Stuff I love #3: Sushi

     The town where I grew up, Berea, Ohio, boasted exactly one restaurant in the 1960s: Pizza King, serving up a horror I remember to this day with revulsion: a greasy, tasteless circle of drippy dough with a third inch of cheese, tomato sauce and a scattering of pepperoni. I can see it still.
     Growing up and moving away, out into the world, meant discovering new cuisines, thank merciful God. The introduction of some I remember clearly. I recall exactly when and where I first experienced Thai food: The Thai Hut on Devon Avenue, around fall, 1979, taken by Kier Strejcek, my roommate, who knew more about the city because he had a band that played at North Side clubs. I remember exactly what we ordered: chicken satay, mee krob, and chicken pad thai. And for years, that was all I would order at Thai restaurants. The Perfect Trio, why depart from it? (To show you how far I've come, now I always order beef and broccoli at a Thai restaurant. Because that is what I want).  
     Sushi entered my life more subtly. I can't recall when or where. It could have been in Boulder, Colorado in the mid-1970s. Sushi had a fad in the 1900s in the United States, but really started to take off in the 1960s. It might have been at New Japan, a wonderful place in Evanston on Chicago Avenue for many years. It served grapefruit sorbet as a refresher between courses and a little soy salad with wheat noodles. The first time Edie met my parents we ate there. Now it's an Ethiopian restaurant.
     Whenever I first ate raw fish—a hump some Americans just can't get over—by 1982, when I was living in Los Angeles, sushi was a cherished highlight, a Friday ritual. Survive another week at a job I hate and reap the reward: a big platter of sushi, the New Yorker, and a jar of sake or two.
     I have been eating sushi, hand over fist, for 35 years, and I'm not tired of it yet. Just last Tuesday, Ross and I went to our current favorite spot, Sushi Sai at Randolph and Franklin, for its $20, all-you-can-eat, sushi chow down, for dinner before "Bel Canto" at the Lyric. The place is only a few blocks from the Civic Opera House, and that $20 special, you just can't beat it.
     What is it that makes sushi so good? Fresh, cool, succulent, a variety of slightly different tastes. The deep red tuna is more complex than the pale pink yellowtail. The fish eggs are salty and minute, caviar basically. The pickled ginger a sweet, crunchy break. Plus, they just look beautiful: a colorful array of discrete packages, artfully constructed, like jewelry. 
      One nice thing about sushi is that it's so expensive, which sounds odd, but the cost keeps you from eating it for every meal, which I once did visiting New York City: breakfast, lunch and dinner. The breakfast was, if I recall, one of those pre-packaged boxes from a bodega, and the big change over the past 30 years is that while once sushi was an urban oddity, now every Mariano's has a sushi chef on call. The stuff they make isn't very good—like frozen pizza to pizzeria pizza. But it will do.
     The downside of Sushi Sai is that their staff is a constantly changing band of anonymous persons. I've gone there 50 times over the past decade and, I swear, have never had the same waiter twice.  I go anyway, but being a constant stranger there removes the social aspect of eating out. 
      To be acknowledged  as a customer, we go to Fujiyama in Northbrook, where we're met by Irene, the co-owner, and her husband Paul, behind the sushi counter. They're the only two staff, besides an occasional busboy. At Fujiyama being a welcome patron is something you earn. The first time we went, 15 years ago, we tried to order sushi and Irene snapped, in essence, "No, you don't want sushi. My husband is very busy now. Get something else." That "What are you doing here? Get out!" vibe persisted for about five years, but we went back anyway, because the sushi is that good. And over the past few years, the hostility has mellowed considerably. The most recent time the boys and I went, last month, to celebrate their being home from college, we were greeted as old friends, quizzed about their schools. I like to think that's Irene warming to us, though she used to get roasted fairly savagely on Yelp, and she might have finally decided to warm to the people she was asking to pay top dollar (about $80 for a lunch for three, and Kent didn't even get sushi, but a Bento box).
     This wasn't meant to turn into a restaurant review—though I can't leave the subject without plugging Blufish, also in Northbrook. Very good sushi, a bit more creative, more of a contemporary exotic flair than Fujiyama, 2/3 the cost, and the young staff serves you with vigor and gratitude.  (There is a third sushi place in Northbrook, to illustrate how popular it has become, the venerable Kamehachi. And though it's a few blocks from my house, we never go there, because it's staid, completely eclipsed by the previously mentioned places). 
     What else am I missing? It's delicious, beautiful to look at, as the photo above (from Sushi Sai) shows. I was going to say it's low calories. A piece of tuna sushi has about 60 calories. Though Sushi Sai's $20 all-you-can-eat (after 2 p.m.) chow down defeats that, now that I think of it. I ended up ordering 21 pieces, which weighed in at 1200 calories or so. Quite a lot, really. 
     Still, if you've never tried it. And there are people, amazingly, who never have, you should. If I can eat sushi a thousand times—and I have—you can eat it once. You don't know what you're missing.

Rahm kicks the can down the road, again

     One point worth mentioning that got cut out of the column below when it was being whittled to fit into the paper.  As much as I wish the "Rahm thinks your stupid" trope were a genius divination of my own, the truth is that Chicago Teacher Union president Karen Lewis told it to me in an interview several years back. Though I did have that "Yes!" moment of total agreement when you're presented with an idea you are certain is true. Still, credit where due, she's the one who said it first. 

     Rahm Emanuel thinks you're stupid.
     Don't feel bad. It's not just you. He thinks I'm stupid too. You, me and everyone else in the city, apparently.
      Not without reason of course. Often we are stupid. Credulous, easily distracted, oblivious to the real problems before us, nevermind their difficult solutions.
     Take his performance last week over the ongoing scandal that is the Chicago Police Department.
     So Rahm rushes home from his vacation in Cuba. And does what? He announces that police will be equipped with more Tasers and be trained more in crisis intervention to "de-escalate" situations.
     Problem solved, right? Give police more equipment, make 'em take a course, and we'll all be living on Sesame Street.
     Anyone believe that? Show of hands?

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Stuff I love #2: Keen boots

     Last October, my wife and I spent a lovely, if strenuous day hiking the length of the Glen Onoko Falls Trail, in Lehigh State Park, about 90 minutes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There, we saw two signs that caught our attention, signs the likes of which we had never seen on a hiking trail before, in all our years of tromping around this beautiful country.
       One had a skull and crossbones, to drive home the danger of the trail, which was wet, and rocky, with stretches that paralleled fatal drops. 

Glen Onoko Falls Trail

     The other was the sign above, that told hikers without proper hiking boots to "turn back now."  I smiled, confidently to myself, because I was wearing my Keen boots, the best hiking boot I've ever put on my feet. 
     I bought them at REI in 2009, when my boys and I were preparing for our epic 7,000 mile, nine-National-Park odyssey across the country. They're size 10, but somehow fit my 8 1/2 EEE feet perfectly. They've carried me up mountainsides in the Rockies, through fern-canopied paths in the Redwood Forest, splashed in the Pacific and the Atlantic, trod the deserts of South Dakota, Nevada and Utah, scampered around Wyoming, been up to Canada, striding through the woods in Nova Scotia and across the canyons of New York City and London and Chicago. 

Keens doing their job in
Southern Utah.

     Keen is a relatively new brand; founded in 2003 by Martin Keen, an outdoors lover and sailor who was looking to make a better shoe for use on boats. The Portland, Oregon company—same hometown as Gerber knife, featured here yesterday; must be the water—amazed backers with its rapid growth, and why not? The shoes are comfortable, light, rugged, water resistant. Low cut, they're easy to get on and off. They don't slip.
     I've had a number of other brands of boots that fell far short. A pair of Timberlands that quickly split between the uppers and the sole come to mind, bringing a shudder every time they do. 
     Even the best boots will wear out after years of hard use, and Keens are no different. (My wife blames the snow: I'd wear them to shovel our driveway, a mistake). When the left boot developed a hole in the upper, I did something I've never done with hiking boots or any other footwear for that matter. I took them to the shoemaker and had them patched. The patches are obvious squares of brown, but I don't care. If I get another few seasons out of them, it's worth it. When they wore away at the heel, I reinforced them myself with REI ballistic tape. Then I started gluing the tape to the seams.
     "Buy new hiking boots!" my wife sensibly commanded. But I can't. Not yet. I'll never find a pair like this. They fit my ducklike feet. They've been with me all over. At some point they'll fall apart—in my heart I hope I fall apart first—and I'll grumble and get another pair of Keen boots. I'm hoping they're as good, being made by the same company and all. But they'll have very big shoes to fill. 

Stuff I Love #1: Gerber pocket knife

    Let's take a break, ignore the Punch & Judy show of Chicago politics and the banshee howl of the country's burgeoning population of crazy people, to visit the comforting world of tangible objects, with a brief reprise of my popular 2013 series, "Stuff I Love." 

    Just before Christmas, a reader wrote and said that he needed a gift for his nephew. He remembered my gift guides of the past, and wondered what I would recommend.
     I thought for a day or two, but only came up with one thing: this Gerber lock blade knife, the L.S.T. Drop Point, Fine Edge. 
     I've carried one in my pocket for at least 25 years. It's very light—just 1.2 ounces—yet sturdy and solid. It can be opened easily with one hand by a flick of the wrist.  Lightness is important—ultralight backpacking guides rave about it—since knives spend the vast majority of the time in our possession not cutting stuff but merely being carried. The stainless steel blade is strong and smooth; it's a joy to run your fingertip along its flat surface. The half-checkered, fiberglass-filled nylon handle is light and easy to hold. When the company brags the knife "just feels good and satisfying when you open and close the blade," they speak the truth. I probably open the knife and close it far more than anything else, even when I don't need it, just to have something to do with my hands. 

     Not that the knife doesn't get put to a hundred practical uses, from slicing apples to cutting rope. It'll trim cigars, razor articles out of the paper, even open a can in a pinch. Someone will be fumbling with a package that needs cutting and before anyone can think, never mind say, "Anybody got a knife?" mine is out and open, proffered with pride, accepted with gratitude and returned with reluctance. It sharpens in an instant, with a stone and honing oil. 
     I did pause, recommending the knife as a gift for a teenager.  It is a weapon, I suppose. Our schizophrenic society is such that while adults are waving their assault rifles around convenience stores, a kid can find himself trundled off by a SWAT team for forming his finger into a handgun at school. I can imagine the excitement this knife could cause pulled out at the wrong moment.  So I hope, if this kid's uncle gave him the Gerber, he gave him some advice too, and the kid has the good sense not to bring it to school. 
     Once you hit adulthood, however, it can go almost everywhere. Back before 9/11, I remember airport security opening it up and giving it an admiring look—at 6.1 inches, open, it just squeaked past airplane restrictions. Post 9/11, I once tried to take it through airport security at Denver, and they had me put it in an envelope and mail it home. But it returned, safe and sound. It always does.  
    Once I forgot I had the Gerber and tried to take it to Cook County Jail; the guard suggested I go outside and push it into the ground under a bush. I did, retrieving it afterward, muddy but none the worse after a quick rinse. They're simple, a single blade and open body, so clean up easily. 
    The LST isn't really a defensive weapon but, finding myself walking through a sketchy area at midnight, I'll keep it in my hand, in my coat pocket, as a talisman if nothing else.

    That said, the knife is so light, it has a way of disappearing for a while—I own two, just so one is usually around—but then they always turn up, buried in a pocket, in the bottom of my briefcase, on a table, and finding one is a burst of the Christmas I never knew. And should I ever really lose it, well, no big deal. If I ever need to replace the Gerber they usually sell for under $13. You can buy a knife for twice or 10 times that, though I can't imagine why. 
    There is, I suppose, a cool factor. Gerber is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and many of its knives are assembled in the USA.  Hunter S. Thompson mentions Gerber knives in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—and while the "Mini-Magnum" is the style of Gerber his attorney waves around, it is bigger and looks almost like a kitchen knife. I'll stick with my LST. 
    You can buy it from Amazon here. You'll never need another knife.  And if you lose it, you can get another one for 13 bucks. In fact, buy a few and save yourself the trouble. They also make great gifts. It's a beautiful thing.  I gave my wife one and she keeps it in her purse.
   LST, by the way, stands for "Light, Strong, Tough." I can vouch for all three. Carrying it might not make you, yourself, any of those three. But it sure will encourage the illusion. 

First a phallic flower, now this...

     "I hate to criticize the Botanic Garden," I said to my wife as we strolled along its trails Sunday, "but the flowers are more ... subdued than usual."
     A joke,  or an attempt at a joke, high spirits being necessary for an hour's walk in temperatures in the upper 20s with a brisk wind. While there wasn't much in the way of colorful blooms, it was compensated by an utter lack of people in the more far flung regions.
     "Hell," as Jean-Paul Sartre writes in No Exit, "is other people." 
     My wife observed that it was the first time we went through the entire Japanese gardens without encountering a soul. The Japanese gardens, a pair of islands connected with quaint bridges, are particularly beautiful this time of year, filled with evergreens like the Jack Pine above, and with subtle decorations like stone Japanese lanterns, whose gently spreading tops are designed to hold snow.

Baha'i Temple

    There were more people at the Wonderland Express, the train diorama the Botanic Garden sets up for the holidays. The last day of the season was Sunday, and we decided to go in, in part out of curiosity, in part to get out of the cold.  I had a memory of visiting the place with the boys, a dozen years or more ago, but only the vaguest recollection.

Mariana Towers

     The Chicago architectural landmarks the trains were going around and over were all constructed from natural materials: twigs and bark and mushrooms and seed pods and such. 
     Sometimes the effect was impressive, such as the Baha'i Temple. Sometimes, well, not so much. I was not charmed  by the Marina Towers constructed of shelf fungi, and said so, prompting my wife to praise the corncobs, or, I suppose, mushroom cobs, I suspect out of the notion that someone took the time to construct it and their feelings must be considered. 
     There was one part of the display we both agreed upon. A model of the Bean or, if you're an employee of the Chicago Tribune, "Cloud Gate," that had been rendered from what seemed like a gourd painted silver, only one that lacked the necessary bean-like smoothness but had a slight cleft that made it resemble something else entirely.
     "It's a tush!" my wife exclaimed, and before I could agree, a British father and his kids came by, and he said aloud, to no one in particular. 
     "It's a bottom!" 
     Nothing wrong with that, and it did add a certain adult, Rabelaisian flair to the otherwise sedate, charming and child-friendly holiday tableau. My wife suggested that perhaps it might be best to place a single Hershey's Kiss directly below the Bean/butt. "Or a some mini Tootsie Rolls!" I suggested.
     "Ewww," she laughed, and we pushed onward. Something to bear in mind for next year, the holiday season now being officially over, with nearly six weeks of winter until a brief respite arrives in the form of Valentine's Day. 

     

Flock of Armed American Loons spotted at its winter nesting ground

     The warblers have left the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and gone south for the winter. As have most of the tundra swans. Few of the 320 species of birds which make Malheur a mecca for birdwatchers remain for the harsh Oregon January. If you search hard, though, you might find some common goldeneyes, mergansers, and perhaps, if you are lucky, the rare Eurasian widgeon.
      This week, though, an exceptional ornithological event: a flock of not-so-rare, sadly, Armed American Loons has abruptly established a winter nesting ground at the nature preserve on the southern shore of Malheur Lake, about 30 miles south of the small town of Burns. 
    "This refuge — it has been destructive to the people of the county and to the people of the area," Ammon Bundy told CNN. He led a band of undetermined size, calling for other armed radicals to join their stand, but not, as yet, declaring the bird sanctuary a caliphate. 

    Twitter mocked the group with hashtags like "YalQaeda" and "VanillaISIS"  and "Yee-hawdists." 

     "Wow I'm sure glad the NSA is monitoring emails and telephone calls to warn of home grown terror incidents," tweeted Pat Ondabak.

"Terror" somehow seems a little harsh. While some wanted to make a point that if it were Muslims we've have drones shooting missiles, the incident does seem to invite more ridicule than fear, at least for now. I couldn't help thinking: "Boy, I'm sure glad we kept all those Syrian refugees out of the country; if we hadn't, they might have armed themselves and taken over a bird sanctuary."

The group announced it intends to be there for years, and open up the area to logging and mining and other activities that Republicans just love. The federal government, prudently, announced it has no plans to go in and drive them out by force, but will just wait until they get bored and go home. And as much as I'd personally prefer the Army to sweep in and kill them, on general principles, I have to grudgingly admit that patience is probably the right path, at this point. We don't want to make them into the new Branch Davidians. 
One wonders what the birds make of all this.

"That'll do her, Dave"—Memories of the Flood, Pt. 2

    The Mississippi River flooding going on now prompted me to look at the stories I filed from the great flood of 1993. This one was one of my favorites, about when the river was re-opened to navigation. I was so taken with meeting the fifth generation of river rats that I pitched the story to Life magazine, which was still around then. They passed, which I thought a shame, since, as you'll see, they were quite an interesting crew.

     MOLINE — With its twin 250-horsepower Caterpillar engines roaring as if all the noise in the world were trapped inside, trying to get out, the James P. Pearson edges into the center of the Mississippi, bound for another appointment with 2,000 tons of sand and gravel.
     One of the numerous river workhorses idled for weeks by the flood, the Pearson, a towboat, is now pushing barges six days a week, trying to catch up.
     "We're only supposed to work five, but with the flood and everything, we're way behind," says Dave Williams, deckhand of the Pearson's two-man crew.
     A self-described "river rat" with five years on the Mississippi at the ripe age of 21, Williams introduces himself as the fifth generation of his family to work the river.
     At least a dozen relatives still do; one of them, his cousin, Shawn Olson, is pilot of the Pearson. He shows up for work with a bad cold, a briefcase filled with rock 'n' roll cassettes, "enough cigarettes to kill any man" and a supply of juice to combat the sweat-wringing 95-degree weather.
     Unlike larger boats making the trip "from Saint to Saint," (St. Paul to St. Louis), the Pearson is a small boat making a local run - four empty barges to drop off at the Moline Consumer's sand dredging operation in Cordova, Ill., swapped for four full barges of new sand to be brought back to Moline and Bettendorf, Iowa, where it is made into concrete mix. Round trip is about 50 miles.
     They are pleased as can be that navigation is still bottled up down river.
     "We wish it would stay like that until next year," Olson says, not wanting his run to be delayed at Lock and Dam No. 14, the only one of the Mississippi's 27 locks that the Pearson needs to go through.
     Going through the lock is fairly quick and simple: The boat and its barges enter the lock, the south gates swing shut, six feet of upriver water is allowed to flow in, the north gates swing open and the Pearson goes on her way on the higher portion of the river. It takes about 15 minutes.
     On a good day.
     But if there are any boats waiting in front of it, there is delay — sometimes for hours, even days, as the Pearson queues up behind larger boats maneuvering their big clusters of barges into the lock.
     Because of flooding conditions lingering downriver, there are practically no boats on this part of theMississippi. There is no wait at the lock. In fact, the Pearson passes only one commercial boat in nine hours - the immense Conti-Arlie, pushing a dozen grain barges. "Fifty-six hundred horsepower," Williams says, reverently. "That's a real working boat."

    Mostly the Pearson has the river to itself. The only sound, outside of the clangorous engine room, is the splash of the river against the barges and the sawing of cicadas in the trees lining the shore.
     Olson steers casually between the wide channel markers, barely needing to touch the wooden and brass rudder controls.
     Williams does his real work when the boat drops off or picks up barges, or goes through the locks. He scampers nimbly over the wet steel barges, securing ropes, winching steel cable. It is hard work in the hot sun, and Williams doesn't seem to have enough fat on his body to make a good butter pat.
     "My job is hard to explain," he says. "People say, 'You're a deckhand? What do you do? My grandfather (Don Williams, captain of the Queen of Hearts casino boat) used to say he told people he was a trucker, so they won't ask any questions . . . the majority of people around here are just society. They don't know anything about the river at all."
     Although both Williams and Olson complain about working on the river - Olson pointed out that "nobody got rich as a pilot" and Williams says he would like to find a "white shirt" job - they both obviously love what they do.
     "Some of the nicest people you meet on the river," Williams says. "They'll take care of you, free of charge."
     At Cordova, four barges containing 1,950 tons of sand and gravel are waiting in a large cove carved out of the shoreline by years of sand-dredging. Olson angles the empty barges next to the company's dredging machine as casually as if he were tossing cards into a hat.
     "Look at that big old bird up there," he says, pointing to something flapping over the forest, just as the barges ease against the dock. "That must be an owl, I betcha."
     Williams unleashes the barges, then takes time for a quick dip in the river, executing a neat jackknife dive into the cool water. "Ah yes," he says, breaking the surface.
     The journey downstream is a lot quicker - about 90 minutes less than it took to fight the current. There is still plenty of time to sit on a timberhead and enjoy the warm, soft breeze (river life is filled with quaint, anachronistic terms. Timberheads are the capped pegs used to secure lines - once cut from logs, they are now steel. At the lock, the little tram used to tow barges, if necessary, is called "the mule," a nod to its animate predecessor).
     A long Soo line freight train pulling auto carriers draws alongside at the river's edge and gives a few friendly toots.
     "That's the competition," Williams says, and Olson says hello back with a few blasts of the air horn.
     The James P. Pearson is almost home now. The sun is setting, a huge orange ball peaking out from behind the trees. "Is that beautiful!" Williams says. Olson opens the front window of the pilot house and turns up the volume on some vintage Allman Brothers Band.
     "Lord, I'm southbound," sings an Allman. "Lord, I'm coming home to you."
     In its final minutes, the sun puts on a display rarely seen outside of English Romantic oil paintings - bands of orange, blue, pink, purple and even green, radiating from the horizon. The gold light shimmers off the ripples, swirls and eddies formed by the barges cutting through the river.
     Two barges are left at the Bettendorf dock, below the bucket crane which will empty them before the Pearson returns at noon the next day - gingerly empty them, because the sand is so heavy that, if not unloaded uniformly, they can easily flip over.
     The other two barges are left at the Moline dock. The Pearson ties up at 8:23 p.m., about as early as she has ever returned from a full day's work.
     "That'll do her, Dave," Olson says, and he gives the horn a few celebratory blasts.
     Williams goes down to the engine room and shuts down the twin Caterpillars, which sigh to silence after nine hours of work.
     The only sound now is the gentle lapping against the wharf of the mighty Mississippi, now tamed to a gentle purr.
                            —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 30, 1993

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1993

 

Photo by Al Podgorski

    The Mississippi is flooding again. The last time it was this bad was 1993, when I was a grunt reporter, and the City Desk sent me down a number of times to report on the disaster. Even after nearly a quarter century, thinking of the flood conjures up unforgettable images: the Mississippi, swollen and wide, racing along almost at the base of the Arch in St. Louis. Whole towns turning out in places like Grafton and Alton trying to keep their sandbag levees intact. Townsfolk keeping their wallets in Baggies.

     And a solitary stone house, which photographer Al Podgorski — who snapped the photo above — and I came upon in Saint Genevieve, Missouri.  An extraordinary sight: a peninsula of sandbags, jutting into the swollen river, protecting a single stone structure. I wrote about the efforts to save the house, and ended up on the stand bag line, trying to keep the wall in place. It was scary. I remember watching water trickling through the cracks between the sandbags thinking, "A guy could die here." But the wall held. None of the historic homes in Saint Genevieve were seriously damaged by the flood. 

     STE. GENEVIEVE, Mo. — This house north of town is called the Rock House because of its solid stone construction. Built in 1805, it is the oldest stone dwelling in Missouri.

     The house has seen a lot of history in its nearly two centuries of existence. It was, for a while, home to a slave trader. It was, for a while, a brothel. 

     It should be under water up to its second floor, and about 50 feet into the swollen Mississippi River.

     But it's not. 

     Walk up to the house, and the mind almost rejects what the eye is seeing. The house is surrounded on three sides by the river, kept out by a fragile sandbag and plastic levee. 

     The house also is called the Myers house, for the owner, Frank Myers, and it was his determination, along with his family's, that has kept the house safe. 

     "When he had resigned himself to fate, it was really when a lot of the family said 'No, we have to save it,' " says Stuart Johnson, Myers' son-in-law, who took over when Myers went into the hospital for a coronary bypass last week. (Ask anyone whether the fight to save the house put Myers in the hospital and the answer is always: "It didn't help.") 

     They have been fighting the river since July 4, and how it will work out is anyone's guess. On Friday, the river crested at Ste. Genevieve, a town of 4,500 about 50 miles south of St. Louis, at 49.6 feet, the highest point ever. 

     Around the Rock House, water seeps out of the bottom of the levee in sheets, forming a considerable creek at the base, where two pumps throw it back into the river. 

     The family has been aided by hundreds of volunteers, from the local girls basketball team, to the National Guard, to prisoners from the Farmington Correctional Facility, who endeared themselves by being concerned about getting the floors muddy. 

    As with much of the efforts to fight the flood, there is a factor of human nobility — or perhaps irrationality — in the fight to keep the river out of the Rock House. The walls are 3 feet of stone; the river probably wouldn't sweep the house away. Why not just give up and put all that effort into cleaning up afterward? 

     "I'll give up when the water brings me out the back door," says Johnson. "When I'm swimming out the back door, then I'll decide what to do next. 

Sandbaggers Get To the Nitty-Gritty

    Sandbags have a rhythm, a mantra. They are too heavy, and you need too many, for it to be otherwise.
     In creation, they require four people, as any volunteer can tell you, in something close to a nursery rhyme:

     One person holds it.

     One person fills it.

     One person ties it.

     One person stacks it.

     The parking lot at Valley High School here looked like a factory producing brown and green pillows.   Tens of thousands of 40-pound sandbags, piled about 3 feet high on wooden pallets, filled most of the area. Around the perimeter, volunteers worked feverishly, making more.

     Grab any sandbag team here and you find a cross-section of Midwesterners who left their lives, temporarily, to drive for hours to do back-breaking work in the hot sun for free to help total strangers.

     Mary Boyer, from Vincennes, Ind., held an empty bag. Ron Lyon, from Caledonia, Ohio, took a shovel and filled it — three shovelfuls to the bag. Nancy Hendrixson, also from Vincennes, tied it, and Marilyn Anderson, from Olney, Ill., did the stacking.

     "We brought a van load of goods donated by the town and dropped them off at the Salvation Army, then came to sandbag" said Hendrixson, explaining how they got there.

     "It's a chance to help out," said Lyon. "To give somebody else a break, to step into the breach."

     Jim Runstrom walked up. He had just driven 10 hours from Waterford, Mich. He asked if he could fill in for anybody, and Anderson let him take over the stacking.

     "I've been seeing these people on TV every day, and they look like they need help," he said. "So I came down."

                             —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 9, 1993

Have a Boswell New Year!

     Friday is New Year's Day. A time of resolutions, of personal goals solemnly set.
     Some are general: be a better person. Some are very specific: lose 15 pounds.
     Less clear is how to go about trying to reach those goals: how to eat less. How to be that better person.
     I'm going to suggest something out of left field: consider James Boswell.
     Famed as the 18th century biographer of British man of letters Samuel Johnson. But a fascinating figure in his own right, an ordinary man with a genius for hanging out with the most brilliant minds of his era. As a teenager he knocked on rationalist David Hume's door, barging in to talk philosophy. Later he argued about God with Voltaire and invited himself to be the house guest of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, hospitality he rewarded by eventually seducing Rousseau's wife.
     I'm not suggesting you spend 2016 cuckolding the great philosophers of our day — our era doesn't really have prominent philosophers. But Boswell's energetic efforts to give his life meaning can be emulated, and they start with one practice that anybody can do, right now, with no special equipment or training: keep a journal.

To continue reading, click here. 

Roll with it we shall

    2015 sort of blew, didn't it? Between Donald Trump and the Syrian refugees, Bruce Rauner shutting down Illinois and Chicago dripping blood. I can't put a good spin on it and wouldn't be so dumb as to try. 
   But it's over now. 
   And at least 2015's suckiness was limited to a city, state and national scale. Close to home, on the micro-local scale, all hums along. The boys thrive in college; work endures, the wife and I enjoy our frequently empty nest. We have much to be grateful for and are, every day.    
     Though it can be hard to be content with our own little garden when the clouds gather and half the country seems to have lost its mind, in harmony with 3/4 of the world.  Not only did 2015 blow, but the prospects for a non-sucky 2016 don't seem so hot either.
    Which leaves us with ... what? Hope, I guess. Hope is the last coin in your pocket when you've spent everything else. Hope is faith when belief has drained away and you figure things have got to get better because the thought of them getting worse is just unimaginable.
     Maybe not. Maybe not so unimaginable. Maybe they will get worse. President-elect Trump, lower lip pouting out like Il Duce, pondering on his throne whether his first act on Jan. 20, 2017 will be to deport all Mexicans or bar all Muslims. 
    Nah, can't happen. Can't can't can't. As Nate Silver said, neither party has nominated a candidate as unfit as Donald Trump in more than a century. They won't start now. 
    And if they do, well, as the poet Thomas Campbell writes, "To bear is to conquer fate."     
     Meaning, whatever life serves isn't so bad if you roll with it. 
     So roll with it we shall. Hope you're rolling now, rocking and rolling, out having fun. We'll be joining you in a bit, going over to friends to have fun, or what fun we can, and that should perk things up. 
     Happy New Year. Let's grab the wheel in 2016 and try to turn this bus into a better direction.  Somebody has to.
  

Flashback 2003: Happy New Year!

Found the photo after this was posted.

     This New Year's Eve we're lucky enough to have friends who are throwing a party, so we've got good company, good food and a good time only a few blocks away. But for years I puzzled and struggled through New Year's Eve like everybody else, usually writing something for the paper. This column had a marvelous photo of myself, in a suit, looking stern, wearing the small Tiffany party hat that I mention at the end.     
     Which I should have bought, given that it was $225, then, and is selling online for four or five times that. Alas, the photo seems lost in the river of time that we all splash around in, but I think the column still is worth revisiting. Happy New Year to all! Drive safely.  

TEN . . .

     Here we are again. In another noisy, jam-packed restaurant on triple price night, wondering where that waiter could possibly be. Or at the neighbors, making yack, yet again, with the Hendersons, the Pendersons and the Schmendersons. Or sprawled on the sofa before the tube -— and not a wide HDTV tube either — with Ethel. Again. Puzzling where Dick Clark went or — if one is a certain age — where Guy Lombardo went. Weren't they just here? It's both routine and a shock. A regular surprise.

NINE . . .

     New Year's Eve. It gets to be like those old movies where the calendar pages flutter off the wall, like falling autumn leaves. One minute, they're playing David Bowie's "1984" and you're thinking, "Golly, it really is 1984, almost," and the next it's Prince singing "1999" and the next it's, well, whatever clatter they're playing on the radio now, assuming anybody listens to radio anymore.

EIGHT . . .

     Still, we rouse ourselves, as midnight approaches. Stand up. Square the shoulders. Refill the drink. Run our fingers through whatever hair time has left us. Direct our attention to the Big Ball at Times Square. New Year's is all about joining the crowd, getting with the program, digging out the good suit, facing the Hendersons (and Pendersons and Schmendersons). Observing the customs — the champagne, the hot dogs in dough, the tiny party hats.

SEVEN . . .

     It's all a lie, of course, this New Year's business. It's the New Improved Product that really is the same old product, but smaller. Two ounces less at the same price. The Happy New Year is the Rotten Old Year with tinsel draped around it.
     There is no 2004, not in any objective sense. The universe spins its clockwork machinations in the same unimaginably vast, indifferent fashion. We can't grasp it, so we pretend the "3" snaps to "4" at midnight, and frankly even that scrap of symbolism is troubling if you ponder it.

SIX . . .

     New Year's Eve doesn't begin at midnight, it ends. Soon after, the party changes gears and guests get their coats. One other special day of the year has a midnight deadline; yes, April 15. Maybe the IRS needs to wed taxes to champagne — you file, pop the bubbly. They wouldn't even need tax laws then; I mean, do you know anybody who shrugs off New Year's? Hard to imagine. A scientist in his lab, a poet hunched over the page, looks up at the muted roar from distant crowds and thinks, "Oh? What? New Year's? I suppose they do that sort of thing" and then plunging back into work.

FIVE . . .

     Put that way, neglect sounds ideal. Not that I could ever do it. I swallow New Year's. Or did, because of the social barometer factor — where you are on New Year's gauges how well you are doing in life. Thus parties. Fancy restaurants. Hit plays.

FOUR . . .

     The Millennium cured me of that. First, I had to work — the whole newspaper did, ready for the disaster that never came. Work was humbling; I felt like Cinderella missing the ball. Second, the entire Millennium hoopla was so overblown and unseemly. Such a huge honking deal: the 21st century! The worries! The geegaws! (They were supposed to be worth something someday. Check out eBay. I saw a $6.99 stuffed "Y2K Bug" selling for a dollar).

THREE . . .

     Now I do it for the kids. We eat hot dogs wrapped in dough, watch movies, play music, dance around. I like to wear a little party hat. I always have, particularly because most men shun them. Too uptight, even guys who don't mind painting blue C's on their bellies and taking off their shirts on TV at Bears games.

TWO . . .

     Party hats are the one part of New Year's that isn't a lie. They remind us to slip into silliness —to shelve dignity, shelve the weary awareness that is, in the end, as futile as giddy celebration. Ignore the grinding gears of ceaseless time. Grab fun when you can. I was musing how party hats are the last festive item untouched by fashion; always cheap cardboard, stapled together. Thinking how we should each get our own lovely, hand-tooled party hat — a little fireman's hat, enamel over metal, or a miniature top hat — we would wear as children to our cherished kiddie birthdays and then keep, in a little satin box, to bring out on grand occasions as adults in need of youthful uplift.

ONE . . .

     As I was having this thought, as if to remind me of the regular falsity of my opinions, I noticed a Tiffany & Co. ad for their $225 sterling silver party hat. A dear little thing, created for the Millennium along with a horn and a noisemaker. The trio proved so popular Tiffany kept selling them. I'm modeling a loaner hat above, and believe me, if I didn't have two kids, a house and a stay-at-home wife locked lamprey-like on my finances and sucking hungrily away, I'd snap one up. I could sure use it. But I do, so back it goes.

    Tonight is a good time to set aside your grim self, don a party hat and join the chanting crowd. Reality will be here tomorrow, waiting.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

                 —Originally published in the Sun-Time, Dec. 31, 2003

State of the Blog III

Jim Bachor's mosaic "Thrive," installed at the Thorndale 'L' station in 2014.

    When I mentioned to my wife that I was sorting through the numbers for my third year end State of the Blog report, she replied, quickly and, I thought, rather emphatically, that I shouldn't. That nobody cares about the stats but me, and my doing so is unseemly, a personal flaw, and I should resist the urge. 
     To which my unspoken answer was: Yeah, and a pony for the children.
     Meaning, in some ideal world, it wouldn't matter if a piece of writing influenced one person or a million. Emily Dickinson's poems were just as good, written on sheets of paper and bound with thread into little booklets and jammed into a drawer at her home in Amherst as they'd be splashed across the cover the Ladies Home Journal. 
     But at some point somebody had to read them.
     And in the 24-hour-a-day roar, the howling free-fire zone that the Internet is, numbers seem to count for something. Anyway, the machine keeps track of them, and I do try to pay attention.  On days when I get 2,000 hits, such as today (assuming you're reading this on the day it's posted, Dec. 30, 2015) I feel as if I've accomplished something. If that is sin, then it is my sin, and I own it.

    Onward, as Rick Kogan would say. 
    The news is good, well, goodish. Last year I suggested that 50,000 hits a month would be some kind of success. I hit that mark for January-- 51,780--and surpassed it two more times, topping out at nearly 60,000--59,986--in August, almost 40 percent higher than the 2014 high of 43,000.
     In 2013, the daily average was 918. In 2014 it was 1200. This year it was 1539 a day.
     Not Kim Kardashian's ass breaking the Internet. But steady progress.
     The blog reached a million hits this year, averaging 47,718 hits a month. And while I estimate that 10 percent of those are Spambots, still a milestone of some sort. I held an on-line party the day we passed a million, with music and mingling, and several hundred readers showed up. That was fun. 
     Not the skyrocketing success that some blogs find. But not bad either, I'm told. We're going for the long term here. The blog is part life raft, part archive, part hobby, part unpaid job. 

    I can't pretend that stopping is an option at this point, for a variety of reasons. First, I get more control over the blog. Last May's post on performance artist/singer Amanda Palmer sticks in mind. I thought it an interesting encounter, and had pictures, and asked the paper for a page, which I'd thought I'd get. Then late in the day, pressing news intruded and I had my usual 750 words, and I had to cut the column in half, clumsily, at the last minute. Which would have really irked me, but it remained the same on the blog, and that is what would be available the next day. Palmer's husband, fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, retweeted it to his 2 million followers, meaning it reached far more people through Twitter than through the paper. The print edition is becoming an increasingly mooted, momentary paper interlude, and that trend will only continue.
    Which is the second reason the blog is important. It's about he only way you can find archived columns of mine. The newspaper, for some unfathomable reasons, yanked its archive off line, and you can either pull them out of Nexis, or find them here. Several times I've tried to refer people to columns which, though only a few weeks old, have already vanished. So having them here is important, to the degree that my columns being available is important, and that conversation I will leave to you.
     I'm skipping the poster this year. The 2015 poster sold eight copies, and while I enjoyed making wheat paste and slapping them up in the West Loop, that isn't reason enough to commission a new one. Maybe for the book, which comes out in the fall. I'm also thinking of creating a coffee cup instead for 2016, to give out as prizes.
     What else? Marc Schulman of Eli's Cheesecake returned sponsorship of the blog for the holidays and through January, and I am grateful to him for that, and urge you to show your appreciation as well by sending the gift of cheesecake to yourself or a loved one.
    Finally, as always, thank you for reading this stuff. Without you, I would be talking to myself. 

Accidents will happen

    

"Untitled," by Robert Gober, Art Institute of Chicago

     Whoops! 

     How clumsy of me. Almost spilled my coffee.
     Well, accidents happen. We've all dropped cups, tripped on rugs. So when the Chicago Police Department says that Bettie Jones was shot "accidentally" by police last Saturday, what else to do but nod our heads in sympathy for the poor officer, who took out his gun and spilled some bullets on a grandmother as she opened the door to let him in. Could have happened to anybody.

     Of course, accidents must be put in context. If I drop my coffee cup every other day, something might be wrong with me. Maybe a neurological condition. Maybe I should see somebody.
     Something is definitely wrong with the Chicago Police Department, though lest we be accused of picking on long-suffering, abused, misunderstood and bullied CPD, we should leap to point out it seems to be the same thing wrong with lots of city police departments. Being an officer is a dangerous job, one made safer by shooting first and then analyzing the situation later.
     Safer for the police officer, that is. For the teenager stumbling down the middle of the street or the woman opening the door, not so safe.

     To continue reading, click here.

 

The Star Wars effect on Israel

   

    I will admit it, quietly: I found the reception of the latest installment of Star Wars disturbing.

    Not the film itself. That was the most ordinary Insert-Tab-A-Into-Slot-B example of formulaic filmmaking. I even enjoyed parts: Daisy Ridley's ability to compose her face to reflect what was going on around her, seeing Harrison Ford as Han Solo. A cute spherical robot. 

     Rather, it was the reaction to the film that rattled me. Not that it was popular. Who didn't expect that? That it was lauded. The American Film Institute was declaring it one of the 10 best films of 2015. The New York Times was talking about Oscar buzz for Best Picture. I thought I had lost my mind, in an Emperor's New Clothes sense. It was as if Kim Kardashian had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her ass's contribution to global harmony. 

    Then again, I've never liked Star Wars, particularly. Seen all the movies, many times, of course. As requisite a part of parenthood as changing diapers. Dueled lightsabers with the boys. "Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father...."

    But I didn't love the things.  In all my years at the paper, I've only written one column about Star Wars: eight years ago, for the 30th anniversary of its premiere. And that wasn't so much about the movie, as an admittedly-far-fetched theory as to its impact on our collective national psyche. 

     The first "Star Wars" movie opened 30 years ago this Friday.
     It didn't strike me as much at the time, even as a callow 17-year-old.
     I remember thinking: Geez, here you have a movie where half the action is a running gun battle at close quarters, between this scruffy band of rebels, one of whom is 8 feet tall, and the supposedly fearsome, supposedly skilled storm troopers. Yet the Wookie never so much as gets his ear singed.
     As the years went on, and the movies kept coming, I learned to dislike the series for a variety of other sins -- its feel-instead-of-think anti-intellectualism, its wooden, Perils-of-Pauline acting, its cutesy, lunchbox-ready Ewoks, its crazed army of zealous fans and the blizzard of branded crap they insist on buying, collecting and cherishing.
     No doubt the anniversary will bring a media storm of What-It-Means-To-Us baby boomer thumb-twiddling.
     But I have a theory about "Star Wars" I've been developing, a hunch forming over the years that I'd like to float by you. It's a tad far-fetched, but perhaps worth considering.
     Could the "Star Wars" movies have had some impact on the American view of Israel?
     Bear with me. What was the American view of "a rebellion" before "Star Wars"? Some South American banana-republic revolution where the Castro manque rebel leader was as likely to be worse than the dictator he fought to replace?
     Before "Star Wars," Israel was the feisty underdog, facing a hostile ring of Arab countries whose overwhelming material superiority was checked only by their disunity and blundering.
     Then the movies started coming, and suddenly "rebels" were freedom-loving fighters facing enormous odds against an evil empire, a role that Israel was all too easily pushed into.
     That may explain why so many "Star Wars"-loving American college students chose to embrace the Intifada -- a nihilist blend of suicide and murder that might not normally appeal to the sort of people obsessed with the well-being of harp seals.
     Yet the Intifada, a machine perfectly designed for the weak to lash out at the strong, played to our rebellion fantasies, the Arab nations sponsoring it faded into invisibility, and the state of Israel became an organized, powerful conspiracy of Darth Vaders, practically an empire, at least compared to the struggling Palestinians.
     Perhaps I'm being fanciful -- I'm sure a lot of it can be blamed on good old-fashioned anti-Semitism, which had to be the reason a dozen rigid totalitarian Muslim theocracies can go unchallenged while Israel's being a Jewish state is damned as "apartheid."
     But there needs to be some explanation for the puzzling American indifference -- Hamas lobs hundreds of rockets into Israel, failing to kill civilians by mere chance, and our public lolls in utter indifference. Why? A bit of the blame might go to "Star Wars," for making us forget that one can be a rebel, one can be the underdog, and still be in the wrong.

—Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, May 20, 2007

The Moody Bible Institute finds me venomous

    Riddle: If you walk into an ice cream  shop and order a vanilla milkshake,  and I follow you in and order a chocolate cone, how many ice cream shops have we entered? 
    Does it change your answer if I email my order in ahead of time, or if you order in Spanish?
     I would still answer "one," arguing that differing choices in frozen comestibles, ordered in different fashions, does not demand that we be in different shops. 
    But then,  I am not a Christian theologian. 
    I received plenty of emails reacting to my column last Monday on Wheaton College sociology professor Larycia Hawkins being suspended for trying to show support for our beleaguered Muslim-American fellow citizens by wearing a headscarf and quoting the pope claiming that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.  
    What struck me was the genius the replies showed for vigorously missing the point. 
    Take this typical example, from Chris Northrop:

Wheaton College has sent students and staff all over the world to help people in many ways . Even the Mideast. Maybe you remember these words " let's roll". Deeds speak louder then words at Wheaton College.

     That sort of thing was easy enough to answer. I replied:

You must have read today's column to mean that nobody from Wheaton College ever did anything good, since that seems to be the argument you're making. That wasn't what I was saying at all. My point is that they're failing now, in this case, as they so often have in the past. If you believe that a Wheaton College graduate having done something good at some point in history excuses the college from honoring those who take uncomfortable moral stands in the face of unarguable evil now, well, I would suggest you revisit that opinion. Thanks for writing.

    I'd not bother to post any of it here  — the joy of my job is that I get to move on, a luxury not enjoyed by everybody.  Then the Moody Bible Institute weighed in.  Founded in 1886 by Dwight Lyman Moody, the institute has long inveighed against what it perceives as the evils of secular Chicago, and I was thrilled to be added to a long list that includes dancing, gin,  jazz and desegregation.  I was Exhibit A of an otherwise unnamed crew of critics who "shifted into overdrive" to criticize Wheaton College.
    "The school is being castigated for Islamophobia, hatred, discrimination, and intolerance," wrote Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer, the senior pastor at Moody, in an essay posted on the Moody Church online newsletter on Dec. 22.
     At first I thought he was agreeing with me. Then I realized that this was merely an example of the "venom" that Wheaton College has had to endure from those such as myself who labor under "only a superficial understanding of both Islam and Christianity."

When Hawkins, quoting the pope, says that "Christians and Muslims worship the same God," she appears to have no understanding of the radical difference and contradictions between the two faiths. Christianity affirms the Trinity, a doctrine which lies at the heart of biblical teaching, and the entire concept of redemption. The Christian teaching is that in Christ, God Himself redeemed us; the Son, in agreement with the Father, made atonement for our sins. God Himself supplies the Redeemer we need.    

 In Islam, Allah does not supply a redeemer; humans themselves pay for their own sins by trying to have their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, always unsure of how to keep score. In Islam, God is capricious and does not have fellowship with human beings. No Muslim would ever call God "Father." 

      Notice how deftly Lutzer has moved from what Hawkins, and myself, were saying—both faiths worship the same God—to what he chooses to rebut, the idea that both faiths are the same. His bringing up the "differences and contradictions" in the two faiths is, to return to our ice cream shop analogy, my laboriously explaining the differences between a milkshake and an ice cream cone. "One shop? A milkshake isn't even ice cream at all. It isn't solid! And chocolate is a vastly different flavor than vanilla. We're ordering completely different desserts!"
     Having gone to great lengths to establish that Christianity and Islam are indeed different religions, though no one suggests otherwise, Lutzer then pretends he's proved his point, concluding, tellingly:

...we can befriend Muslims and show them hospitality, respectfully sharing our beliefs and traditions, and learning from one another. Perhaps in God's good timing, we can share with them that while Muhammad claimed to be a prophet, Jesus claims—and had the credentials to prove—that He is actually the Savior of the world, able to take away our sin and bring us all the way to the Heavenly Father.

We can be good and helpful neighbors without sacrificing the very truths that bring sinners into the presence of God. Jesus affirmed, "Love your neighbor," but He did not say that we had to agree with them doctrinally.   

     Let's take a step back and put the situation in plain English:
     The world is filled with religions. Each worship in its own particular way. (See Dr. Lutzer? Not so ignorant after all). For centuries, each thought they would eventually overcome the rest. Now, in modern times, we know that the only hope for peace and survival is to imagine a multi-cultural world where people of varying faiths, races, nationalities and sexual orientations deserve respect and can dwell in harmony.
     Some chose not to believe that. ISIS is one. Wheaton College is another, and if they find the comparison unfair, I would suggest they ponder the company they keep. It's their choice. Nothing in Christian doctrine forbids a woman from wearing a scarf in solidarity with her neighbors. Nothing in Christian doctrine excommunicates you if you suggest Muslims believe in God.  Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church—not an institution known for its nimble shifts in doctrine—somehow managed the task. 
    The sticking point is that Wheaton, and Moody, and Lutzer, don't believe it. They hold out that the sect they were born into is the only true and legitimate mode of existence. Which is their right, let me be quick to point out, before they collapse to the ground, proclaiming themselves the victims here. Their right, until they try to put that attitude into operation in the public sphere, and their tolerance is revealed to be a false face, a mask worn until, as Lutzer slips in, "we can share with them that ... [Jesus] is actually the Savior of the world."
     Jesus ain't the savior of the world. Certainly not the savior of my world and, to drag out an inconvenient fact, not the savior of the vast majority of people in the world. Never was, never will be. Which is why I care about this issue. Muslims are now getting the crap that used to be saved for Jews, and in some quarters (including, alas, many Muslim ones) still is. Muslims are being abused for the same reason anybody gets abused; because the abusers feel the need and think they can get away with it. 
     They're wrong. Jesus is not the savior of most people's worlds. Tolerance is. We must all live together. A Wheaton College professor, under the illusion that she lives in America in 2015, took a mild symbolic stand in favor of tolerance. The small school she works for — or did, before they showed her the gate — chose to view it as a violation of their dogma, and punish her.  And fellow Bible thumpers at Moody chimed in their approval not realizing that the whip being used on Muslims today could be used on them tomorrow. 
      Not just blind, but hypocritical too. They're the first to cry religious tolerance when it's their religion compelling them to do something out of the mainstream, like harass gay people.  Then we all are ordered to cough into our fists and ignore the demands of human decency so they can serve their Lord in the way they've convinced themselves He wants to be served.  Then a religious moral stand is a beautiful thing. Not for Prof. Hawkins though. Because she's suggesting the two faiths share a sense of the divine when, viewed through the keyhole of Christian fundamentalism, only one deserves God's favor.
     The odd thing is, they are in harmony with the my-way-or-the-highway extremism of radical Islam. Not killing people, of course. Not anymore. They stopped that a couple hundred years ago. But the same small, shameful, selfish, hostile, blindered quality that does nobody any good, especially not them. 
     Despite the "differences and contradictions" Lutzer points to, the problem here is that the approach to religion taken by fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam is the same. Just as radical Muslims lash out at differences, tarnishing their faith in the eyes of many, so does Wheaton College and, as they leap to point out, the Moody Bible Institute. They insist that they are at odds with heterogenous modern life and the people in it. Not just science, but the fabric of society itself, which they consider a necessary evil that must be endured until that happy day when they can completely get their way. A reminder that the reason religion is dying out so quickly in this country is not due to venomous secularists like myself, but because the pious stewards trusted with its survival are killing it.