We’re doomed, but no reason to get upset

 

     Robert Frost wondered whether the world will end in fire, or in ice.
     While fire is clearly winning, I believe the world really ends through cowardice. Though “cowardice” isn’t the right word; the exact term is hard to put a finger on. “Denialism,” maybe. Head-in-the-sandism. The human tendency to see a hole in the ground, understand it is there in our path, then fall in it anyway, eyes open, because this is the route we always take, and we’ll be damned if we’re going to deviate. We’re no sidesteppers!
     Long before people were denying the usefulness of masks or refusing life-saving vaccines, they were pooh-poohing global warming. It isn’t happening or, if it is, it’s caused by natural shifts. Not by people, oh no no no, we wouldn’t wreck our world through carelessness. Since it’s not our fault, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Nobody actually pounds the floor with their fists and whines, “We don’t wanna! Doing stuff is hard!” But that is the general tone.
     The past few years we’ve seen a series of heat waves, brutal droughts, record floods, massive storms. A gathering drumbeat of doom so loud even some Republicans suspect there might be something going on. The latest shoe dropped Monday, a report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
     Where to begin?
     “All is lost,” is not a phrase you see much in professional journalism, even in the negative, “not all is lost,” used in Monday’s New York Times, trying to focus on the dwindling hope that a hotter planet, with melting ice sheets and rising seas might yet be mitigated. Though even that optimism is yanked away in the headline: “A HOTTER FUTURE IS NOW INEVITABLE, A U.N. REPORT SAYS.”
     What is odd, to me, is that the same people denying climate change also crave upheaval. They’ll quote the Book of Revelations and announce the world is ending, based on nothing. But let the world’s scientists join hands and chant, “Yes, the world is indeed ending, at least as the cool green place we’ve known and loved,” and suddenly they’re covering their ears and humming. Then what’s with all the stockpiled weaponry? The freeze-dried food? Geez, climate change ought to be your dream come true.
     I decided to read the report itself, rather than just reports of the report.
     Formally titled “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis” the report has a blue cover and is ... ah ... 3,949 pages long. Quite a lot, really. Well, let’s begin. “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”

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The incredible vanishing mayor.

     I sometimes wonder about Rich Daley's world.
     He's still alive—it's easy to forget that. Seventy-nine, living in Chicago, supposedly. I imagine he has a circle, family friends, former cronies, underlings who hung around. People who made a killing from a Bridgeport connection, still paying court, out of habit, just in case. Various boards he sits in, a law firm he has some kind of association with.
     And a legacy of ... what? Daley strained so mightily to escape his father's shadow, but never did. "Mayor Daley" is still his father, for bad or worse. Though Ritchie did help the city: bringing the 1996 Democratic National Convention, sprucing up the West Side. Millennium Park. Anyone who remembers the dismal expanse of rail yards that used to be right there, just past the Art Institute. It had to be done and he did it. And the Bean! Who doesn't love the Bean? All together now, "Thank you Mister Mayor!!!"
     Sigh. The good is overshadowed by the bad, isn't it? The spectacularly bad deals he brokered, giving away city garages, the Skyway, the Chicago's parking meter franchise—many online got a kick out of the ParkChicago sign in the corner of this photo, taken by my pal Bill Savage, though he didn't even notice the sign when he was taking it. Sometimes, as I like to say, it's better to be lucky than good.    

     Traded for a handful of magic beans, scratching this year's itch, leaving next year's problems even worse. Though in his defense, the crises during the Lori Lightfoot administration have been so extreme we barely talk about the pension time bomb anymore. Not when the city is on fire and children are mown down by gunfire so frequently we've gone numb to it.
     Just as well that Daley's gone off radar because, honestly, what could he add? His silence is a kindness. Besides, the man could be sitting right there, ready and eager to spill, and what good would it do? Trying to understand Rich Daley, as I like to say, is like trying to peel a ball bearing with your thumbnail. Try as you might, you just can't do it. Because it can't be done. I doubt the man knows his self himself. There might not be a self to know. 
     That's about it, just some words to go under Bill's cool photo of Daley's pinched, mournful mug being effaced by one of the Graffiti Blasters he created in 1993, into which the city pours millions of dollars a year to be a less colorful, less artistic place. (Not to go all in for graffiti. Much of it can be oppressive, threatening, some 16-year-old putz defacing a lovely brick wall. But the Blasters were notorious for going after ethnic murals, sometimes on private property, without permission of the owners and to the general outrage of communities).
     Look above his right eyebrow. Is it me, or is that a pig face? A scowling cartoon pig? Just an accident, surely. It couldn't be intentional. Could it?

‘Our first responsibility is caring for ourselves’

 

Rosie Seelaus

     Once I met a man who had no nose. Well, he had a nose, but it was made of silicone. A fake nose, held in place by magnets on four metal posts embedded in his face.
     He wasn’t wearing his artificial nose when we met, at the UI Health’s Craniofacial Center. He was sitting in the examining room of Rosemary Seelaus, an anaplastologist — a medical specialist who makes facial prosthetics. I shook his hand, trying to focus on his eyes.
     Our meeting rattled me, and afterward I had this thought: “I am NEVER ... going to complain about ANYTHING ... ever again!” Because this guy didn’t ask for whatever nasal cavity cancer put a big hole in the middle of his face. And he still woke up, brushed his hair, took his fake nose off his dresser and popped it into place, and went off to face the day. My woes dwindle to insignificance compared to that.
     But life doesn’t work that way. We live in difficult times. This plague showed up about February 2020, seemed like it was going away for about 15 minutes in June 2021. Now it’s August and it’s not only back, but starting to feel like the general crisis — medical, social, political — will never end. It’s getting to people.
     “In reality, I’m barely hanging on sometimes,” S.E. Cupp, whose column appears in the Sun-Times, wrote on Twitter last week. “I’m anxious all day every day about my kiddo, my health, my job, my parents, my friends, my causes, my community, my country … the truth is, it takes a huge toll. I’m sorry to vent and lay this all out there. But I’m burnt out.”
     That takes guts. I’m reluctant to say “I’m burnt out.” It would just spark a chorus of trolls. “You sure ARE, Stinkberg. Why don’t you go hang yourself?” Plus my boss pursing his lips. “Hmmm, he IS burnt out. I mean, three columns on picking up after his dog ...”
     But I can’t leave Cupp out there by herself. I feel obligated to stand with her, like the other slaves standing and saying, “I am Spartacus.” I am burnt out, too. I must have scattered a half-dozen typos in a single column last week. The copy desk plucked them out with tongs, a raised eyebrow and a polite “Do these belong to you?”

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18th Street Brewery

     A good restaurant is a joyful thing. When someplace is rocking the food, the service, the atmosphere, it can make a person happy. Even though I dine out continually, I had forgotten just how much an eatery can supercharge your mood until Friday, when personal business took me to Hammond, Indiana.
     Now Hammond, Indiana is not a garden spot of the world. Modest apartment buildings and town homes, low industrial buildings, a trailer park as soon as you exit the freeway. A lot of liquor stores and cigarette stores and fireworks stores. Not poor, exactly, not prosperous either. Proudly hanging on. My mission was to go to the Federal courthouse, a large brutalist gray concrete structure that could be used in a James Bond movie for the secret police headquarters in Bulgaria and the audience wouldn't blink.
     It was lunchtime. My companion suggested Greek. I like Greek. "I could go for some kebab," I said. But a block or two away from the courthouse is a large brick building, The 18th Street Brewery. Which brings up a fourth important quality in the restaurant experience: luck. You need good food, great service, enjoyable atmosphere and a certain element of luck. A bit of good fortune to send you blundering across a place you didn't even know was there. Wherever this supposed Greek place was, it wasn't right in front of us, the way the 18th Street Brewery was. We went inside.

     Hard rock music. What I think of as metal, though nowadays it might be called thrasher rock or some such thing. Not my normal tasse de thé. But it fit the place. A large room, ceiling painted black, tables, a bar beyond, a big empty expanse off to our right, and to the left, a bright outdoor area, all sunlight and flowers. It was a nice day, but I figured we'd get the full 18th Street experience inside.
     Our waiter was Jerry, and he did everything a waiter is supposed to do. Greeted us in a friendly manner, showed us a table, fetched menus. A simple menu, beers on one side, with the requisite Götterdämmerung names: "Here Comes the Reaper," "Rise of the Angels" "Devils Cup"—I was in such a good mood, I could forgive the missing possessive. I liked that their "Daily Feature" was a cheeseburger, a beer, and an ounce shot of their 90 proof whiskey. Back in the day that would be my go-to move.
     My companion got a Watermelon Gose, made in a nearby brewery, which he said was very watermelony. As a non-drinker, I had to settle for a Diet Pepsi, wondering if I should mention that, with all these odd varieties, banana & marshmallow IPA and such, they might consider coming up with an NA offering. They're all the rage. Or bring in Pabst NA, to harmonize with their can leitmotif. PBR NA rocks. But I kept quiet. 
     Not a wide range of food offerings—more a bar than a restaurant—divided into "BURGERS," including a PB&J Burger made with bacon jam and cashew butter, which now that I think of it, I should have tried. And "NOT BURGERS" such as Brisket Tacos, which my tablemate got, and Pulled Pork, topped with Carolina Gold sauce and pickles on a brioche, the obvious choice for me.    

     Waiting for our order, I looked around. I liked the place graphically, if that makes sense.  The skulls, the paintings on the walls, on the floor, the Gothic stained glass window salvaged from some church. It reminded me of Green Street Smoked Meats in the city: the same fun-to-just-be-here vibe. There's a place I love in Boulder, the Dark Horse, and this made me think of it. A Dark Horsey vibe.
     A manager, Bree, swept over to check on us. I asked how old 18th Street is—seven years, she said, with outposts in Indianapolis and Gary. I was interested in the large space, lined with barrels, beyond the tables, and she explained how this is a working brewery and distillery, and while they do use it for events, otherwise they've got trucks coming and going bringing ingredients in and pallets of beer out.

     Our food appeared quickly, and here I fell down on the job, because the photo I snapped didn't come out. But they present a luscious pulled pork sandwich, the bun set half off the sandwich, displaying the meat, like a muscle car with its hood open to show off the engine. Plus tater tots, on a sheet of wax paper on an oblong metal tray. It looked delightful and tasted better. The pork smoky, the tots crisp. I have to write a post someday on why tater tots are superior to French fries, both for their crunchy-outside-pillowy-inside texture, and the fact they have "tots" in their name.

     Okay, maybe I was just in a good mood—the day was unfolding unusually well. I was somewhere other than my office, working, and in good company.   

     When the bill arrived, it came with a pair of lagniappe—small gifts to seal the deal. Stickers. A detail, a nicety, something I expected from Alinea and didn't get. The three Michelin star place didn't even have a business card I could snatch as a souvenir. But 18th Street had these way cool stickers. A sticker is something you give a child, and these made the child in me very happy. What's that line of Robert Frost's? "Weep for what little things could make them glad." 

     When I got my sticker home, I immediately put it in a prime location, on one of the Hon four-drawer black filing cabinets in my office closet. I never affix anything to those, but confidently  peeled off the back of this sticker and put it on, a memento of my perfect lunch at the 18th Street Brewery in Hammond, to which I extend my sincere congratulations. Excellence is never an accident. It takes a lot of thought and heart and work by a lot of people, and besides the money and success that often follow such effort, you also want someone to notice. I did. 

Ravenswood Notes: Music is the Key

     Lots of people seem to be feeling beaten down and burnt out lately, by the worsening pandemic and the general grind of news. I've been wondering how to combat that, and here comes Caren Jeskey reporting on that dependable bulwark against the difficulties of life: music.

     Have you wrapped your head around this plague yet? Mind boggling, isn’t it? Sure, we knew devastating diseases have appeared on our planet in the past, and were bound to happen again. But were you expecting one in your lifetime? How are you coping? If someone had told me, pre-March of 2020, that the climate of the world would change so drastically I would not have believed it. To think of the staggering amount of deaths that have occurred, and the stories that keep coming in about young folks getting sick and dying (especially with this new shittier variant) is almost too much.
     Grief comes at its own pace and it’s been hitting me in waves. Sometimes the waves are small and I am not even sure why I feel uneasy until I stop and think; other times they are tidal waves that knock me down and toss me about. I wish I could wish this whole thing away. With every ambulance I hear I cringe and wonder if someone is dying a suffocating death.

    “Who said this life’s too much to bear? Just tell me how to fix it. It’s broken. It’s broken.”                                                               —Iggy Pop

     Music is proving to one of my most reliable salvations. I got the Vocalo app and Jill Hopkins in the Morning keeps me company with her witty quips, joyful nature, and curation of fine old and new school soul, new and vintage hip hop, and contemporary hits. She’s keeping me in the know. Vagabon’s In a Bind, for example, makes difficulty seem bearable as she croons from a sad yet powerful place about surviving heartbreak. Thanks Jill. This NPR station’s DJ’s also bring dancing vibes into my kitchen and living room, and dance I do.

     Some of my most religious experiences have been at concerts. Leonard Cohen at the Chicago Theatre, doing 5 or 6 encores, just a couple years before we lost him. Stevie Wonder at the Arie Crown in the 90s, singing "Superwoman" as a friend and I held hands and cried. Stevie again, singing "Songs in the Key of Life" from start to finish a few years back at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, in the company of my sister.
     Nile Rodgers—who wrote, composed or produced Madonna’s "Like a Virgin," Sister Sledge’s 'We are Family," Daft Punk’s "Get Lucky," Diana Ross’s "I’m Coming Out," David Bowie’s "Let’s Dance," the B52s "Roam, "Duran Duran’s "Notorious"— doing his thing with Chic and Duran Duran at Ravinia when it was still safe to be shoulder to shoulder with unmasked strangers, singing our hearts out.
     Lollapalooza has also provided lifelong memories. Iggy Pop’s meatless frame throwing his mic stand into the crowd. Amy Winehouse in a black and white checkered minidress, unable to stand at times, and her loving band of large men holding her up when necessary. Brazilian Girls with lead singer Sabina Sciubba in haute couture and an angelic voice; an apparition in snow white with thousands of adoring fans hanging on every word, shake of her hips, and mesmerizing fluttery hand gestures.
     For a couple years in the mid-2000s I was hired at a beer tent at the fest, to pour and serve hundreds of beers to drunken or soon-to-be-drunken patrons. I walked away with $500 cash each day, and was allowed to see any show I’d like. I didn’t even mind the work part of it since the crew was fun and the people watching phenomenal.
     These days, when I hear folks say they are going to concerts at indoor venues, or to shows that are sure to be overly packed and thus spreader fests, my heart sinks. Too much of the world is not taking this seriously enough. They have all of the patience of a shrew.
     For now I will sing and dance at home, on the beach, on patios and in friend’s yards. I am also ecstatically looking forward to seeing Neko Case on September 4th at a venue sponsored by SPACE in Evanston. They are calling the series Out of Space and the shows will be outdoors and as safe as can be. I will let Neko’s thunderous pipes, perfect pitch, and power take me as far away as I can muster. 
     Sing it Neko. 

     “God blessed me, I'm a free man. With no place free to go. I’m paralyzed and collared-tight. No pills for what I fear. This is crazy. I wish I was the moon tonight.”

It wasn’t ‘Give me liberty AND give me death!’

La Jeune Fille et la Mort, by Marianne Stokes (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)

     No, I did not wear a mask when I stepped into the Goodman Theatre lobby Monday evening. Yes, I had read the explicit instructions in their email earlier that day.

     “Remember that face coverings are required for all patrons attending the performance, regardless of vaccination status. We will provide a mask if someone in your party is in need.”
     Why? The usual selfishness that greases our slide through life. I got my vaccination in April. So I’m OK. Besides, you never know how strict such instructions are. An actual, bar-you-at-the-door requirement, like the Lyric Opera’s iron rule that if you arrive 10 seconds past curtain you have to stand there like an idiot, watching a monitor? Or mere cover-your-butt legalese winked at by those in the know?
     I grasped it was the former when a polite young man intercepted me three steps through the door, offering a basket of paper masks. I apologized, fumbling for the familiar lump in my pocket. I had brought my own, just in case.
     Why not? I shovel the sidewalk in front of my house, use my turn signal, all the usual concessions to being part of a community. I can do a mask, too. Though I am human, and don’t like being inconvenienced. Sitting in the theater beforehand, it occurred to me that once the play starts, I could slip my mask down in the darkness and nobody would be the wiser.
     “All patrons must wear a mask before, during and after the performance,” a voice announced. Twice.
     Darn, I thought.
     I didn’t fear that if I slipped the mask under my nose, someone would hit me with a handheld spotlight, the way Blue Man Group shamed patrons slipping into the theater after the show began while a voice boomed “Late! LATE! LAAAAAAATE!!!”

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Flashback 1988: "A Tale of Two Twins"

Latona and Her Children, Apollo and Diana, by William Henry Rinehart (Metropolitan Museum)

   

      A reader from Harper Woods, Michigan wrote, and in my reply, I mentioned that the first place the paper ever sent me on a story was Detroit. Trying to connect, I suppose.

      Surrogacy was in the news, and a Michigan woman made headlines because she gave birth to twins and the family took the girl and left the boy. Our city editor, Alan Henry, told me to get to Detroit and write a story. I phoned the surrogate mother first — that seemed prudent. She had been on the round of morning TV shows, "Good Morning America" and such, and was burnt out by the publicity. She wasn't interested.  

     Okay, I said.

     A few minutes later Alan passed my desk.

    "I thought I told you to go to Detroit," he said.

     "The woman isn't interested," I replied. "She feels she's had too much publicity."

     Alan gave me a long, pitying look such as only a newspaper city editor is capable of.

     "I don't care," he said. "Get to Detroit. Talk to her neighbors. Write a story."

     I grabbed the phone, called her again, and told her that I had given it thought, and while I completely understood her not wanting additional publicity, because the press made her seem like white trash who sold her baby — that was my exact phrase, "like white trash who sold her baby" — that is why I feel it so important to tell the true story, to set the record straight, and the bottom line is I'll be at her door tomorrow morning with coffee and donuts, please let me in. 

     Then I bolted to the airport and caught a plane to Detroit, so quickly that I didn't bother to stop at my apartment and pack clothes or toiletries. I knew exactly nothing about the city except the Renaissance Center was a hotel, so I took a cab there.  I washed my shirt in the sink, hung it up to dry in the bathroom, then sat in front of the television, working my way through the contents of the mini-bar, waiting for dawn. When it came, I got dressed, bought a dozen donuts and two large cups of coffee, then headed over to her house. By 9 a.m. I was holding the baby while we talked.

     I remember flying back, filling a page of a yellow legal pad with versions of the opening sentence. It was my first front page headline: "TALE OF TWO TWINS."

     It was all going to be just a simple business transaction.
     Last summer, a wealthy Michigan couple agreed to pay Patty Nowakowski, of Ionia, Mich, $10,000 to be artificially inseminated with the husband's sperm, carry the child, then deliver the baby up to them.
     What happened next split apart a brother and sister, caused a father to reject a newborn son, and added a cruel twist to the tangled issue of surrogate parenthood that even its critics hadn't contemplated.
     "Nauseating, is what it is," said Noel Keane, the lawyer who represented the adopting couple, who have not been identified. "This is probably one of the most upsetting cases I have ever heard of."
     Nowakowski was artificially inseminated. "A horrible experience," she recalled with a shudder. Halfway through her pregnancy, she had an ultrasound scan that showed that she was carrying twins, and that at least one was a boy.

     The Michigan couple was informed of this and didn't seem disturbed, said Nowakowski.
     But then, two weeks before she gave birth, the couple informed Nowakowski that if the twins were male, they did not want them because the wife was too frail to raise boys.
     "It was a shock," said Nowakowski in an interview Friday at her home. "I never thought anyone would turn away their own children. They came over here, to our house, and told us. I thought they wanted to meet our kids, out of curiosity. I couldn't believe it when I found out why they came."
     Three weeks ago, Nowakowski, 27, gave birth to a twin boy and girl. Shortly afterward, the biological father took the girl away. Nowakowski was left with a baby boy she didn't know what to do with.

     Keeping him didn't seem to be an option. Their family was set. Her husband Aaron, 30, had even had a vasectomy two years earlier. On top of that, she had been telling her three children, ages 2, 4 and 5, that the babies she was carrying were for someone else. Nowakowski gave her baby to a foster family.     

     "I had to think of my husband, who all along thought of this as another couple's child," she said.
     But not for long. "I just kept thinking: `that poor child,' " said Nowakowski. In the end, she and her husband decided the child "deserved to be raised in a stable family environment."
     So Nowakowski went back to the foster home, laid claim to the son they now call Artie, and brought him home, where he is today, about to celebrate his first hectic month of life.
     "He's beautiful," said Nowakowski, displaying the fat-faced, fair-haired boy, wrapped in a blue blanket. "He is going to be a part of our family. So, in the end, we come out ahead. We have him."
     Nowakowski says she will be honest with her new son and tell him the unique circumstances of his birth when the time comes. As for his relationship with his twin sister, Nowakowski says she will "take steps legally" to see that the two are allowed to know each other. 
     Keane, who also negotiated the deal that led to the infamous Baby M trial in which the surrogate mother fought unsuccessfully to keep her child, said Nowakowski may have little legal recourse if the adopting family does not want the male twin to visit his sister.
     "The law allows exactly what happened," said Keane, who pointed out that, in circumstances such as divorce, brothers and sisters are periodically separated. "Perhaps not morally speaking, but legally, there is nothing wrong with it."
     The Nowakowskis' ordeal did not escape the notice of the government in Michigan, which is struggling to become the fourth state to regulate surrogate motherhood.
     State Sen. Connie Binsfeld, the sponsor of pending legislation to outlaw paid surrogate motherhood, said she was still surprised by the Nowakowski case.
     "I have thought through many different scenarios," she said. "But I never thought of this. That children should be separated like that. I was shocked."
     Reflecting on her decision to become a surrogate mother, Nowakowski said: "It wasn't the money. It wasn't being pregnant again. I wanted to help someone else. . . . Though now I do regret doing it for someone with children.

     "As for now, I'm putting all this past me. I have to protect my kids. As for Arthur J., he's a miracle and I can't imagine not having him."  

          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 24, 1988.

    Note: After a custody battle, the Nowakowski's ending up keeping both children. Such surrogacy agreements are void and unenforceable in Michigan, and participating in one is a misdemeanor, though they are legal, with restrictions, in Illinois. I began looking for Arthur Nowakowski, who would be 33 years old now, but noticed he's never, as far as I can tell, participated in any kind of media beyond his birth year, and the odds are slight he'd want me to be the first.