Flashback 2009: A retiring CPS teacher speaks her mind.

     Today is the first day of school for the Chicago Public Schools. A realm I don't write about much, because it is so broad and complicated, and the Sun-Times always has excellent education reporters who cover the topic like a damp shirt. But occasionally I do, such as this 2009 story about a CPS school for children with special needs. It actually was a significant visit, for me, because I wrote it up for what became "Driving with Ed McElroy" in Granta and led to the University of Chicago Press publishing my memoir, "You Were Never in Chicago."

    The second part — this was back when the column filled a page — is a reminder of the time when a certain British poster, now a visual cliche, was newly re-discovered.

     The Blair Early Childhood Center is one of those Chicago schools you've never heard about. Nobody was ever shot there. It has no football team. This marks the first time its name has appeared in this newspaper.
     Which is a shame, because Blair — which serves 103 public school students with severe medical and mental conditions such as Down syndrome and autism — is bright and clean, with small groups of students, aged 3 to 7, some in padded wheelchairs, gathered around teachers, who sing songs, read stories and present lessons.
     The school is at 6751 W. 63rd Place, far afield from my normal wanderings. But I was taken there by Ed McElroy, that grand gentleman of Chicago. While I'm reluctant to say that I go anywhere Ed asks me to go, the truth is I never turn him down and never feel sorry that I accompanied him somewhere. He knows the city block by block, almost inch by inch.
     Among the many teachers we met at Blair was Deanna Dalrymple, painting in Room 107 with a semicircle of first-graders decked out in smocks.
     It turned out that Dalrymple, 65, is retiring today. The graduate of Chicago Teachers College knew she wanted to be a teacher since age 4, but ended up in special ed the way so many of us end up places — by happenstance.
     "I started out 45 years ago at Christopher School," she said, of another CPS school for children with exceptional needs. "They were in desperate need of special-ed teachers. I had two months to wait for my assignment, and had taught blind children, so thought I would go to Christopher and teach for two months."
     That was in 1965. Two months became almost half a century. When Blair school opened, 25 years ago next October, she shifted there.
      The Chicago Public Schools are not without controversy. Most teachers, like any profession, are muted by self-interest. To speak their true views is to risk unemployment. But a person poised on the cusp of retirement has no such constraints. So? I asked, licking my chops. Any frank thoughts from 45 years of teaching she'd like to share?
     "I get so upset when someone talks about all the bad in the Chicago Public School system," she said. "But there's so much good. So much good being done for every child. What our children get is phenomenal. You see the care here. A child comes in, sometimes can't walk, can't talk, can't do anything, and they come out and these children walk and talk and feel good about themselves."
     OK then, in the spirit that I'd have reported it if she delivered a stinging indictment, and in honor of Deanna Dalrymple's 45 years of hard work with kids that you or I might have difficulty teaching for 45 minutes, I believe she has earned her say. Congratulations and good luck.

See you soon, Bob

     I'm not normally a 10 o'clock TV news kind of guy — I get up early, absorb news all day long from all seven of the distinct sources from whence news comes (can you name them? There are seven, at least).
     Give up?

     Newspapers, of course, then TV, radio, Internet, telephone and — these last two are toughies, particularly for the young folk — conversation with others and news that you yourself observe happening.
     By 10 p.m. I'm usually done with news and reading — the boy and I are 800 pages into War and Peace, slowly slogging onward, like Napoleon in midwinter.
     But I was in front of the tube Wednesday at 10 p.m. to see Bob Sirott do his final broadcast — at least for the near future — on the WMAQ-Channel 5 News.
     He was — as always — cool professionalism itself, and did not take my suggestion, made earlier in the day, that he mark his departure by mooning the audience, nor delivering a Howard-Beale-like tirade against NBC management, which failed to offer Sirott a satisfactory deal.
     Instead, what he said at the end of the program was:
     "Keep calm and carry on — thanks for being there and see you again soon."
     Mmm, that's rather oblique, I thought. The next morning I caught up with Bob. Why the low-key hail and farewell?
     "I thought, you know what, this isn't exactly Chet Huntley saying good night to David Brinkley for the last time," he said. "I'm not that important, I'm also not going anywhere. I'm taking a vacation now; when I get back right away I'm on WGN radio at noon. It would have been a little self-important and pompous, so I opted to go with something a little more subtle."
     "Keep calm and carry on"?
     "I stole that," he said. "If you Google it, it has become popular again, because of the economic strife."
     The quote sounded to me like Churchill, but there's an even more interesting history — British authorities, preparing for German invasion in 1939, printed the advice on a poster designed to brace the besieged populace. But the Germans never invaded Britain, so the poster was never used. It was rediscovered in recent years and resonated with grim economic times — times that make Sirott reluctant to present his abrupt unemployment as hardship.
     "For a lot of people, it's 'Adios, don't let the door hit you in the ass,'" he said. "I'm a really lucky guy. I got zero to complain about. I'll be back on TV, doing something."

Today's chuckle:

     Television: A medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well done.

           — Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 12, 2009

DNC in Chicago offered energy, talent, hope: Here are 4 key takeaways

     I'm not a political reporter, in the same sense that I am not a sports reporter — I find my passion elsewhere. But just as sometimes I'm called to cover sports, so the Democratic National Convention was too big a story to miss. I spent a very long day Monday, hoovered up everything I needed, and couldn't see a reason to go back, watching the rest on television — which my friend Eric Zorn points out is the way the convention is supposed to be experienced. I ended up writing four columns: an opening day scene setter based on the 1932 convention, a focus on Mayor Brandon Johnson, a look at the protests, and this summary, an assignment running in the paper Sunday. I don't know about you, but I'm more than ready to move on.

     There were so many ways the Democratic National Convention could have gone wrong.
     Start with thousands of impassioned protesters in the streets of Chicago, butting up against a police department that has not always risen to the occasion.
     Add dozens of speakers, many stepping, blinking, onto the national stage for the first time, some of them children. Broadcast live.
     And yet, as they'd say at this summer's other big summer event, the Olympics, the Democrats stuck their landing. The protesters stayed in their lane, mostly. The cops did their job well, even though most of that job involved enduring 12-hour shifts, standing around, waiting.
     Remember where the party was just five weeks ago — a bag full of howling cats tied to the cinder block of President Joe Biden, whose deer-in-the-headlights debate disaster seemed to kill his chances of reelection. and maybe hope for a functioning democracy too.
     Then, Biden did what he should have done a year ago: withdrew.
     And Kamala Harris, his heretofore unexceptional, unnoticed and unloved vice president, locked down the nomination in 24 hours and went from virtual nonentity to adored superstar faster than anyone since Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris.
     Given that dramatic starting point, had the DNC offered four days of Chuck Schumer tossing cards into a hat, the party mood would still have been buoyant. Instead, it was a parade of talent that got labeled with the sports cliche "a deep bench."
     The only way to summarize the four-day party is with a four-item list, one highlight for each night. There isn't even room for Doug Emhoff, the first "second gentleman," who's so comfortable in his skin that he made being a divorced Jewish lawyer from New Jersey sound practically iconic, like being a lumberjack.
     On to the daily highlights:
     Monday: Biden, whose heroic denial of self-interest — or tardy acknowledgment of reality — allowed his party to soar, had his moment in the sun. Well, 47 minutes actually. But he delivered the goods: "We're in a battle for the very soul of America." If that Joe Biden had shown up to the debate, he'd still be the candidate.

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"A sad ending to a sad story"

     When I heard the news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had gone and done it, I of course felt bad — for him, at least for the decent human being he had once been, long ago. And for his family. I'd gotten to know his brother, Chris, a little, when he was head of the Merchandise Mart, and found him a smart man, energetic, devoted to family and dedicated to social justice. I knew how proud he was of his father's legacy, and how fiercely he tried to protect it from those who'd tear down his memory. 

     But he was powerless to protect that reputation from the rolling besmirchment that is RFK Jr. As terrible as it must have been to see his brother descend in vaccine nuttiness and paranoid conspiracy theorizing, to see him now outdo himself by kissing the ring of Trump is, as Chris and his family wrote in a letter released Friday, "a sad ending to a sad story ... Our brother Bobby's decision to endorse Trump today are a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear." Speaking of their father in the present tense underscores just how real he is to them, still, 56 years after his death. 

         Robert Vickrey (Smithsonian)

     And it is a sad story. RFK Jr. lost his father when he was 14. He struggled with heroin addiction for decades, became a respected environmental lawyer, but then changed. I remember reading a story about RFK Jr. thundering against the windmills he once boosted when they were going to be put within sight of the family compound at Hyannisport. Maybe the good-for-you-but-not-for-me hypocrisy somehow tore his mind apart.

     I haven't talked to Chris since his ill-considered, poorly-executed run for the governorship in 2018. I'd pissed him off by writing a column saying, in essence, if he really cared about what he says he believes in, he'd drop out and support Dan Biss, because otherwise they'll both lose to J.B. Pritzker (which is indeed what happened). No Nostradamus, I saw Pritzker as a scion of wealth and nothing more, failing to sense what a magnificent governor he would turn out to be.
      Rather than consider my advice, Kennedy was angry and felt betrayed. Loyalty is very big among those who resent being judged by their words and actions. We never spoke again. That's okay. I get by, though I did enjoy our conversations, and what, despite our widely divergent stations in life, at some moments felt like actual friendship. (Even though, now that I think about it, at the time I quoted to him Aristotle's line about how between master and slave there is no friendship). When the news broke Friday, I rooted around for Chris's phone number, thinking to send him a supportive note during what has to be a difficult moment — save grudges for junior high. But I actually know several Chris Kennedys at this point, and didn't want to bother the wrong one. Probably just as well. I can't imagine him caring one way or the other. I'm surprised I do, but then, I'm slow to give up on people.

    As for RFK Jr., this really isn't the "sad ending" his siblings envision. If only it were. Alas, again, they are putting the bright spin on an erring family member. RFK Jr.'s story is not at its end, unfortunately, but now continues, to a fresh hell, the humiliation of being a Trump acolyte. Take a glance at a piece I wrote in 2016, "Chris Christie in rags" about the "stunned, miserable stare" on Christie's face when he found himself standing in Trump's rogue's gallery of supporters, just another supernumerary to the Great Chee-toh God, hoping to huff a contact high of ego and power. The former governor of New Jersey later tried to reinvent himself as a person with a functional conscience, and speak out against Trump. Too little, too late. Or as I sometimes will write a reader: a person who thinks that Donald Trump is a good idea for this country can't really expect anyone to care what he thinks about anything else. It's the same reason you don't ask homeless people for stock tips. I wonder as RFK slides deeper into the Trumpian netherworld whether it will ever occur to him that he had done this to himself. 

     I haven't written much about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because, honestly, I find him too repellent to contemplate. But I keep up with someone in the Kennedy circle, who met RFK Jr. a few times, and asked her what she thinks of him. "A shocking monster," she replied, without hesitation. And that was before he endorsed the greatest menace to American democracy since the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter.  

    Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about John F. Kennedy's style — his brother Ted generously granted me an interview and sent me a kind letter after it was published — and like many Americans, harbor still a small wellspring of respect for a family that gave so much to the country. But the source of that spring went dry years and years in the past, and the ground around it has become dry and cracked. Just a fading, tattered memory among a dwindling band of people, a ruined dream that even some who carry the revered name and cursed blood  stopped caring about a long time ago. 

Sky's the limit.

     It isn't much of a photo. First, the shot makes the street look brighter than it was, at about 8:30, as I came back from walking Kitty around the point. It was pretty dark. The phone commanded me to hold still, and I did, while it sucked up what light there was from the streetlamp.
     But if you look closely, you'll see him. A young man on roller skates who had rolled past me on First Ave, holding a flashlight. He was doing a few circles at the intersection with Center, waiting for a car to pass. 
    That flashlight caught my eye because, as far as I recall, I've never seen anybody skate by at night using a flashlight to guide his way and, I assume, alert cars that he's there. Actually, I rarely see skaters at all. Or skateboarders, for that matter. I assume they're at home scrolling through Tik Tok. Maybe watching videos of skaters. 
     The caution of that flashlight made him relatable to me. I'm a cautious guy. I see kids on their bikes, in groups of three and four, tearing down the street at night, unilluminated, in their dark clothes, and think, "C'mon guys. Don't do that. Stuff happens." I remember having a light on my bike, a big chrome thing, streamlined like a jet liner engine nacelle. It tended to go out of whack, if I recall, the batteries leaking over time.
     But the overwhelming idea left me, in this illuminated skater's wake, was that I had never seen that before. Never. Not a guy skating with a flashlight. And there is something comforting in seeing a creative person do something new. Something hopeful. It's like that day at breakfast, probably 20 years ago, when a waitress asked my younger son how he wanted his two eggs, and he said he wanted one scrambled, one sunny-side up. I looked at him, amazed. In a lifetime of ordering eggs I'd never considered that I could split the order, and left to my own devices would have never imagining it possible. This kid, I thought, is unbound by dull convention. He could do anything. 

What does 'Free Palestine' mean?

     "From the river to the sea," the speaker's voice echoed across Union Park. "Palestine will be free."
     The sun was high and blazing Monday, the air electric with drums and chants and squawking bullhorns. Thousands of people milled around, holding signs, backpacks, bottles of water.
     The only way to cover such a sprawling chaos is to pick a person and dive in. I settled on a trio holding a banner 45 feet long featuring the thought of the day: "FREE PALESTINE." I approached the young man on the left and asked: Free Palestine ... of what? To me, the end of that phrase is obvious: "... of Jews."
     "Absolutely not," he said. "To me, it means the freedom in Palestine to live, to have food and water. To not be in an open-air prison. To not be exterminated."
     He said they were with Students for Justice in Palestine.
     "My personal goal, the reason why I'm here, is to call for a cease-fire and to call for peace," continued the man, 19, who did not want to be identified. "The situation is pretty complicated, to be honest. It would take a long time, but I do think a single-state solution could work."
     A future of peaceful coexistence was not exactly being floated from the stage.
     "Stop all aid to the racist, colonial, terrorist state of Israel!" the speaker shouted. "We will continue to march, until we ... achieve total and complete liberation of Palestine. From the river to the sea. Palestine will be free."
     At a New Students for a Democratic Society booth — echos of the 1960s SDS — I spoke with a young woman whose face was wrapped in a green keffiyeh.
     "Everybody has the right to exist, to live," she said. "We believe everybody should be liberated, but most importantly, the Palestinian people should be liberated."
     And the Jews?

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"Nice try, gramps."

     Nothing like free food to draw a crowd. I slid into some kind of Content Creators Corner at the Democratic National Convention not because I consider myself "a content creator" — though  did ask the doorkeeper, breezing by, "Do newspaper columnists count?" and was told we do — but because I saw they had free soft pretzels. 

      And my backyard, as you might know, has become a rolling orgy of little brown birds flapping and scrabbling around my constantly stocked bird feeder. Sometimes dozens at a time. Nor are they alone. They're are often several rabbits and two or three or four or five squirrels. I'm not happy about it but what can I do? They're hungry.

     I glanced out the kitchen window last Thursday morning and saw this bad boy. All alone. The brown bird shindig had mysteriously moved on. "About time you showed up," I muttered, admiring his fierce hunter's profile. He'd thin the herd.  

     Wrong. No sooner had I snapped this photo — not that good, through the window at a distance — when a development entered, stage left. A young squirrel who had obviously been asleep during the lesson about not being eaten, nudged into the frame and began poking around the seed husks under the feeder, looking for seeds that had fallen to the ground. Those brown birds, in their frenzy, are sloppy eaters. 

    "This'll be quick," I thought, anticipating what was to come. But it wasn't. To be honest, the hawk seemed to barely notice the squirrel. Then he did. It looked like this:

     If ever a hawk had easy pickings, this had to be it. But hawks are designed to dive bomb prey from a great height. This narrow gap didn't allow him to get up a head of steam. Plus there was the obstacle of the feeder, whose anti-squirrel defenses — a baffle and length of PVC pipe — you may now pause to admire 

    When the hawk made its move, it turned out that little squirrel was not so oblivious after all. He bolted under the protection of the fire pit, and some kindling stacked around it, while the hawk flopped and flapped after him, quite ineffectively.

     The amazing part was that the squirrel didn't even wait for the hawk to go away. After the encounter, he was back nosing the seed leavings as if to say, "Nice try gramps." The hawk flew off, no doubt disgusted with himself, in search of less nimble prey.

Brandon Johnson salutes his past while looking toward the future

     It's Monday morning. In a few hours, he will address thousands of Democrats gathered at the United Center and millions more tuning into the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
     But right now, Mayor Brandon Johnson is at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, at 555 E. 51st St., about to speak to a few dozen people. He stands poised by the steps to a small platform.
     "They're coming for him!" Jitu Brown, national director of Journey for Justice, a coalition of grassroots educational organizations, tells the gathering. Brown, who led a 34-day hunger strike in 2015 to reopen Dyett, prowls the stage, invoking faceless forces set against the mayor.
     "Because they want him to privatize. They want him to privatize," Brown says. "They don't want him to love Black and Brown children. They were silent when they were closing over 160 schools in this city. ... They don't get to decide no more. Kwame Nkrumah said this: 'It is better to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else.'"
     With that two-edged maxim tossed out, the man trying to govern the sprawling city of Chicago as it welcomes one president, two candidates, thousands of delegates and protesters, not to forget all the other daily doings of a major city, takes the podium.
     "I'm grateful that we have come together to fortify our position as we push for sustainable community schools to be the model throughout our entire school district," says Johnson, who joined the 2015 Dyett hunger strike on its 24th day. "This model is not simply about teachers and teachers' assistants; it's also about the families who make up the community."
     Party politics might be about to push Johnson onto the world stage, but first Johnson takes the time to go to Bronzeville and give some love to a cause dear to his heart.
     "Sustainable community schools" is a major Chicago Teachers Union effort to remake the public schools so rather than compete for scarce magnet slots, students attend schools in their own neighborhoods with curriculum that will, in the CTU's words, "humanize education in a way that is antiracist and advances equity and justice."
     It's a message Johnson is eager to share with the world. Earlier, at the Chicago Hilton, 720 S. Michigan Ave., Johnson told a Michigan delegation breakfast that politicians need to put public money where their mouths are.

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