Moment de vérité

 

 

   Sunday is Election Day in France. The polls are open. Why should anybody not living in France notice or care? The short answer is, who France elects president today is considered an indication of, well, to put it bluntly, Just How Fucked The World Is. 

     I'm tempted to put my chips on "Very," but will be optimistic and opt for, "Kinda."
     Yes, Marine Le Pen, daughter of National Front founder and all-round holocaust-denying racist asshat Jean-Marie Le Pen, isn't expected to win. But then, neither was Brexit or Donald Trump. 

     Yet win they did.

     The Economist, which has a good nose for these things, titled a recent article about the election, "Don't Panic," noting that incumbent Emmanuel Macron did better in the April 10 run-off than he did the first time, back in 2017. While still comparing the election to a game of Russian roulette. Yes, if things go wrong, they go very wrong. But odds are you'll be okay.

     Cold comfort.
     The bad news, to me, is, even if Macron is re-elected—and the French have only given their president a second term twice over the past half century—that a proto-fascist like Le Pen who is literally a paid lackey of Vladimir Putin can draw whatever support she ends up getting—say 47 percent—is testimony to how far right nationalism has gone after being given a quick scrub. Le Pen changed the name of her father's National Front to "National Rally" and re-directed her rhetoric to basic economic issues while delivering her contempt sotto voce. Maybe a new party will brand itself the "Not Cs" and take off in Germany. 

     In a sense she already won, by her showing in the run-off: 23 percent of the vote, compared to Macron's 28 percent. When they faced each other in the 2017 election (when I happened to be in Paris, and photographed these campaign posters) Macron took 66 percent of the vote. He won't come close to that this time.  The world is embracing strongmen who promise a return to our imagined past. I wish I could explain why.

      This isn't to suggest that France being led by Le Pen out of the sphere of the United States and NATO would be bad merely as an augury for the American elections of this November and 2024. It would be bad, period, for a Europe trying to contain the bloody territorial ambitions of Russia, which is already telegraphing that once it finishes chewing up Ukrainian territory it might decide to take a few bites out of Moldova. A vote for Le Pen is clearly a vote for Putin, but just as American evangelicals started loving Putin when he began quashing gays, so French right wingers now a kindred spirit when they see one.  

    I don't want to get too far out over my skis trying to analyze today's election. France isn't just America with big puffy scarves. It's a place where some votes are cast in on paper ballots tucked within gorgeous light blue envelopes, like fine stationery. Macron is unpopular for being aloof and out-of-touch—though I thought being aloof was part of the job description of the president of France, noted more for their barely concealed mistresses and for polishing the soles of their shoes.  But in case you haven't been following it, news of some sort will be hitting this afternoon. I'm hoping that it'll be the anticipated long exhale of relief. But if it's another stomach-churning disaster, well, we should be almost used to that by now.

 

      

Wilmette Notes: Wee Tim'rous Beastie

Netuske of a Mouse (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     In 1980, I lived above the Sherman Snack Shop in Evanston in an apartment dingy in the way only undergraduates can create. One evening I was watching our small portable black and white television when a mouse scurried past. I was on my feet and out the door so quick I neither put my shoes on nor took my key. The door locked behind me. That memory slumbered for decades until Caren Jeskey's essay today prodded it from its lair. I'm sure it'll raise murine memories in you too. Enjoy.

By Caren Jeskey

     A glass was knocked over in the kitchen very late the other night, clattering onto the counter top. The problem is I was home alone, and not in the kitchen. Instinct kicked in and I dashed into the dark room and flipped on the light. A tiny gray flash of fur flew across the counter at warp speed, and skillfully curved its little body around a sharp corner before it disappeared behind the stove. 

     It was too late to do anything about it so I went to sleep. I wore a skull cap and a huge silk eye mask, and wrapped the sheet around my head for protection. Still, I had nightmares of little mousey sniffing at my nostrils. I did not get much sleep that night.
    For such little guys, mice and other rodents possess an incredible ability to torment and otherwise engage the attention of humans. 
     The Three Blind Mice were a metaphor—betcha didn't know that—for Protestant loyalists accused of plotting against Queen Mary, called blind as an insult by their rivalrous religious persecutors, almost demanding kindly farmer’s wives resort to bloody violence with carving knives.
     In her 793rd poem, our isolated and astute Emily Dickinson pays homage to the power of these creatures. “Grief is a Mouse—And chooses Wainscot in the Breast For His Shy House.” They are hard to see, easily hidden, but can capture our hearts. Or freeze them, during night terrors, as we imagine them clawing our eyes out.    
     Poet Robert Browning shared a tale of woe from A.D. 1284 when their big cousins, the rat, overran the town of Hamelin Germany. The Pied Piper showed up to lead the dirty vermin to their deaths by drowning when they followed his hypnotic flute music to their demise in the local river. When Mr. Piper returned to the town for his exterminator’s fee, the mayor refused to hand it over. Mr. Piper retaliated by luring 130 local children into the mountains, never to be seen again. Pesky rats causing trouble once again.
     They also inspire pity and affection, most famously:

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle …
      — "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns (1785)

 

    This poet was also a farmer, and apparently unearthed a mouse family’s den while tilling his soil. He finds himself feeling badly, contemplating the unfortunate plight of these nervous little beasts.
     For my little problem, I decided to go the humane route. A friend lent me a metal mouse motel, which I baited with crunchy organic peanut butter from Trader Joe’s. Trap set, pest control arranged to come out in the morning, I went to sleep. Didn’t sleep well again.
     When I woke up the next day I peeked into the clear plastic top of the mouse house and saw a tail. Then another, and then one more. Three mice huddled together, taking a nap or maybe frozen in fear. I shuddered and ran out of the kitchen and around the house a bit, shaking off the heebie jeebies.
      Wesley the mouse guy arrived. He plugged up holes behind the stove and around the perimeter of the house with copper wool. Before he left, I asked him to walk with me to a hiking trail a couple blocks away to let la petit ménagerie loose. He kindly said he’d do it himself, and off he went. When Wesley got back he let me know that one of the three had refused to run free. It was hiding in the tunneled part of the trap and would not budge.
   I had a couple hours free before an early dinner date, and I had an idea. I placed the mousetrap into a paper shopping bag and walked over to the fire department.
     I put the trap down, wide open (hoping he’d run off) in a patch of grass, crossed the parking lot full of giant pick up trucks, and headed to the patio. I passed a picnic table and big gas grill, imagined the fatigued firefighters enjoying a well earned meal, and gave the station door a few loud knocks. 

     A tall, slim, balding firefighter pulled a curtain back and peeked out of the glass door. I smiled. He opened up. “Hi. I have a mouse stuck in a trap and I need help getting it out.” He looked surprised. “So you came to the fire department?” I explained the situation, and that I don’t know many people in the area yet. It was sounding a little silly to me even, but he stepped out to help. His name badge read "Tom."
     We approached the trap and Tom peered inside. The mouse’s long tail stuck out from one end of the tunnel, his teenie paws and nose peeking out the other side. It took a good ten minutes of prodding and pulling before our little friend was finally pried out. Mice are strong and agile, and he did not let go easily. I think we hurt his paw a bit because he limped a little, but once released he took just a moment to get his bearings. When he realized he was free he scampered away into the bushes.
     I thanked Tom, made a mental note to drop off some cookies and a thank you note and headed home, hoping not to have a repeat performance. Tom would have a story to tell.

Rotary aids Ukrainian refugees

John Hewko

     Ukraine is a democracy based on a constitution.
     The parts not brutally invaded and cruelly occupied by Russia, that is. The Ukrainian constitution was written in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. And if John Hewko needs to refer to it, he can check his personal copy. Not many people keep the Ukrainian constitution at home — but then, Hewko helped get it written.
     “My parents came to the United States after the Second World War,” he said. “My father in 1949, my mother in 1947. I grew up in a Ukrainian-American community in Detroit, and then Ohio.”
     Hewko became a lawyer, went to work at Baker McKenzie, which sent him to open their office in Moscow in 1989. He grew up speaking Ukrainian, so it was a natural for him to head to Ukraine with the rush of Western expertise helping get that fledgling nation off on the right foot.
     “I took a leave of absence from the firm, moved to Ukraine in the spring of ’91, working as an adviser to parliament, overseeing this group of Western experts,” he said. “We put together the first working group drafting the Ukrainian constitution. We brought in Western constitutional experts, holed up in a hotel room for five days and hammered out the first draft.”
     Hewko is again in a position to help his parents’ homeland, as general secretary and CEO of Rotary International, the 1.4-million-member service organization based in Evanston.
     My experiences at Rotary meetings created the impression of an organization whose primary purpose is to attend luncheons, exchange business cards, and endure speeches. Hewko disabused me of this view right away.
     “The more I’ve worked at Rotary, the more I’m in awe of what Rotarians do all over the world,” he said, citing their work to eradicate polio.

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Never mind.

 

   I hate technology sometimes.
   Hate, hate, hate.
   Even the simplest things...
   So last week a new reader in Washington, D.C. asked if he could receive notifications of new Every Goddamn Day posts by email. 
   I had tried setting that up a few months ago, under the tutelage of Chicago Public Square's Charlie Meyerson. Tried to figure this out through some kind of website. But it was beyond my skill set.
    Now, pressed anew, I dove into the settings section of Blogger and, lo and behold, there was a place where I could plug in emails to send post notifications. 
    So I plugged my email in. It seemed to work. 
    Not wanting to get beyond my skis, or ballyhoo a flawed system, I then put a small notice on the page, inviting emails. Those worked too. I waited a few days to see if the thing vanished, as sometimes happened. No, it seemed to work.
     Confident that I had a solution, I posted an invitation Thursday morning. Emails started to come in. I plugged them into the section in settings. Until the above notice appeared. Surprise!
    Ten? Why 10? Why not a thousand? So as not to jam the Internet? I have 50,000 photos in iPhoto up in the Cloud. And I only get to email the blog to 10 people? A joke, right?
    Anyway, I just pulled the post down—the second time in nine years that I've had to. No point in inviting people send me emails if I can't then send them the blog. I'm not giving up, yet. I'll continue to try to figure out how to solve this. But this is why I generally avoid the technological aspect of blogging. It's hard enough just to write the shit.

Drawing fun out of a hat

Joshua Messado performs with his namesake rings at the Chicago Magic Lounge.

     When the Chicago Shakespeare Theater opened on Navy Pier in 1999, I used to say it was worth going just to sit in a seat there — the fact that they also put on a show was an added bonus.
     I had that same sense of being somewhere special just entering the Chicago Magic Lounge, 5050 N. Clark St., on a recent Saturday night. You almost have to. The establishment is hidden behind a fake laundromat, complete with spinning dryers. Guests aren’t fooled per se — it’s all too pristine to be an actual laundromat. But you know something extraordinary is afoot, a feeling magnified by the black-walled bar to the left and a pristine little lobby decorated with museum-quality magic memorabilia to the right. This feels like someplace you’d find at Disney World instead of a North Clark Street cabaret. Not a raw cinder block in sight.
     “Somebody put a lot of money into this,” I said to my wife. That somebody was Don Clark and his partners, who opened the Lounge in 2018. Clark invited us to stop by, and while two years of COVID-19 hunkering has gotten us out of the habit of regularly going places and doing things, the Magic Lounge seemed worth risking a visit.
     It is. The room had a boisterous party atmosphere before a single card was turned over.
     That night’s show, like Gaul, can be divided into three parts. First, roving magicians performed close-in magic at various tables, engaging in friendly banter and showing off well-executed card tricks.
     Second, the main show, consisting of two acts, opener Jimmy Rock and headliner Paige Thompson.
     Both presented routines built around finding the chosen card and assembling a number that then appears in an unexpected place. Rock is an actual Florida cop who does magic. ”It’s never fun to encounter a police officer,” said Rock, accurately enough. Thompson’s act involved people in the hinterland thinking a woman with purple hair doing magic has to be a witch. While her twist of dancing upon cards blindfolded to find the right one was different, it didn’t rise to what I consider high-caliber magic. Both were competent. Maybe a few cocktails would have helped.

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Strange Worlds

 

"Strange Worlds" by Todros Geller (Art Institute of Chicago)

      Ukraine is never far from mind, as Russia redoubles its attack, hurling armies and missiles at the besieged nation, the second largest in Europe. I keep waiting for the world to shrug and look away—it's what the world does best. But we're still watching, horror-struck.
     At the same moment, we're also rediscovering the depth of our Ukrainian heritage here in Chicago, sometimes hidden in plain sight: "Oh wait, Ukrainian Village. Right..."
     Sometimes just hidden. I offer this little noticed oil in the possession of the Art Institute, "Strange Worlds," a 1928 oil painting by Todros Geller, a Ukrainian-born Jew.
     The news vendor stares boldly at the viewer, red-eyed, gaunt, intense, tight-lipped. He's a man who has seen much, endured much, to get to his perch at a newstand jammed under an 'L' girder. In the background, the faceless pedestrians swirl past. If you look closely at the newspapers he's offering, they're a blend of nationalities and politics, crying for attention .
Geller was not only involved in art, but politics, religion, education—he taught both art and Hebrew.
     Born in Ukraine in 1889, when it was still part of Russia, Geller recalled scarcely thinking of himself as Jewish, until the 1905 pogroms forced that understanding upon him. His family fled the next year, first to Montreal—where he met and became a proud friend of, "Red Queen" Emma Goldman—then Chicago, in 1918, where he studied at the School of the Art Institute.
     Geller was often quoted or featured in the Daily News, whose comprehensive coverage of the Chicago art scene is heartbreaking to contemplate today.
     "Todros Geller, who has been painting and studying in Europe and Palestine this summer has resumed his classes at the Jewish People's Institute," the paper noted in 1927. "Elementary 
and advanced classes in figure and cast drawing, modeling, pottery, etchings, wood block
cutting and printing are offered."
     During that trip he met with Marc Chagall in Paris—Geller was interested in what constituted "Jewish art," though it seems fairly plain nowadays. Later, the WPA sent him to the Southwest, where he did a series of sensitive portraits of Native-Americans.
     His "Black Venus," a woodblock print of a nude cabaret dancer, was the talk of an unjuried 1932 show, scandalizing what the Daily News called "certain nervous nellies who had no business being where they were." That might have included the Tribune critic, who declared the work, "most startling."
     In 1937, a Daily News reporter asked Geller how he squared the Biblical prohibitions against depicting the natural world with his career as an artist.
     "Well you know," he replied, with a smile, and, the paper noted, no trace of an accent, "what happens when a law is passed against something that everybody wants to do."
     "Strange Worlds" was taken as the title of a show of Geller's work that the Spertus Museum put on in 2018—you can see a brief WTTW segment on the artist and his work here.
     Spertus holds many of the oils, woodblock prints, and sketchbooks of Geller, which is fitting, because he worked, unsuccessfully, toward creating a museum of Jewish art in the 1930s. In that era, Jews were sort of the officially-designated cultural outsiders, a role of The Other now filled by different groups. It made me wonder if there is still the sort of contemporary Jewish artistic community that Geller represented, or was it wiped away by the one-two punch of World War II and assimilation?

Are we going to war with Russia?

Metropolitan Museum of Art

 “In Russian-occupied Kherson, satellite imagery that showed the digging of hundreds of fresh grave plots held haunting symbolism of the fate of civilians there.” — News item

     That about sums it up, doesn’t it? A humanity so advanced that we can detect and count 6-by-3-foot graves from outer space. But at the same time, a species so degraded that we’re also doing the random killing that requires the graves. Quite a range of behavior to wrap our heads around on the Monday after Easter.
     And I shouldn’t even address how the same news organization, The Washington Post, that can share such important news is also able, in doing so, to disgorge a phrase like “held haunting symbolism of the fate of civilians there.”
     Symbolism? A grave isn’t a symbol of their fate, it is their fate. (Let’s re-write that sentence into something less passive, shall we? “Satellite imagery showed hundreds of freshly-dug graves in Russian-occupied Kherson, an ominous indication of the fate of civilians there.” More accurate and four words shorter.)
     Having plucked out “haunting,” we can save that word to apply to the Russian demand that the United States stop supplying weapons to Ukraine. And even then, it’s premature. We’re not “haunted” yet by the formal diplomatic note — how 19th century of them! — the Russians sent last week warning the United States to stop giving the Ukrainians the weapons they are using to kick their ass. Not haunted, only worried.
     That Russian demand seems the most salient fact in the whole churning, confusing awful horror of the war in recent weeks. What to make of it?
     Empty threat? Given the ease with which Russians lie, we can take some reassurance that if they are saying they’re going to do some vague unwelcome thing — ”unpredictable consequences” is the term they actually brandished — there’s a good chance they won’t do anything.
     Or is it the sort of justification the Russians like to float prior to their awful acts? A kind of prior authorization they seem to think takes the sting out of unprovoked evil. Their thinking is: We can randomly kill thousands of civilians in the country next door if we first claim we’re liberating them from Nazis and they aren’t a real country anyway.
     Is the United States heading toward war? It seems a very real possibility. Some arms convoy in Poland will be hit, and the gears of general conflagration will start to turn. It’ll all seem inevitable, afterward. Then we can be haunted aplenty.

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