North Shore Notes: Abortion

Photo by Caren Jeskey

   Friday was a grim day for Americans who care about freedom. Personally, I took comfort in the belief that going back into the past is not indeed possible, no matter how passionately fundamentalists try. That most people do not want to live in a theocracy where their most intimate life choices are dictated by religious fanatics. And that, as always, those with totalitarian impulses overplay their hand. Yes, this will not stand. But that reversal is years away, and I felt glad I wasn't obligated to sit down and write something.

     North Shore Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey was, however, and in her typical reliability and professionalism did not disappoint. Her report is understandably brief and blunt, reflecting a numb day that was a shock though not a surprise.

By Caren Jeskey 

     "Good ideas come from everywhere. It's more important to recognize a good idea than to author it.” — Jeanne Gang

     A friend lives on Randolph near the lake, and I am lucky to be enjoying her home (and adorable, tiny pooch named Holly after Mrs. Golightly) while she takes a long weekend away. Jeanne Gang’s Vista Tower fills the window in front of me, and her Aqua Tower also adorns the picturesque frame. Whenever I see Gang's buildings I marvel at the empowered woman who made them happen. A modern day superhero. Aqua Tower was the tallest woman-designed building in the world at the time it was constructed in 2007. Her buildings blend in perfectly with Chicago's skyline, and though they are taller than the other buildings around here, they are elegantly understated and delightful to behold. Her structures are eco-friendly with recycled materials and rooftop prairies and gardens. Gang's Harvard trained eye is a great gift to our city.  

     At the same time that women's power is being supported in many ways, today we face the day after Roe v. Wade was overturned despite the fact that “Gallup polls show Americans’ support for abortion in all or most cases at 80% in May 2021, only sightly higher than in 1975 (76%), and the Pew Research Center finds 59% of adults believe abortion should be legal.” I called a friend yesterday afternoon and she greeted me in tears. “Did you hear?" Yes, I’ve heard. Lately I’ve been feeling like I do not have the bandwidth to deal with the larger issues our country is facing, then I recall that I have to conjure up the will to care.
     When we were in our late teens, or perhaps early 20's, another friend and I were invited to a Thanksgiving gala hosted by an important person. I can’t say who it was, since I have to be mindful about legal repercussions, so I'll suffice it to say that we were at a party that only a privileged few Illinoisans were invited to. During the dinner and subsequent party, a prominent young man became enamored with my friend, and she with him. They found a way to “see” each other- this word conjures up puritanical suppression of sexuality à la the play Spring Awakening (my first COVID play) that I saw this past Spring at Porchlight. In this heavy and tragic performance, secrecy, shame, and denial killed 2 young people and traumatized others.
     After one long date, my friend became impregnated with her suitor's child. She really liked him but at that point he was done with her. Before she could even catch her breath, he had arranged for an abortion. He was a monied financier, she was a nothing in comparison at that time, as far as privilege was concerned. She felt she had no choice. After the mandated abortion she was dropped off at my parent's house where I was living. She came up to my bed and passed out from exhaustion. She slept off the physically and emotionally taxing removal of the embryo from her womb. It was not yet a fetus, which happens at eight weeks.
     I wonder what her life would look like today, had this person been truly interested in the gem of a woman she is — stunning, brilliant, and now very successful- and they had developed more of a relationship?
     Now we can all be worried about the women who are going to be harmed during back-alley abortions on top of everything else this decade has cursed us with. It's time to help in any way we can. Vote, march, donate money to help women get to Illinois and other safe havens when they need it. And try to stay out of the line of fire of the armed haters.

After your abortion, grandma might sue you

 

"Government Bureau," by George Tooker (Guggenheim Museum)

     Now that the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, a shoe that's been expected to drop since early May when a draft opinion spiking the 1973 decision was leaked, let’s have a brief pop quiz:
     Question: What’s the really bad part about reversing Roe v. Wade?
     If you answered something like, “denying American women the right to make their own reproductive decisions, a freedom enjoyed for the past 50 years and one extended to most women around the globe,” I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.
     That’s just the bad part.
     The really bad part, in my estimation — and, yes, I am a man, so my view might be skewed — is the police state that will be quickly set up to punish not only doctors who provide abortions but anybody who facilitates an abortion — with one notable exception.
     But don’t take my word for it.
     Take a look at the model law prepared by the National Right to Life Committee. Banning abortion is only the start.
     “Current realities require a much more robust enforcement regime than just reliance on criminal penalties,” the draft notes. Waiting to snag offenders isn’t enough. States need “RICO-style laws” that turn whisking Molly across the border into Illinois to fix her “little problem” into a criminal conspiracy.
     Where to begin? The fact that a girl is 11 years old doesn’t matter. (That’s not a random number. It’s the age of a girl who became pregnant after being raped in Brazil, where abortion is illegal. She’s now confined by a judge so she can’t have an abortion.) Otherwise: ”We recommend prohibiting abortion except to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”
     They’re talking about physical peril, period.
     “Psychological or emotional conditions” are deliberately excluded because, well, suck it up, sister, we’re not falling for that touchy-feely gobbledygook.
     The law recommends an abortion be a Level 2 felony. In Indiana, where the firm drafting the law is based, that’s on par with voluntary manslaughter, child sex trafficking and kidnapping, with prison sentences of from 10 to 30 years.

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A note on sources

     A reporter is only as good as his (or her) sources. Usually, that means the contacts that he (or she, or, of late, they) has (or, in the latter case, have) developed, allies who will pick up the phone or, better, call unprompted and pass along some glowing shred of news.
     People (whew, that's easier) have never been my strong suit. But I do have a close relationship with books, which are also sources. Over the years there are certain dependables that I go to when I need a quick, in-depth education. 

     For instance, the calendar drives a considerable amount of journalism, and reporters often find themselves confronted with finding a new spin on a shopworn holiday, and if I'm tryin to fill a blank page about, oh, Valentine's Day, Jack Santino's "All Around the Year: Holidays & Celebrations in American Life" (1994: University of Illinois Press) has for decades offered a fresh observation or approach I wouldn't think of on my own. 

     For instance, Santino noted that the holiday dedicated to romance isn't just dropped randomly into the calendar. It mirrors Halloween. In a 1997 column on Valentine's Day, I quoted him: 

      "Halloween is approximately seven weeks before the winter solstice and marks the progression into the darkest period of the year," he writes. "Valentine's Day is about seven weeks after it and marks the progression out of winter and into spring." Santino points out that Halloween imagery is all about harvested crops and death, while Valentine's Day is flowers and romance and life."

     Another essential volume in any home reference library is "Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements," by John Emsley (2001: Oxford). It's that rarest reference that can be read cover-to-cover, for pleasure and I know that no quick dive into a particular metal or gas or whatever done with the Encyclopedia Britannica or online, will come close to the detail and fascination Emsley has already concisely assembled.
     Herein lies the trouble. If what I need is all right there, the temptation is to quickly gather up the nuggets, share them with the eager public, and skip giving the big public thanks to Emsley.
     That's what I did in my manhole cover story in the paper Sunday. Crediting him for the fact that iron is the fourth most common element in the universe seemed unnecessary — he didn't invent that fact, but got it from somewhere himself — and, more to the point, also took another 13 words in a story already three times the usual length of a column.
     Of course, nothing was copied. But ideas were re-worked. For instance, he writes of iron: "In effect it is the 'ash' of the nuclear burning process; once the core of a star has become mainly iron, that star has run out of its primary source of energy." Which I converted, through my own reductive process, into "Iron is, in essence, star ash."
     Now that is laudable condensation, and nobody was ever going to accuse me of plagiarism, the way a reader once sincerely did when I ended a column, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" the concluding line of "The Sun Also Rises" (I wrote back that I assumed my readers are familiar with the line, asking, "If I ended with "Thou shalt not kill" would you accuse me of ripping off the Bible?")
     But as reader after reader singled out that ash line to compliment me, a definite taste of ashes began forming in my mouth. I felt like I was taking a bow for Emsley's performance, and though I should wave the flag for his book.
     You can buy it here. It'll set you back $25 — it's lack of deep discount a reflection of just how useful a resource it remains. Not only is "Nature's Building Blocks" fascinating to read, with the inside scoop on the elements from actinium to zirconium, but it includes the lyrics to the Tom Lehrer song and an essay on the periodic table. Emsley, a British science writer, now 84, cleverly divides each elemental essay in "Human Element," and "Medical Element," "Economic Element" and "Environmental Element" and so on, including an "Element of Surprise" that bring in some cool facts out of left field. (Though he does despair at thulium, throwing up his hands with, "What is surprising about thulium is that, unlike the other rare-earth elements, there is nothing at all surprising about it... This is probably due to its rarity and cost, which may have deterred people from investigating it or seeking uses for it.")

     But I do the book an injustice ending with a rare lacuna. In the essay on fluorine, the element of surprise offers a brief history and explanation of Teflon, the coating made from poly(tetrafluoroethene). "Contrary to popular belief," Emsley writes, "it was not space exploration that led to the development of the non-stick frying pan, but the other way round." But I won't quote too much of it here. Read the book yourself.

Texas Republicans turn up the crazy

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Could somebody please explain Texas pride to me? Isn’t Ted Cruz still one of their senators? That loathsome, cowardly, sniveling, whining, lying, wriggling invertebrate human excrescence? I’m embarrassed to belong to the same species as Ted Cruz. It’s like finding out you’re related to a worm. “And that’s a photo of your great-grandfather, who was a sipuncula, or peanutworm ...”
     Sharing the same state would be unbearable. It’s bad enough that Bruce Rauner is here, somewhere, hiding in one of his homes.
     Yes, Texas is an economic powerhouse — the 9th-largest economy in the world. And what are its chief economic products? Agriculture, energy and ... tourism. Which is what makes one particular line in the draft Texas Republican Party platform — “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States.” — so curious.
     The Texas GOP is taking pains to remind everybody that they find mainstream American values — diversity, public education, free elections — so odious they must officially give a big middle finger to the other 49 states. There’s a tourism slogan for you: “Texas: We hate America so much we might quit at any time ... until then, yeehaw, c’mon down for some down-home cowboy fun!”
     Good luck with that one.
     Of course, lack of bone-deep Republican hypocrisy forbids me from casting shade on anyone’s tourism slogan without pointing out that Chicago has perhaps the worst advertising line devised by humankind: “When you GO you know,” with the “GO” in yellow, lest the connection to micturition be overlooked. Can you imagine the gathering of talent that produced that one? And the bar was already set very high with the previous slogan, “Chicago Not Chicago” which, with a little punctuation, becomes the thought process that accompanies the suggestion of visiting our troubled city. “Chicago? Not Chicago!”
     These slogans have to be intentionally lousy, right? I can only assume it’s some kind of long game by chessmaster Lori Lightfoot, trying to tamp down the inevitable stories about visitors being shot at Chicago tourist destinations this summer by encouraging them to never arrive in the first place. Our next tourism campaign will be “See beautiful Milwaukee.”
      Back to Texas. Yes, secede, by all means. The state gets back $1.20 for every dollar it sends to Washington, and 17.5% of its state budget comes from the rest of the country’s taxes. Illinois meanwhile gets 94 cents back on each dollar we send, after six cents is snatched by Texas. So leave, parasite. Don’t let the door ...

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‘Shall I chew that for you, sir?’

     My gut tells me that light columns of a personal nature are probably both out-of-step with journalistic fashion and not smart, from a self-protection standpoint. Indeed, as I was writing this, I remembered with a shudder that the great Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner at the Washington Post, was shown the gate after just such a column, for failure to sufficiently appreciate Indian cuisine. So if it seems like my praise is one twist too strong, that was deliberate, my winking tribute to Gene. 

     I turned 62 last week, and new indignities of age already are rushing at me, with their seltzer bottles and flappy paddles, the calliope of time wheezing derisively in the background. You’d think, at threescore and a pair, I’d expect them by now. But no.
     We caught the 5:22 to Union Station Thursday night to take our younger son out for an elegant birthday dinner — his, not mine; our birthdays are less than a week apart. He chose Rooh, a trendy progressive Indian restaurant on West Randolph Street.
     On the trip downtown, I entertained myself cooking up lame dad puns that I knew later would have to be manfully suppressed. 

     “I hear the chef is opening a French version of this place, called ‘Rue’, serving Paris street food ...”
     “Have you been to his Cajun cafe, ‘Roux’?”
     “The chef has one of these in Australia, too. ‘Roo.’”
     Really, it’s a sickness.
     A pleasant stroll west and north from Union Station. Well, OK, young people did tend to blast up to us, pause as if confused, even slightly offended that we didn’t automatically hop out of their way, then grudging factor our perplexing existence into their navigational systems, then vector around us, picking up speed, like comets slingshotting around a pair of lifeless moons.
     We got to Rooh and joined the knot of supplicants at the front door. Edging to the maître d’ station, we gave our son’s name. The gatekeepers huddled, consulted, glanced at us, disapprovingly. Looked at a screen again, murmured, reluctantly agreed it seemed this couple has a reservation upstairs.

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Nothing lasts forever, but a manhole cover comes close.

A new manhole cover shakes off its mold sand. (Photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin)

     Visiting the Neenah foundry was a longtime dream of mine. I pestered them for years, and it was thrill earlier this year when they finally agreed. As far as I can tell, this was the first time Neenah allowed a Chicago newspaper reporter to visit their operation in its 150 year history.

     NEENAH, Wis. — This is where they undergo their fiery birth, those overlooked essentials of urban life.
     Most of us seldom notice them, even though they can brave the extremes of weather for 100 years while being run over by trucks without deteriorating, and we depend upon their steadfast operation to keep us from falling into open sewers.
     They are literally everywhere, around the world and at our feet, on every block, every street corner: the manhole covers, stormwater intake grates, bumpy rectangles where the sidewalk slopes to meet the street (formally known as detectable warning plates) and other cast-iron infrastructure that help keep Chicago from reverting back to the swamp it was at its beginning.  

     “It’s stuff that’s always there, but no one thinks about it,” said Joe Falle, director of research and development and application engineering at Neenah Foundry in Neenah, Wisconsin, 190 miles north of Chicago, between Oshkosh and Appleton. “It doesn’t do anything special but cover a hole.”
     Many, many holes. The city of Chicago Department of Water Management, which wrangles the city’s manhole covers, estimates there are about 148,000 sewer covers on Chicago streets, plus another 205,000 catch basins.
     “We have a manhole cover down the middle of every street, going directly into sewers,” said Matt Quinn, deputy commissioner of the Department of Water Management. “Six catch basins per block and three manhole covers.”
     Manhole covers are solid — to keep sewer odor from wafting up to the street. Catch basin covers have slits — to let stormwater in. And, in case you’re curious, no, gender neutrality has not reached this realm of society.
     “Yes, we still call them ‘manhole covers,’ ” Quinn said. “Most people don’t care because it’s a cover over a sewer.”
     But what a cover. Two feet across, about two inches thick, solid cast iron.
     While there are other suppliers, many Chicago covers originate here, in the sprawling, loud Neenah Plant No. 2, the main facility of a company that has been producing cast-iron products for the past 150 years. Ever since William Aylward started the Aylward Plow Works in 1872. The company expanded from plow blades to sugar caldrons and barn door rollers. Alyward’s three sons entered the business, which added cast-iron stoves. In 1904, it began making manhole covers.

 

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Flashback 1996: Like father, like son? No.

 

   My brother-in-law called this week and said, in essence, "You're a writer. Why don't you read something pithy about fatherhood at the Father's Day party his year?" Since he was going to the trouble to fry the chicken and prepare most of the food, it seemed the least I could do.
     I was too burnt out from my rondo of work to compose something fresh, so looked back into the archive and found this, slumbering for more than a quarter century. Readers of "Drunkard" might notice that this column was spot-on augury regarding the Pinewood Derby: I didn't leave him to build his car unaided, but DID screw up his entry, big time. And I also gave my second son — born a year to the day after this was published — a first name beginning with "K," despite the difficulty of transforming that letter into a pancake
     Sun-Times subscribers are enjoying my Neenah Foundry magnus opus today. But I believe I will post that here tomorrow, in honor of Manhole Cover Monday.

     My dad owned a circular saw. And a jigsaw. And a timing light. And a blowtorch. He kept jeweler's tools — tiny files, screwdrivers, tweezers — in a wooden case. He had a pick-ax and a sledgehammer and a belt sander and a beautiful set of German drafting instruments nestled in purple velvet.
     He was a man of tools who had the skills to use them. He built new rooms on the house and a two-story building in the backyard. He could send Morse code and speak French and fix the brakes himself.
     To me, these tools, and these abilities, define the essence of fatherhood, a subject on my mind lately, as today is my first Father's Day not just as his son but as a dad now myself.
     Don't worry, I'm not going to go all weepy on you. To tell the truth, I wish my father had been a klutz. I would savor the memory of some project of his falling apart — a poorly mixed concrete wall dissolving as if it were made of Cream of Wheat; a botched paint job; even a wobbly bookcase, anything to soften the disasters that I know I will soon be displaying to my own son.
     The boy's going to want to be a Cub Scout, for instance. Kids still do that, right? They can't all be crack addicts. And the scouts still have the Pinewood Derby, right? Where they give the tykes a block of wood and tell them to come back with a finished racing car.
     I can see my own Pinewood Derby car as clearly as if it was sitting on the desk in front of me. Electric blue. As smooth and streamlined as a jelly bean, plexiglass cockpit window flush with the wood. The car must have taken my father 20 hours to build, and even though I hardly touched it during construction, I was still proud of it. It was my car, in a sense.
     My own kid won't benefit from such fatherly skills. He'll come to me with his pathetic block of wood, and I fear I'll have to give him a canned speech about being his own man. "I'd like to help you, son, but that would be wrong," I'll say, glancing out of the corner of my eye to see if he's falling for it.
     All the other fathers in his troop will run wind-tunnel tests on the cars they build for their sons. My son will enter a block of unfinished wood with the word "CAR" scrawled on the side in pencil and four wheels tacked on.
     Maybe it will make him a better person.
     No need to worry about that just yet. He's just a baby, thank God. He's still content just to be cooed at (though I have caught him giving me hard, appraising looks. As if he knows).
     What I need now is practice. I have done more painting and sanding and staining in the months since the baby was born than I had done in my entire life, previously. My fingers feel like they've been soaking in Drano.
     In the meantime, my hope is that I can substitute other, easier skills, which I somehow managed to pick up and retain, and so squeak by as a sort of Dad Lite.
     My father poured pancakes into the shape of our initials, to the delight of us kids. That I can do, provided the kid's name doesn't start with a tough letter like a G or a K.
     I almost named our boy Lou just because it would be easy to render in pancakes.
     I do have a few funny noises down — mouth pops and strange whoops — that seem to entertain the infant, for now. Of course, my father could imitate Donald Duck. I tried Donald Duck, once, and almost strangled.
     The beautiful part is that, unless our son spends a lot of time pouring over my old columns, he'll never know that I'm just recycling my father's simplest skills.
     He'll think I'm some sort of genius, having come up with all this stuff myself.
     For instance, once, when I was sick, my dad bought one of those "Visible Head" models and sat at the side of my bed all day, assembling it for my benefit.
     I feel like running to the model shop now and picking up one of those heads, so I'll have it ready should the boy fall sick. I'm sure my "Visible Head" won't be half as finely wrought as my dad's was — but the original isn't around for comparison, and the kid won't know any better.
     Children have no point of reference — one of their best qualities — so they're easily fooled.
     He may even grow up thinking that I, too, am good at things. A craftsman using his tools to effortlessly make the world conform to his wishes. That is, he might, provided that I keep practicing, and his grandfather doesn't spill the beans.
             —Originally published in the Sun-Times June 16, 1996.