COVID grief: ‘Did he know I loved him?’

A piping plover.

     He liked cats and bullfights, served in the Illinois National Guard during the Vietnam War and once ran a goat farm in Arizona. He taught computer programming and worked in the reptile house at the Lincoln Park Zoo.
     He was varied and contradictory, as people often are, the good ones anyway, and after he died in January of COVID-19, his wife of 40 years grasped at the air where he had been. Part of that process was to write to me. There was guilt. For nearly a year, the couple lived like monks in a cell, going out only for doctors’ visits. She thinks that’s what killed him.
     “I am sure I was exposed in the waiting room of a medical office, and I brought it home,” she wrote.

Red-shouldered hawk

     Yes, he was high risk: overweight, diabetes, high blood pressure. Lots of people fit that description. It doesn’t mean you deserve to die.
     He went to the hospital, stayed two days, but was sent home over her objection.
   “I wanted him to stay,” she wrote. “Just over 24 hours later, I found him on the floor, nearly unconscious, and he was transported to the hospital by ambulance again. This time he had a pulmonary embolism and hypoxia. Three days later he was on a ventilator, and one system after another began to fail. He was removed from machines, and he died.”
     What was her husband like? He “made friends wherever he went. He was bright, funny, generous, caring and always interesting. His reserve of facts, especially about history, was amazing. He always supported me in everything I did.”
     He was many things, really. He collected first editions and stamps. He liked to take photographs of birds.
     “He loved birds and was constantly reading and learning about them and trying to add to his life list,” she wrote. “We spent a day recently at Machias Seal Island in Maine photographing puffins. His bird photography often won awards at the Crystal Lake Camera Club.”

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Japanese white-eye.

Photos are by one of the 524,000 Americans lost to COVID-19 this year.

Strange interlude 2013: Monopoly tokens born in Chicago

    I pulled this up thinking to post it on World Monopoly Day, which is March 19, but doing my due diligence uncovered a rival National Play Monopoly Day, Nov. 19, and rather than try to suss which was the "true" holiday for the board game, I decided it would be the perfect post to save as a fire axe behind glass, to run when for whatever reason I didn't come up with anything better.      

     Publicity is more art than science. Yet, like science, it has its formulas. Start with spectacle—parade the circus elephants through downtown. If that doesn't produce the desired result, mix in a spoonful of crisis—allow the elephants to "escape," then watch the photographers come running.
     Or when you have a beloved icon, the standard formula is to mess with it in some insignificant way. Suddenly, in the words of Arthur Miller, "attention must be paid."
     Thus, I smiled to see Hasbro take a page from the old PR lab manual and add a gram of "Survivor": a popularity contest for its 77-year-old stalwart, Monopoly, that will eliminate one current token while adding one of five new token designs. The media bit, big time.
     "Here's your chance to make those wishes known," the AP ballyhooed.
     Normally, I wouldn't touch this story. Yes, I am a traditionalist; I wince at all those themed Monopoly editions—for individual cities or sports teams or whatever. Junk. The central joy of Monopoly, to me, is its pure form. Part graphic—the question mark of chance, the familiar property colors, the cop, the diamond ring. Part is just the physical act of throwing the dice, marching the top hat—always the hat—around the board, passing "Go," counting up the money. My boys learned to count by playing Monopoly, which made my wife and me shake our heads at the electronic version, where a computer counts. What's the point? Efficiency? Why not just let the computer play the whole game while you go off and do something else?
     Still, I'm not going to bemoan the loss of whatever token is cashiered by this stunt. Even if it were my beloved top hat. It isn't as if Hasbro is going to come collect our old sets, and they last for decades—that's why the company is doing this in the first place, to create a little false urgency and move some product during the post-Christmas slough.
     But since Monopoly tokens are in the news, I should point out one overlooked aspect: They have local roots; in fact, Monopoly tokens are as Chicago as deep-dish pizza. It's an amazing story, and if you have a Monopoly set—and who doesn't?—dig out the iron and look at it, because it is the key actor in this drama, crawling like Sweet Pea through the construction site chaos of the past century, yet miraculously untouched.
     Ready? Here goes.
     Ole Odegard was born in Norway. He came to Chicago, and in 1896 opened a laundry, eventually located at 3629 N. Halsted.
     Chicago was a center of the laundering profession—the National Laundry Owners' Association was in Joliet, where it had an institute of laundering (the Coin Laundry Association is still here, in Oak Brook). On the West Side was the National Laundry Journal, run by brothers Sam and Charles Dowst.
     Sam Dowst, like much of the city, attended the 1893 World's Fair, where he saw the Mergenthaler Linotype machine, which creates type by shooting hot lead into molds. He realized that not only could it make type, but also buttons and collar stays—always of use to laundry owners.
     So the Dowsts bought a machine. One journal subscriber, Ole Odegard, wanted to win the loyalty of his customers' children by giving them small prizes. He asked the Dowsts if they could whip up some kind of charm for his business, the Flat Iron Laundry. Something ... like ... a ... little flat iron.
     They did, as well as small die cast cars, which they called Tootsietoys. Nor were they the only Chicago company making charms; a company called Cosmo turned them out, too, selling to another local business, Cracker Jack. The two companies merged in 1926, becoming Strombecker Toys.
     Parker Brothers rolled out Monopoly in 1935, using wood dowels as tokens; it decided to include six made-in-Chicago metal tokens in 1937: a thimble, cannon, top hat (hooray!), shoe, battleship and that original flat iron. In the 1950s, it added a Scottie dog, race car and wheelbarrow, and lost the cannon.
     One of those eight will be "locked up forever," according to Monopoly's Save Your Token Facebook page, replaced by one of five new would-be tokens: a robot, helicopter, guitar, diamond ring or cat.
     The election runs until Feb. 5. Just good fun, right? Perhaps. They're fiddling with success, with what some claim is the key to the game's popularity. "So what is it about Monopoly that has made it the most successful proprietary game in history?" Tim Walsh asks, in Timeless Toys. "I took my own informal survey and was surprised at what I heard over and over again. The players have spoken. It's the game pieces."
     Just to be on the safe side, I went on Facebook and voted to keep the top hat, now tied for third with the battleship (the Scottie dog is in the lead, natch). It's the original flat iron that's in trouble, second to last place, currently held by the wheelbarrow. Of course. Nobody respects tradition anymore.

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 11, 2013

     The iron lost, and was replaced by a cat. In 2017, Hasbro went back to the well and asked fans to vote on the lineup, pitting the eight current pieces against 50 newcomers including a computer, a rather brick-like cell phone, a thumbs up, a variety of smiley face emojis. Some 4.3 million votes were cast, the thimble, boot and wheelbarrow lost, and were replaced by a T-Rex, rubber ducky and penguin. 

Texas notes: Not All Who Wander Are Lost

 

     It just occurred to me: if she is no longer in Texas, what will we call our Saturday report from Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey? "Texan-in-exile?" "Return of the native?"

    The first time I heard the tap tap tap of their strong beaks at the bottom of the glass door, I was confused. No one knocks on my door these days. I looked out, and there they were. Heads cocked, alert round eyes staring at me. Thelma and Blanche, the youngest of our nine backyard chickens.

     As I prepare to move out my temporary tiny house rental refuge, I realize more and more how much I will miss this whole deal. A brand new high-ceilinged tiny house with a washer/dryer unit and a bidet. Not to mention an electric bed that doubles as a couch and the largest flat screen TV I’ve ever had, taking up much of the wall across from the couch bed. Then there’s the remote control Venetian blinds on the red glass front door, floor to ceiling screened windows that roll open letting fresh air circulate, and a sleek (yes, remote control operated) ceiling fan. 

     To make it even more appealing, it’s backed up to a park in a fabulously walkable Austin neighborhood called Brentwood. Birds chirping all day long. Owls at night. Hawks playing with the wind.
     I’ve decided to use my last walks as an Austinite (for now) to notice what I am grateful to this city for, and to say goodbye. As I walk her streets—over 11 miles yesterday—I am taken by how much of the landscape I have grown attached to. (Austin is either a she, queer, or nonbinary. If she has any he in her, it’s more on the feminine end of the range and somewhat gender fluid).

     On the 11 miler I visited one of my favorite finds. Penny Pocket Park, aka Sparky Park, which I happily happened upon during early COVID walkabouts. It’s tucked into a residential neighborhood and appears to have sprung up organically outside of a now defunct City of Austin Substation. As you enter the park, to the right is a sturdy, wavy and bumpy stone wall where people leave offerings in the little nooks and crannies. A blue marble, a recovery chip, kewpie dolls, photographs, tiny plastic toys and any other bauble imaginable. The wall fits seamlessly into the landscape, and is the entryway to a grassy (well, brambly here in Texas) field. There’s a bench built for two nestled under a live oak in the back corner of the field. Penny Park is always worth a brief stop.  

     Prior to Snowmageddon ’21 copious yucca plants peppered our lawns and parks. When flowering they boast sturdy stalks that shoot up eight feet or more from the center of the plant.  I remember seven years ago when I first moved here, seeing my first yucca flower at Natural Gardener (a more prolific version of Gethsemane Gardens in Chicago, which houses wild turkeys, a goats or two, and a guitar-shaped labyrinth). It was a century plant, meaning it flowers once each 100 years. Everything is Bigger in Texas is a motto that can be fun sometimes. (Not so as far as the roads peppered with trucks the size of the tiny house). 
     After February’s ice, snow and cold shocked, terrified, and beat our foliage into submission, the detritus is a grim reminder. Some formerly well-manicured yards full of native plants are now a mess with giant monocot leaves turned into mushy piles of xylem and phloem. Other yards are the aftermath of a slasher movie— thick cacti leaves the size of a horse’s head mercilessly chopped to the bases of the stems with machetes.      Maybe the storm was the last catastrophe in a long year of destruction that will make way for something new. While I doubt that we are out of the woods, hope springs eternal in my indomitable spirit. I have a plan to say goodbye to the south at the end of April, road trip for a month (to free standing, COVID relatively-safe Airbnb rentals) as I make my way back north to the land of the Yankees, where I might just belong. I get my first dose of the Moderno vaccine today— I will volunteer for seven hours directing traffic at an '80’s themed vaccine “party” (oh yes, there are certainly parts of this fun, music-obsessed city that will be hard to say goodbye to). I’ll come back to you in one piece and in many ways a more well-rounded person than I was in days gone by. For now I can live with cacti and cowboys and it ain’t so bad y’all.

Not in a box, not aired by Fox, not here or there, not anywhere

T.S. Eliot

     The poetry of T.S. Eliot is just the right salve to grease the aging process. Snaking himself into the machinery of existence, like Charlie Chaplin shot through an enormous maze of gears, Eliot applies his lyrical truth to the rusty flywheel of life. “Old men ought to be explorers/Here or there does not matter.” Yup.
     Though Eliot has a problem. And no, not the cat poems. They're easy enough to skip. Something far more troublesome. He was an anti-Semite, and wrote poems mocking Jews, most notoriously “Burbank with a Baedecker: Bleistein with a Cigar,” where he clamps a perfumed hankie to his nose and shudderingly cringes:

     But this or such was Bleistein’s way

     A saggy bending of the knees

     And elbows, with the palms turned out,

     Chicago Semite Viennese.

     A lustreless protrusive eye

     Stares from the protozoic slime.

     Ouch. You don’t need a master’s in literature to figure that one out.
     It gets worse.

               The rats are underneath the piles

               The Jew is underneath the lot.

     Into the dustbin of history with Eliot, then? Off the shelf, in that one-strike-you’re-out purity in vogue nowadays? Umm, no, at least not for me. I love Eliot, and find him a comfort and a guide, the vile bits notwithstanding. How? Because literature, like life, is complicated, and once you start tossing out authors and artists with some loathsome aspect to their resume, the shelves and walls empty rather quickly.
     And no, I’m not joining FoxWorld, clutching at myself and keening because the Dr. Seuss estate announced Tuesday they are pulling half a dozen of his lesser works from publication for containing dated caricatures. I get what they’re trying to do: keep the Seuss money machine humming away. It’s called capitalism. Every company refreshes the product line by ditching old models and adopting new ones. Books go out of print every day.

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Gradually then suddenly

     My approach toward getting the COVID vaccine seems unique, or at least unusual.  It's one that I haven't heard any pundits expressing, so maybe I should try. Here goes ... 
     I'm just waiting.

     Not clicking through various web sites, spending hours on hold and filling out forms, investigating the situation in Lake County, picking over my medical history to find some qualifying flaw. That seems ... desperate. At least if you're not 80 or a cashier at a grocery store or a paramedic or some other profession that puts you as heightened risk or in contact with the public regularly. 

     Not so necessary for a columnist who's home more than he's out.
     My days are fairly isolated, just my wife and I rattling around our big old house. I go for walks with the dog, whose leg is all better, thank you. I wear a mask, even when passing people on a windy trail on the Techny Prairie. The concern being that some smatter of COVID could blow my way. Why not? The mask doesn't hurt—I don't know what all those Texans are crying about, the big babies. When nobody is around, I slip the mask down.

     Don't get me wrong; I'd like the vaccine. I'm looking forward to it. But I'm 60 years old and in good health. I have no underlying conditions beyond a titanium spine and hip, and those don't seem to enter into the mix. I've been safe so far this past year, and I figure I can make it until April or May or whenever it's coming. Our union rep at the Newspaper Guild says they're working on getting the vaccine for the staff, and I'm content to let those wheels turn. They'll tell me when it's time.
    Is that patience? Or passivity? I really like the idea of not pushing my precious self to the front of the line. I'm already ahead of the game, and trying to cut in front of others seems like gilding the lily. Blessed as I am, already, waiting my turn in relative safety seems the least I can do. My way of doing my part, by doing nothing. Certain loved ones suggested I sign up for a shot at a Walgreen's in Peoria, or try to pass myself off as a smoker for my occasional cigar, or some such oily strategy to snag an appointment. But Peoria is two and a half hours away, and it is probably a toss-up whether the five hours of round trip on the expressway is more perilous than laying low for another month or two. Besides, it would be wrong.
     My plan is to minimize risk and wait. I was swimming regularly at the Y, assuming it was safe. Then I got some kind of sinus infection one day after swimming—a month ago? Three months? It all kinda blends together at this point. But If figured, if I could get that, I could get COVID too, and put laps on hold until after I get the shots. I do go out on stories, though I try to do it safely. When I was interviewing the homeless last week at the CTA Blue Line Station in Forest Park, there were a few moments—unmasked homeless guys ranting four feet away from me, like the photo above—that I thought, "This is a bad idea." But a week passed, and I'm okay, so it was an acceptable risk, in that nothing bad happened. I didn't seek out the Night Ministry story, it found me, and I couldn't not go. As I used to tell myself when required to visit a public housing project at night, "If people can live here, I can visit."
    Sometimes when others are debating over what may happen, I sometimes interject: "We don't have to argue; we can just wait and find out." That's my approach to the vaccine. I'm cultivating serenity and waiting for it to come to me.  Those vaccines are on the way. People are getting them, and eventually my turn will come. This locked-down world seems like it has gone on forever, and it will be long weeks and months until it turns around. But the change will come, to quote Hemingway's deathless line in "The Sun Also Rises" about how people go bankrupt, "gradually then suddenly." 

Republicans turn their party into a newt

 

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

      Early in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” there’s a scene where filth-spattered villagers gleefully drag a woman to their lord, shouting “We’ve got a witch! Burn her! Burn her!”
     “How do you know she is a witch?” trills Sir Bedevere, a particularly dim-witted future knight of the Round Table.
     “She looks like one!” the villagers say.
     “They dressed me up like this!” the woman objects.
     Bedevere tries again.
     “What makes you think she is a witch?” he says.
     “She turned me into a newt!” exclaims a large peasant, played by John Cleese.
     The assembled look at him. Cleese glances down at his shoulders, as if detecting a flaw in this line of reasoning.
     “I got better...” he ventures, in a small voice.
     Which illustrates a problem with insisting on ludicrous lies. Even in the outrageous world of Monty Python, at some point you may get called on it.
     Donald Trump delivered two main messages to the Conservative Political Action Committee in Florida Sunday: The 2020 presidential election was stolen; and his followers must defeat every Republican who spoke out against him. A pair of propositions that scream for somebody to draw a line connecting the two.

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R.I.P., Terry O'Brien

Terry O'Brien

     Terry O'Brien had the map of Ireland on his face—I always thought he bore a resemblance to Rich Daley, though with a lineage of service to the city that goes back even further: both his father and grandfather worked for the water department, and he rose to be president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, where he served for 16 years and I would sometimes bump into him, in always cordial and informative encounters. So I was sorry to hear he passed away this week at the too-early age of 64. He and I had a mutual friend, the great Ed McElroy, publicist for the MWRD. Ed made sure that our paths crossed from time to time, so it was not accidental. And out of deference to Ed, I would try to find something to highlight. I particularly remember when O'Brien ran for Cook County Board president in 2010, I met with him, an awkward conversation—he was not a natural politician, which speaks to the quality of the man. But I just couldn't find a way to write anything about him, which perhaps speaks to mine. I had better luck when there was infrastructure around to add interest. Though even then, the subject matter could prove a challenge, as this chestnut demonstrates. And yes, I meant the headline as a kind of pun.

ANNALS OF THE LOWER WORLD

     After you have made your deposit, so to speak, after you have performed the final step in the alimentary process, to use a fancy term, after you have completed the necessary paperwork, to be coy, and flushed, to be blunt, the end result, no pun intended, is shot by a gallon or so of water into the secret netherworld of pipes criss-crossing beneath Chicago.
     There, it joins similar contributions from each and every Chicagoan. The gallons add up quickly—to give you an idea how quickly, the pipe carrying this material is about 21/2 inches wide when it leaves your house, but 13 feet in diameter when it reaches the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District's Stickney plant.
     Stickney is not only the largest of the seven wastewater treatment plants in the Chicago area, it is the largest such facility on earth, serving 2.38 million people in a 260-square-mile area including Chicago and 43 suburbs.
    I have an affinity for matters infrastructural, for pipes and conduits and the overlooked underpinnings that make a great city work. I'd like to tell you that it was my idea to hie out to Stickney and watch the sewage flow in, but it wasn't. They invited me, though I happily blocked out a day because, really, how often does one get the chance to stand on a metal walkway 40 feet above the dark gray River Styx of sewage as it begins its transformation back into clean water?
     "The scum rises to the top," said Reed Dring, an engineer explaining the complex process of screening, settling and treating the waste.
     "As it usually does," I said, before I realized that I was sitting next to the reclamation district's able president, Terry O'Brien. I flashed him an apologetic smile and quickly added, "Present company excluded."
     About 800 million gallons come into the plant every day on average—since the storm sewers are also connected, that number spikes up when it rains.
     What you dump down the drain does have an effect on water quality—the reclamation district has been trying to keep Chicagoans from flushing old prescription drugs down the toilet, because their complex compounds resist being removed and build up in the water.
     Industrial polluters can really foul up the works, the most extreme case being in 1989, when the P & H Plating Company on West Belmont poured 4,000 gallons of cyanide into the sewers. The poison killed off the bacteria used for filtering waste in the district's Skokie plant—not to mention 20,000 fish—shutting the plant down. The company's owner eventually was sent to prison.
     If you want to drop a dime on anybody pouring poison into our wastewater, you can call, toll-free (800) 332-DUMP.
     "We don't ask people's names," said O'Brien. Although they do take just about everything else.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 28, 2007