Flashback 2003: Travel to Detroit? Sure, and I'll bring a colleague

 

      Twitter gets a bad rap. But I find it an easy way to interact with people I might never meet otherwise. It's been particularly valuable during COVID, when we all hunkered down and kept out of the public whirl. On Wednesday, Shermann 'Dilla' Thomas, a Chicago historian who runs walking tours of the city,  said he'd like to meet me, and Mary Mitchell. I began to reply that I'd be happy to meet him—I'm happy to meet pretty much anybody—but Mary might be harder to pin down. But then I remembered this incident, and felt that I might be selling her short. It's also a reminder of the sort of thing we miss not being in an office.

     "Security sent this up,'' said the grinning, lanky reporter, dropping a manila envelope onto my cluttered desk. "We opened it very carefully.''
     I took the envelope and gingerly peeked inside, then dumped out the contents: Three music CDs. Two notes scrawled on personal checks. A parking lot ticket from Midway Airport. And the key to a pickup truck.
     "I made some phone calls,'' the reporter continued. "She's a teacher at an inner-city high school in Detroit. She drove here last night and left her truck in the parking lot at Midway. Then she went back."
     "Why?" I said.
     "She wants," he answered, "somebody from the newspaper to drive her truck back to Detroit." 

     "Why?" I asked again. He didn't really know.
     I thanked him and he left. I sat at my desk, turning the key over in my hands and gazing at it. Then I phoned the teacher. She said she wanted someone from the outside world to come and talk to her students.
     "I'll do anything to get the attention I think I need to at the time to get my point across," she said. 

     And that point is? I asked.
     "I love the kids in my classroom and I would do anything for them," she said. "I'm white and they're black. This is about teaching them self-love, self-respect, self-esteem."
     I said I wasn't quite following her logic.
     "I'd love for you to drive it back, just so you can tell the kids what a strange thing [I] did for them," she said. "They'd love it."
     It's a five-hour drive to Detroit, I said.
     "You could talk about the value of math in your work," she said. "If you've got an African-American reporter you could bring along, that would be beautiful, them seeing a white and a black working together."
     Maybe it was the real-world pathos of that last sentiment. Maybe I was seduced by the chance to push math. But for some reason the wall that reporters count on to keep out people who seem not quite right lowered a little. I told her I would call her back and stepped next door, to Mary Mitchell's office (Mary, for those of you reading online in Sweden, is the paper's outspoken voice of in-your-face black womanhood).
     "Mary," I said, "would you go to Detroit with me so that this teacher's class can see a black and a white working together?" 

     She didn't blink. 

     "Sure," she said, barely looking up. I will always give her credit for that.
     I called the teacher back. "We're there," I said. This was a Wednesday afternoon. Tomorrow was too soon. I still had to get the truck from Midway. And airplane tickets back. "Friday," I told her. She was very happy. "I assure you we will pack that auditorium," she said. Which seemed odd. That confidence. As did, when I asked for the school's address, her not knowing. I asked if she would mind if I called the principal, just to get a few quotes about her. She said of course not and gave me his name.
     Acts of generosity are alien to me. I don't tutor kids or volunteer at soup kitchens. It isn't in my nature. But now I was elated. Talking to these kids would be a kind of atonement, for my being in general such a pitiless bastard. I have always loved the story of Jonah, for how he squirms when God tries to send him to Nineveh to preach. Maybe, I told myself, this is a sign. Maybe there's some kid in Detroit who needs Mary Mitchell and me to give him a good talking to. How could I even consider dodging this mission? I'd end up inside a whale.
     The next day I planned to scoot to Midway, get the truck, then bring it home. I'd pick up Mary Friday morning bright and early and we could set out for Detroit to bring those kids the good news about mathematics and racial harmony. Then I remembered the principal. I placed a call.
     "That sounds farfetched," he said, adding the teacher had just come back from a medical leave which "might have affected her judgment."
     The truck trick was odd, I agreed. But it goaded us toward Detroit.
     "We have to check with our district before we do something like that," he said. "She should have checked with me. There is an activity request. I have to go through my office of communications, and follow other protocols. I would put everything on hold."
    So we shouldn't come? I said, disappointed. No, he said, don't come.
     I knew I should have been happy--off the hook!--but I felt terrible, like I had ratted out the teacher. "I had to call the principal, right?" I asked several colleagues. "That was only prudent. Right?"
     The teacher called, crestfallen, to thank me. They had walked her off school grounds after I phoned the principal and told her not to come back until she had a psychological screening. She seemed to blame the principal, for not warming to news of her drive to Chicago and her invitation to the paper. And while I'm all for math, and for loving your students, and passionate teaching, I found myself arguing with her.
     "How can you expect your kids to follow rules and function in a complex society if their teacher won't?" I asked. She didn't see my point.
     Since then, she's sent me thick packets of letters from her students, many saying they haven't learned anything since she's been away. That was meant as support for her, but it seemed to me more of an indictment. What kind of teacher would be proud that her students stopped learning in her absence? Not that I don't have sympathy. Her heart seems pure. And seven years in a tough urban high school could drive anyone close to the edge, if not around the bend. But sometimes you have to follow the rules. A math teacher, of all people, should know that.
             —Originally published in the Sun-Times March 21, 2003

Life back to normal, alas, for vaccinated

 

     The booths at Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Company on Clark Street are small. But the six of us jammed in well enough last Thursday night. True, when my napkin slid off my knee and onto the floor I only momentarily considered trying to somehow snake my hand down and reach for it — a physical impossibility — before simply asking the waiter for another.
     If you are unfamiliar with the Lincoln Park fixture, that’s because it’s not one of the behemoths of the Chicago pizza world, no Lou Malnati’s or Giordano’s. Here, you purchase not deep dish or thin crust pizza, but a sui generis concoction of cheese and dough baked into a bowl and flipped over. We usually skip it and make a meal out of just a salad and the parmesan-dusted Mediterranean bread — it’s that good. There aren’t many restaurants where you eagerly anticipate the salad dressing; this is one of them.
     But we had newcomers — our sons’ girlfriends — who of course had to try the pizza pot pie to achieve the Full Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Experience. Of the six, I was the odd man out. The professional status of the others were: one assistant attorney general for the state of Illinois, aka my wife; three recent law school graduates studying eight hours a day for the bar exam next week, otherwise known as my sons and Girlfriend B, plus Girlfriend A, still in her third year at NYU Law.
     You’d think at some point, while conversation flowed around the Rule Against Perpetuities, post-bar-exam trips and the tax benefits of living in New Jersey that somebody would turn to me and say, “What, are you not a lawyer?” But that would require more attention than a dad typically receives in these situations. I knew my job here was to keep my mouth shut and pay for everything, a task I performed admirably, if I say so myself. Although I did slip up once and begin to speak about reading literature, prompting my wife to immediately manage, somehow, to reach under the table and tap my knee, the international signal for, “You’re talking. Why are you talking? Don’t talk.”
     Otherwise, I was on my best behavior. Girlfriend A has been around for over a year, but Girlfriend B, a recent development, had never met us before. I withheld my natural question: “Why are you here? Are you crazy?” and instead asked, “Where did you go, undergraduate?” When she answered, “University of Southern California,” I nodded sagely and said the first thing to pop into mind: “Trojans.” Their mascot. That’s what I meant, anyway, not Trojans the brand of prophylactics, though I did instantly worry about my comment being interpreted that way, that I’d inadvertently said an off-color remark that would be joyfully seized by my sons and dangled in my face for the next decade. They didn’t seem to notice.

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Flashback 1996: "Protest over theater heavy on melodrama"

     Former Alderman Bernie Hansen (44th) died Sunday. Figuring that I must have spoken to him at some point, which isn't typically true about today's crop of City Council zeds, I went digging and found this from 25 years ago.    

     What impresses me is that, even though I was a quarter century younger, it's so marinated in cynicism. It's almost pickled. If anything, I'm more cheery now than then, which is the reverse of how it's supposed to be.

    A bit of update is in order: the project was scrapped due to neighborhood resistance. Mike Quigley became congressman for the 5th District. 

     The thought of community protest leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I'm not sure why, but I'd have a hard time opposing anything built in my neighborhood, no matter what it was. They could tear down the lovely gray stones on my street and start building an oil refinery and I probably would just tense my jaw and walk on.
     Maybe it comes from being a journalist. I've seen too many concerned citizens righteously banding together to fight to keep an AIDS hospice or a group home for the handicapped or a children's swing set from blighting their neighborhoods and lowering their property values.
     Maybe it's cowardice. When the city began covering the lovely old red cobblestone alley behind our street with asphalt, I briefly considered seizing the banner of protest and trying to stop it. But it was a momentary impulse, a fantasy, the way some drivers, waiting for a train to pass at a railroad crossing, muse about abandoning their cars and hopping the freight to points unknown.
     Asphalt could be an improvement. I can't trust myself to judge, because I know that owning property blinds people to such evaluations. It makes them selfish and oversensitive. Jesus could come down to Earth and start curing the sick, and very quickly the neighbors would complain to the city, "That glow of goodness surrounding His head—it shines directly into my bedroom window at night. . . ." "The shout of joy the sick give when they're healed—it frightens my dog!"
     Still, despite paying a mortgage, my first reaction to news that a giant, 16-screen cinema and shopping center is to be built at Broadway and Surf, two blocks from my house, was this: "Whee!"
     Movies are fun. Shopping is fun. Adding joy was the prospect of a dreary strip of Broadway being torn down, a block of gritty, empty, decaying storefronts, punctuated by a few dingy businesses, such as the establishment apparently called "LIVE NUDE DANCERS." Anything would be an improvement. They could replace it with a hog rendering plant and I'd be happy.
     Here at last, I thought, was one project that no one could oppose. So I was more than a little surprised to see a bright orange flier from something called the Residents' Committee Concerning the Broadway-Surf Development. The flier was headlined: "a 16-screen, 3800-seat movie theater! 7 stories tall—more than 77 feet! traffic of 350 cars, & trucks loading!"
     Struck by the flier's urgency, I compared it to my benchmark of wild alarm, a cardboard poster from Abundant Life Ministries on South Cottage Grove, headlined "WARNING—AWAKE! AWAKE! YOU ARE GOING TO HELL!" I keep it over my desk.
     The similarities in tone were striking. Residents' Committee: "A SEVEN-STORY CONCRETE MONOLITH, ruining the value of your home, whether you own or rent!" Abundant Life: "NO WATER IN HELL! TORMENT FOREVER!"
    The committee flier announced a meeting at the Wellington Avenue Church Wednesday night, and as a student of hysteria, I decided to go.
     My central concern beforehand was that I would be alone, or nearly, forced to interact with the fervid organizers, waving literature in my face.
     To my shock, 400 people showed up, including the would-be developers, clutching their drawings with that sunken-eyed, haunted look so typical of people in their situation.
     While parking and traffic seem to be the central valid concern about the proposed cinema, residents couldn't resist raising every objection imaginable. "Teenagers" and "riffraff" would invade the neighborhood. Popcorn would be littered, attracting "rodents and insects." One woman at the back of the room warned that our "mothers and sisters and daughters" would face an increased threat of rape, presumably by young men driven to frenzy by Demi Moore films.
     Still, as far as these meetings go, this one was relatively tame. The crowd only hissed and booed a little when people spoke in favor of the project.
     Some speakers failed to understand that, despite our democracy, the community can't just vote to keep the project out. Ald. Bernie Hansen's name was invoked, in the hope that he would bend to popular will, which of course was overwhelmingly opposed to the project. Hansen wasn't there, but his aide, Mike Quigley, was, and he reminded the residents that they had been against restricting the area's zoning when development was still theoretical, and therefore good, and not specific, and therefore bad. He poured oil on the waters by dangling the possibility of some as-yet-unnamed political maneuver thwarting the developers.
     But his boss, in a conversation the next day, seemed to think that while the project, in general, was a done deal, the developers might yet find it in their hearts to work with the community to change the particulars. Hansen added the Chicago version of "or else."
     "Things get tied up," he said, philosophically. "Time is money. There are ways of stalling things, of making things a little more difficult. Not that you could stop them. But it makes them more attentive toward the community needs. I don't think you are going to make anybody happy."

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 30, 1996

‘If it gets cut, where do the kids go?’

 

     You never know what you’ll find at the library.
     Strolling into the Niles-Maine District Library Friday afternoon, its entrance decorated with colorful yarn creations, I noticed the “HOT PICKS” shelf holding a copy of Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” I've been meaning to read it—her "The Warmth of Other Suns" is an essential American text.
     Grabbing the book, I settled into one of the comfortable blue chairs and read the first chapter, about the 2016 election.
     “The election would set the United States on a course toward isolationism, tribalism, the walling in and protecting of one’s own,” Wilkerson writes, “the worship of wealth and acquisition at the expense of others.”
     That’s the reason I came here. A reader alerted me to what he described as “the cabal of four right-wing library-haters who took control of the 7-member Niles Library board, pushed out the executive director, and are slashing the budget, slashing the hours, cancelling orders for new books and a new roof. They especially don’t want any foreign-language books because people oughta learn English.”
     Can that be true?
     “It is,” said Niles Mayor George D. Alpogianis. “What they’re asking for, in my opinion, is ludicrous. Big politics are starting to trickle down into smaller communities and are now hitting our libraries. The library has always been a safe haven. I have five children, and we’ve spent hundreds of hours in the library. We’ve always felt good about it.”
     Many Niles residents aren’t feeling very good about their library lately. Like all local issues, the complexities and personalities involved can be numbing.
     The basic situation seems to be four board members applying a Reaganite kill-the-beast approach to their local library, throwing out anything that isn’t about stacking books in a room — no yoga for seniors, no librarians visiting schools. A bare-bones library run by people who hate libraries and hate most of the people they serve.
     “If havoc is what you want, havoc is what you’ve got,” said the mayor.

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"Remember the Maine!"

 

     Many communities have a square, a little park at the center of their downtown. My hometown, Berea, Ohio has a triangle, aptly called "The Triangle," and I was strolling around it with the friends we were visiting in May, on our way out to Virginia for our younger son's graduation.     
    "Wait a minute," I said, breaking away from our group. "I want to go look at that plaque made out of a piece of the Maine."
     I hadn't seen it in a decade or two, but I knew it was there, somewhere. It took a bit of searching. For an uneasy moment I thought it had been carted away. Not every tribute that is taken down is done so because it's become offensive; some just are irrelevant. 

     But there it was, an actual memento, cast from a piece of the ship that blew up in Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898. That fact must have impressed me as a child and stuck in mind. "Cast from metal recovered from the USS Maine," it says on the plaque, the way after 9/11 pieces of the Twin Towers were worked into memorials. 

     It was a similar attack, maybe, with a considerable loss of life. The USS Maine sank with a loss of most of its crew. Hit by a mine, it was believed at the time, and the sinking was cast as provocation and atrocity and blamed on the Spanish, who were trying to put down a Cuban independence movement. "Remember the Maine!" became a rallying cry, and the U.S. entered into one of its more lopsided imperialist wars.

     I pass it along as a reminder that monuments do, in fact, influence us. I know what the Maine was, not because of any history class, but because of this green oxidized slab of bronze that I passed regularly for the first 18 years of my life. The memorial doesn't mean I particularly venerate the Maine—some historians suspect it was blown up, not by a Spanish mine, but through some ineptness in the management of the ship's engines and coal supplies. I could see that. My concern was nostalgic, not historic. Some U.S. history books never even mention the Maine, and probably just as well. You can't remember everything.

     Though there is a value to the story. The moral of the Maine sinking is to remember the dubious excuses we use for going to war—like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or the weapons of mass destruction that weren't there. They seem so important at the time. But they're really not. We say we remember them, and we do, for a time. Then we forget and move on.

Rambling Notes: The South of the North

     The less preface I add to this, the better.  Without further ado, the Saturday report from Caren Jeskey. Strap in, you're in for a wild ride:

    “I send you a postcard. It says ‘Pulaski at night.’ Greetings from Chicago, city of light. City of light. Come back to Chicago, city of light, city of light.” 

                                                          —Andrew Bird

     It’s not easy being from a fabulous, international city. Home calls to all of us, but for many, home does not offer the richness of the city of wild garlic. Still, it was just not enough. I knew there was a reason I had not unpacked my car.
     After six long weeks back (after living in Austin Texas for 7 years), I found myself propelled south once again. I realized “I don’t have to be here,” and my steering wheel did the rest. While I felt welcomed in many ways, coming back to Chicago was not what I had expected. Life seemed so much easier, more harmonious in the music capitol of the world. In retrospect, living amidst a sea of Peter Pans who will never grow up but will have fun until their dying days is appealing. I used to criticize their hedonism in my quest to “mature” but since I don’t have the answers who’s to say who is right? 

     Coming home reminded me of my failings. In Texas I can be someone new. I am not painted into boxes by anyone because my friends are relatively new. They met me as an adult rather than holding old images in their minds, images that cloud their ability to see me clearly. To listen actively, instead of assuming they know who I am.
     In Austin I always feel like I am on vacation. It’s not really home, but it’s a place I can explore and stay alive, stay curious.
     So I am back in the Lone Star State, at last. Ah! I’ve missed you. Pick-up trucks that push me off the road. A land where science isn’t real. Fantasy is more fun anyway. Maybe I’ll become a flat-earther. Now that seems amazing. Biking on a smooth plane forever and ever? And if it ends I am sure God will save me. How comforting.
     I’ve missed the eclectic gardens and street art that seems to pop up everywhere. Horses and cowboys and real country music. Souped up hotrods racing around— Harleys rumbling my insides. I guess a place can grow on you.
     I’ve missed the endless greenery and 90 degree temps. Seeing all of my neighbors out there running and biking and walking and paddling. Such an active city!
     Chicago, that is. You see, I did not leave. I was just joshin’. I am still here. I’ve noticed that Chicago and Austin are very similar. Everything I described above happened in Edison Park, Norwood Park, and Park Ridge. Who’d-a thunk it? Not me.
     I’ve managed to stay in a very specific enclave for most of my life. Rogers Park, Uptown, Edgewater, Boystown, Lakeview, Wicker Park, downtown, Hyde Park, Oak Park, Evanston, and the Southeast side of Chicago. Where I meet kindred spirits around every corner.
     The past six weeks living on the Northwest side has really opened my eyes. As a kid I had openly racist family members who lived on the far south side in Hegewisch. Up here on the northwest side the climate is similar; well-kept homes with manicured lawns, and lots of police presence. Neighbors have screwed blue lightbulbs into the sockets on their porches to support “Blue Lives.” One home has flooded the entire exterior with blue. Blue Lives Matter flags pepper the houses and businesses. These are the same folks I felt I had to get away from in my younger days. As painful as it is to be estranged from family, I’d become enraged every time I’d hear the “n” word spoken, and I did, often. I once made the relative who was hosting us break down in tears after I confronted a Bud drinking good ol’ boy neighbor who had joined us. As I recall, we left the party and as my folks drove us home they told me how proud they are of me. Still, that kind of family drama is never fun.

     I felt scared during my walkabouts on the NW side. It seemed I was in a fortress, and since I have several family members who are cops I know that fierce protection of their home court might mean hair trigger reactions to perceived and not real threats. I say this because I was harassed more than once when I brought POC into white areas in a way that never, ever happened when I was alone or with other white people. I was considered a possible enemy for having a POC in my presence. It was terrifying and embarrassing— for example I was driving with a friend past my hight school on a weekend drive and got pulled over “for having a broken taillight” BS.

     I was struck that the cops' homes were modest; small compared to the fancy mansions just a few blocks farther west. That made me a little bit sad— those who rally for blue lives? What are they really doing for officers? Their pocketbooks? Their mental health?. I heard about another Chicago police officer's suicide today. He was just 24. This was the third death by suicide of a CPD officer this year. The rigid standoff we are in is a lose-lose for all.

     When I passed people, almost no one said hi; an insulated community where strangers are not to be trusted. Thank goodness I packed up and moved east this week, to Ravenswood, where I fit every stereotype Peter Sagal jokes about in his NPR games show "Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me."  I’m a Birkenstock wearing foodie who reduces, reuses and recycles. I’ll talk to you about farm to table products any day, and I want to know where the best freshly harvested mushrooms can be found. I love the Sunday New York Times, and I like my coffee freshly ground each day.

     It saddens me to know that my kinfolk in the O’Hare flight path land cannot comprehend why Black Lives Must Matter. They do not have any understanding of what it must be like to live under the shadow of harassment at all times.
     Yes, the lives of our public servants do matter. But why can’t they see that their lives have always mattered more than Black lives in this city? Not only that, but Black lives have been smote.
     Now that’s criminal.
     When I hear comments about the “scum” who are killing each other with gang violence, I feel physically sick. Those who say that are racist to the bone. How can they continue ignoring the history of POC in the U.S.? Still?
     I don’t have a lot of hope that one day we will all live together harmoniously, loving and trusting each other and sharing resources equally. But I am a dreamer and I am not giving up all hope just yet. If that sounds naive that’s OK with me, for isn’t it better to feel what joy we can rather than wallowing in pain?

“It’s not about win or lose, ‘cause we all lose when they feed on the souls of the innocent; blood-drenched pavement. Keep on moving’ though the waters stay ragin’. In this maze you can lose your way, your way. It might drive you crazy but doc’t let it faze you no way, no way!”
                                       —Matisyahu

Relax, Cook County is not spying on your dog as it poops

 

     Look at this photo, sent by a reader.
     “ATTENTION DOG OWNERS,” the sign announces. “As part of a pilot program between Northwestern University and the Department of Public Health, this area has been selected for enhanced dog waste ordinance enforcement. DNA MATCHING AND DRONE SURVEILLANCE IN EFFECT.”
     In bright magenta.
     “Found this sign on my block (6500 N. Greenview),” the reader wrote.
     What do you think?
     Have Cook County and Northwestern joined forces to monitor dog poop via drone?
     Like much disgorged by the internet, the sign evokes the “No, that couldn’t be, could it?” reflex. You want to dismiss a thing as an obvious fraud. But there’s that little backdoor of doubt. Stranger things have happened.
     First to Mr. Google. Slim pickings. A company in the Netherlands, Dogdrones, in 2017 said it would use drones, in conjunction with on-the-ground robots, to clear neighborhoods of dog poop. I sent emails to the two founders, not expecting a reply.
     Queries to Cook County and Northwestern — a process we professional journalists call “finding out if something is true.” I recommend it heartily to those who attempt the same by holding up new information against their engrained prejudices to see how well they match.
     Northwestern started the country’s first forensic crime lab, trying to solve the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. So this would be in their wheelhouse.
     Alas, no.
     “The University is unaware of any such study,” said Jon Yates, assistant vice president of communications.
     The Cook County Department of Public Health pointed out something I ought to have known: it has jurisdiction over the enormous realm that is Cook County except Chicago, Skokie, Oak Park, Stickney and Evanston. They have their own health departments.
     “One of the commissioners saw those signs around Northwestern,” said Tom McFeeley, the county health department’s communications manager. “It’s posted outside their jurisdiction. That’s why the dog poop story doesn’t add up.”

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