Share Eli's cheesecake for the holidays.

     "Do you want to split a piece of cheesecake?"
     It was a rhetorical question. There is only one conceivable answer, an immediate and enthusiastic "YES!"
     Though my wife, a woman of surprise, didn't say that.
     "Cherry or turtle?" my wife countered, opening the freezer. We had both kinds.
     "Turtle!" I exclaimed.
     She paused.
     "How about we take half of each?" Her eye was on the cherry, also a good call, but I was in a caramel and chocolate frame of mine.

     And that would have meant a full piece for each of us. Decadence. Luxury.

     I held out for the shared slice. For several reasons. First, there is the slow, sensual, delicate, deliberate process of sharing a slice of Eli's cheesecake, each of us delving our forks into its firm, cool, exterior, carefully working our way toward some imaginary radius dividing our beloved's half from our own. And the noble generosity, toward the end, as the precious cake dwindles and we go slower, deferring, making sure the other has their due, pushing the last remnant across the cake in the other's direction.  Here, you take this, love. What is mine is yours.

    And yes, eating only half a slice means fewer calories, moving cheesecake from a rare indulgence to a regular treat. You can eat more by eating less. 
     I was inspired to cheesecake by the Eli's advertisements, which went up on everygoddamnday.com Wednesday night, the ninth holiday season where they have appeared, without fail, like Santa, like carols, like joy itself, to welcome in the holiday season. 
     Though honestly, we've been indulging in post-prandial cheesecake more in recent months. Cheesecake used to be the realm of our boys, the frozen fatted calf awaiting their inevitable return. It was theirs, and our occasional taking some was stealing from our children. Which we of course still did.  But rarely. 

       Now, with both boys lashed to their legal oars, their returns are less frequent. Yet the cheesecake remains—we always have it on hand. The perfect treat to take out for guests. The perfect answer to the puzzlement of what to have for dessert. The perfect reassurance, glanced under the frozen peas and Eggo waffles, that you are living a Good Life. If you don't have Eli's in your freezer, then you're really not a Chicagoan. Really not alive.  

     Somebody must eat it. And that somebody is myself. And my wife. Together.
     Though it could also be eaten by you, yourself, and your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend or significant other. You are allowed. An amazing generosity of the Eli's company is that they share their cheesecake. They don't have to. They could keep it all to themselves and who could blame them? But it is available, for mere money. Sold as if it were some sort of commercial product, and not the frozen ambrosia of the gods. Available online, for yourself or for gifts. Or for both. I will give cheesecake this season because I always do, since it is always appreciated, the only downside of giving cheesecake as a present being that it becomes one cheesecake out of the finite galaxy of cheesecakes that eludes consumption by yourself. But that's okay. There are plenty, and they are always making more, in the immaculate factory on the northwest side of Chicago. Always more, and you can't eat them all, though God knows it would be a joy to try.

      And besides, this holiday season, with so much going wrong in the world, we need a chance to make something go right. To light a candle in the darkness, to savor a slice of life while we have it by eating cheesecake and to spread joy where we can by giving it.
     As a regular reader, you know I don't demand much from you. Read the stuff, don't be a jerk in the comments. There is no paywall, no subscriptions, no cup rattling of any kind. All I ask of you is that you buy one cheesecake, for yourself, or for another, once a year. Now is that time. Just click here, or on the advertisement at left, to be transported to the world of Eli's cheesecake. Then the only difficulty will be picking which one.

He’s baaaack! Lessons from the Smollett case

Ufizzi Gallery, Florence

     Has the law ever been compared to a dim cat? No? Good, then let me be the first. Waking Monday morning to see the dead mouse of the Jussie Smollett case dropped on our collective pillow is a reminder not only of walnut-brained felines, but that when Hamlet lists the reasons to kill himself, “the law’s delay” is No. 2, right after the pangs of unrequited love.
     Almost three years. Longer than COVID-19, and COVID-19 feels like forever. You’d think it should be done by now. But no. He’s baaaaack.
     Given that a trial is going on, journalistic convention discourages me from endorsing either of the two possible narratives: A) That Smollett was the victim of this strange racist/homophobic attack committed by a pair of his employees, as the defense now suggests. Or B) Smollett himself paid his two associates $3,500 — by check, since we are not dealing with Lex Luthor here — to stage the attack in some kind of cracked effort to boost his profile and hence his salary.
     I’m not publicly endorsing one or the other. Let’s just say I believe the one that doesn’t require a suspension of common sense. While we’re waiting for the jury to choose, no one can fault us, the unwilling audience, if we pass the time by trying to extract a bit of benefit out of this waste by noting three of the general lessons illustrated here.
     1) Don’t lie. Lying is a trap. Alas, the same sort of person who fabricates stuff also lacks the fortitude to admit it when caught. And so it continues.
     We’ve seen this on a national scale as the election fraud lie of Donald Trump has become the bedrock belief of the Republican Party. Worse than merely a lie, it’s a flimsy lie. They obviously don’t really believe the election was stolen from them in some amorphous way they can’t explain, never mind prove. If they actually believed that, why vote at all?
     Rather, it’s just the lie they use to grease the skids of their bad behavior to fool themselves, if nobody else. The way Smollett is ignoring the fact that at one point he did community service — not the usual route taken by victims of hate crime — before Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s special alternate system of justice for TV stars came to light and the matter was taken out of her hands and given to a special prosecutor.

To continue reading, click here.

Flashback 2000: Prayer needs a 'private' sign

 

     The Uptown Poetry Slam returned to the Green Mill on Sunday after its long COVID hiatus. The most fun I've had in a while. The open-mike poets were funny and true and passionate and heartbreaking. The jazz was cool. And Marc Kelly Smith was the perfect MC, energetic and raw, reciting his own powerful poetry. There was tap dancing, and one poet proposed to his girlfriend from the stage. I was honored to be allowed to say a few words, and considered talking about Miss Eve, then didn't. I can't believe I haven't shared the following before, but here it is.

     The Green Mill is a wonderful old bar in Uptown. If you've never gone, you really should—dark, cozy, comfortable. I used to stop by whenever I could, back in the days when it had a regular pianist named Miss Eve.
     Miss Eve played at the Green Mill for nearly 50 years. She was a big, fleshy woman, and she would sit perched at the small piano behind the bar and sing, her voice rough and low. She took requests, and I'd try to stump her. My mother had been a singer in the USO, so I was familiar with a wide range of obscure old chestnuts. I'd request "Goody, Goody," and "Embraceable You" and "There's No Tomorrow."

Miss Eve

     

     "Do you know `Avalon' ?" I'd ask. "Do you know `Come Rain or Come Shine' ?" Invariably, she did. But I kept trying. One day she interrupted me in mid-question. "Honey," she rasped. "I know 'em all."
      A flash of insight swept over me. She knows them all. She is omnipotent. Divine. A god. Of course! God is a sweaty fat woman in a dark bar, playing out the tune of the world.
     Right, I know: drunk. But it seemed profound, then. I mention it to illustrate why I don't pray much. If you are the sort of person who can entertain a thought as blasphemous as "God is a sweaty fat woman . . ." then you lack the sincerity needed for prayer.
     While I don't pray much, I do appreciate prayer. It is an amazingly efficient endeavor. Prayer doesn't require batteries. You can do it aloud, but you don't have to. You can pray silently. Nobody will stop you. There is no need to clasp your hands in front of you or to kneel. You can choose to turn your eyes heavenward or not.
     This subtle, flexible quality of prayer comes to mind when I hear of people trying to make it into a public spectacle, either by forcing it into public schools or, as we keep hearing from the Southland, shouting it out at high school football games.
     Ever since the courts struck down leading prayers over the PA system as unconstitutional, rabid ministers have been encouraging their charges to stand up before games and pray.
     What is the purpose of this? Down South, they argue that they are merely continuing a tradition — God and football. The argument that a person should be able to attend a high school football game without being forced to choose whether to stand for a public display of adherence to Christianity never seems to affect anybody south of Missouri.
     What they don't realize is that this only works so long as most people think alike. As we learned this year in Palos Heights, the face of America is changing, and as our country becomes more diverse, the bullying represented by those football game prayers will become more intolerable. How would they react if, after the spontaneous Lord's Prayer died away, a smaller contingent stood up to recite the Hebrew schma as a third group went down to the field to unroll their prayer rugs facing Mecca.
     They wouldn't like it.
     You can pray all you want — in school, at football games, in a bar. You just shouldn't make a show of it. The reason is that if you recite the Lord's Prayer — your Lord's Prayer — then I should be able to shake a palm branch, and little Haji should get a chance to light incense to the six-armed elephant-head god.
     This is only fair. Yet so many people just can't get it. Maybe I should pray for them. Miss Eve, do you know "As Time Goes By"?
        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 5, 2000.

‘Let’s reduce the misery’

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Before we consider the issue that U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., phoned me to talk about last week — shipping fighting birds through the United States Postal Service — we need to wrap our heads around the general idea of animals being sent through the mail.
     It is a common practice.
     “They sent me a list of things you can legally mail,” Quigley said. “Poultry, honeybees, scorpions, live adult birds, which is depressing. Baby alligators, frogs, chameleons, lizards, etc.”
     Which makes sense. Animals need to get to farms and pet stores. It isn’t like they can take a bus. Posting them doesn’t strike me as particularly cruel. Given the amount of time a frog spends hibernating at the bottom of a frigid lake, four days in a dark container doesn’t seem a crime against nature.
     But that isn’t the problem Quigley is trying to address.
     “Today we’re focused on buying, selling, possessing or receiving any animals for purposes of the animal participating in a fighting venture,” Quigley said.
     Cockfights — putting two birds in a ring, with razor talons attached to their claws, and goading them to maul each other — is one of the more obscure sub-hells of sport. Illegal in all 50 states, it is still permitted in territories like Puerto Rico and Guam.
     Maybe I’ve been softened up by COVID isolation, But I was happy just to be approached by somebody about something. Quigley could have been exercised about the Oxford comma, and I’d give him my ear.
     Earlier this month, Quigley sent a letter to Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale, asking the USPS to develop a strategy to start better enforcing the 2002 federal law against shipping animals for fighting purposes.
     “There have been 500 shipments of fighting birds, mostly from state-based farms in the Carolinas, some 10,000 fighting animals sent to Guam,” Quigley said. The birds are also being sent to Puerto Rico.

To continue reading, click here.

'Better I should know'

    Reality is a stern taskmaster. That's why so many people are so loose with their facts. Not that they are averse to factuality, per se. They never fudge random fact, never claim the moon is made of chalk.

    Rather, they want a pass, want to coast, want to ignore the costs baked into their behaviors. Nobody lies to make themselves look worse, or to emphasize the gravity of their misdeeds. Rather, they attempt to deform the truth—always in vain—to bend it out of shape rather than admit that it is they themselves who need adjusting. They try to pretend their wishes were horses, mounting air and riding away, in their minds if not in actuality. 

     That's why I keep an electronic scale in the kitchen. Because when the issue is as significant as what you put in your mouth, a person tends to err on the side of more. I've eaten a salad in a chain restaurant and figured it had to be 500 calories, then later checked the establishment's website and found it was really 1,200. Just as primitive cultures lacked words for large numbers, and could 1,2,3 and "many," so I have a hard time adjusting the upper limit of what I imagine certain foodstuffs contain, difficulty adjusting to just how fattening they are. It seems to defy possibility. I used to like a good blueberry muffin, until Jewel started posting they are 600 calories. I never ate one again.

     Still, even with the best, most accurate intentions, mistakes happen. 
     The other day. I cut myself a slice of my wife's delicious homemade cranberry bread. It was a thick slice, and I figured it had to be 1.5 ounces. Then I tossed it on the scale. More than twice that: 3.3. To my credit, I did not then announce that the scale was broken. Or suspect a problem with gravity. A lot of people seem to take that route. But the cranberry bread was 330 calories whether I recognized it or not. As Sarah McLachlan sang, "Better I should know."

Ravenswood Notes: Oromo

     Damn! I read the Saturday post from our Ravenswood bureau chief Caren Jeskey and berated myself with: "Why didn't I think of that?" The only thing to do is to wait a respectful period of time—weeks? months?—and then dive into my own complicated relationship with the piping hot brown nectar of the gods. Until then, her report:

Dedicated, in gratitude, to my parents.

     Coffee has been a constant companion throughout my life and I know just why it's sometimes called "the poor man's gold." From before I was born, our house welcomed each day with the sound of a percolator, which was later replaced by the wheezes and gurgles of a good old drip machine.
     For some of us, there are few things as satisfying as the sound of coffee brewing. Well, maybe the pleasure of pouring hot water from the tip of a gooseneck kettle in concentric circles over fresh grounds, and letting them bloom as they release their heavenly aroma. When I grind my beans each morning, carefully reassemble the clean parts of the vessel I’m using to brew that day, heat up water, and add it to the grounds, I am immersed in the ritual and it's comforting.
     From my toddler to my teenage years, my mother kept a giant green thermos full of the pungent dark liquid by her side. This was necessary and justified, considering that she was raising three young children during the day and working all night long until the sun came up. She also went through another period of working full time while raising two of us, co-running the household, and getting various degrees of higher education that she did not have time for in her 20s. My dad was around too, but my mom had to fly solo when he was miles away working long days, and later when he traveled for work. She simply had to stay tanked up.
    In the early 70's it must have taken my dad hours on the bus to get from our white wooden farm-style house on Ridge and Lunt all the way to the Campbell’s Soup factory on 35th and Western where he worked. Legend has it that he took the bumpy CTA trip, day after day, while holding a piping hot cup of the brown stuff. Of course the cup was not covered with a lid — this tough, handsome, south-side greaser of a man was not soft enough for that. I am quite sure he never spilled a drop of the java, gracefully maneuvering his cup as the bus lurched over potholes, as he headed off to support his family with his strong, capable, and steady hands.
     I’m right there with my folks in our love for those roasted little beans. As a young kid I’d pour coffee out of the percolator into a cup, add milk and sugar, and drink away. I've liked the taste of java from the very first time it’s bitterness — not quite concealed in the condiments — hit my taste buds.
     When I was 17 and working the sunrise shift at Granny’s Waffle and Pancake House on Pine Grove and Diversey, my regulars were relieved to see that I knew how many creamers and sugars it took to make a proper Boston. I’d make sure it was well stirred, collect my tip, hand them their prize, and they’d head out to face their days, feeling bolstered by liquid energy. I was a dealer. Speaking of that town, a 2015 study found Coffee Drinking 'Not Uncommon' Among Boston Toddlers. In this upside down world we are living in it’s probably all of them by now. On this holiday weekend let’s not get too dreary by focusing on the dangers of caffeine or the fact that South Korea may be the only place that’s getting it right.
     Fortunately I am down to one or two cups of joe a day, with the rare third cup some afternoons. Rather than chugging the battery acid like I used to, and never being able to get enough of it (I once worked at a coffee shop where fellow baristas asked the owner to do an intervention since they were worried that I might achieve caffeine toxicity in my enthusiasm to taste all the drinks), I am able to enjoy a safe amount of homemade deliciousness. There are even days I don’t have any, and I don’t miss it.

Molly & Macallan

    Then there are days like this past Wednesday. I was on a long walk and decided to treat myself to a special coffee at Oromo in Lincoln Square. While I waited in the short line I noticed two young women in front of me. I admired the kicks on one of them; white lace up booties with goldish stripes reminiscent of bowling shoes. I also liked their color palettes— the rusts, browns, creams, and blues fit right in with the simple wood and Turkish tile ambience of the shop. I took a chance and complimented the shoes. Turns out the two are a couple visiting from the St. Louis area, Molly and Macallan, and they had the happy vibe of vacation.
     The little chat — one of very few human interactions off of a Zoom screen I had that day — put me in a brighter mood. I ordered a Pistachio + Rose Latte comprised of fresh pistachio milk, rose syrup, espresso, and rose petals. I sipped my fancy gem as I walked back home under sunny skies in the warmish fall air and I was grateful for the day.

Back from the dead

     During a very long day Thanksgiving Day of cutting, toasting, measuring, mixing, baking, covering, washing, sweeping, driving, greeting, chatting, serving—I could add another dozen gerunds, but you get the picture—I had plenty to time to reflect on the dynamics of family.       

     Yes, it's a lot of bother. Throwing a big party for crowds of people, some of whom you see once a year. But as with so much in life, you get out what you put in. When finally everything was ready, and it came time when we normally go around the table and give thanks, I suggested to my wife, sotto voce, that perhaps we jettison that part. There were so many of us—28. The feast had been delayed—complications with the mashed potatoes. Maybe we should just cut to the chase. 

     No, my wife said: tradition. So we began.
     Another value of hanging around other people: because you are not always right. Sometimes they are right.
     In this case, my wife was correct. The thanks that I was ready to ditch turned out to be the best part of the day, for me anyway, certainly better than merely eating. A poem of thanks by a 6-year-old was read. People were grateful to have survived COVID, to be alive, to be together. Nobody talked about material stuff. Few even mentioned the food. It was the family, us, here, now.
     A few brought up other things. When it was my turn, I stipulated what everybody had said, thanked my parents for coming from Colorado and my sister from Dallas, mentioned our own distant ancestors, who made their escapes so we could end up here, alive, then gave thanks for Joe Biden being elected president. That was well-received in our crowd. Though the thanks that will stay with me came from my niece Rachel, studying to be a rabbi in Jerusalem, who flew in. 

      She said there is a blessing for when you haven't seen anybody in over a year, and she gave the blessing, in Hebrew and in English: "Blessed art thou, our Lord our God, King of the Universe, who gives life to the dead."
     It's part of the Amida, the daily prayers that religious Jews say. Some say it upon waking in the morning, which, when you think about it, it a kind of arising from the dead. During the inevitable discussion that followed, my brother-in-law Alan pointed out that it wasn't so much physical resurrection that is being referred to, but the awakening of "dead souls." Or in this case, when someone you love is gone so long, a part of yourself become dead, or dormant, a part that reanimates should that person return.
     That is certainly true. The house rang in a way it hasn't rung for two years, with raucous laughter and a babble of voices and racing children. Say what you will about the family, it is life, in our case from a toddling almost 2-year-old, who pointed to a broken banister and said, "Uncle Neil will fix that," to a nearly 90-year-old, who marveled at the technology behind my large screen TV. All in the same place at the same time, basking in a warmth that goes back to the first protozoan cells clumping together deep within an ancient sea.
     I could go on, but about 11 p.m., after the last care packages of turkey—we had three, roasted, fried and smoked—stuffing and pie—we had six, pumpkin, pecan, sour cherry, mixed berry, and a couple I'm forgetting—were carted away, my wife and I ran out of steam and went to bed. Which means there's more washing, wiping, scrubbing, drying, unloading, sweeping, loading, stacking, disposing, climbing, sorting, storing and more waiting downstairs to be done. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving yesterday with all the loved ones you could gather together, and a quiet and restful day after today.