Meep-meep

   
 
     I came to awareness in a particularly mediocre time for children's cartoons, the mid-1960s. Huckleberry Hound. Beanie and Cecil. Magilla Gorilla. Not exactly art for the ages. Not exactly "Krazy Kat." The Flintstones wasn't bad—we didn't know it was a bald rip-off of "The Honeymooners." But it was on at night; intended for adults. People forget that.
     Luckily, there was relief, in the form of Warner Brothers cartoons. They had begun their lives in the 1940s in theaters, part of the elaborate set piece that was going to the movies, along with newsreels and travelogues and such, intended to pad the intervals between features. They had ended their useful cinematic purpose, and were now pressed into endless duty in the saw-dust floor vaudeville of Saturday morning VHF television. There they stood out like a Fabrege Easter egg set among plastic ones: funny, well-produced, fast-paced, artistic, mini-movies. They easily withstood being watched over and over and we did.
     Of course I was a Bugs Bunny fan, appreciating his mordant wit and detached style that at the time I didn't realize was lifted from Groucho Marx. The Road Runner tended to bore me, with its constant chases and desert dry locale and hardly any witty dialogue at all. The occasional boast or "ulp" from the inevitable loser, the sputtering mockery of "meep-meep" from the inevitable winner.
     But the cartoons did give us a classic trope, a metaphor, a stock character in the form of Wile E. Coyote or, as he would put it, in an arch, thespian voice completely at odds with his mangy, underfed demeanor, "Wile E. Coyote"—pronouncing it "Kie-oh-tay"— Genius." It was on his business card.

    He came to mind Friday afternoon, frozen in that eternal moment after he has grabbed at the Road Runner and plunged over a cliff, that instant where he looks at the viewer, his pupils dilating, before hurtling to earth with a twanging "Ptooooo," and then the Doppler effect whistle of a falling bomb.
    How very like the Republicans,  fulminating against ObamaCare for years, pinning their hopes on the liar, bully and fraud Donald Trump, grabbing at the prize, too crazed and egomaniacal for caution, then tumbling to earth at their own hand, with only each other to blame. The whole quest, a fervid revenge fantasy straight out of "Moby-Dick"—maybe Ahab would be a better motif for today, but let's dance with who brung us.
     The Republican replacement of ObamaCare was certainly a Rube Goldberg device on par with the elaborate Acme contraptions that our unfortunate canis latrans would uncrate and attempt to use to snare our his swift nemesis, inevitably with disastrous results.
    Wile E. was the definition of pride, going before a quite literal fall. As are Paul Ryan, et al. Swelled with the wealth of their business masters, and the power they wield, or could, if they could only agree, they view those who think otherwise, who, oh for instance, see the value of helping people get health insurance with such utter contempt, they are so certain, they failed to notice the American people tiptoeing out of their tent. Only 17 percent supported their American Health Care Act. They elected Trump to repeal and replace ObamaCare, not spike it and replace it with a thinly-disguised jackpot for the rich. The Republicans always insisted it would be replaced with something better, or at least similar. Not gutting the health care of 24 million Americans to put more money into the pockets of the wealthy, all for the chimera of "access" and choice, an obvious dodge that operatively was like a tyrannical father throwing his children in the street, explaining that he doesn't want them limited to the narrow range of choices in his poor larder, but is encouraging them to sample the cornucopia the world has to offer.

     Being geniuses, they just assumed the gullible public would just fall for whatever has they served and, I suppose, given the election of Donald Trump, they had good reason to think they might pull it off.
     Though if there is any moral here, the failure of the Republican efforts to pass their sham health insurance plan is a reminder that believing you're a genius and actually being a genius are two very different things.
     I don't want to treat lightly the national tragedy that is the Trump administration, nor the disastrous Republican Congress ripping up the planks of civil, decent, intelligent society. But this latest, biggest, most risible failure of a string of failures has to be encouraging to those of us in the fact-based world. To see Trump chortling, still, about the potential collapse of ObamaCare—something that could still happen, given the country is in their hands—you'd think he doesn't realize there are millions of American lives involved. And of course he doesn't.

 

A joyous mother of children, thanks to Planned Parenthood

Tre and Courtney Everette with their children, Dru, left, and Kinlee. 

     Adults waved off Courtney Everette's painful menstrual cramps. Just part of the joy of being a woman, the teenager was told. Deal with it. So she did, for years. Until one day when she was 17, staying with her grandmother.
     "She recognized things seemed a little more intense," said Everette, now 35. "I was really rundown. The level of pain was getting worse."
     Her grandmother took her to the hospital. Doctors diagnosed endometriosis, a condition where the tissue usually forming each month inside a fertile woman's uterus instead grows outside it, in the abdominal cavity, leading to scar tissue, cysts, pain.
     Added to those woes, for Everette, was fear of infertility.
     "Even at 17, I knew I wanted to be a mother," she said.
     Endometriosis can be treated, however.
     "I was lucky," Everette said. "My doctor told me my best option was to use hormonal birth control, and that would reduce pain and preserve my fertility."
     Time went by. She attended graduate school at DePaul.
     "Back then, you got kicked off your parents' insurance at 21, 22. So I got booted and found myself unable to afford the hormonal birth control I needed to manage my endometriosis," said Everette. "I called a good friend, crying, and told her 'I'm in pain and really worried this is going to hurt my chances to be a mother.'"
     The friend replied: You're in a big city. Chicago has to have a Planned Parenthood.
     It does. So Everette went...

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Shedd fish food for thought

 © Shedd Aquarium/Brenna Hernandez

     Today is my 30th anniversary on staff at the Sun-Times. Last year, I marked the day by posting a favorite story, and I think I'll continue that tradition.
     Though it does seem an apt moment to pause and ponder: 30 years at the paper. Quite a lot really. How did that happen? Just lucky, I guess. The opportunity arose, I gave it a try, and kept beavering away while the industry fell apart around me. Kind of like Sweet Pea crawling through a clangorous construction site in a "Popeye" cartoon. Whenever I got to the end of one girder, another arrived and swept me to safety.
     It's a good job—work at something I enjoy, with like-minded professionals, generally, plus good pay and benefits. Old salts rhapsodizing their own careers tend to overlook the latter, as if it's beneath notice. It's not. When my side of the political spectrum is ululating in horror at our fellow citizens who voted for Donald Trump—how, HOW could they do that?—I try to remind myself that I am employed, have been for decades, that whenever I jam my hand into my pocket there is money there, and how very, very disturbing it would be for me if that were not the case.  
     Still, working in the same place for nearly a third of a century can seem timidity. In my defense, I took some breaks. A year when Ross was born; three months for Kent. A few months to visit my brother in Japan. A few for a book. Some time for rehab. Close to two years away, total, which I think is beneficial in any career. Didn't earn as much as would be the case had I never stepped away, but I had a better life.
    Nor did I cling desperately to the job. I kept my eyes open. I did quit once, handing my polite resignation letter to the editor-in-chief. But he talked me off the ledge.
     I went in at 26 and now I'm 56. My whole life only to find myself on the downward slope. But not, I believe, coasting. Not yet gone too far into decay. Still pedaling hard. 
     Regrets? I am in no way a Big Cheese. No $20,000 Clarence Page speaking gigs in Paris. I bet that's nice. I would have liked to been a George Will-like player for a while, my face set in a mask of self-importance, striding into the White House to canoodle the president.  
     But as T.S. Eliot said, "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." I never phoned it in. This work was always important, to me if to nobody else. It was what I wanted to do with my life and I did it, and it was fun, and I like to think I was good at it, and am still good at it. The Trump enormity reminds us that this stuff is important, or can be, if people only pay attention to it.
     I didn't write to cause change, which is good, because I didn't. My highest goal is to hold the interest of readers, and I think I do that. To think about life, and sniff out compelling facts. An ideal story, in my eyes, has three things: a good lede, a few astounding facts, a few strong quotes. This story has all three. A concise, surprising start. One of the favorite facts of my career—what the Shedd Aquarium uses to make seawater. The "oh wow" moment when I noticed the big boxes of the stuff. And the ending quote, I'm proud of drawing that line out of her. 
    And I'm also proud of how the story came about. It didn't arrive as a press release. It was my idea. I had to badger the Shedd. The notion that someone would write about how they feed fish, well, it just didn't scan.  "Most people can't keep a goldfish alive" "I implored. "You feed tens of thousands of fish every day." Eventually, over years, I wore them down, or more likely just found the right person to ask, and someone relented, allowing me to look behind the scenes. The Sun-Times gave it the space it required, and played it prominently—pages 2 and 3.
    Anyway, to the story. Thanks for reading these past 30 years. I think I have another decade left in me. I hope you stick around.

© Shedd Aquarium/Brenna Hernandez

     Fish eat fruit. And vegetables. Some do anyway. Lungfish nibble lettuce. Stingrays eat their peas, though floating peas will clog a tank's filter if you're not careful. The Shedd Aquarium goes through about 4 tons of fruit and vegetables a year.
     Aquatic creatures have a range of surprising eating habits — some turtles like bananas. If you asked which eats more, an 80-pound sea otter or a 2,000-pound whale, most people would probably guess the whale — much bigger — and they would be wrong. It's the otter. Otters have no blubber, and thus must consume a quarter of their body weight every day to stay alive.
     When you think of feeding fish, what do you imagine? Tapping a small canister of dried fly flakes over Goldie's bowl? Just doing that can be enough of a challenge. What must it be like to feed the roughly 32,500 animals housed at the Shedd Aquarium? Seven days a week, 365 days a year?
     How do they do that?
     "Everything is compartmentalized," said Michelle Sattler, the Shedd's collections manager. "We have reptiles, birds, mammals, invertebrates, fish. We have everything." (People might forget the Shedd's birds: 20 penguins, plus two owls and two hawks).
     Sattler's particular responsibility is the Caribbean Reef, a 90,000-gallon tank housing hundreds of fish, from 60-pound stingrays to butterflyfish weighing a few ounces. Divers go into the reef to feed the fish, which I always thought was purely for show, but has a practical purpose — some fish are aggressive and territorial, and if aquarium personnel just dumped food into the top of the tank, as with goldfish, half of the fish would starve to death while the other half got fat.
     Yes, fish can get fat. That's why the Shedd keeps track of what many animals in its care eat, particularly larger species, and uses clickers to train some fish to eat on cue.
     Piscine competitiveness makes hand-feeding less fun than it looks — it isn't all floating around and answering tourists' questions. Divers can get beaten up by hungry rays.
     "The stingrays in the Caribbean Reef, they're big and they're strong and they can be bullyish," said Sattler. "They weigh 60, 70 pounds and they can push you around, if they feel like they can get away with it."
     What else do fish eat? Just about everything. The Shedd uses 100,000 crickets a year. Plus tons of a seafood gel. Then there's regular seafood — the Shedd buys a quarter million pounds of restaurant-grade seafood each year — shrimp, herring, squid, mullet, mackerel. The staff checks over every last smelt in the Shedd's five kitchens.
     "We have a crew that start at 5 a.m. We do a quality sort that usually takes four hours," said Madelynn Hettiger, senior trainer, of the marine mammal department. "We look through every single fish, to check for missing eyeballs, to see there are no tears or breaks in the skin, no freezer burns" (important because bacteria that could harm the Shedd's fish could settle in the cuts).
     If you've ever grumbled about the admission price at the Shedd ­— and who hasn't, with an adult pass being $28.95? ­— think of those ravenous sea otters.
     "It costs more to feed five sea otters than all the animals in the oceanarium combined," said Hettiger.
     Increasingly over the past decade, the Shedd raises its own food for its animals.
     "If we can grow our food here, we do," said Mark Schick, manager of special exhibits. "There are several advantages ­— one, we know we always have it." Which isn't always the case when grub is jetted in. The Shedd has had some nervous moments in the past due to shipping snafus, suddenly out-of-business fisheries and the occasional gulf hurricane. It isn't as if you can serve your sea lion a few TV dinners while waiting for FedEx to track down that shipment.
     "If you want to get a cheeseburger, there are many places out there," said Schick. "If you want mysid shrimp, there are very few places out there."
     Thus hidden from visitor view, in low spaces behind the tanks, is a burgeoning effort to raise food — water fleas, crayfish, rotifers — for the Shedd's collection.
     "It's far less expensive to grow food here than to ship it priority overnight," said Schick.
     Living food is necessary, because some fish will eat only moving food and won't touch prepared food. They also have to raise food to feed the food that feeds the fish. That explains the 24 bubbling gallon bottles of algae, the various shades of green denoting degrees of maturation. (The Shedd also makes its own sea water using — what else? — crates of Instant Ocean, "The World's No. 1 Sea Salt.")        

     One mainstay of the Shedd food program has an unexpected nostalgia connection — mysid shrimp — which have the benefit of being able to stay alive in suspended animation until needed and mixed with water, a talent developed in dry African lake beds, which gave them a passing fame under a different name in the back of comic books.
     "Sea Monkeys," said Schick. "Remember when you were a kid?" He feeds the quarter-inch-long brine shrimp — which, contrary to the comic illustration, do not have faces or hands, but look like tiny translucent grains of rice — to the Shedd's sea horse and sea dragon collection.
     "If we were buying them, it would be hundreds of dollars a week," said Schick. "Raising them is a fraction of that."
     As with most people, fish crave variety in their diets.
     "Salads are great for you, but you don't want salad every day," said Schick. "With fish, it's the same way. We like to spice up their diet and enrich them with living moving targets." Sometimes food is frozen into ice blocks, or tucked inside feeder balls, just to keep it interesting.
     As much a routine as feeding fish at the Shedd is, as with human food, there is an aspect to feeding that transcends the physical. The staff, which sometimes names the fish under their care, develops attachments to certain fish and demonstrates those attachments through food.
     "I have a fish that, for me, is very coveted," said Sattler, who has been at the Shedd for 14 years. "It's a beautiful little fish, When I took the exhibit over there was one individual of this specifies, I saw it, it was smaller, hanging out in the corner, I asked, 'What is that fish?' They said, 'That's a boga.' It's beautiful."
     She encouraged the Shedd to collect more bogas.
     "I have a group of them, kind of like my babies," she said. "Even though the exhibit gets fed four times a day, I like to go up to the top and sprinkle food for them."
     Because you love them?
     "Yes," she said. "Because I love them."

                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times March 3, 2013

© Shedd Aquarium/Brenna Hernandez

Pablo Neruda, your guide to the Home + Housewares Show

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     "Amo las cosas loca, locamente," Pablo Neruda writes. "I have a crazy, crazy love of things."     

     Me too. So I seldom miss the International Home + Housewares Show, which ended its four-day run at McCormick Place on Tuesday. No one tells me to go; I just do, for the joy of wandering around, checking on old favorites — Igloo is 70 years old, and now sells coolers lit from within by LED bulbs. Noticing new trends: everything is organic, or else silicone.
     The show is so vast — 2,200 exhibitors, 62,000 attendees — it helps to have a plan to approach all these sponges, buckets, hangers, trash baskets. The great Chilean poet's "Ode to Common Things," a series of 25 poems lauding commonplace objects, sounds as good as any. The Nobel laureate begins with a general "Ode to Things" and the line above, then gets specific, fast.

     "I like pliers...."

     "One of our best-sellers," said Perrine Giacomazzo, marketing director at Kikkerland, a company founded to market Dutch design (the name means "frogland"). She explained that putting wood on the seven-in-one multitool made it into a popular gift item.

     ". . . and scissors."

     "The popular one is this one," said Naomi Ogawa, secretary at B.H.P. Industries in Japan — half of the show's exhibitors are from overseas. She is referring to the "Almighty" titanium coated multi-purpose kitchen scissors. "The five-in-one. We have five functions, like can opener, driver thing, walnut cracker. This one is for peeling fish skin."

     "I love cups, rings, and bowls—"

     "Bowls are the new plates," said Nicole Ramos, sales manager at Denby USA, the American arm of the 200-year-old British dinnerware manufacturer. "A shift on how the millennials and people of today are eating and entertaining. People don't entertain like they used to, not these big family gatherings or formal dinners anymore. We've recognized that, and shifted our focus to people who just sit and eat dinner in front of the TV, and if you eat dinner in front of the TV it's safer out of a bowl than a plate."

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"It's not my wife's cooking but we have to eat"

    Given the constant tarantella of confusion and malice that is the Donald Trump administration, missteps from a few days ago take on the air of ancient history. But somehow his budget spiking Meals on Wheels, and his underlings' insane defense of scrapping such an important program, seem to epitomize the short-sighted meanness of our government. 

     It has been nearly 20 years since I went around with a volunteer from The Ark, delivering meals to the homebound elderly. But their need and gratitude are a vivid memory, and the cheery determination of the volunteers, which will continue with or without government support.

     Abe Ginden takes a gnarled, work-worn hand and affectionately pats the top of a covered aluminum pan.
     "She's nice," he says, referring to the food platter as if it's the elderly lady whose name is scrawled on top -- one of 30 shut-ins receiving meal deliveries from Ginden through a program run by the Ark, a Jewish social service agency.
     Ginden knocks on the door. "FBI—open up!" he jokes. But the woman on the other side doesn't want to open up. As do many clients this particular day, she tells him to just leave the food outside and go away.
     "I get this every day," says Ginden, 69, setting the food down. " 'Leave it at the door.' They don't want to get out of bed."
     About 31 million U.S. citizens were age 65 or older in 1990. The figure will balloon to 70 million in the next 30 years.
     For the portion of these people who become infirm, the choice will be either institutionalization or relying on home services such as the Ark's, which not only provides food but a link to the outside world which -- accepted or not -- is offered every day.
     If the rejections bother Ginden—a World War II Navy vet -- he doesn't show it. At every house he says something pleasant, either through the door or into the intercom.
     "Hot stuff!" Ginden shouts, pressing the buzzer for the apartment of Harry and Rose Goldberg.
     The Goldbergs not only let Ginden in, they are waiting—beaming—in the hall to welcome him into their modest 1-bedroom apartment.
     Harry Goldberg, 85, is 5 feet 10 inches tall and 116 pounds; he is the very definition of the word "gaunt." Still, he appreciates the food.
     "It's not my wife's cooking, but we have to eat," says Harry of the Ark's food. "She was a terrific cook, and I'm not saying that because she's my wife."
     "You can't have everything," says Rose, his wife of 62 years, who at times seems distracted, as if listening to music far away.
     "She's got her ailments," Harry says.
     Both agree that Abe Ginden is as important to them as the food.
     "The best," Harry says. "He's a doll. There's not enough he can do for us." Harry's voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper: "He'll bring in extra rolls. I don't know if it hurts him with the company, but he brings us bagels. Sometimes, a challah."
     "It's such a nice service," Rose says. "And this kid here; they don't come any better."
     Harry was with Globe Glass for 40 years, and fought as a 60-mm. mortar gunner in the Pacific. "Five hundred and seventy-five went in and only eight came back," he says.
     Ginden chats for a while, then returns to his route. Many of his customers have grave illnesses.
     "Cancer," Ginden says of a client before ringing the bell. "He's all cut up. A nice guy. It should happen to a dog and not to him."
     But the cancer patient greets Ginden at the door and updates him on his situation while accepting the foil pans of warm food.
     "Forty days in the hospital," he tells Ginden. Of the food he says: "Very good."
     The service is not free; clients pay as little as 50 cents a meal and an average of $4. "It gives them pride to pay something," says Edna Traube Feldman, the Ark program's coordinator.
               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 4, 1998

Not having health insurance can be as deadly as terrorism

  

     March 6. Two weeks ago. Does the date stand out in your mind? It should.
     On that day President Donald Trump signed his second travel ban, denying visas to residents of six predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days and barring all refugees for four months.
     The order was called "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States." The administration argued for its necessity using words related to protection: security, safety, risk. "We cannot risk the prospect of malevolent actors using our immigration system to take American lives," said Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly.
     Also on that day — the same day — Republicans offered up their plan to dismember Obamacare.
     No one spoke of protection or risk. Instead, Obamacare was being dismantled in the name of . . . what's that word Paul Ryan kept using? Right, "access." If the government stopped blazing a route to insurance, Americans would be free to wander into the marketplace and buy whatever insurance they like, the sky's the limit, provided they can pay for it — which many can't.
     So one measure, the travel ban, is being taken to protect American lives. The other, to give them access to options.
     But what if we took those two values and swapped them? Apply concern for access to the travel ban, and security to Obamacare. What would that teach us?

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Flashback 1998—Preschool: a matter of life or debt

    With Northwestern nearly snatching victory from Gonzaga—we was robbed!—Saturday afternoon, I fell to wondering what I'd written about my alma mater over the years. I tiptoed into Nexis and found of a 1997 column that was such a bitter keel-hauling of my alma mater that I just couldn't bring myself to re-print it now, not with my kid having two years to go there. 
    But I did find this, from the summer of 1998. I would point out that the toddler we ponied up the big bucks to go to pre-school—the Apple School, in the shadow of Cabrini-Green, if I recall—is now 21 and we're still paying for his school!  Though there was a break, here in the suburbs, and the end does hove into sight, at long last. One more year, and he finally gets to spread his wings and fly into life, his tank topped with expensive education, while his mother and I, our vitality drained by paying for it all, economically and emotionally, are discarded like two dry husks. Such is life.

     There was an article in Harper's awhile back by a man who had driven his family deep into debt. Despite an income, with his wife, of $ 100,000, they had been plunged into bankruptcy and ruin. Their home was beset by bill collectors and credit card companies, all demanding, in shrill and rising tones, the tens of thousands of dollars the family owed.
     What had brought them to such ruin? Gambling? Drugs? Psychic hotline addiction?
     No; private schools.
     The family has three children and, unwilling to subject them to public schools, wrecked themselves trying to pay for private education.
     I have been thinking about that family all week, brooding, like Saul in his tent, over their fate, the first whiff of which, I believe, I have just deeply inhaled. Wearing roller skates and poised at the top of that short slope to utter financial disaster, I felt the first sharp poke in my back.
     Our 2 1/2-year-old was accepted into a pre-nursery school for the fall.
     People who are reading this on farms, with the wind rustling the willows and their children playing out back with Spot the dog and Fluffy the cat, might not quite understand the concept of a pre-nursery school. "What kind of people would send their li'l ones away so young?" says grandma, coming through the screen door with a freshly baked huckleberry pie.
     "I don't know, Nana," says Bea, drying the dishes with a patch of homespun and gazing at her children, running through the rye. "It must be a city thing."
     You're right, Bea, it is a city thing. Though for the life of me, I can't understand it either. My mother didn't pack me off to preschool until I was 4, and then I made her pull me out because there were other children there and, frankly, I didn't like them.
     Two-and-a-half hours a day, three days a week. It isn't as if we're sending him away to a boarding school in Switzerland. (Hmmm . . .) Just enough to get him to learn to share his toys and finger paint and socialize with others and be spared the life of maladjusted elitism that, well, afflicts so many people nowadays.
     Then there is the break it provides his mother. A few gasps of air; the difference between swimming and drowning.
     My wife searched for a preschool with the tenacity of a young actress trying to land her first role, and with about the same initial success. The prestigious day care a block from our house (it's in a brownstone, like an embassy) rejected us with a form letter (a form letter addressed to a different child but sent to our home, to add insult to injury). Other places turned up their noses as well.
     Finally, the call came, just when she had given up hope. I was there when my wife took the call. It was like one of those Publishers Clearinghouse commercials.
     "It's pretty expensive," she said, a little later, after composing herself. "What do you think?"
     "Well," I said, "given the fact that you wept like a baby for joy when they called, I guess we sort of have to."
     Now, with so many columnists making up things nowadays, I want to point out that the above conversation really, truly happened. We also discussed whether we should pay for the school by not paying our real estate taxes. I called out after her, as she hurried to the school to give them our check, "Honey, remember to rob a liquor store on your way home."
     The preschool tuition, I noted with horror, was as much as the tuition I paid Northwestern University the fall semester of my freshman year.
     I'm certainly not looking for pity. I just want readers to understand that, when I start writing column after column about our cute little farm 50 miles away in Harvard, Ill., I didn't move out of the city on a lark.
                      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, August 25, 1998.