In companionable silence

    

     My older son and I sat on the riverside park bench in companionable silence — his term, coined years ago to describe those rare intervals when his father shuts up and just lets everything be.
     A feat I like to think I'm getting better at. Shutting up, as I've said before, is an art form, and like any creative discipline, requires practice. I'm aided in that of late I sincerely have nothing to say to him. Not that my life is uninteresting, I hope. It's just that it's interesting in the same way now as it was last week and last month and last year and the year before and five, 10 and 20 years ago. I write a newspaper column, tend to a century plus house, am the lesser half of a stable marriage. There isn't a lot of news, particularly since we talk every week, more or less. So rather than fill the silence with endless prattle — my go-to move — I've learned to just sit. In companionable silence.

      Jersey City was never on my mental map before he lived there; how could it be, with the supernova of Manhattan glittering across the water? I wouldn't have been able to tell you whether it was 100 miles away or, as it is, one PATH train stop beyond Lower Manhattan. Jersey City is a very livable little urban environment — that is, if a city of more than a quarter million people can be called "little." It manages to be both populated and deserted. We walked around quite a lot, and barely had to look both ways crossing the street. The only peril was the light rail system, and the narrow train blares a horn if it seems as if you're about to blunder in front of it. Otherwise, empty block after empty block --  everybody seemed somewhere else, except for the big street festivals, which seem to take place every night we're in Jersey City.    

     Thursday, I shared a leafy photo taken Wednesday from across the Concord River, near the Old North Bridge in Massachusetts.  Today I thought this  very different view, calming and marvelous in its own way, approaching the complexity of nature. Another panorama across another river — the Hudson, at what my son calls FiDi — the Financial District of New York, dominated by One World Trade Center, the former Freedom Tower, which was built, finally, after long dithering, next to the footprint of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, now converted to a very moving memorial — well, moving to those who remember the day. Now that I think of it, a single candle would be a moving monument to that day, to those who remember  it.

      Rambling is a survival skill to the dwindling band of us whose jobs involve filling space in newspapers. But in life, it's good to sometimes just sit and watch the river go by, particularly in good company. I would steal glances in his direction. The same face as when he was a toddler, now trim and angular and bearded. But the same contours, the same blue eyes. I tried not to speak, and generally succeeded. 

"My husband wouldn't like that"

     Sometimes there's a scrap of information that just doesn't fit into a particular story. But you just can't let go either. For instance, I spoke with veteran newspaper photographer Bob Black for my big Sunday story on how the Sun-Times covered racial issues that ran early this month.

     We of course talked about other things besides race, and he let this quote fly, which really seems a postcard from a vanished world:
     "This was in the beginning of a social change in so many areas," said Black. "It wasn't just civil rights — also women's rights were starting to take shape at that time, I remember we used to do society assignments. We'd go up and ask the women their names, they would always give their husbands' names: Mrs. John So-and-So. When that began to fade away the paper was in the forefront. The paper started asking us, when we took down names, to ask the ladies for their names, not their husband's names. Some of the women were reluctant to do that. Others said, 'Yeah, I'll give you my name. I'm Margaret So-and-So.' Some of the women would talk among themselves, wondering if they dared, and they'd say 'Oh, my husband wouldn't like that...."

     I thought of holding onto that, building a story around it. But this is one of those mornings when I'm in transit — heading home after 10 days away — and think its legs are strong enough to stand on its own. A reminder that, if for some guys the whole Me-Too movement seems just too much, that it's a pushback against something, against women not even feeling comfortable withj their own names. A reminder that a married woman couldn't have a credit card without her husband's permission until 1974 and the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

     I've been around enough to remember that world first hand, although my memory, naturally, has a lighter spin. I was the opinion page editor of the Wheaton Daily Journal, and got a letter signed "Mrs. Pierce Hiscock." Right, I thought, like I'm going to fall for that. The letter was halfway to the garbage can when I thought: you never know... I phoned the number. A lovely older woman answered. 

     "Is this Mrs. Hiscock?" I asked.

     "Yes...." she replied. "It is."

      "This is the Wheaton Daily Journal, and we've received your letter."

      "Oh good."

      "We we like to run it. But, ah, we were wondering if, umm, we could use your first name. What is it?"

      "Jane" (or some such thing; it's been 40 years).

      "So we'll sign it, 'Mrs. Jane Hiscock.' Would that be all right?"

     "That's fine."

So Mayor Johnson’s NOT going to Mexico?

     Media folks can be so negative.
     After Mayor Brandon Johnson announced he was going to the southern border — America’s, not Hegewisch — I was licking my lips. This is what we journalists — OK, just me — call “a duck in a bucket.”
     Imagine: the large galvanized pail, filled with water. The placid mallard, gazing up innocently as I raise the metaphorical double-barreled shotgun of scorn, squint one eye, smile, then squeeze both triggers. A simultaneous blast and quack of alarm, cut short, and gone in a cloud of feathers.
     Too easy. First, the border inspection tour is a cherished cliche of the right wing. Put on your Carhartt coat, slap a look of Ted Cruz concentration on your mug as you stare fiercely at a group of miserable refugees huddled a safe distance away. Use ing their misery to buff your image among those not savvy enough to be disgusted.
     For the mayor of Chicago to volunteer to perform that charade — it’s like his attending a Trump rally to see what they’re like.
     Besides, Eric Adams, mayor of New York, just went to Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia to tell them “New York City is full,” an empty gesture immediately denounced as a “paid vacation.” So Johnson’s trip, had it happened, would have been parroting a bad New York idea. Next he’ll suggest that Chicagoans pile garbage on the sidewalk.
      I was rubbing my hands. Christmas is coming early this year ...
      And then Johnson has to go and ruin it by canceling his trip, in reaction to the chorus of ridicule along the lines of, “Why don’t you investigate the city that you are theoretically mayor of instead, and acquaint yourself with the myriad problems right the flip here?”

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Autumn lake

    

      If I were a big important national columnist, with a big important national following hanging on my every word, I would feel obligated to weigh in daily on the ghastly news continually arriving like so many shells raining down on us.
      But here, on this hobby blog, with my ragtag bag of fans, who for some unfathomable reason like this stuff, I don't have to pretend to make sense of the insanity of the Israel-Hamas War, as it is now being called, according to official AP style. I don't have to try to explain what is to be done with immigrants — that's Friday in the Sun-Times — or set up a felt board and use Mr. Sun and Miss Moon to illustrate what Jim Jordan's double defeat in his attempt to become Speaker of the House means for the future of Trumpism. 
     Instead I can share with you an image of this lovely lake, which is ... well, better not say, in case you decide to rush there. What I will say is that the view, in this direction, was the solitude and serenity of this weathered old grey wood building, crouched amongst the explosion of yellow leaves, placid before still water. Though it was not an isolated lake. There were lots of people all around me. But I chose to face away from the crowd, for a few precious moments. I recommend it highly. The problems will all still be there waiting when we turn around. 

Is razor sharpness heritable?

Cafe reader, Amsterdam

     For all my vaunted rationality, there is an undercurrent of mysticism in me. That's nothing to be proud of — it's as common as dirt. But nothing to be ashamed of, either . . . I hope.
     What do I mean? I was reading the New York Times obituary of Louise Glück, the great American poet who died Saturday. How to describe her? Kind of the anti-Mary Oliver. If nature in Oliver's poems is affirming, redemptive, serene — those reassuring wild geese flapping into view to tell us everything's okay. -- then Glück's world is “bleak,” “alienated” and “austere.” When Glück writes "I set myself on fire" the reader wants to blaze alongside her.

      The future Nobel laureate allowed me to use seven of her poems in the literary guide to recovery, "Out of the Wreck I Rise," I wrote with Sara Bader, and I was grateful, and felt perhaps an even stronger kinship than the one inspired by reading her poems, since we'd spoken several times and money changed hands. I wrote about her three years back, and you can read more here.
     The Times spoke of Glück's "remorseless wit and razor-sharp language" and then dropped this little factoid: "Her father, Daniel, was a businessman and a frustrated poet who, among other things, helped invent the X-Acto knife."

     Say no more! My mind instantly connected that "razor-sharp language" to the small triangular heads of those hobby knives. As if her incisive genius were inherited, almost pre-ordained.
     Which is both silly and how people think. Though why should it be? We do take something from our parents — that's undeniable. Maybe the silly part is anthropomorphizing the X-Acto blade into Glück's raw voice. Very Mary Oliver-ish of me, now that I think of it. Oh well, I suspect that, as much as I admire the Glücks of the world, I'm really a softie at heart.

Copyediting is life.

 

     The guard took my bag and wheeled it through an imposing bronze gate — the First National Bank of Jersey City, retrofitted into the Hyatt House Hotel. Waiting for a claim check, I did what I reflexively do — read, in this case a sign posted in front of me: "For Roof Top entrance, please go around the corner to our York Street entrance."

     Ouch, you see where that clunks, don't you? That doubled "entrance." It should be, I thought, 'For Roof Top access, please go around the corner to our York Street entrance.' Eliminates the redundant word.
     Sometimes using the same word over and over is powerful, each repetition resonating and building on the uses that went before. "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields..." Churchill's June 4, 1940 speech isn't improved by plucking out those last two uses of "fight" and making it something like, "We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall battle them on the landing grounds, we shall resist in the fields." It's weakened, if not wrecked.

     A more difficult call is when to drop redundant single words. Above, when I mentioned Churchill, first I used just his last name then, thinking of AP style, added his first, "Winston Churchill." Then lost "Winston." Some writers are so familiar there is no need for first names. "Shakespeare's sonnets" is fine. "William Shakespeare's sonnets" is overkill. 

   I'm amazed at how often, on labels, completely unnecessary words are left on. 

   Last week my wife and I were having bologna sandwiches for dinner — hey, it happens. She took a package of chicken bologna from the refrigerator. I'd never buy chicken bologna in a thousand years. It's like buying a beef drumstick. But bread was toasted, Plochman's applied and voila, dinner. At one point my gaze fell upon the bologna package.
     "What?" my wife asked, noticing me looking.

     "I'm copyediting the label," I said, tapping the motto curving along the bottom of the red and yellow logo: "Glatt Kosher Product." "You don't need the word 'Product' — 'Glatt Kosher' is sufficient. 'Product' doesn't add anything meaningful."

     Of course, there's a lot of that going around.

Strengthen one another

 

     Family obligations took me to New York for a quick visit — one full day and out. But I happened to arrive Friday, just in time for the "Day of Rage" that Hamas had announced to inflict their wrath on any random Jew who happened to be nearby.
     Which was worrisome, because I'm nothing if not a random Jew. Would it be safe? Myself, I wasn't concerned, but my loved ones were worried, as loved ones will be.
     So I'm waiting for my plane, about 6:30 a.m., and this gentleman is in line with his two sons — first I noticed the yamulke on the younger boy, about 7, and the fringes of his tzitzit. I saw them and thought, "If he can face the world today, so can I."
     At that moment the man whipped out his tallit, put on tefillin, and began davening his morning prayers, right there in line. Not a lot of wind-checking among these folks. No reading the room. I took one photo, and though I am not a pious person, as you know, thought of a line from Isaiah, "Fear not, for I am with you." That's why he can do this, my wife later explained. Because he believes God is protecting him. I almost pointed out that God is notoriously lax when it comes to watching out for his Chosen People, particularly last week. Hope springs eternal, I suppose. Maybe God means well, but is clumsy. Or pre-occupied. All those physical laws to keep straight, all those galaxies to keep twirling.
     On the plane, he sat a dozen rows ahead, still in his prayer shawl and phylacteries. I wanted to say something to him, out of free-floating goodwill and my own anxiety about going out and about looking like someone from the cover of Der Stermer. But I was aware from past experiences that religious Jews do not always welcome uninvited expressions of solidarity from their weak-tea religious brethren. Just because the Lubavitch are the Welcome Wagon for piety doesn't mean other ultra-orthodox sects are. Some have more of a leave-me-the-fuck-alone vibe.
     I happened to stow my backpack in the compartment over his head. During the flight, I went to get a snack from the backpack, mulling over what I wanted to say to the Orthodox Jew, should I get the chance. What came to mind was one of the few snatches of Hebrew I know: Hazak, hazak v' nit'hazek, which means, "Strong, strong and may we strengthen one another."  It's usually said when a congregation has finished reading a book of the Torah, and struck me as a something that could be repurposed as an expression of encouragement. Or not. I'm no expert on these things. More like someone trying to reconstruct a kindergarten teacher's manual based on having gone to kindergarten, long ago.
     I kept the phrase Hazak, hazak v'nit'hazek on the tip of my tongue, ready to deploy it, even as we left the airplane. He lingered — I wasn't quite up to planting myself and waiting to fake a chance encounter. Finally, I cast a final backward glance, and then vanished into Newark International Airport. Probably for the best. 
       The word hazak unlocked a memory, however. I was at a bar in Jerusalem, back in the day. The Red Windmill? I asked the bartender for a traditional Israeli drink and he made me a bieru hazaka (בירה חזקה) — a "strong beer" — consisting of a glass of ale with a shot of arak dropped into it. It did the trick, and reminds us of how the ancient and the modern mingle in Israel. IF Jews don't belong there, they don't belong anywhere, which is sorta the point anti-Semites are trying to make. Anyone who suggests that the Israelis just abandon their ancient land a) are being by definition anti-Semitic, by expecting Jews to do something that no other people would be glibly expected to do and b) have never been to Israel. It's such a small, beautiful place. There isn't much comfort to be found in this current nightmare of slaughter and atrocity with no end in sight. But this is undeniable: at least they're fighting over something worth having. You can't really blame the Israelis for wanting to be so strong and tough that nobody can take their land away. That's what we do, what every other country tries to do.