The air hurts

  

     Chicago had the worst air quality in the world on Tuesday. The sky was smokey grey. Wednesday didn't seem much better. I was downtown both days, attending to business at Navy Pier.
     "If you go outside, wear a mask," my wife texted. Considerate as always. I didn't mention that I had tucked a cigar in my briefcase to smoke if I had any downtime downtown. I sorta liked the image of sitting the middle of some global air quality emergency, puffing on a stogie. It smacked of defiance, if not common sense. When the sun blows up, the last human being on earth will be standing tall, giving the supernova the finger.

    Nah, will have vanished billions of years earlier. We're on that path.

    More people were wearing masks downtown. I didn't, because the air didn't affect me much — maybe a little extra watering around the eyes at the end of the day. My wife suffered more. I defrosted some matzo ball soup to combat the ill effects of toxic air, a folk remedy so inadequate it seemed almost poignant, like treating an infection by singing to it.

    Blame wildfires in Canada. The numbers were staggering. This sentence leapt out of one report: "The amount of land burned so far is 4,000 percent of the average amount." Forty times times the usual. But that story was from a few weeks ago. Now it's 50 times. Tommy Skilling, trying to put the situation into graspable terms, observed that an area as large as West Virginia has burned.

    In case it isn't staggeringly obvious, the cause should be pointed out:

    “Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States during the last two decades," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed. "Wildfires require the alignment of a number of factors, including temperature, humidity, and the lack of moisture in fuels, such as trees, shrubs, grasses, and forest debris. All these factors have strong direct or indirect ties to climate variability and climate change.”

     Is there hope? Probably not. But we can grasp at anything. I went to RL Restaurant for lunch Wednesday, hopped on a bus at Navy Pier, and was surprised to see it was an electric — the CTA has run them, experimentally, for two and half years now. It pulled up under a large square box and an orange connector dropped down so the bus could charge while it sat there, waiting for passengers. Very high tech.

     I chatted with the driver — he said that unlike electric cars, the electric buses are slower. "Even the doors open slower," he said. Still, given the air quality, it was comforting, if you didn't think about it much, to see this wan attempt to combat the global emissions problem though, as is typical of human response to gradual ruin, too little, too late.

Nikki Haley’s search for lost times

     I try not to use fancy words. OK, stop laughing; it’s true. I did it just now — my fingers itched to type “recondite words” — meaning “obscure.” But I held back. Flaunting your vocabulary is showy and pretentious, and what’s the point of writing something that nobody understands?
     But sometimes a word is too perfect, sitting there, waving its little lettery arm in the air, serifs flapping, straining, going “Ooo, ooo, me me.” Eventually, you relent and use it.
     Like “revanchism.”
     The dictionary defines revanchism as “a policy of seeking to retaliate, especially to recover lost territory.” This can be figurative as well as literal. You want something back you once had, or think you had.
     Revanchism is the primary moving force today in the Republican Party, and understanding it explains much. The entire Trump monstrosity grew out of a promise to claw back what was lost. “Make America Great Again” implies it sure ain’t great now, not with all these immigrants and minorities strutting around as if they belong.
     To that end, the GOP is trying to grab the steering wheel and put the nation into a skidding U-turn. We hear that every time Ron DeSantis opens his mouth and wages his cruel two-front war on trans kids and Black history — we don’t want to see the people we once didn’t have to see.
     That includes even supposed moderates like Nikki Haley, who sent a three-sentence tweet that roiled Twitter like a cinder block tossed into a koi pond:
     “Do you remember when you were growing up? Do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out.”

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"Fireballs of dissention"

     "Fireball" is one of those words that has a clear literal meaning — a ball of fire — but no obvious figurative uses. If I say someone is a "firecracker," it's obvious that I don't mean they're an exploding tube filled with gunpowder, but someone with a vivacious, sparkling personality.

     But who or what would a fireball be? The term does come up figuratively in baseball — pitchers with a very fast fastball as "fireballers." That's an exception, though.
     It isn't used very often. Myself, I only deploy the word in one setting, again very literally. We'll be on the highway, and a car will blow past us, weaving in and out. 

     "I'll drop back," I say to my wife, "and avoid the fireball."

     So it was odd on Sunday to encounter the word, not once, but twice, in independent situations. My Ohio friends and I were strolling on the beach at Put-in-Bay, and I noticed a pile of Sprite cans, along with a scattering of little single serving empties of Fireball, a gross cinnamon whiskey drunk by youngsters, the gustatorily challenged and emotionally immature.
     There are other products that use the term — Atomic Fireball candy, made by Chicago's own Ferrara, a reminder that the mushroom cloud rising up from an atomic bomb was called a fireball. Both share an unsubtle cinnamon connection, and I suppose giving it the "Fireball" moniker is an attempt to cover up its harshness with intentionality: it's supposed to taste this searingly bad.
     I wouldn't have given the word a second thought. But later in the day, my friend and I had to pop into his old wooden barn, and we looked in on his 1947 Buick convertible, which normally we ride around the island in, the cynosure of all. The old beauty been acting up, lately, and is in need of repairs.
     "Do you want to see the engine?" he asked — I didn't recall ever seeing the engine in the car before, and I've been riding in it since I was 17.
     "Sure!" I said. (Now that I think of it, I bought a new car in January, without ever popping the hood to look at the engine, and have not done so once since. I can't think of any kind of defense other than I assume it has one).

     He opened the massive hood as I thought of the relevant lines from Bruce Springsteen — "big old Buick" —and there, for the second time in an hour, was the word "Fireball" (which, upon reflection, is not the best name for a part of the car receiving gasoline).
     Seeking other uses, I consulted Wentworth and Flexner's Dictionary of American Slang and found "fireball" defined as, "An ambitious efficient, and fast worker; a very active person."
     Online, I noticed that the American Meteor Society defines "fireball" as "another term for a very bright meteor" and encourages readers to report any sightings back to the AMS, including as many details as possible, such as brightness, color and duration, for inclusion in their Fireball Sightings Log.

     In 1907, there was a "Fireball" racehorse, and "fireball" was used to describe an orb-shaped gas light, which were sometimes erected on a cement stand "to safeguard the boulevards and compel motorists to be careful." They were common enough on Chicago streets to be described as "familiar" — there were several on Michigan Avenue — and motorists complained about them.  

      My Oxford English Dictionary has mostly literal meanings: "A ball of fire or flame; applied esp. to certain large luminous meteors, and to lightning in a globular form." It traces "fireball" back to 1555, noting that it also describes balls of coal dust used to kindle fire, and includes a few figurative uses, such as this, from 1718: "At this Time there were Fire-Balls of Dissention flung all over the Kingdom."  

     That's certain evocative of the incendiary nature of dissent. Though doesn't it seem that, lately, dissent is not the exception, but the rule? We've become a society of complainers, objecters, arguing forcefully for whatever private individual phantasm holds us in thrall. It's been a while since anybody worried about our being a nation of sheep and, in all candor, a bit of conformity in any realm would be met with gratitude and relief.  

Zealotry is never satisfied.

Julius Gari Melchers, "Mother and Child" (Art Institute of Chicago)

     Religion is supposed to be voluntary, right?

     I mean, imagine that a particular sect — say the Jews — found a way to force one of their idiosyncratic ritual practices on the general public. Let's say Kosher food laws.

     That wouldn't work well, would it?
     What if cheeseburgers were suddenly illegal in half the country, due to judicial decisions? Pork chops, banned in 20 states. 
     Even though it wouldn't be all that inconvenient. Yes, plain old burgers are never quite as good. But nobody's life is going to be severely altered. 

     And they'd have reasons: it's healthier! Morally superior! No risk of boiling calves in their mother's milk. Billboards along the highway would go up, showing plaintive calves, begging not to be boiled.
     Still, it just wouldn't fly. People would rebel.
    Because Jews are an extreme minority. And their rituals are unfamiliar. And not many people care much about cattle.

    So why ... why why why ... when it comes to arcane Christian practices — Christian sexual practices — is somehow forcing a particular religion on others is okay? Maybe because they struck upon a really good metaphor — not calves, but babies. Warm cute cootchie cootchie coo babies. And convinced themselves, and others, that these entities — in reality unborn fetuses — were babies, and had to be protected. Car seats. Fuzzy blankies. And an abortion ban. A ban that went into effect in half the country a year ago, on June 24, 2022, the day Roe v. Wade was reversed. 

    You know the story. Yet it doesn't seem to enrage you. Or anybody else. Women haven't risen up. Because some buy the fiction, and others are cowed, or complacent. Though what has happened is that American attitudes have shifted. Abortion, which is supposedly murder, is now more popular than ever — about two-thirds of the country think it should be legal in the first trimester. Where it is illegal, no women or doctors are finding themselves in jail (because the zealots behind it don't really think it's murder, generally. That's just words they say when imposing their religious practices on others by law). Plus, having finally got their way, zealots move to the next step in their dance back into the imaginary past, going after contraception. And gays. Because zealotry is never satisfied. Repression of unbelievers is the end, not the means. 

      Which is another reason the democratic system of voting and elective representation is under attack. It isn't just about worshipping Trump. He's a symptom, remember, not a cause. A symptom of an extreme minority trying to impose its will on the majority of non-believers. Welcome to America, 2023.

What's Russian for "maybe next time"?

Assassination of Czar Alexander II

       Didn't see that one coming. 
        Well, we did. At least the possibility. As Vladimir Putin plunged his nation into a pointless, endless, bloody war against Ukraine, hand-wringing onlookers in the West optimistically speculated that maybe this would end by somebody moving against the Russian dictator for botching the situation so thoroughly. Maybe his people would rise up. Maybe somebody would stop him.
       Yet nobody really believed that possible. Russia's second revolution, in 1991, turned out to be more of a shift from Communist tyrants to non-denominational dictators, like Putin, who seems cemented to office like a barnacle. He won't simply go away. It can't be that easy. Previous Russian leaders whose policies were epic disasters — Stalin allying himself with Hitler, only to be betrayed by him — were allowed to continue their campaigns of terror and error. For years.
      Then for a few hours Saturday, Yevgeniy Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries were headed to Moscow. Maybe deus ex machina, the nightmare would just stop. Who knows what might happen?
     Turns out nothing, yet. Prigozhin fled to Belarus. Putin's misrule continues, the threat to his power banished. The meat-grinder in Ukraine grinds on. 

     Perhaps this is a necessary reminder that heroic action leading to actual change is the realm of the movies. In real life, the tectonic forces of history grind on. Greed, self-interest and pitiless inertia mean that missteps, once taken, turn into calamitous journeys into ruin. "The road to hell is smooth," Virgil writes. "Easy the path and simple the way. But to turn, and regain the upper air. There the work, there the labor lies."

     Although. The fact it began, that it seemed to almost happen, does remind us that anything is possible, and those that rise by raw power can fall by it too. With totalitarian successes being chalked up over the globe, and would-be fascists vying for position in this country, the pilot light of hope should be kept lit. We'll need it in the days ahead. And seeing Putin squirm to fend off enemies at home is just the fuel we need right now. Maybe next time it'll work. 

One sign, two people

     Forty years is a long time for two people to hang around each other. And while I’d never claim that their minds start to run on parallel, even identical tracks, well, maybe I should just describe what happened today.
     So my wife and I are driving to spend the weekend with friends. And we’re a little early, with time to kill. So we stop by Potawatomi State Park, to hike for an hour.
     At one point, we pass the sign above, and I turn to read it as we walk by: “Please carry out your trash.” And I instinctively consider making a joke about it. But I immediately shake off the idea — no man should suggest that his wife is trash — preferring to smile inwardly than to air the joke and risk causing offense. Shutting up is an art for that requires constant practice.
     But even as I am silently basking in my triumph over the weisenheimer impulse, my wife stops, turns, takes a step toward me, reaches out, grabs my elbows and lifts.
     “What are you doing?” I ask, knowing the answer.
     “Trying to pick you up,” she replies, with a wicked smile.

No more ridiculous than golf

Rey Kadon took this shot of the Miller High Life 400 in Brooklyn, New York, in 1989.
“Who wouldn’t have fun on a charter bus with a bunch of your coworkers and kegs of beer?” he recalled.

     An apology is in order.
     I’m so inured with the toxic free-fire zone that pops up around controversial issues, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that most people are decent and sensible. When I invited readers Wednesday to write in explaining the allure of NASCAR, I didn’t really expect that people would then actually, you know, write in explaining the allure of NASCAR.
     But that’s exactly what they did — wrote thoughtful, often heartfelt reflections and celebrations of the sport. So as much as I like to flit nimbly from topic to topic, it felt wrong to just ignore them. So here goes.
     Neal Elkind finds beauty in the races, writing:
     “NASCAR has more in common with watching baseball than maybe you may realize. It’s a wonderfully lazy spectator sport. It’s auto racing perfected (in its traditional oval) as a spectator sport. ... The strategy of cars maneuvering for position and the use of aerodynamics. F1 and Indy, you only see cars whooshing by for 1 second (like watching competitive downhill skiing in person). The noise, which is astounding, and motion, is hypnotic. Like baseball, it’s pastoral. Really. You can wander off to the concessions for 15 minutes (or, a whole inning) and not feel that you’ve missed anything. The crowds tend to be families that do not fight or swear in the stands. I could go on about how this race shows the beauty of our city’s lakefront to a whole new audience.”
     Doug Nichols traced the appeal of racing back to antiquity:
     “There are the funeral games held by Achilles to honor Patroclus. Among other sports, the games featured a chariot and a foot race. Centuries later, the chariot racing in Constantinople’s hippodrome was important to the social fabric.”

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