Chicago Voices, #1: Little Village

A reader, E. S., writes (the emails are complete and unedited, the ellipses are his):

     Greetings! You and I had emailed about the state of things on the streets of Chicago, some time back. You and I are both old enough to understand that change is difficult and slow ... if it ever happens at all.
     I happened to come upon a situation last Saturday morning and I had to laugh ... crying is a luxury many of us in these neighborhoods cannot afford. On the corner of 24th Street and Sacramento Ave ... in the middle of the intersection was a garbage dumpster. No one seemed to mind it. I guess the police had other things to do as well. But it's meant to convey that Satan disciples aren't welcome here. I think the bigger message conveyed is that everyone around these neighborhoods knows who the law is ... and sadly who it isn't. It's a very sad story told over and over again.
     The end result was that half a block from the dumpster and less than 24 hours after this picture was taken. 3 people were shot. Someone somewhere needs to tell these stories everyday. I wish I could ... but that's a story for another day.

     I asked him how he knows what a dumpster being in the middle of the intersection means.

     That one is easy Sir. It's a roadblock ... much like the ones we used in Iraq and Kuwait when I was there. Except we used armored vehicles... haahaa. The upside down pitchfork is a warning to the Satan disciples who use that moniker in their graffiti and have used it for decades. On the street it means DK disciple killers.
     The roadblock functions to slow the traffic to identify potential targets. Once that's done ... well the shooting normally follows. Military tactics on a rudimentary scale ... often with the desired results for one group ... and detrimental results for the other ... and the wars ... on our streets ... go on.
     It's more socioeconomic than most people think. It's not lack of opportunities or deficiency in schooling that drives the violence. I too am from these streets. However, violence prevention begins in the home and without adequate father figures ... or discipline..kids turn to the streets. As Glenn Frey once sang ... it's the lure of easy money and has a very strong appeal.
     School is hard..work is hard ... life is hard. But if you tell a kid I'll give you 20 grand for 20 hours ... and no one at joke to say HELL NO! Well that settles that.

   I asked if he'd mind my posting the photo on my blog, with maybe a few of his remarks, shielding his identity of course. He replied:

     Sir ... you can post anything you wish ... and I'm not afraid of being identified. You can share anything I've shared with you, words or images. Fear is what feeds these situations. And until someone, somewhere stops being afraid ... whether in city hall or the CTU or the CPD ... kids will keep killing kids.
   Will someone give a shit? I don't know. At least not where we live. If someone is shot in Lincoln Park ... there's wall to wall coverage. The tragic shooting in Highland Park produced an assault weapons ban. But kids in Chicago's poorest neighborhoods are killed every single day ... and yeah some of it is reported ... but most of it isn't.
     We live in a world where we know nobody cares ... it makes us indifferent to the suffering everywhere else. They don't give a shit about us ...why in the world should we give a shit about them.
     And so it goes.. I do thank you for giving a shit ... and replying to my emails. I should work for the Sun-Times ... the stories ... I could tell.

Keep Chicago ‘a good place to be’

     I was working on April 13, 1992, and covered the Loop Flood, when the Chicago River poured through a crack into a forgotten freight tunnel and shut down businesses across downtown.
     My central memory, besides the phalanx of six mounted Chicago policemen cantering up an otherwise deserted Wabash Avenue, is of the streets around City Hall.
     They were jammed with equipment — big pumps, banks of high-powered lights, communications gear and command centers — was rushed to the scene.
     “God bless America,” I thought. We might be as woefully inept as anybody, but when disaster strikes, we’ve got the resources.
     Sometimes. Had the crack been fixed in a timely fashion, the repair might have cost $10,000. Instead, billions were lost, the result of being overly addicted to regulations. Someone could have said, “Screw the bidding process; just get it fixed.” Someone didn’t.
     That happens a lot. We gawp at a problem until disaster strikes. I’m still shaking my head over how the city torpedoed the Friday Morning Swim Club at Montrose Harbor.
     You’ve certainly heard of the swim club — a couple of young professionals started jumping into the lake Friday mornings to kick off their busy weekends. Quickly hundreds, then thousands, of young folks joined them.
     It wasn’t just innocent fun; it represents something important.
     Think about it. What’s the biggest problem facing Chicago? Besides residents being robbed or shot. That’s only a contributing factor to an even larger problem: the hollowing out of downtown. Emptied by COVID and post-George Floyd unrest, ruthlessly mocked across the country as a nest of crime. Employees happy to work in their underwear at home. Tourists staying away.

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Mailbag

 
     The immigration columns Monday and Wednesday certainly shook the nuts out of the trees, and there are too many good ones not to share. This one made me smile, just for its opening rhyme, thorough reasoning and that priceless circum vita/kicker after his signature. Of course I'm including my answer. Enjoy.

Hello Neil,
     Yet again you are drunk like a junk punk lunk bunk chunk dunk sunk skunk on your disgusting, revolting and nauseating moral and ethical arrogance, vanity, conceit and hubris! My brother once ran the Border Patrol, Neil. You are entitled to your own opjnion (sic), but not your own facts, Neil. You lie yet again when you write that Texans regret the illegals did not die on the razor wire. The barbed wire keeps the barbarians out, Neil.
     You lie yet again when you write it is just as legal to sneak over the border as it was to arrive at Ellis Island. You are a mendacious prevaricator not fit to wipe the ass of a Border Patrol agent, or for that matter Thomas Jefferson or Christopher Columbus! You have disgraced yourself yet again, Neil, with your ignorant opining on an issue, illegal immigration, about which you know virtually nothing. It was my brother who implemented the legalization of 4 million illegal aliens in the 1980s under Simpson-Mazoli.
     Neil, it would have been better if your ancestors had stayed wherever their original home was instead of arriving the Steinbergs in America to have their reputation shredded by your moronic writings. The only question is whether that overestimates your IQ and it is actually that of an imbecile. Certainly you need to go back to kindergarten and learn some kindness to cure you of your immoral heart, Neil!
    Sincerely,
    Charles Whitty Everson
    Harvard BA with honors
    Vanderbilt JD

My reply:

     Didn't Ted Cruz go to Harvard? I'm beginning to see a pattern.

     NS

Don’t be like Texas’ ‘Murph’

    

La Guia The Guide, by Rigoberto A. González (National Portrait Gallery)

     There are a lot of heartless people. They held a festival on social media after I wrote Monday about how Chicago could do a better job housing refugees shipped here from Texas. I wish I could address the top 25 reactions. One will have to do:
     “Multiply all this by hundreds and you have what Texas has put up with for years,” a reader from Murphy, Texas, — let’s call him “Murph” — wrote on Facebook. “Sorry, but BS. I’ve had my car struck twice by uninsured motorists with no papers. More than half the patients in the Dallas County public hospital were undocumented. The strain is enormous, on all services and neighborhoods.”
     A lot to unpack. First savor “had my car struck twice by uninsured motorists with no papers,” a version of what I call the “an immigrant peed in my alley” argument. And I heard Spanish spoken at a McDonald’s once. We all carry our private crosses.
     But let’s try to be sympathetic, the liberal superpower.
     Gosh, struck twice?!?! That’s terrible Murph. All these undocumented immigrants so busy greedily gorging at the public trough they can’t even be bothered to insure their luxury vehicles. What’s wrong with them?
     Hmmm ... could it be they can’t buy car insurance in Texas? Why sure they can. All they have to do is produce a valid driver’s license. And how do they get that? Easy, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Merely “present proof of lawful presence in the US.”
     Ooh, kind of a deal-breaker for the undocumented, huh?
     Shame Murph doesn’t live in a civilized state, like Illinois, where not only do we show Christian sympathy to the families drop-kicked here, because his governor is awful, but Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill last June — HB 3882 — allowing undocumented residents to get Illinois driver’s licenses. So they can buy car insurance. Like regular people.
     Speaking of regular people, another go-to move of haters is to damn the group they scorn for doing the exact same things that they do themselves. Like getting sick.

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One bad ass wasp

    Nearly a million known species of insects in the world, and many more yet unknown, despite biologists fanning out everywhere, cataloguing them hand over fist.
     So we shouldn't be a surprise to be confronted with any bug not seen before.
     And yet ... you just don't expect to bump into a new one. 

     Such as Sunday, when my wife and I were strolling in bliss around the Chicago Botanic Garden, I was drawn to an outcropping of a familiar white flower.
     "Queen Anne's lace!" I exclaimed, rejoicing in a particularly bright white array. "I haven't seen much of it this year."
     Three steps away, my wife announced that I'd better be careful; there were bugs on them. A lot of bugs. Sure enough, small black insects that shone iridescent blue when the light angled a certain way. 

     I could pretend I knew them on sight. But in truth, identification had to wait until I got back to the office and could ask my Uncle Google. The blue mud dauber wasp, or chalybion californium, which the U.S. Forest Service dubs "The Black Widow Killer" because it is "most famous for its predation of black widows." 

     Not round these parts, I hasten to add. As far as I'm concerned, the blue mud dauber wasp isn't famous at all. On the other hand, who am I to quibble with the United States Forest Service? 

     The wasps snatch spiders right off their webs, sting them to death (don't worry; they aren't physically able to sting humans, which is a relief). Then they take them home to feed to the kiddies. (The main biological difference between bees and wasps, which both belong to the order hymenoptera, is that bees feed their young with pollen mixed with honey, while wasps provide them with captured insects).

    And those homes might be, ah, borrowed from other wasps. The blue mud dauber will  taking over the nests of other species of wasp, booting out their larvae and replacing them with their own.

    All told, one bad ass wasp. As a rule, I'm not fond of wasps — based mostly on an unfortunate encounter with more mundane yellowjackets almost a decade ago. More of a bee man, myself.

     However. It must be that iridescent blue. A great blue will cover many sins, such as being a wasp. Anyway, it was news to me, and I figure I'd share it.

Chicago needs every busload

Maria Caripa, an asylum-seeker from Venezuela, holds her daughter, Maria Caripa, 1, outside             the District 18 police station (Photo for the Sun-Times by Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere).

     Help me here.
     Chicago is a city famous for ... what, exactly?
     Burning to the ground in 1871? Prompting residents to emit a shriek of dismay and give up?
     No. Chicago boosters fanned out across the country, raising money in a flurry of civic pride. Chicago rapidly rebuilt itself, better than before.
     Maybe Chicago is known for volunteering to host an enormous exposition in 1893, then realizing it had bitten off more than it could chew, tossing up its hands and hiding behind the sofa when the world started rattling the doorknob?
     No. The city tapped Daniel Burnham to oversee the quick construction of an enormous, ornate White City. The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition boosted Chicago into the modern age.
     So how come in 2023 Chicago is in agony over a daily busload of immigrants? Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s quotidian middle finger to tolerance and decency, a jeer of Texan regret that they didn’t die tangled in the miles of razor wire Texas has strung across the Rio Grande.
     Their arrival is a logistical nightmare. It has to be, for the city to house refugees in police stations, as if they were public facilities designed to help communities deal with crisis — oh wait, that’s what they are, right? Still, it must be hellish for some cops to be daily confronted with objects of their scorn.
     At least judging from FOP head John Catanzara, who last Thursday snidely suggested immigrants be housed at City Hall. (Hmmm ... not a bad idea. Have you been to City Hall? Mostly dead space, particularly in the upper floors. You could house 300 immigrants there and never see them).
     Both police stations and City Hall are desperate choices. We must do better than this. We have the track record. Assimilating immigrants is Chicago’s brand. No need to trust me. “Immigration from abroad ...” The Encyclopedia of Chicago notes, “has been the city’s hallmark characteristic in the public mind.”
     We’ve got it light, relatively. In 1890, 68% of people living in Chicago were born abroad, a situation so chaotic that three years later, Chicago threw a fair for 25 million visitors.
     Today, 20% of Chicagoans were born outside the United States. We need every one. Chicago’s population in 2023 is 2.7 million. In 2000, Chicago’s population was 2.9 million. In 1980, it was 3 million. Between 2020 and 2022, Chicago lost 3% of its population.

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Coveting thy brother's tomatoes

  

     It's tomato season. As readers well know, every year I plant a tomato garden and ... well, just look at these beauties, above, on display in a bowl in my kitchen.
     Am I proud? Why, sure! I'm so proud that ...

     Geez.

     How does Trump do it? Lie continually, I mean. I can't even lie about tomatoes.
     Okay. To be honest, which I seem doomed to being, not so proud. Not proud at all. Because I didn't grow them. My sister-in-law did.

     There, I said it. Are you happy?
     The tomatoes were a bolt from the blue. My brother and I were having a belated birthday lunch — 10 weeks late, in fact. We're both busy guys.
     I arrived at the restaurant — Blufish on Willow Road, excellent sushi, great prices, first-rate service, and a lux room like some trendy Manhattan eatery — and he was already sitting there.
     "I brought you a present," he said, pointing to a shopping bag on the floor. I seized the handles. Heavy. Lifting it to the table with both hands, wondering, What could this be? I look inside. Tomatoes. A lot of tomatoes. Big, beefy, red. Perfectly ripe.
     I felt a surge of complicated emotion that, in a movie, would involve flashing to the stunted tomato plants in my garden, and their pathetic output — mostly green, a few quivering on turning red — with this bounty. Game, set, match for my brother. Or, rather, his wife, since she had grown them.
     "What's Japanese for 'tomato shame'?" I asked. My sister-in-law is from Osaka. 
     "Tomato no haji," he said.

My tomatoes are just sad.

     I am shamed, tomato-wise. Plunged into tomato shame hell. It wasn't always like this. I remember those years, of carrying bags of tomatoes to the neighbors. Share the bounty. My bounty, the bounty of tomatoes grown by me. 

     But in recent years, not so much. Okay, not at all. I have an idea what's been stunting them — my apple tree, planted unwisely next to the garden 20 years ago, must hog enough sun. Switching out the soil for fresh compost hasn't done the trick.
     Don't get me wrong. I'm not completely lame in the garden. The cucumbers have been fabulous this year. Massive. Each one bigger than the next, monsters the size of my forearm. As soon as we polish off one there's another on deck. Which is good because, as you know, a cucumber goes bad in about three days, so it's great to have a steady, fresh, free supply.

One of the first paintings of tomatoes in
Japan, by Kanō Tan’yū (1602-1674)

     Being a word guy, I distracted myself by focusing on the Japanese word for tomato — tomato — which seemed odd, since the fruit came to that country in the Edo period — the 1600s — by Portuguese traders. At first they were considered merely decorative; it took several hundred years for people there to start eating them.  

     Europeans, too, were slow to eat tomatoes, which remember are part of the nightshade family, along with deadly nightshade and belladonna. (The leaves and roots of tomato plants are indeed poisonous). 

      The Oxford English dictionary offers some interesting historical takes: Grimstone's 1604 D'Acosta's History of the Indies, mentions "...Tomates, which is a great sappy and savourie graine." Then there is an evocative 1753 citation from Chambers Cyclopedia Supplement, "Tomato, the Portuguese name for the fruit of the lycopersicon, or love-apple; a fruit eaten either stewed or raw by the Spaniards and Italians and by the Jew families in England."

      The "love apple" term was due to its supposed aphrodisiac properties Noah Webster mentions it in his 1828 dictionary, though Samuel Johnson omits any hint of tomatoes in his 1755 dictionary, despite the word being in use. My Wentworth & Flexner Dictionary of American Slang cites the "a very attractive girl or young woman" meaning back to 1951, and R.S. Prather's Bodies in Bedlam: "The idea that such a luscious tomato might be mixed up in a murder went square against the grain."

"Karaage-kun Tomato BBQ Sauce Flavor"
is a mixture of BBQ sauce and ketchup.

    Circling back to Japan, which originally called tomatoes togaki, which means, "Chinese persimmons;" they made up for lost time becoming fans of both tomatoes and ketchup, which they call tomato kechappu. Southwestern Japan is Japan's tomato growing center — I've been there, to Kumamoto, for its regional mascot's birthday party, and remember that tomatoes are mentioned in Kumamon's calisthenics song. Japan also holds the Guinness world record for largest tomato plant. 

      So how did Japanese tomatoes end up with tagged to an English loan word name? The short answer is: they didn't. Both Japan and the United States borrowed the word from the same original source. Tomatoes are thought to have originated in South America, probably Ecuador or Peru, then found their way to the future Mexico, where the Aztecs named them tomatl. English has a number of foodstuffs that echo Nahuatl, the Aztec language: avocado (ahuakatl); chocolate (xocolatl); and chili (cilli).
     It's sorta cool to think that the ingredients you're assembling for dinner were called for, using basically the same name, by someone hungry after a long afternoon watching ritual victims having their hearts torn out atop a pyramid to the greater glory of Quetzalcoatl 500 years ago.

     I've been eating my bounty at almost every meal. On fresh bread, with goat cheese and butter. In peaches and tomato salad. Or cucumber and tomato salad. Or just sliced, eaten with a knife and fork and a spritz of fig vinegar. I've even experienced the joy of sharing. A neighbor stopped to chat, with his beautiful Doberman. We talked politics for a long time, then I had an epiphany.

    "Say," I said. "Would you like some tomatoes?" He nodded happily yes, he would. I ran in the house and selected four big beauties. 

     "Here you go!" I said, handing them over. I meant to tell him that I had not in fact grown them myself, but was regifting the tomatoes. Before I could, however the conversation wound up and he went on his way. Maybe not so honest after all.