Welcome Prof. Savage's class

Wrigley Building

     Today is a little unusual. Bill Savage, a sui generis Chicagoan—Cubs fan, avid cyclist, hot dog expert, and Northwestern literature professor—is assembling a year-end extravaganza for his Chicago Way class. He asked a group of friends and associates to pick a location in Chicago that "speaks to the essence of the city."
     To just flick a name at him and be done with it seemed the quick way, the easy way, the coward's way. Certainly not the Chicago way, where you help your pals and your pals help you. Manus manum lavat—one hand washes the other. Besides, I was intrigued by the question, so decided to not only pick a place, but remark upon it, here, thus both instruct those students lucky enough to have Bill as a teacher, and entertain of what readers of this blog aren't Russian spambots.
     The Wrigley Building flashed to mind, first, because I've always loved the Wrigley Building, this terra cotta Spanish Revival Beaux Arts hodgepodge of a skyscraper, with its clock tower, glazed ivory skin and nickel skybridge.  I figured I could backform some justification for choosing it: built in 1921 (and, quirkily enough, again in 1924, since the building is actually two separate towers with different addresses) it was always brightly lit, intended to be a dramatic lure to draw business across the river, on what was still Pine Street, because there wasn't much there: a few Gilded Age mansions and the old Water Tower.
    That's why the Wrigley Building hosted a bank and a restaurant and other facilities, to service officeworkers marooned there while the city grew up around it (including, to my good fortune, the Chicago Sun-Times, whose squat gray trapezoidal monstrosity of a building, situated next to the Wrigley's beauty, was described by one wit—okay, me—as like placing an overturned galvanized metal bucket next to a spun sugar wedding cake. Gone now, replaced by the cool blue Marian skyscraper known as Trump Tower, for now).
    I could talk about real estate development and the growth of the city. Redlining, speculation, inherent at its very birth, when Native-American land was platted up and sold off just 90 years earlier in the speculative frenzy that followed the opening of the Erie Canal.

City Hall

      No. Real estate development can't be the essence of Chicago. Something else then. My mind wandered to City Hall and the Cook County Building, two identical, mirror-image halves filling an entire city block, constructed at different times by two different governmental entities.
     Any idea which two? C'mon, you guys need to pay attention. The city and ... yes! Cook County. Bill has trained you well. A massive cube, it speaks of the wheeling and dealing, the way Chicago government has sparked and squelched, led and responded to, constant change in the city. The City Council where the 50 wards gather to receive their slice of the pie.
    Not that either. The first two candidates were inspired by faulty thinking, focusing too much on the "location" part of the assignment. The more I thought, the more "essence" came to the fore. The essence of Chicago couldn't be the Wrigley Building, no matter how twee, nor City Hall. We aren't rococo architecture or shameless boodle. Important, but not what the city is about. Wrigley Field flashed, briefly, but was dismissed for the same reason. Chicagoans love sports. But we are not about sports. It is not our essence.
    And then the choice came to me, fully formed, Venus on the Half Shell, the place that reflects Chicago's birth, entire existence, and life to come. Its past, present and future. The essence, the juice, wrung out and reduced to a dark liquid at the bottom of a retort. The key, as it were, to understanding everything that has happened and will happen here, whether the city will continue to thrive or flicker and fade, as so many cities have,  becoming some vast American Naples where aging men with sports coats draped over their shoulders stand at espresso bars,  squinting into our past, trying to detect a flicker of vanished glory.
     Ready? Wait for it.

Union Station

     Union Station.
      We would sit in the Grand Hall, itself a vast, almost sacred space. It is there—we are here—because Chicago is a portage. That is why Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet paddled here in September 1673. They were returning from their exploration of the Mississippi Valley, heading north to Green Bay, and were shown a shortcut; go up the Illinois River to the Des Plaines, then carry your canoes—in French, portage—to the muddy trickle of the Chicago River. From there up Lake Michigan to Green Bay.
     That act of transfer is the essence of Chicago. From one river to another, at first, then from lake steamers to the rail system that spread out in all directions from Chicago.  When Lewis & Clark set out West in 1803, they left from St. Louis, already a majestic, bustling city, Gateway to the West, while Chicago was a swampy nowhere with a trading post and that's it. But half a century later, with the advent of trains, Chicago, which was not on a mighty river, embraced the new technology, while St. Louis— worried especially about putting railroad bridges across their river — stuck with the old way, steamboats and the Mississippi. Both cities gambled. They bet on the past and lost. Chicago bet on the future and won.
    There's a lesson there, kids.
     Chicagoans weren't enamored with trains either, at first. That's why the station is on this spot, across the river, on what used to be the outskirts. To keep the damned contraptions, which did tend to explode, away from the glory of downtown. The first line was heading toward Galena, a prosperous lead-mining town that was the same size as Chicago when the first track was lain. But Galena, like St. Louis, wasn't a portage either, and so stayed a small 19th century relic known for its fruity wine and its connection to Ulysses S. Grant.
     So why is being a portage important? Because there is profit in being the middleman. If you look at a layout of Union Station, you will see it is misnamed. It is not a station at all, in the sense that it does not sit on railroad lines passing through. It is really Union Terminal: because all routes end here. You cannot take a train through Chicago. Every line stops here, intentionally. There are north tracks, and south tracks, and one little feeder that connects, for moving stock, not passing through.
    Why do you think Chicagoans did not want trains passing through their city without stopping? Discuss.
    Freight was offloaded in Chicago, cars changed, handling and storage fees collected. Passengers poured out of one train to buy meals and gifts, maybe stay a night, then left on another.  Chicago was the nexus where the developed East met the agricultural West. That was enough for Cyrus McCormick to bring his reaper works here, to be close to farmers who bought his threshing machines.  That's why the commodities exchanges are here—because 150 years ago wheat and corn and oats were rolling into Chicago. The first ceremonial train to leave Chicago in 1848 returned with a load of wheat, purchased from a passing farmer. That's why mail order houses like Montgomery Ward and Sears grew up here — because here the tracks went out in all directions, the factories were nearby, and if you were shipping corsets to Los Angeles and New York and New Orleans, Chicago was the place to be.
     That dynamic persisted, even after water traffic fell away. A century after McCormick brought his factory here, Douglas Aircraft started building planes in an old apple orchard northwest of the city. Convenient location. Close to all that steel coming out of Gary. After the war, the city took over the runways, eventually building an airport there, named for World War II hero Butch O'Hare. A plane couldn't fly all the way across the country in one hop in the 1950s, so they'd land in Chicago to refuel. A portage still. If you puzzled over the "ORD" on your luggage tags, it stands for "orchard," one of those little winks where the past shows up today and reminds those who notice.
     The fact this waiting room isn't jammed with people is a reminder that technology changes. Trains to planes, planes to computers and the cloud. A few key battles in the communications revolutions were fought here — the first cell phone call placed by a member of the public was made during a stunt in the parking lot at Soldier Field, by the first company to sell car radios, in 1930, its name a mash of "Motor" and "Victrola" — Motorola.
    A good student doesn't argue the question's premise, but I should end by pointing out that key though transportation is, one vital truth that makes a city like Chicago great is that it has many essences. With an eye to these very difficult times — a traitor and fraud in the White House, plague in the land, the economy cratering, and now civic unrest because the first three weren't bad enough, apparently — we could have met at the Chicago Fire Academy on De Koven Street, built, with a more nod to the symbolic than is common among city officials, on the exact spot where the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 began — and no, Mrs. O'Leary's cow did not start it by kicking over a lantern; that's just a xenophobic calumny that somehow buried into the public mind and became accepted as fact.
     We could have talked about rebirth, about how that disaster and the city's frenzied re-building is what led to our future greatness, and quickly too. The flames burned away Chicago's past and left it with only future.
     We might have met in Hyde Park, on Midway Plaisance, the mile-long street connecting Washington and Jackson Parks. Here was the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, another essence, Chicago as that glittering destination that rustics from Davenport come to witness wonders, a dynamic that was repeated artfully in the construction of Millennium Park. Like the ORD luggage tag, if you go to a carnival midway to knock down milk bottles, you're hearing a faint echo of the Midway Plaisance, which was jammed with sideshows, with Little Egypt dancing the hootchie-coo and the first hot dog stand.
    When Prof. Savage raised this idea, I naturally assumed he would ask me to be waiting here, in Union Station, cross-legged on one of the massive wooden pews, cup of coffee in hand, to deliver this to you in person, after you shambled in, bemasked and bemused.
     But that turned out to be a physical impossibility, as you have already scattered around the country. Which itself might be a hint of where Chicago is going — a source of virtual classes taught by people you never set eyes on about locations you perhaps haven't seen. Maybe that's an improvement. Wherever you go in life from here, keep an eye out for the portages — isn't that what Amazon is? The manufacturers of the world dump stuff at their feet, and they unpack it, box it back up and ship it down the line. The same dynamic with a new twist. Worked for them.
    In closing, Chicago is a gift the past has given us that you can spend the rest of your life unwrapping. I know your professor has, and I have, and if you choose to stay or to return here, like us, you will not regret that decision, or at least not regret it much. Thank you for your attention.

‘This is my store!’ Loop icon holds on

     Last Friday, Scott Shapiro wore a necktie — an ivory Italo Ferretti with blue dots — for the first time in more than two months.
     “I almost forgot how to tie it,” he said. “It took me several times to get it right.”
     This is noteworthy because Shapiro owns Syd Jerome, the upscale Loop menswear institution. Like many Chicagoans, Shapiro is eager to get back to his old life, which for him means standing at the front of the store, impeccably dressed, greeting customers, helping them navigate Syd Jerome’s fifth and fanciest location, on Clark Street just north of Madison.
     That slow climb back began Friday. That’s what the sign said: “Re-Opening May 29.” The clerks were nattily attired, alert and ready. Carlos Nava went over the windows one last time, wiping every smudge. It seemed a fresh start and not a mere lull between Act One, the medical crisis and economic disaster of COVID-19, and Act Two: all that, plus widespread, ongoing violence following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
     Syd Jerome began in 1958 when Scott’s father, Sidney Shapiro, who by age 11 was steering customers into discount suit joints on Maxwell Street, opened a store of his own, less than a block away.
     Now, during the pandemic, through April and May, Shapiro came into the shuttered store every day. Keeping up with the paperwork of being closed was itself a full time job.

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Help Central Camera rebuild.

Photo courtesy of Dave Hoekstra's blog.

     I am not a photographer, obviously. But I like to think I have an appreciation for photography, and photographers, and cameras. Nor am I a graphic designer, but I admire a really cool logo. 
    Two buttons pushed by Central Camera, a wonderworld of old cameras, with rows of boxes of film, and odd ephemera to be expected in a shop now in its third century, all under a gloriously retro cool logo. I loved walking in, noting the glowing green neon "Since 1899." I only went in a few times: curiosity, if I recall, one of the boy's photography class projects, with a friend seeking a certain sort of film, showing off the place to visitors.  The clerks, I recall, were knowledgable and nice.
     So as much sorrow as Saturday's riot unpacked, seeing the smoke pouring out of that little shop touched upon how our current crisis, a dumb beast, tramples on the lives of all sorts of Chicagoans. My longtime Sun-Times colleague Dave Hoekstra says it far better than I could, so I am going to defer to him, and let his blog take over, with his kind permission. But not before reminding you to click the GoFundMe link and give money. I did, and in case you overlook it in his story, here is the link again. 
     Dave writes:

     I was at the historic Central Camera Co., store, 230 S. Wabash on Friday afternoon.
     I waited outside the door to pick up some prints at Chicago’s oldest camera store. My friend and long time clerk Timothy Shaver came out. We did an elbow bump and I gave him condolences towards the recent passing of his mother at age 99. Third generation store owner Don Flesch arrived next. He offered me a piece of candy as he does with most of his customers. He pulled his face mask down a bit to reveal a smile that would never be denied.
     We began talking about the pandemic and all the things Central Camera has survived since his grandfather Albert Flesch opened the company in 1899. World Wars. The Holocaust. The Great Depression. Digital photography.
     And a little more than 24 hours later Central Camera was torched in the downtown riots.
     The store was looted and set on fire Saturday night.

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How could he do it? Riots don’t touch key question

Photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin Garcia

     They’re breaking into all the stores. We have nothing on State ...
     The updates calmly crackle across the police scanner, urgent and unceasing. CPD in my left ear, CFD in my right.
     The injured officer is on the west side of the bridge, squad ...
     Saturday night creeps by that way, 5 p.m. to midnight. I’m keeping track, while chewing on the question that set all this in motion:
     How could he do it?
     The question that had to cross every mind — maybe too obvious to say out loud — while watching that video of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneel on George Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes Monday until he was dead. It sparked horror that rattled the nation.
     We need everybody to report to State and Lake, they’re about to set a building on fire.
     But protests quickly deteriorated into violence — a police precinct headquarters burned in Minneapolis. Then in scattered cities. Then in cities across the country Saturday night including Chicago. Watching TV news is like trying to breathe through a straw. Trying to figure out what was happening here as dusk fell, I sat and listened to the police scanner.
     The injured officer is on the west side of the bridge ...
     Chauvin being charged with murder should have defused the outrage. So why this chaos? Economic ruin? Pandemic fatigue? Outside agitators? I don’t buy that. The disturbance took on a life of its own. This riot had as much to do with George Floyd as the championship riots of the 1990s had to do with Michael Jordan. The scanner constantly crackled.
     Wagon at Macy’s, come up Madison now!
     The key question got lost in the smoke and shattering glass. How could he do it? How could Chauvin do that to another human being?
     Squad car north of Adams on Dearborn on fire ...
     The easy answer: because Chauvin is a cop. Cops do that kind of thing.
     But yet ... aren’t those also cops scrambling around downtown, holding their lines, issuing requests, trying to keep the city from tearing itself apart?
     Two squad cars on fire in front of the Witt Hotel. Anybody know where the Witt Hotel is?
     How could he do it? Lack of training? I was shaking my head sadly at the Gopher State cops botching it so badly up until 5 p.m. Saturday. We have our own training issues here. What was the plan for handling unrest, and how did it fall apart so quickly?
     Give me more units at Hubbard and State, they’re surrounding them.
     Police represent society, for good and bad. They represent us, our values. So let’s ask again: How could he do it? Easy. Because George Floyd wasn’t a person. To Chauvin, he wasn’t human, he was black.
     They broke into the Palmer House ...
     The Black Lives Matter movement is misnamed. Because black lives don’t matter — not to Derek Chauvin. Not to a lot of people. Look at the crimes that aren’t captured on camera. The substandard schools reserved for African Americans. The gaps in housing, education, employment, capital. We focus on one death while the machinery crushing uncounted lives chugs away. As it always has.
     We need units! We need officers now!
     How could he do it? He was trained. Not at the police academy, maybe. But by America, and its 400 years of systemic dehumanization and enslavement. Those go together and endure, a legacy baked into everything today. Of course, 40 percent of Americans ignore facts; they always have. You can’t be a self-satisfied slaveholder otherwise.
     201 N. State, we got a squad car on fire ...
     The Floyd killing isn’t even the only horrific killing of a black man to emerge on video in the past month. Ahmaud Arbery, or have you already forgotten? Shotgunned while jogging in February. The video created a stir ... three weeks ago.
     Rush and Walton we have a large crowd. They’re going into Versace.
     Forgotten now. Maybe that’s why this keeps happening. Because problems are easier to forget than fix. Bigotry is not a flaw in America but a feature. Black lives matter to some people in some places. But not to this cop in Minneapolis, nor his colleagues, nor many other Americans too dumb to even realize it.
     To them, black lives — or gay lives, or women’s lives, or Jewish lives, or my life, or yours — simply aren’t important. How do you fix that? Hell if I know. I just report the fires, I don’t put them out.
     15 West Hubbard, they are outnumbered, they need more cars ...
     Those trashing the city — do their lives seem to matter much, even to themselves? On Saturday night, the Chicago cops seemed to be the ones to whom life really mattered.
     15 West Hubbard, they are throwing things at the officers ...
     15 West on Hubbard, please, they need some help ...

What happened to "we're all in this together?"

     Why do tragedies always occur on lovely days? The weather was so perfect Saturday, my family decided to get out of the house, drive over to Riverwoods, picnic on a blanket, walk in the Ryerson woods. We sat on a bench, watched the Des Plaines River roll by, and I manfully resisted explaining how important the river was to the history of Chicago, which began as a portage between it and the Chicago River and never stopped being the vital link between one place and another.
    I'd seen a police station burn in Minneapolis — Minneapolis? I guess these Garrison Keillor cliches about Minnesotans are behind the times — and unrest in places like Louisville and Denver and Detroit. And honestly, felt a little smug. No problems like that in the City that Works. Lori Lightfoot, you go girl!
     But around 4:30 p.m Twitter kept feeding indications that things weren't going well downtown. It was surprisingly difficult to find information. At 5 p.m., the local CBS, ABC and NBC weren't showing news — or maybe they were and I couldn't find it, among Hulu and Netflix and our hundreds of stations.  CNN was doing what it does: reporting on the coasts, sort of.  

    I went upstairs and listened to the police scanner in my office, cops in my left ear, fire in my right. I'm going to write that for the paper tomorrow as soon as I'm done here, so a few thoughts, then I'd better get cracking. On the scanner every sentence seemed a crisis. Calls for help. "10-1," the cop version of "S.O.S." Though information there could be wrong, too. They kept talking about 3,000 protesters arriving from Indianapolis, and no one ever said "On what, 100 buses?" At 11 p.m. they were still talking about it, and sent a police helicopter to the Skyway to keep a lookout. I wanted to yell at the scanner, "C'mon guys, think!"
    The famous outside agitators. The Minneapolis mayor said that all of those arrested the first night were strangers from somewhere else. Then the number became 80 percent. I have a tough time believing that. It's such a convenient truth. What happens, in these cases, is the grip of society — fraying apart already, thanks to our poisonous president, this virus and economic ruin — seems to loosen, that some people convince themselves that civilization has relaxed, the rules are off, and those people go crazy. It has as much to do with the murdered man, George Floyd, as the riots after Bulls championships had to do with Michael Jordan.
     My wife and younger son watched TV, or tried to. CNN was horrible, the commentator — Don Lemon maybe? — intoning over and over how the country is burning and where is the leadership? Both exaggerated and inadequate. It seemed flat and fake and forced. Just tell us what's happening. They had the hardest time doing that. Friggin' TV news, it's like trying to breathe through a straw. 

     I fled back upstairs, listened to the cops chase the protesters around the city. That was the plan? 
     I had a plan. Before Saturday night happened — I'm loathe to call it "The George Floyd Riot" though that's the misnomer that'll probably be stuck to it, unless it's just part of the general chaos of the second half of 2020 — I was going to write about The Self-Isolation Choir, which is just what its marvelous name would suggest: a British group of homebound musicians united by a crisis. A friend on Facebook pointed out that they're doing the "Messiah" online at 1:30 p.m. CST. You can find more information at the link here. Sounds fun.
      I'm not sure whether I will have the patience to sit there and listen, never mind the lightness of heart to sing along. Maybe that would be soothing. Maybe the images — from Twitter, and from Sun-Times photographers such as my friend Ashlee Rezin Garcia, who took the imagine on the front page above — will just jumble in my head and the music seem a mere buzzing.  
     Seeing downtown looted is oddly personal; I know these places. I was in Syd Jerome, the upscale men's clothier at Clark and Madison, the day before, Friday morning, talking to its personable owner, for a column on the opening of the city which now will probably seem woefully out-of-step on Wednesday, and is probably mooted by events anyway. Central Camera, "Since 1899" glowing in green neon as firefighters trying to pull the burglar grate back and smoke pours from within on Twitter. Such a lovely shop, all these old cameras, like a museum. The kind of place you lose and it doesn't come back.
     It made me think of a previous riot, one of the Bulls championships. In the cold light of morning I walked up Michigan, assessing the damage.  The window was boarded up at Stuart Brent's, and I went in to see what the irascible old bookseller had to say. I found him just sitting there, staring at the floor in his shattered shop, sunk into very unexpected dejection. So much that I immediately tried to cheer him up.
    "Well at least they were looting books, right?" I said, with all the brightness I could muster. "Stealing books! A higher level of looter..."
     He turned his face up to me, his eyes moist and old and terribly sad.
     "They didn't steal the books," he said. "They just threw them in the street."

Texas notes: Oyster

The Aegean Sea by Frederic Edwin Church (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

    Our Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey is a woman of parts, without question. Still, today's report ventures off in a totally unexpected direction, as you will see.

     During the summer of 2005 the man I was dating got a phone call. The King of Jordan, who was once a boarding school buddy of his, was inviting him to come for a visit to help support the building of a new boarding school in Jordan. The idea was for the King’s previous classmates to help fund and support the up and coming King’s Academy, which was modeled after the school in the States where the King had spent some of his formative years. Since wives and partners of his classmates were also invited, I was beyond excited to learn I’d be joining my boyfriend on this trek to The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. My ex and I were not exactly a solid couple, though we lived together in his gigantic rental loft in the West Loop of Chicago, and we did our best to make things work between us. Even though he did not always like me — once calling my “histrionics boring and pedestrian” when I was passionately expressing my innermost feelings — apparently there were some perks to my presence, despite what he saw as my somewhat plebeian tendencies. We had almost nothing in common and to this day I can’t quite explain how we ended up a couple, though I remember clearly how it started.
     The first time I saw his six foot seven inch stature adorned in high-waisted hand tailored trousers that seemed to come from a distant and more magical era, and the long black braid cascading down his back contrasting against his fashionably wrinkled white linen shirt, I was enamored. I was not used to such unusual eye candy in the city I’d lived in for most of my life when I spotted him on the outdoor dance floor of Summer Dance on South Michigan Avenue. I discovered that a good friend of mine was there with this tall living sculpture, so we had a chance to meet. He was an odd bird, wildly interesting and intelligent, and I loved it. He was self taught on the baby grand piano placed with a view out of a huge plate glass window of the loft, and would whip out a ragtime hit in between other acts of prowess. I joined him at dinner parties in Chicago and New York with artists and brilliant thinkers, doers and creators, and my life became a French movie. Everything was amber and tawny, we had a demanding orchid that simultaneously could not tolerate too much attention, which was casually and somehow perfectly placed in a pot full of mulch that hung precariously from a giant exposed brick wall. We made tofu with vindaloo sauce and used molasses, whole wheat flour and dark chocolate nibs in the banana bread. Our visitors were the curators of jazz festivals on islands in Europe and famous musicians, poets, actors, and inventors. We once spent a summer working on an art project on tobacco farms in the South where we were taken on a four-seater private plane to an island in Georgia with a pilot who did loop-de-loops while I squealed with nervous joy and my boyfriend and the pilot’s wife screamed at him to cut it out and right the plane. Being in this man’s life opened the world up much bigger than I had ever known it to be.
     It was not surprising that now I’d be joining him on a trip as the guest of royalty. One big question loomed large in my mind: what on earth would I wear? My wardrobe of tie dyed bell bottom yoga pants mixed with funky dancing and club attire would not do. A solution quickly surfaced — a warm and generous woman who lived in a penthouse that we frequented for wine-laced never ending dinner parties on Fulton Market jumped right in. She was all too thrilled to help this comparative pauper become a princess. She invited me over and into her closet, which was larger than most apartments I’d lived in, and started pulling out colorful zigzag designs of Ottavio Missoni and flowing silk and linen garments, and buttery leather designer sandals. She didn’t skimp at all, and outfitted me with elegant jewelry and a handbag too. I was ready to face this once in a lifetime adventure properly.
     As was the case with many big dreams in my life, the expectant picture I held in my head proved to be much grander than the real thing. Don’t get me wrong — riding camels through the Wadi Rum Desert and snorkeling off the King’s yacht in the Red Sea were as wonderful as anything I could have possibly imagined, but at my core I knew I was only a temporary fixture in this magnificent life. My boyfriend and I were not connected as some couples are, like best friends. This was temporary. Knowing that, I felt a bit sad, but more than that I was grateful. The King put us up in Disney-like castles of hotels where the housekeeping staff would sculpt swans kissing each other out of towels and surround them with rose petals placed on our bed until I asked them to stop. We spent the trip mostly apart. I bonded with a woman — another partner of a former classmate of the King — who was to become a dear friend, and my boyfriend got lost in creating his art.
     I never did meet the Queen who was too busy for us, but I did get to spend a little bit of time with the warm and welcoming King and his son. The rest of the trip was spent exploring Petra, the city carved into the sandstone you may have seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, floating in the warm thickness of the Dead Sea, exploring the ancient Roman city of Jerash and the port city of Aqaba. We ate lamb and vegetables that baked for hours in huge metal pots that were buried in the hot desert sand, and dug out ceremonially by Bedouin men and women who were hired to take care of us. We sat in tents in the desert, woven rugs beneath us and hookahs and beverages at the ready. We learned that delicious cardamom flavored tea would be continually poured into our little glass tea cups until we shook the cups from side to side, indicating that we were done.
     A week before our trip we learned that three missiles had been launched from the Jordanian city of Aqaba towards a US naval ship in the Red Sea. One missile had landed in the Sea, one in Israel and thankfully harmed no one, and the third mistakenly landed in a warehouse off the coast of Aqaba and killed a Jordanian man. Family and friends begged us not to go on the trip after hearing of the violence aimed at Americans, but we were not backing down and would not be frightened out of taking this trip. The absurdity of war continues to ripple though our nations. Even with the danger that always loomed, I once felt that the world was my oyster and I traveled at every opportunity. For now it seems there is less talk of war among my friends and even in the news. Now a global threat has taken on a new form, an all but invisible organism that is not only keeping us from distant shores but even from travel within our own borders and even from our own families. It’s keeping us away from or warily distanced at civic centers, meeting halls, places of worship and all of the little places we once took for granted — markets, mom and pop shops, libraries, book stores and even our own sidewalks. As distancing relaxes successfully in some parts of the world like New Zealand who has handled this pandemic with clear and sane leadership, we can only hope that even with our hiccups and strange partisan fights we will beat this thing and once again have the freedoms we were accustomed to, or at least some semblance of them, and perhaps with an even deeper sense of gratitude this time.

Trump stomps on his Twitter megaphone

     I believe it is the complaining I shall miss the most.
     The whining.
     I almost added “the grumbling.” But Donald Trump does not “grumble,” not the low, corner-of-the-mouth, suppressed muttering implied by the term. No, his every grievance is an air horn two inches from your nose: “BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!”
     I’ll miss that.
     And by “miss” I don’t mean, “wish back.” God no. But “notice it’s gone.” That delicious moment when the endless beep-beep-beep of a truck backing up nearby just suddenly ... stops.
     The steady drumbeat — no, drumroll, rat-tat-tat-tat — makes pausing at a single cavil a challenge. While you carefully consider one, three more are fired off. It’s nonstop, exhausting, the drip-drip-drip of norm-shattering psychopathology.
     Did I call them drips? Make that a firehose — high pressure, the nozzle flinging itself about, water jetting in all directions. You can’t drink from it.
     But you have to try, occasionally, despite the soaking. Because some Trump gripes are more significant than others.
     His lashing out at Twitter this week is worth getting water-logged to address. Because it shows just what a nihilistic, “Top of the world, Ma!” ending we can expect should he somehow lose the election in November. No gentle going into that good night, not for The Donald.
     It started Tuesday, with a lie he’s been repeating a lot:

There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone.....

     Republican invocation of voter fraud is itself a fraud. The GOP takes an insignificant problem and pretends it is widespread in order to suppress Democratic votes and undercut trust in the electoral process that increasingly disfavors their shrinking base of angry, fact-averse white folks.

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