Debate? What debate? Did anybody really expect a debate?

     Watching the disaster unfold Thursday night, I considered jumping in and changing this. But honestly, what need be said? Joe Biden started the debate feeble, almost wide-eyed, staring at the ground, as if in shame, as Donald Trump bloviated and lied. Biden rallied, at points, but it was too late. The fiasco was so painfully clear, any Democrat watching realized it almost immediately. I suppose that is a comfort — at least we can recognize a new reality —well, new to the public — in front of our eyes. Turns out the Republican libel was right. Now as to whether anyone will do anything about it, well, I wish I had hope of that. Something could happen. But, to paraphrase Renault in "Casablanca," that would take a miracle, and the Republicans have outlawed miracles. Or, rather, the Democrats have. We did this to ourselves. We made our bed. Now we have to lie in it.

     My profession has lots of rules. Spelling rules, grammar rules, usage rules. People quoted in stories ought to both actually exist and have said the words attributed to them. Were I to tuck in a sentence like, "'I think the mayor is a fumbling stumblebum,' said John Q. Chicagoan, relaxing in the bleachers at Comiskey Park ..." my boss would be on me like a ton of bricks.
     Writing authoritatively about events that have not yet occurred is also frowned upon. The ideal way to comment on Thursday night's debate between President Joe Biden and former president and, oh, dear God, perhaps future President Donald Trump would be to watch it and then craft my opinion on the fly while it is happening.
     But that's problematic, too. The debate began at 8 p.m. and lasted 90 minutes. I might have spent this column discussing an exchange in the first hour when, five minutes before the end, CNN producers will have had to pry the candidates' fingers off each other's throats. That would look stupid, or worse. I remember a colleague who lost her job after reviewing a concert she left early, remarking on songs that were never performed.
     Besides, I know of one thing that definitely, 100%, take-it-to-the bank was going to happen Thursday night. Or, to be more precise, not happen.
     OK, again, lots of things might not have happened. The whole debate might not have come off at all. Trump might not have shown up — people kept saying that, citing his proven track record of cowardice. After protesters scuppered a Chicago campaign appearance in 2016, Trump never showed his face at a public event in Chicago again and certainly never will. A distinction that should be added to the city seal, perhaps replacing the naked baby on a clam shell.
     Or the debate could have been incomplete. The TV lights could have melted Biden like a wax figurine under a blowtorch. He could have crumbled to dust and been blown away on the hot gale of Trump's nonstop jabbering. Anything is possible.
     But of the range of possibilities, there is one thing I was 100% certain wasn't going happen, even though it is tucked into the very name of the event under consideration: the first 2024 presidential debate. I'll give you a hint. It is certainly presidential — one current and one former president was there. But the presidential debate wasn't a debate. Did anybody expect otherwise?
     Did you tune in, expecting the presentation of arguments? The marshaling of relevant facts? One candidate shrugs off the very idea of factuality, living in a constantly changing fantasy hall of mirrors that millions and millions of Americans are all too glad to wander alongside him in, docile as lambs.

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Flashback 2006: King Lear, "I would not be mad"

Stacy Keach, left, as King Lear. (Photo courtesy of the Goodman Theatre)

     Many emails Monday from readers grateful for my pushback against muscular Christianity trying to wrestle public education to the ground and break its arm. One mentioned that this was the third letter of praise he had sent to a public figure, in his life, the first being to Christopher Plummer after seeing him in "King Lear." 
     Good company. My inclination was to send him, as thanks, my observations on Robert Falls' benchmark 2006 "King Lear," but realized I'd never posted it here. Let me fix that right away.

'I would not be mad. . .'

     Theater, like life, is fleeting. The most elaborate production is quickly gone, the sets broken down, the cast dispersed, never to return.
     But you can't see everything, not in a town like Chicago, where dramatic riches are being tossed from a stage somewhere almost every single night.
     Which is why I nearly missed "King Lear" at the Goodman, for the simple reason that "Hamlet" opened at Navy Pier a few days earlier. How much Shakespeare can I reasonably ask my wife to endure?
      As October clicked by, I began to feel a rising panic, the desperate urgency that grips my boys when they hear the receding jingle of the ice cream truck. My chance was slipping by. Still I dithered.
     Then the Wall Street Journal, a perfumed hankie jammed under its nose, panned the play as an "appallingly expensive desecration," as if it were footing the bill. "Oral sex, anal rape, male and female nudity, murder by garrote" — the Journal huffed, as if Shakespeare didn't stud his work with both killings and low puns about country matters.
     Could director Robert Falls have really stumbled that badly? I remember being awed at his "Hamlet" nearly a quarter century ago. It shocked, in a good way. When Ophelia came on stage, late in the play, hiking up her skirts and drawing on her face with lipstick, you recoiled, thinking, "She's crazy!" and then laughed at yourself because, duh, it's Ophelia.
     Was the Journal right? Or was my colleague Hedy Weiss, who praised the play, particularly Falls' decision to set it among the embers of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, which the Journal found a stunt?
     If I didn't see it, I'd never know.
     So I went, alone, having failed to entice anybody to go with me. Drove downtown in the snowstorm Thursday, ponied up the $26 to park and the $60 for a ticket, feeling slightly sheepish — some strange vestige of directorial brand loyalty. "Lear" isn't even one of my favorite Shakespeare plays.
     Or wasn't, until now.
     The good news is that the Journal's theater critic is as perceptive as its editorial writers, who consider George Bush in a class with Lincoln and Jesus. Without replicating Hedy's spot-on review, I'll note that the murderous dukes and lecherous ladies of "Lear" fit perfectly into the bloody post-Soviet chaos.
     At one point, I did turn my face away, revolted. But that was when Gloucester's eyes are ripped out, and isn't that what an audience should do at that point? Falls didn't write the scene — Shakespeare did. Falls just gave it the horror it deserves. I guess the Journal would have preferred his eyes be put out demurely, perhaps by a committee.
     The sad thing is that "King Lear" only runs for another week, though tickets are available. As I said, these things end far too soon.

          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 15, 2006

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Lemon Meringue Pie ice cream!

     One crisis after another — climate change and nationalism, crime and, oh yeah, don't forget, Thursday's presidential debate. "From wrong to wrong, the exasperated spirit proceeds," as T.S. Eliot put it.
     Unless restored by ... well, it's summer; let's talk about ice cream.
     The world won't deteriorate faster because we pause to consider cool creamy goodness.
     In my defense, I seldom write about ice cream. There was a 2009 column ripping the lid off the spumoni question — it isn't Italian — and then, way back in 1996, when I escaped parenting a newborn long enough to inhale a jumbo atomic hot fudge sundae at Margie's Candies.
     I wouldn't write now, but Graeter's Ice Cream, a venerable Ohio company founded in 1870, converted an old auto body shop in downtown Northbrook into its first Illinois ice cream parlor in 2015. They offer a wide array of flavors, my previous favorite being black raspberry chocolate chip — think inch-long shards of Dove-quality dark chocolate.
     Graeter's offers tasting spoonfuls. As much as I hate to hold up the line with gustatory experiments, it seems a failure of imagination not to sample a new flavor before ordering black raspberry chocolate chip. In the spring, Lemon Meringue Pie was featured. I like lemons. And I like pie. One taste. Boom. Bits of crust. Bits of lemon candy. My mind rearranged itself. I ordered a bowl.
     That was it. Black raspberry chocolate chip was forgotten. For the first time in my life, I actually went to an ice cream parlor seeking out a specific flavor. A few days later I returned for another bowl. And bought two pints so I'd have it around. Two.
     Lemon Meringue Pie Ice Cream — how'd they do that?
     "It was a team approach," said Bob Graeter, chief of quality assurance and part of the fourth generation to run the company. "We're always working from a portfolio of 15 or 20 concepts. Seeing what's trending, what's out there. Lemon is an on-trend flavor. We're seeing a lot of citrus flavors in ice cream right now. We've been toying with lemon-flavored ice cream, along with the idea of reinterpreting bakery items. We have a baking business in Cincinnati."

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Ed Burke sentenced to prison: 'There's more to life than a little money, you know'

     The heat broke on Monday, a beautiful, clear, low-humidity early summer day in Chicago, beginning to end. A great time to be out and about, free and easy. I rode my bike to the paint store, got on my knees in the garden. The very last place anyone would want to be is inside a courtroom, particularly if you were the guilty party, like former City Council member Ed Burke, waiting to see how long you'd be put away.
     Citing his role in "this erosion ... this chipping away at our democracy," Judge Virginia Kendall gave Burke two years in prison, plus a $2 million fine.
     I wonder which hurt more — the time or the money? For a man who would endanger his reputation to grab some more money and gain a client. Over a Burger King driveway easement. I'm always amazed at how little people wreck their lives over. For Dan Rostenkowski it was postage stamps, crystal and a couple of chairs. George Ryan got a grand back from some vacation. Rod Blagojevich didn't get anything, but tried to shake down a children's hospital.
     Two years. Not the 10 the prosecution sought. A light sentence, but more time in jail than anyone, never mind an 80-year-old with nine-tenths of his life behind him, wants to contemplate.
     Give Burke credit. Unlike Blago, who multiplied his own prison time by being too stupid to realize he'd done anything wrong, Burke copped to his guilt.
     "The blame for this is mine and mine alone," he said.
     That is refreshing. We live in an age of denial, when nobody is caught so red-handed they can't off-load responsibility somewhere else. Then again, Ed Burke always had style.
     It'll be in a minimum-security federal prison. Not quite a resort, but he won't be raking a tin cup across the bars, either.
     But still, prison. Lights on, lights out, go here, go there. It's like being sentenced to two years in a cinder-block-walled, fluorescent-lit cross between junior high school and the worst summer camp ever.
     Was I the only one, when Burke received his punishment, to think of Frances McDormand's great speech from the end of the Coen Brothers darkly comic thriller "Fargo?"
     The very pregnant chief of police, Marge Gunderson, is driving a wrongdoer to his appointment with justice, and recounts his crimes.
     "So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there?" she intones, in her somber, yah-hey-dere Minnesotan accent. "And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it."
     Burke probably couldn't help himself. Half a century of power and habit, he just expected anyone who wanted to make something happen with the city to throw business his way, too. His interests and the city's were one. He didn't need the money, didn't need to buy more expensive suits. Quality like that doesn't wear out or go out of style. It was just Monopoly money at that point, another marker of success, like a Brioni label.
     That has to be the most galling thing. He was already rich. He sent himself to prison out of habit. For pressing too hard into a federal wiretap for more business he didn't need. There's a lesson in there somewhere: Know when you have enough. I might buy my suits at Suits 20/20, but I don't have to extort money from anybody to pay for them.

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Why stop at the 10 Commandments? Let's teach Hebrew to schoolchildren in Louisiana

     Children aren't born religious. They have to be taught. I was taught to be Jewish at home and at Beth Israel — The West Temple. "West" because it was on the West Side of Cleveland, where my family lived. I learned Hebrew, with the same sense of joy I mowed the lawn or other obligatory tasks required of me.
     But Rabbi Eric Hoffman's Talmud class was different. It made me think, and I liked that. This was in the mid-1970s. I was around 16.
     The Talmud consists of dozens of books of rabbinic commentary on Jewish law. For instance, the central tenet of Judaism is the Schma. A brief prayer — "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One" — said by devout Jews three times a day: morning, evening and bedtime. The question we were discussing in Talmud class was: when to say the Schma for the third time each day? Answer: at night. When is it night? When it gets dark. When does it get dark? When the stars come out. How many stars? Three. How big? Medium sized stars.
     I raised my hand. Given that Reform Jews like ourselves don't say the Schma daily, never mind three times a day, I asked, why does it matter when the third time should be? Why are we learning this?
     Rabbi Hoffman — a trim, compact young man with a dark black beard — explained the Talmud offers a way of thinking."Talmudic reasoning." A method of breaking down problems into basic parts; that has been very useful ever since, both personally and professionally.
     What he didn't say was, "Do what you're told." Compulsion is not educational. Compulsion is slavery. The way the state of Louisiana is legally forcing all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.
     That bit of news drew no surprise or outrage from me, but pity for a state that is a backwater. Louisiana is called the Pelican State, but it is also the Dead Last State. The perennial bottom dweller of state rankings. The worst crime. Worst economy. Nearly dead last health care, in education. Sticking up the Ten Commandments is gilding a turd.
     The real point is to float the case to the Supreme Court, where Donald Trump's missionaries can enshrine it into law and other states can follow suit, under the flag that being denied a chance to shove their own religion down everybody's throat is oppression — to the top dog religion doing the shoving, that is. Everybody else has to smile and take it.

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Nothing conveys the warm human touch like a robot

Elmhurst Hospital

    
     Hospitals make a lot of money. And since they can't lower the cost of healthcare — that would violate some unwritten maximalist healthcare provider code — they tend to build ever more ornate structures, such as the lobby of Elmhurst Hospital, part of Endeavor Edward-Elmhurst Health. An indescribable medico-magnificent decor, all stone and woodwork, the unimaginable Prairie Style on steroids outer office of Ayn Rand.
     I was there last week because my mother has been there — she turns 88 today, by the way, I'm going over there later for an impromptu birthday lunch — being treated for the effects of age. I'll admit, I welcomed the grandiosity — it was soothing, made me think she was in a good place. As did the attentiveness of the 5th floor nursing staff, who answered all my questions, assured me they'd keep us posted which, I assumed, meant they'd let me or my brother know when they released her. Even though they didn't, sending my mom back to Golden Haven in Addison without telling anyone, only to have her pass out as she left the medical transport van. She had to be taken straight back to the hospital. Nice work guys.

Moxi

     They might not have gotten the call-the-family-of-aged-patients-before-you-kick-them-out routine down. But they do have Moxi, an "autonomous point to point delivery robot," which I passed in the 5th floor corridor after visiting my mother. The product of an Austin,Texas company, Diligent, it — whoops, "she," the robot is female — is supposed to free up nurses from the bother of delivering prescriptions, lab samples and small medical devices from one place to another. Its — whoops, her, I guess the idea that nurses are female dies hard — little blue screen read "Pickup Going to 1A Telemetry," but Moxi just sat there in the few seconds I regarded the thing while it, she, blinked stupidly, like a cow.

     Moxi has a robot arm and, according to the robot's web site, "A friendly face that nurses and patients look forward to seeing," which seemed quite the oversell for two dozen blue dots arranged into a pair of circles.  Though the circles not only  blink but, judging from this video on the Moxi at Edward Hospital in Naperville, form half circles and even little hearts — to show affection, I suppose. Moxi wuvs you. There were 100 Moxis blinking and delivering bottles of ibuprofen in various hospitals by the end of 2023, including Northwestern Memorial, which is an investor, and six other Chicago area hospitals. You don't buy the robot, you lease, ah, her. It — whoops, she — was doing 20 tasks a day at Edward, though the company says some hospitals get 100 jobs a day out of Moxi, which supposedly isn't intended to replace hospital staff. Yet.

Salon of Hairdressing

 

It's always good to take two snaps of a scene. In case you get a mayfly in one of them.

     Being a two-birds-with-one-stone type of guy — okay, I don't like the idea of hitting birds with stones, even as metaphor. A multi-tasker then. 

     Either way, after realizing I had to leave my car to be serviced at the Mazda in Evanston for a few hours on Thursday, my first thought was how to fill the time. Sure, I could sit in the comfortable Mazda lounge, reading The New Yorker and drinking spring water and trying not to eat too many granola bars. But that seemed so passive.

     The drop-off was for 11:30 a.m., so lunch seemed appropriate. My usual Evanston lunch companion, Prof. Bill Savage of Northwestern University, was unavailable, so I tapped ... oh, I shouldn't say ... a local politician. We'd talked about having lunch. 

     Trouble was, the Mazda service center is sort of off the beaten track — 2201 Autobarn place, behind a Target. Way off the beaten track, actually. A 50 minute walk to Lucky Platter, where this fellow and I met last time, years ago. An Uber would cost more than lunch, and be a sort of surrender. I thought of asking him to pick me up at the dealership. But that seems, oh, high-handed. So I looked at Google Maps, and found an eatery just a 15 minute walk away, Main Pizza Chalavi. Never heard of the place. I looked at their menu online. They had salads. He agreed.

     It felt odd to be walking down Howard Street on a bright June day, past the tiny brick homes. But also good. I got to my destination about 15 minutes early, and paused before the above unassuming structure pictured above and saw ... well, let's see if you notice what I noticed. Take good look.

     The sign on the building said, rather grandly considering its modest brick facade, "Salon of Hairdressing" while the sign jutting from the building read "Franz Hairdressing Salon." And I realized that I hadn't a clue what those various parts of speech are called. No grammarian I. And what is the difference between A of B and BA? The former certainly sounds grander. "House of Lords" is much more high toned than "Lords' House." What part of language is this?

     At first I suspected the genitive case — showing possession. "The health of Bob" is also "Bob's health." " But hairdressing doesn't possess the salon — it isn't Hairdressing's Salon. Rather, the dressing of hair is what occurs there. There is no possession. It's really a noun-as-adjective pair, like "bowl of water" and "water bowl." The water describes the bowl, as the sort of vessel water goes in. Franz works in the sort of salon that does hairdressing.

     Setting aside the grammatical issues for a later time, I approached the door. The place seemed abandoned, and I assumed it would be locked. But I pushed. The door opened several inches. Peering in, and saw those old-fashioned hood dryers that I associate with women in the 1960s smoking cigarettes and having their bouffants teased. I should have gone in and written a column about the quirky characters there. But it was silent, empty inside — and I could have just as easily been shot. I departed, already castigating myself as a coward.

     Main Pizza Chalavi surprised me, by the way. Since I was early, I took a stroll around inside. It did not scream haut cuisine. But the bins of salad looked fresh. I took up position outside, thinking I might persuade my lunch mate to go anywhere else, maybe the Mexican place across the street. The railing I leaned on gave way a bit, and I quickly stood up straight. Checking the rail, it wobbled. I could have easily wrenched it off. The building was a former Gulliver's, and whoever had turned it into a Kosher eatery hadn't put much money into rehab. Maybe something they could take care of. The place seemed busy, populated by men in beards and tzitzit, and several matched sets of ultra-Orthodox children.

     My lunch mate showed up. I suggested we hop in his car and go anywhere else. No, he said, this was intriguing. We went in. I ordered the cranberry salad, which was truly excellent. Really, a first rate salad, even though I couldn't get any chicken on it — it was a dairy salad, and God forbids it. They made do with cashews for protein. My friend and I had a lively conversation and I even remembered to stop talking at various points and ask him about himself. 

     I'm tempted to go back, have another salad, then gird my loins and plunge into Franz Hairdressing Salon or, to put on airs, the Salon of Hairdressing. There must be a story there.