"Though the frost is cruel" certainly rings true

The Stoning of Saint Stephen by Domenico del Barbiere (Met)

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen
When the snow lay 'round about
Deep and crisp and even

     Kinda late for Christmas carols, ain't it Neil?

     Not really.

     For as many times as you've heard the bouncy opening lines of "Good King Wenceslas," have you ever wondered exactly what "The Feast of Stephen" might be?

     Of course not. That's my job.

     The Feast of Saint Stephen is today, Dec. 26, also known as "Boxing Day." A holiday in Britain and Canada.

     While the Feast of Stephen honors the first Christian martyr of the same name, Boxing Day has nothing to do with pugilism. 

     Rather, it was a day when Christmas boxes were delivered to the poor and to tradesmen—an early form of re-gifting, I assume. You took the fruit cake you didn't want, re-wrapped it and delivered it to the butcher.
    As if that weren't enough, today is also the first day of Kwanzaa, the holiday created in 1966 for black people who wanted a Christmas unsullied by white folks—and given the way white people leave claw marks on Christmas, the stink that Fox News sorts makes over questions like what color Santa Claus should be, who can blame them?
    That's too glib—Kwanzaa is really a celebration of African cultural heritage, and whatever its roots, Kwanzaa is now more of an auxiliary celebration than a replacement. It's there if you want it. Maybe I've been cocooning extra hard, but Kwanzaa seems muted this year—perhaps the trickle-down effect of Trump's general racial contempt. Perhaps people keeping their heads low. Perhaps I am mistaken. 

    With Christmas, 2017 in the books, it's time to begin performing the rites on the year. Typically, in the media, that consists of re-burying celebrities who died over the past 51 weeks, of highlighting the various horrors that occurred, and surveying where one could go to party on Dec. 31.

     I'm not sure I have the stomach for any of that. 

Saint Stephen

     Last year's dirge for 2016 still seems sadly apt.  We already had a sense that Donald Trump wasn't going to rise to the occasion of the presidency, but rather would pull the office down to his level of pettiness, narcissism and deceit. Though it was shocking just how readily an army of GOP quislings lined up to flatter and applaud, that wasn't entirely unexpected either.  Enough; it was bad enough living through 2017, forgive me if I pass on the opportunity to reprise it. 

      Not that we want to forget history. Every time someone speculates whether evangelicals will survive supporting Roy Moore, or Trump, or whatever jaw-dropping moral wrong they're endorsing at the moment, I feel compelled to observe that Christianity endorsed both slavery and Jim Crow for several centuries and came out just fine. It'll survive this too. As St. Stephen reminds us, mythologizing wrongs committed against your own faith while shrugging off crimes your faith commits against others is what religion does, has done, and always will do. Don't hate me for pointing it out.

Aire Ancient Baths brings Roman luxury to River West

  
 
     When I wrote about "111 Places in Chicago That You Must Not Miss"—the column where I go to Englewood to get a cup of coffee—I spoke with its author, Amy Bizzarri. We talked a bit about Red Square Spa, and she mentioned this new Greco-Roman bath that had just opened, too new to be included in her book. I asked her if she planned to write about it, and she said no, so I snapped it up. That's TWO columns I've gotten from her. Thanks Amy.

     What do Chicagoans have in common with ancient Romans?
     Beside living in a crumbling empire ruled by an unstable tyrant, that is.
     Well, we've got our own Roman bath now.
     Aire Ancient Baths Chicago, 800 W. Superior, opened late last month.
     Doing my due diligence, I noticed something surprising: The Tribune, Crain's, Chicago Magazine, TV stations, all noted that a Spanish company was opening a 20,000-square-foot bath complex in the basement of a rehabbed 1902 paint factory in River West. Then all overlooked one vital step in the journalistic process: The actually going there part.
     As a former card-carrying member of the Division Street Russian Baths, I sensed an opportunity, and visited Aire last week.
     But not before getting in the spirit by reading Seneca's Epistle 86, where he discusses Roman baths. Seneca habitually praises the simple life, as only a fabulously wealthy man can, and so lauds the rustic baths of yore, with their chinks admitting light, so superior to the marble splendor of the baths of imperial Rome, with their big mirrors and fancy windows.
     Seneca's scolding, combined with Aire offering a $450 bath in Spanish wine, inclined me to expect over-opulence. A place for Trump-era plutocrats to percolate away their excess cash.
      So I was pleasantly surprised, walking in, to discover Aire has found the sweet spot between spartan and excessive. The tone is not gilt but exposed brick and rough-hewn beams. You are assigned a white glass locker, change into a bathing suit — it's co-ed — and little black water shoes, then plunge into the bath complex.

To continue reading, click here. 

A visit to the old Division Street Russian Baths.

The Men's Bath, by Albrecht Dürer (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Not everybody understands the importance of sometimes stopping what you're doing and just relaxing. Water helps. Tomorrow I'm reporting on Chicago's newest public bath, which I visited last week because I am a fan of its oldest, the Division Street Russian Baths, opened in 1906 and surviving to this day under the unfortunate name of the Red Square Spa. 

    To get us in the proper aquatic mood, today I'm re-visiting the old Russian baths toward the end of their existence, in the late 1990s. 

     Monday, 8 a.m. Just one customer at the Division Street Russian Baths: me. "No people because it's Monday morning?" I ask, hopefully, of one of the masseurs.
     "No people every day," he says.
     I undress, wrap myself in a sheet, and head downstairs, pondering this mystery. "No people every day." I haven't been here in a year. I used to go all the time. My brother and I were members; we'd try to slide by once a week to take the heat and get a massage before breakfast. It was great.
     But life got busy. He's busy. I'm busy. Everybody's busy. I've been meaning to get here for a long time, but was galvanized into action by something a computer consultant was quoted as saying in this newspaper: "My time is super-valuable."
     That sentiment clung to me for days, like grime, and I felt the need to steam it away.
     I greet Jimmy, who—after not seeing me for at least a year—asks about my brother. "He's real busy," I say. Jimmy steers me over to say hello to his dad, Joe.
     Joe Colucci, the owner of the baths, is 92 years old. He's a former Kaiser-Frazer dealer. That was a kind of car. Before selling cars, he was a bigshot with the Herald-American. That was a newspaper.
     We talk. I tell Joe he's looking good. "I'm a cripple," he says, pointing to an aluminum walker that he didn't have last time I saw him.
     The baths are one of what I call "second-tier Chicago treasures." The first tier are places like the Water Tower or the Art Institute. They're institutions that are not going anywhere. You don't pass the Water Tower and worry: "Boy, I hope nobody decides to pull that down." You don't pay your entrance fee at the Art Institute and think: "There! That'll keep them in business for another day."
     But the second tier—they are also institutions, they also make Chicago what it is. But their futures are less certain. When I drove over to the baths, for a frightening moment, I thought they were gone. I would have been shocked but not surprised. Who can spare a few hours to sit and take the heat? We're all busy. Our time is super-valuable.
     Some institutions shift: Wrigley Field used to be second tier; now it seems safely first tier. The Music Box Theater on Southport is second tier, bucking the huge social shift caused by videotape. You buy a ticket, you not only see a classic movie, but also perform an important civic duty.
     The baths are swimming against a social current even stronger than videotape—indoor plumbing. When they were built, in 1906, few working-class people had their own bathrooms. You shared. They were crowded and foul. Going to a public bath was a luxury. The Park District ran dozens of them. There were dozens more private bathhouses. Only Division Street is left—a Roman senator could walk in, take one look at the hot and cold pools, the masseurs, the birch branches, and know exactly what was going on.
     Downstairs is eerie with no one in it. The big empty shower room, the fixtures high up on the wall, cascades of water pouring from them. None of those modern austerity fixtures, hurling a trickle against your chest.
     The empty steam room. I take the worn piece of wood—it might have once been a 2 x 4, and lift the handle on the metal oven door. It clangs open, and I stoke a half dozen scoops of water from a large bucket onto the glowing red stones—you have to do it just right or you'll scald yourself. The steam rolls out of the oven, and I can feel the heat rising as I take my seat on the dark wooden benches.
     After about 45 minutes, I go upstairs to the sleeping room, to get a massage. The sleeping room is a large, dimly lit chamber, with six metal single cots and two massage tables. I don't think there's another room like it in the city. You lie on your back, on a single metal bed fitted with clean sheets, and look at that pressed tin ceiling, painted white, with flickering shadows from the spinning fans. It's an image out of Ellis Island, out of Nelson Algren.
     A brief rest, then back downstairs, for more heat, a scrubbing with a rough sponge, a dip in the cold pool, more heat. A handful of customers—no more than six—arrive by noon. I had planned on spending two hours, but accidentally spent four. Difficult to pull yourself away from the steam room—so hot, it makes all the so-called saunas in health clubs seem like tepid, moist places. Will it be here next time I come back?
     Where else can you sit, parboiling in the heat, waiting for the moment when you seize one of the black rubber buckets filling under the taps and dump a blast of revivifying cold water over your head? That sounds harsh, but feels great. It wakes you up. It makes you feel super-valuable.

              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 28, 1998

Good soup

     Business took me to Superior and Halsted Thursday afternoon—more about that on Monday. When I was done, I realized that, rather than head downtown to Union Station to catch a train home, I could just proceed straight west.   
     It was a two-mile walk, but I had Jonathan Eig's excellent Ali: A Life to listen to on my phone, and was in no particular rush. I'd have plenty of time to intercept the 3:55 at the Western Avenue Metra station.
     Condos gave way to industrial buildings. Some big Museum of Contemporary Art warehouse. A lot of construction—men tearing down buildings, putting up additions. 
    I slid over to Grand Avenue and realized I was hungry. My business at River West required me to percolate myself in hot and cold pools, and the turkey sandwich I had at 11:30 ran out an hour ago.
     A Starbucks loomed into view and I briefly considered sliding in for a mid-afternoon cup of coffee and some kind of baked good. But the food at Starbucks ... ewww, right? It's what you eat when you don't have the option of eating anything else. I decided I'd rather be hungry. 
     And who knows? Some local establishment might present itself.
     As if to reward me for that line of thinking, a few minutes later a pleasant little place, Tempesta Market, materialized on Grand. I went in.
     My attention concentrated, naturally enough, on the gelato. I don't think I've had any gelato since we were in Rome last April. A friendly young woman named Danielle asked if I'd like a taste. Sure, the pistachio please. It wasn't bad. Your basic pistachio gelato send up from central casting.  Not quite worth the calories to eat.
     I explored the rest of the store. Their first sandwich was called "The Dante"—hot soppressata, mortadella, finnochioa, six meats in all. Danielle told me that the name was picked by Tempesta's general manager to honor the sandwich's spiciness, which instantly won my loyalty. Samples of ham and cheese were set out. I tried those, plus toast smeared from a large chunk of deep red substance—nduja—that tasted like a kind of dry chorizo, perfected by owner Tony Fiasche, from a family recipe dating back five generations. Interesting and complex. But not what I was hankering for.
     And then I noticed a chalkboard describing soup: "Kuri-Kuri. Red Kuri Squash Soup. Creme Fraiche. Curried Pistachio and Toast."
    "Is it good?" I asked.
    "It's good," said Danielle. 
    "Give me the soup," I said.
     Hail chef Mike Rivera (How many storefront markets even have a chef?) The soup wasn't too heavy or too sweet, not too hot or too anything. Just perfect. And it looked beautiful. Look at that soup. A mid afternoon joy, beautifully presented, for five bucks. The buttery toast was tasty too.
    Don't overlook the thick cloth napkin under the bowl. I also had one on my lap. A really beautiful napkin, its green line echoing china coffee cups in old diners. Soft. Thick. The kind of touch that communicates to a patron that the restaurant cares, and is paying attention. Somebody has to wash that napkin, and dry it  and fold it. A lot of work. But excellence and a lot of work tend to go hand-in-hand.
    I returned my empty bowl and went on my way buoyed. Yes, the day got complicated after that. Turns out the 3:55 is one of the few trains on the Milwaukee District North Line that doesn't stop at Western. I watched it thunder by and thought. "At least I have my phone." Which went from 50 percent power to flatline dead in my hands, perhaps due to the cold. 
     Which is funny, because last week I switched from paper train tickets to e-tickets thinking No worries, the good old Apple never ever dies. 
      But I had a solid base from the soup and toast, had the presence of mind to go into the station—a truly empty, creepy room from the 1930s that looks like a black and white crime scene photo after the bodies were removed—and let the phone warm up. 
     Sure enough, it had just enough life to flash the conductor on the 4:15 my ticket, and the day recovered its sense of order and rightness. Next time I'm going for the Dante sandwich because, really, how often do you get the chance?


   

Henry Ford, America's hateful square dance instructor

     Strange.
     Social media is awash in conspiracy theories — another word for confused persons trying to window-dress reality into something they can understand and accept. The dust hadn't settled after Amtrak's Washington State crash before right wingers were blaming it on their bogeyman of the moment, the anti-fascist movement Antifa.
     Then an actual real-life conspiracy gets unearthed and people just shrug on hurry on. If it doesn't buff their biases, they don't care.
     I was flitting around Twitter this week when I happened upon an article by Chicago freelancer Robyn Pennacchia on Quartz, a web site run by The Atlantic Magazine.
     I don't like to echo the work of others. But OMG.
     The headline says it all — "America’s wholesome square dancing tradition is a tool of white supremacy" — and explains the reason countless kids in countless gym classes have been swinging their partners round-and-round for the past 90 years. It is not — as I supposed — some vestige frontier tradition that lodged in public school physical education and somehow survived the lash of time, but a direct result of ... well, better let Pennacchia explain it:

     To understand how square dancing became a state-mandated means of celebrating Americana, it’s necessary to go back to Henry Ford... Ford hated jazz; he hated the Charleston. He also really hated Jewish people, and believed that Jewish people invented jazz as part of a nefarious plot to corrupt the masses and take over the world—a theory that might come as a surprise to the black people who actually did invent it.

     I knew that the inventor of the Model T was a poisonous anti-Semite, an inspiration to Adolf Hitler and the only American mentioned by name in Mein Kampf. But the jazz stuff is new. Pennacchia quotes volume three of Ford's The International Jew, written in 1921:

To continue reading, click here.

Never think about hot-from-the-oven bagels

     Certain food is so good that you cannot seek it out on your own volition. You must not even allow yourself to think about it, but wait to be prompted by others.
     Lou Malnati’s pizza comes to mind. I live a three-minute walk from the Northbrook branch. But for 17 years I have never, ever, said, "Let's get a Lou Malnati’s pizza." Because if I let myself to say that, even once, I would say it every day, and then where would I be?
     As it is, I order it plenty, usually because my older son is home, and requires being greeted with Lou Malnati’s on his first day back. It's tradition. 
     However. He was just here in November, to celebrate Thanksgiving and attend "”Walkure,” though not in that order of significance. So when he came home for Christmas break, rather than order Lou Mitchell's, we decided to shake it up, and go to Pequod's, whose nearly-burnt deep dish is almost as good as the etherial Burt's Pizza.
     As it happens, Pequod's screwed up our order—they gave our pizza to another table, who discovered it wasn't theirs by beginning to eat it. After half an hour we were informed. That wouldn't have bothered us—things happen, particularly in restaurants. We were talking, catching up, having fun—but what annoyed us is that the waitress never came over to either bring the bad news or apologize. She sent the manager to do it for her, and never returned to our table for the next hour. I considered that bad form, and Pequod's dropped out of my heart—I decided to satisfy my desire for caramelized deep dish at Burt's and, should I ever feel tempted to go for a change of pace, to resist that temptation and still go to Burt's.
     But that isn't what this about. What this is about is what happened afterward. We had to go to Northwestern to pick up some paperwork for my younger son. On the way, it was suggested that we stop by New York Bagel & Bialy, 4714 Touhy in Lincolnwood, to pick up bagels for breakfast the next morning. 
     We did, ordering a variety. When I received the bag, I felt that some were still warm. Very warm. Fresh from the oven. Hot. 
     Of course they were. New York Bagel & Bialy is open 24 hours a day. The bagel place that never sleeps. There's always something fresh from the oven. We immediately divvied up an everything bagel. We didn't eat much—we had just had pizza and salad and fried mushrooms remember. 
    So we each had a quarter bagel. Just a couple bites. But that was enough. Hot. Fresh. Fantastic. The best damn thing I'd eaten in a long time.
     "Why don't we come here more often for fresh-from-the-oven bagels?" one of the boys asked. 
     A reasonable question. I had the answer.
    "If we allowed ourselves to do that," I said. "It would be all we'd ever do."

Republicans and the death of truth

     Donald Trump is not the only politician who can let his mouth fall open and utter a lie so bald it takes your breath away. 

     There is also Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. 

     Did you hear his remark at the late-night press conference celebrating Congress closing in on birthing the GOP's horrendous and obscene tax reform bill? This giveaway to the wealthy, the pillage of middle and lower income America that it's been preparing in secret and ramming through the House and Senate?
    McConnell said:

     "After eight straight years of slow growth and under-performance, America is ready to take off."  

     Words fail me. Which doesn't happen much as a writer. Sincerely, they do. So instead I am going to share a graphic. This is the stock market under Barack Obama's administration, with Trump's tacked on the end:

    Am I the only person who remembers the economy Obama inherited in January, 2009? The banks and financial service companies imploding? The car industry about to collapse? I understand partisanship, and it is nothing new. But this is the death of truth. This is disease. This is mendacity so extreme it is alien to both our country's past and its future. Yet people believe it. Lying Republicans have joined hands with a shameless right wing media to create a sector of the electorate that will believe anything, accept any premise, that lives on fantasies and delusions and conspiracy theories. That runs on malice. The kind of partisan blindness we are used to reading about in dystopian fiction. Black is white. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. This is our future unless patriotic Americans who value the freedom of truth find a way to stop it.