How to honor the COVID dead?

Stephen Blackwelder, conductor of the DePaul Community Chorus. Also onstage is the       
                    Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago, which plays with the chorus.

     Should we honor the COVID dead?
     The current tally for the United States is 972,000 and climbing by 1,200 a day. At this rate, we’ll hit 1 million Americans dead of COVID-19 sometime in mid-April.
     Do we memorialize the fallen? And if so, how?
     Uncomfortable questions. Americans are used to solemnizing those who die in wars. They have their own day. (Sigh. It’s Memorial Day.) And while some Americans visit graves, in general the holiday is marked with ball games, blowout sales and potato salad.
     Some countries have national moments of silence. I’ve been in Israel during their Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron, and at the appointed moment people stop driving and stand outside their cars, heads bowed, for a two-minute moment of silence.
     Silence is not a very American concept. We’re more into physical monuments. My hometown had a statue to a Union soldier on a plinth in its downtown triangle, a silent sentinel that I never associated with anyone dying until now.
     The World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a sprawl of low walls and stumpy columns and burbling pools that I would be hard-pressed to envision in my mind’s eye, and I was there. More a fancy marble skatepark than a memorial.
     The gold standard for war memorials is Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a black granite gash in the earth with the names of the 58,000 American military who died in that brutal, grinding war.
     Should we try to do something similar for the COVID million, victims of another conflict that divided our country? Hard to imagine. Maybe there is an artist or architect who can put the plague years into meaningful shape and mold public perceptions as Maya Lin did.

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Flashback 1987: Stress Test - One man's fitness odyssey

     The 35th anniversary of my joining the staff of the Sun-Times is Wednesday. I browsed my 1987 clips, looking for something to share in celebration, and was struck by a few things. First, I forgot how uncomfortable I was with the whole asking-people-stuff aspect of the job. The stories are peppered with quotes from college pals, plus my future wife and her friends. I obviously turned to them to get their opinions. Both oblivious AND lazy. In my defense, before the internet, tapping random strangers on diverse subjects wasn't quite so easy. Still, I was lucky not to be fired.
     Second, and this came as a real surprise, is how personal some of the pieces were. I had no trouble writing about my first date, my childhood memories, or this story, about measuring my heart and body. The usual way to do it would be to observe another person going through this process. The future columnist way—and I am obligated to point out, the easier way—was to simply do it myself.

     Notice the voice of this: confident, slightly humorous, exactly as I would sound now. So either points for consistency, or demerits for failure to change. One difference is that I never say how much I weighed, my attempt to draw the veil and give myself a bit of privacy. 

     I asked my girlfriend if she thought I was fat.
     "No, I don't think you're fat," she said. "A little extra, but you're not fat. You're not skinny, but I don't like skinny men."
     I asked my mother if she thought I was fat.
     "No, I don't think you look fat," she said. "You are very well shaped."
     I asked Dr. George Lesmes of Northeastern Illinois University's Human Performance Laboratory if he thought I was fat.
     He said nothing, but arranged for me to take a series of fitness evaluation tests that would answer the question, not with opinions, but with cold, unlying numbers.
     "The thing that is important for people who are looking to change their lifestyles is feedback," Lesmes said. "There's no better feedback than numbers. If I can say to you in May your oxygen capacity is 3, and show in July it's up to 3 1/2, that shows progress and is good for motivation."
     The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that individuals over 35 take a fitness evaluation test, not only to gauge any improvement that might come from an exercise and diet regimen, but to make sure they don't have any cardiac problems that might be aggravated by strenuous exercise.
     Before the test, a lab assistant went over a lengthy form that stated, in essence, that I realized I might drop dead at any time during testing and, should that happen, there would be no hard feelings between us. I signed, changed into sweats, and soon found myself sitting on an examination table.
     The first test, a stretching test, was simple. Sitting with my legs on the table, I stretched forward and, arms straining, reached as far as I could past my toes. Piece of cake. I scored a 12 and, not knowing that meant I had the flexibility of uncooked spaghetti, felt quite good about it.
     Next, electrodes—plastic discs with small metal nubs in the middle—were attached to my chest. Hairy men, such as myself, might be a bit surprised to realize that the spots where the electrodes are to be attached must first be shaved. I certainly was surprised, if not horrified. I picked forlornly at the clumps of hair as they fell over the table.
     "Do you want me to save it?" the lab assistant asked. She told me that Evanston firemen, who take the test each year, say it grows back and, at worst, itches for a while. I comforted myself with the thought that if burly firemen allow themselves to go through this, so could I.
     She handed me what looked like a sock made out of netting and told me to slip it on to hold the wires in place. I took the sock and examined it dubiously.
     "This fit people much, much larger than you," she said and, after a bit of struggle, I slipped the netting over my torso.
     Electrodes now held in place by the netting sock, I shuffled over to a treadmill, dragging an electrocardiogram machine behind me.
     Running on the treadmill is the part where, if you're going to have a heart attack, you do. I don't know why, but I had pictured a leisurely jog, trotting along to the bips and bleeps of heart machines.
     What I got was a mad, exhausting dash. Every three minutes they increased the speed and the angle of the treadmill. After seven minutes or so my personality shrank away and I was reduced to an unthinking bundle of flailing muscles and gasping lungs, staggering instinctively forward as the white coat on my right took my pulse, the white coat on my left jacked up the treadmill, the third white coat watched the monitor and the fourth coat, a man—the same man who told me not to lean so heavily on the railings— added insult to injury by jamming a nose clip over my nose and having me breathe through what looked like a hair dryer hose.
    The purpose of the test is to put as much strain as possible on the heart, to see how it reacts. Later, I learned my heart redlined at 188 beats per minute. My first question, after I had given up, been helped off the treadmill and lay in a panting, sweating heap on an examination table, was: If people are in bad shape, why put them through this? Isn't having a heart attack on the treadmill under close scrutiny just as bad as having a heart attack running around a track somewhere?
     "Sure, but running real hard on the treadmill, we'll be able to monitor you with the best equipment possible," Lesmes said. "We'll also be able to identify at what point in your exercise problems occur. Then we can sit down with you and make sure we design an exercise program that will benefit you without putting you at risk, or getting to that point where problems occur."
     Lesmes went on to explain that, for instance, if the EKG showed that my heart started to do the tango at 160 beats per minute, they would design an exercise program where I would be able to approach my limit without overstraining my heart.
     The body fat analysis started simply enough. I sat next to a machine called a spirometer and expelled as much air as I could into a tube. My efforts were displayed by a large, Plexiglas cylinder and recorded on a cylindrical graph. Urged on by the cheerleading of the lab assistant, it was rather fun, like a game one might find at a state fair.
     The purpose of this test was to find out how much air was in my lungs so that in the next test, the hydrostatic weighing, the reading would not be thrown off by excess air.
     Hydrostatic weighing was not so much physically taxing as it is psychologically icky. I had to climb into a square metal tank filled with warm water, and sit on a harnesslike thing attached to a scale. Once on the harness I had to dip my head below the water, blow all the air out of my lungs, and wait until the assistant took a reading.
     While I was showering and getting back into my street clothes, the data was compiled into a small booklet, which we then reviewed. The good news was that my heart was "strong," which meant that it was quick to recover its "resting" rate after exercise and did not change rates in rapid jumps, but gradually.
     The news quickly got worse. My oxygen consumption was average, flexibility fair, lung flexibility good. The real knife-twister was body fat: 23 percent. According to their table titled "Normal Values of Percentage Body Fat for the Average American Population," I had the body fat of a 47-year-old man, which I suppose would be fine if I were 47, and not 26.
     They calculated my ideal weight (170 pounds) and—perhaps on the assumption that I was stupid as well as fat and couldn't do the math myself, perhaps just to grind my face in it—they calculated how many pounds I would need to lose to get to that ideal weight.
      Then we then went over the mysteries of calorie intake, types of exercise and importance of warm-ups.
     "We don't want to just tell you you're fat," said Diane Reynolds, a graduate assistant. "We want to work with you to reach a goal."
     My goal at that point was lunch, and, after going on a tour of the gym that people who pay $65 for the test are free to use, I conducted a test of my own, which involved measuring my response to a big bowl of teriyaki chicken. I passed.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 7, 1987

Friendship in the plague years

    COVID doesn’t just kill people — 1,200 Americans a day, quite a lot really — but it kills friendships, too. Or at least makes them even harder to navigate.
     Especially that middle zone of business associations — those quasi-friends whom you become closer to than merely doing your job requires. People you like, when you run into them. But not anybody you’d hang out with in a pandemic.
     I liked Ken Price, the director of public relations at the Palmer House. We had things in common. We both thought that being in the newspaper was really important. We both liked eating lunch at the Palmer House, though he’d nibble something dietetic while ordering plate after plate of whatever was new and fattening on the menu and jamming the plates in front of me. He’d send me off with gift brownies — invented at the Palmer House! — and, leaving the hotel, I’d hand them to the first homeless person I passed on State Street.
     Ken was such as booster of the hotel that he was baffled, almost hurt when I declined a pitch. Three years ago we had lunch, not in the restaurant, but in the gorgeous lobby, next to a scaffold where work was going on restoring the ceiling. I talked with a restorer, admired the work. But somehow ... the topic just didn’t ... gel. Maybe next time.

     That happens. Uncle Ken — I called him “Uncle Ken” — was still interesting and flamboyant, with his elaborate eyeglasses and his beloved dogs. And warm. He always asked about Edie and the boys. He was one of the few to whom, when COVID struck, I sent an inquisitive email now and then, asking how he was. Rattling the doorknob. He never replied. Which bugged me. I took his silence personally: Of course not. The Palmer House is shut down. No need for publicity. No need to talk to me.

     In this business, you don’t want to be so cynical to assume people interact with you only because they want something. I know a popular chef who once confessed that she worried people were her friends only for the free food. I felt sorry for her but also understood. I have old friends who only contact me when they have new books to promote. I try not to think about about them in between, try to tell myself that friends are like comets, close for a time, then suddenly a dot dwindling against the black cosmos. You can’t go chasing after them. They’ll be back.

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Ken Price: "Last of the great publicists"

   

Ken Price

     There is the Palmer House, and then there are all the other hotels in Chicago, and while I could rhapsodize the gorgeous lobby, the history, the location, the truth is, the most important factor was that the Palmer House had Ken Price representing it, while all the other hotels had ... well, I couldn't tell you anything about them. Ken Price alone approached me about stories at the Palmer House far more than all the other hotels in the city, combined. They don't make publicists like that anymore. I'll miss him. 

     Ken Price didn’t need a family; he had a hotel.
     “His work was his life. His work was his family,” said his niece Julie Stevens. “He loved what he did.”
     The 800-person staff at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel, where he was director of public relations for 38 years, reacted to news of his death from cancer Wednesday the way any family member would: with sadness and tears, shed by everyone from bellmen to telephone operators to Dean Lane, the hotel’s general manager.
     “We’re emotionally devastated,” Lane said. “Ken treated everybody with so much dignity and respect. From bartenders to room attendants, we’re all crying. He meant so much to many people. It’s been incredibly devastating.”
     “Whether someone was a doorman or a housekeeper or a senior vice president, he was interested in everybody and treated everybody the same,” Stevens said.
     Mr. Price, 82, was tall — about 6-feet-2 — and elegantly turned out: beautiful suits and neckties, shoes shined, pocket square folded. And large designer eyeglasses that somehow seemed part of his persona.
     “No one other than him could get away with wearing them,” Stevens said. “They stopped making this frame long ago. He had them specially made, found someone to do it,”
     “He would wear his ascots and he would wear his Hollywood glasses,” said Shelley MacArthur, an entertainer who sang at the Palmer House Empire Room, which staged nightclub shows until 1976 — comedian Phyllis Diller put on the final performance — and then started functioning as a regular, albeit splendid, hotel ballroom.
     “Mister Kelly’s, all those great clubs, the Empire Room was one of the last survivors of that,” MacArthur said. “When they changed the room, that was one of Ken’s very sad moments.”
     He did have his times of darkness. Mr. Price would deeply grieve, for months, after the death of one of his beloved dogs — Kugel, Fotchie, Sidney. The world was not going in a direction of which he approved.

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Wilmette Notes: The Entertaining Nature of People

     When I go to estate sales, I invariably come away empty-handed, with only melancholy thoughts on the futility of acquisition and the sorrow of life. North Shore Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey, unsurprisingly, finds a whole lot more, including a word I had never heard before. Her Saturday report:

By Caren Jeskey

Was Liebe sei
Dichter! was Liebe sei, mir nicht verhehle!
Liebe ist das Atemholen der Seele.
Dichter! was ein Kuß sei, du mir verkünde!
Je kürzer er ist, um so größer die Sünde!

What is Love?
Poet, what is love? Will you not tell me!
Love is when the soul takes a breath. 
Poet, what is a kiss? Do tell me, please!
The shorter it is, the greater the sin!
         — Charlotte von Hagn

     Franz Liszt is considered the world’s first rock star. He was 6’2” with long blonde locks and more than a hair of talent. Women flocked to the stage after his concerts, picked up spent cigar butts and inserted them into their cleavages. I was not expecting that. 

      I had no idea, when I asked about an image of German comedienne Charlotte von Hagn at an estate sale recently, that I was set to learn about great dramas of the 19th century. I was on my way out of the sale after helping coordinate donations to Humanity Relief. Other than the Japanese screen I’d already picked out and loaded into my car, I was not really drawn to anything else at the sale in Riverwoods, though the bright and sunny home with leopard print carpet was filled with gorgeous treasures. I noticed that a gentleman from Knee Deep Vintage was cleaning up, so there may be some cool finds on 18th Street.
     Ms. von Hagn caught my eye. She was framed in a simple, velvet lined gold painted 14x12 inch frame, set back an inch or two from the glass. Her right eye revealed exotropia, giving the impression that she was seeking something better elsewhere. Her calm countenance, small smile and bemused eyes were pleasurable to behold.
     What really got me was that her dark, ringlet-curled hair was adorned with real gemstones—well, more likely replicas but still—and her velvet and fur trimmed dress similarly bedecked. She sat on a sturdy wooden throne-like chair with brass screws and decorous bulbs indicating high class. That settled it. She was coming home with me.
     I put her in the car and was excited to have a new friend from history to hang on my wall. I’d given her name a quick Google search before I decided to bring her home (to be sure she wasn't the wife of a German oligarch), and learned that she was a witty actress who was born and died in Munich in the 1800s. She lived a good long life and died four weeks before her 82nd birthday in 1891. Her father was a businessman, and her brother an accomplished artist.
     Apparently, Liszt’s popularity gained him the disdain of the likes of Nietzsche, who gave the composer the nickname "Liszt, or the art of running after women." Ms. von Hagn (who was only married for three years of her life) was one of Lizst’s lovers. It’s said that she composed the poem "What Is Love" on the corner of a paper fan, and offered it to him after one of his shows.
     In my quest to learn more about this interesting woman, I found that in addition to the philosophizing he is well known for, Nietzsche tried his hand at composing music as well. He wrote a piece that Wagner’s wife played at a concert, and for some reason (maybe it was bad? Maybe Wagner had a case of jealousy?) Wagner apparently left the show and literally rolled on the floor laughing. After that “Nietzsche later parted ways with Wagner, even writing an entire essay–Nietzsche contra Wagner –about why he had decided to metaphorically stop returning his once-friend and idol’s calls."
     I like to sit around and wax poetic, myself. Here on my comfy velvet couch in a quiet and safe suburb, I have room to think, to write, to create, to grow. These days I find it unwise to more than dabble in the news. Yes, the world is crumbling in many ways. As spring approaches, my aim is to find fun things to talk about and I am sure that much of it will come in the form of art. I won't let myself ponder a day where Chicago is no longer safe and important landmarks like The Art Institute might be carelessly bombed like a children's library in Chernihiv. My nightmares belie this choice, for it's impossible (and unwise) to tune it all out. But that's a small price to pay.

Let’s fight for freedom right here

     Fight for freedom in Ukraine?
     Why not fight for freedom right here?
     Let’s review, shall we?
     It’s mid-March, 2022. Our nation is united in spirit against Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin because ... why, exactly? Because he invaded democratic Ukraine, and is not only killing civilians and destroying cities, but also committing these atrocities to take away their liberty.
     Is that it? There’s no freedom of speech in Russia. We saw independent media outlets closed down at the start of the war. Peaceful protesters in Moscow hustled away by nightmare phalanxes of black-clad police. The elections keeping Putin in power are a sham. Opponents standing up to him politically can find themselves in prison, or drinking tea laced with polonium.
     Americans don’t like that. Readers write, demanding a no-fly zone, basically a declaration of war by happenstance. We might as well just cut to the chase and go to war, which some readers also support.
     Leading to today’s question.
     Why are we eager to defend freedom in Ukraine but not at home? Why cheer on the Ukrainians as they die in the name of democracy, applaud their refusal to submit, their courage, while rolling like puppies — many of us, anyway — at the feet of Donald Trump, a weak-tea, wannabe version of Putin? Someone who has either repeatedly said or tried to do exactly what Putin does?
     Sure, it might be a tentative foray, like suggesting the Federal Communications Commission sanction “Saturday Night Live” for making fun of him, or encouraging his followers to shout down entirely true reports of his countless lies with chants of “Fake News.” But the theory is the same.
     At this point, certain readers send their thumbs flying to write in some version of: “Aiyee, you’re obsessed! What’s with the Trump fixation? Why are you talking about him? A distant memory of something that might have happened once in a country somewhere, perhaps our own. Move on!”

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Flashback 2012: Palmer House guests to act like dogs at tea party

Kitty at the Empire Room, 2012
(Photo for the Sun-Times)

     Over the weekend I was writing an actual letter to a dear friend—been a long time since I've done THAT—and mentioned the tea parties for dogs that the Palmer House held 10 years ago. It struck me that I've never posted the column I wrote about one, an oversight I leap to correct.

      What’s it like to be famous? Well, you walk out of an elevator at the Palmer House Hilton, into the splendid, Wedgewood-ceilinged lobby, and every face swivels in your direction. People light up, just light up, as you pass, big smiles breaking out, expectant nods, murmurs of appreciation. Feeling the attention upon you, you float on a cloud of benevolent interest, through the gilded lobby, down the stairs and out onto Wabash Avenue, where it doesn’t end. Attractive women pause to make conversation. The patrons inside Miller’s Pub see you and tap on the window, waving and smiling then, unable to stop themselves, they leave their drinks and rush out into the street to marvel that you are actually there. It’s very nice.
     Not that I’m famous, of course. People don’t know who I am and wouldn’t care if they did. But there’s something about walking a dog through a downtown hotel lobby — particularly when it’s a button-cute little dog like mine — that provokes a reaction that I imagine is very close to celebrity.
     Not every hotel is dog-friendly, but the Palmer House is. That’s why Kitty — that’s our dog’s name, it’s a long story — and I were there, to experience the hotel’s canine-coddling qualities, which include a big fluffy dog bed in a corner of your room, plus special Palmer House dog tags, custom baked biscuits and, best of all, the right to tromp through the lobby with your dog whenever you please. All they ask is that you not let your dog tear the place up, and kennel her if you leave her in the room so she doesn’t, you know, attack the chambermaid.
     Regular readers will remember that last year I attended the Palmer House’s Doggie Tea Party, without Kitty — I had to be somewhere that evening and couldn’t bring her downtown. It was a surreal scene — dogs in gold crowns gobbling down canine sushi set before them on a low, damask-covered table by white-gloved waiters, society ladies of indeterminate age and unimaginable wealth shrieking greetings at each other, planting air kisses, while immaculately dressed men who all seemed to be wedding planners or party consultants pressed one palm to their cheeks, grasped their elbows with the other, then sighed and commiserated about how difficult it is to find a really good dog chiropractor.

Kitty in the Empire Room
(Photo for the Sun-Times)

     Frankly, I wasn’t sure how well Kitty would fit in with that crowd — she isn’t a pure breed, after all, and buys her kibble at PetSmart as opposed to, I don’t know, having it shipped in from Fauchon in Paris. Or maybe she’d love it. She’s a dog. She tends to love everything. Maybe I’m the one who didn’t fit in. If walking a dog through the Palmer House lobby felt like being famous, trying to talk to my fellow dog tea partiers was one of the more anonymous things I’ve ever done — some guests seemed as if not only had they never read my newspaper but they had never read any newspaper. Conversations tended to be brief.
     Of course, last year’s tea party was an invitation-only affair, culled from the upper crust of the haut monde. This year’s, which takes place Thursday at 11:30 a.m. at the Palmer House’s Empire Room, 17 E. Monroe, is open to the public, for the first time. The event costs $30, all of which goes to benefit the Anti-Cruelty Society. Your dog not only gets a multi-course meal, but also you are plied with champagne, if you are so inclined, and a professional photographer will take your picture in the ornate setting, a keepsake to suggest to others that you lead a grander, more luxurious life than you actually do.
     I’ve been pondering whether to bite the bullet and take Kitty this year. She would have fun, but then she can have fun with a chewed-up tennis ball in my front yard. The Palmer House people of course would be happy, but my job isn’t to provide another supernumerary for their soirees. And me? I’d have to schlep her downtown. And while I do shudder recalling the sinking, What-Am-I-Doing-Here? feeling from last year’s party, that might be ameliorated by the admission of the general public, those non-botoxed, non-pickled in Chanel No. 5, salt-of-the-earth regular folks whose dogs do not have purses that match their own, yet still feel able to give $30 to a good cause in order to watch dogs with names like “Butch” and “Chief” caper under the crystal chandeliers in the Empire Room for 90 minutes.
     In fact, that might make all the difference — there were moments approaching near chaos last year, a woofing whir of dogs and waiters and matrons and gentlemen in $900 blazers. And that was before the public was admitted. Think of the effect on all those Margaret Dumont’s society parties once the doors fly open and the Marx Brothers burst in. Only this time they’ll have dogs in tow and be served champagne. Frankly, I think it will be something to experience. I should go. It’s a strange job, but somebody has to do it.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 3, 2012