Chicagoans burn while Great Chicago Fire Festival fizzles

     The city and Redmoon say they're ready to try the (Not So) Great Fire Festival again next year. That's a good idea, though I'm wondering whether the group responsible for the flub are the ones we should entrust with trying it again. In the real world, you do a botch job, you get fired. But that isn't the approach Chicago is taking. Maybe what we also suffered was a failure of imagination, and perhaps the best people to remedy it are the very people whom this festival supposedly celebrates.

     Where was Mrs. O’Leary’s cow when Chicago really needed her?

     OK, historians agree that it wasn’t Cate O’Leary’s cow knocking over a lantern in the barn at 137 DeKoven Street that touched off the Great Chicago Fire on Oct. 8, 1871, leveling much of the place and setting the stage for the city we see today.

     But somebody needed to show better skill in the setting-things-ablaze department than was shown by the Redmoon Theater Saturday night, as its first Great Chicago Fire Festival turned into an epic fail and embarrassing fizzle for all involved, particularly Mayor Rahm Emanuel, on hand to personally witness his latest setback.

     Some 30,000 people came downtown on an unusually cold and rainy early October evening. But in a town used to putting 60,000 hardy souls in Soldier Field on a single-digit day in December, bracing unpleasant elements is nothing unusual, and as darkness fell, the pre-flop mood around the river was boisterous by all reports.

     The procession of barges — Victorian mansion-shaped floats — made their appearance. Flame was put to them. Only the things wouldn’t burn.

     Minutes passed. The crowd started chanting: “We want fire! We want fire!”

     The Twitterverse had no trouble igniting in a firestorm of scorn.

     “Is anyone downtown at the Fire Fest?” WGN’s Dean Richards tweeted. “54 min late . . . nothing happening at State Street!!”

  “‘It’s cold, I’m hungry, nothing’s on fire.’ Common refrain I’m hearing right now at Chicago Fire Fest” tweeted WTTW broadcaster Paris Schutz.
     To be clear: I wasn’t there. I had contemplated going, the way you muse you really should get up on a ladder and clean those gutters. I raised the subject as we broke our Yom Kippur fast at a Korean barbecue joint late Saturday afternoon (close enough; though if you’re looking for a cosmic reason to explain the Great Chicago Fire Festival Fiasco of 2014, consider its scheduling on Judaism’s holiest day: Always a bad idea to give the finger to the God of Deuteronomy).
     But the temperature was a paltry 42, a penetrating cold due to the drizzle, and my wife said there was no way she was heading downtown. She made a counter suggestion: gelato and a movie at home instead. I wasn’t about to argue that one.

     Still, curiosity had me online at the appointed hour, smiling benevolently at the snafu, which I had foreseen in my Aug. 25 column where I toured Redmoon’s Pilsen headquarters, viewed the floats being built, and saw that, five weeks before the event, they didn’t seem to have their act together.
     “The preview had a hasty, shambolic quality that made me wonder if they’ll pull it off,” I wrote, and happily retweeted Saturday night, a rare moment of prescience.
     Though to be candid, I was more worried about blazing floats getting out of control; the thought that they couldn’t even get the things to light in the first place was so extremely lame as to be beyond imagining.
     What now? Anyone purporting to hold a public event, particularly in Chicago, has to accept the occasional disaster, from the monsoon that washed out what was supposed to be the first night game under lights at Wrigley Field (“8/8/88,” remember?) to that storm forcing Lollapalooza to be evacuated in 2012. As much as I was disappointed by the New Age, twee, self-adoring execution by Redmoon, an organization that lost its soul catering birthday bashes for billionaires, there is a good idea lurking somewhere here, and lame as its debut was, it would be even lamer to drop the idea altogether. Many a cherished tradition crawled slowly out of the blocks. The WOOGMS Parade, a beloved and now extensive Memorial Day celebration that has enlivened Lake View for half a century, began with Al Weisman getting an American flag on a 5-foot-long flagpole and marching down Oakdale Avenue, followed by the neighborhood kids.
     Why not rethink the thing? Redmoon was so wrapped up with artsy-fartsy nonsense that their barges didn’t burn. Have a dozen barges, not three, and allocate each to a neighborhood group or charity — maybe they have to pay for the privilege. Let them construct a big, flammable edifice under the close supervision of somebody who knows what they’re doing. Let the whole thing benefit the Chicago Fire Department or a related charity, like Bucks for Burn Camp. Pry the buttered fingers of Redmoon off the event; send them back to serving canapes to Sam Zell’s friends. If we quit now, the entire effort was a waste. It we declare it a do-over, it might someday be seen to have worth. That’s the true Chicago spirit. We don’t quit.

Zeke Emanuel guesses how he'll feel in 2032

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel

    Attempting to explain the impenetrability of Richard M. Daley, I coined the phrase: "Trying to get to know him is like trying to peel a ball bearing with your thumbs." Maybe some people can, maybe the man has friends who understand exactly what he's all about. God I hope so. But to the rest of us, it's a smooth, slippery, sealed mystery. I don't believe Daley himself has a clue about who he really is or why. 
    Though not quite as murky, Rahm Emanuel is similar enigma. He talks more than Daley did, true, but in a sense he's just as unknowable but for opposite reasons. If Daley's a silent sphinx, Rahm's a babbling brook, a Twitter feed, an endless gush of spin and pronouncements and self-congratulation. It's hard to find a few nuggets of reality floating in all that.  He reflects himself, but a funhouse mirror version, with the good distorted, and the negative shrunk down to nothing.
     One indispensable guide to Daley was his younger brother, Bill. Rich might never say anything of substance if he could avoid it—he'd cough up a wet furball of mangled syntax and consider the topic closed—but Bill liked to talk, and sometimes he would cast a wan ray of light down the pitch dark well of his brother's soul. 
     As with Daley, Rahm's older brother Ezekiel Emanuel provides a valuable perspective on the unknowable. His book about growing up with Rahm and Ari, the youngest boy, Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family painted a surprisingly candid—read "stark"—view of their lives, with a pediatrician father who had a tendency to bring stray foster kids home to live, and a driven, occasionally unhinged mother who dragooned her children to picket their neighbors' homes and forced them to attend rallies for causes they could barely understand. It explained a lot. The parents drilled into the boys the need to compete, and the three siblings tried to top each other in a semitic North Shore version of the Kennedys.
     Reading it, and assuming that the truth was a derivation or two worse, you have sympathy for Rahm. Of course he'd be the way he is, the poor bugger, a driven little machine of achievement, running after the next prize. To the public, he's rich and powerful. To him, no doubt, he's never rich or powerful enough. 
     Now Zeke has written an essay in the current Atlantic magazine, "Why I hope to Die at 75," that is causing conversation for what it says about aging, the suggestion that rather than clawing at the curtains of life, one should reach moderate old age and resign yourself to a hoped-for swift death. An interesting premise, though I'm more fascinated by what it tells us about  the general Emanual worldview. 
      A doctor and bioethicist, Emanuel argues, correctly, that as we age our bodies decline and our minds become less free-ranging.
     "We literally lose our creativity," he writes.  "But the fact is that by 75, creativity, originality, and productivity are pretty much gone for the vast, vast majority of us."
      That's enough for Emanuel, 57, to announce that he'll be happy to go at 75, to avoid the gentle slide into non-productivity. He won't kill himself, he hastens to add, without quite explaining why not. He'll just refuse all life-saving medical care at that point. He seems to think he's making a bold declaration though I couldn't have been the only reader who felt the nearly two decades between this promise and the fulfillment render pretty much everything he insists he'll do or believe essentially meaningless. If I told you what type of tea I'll prefer in 2032, you'd look at me askance, and rightly so. 
      Still, it's the measure he uses to value life that I find fascinating. Forget 75. I hate to be Debbie Downer here, but the truth is, at 65, or 45, or 25, most of us, the vast majority,  aren't winning any prizes in the creativity, originality, or productivity departments. So the decline of whatever scant prowess we may have once had isn't the biggest loss, to us or anybody else. Certainly no reason to step away from the one life we've ever had. The Atlantic piece reflects the mindset of man who is blind to anything that isn't success, the morality gleaned from sneaker commercials and stockbroker ads, that postulate a nation or Iron Man Tri-athletes (like Rahm) where nobody retires to potter in a garden and do the crossword puzzle, a doom that Zeke Emanuel in essence mocks. 

   And then, as walking becomes harder and the pain of arthritis limits the fingers’ mobility, life comes to center around sitting in the den reading or listening to books on tape and doing crossword puzzles. And then …

    Emanuel immediately kicks open an escape hatch. "Maybe this is too dismissive" he quickly adds, lest anyone latch onto his implication that if you aren't writing Infinite Jest you might as well be dead. But that is what he is saying. The idea that life is, itself, a joy, a unique gift that can be savored even on the most limited terms, never seems to occur to Zeke Emanuel. That waking up, making a cup of coffee, assessing the sky and beginning another day, alive, where one can talk to friends, read books, walk the dog, whatever one can, is enough to live on, despite the pain, indignity and decline of age, is unimaginable. He charts the average age men win the Nobel Prize: 48. Well, we all better get on the stick then.
     Emanuel never mentions that plenty of adults lead lives that are diminished, by general standards, from day one. By his measure, they shouldn't give flu shots at Misericordia, because the sooner those folk die, well, the better for them and everyone else. Yet they do, and those of us whose lives barely register on the Emanuel Scale resist writing lengthy pieces in The Atlantic (are there any other kind?) eagerly anticipating our rendezvous with death.
     Emanuel mentions that his parents are both alive, his father 87, has "slowed tremendously" and isn't churning out professional successes anymore.
     "Despite this, he also said he is happy," Emanuel notes, dubiously.
     I have an arthritic hip, a balky memory, and am in desperate need of bifocals, my eyes weakened no doubt from staring hard at the horizon, waiting for a ship that never came in. Yet I truly can say I enjoy life more back when I was 25 and all my neurons were on line and firing properly.     
    Emanuel doesn't perceive it, but his parents being alive skews his judgment here, because he theorizes their decline will blot out the good memories he has of them.
     "Yes, with effort our children will be able to recall that great family vacation, that funny scene at Thanksgiving, that embarrassing faux pas at a wedding," he writes. "But the most-recent years—the years with progressing disabilities and the need to make caregiving arrangements—will inevitably become the predominant and salient memories."
     At times perhaps. But my impression is that difficult declines are kept in a separate category for most people. My parents are 82 and 78, and while they are not hiking glaciers in Colorado the way they used to, they just got back from taking the Queen Mary up to Nova Scotia, and if you asked them, they would say they have their good and bad days, but all told they do not wish they had died years earlier. Nor do I wish they had. I talk to my mother on the phone almost daily, and she manifests her distinct personality quite well—sometimes too well—despite being three years past Zeke Emanuel's sell-by date. And my father, well, the passing years have filed off some sharp edges, and I have to say that the version circa 2014 is in some ways preferable to the 1984 model. We argue less.
     That is meaningless in Zeke Emanuel's world. To him, if you're not rocking your profession back on its heels, well, the grave calls. He wants the last image that his kids have of him as vibrantly climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, not leaning on a cane and feeding pigeons. The fact that his own kids vehemently disagree with this gets waved off, several times. Respecting the opinion of others, giving it weight and significance, is not an Emanuel survival skill.
     Whatever life holds in store for my parents, I'm not worried it's going to efface the memory of Hanukkah 1967. I now this because my wife's parents are both gone, sadly. Both went through difficult, painful deaths which, despite Emanuel's postulation otherwise, did not wipe out the decades of happy memories for their children. Nobody liked seeing them suffer, but nobody was rooting for them to nip out earlier either, including themselves. They had a toughness that has nothing to do with running a marathon. There's a creepy, detached, inhuman quality to Emanuel's argument, but that can't come as a surprise to anyone living in his brother's city.
      Achievement is a great thing; I'm big on it myself. But it can have a monstrousness, and it vibrates under his argument. When Emanuel writes "It is much more difficult for older people to learn new languages," you wish a more practical, human person, grounded in quotidian life, had pointed out to him that, luckily old people seldom need to learn new languages. Whatever the remaining years of my life holds, mastering Mandarin isn't part of the program, and I'm okay with that. 
      Being an Emanuel, he lards his essay with enough caveats and escape clauses that nobody can really be offended by it, and Emanuel allows himself freedom to renounce the whole idea as he approaches 75.
      "I retain the right to change my mind and offer a vigorous and reasoned defense of living as long as possible," he writes, lest Atlantic subscribers show up to his East Coast home with torches in 2032.
      I don't want to criticize Emanuel too harshly. I'm glad he wrote the piece, as our aging society will demand a re-thinking of how we approach medical care at the end of life, and what he calls "a tsunami of dementia" will become a problem we can't avoid, assuming it isn't already. Our ethics and approach to health care lag tragically beyond our technical medical capabilities, and change must happen. It is too easy to slip into the protracted, technology-ridden death alone in a hospital ward that nobody wants for themselves or their loved ones.
      It can be very difficult to talk to parents about these issues—he discusses that—and we need to create a world where doing so is essential.
      So this sort of article is helpful, as part of a conversation we should all be having. But it also confirmed what I know about the mechanistic, Energizer Bunny of endless action that Chicago has for a mayor. I'm not complaining—I think he's doing a good job, in the main, and perhaps a regular human being wouldn't take it on, never mind perform it as well. But there's a mystery to Rahm, and this helps us make out its contours in the darkness. If there seems a disconnect, a gulf of incomprehension between Rahm Emanuel and the 2.7 million flesh-and-blood people he leads, or tries to, well, it obviously runs in the family.

Not only do you fast at Yom Kippur, you pay for the privilege

     Five years ago, at the height of the recession and feeling a pinch ourselves, it seemed apt to write about the economic jolt that Yom Kippur can deliver to the faithful. What sets this column apart is the extraordinarily tone deaf, tetchy and charmless response by the executive director at the Free Synagogue in Evanston, which I've appended below. 

     Chicago doesn't have a proper Jewish deli. Some will grumble at that statement, will point to Manny's on Roosevelt Road. But Manny's serves cafeteria-style, so it doesn't count -- cafeteria-style deli is like take-out French: the food could be wonderful, but the format undercuts it.

     I'm also biased against Manny's because I was first taken there years ago by Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County medical examiner, for lunch after a long morning spent watching him perform autopsies. That tends to put off your appetite for a place, forever.

     Upscale delis like The Bagel certainly try, and their food is fine, I guess. But they're too clean. You want a deli to have a certain dingy, loud, shut-up-and-eat quality, not to be a bland plastic place. You want your waitress at a Jewish deli to be some harried Eastern European woman in her mid-50s with flabby, flapping biceps and a look of sour forbearance etched into her face, not a perky part-time aerobics instructor brightly suggesting you try the Chinese chopped salad.

     Of course, now that I ask myself what, indeed, I consider a real Jewish deli, I realize I'm thinking of Corky & Lenny's, in Cleveland, with jars of sour pickles on the tables and big baskets of fresh bread and chocolate phosphates slopping down the glass as they're slapped down before you. Of course, were I to go there now, I'm sure I'd find it doesn't compare to itself in memory either.

     Not that Chicago is without Jewish culinary institutions. There is, for instance, Romanian Kosher Sausage on Clark Street—everyone simply calls it "Romanian." The odd thing about Romanian is: Though I never think about it when it's not in sight—I never say to my wife, "Hey, let's drive to Romanian!"—I don't believe I've ever passed by without stopping in. 
     Because you can't get this stuff just anywhere—the best kosher pastrami, salami, garlic hot dogs, chicken, kishke—all of which we piled into a basket after Romanian's irresistible pull forced us off Touhy last week and inside. How can you not? People journey there from Indiana, from Wisconsin. They place enormous orders and drag them back to Jewish communities stranded in Iowa. The guy in front of me bought $445.58 worth of meat to take back to Michigan.

     "We get people from St. Louis," said the clerk.

     A bold sign in Romanian orders: "Get your Rosh Hashanah and Sukkoth fresh meat order in your freezer now!! DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE. AVOID HIGHER PRICES AND SHORTAGES."

     I admire the severity of that -- given the perils facing Jews, you really have to drive home a threat to catch our attention. This is a time of heightened alertness, because it's now September, the High Holidays loom, and they inspire a certain frantic, musical chairs angst -- the song stops Sept. 18 for Rosh Hashanah, and if you didn't plan ahead, you have no brisket. A week later, the needle is lifted for Yom Kippur, and if you weren't careful, you have nowhere to stand and beat your chest.

     Even the most casual, ham and cheese Jews like to visit a synagogue on Yom Kippur. The way to guarantee a seat is to join a congregation -- some don't let non-members in. But only 40 percent of America's ebbing Jewish population belongs to a temple, and the 60 percent who don't belong sometimes have to scramble.

     For synagogues, the High Holidays present a dilemma. On one hand, you've got all these twice-a-year Jews traipsing through -- what better time to put out the Welcome mat, wrap your prayer shawl lovingly around their shoulders and draw these strangers back toward the comforts of faith?

     On the other, the synagogue needs a new roof, you've got customers eager for what you're selling, and what better way to fill the empty coffers than to charge admission?

     On the Chicago Board of Rabbis Web site list (at juf.org), High Holidays ticket prices range as high as $500; Evanston's Beth Emet The Free Synagogue charges $400 -- ironic, given the name.

     Many synagogues will waive fees for students and the indigent. With the economy still in the toilet, others are scrapping tickets altogether.

Makom Shalom, a renewal synagogue in the South Loop, doesn't sell tickets and instead asks for donations.

     "People are under tremendous economic pressure," says Chava Bahle, rabbi at Makom Shalom. "The pay-to-pray model is not appealing."

     As uncomfortable as the topic is, touching on old slurs about Jews and money, it is also a significant issue in a faith that risks evaporating into the anything-goes polychromatic wasteland of American culture. A lot of American Jews wouldn't enter synagogue if you paid them, so the money question is one that synagogues are grappling with as they try to rally the tribe while there is still a tribe to rally.

     "Almost all congregations these days are really sensitive to economic realities," says Rabbi Michael Balinsky, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. "People have to understand, it costs something to do services -- rabbis have to be paid, rooms have to rented, synagogues have to pay their electric bills and water bills. That's the reality. Everything costs."

     AND YET. . .

     "The last thing we want to do is have people feel they can't come to services," he continues. "We want everyone to be there who wants to be there, and no one is going to be turned away for financial reasons." 
                                                                  —Aug. 31, 2009
HOW TO COMPLAIN

     The scorched-earth rhetoric that passes as political speech infects our daily conversations. People express disagreement by blasting away with both barrels. No one is mildly miffed -- it's always full-blown, quivering outrage.

     But to what end? The reason for complaint should be to get a point across, perhaps even change minds, and here a bit of sugar does wonders. You can insult or you can persuade, but you can't do both.

     Early last week, I ran a column that began by claiming there are no decent Jewish delis in Chicago, then shifted to the topic of synagogues charging for tickets at Yom Kippur. I expected to hear from delis, honked off at being overlooked.

     But the delis were very polite, and two had a point. Kaufman's on Dempster in Skokie sent a puzzled note. I wrote back that I've been patronizing Kaufman's for 25 years but didn't consider them because, in my mind, they're not a deli, but a bagel bakery that sells cold cuts. A fine distinction, perhaps.

     Max & Benny's, the Northbrook institution, also cleared its throat. I overlooked them because they're right under my ample nose. But space is tight, so we'll save them for another day.

     As for the tickets, Chabad, the ultraorthodox group, pointed out, in their characteristic friendly, upbeat fashion, that their services are always free. I've gone to Chabad services, and they are lively, if heavy on the Hebrew.

     In fact, the only real nastiness I got was from Beth Emet The Free Synagogue, aghast that I would make a pun about them.

    Here is the offending line, in its entirety:

     "Evanston's Beth Emet The Free Synagogue charges $400 -- ironic, given the name."

     I won't bore you with the full response from Bekki Harris Kaplan, Beth Emet's executive director, but it includes the words "angered" "obnoxious," "upset," "sarcasm," "character attacks" and "saddened."

     She said she wanted dialogue, so I wrote to her:

     "If you truly want dialogue, two questions: 1) Why is listing the $400 fee OK on the Board of Rabbis Web site, but a 'slam' when I include it in a column on the challenge of both welcoming Jews to synagogue and paying for services? 2) If I wrote, 'I was in the free weight room at the East Bank Club, which is ironic, because it costs $200 a month to use it,' I bet the general manager of the East Bank Club would be smart enough not to send me a starchy note. Why aren't you?"

     Alas, she did not reply, which makes for a very one-sided dialogue. In case she's moved to dialogue now, I'll add a third question: "How can anyone purporting to represent a people so rich in humor, irony, wit and whimsy collapse into a moaning heap of complaint when her own ox is nicked?"

     Postscript: A ticket to Beth Emet now sets you back $500, a 25 percent increase in five years, according to the Board of Rabbis web site. And yes, Ms. Kaplan is still the executive director of the Free Synagogue, no doubt using her charm to draw the faithful through their gates. I never did hear back from her.

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     For the New Year (the Jewish new year, if you're thinking, "New Year? What New Year? It's October") I thought I would add an extra twist to the Where IS this? fun activity. Not only will a photo be tossed up to be puzzled over, but then, when it has finally been guessed, I'll post a bit of follow-up rumination about the place. I'm doing this because it was frustrating to display an interesting place, but not be able to say much about it, so as to not give away the game (not that people were stumped long anyway). 

    So I'm posting a picture of this enigmatic green blob, and then I'll fill in why I selected it after somebody figures out where it is. The winner will receive this pristine copy of the Nov. 5, 2009, edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, marking Barack Obama's first election as president. A True Collector's Item, as they say, it popped up while moving my office to the 10th floor; actually several of them did, and how many does a guy need? I see them selling for twenty bucks on eBay. You can have this one by guessing where this enigmatic green emblem is located. Please remember to place your guesses below, and good luck. Remember, I'll be at synagogue for a while today, so it might be later than usual before I can moderate your guesses. Be nice.

Postscript

     I'm a creature of habit when it comes to restaurants. I know what I like—Gene & Georgetti, Harry Caray's, Petterino's, Star of Siam, Sushi Sai, Prairie Grass—and I want it, again and again. But there is a chink in the armor; occasionally a friend will suggest trying "something new" and my accommodating nature trumps my hidebound habits. 
     So when a fellow journalist, a writer for The Economist, suggested a change of pace, I reached for one of those places I've been curious about. I actually thought I was suggesting the Raw Bistro, at 1901 N. Halsted, but somehow got us to a place called Raw, at 51 W. Hubbard, at the sign of the artichoke, or broccoli, or whatever that green thing is supposed to be. 

      I arrived at the first; punctual to a fault. Inside, I noticed it was more a carry-out store than a restaurant, just five or six stools, a refrigerator case, lots of large jars of

supplements. And everything was really expensive. Four dollars for a cookie. By the time my friend arrived, I was waiting out front, and suggested we try somewhere else. 

     No, she said, she lives nearby and is curious about this place. Okay, I'm game. I bought a kale salad for $12 and a carrot muffin for $6 that felt like a lead shotput. She got some dumplings and a $9 bottle of coconut kefir.
     The kale salad was astoundingly good. "So this is what all that kale madness is about," I thought. The amazing thing is, I ate and ate and ate, sharing with her, and when we were done I still had 3/4 of the salad left. I took it home, shared it with my wife with dinner, and still had plenty for breakfast the next day. And the carrot muffin—it was like eating a scoop of Jupiter: this dense, rich, orangish material. She liked her dumplings and kefir less, but we both agreed the place was worth the $20 apiece it cost for lunch. The clerk at Raw also kept setting out little paper cups with samples: sweet potato chips and pumpkin smoothie, mock tuna and a soy burger with homemade ketchup that definitely called for further investigation.  And considering how long the food they give you lasts, and how good and fresh it is, it's really not that expensive.
     Anyway I thought, in my role as a value-added blogger, I should not only use it as a contest location, but then tell you a little about the place. To be honest, I suspected it was going to taste really good, because Raw is vegan, and no vegan restaurant is going to stay in business long if they can't find a way to make the stuff taste good. I'll go back. 

Divvy Diary: Safety in numbers

     Education is a process, not an act. One of my favorite aspects of writing a column is I get to build off things I've written earlier. Such as finally understanding the seeming paradox that more amateurs without helmets careening on bicycles in city traffic somehow makes the city safer and leads to fewer head injuries.

     A friend is feeling unwell, and I recommended she nurse herself back to health with the rich gingery soup from Ajida, a Japanese grill on Wells Street.

      As she isn’t able to go out, I gallantly offered to convey the miso udon to her, of course hopping on a Divvy to rush the soothing broth to her place in Greektown.

     As there are no Divvy stations immediately around the restaurant, I meant to pick up a cable lock, to secure the bike while I ran inside to collect the carry out. I considered leaving the bike unattended in the street. But I did that once, buying cookies at D’Amato’s Bakery on Grand, and it was a nerve-wracking experience, with one eye on the goodies slowly being placed into a box by the clerk, one eye fixed on the defenseless blue Divvy bike parked in front, poised at any moment to have to bolt out to rescue it.

     Never again. Too stressful. But I didn’t get around to buying the lock, so instead I walked to Ajida, accepted our soup, then hot-footed it to Franklin and Madison to grab a bike west to Halsted.

     Memo to self: buy cable lock.

     In fact, if you have other unsanctioned tricks and unrecommended strategies regarding maximizing the bike share system, let me know and I’ll include them in a future column tentatively titled, “Pimp My Divvy.”

     Yes, I wore my helmet. I’m trying to be more scrupulous about that, a) because it’s safer and b) toting the helmet gives me a cachet of cool, if only in my own mind.

     Speaking of helmets . . .
     When last we addressed Divvy helmets, in July, the American Journal of Public Health had printed a study claiming that in cities launching ride-share programs, the percentage of head injuries among bicycle-related injuries went up. I used it as the basis for a general plea for more helmet use and called on the city to do more to promote helmets, which of course had no effect.
     This week Andres Salomon, a Seattle bicycle activist, sent me a pair of follow-up letters from the Sept. 11 journal of public health that revisit the issue, pointing out that while the percentage of head injuries has gone up in 10 cities with ride-share programs, totals went down,
     The study “misinterpreted the injury data,” Salomon and his colleagues write. “Although the proportion of injuries that were head injuries increased . . . the authors fail to mention that the total number of head injuries declined by 14.4% in bicycle share cities, compared with a decline of only 3.9% in control cities. . . . The total number of nonhead injuries declined even more sharply — by 37.8% in bike share cities, compared with a 6.2% increase in control cities. . . . The data suggests that bicycle share programs were in fact associated with reduction in bicycle injuries, even though none of the programs provided helmets.”
     The letter suggests that Vancouver, which is delaying its rideshare program until a system of helmet rental can be established, is endangering bicyclists by doing so, while Dallas, which suspended a helmet law to encourage its program, is helping them.
     That seems counterintuitive; how can filling busy city streets with inexperienced, unhelmeted bicyclists, often unused to urban biking, often tourists who might not have ridden a bike in years, somehow cause accidents to go down? What’s happening?
     The letters allude to the “potentially protective effect of bicycle share programs” without speculating what those effects might be. It doesn’t take an academic to understand what’s happened in downtown Chicago. Any frequent cyclist can tell you.
     “It’s a critical mass,” said Diane Dillon, who regularly rides her bike from West Rogers Park to her job at the Newberry Library on Walton. “The critical mass of cyclists has made everyone, drivers as well as pedestrians, more aware of bicyclists and the need to share the road.”
     “The ‘protective effect’ is another way of saying ‘safety in numbers,’ ” Divvy spokesman Elliot Greenberger agreed. “We’ve added thousands of big blue bikes on the street. You bet that means that Chicago is noticing and getting more comfortable with bike riders. With that kind of shift, you typically see motorists, cyclists and pedestrians become more aware.”
     Dillon has noticed motorists are less blithe about weaving into bike lanes, cutting off cyclists or laying on the horn needlessly.
     “When bike lanes were first introduced, drivers routinely violated the space,” she said. “Now they are cutting people off less and driving more respectfully. I get fewer anxious and annoyed honks — they would see a bicyclist and just honk for the sake of honking. Now they’re more respectful.”

Judaism isn't easy, but it has its rewards

     Yom Kippur begins tonight at sundown, and as the only newspaper columnist in the country, I believe, who regularly comments on being Jewish—it's part of my life, and I never got the memo reminding me that I'm supposed to be vaguely embarrassed—I feel as if I should say something.
     Only I took the nation's temperature, Jewish-wise, on Sunday, for Rosh Hashana. And frankly, I feel like I said everything I have to say about Yom Kippur in a pair of columns more than a decade ago. True, few readers are going to read an argument and think, "Heyyyy, didn't he take this tack back in 2003?" But I have my pride. So rather than regurgitate the same old thoughts, I'm going to draw these Yom Kippur chestnuts out of the vault, for your holiday entertainment. 
     This first one is notable because, after it ran, I got a phone call from my rabbi saying, in essence, "How can we help you feel better about your religion?" And I had to tell him that I feel just fine about it—well, a little squeamish that my rabbi is calling me up, giving me grief at the office—but otherwise doing okay, faith-wise. Just a tad unconventional, that's all. 

     It's Yom Kippur time, again. Starting Sunday night, for those keeping score. And since most readers are probably only dimly aware of what Yom Kippur actually is (don't feel bad; I didn't know the Easter story until I saw "Jesus Christ Superstar'' as a teenager), I probably should explain. It's the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, a holiday noted primarily for three things: 1) repentance; 2) fasting and 3) the uncharacteristic flocking, like swallows to Capistrano, of assimilated Jews back to their neglected synagogues.

     Much press attention was given to that third point this year in the wake of a study showing that population growth among Jews in this country has been stagnant for the past decade, mainly due to a 40 percent intermarriage rate.

     No wonder Jews are drifting away, if Yom Kippur is the only holiday they show up for. That's like missing the football game but stopping by for the snarl in the parking lot. I'm not sure what the logic is — maybe fooling God into inscribing them in the book of life for another year ("No, no, I've been here all along Lord, really . . . ").

     If I had to pick just one holiday to go to temple for, I'd pick almost any other; Simcha Torah, for example. There's dancing, and waving flags, and kissing torah scrolls. It's basically a big party for a book, and as a bookish type, I like that.

     But Yom Kippur? First, you're looking at about five hours in the synagogue, what with Kol Nidre Sunday night and services all day Monday. It's actually closer to 10 hours, but between arriving the traditional 45 minutes late and sneaking off in midafternoon, five is more like it. That's a lot of time to pray. I don't want to blaspheme, but if God were as quick as He's supposed to be, then why do we have to keep restating the same praise and contrition, in various ways and languages? You'd think it could be like a pollution emission check — a quick peek into the sooty chambers of our hearts, a few checkmarks on the form, and we're on our way again.

     Not that I don't enjoy the prayers. The tunes are beautiful, the thoughts, lofty. Though I admit getting hung up on the gender equality infecting the lower rungs of Judaism. A central part of religion is nostalgia — you're doing what you did as a kid. But in our synagogue, we can't invoke the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, without including the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. I'm not against equality — if I were, my wife would kill me with a brick while I slept. But when you whip in the matriarchy, it no longer is the same prayer as when I was a kid, and it jars. Imagine, at the ballpark, if whenever they sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," every time they got to "buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks" they added "and apples and celery and healthful snacks" as a nod to smart eating.

     There is also a considerable amount of chest-thumping at Yom Kippur. You stand, and beat your chest, and declare your sins — not specifically. Nobody says, "I goldbricked at work and cheated on my wife and hit my kids." Rather, in the safety of numbers, we thump our fists over our hearts and declare a laundry list of generic sins — "We have harmed others. We have wrought injustice. We have zealously transgressed."

     I like the thumping. But I find myself — and I know this is not the point of the thing, but being a guy one tends to be competitive — keeping score during this solemn litany, thinking "Yup, did that one. Did that one. Didn't do that one. Sorta did that one."

     A final note about Yom Kippur: Perhaps unique among the holidays of the world's faiths, it has almost completely defied our society's steady march toward commercialization. Yom Kippur is devoid of trappings — no decorations, no gifts, almost no cards. Of the thousands of types of greeting cards that Hallmark sells — even they are unsure how many — the company offers exactly one style of Yom Kippur card.

     "Wishing you the peace that comes with forgiveness," it reads. "Hope that comes with new resolve and joy that comes with making new blessings and the dawn of a whole new year."

     That's sweet, actually, though I hope they stop there. It's too easy to imagine the Atonement Line, with all sorts of syrupy "To My Neglected Mother" or "Greetings To My Traduced Friend" cards.

     Perhaps that it is coming. I can also see the beer companies getting involved, the way they shanghaied Halloween from the candy companies. People do throw break-the-fast parties (we tried setting one up with friends, but they insisted on waiting until twilight). Perhaps someday soon we'll have "Slam a Bud at Sundown!" displays in the supermarket (assuming, of course, we beat the gathering demographic doom. Nobody markets to the Shakers).

     My general sense is that Yom Kippur is like jogging — something whose value is greatly enhanced by the wonderful sense of fulfillment that washes over you when you're done. Myself, I'm looking forward to the holiday on deck, Sukkoth — a harvest festival. Not nearly as holy, true, but you get to sit in a booth of corn husks and pine sprigs in your backyard and drink with your friends. Judaism can be a taxing religion, particularly at this time of year, but it is not without its compensations.

                                             —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 3, 2003

Tracy Morgan and the Eggshell Skull Rule

     The law gets a bad rap, but has its fascinations.
     For instance, TV comedian Tracy Morgan and five other passengers were in a Mercedes limousine that slowed because of traffic congestion on the New Jersey Turnpike June 7 and was rear-ended by a Walmart truck.  Morgan's friend, James McNair was killed, and Morgan, who starred on NBC's Saturday Night LIve and 30 Rock, was badly injured.
     Before rear-ending the limo, the driver of the Walmart truck, Kevin Roper, made several mistakes: he was traveling at 20 miles per hour over the speed limit, according to the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation. He ignored warning signs. And he had been driving for nearly 14 hours, the federal limit.
     The driver faces several criminal charges, including vehicular homicide and Morgan of course filed a civil suit. 
     A layman might be forgiven for assuming Walmart would just hand Morgan a blank check at this point. But that isn't how it works. The law is a battle. Parties clearly in the wrong—particularly giant corporations in the wrong—must mount a defense, and it should be no surprise that Walmart lawyers are seeking to pin the blame on Morgan, saying his injuries were  "caused, in whole or in part, by plaintiffs' failure to properly wear an appropriate available seat belt restraint device"and so, by not wearing a seatbelt "acted unreasonably and in disregard of (their) own best interests."
     News reports focused on Morgan's incredulous response.
     But I was more interested in what the law says. 
     At first blush, it would seem an 0pen-and-shut case.
     There is a queasily-named principle in law called "The Eggshell Skull Rule" that says, in essence, that a person who does wrong is responsible for any harm done to a person, even if that person is in an unexpectedly precarious state. "A defendant takes a plaintiff as he finds him," is the way it's usually phrased; meaning that you are on the hook for the injuries you inflict, even if they could not be foreseen. Morgan's carelessly being in a vulnerable, seatbeltless position shouldn't matter. Heck, if every evening I bathe in a tub filled with gasoline, and you malicious toss a lit cigarette into my open bathroom window, assuming the tub is filled with water, you are responsible for my horrific burns. That bathing in gasoline is stupid doesn't enter into it (the "eggshell skull" comes from another hypothetical. If I push you down, and your skull shatters because it's an eggshell, I've murdered you. The argument that a person with such a skull shouldn't go around without a helmet doesn't score many points in court).
     Unless it does. Walmart has to offer some defense, and in making the motion pinning the blame on Morgan, it shows that it is not going to roll over and pay whatever staggering, eight-figure settlement the TV star is hoping for. Walmart has deep pockets, and part of any lawsuit such as this is the filing of endless motions and continuances, the displaying of the legal fleet, as it were, to try to instill fear and expense, grind down the other side and reduce their expectations. 
     As with any situation involving law, it gets more complicated than that. Different rules come into play, and it is up to a judge and jury to decide which ones apply. For instance, there is a concept known as comparative fault, which is the new term applied to what was once called "contributory negligence" (in essence,the idea that if you've somehow done something to contribute to your injury, like not worn a seatbelt, you can't collect damages). 
    Only four states adhere to the idea of contributory negligence, and New Jersey isn't one of them. New Jersey does have a rule about comparative fault—the "51 Percent Bar Rule" that says if a plaintiff is more than half at fault in a situation, then he can't collect. 
    Which means that Walmart has to convince a jury that an exhausted, speeding, heedless truck driver is less at fault for Morgan's injuries than the comedian himself is, for not wearing a seatbelt in the back of his limo.
    A tall order. It isn't quite saying that you're at fault for not wearing a bulletproof vest when I shot you, but in the same ballpark. Or at least that's what I would argue, were I Morgan's lawyer (or, more likely, lawyers). 
    But wait. It gets even more complicated. Bathing in gasoline or having an eggshell skull are not crimes. But riding in a car without wearing a seatbelt is.  In 2010, New Jersey passed a law that all passengers, front and back, must wear seatbelts. A Walmart lawyer could argue that Morgan's commission of a crime, minor though it is, reduces the damages he could expect. He is like a burglar who breaks into somebody's house and then drowns in the whirlpool tub. Even if a jury decides that the fault is 10 percent Morgan's, that's 10 percent shaved off the top of a judgment certain to be in the millions. A Hail Mary pass worth trying. 
       Then again, speeding is also a crime, as is vehicular homicide.
       You get the point. It's all moot anyway because Walmart, shying away from the continuing bad publicity involved with its reckless employee injuring a popular entertainer, will no doubt, after showing  the stick of its legal muscle, choose the carrot of  some never-to-be-disclosed settlement. Morgan, tired of the whole ordeal and eager to get on with his life, will no doubt take the money.  Still, it's interesting to think about. At least I hope it is.
        Then again, I'm not a lawyer, and I know many readers of this are. Am I missing something here?