"Pornography for the blind" — the audio book adventure

     This column is, in a way, a result of my trip down to Wayne County in early January. I wanted an audio book to pass the time on the long drive downstate, and grabbed George Packer's "The Unwinding." But the rental car didn't have a CD player—outdated technology—so the box sat mute on the passenger seat. I began listening to it when I got back, driving around town. It got so I looked forward to any errand, the longer the better. But I just don't drive that much, and at disc 10 I crossed the Rubicon, copied the remaining CDs onto my iPod, and listened to them while walking the dog, folding laundry or cleaning the kitchen. Something about audio books migrating from the car, where they had always belonged, to the rest of life, seemed to magnify their importance. It got me thinking whether I was processing the book in the same way, listening to it, as I would had I read it. Which put me in the right frame of mind to be interested in the book below. 

     Before Scientific American even published Thomas Edison's letter announcing his plans to to mechanically reproduce speech, the press was predicting the end of reading.
     "Why should we learn to read when, if some skillful elocutionist merely repeats one of 'George Elliot's' novels aloud in the presence of a phonograph, we can subsequently listen to it without taking the slightest trouble?" the New York Times mused on Nov. 7, 1877 after hearing of the device.
     A century later, "Cannonball Run" star Burt Reynolds recorded "Moby-Dick."
     In between, much debate over whether popular fiction should be made available to those with impaired vision or was that "pornography for the blind?"
     We are in the golden age of audio books, the fastest-growing sector of publishing. About 125 new audio books are released each day.

       One of those new titles, "The Untold Story of the Talking Book" by Matthew Rubery (Harvard University Press: $29.95), was also published in printed form, luckily, because that's how I noticed the book's cool dove gray cover and grabbed it.
     This is one of those books that keeps flinging marvelous facts: "in the fourth century, St. Augustine memorably recalled his astonishment upon finding his teacher St. Ambrose reading silently to himself." As it does, the book raises intriguing questions:
     "What exactly is the relationship between spoken and printed texts?" Rubery asks. "How does the experience of listening to books compare to that of reading them? What influence does a book's narrator have over its reception?"For the first 50 years of recorded sound....

     To continue reading, click here.

Rachel Maddow fires at Trump, blows off her toe

Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S. Alaska Hawaii (detail) by Nam June Paik

      Like a lot of people, I noticed Rachel Maddow's tweet Tuesday evening, the one where she ballyhooed having Donald Trump's tax returns. Something smelled wrong about it, but it didn't cost anything to turn the television on at 8 p.m. and see what was up. 

       I have to admit, I've never tuned into her program before, though I've caught snippets, online, and she seems an intelligent person, good-hearted and thoughtful. 
     But generally, getting your news from television is like trying to breathe through a straw: a lot of effort for a little result.  Fox News is unwatchable agit-prop for right wing zealots, and CNN's reputation died when Malaysian Flight 370 disappeared in 2014, the network veering into some weird Twilight Zone of round-the-clock speculation, time-filling and tap-dancing. It was closer to performance art than reportage, with crazy speculation and holograms, a stain that can never be removed.  MSNBC, well, I really didn't have a preconceived notion about them. Somehow related to NBC. 
     So my expectations were not high. Maddow began by ... well, I can't say exactly what she was doing. "Setting the stage" someone tweeted, when I began urging her to get on with it already. Establishing that yes, people were in fact interested in Donald Trump's tax returns. And those returns could show all sorts of interesting things, like being indebted to some Russian gentleman who paid more for one of Trump's houses than it was worth. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. The same couple ideas, worn to a nubbin like a toddler's adored blankie. Then a commercial break. We were introduced to David Cay Johnston, who won the Pulitzer Prize -- not the gold standard of excellence she seems to imagine it to be -- who has a book on Trump out, and received the two-page photocopy in his mailbox. Twenty minutes into the show ... nothing.
     I went to the kitchen for a snack.
    Eventually, after much waving of the photocopied return, it was revealed that, in 2005, Donald Trump earned $158 million and paid $33 million in taxes, and it was so obvious, at least to me, that Maddow had been played— by Trump. You want taxes? I can see him sneer, here's taxes. The few pages that don't show the depth of his enslavement to the Russians, or his miserable cheapness at charity, or any of the dozen deficiencies that make Trump an unfit president and are the reason he wouldn't release them. He earned a lot of money in 2005 and payed a defendable share of tax. This wasn't a revelation, it was a blow job under the desk, the tax return version of that New York Post headline "Best Sex I Ever Had." You could tell it was a plant because the White House confirmed its authenticity, and the pro forma howl of outrage was just a wee bit muted. 
     I understand there is time to fill and eyeballs to attract. But the Donald Trump presidency is a true crisis, and goofy shit like this minimizes it. Maybe, in my ignorance, I gave Rachel Maddow a stature she didn't deserve -- a friend who watches MSNBC said the entire three hour block on MSNBC is always talking heads hyperventilating about every Trump nuance "like their hair was on fire." 
    Our nation is in danger. This is not the time for publicity gimmicks and cheap stunts to hook an audience. A hundred and fifty years ago, newspapers would print melodramatic fiction. You'd get to the end of the story and there would be a line, "And that is what it might have been like had all the animals escaped from the zoo Tuesday!" The modern world killed that, supposedly, and Maddow's tax return PR grab was a step back toward P.T. Barnum because what she claimed, while literally true, wasn't true in the way she pretended it to be. She didn't actually have what she pretended to have: something significant. It was like my claiming I have a new Ferrari when what I really have is a new Ferrari tire. 
     Whenever I write about Trump or anything related to Trump, my readership goes up 50 percent. So by that logic, I should write about Trump continually. I don't because a) some days a half dozen outlets say everything there is to say about that day's outrage and I don't see the need to pile on or echo; b) four years is a long time, and we need to take a break from just gazing in horror at the calamity; and c) other interesting and important stuff doesn't stop going on just because our country is on fire.
     If the sun were suddenly about to explode, but we had a month to live, we would not want to spend it reading "New Details on Sun Exploding" every single minute. We'd get it, and only want to hear truly significant stuff ("Here's the Date the Sun-Will Explode.") Nobody wants a list of stars that aren't blowing up in a month.
      That's why I avoid the "orange Chee-to" cheap jabs at Trump. I don't care that Melania is staying at Trump Tower, or that he golfs every weekend even though he promised he'd never take a vacation. That lie has to get in line behind all the others and it's a long line. What I care about is that he is a deeply un-American hate monger, in thrall to the Russians, who is working to undermine the country morally, economically, physically -- yanking away health insurance from 24 million people, many of whom are so out to sea they voted for the man. That every day he works to undermine the legitimacy of the media, the courts, the idea of truth itself. He's a liar, a bully and fraud. The rest is just window-dressing. 
     That's what's important. And Maddow yelling "Fire!" Monday night, well, it makes battling the blaze that much harder. It gives Trump the chance to say, "See, the media scum saw the taxes," when we didn't see anything at all. It casts an important voice into disrepute -- she could say she has Steve Bannon's head on a pike, details at 9 p.m. EST, and I'm not sure I'd tune in.  Rachel Maddow is still one of the good guys, but less an asset today than she was Monday. And the worst part: it was a self-inflicted wound. Someone dangled a few photocopies at her, she drew too fast and blew off a toe. 

"Pain is the great destroyer of language"

Gold Star Monument, "I gave my best to make a better world,' Nashville, Tennessee.

   
    This is one of those columns where writing it was the easy part. The daylong trick was cutting it from 1100 to 679 words. There was the poetry aspect and the head trauma aspect and the VA botching its job aspect, with the very quotable Dawn McGuire saying things such as "I feel like I'm married to Wittgenstein" of her time getting her masters of divinity at the Union Theological Seminary. It wasn't on point, but how often do you get to use a line like that? 
    I somehow managed. If you want more of McGuire, do get her new book, American Dream with Exit Wound, which I've read and recommend, or her previous one, Aphasia Cafe. You can hear her reading a heartbreaking and smart poem from it, "Aphasia Breaks the News," originally published, mirabile dictu, by the American Academy of Neurology Journal, by clicking here. 

Dr. Dawn McGuire

     Neurology, the official journal of the American Academy of Neurology, publishes papers on brain science with titles like "Vesicular acetylcholine transporter defect underlies devastating congenital myasthenia syndrome."
     It also, marvelous to relate, prints poetry. And yes, the poems are peer reviewed.
      In 2012 it published "Poems from the Aphasia Cafe," from a book by Dawn McGuire, a San Francisco neurologist and poet. McGuire's poems echo her work with shattered minds, particularly wounded veterans — "aphasia" is a term for loss of speech through brain injury. McGuire, who grew up in Appalachian Kentucky and studied at Princeton and Columbia, does not mince words when talking about the vets under her care.
     "They come back and are expected to reintegrate without any attention to the fact they are often very young men who have been asked to really split their psyches and do things that the culture and family they grew up in would find abhorrent," she said. "There's nothing like boot camp for reintegration, where they can see they've been split by these experiences, by what they've done, what's been done to them. There's no way for vets to re-enter the regular community."
     Boot camp for returning vets is a great idea. We put soldiers through intensive training before they serve, but they're left on their own when they come home and often need help most.

To continue reading, click here.

A pocketful of seeds

     Well, Northwestern's basketball team is in the NCAA championships for the first time in its 78-year history, leading to an interesting question.
    Do they stand a chance?

    "No," said a Wildcat sophomore of my acquaintance, showing that school spirit is hereditary, "they're just not that good."
    Though that was not the interesting question I have in mind. That's coming up.
    "Even if they win Thursday," he continued, "they go against the No. 1 seed, Gonzaga."
   Which leads to a more interesting question. What's Gonzaga? I had never heard of it in my life. It sounded like a type of cheese.
    Gonzaga University founded in 1887, a Jesuit school in Spokane Washington. Proof that: a) you can have a really good basketball team, the best in fact, and be obscure. and b) sports is good publicity, since, assuming I am not the only one who hadn't heard of the school, people are sure hearing of it now.
    But even that isn't the really interesting question, at least to me. Here it comes. 
    "How did 'seed' get to be a term for ranking in sports?" I wondered. Seeding is when, in a championship, the best teams or players are paired against the worst, early on, so that the top contenders don't knock each other out early in the tournament. 
     The boy had no idea regarding its etymology. I guessed it might be a corruption of "seat." 
     Back at the office, the mothership Oxford English Dictionary offered a full page plus of definitions. The word itself is a thousand years old, the first meaning given over to varieties of grain, bran and plants. The second definition seemed promising."The germ or latent beginning of some growth or development." That might fit with participants in a championship ranking. Then on to lobster roe and bubbles in glassmaking. 
      On a hunch, I turned to the Oxford Supplement. Latecomers that didn't quite work their way into the main show. To cease flowering, small crystals in liquid ... bingo! "Sport, esp. Lawn Tennis. [f. sense *II of the vb]. One of a number of seeded players in a tournament." 
    The first usage is from 1933, from The Aldin Book of Outdoor Games. "'But why put my beloved lawners last?' wails the Thibetan 'seed.'"
    The quote marks show it's a novel usage, at the time.
    The reference to a verbal form sent me back to the main dictionary to scour closer, in case I overlooked something in all those seeds. Yes, the II usage of the verb. "To stock with inhabitants" and a 1627 reference, garbled with age, "Here bigines at noe pe ledepe toper world to sede."
    Hmmm, that's not very satisfying. I looked online. Zip, except for this NPR segment from yesterday that said, in essence, "it's from tennis." Nice digging guys! 
     H.L. Mencken's three-volume The American Language had nothing except "seed" as a charming dialect past tense of "see." Fun, but not exactly on point. 
    Then I turned to Wentworth and Flexner's  Dictionary of American Slang, which did offer this definition of seed: "A young man with little ability or promise of future success."
   Ooo, tempting. A slow pitch, right down that pipe, to mix my sports metaphors. No! I'm not going to say it. We do not traffic in the obvious. But a good point to end. Go Cats!
     

All together now: "Thank you Congressman Shimkus!!!"

     Apologize? Why would anybody want Rep. John Shimkus to apologize for scoffing, during last week's debate over the GOP gutting of the Affordable Care Act, at the idea that men should be required to pay for prenatal care? The issue is, he said the next day, "simple."
     He's right. It is simple. We should all thank him and I will, right now: Thank you Congressman Shimkus.
     Because in this swirling political era where the chaos at the top of government sends out echoes of confusion, where today's baseless charge or policy enormity can barely be grasped before it is replaced by tomorrow's, Shimkus' question provides a simple moment of clarity, a line you can be either on this side of or that.
     Why should a man be made to buy insurance that includes prenatal care when a man obviously cannot have children? Why is it his business?
     You can see the thinking behind the question. It shows through like a tadpole's guts. Are we not free people, each caring for his own private affairs? Isn't suggesting otherwise just squishy liberal it-takes-a-village-collectivism?
     It's a trick question, because it involves women, whose rights are so automatically trampled by society that we hardly notice. Bearing and raising children is women's work. Thank you Rep. Shimkus, Republican of Illinois. If we flipped that question around, and asked what business it is of any man whether a woman gets pregnant or not, or ends her pregnancy or doesn't, Shimkus' party would have a very different answer. Of course it's his business. It's everybody's business except, perhaps, the woman herself, who can't be trusted to make that moral choice.

To continue reading, click here.

  

Spring forward

  

      It is perhaps the most useful mnemonic phrase: spring forward, fall behind. 
     At least it was, back in the day when we set our clocks. Now clocks -- on our computers, our cell phones -- pretty much set themselves.
     Still, helpful to bear in mind, as twice a year, once in the fall, and once today at 2 a.m., we try to wrap our heads around the complexities of Daylight Savings Time. 
     Expect a bigger hoopla next year. It was in March, 1918 when the House of Representatives voted 252 to 40 to pass a law "To Save Daylight and Provide Standard Time for the United States."
    Well, Standard Time had already been enacted, by the railroads, in 1883. Before then, each locality had its own concept of time and there was no particular need to synch them up. Noon was when the sun was directly overhead on Main Street. 
    It was only when the option of Daylight Savings Time—begun in Germany, a fact its opponents milked to maximum advantage—that Standard Time, set by the Union Pacific, suddenly became "God's time" set in the Book of Genesis and untouched ever since. 
     Columbus politicians might fan their soup with their hats, James Thurber once wrote, but they had enough good old-fashioned horse sense to know fiddling with the clocks was "directly contrary to the will of the Lord God Almighty and that the supporters of the project would burn in hell."
     There is such comfort today, when half the country seems lost in unreason, rejecting the science of climate change and vocally backing an unfit liar and fraud, to look back a century and realize that the American people have always had trouble with anything the least bit complicated.  Daylight Savings Time moves the clocks forward an hour in the spring so that when June 20 arrives, instead of the sun rising in Bangor, Maine at 3:49 a.m., as it would under Standard Time, the clock will read the relatively luxurious 4:49 a.m. instead. So the hour of daylight that most people would be sleeping through is shifted to evening.
    That would seem a bonus, but Americans (and Britons, and Canadians) fought it like a rend in the fabric of reality.
     "It prevents people from enjoying the air in the morning, when it is fresh and healthful, by compelling them to go in shop or office one hour before it is necessary one New Yorker wrote to Congress. "It upsets the schedule of all large manufacturing plants, as their working hours are arranged so as to take advantage of the summer daylight hours. It is the direct cause of overcrowding of transit lines during rush hours, as it causes everybody to go to work at the same time, where as under normal conditions different factories have different arrangement of working hours, thereby lessening the overcrowding of cars."
    Congress passed it, but some Americans simply refused to comply.
    "I'm fooled enough," a Charles Gale was quoted saying in the New York World, "without fooling myself on purpose."
    The move had been sold as a war expediency, and as soon as it was over, Congress sprang to end it. As usual, Southerners led the way backward.
    "God's time is true. Man-made time is false," said Rep. E.S. Candler of Mississippi. "Truth is always mighty and should prevail. God alone can create daylight."  
     "I am opposed to Congress undertaking to usurp not only the powers of the Executive and the States, but those of God almighty and seeking to fix the time when the sun shall rise and set," said Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi. 
    In July, 1919, Congress repealed Daylight Savings Time, twice, and President Wilson vetoed the bill, twice. But Congress overrode his veto.
    But as so happens when the federal government drops the ball, localities stepped in.
    "The Big Apple had taken a shine to Daylight Saving,"  writes Michael Downing, in his engaging book on America's struggle with the clock, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Savings Time, from which much of this account was cribbed.  "If this hadn't happened, residents of North America would have been permanently spared the annual stem-winding ritual and its attendant controversies." 
    Among the advantages of Daylight Savings, it gave the 9 a.m. open of the New York Stock Exchange an hour jump on London, allowing traders to take advantage of the London markets before they closed at 3 p.m. London time.  In 1920 New York City went back on Daylight Savings, and--pushed by stock and mercantile traders--Boston followed suit, pressing the Massachusetts legislature to draw in the whole state. As did Philadelphia and Cleveland, though Cleveland's law moved the clocks in the exchange and nowhere else.
    The split—with urban centers, plugged into the global grid, embracing daylight savings, while farmers, worried the cows would become confused, shunning it. Indiana, the Mississippi of the Midwest, was famously a crazy quilt of varying time zones.  It was not until 2006 that, after much debate, the entire state decided to tamper with time as God intended it. 
     
         

$20,000? No? How about cookies?

     When I wrote about Leonard's Bakery in Northbrook earlier this week, the most interesting part never made it into the piece. The owner was not particularly chatty, so I ran Leonard's through Nexis, thinking there must be press on it. There wasn't. Not a word, ever, by anybody, over the past 20 years. Which is a shame because the place really is a treasure. Maybe I'll spend the day there for its 30th anniversary in August. 
    Well, there was one thing. This, written by me four years ago. I like how I contrasted my real-life emails with the upper echelon moral squishiness of a Tribune panjandrum. 
    There is an interesting typo in this—what I call a "brain cramp." When I refer to "rugellah," which are sweet little pastries of cinnamon and raisins, I'm actually thinking of "mandel bread" which are, like I describe them, soft versions of biscotti.  

     Would you be interested and available to speak to the JCC Women's Auxiliary Luncheon on Wednesday, September 5th at Birchwood Country Club in Highland Park? The topic would be politics. Love to have you! Please let me know.
     A funny 2006 "Saturday Night Live" bit begins with Steve Martin on his cellphone. "I'll be home by morning," he says. "I'm just doing this, uh, corporate gig . . . I don't know, some corporation." Then his hosts enter the room. "We are so excited to have you here," says one. "This is a great day for Hamas!"
     "Hamas?" says Martin, in a small voice.
      Martin isn't so sure he's the right guy to perform at "Hamas — a Victory Celebration." But the money is so huge he can't say no. And his hosts try to reassure him. "You are a hero here for your comic genius, your ability to play tender moments, and your well-known hatred for the state of Israel!"
     Life imitated art this week when Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial board member Clarence Page found himself in hot water for accepting $20,000 and a trip to Paris to give a three-minute speech before a suspected Iranian terrorist group. He says he had no idea whom he was talking to until he got there.
     That seems curious to me, having just gone through my own delicate if infinitely more low-rent negotiations for a talk. Forget Paris. I wouldn't go to Highland Park without knowing what I was getting myself into.
     "Politics" is sort of a broad subject. Anything else you can tell me about the talk? How many people do you expect?
     I should mention that, on rare occasions, I've gotten what I considered a hefty amount of money; Elmhurst College once paid me a few thousand dollars to deliver a lecture.
     We usually get about 50-70 to attend. Although, you could be a big draw. We'll give you lunch if you like. The food is very good
     Though I prefer to get paid, I often end up speaking for nothing, or whatever token the group wants to give. The Rotary gave me a lovely date planner. Twice. I've been given potted plants, paperweights. A synagogue once offered a plate of ruggaleh — think biscotti, only softer and Jewish — which then became my gold standard of excellence.
     Hmmmmm . . . I try not to speak for free. Do any of your ladies bake? I'm a sucker for ruggaleh . . . if you can have someone bake a plate of ruggaleh, we have a deal.
     The key question is whether speaking fees constitute bribes. People doing unethical things try to ritualize them — in the old days, crooked pols ran insurance agencies and anyone wanting to corrupt them bought a hiked-up policy. A similar scam would be: speak to us, we pay you a huge fee, and nobody has to accept envelopes stuffed with cash.
     The issue isn't bias. You can argue that Page — who, I should add, I've never met and rarely read — is in the bias business. He isn't paid to be neutral, but to give his opinions. The question is transparency — the idea is those opinions are based on his honest analysis of the world, not a $20,000 check cut to him in secret. That's why the Tribune has its policy, although it seems odd — they aren't against their writers taking money, per se, they just want to sign off on the transaction.
     To me, bias is on the page. You can be Simon Pure, you can send back the promotional pens sent to you at Christmas, and still let your personal prejudices ruin your work. Or you can be a cauldron of rigid notions, but set aside your own feelings — I wrote Ronald Reagan's obit for the Sun-Times and I despised Reagan. But the piece was fair and respectful and nobody complained.
     Ingratitude is a writer's best friend. I like to think that if Elmhurst College started, oh, refusing to admit black students, I'd leap upon them with a snarl, and not pause, thinking, "Gee, but those are the nice folks who asked me to give an Andrew Prinz Guestship Lecture for Political Awareness." I'm hard on Northwestern, and it gave me a scholarship.
     Neil — We will pay you! We are not asking you to speak for free. I will get you a pound of ruggaleh from Leonard's Bakery in Northbrook. Would $300 do it?
     It seems odd to even have this controversy in the era of Citizens United, when corporate money is deluging the American political process. I have sympathy for Page. One moment you're living the high life in Paris. The next your boss has you kneeling on a rail. Par for the course, that journalists still get in trouble for the crumbs that come our way. Of course, $20,000 is a very big crumb. A lot of money, though still too cheap a price to sell your reputation. But isn't that always the most shocking aspect of scandals? The smallness of the stake. Postage stamps, crystal. My guess is that 20 grand will look less and less to Page as the years go by. Not to be on a high horse. I might have grabbed for it, too. People tend to take what they can get.
     $300 is good. I've written you guys down for Sept. 5. You can skip the ruggaleh if you like.

                                     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 6, 2012

As American as baseball, mom, apple pie and Jews

     It's the last Monday in February and 20 teenage boys are waiting in a gym in Deerfield. It could be any high school gym anywhere, except for the big silver mezuzah on the cinderblock doorway, an Israeli flag next to the American flag, and the banner reading "Rochelle Zell Jewish High School."
     Paul Chanan gathers the boys in a circle and begins the traditional start-of-practice pep talk.
     "Today represents the first day of what will be a real long journey to reach some very lofty goals," says Chanan, an options-trader-turned-teacher. "Coach Zouber and myself are incredibly proud to lead this team of great guys, of great competitors and of great community. This is going to be a joy for us, and we are honored to be your coaches. But we are going to ask a lot of you. ... We are going to ask that you give us everything that you have. ... We are going to absolutely 100 percent demand 100 percent from you, all the time. We are going to compete with great hustle. With maximum intensity. With aggressive style of play and with an unyielding passion for the game of baseball and for your team."
     "Yes coach!" the boys reply.
     Not realizing that Rochelle Zell is a new school — founded in 2001 — whose students range across the spectrum of faith, I went to practice expecting a scene out of Chaim Potok's The Chosen — earlocks and fringes flying as guys round the bases, outfielders punching their gloves and razzing the hitter in Yiddish.
     In Potok's novel, baseball is pushed by teachers because "it was an unquestioned mark of one's Americanism and to be counted a loyal American had become increasingly important."
     Rochelle Zell's team was started four years ago — not by teachers, but by a pair of freshmen, Jon Silvers and his best friend, Adam Gilman, both now 17 and co-captains.

     To continue reading, click here. 

We're still here? Great, let's eat.

Marc Becker

      Purim begins March 11 at sundown. A joyous holiday, in case you aren't familiar, a rare break from fasting and mourning and general fretting about life. Purim celebrates the Jews' escape from doom — in Persia, officially, at the hands of the evil Haman, adviser to King Ahasuerus, but also a general thumb-to-nose-and-wiggle-fingers "We're here and you're not" at adversaries from Pharaoh to Hitler to, well, Donald Trump.  We've victims, sure, often, periodically, but also survivors. The faith is a direct living link from now to ancient Babylon, which is incredible, or would be, if anyone besides ourselves valued that kind of thing.
     Purim is, alas, extra timely this year, as we have a president constantly giving winks and dog whistles to the anti-Semitic, white nationalist fringe of the Republican Party. Emboldened, the haters are crawling out of their basements and troll holes to kick over headstones in Jewish cemeteries and phone bomb threats into Jewish day care centers, and other acts of alt-right bravery. How far will it go? As far as they can without consequences. Bullies, remember, are also cowards.
     You don't have to squint too hard to see Trump as a modern day Ahasuerus, with his own twin Hamans in the form of Stephens Bannon and Miller. Among the most pitiful remarks I heard from Jews mulling over this turn of events was the hope that Trump's daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism, will "be our Esther" -- the hero of the Purim story, Ahasuerus' wife, who intercedes on behalf of the Jews and saves them.  
     Is that your escape plan? Purim? Purim is just a story. It never really happened. If  the fate of American Jews is in the hands of Ivanka Trump we are truly screwed.

     But we've strayed from the point of this: hamantaschen, the delightful tri-cornered pastries that Jews eat on Purim because, well, we can. They come in cookie-based and yeasty cake-based forms, and when I brought some of the hard cookie-type from Mariano's last week, my wife dispatched me to Leonard's Bakery for the soft puffy cake version, which she prefers.
    A word about Leonard's. I have to be sent to Leonard's. I never go to Leonard's on my own volition, because if I allowed myself to entertain the thought, "I think I'll go to Leonard's today" then I would go every day and weigh 400 pounds. So I can only go a) when requested by someone else or b) to pick up a bobkha cake to wow a dinner guest or host.
      Rolls. Breads. Cookies. Cakes. Goodies from Leonard's illustrated my wildly popular "Steinberg bakery" post. It's heaven. 
     While there, picking up yeast hamantaschens for my wife and, heck, a few cookie types for me, I chatted with Marc Becker, the owner.
     "Have you tried the chocolate?" he said. I admitted I had not, being a traditional type, and limited myself to apricot, poppy seed and raspberry. He handing me a warm cookie-type chocolate hamantaschen and I bit into it on the spot. Rapture.
         I expressed admiration, as I do, for the bakery's graphics, specifically for the bottom of the box, which has the word "Ouch!" and their trademark baker, not beaming as on the top of the box, but his mouth an "O" of distress. It's a small touch recommended, Marc said, by his friend Michael Krasny.  Leonard's celebrates its 30th anniversary this August, and while the excellent quality is what brings you there, I have to admit I like the extra little touches, like the message on the bottom of the box. 
     Opening tucked in a remote corner of a strip mall on Dundee Road, just east of Pfingston, seemed an iffy proposition back then. Marc wondered, "Who's going to come to see me in this corner?"
    Obviously people who want really, really good rugellah. And cookies. And coffee cake. And hamantaschen. People complain that the suburbs lack authenticity, and for the most part they're right. But Leonard's is the real Megillah, as my people say.

Northbrook murder close to home but not close to heart

Murder scene

     I live in a village. As villages often do, Northbrook has its own set of quaint local traditions, like the annual pancake breakfast at the Village Presbyterian Church. When the boys were younger we'd never miss one — they have raffles, puppet shows and the Boy Scouts put on a display of knots, a tent and a canoe. One year we used a device to twirl strands of hemp into rope, an important scouting skill, apparently.
     So my wife and I go Saturday, to the 61st installment of what has been deemed a "pancake festival," I assume, because now you can have seconds. We do not particularly want pancakes, but do like to support the community — the breakfast benefits Northbrook's various holiday celebrations through the year.
     We're there, gobbling flapjacks. Sandy Frum, the village president, is pouring coffee. She moseys over, sits down and we chat. She has just been to New Zealand. I steer her toward a more local topic: that new building being constructed on Shermer; what is going to go in it? Another paint store? We've already got two. No, she says, another real estate office.
     I consider asking her about the murder. On Dec. 7 a lawyer, Jigar K. Patel, was strangled in his office, not a block from my house. The police assured the public there is nothing to fear but didn't arrest anybody. Which seemed ominous. If they know who did it, why not arrest the guy? If they don't know, how can they be certain we're safe? Maybe a maniac is stalking Northbrook.
     She would know what the true story is on that.

To continue reading, click here.

The generosity of the Target Corporation

     Don't get me wrong. I like Target. The stores are clean. They're big and bright. The red bull's eye design element really holds the place together. They have stuff I want. On weekends, when my wife goes to do an errand, to pick up enormous blocks of paper towels and slabs of toilet paper, weighty jugs of cat litter, I tend to go along, to lug the litter and look around. 
     There's always something interesting, a heretofore unimagined product, like a cleaner to clean the inside of your washing machine, which I always imagined was clean enough already. I wrote about that previously.
    Or this display, noticed last weekend. Before I say a word about it, I want you to take a look. I'm curious as to whether what popped out at me, immediately, also pops out at you. See the picture to the right? The little display next to the paper towels, pushing gift cards? Look at it closely.
     Anything leap out at you? Anything odd?   
    Yes, it could be that the "holiday" display is still up in March—I suppose the holiday could be Easter, but do you give Target gift cards at Easter? It's possible, though I just suspect somebody's falling down on the job at this particular Target. Anyway, that wasn't what I noticed.
    Anything else?
     How about "free sleeve with all holiday gift cards."    
     Free sleeve? These cards are a great money-maker for these stores, since you pay them for a plastic card that costs almost nothing, they have your money for a period of days and weeks until the recipient redeems the value of the card, which sometimes never happens because the cards are lost or forgotten. Sweet. Consumers spent $150 billion on gift cards in 2015 and $1 billion worth were never used. 
     So it is natural that Target would want to give you something in return, like this ultra-chic paper sleeve to put your gift card in. 
     A tremendously chintzy drop of generosity for a story to be ballyhooing, am I correct? That's like a hotel crowing that they give you clean sheets. 
    Is there a word for a gift so paltry it's worse than nothing at all? I can't think of it. Our language of gift-giving is surprisingly sparse. We have to borrow a Cajun term for "lagniappe,"  one of my favorite words, meaning a small present meant to seal the deal, that free cookie the baker gives you as you browse. The "free sleeve" is an anti-lagniappe, a present so expected—"We put a fresh paper examination table strip with every check-up"–that it makes you question the entire transaction. 
    "Free sleeve..." Is there a chance they were joking? A bit of whimsy cooked up by some harried copywriter, deep within the Target organization? Nah...

      

George Orwell's "1984" a best-seller, Snapchat worth billions—any relation? Discuss.

Workshop of Ralph H. Bauer, inventor of the first video game (Smithsonian Institution)

     Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, went public Thursday. By day’s end, its share price jumped 44 percent, making the company worth $34 billion, about equal to General Mills, makers of Cheerios.
     The offering interested me because I use Snapchat, by necessity. Since it is, I suspect, unfamiliar to many readers, I ought to explain it.
     Snapchat is a photo sharing and messaging app. Like life itself, Snapchat is fleeting. The recipient has a set number of seconds — say 10 — to look at the photo being sent. Then it vanishes, irretrievably.
     This has obvious utility if you are, say, sending naked pictures of yourself. Which let me rush to mention is not why I use it. Snapchat also allows messages to be written across the photo sent, and add a variety of comic trappings. If you want to send a photo of yourself as a dog, with floppy ears, snout and lolling tongue, Snapchat will do that.
To continue reading, click here.

Liberals can wear jackboots too

 

Middlebury College

   Middlebury College is a lovely place, nestled in the mountains of Vermont. I visited with my older son in 2013 when we were looking at colleges. They were fiercely proud of their liberal arts heritage, and referred to Robert Frost so often I thought he went to school there. He didn't, but lived nearby.

     The place has less to be proud of after last Thursday, when a student mob disrupted an attempt by Middlebury political science professor Allison Stanger to host Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, a highly controversial 1994 book that attempted to show a scientific link between race and intelligence. His attempts to speak were shouted down, and after he was removed to a remote location to conduct his talk via TV link, he and Stanger were attacked, sending the professor to the hospital.
     Here's the Washington Post coverage of the incident.
     I agree with those who find The Bell Curve disingenuous hogwash. Still. Violence is violence. It is unacceptable whether being used to terrorize a religious minority or bully a political scientist whose works you find hateful. There is no justification for it. If you believe in your ideas, if you believe they are true, you should also have confidence they will prevail against somebody whose ideas you find reprehensible. Not because you shouted him down and kept him from ever expressing those ideas. That isn't a free society.  

      College students should know this. But college is also an age of tremendous narcissism, personal drama and lack of perspective.  I was not taken with Middlebury, which has its own private ski slope. "It's a four-year summer camp for rich kids," I quipped. Perhaps their sense of privilege is such that the very idea of other opinions is intolerable. They need to work on that. 

     Totalitarianism is on the march in America. If tomorrow Donald Trump formed the Red Hats, squads of thugs who swagger around, roughing up illegal immigrants and Muslim refugees and liberals, they can now point to Middlebury College as justification. And who could say they don't have a point? Well, I could. It's the worst kind of hypocrisy, to use your erstwhile foes as your moral compass the moment they commit a transgression you would like to try yourself. The way Americans trembling at the thought of sharia law will suddenly point to Saudi Arabia's draconian practices and wish we could do the same. It's rank hypocrisy but then, there's a lot of that going around too. 

    Toleration is meaningless if you only extend it to those whom you agree with. Charles Murray's work might be of dubious scientific value, but it is an argument nevertheless, and those bullying him at Middlebury College did not him, but themselves, a grave disservice, elevating his reputation while undercutting their own. 

Books on the nightstand: "The Unwinding"

     "Books on the night stand" is a heading for a page at the side of this blog where I sometimes write about books I'm reading.
      But times change. And I had to pause whether I could include the book I've been -- well, not "reading," certainly.  And "enjoying" doesn't fit either, it's too sobering. I suppose "listening to," since it's a book on tape, well, except it's on CD ....
    The hell with it. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer is a haunting, timely epic look at how America got where it is today. To add an extra twist, I was about to drive down to Wayne County in January to talk to the residents there about their overwhelming support for Donald Trump in advance of his inauguration. 
       Packer is a staff writer at the New Yorker, and The Unwinding his 2013 panoramic portrait of what went wrong in the United States over the past 40 years, an crumbling of social, economic, governmental, moral and intellectual bedrock that has left us unmoored and stumbling toward whatever fate -- or doom -- awaits us.  The growing partisanship, cynicism and dysfunction of politicians, their increasing domination by big money interests, the missed opportunity of the banking and real estate collapse of 2009, when the government bailed out the banks and the mortgage lenders but failed to put in controls that might prevent the next crisis. Obama comes off as colluding with the very people he should have sent to jail.
    The book is a bravura act of reportage—a factual version of John Dos Passos' 1930s classic trilogy U.S.A —with a big cast of characters: Tammy Thomas, an African American factory worker in Youngstown, Ohio who becomes a social activist. Dean Price, a North Carolina truck stop owner who gets into bio-diesel. Jeff Connaughton, an ambitious aide to Joe Biden — the future vice president is portrayed as a shallow ambitious phony, one of many famous people salted throughout who, like Napoleon in War and Peace, add glitter and spice up the narrative. Names like Jay-Z and Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell and Alice Waters pop up. I savored the damning portrait of Newt Gingrich, whose bare-fisted tactics hurried American decline, as well as that of new gilded age tycoon Sam Walton. I'm not sure why Raymond Carver is there, but I welcomed him too. Some I was barely familiar with, like Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire now supporting Trump.
    This is the first non-fiction book I've listened to on an audiobook, and one with so many characters poses some challenges, at least at the beginning. But I've found it also makes me eager to get into the car. The trip to Wayne County gave me a richer sense of the people supporting Trump -- not idiots, certainly, but people with limited range of interests focused on a particular set of local issues.  In one of those echoes that would look trite in fiction, the audiobook I grabbed almost randomly off the library shelf to listen on the way down also expanded and echoed what I'd find when I go there. If we learn one thing from the Right, contempt is easy. Understanding is hard, and anyone trying to figure out how we got in this mess would do themselves well to read it..
    Since audio book readers often get overlooked, I have to give props to award-winning veteran reader Bob Fass, who delivers these tales of suffering with an appealing dry evenness.
    As I was listening to the book, I also found myself thinking about how hearing a book is different than reading it. So it was more perfect timing that I happened upon The Untold Story of the Talking Book, by Matthew Rubery, (Harvard University Press: 2016) drawn by its clean and appealing cover. I've just read the introduction, but am intrigued both by the tidbits of information he assembles—Saint Augustine was dumbfounded to find his teacher, Saint Ambrose, reading silently to himself—and the larger questions Rubery raises:

     What exactly is the relationship between spoken and printed texts? How  does the experience of listening to books compare to that of reading them? What influence does a book's narrator have over its reception? What methods of close listening are appropriate to such narratives? What new formal possibilities are opened up by sound technology? 

     We think of the shifting sands of technology as being something new. But even before the public had heard Edison's phonograph, the press was speculating it might mean the death of books, or their radical transformation, as who would read the words themselves when skilled elocutionists could do it for you?
     I wrote a little about the history of audiobooks three years ago, when Audible brought out my memoir Drunkard in audio form. But I haven't gotten into The Untold Story of the Talking Book far enough to give it more of a full treatment than this. You'll have to wait for a couple weeks. In the meantime, this book actually will be resting on my nightstand.

Why would anyone WANT Trump to visit Chicago?

 

     What's wrong with people?
     I'm reading all this speculation about Oprah Winfrey being maybe interested in running for president. Conversation seems to revolve around her views. Is she sincere? Is it a joke? And the logic seems to be, heck, experience doesn't count for anything, obviously, since Donald Trump was elected president. So why not Oprah? She's a big rich star too!
     Those people are missing the point, entirely. Yes, Trump won. But based on the chaos of his first six weeks of his administration, and the unqualified clown/zealots he's stuffing his cabinet with, his election isn't a template for more of the same. It's a grim cautionary tale, a reminder that while the popular mania might turn on expertise in general and politicians in particular, that electing a president based on lack of government experience is like choosing a surgeon based on scant medical knowledge. Oh, he can put on green scrubs and a paper mask and look the part. And maybe fool some people who judge by appearances. But stick him in front of an open chest cavity and he just stands there, gawping.
     Which is sorta what Trump is doing now.
     The only actual accomplishment Trump can point to is giving himself an "A." The rest is bluster. Which is not the bad part. The bad part is that some people believe him. They assume, he's so smug, so certain, so rich, he must be succeeding, since he says he is. Except he's not. We just aren't used to somebody lying so consistently, so thoroughly. It throws us.
     Yes, there are similarities. Like Trump, Oprah is a giant airship of inflamed ego. The materialism run amok? The close-your-eyes-follow-me-and-your-dreams-will-come-true magical thinking?

To continue reading, click here.

God's substitute for happiness

 Mariusz Kwiecien, as Eugene Onegin, and Ana Maria Martinez as Tatiana
 (Photo by Todd Rosenberg, Lyric Opera of Chicago)

     So I blew off my responsibilities Wednesday afternoon and caught the matinee of "Eugene Onegin" at the Lyric, because seeing "Carmen" for the second time this season Tuesday night obviously didn't satisfying my opera jones for the week. 
    Well, actually, I was told that if I missed it, I would be sorry, and that was correct. Beautiful, strong voices, enigmatic sets. True, I'm more a Bizet man than a Tchaikovsky man—give me the big rolling punches of "Carmen" more than the dolorous loveliness of "Eugene Onegin." But it worked.
   Yes, "Eugene Onegin" is not heavy on plot. He's a scoundrel. One sister is in love with him, writes a letter and is rebuffed, he woos the other sister at a dance, cheezing off her suitor, his best friend. There's a duel -- which means, with all the dueling in "Hamilton," if I can find one more dueling production this season, that would constitute a trend.
    Trying to justify going, I told myself I wasn't just playing hooky, but working, building my base of knowledge regarding opera, always useful when covering Chicago's pressing urban problems. And I was pleased to recognize not one but two performers from previous work: Ana Maria Martinez, who was in "Don Giovani" (sort of carving out a singing-against-the-bad-boy niche for herself) and Iowa's pride, Katharine Goeldner, whom you might remember as stepping into the lead role the last time the Lyric did "Carmen," in 2010/2011 (or, more likely, not. But I sure remember it).
    At intermission the group behind me started debating what language the singers of "Eugene Onegin" might be using. I let them go on but, when resolution didn't seem at hand, Finally, I broke my rule against butting into other people's conversations. 
    "It's Russian," I said, half turning in my seat.
     "It doesn't sound like Russian," a man objected.
     "I studied Russian in college," I said, evenly. "They're speaking Russian words. 'Ya lubloo ti da,' 'Yes, I love you.'" 
    They were still skeptical—this person claiming knowledge on the subject they obviously lacked any experience in whatsoever didn't count. Then one located some corroboration in the the program. "It says 'Russian,'' one lady read, and they were satisfied. 
    Well, you don't go to the opera to socialize with other patrons. It never works out well. Although, heading up the aisle at the same intermission, an 85-year-old woman grabbed my arm and suddenly I was escorting her on my arm. She was apologetic, and I said No, this is exactly how my mother gets around. 
    "Though you really should use a cane," I said, delivering the same lecture I give to my mom at every opportunity. She said she has a man who lives with her and helps her, but he also had to tend to her husband, and couldn't make the four-hour investment going to the opera entailed. I was about to quote Blanche DuBois on the kindness of strangers, but we were in the lobby and she broke free and was gone.
     Not a lot of intellectual challenge going on with "Eugene Onegin." Although. Early on, when two rustically-dressed women are peeling potatoes against a vast orange background with five tall thin birch trees cutting up the stage, one snatch of song was translated as, "Routine brings comfort from distress. God's substitute for happiness."
    Well, that's something to chew on. Damning, yes. I guess to be happy you have to seduce your pal's beloved then kill him in a duel.  Frankly, I'd rather make coffee and walk the dog every single day. Without giving away the ending, I have to say I was one of the few patrons, if not the only patron in the history of music, to laugh out loud, big grin on my face, as poor Eugene was left, miserable and alone in the center of the empty stage, decrying his woe. I had that reaction because I was suddenly thinking of a particular die-hard bachelor friend and wishing he were sitting next to me so I could elbow him in the ribs and say, "Something to look forward to, eh?" And I have to say, as the lights came up, and I jumped to make the 5:25, I was pretty darn happy, even though I was catching the same train I always do.

The Riverwalk: Promenade, jogging path, ramp to a penal colony on Mars

     Oddly, the two things I most meant to say when I set out to write this — how Rahm Emanuel, when he first took office, said he wanted to revitalize the river front, and how the river forms an artificial coast, giving a sweeping vista of skyline — didn't make it through cutting this for size. 

     Sure, Rich Daley wrecked the finances of the city and left behind a ruined economic shell. But Millennium Park, man that's something. And the Bean! I just love the Bean.
     And yes, our current mayor, Rahm Emanuel, doesn't have a clue what to do about the violence convulsing our city. But he did build the Riverwalk, and it's nice.
     Last month, the Riverwalk opened its latest stretch from the Franklin Bridge to Lake Street and that, coupled with the February warm weather seemed to demand an in-depth journalistic investigation.
    One afternoon last week, I crossed the river on the Orleans Bridge, turned right, strode down the concrete ramp, took a hard left, walking to the base of the Lake Street Bridge. I paused, fired up a Rocky Patel, and started to stroll, err, probe.
   I would like to report that the new ramp is a cleverly designed modernistic fantasy of concrete and metalwork. But it's not. It looks like the entrance chute to a penal colony on Mars, a spew of naked concrete and chain link fence. That's the bad news; the good news is, it may not done yet, at least according to the an architect's rendition I noticed in city materials. I phoned the mayor's press office, several times, over a period of days, and emailed, trying to get clarification. They're working on it.

    To continue reading, click here.

       I paused to listen to musician Sean Black on the Riverwalk. This is his song, "The One." 

On the nightstand: "The Remains of the Day"

    The state of the country being what it is, it seems increasingly essential to have a good book nearby to lose myself in as need be, or at least to look forward to losing myself in, a respite from the daily stirring of the pot that our president finds useful to keep the public distracted from what he has already done.
     A good friend recommended Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, The Remains of the Day, and I hurried to the library to pick it up.
     The story is a week in the life of Stevens, the aging veteran butler at Darlington Hall, as he drives to Cornwall to meet the manor's long-ago housekeeper, Miss Kenton, now married, though perhaps not happily. It's after World War II, and much has changed—his longtime employer, Lord Darlington, died three years earlier, and was recently replaced by an upstart American businessman, Mr. Farraday. He motors along in his boss's elegant Ford, musing on the past, various revered butlers he has known, his father's decline. 
     The central joy of the book is the tone, the voice, Mr. Stevens always restrained observations on the nature of "dignity," his failed attempts to engage in banter with his new boss.
   Passing a signpost for Murssden, the home of Giffen and Company, makers of "dark candles of polish," a technical innovation "which came to push the polishing of silver to the position of central importance it still by and large maintains today," Stevens sets off on several pages on the importance of well-buffed silver, the highlight being:
    "I recall also watching Mr George Bernard Shaw, the renowned playwright, at dinner one evening, examining closely the dessert spoon before him, holding it up to the light and comparing its surface to that of a nearby platter, quite oblivious to the company around him."
     Either you get that or you don't. The book is one slow reveal, and the less said, the better. The ending also offers up a steaming dollop of philosophy that I know I'll value as the darkness gathers. Or try to anyway.  
    Though the peril of escaping from the daily headlines in a book is that the news follows you there. I don't think I'm revealing too much to say as The Remains of the Day clicks along like a hall clock, Lord Darlington's politics don't hold up well. In the mid-1930s, Lord Darlington comes under the sway of British fascists, leading to this:

     "I've been doing a great deal of thinking, Stevens. A great deal of thinking. And I've reached my conclusion. We cannot have Jews on the staff here at Darlington Hall."
     "Sir?"
     "It's for the good of this house, Stevens. In the interests of the guests we have staying here. I've looked into this carefully, Stevens, and I'm letting you know my conclusion.
     "Very well, sir."
     "Tell me, Stevens, we have a few on the staff at the moment, don't we? Jews, I mean."
     "I believe two of the present staff members would fall into that category, sir."
     "Ah."
     His lordship paused for a moment, staring out of this window.
     "Of course, you'l have to let them go."
     "I beg your pardon, sir?"
     "It's regrettable, Stevens, but we have no choice. There's the safety and well-being of my guests to consider. Let me assure you, I've looked into this matter and thought it through thoroughly. It's in all our best interests."

     That word—"safety"—just glowed on the page. Sound familiar? Though now we'd say "security" and the parties that our best interests demand be kept at a distance are now Muslims. But the logic, or rather, the illogic, is exactly the same.