Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

    One of the sadder manifestations of the general weakening of religious faith in this country is the fate of church buildings, often lovely, charming old structures that find themselves without congregants or purpose, slowly declining over decades before falling into decay, if not ruin, then finally torn down, a loss to architecture and to their individual neighborhoods. 
     The few churches being built today are typically constructed in the suburbs, new homes for urban congregations that have pulled up roots and fled, taking their prosperity elsewhere.   
      But when I investigated these gleaming new copper domes this week, what I found was a brand new construction of considerable size, right next to the old church building that it will replace. The new building is scheduled to be completed next year. 
      What's the name of this Chicago church? Were is it? Since my winner last week got so excited over her book, let's give away another—a copy of "Complete & Utter Failure," perhaps my favorite. Make sure to post your guesses below. 

Richard Branson is taking a bath

     Richard Branson is taking a bath.

     Or was, 23 minutes ago.

     I know this as a fact because he tweeted a photo of himself, in the tub, discreetly shielded by bubbles, thank God.

     “Right now I’m delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath,” he wrote.

    Oh wait, “had”—the bath might be over by now. In fact, by the time you read this, the bath is certainly over. Let’s start again.

     Richard Branson took a bath.

     In a lovely, oval shaped Turkish stone tub that probably set him back $20,000. But the billionaire owner of Virgin Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and hundreds of other companies in the Virgin Group can certainly afford it.

     Thursday morning he tweeted that message and photo; you can see the nice slat wood of the bathroom, a hint of green—Necker Island?—through a window, to his 4.27 million followers, including myself.

     The photo is what got me thinking. Somebody else had to take it.  It’s not a selfie. An assistant no doubt. “Snap me in the bath, Reginald, and we’ll alert the masses.”

     But I don’t want to mock Branson; a nice, exuberant man, by all indications. Three years ago he came to Chicago to promote Virgin Airlines and rode the Blue Line in from O’Hare, giving free tickets to San Francisco to those riding the L with him. 

    “Life is much richer if you say ‘yes’ than if you say ‘no,’” he told the Sun-Times.

     So an affable fellow, as far as tycoons go. He describes himself on his Twitter account:

     “Tie-loathing adventurer and thrill seeker, who believes in turning ideas into reality.” (Were I his media consultant, I’d lose the “tie-loathing” since it dates him, a blow struck in a battle that ended long ago. He might as well say, “white tie loathing” at this point. The younger generation never had ties to loath, judging from the kids packing the elevators in our building: t-shirts, cargo shorts, sandals. Not much left to hate as a workday imposition, though I suppose they’ll find something.  “Dude, I’m so glad to be out of those flip flops I had to wear to the office,” they’ll say, running barefoot on the weekends. “My big toe felt so isolated...”)

     Not that I blame Branson. We live in an age where....

The rest of this post vanished during one of the Sun-Times rejiggerings of its computer system. 

"You want war, we want peace"

    "Racists go home! Racists go home!"
     You could not actually hear the Palestinian counter rally from the heart of the pro-Israel rally held in front of the Israeli embassy, in  the middle of Madison Street, just west of Canal, at noon on Tuesday.
    But if you skirted the edges, as I did — less crowded — their amplified chants became clear.
    "Racists go home!"
    Which almost made me smile, because we were home. I suppose they meant in Israel, though it sort of is a universal directive to any situation where Jews find themselves living on a spot. The Germans didn't think they belong there either, and they had lived there for 500 years.
    "Racists go home!" the Palestinians across the street chanted.
     Meanwhile, the pro-Israel side sang "Am Yisrael Chi" — "The nation of Israel lives."
     The official noontime demonstration had broken up and I gravitated along with the mass of blue and white flag wavers across Canal to the unofficial post-demonstration standoff, where the two groups stood shouting at each other, while cops on horses and on foot stood in the street between.
    "Terrorists go home!" the pro-Israel side started up, reactive as always. If there was one major mistake Israel has made in this whole process, is they let the Palestinians, however ill-led, call the shots. Its policy is to wait, see what they do, then respond.
     "Terrorists go home."
     "Racists go home."
     It wasn't lost on me which side I was on, literally. I had gone over to the Palestinians earlier. But their protest was a hotter, more condensed knot of about 150 people on the corner, and I hadn't had the fortitude to insert myself among them. Instead, I snapped a few pictures, talked to one person, and skedaddled away.
     The Israeli gathering was much larger--say 1,000 over a much greater area than the Palestinians': that seemed apt. Not that size matters: Pro-Palestinian rallies have been going on all week, and this was more of a hastily arranged, let's-spoil-their-party kind of thing. I noticed that the police screened the bags of people entering the pro-Israel rally; the unspoken assumption being the Palestinians were safe from bag-carried bombs.
     The "You want war, we want peace," chant threw me a little. Really? And on what do you base that claim? Like much in the Palestinian rhetoric, it had a mere words quality. They way the rockets randomly fired into Israel are called "defensive" or "resistance." Like Republicans, they seem to feel that if they find the right label for something it'll then be okay. The truth is, I've never actually hear anyone in authority on the Palestinian side laying out a map to peace that doesn't involve them magically regaining the country. Even the two-peoples-existing-together rhetoric—the latest and-then-you-give-us-your-country argument—doesn't have a lot of on-the-ground evidence to back it up. If the Palestinians are trying to establish their ability to exist peacefully within a secular state of Israel, they're doing a botch job of it.
     Israel, on the other hand, has a 20 percent non-Jewish minority actually living in peace within its borders. Maybe rather than fighting the Israeli settlers the Palestinians should embrace them and wait. But then that would involve long-range strategic thinking, something the Palestinians are even worse at than the Israelis, which is really saying something.
   "You want war, we want peace," the Palestinians chanted. Others in the pro-Israel faction reacted similarly. Being Jews, they argued, even though the other side couldn't hear. A lady next to me was actually talking to them, almost muttering--even I couldn't hear what she said.
     Eventually the pro-Israel side, again, reflected the Palestinian chant, this time identically, "You want war, we want peace." A little embarrassing, if you ask me. So much for Jewish creativity. But they were improvising on the spot, and the results of that are seldom good, as the situation in Israel shows.
    There was something extra ludicrous at that point, ludicrous about the whole thing. These two groups, screaming their desire for peace at each other. Then get to it, idiots. The idea of protests is to make beliefs known -- the public, telling its careless leaders what the real situation is. If only the czar knew... Though Jews supporting Israel is not exactly an epiphany, nor is Palestinians supporting their own brethren.
     What's the point of protest if nobody but nobody is listening?
      Maybe that's better. Is there a conflict in history where the divisions are not insanely petty and local? Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Serbians and Croatians, Sunnis and Shiites. I couldn't tell a Tutsi from a Hutu if you put a gun to my head, and neither could you.
    Both sides seemed set on proving something to some imaginary impartial arbitrator. The United States? The world? God? They don't realize they're by themselves. The world is not going to bail out the Palestinians. It sure hasn't up to this point. Nor are they going to go away. Both sides are stuck relying on a losing strategy in a game where they both lose, year after year.
     So sad and, if I may, stupid. Maybe that's the path to peace, the message that the world needs to convey back, loud and clear. Not parse the bottomless grievances of both sides. I think there is more validity to Israel's, but then, I'm on their side, and at some point being right doesn't really matter anymore. It's just another road to folly. Maybe that's the central, unsaid fact of the stand-off: it's stupid. That could be concept strong enough to counter-balance the rebellious zeal of the Palestinians, the military pride of the Israelis. A simple chant back, shouted by the world: you're stupid. You're both stupid. The whole thing is stupid. Why don't you stop being stupid and go figure it out, at long last? Because you're blocking traffic, the both of you, on Madison Street.
   

    

Meet Hanan

    After I wrote about land mines a few weeks ago, Lurie Children's Hospital said they had a young patient with a similar sort of injury, sponsored by the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. I knew that aspect would throw a curve to some readers, and decided to just step back and tell the story. Though I wanted to mention that I went to their Iftar Friday night, the day after Israel invaded Gaza, and felt welcomed by everyone I spoke with, which, to be honest, was exactly what I expected.

     Hanan is 7.

     She has a gap-toothed smile and loves Hello Kitty, the intensely cute Japanese cartoon character. A spangled Hello Kitty decorated her pink dress, which she demurely protected with a napkin Friday night, holding it in place with one hand while trying to navigate a fork around her dinner plate with the other, until a helpful tablemate taught her the tuck-the-napkin-into-your-collar trick.

     Hanan is a Palestinian from Syria, and came to Chicago in April for medical treatment for her right leg, which was blown off below the knee by a bomb in the Syrian civil war which, in case you’ve lost track, has cost more than 100,000 lives over the past three years and displaced millions.

     She was brought to Chicago by the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

     “I met her in Jordan when I was on my way to Gaza for a medical mission in February,” said Sarah Alrayyes, media coordinator for the charity in Chicago. “I’ve met many, many kids, and she is a very special and unique girl. She’s extremely smart. She’s just very captivating, really. Anyone who would meet her could not help falling in love. Before I met her, I was warned by our CEO, Steve Sosebee: ‘You will fall in love.’ I later emailed him: ‘You are completely right.’”

     Hanan limped heavily as she went from hug to hug Friday at an Iftar — a Ramadan break-the-fast community meal — at Reza’s, held to benefit the fund and several others.

     Her parents couldn’t get out, but her grandmother took her to Jordan, where an aunt and uncle live.

     “Our Jordan chapter stumbled upon her case,” Alrayyes said. Chicago’s branch of the non-political, non-religious charity brought her case to the attention of Lurie Children’s Hospital, which issued a letter crucial in getting Hanan, who didn’t have a passport, to the United States for treatment.
     "Lurie Hospital has been wonderful," Alrayyes said. "Also Shriner's," which did work to stabilize Hanan's stump so it could be fitted with a prosthetic.
     It's not that they don't have hospitals in Jordan, but the prosthetic leg she got there was rudimentary; it hurt and fell apart; her grandmother had to stitch it together.
     Hanan was afraid of hospitals, understandably, so volunteers brought her to Lurie first to show her around. When she arrived, she worried about crossing the street, because of the tall buildings.
    "Afraid of snipers," explained Kathleen Keenan, Lurie spokeswoman. "We gave her a tour of the hospital and the ER. She wanted to know how many other children would be there, and would she be on the floor. This is all something I witnessed."
     Doctors are fitting her with a more advanced artificial leg: but not too advanced, so she'll be able to get it repaired back home. And of course it'll look great; something very important to Hanan.
    "We're going to make it look almost identical to her other leg," said Jeremiah Uronis, her prosthetist at Lurie, where Hanan also is working on rehabilitation.
    "She doesn't trust her limb at this point," Uronis said. But eventually she will walk so "you wouldn't be able to even tell" she has an artificial leg, which is being made "really heavy duty" because kids are as tough on their artificial limbs they are on everything else.
     While the hope is to return Hanan to her family in Syria for the start of school in September, there are other issues.
    "She is facing emotional challenges right now," Alrayyes said. "She has many fears. It's a traumatic experience for someone being so young; she was 6 years old."
    One problem is that she associates getting better with going back home.
    "She's having some challenges accepting the new leg," Alrayyes said. "She misses her family and wants to go back, but she's also afraid. She keeps asking: 'What if I lose my other leg?' "
     A heavy concern for a little girl to carry.
    "Imagine you're 7 years old, leaving your family," said Dr. Jeffrey Ackman, Shriner's chief of staff and Hanan's surgeon. "You don't speak the language, don't know anybody here and you're going into the hospital to have surgery. These kids are very brave."
     The war in Syria rages on, pushed out of the public eye by the battle in Gaza, which only increases the work for charitable groups like the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, which provides medical and humanitarian aid there.
     "They're overwhelmed. They're out of supplies. They're exhausted. The doctors and the staff are working around the clock," said Alrayyes, who called the situation dire.
     Whenever these conflicts arise, the tendency is for each side to view its losses with maximum sympathy while dismissing those of the other side as somehow deserved. In the U.S., we make the mistake of following suit, picking sides ourselves, when what we should be doing is focusing on the victims, often children, and urging both sides toward resolution.
    "The adults are fighting," Ackman said. "The adults are at war, and it's the kids who suffer."

Everthing old is new again

 

     Silly me. I actually took the bait, flopped my fingers on the keyboard, and wrote a new column about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, when all I had to do was dig back into the archives and pluck out a completely-serviceable old one. Here is a column from ... well, I'll let you guess. Read it, see if there is a comma that is no longer relevant, alas. At the end I'll give you the date, as a sad coda. 
 

     Whatever your motive, attacking nations is usually bad for you. 
     Dangerous even when you're a big powerful country attacking a 
weaker nation, like Nazi Germany when it invaded Poland in 1939. 
     The Germans had high hopes, rolling across the border. But it did 
not end well for them.
     Even a nation acting on high moral principles, such as the United 
States was supposedly doing five years ago when it invaded Iraq, 
will run into trouble. The war is now universally viewed as folly 
that cost the lives of 4,100 American soldiers and --get ready for 
a statistic you don't read much -- some 100,000 Iraqi civilians.
     As bad an idea as it is for nations, it's an even worse idea for 
non-nations. Were I to decide to wage war on America -- say by 
firing homemade rockets from my back deck into the surrounding 
neighborhood -- retribution would be swift. The local police force 
would no doubt surround the house -- a more powerful force, by the 
way, than myself and my paltry homemade rockets. Even, dare I say 
it, a disproportionate force . . .
     You see where I'm going with this. While nobody wants to see 
civilians die, at some point -- and that point seems to be now, at 
long last -- the world is going to realize that by constantly 
firing missiles into Israel, Hamas is calling hell down upon itself 
and its people. The rocket attacks were not fighting for their new 
nation, but forestalling it. A dispassionate observer would note 
that what Hamas is vowing now after Israel's deadly reply -- to 
visit more destruction upon it -- is exactly what they were vowing 
before. Peace will come the day Palestinians decide they would 
rather build a real, limited nation today than die on the altar of 
a theoretical, unlimited future idyll. That day, alas, tarries.
         — first published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 29, 2008 

"We plan and God laughs"

     "Maybe," my wife said, "you should wait until after they work on the pipes. They might tear up the sidewalk."
      The Village of Northbrook was about to begin work on the water mains on our block.
      We were on our knees, pulling weeds in the strip of earth between the grass and the sidewalk in front of our house.
      I pondered this suggestion, torn, eager to get a strip of edging down, then fill the front bed with mulch. As a reward, for pulling all those weeds up. We had really cleaned up the front bed nicely.
     The bed was under our struggling spirea. To the left of our front walk, a massive hedge of vanhoutte spirea, turning to a glorious cascade of white in the spring. To the right, a dinky, devastated remnant I keep reinforcing with more spirea, which keep dying. I'm not sure why. The soil. The light.  
      "I only have one goal in life," I told my wife, recently. "I want that spirea hedge to grow."
     And it did. This year, finally, to my delight, it progressed. Bushes that had been languid stirred, perked up -- my wife credits her cutting them way back last autumn. The vinca ground cover that we planted around the spirea also began to take hold, a line of defense against future weeds. Planning ahead. 
     Time, I felt, for a nice black edging, and mulch of some sort, to further keep down the weeds. Hit 'em with all we've got. My wife and fell to our knees and busied ourselves, happily toiling. Put down the edging or not? 
     "I'll wait and see what they do," I said.
     Enter the Village of Northbook.
     Something about the incoming water pipes. The new water tower puts too much pressure—or not enough—so they're replacing the mains. Which is a cruel joke, since it's the drainage on our street that's horrendous. I've considered buying a canoe. 
      Give the workers credit. They have tried, when implanting this enormous steel trenching support in our front yard, directly over where the sidewalk use to be, to save the spirea. The treads of their machinery brush but do not crush them, not yet anyway. The vinca though are gone, true--stout little oval leaved warriors, just starting to spread out and explore, to live their low-lying lives. And a few of the spirea do seem to have vanished. 
      This is the odd part. I took it all with ... equanimity. No grief. No marching to Village Hall, next door, pounding my fist on the counter. "I have been wronged!" One does not garden, one does not presume to nurture nature, without developing a farmer's hardy composure. Stuff happens. Take your successes where you find them. The spirea as yet, survive, mostly. And vinca is still being sold, by the flat, over at Red's. Nothing a bit of spadework won't fix. In the realm of the government showing up at your front door and doing something bad to you, this was pretty minor stuff. "And then the soldiers came and killed our shrubbery."  
      And the weeds? Completely gone along with the earth that had been under them. Where they once were is a six-foot deep trench. Of course we could have saved ourselves the effort had we known the village was going to swoop in and do our weeding for us with a backhoe. But you know what? Those hours we were working, my wife in a big hat, were some of the most fun of the summer. Sure, we did not in fact accomplish anything. But who does when it comes to yardwork? At best you stem the tide for another day. At least my new edging is still in the back, waiting to be installed, the bags of mulch unopened. I could have meticulously put the stuff down only to see it immediately torn up. But I had a hunch. 
     So at least I guessed right, for once. I had a sense that things would not be going as planned. One should always expect that.  And always cling to the process, which can't be taken away, and not the result, which can. As my late mother-in-law liked to say, "We plan and God laughs." Or, in this case, the Village of Northbrook. 

Plan B offers a glimpse, maybe, of Palestinian future

Roey Gilad, Israel's consul general in Chicago

     Yes, there is a connection between the downing Thursday of a Malaysian Airlines 777 jet over eastern Ukraine and the Israeli invasion of Gaza the same day.

     And no, it isn’t the inevitable conspiracy theory, the if-it-helps-you-then-you-must-have-caused-it delusion that the Israelis shot down the Malaysian plane in order to divert world attention from their military action, though that is exactly how the situation coincidentally unfolded.

     To be honest, a preliminary check of the lunatic fringes found not a whisper of this, which surprises me. It must be on the way.

     The Israeli/Palestinian standoff is not an area where rational thought is much rewarded.  The Israelis seem content to play jailer to a restive, belligerent and growing population of 4.5 million Palestinians jammed into the West Bank and Gaza. It is a failure of empathy on Israel’s part, which I’d fault them for more except it is enlightened benevolence compared to the Palestinians, nearly a third of whom elected a terror group, Hamas, to lead them, which makes their cries of injustice ring hollow. If Israel is locked in the outdated land-equals-security calculus, Palestinians keep returning to the same tattered 1947 game plan — we fight you and win everything someday — that has been losing consistently for the past 67 years.

     Meanwhile the world, which doesn’t give a fig about much, doesn’t give a fig about this, except for those who hate Israel on a good day and really, really hate Israel now that it’s drawing blood, for reasons they vehemently insist have nothing at all to do with it being Jewish. Reading their emails and fielding their phone calls has left me with one thought: You don’t have to be anti-Semitic to condemn Israel, but it sure helps.

     So while Israel is dismantling Hamas tunnels and accidentally killing civilians — something Hamas is frantically trying to do intentionally — there will be a next month and a next year. Just because there is no hope now, this moment, doesn’t mean nothing will ever happen and this standoff will continue forever. So let’s ask my favorite question, one I like to bring up only because no one else does: How does this end?

     Everyone has a plan.
     The Palestinians and their sympathizers expect the Israelis to hand the country over and magically vanish, back to Poland perhaps (funny; the same people demanding Israel welcome back descendants of those it displaced in 1948 would recoil in horror if you suggested descendants of the Jews annihilated in 1945 return to claim their ancestral lands. Why is that?) The right wing in Israel is hardly much better; they would like to squeeze the Palestinians into ever-smaller knots of misery as they nibble at the land they feel God Himself gave to them.
     Myself, since Israel is supposedly the adult in the room, I believe it should come up with a plan. Announce that Gaza and the West Bank will be an independent Palestinian nation on such and such a date, its borders will be here. It isn’t ideal, Israel will say, but it’s what we’re giving you — a start — and we’ll be happy to discuss specifics later after you’ve shown you are a peaceful neighbor. If China and Taiwan can do it, so can we.
     That would never work, on one level, because Hamas would reject it. Great. Let them. On another, it would change everything. I was glad to hear Roey Gilad, Chicago’s consul general from Israel, bring up that very idea last week, calling it “Plan B.”
     “Israel would like to separate,” he said. “Israel is seriously considering Plan B: unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank.” Support is “stronger than ever.” About time.
     The downside is where the Malaysian airliner comes in. Killing others is so easy. Gilad didn’t mention it, but the problem with quitting the territories is the first thing they always do, as their first baby step toward nationhood, is to attack the powerful Israeli military machine. Not the first step I would take, but there you go.
     The Israelis know, from hard experience, that they’ll have to go charging back in, as they are doing now, to destroy the military capability being flung at them. They have to. Sneak in a few of those Russian missile launchers and economic life would stop.
     But eventually Palestine would get the message, the way Egypt, Jordan et al have. They could move on to the next problems.
     When you puff away the fog of confusion, either that happens, or Israel becomes South Africa. Two choices. I’d pick Plan B.
     Yes, Israel would have to go charging back. But if you look at today’s headlines, they’re doing that anyway. Israel is good at defeating aggressive neighbors. Not so good at keeping them captive. End the latest carnage. Take a breath. Then implement Plan B. Give Palestinians their country whether they want it or not. It’s worth a try.