Are you a vet? Can you prove it?

Mellody Frazier, who was an RN with the Navy, registers her discharge
papers with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds.

      Veteran's Day is around the corner. It's a holiday that always inspires choruses of lip service to our military men and women, which frustrates me, because talk is cheap, and not necessarily what vets are looking for. So each year, at this time, I try to find something practical to write about that might benefit vets, such as the importance of securing your discharge papers. 

     Call it the last battle.

     After soldiers go through the rigor of enlisting, of training, of shipping out, of maybe seeing combat or, usually, being a cog in the vast military machine, then finally their service completed, and after a few years or a few decades, comes a time when the newly minted veterans must make sure they receive the benefits to which they are entitled.

     Meet form DD-214, informally known as “discharge papers.” A document that tells the world and, most important, the Veterans Administration, that you served your country well and were discharged. With so much depending on that — medical care, pensions, loans, educational benefits, even a military funeral — you would think vets would keep them in bank vaults, and some do. But others lose them or put them in boxes that are destroyed in floods.

     Thus over the summer, Karen Yarbrough, Cook County recorder of deeds, started to reach out to vets, suggesting they bring in their DD-214s to be copied and permanently stored in her office, so the vet always knows where it is. Moreso, the recorder’s office has created a cheery intake center in the Cook County Building, 118 N. Clark St., decorated with patriotic posters, for them to come to.

     "We want to make it as welcoming as possible," said Brian Cross, veterans service coordinator. "We wanted this accessible."
     Chief Warrant Officer Mellody Frazier certainly found it accessible.
     "I love it," said Frazier, who was a naval registered nurse at the Portsmouth Medical Center in Virginia between 1992 and 1995. "It's bright; it's very friendly."
     She brought her form to be filed.
     "I heard about the service and thought I would come back and actually get it done," Frazier said. While she has lived in various places, as military people tend to, "this is my home of record, so I thought I would come here and have my information here."
     Of course there was one more form to fill out.
     "Miss Frazier, just fill out these forms real quick and I'll have you on your way," Cross said.
     "This is like a welcome home," said Yarbrough, who took office in December. "You see their faces light up."
     One might wonder why the VA wouldn't have copies of every vet's discharge papers, and the answer is, a) they don't get them automatically from the Department of Defense, but only receive one after a vet files for benefits, and b) just like the vets they serve, the VA is known to lose paperwork too. Or shred it by accident. The VA "has long operated in a veritable culture of lost paper" according to a 2008 expose in the Tampa Bay Times.
     Yarbrough said her office was not waiting for vets to walk in, but doing "lots and lots" of outreach. "More and more veterans understand the importance of it," she said. "The more we tell about it, the more do it."
     The VA neither discourages nor encourages the practice of filing the forms.
     "It's up to the individual veteran what they want to do with their DD-214. It's always a good thing to hang on to, and always a good thing to have a copy," said Craig Larson, director of public affairs at the Chicago office of the VA. Himself a vet, Larson filed his with the VA in Rockford, where he lives. "They keep a copy for me, in case for some reason I misplace it."
     More commonly, it is a vet's survivors who can't find the DD-214. John Mirkovic, director of communications for the recorder's office, said an all-too-frequent situation occurs after vets have passed away and the family wants a military funeral but can't find the form for the funeral home, which requires one for military honors. Usually, there isn't time to get a replacement from the DOD center in St. Louis.
      Registration avoids that.
     "That way, no one has to go through pain of missing a military funeral," Mirkovic said. "To me, that's the most important thing."  

"How then could I unite with this wild idolater?"

     My longtime friend David Seldin, now of Boston, posted this on my Facebook page Friday.

The start of your 10/19 column reminded me of my favorite passage from Anna Karenina — actually my favorite passage in all literature — when Levin meets his son: 

Smiling, hardly able to restrain his tears, Levin kissed his wife and went out of the dark room. What he felt towards this little creature was utterly unlike what he had expected. There was nothing cheerful and joyous in the feeling; on the contrary, it was a new torture of apprehension. It was the consciousness of a new sphere of liability to pain. And this sense was so painful at first, the apprehension lest this creature should suffer was so intense, that it prevented him from noticing the strange thrill of senseless joy and even pride that he had felt when the baby sneezed.     

    Beautiful of course — Tolstoy is at his best talking about the intricate shadings of love (well, that and horses). But a phrase David used, "my favorite passage in all literature," caught my attention. While I recently scoffed at the Poetry Foundation asking Chicagoans for one "favorite poem" -- that seemed so specific, almost anti-poetic — a favorite passage in literature somehow seems a different case. Indeed; I knew mine immediately. 
     But first, I asked the Hive Intelligence what their favorite passages were, and why. They came up with a solid selection. Here are four:

The Morgan Library, New York City

      Nancy Nall Derringer (a fine blogger you can find here) cited Vladimir Nabokov beginning Part One of Lolita:

      Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.        

    She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

      Nancy explained: "And I love it because it was written by a man whose first language was not English." 

       Heather Joy Swanson offered the famous opening line of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice:

     It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

     "This sarcasm just sets the tone for the whole book - so unexpectedly funny at times," she said.

       Lane J. Lubell, being young -- he's Ross' age — cited that bard of impassioned youth, F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Great Gatsby: 

 I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered ‘Listen,’ a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour. 

         "I hate to be conventional, but I have to be honest," said Lane.

      One more. One of my favorite columnists at the paper, other than myself, is Phil Handler, who offered several passages from Tim O'Brien's great war book, The Things they Carried: 

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

     Alas, we can't get to all the tremendous suggestions. Thanks to all who took the time.
     Okay, my turn. Chapter 10 of Moby-Dick, "A Bosom Friend." A wonderful character portrait leading up to, for me, what has to be one of the wryest paragraphs in literature. 
    Ishmael returns to the Spouter-Inn to find Queegueg, "quite alone" and whittling at his little idol, "humming to himself in his heathenish way."

      We get to know the fierce tattooed Polynesian harpooner who, like so many with an outwardly fierce appearance, turns out to be sweet and generous, with his own nobility, "a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor." He even looks, to Ishmael, rather like the father of our country. 

    "Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed," notes Ishmael, who is sort of mid-19th century American Everyman smartass.

    They share a smoke, and Queequeg declares themselves friends for life, I'll give the first, to set the scene, but it's the second paragraph, beginning "I was a good Christian..." that I'm thinking of when I think of "my favorite" passage in literature, for its wildly-curving train of thought for its good-natured humor and, to be honest, for the sheer relief I felt encountering it after the first 80 pages of the book, much of that spent by Melville prattling on about whaling: 

    After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers' pockets. I let them stay. He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed the paper firebrand. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or otherwise.      

     I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth — pagans and all included — can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship? — to do the will of God? that is worship. And what is the will of God? — to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me — that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world.   

     Thanks everyone who offered up favorite passages -- I'm sorry I couldn't list them all, but feel free to add your own in the comments sections below.


Photo atop blog: Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library.

Non-Native-American Guide

   

 
     Last week I started thumbing through old columns about my son Ross, who turns 18 today, thinking I would reprint one here. They were so touching, I ended up running a bunch of snippets from over the years, as a sort of greatest hits, in the paper on Monday (you can read it by clicking here). I was pleased that so many readers wrote to say they were moved by it. 
     One column, from June 7, 2002, stood out, illustrating how one of the many beauties of children is the way they force their parents out of their comfort zones and into the world.  I want to reprint it today, as a birthday gift to myself, maybe to him and, I hope, to you too. 

     'Will we need to learn Indian language to communicate with the chief?"   

     The question came from my oldest son, then 5, as we drove to our first Indian Guides meeting last fall. I smiled sadly, glancing at him in the rearview mirror, marveling at the naive assumption behind his question. Life can be so poor compared with possibility.

      I almost didn't sign up for the Guides. Registration, late last summer at the local YMCA, was hectic, disorganized. The fee was $60. My son and I sat at the back of the room on metal folding chairs, waiting for someone to take charge, to make some kind of welcoming speech, something. Eventually we received instructions and a plea for volunteers. I almost took Ross' hand and quietly slipped out the door. That would be my way. I'm not a joiner. But my father signed us up for Indian Guides, 35 years ago. If he could take the time, then so could I.

     Our tribe's first meeting took place in Chief David Nadig's garage early one Saturday. The garage door was open. Ross and I edged up to the group, all of whom seemed to know each other. No one turned to notice our arrival. Again, I almost spun around and left, but made myself stay. A good thing, too. Soon the kids were stringing beads on leather thongs and attaching them to a big banner that read "IROQUOIS,'' our tribal name, and contained the boys' handprints and names. The dads guzzled hot coffee and popped doughnut holes.

Camp Hastings, fall, 2001. Ross is the boy at far right.

     At Halloween we had our first overnight, sleeping in cabins at Camp Hastings. We carved pumpkins. Ross played floor hockey but not four-square ("It's just a simple game of catch," he said, declining, a phrase another father overheard and repeated, amazed). The boys got along immediately, hooting on the hayride, splashing in the pool. The dads were more tentative, navigating the social shoals with dadlike awkwardness--there was no beer to lubricate, no football to watch. We shuffled our feet, talked mortgages, kept an eye on our boys.

     Over the winter there were other events--a winter carnival with an animal show, a craft session making little fringed buckskin coin bags, perhaps a landmark event since, after 75 years of Indian Guides, we may be the last cohort to associate with Indian culture. This past year, bowing to Native-American objections over the obvious insult of being connected with people such as myself and my son, the Chicago-based YMCA announced it is dropping "Indian" from the group's name. I guess we'll make plain leather bags next year. The purge seems voluntary--unlike the Boy Scout vendetta against homosexuality, there hasn't yet been an active scouring of the ranks. Certainly not judging by the Spring Roughout last weekend at Rock Cut State Park. Oh, "Indian" was banished from the commemorative patch--PC Uber Alles!--but otherwise the impact was almost nil. Our lovely Iroquois banner, with the small handprints of our white sons and their shameful Anglo-Saxon names, was proudly displayed. 

     There was a faux tribal closing ceremony led by several war-bonneted chiefs to the sound of drums. We marched by flashlight to a big campfire (hearing the mock war chants of "Hi Howareya! Hi Howareya!'' half Sitting Bull, half Shecky Greene, I conceded a point to all those joyless activists. No one's completely wrong).

    Some 30 braves, all about age 6, sat around the blaze, each holding a white feather they would toss ceremonially into the fire. A chief clad in a war bonnet and golf shirt read a delightfully hokey speech about the Great Spirit and the West Wind (it's a comfort to me to realize that Native Americans don't have larger issues than their expressions being quoted in goofy/solemn rituals in the woods. Next Sinn Fein will come out against Irish soda bread). The speech concluded with an exhortation that a dad is his little brave's best friend.

     At this, my own brave raised his hand. Reflexively timid (no wonder the Indians don't want me in their camp) I tried to shush him, afraid of what his question might be. But one chief had already noticed him. "Yes, young brave," he said.

    "What if your mom is your best friend?" he said. I pressed my fingertips against my forehead. The circle rocked with laughter, and we headed back to our fire for s'mores and stories. The chief told the Sven Svenson story (another ethnic stereotype! We're practically the Posse Comitatus!) and Ross clutched my arm, tired, scared and happy.

    By Sunday morning, as we busied ourselves making pancakes, a transformation had come over the group. Not the kids, but the dads. Sometime in the previous 24 hours, fueled by a perfect lakeside campsite, perfect weather, plus canoeing, fishing, hiking, swimming and great steaks, all in the company of our beloved sons, the dads had coalesced into a real group. We all pitched in. We all, finally, knew each other's names.

     I was tempted to campaign against naming us "YMCA" Guides, which is ageist, sexist and religiously biased, in that order ("Association" can stay). Then I thought I'd like to change it to "Cowboy Guides." We could be Wyatt Earp's Gang. Let the activists chew on that. Instead, I'm letting it drop. I've realized the name isn't the important part. The important part is gathering in a group with our boys and our new friends. June is fleeting, only for a brief time does a boy want to share a tent with his dad, and I can't believe how glad I am that we joined.

Photo atop blog: Ross in the Badlands, 2009. 

AT&T U-verse — solution to a problem you don't have.

  
   Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

     A scream is hard to convey on paper. A little more guttural, a little more Linus-with-his-head-tipped-back, mouth an enormous "O":

     Arrrrgggggggggggghhhhh!

     Better.

     AT&T U-verse "In my day" commercials. You've seen 'em. I've seen 'em and I don't watch television, except for Bulls games. Everybody's seen 'em. They're everywhere. The same set-up. Older kids, early teens, adopting a fake sage tone, watching younger kids enjoying the key U-verse feature, apparently: the ability to move your television from one room to another. Commiserating how they couldn't do that when they were small. (To watch an AT&T U-verse commercial, click here.)

    'Cause that's a big regret in a kid's life: not being able to move the family's gigantic television around.

    Now I'm asking you—yes, you, personally—if you have U-verse, have you ever dragged your HDTV outside? Who the hell does that? And most TVs are what, 50-inches across.  Enormous plasma flat screens. Half the time they're bolted expensively to the wall. They're as portable as stoves.

     And really, why should they be moved outside? Why would anyone want to do that? For a kids party? Really? These commercials always show little kids hopping in front of the conveniently moved U-verse-bundled TVs at a birthday party. Have any of the chuckleheads who conceived these commercials ever hosted a party for kids? Chaos. Disorder. Destruction. Mob madness. When my boys were of the age to have big birthday parties, we hid away beforehand any heavy objects that one sugar-crazed child might use to bludgeon another. Barely helped. Once, the boys pelted each other with boots.

     The last thing I'd do is drag my TV outside so some child could knock it over, probably onto another child, killing him. Not that moving the TV was anything I ever contemplated. Because where's the television, typically? Biggest, most kid-friendly room in the house, right? Finished basement. Rec room. Living room. It's already where you want the kids to be sequestered.

    Besides, giant televisions cost, what,  a couple hundred bucks nowadays? Families already have them in every room large enough to hold one and in a few that aren't. No moving around necessary.

     There's pathology lurking here. Huge corporations have a grim track record of failure when it comes to mistaking what they would like to sell to the public with what people actually want or can be made to think they want. The prime example of this of course is the Picturephone which ... AT&T has been trying to foist on an indifferent public for 50 years. Because really, what do you want less than for whatever person is calling you to also be able to see you? AT&T is still at it. Here's a thought: try hawking your stuff on a selling point that means something to somebody. Say U-verse is ... oh I don't know ... cheaper. Cheaper is always good. And it would be cheaper, too, if you didn't waste a fortune on those "In my day" commercials.

     Or am I wrong? Have you wheeled the TV out to the deck? I am open to the possibility that there might actually be actual people who actually do this. Are there? Hello?


Photo above: At the Art Institute of Chicago; atop blog: viewing the Art Institute's Thorne Rooms.

The home team, losing in the late innings

 

Corned beef on rye, Schwartz's Hebrew Deli, Montreal

   
     Before there was science, there was religion, to explain how the universe was created, how animals came to be, why good people get sick and die. Faith filled the empty moments in the day—of which were many—with ritual and requirement, explaining eternal mysteries and softening the frequent tragedy of life. It served a purpose, when life moved at a camel's pace.
     Over the past century, however, science has stepped in to allow us to understand much that religion once handled. The origins of the universe, the nature of disease. And the frantic pace of modern life will latch onto every spare second if you're not careful—which, ironically, creates a new niche for religion, which like any organism, adapts to survive. Now religion is here to slow us down, snatch back a little time from the spinning gears of 21st century living, to help us pause and contemplate what mysteries remain. So though weakened, religion chugs along, changing as it goes.
     Still, when I read the latest example of how faith's still-strong grip on our culture is loosening, I am generally glad. Much suffering, much oppression, occurred in the name of religion and occurs, still. While I wouldn't go so far as to say we are better off without it—there are still those empty moments and nagging mysteries, not to mention the need for community—weakened religion is also voluntary religion, and I firmly believe faith should be something you choose, not something forced upon you by others.
     Thus I was torn, a few weeks back, the Pew Research Center put out a 212 page study called "A Portrait of Jewish America." It might as well have been called "Jews are Toast." It didn't come out and say the religion is circling the drain, but the numbers don't lie. Two-thirds of Jews don't belong to a synagogue, 71 percent of non-Orthodox Jews marry non-Jews, almost a fifth of Jewish children aren't being raised as Jews. It's a recipe for extinction.
    Can't very well smile inwardly when other religions dwindle, pleased that the irrational chains are finally being struck off of humanity, the blinders cast aside, then put up a howl when it's my particular sect's turn. And, to my credit, intellectually, I see the Pew study as more of the same. Catholicism fades, Islam loosens its rigid strictures, and of course American Jews drift quietly away (okay, go ahead, insert your joke: "About time they did something quietly...") 
    And yet. . .
    Jews are the home team. Born, raised, bar mitzvahed, wed and too late now for me to simply shrug off the whole megillah. It smacks of betrayal. You have to root for the home team. It doesn't matter if the owner is a tightwad, the coach a bum, the game child's play and nonsense. Nobody in the American League said, "The designated hitter rule is stupid, and besides, we've got football now..." 
    Or maybe they did.
    As with baseball, a case can be made that Judaism is important, culturally—for a long time before globalism started to really mix the world up, Jews were the vanguard of the stranger living amongst you. We were the Other, the observers. That's why people hate us so much. We spoil their uniformity and make them think, which few people want to do too vigorously or too often. Why think when you can believe? Jews were for thinking before thinking was cool, at least secular Jews. The Orthodox, well, let them speak for themselves.
    The study was barely noticed.  Gentile society, of course, doesn't care, and Jewish officialdom, with its dismal track record botching the big issues facing Jews, whatever they are, is already punting this one too, ignoring the growing distance, for instance, between what secular Jews remain and Israel, whose non-policy toward the Palestinians looks shakier to Jew and non-Jew alike, year-by-year. They've been fiddling while the religion burns for years now, and aren't about to stop.
     So recognizing my own bias, why care? It isn't as if there is an intrinsic need for a small Jewish minority to question mainstream beliefs anymore. We set the example, now exit the stage, to join the Shakers. Other faiths will step up. The Muslims are doing a fine job as the new minority American faith on deck, and they can complain about crosses in the public way as loudly as Jews did. Society now has gays to test how much it really believes in tolerance of fractional minorities.
   And there will always be some Jews. A core of Jewishness, kept alive by the hermetically sealed world of the Ultra-Orthodox and the Hasidim. Their society is designed to endure—that's where the whole non-change thing comes in. Sure, we smirk at them for the black hats and wigs and 17th century traditions. But they know that if you swap your heavy black coat for a smart Calvin Klein jacket, you're halfway a Unitarian. As long they exist, there will be a steady stream of secular Jews dribbling away from them, like the tail of a comet.
   Of course extrapolating the current trend into infinity a classic recipe for misreading the future. Maybe this is not a falling star, but a pendulum. We're swinging toward assimilation the past few decades, and then we'll swing back. If you can say one thing about Jews, we tend to endure, no matter what life throws at us. So maybe the flame of faith goes low, then flares up again. If we can survive Nazi slaughter, we can survive American assimilation too.
    No big point to make today. I'm not going to gin up a false alarm, or start going to temple just so Judaism as a whole will glow a few atoms brighter. Life's too short to expend in ritual that you don't savor. All religions fade as their primary purpose—command us exactly how to fill our lives and explain an otherwise incomprehensible world—is replaced by lesser  social and emotional benefits. No one misses the vanished religions of the past—no one mourns the absence of Zeus-worshipping pantheists. All religions are gently fading, and a good thing, too. It only stings a bit more when it's your own home team that's losing in the late innings. As much as the head wants to nod and say, "Yes, yes, that's how it goes," the heart still wants to cry, "Aw c'mon guys, get a few hits, will ya? Doesn't anybody know how to play this game?"

Corned beef on rye, 2nd Ave. Deli, New York City

Some companies you can't forgive

Photograph courtesy of Lexie Rand

    Sunday dawned and the iMac had trouble snagging the Internet.  Who knows why these things happen? A glitch.
    I did what anyone does under those circumstances: shut off the computer and turn it back on. 
     Still no go. 
     A creeping dread. What if we were cut off?
     I alerted my wife. She suggested powering down the modem, and turning it back on. That sometimes drives the gremlins away. We traipsed downstairs, began pressing buttons. 
    Modem lights no longer blinking, she said we should give it time— to cool perhaps — so we went for our walk in the Botanic Garden. A Halloween celebration was going on—little kids dressed as dalmatians, as princesses.
    It was nice. Still, I was concerned -- my thoughts were of you, of course. If I couldn't get online, I couldn't update the blog. I might miss a day — Every goddamn day, remember? — and not only would your day be just a little less festive, but the trolls hiding under the bridge of Eric Zorn's blog would all leap up and start gleefully dancing around their Malice Pole, cackling and ululating that Steinberg had missed a day, missed a day, missed a day. So yes, I guess I was thinking of myself too.
     "I suppose I could take the laptop over to Caribou Coffee and use their wi-fi to update the blog," I said, as we walked.
    "Starbucks," my wife said. "You'll go to Starbucks."
    "Of course," I said, immediately understanding what she was meant. The Caribou Coffee in Northbrook is radioactive. You can't go in. A dead zone, our own Chernobyl. Oh, the building is there, a block from our house, but it no longer exists as a place a person could walk into and get coffee and a sweet roll and go online. 
    Why? It had, during the recent homecoming week, allowed students from Glenbrook North High School's gay-straight alliance to paint a window, as local businesses will do during homecoming festivities. But when the Caribou manager saw what the students had painted, the rainbow gay pride flag, he quickly washed it off. 
    Parents complained on Facebook. They urged boycotts. The newspapers covered it. I expected the Caribou to do what any sentient business  would -- beg the kids to come back, ply them with brownies and soda, allow them to repaint their window, a bigger rainbow flag this time.
    But no. The Caribou corporate parent in Minneapolis issued the standard, we-welcome-everybody-to-buy-our-coffee BS statement. The Illinois Caribou organization did too. But nothing from the local coffee stand operator, the guy with the most to lose. He should have been going door-to-door in sackcloth, personally apologizing to residents. 
    To me, purely from a business perspective, it is that second lapse that is the true sin. People are human, they err, they let their fears and biases get the better of them. Happens to everybody. But to leave the error sitting there, festering, particularly a business as marginal as a coffee shop—it isn't like coffee is hard to find—in a squishy liberal community like Northbrook, well, that's just unforgivably stupid. "It's worse than a crime," as Talleyrand said, "it's a blunder."
    To people with long memories, such as myself, who sometimes shudders when I see a BMW because of a photo I saw at the Holocaust Museum in 1994 of prisoners in World War II walking the "staircase of death" at a BMW factory, Northbrook's Caribou Coffee is now a hate group, like the Posse Comitatus, and we are never, ever ordering coffee there again. It might as well change its name to Westboro Baptist Church Coffee.
    That might be petty of me. But in the immortal words of Nicholas Cage in "Moonstruck," "I ain't no freakin' monument to justice." Maybe there is something about humans that just needs to hate something, and since I can't find it in my heart to despise any particular group of people based on race, religion or nationality, I express that natural tendency to loathe by really getting my back into hating certain companies and their products, and not always rationally either. 
     I will not, for instance, drink Perrier, because it was tainted with benzene. The fact that it was tainted with benzene in 1990 is meaningless. You can get pure water from the tap; what bottled water companies are selling is an idea, and if that idea is "benzene," even faintly, why waste your money? Go for the brands that weren't once poisoned. Time doesn't fade on horrors. Brown's Chicken didn't wait a couple years after the massacre and then try to re-open the shop where it occurred. They tore the building down. Because it would always be tainted.
    Not that forgiveness is impossible. For years I did not fly American Airlines, because American flipped a DC-10 over at O'Hare in 1979, killing 271 people. I didn't even like to fly on DC-10s. But after 25 year or so, the memories of reading the graphic descriptions of body parts being plucked out of the fields around the runway faded, a little, and I grudging allowed myself to fly American, and now I quite like it. 
    But for some companies there is no forgiveness. Ford, and its anti-Semite founder, Henry Ford—as bad as it is to be a fan of Hitler, Ford was worse: Hitler was a fan of him. Or Jimmy John's, rushing to bitch that giving health care to its workers will add pennies to the price of a sandwich. Or Walmart, which is practically a branch of the Chinese Communist party. 
    For me, the lowest rung of chthonic corporate ill-will must be reserved for The Berghoff Restaurant. The Berghoff used to be my favorite place to eat. When out-of-towners came to Chicago for the first time, I would take them proudly to the Berghoff, as if I had created it -- my pal Adam Gopnik, the New Yorker's man in France, and I had our first meal there.
     Then, in 2006, the Berghoff pretended to close, in order to fire its union waitstaff, putting its customers through this elaborate mock farewell, only to reopen, on the down low, a few months later. They did it for a little money. It was if your mother staged her own death and funeral, fooling you kids, in order to get out of some magazine subscriptions she no longer wanted. 
    As with Caribou, the vile initial act was compounded by the indifferent response. The Berghoff never apologized, never explained. Just a big, loud, drawn out, middle finger in the air fuuuuuuuck-youuuuuu to all its devoted, long-time customers. Then turn around, smile broadly, adopt a different tone of voice and welcome them all back in with a sweep of the arm to spend their money there again. No thanks. 
    Still ... I'm a soft-hearted guy. I don't like to hold grudges. Even when right, it still feels petty. And I missed their creamed spinach, their schnitzel. I ran into the Berghoff publicist at the McCormick Place restaurant show a few years back. Let's bury the hatchet, I told her. All that has to happen is for one of the vile Berghoff spawn -- I didn't use those exact words -- to spell out exactly what happened, and in the purifying light of candor, all will be forgiven, and I will lead a joyous procession back to the Berghoff for thuringer and sauerkraut sandwiches and their good homemade root beer.
    No dice. 
    So damn the Berghoff then, the restaurant, the family, the whole edifice of deceit and bratwurst. There is no wrath like the lover scorned. May the avenging god of restaurant calamity smite it, and send it down to the oblivion that has claimed so many far better restaurants. And while the Berghoff lingers, unwelcome, on Adams Street,  a haunt for tourists and the soulless, we turn our faces away from it, the way we'd turn away from a lunatic on the street corner doing something disgusting.
    Sometimes it takes effort. I ran into Newt Minow, the famous lawyer, at a party, and it turns out he is a fan of the column. We decided to have lunch. We chatted in his office for a while, then went down to the street. I found he was steering us toward the Berghoff. Respect mingled with a kind of panic. 
    "Umm, Mr. Minow," I finally said, freezing in the entranceway. "We don't want to eat here."
    "We don't?"
    "No," I said. "Bad karma." I believe that puzzled him a bit, but we walked out, ate nearby at Vivere, on the ground floor of the Italian Village, without having to worry about the ghosts of betrayed waiters spitting curses upon our food.  Our lunch was excellent.

Postscript: The Caribou Coffee in Northbrook went out of business in May, 2014, part of a corporate mass closing of outlets. 

Growing up in the newspaper

Big Sur, 2009

     With my older son Ross turning 18 on Friday, I found myself glancing back at the many stories I've written about him, since he was less than three months old and I began writing a regular column. 
     Which is ironic, since Ross is the only topic I was directly ordered by the editor of the Sun-Times not to write about. "Every time you write about your SON," boomed New Zealand press lord Nigel Wade, "I get the impression you didn't know what else to write about." Probably true. But I wasn't wearing out the topic  — he had just been born.  My theory was that Nigel, who had no kids himself, didn't quite see their utility. 

At the old Sun-Times office. Photo by John H. White

     I didn't listen to him. Part of the secret to a long career in journalism is knowing when to ignore your bosses. And the readers did seem to enjoy my occasional columns about Ross, and my younger son Kent. I tried not to overdo it —better too little than too much— and didn't want to let my sons devolve into shtick, don't want to stray into "Good Morning, Merry Sunshine" territory.  I've tried to deal with the boys with honesty and humor and love, and I like to think that readers can see that.  Some wonder what Ross thinks about being in the paper. I asked him a few years ago if he minded, and he replied: "What I MIND is that you don't put my picture in the paper more." So there you go, like father, like son.

     ‘They blow through your life like the wind on the plains,” John Hiatt sings. “Like the dust that covers everything, til the rivers fill with rain.”

     He’s referring to children, of course, and if parenthood’s first shock is the overwhelming responsibility (“Being a parent,” I said, when it began, “is the sudden realization that your whole world can choke to death on a penny”) the second shock is when you turn around and they’re nearly adults, driving and managing their lives; while you’re reduced to a minor supporting role, like some ridiculous aged adviser in a Shakespeare play, uttering your idiotic, ignored advice.

     My older boy, Ross, turns 18 on Friday, and is busily filling out college forms, like a prisoner working on a tunnel with a spoon. I whistle my way over, a guard on patrol, and he freezes, quietly waiting for me to pass.

     Wasn’t always like that. You folks know. He’s popped up in this column his whole life. Computers never forget. A few keystrokes and we’re back on Pine Grove Avenue in 1997: 

     “Bye-bye Ross. Bye. Daddy’s going to work now. Bye. See ya.” 

     Nothing. My 2-year-old son’s head doesn’t turn. His face doesn’t deviate a degree from staring directly at the object of his affection: "Teletubbies."
     I walk over to his chair, lean down low, and whisper in his ear: “Bye-bye. See you. Have a good day!” Nothing. Eyelock. He doesn’t even blink. The Teletubbies dance and sing.

     Then he’s 5, his birthday. I write a letter to him.

     Five years old. Happy birthday, boy. Did you like the metal Chicago police car? Just like the real ones.  The doors open, and everything. I wish you could see yourself as you are now . . . Sprawled on the floor, doing a hard puzzle, working through a maze, tossing tough questions from the back seat. “Dad, what’s the difference between hornets and wasps?” “Dad, why does the moon follow us?” “Dad, what happens if somebody shoots a missile at us?”

     At 7 he insists we see Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal."

     [Ross] wanted to know where the seven seals were in the movie. He thought there'd be actual seals, the kind with flippers. I explained about how in olden times important letters were sealed by wax, and about how in the Christian Bible there is a story about the end of the world.
     The next morning, he ran into my office, hugged me, as always, but instead of asking for our chess game, he asked for "the story of the movie." . . . he wanted the Book of Revelation.

     Then he's 11. I ask if he has accomplished all he hoped to over the summer and he says no, he wanted to try oysters. Off we go to Shaw's Crab House, not only for oysters, but the George's Bank Haddock, with spinach:

     Conversation ranged from why fish places always serve cheese bread to which ring of Dante's Hell his dad would occupy, according to an online survey (Level Two, with the gluttons and those buffeted by their lusts).
     Suddenly, a stricken look crossed his face and he leaned over, his nose almost to the white tablecloth. I thought it might be an oyster flashback. "What's wrong?" I asked, alarmed.
    "I have spinach . . ." he said, groping under the table, " . . . stuck inside my shoe."

     Then he's 12, blond hair down to the middle of his back, jumping into frigid Lake Michigan, doing the Polar Plunge with me.

First time behind the wheel: Bonneville Salt Flats

      Then 13. I would never have considered staying downtown on Election Night 2008, would have missed the unforgettable scene on Michigan Avenue. But he wanted to go. The next summer, I'm teaching him to drive on the white tabletop of the Bonneville Salt Flats, during our epic trip out West. The day he turns 15, we go to the Goodman. The PR staff sings him "Happy birthday" as we arrive.

     I did suggest to him, seeing it's his birthday and all, that he might prefer to do something else with someone else — go hang out at the mall with Biff and Marty, go have an ice cream soda with Becky Thatcher. No dice. He's been looking forward to "The Seagull" ever since we saw "Uncle Vanya" at Chicago Shakespeare last spring. I know this won't last. It can't, and I don't want you mocking me when he pops up in a video shot in a cave in Pakistan, gazing sternly at the camera and urging jihad. Those things happen. But it hasn't happened yet.

     Three years later, no cave yet. So what's it like now, his senior year? Quieter. Formal. I make a point to be downstairs before he rushes out at 6:40 a.m., just to say hello, to encourage breakfast, exchange some words. "Have a good day at school, son" I'll say. "Have a good day at work, father," he'll reply.
     When I turned 18, my mother bought cases of 3.2 beer, iced in a garbage can. A backyard crowded with kids. "Don't you want a party?" I ask him, now. No. Gifts? No.
     How do I feel? Proud. Lucky. Some kids drag their parents through hell. Much sympathy for those parents. It must be hard. It's hard enough when kids cause no trouble and just become adults. Well, almost adults. He still has that police car on his dresser.