Northshore Notes: Better Late than Never

     Happy October! EGD Northshore correspondent Caren Jeskey and I are very different people, luckily for her. But we do keep discovering similarities in outlook, such as our sharing the Big Love for architect Jeanne Gang. When the University of Chicago Press asked me to write my upcoming book, a daily history of Chicago, my very first thought was: "I've got to get Jeanne Gang in there." And I did.

     Although today's post underscores a difference: just because I need a vacation doesn't mean our indefatigable Saturday essayist needs one too. Caren isn't about to neglect her duties just because the cat's away. So I'm pleased to pause my "Dozen Destinations" space filler to share her Saturday report. Another snippet of my 2009 travelogue returns Sunday. 

By Caren Jeskey

     Chicago continues to surprise and amaze me. A friend called to say she could not make it to my September birthday dinner, so she suggested a local kayak trip instead. We met at the WMS Boathouse last Saturday morning, which Jeanne Gang designed. As a Gang fan, I was delighted. The structure was completed back in 2013, yet it had not been on my radar. 

     One of the buildings houses rowing training equipment and an education center complete with padded benches nestled into the woodwork, and a library of books children can take home. The design is fresh and crisp with skylights, floor to ceiling windows, and light colored wood ceilings and staircases. Gang earned the U.S. Green Building Council’s silver LEED score for the sustainability factor of the building. 
     In Gang’s words, “Ecologically, the overall goal of a healthy river led the design team to focus on diverting stormwater from the city’s combined sewer system, one of the largest impediments to improved water quality. The boathouse’s roof drainage elements and site design together function as its stormwater management system, diverting 100 percent of runoff from the sewer. Green infrastructure—porous concrete and asphalt, native plantings, gravel beds, and bioswales (rain gardens)—is used to store and filter runoff before slowly releasing this filtered water back into the river. Existing habitats were maintained and strengthened with a mix of native grass, plants, and trees, and silt fabric prevented compaction and erosion during construction. These efforts serve as a model for softening the river’s edge, supporting its ongoing revitalization. With structural truss shapes alternating between an inverted 'V' and an 'M,' the roof achieves a rhythmic modulation that lets in southern light through the building’s upper clerestory. In summer, the clerestory lets in fresh air, while in winter, it allows sunlight to warm the floor slab, minimizing energy use throughout the year."
     Then it was time to get into the water ourselves. Boat stewards fitted us with life jackets and expertly placed our single person kayaks into the river. They gave us step by step guidance on how to get in and out of the boats. The last time I dismounted a kayak was back in Austin, which ended in an unplanned lake dip. Thankfully, I managed to avoid a dunk this time.
     We set off northbound from the dock between Belmont and Addison at a leisurely pace. Regal herons perched on concrete slabs and tree branches. One took flight right over us, showing us its 6’ wingspan and graceful ability to soar. It was a cloudy day, so turtles were not sunbathing along the shore, but a few peeked their heads out of the water to check us out as we floated along.
     Folks who are interested can take part in planning river development on October 1 and 6 for the South Branch and Bubbly Creek areas.
     After our relaxing water jaunt, we took a short walk past The Garden bike park. We watched cyclists young and old landscaping dirt mounds, and doing twisty turny things in the air from atop their bikes. We headed south and saw a father and son who’d set up a Pickleball net in an empty parking lot, which reminded us that we’ve been talking about visiting the court at the new Architectural Artifacts location. We followed the path to Belmont Avenue and found a sweet view of the city.
     When it was time to leave this burgeoning nature oasis in the city, we headed to Avondale Coffee Club with our laptops to get some work done. Turns out, the pair of friends who founded the shop were there to regale us with stories about their establishment. Jacqueline and Adam let us know that everyone who works there functions as equals, like a well-oiled family. They bought their first 150 pound bag of beans from a farmer in Guatemala via an Instagram post about seven years ago, and the rest is history. They source most of their coffee beans through Golden Mountain Coffee Growers whose mission is to "fight poverty through quality coffee." Jacqueline roasts the coffee at Reprise Roasters in Libertyville. She won a Gold Medal for her "Double Anaerobic Fermentation Category 3: Filter" last month at Golden Bean, the "world's largest coffee roasting competition," and is heading to the Word Championship in Hawaii later this year.
     We also met Kati, their business partner and Adam's life partner, as well as teammates Brian and Zach. They are celebrating three years at their Evanston location today and this evening, where they are offering a rare 20 percent discount on their beans from 5-8pm.
     Damn you, mortality. I wonder how many amazing finds Jeanne Gang, the gang at Reprise, and other talented locals have in store for us? If only we could live forever and find out.

Flashback 1990: `Working poor'? It's a state of mind

     Reacting to anything Darren Bailey says is probably pointless. He's a downstate dope spraying his ignorance around in the mistaken belief that doing so might get him elected governor. Barring tragedy, he won't even be a political footnote.
     And yet he flails. One tactic that goes over big in his world is slurring Chicago, since insulting Black people directly is no longer fashionable, even in his milieu. So he uses code; a combination of racism AND cowardice. Though those two qualities are really just two sides of the same coin.
     When Bailey called Chicago "a hellhole" twice at the Illinois State Fair, my former colleague Monica Eng, now at Axios, asked him if people living in Chicago also believe they live in a hellhole, and he replied "Actually, I believe they do. Because it's unsafe."
     He believes. He doesn't know because he hasn't asked them, and hasn't asked them because he's barely set foot in Chicago. He believes that to be the case because he is a practitioner of the classic Fox News mind-reading trick, whereby bigots try to give a sheen to their loathsome thoughts by projecting them upon others. I would bet that for every Chicagoan who thinks they live in a hellhole, there are 50 who think Bailey is an idiot, or would, if they'd ever heard of him.

     Common sense — the common sense that Bailey so obviously lacks — tells us that most people anywhere, no matter their condition, do not consider themselves to be living in misery, never mind a hellhole. They have pride in their homes, modest though they might be. Troubled though they might be.
     This reminded me of a story over 30 years ago when one of the geniuses at City Council declared alderfolks like herself to be the "working poor." Editor Alan Henry's eyes lit up with that sort of glee that has become rare in newspapers nowadays. He gave me an assignment that was more like whittling a splintery pointed stick to shove up the politician's backside, a task that I understood immediately and executed with pleasure, hurrying to her ward, finding the most abject residents I could, people literally grovelling in the mire, collecting aluminum cans, and asking them: "Do you consider yourself poor?" 


"We are the working poor."
          — Marlene Carter, $40,000-a-year alderman of the 15th Ward, arguing last week that aldermanic salaries should be raised to $65,000.

     On bleak, garbage-strewn streets of Marlene Carter's 15th Ward, the real working poor are too proud to call themselves that.
     Marvin McKinley, pushing a shopping cart filled with a broken bike frame, a spool of garden hose, crushed cans and assorted castoffs, doesn't think of himself as poor.
     "I'm middle class. Middle class," said McKinley, 34, savoring the words. McKinley estimates he earns $8,000 a year selling scrap. "Aluminum. Copper. Anything you can make a dollar off."
     Willie Lee Lewis, a father of 12 who earns $7 an hour raking up sludge and trash in an empty drive-in movie parking lot, doesn't see himself as poor, either.
     Nor does he think Ald. Carter deserves a 62 percent raise.
     "I never see her around here yet," he said, gazing into the distance. "You want a raise, you should be around here. I've been here 10 years, I haven't seen her yet."
     "The only time I see her is on television," said Willie Luckett, 74, standing in the doorway of his daughter's store, waiting patiently for 63rd Street to offer up a customer.
     Far from being "poor," — the U.S. Commerce Department poverty line for a family of four was $11,611 in 1987 — Carter has an income approximately double that of the average Chicago family.
     According to 1979 census statistics, the median income for a typical Chicago household was $18,776. The newest census data, observers agree, will show a slight increase to approximately $20,000.
     In 1979, aldermanic salaries went from $17,500 to $22,500.
     Since then, they have almost doubled, while Chicago's median family income increased by less than 10 percent.
     The Public Works Department reports median family income in some wards is as low as $7,325. The median in the South Side 15th Ward is $18,391 — less than a third of the proposed $65,000 aldermanic salary.
     Even the richest families — those in the 13th, 18th, 19th, 23rd, 41st and 43rd wards — earned a median income of between $25,000 and $30,000, a full $10,000 less than Carter earns as alderman.
     Or, in other words, the $25,000 raise the aldermen are requesting is equal to the total average pay of families in the wealthiest wards.
     As a rule, those closer to Carter's salary level tend to be more understanding of some aldermen's desire for more money.
     John Pawlikowski, owner of Fat Johnnie's hot dog stand, 7242 S. Western, sympathizes with Carter.
     "Who can live on $40,000 a year?" asked Pawlikowski, who supports a raise for Carter. "She does a good job. This place was loaded with hookers."
     "I see no need why there couldn't be some kind of increase in income," said Phillip Whorton, 61, a contractor overseeing tuckpointing on the New Zion Grove Mission Baptist Church, 64th and Wolcott. "Though 62 percent is a little high."
     Other residents are adamantly opposed to the size of the proposed increase.
     "I'm against that," said Bob Anderson, selling fruit off the back of a truck at 63rd and Yale. "That's a big jump. Everybody's entitled to a raise, but I don't think they are entitled to that much."
     "They don't need no raise, they need to give somebody a job," said McKinley, angrily, searching the side of the road for scrap. "A man needs an eight-hour-a-day job."
     Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry President Samuel Mitchell reflected the view of most business and civic group leaders when he said aldermen must first agree to give up any outside incomes and jobs before they can "seriously call for a pay increase."
     Officials of the Chicago Civic Federation said aldermen should also agree to curb City Council spending before considering any kind of wage increase.
     The opposition expressed by residents of the 15th Ward is mirrored across the city. A WBBM-Channel 2 News telephone poll found a resounding 96.6 percent of Chicagoans opposed a pay increase.
     One of them is Roger Eugene, 41, who stooped to pick aluminum cans out of the mud covering a vacant lot in the 15th Ward.
     "I sell the aluminum at 59th and Bell," said Eugene, who gets about 50 cents a pound. "On a good day, I get 13, 14 pounds — never less than eight."
     Eugene, a disabled Vietnam vet whose rent is $150 a month, begs to differ with Ald. Carter on her vision of herself.
     "Oh no," he said. "That ain't poor."

Flashback 2000: Gary offers a few things to make visit worthwhile

     When a writer you respect gores your ox, it stings. So as fun as my latest vivisection of John Kass was, it did decry the painful erosion of civil rights in the former newspaper columnist's new home state , judging Indiana severely for it. Several readers living there raised a finger and said, in effect, "Ouch." While the throttling of freedom in Hoosierland does deserve constant, full-throated condemnation — Friday they passed an almost complete ban on abortion — there's no need to tar the whole state completely with one broad brush. It does still contain people — a majority, actually — who would yet breathe the air of liberty, if only they could, and the state does contain several pleasant spots. Just last year we enjoyed lunch at a brewery in Hammond. And in 2000, prodded by a line in the New York Times about tourism in Gary, I actually visited that star-crossed city to take in the sights, such as they are. I offer it as a conciliatory gesture to my Indiana readers, and afterward give an update on some of the people and places encountered below.

GARY, Ind. — How deep is this town's image problem?
     Driving here, I worried about my suit. It was my good suit: Would the air in Gary somehow ruin it? Corrode the cloth, melt the fabric into a crusted, spotted motley? I had decided to risk it in the name of image.
     Driving east on the Chicago Skyway, past the groves of high tension electrical wires and the rolling brown industrial scrubland, I detected changes in the atmosphere — first hopsy, then acrid, a definite tang, a tickle at the back of the throat -- and wondered if I had made a mistake.

     I was on my way to visit the tourist sights of Gary, which will host the Miss U.S.A. Pageant for the next three years. The beleaguered city is giving Donald Trump $1.2 million to bring the spectacle here to spur economic development and introduce the nation to the attractions of Gary, which would be better known were it not for "years of brainwashing by the media about the negatives of the city," according to Spero Batistatos, the president of the Lake County visitors bureau.
     As a passionate foe of media brainwashing, I felt obligated to go to Gary and assess its potential as a tourist destination.
     I started my day at U.S. Steel's Gary Works, probably the most prominent institution in Gary. Having enjoyed corporate tours from Ben & Jerry's in Stowe, Vt., to the Tabasco sauce plant in New Iberia, La., I thought I'd touch base at the visitors center.
     "Ain't got nothing like that," said the guard and, after taking a moment to savor the grim Dickensian splendor of the Works, I wheeled the car around and headed down Broadway.
     I remembered Broadway as one of the most shocking and dismal urban tableaus I have ever seen — 40 blocks of empty abandonment.
     That hasn't changed — maybe a few more people about. I appreciated the historic display of shuttered 1950s-era stores, signs and typefaces, generally untouched by progress or economic development.
     The man from the Lake County Convention & Visitors Bureau had suggested I meet him at the Interstate Visitors Information Center, which isn't actually in Gary, but Hammond. By then, I had learned that those promoting Gary take a rather, umm, expansive view that defines the Gary Metropolitan Area as extending from Wilmette to Indianapolis.
     You can't miss the Center (I-80; 94 to Kennedy Avenue South). An odd building designed around themes; in giving nods to the farm and steel industries it looks like a cross between a jet engine and a grain silo.
     Inside is clean, airy and modern — it opened just in December — with an engaging exhibit of poster art in the main hall and a permanent John Dillinger Museum filled with displays that are both intelligent and downright cool: authentic weaponry, period outfits, a Hudson Terraplane 8 auto, plus interactive displays (go into a bank lobby, then recall from memory details of the crime in progress). I thought my trip amply rewarded just for the letterhead of the Indiana Reformatory, which showed a portrait of a bespectacled old lady and the motto: "There is no love like the good old love, the love that mother gave us." I'll bet that melted many a hardened criminal heart.
     I was met by Shawn Platt, an enthusiastic young man vaguely resembling Charlie Sheen, who was going to take me to a few of the sights.
     But first, lunch. There is only one good restaurant in Gary, judging from the people I asked — and I asked half a dozen — who one and all recommended The Miller Bakery Cafe on Lake Street — and Platt and I repaired there for a festive meal.
     Gary Sanders, the chef; owner, joined us, and when I said I was visiting Gary's tourist attractions, he actually laughed, said, "Really?" and shot Platt a bemused, eyebrow-arching look.
     We dined on crab cakes, cornbread custard, and avocado-lime chicken on a risotto cake — all quite good, at least according to my admittedly broad tastes. I asked Sanders what he thought was the prime tourist attraction actually in Gary, and he sent us to the Aquatorium.
     The Aquatorium is the new name for the old Gary Bathing Beach changing house at Miller Beach. It sits right on the lake, a crumbling concrete structure with a certain aura of elegance: The concrete is formed to resemble Greek columns.
     "It's amazing in the summer how many people are on this beach," said Platt, as we walked among the deserted dunes. "It's just packed."
     There was a beautiful view I had never seen before — the skyline of Chicago, a distant gray toy city to the right, a wide gap, then the industrial sprawl of Hammond and Gary to the left. Quite pretty.
     "We don't claim to be a place where you could spend a week for a major vacation," said Platt, showing off the lobby of the Radisson, which isn't in Gary either, but has a waterfall. "Just a weekend getaway."
     That may be overstating the case. But I could see, when the weather gets warm, a person with either an unusual interest in Dillinger or two children between the ages of 5 and 15 might enjoy replicating my day — an hour at the Dillinger Museum, lunch at the Miller Bakery Cafe (they'll give the kiddies spaghetti for $6, and you New Zealand rack of lamb for $14) then a quick visit to the beach, which was deserted and lovely, with eerie, weed-topped dunes and a certain desolate beauty.

             — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 5, 2000.

     Spero Batistatos was with the Lake County visitors bureau for more than 30 years before being let go in 2021. He's now studying for a master's degree and teaching at the White Lodging School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Purdue University Northwest. Shawn Platt left the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority shortly after this story ran, did communications for Bank of America and Fifth Third Bank, and is now chief of staff & chief communication officer at Continuum Ventures in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Gary Sanders closed the Miller Bakery Cafe in 2010; it was reopened by new owners in 2013 and closed again in 2019. Sanders died in 2020 at age 53.

The Aquatorium marked its centennial in 2021.

Bottomless

 

     Our son works in the Financial District in Lower Manhattan. So when we visited him last week, we got a hotel room next to the new One World Trade Center, steps away from the site of the old, and of course we paused to contemplate the 9/11 Memorial, "Reflecting Absence."  

     If you've never been, the footprint of the north and south towers of the old World Trade Center have been preserved, two squares formed by bronze parapets, listing the names of the 2,983 people who died that day in the terrorist attacks, plus those lost in the 1993 precursor bombing.
    Water cascades 30 feet down each side — the largest manmade waterfall in North America— and in each pool, what I consider the brilliant stroke, is "a smaller, central void," in the words of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Those two square pits you can't see the bottom of, a perfect physical evocation of endless grief after profound loss. You yearn to see a bottom, but there is no bottom. Only emptiness.

    The design, by the way, was done by an Israeli-American architect, Michael Arad, his work picked out of more than 5,000 submissions. While not generally a fan of memorials, some events are so enormous, our humanity demands it. Which makes me wonder how we will commemorate COVID. Arad has proposed something interesting to honor the 50,000 New Yorkers who died of COVID: a "floating sanctum" at the bottom of the Central Park Reservoir.  It would only appear when the water is lowered for maintenance. Most of the time it would be out-of-sight, which is fitting, since even the most terrible events submerge in our consciousness. Time heals whether we want it to or not.

     “I liked the idea that for one week each year, you could access a place in the city that at other times is just a submerged memory,” Arad told Architectural Digest. “The Reservoir exhales, the level of the water sinks, and the dam appears so you can traverse it on foot.”

     I imagine, on that one week a year, it'll draw quite a crowd. For a long time. But not forever. Nothing is forever. Not even grief.

Flashback 2011: The Main Event—Replacing city's century-old water mains

City workers repairing a water pipe (Sun-Times file photo)

     This week I was talking with someone in the water department regarding an upcoming story, and mentioned this column from 2011 which, to my surprise, I've never posted here before. What I remember most about this is piece how it came about. I was having coffee with Rahm Emanuel—mayors other than Lori Lightfoot did that kind of thing—and he said something like, "You never write about me," and I replied, at least in memory, "You're not interesting."

     Unfair! The mayor said: he had just gotten approval for this big water main project. 

     I explained that if I wrote about the funding, I'd just be ballyhooing his administration. But when the pipes actually went in the ground, I'd be right there. And so I was. It took a while to get this in the paper, and I remember bumping into him—mayors other than Lori Lightfoot went about in public, and you could run into them—and him saying, "Where's my water story?" or words to that effect. 

     Water is the most democratic thing the city of Chicago does. Residents of the fanciest penthouse to the meanest flophouse expect clean, cold, Lake Michigan water to flow whenever they open a tap.
     Everybody pays the same: $2.01 per thousand gallons, whether at Navy Pier, next to the Jardine water plant, or every one of the 125 far-flung suburbs that buys Chicago water.
     At least until Jan. 1, when the price jumps to $2.50 per thousand gallons, the hike intended to pay for Mayor Rahm Emanuel's ambitious 10-year plan of infrastructure improvements, a massive effort to correct years of neglect.
     Chicago is crisscrossed with 4,300 miles of water mains, from enormous trunk lines five feet in diameter to the little six-inch feeders that run down residential streets, a billion gallons a day coursing through the system.
     In the past, the city replaced these mains at the rate of about 29 miles a year.
     Which sounds impressive until you do the math: At that rate, each main is replaced once every 148 years.
     That's bad.
     Bad because pipes do not last forever, particularly not in Chicago, with its 30-below-zero winters and 100-degree summers.
     Buried iron pipes expand and contract, eventually cracking. Small leaks undermine the ground beneath the pipes, causing them to sag and snap. Inside, minerals from the water build up, like an artery choked with cholesterol—a process called "tuberculation"—so that a six-inch main only has the capacity of a three-inch pipe.
     Meanwhile, the outside corrodes, the walls grow fragile.
     How fragile?
     One length of water main replaced this fall on West Superior between Leclaire and Cicero was laid in 1894 and 1900. Crews couldn't dig closer than two feet to the old main; any closer and the 40 pounds of pressure inside might burst the pipe.
     "The pressure of the ground is basically holding the pipe together," said resident engineer Steven Skrabutenas. "Then you've got 600 gallons of water a minute flowing into your work trench. It doesn't take long to fill up a hole, and you have to do an emergency shutdown and repair it."
     About 20 percent—roughly 1,000 miles—of Chicago mains are a century old or older, according to the Department of Water Management.
     They must be replaced, at a cost of about $2.2 million a mile, including the cost of replacing the street.
     That's why, in mid-October, Emanuel released his new budget calling for a boost in water bills, 25 percent now, then 15 percent every year for the next three years, the increase going to repair Chicago's decrepit mains and sewers.
     "We need to invest in our infrastructure to maintain the quality of life for people across the city, protect our homes from flooding and our cars from sinkholes," said Emanuel. "If we don't invest and proactively make upgrades to our system, we will continually be forced to react and make emergency repairs at a greater cost to everyone."
     The plan is to raise the rate of replacement toward 90 miles a year over 10 years.
     A monumental task, as can be seen by watching just one repair job—"Item 120"—the installation of 1,974 feet of eight-inch ductile iron pipe along three blocks of West Superior.
     The first shovelful of dirt was turned on Sept. 29, with an exploratory hole dug to take a look at what's down there—you can't just start digging on a city street, which conceals not only water and sewer pipes, but also gas mains, AT&T cables and buried electric lines. You have to figure out what's where.
     "Everything is records," explained Skrabutenas, who carries around a little orange notebook filled with his meticulous engineer's handwriting. "Everything I got is here in record books. I got the pipes. I know where everything is at, what we did, how many feet, the pieces, the locations, what parts I use."
     He took out plans, large technical maps of the underground as Chicago believes it to be. He uses them as a guide but also constantly updates and fills in gaps—about 5 percent of the network under city streets isn't recorded, because the information was lost, set down wrong, or never noted to begin with.
     Sometimes things show up that aren't supposed to be there or are there but unmarked. A gas line that's labeled inactive might turn out to be live.
     "I'll give you an example," Skrabutenas said, spreading the plans across the hood of his truck. "This is the location of each house. This is No. 3042. From the line, the location of this is supposed to be 166 feet. I verified and saw the line, and it's not, it's 159 feet. So I upgraded it to tell them how it really is. . . . You want to check everything."
      Infrastructure is in three dimensions, so they need to know not only where these lines are, but also how deep.
     "Do I have room to go over, or do I need to do something else?" he asked. "I want to verify where it is so it all works."
     Once they knew what was under West Superior, work began in early October, with a machine crushing the pavement in a four-foot-wide stretch along the south curb, and then a backhoe digging a trench five feet deep—water mains in Chicago must be at least that deep or they'll freeze in winter.
     The trench is dug by a track excavator with a two-foot-wide bucket.
     Backhoe operator John Dombroski worked a joystick, following the hand signals of his "top man" standing at the lip of the trench.
     "I won't even watch the bucket, I watch his hand," said Dombroski.
     "He's so good he could comb your hair with the teeth of the bucket," added Skrabutenas.
     An additional benefit of Emanuel's plan, besides critical infrastructure improvement, is the addition of 1,800 construction jobs—both at the water department and its contractors and suppliers.
     Working a water crew is a good job but at times a tough one.
     Because water goes everywhere in the city, water crews find themselves in places where they're happy to be inside a trench.
     "This isn't the best place to work, danger-wise," said foreman Stan DeCaluwe, noting that most at risk are the area residents. "The last site, two men were shot on the corner about 120 feet away from where we were digging."
     But gunplay is a rarity.
     "Mostly our problems are theft on the job site," said DeCaluwe. Tool lockers get broken into.
     The new main is eight inches in diameter—to increase the capacity to larger buildings that might be built in decades to come.
     The new pipes are 18 feet long, and their manufacturer suggests they're good for 300 years, coated with a protective resin outside, wrapped in plastic and lined with concrete. They are also ductile iron, which has a little more give.
     "You've got more forgiveness," said Michael Sturtevant, deputy commissioner for engineering services.
     One of the more surprising aspects of the process is that the new main was set in place, then covered back up with dirt.
     "You can't leave these trenches open," said Skrabutenas. "I can't shut this block down for a month."
     The new main was pressure tested—100 pounds for two hours, to check for leaks, then flushed with chlorine for 24 hours, to sanitize it and prevent bacteria from being introduced into the system.
     On Nov 17, after 34 days of work, service was transferred to the new main, house by house, and the old main was shut off. It's left in the ground—there's no point to remove it.
     From now until April, the water crews will focus on leaks.
     "If something is going to fail, typically it fails more often in the wintertime," said DeCaluwe. "Everything's hampered by cold weather."
         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 27, 2011

Flashback 2000: Prayer needs a 'private' sign

 

     The Uptown Poetry Slam returned to the Green Mill on Sunday after its long COVID hiatus. The most fun I've had in a while. The open-mike poets were funny and true and passionate and heartbreaking. The jazz was cool. And Marc Kelly Smith was the perfect MC, energetic and raw, reciting his own powerful poetry. There was tap dancing, and one poet proposed to his girlfriend from the stage. I was honored to be allowed to say a few words, and considered talking about Miss Eve, then didn't. I can't believe I haven't shared the following before, but here it is.

     The Green Mill is a wonderful old bar in Uptown. If you've never gone, you really should—dark, cozy, comfortable. I used to stop by whenever I could, back in the days when it had a regular pianist named Miss Eve.
     Miss Eve played at the Green Mill for nearly 50 years. She was a big, fleshy woman, and she would sit perched at the small piano behind the bar and sing, her voice rough and low. She took requests, and I'd try to stump her. My mother had been a singer in the USO, so I was familiar with a wide range of obscure old chestnuts. I'd request "Goody, Goody," and "Embraceable You" and "There's No Tomorrow."

Miss Eve

     "Do you know `Avalon' ?" I'd ask. "Do you know `Come Rain or Come Shine' ?" Invariably, she did. But I kept trying. One day she interrupted me in mid-question. "Honey," she rasped. "I know 'em all."
      A flash of insight swept over me. She knows them all. She is omnipotent. Divine. A god. Of course! God is a sweaty fat woman in a dark bar, playing out the tune of the world.
     Right, I know: drunk. But it seemed profound, then. I mention it to illustrate why I don't pray much. If you are the sort of person who can entertain a thought as blasphemous as "God is a sweaty fat woman . . ." then you lack the sincerity needed for prayer.
     While I don't pray much, I do appreciate prayer. It is an amazingly efficient endeavor. Prayer doesn't require batteries. You can do it aloud, but you don't have to. You can pray silently. Nobody will stop you. There is no need to clasp your hands in front of you or to kneel. You can choose to turn your eyes heavenward or not.
     This subtle, flexible quality of prayer comes to mind when I hear of people trying to make it into a public spectacle, either by forcing it into public schools or, as we keep hearing from the Southland, shouting it out at high school football games.
     Ever since the courts struck down leading prayers over the PA system as unconstitutional, rabid ministers have been encouraging their charges to stand up before games and pray.
     What is the purpose of this? Down South, they argue that they are merely continuing a tradition—God and football. The argument that a person should be able to attend a high school football game without being forced to choose whether to stand for a public display of adherence to Christianity never seems to affect anybody south of Missouri.
     What they don't realize is that this only works so long as most people think alike. As we learned this year in Palos Heights, the face of America is changing, and as our country becomes more diverse, the bullying represented by those football game prayers will become more intolerable. How would they react if, after the spontaneous Lord's Prayer died away, a smaller contingent stood up to recite the Hebrew schma as a third group went down to the field to unroll their prayer rugs facing Mecca.
     They wouldn't like it.
     You can pray all you want—in school, at football games, in a bar. You just shouldn't make a show of it. The reason is that if you recite the Lord's Prayer—your Lord's Prayer—then I should be able to shake a palm branch, and little Haji should get a chance to light incense to the six-armed elephant-head god.
     This is only fair. Yet so many people just can't get it. Maybe I should pray for them. Miss Eve, do you know "As Time Goes By"?
        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 5, 2000.

‘Everything went wrong’ — the Great Chicago Fire at 150

     I volunteered for this one. Working on a book about Chicago history, of course I noticed the 150th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire was looming, and poked my bosses, months ago. Not something a newspaper wants to forget. My approach was dictated by a single fascinating—to me anyway—fact, the one that begins the story. From there, the structure of passing the narrative from witness to witness presented itself. I knew that my piece would appear after the Tribune had been hammering on the fire for weeks, and hoped to provide something fresh and different. 

     The summer of 1871 was terrible for Mary Todd Lincoln. Her adored younger son, Tad, 18, died in July, a month when no rain fell in Chicago, the city where the slain president’s immediate family moved after leaving the White House in 1865. Mrs. Lincoln, a woman heavily veiled in black who “suffered periods of mild insanity,” lived with her only surviving son, Robert, a lawyer, on South Wabash Avenue. By autumn, she sank even deeper into anguish.
     “As grievous as other bereavements have been, not one great sorrow ever approached the agony of this,” she wrote to a friend on Oct. 4.
     And then the city burned down around her.
     One hundred and fifty years after the Great Chicago Fire, much about the epochal event that recast our city and its people is unfamiliar to current residents. Not one person in a hundred knows Abraham Lincoln’s widow lived here and endured the calamity, while the one thing many believe they do know about the fire, that it was started by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicking over a lantern, is a baseless ethnic slur, a scrap of mocking calumny preserved in amber like an insect’s leg, surviving all efforts to dislodge it. Even though universally agreed to be untrue, or at least unsupported by any evidence, the lie endures.
     The most common causes of fires, the Chicago Fire Department had reported the previous March, were not cows or lanterns, but defective chimneys, carelessness with flame, and arson. There had been an average of four fires a day in Chicago the first week of October, started by tossed cigars, mischievous boys and oily rags bursting into flame.
     This was a city heated by coal, lit by gaslight, strewn with hay. The sidewalks and even some fire hydrants were wooden. Blistered by drought, “the dust was almost intolerable, the ground became parched,” wrote Chicago Theological Seminary student William Gallagher. “A furious wind from the southwest had been blowing steadily all day Sunday.”
     Whatever the cause, the fire certainly started in the barn behind the home of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary and their five children at what was then 137 DeKoven Street, on the city’s near Southwest Side. The hardworking O’Learys already had gone to bed. And they didn’t own a cow; they owned five, plus a horse and a calf. A drayman named Daniel Sullivan, out enjoying the evening, saw fire through the cracks between the boards of the O’Leary barn.
     “Fire! Fire! Fire!” he shouted.
     Sullivan went in the barn and untied the cows, thinking they would save themselves. They didn’t. He dragged the calf outside, badly singed.
     Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, a 20-year-old reporter on the Chicago Evening Post, arrived almost immediately, about 9:30 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 8, 1871, to find himself in a part of town he had never visited before.

     “I was at the scene in a few minutes,” he later recalled. “The land was thickly studded with one-story frame dwellings, cow stables, pigsties, corncribs, sheds innumerable; every wretched building within four feet of its neighbor, and everything of wood — not a brick or a stone in the whole area. The fire was under full headway in this combustible mass before the engines arrived, and what could be done?”
     The fire engines — steam pumpers, drawn by teams of brawny horses — were delayed because the alarm was slow being turned in. A pharmacist refused the alarm box key to a resident who’d seen the fire. Mathias Shafer, the night watchman in the Cook County Courthouse tower, saw the orange glow but thought it was light from the gas works. When he did send an alarm, he sent the firemen to an address a mile and a half from the fire.
     Later asked to describe what went wrong, one fireman would reply: “Everything went wrong.”

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Ravenswood Notes: Assuaging Fear

    So much is said about a city like Chicago, it's unusual to run into an entirely fresh take. But if anybody has ever postulated, as EGD Ravenswood Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey does today, the city as revered ancestor, I haven't encountered it. Her Saturday report:

     It’s 5 a.m. and I’m up writing from my Chicago apartment. The Brown Line and Metra rumble by repeatedly in the near distance, sounds that make me smile. I don't even mind the gentle shaking of the building. I am a die-hard Chicago fan who experiences this city as a living entity, a family member— perhaps one of my eldest ancestors. At once warm and fierce, she lays down the rules. Be strong. Don’t give up. Don’t complain, and if you do get over it soon. Be smart and savvy, and know your place. You might be privileged but don’t forget where you came from. Don’t look the other way when others need help. Stay on your toes, aware. Keep those car doors locked these days and stick to safe areas at safe times of day, but love and respect all of me. Do not live in fear. Be brave. Be tenacious.
     Since I am speaking of my particular family, Chicago has also guided us to grow things in her soil. Green beans under the skyway on the far south side. Roses wrapping around the Virgin Mary statuette in the Vet’s Park area of South Deering. Tomatoes and cucumbers, grown out of necessity by an immigrant railroad worker, to sustain the family, precariously (and often unsuccessfully) protected from rabbits, squirrels, and birds in the shadow of Senn High School. Eye popping, deep green leaves and happy, colorful flowers in a copious container garden on a back deck in Rogers Park. Rows of crops planted outside of the McCormick YMCA in Humboldt Park, where a Schwinn bike factory once stood. Palms rescued from the alley on a porch in Ravenswood. And always, always propagate.
     Avocado pits cracked open as roots break free, rambling vines spilling out onto window sills in glass jars filled with water. Jade and Tradescantia zebrina pups sprouting up from clippings that friends and neighbors shared. A baby rubber plant that’s at least 25 years old on an alley salvaged end table in a window on Wilson.
     I thought I’d be writing about fear today. Waking up at 4 a.m. after not enough sleep prompted me to take two hydroxyzine (not a regular habit since as an old school Polish/Irish/Lithuanian girl— who turned 52 this week— I am deathly afraid of prescribed medications even if they are needed). I have a feeling my Polish ancestors were the type who made tinctures from herbs and medicinal plants they grew themselves. While I am also drawn to natural remedies, I am out of practice and don’t have the intuitive sense of which plant medicine I need these days. Plus I don’t trust it enough not to die while forsaking pharmaceuticals like a Sri Lankan shaman tragically did this week. 
     In the past, I had tens of jars of dried flowers, roots, and leaves that I’d pull out in the wee hours when anxious thinking tried to take hold, preventing me from enjoying my zees. Chamomile and peppermint to relax, star anise to settle a tummy, sage for purifying and comfort, senna after eating too much cheese, St. John’s Wort to boost the mood.
     Today I reached for the prescribed meds and embarked upon a meditation. This combination usually works. Breathe deeply, choose a mantra. “Clear mind” on the inhale, “don’t know don’t know don’t know” on the exhale (as taught to me by Ana Forrest many moons ago), or simply “I am OK right now. It’s time to sleep.”
     But no. I’m wide awake and realized that fear woke me up in the first place. I’m having complications after round two of three of a dental procedure, and that scares me. Will my gums ever be the same? I’ve had a falling out with a childhood friend, which is unnerving even though our expiration date may have come. I’d like to be in a state of calm acceptance about this. I will get there, but have been ruminating about our last conversations and how angry I feel about being misunderstood. It will take some processing and active healing though, since one of the reasons I came back home was to reconnect with people. Since I got back in May, I’ve learned that I have some healthy friendships and familial ties, but I also have vestiges of a sometimes broken past to face.
     I could go on about what troubles me, but you get the drift. We all have things on our minds. I know that as I age, and those I love age, it behooves me to live a life that’s as present as possible, taking each challenge as it comes with as much grace and courage as I can muster. Good rest and healthy habits that contribute to the most balanced version of myself are the only recourse for the daunting task of being human.
     Off to water and prune. Wishing you a good day.

Culinary Artists Week #1: Cookin' at the Ritz

     I'm on vacation this week, kicking back around the house. So as not to leave you in the lurch, however, I've declared this Culinary Artists Week, and am featuring some of my favorite pieces about chefs and haute cuisine over the years, starting with this profile of Sarah Stegner from 1999, when she presided over the Ritz-Carlton dining room.  Lucky for me, in 2004 she started Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook with her husband, Rohit Nambiar and Ritz executive chef George Bumbaris—both of whom have cameos in this story—so I've been able to keep up with her progress as a top chef, not only from a gustatory perspective, but as she deepened her passion for local, ethical, sustainable food cultivation and mindful dining. While in the process eating many, many first rate meals prepared in her kitchen. This profile is long—over 2,100 words–but I guarantee at the end you'll wishing you knew more about her. Tomorrow's post is connected: a visit to Judith Schad at Capriole Farms, which I learned about through Sarah's commitment to high quality American cheeses.

Sarah Stegner in 1999 (Sun-Times)

      Sarah Stegner is a long way from the kitchen at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where she is chef of the Dining Room.
     About 80 blocks south. Nearly 10 miles of distance, and a world away by culture, from the glitz of the Ritz, to the grit of East Englewood.
     The day is bright and crisp. Stegner gingerly steps through what, at a quick glance might look like a muddy, weedy, vacant lot. A closer look reveals a tiny garden with an ambitious name: "The 70th Street Farm." Nothing is ready for purchase, but the tomato plants are in, and Stegner wants to check their progress.
     "We might be able to bring back herbs," she says.
     The visit is as much to lock in a claim to the produce from the one-third-acre plot as it is to examine the plants. Fine restaurants are in keen competition for fine produce, and Stegner was floored by the tomatoes this lot produced last season.
     If possible, the Ritz will claim all the heirloom lettuce, beets, tomatoes, giant snow peas and broccoli. Let the other chefs drive to Wisconsin.
     She casts a covetous eye on young lettuce — perhaps she could take it back for tonight's salad? Neil Dunaetz, who runs the farm, rebuffs her: "It would be like robbing from a cradle."
     After 20 minutes, she leaves empty-handed, pressing home the point, one more time, that when things come out of the ground, he should call her.
     "Anything you have ready, we can put on the table," she says. "You have it, we'll use it."
     Back at the Ritz, the kitchen is gearing up for Friday night dinner, three hours away. Chefs and assorted staff stroll in like actors gathering at theater before a play. Everyone begins doing something: declawing crabs, boiling stock, making pasta.
     Stegner — one of the nation's top chefs, named "Best Midwest Chef" last year by the James Beard Foundation, winner of numerous accolades, including the Prix Culinaire International Pierre Taittinger — has her own priority.
     "I have to order cheese," she says, picking up a phone. "I need cheese for tonight. I'm not bad off, but I'm not sure I have enough."
     There are a thousand minor-but-important details to worry about, but cheese is special to Stegner. The Ritz menu introduces the $16 cheese course with a lengthy ode to cheese, beginning: "I have enjoyed the search and discovery of fine American cheeses. Acknowledgment needs to be given to the artisans for their work and determination to deliver consistent quality cheese . . ."
     Thus Stegner, and not a subordinate, labors over selecting that night's cheeses, appraising them like a choosy casting director. She unwraps Brillat Savarin, Hoch Ybrig, Lingot Dauphinois. Some make the cut for that evening's dinner; other cheeses are told to go home, marry the girl next door, give up this crazy dream.
     "It seems mundane," she says. "What I'm doing is checking quality. I like to do it. It needs a little bit of attention."
     A moist Roquefort, speckled with mold, blows its audition.
     "It can be riper," Stegner says. "It's still a little bit young."
     The cheeses are arranged from mild to strong. Asked if the average diner appreciates the pungent wallop of a very strong cheese, Stegner smiles.
     "They might," she says.
     Stegner is as economical with smiles as she is with fresh truffles. She'll serve one, but not without reason and certainly not lavishly, not in the wild excess of other chefs.
     "There are baseball cap chefs and toque chefs," said one of Stegner's acquaintances, referring to the tall, starched chef's hats. "She's a toque chef."
     Stegner cooks with concentration bordering on solemnity, like a cleric performing a rite. The kitchen is very quiet, except for the exhaust fans and an occasional clink of spoon on pot.
     "She's real intense," agrees friend Jimmy Bannos, the chef; owner of the two Heaven on Seven restaurants. "There's no BS when she's in the kitchen, no messing around. She's focused."
     That said, her intensity rarely explodes into anger. There is no screaming in Stegner's kitchen. Her longtime friend and mentor, Ritz executive chef George Bumbaris, says that now is common in commercial kitchens: "It doesn't work, anymore."
     Then again, few of the cliches of the star chef apply to Stegner. Despite her classical training, she avoids stuffy terms. Red rice is a "neat grain."
     She asks junior chefs if they would mind doing something, as if they might say no.
     "Would you do me a favor?" she says. "Will you make a mustard and red wine vinaigrette? Don't make a lot of it."
     When a fire flares up on the grill line, she reacts first, leading the assault to put it out. (The closest the Ritz ever came to not serving dinner in her nearly 15 years in the kitchen came when a pot of lobster bisque boiled over and set off the fire suppression system, dumping fire retardant over the grill and not only ruining everything already prepared, but forcing the entire line to be cleaned before preparations could begin anew.)
     "That was my worst nightmare," she says. "We opened, but we opened late."
     Perhaps the most unusual thing about Stegner, 35, is that in a business where chefs climb the ladder by hopping from restaurant to restaurant, she has been at the Ritz since she was 19, when she was hired on the spot to clean fish, 12 hours a day, for eight months.
     "It's physically hard work," she says. "You need a lot of knife skills. It challenges your dedication to the profession."
     Stegner met the challenge, and stayed on in the Ritz kitchen. She was, if possible, even more reserved at the beginning.
     "She started very shy," says Bumbaris. "She basically matured here, and has gotten a lot more sophisticated with the food."
     She came from food people. Her grandmother, Mary Boswell, had been a caterer in DuMont, N.J. She got into the business, the story goes, with parties raising money for a new church building.
     "I remember clam chowder — this was the East Coast," says Stegner. "They had a grill outside, and she would do venison roasts."
     Stegner grew up in Evanston, graduated from Evanston Township High School and went to Northwestern, studying classical guitar. But that route quickly soured.
     "There were nine classical guitarists when I was there," she says. "They were either really into classical music or wanted to be rock stars, and I didn't fit in with any of them."
     She left Northwestern after her freshman year and took refuge at the Cooking School Dumas Pere.
     "I wanted to work in a kitchen," she says. "I didn't know what that meant."
     She ended up a waitress at Bennison's Bakery in Wilmette, working the breakfast shift. That's when she got her first job at the Ritz.
     It took her just six years to move from cleaning fish to being named head of the Dining Room, and quickly the honors began rolling in. Like many successful chefs, as her fame grew, she responded by getting involved in the wide spectrum of charity work available to the culinary set.
     "When somebody calls you and says we need your help, it's pretty hard to say, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I have a date that night,' " she says. "If I can, I will."
     Four years ago she founded the Women Chefs of Chicago, a fund-raising group.
     Stegner checks to see if the morels have arrived. They have, and in fine form. She gives them an appreciative look, then sends them on their way to becoming a sauce for the ravioli.
     To take advantage of the freshest meat, fish and produce available, a new menu is composed each day, based on what comes in and what is good. Stegner is constantly improvising. Fifteen pounds of wonderful wild watercress have arrived, so potato and watercress soup goes on the menu for this night. There have been times when the menus were being printed while the first patrons were filing into the Dining Room.
     "Sometimes we push it to the last minute," she says. "Sometimes, right down to the wire."
     In a small, square room, with beautiful menus from special dinners framed in gold on the walls, Stegner sits with a china cup of cappuccino, intensely examining the latest draft of the menu. She takes a pen. The sheep's milk ricotta gnocchi with leeks is struck out. The julienne of prosciutto? Out. It is 3:20.
     "I want to show off the duck liver terrine," she says.
     The moment of peace ends quickly, replaced by a new mini-crisis. Little black beetles discovered in the watercress. The beetles are shown the door.
     As mealtime approaches, the entrees make their appearances. Long lines of thick pink veal chops. Deep red steaks. Stegner quizzes the other chefs.
     "Enough caviar for tonight?" she asks one.
     "What about the raviolis?" she asks another.
     "Twenty-six orders," the other chef, Chris Murphy, says.
     "I think you're going to be tight," she says.
     There are 37 radiologists at two special parties who could, in theory, order the raviolis. If the kitchen got 27 orders, they would have to prepare more dough, and that would throw a wrench in the works. On the other hand, the ravioli dough cannot be saved; if none of the radiologists orders ravioli, the 26 orders will be lost. Risk running out or risk wasting a lot of dough? Stegner tells Murphy to make more dough.
     It is the sort of spot decision, half culinary, half economic, that makes or breaks a chef and a restaurant. Stegner makes them all day long. Mistakes happen. Once she ordered 15 pounds of pea shoot tendrils, missing the fact that they cost $4 an ounce. She ended up with $ 1,000 worth of pea shoot tendrils.
     That wasn't worth it, but generally freshness is worth almost anything.
     She says that, while she was classically trained in the French tradition, she tries to retain the American focus on the product.
     "What we put in our mouths comes from the earth," she says. "People are beginning to understand that and go back to that. So if you get incredibly good arugula grown at a farm in Illinois, I'm not going to take that and twist it around and stack and hide it. I'm going to give you that arugula in its purest form, the way it tastes the best."
     Before the customers taste Stegner's food, the wait staff does. Just before 5 p.m., the waiters gather, examining the menu, and Stegner sweeps out with special items for that night, but not before touting a charity dinner.
     "Are we allowed to go to it?" a waiter asks.
     "You're allowed to work it," she says. Then she pops into the kitchen.
     "This is potato watercress soup," she says, returning with an elegant little bowl. "They're wild watercress. Yukon golden potatoes. A little bit of butter but no cream. In the bowl a little garnish, and shallots with mustard vinaigrette."
     The waiters taste and savor. Spoons click. The response is good. She hurries back to the kitchen.
     "This is the ravioli with morel mushroom cream sauce," she says, returning.
     "Where are the morels from?" someone asks.
     "Washington state."
     Back in the kitchen, Stegner, who takes great pain to credit those working under her, says she puts great emphasis on the daily pre-dinner ritual.
     "I have to make sure the wait staff understands why this is important to me, what this is about, make sure they taste it so they can go and convey this passion," she says. "They're really good at that."
     Quietly, one waiter suggests the ravioli might be saltier than ideal. Stegner herself thought they had nailed the saltiness perfectly, but she trusts her staff, and goes back to tell the chefs to keep a watch on the salt.
     "If they don't like it, I don't want to serve it," she says.
    Then the night really begins. Stegner stays until the last plate goes out.
     "I don't always stay for the kitchen breakdown," she says, almost guiltily.
     Underlying Stegner's modesty is a knowledge that all the accolades in the world mean nothing if the food isn't good, if the marinated grilled rack of Colorado lamb with Yukon golden potato and goat cheese puree, the black olive and oven-roasted-tomato lamb jus, and the slow roast salmon over braised lentils aren't well worth the price to the diner.
     "The thing about my profession is I'm only as good as the last meal that you ate," she says. "If every plate that I put out today isn't as good as yesterday, they're not going to say, 'Let's go back because last time it was great.' They're going to go, 'Oh, I'm not going back because it wasn't good this time.' It has to be good every time. That's my job: to make it good every time. That focus drives it. You have to focus. You can't let go. You can't step back and say, 'Today I don't feel like working.' "
     That sentiment defines Stegner as much as a thousand personal details — not that she is very forthcoming about those. She lives in Evanston. She has a dog, an American Eskimo miniature. She is married to Rohit Nambiar, an assistant manager at the Four Seasons. But she quickly draws the veil and refocuses on the food.
     "That's enough of that," she says. "I am private. I think the thing is, the minute you take your eye off of the passion of the food is when you end up in trouble. That's a principle I have. This is what I do. This is what I'm about. This is my gift to the public.
     "It's not me and my personality and what I think and what I believe. It's what you eat. The focus needs to be on the food. It's not me. It's the food that people come for."

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 20, 1999

Flashback 2013: "Shifting sands mark art’s moment in time"

     "I was here," I said, pausing, as my son and I walked north on Wabash Avenue last week, past the Soka Gakkai International-USA Buddhist Center. Years ago. But why? I remembered a room full of people, chanting sutras. And I remember the year and season, oddly enough. It was the summer of 2013, just before I began this blog. The column had been suspended, and I took to plunging out into the city, looking for things to write about, determined to keep my legs churning until my irked masters sorted out their emotions. The ... Second Presbyterian Church was nearby, and I was here because the organist ... was a reader? No, I found that out when I revived. The church was being refurbished. I learned about the organist when I got there. A joy and privilege, to sit in the empty sanctuary, while Bach thundered out. I'll have to dig out that column sometimes. So I must have popped into the Buddhist Center on my way there, to take a look.
     Did anything get into print? Not that I can tell. But looking for something, I found this.
   

Joe Mangrum    

     Art is work, if you’re lucky. Hard work, sometimes. Sweat drips off the nose of Joe Mangrum as he crawls on the floor to dip his fingers into a clear plastic bowl, draw out a fistful of brightly colored sand, then dribble out arcing lines of purple. He stands up, crouches down, kneels — cushioned by a pair of industrial kneepads — then is on his feet again. Over and over. For eight hours.

     Born in St. Louis, Mangrum came to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute. He graduated in 1991, lives in Brooklyn now, and has done nearly 600 of these sand paintings on the streets of New York, where oblivious striding businessmen, attention fixed on phones, and untethered toddlers often make abrupt alterations to his work.
     “You have to be aware,” he says. “You have to have eyes in the back of your head and your guard up to prevent that. Some days 30, 50 people walk into my work. It’s not something I can get upset about.”
     Not a worry on this day. His canvas is a 17-by-12-foot grid of tiled floor, safely set off the beaten path between a Gateway Newstand and one corner of the Alonti Market Cafe in 300 S. Riverside Plaza, a sprawling office building on the Chicago River, south of Union Station.
     Artists appreciate wealthy patrons — they did in Roman times and they do today — and while Mangrum sometimes works for donations from passersby in New York, he was brought to Chicago by the real estate firm that manages 300 S. Riverside, the idea being his work will interest building tenants. Mangrum drove here with his wife, Deborah, and Papillon pup Pancho, toting 500 pounds of Sandtastik play sand in all 35 colors the company makes, including “Ultra Violet” — his doing. “They were coming up with a new color and asked me to name it, because I was buying so much sand,” he says.
     (“He’s awesome,” Sandtastik general manager Bert Sabourin says, from its Ontario, Canada, headquarters, confirming the story. “If he needed a special color, we’d do it for him. The work he does is phenomenal. To put that much effort in and then sweep it up.”)
     Not that this painting meets that fate, not yet. Sand paintings are thought of — if they are thought of at all — as a Buddhist commentary on the transitory nature of life. Rather than attempt to preserve an oil painting through the centuries, under the illusion that it will remain “forever,” they create gorgeous sand mandalas, utter a prayer and sweep them away.
     That isn’t what Mangrum is doing with his work, which is set to remain in place through the summer.
     “I don’t call them ‘mandalas,’ simply because it’s a very culturally specific term,” he says. “What I’m doing is drawing from all these ancient templates but then mixing it up with my own contemporary work — I just call them sand paintings so that people from all over the world can relate and not put it in what I call the ‘Eastern Philosophy Box.’ ”
     As Buddhists do with mandalas though, he starts in the center — a single, dime-sized dollop of yellow, bright as an egg yolk. He builds out, ribbons of orange, of purple, paired with yellow. Mangrum has no set design, but builds from images in his head. “It’s all improvised,” he says. “I put down a couple dots and circles and start branching out.”
     There are no sketches, no preliminary design. All he knew beforehand is he’d create “some organic round shape that has a certain organic symmetry to it.” Everything from “op art, one of many influences ranging from ancient designs all the way to sci-fi, ‘Avatar,’ Dr. Seuss, quantum physics.”
     Even the most savvy artist can’t sell sand poured in the street, however, so Mangrum creates limited edition photographic prints of his work. He also has been commissioned to do his work all over the world, from Beijing to Copenhagen to San Francisco. Mangrum has appeared on “Sesame Street” and in the Corcoran Gallery Rotunda in Washington, D.C. He also does weddings.
     As with all artists, Mangrum’s journey has been serpentine. He waited tables, worked construction. “I’ve worn a dozen different hats,” he says. Initially, he created his images out of found objects — leaves and flower petals and seeds. He didn’t start working in sand until 2006, when he had a painting to make but no materials at hand. And while he distances himself from more spiritual sand paintings, he does see his work as, “a metaphor for life. We all pass away and regenerate, spring into fall, fall into winter, then spring anew again.”
     While here, he also created two works at 540 W. Madison. He will return to 300 S. Riverside Plaza to talk about his art and answer questions from 1 to 2 p.m. today.
     The building roped Mangrum’s art off with stanchions. The day after he created it, most people stream to work — 300 S. Riverside Plaza is home to JP Morgan Chase, AIG, National Futures Association, among others — and pass by without noticing. One in 10 turns a head or slows stride. And a few rare individuals actually stop, most taking photos with their phones — as if that were permanent.
     But Derick Evans, who works in the building’s messenger center, does stop, and stands there, beaming.
     “It’s magnificent,” he says. “How does he have it all in his head? It’s a gift, just a gift. I love it. Just goes to show what’s with this human being. This was not something you are taught. This is something you are born with.”

    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 13, 2013

Joe Mangrum still does his distinctive sand art. You can find his home page here.

Texas notes: The soul of a man

     "The ability to give" should top all of our lists of reasons to be grateful, as Austin Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey reminds us.

     “Hey Siri. Play Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.” 

      His name had been floating around in my mind since I heard it mentioned on NPR the other day. She complied, and I was greatly rewarded. Lilting, bending guitar chords slowly built up to the moment when a rich, boyish yet distinctive voice began imploring the listener. Mr. Elliott played and sang an old gospel song, "Soul of a Man."  

     Time stood still in the way only a song or another stunning piece of art, nature, or sentient connection can accomplish. The lyrics with more questions than answers matched my mood on this strange and lovely Thanksgiving day.
     The morning had started as usual with freshly ground coffee, newspaper headlines and my attention being pulled in and out of radio stories. I like to keep WBEZ Chicago playing in the background, even down here in Texas. Sure, it can be disconcerting to hear “a high of 47 and overcast,” and sometimes I have to take a moment to reorient. After years of living down here in the South it still surprises me, somehow, that there are places where winter doesn’t really exist.
     After coffee, I got dressed and decided it was time to get out of the house. I drove off listening to Ramblin’ Jack, windows open on a mid-70’s Fall day, to nowhere in particular. I had only a loose plan for this holiday. Once the song ended and the trance was lifted, I decided to start at the grocery store. Masked and distanced with hand sanitizer in my fanny pack and peppered all around the store in touch-less dispensers I felt like a character in the Jetsons. I thought “make sure your helmet and space suit are on, lest the very air around you cause sudden death.”

     Reasonably sure I’d survive this visit, I picked out one of the last containers of freshly baked Pao de Queijo (Brazilian cheese bread). I got back into my car and as I drove off continued listening to Jack. I could not find a song nearly as transfixing as the first one I’d heard, so I played it again and again.
     I headed to my friend Richard’s house where he met me in his garage. I left the cheese bread on a chair for him. He took a box of Saran-wrapped plates and Tupperware loaded up with holiday foods and placed the box on the trunk of his car, then backed away. I felt grateful and humbled that he (and others) offered me holiday meals and distanced visits, so far away from my family this year. Richard and I were both masked and kept a good distance from each other. We chatted for a little bit and then said our goodbyes.
     I took the food and headed to my happy place— a small field behind the castle-like museum in the Hyde Park neighborhood nearby. I laid a blanket out on the grass, unloaded the box and turned it over as a table. I put a nice cloth over it and unwrapped the feast. Baked chicken, yams with pineapple, green beans with thick-cut bacon, tart cranberries, stuffing and gravy. The works. I started with the pie of course.
     I marveled at the sky and how utterly content I felt. I’ve gotten used to solitude and while I miss people, we have found ways to stay connected. In some ways I feel closer to family and friends who are far away than I did when we visited more often. When we do talk it’s with more presence and reverence than before. The fragility of life is now ever-present.
      After my meal I took a short constitutional and saw families sitting in circles on their lawns. I wondered if they were wishing they were somewhere else. Sheltering in place with family members usually seen much less has been taking a toll on folks I know. Or were they basking in gratitude for being close to the ones they love? Perhaps they were wavering between the two, or something else entirely.
     As I headed back towards home I passed by a disheveled man talking to an unseen force in his head, standing next to a large dumpster near the gas station. I stopped at the store, picked out a vitamin water, and put together a bag for him— the rest of the feast that I had set aside as leftovers, a plastic spork and napkins, and a waterproof jacket a neighbor donated to my trunk-stash for folks in need. As I slowly approached him (keeping 20’ or so of distance) he bent down and hid. I called out “sir?” and he peeked out at me. I said, "If you’d like a meal and a jacket I will leave them here for you,” and left them on the curb.
     As I walked back to my car he called out a feeble and garbled thank-you and quickly took his gifts down the alley. I saw him sit down in his encampment, about a half a block away, and dig right in. I wished I’d given him more and now that I know where he is, with the generous flow of gifts from my neighbors, I will look for him again. “What is the soul of a man? I’ve traveled in different countries. I’ve traveled in foreign lands. I found nobody to tell me, what about the soul of a man?” In this COVID era I’ve never felt more comfortable with the fact that I do not know.

Mikva could conjugate ‘democracy’

Abner Mikva, after having his South Side congressional district gerrymandered away, announced in 1973 he would run for Congress in the northern suburbs.

 (Sun-Times file photo)

     We’ve seen the damage one man can do. 

     To the national discourse. To our country’s health, institutions, honor. To the value of truth itself, and the freedom Americans enjoy, the latest threat being the installation on Monday of a rigid far-right fanatic onto the U.S. Supreme Court, who for a generation will steer the country in a direction most of its citizens do not wish to go.
     As the nation prepares to — maybe — spit out that one-man wrecking crew, Donald Trump, a timely reminder of the good one person can also do has its Chicago premiere on WTTW Thursday: “Mikva! Democracy is a Verb,” an hour-long documentary on the life of Abner Mikva.
     Mikva was the rare political figure to range across all three branches of government — legislative, judicial and executive. A liberal congressman from both the North and South sides. An appellate judge. And White House counsel for Bill Clinton.
     Mikva began his career as a lawyer, then cut his teeth for a decade in the Illinois House of Representatives, where he became expert at a quality that today has reached low ebb: the art of reaching across party lines to get things done.

     “People think, well, if you compromise, that means you don’t have any principles, you’re selling out,” Mikva explains in the film. “That’s not the way it works in a large society like ours. We ought to be able to find a way to compromise our differences, especially on the important issues.”

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