Saturday pinch hitter — Jack Clark: "A fly at my desk"

     I've known mystery writer Jack Clark for many years, and enjoy his novels. When I hocked spit out of a dry mouth last Saturday (well, writing a brief bit about the Art Institute's Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit, so not exactly twiddling my thumbs) Jack gently reminded me that he had offered me a perfectly good essay on a subject that literally everybody can relate to.

     Every so often a centipede will get trapped in the bottom or my bathtub or kitchen sink. I’ve never figured out how they get there or what they’re searching for. They’re probably hot on the trail of one bug or another. That’s one of the good things about centipedes, besides being nocturnal and very cool looking; they slither around all night hunting for other insects to eat. During the day, they sleep and generally keep themselves out of the way. 

     But even with 15 sets of legs, they can’t seem to get up from the bottom of the tub or sink. It’s usually morning when I find one of them scurrying around in the depths, making futile attempts to get up those slippery slopes. I’ll usually use a flexible piece of plastic or cardboard to try to help them along. This almost always drives them into a state of terror. They think I’m attempting to kill them, and sometimes I accidentally do. Or I mutilate them so badly that the only remedy is to finish the job. They’re fragile creatures, believe me. Those little green legs are not even close to being heavy-duty. 

     Usually when they do get to safety, they scurry away and quickly slip through some crack in the baseboards, looking like one of those articulated buses as they disappear into that dark world behind the walls. 

     I had a houseguest recently. He was also nocturnal and the centipedes terrified him. He also told me they looked gross. I thought this was pretty funny, considering he was from California. You want scary? They’ve got tarantulas out there in the Golden West, not to mention bears and mountain lions. And, as far as gross goes, some of their rats live in trees. What could be grosser than that? Isn’t bird shit landing on your head bad enough?

     One day as a truck driver, I made a delivery to a small desert town east of Los Angeles. We were moving one sister in with another. They were both well past retirement age, a couple of sweet old ladies, I thought at first.

     It was a very hot day, 110 or something like that, which is not unusual in that part of the world. When we opened the front door to bring the furniture inside, a few dozen flies came in as well. The heat had obviously sapped most of their energy. They didn’t buzz around like regular flies. They floated slowly and barely made a sound as they soaked in the shade. 

     As we were leaving, I apologized to the sisters for letting the flies in. 

     “Oh, don’t worry.” One of them flashed an evil grin and waved an arm above her head. “The vacuum will take care of them in no time.” 

     I closed the door and left the flies to their fate. But I’ve often wondered if in the cool of that desert night, with the air conditioning taking a well-deserved break, the sisters might have heard a plea-like buzzing coming from deep in their front hall closet.

     I’ve occasionally vacuumed up a spider, but never intentionally. As soon as you start waving that hose around, most of them know it’s time to abandon the web. 

     Year ago, in France, I was staying in a hotel in a village about an hour northwest of Paris. It sounds charming, I know. In reality, it probably had more in common with the Bates Motel than with the cute little place you might have imagined. 

     When I carried my suitcase into my room, I found that spiders had gotten there first. They’d taken up residence in every corner. I found a cup and spent a bit of time catching one spider after another, and then tossing them into the vines that grew just outside, then I closed the window.

     The spiders didn’t come back that night, but plenty of other insects did, mosquitos and other annoying pests. In the morning, I opened the window before I left. When I came back later in the day, the spiders were back in their familiar corners. The other pests stayed away for the rest of my visit. 

     I’ve seen plenty of spiders in France but not a single window screen. I believe there is some connection.

     Back in the U.S.A., I watched one spider eat another high on one of my bathroom walls. It was truly gross, and it was grosser still knowing that it was probably a female spider eating a male just after they’d had sex. Where are your demands for equal rights now? 

     I waited until she was done with every last morsel of her late lover. She was still basking in the afterglow when I caught her and tossed her and her last supper straight into the toilet. “Happy now?” I shouted as she circled the bowl on the way out.

     I’ve often wondered what happened when you flushed an insect. They might drown on the way down, inside that measly gallon and a half of water. They could die of trauma from bouncing off the sides of the drainpipe. If they make it to the bottom, they’ll probably find plenty of other creatures waiting. Rats, opossums, and frogs, to name a few, plus scores of insects to eat or be eaten by. If they manage to keep floating along they’ll probably end up going down the Sanitary and Ship canal to the water treatment plant in Stickney. 

     If they can get past that, well, then they’ll really be on their way; the Des Plaines River to the Illinois, to the Mississippi and down to the warmth of the Gulf of Mexico. It might even be a pleasant ride.

     One afternoon, I was writing away, when a little black housefly came by and decided to hang around my desk. He wasn’t very annoying as flies goes, no loud buzzing, bumping, or putting his dirty feet on my arms. He just wouldn’t go away.

     I was involved in whatever I was writing so I tried to ignore him and keep going. After ten or fifteen minutes of this, I looked up and there he was taking a stroll inside my half-full coffee cup.

     Well, this was almost too easy. I put my hand over the cup, trapping him inside. To get him outside, I’d have to open two doors. This would not be easy with one hand holding the coffee cup and the other covering the top. I’d managed it plenty of times before, but this time I took the lazy way out and headed for the bathroom instead.

     And, in truth, I was a bit pissed at the fly. Not only was I going to have to throw out some perfectly good coffee, but the writing had been going okay for a change. I’m not talking a Pulitzer or a National Book Award but maybe a halfway decent review on Amazon: “The middle was a little murky and some of the characters seem to be thrown in for no apparent reason, but not a bad book overall.”

     “Enjoy your vacation,” I said, and I flushed the fly and the remains of my coffee away.

     I went back to my desk but I’d lost whatever inspiration I’d had. So I didn’t fell that guilty about sending the fly to the depths. I figured he’d survive the fall. But how was he going to get through Stickney? A fly dumb enough to get caught inside a coffee-cup trap probably wouldn’t stand much of a chance in what has sometimes been called the crappiest place on earth.

     I finally got back to my legal pad and was busy scribbling away (always do your first draft in longhand, that’s my advice) when I heard a buzzing. I looked up and a shiny golden brown fly was heading down the hallway right towards my office. He was flying faster than any fly I’d ever seen, faster than a speeding bullet, it seemed to me, even louder than the most powerful locomotive. As he came closer, I realized that this very angry looking fly was aiming straight for my head. I leaned far back in my chair and the fly changed directions with me. At the last possible moment, I grabbed the legal pad and held it up to shield my face. My chair started to topple over backwards. I threw the legal pad away, reached for the safety of my desk, and pulled myself back upright.

     I could suddenly hear my heart beating. The buzzing had stopped. The people upstairs were tromping around as usual. Had I actually hit the fly when I’d tossed the legal pad? “Take that, Mr. Fly,” I shouted in triumph. The next instant I had a horrible thought, Oh, dammit. Was that Vince? This was my big brother. He’d died about two years earlier. Had he stopped by for a visit? Had I just knocked him to smithereens after first flushing him down the toilet?

     I’m serious here.

     Vince was my first or second reader for most of my life, and he wrote a bit himself. When I was young and he’d read something I’d written, he’d always tell me it was great. This was nice to hear, of course, but it’s not very helpful. As I got older he started to tell me the truth. That’s usually not so nice to hear, but it is usually quite helpful.

     One day he was flipping through the manuscript of my latest novel. He started at the beginning and kept turning pages. I thought this was a good sign. He hadn’t found anything to complain about yet. 

     He got in fairly deep and finally stopped.

     “Here it is,” he said, and he showed me where he’d drawn a line from one side of the page to the other. “This is where your story starts.” He pointed. “Cut all that other stuff.”

     That other stuff was the first 50 pages. And he was right, of course. After I cut all that other stuff, what was left became my first published novel.

     So it’s not that surprising that Vince might stop by my office if he got the chance. He couldn’t be a fly on the wall because my desk is in the middle of the room. If he wanted to see what I was working on, he’d have to hang around a bit closer. Even with those five beady eyes that flies have, he probably was having trouble with my atrocious handwriting. Maybe that’s why he kept hanging around.

     Vince wasn’t a big coffee drinker, but he’d try just about anything. It used to drive him crazy that I would go back to the same restaurant and order the same meal over and over again.

     You probably think I’m just trying to amuse you here or that I’m off my rocker. No. This really happened. I flushed a dark fly down my toilet and a while later a golden brown one came back and almost knocked me out of my chair. I’m not a religious person. I haven’t spent much time thinking about the possibility of life after death. I figure I’ll find out or I won’t before too long. But maybe that old idiom about the fly on the wall has been around so long for a very good reason. Maybe it’s rooted in truth. 

     If you do get to come back as an insect or animal or who knows what, maybe a tree or a traffic signal, I hope you get to come back more than once. I hope Vince gets a better reception the next time around. 

     The way I look at it, a very dark fly had gone into the toilet and then, a half hour or so later, the same fly had come back, now a much better-looking golden brown— or maybe that wasn’t gold. But he’d come back pissed, and it looked like he wanted to let me know how he was feeling. And that was so much like Vince. He’d tell you what he thought, sometimes with a bit of humor, but there was no guarantee about that part. 

     I never could find the fly’s remains. I don’t take that as the sign of a possible miracle. My office is usually a mess. The other half of the room is my workshop/tool room. I lose small objects all the time. 

     I keep waiting for another fly to act in a similar fashion So far, none seem to be interested in hanging out. I do pay more attention to them than ever before.

     I don’t flush insects down the toilet anymore. But I still eat meat and even seafood now and then. 

     It’s been decades since I’ve bought into the view that humans are superior beings. My argument against is pretty simple: In the last century, somewhere around 100 million people were killed in wars alone. Who knows what that number would be if we included the shooting, stabbings, hit-and-runs, and all the other ways we kill each other in civilian life as well?

     And then there’s this century to think about. Seems to me, it’s already circling the toilet bowl. 

     How’d you like to be a fly on the wall the day it finally goes all the way down? Although, now that I think about it, that just might be the safest place to be.

You don't have to have children to enjoy life. They do help. Unless they don't.

The Newborn Baby, by Matthijs Naiveu (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     The most difficult endeavors are often also the most rewarding. Climbing Mount Everest, surviving Marine boot camp, raising children, are taxing but also fulfilling. Well, I can't vouch for the first two. But that third one — I have considerable direct personal experience. Trust me: being a parent is hard. And exhilarating.
     Back when my friends were having babies, I sometimes greeted the happy news of a pregnancy by describing what I called my "parenthood epiphany." It went like this:

     The week we brought Ross home, I was sitting in the new blue rocking chair about 3 a.m., staring numbly down into his red, distorted, howling face. And a startling thought formed in my exhaustion-sapped mind: Ohhhhhhhh, so this is why those teenage girls kill their kids. Now I understand. We're 35 years old. We have all the money in the world. We desperately wanted this baby, for years. It's the third night. And we're going OUT OF OUR MINDS!

     I told that story, not because I'm a bastard — well, not entirely — but because I wanted the expectant newcomer before me to realize that they were embarking upon a rocky journey. That if they found it difficult at times, it wasn't because they were bad parents, necessarily. It was just the nature of the beast
     Only the story didn't comfort the listeners, it concerned them — I can still see one colleague, an editor at the paper, backing away, eyes wide — and I eventually stopped telling it, so not to constrict my social circle smaller than it already was.
     This came back to me when I saw Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance being pilloried on social media for his remarks from 2021 that people without children do not have a "direct stake" in the country, but are, "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too. It's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg ... the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children."
     There's a lot to unpack there.
     First, he's completely mistaken. Harris has two stepchildren, and the suggestion that they somehow don't count is simply wrong, as anyone who knows anyone with foster or adopted children — like Pete Buttigieg and his husband — or stepchildren knows.

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City Lit Books pares its reading list

     Gary Ashman is an attorney and a friend of this blog — he has a copy of the original EGD poster framed in his lovely, well-stocked home library. We have shared a cigar or two, and  he even briefly advertised on the blog when it first went live. We haven't conversed in a few years, so it was good to hear from him again. When I saw what the letter he was sharing was about, I asked if he would mind if I posted it here. He didn't. As a rule, I don't react to the lazy Manicheism and reckless Jews-don't-count rhetoric that sophomores and their equivalent wallow in lately regarding Israel and Gaza — there's too much of it, and I try not to traffick in the obvious. When one side premises its argument on, "First you give your country to someone else and disappear, then everything is solved..." there isn't much room for discussion. Plus you see how effective it is — it has gotten the Palestinians nowhere for the past 57 years; of late, the war continues, lives are lost, Netanyahu, who should have gone to prison long before Oct. 7, maintains his grip on power, and nothing changes. 

Vice presidents are always obscure — until they're not

 

Vice president Kamala Harris campaigns in Wisconsin Tuesday
 (photo for the Sun-Times by Anthony Vazquez)

     Say what you will about Northwestern University's former Medill School of Journalism, those annealed in its furnace tend to stick together. Two of my classmates made the complicated trek to Charlevoix, waaaay up in you-can't-get-there-from-here Northern Michigan, for my older son's wedding.     

     Back in the day, I also schlepped to keep up with my far-flung classmates — I think it was my way to be quasi-adventurous while having someone who knew the territory close by and, not incidentally, a free place to stay.
     So when Medill classmate Mary Kay Magistad based herself in Bangkok, freelancing around Asia, I slid by to offer my support. It was a memorable visit — how could it not be? I saw the king and queen of Thailand, at least from a distance, in a procession of red Mercedes ferrying them out of the palace gates, where I happened to be loitering.
     And I saw Dan Quayle, then the vice president, up close. He came to town and I couldn't resist showing up at his press conference. The motorcade arrived, police motorcycle outriders, communications vans, Cadillac limousines flown in on Air Force Two. At least a dozen vehicles, this long line of flashing red lights, a strobing parade of American power where, at the very end, a door flies open and disgorges Dan Quayle. I couldn't help think of that scene in a Bugs Bunny cartoon where a huge spaceship spits out a series of smaller vessels, Russian nesting doll style, until finally out pops tiny Marvin the Martian.
     Quayle was one of the more laughable vice presidents — remembered today, to the degree he's remembered at all, for telling a class he was visiting that "potato" is spelled "potatoe." Spoiler alert: It's not.
     But Quayle also represents all vice presidents, in his invisibility and inadequacy. Among the most astounding things of this very astounding week, after the fact of a powerful man doing a selfless thing for his country — Donald Trump had almost made us forget it is possible — was the alacrity with which the Democrats rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris.
     Not to take anything away from her many fine qualities. But it is a reminder that when you're dangling from a cliff from a sapling that's pulling out of the earth, you don't vet the person throwing you the rope too closely. The party ready to vote for Joe Biden's mummified corpse saw that dusty cadaver magically transform into a living, breathing, talking, fund-raising woman. Talk about an upgrade.

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Unpublished draft: Biden stepping down gives Democrats a fighting chance.

 

Judith, by Jan Sanders van Hemessen (Art Institute of Chicago)

   Sunday was an odd day. First thing in morning I wrote my Monday column, as usual. Joe Biden had not yet withdrawn from the presidential race. But the possibility was on my mind though, honestly, I didn't think he would do it. Friday's optimism had curdled. So I wrote a melancholy column about infirmity and age and when it is time to go. Then when news hit about 1 p.m., I leapt to give the column a quick going over, to reflect the developments. That went online. One editor liked it, but another  suggested I was going to the dad well one time too often — that caught my attention like a right hook — and I should work up something entirely new. So I did. But that was never published — a third editor higher up the food chain found it "political," and decided not to run it. I was disappointed though, since I also liked the column they were going with, didn't argue too much. And as it turned out, many readers were grateful, and none said "Why are you rambling on about Warren Zevon when the tectonic plates of American politics are shifting?" Particularly since I knew that here, I have no higher ups, so you can read what the paper declined to print. 

     I'll admit it; I'd given up hope. Everybody is so selfish, maximizing their own advantage, ignoring the common good. So of course Joe Biden would dig in and cling to his prestigious job with its big jet airplane, even as polls tanked and Democrats scrambled over each other, begging him to leave. Saturday it seemed the whole tangled ball would tumble arguing and clawing and spitting over the precipice, leaving the path clear for juggernaut Trump to glide easily back into the White House. and end American democracy.
     Then ... surprise, surprise ... Sunday afternoon, Biden did the right thing.
     I will admit — I never liked Biden. Having read George Packer's "The Unwinding," Biden came off as the most plastic political hack ever, with his hair plugs and fake grin. Now I think he's a patriot, if not an American hero.
     Biden endorsed Kamala Harris. Not that she's a sure winner. Far from it. Harris has the same handicap that sank Hillary Clinton: She's a woman in a sexist country. Where a third of the women can't be trusted by the men running their states to decide when to have a baby.

     And honestly, in the four years she has been vice president, Harris has not exactly endeared herself to the nation. She has done what vice presidents do, keep busy, keep out of trouble, and stand by in case something happens to the president. That's okay. We'll get to know her better now. The slate is clean; she has a fresh start.

     Harris is 59 years old — almost two decades younger than Donald Trump. And now the focus of the election can shift directed where it belongs — not on Joe Biden's age or agility of mind — but on Donald Trump's utter unfitness to be president.
     And remember. The goal is not to appeal to the 40% who are zipping up their lemming outfits and hot to march after Trump into a brave new world of totalitarian America. It's to appeal to the 5% in seven states who could have sat out the election, thinking, "I'm not bothering to vote for the old guy" who now might be lured out and support a woman of color who can be counted on to do whatever is humanly possible to avoid a nationwide ban on abortion.
     Hope blooms. We now have a candidate who can speak in clear, complete, powerful sentences. Americans can once again hope we have a future that doesn't involve becoming a vassal state of Vladimir Putin.
     And who will she pick to be her running mate? I bet J.B. Pritzker is on the elliptical right now. I'd say go for Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, but a ticket with two women would cause parts of the country to implode out of sheer door-jamb gnawing, toxic male insecurity. Pete Buttigieg could fill the traditional vice presidential role of tailgunner, directing scorn at Trump from now until November.
     Heck, the whole thing could be decided at the convention in Chicago next month — we've sailed into uncharted waters. Chicago is the site of the last contested vice presidential slot, in 1956, when the choice came down to Estes Kefauver and John F. Kennedy. The Democrats, true to form, chose Kefauver, a senator from Tennessee.
     Maybe Biden will start a trend, of old guys realizing they've lost a step or three and deciding to pack it in.
     There's no shame there. The body decays, the mind crumbles. For every timely exit — and Biden's is late, but maybe in the nick of time — a dozen stay too long. Athletes whose legs are gone, singers whose voices are shot. It's not about the age — nobody is suggesting Mick Jagger quit, because he can still do his prancing rooster routine at 80. It's about whether you can still produce.
     So much is at stake in this election. As I said Friday, just the top three — mass deportations, ruinous tariffs, and a nationwide abortion ban — should have been enough to clear the benches and get people voting. But the American public, well, they can be inattentive. Hopefully Biden stepping down and Harris stepping up will catch their attention. Because when you look over the Project 2025 plan the Heritage Foundation has set out for Trump, it amounts to nothing less than a revolution, an overturning of American democracy.
     Who the president is matters. Up until Sunday afternoon, that man could have been Joe Biden, again, for another four years. But he gave up his chance because he recognized reality. Democrats pressed him because they recognize reality. Democrats are the party of recognizing reality, of facts and laws. Our work is cut out for us. But now we have a fighting chance.

If you're wondering about the illustration, recall your Bible. Judith is the heroine who saved the Jewish people by getting the Assyrian general Holofernes drunk and then cutting off his head with his own sword. She's just done the deed, and is looking at her arm in wonder, as if thinking, "I just did that." I love it for that.

It's hard to walk away, but it was time for Joe to go

Carnitas torta, 5 Rabanitos

     When Warren Zevon was dying of lung cancer, he spoke with David Letterman. The talk show host asked the great singer/songwriter what it is like living with his fatal diagnosis.
      "You put more value on every minute," Zevon replied. "I always thought I kinda did that ... but it's more valuable now. You're reminded to enjoy every sandwich."
     "Enjoy every sandwich." A great line, one that I think of, more and more. Even though I'm healthy as a horse. But I'm also 64. Nothing lasts forever.
     I can relate to Joe Biden's predicament, I really can. He's president of the United States, a job that comes with power and attention and a jet airplane. Hard to walk away, and kudos to him for making the tough decision and deciding not to run again. He dragged his feet, naturally, but in the end he did what he thought was necessary to give American democracy its best shot at survival.

Turkey club on wheat toast, Lou Mitchell's

     Stepping down has to hurt. Biden was at peak performance not long ago: defeated Donald Trump in 2020, mobilized Europe to respond to the invasion of Ukraine. One bad night, and suddenly the kids were taking away his car keys.
     Only it wasn't just one bad night but what that bad night represented. If I turn in my grocery list as a column, that wouldn't be just one bad column, but a clanging alarm bell that something bad had happened, and might happen again.
    Biden endorsed Kamala Harris. Not that she's a sure winner. Harris has the same handicap that sank Hillary Clinton: She's a woman in a sexist country. Where a third of the women can't be trusted to decide when to have a baby. But she can speak powerfully and get Americans excited.

Pastrami on rye, Max & Benny's

     Imagine if Republicans pushed against an unfit candidate half as hard?
For some, retirement is easy. My father retired from NASA at 56. Meaning he's been retired for the past 36 years, longer than he worked. The glory of a federal pension.
     At the time I was puzzled. Stopping so young seemed a refutation of his entire career. Did he not want to do something else? Find another job? No. He wanted to paint watercolors and hike the Rockies, which he did until the frost set in. 
     Now he sits and stares blankly at the television. So maybe retiring early was smart. As a bartender said in Buenos Aires, encouraging me to try the tango: "The life is only once."
      Right. But what if you like to work? And the job has a shimmer of significance. Shouldn't you stick at your post, tapping away, as the water rises around your ankles? I always assumed the decision would be made for me. The paper would break apart in the typhoon battering professional journalism. Or I'd make some joke that is no longer funny and be frog-marched offstage.

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Crispy

     Were I trying to create a personal brand, to craft a writerly image, I suppose I'd try to cast myself as the hyper observant scribe, a kind of journalistic Sherlock Holmes, studying cigar ash, taking note of atoms as they flit through the air. Nothing would escape the iron claw of my notice.
     But that isn't true. I don't want to say I'm an oblivious blockhead — that isn't true either — though I have moments of staggeringly oblivious blockheadedness. Or, as I sometimes put it, for a smart guy I can be astoundingly stupid.
     For instance. When I was in Boston in May, hanging out with my cousin Harry, I went to the supermarket for him — he's ill, and shopping can be difficult. He texted me a list: potatoes, apple sauce, tapioca pudding, and such. I searched for the various items — surprisingly difficult in a store you've never visited before — parsing the various vague requests. What exact kind of cheddar cheese slices? (I actually blew that assignment by picking up non-dairy soy slices cleverly disguised as cheddar cheese. Or maybe not so cleverly disguised; still, it fooled me.) 

      One item was quite simple: "Rice Krispies cereal." I rolled my cart to the proper aisle. Except I couldn't find the Kellogg's Rice Krispies. I went down the cereal aisle, scanning the boxes. Once. Twice. On the third time I gave up and settled on the generic version, "crisp rice," all lowercase, an unexpected e.e. cummings homage, with a generic pink cartoon dragon gawping at the stuff. Not something I would eat, but then, not everyone is me. Maybe Harry would enjoy this "crisp rice." Still, I'd better check. The best thing to do was text a picture. So I snapped the photograph above and sent it to him. "No Rice Krispies, incredibly," I wrote. "This okay?"
   I hit "Send." Then looked at the photo I had just sent. 
    "Oh wait," I added. "Never mind. There it is." Which is a drawback of this instant communication. Sometimes just waiting — or looking yet again — works better. In trying to figure out how I overlooked it, I think I was distracted by the bedragoned cereal above. Shunning that, I missed the mark below.