‘Melancholy is a vocation in itself’

Josienne Clarke

     Most of the music I listen to is 40 years old. Or more. Trying to keep even a little current, I started seeking out recent artists. One day Apple Music served up a song called “Chicago” by British singer/songwriter Josienne Clarke.
     Drawn by the title, I gave it a listen.
     Now songs about Chicago tend to be very specific. The classic 1922 “Chicago: That Toddling Town,” for instance, not only mentions a particular street — “State Street, that great street” — but Judy Garland’s version names a certain chic restaurant, the Pump Room, and exactly what she’ll be eating there: “On shish kabob, and breast of squab we will feast ... and get fleeced.”
     Clarke’s song is specific in its own way.
     “It’s not Chicago’s fault,” she sings, in a subdued, precise voice, “that no one came to see me play.”
     The moment I heard that line, I knew it had to be based on one very real experience. Nobody makes that up.
     So what happened?
     “That was the 17th of September, 2016,” said Clarke, when I caught up with her by phone at her home on the western coast of Scotland. “I had just signed to Rough Trade Records. One of the first things I did was go over to the States for a tour. We played New York, Boston, Philadelphia. We went into Canada, then to Bloomington, Indiana. Most of those gigs were fairly well frequented. Then we went to Chicago ...”
     To Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont Ave., a beloved Roscoe Village dive bar/jazz venue.
     To be honest, the room wasn’t completely empty.
     “It’s kind of a lie to say that no one came, because there was actually one guy in the back in a red jumper,” she said, using the British term for a sweater. “I feel bad every time I talk about this song and then play it. His whole experience at that gig, I have erased.”
     Then again, feeling bad is something of Clarke’s brand. Or as she put it: “Melancholy is a vocation in itself.”
     She sang her full set to the guy in the red sweater. Then she went to the bar, ordered a big whiskey, and thought about what had just occurred. Here she was, a professional singer with a music contract.

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Postscript:

Of course I reached out to Hungry Brain to see if anybody remember Clarke's 2016 show. A few days after the column ran, I received this:

Hey Neil,

Sorry for just getting to this now, this particular email fields booking requests in addition to many other things. Our archives evidently say I worked sound that night but I have no real recollection of the night. Shaina Hoffman and Ben Walker were also on the bill, 9 people in attendance in total. If you have an opportunity to modify your article please feel free to add that information!

Best,
Nolan

That doesn't necessarily contradict with Clarke's memory of one audience member — the other eight could have only attended the Hoffman and/or Walker shows. 

Sometimes you need a second brain....

     My wife baked corn muffins Saturday. We were joining some friends for dinner from Smoque, and what goes better with barbeque — ribs! brisket! chicken! — than cornbread?
     To make cornbread, you need buttermilk, I was told. So off to Sunset. "Get as little as possible," my wife instructed. I looked for a small, half & half sized container, but there was a choice of one: this Prairie Farms quart.
     The corn muffins were a hit, the buttermilk placed in the door of the fridge to await its doom — being thrown away in a week or two, I imagine. Because what good is it except for baking? In fact, what is buttermilk anyway? I had no idea. Well, a vague idea ... milk with butter in it? But that couldn't be right. Too easy. Am I the only one not to know? A common lapse, or a glaring void in my general knowledge, like not being able to pick out Australia on a globe. Curious, I took a half teaspoon of the stuff. Yuck. Puckeringly sour. Then I consulted Prof. Google.
     The BBC's Good Food blog has a comprehensive and cogent explanation:

     What is buttermilk? 

     There are two types of buttermilk. Traditional buttermilk is a thin, cloudy, slightly tart but buttery-tasting liquid that's left after cream is churned to make butter. These days, however, it is more commonly sold as a thick liquid produced commercially by adding an acidifying bacteria – and sometimes flavouring and thickening agents – to milk. This commercial product can be thought of as a gentler, thinner yogurt, with any buttery flavour likely added.
     Buttermilk is traditionally a drink, but is more often used in baking now. When used with baking soda, it reacts to form carbon dioxide, thus helping mixtures such as soda bread, rolls, scones and waffles to rise.
     It's also used as a marinade, as the acidity can help to make meat more tender and flavourful. You'll find buttermilk used in this way in some chicken dishes.

     Fair enough, and a potential use for our remaining buttermilk. Maybe I'll marinate something. A reminder what the internet is great at — helping fill in awkward gaps in one's knowledge.
     That worked. But sometimes the internet falls flat. At first anyway. For instance, last week suddenly a series of dark lines appeared on Center Avenue. I immediately thought of a sheet music staff — the five parallel lines where the notes are written. (See, the buttermilk isn't the only thing that's cultured around here). Then, while having this semi-sophisticated thought, I actually looked up, to see if there were wires above. Perhaps I was suddenly seeing the shadow of electrical wires I hadn't noticed over the previous 23 years.
     There were no electrical wires. Just uniformly spaced lines in the road, obviously drawn in some kind of liquid, curb to curb and parallel with it. I usually jump on such mysteries, but here let the ball drop. There's a lot going on. Monday afternoon they were back. I googled "Lines on streets in Northbrook" and got nothing. I stopped there, embarrassingly, and put in a call to the Northbrook Village Hall. But it was late in the afternoon, and even the most brisk and efficient municipality could not be expected to reply.

     So I thought I would put it to you. Perhaps we could have a spirited discussion in the comments section that isn't about my deficiencies as a person and host. My theory is that they're some sort of heretofore-unimagined anti-snow prophylaxis, that instead of salting the roads after the snow falls, they now can do so before due to some marvelous advance in road salt technology.
     Or is that insane? As daft as looking up for wires? Because that's the only theory I could come up with. Take a look at the photo below. Does anybody know? Does anybody have any guesses? I hope the phenomena isn't as common as dirt, because it's new to me. 

    I had just explained the above to my wife, about 10 p.m., as she sat on the sofa. She glanced down at her phone, idly, and tapped with her thumb. Three seconds passed.

    "Those grey parallel lines are brine that has been spread to melt snow and ice in advance of a snowstorm," she read. "The brine solution goes on wet but dries after application."

    So my guess was right, which is good. But my search was too feeble to find the answer. Which is bad. The lines are nothing new — at least 20 years old. The problem was, I had searched "Lines on streets in Northbrook" while she searched, "Lines in the street, salt." A reminder that, often, what you look for determines what you find.

Don’t forget what human frailty is

     U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber said he wasn’t feeling well last week, and put off until February the sentencing of the “ComEd Four,” caught up in the investigation of Michael Madigan and convicted of bribery last May.
     Reminding me of something I’ve been meaning to do: put in a good word for one of the guilty parties, Jay Doherty. I’ve known Jay for 25 years, since I started attending the Friday lunches at Gene and Georgetti that our ace political columnist, Steve Neal, held in an upstairs room. The meals were well-lubricated, hours-long affairs, with politicians and power brokers. I always tried to sit next to the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski, and listen fascinated to his tales of backroom deals in Congress. He had a way of giving your forearm a squeeze — I liked to think of that squeeze as passing from Lyndon B. Johnson to Dan to me.
     Rostenkowski went to prison over trifles. Misuse of postage stamps. Crystal. Some chairs he took home. Petty stuff. What I call “lone trombonist” crimes. The marching band executes a crisp 90-degree turn, but one guy misses his cue and keeps going straight. His friends wince.
     Jay isn’t a friend — I haven’t spoken to him in years — though I did send him a supportive note when his legal woes began. Because I know how lonely it can get when trouble comes knocking. Rather, he was what we in the news biz call “a source.” When the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District was feuding with a Gold Coast condo over use of an alley, the story reached me through Jay, who “dropped a dime” on them, as we old timers say.
     “Let’s have some fun,” he’d said. And fun it was. I was a better informed journalist because of Jay Doherty, and a plugged-in reporter is a happy reporter.

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Mailbag

     Last Monday I wrote about providing legal counsel to immigrants to Chicago. I didn't consider that the topic would shake the nuts from the trees — I can be naive that way — though a glance at last week's email clued me in. I plucked a couple representative examples for your reading pleasure, plus a third provoked by colleague David Roeder's farewell column — a rare but not unprecedented occurrence. More than once I've had to reply along the lines of, "You know, I'm busy enough being responsible for what I write, never mind being blamed for something Mary Mitchell — or Rich Roeper, or some other person — wrote." Plus my responses of course.  

I live in IL and I don’t like the fact that immigrants get EVERYTHING free and it comes out of our TAXES thats why people are moving out of IL!!! Why are we getting so many immigrants? They should come in as our great grandparents did and see the Statue of Liberty! They are trying to take over our USA  jobs and the Venezuelans want more pay to do our jobs!!!! So I want to send them back to NYC or have them GO HOME!!! Let’s take care of USA homeless and our wonderful veterinarians, who fought for our country!!! I know Texas don’t want them too it seems like democrat states want them and unfortunately ours is a democrat state!!!!But we don’t want them OUT in our suburbs!!!!

Dana B.

Dear Dana:

     So you'd prefer they be charged for the privilege of sleeping on a police station floor? And you condemn them for both being on the dole and taking our jobs? Shouldn't you pick one or the other? I'm just joking — I can't imagine you actually thinking through these things. Though I will point out that they ARE home, now, whether you like it or not. And I am in agreement about the need to support our wonderful veterinarians. The service they provide for our pets is usually first rate. Thanks for writing.

NS

     This organization is funded by Zionists. This entire global migration plot is a classic Zionist false flag. Anyone aiding and abetting these illegal immigrants is anti-American and working to destroy the sovereignty of the United States.
     Many Hispanics are crypto-Jews!
     All America did was take in Jews and they have done nothing but show disdain for this nation. Y'all should go back to Europe or Israel if you hate America so much!
      Any politicians, businesses and organizations aiding and abetting illegal immigrants are in violation of Federal Laws:
     Subsection 1324(a)(1)(i)-(v) prohibits alien smuggling, domestic transportation of unauthorized aliens, concealing or harboring unauthorized aliens, encouraging or inducing unauthorized aliens to enter the United States, and engaging in a conspiracy or aiding and abetting any of the preceding acts.
ACT 274A - UNLAWFUL EMPLOYMENT OF ALIENS
      The United States is under no legal obligation to care for these people, the US Congress did not agree on the UN Migration Pact...

There's more. But you get the idea. I thought a moment, then replied:

Grandma! I told you never to write me at work.
NS

Your column today does not bode well for 2024! I've been reading the Sun Times every day since I rode the train to work in 1961 (it was easier to read on the train>) I was unhappy when Mary Mitchel left and now you! I do hope you gift us with a column once in a while as you will be missed. Enjoy your retirement as you deserve it. 

Diane K.

Dear Diane:

I think you meant to send this to Dave Roeder. He's the one who had a column in the paper announcing his retirement. I, alas, am not going anywhere. Thanks for writing.

NS

January 6 + 3

     The Thomas Garrigue Masaryk Memorial is one of the more obscure pieces of Chicago public art. An impassive medieval knight perched astride his warhorse installed after World War II, he surveys the Midway Plaisance stretching out before him on the campus of the University of Chicago.
     Out of place, transplanted, a lump of European sculpture facing the gothic architecture of campus. Nothing special, perhaps. Except, to me, the inscription, which summons up the mystic spirit of a battered nation, in this case Czechoslovakia. 

      "DEEP WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN," it begins, in all caps, for emphasis. "THE KNIGHTS OF BLANIK SLEEP/WAITING FOR THE HOUR TO/DELIVER THEIR PEOPLE FROM/THE OPPRESSOR."
     Long oppressed peoples dream of liberators. The weak imagine a strong hand that will lift them up  after their own strength has given away. Rescue is coming.

    Patriotic Americans — truly patriotic Americans, who believe in the tenets this country was founded on — are not weak, not cast down. Yet. We still can save ourselves. This year. That might not be true next year.
   "ACCORDING TO AN OLD LEGEND,/SLUMBERING WITHIN ITS MOUNTAINOUS DEPTHS/THE BLANIK/KNIGHTS STAND GUARD. READY TO RIDE FORTH ... IN THEIR NATION'S HOUR OF NEED."

      Who will lead us in our nation's hour of need? Joe Biden, apparently. He is the one riding forth, anyway, delivering a heartfelt speech Friday at Valley Forge. No barrel-chested knight he. Biden looks old. Sounds old. He is old. But Biden is also what we've got. He invoked George Washington and revolutionary times — not from personal memory, one assumes.

      "American made a vow," he said. "Never again would we bow down to a king."

      Until now, that is. Half the nation has found its savior, and it isn't any band of knights sleeping in mountain cave outside of Prague. They found him and they're sticking with him, come hell or high water. They would gladly abandon everything else to prop him up. 

     I once defined addiction as trading everything for one thing. They are addicted to Donald Trump. They would trade everything about America they once professed to love and value to serve him. It's a bad deal. A mad junkie scramble, trading grandma's fine silver set for an hour of relief. A scam. Another Trump scam that worked, and keeps working, because — never forget — the defrauded become invested in the scam. The truth won't set them free. They can't even see it. There is no truth, only the lie they cling to like a beloved scrap of blankie.

      Biden posed "the most urgent question of our time." He said:

      "Jan. 6. A day forever seared on our memory because it was on that day we nearly lost America. Lost it all. Today we're here to answer the most important of questions: 'Is democracy still America's sacred cause?'"

     It is to me. And you too, I imagine. You're here. Biden didn't mince words:

     "We saw with our own eyes the violent mob storm the United States' Capitol. For the first time our history, insurrectionists had come to stop the peaceful transfer of power in America. First time! ... Because of Donald Trump's lies. These lies brought a mob to Washington."

      "TRUTH WILL PREVAIL" reads the plaque facing campus. 

     Will it? Twenty-five percent of Americans — and 1/3 of Republicans — believe the FBI instigated the Jan. 6 insurrection. You lie to people long enough, they believe the lies, if the lies suit their fancy. The harsh reality outlined by the president is just so much static, and they focus, gleefully, on his slight stumbles. 

      Or as I put it: Once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, the exact nature of the reality being ignored hardly matters.

     To the duped. To those ready to fight for our nation, the truth is the only thing that matters.

     "In trying to rewrite the facts of Jan. 6, Trump is trying to steal history," said Biden. "This is like something out of a fairy tale. A bad fairy tale."

     But we are not in a fairy tale, good, bad or indifferent. No mythical knights will emerge from any mountain cave to save us. We will have to save ourselves.

     "Remember who we are!" Biden said. 

     We are Americans. That will have to be enough. 

     

One life, out of the spotlight, still significant

Noël Brusman, right, and her future husband Marvin on a date in 1979.

     The easy thing to do would have been to pass this along to our excellent obituary writer, Mitch Dudek. But the material Noel Brusman's daughter-in-law sent was so extensive, I knew I could extract something interesting from it for a column. And when I saw that she had married her divorce attorney, I knew I'd made the right choice.

     Noël Brusman was an avid smoker. She loved cigarettes. But the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report put an end to that. Brusman quit through “sheer willpower,” promising to pick up the vice again on her deathbed.
     But when that sad time came last month, Brusman forgot her promise. She did, however, ask for gin, and Marvin, her husband of 43 years, served her Beefeater on ice, with lime and tonic, in a Wonder Woman sippy cup.
     Brusman’s death Dec. 11, two weeks before her 93rd birthday, was not noted in the newspapers. The media likes to pile on, gilding the lily. Those “The Lives They Lived” retrospectives last week celebrating, yet again, the familiar accomplishments of Tina Turner, Rosalynn Carter and their ilk. Just in case you forgot.
     About the same time as those were appearing, I received an email from Brusman’s daughter-in-law.
     “Years ago, you wrote of U.S. Air Force soldiers on a peacekeeping mission who gave away Beanie Babies to Afghan children,” began Patti Naisbitt, referring to a story written 17 years ago. “Noël Brusman, mother of one of the soldiers, was tireless in her efforts to collect and ship beanie babies. You talked with Noël for that story ... she had a lot to offer.”
     That she did.
     ”She was a grassroots activist, always working to make her community a better place,” wrote Nana Naisbitt, Brusman’s daughter. “Noël had a myriad of interests, but preferred to address big challenges like racial inequality in the Chicago schools, adding sex education to Chicago school curriculums, and fighting for teachers’ rights, even while raising five children.”
     She was no cosseted do-gooder, advocating causes from the chaise of ease. Life served Brusman up curveballs. Breast cancer, twice, at age 37 and 54, because once wasn’t enough, apparently. Her first husband, John, abandoned her and their five children in the spring of 1975. So she found “the love of her life” in an unexpected place: divorce court, marrying her attorney, Marvin Brusman, in 1980.

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A survivor’s legacy

Sam Harris

     This job has a way of circling back on you. I covered the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum on April 19, 2009, and wrote about deciding whether or not to talk with the Nazis who were picketing the event. I listened to the speeches, but didn't go inside — I'd been to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in 1994. That was plenty. I finally visited Illinois's version in 2016, watching Chicago Police recruits get training there. 

     But when Rotary Magazine asked me to profile Holocaust Museum founder Sam Harris, I pulled the program from the opening — I have a good filing system — and there was Harris,  alongside Bill Clinton and future Gov. J.B. Pritzker. I was glad to meet Harris — to realize that the youngest holocaust survivors are still among us, a living link to the abyss — and to write this piece, which appears in the January issue of Rotary Magazine.    

    Sam Harris is passionate about it. He will meet you, even though he is 88 years old and uses a walker, in the somber industrial entrance of the museum he helped create, an institution dedicated to making sure the awful, important story that he lived is told, years after he is gone and his voice, among the dwindling firsthand accounts, is finally silenced.
     That wasn’t always the case.
     For many years Harris, a former insurance executive and a member of the Rotary Club of Northbrook, Illinois, didn’t want to talk about how the Nazis had come for him when he was a small boy. He didn’t want to talk about the terrible hunger. The fear. The machine guns. His murdered parents. The cattle cars. The concentration camps. It was old news, ancient history. What would be the point? He was an American now. First an American boy, living in Northbrook, a comfortable suburb north of Chicago. Then an American man who could choose for himself what to discuss. Or not discuss.
     His refusal went on for years. "I knew it troubled him, that it was all inside of him," says his wife of 62 years, Dede. "He just never spoke about his past. I could see it festering."
     The reluctance was complicated. He didn’t want people to feel sorry for him. And if he became successful, he wanted it to be because of who he was, not because of what happened to him, he explains, settling into a chair in the small but well-stocked library of his museum. If someone detected an accent and asked where he was from, he’d toss the question back: Where do you think I’m from? And if the person said "New York," Harris would say, "Yes, exactly! New York." Or if someone said, "Germany," he’d say, "Germany, yes, how did you know?" And smile.
     A trained social worker, Dede Harris eventually sat her husband down by a crackling fire one evening. "I asked him to tell the story," Dede recalls. "It seemed to have broken through that impasse. Once he was able to verbalize the feelings, he had to be open to other people."
     It began slowly. At a 1977 meeting of the Rotary Club of Wilmette, Illinois, Harris met a member, Rabbi William Frankel, who grew up in Vienna. Like Harris, Frankel had fled the Nazis, only he used his past as a springboard to a life of activism. Frankel had marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and was prominent in Catholic-Jewish outreach efforts. He befriended Harris and convinced him that he owed it to future generations to tell his story.
     Around that time, a group of neo-Nazis planned a demonstration in Skokie, a Chicago suburb that was half Jewish at the time and home to many Holocaust survivors. Though a lengthy legal battle prevented the demonstration, activists like Rabbi Frankel believed silence and inaction were no longer an option. Waiting and hoping while evil rises to its feet was never a smart strategy.
     Meanwhile, Arthur Butz, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, about 10 miles from where Harris lived, published a book with the claim that the Holocaust was a myth perpetuated by the Allies and Zionists. Frankel called Harris to express his abhorrence of the book. "Sam, I know it’s hard for you, but it’s time for you to talk," Frankel urged him.
     In Frankel’s basement, the rabbi interviewed Harris on video camera. "And it was the first time really, I was able to talk," says Harris. "I said to myself, I’ll never do this again. But he showed this to everybody in the congregation. And it was packed. And then he passed that around to other rabbis. That was all because of Rotary."

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