'Don't you go' — Breaking the bad news to bees

Bee hives at the Chicago Botanic Garden

      "Oh no!" I said, surprised though not stricken, to learn of Queen Elizabeth II's death Thursday afternoon on Twitter. I immediately passed the news on — informing my wife, who was sitting a few feet from me. Since then I, no doubt like you, have been eagerly lapping at the endless ocean of reports and commentaries on the seismic shift, because that's what royalty does: give us something grand to think about, embroider our drab, work-a-daddy lives with regal purples and heraldic oranges.

      Like most, I imagine, I was pleased that Sad Sack Charles finally got his big promotion, and understood, if not entirely appreciated, those who used the moment to remind us what brutal imperialists the Brits used to be. Though it does seem bad form. I've gone to the funerals of people who had significant flaws, yet managed not to announce those flaws in a loud voice across the funeral parlor. But I understand the motivation. Someone used the queen's passing to tweet the opening sentence of Patrick Freyne's delicious analysis of royalty and celebrity on the occasion of Oprah's interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last year. I admired its concision, metaphor and pacing and passed the lines along:

Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.

      Prose like that reinforced my natural inclination to say nothing. I don't have a dog in this race, nor any particular insight to add. When I tried to ponder writing something, the first thought that came to mind — trying unsuccessfully to arrange tea with the Queen when I went to London to give a speech in 2009 — was not about her at all, but about me, my go-to inclination that I constantly battle. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent," Wittgenstein writes. Sound advice.
      But my 48 hours of unusual reticence crumbled at a touch Saturday when I saw a brief report from Rolling Stone, of all places, headlined, with beautiful simplicity, "Queen Elizabeth II's Bees Have Been Informed of Her Death."
     Normally, implausible news should be checked out, but this, by Daniel Kreps, has a purity, sweetness and veracity that immediately manifests itself in the opening lines:

     The hives of bees that reside within the gardens of Buckingham Palace have been informed of Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
     In keeping with one of the stranger traditions connected to the British royal family, the palace’s official beekeeper broke the news of Her Majesty’s death at the age of 96 to the roughly 30,000 bees currently on the grounds, with the royal beekeeper also tying black ribbons around the hives in memory of Queen Elizabeth II.

     I would stake my reputation on that being true. A thousand writers from the Onion working for a century couldn't approach that tone. And if it isn't true, well then I will happily, as Sherlock Holmes always threatened to do, retire to Sussex and keep bees.
     I don't want to seize Kreps' work — click on the link, it's the best thing you'll read today — though to urge you toward it, I'll share the words that royal beekeeper John Chappie used to break the bad news:
     "The mistress is dead, but don’t you go. Your master will be a good master to you."

     Reading that gave me a mad impulse to again ask Mayor Lori Lightfoot to meet me at the hives which, for years, were on the roof atop City Hall. Then I remembered that, a) she always refuses, via her underlings and b) the hives have been removed, I was told when I was fact-checking the book, which of course has a few lines about Chicago beekeeping. As to whether the bees were exiled through Lightfoot's hostility toward bees — maybe she was stung once as a lass in Massillon and harbors grudges, her particular genius, or maybe as sentient creatures other than herself, they naturally draw her contempt. Or maybe she is completely indifferent to bees — that sounds right — and the hives were dismantled independent to her, as part of the general program of deterioration that grips the city. 

     Anyway, the queen is gone and Chicago hives are gone, I am told. In Britain, the bees now labor for King Charles III, and know it.

 

Northshore Notes: No Moor

     I'm almost embarrassed to say what my primary takeaway is on Northshore Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey's lovely rumination on childhood and royalty. But a writer should be who he is, so here goes: There's a Sock Monkey Museum? Why was I not told? Until now of course. Enjoy.

By Caren Jeskey

     Long Grove Confectionery was the Disneyland of Lake County when we were kids. We’d pile into a wood paneled station wagon and take the very long (for little people) journey northwest of the city to a magical land of candy. Just beyond the fairytale forest — perhaps Deer Grove or Lions Woods — an idyllic town appeared to us in the windshield. Thousands of lights twinkled between the trees as the cozy skyline of Long Grove came into view.  

      My brother, sister and I jumped around, bursting with anticipation, from our unbuckled spots in the back, the way back, or the way-way-back. This was the '70s. As you well know, children were allowed to nestle between mom and dad in the front seat of a car, sit unbuckled anywhere, or even lay down in the back, seats folded down, on sleeping bags.
     The good old days! We were closer to death but it sure was fun.
     My father would drop us off to go park and then trek back alone — our quiet and steady hero (with my mom being more of a Wonder Woman type of hero, on top of the quiet, steady work she did for the family). We’d hop out of the car and stand before the confectionery, which was a perfect replica of a little red schoolhouse. We had arrived. We were royalty and nothing could stop us from getting the giant peanut butter cups and turtles that we’d later chomp down in record time.
     When Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor died at the age of 96 this week it was very sad to hear. I’m sorry for the loss to her family, and everyone else who loved her. Her death is also a mortality reminder for several people in my life. It was easy to immortalize such a powerful person.
     The awareness of memento mori was passed down to me, as a person with Irish Catholic Polish Lithuanian blue- and lower-collar roots, and a heavy dose of Jewish influence. It’s not bad to remember that we are all going to die. Everyone we love is going to die. And as a friend pointed out, everyone we don't like is going to die too. For me, remembering that simple fact can make vitriol towards others less appealing. It can steer us out of judgment and into living our own lives rather than getting lost in anger towards others.
     Memento mori is “God willing,” or “b’ezrat HaShem,” in Jewish and Hebrew tradition. It’s “today is a good day to die," a phrase credited to everyone from Hunkpapa Lakota leader Low Dog to a Methodist preacher named Wilbur Fisk in the 1800s, to a character in the movie Smoke Signals, and even to Klingons. It’s “In sha’Allah” in Arabic. “Lord willing and the crick don’t rise” poetically said by a southern redhead friend. “Deo volente” in Latin.
     Since mortality is inevitable for most of us — not sure about Elon yet, but time will tell — trying to live a good life is comforting. As a non believer in higher powers, my purpose is doing what I can to make the world a better place while I am here, and when I am not, in the form of good memories. Yes. Easier said than done, and an endless journey.
     Good health starts with a strong sense of oneself. Not a grandiose or insecure ego, but a healthy ego. Knowing what we can change and what we cannot change, and then taking reasonable steps to get the results we want while being able to accept disappointment as a part of life.
     I often speak about the past with nostalgia. It is not lost on me that there are countless reasons to be grateful that the days of yore are in the past. For us to bid them adieu.
     The idea of blue bloods is one such reason. There is no such thing as royal blood. Even their legacy is rife with every ailment and affliction known to the rest of us. They are just much, much richer.
     I cringed when I saw that Oprah and Harry had a show on AppleTV called The Me You Can’t See. I wrote it off as probable fluff. Then I decided to give it a watch, rather than being an uninformed critic. The first episode was done very well. Harry speaks of what it felt like to lose his mother, and how his very needs as a young child were ignored in the name of keeping up appearances at that time. It exhausted the little fellow. Harry, like many people, had give up his essence as a child to perform, in order to maintain his attachments to those he relied on. A recipe for disaster as far as human development goes.
     The term blue blood came from the idea that milky white people in Spain, whose veins show through their skin, are superior. Their blood must not get mucked up with the blood of darker skinned people such as the Moors. It’s time for this archaic false belief to be put to rest. I realize that it’s not at all that simple, and the monarchy has its place in the stability of the world; however, let’s revisit who gets revered and who gets trampled upon on this planet.
     To get through this thing called life, I often take day trips to fun places like Long Grove, still. Last Sunday was for Irish Fest. My family and I tapped along to Irish jigs, marveled at the strength of the young dancers, and enjoyed the bagpipe parade as musicians in full Irish regalia marched through the crowd. My niece and I found a stream with rocks to cross, and a patch of grass to run around on, then collapse and look for four leaf clovers.
     We popped into the Sock Monkey Museum. We ate on the patio of a restaurant perched on a lake. We had some simple fun, in the melee of this complicated week of 2022.

‘Homelessness’ finally eliminated!

Night Ministry worker checks on unhoused couple on Lower Wacker Drive.

     “Look at his shirt!” I said to my wife, aghast, as we watched two extremely fit young men trade volleys at the U.S. Open. Square neck, with a bib effect that made Karen Khachanov seem like he was wearing a barista apron.
     “Take it up with Nike,” she replied, dismissively.
     Translation: Change happens, deal with it.
     As if the reality that “the goat” Charlie Brown was, for baseball ineptitude, has completely morphed into “the GOAT” that Serena Williams is, the Greatest Of All Time, were not strain enough, now comes another linguistic shift, courtesy of my friends at the Night Ministry.
     ”Revised Mission Statement Recognizes Primacy of Human Connection and Dignity of Clients” reads the headline across that organization’s Fall 2022 Nightlights newsletter. 

     “The Night Ministry’s previous mission statement referred to those we serve as ‘experiencing homelessness’” it explains. “The word ‘homeless’ has been deliberately replaced with ‘unhoused,’ as the former often has derogatory connotations.”
     Progress?
     The problem with designating new words to describe negative conditions is that, no matter how carefully chosen, they quickly become negative words themselves, sometimes insults. Changing conditions is hard, often impossible, so we change the words describing them instead. Go for the low-hanging fruit.
     The idea, I believe, is that changing language helps change conditions. Maybe so. Though this also leads to something I call “euphemism creep” where any word attached with certain populations assumes the difficulties of the groups described, and becomes pejorative. “Special needs” was supposed to replace developmentally disabled, but soon kids were taunting each other as “special.”      The tendency has been to stop labeling people under all-encompassing terms. Thus you’re not blind, but a person with visual challenges. Focus on the human, not the difficulty.
     That’s why “slave” has been shown the gate. The word fell from favor to describe the condition afflicting many Black Americans before 1865 because it was based on the perspective of white society, which viewed them as chattel, period. When in reality they possessed all the qualities other people have. So instead of “her grandmother was born a slave,” I write, “her grandmother was born in slavery,” which isn’t a loss in style or comprehension and leaves the door open to her grandmother’s many fine qualities.
     But banishing negativity can blur the experience being described. Get vague enough and the reader won’t know what you’re talking about. I once wrote a long piece on what it’s like to be disfigured, talking to people with no noses, burned faces, or features distorted through neurofibromatosis.
     Mosaic, the London medical website publishing the article, was uncomfortable with the word “disfigured.” They wanted such people called “different.”

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Book event this weekend

By Barbara Kruger

     Drama and literary talks do not, as a rule, go hand in hand. Public appearances of authors are typically sunk into the realm of scripted routine, half photo op, half marketing ploy. The free coconut shrimp on a card table at Costco only with books and they're not free.
     You know what to expect: the tweedy writer, flushed from his hidey hole, shorter, older, more timid than his publicity photo would suggest, in his miserable corduroy jacket, blinking in surprise at discovering a handful of actual human people assembled before him (or, more typically, not assembled before him). The audience, should there be one, prim, skewing even older, faces set in judgment, unease and anticipatory boredom. The birdlike host, eyes darting about the room, wondering if she will be held personally responsible for scheduling this fiasco, warbling an introduction, sometimes read off a card in a plummy voice as if the speaker were not only unfamiliar with today's guest, but unaccustomed to language itself. The inert pile of books, sooooo expensive without the expected discounts, waiting to be sold. Or, more typically, not sold.
     Despite these norms there is nevertheless a bit of drama building behind my scheduled appearance this Sunday at 2 p.m. on the Plymouth Court Stage at the Printers Row Lit Fest, the first event supporting my new book, inspired by this blog: "Every Goddamn Day: A Highly Selective, Definitely Opinionated, Alternatingly Humorous and Heartbreaking Historical Tour of Chicago" being published by University of Chicago Press. It's billed as a conversation with Shermann Dilla Thomas, the "viral Chicago TikTok historian." 

    I've never met Thomas, nor have we yet conferred about how Sunday should unfold.  What if we don't get along? What if we just sit there, gawping at each other, waiting for the other to begin? Or, worse, what if Shermann simply starts talking and doesn't stop? Never pausing, nor even looking at me. The audience, spellbound, eats it up. They lean forward, hanging on each word. Rapt. At some point, about 40 minutes in, I silently stand up, edge my way around the table and leave the room. Nobody notices. 
     There's more. I've never even seen a copy of my new book, and can't honestly say for certain whether any exist, or will by Sunday. If the books do arrive, I picture a white van from the vast University of Chicago warehouse in Pullman screeching to a halt on West Polk Street and before the frame has a chance to rock back on the wheels the back doors fly open and a single box is expelled, tumbling to the curb like a hurled bundle of newspapers, then rushed through the Lit Fest crowds looking for vintage cookbooks. I'll be still settling in, looking around at the audience, puffing out my cheeks and wondering, "Where IS everybody?" when I'll be handed a book, have just enough time to register its heft and the fact that the cover is put on upside down and backward, and then be called upon to speak about the history of Chicago, which I'll promptly trace to 1491 and the expulsion of the Bohemians from Spain.
     Were I you, I would not want to miss it. There's the whole Lit Fest going on all weekend, a sprawling carnival of reading material and assorted ephemera, like those old books cut up into sculpture and velvet-lined storage boxes. They make good Christmas gifts, and it isn't often that you have the chance to sit with a real author and talk for an hour, one-on-one. Not that I'm expecting that to happen. I'm still holding out hope that Shermann Dilla Thomas shows up and is joined by audience members in addition to yourself, and maybe even an appearance by the physical book that is responsible for this whole thing, an effort that I've been working on like a plow horse for the past two years.
     But there is a chance. See you Sunday. Maybe. Admission is free.

Nick Cave fights racism with beauty

     Sometimes it feels like we’ve become a nation squatting in the ruins of our past. Living off scrounged philosophy and canned food discovered in wrecked basements, warming ourselves over the flickering fires of liberties ignited long ago and not quite extinguished. There’s so much stuff scattered everywhere, garish and contradictory, trash pushed up into enormous cliffs and walls. It takes focused attention to make any sense of it, and an act of rare genius to render the rubble into art.
     I almost missed the Nick Cave show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Why go? Well, I’d seen one of the artist’s quirky Soundsuits — a sequined costume topped with a kind of exaggerated pope’s mitre — at the Whitney in New York a couple years back. He’s a Chicago artist, and while I only recently realized he is a different person than the Australian singer of the same name, I try to keep track of Chicago artists. I also noticed friends on Facebook posting photos of hundreds of delicate foil spinners when the show opened in mid-May.
     I’ve long passed the get-to-the-show-when-it-opens phase of my life, and am now firmly trudging through the try-to-see-it-before-it-closes part. With the Cave show closing Oct. 2, the canyon floor was hurtling up at me.
     Still, not exactly a pitchfork at the back prodding me downtown. Perhaps key, my wife also wanted to go, and we paired a visit to the MCA Sunday with hitting the last day of the Chicago Jazz Fest. I’d point out how downtown was jammed with throngs of happy tourists, but that’s becoming cliche. Still, if only all those patriots edgily fingering their weapons downstate and projecting dire thoughts at a city they last visited in 1992 could muster the courage of a 4-year-old girl in a tutu to walk down Michigan Avenue. It might be an education for them. Or might not, given the current genius to see, not what’s in front of you, but what’s between your ears, projected upon the world like a slideshow.
     I’m glad we went. Because while the colorful Soundsuits, dripping with beads and buttons and bling, are weird and wry and engaging, what really struck me is how Cave takes ephemera, the kitsch you see sold on a blanket on city streets, and assembles it into tableaus of significance.

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Artifact

     What is our responsibility to the past? To preserve it, of course. Because if history isn't passed along, then it's lost irrevocably, and the present isn't always a good judge of what is important, what insignificant.
     The thing about the past, though, is there's so much of it. You can't preserve everything. What to hold onto? What to let go? Words and images can gather in an endless collection of files without jamming our capabilities. But not everything is stories and pictures. There is stuff, and lots of that, too. What to do with it?
     I met a neighbor for breakfast at Leonidas last week, the cute little Belgian chocolate shop a few blocks from my house. An almond croissant, a cup of joe, and all was right with the world. He came bearing a gift: a round plastic container holding the cookie above. With it, came a story, related to Ed Hanrahan, who 50 years ago was the Cook County State's Attorney. I knew the part about Hanrahan leading the Dec. 4, 1969 raid against the apartment where Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was sleeping, killing him and an aide, Mark Clark. My neighbor filled in some interesting details, such as that the cops on the raid were not regular Chicago police, but Cook County State's Attorney police, older, semi-retired, not particularly skilled at what they did.

     The murders — Hampton died in a fusillade of bullets, Hanrahan lied and claimed it was a fierce gunfight, pointing to nail heads in the wall and pretending they were bullet holes from Black Panther fire — scuttled Hanrahan's political career, in the way Rahm Emanuel's wrecked on the killing of Laquan McDonald. The then-powerful Democratic Party wouldn't slate him. 

     But he did not go quietly. He ran without party endorsement. As part of his efforts, Hanrahan marched in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, and arranged some piece of hokey business where he paused in front of Mayor Daley and doffed his top hat, whereupon a white dove of peace was to fly out. Only the poor bird, no doubt nearly smothered in its confinement, merely tumbled dazed to the street, a classic political moment if ever there were. 

     As part of Hanrahan's similar flailing efforts to rehabilitate himself, my fellow Northbrookite, then a wisp of a young operative, donned a white busboy tunic and slipped into the banquet hall where a Democratic dinner was about to be held and set one of these green fortune cookies at each place setting. I guess the idea was the party stalwarts would see the cookie, smile, and conclude that yes, indeed, Hanrahan is the man.

    It worked, kind of. Democratic voters, who can be a forgiving lot, gave the nomination to Hanrahan, who promptly lost to Republican Bernard Carey in the general election.

     Though notice how the story — which must no longer be familiar to many after the scouring hand of time rubbed it away for half a century — is evoked by the cookie, which he had guarded for 50 years. My friend was in the process of unburdening himself of such ephemera (And burdening me with it, I thought, accepting the token). He didn't intend on me to keep it, but his idea was for me to convey the cookie to Mike Sneed, the Sun-Times gossip columnist who at the time was a Tribune gossip columnist and, he said, reported on the cookie prank.

     I didn't find any evidence of that, though I did find mention of the cookie caper. With our office on North Racine shutting down next week, ahead of our move to Navy Pier and the Old Post Office, and rolling dumpsters being filled with crap, I couldn't see conveying this lone cookie to work and trying to find it a home. My colleagues would think I'd gone mad. My initial thought was to simply mail it to Sneed and be done with it. But that would require a small investment of time and money, so I dashed off an email: do you want this?

     "Good grief! He kept the molding cookie all this years?" she replied, neatly expressing my own thoughts. "Did he tell you what the gag was or just a campaign cookie at a political event? I can still hear Ed’s laugh. It was everything Irish back then. I think I was in my 20’s still when Ed was in office. .. Now in my dotage, I am trying to toss the dross of my newsie past. I will now choose to give the cookie a pass."

    Smart woman. Can't say I blame her. But I am nothing if not a conscientious steward of the past. I went online, where the Chicago History Museum has a form where you can offer to donate artifacts related to the city's past to the museum's collection. I'm not expecting them to send curator's with white gloves, but I could see this cookie being part of some exhibit on political mischief. Staffing being what it is, I figure I'll hear from the museum in a matter of weeks or months or never. Until then, my office at home is such an uncurated clutter of crap that another cookie more or less won't matter. Once it's gone, it's not like it could be easily replaced, and I imagine the city isn't silly with them after half a century. Though you never know.

‘You catch the moment’

 

   A criminal trial brings many people together in one room. It can get crowded and confusing, but there is a clear hierarchy to help make sense of what’s happening.
     First is the judge, of course, in this case U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, 85, set off not just by an elevated perch and flowing black robes, but his air of authority.
     He’s flanked by a clerk, a bailiff, deputies from the U.S. Marshal's office, and a court reporter, working that that odd stenotype machine with its 22 flat keys.
     There is the defendant who, if you were in Leinenweber’s courtroom last week, was R. Kelly, the singer already sentenced in June in New York to 30 years in prison for sexually abusing young girls. This latest trial, now in its fourth week, is expected to conclude in a few days.
     Kelly’s at a table with his attorneys. At the next table is the prosecution. There is the jury in their box, the press in its row, the public filling the rest of the room. Witnesses come and go.
     Then there is Don Colley, 68, bald with a neat beard. He typically holds a Stillman & Birn sketchbook, with grey or tan pages. He gazes at the proceedings, while sketching with colored markers, Pitt Artist Pens, by Faber-Castell. He likes them because they don’t have an odor, like some markers, which can give an artist away. Plus, you don’t have to stop drawing to sharpen them, as with pencils.
     You might naturally assume Colley is a courtroom artist — normally, there are two, working for TV stations. But Colley is something rarer than a courtroom artist: an artist in a courtroom.

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