Relax: Chicago has done this before

     When news broke Wednesday afternoon that Chicago is being considered as host of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, the reporter behind the scoop, NBC News national political correspondent (and my former colleague) Natasha Korecki tweeted out my story about the 50th anniversary of the disastrous 1968 Democratic convention, which so scarred the city and sullied its reputation.
     While it’s nice to be remembered, I’d hate for that tumultuous event to once again define what happens whenever Chicago hosts out-of-town guests. That disaster isn’t the only convention we’ve had. Chicago is the most popular city in the country for such events, having hosted 11 Democratic and 14 Republican gatherings including the first one in — did none of you pay attention in school? —1860 when the newly-formed Republican Party, worried that huddling in an Eastern city would “run a big chance of losing the West,” picked Chicago as a symbol of “audacity.”
     They gathered at a large log building at the corner of what is now Lake and Wacker Drive and nominated, indeed rather audaciously, a homespun downstate lawyer and failed senatorial candidate named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was tempted to hurry to Chicago, but his cronies waved him off, worried he would undo the backroom deals they struck to get him the nod. “Honest Abe” was a fine campaign slogan, but could be difficult in practice.
     I won’t go through all the conventions, there are history books for that. Though Chicago can boast that our conventions tend to stand out, and not just because of rioting. There was the 1920 Republican Convention nominating nonentity Warren G. Harding, basically because he looked like a president and nobody knew he had an illegitimate daughter, the deal putting “smoke-filled room” into the political vernacular (actually smoke-filled rooms, 408-10 of the Blackstone Hotel).
     Or the 1932 Democratic convention where Franklin D. Roosevelt helped usher in our modern campaign age with two political firsts: being the first nominee to show up and accept in person, and the first presidential candidate to fly in an airplane. The flight was delayed due to storms, and FDR explained, apologetically, “I have no control over the winds in heaven.”
     Our next convention could very well instead reflect the 1996 Democratic convention, sending Bill Clinton on his way to re-election and helping revitalizing the West Side an in general allowing the city to shine instead of screw up.

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Tempestuous tenure of ‘Jane Byrne’

    This Saturday it will be exactly three years since Lori Lightfoot crushed the once formidable Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and was elected mayor of Chicago by an almost 3-to-1 margin, taking all 50 wards.
     A post-mortem would be premature, as Lightfoot’s still got a year to go. Maybe she’ll manage to pull the ripcord before hitting the canyon floor. I’m rooting for her.
     Yet it’s safe to say that, despite the singular role race plays in Lightfoot’s rhetoric, as a 1,001-uses solvent to be sprayed in all directions, trying to squeeze out of whatever jam she finds herself in, few critics compare Chicago’s third Black mayor (not to forget Eugene Sawyer, though many people, myself included do) to the first, the ebullient Harold Washington, who faced fierce opposition with very few Lightfootian cries of “poor me.”
     The mayor who seems most relevant to Lightfoot, alas, is Jane Byrne. Like Lightfoot, Byrne was female. Like Lightfoot, being mayor of Chicago is the only elective office Byrne ever held. And as to whether Lightfoot will also serve a single term and be shown the door in favor of someone who can actually do the job, time will tell.
     Until then, WTTW is debuting an hour documentary Friday, “Jane Byrne,” kicking off the new season of its “Chicago Stories” series. It’s a solid introduction to Byrne for those who might be unfamiliar. Even those well-schooled in her story — I read her fine autobiography, “My Chicago,” and wrote her obituary for the Sun-Times — will find new nuggets they hadn’t known before.
     In 1960, Byrne was a young military widow. Her husband, a Marine pilot, had crashed approaching what was then the Glenview Naval Air Station. Plunging into campaign work for fellow Catholic John F. Kennedy, Byrne came to the attention of Mayor Richard J. Daley, who found her a role in his administration.
     Her presence was supposed to be a sign of mid-1960s progressivism. The trouble with Janie Byrnes — as Daley called her — was that she didn’t resign herself to being window dressing, proudly displayed in her sinecure as the commissioner of sales, weights and measures.
     Instead, Byrne took her job seriously.

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Michael Madigan: The Man Who Ran Illinois

Mike Madigan, far right, at the 2013 signing of the Religious Freedom and Fairness Act .

    I love writing freelance, and have done so for some of the top publications in the world: Esquire, Rolling Stone, Forbes, Granta, The Washington Post ... quite a long list really.

    The reasons hardly need mentioning. Other publications provide an outlet for stories that the paper isn't interested in—there was no way the Sun-Times wanted 6,000 words on being disfigured. But Mosaic, the London website did. It also sent me to Japan for a teddy bear's birthday party, which the paper wasn't going to do either. Esquire asked me to shadow Rahm Emanuel for three days. Men's Journal once hired me to paddle a canoe down the Chicago River. Stuff like that.

    The money's nice, of course. There's also a sense of validation. For a moment, I'm not just a local oddity, but a local oddity echoing faintly in the larger world.

     The requests haven't come in much lately, which I took to be the gathering isolation and irrelevance of age. So I was glad when the Washington Monthly asked me to read Ray Long's new book and write something about the disgrace of Michael Madigan. I asked the editor why he chose me—I have not exactly distinguished myself with my Springfield coverage (the lede is a sly way of saying, "This doesn't generally interest me, but...") He replied that I spoke to Dick Babcock's class at Northwestern seven years ago, and he was in it. A reminder: always be nice to young people coming up, because you never know when you'll be working for one.

 

    State legislators are like ants on a log. There are too many of them and they are too small, running around too fast to recognize as individuals, let alone track their efforts. Even if the log is in your backyard, why bother paying attention? Given the typical statehouse task—dragging bits of legislative leaf around—only the most dedicated political junkies even bother to try.

     Occasionally, though, one leader plants himself in the center of the action long enough to offer a pathway not just to understand what’s going on in one colony, but also to illuminate the general calamity poisoning our increasingly toxic national political culture: the money, influence, rule bending, and self-dealing that deform government at every level.Meet Michael J. Madigan, the tight-mouthed enigma at the center of the Illinois legislative anthill for more than a third of a century. Nicknamed “the Sphinx” for his expressionless silence and windblown longevity, Madigan was the last operative drive shaft from the old Daley Democratic machine—forged by Richard J. Daley, Chicago’s infamous mayor from 1955 to 1976— where clout was built on a system of mutual support: You vote the right way, and I’ll make sure your son gets a park district job. Throughout his career, Madigan was chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois, committeeman of Chicago’s 13th Ward, and speaker of the Illinois House for 36 years, the longest-serving leader of any legislative body in American history.
     Reviled by Republicans as “the center of all evil in state government,” Madigan endured while governors came and went. When Republican Jim Edgar became governor in 1991, Madigan didn’t return his phone calls for months. Madigan didn’t need him; he was served by a patronage army of 400 drones beholden to him for jobs, raises, and promotions, who would leap to campaign, knock on doors, and buttonhole commuters to sign petitions. (Or, in one infamous ploy, the opposite: hectoring residents of Madigan’s district to sign affidavits retracting their signatures on the nominating petitions of a 19-year-old who dared run against the state’s most powerful politician’s chosen alderman. The lad had no chance of winning, but so ruthlessly had the speaker’s operatives clawed signatures back that some 2,600 voters agreed to renounce signatures they had never given.)
     Madigan was an accepted reality of life in Illinois, like the weather, or, more accurate- ly, like God, a mysterious force in His Heaven, spinning works and mysteries.
     Then it all changed.
     First, the #MeToo revolution of 2018 rattled the Madigan organization, taking down his longtime chief of staff, Tim Mapes, and top aide, Kevin Quinn, amid accusations that Madigan didn’t do enough to stop them from sexually harassing their female colleagues. Sunlight started pouring through the cracks. Madigan gave the first deposition in his life. The U.S. Department of Justice’s federal investigation into Madigan’s alleged corruption circled nearer. For years, Madigan had used an electric utility company, Commonwealth Edison, as a “crony job service” that issued direct payments to Madigan’s allies, such as the $4,500 a month it funneled to the Cook County recorder of deeds, Ed Moody, for “consulting.” In return, Madigan advanced legislation that was favorable to the utility. He would also steer business to his private law firm, including clients who had business before the state.

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Out like a lion

     “I’m starting to really hate the cold,” my wife said, and not for the first time. The sort of thing Midwesterners say after spring dangles a couple of delightful days in our field of vision — 60, 65, even 70 degrees — then rudely slaps us across the face with a wet sock of miserable, damp, penetratingly cold days. It was 21 degrees Monday morning.
     “Me too,” I mumbled.
     COVID-19 seems to have unmoored everyone, in more ways than one. Time expands and contracts like clocks in a Dali painting. Civility crumbles. Reason becomes a bruising dash through our neighbors’ gantlet of speculation, conspiracy theory and outright hallucination.
      We’re battered, tired, viewing the latest news through latticed fingers. We’ve also become unrooted, many of us. Americans are on the move, fleeing the frost, looking for some warm rock to hide under. A United States Census Bureau report released last week shows nine of the top 10 fastest-growing U.S. counties are in Arizona, Texas and Florida, where four of the top 10 fastest-growing metro areas are located.
     Yet, like everything else, it’s a blurred picture. Cities in all climates are losing people — Los Angeles County topped the list of dwindling metro areas in raw numbers, with a 184,465 resident drop from July 2020 to July 2021. (The population of New York County fell by an astounding 6.9% in one year.) The Chicago metro area is down 106,897 people; the Census Bureau describes the metro area as “Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI” (and readers give me grief for living in Northbrook; from a demographic perspective, I’m practically sharing a $10-a-month apartment on Wabansia with Nelson Algren).
     Though if you are looking for something positive, Cook County remains the second-largest U.S. county, with 5.1 million residents, behind only Los Angeles County. (Both benefit from a historical quirk — the five boroughs of New York City are five separate counties).
     Population is dwindling everywhere — nearly three-quarters of U.S. counties, 73%, are in decline. “Natural decrease occurs when there are more deaths than births in a population over a given time period,” the Census Bureau points out. “In 2021, fewer births, and aging population and increased mortality — intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic — contributed to a rise in natural decrease.”

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"Nasty things"

 

     I don't like orchids, I thought, but did not say aloud, when Edie suggested we go to The Orchid Show: Untamed at the Chicago Botanic Garden. We already had four tickets, a benefit of our annual membership. They'd been on the magnetic board in the kitchen for months. I never suggested we go, not being an orchid fan. The show had been running since Feb. 12—last time we went to the Botanic Garden my wife suggested we go, but forgot the tickets at home. The show was closing Sunday. It was now or never; well, now or not for almost a year anyway.
     The weather was rainy and drippy and cold, mid-30s, perfect day to go to the show, which of course is indoors. We got in the car.
     "At least there won't be many people there," I predicted. Sometimes, perhaps because of the pandemic, the Botanic Garden seemed positively packed, at least when you first arrived. Once you get into the garden, toward the prairie and the greenhouses and such, the population thins out. Most people don't want to toddle too far past the entrance.

     I was certain the rain would keep everyone away. But the parking lot had plenty of cars, and obviously a good number of folks braved the showers to see the show. As we looked for a space, I remembered, for some odd reason, going to see the band Bread at Blossom Music Center in Cleveland in the mid-1970s. I'd never go of my own accord—as with orchids, I didn't like Bread—but was tagging along with others, and joked beforehand that no one would be there, that it would be us, alone with the band, playing forlornly on the stage, heads down, ashamed. Maybe they'd give up doing even that, set aside their instruments, come over, sit on the edge of the stage, and explain how they came up with lyrics like, "Baby I'm-a want you...." It didn't even make grammatical sense.

    I was shocked to see the venue jammed with Bread fans. Who could have imagined?
     The Orchid Show: Untamed was quite lovey, with orchids hanging from the ceilings high above the entrance room, and in the smaller greenhouses all manner of shapes and sizes and colors—purples and orchers, yellows and whites. Speckled, and banded and striped. The signage was on-point and interesting. I didn't not know that orchids are hearty survivors—the slogan for the show is "Nature Finds a Way"—and thrive around the globe, practically from pole to pole. After the eruption of Krakatoa, the first plants to sprout in the volcanic ash were orchids, and they're spring up in the most inhospitable places. 
    That isn't a reason not to like them; I didn't know that aspect about them, and lent them a grudging respect. They're the most beautiful weeds ever.

     I wondered if it might be anthropomorphic. There is a certain screaming face aspect to some orchids. Look at the orchid on the top of the page: eyes squinched, kind a bonnet. Something monstrous.
     No, that's not it. I gazed some more. Some are certainly very, ah, vulvic. Maybe not liking orchids is some kind of unconscious hostility toward women. No, that can't be it either—if it were, the idea would never come to me and, besides, I think women are just swell, in general.

     Then what?
     When I was growing up in Berea, the father of one of my sister's friends raised orchids, and I remember, once, visiting his home, with the large greenhouse off one side, which of course we had to admire. Maybe that was it. There was a strangeness to it, with its heat and humidity and its special lights and the hovering father pointing out this prize and that. He was an odd duck.
     So orchids are an oddity, the realm of eccentrics, the crazy aunt of the flower world, with her purple hair and batik. That felt closer.

      Is there an air of weirdness and marginality to orchids? The only product that comes from orchids is vanilla, from one type of orchid, vanilla planifolia. (Vanilla doesn't come from vanilla beans—that's a misnomer—they're actually pods). Vanilla isn't eccentric. Returning to sex, vanilla is the very definition of mainstream and ordinary, though that seems unfair: in ice cream preference vanilla runs neck-and-neck with chocolate in popularity. And everybody thinks chocolate is great. Maybe chocolate has a better PR firm).

     Edie didn't know I was puzzling through this, but she offered an observation closer to the mark. We were reading about the omnipresence of orchids, who they have been on earth for 110 million years, live in every clime and zone: above the Arctic circle, in deserts, on bare rocks—particularly surprising since their tiny seeds lack endosperm, and thus need to form symbiotic relationships with various fungi in order to germinate. (One locale where orchids are relatively scarce, I was surprised to learn in the Britannica, are rain forests).
     "How can they grow everywhere when I can't keep one alive?"
     Could that be it? I vague recall getting an orchid as a present from an admirer, taking it home and trying to keep the thing alive. Which I was unable to do. That seems a mean and petty reasons not to like such a varied and colorful realm of flowers. Because I killed one. Though people do generally have an easier time forgiving the wrongs that others have done then they do forgiving others for the wrongs they themselves have done against them. If that makes any sense. I was close to vowing to do better, and give orchids another chance.

     Then I put the question to my cousin Harry—we talk frequently about diverse topics. He reminded me of the opening of Raymond Chandler's mystery classic, "The Big Sleep," where  Philip Marlowe meets the invalid General in his greenhouse.  You can see the scene from the 1946 Howard Hawks noir film version with Humphrey Bogart here. In the book, the old man complains of his ailments and explains "the orchids are an excuse for the heat." Leading to this passage where the General asks:

     "Do you like orchids?"
     "Not particularly," I said.
     The General half-closed his eyes. "They are nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. And their perfume has the rotten sweetness of a prostitute."

     So there it is. At least it's not just me.

North Shore Notes: Rose-Colored Glasses

     Saturday. Whew. Busy week. Interviews, paperwork, heading downtown midweek with the Thresholds homeless outreach team for Friday's column, all the usual obligations. It's a relief to sit slumped in the dugout with my left arm wrapped in ice and watch Caren Jeskey confidently trot to the mound to pitch relief. Her report: 

Design for the cover of "The Raven," by Edouard Manet (Met)

  

By Caren Jeskey

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
            — from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

 

   My sister’s 8 year old child was buckled into her carseat with me last weekend and asked “what do you know about that raven play?” After a bit of frustration on her part when I was not quite sure what she was talking about—adolescence seems to happen earlier and earlier, doesn’t it?—we settled on talking about the only theater-related black bird thing that came to my mind, the Raven Theatre on Clark and Granville. Improv classes teach us to pick up whatever our partner throws at us verbally, and run with it. This seemed to do the trick and my niece was on board with the conversation.
    From contemplating a world where live theater safely exists, I moved our bird talk on to Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven" to see if that rang a bell for her. She hadn't heard of it.
     A little later, at my house, she soaked in a warm tub—does winter ever end in Chicago?—and I read her a redacted (for maturity) version of the poem. She listened raptly, and mostly had no idea what Poe’s words meant. Just as the adults in my life did for me when I was learning Shakespeare at her age (I recall seeing Othello when I was 8, in Loyola University’s library on the lakefront) I gave her the words in modern English.
     I let her know that the person in the poem had lost the love of their life, Lenore. They thought, at the time of the writing of the poem, that they would never recover from the grief. We talked about how hard things happen in life that bring us down. Feelings sometimes change, and ideally people heal— even just a bit— from difficulties they thought they’d never get past.
     It’s hard to be chipper these days. Being artificially cheerful is exhausting. It seems inauthentic to be a Pollyanna, ignoring the strife of the world and always looking at the bright side of life. At the same time, Polyanna author Eleanor Porter might have been onto something when she cautioned against being “too busy wishing things were different to find much time to enjoy things as they were.” Just as my elders gave me hope in a world that was surely hard for them many times along the way, perhaps even unbearable, it’s important to keep some degree of hopefulness and positivity in my heart and mind when I can, especially for the children in my life.
     The raven episode had me thinking about the magnificence of birds. A client recently told me that eagles cast huge shadows on the ground, so if one is out hiking in an eagle rich area, a momentary cloud that washes over us might be a visit from one of our national birds. I took a brief hike in Harms woods recently, and such a shadow darkened my car as I was getting in. I looked up and all around but it was elusive, and had disappeared.
     On my North Shore walkabouts I often keep my head to the sky. A hawk darted past and perched on a tree the other day. I stalked it and waited until I was able to capture a mid-flight photo. One such dude pulled shoppers at Da Jewel out of their early COVID funks in fall of 2020 when he posted up on a bike rack outside of the store. He gave them something cool to talk about at an otherwise undeniably uncool time.
     I was once dive-bombed by a redwing blackbird in San Francisco while others captured it on a recording— they were camped out in the financial district enjoying watching passers-by anger the two winged creature as we innocently walked too close to his family’s nest.
     Another time, I was at a yoga retreat in the Bahamas, I was with a small group getting a tour of the grounds. All of a sudden I felt a firm hand on the top of my head, squeezing. The group stared in shock. I did not know what was happening. I crouched down laughing, thinking someone I knew must be pulling a prank by coming up from behind and palming my head. Suddenly the hand was gone and I swung around to see who was messing with me. No one was there. The group animatedly explained that a dove had landed on my head. I felt lucky somehow, though it was probably just trying to kill me.
     Pollyanna was an 11-year-old who lost her parents and was sent to live with her unhappy aunt just before World War I. She played the “glad game” and found the good in everything. Even though each of us knows that justice along with the power found in numbers can move mountains. So why don’t we rise up, en masse, and use this power to defeat the evils of the world?

Mending the frayed social safety net

     “Angels don’t speak English, they speak emotion,” Edgar, a gaunt 24-year-old, tells Ryann Billitteri as she approaches him outside the Taco Bell at Dearborn and Van Buren Wednesday afternoon. “The translation is through your life....”
     He continues, blending near-poetry and conspiracy theories, wild claims and philosophical riffing, as Billitteri, a caseworker at Thresholds, gently steers him out of the rain and into the restaurant, where she buys him a Taco Supreme (“If you could bless me with extra sour cream on the side,” he says) and tries to get Edgar to sign a form to help him get off the street and into housing. Where he sleeps now, he says, is “classified.”
     Edgar sits and talks. Billitteri, team lead of Thresholds’ homeless outreach program, listens, silently proffering a pen. But he doesn’t sign. She’s been trying for months.
     Only about a third of Illinoisans who need treatment for mental illness get it; social services in the state are perennially underfunded, trimmed to the bone after years of sweeping budget cuts.
     “Since time immemorial,” said Heather O’Donnell, senior vice president of public policy and advocacy at Thresholds, which provides a range of mental health, addiction and housing support for the disadvantaged, plus guiding the formerly incarcerated as they transition back into society. “This has been happening for decades; it’s just snowballing because of the pandemic.”

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