Notes from a beautiful country (political rough edges notwithstanding)

     "Do you want to visit a lavender farm?" my wife asked. The honest answer would be: "God no — why would I do that?"
     But we were in Northern Michigan, with a few hours to kill before the weekend's wedding festivities began. I'm a blind blunderer, but my wife has this superpower; she investigates where we're going and discovers what there is to do. So her suggestion is an endorsement, practically a command. In that light, why yes, by all means, let's go. If I didn't take my wife's lead, I'd still be a single guy living in a one-bedroom apartment in Oak Park, and not the father of a groom.
     "Sure," I said. Shortly thereafter we were gawping at the purple wonderland of Lavender Hill Farm.
     This is such a beautiful country. The rural regions hold their own against the national parks or coastal waters or even the gorgeous skyline of a city like Chicago. Driving almost anywhere reminds me of that.
     I know. Democrats are supposed to be twisting in agony right now. Between Old Joe Biden tightening his grip on the steering wheel as the Democratic Party races toward a cliff, and Donald Trump escaping death (by the direct intervention of the Lord God Almighty, as he says, or by the same persistent dumb luck that had him born to a real estate millionaire in 1946), doom is nigh.
     But honestly, I don't feel it. Given how either man won't be around much longer, I'm already looking past them, to what each represents. Biden's biggest achievements so far are repairing America's crumbling infrastructure — bridges and roads like the ones we were gliding across — and mobilizing Europe to stand behind Ukraine. Plus standing for decency and honesty — his claims to spryness notwithstanding.
     Trump represents an America not only grovelling before dictators, but imitating them. On that note: enjoying the Republican convention? I didn't watch a second. News reports convey policy notions that are pure folly. Like those "MASS DEPORTATION NOW!" signs. I don't know if you've noticed, but companies can't staff as it is. Were the United States to actually do what the GOP is suggesting — deport millions of immigrants whom we didn't allow to become legal — besides being an epic human rights disaster, it would crater our economy.
     As would the tariffs Trump loves, whether imposed by him or JD Vance. Chicago should be especially sensitive to this. Remember candy companies? Remember Brach's on the West Side, running 24 hours a day? Swept away by daft sugar tariffs propping up beet farms in Minnesota. It was estimated that three candy company jobs vanished for every sugar industry job saved.

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Motel life: analyze, adapt, overcome.

      Inflation is bad, I know. But the specifics can still be startling. We were striding through the Chicago Botanic Garden earlier this month. It was hot, I was thirsty and a lemonade was in order. So I got in line at a refreshment stand and, in a pro forma way, asked what a cup of lemonade costs. Answer: $12. Mind you, this wasn't a lemonade and vodka, or fancy lemonade squeezed in front of your eyes. Just a glass of plain old lemonade. Made from water, sugar and a lemon or two. Or lemon extract, more likely. 

     Maybe I'm cheap, but I couldn't do it. I turned and fled, muttering apologies. Setting off toward a water fountain, I asked myself what was the most I would have paid for a lemonade there at the Botanic Garden, and decided $8. 
     Or on Sunday. We decided not to drive straight home the day after the wedding, but to stop in Traverse City, an hour south. Take it easy. We booked ourselves in a Best Western motel. What would you think a room at a Best Western would cost? With the $20 fee for the dog, over $300. Not to diss the hotel. It was clean, the clerks were very nice. There were chocolate chip cookies that evening and make-your-own waffles in the morning. 

     Though we did check into the special dog suite — it had an exit to outside the building, and no carpeting. But my wife didn't like the uncarpeted effect, so we quickly changed rooms, from 125 to 108.
    Which meant, when the air-conditioning started this loud whining hum, we were not predisposed to change rooms again. I mean, once is acceptable. But twice, that puts you in the realm of chronic complainers, if not the unhinged.  I figured, we'd get used to it.
     But I am nothing if not handy. And I know that noise is created by vibration. Approaching the air conditioner, I placed my palm firmly on the surface and pressed. The hum stopped. Now the thing to do was try to replicate the effect of my hand pressing hard on the air conditioner front panel. I slid over the one chair and wedged it against the air conditioner. It continued operating, quietly. Amazing. Sometimes stuff works. I was pleased with my handiwork though, frankly, for $306 a night, you expect better.

Artist's Guest House

     As a rule, I like hotels. The thrill of luxury and perfection. The little twin bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The hush when the door clicks shut. The mountain of pillows. Or motels, with their bare bones comfort, rest, sanctuary from the road, uniformity, value.

     And yet. Nothing is more antiseptic than a hotel room. Ideally. You do not want a crumb, a trace of any of the thousands of previous occupants. Generic art on the walls. Anodyne furnishings. Nobody wants to live in a hotel room.
     An Airbnb can be different.  Much better. Or worse. There is a roll-the-dice quality. One pair of guests at the wedding last weekend had their Airbnb cancel at the last minute. Another compared their lodging to a Mediterranean villa. You take what you get. Then again, hotels can screw up too; my sister's hotel lost her second night's reservation, forcing us to scramble to relocate her.

     With an Airbnb, you are moving into somebody's home, often literally, a place they may have recently occupied. The owner is very present in quirky furnishings and decorations. 

     That can be a good thing, or a bad thing. There is a risk, but also a reward. You aren't a guest of Mr. Hilton or Ms. Marriott, but a real person — ideally. Some Airbnb's are pretty corporate themselves.

     Still, a good option, particularly in a pricey resort town like Charlevoix, Michigan. We'd be occupying an expensive suite the day before and after the wedding — the groomsmen would be changing there. So something a bit more affordable was in order for the first two days — and, crucially, a place that allows dogs, as our Kitty was a flower girl in the wedding. This led us to the Artist's Guest House. 

     There was an actual artist, John Posa, and I have never moved into an Airbnb where the presence of the owner was felt quite as strongly as it was here. 

     His widow, Oksana, showed us around the place, explaining that her husband recently died, and since they had bookings, she was continuing on with the Airbnb while she figured out what to do with it. Her husband had used the small building, a former mocassin store, as a studio — there were two big lithography presses in the living room.

   I gave my condolences and then asked how recently he had died, fearing it was last week. She had tears in her eyes, and said it happened in February. Recent enough.
     Not that she was dour. She was kind, upbeat, welcoming. She left us with a loaf of walnut bread baked that morning, some farm fresh eggs. A variety of wines were available at $10 a bottle.
     We settled in, looked around. I liked his prints more than his paintings — the dog over the fireplace seems to be floating in air rather than water — but he certainly had talent, and a sensibility. Having closed down my father's studio a few years ago, I was conscious that this was Posa's space, with tubes of ink scattered around, rollers, pencils he had no doubt sharpened. Long thin drawers contained stacks of fresh prints. He had also been a patent attorney, and had a hobby of going to yard sales and buying contraptions that had their 

patent number on them, then pairing them in tableaus with their patent filings. I was excited, the next morning, to notice a wooden box from Kraft American Cheese. (Any idea what Kraft was patenting? Weigh your options. Perhaps it would be best to think of actual cheese. What does it have that Kraft American cheese-like product lacks? Correct. Rinds. That's intentional. "The principal objects of my invention are to prepare cheese of the type described, in units of such size and shape that can be readily sold ... while at the same time drying out or spoilage of the unsold cheese is practically eliminated; to provide a cheese of the American variety which shall be free from objectionable rind or inedible skin...")  

     The bed was wonderfully firm and we slept well. In the morning, my wife made a lovely breakfast with eggs, peppers, real cheese and bread, plus a grapefruit we had brought with us (like Hunter S. Thompson, I make a point of traveling with grapefruit). I put on one of the artist's CDs: Boccherini quintets for string quartet and guitar. 

    The Artist's Guest House is right on 31, the main drag, but quiet enough, and a brief stroll from Charlevoix's touristy downtown of jam shops and cute little boutiques — certainly better than driving, since the bridge is raised every half hour, tangling traffic.

      We were glad to stay there and would be glad to return, if it's still around. The space's future is uncertain. Then again, all of our futures are uncertain. As a person shielding my own little guttering creative flame from the downpour of life, I tried to look extra hard at the dead artist's studio, reflecting on the brief span it will remain. The brief span that any of us will remain.

Anything is possible.

Traverse City, Michigan — July 14, 2024

      When I heard news of the shooting of Donald Trump on Saturday afternoon, my first thought was "Reichstag Fire." The 1933 arson of the German parliament that Hitler used as a pretext to suspend civil liberties. Not that Trump is in a position to do that, yet. But rather that this was a lucky wound, another stroke of good fortune for a man born with a horseshoe up his ass. The assassination attempt will be an excuse to eventually become the dictator he already intends to be. To play the martyr he already portrays himself in every breath. Trump gets rare confirmation in the physical world of his bone-deep belief that he is a victim. His followers, who already consider him to be Jesus on the Cross, find an actual nail to justify their passion. And the Democrats, already glumly backing an octogenarian who couldn't pretend to be focused for 10 minutes with everything on the line, now have another reason to go even limper as their bodies are swept over the falls. Our bodies.
     That's the bad news. The good news is that today is July 16. Nov. 5 is still almost four months away. As we have just seen, anything is possible. I hope. But as I've said before, hope is the last coin in your pocket when all of your money is gone. 

"The feeling we had come home"

     Northern Michigan is Hemingway country. Paris and Spain and Cuba came later. Here is the motherlode for early Hemingway, the Nick Adams stories. Though this woodsy, cherry-strewn realm does pop up elsewhere. In "Green Hills of Africa," Hemingway writes,  “The best sky was in Italy or Spain and in Northern Michigan in the fall.”
     Saturday's wedding of my older son and his fiance took place at Charlevoix, the lovely lakeside town which, for Nick Adams, represents domestic bliss with Marjorie in "The Three-Day Blow." Though his friend Bill assures him that a married man is "done for." 

     Not true. Fiction be damned, Hemingway personally liked marriage well enough — he did it three times. He wed his first wife, Hadley Richardson, at Horton Bay, and honeymooned 20 miles east of Charlevoix at Walloon Lake. Their signed marriage certificate is displayed at Harsha House, part of the Charlevoix Historical Society Museum. 

     The museum also holds a letter written by Hemingway saying how, in 1920, his mother kicked him out of their house, and he was only able to survive the summer by parlaying $6 into ten times that amount at a Charlevoix gambling den. The winnings, he wrote, “prevented [him] from having to go to work at the cement plant where Bay Harbor is now." 

     We admired the local cement plant, still on the shoreline. And Bay Harbor is where my son's wedding took place, close to his new wife's family.

     While I plan to take some time to process the whole event — you are, as I like to say, allowed to think about stuff —  there was one reading my son had incorporated into Saturday's ceremony, from "A Farewell to Arms," that I thought I'd share now, especially after a fellow guest whose son is getting married in September made a beeline to me afterward and announced that she is going to regift the quote: 

At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.

     Beautiful, right? Perfect. I've recently read "A Farewell to Arms" and at the reception asked my son when he'd come across that passage. Not while actually reading the book, he admitted, but by surfing selections of romantic quotes online. Not quite the same as stumbling upon it in situ, I suppose, not sighing in recognition of truth and marking the place to return to later. But good enough nevertheless.  Anyway, it's a moving and effective wedding quote, and if you'd like to borrow it, it's yours.

Wedding flashback #3 — 2011: Peasants and princes marry for one reason

Prince William and Kate Middleton on their wedding day

     My older son got married Saturday afternoon, in a lovely waterside ceremony. Meaning that I've got better things to do than craft the high-calibre journalism you've come to expect here. But I am not without compassion, and luckily I've commented on plenty of weddings over the years. I'm sure the happy occasion will make the cut, eventually. But not today.

     The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is one week away. Which means I better speak my piece now, since by Monday we can expect a Category 5 media hypestorm to be howling in full fury all around us, and you won’t be able to hear a word I say.
     So far the initial outlier Royal Wedding storms fall into one of two major types.
     First, the drenching downpour of mainstream hoopla, the standard, isn’t-this-lovely, let’s-parse-every-detail documentation, the traditional approach for the past century. The TV networks are all chanting “We’re there! Giving you the lowdown on every last flower (look for myrtle in the bride’s bouquet!) and every salient and non-salient detail (did you know that two horses in the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment have been named in honor of William and Kate? You do now.)
     The second, smaller, more modern gust blows against the prevailing gale. In America, it’s a sort of “Didn’t we fight a revolution to get away from this sort of thing?” incredulity, bordering on anger. Death to kings! In Britain, there’s an even stronger current of rejection and contempt, of those insisting that just because one royal is getting married, that’s no reason to pause from despising the royals as a group and wishing they’d go away. The disgust over their lavishness and vapidity is magnified by the specter of jug-eared, red-cheeked Charles — think Bertie Wooster at 62 and a prince — and the memory of his tragic first wife, Diana, whose own storybook wedding is a cold rain on next week’s parade.
     My take is neither slack wonder nor hot contempt, though I see the appeal of both:
     Awe is appropriate. Most lives, including my own, are dull, if not dreary, our days spent taking out the garbage and clacking away at our jobs. The image, no matter how false, of a fairy tale wedding, with kings and queens and royal carriages, provides a powerful glow one can warm one’s routine-numbed heart over.
     Sure it’s a lie. But what drama isn’t? The loathsomeness of the royals is a function of our close study of their lives — they don’t seem, as a class, any more despicable than, oh, Hollywood actors or professional athletes or other providers of mass entertainment.
     But I sympathize with scoffers too. It’s too much. The media can’t seem to find a balance — next week all wars will recede, the budget brawl in Washington will mute, every news story will be drowned out by a Windsorian wave that I think would drive the most Union Jack-draped royalist mad. Is that the media’s fault? People tune in, read, they’re interested.
     Myself, not so much. I had to check which prince is getting married and which is next in line after Charles (William, for both).
     I did succeed in finding one aspect that intrigues me — the question of why they, or anybody else, get married. Why have a ceremony? I don’t mean singlehood vs. married life. I mean a wedding as a universal social custom. Why, from thatched huts to Westminster Abbey, from 10,000 years ago to next week, do humans make such a fuss when they decide to face life’s joys and woes together?
     A Short History of Marriage, by Edward Westermarck, is a surprisingly lucid piece of work, despite being written by an academic, which provides a reason for weddings that never crossed my mind, one so simple that it’s a revelation.
     “The most general social object of marriage rites is to give publicity to the union,” he writes. “Publicity . . . is everywhere the element which distinguishes a recognized marriage from an illicit connection.”
     If marriage is an institution designed to raise families, then weddings are designed to publicly commit the man, in earlier times, and now the couple, to the responsibilities soon to be literally crying at their feet.
     Hence the big wedding. Hence the feast, in order to draw the guests, who are there to witness the event and spread the word, a vital function in pre-cable TV days.
     So while the typhoon of press coverage is excessive and deadening, we can take comfort in the thought that publicity is not just traditional, but the true reason for a wedding.
     A little attention is in order — you smile at every bride and groom passing through a hotel lobby without parsing their backgrounds, why not smile at this couple too? I would not want to be either the person camped out on the sofa all week, drenched in the coverage, nor would I want to be muttering about the madness of King George III. The former might want to watch less and live more, the latter might take a day off, in the name of idealized young love. You can go back to despising the royals and eagerly awaiting their downfall bright and early next Saturday morning.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 22, 2011

Wedding flashback #2 — 2010: Plan for a perfect wedding then wait for the problems

Group Portrait: A Wedding Celebration, by Gillis van Tilborgh (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     My boy is getting married today, meaning that EGD needs to operate on automatic pilot for a while. Luckily, I've written a number of columns on the subject, including this one, which is extra apt because ... actually, no time to go into details now. Let's put it this way: my observation that there is always a glitch or two when trying to pull off a wedding is not refuted by current events. Though as always, everything will work out fine in the end. I hope.

     By 50, a man should have played a role in a few weddings, and I've been involved in my share. I've hosted two, one for my brother at my apartment on Logan Blvd., one for a pair of readers at the Willis Tower Skydeck. I've been a best man and a groomsman and helped throw a surprise bachelor party at a bar in New York City. Not to mention the many weddings I've attended as a guest, including one atop the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier and, of course, my own gilded affair in the Babylonian splendor of the Hotel Intercontinental in downtown Chicago.
     My involvement in these weddings has left me with one central piece of wedding wisdom that I impart to all prospective brides — something those brides-to-be whose wedding dresses went up in flames Wednesday at Eva's Bridals of Oak Lawn learned big-time, but which holds true for every wedding and deserves being stated whenever possible:
     Something always goes wrong.
     Always, always, always.
     Oh, I suppose the most casual affair — a quick exchange of vows in the Cook County Clerk's office — can go off without a hitch. But anything more complex than that — plan to open a jar of nuts and beat a tambourine afterward — and the possibilities for screw-ups swiftly multiply.
     This of course is completely opposite to the standard bride's goal of a "perfect" wedding, whatever her idea of perfect might be, from arriving in Cinderella's glass carriage in a cloud of doves at a ceremony officiated by Mickey Mouse, to standing barefoot behind the counter at the McDonald's where you met your beau.
     These brides operate under the false impression that just because they've planned something for months and paid an ungodly sum of money for it, therefore they can expect everything to come off without a hitch.
     That's not how life works
     At our wedding, I wasn't hoping for perfect — guys seldom do. A guy, if he's marrying the right person, will be happy if his bride shows up. I was content to let my bride plan the wedding of her dreams, limiting my participation to a few symbolic contributions which consisted, if I recall, of a) putting carrot soup on the menu. (I like carrot soup) and b) insisting that, if we were going to have a band, it had to be a good band.
     Carrot soup is easy. And a good band is attainable, if you spend enough. But "perfect" is another matter entirely. "Perfect" is generally synonymous with "impossible." Oh, you can bowl 300 or pitch a perfect game, but with something as complex as a wedding, with the flowers and the chapel and the reception and the music and the meal and the guests, the odds of it all coming off perfectly are scant.
     Expecting wedding perfection is a recipe for disaster because there are so many things that can go wrong. A colleague and his wife asked for their wedding cake to be "creme" and it showed up "green" -- say the words out loud. A wedding cake with mint green icing.
     They laughed — which is key. The secret to a perfect wedding is not guaranteeing that everything unfolds perfectly — it won't — but in ignoring or shrugging off imperfections.
     I was immensely proud that my bride, when she opened the box from the florist containing her bouquet, calmly noted that it was not the round bouquet she ordered, but a draped nosegay. Some brides would have lost it at this point, but she observed that they were still beautiful flowers and it was too late to do anything. An even-keeled acceptance that probably explains how she could marry me in the first place, and that has served us well, lo these past 20 years.
     You can plan for perfect. You may think of your wedding as a stage play — you may write a script, plan various entrances and exits.
     But once it is happening, you must abruptly shift, abandoning the stage play paradigm, jettisoning hopes of "perfect," and view it as a party. You know how parties work — you plan, then let the thing unfold.
     That way, if something happens that's not in the script — your aged uncle stands up in the middle of the vows and begins a rambling toast, or your wedding dress is burned up in a fire — you adapt. The uncle is coaxed to his seat; another wedding dress is found elsewhere. It immediately becomes a good story.
     Weddings are luxuries, but useful luxuries — they can give a couple a good running start up the hill of married life. Sure, you can stamp your foot and insist on perfection. Good luck; maybe that'll work for you. But it's easier if you expect something will veer off course, look for it, wait for it, and when it occurs, say, "Right, this is the thing that's going to go wrong at my wedding."
     My wife and I, to this day, sometimes warm ourselves on the still-glowing embers of our wedding. Not because it was perfect, but because when glitches happened, we hopped over them and kept going. It didn't unfold perfectly, but it's perfect now.

    — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 29, 2010