Clematis redux

     Perhaps lazily, I considered the woody vine growing before my front porch as the "clematis," not really caring which of the nearly 400 species of clematis it might be.
     But when I paused, admiring the particularly lusty bloomage this week, I decided to pin down its exact variety. So I plugged a shot of the little white starbursts into Google Image, and, after an initial scare that it might be a Confederate Jasmine Vine ("the past isn't history, it isn't even past...") decided mine had to be either a Virginia Bower or a Sweet Southern Clematis.
     My initial inclination was to pull for the former, as my son is a loyal Wahoo alumnus. And while the flowers look almost exactly the same, the Sweet Southern is considered invasive, because the seeds get everywhere, though they're so similar it seems almost a silly distinction.    
     The difference being the leaves. Serated = Virginia Bower = good. And smooth = Sweet Southern = bad.  Of course I have the bad variety, though it's been there for years, doesn't seem to be spreading and while I cut it back every fall, I'm not about to dig it out. Let the Invasive Species police come get me.
     I was more interested in the literary ramifications of "clematis," which comes to us unchanged from ancient Greek, κληματίς, meaning "a climbing plant." My assumption was that pickings would be slim — my Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" has no entry for "clematis" ("rose" has 79). 

     Because what rhymes with "clematis"? Arthritis? Bursitis?  That's the making of a lovely sonnet for sure.

     Plug "rose" into the Poetry Foundation web site and you get over 10,000 results. Plug "clematis" in and you get 63, and upon investigation, not all of those actually contain the word.
      Robert Frost's "The Wood-Pile"  does. Here he comes upon a neglected store of firewood, set aside by someone long ago, Clematis are part of nature reclaiming its property"

The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.

In a more recent poem, "America," German-born Aria Aber is trying to adjust herself to a "country of cowboys and fame" that tells her, "to keep quiet about certain things." And that was four years ago. To her:

I feared what had happened in your forest, the words that pursued the soft silk of spiders
The verbs were naturalize, charge, reside
The nouns were clematis, alien, hibiscus

     If Aber's scared of considering the past of America's forests, she ought to visit Germany's. She's at Stanford now, so I hope feels more sanguine about the place.

     The classics never let us down. The word's Greek origin made me suspect I'd find it there, and I wasn't disappointed. Pliny the Elder — who we saw being killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius after saying, famously but incorrectly, in his case, "Fortune favors the brave," gives the flower an in-depth consideration in his "Natural History."

     Old Pliny finds the leaves are good for cleansing leprous sores, and the seeds cure constipation. The Greeks, he notes, eat the leaves as a vegetable, with oil and salt. They must have been hungry.

     I was just about ready to wrap this up and call it a day, when I decided to do the Full Boy Scout Try and check Shakespeare for clematis. Coming immediately upon this piece, written exactly two years ago. 

    Two few things stand out — first, the author, delving into clematis in a fashion identical to my own, comes up with material entirely different from what I found, including the plant that inspired his rumination, which belonged to a neighbor. 

     And second, I am the author. 

    Which is vaguely terrifying. Usually I snap to recall something I wrote 40 years ago. Or at least to consider the possibility and check. Yet I could plunge into clematis without a shiver of reluctance that I afflicted you with the topic a scant 735 days ago. But also comforting in that, given the entirely different result, I can still post this. Answer me honestly: how many of you began this piece and thought, "Heyyyyy, wait a minute. Didn't we read about clematis in 2023?"

Ornament

 

     Before 7 a.m., the neighborhood is pretty much ours. The occasional jogger. Another dog walker, maybe. But many is the morning when Kitty and I take our rounds and don't see a single soul.
     Sometimes I forget other people are around, and while we are going about our business, somebody is watching us. I paused to photograph this hood ornament on a Mack truck hauling away dirt from the construction site over at Catherine (demolition of the house that had stood there was captured here in July).

     Why? Because I love it. It's beautiful. When I was growing up, a Mack truck was a synecdoche for all trucks — being flattened by an unexpected event was "being hit by a Mack truck." And what boy doesn't love a truck?

     The company was founded in Brooklyn in 1900 by brothers Augustus, William and John Mack. At first they built buses. In 1932, the company's chief engineer, A.F. Masury, carved the iconic hood ornament out of a bar a of soap, and patented it. 

     I took a couple shots, and noticed the backhoe operator was not only there, but looking at me, then getting out of his cab. I could have scooted away, but didn't want to further alarm the man — people associate taking photos with irked individuals trying to get others in trouble. Maybe he felt guilty for working before 7 a.m.
     I explained, several times, that I was just photographing the hood ornament. But the concept was not being conveyed. There might have been a language issue. So I showed him the photo I had just taken, and he seemed to relax. I complimented his truck.
     "Very strong," he said. "I like to load the truck and get out."
     That seemed to be my exit line, and I left. The next day, however, just as Kitty and I were passing, he was pulling out in his Mack truck. I waved, as if we were old friends.

Then they came for the comedians ...

"Clown with drum" (detail) by Walt Kuhm (Art Institute of Chicago)

      Nobody cries like a bully.
     The big goon in the schoolyard, on the prowl for little kids to push down. Scattering books and kicking them. Snatching hats and throwing them in the mud. Then someone finally stands up to the guy, taps him on the nose, and he's on the ground, writhing and wailing like the baby he is.
     Because he isn't really strong — he's only tough when picking on somebody half his size.
     Welcome to our political moment. President Donald Trump desperately lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize, can't stanch the slaughter caused by his hero Vladimir Putin. He shrugs off Israel pulverizing Gaza. Tariffs are imposed and withdrawn in a wild, Lewis Carroll carnival of confusion.
      But he sure can go after his critics, and anyone who opposes his authority. They must be crushed, because under Trumpism there is no independent Congress, no impartial courts, no unfettered academe, no free press. Only one man's indomitable will.
     That isn't an easy sell. We are, thank God, a nation built on the idea of widely distributed power and a once-cherished Constitution. States maintain their own separate authority. So those states must be cowed by sending in the military under the flimsiest pretext of law enforcement, though they seem very particular about which laws get enforced and which ignored.
     Universities — traditional hotbeds of dissent — are brought into line under the canard of dialing back antisemitism. Funds are snatched away in what is essentially extortion, a dynamic used over and over because it works so well. You can resist, but it'll cost you.
     The media bends. Jeff Bezos wants his Amazon packages delivered on time. So his Washington Post softened its opinion pages. Among the clearest, most effective voices are television comics, but they too prove vulnerable to the Achilles' heel of their corporate parents' business interests.
     In July, CBS announced then end of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," citing financial reasons, though it was hard not to suspect that those financial reasons involved Paramount's sale to Skydance Media.
     Wednesday's abrupt yanking of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC was even more naked. Trump's Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to pull ABC's broadcast license. And Nexstar, calling Kimmel's words "offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse” said it was removing his show from its 32 ABC affiliates.
     Nexstar, naturally, is seeking FCC approval to acquire rival Tegna in a $6.2 billion deal.
     It's almost an afterthought, but what did Kimmel say to get in such trouble? For the record, he said:
     "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it," he said.
      That's a) not offensive; b) not about Charlie Kirk.

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Flashback 1987: Lawson Y's residents face ouster in closing

"Sollie 17," by Nancy and Edward Kienholz (National Portrait Gallery)

    The old Lawson YMCA — now Lawson House — was on the radio Wednesday — for receiving a historic preservation award. That is good news, and better that the building is now 409 units of low cost housing, what it was at the start.
     I have two central Lawson Y memories, neither of them very good. The first was sitting in the very good barbecue chicken joint that used to be across Dearborn, enjoying dinner with my significant other, when a man leapt from the roof and hit the sidewalk on Chicago Avenue. We didn't see him fall, but saw the crowd gather, and left our meal to join them. That was a mistake, and we returned to our dinner with considerably less appetite.
     The second was sitting with Percy Davis in his little room, discussing his life options, leading to this story. The YMCA official who predicted it would be sold in two years was off by 35 years — the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago finally sold it in 2024, not for millions, but for $1.

     Percy Davis isn't the kind of person the Young Men's Christian Association wants around anymore.
     The 81-year-old former employee at the First National Bank of Chicago has lived in the Lawson Y at Chicago and Dearborn for 37 years. Now retired, Percy passes his time reading, studying Spanish and attending the senior evening club that is held every night at Lawson.
     But sometime in the next two years, Davis and the rest of the people who live in the 595-room Lawson YMCA can expect to be out of a home. Lawson is up for sale.

Lawson YMCA (Chicago Historical Society)

     The 22-story building is just one of the dozens of YMCA residential facilities that are being closed across the country as the Y phases out low-cost urban housing in favor of providing recreation to families.
     Since 1983, 66 YMCA facilities, representing 7,500 beds, have been closed nationwide. The Chicago YMCA, which has seven residential buildings housing more than 2,000 people, has in recent years closed facilities at South Wabash, Division Street and Hyde Park.
     "It's happening in every major city all across the country," said John W. Casey, president of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago. "They've all gone through that same transition over time. Buildings have deteriorated and the capital hasn't been there to keep it up."
     The YMCA is asking $12 million for Lawson, and though it has been on the market for more than three years, Casey is confident the building will be sold within a year or two.
     "I'd be surprised if it takes two years," Casey said.
     The YMCA gives two basic reasons for closing down its residential facilities. One, it needs the money for new projects (the YMCA is breaking ground this fall for a new $8.5 million building in Woodlawn). And two, it is turning its focus away from urban centers and more toward "neighborhoods."
     "Our mission is youth and family in the city, and most of the people at Lawson are over 50 years of age," Casey said. "The question is, do you reinvest money you don't have in Lawson, or convert the value of the Lawson asset into other projects?"
     Casey said that, in the long run, the Near North area will get by fine without Lawson.
     "The YMCA understands this city can only exist in the 21st century if it has strong neighborhoods," he said. "I think the central area is going to take care of itself."
      Others are not so sure. Chicago is losing low-cost, single-room-occupancy housing at the rate of more than 1,000 units a year, and the closing of Lawson will only contribute to that decline.
     "This kind of closing is a disaster," said Dr. Ron Vander Kooi, president of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. "It's part of a pattern of Ys closing."
     Vander Kooi said the closing would mean a sharp reduction in the standard of living for most of Lawson's residents, despite the YMCA's efforts to relocate them.
     "A few will find comparable housing," he said. "Most of them will have to pay much more for similar housing and at least a few will become homeless."
     The churches in the area, which use Lawson to house the homeless people who frequently turn up at their doors, say Lawson will be missed.
     "From our viewpoint, one of the problems you get in an area like this is finding housing for people who have no place to go," said Bishop Timothy Lyne, pastor at Holy Name Cathedral, across the street from Lawson. "Lawson is a resource for taking care of problem people. The people in the neighborhood need it."
     The YMCA administration says it will make every effort to relocate residents.
     "They're of great concern to us," Casey said. "We're going to make a considerable effort to help each and every one of those people who need our assistance. We're not going to come in the middle of the night and board up that building and sell it off. The transition will be done in a timely and humane fashion."
     Some Lawson employees point to the long time Lawson has been on the market, hopeful that no one will buy it.
     "We live this day-in, day-out," said Hal Meyer, who is in charge of programming at Lawson. "They've said it was sold several times, but the day comes to fork over the money, and it doesn't happen."

                    — Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 12, 1987

Stopping by the local Charlie Kirk vigil

     Kitty and I, we have our routine. She appears with the dawn at my bedside and makes a plaintive noise. This is my signal to stand up, throw on jeans and grab her leash for our amble around the neighborhood.
     About 4 p.m. she's back, a patter of paws on the wide red pine floorboards of my office. She'll sit patiently, waiting, then clear her throat, and we'll hit the pavement again.
     The final walk is always my doing. I'll realize it's after 9 p.m. and summon her from her bed in the living room. We often visit the Northbrook Village Green, where we circle the fountain, ball field, playground and charming gazebo, she exploring smells, me reflecting on the sweetness of our lives. Really, toss in a few wandering peacocks and it could hardly be more idyllic.
     Sunday, just before 7 p.m., Kitty and I broke custom, with an unusual pre-dinner walk over to the park. An editor had mentioned the candlelight vigil for slain MAGA icon Charlie Kirk, and I decided to slide by for a look-see.
     "We'll be back," I told my wife, busy in the kitchen preparing eggplant lasagna.
     Why take the dog? Honestly, I pictured a dozen people shielding candles in homemade foil holders, shooting me hard looks as I padded past. Kitty was my cover — "Hey, I'm not spying, just walking the dog!"
     That was a silly expectation. Nobody in the crowd noticed me.
     As I walked up, they were singing "The Star-Spangled Banner." I took off my hat, placed it over my heart and joined in. We're on the same page, so far. Why not look for commonalities as well as divisions?
     There were, by my estimate, about 300 people, some carrying American flags — several literally wrapped in the flag. Lots of kids.
     Northbrook has plenty of Donald Trump fans because it's an affluent, predominantly white community, and part of the Trump appeal is to well-off white folks chafing under the difficulty of their lives: the insult of hearing snatches of Spanish spoken in public; the pain of their children being exposed to ideas other than their own; the discomfort of worrying whether the person in the third stall might have been born a different gender.
     See, that's why I could never join the MAGA world — because I have no sense of grievance. Just the opposite. I'm grateful. I live in a good place. I have a good job, paid well for doing exactly what I want. Blaming others for my woes feels small, particularly since most of my problems are self-generated — little anxieties that stick in my craw until I can manage to hock them out.
     It gets worse. I care about those who struggle, and accept people different than myself. Alternate ways of thinking and modes of existence are not pressing existential threats to my own. Gay marriages don't wreck my marriage. I don't look at others in a bathroom long enough to suss out their birth gender. Edgy books didn't ruin my kids. Immigrants don't threaten my livelihood. As my pal Lin Brehmer used to say, "It's great to be alive."
     But my essential optimism also makes me a poor fit for the left. While I value knowing the full, uncensored history of this country, I'm still a patriot. I love the flag. I've shot guns with my kids for fun. I never bought the one-strike-and-you're-out cancellation business. I can't understand questioning an Abe Lincoln statue because of something he said on the stump in Jonesboro in 1858. Identity might be a full-time job for many folks, but it's not an actual profession.

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Flashback 1997: Shrewd Edgar shows quitting is underrated

     I liked Jim Edgar and even voted for him. A Republican before that meant pledging fealty to a liar, bully, fraud and traitor. When I heard he had died Sunday, I looked back at what I'd written about him and found this.

"Some people in politics stay too long." 
             — Jim Edgar

     A class act, that Edgar. Sure, he was on the wrong side of patronage, and slightly stained by the MSI mess. But all told, a first-rate politician; at least he didn't end up in prison, and not every Illinois governor can say that.
     Myself, I was pulling for him to run for the Senate against Carol Moseley-Braun, whose performance wavers between the twin poles of disappointment and disappearance. Edgar would have easily blown Moseley-Braun out of the water — reduced her to a few floating scraps of debris and an oil slick.

Jim Edgar

     That's the downside of Edgar's noble act. He gets to walk off stage, tall, dignified, at the top of his game, and we're left scrabbling around in the mud with the usual crew of politicians, who wouldn't abandon their stations at the public trough if the Lord God Almighty sent them a private invitation to do so.
     It's still too early to tell whether Edgar is really retiring, or just making a brief tactical retreat. I don't want to praise him for abandoning public life so he can sit on the front porch of his Downstate log mansion, teaching the grandkids to whittle train whistles, only to have him show up a few months after leaving office as a lobbyist for North Korea.
     Instead, I'd like to applaud the one undeniable aspect of Edgar's announcement. Whatever he ends up doing, he certainly won't be governor anymore. He exercised one of the most underrated and unfairly maligned options in life: he quit.
     Quitting gets a bad rap. All those slogans pinned up in high school football locker rooms, all those little fatherly speeches, have created the general impression that quitting is bad.
     In reality, quitting is an art.
     True, like art, many people do it badly. Ross Perot was a bad quitter. Stirred the pot and then bolted just when it got hot. Shannon Faulkner, too, and for the same reason; having gone through all of that legal mess to join the Citadel, she should have died standing up rather than quit after a couple of days.
     But that's my judgment. Faulkner might look back at quitting the Citadel as the smartest thing she ever did. Quitting should be a private matter — something you do for yourself and not for anybody else (except in the case of Moseley-Braun. Her quitting would be an act of public beneficence).
     Edgar isn't quitting office for the good of the state. Whatever his motive, he's doing it for himself. Which is as it should be. You've only got one life — nobody comes to you on your deathbed and says, "Hey, you stayed in that position you hated for a long, long time. Here's a few extra years as a bonus. Now go do what you really want."
     When should you quit? When you can't stand where you are anymore. That sounds simple, but most people can't figure it out, and they stay in places — jobs, marriages, cities  —they hate, for too long, because they're afraid of setting themselves free from the stone, even as it drags them down.
     How many offices are overrun by the zombies from "Night of the Living Dead," stumbling around, their arms stiffly in front of them, their faces flat masks of belligerent defeat?
     Why haven't those people quit if they dislike where they are so much? Well, first, quitting takes courage. Jobs are hard to come by, and so people cling to them, even when they shouldn't. Even though I have yet to hear of anybody who quit a job and then starved to death. ("EMACIATED CORPSE FOUND HUDDLED AT DOOR OF FORMER EMPLOYER: `HE QUIT,' SAYS EX-BOSS")
     Wasn't that the lesson of Vietnam? Know when to cut your losses and run?
     As so often with pundits, I'm bad at taking my own advice. I should resign here and now, but that seems a big step just to give a column a snappy finish.
     The times I have quit, however, were usually wonderful. In college, I recall, I foolishly assumed that breezing through introductory economics meant I should take a more advanced course.
     Big mistake. After sitting through every class, paying close attention, I realized — the night before the midterm  —that I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
     So instead of taking the midterm and flunking, I went to the registrar's and dropped the course.
     Quitting violated every instinct of nose-down, reflexive struggle that I had ever been taught. And it felt great.

       — Originally published in the Sun-Times Aug. 24, 1997

Punch, Judy and Charlie Kirk in the social media battle royal

Sketches from a Punch and Judy show, by George Cruikshank (British Museum)

     Punch and Judy is a traditional British puppet show, once found in 19th century seaside resorts. A tribute to chaos, with the anarchic Mr. Punch and his long-suffering wife Judy going at each other with bats. There was a policeman, and a baby, invariably ejected from the little curtained booth as the children in the audience shriek with delight. Plus, for exotic danger, a crocodile.
     Eventually, modern sensibilities caught up with Punch and Judy — all that violence — and they were toned down and largely disappeared, except for a festival or two.
     I'd like to offer Punch and Judy as a useful frame for understanding social media. We somehow still consider social media as news and debate. 

British Museum

     But it's neither. News is supposed to involve information that is reliably true. And debate involves parties bringing facts to the table to argue points in good faith.
     What we've got instead in social media is algorithm-fueled chaos, where malice and outrage top reason and accuracy, a battle royal, war of all against all.
     Or rather, the traditional political parties, Democrats and Republicans degraded into Mr. Blue and Mrs. Red, pounding the tar out of each other, using words as sticks, while the rest of us sit, cross-legged at their feet, whooping in delight and shock.
     This was very clear during the latest social media frenzy over the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and out of the billions of words expended over the past five days, I want to focus on the way my fellow liberals flooded social media with remarks Kirk made over the years.
     The unsaid implication being, I guess, that as a person who said this kind of thing, he somehow deserved death, which he certainly did not.
     I agree with policy analyst and media pundit Malcolm Nance, who immediately labeled the murder terrorism, adding, "No one had the right to take a life because you have a political disagreement in this country." Later, he tweeted that Kirk "was a vile, unapologetic racist & White supremacist. But he had a RIGHT to speak all the racist White supremacist twaddle he wanted without getting shot."
     This truth flew past a lot of Democrats, who preferred to focus on two statements of Kirk's, presented as particularly significant.
     First, regarding gun deaths:

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Photo courtesy of Howard Tullman