Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame honors puppeteer, others.

    Having just read Thomas Dyja's excellent The Third Coast, with its touching portrait of Burr Tillstrom, the Chicago puppeteer who created "Kukla, Fran & Ollie" and almost single-handedly got television rolling (his show was designed to push parents to buy television sets for their children, and boy, did it ever), I was glad to see Tillstrom named this week to Chicago's Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. I was also proud that my Sun-Times colleague Andrew Patner was honored as well. And, heck, okay, I was happy to see myself there, too, as a friend of the community.
       My first thought was of all the people, starting with Andrew, continuing on through Jon-Henri Damski, Paul Varnell, Rick Garcia, Lori Cannon and many, many more, who helped me better understand the gay perspective (Paul, of course, would deny that such a thing as a gay perspective exists, and, as always, he has a point).
      I thought, it might be worthwhile to pull together a little of what I've written about gay Chicago over the years. My interest in the community began with an assignment—a night editor sent me to the Town Hall district to attend an outreach meeting the police were holding. (If you make it to the end—it's long, I know, but once I started I had trouble stopping— notice a very different story about the police in 2010). I kept returning to the community because it's interesting and few in the mainstream press were paying attention. The injustices gays suffered and suffer demanded attention. As proud as I am to be in the Hall of Fame, I'm prouder of the work that prompted them to invite me.
 
On relations between the gay community and the police:
   In recent months, the Chicago Police Department has been asking the city's gay community to talk about its safety and crime concerns. The message from gay residents is disturbing:
     They're afraid of the police.

PaulVarnell

    "We are as afraid of cops as we are of any criminals and street bashers," said Jon-Henri Damski, a columnist for Windy City Times, a gay publication. "They are as likely to take their badges off and attack you. Of course, there are good cops. But that doesn't reduce the inherent fear of getting hurt and calling the cops."
     Paul Varnell, a homosexual activist who has written about hatred of gays among police officers, said: "I've been arrested and I've been mugged, and frankly I prefer being mugged."
                                                                  —Nov. 17, 1991

On the memorial service for ACT-UP activist Danny Sotomayor:
    Margaret Sotomayor stared up at the police sergeant, looming a good foot taller than she, and uttered a timeless statement of entreaty and reproach.

    "I am the mother," said Sotomayor, trying to force her way into the tribute that friends of the late gay activist Daniel Sotomayor were holding at the Riviera Theater last week. "This is unnecessary, to throw us out of here."

     While 300 people cried and hugged and watched a slide show and documentary film about Daniel Sotomayor's life, Margaret Sotomayor and her children stood outside on the sidewalk and held a vigil of sorts.

     The Sotomayors felt slighted by not being invited. The planners thought the family had not been sufficiently supportive in the terrible last weeks of Daniel Sotomayor's battle against AIDS.

     But the arguments of both sides are not as important as what they symbolize - the tragic breaches that often form between homosexuals and their families. 
                      —March 18, 1992

From a story examining transgender life in Chicago:
     Jenny has sparkling blue eyes, a small, upturned nose and a cascade of curly blond hair tumbling over her right shoulder.
     With a rhinestone nail charm centered on each red fingernail, a dab of blush at her decolletage, and deftly applied make-up, it's easy to believe her when she says she spent three hours getting ready to go out.
     The shimmery blue and silver dress is custom-made, she says, and it's easy to believe that, too, since with the spike heels, Jenny tops out at perhaps 6-foot-7.
     "I'm a bigger girl, I know," she says, smiling radiantly. "I can't go out to a mall—hey, I've got a football player's shoulders."
     So instead, Jenny has come here, to a banquet hall on the Northwest Side of Chicago, where the city's tiny, secretive transvestite community is having one of its many regular social functions. . .   
                           —May 24, 1992 

On the idea of gay history:    
     Almost any library worthy of the name has more books. Almost any mid-size business archive probably has more papers. And even the cash-starved Chicago Public Library is open longer hours.
     But the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, a large storefront on North Paulina Street, is important not for the number of volumes on its shelves, nor the limited number of gray archival boxes stacked in back, nor its severely restricted hours of operation.
     Gerber/Hart is the only gay and lesbian library and archives between the coasts, and the largest outside of San Francisco and New York. With the first national lesbian and gay history month scheduled for October, Gerber/Hart is the symbol of an idea that still is upsetting to some quarters of society—that gays and lesbians have a distinct culture, a history that is worthy of study, preservation and understanding.
     "We're here to serve a unique need," said Kevin Boyer, board president of Gerber/Hart. "We provide a safe space for people who want look at materials that are gay- and lesbian-related. Our patrons know they are not going to have to ask a presumably heterosexual librarian for The Joy of Gay Sex."
     The library represents a growing consensus that gay history is an area worthy of serious study - a view that took years to emerge.
                  —Aug. 28, 1994

Pride Parade, 2011 (Sun-Times photo by Tom Cruze)

On the first meeting of the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce: 

    Wednesday's chamber of commerce meeting had everything you would expect. A lot of small talk and much exchanging of business cards. An audio-visual presentation. Repeated mention of the need for vigorous participation in committees. The group was mostly men, as is typical at chamber functions.

     There were a few things you might not expect. The food spread was more than the usual pretzels. There were mushrooms stuffed with crab and little boiled potatoes and fresh strawberries. And the men at the meeting sometimes exchanged greetings by kissing each other on the lips, a definite clue that this wasn't a chamber of commerce meeting in Peoria.

    Rather, it was the founding meeting of the Chicago Area Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, held upstairs at Ann Sather's Restaurant on Belmont Avenue.

     Chambers of commerce are in every town in America worthy of the name. The chamber is a fine, basic, American institution which has done much to foster our country's thriving business climate. Just the name—"Chamber of Commerce"—summons up visions of barber shops and hardware stores and firm handshakes.

     And I doubt that many chamber members in America would deny gay Chicago business owners the right of banding together to further their interests. Few businessmen would argue that a gay chamber in Chicago somehow poisons the institution of chamberhood and thus diminishes the sacred commercial spirit of straight chambers in Minneapolis and Akron and Des Moines.

    So why is it, then, that we must go through some sort of national catharsis over whether gay people can be permitted to marry legally?
                —March 31, 1996

On the Gay Pride Parade:
    At Belmont, the parade route was lined with gay men, many naked to the waist, as if ordered up by the dozen from Central Casting. I walked along the parade route for an hour before I saw somebody who stood out. He was a tall man, also shirtless, and as I passed I noticed he had "HIV +" branded on his back in letters almost 2 inches high.
      I wanted to talk to him, but was hesitant. He presented a fearsome image—entirely bald, with a long braided goatee.
      Taking up a position behind him, I pondered my approach:
     "Excuse me, sir, but I noticed your brand. . . ."
     "Quite a brand there, my good fellow!"
      Working up courage gave me a chance to inventory his body markings. An array of multicolored biological hazard warning signs—those circular, thorned symbols—beginning on the side of his neck and cascading down his right arm. A phrase in Greek across his lower back. On his left leg, snakes.
      After a few minutes, I went over and inquired about his decorations.
     "It goes back to testing HIV positive," said the man, Brian Short, 40, who lives in the South Loop and turned out—as outwardly fierce people so often do—to be niceness itself. "I was tired of being ashamed of that and wanted to find a different way to express it."
              —July 2, 1997
                                                                                  

On a Methodist minister being "tried" for performing a gay marriage ceremony.
     The Methodist Church is holding a trial in a few months to see if the minister at the Broadway United Methodist Church should be booted out of the clergy for performing a rite marrying a gay couple.
     The immediate reason—it's against the Bible—grows pale the more you look at it. Many things are banned in the Bible, from dishonoring your parents to eating lobster. Going hammer and tongs after gays, the way organized religion feels compelled to do, seems awfully selective. Why boot out just gays, and the ministers who unite them, and not, say, adulterers? Why not those who swear? They're banned, too.
     I suppose the quick answer is that gays are targeted because they can be. The Methodists can't very well toss out a minister for marrying an interracial couple, or a Methodist and a Baptist, or a liar and a thief. Gays are one of the few subgroups left that can be openly persecuted. The awning of law and custom we've built up doesn't quite cover them yet, and certain people are horrified at the thought that it someday might. Who would be left to openly loathe?
     Part of it is that the rest of society is so quiet when gays are persecuted. Yes, we cluck our tongues when young gay men are brutally murdered, as if to say, `Well, we don't want to kill them now, do we?" But the fear of being labeled gay is so strong that it is easier to be silent or look away.
    Let me get this straight: God cares about our sexuality, but not about our moral courage. Right . . .            
                  —Nov. 27, 1998

On Jews and gay marriage:
     A few years back, I noticed, to my surprise, that a Jewish congregation meets at the end of my block. It is made up entirely of gay people, but the convenient location dwarfed any scruple we might have had at mingling with such an unorthodox—so to speak—group. We signed up for High Holy Day services.

     While I wasn't worried about praying with gays—I didn't worry that I would catch it—I did worry what they'd think of us. We would be in the minority. Breeders, with our little baby. I expected to be scorned. We sat in the back row, and every time our baby cried I rushed him out.

     The third or fourth time this happened, I sprang to my feet, and was halfway out the door when the rabbi stopped in mid-sentence.

     "You know," he told the congregation, "when I was growing up, I loved to hear the sound of the babies at the back of the synagogue. It's nice to hear it again."

     I stopped cold, necktie under my ear, sweat on my brow, howling baby squirming in my arms. I looked around. And people were smiling back at me. They were not disturbed to find this unexpected straight family in their midst. They were pleased.

     I thought of that moment this week, when the main organization of reform Judaism endorsed the performance of homosexual unions. I was glad we were returning the favor; it seems clear that the main result will be a number of people who otherwise would be ostracized at a moment of personal happiness will, instead, find a measure of acceptance. 
              —April 4, 2000

On "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy:" 
     It seemed to suggest that all gay men were fungible sources of fashion wisdom and that any random group would do. There, beneath all the Mod Squad hipness of "Queer Eye," crouches a rather ugly stereotype—that gay men are somehow snappier than straight men, better dressers, better decorators, knowing connoisseurs.

Jon-Henri Damski

    "Well, aren't they?" I thought, and struggled to name a gay man who wasn't rather better decked out than us straight boys. That's when Jon-Henri Damski wandered into mind, looking, as he always did, like he slept in a hallway in the Belair Hotel, the fleabag on Diversey where he lived (in a room).

    As much as "Queer Eye" is lauded as a breakthrough of unabashed gayness into mainstream TV (as opposed to "Queer as Folk" which was more of a cult hit), it will be someday seen as an offensive relic, like those salt and pepper shakers of grinning, red-lipped black boys holding watermelons.

    "Queer Eye" will eventually be viewed the way we would see a 1940s radio show called "Dance Time with the Darkies." 
                  —Oct. 10, 2003

On an ancient pagan tradition: opposing gay marriage:

    'I have a ceremony to attend," lisps one of Juvenal's loathed fellow Romans, more than 1,900 years ago. "At dawn tomorrow in the Quirinal valley."

    "What is the occasion?" chirps his dainty pal.

    "No need to ask," says the first. "A friend is taking to himself a husband; quite a small affair." And off they trot to the ceremony.

     Like a good many people, apparently, Juvenal hated gays—he hated lots of things, but had a special hate for homosexuals.

    That is the beauty of the classics. They remind us that the issues we tie ourselves into a knot about, and consider evidence of our own fallen state, are really the evergreen issues of history, only we don't know it because we're too busy trying to shove our religious dogma down strangers' throats.

    Homosexuality was open and tolerated in Rome, and, perhaps for that reason, Juvenal can barely wait to launch into them in his Satires—a quick introduction damning the clatter and corruption of the empire and then, boom, the entire second satire, a rant against gays for their effeminacy, their brazenness, and the very existence of guys such as Gracchus, the former priest of Mars, who has the audacity to actually marry somebody, who "decks himself out in a bridal veil" and weds in a little ceremony.

    Anything familiar here? The similarities are quite stunning. Grumpy old Juvenal—the patron saint of crusty pundits—ridicules the short crew cuts of these queers, "their hair shorter than their eyebrows," and presciently predicts our exact situation regarding gay marriage.

    "Yes," he writes. "And if we only live long enough, we shall see these things done openly: People will wish to see them reported among the news of the day."  
           —Feb. 16, 2004

  From a column about Kraft Foods being pressured for sponsoring the Gay Games:

    Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is great. My boys love it; they prefer Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to homemade. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is inexpensive, and easy to prepare, and I admit that I slyly withhold a few tablespoons in the pot when I'm doling out lunchtime bowlfuls so I can savor a bit of its warm cheesy goodness myself. I believe you should buy lots of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
     Normally, I'd keep that burst of enthusiasm to myself. But I read that the usual gang of faith-based hate groups are pressuring Kraft because of its sponsorship of Chicago's 2005 Gay Games—perhaps acting under the notion that gays participating in athletic events somehow ruin the idea of sport, the way they wreck marriage. The groups are threatening a boycott. 
     That's their right. But what is the opposite of a boycott? A buyup? Seeing how Kraft, in a rare show of corporate courage, is standing up to these bullies and sticking with their sponsorship, I suggest those who agree with Kraft have a duty to show our approval by buying Kraft products. The Gay Pride Parade is just around the corner, and I would suggest that those holding parties whip up a batch of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese—it really is good, sort of. Or set out a brick of Velveeta, in silent tribute. You don't have to eat it.
                                                                                                      —May 25, 2005


From a column on why a separate Chicago high school for gay students is a bad idea:
     Late Tuesday, backers of the city's first high school catering to gay and lesbian students withdrew their proposal for the time being. Good. The special school is a bad idea, and not just because the name—"The Social Justice Solidarity High School"—sounds like something Kim Il Jong would establish in Pyongyang.
     There is no question that gay students—or students whose classmates suspect they are gay—can find their lives made living hells by their brutish peers. But is the solution really to isolate them for their own safety? Isn't that sort of punishing the victims? Don't we have a Plan B—say, teaching students not to torture those different from themselves? Just an idea. It isn't as if the issue is limited to gay students.
    Even if a homosexual haven solved the problem at hand, would one  school be enough for the job? The CPS surveyed high school students about their sexuality, and a whopping 9 percent said they were gay, lesbian, bisexual or unsure. CPS chief Arne Duncan thinks the true number might be even higher.
     That's a lot of students—as many as 10,000, by my count. Too many for one rainbow reserve, or whatever you call it. Are we doing this because a special school is really the best solution, or because rounding up the nonconformists and sticking them somewhere out of sight—the Oubliette Option—is a hallowed public school tradition?
    But heck, if the CPS is going to create a gay gulag, at least come up with a decent name—the Oscar Wilde High School and Sanctuary from the Frequent Cruelties of Life, or something.      
                               —Nov. 19, 2008

From a column about gay Chicago cops hosting a global convention for LGBT law enforcement officers:

     When I attended GOAL's final meeting for the conference at the Town Hall station last week, I expected something quiet, maybe even covert: a handful of determined officers grimly planning in hostile territory.

     Instead, there were two dozen off-duty cops, in shorts and T-shirts, young, old, men, women, transgender. They were packing heat, wearing badges, eating cookies, laughing and going over last-minute preparations—tickets sold, hats designed, posters printed.

     "This has been an incredible two years of work and planning," Off. J. Jamie Richardson said. "This is a very significant, historic moment. This is a huge step. I can't believe the police department agreed to do this"—"this" meaning take part in the conference, which is drawing 400 officers from around the globe.

     The conference began Tuesday evening—a reception with Mayor Daley—and runs through Sunday's Pride Parade. Sessions include mainstream topics such as "Effects of the Taser" and "Terrorism Awareness," and gay-specific topics, such as sexual-orientation hate crime, same-sex pensions and "Transgender Issues Within Law Enforcement," featuring a presentation by South Elgin Deputy Chief A.J. Moore, the highest-ranking transgender officer in Illinois. (CPD has four transgender officers, Richardson said).

     To be honest, I felt behind the times—this wasn't the CPD as I understood it to be. It's a common misperception.

     "Many people think of the Chicago Police Department as being one of the last bastions of homophobia in the city and that's just not true," said Bill Greaves, the city's liaison to the gay community. "They would be surprised at how the department has improved over the past 10 years."     
                              — June 23, 2010

     From a column explaining how Christianity—and not tolerating gays—toppled the Roman Empire.   
    Ignorance is the great engine of human misery, the fertile  field where its fruit, hatred, grows in all its awful forms, from  the first human, crouching on a dark savannah, screeching terrified defiance at a shape silhouetted on the horizon, to Rep. Ronald  Stephens, rising to his feet in the Illinois House, blaming "open homosexuality" for the fall of Rome."If you look at the sociological history of societies that have failed," said Stephens (R-Greenville), "what are some of the  commonalities? One of those is that open homosexuality becomes accepted."
     A common idea: Mighty Rome toppled because it allowed those light in the togas to prance unchallenged through the Forum. We're on our way to ruin, too, not because of ascendant China or a collapse of  political discourse, but because we allow gays and lesbians to live their lives with only moderate harassment.
    That's funny. Not ha-ha funny, but ironic funny, and demands we  shine a light down this well of ignorance.
     First, the Roman Empire—even lopping off the first 700 years, from Rome's founding to Julius Caesar—lasted 500 years.
     We should only fall so quickly.
     Second, such a swath of land—the empire stretched from Great  Britain to Egypt—had, over half a millennium, various views  toward homosexuality. Yes, at times Romans would chat about their catamite lovers with an ease strange to our ears. But other times they'd be put to death for it.
     If tolerance didn't topple Rome, what did?          
                —Dec. 3, 2010
   
 After spending 15 hours watching two mothers raise their four young children for a Mother's Day article:

     Opposition to gay marriage is a religious scruple. And on that level, I accept it. Follow your faith, reject any gay marriages you might be tempted to enter into. I’m with you. It’s a free country.

    However ... it being a free country for you means that it’s a free country for others, too. Shocking, I know. Not only for people who are gay, but for straight people who don’t subscribe to your view of faith. People who realize that our culture’s steady march toward recognizing traditional subhumans as actual individuals with rights, starting with women, then blacks, then people with disabilities, is finally coming around to homosexuals.

     And while your faith screams that this is bad, there’s still nothing in the fact-based world to justify trying impose your view on non-believers. Rep. Joe Walsh, if you recall, made one of the more popular lunges: claiming that gays make bad parents. That isn’t true.

      But even if it were true — are we now not letting people marry based on what kind of parents they’d be? Because meth addicts and senior citizens can marry. Deflating one false argument only leads to the next. Not worse parents? How about tradition? The marriage-is-unchanged-for-millennia argument is also popular, also untrue, and a particularly laughable stab at reasoning. You wouldn’t accept that logic from your doctor. “Calm down — leeches are a medical tradition going back centuries!” You want tradition? Buy a butter churn.

     I believe most people opposing gay marriage are not bigots — they’re just immersed in their own insular worlds and don’t know any better. As I sat in that small house in Skokie, the thought grew: If only those religious folk could see this family living, reading, loving, praying, tickling together, they wouldn’t try to set their faith as a stumbling block before them. That’s inhuman, and it’s changing. Many religious folks have made the leap; the rest will. Or they’ll die off and their kids will. Like science, like most things, religion can be put to good or bad uses. It is our servant, it’ll do what we like, though lots of people pretend it’s the other way around.  
         —May 13, 2012

Pope Francis calls for a new balance

     Pope Francis' interview with an Italian Jesuit magazine, publicized last Thursday, did not itself change anything. But for many faithful waiting for a sign that the church is finally perceiving modern morality, a little, and with a secular community tired of having religious dogma given a veneer of faux rationality and forced upon non-believers through the laws of their countries, it was a welcome sign indeed. Change is tardy, and slow, but also possible.

     There was a time when I worried that Judaism was becoming a death cult. That the Holocaust had permanently deformed the religion and too much attention was being spent on the horrors inflicted upon the Jewish people during World War II, to the detriment of those alive now.

     Part of that might have been transference — persecuted people tend to adopt diluted versions of the views of their tormenters. And just as blacks can be prejudiced based on the shade of each other’s skin, so a bit of the hand-flipping dismissal anti-Semites direct toward the Holocaust might have leached into me.

Inside the Basilique-Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Quebec 

     But some of that feeling was legitimate. Remembrance is one thing, obsession another. There is only so much atrocity you can stomach, and I wasn’t comfortable with a faith that alternated between keening past horrors and moonlighting as the de facto tourist board for the State of Israel.

     It was a question of balance. That’s why I was glad when our family joined a reconstructionist synagogue — Shir Hadash, which means “a new song”— that approached the religion as if it were actually something joyous and alive, with less frequent forays into the abattoir of the past.

     Each religion has a lot of stuff in it, and so the faithful of any stripe must pick and choose. You can’t emphasize everything. That’s how I interpreted Pope Francis’ surprising remarks, made public Thursday, about abortion, gay marriage and contraception. No interpretation was necessary, actually; that’s what he said, clearly and precisely.

     “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” he told an Italian Jesuit magazine. “We have to find a new balance.”
     The entire interview is worth reading. The pope wasn’t signaling any sea change in church doctrine on these hot-button issues (in fact, he felt the need to denounce abortion the next day, as symptomatic of a “throw-away culture”) but rather a shift in focus. He was only saying what is manifestly true — that the leadership of the church, aided by knots of revanchists, has gotten out of step with the faithful, never mind the mainstream culture, and if the church doesn’t want to eventually “fall like a house of cards,” it has to return to what the pope called the “freshness and fragrance of the Gospel” and strive for something “more simple, profound, radiant.”
      In short, it was a message of love, the agape love of God that is supposedly behind every religion.
      This of course is at odds, intentionally so, with those who wake up in the morning to shout that the children of gay marriages do not really belong to families, that women who have abortions are murderers and those who practice contraception are sticking their thumbs in God’s eye. They had been calling for Francis to comment on these matters, and now he has. Be careful what you wish for.
      Chicago’s Cardinal George yielded the field on this one, issuing a statement Friday that lauded the pontiff’s “beautiful reflection” while letting its substance go by.
      The cardinal’s tact gives rise to hope that those who view their Catholic faith as a bludgeon might be given pause. A bit of hope. Papal infallibility only goes so far, and it will be easy for some to shrug off the current pontiff as an aberration and wait for the next guy, hoping for another Benedict XVI-style “my way or the highway” papacy.
     They will not see this interview for what it is — a baby step away from the dead end the church has long been marching down, a chance to wrest the faith from “those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions . . . those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists.”
     Those folks will have their say. The word they use for my views on the subject is invariably “bashing,” and no amount of praise for the parts of the church that aren’t trying to use the government to impose doctrine on unbelievers will matter. I like to point out, though, on general principle, that the church does and always has done wonderful things, including keeping the flame of knowledge alive when the world went dark. Anybody who reads ancient philosophy has 500 years’ worth of Catholic monks to thank that these texts didn’t turn to dust in 1354.
     That’s because for centuries the church chose to respect doctrine that was inimical to what it believed, a balance that the pope obviously wants back (asked who he was, Francis said, “I am a sinner.”)
     Like Francis, I would hate to see the church reduced to the things it is against. His words are a challenge to those who want to close the gates, draw up the drawbridges and toss the troublesome over the wall.
     “We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity,” he said. And let us say, “Amen.”

"May it please the court..."

     It is easy, correct and perhaps even useful to take a sneering view of the law. Lawyers can be venal and incompetent, prosecutors ruthless and misguided, judges, biased and inept. Particularly in Cook County, where judges who are literally insane have been returned to the bench by voters who, to be blunt, don't know and don't care.
     That said, there is also a grandeur to the law, even a beauty. Sometimes justice is done, despite everything. And we should not let its flaws overwhelm our view of the system. Justice is always flawed, always a struggle. "Judging from the main portions of the history of the world," Walt Whitman wrote in 1870. "Justice is always in jeopardy."
     That might be a grand intro to a column about minor mechanics of the law. But the Illinois Supreme Court is meeting in Chicago while its Springfield home is refurbished, and I stopped by last week to watch the proceedings. They looked better than you might expect.

     If you find yourself arguing in front of the Illinois Supreme Court during its sojourn in Chicago this year, the first time the high court has ever met for a full term here, watch out for the microphone. It’s easy to slam into its gooseneck just as you are about to open “May it please the court . . . ,” the way Keith Rhine, a Waukegan attorney, did on Wednesday.

     “The microphone gets everyone,” quipped Chief Justice Thomas Kilbride, sending a ripple of laughter through the filled-to-capacity room on the 18th floor of the Bilandic Building, 160 N. LaSalle.

      Restoration of the Supreme Court’s usual home in Springfield, built in 1908, sent the court packing, the first time it left town since 1897. Its seven members began hearing oral arguments Sept. 10 — for a check-forgery case — and wrapped up Wednesday, but will hear more cases in November, January, March and May.
     The public is welcome, though anyone expecting TV fireworks will be disappointed. The attorneys give measured, statute-laden arguments, interrupted by polite questions from the bench. But there is a certain fine-tooth combing of legal issues that is satisfying to those of us who value living a society based on law. The first case of the day, American Access Casualty Company v. Ana Reyes et al., stems from a traffic accident on Oct. 30, 2007, where Reyes drove to Elgin and struck two pedestrians, killing one. She had insurance, but the insurance specifically excluded her from driving. The law requires cars to be insured, so sometimes people who are not themselves eligible to drive buy it so their family or friends can use their vehicle.
     The issue revolved around whether these exclusions are good public policy. Keely Hillison, of Parrillo, Weiss & O'Halloran, began the morning, representing American Access Casualty, which issued the policy but denied coverage to Reyes because she was excluded from getting behind the wheel.
     "I want to suggest this is allowed," she said. "It is clear the statute intended and common law allows the exclusion of drivers by name." This is the second time Hillison has argued before the high court. She was happy about the shift in venue; her law offices are a short stroll away at 77 W. Wacker.
     "It makes it easier for me," she said, later. "I don't have to travel to Springfield." Though she did stipulate that the current courtroom, a modern, dignified chambers of dark wood usually used for judicial disciplinary hearings, lacks the grandeur of the Supreme Court Building in Springfield.
     The next case, Venture-Newberg Perini Stone and Webster v. Illinois Workers' Compensation et al, had that spare simplicity that makes some legal cases sound almost like Bible stories. A workman heading to a plant was hurt. Is he exempt from compensation because of the "coming and going" exclusion that keeps workers from being covered if hurt on their commutes? Or did the job of Ronald Daugherty require him to be near the plant? Did his job begin when he got there?
     "The employer didn't send him, he was not hired until he had gone through the screening at the plant," argued Michael Resis. "He was not on call that day and there was no emergency . . . he chose to travel to pursue a job opportunity."
     Jonathan Nessler represented the compensation commission. "Ronald Daugherty testified he was to be within a half hour of the plant for emergencies," Nessler said, deploying a gesture I immediately dubbed in my mind "the spider"- his right hand open, as if holding a ball from above, tapping his fingertips on one spot on the table, then another. The hopping spider then became a bouncing cup. Tap, tap, then swish to drive his point home.
     The question boiled down to what a boss tells you to do versus what a worker is tacitly expected to do. Questions most people never think about but can suddenly become important under law. The court's decision in this case — and the others — is months away.
     The court is convening here all year though, as anyone who has done renovations knows, all rehab dates are tentative. With $12.6 million in work to do, whispers are the court may be here next year too.
     In a room outside the courtroom, overflow visitors watch the proceedings on closed-circuit TV and lawyers wait. Arguments for the workman's case wound up.
     "Showtime," said Joel Ostrow, rising to his feet. He is the attorney for Jennifer Schultz, suing to recover child-support payments that her ex-husband's employer may — or may not — have been obligated to withhold from her ex-husband's pay. In February the Appellate Court upheld her case's dismissal, but she's hoping for relief from the highest court in the state, now sitting in judgment in Chicago.

Audi Alteram Partem

     A few years back, my oldest son brought home an armload of Latin books from the library. He was going to teach himself Latin. I glanced through the books—heavy sledding. 
      "You know," I told him, "the biggest Latin publisher in the United States, Bolchazy-Carducci, is in Wauconda. I bet they have some kind of self-taught course we could use."
     And so they did. Three hundred dollars later, we had the Artes Latinae CD-rom disc, plus a workbook and study guide. And so we began Our Latin Summer, sitting side by side at my computer, drilling pronunciation, taking quizzes. Okay, it wasn't throwing the old pepper around in the front yard, but it would have to do. We pressed forward religiously, an hour a day, for weeks, months, longer than any sane people with no particular need to learn an ancient language would. 
     Eventually we lost steam. In Latin, they trill their Rs like Puerto Ricans. I'd never have attempted the language had I known—that's what eventually drove me away from speaking Russian, in part. My mouth just doesn't want to do it -- the best I could attempt was a kind of D dragged backwards across my pallet. It was work, though after we stopped, I missed it.
      I had liked learning the timeless idioms. Vestis virum reddit -- "clothes make the man." Manus manum lavat  -- "one hand washes the other," which ended up being the title of the first chapter in my Chicago book. Everything sounds better in Latin.
     Such as the sentence above, AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM, emblazoned in big letters across the back of the judicial chambers on the 18th floor of the Michael Bilandic Building on LaSalle Street.
     It doesn't mean anything particularly poetic. 
     "'Hear the other side,'" explained Patrick Cronin, manager of security for the court. It reminds the judges to hear the other side. It's also on the wall in the courtroom down in Springfield." He had opened the downtown courtroom so I could take some pictures -- my column in the Sun-Times Sunday is about sitting in on some of the oral arguments before the Illinois Supreme Court, which is convening in Chicago for its entire term for the first time, well, ever, while their building is being remodeled in Springfield
     I don't want to wax poetic about our justice system. It is heavily skewed by money, by race. But still, the theory, the concept is there. Our courts fall short, time and time again. We still have those insane mandatory minimum sentences largely in place. But at least the goal is there to fall short of.  There is something beautiful about seeing that slogan, in big metal letters, directly across from the bench where the seven high justices sit. At least the sign at the back of the courtroom doesn't say PECUNIAE OBEDIUNT OMNIA -- "All things obey money." Not yet anyway. 

The British Museum

 

The Winged Toolmaker

      If man is, in Hannah Arendt's phrase, homo faber—Latin for "man the (tool) maker"—then herons could be referred to as avis faber, "bird the toolmaker," since they are one of the few birds that actually craft objects for their use.
     Avid fishermen (or, I suppose, fisherbirds), herons will break off bits of twig with their sharp beaks and toss them into the water as lures, then snap up the fish who come to investigate.  Their long necks can coil and strike, just like a snake, and they devour not just fish, but frogs, turtles, large insects, small mammals such as voles, and even other birds. Just about anything that comes their way.
     Herons, such as this Great Blue Heron spied last week at Beck Lake, in the Cook County Forest Preserve between Glenview and Des Plaines, are known as solitary birds, as opposed to geese that are seen in honking abundance this time of year and best avoided (I tried to get a picture with some low-flying geese flapping by in the background of the Great Blue but, being geese, they refused to cooperate).

Great Blue Heron, Beck Lake, 9/14/13

     While Great Blue Herons often go about their business alone, they return at night to loose colonies known, rather delightfully, as "heronies." So no need to try to befriend them—they have their pals, hidden away. Great Blue Herons are actually a variety of white heron, and the largest heron in North America.
      I spied this fellow in the shallows. Impossible to tell if it's a male or female—Great Blue Herons are "monomorphic," meaning the male and female have the same color plumage, and they also share duties rearing the next generation.
     A very modern habit, though they are considered ancient birds, birds that "look like prehistoric ghosts," to use Diana Wells' lovely phrase. She quotes a 9th century writer, who believed the high-flying herons reach altitudes where they "behold forever, the countenance of God."
     Whatever they are looking at, they are not only pleasant to behold themselves, but good omens, too. Herons, being predators, are considered signs of ecological health. Score one for the Cook County Forest Preserve.
      The Great Blue Heron's actual scientific name, by the way, is nowhere near the one I imagined: ardea herodias. Ardea being, sensibly enough, Latin for "heron." And Herodias -- the surprise in the whole story -- being Greek, the name of a notorious Queen of Galilee. It was Herodias who asked for John the Baptist's head on a platter, supposedly, and encouraged her daughter Salome to dance with the bloody souvenir. How this dread figure's name got assigned to so beautiful and benign a bird, well, I'm working on that. My hunch is: blame the heron's omnivorous appetite. If you are willing to eat almost  anything, people notice, and say unkind things about you.

Three dimes

Hotel Pattee; Perry, Iowa 

     Walking south on LaSalle Street Wednesday, I reach into my pocket, feel something, pull out a dime. Must have got in there when I scooped some change off the night table.
      "Mr. Hart, here is a dime. Call your mother. Tell her there is serious doubt about your becoming a lawyer."
     I can hear the words as clearly as if Professor Kingsfield had spoken them in my ear, though it is just memory, echoing off the coin. John Houseman's mellifluous voice in "The Paper Chase."
    A popular movie, to people of my generation—released 40 years ago next month, incredibly. About the struggles of first year law students at Harvard Law School, it made a big impression on me. I remember the first time I saw it, in the fall of 1978, at Northwestern's A&O Film series. I remember who I saw it with, Leah Moskowitz, a fellow Northwestern freshman. I was affected, not for the legal aspect, but for the ambition. The students, so hungry to learn, to strive, to achieve. That was me. My date, however, shrugged it off, at least in my recollection. I remember gazing at her, dumbfounded, almost offended. You didn't like it? You're kidding me. We never went out again.
      "Mr. Hart, here is a dime..." How could that sentence slumber in my mind for so long? True, it was a dramatic high point—Kingsfield is throwing the hero, played by Timothy Bottoms, out of class. But I saw the movie, what, maybe three times? Once in 1978. Again in the late 1980s when VCR tapes took hold, and one more time, showing it to my boys in the 2000s—who like Leah Moskowitz, were indifferent.
      And why should it bubble up now?* I've handled many dimes over the decades. Why this moment? The more I look at the dime, the more comes back. My grandmother's voice, over the telephone mounted on the wall in our kitchen in Berea, a few months after I saw "The Paper Chase." I was home for winter break.
    "A lady I play poker with," she said, in her thin, reedy voice. "Has a granddaughter at Northwestern. You two should meet."
     I was always ready to meet anybody willing to meet me. The grandmother angle was worrisome, true, but I could work with it.
      "Sure," I said. "What's her name?"
     "Leah," she said. "Leah Moskowitz."
     "Shit grandma," I said, before I could stop myself. That wasn't going to happen.

    Those images, hiding amidst the trillions of neural connections. I put the dime away, these thoughts rattling around, blocking out LaSalle Street. Worried. Memory is the prison old people build for themselves then live in, squatting in the smoldering ruined palace of their lives, rooting around in the ash. The images kept wafting up, unbidden, like wisps of smoke. I could see Leah Moskowitz, 18, porcelain skin, very white, probably 85 pounds. It made me almost want to track her down, call her. "You know, in my memory you're still 18." Flattering? No, creepy. Note to self: don't be creepy.
    You have to be careful unspooling the past. The assumption is that other people care, and usually they do not care. A common affliction of men my age is to view the present as a mere pretext to dig up these non-sequitur memories. To be interested not in what is but in what was. "Funny you should mention Belgium, I spent a month in Belgium once..." And off they go. They're bores. Note to self: try not to become a bore.

    A block later my hand goes back in my pocket.  Two dimes. Twenty cents, sitting on my open palm. That's what comic books cost when I was a kid. "Captain America." God, I loved those. He was my favorite, and I carefully gathered an unbroken run of issues. Why Captain American though, and not another?
     Pondering,  I plunge my hand back in my pocket, bring it out. Three dimes. Thirty cents.  A candy bar....
      The key is knowing when to stop. Though it's difficult. Leah Moskowitz ...  she looked like a china doll. Never saw her again, at least not so it stuck. But with a little online digging, I find she changed her name—that's why I decided it's okay to use her maiden name here; any embarrassment for having seen a movie with me 35 years ago most likely won't get back to vex her. And oh, look at this. After Northwestern, she graduated from Harvard Law School, and spent her career as a lawyer. Maybe she liked that movie more than she let on.

*The above was written, and posted, and I was in the midst of tweeting the "Here is a dime" quote when it struck me: hmmm, I had just left the morning session of the Illinois Supreme Court, having spent 90 minutes listening to legal proceedings. Maybe that had something to do with it. 

"That's not tellable, mother."

     She kept the news until after dinner. An admirable restraint; I would have blabbed it immediately. But I am a blabber in a family that can maintain their silences.
     I was sipping my tea and polishing off a piece of plum banana bread Tuesday night. The older boy was digging into some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. The younger had absented himself to the television.
     "So I went to walk the dog with Mrs. M...." my wife began, mentioning the name of the mother of one of the friends of our high school senior. "We talked about homecoming." 
     He continued eating. I sorted through my dusty high school memories. Homecoming? When is homecoming? In the spring? Is it spring now? No, it's September. The leaves are just beginning to change.
     "A group is going out for homecoming...." 
     Still nothing from him. Me, slow on the uptake, thought she was inquiring whether he might want to think about going to homecoming too, perhaps even latching onto his friend's group. He should be a good sport and go with them. I was about to jump in and say something encouraging: "Life is to be lived, son." Or words to that effect. 
      "...and that group is coming here, apparently, at some point afterward, for a bonfire," she said. I had a flash: unfair! Why would his friends come here for a bonfire if he weren't part of the group? That's mean! And then, as she continued, it dawned on me. Ohhh. He did know. The group already included him. And his friend's mother obviously knew. And my wife learned earlier in the day, by accident. And now I was finding out, because I happened to be in the room. 
     "I'd like to be informed of these things," she said. "I'll set out dessert." 
     "Dessert won't be necessary," he informed her, with asperity. "We're going out to eat."
     "Maybe s'mores...." 
     That gave him pause.
     "S'mores..." he allowed.  "S'mores might be nice." 
     "And something about a football game...."  she continued, pointing out that his friend is obviously comfortable telling his mom much more than our son seems able to tell us.
     A brief silence. I sipped my tea. These conversations go on around me as if I'm not there, and by the time I think of something to add, they're usually over. While I was mulling, the stone spoke. 
     "That's not tellable, mother," he snapped. "Some vague plans in the far future."
      Those were his exact words, verbatim. 
     "It's Sunday," she said. "Or a week from Sunday." 
     I want to tuck his phrase away, in an electronic bottle, for future reference. Twenty years from now, after my wife and I spend an awkward 10 minutes in front of the giant WallSkype, trying to pry a bit of information out of him about when he might take a break from the Shanghai Co-Prosperity International Improvement Zone and visit his old parents in the Illinois Agricultural Province ("I'd speculate on an estimated visit window, mother, but we have an accelerated production schedule for expanding the plasma field. You know that....") The wall will go dark, for a moment, then revert to some generic natural scene—wind blowing through fields of wheat. An elderly couple sitting on a worn, lumpy sofa gazing at a glowing wall.  
    "That's not tellable, mother," I'll mutter, still staring straight ahead, emitting a kind of wheezing half chuckle. "Some vague plans in the far future," my wife will add, shaking her head, smiling slightly. 
     Until then, I'm glad my wife had the conversation with Mrs. M. Otherwise, he might have just disappeared for a few hours a week from Sunday, and we'd have learned of the plans when I looked through the kitchen window and saw flames in the back yard.



Photo above: White wall, Middlebury College campus, Middlebury, Vermont. August, 2013