More poetry

 

     How are we to get through the next four years? Poetry always helps. I've written about the medicinal power of Walt Whitman. Though I'm reluctant to break out "Leaves of Grass," worried that his joyful, fearless vision of 1850s America would clash too horribly with the current terrified, narrow moment, as we watch through latticed fingers as a monstrosity and his underlings tear our nation down to their level. 

      Besides, I think I gave my copy away to a young man down the block.

      There's always more poetry. I was at the Northbrook Public Library Wednesday afternoon, returning a couple books, and paused in front of the new books shelves. I picked up "The Best American Poetry 2024," wondering if it was worth the effort of carrying away. Some poetry is great, but a lot of poetry is crap. 
    I opened the book, and turned randomly to "Chainsaw," by Marie Howe.
    "We grow smaller — we break things," she writes.
    Yup. I checked the book out.

'Oh my God! It's a dog! It's alive!'

     Maria Arsenijevich saw a flash of fur poking out of a yellow plastic tub. At first she thought it was a toy. There's was no sound, no movement. It couldn't be alive. It had to be a stuffed animal.
     She was sitting in the family room at the back of a "humongous" Lincoln Park home early last March. The crew of two workers from her company, Clearing Chaos — don't call them "cleaners," they are professional organizers who specialize in decluttering and dealing with hoarders — were separating the possessions of a tenant being kicked out of her rental home. Boxes and cartons were piled 6 feet tall. Piles of junk. They were two hours into a seven-day job.
     The tenant was a doctor, Anita Damodaran, 38, a pediatric physician with two young children.
     "Very charming," said Arsenijevich. "A very nice lady. Hoarders are usually extremely intelligent and very nice."
     Damodaran Damordaran was helpful, assisting the Clearing Chaos workers, pointing out which possessions were hers and should be shipped to Florida, where she was moving. What should be donated, what thrown away. Even doing some of the work herself.
     "She took this whole tower of crates and held on to a black and yellow one and was dragging it to the door to get it outside to the deck," said Arsenijevich. "I turned around to see what she was doing and saw a furry something poking out from below the yellow lid. I thought, 'It's a stuffed animal, bursting out. Because there are too many of them in the tub.' There was never any noise. No whimpering, no barking. She goes a little farther, and now I'm seeing three-quarters of a face. I wasn't sure it was a face — one side was matted with fur. The dog was popping its head out of the tub. The top was raising. I was fixated on the dog.
     "My brain was saying, 'That's a stuffed animal.' I'm staring at this thing, and my mind's going, 'Something's not right here.'"
     What was not right here was that Betty, a Portuguese water dog, had been confined to that plastic tub, a veterinarian later estimated, for about a month. Her weight had fallen from about 40 to 19 pounds. She was near death.
     Damodaran dragged the box away. That had to be a toy, Arsenijevich told herself, again.
     Then her assistant started to scream.
     "Oh my God, oh my God!" one of her crew yelled. "It's a dog! It's a dog! It's alive!"
     Arsenijevich raced over.
     "I thought it was a standard poodle. Just sitting in the crate, its legs in front, very rigid, like a statue," she said. "No movement."
     She started barking orders at her crew. One — who didn't want to use her name — was sent to the kitchen to get water. Arsenijevich called MedVet, the emergency animal hospital at Belmont and California. They told her to find a blanket and use it as a stretcher.
     And Damodaran?

To continue reading, click here.

They left off God ... this time.

  

     You have to train yourself to think like a machine.

     When Facebook took down today's post, at first I bristled: obviously my courageous anti-administration stand had offended the Zuckerbergians. The boot of repression set upon my neck.

     Then I thought more, and realized: "N0 — the letterhead."

     I had begun my post with the Illinois Republican Party fundraising scam email sent out yesterday. No doubt, that caught some machine's eye, and I was flagged as trying to pass myself off as the Illinois Republican Party, which no patriotic American would ever do. So let's try again, with a new top illustration, and see if this works better:

     This survey showed up in my inbox Monday.
  

    Hmmm...
     There really isn't anything more to say, is there? You either immediately understand, having understood long ago. Or you never will.
     Honestly, I don't hear from individual Trumpy readers much anymore. Maybe hoarse from cheering. Maybe finally gave up on experiencing the world beyond the four corners of their little shoebox world of Fox News and Newsmax. I couldn't tell you. I don't miss them.

     When you click on the supposed poll, it turns out to be fishing for your email and phone information so they can hit you up for money. That's what the bottom line of much of America's descent into ruin is — a running grift, putting on a dumbshow of puppet boogeymen to wring cash out of the rubes. The politics are almost beside the point. 

     Except they're not. Dismantling the government is not just a bad thing. It's a disaster. The wholesale, unpremeditated, chaotic fashion it was conducted. First the disruption of thousands of lives, low level bureaucrats charge with mundane tasks to keep the machinery of governmente running. We'll be left with a broken box of gears and pieces, a shattered government that we'll never put back together. If we were taken over by Russia directly, I don't believe they'd destroy the country's infrastructure in this fashion. Our enemies would be reluctant to do this.

    And the Democrats are ... silent, right? Except for Gov. J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, where are the voices screaming bloody murder? Nowhere. It's a nightmare.

FDA foot-dragging might have saved your hands and you never knew it

A portion of the thalidomide, brand name Kevadon, seized in Chicago in 1962 (Sun-Times file)

     How many Frances Kelseys were let go from the federal government last week? Probationary workers were fired en masse, in a sham lunge at savings — really an enormous transfer of expenditure from organizations benefiting regular Americans to more tax savings for the rich.
     Was there one future Dr. Kelsey? A hundred? We'll never know. One would be too many.
     What? The name Frances Kelsey doesn't ring a bell? Of course not. People forget. Even though she was a hero — a local hero, too, University of Chicago Medical School, class of 1950, where she studied pharmacology.
     Dr. Kelsey was a fresh hire at the Food and Drug Administration in September 1960 when a stack of three-ring binders, each the size of a phone book, landed on her desk, busywork for the new girl who joined the agency the previous month.
     It was an application from William S. Merrell, an Ohio pharmaceutical company, for a drug it wanted to sell called Kevadon — a sedative introduced in Germany in 1957, and sold all over Europe. Approval was expected to be routine. The FDA had just 60 days to register an objection. Otherwise, Merrell could go ahead and sell the drug in the United States.
     The company already was giving samples of Kevadon, a brand name for thalidomide, to U.S. doctors; eventually 1,200 doctors would start handing out free pills to 20,000 American patients, often to pregnant women, where it controlled the nausea of morning sickness. Without telling women the pills were unapproved. A field test conducted on the unaware, all completely legal.
     But the application bothered Dr. Kelsey who, though new to the FDA, had years of experience in her field.
     "There was something a little different about this one," she later remembered thinking. Before the 60-day limit ran out, Kelsey wrote to Merrell saying its studies were "incomplete," despite their bulk. She questioned the company's methodology.
     Merrell cried foul. Executives hurried to Washington to complain about the "stubborn bureaucrat." They sent letters to her superiors, made phone calls, placed editorials in medical publications denouncing "dilatory tactics which certainly cause a loss to the industry of millions of dollars ... and even loss of life." Kelsey was being "unreasonable and irresponsible."

To continue reading, click here.

Not among them either

     Lord George Gordon Byron did not, I feel safe saying, ever tramp his gray suburb on a cold February evening. Block after empty block, his only company a small dog who, though perky as always, could not herself populate a neighborhood the way, oh for instance, people could.
     Where is everybody? Inside, of course, scrolling TikTok, making dinner, watching television, or poring over the grim news — I'm not speaking of anything specific, just the general dismantling of the country by bad people. Couldn't there be another dog walker, kids playing, anything? Someone in the distance? A car? This is like one of those austerity sets that the Lyric Opera inflicts on their audiences where Valhalla is represented by a blue lightbulb and some twisted tinsel. 
    So to make things worse, I conjure up Byron ... why?
    As reproach? To torture myself. The dashing romantic hero. Profile like an alp. He swam the Hellspont — first person to do so.  Fame, intrigues, travel. To use him as a personal yardstick is nuts. 
    So why then? As comfort? That makes more sense. I was a Eugene O'Neill fan as a teen, and that snatch of Byron in "Touch of the Poet" lodged itself in my bowl haircut Ohio head:

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered it's rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee
Nor coined my cheeks to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo, in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such, I stood
Among them but not of them...

     Because I was special. In my own mind, if nowhere else. How grandiose is that? I loved those lines for the same reason Cornelius Melody does in "Touch of the Poet" — trying to present himself as something better than his drab surroundings.  A gem in the muck. Brush the hay from my shoulders and quote Byron. Those lines prompted me to read "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" — I remember nothing of the book but writing a paper on it for Bonnie Brown's World Lit class in 12th grade.

     In my 30s, I did grasp at reproducing Lady Caroline Lamb's famous assessment of Byron as "mad, bad and dangerous to know." I failed mightily. 

     Byron receded in my later life — he doesn't quite go with middle age. No Philip Larkin he. I did not have the good sense that Byron did to die at 36, fighting for Greek independence. Spared himself the sour years. 

     Coward. Being dashing romantic heroes is easy, I imagine. Tougher to be the lone watchmen of Center Avenue, walking the streets in a dead patrol. Smart enough to know that not every day is golden. Some days are February. Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear...

    Actually, Byron left behind a little help here, some bracing words for those of us who are, far later than we should be, still sprawled in the middle of a messy pile the small parts of Life as sold by Ikea, trying to figure out how to put the damn thing together. In an 1821 letter to his biographer, the Irish poet Thomas Moore, Byron recounts how he met a young visitor, who seemed disappointed in meeting a great poet.

   "But I suspect that he did not take quite so much to me, from his having expected to meet a misanthropical gentleman, in wolf-skin breeches, and answering in fierce monosyllables, instead of a man of this world," Byron wrote. "I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?"

    Or as I like to think of it, if you ever hope to reach mountaintops, on rare occasions, then you must be willing to spend most of your time plodding up the sides of mountains. Which can be hard, lonely work. But worthwhile nonetheless. Or so I recall.

Rice cakes of the night

Live tilapia at the Super H in Niles.

      Did you have a fun Valentine's Day? I sure hope so. We sure did. My wife bought us a day at King Spa, the sprawling Korean pleasure dome in Niles. The passes were good for the next three months, and I actually hesitated when it came time to go, thinking: "But that means ... I won't be home ... working. Maybe another day..." I contemplated that gambit, then dove in. Let's go!

     When I first visited, over a decade ago, I found that I had difficulty simply lolling. "Can you even loll through force of will?" I wondered, gazing at the clock, champing at the bit to get to the next pool of relaxation.
     Good news. Age hasn't brought wisdom, but it certainly has improved my ability to recline for protracted periods, doing and thinking nothing. Four hours flew by. Very restful. 

    The venue is pretty much the same — the price has doubled in 11 years, from $30 to $60, so it's less of a bargain. But the place was well attended, almost crowded, with the same smorgasbord of humanity — couples, friends, families, individuals, a spectrum of ages and races. The food was excellent. 
      Of course afterward we stopped next door at the Super H, an enormous Asian supermarket, where we wandered the stacked bags of rice, the unwieldy exotic fruit, the wildly enthusiastic boxes of mysterious products. My wife loaded up on mushrooms for a promised mushroom stew. I pondered a half gallon of matcha soy milk, took it, checked the carbs, put it back, then went for it — you only live once! — along with assorted goodies, like little round walnut cakes.   

      I enjoy studying the unusual packaging from other countries. Shorn of familiarity, some seem over-the-top, almost crazed, with their pop-eyed characters shouting nonsense syllables. For some reason the deadpan slogan of a Moon Pie-like Korean product, Choco-Pie, caught my fancy: "It's fluffy." I'll bet it is. Maybe I was just in a good mood. This not working thing — it grows on a person. I could get used to it.

     Then there were the yellow boxes below. Oh my. "Puto" is a male prostitute in Spanish. Though that's more of the sedate definition; it's actually a highly derogatory anti-gay slur. That couldn't be the intention. Back home, a moment's digging showed that, in Tagalog, it's a popular steamed rice cake served with — judging from the photo — a big pad of melty butter on top. Popular in the Philippines. I wonder how their sales to Spanish-speaking countries are? I imagine certain Hispanic men stock it for its camp value, the way I'd put a box of Kike toothpaste in my medicine cabinet if I ever came across such a thing.

Donald Trump is absolutely right ... about the penny

     Why yes, I am a coin collector. Not that I've acquired a new coin in 50 years. But being a coin collector is a permanent condition, like being a Marine. And I still have my pathetic childhood collection of Morgan silver dollars and a fine 1883 "no cents" Liberty nickel, which I can happily expound upon: a Roman numeral "V" on the reverse, but no "cents," so fraudsters would gold plate the nickels and pass them off as $5 gold pieces.

   Scary to consider how much numismatic minutia I jammed into my head between the ages of 10 and 15; even scarier to recognize how much is still there.
     For instance, I don't have to check to know with 100% certainty that the Lincoln penny was introduced in 1909 to mark the centennial of the 16th president's birth, replacing the far prettier Indian Head Penny. Or that it originally had sheaves of wheat and a bold ONE CENT on the back. Replaced in 1959 with the Lincoln Memorial.
     Forget the design. It became clear long ago we shouldn't have pennies at all. The Lincoln cent became a rebuke. A symbol of inertia, aversion to change, everything wrong in our country. Address climate change? We can't even get rid of the penny. Civilized countries — Canada, Australia, Britain — ditched theirs decades back.
     Only in America do we stick with a coin that costs more than three times as much to make than it is worth, not that people spend them much. I wouldn't bend over to pick up a penny. Would you?
     So when Donald Trump paused from vandalizing our government Sunday to kill the penny, it took my breath away. It's a ... good idea — no, a great idea. Who uses coinage of any kind? Or cash, for that matter? About time. Bravo, Mr. President! And I have to say that out loud because the liberal superpower — and curse — is we approach situations rationally and can find value even in those we oppose. This isn't the first accomplishment for Trump — he also fast-tracked the vaccine against COVID-19 after ignoring the pandemic. And others.
     That said, we don't want to make too much of results while ignoring method. If somebody breaks into your house and washes the dishes, it's still a crime. They could steal stuff next time. Given the blizzard of executive orders of questionable legality pouring from the Oval Office, odds are one or two will resonate with most everybody. We are still hurtling toward the abyss. There are too many Americans willing to live in a country where one man is above the law. If he were Donald the Just, issuing commands steeped in the wisdom of Solomon — spoiler alert, he ain't — I'd still be uncomfortable with the change to a country that used to have a powerful Congress and respected courts and unquestioned elections.
     Still. It's a healthy exercise to think positively, even for a moment, about a generally loathsome person. This reminds me of when I was researching Henry Ford a few years ago. You might think of him as the genius who created the Model T and the assembly line, and he was. But Ford was also driven nuts by wealth and success — it didn't start with Elon Musk — and lurched onto the international stage, trying to end the first world war by sponsoring a voyage of peace activists to Europe and becoming a roaring antisemite.

To continue reading, click here.