No thoughts, no prayers

     

     Nah, I don’t care about the mass shooting. 

     This latest crop of gunfire victims leave me completely unmoved.     

     I know nothing about them and am indifferent to the tragedy, to the lives cut down in a hail of bullets. I don’t feel sorry for them. don’t want to know their names or see their faces. I’m not expressing any thoughts or prayers, no sympathy extended to their families.
     In fact, were they to hear from me today, as I write this, they would not welcome my condolences, even though I would be the very first to reach out to them. Doing so would only leave them confused, even frightened.
     Nor do I care about the reasons the killer did what he did. Terrorism? Mental illness? Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. The breathless wait for a “motive.” As if that matters to the dead or anybody else. The only reason we want to know what prompted the murderer to pull the trigger is so we can dismiss the whole thing even faster than we already do, which is plenty fast.
     I’m not even curious about the kind of gun, though it doesn’t take a genius to assume it’s another assault rifle, because it always is. That’s what these guns are made for, to mow down many people quickly.
     Yet we’re always surprised when they do. Or at least we pretend to be. We put these guns in the hands of millions of people. Then press our palms to our cheeks when they use them. Pathetic.
     To summarize: Don’t know anything about the shooting, its location, how many victims or who they are, who the shooter is or why he — it’s always a he — did it.
     I don’t know because I can’t know, since I’m writing this not in the aftermath of the recent atrocity, as is custom. But before, on April 9, 2021. To prepare for the inevitable.

     As I type, the victims-to-be are still going about their lives. Their as-yet-uncrushed loved ones have not seen the initial bulletin, felt the sinking dread, frantically tried to find out, learned the awful news and been stunned, stupefied, devastated.
     I’d warn them, but I don’t know who they will be. They could be anybody. Could be me. Or you — well, not you, since you’re reading this. You were lucky. This time.

      Journalism is a kabuki, a stylized form, the telling of the same story again and again. So please forgive me for trying to experiment within the confines of a long established tradition, the ritual post-slaughter hand-wringing.

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"There is another way"

    There is no shortage of Jewish people sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Which I'm tempted to portray as a stark contrast to Palestinians, who do not seem awash in sympathy for Israel and its sufferings. I can't recall hearing anybody say that Israel is a nation that has a right to exist and its people should continue to live. 

     I've been reluctant to say that in print simply because I have not done a survey of everyone everywhere, and for all I know there are Palestinian voices that echo the compassion that flows from Jewish quarters, I just haven't heard them. Besides, Jews can express themselves without worrying the Mossad will kill their families, which is not be the case for critics of Hamas. I try to be fair.

     That said, a reader, Harry R., sent this to me. It seemed a worthwhile, if idealistic, opinion. I asked to post it here today, and he said yes. He didn't ask that I shield his name, but given the tenor of the times, I did so, as a courtesy and precaution.

Dear Palestinian Neighbors:

     I’m reaching out to you as a friend, a neighbor and someone who cares about my many friends and family who live in Israel/Palestine. We need to reach out to each other, today, more than ever, before the entire region blows up. 

     First, a little background. I am a Jewish man who grew up in the Chicago area and lived in Israel for 16 years, from 1985 to 2001. During that time, I devoted myself to building bridges between Israeli Arabs/Palestinians and Israeli Jews. It is still upsetting for me to note that non-Jewish citizens of Israel grow up almost completely separated from their Israeli Jewish neighbors, living in separate communities, going to separate schools and living separate lives.

     The non-Jewish communities often lack the quality services and infrastructure that their Jewish neighbors have. During the time I was in Israel, living in the Galilee (indeed on land formerly owned by Arab neighbors) a group of Jews and Palestinians living in neighboring villages chose to break down the barriers between us. We created joint summer camps, leadership programs, community shared holidays and events. When peace was achieved between Israel and Jordan we took a group of youth leaders to Jordan. We were at the forefront of a peace movement in the 1990s that was going to change the face of Israel/Palestine. We had hope. 

     Then it all imploded. The second Intifada broke out after Ariel Sharon led a group of Israeli leaders onto the “Temple Mount/Al Aksa.” Then he was elected Prime Minister. It was at that time that I moved with my family, for personal reasons, back to the Chicago area, where I grew up. Today my heart is breaking for all Israelis and Palestinians who are suffering under leadership that does not believe in peace and has led them all to the brink. I cry for the many Israelis of all ages who were massacred by militants who were sent on a mission to “liberate” Palestine and kill Jews. These were not freedom fighters, they were murderers. 

     I cry for all the Palestinians who have been brutally murdered by Jewish settlers, while the Israeli army looked on. I cry because the peace that I worked for and believed in for many years is now farther away than ever. Last weekend I was in downtown Chicago and saw many of my Palestinian brothers and sisters rallying and calling for the destruction of Israel. Their signs read: "Palestine from the River to the Sea." They did not leave any room in their rhetoric for a peaceful Israel. And worst of all, they did not reach out to me to cry together over all the innocent lives lost. They did not criticize the cruel leaders in both countries that do not show enough care for human lives. They only saw their friends and families in Gaza who were being killed. Likewise, many of my Jewish friends and family only see and grieve over their friends and family in Israel, and demand revenge. Friends, the killing may go on and on, but how will it end? Neither side will win. It is an impossible situation filled with ongoing hate, and ongoing sorrow. But, there is another way. We can sit down together for a proper “sulha,” (Arabic for a mediation). We don’t need to agree. We need to sit down with each other and listen. We can do this at the dinner table, in our places of worship and community centers. There are many examples for how this can be done. Slowly we can rebuild trust and create something new. It isn’t too late! We have a choice. I am calling on all of you today to sit down again, share our sorrows and hopes. My friends, let’s work together before it is too late.

    Harry R.

Think before becoming the monster

By Takashi Murakami

     “Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird,” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche writes: “Anyone who fights with monsters, should be careful that he does not become a monster.”
     That aphorism has been clanging in my head like an alarm bell ever since Israel began its counter-attack on Gaza. The trick is “How?” and the honest answer is: Once the blood-letting begins, it’s already too late.
     The monster is unleashed, to rage for a long time, maybe years, before we realize what we’ve become. Or never realize, because the killing has gone on so long, it just makes sense. We had to massacre those folks. They had it coming.
     Fourteen hundred Israelis slaughtered Oct. 7, mostly civilians. Five thousand killed in Gaza since then, with more slain every day.
     All hidden behind a solid wall of justification. As if every atrocity ever committed in the history of the world weren’t backed by solid reasons, in the eyes of the perpetrators. Hamas and its supporters have plenty of excuses for the Oct. 7 attack, starting with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and stretching back to the construction of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem around 957 B.C.
     Israel can cite the brutal Hamas attack as reason aplenty to unleash its murderous fury. They have to destroy the terror group, root and branch. Destroy those tunnels. Destroy command centers and weapons caches. And if Hamas located those under mosques and apartment buildings, well, whose fault is that? Yes, Hamas doesn’t exactly poll the neighbors before setting up shop. But that is one of those fine points lost in the fog of war.

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"Doesn't Kill to Ask"

 

     The 1960s and the 1970s were the heyday the public service advertising — the brightest minds of Madison Avenue focusing their creative genius against littering, smoking, forest fires. The idea was to push the public toward good behavior, and the commercials could be wildly creative.
     Lately, I don't see much of that kind of thing in the shattered remnants of the old school media. Which is a shame, because we still need it, as I was reminded by this poster spied earlier this year by Union Station. Sadly, too much of the debate over a sane gun policy falls into a 0-or-1 non-debate over laws. When, obviously, we aren't ready for more laws. What we need is to prepare people with more education. The Ad Council thundered against smoking for years before cigarettes were banned in restaurants (I remember people seriously suggesting that nobody would dine out if they couldn't light up after a meal). It's a journey of small steps.
     The suicide rate for gun owners is 9 times that of people who don't own guns. Buying a gun endangers yourself and your family — the odds of using to deter crime are tiny compared to the odds of accidents and self-harm. The time to find out if there's an unsecured, loaded gun in a night table drawer is before you send your kid to play over a friend's house. It "doesn't kill to ask," as the sign suggests, "if there's an unlocked gun in the house." In fact, asking might save someone's life. People ought to understand that, and the only way they will know is if somebody tells them. Over and over again.

The Great Mothball Debacle of 2023

Sergio Mejia, the hero of this story, in the basement of our home.

     Had the chipmunk not poked its head out from between a gap in the bricks of the foundation of our 1905 farmhouse at the exact moment I looked up from planting bulbs, none of this would have happened.
     Had I not said, “Oh look!” to my wife, also planting bulbs, and suggested the hole be blocked up, perhaps with steel wool, none of this would have happened.
     “Toss a mothball in,” she suggested. Had she not ...
     We had a 2-pound box of Enoz mothballs, divided into four eight-ounce packets. I trotted to the garage, grabbed one of the bags, returned to the house and poured it into the gap.
     That was the staggeringly stupid part. Doubly so, because I know how vile mothballs are, had marveled how the intense smell punches through triple layers of plastic.
     I knew this. And poured the whole bag in anyway. My thinking, to stretch the term, was: “I’m outside.”
     You know what’s inside? The inner wall of the foundation. The mothballs tumbled into the inch-wide hollow gap between the inner and outer walls of the brick wall. Irretrievable. The odor permeated the entire house.
     Our first move, after opening windows, was to grab a hose and spray water into the hole. Float them out or melt them. Mothballs don’t float. Nor melt. What to do?
     Sunday night we headed to Lowe’s for a new shop vac. Bright and early Monday, I duct taped a section of thin garden hose — to fit in the gap — to the shop vac and snaked it in through the gap. It didn’t work.
     My wife read online that vinegar eliminates mothball odor. We poured a couple gallons into the wall. That only works once the mothballs are gone. The smell intensified. We also read that mothballs are pesticides that can cause cancer, eye disease.

     Monday afternoon I took a drilling hammer and a cold chisel and loosened a couple bricks in the basement where I thought the mothballs might collect, and dug out a lot of dirt that had drifted into the wall over the years. But no mothballs.
     As a homeowner, you know you’ve screwed up when you find yourself hammering bricks out of your foundation wall.
     Monday ebbed, the thought that I ruined our house intensified. My wife said, “Call a professional,” and I did. Three: US Waterproofing and other basement fix-it types. I also ordered an endoscope online. A tiny camera on a snaking black wire. Thirty bucks.
     Monday night we slept in our older boy's room, where the smell hadn’t yet reached, while I played an endless loop of “You’re an idiot” in my head, wishing passionately to go back in time. Why didn’t I just stuff the whole bag in, on a string, so it could be pulled out? Why? Why?
     The endoscope arrived about 5 a.m. God bless Amazon. Dawn found me out front. “I can see them!” I said. Inches from the opening, little groups of mothballs, twos and threes. Inches away. See them, but couldn’t reach them, not even when I took the drilling hammer and chipped the gap wider.
     Off to Ace Hardware for one of those little flexible four-pronged grippers. I taped the endoscope to it.
     My improvised tool worked. I bloodied my hands, manipulating the device into the wall but didn’t care. Over three hours, I withdrew 23 mothballs from the front of the house. Hope flickered.
     Tuesday afternoon, one of the companies said I needed a mason. “Can you recommend one?” I pleaded. One gave me the number of someone named Sergio. I called Sergio. He said he could come by early the next morning.

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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."