Ed Burke grew tired of waiting for his next golden egg

     Oh Ed, Ed, Ed, what is it with you rich guys? You're sitting astride a money machine, chugging away, day after day, year after year, pumping cash directly into your fat accounts. But it just doesn't pump fast enough—is that the problem?
     No. That isn't it. What happens is, you get careless as the years roll on. Holding the honking, flapping goose jammed under one arm, waiting for something shiny to crown. You get impatient, standing there, choking on loose feathers, with your cupped hand, poised beneath its struggling bottom. You just want to move the process along. So you start to work your fingers in, try to get a handhold on that slippery sucker and pull the golden egg out.
     Into a federal wiretap. With Burger King. Over a driveway.
     Of course. It's always something trivial. Crystal and chairs and postage stamps in Dan Rostenkowski's basement. Mr. Chairman also went down after huffing power and money for so long it made him lightheaded.
     The charge isn't trivial: attempted extortion. Though to me, the crime is what's legal: the cosiness of our leaders and big money already violates the public interest on a normal day, no chargeable crimes committed. The guys running the city do business with the businesses they're supposed to be monitoring. The standard of excellence being: no quid pro quo. So long as you don't speak the words, "Give me the money and I'll do whatever you want," clearly, into an FBI wiretap.
     You don't have to say it. They know what to do. Manus manum lavat. It should be on the city seal. "One hand washes the other."
     Ed Burke belongs on the seal too, instead of the baby. He is a minor Chicago landmark, and I'd be sorry to see him go, sort of. Not Field's but Carson's. Not the Water Tower but Water Tower Place. You might not ever go there anymore—who does?—but you'd still hate to see the thing torn down.

To continue reading, click here. 

'Up against the wall'

Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 by James McNeill Whistler

    "Bullies don't win," Freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) told a cheering room of supporters Thursday night, recalling something she told her son. "We're going to go in and impeach the motherfucker."
     An informal remark, not an official statement. But the all-important video was taken, and the first Palestinian-American member of the House was instantly the talk of Washington, along with her use of the king of George Carlin's famed Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. 
     The obscenity caught notice, particularly, of Republicans ever eager to play the victim and fixate upon someone who seems more vile than themselves. Though to me, the ... well not offensive, but regrettable part of the statement was not the multi-syllabic obscenity, but the word that came before: "impeach."  Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors are of yet undocumented, and should impeachment come, it is hoped that it can be in the sense of patriotic duty and seriousness of purpose entirely lacking in the GOP, not tossed out in a moment of profane exuberance. Rep. Tlaib reminds us, as if it were necessary between anti-vaxxers and safe spaces, that the right wing does not hold a monopoly on bush league ridiculousness.
     The New York Times bit the bullet and printed the word, undashed in a front page story on Saturday, though let it rip at the end of the 11th paragraph, deep inside the paper.
     Needless to say, this is not the first time the word has been used, and curiosity sent me reaching for my well-worn Second Supplement Edition of Wentworth and Flexner's "Dictionary of American Slang," only to initially find it missing—no separate entry, no usage note after "fuck . [taboo] v.t. To cheat, trick, take advantage of, deceive, or treat someone unfairly..." 
    Nothing where it rightfully belong, before "Mother Machree" (defined as "an alibi; a sad story, usu. fictitious or exaggerated told to elicit sympathy, avoid punishment, etc." a useful word to have in the verbal arsenal when dealing with our president).
     This couldn't be, not in a book published in 1975. And sure enough, there it was, tucked into the appendix of  "terms that have come into use since 1967:" "motherfucker [taboo] 1 a low, despicable, base person. This is now the most derog. of all common U.S. epithets."
     The note goes on, tracing mother-based obscenities to Spanish-speaking countries, then this pops out, "The dislike may apply to any characteristic: selfishness, rudeness, laziness, unethical behavior, etc." which makes me suspect that, rather than being criticized for her crudity, Rep. Tlaib should be lauded for her precision: the right tool for the right task.
      Flexner (who wrote the appendix; Wentworth died in 1965) traces the word to African-American argot, spread to the general population through military service in World War II, and points out that it replaced the weakening "son of a bitch."
    But that's a mere foretaste to the full treatment found in Oxford University Press' highly useful (though timidly-titled) "The F-Word," edited by Jesse Sheidlower, whose dozen page exegesis on "motherfucker" begins with a memorable usage from 1918, cited in a letter in Journal of American History of all places: "You low-down Mother Fuckers can put a gun in our hands but who is able to take it out?" Full examination is given to the term as a compliment, particularly among people of color, including this, spoken by a Puerto Rican drug dealer, overheard by John Cheever and recorded in a 1971 letter: "Oh what a cool motherfucker was that Machiavelli."
     I have to admit, it isn't a word that I can recall ever using myself—I blame those four syllables, which are a lot to squeeze out in the highly-charged situations where it might be used. Though now that I reflect, in my mouth the word would also carry an echo of cultural appropriation. Samuel L. Jackson can use it in "Pulp Fiction;" I can't.  (Not only can Jackson use it, he does, 26 times in the film, conveying the full range from compliment to insult, often in the same exchange. "You're a smart motherfucker, that's right," he says to Brett, interrupted his Big Kahuna Burger breakfast toward the beginning of the movie then, when Brett is slow to answer a question: "English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?")
     That should suffice for our purposes for today.
     Though I should note, in parting: George Carlin was wrong. Not only could you say "motherfucker" on television, but three years before he first performed that bit, someone already had—Grace Slick, singing with the Jefferson Airplane on the Dick Cavett Show on Aug. 19, 1969, the day after Woodstock.
     During the song "We Can Be Together"—at about 3:58 in the video—she sings the word once, and, for you fans of irony, I will post a little context. Lyricist Paul Kantner said he was inspired by the popular Black Panther battle cry:

     Up against the wall
     Up against the wall, motherfucker
     Tear down the wall.
     Tear down the wall. 

      She sings it clear as day.
      Which brings to mind another song, this one by Peter Allen:
      "Everything Old is New Again."

'She belongs somewhere else'

     I was researching Monday's column and came across this, from a decade ago, and realized it had never been posted on my blog. Which it should be, because it is one of those columns where a simple practical matter—what to do with this woman's ashes?—uncovers a tangled history of human emotion, from the homeless man sneaking into the factory where he once worked to sleep to the currency exchange owner in his tiny bulletproof cell kept company by a dead woman in a shopping bag. Among the odd things I've done in this job—talked to people smoking crack on Lower Wacker Drive, watched a breast lift performed, sat in the back seat of a sheriff's car with a hooker, waiting for her to proposition me—having this lady's urn on the corner of my desk ranks right up there.

     Neva Evans has spent most of the last decade in a Jewel shopping bag tucked away in the cluttered back room at the Ashland-Diversey Currency Exchange.
     Or at least her earthly remains have, ashes in a funerary jar with a mother-of-pearl finish.
     "Good morning, Neva," the owner of the currency exchange, Arnie Berezin, would say as he begins each day at 5 a.m.—which he does, seven days a week, cashing checks and issuing money orders in a tiny alcove decorated with business cards and rolls of coins. A $400 money order costs 85 cents.
     "I'm a nickel-and-dime business," says Berezin, 62. "We don't get rich here."
     The ashes were given to him by a customer, Michael H. Evans, about eight years ago. Mike Evans had worked at Chicago Transparent Products, a nearby plastic bag factory on Paulina. He liked sports, he liked Stephen King novels and he liked beer, but he adored his wife. Then Neva Evans died after an asthma attack.
     "His whole life revolved around his wife, his whole life revolved around his job, in a couple years, first he lost his wife, then he lost his job," says Berezin. "He started drinking heavy and that was the last we saw of him."
     For a while, Evans lived in the old abandoned factory where he once worked —he would sneak in at night to sleep there.
     "Mike Evans was a good guy," says Berezin, choking back tears. "He just never bounced back. The last we heard, he was walking up and down Paulina. He was a lost soul."
     Berezin is the opposite of a lost soul -- he knows exactly who is he and what he does. His parents owned a grocery store on the Southwest Side—he used to work at the store, but they sold it and in May 1973, he bought this currency exchange. The space he spends 13 hours a day behind thick bulletproof glass is maybe two feet deep and six feet across.
     "Cells are bigger," he says. "This is my cell. Some people think I'm crazy, but I put two kids through college."
     He has no employees. Since 1973 the exchange has been closed exactly one day—his father's funeral in 2003.
     He has no hobbies. He never thought about trying to expand.
     "No, I was always comfortable here," he says. "I'm not much of a risk taker."
     Berezin would give Mike Evans $5 or $10 sometimes—not a standard currency exchange practice.
     "I felt heartbroken for him," says Berezin, who calls his customers "kiddo" and tries to help them navigate the economic paperwork they thrust at him through the well-worn metal trough.
     "He cares about a lot of his customers," says Berezin's wife, Sara. "A lot of them depend on him. The economy's bad, some people are really having a hard time. Some can't read, they can't handle money. He tries to help them out."
     One day Mike Evans came in toting a shopping bag. "He said, 'Arnie, could I leave this bag in here?' '' remembers Berezin.
     "I couldn't say 'No' to him. He was a good customer and he was homeless."
     Neva Evans stayed. Mike Evans never came back
     "I always hoped Mike would walk in this door and it never happened," Berezin says. "If he's alive, I'd like to know why he never came back here, because he loved her."
     Over the years, Berezin has called funeral homes, to no avail.
     "I tried everything," he says. "Nobody would take it off my hands."
     But he just couldn't throw the ashes out.
     "It doesn't belong in a Dumpster," he says. "It's a person."
     Lately, he has been worrying about what will happen to Neva.
     "I'm not going to live forever," he says. "This place is not going to be here forever. What's going to happen to that bag? I tell people and they laugh at me, and ask, 'Why don't you toss it away?' Well, what if that was your mother? What if that was your daughter? I just couldn't do that."
     He asks me to take the urn with me, saying, "It doesn't belong here. It belongs somewhere else, with family members or buried. It doesn't belong at the back of a currency exchange. It doesn't belong here."
     As I am leaving, Berezin tears up again, and says goodbye to the urn. I ask if he is certain he really wants me to take it.
     "She doesn't deserve to be on a concrete floor," he says. "She belongs somewhere else, other than here. That's a human being in there."
     I take the ashes home and set them on the corner of my desk, then find out what I can about the woman inside.
     Neva Louise Grace Evans was born in Philadelphia, Miss., on Sept. 4, 1948, to George and Maudine Grace. Her family came to Chicago, and she graduated from Wendell Phillips High School in 1966. She married Michael H. Evans in 1985 and died at the age of 51 on April 9, 2000.
     She had three daughters from a previous marriage—Lisa Grace, of Alpharetta , Ga.; Michelle Grace and Felicia Grace; plus two sisters, Patricia Baker and Iris Heard, and a brother, Dwayne Adams. Any kin are invited to contact me at the newspaper. The earthly remains of Neva Evans will be waiting for you, in a funerary jar with a mother-of-pearl finish.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 11, 2009

I won't leave you hanging. Two days later, I published this:

UPDATE

     Many readers contacted me after Wednesday's story about the sojourn of Neva Evans' ashes at the Ashland-Diversey Currency Exchange. Some knew her and reflected on what a lovely lady she was. Some were funeral home directors, offering a spot for the urn.
     One was Danny Evans, who put me in touch with his brother, Mike Evans, the man who left his wife's remains eight years ago.
     "I did go into hell," he said. "I've lived in shelters. I wasn't in Chicago. I couldn't find a job here for a long time, so I hitchhiked down to South Carolina and Florida. I came back; I'm recently moved in with a girl and have a part-time job. I forgot all about this. I'm sick to my stomach about it. I should have never forgotten about her, but you lose track of pretty much everything . . ."
     That's where we should draw the veil, except to add that I also heard from Neva Evans' sister and her three daughters.
     "No one knew until your article," said daughter Lisa Grace. I'll be handing the urn over to them this morning. "Now she's back with her girls," said Grace.
     Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

     That last sentence will require no translation for Catholics, who hear it as ashes are smeared on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday: "Remember O man you are dust, unto dust you shall return."

Egyptian canopic jars, late period. These actually did not contain ashes, but the organs of the deceased,  removed for mummification (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 

Trump's border wall completed in latest triumph for president

     NOGALES, Arizona —The massive border wall demanded by President Donald Trump was completed today, spanning the United States’ entire 2,000 mile southern border with an impenetrable defense against the disease, filth and criminality brought by immigrants.
     Twenty feet high, made of reinforced concrete topped with gleaming spikes, it represents a stupendous achievement both in the speed in which it was built — less than two years since the president took office — and for its financing: the entire $42 billion dollar cost borne by the nation of Mexico.
     “We defer to the inexorable will of President Donald Trump,” said Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, signing a check for the final payment. “This should help our neighbor to the north remain unviolated by illegal entry of the criminals and rapists that Mexico creates in such profusion.”
     The governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, wielded a trowel and tapped in the final, ceremonial gold-plated brick, then declared a statewide Day of Jubilee to mark the occasion, giving governmental workers a paid vacation to “enjoy their families, now free from the threat of being murdered by invasive hordes of Guatemalan refugees” and praised the clear eye and firm hand of Trump for bringing about this …

                                                                *****

     There, that should do it. Trump is famous for his brief attention span. By now he’ll have looked up, beaming, and been distracted by a shiny object. Clip the above and send it to the White House, congratulating Trump on his stunning success. Or, better, tweet it to him. Problem solved.

To continue reading, click here.

"You ordered THAT?!"

Paladar, 2252 N. Western, has china displayed, a tribute to the old Cuban custom of giving gifts of china to married couples.

     The house is filled with boys again, sprawled on the sofa, watching television, leaving their shoes by the door, whipping up unexpected recipes—Russian baked milk, Japanese pancakes, mulled wine. I was in the kitchen, preparing something when one sentence spoken by my older son cut through the clatter.
      "Complaining is part of the fun," he said.
     I stopped what I was doing, carefully dried my hands on my apron, and briskly walked around the island.
     "That's my son," I said, smiling and kissing him on the head.
     It's true. Not that a person wants to point out the negative. It's just natural. And joyous, in that it is enjoyable. The scratching of an itch, a sense of justice served, of truth defended.
     That said, this is not a complaint. I want to be clear. I almost didn't write the following, because I did not want to be seen as complaining.  It is not a criticism; more of a marvel, the sharing of a wonder.
    Last month, my wife and I swung by Tony Fitzpatrick's gallery for a couple openings one Friday after work, and thought we'd grab a late dinner afterward. I examined the options north on North Western Avenue between the gallery and the Kennedy, and settled on Paladar Restaurant and Rum Club. Cuban food, mmm—tasty and not found on every street corner in Chicago.
     The cheery, brightly lit room was utterly empty when we arrived at 8:45 p.m., and the owner greeted us with warmth and sat us at a prime table, explaining the specials of the night. The Carne al Carbon, very good, he said, a speciality of the house.
    I admit, I do not always attend carefully to the rendition of specials the way I should. I like to keep my own counsel. Sort of listening with one ear while scanning the menu with the other....
     Wait a second...
     You get my point. Anyway, he left, we ordered our drinks—homemade limeade, always a good sign. The waitress was friendly and efficient. I ordered the palomilla, a marinated top sirloin, thinly-sliced and covered with onions. I like onions. The meal came. We set to eating. Yum. The owner drifted by to check things out, looked at my plate. His face fell, he said something that nobody associated with a restaurant has ever said to me in a lifetime of vigorous restaurant patronage, a sentiment that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life.
     "You ordered that?!" he said, aghast.
    I explained that I happen to like onions. I did not add that the speciality of the house he recommended cost $22.95 and, economical man that I am, this seemed a solid value at $16.95 and something I would like just as much if not more. I ended up nearly apologizing for my order, promising that I would certainly order the special upon my return.
     And I will. It was good food well-served in a fun setting. I waited nearly a month to relay this, because I wanted to assess, in my own mind, whether I was criticizing the place. I hope I'm not—honestly, I was delighted with his remark. It spoke of passion, of knowledge of their menu, and that invariably some dishes are better than others. Not to mention that rarest of all qualities nowadays: candor.
     Paladar was not crowded for late on a Friday—another couple came in during the hour we were there, and two guys sat at the bar. I bet the place is a really good time, particularly if you can partake of their extensive rum menu. So you should definitely consider checking the restaurant out. And if you do, take my advice: keep the menu closed. Pay attention, then order the special, whatever it is.
   

‘People come into focus’ — New Yorker sophistication crafted at Chicago landmark

  

     Tom Bachtell could work at home.
     “I could,” he agrees. “But I’d hate it. I’d feel so alone.”
     So despite his boss being 800 miles away in New York City, to do his job Bachtell leaves his home in Lincoln Square and travels to the South Loop, to his studio on the 14th floor of the Monadnock Building. 

   “I love going into the 7-11,” he said. “I love seeing all the crazy people there. It’s sort of a latter-day-form vaudeville.”
     Bachtell has a singular profession. He is an artist for The New Yorker. For 30 years, he has drawn the elegant caricatures that grace the magazine.
   I met him through his late spouse, Andrew Patner, immediately inviting myself to his studio. After about five years of pestering, he agreed. We talked about his growing up in Ohio, coming here, becoming a couple with Patner, the Sun-Times music critic and beloved WFMT host who died in 2015.
     “I thought about the world we came from in Cleveland, what we made of it, and then coming to Chicago and gradually becoming a part of the world here,” Bachtell said, as soft classical music burbled in the background. “And how fortuitous it was I met Andrew, and  how we were doing similar things. Andrew integrated me into Chicago and taught me how to love Chicago. When I met Andrew, I fell in love with him like that.”      
     He snapped his fingers.
     “He was an engaged person, constantly trying to engage with the world. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
     I pointed out that outsiders have a way of coming to Chicago and finding fascination.

To continue reading, click here.

Oak Park native Robert T. Fanning Jr., friend of elk, foe of wolves, dead at 69

Bob Fanning

  
    Among the many benefits of being friends with Rick Telander has been getting to know some of his friends. One of the more distinctive is Rory Fanning, whom Rick met when the former Army Ranger was walking across the United States to benefit the foundation of his late buddy, Pat Tillman. 
     When Rory's father passed away last week, he contacted me, looking for someone at the paper to write the obit. Of course I volunteered. It was interesting to learn about his father's complicated life. Not everything can be worked into an obit, and there was one aspect that never made it onto the page, but is worth mentioning here. Rory and his dad had some rocky times in their relationship—I don't think I'm speaking out of school saying that; a lot of fathers and sons do, I certainly did. But when his dad passed, Rory stepped up and tried to present him in his best possible light, and to make sure people knew about him the way he wanted to be known. Not every child writing an obit does that. Holding a grudge is so easy many people do without considering there is another path, but Rory stood up for his dad at the end, even though his dad wasn't always standing behind him, and I admire that.  I've learned a lot from knowing Rory—he's a marketing executive at Haymarket Books, and doesn't accept the truisms of American life that I do, or did. But I think this moment gave me something that I'm going to value and try to apply in my own life.

     Bob Fanning not only ran with the wolves, he liked to kill them.
     “He was a man’s man, a bear hunter, a horseback rider, there was no one like Bob,” said his lifelong friend, Frank Murnane, owner of the Murnane Cos. “They broke the mold with Bob Fanning; one of a kind, in all respects.”
     Fanning’s lifelong animosity toward wolves came from a desire to protect elk, as founder of Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd. In one of those epic battles that roil the great expanse of the West, between federal power and state authority, between environmentalists and ranchers, you knew exactly where Bob Fanning stood.
     “Lock and load and saddle up while there is still snow on the ground,” Fanning declared, after the governor of Montana encouraged local ranchers to shoot troublesome wolves on their property in 2011, the year Fanning ran for Montana governor, part of a pack of Republican hopefuls, though he did not win.
     As to how an Oak Park native, graduate of Holy Cross High School in River Forest, ended up in Big Sky Country, well therein lies the tale of Robert T. Fanning Jr., 69, who died on Christmas Eve, in Billings, Montana.
     He was born in 1949, one of six brothers — Danny, Kevin, Brian, Quinn and Tim, and a sister, Mary. Their father, Robert T. Fanning Sr, was a stockbroker who owned Fanning Shoes in Oak Park, and mother Ann was a homemaker.To continue reading, click here.

A New Year’s political lexicon to help decipher 2019

     Anyone sorry to see 2018 go? A show of hands. Anybody? Didn’t think so. While the year was fine for me, personally — anyone who climbs to the top of a Mayan pyramid in Central America, hikes the Appalachian Trail in Virginia and sees both sons graduate from college in a single year isn’t in any position to complain — it does hurt to see our once great nation rolling in the mud of humiliation day after day.
     The biggest recommendation that can be made for 2018 is the lead-pipe certainty that 2019 will be worse, as the dogs of justice close in on an ever-more isolated Donald Trump while his adult minders flee and his defrauded base, lost in their own private dreamworld, howl outrage.
     They yell in a language all their own, one that often needs translation. This month dictionary companies have been trotting out their “Word of the Year,” but those really are not helpful, divided between faddish terms that will never gain popularity — Cambridge Dictionary chose “nomophobia,” the fear of losing your phone — or endorsements of the obvious. Oxford Dictionaries chose “toxic” as its 2018 word of the year.
     Gee, ya think? Why focus on a single word? I believe it would be more useful in our struggle to get through 2019 to understand changes in common words. Words whose definitions have become deformed, by those whose entire lives are an ongoing assault on factuality and meaning.
     So here I present my 2019 political lexicon, a highly abbreviated but I hope still comprehensive list. All usage examples are taken from actual emails or tweets sent to me:
     agenda: n. An imaginary coordinated directive that dictates the otherwise ordinary, independent actions of members of a despised group, often used to characterize gay people attempting to lives their lives. “The Democrats are committed to advancing the LGBT agenda and forcing the rest of America to accept, support and pay for it.” (National Organization for Marriage).

To continue reading, click here.

The one word from Trump that reduced Mueller to blubbering jelly: The State of Blog V

      Even someone viscerally against the Orwellian abuse of language has to be careful the practice doesn't rub off. Troubled times tend to be absorbed by osmosis, resist though you may. 
      So as I contemplated today's analysis of the fifth full calendar year of the blog, my first thought was "Bad is good."
      Can that be right? 
      The bad part certainly is. 
      After four years of steady, double-digit growth, everygoddamnday.com hit a wall in 2018. Things were clicking along, June, July and August all above 70,000 hits a month. Then the numbers stallled, and began to slide. By November and December, we were back in the 50s, and the average for the year was 65,893 a month, a couple thousand less than last year.
     What happened? It's possible that, having run out of things to say, I became repetitious and readers turned away. I certainly get tired of myself some days. Maybe the practice of reading for meaning has fallen from favor, and the time once spent here is now spent on Facebook watching videos of people in foreign countries being narrowly missed by careening trucks.
     Or ... speaking of Facebook ... someone working there, and at Twitter, might have turned a dial. The readership numbers are sluggish, they can't get airborne. Some days I can feel the weight, sitting on my back, as I vigorously flap. Mother Jones, in its state-of-the-publication report earlier this month (see, it isn't just me) blamed Facebook for fighting so-called "fake news" by muffling all news:

     And then Facebook delivered the sucker punch. This past January, Zuckerberg announced what amounted to the end of the “perfect personalized newspaper”: Facebook was pivoting back to baby photos. The algorithm would ramp up the number of posts from friends and family and dial way back on news. Not just the fake kind. Any kind.
     Today, you are far less likely to see posts from Mother Jones or any other publisher than you were two years ago, even when you’ve specifically followed that page. Facebook reach for most serious publishers has plummeted—so much so that some are even breaking their rule against disclosing internal analytics. Slate recently revealed that it sees 87 percent fewer Facebook referrals than it did in early 2017. Many other news organizations have taken a hit in the same range.

     In that light, EGD's stumble is not only explained, but perhaps even a sign of strength for not being far worse. Hence my bad news being good. So it isn't quite in the same league as "War is peace."

     And besides, I've always insisted that this endeavor is not metric driven. Here is my chance to prove it. The blog as an outgrowth of my newspaper column, and an outlet for creativity. Not to mention a chance to do something routinely. I used to feel guilty of periodically filling a day by reposting old columns that are germane to this or that topic. But the Tribune reprints old John Kass columns in its actual newspaper, and they were shit the first time around. So nothing to feel guilty about. I certainly like reading them again, and I wrote them.

     So how was the content in 2018, to use a word I dislike ("content," though "2018" isn't high on my list either)? Three of my top ten all time best-read posts are from this year, led by this plea to help the Guildhaus, which got almost 10,000 hits (and, I should blushingly point out, raised $20,000 for the sober living facility in Blue Island).
     I believe it's been a varied, interesting year. In January, we gazed out this window in Paris and visited Belize to learn about the Mennonite community unexpectedly found there.  In February EGD ran a series of columns marking the auto show, including getting behind the wheel of a Bentley. In March we visited Mayan ruins one day, and talked tomato soup with the folks at Campbell's the next. In April, the Apollo 8 astronauts discussed circling the Moon, and by May we took in the Ivan Albright show at The Art Institute.  

     In July, I drove down to Granite City to hear Donald Trump speak, and I'm proud that, rather than regurgitate the preconceived notions I had brought with me, I talked to people and reported on what unfolded in front of me.
     We had dinner at Alinea, coffee at Caffe Regio in New York City, and hiked Stony Man Trail in the Shenandoah National Forest in Virginia. 
     Again and again, I kept up what I hope was a steady directed fire at the Trump abomination, brass rhetorical shell cases flipping over my shoulder as I tried to keep a bead on the slipperiest politician ever, jinking back and forth, emitting obscuring clouds of prevarication. Nobody is going to care about this blog 100 years from now—they barely care about it now, as I write the thing—but if anybody does, I hope it's because of the rhetorical ack-ack fire I marshaled in support of cherished American values, against the assault of the president backed by wave after wave of the defrauded dupes who'll back him to the end. 

     That's grandiose, and I apologize for it. Wherever the beating heart of significance might be, we are far from it. However. There is an EGD community, of sorts. Tate birddogging my mistakes every day, Grizz and Shari and Thomas and Tony and Paul and Sandy and Coey and Bitter Scribe and all the rest. Thank you reading this thing, and taking it seriously, and adding your own spin on the conversation. Thank you for course to Marc Schulman, at Eli's Cheesecake, who has supported the blog since its inception. Thank you to my bosses at the Sun-Times, whose complete indifference to this blog has been their greatest gift. Thank you to my wife for no longer suggesting that I just chuck the thing and go back to knitting.
     So in 2018, the blog, like the country, did not thrive, but it did, again like the nation, endure. And that is certainly an accomplishment. My plans for 2019 are to hold my position until relieved. Or, in the immortal words of Dr. Johnson: "I will be conquered; I will not capitulate." I suggest you do the same.

     

     

The Saturday Snapshot #21

     Friday I bought a ticket to fly to Raleigh, North Carolina next month, to report on a story. A beautiful part of the country, one I'm looking forward to visiting again—readers might recall our family trip to Marshall, North Carolina four years ago.  So it seems a perfect time to run this photo of Gabriela and Sofia, submitted by faithful reader Sandy Klemp, who writes: 

     The photo shows Gabi and Sofi looking out onto Grandfather Mountain in Linville, North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains.... Linville is about 18 miles SW of Boone, North Carolina. Boone is one hour from the edge of the Smoky Mountain National Park. It’s quite brilliant in Spring and Fall and is home to Appalachian State University.

    The nickname for ASU students, by the way, is "The Mountaineers," and the school has its own climbing wall and a "Base Camp" in its student center where kids can sign up for all sorts of excursions—rock climbing in the Linville Gorge, mountain biking, white-water rafting on the French Broad River—which, now that I think of it, I've done. I recommend it. Thanks Sandy for sharing the photograph.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, in business 250 years, hoping for 250 more

     December certainly snapped by, nearly. Did you celebrate the Illinois Bicentennial earlier this month? Me neither. The event left me cold, and I sense I’m not alone. Residents of Illinois aren’t like those of places such as Colorado or Maine—no strong collective identity. Instead, we’re Chicagoans or Downstaters, proud Illini alumni or denizens of Kane County. A guy on my block has an “Ohio is my home” bumpersticker. I’ve never seen anything similar for Illinois and don’t expect to.
     The state bicentennial wasn’t even the only big Illinois anniversary this month. There was the 250th of the oldest business based in the state … anybody? … Encyclopaedia Britannica, founded in Scotland in 1768, transplanted to the United States in 1901, falling under the control of Sears Roebuck in 1920, then donated to the University of Chicago in 1943, its continuing corporate contortions since then based in Chicago.
     As a reference geek, I am the proud owner of not one but two sets — the beige-bound 1964 edition, in boxes in the attic, which my parents bought to prove we were educated people and I couldn’t bear to part with, and a 1998 edition within arm’s reach of my desk. I like it because it gives me clear, concise information often obscured by the muck on the Internet. When I went to Carbondale last year for the big eclipse, I boned up on solar eclipses and the sun with my Britannica. The way-cool fact that helium was discovered in a spectroscopic analysis of the sun — helios is Greek for “sun” — was cribbed out of the Britannica.
     Sears is a tottering ruin. But Britannica is still going strong, according to CEO Karthik Krishnan, who marked the anniversary by chatting up the media.
     “Britannica is doing great,” he said. “We had an outstanding year this year. Instead of waiting for people to come to us, we’re focusing on how to get where people are and providing them information in a meaningful way.”
     Isn’t that what the internet does?

To continue reading, click here.

"As imposing as an alp"—RIP Mary Cameron Frey

Mary Cameron Frey, left, with former Sun-Times
managing editor Joycelyn Winnecke

     I was sad to hear that my former Sun-Times colleague Mary Cameron Frey died Wednesday. She was a doyen from another era, the intersection of upper crust society and daily newspaper journalism. I once proposed a story to Chicago Magazine to be called "Great Dames" that would feature Mary and Eppie Lederer and Margie Korshak and other assorted majestic women, all gowned and collected for a group photo. I can't imagine who'd be in that photo today.
     You can read her obituary in the Sun-Times here.
     Mary had a memorable cameo in my recovery memoir, "Drunkard," which I will reprint here to give those who didn't have the pleasure of knowing her a sense of what she was like.

     "Neil!" calls Mary Cameron Frey, the society columnist in the office next door. She is a grande dame, wealthy, in her sixties.
     "Yes, Mary?" I answer, stripping off my coat and tossing it on a chair.
     "I need to have a serious talk with you."
     "I'll come over seriously," I say, bustling around the corner. 
     "Sit down," she orders. I quickly sit, regarding the colorful stack of large gardening books on her desk.
     "Peter Baker is coming back."
     "I know. I'm excited."
     "He's a drunk."
     "I'm a drunk." 
     "He is what they call in the Catholic Church 'an occasion for sin' and he is going to lead you astray."
     Mary is wearing her standard office uniform, which I think of as "Hyannis Port Casual"—khaki pants and a light blue Polo man's shirt, her steel-gray hair made up as if for a cotillion, every strand sprayed into place, so she can slip away after work, throw on a dragonfly green ball gown, and be all set for the Women's Auxiliary Board of Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Annual Glitter Gala and Silent Auction.
     "I can sin on my own," I say, thinking about my recent relapse. "Look, Peter is the only boss I've ever worked for in my whole career who cared for me and helped me."
     She makes a sour face.

     "I've cared for you," she says, which is true. For years, I thought of Mary as the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, for her habit of ordering about photographers at charity events and brusquely banishing nonentities from pictures as if not being famous and rich were embarrassing personal flaws. But Mary showered me with e-mails while I was at rehab. At first I suspected she was fishing for dirt. But after a while—reading the genuine concern, the way she signed them "love"—it dawned on me that she might actually be sincere, and that while Mary may have imperiously treated me as the help before, my fall has touched some chord within her and she truly cares.
     "You're not my boss."
     "That's true, but I'm watching out for you, and Baker is no good. I don't know why we're bringing him in here. I've been at black tie dinners where he shows up in an open-necked orange shirt."
     I should have laughed at that, but one doesn't laugh at Mary Cameron Frey. She's as imposing as an alp.
     "His father was a coal miner," I say.
     "My father was a simple man and I'm sure yours was too," she says. "That's no excuse."
     "My father was a nuclear physicist," I mutter.
     She says she has a dear friend who never stopped thinking of alcohol, never. He goes to two meetings a day.
    "That'll pass," I say.
     "It's been thirty years."
     "I'm lucky then, because it's not an issue for me," I say, mustering bravado. "We'll play racquetball."
     "He's coming here to play racquetball?"
     "He brings a vibrancy to the paper. Ten marines get killed and we put it back on page 42. The Tribune had it as their line. Baker won't make that kind of mistake."
    "Well, we'll see what he does here. But you"—and she aims a lacquered fingernail at me—"watch yourself."
    "I will," I promise, backing out.
     "You know I love you and I don't want anything to go wrong," she calls after me. 

Garry McCarthy tips his hand

     So let's say I'm planning to rob a bank—I'm not, so don't be alarmed.  

     But hypothetically, say I'm going to. I don't want to pull the heist alone, and risk straining my back, lugging all that loot. So I recruit my pals, Bugs and Ox. We case the joint, as we criminals like to call locations we're going to rob, we divvy up roles. Bugs and Ox go into the bank, and since I'm the mastermind, l reserve for myself the task of driving the getaway car. Seems safer.
     But inside the bank, things go wrong. Ox trips over a free toaster display, falls on a security guard and crushes him. The poor guard dies. The law says that not only can Ox be found guilty of the guard's death, but so can Bugs and even me, outside in the idling car, because I'm a participant in the crime that caused the death.
     That makes sense. When you're robbing banks. What about lesser crimes? Out on bail, awaiting my trial for the bank heist, I carelessly jaywalk. A police officer heads in my direction to give me a ticket and is killed by a bus. Also murder? The basic facts are the same: a lesser crime that results in the death of someone.
     You see where I'm going with this.
     Edward R. Brown is accused of discharging a gun into the air on Dec. 17. Responding to the gunshot, officers Conrad Gary and Eduardo Marmolejo were struck by a South shore Line commuter train and killed. Their deaths cast a pall of public grief over Chicago's holiday season.
     Brown, who has no criminal record, was charged with felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm.
     This was not enough, speaking of reckless, for former police superintendent Garry McCarthy. He went on right wing talk radio Sunday to demand that the 24-year-old, who has no criminal record, be charged with more serious crimes "up to felony murder," though how doing that either brings the dead officers back or reduces the future occurrence of stupid acts that draw attention of the police is a mystery, one perhaps answered by the fact that McCarthy is in the scrum of candidates running for mayor. He personally condemned his mayoral opponent, in the scrum of 21 candidates now and perhaps one-on-one after February, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and her protege/state's attorney, Kim Foxx.

To continue reading, click here.

Lightweight

     Did you get what you wanted for Christmas? Did you run downstairs and grab the packages under the tree, rip off the wrappings and squeal with delight?
    Good. Must feel nice.
     I certainly didn't, and not just because I don't celebrate Christmas and don't exchange gifts with anyone.
     This year, I wanted something in particular, as readers of my Dec. 12 column on the Banksy sculpture contest might recall. A worthy charity raising money for refugees, Choose Love, was holding a lottery. For just a £2 donation (about $2.50) you could guess the weight of the boatload of refugees that Banksy made for Dismaland, his 2015 take-off on The Magic Kingdom.
     It seemed worth doing. How many people would enter? And I wanted the thing, thought it was beautiful, and hoped that thinking the problem over would give me a leg up.
     They gave you a bit of information: photographs, plus the length, 90 centimeters, or almost a yard long. They said it had a commercial fiberglas hull and the figurines were resin over foam.
     I'll bet it's light, I thought, focusing on the foam. I did some research. Remote control boats of a similar size sold on eBay weighed from 7 to 10 pounds. Of course they had battery packs and remote controls. The Banksy boat didn't. So maybe the missing battery would balance out the figurines. I scattershot my 20 or so guesses—one every day—between six and 11 pounds. 
     I considered myself clever.
 

   The contest ended at 10 p.m. Dec. 22, Greenwich mean time, and I must admit, I checked my email folder for the announcement that I had won. Checked the spam folder—sometimes things go to spam. Looked for news announcements. Nothing. Nothing Sunday.
     Not that I expected to win. Rather, I was alive to the possibility.  Okay: I mused on how good that would feel. Pictured the special exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The tasteful plaque, thanking its owner, aka me, for loan of the artwork.
     Okay, I told myself. Just because the contest ends Saturday doesn't mean they'll announce it Saturday, I reasoned, deciding to wait patiently. I imagined the email, informing me I had won...
     Sure enough, Monday, Christmas Eve, an email arrived, with the subject line, "The Banksy Boat raffle is over! Unfortunately you didn't win—but thank you so much for donating. Here's how much it weighed"
     Smart. Tear the bandage from the wound. Don't cause confusion.
     "The correct weight was 11692.2 grams, as weighed by KCL Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Science." 
     Or 25.7 pounds. My estimate was about a third of its actual weight. Some less than a third.
     Ouch. 
     That resin must have been heavier than I thought.
     This is not, I had to remind myself, an indictment of trying to think things through. Sometimes you do and the logic is off. I had certainly been right about it being a good shot, as far as lotteries go. Choose Love said it raised £90,000, or 45,000 entries. Good odds compared to the infinitesimal chances of the lottery.
     And as I pointed out in my column, had I won it, there was the complicated task of getting the dingus back home and figuring out what to do with it, insuring it and protecting it and the like. So in a sense, not winning can be considered a gift. Not exactly the gift I hoped for, true. But not getting what you want is also an essential part of Christmas, I am led to understand. Part of the magic of the holiday is squinting at what you received and convincing yourself it's really what you wanted all along.

A Christmas Metra Miracle

     Christmas stories tend to involve a selfish man, whether Ebeneezer Scrooge or the Grinch. I suppose the man doesn't have to be selfish—George Bailey comes to mind. He just needs to be a man, with all the implications of dimness that being a man implies.
     For today's purpose, that man will be me. Though Christmas season approaches, our hero goes on with his usual routines, working and grumbling. In my case, I'm particularly armored against the holiday, because I'm Jewish. No tree. No presents. No nothing.
     I take that back. Every year there is the Chicago Sun-Times Letters to Santa Program. The paper invites readers to take a photocopy of a handwritten letter from an elementary school pupil, then go out and buy gifts for that student. Every year the paper asks its top columnists to write a column urging people to go out of their way, dig deep, buy presents for needy Chicago schoolchildren, every year I do, with what I hope is a certain amusing-though-very-real reluctance.
     My colleagues weighed in. Mary Mitchell wanted to help them all. "Each one tugs at my heart." Mark Brown shone, tracking down an adult who had received these presents, wrote about what it meant to him. “I was that kid,” Adrian Gonzalez told him, of being a needy child 22 years ago.
     A high bar. But this year I was all set. I would expense the presents—turn in the receipts, include my boss's aghast response. A bit of holiday fun, then of course end up paying for it myself. 
     But the paper didn't ask. That surprised me. I was disappointed and liberated. Freed from the obligation: no pawing through the pile of letters looking for something suitably heart-tugging. No schlep to Target with the wife, no squinting at childish scrawl, trying to figure out what was being requested. No being confronted with some heretofore unimagined realm of toys, "A Mister Poo-Poo-Dee-Doo Dispenser?"

To continue reading, click here.

Flashback 2002: Dan Ryan's, a Taste of Chicago in Taipei

     Strange to see Dan Ryan in the news this past week. Stranger still that he was brought up by Bill Daley, who suggested  renaming the Dan Ryan Expressway in honor of Barack Obama. It must be a bad idea, since Bill Daley is suggesting it. Half naked play for African-American support (while, at the same time, revealing how stupid he thinks Chicagoans must be) half sign of how out-of-touch Daley is (cause the really big issue facing the next Chicago mayor is how to honor the former president). 
     Right after Chicagoans expressed the above, in a dozen places and ways, the next question was: who's Dan Ryan? A reminder that these supposed honors become meaningless identifiers. I knew Ryan was Cook County board president, but not due to the highway, but because the name is used, as something of a non sequitur, by a chain of steakhouses in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. This snippet ran in the business pages.


     TAIPEI, TAIWAN: "Warning," reads a line on the menu at Dan Ryan's Chicago Grill, "we serve American portions."
     Not really. While you can indeed get a piece of steak that outstrips the thumb-sized beef bites that typically accompany Chinese dishes, the Dan Ryan steak, though tasty, is still rather anemic compared with the formidable footballs of meat encountered back home at a Gibson's or a Smith & Wollensky's.
     But back home is 5,000 miles away, and homesick Chicagoans, as well as locals searching for exotic foreign fare, have kept Dan Ryan's—named for the president of the Cook County Board who died in 1961—in business for a decade now.
     Besides a large oil painting of the former highway builder, Dan Ryan's, of course, sports a Chicago decor—a Vienna hot dog sign, an Illinois flag, framed front page of the Chicago Herald Examiner. Over the bar, official portraits of Rich Daley, Jane Byrne and Harold Washington.
     Chicago is associated with pizza in much of the world, but in Asia, the city is synonymous with steak. There are five Dan Ryan steakhouses, three in Hong Kong, one in Singapore and this one in the capital of Taiwan, where it is not even the sole Chicago-oriented steak restaurant: there is also a Capone's Chophouse & Cabaret.
      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 16, 2002

The Saturday Snapshot #20

 


     Reader Coey (her "nom de blog"—"a lady's name should only appear in the newspaper three times, you know" she explains)  sent a trio of arresting photos, taken earlier this month in Olympic National Park in Washington State: her timing was good; much of the park is closed now, due to storm damage. 
     She writes:

     It's a spectacularly beautiful place, and we were fortunate enough to be there when the temperature and sunlight were such that, in some places, the deep greens were set off by a dusting of snow...I'd add that Olympic National Park is well worth a visit. I knew next to nothing about it before we went on a trip to Seattle, and the diversity of natural beauty there is something to see. There are three distinct ecosystems, so something for everyone!

    So have you looked at the photo? Good.
     Now look at it again, closer. I chose this one of the Hoh Rainforest's Hall of Mosses because of the people in it. You might not see them at first glance—I didn't. But look harder—there are two, and noticing them completely changes the scale of the photograph. And reminds us that sometimes we have to put in a little effort to perceive the people involved in any situation, because we don't expect them, or they blend in too well to their background. Often they're there, if only we look hard enough. 

    Thanks Coey for sharing this. EGD welcomes submissions for The Saturday Snapshot, even though there is a backlog, and appreciates the patience from those who have already offered photos. I'm working my way toward them.

I

   

Pink laces, longer hair and significantly smarter: welcome to girls hockey

Avery Knueppel, 13, was inspired to play hockey by her father and grandfather. She says boys were not "super kind" to her when she began playing but have learned to respect her. |

     Do girls play hockey differently than boys?
     Yes, according to Jenny Fitzpatrick, who has both a son, Mac, 14, and a daughter, Caitlin, 10, playing youth hockey.
     “The girls really play smart,” she said. “More brains, less brute.”
     “Significantly,” added Forrest Knueppel. “I have a son that plays as well, and I’ve been coaching. For the longest time, I’ve said: If all kids were as easily coached as my daughter and all girls I’ve coached, our job would be a heck of a lot easier.” 

Kyla Schneider, left, at practice.

     “They listen better,” said Steve Holeczy, a coach of Squirt hockey—the levels are Mite, Squirt, Pee Wee and Bantam. “They mature a little better, so they’re not screwing around, when we ask them to do stuff, they’re very attentive. Skillwise though, it’s very, very equal.”
     “The girls seem to have a little more solidarity as a team,” said Alicia Sharun, 14, who has played on both all-girl and co-ed teams. “I like girls better. I feel I can communicate more with them.”
     Despite the growing popularity of girls hockey, people still assume hockey players are boys.
     “The big differences are, whenever I talk to friends about it, they assume it’s a son, assume I have two boys,” said Fitzpatrick.
     But girls do play hockey, which is why I stopped by the Glacier Ice Arena in Vernon Hills to watch the Ice Dogs practice and to talk to the girls, their parents and coaches.
     Only eight of the 300 players at Glacier are girls. Nationwide, the ratio is about one in seven: of 382,514 kids participating in USA Hockey last season, 60,983 were girls.  
     But over the past decade, participation of girls under 8 has increased 50 percent.
     "We're getting the word out there: girls play hockey too," said Kristen Wright, USA Hockey's manager of girls player development, who credits recent USA women's team Olympic gold and the increase in college programs for popularizing the sport.
     The girls I spoke to were all inspired by family members.
     "My sister and my dad were playing it," said Jessica Sharun, 10, Alicia's younger sister. A fifth grader, she started to play at age 6. "It just looked kind of fun."
     "I used to play in high school," said her father, Dwayne. "I didn't push it on her."
     "My grandpa and my dad used to play it, so they encouraged me. I enjoy it," said Avery Knueppel, 13, an eighth grader who now plays in a mixed bantam league where the rules allow checking; younger levels don't.
     "The first time she got nailed, she popped right up," said her father, Forrest. "She was prepared for that."
     How do the boys treat her?
      "When I first started playing on guys teams, they were not super kind," Avery said. "But as I've started to play more I think I've gotten more accepted, and my team right now is being really kind to me."
     "At that age, there are two kinds of guys," said Forrest. "One that is almost avoiding her; they don't want to be 'that guy.' The other ones are trying to make a point: that this is a guy's game."
     Avery's mother, Kim, still remembers the shock of seeing her daughter play against older male players.
     "She was on the ice with senior boys," she said. "They were huge."
     Practice focused on skating drills, because it doesn't matter how well players handle a stick if they can't get to the puck. The same path that leads some girls to ice dancing leads others to hockey.
     "Jessica started figure skating," said Wayne Sharun. "She came off the ice after she figure-skated and said, 'I'm bored. I want to play hockey.' I said, 'We have equipment that fits you.'"
      "I liked skating, " said Lily Aristodemo, 9, a fourth grader. She went to the rink to learn figure skating, but others were playing hockey. "I saw them play and wanted to play too."
      Seeing the girls being interviewed, Blake, a boy, drifted over to share his opinion about the best part of hockey: "Winning." He was driven off by the girls with cries of "Leave! Leave!" and "Get out!" and "This is not for you; this is for girls only!"
      No shortage of spirit here.
     "A lot of people think hockey's just for boys, but there's no reason girls can't play the sport," said Holeczy. "It doesn't matter, girls, boys. It's a great sport."

No. 26, Kyla Schneider, 10, listens to coach Steve Holeczy during a practice at the Glacier Ice Arena, in Vernon Hills. Like many girl hockey players, she was inspired to try the sport through family: her father, Eric, is general manager at Glacier.