Hard work, prayer and carry-out

Sisters (from left) Kim, Minah and Tran Dao opened a Northbrook restaurant and coffee bar, Basu, in late February. Kim encouraged her younger sisters to quit their jobs and go into the restaurant business. “It’s very bad timing,” she said.

    Sarah Stegner looked at the deserted dining room of her restaurant at 6 p.m. Monday and said words that perhaps no professional chef has ever uttered before:
     “I was afraid it was going to be too packed.” 

Sarah Stegner, chef at Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook, with husband
and co-owrner Rohit Nambiar. “The plan is to keep cooking,” she said

 
     She was explaining why, even though she could have held a final, last hurrah dinner at her Prairie Grass Cafe before Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s order to indefinitely close all Illinois restaurants and bars went into effect, “that’s not the right thing to do.”
     She said it twice.
     “That’s not the right thing to do.”
     While a goodbye dinner would have raked in money that she, her partners and staff may desperately need in the weeks and months to come, it would also put those who love her Northbrook restaurant in jeopardy for contracting the virus. That, she was unwilling to do.
     Instead, Prairie Grass, like many restaurants, is offering carry-out. I was there picking up dinner out of a sense of moral duty. Part of what gives Chicago its luster is the bountiful array of unique and delightful restaurants in and around the city, from beloved hot dog stands to world-famous 3-Michelin-star eateries. They have been there for us, framing the joyous moments of our lives — we had our 25th wedding anniversary dinner at Prairie Grass. It seems natural for customers to stand with them now that they need us most.

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Readiness is all

     I strive to be rational, and to live a rational life. But I'm not Mr. Spock, so fall prey to some of the same irrational practices dabbled in by everybody else. I wish upon stars, touch wood, and consider certain situations "lucky."
    Or unlucky. Baseless fears and oddball notions afflict just about everybody, and such tendencies are amplified by strain, such as the current crisis.
     For the past few days I've been seeing crows—large, deeply black birds—as not just a welcome indication that the crow population has rebounded. But a sign. A bad sign. A warning.
     Crows aren't quite vultures, but they are omnivores, and will eat almost anything, including carrion and, given the chance, our corpses. It's like they're watching us. Waiting.
     Nor is it just the crows. I set out to walk our dog Kitty Wednesday morning. After a few steps, her attention was riveted to a spot on the lawn in front of our house. She snuffed mightily, and I noticed a scattering of white wisps. Fur of some sort. Plus a bloody leaf, and, at third glance, a white puff that had to have been, until very recently, a rabbit's tail. The culprit? A hawk, probably. Or perhaps a pre-dawn coyote—we saw one only a few weeks ago.
    I gazed down at the white tufts and had a single, chill thought —I'm almost embarrassed to say: "An augury!" A presentiment of what is to come.
    And that is? Difficult to put into words. Something along the lines of: Nature doesn't care about our little edifice of society and culture and hopes and selves. Death just scythes the field, it doesn't first sort the good from the bad. I'm sure that was a fine rabbit, handsome, intelligent, with a tidy hutch somewhere, nosing the morning air for a waft of delicious ... whatever the heck it is rabbits eat. Then bam! Doom from above. Or a final thought, "Oh sh..." as the coyote pounces.
     A prediction. An augury.
     Luckily, I had a few lines of Shakespeare to bat that away with.
    "We defy augury..." then—God, this is really embarrassing—"There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all." I said it out loud.
      No kidding. Getting ready is about all anyone can do nowadays. That and wait. And worry.
      The readiness is all. That seems a sentiment worth sharing in these parlous times. Readiness is good, is it not? 
    And yes—don't all shout it out at once—I know the trepidation that Hamlet feels is well-placed: he is reluctant to agree to a duel with Laertes that will in fact—spoiler alert!—kill them both.  Readiness doesn't help him much; he shoulda paid attention to the signs.
      But the current contest is one that will go on with or without our consent. Ready or not, the sword's hilt is thrust into our freshly-Purelled hands and we must duel with this invisible thing, this virus, defending ourselves by ... geez, washing our hands a lot I guess and keeping a sword-length of distance. 
     We defy augury. How? Yes, by being ready. By doing what we can to prepare. Also by not being too afraid. Notice, I didn't say "by not being afraid." A certain amount of fear is inevitable, and even useful, to the degree that it prompts you to vigilance, doing the steps you're supposed to do to keep yourself and others safe. 
     But not so much fear that it poisons these pre-spring days.  Even in the very worst scenarios, the vast majority of people will be fine, only suffering the harm of having to live through the coming ordeal. Unlike that poor rabbit.

Turn-out low but steady in Purell Primary

     Election Day is an all-hands-on-deck proposition at the Sun-Times, and it felt good to be out in the field, working on a story. My instructions were to write something about the election, and my plan was to hit as many polling places as I could, then scoot back home and write it up. I was a little worried that this is too light, out-of-step with the disasters rearing up everywhere. But it reflects what I saw and learned about. 

     The shock of Tuesday’s election is how ordinary it was.
     Considering all that is going on around the March 17 statewide vote — a global viral pandemic, a stock market meltdown, schools cancelled statewide, bars and restaurants closed — Tuesday’s primary election proceeded with surprising smoothness, at least in places such as the Sulzer Regional Library, 4455 N. Lincoln. All the judges who were supposed to show up did show up. Voters came too.
     “Aside from hand sanitizer everywhere and wiping down the pens, it’s business as usual,” said Colby Krouse, an election judge. “Lots of wipes.”
     Sure, there were problems. There always are. Reports of long waits, confusion and late openings from various locations. A major challenge was with election judges. Retirees like to pick up a little extra cash and perform a civic good by serving as judges. But the threat of the virus, which is particularly dangerous for older people, prompted more than 800 judges to bow out at the last moment.
     “I set this whole place up,” said Jim Maivald, surveying a roomful of voting stations, chairs and tables at the Lincolnwood Community Center, 4170 Morse. “Usually there are four teams.”
     Some judges overcame their fears and showed up anyway.
     “I’m very worried about it,” said Vicky Plange, speaking through a mask at the Croatian Cultural Center of Chicago, 2845 W. Devon. “But I’m taking precautions.”
     “Somebody has to do this,” added Cindy Gray-Lewis. “It’s our civic duty, to represent Chicago and Illinois.”
     Chicago, a city that has had its share of difficult and wild elections, from the one after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, to the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Pineapple Primary of 1928, punctuated by 60 bombings. (”pineapple” was gangland slang for a hand grenade).
     Successfully conducting an election — perhaps Tuesday’s should be remembered as the Purell Primary — is not typically a source of civic pride. But managing statewide voting was more than Ohio was willing to risk — they canceled theirs, the governor overruling a court that ordered him to hold the election. Florida and Arizona also held primaries.
     Judges who dropped out in Chicago were often replaced by high school students like Noah Kern, 17, who attends North Side College Prep.

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Kindness can be infectious too

Oedipus Cursing his Son Polynices, by Henry Fuseli (National Gallery of Art)

     Anger, too, is infectious. You might not be mad at all, but someone else is, and yells at you. Instantly you're mad, too. You tend to yell back.
     But calm also can be infectious. Kindness too, and here is an example to back that up, something from the email reaction to yesterday's column. In fact, the very first response, Monday evening, from Matt S.—he used his full name, but I'll shield it:

     "I read your article about maintaining a sense of humor and want to say that you are really a pathetically snarky person. No, you aren’t an optimist. You’re just an asshole."

      Maybe because he telegraphed his intent—the subject heading was "what a dick article"—I was prepared.  My reply was in full cross-legged-on-a-lotus-blossom mode:

"But polite. Thanks for writing Matt."

     That usually would be the end of it, or if someone did reply, they'd just take the trowel and ladle on more. But Matt, perhaps feeding off my zen, caught himself:

"I’m sorry. I hate anything political in these times, the memes, etc.. i lean right and found myself backing up JB Pritzker today to someone of my ilk, and had to say “Jesus, dude, put politics to the side for 5 minutes”. this whole thing sucks."

     That seemed sincere, and I tried to respond in kind:

     "No argument here. In my defense, I had a big package about a young guy fighting Stage 4 colon cancer ready to go—I feel less like writing about this virus stuff than you feel like reading it. But all the virus news pushed it out of the paper about 2 p.m.—a long, complicated story, now running Sunday—and I had to whip something together in half an hour, so I grabbed some tweets and retro-fitted them. We're all on edge lately. And thanks for the apology. Very rare in this day and age. Sorry the column struck a wrong chord. Stay safe."

     His reply was:

"You too, man. Young guy with stage 4 colon cancer? geez. we are all lucky to just be freaked with germ paranoia and hand washing ocd.
I look forward to reading that article for some perspective. Please add any info if he needs help with medical bills."

      From calling me an asshole to pulling out his wallet to help with medical bills for someone I was writing writing about. All in the span of 10 minutes. People do cover the spectrum, don't they? I thanked him and said the guy works for the federal government, so his bills are covered.
     This crisis, it will bring out the good and bad in people before it is over. Wouldn't it be something if it was remembered more for the good than the bad? It's still possible. Stay safe out there. Keep an eye on one another.

Better laugh now, before tragedy sets in

     

     If this seems slapped together, it was. Sunday morning I turned in a complicated, long story on colon cancer I'd been working on for a few weeks. Then mid-afternoon, as a string of coronavirus developments pushed it out of the paper. No room. But there was room for a standard-length column, so I batted out this and hoped it flew. I'm not sure it does. I think my point, to the degree I have one, is that if 9/11 started in tragedy and we learned to laugh again, the novel coronavirus is starting in farce and ending in tragedy. 

     You want to hear something strange and a little scary? I felt great Saturday morning. Walking the dog, breathing the frosty air, taking big strides—well, what constitutes big strides for me. An unexpected surge of energy.
     I had no idea why. I hope it wasn’t the snow day, society’s cancelled, End of Times drama of the United States collectively ducking into a crouch, readying itself to start receiving full body punches from the coronavirus. But with journalists you never know. We can’t help but ooo and ahh at the big fire for a moment or two before catching ourselves and remembering the people leaping out the windows.
     Maybe I was just well-rested.
     Social media fixated for some ungodly reason on people buying lots of toilet paper and others condemning them for buying lots of toilet paper. I took to Twitter to try to offer up a silver lining in all this before, you know, thousands of Americans start to die and nothing seems funny anymore, which I distinctly remember as being the bitter icing on the tragedy cake of 9/11.
     I tweeted out a series, beginning with “Look on the Bright Side #1: No sign of Rudy Giuliani.”
     Because this was twitter, people were reacting instantly, pointing out that this was wrong: Trump’s unhinged consigliere was on Fox News, flapping his gums about the crisis. That’s what I get for never watching Fox, and for being an optimist. I keep thinking, with life or death hanging in the balance, the presidential clown show must come to an end.
     But of course it doesn’t. It just gets worse.
     I tried again.
     “Look on the Bright Side #2: Trump not crowing about the stock market.”

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Ennobled and demoralized.

     Stayed home all day Saturday. Following the news online. Reading. Like waiting for a storm. Edie made chicken noodle soup. That helped.
     We see what's coming. Yet it's hard to believe. Walking the dog in the morning I felt ... almost buoyant. That's weird, right? Inappropriate. But understandable too. As a child, I liked storms. And even though I tell myself this will be something bad, it doesn't feel bad, not yet. People are still prattling on about toilet paper. So a disconnect, between the mind and the heart, what I know and what I feel. Which itself is unsettling.
     Human, I suppose. I believe I've been a consistent enough critic of Donald Trump in the nearly five years since he cannonballed into national and world politics that I can make one small observation that may seem in his favor without being accused of apologizing for the would-be tyrant.
     His underplaying the coronavirus threat — saying it was under control, or would quickly pass — is being waved around social media as clear evidence of his utter unfitness to lead. It certainly is. The man is a buffoon, a liar, a traitor, and more. So many flaws it's wearying to even list them.
     However. Closing your eyes to peril is also very human. Routine has a momentum, and we tend to want to keep it going along its intended path, even when there is an obvious bump, or detour, in the road. We don't let go of it without leaving claw marks.
      At least I don't.
      I remember almost 25 years ago, in July, 1995, when the Chicago heat wave was killing people across the city — as with COVID-19, also mostly the elderly — and the medical examiner was holding press conferences, outlining that day's toll of what would be nearly a thousand heat-related deaths in Chicago. Even as the bodies stacked in refrigerated trailers in the medical examiner's parking lot, I distinctly remember looking at the television and wondering, "Now, is this a real phenomenon, or just Donoghue calling every corpse that shows up at Harrison Street a 'heat-related death?' He's a showboat. I wouldn't put it past him. How could it be that many?"
     It was real. This pandemic is real too. Though it doesn't seem real. Not yet.
     Maybe I'm deceived by all the false alarms in the past. The predicted storms that never came. The blizzards that proved to be a dusting. Missed us. I know how people get worked up over threats that are not there, they exaggerate. Maybe that's what causes me to be reluctant to acknowledge the looming disaster. If it's to be a disaster. I'm too aware of the possibilities of panics, mistakes, mass hysteria.
     There's a great story, "The Day the Dam Broke" in James Thurber's "My Life and Hard Times," where he recounts "that frightful and perilous afternoon in 1913 when the dam broke, or, to be more exact, when everybody in town thought that the dam broke."
     Nobody knows how it started—perhaps a young man in high spirits breaks into a trot, or a husband remembers he is late for a lunch date with his wife. In a moment hundreds of people are running for their lives, shouting "Go East! Go East!" Even though the dam hadn't broken and, even if it had, it wouldn't have reached them in the East part of Columbus, Ohio. No matter.
     "The fact that we were all as safe as kittens under a cookstove did not, however, assuage in the least the fine despair and the grotesque desperation which seized upon the residents of the East Side when the cry spread like a grass fire that the dam had given way," Thurber writes.
     Astounding how quickly society shut down over the past few days. Air travel, restaurants, sporting events. Of course the thing feels like a snow day, a lark, when it should feel like ... something else. The calm before the storm. These extraordinary steps are to keep people safe, and I can't be faulted for hoping that they might work. For feeling safe.
     That's the irony here, an irony worth pointing out. The more effectively we wash our hands, avoid crowds, cancel events, etc., the more blunted the pandemic might be, the more we'll feel those precautions were unnecessary, an overreaction. Even though they weren't. We'll never really know how much they helped, or what we avoided. Unless we don't avoid it. Talk about a dilemma. For some Americans, these weeks and months to come will be a time of tragedy. That's a certainty. And for the rest it'll be a story about stores being stripped of toilet paper. That too is par for the course.
    "We were both ennobled and demoralized by the experience," Thurber writes. Sounds about right.

The Thurber story was based on a real event, March 12, 1913

   

Notes from the Current Crisis

Northbrook Public Library

     When the Village of Northbrook sent an email Thursday announcing that after Friday the library will be closed for the rest of the month, the harsh voice of Clarence, the angel from "It's a Wonderful Life" practically screamed in my ear: "They're closing down the library!"
     And the NBA. And Broadway. And much of public life. But it was the library that prompted me to action, 4:30 p.m.—it was closing at 6 p.m. I grabbed a half dozen books around our living room that need to be returned, either already- or never-to-be read, and walked over: the library is literally in my backyard, or, rather, through my backyard, over a berm of trees, past the community vegetable garden, and through the parking lot of Village Hall.
     It wasn't quite a mob scene. But there were a dozen people in line to check out books. I had never seen that. I went upstairs to the New Books section, grabbed a few volumes that might prove useful in researching my next book, and got in line. The librarian who checked out my book was wearing latex gloves. He asked me if I knew the library was closing for a couple weeks. I said I did.
     I felt glad that in addition to hoarding toilet paper, that people are also hoarding books. A hopeful sign. Then again, the strange toilet paper situation—shelves stripped—did not cause the sense of superiority or condemnation it seemed to evoke in everybody else. I have what my people call rachmanis—something stronger than sympathy but weaker than pity—for such people. This is a scary moment, and if you can comfort yourself with a big cube of Angel Soft, or a copy of Emily Dickinsen, or just about anything else, well why not? Later that evening I stopped by Target for cat litter—not as a hedge against the End of the World, but because we need cat litter. I was relieved to find litter in bountiful supply and also on sale—normality tends to endure. The bread, however, was completely gone.

Target, Friday night