Don't be afraid, it's just history

Untitled (Toni Morrison) by Robert McCurdy (National Portrait Gallery)

     If the three Canadians who discovered insulin in 1921 were themselves diabetic and trying to save their own lives, would that make their accomplishment less significant?
     I'd say no. Their breakthrough still benefits uncounted millions.
     Similarly, I do not discount the American Revolution because the colonists were thinking mostly of their own interests.
     They still forged a new type of freedom. For themselves. At first.
But that freedom began to spread — rather like a virus escaping a lab — and kept infecting others.
    That is the American story in a nutshell: One group secures rights for itself, then those rights are claimed by a more disadvantaged group.
     While soaked with blood and outrage, it is still an inspiring story. That's why I'm so puzzled that Florida and Texas pretend that telling the core American narrative somehow hurts their children.
     Which is more inspiring? That wealthy planter and slave owner Thomas Jefferson paused from gardening at Monticello to write the Declaration of Independence? Or that his grandchildren, descendants of Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman Jefferson made his concubine, would some day gain their rights as free citizens — in theory — under that very same document?
     I'll take the second story. It displays the promise of America. You can't feel bad hearing it, unless you're rooting for slavery.
     The past helps us understand the present. If you are agog at the Alabama court casting embryos as children — albeit very well-behaved children — it might help to remember that while Black Americans won the right to vote in 1865, American women would not receive the same right for another 55 years, until 1920. American wives and mothers and sisters lagged two generations behind those once considered sub-human chattel.

To continue reading, click here.

The box your stuff goes in right before it becomes your stuff

 

    Leaving the Ace Hardware in Northbrook, I noticed this Amazon Rivian Electric Delivery Van 700 — you could hardly miss it. One of thousands rolled out over the past 16 months in cities all over the country. I think I was drawn by its rich blue grey, rounded corners, and the way the top of that back wheel is covered by the bottom trim, a look I think of as "Citroen-like." 

     The vans get about 150 miles on a charge. Drivers usually use between 20 and 40 percent of the charge in a day. There are some interesting features — the driver's side door, for instance, swings out like any other truck door, but the passenger door is a pocket door — it slides rather than opening out, to avoid being clipped off by passing traffic or dooring cyclists. 

    There isn't a passenger seat — delivering packages is a one man job, for now, until Amazon figures out how to replace that person with a gizmo — but a jump seat that folds out if there's ever a second person who needs to ride in the van. Somone put a lot of thought into making it easy to make deliveries — for instance, put the van in park, and the door between the driver's compartment and the cargo area automatically slides open.  It's tall — clearance height of 9'7, and most drivers can stand up fully inside.

     I had a shock-of-the-new moment of confusion when I saw it, because I think of Prime as one of the streaming services we get, like Netflix or Hulu or Max.
     What are they delivering? I wondered, idiotically, as I took this shot and then walked a few feet in the direction of home. Oh right, I thought, catching the back of the van. That place. They deliver a lot, actually. Hard to keep all this stuff straight sometimes. 

Jim Tyree

      Live long enough, and men you know become statues.
      Well, that's how it's been for me anyway. Maybe for you, not so much.
      Some I knew fairly well: Roger Ebert, Irv Kupcinet, Jack Brickhouse. 
      Some I only spoke to once or twice: Michael Jordan, Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Harry Caray.

      All men, so far. Women don't seem to get statues. I'm not sure why, but lucky them. Being rendered into bronze has to be a mixed blessing. You need to be dead, usually. They make an exception for sports heroes. Though some of the statues — Ebert's, for instance — well, not the best likeness. 

      Some have other memorials as well. Harry Caray, for instance, the broadcaster, has a statue outside Wrigley Field, and a namesake restaurant in River North. I was trucking there Monday, through the double-deserted downtown. Especially empty because it was both President's Day, when many government offices were closed, and a Monday, when many workers wring out an extra day of weekend.

     So pretty much alone, proceeding along the 300 block of North Clark Street, heading to Harry Caray's to have lunch with a reader who had bought the meal in a charity auction, when I was stopped in my tracks by the plaque above.

      First, I'd never seen a memorial like this — a metal marker, not on the public way, but a private sidewalk between blocks, on a shortcut I was vectoring through.
      And second, I knew Jim Tyree, CEO of Mesirow Financial. He rescued the Sun-Times in 2009, leading a group of investors who, by paying $5 million and assuming $20 million in debt, snatched it from the vultures who'd have picked it clean long ago. 

      I remember the cocktail party he threw after he bought the paper. It wasn't for everybody — just machers — and I was surprised to find myself among the select. I wandered the crowd, nibbled appetizers, while running what I would say to him over in mind, smiling a little, thinking of Luca Brasi practicing his greeting by himself in the opening of "The Godfather."
    "Don Corleone. I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your home... on the wedding day of your daughter..."
     I finally worked my way up to Jim, waiting for an opening and inserting myself into a gap in the circle of well-wishers. He looked at me. I introduced myself and said, formally "Mr. Tyree, thank you for saving the Sun-Times."
      To which he replied, "People tell me you're the reason they read the Sun-Times."
      Which left me speechless, groping for a response.  What I came up with was this:
      "Thank you. I'm reluctant to quote David Radler ... " — the predatory felon who owned the paper before Tyree — "...but he liked to say, 'When you make the sale, close your briefcase and walk away." 
    And I turned and left. We spoke again in the brief time he owned the paper — when he came down with cancer, I gave him Evan Handler's "Time on Fire," a primer on staying alive and keeping your spirits up while battling the Big C. 

     That wasn't what killed him — a technician preparing him for dialysis messed up the line into his artery, introduced oxygen, and that got him. An unfair end for a very giving man, someone who loved Chicago. 

     And now he is part of Chicago, literally an element of the infrastructure, like a fire hydrant or a lamppost, built into the ground, part of the pavement.  I'm not sure whether I'd like it if this caught on — you're trying to get somewhere, and all these prominent individuals call to you from below your feet. It's cool that there's the one. Jim Tyree deserves much more. But it's a start, and made me think of him, which is the point of these tributes. 

Clark Street, 12 noon.

Chicago is not the City that Bumbles

     Oh, Mayor Johnson. Really? You show up at an editorial board meeting on Monday and are shocked — shocked! — to discover the meeting is on the record, meaning the newspaper reporters present reserve the right to listen to what the mayor of the city of Chicago says about important matters and then relate that information to residents.
     So you flee, shrieking (or so I imagine. I wasn't there, alas).
     Surprised, were you? I'm surprised too. Amazed, really. The bar is pretty low at this point, but it wouldn't surprise me more had the mayor shown up not wearing pants.

     Because, really. If Brandon Johnson doesn't even trust himself to open his mouth and let words come out, can't even try, then how is anybody else supposed to trust him?

     Mr. Mayor, let me level with you: You are playing into the media's hands.
     Yes, we ask our questions, getting all sad and belligerent when you don't answer, or rather, start tossing some off-point word salad that means nothing.
     But we're also secretly pleased. Because we don't really want to hear your side. We're just pretending to, because our job demands it. When you clam up, you're putty in our hands. It's liberating.
     How so? Let me tell you a story.
     So a highly placed Illinois judge comes to my office at the newspaper for the purpose of planting a dagger squarely in the back of Tim Evans, chief Judge of the Cook County Circuit Court, whose management style is lacking in her eyes. She's a respectable source. Her complaints seem valid — court system run poorly, yaddity yadda yadda. I prepare my column, pinning Evans wriggling to a board for the amusement of all.
     But journalism is a kabuki, a highly stylized form. It has its finely-calibrated rituals. Before I can run my vivisection of Judge Evans, there is something I must do — you kids, fresh hires, any ideas? C'mon, don't they teach you anything at the Medill School of Storytelling, Communicative Arts, Interpretive Dance, or whatever they call the place nowadays? (Actually, it is — checking my notes — "The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications." A staggering example of malpractice, which I only mention because I intend to start a fundraising campaign to purchase an ampersand for the school).

To continue reading, click here.

Train accident

     A long, continuous train horn. Unbroken. Wehrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.... 
     "That's a person," I said to my wife.
     Meaning, the only reason an engineer lays on the horn like that is someone on the tracks.
     Suicide, most likely. At least I hoped it was. The only thing worse than jumping in front of a train, intentionally, is to be blundering along, earpods screwed in, chatting on your iPhone, look up and think, "Shit a train," and bam it's over.

     Besides, most are suicides. There is that subtle hint of the ringing bells and flashing lights and lowered gates to help even the most careless avoid accidents.
     I live one block from the Northbrook Metra station. Quite intentionally. When we bought this house, nearly a quarter century ago, I wanted to live by public transportation so I could go into work without driving. Driving sucks. At least city driving. If I need to drive north, to Wisconsin, or west, to Iowa, I'm all for that. Coffee, tunes, the semi-open road.

      We can see the tracks from our dining room window. 
     Of course we thought about the noise. Those train horns. The clanging bells. And, such as Monday night, the ambulance and fire trucks that quickly arrived on the scene. I gazed uneasily out the living room window at the strobing lights. Some poor person...
     We were smart. Before we bought the house, we sat in what would be the master bedroom and waited. A train came by — a sort of gentle whoosh. We decided that we could live with that. Then we moved in, and the first freight came by, rattling the century-old windows in their dry frames. You get used to it.
     I'd taken the train downtown Monday to have lunch with a reader and his wife who bought the experience at a charity auction. They live in Kenosha. I told them, rather than go all the way into the city, we could meet at Prairie Grass —run by Sarah Stegner, the former chef of the Ritz Carlton dining room. I tried to tempt them with pie. Door County Sour Cherry. Coconut Creme. Pumpkin.
     But they wanted the full Chicago experience. So I suggested Harry Caray's on Kinzie, my go-to restaurant showing off the city. That lovely little Dutch revival building that somehow survived the ravages of time. The walls, a museum of memorabilia. It doesn't hurt that there is a photo of my younger son, on the mound at Wrigley Field, throwing out the first pitch at the Cubs/Sox game on the 3rd of July. A frozen rope to the catcher.
     Why would anyone jump in front of a train? I know the answer. Despair and sorrow and sadness and hopelessness and mental illness and addiction. Lost romance, lost job, lost hope, just plain lost. A permanent solution to a temporary problem.
     The devastated loved ones of those who perish under the train often put little white crosses and plastic flowers on the spot where the death occurred, and Metra leaves them for a polite period, sometimes for a good long while, to bleach in the sun and become faded and pitious. One, just off the platform by a tree, lingered for years, and I would eye it uneasily waiting for a train. Maybe even with a trace of annoyance — I'm sorry for your personal tragedy, but it's sobering enough to be going to a depopulated downtown to attend some meeting you could as easily conduct on Zoom or never at all. Must I consider your tragedy too? A petty thought, but you have to be who you are. It isn't very much to ask. Pause to remember this person was here.
     Monday night, the commotion lasted for a couple hours. Emergency trucks coming and going, other trains blasting their horns, loud and long, as they inched past what I assumed were recovery efforts. What I think of as, "picking someone up with a tweezers."

     Only it wasn't that. I checked the news the next day. Not a suicide — a 23-year old woman, running across the tracks. Taken to Evanston Hospital. Condition unknown.
     Running across the tracks. Jesus F. Christ. It mystifies me. Where are they going? Monday, when I returned from downtown, I got off the train, crossed Shermer, and tucked myself behind the crossing gate. Everyone else, getting off the train, stayed between the gate and the train, the better to surge across the tracks when the train pulls away. Timing their bolt from the blots so they're in motion even before the stainless steel wall of the train has removed itself. Which can be a problem if there is a train coming the other way. I've seen people start, then dance back as a train passes the other direction.
     A cautious move, on my part, to wait behind the gate. Habit. When we moved here, the boys were 3 and 4, and I realized the best way to inculcate train safety in them is to do it myself. It's very hard to be hit by a train if remain behind the gate until it raises up.
     This is not to criticize the young lady, whom I hope is alright. Maybe she was just grazed. That's unlikely. Usually, you get hit by a train, you know it. Maybe she'll reach out when she gets out of the hospital, and can tell us where she was going in such a hurry. Though I wouldn't expect that. It's got to be embarrassing, to be so careless. It's got to add insult to injury.

Should America care about felons?

     This was over 1,200 words long when I finished the first draft Tuesday morning. Cutting it to size required loss of this bit of promotion I had wanted to tuck at the end. If, after reading this, you would like to hear Ben Austen speak, and are free tonight, he will be discussing his book Wednesday, Feb. 21 at 6 p.m. at the Northwestern University School of Law, Strawn Hall, 375 E. Chicago Ave. Admission is free, but you need to register.

     "Vindicta" is Latin for vengeance — payback for wrongs others have done.
     Or wrongs you imagine they've done. Or might do.
     Look around. We are in the golden age of vindictiveness. It's the thread that holds everything together, the hidden hand. The only questions: Who is the object of retribution this week? Who can we safely hurt?
     Nearly a decade ago, when Donald Trump went down that escalator, vindictiveness was directed against Mexicans (rapists) and Muslims (terrorists). We were building the Wall and banning immigrants from Muslim countries. Trump was elected president on that platform and might yet be again.
     Like fashion, the specific objects of our scorn change with the seasons. Now Mexicans and Muslims are out, more or less, and Venezuelans (too many) and trans people (predators) are in.
     In a pinch, there's always criminals.
     You don't need Trump to tell you to disdain felons. That's the default. The United States incarcerates nearly 2 million people, more than China, four times our population. The U.S. is the world's top jailer — our incarceration rate is 531 per 100,000, nearly double the 300 of Russia. Canada's is 85.
     Our country is in such peril right now that I'm reluctant to bring up a another concern. But when you consider our problem as one of general vindictiveness — the urge to punish driving our political nightmare — the fate of prisoners becomes very relevant.

     Particularly after reading "Correction: Parole, Prison and the Possibility of Change" by Ben Austen, a compelling, well-reasoned book that looks at incarceration in Illinois through two longtime prisoners.
     First, Michael Henderson, who borrowed a .38-caliber snub-nosed revolver and shot a fellow teen outside a bar in East St. Louis in the summer of 1971.
     Then 18, Henderson was offered a deal — plead guilty, and be sentenced to 7 to 21 years. He declined, was convicted, and sentenced to 102 years.
     Second, Johnnie Veal, convicted of gunning down two policemen in Cabrini-Green in 1970. The notorious murder of Sgt. James Severin and Officer Anthony Rizzato shocked the city. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, but Veal was a Cobra Stone, and several rival gang members fingered him. He was sentenced to 100 to 199 years in prison
     Both men were sentenced before 1978, when sentences still could be adjusted by a parole board. Austen focuses on this dwindling population of men who have been in jail for decades and are offered the carrot of release, as a goad to self-improvement, while that decision rests with parole boards, often staffed with retired cops and prosecutors more interested in regurgitating the details of a crime than considering any improvements in the criminal over the past 20 or 30 or 40 years.

To continue reading, click here.

Today in cat news

Casper

     Riddle: they're in our house, but are not ours. We care for them, a lot, while they care for us not at all.
     What are they? Cats, of course. Who are they? Casper and Boo, in this instance, and they are not our cats, beyond the truth that cats never really belong to anyone, but also because they are our younger son's cats, temporarily relocated to our home while he travels doing important legal stuff.

Natasha

     Which gives us three cats, at the moment, including Natasha, the 14-year-old queen of the roost. The younger pair do not bother her, at least not while we're watching. She is slow, quiet, shrinking into herself — 14 years old is getting up there — and we worry about her. She often seems somewhat stunned, lost in her own interior thought, ignoring the treat under her nose.

     Casper is pure black with a patch of white on his chest. He is a high trajectory cat, shooting through the house, pinballing from room to room, up the walls, across the ceiling. Or so it seems. 

     Boo is the opposite. Stasis in feline form. Lassitude. Inertia. Boo will spend hours in my son's closet. Just ... being ... Boo. She looks like a cow that's been transformed into a cat form by a witch's curse — a tiny head, the size of a ping pong ball, on an enormous body. No tail, which we originally thought of was due to some mishap, but now seems to be a quality of the breed, though I'm not sure which one that is: the Mini-Holstein Hippocat, perhaps. 

     Boo actually cares for us very much — for me anyway. A quality I admire in any creature. I'll be writing away and she'll pad into my office and hurl herself onto my lap, sometimes with the help of her needle claws. Which complexifies the writing process, having to reach over and/or around this dozen-pound lump of thrumming fur. What choice have I? It isn't as if I can move her — that would be ungrateful, maybe even bad form. So I stop writing and stroke her. I like the affection. In fact, when the cats were delivered, I couldn't help informing my future-daughter-in-law that dropping Boo off was a lot easier than getting her back will be. She might need a court order. 

     In the past — yes, we've done this before — we insisted on claw covers, or their nails being trimmed. There was no time for that this visit. The cats were nearly flung at us. I reacted to the change in my typical fashion — by complaining, pointing out the claw-sized divots in the edge of the Shaker hutch — Casper's work. Boo would sooner sink into the ground and vanish than climb anywhere. Though even as I complain part of me realizes that someday these claw marks will be valued souvenirs of their sojourn here.

      My wife, using that Actually-Do-Something-About-The-Problem superpower of hers, ordered the above scratching post. Assembling it, I noted that it was impossibly high — showing I can be as slow to process information as anybody, since I've seen Casper leap atop refrigerators — and that Casper would never access its topmost portion. Which he did immediately, as soon as I set the thing out, as a reproach, the "Hey Idiot Look at This!" being unvoiced. At least I had the presence of mind to snap a photo.

Boo