Candor is a privilege

     Aunt Marsha and her daughters won't be at our Thanksgiving this year. They're from the New York branch of the family, have never come to visit and never will. Too good for us, I suppose.

     But if they were there, or we there, I would not delve into their support of Donald Trump, which I learned about from my mother. "Hey Aunt Marsha, you're an idiot carrying water for a traitor" does not seem something that the hospitable host would say, particularly not to an aged relative. I don't even say that to strangers, not much, not anymore.  Why bother? If they were open to suasion, they wouldn't believe as they do. No need to descend into abuse; they're better at it. They have more practice.
     This simple truth seems not to be so easy for people to grasp, based on the number of articles in what was once called the popular press—and now is what? The unpopular press?—on how to talk about the Trump enormity over the holiday table.
    Here's a thought: don't.  Not to offend my colleagues in the news trade, but why? Candor is a privilege, not a right. I have to respect you to spend time birddogging your errors. So if you are lost in some delusion: astrology, religion, an unmerited faith in con men and traitors like-oh-for-instance-Donald-Trump, I will not take your hand and try to lead you away from your folly. Why bother? You're lost, and if it were in my power to guide you out, I would. But I can't. It would only upset you and annoy me, like the old joke about teaching pigs to sing ("Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.")
     Sure, it's annoying for some loudmouth uncle to channel whatever psycho-fucking-bullshit was featured last night on Fox News. It can be difficult, I imagine.  But not as difficult as snapping at the bait. Because that's what those opinions are: traps, dug for anyone careless enough to fall in. That's what most of the Trump dynamic is about: finding someone to abuse and bully so you can feel better about yourself. 

      Let me tell you a trade secret: there's no need to play along. You can completely ignore the mean, the crazy, the ignorant. Let them find their victims elsewhere. I have a spam filter filled with harsh people talking to themselves, like lunatics sitting in windowless cells, howling, gabbering to the wall. You know when I read their emails? Never. Almost never. Only if I'm stumped and want to reach in and find something stupid to set upon a plinth for people to laugh at.  My eyes don't fall on one in 50.
     This might hurt their feelings. Boo fuckin' hoo.They might feel neglected. I wouldn't know. They might complain. No doubt they will complain, that I'm just too timid to behold the wonder of their magnificent truths. That's fine. Let 'em complain. I won't read those either. Because between the frictionless malice of social media and the validation for caustic lunacy that comes with Donald Trump, we find ourselves in a Carnival of the Mean and Dumb. But just because they're dancing doesn't mean we have to clap. Time is finite; don't waste it on fools.
     You have to protect your boundaries, to not let the poison in. 
     Not a very Thanksgiving-like sentiment, I know, and I'm sorry. The truth is, I had a full, fun day Wednesday, finishing up a special, double-length sports column for Saturday, then picking the boys up at the airport, collecting my parents and hanging around, having fun, going out to a festive Greek dinner. Conversation ranged from whether a contract carries extra weight because it's written in blood (no, there's case law; California, naturally) to what kinds of soup would make good names for children (Chowder for a boy, Jambalaya for a girl) to who Sloopy is in the song and why she needs to hang on. Nobody was mean. Nobody was stupid. Everybody played nice together like a string quartet. Thursday is one of my favorite days: Thanksgiving, starting with me whipping up stuffing for 27 guests. I hope you have an enjoyable one, and thank you for reading this past year. I hope you are not saddled with a crazy, mean person, or are that sort of person yourself. If you are, and you're reading this, and since I am in essence a hopeful man, I will observe that just because everyone is staring into their plates as you prattle on doesn't mean they are awed by your eloquence. Perhaps some reflection is in order if only you could, you know, do that sort of thing.  



     

Students give thanks for America and Sullivan High

Melak Alhajmani, 16, (far left) a junior from Iraq, smiles at Oyinea Alonge, 17, from Nigeria, while students give thanks during Sullivan High School’s third Thanksgiving celebration.

     Before tucking into dinner at Sullivan High School’s Thanksgiving celebration last week, Sarah Quintenz, leader of the Rogers Park school’s International Academy, asked the 180 participants — students, teachers, alumni, guests from the community — to stand, hold hands, and give thanks.
     She started us off in English.
     ”For food, for raiment, for life, for opportunity, for friendship and fellowship, we thank thee O Lord,” said Quintenz. “Bless the cook and bless the dishwasher.”
     That drew a chuckle from the kids, whom she then asked to give thanks, each in their own native language. 

Chance Uwera, 16, left, and Josiane Irafasha, 19,

   

    ”Iman ihey umah dishey ... ” Chance Uwera, 16 began at our table. Next was Josiane Irafasha, 19, both speaking in Kinyarwanda, one of four official languages of Rwanda.
     ”Thanks, for having a life,” translated Uwera. “God bless everyone who’s here and in the whole world.”
     A world well-represented among the 650 students attending Sullivan, long a magnet for immigrants.
     ”Sullivan’s probably one of the most diverse schools in the city of Chicago,” said principal Chad Thomas. “We have kids from all over the world — over 40 languages spoken here.”
     In 2017, partly in reaction to growing anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States, Sullivan decided to hold a school Thanksgiving. Among those celebrating their first Thanksgiving dinner last week was Shahin Keliby, who thanked her parents and “the American government.”
     ”They allowed us in and we are here,” said the senior, 18, a Muslim from Burma. “Three years and two months.”
     The event, organized by the Friends of Sullivan, reflects the diverse face of our country’s future.

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Shahin Keliby, came to the United States from Burma "three years and two months" ago.

Puzzling socks, weird toys, and other perils of being generous

     Sunday morning, kitchen. The husband making coffee. The wife sorting a stack of mail into two piles, pitch and pay. She mentions Northbrook has a program where anyone over age 55 gets $5 off a cab ride.
     I make a face. Is that really intended for us? Are we not above that?
     “Every five dollars counts!” she decrees, briskly moving to the next letter.
     Do I want to give to Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism?
     “No.” (The “Let-them-nuzzle-the-Tribune’s-ass-on-somebody-else’s-dime” is unvoiced.)
     The Anti-Cruelty Society?
     “Are we forgiving them for Vronsky?” I ask. A beloved cat we rescued from their clutches. “They wanted to kill him.”
     “I give every year,” she says. Asking my opinion is, apparently, more symbolic than functional.
     As I’m escaping upstairs she calls after me.
     “And do that Santa, presents-for-kids program this year without grumbling.”
     I freeze, wounded.
     “I always grumble. It’s a holiday tradition.”
     ”No need to put on a curmudgeon act.”
     “It’s not an act.”
     “You’re sweetness itself ...”
     No sane husband is going to argue with that. OK. Fine. When stacks of children’s letters appear in the lobby of the Sun-Times, I do something unprecedented: march over and grab the first letter off the pile. None of the usual careful sifting, trying to ID the tot requesting easy-to-find, inexpensive presents. I will bring joy to ... a 6-year-old boy.
     His letter begins:

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Friendly dogs

   

      Have I mentioned that my dog made a friend? It's true. Sarah from up the block. Or Sara from up the block, no "h" at the end. Not premeditating writing about her before this moment, I haven't yet bothered to check whether she uses that final, optional "h."
     The dog doesn't care of course. The owner might. But I'm not ready for the owner, whom I'm still on nodding terms with, to be introduced to the anything-that-happens-between-us-could-end-up-splashed-online-and-maybe-in-the-newspaper-too aspect of being acquainted with me. Could be off-putting.
     So "Sarah," for the time being.
     We seem to be on the same schedule, this neighbor and myself. Almost every morning and many afternoons Kitty and Sarah joyously greet one another, their tails going like metronomes, sniffing mightily, circling like wrestlers, sizing each other up, near mirror images of each other, while her owner and myself gaze at the sky and do our own measured, polite verbal sniffing, mostly about the weather.
     Hey wait a second, you might be wondering about now. Why are we reading about my dog and not a post on the topic that was promised yesterday?
     Allow me to explain.
     Sometimes, when I'm telling the subject of a story what day it will run, I will pause and remember to add a caveat.
      "Unless the Willis Tower topples over."
      Meaning, this is the news business, or what's left of it, and something could happen between now and then to nudge your story aside.
      But Sunday, when I wrote that today's column would be about our Letters to Santa program and the ordeal of buying toys for a tot, I overlooked my own policy of caution, forgetting that a) The paper might not want to run Letters to Santa columns two days in a row, no doubt to obscure the sharp fall-off in quality and emotional intelligence between Mark Brown's adult take on the subject and my own juvenile maunderings and b) More pressing news might push a topic like the week's second Letters to Santa column out of the paper.
     Or both, as I was told by my editor, and I chose to believe him. I suppose I could have gone all Jay Mariotti on the man and insisted that Monday is my day, goddamnit, and if they don't want one particular column—a column that they themselves asked for!—why then I'll just sit down and write another column, about a different topic! Because if you are not in the paper, you might as well be dead. There's always Donald Trump, always some jaw-dropping departure from cherished norms, such as... checking his Twitter feed ... nope, I stand corrected. Just dozens and dozens of tweets and retweets that it seems a painful waste of precious human existence even to read once, never mind write about, including five retweets of something calling itself Buck Sexton, maintaining his innocence, his popularity, his support. Dull as dirt.
     Honestly, I'd rather stick with the two friendly dogs. The president will still be crazy tomorrow. The secretary of the Navy resigning is a big deal, yes, a sign of the crazymaking dysfunction radiating out from putting a bad man in a high place. But that deserves a column all its own, on the relationship between being doing a good job and being willing to quit it.
     So no column in the paper Monday, and since I make a rule never to scoop myself here by running a column before it goes online, you'll just have to wait until Tuesday too.
     Which leaves us ... where?
     Oh right, dogs.  I can't communicate how glad I am that Sarah's owner recognizes and values the bond of affection growing between our two dogs as much as I do. Other dog owners ... treading carefully here ... well, let's just say they do not seem to grasp the importance of small social interactions, whether between dogs or humans. The dogs sniff, the humans chat, it's a beautiful thing. You walk away with a brighter view of the world. To me. And to Sarah's dad. To others, they are far too busy and important, in their own perception if nowhere else, to waste their time in such a fashion. They see us a block a way and flee. Seriously. Vector off 90 degrees in the opposite direction. Kitty strains in their direction, seems a little puzzled to see them fly away, and strains toward them. I lean down, give her a comforting pat, and say in what I hope is a voice just loud enough to carry: "Don't feel bad Kitty. That's not a friendly dog!"

Flashback 2010: Santa has all those elves to help him

     Thanksgiving hasn't even arrived and already Christmas is placing its demands. And on a Jew yet. Then again, we in the newspaper biz have to look a little further down the road than most, to make sure we stick our landings, and don't run the Christmas Special on Dec. 27.
     In that spirit, Today the paper is rolling out its annual Letters to Santa Program—let's see Craigslist do that! Mark Brown kicks off the effort Sunday, and I'm in the line-up right behind, striding to the plate to take my swing on Monday.

     After writing tomorrow's offering, I looked at a few efforts from years past. Consistent in tone, I'll grant myself that. Though 2017 was particularly prickly, leading me to wonder if I perhaps am—shudder!—mellowing with age.

      Anyway, grinding out a few larger projects, and not at all feeling like writing anything more complex than this intro for today, I wondered what other Letters to Santa columns I had stashed in the vault, and found this relatively innocent effort from 2010, worth recalling only for its re-visiting of an American classic that you might not have opened in too long.

     If you could give a child you never met a book, what book would you give?
     It matters, I suppose, that the child is a boy, 8 years old, as he mentions—no doubt under instructions—in his letter to Santa.
     "Dear Santa," he begins. "My name is"—I suppose I should shield the name—"I go to Mayo School. I am a 8-year-old boy. I will love to have a book, a teddy bear, and I will love to have a bookbag for Christmas. Thanks Santa."
     Usually I dodge the do-goody Christmas stuff. But this year someone asked me directly to help with the Sun-Times Season of Sharing, which answers children's letters to Santa. The "No" caught in my throat. So I got a letter asking, not for a mitt or a puzzle or something easy, but a book, which stuck me with the metaphysical question, "which book?"
     My first impulse was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. All the kids love Harry Potter, and it would make a satisfying tome for this lad to heft on Christmas morning.
     But an 8-year-old—that's young. Harry Potter might be a little dark.
     The cover letter explains that the letters are from the Wabash YMCA Child Care Program, that 95 percent of the children live in poverty, and many are in single-parent homes or being raised by grandparents.
     In that light, the message of the first Harry Potter book—do nothing and a world of wonder will show up unexpectedly and pluck you out of your dire circumstances—may not be the most helpful advice to give a child perhaps facing a steeper climb up life's hill than most.
     Which made me think of Charlotte's Web, the E.B. White classic about a naive pig, Wilbur, who avoids a date with the chopping block due to the caring, effort and cleverness of his friends, first a little girl named Fern, and then a grey spider named Charlotte.
     In addition to the story, there is the farm itself, which may be a revelation to a city kid. Fern washes with a bucket and a sponge.
     "The barn was very large," writes White, who knew his way around a farm. "It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell—as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world. It smelled of grain and of harness dressing and of axle grease and of rubber boots and of new rope."
     Wilbur is teased ("Pigs mean less than nothing to me," sniffs a lamb) but stands up for himself. The book offers a variety of evergreen messages, from "People are very gullible" to "summertime cannot last forever."
     I stopped by the Book Bin to buy the boy a copy, and was presented with one of those gut check choices that discourage me from doing this kind of thing: paperback or hardback? The paper was $6.99, the hardback $10 more.
     "Kids don't really care about the tactile quality of books, do they?" I wondered aloud, eyeing the paperback, tempted to save 10 bucks. But what kind of gift is a paperback?
     "Do unto others . . ." I said, buying the hardback. If you're going to pass a book down the generations, it needs to be sturdy.
     The teddy bear was easier—big, soft and with a beige scarf that says "Bear."
     I pictured a "bookbag" as a squarish affair with a flap, but my wife said what the boy means is a backpack, and we found one that was sort of an urban camouflage that would appeal to the budding survivalist in every boy.
     By that time I was having second thoughts about Charlotte's Web, just looking at the cover, with a placid-faced Fern holding Wilbur. It's a book about a girl. I bought this poor boy a book about a girl. Though I comforted myself that, at 8, the whole anti-girl thing hasn't kicked in too strongly, and if he reads the opening sentence—"'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."—he'll be hooked.
     My wife dug into the mass of books left from our  boys' single digithood: Spiderman, Freckle Juice by Judy Blume, the On the Run series. Sweetening the pot, just in case.
     The cliche is that helping others benefits the giver, and I can vouch for that. I have no idea whether this lad at Mayo School will take to Charlotte's Web, but my Monday was embroidered by re-reading the book for the first time in a decade. Maybe he'll find comfort in it too and, if not, there's always the teddy bear.

         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, December 15, 2010

They'll be here soon—are you ready?

     The boys are coming home Wednesday!
     I can hardly wait.
     Although my enthusiasm is tempered with a certain ... sense of ... ah ... caution.  A pause, to remind myself. It's been a few months. Adjustments are probably prudent. Calibrations, in the whirligig of words that is me.
     They are full grown adults now, used to living on their own. In silent apartments full of text books. I have to let them settle in, adjust to being under their parents' roof once again. I should tread gingerly, and not try to  mess things up, the way I often do, by, you know, saying stuff to them.
     What kind of stuff? Hard to predict, before the fact. Prior to the offensive words actually being articulated. Then the problem is all too clear. Sometimes the culprit is the most innocuous expression of goodwill, the most ordinary cliched greeting or farewell. 

    I was looking over unpublished bits and pieces tucked away on the blog, and came across this exchange, taken from life this past summer as my youngest was going out the door one morning. I believe it stands on its own without need for further explanation:

     "Go get 'em!" I said, in what I imagined was a tone of  carefree bonhomie.
     "Go get who?" he replied, clearly annoyed.
     "Umm, whoever needs to be gotten," I said, struggling.
     "I'm an intern," he said, incredulous, almost angry. "There's nobody needs to be gotten."
     "Alright then," I said, forcing a smile. "Have a good time doing whatever it is you're going to do."
     And he was gone.

Impeachment hearings: Do you respect law or power?

The Mona Lisa is continually mobbed. But if you go to visit this treasure of the Louvre, you can have it all to yourself. Even though it's the most significant artifact in the entire museum. Any idea what it is? 

      A few years ago, my brother went for an afternoon pick-me-up at the Protein Bar near City Hall. As he was ordering, Rahm Emanuel came in and stood behind him. My brother finished his order and stepped aside. The mayor asked for the exact same protein drink. A moment passed, Rahm talking on the phone glued to the side of his head. The clerk handed Rahm a beverage.
     ”Hey,” my brother objected as Rahm vanished. “That was my drink. I was here first.”
     The clerk shrugged,
     ”He’s the mayor,” he said.
     That is power in a nutshell. You could study every Protein Bar employee manual and not find one word suggesting a policy to nudge bullyboy local officials to the front of the line. They don’t have to spell it out. It’s understood.
     I offer this story because it meshes with the impeachment hearings going on now in Washington. They could seem a bewildering spectacle unless you understand them as a tug-of-war between two utterly opposite views of our society.
     Do we live by rules-based egalitarianism? A nation of laws, customs and procedures? “Hey, I was here first.”
     Or by the exercise of raw power by those who hold it, aided by their eager enablers? “He’s the mayor.”
     The answer is: both, in conflict. Ideally in balance, though power always has the advantage, because it’s usually in your immediate self-interest to bow. Those who play along get a bigger slice of pie. The resisters often get nothing. So if you need to drop the values you’ve clung to your entire life in order to jam your hands in the goodie bag some bigwig is shaking in your direction, well, so be it. Goodbye values!
     Let’s look at the impeachment charges laid out in detail by a string of reliable witnesses:
     In July, President Donald Trump held up $392 million in military aid to Ukraine trying to blackmail its president into announcing publicly that he is investigating Joe Biden and his son. This contradicted the strategic interest of the United States, but was in Trump’s personal interest: to win re-election in 2020.

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