Flashback 2012: Hedy and Mort, a match meant to be

 

  
     Longtime Chicago media maven Mort Kaplan—he was known for guiding the campaigns of Paul Douglas, Dan Walker, Alan Dixon, among many others—died Friday and was buried Monday. Getting in line before the funeral to express my condolences to his signifiant other, Hedy Ratner, I checked out the crowd, and noticed Christie Hefner, who smiled and gestured toward the front of the room. There was the column below, blown up and displayed on an easel. A person forgets, doing this three times a week, how important it can be to others, and I felt honored to be included among the framed family photos and the flowers. Mort drew a good house, I should note, standing room only, with a solid smattering of the well-known—not only Christie, but Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, sitting front and center with personal finance columnist Terry Savage. I took a seat next to Elaine Soloway, the former Jane Byrne press aid whose ex-husband was the model for the transgendered main character in Amazon's "Transparent." My former boss Joyce Winnecke was a few rows back, as well as a variety of PR sorts—Rick Jasculca, who spoke, and his partner Jim Terman, and no doubt others I didn't see or didn't recognize. 

     Once upon a time, a couple fell in love and decided to get married, even though 44 years passed between the falling in love part and the getting married part. In a magical kingdom called Chicago . . .
     Aw hell, it’s Hedy Ratner and Mort Kaplan, and if you know them — and everybody seems to (“Everyone knows Hedy,” agreed Mayor Rahm Emanuel) — then you know the standard conventions of romance go out the window. Both have such strong personalities, they not only do things that most people never do, but they do things that most people never even think of doing.
     Such as?
     Such as going out to dinner at two different restaurants, so Mort can dine at one (steak) and Hedy can dine at another (salad).
     Such as dating for four decades, off and on, and then celebrating her 70th birthday last year by gathering 120 friends at a hotel “to attend a surprise ceremony,” the invitation read. The couple greeted their guests in regular clothes, then slipped away and re-entered the room, she in a white bridal gown and veil, he in a white tux, standing before clergy, exchanging vows but not getting married, to the shock of everyone gathered there.
     “I am obliged to pronounce you status and quo,” deadpanned Rabbi Aaron Freeman.
     Or, in some ways the capper, this Sunday evening at Orchestra Hall when, in defiance of all expectation, Hedy and Mort will really, truly tie the knot. Or so they claim . . .
     “This is a story about bashert,” said Hedy, slipping into Yiddish. “Bashert is fate, it’s destiny. It was truly destined. Four decades ago, Mort and I met. It was love at first sight and it’s been this wild ride ever since, a stormy fabulous relationship. We’d split up, then come back together and then split up. We probably did that a dozen times. Finally, 20 years ago, we decided we should be together.”
     That’s her side. What about Mort’s side?
     “I don’t know if I have a side,” he laughed, a nod at Hedy’s big personality. “We’ve been on a magic carpet ride for four decades.”
     Or is he being modest? He did, after all, once put up a billboard at the corner of Chicago and State declaring his love: “To Hedy: A parfait in a world of pound cake, Mort.”
     Hedy was born in Chicago, went to nine colleges, earned five degrees, got married twice, plunged into the women’s movement in the 1970s, is founder and co-president of the Women’s Business Development Center.
     Mort, a graduate of DePaul, served in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps during the Korean War. He ran a big PR business, Morton H. Kaplan & Associates — it was his idea to have Dan Walker walk across Illinois while running for governor — was first chairman of the Illinois Arts Alliance, became professor emeritus at Columbia College. He got married, had three daughters.
     Mort, I don’t know well. Hedy, I’ve spent countless hours sitting across from in editorial board rooms. Petite, curly blonde hair, when she stopped by my office last week, she rode her bike — she rides a lot — in a gray silk dress, wearing a large purplish flowing shawl, a mother of pearl necklace and a teardrop diamond pendant. She showed off her engagement ring the way Betty Boop would — arm straight out, hand at eye level, bent down at the wrist, fingers splayed. When I marveled over how she could bike in that outfit, she lifted up her dress with both hands to reveal hot pink bike shorts.
     Last year’s faux wedding began as a party.
     “I wanted to do something really spectacular,” she said. “We always do parties, everyone expects that from us. So last year we sent out invitations celebrating my birthday. We never explained. We did a fake wedding.”
     That was a joke. Now it’s serious. So what changed in a year?
     “A couple of things,” said Mort. “I had a stroke in January, and something happened in that period that I did not like. She wanted to get a prescription filled, and one doctor said, ‘Who are you? You’re the girlfriend.’ And I said, ‘She’s not the girlfriend!’ She was the quarterback of my recovery. She pushed me and pushed me.”
     “I told him . . .” Hedy said, “ ‘I want my Mort back.” ’ So much so that she — and if you know her, this is the most incredible part — proposed to him, down on her knees.
     “I said, ‘I want to think about it,’ ” laughed Mort, who eventually said yes. “It just seemed like it was time. A lawyer friend told me there are a lot of benefits, later in life.”
     The purple print on the outside of the invitation reads, “This time it’s for real.” Not to quibble, but I would have said “this time it’s official.” It seems as if it’s always been for real.
     “It’s like we’re young lovers,” Hedy said. “He’s going to be 81, I’m going to be 71, and we still, we never stop talking, we never stop laughing. Our lives are filled with Yiddishkeit [Jewish culture], politics, culture, art, music, theater. But mostly laughter.”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard the term bashert,” said Mort. “This is bashert.”     
                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 29, 2012

Someday Ken Griffin will be as famous as Daniel Cook

     There were only a few protesters. Clumped together on the sidewalk outside Macy’s on State Street, holding signs that read, in essence, “Save Marshall Field’s!” Not the store — it had already been sold, lock, stock and Frango mints. But the name. They were protesting the new owners changing the store’s name to Macy’s.
     And in that single moment, any sympathy I might have had for their cause drained away. I could practically feel it pooling at my feet. I’m as nostalgic as the next guy, if not more so. But with all the wrongs in the world, to wake up, lace up your sneakers, paint signs, go downtown and stand in the street to protest the subtraction of one sequin from the little nostalgic tapestry shimmering at the back of your mind, well, it’s almost obscene, right?
     After that, I became an immediate adaptor of name changes. Guaranteed Rate Field? Sure! Willis Tower? You betcha! There is no John Hancock Building — it’s “875 North Michigan Avenue,” now, thank you very much.
     So when the Museum of Science and Industry — make that the former Museum of Science and Industry — announced it will henceforth be known as the “Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry” thanks to an infusion of $125 million from the richest man in Illinois, I smiled and thought, “Great!”
     Nor am I alone.
     ”Griffin is donating $125 MILLION dollars to the museum,” Gail Torkilsen commented after a story about the change. “Nice. No one should be upset. Thanks Mr. Griffin for your gift. I’m proud of you.”

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‘Code yellow: Trauma in the emergency room’

Mount Sinai medical personnel treat a stabbing victim (Photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin Garcia)

  

     In July, I read a story in the Sun-Times mentioning that the emergency department at Mount Sinai was "on bypass," meaning that trauma cases had to go to other hospitals. "They must be really busy," I thought, phoning the hospital and inviting myself to visit the ER. At first Mount Sinai's spokesman balked, citing patient privacy, HIPAA laws, the usual reasons. "That's a shame..." I mused, or words to that effect, "because what you do is important. And wouldn't it be nice if more people knew about it..." That started an email  conversation that led to this story. Kudos to Mount Sinai's Dan Regan, who eventually said "yes," trusted us, and stood uncomplaining for eight hours while Ashlee Rezin Garcia and myself collected the words and photographs for this story. Thanks to all the professionals at Mount Sinai who opened up to us or at least tolerated our presence, particularly to Raquel Prendkowski, whose candor and leadership made this more than a description of medical procedures. Thanks to Ashlee—a true professional and a pleasure to work with. Thanks as well to John O'Neill, Paul Saltzman and everyone else at the paper who helped make this pop on the Sun-Times site—wait until you see it.

     “What is your name? Can you tell me your name?”
     The first question that people are asked as they are rushed into the emergency room at Mount Sinai Hospital is a ploy. The nurses and doctors hovering alongside the rolling gurney aren’t really interested in that. Not now, with life potentially hanging in the balance. Besides, they probably could get the person’s name from a wallet in the bloody clothes being stripped or cut away.  

     What they really want is to prompt the patient to speak, or try to.
     If they can, “That tells us they’re breathing fine and their lung sounds are clear because they can talk to us,” said Raquel Prendkowski, emergency department director for Sinai Health System. “We want to see if they’re audible.”
     Marco Munoz, brought in on a recent warm Tuesday night, can mumble his name. But his left lung is not clear thanks to the knife plunged into his chest 15 minutes earlier in K-Town.

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Strike Flashback 2012: A strike is a stain that never washes off

Storytelling class, Thomas Chalmers Public School

    The Chicago Teachers Union set a strike date for Oct. 17. Instantly I wondered about the last strike, in 2012, and figured I'd better glance at how I covered it. The circumstances that brought about this pre-strike column are worth mentioning: Rahm's press secretary Tarrah Cooper drove me to this school and ordered me to look around, so I could see what was at stake. I knew I was being played, but couldn't help writing about a school I'd never been to. It also shows the difference between Rahm's aggressive approach toward the media, at least at first, and Lori Lightfoot's more laissez faire attitude. While I haven't quite given up on her, I've never heard from her press folks either and don't expect to. Perhaps that is a commentary on how the status of the newspaper has degraded in seven years. Or perhaps the Lightfoot team is not on its game.

     Banners from colleges—Harvard and Michigan State, Howard and Yale—hang from the ceiling in the second floor common corridor at the Chicago Vocational Career Academy on East 87th Street. The idea is that every day, as they come and go, students will see the goal— college— above their heads but not out of their reach.
     "We have 300 new freshmen coming in, so we're really proud," said Principal Douglas Maclin, showing off a new culinary arts center. "Last year we only had 134, so with the new STEM program"—Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, pairing the school with a business partner, in CVCA's case, Motorola—"we nearly tripled our enrollment."
     More than 400,000 students attend Chicago Public Schools, a number difficult to really grasp. If our school system were a city, it would be bigger than Miami.
     That city may—or may not—be plunged into disarray on Monday, when the Chicago Teachers Union is set to strike. That's why I was at CVCA, a last minute push by the administration to try to illustrate what is at stake here.
     It's a compelling argument—the school year just started, the students are learning.
     Of course, others would also be deeply affected by a strike. I count four groups and one person with a lot to lose here. There are the students, of course, who began school Tuesday with a lengthened day and other improvements, such as STEM magnet schools that offer community college degrees—Chicago has five such schools; I visited another, the Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy, so brand new they haven't put up a sign yet.
     There are the teachers, led by their fiery president, Karen Lewis, who passionately points out, and not without cause, that all these advances are also demands—a longer workday, longer work year, without either input from them or a comparable raise in pay.
     There are the parents, who not only want their kids studying but, in many neighborhoods, want them off the street, out of harm's way, and in case of a strike the board and many churches are trying to give them safe places to go.
     Fourth, there is the city, its reputation already flecked with blood because of the murderous summer of 2012, or at least by the media's reaction to it. A city that strikes is not a City that Works. It's never a good thing.
     Which leads to the person, Rahm Emanuel, who wants to avoid a strike, not just because it's bad for students, bad for teachers, bad for parents and bad for the city, but—and he would never admit this, but it has to be true—it would be bad for him, for his reputation. A strike is a stain that never washes off. It could be resolved in an hour and it would still be a strike on his watch. Tap a Chicagoan on the shoulder and ask for a salient fact about the Jane Byrne administration, and after a mention of camping at Cabrini Green, they'll say "school strike" (or "transit strike" or "firefighter strike.") Nobody forgets strikes.
     I'm a good union man, and understand the value of a strike threat. It's designed to extract every dime that tight-wad bosses are willing to pay to have employees keep working. Done right, a strike is a real possibility that's about to happen, really and truly, with picket signs printed and employees in their hats and coats at the door, eyes on the clock. Then it doesn't happen—the clock stops at midnight for the Come-to-Jesus moment, the deal is struck, handshakes all around, the news goes out, a cheer goes up, workers and bosses are grimly satisfied that they got the best deal they could, and everybody lurches onward.
     A strike should be like "Waiting for Godot"—everyone talks about him but he never shows up and then the play ends. A strike that actually occurs means failure. Someone didn't follow the script. Maybe the mayor overplayed his part. Maybe Lewis really does want to pull that pin on the strike grenade, on general principles. Or maybe—I suspect this—she's a better actor than she lets on.
     The longer school day is undeniably a good thing—getting paid more would be nice, but as someone who hasn't gotten a raise in years, I'm one of the many wondering what planet teachers live on. I live on Planet Glad to Have a Job. While I don't want to be suckered by a couple showcase schools, the energy and effort I saw there are undeniable.
     "I really want to be valedictorian," said Kayla Kopplin, 17, a CVCA senior. I popped into Honors Algebra 1, to watch freshmen taking a diagnostic test involving a mosquito who flew 0.6 miles and then had to stop.
     "We did a thinking problem before that—normally I'd have to go straight to test time, and I would have nothing else other than test time," said Megan Payne, a 6-year CPS veteran teacher. "So the extra time allows me to actually get something in that is engaging and talking and the kids are working."
     She has a stoical view about Monday.
     "For me, whatever's going to happen . . . " she said, pausing, "it's going to happen. I'd rather be here in the classroom with the kids."
     I suspect most people feel that way.
                                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times Sept. 9, 2012

The Economist fights for freedom in Chicago

Zanny Minton Beddoes 

     Forbes magazine listed her among its 100 “World’s Most Powerful Women.” A graduate of Harvard and Oxford and, since 2014, the first female editor-in-chief of The Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes is in Chicago to host the Open Future Festival, “a global summit on the role of markets, technology and freedom in the 21st century” this Saturday at Union Station.
     Though when we spoke, I put a different spin on it.
     ”A day of speeches in a train station...” I ventured. “That sounds very 19th century in this social media age. What do you hope to accomplish?”
     ”I hope it’s 19th century married to 21st century,” she replied, noting that the event will be Livestreamed and posted to YouTube. “We were founded in 1843 and started the first Open Futures Festival marking our 175th anniversary. We wanted to have a chance to re-make the case for open society and open markets. We want to do it by engaging in a global conversation with both supporters of our world view and our critics.”
     Speakers range from Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to Ryan Fournier, co-founder of Students for Trump. From Bhaskar Sunkara, author of The Socialist Manifesto, to Gabby Giffords, the former congresswoman who survived an assassination attempt in 2011 and is now a gun control advocate.
     ”It’s important to get different people of different ages in a room together to discuss the future of technology, capitalism, free speech and identity politics,” Minton Beddoes said. “We want to engender the discussion.”
     What discussion? It seems discussion is the one thing that isn’t happening in society today. Everyone alternates between digging their own ideological trench a little deeper and lobbing shells at anyone who isn't exactly like their own precious selves.
     "I think there are some people who are looking for new solutions, who are debating," Minton Beddoes said. "There is an awful lot of polarization, a lot of people in their own echo chambers shouting at the opposition. That's really who we are trying to address."
     She tries to hear all sides.
    "Whenever I come to this country, I force myself to watching MSNBC for 15 minutes, and Fox for 15 minutes. It's not very fun."
     I almost interrupted her with, "I couldn't do that if you put a gun to my head," but kept quiet.
     "It gives me a window into the polarized nature of this country. It's very striking," she said. "I left in 2014, and it's much more polarized. Two different sets of people having two different conversations with very little willingness to reach across and have an intellectual debate."

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Not lost in a Waze

     
     A columnist has to be careful about falling into a trap I call "discovering common knowledge." That is, hailing something as a wonder when it really is a commonplace. You don't, for instance, want to breathlessly relate that you can buy books on Amazon. Not in 2019.
     I narrowly avoided this pitfall last month, when I drove up to Ontonagon. The Audi we took was a newer model, with one of those big video displays. The driver used Waze, Google's crowd-sourcing navigation system. It not only tells you which direction to go, in a clear, pleasing fashion, but it also announces upcoming hazards: cars at the side of the highway, objects in the road, and waiting police speed traps.
    There were several reasons to be intrigued by this. First, Google already has a marvelous navigation system, Google Map. So with Waze, Google is competing with itself. Second, that such a big corporation sells something to facilitate speeding—a high tech fuzzbuster, as we used to call the radar devices that sat on your dashboard and told you when the cops were ahead, busting speeders. It seems rather naughty of Google.
      When I got back, I looked into the system. Created in Israel, a dozen years old, available in 40 languages (we passed the hours driving back from the UP having it speak in the Cookie Monster's voice, in Japanese). The Illinois Tollway Authority works in cooperation with Waze, plugging it into its road service communication system. It seemed almost incredible that IDOT would participate in an enterprise designed to thwart the police. But it does.
    Part of a columnist's job is to cause trouble, so I shot off a query to the Illinois State Police: 

Using Waze, drivers are informed that police are ahead, and slow down. Is this a good thing, in that it encourages drivers to slow down before even seeing a patrol car? Or bad, in that it seems to encourage reckless speeding? If the latter, is it also bad that the Illinois Tollway Authority is cooperating with the Waze platform? For instance, when an IDOT truck turns on its lights, a notice goes out to Waze users. Should the state be encouraging a system that facilitates speeding?    

     Unlike the Chicago cops, who rarely respond to any query, no matter how basic, the state police actually coughed up an answer, of sorts: 

One of the goals of the Illinois State Police is to encourage motorists to slow down or move over, if practical, when approaching emergency vehicles or any vehicles with their hazards on to prevent crashes, injuries or even deaths. We ask motorists to employ safe driving practices, including following the speed limit. If the Waze app can give motorists sufficient time to slow down or move over when approaching a car on the side of the road, then the Waze app can be a tool to help potentially save the lives of emergency responders as well as drivers broken down on the side of the road.

     Broadminded of them, and no argument here. I was tempted to put it in the paper. But first, everyone I spoke to already knew about it. And second, to work, Waze has to have a lot of drivers participating. Because not only does it process information from, say, IDOT, but it also uses data provided by other drivers. A motorist will note a tire in the road—or a cop at the side of it—and the information goes out over the network. If the tire is removed, or the cop moves on, other drivers will make note of it. To work, the system has to have a lot of participants. And there is something comforting and communal about that, a spark of human altruism crackling through the navigational machine. That's something worth mentioning.
   

Oaks gone wild: Illinois' key tree in spotlight

     It was not the smoothest pitch.
     ”Oaks are awesome.” the email began. “That is why Illinois renamed October OAKtober in 2015. But Chicago oaks are under attack from the following: Oak wilt; Bur Oak Blight; Oak Anthracnose; Root Rot; Sudden Oak Death...”
     My reply was not a sarcastic “Oh no, not oak wilt!” But an enthusiastic “Yes!” to the suggestion that I discuss the oak situation with an arborist. The reason? My own hidden agenda, a cloud of oak-based guilt, over the pin oak I murdered by planting it in my front yard almost 20 years ago.
     ”People like to live around oak trees,” said Shawn Kingzette, a certified arborist at Davey Tree base in East Dundee. “But our oak ecosystems are at risk.”
     We talked about the various oak ailments outlined in the email. Sudden Oak Death, for instance, is caused by a fungus carried in the soil of rhododendrons. “It’s a relatively new disease, especially in the Midwest,” Kingzette said. “It’s a phytophthora fungus.”
   

 Then I brought up the lost pin oak. Tall, with pointy leaves. I did my best to see it into the world, but ... sniff! ... it died. My fault?
     ”With pin oaks we have a saying: ‘The right tree in the right place,’” he began, soothingly. “It could be the soil you have. Pin oaks like an acidic, good-draining soil. It might not have been the right setting for a pin oak to thrive. You might not have done anything specifically wrong.”
     Whew. While I had him on the line, I had to ask: those deeply lobed leaves; what’s the purpose? I assumed they cut down on wind resistance.
     ”I don’t know whether you believe in God,” Kingzette began, betraying himself as a non-reader of the column. “But just the beauty, the shape. The rounded lobe of the white oak, the pointed lobs of a pin. I’m sure there’s some benefit, but it’s just pretty.”

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