Travels with Butch

Garfield Park Conservatory

  

     The game-changing technology for me, when it comes to public transportation, was when Google recently started showing Chicago L stations on its maps.
     Before that, I took the L if I happened to know the L stopped near where I was going. If not, I took a cab, or drove.
     Armed with this new technology, however, I am a free man. Last Friday, for instance, I needed to go to Garfield Park Conservatory. Before Google, I would find the address and drive. Now, I could see there is an L stop literally across the street, on the Green line.
     I grabbed the train at the Thompson Center, using my old-fashioned CTA "Transit Card," with the magnetic strip on the front and its nipped corner. Nothing like pending loss to make a bland piece of plastic into something nostalgic. I never thought much about the cards before but, with weeks to go until they disappear, suddenly the old card was Riverview in card form. I'd been reading about the looming Ventra card changeover—the problems customers have been enduring, getting hundreds of cards delivered to their mailboxes, trying to hack through the system, waiting minor eternities for customer service to help them track down some elusive "Access Code."
     Not wanting to someday soon find myself at a remote L stop on a frosty December night, uselessly poking my antiquated fare card at a sealed slot, I thought I had better master this Ventra thing. So returning from Garfield Park, I bought a Ventra card at the Merchandise Mart stop.     It was actually quite easy, if you aren't tying it into your bank account. You buy one just like a regular fare card. With a yellow vested CTA employee hovering nearby, poised to help, I slid a $20 bill into the machine, and it spat out a cool gray Ventra card, vertically formatted, with a doubled V logo (very similar to the Divvy logo and almost the same hue, which I've dubbed Transit Blue). The card has a Mastercard logo as well, for those using it as a debit card.
     The catch is, it only gives you $15 in credit. To get your five bucks ransom back, you have to go online and register. Also fairly simple process -- name, address, email. I almost got tripped up when it asked for the infamous 'Access Code" but, thinking quickly, I realized that since I had no account to tie into, it probably didn't matter, so just took any four numbers -- the first four digits on the card's code — and that worked fine.
     But one request stopped me cold. "Nickname for Card." It was required. I had to give my card a name. There was no explanation as to why.
     See, this is why old people are ready to die when their time comes. The world changes in fundamental and alarming ways. I know that coyness and computers somehow go together -- Apple's calculated inoffensiveness, its twee charm, that so readily lures and conquers Western society. But shouldn't I be able to ride the friggin' L in Chicago without anthropomorphizing my train pass? And what was wrong with tokens? I remember them: round, brass, with three little semi-circular cut-outs....
     Sorry. I'm not ready to die quite yet, so I guess I will conform.
     The first nickname I thought of was "George," as in "Orwell" for the Orwellian menace of being forced to name the stupid card. But that seemed obvious. Then I thought of "Butch."
     In 1996, when Gigi Pets were introduced, those little electronic keychains containing a crude virtual animal you had to constantly feed and walk and play with or it would die -- somebody's idea of fun. I always wanted a dog, and named my electronic dog "Butch," leading to one of my favorite column openers, an homage to Albert Camus: "Butch died today, or maybe it was yesterday. Actually, he died both today and yesterday..." I'll append the column below for those interested (and with the time. I know I'm rambling on today. You can always read a bit now, and come back later).

   Having named my Ventra card "Butch," however, I couldn't simply let the matter rest. Younger people might do whatever the screen tells them without a second thought. But I needed to know: why name the card? What's the purpose of that? A search on-line found, well, nothing. A phone call worked better.
     "So the nickname..." began Lambrini Lukidis, a CTA spokeswoman, with a certain hint of weariness—the Ventra roll-out is not being celebrated in the local press. "You can have multiple Ventra accounts. So you can have one, and give cards to your wife, your kids."
     The idea is, you can name your cards after your kids, your spouse, the owner of the card, the better to keep track of them. Okay. But why couldn't they point that out? Let us in on the secret? (To be fair, they might, it isn't as if I've studied the vast literature of Ventra.
     Two words: brass tokens.
    Sorry again. I alluded to the confusing whir surrounding the roll-out and Lukidis explained. "These are active accounts, tied to people's bank accounts. We're actually transferring money. We have to take precautions."
     She later emailed me that already a third of the CTA rides are paid for with Ventra—11 million swipes so far. Most riders must have figured this out. So hundreds if not thousands are confused and inconvenienced, while hundreds of thousands get it. A fair argument, though also a version of the Post Office Defense (you know, after a postal worker goes postal, a federal PR sort explains that most postal employees didn't shoot up their workplaces). Every new system has its kinks—you had to hand crank the engine of the early Model T's to start the car, and every now and then the kickback would break the would-be driver's arm. Compared to that, being put on hold for half an hour calling Ventra customer support isn't that bad.
     Still, I'm sticking with the simple, pay-as-you-go system. We'll load the old bank account into Ventra another day, when we absolutely have to. As it is, I can have a hard enough time just navigating the L, even with Google maps. For instance, Friday, heading to Garfield Park. I saw that the Green Line stopped at the Garfield Park Conservatory, and noted the stop before, Kedzie, so I would be ready.
     What I did not fathom, initially, was that in addition to going west, the Green line also goes south, to Cottage Grove and 63rd. I knew this vaguely, intellectually, having taken the Green Line over the summer to the near West Side and heard the announcements. But I figured that it must curve sharply southward. after Garfield Park. Frankly, I didn't think about it closely. At first.
     The train rumbled along pleasantly. I read the paper, feeling quite urban and competent. At 43rd street it dawned on me that something was amiss, and began to think a bit more about the old route. At 47th I stood up, moved over to the map, and studied it long enough to recognize that a mistake had been made, by me apparently. The line runs west from downtown, true. But it also runs straight south from downtown as well. Ah. Two separate directions. Now I see.
     No biggie. I got off, walked briefly down 47th street, taking in the environs. Then I got back on the L going northward, noticing gratefully the CTA only charged me 25 cents for my blunder. Nice of them really. I haven't adjusted myself to having a card with a name and a personality, but I suppose that's next. Butch is in my wallet now, awaiting his chance to be useful.

Here is the column I refer to, from June 6, 1997

Giga Pet, the gadget dying for our attention

     Butch died today, or maybe it was yesterday. Actually, he
died both today and yesterday. Not only did Butch die both days but,
if history is any judge, I expect him to wake up dead again tomorrow.
     Butch is my Giga Pet. He lives inside a purple electronic keychain. While I don't want to argue that Giga Pets and other computer kiddie critters are a Significant Trend in Pop Culture, they're certainly the first mass-marketed toys that not only leave behind steaming piles of excrement but also have the alarming tendency to keel over dead. 

     I bought my Giga Pet Friday after noticing about two dozen people in front of FAO Schwarz on Michigan Avenue, waiting to get in. 

     At first, I thought the crowd was the usual contingent of out-of-town yokels. (What, you think I'm being mean? As if the hayseeds don't laugh at us, while sharing cheeseburgers at Hard Rock: "My word, Emma! Could you believe that Schwarz store charging $800 for a china doll no better than the one Great Aunt Bertha's mother bought for 25 cents from the German peddler? If only the Simpson boys hadn't smashed it to flinders.") 

     Upon inquiry, however, a store employee said that the crowd was mostly locals hot to acquire the latest cyber-beasties (the craze started in Japan, naturally, with "Tamagotchis," little computer chicks that, just like real ones, die unless you care for them and sometimes even if you do). 

     Giga Pets cost $12.95 and are offered in a half-dozen varieties: Digital Doggie; Compu Kitty; Baby T-Rex; Virtual Alien; Microchimp and Bit Critter, an insect. 

     The choice was a no-brainer; I went for the dog. You see . . . bring up mournful violin music . . . I never had a dog when I was a boy . . . sniff! . . . My parents always told me that my father was allergic to dogs, and by the time I was old enough to realize it was a lie, I didn't want one anymore. 

     Still, I can't help but wonder what better course my life would have taken had I owned a dog. All those summer days spent reading books, developing unreal expectations of adult life — I thought men spent their time sitting in Spanish cafes, drinking the good cold wine with Lady Brett — would have instead been enjoyed hanging around with my pal, Butch, tossing a stick into the Ole Swimmin' Hole and watching him bravely dog-paddle to get it. 

     My new electronic Butch won't chase a stick. But he does chase a ball, one of the several tasks that I, as his new owner, am expected to perform again and again throughout the day to keep him alive, by punching one of several buttons. 

     And I have been punching them, like a madman, to no avail. I've always said that owning a dog is like having a second job, and this pet is proof positive. 

     At least the Giga Pet people — whose American headquarters is in Vernon Hills - are straightforward about what you are getting into. "Your new Giga Pet is going to need lots of attention to grow up healthy and happy." No kidding. Besides fetch, that attention takes the form of feeding, delivering treats, giving baths, cleaning up messes, putting out the light, disciplining and occasional trips to the doctor. I'm surprised you don't have to knit him little sweaters. 

     Butch is a cute little pup. He meanders across the stamp-size screen, rolling his eyes, somewhat spastically, sometimes bobbing his head happily. 

     Every so often a little alarm signal — "?!" — flashes in the corner of the screen, and I must try to figure out what Butch wants. A treat? No. A bath? No. To be rushed to the vet's? No. Ah-ha - he wants the light out. He's tired. So am I. 

     After a day of periodically checking on Butch and trying to see that he was comfortable, I kept him downstairs while I went to bed, figuring that he was set to last the night. A fatal mistake. My wife found him the next morning. 

     "Honey, I think Butch is dead," she said. Sure enough, there on the little screen was a flapping angel - the soul of my electronic dog, I suppose, winging its way to silicon heaven.           Reviving him was simple, and while I intended to rename him "Fido," I messed up that part, and was left with Butch again, though in my mind he became "Butch 2." After a day of diligent care, I made a point of topping off his tank, foodwise, treatwise, playwise and bathwise before I went to bed, and so was genuinely surprised and distressed to find him dead again the next morning. 

     "Maybe you should wake up in the night and check him," said my wife. 

     Fat chance. I plan to foist my Giga Pet on to the first tyke I can find. Kids are hardened nowadays. They can endlessly kill and revive their little digital pals and never bat an eye. Me, I have enough guilt without bathing my hands in virtual puppy blood every morning before breakfast.

Wait! There's MORE!

     And if you still haven't read enough, a condensed version of the post above is running in
Thursday's Sun-Times.

      You can read it by clicking here.

Contempt for our democracy

     What does "law" mean, anyway? According to the dictionary it is, in part "a system of rules" governing how our society works.  You can only drive so fast. You can't extend your house onto your neighbor's property. If you are arrested, you have a right to be treated in a particular fashion.
     We follow the law because to do otherwise invites anarchy. Even if a person is guilty of crimes, of murders say, deserving of punishment, we would not want the police to just kick down his door, drag him in the street, and shoot him on the spot. That would be easiest, and that might be justice on a cosmic scale. But if he's guilty, we want him to be arrested and tried, to receive justice according to our system. According to "the law." Otherwise, the next time the police kick down a door it might be that of an innocent man—maybe even your door—and without the oversight of the law, who would ever know?
     Thus it is frightening when the law is set aside for a good reason, never mind a bad one.
     We live a scary time when the basic system of our government is being threatened, and by the very people we elect to administer it. And because bi-partisanship is so rare, I will give you two glaring examples of the law being skirted, one Democratic, the other Republican.
     In July, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn suspended the pay of state lawmakers to put pressure on them to solve the state's staggering, $100 billion unfunded pension liability His motives were pure—something has to be done—but he did the wrong thing, because we can't have a system where the governor docks the pay of legislators every time they don't do something he wants them to do. It's bad precedent, and undermines the division of power in our democratic system. A Cook County judge correctly rejected Quinn's stunt, but he's appealing it to a higher court. He's going to lose, eventually, both a good thing, and a position Pat Quinn finds himself in with numbing frequency
     Similarly, what's going on in Washington is the opening gong of doom. Even if you hate the idea of ObamaCare—a legitimate political view, I suppose—the fact remains it's the law, passed by both the House and the Senate, signed by the president, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court. To shut down the government unless ObamaCare is repealed/delayed/ whatever is to threaten the entire democratic system. Nothing that becomes law will be safe from Congress deciding to put a gun to the country's head and demanding it be changed. This action opens the door to anarchy, and all over a government-mandated insurance system which is the definition of sound social policy. It's a bad thing done for the wrong reason.
     These are grim days. We can only pray that President Obama, who sometimes has problems with a squishy spine, maintains his solid opposition to negotiating with these legislative terrorists. What of democracy? What of the law we supposedly cherish? How can we pay such extravagant lip service to our system in theory, and treat it with such contempt in practice? 

Author shines her "Warmth" on Chicago

     Being well-read doesn't mean there aren't still big holes in your education.  Which is what makes a program such as One Book/One Chicago so valuable. Starting with the very first selection in 2001—"To Kill A Mockingbird," which I had somehow missed—the city has offered a gentle prod for Chicagoans to read excellent books that not only help them grow as individuals, but add bonds of commonality to our diverse city. This year's choice, "The Warmth of Other Suns" was perhaps the best yet. I tweeted the book as I read it, sharing its many high-points and jaw-dropping details. Though I wrote an earlier column about the book in July, I thought the author's appearance in Chicago last week might be worth attending, and I wasn't disappointed. 

    Isabel Wilkerson visited the Chicago Public Library’s Harold Washington Center last week to talk about her excellent 2010 book, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” and I stopped by to hear her.

     The Winter Garden was packed, an encouraging sign in this era when the future of print books seems so uncertain. Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced her enthusiastically, revealing that not only was her book the obvious choice for the city’s One Book One Chicago program this year, but it was his go-to Hanukkah gift to give friends.

Isabel Wilkerson at the Harold Washington Center.

     And why not? While weighing in at 550 pages, it masterfully weaves together the story of three Southern black Americans — Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Robert Foster — beginning with their humble origins in Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana, following them on their daring escapes northward and their sometimes arduous journeys to become, respectively, a humble Chicago church lady, a dignified New York Pullman porter and a flashy LA doctor.

     When you see the enormous effort these daring people took to get the barest chance in life, the hardship they endured, there’s always another shoe to drop, the question: what happened after? Why did succeeding generations, facing declining yet still real barriers, often fail to follow their examples to make that climb to success? Why did they become stuck in the sprawling ghettos that ring Chicago and every other major city?

     The mayor touched upon it.
     "It reminds all of us of the work that remains ahead of us in order to keep the promise of Chicago alive," he said.
     Toward the end of Wilkerson's speech, she referred to "all of the lost talent, all of the genius" that was squelched by the brutal apartheid of Southern racism — the jazz musicians, the playwrights the surgeons — who never reached their true potential but spent their lives picking cotton or scrubbing out the kitchens of white ladies.
     She talked about how close Jesse Owens — who ran for gold in the 1936 Olympics, sticking an American thumb in the eyes of the Nazis and their pretensions to a master race — came to running errands down South instead of running track. How John Coltrane might have never had a saxophone placed into his calloused hands.
     She said one thing that surprised me. As easy as it is to portray the white hierarchy that kept racism in place as mere villains, as cliches, she observed that they, too, paid a price for their domination.
     "Their loss was a spiritual loss," Wilkerson said, generously. "If you are going to hold someone down in a ditch, you have to get down in that ditch with them."
     Or you did then. Our world is much less brutal now, but it also has created distance between the oppressor and the oppressed. The system — deprivation here, over-abundance there — now does the dirty work the field bosses and landowners once did.
     A youngster in Englewood might have a slightly better chance of reaching his potential in Chicago today than he would in Alabama in 1913, but still not nearly the chance were he in Wilmette. In a sense, his grandparents had an advantage — they knew the deck was stacked against them and knew where they had to go to find hope. Where should their grandchildren go?
     "These people freed themselves," she said of the first migration. But the task is not finished. "We have been bequeathed a beautiful burden, to make their sacrifices mean something. . . . You can change laws. You can not as easily change hearts."
     That's it. White society does not hold blacks down in the same way it once did — less force, more finance. But its heart is still hardened. We don't quite see the kids dying in sharp focus. That's why Wilkerson's book is so valuable. It is like a heart-valve transplant, to make the indifferent reader more invested in these fellow citizens or, rather, to know how invested we all are. And to remind the hopeless that their forebears mustered hope in the face of greater odds.
     The Pulitzer Prize winner said one more thing, a lovely thought, in regards to her parents coming to Chicago from different states in different years, meeting here, leading to her, an event she is grateful for.
     "It's nice to exist, you know," she said.
     It is, or it should be, if you are free to live life in a manner congruent with your desires. If you can go through your daily routine without fear someone might shoot you or your kids. If you have access to the same opportunities.
     "Here in the land of our birth, our work is devalued and our very lives are devalued," Wilkerson said of the subjects of her book. That was true then. And it's true now.

But does it have to be as lovely as a tree?

     I like poetry. The Poetry Foundation, well, I try to like them too. It can be hard, because they're a foundation, and something about foundations is antithetical to the poetic spirit, the way that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland doesn't embody rock and roll so much as entomb it. They do try to get poetry out there, though I wish they made more of an effort to occasionally have some kind of edge; buy a round of drinks at the Poetry Slam, something. Still, I like to keep tabs on them. They're good at heart. I didn't plan on touting their favorite poem er, "event"—I just stopped by to meet the new boss, Robert Polito. But the favorite poem thingy hasn't been announced yet —you read it here first, folks! —so I thought I would ballyhoo the con... whoops, something-close-to-but-not-quite-a-contest. (Isn't that the problem in a nutshell? That they won't call their contest a "contest." Too much foundation and not enough poetry). Then I got hung up on the fact that they're asking people to make the effort to write about their favorite poems, but aren't giving any prizes, other than to appear in their video. Any local saloon would dig up prizes. It seemed chintzy. 

     If you asked me to name my favorite poet, I’d be hard-pressed. I mean, yes, I keep trotting out Dante, but the dour Florentine can be heavy lifting. I’d hate to be forced to balance my affection for him against, say, Walt Whitman, lustily grabbing the reader around the neck with one hand and drawing him close, while the other hand — well, ahem, never you mind.

     But could I pick Whitman over Mary Oliver? Willow leaves in her hair, swallows fluttering around her head like a Disney heroine? A poem of hers in your pocket is like an aluminum bottle of cold water jiggling on your belt as you set out on a hike in the forest. You’re glad it’s there and even gladder when you pause to take a long, soul-satisfying pull.

    Does she really trump Rilke? Or Virgil? Or John Berryman, addressing the Lord? “I fell back in love with you, Father, for two reasons: / You were good to me, & a delicious author...”

     No matter. The Poetry Foundation isn’t even asking for your favorite poet — that would be hard enough. They’re asking for your favorite poem, in the about-to-be-announced Favorite Poem Contest: Chicago, reviving the contest that Robert Pinsky held when he was America’s Poet Laureate.
     Is that even possible? "Favorite" has to be time specific. Favorite now. Favorite at the moment. For a long time my favorite poem was Robert Browning's "Andrea del Sarto," the ambling, melancholy justification of a painter who was merely excellent, rationalizing why he wasn't a Michelangelo. "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what's a heaven for?"
     But did I like that better than Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man," a novel compressed in a few pages, with lines never to be forgotten: "Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."
     I learned about the contest after stopping by the Poetry Foundation's spare, elegant West Superior clubhouse to meet its new president, poet and scholar Robert Polito. He took exception to my suggestion that poetry squats on the outer margins of our culture.
     "It's hard to say exactly where poetry is," he said. "It would seem a lot of people would say it's on the periphery, it used to be more important. In a lot of ways, there's never been a better moment to be a poet and to be a reader of poetry than right now."
     He cited the explosion of small presses, local poetry scenes and books of poetry.
     "There's an enormous amount of poetry in the culture," he said.
     Further boosting poetry into the mainstream, from Oct. 15 through Nov. 15, the foundation is inviting Chicagoans from all walks of life to write about a poem they love and why they love it.
     Five entries will be chosen to participate in a video that will debut on the foundation website in January. And that's it — no prizes, as this is not a contest, for reasons I'm sure are dull and unpoetic and involve lawyers. (I did try my best. "C'mon," I told them. "You gotta have prizes. A coffee cup, a T-shirt. Something.")
     Still, entering isn't difficult. In fact, I'll go first. My favorite poem is ... "Leaves of Grass." It has to be, Whitman's bold, brilliant, timeless ode to the bounty and promise of America. Particularly the part where Whitman, who spent the Civil War as a nurse tending wounded soldiers, ministers to the reader.
     "O despairer, here is my neck," he says, practically leaning over your bed. "By God! You shall not go down! Hang your whole weight upon me."
     Whitman nearly clamps his lips over yours, filling your lungs with air.
     "I dilate you with tremendous breath ... I buoy you up; Every room of the house do I fill with an armed force ... lovers of me, bafflers of the graves; Sleep! I and they keep guard all night."
     I always smile at Uncle Walt and his motley band of mid-19th century inverts, in their floppy Jed Clampett hats frayed and homespun, toting Sharps rifles, taking up strategic spots around my house, dutiful midnight sentries. He wrote it to strengthen, and it does, every time.
     That's mine. What's your favorite poem? Don't tell me; tell the foundation, starting Oct. 15: poetryfoundation.org. Good luck.

Your government (not) at work

 47th Street, Chicago, Oct. 4, 2013 

     In the furious exchange of partisan blame going on in Washington at the moment, no claim is too outrageous or unfair to be fired off by the Republican side, increasingly frantic at how the public is somehow blaming them for their shutdown of the government.  Arkansas Republican Rep. Tim Griffin, during the police chase of a disturbed woman who drove her car at blockades, tweeted, "Stop the violent rhetoric President Obama, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. #Disgusting."

     The Democrat side, as always, is more reality based and temperate. For instance, one thing I don't blame the Republicans for is their sentimental focus on the closing of the national monuments in Washington. Even though it's their fault, entirely, there is something so sad about the idea of people visiting our nation's capital, as a pilgrimage to honor this great country, and being thwarted. The country is so screwed up that it can't keep the Washington Monument open. Or trying to visit the national parks, places of extreme natural beauty created by nature and put off limits by our tottering politicians.

     I've felt that frustration first hand.

     Ten years ago, I took my family to Washington, as it happened, a few days after the war in Iraq broke out. I went because my oldest boy was in 2nd grade, and when I was in 2nd grade, my family had taken a memorable tour of the FBI. But the FBI Building was closed, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was closed, as were other national monuments.  It seemed cowardly, as if the feds felt they had to sandbag the National Archives in case Saddam Hussein's elite guard showed up to burn the Constitution. 

     The idea that this was happening because of a new war almost got lost. Small problems somehow have a way of burrowing into your mind more directly than the big picture disaster. Yes, cancer research is on hold because of the current shut-down, and poor children might not get food aid, and a hundred other problems, growing each day with no end in sight. But long-planned weddings being prevented from taking place at Yosemite! Isn't that heartbreaking? 

     When this crisis was still only looming, at the end of August, I was being bothered by the approaching helium cliff. I wrote this column, about how the United States government for decades squelched the market for helium by selling it too cheaply, and now threatened to send shock waves through a variety of industries that use helium, from semi-conductors to medical imaging to aerospace, due to a short-sighted 1996 law forcing the government to pull out of the helium business whether other suppliers had stepped up or not. The noble gas issue seemed a small but significant metaphor for how badly the government can screw up even something simple. Yes, the shutdown was certainly on the radar, but we hoped it might not happen, and I preferred to worry about something that literally could not be seen. 

     Now, in one of those minor but delicious ironies, Congress, in the middle of all this shut-down business, actually took the time to slap a bandage on the helium problem. The government was allowed to close down, but we're okay, helium-wise. The necessary stopgap fix was passed by Congress. All the president has to do now is find a moment to sign it. So the one thing that I worried about specifically and at length is going to be just fine. It's the rest of the government that has come crashing down. It's like one of those cartoons where the character saves a lone china cup while the whole house collapses around him. 

     Still, the law didn't come soon enough to prevent widespread helium shortages, and this sign, spied on the door into the Hallmark card shop in Northbrook last week made me sad too. "I'm sorry Chrissie, no birthday balloons for you, because the United States government somehow found a way to create a shortage of the second most abundant element in the universe." 

     In 1969, the United States landed men on the Moon. Now we can't even fill party balloons in Northbrook. We seem to be sliding backward at an alarming rate. 

 47th Street, Chicago, Oct. 4, 2013 

If I say something will he kill me?

    If you walk down the streets of Chicago long enough, you'll see just about everything. 

    In all my years commuting to the newspaper—26 and counting—I've never, as I did Wednesday morning, found myself behind a man wearing his shirt inside out. 

     This is something new, I said to myself, standing behind him at the light, waiting to cross Madison. 

    A brown polo pullover with yellow and white stripes—not the best look when worn properly. To me, they're the kind of shirts I wore when I was 7. A child's shirt. It's jarring to see grown men go to work in them.  I briefly considered saying something. "Hey pal," or words to that effect, "do you know you have your shirt on inside out?" 

     But he was a big strapping guy, with a healthy gut hanging over his belt. As I imagined saying those words, as I formed them in my mind, trying them out, my next image was him turning with a snarl and plunging a steak knife into my chest. Or screaming in some thick Eastern European tongue as his hands close around my throat. That kind of thing happens. Mind your own business, I told myself, hurrying up Wacker, crossing at Washington. 

     I thought about other things. But at Franklin, he was back, coming north. We had taken different routes, but were now converging, intersecting, and I had the chance to say something again. Could this, I wondered, be a style? No, it had to be some sign of disturbance, some person in the grip of a mania, who just put their clothes on in a disordered fashion. Do not enter into his world. Flee.

     He crossed Franklin, and now we both were going north, paralleling each other. I tracked him out of the corner of my eye; he walked with a certain bearish, rolling gait. And suddenly I felt like a coward. This man needed an outside opinion. This man needed my help.

    I crossed the street in the center of the block, hurried to catch up, fell into step beside him. Approaching Lake, as we passed under some scaffolding, I made my move.

    "Excuse me," I said.

     "Yes?" he said, brightly, pleasantly. "Can I help you?"

     "I was wondering if you knew that..."

     "Yes, my shirt," he laughed—his voice regular, friendly, not the guttural bellow I had anticipated. "I put it on backward. I'm going to change it as soon as I get to the office. Thank you though." He smiled.    

     "Well, that happens," I said, trying to be comforting. "I once spent the day wearing a kilt backwards, with the pleats in the front. Nobody told me." 

    "I noticed some odd looks at the train station," he said. "I thought maybe I just looked extra handsome today..."
     "I'm lucky to have my wife give me the once over before I leave."
     "I live alone," he said.

      And we exchanged a few more words, until we got to Wacker again (for you readers in Indonesia, Wacker Drive curves through downtown, in a gentle right angle, so you can travel in a straight line and still cross it twice. It has North, South, East and West addresses, which can be confusing to newcomers). I bid him farewell, and he bid me farewell, and I walked north puzzling: Why are we so afraid of each other? Why are we so reluctant to talk to strangers? Why do we assume the worst, the very worst, about those we don't know? Most people are not fiends. Most people are nice. So why the excess of caution? Is it just me? No, that seems to be the common practice. I spend two hours commuting most days, and people are loath to look at each other. I could show up at the train station wearing a Carmen Miranda fruit hat and the people I see every day would edge away but not say a word.  A little wariness is necessary in a city like Chicago. But too much, and you live in your own personal desert, a lonely island in a sea of humanity. No need for that. No need to cringe in your little protective bubble, alone. He was a nice guy who happened to put his shirt on the wrong way.  If I hadn't had talked to him, I never would have known. 

The Never-Ending Goodbye

     Mocking Oprah Winfrey is a dirty, thankless task, but someone's got to do it.  I've cheerfully assumed that futile but fun burden for nearly 20 years, and while it hasn't made a dent on the vast, sky-hogging, culture-spanning, armor-plated Death Star edifice that is Oprah Winfrey, objections were raised, and that counts for something. At least someone once referred to her as "that froglike dominatrix presiding over her Theater of Pain." As a rule, I try not to curse the inevitable, try not to shake my fist at the sun and decry the omnipresent. But with Oprah, I make an exception because, really, otherwise the chorus of praise, much of it from herself, is just too damn nauseating to endure:

     Oprah, Oprah, Oprah...

     How can we miss you if you never go away? It seems only minutes after your painfully protracted, celebrity-spattered farewell to when your talk show shut down Michigan Avenue for days — OK, it was in 2011, but it feels like yesterday — and now we’re being called upon to bid you goodbye yet again, this time as you put your West Side studio complex on the market, and maybe your swank Gold Coast duplex, too.

     Well, ta-ta. It’s been fun. Don’t let the door hit you in your ...

     No, no — positive thoughts. The high road.

     Well, ta-ta. Don’t be a stranger ...

     Oh, right, you were a stranger. As much as you liked to float your Chicago street cred when basking in the endless celebrity limelight that trailed you like your own personal sun, it wasn’t as if you were ever really here beyond the confines of your 15,000-square-foot Water Tower Place duplex. Not a lot of Oprah sightings in all those years you did that hall-of-mirrors show of yours. No river of Oprah bucks watering thirsty Chicago charities. More like a trickle.

     Eighty years after Al Capone went to prison, he’s still associated with Chicago, too much. Two years after you left, well, as much as you must think of the city as one vast cargo cult, sitting in the lotus position learned from one of the endless chain of sham gurus you ballyhooed, scanning the skies for your return, well, we’re not.

     But let's not go negative. Let's be positive. Let's wish you had been more supportive of your adopted hometown, in real, tangible ways beyond all that self-serving blah-blah, and then, why it'll become true, right? That's how "The Secret" works, right? Factual, tangible reality is for the soulless, the unspiritual. It's what's in our hearts that counts, and in my heart, you were a fixture each summer at the bake sale at Misericordia . . .
     Whoops. Negative again. Maybe you did us a favor by not associating too much with Chicago, a practical city, a hardworking city, not given to crystals and magical thinking and the brand of snake-oil quackery that your program daily injected right into the brainstem of the American body politic. Why blame you if people bought it hook, line and sinker? "OWN" —the Oprah Winfrey Network, a vanity project on steroids. I guess "Me Television" was already taken.
     Or, in your defense, the public's gullibility was already there, and you just reflected it. You had your moments. Sure, too many were spent in squealing worship of brand materialism at its basest. But sometimes you rose above: One show, you sent a family from St. Louis to live in Mongolia in yurts. It was interesting.
     (I should probably say, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I was a guest on Oprah's show once, nearly 20 years ago, promoting my second book. A four-hour ordeal I remember as a blur of endless waiting punctuated by frantic assistant producers with clipboards lunging past, of fellow guests blinking in wonder at indoor plumbing, of cheap vending machine muffins sweating oil in their plastic wrap, piled in the Green Room by minions of the richest woman after Queen Elizabeth II. Of how flinty, disinterested and queenly in a bad way you were in person. It is not a happy memory).
     But let's not be negative. Let's not. Let's be positive. Our thoughts become our reality. The bullets will not harm us . . .
     Credit where due: The West Side was a blighted war zone interspersed with pickle factories and sheet metal companies in 1990 when you opened your studio. Six years before Rich Daley snagged the Democratic National Convention and put in all those wrought iron fences and planters. So kudos to you, a true pioneer, if buying distressed real estate and putting in a TV facility that has no interaction with its neighbors is pioneering.
     At least you'll make money selling this one, probably, as opposed to the store you sold earlier this year, at a $1 million loss, or the condo last year, losing $2.9 million (though really, what is money to you at this point? Which is another talent of yours we must marvel at: the ability to make lumpen, hair-in-curlers America feel that you were relating to them in the 46 minutes you spent gazing at their representatives sympathetically, a human version of Nipper, the RCA hound, except of course when you were always happy to cavort with the celebrities who beat a path to your door.)
     So yes, off to Los Angeles with you, as if you weren't there already. Chicago will, let us say again, get by just fine without you, in a fashion remarkably similar to how we got along with you. Sort of how the TV-watching public adjusted to the loss of your program by emitting a complacent "moo" and flipping to whatever was on the next channel.