Northshore Notes: That Thirteen Hoodoo

     I watched the president's speech Thursday night, and while I felt he did a good job, with the nation divided between those who see the existential peril to democracy all too clearly, and those clamoring for disaster to come quickly, I'm not sure what good his words will do. I was glad not to have to comment on it, and gladder that our North Shore Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey took up the challenge. 

By Caren Jeskey 

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
                       —F. Scott Fitzgerald     

     Nothing makes sense sometimes. President Biden is being criticized for speaking to Americans as though we are divided into two camps. What am I missing? We are — solidly ensconced into rigid fortresses at this point, as we should be. I am happy to be dug in on the right side of things.
     My tribe understands what the phrase “separation of church and state” means. We know that all instructional tomes, whether political, religious, or other, need to be revisited regularly, and amended to fit the current times. The Old Testament of the religion I was born into, Christianity, is hilarious. This text is also in the Orthodox Jewish Bible:

“The priest could not marry a prostitute, a defiled woman, a divorced woman, or even a widow. In order for the priestly line to be pure, he could only marry a virgin of his own people.”
                       —Leviticus

       Also Leviticus: 

     “For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach [the altar]: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, or crookback, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken. He shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries.”

     Stones are testicles.
     No wonder generations of people being spoon-fed this stuff have lost their ability to see the intrinsic dignity of all human life and the absurdity of a false sense of supremacy.
     An astute client commented that “progress is a pendulum.” As we watch years of growth being ripped away, she helped me remember that solace can be found in the idea that things will right themselves again. Especially with diligent efforts.
     Okay, some things make sense. It was my sister’s birthday this week. We sat on the patio of The Fireside Restaurant on Ravenswood, pausing for Metra trains loudly whooshing by. My Grandma Olive and Grandpa Carl were across the street at Rosehill.
     I've been thinking a lot about Olive lately. My mother’s mother. My sister and I have a bit of her in us. She got on a train from a boarding house in Wilmington, Delaware and headed to Chicago in 1927 at the age of 14. She was born on November 25, 1913, and lost both of her parents before she was one year old. 
     Lore has it that Olive’s folks were butchers. Since she left at such a young age with no mementos we lost the story of our ancestors, but they were Irish or Welsh. I perused the Wilmington Gazette and noticed a story from October or 1907 when Olive was not even a glimmer in her parents’ eyes. “Butchers Off to Chester: Members of the ‘Wilmington Butchers’ Association left this city at 1:30 o’clock over the Pennsylvania Railroad, for Chester, where they will be entertained by the butchers of Chester.” I pictured my great grandparents being entertained by men and women wrangling sows in white aprons on that journey.
     Joe Biden is often described as a scrappy Irish Catholic (and as you know, raised his family in Olive’s home city). I think his family and mine might have a thing or two in common.
To entertain myself further, I read a bit of the Evening Journal on the day of Olive’s birth. Strange random poems and musings pop up throughout the news of the day, such as oil lamp fires, bike thefts and murders. “The Thirteen Hoodoo: There are thirteen letters in the name Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson was the thirteenth president of Princeton. President Wilson was nominated on the thirteenth of the month. Adding 1, 9, 1, 2, the year in which he was nominated makes 13.” 

     They go on with other ways he can be associated with the number 13.
     I’m going to do my best to get my personal pendulum to swing into a simple time where little ditties like Thirteen Hoodoo can drown out the overwhelming amount of conflict and confusion we face in the world today.

Downstate wisdom doesn’t wash

Fairfield, 2016

     One traditional ritual of the media is the journey to the heartland to take the temperature of the decent hardworking folks there. I’ve done it myself, and it’s always enjoyable. Open roads, endless fields of grain, hot coffee, homemade pie.

     And the people are so friendly. Honestly. When I describe going downstate to Fairfield prior to Trump’s inauguration in 2016, to talk to the good citizens of Wayne County, who voted 84% for the fraud, liar and bully Donald Trump, the shorthand I use is, “It’s like a Richard Scarry book.” Remember: those big picture books like “What Do People Do All Day?” Busy neighbors rendered as friendly bears, dogs, cats, pigs, lions and such.
     I’d walk into the bank and the police station, unannounced, and talk to the bank president and the police chief. If I strode into a bank in downtown Chicago and tried to see the president, I’d probably be wrestled to the floor.
     Yes, there was a certain irony. Having driven 275 miles to learn what people think, I’d invariably be informed that Chicagoans don’t care what downstaters think. I managed to restrain myself from spreading my arms, running my gaze over my body, and announcing, “And yet I’m here.”
     I’ve done that kind of thing: You get a blank stare.
     That memory came back, along with a pang of envy, reading Tina Sfondeles’ excellent report Wednesday from Centralia, “Southern Discomfort.” It explains where the Trumpian campaign to undermine free elections comes from. If you live in a community of 12,000 people and are baffled and angry that the Chicago metro area, with a population of 10 million, can somehow drive policy choices and election results, you are by nature also yearning toward a system where the electorate doesn’t influence decisions.

To continue reading, click here.

Flashback 1988: Jazz lovers remain upbeat despite rhythm of the rain

     Funny how early experience can set your opinion. For a long time, I'd say, "It always rains at the Jazz Festival." Because for the first few years I covered it, it did, sheets of monsoon. I remember looking out over the drenched Grant Park, seeing one guy sitting out in the middle of the lawn, in a downpour, sighing, and trudging out through the sodden field to talk to him, rain streaking the ink on my notepad. At least this weekend looks like clear skies.

     The Bud Freeman All Stars were just beginning their set, at a little after 6 p.m. Sunday, when Mother Nature decided to sit in for an impromptu duet at the 10th annual Chicago Jazz Festival.
     She began with a slight staccato of rain, building to a quick, pounding crescendo and followed by a fierce clarinet solo of wind, which sent dust and paper swirling across Grant Park and the less dedicated music fans scurrying toward their cars.
     The more dedicated, some of whom had traveled hundreds of miles for the famed festival, were not deterred.
     "It'll pass over," said Jane Davis, of Knoxville, Tenn., who attended every day of the festival and, when the rain came, sought refuge under a tree.
     Mark Stach sought protection by wrapping himself in a blanket and a sheet of plastic. Cindy Breithaupt wrapped herself in Mark Stach.
     "We're gonna stay," said Breithaupt, of Redbank, N.J. "The sound comes through."
     Though from out of state, she had a Chicagoan's disdain for those who were leaving.
     "They're not diehards," she said, simply.
     While some winced and cowered before the elements, Duke Newton, of Chicago, sat placidly at a small, neatly set table, its yellow tablecloth weighed down by strategically placed silverware. He said he was enjoying himself greatly.
     "Oh yes, we're die-hard aficionados," he said, drawing on a small cigar. "We wouldn't let a little weather like this run us off."
     One positive effect of the weather was to reduce the blanket-to-blanket crowding usually found at the festival. Through Saturday, the fest had drawn 280,000, but only 85,000 showed up on Sunday, far fewer than the 200,000 or so who usually attend the last day of the festival.
     "There's plenty of space to park yourself," said Rick Baumann, of Goshen, Ind. "We're not afraid of a little rain."
     The rain stopped, and the music started up again, but Patricia Roger, with her son Alvin, 11, in tow, headed for home anyway. She stopped to expound on the two unavoidable forces of nature that were taking her away from the festival.
     "The rain and my son," she said, adding that it was her son complaining about the rain, more than the rain, that sent her home. "He should be exposed to all forms of music. I wanted to see Herbie Hancock." Said Alvin, "My mother said I had to come."
     Roger had a word of advice for parents thinking of enriching their offspring at future festivals.
     "Leave the child at home," she said.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 5, 1988

Music to soothe a shaken city

 

"Dizzy," by Marc Klionsky (1988; National Portrait Gallery—Smithsonian Institute)

     Dizzy Gillespie cut a regal figure striding through O’Hare: his black and red fez like a crown, his green raincoat draped over his shoulders like a cape.
     It was 1988. Dizzy was coming in from Paris. My job was to meet him at the airport, fly down to Peoria together, interview the jazz legend and catch his performance that night. He didn’t bring anything so square as a change of clothes. Just an instrument case containing his famous angled horn. And a small satchel holding papers, vitamins and medicine for his diabetes.
     If the name is unfamiliar — time effaces the greatest fame — Dizzy Gillespie was the archetypal jazzman. His personal look — sunglasses, soul patch, beret — became the cliche of a bee-bop hipster.
     The musician had come quite a way — 4,300 miles, Paris to New York by supersonic Concorde, New York to Chicago by jet, now a prop plane to the city known as the place where anything daring won’t play. He was 71 years old. He’d been blowing his horn for half a century. Why go to all this trouble for another gig?
     “I want to play all the time,” he replied. “You have trouble if you lay off. There’s an old saying among classical jazz guys: “If I don’t play one day, I know it. If I don’t play two days, my compatriots know it. If I don’t play three days, the whole world knows it.”
     “You have trouble if you lay off.” Something to bear in mind as the Chicago Jazz Festival takes place this weekend at full strength for the first time in three years — last year was a one-night showcase. I imagine more than a few people have a little trouble with the notion of heading to downtown Chicago simply for great, free jazz. Perhaps out of practice by the COVID lull, perhaps given pause by violence that has spilled out of the areas of the city where Chicago has accustomed itself, shamefully, to allowing violence to perennially persist.

To continue reading, click here.

Happiness is a warm Tesla

     As a rule, I try not to mess with another man's fantasy. But accidents happen. Monday's column on the challenges of providing a national grid of electric vehicle charging stations struck me as fairly straightforward: an entrepreneur heading an EV charging station company hoping to demonstrate how difficult his competitors could be to use.
     This struck a certain element of readers as criticism of electric cars in general:

     "ARGH! yet another article on why we can't go to electric vehicles," begins David M. "Range! charging! yada yada. I've have been driving Tesla cars since 2011. Owned the 2nd Tesla Model S in Illinois and 117th overall. I've done over 15,000 miles of road trips including Chicago to S. California. Never any charging problems. Yes, the Tesla supercharging network is far superior and other networks seem to have issues keeping their charging stations in operation."
     Need I point out that nothing in my column even vaguely suggested "we can't go to electric vehicles."

      It felt odd to look out the window and see Tesla owners with pitchforks.
      "Inoperative chargers, range anxiety. — not relevant to the overwhelming majority of EV drivers unless you own the old Nissan Leaf," writes Lewis C. "My experience driving twice across the U.S. from California to Connecticut was a joy. No apps, no credit cards, fully operational charging stations. Tesla tells me when and where to charge, preconditions my battery for optimal charging, and almost always directs me within a tenth of a mile from the highway exit either at a shopping center or hotel/ motel parking lot. I never waited for a charging station and rather enjoyed the 20-25 minute interlude to use a restroom or get a bite to eat. A Navigator? 19 POUNDS of CO2 into the atmosphere for every gallon burned by your car/truck. Yikes!"
     That last line made me realize It had inadvertently put my hand into the cage of zealous environmentalists—whom I completely support, by the way, minus the sarcasm. I didn't summon the Navigator, which I admit is a Beast — I just got in. I own the sin.
      I would never suggest that owners of Telsas channel the lip-curled contempt of company icon Elon Musk. But there was a certain tone.
     "Yes, if you are trying to charge that ridiculous Porsche EV it is very difficult," writes L.J.H. "It's not an accurate or typical portrayal, tho. Almost 70% of EVs are Teslas and (surely 70% of road charging, or more) it is a seamless, convenient and pleasant experience. Normally, the car tells you where to go and when, but there are so many options! "
     Seventy percent is the actual figure of Tesla EV market share, which surprised me, as did some Tesla owners practically willing all the other manufacturers out of existence.
     "Neil.. you well document why TESLA is 99% of the electric car market," writes Sheldon H.
"None of the problems you highlight exist if you own a Tesla. I've had one since 2016 . Thousands of Tesla chargers now everywhere..... super easy...but like so many other Tesla people that can do it, I put a 220 line in my garage and overnight I'm back to 190 miles (much more than I need for the day). On a trip a convenient Tesla charger in route gets
me charged to 280 miles in about a half hour. The start ups like your interviewee (and FORD, GM) are years behind the established conveniences of TESLA."

     One reader, Tom K., does raise a question I wish I thought of: why aren't gas stations installing EV stations?
     "Do not recreate the wheel," he writes. "We got all the gas stations. Every gas station should start putting in two or three electric charger pumps. I will buy an EV when I could go to the gas station and spend the same amount of time filling up my electricity in my car as I spent filling up my gas in my car. Until then it’s gas gas gas."

    I'd be tempted to say the reason is they don't want to promote the competition. But if they charged EV cars, electric vehicles would be their customers, not the competition. I suppose the honest answer to why gas stations don't install EV charging stations is the same reason newspapers didn't create Craigslist. Large companies, like ships, just can't change direction that fast. Or at all.
     As often happens, I got it from both sides: electric vehicle fans (well, Tesla fans) and those who don't see the point of promoting electric vehicles at all.
     "My question is this . Why are we spending taxpayer money to help EV manufacturers sell cars ?" asks Russ G. "Shouldn’t they help provide the power source ? Did taxpayers pay for gas stations after Henry Ford and others invented the automobile? I don’t think so and Tesla and all the rest should be in the forefront of providing the power source for their products !"
     And yes, I wrote him back that taxpayers might not have paid for gas stations, but they sure as heck paid for highways.
     Enough. No mas. For the record, not that there is a record, I'm all for electric cars, and might even buy one next time I buy a car. And as I like to say, I'm only responsible for what I write, not for what you imagine I wrote. 

You clean your own windshield, too

Hooman Shahidi in front of the Porsche Taycan. 

     We were somewhere around Mount Pleasant on the edge of Racine when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like...
     OK, there were no drugs, beyond caffeine in the coffee — I had to mention them to pay homage to the opening of Hunter S. Thompson’s epic road adventure, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
     We certainly were on a road trip, to Milwaukee for lunch. In a somewhat boss ride: a 2022 Porsche Taycan electric sports car, part of a revolution taking place on America’s roads. Merrily blasting north on 94 at ... ah ... umm, yes, the customary speed. 

     Over 600,000 electric vehicles were sold last year. California just announced they are banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars after 2035, perhaps sounding the death knell for the internal combustion engine that reigned for a century.
     Yet electric vehicles all share the same drawback.
     “They’re no good if you can’t plug them in and they’re no good if you can’t find [charging stations] and they’re no good if they’re creating all these barriers to actually charge your vehicle,” said Hooman Shahidi, co-founder and president of EVPassport, riding shotgun beside me.
     The federal government will pour $5 billion into EV charging stations over the next five years, with $148 million of that slated for Illinois.
     EVPassport is one of the smaller players in the scramble to provide those stations. The California company is not yet two years old, with 1,500 chargers in 23 states and Canada.
     “We’re hoping to get 10,000 chargers 12 months from now,” said Shahidi.
     There are only about 6,000 fast-charging public EV charging stations in the U.S., according to MIT Technology Review, plus 48,000 slower charging stations. A third the number of gas stations. Since EV stations generally have no attendants, they are more susceptible to breakage and vandalism. A recent study of EV stations around San Francisco found more than a quarter out of service at any given time.
     Those that do work are not always easy to operate — that was the point of our trip. Shahidi wanted to demonstrate how bothersome his competitors are.

To continue reading, click here.

A recovery at the end of the world.

      I'm fortunate to have written for some of the best magazines ever published: Rolling Stone, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Forbes. 

     How did that happen? Sometimes I approached them, more often they reached out to me. Either way, that kind of work has dried up as publishing slid into the same slough enveloping newspapers.

     That's one reason I was particularly thrilled when the Rotary Magazine, published in Evanston, asked me to write something about recovery for their September issue. I haven't revisited that topic in a while, and it was interesting to bring more recent experience to bear. 

     A savvy freelancer keys his writing to his audience, and I saw that Rotary focuses on its truly global scope — 1.4 million members belong to 33,000 clubs across 200 countries. Quite a built-in readership base for a magazine, and I was impressed by their  operation, and particularly delighted by Andrea Ucini's gorgeous artwork, as you'll see when you jump to their web site. Though there's nothing like seeing it across two pages in the magazine. The good news is there is life in publishing yet, and in this particular tiny corner of it.

      You don’t have to go looking for booze, it will find you wherever you are, even at the end of the world. Or make that, “The End of the World,” part of the official slogan of Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city on Earth.
      The Royal Canadian Geographical Society had invited me to travel aboard its polar, ice-class cruise ship for two weeks as it traveled the coast of Chile, getting up close and personal with glaciers. Of course I’d been reluctant: Glaciers? Big walls of ice? Lectures by scientists? For two weeks? Won’t that get old?
     But the trip was free, and I figured: Go, see what it’s about.
     So a flight to South America, a few days in Buenos Aires. Then a 1,900-mile hop south to the tip of the continent, where the RCGS Resolute was moored, waiting.
     I had just been shown to my stateroom and was exploring, pulling open drawers and peering behind cabinet doors. Behind one was a well-stocked minibar: rocks glasses, little bottles of Jack Daniels lined up, soldiers ready for duty.
     “Oh,” I thought, quickly closing the door. “I’ll have to ask the purser to take that out.”
      I’m a recovering alcoholic. And yes, I had considered, before agreeing to the trip, the risks of taking a cruise for a fortnight. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson’s pithy description — “Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned” — being on a cruise is like being locked in a bar with the chance of relapse. But I decided to risk it. “I’ll not drink there the same way I don’t drink here,” I assured my wife.
      When reformed drinkers tell their stories, they usually begin at rock bottom, after maybe a parting glimpse of the debased routine of an addict, just to set the scene. Then bam, the crisis, some disaster, an accident, a crime, a shipwreck of confusion and shame, then the slow swim toward the light, lungs bursting, time running out. The meetings, confessions, coffee.
      But everyone tells that part. I’ve told that story myself, many times — of how I was arrested on a domestic battery charge for striking my wife after a bout of heavy drinking and placed on leave from my job at the Chicago Sun-Times. I remember sitting, squirming at a luncheon at Rotary/One in Chicago as I was introduced to talk about Drunkard, the recovery memoir I had written. The Rotarian’s words made me sound like Satan. Head bowed, I slowly strolled to the podium, frantically trying to think of a way to crawl out of the hole he had dug for me.
     When that book was published, a politico pal raised an eyebrow and summed it up this way, half puzzled, half amused: “You’re telling on yourself.”
     You betcha. Candor is key in recovery because addiction depends upon continual lying, to yourself and everyone else. You can’t fix a problem you won’t even acknowledge. By telling the worst, you also show that you are willing to be honest.
     But deceit is a persistent pest; it can be hard to keep out. Even when spilling the beans about your life-changing screwups, there is deception of a different sort. The lie of misdirection. Recovery begins in drama, typically, but drama is not the essence of long-term recovery. Routine is.
     The long haul involves struggling to change your perceptions, change your ideas of behavior, of what life is about. Going into recovery is trading one thing — your adored substance — for everything else, except that addiction has so skewed your judgment, you’re not sure that’s a good deal.
     You have to reset your mind, recalibrate your values. That takes time, practice. I remember sitting in rehab, half asking, half demanding, “How will I ever go to France?” Sincerely wondering, baffled. What would be the point? Without red wine? Cognac? Champagne? Aperitifs in little cafés? You might as well stay home.
     You have to drink. Drinking is the joy of life. Particularly when you travel. Particularly in France. Good luck finding a tourism advertisement that doesn’t show the happy gray-haired couple clinking glasses. I saw a cruise ad that showed a tiny ship crossing the gelid surface of a martini, as if drink were the journey, the destination, the ocean itself. For many, it is.
     Then our oldest son spent a semester studying economics at the Sorbonne. (“In French!” I would tell my friends, putting an extra Ohio twang into the pronunciation. “In Frehnnnnnnch!”) We had to go see him. How often do you get the chance? 
     We stayed near the Pantheon and busied ourselves plunging down into the catacombs, through the Louvre, up the Eiffel Tower. Near it, a lovely restaurant my son had found, Astrance. A single sigh for my sparkling water instead of cabernet. But the meal was fantastic, the service so crisp and professional.
     On the downside, no wine. On the upside, maybe the boy wouldn’t have excelled the way he had in a broken household with a drunk dad. My wife certainly wouldn’t be there. At one point our son took a photo. We were positively glowing. We looked young, happy.

To continue reading, click here.