Any time is Candy Crush Saga time!

    Most parents of seniors don't even attend mid-winter parents night at Glenbrook North High School. 
     The halls, thronged with middle-aged couples in the fall, are noticeably depopulated. Several teachers greeted us with a quasi-sincere, quasi- joking, "What are you doing here?!"
      Good question. And we have a good answer. We saw the first one off at a parents' night at Greenbrier Elementary, 14 years and change ago, and we might as well see the younger one through to the bitter end. We were glad we went, particularly when our boy's Chinese teacher started class with a video of him holding our heroic dog, giving a tour of our home in Chinese. The two other couples, both native Chinese, chuckled appreciatively, though I couldn't get out of them whether they were laughing at what he said or at the way he said it.
     The teachers, as always, were excellent—our older boy found college a breeze after Glenbrook North. I did notice this parent playing Candy Crush Saga on his cell phone. At least I think it was; I'm not an expert at hand-held games. Never played one. All these games look like little arrays of colorful dots to me. It could have been Fruit Smash, or Cupcake Chaos, or something.
     The important thing was dad was ignoring the teacher, passing the time in his kid's chemistry class by playing on his phone. To me, that's bad form, though I suppose the kids have to get it from somewhere. Still, we were only in each class about a dozen minutes.
     Not a big deal. Standards are so old-fashioned. I don't know which is worse form—him playing or me noticing. Our evolving etiquette seems to be that we ignore each other's phone habits. I can't hold him up to too much censure. At least he was there. Most parents didn't bother. They were happily playing Candy Crush Saga at home. So kudos for making the effort. I believe that a large part of success in parenting, like any other endeavor, is showing up. Though how you behave once you do show up does matter, a little, I like to think. 

Why care about El Salvador when we have problems at home?

Debra Gittler, in El Salvador

Altruism is something of a mystery to me. Here I am, hunched over, puffing frantically into the sails of my little bark of a career as it slowly settles into the water, while there are certain rare individuals who devote their lives to helping the downtrodden. I don't get it. Thus when I encounter one, I try to get at the mystery of why they are doing what they do. Plus, I don't have many readers in Central America, at least not who write in. So after I received a friendly note from Debra Gittler in El Salvador, and since I'm out of town, I asked her for a brief report about what Central America is like and why she's down there. This is what she wrote:

Hola from El Salvador!

My name is Debra Gittler. I’m the Founder and Executive Director of ConTextos, a literacy organization established in El Salvador, where I’m writing this letter, and also in Chicago, where I’m from and where I still call home.

I’m often asked, “Why should Chicagoans care about kids in Central America when we have the South and West sides to worry about?” 

Ironically, my two homes—ConTextos’ two homes—Chicago and El Salvador have a lot in common. Both are plagued by gang violence. El Salvador is now one of the most violent countries in the world with rampant gang violence that plagues kids in school and out. Experts say that if you were to superimpose El Salvador’s homicide rate upon New York City, it would be like 6,000 homicides per year.

So why would I choose to live in such a terrible place?

This is a land of contradictions. The gentle tropical breeze mixes with the third-world roar of broken mufflers. The air is vibrant with the scent of bright flowers and unregulated car exhaust. Massive digital screens advertising high-end goods loom over squatter communities that cook over firewood and have no access to water. You can get four homemade pupusas and a cup of coffee for a dollar at a local spot, or a $4 coffee at Starbucks.

El Salvador is also a stunningly beautiful country. My home in the city is only 30 minutes from the beach and an hour from the mountains. My patio looks over a volcano—one of 19 in the country—and yes, I leave my doors open to the outside all day and night, every day and night. The temperature never strays far from 85 degrees.

Right now is sugar cane harvest, and part of the process is burning the cane fields. At night, you can see the mountainside on fire. Ash floats on the air and settles everywhere. I like to pretend the ash is from the volcanoes…

Last week, Central America popped up in the international news when Vice President Joe Biden announced: A Plan for Central America: "As we were reminded last summer when thousands of unaccompanied children showed up on our southwestern border, the security and prosperity of Central America are inextricably linked with our own."

How so? I first moved to Central America eight years ago. After three years as a teacher in the South Bronx, I came here to work in education reform. You’d think that “first-world” and “third world” poverty would be so different. But in fact, I could see the connections that Biden refers to—the kids in my classroom in the States were the same that I served in Central America, the educational culture that I fought was the same in both places. I also noticed that traditional bi-lateral efforts for development just weren’t enough to make sustainable change. So I founded ConTextos to fill an obvious gap: provide books and training to schools.

Here in Central America many adults never had the opportunity to read. In schools today, kids lack access to books and learn via rote memorization, copy and dictation. ConTextos changes this paradigm. We establish school libraries and train teachers so that kids develop authentic literacy skills such as deep-thinking, analysis, interpretation and creativity. These are the skills not just to be a better reader, they’re the skills necessary to be a more active member of an effective society.

Whatever happens in US immigration reform, part of the solution must involve investing in education and the social sector in the countries of origin. That’s why ConTextos’ is seeking support to expand into Guatemala and Honduras. This region, now the most violent in the region, needs help. And ConTextos is helping.

While there are hundreds of people with profiles like mine working in Chicago and throughout the States to improve education, Central America has a terrible dearth of educational NGOs. And the best part: our work is incredibly affordable to donors and foundations. It costs just $5,000/year per school for us to create a school library and provide a year’s worth of training.

Neil, I hope you’ll reach out to your readers to help us raise awareness (and money) in Chicago. Investing in education as a tool to combat violence and create opportunity isn’t a question of either the West side or international; it means investing in both. And what better way than through a Chicago-based organization.

You can learn more about ConTextos at contextos.org and vimeo.com/contextos. ConTextos is a Chicago business making huge strides in one of the most fragile, volatile regions of the world. I hope you’ll let your readers know about us!

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     I'm not sure what drew me to this chief.
     The fine detailing on the feathers of his war bonnet, surely.
     Maybe the almost-semitic arch to his nose.
     Something of a sneer, facing into the cutting Chicago wind.
     Or maybe I just thought, "This'll stump 'em."
     Which of course it won't.
     But a guy can try.
     So puzzle over this one. 
     I'm in California, bopping around the Parents Weekend events at Pomona College.
     So I won't be able to render the verdict until late in the day.
     Unless you get this very quickly.
     As you tend to do.
     The winner receives a bag of fine Bridgeport coffee. 
     Which I never get tired of drinking.
     So place your guesses below, and good luck. 

Winter is fall season

     Blame the dog.
     On our walks, I prefer she go right. Habit. Better scenery.

     But last Sunday morning she turns left. I think, "Okay, follow the dog."
     I pause in a driveway across the street, looking back at our yard, wondering whether rabbits can take down a 3-foot-tall pine sapling that has gone missing. Then it happens.
     What happens I can't tell you, exactly, other than I fell, apparently.
     Wham.
     But honestly, I didn't even feel "wham."
     One moment I'm standing, feet planted, wearing my heretofore trustworthy Keen hiking boots, looking at the spot where that tree the rabbits perhaps ate should be. Then staring at the sky, my hands curled above, the dog licking my face after, I assume, both feet shot out, there was a Wile E. Coyote moment of suspension, then gravity did its thing, with the requisite halo of stars and tweeting sparrows.
     I couldn't move. Not as worrisome as it sounds. A calm, almost a curiosity. This is a development. Using my shoulder, I angle my right hand toward my face and give my thumb a tentative nibble. Completely numb, as if asleep.
     At least I'm not dead. Falls killed about 30,000 Americans in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control, making it almost as common a cause of death as car accidents. Winter, ironically, is peak fall season.
     "Falls are more common in the wintertime," said Dr. Rahul Khare, an emergency room physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. He estimated NU's ER might get 10 cases in a morning on icy days, as opposed to one or two when it's dry. Falls cause a variety of injuries. "One of the biggest is what we call "FOOSH" injuries—Falls On an Out-Streched Hand," he said. "We see fractures in the bones in the hand as well as bones in the arm as well as elbow injuries, shoulder injuries."
     "With younger folk, ankles and wrists, older individuals you'll see ankles, fractures in spine, hips," said Dr. Mark Cichon, chair of emergency medicine at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. He said the costs of such falls will increase tremendously as what he calls the "grey tsunami" of an aging population rolls on. According to the CDC, the 2.4 million people whose falls required visits to the hospital in 2012 resulted in a staggering $30 billion in medical costs.
     "You go down very quickly," said Khare. "You don't even remember. It only takes half a second from standing to hitting your head on the ground."
      I can vouch for that.
     Eventually my neighbor rushes out and helps me to my feet. My head doesn't hurt, but my arms burn—electric shocks up and down. I hurry inside and climb directly into bed, consider ignoring the incident, embarrassed at the shame of falling. That horrible cheezy TV commercial. "I've fallen," the old woman whines, "and I can't get up!" But the burning worries me. That isn't good. I tell my wife, who leaps out of bed and hustles me the hospital, while I fret about adding another straw to the groaning medical system.
      At Glenbrook Hospital, the ER doctor suggests not one CT scan, but two—one head, one neck. I balk. Is this really necessary? I mention having just read "Medical Tests You Can Safely Skip" in the March Consumer Reports ("CT emits a powerful dose of radiation, in some cases equivalent to about 200 chest Xrays...That does can alter the makeup of human tissues and ... the damage can lead to cancer.") I've know people who've had facial cancer—not a condition you want to court.
      But my arms are still burning, and balancing the theoretical risk of something going wrong down the pike against the need to learn what is causing this now, I accept the risk of about $2000 worth of look-see.
     "I have this conversation at least once a shift, if not more" said Khare. "It is really important to ask your physician about the necessity of the CT scan....in your case, burning hands ... I'd be more inclined to get the CT scan on that because of that neurological finding. The important thing is to be honest with doctor to say 'Hey, could we have a discussion?'"
     And the doctors don't hate you after that? I asked.
     "No, I don't think physicians are doing that as much as they used to," Khare said. "Shared decision-making is very powerful. Nothing is black or white in medicine ."
     I leave Glenbrook with a pack of steroids and a diagnosis of "cervical strain." As far as what people should do to avoid falls...

Heroic dog

     

     "If you're going out, what are the shoes you're wearing?" asked Cichon. "If you're elderly, think about a cane, a walking stick. Not to say you're old and need a cane. Just to help steady your balance. Take small steps."
     Still, no matter what precautions you take, falls can be unavoidable.
     "The truth is, you still have to take out your garbage," said Khare. "You still have to walk your dog."
     Speaking of which, we don't really blame the dog; in fact, she is a hero. She could have left me and chased a squirrel. But she stayed with her downed man, and licked him back to consciousness. 
     "She's Lassie!" my wife exuded, when the crisis had passed.

Still in the dark on Valentine's Day

I'm heading to Los Angeles today, and as much as I wanted to hang out the "Gone Fishing" sign, I hate the thought of leaving you staring hungrily at your screen. Valentine's Day is Saturday—not Friday, as this 1997 column claims. But otherwise it holds true. 

     This Friday is Valentine's Day. In preparation for tiptoeing into the minefield, I dug into Valentine's Day lore, trying to find a clue as to why it is always such an ordeal.
     Most of the stuff was pretty tedious, the various Saints Valentine who may or may not have existed, and the colorful ways they may or may not have been slaughtered.
     There was an interesting line from Chaucer, who comments how chickens chose their mates on Valentine's Day. The word he uses for chickens is "foul," and only then did I realize that "fowl" and "foul" have the same origin, something that should be obvious to anyone who has been to a poultry factory.
     Interesting, but not helpful.
     Then I ran across a theory offered by Jack Santino, a professor at Bowling Green University, that Valentine's Day is the opposite of Halloween. "Halloween is approximately seven weeks before the winter solstice and marks the progression into the darkest period of the year," he writes. "Valentine's Day is about seven weeks after it and marks the progression out of winter and into spring." Santino points out that Halloween imagery is all about harvested crops and death, while Valentine's Day is flowers and romance and life.
     And—this struck me as most important—Halloween is outdoors and male, given to pranks and disguise, and Valentine's Day is indoors and female, given to revealing new affections and reinforcing old ones.
     Bingo. No wonder I make such a hash of it—as I suspect many men do—year in and year out. Valentine's Day is a female thing.
     Some of my worst dating nightmares have taken place on Valentine's Day. One year, I waited until the last minute to make a restaurant reservation, not realizing that Valentine's Day is Amateur Night Out, second only to New Year's. Every place was booked, and we stopped at six restaurants before we found one that had only a half-hour wait. It turned into a 2 1/2-hour wait, and we finally ate just before midnight. It's amazing she still married me. That's love.
     And love must receive its due. But what? Too small of a token — say, just a card and a single, elegant rose — would look cheap and receive scorn.
      But too much is just as bad. If I gave my wife the traditional dozen red roses — which cost about $200 this time of year — she would take one look at the flowers, then murder me and bury the body where it would never be found.
      She's frugal. Maybe your significant other has a different characteristic. Extravagant. Or traditional. Or quirky. Whatever it is, you, as the guy, are expected to have measured your lovemate's individual soul and arranged just the proper gift to resonate with that soul perfectly.
     Woe to we who misjudge. Last year was a disaster. My wife had been sick for a week. I was running the house, cleaning, caring for the baby, trying to work. This didn't seem like the time for grand romantic gestures.
     Then, about 6 p.m., she came downstairs, pale, wraithlike, sick, blinking into the light. Where, she wondered, were the Valentine's fripperies? The surprises? The chocolate delicacies? I stared at her, agog, as if I were in a foxhole in war and a corpsman belly-crawled over and shouted, above the shrieking shells, that they needed men immediately over at the firebase to dance around the maypole.
    That brings up the element of surprise. Even the perfect gift turns a little sour if you tip your hand ahead of time. If you mention to your wife today, "I thought I'd buy you some nice lingerie for Valentine's Day," she'll react as if you said you want a divorce. The perfect thing must be revealed at the perfect moment, perfectly. 
     Women.
     I almost had it once, almost 10 years ago. My girlfriend wanted to see "Cats." It was a hot ticket, playing at the Shubert Theatre. Now, I would just as soon be tied in a sack with cats as go see the musical, but, well, you know, amantes sunt amentes* and all that. So I bought the tickets. I arranged for an early dinner, close to the Shubert: the Berghoff,** a get-you-in, get-you-out type of place if ever there were. There was a long line—Valentine's Day, remember—and I almost tipped her off by absentmindedly crushing my fedora into a ball while we waited.
     But we got in, had a pleasant dinner, and were just at the cusp of leaving, about 20 minutes before curtain time. The waiter was pushing dessert. No thanks, I said, just the check.
     There must have been some revealing tone in my voice—waiters can smell fear, like dogs. This one smiled and said: "Going to see a show, eh?" I issued an immediate denial: oh no, not a show, not us, nope. Too late. My girlfriend broke into a wide grin and exulted: "Cats!"
     It's amazing that she still married me.
     This year, I have a gift for her—she knows what it is, and I know she knows, though we've never discussed it. That's love.

                 —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 9, 1997

*  "lovers are lunatics"
** Closed in 2006; later re-opened, but only patronized by tourists and the spiritually dead.

You are not going to win the lottery

     So much of what's left of media criticism consists of slagging various competitors when they make a perceived misstep, I thought I'd pause for a moment to praise a colleague who did something today we see too little of, and is appreciated, at least by me.

WBBM reporter Bernie Tafoya

     Coverage of the Powerball Lottery is generally a relentless ballyhoo,  where the media, for some unfathomable reason—tradition, I suppose—falls over itself to promote this tax on desperation, focusing on the jackpot and the long lines, interviewing people about how they'll spend the millions they're not going to get.
    Rarely does anyone mention the infinitesimal odds. Rarely are the majority of people, who shun the lottery, given their due. We're all gripped in a fever! Every. Single. Time.
    Thus I was impressed to hear two reports on WBBM 780 AM Wednesday by veteran newsman Bernie Tafoya, that offered perspective, talking of people who weren't playing Powerball, either because they didn't gamble or they knew they wouldn't win, and highlighting the just about impossible odds.
        That's refreshing. The truth is, the majority of people never play the lottery, and of those who do, almost all never win anything of significance. It's a sucker's game, and the media does its audience no favors by downplaying that. The odds of winning Powerball are minuscule: worse than the odds of picking one person randomly from among the 315 million living in the United States and having that person turn out to be Barack Obama or his wife Michelle. When the lottery rolls over, the media emphasizes that the jackpot has grown even larger. The excitement builds! It never points out that the rollover means you could have purchased every single ticket sold and you'd still lose. I once figured out that the odds of winning the Powerball lottery is the same as hovering in space above the continental United States, flipping a quarter toward the entire country, where odds were even it could land anywhere on the US landmass, and having the quarter come down inside Wrigley Field.
    If the lottery is news—and I can see the argument—then it is bad news, or at least depressing news: people spending being charged to dream when dreaming of course is actually free, plus government becoming addicted to vice taxes to prop up what's left of its operation. Good for Bernie for telling it like it is. 

A visit from Sheriff Steinberg

     My apologies in advance for this, perhaps best read aloud, or not read at all, particularly if you are in the habit of writing outraged emails to newspapers, bitterly complaining that your sensibilities have been offended. As the following tries to illustrate, it’s a big world, with many people other than yourself in it, alas, and sometimes the world makes accommodations for them. This is one of those times:

     Welllll friend, I’d say what we have here is a situation.
     Alabama, a state we all thought was a member o’ the You-nited States ah ' merica, has succeeded once again, with the venerable chief Judge Roy S. Moore — he of Ten Commandments in the courtroom fame — announcin’ that fed’rall court rulings are more gentle suggestions, more like helpful hints, as opposed to binding orders, at least when it comes to the subject of quote–unquote gay marriage.
     And if Alabama probate judges, drawing ‘pon the guidance of their own hearts, and the fine Suth’n tradition of oppressin’ folks who have always been oppressed down theh, well, if those judges prefer to ignore those federal rulin’s, say, and not ish-eh marriage licenses to ho-mo-sekshul Alabamans, whale, that’s just fahhhhhhn.
     And Mundeh, when it were to have been legal, had the United States of America authority actually extended down that fah, 52 of the 67 Alabama judges decided that Judge Roy S. Moore was rahhhhht.
     So in honah that, in honah Judge Roy S. Moore — don’t ya justlove that name? — I’m dippin’ two fingers in a pouch o’ Red Man, drawin’ out a generous chaw o’ tobaccah, insertin’ it with practic’d skill, settin’ back in mah chair, and revivin’ a heretofore vanished American stereotype: the grinnin’ Suth’n sheriff.
     O-fensive? Why sure it’s o-ffensive. That’t the point, frind. What you have to ask yerself is, “Am I o-ffended ’cause I’m ‘gainst classifyin’ groups ah people, all groups of people, in an unfair and derogatory fashion? Or am I o-ffended’ cause I just don’t liiiike it when it happ’ns t' me?”

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