IMAN Green ReEntry rebuilds homes, lives

Rashid Grant, 38, who spent 20 years in prison for murder, rehabbing a home in Chicago Lawn as part of Green ReEntry, a program of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network.

     Last September, Jack Appleton, 62, was living in a shelter, looking for work. The search wasn’t going well, thanks to one aspect of his career that sticks out on a resume: 13 years in prison for bank robbery.
     “Most people don’t even want to talk to you,” Appleton said. “I just was looking for a chance.”
     Jack Appleton’s chance finally came.
     “I had just got out of Pekin, and was looking for a job and a place to stay,” he continued, pausing Monday morning from work rehabbing a brick bungalow on Fairfield just off West 63rd Street in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood. “I heard from word of mouth about IMAN.”
     IMAN is the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, a nonprofit organization designed to strengthen bonds between black and Muslim Chicagoans. IMAN’s programs include a medical clinic, outreach to store owners, and Green ReEntry, which helps the recently incarcerated get work experience and housing. We expect felons who have served their time not to return to jail, yet few employers are willing to risk hiring them. Green ReEntry not only helps them, but their community too.

To continue reading, click here. 

This is why the Republicans lose

     This is why the Republicans lose. Because you cannot stop time. It moves, forward, relentlessly, whether you like it or not.
     Oh, you can try. You can block nomination of a new Supreme Court justice to replace the deceased Antonin Scalia, out of the patently-offensive notion that Barack Obama no longer represents the will of the people in the last year of his term. You can announce that the court will just have to wait for that 9th justice. You can do that.
     But the Supreme Court still hears cases. And the 4-4 deadlock announced Tuesday means that the lower appeals court ruling in Friedrichs v. the California Teachers Association stands, denying the lawsuit by a group of California teachers who argued that forcing them to pay union dues was a violation of their 1st Amendment rights.
     The irony is, had Congress done its duty and approved Obama's choice, Merrick Garland, he very well might have sided with the conservatives. We'll never know, will we?
    Thanks Mitch McConnell. You can't hold back time. It squeezes around you and moves forward with or without your approval. 

At least he didn't say 'Work will make you free."

     "My policy is America first," Donald Trump told Fox News Monday, "and will always be, America first."
     "America first."
     Really?
     Though anyone in the least bit historically-minded is already cowering in a paroxysm of disbelief, watching this presidential campaign in open-mouthed, Edvard Munch-strength horror, Trump's words have to send a new shiver across our blown-out sensibilities. 
    The America First Committee, the bund of isolationists and Hitler boot lickers that thrived for a year before Pearl Harbor, funded by xenophobes like Robert McCormick, starring sieg-heiling erstwhile hero Charles Lindbergh. It fought to make sure America was as unprepared for war as it could be, under the charmed notion that Herr Hitler and his allies would leave us alone as long as we didn't antagonize them.  Trumpeting safety, it endangered the country, leaving us vulnerable.  
     FDR, whom they loathed, warned them.
     "Let no one imagine that America will escape," he told Chicagoans during a visit in 1937, "that American may expect mercy, that this Western hemisphere won't be attacked."
      This is exactly what Trump et al believe. If we bar immigrants and refugees, we can somehow keep terrorists at bay. It is a theory that imagines all bad things hovering outside our borders. All we have to do is not let them in. When the truth is far more complicated. 
     I can't even insinuate that Trump intended the reference as a dog whistle to his terrified rabble of followers. Even if he weren't ignorant of the past, his supporters certainly are—a chunk of America doesn't even know there was a World War II, never mind sweating the home-front details—and only resent when the obvious parallels between Trump and Hitler are pointed out: the stoking of support based on demonizing already-scorned minorities, the barely suppressed—so far—calls to violence.  
     You really should watch the Fox News clip where Trump says it. They play a snippet of Barack Obama suggesting we should let more refugees in. Then they cut to Trump, who reflexively wildly-exaggerates what Obama has said into talk about "open borders" as if Obama had invited the world in. As if they really don't know that America's current refugee policy is a profile in cowardice. Our country has let a couple thousand Syrian refugees in the past year, while Europe has welcomed millions.  Even if terrorists were among them, pointing to terrorist acts as an argument against immigration is like pointing toward a car wreck as an argument for a 10 mph speed limit.
      Haters see risk in the things they already hate. They can't grasp the risk of America turning its back on its values, on the thing that made us a great nation to begin with, not to mention providing the grease our economy needs to work. They don't see the harm of being a ghetto of white ignorance that feeds the phenomenon in the first place. 
    Perhaps the most galling thing about Trump is that he is not alone. His success is due to his shouting things the GOP has been whispering for years. While Trump is acting as the Harold Hill of haters, high-stepping toward the White House with trombones at full blare, the House of Representatives passed HR 4731 out of committee Monday. The "Refugee Program Integrity Restoration Act,"  would reduce and cap our already minuscule refugee admissions, allowing timid state and local governments to opt out of letting any refugees in at all. 
      This isn't "America First." This is "Fear First."

Playboy: not many sexy pictures, but lots of Don Cheadle

     When I heard that Playboy is for sale — its supposed worth, about $500 million — my first, unvarnished thought was: "Who's going to buy the magazine? I wouldn't buy a copy of the magazine."
     Last fall, when Playboy announced that they would no longer publish nudity, I wasn't even curious. Who cares? The world has hurtled past them.
     Now I realized that journalistic rigor demands I get my hands on an issue. Look at the thing. They used to send them free to the newspaper, where the fat brown envelopes, with discreet "PEI" — Playboy Enterprises Inc. — return addresses, would stack up, unopened. Life is just too short to browse $10,000 stereos and endless variations on the same pneumatic airbrushed babe.
     No more. I felt a trickle of dread at the thought of buying Playboy. There's still a whiff of shame associated with buying pornography.
     Tried the 7-Eleven at Franklin and Lake. The magazine rack had Maxim—the bawdy lad mag that kneecapped Playboy. The store also had the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, eating Playboy's lunch.
     No Playboy. Hidden behind the counter? No.
     Ditto for the CVS on Madison. Scientific American but no Playboy.
     The newsstand at Union Station carries it. At the register, I babbled to the clerk that this copy is for research.
     "There are many varieties online," she replied, enigmatically. "Do you want a bag?"
     "God yes," I exclaimed.
     Safely at home, I looked at it.
     Lo, how the mighty have fallen.
     The cover is matte, not glossy. A model wearing a pale blue bra, her hands braced behind her hips, pelvis thrust forward, hair in her face, a flash photograph that has the feel of a snapshot of your older sister taken at Wisconsin Dells in 1974.
     One hundred and six pages, total. Five pages of Playboy product ads—bunny logo baseball caps, Playboy cologne. Marketing is what keeps Playboy afloat, supposedly.
     Two photo spreads. The first, shot by Molly Steele "celebrated for her serene images of nature." Half a dozen of perhaps the most un-erotic photos ever to appear in a magazine not dedicated to dentistry. The third particularly sticks out: a woman in a lake, her head resting on her hand as if supremely bored, her face blocked by a brown clump of weeds. In the last, she clutches a sheet, tongue lolling out, no doubt intending to invoke Miley Cyrus, but more an expression of nausea. I can't imagine a horny 15-year-old boy would find interest in any of them.
     The second set, of Miss April, Camille Row, are a little better. Playboy centerfolds used to be shot in swank Victorian mansions; now, framed against beige shag carpets and goldenrod curtains, which I'm sure struck the Playboy editors as raw and real, but just looked tired. I showed the centerfold to my wife and she said, "That's not a flattering picture."
     There are articles—an interview with actor Don Cheadle, a short story, candidly titled "Insipidities," I soldiered through the tale, and could criticize it, but am too grateful to see fiction in a magazine in 2016. It brought to mind Samuel Johnson's quip, "the remarkable thing is not that it's done well, but that it's done at all."
     Which might be an epithet for Playboy. Nobody who works for a publication can take pleasure at its decline—we're all cooking in the same pot—and Playboy is as Chicago as the stockyards. Hugh Hefner, a proud graduate of Steinmetz High School, created it right here.
     But the first obligation of anyone intruding upon the public's attention is to be interesting, and, while acknowledging that I am not the target audience, I just couldn't see anything in the April Playboy—not one thing—that justifies tracking it down and paying $8. Maybe if you are really, really interested in Don Cheadle. But even then. Plug "Interview with Don Cheadle" into Google and nearly half a million hits come up.

Happy Easter!

     A number of readers wrote to wish me Happy Easter, which is nice of them. I appreciate the sentiment even though, truth be told, I'm Jewish, and don't celebrate the holiday in any fashion. Not even with the consumption of a single jelly bean — not on principle, mind you. I'd eat the jelly bean if one were to come my way. 
     But none did.
     Indeed, I didn't realize today was Easter until a few days ago. It sort of snuck up. I hope that isn't insulting — some people have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that other people believe other things. It seemed like a callous neglect.
     It might be hard to believe, but growing up, I had no idea what the Easter story was until I saw the movie "Jesus Christ Superstar." Why would I? The subject never arose. It's a moving  story, and I can see why people recount it year after year.
     One reader, knowing my inclinations, wished me Happy Passover instead. But Passover doesn't come for nearly another month, at the end of April. The two might be twinned in the public mind, like Christmas and Hanukkah, but their occupying the same section of the calendar, roughly, is purely coincidental. I accepted his wishes in the spirit intended.

     I wouldn't have marked the holiday, but my pal, Michael Cooke, formerly of the Sun-Times, now editor of the Toronto Star, read my piece today on cemeteries, and sent some lovely photographs I wanted to share. They are of the burial ground and environs outside of St. Mary's Church, in the town of Kirby Lonsdale in Northern England, where he attended services last week.     
    The church is near the town where he grew up—he has relatives buried here—and parts of it date back to Norman times, making them nearly a thousand years old. 
     A reminder that this religion stuff has been with us a very long time, and if we approach it with a spirit of respect and appreciation for our fellows, there's plenty of good in every faith. Religion is a tool, one that can be used to ennoble or to tear down—you can use your faith to love others, or blow them up. The Christian faith inspired Easter, and its promise of rebirth, built and tended this gorgeous Anglican church for a millennia. Yet it is the same faith that inspired numerous  readers to write in this past week, and not pleasantly, explaining why their religion demands that they care about the birth gender of people using public restrooms, which is just daft. 
     But let's save that for another day. Happy Easter. I hope it was restful, fulfilling and happy for you. My wife and I spent an hour walking through the Chicago Botanic Garden, and while our lilies and crocuses are not quite as far as they obviously are in Cumbria, we enjoyed observing the Easter finery of the men and women, boys and girls who had come to stroll after church. 

Pause at cemeteries

     I pause at cemeteries, then go in. 
     Don't you? It seems the thing to do.
     Though I'm not sure why. It feels like dull curiosity, at the moment, a mild historic interest. Almost something embarrassment, prying in the affairs of others, treading on their graves.
    But it's something of an obligation too. These people lived, they loved, they died, as shall we all, and left these traces, claimed their little space, a private country, eighteen square feet of territory made sovereign by their headstone forever.
    The least we can do is glance at them as we pass by, at this little garden of eternity.  
    Well, maybe not eternity. Not, in fact, forever. Nature is forever. Humanity is the frost on a pumpkin, the charge on a battery. Headstones melt in the rain it turns out, at least marble and limestone do. Granite lasts a bit longer, but those will crack or be carted off in their turn. It's only the illusion of permanence, to comfort the bereaved among us.

     Me, I find comfort in their ephemerality. Because it reminds us that for all the effort we put into our works, our careers and houses and such, great or small, it adds up to nothing, long term. A bigger monument, a plinth, a pylon, a crypt, which only makes the passerby shake their head at the irony, the futility. "Benjamin F. Barge" and his cap and gown and steepled glory is just as dead as the guy under an unreadable mound of softening stone. Reputation helps him no more than anonymity hurts the other. 
    How many people waste how many years piling up those stones? Stones that most people, truth be told, never contemplate at all.
    Though there is good in doing so. I hiked up a steep hill in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania last October to look over the cemetery. I did it the morning I left, as if it were some duty that had to be performed before I was free to leave the town. Because it was there.
    I pause at cemeteries, then go in, Because, coming out, I'm gladder to be alive. 

Roll on, Big O....

     The mind's a funny thing.
     When I was in Japan, I saw Lawson stores everywhere; they're the second most popular convenience store in Japan, after 7-Eleven, with some 11,000 outlets all over the country.
     And I immediately knew I was familiar with them.  That before 7-Eleven, before White Hen, there had been Lawson's in Ohio, where I grew up.
     Lawson's began as a dairy in Akron, Ohio, in 1938. As the stores spread, they threatened the milk man monopoly -- you didn't buy milk in stores, y0u had it delivered. Lawson's began the practice of selling milk in gallon jugs, and battled milk inspection laws as they spread their stores —as many as 700 in Ohio and three neighboring states, 200 in the Cleveland area alone.  They also fought the Ohio blue laws that kept stores closed on Sunday.
     But I really didn't think about their sudden appearance all around me. I hadn't seen one in decades. Lawson's sold out to Dairy Mart in 1985 and the stores were renamed. I hadn't seen the familiar, comforting, familiar, fat white milk bottle on the blue shield in 30 years. But I instantly accepted its presence, a survivor in the Far East.
     All I thought was "What a great logo."
     It wasn't until I got back home that the full memory returned. We were having breakfast Sunday morning. Edie had set out some orange juice, a new brand, and I was reading the ballyhoo on the label. "Squeezed daily" it said.
     Rollllllll on, Big-O,....
     Suddenly, I was hearing music in my head.
     Get that juice up to Lawson's in 40 hours. 
     A TV commercial, making heroic "The Big-O Orange Run," rushing fresh orange juice up to vitamin C deprived Ohioans.
     Now one man sleeps while the other man drives, on the non-stop Lawson run.
      Of course the commercial is on-line.
      And the cold, cold juice in the tank car caboose, stays as fresh as the Florida sun.
     Now we're used to living in a small world. If our roses come from South America, our bricks from China, well, that's how it works. But once upon a time racing that OJ up from Florida was a big deal. It was something to sing about.