Ravenswood Notes: Ma

Ganesha (Art Institute of Chicago)

     I was reading over today's report from Ravenswood bureau chief Caren Jeskey, and reflecting on how very different people we are, both in personality and outlook, when she hit upon my absolute favorite Hindu deity, Ganesha. Though my affection stems mainly from his title as "Remover of Obstacles,"  according to the placard next to the thousand-year-old Indonesian carving on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. 

     While not given to ritual, whenever a new book is being shopped around, or published, I make a point to pause before Ganesha, touch my thumb to my middle finger in a gesture of entreaty, and utter a single syllable: "Please."

      Although now that I read up on him, I see that Ganesha is also the Placer of Obstacles, when he thinks it'll do you good. So maybe I'm tripping myself up, alerting him to the next opportunity to give me a well-deserved karmic smackdown. Anyway, Caren's report awaits:

     Yes, the strange tragedy of Jussie Smollett and much sadder news is on my mind. I’m as tired of distancing, and as dismayed by the state of our city (and beyond) as anyone. So I decided to take a break from December 2021, pull out an old story of happier times, edit, and share with you.
     A group of joyful yoga teachers bounced out of Moksha Yoga on Carpenter near Ogden, right around the corner from The Matchbox Bar. We piled into cars and ended up at a funky apartment on Milwaukee and Damen one night in the early 2000s. We were young and energetic, and felt invincible. Someone broke out a didgeridoo, an aboriginal Australian wind instrument. I was heck bent on learning, and gave it my all. My lips were swollen for hours afterwards. We had a blast that night, making music, singing, and dancing, then heading home to collapse into bed.
     A favorite friend back then was a young woman from Detroit we called Ma because she was forever whipping up delectable meals for us, and finding other ways to nurture the group. She drove a big old vintage Cadillac—the color of a purple grape— that had belonged to her Grandmother. One night, Ma (whose real name was Dara, pronounced Dada) and I set off, quite late, towards a giant hotel in the northwest suburbs. We were heading to see Ammachi, the hugging “saint” from India. We parked far away from the entrance after driving past a sea of hundreds of already parked vehicles.
     Amma is the consummate social worker. She has raised millions of dollars for various social causes. She once (pre-COVID) traveled the world, “blessing’ people, and raising money along the way. Yes, she is a religious figure to some, but not to me. As an atheist I still find value in many aspects of religious traditions. The beauty of stained glass, the pungent aroma of Frankincense smoke permeating Catholic and orthodox churches, the ritual of bar and bat mitzvahs, and so much more.
     The moment we walked in an Indian couple grabbed me, ebullient, and playfully demanded to know if I had a raffle ticket. I did not. They thrust a small piece of paper with a number into my hand, and pulled me into the banquet hall. There were rows of hundreds of padded banquet chairs, and they pushed me into an empty seat. They laughed and said “now you wait here” and they disappeared. I had no idea where Dara went. This started a journey that was to last deep into the night and into the dawn of the next day.
     As the minutes ticked by, we were guided to move chairs, closer and closer to the front of the room towards a lavish gazebo. It was placed in the middle of a stage that was bedecked with an extraordinary collection of potted trees and flowers. Back center sat a woman with long black hair pulled back into a bun, seated on an elaborate throne of sorts. She was wearing white flowing garments and was covered with rose petals. The stage was packed with devotees sitting all around her, ready to jump to be sure her every need was met.
     On the wide expanse of floor between the padded chairs and the stage were hundreds of people sitting on meditation cushions or blankets, some singing along with mantras (prayers) being played and sung by top notch musicians. There were children sleeping, elderly people leaning on their loved ones, and eyes were fixed on Amma or closed in meditation.
     There was a long single file line of people dressed mostly in loose white garments along the left side of the stage. The line led to a set of stairs. After chair hopping for a long while, I finally found myself in a little tent next to the stage. I was asked if I wanted a mantra. Don't laugh. According to an article in Yoga Journal, "Neuroscientists, equipped with advanced brain-imaging tools, are beginning to quantify and confirm some of the health benefits of this ancient practice, such as its ability to help free your mind of background chatter and calm your nervous system.” It sounded good to me, and so I received one. I still have the little piece of paper it’s written on.
     I use it sometimes as a way to simply focus on one thing, which quiets my mind.
     My moment had arrived. I was swept to the feet of Amma by a handler on each side of me. I knelt, and she pulled me close and wrapped her warm arms around me, folding me into her bosom. I almost fainted, feeling the deep sense of relief a hug from a grandmother can give you. She fervently whispered into my ear and then handed me a small bag of candy, flower petals and pretty baubles that she had “blessed.”
     Then she placed a little piece of paper into my palm and pressed it there. My mantra. She pulled me back towards her, embraced me again and whispered a long chain of prayers into my ear. Before I knew what was happening I was pulled to my feet and to the stairs to the right of the stage, then released into the seated crowd. I sat for hours, meditating and singing along with the kirtan music being played.
     We sang to the elephant headed god Ganesha who carries a rope to pull us to our highest good, and to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and purity. At some unknown time— it was close to dawn and I was exhausted— I ventured out into the crowd of thousands and found Ma and other friends. We ate delicious savory saag paneer, which is fresh Indian cheese mixed into an aromatic creamed spinach. For dessert I picked gulab jamun, which I like to call balls of joy — rightly so since they are made of milk powder, flour, rose water and lemon, and remind me of deep fried donut holes that are served hot in a bowl of rosewater sugar syrup.
     Amma, which means Mother, has traveled the world blessing people and raising money to alleviate homelessness, poverty, and injustice. She was born in 1953 in what is now known as Kerala India. Amma’s organization has donated millions to alleviate the suffering brought on by COVID. A month into COVID a free hotline run by her organization in Kochi was set up to provide free mental health counseling. I have heard countless stories over the years about how this woman and her group have worked tirelessly to provide relief to those who need it, and not one iota of scandal, ever.
     What if we were all Ammas? What would this world look like today?

Beatles’ ‘Get Back’ long but worth it

                                                    Photo courtesy of Apple Corps Ltd.

   

     Sometimes you write something, and later realize it missed the crux of what you wanted to say. What I wanted to say was that I always took the Beatles for granted—they were a given like air. The "Get Back" documentary gave me a new appreciation for their artistry. Maybe that's implied.

     “I want to watch that again,” my wife said, surprising me. We had just sat through the three-part, seven-hour-and-48-minute “The Beatles: Get Back,” a Disney+ documentary on the January 1969 recording sessions that led to the group’s last album. We see the Fab Four trying to knock together new songs while planning a concert to give the TV special that they think they’re filming a big finish.
     But where should they perform? On a ship? At some ancient amphitheater in North Africa?
     Amazing that a show can be that long and slow-moving — almost nothing happens in the way of dramatic development; George Harrison gets in a snit; there’s that concert to plan — yet also so compelling. My wife and I hurried to the TV after dinner to watch the second and third episodes, as if it were some kind of cliffhanger.
     As the musical glacier formed before us, flake by flake, one question kept tugging my sleeve: What does Terri Hemmert think of this?
     You know Aunt Terri, the beloved radio disc jockey whose soothing voice has been a fixture on WXRT-FM (93.1) for almost half a century. For nearly two decades, Hemmert has hosted Breakfast with the Beatles on Sunday mornings and been dubbed “Chicago’s #1 Beatles Fan.”
     I tracked Hemmert down in her car. To my surprise, she hasn’t finished watching “Get Back.” Too busy.
     “I’ve seen all but the last two hours,” she said. “I’m going to see the last part Saturday. I don’t even have a TV.”
     Is this not a big deal for you?
     “I’ve been waiting for it,” she said. “Anticipating it for a long time.”
     And the verdict is?

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Flashback 2008: Cowardly retreat

The Great Pyramid, Giza, by Adrien Dauzats
(Metropolitan Museum of Art) 

     The United States Congress is trying to decide whether it has the institutional integrity to push back against the loathsome anti-Muslim rhetoric of several members. About time. For some reason, this particular bigotry is too often not seen as being as completely unacceptable as, say, racism or anti-Semitism. It should be. I wrote this 13 years ago, when the Spertus Museum realized it had put on an exhibit that was too fair for its donors' tastes. It also is a reminder why Barack Obama never warmed to me. This ran when the column was a full page and ended with a joke and, as the joke is not half bad, I've left it in.

     Cultural institutions in the Arab world are not known for their political balance. Which is what makes it so disappointing that the Spertus Museum would bow to pressure from donors and yank an exhibit about the borders of Israel. I didn't go to the show—the Jewish museum isn't exactly on the must-see museum circuit—but the specifics hardly matter. However offensive a particular display may have been, however starkly it demonstrated an opposing view, assuming it was incorporated within a halfway balanced exhibit, the show should have stayed, as testament to the ideal that you should at least be aware of what the other guy is saying.
     Spertus's shameful capitulation is nothing exceptional. Museums have a long history of cowardice, between the Smithsonian caving in over World War II controversies to our own local institutions being so in the thrall of corporations that they never mount anything controversial in the first place. But if the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock teaches us anything, it is the limited benefit of bulldozing forward without regard to conflicting viewpoints. We condemn the Palestinians for feeding their children a narrow view of the world. And then we take a page from them and spike an exhibit because some aspect makes the check-writers uneasy. Shonda fur di goyim. From a Jewish museum, we expect better.

TALK THE TALK

     People are giddy over Barack Obama, and not without reason. He represents a real opportunity for our nation to get back to being the kind of nation we fancy ourselves to be— thoughtful, competent, respected.
     Myself, I'm disappointed in Obama, at least in one regard. Every time he explains his Christian upbringing, every time he emphasizes that he is not a Muslim—to counteract the right-wing fanatics trying to twist his multicultural heritage into something it is not—he misses a wonderful opportunity.
     At one point—just once—between now and November, he should ask, "And what if I were a Muslim? Would that bar me from being elected president, the way being black barred millions of Americans from being president for hundreds of years? Is that the American way? Do you not realize that there are millions of United States citizens who are Muslim? Can you think of one ever committing a terrorist act against this country? Don't you realize that the entire notion of a war between the West and Islam is a major part of the Osama bin Laden philosophy, that it is only true to the degree that we let it be true? When I am president, I will show the Islamic world that we are not natural enemies, but inevitable friends. Americans have shown that they are willing to judge a man, not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. Surely, were I Muslim, I would be judged by what I have done, myself, and by what I have said, myself, and not condemned at the start because of crimes committed by others who claimed they were done in the name of faith."
     I'm not a politician—perhaps that paragraph would lose him Florida. I'm always surprised by the number of Jews who do not feel a moral obligation to support other embattled minority groups, to extend to them the same humanity we were so often denied ourselves.
     America thrives only to the degree that it refuses to submit to the tribalism and hatreds that so poison the world. When is Barack Obama going to say that?

TODAY'S CHUCKLE

A well-dressed man called on a rabbi and told him a distressing story of poverty and misery in their very own neighborhood.

"This poor widow," he said, "with four hungry children to feed, is sick in bed with no money for the doctor and, besides, she owes $1,000 rent for three months and is about to be evicted. I'm trying to help her raise the rent money so she won't be thrown into the street. I wonder if you can help?"

"Of course I can," said the rabbi. "That's what rabbis are for. But tell me, we haven't met before -- who are you, to be so kind to this poor woman?"

"I'm her landlord," he said.

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 23, 2008

It doesn’t matter if Till whistled

     Fish don’t feel the water. How could they? It surrounds them always. Fish never think, “I’m wet.”

     Similarly, in America, the 400 years of racism have made bigotry so pervasive we can miss it, unconsciously accept its premises. Sometimes, we think we’re pushing back against it, when we’re really just using it to propel ourselves forward. Swimming in it.
     The ghost of Emmett Till, in the form of a photo, appeared on the front page of the Sun-Times Tuesday. Like all ghosts, it demands a response. A startle, then a closer look.
     The smiling, viewable photo, of course, was taken before the 14-year-old Chicagoan was abducted, beaten, shot and dumped in the Tallahatchie River while on a visit to relatives in Mississippi in 1955. Not one of the gruesome images that ran in Jet magazine after his body spent three days in the river before being noticed by boys fishing nearby.
     The two men accused of murdering him grinningly walked, the all-white jury waving them on their way.
     But the case was reopened by the Justice Department in 2017, after publication of a book claiming the shopkeeper, Carolyn Bryant Donham, who accused Till of doing something unwelcome — whistling, making a lewd comment, squeezing her hand — admitted she had lied. That the boy hadn’t done anything to spark the fury of her husband and his friends.
     The FBI probed the author’s records but didn’t find the necessary evidence, so it closed the case.
     Abandoning charges disappointed Till’s family. They wanted Donham to admit that her claims were false. That she was sorry.
     “I had hoped that we could get an apology,” one said.
     Why? Why is it important to believe that Till didn’t do anything objectionable? That he wasn’t a brash Chicago teen visiting his country cousins, ignoring his mother’s advice, being crude and showing off?

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Flashback 2011: Future senator heard duty’s call Dec. 7

At 50, Paul Douglas was the oldest Marine recruit
ever to go through basic training at Parris Island.

     Today is Pearl Harbor Day—the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the United States, a standard for treachery that lately we seem determined to surpass ourselves. We see so many Republican senators energetically working to betray their country's basic precepts, it is easy to forget that once zeal prompted certain politicians to support our nation, even at personal cost to themselves. So I thought I would dig this up, from the 70th anniversary. It was melancholy to see Ed Burke pop up here. Then, the wellspring of symbolic tribute to those he considered heroes; now marinated in shame at his own venal behavior.  And Chris Kennedy, a supposed pal before I joined the chorus pointing out what a lousy gubernatorial candidate he was. Took his ball and went home, never to be seen again.

     Seventy years ago — Dec. 4, 1941 — the Chicago Sun, the seed of this newspaper, was sown by Marshal Field III, an attempt to support Franklin D. Roosevelt’s interventionist policies and counterbalance the Chicago Tribune, Col. Robert McCormick’s isolationist, reactionary, deeply biased Republican multimedia bully (what, you think it started with Fox News?)
     The city, keen for a newspaper war, which at the time involved squads of armed goons attacking each other, stayed up late Dec. 3. The presses ran at 11 p.m. A million copies of that first edition were sold.
     The timing was bad. Three days after the debut, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and even the Hitler-coddling Tribune got behind America’s opposing fascism. Still, the Sun kept shining, 70 years now and counting.
     When we remember Pearl Harbor, we remember the surprise Japanese attack, the 2,000 American lives lost, the “day that will live in infamy.” And that’s about it. I certainly didn’t know how Paul Douglas responded; I only knew one fact about Douglas — he was once a U.S. senator from Illinois — and that was only because I wrote Chuck Percy’s obit, so I knew Percy defeated Douglas in 1966.
     Then I bumped into Ald. Ed Burke (14th), who had Douglas on his mind.
     “After Dec. 7, he resigned from City Council and enlisted in the Marines,” said Burke. “He was 51 years old when basic training was over.”
     Once Douglas joined the Corps, he used his connections, not to avoid combat, as some do, but to get sent into battle.
     “In every age, there are patriots we need to honor,” said Burke.
     When you look closely at the details, history tends to be more complicated, more human and — in my view — more interesting than Greatest Generation generalities. Douglas enlisted after Dec. 7, yes, but he also wanted to enlist before Pearl Harbor.
     “I tried to make amends for my sedentary years,” Douglas wrote in his memoirs, of his summer, 1941 spent getting fit, swimming and running at the Indiana Dunes. “Although on the edge of fifty, I found myself obsessed with a wish seemingly impossible of fulfillment. I wanted to do more than talk. I wanted to enlist in the armed forces.”
     A Quaker, during World War I Douglas had gone through “internal agony” trying to decide if he could kill fellow human beings. He registered as a conscientious objector then, in 1918, had a change of heart and tried to enlist, but let himself be turned away.

     In 1941, he realized “if aggression was to be stopped, it would have to be by force.” His reasons were personal as well as political. “There were emotional forces at work, also,” he wrote. “I was dissatisfied with my record in World War I, when I had waited too long . . . I wanted to erase that stigma, and how better could I do that than by risking my life in defense of my country?”
     Douglas quit City Council (Paddy Bauler shouting out “Good riddance!” as he announced his resignation) enlisted, fought, earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, returned and was elected to the Senate, where he fought equally hard for civil rights, serving Illinois from 1949 to 1967.
     “Illinois has traditionally sent two types of leaders to Washington,” said Chris Kennedy, the former Merchandise Mart president. “Great moral leaders, like Paul Simon, and great operators, like Dan Rostenkowski. Paul Douglas was the archetype of the great moral leader, and he garnered a lot of his legitimacy through personal courage and what he did in World War II.”
     Burke thinks the city should find a way to honor Douglas.
     “Nothing is named for him in Chicago,” said Burke. “Just as we honor those patriots fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, we ought to remember the example of patriotism and bravery that those who went before them represented.”
     So when I fly my flag to mark Dec. 7 Wednesday, I’ll remember Paul Douglas, for both patriotic and personal reasons. The night that the Chicago Sun went on sale, the risk of violence was so great it was uncertain whether newsstands would accept bundles of the upstart publication. Douglas, then an alderman, pressed the mayor to assign a policeman to every newsstand, to help deter the Tribune thugs. Time to return the favor.

                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times Dec. 5, 2011.

Getting mad about it won’t help

     Anger is ephemeral. 

     Whoops, big word, sorry. Anger, it passes quickly.

     If you let it, that is. Many people hold onto anger. They sulk and are bitter.
     Here, time can help. An hour passes and you’re a different person. That’s why, when I can, I try to write these columns, then, before sending them to my editor, set them aside a bit. To cool.
     Saturday I snarled one out that ... well, the headline will give you the idea: “Let’s all stop voting and shoot each other.” It was a never-published mashup of anxiety over American democracy falling apart and horror over the latest school shooting.
     Not a bad column, mind you, in my biased estimation. It does come charging out of the blocks:

     Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. Regarding both democracy AND guns.
     All this handwringing about elections, it’s so 2020. Nobody really believes in voting anymore.
      To my right, Republicans, faces red from screaming how amazingly well-run elections are actually fraudulent, ‘cause they lost, kneecapping the mechanics of voting across the country, so they won’t look so lame trying to steal the next one.
     Meanwhile, in case I’m tempted to get into a partisan snit, we’ve got Democrats, particularly in Illinois, double that in Chicago, who recognize the unfortunate reality of one person/one vote, but then turn blue concocting these gerrymandered jigsaw maps to guarantee those votes are diffused, so those in power — aka themselves — stay in power. Chicago can’t have more Hispanic wards simply because there are more Hispanic voters. That’s craaaaazeeeee ...

     So far, so good. A point is made, riding that plague-on-both-your-houses hobbyhorse we moderate pundits enjoy straddling.
     Then I veer into the ditch:

     Maybe we need to do what the rest of the world does, now and throughout history: arm up, divide into factions and start shooting each other. We seem halfway there already.

     That’s enough of that. I went on to spout these Modest Proposal violent suggestions that I then immediately have to claw back. In the calm of Sunday, I figure: so many angry people already. Why be one more?
     Puffing away the steam, I see the problem: it’s the Crumbleys — Thomas Pynchon could not have dreamt up a better name — the Michigan parents who, it is alleged, bought a Sig Sauer for their 15-year-old son as an early Christmas present, then snickered off the alarms his teachers raised about the teen doing an internet search for ammunition and threatening to shoot people, which he is accused of doing last Tuesday. Four classmates were killed.
     It’s one of those horror stories that cuts through the normalized carnival of insanity that is American life today, hooks two fingers into the nostrils of parents and pulls us along, agog that anybody could behave that way.

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Flashback 2012: Cold War relics come to light 50 years later

     Twitter gets condemned as a rushing river for loons and liars, a caustic Styx flowing from the heart of our malicious national id, steaming with racism and idiocy. And there is much truth to that criticism. But you also get to pick whose feeds you receive, generally, and mine is laden with salt-of-the-earth Chicago sorts who wander around the city, snapping photos of interesting buildings and beautiful birds, sharing historical stuff, with hardly any vomiting of malice at all. One of those I follow, the Trib's William Lee, tossed up a photo of Schulze bakery, sparking two thoughts, a) hey, that place, I was THERE, a couple times and b) I never shared any of those columns on the blog. I can't fix Twitter. But I can remedy that.

     We were going to blow each other up. The world might come to an end.
     That’s what we were afraid of, anyway. Someone would make a mistake in the war of nerves between the United States and the Soviet Union, the missiles would fly, and civilization would vanish under a funeral shroud of expanding mushroom clouds.
     There was really nothing people could do, except worry, and plan for the unthinkable. So we built bomb shelters — in our backyards, most famously, but also in the basements of public buildings.
     The question arose how people lucky enough to get to a shelter in time were supposed to survive until it was safe to come out. So supplies were laid away — food and water and other essentials.
     Most were pitched years ago. But in a city as big as Chicago — 227 square miles — forgotten places will come to light. Such as when the Chicago Department of Transportation is building new roads. There are often surprises.
     “We always find bottles, interesting things, old foundations,” said Michelle Woods, a project manager for the $300 million reconstruction of Wacker Drive. “Things you don’t expect. This was something that blew all of us away. No one’s seen anything like this.”
     “This” is a large cache of civil defense provisions, forgotten since the early 1960s, tucked between a basement wall of the Miller-Coors Building, at 250 S. Wacker, and the outer wall of the drive itself, discovered in late January as crews used a mechanical claw to tear out the old bridge deck at Jackson and Wacker.
     The provisions were stacked, still, after 50 years, though some were scattered by the time I got there. Dozens of green metal water drums — rusted and empty now — designed to be turned into commodes. Boxes of toilet paper and medical supplies. Some had been broken open by looters. Tongue depressors lay scattered. Some 50 cardboard boxes contained large square tin cans marked “SURVIVAL BISCUIT” bearing a packing date of “Aug-Dec. 1962.” The height of Cold War tension.
     “Everyone was fascinated to find something like this,” said Woods. “We said, ‘Let’s see if we can find someone who can use it.’ . . . There is a Cold War museum at the Minuteman Missile National Site in South Dakota, we’re going to send them a bunch of stuff.”
     Many of the supplies were produced in Chicago. The water cans were made by Rheem Manufacturing, 7600 S. Kedzie. Rheem opened in 1941 as a war munitions plant and ended up making water heaters. The survival biscuits, wrapped in cellophane cubes and packed 18 pounds to the tin, were made by “Schulze and Burch Biscuit Company — Chicago, Illinois.”
     Rheem closed its Kedzie plant in 1988. But not only is Schulze & Burch still there, but a few of the same workers who packed the tins of biscuits in 1962 still work at its factory at 35th and Racine.
     “I remember them, yes,” said Annie Hall, 76, who joined the company as a packer in 1958. “We packed them, then they wrapped them. Then the tin would go down, there was a pool of water, and we’d test it, we’d submerge each can, to see if any leaks were in there.” She laughed. “We used to call it the ‘baptismal pool.’ ”
     Schulze & Burch got its start in the 1920s — Paul Schulze began baking Butternut bread, sold that company, then went into business again with his son baking crackers. “The very first saltine that was ever made in the world came out of this facility,” said current company president Kevin M. Boyle. “It was trademarked.” During World War II, Schulze & Burch began to sell biscuits to the government for military C rations, which led to selling civil defense provisions.
      Today it is the largest producer of toaster pastries in the world, except for Kellogg’s. “Pop Tarts are number one and we’re number two,” said Boyle. “Ninety percent of all store brand toaster pastries are produced by Schulze & Burch.”
     Boyle walked me through the factory. Toaster pastries are the bulk of its business, “our bread and butter,” Boyle said. Tuesday they were making strawberry, “by far the most popular flavor” he added (followed by brown sugar cinnamon and chocolate fudge) — all frosted of course.
     “The unfrosted don’t sell,” Boyle said. “You need the frosting to sell to kids.”
     The bakery, which employs 500, makes toaster pastries by kneading dough in 3,600 pound batches, then rolling it in sheets through a line that must go faster as the sheets get thinner, machines cutting them into four-inch rectangles, air holes punched to let the steam out, then jam, which they make themselves, is spread, and the pastries — which Boyle calls “pies” — are baked in gas ovens as long as a football field.
     I watched an amazing Bosch pick-and-place machine as it paired fruit bars to be wrapped — its four carbon fiber arms a blur as they plucked two bars and set them on a moving belt. It paired eight bars a second, something Annie Hall used to do by hand.
     “You won’t remain in business in Chicago without investing in technology,” said Boyle. “We’re the envy of the industry.”
     I thought back to another use of technology: the unexploded hydrogen bombs that brought me here.
     Leaving the Wacker Drive civil defense treasure trove, lugging an 18-pound can of Schulze & Burch Survival Biscuits, I stood in the commotion of the Wacker Drive construction site, jackhammers chattering away in the distance, soaking in the surreal scene of Lower Wacker with the Upper Drive removed, all dust and rubble, the sky above framed by broken concrete and jutting rebar. It looked for a moment like a ruin, like the city as it would have been had the unthinkable occurred that we were trying to plan for with our pathetic little shelters and cans of crackers.
     We commemorate the wars fought, the heroes who died in them. And rightly so. But maybe we also should celebrate the wars we didn’t fight, the people who didn’t die — we should honor the rationality that pulled the United States and Russia back from the brink in 1962, 50 years ago this October. To recognize the great blessing we enjoy, to use technology to make frosted strawberry toaster pastries at a very fast rate, right here in Chicago, and that the biscuits we set aside for the end of the world went uneaten.
     Well, until now — how could you not? Not bad, really, dry of course, a blend of a saltine and a graham cracker, almost tasteless, with perhaps a slight off flavor of smokiness. They held up. Annie Hall and her co-workers did their job well.
               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 18, 2012