Banging on the library door

   

The Richelieu Reading Room of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, or French National Library, in Paris.

     They're taking my Chicago Public Library card away?!?
     Were you to evaluate the range of bad news in last Tuesday's Sun-Times, from the death of a courageous, liberal pope to the prospect of an impoverished city of Chicago laying off employees, you might not choose Shannon Tyler's story on page 15: "E-cards to be discontinued by library."
     Then again, you are not a library geek, like me, who takes his libraries very seriously.
     The CPL and I go waaay back — heck, I was involved in the decision-making process that selected the building for the Harold Washington Library Center. (OK, OK, the public was invited to vote on a variety of design options. I voted and my favorite won — I liked the elaborate frou-frou at the corners and didn't know they made patrons go through a maze to get into the place.)
     Then again, libraries tend to make you jump through hoops. But I'm always up to the task. From the British Library in London to the New York Public Library to the Library of Congress in Washington, I've gotten in, received library cards, roamed the subterranean stacks, consulted books and, in general, reveled in their bookish splendor.
     The British Library gave me a card good for five years. The Newberry Library not only gave me a card but a shelf to put my checked-out books on. And now the best Chicago can do for non-residents is issue a chit good for 90 days, non-renewable?
     Have you ever researched a topic? Ninety days is a start. Ninety days is clearing your throat. I've stepped over a book on the floor for 90 days before cracking the cover. These things take time.
     I use the CPL website continually, simply because it's the easiest way to search historic newspapers — the Chicago Defender, the Chicago Inter Ocean. Have you ever read the Inter Ocean? Its reporters were so sharp, I want to disinter their bodies and shake their clawed hands. Even the Tribune archive — in fact, I consult the Trib from decades past far more than I read today's Tribune.
     And you want to take that away? Just because I live in Northbrook? You monsters!
     I phoned the library. What, I wondered, have I ever done to you to deserve this? Being besieged by suburbanites trying to consult the Chicago Examiner online, are you?
     "We have such a demand," said Patrick Molloy, director of government and public affairs for the library. "Not so much from the suburban people, as we have people from all over the country and even internationally, creating online cards, checking out ebooks — they've got 15 things on hold — and people are waiting a really long time to get ebooks."

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A whole new meaning to "It's cheaper to keep her"

Ruth Snyder in the electric chair

    I complain about being surrounded by lawyers — two sons, a daughter-in-law and a wife — but there are advantages.
    Yes, conversation quickly devolves into .... well ... I couldn't tell you exactly what they're talking about, and I try to listen, hard. For a while. at least. Something about monopolistic practices, for the older boy. About motions to dismiss, for the younger. And landlord difficulties, for my daughter-in-law at Legal Aid (when can I drop the "-in-law" part? It seems unnecessarily specific. I love her like a daughter). 
    But one does pick up truths, as if by osmosis. 
    For instance, Saturday I received an email under the very promising slug "Good column yesterday re: Crimo..." that read:

      But too bad CP is not legal in Illinois. How much will the taxpayers spend housing and feeding this vermin, for what, 60 plus years possibly.
     Meanwhile millions of people in our country are homeless and/malnourished. Diverting funds from housing and feeding miscreants like Crimo should be diverted to help those less fortunate in our society, in my opinion.
     Consider me a pro capital punishment, far left liberal. Hopefully, one of Crimo’s fellow cell mates will ‘Off him.’ And the sooner the better. Happy weekend. - L. from Glenview

    "CP" being, I realized after a moment, "capital punishment" (As opposed to what's going on in Washington now, which we can consider "capitol punishment").
     I knew my response immediately. Checked it online at the U.S. Department of Justice's web site (which I hate to ID, lest they scrub that information too. I guess it's safe, because it doesn't deal directly with race. (Though you can't talk about capital punishment without getting quickly to race: a third of the Americans executed since 1976 are Black, double their representation in the population — though I should also observe they're responsible for half the murders). 
     I linked to the page in my reply:

     Ah L., you must not be surrounded by lawyers, like I am. Capital punishment is far, far more expensive than keeping someone in prison for the rest of his life, when you factor in the legal costs. It's cheaper to house 'em for 40 years than to fry 'em once and — if you ask me — a more terrible punishment. There's a former colleague who was sniffing around, begging for his old job back, and I mentioned, just the other day at the office, "I couldn't conceive of a worse fate than being him is." That would go double for Crimo. Thanks for writing.  NS

     Alas, the reader didn't bother clicking on the link, nor could he grasp that the legal appeals around capital punishment quickly dwarf food and housing and medical care for a prisoner. He seemed to think the choice was shooting Crimo the day after sentencing, or 40 years in prison. I observed that, had the death penalty been on the table, Crimo might never have pled guilty, and the trial would be grinding on right now. 

Independent Bookstore Day.

The Book Bin's new location, 1929 Cherry, Northbrook

     Happy Independent Bookstore Day! When I heard that the last Saturday in April has been designated a holiday to celebrate the tenacity of small bookstores, my first thought was, "Isn't every day independent bookstore day?" Not that I go every day — at this point, with the mesmeric lure of social media, I'm lucky to crack a book every day, never mind buy one. But I'm one of those people drawn into bookstores as if by gravitational pull. How can you pass one by?

     Holding a special day for small bookstores is sort of gilding the lily at this point. Once upon a time, independent bookstores were endangered by the peril of big box bookstores — Borders (remember them?) and Barnes & Noble and such.  Now the giants have largely gone the way of the dinosaurs, missed in their own right, while small bookstores, like the hardy voles, have survived the apocalypse and continue to thrive and evolve. Amazon might be handy in certain circumstances, but you seldom have a conversation there, and part of the money spent on Amazon ended up funding Donald Trump's inauguration.
     I'm lucky to live in Northbrook, whose Book Bin has been a social hub since 1971. The news is that  in February it moved into bigger quarters at 1929 Cherry Lane — and closer to me by a  hundred yards or so. They've always been busy — I'm always amazed to find four or five clerks working whenever I stop by — and supportive of my books. For the last one, we developed a fun symbiosis — anyone who wants a signed copy calls the Book Bin, which texts me. I stroll over and sign their copy, and the Book Bin ships it out. Do it now, if you like — 847-498-4999 — I'll be there in a few hours, can sign your book, and the Book Bin will speed it on its way. Gift-wrapping is free.
    Now that I think of it, walking over to the Book Bin to sign a book for them probably takes more time and effort than just packing it up myself. But it's a lot more fun — you see the latest titles, chat with owner Alli or her sister Amy, take the air on the way there and back. I feel like I'm a character in a Richard Scarry book.

    On Saturday, not only is the Book Bin celebrating Independent Bookstore Day, but it's also having a grand re-opening in the new location. There are snacks, music, fun.

     A big Independent Bookstore Day event is something called the Book Crawl — like a pub crawl, only with books. They've printed passports, created special stamps, hired buses, and if you visit 10 participating bookstores, you get 10 percent off all year. 
    Some of my favorites are on the list: 57th Street Books, a sprawling subterranean (okay, a few steps down from the street) Hyde Park institution. New and used. Good Dante selection. Powell's too.
      Bookends and Beginnings, which took over Bookman's Alley in Evanston for many years and now has moved into a new space in participating. As is the Newberry Bookstore, which, in keeping with the library's mission, is heavy on design — I once spent $10 there for a little booklet designed for self-guided bike tours of Chicago's racial history, timed for the centennial of the 1919 race riots, not so much because I planned to ride it, though I should, but because it was such a neat little volume.
    Quimby's is taking part, a skateboard punk of Chicago bookstores (though its brother, Comix Revolution in Evanston, is not. I got my first Uglydoll at Comix Revolution, and they have the best curated new book table. I found Eddy Portnoy's essential "Bad Rabbi" there). 
    The Book Cellar, Lincoln Square's jammed shop, is on the list — the "cellar" part is for their wine bar.  And the Book Stall, in Winnetka... 
     You get the idea. Sorry I didn't give you more advance notice — I only found out about it Friday morning. I'm not hitting 10 bookstores. Saturday morning I'm conducting an interview — about a book, fittingly enough, the new Wrigley Building coffee table book — with one of the authors and the photographer. I'll write about that in a couple weeks. Afterward, I plan to stroll over to the Book Bin and see what I can find. So, figure about 11:30 a.m. Maybe I'll see you there.

Crimo isn't alone ignoring the pain of others

     When you stop caring about people, you can do anything.
     Ignore any suffering, endorse any wrong. Heck, you can, as Robert Crimo III did, cause suffering and inflict wrongs yourself. Show up at your own town's Fourth of July parade and fire 88 shots from an assault rifle into the crowd of your neighbors, killing 7, wounding 48 more.
     You're free to do that, then shrug it off afterward.
     We wonder how Crimo could do it, while at the same time imitating him, in our own small way.
     Part by necessity. The world is a terrible place. You can't mourn every bird nudged out of every nest, every child who dies anywhere. Life would be continuous agony. You have to be concerned about yourself, primarily, your family, next, if you're lucky enough to have one. Then a few neighbors, co-workers, friends. We make such a big deal out of the tiny fraction we care about, we completely ignore the majority who don't count.
     Some cause harm. For a lark. In Crimo's case, he pulled the trigger, he claimed, inspired by friends being shot by police — imaginary friends apparently. Lies are helpful that way, the grease on which our bad deeds slide. Crimo says he was a zombie, a sleepwalker.
     There's a lot of that going around. Those who aren't psychopaths prefer to let others do their harm for them. The reasons hardly matter. Our government hurts people based on their immigration status. Their paperwork. It's such a familiar excuse, we forget just how flimsy it is, how false. Just as baseless as other popular pretexts: the color of someone's skin, their religion, gender. Meaningless distinctions that become meaningful to those who want to oppress and hurt, or ignore oppression and pain.
     As if the 2022 Fourth of July massacre weren't close enough — a 13-minute drive from my house to Ross Cosmetics, the Highland Park store and social center Crimo chose as a sniper's nest — after the killing I noticed a photo I took at a Trump rally at the corner, within sight of my window.
     It was 2020, the COVID Plague Year. Northbrook activist Lee Goodman had taken to posting the COVID death tolls on a sign at the corner of Shermer and Walters — then under 200,000 dead. Trumpers began holding rallies at that corner to register their displeasure at anyone keeping track of something as trivial as Americans dying in a pandemic, the opening salvo of what, five years later, has become a general war on education, experts, data, information.
     Not only don't we care who gets hurt; we don't even want to see an official toll. Statistics are for losers.
     It might seem facile to draw a line from Crimo to the administration. Why not? Both are motivated by the same blithe unconcern for life. It's only a matter of degree. , and seven dead are a rounding error chump change compared to what's happening right now. Human Rights Watch just issued a paper: "100 Human Rights Harms in 100 Days: The Trump Administration's Assault on Rights in the United States and Abroad."
     No. 1 is "Children, adults, and whole families may find it more difficult to feed themselves as the administration eliminated over $1 billion in food assistance for school lunches and food banks in food insecure school districts and communities across the US."
     Are those kids going to die of hunger tonight? No. But it's a hint at what's going on — if you don't care about hungry kids, what do you care about? Trans high school athletes, apparently.

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Coffee with the senator

     Sen. Dick Durbin announced Wednesday that he won't run for re-election. Of course he did. In an era when politicians leap to look out for themselves, first, last and always, clinging to power until it's pried away, Durbin is a man out-of-time, cleaving to the old standards of service to country before service to self. Who knows where we'd be today if Joe Biden had done the same in a timely fashion, although Durbin had the benefit of learning from Biden's bad example. I'll miss Sen. Durbin, for the good he did for our country, our state, and for how accessible he was — the kind of guy you could sit down with and share a cup of coffee.

OPENING SHOT

      Had a cup of java with my old pal Dick Durbin at a Madison Street coffee shop Thursday morning.
     "So you don't think Alito is so bad?" said Illinois' senior senator, alluding to a column I wrote suggesting that President Bush's current nominee to the Supreme Court wasn't the kind of towel-gnawing conservative crazy who would justify the Democrats kicking out the stops to block him. I assumed a filibuster was a flat-out political impossibility but Durbin — who is on the Judiciary Committee, and thus should know — disagrees.
     "I would have told you that last week," he said. "But after meeting with my colleagues, I'm not sure. We can't rule it out. I was surprised at the intensity of feeling."
     They are convinced that Alito will not only pitch Roe vs. Wade, but lead us into a world of excessive governmental power and reduced individual rights — a dark new Alito's America.
     Not that they got that across. A murderer's row of Democratic senatorial powerhouses, led by Ted Kennedy, had hours of choice TV time to tar Alito, and came off looking verbose and ineffective.
     "It wasn't an easy week, I'll tell you," Durbin said, with a laugh.
     To be fair, the Dems were in a bind -—anything resembling tough questioning would be seen as bullying a respected jurist, which doesn't poll well. So they were left speechifying and focusing on minutia.
     None of it added up to the impression that Alito was too conservative to serve.
     "We look back and say, 'What went wrong?' " said Durbin, who insists that the American people feel Bush won the election and therefore gets to pick his court nominee, but they didn't realize they would also be getting Alito's America.
     "Did he win the election saying he would appoint a justice to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade?" said Durbin. "This isn't what we bargained for."
     Durbin said Democratic senators will decide over the next several days whether they want to take the dramatic step of filibustering the nomination. It's still a long shot but, I'll tell you this: It would make great theater.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 20, 2006

     Had breakfast the other morning with Sen. Dick Durbin and Dan Seals, the young Democrat who just might unseat Mark Kirk in the 10th Congressional District next week. We were discussing that age-old question of whether the current election really is the most mean-spirited in history or only feels that way. Conversation naturally moved to George Allen, the Virginia senator who, having pretty much dug his own political grave with his mouth, is desperately lashing out at his opponent, Jim Webb, by pointing shrilly to salty lines culled from Webb's war novels as if they were evidence of perversion. Durbin used a phrase I hadn't heard before.
     "George Allen is a spit tobacco senator," he said. "One of four in the Senate." Meaning that he dips and chews tobacco, a vile habit better left in the barn. But Allen doesn't leave it in the barn. Durbin entertainingly described a flight down to Guantanamo he and Allen shared on a military airplane, and the cringing revulsion the clean-cut, dignified and ramrod straight military hosts extended toward Allen, a drooling nicotine addict dribbling brown saliva into a plastic cup. That's a grosser image than anything in Webb's novels.

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 1, 2006

     For many years, my column took up a page and ended with a joke, often sent in by readers. Sen. Durbin shared what had to be a real occurrence

TODAY'S CHUCKLE ...

     Normally, you couldn't pry me off the couch on a Sunday afternoon. But this Sunday, Jan. 20, the first-ever 10th District Democratic Convention ... The public is invited, and the keynote address is by my old pal and regular reader, Sen. Dick Durbin who — completely unrelated to Sunday's convention — sent in this joke:
     The senior senator from Illinois was visiting an elementary school in Caseyville. Always eager to impart the importance of understanding our democratic system, the senator asked the children in a third-grade class whether anyone could name the vice president of the United States.
     There was a silence. Finally, a small voice from the back of the room ventured: "Judge Judy?"

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 18, 2008

'How can we help?' Go to 26th Street and chow down

 

Susana Mendoza

     Don't bite off more than you can chew.
     If something is overwhelming — whether today's news, or the $39.95 Carne a La Tampiqueña platter at Nuevo Leon Restaurant, 3657 W. 26th Street — just cut it down to manageable size. That works for both ceaseless national turmoil and dinner. I got the half order.
     I was there last week at the invitation of Susana Mendoza, the Illinois comptroller. Not a personal invitation, mind you — we don't know each other — but a general plea, delivered by one of her now trademark slick videos, complete with aerial drone shots and Illinois farmer Dick Bigger Jr.
     Seeing the fun Mendoza has with Bigger's name — which got her campaign video on Stephen Colbert — reminded me that there are two types of politicians: the stiff, robot from Mars sort — no names, please, you know who I mean — and easygoing, Judy Baar Topinka types. Proud possessors of quirks, like Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, twirling her baton at the Pride Parade. Public servants I bestow with the ultimate compliment: "actual human beings."
     Into that fold goes Mendoza, whose official portfolio includes neither dining with the press, nor plumping the neighborhood where she was born.
     But one of the countless negative results of the Trump administration's war on America has been ICE raids deadening business in ethnic neighborhoods such as Little Village.
     "It was tremendous," Mendoza said, noting traffic at Nuevo Leon fell by three-quarters. "They went from 280 tickets a day to 67."
     "Locals are not coming out," confirmed Nuevo Leon owner Laura Gutierrez. "We did have a couple incidents, people picked up, right down the block. When people from the neighborhood see that, they stay inside the house."
     I initially wondered whether Mendoza worries she is urging immigrants into harm's way. But I'd misunderstood the target audience: folks like me.
     "We're encouraging people who are not from the community to come to the community," she said. "That's why we did it in English."
     It works. I arrived an hour early and happily wandered 26th Street, an area I'd never visited before.

Ginger pigs

     I did have a goal: El Nopal Bakery, 3648 W. 26th St. Having lived on Logan Boulevard for several years, I developed a deep affection for treats I think of as "ginger pigs," actually called marranitos or cochinitos — "little pigs" — big, thick, soft gingerbread cookies, roughly porcine in shape.
     The idea, Mendoza said, is "to have people maybe venture out of their comfort zone. So many people are talking about this issue, [wondering], 'How can we help?' The best way is lifting up the businesses by coming into these communities, where people are afraid to come, and spend money."
     I did my best, buying two ginger pigs, and would have spent more, except many stores are geared toward princesses — well,15-year-old girls on their quinceañeras. Though some aimed at a younger crowd, and my eye was caught by an attractive green number in the window of Pink & Blue Kids Wear, 3437 W. 26th St., that seems perfect for a certain as-yet-unborn girl.
     I went inside. The dress seemed reasonably priced for such elegance, at $120, but as one unaccustomed to this kind of purchase, I snapped a photo and sent it to her due-in-June mother, who, while uncertain of what occasion would call for it, pronounced the garment "very adorable." I decided to put off the purchase, for now, but to return soon to collect it, and more ginger pigs.
    "All of us can help by coming here and patronizing these businesses," said Mendoza, who doesn't plan to stop her efforts at Little Village. Chinatown is next, and then other affected Chicago communities.

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Bird of prey

Photo by Dan Abraham

     Much reader reaction to Monday's column on birding.
     "You can't go wrong with birds," I told my wife. Not only for their beauty, their energy, the way they slip the bonds of earth and fly. But their independence —  they carry on quite well without us; better, in fact. They are not often domesticated. People do keep birds, but in cages. Not like dogs and cats and goldfish. They are free, which is more than we can say, particularly at the present moment. 
    Among the many sharing their thoughts was Dan Abraham, who writes:
    "I’ve never written to you before, but after reading the column on birding, I thought you might like this photo. I don’t intend to go birding, but this guy showed up in my backyard in Evanston the same day your column came out.  Google says it’s a Cooper’s hawk. "
    He is right, I do like it, and his photo prompted an investigation and a confession.
    First, for all the times I've referred to a Cooper's hawk, I never asked the obvious question which is ... anybody? ... that's right: who's Cooper?

William Cooper

     The bird was named — nearly two centuries ago, in 1828 — after naturalist William Cooper, one of the founders of the New York Lyceum of Natural History, now the New York Academy of Sciences, and what is extra nice is that it was not done so by Cooper puffing himself, as often happens, but by his friend, Charles Lucien Bonaparte. 

     Among his other interests, Cooper was a conchologist, a word I had not encountered before, which means exactly what it sounds like: a zoologist of shells.

     The confession is simple: I tend to call every hawk I see a "Cooper's hawk," even if they are a sharp-shinned hawk, which indeed look very similar, or a rough-legged hawk, or any of the eight species of hawks found in Illinois. 

     Now that I admit the sin, the practice of lumping all hawks under that one variety sounds pretty lame. I'm going to have to try to do better and improve my hawk-identification skills. Hawks deserve no less.