"The world has changed, you perfidious bigot you."

      Happy Mother's Day, first of all. 
      If you are a mother, I hope you take this moment to bask in the outpourings of affection being showered upon you, from those for whom you sacrificed the best years of your life, trying to raise them into some semblance of maturity. 
     And if you are a child—and who among us is not?—I hope you remember to thank your mother or, if that is not possible, to remember her, as fondly as you can.
      And since it's springtime, and May, and Mother's Day to boot, a cheery thought, as my own little Mother's Day gift to you. 

    I was at the Hallmark Store in Northbrook this week, looking over the Mother's Day cards, of which there are a profusion, and I noticed that they represent, even more than I can recall them doing in previous years, the full spectrum of the maternal experience. Not just in English and Spanish and Polish and Italian, not just for the religious and the secular, the casual and the formal, the funny and the emphatic. 
     But also cards for people you might not think would get cards today. Cards for "Ex-Mother-in-Law" and "Ex-Daughter-in-Law" (reassuring her, "Some things never change," such as the feelings of their former in-laws) . Cards from one mother to her co-mother, and for mothers whose child has died, and for individuals who were "like a mother" without, apparently, enjoying official motherhood status.
      Which is all wonderful and in keeping with complicated, messy reality as it is lived by real, flesh-and-blood people, and so different from the icy, theoretical, my-way-or-the-highway, white, Protestant, a mommy-and-a-daddy-and-tw0-and-a-half-kids wilted former ideal that so many of our legislators, particularly in the Southland, seem to still be paddling toward, even as it recedes over the horizon.
      Hallmark Cards, based in Kansas City, Missouri, was founded in 1910, and is not known for being on the forefront of social change. They can't afford to be. Printing greeting cards costs money, and if they create a style of card that nobody wants, then they lose money on that card. Lose enough money on enough cards, you don't say in business for 106 years. They also lose money if their brand strays into the odd or the unacceptable. To be included among the realm of individuals to whom Hallmark sells cards is to be normal, by definition, to be acceptable, and on Mother's Day, 2016, acceptability is a very wide net.  
    See? I told you, good news.  Yes, not everyone has gotten the memo yet. It might go down better in a card. "The world has changed, you perfidious bigot you" and you open it up, "Get with the program, bub." Not something Hallmark would sell. Yet. Maybe by the fall

Is your sign straight?

     The sign didn't skew a lot, but it skewed enough—maybe half a brick dip to the left or, if you prefer, half a brick rise to the right. 
      It was crooked. 
      Plus, of course, the old brackets that held the "My Pi" sign from the restaurant before, the pizzeria that came and went, and quickly too. That's what happens. You get one chance.
      Nobody took those brackets down. A man on a ladder could have removed them with a screwdriver in 10 minutes. 
      But no one did.
      Last year, months before the restaurant opened, I was walking down Shermer in the old leafy suburban paradise and saw that sign announcing the new place, "Agave Anejo Mexican Grill," and immediately had this thought:
      They'll never make it.
      Because to survive, a business needs to pay attention to detail. Especially a restaurant. Because you can eat at home. You need to master the details, to not scrimp  and cut corners and do a slapdash job. To thrive, a restaurant has to sweat the small stuff. That's what customers expect, and are paying for.
      This vaguely Star Trek "A" was obviously designed on the cheap, the name itself hard to read, and skewed to boot. Amateur hour. The restaurant was doomed.
      I thought of writing that, a year ago, when I saw the sign. But why torment a small business owner, right out of the gate, some poor guy pursuing his dream? A Mexican restaurant of his own.
     Maybe the food would be great. A culinary genius, oblivious to such non-food matters as signs and skewing.
     Better to err on the side of kindness, if staying quiet was kindness.
     Maybe I should have written my thoughts. Maybe it would have helped him. Maybe not doing so wasn't doing him any favors.
     Nah, he wouldn't have taken the criticism and learned. People so seldom do.
     So the restaurant opened, last August. The grand opening banner stayed up for a month after the grand opening. That, too, was a bad sign, literally. It advertised the grand opening that had come and gone, and didn't come down until one corner fell down, and even then it flapped around in front of the door. For a day or two.
      Of course we ate there, my wife and younger son, we tried the food. And it wasn't bad. A little expensive. Basic Mexican food. I remember a serviceable ceviche. We almost went back for a second try—support the local business, a block from our house.
     But inside, there was no art on the wall. Who starts a Mexican restaurant and has no art on the walls? Not a colorful paper-mache lizard. Not a sombrero. Not a metal cactus. Nothing.
      So we didn't go back. The lack of art gave me almost a contempt. Really? And we were supposed to eat there why? The place never seemed that crowded. A few people in the bar. And then not even that. A week or so ago the restaurant went dark and the "FOR LEASE" sign went up. Too little capital, I would guess, and too little effort. A small dream poorly executed.
      Still, someone's dream, not deferred, but vanished, so nothing to laugh about. Instead, a grim nod, a recognition of the risk that all who strive face, and should be aware of. That tilted sign was the tip-off, before the the first basket of tortilla chips hit the table. Don't be half-assed. If you're going to do something, do it well. Make sure your sign is straight.

     

Let's go back to the coroner

"Still" by Damien Hirst, Art Institute of Chicago

     Cook County Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cina announced his retirement Wednesday, claiming a desire to seek a "more peaceful lifestyle."
     Which immediately raises the question: What about his four-year tenure wasn't peaceful?
     Perhaps he was referring to the dramatic press conference where he revealed that teenager Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times, 14 while lying in the street, dying.
     Oh right. There was no such press conference. Cina's term was distinguished by a big hike in funding, allowing him to hire more staff and modernize the medical examiner's office, and though we played connect-the-dots last week, I would be so bold to suggest that those two elements — his keeping mum and his being served a big heaping slice of county pie — are not unrelated. Just a theory.
      I'd love to ask him about it, but no interviews, at least not with me. Then again, I'm the one who pointed out when he showed up that he planned to keep his $5,000-a-day forensic consultancy sideline. That kind of thing tends to sour relations.
     Not so for his predecessor, Dr. Nancy Jones, who had a habit of articulating medical findings, even ones that her bosses found unwelcome. Such as in 2009 when she said that Chicago Board of Education President Michael Scott committed suicide, even though Scott's pal, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and Scott's family preferred to dwell in an alternate universe of flimsy conjecture. Daley threw Jones under the bus, and her staff passed around photographs of the messes they were supposed to be cleaning up.....

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"It's hard to take the fingerprints of the dead"

Anti-NATO protest, Chicago, 2012. 

      The Cook County Medical Examiner, Dr. Stephen Cina, quit on Wednesday, saying he wanted "a more peaceful lifestyle"—whatever that means, perhaps a reference to his $5,000 a day forensic consultancy sideline. 

     One that got away. I heaved a weary sigh—having known every Cook County Medical Examiner since the first, Dr. Robert Stein, and watching most of them work, I know that the morgue produces interesting stories. Not Dr. Cina, too modest, or too circumspect, to allow that. 

     But his predecessor, Dr. Nancy Jones did, after sufficient pleading directed at her boss, Todd Stroger, a process that ended up in my book, "You Were Never in Chicago." I am proud of this story on a number of points,  particularly noticing the tools she was using. Anyway, I thought it worth reposting.

     'It is difficult to take fingerprints of the dead," says Dr. Nancy Jones, the Cook County medical examiner. "They really are not that cooperative."
     She immediately reconsiders this.
     "These are the best patients in the world," she corrects herself, as if reluctant to criticize broadly people she sees by the thousands, though they don't see her. "If you come to me as a clinician, and I tell you to quit smoking, you don't. I tell you to take your medicine, you don't. It's the living patients who don't do what you tell them to."

Dr. Nancy Jones

    Here, in an autopsy room at the county morgue, however, the patients stay put, quietly waiting their turn on rolling steel tables, their lightless eyes half open. Technician Tiffany Gregoire helps arrange the body of a large, muscular young man, then gently washes him with a sponge. He was found face-down in a roadway, a bullet hole in his back, the latest victim this year of heightened violence, one of a dozen corpses to arrive in the previous 24 hours.
     "A little lighter load," says Dr. Jones. The average is about 16 cases a day. She reads off today's list: "A drug death, a gunshot, an unknown bone that may or may not be human, a couple of elderly people without families, a pedestrian . . . Actually, it's not a bad day."

UNCONVENTIONAL TOOLS

     Dr. Jones examines a 24-year-old who hanged himself with a shoelace—one of two suicides on today's schedule. Suicides are up. "We always know when the economy goes sour," says Dr. Jones, who suspects hard times might also explain the spike in child murders they saw in April and May.
     At the next table, Dr. Larry Cogan examines the gunshot victim. With a potential murder trial in mind, he inserts a steel rod into the wound and Sherry Davis photographs it, so a jury can see the bullet's trajectory.
     After the victim is rolled over, Gregoire takes a scalpel and cuts across the big man's chest, just below his collarbone, and down his sternum, making a rough "T." Below the brown skin is a beige layer of fat, then deep red tissue that looks disconcertingly like steak. In short order, his heart is on an electronic scale. It weighs 374 grams.
     Dr. Jones has short, coiffed red hair and frameless glasses. She was born in Aliquippa, Pa., a small steel town; her father worked in the mill there for 40 years. Though she has lived in Chicago since 1970, she is, she admits, a small-town girl at heart, and she brings a certain practicality to her job. Her medical kit includes carpet needles and a regular pair of pliers instead of a medical dura stripper costing four times as much. The cutting instrument she uses for autopsies is not a scalpel, but a fancy kitchen knife—a Henckels with a 10-inch blade, the kind found in upscale kitchens.
     "The reason I have this is because they hold their edge, and they're a lot less expensive," she says.
     Gregoire struggles to reach up into the murdered man's throat and pull out his tongue. It is hard, physical work, and while she utters an occasional expletive, her face is placid, expressionless. This is routine. When is it difficult?
     "I would have to say when the bodies come in with roaches," she says. "I don't like that. I'd rather see maggots than roaches."
     After weighing the man's heart, liver, lungs and other organs, then dumping them into a red plastic biohazard bag that will later be inserted into his chest, Gregoire turns her attention to opening his skull. Pulling away the dura inside the skullcap sounds like fabric ripping.
     "This is the part of work that gets a little tiresome," Gregoire says.
     The weight of each organ is recorded on a chalkboard. The photographs are shot on film, leading to "racks and racks and racks" of slides.
     Dr. Jones uses carbon paper to fill out multiple death certificates. The modernization that led hospitals to bar-code every last pair of Tylenol hasn't reached here yet. Dr. Jones -- who joined in 1986 but only became medical examiner last year—is planning to bring the office into the modern age as fast as possible, assuming the money can be found.

'IT'S A LOT OF STRESS'

     She also hopes—someday—to have enough staff to give them breaks from the routine, because "it gets to everybody." Some time away from the autopsy room, maybe an occasional month doing paperwork, filing slides, perhaps educating hospitals and funeral homes, which sometimes forget that certain deaths—suicides, infants, industrial accidents, murders—are required by law to be sent to the medical examiner.
     "It will make a huge improvement, to have relief, and not do the same thing day after day after day, month after month after month," she says. "It's a lot of stress."
     Despite the county budget crisis, she is hopeful.
     "I've been getting a lot of help from downtown," she says. "They really do understand my issues here."
     Beneath Dr. Jones' no-nonsense demeanor beats a warm heart. She likes riding horses, owns two, and adopts rabbits from a rescue group. When a friend, a police officer, died, the officer's wife asked Dr. Jones to perform his autopsy. She did so with her usual professionalism, crying only later, as she dictated her notes. Dr. Jones is 55 and proud of it.
     "Getting old is a privilege that many people don't have," she says. "Every time you get up in the morning and feel those aches and pains, you should thank the Lord."
     Her job has strengthened her faith.
     "I believe in God, very, very much," she says. "Doing autopsies on human beings, you see how intricate we are. The wonder of the human body. How well it meshes together, and how little it takes to stop a person's existence. One little thing."
     A few feet away, Dr. Cogan has removed the bullet that killed the man. A mangled lump of whitish metal, no bigger than a fingertip.

                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 2, 2008

Hey George, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

     Chicago! Yo! Over here! I have a question.
     So the 2016 Summer Olympics begin in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5 — three months from Thursday — assuming the city doesn't first dissolve into unrest or the region become overwhelmed by Zika-carrying mosquitoes or Brazil collapse into political anarchy.
     That said, how many of you have had this thought: "Darn, if only we had gotten the 2016 Olympics. I sure wish it were taking place right here instead."
     A show of hands. Anybody?
     Thought so. While I'm sure there must be someone who wishes that, among Chicago's complex raft of woes, the city were also throwing a weird mega block party for shot-putters and pole-vaulters and all those other sports we studiously ignore the 47 consecutive months between Olympics. But I'm not expecting many.
     The general reaction has to be a collective, Whew!
     Dodged that bullet.
     One disaster that Richard M. Daley didn't foist upon Chicago despite trying with all his might....

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Chicago's own circus, City Council, once put on an elephant show

     Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus had their last show using elephants in Rhode Island on Sunday. I can't claim to be particularly saddened to see the 120-year tradition end. Society changes. I used to enjoy taking the boys to the circus, and the shows were dramatic, especially the elephants forming a massive living tableau of animal bulk. But I understand that elephants are sensitive beings, and abusing them into public performance is not a particularly laudable human achievement. I'm sure feeding slaves to the lions in the Colosseum was a thrilling spectacle too, but that isn't a convincing argument against doing away with it.
    This view represents—I won't say "progress"—how about "evolution" on my part, to borrow Barack Obama's term. Ten years ago, in the wake of three elephants dying at the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Chicago City Council was holding hearings whether to effectively ban elephants in the city. I swallowed hard and attended a meeting. 
    It's a shame the aldermen couldn't have applied this zeal to shortfalls in pension funding; could have saved everybody a lot of grief. Elephants aren't the only ones who suffer. 

     Old people shouldn't live in nursing homes, where they are crammed in small, overlit rooms, often with cantankerous roommates. A few are neglected, suffering terrible bedsores, or abuse at the hands of churlish, undertrained "attendants."
     Instead, they should live out their days with their families, relaxing in wicker rockers, sipping lemonade on the wide front porches of splendid Victorian homes, their grandchildren capering around their knees.
     To help facilitate this, the City of Chicago should ban nursing homes within its borders.
     This, as best I can figure, is the kind of logic underlying arguments against allowing elephants -- either at the Lincoln Park Zoo or in passing circuses -- to reside in Chicago. Since elephants sometimes in some places are treated poorly, they shouldn't be kept in captivity at all.
     This was laid out in the City Council chambers Thursday, during a Rules Committee hearing for Ald. Mary Ann Smith's (48th) proposed ordinance to require so much free space for elephants that it would effectively ban them.
     We saw slides of elephants with abscesses on their feet. A brief, soundless, green-tinged video of a man with a hooked staff, instructing another man how to use it to discipline elephants.
     "Hurt 'em, make 'em scream," read the closed captioning, helpfully provided by PETA.
     Somehow, these incidents were supposed to jell into a general indictment. Testimony in support of the bill began -- for some inexplicable reason -- with a 16-year-old Lincoln Park High School sophomore named Francie Flannigan.
     "The elephants didn't ask to be here,'' she said. (They didn't ask to be in Africa, either, but no matter). "They are our guests. We should treat them like guests and not prisoners."
     The theater major ended by reciting from that elephant classic, Dr. Seuss' Horton Hatches the Egg.
     " 'I said what I meant and I meant what I said, an elephant is faithful, 100 percent.' "
     Ald. William Beavers (7th) responded to this curious display with a pertinent question:
     "Have you ever seen an elephant?"
     "Yes,'' said the girl. "At the Lincoln Park Zoo."
     "Anywhere else?
     "Also at the circus."
     Some three dozen other youngsters, all in identical neon green T-shirts memorializing the last three elephant inmates of the Lincoln Park Zoo, were in the public gallery, which is probably 1 percent of the kids who go through the zoo on a rainy afternoon.
     In general, Beavers provided a steady, thoughtful counterpoint, as we sailed to the realm of the absurd, acting as the Council's voice of reason (as opposed to Ald. Arenda Troutman [20th], whose rambling, incoherent speech left people scratching their heads).
     After the video, Beavers summarized the situation:
     "It's a video of one idiot, and you want to punish the whole city because you saw one person doing something."
     Patti Miles, a former employee of the Detroit Zoo, described how that zoo's elephants were shipped to a sanctuary in California -- she didn't explain why, if the elephants were so terribly abused, they nevertheless lived into their 50s, nor did she point out that the Detroit Zoo managed to make the decision without the intercession of government.
     She seemed to be speaking, not only against zoos, but against human experience of the living world in general.
     "Why is it so important to see something with your own eyes?" she asked.
     The assumption of all the pro-ban people was that there was some idealized state of nature, over in Africa, where all these elephants would be joyfully roaming if they weren't kidnapped and taken here, some Eden with no poachers, no droughts, no hyenas, no illness.
     There are 2 million Americans in prison in this country, some kept in horrendous, overcrowded conditions -- such as at the Cook County Jail. There are 600 elephants in the United States. I just don't think our priorities are straight.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 24, 2006

     Postscript: Stung by ridicule over its banning foie gras in 2005, the City Council ended up not banning elephants. In 2008, the City Council did pass a weak tea anti-elephant abuse ordinance, making it illegal "to use on an elephant any device or instrument with the intent to cause pain and injury" without mustering the courage to specifically mention "bull hooks" etc. and thus missing the heart of the matter.  The Lincoln Park Zoo got rid of its elephants, no law necessary, in 2012. 

U.S. Supreme Court leans toward legalizing corruption

Bob and Maureen McDonnell

     Things are a mess.
     They sure feel like a mess, don’t they?
     Chicago teeters on insolvency. Illinois hurtles toward its first anniversary of utter fiscal gridlock.
     Nationally, the view is even more surreal, like some semi-obscene Dali painting come to life. This crude New York punchline has shanghaied the Republican Party. While the Democrats who aren’t still skipping happily toward Shangri-La behind Pied Piper Bernie Sanders, banging tambourines wrapped in ribbons, grimly assemble around scarred old campaigner Hillary Clinton, like yeomen clutching pointed staffs in a muddy field around Henry V, psyching themselves up to fight off the legions of bowl-haircut Middle American sexist idiocy for the next six solid months.
     So I hate to point out another looming problem, one not on your radar yet. It won’t show up until June, maybe. But it bobbed to the surface of our national discourse last week before being flushed away by the next jaw-dropping set of bad news. Since you may have missed it, I feel compelled to pluck it out and hold it up, gingerly, between thumb and forefinger.
     Bob McDonnell.
     Name mean anything? Of course not. Don’t feel bad, it drew a blank with me too....

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Postscript: Wondering what happened? Read it and weep. 

Chris Christie in rags

    The presidential election is Tuesday, Nov. 8.
    One hundred and ninety days from now.
    A tad more than half a year.
    Quite a lot, really.
    And given that, right now, it looks as if those days—4392 hours — will be taken up listening to, looking at, and thinking about Donald J. Trump, some words of comfort are in order.
    I'd like to direct your attention to Chris Christie in the photo above.
    Now the governor of New Jersey was never going to be president. That dream vanished when his top aides shut down a few lanes of the George Washington Bridge leading to Ft. Lee in 2013, as some kind of crazy political payback by creating huge traffic jams. Meaning either Christie knew about it and lied about that knowledge. Or ran an administration where henchmen ran riot while he sat in the dark.
    And really, which was worse?
    The man was a political corpse and didn't know it.
    Still, Christie showed up at the Republican debates, delivered his prepackaged zingers and hit his cues. And when it was over he was among the first former opponents to embrace Donald Trump.

    As a reward, Trump lets him join the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band album cover melange of models and GOP mercenaries who have drifted over to his banner and are allowed to stand behind him at speeches.
     Christie, though, is noteworthy for that expression, that stunned, miserable stare that often comes over his face. I think of that woman trapped in the hive in "Aliens," who croaks "Kill me."
    Or—and this is a vague memory—there was some Babylonian king, who kept his enemy, blinded, in a small cage at court. It was something I glanced on a TV historical drama years ago, so might not even be true. I can't dig up any facts on the matter, so maybe you can help out.* But the sight of once egomaniac Christie, deprived of the spotlight, showing his throat to Trump, who dressed him in rags and chained him to a post in the corner, where he crouches, miserable, waiting hungrily for scraps of attention.
    That's a beautiful thing. It makes me happy every time I see it, because the obloquy is so well-deserved. The quisling, his head shaved, in a tumbrel, dripping in spit. And perhaps there's a bit of foreshadowing there. It is too much, at this point, to hope that Trump will end up the same way, toothless, ignored and flailing, a male Sarah Palin, spouting gibberish as people avert their faces. He's too rich for that. But it could happen. Some version of that could yet occur. Look at Christie. Really look at him. Whenever Trump is on stage, scan the ensemble of bootlickers and coat-holders and toadies. Find him and be reassured. The wheel turns, and sometimes rough justice does occur. Trump is riding high now, at this moment. But a moment does not last forever. Or so one may passionately hope.


* A Bible-savvy reader, John Anton Weber, offers up the unfortunate I was thinking of, Zedekiah, citing chapter and verse:

"At the end of his eleven year reign, Nebuchadnezzar succeeded in capturing Jerusalem. Zedekiah and his followers attempted to escape, making their way out of the city, but were captured on the plains of Jericho, and were taken to Riblah.There, after seeing his sons put to death, his own eyes were put out, and, being loaded with chains, he was carried captive to Babylon, where he remained a prisoner until he died."  

                                                — Kings 25:1-7; 2 Chronicles 36:12   

Thank you John!

Welcome to the restroom of Mort's Deli.

     "I'm just wondering, with all this talk about transgendered people using the washroom, I want to know, who is going to be doing the checking? How do they plan on enforcing the law?" 
                                                                           —Phone message, April 29, 2016


     "Good evening. Welcome to the restroom of Mort's Deli. Please feel free to avail yourself to a stick of Wrigley's spearmint chewing gum or Lifesaver mint. But only one, please.
      "Why yes, I remember you, too. You asked for blueberry bagels last year. There is no such thing as a blueberry bagel. Not at the Steinberg Bakery which is closed for a month. Being remodeled. We are installing new, crazy expensive terrazzo counters and tile floor. The contractor said two weeks which means four. In the meantime, I told my brother Morton that I'd help him with the restroom duty at the delicatessen when I wasn't overseeing the work. You have to watch them, like a hawk you do.
      "It is not easy, the rest room duty. Believe me. Now a nice gentleman like yourself, there is no need to ah ... examine the package. But younger men, teenagers, they can be very smooth-skinned and fair. The way they dress nowadays. Hard to tell the boys from the girls....
     "No, I have not had a lady come in here yet a, how do you say, transgendered individual. But I've only been here a week. Morty's sister, Alice, is in the ladies room. She had someone she was certain was a man. I mean, there were shoulders, a mustache....
     "No, no, we cannot touch the patron. That would be assault.  All we can is ask. Insist. Alice asked the lady to ... well, see the goods. This lady, she became very offended, and left before the police could be called. Which is good, you are supposed to call the police, because it is a crime, to go into the men's room with the equipment of a woman, and versus vice.
    "Turns out, Mort said later, it was indeed a woman—Mrs. Berkowitz's sister, visiting from Cleveland. She had never been here before, which is why Alice didn't recognize her. Her own fault, really, for not being a customer. Still, an unfortunate incident. Not only did the sister get mad, but Mrs. Berkowitz too. A good customer for 20 years. She'll come around. Where else can you get such garlic pickles? Nowhere. Mort makes them himself, from Polish cucumbers raised in oaken tubs.
    "But the law is the law. 'The Illinois Restroom Safety and Decency Act.'  It's framed right there on the counter, next to the bottle of Old Spice. Please feel free to avail yourself to the Old Spice. It's bracing.
     "The law requires that the act be framed and prominently displayed, though I think that Moishe would do so anyway. He doesn't want his customers to think that he cares ... about ... you know ... what they have ... down there. He only cares that you order a corn beef sandwich, or something, enjoy your lunch, and not linger. Sometimes people linger, eating the rolls and pickles—the best!—for hours. But what can you do? You can't throw them out. Even a cup of coffee. That was the biggest problem Mort had, people who get a club soda and think they're entitled to a basket of rolls and a jar of pickles.
    "But times change. Mort has had his deli here for, what, 50 years? More. Since 1964. Before it belonged to our uncle Sol. It was called Sol's. But Sol became ill, and had no children. Well, two girls, but no boys to pass the business onto. Girls have no sense for the business. The girls had no interest in the delicatessen, went to school somewhere and got jobs, one became, I don't know, a physicist, the other a pilot.
     "In all that time, there was never trouble with the restroom. Well, sometimes a parent would order their kid the Jumbo Atomic Hot Fudge Sundae, and let the child eat the whole thing—it's supposed to be shared with four people—and he would rush into the bathroom and, well, let me tell you. My brother told me it was like somebody pulled the pin on a grenade in there. There was throw-up on the ceiling. 
    "But as far as men dressed as women lurking about the stalls, pouncing upon the customers doing their business, that was never a problem. Which is what makes the law so strange to me. Now Mort, he says it isn't about restrooms, really. Me, as a baker, I'm used to silly laws. We have to have the kitchen checked for rodent activity, as if that were possible in an establishment of such unsurpassed cleanliness as the Steinberg Bakery. But in other places, yes, so I go along. I try to be a good citizen. Which Mort does too. Though he has a theory. He says, with the Internet and cell phones and freedom, it gets harder to kick the people you hate. Time was, you could, literally, you saw somebody you didn't like, a schwartz, a fairy, whatever, you could walk over, give 'em a kick. And what were they going to do? Nothing. Nobody cared what happened to them.
    "Now, oh boy. Everybody cares. They post the video and everybody cries. Suddenly there are no people ashamed to show their faces in public. They get to ride the bus, use the bathroom, wherever they please. It's a new world. But some people, they don't like it. They have the itchy toe. They're still itching to give their kick and, blocked one way, find another. Not me. I hate no one. I am a businessman. You come in, I sell you butter cookies, no matter how loathsome an individual you happen to be when you are not buying my cookies. It isn't my business. My business is selling you cookies, so give me the money, and get out. Four weeks. Six tops.
    "This law. This stupid law. So now somebody has to sit in the bathroom, checking. In every public restroom with more than two stalls. Sadly, Mort's Deli has three, though he's going to hire my contractor—Sheldon Finkleman and Brothers, the best!— to rip one out. As soon as they're done at the Steinberg Bakery. By June, God willing.
    "Until then, well, here I am. Trying to make the best of it. Not so bad. I got the newspaper. There's the radio, easy listening. Part of it is nice -- like the old days, when there were clubs. The Chez Paree, the Trade Winds. I once saw Tony Bennett at the Double Door. You can't imagine. There was always a colored fellow in the bathroom, handing out towels and brushing off shoulders. Mort should have an actual colored fellow, but it isn't so easy to find one who'll sit in a restroom and guard the mints. Besides, for the enforcement of the law, that requires a certain finesse, a certain authority. Which is why Morty turned to me. I am a figure of respect at the Steinberg Bakery, and run a right ship here. Still, most people are the gender that God intended them to be, and are just answering nature's call, and since I'm here anyway, I try to make it a little elegant for them, for all of us, with the fancy lotions and the music and the aftershave and the combs in blue water. Here's a towel. Please deposit it in the wicker basket. People can be pigs. I know. Here, help yourself to a stick of Wrigley spearmint gum, but only one. Some people scoop up the tray. And thank you -- some gentlemen, they take the gum but leave nothing. Which is their right, but leaves a lingering bitterness. Still, it takes all sorts to make a world. Let me tell you. A little kindness goes a long way. I wish more people knew that.

Let's all play Ted Cruz connect-the-dots

     Remember connect-the-dots? I do, which is scary. Pages covered with numbered dots, plus a few embellishments that pretty much give the game away unless you're a particularly dim child. Grabbing your squat blue pencil, you draw a line from one dot to the next, using your newly acquired counting skills. An image emerges. Oooo.
     Long gone now, I imagine, another victim of computers.
     Still, we can play connect-the-dots by relating disparate news items until a picture forms.
     Dot 1: Woke up Thursday morning to WBBM radio playing a Ted Cruz campaign commercial — right, Indiana, our slice of the Southland next door, is having its primary Tuesday. The Cruz ad does its own little connect-the-dots, taking the common fear of transgender people, marrying it to Donald Trump, who in a rare moment of common sense, said "people go, they use the bathroom that's appropriate." Cruz offers that as his plea for your vote.
     Rex Huppke wrote a bold explanation in the Tribune this week of just how cowardly, offensive and un-American Cruz is for singling out a long-besieged minority for further abuse. Readers know I am not in the practice of touting the competition, but such considerations are a trifle compared to the welfare of the nation, and must be set aside so long as there is the threat, no matter dwindling, that Cruz could prevail. He's worse than Trump, and that's saying a mouthful....

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Behind every successful man is a woman, laughing at him

     When the Tuesday results came in, and Trump had swept the Republican primaries in all five states—Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island—suddenly it seemed very real. The man could really be the Republican presidential candidate in November.
      And while that most likely means Hillary Clinton will dice him like a Veg-o-matic, nothing is certain in this world. People certainly hate Hillary Clinton, for ... well, whatever flimsy surrogate they wave around—Benghazi, emails, the death of Vince Foster, if they're Republicans. The war in Iraq, Goldman Sachs, not being Bernie Sanders if they're left wing Democrats. 
     As to where her gender fits into all this, well, it'll take a sharper mind than mine to sort that out. It's easy to assume the GOP hates her because she's a woman since they do seem to go out of their way to scorn women, like Ted Cruz's already-notorious commercial that's about women's restrooms but is addressed to their lords and masters, men.
     But Bill Clinton isn't a woman, and Republicans hate him just as much as they do Hillary.
     Trump came pretty close to denouncing Clinton for her gender Tuesday night. Flush with victory, he lit into his opponent-to-be for what one can assume is her most glaring fault. 
    “Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5 percent of the vote,” Trump said, during a rambling speech that he turned into a news conference when he ran out of things to say. "The only thing she's got going is the women's card. And the beautiful thing is, women don't like her."
    How that is germane ... well, it goes without saying, though within hours the Clinton campaign had a strong video response online, taking Trump's words and ramming them up his ass, where they belong.
     What Trump is groping at, I think, reflects the common bully belief that oppressed groups are really entitled. Just as Republicans said Obama became president because he was black— since African-Americans just show up and leapfrog into seats of power— when the truth is he became president in spite of it, so many voters aren't embracing Clinton because she's a woman, but they're overcoming their unspoken disdain they have for women and supporting her anyway, because she's smart and talented and the best person for the job.
    To me, the most telling aspect is that Hillary had a speech prepared, while Trump winged it. That's why his fans love him, I know. But a thinking person does not want a president who wings it when preparation is a possibility.
     She certainly is a flawed candidate. But like Democracy as defined by Winston Churchill as "the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried for time to time," so Hillary Clinton is the worst candidate, except for all the others that are trying right now. Compared to them, she's Moses and Jefferson in one except, as Trump keeps pointing out, female.
  

It's not just for topiary any longer

     I was standing in a bar in Jerusalem with the newspaper publisher's wife. Having traveled Israel together for a week, we had run out of things to say a few days earlier. So we silently watched the TV over the bar which, at that moment, was showing a Kotex commercial.
     "There's an interesting story about how Kotex was developed . . . " I began.
     "And I suppose you're going to tell me," she said.
     That stung. I know I can be a bore. But certain stories fascinate, such as how 100 years ago Kimberly-Clark, the Wisconsin paper mill, ramped up to make Cellucotton, which went into gas mask filters in the First World War. The war ended abruptly, tanking the gas mask market, so Kimberly-Clark had to figure out what to do with all that Cellucotton. They developed two new products, thin sheets they called "Kleenex" and thick pads they called "Kotex."
    The challenge of selling Kleenex tissues was figuring out what to do with them. Originally they were sold as a way for ladies to remove their makeup. But a nurse suggested sneezing into them, and an industry was born.

     The challenge of selling Kotex was two-fold: first teaching reluctant women — who up to that point used rags — to try the product. And second to push squeamish retailers into selling it. At first they packaged it in plain white boxes....

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"The saving grace of Kumamon"

Repairing Kumamon Castle, part of which collapsed.

    

"Fight on Kumamon, You're Strong, Kyushu!"

     When I heard that powerful earthquakes had rocked Kyushu, Japan's southwestern island, earlier this month, my first thought was, "But I was just there!"
      A natural sentiment, I suppose, a human reaction, though not a particularly laudable one. I always worry there's something shamefully egocentric about focusing on your remote connection to some distant disaster: Way to make an immense tragedy all about you, Neil.

This cartoon hoped for pets to be reunited with their
families and invoked "the saving grace of Kumamon."

     My second thought seemed even less appropriate: "Send in Kumamon!" A reference to the jolly bear mascot whose birthday party I attended in Kumamoto last month, as part of my research for an article on cuteness I'm writing for Mosaic, the London web site of science and health. He's the most popular yuru-kyara, or "loose characters," representing every town and city, region and company in Japan.

     I momentarily thought of tweeting words to that effect, as a message of solidarity. "This is a job for Kumamon!" Better than the generic "You're in our prayers."
     Then I reconsidered. People were dying: 45 dead, more than a thousand injured. The material loss is tremendous—Toyota, which has a factory there, alone will endure $250 million in lost sales due to interruption of its production lines. 
      So I kept quiet, not wanting to play glib with their tragedy.

This was captioned "Kumamon, Protect the Children"

      Turns out, I could have invoked the great black bear of happiness. Calling upon Kumamon was a common impulse. It seems as if half of Asia did. Not officially. The Kumamoto Prefecture government, which controls Kumamon (he has a desk and a title, director of marketing) had more important things to do than manage their mascot. So his official Twitter feed, which has a half million followers, fell silent.  
     But others must have really needed him. Kumamon was missed. In Kumamon's absence, people across Japan took to social media to express concern both through Kumamon and for him. They wondered where he was. The Japanese embassy in Canada encouraged ex-pats to send messages of support to Kumamon, and noted manga artists led a campaign of drawing Kumamon to express solidarity and raise money for earthquake recovery efforts. I found them quite touching, and thought I would share a few here. 

A particularly lovely effort from mainland China, whose panda says, "Because we're both bears."

Donald Trump: The rare Republican who believes in evolution

  

     As a lifelong Republican, I enthusiastically support the candidacy of Donald J. Trump. He will make an excellent nominee and, eventually, president, taking his rightful place alongside such GOP icons as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.
     If you ask me why Mr. Trump will be an excellent 45th president, I would point to his moderate, commonsense policy on immigration reform; his strong, consistent stand against abortion; plus his opposition to the PC madness currently roiling the South regarding transgender use of public bathrooms, where decency is making a stand against "repulsive perverts," to borrow Ted Cruz's description, bursting into women's restrooms, terrifying our mothers and daughters.
     Nit-pickers among you might point out that Trump has not always believed any of these things. Within recent memory he was calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, suggesting Muslims be blocked at the border, and shrugging off the deep visceral horror represented by people using the toilet without the government concerning itself with the state of their sexual organs.
     To which I would reply: That is evolution, Donald Trump style. Or as his senior aide explained to the Republican National Committee in a closed door meeting last week, up to now Trump has been "projecting an image."
     "The part that he's been playing is now evolving," said chief advisor Paul Manafort....

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Good night sweet prince

     When David Bowie died in January, I thought of all Bowie meant to me, since I was a 16-year-old at Camp Wise, and batted out something reflecting that connection. The paper ran it the next day, on the front page.
     When Prince died Thursday... well, not my table, so I said nothing.
     Wasn't missed. The Internet was an explosion of Prince—remembrances, celebrations, praise, reflection, grief.  Surely nobody wanted to read more.
     So Saturday, nothing. The entire Internet had reverted to Prince anyway.
    To be honest, rather than adding something, I would have subtracted. It was too much—in my opinion, as someone who didn't care for him, one way or the other. I missed the other news that Prince was crowding out. Yes, he was dead. Yes, "Purple Rain." The New Yorker tweeted their purple, raining cover minutes after his death was announced. Everyone wanted in on the action. 
    I wasn't interested in him when he was alive. Kinda late to start now...
    But it felt like sour grapes to say that. The songs, well, people do like that sort of thing, obviously. To me, appreciation of Prince hinged on finding him, or his music, sexy, and, without going into details, not my cup of tea, no. 
     I did think of saying that—offer up something for the Prince indifferent, who might be feeling left out and bewildered. There's comfort in knowing you're not alone. God knows the Prince fans are being catered to. Why not whisper, there is no accounting for taste?
     Yet...why pooh-pooh something people genuinely valued in their moment of (apparently) genuine grief? Bulletin: it's not all about me. 
     Better to wait a few days.
     Maybe on a warm Sunday. Who the heck's reading this anyway? Go outside, get moving. Walk in the 80 degree weather in the Chicago Botanic Garden. That's where I am.
    If Prince wasn't your guy, well, I'm with you. A shame he's gone—57, too young—but I would have settled for the news told once, and that's it. Why does every celebrity death have to be given the Full Diana Treatment? Am I the only one getting tired of the media, hungry for hits, keening over every lost celebrity? It's exploitative.
     With the exception of this post, of course.
  

Is your dog ready for Passover?

    The woman who owns Evanger's Dog and Cat Food Company phoned a few weeks back. Was I, she asked, interested in writing about their Kosher dog food. "Sure!" I said, then paused. Wait a sec...Didn't I write about you guys? No, no she assured me. 

     I did, and only a few years back. Which means it is too soon for me to take up the subject again; a topic like Kosher dog food needs about 20 years between columns. But in checking, I re-read this Passover piece, and decided it merits sharing, for those who missed it, or just might enjoy reading it again (heck, I enjoyed reading it again, and I wrote the damn thing).  I particularly appreciated the part where I scour the Talmud for dog references. I always feed our dog Kitty before feeding myself: it seems cruel to eat in front of her. Now I see that doing so is also ordained by God. I imagine that dynamic is found in a lot of supposedly-religious practices: impulse first, then divine sanction, if available, second. Then pretend it's the other way around. 
    Happy Passover.

     "So is Kitty keeping Passover?"
     Spoken by my 15-year-old, one of those wise-ass teen questions that pour out of kids' mouths at that age. He had been asking about our family Passover plans, cringing at the thought of matzo sandwiches.
     Yes, I said, at Passover—which begins Monday night—the bread gets tucked away, a minor deprivation to help remind him of the carnival of plenty that is his life. Just at that moment Kitty, our little bichon frise/shih tzu mix, squirmed. 
     What about the dog?
     Pets are of course freed from observing the strictures of faith. But I'm a big believer in checking stuff, as opposed to just guessing.
     So off to the Talmud—the rabbinic commentary over Jewish law and teachings, compiled over centuries. It runs more than 6,000 pages and contains a surprising amount about dogs. Though of course, given the nature of rabbinic debate, what it contains is often disputatious and contradictory.
     Rabbi Natan, for instance, insists raising an "evil dog" violates the principles of Torah. Rabbi Yaakov Emden interprets this to mean that all dogs are forbidden, being not only evil but the sort of thing that gentiles waste their time on. Other rabbis argue there is no prohibition against all dogs, but only against those dogs that are evil. The rabbis then fall to arguing over what an evil dog might be—barking and/or biting seem to be factors.
     Nor is the Talmud silent on feeding pets, using a verse in Deuteronomy to insist that— Rabbi Emden notwithstanding—you must feed your dogs before you feed yourself.
     But what the Talmud says and what Jews actually do can be entirely different matters, so I consulted an oracle far outstripping the Talmud in both size and scope—Google. Plug in "Kosher dog food" and the first site that pops up is for Evanger's Dog and Cat Food Company of Wheeling, Ill.
     "It's a family business," said Brett Sher, whose parents bought it in 2002. The company was started in 1935 by Dr. Fred Evanger, who raised Great Danes.
     "He wanted high-quality pet food for his dogs," said Sher. "That's where it all started."
     The factory is still in the barn that Evanger converted in 1935—though it is moving to Markham within three months.
     "We are the only family-owned cannery making pet food in the United States," he said, emphasizing how they like to buy produce and meat from the Chicago area.
     "Most of our raw materials are from Chicago," Sher said. "Ninety percent are from within 50 miles of the plant." They have 80 employees, and sell pet food in 5,000 stores nationwide and around the world.
     Evanger's offers exotic fare like "Duck & Sweet Potato Dinner" and "Grain Free Pheasant." They sell pet food made of buffalo, of rabbit, of wild salmon—and of pork, a big seller in Israel, ironically. A reminder that the products are not "Kosher"—not made from approved animals slaughtered in a supervised, ritual way—but rather "Kosher for Passover," meaning they don't contain certain grains or milk products.
    "We do have a rabbi who comes in, unannounced, and does an inspection to make sure we're not using chametz," said Sher.  
     "Chametz" means grains prohibited during Passover. The issue is not what the dog can eat, but what can be kept in the owner's house. During Passover, observant Jews rid their homes of all chametz, and most dog food contains grain. (Ironically, non-grain pork dog food can be kept in an observant Jew's home at Passover while bread cannot).
     Families sometimes resort to symbolically selling their pets and pet food to the neighbors, a traditional dodge, or even boarding pets during the holiday. Or there's Evanger's.
     "This way the dog can eat with the family rather than eating outside," Sher said. "It takes the hassle out of all that."
     It wouldn't make much business sense to sell products only useful for a week in the spring, and then only to Jews. But many pets have gluten issues, plus there's a cachet to the word "Kosher," even in places like Japan.
     "They think it's healthier so they love it," said Holly Sher, Brett's mother. "Overseas, they like it." Chicago customers like it too.
     "The Kosher for Passover is a large selling point for some people," said Travis Thomas, owner of Wigglyville pet boutique — Evanger's isn't sold by chains, just independents.
     It is God, in the book of Exodus, who orders Jews not to have bread in their homes during Passover: "Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses."
     There is another passage in Exodus that I was surprised the Talmudic rabbis didn't pick up on: "But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue," God says in 11:7. Now maybe the Lord was referring exclusively to Egyptian dogs. But I think the argument could be made that God was recognizing and accepting the presence of all dogs. Which, thanks to Evanger's, can be fed right next to the pious Seder table.
             —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 24, 2013

When it comes to Rauner, the plain truth is bad enough

     Karen Lewis used to do standup at the Woodlawn Tap.

     Before she was a teacher, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union briefly wanted to be a comedian.

     She still has a tendency to let loose with both barrels, like Wednesday, when she called Gov. Bruce Rauner "a new ISIS recruit" in front of the City Club.

     I winced, because the truth about Rauner is bad enough: our most rigid and immoral governor in living memory, who not only did not accomplish anything he said he would, but, indulging in the extremism that has brought the Republican Party to the edge of ruin, turned his standoff with House Speaker Mike Madigan into statewide paralysis, hurting thousands of the most vulnerable Illinoisans and truly damaging the state's vital institutions.

     Just say that. No need to drag in terrorism. Wild exaggeration is a tactic of the weak, the Occupy movement vilifying a system they haven't the foggiest notion of how to actually change. Comparing Rauner to ISIS doesn't hurt him — he's the most don't-give-a-damn politician I've ever encountered, well, except for Madigan, which is what makes their faceoff so maddening. If they were a pair of dogs with their jaws locked on each other, we could turn a hose on them.
    As it is, all we can do is wait. So I understand Lewis' frustration...

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Our mediocrity is reflected on our money

August Saint-Gaudens $20 gold piece

     It was Napoleon who said, "If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna."
     Meaning, don't be half-assed. Don't do things part way. Finish the job.
     Like the U.S. Treasury Department taking Andrew Jackson off the front of the $20 bill and, in the same smooth motion, putting him on the back.
     Weenies. Really. If we wake up one day and we're a province of China, it'll be because we're not bold enough to change the person on our currency every century.
     Jackson has been on the twenty since 1928.
     I should show my hand here.
     I was a coin collector, which means also a currency collector, a little.
     That might sound timid, but you need guts to collect coins.
     To be a coin collector is to despair for America, a little.
     Because we not only know how far we lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to putting something of beauty in our pockets.
    We also know how we fail to match our own legacy from eras gone by.
     We weren't always like this.
     Changing the twenty now made me think of another time when we changed the twenty—the $20 gold piece, that is. Teddy Roosevelt was president.
     "I think our coinage is artistically of atrocious hideousness," he wrote to the treasury

$10 gold piece

secretary in 1904. Roosevelt sought out August Saint-Gaudens to re-design the $10 and $20 gold pieces, leading perhaps the most beautiful coins ever produced by this or any country.
     I'm not one of those complaining that Tubman somehow isn't worthy—she does seem a bit of a flat historical figure at this point, veiled in semi-myth, like Johnny Appleseed. But that could be my own ignorance of her history. She was a real person, who did real acts of heroism to free slaves, and I get the need to nod in the direction of women and African-Americans, though were I them, I might be miffed at the tininess of the gesture. 
     Other women will crowd the backs of smaller denominations: Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul. peaking out from the back of the $10, Marian Anderson singing on the back of the $5.
     What they should have done is exiled the lot—Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton, et al—for a decade, ushered the women onto the front of all the bills. Then we could bring the presidents back, or not , in 2027. 
    But that would be bold. And people might complain. Hence these half-measures, these mincing semi-honors.  Stealthily stealing into one suburb of Vienna.
     What kills me most is they're keeping Jackson, on the back, in some capacity, a craven surrender to the idea that we can't change anything decisively. The heart breaks.
     Yes, there are more important things, as day by day, year by year, the United States sinks into frozen decrepitude. But the money is a symbol of our paralysis. In a functioning country, it wouldn't be such a big honking deal to change the face on currency, because we'd have new money every decade or two.
     Not this country. Tiny interests are the tail that wags the dog. So rather than irk the change-counting machine industry—yes, such a thing exists—we keep the penny, while aversion to change of any sort inspires us to keep its Lincoln design which, by the way, first appeared in 1909. We've seen it plenty.

     I won't rave on about the ugliness of our coinage. I'd rather see a sharp bas relief of Donald Trump on the quarter than the bland profile of Washington we've been looking at since 1932. Although maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. I'm thinking what kind of currency, what kind of coinage, a dynamic nation striding into the future would have. Maybe these ugly coins and outdated bills, and incremental half changes are exactly what we deserve.