"H A P P Y ... T R A — L S ... T O ... Y O —!" Pat Sajak moves on.

     Last year Stephen Colbert asked Jim Gaffigan what's new, the classic slow-pitch-down-the-middle that talk show hosts serve their guests. Gaffigan swung from his heels.
     "The biggest thing, probably, since I've seen you, is Pat Sajak retiring," the comedian said. "People ... you can see how stunned they are."
     Are we? Maybe a little. Game shows aren't supposed to change. They're supposed to endure, a bedrock of entertainment stability in an otherwise rapidly shifting culture. We don't focus on them, hardly talk about them unless a contestant goes on a run or makes some laughable error.
     And their hosts reign for decades, none more so than Pat Sajak, the longest-serving TV game show host in history — 8,000 episodes of "Wheel of Fortune" over 41 years, a tenure that ends Friday.
     "Wheel of Fortune" is still the 2nd most-watched game show in the country, after its brainier cousin "Jeopardy!" and some years is No. 1. Though there is a disconnect between the show's huge popularity and the esteem granted its host.
     "He's the host of 'Wheel of Fortune,' but really, is there anything Pat Sajak can't do?" Gaffigan deadpanned. "He's, ah, he's ... like a renaissance man."
     Meaning: He's not. Sajak is a blandly handsome former weatherman who got very rich playing a mash-up of "Hangman" and roulette on television. Aided almost the entire time by the truly incredible Vanna White — and I say "truly incredible" because while most models hired to smile radiantly on game shows are anonymous and replaceable, White has endured as the nation's letter-turner, becoming a household name whose job is set to continue through at least 2026, when she will be 69.

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Fake bird.

     Cicadas aren't the only insects on earth you know. It only seems that way, at the moment. (Someone asked me what the cicadas were like in Northbrook, and I said it's like being an extra in the David Lynch film "Eraserhead.") Right now, for a non-cicada bug to be noticed, it has to practically leap out in front of you.
     Which is more or less what this handsome specimen of a polyphemus moth did, showing up smack in the middle of the sidewalk while I escorted Kitty down Catherine Street the other morning. It wasn't flapping, but just sort of resting there — a sure sign of distress, as moths are nocturnal.

    People go on and on about butterflies, though moths are practically the same — less colorful, more furry, denizens of the night instead of the day. Moths rest with their wings spread, as above, while butterflies in repose fold their wings back.   

    I assumed the moth must be dying, and didn't want to molest the poor creature as it expired. Though I took this photo of it — upside down, and kept it that way because you really see how the moth disguises itself as a great horned owl, at least long enough to give a predator pause and perhaps facilitate the moth's escape.

     No escape for this poor fellow, I'm afraid. Walking away, it struck me that, in nearly a quarter century perambulating around the ol' leafy suburban paradise, I don't believe I've ever seen one before. For a moment I slowed, thinking I should turn back and, I don't know, collect it or something. Pin the thing in a frame, as a trophy. 

     I kept going. Kinda late for me to take up butterfly-and-or-moth collecting. Beside, one of the key functions that moths and butterflies fill is to transform plant material into animal food, by being eaten. Best to leave this behind as a snack for some hungry bird.

     A fate both moths and butterflies try to avoid, using camouflage — blending into their surroundings — and mimicry, as above, pretending to be something they're not.
     A common defense in the animals world, including humans, now that I think of it. I sure try to present myself as a bigger, fiercer creature than I actually am. Nor am I alone. At the risk of veering political, this fragile Lepidoptera posing as an hardy avian predator could remind us of a certain brittle, weak and dim-witted egomaniac puffing himself as a strongman genius looking out for the common man. 

     Or maybe not — this bug isn't hideous, for starters. Nature might be indifferent, but it's rarely cruel. For some people, cruelty seems the whole point of their existence.

The story of Kabir and the cicadas

 

Conor O'Shea, left, his wife, Aneesha Dharwadker and their son, Kabir.

     Weeks pass, and still the cicadas come, more and more, louder and louder. In my leafy suburban paradise, toward evening, the background whir revs up into a maddening whine, like nature's insectoid buzzsaw ripping through the thin veneer of modern life.
     The cicadapalooza coverage in the media has slowed, but too late: expectations were already raised.
     "We were following the news," said Conor O'Shea, landscape architect and father of two small boys, Kabir and Kieran. "We kept hearing about the cicadas coming to Chicago. We all decided to go to Smith Park to go cicada hunting."
     The West Town family visited the small green trapezoid and made a startling discovery.
     "There were no cicadas," said O'Shea.
     Entomologists say there are not enough venerable trees in Chicago.
     "We don't have very many old trees in the city so they won't be able to emerge if they have nowhere to live as nymphs," Hazel Fricke, of the Field Museum's insect department, told WBEZ.
     So the family headed to west suburban Riverside. O'Shea sent a report to the Sun-Times describing what happened next.
     "My sons collected shells, observed emergence holes, and brushed off cicada nymphs crawling up their legs," he wrote. "This morning my son Kabir decided to cut out your article 'Global Swarming' and brought it to his school along with some of his shells to share with his classmates at Suder Magnet Montessori, a CPS school at Damen and Washington."

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Meet The Duffers: An intergenerational hockey team with a standing reservation in Downers Grove

     A bonus column this week, written for a special Sunday section on community. 

     It’s Wednesday, it’s noon, it’s Grand Dukes, an Eastern European restaurant in Downers Grove. Which can only mean one thing. The Duffers are assembling.
     “Hey, Bob!” says Jim Glynn, the “Young Guy” at 61, sitting at the bar. Bob Granato is hockey royalty, the uncle of Tony and Don Granato Jr., NHL former players and current coaches, and Cammi Granato, the first woman inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
     Everyone has a nickname. Greg Lopatka is “the Beak” for obvious reasons if you see him in profile. Arvetis M. Dikinis is “Harvey” — you can’t expect the guys to handle “Arvetis” — and wears a Duffers jersey, which expropriates the Hamm’s Beer bear (artfully if not legally) as their mascot.
     And what are the Duffers? Well, that is a long story, starting in 1970, at the new ice-skating rink opened in Downers Grove. Shortly thereafter, the future Duffers found themselves in the stands, watching their sons play hockey.
     “Most of us had kids playing at the rink,” says Lopatka, 84. “The original guy, Jim Miceli — we call him ‘The King’ — he said, ‘This looks like fun. We should do this.’”
     So they started playing Sundays at the rink.
     They never stopped. For the next 53 years. They hang out, they play. They even take the team on the road, traveling to distant cities — they’ve taken 42 road trips over the last half-century — to play at actual NHL arenas after the pros have vacated the ice.
     “We’ve had a lot of fun, thanks to the Granatos,” says Greg Zerkis. Tony Granato’s brother, Don Sr., is also a member.

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Trump's felony convictions the straw that didn't break the camel's back

     When news broke Thursday that Donald Trump had been found guilty of 34 felonies in his payoff of porn star Stormy Daniels, I felt surprise — I assumed at least one juror would refuse to convict — then emptiness. Not the elation ululating over social media. Not a desire to plunge into the reams of reportage and analysis boiling out the press. Nothing.
     When my editor at the paper called a few minutes later, I was glad to be walking up Western Avenue, on my way to interview a 5-year-old about cicadas — we'll get to that Wednesday. No, I wasn't in a position to opine on the conviction for tomorrow's paper. No, I really didn't have anything to add, other than what I've been saying about this for years:
     Once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, the specifics of the reality being ignored hardly matter.
     Has anything changed? Not really, making it a truth that bears regular repeating.
     A kind of mantra to distance myself from the rest of the media, which display a startling inability to grasp the situation here, the dynamic that has settled over half our country. For followers of this man, there is no truth, no moment of revelation, no bottom to bounce up from. If trying to corrupt an election, then leading an insurrection didn't sour his acolytes, what is the dry legalism of 34 felony convictions supposed to do? His fans immediately cried persecution, flying flags upside down and off-gassing grievance.
     In their world, anything goes. Literally. Trump isn't trying to steal the election, the Democrats are. By holding Trump accountable for the crimes he commits. And allowing mail-in ballots.
     Once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, the specifics of the reality being ignored hardly matter.
     Of course, that isn't true in real-life situations. If your house is on fire and you sit on the living room sofa popping malted milk balls into your mouth and grinning as the curtains ignite, the reality you are ignoring definitely will matter, and soon. The reality being ignored matters if your pregnancy goes wrong in Texas and you need emergency surgery. You can ignore facts, as I also like to say, but that doesn't mean facts will ignore you.
     Friday morning I did my due diligence, re-reading W. B. Yeats' "The Second Coming."
     "Turning and turning in the widening gyre," it begins — a gyre is a vortex. "Things fall apart/the centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
     Testify, brother. Yeats wrote that in 1919, after the First World War killed the Western notion of order and progress. The idea that leaders don't know what they're doing wasn't born in the gore-washed trenches of the Somme. Rather, it was confirmed there, subject to periodic reminders.

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Flashback 2013: Marriage is . . . (hint: it’s not just sex)

      Gay Pride Month already? It does creep up.  Not being gay myself, I can't have much pride in the gay department. But I am proud of how the vicissitudes of gay life have been reflected in my column. I am what is sometimes called "an ally," though I prefer to think of myself as a sentient, caring person who has mastered the empathy-with-others-unlike-yourself trick that eludes many, if not most, folks. 
     I hope this is still worth rereading, for the way I lay out the argument which, alas, remains relevant today. And yes, I was curious about my use of "boinking" in the first sentence. Checking, in the hope that my usage was some kind of hapax legomenon* in the Sun-Times, I found that, alas, it was not, but had been deployed before me by Roger Ebert, Judy Markey and Richard Roeper, who introduced the term to our readership in 1988 by noting: "Donna Rice becomes famous for boinking Gary Hart."

Dear Cardinal George:

     So marriage is all about boinking?
     Forgive me for being blunt — lucky you didn’t read the above before I watered down the gerund, out of concern for your sensibilities. But that idea — sex = marriage — is the gist of the letter you sent to the faithful last weekend: Marriage is about sex, gays can’t have sex, at least not good old-fashioned heterosexual sex, thus gays can’t get married, and any attempt to allow them to marry — for instance, any new law passed in Illinois — is a “legal fiction” and a “serious danger”; oh wait, the “serious danger” part is in your second letter, to government officials, urging them to follow your religious dogma when forming laws for the State of Illinois.
     Where does one begin?
     First, Cardinal, thank you for your insight. Given that I have been married — 22 years and counting — and you haven’t, perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I reply to your letters with a letter of my own. Letters are so friendly.
     I should be clear at the get-go, since so many readers have such a hard time with this: I am not Catholic, and my concern is not about what Catholics do or don’t do in practicing their own religion. It’s a free country, sort of, and all may follow whatever faith they like. As the leader of Chicago Catholics, you have a duty to tell your flock what being a good Catholic means. And were that the extent of your letters, I’d never dream of arguing. It would be none of my business.
     But that is not what you’re doing. What you’re doing is instructing Catholics to pressure legislators, and pressuring them yourself, joined by like-minded clerics, to craft laws that force non-Catholics to follow Catholic doctrine. That makes it everybody’s business. It is the right — I would say duty — of non-Catholics to resist religious notions being imposed on Illinoisans through law.
     In an attempt to justify an unjustifiable intrusion of religion into secular life, you write, in your letter, “Marriage comes to us from nature” — one of the wilder statements to issue from a prelate, which is saying a lot. “The human species comes in two complementary sexes, male and female” — no argument here — “their sexual union is called marital.”
     Really? By whom? Because people nowadays mate like ferrets, while fewer call it “marital.” What comes to us from nature is not marriage but sex. Some species do indeed mate for life, but that is the exception, not the rule. Biologists say it isn’t fidelity, but random copulation that comes from nature.
     Surely, Cardinal George, you are not endorsing random copulation, natural though it may be. Rather, this is the latest in a long history of the church trying to control sex — first straight sex, and now that effort has fizzled, roundly rejected by both society and most Catholics, you’re focusing on gays, perhaps because you can or you think you can.
     You worry, in your letters, not about the families you would blithely squelch, but about your own feelings, the risk that devout Catholics will be seen as “the equivalent of bigots” after gay marriage becomes completely accepted — which it certainly will.
     Well, yeah, that’s the drawback of being a bigot, no matter how you gild it in theology. But worry not — look at the church’s stance on females. While society long ago let them be doctors and lawyers and, yes, even clergy, the church refuses to follow suit. Yet it lives with the anti-women stigma just fine. It’ll be no different with gays, and the church’s position will be just one more antiquated cruelty the world will tolerate. You’ll hardly notice.
     Because marriage — and here you’ll have to listen to an old married guy — isn’t just about sex. Yes, that’s part of it. But someone who gets married for the sex is like someone who flies on an airplane for the meal — there are easier, cheaper ways to go about it.
     Sex is not the central defining element of marriage — that would be commitment a.k.a. staying together, often raising children, sometimes cleaning the house, paying bills, talking quietly at night, having a relationship recognized by society and law, a vessel solid enough to navigate the tempests and calms, storms and lassitudes of the years. Marriage is about love and responsibility. And here homosexuals are on an even playing field with straights. Yet here you are mum — as if, because you don’t see them, they’re not here.
     But they are here, and you’re hurting them, or trying to. Religion is a tool — a hammer that can be used to build a house or to hit someone in the head. Your choice. Rather than try to make life better for gays — a long-oppressed group only now achieving freedoms most take for granted — you choose to set your faith as a stumbling block before them. Rather than help the more hidebound members of your church see why this is rightly happening now, you vigorously rally them to desperate, last-ditch resistance. That is your misfortune, and theirs, and ours.

With respect,

Neil Steinberg

                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, January 4, 2013

* "Hapax legomenon" is Greek for "being said once," a term used to denote a word used once in a particular body of literature. For instance, in the Torah, God tells Noah to make his ark out of atzei gopher (עֲצֵי-גֹפֶר) or "gopher wood," a term that does not appear anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible.

'I am not what I am' — Traitors and villains explain themselves

    

The Circle of Traitors: Dante's Foot Striking Bocca degli Abbate, by William Blake (Met)

“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages. ”
                      —Judas Iscariot

“There is no other way of enjoying riches and money than by riotous extravagance; only stingy and ungenerous fellows keep a correct account of what they spent.”

                        —Nero

"I am not what I am.”
                        —Iago, "Othello"

"Love to my country actuates my present conduct, however it may appear inconsistent to the world, who very seldom judge right of any man's actions." 

                       — Benedict Arnold

"I think I have done well, though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me."

                        —John Wilkes Booth

"Every time a boy falls off a tricycle, every time a black cat has gray kittens, every time someone stubs a toe, every time there's a murder or a fire or the marines land in Nicaragua, the police and the newspapers holler 'get Capone.'"

                         —Al Capone

"Stalin is left standing and wins; I fall and lose. History only concerns itself with victors and the volume of their conquests; triumph justifies everything."

                         —Benito Mussolini 

"It is untrue that I or any other person in Germany wanted war in the year 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who are either of Jewish origin or work for Jewish interests."

                          —Adolf Hitler

"I am convicted unfairly and die innocent."
                      —Vidkun Quisling

“I believe I’m innocent of this crime and that I did not commit this crime."

                     —Sirhan Sirhan

"Remorse for what? You people have done everything in the world to me. Doesn't that give me equal right?"

                       —Charles Manson

"People don't want to know the truth and the honesty of it. If they want to be convinced, they're brainwashed into what they believe. Then fine, go ahead and kill me. But vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. You will have executed someone who didn't commit the crime...I have no knowledge of the crime whatsoever. Never have had."
                       —John Wayne Gacy

 "I never intended or agreed to spy against the United States."
                      —Jonathan Pollard

"I am an innocent man. I don't believe most of America believes I did it."

                     —O.J. Simpson

"I was just convicted in a rigged political witch hunt trial: I did nothing wrong."

                       —Donald Trump