COVID + 4

     Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of Presidential Proclamation #9994, declaring COVID to be a national emergency. "A moment that changed the world," is the way one story put it.

     I'm not so sure of that. Not that COVID didn't change the world; we still live in the fall-out of its isolation, division, private death and public disorder. I mean whether the proclamation was the decisive moment when the world shifted. In my own memories of the advent of COVID, that day, March 11, doesn't particularly stand out. I did watch Trump's announcement that evening, and snapped a photo of the television. Americans are used to travelling about freely, and the notion that now we no longer could, well, it was frightening. Then again, much of COVID was frightening, except for those who couldn't grasp the situation, which was also scary.
     Still, emotionally, March 11 didn't touch the surprise in mid-February, having lunch in an utterly deserted Chinatown restaurant in New York City, or March 13, seeing the shelves at Target stripped of bread, or March 16, the day before Gov. Pritzker closed the restaurants in the state. Sitting alone in an empty Kamehachi in downtown Northbrook, watching the sushi chef work, thinking, with true dread, "I'm killing myself for a negi hamachi roll."

     Other moments stand out. Wiping our groceries off with disinfectant. Putting on a mask for the first time before going into a store. "I feel like we're going to rob the place," I said to my son. Walking the dog at night, passing knots of neighbors, gathered in folding chairs in their driveway, having a party of sorts, social distancing in the darkness.

     Now COVID is gone, mostly, but not forgotten. Not by me anyway. Others, not so much. 
     "I still can't believe that happened," I sometimes say to my wife, perhaps an indication that it is still happening — almost the dazed remark of a survivor hauled into the lifeboat and wrapped in a wool blanket. I finally came down with COVID last July, and sometimes wonder if it isn't lingering in some ineffable way. 
     Have you noticed how little we think about COVID now? There is no memorial or even talk of a memorial. They're building a monument to fallen journalists in Washington, D.C., while the 1.1 million Americans dead of COVID, and counting, are forgotten, not that we ever considered them much in the first place. I can hardly accept it myself.

     Very little souvenir crap that events invariably produce, if you discount all the little bottles of hand sanitizer that still pop out of junk drawers. The only tangible relic is my vaccine card, which I'm holding onto for future reference. 

     That's another moment I'll never forget — March 15, 2021. My older son, at home with his girlfriend because their school had shut down ("Maybe you should get out before they blow the bridges," I told him on the phone. "Dad," he reminded me. "We live in New Jersey....") had gotten a hard-to-snag vaccine appointment at a Walgreen's two-and-a-half hours away, in Springfield. All the appointments in blue state, rational Chicago were taken. At the time I felt flattered, that he was looking out for me. Only later did it dawn on me that he wanted somebody to drive them there.

     Either way, I assumed that when I got to the Walgreen's in Springfield it would be jammed, like that last scene at the Jakarta airport in "The Year of Living Dangerously," with Mel Gibson waving his passport over his head and pushing through the crowd. 

     Instead the place was empty. Not even any customers, never mind downstaters queuing up for the vaccine they decided they didn't really need. I walked up the empty aisle toward the pharmacy in the back with a sense of wonder. I was excited to get the shot, and later regarded with mingled scorn and bogglement all those who spurned it. Rejecting this one aspect of a modernity they otherwise embrace, drinking purified tap water, speaking into cell phones and enjoying all the other benefits of technology, while scorning this one just because some talk show host told them to. I'll never understand it.

When it comes to Social Security, don't let a scammer sign up first

Pension certificate, 1873 (National Postal Museum)

     When I joined the Chicago Sun-Times — 37 years ago this month — my job was to be half the writing staff of The Adviser, a weekly publication giving readers practical advice: how to raise a dog in the city, fight a traffic ticket, pick a health club (I cooked up that last one because I wanted to find a health club myself, and figured why not combine business and pleasure? Bottom line: avoid scams that present membership as an appreciating investment and pick something close to you, so you might actually go).
     I wasn't with the features department long — on my second day at work, the city editor stopped by to say he wanted to lure me to the news side. But The Adviser gave me an affinity for those practical, how-to-get-a-stain-out-of-a-broadloom-rug type of story. A good news article makes readers think about something, a great one makes them do something.
     In that light, "How Fraudsters Break Into Social Security Accounts and Steal Benefits," by Tara Siegel Bernard, which ran Sunday on the front page of the New York Times, must be a great article, because I don't believe I've ever snapped into action the way I did after reading it.
     The story begins with an 88-year-old woman who had her Social Security benefits redirected by a criminal, who changed the bank account her check was sent to.
     "This particular fraud — where criminals use stolen personal information to break into online Social Security accounts or create new ones, and divert benefits elsewhere — has plagued people for more than a decade," Bernard writes.
     And I realized: I'd never signed up online with Social Security to create an account, at myaccount.ssa.gov. So anybody who got my Social Security number — from a data breach, say — could go online, sign up for me, apply for my benefits which, being 63, I'm eligible to start receiving, then direct the money wherever they pleased. And I'd never know it happened, maybe not for years, until I go to retire and discover that someone is already receiving my benefits.
     I leaped up from the breakfast table, bolted upstairs and immediately signed up.

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Unexpected visitors

 

     "Hey honey!" I said, looking up from a magazine. "I think the 'Northbrook Voice' is casting shade on our house."
     I was reading the January/February issue, a page two story headlined, "Visionary That Helped Make Our Village What It Is Today." That should be "Visionary Who Helped..." but no matter. The article was about Edward D. Landwehr, the postal carrier who was one of 35 men to sign the petition incorporating the village of Shermerville. When a contest was held to rename the town, his suggestion — Northbrook — got the most votes. The leafy suburban paradise I call home.
     My interest was personal — we live in Ed Landwehr's old house on Center Avenue, built in 1905. The Village Hall, public library and old water tower in my backyard are in his old cornfield. The article mentions the house.    

     "Ed and Annie lived on a large piece of property on Center Street," the unnamed author writes. "Although changed, their house still stands today."

     "Although changed...?" Ouch. 

     Tell me if I'm being overly sensitive.... 

     "Although changed..." 

     Yes, the house has faded piebald olive aluminum siding on it now, and a two-story addition on the west side added in the relative yesterday of 1959. A master bedroom above and a rec room below. The place would be quite small without them. I replaced the rough front porch made  of two-by-fours and crumbling brick steps with wooden steps and a nice railing made of lathework. And maybe I'm being touchy — not without reason. It IS my house, after all. But that "although changed..." Do I detect a note of asperity, of censure, in that? Is there a house that hasn't changed since 1905? At least it's still here. The place was sold to us "as is," practically a tear down. The kitchen was a ruin, floor sloping, counters pulled away from the walls. We didn't have a working stove for the first two years we lived there. But we decided to keep it because a) we liked it and b) we couldn't afford to build a new one.

    So yes, we bloody well changed the house, all we could. I plan to change it more.

    Though changed, it is not without interest. I was attuned to this topic because of something that happened in November. I looked out the front window and was surprised to find a half dozen people, gazing at the house, taking pictures. Hesitant to imagine that this might be about — are these the piqued readers that John Kass so worries about? Come to get me? Unlike John, I didn't bolt to Indiana like a terrified bunny and start digging a burrow. Instead I went outside and said hello. They were descendents of Ed and Annie Landwehr, in town for a civic event at the historical society, honoring their ancestor.

     Of course I invited them in — we try to keep a modestly neat abode for just such a contingency. They went from room to room, sharing memories. A grandfather had lain in state in our front parlor. We showed them that the pocket doors between the living and dining room still work. They were curious, friendly, polite and grateful.

      I have a letter I found at the historical society from Ed's son Martin, and sent it to his descendents. I hadn't read the letter in many years. The house was built without bathrooms — that was in the backyard, and Saturday night bathwater was heated on the stove in the kitchen. I was charmed that the same line of evergreens lining the driveway were planted when the house was built, as was the hedge of van houtte spirea that I have battled to keep alive.

     A sane man would have torn that spirea out years ago. That's what the neighbors across First Avenue did. But I am not a sane man, when it comes to spirea, and I estimate I've spent nearly a thousand dollars and planted 15 shrubs if I've planted one. It's worth it every spring when that thing turns into a bed of snowy white. Were Ed Landwehr to suddenly arise and walk among us next month, he would see the thing from a block away, and it would make him happy. Although I imagine heaven is just silly with vanhoutte spirea.

     I thought I should write my own letter someday, encapsulating the quarter century my family has spent in the house. We raised two boys here; I wrote five books in the upstairs library. I like to imagine it would be of interest to a future owner, though the sad reality is that anyone who buys the place will certainly tear it down to build one of those jumbo white faux farmhouses with black trim that are all the rage. Me, I prefer an actual farmhouse, that once was associated with an actual farm — complete with a horse, stabled in the garage in the living memory of our next door neighbors when we first moved in. There are two horseshoes nailed to a main beam in the basement — for good luck. The wood is cracked, but holding — one of the first things we did when we moved in was add a support brace, to keep the place together.

 

     

"Bésame, soy irlandés!"

 

     Some aspects of Chicago life are so scoured raw by excess attention — particularly from advertising copywriters trying to inject a bit of local color into their plugs — that mere mention of them is enough to draw a wince of pain. Deep-dish pizza and ketchup on hot dogs leap to mind. Please, no mas.
     The St. Patrick's Day version is dyeing the Chicago River green and chugging green beer in Irish pubs. You'd think these were Ireland's only contributions to the world.
     As St. Patrick's Day looms, I try to shine a light in the more neglected corners. In previous years I shared a bit of the work of the Irish writers whose grim black-and-white portraits stare mutely from pub walls, or celebrated Hazel Lavery, the Chicago beauty name-checked in a Yeats poem, whose face graced Irish banknotes for nearly half a century.
     This year I'd like to mention famous Irish revolutionaries Michael Collins, Daniel O'Connell and Che Guevara.
     Ireland's revolutionary spirit was born, never forget, from nearly a millennium of oppression, as the English invaded Ireland in 1169. In 1494 ...
     What's that? Still chewing on Che Guevara? What's he doing there? The Argentine revolutionary whose face stared down from countless 1960s college dorm rooms? Not aware, are you, of the Irish roots of the man who helped overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959?
     "The first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of Irish rebels," said his father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, whose forebear Patrick Lynch left Galway in 1749, bound for Argentina.
     The connection isn't a big secret — Ireland put Guevara on a stamp in 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. Though I learned about the Irish/Argentine connection in a more direct fashion.

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'Working directly from Nature is the best way'

Deering Memorial Library, Northwestern University

     The Fine Arts Building has to be on anybody's short list of favorite downtown buildings, with its elevator operators — the last in the city, soon to be phased out — its sun-filled fourth floor atrium and general air of seedy artistic casualness, home to violin makers and  mouthpiece fitters, shoestring opera theaters and puppet troupes. 

     Yes, in recent years, there is a pang for the loss of the Artist's Cafe —I'm tempted to decry the singular possessive, but what artist worth his or her salt isn't pretty singular in nature? It was a splendid burger, pie and coffee diner that time forgot, with patrons including Johnny Carson and Mick Jagger, the perfect place to while away an hour waiting for a concert to start. Closed five years now.

     I was there recently visiting a brass instrument showroom on the second floor, and returned last Friday to kill  few minutes before the ACLU Luncheon at the Hilton down the block by browsing the lovely bookstore on the second floor.
    My attention was drawn by an exhibit of paintings there by Don Yang. The paintings were created en plein air, or "in the open air" meaning it wasn't done in a studio, but painted on an easel outside, in front of the scene being depicted. 

     I asked Yang about it — what does painting in the outdoors bring that can't be found painting, say, off a photograph? 

      "Nothing like painting and drawing the real thing on location seeing/feeling the true color and atmosphere," he replied. "What we see in photograph or screen shot is not ‘real’ in the sense of true color. Those images are heavily dependent upon the printer and paper (photo) or how computer/tablet screen is calibrated. Never same as what I ‘feel' with my eyes. Even the gloomiest day on location offers more vibrant colors and sense of presence than a photo reference.

     "Though I do enjoy my studio work, and often have to work off of photo references, working directly from Nature is the best way to learn and experience the true light and color.
Different season, different day, different weather, and my different mood of the day yields different paintings.
     "I didn’t understand how Monet felt he could ‘get away with’ painting the same haystack and consider them all different paintings until I started taking my own painting gears outdoors.
     "To me, plein air painting is just as much of an experience as it is a result."
     Born in South Korea, Yang came to the United States as a teenager. After a stint in the Army, he settled in Chicago, painting and teaching. He's chairperson of the fine arts department of the American Academy of Art College, a small, for-profit school teaching art and design.
     I like the dappled light in the paintings, the rich natural colors, and the way he frames his images. Yang often paints familiar Chicago landmarks, but from unexpected angles. Another thing that struck me about the painting was how affordable they are — $500, $800. Not cheap, but not an unimaginable fortune either. They struck me as a good special event gift for someone, and yes, he does commissions, if there is a certain home or part of the city that you or a loved one has particular appreciation for.
     You can see dozens more examples of his work on his website, or reach Don Yang at donyangart@gmail.com.

Fourth Presbyterian Church Courtyard

Give Scientology a break!

     Preconceptions can blind you, so you see what's festering in the back of your mind rather than what's shining right in front of your eyes.
     Take stories about the opening of a new Scientology center in the South Loop. The accounts focused on the accusations directed at the church, that it is a "criminal enterprise."
     Scientology stories always trot out the controversies.
     While downplaying what is, to me, the bigger news: somebody opened something in downtown Chicago. The corpse is twitching! The headline in the Sun-Times was "Church of Scientology expands in Chicago," which is like topping a story on the Resurrection with "Ex-carpenter goes for walk."
     I should show my hand here. All religions are scams, to one degree or another. Which is not to say they are without value. People can derive deep emotional moral satisfaction from being defrauded — the past decade of American history proves that. Life is squishy, painful and short, why not embroider existence with some mystic hoo-ha?
     Look at the charges outlined in the Sun-Times story: "The California lawsuit, filed by former Scientologists, accuses the group of, among other things: unpaid child labor, identity theft, covering up sexual assaults ..."
     Are there not well-established churches — no names, please! — also regularly rocked with at least a few of those accusations? I believe there are.
    That said, Scientology does have a way of standing out from the crowd.
     "An anti-democratic authoritarian personality cult that will not tolerate critical comments (however justified) about its policies or leaders," is how Stephen A. Kent, sociology professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, described Scientology.
     In Scientology's defense, there's a lot of that going around.
     Of course, opening a new business isn't the hard part. It's the staying open part that is the trick. And here, like any hopeful restaurant or internet startup, Scientology's new center faces challenges, as Kent explained when we spoke.

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Flashback 2012: Are Oscar winners cursed? Only to overly credulous media

     What goes around, comes around. As in 2012, we've been without snow so long that we've forgotten what it's like. And it's Oscar time, again. This column from a dozen years ago recently popped up in my Facebook feed, and I thought I'd run it today, to get you in the mood for the Academy Awards. 

     Thus Chicagoans awoke to the indignity of snow Friday morning. Snow in February! Imagine that! Two whole inches and we can’t hope to see the sun until Saturday, with balmier, mid-40s temperatures not returning until the next day. The indignity of it.
    Admit it — you were feeling sorry for yourself. I sure was. I was almost offended, as if this weren’t allowed anymore, and somebody slipped up. Half a warm winter and we fancy that winter has been outlawed.

Odd people II

     Strange indeed. People also automatically embrace the most extreme explanation, ignoring less flashy causes. A streak in the sky? Must be a mother ship from the space aliens who constantly hover around the periphery of our vision, keeping tabs on us.
     Some of this is biological. There was little downside to seeing a murky shape in the dark and thinking, "Bear!" It served us a whole lot better, in evolutionary terms than shrugging and thinking, "Oh well, must be a bush." Those folks tended not to survive.
     We are machines of innate exaggeration.
     Still — "The Oscar Curse" — really?
     "A mysterious jinx that has plagued past winners of the golden statuette," CNBC.com reported last week. "While logic would dictate that winning Hollywood’s most prestigious award should catapult its winner into the A-list, the sad fact is that many Oscar-winning performers have seen their career trajectories plummet."
     Mysterious? Sometimes I’m ashamed to be a journalist, they can be so credulous. The notion has been repeated again and again in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s Oscars.
     None of the stories I saw breathed a whisper of what is really happening, perhaps because that would take actual logical, or rather, statistical, thinking. Two concepts.
     First, "Regression to the Mean." If there is an average performance — say the typical baseball batting average is .261 — and you excel, say one season hitting .350, then your subsequent performance will tend to deteriorate toward the average, to preserve it.
     So if you flip a coin and it come up heads five times in a row, while the odds are always 50-50 on your next flip, at some point you’ll likely have a run of tails, since the odds of heads will gravitate toward 50 percent.
     Thus, if the vast majority of movies are garbage — and they sure are — and an actor appears in an exceptional movie (the kind that generate Academy Awards) then the odds are greater that the actor will return to trash as opposed to somehow magically being projected into another great movie.
     The second concept at work here is non-random sampling. A piece last week in RedEye singled out five actors who were supposedly "curse victims" — Halle Berry, Cuba Gooding Jr., Roberto Benigni, Reese Witherspoon and Mira Sorvino — and cited their Oscar-winning performances and their subsequent dogs.
     They seemed to think that proves their point: Look! Halle Berry was in "Gothika" after she won an Oscar for "Monster’s Ball."
       The story didn’t mention that Berry was in plenty of lousy movies before winning her Academy Award. How can "X-Men: The Last Stand" be offered up as evidence of the curse when Berry also appeared in the nearly-as-bad "X-Men" prior to winning?
     You could just as easily gather together five actors who won Oscars and didn’t immediately appear in lousy movies. Katharine Hepburn won an Oscar in 1967 for "Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner" and won again the next year for "The Lion in Winter." Meryl Streep was nominated for 17 Academy Awards and won twice, and while Margaret Thatcher fans might grumble about her latest, you can’t say she’s been in a bad film.
     The Oscar Curse is like the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx or the sophomore slump, a fun fallacy reported as fact by those who should know better. If you excel now you’ll tend — on average — to slip later. Maybe that’s too sad a truth to report unvarnished.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, February 24, 2012