Flashback 2009: Are we really this shallow?

      Fall began Monday at 2:19 p.m. I was looking for old columns that greet the autumn when I stumbled upon this. The opening segment pushes back against the identity-based politics that over the past decade and a half have come to dominate our world, both in the left sanctifying it and the right demonizing it. Let's just say the "happy future" I refer to must be dragging its feet. I kept in the correction just because it captures a moment in history — the police censorship of movies using its "widow's board" that will be unfamiliar to many. It was back when the column filled a page, and I've retained the original subheadings.

Opening shot

     Ever wonder how people in the future will view us? I do, especially this week, pawing through the coverage of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama's first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
     There was a certain theme, a leitmotif, if you will, a focus, an element of the story given an awful lot of emphasis.
     Did you notice it too?
     She's Hispanic.
     And yes, I understand that having a Hispanic Supreme Court justice would be historically significant, a milestone in our steady march from a racist, slave-owning past to the happy, everybody-in-the-pool future that we expect to arrive any moment now.
     But did Sotomayor's ethnic background really deserve the big blast of ballyhoo it received, going so far as to exhume poor old Benjamin Cardozo to determine whether he too was Hispanic (his family came from Portugal in the 1700s)? 

"Mona Lupe," by César Augusto Martínez

     

     There was something unhinged about it all ("Latina Justice" blares the cover of the new Time), something deeply ironic in our marking this sign of racial progress by going gaga over ethnicity. If society were actually as tolerant as we believe this latest advance indicates, would we really be fixating on the Hispanic angle?
     Imagine a similar response in private life. You are considering going to a new doctor  — Dr. Sotomayor — and tell your friend about her.
     "My God, she's HISPANIC," you gush. "Her parents were PUERTO RICAN! Which means, if I go to her, she'll be the FIRST HISPANIC DOCTOR I'VE EVER HAD...."
     At that point, your friend would be edging away from you because it's racism — not the extreme, Bull Connor racism, but racism nonetheless — the softer, gentler harping on irrelevant differences. Society dislocates an arm patting itself on the back for letting one of a heretofore-loathed minority sit at the dinner table, while the honored group celebrates as if they were a fungible mass and the accomplishment of one is the accomplishment of all. Are we not better than this?
     Not yet. Someday, a future scholar writing about our woeful early 21st century race relations will be at his datascreen, smiling and shaking his head at what oblivious goofs we all were, and I want to wave over your heads at him and say, "Hey Phred2047 — don't feel so smug. It wasn't unanimous."

Correction

     Last week, I wrote that Mayor Richard J. Daley didn't allow movies to be shot in Chicago because of "The Man with the Golden Arm," the 1955 Frank Sinatra film.
     It was a good guess, but printing that as fact was like grabbing a container at the back of the refrigerator and gobbling what's inside without first checking to see if it's still good.
     The error — no, let's make it a "probabilistic fact later proved untrue" in honor of Topix* — prompted a phone call from Michael Kutza, founder and longtime director of the Chicago International Film Festival. He remembers what happened.
     "It was 'Medium Cool,' " he said, referring to the controversial 1969 film set against the riots at the Democratic National Convention. "It put a stop to everything. Every script had to be read by somebody at City Hall, and they didn't allow anything to happen."
     The Sun-Times regrets, etc.
     That out of the way, we fell into talking about the censorship board, which Kutza had to appear before when the festival began.
     "A feature film was in two very heavy metal cans whose combined weight was 100 pounds," he said. "In 1965, I had to drag my movies down to the old building where we used to pay our parking tickets.
     "You went in there -- it was a leftover courtroom -- and they had actual judges, these nine ladies --they had to be widows of policemen, that's what gave them the right to be on the censorship board. I was too young to think it was funny.
     "I had to drag these things in there and leave them overnight," he continued. "I took maybe 10 feature films there -- they had a 35mm projector, and any film shown in Chicago had to pass by these people."
     "Pass by" should not be taken to mean they actually watched the films, not all of them.
     "Our films were immediately made X-rated because they were from foreign countries," Kutza said. "When I dragged in a Swedish film, it was rated porn immediately, without looking."
      This was a problem for a film festival, so Kutza struck on the solution of making the event "adults only." Eventually, he did what all who wanted to get something done in that long-ago era did -- he appealed to the mayor.
     "I worked with Frank Sullivan, the press secretary to Mayor Daley," remembered Kutza. "He took me to him, and Daley said, 'Give the kid what he needs, but don't tell anybody because the stuff you show could lose me votes.' "
     The 45th annual festival takes place this autumn.
     "The nicest thing about doing this so many years is you have a chance to outlive your critics," Kutza said.
     I will look forward to that.

Today's chuckle...

"I was reading the paper, and it said that 80 percent of the people in New York are minorities. Don't you think we should stop calling them minorities when they hit 80 percent? You could put one white guy in a room with 50,000 black people and 20,000 Puerto Ricans, and he'd still be going, 'Look at all these minorities! I'm the only majority here.'" Louis C.K.
                      — Originally published in the Sun-Times May 29, 2009

* Topix, the country's "largest local forum site," was being sued by a Texas couple for posting unsubstantiated rumors that they were child molesters and drug-dealers. A jury eventually awarded them $13.8 million in damages.

Mona Lupe, by César Augusto Martínez

HIV care navigates Trump order roadblocks

Dr. Brandon Hill

     How does a trans person changing their name help fight the spread of HIV infection?
     The answer is simple: Studies find that a person whose ID lines up with their current gender identification is more likely to successfully navigate the complexities of health insurance than someone whose driver's license seems to show a different person.
     So instead of, say, taking hormones offered by a friend, maybe using a shared needle that can transfer blood-borne illnesses like HIV, they will get medication from a pharmacy, along with a clean needle.
     Of course, this is not a concern to a federal government that doesn't want trans citizens to serve in the military, never mind have their medical needs addressed.
     Neither is it a concern for a government that doesn't want to pay for research into children's vaccines, let alone take into account the unique demands of being a person born to a gender they cannot happily live with.
     But it is a concern to Dr. Brandon Hill, co-author of the aforementioned study of how name change affects the well-being of Black trans women. He's president and CEO of Vivent Health, which began 40 years ago as the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin and now is one of the nation's largest providers of HIV healthcare and social services.
     "HIV stigma is still a real issue in Chicago," Hill said in the lobby of Vivent's bright, airy, art-filled and meticulously clean Edgewater clinic on Broadway. "Even as an acceptable chronic disease, there are still challenges in getting the care that they need."
     Has the shift in government policy away from learning stuff and helping people affected front-line caregivers like Vivent Health?
     "A little bit," Hill said. "Of course, the changes in government and government policy don't often take an immediate effect. So we're planning for things that roll out in 2027. It will both impact the organization but also impact the client base covered by Medicaid and Medicare."
     If mention of Medicare surprises, remember HIV infection is no longer just a young person's concern. People with HIV have been surviving since the introduction of antiretroviral therapy in the 1990s. Vivent has a client who is 90.
     Whether those living with HIV can continue to age depends, in part, on whether networks like Vivent manage to stay afloat during the anti-Black, anti-trans flood.
     In August, President Donald Trump issued an executive order "Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking" that denies federal money to research directed at a specific race or acknowledging the existence of non-binary people.
     "A lot of the grants that were frozen included language like 'HIV outreach for transgendered people,'" Hill said. "Because of the executive order, we can't give you money if that's what you're going to do. It created this weird limbo."
     But science, like water, finds a way, and skilled grant writers are already accustomed to jumping through hoops.
     "A lot of folks ended up having to de-specify the work — I call it 'neutralizing,'" Hill said. "So while you might have had a grant for 'HIV testing for LGBTQ youth,' you just have a grant for 'HIV testing for youth.' Those type of maneuvers that are made to comply with the executive order actually make it ... almost not legible to the individuals who need it."

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Which is kind of the point.

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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