Exhibit holds magnifying mirror to our wrinkled, decaying 'Flesh'

Ivan Albright. Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida, 1929–30.
Gift of Ivan Albright. © The Art Institute of Chicago.

     Can you be the fan of an artist because of the title he gave to one of his paintings?
     Ivan Albright is Chicago's most famous painter. Born in North Harvey, he studied at the School of the Art Institute. The Art Institute of Chicago holds more of his paintings than any other museum, though typically just three canvases are on display at any time.
     One, his portrait of an aging woman sorrowfully contemplating her ravaged face in a mirror, "Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida." Furrows of cellulite under harsh white light, the polar opposite of every romantic portrait ever painted. Albright is staking out his turf: decay and age, not in soft Rembrandt glow, but as nightmare, a realm that 70 years ago he had to himself*—predicting all the graphic shock art that came later.
     He is certainly contemporary in how he leapt to other media. The second painting often on display is his most famous, "The Picture of Dorian Gray," a life-sized portrait of Oscar Wilde's debauchee, commissioned by MGM and featured in lurid Technicolor in the otherwise black-and-white 1945 film. 

     And third, the painting that makes Albright special in my eyes. An enormous still-life of door, weathered and warped into its frame, a painting he titled, "That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do. (The Door.)" Why? Maybe the sentence echoes in my regret-based interior ecology; it sent me by the Art Institute to see the new Albright show, which opened earlier this month: "Flesh: Ivan Albright at the Art Institute of Chicago."
     The door isn't actually in the exhibit—it's a few galleries over. Maybe it doesn't fit into the "Flesh" theme.  

Ivan Albright. Head of My Father, 1935/36.
 Mary and Earle Ludgin Collection.
© The Art Institute of Chicago.

     It's a modest show, one room, but well-worth a visit. I knew a bit about Albright—that he's the father-in-law of former secretary of State Madeleine Albright, for instance. But I did not realize that his father Adam Albright was a painter of sugary, idealized children. His son's entire career, all the burst veins and dead fish flesh, could be considered an elaborate revenge upon the old man.

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* Originally I prefaced this with the observation that I am not an art historian, but that got cut whittling this to size. What I should have done is gone with that flash of self-awareness and not ventured about Albright being in the forefront in this regard, because he wasn't, according to reader Tom Hohman, who writes:, 

     Albright certainly did not have this "realm...to himself". See Otto Dix, Max Beckmann and Weimar artists banned by Hitler. They were on the vanguard of the German New Objectivity Movement. Dix particularly explored the same subject as Albright but decades earlier.

     I regret the error, and leave this in, as opposed to just removing it, as a cautionary tale about letting your idle conjecture stray beyond the borders of your actual knowledge. 

The NFL cracks the whip

Sgt. Alex Rogers with Battle Flag, 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteers (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  

    I'm torn. 
     On one hand, the National Football League is a business, like any other. Olive Garden would not let your server plug syndicalist revolution along with the surf and turf. Ford wouldn't let a designer push though the Agrarian Reform F-150 Pick-Up.
    So why should the NFL allow its highly paid employees to use the global stage it has put them on to register a private protest, even one concerning as important an issue as police brutality? The NFL is in a business relationship with the Department of Defense. It gets money for those patriotic displays, soldier re-unions and such, or at least did. Why bite mindless patriotism, the hand that feeds it? 
    Pro football isn't the government. Free speech ends at the stadium gate.
    That wasn't my immediate thought on hearing Wednesday's news, however.
    My immediate thought was "Fuck the NFL." Forcing players to stand for the national anthem. That or cower in the locker room. Or pay a hefty fine. After two seasons of certain players taking a knee to draw attention to police brutality, which was re-purposed by the Right, in their favorite Pretend My Foe Believes Something Stupid Gambit, into a protest against the flag. 
     Which we are all for. Or at least better be, now, or else.
    Some kind of fine, to be determined, for those who go to one knee.
    That's their solution. Stand or else.
    Don't they realize? Coerced respect means nothing. Every tinpot dictatorship forces its enslaved populations to stand rigid during whatever wheezing ditty passes as their national anthem. Doesn't make them a great country.
     The United States, which actually is a great country, or was, before it was delivered into the hands of treasonous morons by some near-majority of voters either terrified of the future or fixated on some point in the past, or both, does not need to force tribute. 
     Now I'm not so sure. I still stand for the pledge. But if someone else wants to respond by raising a middle finger of one hand and grabbing their crotch with the other, well, I know where you're coming from, brother. Those thundering loudest for respect are always the ones who least deserve it. 
     No 2nd grader is forced to say the pledge of allegiance, because school administrators know that students are a diverse group. Some students are Jehovah’s Witnesses and don't believe in saluting anyone but God. Some students are familiar enough with the checkered history of this country to not feel obligated. 
    But schools are part of government, a key distinction. It's a free country, or was. And to honor that freedom, the National Football League—some private, cash-stuffed business—is not compelling its employees to earn their pay, in part, by expressing a respect that maybe they feel, maybe they don't.
    How to tell? 
     The expressions on their faces might be a give away. Their postures. There are ways to register dissent short of falling to a knee. Will those be fined next? A sneer? A shake of the head? How much for a bored expression?
     This policy, like most misguided censures, will only highlight what it means to efface. 
     I'm not going to join those predicting doom for pro-football. I don't watch the games, I'm not their target audience. But between the concussion scandal, the Right pushed away by the protest, and the Left pushed away by this snap of the overseer's whip on the backs of protesting players, you wonder.

Summa - - - laude: Fill in the blank, which is more than a cake computer can do

Photo courtesy of Cara Koscinski

     Now cum is an interesting word. Latin, of course, a preposition meaning "with." It begins the aphorism cum grano salis—"with a grain of salt"—a note of skepticism going back to ancient Rome, when soldiers' pay was connected to the common mineral ("salary" derives from the Latin salarium, the money soldiers were paid to buy salt).
     We see it particularly this time of year, on diplomas flashed at graduations. There is cum laude, "with praise," magna cum laude, "with great praise" and the utmost, summa cum laude, or "with greatest praise."
     You and I know this because we're human beings in a literate society. We pick things up.
     But the cake-decoration system at the Publix supermarket in Charleston, South Carolina is not human, and does not know this. It's a computer, programmed to weed out surprisingly frequent attempts to render profanity into icing. (Sigh. There is a non-Latin, sexual meaning to the Latin term which, if you don't know, I'm not going to explain. Ask around).
     Charleston mom Cara Koscinski ordered a cake from her local Publix supermarket to honor her son Jacob, graduating from a Christian home schooling program.
     Ordering online, she designated it was a graduation cake, which automatically conjured up mortarboard and scroll ornaments. Then she plugged in "Congrats Jacob! Summa Cum Laude Class of 2018."
     Up popped a red warning: "Profane/special characters not allowed."
     As is common with automatic systems, there was an out, a place for "Special Instructions," where Koscinski explained that, as opposed to its center syllable standing alone, "summa cum laude" is not in fact profane.

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Career clarity, thanks to Laurie Dann

Shield with the Face of Medusa, by Arnold Bocklin

    I'm usually pretty good about anniversaries. The Loop Flood. The Picasso sculpture. I've got them down cold. 
    And I did know that the 30th anniversary of the Laurie Dann rampage was coming up this past Sunday, May 20. I was reminded 10 days ago, when Eric Zorn wrote a compelling column about one of the students who survived.
    That took the wind out of my sails. It had been done, the subject tackled. Point to Zorn. I forgot about it, until I looked down at my Sun-Times folded on the sidewalk and saw Dann's set, schizophrenic face gazing up at me.
    I should have written something. I should have tried. I was there.
    Well, not there meaning inside Hubbard Woods School. Zorn had that. And a guest column in our paper Sunday by Phil Andrew, shot by Dann in his home that day. Another reason for me to keep my lip zipped. Their voices have been heard.
     What would I add? The lessons I learned that day have little to do with Dann in particular or shootings in general, and more to do with me. I try not to make everything about myself.
    But you know, every goddamn day, and it's Monday night and, well, why not? If you're Laurie-Danned out, and I wouldn't blame you, please stop by tomorrow. I'll have ... something.
    That day in memory was significant. Not for any horror. The overall tone was running around, chasing the story as it unfolded. It was important, because it taught me I didn't want to be a reporter. Not in the chasing-after-hard-news sense.
    Four moments stand out.
    The first, the afternoon of the shooting. Dann not only shot up a second grade classroom, killing 8-year-old Nicholas Corwin, but had left poisoned treats for a frat at Northwestern. I arrived, to some kind of barbecue. One beefy frat guy, tending a grill, had eaten some of the poisoned Rice Krispies treats, but wasn't bothering going to the hospital. At least that's what he told me. Five years out of Northwestern myself, there was something unsettling and awful in sidling up to this joker with a can of beer in his fist, har-harring the whole thing away while he turned the grilling brats.
     Second, late. The evening of the shooting. Dark out. Finding the teacher, Amy Moses, who saved the kids, by refusing to herd them together. Everybody wanted to find her. I did, not through any big sleuthing skills, I imagine. Someone at the desk probably gave me her address. So I'm at her apartment building, and I ring the buzzer with her name on it, and she answers,  and I explain what I was there for. She says, "You know, I had a really bad day," or words to that effect. She didn't want to talk to me. Oh right, I thought, and said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I can't blame you there" and went away.
     Not exactly Jimmy Olsen. But I wasn't going to badger this poor woman. My job was to find her, not wring some words out of her.
     And third, the next day. Every journalist in the world was at the school—some kind of meeting with the parents. French television was there. One TV reporter stuck a microphone in the face of an 8-year-old, bending over, the child looking up. She asked something like, "And how do you feel when your classmate is killed like that?"
    It was revolting. I fled, striding away, to the back of the school, where no one was, and saw bikes on a bike rack—all unlocked. And I thought, "That's why we're here, because this is a place where kids don't lock their bikes." A moment that impressed upon me the value of sometimes walking away from where things are supposedly "happening."
     The final moment in the Laurie Dann quartet of memories came a year or two later. Winnetka was debating whether to name a park "Nicholas Corwin Park" after the boy who had been killed. The meeting was a stomach-turning essay in the pettiness of people. One woman actually said something like, "My kid died of cancer, where's his park." Several said that naming the park after the boy would mean they'd be constantly reminded of the tragedy.
    That got me up to the podium. Reporters are really not supposed to speak at meetings they're covering. It's not done, but I did it. I walked up to the podium and said, in essence, "I'm a member of the media. And let me tell you, you are going to be reminded of this whether you like it or not. On the first anniversary and the fifth and the 10th and any time something similar happens somewhere else. You might as well name the park after the kid and take some control over the being reminded process." 

Despite the objections of some,
Winnetka named the park for the murdered boy

    Then I sat back down, immediately worrying about my job. Because all I had to do was have my little rant end up on the evening news and I'd be out of a job. I hope that now, after 30 years, the statute of limitations has run out on that kind of thing. We'll find out.
    So that's what I have. Realizing that I didn't want to chase the news, I wanted to comment on it. I'll hurry past the other, obvious stuff, which everybody has been saying aplenty. That now, 30 years later, school shootings are routine. That the toll--an 8-year-old boy killed and six wounded—would hardly mention a notice nowadays. A shooting where only one child dies is practically a good thing, because we've had so many worse. In 2012, 20 small children were slaughtered in Newtown, Connecticut. We were shocked, but not so shocked as to actually do anything about the problem. Now we're beginning to feel silly saying we're shocked. We've come to expect it.

Illinois condemns motorcyclists to death by leaving helmets off safety tip sheet

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

     What is it with rich guys and motorcycles? Sam Zell was always blasting around Majorca, Spain, on his Ducati. Maybe he liked it. Maybe it made him feel alive. Maybe he imaged the romance of the bike made him seem less vile.
     Bruce Rauner is the same — his motorcycle, like that Carhartt jacket, no doubt intended to foster the impression that he's a rough-and-tumble man of the people, and not a flint-hearted, out-of-touch millionaire with nine homes who spent the past three years trying to grease the seized-up gears of the state with the fat squeezed from the lives of the poor and the disabled.
     While my general attitude toward Rauner is to ignore him and patiently await the hook that will yank him offstage and into history, my attention was caught by a photo Rauner tweeted Thursday, showing himself with one crisp-jeaned leg draped over a Harley, and a little public service announcement:
     "Did you know that May is Motorcycle Awareness Month? As an avid rider, Gov. Rauner wants to make sure all Illinoisans are staying safe on the road. Click here for more info and safety tips:"
     I assume that was written by an underling and doesn't mean Rauner is now referring to himself in the third person — entering his royal phase, perhaps.
     Intrigued, I clicked the link and was brought to the Illinois Department of Transportation's "safety tips for motorcyclists" page.
     What are those tips? Just four: Be Visible ("Wear high-vis clothing to make yourself obvious!"); Intersections (not a tip, per se, but a place to be cautious. "Make sure you are free from other car's blind spots.") Passing ("Do not change lanes quickly...") and Following Distance ("All motorists should allow a minimum 3 second 'space cushion').
     Sensible enough. But anything missing? Besides an editor, I mean. An important aspect of safety is glaringly left out:
     Helmets.

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Wrestling with identity politics

I'm in the middle, second row, dark shirt; Harry Cuthrell is behind me to the left, Bernard Neally two guys to the left of him; Bill Grayson is the third wrestler right of me, his head slightly tilted.

     My column on graduation weekend at Pomona got a lot of feedback last week, particularly after 

a colleague wrote a response: "White privilege is getting to write a column about the time you felt left out."
     The assumption behind that phrase—"the time you felt left out," as if there were only the one—stuck in my craw, but I didn't want to argue. I'd had my say, now she gets hers. That's how it works, and in the range of unfairness, this was something I could accept with grace. So I retweeted it, mentioning my experience of not lettering in 9th grade wrestling, a sly wink to telegraph, "We all have our woes." 
     My former editor, Andrew Herrmann, said he'd like to hear more about my season as a wrestler.
     Hmm... I don't usually take requests—I'm not a short order cook. But it seemed a story worth telling on a Sunday, perhaps one that can move the discussion along, about exclusion, and effort, and "white privilege." I don't want to re-open the debate. But it isn't as if the issue is going away either. 

     I grew to hate being a fat kid. You're no good at sports. People make jokes. It's unattractive. Uncomfortable. My right upper arm had stretch marks. I had to buy my clothes in the Husky Department. 
     So I tried to do something about it, starting at age 15.
     I joined the junior high school wrestling team.
     The idea was to force myself to exercise.
     And forced to exercise I was. We all were; we had to run "wind sprints." Run a certain distance—to the center of the gym, back, then to the far end, touch the wall, and run back. If everybody didn't do it in a certain amount of time, then we all had to do it over again. And again.
     Wind sprints were awful. You haven't suffered until you've made the entire squad do extra wind sprints because you're so out-of-shape you can't do one in the allotted time. Winded—I guess that's where they got their name—sucking air, humiliated and receiving the angry glares of your teammates.
     Still, I endured. I had made a commitment. I wanted to stick it out. Besides: I liked being on the team. I belonged. We had uniforms, these black spandex body suits. We had headgear. We wore special shoes. We struggled. Guys wrapped themselves in the mats, sweating, trying to make weight. It was dramatic: I remember Wayne Carroll slamming his locker, crying, after losing a match. This was important.
     One practice, drilling a maneuver designed to roll your opponent over, using your head as a lever, I was trying it out on Mr. Reese, the assistant coach, a mountain of a man, and something snapped in his back. He had to be taken away in an ambulance. I felt sorry for hurting him, sure, but there was also an unspoken coolness involved. I might be a fish, but I had sent Mr. Reese to the hospital. He was a huge guy. 
     What I hadn't thought of was that I'd have to wrestle in meets. Against other schools. But that was the general point.
     At 191 pounds, I was a heavyweight. There were three other heavyweights. Bernard Neally and Harry Cuthrell, football linemen keeping in shape in the off-season. And Bill Grayson, who, I seem to recall, lived in the youth home.
     We wrestled each other, every week, to see who got to go to represent the school that weekend. Each opponent was a unique experience. Bernard would stand there, hands on his hips, and order me to shoot in—"shooting in" was the term we used for the lunging motion to go at someone's leg. Rather than trying to evade me, Bernard would just stand there, tensing his tree trunk of a leg. I would wrap myself around it and try to lift. It was like trying to lift a fire hydrant. He would stand there, tell jokes and laugh while I squirmed and struggled to budge his leg. Then he would pin me.
    Harry Curthrell was even stronger. I remember shooting in, and he did something with his hands, a quick motion, and suddenly the blue mat was where the ceiling had been, and visa versa. Then gravity did its thing. In a comic the sound would be written as: "WHUMPF!!!"
     And Bill Grayson, the worst of all. You get points in wrestling, for reverses, for getting on somebody's back, for holding on—"ride time"—they called it. You can never pin the other guy and still win on points. Bill would hardly do anything, and let me rack up the points, do everything but pin him—I'd be winning, I don't recall the score, say 20 to 0. Then they would mark the last 10 seconds of the match—I remember them tossing a rolled up towel, to signal the approaching end. At that point he would come to life and pin me. He knew that I knew that if I could hold on for those last 10 seconds I would win. Finally win. But I never held on. I couldn't do it.
    It seemed cruel.
    So I never got through wrestle-offs. Never competed against another school in a match. But I lasted out the year. Went to every practice, every match. At the end of the year, at our banquet, every guy on the team got a white sweater with a big blue "R"—for Roehm Junior High School—trimmed in gold. Except me, since I had never actually wrestled against another school. Thus I didn't earn a letter, alone among the 57 kids on the team in the 7th, 8th and 9th grades. I remember wondering why they couldn't cut me a break—I was on the team, right? I had done my best all year. I had stuck it out. That sweater would have meant a lot to me. But I understood, rules are rules. 
     It's sort of a woebegone story, which is why I haven't told it before. I don't like painting myself as a victim. And it's a minor exclusion, compared to the larger injustices and tragedies of life. Compared to actual sorrows, it's nothing.
     But like all people, I don't compare my personal sadnesses against the weight of all human sadness, don't measure my life against the full spectrum of all lives. It was significant to me.
    Nor was it the only time I felt cut out. I hate to list them all. But since the subject was raised, and not by me, maybe it's overdue, in a society where slights and sufferings have become a strange sort of currency, chits we flash to show how ... well, disadvantaged we are. Because that makes us somehow worthy, somehow better, almost morally pure, in our own eyes at least. 
     Not that all of them add up to being disadvantaged. But they do show that my colleague's imagination—he's a white guy, he's sitting pretty in the white guy club—is out of kilter with reality, with my reality as I experienced it. Everyone is privileged, compared to someone else, and maybe one reason why the speakers at Pomona College were so insistent about trotting out their bona fides of disadvantage was to obscure, to themselves if no one else, that they might have had humble beginnings, but they're making up for it now, and have ascended into the elite. Most Americans still don't go to college at all. Most people in the world live in poverty, or nearly. Their parents might have struggled, but they went to school in the heaven-like town of Claremont, California. They're now the advantaged, holders of privilege, whether they like it or not, and no amount of blowing kisses at the kitchen staff will change that. Slagging others based on your own assumed superiority is sort of what the privileged do, and if that assault is based on your ancestors coming over on the Mayflower or on their wading the Rio Grande is only a matter of personal style.
      We all have our privileges, and our exclusions, and they seem very tangible to ourselves. I was not only fat, but the sole Jew in my elementary school—being Jewish isn't considered a minority anymore, I suppose because many Jews do well. Like Asians, we've succeeded so much we've voided our minority status card. Maybe so. But that doesn't mean being Jewish doesn't put you on the outside of Christian society, squirming while the rest of the class sings their carols and goes to their church camps. People still fucking hate us, and part of that hate is pretending all Jews are bankers and movie makers and George Soros, basking in privilege. All the obstacles of being a minority and none of the contact cool. Or so it can seem.  One reason my upbringing was so solitary is because half of my extended family was back in Poland, buried in a pit. If that isn't a disadvantage, what is?
    I don't see the utility into making your struggles into a kind of reality show competition. Maybe it's just the human joy of running down the lives of others, sight unseen, in using your story, whatever it is, to bludgeon those you resent for the easy path you assume they enjoyed. I'm not looking for sympathy. Instead, I'm asking: why does your struggle need to trump mine? What is the point of you finding your voice if the first thing you say is that others are somehow no good because they didn't climb the mountain you climbed? How do you know your path is steeper than mine? Why do we have to be in competition at all? That's the part I don't understand. So you can come out ahead? Okay, I tap out and yield; you come out ahead. You win, pinning me in the suffering competition. Now what?
    Once we're done comparing hardships, we need to seek commonalities. We must tire of bickering and find ways we are similar, rather than highlighting differences. That's what bugged me about the Pomona graduation. I did not, as some leaped to assume, resent the hoopla over these various ethnicities and groups. Good for them. I applauded. But what bothered me was the consistent shattering of the student body into its component pieces in order to show off each sparkly shard, without ever making the slightest effort to gather the fragments back up and show how they  might fit together into a cohesive whole, into something that everyone can be a part of. Because I believe they all fit together, somehow. They have to. 


   

And how's that working?

"The Death of the First Born" by Erastus Salisbury Field (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     If on Friday morning you tapped Texas dad Antonios Pagourtzis on the shoulder and asked him why he owned the guns that his 17-year-old son Dimitrios would soon take to Santa Fe High School and use to kill 10 people, he would have no doubt replied, "To protect my family."

Skip the wedding, reflect on how Chicago once hated British royalty

     Are you kidding? Get up at 6 a.m. Saturday to watch a royal wedding?
     Another royal wedding? Didn't we just have one of these, what, just seven years ago? How many more do we need?
     And no, I'm not drawn in by the bride's Northwestern connection — hail to purple, hail to white and best of luck to all fellow alumni. But it's important, with all the crazily-obsessive media attention building for months, to give permission to ignore the festivities, even sneer at them. To remind ourselves that not only do Americans reject the notion of royalty — it's kinda how our nation came to be — but Chicago has a particular history of despising British aristocracy.
     The oft-cited quote is Mayor William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson's threat against King George V: "If George comes to Chicago, I'll crack him in the snoot." The common assumption is that this was a tossed-off remark, perhaps to appeal to Irish voters.

      It was not. Rooting out the British menace was the linchpin of Thompson's 1927 mayoral bid, what one historian called "one of the most absurd campaigns ever waged in an American municipal election."I will not rest until I have purged this entire city of the poison that's being injected into the heart of American youth," Thompson said appointing a gambling buddy as special commissioner to weed British influence from Chicago's libraries and schools.
     Needless to say, Thompson won. A reminder that Donald Trump didn't invent getting elected by damning foreigners, he merely refined it.
     Ridiculing the English is uniquely satisfying and consequence-free; I'm surprised people don't do it far more often. While most nationalities have weaponized their cultural pride, the English can be mocked openly, boldly denounced as swine, provided of course you reach for the proper literary fig leaf, such as D.H. Lawrence's deathless rant: "Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates ... the sniveling, dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulseless lot that make up England today."


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The photographs are "Distortographs" of William Hale Thompson by British photographer Herbert George Ponting, mostly known for his Arctic photographs of the Scott Expedition. In 1927, he patented a lens attachment he called  the “variable controllable distortograph ... a revolutionary optical system for photographing in caricature or distortion,” submitting these photos of Thompson along with his application. While I have found no evidence connecting Thompson's anti-English campaign to these creations, due to the timing, a link seems likely.  (Photos used with permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) 

The word police

Stephanie Izard

    A future column I'm working on necessitated a stop by the Chicago Ideas seminar at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tuesday night. I was hoping to talk to an executive in attendance at "The Future of Food in America," a panel discussion between Stephanie Izard, the chef behind Girl & the Goat, and Sam Kass, a nutrition advisor at the Obama White House, moderated by ABC 7's food reporter, Steve Dolinsky. 

     Since I wasn't particularly interested in the topic, I probably shouldn't assess how thoroughly it was covered—in the future we'll be eating less meat, ideally, and toward that end Girl & the Goat is serving hamburgers that are 25 percent mushroom, which seems like a good idea. 

     Seeing Izard reminded me of a column I wrote about her a dozen years ago, when she was starting out. Afterward, we had a chance to chat. "I still haven't read The Odyssey," she said, when I reminded her of the item below, and I put in a plug for Emily Wilson's new translation. 

     I understand ironic restaurant names. So many places are burdened with ordinary names such as Ma's Family Restaurant or the Steak and Potatoes Grill or whatever, that a hip chef wants to stand out in the crowd. Thus we get eateries with odd names like Barbed Wire or Gristle or Slop Sink.
     For me, the gold standard of winking eatery names is the University of Colorado at Boulder's student center cafeteria, which is called the Alferd E. Packer Memorial Grill— Packer being one of the few Americans ever found guilty of cannibalism, convicted of dining on several of his snowbound traveling companions during a harsh Rocky Mountains winter of 1873.
     College students eat that sort of thing up—sometimes literally, during "Alferd Packer Days" when they have, in years past, constructed life-size Packers out of chopped liver and set at them with crackers.
     So I understand irony.
     But "Scylla"? The "yelping horror" of The Odyssey? A beast known for gobbling up men alive? That seems to be pushing it.
     When I heard that a seafood place named "Scylla" had opened up on North Damen, I found myself running back to consult the epic poem. Circe, finally releasing Odysseus from her clutches, warns him: whatever he does, stay away from "the grisly monster."
     "No one could look on her with any joy," explains the goddess. "She has twelve legs, all writhing, dangling down, and six long swaying necks, a hideous head on each, each head barbed with a triple row of fangs, thickset, packet tight -- armed to the hilt with black death!"
     But Circe isn't done yet.
     "Scylla's no mortal,'' she continues. "She's an immortal devastation, terrible, savage, wild. No fighting her, no defense—just flee the creature, that's the only way."
     Can't you just see that in an ad? "Outstanding" -- Pat Bruno. "Terrible, savage, wild" -- Homer.
     Restaurants cost money—often somebody's life investment. I just couldn't imagine, with the menus being hand-lettered and the lighting fixtures agonized over, even the most ironic chef, going through lists of possible names—"'Clytemnestra?' No. 'Medea?' No.—Hey, 'Scylla!' That's snappy. The good old yelping horror. Yeah, that's it. We'll call it 'Scylla.' "
     I phoned Stephanie Izard, Scylla's chef and owner, who laughed when I told her why I was calling.
     "Basically, when I chose it, it was early on in reading about Scylla," she said. "I saw her as a sea monster in the Mediterranean, not really realizing the extent of her evil. Since then I've read more about it. . . ."
     So a failure to do one's homework—sort of like naming your daughter Anna Karenina Smith because you never got to the end of the book.
     Any regrets?
     "I still like the name—it always brings up questions,'' said Izard, 29. Like why you'd go to a restaurant whose name suggests—at least to the tiny fraction of Chicagoans familiar with the tale—a hideous doom to be avoided at all costs?
     "We don't want to send that message out," she said.
      Can't say I blame her.
                          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 10, 2006

     Postscript: And as a reminder that you never know what part of a column will touch people, after this ran, I received a letter from a 15-year-old reader, saying her name was Karenina, and could I pass along her interest in meeting other girls of the same name. I did.

You mean you’re NOT an undocumented immigrant? Take your diploma and get out

      It wasn't that the graduation festivities were without value—a class day speaker was very candid. A political science professor read from the Declaration of Independence. But those too were mitigated—she was being candid about her lack of employability after four years in college. The professor first pointed out that the Declaration of Independence has value, despite author Thomas Jefferson owning slaves, since John Adams, who helped, was anti-slavery. As if the concepts depended on the moral purity of who wrote them, which is pretty much where we are at nowadays. But by the time I cut it down to 700 words, this is what was left. Make no mistake: our family had an enjoyable graduation weekend, but there was a constant cloud of the school's own creating, which I tried to capture here. Based on some of my email, you'd think I'd written a hate polemic. 

     Southern California houses don’t have gutters. Not enough rain. I wish I could say I noticed this, with my keen journalist’s eye. But it was my wife who, strolling around the lovely college town of Claremont, an hour east of Los Angeles, pointed it out. That happens a lot.
     What I noticed was the sign for the “Black Graduation Ceremony” two days before the full commencement at Pomona College, the liberal arts school where my kid got his degree on Sunday.
     The sign was the first thing I saw stepping on campus, and set the tone. What could black commencement be? Like black proms at southern high schools? A sign of fracture and exclusion? Even here, at an epicenter of inclusion? Pomona placed 9th out of 2,475 colleges on a ranking of the most diverse schools.
     I started with my kid: what gives? He said that there are several separate graduations—also a “Lavender Commencement” for LGBTQ community. No big deal. He was entirely non-plussed, as if I had asked about some mundane aspect of student life: "And all these backpacks, what are they for?"
     We had come 2,000 miles to attend three events. The first, a pair of brunch receptions for the Economics and International Studies departments—his degree is in both. His teachers were outgoing, we got to meet friends, teachers and classmates we had only heard of. It was great.
     Next to me in the buffet line was someone who seemed a good a place to continue my investigation. Lorn S. Foster, the Charles and Henrietta Johnson Detoy Professor of American Government, whose field of study is "race, community and power." I asked about black commencement.
     "For kids who don't have a place at Pomona," he said. "It's a space for them to be expressive."
     Do they not have a place in the larger school because they are denied it? Or because they refuse it? It seems an important distinction.
     Foster, retiring after 40 years, mentioned the LGBTQ commencement and similar events.
     "They're celebrations," he said.
     Fair enough, and I tried to enter into the spirit of celebration, but kept getting nudged out.
     The next day, Class Day, in cool weather—California's "May Gray." The class day address was by Shahriar Shahriari, a respected, popular math professor. I would summarize his talk as: the United States is an imperialist power meddling in the affairs of nations across the globe, including his home of Iran.
     True enough, though if he has lived here for the past 40 years for reasons beyond this country being an iron fist of repression crushing the dreams of freedom worldwide, he kept those reasons to himself. I wish he hadn't.
     The rest of that program nestled in that sweet spot of mundanity that isn't bad enough to be comic, alas, but never rose to the level of actually being interesting. When I looked over at my son to gauge his reaction, he formed his fingers into a pistol, placed it to his temple and pulled the trigger.
     "Maybe we should have crashed the black commencement," I suggested.
     The next day, at graduation, class speaker Maria Jose Vides Orellana gave me my first trigger warning.
     "I want to give a general content warning, for references and mentions of violence, deportation, anti-blackness, police brutality and sexual assault," she began, also offering up a fair summary of how the college experience was presented to us parents.
     Much talk of "marginalization," and I was tempted to shout, "If you want to be marginalized, try being a newspaper reporter in 2018, or a conservative white Jewish male at a liberal arts college." But the truth is, sympathizing with yourself is a skill everyone masters all too thoroughly. What's the point of being woke, as the kids say, if the take-away, "I'm better than you," is the same conclusion every hater comes to, no college necessary?
     Trump's America offers a steady drumbeat that certain people don't belong. So it's heartbreaking, if perhaps expected, that the object of this scorn concludes: "Hey, we don't belong."
     Belonging can be seized without fanfare. One of my kid's roommates is a U.S. Marine studying water management—he's off to Stanford for his masters. He showed us an engraved K-bar knife his buddies gave him as a graduation present. We all admired it, and while I wished one moment in the two-day ceremony acknowledged the presence of guys like him, or my son, they both seem to know who they are and what they are doing, no public validation necessary. I guess that's white privilege.

     My colleague at the Sun-Times, Alexandra Arriaga, wrote a response to this column. While I don't agree with how she characterized my column—I was wondering why the separate commencements were necessary at one of the most inclusive colleges in the country, not complaining I wasn't invited—it is worth reading. 

In-N-Out

     Epicures are odd people.
     My older son likes fancy restaurants, and he is all Michelin stars this, and coq au vin that.  The swank place we dined at Sunday night to celebrate his graduation was picked, in part, for its steak tartar, which I think of as "raw ground meat."
     Then Monday, heading for LAX and, we have a little extra time, and it's pushing noon, and he suggests, "Hey, why don't we stop at the In-N-Out Burger by the airport?"
      I've spent months in Los Angeles, but can't say In-N-Out Burger is on my radar. But it seems to be a cult of some sort, stoked by rarity—the chain only operates in six states: Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Texas,  Utah, and the mothership, California.
     Sure, I say, it's your graduation. 
     What should I get, I ask my son.
     Burger with animal sauce.
     "Animal sauce?"
     "A mayonnaise-based sauce," he says.
     Sounds a bit Big Mac-ish. But OK. When in Rome ... (Actually, "Animal Style" means extra sauce, mustard-grilled patties and extra pickles. "Mustard-grilling" is when they slather the patty with mustard before flipping it. Who knew?)
     We get in line for the drive-thru—no spaces, no time. We order four burgers—$12.81. Enthusiastic workers hand us a squarish bag. When my wife looks inside the bag, she explains, "The burgers are unwrapped; they just put them in the bag!"
     Immediately I think it has to be some strange Californian law to cut down on waste. But rather, upon closer exploration, it turns out the burgers are combat wrapped for a car culture—only half covered, so you can grab the paper-wrapped half and immediately mash the burger into your face, which is what I do as I steer toward the car rental return, only a few blocks away.
     It is a distinctive burger—fresh bun with a thick round bottom half. Lots of lettuce and fresh tomato. The rest ... well, it was okay, but then I ate it with one hand while driving toward the Avis drop off. Whatever excellence mustard-grilling imparts is lost on me.
    Avis, incidentally, wraps its corporate arms around us as we arrive. Alex—I didn't catch his last name—but he is just, well, extra-friendly. He tries harder, as the slogan goes, and it is appreciated. I don't have much car rental loyalty—I think of them as all the same. But Avis now stands out, because it has Alex greeting customers as they bring their cars back at LAX.
     The In-N-Out burger chain is older than McDonald's. Founded in 1948 (their 70th birthday is this Oct. 22) while the McDonald's Corporation started in 1955, and originated the drive-thru, being the first burger joint to use speakers to take orders from motorists in cars.
     Oddly, given the vaguely sexual overtone of the name, "In-N-Out," the owners are fundamentalist Christians who cite Biblical verses on the burger packaging. For some reason, this doesn't bother me—it's their company—since they don't seem to harass their workers or try to undermine the rights of their customers.
     No great epiphany here—we got into Chicago late to find monsoon season upon the city— except that value has to do with scarcity. In-N-Out are certainly beloved, but if they were on every street corner, like McDonald's, that ardor would no doubt fade: familiarity breeds contempt.  I don't think my experience Monday will knock White Castle out of its preeminence in my heart among quirky hamburger chains. But it did help redeem the state's reputation, fast-food wise, which had been so tarnished by a few bad experiences at Bob's Big Boy and Denny's. Anyway, it's good to be home, college graduate in tow. He hasn't slept under our roof for five months. 

Waitlisted for dumplings

     We drove half an hour to Monterey Park, a sprawling city east of Los Angeles that is 2/3 Asian, in order to sample the authentic soup dumpling at Mama Lu's Dumpling House, one of my older son's favorite places to eat. 
    The restaurant was exactly what you'd expect: crowded, clatter, not many caucasians. Although I got one surprise: instead of a harried host jotting down names on a pad, this computer maitre d', where we tapped in our name ourselves and registered to be notified when a table became ready.
     Another job down the tubes. I've grudgingly accepted ringing up my own razors at CVS and bagging my own nails at Home Depot. Resistance is futile. But somehow this seems straying into a new area.
     It was extra odd finding it at a small Chinese dumpling place and not, oh, McDonald's, or some other big corporate chain, which have been experimenting with having customers key in their own orders, to make up for the lack of minimum wage drones. Why here?
     We plugged in our phone information, were told the wait would be a half hour, then strolled down Garvey Avenue to see what the wait was like at the second Mama Lu's Dumpling House, five blocks east, speaking of quirky. I must have been tired from our trip, because I didn't even probe why there were two restaurants with the same name half a mile apart. I gazed at the streetscape—lots of travel agents and nail salons, with signs heavy on Chinese characters. It was like being in Taipei. Mama Lu's II was even more jammed, and no sooner had we turned to go, than we got a text telling us we had a minute to claim our table.
     The boys hustled ahead, and didn't get there in a minute. Our spot in the queue vanished. But due to some old-fashioned, low-tech humble entreaty to an actual human being on my son's part, we got the next table and didn't have to re-enter our names and begin the process all over again.
     I'd like to think the electronic sign-up practice won't spread to restaurants generally—you can eat at home, and if you are going to be greeted with a computer screen, next the dumplings will be cooked up by robots in the back and served by drones. Something of the experience is lost. I always consider service—someone greeting you, someone being friendly to you—an intrinsic part of the dining out experience. 
      They were very good dumplings—a blurp of hot soup in the middle—which I suppose is the important thing. The friend fish was also excellent. The fried cubes of coconut bread, well, I assume that's an acquired taste. The only unsettling aspect, that computer sign up....
     Then again, I squirmed when the New York Times put a color photograph on the front page. It might have seemed wrong, at the time and for a moment, but we got used to it, and after all these years I'm ready to admit that, yes, it was an improvement.
      Several other California-style developments caught my eye this trip. Our room had a "Clean Remote"—obviously reacting to the news that television remotes are the filthiest spot in the room, because they're difficult to clean, this one bragged "The Clean Remote has been designed specifically to make it easy to clean and disinfect."
    Not that they necessarily do it. But the potential is there.
 .    I also spied more EXIT signs at floor level, which puzzled me the first time, but are obviously designed to but of more use to patrons crawling through smoke-filled halls. Smart but not the most pleasant image to have when you're checking into your motel.
     It's always a challenge to decide whether a social shift is a loss, a deterioration, or just new. When people began saving a nickel a gallon on gas by pumping it themselves, the loss of the guy who pumped your gas and checked your oil seemed a step toward the abyss. Now, you don't want some odd guy to start pawing around your car. It's intrusive. A reminder that while it's easy to see our systems changing around us, it's harder to see ourselves change within those systems. Which is true for more than technology. Assuming we ever get rid of Donald Trump and his cohort of quislings and traitors, we'll then have to address how we ourselves have changed, perhaps against our will, perhaps without even realizing it. But changed nevertheless, and certainly not for the better.

    

Graduation flashback: Taking a pass on a 'bar ritzvah'

  

     Birth might be the last life transition done without ceremony of any kind. A few phone calls to family and friends, a photo of the new life taken on the day of delivery. Then you collapse at home in exhaustion and relief. The ceremonies don't start until ... well, for Jews, a week later, with the bris, a party marking circumcision.  Rather soon actually.

     Then the yearly gong of birthdays. The dress rehearsal of lesser graduations—from pre-school, sometimes, junior high, then the main event, high school, when suddenly the bright sun that has filled your sky for 18 years becomes a distant star, sometimes glimpsed in the night sky, more often not.

     My older boy graduates from Pomona College today, and, busy with festivities, listening to speeches, meeting his friends and teachers, and eating, eating, eating, I thought I would mark the occasion here with a transitional column from when he was growing up. This one was about his bar mitzvah. I've left in the joke that used to appear at the end of my columns.

     A co-worker asked how my son's bar mitzvah went. Very nice, I said. Then she flashed a little smile—a smirk, really—and inquired about its theme, which I took as a polite way of wondering whether it was one of those grotesque North Shore extravaganzas that one hears about.
     I explained, again, that it had no theme—well, "Judaism," I suppose—but there were no hired dancers, no fog machines, no hot air balloons or sit-down dinners for 300 at the Four Seasons with the bar mitzvah boy's bust done in chopped liver, like a butter cow at the state fair. It wasn't built around the Bears or the movies or NASCAR.
     This news invariably disappoints—people are keen for new details of the spectacles I think of as "bar ritzvahs," the pop bands and minor celebrities engaged, the self-flattering theme parties, the money spent. Within the last week, I've had acquaintances tell me of bar mitzvahs where a film was shown involving the actual actors from "Lost"—dad is in the TV business, apparently—and one where it was rumored Green Day would perform.
     Such tales are a harmless way to indulge in the pleasure of reflecting on the spendthrift idiocy of others. But they are also a reminder that somehow bar mitzvahs have lost their good name.
     Part of this might be a kind of prejudice—assuming that any bar mitzvah party will have tables named after various local shopping malls projects an unfair stereotype of crassness onto Jews that is only partially deserved. Indulgent gentile parents throw huge birthday parties for their children, some of which are captured cruelly on that MTV reality show "My Super Sweet 16." Yet strangers do not greet news that one's daughter has turned 16 by asking whether she wept because she got a BMW M5 and not the even-pricier M6.
     I should be clear that a confluence of circumstance helped keep us from hosting a bar mitzvah blowout—first, we are not wealthy, which always helps ensure that a person is a critic of excess instead of a perpetrator of it. We settled in Northbrook, which is more proletarian than the New Trier catch basin, where activities involving children—school, athletics, religious events—too often are twisted into Darwinian, king-of-the-hill blood sport.
     Second, with the gathering economic disaster, this did not seem the time to indulge in resource-burning Semitic potlatches, which weren't going to happen because, third—and most significantly—neither my wife nor my son felt inclined to show off.
     Nor did I, having made a conscious decision that this wasn't going to be about me. I didn't invite any work associates, explaining to those who complained about being left out that it was his bar mitzvah, not mine.
     Looking back, none of the moments that stick out involve commerce. None of them induce a wince. The rabbi invited my son's friends up to see the Torah as Ross read from it, and they gathered around and gazed wide-eyed at the ancient scroll. At one point, half of the congregation got up and danced—one of those dipping, hand-holding hora-type dances, not "The Locomotion." My son played "Hatikvah" on the viola.
      My most significant contribution to the event—well, besides paying for it, pricy enough, even though the party for his friends was held at the Brunswick lanes in Northbrook—was persuading him to do it, and I must admit the task was neatly accomplished.
     My older son's view of God seems on par with the average adult's belief in Santa Claus—a risible bit of cultural baggage that some people actually take seriously—and he was initially reluctant, wondering why he had to go through this time-consuming ritual at all.
      I delivered the Team Speech. Three thousand years ago, something happened in the desert. From generation to generation, this thing was passed along in an unbroken chain—no one in the Middle Ages decided, "Hey, I'm going to become Jewish because it's so much fun. . . ." The chain reached unbroken from Moses to my father, for whom this stuff occupies an even tinier corner of mind than it does mine, which is saying something. He nevertheless felt obligated to pass it on to me, and now I was passing it along to him. Because you just never know—it might come in handy someday.
     "It's like you're going on a hike in the jungle," I said, groping for a metaphor. "And I say, 'Take along this inflatable rubber raft.' And you say, 'That's stupid, dad, I don't need a raft— it's heavy. I'll be in the forest. There's no water.' But you indulge me, and carry the raft with you, even though it's a bother. Then you come upon a river you must cross. . . ."
     Not the most sophisticated theological argument. But it worked—well that, and dangling the prospect of presents. Looking back on the bar mitzvah, I can honestly say I wouldn't have done anything differently, and I'm sure not every parent who hired fire-eaters and rented out Navy Pier for their kid's bar mitzvah can say the same thing.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

     The party planner had promised a unique bar mitzvah, and so far she had been true to her word. The chartered jet had landed in Tanzania. The line of elephants had been waiting, and then set off toward the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where the ceremony would be held at twilight. The father of the bar mitzvah boy was on the last elephant, swaying along the trail.
     After traveling for an hour, the elephant train abruptly stopped. The father sat, waiting, for a long time. Finally, he shouted to the person on the elephant ahead of him, "What's wrong?" The question was passed ahead from elephant to elephant. After 20 minutes, the reply worked its way back toward the dad. The guy on the elephant in front of him turned and said, "We have to wait—there are three other bar mitzvah parties ahead of us."
       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 8, 2008

Flashback: Lincoln relic or just old hat?

Abraham Lincoln, by Alexander Gardner (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     My former colleague, Ray Long, reports in the Tribune that the financially-troubled Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield is considering unloading some of its stuff. I've never been a fan of the library, which cast itself as more of a cut-rate Disneyland for downstate rubes than a serious institution dedicated to scholarship, and their intellectual laziness over their expensive piece of old haberdashery is a perfect example of why. Long puts its this way: 
        "The Taper collection included a beaver fur stovepipe hat that library officials are satisfied that Lincoln wore, though some critics are not convinced there is empirical evidence of an attachment to Honest Abe."   
      Which to my ear is a study in understatement, akin to, "Many critics consider 'Harry Potter' to be a work of fiction." The moment I heard the topper might be up for sale, I thought of this old column. Let's put it this way: were I you, I would think twice before spending too much for that hat. 

     People lie. They dissemble and prevaricate. They fool themselves and others.
     The history of fraud is long. One of the best passages in Loyal Rue's "By the Grace of Guile: The Role of Deception in Natural History and Human Affairs" involves the explosive popularity of holy relics in the Middle Ages: 

Response to the 'discovery' of these relics was so intense that even more spectacular finds followed: the staff of Moses, manna from the wilderness, the bodies of Samuel the prophet, St. Peter, St. Paul, Mary Magdalene, hanks of hair from the Virgin Mary, vials of her milk, blood from the birth of Jesus, pieces of the cross, the crown of thorns . . . eventually there were enough fragments of the cross about to build a battleship, and enough of the Virgin's milk to sink it.

     Just as those who "found" these relics had to deal with impolite questions—such as "How did Mary Magdalene's body come to be buried in France?"—so possessors of more recent relics go through contortions trying to justify their venerated objects. In the wake of Dave McKinney's stories in the Sun-Times, it has been joy to watch the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield shimmy, trying to escape the obvious conclusion: that no real evidence links the top hat they claim was worn by Lincoln to the 16th president. 
     Yes, it is his size, and yes, it comes from the Springfield hat shop that Lincoln patronized. But to accept that as proof of anything is to believe that every 7 1/8 hat sold in Springfield back then must have belonged to Lincoln. That's like saying that every sandal from Roman times was worn by Jesus.
     The library claimed, at first, the hat was given to an Illinois farmer, William Waller, during one of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates. This ran into a problem when the Sun-Times pointed out a 1958 affidavit claiming that the hat was given to Waller "during the Civil War in Washington." Now they had two stories, a conflict, like the three churches that each claimed to own a head of John the Baptist.
     We need to remember that, as with holy relics, Lincoln memorabilia is an area famous for fraud and forgery—I once watched as the late Ralph Newman, a renowned Lincoln expert, dashed off a convincing Lincoln signature, to show how easily it could be done.
     In November, Dominican University gave a seminar, "Lincoln Fakes & Forgeries," where speakers addressed deception in the wake of a portrait that for decades was thought to be of Mary Lincoln but turned out to be a fake.
     "Not just paintings, but handwriting, photographs, printed documents, stories, and supposed family relics of the Lincolns have been passed off as authentic since Mr. Lincoln became president," the university noted. "Some of these items show chutzpah; some show greed; and some, a sincere yearning to be associated with greatness."
     These words were printed next to a photo of James Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Lincoln Presidential Library, who spoke at the seminar. Thinking he must be an expert in this, I phoned him, and had one of the more unpleasant conversations I've had with anyone in recent years.
      "I've already said all I have to say," he snapped. He must be referring to his limp remark to Dave McKinney that the hat's provenance "cannot be proven or disproven."
      I hope they engrave that on the plaque. Cornelius did not sound like a confident man in proud possession of a national treasure. He sounded like a man running from truth.
     "If this hat came into my shop with that story, to be consigned, I wouldn't do it because I could not prove it," said Dan Weinberg, owner of Abraham Lincoln Book Shop.
      I can see why the Lincoln Presidential Library folks are snarly—they spent millions on an old hat whose link to the 16th president is at best notional. (The whispered, more-likely story is that the hat morphed into a Lincoln relic 50 years ago, during the Civil War centennial). That can't be helped now without going back in time, and the proper time travel technology just isn't here yet.
     What happens next is what worries me. The museum is committed to passing off the hat as genuine, perverting the idea of historic scholarship. We cannot tolerate that. My late colleague, Steve Neal, insisted that qualified professionals run the library. He fought to keep it from being a nest of George Ryan cronies. It is sad that it takes a Chicago newspaper, again, to remind them that, as tempting as it is to tap dance around their mistake, they risk turning the museum into a P.T. Barnum cabinet of dubious wonders. And once they go down that slippery road, the sky's the limit. If they display this hat as Lincoln's own now, someday they'll be displaying feathers from Lincoln's angelic wings collected in heaven. The millions wasted are still too cheap a price to sell our state's soul.
     "You have to be true to history if you're going to be in this business," said Weinberg.
     Do we honor Lincoln by fetishizing this expensive old hat? Or by being true to history?

                           —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 27, 2013