Welcome Rahm and Carol back to the federal government

Two Fools Dancing, by Hendrick Hondius (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Though president-elect Joe Biden is staffing his cabinet with top-notch experts, a note of alarm has popped up. Readers are tugging my sleeve: Do I know that Carol Moseley Braun is being considered for secretary of the interior? Do I know that Rahm Emanuel is in the running for secretary of transportation?
     Yes and yes. But remember: Their names are being floated by themselves. Rahm Emanuel is a Nijinsky of self-promotion; leaping, twirling, shape-shifting ambition in human form. White House advisor. Congressman. Mayor. Cable TV pundit. Be honest: If you saw a news report on the Vatican, and spied, tucked behind Pope Francis, Rahm Emanuel in red robes and a skullcap, leaning over, murmuring a few velvety words into the pontiff’s ear, would you be surprised? I sure wouldn’t. He’s that kind of guy.
     And Carol Moseley Braun she’s ... well ... she’s just sad, isn’t she? Having been elected the the first African American female in the United States Senate, she immediately punted that job by canoodling with a dictator’s son and neglecting such essential duties as showing up for work.
     And what was her job after that? Ambassador to New Zealand. Is there an employment that reeks of pity mingled with let’s-ship-this-person-to-the-other-side-of-the-globe more than ambassador to New Zealand? Wellington is 8,750 miles from Washington. A 30-hour flight. She found her way back, dabbling in several stillborn businesses. A pecan farm. Some kind of tea, which I had the chance to try: both bitter and weak. That’s why I don’t write fiction.
     Ready for a shock? I’m fine with both getting Cabinet positions.

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Anniversary

     Most Jews in the Holocaust went to their deaths without resistance. They didn't fight. They did what they were told, and were killed. They weren't angels or martyrs, but regular people with all the excellences and flaws that regular people have. There was only one Anne Frank. It was a gigantic, mind-boggling, irredeemable tragedy that, people being people, we nevertheless keep trying to grasp and redeem. Maybe that's natural.

    Over the span of my lifetime, it seems like it's only gotten worse. Not the Holocaust; the sugarcoating. We've began remembering the enormity of the thing, with the isolated instances of resistance serving as tiny moments of relief. Then gradually the horror faded, crowded out by the relief, which almost took over. It became a kind of ennobling story, an entertainment, which it shouldn't be. 
    I point this out as prelude, having read a piece in today's Tribune to mark the 62nd anniversary of the Our Lady of the Angels school fire, an inferno that killed 92 students and three nuns. To be fair, "Then & Now" isn't really intended to recapitulate the events of the fire, but to update what the order of nuns are doing now. That's interesting, and I have no complaint, as far as that goes. I like nuns. The Catholic church does much good that should be recounted.
    My bone of contention is the complete gloss the fire itself is given. The first fact we learn is that it was "a tragedy that revolutionized fire codes around the world." Pretty to think so. Chicago already had fire codes at the time of the fire. The school was just allowed to ignore them.

     Then we learn of the heroic rescue efforts of three nuns, capped by Sister Helaine O’Neill, "who literally used her body as a human bridge for children to climb across over a flaming stairwell." Saints have been beatified for less.
     Maybe that happened. David Cowan and John Kuenster don't tell that story in their definitive book, "To Sleep With the Angels: The Story of a Fire." But maybe they missed it. I wasn't there, so I can't say.

    There are other stories, of nuns ordering their students to sit, students who might have escaped but didn't. Of the desperate efforts of parents to get to their dying children. We don't get those. We don't get anything else. Fire codes revolutionized and nuns heroic. Period.  End of story.

     That's wrong. A deformation of history. An offense, a crime of forgetting committed again the horrors of the past, against those who suffered from those horrors. Two-thirds of the students who survived the Our Lady of the Angels fire were boys. Ponder that for a moment. Many of the younger students were found by the windows, where the older ones had trampled them. This is not to single out any particular faith, though I know some readers will take it that way, because it's easier to play the victim than to think. All creeds panic in a fire. There is nothing inspirational or pretty about it. As the years go by, and journalistic standards are replaced with an ill-considered tendency toward entertainment and pat tales of inspiration. Maybe that's what happens when a hedge fund buys your paper; journalism falls away and we are left with distortion and propaganda. We all need to guard against that.

Federal flaw spurs unemployment fraud letters

     There are many ways to find out you’ve been fired. The classic “Could you come into my office?” delivered with grim faux casualness on a Friday afternoon. The mass layoff email. Chicago radio folks sometimes learn of their professional demise in a Robert Feder column.
     I was informed of my unemployment by letter, on Monday, Nov. 16. About 4 p.m. I was about to walk the dog and checked the mail. There was an innocuous window envelope from a P.O. Box in Springfield. Its very blankness screamed, “Open me!”
     “UI Finding” the letter was headed. For a moment I thought it was UL, Underwriters Laboratories. Then a few key phrases caught my eye: “Last Employer” and “Unemployed Reason: Laid-Off (Lack of Work)” and “Last Day Worked: 04/29/2020.”
     I took off my coat. The dog could wait.
     “Honey!” I called. Though I didn’t need savvy legal advice to immediately call the 800 number on the letter while firing off an email to the newspaper’s human resources department.
     “Welcome to the Illinois Department of Employment Security Benefit Payment Control Division,” chirped the voice over the phone. “Your call may be monitored for quality or training purposes ...” It took a few tries to worm my way to where I needed to be.
     “Rather than wait on hold or call multiple times, you will receive a call,” the voice lied.
     I’m still waiting.

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Stop means stop

 

     What is more standard than a street sign? Designed to convey a single simple message to drivers zipping past, they are one form that isn't played with. Stop signs are always a red octagon. They're never blue. They're never square.
     So driving down a street in Norridge Saturday I was instantly intrigued with this stop sign addition, a little mini-me sign, adding an exclamation mark to the standard stop sign. As if the town were saying, "No kidding, we mean it." I'd never seen one before.

     Could it be official? Or some desperate measure from a local resident? It looked too well-wrought for that. They got the font right, and that is usually a giveaway.
     At home I jumped online, and found the signs as early as 2008 in Hinsdale, and references to a "Stop Means Stop Program." But I couldn't find an original source—not the program itself., obviously a play off "No means no." Kinda risqué for a street sign. Then there is a tradition of newer signs having a little edge, trying to cut through the clutter and stand out from the overfamiliarity of the usual. New York's classic, "Don't even THINK of parking here" comes to mind. 

     I found them in Georgia, but most seem a suburban Chicago thing. Forest Park tried them. Park Ridge too, which inspired Lincolnwood to consider doing so as well. 
    In 2018, the Lincolnwood Traffic Commission didn't think much of the "Stop Means Stop Program."
     "The Commission discussed the facts that the program is discouraged by the Illinois Department of Transportation, it contributes to sign clutter, there are no warrants or standards and there is no available evidence to suggest it improves safety or compliance."

     Ouch. In its defense, the sign made me stop completely, but then I wanted to take a photo.  Street sign clutter seems a real concern, to some people, but to me that's one of those criticisms that says more about the observer than the the thing being criticized. "There are too many street signs." That's like complaining there are too many molecules flitting through the air. Or am I making the mistake of treating a genuine concern lightly just because I don't happen to share it? I thought the thing was cute. Then again, I've seen it once. 

Texas notes: The soul of a man

     "The ability to give" should top all of our lists of reasons to be grateful, as Austin Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey reminds us.

     “Hey Siri. Play Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.” 

      His name had been floating around in my mind since I heard it mentioned on NPR the other day. She complied, and I was greatly rewarded. Lilting, bending guitar chords slowly built up to the moment when a rich, boyish yet distinctive voice began imploring the listener. Mr. Elliott played and sang an old gospel song, "Soul of a Man."  

     Time stood still in the way only a song or another stunning piece of art, nature, or sentient connection can accomplish. The lyrics with more questions than answers matched my mood on this strange and lovely Thanksgiving day.
     The morning had started as usual with freshly ground coffee, newspaper headlines and my attention being pulled in and out of radio stories. I like to keep WBEZ Chicago playing in the background, even down here in Texas. Sure, it can be disconcerting to hear “a high of 47 and overcast,” and sometimes I have to take a moment to reorient. After years of living down here in the South it still surprises me, somehow, that there are places where winter doesn’t really exist.
     After coffee, I got dressed and decided it was time to get out of the house. I drove off listening to Ramblin’ Jack, windows open on a mid-70’s Fall day, to nowhere in particular. I had only a loose plan for this holiday. Once the song ended and the trance was lifted, I decided to start at the grocery store. Masked and distanced with hand sanitizer in my fanny pack and peppered all around the store in touch-less dispensers I felt like a character in the Jetsons. I thought “make sure your helmet and space suit are on, lest the very air around you cause sudden death.”

     Reasonably sure I’d survive this visit, I picked out one of the last containers of freshly baked Pao de Queijo (Brazilian cheese bread). I got back into my car and as I drove off continued listening to Jack. I could not find a song nearly as transfixing as the first one I’d heard, so I played it again and again.
     I headed to my friend Richard’s house where he met me in his garage. I left the cheese bread on a chair for him. He took a box of Saran-wrapped plates and Tupperware loaded up with holiday foods and placed the box on the trunk of his car, then backed away. I felt grateful and humbled that he (and others) offered me holiday meals and distanced visits, so far away from my family this year. Richard and I were both masked and kept a good distance from each other. We chatted for a little bit and then said our goodbyes.
     I took the food and headed to my happy place— a small field behind the castle-like museum in the Hyde Park neighborhood nearby. I laid a blanket out on the grass, unloaded the box and turned it over as a table. I put a nice cloth over it and unwrapped the feast. Baked chicken, yams with pineapple, green beans with thick-cut bacon, tart cranberries, stuffing and gravy. The works. I started with the pie of course.
     I marveled at the sky and how utterly content I felt. I’ve gotten used to solitude and while I miss people, we have found ways to stay connected. In some ways I feel closer to family and friends who are far away than I did when we visited more often. When we do talk it’s with more presence and reverence than before. The fragility of life is now ever-present.
      After my meal I took a short constitutional and saw families sitting in circles on their lawns. I wondered if they were wishing they were somewhere else. Sheltering in place with family members usually seen much less has been taking a toll on folks I know. Or were they basking in gratitude for being close to the ones they love? Perhaps they were wavering between the two, or something else entirely.
     As I headed back towards home I passed by a disheveled man talking to an unseen force in his head, standing next to a large dumpster near the gas station. I stopped at the store, picked out a vitamin water, and put together a bag for him— the rest of the feast that I had set aside as leftovers, a plastic spork and napkins, and a waterproof jacket a neighbor donated to my trunk-stash for folks in need. As I slowly approached him (keeping 20’ or so of distance) he bent down and hid. I called out “sir?” and he peeked out at me. I said, "If you’d like a meal and a jacket I will leave them here for you,” and left them on the curb.
     As I walked back to my car he called out a feeble and garbled thank-you and quickly took his gifts down the alley. I saw him sit down in his encampment, about a half a block away, and dig right in. I wished I’d given him more and now that I know where he is, with the generous flow of gifts from my neighbors, I will look for him again. “What is the soul of a man? I’ve traveled in different countries. I’ve traveled in foreign lands. I found nobody to tell me, what about the soul of a man?” In this COVID era I’ve never felt more comfortable with the fact that I do not know.

Why the media isn't fake.

Donald Trump, White House press conference
Thursday, Nov. 26, 2020

      Because nobody could make this shit up. 

     That's it. That's the entire post. I could add more. (What is that? The Irresolute Desk?) But the picture of Donald Trump's first press conference since losing the election Nov. 3 says it all. He is the living embodiment of John Milton's observation, "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven." Outside conditions are wildly over-valued, particularly by crude frauds like Trump. It is the person within, his mind and character, that color everything. Look at him. Look at his condition: Rich. Powerful. Famous. The president of the United States. And yet such a tiny, pitiful man. He radiates the essential pettiness within, emits a constant whine of grievance, no matter the circumstance, a howl that drowns out everything else. That's why I'm really not very concerned whether he goes to prison or not. What difference does it make? He carries his cell with him wherever he goes. Some people are their own worst punishment.

Thanksgiving 2020

     Happy Thanksgiving!
     I suppose I should just leave it at that. After a brutal, endless, emotionally-wringing 2020 presidential campaign, with its unprecedented attempt by a sitting president to subvert the election process, conducted against the background of a raging viral pandemic, we deserve a moment of relief, of stepping away from the maelstrom and concentrating on our own personal lives. I still feel blessed, and hope you do too. I hope there is food on the table and a loved one or two in your bubble and you find time to pause, and reflect, and give thanks for the good things, the rocks that are not washed away in the tempest, solid enough to set up a table and sit and share something plentiful and good.

     Period. End of post.
     But this is far from the usual Thanksgiving, even though an alarming number of Americans are pretending it is just another holiday, hopping on planes and gathering in big family groups, while all of the medical experts and the responsible parts of government beg them not to. Why? I suppose being heedless, even stupid, has something to do with it, or at least on automatic pilot, zombies vacuuming a house that's on fire.
     It isn't entirely their fault. We've been grinding through eight months of this. The impulse to say, "The hell with it," is human and strong. Plus many are being led astray. It isn't as if Trump is alone setting fire to the curtains. Yesterday I notice a post on Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas' Twitter feed and, well, perhaps it's best if I just show you:

     In one sense, that is a standard GOP bullshit, the hallucinatory conjuring up of some insane stand—the War on Christmas migrating to Thanksgiving—and projecting it on the bogeyman of liberals, so it can be decried. Squeezing a little imaginary victimhood into a paper bag so it can be huffed, for the high it obviously produces. Not that there aren't academic sorts pointing out that the actual first Thanksgiving took place in September, or that it didn't work out so well for the Native-Americans welcoming the pilgrims. Not that some don't cluck at Thanksgiving, as people do about literally everything. Yet all of it scraped together doesn't amount to a collective eye roll, never mind "losing their minds." Rather, it's the same comic Yosemite Sam bow-legged bluster, Cruz firing his rhetorically six-guns into the air, swaggering against imaginary enemies who are, again remember, trying to cut down the number of conservatives who are dying on ventilators in three weeks.
     It is grotesque enough from a stupid man, from a man like Donald Trump. To see it from Cruz, who was educated at one point, and knew enough to denounce Trump in 2016, before he fell at his feet and began rolling like a puppy. It's despicable and should excuse him from the office he holds—in Texas, remember, where they called out the National Guard to help with the morgue overflow—never mind let him aspire toward higher office, as he so obviously does. That he is a member—I almost said "respected member" but don't want to overstate the case—of the United States Senate, and not some fringe loon, is a hard pill to swallow. Never mind the prospect that he might be the 47th president since, after Trump, anything is possible. So I had to take that tweet and seal it in a bottle and set it on the shelf, here, where we can find it in 2022 when Cruz starts vigorously running for an office even further beyond his abilities. (Assuming he's still not crouched over Trump's shoes, licking). 

      This is criminal negligence, to make business-as-usual Thanksgiving into an act of political defiance and egg his flock of Lone Star State sheep to rush baaing to the nearest pack of wolves and show their bellies.
     Enough, let me let you get back to your celebration, the more modest, safe and low key the better. If Ted Cruz can wildly cheer on folly, then I can provide a knowing nod of approval to caution. There is nothing wrong with stepping away from the herd. When you're giving thanks, you might want to give thanks for being able to breath, unassisted, because not everyone can.
    We will always remember this Thanksgiving. Crisis holidays are like that. I remember a distant New Year's Eve, 2000. The coming of the millennium was a big deal, and people were doing all sorts of wildly excessive things, rushing off to the pyramids, seeing laser shows in Paris. Not only did I not do any of those things, but I had to work, the newspaper sounding an all-hands-on-deck alert in case the Y2K computer melt-down some experts feared actually occurred. (Before COVID, before 9/11, we had no idea what a crisis looked like...)
     So it's 11:45 p.m., Dec. 31, 1999. A quiet night, none of the bad stuff we feared occurring, and I look up at the harsh florescent-lit newsroom at 401 N. Wabash and think, "I'll be damned if I'm ushering in the millennium sitting in this goddamn place." And I get up, and go downstairs, and stroll south on Wabash Avenue, an unusually warm December night, and stop at the middle of the Wabash Avenue Bridge, lean against the rail, and watch the clock on the Wrigley Building slowly advance toward midnight, utterly alone, the street empty. It was quiet and solitary and peaceful. At 11:55, a knot of partygoers, rushing somewhere down the block. Then still again.
     At midnight, a soft cheer, from somewhere, from everywhere, and some fireworks popped in the general direction of Navy Pier. It was a very nice, comforting moment that became a beautiful memory. I hope this COVID Thanksgiving is the same for you. There will only be the one, if we're lucky, and we might as well make the best of it. We can celebrate in the traditional fashion next year. Those of who live to see it, I mean. Stay safe. Happy Thanksgiving.