Put down the Colgate, honey.

     A thought experiment:
     Pretend, for a moment, that instead of nominating religious fanatics to the U.S. Supreme Court, Donald Trump had instead packed the high court with dentists.
     And instead of reversing Roe v. Wade, the ruling that for half a century protected the right of American women to make their own reproductive choices, this new court of oral activists allowed state legislatures across the country to mandate what brand of toothpaste women must use.
     Men, of course, would be free to continue using whichever toothpaste they like.
     Certain states, such as Illinois, would continue to allow their female residents access to the range of available brands. Crest. Colgate. Herbal toothpastes like Tom's. Sensodyne. Their choice.
     But other states would rush to make that decision for women and mandate a particular brand — or even bar toothpaste entirely. Use a rag and baking soda, honey, just like in the good old days.
     How would people react?
     Some would no doubt shrug and do whatever the state says. Freedom can be stressful, and there's always a big slice of the population that resents the pressure of being expected to run their own lives. The secret shame of totalitarianism is that a slice of the oppressed like it. Slavery is freeing, ironically, to them. No need to think for yourself, to agonize over choices — your betters do that for you. All you need do is obey.
     But others would rebel at the idea of the government telling us what dentifrice to put in our mouths. We saw how people resisted being told to do something as simple as wear a paper mask during COVID. And gratifyingly seven states — including backwaters like Kansas — rushed the abortion question onto their ballots, protecting the right of women to figure out their lives themselves. These initiatives didn't fail anywhere, because Americans overwhelmingly want the right to choose to have an abortion. Just like Mexico, Ireland, the rest of the Western world.
     Which brings up the connection between undermining voting rights and pushing mandatory religious fundamentalism. What the far right is doing is not popular. Most people voters don't want it — there are heartening signs that Americans are standing up and making their will known — so voting has to go. Since that's too naked a totalitarian flex, even for religious zealots, it's disguised as fighting election fraud, which scarcely exists.

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Facebook finds me unacceptable.

     The nation of Poland once demanded that the Sun-Times take down a column of mine, "True greatness comes from facing history."  At least their embassy in Washington, D.C. did, claiming I was defaming Poland by suggesting that it didn't need the Nazis to show up and teach them how to be anti-Semitic.

    Though they didn't put it in those terms.

    "We respectfully ask for the immediate withdrawal of the article from your website, as it contains a shocking number of blatant factual errors," wrote one Rachon Nikodem. 

     These errors were all along the lines of one author I refer to as "a historian" actually had a degree in sociology. That sort of thing. 

     We made a few tiny corrections, more to placate them than anything else. In discussing the situation, I said something that I've had occasion to repeat a number of times, alas:

     "They think they're refuting the charges, when actually they're manifesting them." Nothing says anti-Semitism — or racism — louder than pretending your bigoted history doesn't exist. It's a bad look.
     The paper, I'm proud to say, stood firm behind me, even after a local Polish lawyer then sued us on their behalf, dragooning two local Polish yokels as injured parties. The attitude of the Sun-Times lawyer when we spoke was, "Yeah, I got this." No need for me to be involved, though this was 2021, and I attended the Zoom court hearings.  I can't say watching a judge laugh the lawsuit out of court was the highlight of my career, but it certainly was right up there.  I felt my dead Polish relatives were, in a tiny meaningless way, avenged.

     Newspapers don't yank down their work. Not without strong compelling reason. The idea is, good or bad, once published, it becomes part of the public record, and thus must be available. Unless it's plagiarized or libelous or in some way far beyond the pale. Which might make me extra sensitive to the idea of things I've written being purged.
     But Facebook tossed one of my blog posts off their social media platform last week, and I found it chilling. It had only happened once before, but that was a column about why Howard Tullman's art collection was so heavy in the nekkid women department. The column included a few photos of his collection and, well, squelching exposed flesh, even when painted, has such a long history that it somehow doesn't seem as objectionable.
    But this post was a list of quotes that I had researched. Donald Trump had just been found guilty of 34 felonies, and his objection, "I was just convicted in a rigged political witch hunt trial: I did nothing wrong" seemed like it called out for context. I gathered together the justifications of other traitors. Benedict Arnold: "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" and Vidkun Quisling, the betrayer of Norway: "I am convicted unfairly and die innocent."
     For good measure I threw in some obviously guilty fellow felons, like John Wayne Gacy: "You will have executed someone who didn't commit the crime...I have no knowledge of the crime whatsoever. Never have had."

    The best part of the whole exercise was, rooting around to see what Iago says in "Othello" that might apply, I found the evergreen "I am not what I am," which could be a generic summary of half of the statements that come out of Donald Trump's mouth.
     I was so pleased with the result, I considered running it as a column in the newspaper. But there was no exposition — just a list of quotes. And it included a line from Hitler's final testament, written days before his suicide: "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."
     I imagined an editor having trouble with that. "So you're ... comparing Trump to Hitler?" and didn't feel like arguing the point.
     Immediately several readers who had posted it on their Facebook pages complained that Meta had taken it down. I figured it was something to do with their pages. Mine was fine. A day later, Facebook lowered the boom.
     "We removed your post," it declared. "Why this happened" It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way." Then it showed my link. "You're post goes against our Community Standards on spam."
     Ouch. I never try to get likes, etc. You can't. You never see that kind of thing coming — go to a discount supermarket with your wife, and suddenly hundreds of thousands of Aldi fans on Reddit are baying for your blood. Nobody plans that.

      I appealed the decision to Facebook, which said they'd get back to me. They must be whistling all the way. Nothing yet. In fact, they did it again Sunday morning, yanking a fairly anodyne farewell to "Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajak. A reminder that oppression is addictive, even when done by machine.    

     I recognize the dilemma. You don't want Facebook clogged with spam and offensive crap ... of others. You also don't want your original, thoughtful food to be deemed offensive muck and hosed away.

     The chill, of course, is to realize that someday everything will be online, and that online world will be in control of six companies, some of them run by irresponsible egomaniacs like Elon Musk. There is something very "1984" — Winston Smith, strapped to a chair in the Ministry of Truth, straining to see a scrap of paper — about the idea of what can be shared being determined by ... actually, not even a few people. A few algorithms. That's a very frightening prospect. Our voices will be stifled by a few semiconductors.

     Yes, every medium has its standards, and I've had  a few columns rejected over the years. I remember New Zealand press lord Nigel Wade tersely informing me that the paper would not be printing my column explaining why Oprah Winfrey is the embodiment of Satan. As bad as that is, at least it is always a person making a decision. The way Facebook does it — it's as if the columns were weighed and then rejected for being too heavy.

      Blogger doesn't do shit like that. Blogger is more of a neutral communication channel, like AT & T. That's one reason I didn't shift over to Substack when they invited me to join — I got the sense they reserved the right to pass judgment on what I am doing. The New York Times ran a chilling story about how China scrubs their internet history. We need to make certain that it can't happen here. 

     The upside, I suppose, is that the more Facebook deteriorates, the more it is an ad-choked wasteland of irrelevant pap, the easier it will be to avoid. Elon Musk did us a favor by wrecking Twitter. People vote with their feet, as religion has discovered, belatedly. Having your work arbitrarily pitched off by some machine is part of that process. I suppose we should be grateful.

Kind soul

 

     A cicada got in the house. Not sure how. Some sneak in as stowaways on my shoulder, hopping on after I'd inspected the yard. This one was seen in shadow on the back of the roller blind in our bedroom. My wife pointed it out.
     The roller blind was new, pure white and quite expensive. The last thing I wanted to do is smear a tablespoon of cicada gore across it. The stain would never come out. That streak would mock me for the next decade. I paused, contemplated, did that spatial cognition thing that men are so good at, and determined I could pull the shade without crushing the cicada.
     "Get me a Dixie cup," I asked my wife, not wanting to take my eyes on the cicada, lest it make its getaway and secrete itself in a hidden nook in our bedroom, from where it would torture us with its shrieks for weeks to come. My wife brought the cup. I nudged red-eyed bug deftly into it, without blotching the shade. I strode into the bathroom, shook the cicada into the toilet, and flushed.
     Then I returned to the bedroom, and saw my wife's face. She was ... not crestfallen. Not shocked. A slight shade of a something that, after 40 years together, I immediately understood.
     "You thought I would take it outside?" I said.
     "Yes," she replied.   
     "To join the trillion other cicadas nibbling on our sapling branches?"
     "Yes."
     And that, dear reader, is why we've been married for 34 years come September. "A woman of valor, who can find?" Proverbs 31:10 asks. "For her price is far above rubies." Maybe so. But a woman of kindness? A truly sympathetic person? Someone who can relate to the inherent value of the primitive flying insect that finds its way to her bedroom? That is rarer still.
     Friday I walked over and picked up lunch from Little Louie's — a Northbrook icon, and if you haven't patronized the place lately, you should. We ate on our back porch, while the cicadas filled the air over our heads, leaping off and on the spreading branches of the two sugar maples that form a partial canopy above our heads. She marveled at them in a way that, for all the media coverage, I'd never heard before. The cicadas were beautiful. She was so happy we live here, and not some other place, where the unfortunate residents miss this spectacle. What a special time!
     That evening, in our bedroom, I reclined onto the pillow and realized something light was moving on my neck. A cicada, I hoped. Sitting up, I requested her immediate attention. She grabbed a Kleenex and, after some Marx Bros. fumbling, plucked it away. Then she exited the room and hurried down the stairs. I did not have to ask where she was going.

"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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