Show some respect for your elders

Respect for the Aged Day ask we “upload pics to honor the elderly people in your life.” My father Robert, 91, at home in Buffalo Grove.

    When I was a little boy, an elderly man from our neighborhood would go from house to house with a wheelbarrow, selling vegetables from his garden. I don’t remember his name or what he looked like.
     But I remember my father asking him a question: “Who was the first president you ever voted for?” His answer: “Teddy Roosevelt, 1904.”
     I bring that up because Monday, Sept. 18 is Respect for the Aged Day. Didn’t know that? No shame there. I wouldn’t know either, except that Chicago Public Media’s manager of diversity, equity and inclusion sent an email encouraging us to celebrate the day.
     It began in Japan in 1966 — that word “aged” is the giveaway. Not a word many Americans would use to describe themselves or anybody else. Nor is “old.”
     I remember being at the birthday party for Harry Heftman, who owned the Chicago hot dog stand at Randolph and Franklin. He was looking a bit rhumy about the eyes, and I thought of beginning a column, “Harry Heftman is looking old ...” and asked his daughter if she thought he would mind. “Oh no, you can’t,” she said, aghast, “Harry would hate that.” Heftman was 103 years old.
     If you can’t be old at 103, when can you be old? And the honest answer is: never. Not in our culture. Disdain for the aged is the last acceptable bias. Our culture sticks old people in ghettos, so automatically we never even pause to question the practice.
      At 63, age-wise I have a foot on the boat and a foot on the pier. Especially since my parents are both alive, at 91 and 87. Having moved them from Boulder to Buffalo Grove last year and been mother-henning their increasingly complicated care ever since, I have “respect” down cold, but can’t pen a general encomium to being old without recognizing that much of age is simply horrible — a sheering away of every hope and pleasure you ever had, while undergoing expensive tortures straight from Dante’s hell.
     “The cold friction of expiring sense,” as T.S. Eliot writes. “Without enchantment, offering no promise/But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit/As body and soul begin to fall asunder.”

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The third prayer

View out our window Saturday morning at the Lion D'or Hotel in Haarlem

     Saturday was a long day. We woke up in Haarlem at 6:29 a.m., a minute before the alarm was set to go off. Caught the 7:36 No. 300 bus to Schipol airport at the train station across the street — the airport bus leaves every 10 minutes, on the sixes, which is kinda embarrassing when you're from a place where there can be two hours between trains.  

Note the little golf hole.

     At the airport I admired and participated in, once again, a tradition invented by the Dutch at that very airport — urinal targets. Cooked up by an airport custodial official to reduce "spillage," it was estimated that cleaning costs for Schipol bathrooms fell 8 percent afterward. Perhaps a dubious figure, in my estimation, but one cited in a captivating 2017 Washington Post article that gives the little images as an example of "nudge"economics: getting people to do the right thing by gentle persuasion, as opposed to, say, punishment. The piece quotes University of Chicago Nobel Prize winning economist Richard Thaler talking about the targets — I also saw a housefly used. One does tend to aim for the target.

     We boarded an 11 a.m United flight to Chicago. Airline problems are so commonly dissected we forget to notice that they usually work just fine, and are still a wonder. Here the flight was completely unexceptional — at one point I marveled, six miles up, 500 miles an hour, into a 100 mph, 50 degree below zero headwind. "A lot quicker than walking," I said to my wife. Three movies — "Singing in the Rain," "Eighth Grade," and "Bohemian Rhapsody" — and we were back in Chicago. As the plane taxied to the gate, the windows flecked with rain, the first we'd seen on our entire trip.

     O'Hare, as usual, was less impressive than the flight to it, or the urinal target for that matter. The passport control line to enter the country filled a room, and was worse because I knew it was coming. Open borders my foot. At least the huge line moved quickly. They're remodeling Terminal Five — so maybe it'll resemble those sleek and pristine European airports at some point in the far-off future. Right now the place is a maze of construction barriers and exposed conduit. As we snaked through the room, I juxtaposed the billboard boasting about Chicago being a "world class city" with the ripped up ceiling and the hundreds in line. It's an empty boast when we can't even put on a good face for visitors who have just arrived. (I spoke with a Dutch engineer on the plane, here for the first time, to spend 10 weeks working on coffee roasting technology in Lincolnwood. I gently suggested that Lincolnwood is perhaps not the best Chicago has to offer, that he not spend all his time there and, perhaps, make his way to the Art Institute. He hadn't heard of the place, but seemed willing to give it a try). A United official shouted to the mob that, contrary to the instructions they received, they'd have to retrieve their bags in the process of missing their connections. 

     At least American Taxi worked well, as always, a new electric car pulling up a few minutes after I ordered it. The skies were overcast, the familiar highway now felt odd. One of my favorite parts of vacation is that decompression back into your life, and after almost 10 days away, everything was satisfyingly strange, even new. "Nice house" I said, as the taxi pulled up.

     We emptied our suitcases, threw the laundry in the machine, stacked up our pile of presents for relatives and helpful neighbors. I hurried across the street to retrieve Kitty who, as always, was a much appreciated houseguest. We were delighted to learn that the first neighbor who had sat for four days later asked the second if they could have her back for one night, as a birthday treat for their daughter.  A dog of love.

     Saturday was Rosh Hashanah, so after a nap and a shower, we drove — "Nice car!" I said — over to my sister-in-law's in Skokie for dinner. We brought toys from Tivoli Gardens for the grand niece and nephew, plus Dutch chocolate and weird Danish licorice — spheres wrapped in lemon-flavored chocolate, purchased at a shop that resembled a jewelry shop in the basement of a swank Copenhagen department store, with two pretty clerks seriously handing us various orbs to sample.

     Before dinner, there were three prayers — over the wine, the bread, the apples and honey for a sweet new year, 5784 for those keeping track at home (not that anybody does, beyond the holiday, except for weddings and bar mitzvahs). The Hebrew rang a little melancholy, having been through Anne Frank's house the day before, and noted the brass "stumbling stones" in front of houses noting where residents had been rounded up and sent to their deaths — three-quarters of Dutch Jews died in the Holocaust, a much higher percentage than in Belgium or France.. You can't see the little animated film at the end of the tour, plugging the need to vigilantly protect democracy, and not think about our own orange fuhrer, still a growing threat.

     My brother-in-law, Alan, said the prayer over the apples, and added something I liked, quoting his friend, Rabbi Menachem — that at Rosh Hashanah, while we ask God to inscribe us into the book of life, it is actually we ourselves who do the writing. We whose acts and thoughts make the coming year a good one. Or not. We save our own lives, Alan said, by doing what we love. "You write yourself into the book of life for a good year." he said and I smiled,  thinking, That's a plan. 

Chicago Voices #3: Road sign warrior

     I was walking north up Wells Street the other day, looking for Erie, when I was reminded of a pet peeve of mine. The signs on one way streets downtown often only have print on the side facing traffic. Thus pedestrians, such as myself, going the opposite way of the car traffic, are left to our memory, or GPS, to figure what street we are approaching or, must pass the sign and look back. Which does not seem a system that behooves a great city.

    I thought of complaining, but what would be the point? Who would listen? Nobody. What would happen? Nothing. 

     That is not the way of Steve Bahnsen. Readers with long memories might recall the column in 2015 that I wrote about Bahnsen, a self-appointed monitor of highway signs or, should I say, the abysmal state of highway signs. Since that ran, I have received a steady stream of countless updates.  I thought I would share one. Whether you view him as a tireless advocate or a fixated crank, he reflects that very American notion that gaps should be filled and wrongs should be corrected, 

     I am thrilled and delighted to be able to share the attached photos of the new Exit Number plaques and gores just installed along US Highways 61/151 in Dubuque. This culminates a 20 year project to have these done.
     The photos are in an order coming from the south with the first exit being 183. The exits continue north with the last one being 190.
     (Not all of these have exits or entrances in both directions thus the gap in numbering them.)
     Gores are at the exit with a green arrow. New gore signs were installed featuring the next exit number also.   
     One photo shows the Mile Post 189 sign. Miles begin at the southern or western border of a state. US 61 enters Iowa from Missouri south of Keokuk. Mile Post 1 is a mile north of the border. Dubuque is thus 189 miles from the Missouri border.
     After crossing the Mississippi River, US 61/151 continues in Wisconsin where the numbering system begins all over with Exit 1 where the highways go to Hazel Green, Wis and East Dubuque, Illinois.
     Numbering these exits will be helpful for those who need GPS to find where they are going.
     Exit numbers are shown on the new 2023 Iowa highway map.
     These signs are near the US 20 bridge that was shown last year on the Mighty Mississippi River stamps.
     I hope you have enjoyed this information about I O W A.

     Steve

Which leaves a question: what is a gore? I put it to Steve. A few days passed, and then I received this:

     I was downstate and in Kentucky yesterday. Now I have about fifty reports to write about
signs and postal problems. So I just got to your message.
     To define a "gore" on an expressway or Interstate:
     It is the area where the exit is. And is between where the mainline continues straight
and the exit ramp begins. People get into the right lane to exit through the gore to get
to the exit ramp.
     The green sign here with an arrow is called the Gore Exit sign.
     If the expressway has exit numbers, that number is now shown on the Gore Exit sign.
as another reminder for travelers of where they are going.
     Those Dubuque exits were not numbered at all before so that is why everything is new.
     Also, less that one tenth of one percent of the exits nationwide are to the Left. So the
arrow on these signs point to the left. An example is when you are going to O'Hare on
I 190, there is a Left Exit to go south on the Tri State, I 294.
     However that Gore Exit sign has been down for months!!!

Wagon of Fools

Wagon of Fools by Hendrik Gerritsz Pot (Franz Hals Museum)

     It's not that I don't trust you. That would be nuts. I don't even know you. But my wife, well, she is convinced that if readers are aware when we go on vacation, then one will rush over and rob our house. Heck, she could be right. It is a crazy world. Things happen. And she does tend to be right. But even if she is not — and in this case, I suspect she isn't -- one secret to staying married for 33 years is to respect the  improbable concerns of your loved one. 

     So when we're away, such as our current jaunt through Denmark and the Netherlands, I try to draw the veil, and prop up the pillows of these posts to make it seem like there's a person here. 

     But now we're heading home. So unless you're very quick and grab your pry bar and your big sack and race over and start looting within the next few hours, we should be okay. (Not that I'm encouraging you to do that. We have a tight-knit, vigilant block of dog walkers and sharp-eyed, concerned people. My greatest protection is that there really isn't anything worth taking. A few nice Cooper lamps, maybe).

     That leaves me with the challenge of what to say. The past week was lined up before we departed.  But I carelessly left Friday unaccounted for, forgetting the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from marching around foreign capitals for a week. A few days ago, my wife looked at her FitBit and announced that we had logged 25,000 steps. More than 10 miles. Phew.

     So okay, writing. Mmm... There must be something, right? Observations galore, just waiting for me to blow a whistle and order them into formation. Tweeeeeet!  Line up!

     No? That didn't work. The perceptions just sprawl around the divans of the mind, gazing at me with languid torpor. 

     Can't have that. Not after biking around Copenhagen, climbing several tall towers, and seeing every painting in Amsterdam.

     Paintings like the one above, in the Franz Hals Museum in Haarlem, It stood out, or at least will have to do until I can get home, drop my bags, and slide behind my iMac — provided you haven't stolen it — and organize my thoughts, which right now pretty much revolve around where to get the next herring sandwich.

      It's called "Wagon of Fools" by Hendrik Gerritsz Pot. Painted in 1640, the work is a commentary on the infamous tulip craze of 1637, when the Dutch went mad for the bright flowers, and fortunes were made ... and then lost ... on speculation in bulbs. You see the travelers drinking and counting their profits while hope — in the form of a bird — flies off. Notice the tulips on the flag, and being worn as crowns, or cuckold horns. 

     I was about to say "I hope this doesn't perfectly encapsulate our current political situation," but hope, as I like to say, is not a success strategy. And it kinda does.

      But even if it is apt, there is also a kind of comfort. Some reassurance in realizing that widespread self-destructive idiocy is not the sole property of America in 2023, though it sometimes does feel like that. We didn't invent it. Folly is a general characteristic of the human condition. The Dutch somehow muddled through their tulip craze, and managed to laugh at themselves later. Americans will somehow get past this, and even learn to laugh at ourselves. We might as well. Everybody else does.

The Matching Game.

    Are parlor games even a thing anymore? They can't be, because parlors — formal rooms reserved for entertaining — have pretty much vanished, turned into living rooms where we slump in front of the flatscreen (I originally typed "slump in front of the television" but "television" suddenly felt wrong, like calling a refrigerator an "icebox.")
    Is entertaining still a practice? Occasionally we invite people over, after realizing we haven't seen them in years. And even more occasionally we are invited over. But work isn't the only realm where we've retreated indoors to play Wordle. 

     Or maybe that's just me. Maybe you are partying with your pals like Holly Golightly. I don't want to forget Thoreau's essential dictum about never mistaking a private ailment for an infected atmosphere.
     Perhaps I should define my terms. I think of parlor games as the silly challenges hosts impose upon their guests at cocktail parties. (Cocktail parties! I remember those. Thirty years ago we had cocktail parties and invited our many friends. I'm sure young people still have them. At least I hope they still do. Cocktail parties were fun).
     Now we have family gatherings — lots of them. For Jewish holidays — Rosh Hashanah is coming up. Passover in the spring. Beer and brats at Hanukkah. And secular holidays. Fourth of July. Or  the Sunday before last, a joint Labor Day/Oldest Son in Town barbecue. Not a lot of people — 15 friends and relatives; we might have had 10 more, but several families were out of town.  We grilled hot dogs, chicken and salmon burgers.
    My sister-in-law and her eldest daughter had been shopping at the Skokie International Market on Lincoln Avenue, and were struck by the array of unusually flavored chips. Wanting a pretext to try them without saddling themselves with lots of bags of chips they could never eat, they  concocted a game: guess the flavor, dubbing it "The Matching Game."
     She prepared eight paper bowls, numbered one through eight. Then gave us sheets headlined "Matching Game: Identify the flavor of chips in each bowl!!" 

Game sheet

     

     Down the left side, numbers 1 through 8. Then a list of the flavors: Mexican Chicken & Tomato; Peach Beer; Beef Wellington; Steak Kebab; Roasted Cumin Lamb; Numb & Spicy Hot Pot and Roasted Fish.
     At the bottom, more instructions: "Draw a line to connect the bowl number to the flavor you think it is! " And then a final reassurance, given the number of vegetarians and vegans at any family event: "Note: these are artificially flavored .. none contain actual meat or fish!" (More exclamation points than I would use, being miserly in that department. But a key to games is to impart enthusiasm, so exclamatory zeal can be forgiven).
    We sat around the coffee table, passed the bowls, one at a time — this seemed important, for encouraging discussion. Much better than just having the guests have at the bowls in a random rush.  Fun was had,
    The most notable thing about the results were how indistinct most of the flavors proved to be. Only one really stood out and was universally declared — the really repulsive Peach Beer. I kept score, in my reportorial role. Some flavors completely stumped the dozen players — nobody identified Kebab correctly.  The most flavors anyone guessed correctly were three — the winners my wife and our 8-year-old grandniece. One player was disqualified for amending his answers as the flavors were revealed. The process took, oh, 20 minutes. It was fun.
     In retrospect, if you want to add spice (sorry) to the game, you can ask players to speculate what cultures enjoy which particular flavors. "Peach Beer" struck me as Middle Eastern, simply because I encountered a bottle of Mood Peach Malt Beverage in a taco place a few years back, and it hailed from Jordan.

    Wrong. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. While peach beer is a common beverage — I found this article on 26 popular American peach beers, Lays Wavy White Peach Beer Chips are imported from China.  I suppose we're going to have to get used to it.

Katy lied.

  

                   Katy lies
                   You could see it in her eyes
                   But imagine my surprise
                  When I saw you
                                 —Walter Becker/Donald Fagan

     Amazing how a word can slumber at the back of your brain for years, for decades, only to leap up, ready for duty, when the moment calls for it.
    "A katydid!" I cried, spying the gorgeous specimen atop my storm door when I returned from taking Kitty on her nighttime stroll a week ago Sunday, perching prettily atop the five coats of marine spar varnish.

     A round-headed katydid, I think. One of the 14 species of amblycorypha. 
     Not very well camouflaged in this context. Taking a risk to closely inspect my work. Nor am I 100 percent sure it's a katydid — it could be a false-leaf grasshopper — the decisive head is a bit tucked down. Though now that I look at it, it does seem a little grasshoppery.
     Either way, you have to admire the way the camouflage leaf on its back includes the veins of the leaf — details are important in any deception. An art form all their own. Vladimir Nabokov, a devoted butterfly lover, savored this sort of thing. "The mysteries of mimicry had a special attraction to me," he wrote. "Its phenomenon showed an artistic perfection usually associated with man-wrought things. . . When a butterfly had to look like a leaf, not only were all the details of a leaf beautifully rendered but markings mimicking grub-bored holes were generously thrown in." Details no predator would ever notice, Nabokov cooed.

      The next morning, I spied a monarch flitting about a milkweed — they lay their eggs in milkweed. I couldn't get a good photo, I'm afraid, as the beastie was instantly on the wing. 

     But it does lead to an interesting question: two insects, both trying to survive, one by hiding, the other by advertising itself boldly. What's the difference? The katydid would make a tasty snack, while the monarch is poisonous, like the milkweeds it feeds upon as a caterpillar. So the bright orange and black coloration is a big lepidopteral "fuck you!" to potential predators. "Go ahead, eat me. It's your funeral."

     Which has to be encouraging to us toxic, out-in-the-open sorts. Leave hiding in the shadows to others, the timid leaf munchers. Fear nothing; our poison protects us.

      When I opened the screen door, the katydid oafishly moved to the lip of the door frame, where closing the door would crush it. Good thing its ancestors cooked up that leaf disguise, over countless millennia, and willed it to their progeny, because they're not very bright, the trademark curse of heirs and legacies everywhere. Kind soul that I am, despite my venom, I shooed it away and let it live to hide for another day.

Flashback 2005: "Fancy lamps"

     The assignment was to write about a Chicago factory. Any factory. I remember flipping open the business-to-business Yellow Pages — it was that long ago — and settling on a small company that made dental tools. Because who writes about that? It could be me. But the owner or, rather, his brother, didn't want to talk to the media. So I settled on Cooper Lamp, because I drove by their factory on the Kennedy. And, by the time I was done, found myself comparing it to the Ford factory on Torrence Avenue. It's a long piece, but I'm away for a while, so I thought I'd share it with you to pass the time.     

     From the street, the factory housing the Frederick Cooper Lamp Company is not as ugly as most. The building was originally a ladies undergarment plant, built around 1900; it has a courtyard and windows, luxuries that would later be dispensed with in most factories. The four-storey brick building, with a square tower double that height, is a reminder that a factory was once the centrepiece of a neighbourhood, second only to the local church. The tower, like a steeple, catches the eye; it advertises the product with a sign informing the 260,000 cars that pass every day along the Kennedy Expressway leading out of Chicago that Cooper produces lamps of elegance.
     ‘Elegance’ can be taken as an euphemism for ‘costliness’ and Cooper lamps are indeed expensive. The lamps are made of brass and copper, maple and marble, bronze and china, silverplate and gold leaf. No one has any idea how many different styles they make and the number keeps changing. The cheapest costs $200, and from there prices soar into the thousands for crystal chandeliers.
     None of the luxury of Cooper’s product extends to the factory itself. The entrance is through a single flight of narrow stairs leading to a small, not particularly clean, reception area. This was last decorated, from the look of it, in the early 1970s: pea green carpeting, and fake wood-panelled walls. A few well-tended plants, a carved eagle and some handmade sparkly butterflies on the bulletin board save the room from dreariness.
     The public face of Cooper Lamp is more attractive: Suzanne Lauren, an energetic woman whose dangly bracelets bear an uncanny resemblance to decorative elements of certain Cooper lamps. She has worked at Cooper for twenty-three years and is now the vice president of design. She is accompanied by her dog, Cooper, a German shepherd that has the run of the front office, a room as cluttered as the reception area is bare. One wall is given over to manila folders; the desks are piled high with catalogues and promotional materials; lamps in various stages of assembly crouch in the corner as if they have wandered off the factory floor.
     A lamp is divided into four parts. First is the shade—a screen of paper or cloth that softens the harshness of a bare bulb. Second is the electrical socket that receives the light bulb. Third, holding the socket aloft, is the base which is often decorative. Anything can be used for a lamp base—bowling balls, football helmets, toy trains—but given Cooper’s high-end market, the bases tend to be brass urns, china vases as well as an eclectic range of objects that seem designed to appeal to wealthy widows: brass elephants, bronze bulldogs, Chinese horses, verdigris dancing frogs, copper Nepalese horns, metal palm trees. Floor lamps tend to be more uniform because of their larger size, their bases simple brass poles or turned wooden posts.
     Under the base is the part that most non-lamp people never consider: the mounting. This is a little circle of wood or stone or, in less expensive lamps, plastic, that acts as a buffer between base and table top. The mounting is like a pedestal for a statue. Without it, a lamp looks unfinished, like an urn with a lampshade on top.
     In practice a lamp has many more pieces than just these four main components; each part consists of many more parts. A mounting might be three circles of wood, each a bit smaller than the one below. A base might be an urn that is assembled out of a dozen various rings and handles and curving sections. An electrical socket includes a cord threaded through a metal channel and a plug and a harp (the loop of brass that holds the shade). A shade can be a complex confection of cloth, metal, cardboard, or even a decorative fringe consisting of one hundred inch-long threads, each one holding a colourful glass bead.
     This multitude of parts—wooden feet, stone discs, copper tubes, glass beads, porcelain dogs, brass finials, tin pineapples—dictates the set-up of the 240,000 square foot Cooper factory. Most of the plant is given over to rows of shelves and bins and tables to hold the thousands of dusty parts. The pieces are stored where they are made since the Cooper plant consists of a series of shops. This makes the factory unusual in this age. The typical modern factory either makes something—forging steel rods, moulding rubber tires, dipping chrome plating; or it assembles something—putting together bicycles. But Cooper does both, out of necessity.
     ‘All the small businesses in the Chicago area stopped—wood carving, plating, metal forming and casting,’ says Frederick Gershanov, who owns Cooper Lamp with his older brother Peter. ‘So all those operations we took into our company.’

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