Tales from the woodshop

 

     Monday night was woodworking class. Nearly halfway through making my end table. Maple shelves with cherry legs and rails. A minor crisis — I took some wood home last time, thinking it was scrap, and it turned out to be something I needed yesterday. But the teachers are nothing if not accommodating, used to dealing with the full spectrum of blundering, and I was guided through creating replacement pieces and got my work done before class ended. 

     Mistakes happen, and usually can be corrected. That's part of the joy of workworking, one of its central lessons. If you recall last time we popped in, I was regarding with boggled horror my terrible dovetail joint. I considered how rarely do adults get to do things they're really bad at. They learn to avoid them, so don't dance, don't speak in public, don't express their emotions. 
     Me, I try to power on through. To be good, you have to be willing to be bad. I signed up for the second class at the Chicago School of Woodworking, "Mortise and Tenon Joinery." Though I deserve no credit for persistence. I took the second class for the same reason I signed up for the first ; my younger son asked me, a development I've taken to referring to as "The Pulitzer Prize of Parenting." Though this time I couldn't help spilling the beans. "I know I'm not supposed to say this part," I said. "But I'd sign up to spend two and a half hours a week tossing playing cards into a hat with you." 
     The kind of squirmy, over-sharing thing a dad would say — well, that I would say. My dad was a nuclear physicist for whom sentiment was an irrational number of no practical value. So I veer the other way, though worrying it's too much. "Dad was always saying 'I love you,'" the boys will grumble to each other, bitterly, in 2055. "I hated him for that."
     A mortise, by the way, is a recess designed to accept a projection, called a tenon. I could pretend that above razor sharp joints reflect a huge increase in my skill. What they represent is the value of machinery. I'm sure a skilled carpenter can make some wonderfully precise cuts with a wooden mallet and chisel. But I am not a skilled carpenter. We learned the basics with Japanese hand saws and brass marking wheels. Now we've moved on to the most extraordinary power tools — massive Felder professional machines that make the stuff sold at Home Depot look like potato peelers.
    Yes, you have to be careful that you don't feed your fingers into the blades. But there are safety guards, and with Mad Eye Moody's epithet ringing in my ears — "Constant vigilance!" — I keep focused and perform my tasks, under their constant watchful eye, with intently but without so much terror. I've kept my fingers on my hands, so far, and the teachers stress the value of keeping that desire foremost in mind.
    I went back and looked at that first dovetail joint, which I kept, as a token of humility. Actually, it wasn't as bad as I recalled, that second to the bottom mortise, which got kinda chewed up — I could get the yips with the chisel — but did not look that terrible, from a distance. 
     A reminder: we progress for many reasons. Being able to look back and detect improvement is a good one. Everything is a process. Those who passionately wished that the years 2017 to 2021 would be a nadir in the decline of the United States were, sadly, mistaken. Our rock bottom is still out there, waiting for us.  The sooner we get there, the sooner we will begin improving. A joy, it will be, someday, perhaps, to remember even this.

      

New Mexico gets to stay ... for now.

Worker assembling a globe at Replogle in Hillside in 2018.

     A globe is a handy thing. When I learned one of my favorite bits of local trivia — to pray facing Mecca, Chicago Muslims must turn northeast — I rushed to my globe for confirmation. On a map, that looks wrong. But a minute with a string and my 16-inch Replogle Library Globe and you see it is true — northeast, through Montreal. Because the world is spherical.
     While my globe is a lovely object — brass fittings, three carved lion's paw feet — it does have drawbacks. This one is old and out of date. There is a French West Africa and a Belgian Congo, remnants of a colonial past our new administration seems hot to revive.
     One of Donald Trump's first acts as president was to declare the Gulf of Mexico is now the "Gulf of America." Marking territory we do not actually own, like my little dog on a walk, laying claim to certain trees. A sign, not of strength, but weakness. I shook my head, smiling at the self-own.
     Then again, I don't have to leap to accommodate him. You and I and the rest of the world can continue to call it the "Gulf of Mexico" as it has been known for the past 400 years. But like Trump's attempt to cut federal funding to key programs, the renaming of the gulf will affect people who were never considered.
     For instance: One of the top manufacturers of globes in the world is Replogle, a venerable Chicago company for the past 95 years (overlooking an awkward period when it shut down in 2010, popping up in Indiana, until it took a good look around, realized where it was, and scurried back). Keeping up with the shifting sands of politics is a constant challenge for Replogle, and I wondered just how quickly they are following Trump's directive.
     "It's a tough business climate for both our businesses, newspapers and globes," Replogle CEO Joseph Wright began. I didn't argue.
     Replogle makes hundreds of models of globes in numerous languages, and reflecting reality as the locals see it is already in their skill set. Thus, Japanese globes show them owning the Kuril Islands, which the Soviets seized in 1945. Globes sold in India show them possessing all of Kashmir, which Pakistan takes issue with.
     So this isn't their first rodeo. The day East and West Germany reunited, Replogle globes showing a unified Germany were rolling off the line. Here, a little delay seems in order. Trump's fragile whims have a way of sometimes shattering when they hit hard reality. His funding freeze to thousands of federal programs, remember, was rescinded two days later.
     "In the United States, most turn to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names under the Department of the Interior," Wright said. "However, that is just a small starting point. We also look at which countries are recognized by the U.S. for inclusion. Also the U.N. Also NATO. Most large international waters are not under the control of any naming authority or treaty. Each country decides for themselves."
     Other companies selling products that cannot be readily updated are also playing for time, such as Chicago's purveyor of physical maps and atlases.
     "Rand McNally will await final legal and public review through the Secretary of the Interior’s office, as required in President Trump’s Executive Order, before making any adjustments to our Atlases and maps regarding the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America," the company said in a statement.
     Market demand is key. When Egypt insisted its border with Sudan be placed where they fancy it should be, rather than where it actually is, Replogle consulted the State Department, considered its minuscule Egyptian market, then shrugged and ignored the request. America's former allies whom Trump daily neglects and insults, when he isn't harming them with insane, self-destructive tariffs, are a larger market. They cannot be expected to start stocking up on "Gulf of America" globes.

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Enter "The Triangle Zone" for Valentine's Day with Eli's Cheesecake

 

    You don't need me to tell you that cheesecake is the essence of romance. Its sensual sleekness and cool perfection. The sweetness. The initial chill that warms, yielding wonderful flavor, like love itself.
    With the new Valentine's Day Eli's ad going up last week, of course I reflected on past voyages into the sensual side of cheesecake, its intrinsic share-ability, how going back to ancient times cheesecake has enraptured some of the greatest minds of Western civilization. You would think there could not be more to say.
    But there is more. Cheesecake is endless.
    I have not yet remarked on the shape of a wedge of cheesecake. But Japanese novelist Haruki Murikami has, in his pristine short story, "My Cheesecake-Shaped Poverty" published by The New Yorker in 2023. A poor young married couple rents a house on a piece of land defined by busy railroad lines. 
    He calls the lot "The Triangle Zone," and while that would have been sufficient, he elaborates thus:

    "Imagine, say, a round, full-sized cheesecake. Cut it into twelve equal pieces with a knife so it’s like the face of a clock. What you’d end up with, of course, are twelve slices of thirty degrees each at the tip. Place one of these on a plate and, as you sip your tea, take a good hard look at it. That tapered end of the thin slice of cake? That’s exactly the shape of the Triangle Zone I’m talking about."

     Honesty, I thought the author of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" was going to go ... ah ... go other places one he had established the Triangle Zone. They can be quite racy, Japanese authors. But that's as far as he takes the notion, the rest of the story involving the couple renting the property despite the real estate agent's attempts to dissuade them. ("Isn't it too noisy?" he asks).
    Cheesecake certainly has its place in fiction. Stephen King told Bon Appetit magazine that he begins work on a new novel by eating cheesecake. "Cheesecake is brain food" he said, though it does not seem to be Eli's Cheesecake, which might account for his books' morbid tone.

     The internet has a grave idiocy to it which AI will struggle to overcome. I've seen several sincere references to George S. Wykoff's 1928 monograph "Cheesecakes in Literature" none noting that the thing is obviously a joke — people jested, even 100 years ago. Wykoff quotes Hamlet saying, "Thus cheesecake doth make cowards of us all." 

     There is undoubtedly cheesecake in Damon Runyon, though the Broadway chronicler displays an unfortunate prejudice for the New York version. 

     "Still you will admit that Mindy's cheesecake is the greatest cheesecake alive," Frank Sinatra's Nathan Detroit says to Marlon Brando in "Guys and Dolls."

      "Gladly," Brandon purrs.  "Furthemore, I am quite partial to Mindy's cheesecake." 

      I will point out that both characters are criminals whose judgment cannot be considered sound. Although the observation that cheesecake is "alive" does harken back to its animate, passionate quality. The stuff is practically a force of nature.

     Enough. We are avoiding the most important point — as are you. The important point is that today is Feb. 2, you have bought nothing for your beloved, because you are a laggard and in a relationship so long that you've become slack and careless. Love fades and founders on such laziness, which creeps in and rots even the strongest foundation while we remain unaware, until it is too late, and the carefully-built edifice that has protected us for so long comes crashing down on our heads.

    Fortunately I am here to help you. There is still time. You needn't look up from your silage to see your lovemate stamping out the door, suitcase in hand, too angry or indifferent to bother casting you a final look or a tart goodbye. That is because you are not going totake your relationship for granted. You are going to take decisive action by clicking here and ordering her — or him, or them (who am I to pass judgment on your preferences and arrangements?) the heart-shaped Black Forest cheesecake that Eli's so generously shares with the world. It is not only the right and honorable thing to do, but the only thing standing between yourself and heartbreak and loneliness.  You can thank me later.

"Because I have good sense."

     Sorry I didn't have a column in the newspaper Friday. Black people are to blame.
     Oh, did I say that out loud? Whoops. It's supposed to be unvoiced. I should have just pointed out that the newspaper has a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion effort, and let your imagination fill in the rest. 
     I need to work on the above if I hope to mimic the exact note of bone-deep yet tacit racism that President Donald Trump revelled in Thursday when discussing the tragic helicopter/plane collision over the Potomac, veering from his falsely pious evocation of thoughts and prayers for the victims, before he dove into his baseless accusations that the two Ds — Democrats and diversity — are to blame for the crash. Sixty-seven people died, and his minute of silence was followed by half an hour of baseless calumny. It would be shocking if we, you know, hadn't lost our capacity for shock years ago.
     Pressed how he could say that when the investigation of the crash has just begun, the President of the United States replied:
     "Because I have common sense.”
     Good old common sense. No need to spell it out, but let's try. You just know that Black people aren't as skilled as white. You just know that trans soldiers degrade the military. You know that Jews are greedy, Muslims terrorists, and immigrants, criminals and parasites. You know people with disabilities can't do a good job at anything other than bagging groceries. No proof is necessary, and any contrary evidence is merely dismissed. Water off a duck's behind.
     The sad thing — well, one of the many sad things — is there are valid reasons to be critical of DEI. I actually am a member of the DEI council at the paper, When I applied, I did so out of the exquisite sensitivity and devotion to fairness at which I excel.
     "Better to be inside the tent pissing out," I told my wife, "than outside the tent pissing in."
     The language I used applying to the program was more honeyed.
     "While I am not a member of any of the groups that are typically considered under the umbrella of diversity, I've always had a sensitivity to such groups, particularly the LGBTQ community," I wrote. "The paper has always been very supportive — I wrote the first (and to this day, really the only mainstream newspaper look) at the Chicago transgender community in 1992. I'm just now completing a look at how the Sun-Times covered race over the past 75 years, and while it was subject to the limitations and prejudices of its times, all told the paper has always led rather than followed."
     You'll notice I didn't say I'm Jewish. Jews, though certainly a traditionally oppressed group, have somehow lost our minority card. In part, I believe, because we tend to be white, and people buy the slurs against us. Why should the George Soros-funded octopus straddling the world, flailing its grasping tentacles, need a helping hand? DEI is about supporting worthy outcasts, not solidifying Shylock's grasp on his pound of flesh.
     Despite this, my argument worked. Or maybe they just admitted everyone who applied. Either way, I was accepted, and attended the occasional meetings. Which put me in a position to notice Trump tearing out DEI programs root and branch from the federal government with more than the usual perspective of Americans alarmed seeing their institutions re-calibrated to suit the whims of a bigot and would-be demagogue.
     Calling such programs "“radical and wasteful" Trump ordered all DEI-related employees to be put on paid leave by 5 p.m. his first Wednesday in office, in advance of being fired. Concern that any employee address inclusiveness in the workplace was so extreme the order warned against trying to shield such unworthies, demanding that agency heads quiz their underlings whether they “know of any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.”
     I actually agree with that first assertion. DEI programs are radical in the sense that for the majority of American history, organizations would merely bar employment of disfavored groups. There is no risk of untermenschen proving their worth if you never let them even try. When Chicago hosted the World Columbian Exposition in 1893, Ida B. Wells picketed the fair, where a Black could not be hired a janitor. In the 1920s, colleges struggled to not admit "too many" Jews, so as not to corrupt their student bodies, the way they fret over the proportions of Asian students today.
     The Republican war against DEI is based on the premise that civil rights is over, the minorities won, that white Christians are the besieged community, and the situation must be set right by prying the fingers of these lesser folk from the ledge of acceptability. The thinking is: You can eat at the lunch counter at Woolworth's. So shut up already. The fact that Woolworth's is long gone is not a consideration.
     And true, such efforts create winners and losers. And sometimes it seems that DEI is swapping one unfair system for another. All of that could be discussed, if the current administration were not deploying DEI as a kind of modern shorthand for an old racial slur.

     Any valid complaint regarding DEI melts away when Trump is thundering that all such programs "divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”
     Actually, it is the president who is dividing Americans by race — or rather, sticking a crowbar into the division and prying back and forth, widening the chasm.
     Everyone harbors prejudice. Everyone exhibits discrimination of one sort or another at certain times and places— I wish we could grind that into people's heads. What I remember most distinctly from the first DEI meeting is this: I had vowed to just listen, to keep my yap closed — shutting up is an art form I struggle to master. But at one point "microaggressions" — small slights too minor to constitute discrimination but yet sting — were brought up.
     "Older employees don't know what a microaggression is," someone said.
     "Which itself is a microaggression!' I blurted out.
     I'd like to say my point was made, my colleagues nodding, wiser thanks to my insight. But it wasn't. Old people, like Jews, are scorned so automatically nobody even considers it prejudice. And so the work continues.

     In closing, I should point out that efforts at racial inclusion really did keep me from writing a column Friday. Because I worked a long day on the Martin Luther King Day holiday, rather than relax and contemplate our nation's progress, I asked to take a day off later on, rather than take extra holiday pay. My boss kindly reminded me I had that day off coming, so I took Friday. An outside observer might be forgiven for believing that this was entirely my doing — the decision to work, and to take time off. But that just means they're blind to the hidden hand of DEI machinations at work in our country today. DEI means nothing is ever your fault.  There will be not a mistake made in the next four years that our monster president cannot lay at its feet. 

Is it the shoes?

 

Those wouldn't be size 14s by any chance?

   Postage stamps. Crystal. Office chairs.
   To Chicagoans of a certain vintage, the above miscellany should conjure up Dan Rostenkowski as clearly as if I had posted his photograph. The minor grafts that ruined him, the pebbles upon which the great chairman of the Ways and Mean Committee scuttled his career and sent himself to prison.
    Not to single Rosty out. Corruption is always over petty shit, compared to the damage done. Ed Burke, off to jail for ... anybody? ... corruptly holding back a driveway cut-out exemption for a Burger King until his law firm got some business thrown its way.  Mike Madigan mumbling the wrong phrase into a federal wiretap. George Ryan crumpling an envelope holding a thousand dollars in cash and jamming it in his pocket. Rod Blagojevich tossed to the wolves by his father-in-law, Dick Mell, over the governor shutting down a landfill owned by Patti's cousin. It would look ludicrous in fiction.
    Okay, not always petty shit. Ed Vrdolyak went away for a significant chunk of cash — a $1.5 million kickback scheme. Although, compared  to the billions the Vrdolyak Law Group rakes in on personal injury lawsuits, still chump change. As always, the crime is what's legal.
     Into this pantheon leaps Mayor Unforced Error, Brandon Johnson, according to the Sun-Times, with his pathetic take of luxury goods — Hugo Boss cufflinks, a Montblanc Pen, handbags by Kate Spade and Givenchy. The usual baubles.
    Not to suggest anything untoward. Perhaps everything is on the up-and-up, as the mayor insists with his trademark huff. Maybe his wife isn't carrying that Kate Spade purse. Maybe his failure to account for the gifts is just him being too busy doing important work, driving the city deeper into ruin. His blocking the inspector general from looking into the matter is due entirely to distraction. No time to follow standard ethical policy. Yeah, that's the ticket. Though the guilty flee where none pursueth, and were the mayor handling gifts properly, why did he do everything he could to keep prying eyes off the supposed trove? Why wax so indignant? (The answer to that could be, "Because he always does." Truly, the man bristles at a touch).

     At this moment, what journalists are no doubt pawing over photos of the mayor, looking for him wearing a pair of Carucci shoes, whatever those may be. Careers have foundered over less.

Ronald Reagan's dream come true

Vent Haven Museum, Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky

     The Reagan epiphany was a simple one. With overt racism fallen from favor, in some quarters, you could no longer directly afflict the people you are keen to scorn— the minorities, the immigrants, the poor, gays, not to forget women, who are actually the majority but historically vulnerable because of their sex. 

      But you could assail the government that helps them. Starve it by slashing taxes, for the rich. Smother programs. Jettison goals. Scrap supportive laws and pass restrictive ones.
    Public education, once the bedrock of American society, could be abandoned once Black people found their way into white classrooms. School choice could be boosted, and here "choice" means "using tax money to pay for private schools for parents who couldn't bear to let their kids rub elbows with their lessers." 

     People bought it.

    That many of your own kind are hurt — most people in poverty are white — didn't matter. Bigotry is both a kind of ignorance and a form of self-immolation. Southern towns would fill in their swimming pools in the 1960s after the courts ordered them integrated. If your own children sweltered, well, there are always private clubs, and another reason to hate the people you hate already. 

    And there's always someone to hate, to fear, if that is what you are looking for. 
    The task never ends, and when would-be demagogue Donald Trump took office, he arrived with a flurry of spite and vindictiveness, sprayed in all directions, against groups and individuals who dared stand up to him in the past, a practice, already rare, sure to become rarer. 

      Trans soldiers were ejected from the army, based on nothing more than malice and general distaste. The same calumnies directed at Black military personnel until Truman integrated the Army in 1948 could be retrofitted. Any port in a storm. The first thing the new secretary of defense did was strip former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley of his security detail and security clearance, and take steps to bust him in rank in retirement. The first thing.

     Whatever pressing matters the country faces are pushed aside. The need for a functioning military is overlooked. 
     So, open season on vulnerable Americans and the government that serves them. The whole system torn down, as if by a child. That the government does so much, from building roads to testing the purity of food and drugs, that it helps so many, is simply ignored. Racism is both a form of ignorance and a powerful addiction that must be fed .... with somebody. Anyone will do. Democrats, liberals, will serve too, eventually. Does it seem the bond that should hold Americans together in unified purpose is easily dismissed? Apparently so. 

    Today's post is late — my apologies — and I know feels ... what? ... muted, wooden, subdued. That's an accurate rendition of my mood. There must be a lot of that going around.

Lady Liberty gets a makeover — the statue remains, the concept behind her is sold for scrap

     Look on the bright side. The Statue of Liberty is still there, at the mouth of New York Harbor. Facing southeast, to welcome immigrants arriving aboard ships. Lifting her lamp to light the golden door.
     "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ..." is still emblazoned on a plaque at the feet of the Mother of Exiles. "Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me."
     There is no plan — no public plan anyway — to take her down and sell the copper for scrap. Or jackhammer away Emma Lazarus' famous poem praising "a mighty woman." Or remove the torch and refashion her uplifted right hand to display an extended middle finger.
     Not to give anyone ideas. Defacing national monuments is already in the air — talk has resumed of adding Donald Trump's face to Mount Rushmore.
     The statue remains, for now. Only the concept behind her is being scuttled, the American welcome mat yanked away, again. The golden door slammed shut.
     U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — was busy in Chicago and across the country Monday. Hundreds of immigrants were arrested here, thousands nationwide, and while those arrested were portrayed as murderers and rapists, facts were scarce.
     I have a feeling that when the facts are known — and we can't assume the truth will ever be known, this being 2025 America — the bulk of deportees will end up having committed parking offenses, and of course, the unforgivable crime of being here in the first place. Which is what this is all about, and why Donald Trump is president — so we can throw out the foreigners along with their crime and disease and strange languages and get back to this country as we imagined it to be in the 1950s.
     A certain brand of foreigners, of course. From Mexico and South America, primarily. They haven't rounded up the Norwegians, yet. I contacted the French consulate in Chicago to see if their people here are on edge. Let's just say, they're not. The elimination of diversity efforts in government and anti-discrimination laws give further proof, as if more were needed, of what this is really about.
     The effort focused on Chicago. Here is where border czar Tom Homan was striding around, joined by — in that note of surreal horror that all true nightmares require — TV's Dr. Phil,  offering the ripping apart of families as entertainment, edging toward the strafed lifeboat full of refugees in George Orwell's "1984." Red meat for red state audiences.
     Remember why Chicago is being singled out. What is our crime again? Oh yes, we are a "sanctuary city," welcoming immigrants, who have so overrun the place that Chicago's population has been flat for 30 years. Chicago had more people in 1925 than it has today. We're being punished for seeing a situation clearly — we need residents — and acting upon it. Expect more of that.

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