A meatloafy kind of glory

     What are we doing when we take photographs of our food?
     Bragging, obviously, since such shots are intended to be posted on Facebook and tweeted on Twitter, tumbled through Tumblr and pinned on Pinterest and a half dozen other networks I can't think of right now. 
     We do so to say, "Hey, I'm eating this good stuff, at this trendy hotspot."
     I try not to do that. 
     Not because I'm reluctant to brag. I've got that down to a science. Rather, I have difficulty snapping the picture. There is something low-rent about photographing your food in restaurant. It's akin to eating with your hands, or filling your pockets with bread. Just as you should win as if you've won before, so you should eat in a restaurant as if you've eaten out before. 
     Plus, if you think about poking around on Facebook, you never come to some food shot and think, "Wow, that looks GREAT; I better go eat there right away." We tend to ignore those photos, and just as well, if we can give any credence to a Brigham Young University study, that last fall suggested that looking at photos of food blunted our enjoyment of eating, since our tastebuds became dulled by just the sight of food. 
     Actually, now that I think of it, we tend to ignore, or overlook, or miss, the vast majority of everything online. When the history of social media is written, I'm afraid it's going to be the story of a lot of people talking to themselves in cyberspace.
     So I try to eat my food, not photograph it. But sometimes I give in, sometimes I feel I have to, not because the food is so good, or the place so trendy, but because the meal just looks so beautiful, like this plate of meatloaf, whipped potatoes and peas and carrots at the County Clare, a lovely pub and restaurant near the art museum in Milwaukee.
      It wasn't even my meal, but Ross's. As soon as it was set down I whipped out my phone and fired off a shot.
     What made it beautiful? The colors, to start, I suppose, the rich reddish brown of the sauce on the meatloaf, the green and orange peas and carrots, the delicate waves of the potatoes. But more. A certain serenity, a quiet, an innocence, if a plate of meatloaf and potatoes can be said to be innocent. And perhaps it can, it does have its own perfection. The classic meal. Meat and potatoes, literally. A sort of repose. In a moment if would be cut up and chewed over, down the pipe and on its way into something much, much less beautiful. 
      As are we all. 
      But before the inevitable arrives, I captured them at their zenith, their pinnacle, and saved them, basking in their glory, albeit a meatloafy kind of glory.  

500 women, 1000 pounds of flour, and me

   You can’t assume things in this job. I’d like to pretend that of course everybody knows challah is a rich, dense, slightly sweet, often braided egg bread, that it entered American consciousness years ago, along with bagels and gefilte fish and other Jewish foodstuffs. But the truth is, some readers probably have no clue, probably would pronounce the word with a hard “ch,” like “choice” —“CHallah”—instead of the back-of-the-throat scraping H so prevalent in Hebrew, Arabic and other languages where spitting is an essential aspect of communication. So I really must explain challah.

     Which I just did, except for the obvious: that challah is really good — think of how fantastic fresh homemade bread tastes. Challah is even better. Once I stopped at Tel-Aviv Kosher Bakery on Devon, and even though I had no plan to buy challah, it was just coming out of the oven, and once that aroma hooked its fingers under my nose, I had to follow, had to buy a loaf, in the naive belief it would last until I drove home. It didn’t, beyond a tiny, pathetic, scrap.

     Which is a long way of saying that when Chicago’s Lubavitch Chabad had its Mega Challah Bake at the Holiday Inn in Skokie last week, I was there, drawn not only by the siren lure of challah, but by the fact that they assembled 500, count ’em, 500 women to make dough. A lot of women.

     It did not start well for me, as not only the sole representative of the media, but the only man in the room. The first several women I went up to, trying to do the whole tell-me-about-what’s-going-on thing that we media jackals are so fond of, briskly directed me to someone else who didn’t want to talk either, and I was at the point of giving up and fleeing into the night when I encountered Mina Schanowitz, of Deerfield by way of Paris who, perhaps being French, was able to overcome her reluctance to speak to a man to whom she was not married.

     “It’s a very special thing, being together, because the power of prayer is strong,” she said. Has she baked challah before?

    “Of course. I do it every week,” she said. Though like much of what Chabad does, the event was designed to attract the unfamiliar.

     "A lot of women who will come tonight never braid challah," she said. "For a lot of people, that will be a new thing."
     According to tradition, baking challah is one of the three mitzvot - blessings - expected of Jewish women, along with lighting Sabbath candles observing the purity laws associated with mikvah, or ritual bathing.
     The event was conceived by the family of Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, the late leader of the Lubavitch in Illinois, who died unexpectedly after a minor medical procedure March 4, and would have turned 60 last week.
     Others came because of an aura of good fortune associated with preparing challah.
     "I have a son I want to marry [off]," said Rivkah Leah Bernath, 47, who is a member of the Chabad Shidduch Group - a network of matchmakers - and said that many people were there to tap the power of challah.
     "Some people have a sick one, some people want to marry someone," she said, "Some want to get married themselves. Some people are looking for a job. Everybody has a different reason. Some are doing it because they loved Rabbi Moscowitz and want to honor him."
     Each participant paid $25, underwriting the night's considerable logistics: 47 gallons of water; 16 cups of salt; 250 cups of sugar; 31 cups of yeast; 1,000 pounds of flour; 8 gallons of oil, 45 dozen eggs, not to mention 500 bowls and aprons, divided into 500 portions by students at the Lubavitch girls high school, part of a chain of volunteers, including 50 captains, one per table.
     "Oh my goodness, dozens and dozens and dozens of people," said Sara Moscowitz, a daughter-in-law, who practiced demonstrating braiding techniques the night before using Play-Doh. There was a spoons and bowls committee, a committee for aprons, an ingredients committee, a centerpiece committee, a recipe committee and a committee of volunteers enlisting more volunteers.
     "I have close to a dozen committees just to make sure everything is done," said Moscowitz. "Subcommittee upon subcommittee," added Yona Posner. "It really was a community group effort."
     The women assembled the ingredients, kneaded dough, then braided it. While the dough rose, they heard a brief concert. To my disappointment, they took the dough home to bake. All that and I didn't even get a taste. But those ferrying challah home agreed it was, for them, a lovely experience.
     "It's just a good time," said Moscowitz. "Who doesn't love warm pretty bread that tastes good?"

"I wondered what I wanted out of this trip"

     Father's Day.  

      Like many men my age, I am sandwiched between two generations. Prompted by the holiday, I can either look to my own children, or to my dad, 81 and living in Boulder, Colorado.  

     I'm thinking more of my father lately--I just saw the old commander a few weeks back, when my oldest boy graduated from high school.  

     Then in a bookstore Saturday, I came upon a copy of Bowditch's "The American Practical Navigator," a thick nautical reference. "I read this on the ship," I told my wife, and suddenly I was sailing the Empire State.
      You might not know it, but I wrote a book about my dad.  No reason that you would: the thing sold 2,000 copies, maybe. Sank like a stone. I don't talk about it much. Frankly, I don't think about it much. It was 15 years ago that we crossed the Atlantic together on his old ship, the Empire State, run by the State University of New York Maritime College, used to train cadets. 
     In 2002, my book about it came out, "Don't Give Up the Ship." I had high hopes for the book--unlike all these feel-good dad and lad adventures, this was a challenging tale without the classic epiphanies or happy ending. I thought people would relate to its very human messiness. 
    Instead we annoyed people. "I found these two men highly irritating" said the critic for UPI, which nevertheless had picked it as "Book of the Week." 
      Yeah, well, hard to argue that one. But you have to be who you are, and you have to dance with who brung ya.  I thought, in honor of the holiday, I would drag out this excerpt, which ran in the Sun-Times. Happy Father's Day, if possible.

     The big morning finally arrived. My father and I did our sweeping checks of the room, the "V.I.P. Suite" at the State University of New York's Maritime College in the Bronx. Thin industrial carpeting over a concrete floor, nautical prints, spartan, sturdy furniture; a state college's idea of luxury. We peered under beds, searched every drawer and closet, even those we had never used, not wanting to leave anything behind, trying to be smart and thorough.

     We wheeled our suitcases into the bright 7 a.m. mid-May sunshine and across the Maritime campus. Mostly 1950s brick buildings, square and charmless, in the shadow of the Throg's Neck Bridge, but also Fort Schuyler, an 1830s pentagonal stone structure built to defend the Hell Gate against the British, with thick walls and gun slits and a parade ground. We walked toward the Empire State--our ship, for the next month, sailing down the coast to the Caribbean and then across the Atlantic to Italy-- gleaming white at the pier.

     The pier was hectic with a festive, pre-summer-camp sort of commotion, busy with families, girlfriends, boyfriends and cadets--trim teens in bright white shirts and dark navy pants, their "salt and pepper'' uniforms. They towered over their parents. Mothers held bunches of balloons. Fathers lugged big portable coolers, cases of soda, cases of juice. I worried that we were unprepared--we had no juice--and puzzled over the balloons. At least a dozen families had brought bunches of them. They seemed an odd, child's-birthday-party touch.

     My father stopped short and I ran thud into him. Like a vaudeville act. Disentangling ourselves and our rolling luggage, I wondered, "Is this how it's going to be? Frick and Frack?" I looked around to see if anybody noticed.

     Turning onto Dock 19, where the ship was tied up, I saw that the dock was named for A.F. Olivet, the no-nonsense captain during my father's cruises. I paused to make note of that, and of the dinghies moored under a protective wooden roof leading to the ship--they had bold, forward-straining names: Courageous, Freedom, America, Magic.

     Looking up, I saw that my father, the good New Yorker, had kept walking. I called to him--"Dad! Wait!"--and he turned. "I'll go slow," he shouted back. But he didn't go slow. He strode toward the ship. I hurried after him, the luggage wheels humming against the concrete.

     I got alongside the ship, almost to the gangway, just in time to see him go up without me, lugging his suitcase, a wide smile spread across his face. He said something pleasant to the officer at the top of the gangway and disappeared inside the Empire State. I stood on the pier a moment, shocked, then raced after him, hefting my suitcase in both hands and clattering up the awkward low metal steps. After months of arranging--the conversations, the phone calls, the formal letters, the visits--I had figured that our boarding the ship would be an obvious moment of high drama: an exchange of loving glances, a pat on the back, a shy filial smile, a fatherly ruffle of the hair, a deep breath and up we go together, arms linked. Ta-daaaaaaaah!

     Not in this life.

     "What's your hurry, sailor?" I hissed, out of breath, catching up to him at the cabin, C1, marked by a note card reading "Mr. Stienburg Sr." and "Mr. Stienburg Jr."

      He offered this explanation: he wanted to get his suitcase aboard before the tide came in, raising the angle of the gangway, making it more difficult to walk up. He actually said this. Stunned, I turned away, puzzling whether his excuse was a mountainous lie or, worse, a sincere delusion.

     I stood in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror: how was I going to do this? Six weeks with my father. A month at sea, then 10 days in Italy. We'd kill each other. Or I'd kill him. Or myself. Or he'd kill me. One way or another, somebody was going to be killed.

     Then the anger, a hot fluid at the back of my brain, drained away and I almost laughed--the tide; so ridiculous--and I remembered that, up to this moment, I had been genuinely worried my father wouldn't get on the ship at all. That despite his promises, when the moment finally came, he would freeze up on the gangway. Many times I had imagined, not entirely without pleasure, him grasping the handrails, white knuckled, rigid, me behind him, ramming the heel of my hand into the small of his back, forcing him forward. "Get on the goddamn ship, dad!"

     That had been the preconception. The reality was 180 degrees opposite. Instead of hanging back, fearful, needing a shove, he had raced ahead, excited, forgetting all about me. Realizing this shocked away the anger. It struck me that, after all these years, I didn't know my father at all. Not a bit.

     We stowed our luggage in the cabin. When we had seen it for the first time, the night before, it had seemed huge. But now it looked very small. Two single beds, bolted to the floor, 19 inches apart. Between them, a single square window, facing forward, offering the vista of the foredeck, nearly the length and breadth of a football field. The window couldn't open.

     I set my laptop computer on the desk. The newspaper had refused to grant me the leave I requested. Instead, they insisted I file my column from the sea. Not exactly convenient. Still, given how I had botched my request, I was relieved they let me go at all.

     Newspaper editors-in-chief are not famous for their bonhomie, and my boss at the time at the Sun-Times, Nigel Wade, was perhaps more aloof than most. A large, ruddy, well-tailored New Zealander with a dramatic head of silvery hair, he was not given to long, friendly exchanges with the staff. Or even short, friendly exchanges.

     Granted, it would have been difficult to pick a worse moment to bring up the trip. I had written a column about not having an idea for a column--something I thought was very hip, very Seinfeld, and also happened to be true, always a plus in journalism. I enjoyed puncturing the notion of columnist-as-infallible-font-of-endless-wisdom, and admired the portrait I painted of myself slumped before the computer, mouth open, head empty. "This must be what stupid people feel like all the time," I wrote.

     Nigel hated it. "If you can't think of an idea for your coh-lum, then perhaps you should not be writing a coh-lum," he said, after I was summoned to his office for a chewing out. At first I bristled--the column did have an idea behind it: not having an idea for a column. He just didn't like my argument, didn't like the suggestion that some days there is no wisdom to sell for 35 cents. That didn't go over well either. I tried a second approach: I was tired, working very hard, maybe the grind was getting to me, but I certainly still had something left to say. He liked that better. I was off the hook. The flames died down, we entered in that phase of relaxation that comes after a tense talk; the raking of embers, decompressing back into the workday, when I unwisely said something along the lines of: Besides, I've got this ocean voyage with my dad coming up, will need to take off a few months from work, and that should give me a chance to recharge my batteries.

     What could I have been expecting? "A nautical adventure? Jolly good! Splendid. Just the medicine for you. Don't know why you waste your time on all this newspaper nonsense anyway. We must lift a few brandies at the 410 Club before you sail."

     The actuality was different.

     "Fuck off then!' Nigel shouted, leaping up and waving me toward the door. "Fuck off! Get out of here!" I fled, backing out of the office, babbling apologies, hands spread in defensive entreaty, almost bowing. Not the heigh-ho send-off I might have hoped for.

     Just before the Empire State sailed, my father and I went back down to the pier, to walk around on land one last time, more relaxed, without the physical and psychological burden of our luggage. People were hugging. A girl sat on the low concrete wall by the water and wept. Their own stories being forged, I thought. Would their unborn children someday be drawn to the sea after them, sucked into the vortex of their parents' romantic notions? I sent a mental message of solidarity to those unborn voyagers--good luck, kiddos, I'm with you!

     Departure approached, and we went back aboard, together. Officials from the college, alumni, all sorts of people crowded the officer's lounge on the cabin deck and along the rails outside, picking at cheese and pretzels, a cocktail party without the cocktails. Joe Gerson, a spry old gent in a baseball cap emblazoned "EMPIRE STATE--1949-1999" had been on my father's cruises, and knew a lot of the same people, such as third mate Bill Hawley.

     "Bill Hawley was my rabbi," Gerson said. "He was a great guy. He was my rabbi, Mr. Hawley. Without Bill Hawley I would never have made it. I remember him telling me as if it were today: 'Every stevedore carries a tin cup. Have a drink with him. You'll get more with a little booze than with the vinegar. Remember: be a Third Mate and act the part. Always be in the swim. Never be out of the swim. . . .'"

     At that moment, the ship's horn blasted and the pier began to move away. I checked my watch: 10 a.m. We were leaving. I clanged up the metal stairway to the bridge and scanned the huge crowd lining the shore. Admiral David C. Brown, the head of the school, was leaning against the rail, watching the fort recede. "You will notice," he observed, "that the ship left promptly at 10 a.m."

     I nodded, thinking: A complete anti-climax. The second dramatic high point of the morning shot to hell. I didn't even know where my father was at the moment. That's why it is bad to anticipate. The times you imagine are going to be significant fall flat, while excitement boils up where it isn't expected. Whatever this trip is going to offer, I thought, won't be in the departure. Still, I kept my eyes on the skyline of New York City as it fell away, feeling very much out of the swim, wondering how things would be by the time Charleston--our first stop--loomed into sight. The people on the dock were tiny dots, interrupted by bunches of balloons. That's what the balloons were for: so those on board could spot their families and loved ones, could cling to the sight of them as long as possible as the ship sailed away.

     All the first day, my father and I explored the ship, at first together, and then splitting up. Living in a world of general flimsiness, of thin sheet metal and plastic bumpers, all designed to just barely work and no more, I found a real thrill in the overengineering of a ship, basically a 50-story building designed to lie on its side and be pounded by the might of the ocean.

     I wandered, delighting in just how solid everything was. In the bow, twin capstans to pull up the anchors--a pair of 12,000 pound, two-pronged black monsters. The capstans were huge spools, three feet wide and made of a brass alloy that you could tell, just by tapping with a knuckle, were something far denser and stronger than the fragile substances typically encountered on shore.

     The links of the anchor chain were eight inches long, shaped like the numeral 8, the center stud to prevent tangling. Bolts as thick as forearms were secured by nuts as big as fists.

     I went to the bridge, a wide, shallow room at the top of the ship, glassed in on three sides.

     A cadet stood at the helm, which was not a grand wooden spoked wheel like in the pirate movies, but small, the size of a dinner plate. The tiny wheel lent a certain air of delicacy to the act of piloting the ship, like an immense chef cracking a quail's egg. Other cadets--maybe half a dozen--stood at charts and at the two new, colorful Raytheon radar stations. I slipped behind the helmsman and watched, quietly.

     Perhaps 15 seconds later, my father appeared in the starboard doorway, a look of concern etched on his face. I smiled at him. He made an abrupt, "come here" gesture. I went there.

     "You're on the bridge," he whispered, deadly earnest.

     "I know," I whispered back. "That's where I can see what's going on."

     "The captain won't like it," my father warned.    

     "Let's see," I said. I turned around and walked over to the man who was obviously Captain Joseph Ahlstrom--the tall, pleasant-faced officer with sandy hair whom everybody was listening to. I introduced myself. We shook hands. "Do you mind if I'm on the bridge?" I said.

     "Make yourself at home," the captain said, in a strong Staten Island accent. Flashing my father an "easy-as-pie" shrug, I returned to my spot behind the helm. When I next looked in my father's direction, he was gone.

     It took a while for my father to actually step inside the bridge, and when he did, he ventured in tentatively, as if expecting snakes. It was a different world than when he was a sailor, and he never quite adjusted to it.

     I left the bridge and returned to wandering, stepping through high doorways, over chains. At the very end of the ship--the stern--I stood on the fantail and watched the foamy white trail of the ship bubbling back fast, spreading behind the ship. A cadet always stood watch at the stern, on the platform above the supply house, facing backward, to make sure some careless faster ship didn't sneak up on the Empire State, unnoticed, and ram her.

     That, and as a final, desperate hope to anybody who fell overboard. I studied the churning surf passing behind the ship, focusing on a particular bit of foam and counting. It moved away fast. You'd have about five seconds to catch that lookout's attention. Then it would just be you, alone, in the vast, wide, deep ocean.

     I wondered what I wanted out of this trip. People do not change. I firmly believed that. My father and I would come to no understandings. The past would remain enigmatic. Nothing would be solved. No hugs at the happy ending, eyes wet with love and reconciliation. No epiphanies. No life's lessons learned. We would end up, I was certain, exactly as we began, shaking our fists at each other as the taxicabs screeched away in opposite directions.

     That's what I told myself. But it was a lie, a protective fiction, concocted to soften the impact of what I feared would happen to my unspoken hopes. In my secret heart, I wanted everything to work out. To salve the old wounds, to discover something new, to find some better, more genuine father beneath the one I knew too well, to craft myself into the son he truly wanted. I was a fool and, like most fools, believed that I was wise.

From Don't Give Up the Ship by Neil Steinberg. Copyright 2002 by Neil Steinberg. Reprinted by arrangement with Ballantine Books, a division of Random House Inc.

You can buy the book online for a penny, $4 total, delivered, if you include the $3.99 shipping, on Amazon, by clicking here. 

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

    Today is Flag Day.
    Happy Flag Day.
    Not the most popular holiday.
    Kind of a low rent, odd man out banner festival jammed between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. 
    Three patriotic holidays in the space of five and a half weeks.
    Quite a lot, really.
    Four, if you count June 6, the anniversary of D-Day, which is practically a holiday, and certainly carries more emotional heft than Flag Day. 
    Most days do.
    Makes sense that one would get the short shrift.
    Flag Day is not a federal holiday. It celebrates...for those who notice...the adoption of the United States flag on June 14, 1777 by the Second Continental Congress. Though not of course this particular flag, not the current flag, with its 50 five-pointed stars, one for each state. That only dates to 1959, when Hawaii and Alaska entered the union. 
    The original 1777 resolution reads:
    “Resolved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.”
    That flag looks like this:

    So not the biggest deal, as far as holidays go. Sort of an Arbor Day level holiday but for flags instead of trees. Beer companies don't even notice it. 
    No Flag Day picnics. No greeting cards. You don't get the day off of work.
    A few stores have sales, I suppose.
    And the only only obligation to fly the flag.
    Which the vast majority of folks don't bother to do.
    I am not one of those folks.
    I actually look forward to Flag Day.
    Because I have a flag. 
    That I love to fly.
    I'd keep it out all the time. 
    But then flying it wouldn't be special.
    So I hold back and fly it whenever I can.
    Such as on Flag Day.
    I tend to notice flags too.
    Like this enormous beauty, hanging properly—the union to the left, I checked—in...well, a public space in Chicago.
    Frankly, I figured readers will ID the spot immediately.
    But I like the picture, so decided to use it anyway. Today being both Flag Day and a Saturday, when my Where IS This contest runs. 
    Besides, given how photos I'm sure will stump people get guessed quickly, maybe, in that perverse way life has, the one that seems obvious to me will leave you scratching your heads.
     Maybe not.
     Make sure to post your guesses in the comments section below. 
     The winner will receive ... what? ... I'm getting tired of handing out posters and copies of my books. 
     How about someone else's book? 
     How about a copy of First Son: The Biography of Richard M. Daley, by Keith Koeneman, published by the University of Chicago Press. It's about Rich Daley, but no book is perfect. 
      I have an extra copy that's yours, if you guess correctly.
      Good luck.   
       

Not an "issue," a "traffic snarl from hell"

     In the name of all that is holy, STAY OFF THE KENNEDY EXPRESSWAY for the next three weekends! That is, unless you want to be plunged into a TRAFFIC JAM NIGHTMARE HORROR beyond your worst imaginings!!!

     Not that state officials will put it that way.

     “The city of Chicago is still open for business,” enthused Ann Schneider, secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, at a press conference at IDOT’s emergency center at 35th and Normal on Tuesday. “People should, when they make their travel plans for these weekends, make sure they do so understanding there’s going to be some traffic issues. For sure, definitely understand that the city is open for business.”

     Translation: Part of the monolithic Ontario Street bridge, built in 1959, over the Kennedy Expressway is being demolished. Beginning at 10 p.m. Friday the clotted-on-a-good-day five lanes of the Kennedy will go down to a sclerotic two lanes, with speed limits of 10 to 15 mph, in theory, exiting at Ohio, executing a hairpin turn, and returning to the highway, eventually. While the $16.5 million project is underway, chamber of commerce types want you to fight your way into the city to stores. If you must, DON’T FOR ANY REASON DRIVE DOWNTOWN DURING THE WEEKENDS OF JUNE 13, 20 AND 27!!!!!

     In a strange marriage of traffic warning and tourist board puffery, state officials listed the two dozen special events taking place in the midst of this construction, from the Chicago Blues Fest, the Gay Pride Parade and the Gospel Music Festival.

     The bridge is a relic of 1950s gigantism, making it even harder to remove.

     “It was poured in one piece and, because of that, it has to be removed as one unit,” said Sarah Wilson, a bridge maintenance engineer at IDOT. She said that because of deterioration of the bridge, traffic has been restricted to the legal load limit of 40 tons four years ago — as opposed to allowing heavier loads by permit — and if the bridge wasn’t replaced, they’d eventually have to ban trucks from the Kennedy. “This is a safety issue in terms of getting this very old structure demolished and out of the way.”

     “Issue” was definitely the term of the day, along with “challenge.” But it is an indication of just what a SNARLED CREEPING ORDEAL OF MISERABLE MOTIONLESSNESS anyone entering the Kennedy during that time will face during that the dreaded p-word — “problem” was almost uttered.
     "That is a pro . . ." Schneider began when a reporter asked what would become of their schedule if it rains in June (average rainfall in Chicago in June: 3.45 inches, more than in April or November), before catching herself.
      "That is a challenge for us," she said. "There is the potential that the weather could delay some of this."
     Another issue will be the 260,000 cars that daily use the Kennedy pouring onto side streets, and state officials warn bicyclists to TAKE EXTRA CARE THAT THEY ARE NOT KILLED by frustrated drivers, though of course not in those words either.
     "Bicyclists are also urged to be aware that there will be additional traffic on arterial streets, and like motorists, are encouraged to plan accordingly," IDOT suggested in a press release.
     (Seasoned commuters know there's a slim chance that so many will be scared off the Kennedy that, at times, those few brave souls who hazard traveling it will find driving a breeze, at least until everyone else realizes the other guy is avoiding it, flooding back, jamming the thing totally).
     "Make no mistake, the city is open for business," echoed Gary Schenkel, executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communication. "There is no place like Chicago in the summer, after the long winter . . . " (It must be Rahm's tireless civic ballyhoo; it infects people) " . . . so whether you are planning to attend our festivals, special events, beaches, ballgames, shopping dining downtown or in our neighborhoods, we are asking motorists to plan accordingly and to cooperate with IDOT's request to use alternate routes and public transportation over the next three weekends . . . there are increased public transportation options for those who want to take advantage of all this world-class city has to offer."
     Translation: Take the train, if you can find a place to stand. Otherwise, have you considered visiting beautiful Milwaukee? Our neighbor to the north has a fine art museum and lovely lakefront. Just 90 minutes away, assuming YOU DON'T FOOLISHLY TRY TO TAKE THE KENNEDY THROUGH DOWNTOWN TO GET THERE!!!

Throw Eric from the train

 
     I try not to follow politics.
     Because tracking politics is like focusing on the telephone poles as they fly past while you travel aboard a train. Disorienting, a little queasy-inducing, and it distracts you from where you're heading.
     Eric Cantor, for instance.

     The Republican House Majority Leader.
     Soon to be the former Republican House Majority Leader....
     I was aware of him, as a clench-jawed zealot opposing the president, well, on just about everything.
    And then Tuesday he was vaporized by an even more extreme zealot, tea party zealot David Brat. It was like one of those science fiction movies where the big scary beast is abruptly swallowed up by an even bigger, scarier beast (or, in this case, by something much smaller. Brat winning is like a rat swallowing a wolf).
      And the media chorus analyzing the event has one conclusion: a big reason Cantor got the boot, general consensus decrees, is immigration.
     "Cantor’s defeat to tea partyer David Brat was so intertwined with immigration — 'amnesty' and 'illegal aliens' — that the few fence-sitters in the GOP-led House are going to flock back to the politically right side of the divide," the Miami Herald wrote.

     So the chattering heads fall to chattering about how this will affect the future of the Republican Party, which is now, supposedly, even more anti-immigration than it was before, which is saying something. And about the chances of immigration reform, which is dead, again, or even deader, assuming it was ever alive to begin with.
     And there they stop.
     Leaving off the most salient point. 

     The facts remain unchanged. The arc of history bends in the same direction. We're still heading exactly where we've been going for decades. The Republicans just decided, again, that if they leap off the train, that will somehow change the direction it is racing.
     Wrong. Leaping off the train hurts them a lot more than it hurts the train. You would think that they would finally figure that one out. 

     Immigration reform today is where gay rights were 20 years ago. A massive boulder held in place by a pebble on a steep hillside. One push and away it'll go. 

     Today, about 15 percent of Americans are of Hispanic origin, making them the largest minority group in the country. Not everyone who is a Hispanic is affected by the immigration issue, but many are. By 2050, they will triple in numbers, and make up 30 percent of the country. By then, one in five Americans will be an immigrant.
     How do you think immigration reform will be faring then? This is not an "if" question. This is a "when" question. 

     By then, Hispanic Americans will also not be the ooo-scary Intruder than can be shrugged off by Republican revanchists with buzzwords like "amnesty." They will be our neighbors, friends and co-workers — that is, if they aren't that for you already — fighting for their millions of parents, children, brothers and sisters living in rightless quasi-serfdom. 

     Actually, it is a safe bet that, long before 2050 rolls around, this problem will be addressed. Immigration reform will be solved eventually by somebody. It's a shame it couldn't be solved by us now, but as the Hindenburg of Eric Cantor's political career going up in a ball of flame dramatically demonstrates, the GOP just isn't ready yet. Easier to self destruct, again, than see the future that is already here. As always, they'd rather follow the dictates of their tiny hard anthracite black coal hearts and lose, than do what is right for our country and the route it is traveling, has been traveling, and will be traveling.

I think Trump is great because ...

     A considerable number of people took me up on yesterday's request to finish this phrase: "I think it's GREAT that the Trump name, that hallmark of excellence, is going up in the heart of Chicago. I sincerely admire Donald Trump because..."

                     ....Trump is so American. That's why we love it! Should make the letters larger in Red,White and Blue.           
                                                     —Carl Wanzung, Chicago 

Though the majority turned the statement against Trump: 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                         ...because he gives the scale of human values its low.

                                                     --Neil Liptak, Elwood

...because the Trib Tower, Wrigley Building and Crain Building now will look even more magnificent, pristine and tasteful. So, thanks, Donald. Your sheer "presence," and that of a building that achieved taste and beauty in spite of you and now is getting duly pimped up by your lowness, reminds us that the rest of us, including those Chicagoans with as much money as, if not more than, the Donald do have taste and class that can''t be taken for granted.
                                                          —Laurent Pernot

Although this one, while the initial thought was one heard over and over, ended on a priceless note (I decided to omit his name, to shield him from the vindictive pettiness of condo owners):

The new sign is another egotistical move by the biggest pompous a$$ in America. I am sure he hated it when he saw those beautiful pictures taken from the east and they weren't subtitled to include his name.  He fixed that as he has now ruined the view.

To be honest, we thought long and hard before we purchased a condo there.  We love it, but as you pointed out, I tell people we have a place at 401 N. Wabash.

But it was a serious question, and we should give some serious answers, of which I got quite a few, such as this, from John J. Kula, of Mount Prospect. People often tell me they disagree with something I've said, but enjoyed how I said it. I'd have to say the same about this:

     I'd like to buy a letter. It's my building. It's my money. Welcome to America!
     The recent uproar and indignant outrage over the bold letters of TRUMP made me reevaluate my moral outrage meter settings. Why am I not upset over TRUMP? Now I can tell visitors to downtown Chicago the names of at least four buildings. That's great.   Perhaps the chosen font for the TRUMP letters upsets some people.
     I decided to search the streets and buildings to establish some sense of moral precedent.     Who dares affix their name to a building that others are coerced into reading each time they pass by the building? There are other buildings with names on them - fancy, large boldly illuminated from within and without - signs seen at night from miles around town. I believe the Vegas mecca has them in spades. The toll ways have hundreds of outdoor signs emblazoned with the names of real people and their businesses. Some people reasonably object to those as visual pollution.  Hospitals have name signs too provided by self-promoting investors. Some religion-affiliated hospitals have names of saints who are dead, so that's OK.
     Fine arts centers, businesses, and retail stores have name signs for owners, investors, benefactors, etc. Even Abe Lincoln has his name on a presidential library.  I believe Marshall Field, Carson, Pirie and Scott and Mr. Macy endorsed self-serving lettered signs.    You ask, "Where's the benefit?" To whom, I ask. to society? Really? Just think of Mr. Trump's sign as a token of civic goodwill. Think GOODWILL.  So, why the fuss if Mr. Trump wants a TRUMP sign on his own building facade? Just add the Trump tower to the tourist guide list of famous building names.

Many came in the form of letters. I'm not as big a fan of this one, from a John Marshall law professor, but it does include a derisive poem, and how often do you get one of those?

Dear Neil:           

       You may want to file this under be careful what you wish for, so I’ll hold you to your promise to print this.             

     I think it’s GREAT that the Trump name, that hallmark of excellence, is going up in the heart of Chicago, I sincerely admire Donald Trump because….              

       First, the Trump tower is a Chicago icon, like it or not, and was about the only large scale real estate project built here during the worst of the recent Great Recession.  Did anyone think that Donald Trump would deviate from his standard practice of putting his name on the building? There is no suggestion that the sign is not fully in compliance with the spirit and letter of the law.  The sign is on the lower quarter of the property and is visible from the river and Wabash Street.  It is white, simple and similar in design to other signs here in Chicago, including those atop Roosevelt University and the CNA building, both of which signs are larger and placed at the top where they are visible for miles around.

        There are other examples of signs in Chicago that have become part of our architectural heritage, such as the landmarked Wrigley Field sign or the ubiquitous Chicago Theatre and Berghoff Restaurant signs.  Oh, and there is one other prominent sign, actually two, larger andmore visible, right on the river at Wolf Point.  “CHICAGO SUN-TIMES” bigger and less appealing than the Trump sign.  Perhaps memory has faded for some, but the building that the Trump tower replaced, the former Sun-Times building, also included a great big CHICAGO SUN-TIMES sign in bright yellow letters.              

     When you and other critics opine that you don’t like the Trump sign, you are really meaning that you don’t like Donald Trump.  Clearly, if personal character was the standard for installation of a sign he would fail the test.  Trump is universally perceived as an obnoxious bully-- so what.  Perhaps you are suggesting a Litmus test for signs on loop buildings, evaluating the principal owners of the building for their moral charter?  Maybe a jerk factor test that will appease even the bleeding heart self-appointed Chicago architectural critic, who criticizes this sign through tears, as if someone was dying, “….oh the humanity.” I don’t see any Mother Theresas among the owners of any of the loop’s buildings. 

             So yes, I applaud the installation of the sign, it is big, bold and appropriate for Chicago,--a City of broad shoulders, not a city of ballet slippers.               

     I’ll see your Ozymandias poem and raise you with this little ditty….   

THE OLE GRUMP 

There one was a man who worked in a glass house. 

One day while riding his Divvy in our city, 

he came upon a story, as big as a tree.

A story beginning with a T, 

which stands for Trump.  

Soon he was back on his rump, 

to throw a big stone from atop his own stump, 

high above his own ditty, 

the great big words, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 

flying high above our fair city.  

Very truly yours, John J. Lag

Well, I'd say that's more than enough—just because we can go on endlessly on-line doesn't mean we should. Thank you everybody for sending in replies. See you tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and onward into infinity....

He must not realize "TRUMP" is a slur...

     When Percy Bysshe Shelley was challenged to write a sonnet about Ramses II, he reflected on the emptiness of vanity, using the Greek form of the pharaoh’s name to title his poem, “Ozymandias.”

      Since Ramses II is taken, I’ll have to settle for Donald Trump.

      Not to try to one-up the great British poet, but Shelley hadn’t actually seen the regal ruins, the “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” that stood forlorn and abandoned in the shifting sands of the Egyptian desert. He read about it in a history book.

      I, on the other hand, jumped on a Divvy bike Tuesday afternoon and went to eyeball the huge “TRUM . . . ” being installed on the south face of the Trump International Hotel and Tower on Wabash. The big “M” was halfway up. The giant “P,” alas, is coming.

     Seeing it go up will make it extra sweet when it comes down.

     There is no accounting for taste. So if you are reading this column in a newspaper you found, say, in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room on North Michigan Avenue, killing time before the next collagen injection in your bee-stung lips, you might want to stop here, pick up an old issue of Chicago Social, and no harm done.

     Gone? Good. The allure of Donald Trump has always mystified me. I like fancy stuff as much as the next guy. A well-crafted English shoe. An exotic car. But to me Trump represents not quality, not taste, but expense for expense’s sake. Wretched excess. Money divorced from sense, from balance. “Trump” is so synonymous with a kind of gold-plated lusting after empty status, it’s hard for me to believe anyone thinks otherwise.

     Shelley notes the stone pharaoh’s face: Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command.

     “Sneer of cold command” sort of evokes Trump, the man, does it not? I only met him once, when he was in town drumming his Atlantic City casino. No king he; Trump needed a shoe shine and a haircut.
     Despite my low regard for the man, Chicago’s Trump Tower struck me as a pretty building, except for the name of course. A cool blue finger pointing toward the clouds, like a skyscraper on Mars.
     Thankfully, the “TRUMP” will only deface one side. Standing across the river, looking all around, I noticed the lack of any similar sign. Nothing atop the Wrigley Building, or the Gothic horror show of Tribune Tower. A small “Hotel 71” on the old Executive House, and that is out of date too. It’s a Wyndham now. A reminder of how fast things pass.
     Rich Daley, despite shafting the city in many ways, was good about keeping downtown from devolving into the set from “Blade Runner.”
     I contacted the office of Mayor Rahm Emanuel — a subtle multimillionaire if ever there were one — to ask: Why? The 5th floor said, in essence, don’t blame us. The sign was “approved in the mid-2000s” — code for it being Daley’s fault, just like the pension mess. The sign, they said, also was originally 25 percent larger and multi-colored (!), so let’s count our blessings it’s only as bad as it is and not even worse. The City Council had to approve the Trump sign, the special bill sponsored by Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd).
     The OK had to come not because the sign is too tall, amazingly enough — city ordinance allows signs 24 feet high, and Trump’s letters are 20-feet-and-change tall — but because it’s too long, 141 feet, when the legal limit is 100 feet.
     Who does this sign benefit? Out-of-towners who pass by and wonder which building this is? The hotel and condo owners ballyhooing themselves? As bad as being Donald Trump undoubtedly is, being caught basking in his glow is even worse. Admiring Trump is like bragging about shooting a lion; there might be some small band of humanity who thinks better of you for it. The rest draw back in confused revulsion.
     I would love to hear from Chicagoans who disagree. Begin your note, “I think it’s GREAT that the Trump name, that hallmark of excellence, is going up in the heart of Chicago. I sincerely admire Donald Trump because . . . ”
     Complete that thought, then sign your name. I’ll print it.
     I’m not expecting response to my plea. A big Trump sign is not the Chicago way. Not to go all Garrison Keillor on you, but we’re Midwesterners. Modest people, the Pritzkers notwithstanding.
     Self-flummery is New York-ish. And while in the distant past, New Yorkers did well in Chicago — our first mayor, William B. Ogden, was a New York lawyer — generally New York has a way of failing in Chicago. Nathan’s Hot Dogs? Failed. The Limelight nightclub? Failed. Howard Stern? Failed. Chicagoans don’t like to wait behind velvet ropes. Not a lot of helicopter service or even town car service here. Or doormen for that matter. We can open our own doors, and generally avoid the kind of grotesque display that passes for status in the scramble up the greasy pole that is Manhattan.
     I’d be more distressed about this, but frankly, I really believe this is temporary. (“Everything is temporary,” as Cosmo Castorini sagely says in “Moonstruck.”)
     Sure, but how long? How long will the noxious “TRUMP” be up?
     Squinching my eyes, I’d predict . . . 12 years. But maybe I’m being optimistic. I’m a cheery sort.
     Maybe more. The white, illuminated, block-letter “PLAYBOY” sign — at 9 feet, not even half as tall as “TRUMP”— was atop the Palmolive Building for nearly a quarter century, from 1965 to 1989. At the time, it was hard to believe it would be gone; now it takes effort to recall it was ever there.
     The Smithsonian, by the way, wouldn’t take the Playboy sign letters. Too big. Maybe they’re half-buried in the sand somewhere.
     A lesson for Trump. My guess is that after enough prospective tenants say that they’d love to live at Trump Tower, if it weren’t for a pang of shame they’d feel mumbling the name of the place, a change will come.
     “What goes up must come down,” I muttered aloud, straddling my Divvy bike, almost as a curse, then turned and pedaled gratefully away.
     Shelley’s poem ends:

              And on the pedestal these words appear:
              “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.

               Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

               Nothing beside remains. 

               Round the decay

               Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

               The lone and level sands stretch far away.