressful, and there's always a big slice of the population that resents the pressure of being expected to run their own lives. The secret shame of totalitarianism is that a slice of the oppressed like it. Slavery is freeing, ironically, to them. No need to think for yourself, to agonize over choices — your betters do that for you. All you need do is obey.
     But others would rebel at the idea of the government telling us what dentifrice to put in our mouths. We saw how people resisted being told to do something as simple as wear a paper mask during COVID. And gratifyingly seven states — including backwaters like Kansas — rushed the abortion question onto their ballots, protecting the right of women to figure out their lives themselves. These initiatives didn't fail anywhere, because Americans overwhelmingly want the right to choose to have an abortion. Just like Mexico, Ireland, the rest of the Western world.
     Which brings up the connection between undermining voting rights and pushing mandatory religious fundamentalism. What the far right is doing is not popular. Most people voters don't want it — there are heartening signs that Americans are standing up and making their will known — so voting has to go. Since that's too naked a totalitarian flex, even for religious zealots, it's disguised as fighting election fraud, which scarcely exists.

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Facebook finds me unacceptable.

     The nation of Poland once demanded that the Sun-Times take down a column of mine, "True greatness comes from facing history."  At least their embassy in Washington, D.C. did, claiming I was defaming Poland by suggesting that it didn't need the Nazis to show up and teach them how to be anti-Semitic.

    Though they didn't put it in those terms.

    "We respectfully ask for the immediate withdrawal of the article from your website, as it contains a shocking number of blatant factual errors," wrote one Rachon Nikodem. 

     These errors were all along the lines of one author I refer to as "a historian" actually had a degree in sociology. That sort of thing. 

     We made a few tiny corrections, more to placate them than anything else. In discussing the situation, I said something that I've had occasion to repeat a number of times, alas:

     "They think they're refuting the charges, when actually they're manifesting them." Nothing says anti-Semitism — or racism — louder than pretending your bigoted history doesn't exist. It's a bad look.
     The paper, I'm proud to say, stood firm behind me, even after a local Polish lawyer then sued us on their behalf, dragooning two local Polish yokels as injured parties. The attitude of the Sun-Times lawyer when we spoke was, "Yeah, I got this." No need for me to be involved, though this was 2021, and I attended the Zoom court hearings.  I can't say watching a judge laugh the lawsuit out of court was the highlight of my career, but it certainly was right up there.  I felt my dead Polish relatives were, in a tiny meaningless way, avenged.

     Newspapers don't yank down their work. Not without strong compelling reason. The idea is, good or bad, once published, it becomes part of the public record, and thus must be available. Unless it's plagiarized or libelous or in some way far beyond the pale. Which might make me extra sensitive to the idea of things I've written being purged.
     But Facebook tossed one of my blog posts off their social media platform last week, and I found it chilling. It had only happened once before, but that was a column about why Howard Tullman's art collection was so heavy in the nekkid women department. The column included a few photos of his collection and, well, squelching exposed flesh, even when painted, has such a long history that it somehow doesn't seem as objectionable.
    But this post was a list of quotes that I had researched. Donald Trump had just been found guilty of 34 felonies, and his objection, "I was just convicted in a rigged political witch hunt trial: I did nothing wrong" seemed like it called out for context. I gathered together the justifications of other traitors. Benedict Arnold: "Love to my country actuates my present conduct, however it may appear inconsistent to the world, who very seldom judge right of any man's actions" and Vidkun Quisling, the betrayer of Norway: "I am convicted unfairly and die innocent."
     For good measure I threw in some obviously guilty fellow felons, like John Wayne Gacy: "You will have executed someone who didn't commit the crime...I have no knowledge of the crime whatsoever. Never have had."

    The best part of the whole exercise was, rooting around to see what Iago says in "Othello" that might apply, I found the evergreen "I am not what I am," which could be a generic summary of half of the statements that come out of Donald Trump's mouth.
     I was so pleased with the result, I considered running it as a column in the newspaper. But there was no exposition — just a list of quotes. And it included a line from Hitler's final testament, written days before his suicide: "It is untrue that I or any other person in Germany wanted war in the year 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who are either of Jewish origin or work for Jewish interests."
     I imagined an editor having trouble with that. "So you're ... comparing Trump to Hitler?" and didn't feel like arguing the point.
     Immediately several readers who had posted it on their Facebook pages complained that Meta had taken it down. I figured it was something to do with their pages. Mine was fine. A day later, Facebook lowered the boom.
     "We removed your post," it declared. "Why this happened" It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way." Then it showed my link. "You're post goes against our Community Standards on spam."
     Ouch. I never try to get likes, etc. You can't. You never see that kind of thing coming — go to a discount supermarket with your wife, and suddenly hundreds of thousands of Aldi fans on Reddit are baying for your blood. Nobody plans that.

      I appealed the decision to Facebook, which said they'd get back to me. They must be whistling all the way. Nothing yet. In fact, they did it again Sunday morning, yanking a fairly anodyne farewell to "Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajak. A reminder that oppression is addictive, even when done by machine.    

     I recognize the dilemma. You don't want Facebook clogged with spam and offensive crap ... of others. You also don't want your original, thoughtful food to be deemed offensive muck and hosed away.

     The chill, of course, is to realize that someday everything will be online, and that online world will be in control of six companies, some of them run by irresponsible egomaniacs like Elon Musk. There is something very "1984" — Winston Smith, strapped to a chair in the Ministry of Truth, straining to see a scrap of paper — about the idea of what can be shared being determined by ... actually, not even a few people. A few algorithms. That's a very frightening prospect. Our voices will be stifled by a few semiconductors.

     Yes, every medium has its standards, and I've had  a few columns rejected over the years. I remember New Zealand press lord Nigel Wade tersely informing me that the paper would not be printing my column explaining why Oprah Winfrey is the embodiment of Satan. As bad as that is, at least it is always a person making a decision. The way Facebook does it — it's as if the columns were weighed and then rejected for being too heavy.

      Blogger doesn't do shit like that. Blogger is more of a neutral communication channel, like AT & T. That's one reason I didn't shift over to Substack when they invited me to join — I got the sense they reserved the right to pass judgment on what I am doing. The New York Times ran a chilling story about how China scrubs their internet history. We need to make certain that it can't happen here. 

     The upside, I suppose, is that the more Facebook deteriorates, the more it is an ad-choked wasteland of irrelevant pap, the easier it will be to avoid. Elon Musk did us a favor by wrecking Twitter. People vote with their feet, as religion has discovered, belatedly. Having your work arbitrarily pitched off by some machine is part of that process. I suppose we should be grateful.

Kind soul

 

     A cicada got in the house. Not sure how. Some sneak in as stowaways on my shoulder, hopping on after I'd inspected the yard. This one was seen in shadow on the back of the roller blind in our bedroom. My wife pointed it out.
     The roller blind was new, pure white and quite expensive. The last thing I wanted to do is smear a tablespoon of cicada gore across it. The stain would never come out. That streak would mock me for the next decade. I paused, contemplated, did that spatial cognition thing that men are so good at, and determined I could pull the shade without crushing the cicada.
     "Get me a Dixie cup," I asked my wife, not wanting to take my eyes on the cicada, lest it make its getaway and secrete itself in a hidden nook in our bedroom, from where it would torture us with its shrieks for weeks to come. My wife brought the cup. I nudged red-eyed bug deftly into it, without blotching the shade. I strode into the bathroom, shook the cicada into the toilet, and flushed.
     Then I returned to the bedroom, and saw my wife's face. She was ... not crestfallen. Not shocked. A slight shade of a something that, after 40 years together, I immediately understood.
     "You thought I would take it outside?" I said.
     "Yes," she replied.   
     "To join the trillion other cicadas nibbling on our sapling branches?"
     "Yes."
     And that, dear reader, is why we've been married for 34 years come September. "A woman of valor, who can find?" Proverbs 31:10 asks. "For her price is far above rubies." Maybe so. But a woman of kindness? A truly sympathetic person? Someone who can relate to the inherent value of the primitive flying insect that finds its way to her bedroom? That is rarer still.
     Friday I walked over and picked up lunch from Little Louie's — a Northbrook icon, and if you haven't patronized the place lately, you should. We ate on our back porch, while the cicadas filled the air over our heads, leaping off and on the spreading branches of the two sugar maples that form a partial canopy above our heads. She marveled at them in a way that, for all the media coverage, I'd never heard before. The cicadas were beautiful. She was so happy we live here, and not some other place, where the unfortunate residents miss this spectacle. What a special time!
     That evening, in our bedroom, I reclined onto the pillow and realized something light was moving on my neck. A cicada, I hoped. Sitting up, I requested her immediate attention. She grabbed a Kleenex and, after some Marx Bros. fumbling, plucked it away. Then she exited the room and hurried down the stairs. I did not have to ask where she was going.

"H A P P Y ... T R A — L S ... T O ... Y O —!" Pat Sajak moves on.

     Last year Stephen Colbert asked Jim Gaffigan what's new, the classic slow-pitch-down-the-middle that talk show hosts serve their guests. Gaffigan swung from his heels.
     "The biggest thing, probably, since I've seen you, is Pat Sajak retiring," the comedian said. "People ... you can see how stunned they are."
     Are we? Maybe a little. Game shows aren't supposed to change. They're supposed to endure, a bedrock of entertainment stability in an otherwise rapidly shifting culture. We don't focus on them, hardly talk about them unless a contestant goes on a run or makes some laughable error.
     And their hosts reign for decades, none more so than Pat Sajak, the longest-serving TV game show host in history — 8,000 episodes of "Wheel of Fortune" over 41 years, a tenure that ends Friday.
     "Wheel of Fortune" is still the 2nd most-watched game show in the country, after its brainier cousin "Jeopardy!" and some years is No. 1. Though there is a disconnect between the show's huge popularity and the esteem granted its host.
     "He's the host of 'Wheel of Fortune,' but really, is there anything Pat Sajak can't do?" Gaffigan deadpanned. "He's, ah, he's ... like a renaissance man."
     Meaning: He's not. Sajak is a blandly handsome former weatherman who got very rich playing a mash-up of "Hangman" and roulette on television. Aided almost the entire time by the truly incredible Vanna White — and I say "truly incredible" because while most models hired to smile radiantly on game shows are anonymous and replaceable, White has endured as the nation's letter-turner, becoming a household name whose job is set to continue through at least 2026, when she will be 69.

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