Hog wild

 

   My stock of Yiddish phrases is not very deep. But I do know "shonda fur di goyim" — a disgrace in front of the gentiles. Usually directed at a member of the tribe who, by playing into some ethnic stereotype, has embarrassed his religion before those who are too quick to scorn us anyway.
     I've always viewed that attitude with skepticism. It seems predicated on the mistaken notion that haters are making judgments, gathering facts. When they begin with their conclusions, and cherry pick only the facts that fit. I don't have many rules as a writer, but "Don't write for people who hate you," is one of them. People who consider Jews cheap are going to do so whether I pinch pennies or not.
     I also don't write for the easily embarrassed. When I wrote Friday's column about ordering a pork chop at the Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington, DC, I had my concerns — it was a trivial, share-my-high-life kind of post. I decided not to mention that the pork chop cost $35. Class distinctions inflame, why pour gasoline on the fire?
     I also didn't put in a few sentences explaining that YES, I know, I'm a JEW ordering a pork chop. Deal with it. First, I've said exactly that before. And second, I only had 790 words to tell a story that ended up being complicated. I decided to accept what flack I got for being who I am.
     In the end, it was only one guy. Let's call him David, since that is his name. David writes:

     I have been reading and enjoying your column for years. It's one of the reasons I still subscribe to the Sun Times. However, I was disturbed by your Friday column restaurants and pork chops.
     I personally don't care what a person eats or if they choose to consume something that might not fit in with their culture. Live and let live has always been the way I've conducted my life. In this case though, coming from a Jew, which I am too, I think glorifying pork chops complete with a picture sends the wrong message to many of your readers.
      Some readers, particularly non-Jews, may be confused thinking pork chops are off limits to Jews and I think to most Jews, that's where they draw a line. Virtually all of my friends who do not keep kosher avoid eating pork and bacon.
     In my mind, a Jewish guy writing a column about pork chops is inappropriate. As I said, you have every right to eat whatever you want but to see you, who occasionally writes about things Jewish, which I appreciate, writing such a column was very disappointing.
     I will continue to enjoy your column but please, at the very least, publicly respect a tradition that goes back thousands of years. You don't have to keep kosher to do that.

     I might not have answered at all. But he was, he said, a fan. He deserved a response of some sort. I thought carefully and answered this way.

     Let me start by saying that I appreciate that you have been reading for so many years. I appreciate your loyalty, and should probably just leave it at that.
     However. It troubles me that, despite this steady readership, so little of my worldview seems to have worn off. Perhaps you've read, but not for comprehension. Perhaps you've been skimming. If that is the case, let me urge you toward greater focus. Because if anything is clear from my column, it is that, while I am a proud Jew, I am not what they call a shomer shabbos Jew. I have never suggested I am any kind of role model or, indeed, anybody other than who I am. This can't be news to you. In fact, I've even addressed the pork chop issue, and quite recently. Here, please read the top of this. That's why I didn't take time in Friday's column to try to ward off a letter such as yours.
     Since you are a regular reader, I'll only ridicule you a little, in a gentle fashion. Here's what you said: while you yourself don't care what a person eats, you nevertheless care enough that I should pretend not to eat pork, or at least not admit to it in print. Because non-Jews, mistakenly, think pork chops are off limits to Jews. And we need to encourage that error so ... here I lose the thread. So they don't think less of us? I can't imagine doing the same thing for other faiths, castigating Christians for missing Easter services, or Muslims for not praying five times a day facing Mecca. Are these not personal choices?
     You go on: since "most of your friends" don't eat pork — how could you possibly know? Have you asked them? — I should pretend not to eat pork too? In case we ever become friends?
     Honestly, David, if I were to compare both our lapses: my enjoying pork chops in print, and you feeling that Jews need to present a unified front, pretending to engage in practices which few of them actually do — and up to 85 percent of American Jews do not keep Kosher — I would humbly suggest that I am the one displaying the more traditional Jewish values, at least to the degree that we still value honesty, individuality, sincerity and the like.
     I think that's enough. If you don't mind — and even if you do — I think I'll post this on my blog on Tuesday for the benefit of my most loyal readers. But don't worry, I will shield your name, to protect you from embarrassment. I recognize that it takes chutzpah to write to a newspaper columnist, and respect you for making the effort. But I hope you then accept my response in the spirit it was intended.

     No answer of course. Reading this a second time, I worry I was too hard on a landsman — another Yiddish term, for a fellow Jew from your general area. Sometimes I can be heavy-handed. Should I have gone for a lighter touch? 

Trump's executive orders on homelessness: 'Inhumane ... ineffective and counterproductive'

     A homeless man has been sleeping on a low flagstone wall at the corner of Shermer and Walters in Northbrook for the past few nights. A block from my house.
     The first time I saw him, while walking our dog with my wife about 9 p.m., I steered us in a different direction, worried he would, I don't know, leap up and stab us. It happens.
     The second time I saw him, I had a very different thought: "You know, we have those extra bedrooms. Maybe we should put him up for a few nights ..."
     Two very different reactions — fear and kindness — that neatly bookend the general reaction to pervasive homelessness in American society.
     On the one hand, we're afraid. Even though the unhoused are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than the cause of it. Not just for our own safety, but for the health of our communities as a whole.
     Few motorists driving along Lake Shore Drive, I imagine, see the tents sprouting in Lincoln Park and think: "Cool. A welcoming city provides safe space for its most humble citizens." Not the city beautiful Daniel Burnham had in mind.
     On the other hand, we recognize life is hard. There are many ways to fall through the cracks: addiction, mental illness, divorce, unemployment, poverty. Some unfortunates struggle to maintain the barest fingerhold on society.
     Who among us wants to tread on their fingers? I doubt many Americans wake up and wonder, "How can I make life more difficult for homeless people today?"
     Such people exist and now have a strong ally in Washington. America is in the midst of her Golden Age of Fear. It's like we're cycling through vulnerable communities, one by one, to see who can be demonized and oppressed next.
     Trump 2.0 came out of the blocks swinging at immigrants — who now can be arrested on sight by masked police, without due process, and shipped to foreign countries while we race to build our own domestic gulags.
     Then trans people, who now can be cashiered from the military for reasons that had nothing to do with their ability to serve.

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'Manifest Destiny'

Detail of "Manifest Destiny," by Alexis Rockman (National Portrait Gallery)

     When methods of communication are being discussed, there is of course our drug, passion and universal solvent, social media. Then a passing glance at radio and television, with a sigh of parting for the fading old ways: books, magazines and of course my own ever shrinking ghetto, newspapers.

     Oil paintings don't even make the cut. Which is a shame, considering the drama and power they are capable of. Consider Alexis Rockman's mural "Manifest Destiny," noticed in the National Portrait Gallery during our recent visit to Washington. It is kind of hard to miss — an enormous expanse of sunbaked orange, crumbling infrastructure and suffering wildlife.

      Though its placard understates the case:
     "What might happen if we don't exercise responsible environmental stewardship?" it begins.
     "What might happen"? Ya think? I'd say it bleeding well is happening, right now, and quicker than we expect. "If we don't exercise responsible..." This ship has freakin' sailed on that one, has it not? We elected Mr. Damn-the-Windmills-and-Dig-Baby-Dig.

     "The painting shows the Brooklyn waterfront as it might appear several hundred years in the future if human-induced climate change continues unabated." Another underestimate. As with Hemingway's description of bankruptcy, these changes are happening gradually then suddenly.
     You can see why Trump came for the Smithsonian, almost right out of the box. In March he signed an executive order to “remove improper ideology” from the museums, forbidding exhibits that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
     Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery —  the star of the Smithsonian — stepped down even as Trump was firing her for expressing "anti-American ideology."
     Looking clearly at the future, like accurately accessing the past, is apparently no longer an American value. Being concerned for the rapidly deteriorating state of the planet is no longer an American value. Facts are un-American.

     At least at the moment. In some quarters. But it will change. Eventually.

     If you think sentient Americans curse Trump now, imagine how residents of that sun-blasted world — maybe decades, not centuries away — will revile his name, and the blindered rampant ignorance  he represents. He isn't dooming us — he's doing something worse. He's dooming our children and grandchildren.

Rockman's mural is eight feet tall and 24 feet wide.

Demolished house

      The house was small. And white. On Catherine Street, two blocks from my own. With black shutters that never closed once — decorative. Grasping, along with the coach lights, toward some whiff of colonial splendor that almost seems a joke when you think about it. A symbolic white handkerchief of elegance in a neighborhood where people build gigantic faux farmhouses. Where some build enormous homes, live in them a bit, then, decide these estates just aren't big enough, buy the lot next door and double the size of their already huge house into some kind of super huge house.     

     I've thought of knocking on the door and demanding a tour — "What do you do with all that room?" A bad idea, at houses where I've literally never seen a person outside, coming or going. Not in years.

     But that wouldn't go over well. Not my place, literally or figuratively, not as a local dog walker and humble senior citizen, newly enrolled in Medicare. With a half price Metra pass freshly installed in my wallet, awaiting its first use. 
     The chain link fence went up weeks ago,. Maybe months. Then last week, the Caterpillar excavator arrived, signalling the brink of doom for the old home. I tried to imagine the years of life unfolding there, the new couples arriving, the babies squirming, the children running around. The gradual deprecations of time, ignored as always. Or as Mary Oliver writes:

We did not hear, beneath our lives,
The old walls falling out of true,
Foundations shifting in the dark.
When seedlings blossomed in the eaves,
When branches scratched upon the door
And rain came splashing through the halls,
We made our minor, brief repairs,
And sang upon the crumbling stairs
And danced upon the sodden floors.  

     A vague and haunting image of happy life when it is past. Though honestly, I failed completely, conjuring up the lives unfolding here. Hard to imagine the life of someone you know, a person standing in front of you. Hard enough to remember your own, sometimes. Doing so from the architecture of a house about to be torn down is impossible. At least for me.
     The house is ... what? 1930s? That would be my guess, but I'm not knowledgable about such things and invite correction.  Colonial revival was a style throughout much of the 20th century — some 40 percent of American homes built in the 1920s reflected it. 

     I didn't dwell on the house being pulled down, which couldn't take an hour. There's enough cause for melancholy in my own life without channeling anybody else's. Two days later, when I passed again, the house was rubble, the bricks already palleted up — old bricks are a hot commodity. Apparently, we just can't make them like we used to. Something about the minerals in the clay. Or maybe we could, but don't bother. The current not-quite-so-nice bricks are good enough.

      Someday soon my wife and I will stroll by this empty lot, and she'll say, "I don't remember what was there." And at least now I'll say, "I have a picture, if you're really interested."

    The Oliver poem ends this way:

For years we lived at peace, until
The rooms themselves began to blend
With time, and empty one by one,
At which we knew, with muted hearts,
That nothing further could be done,
And so rose up, and went away,
Inheritors of breath and love,
Bound to that final black estate
No child can mend or trade away.

Top quality restaurants don't resemble 'The Bear'

   

Leidy's Duroc pork chop with cheddar grits soufflé and bacon-braised swiss chard.

     Chefs are rock stars. Waitstaff are coveted. You know who never gets their due? Even though they're the key to restaurant excellence, as important as food or service?

     Management.
     "I think you might have something there," said Rich Melman, founder of Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants, the wildly popular family of eateries. Most new restaurants fail, but Lettuce has been in business over half a century and owns, manages and licenses more than 130 restaurants in a dozen states. They know what they're doing.
     This epiphany struck me this way: my wife and I recently helped our son, his wife and new baby move from Jersey City to D.C. I must have really stuck my landing, because toward the end of our two, count 'em — two weeks — helping, my wife announced that she would take me out to a celebratory lunch at the venerable Old Ebbitt Grill.
     Reservations proved impossible. So we just showed up, and were told the wait was 45 minutes. Parking ourselves at the bar, we ordered drinks. My wife requested an ice tea.
     "I'll get it," said a manager at the end of the bar who overheard the order. That struck me as unusual, like a company vice president stepping out of his office to mop the floor.
     "Let me comment on that," said Melman, when I described the scene. "I think very small. And that's how we got big. You're probably dealing with the manager in charge of the bar. In busy times, they have key people watching over whatever is going on. There might be another manager watching the dining room. Another manager watching over the kitchen. It's like a great shortstop/second base combination. You know what to expect. You know each other's moves."
     Why do some restaurants work and others don't?
     "I think it would be called restaurant leadership," Melman said. "There's got to be somebody who has the passion and the knowledge and the stick-to-it-ness to make something work. That becomes the culture of the organization. What impressed you is how the team works. There is a lot of teamwork in a good restaurant. Covering for one another."
     Speaking of teams, I haven't mentioned the astounding part. I order the Leidy's Duroc pork chop with cheddar grits soufflé and bacon-braised swiss chard.
     The chop shows up, a thick, 16-ouncer. A thing of beauty. I reach for my phone — dead after a morning snapping photos. Sure, I could have used my wife's phone. But I had more pressing things to do, like digging into that pork chop.
     Regret came later. How could I write about this spectacular pork chop and the organization serving it up without a photo of the pork chop in question? I considered going back the next day and ordering the chop again. But that's seemed nuts.
     So I did a Hail Mary, and called Clyde's Restaurant Group, which runs Old Ebbitt. Did they happen to have a photo of their pork chop?

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'The busy bee hath no time for sorrow'

Bob Israel

     We are the architects of our own happiness. Or sorrow. I think we forget that. It's too easy to offload responsibility for our lives onto fate, circumstance, others. To sit on your hands and complain. If you don't like what's going on right now, get busy and change it.
     I'm thinking of Monday morning. I'd been working for a couple hours, but hit a wall. It was about 9:45 a.m. I looked up, a little stunned, to find myself sitting at a desk, writing stuff. How did this happen? This is where working in a place with other people would be helpful. You could get up, get coffee, wander over and talk to one of those other people.
     But I work alone. I groped to think of someone to call, but came up empty.
     Drifting over to Facebook — which gets a bad reputation, but definitely has its uses — I noticed Bob Israel, a Northbrook trustee I'd met once after a recent village board meeting. He'd posted a photo of himself in a beekeeper's mask. Plus a trio of honey jars with homemade labels.

     "I have honey — I’m home today," he wrote. "Does anyone want to stop by and pick up a jar (or three)?"
     Posted 11 minutes earlier.
     Why the heck not?

     I grabbed $15 and the car keys. Google Maps told me Bob and his hives were a five minute drive or ... a 10 minute bike ride. I hopped on the old Schwinn. Always choose the more strenuous option. Riding a bike helps.
     Bob has several hives and about 125,000 bees in his back yard. He's been keeping bees for about five years.
     "The neighbors were initially freaked out," he said. "But then they realized their gardens have been better than ever. One of my neighbors took out all his grass and put in flowers."
     That's true — he'd replaced a section of back lawn with bee balm, daisies and other bee friendly flowers, a gorgeous tableau.

     "I started keeping bees because of my concerns about the environment and desire to be more restorative than destructive," he said. "As I took classes and started to learn more about the bee's social structures and began working with the bees, I found it to be both mind-calming and to benefit the flora in my neighborhood — so, effectively my reward is found in a bit of clearing of my mind and a multitude of blooming flowers.

     I stood before the hives, admiring them, and Bob directed me off to the right, "out of their flight path." There being nothing flowery about myself, the bees ignored me entirely, as they did Layla, Bob's dog, who practically was jamming her nose into the swarm.

     My admiration for bees was sparked in part by Virgil's Georgics, which includes a parody of battles in Iliad, fought by bees, whom he calls "stout warriors in their waxen kingdoms."

     Bob refers to his bees as "the girls," which I liked very much. I told him I knew this is correct gendering, as most bees in a hive are female.

     "There's some drones," he said.

     After 10 or 15 minutes I paid $15 for a pound of honey — the money goes to a worthy charity. Bob wrapped it carefully in a sheet of styrofoam, I put it in my bike basket and donned my helmet. A car pulled into the driveway and a man stepped out.

     "If you're here for honey, you've come to the right place," I said, and rode away.

     The sunny, summery morning certainly looked better than it had less than an hour earlier. I got back to the house, broke out the honey and dipped a spoon in. It tasted excellent: fresh and light. A reminder: the sweetness is always out there, waiting. Sometimes you have to get off your duff and go find it, that's all.

     If you too are in bicycle distance, and want to arrange a honey pick up, you can contact Beekeeper Bob at bobisrael@sbcglobal.net

"Stout warriors in their waxen kingdoms."

If you don't get this app, this dog might die

Kitty

     A dog cannot clear its throat, exactly. What Kitty, our little 15-year-old Shichon, does each morning is appear at my bedside about 6 a.m. and emit a low grumbling sound. My cue to get up, get dressed, pop in earbuds and take her for a walk.
     Center Avenue is empty at that hour. Tree-lined, nice houses. You'd think the pleasant vista of leafy suburban comfort, set to my favorite tunes, would put me in maximum good spirits.

      And it does, to the degree that anything can. Yet, after we return home, the first thing I do is fill her water bowl to the brim, thinking, "I want her to have plenty to drink in case we drop dead and nobody notices for days."
     A grim thought. And a rather improbable one — I mean, yes, people our age, mid-60s, do die abruptly. But the odds of both my wife and me  expiring at the same moment are slim. How would that even happen? An awful coincidence, perhaps. She steps in front of some idiot on an electric scooter blasting down a Loop sidewalk at the same moment I stumble headlong down the stairs at home.
     Morbid stuff. Where did that dog-dying-neglected thought even come from? I'd like to blame Gene Hackman — he and his wife died in February, unnoticed for over a week, and one of their dogs perished in a crate, horribly. But I was having this thought long before.
     Looking for relief, I wondered if there might not be some internet gizmo that will sound the alarm if you don't check in.
     Snug Safety is a cheerful, well-designed little app that sends a text every day at a set time with a big green button to tap. Fail to tap, and it alerts an emergency contact. Hit the button, and you're rewarded with an affirmative little quote.
     You can pay — $199.99 for a year, $19.99 for a month — for access to a human dispatcher. But the basic service is free.
      Every day, a big green button. Then the quote. First day:
     "We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men." — Herman Melville

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If the headline rings a bell, yes, it is
an homage to this classic National 
Lampoon cover.