Restaurant memories

     An amuse-bouche is a little morsel served between courses to refresh the palate. The term is French—for "mouth amusement"—but isn't actually used in France. Rather, it's an American invention of the 1980s, ironically exactly when the iron grip of French cooking was really being pried away from American high cuisine. 
    Amuse-gueule might be the proper term in France, but I am not in France, and just as nothing is more off-putting than a white dude rolling the R in "Puerrrrto Rrrrico," so it's a little late in the day for me to start imitating a Frenchman. We are allowed, as I'm always telling my older son after he starchily corrects my grammar, to use the vernacular.
    So amuse-bouche it is. When I think of one, I think of the little icy ball of grapefruit sorbet they used to serve at New Japan between the soba noodle salad and the main course. New Japan was on Chicago Avenue in Evanston for decades—it's where my wife-to-be first met my parents. She wore fuscia—it was the mid-1980s. Then one day it became an Ethiopian restaurant. 
     Such is the way with restaurants. They're like stage plays: here for a while, then vanishing into memory, where they linger. That's part of what makes them precious. Once they disappear, they never come back (except of course, the Berghoff, which faked its own death in 2006 in order to fire its union wait staff, then reincarnated, not realizing that it was also betraying its loyal customers. Or maybe it was just me, but I never went back to check on the reanimated corpse, which seems to be kept alive with steady transfusions of clueless tourists).
     I hardly ever write two columns in a row on any subject. But after we ate at Alinea Sunday night, I knew that I'd have to explain how I came to pay the fare for Grant Achatz's 3-Michelin-star restaurant in Lincoln Park. Rather than let half the column be taken up with figures and rationalization, I decided to let Wednesday's column be all about the tab, and devote Friday to the actual dining experience. Which is actually the hard part, like trying to describe a symphony in words. "And now the horns come in..."
    Leaving today's blog post as the pause between Wednesday and Friday, between the appetizer and main course. 
    Since the subject is restaurants, perhaps a refresher, a tangy dollop of perspective that can't make it into the paper. Something small and cleansing.
    Restaurants are like travel; they frame life, add significance. Yet, like travel, they're also superfluous. You never have to visit Paris, or the Redwood Forest. But it's a very good idea, if you can swing it. 
    Just as you aren't required to eat at restaurants. You can eat at home for a fraction of the price. You can carry a sack lunch every day. People do. It's cheaper. And I don't want to skate by the hard times facing so many people. But I have a rule in this job: don't pretend to be someone you're not. And the hard times that are inundating many are barely lapping at my yard. This trio of pieces is proof of that. 
     So for those who can, to not patronize restaurants, like not traveling, is missing out on a joy of life. At least according to my value system. Each his own. I think I view eating out the way other people view sports—as something worthwhile that frames life and gives it meaning.
    So what makes a good restaurant? As a guy who has eaten out thousands of times, literally, in Chicago, I look for three key measures.
     First, the food. It has to be good. Which sounds obvious, but gets screwed up more often than not. Particularly new places. There's a restaurant space around the corner from our house that has seen three restaurants come and go in five years, and all for the same reason. Sub-par food. We'd try them a time or two when they opened. Just. Not. Good. Enough. A pizza parlor where the pizza was so-so. A Mexican place serving meh Mexican food. And a fried chicken restaurant with soggy fried chicken. We were pulling for them, rooting for them, hoping for them. And they let us down.
     That said, judging on food alone is impossible. If you asked me to pick a restaurant based entirely on taste, on peak mouthfeel experience, I'd be stymied. I'd say ... oh ... go to New York Bagel & Bialy on Dempster, get whatever bagel is hot from the oven, take it back in the car and eat that. That's the best thing you can put in your mouth in Chicago. Second best? Order a Lou Malnati's deep dish spinach and mushroom pizza with buttercrust and eat that at home.
    Note that neither is actually in a restaurant. Because food is important but it's also only the beginning. There is the space—the room, the tables, the chairs, the walls, the view, the ambience. The dining room at the University Club is like having dinner at Notre Dame Cathedral. Chicago Cut isn't my favorite steakhouse—that would be Gene & Georgetti—but that glass cube on the river. The food at Kimball Musk's Kitchen is good enough, but oh that room, tall and cool and sleek along the river. Even the bathrooms are elegant.
    Food and space aren't everything either. What makes Gene's better than Chicago Cut or Gibson's isn't the room—Gene's is like being in the 1950s basement of your mad uncle. And while Gene's steaks are indeed better—less greasy—that alone isn't why I love the place. It's the service, the third leg of the restaurant experience. Old line waiters in starched white aprons. Somber, almost grim men who go about their business with a monkish solemnity. 
     All the meals eventually blend into one meal, one sense of comfort and service and belonging. Old restaurants long gone live in memory. I can't tell you whether the famous spinning salad at Don Roth's Blackhawk was any better than any other salad. I first had it I was 15 and didn't even like salad. It was 1975. But I can see the tuxedoed waiter with the possibly fake French accent putting on a show for us, "Here at zee Blackhawk, we spin zee salad not wance, not tuh-why-ice, but sree times!" while my sister and I collapsed against each other, fighting laughter.
     Taken together, the food and the room and the service make a box we put memories in. When my wife turned 40, I made reservations at Tru, the swank place that Gale Gand and Rick Tramonto ran for years on St. Clair. They hadn't invented the pay-to-play reservation system, and as the day approached, my wife began to try to squirm out of it, quailing at the expense. I had to reason with her.
    "Remember going to Everest for our anniverary?" I asked. Just before our first son was born. She was eight months pregnant, big as a house but chic in her stylish new maternity clothes. "Remember what you wore?" I do. I can see her coming down the spiral staircase in our place on Pine Grove Avenue. "Remember what we ordered?" Buttery whole lobsters, paired with risotto topped with gold leaf. All of those memories would be gone—would never have existed in the first place—without the restaurant. If it wasn't expensive, fancy, special, a big deal we were dressing up and going to with a sense of occasion. We only went there once.
    I could go on and on, but the amuse-bouche is supposed to be a tid-bit, not a feast. You have your own restaurant memories, and I imagine they're just as precious to you. The experience is wonderful, while it is unfolding. But the memories are the thing you pay for, the thing you get to keep. 

Amazement at Alinea begins months before dinner, when you pay the tab

Grant Achatz in the kitchen of Alinea, his world-renown restaurant, where dinner can cost $420. Without wine.

     You know what's great about being a newspaper columnist? The pay. I'm not kidding. They just firehose money at you — well, at me anyway; others not so much — and the odd thing is, despite years of scrubbing my pits in this continual money shower, I never paused to appreciate just how bleepin' flush I truly am. The postponed home repairs and frequent breakdowns of our rusty 13-year-old van and the debt pit dug by two private college tuitions must have blinded me to my ridiculous wealth.
     Then in April, one event utterly changed my view of myself. I am rich, Scrooge McDuck rich, upper 1 percent, baby, at least when it comes to the purchase of really, really, really expensive dinners.
     My family ate at Alinea Sunday night.  One of the best restaurants in the world.
     And among the most costly. That part usually gets left out. Since any description of the actual dining experience would by necessity begin with my attempt to justify shelling out, ahh, $1,766.16 for one meal, best to get it out of the way, first, so I can relate to those curious — and really, who isn't? — what you get for that sum.
     Where to begin? Our two sons were born. Skip the next 20 years. They grew up, did well in high school, breezed through college, the younger finishing in three years. One graduated in May, the other graduates later this month.
     College graduates get a present. It's a tradition. I had ideas: Allen Edmonds shoes. Made in Wisconsin. I've been to the factory. Gorgeous. A pair of Oxford wing tips. Pricey, sure. But handy for all-important job interviews.
     No shoes? How about a pen? A real fountain pen? Nope.
     My older boy offered an idea of his own, almost jarring in its sweetness: Disneyland. He went to college outside of Los Angeles for four years, but had never been.

     What could I say? What would you say? "Gosh buddy, I'd love to take you and your brother to a couple days at the Magic Kingdom as a reward for 17 years of gerbil-on-a-wheel academic effort. But it's expensive..."
     "Umm, sure," is what I said, thinking gloomily: Disneyland was run-down when I visited 35 years ago.
     Time passed. The older kid, who studied economics in French at the Sorbonne, did the math. A hundred bucks just to get into Disneyland. Multiplied by four Steinbergs. Times two days. Plus hotel. And food. And mouse ears.
     Why not, he said, go to Alinea instead? He likes fancy dining. His brother too. It'll cost some $1200, about the same as Disneyland.
     Hmmm, two miserable sun-baked days eating curly fries at a jammed amusement park? Or a glorious dinner at Grant Achatz's world-acclaimed restaurant in Lincoln Park?
     What to do, what to do? I justified, mightily, dredging up every expensive home and car repair. That exploratory surgery on the cat: $1,400 on a dead cat. Here we get swank chow and no cats have to die. Plus the boys ... our little boys. They want this. My wife, frugality itself, who grew up in Bellwood and whose father bent metal pipe for a living, agreed to the folly.
     Now all I had to do was make a reservation. Here the amazement begins. You'd think that coughing into your fist that you are willing to shell out a mortgage payment for dinner would instantly garner a table. Wrong. At Alinea, diners pay upfront and seatings sell out months in advance. You need to plan. We agreed on a date—Saturday, June 2. Those seats became available ... April 15 at 11 a.m. At the appointed moment, I was poised online ... tapping, tapping ... in! Saturday night was already gone. Switch to Sunday. Adapt! Overcome! Could the boys go that night? Yes!
     I was so relieved to snag a reservation, it took a second to queasily grasp that the mind-boggling $1260 base price had, with 11.5 percent tax and 20 percent mandatory tip, grown to $1685.88. Maybe not so rich after all...
     So that's the story. As 5 p.m. approached on Sunday, I began to appreciate the wisdom of the pay-first system. Without it, I'd be tortured by doubts, gnawing second thoughts. I could see us all setting off for Alinea, but me instead driving madly north, hunched over the wheel, racing toward the Allen Edmonds shoe factory.
     Now, having already paid, there was nothing to do but show up and eat dinner.
     Which was ... well, I'll have to tell you Friday.
 

Contemporary Caravaggio

La Guia ("The Guide") by Rigoberto A. Gonzalez (National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.)

     If you go to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., you will see the expected portraits of the presidents: Gilbert Stewart's clench-mouthed George Washington, waiting for his rendezvous with a dollar bill; Lincoln, looking almost handsome, sitting pensively in a chair. 
     But half the building is the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and there you will find  both various art work, with an emphasis on the Victorian, as well as large temporary shows. 
     When I was there, they were showing examples of outstanding contemporary portraiture, including the above, by Rigoberto Gonzalez. 
     I liked it for its drama, the old-fashioned skill in rendering the human figure. It had the story-telling quality of paintings before television, and we wonder what is going on. Are they caught—they seem to be raising their hands. What are they looking at?
     Gonzalez was born in Reynosa, Mexico in 1973, and came to this country when he was 9 years old. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1999 and received his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2004.
     A fan of baroque artwork, he wants his paintings to tell stories, although of course the stories the painting tell in part depend on the viewer. The "guide" in this painting is the teenage girl at left, by the way, helping two older immigrants through a river toward their new home.  
    What story they are telling depends, in part, maybe in large part, in who is looking at the painting. How do you feel about these people? Concern? Contempt?
    They are of course the newest American citizens, or would, if we let them. That many would look at the above with only scorn and rejection—there is a lot of that going around—seems reason enough to post it here. Your grandparents might have come here through Ellis Island, but Ellis Island closed in 1954. 
    I looked into Gonzalez's work. He often uses violence in Mexico as a theme, such as, below, in the enormous 2011 canvas, "Shootout in the Border City of Juarez." Twenty-feet wide and nine feet high, he based it on renaissance crucifixion paintings. I'm only showing part of the painting, to see the detail.
       "I've always had this interest in doing things that are terrible and beautiful," Gonzalez once said. "My hope is that it has a cathartic quality to it. You can't keep suppressing it. I want you to talk about it, show the work, engage the public, start a discussion."
      Okay, I'll begin. Above the portrait of Lincoln is this quote from the 16th president:
     "The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."
    He was referring to the Civil War. Now we are engaged in a struggle equally divided, though not as bloody. Where are we heading as a country and in what light, when we turn around and view this era, 2018, will we think of ourselves, how we behaved, what we did and did not do? 

"Shootout on the Border City of Juarez."

Irish pro-choice landslide should resonate in the supposed land of the free

Hydra and Kali by Damien Hirst

     Simple question:
     When facing choices, do you prefer deciding yourself or letting someone else decide for you?
     What kind of choices are we talking about? Doesn’t matter. Could be something trivial: what flavor of ice cream to order. Or more important: what color to paint the living room.
     Or even something truly significant: what political party to join. What religion to follow.
     Got your answer? Good. Set it aside.
     This isn’t a trick. I’m not going to condemn you if you answer, “I want others to make decisions for me.” Many people do. They join fraternities, the military or other organizations where following directions is tantamount. Nothing to be ashamed of. There is a pressure in making decisions, a weight in assuming responsibility for your choices.
     Some alternate. I, for example, generally like to make my own decisions — chocolate chip cookie dough, white walls. Sometimes I yield to decisions made by others long ago: my parents were Democrats and Jews, so I’m sympathetic with the idea that government should help those in need and in no hurry to embrace unfamiliar faiths that seem even more contrived and arcane than my own.
     Sometimes I want someone else to decide: “Honey, which tie goes better?”
     So I understand, and even sympathize a little, with those who would offload their choice regarding an issue as significant as abortion, surrendering to a higher power: to the government, or some religious authority. It has to be a wrenching decision, to snuff about this tiny, aborning life, and if you could remove it from yourself, or from others, and decide it with permanent finality and unwavering certainty, you are free from the stress of deciding. As are they.

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L'etat, c'est lui.

    
     Donald Trump believes that, because he has the power to end the Mueller investigation, he cannot be subpoenaed by it. Because he can pardon himself if convicted of crimes, he cannot be accused of them.
     Is he right?
     The argument set out in a letter by his lawyer claims that since the president can "if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon” that he can also refuse to testify before the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
     A court will no doubt decide this, in the months to come. But clarity can be found now by simplifying it to a more mundane level, by asking a few hypothetical questions:
    Can a police chief, who has the power to hire and fire officers, be arrested?
    Can a county sheriff, who has authority over prison guards, be put into jail?
    Can a senator, who has the power to pass laws, himself violate a law?
    Can a president?
    The answer of course is yes, yes, yes and yes. Because if it isn't "yes" in every case, then we no longer have a society of laws, but a society of men.
    Men like Donald Trump.
    Not a society of rules, of order. But a society where ordinary citizens follow orders. The orders of men like Donald Trump.
    Every American is facing a choice, right now. Respect the United States, respect its laws and traditions. 
    Or respect Donald Trump. 
    Follow our morals, values and laws. 
    Or follow Donald Trump.
    It's that simple. 
    Simple, yet so many don't get it. Trump supporters, having put their bets on Trump, whether out of economic anxiety, racial bias, seething resentment, ordinary fear, free-floating malice, Republican habit, gender bias, or whatever pathology causes a supposedly freedom-loving American to support a would-be tyrant, refuse to be put off by whatever new low Trump sinks to. They are willing to pay any price, bear any blunder, meet any transgression, support any traitor, oppose any relief, to assure the continuation of the Trump era. 
    It is shocking how many people bend their knee to him. Past rivals, abused and trivialized on live television, now kiss his ring. Politicians who fought and struggled against Barack Obama's every act—try to bring more health care to more Americans—roll like puppies at the feet of this demagogue.
     I see on Facebook the common meme that someday Trump supporters will regret their support. I severely doubt this. First, because if you go down South, you will not find aging bigots who battled civil rights tooth and nail now hanging their heads in shame. I never see those people. It is far easier to deny folly and keep denying it than to eventually face it. People, generally, are cowards. Hence the popularity of Donald Trump.
     The only time such reckoning has a chance is when the people lost in follow are soundly defeated. The Germans, crushed, began to sincerely wonder whether they had erred, morally, with all this Nazi business.
     Keep that in mind, foremost in mind, this November. Unless these guys lose, we all lose. We won't be given many chances to reverse this. It will set in, settle in our bones. It might already have done so. It might already be too late. Some days, it feels too late.
     Because second, he may prevail. The abused system of laws and standards and decency gives way, day by day, inch by inch, and we stagger toward the same power-driven, money-driven dystopia we find in so many other countries. A world where Russia has won. It's so strange. They couldn't defeat us through strength, through bombs and armies. But they have us on the mat through guile, their tool in the White House, the evidence of his perfidy being quashed before it has come out. And 40 percent of the American people eager for it to happen.
    We could not only end up with Trump, but worse to come. If you can gaze at Trump's words and actions and endorse that, put your words and your heart and your vote behind it, I believe you can endorse anything.
     Here's what I don't understand: What do his supporters get? What's in it for them? A frisson of self-love? As bad as betraying your country is, at least Trump and his family and cronies get a payday, in money and power and perceived status. What do their supporters get? Nothing, but a pat on the heads, a few facile lies, a couple sympathetic judges and country in ruins. Maybe that's secretly what they wanted all along, chaos. Finally, a reason for all those guns.

Is Ivanka Trump a feckless cunt?

"Five Antique Torsos" (detail) by Damien Hirst

    I suppose, this being my own personal blog, freed from the musty standards of decorum lingering around actual publications like the smell of sulfur at the mouth of certain caves, I should take a moment to dissect the controversy swirling around Samantha Bee's calling Ivanka Trump a "feckless cunt."
    First, let me say, up front, that I don't have a dog in this race. I am not leaping to Bee's defense. Though I've seen dozens of promotions for her program, "Full Frontal"—they run continually on TBS during "The Big Bang Theory"—I wince in expectation when they come on. Bee strikes me as both unsubtle and unfunny, her voice a monotone shout, and the promotions are anything but: they don't promote her, but undercut her, and never made me for a moment tempted to tune in.
     In other words, if she went off the air tomorrow I'd care not a bit. The program itself means nothing to me.
    Onward, to the matter at hand...
   "Feckless" is a good word, meaning,  when used in relation to things, ""ineffective, feeble, futile, valueless," according to my mighty Oxford English Dictionary and of people, "destitute of vigour, energy, or capacity; weak, helpless."
     "Feck" actually is a word, too, by the way, meaning: "efficacy, efficiency, value; hence vigour, energy." 
    I really can't judge if Ivanka Trump is indeed feckless because, in the continuous slow motion train wreck, the ongoing national disaster that is her father's administration, she doesn't merit notice. I can't tell if she is energetically pursuing some goal or sighing and puffing up her bangs and flipping through a shoe catalogue because I haven't been paying attention to her. Besides, nothing anyone could say about Ivanka Trump would make me cringe the way I already did when certain Jews, hopeful that she would counterbalance the Pandora's Box of hatred her father kicked open, hoped aloud that Ivanka, being Jewish, might be "our Esther," referring to the Purim story of the beautiful queen who interceded to save the Jews. Ivanka would protect us.
    Talk about feckless.
    As for "cunt"—sorry mom, no kindergarten asterisk in place of the "u" here, I need to reserve them for footnotes, like this one *—it remains "one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock," according to feminist Germaine Greer, who nevertheless deployed it in conversation as far back as the 1950s. 
    "On one occasion," Christine Wallace wrote in Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew, "she walked into a Melbourne cafe and pronounced loudly, 'I'd like to wrap my big juicy cunt around ...' naming the man who was her current object of desire. To say this attracted attention in late 1950s Melbourne is a considerable understatement."
     I assume the hunky man fled from Greer as from a house afire. I certainly would. The word is not in my vocabulary, because of its blend of coarseness and sexism. I can call a man "a dick," if warranted, and often do, now that I think of it. But I can't see myself calling a woman a cunt, except perhaps under some extreme circumstance that I shrink from contemplating.   
     It is worth noting the full context of what Bee said, since the rondo of outrage typically divorces offenses from their frame. On Sunday, Trump had Instagramed photos of herself nuzzling her son, even as outrage over her father's policy of separating refugees from their children peaked.
      “You know, Ivanka, that’s a beautiful photo of you and your child,” Bee said, “but let me just say, one mother to another: do something about your dad’s immigration practices, you feckless cunt!”

    Right wing commentators thrashed like piranha in a pond. The White House denounced Bee's "vile and vicious" words. 
     Is the word "vile"? While the subject is open to debate, it seems to me the word is more taboo than what I'm required to refer to as "the n-word" which gets a surprising amount of play, both among African-Americans, and also in literature and the sincere use of odious bigots. "Fuck" is as common as breath itself. But "cunt" carries a sting of obscenity without much counterbalance of non-offensive use. Henry Rawson called it "the most heavily tabooed word of all English words" and I certainly would agree: I can't think of any songs that use it**, which can't be said for "fuck" or that other word.
    At least now. But these things change, and are subject to geographical differences and changes in fashion over time. In 2004, the Chicago Tribune, back when it had a woman's section, featured on its front page a story on the word, spelling it "C*NT" in the headline, detailing, if I recall correctly, its supposed acceptance in England.***
    Then editor Ann Marie Lipinski got word of the word being spotlighted, after the section had been printed. She ordered every available Trib hand dragooned and rushed to Freedom Center to yank 600,000 WomanNews sections out of the papers. They might have done too good a job: I could not find an image online, though I would love to see it and post it here, and briefly worried that perhaps it was a false memory. But Michael Miner described the incident in his Hot Type column at the time.
    Though if I had to rank the shocking facts in the above paragraph, I would order them 1) The Tribune had a Sunday section called WomanNews 2) the Tribune once printed 600,000 copies of its newspaper and 3) the Tribune came close to running a story on the popularity of the word "cunt." 
     This might be a topic where less is more. Time to wind up. If you just have to read more, Katy Waldman does a good job picking apart both the controversy and the etymology on the New Yorker's web site. 
     What this boils down to, in my mind, is a collision between the culture of grievance and the ever-changing realm of language. Democrats were nodding and laughing when Bee used the word. Republicans, so adept at equating unequal events, lunged at the crudity to balance out Roseanne Barr, even though calling Valerie Jarrett the daughter of an ape feeds into the worst racist negations of humanity, while Bee, being herself female, in a less culturally-roiled month could have defended tossing a sisterly c-word toward Ivanka without raising an eyebrow. To me, her groveling apology was worse than the crime itself. If you're going to take Vienna, take Vienna.
     But then again, I don't think Bee should be on television, based on all her words that aren't cunt. She just isn't good enough. Though to be fair, maybe the problem is that the person making her promos does a lousy job, picking the wrong bits to highlight. It could be a fantastic show—I've never watched it, so shouldn't judge.
     I wouldn't have touched this topic ... no, wrong word choice ... I would have let the matter slide ... no, I wouldn't have probed ... oh the hell with it. But I noticed a quip on Facebook that I felt duty bound to immortalize; alas the person repeating it didn't note the source. It observed that Ivanka Trump "is not deep enough or warm enough to be a cunt." I think that sums up the situation perfectly. 

* I underestimated her. "Honey, I'm your mother. C'mon," she said, when I tried to warn her off. "Now I HAVE to read it. She said something true."

** On Facebook, a reader offered up Marianne Faithful's 1979 betrayed lover's lament "Why D'ya Do It?": "Every time I see your dick I see her cunt in my bed." Ah the 1970s, we were so forthright in those days. Another offered The Police's 1981 "Rehumanize Yourself," a song particularly apt in our era of resurgent nationalism:

          Billy's joined the National Front
          He always was a little runt
          He's got his hand in the air with the other cunts
          You've got to humanize yourself

*** Bill Savage, who gets around and is the platinum bar of veracity, confirms this:

     “Cunt” is indeed a commonplace and not particularly offensive word in the UK and Ireland, especially in Scotland and urban Ireland. Was talking with a friend who’s married to an Irish guy, about how she had to train him about how that word is heard in the US. In Dublin Irish, it’s practically a punctuation mark. They also use “whore,” pronounced “hoor,” in a way that grates on American ears. Also, on “feck”: that’s a common Irish dialect pronunciation of “fuck,” and someone might be described as a “feckin’ hoor of a cunt” in a pub discussion without raising any eyebrows. Two (three) nations, again divided by a common tongue, to paraphrase Churchill.

Bigotry obvious in Roseanne Barr debacle; less so, the value of professional PR

    My first job out of college was writing publicity in Los Angeles. I sat in a bare office—desk, chair, window facing a parking lot—in Century City, grinding out capsule biographies of 12-year-old BMX bicycle racers, stiff-arming the creeping conviction that, at 22, my life was now officially over.
     The sun-kissed little hellions could not be expected to pause from their moto whips and 540 barspins to write their own profiles, of course. Such things were not done. Writing your own publicity was the realm of the amateur, of mimeographed church newsletters and bulletin board rummage sale announcements. A professional operation like the BMXL—the Bicycle Motocross League—was expected to hire a slick firm staffed with fresh Northwestern graduates such as myself, who would drape them in properly-spelled glory.
     A sensible dynamic which came pouring back to me this week as I sat gaping, open-mouthed, along with the rest of the country, watching Roseanne Barr's reborn career implode, along with ABC's top-rated program, after the comedian sent out a tweet late Monday suggesting that former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett is the progeny of an ape.
     Since many Americans seem clueless as to why this particular insult is different than any random cruelty, a bit of history:
     The United States was founded a slave-owning nation. Our Constitution was an elaborate tap-dance lauding liberty while enabling slavery. But you need more than disingenuous laws to own slaves. You need the slave-owner's mindset. Convincing yourself that some human beings are your personal property based entirely on the color of their skin is a complex self-deception that requires you to believe they are inferior to you. Deciding they are non-human helps, and Roseanne said what every daughter of Dixie felt in 1850, a time when Americans eagerly hardened their hearts, perverted their religious faith and deformed their ethical standards to tell themselves this. After all, money was involved.

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'He really has a deft way with him'—Tony Fitzpatrick on Rick Telander

Swallowtail

     I'd hate to have to decide who is cooler, Rick Telander or Tony Fitzpatrick. 
     Rick is a revered sports columnist who became a star at Sports Illustrated before jumping to the Sun-Times. Tony is a respected artist who performs one-man shows at Steppenwolf and whose visual creations are collected in museums around the world. 
      Rick was the kid for 15 years in "The Sportswriters" on TV. Tony plays mysterious security guard Jack Birdbath in the "Patriot" TV series on Amazon Video.
      Rick played one-on-one with Michael Jordan. Tony hosted the Uptown Poetry Slam when it first began at the Green Mill. 
     See? It's impossible.
     And though I know both men and flatter myself that I am friends with both, I had no idea they knew each other—Rick met Tony 30 years, writing about the Slam. Nor that Rick is an artist. Nor, until a few weeks ago, that he was having a show at Tony's gallery. 
       My first thought was that I should write something, about the wonder, this sports-writer-turned-artist. Then I dithered: maybe I shouldn't—bias, both are pals—then that I should. I ran it past my editor, and he said fine, 
    Then Robert Chiarito beat me to the punch with this sprightly interview with Rick for Chicago magazine.
      Which left me ready to drop the idea. But I had already talked to Tony about the show, and figured his remarks would make for something of a bookend to Rick's observations. Anyway, the show opens Friday, June 1, from 7 to 10 p.m. at Adventureland, 1513 N. Western Avenue. Rick will be there. Tony will be there. There will be beer and wine. And, for what it's worth, I will be there too.

Songbirds

     "He's actually been making this stuff since he was a kid, he just doesn't talk about it. About six years ago, he started coming around, showing me his work, the stuff he made as a result of his trips to the UP. He's kind of a nature kid, and he liked what I did."
     Were you an inspiration? Because I see a connection.
     "He maybe looked at some of the things in my studio. It opened a couple doors to him. But he's got his own thing. He responds to nature in a way that touches me. He really has a deft way with him, making figures and making images. He's obviously a guy who has thought a lot about it. At the age of 69, this man has a second act. That's not the usual way it goes in America. I've encouraged it over the last half a dozen years. Watched him evolve and have something to write about besides the vanities of athletes, the constant push me and pull you between the millionaires and the billionaires. 
     "I think this is in large part his respite from that. It was always there."
     You guys have known each other a long time.
     We first met 35 years ago. He wrote the first press about me I ever had. He said, 'I've been making drawings since I was a kid, I don't really show them to anybody.' Back then, 28 years old, I said 'Why wouldn't you?' I think he came from the culture of being a former jock, went to Northwestern on a  football scholarship, wrote for Sports Illustrated all those years. Perhaps maybe one part of his psyche was he really didn't feel like sharing this with anybody.
     "I didn't really show anybody my art until my junior or senior in high school. I wanted to have ownership in my own life. I suspect, in a very different way, that might resonate for Rick. Don't ask about the mechanics of how thinks. He makes art in part about storytelling. He's always saying, 'It has to be beautiful.' I'm like, 'No Rick it doesn't.' Beauty is sometimes a side product.
    "One thing I really liked is  his fearlessness with art-making. He's not afraid to get in there with watercolors and pens and ink and collage elements. He draws very well, it's been kind of a remarkable symbiosis. I learn a lot from him.
     "Last year, my son brought a few of Rick's pieces in here and said, 'Let's do a show. He's not getting any younger.'  At first I thought I would have to talk him into it, but he's all in. He's ready to show people, ready for people to meet Rick Telander, the other guy. We think we know people from their bylines and what they observe. Part of the thing about making visual art, much say you look outward have to look deeply inward, Rick maybe surprised himself. And me; I'm thrilled we are able to do this." 

"I think the story is more important than the truth"

"The Nose" by Alberto Giacometti 

  
     Lies have a long afterlife for a reason. They scratch an itch, tell a satisfying story. Donald Trump's constant untruths boost his fragile ego, his false claims about the press are a cynical attempt to blunt valid criticism now and undercut damaging revelations certain to come in the future.
    Besides, accepting something at face value as true, because somebody says it's true, or there are news clippings assuming it's true, is easy. Much harder to ask, "Did this really happen?" and start to dig. That takes time, and energy.
    Which can be in short supply with a breaking news story. But are in abundance when writing an advance obituary. So I was disappointed to see a New York Times obituary of Dick Tuck by Robert D. McFadden repeat tales I knew to be untrue, stories that Tuck had admitted were untrue.
    Yes, it was a long time ago, while researching my first book, "If At All Possible Involve a Cow: The Book of College Pranks." But the book was published by St. Martin's Press, featured on the cover of Rolling Stone and on Good Morning America. It wasn't a best-seller, but it wasn't a secret either. McFadden, a Pulitzer Prize winner, couldn't have wondered whether these marvelous events in fact occurred. It isn't as if the University of California at Santa Barbara isn't still there. 
    Maybe it's best just to reprint the Tuck section from my book:

     Of all the pranksters in this book, perhaps the most vexing case is Dick Tuck. Famous for his determined hounding of Richard Nixon, Tuck has attached his name to some delightful pranks—the time he arranged for an old lady to embrace Nixon the day after his 1960 TV-debate drubbing and say, "Kennedy got the best of it last night, but don't worry dear, you'll do better next time." The time he signaled for Nixon's campaign train to pull out of the station while the candidate was delivering a speech from a platform at the back. The time he tricked Nixon, during a visit to San Francisco's Chinatown, to have his picture taken under a huge sign which said, in Chinese WHAT ABOUT THE HUGHES LOAN? alluding to a scandal dogging Nixon at the time.
    So well-known was Tuck for his deeds that when the Watergate scandal first broke, Nixon's henchmen initially blustered that it was merely a Tuckish prank.
     It would be wonderful to say that Tuck is an exception to the Hugh Troy Syndrome—legendary pranksters whose feats melt away when examined closely. Sadly, that is not the case.
     The reason Dick Tuck falls within the book's scope of interest at all is that he traces his Nixon-baiting career to Nixon's run for California's Senate seat in 1950, when the Trickster waged a brutal campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas.
     A junior at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Tuck was a campaign worker for Douglas. He was also in the history class of professor Harry Girvetz, who was contacted by Nixon's campaign headquarters—Tuck says—looking for an advance man to coordinate a campus appearance by Nixon.
     Girvetz, Tuck says, asked him if he would take the responsibility. Tuck accepted.
     "I picked the largest auditorium I could find," Tuck told a newspaper in 1973. "There was nobody on campus at the time and this place must have seated 2,700."
     Tuck also chose a time of 4 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon. Since most classes were held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the campus was largely deserted. "We went to the beach Tuesdays and Thursdays," said Tuck.
     "Of course, only about forty people showed up. Then I held it up so latecomers could arrive. Well, Nixon and everybody there began getting impatient."
     While waiting for the latecomers to arrive, approximately half the people who had shown up left. Nixon impatiently insisted that they get going.
     "Finally, the meeting started and I got up to introduce him. During the introduction I proposed one hundred and three questions for Nixon to answer during his talk."
     "And then I turned to him with a flourish and said: 'And now here's Richard Nixon, who will speak to us on the World Monetary Fund."
    The appearance was a humiliating failure, and as Nixon was leaving, he called Tuck over and asked him his name. Tuck told him.
     "Well, Dick Tuck," Nixon said, "you've just made your last advance."
     A nice tag line to a great prank. The problem is, the entire thing is a lie; worse, one that Tuck has been repeating as true for the past 40 years.
     After examining 30 years of credulous newspaper articles, happily detailing Tuck's various exploits, I tracked down Tuck in New York, and he repeated his stories for me.
     They sounded true enough—filled with detail and largely consistent. Then there were all those clippings. And I certainly wanted to believe him.
     But the rally story started to unravel owing to Tuck's use of Professor Girvetz. No doubt mentioning a professor by name struck Tuck as the sort of small detail that adds veracity to a tale.
     But he overlooked the fact that Girvetz was famous as a liberal Democrat—a building at U of C-Santa Barbara is named after him. The notion of Nixon's campaign staff, no matter how harried, contacting a famous Democrat to set up a campaign visit struck me as highly odd. The archivist at U of C was interested in my quest, and combed the student newspaper for news of the rally. Nothing.
     I called Tuck back to see if he could provide me with more information—perhaps the date of the rally, or the name of a friend who attended. Suddenly, he was no longer the ebullient man I had spoken with before.
     "Your desire for truth troubles me a little bit," he said. "I think the story is more important than the truth."
     To give Tuck credit, under pressure, he finally admitted that not only was the disastrous University of California rally a fiction of his, but so was the train story and other pranks he is credited with.
     In his defense, Tuck claimed that the truthfulness of a story is secondary to its effect—look at Santa Claus, he said.
     But what he fails to see is that the lack of truth completely undermines the value of anything presented as fact. It taints the moral of the story. The reason people embrace Tuck's pranks is not because they are wonderful, timeless tales. People love the punch line—tricky old anal-retentive Nixon, the wily puppet-master, reduced to a laughingstock, red-faced in the empty hall, failing to finish his speech as the train pulls away.
     Tuck's pranks appeared to play upon Nixon's defensiveness, egotism, and lack of humor. To see the importance of it being Nixon, imagine playing a prank on Jimmy Carter, somewhere in Africa, pressing a rag soaked in sugar water against the lips of a starving infant. Not quite the same image. 
     Remember, what brought Nixon down was not the Watergate break-in, per se. Rather, it was his lying to cover it up, shameless and on television, gazing into the camera and distorting the truth for his own benefit.
    Kinda like Dick Tuck.

     I contacted both the New York Times and McFadden and informed them of the problematic sections of the obituary. Neither responded. Which is also disappointing. I'm open to the idea that, as people tend to do when they possess a bit of personal knowledge on a subject, I'm exaggerating the significance of this lapse. But it seemed at least worth mentioning. Truth is either important, or it's not.

Local kid steals spotlight in boffo Beckett ‘Boy’ star turn

Zachary Fewkes (center) with Aaron Monaghan (Estragon, left)
and Rory Nolan (Pozzo)  Photo by J Lauryn Photography.

     Zachary Scott Fewkes is only 12. But he has been skipping school in Lake Zurich recently to hang out on the Chicago waterfront with a pair of Irish bums.
     And his parents approve.
     Then again, these are no ordinary Hibernian hobos, but two of the most famous homeless men in literature: Vladimir and Estragon, the talkative tramps in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” currently on stage at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
     As frustrating as their task is — miserably killing time on a barren heath, with its one bare tree, waiting for someone who never arrives — the roles, played by Marty Rea (Vladimir) and Aaron Monaghan (Estragon) are diva turns compared to Fewkes’ character, “Boy,” who shows up at the end of the first act to deliver a message: “Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won’t come this evening but surely tomorrow.”
     An easy role to overlook. The reviews in the Sun-Times and Trib name four of the five actors — Chris Jones refers to “a quartet of masterful performances,” cutting Fewkes out of the ensemble entirely, even though his character has not only an under-appreciated importance in the meaning of the play, but a unique acting challenge.
     The four adults are seasoned actors from Galway’s renowned Druid Theatre, with a long list of roles and awards between them.

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'People gather to forget about life's realities'

      I actually didn't need to write a column for Monday. A vacation day, in theory. But my column on the Ivan Albright show came together quickly and I realized I could write another and say something about the flag and the protest without cutting into my holiday weekend.
    I'm glad I did. Lots of reaction to my Memorial Day column, from people who loved it, to those who cancelled their subscription.  So much reaction that I began to categorize it. Three types: praise, insult and argument. Of the three, the argument is the smallest group—takes effort—and the most interesting, because a few readers people made various points I hadn't thought of or had under-appreciated. The email I found most persuasive are those who said, in essence: We watch sports to relax. We don't want our societal problems shoved under our noses. We want a beer instead.
     That was summed up best by this, from a Chicago firefighter. I've added paragraph breaks for readability. 

     I enjoyed your article.  This entire situation is controversial and divisive.  One thing I’ve asked and never gotten a satisfactory answer on is regarding the timing of the protests.  I’m a firefighter in Englewood so I’ve seen my share of society’s problems and injustices up close.   
     What if, while in uniform, I decided that instead of doing what my job required I would take a knee in protest.  What would happen?  Would I be considered a person exercising their 1st amendment rights or a person not adhering to requirements of my employment?  
     I don’t have to be a firefighter.  If I don’t like the rules the fire department imposes while I’m in uniform, or out of uniform for that matter, I can resign and pursue a different employment.  
     As for my question above, my opinion is that while I’m in uniform, being paid for my performance in that uniform I am required to adhere to the rules and regulations set forth by the fire department.  If I want to advance any agenda or set of beliefs on my days off, or my own time I am afforded that opportunity and it should not be infringed on.  I believe the same is true in the NFL.  I applaud the players wanting to use there social status as a means to improve society as a whole.  Just do it on their own time.  Not when 55,000 people paid to see them perform in that uniform.  
     It’s no different to me than a music artist preaching during their performance.  I don’t want to hear it, I paid to hear you sing, dance, act.   People go to sporting events, concerts, etc. to escape life’s difficulties if just for a few hours not to be reminded of how bad things really are!  If I wanted that, I’d watch the news.  So I ask again, does the timing of these protests really help social injustice or is it just self centered performers with a look at me complex?  I don’t think we’ll ever truly know.  I do know one thing however.  If I went through with my scenario above about not doing my job and protesting instead I would be disciplined.  Severely.  And rightly so.  When you put on a uniform to go to work whether you’re a UPS driver, police officer, flight attendant, or even a football player you are agreeing to act in a manner that is decided upon by your employer.  Perhaps the most important uniform is that of Military members.  
     On this Memorial Day, as we honor those that gave their life for our freedoms, people who wore that uniform until the end, maybe we should re-examine whether one day a year is enough for their sacrifice.   Maybe, we as a society need to reminded before sporting events and other venues where people gather to forget about life’s realities for a while about the sacrifices that were made to allow us to live as we do.  Maybe standing in a respectful manner for a two minute patriotic song is exactly what this country needs.  Being told to rise, kindly remove all caps, and pay attention as we honor America with the singing of our National Anthem is not forced patriotism, it’s respect that has been bought and paid for by every single person who has worked to make this country the place it is today.   The fact that so many don’t see that is the real problem.  

     I could poke a few holes in this—sports events are to have fun and forget life's harsh realities, when it comes to protest, but also a time to honor the courageous fallen. Which is it? My understanding is that these patriotic displays originated during wartime, as an attempt by professional franchises to deflect the question, "Why aren't these strapping young men fighting?" Seems the public bought the hype all too well, as it often does.
    But I don't want to re-argue the point. I suppose I would add that going to a knee during the national anthem is a very quiet and under-stated kind of protest, and it seems the protesters are being blamed for the over-reaction of the people doing the blaming, for the way their protest was seized and twisted and made into a political football by the president and his ilk. But we can have this discussion another day, and no doubt will. Thanks everybody for writing in. Well, almost everybody...

Do we salute a flag that represents forced displays of what you don't believe?

     I love the flag.
     Mine is frayed and faded from use. I'll put it out on Memorial Day, to honor the fallen, place my flat palm over my heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
     Nobody forces me.
     Like all loves, there was the initial infatuation period. Making construction paper pilgrims in elementary school, becoming fascinated with American history. Reading Samuel Eliot Morison's epic "The Oxford History of the American People" at summer camp in my mid-teens.
     We were the good guys. The Americans kicked Hitler out of Europe. The Rangers up the ropes and into the teeth of the German machine guns at Pointe du Hoc and the raid on the ball-bearing plant at Schweinfurt. When my boys were old enough, I gave them a copy of "Air War Against Hitler's Germany" thinking they'd love it like I did.
     They didn't. Times change. The parts of history that were hardly a distant murmur when I was growing up took their places in the narrative, like silent witnesses slipping into the back of a courtroom. One by one, called to the stand to testify.
     The more you learn about our country, the more conflicted the story becomes. I like to think it's still a basically good story about good people, with continuous lapses. But I understand those who think otherwise. The only actual U.S. Army Ranger I know went into the service a gung-ho patriot and came out a radical anti-imperialist, someone for whom the American tale is one long atrocity, sodden with horror.
     Am I supposed to contradict him? I think he's right, factually. But I'm a basically cheery fellow, and want to believe I live in a good place, with exceptions.
     This mutual respect, despite disagreement — I think he respects me, we drive up together to the same pal's place on Lake Superior every summer — is what makes America a great nation, and not one of those fractured nest of warring wasps that ruins so many others. America: I love it, you condemn it. I think you're wrong, you think I'm wrong, and we have a conversation, driving to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

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'Every military casualty of every war has contributed to our freedom'

  
  

    Patriotic Americans honor the sacrifice of our nation's military without glorifying war. Not always as easy or as clear a distinction to make as it sounds. It can be a short leap from commemorating soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to valorizing every conflict. And not one we should automatically make, because it softens us up for the next war. Which is always waiting around the corner, and easier to start if we feel it's necessary, by definition, because they're always necessary, even laudable. 

MEMORIAL DAY 2008

     We arrived early at the parade this year, setting up our blue canvas folding chairs along Cherry Street, staking out a good spot.
     We needn't have bothered -- when the parade began, a half-hour later, there was still plenty of open curb space. The neighborhood certainly wasn't jamming the route.
     We're a nation at war, I thought, as the well-scrubbed fire trucks strobed by. Yet we don't act that way.
     Maybe that's a function of living in a leafy suburban paradise like Northbrook. Not exactly a military town. We enjoy the benefits, but the price is being paid by someone else.
     After the fire trucks, the vets, carrying the banner of the George W. Benjamin American Legion Post 791. As they approached, those lining both sides of the street stood up and applauded.
     Two marching bands — from the junior high school and the high school — a troop of Boy Scouts and of Brownies and then it was over. Eight minutes, start to finish.
     Afterward, my wife and I went to the park at the center of town, to hear the speeches and sing "The Star-Spangled Banner."
     As the speakers spoke of honor and sacrifice, I held my notebook. But I only jotted down one sentence.
     "Every military casualty of every war has contributed to our freedom," said Maj. Gen. Clifton Capp (Retired).
     I rolled that sentence over in my mind all the lovely Monday afternoon, sitting on my front porch, watching the flag undulate in the spring sunshine, trying to pick apart what it means.
     It's the safe view, of course. Every soldier a hero, every skirmish important, every war unavoidable.
     And as long as it is relegated to the past, you can't argue it — nobody wants to question the value of sacrifice.
     But buried in there is a troubling implication — the suggestion that every time the military is sent somewhere to fight, our freedom is on the line. That's certainly what supporters of the war in Iraq seem to believe. But is it true, or is it circular logic? Are we fighting in Iraq because our freedom is on the line? Or do we feel our freedom is on the line in Iraq because we're fighting there?

              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 28, 2008

How to talk to old people

Astronomicum Caesareum (Metropolitan Museum)

     Like comets, the kids return this time of year. On schedule, their wide elliptical orbits in time and space, through semesters and colleges and foreign countries, loop back, one more time, home to familiar ground. 
    My oldest has impacted back into the house, his room turned from pristine shrine to a crater, strewn with ejecta, rubble, books and clothes and cables and backpacks. 
     A meteor shower of friends zip past the house, kids I've known since grade school, now lean, clean, tall, well-scrubbed proto-adults. Aborning stars all.
    I go out to walk the dog. Some late model SUV in the driveway. At the wheel, a young man curled over his phone. No need to actually walk up to the house and ring the doorbell. That's as old-fashioned as churning butter. A simple text: "In the driveway."
     I step around the front of the car, dip my head, angle into his view. He looks up and is out of the car. These kids move fast.  
     Beaming mightily, as if viewing something highly amusing. 
     Hey, I say, good to see you. What are your plans after school? The Wharton School of Business slingshotting him into the world.
     "Infometrics at Facebook," he says, adding "Silicon Valley," helpfully, just in case "Facebook" draws a blank the way  "infometrics" does—something about numbers, I imagine. Too much pride to ask. Instead I say something positive about Facebook: "Very useful service." 
     "And how about you?" he says. Being polite. We're peers now. Just two employed persons trading data. "Still at the paper?" He doesn't know himself whether the paper exists or went out of business five years ago—how could he? It's something a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
     "Still the same," I say. "Every day somebody employed at a newspaper still has a job is a good day." 
      He smiles, indulgently, benevolently, eyes twinkling.
     "Well, it's good that you're keeping busy," he concludes, as if trying to put the bright spin on something that might otherwise seem impossibly trivial. I make some additional small talk — how are his parents? What movie are the boys seeing? They had hoped for "RBG"—a movie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But it wasn't playing. So "Deadpool 2."  
     My son comes out, and, taking my cue as if dismissed, I wish them a good time, turn and hurry  down the street.
     "Good that you're keeping busy." Good that you're keeping busy!? Ouch. As if my job, my career, my life, were some quaint, marginal activity, a time-killing hobby: making corn husk brooms, spray-painting pine cones and attaching googly eyes so they resemble owls and trying to sell them at craft fairs.  Tossing cards into a hat. A kind of recreational therapy.
    Keeping busy.
    Well, that's how it must seem, I suppose. That's how they talk to old people. No use my complaining about it. That's what old people do. Complain. About the world not paying attention to them enough. Not making a bigger deal out of their pebble of a life. This is how it should be, right? Try to think back to when you were that age. Old folks were a puzzlement, an enigma. Their lives were obviously over—old, failed, neutered, decrepit. And yet they were still here, unwanted, unneeded, shuffling around. These odd alien life forms with their weird post-mortem existence. Nobody has the heart to tell them they've died, not yet, and so, in temporary ignorance, they propel forward a few steps, like decapitated chickens, on muscle memory and habit, leading their sedentary, dwindling, declining existences.
    And it could be worse. When I pause to recount the above exchange to a woman down the street, she says—as soon as she finishes laughing, recovers her breath, eyes watering, gasping, which takes some time—that her daughter, about the same age, will cut her off in the midst of delivering some bit of maternal wisdom with: "Why do you talk?" 
     Double ouch. Girls are harder, all parents I know say that. My boys might think—certainly think, "Why do you talk? Why are your lips moving? Why are you speaking to me, as if I could possible listen, care or benefit?" 
     But they don't actually say those words, out of pity perhaps, or utter indifference. Or maybe politeness. That's it! Politeness. They know how to talk to old people. So take comfort in that. At least they're polite. To our faces. We did that much right.
      This is all as it should be. My wife keeps saying that. This is why we raised them. So many parents have kids sputtering on the launch pad. "3...2...1..." and instead of the big roar and the fiery ascent, a fizzle and puzzled looks all around mission control and an immediate inquiry into What Went Wrong. It would be an insult to those parents for us to regret, too loudly, too much, the perfect blast-off. Of course the youngsters have to scorch the earth, the launchpad, to push against us, in order to overcome the earth's gravity, to defeat the force holding them back, and power upward into the heavens. Of course the ground doesn't like it. You don't have to like it. You just have to accept it, and you don't even have to do that, because what you like or don't like, accept or don't accept, matters a whole lot less now. Comfort yourself with the thought that, maybe, they'll toss a glance back at the blue dot dwindling behind them, maybe a single nod in approval—a good place to come from, the home planet. They'll at least keep track of it for a brief while yet, if only for navigation purposes. A fixed point for them, a reassuring thought for us, to try to believe, while enduring the roar of liftoff and waiting for the ringing in our ears to subside.