Goodbye 2020: A year like ... well, you know

     An Easter like no other.
     A summer like no other.
     A World Series like no other.
     A year like no other.
     The description “a _____ like no other” wasn’t invented in 2020. It has been used for more than a century: ”It has been a year like no other,” wrote R.M. Squires, summing up the world of dentistry in 1919.
     But the phrase was worn to a nubbin over the past nine months by journalists lunging to convey in a handy three-word code the baked-in strangeness and continuous turmoil we’ve been enduring. A branded logo to rubber-stamp this slow-motion train wreck: COVID-19 pandemic meets civic unrest meets economic disruption. Our locked-down society of shuttered schools and struggling restaurants, all playing out against a political clown show that veers from farcical to frightening, sometimes within the same hour.
     A presidential election like no other.
     A Thanksgiving like no other.
     So often was “like no other” flung, at times I wanted to scream, “EVERY year is a year like no other!” Years are unique, like snowflakes. And besides, 2020 is like other years. It’s like 1968, 1945, 1918 ... all the way back to 1066, landmark years where you won’t have to purse your lips and ponder, trying to dredge up a single event. We all know what happened in 2001. Nobody is going to snap their fingers and try to recall what year COVID struck: 2020, a year to remember, whether you like it or not.

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COVID-19 has mixed impact on beekeeping

     

Corky Schnadt and bees

      But how has COVID affected beekeeping in Illinois?

     “It’s actually been a positive, oddly enough,” said Eugene Makovec, editor of the American Bee Journal, based in Hamilton, Illinois. “Everybody wants to buy honey. The honey I sell is from a dozen hives that typically produce 500 pounds of honey.
     “Last year I sold primarily around the holidays to three or four local stores. This year, the stores I sell to went crazy in honey sales, starting in April. It’s been difficult to keep up with them. I’m actually going to run out of honey.”
     His explanation: Honey is comfort food.
     It’s important for beekeepers to keep abreast of new developments in their field, and that, too, has benefited.
      “I find Zoom meetings very helpful” said Corky Schnadt, president of the Illinois State Beekeepers Association. “I just attended a symposium by the University of Nebraska. There were entomologists from all over the country. I thought, ‘There is no way I would have gotten all this information otherwise.’ I would never have gotten in the car and drove to Nebraska. Zoom meetings keep us connected with the latest data.”
     Not all is rosy in the apian world, however. Novice beekeepers, after sinking $500 or more into a hive, a colony of bees and protective gear, have concerns they like to share with experienced beekeepers.

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Houston, we have ... an issue here.

 

Traffic, Buenos Aires

    Headline writers generally grab the shortest possible term. Storms "hit" rather than "arrive." Victims are "killed" rather than "murdered." But take a look at this headline from last night's on-line Trib.

     "Person of interest" is a way to say "suspect" at more than twice the length. There is a certain rational, of course—sometimes authorities investigate someone who turns out to be innocent. "Suspect" has darker connotations which "person of interest" does not yet have, yet, and labeling someone a "suspect" can tar them though guilt is not implied. Though the practice is decades old and those have been labeled "persons of interest"—such Richard Jewell, who was falsely-accused of the Atlanta Olympics bombing—have argued that people see through the ploy.

     To me, it is cover-your-assery, not the noblest motive in professional journalism. But at least when dealing with humans, there is a justification. It's important not to injure the innocent. But I've noticed what I refer to as "euphemism creep" where the softer, more amorphous terms is used where no mitigation is actually necessary. Out of reflexive timidity. The example that sets my teeth on edge is the morning traffic report on WBBM radio. If a semi jackknifes on the Eisenhower, cutting off three lanes of traffic, it creates "an issue." As does every other delay that in a less-enlightened time would be called "a problem" on the highways. Sometimes the i-word is deployed three or four times in a brief report. 

     Now, I can see how you don't want your kid's teacher to say he has a problem with anything. And you wouldn't want to risk having a problem child. "Problem" is like "suspect," a malign term. "What is your problem?"
     But how does this translate to traffic snarls? Clogged highways don't have feelings. Nobody at IDOT will feel bad if there is a problem on the Dan Ryan. No trucker is going to cry himself to sleep because the radio reporter said his breakdown on the side of the Kennedy caused a problem with gapers. 

     The trouble is that we train ourselves to hold back the dogs in one area, and it bleeds into the others. Thus language is dulled, and made more confusing, and reporters train themselves to err on the side of caution. So, for instance, when the president started lying continually, it took parts of the media a shamefully long time to use the word "lie." That's a problem.

Texas notes: Tired

     Today's report from EGD Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey.  

    As my car turned the corner on 47th and Shields the tire fell off. At first it just wobbled a bit, so I went ahead and took the turn. As an optimistic teenager I was “sure” nothing was wrong. We got out and surveyed the damage to the long blue station wagon. A 1978 Chevrolet Caprice Classic was the tank my protective father decided his teenaged daughters needed, and he was correct. My friend Kristin and I had been visiting someone we’d met out at a club. Back then in the mid-to-late 80s, we pretty much danced our lives away. We had to fit school and work into the schedule, but house music (and later goth and new wave) came first.
     We’d dress up in designer clothes that I couldn't honestly afford, even with my job at Marshall Field’s, and we’d hit the clubs. There were parties at Operation PUSH, Mendel Catholic High School, Evanston Township High School, the Hotel Continental, The Muzic Box on lower Wacker, The Warehouse, and too many more to name.
     I lived it, but Wikipedia says it well: “The Warehouse became a hub for the people of Chicago, specifically black gay men. It was compared to a religious and spiritual experience. At the time, many black gay men felt excluded from the religious communities that they had been raised in.” We danced all night long to lyrics such as “gotta go to church y’all,” and “I’m every woman.”
     These clubs offered a culture of acceptance that was most welcoming. We’d arrive decked out in Norma Kamali suits, paisley Kenneth Cole shoes, shiny black riding boots and Marithé et François Girbaud baggy pants and silk shirts. We affixed sparkling broaches to the collars.
     We met Leon out dancing one night. He had an amazing haircut known as a “box,”— like Kid in Kid ’N Play. After hanging out at clubs, Ronnie’s Original Steak House and Water Tower Place for months—as we did back then—he invited us over to meet his family. We went over on a weekend afternoon and met his grandmother, siblings, and a few others. We watched TV, had snacks, and laughed our tuchuses off.
      When we left, Leon walked us to my car. We said goodbye and pulled away. Enter tire fiasco. As we took a look at the wheel I felt confident I’d be able to fix it. After all, I had a jack and a spare and I’m my father’s daughter. He made damn sure his children knew how to change a tire before we were allowed behind the wheel. Just then a group of young people came by to see what was happening. They took a closer look and realized the lug nuts were gone.
     Someone had stolen them. The crowd around us reassured us that they could help. They ran off, and came back with the six lug nuts we needed. We worked together and the wheel was fixed. We said goodbye and headed home to lie to our parents about being somewhere else for the day. We often found ourselves in parts of Chicago that are not considered safe. That’s why I know firsthand that Chicago is full of good people.
     Despite its trials and tribulations, I feel fortunate that my Grandma Olive hopped on a train from Delaware to Chicago when she was a mere 14. She moved into an apartment with other Irish girls and became a career cashier (including a stint at the Hotel Continental before my days of partying there). She met my Grandpa Carl at Oak Street Beach. They created my beautiful mother who met my dad at The Old Hangge Up, and here I am, with a heart full of admiration and respect for the city of big shoulders. It’s a complicated, yet special city and I am proud to call Chicago my home.

‘Every difficult problem ... is disguising a blessing’

 

André De Shields in "Hadestown."

     Christmas has pagan roots, in holidays designed to illuminate the darkness of winter and keep the gathering cold at bay with the warmth of love and celebration.
     Which can be tough to manage in the best of times. Our COVID-19 Christmas, with so many people isolated, careers wrecked, bank accounts emptied, is even harder.
     You need a light to guide you.
     On top of everything, 2020 has been almost entirely devoid of live performance: no concerts, no theater. Unless you were lucky enough to catch one at the beginning of the year, and I was. Singer Anaïs Mitchell took the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice and turned it into a thoughtful musical, “Hadestown.” Last February, just before the world shut down, my wife and I met our boys in New York City and we saw it on Broadway.
     In the tale, lovely Eurydice goes down to Hell to live with Hades, king of the underworld, and her lover Orpheus tries to bring her back, with a helping hand from Persephone, Hades’ wife. Her absence brings the winter; her return, the spring.
     The star of the show is veteran Broadway actor André De Shields, and he has one line that kept returning to my mind as the days grew shorter, colder and grimmer.
     “The world ... came back ... to life!”

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Bye bye BK Lounge

Burger King's creepy mascot

     Food is emotional.
     That's obvious. Every bite wrapped in taste and memory, smell and perception. Satisfying a craving older than language, older than fire, broader than humanity, felt by every creature, from flea to vole, hawk to whale.

    Yet for some reason, as obvious as that is, as much as I've not only eaten, but thought about eating, talked about it, wrote about it, the food/emotion link didn't really stand up and wave until I read that the Burger King in Evanston has closed permanently. 

     Because I felt nothing.
      Which is odd for several reasons. The food at McDonald's is crap, generally, but I nevertheless have fond feelings toward the chain, despite its way creepy mascot, Ronald. A bond stretching back to the red and white tile buildings that had nowhere to sit (okay, a small alcove, if 50 year old memory series, that people never actually used). I have complex associations with the yellow paper that wraps McDonald's cheeseburgers, and every year or three I find myself wanting one—the way you taste that pickle when you bite into it. Somehow the pickle is key, the ketchup. The cheeseburger itself is just the vehicle.

     Every few years, I think, "I'd like a McDonald's cheeseburger." Despite being sober. And I have to actively remind myself of that grotesque moment after you've eaten something  from McDonald's, and your body shudders with the violation done to it, and you feel that oily residue on your teeth, and that McDonald's smell, the same smell that invades every corner of a Metra car the moment someone opens a McDonald's bag, started to percolate out your pores. I think it's the grease.
     Burger King is far better, food-wise. Flame-broiled. Real lettuce. Its own even more horrifying mascot. Yet Burger King is an eternal also-ran, Pepsi to McDonald's Coke. I might have to bat away temptation to patronize McDonald's every few years, but I never, ever think: "We should go to Burger King." It never crosses my mind, and were it to vanish, I would never notice it was gone, the way you typically never wonder what happened to Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips. The last Burger King I ate in was seven years ago, because I happened to be in a car with someone who stopped at Burger King to eat as we were driving to the UP.
    Even stranger. I have very specific memories of that Burger King in Evanston, closed permanently due to the pandemic after 44 years in business. "The BK Lounge" we called it, an undergraduate stab at ... what? Hipness I suppose.

     I lived for two years directly across the street, 1725 Orrington Avenue, at what was then the Northwestern Apartments, a vast 600 student freshman hive. The building is still there, but it's the McManus Center, housing Kellogg School of Management students and their families.  Once upon a time, reporters would have hung out, interviewing people going in and out of the center about their views of Burger King closing. But nobody has the staff or the time or the inclination anymore, and there's a pandemic going on, and even the Daily Northwestern didn't bother. Nor did it track down anyone with memories of the place.

     Here, I'll do your legwork for you, and contribute mine, for what it's worth.

     My first day at college, in 1978. My family drove in from Berea, Ohio. We unloaded my boxes of records and stereo system and big ass speakers and steamer trunk. Then it was time for lunch, and we trooped across the street to Burger King.
     Here's the memory: we get our food—burgers, fries, soft drinks, not much else you could get there back then. Whoppers, I suppose. And my little brother is fussing with his ketchup packet, for the fries, and both squeezes and tears it at the same moment, projecting a splurt of red ketchup across my sternum.
    And I remember looking down at the splash, with dumb bovine incomprehension, then up at him, and then off to the side, as if looking for the studio audience. I wasn't mad. I wasn't even particularly surprised. It was almost as if I had expected this, or something like it, and now it had occurred. The reaction was more a "So this is how it's going to be, eh?" resignation. Which was apt, because that was indeed about how it went. 

Happy birthday, pizza matriarch Jean Malnati

Jean Malnati, center, with sons Rick, left, and Marc.

     We had a nickname for my Grandma Sarah: “The Christ Child.” Please forgive the blasphemy. But she was born on Christmas Day, and certainly adored. Besides, it wasn’t our religion we were playing loose and weird with.
     People born on Christmas get their celebrations lost in the glare of the holiday. Even those born near the holiday. In some ways, they have it worse. All the preparations, the distractions, and not even the quiet of Christmas Day. Add COVID, when all our birthdays are denied the attention they deserve.
     And some individuals really deserve attention.
     Where to begin? Let’s start in 1980, with the great Sun-Times sports columnist Bill Gleason sitting in the Bears locker room, amidst the discarded tape and sweaty socks, having a post-game chat. Gleason brings up Brian Piccolo, the Bears running back who died of cancer 10 years earlier, at age 26.
     “What made you think of Brian?” he is asked.
     Gleason replies he always thinks of Brian this time of year. Someone makes it easy for him to remember.
     “He is garlanded with fresh flowers, a gentle hero among us,” Gleason later wrote, “because a lady who is beautiful on the inside as well as on the outside throws a party for him every autumn.”
     That lady is Jean Malnati, who with her husband, Lou, founded Lou Malnati’s Pizza in 1971. She is one of those unfortunates whose birthday (Dec. 22) falls around Christmas.
     “We’ll always have the Brian Piccolo Scholarship Party,” Jean told Gleason, 40 years ago. “I’ve never given a thought to discontinuing it.”

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