Chaos reigns as Mary takes it on the lamb

 

Metropolitan Museum of Art

   Busy day yesterday. A lot going on at the paper. Lunch with an old friend at the Tortoise Club, then down to South Shore for a column that you'll see next week.  Then up north to Evanston.
    Late night on campus, at Tech, watching the movies made by directing students, including a lifelong friend of the family. Dinner at midnight, which used to not be possible in Evanston, at The Farmhouse. Fun.
    Arriving home, I thought: I'll worry about it tomorrow.
    So now it's tomorrow, announced with the iPhone making a sound I didn't know was possible: some insane flash flood warning. Thanks nanny state. No matter. The explosive lightning strikes all around the house would have done the trick anyway.
    So...let's see. I passed the Erickson Institute the other day, a graduate school for child development specialists on LaSalle. And whenever I see the sign, I think of the column below, an ode to our public education system, the only time my column in the paper consisted entirely of a poem. Not the best doggerel, true, but much of it does remain apt, particularly at the end. Even a cameo by Paul Vallas, who is still lingering on stage. A bit might require context: the line about Trinidad refers to local school councils, the dreaded LSCs, which formed under the charmed notion that parents would make less of a mess of the schools than the professionals were doing. They didn't, the groups devolving into bitter power disputes where good principals were tossed over the side for not having the right identity bona fides.


Mary had a little lamb
With fleece as white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day
Which was against the rule
That calls for zero tolerance
Of animals at school

The teacher, Mrs. Martinet
Dragged Mary down the hall
To principal Joe Pecksniff
Whose brain was rather small

The principal phoned Mary's mom
Who hustled to the school
Wringing her hands in worry
While Pecksniff checked the rule.

There he found it, clear as day:
"No lions, tigers, bears,
or animals are allowed
on school grounds anywhere."

Now the matter could have ended
Had he turned the lamb out
But that isn't what Pecksniff thinks
Discipline is about.

"Three days' suspension," he said.
When Mary's mom came by
"Six days if you say a word."
And she began to cry.

What happened next is currently
At issue in the courts
Pecksniff says Mary struck him
Committing several torts.

The teacher insists she sustained
Assault by Mary's ma
Who has counterclaims, while the lamb
Through a spokesman, said, "Baaa."

A siren began to scream and flash
Above Paul Vallas' door
He gazed at the Incident Map
As so often before.

The bulb for Mary's school lit
The school board czar did sigh
And stood up, idly wondering
"What now, oh Lord, and why?"

Is some teacher showing porn films?
Did a sub bite a lad?
Are parents demanding their principal
Must come from Trinidad?

He straightened his tie while leaving
Can't look bad in the press
Always a chance for good PR
While cleaning up a mess.

By the time he got there, chaos
Too late to slam the door
Packed in Pecksniff's office --
Principal, mom, and more

Three cops, four social workers
Five lawyers in nice suits
While TV quizzed an expert from
The Erickson Institute.

The story hit the Sun-Times
And, three days later, the Trib
Channels 2, 5 and 7
Even Newsweek ran a squib.

I'd tell you how it ended
But such matters never stop
There's "Pecksniff v. Mary's Mom"
and "Martinet v. Cop."

Don't forget "School Board v. Lamb"
to be taught evermore
At John Marshall, Chicago-Kent
And law schools by the score

Mary became quite famous
For just about a week
Like the couple barred from prom
Or that boy who kissed a cheek

Remember, the Porgie Affair?
Lil' Georgie kissed a gal
And by the time adults were through
Nearly wound up in jail

A fate that Mary was spared
As both she and her lamb are white
Both sent only briefly to the
Audy Home overnight

At least Mary learned the lesson
Taught daily by our schools
That children must be the wise ones now
Since grown-ups are the fools.

    —Original published in the Sun-Times, June 18, 1997

Food as puzzle and delight — dinner at Alinea

     

     A shaving brush.
     Sable bristled, set on a white plate. Four white china bowls arrayed nearby. Plus a big wooden bowl of hot salt with tongs stuck in it, and a fancy seltzer bottle.
     We were at Alinea, Sunday night, the world-renowned 3-Michelin star Chicago restaurant. If you read Wednesday's column, you know the chain of circumstance that led my family there.
     If I had to encapsulate the experience in one word, I'd say "surprise." That, or "mystery." Alinea is food as puzzle and delight.
     What is the shaving brush for? I assumed it would be put its usual purpose, to whip up a lather, some froth having to do with the clam chowder. Molecular gastronomy restaurants—though Alinea prefers the term "progressive American"—are known for bursts of flavor, wafts of aroma, spoonfuls of tasty foam.
     That wasn't what the shaving brush was for, though ...
     We're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start at the beginning. A black non-descript building on Halsted Street. No name; it's not like they're expecting walk-ins. The web site warns you that if you aren't there at the appointed time--ours was 5 p.m.—you'll cut into your own dining experience. At 4:50 we reported to the front desk 10 minutes early, as requested.    

Grant Achatz, center, chef at Alinea.

     The surprise began at the greeting. No high formality, no brisk fawning of fancy French restaurants. A cluster of young folks, then we were ushered into a large room and sat in the middle of an enormous table, my wife and younger son on one side, the older and I—both lefties—on the other, with five feet between us. The table sat 16, and was decorated with big bowls of flowers.
     There's no menu. You eat what you are given. They dangled a wine course before us, and then brought excellent sparkling cider. We toasted the boys and talked for a while—if I had to say the best thing about the staff at Alinea, they never cut off a conversation. They excelled at absence, part of what I began to realize is a conscience effort to keep the spotlight on the food.   

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Restaurant memories

     An amuse-bouche is a little morsel served between courses to refresh the palate. The term is French—for "mouth amusement"—but isn't actually used in France. Rather, it's an American invention of the 1980s, ironically exactly when the iron grip of French cooking was really being pried away from American high cuisine. 
    Amuse-gueule might be the proper term in France, but I am not in France, and just as nothing is more off-putting than a white dude rolling the R in "Puerrrrto Rrrrico," so it's a little late in the day for me to start imitating a Frenchman. We are allowed, as I'm always telling my older son after he starchily corrects my grammar, to use the vernacular.
    So amuse-bouche it is. When I think of one, I think of the little icy ball of grapefruit sorbet they used to serve at New Japan between the soba noodle salad and the main course. New Japan was on Chicago Avenue in Evanston for decades—it's where my wife-to-be first met my parents. She wore fuscia—it was the mid-1980s. Then one day it became an Ethiopian restaurant. 
     Such is the way with restaurants. They're like stage plays: here for a while, then vanishing into memory, where they linger. That's part of what makes them precious. Once they disappear, they never come back (except of course, the Berghoff, which faked its own death in 2006 in order to fire its union wait staff, then reincarnated, not realizing that it was also betraying its loyal customers. Or maybe it was just me, but I never went back to check on the reanimated corpse, which seems to be kept alive with steady transfusions of clueless tourists).
     I hardly ever write two columns in a row on any subject. But after we ate at Alinea Sunday night, I knew that I'd have to explain how I came to pay the fare for Grant Achatz's 3-Michelin-star restaurant in Lincoln Park. Rather than let half the column be taken up with figures and rationalization, I decided to let Wednesday's column be all about the tab, and devote Friday to the actual dining experience. Which is actually the hard part, like trying to describe a symphony in words. "And now the horns come in..."
    Leaving today's blog post as the pause between Wednesday and Friday, between the appetizer and main course. 
    Since the subject is restaurants, perhaps a refresher, a tangy dollop of perspective that can't make it into the paper. Something small and cleansing.
    Restaurants are like travel; they frame life, add significance. Yet, like travel, they're also superfluous. You never have to visit Paris, or the Redwood Forest. But it's a very good idea, if you can swing it. 
    Just as you aren't required to eat at restaurants. You can eat at home for a fraction of the price. You can carry a sack lunch every day. People do. It's cheaper. And I don't want to skate by the hard times facing so many people. But I have a rule in this job: don't pretend to be someone you're not. And the hard times that are inundating many are barely lapping at my yard. This trio of pieces is proof of that. 
     So for those who can, to not patronize restaurants, like not traveling, is missing out on a joy of life. At least according to my value system. Each his own. I think I view eating out the way other people view sports—as something worthwhile that frames life and gives it meaning.
    So what makes a good restaurant? As a guy who has eaten out thousands of times, literally, in Chicago, I look for three key measures.
     First, the food. It has to be good. Which sounds obvious, but gets screwed up more often than not. Particularly new places. There's a restaurant space around the corner from our house that has seen three restaurants come and go in five years, and all for the same reason. Sub-par food. We'd try them a time or two when they opened. Just. Not. Good. Enough. A pizza parlor where the pizza was so-so. A Mexican place serving meh Mexican food. And a fried chicken restaurant with soggy fried chicken. We were pulling for them, rooting for them, hoping for them. And they let us down.
     That said, judging on food alone is impossible. If you asked me to pick a restaurant based entirely on taste, on peak mouthfeel experience, I'd be stymied. I'd say ... oh ... go to New York Bagel & Bialy on Dempster, get whatever bagel is hot from the oven, take it back in the car and eat that. That's the best thing you can put in your mouth in Chicago. Second best? Order a Lou Malnati's deep dish spinach and mushroom pizza with buttercrust and eat that at home.
    Note that neither is actually in a restaurant. Because food is important but it's also only the beginning. There is the space—the room, the tables, the chairs, the walls, the view, the ambience. The dining room at the University Club is like having dinner at Notre Dame Cathedral. Chicago Cut isn't my favorite steakhouse—that would be Gene & Georgetti—but that glass cube on the river. The food at Kimball Musk's Kitchen is good enough, but oh that room, tall and cool and sleek along the river. Even the bathrooms are elegant.
    Food and space aren't everything either. What makes Gene's better than Chicago Cut or Gibson's isn't the room—Gene's is like being in the 1950s basement of your mad uncle. And while Gene's steaks are indeed better—less greasy—that alone isn't why I love the place. It's the service, the third leg of the restaurant experience. Old line waiters in starched white aprons. Somber, almost grim men who go about their business with a monkish solemnity. 
     All the meals eventually blend into one meal, one sense of comfort and service and belonging. Old restaurants long gone live in memory. I can't tell you whether the famous spinning salad at Don Roth's Blackhawk was any better than any other salad. I first had it I was 15 and didn't even like salad. It was 1975. But I can see the tuxedoed waiter with the possibly fake French accent putting on a show for us, "Here at zee Blackhawk, we spin zee salad not wance, not tuh-why-ice, but sree times!" while my sister and I collapsed against each other, fighting laughter.
     Taken together, the food and the room and the service make a box we put memories in. When my wife turned 40, I made reservations at Tru, the swank place that Gale Gand and Rick Tramonto ran for years on St. Clair. They hadn't invented the pay-to-play reservation system, and as the day approached, my wife began to try to squirm out of it, quailing at the expense. I had to reason with her.
    "Remember going to Everest for our anniverary?" I asked. Just before our first son was born. She was eight months pregnant, big as a house but chic in her stylish new maternity clothes. "Remember what you wore?" I do. I can see her coming down the spiral staircase in our place on Pine Grove Avenue. "Remember what we ordered?" Buttery whole lobsters, paired with risotto topped with gold leaf. All of those memories would be gone—would never have existed in the first place—without the restaurant. If it wasn't expensive, fancy, special, a big deal we were dressing up and going to with a sense of occasion. We only went there once.
    I could go on and on, but the amuse-bouche is supposed to be a tid-bit, not a feast. You have your own restaurant memories, and I imagine they're just as precious to you. The experience is wonderful, while it is unfolding. But the memories are the thing you pay for, the thing you get to keep. 

Amazement at Alinea begins months before dinner, when you pay the tab

Grant Achatz in the kitchen of Alinea, his world-renown restaurant, where dinner can cost $420. Without wine.

     You know what's great about being a newspaper columnist? The pay. I'm not kidding. They just firehose money at you — well, at me anyway; others not so much — and the odd thing is, despite years of scrubbing my pits in this continual money shower, I never paused to appreciate just how bleepin' flush I truly am. The postponed home repairs and frequent breakdowns of our rusty 13-year-old van and the debt pit dug by two private college tuitions must have blinded me to my ridiculous wealth.
     Then in April, one event utterly changed my view of myself. I am rich, Scrooge McDuck rich, upper 1 percent, baby, at least when it comes to the purchase of really, really, really expensive dinners.
     My family ate at Alinea Sunday night.  One of the best restaurants in the world.
     And among the most costly. That part usually gets left out. Since any description of the actual dining experience would by necessity begin with my attempt to justify shelling out, ahh, $1,766.16 for one meal, best to get it out of the way, first, so I can relate to those curious — and really, who isn't? — what you get for that sum.
     Where to begin? Our two sons were born. Skip the next 20 years. They grew up, did well in high school, breezed through college, the younger finishing in three years. One graduated in May, the other graduates later this month.
     College graduates get a present. It's a tradition. I had ideas: Allen Edmonds shoes. Made in Wisconsin. I've been to the factory. Gorgeous. A pair of Oxford wing tips. Pricey, sure. But handy for all-important job interviews.
     No shoes? How about a pen? A real fountain pen? Nope.
     My older boy offered an idea of his own, almost jarring in its sweetness: Disneyland. He went to college outside of Los Angeles for four years, but had never been.

     What could I say? What would you say? "Gosh buddy, I'd love to take you and your brother to a couple days at the Magic Kingdom as a reward for 17 years of gerbil-on-a-wheel academic effort. But it's expensive..."
     "Umm, sure," is what I said, thinking gloomily: Disneyland was run-down when I visited 35 years ago.
     Time passed. The older kid, who studied economics in French at the Sorbonne, did the math. A hundred bucks just to get into Disneyland. Multiplied by four Steinbergs. Times two days. Plus hotel. And food. And mouse ears.
     Why not, he said, go to Alinea instead? He likes fancy dining. His brother too. It'll cost some $1200, about the same as Disneyland.
     Hmmm, two miserable sun-baked days eating curly fries at a jammed amusement park? Or a glorious dinner at Grant Achatz's world-acclaimed restaurant in Lincoln Park?
     What to do, what to do? I justified, mightily, dredging up every expensive home and car repair. That exploratory surgery on the cat: $1,400 on a dead cat. Here we get swank chow and no cats have to die. Plus the boys ... our little boys. They want this. My wife, frugality itself, who grew up in Bellwood and whose father bent metal pipe for a living, agreed to the folly.
     Now all I had to do was make a reservation. Here the amazement begins. You'd think that coughing into your fist that you are willing to shell out a mortgage payment for dinner would instantly garner a table. Wrong. At Alinea, diners pay upfront and seatings sell out months in advance. You need to plan. We agreed on a date—Saturday, June 2. Those seats became available ... April 15 at 11 a.m. At the appointed moment, I was poised online ... tapping, tapping ... in! Saturday night was already gone. Switch to Sunday. Adapt! Overcome! Could the boys go that night? Yes!
     I was so relieved to snag a reservation, it took a second to queasily grasp that the mind-boggling $1260 base price had, with 11.5 percent tax and 20 percent mandatory tip, grown to $1685.88. Maybe not so rich after all...
     So that's the story. As 5 p.m. approached on Sunday, I began to appreciate the wisdom of the pay-first system. Without it, I'd be tortured by doubts, gnawing second thoughts. I could see us all setting off for Alinea, but me instead driving madly north, hunched over the wheel, racing toward the Allen Edmonds shoe factory.
     Now, having already paid, there was nothing to do but show up and eat dinner.
     Which was ... well, I'll have to tell you Friday.
 

Contemporary Caravaggio

La Guia ("The Guide") by Rigoberto A. Gonzalez (National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.)

     If you go to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., you will see the expected portraits of the presidents: Gilbert Stewart's clench-mouthed George Washington, waiting for his rendezvous with a dollar bill; Lincoln, looking almost handsome, sitting pensively in a chair. 
     But half the building is the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and there you will find  both various art work, with an emphasis on the Victorian, as well as large temporary shows. 
     When I was there, they were showing examples of outstanding contemporary portraiture, including the above, by Rigoberto Gonzalez. 
     I liked it for its drama, the old-fashioned skill in rendering the human figure. It had the story-telling quality of paintings before television, and we wonder what is going on. Are they caught—they seem to be raising their hands. What are they looking at?
     Gonzalez was born in Reynosa, Mexico in 1973, and came to this country when he was 9 years old. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1999 and received his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2004.
     A fan of baroque artwork, he wants his paintings to tell stories, although of course the stories the painting tell in part depend on the viewer. The "guide" in this painting is the teenage girl at left, by the way, helping two older immigrants through a river toward their new home.  
    What story they are telling depends, in part, maybe in large part, in who is looking at the painting. How do you feel about these people? Concern? Contempt?
    They are of course the newest American citizens, or would, if we let them. That many would look at the above with only scorn and rejection—there is a lot of that going around—seems reason enough to post it here. Your grandparents might have come here through Ellis Island, but Ellis Island closed in 1954. 
    I looked into Gonzalez's work. He often uses violence in Mexico as a theme, such as, below, in the enormous 2011 canvas, "Shootout in the Border City of Juarez." Twenty-feet wide and nine feet high, he based it on renaissance crucifixion paintings. I'm only showing part of the painting, to see the detail.
       "I've always had this interest in doing things that are terrible and beautiful," Gonzalez once said. "My hope is that it has a cathartic quality to it. You can't keep suppressing it. I want you to talk about it, show the work, engage the public, start a discussion."
      Okay, I'll begin. Above the portrait of Lincoln is this quote from the 16th president:
     "The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."
    He was referring to the Civil War. Now we are engaged in a struggle equally divided, though not as bloody. Where are we heading as a country and in what light, when we turn around and view this era, 2018, will we think of ourselves, how we behaved, what we did and did not do? 

"Shootout on the Border City of Juarez."

Irish pro-choice landslide should resonate in the supposed land of the free

Hydra and Kali by Damien Hirst

     Simple question:
     When facing choices, do you prefer deciding yourself or letting someone else decide for you?
     What kind of choices are we talking about? Doesn’t matter. Could be something trivial: what flavor of ice cream to order. Or more important: what color to paint the living room.
     Or even something truly significant: what political party to join. What religion to follow.
     Got your answer? Good. Set it aside.
     This isn’t a trick. I’m not going to condemn you if you answer, “I want others to make decisions for me.” Many people do. They join fraternities, the military or other organizations where following directions is tantamount. Nothing to be ashamed of. There is a pressure in making decisions, a weight in assuming responsibility for your choices.
     Some alternate. I, for example, generally like to make my own decisions — chocolate chip cookie dough, white walls. Sometimes I yield to decisions made by others long ago: my parents were Democrats and Jews, so I’m sympathetic with the idea that government should help those in need and in no hurry to embrace unfamiliar faiths that seem even more contrived and arcane than my own.
     Sometimes I want someone else to decide: “Honey, which tie goes better?”
     So I understand, and even sympathize a little, with those who would offload their choice regarding an issue as significant as abortion, surrendering to a higher power: to the government, or some religious authority. It has to be a wrenching decision, to snuff about this tiny, aborning life, and if you could remove it from yourself, or from others, and decide it with permanent finality and unwavering certainty, you are free from the stress of deciding. As are they.

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L'etat, c'est lui.

    
     Donald Trump believes that, because he has the power to end the Mueller investigation, he cannot be subpoenaed by it. Because he can pardon himself if convicted of crimes, he cannot be accused of them.
     Is he right?
     The argument set out in a letter by his lawyer claims that since the president can "if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon” that he can also refuse to testify before the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
     A court will no doubt decide this, in the months to come. But clarity can be found now by simplifying it to a more mundane level, by asking a few hypothetical questions:
    Can a police chief, who has the power to hire and fire officers, be arrested?
    Can a county sheriff, who has authority over prison guards, be put into jail?
    Can a senator, who has the power to pass laws, himself violate a law?
    Can a president?
    The answer of course is yes, yes, yes and yes. Because if it isn't "yes" in every case, then we no longer have a society of laws, but a society of men.
    Men like Donald Trump.
    Not a society of rules, of order. But a society where ordinary citizens follow orders. The orders of men like Donald Trump.
    Every American is facing a choice, right now. Respect the United States, respect its laws and traditions. 
    Or respect Donald Trump. 
    Follow our morals, values and laws. 
    Or follow Donald Trump.
    It's that simple. 
    Simple, yet so many don't get it. Trump supporters, having put their bets on Trump, whether out of economic anxiety, racial bias, seething resentment, ordinary fear, free-floating malice, Republican habit, gender bias, or whatever pathology causes a supposedly freedom-loving American to support a would-be tyrant, refuse to be put off by whatever new low Trump sinks to. They are willing to pay any price, bear any blunder, meet any transgression, support any traitor, oppose any relief, to assure the continuation of the Trump era. 
    It is shocking how many people bend their knee to him. Past rivals, abused and trivialized on live television, now kiss his ring. Politicians who fought and struggled against Barack Obama's every act—try to bring more health care to more Americans—roll like puppies at the feet of this demagogue.
     I see on Facebook the common meme that someday Trump supporters will regret their support. I severely doubt this. First, because if you go down South, you will not find aging bigots who battled civil rights tooth and nail now hanging their heads in shame. I never see those people. It is far easier to deny folly and keep denying it than to eventually face it. People, generally, are cowards. Hence the popularity of Donald Trump.
     The only time such reckoning has a chance is when the people lost in follow are soundly defeated. The Germans, crushed, began to sincerely wonder whether they had erred, morally, with all this Nazi business.
     Keep that in mind, foremost in mind, this November. Unless these guys lose, we all lose. We won't be given many chances to reverse this. It will set in, settle in our bones. It might already have done so. It might already be too late. Some days, it feels too late.
     Because second, he may prevail. The abused system of laws and standards and decency gives way, day by day, inch by inch, and we stagger toward the same power-driven, money-driven dystopia we find in so many other countries. A world where Russia has won. It's so strange. They couldn't defeat us through strength, through bombs and armies. But they have us on the mat through guile, their tool in the White House, the evidence of his perfidy being quashed before it has come out. And 40 percent of the American people eager for it to happen.
    We could not only end up with Trump, but worse to come. If you can gaze at Trump's words and actions and endorse that, put your words and your heart and your vote behind it, I believe you can endorse anything.
     Here's what I don't understand: What do his supporters get? What's in it for them? A frisson of self-love? As bad as betraying your country is, at least Trump and his family and cronies get a payday, in money and power and perceived status. What do their supporters get? Nothing, but a pat on the heads, a few facile lies, a couple sympathetic judges and country in ruins. Maybe that's secretly what they wanted all along, chaos. Finally, a reason for all those guns.