David Bowie: Bottomless cool you could dance to.

     David Bowie's son confirmed that the rock star died Jan. 10 after an 18-month battle with cancer.

     David Bowie helped shape my world.
     When I was 16, I was a junior counselor at a summer camp in Ohio. We had a small turntable and just a couple records, if I recall correctly: one was Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars." We played it continually, all summer. 
      By fall I was a Bowie fan, for his flair, the drama of his music—"Ziggy Stardust" is a dark tale of apocalypse and murder, a theme continued on "Diamond Dogs." His bleak worldview helped me navigate the self-generated crisis of adolescence. I remember coming home from high school, putting on the "David Live at Tower Philadelphia" album to the "Diamond Dogs" track, clapping on a pair of headphones and crawling under the desk to listen at full volume. 
     "This ain't rock and roll," he cried. "This is genocide!" 
     I have no idea what that meant, but it sounded good. Plus Bowie was cool, so fabulously hip that just listening to him imparted a bit of contact coolness, even to a chubby Ohio teen with a bowl haircut. 
     The album that came out when I was a senior, "Low," is not his most famous — half the songs are instrumentals, winding, jazzy Brian Eno-influenced numbers. But his "Always Crashing in the Same Car" certainly spoke to me—I wrecked both my parents' cars—and "Be My Wife" certainly did. "Sometimes I get so lonely," he sang. "Sometimes I get nowhere."
     I only saw him sing once, in 1980. He was touring for his "Berlin" album. In my recollection, he stood motionless behind a synthesizer and never so much as said, "Hello Cleveland!" True to form—he actually disliked having to perform—but also disappointing, as a fan, because Bowie was one of those rare stars, like Bruce Springsteen, who you wanted to look back at you. He never did, an artist lost in his art or, maybe, just too aloof. 
     Bowie kept putting out hit albums. "Heroes" was another one of those songs that was a soundtrack to my life. "You, you can be queen. And I, I'll drink all the time..."
    His star kept getting bigger. "Let's Dance" was elegant and sinuous, showing a song could be a hit and have a beat while avoiding the idiocy of disco. And then he just went away, living on some island, it was said, with his wife, the Somali fashion model  Iman.
    Bowie acted in movies—"The Man Who Fell to Earth"—that were strange and wonderful. 
    In recent years, he returned. New music. A retrospective of his life that toured world museums, a living scrapbook, tribute and not coincidentally, record promotion. He always was the consummate businessman. People lined up for hours to see it at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
    I did too, not so much in tribute to Bowie or my teenage self, but because my oldest son, Ross, loves him.  The boys grew up watching "Labyrinth," a kid's movie that had Bowie playing a goblin king to a teenage Jennifer Connelly and the Muppets.  He did that sort of off-beat thing—he was cool enough to pull it off, whether singing "Little Drummer Boy" as a duet with Bing Crosby, of all people, or recording  Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. 
     I remember Ross at 16, playing "Ziggy Stardust" and giving me one of those "What is dad making of this?" looks. I said, "Given that I had that album memorized, word for word, when I was 16, and can sing it for you now, if you're looking for me to be shocked, I'm not."  And then I began the album's first song,  "Five Years." 
     "Pushing through the marketplace...so many mothers sighing," I warbled, before he begged me to stop.
     Just Friday we were in Vintage Vinyl in Evanston—records are back; my kids buy 'em. They had the brand new Bowie album, "Blackstar," which came out Jan. 8, his 69th birthday. I held it up for him to admire,  though, at $38, that's all he did. 
    "I can get it online," he said. 
    So Bowie, the man, ended his story Jan. 10, to the sorrow of his friends and family. But the musician, artist and cultural figure will continue, so long as there are teenagers looking to see their turmoil reflected somewhere, and adults hoping to borrow a bit of bottomless cool and something good to dance to.

Surrendering to Powerball

     I didn't win the Powerball lottery Saturday night.
     Neither did you. Nobody did.
     Shocking, I know, because, well, we had our hopes, didn't we?
     I'm still surprised that I played, twice. So $4 of that a $1.3 billion being given away, maybe, Wednesday is mine.
     Or was.
     I'm a little embarrassed to admit I played. Mr. Logic. Mr. Rationality. Voluntarily paying the Stupid Tax. It's almost as bad as visiting a palmist.
     Well, like any sinner, I have my excuses.
     The first time was a few weeks ago, and a machine made me do it. I popped into the 7-Eleven on Shermer Road to buy a Sun-Times — my wife had taken ours to work. There was a new machine set up by the doughnut case. Designed, no doubt, to relieve the endless pressure on the clerk who has to sell both tickets and Slurpees. I had $2; why not try out the machine? It worked.

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"They have no problem talking to a robot." Meet Paro

     I am not what is called an "early adopter." I have not summoned an Uber car, though I've ridden in one conjured up by colleagues, and I've downloaded the Uber app on my iPhone, inching toward the big moment when I shift from licensed cabbies to piecework drivers.
     And I didn't pet a Paro until Friday, a dozen years after the robotic baby harp seal was created and started showing up at nursing homes and hospitals, and long after it became something of a cultural touchstone, parodied on "The Simpsons" and well-covered in the media.
     Still, it was news to me—I had stopped by the Japanese External Trade Organization's Chicago office, to pick up some background information for a trip to Japan in March for Mosaic, the London web site of medicine and science. Since I'm writing about kawaii, or cuteness,  my contact at JETRO,  Robert Corder, thought I might enjoy meeting Paro.
     And I did, if "enjoy" is the word you can use to describe the slightly vertiginous feeling you get when you glimpse the unfamiliar future hurtling toward us.

     Paro is not a toy. It is a $6,000 robotic baby harp seal that has audio, light, touch and temperature sensors, microprocessors. It bobs its head, looks at you like an inquisitive pup, practically begging to be stroked. It can bat its long eyelashes, and coo and trill in an appealing, lifelike way. 
       "They actually recorded baby harp seals, in Canada, to get the sounds just right," said Corder. "The shape itself, you have to hold it." 
     I admit that it is something easier to pick up than put down, and we ended up passing it to each other as we talked. The robots are made in Japan, but the company selling them, PARO Robotics, is based right here in Itasca. 
     Paro was designed by Takanori Shibata, a Japanese engineer who wanted to develop a robot that would be useful to people.  At first he considered making a robotic cat or dog, but people tend to prefer one or the other, and had pre-set expectations about how cats and dogs should look and behave.  On the other hand, not many people have held a baby harp seal.  Paro was approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a Class 2 medical device in 2009, and is found in hospitals and treatment centers around the world. The seals are useful motivators when dealing with autistic children, for instance.
    "They use it for kids who have ADHD, Asperger's and autism," Corder said. "Those kids can have a hard time connecting, so they teach them to talk to Paro. They have no problem talking to a robot. The teachers will use him as a teaching tool. They use him for breaks. 'Let's take a break and you can have some Paro time.'" 
     In retirement homes, Corder said, Paro not only comforts lonely seniors, but lures them into social interaction. 
    "The people come out of their apartments, come out of their rooms, down to the common area," he said. " They don't bring it to your room. So if you want to have time with him, you have to come out of your apartment. It's a whole strategic use." 
     I felt like a farmer gawping at a Model T, and what made me believe this sort of thing is going to grow bigger and bigger, and not just be a passing fad, is that I kept looking at Paro, which was batting his eyes and cooing and almost demanding attention, instead of looking at Corder, who is just another human being. 
    That no doubt troubles some, and I admit I had qualms floating around myself. Should not every dementia patient and troubled child have human caregivers and live comfort animals? Sure, in an ideal world. And a pony for the children. But in our real world, with an exploding population of elderly with dementia, caregivers will be a scarce commodity, and if comfort is found in robots such as Paro—and it is, studies around the world show—where is the harm?
    Paro made me think of our small dog, Kitty, and another initial, half-hearted mental reservation was, naturally, this robotic seal would not really love its owner the way a dog does. But that love is also a projection. I just think Kitty loves me, because I want her to and she seems to. Just like Paro does.  

Okay, I'm stupid too....

     Yeah, I bought a Powerball ticket. Friday, on the way to the train. 
     Stupid, I know. Because I'm not winning. Nobody is winning, at least nobody has for the past nine weeks. Which is why the jackpot is $800 million. The media focuses on that enormous, nearly-a-billion buck payout, and not the fact that you could have bought every single ticket sold for the past two months and change and still not won.
     But I bought a ticket anyway.
     Why? I suppose because I was hungry, which might sound strange. I had a small salad from home for lunch, now it was late afternoon, I popped into a Corner Bakery. I didn't want to buy a 600 calorie muffin. So I bought the smallest thing in the store, a 99 cent ruggalleh (a little cookie-sized square pastry, for you non-Jews).  It cost $1.10 with our highest-in-the nation tax. 
    So a buck plus shot to momentarily bat back hunger, and no chance at all for the Mount Everest of cash. That softened me up. So when the hand-drawn sign saying "$800 million jackpot!" or some such thing, in the window of the convenience store in the Civic Opera building caught my eye, I had just spend almost as much on next to nothing, and I knew I had two singles in my pocket. 
     What the hell? Why not?
     Lots of reasons. A sucker's bet. A vote for innumeracy, for failing to grasp the reality of long distances, long spans of time, long odds. The odds of winning the Powerball lottery are the same as the odds of picking one person at random from the population of the United States of America and having the person you randomly select be Barack Obama. I played the Powerball a month ago, because they had set up a machine at the 7-11 in Northbrook and I wanted to try the new machine out, and I didn't hit one of the six numbers you need to match. It's like setting out on a journey to Alpha Centauri and making it to Lincolnwood. 
      The glib line is that you are paying for the dream, and I did think of what I'd do if I won the money. Ready for something sad? My dreams of avarice were a new driveway and siding on the house. 
     The truth is, even those who win, which I won't, half the time end up wrecking their lives with the money. They were happier without it. Just as money can't buy a personality or a heart, as Bruce Rauner proves, so it can't buy happiness either.
     Sigh. So putting down two bucks on the same irrational stupidity that leads people to anti-vax theories and the belief that space aliens are watching us, and airing my small-bore dreams of adequacy in the bargain.  Chasing the same empty dream that turns cooing babies into Bruce Rauner, forming his fingers into pyramids and cackling over his piles of gold.
    Well, honestly, just to see that trait laid bare is worth two bucks. And picking up shirts on Saturday morning, the dry cleaner and I had a pleasant Powerball exchange. And my youngest and I passed five minutes actually talking to each other about how we'd spend all that dough. So I did get my two bucks worth after all.

All we need to do is...

     Readers get the impression that my mail is a septic stream of insult and craziness. Part of that is my fault. I tend to find the insanity more noteworthy than the common sense. It stands out more. But sometimes I get an email that amazes me in its lucidity. Such as this, from Linda Barnes, reacting to my column on what needs to be done to reduce police shooting. It's brief, to-the-point and very big picture, and I thought I'd share it. Not so suggest that any of it would be easy. But how could we imagine the solution would be easy?

      I enjoyed reading your article, "Tasers Won't Help, So What Will?" I agree with your suggestions that police restraint and luck would help, and especially that "everyone needs to try harder." But even with trying harder, there's only so much that can be done, because it is such a mess that needs to be undone. To keep it simple, I would suggest we start by moving in the direction of legalizing drugs, thus largely eliminating the prime reason gangs are shooting and killing people in Chicago. Then, I think we need to ensure there are enough well paying jobs in the area. This is starting to take place with the technical/industry hubs that are forming in the city. Lastly, we need to ensure people are qualified to perform the jobs. This can be accomplished by schools providing technical job training and tutoring, as well as individual and family counseling. 
     We are starting to move in that direction with the specialty community colleges. I think it would be good to start it in high school, which some other cities are doing successfully. What hit home for me this morning is how much preparation goes into developing a young person to be ready for their first day of work. My 21 year old son just left for his first day of work as an Auditing Assurance (Accounting) intern and as I snapped a photo of him in his professional clothes, I realized the lifetime of preparation for this (from the day he started kindergarten until now). This is what all young people need to succeed and if they aren't able to get it at home, I think schools should step in.

     Thanks for listening and thanks for writing such effective articles.

If Tasers won't help, what will?

     The paper allots only 750 words for this column, so an occasional elephant in the room gets deliberately ignored. Wednesday's observation that Rahm Emanuel's tasers-and-training Band-Aid won't solve the problem of police shootings left one pachyderm hiding behind the curtains. Readers were quick to point him out:
     "It is easy to show how everything he is doing or proposing is wrong," wrote Roger Hirsch. "But I didn’t see anything in the column that suggests what you think he should do to get Chicago back on track. Not even one single idea."
     Fair enough. Though tight space is only one factor, just as important is this: I try to never be the Advocate for the Impossible, and putting chips on police culture changing is a sucker's bet. They are machines designed to resist change.
     Still, the CPD is always toward the top of the list nationwide when it comes to shooting civilians. What should it do?

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Get well soon, Terri!

  

     Media personalities come and go, particularly on radio, where DJs land in the Chicago market with a splash and then disappear just as quickly without a ripple. 

     And then there is Terri Hemmert, my fellow Ohioan, always bright, always good-natured, sincere, direct, knowledgable, enthusiastic. And always there. She has been on WXRT 93.1 FM for more than 40 years, and it was worrisome news to hear Thursday that her last program for the time being is Friday. She has cancer, as she announced with her typical candor, is undergoing surgery on Monday, and will need at least a month to recuperate.     
      I am confident that many, many Chicagoans share the deep respect and affection — oh, hell, say it — the love that I have for Terri Hemmert, and join me in wishing her a speedy recovery and quick return to the airwaves, where she belongs. Here is a tribute I wrote to Terri when the city declared her a civic treasure in 2008. 

     A good radio station has a personality, a flavor, almost a smell -- there's an unmistakable fresh-laundry-snapping-on-the-line bleachiness to WGN, for instance, with Judy Markey and Kathy O'Malley chatting over the backyard fence and Orion Samuelson putting the John Deere into neutral, climbing down from the cab, squinting at the horizon and telling us how the soy bean crop is doing as he wipes his big hands on an oily rag.
     Then there is WXRT, which for a generation of Chicagoans is the radio equivalent of Thai takeout -- an essential element of city living, both familiar and exotic, peanuts and limes, nutritious and sinful, an essential luxury that makes up for all the hassles.
     The main course of WXRT is Terri Hemmert -- "Aunt Terri" to her loyal listeners -- who is being celebrated tonight as a "Chicago Treasure" at the Chicago History Museum. Terri just passed her 35th anniversary at the station; she joined as an announcer and public affairs director. In 1981, she became the first female morning radio personality in Chicago, and ever since her calm, soothing voice and musical laugh have been an anchor in a world of flux and madness.
     How did a girl in Piqua, Ohio, get into radio?
     "I wanted to meet the Beatles," she explained, over lunch at Volare on East Grand. "I saw a picture of Jim Stagg interviewing Ringo Starr." So she sought out the famed disc jockey -- who also ended up in Chicago.

     "He encouraged me," Hemmert remembered. "He said, the first thing, 'Don't let anybody talk you out of it.' So I hung in there."
     Eventually she would meet Ringo ("I hope it was worth the wait," he told her) and Paul McCarthy ("Now it's like we're old friends," she said. "I think that's so cool") and hosts a Sunday "Breakfast With the Beatles" in addition to her weekday duties.
     She also has taught the history of rock 'n' roll for 30 years at Columbia College.
     "I love teaching," she said. "That's my favorite thing; I love those kids."
     I observed that teaching is hard, students often intransigent. Hemmert said that's the part she likes.
     "I love getting slackers and whipping them into shape," she said. "Because I was a slacker."
      She is energized by the station's recent move from Belmont Avenue to NBC Tower.
     "I'm still in awe of this city," she said. "I'm thrilled to be downtown."
     Of course, some believe a certain scrappiness went along with being on Belmont Avenue.
     Has not the corporate behemoth -- the station is owned by CBS -- changed WXRT?
     "People always say that -- that being owned by a corporation affected the station," she began.
     "Well, it isn't as if you play 'Penis Envy' anymore," I added, mentioning a satirical Uncle Banzai ditty that Terri once played daily.
     She smiled.
     "WXRT has always evolved," she said. "We still play new music. We still play R&B, we still play the blues, which is very, very rare. We're a mix of old and new. People sense that we're there, and we have a commitment, and that's great."
     The lovely thing about Terri Hemmert is how excited she still gets about playing music and teaching music and being in this city. She could have moved. She had offers that might have nudged her up the career ladder.
     "I love Chicago so much; what a great city," she said. "I like Chicago more than I like radio. I'll die here."

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

     In honor of Terri Hemmert (whose favorite song, "In My Life," lent the headline to her item) a Beatles joke:
     Q. How many Beatles does it take to change a light bulb?
     A. Four.
     John to come up with a light bulb. Paul to claim half of the light bulb. George to complain his lights bulbs are never considered. And Ringo, to actually change the light bulb.
                               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 19, 2008