The Nutcracker

Anabella de la Nuez and Jose Pablo Castro Cuevas in "The Nutcracker" (Photo by Katie Miller)

 

 

      Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky never visited Chicago. The Russian composer was invited here, to attend the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition in May of 1893. But he begged off, observing that he had just been in America in 1891, when he went to New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and Baltimore. That would have to do, as he would die that November.

Tchaikovsky's contribution

     Tchaikovsky did, however, heed Bertha Palmer's request of famous people to provide something that could be auctioned off to raise money to build the Children's Pavilion (as did Rudyard Kipling, Henry James and a range of 19th century notables). Tchaikovsky penned seven bars of “Andante cantabile,” then a new composition.
     So it is perhaps apt that his last masterpiece, "The Nutcracker," be sent to the fair in his stead in the Joffrey Ballet's production of the Christmas favorite. This fair-themed version debuted in 2016, and with the city plagued with a variety of problems and dysfunction, barely able to raise some tents to shelter immigrants, it's comforting to recall a time when Chicago built a White City in Hyde Park and welcomed the world to an enormous party.

     The  production opened Saturday night at the Civic Opera House. While being a dance critic ain't beanbag, and I would never presume to bring skill or experience to the endeavor, I thought it might be worthwhile, as a vacation diversion, to marshall a few words about it here. 

     But really, what's there to say about the Joffrey favorite? The audience, being packed with finely-dressed, super-excited families, was itself a holiday entertainment. It was fun just watching the proud attendees take pictures of each other in front of the big tree of gift packages set up in the lobby. The fact that someone also put on a dance afterward was an added bonus. 

     The Joffrey production transports the ballet from an upper class German household to a hardscrabble Chicago family on the eve of the World's Fair, I assume to mirror society's general rejection of all things well-to-do. There is a magic moment early on when the children, given an assemblage of unpromising objects — a bike wheel, a glass sphere, and such — set them on a table, and they become a silhouette of the fair, with its towers and Ferris Wheel.
     The dancers were flawless, as far as I could tell, the costumes lavish. Of course I've seen "The Nutcracker" a number of times, and perhaps familiarity took a bit of the oomph away. There's a moment when the family's paltry, Charlie Brown Christmas tree expands into a wondrous, stage filling marvel I looked forward to and, sorry, but that moment just didn't pop Saturday night the way I remember it doing in productions past. Nor was the battle against the mice as frightening as I would have liked.
     But that's the reaction of someone more skilled at criticism than praise, particularly when it comes to ballet, which I don't attend much. Overall the production is two hours of Christmas magic, lovely to behold, particularly one moment when the stage is filled with falling snow and dancing sugar plum fairies, or whatever they were. Simply marvelous, and a welcome distraction from everything going on in the world.  If you've got your tickets — it runs through Dec. 27 — you're in for a treat.

Zackery Manske, Yumi Kanazawa and Hyuma Kiyosawa (Photo by Katie Miller).

Flashback 2009: Logic on Israel's side

Metropolitan Museum

     While the scope of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack was unprecedented, the concept — let's kill our way out of this bind — is nothing new, as this column from 2009 testifies. Back then the column filled a page, complete with a joke. It isn't a particularly funny joke, granted, but it has the benefit of touching upon a grim truth. I've kept the original subheads, but cut a bit about a speech appearance, since some readers are easily confused, and might show up at the event, which occurred 14 years ago.

Opening shot ...

     Most people don't question their own beliefs. If you worship a pineapple as God, it isn't because your mom and dad worshiped a pineapple as God, but simply because divine authority rests in the spiky tropical fruit. Others may disagree, but dismissing conflicting beliefs as folly is part of the drill.
     It is useful, however, to try to recognize your own biases, difficult as that is, if only as a test. For instance: I support Israel. Why? Perhaps being Jewish has something to do with it, perhaps being spoon-fed the glory, the miracle of that nation's founding along with my Cream of Rice was a factor.
     But what would the impartial view of Israel, in its current struggle with Hamas, be? Let me see if I can state the Hamas view plainly, without bias. They would like the Jews in Israel to vanish, somehow, or at least to hand their country, which is a year older than modern China and a year younger than modern India, over to the Palestinians, most of whom have never lived there. A dwindling number resided there, once, and lost their homes under difficult circumstances, so now the entire group deserves the whole country.
     Is that it?
     What is the Israeli position? Basically, that their nation is here, now, a country like any other, despite the novelty of being run by Jews, and the Palestinians should go form their own nation on the land they have instead of always trying to take theirs.
     Do you really need to be Jewish to embrace the latter idea?
     

'What do we want?'

     "Free, free Palestine," the protesters chanted. "End the occupation now!"
     About 500 people had gathered Friday in Pioneer Court, the plaza just south of Tribune Tower, when I stopped by for a look.
     "What do we want?" someone with a megaphone cried. "Justice!" the crowd answered. "When do we want it?" he asked. "Now!" they replied.
     Justice is good. We're on the same page here, though I suppose our definitions of justice might differ. To me, embracing justice is accepting the consequences of your actions. For instance, electing a terror group like Hamas as your legitimate government and then standing idly by while it attacks a neighboring nation seems to call for some pretty stern justice, which is what is going on in Gaza now.
     The protesters, naturally, would disagree.
     "Free, free Palestine," they chanted. In their mind the crime — the "nakba," the "catastrophe" — was the founding of the State of Israel, and justice demands . . . what exactly? They don't come out and say it, but "Free Palestine" implies the following prepositional phrase, ". . . of Jews." That usually gets left off. Good manners, I suppose.
     This is nothing new, but is instead the standard, timeless racist fantasy — get rid of the people we don't like and then we'll be happy. "Juden raus" — "Jews out" -- the Germans said, despite the fact that Jews had lived in Germany for 500 years. That didn't matter, just as it doesn't matter that Jews have been in Israel for thousands of years. Flip open your Bible; they're there. "The children of Israel were fruitful," it says in Exodus, "and the land was filled with them." The land the Bible is talking about isn't Europe.
     The rally kept growing, women in scarves, men in beards. I couldn't help but view these sincere, impassioned people sympathetically, as victims of history who were tragically taught to pin their hopes for future happiness on the destruction of another country.

Today's Chuckle

     One little-known aspect of the current crisis in Gaza is that, just before starting their attack, Israel annexed the strip of land, officially designating Gaza as part of its own country and unilaterally converting its occupants to Judaism.
     "We figured" explained the minister responsible for the change, "if it were Israel we were shooting missiles at, and Jews who were dying, then nobody would care."

           —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 5, 2009

Lying liars and the lies they lie

   

     A lot of writers who win the Pulitzer Prize let it go to their heads. They preen and strut. But I've always managed to stay the same humble scribe that I was when I joined the newspaper. Similarly, being a big New York Times best-seller author can inflate an author's ego until it pops. Though I try to keep myself grounded in solid Midwestern values of family, decency and hard work that are my guiding stars.
     Do you see what I've done above? It's not a lie, as such. I never say I won the Pulitzer Prize — I didn't. Nor have any of my books gotten anywhere near best sellers. 
     Rather, the opening graph is the kind of deceptive self-puffery that a lot of people seem compelled to indulge in, that is when they just don't flat out invent stuff. Originally, I was going to just outright lie — claim to have won a Pulitzer, to being a best-selling author. But my fingers wouldn't do it.
     Just as well. I wouldn't be good at it; honestly, I'm confused by liars. I just don't get it. It's obvious why they commit their fabrications. To puff up their shriveled little souls. To impress others. They feel the truth about themselves, whatever it is, is not sufficient — even when that truth is that they're a former president of the United States, rich and famous, with a good chance of returning to office. Obviously they need more. Constantly more. More than any version of reality can provide. They're trying to fill a bottomless pit — some gaping wound in their soul — and rather than do the hard work to close the hole, repair the void, be satisfied with what they've got, they keep shoveling stuff in. It's never enough, which is why the lies keep increasing: more and more, bigger and bigger. Because the hole keeps getting bigger.
      Now that I think of it, maybe I'm not confused by liars. Maybe it's their supporters who I really don't get. How do they not perceive the deceit? It's so obvious. Why are they not disgusted? It's so pathetic. To me, even a few small lies are enough to turn me off on a person. It only takes a little spit to spoil the soup. I read a recent New Yorker profile of NYC's new mayor, "Eric Adams Administration of Bluster." The story wasn't only about his lies, though they kept popping up, and stood out. Everything else fell away. Adams claimed to be a vegan, but when called out for eating fish, he first denied he had eaten any, then denied he had ever said he was a vegan. He claimed to have been a boxer; then denied having claimed to be a boxer.
     Small shit. But the pivot of the piece was this:

     "The Mayor apparently reserves the right to mix incidents from his own life with material from his quantum lives: things that could have happened, or almost happened, or happened to someone he once met. All potentials exist simultaneously. An Adams untruth will not be outrageously grandiose and grifty, like those told by Representative George Santos. But Adams doesn’t just polish anecdotes. He is unusually ready to repeat things that are confirmably untrue, or that — in their internal contradictions, or avoidance of specifics, or mutability from one telling to the next — seem very likely to be untrue."

     I finished the profile with one thought: the man's a liar.
     Period, full stop, end of story. I don't know what kind of tangled end is waiting for Adams, but when it shows up in its screeching, slo-mo train wreck glory, I'll be there muttering "So what did you expect?"

      Although, when that end comes, it isn't very satisfying either. Yes, watching the George Santos  finally get the heave-ho from Congress Friday — only the sixth man in the history of the United States to be ejected from the House, and three of those were for supporting the Confederacy — carried with it a faint note of satisfaction. About time. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

    But only a muffled note. A gentle "ping." As much as I wish I could spin Santos being hocked into a handkerchief as some kind of turning point, I really can't. It wasn't his continual, ridiculous prevarication that did him in, but actual crimes, albeit unproven ones. The man is accused of stealing his own campaign funds to pay for porn. Roll that sentence around in your mind. He didn't deny it, just conjured up some imaginary rush to judgment while the more shameless Republicans, who had voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, talked about the risk denying the voters their sacred mandate. A shame that hypocrisy isn't poison; they'd keel over dead on the spot.

     No, I think Santos was so insanely over the top that even as lame an organization as Congress was prompted to finally get rid of him — plus he isn't particularly popular. That's key. If only he had created a strong base for himself before his lies came to light, we'd probably be stuck with him. 

      Heck, maybe Santos isn't through yet. All he has to do is show up at the Capitol Monday morning, declaring nothing unusual happened Friday and he is still in office. A certain percentage of people would buy that. The same slice who will buy anything. There are so many of them. I get the upside for the liar — he basks in undeserved praise. But what benefit do the dupes derive? The right to admire an undeserving hero? How satisfying could that be?

Remembering Michael F.

     I'm on vacation this week. Which means of course that I'm working — another Rotary magazine article to finish, my fourth over the past year. But I can't let my EGD responsibility slide, so I'm looking over pieces that I wrote but decided for some reason not to post. This was written four years ago — I know why I held it back; because I didn't want to poke a stick into a wound that was still fresh. But four years is a while, and I think I can post this now with a minimum risk of upsetting anybody. With time comes perspective, ideally, and an ability to see the saddest situations in a positive light.

     "To have a problem in common is much like love and that kind of love was often the bread that we broke among us. And some of us survived and some of us didn’t, and it was sometimes a matter of what’s called luck." 

                                                           —Tennessee Williams, Memoirs

      Only one friend came over the house that first horrible week, after I was allowed to come home. Then again, Michael didn't have very far to come: out his front door, turn left, walk a few steps, up five stairs, knock on my door. Bearing two cans of raspberry soda water and a bag of potato chips.
     We sat on the porch and talked. Which is what you most want to do when you first go into recovery: talk and talk and talk, trying to sort out how the greatest thing in your life has suddenly become the worst. How it somehow snuck up on your from behind and bit you, hard, in the ass. How to pry its jaws off you.
    It was October, 2005, so I don't remember anything we said. But I do remember, when we were done, we stood up and Michael hugged me. He was much taller than me, a good four inches, and I had a face full of plaid flannel.  Geez, I thought, not only do I have to give up booze, but now I gotta hug guys too?
      Afterward, we would go to meetings for more talk. Sometimes walking to the church around the corner. Sometimes he would pick me up in a big old car, some 1970s Cadillac he inherited. It was like an inverted echo of high school, but instead of one of my buddies who had a car coming to get me so we could hang out and delight in the combination of beer and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, we were two newly sober adults on our way to AA meetings in the Northwest suburbs.
     Meetings, meetings, meetings. How I hated them. Michael liked them. He believed. He had a sponsor, and diligently climbed the 12 Steps, and was an avatar of How It Works.
     Only it didn't work. Not for him. Not long term. For some unfathomable reason, sobriety didn't stick with Michael, while it worked for me. Who knows why? Maybe it was simply professional pride: I had a recovery memoir coming out and didn't want to make it into a lie. "I don't want to fuck up my memoir," was how I put it, along with not wanting to be another Kitty Dukakis (an editor at Simon & Schuster, in rejecting my book, said I hadn't been sober long enough to write a memoir, saying that they'd published Kitty Dukakis's recovery memory, and she rewarded them by drinking nail polish remover on her book tour). 

     Maybe it was luck, some combination of neurons and random chance. Or some other aspect of my circumstance.
     Maybe it was mere necessity. Michael came from money. That could be what did him in. Because I had no choice but to pull myself together and get back to work, while he could retreat from life and climb into the bottle and the bills would still get paid.
    When the news came that Michael was in the hospital, I only thought of the good stuff. He was our neighbor for, geez, 17 years. We'd sit on the porch and talk and smoke cigars, hour after hour. Of course he had his quirks. 
    "You know, I sometimes sneak into your yard at night and shoot your rabbits," he once said.
    I chewed on that, weighing my reply.
    "Just don't shoot the boys," I finally muttered.
    He had taste, humor, integrity. Qualities that fluttered back to mind when I heard about the failing liver and kidneys.
      "Maybe this will be a wake up call," I said to my wife, half-heartedly.
      "The divorce was the wake-up call," my wife replied, grimly.
      A wake up call that he let ring and ring. Michael died a few days later. A few days after his twin boys had left for college.
     So what do you say? The important thing is, to me, to remember that he was like before: a good man, considerate, methodical, a runner, who took care of himself and adored his children. He was the sort of neighbor who would hurry over to your house during a flood and help pump out your basement. Who helped you clean your dryer vents. His bad end didn't come because he was a bad person, but because he was a person, period, a person who fell in a hole and couldn't get out. The thing about alcoholism is, it's a disease that looks like a decision. To the uninitiated it can seem that Michael pondered his options — hmm, should I stay with my beautiful wife and three great kids and see them off to college? Or should I go drink myself to death at my mother's house? — and made the wrong choice. 

     But that isn't a choice at all, not one that any rational man makes. Addiction is another word for diseased thinking. When I heard the bad news, I thought really of all the happy times, and what a good, decent man he was, and not what happened later, toward the end. I hope his wife and kids do the same. I hope the kids realize that how well they turned out is a reflection of the man he was, at heart, before the disease took him. And if his memory has to be a scar as well as a comfort, well, then it should be a scar worn with pride. Because he certainly fought the thing, hard, for years, before it overwhelmed him. I was there, I saw him fight. He fought hard but he lost, that's all. Sometimes people lose. A difficult truth, but one worth remembering.

"Dear God..."

        "God the Father," by Ambrogio Bevilacqua (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Even writing every goddamn day, some scraps don't get posted. Like this missive to the Supreme Being, drafted at the end of October. I noticed it, scanning back over old material, and felt it could liven up the last day of November.

Dear God:

     I see that, in Your infinite wisdom, You have personally chosen to elevate Mike Johnson, obscure Republican of Louisiana, as the Speaker of the House. That's how he views it anyway:
     "The Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority,” said Johnson, attempting to give his new post a shimmer of the divine. “He raised up each of you, all of us. And I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific time."
     Does that count for Joe Biden? The president of the United States? Or was he snuck into office while You were busy elsewhere, perhaps molding galaxies. (A process I've always thought of as being similar to making a snowball. You scrape an infinity of cosmic matter in one of Your enormous hands, pat it into a vaguely spherical shape, then set it twirling on Your divine fingertip in one of the further reaches of the universe, then step back to admire Your handiwork for a moment, or a billion years, then proceed to the next one. Thank You for that, Lord, for those spinning galaxies. They're so cool. And for Saturn. That's also very... 

     Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, religion screeching into the United States Congress. And the stunning hypocrisy of conjuring up Your Holy Approval, for people Republicans approve of, generally themselves alone, and Your Divine Scorn, for people they don't like. 

     Not to forget the plain weirdness of it all, the contortions they manage while imagining Your will. Johnson, who is opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, explained his absent wife, Kelly, this way:“She’s spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord. And, um, she’s a little worn out.”
     That's the downside of the current trend toward just vomiting forth verbiage and worrying about what kernels of sense can be picked out later. Setting aside the locker room prurience of Kelly on her knees, a man offering up the image of his wife beseeching the Lord for the last "couple of weeks" not only smacks of desperation, but is kinda an insult to the Deity. I mean, you are many things, O mighty God, but slow on the uptake is not one of them, supposedly. 

     And isn't that a contradiction to Johnson's first statement, about government power being foreordained by You according to Your Divine Plan? Either you are looking out for the benefit of your flock by anointing wise and prudent leaders like Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Or you are harkening to the entreaty of politicians' wives (and, of course, husbands), desperate to advance their spouses' fortunes.  It can hardly be both.

     Anyway, You've got better things to do, Mr. Omniscient — I hope reading my letter didn't distract You too much, Lord. (Though it would explain Gaza. Distracted by some obscure politician's wife, groveling in the dirt, demanding advancement for her man, you let all hell break loose in Your promised land). 

     But since I have Your Infallible Attention, I might point out that were a particular but unspecified member of the human race to be suddenly riven by a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky, charred to a cinder on the back nine at some garish golf course, well, that would be more than enough to make this peace-loving non-believer forevermore convinced of Your Divine Majesty. Truly. I'll start lighting candles on Fridays, and preach Your unquestionable existence. Is it a deal? Or do you only slaughter toddlers hiding in basements?

Your humble servant,

Neil Steinberg

Push back against the world’s woes

     Scary times, these. If you’re not terrified, you’re not paying attention. With wars in Ukraine and Gaza — the latter on pause, for now, but that will change, and either could easily explode into a greater conflagration — and thousands of migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees flowing into a Chicago still wobbly from COVID-19, there’s a line around the block of Big Frightening Problems to worry about. Did I mention the real chance of democracy dying in America next year? Or that the world is on fire? Those too.
     But fear is not a success strategy. You don’t solve problems by fretting about them. You solve them by doing something. Tuesday was Giving Tuesday, an online effort to get people to pause from fire-hosing their money at streaming services and sports betting apps and direct a few trickles of cash at worthwhile causes instead.
     My household supports The Night Ministry — the last strand in Chicago’s social safety net — and The Ark. You might want to get behind Heartland Alliance or Catholic Charities.
     If your heart goes out to those who come to Chicago seeking a better life and end up sleeping with their kids on a police station floor, consider supporting Refugee One.
     There are many more — you did, I hope, support groups you’ve already been supporting. If not, a few minutes spent consulting Prof. Google should do the trick.
     You might think this story is a day late. But it’s supposed to run on Wednesday, because Chicago Public Media has dubbed Nov. 29 CQ as “Giving Newsday.” Part of the trick of surviving in the media is to find a way to stand out from the general roar, and by focusing on the following day, the hope is we’ll take advantage of the spirit of holiday generosity while not getting lost in the crush of worthy causes.
     The Chicago Sun-Times is owned by Chicago Public Media, a 501(c)3 charity that also owns WBEZ 91.5 FM, and though I’m biased, I’d argue that, in a way, supporting us is even more important than backing some other charity, because we’re how you learn about everything going on in the world.

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Eli's Cheesecake: a holiday tradition

Marc Schulman, Eli's president since 1984, shows guests through Eli's Cheesecake World.

     You know the holiday season is upon us in earnest when the Art Institute's proud lions are wreathed in greenery, the air is filled with festive music, and Eli's Cheesecake ads go up on everygoddamnday.com. 

     To mark the occasion, the family headed over to Eli's Cheesecake World on Saturday to get a quick tour from its owner, Eli Schulman, who took the family around his expanded factory — business is booming — before we settled in to coffee, conversation and, of course, cheesecake.

Passion fruit curd olive oil cake cheesecake

    The challenge being, if presented with the delightful dilemma of being invited to dig into literally any type of cheesecake that Eli's makes, from chocolate chip to key lime, apple streusel to blueberry swirl, peppermint bark and salted caramel, which one to choose? You can browse the available flavors at the Eli's website.
     As difficult as that sounds, it was actually an easy decision: passion fruit curd olive oil cake cheesecake made with mascarpone mousse, inspired by Natasha Pickowicz's "More than Cake" cookbook — because really, how often do you get the chance? (Who is Natasha Pickowicz, you ask? For shame! She is only the wildly popular "NYC pastry wunderkind" and "The Queen of Sticky Buns." Okay, I had to look her up, but I was glad to get to know her — eating cheesecake and learning about the new generation of rising pastry chefs)
    So how did her cheesecake taste? Smooth. Sublime. Lovely. Light. I usually like my cheesecake with a heavy dose of chocolate crumbled over it. But this was obviously something more advanced. My wife raved.
     I also learned the meaning of "POG" — it stands for "Passion Fruit Orange Guava" and was the flavor of one cheesecake we took away with us — at Eli's Cheesecake World's store you can get all sorts of exotic flavors, unavailable to the masses who have not made pilgrimage to the mothership.  I think otherwise you have to be flying First Class on United to Hawaii to be given the privilege of trying the POG cheesecake, which was extraordinary. As was the Tiramisu Cheesecake, which was the other. I'd have gone home with more — I have my sights set on the Hot Chocolate Cheesecake, which sounds heavenly. But I limit myself to three cheesecakes at a time in the freezer. Restraint.   

     So welcome the traditional holiday cheesecake ad, which you will notice on the left side of the EGD homepage. Click it, and you'll be ushered into the world of gustatory delight that is Eli's. Today is Giving Tuesday, and while I hope you are digging deep to help those less fortunate than yourself, I'd also advise you to remember yourself, and your cheesecake needs — doctors say that the average American only consumes 25 percent of their daily metabolic requirements for cheesecake. 
     Oh, that's a lie. While cheesecake is good, and nutritious, there isn't an actually FDA requirement for it, though imagining how delightful a world it would be if there were. Even though a certain tone of fabrication infects social media, more and more, we try to play it by the book here on EGD, which is why we hope you'll support us by giving yourself the gift of cheesecake.
     Let me take this opportunity to say how glad I am that EGD, now in its 11th year, has been supported by Eli's Cheesecake for every second of its existence. Many, if not most, Chicagoans love Eli's Cheesecake. But how many can truly say they are loved back? Enfolded in the cool, sweet embrace of the nation's foremost cheesecake.  It's a wonderful thing, and I consider myself blessed that the holidays have rolled around again, bringing light, laughter, family, friends and lots of Eli's cheesecake. And that's the delicious truth.