Ravenswood notes: Heartfelt

     Something about enormous calamities spurs us to recount our own personal connection to them, if only the moment of discovery, and our immediate reaction. Maybe it is a form of witness, of testimony. Of participating in the pageant of history. Or the re-exerting of a tiny bit of control over chaotic, gigantic forces well beyond us. I would expect that Ravenswood Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey would have had a reaction that is both distinctive and challenging, and as always she does not disappoint. Her Saturday report:

     My mother adheres to a strict no-daytime-TV policy for herself. She’s a gardener, among many other talents, and maximizes rather than wastes her precious days. That’s why I knew something big was happening in the world when I came downstairs that warm Tuesday in September, 20 years ago today. Mom was stationed in front of the television with an expression I had never seen before.
     I joined her briefly until something inside of told me to get the heck out of there. The gist of the story was all I could handle. I said goodbye to this new model of Mom I was seeing, and walked out the front door of my folks’ home in Rogers Park (where I was staying while I completed my last year of grad school).
     I intuitively knew where to go. I walked into Evanston towards the toy store on Main Street. I bought bubbles and a ball and went to the local Montessori school where I picked up my best friend’s two children and their friend Jane. I ushered them to a park at the beach, and we played the afternoon away. I can still see their wide smiles, hear their copious laughs, and feel their youthful bliss. It was the perfect medicine.
     I knew that I could only protect them—and myself—for so long. We’d have to face the music sooner or later. I retuned them to their families, and made it home just before dark. My mother was still trying to process what was happening. My Dad was out of town on business, so it was just the two of us.
     In retrospect I’m sorry I abandoned my Mom on one of the most difficult days in U.S. history; however, back then and still today I tend to avoid and dissociate from the evils of the world. I prefer to live in a bubble of sorts, where it makes more sense to toss a ball around in the sun than it does to consume media designed to loop me into an insatiable quest for tragic information.
     The trial for the so-called architect of these attacks finally started a few days ago. I went down a rabbit hole of internet information about Al Qaeda, which led me to conflicting stories about whether or not they are currently becoming increasingly more affiliated with the Taliban.
     I was flooded with a sense that there is endless horror in our world. This led me to research theories of why there is so much war, why religion is often a driving force behind such strife, and then to the matter of how the brains of non-religious folks differ form those who are religious. Some call religion a delusion, others say it’s evolutionarily necessary to instill a sense of goodness within people so they can coexist peacefully with others.
     Some talk of a God-spot in the brain, others denounce this theory.
     In other words, no one really knows much of anything. Theorize, yes. Know, no. From where I sit, safe and sound on a comfy couch on my back porch, my good fortune astounds me. I was not forcibly recruited as a child soldier, I do not have to learn to build bombs, carry weapons, or arm myself in any way. All I have to do is live and read and learn and use my brain to philosophize about life, and do my best to live well and stay out of danger’s way.
      It’s heartbreaking to think of all of the people, near and far, who are out there right now planning ways to harm others, or in the very act at this moment. It’s not necessary. Greed, ego, fear, and the misuse of power are our mortal enemies. People don’t have to be.
     I know this because meditation has taught me patience, and a way to open my mind. I’ve learned that it’s ok not to get what I want when I want it. It’s taught me that I am no more or less important than anyone else, and I do not have to force my opinions upon others. The opposite of tyranny.
     As murderers sit around plotting how they will wipe others off the face of the earth I wish an army of concerned humans would just give them a paint brush, a book, a hug, a stellar education, alternatives, and let them see that it’s possible to live a beautiful, meaningful life rather than throwing it all away.

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With COVID-19, a new 9/11 every day

 

     A decade ago, I looked back at Sept. 11, 2001 on its 10th anniversary, recalled its “crashing planes, burning buildings, tumbling bodies” and noted, “it hardly needs to be recounted now.”
     Of course not. Because the wounds of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the hijacked flight that went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, were too fresh to require much description, but too raw to overlook.
     Remembering was a duty. The lives lost that day — almost 3,000 — demanded attention. Demanded to be put into context, to understand how enormous a loss it really was.
     “More Americans died on 9/11 than in the War of 1812,” I wrote. “It was the bloodiest morning on American soil since the Civil War.”
     Things have changed. In 2021, we don’t need to reach into the 19th century in search of perspective. We can look back to a week ago Thursday — 9/2 — a date which will live in obscurity, when 2,937 Americans were killed by the current foe attacking our country, COVID-19.
     Or Feb. 10, when 3,254 died. Or Jan. 21: 4,135. Or hundreds of other days. About 650,000 Americans slain, out of sight, the nation hardly noticing, never mind honoring its loss. Yet killed all the same by a far more lethal foreign assailant.

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Michigan Flashback 2003: "The howdy boys"

     While I'm heading to the shores of Lake Superior, I thought I'd distract you with a previous foray into Michigan.

     ROTHBURY, Michigan: Frederick Jackson Turner famously declared the American frontier closed in 1893, and our national psyche has yearned toward the spirit of adventure represented by the untamed West ever since. Just the words "dude ranch" and "horses" were enough to get me in a car with my family on a Friday afternoon, fighting 200 miles through Memorial Day traffic from Chicago to the Double JJ Ranch, just north of Muskegon.
     We wanted riding, cowboys and adventure, and we got it, though first we had to pass through an initiation of sorts.
     No matter how much research you do, vacationing in a new place is something of a trust drop. You close your eyes and pitch backward, hoping the unfamiliar place will catch you in a pleasant fashion.
     At first, I thought the Double JJ was going to drop the Steinberg family. We arrived at the quaint Western town, complete with jail and ice cream parlor, that is the center of "The Back Forty," the family section of the resort (there is also "The Ranch" for adults only, and "The Thoroughbred" for golfers) at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday, hours behind schedule because of snarled traffic and the one-hour Michigan time change.
     The front office was mobbed—I counted 17 people milling before the check-in desk—and when our turn came, a pale young clerk was maddeningly vague about exactly what amenities the resort had and how we might gain access to them. As she mumbled her "yeah, maybes" as if she wasn't quite sure where she was working, my wife and I locked eyes and I had that plunging "what have I done with my weekend?" feeling of doom foretold.
     Thankfully, it was smooth sailing from there. The cabin was woodsy, but new and clean, with an upper loft for the boys and a bedroom with a big Jacuzzi for the exhausted adults. By the time the pre-dinner cocktails arrived at the handsome Sundance Steakhouse, overlooking the resort's championship 18-hole golf course, we were adjusting ourselves to the place.
     It was the next morning, however, that we really started to love it. We signed our boys up for the beginning corral rides—they like horses and I like putting them on horses, and they came prepared in their cowboy boots, belts, shirts and hats. The Double JJ has more than 100 horses and 1,500 acres of lovely Michigan property, and I could tell right away that this was no "walk 'em in a circle three times and call it a day" type of horse experience. Even at the most junior levels (my boys are 5 and 7) there was an emphasis on teaching them how to handle the horses, putting them through the paces of turning and stopping. You couldn't spit without hitting wranglers—at one point, with eight kids on horseback, I counted six staffers in the ring, helping them in the most gentle fashion.
     After the lesson, the kids were tested. I admired the way the wrangler, Nicole, kindly gave my 5-year-old his ribbon, while letting me know with a meaningful glance that he wasn't ready for the trail yet. So while he was hanging out with a group of kids and counselors, playing golf and doing crafts (one of the beauties of the Double JJ is there are activities for kids that you can hand them off to—even overnight cabins—then pluck them out as need be) my wife and I and the older boy spent a pleasurable 90 minutes on the trail, going through some of the scenic woodland and farm. The younger boy barely noticed we were gone.
     The rest of the weekend was a blur of activity—we swam in the pool and rode down the towering water slide, went on a hay ride and watched a pleasantly corny "stunt show." The ranch has about 30 sled dogs—they have dogsled races in the winter—and my boys insisted on walking one. I loved the frantic scene of the four of us, hanging on to this leash for dear life, being pulled along at a fast clip by one of these enormously-powerful, 80-pound wolfish animals.
     There were also cattle drives and camp fires, a pig roast and a rodeo—which, though we missed it, all the other guests were raving about, and seems to be a must-see.
     The best way to think of the Double JJ is as a Western summer camp for families. Guests who didn't wear their rustic name tags were called to the front of the dining hall (the food was tasty if unextraordinary) and compelled to sing—a fact I neglected to tell my wife until after she was caught tagless.
     Still, she kept calling the Double JJ "perfect" and vowed we would we return. And when we left, the boys were practically hanging out the windows, calling their goodbyes to their various horses by name. It was a rare, special weekend, and I'm glad that we went.  

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 15, 2003

 The Double JJ Ranch is still going strong, and you can learn more about it here.

‘Success means I get to do it again tomorrow’

Steve Albini

     One reason I let almost 40 years go by without reaching out to Steve Albini is that our last conversation was so engrained in my mind. It was the summer of 1982. I bumped into him at Norris Center, Northwestern's student hangout, and he showed me this little electronic drum machine he had just gotten. I told him that I was leaving soon for my first job in Los Angeles. "Well, don't die," he said tersely, and walked away. Coming from Steve Albini, that remark was the equivalent of a teary hug from anyone else, and I doubted I'd do any better than that. But perhaps driven mad by COVID isolation, I leapt across the chasm, and was glad I did.  A smart man, and there aren't enough of those around. I only wish I could have printed more of our conversation. 

     “Do you feel successful?” I asked Steve Albini, at a taco place near his Belmont Avenue recording studio, which readers visited Monday.
     Albini is successful, by any measure. A legendary sound engineer — known for producing Nirvana’s last album. Notorious lead man of Big Black, “some of the nastiest noisemakers in rock” according to Rolling Stone, and, more recently, Shellac of North America. They tour the world.
     But those tough on others, as Albini certainly is, are often hardest on themselves. So I was curious. Does he consider himself a success?
     “To the extent that I could care about that, I would say yes,” he replied. “I’ve lived my whole life without having goals, and I think that’s very valuable, because then I never am in a state of anxiety or dissatisfaction. I never feel I haven’t achieved something. I never feel there is something yet to be accomplished. I feel like goals are quite counterproductive. They give you a target, and until the moment you reach that target, you are stressed and unsatisfied, and at the moment you reach that specific target you are aimless and have lost the lodestar of your existence. I’ve always tried to see everything as a process. I want to do things in a certain way that I can be proud of that is sustainable and is fair and equitable to everybody that I interact with. If I can do that, then that’s a success, and success means that I get to do it again tomorrow.”
     COVID-19 has turned many friendships into slag heaps of cold ash. It seemed perverse to seek out Albini, whom I hadn’t seen in decades, who doesn’t suffer fools and can summarize your failings with a precision that’ll haunt you to your grave. Driving to lunch, I wondered if I was ready for his notorious scrutiny, conjuring a potential headline: “Steve Albini explains why I suck.”
     I told him I have a hard time sharing his perspective.
     “I can’t conceive of somebody who’s done what he’s wanted to do every day for four decades, published books and still writes a daily column and have that person think of himself as anything other than a success,” he said.
     That was unexpected.
     “You’re mellower than when we were in school,” I said.

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Put Dante in the game.

     Guys talk. And not everything we say, we want to share with the public, right? For instance. In Sunday's description of going to the Cubs game, I left out a certain digression of mine at the ballpark. Didn't seem germane. But it actually was germane, as you will see. The problem was, it's embarrassing.  A little. Okay. A lot.
     I started talking about Dante. At the ballgame. I was with book editors, remember, and the topic came to books I'd like to write someday, and I explained my theory that Dante is funny, in a wicked, Spy magazine sense, creating this hell and putting all his enemies in it. They nodded politely.

    It wasn't easy for Dante. It took some creativity, see? I continued. For instance. He was betrayed by Pope Boniface VIII. Whom he very much wanted to put in his newly-minted hell. But he couldn't, because the Inferno actually takes place at a certain time, over Easter weekend, 1300. And Boniface had not yet died. So trying to be faithful to the faux verisimilitude that lets people forget this is all something he made up, in the narrative, Dante, led by Virgil, comes to this hole, where the popes are kept, head down, their feet kicking, the red flames burning their feet a parody of their red papal slippers. And one pope hears a sound above, and says, "What, Boniface? Is that you? You're early?"

     Funny, right?

     Eventually I stopped. And no harm done, except perhaps two guys really, really sorry for whom they decided to invite to the game. My shame would have been hidden.

     Then a Facebook pal, Ann Hilton Fisher, alerted me to a program that begins tomorrow, that I have to alert you to: "100 Days of Dante," beginning Sept. 8 and running until Easter Sunday, they are reading three cantos of the Divine Comedy a week. Here's a story about it.
     I'm not endorsing the project en toto. And if you watch the video, you'll see they slip in that the Divine Comedy is "which has taught generation of people a deeper way to love God." That's one take. It could also better rationalize apostasy. It's put together by a consortium of American Christian universities, who are not famous for the range of their intellectual scope, and the lead organization is Baylor University, the Waco Texas Baptist school. For all I know, it's a thinly disguised 100-day orgy of anti-Catholicism, which Baylor was once known for. Though I hope not.

    The 700th anniversary of Dante's death is Sept. 14, and we have to do something, right? I plan to at least tune in until I have reason to drop out, and figure you might want to join me.

‘I want the music to survive’

Steve Albini

Monday is Labor Day, an apt moment to consider a profession rarely featured in a daily newspaper.

     “Let me show you the rest of the studio,” said Steve Albini, moving through a musician’s paradise of musical instruments — fine guitars, timpani, two grand pianos — plus an audiophile’s dream of equipment: Marshall amplifiers, reel-to-reel Ampex tape machines, high-end speakers, coiled cords, headphones, mixing boards, rows of phase shifters and fuzzboxes and other effect pedals. The walls are enormous bricks, each weighing 13 pounds.
     “These are adobe bricks we had brought up from New Mexico,” he explains. “They have some interesting acoustic properties. The walls are self-isolating ... massive, enormously heavy and that stops the transmission of sound from room to room. We built this whole place. Everything you see is a new construction.”
     Since 1997, here at Electrical Audio on Belmont Avenue, Albini has recorded music by thousands of musicians, from the world famous to the deeply obscure. Commercial clients, too. A few cases of Mamba fruity candy are scattered around the foyer — the manufacturer needed a recording studio to shoot a commercial, and hired the space, which has a feel that is somehow both cutting edge and classic.
     “Everything that we’ve seen so far is Studio A — the bigger, fancier studio,” Albini said. “Each of the rooms has a different sound footprint, and that is intentional, so you can make an active choice about what you’re recording. That room over there is Alcatraz — super dead, super dry sound. This room is called the Kentucky room, much brighter and more lively recording environment. It has a quick slap of reverb and not a long-sustaining decay. Very good for drums. Any acoustic instruments, acoustic guitar, banjo violin, mandolin. Any percussion instruments, vibes and marimbas and all that kind of thing — all that sounds great in there because you get this quick, bright, reverberant sound from the room.”
     If you’re wondering why we’re here, it’s complicated. Among the many bad things that COVID-19 has done is isolate people. Casual relationships vanish. It gets lonely. A few weeks back, I read a Tribune story about speed cameras that quoted Albini saying the typically challenging, contrarian things I remember him saying when we were in college together. Unlike drivers such as myself, merely irked to get speeding tickets, Albini finds the automatic speed cameras “a nicely implemented, mild reminder to keep speed under control in those areas.” Besides, he said, better to trust automatic cameras than give discretion to cops, who have proved “they will abuse that discretion.”

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'Take me out to the ballgame...'

     Confession: I have never gone to Wrigley Field of my own initiative.
     That is, never conceived the thought, "I think I'll go to a game," and either taken myself, or invited a friend and headed to the Friendly Confines.
     I've gone because someone was in town—a business associate, relative, friend—and I wanted ot show off the park. I've gone to take my children, so they can experience a game. And I've accepted many invitations, such as Friday, when a pair of book editors invited me along to round out their group, blessed—or should that be burdened?—with free tickets from some season ticket holder too disgusted with the Ricketts gutting the team to attend another game.

    It occurred to me, arriving to meet them, slipping into my seat, Section 31, Row 7, Seat 1, that this was nice. Even. being by myself, even knowing the Cubs had traded away their good players. I vowed to someday come alone, of my own volition, just for the heck of it, maybe next summer. Just because I can.

     The whole process was enjoyable. Parking at the Skokie Swift. Getting on the 'L' at one of its rare forays into the 'burbs, with a variety of folks clad in their Cubbie gear, a few kids carrying gloves, the zenith of optimism 
     The seats were great. "Like sitting on the field," I texted to my wife. I bought a Bud Zero—a new and welcome development, and only $8. Munched peanuts, bought a hot dog from a vendor (the condiment options are ketchup, mustard and relish. Just sayin'). The game was exciting, to the degree I watched, with a home run, a wildly overthrown pitch.
      The really fun part was the conversation. A lot about Nicholson Baker, whom one of the editors had met and worked with. When he revealed that, I reached out and touched his shoulder with the pad of my index finger, as if to access by contact a bit of the Nicholson Baker writerly mojo. An extraordinary novelist.
     And there was one moment I really savored, which I should explain, because I doubt anyone at the ballpark would pick it as the highlight. Cubs coach David Ross being out with the COVID, Andy Green stepped in. He was spectacularly upset over the umpire's call at second base—we all missed the play, and my pals turned to their phones to find out what had happened. I didn't actually care that much, so my gaze strayed to the left field scoreboard while Green foamed and gesticulated and marched around the umpire.
     Whoever operates the video scoreboard, kudos to that person. At one point the camera zeroed in on the Wrigley clock, as if to say, "Tick tock, Andy, let's wrap up your tirade and get on with the game." I fumbled for my phone, but the operator cut away, and I took a photo of the clock.

    A reminder that as much as we focus on the players and coaches, there is an enormous substrata of people who make baseball worth experiencing, to the degree that it is. Friendly usher when you walk in. Unsung heroes, like the rangy afro'ed attendant—once I would have called him a "ball boy"—who sat on the field in front of us, snagging stray balls that rolled his way. When he did, a small boy would inevitably appear at his elbow and wait patiently, glove proffered. Eventually he would turn, tuck the ball through the net, into the mitt, and the boy would turn, agog and delighted, bearing his treasure in triumph. I listened as a father gently urge his son to do that—7-year-old boys can be maddeningly shy—and eventually he went and learned one of life's key lessons: you don't get what you want unless you ask.

David, left, and Gary.

       It rained for almost an hour, but a gentle rain, and we sat in it without complaining too much. I struck up a conversation with the beer vendor, Gary from Albany Park, who delighted to see that I was Jewish, spent a long time discussing Romanian hot dogs, which are sold at a certain stand in the field, as well as the Jewel on Howard, "the Jewish Jewel" he called it. Gary has been selling beer at Wrigley since 1984. But that's nuthin', he effused, calling over David, who has sold beer here for 58 years, or since I was in nursery school. I took their photo.
     We stood and sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and shortly thereafter the game was over. Filing out, I thanked my friends for inviting me, and thought what a thoroughly enjoyable time I had had at the ballgame. Just as we reached the steps down to the causeway out, I paused.
     "Just a second," I said, and turned, my eyes searching the scoreboard. Six to five, the Cubs won—I thought they had, based on how the crowd cheered when it was over.
      "My wife might ask me the score," I said, hurrying to catch up.