Break the glass — Gov. Quinn signs same-sex marriage bill

     One great aspect of my job is that I get to pick what I write about. Another is that I get asked to do things. I had no intention of attending Wednesday's signing of the bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Illinois — I've kinda covered that topic. But my boss asked me to go, and I'm a "Give the lady what she wants" kind of employee. So I hopped on the Divvy and rode down to the UIC Forum. It was fun — I knew a lot of people there. And the room was suffused with a very warm, boisterous and happy spirit. It was impossible not to contrast the humanity and serious purpose of the people there, celebrating family and life, with the unhinged emails I've been getting from cramped religious fanatics, foaming in detail about the sexual practices that obviously obsess them. Makes you wonder which side is listening to the spirit of God, and which is really possessed by the devil.

     Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County Board president, said it best:
     “Throughout our nation’s history, individuals and groups have fought for equal protection under the law,” she told the thousands of jubilant witnesses gathered Wednesday at the UIC Forum to witness same-sex marriage signed into Illinois law. “The battles to define a person, a citizen, a voter, a marriage. As a history teacher, I firmly believe that marriage equality is the civil rights issue of our time.”
     To her right at the podium were most of the top government leaders in Illinois — not only Gov. Pat Quinn, who would minutes later sign the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act on the desk that Abraham Lincoln used to write his first inaugural address, but Speaker Michael Madigan, his daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and dozens of state legislators and constitutional officers.
     You could view it as a political victory for gay people. Or as one step in the very long historical process to which Preckwinkle alluded.
     Once upon a time, everyone stayed in place. To see the remnants all you have to do is look at your last name — the Bakers and Farmers, Smiths and Taylors, were once the actual bakers and farmers, smiths and tailors, professions of locked-in subjects who wouldn't dream of trying to fill any other role than what your father or mother did, the only thing God and tradition intended them to do.
     But some chafed under that. They wanted to be free. And they forced change.
     And that is the entire story of modern life, the past 300 years at least. Institutions and rituals, religions and kings, laws and traditions, slowly yielding to the relentless pressure of the individual yearning for liberty. Yearning to be themselves or, more accurately, yearning to be something else. First the serfs objected to being serfs, and people from dominated countries tired of being dominated. Religions that weren't the main religion asked why they couldn't worship in their desired way. Women, minorities, children, each one being recognized, after years of argument, protest, struggle, to be welcomed by some, held back by others who pointed at the past as the only true and acceptable map for the future.
     And now gays and lesbians, today in Illinois. Quinn, an honorable man, a practicing Roman Catholic, following the strong tradition of that religion toward social justice, signed a law in Illinois so that, as Emanuel noted, "There is no straight, or gay marriage; from now on there is only marriage in Illinois." In June, men can marry the men they love, and women can marry the women they love, just the way it has always been for heterosexual couples.
     As we move forward, we might ask ourselves: Why were these fellow citizens held down so long? For what reason? In the distant past, it might have been limited resources, the need for someone to do the scutwork for free. More recently, perhaps some basic human need to hate and fear somebody. And ignorance that was swept away by realizing that this oppressed group includes our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, or friends and parents. Gays and lesbians, in freeing themselves, offer the entire society a chance to understand itself better.
     So applause to gays and lesbians, for achieving a victory that their forebears could hardly dream of. And applause for the straight community, for sharing — grudgingly, gradually, true, but sharing eventually — the precious gift of sweet daily life, of recognized married relations and solid family life, of acceptance and normality. Because it isn't just homosexuals freed here, but all society, wriggling from the grasp of a powerful, destructive, long-term, hateful bias. Not fully, God knows. But a big step, another big step, in a journey of many steps, big and small.
     This is is the moment in the wedding when the solemnities are done, the cleric closes the prayer book and smiles; the groom, or I suppose now the bride, steps on the glass — symbolizing a break with past sorrows and a bright future; the world shifts, slightly, and everybody cheers.

A newcomer's guide to the opera

     I sort of blundered into the opera. In 2008, Lyric Opera of Chicago produced "Porgy & Bess." George Gershwin's great opera. I wanted to see it, and to write something about its complicated racial history. At the same time, the paper's editor thought I should take 100 readers to the opera, as a stunt. I didn't even particularly like opera. But I grew to—that's the thing about opera, the more you go, the more you want to go.  I suppose it's like an addiction, except one you can happily indulge all your life and you don't have to quit. Also, like addiction, you want to draw people in with you, for company. The Sun-Times Goes to the Lyric sweepstakes is in its sixth year, and I'm glad so many people—600 and counting—have learned a little about what opera's all about.

  

     Five hours, exactly; from Sir Andrew Davis striking up the orchestra Sunday to when the audience stood potching our hands together to thank the cast for putting on such a vigorous performance of Wagner’s last opera, “Parsifal.”

     And while I don’t want to suggest that savoring every nuance required anything less than complete concentration on my part, there was still plenty of attention, and God knows enough time, left over to let my mind wander to the odd art form that is opera, and to the 100 lucky winners of the Sun-Times Goes to the Lyric contest joining me at the opera house Wednesday for opening night of Verdi’s “La Traviata.”

     Judging from my email, there is a bit of uncertainty about what is required by opera, and as I am in the passing-along-of-relevant-information business, I thought I would offer a quick primer in How to Do It.
     There is only one vital, unbreakable rule when it comes to opera that sets it apart from most forms of entertainment: You can't be late. The curtain goes up at 7:30 p.m., which means if you show up at 7:31 p.m., you find shut doors and a joyless usher, deaf to your pleas, who invites you to watch the action on a nearby TV monitor, which is to experiencing live opera what reading a menu is to eating food. Or so I'm told — I've never been late, through a secret technique I will share with you now called "being early." For instance, for Sunday's matinee, my son and I arrived at the opera house half an hour before curtain, giving us time to stand at the bar downstairs and eat our sack lunches.
     Another distinction: Unlike sports venues, you can bring food to the opera. You can't eat at your seat, but they have tables in the lobby. A couple actually picnicked under a staircase Sunday. I'm not saying roast a lamb or bring a keg — I'm sure the whole thing is frowned upon, since they sell food. But people still do it, on the sly.
     The other concern folks have is parking. Some have written to ask if there is parking in downtown Chicago, and I tell them, yes, there is. You do have to pay money, and that seems to shock some. There are several garages and lots nearby.
     If you've ever been tempted to take Metra, now is your chance. Union and Ogilvie stations are a block west, so long as your train doesn't require you to bolt early; people who do not stay and applaud after an opera are doomed to spend eternity in hell.
     The other item people ask about is dress. Contest winners want to know if they should "dress up." I wore a blue blazer with charcoal pants, a blue shirt and a tie festooned with skulls — with Wagner it seemed apt — and noted with approval many gentlemen wearing similar getups. But you could ditch the tie and the jacket. Some men wore a kind of Dick-Cheney-on-his-ranch ensemble — think moutainy vests, jeans. I'd say whatever you're comfortable in, and many newcomers I talk to are sporting green work pants and plastic Pipe Fitters Local 597 jackets and they have a swell time.
     "La Traviata" is three hours long. I recommend a mint or something you can entertain yourself with by quietly slipping your hand into your pocket, removing a mint and popping it into your mouth. It's good to have an activity, and I probably went through 25 Sencha green tea mints Sunday, which sounds like a lot until you realize it's only five an hour, or one every 12 minutes.
     What else? Oh yes, how could I forget? One other ironclad rule that, unlike Don't Be Late, is not about your enjoyment but about everybody else's: Don't talk. You're not at home.
     As much as you want to turn to your wife and say, "Golly Emma, this isn't half as bad as I thought it would be!" please don't. Because you'll be sitting behind me — that's where all the people who talk loudly in operas seem to congregate — and my limited attention, which I'm manfully trying to focus on the Hunter Entering the Glade, is instead spun 180 degrees in the wrong direction, toward you, and whatever lame, unnecessary remark you are making. That means the person in front of you, aka me, not only won't enjoy his precious time at the opera as much as he should, but will inevitably see that you don't enjoy yours either, by whipping around, staring at you and saying, in a loud voice, "You realize you're not at home, don't you?" Or I'll try to say that and not, "If you don't shut up, I'm going to murder you in your seat."
     Strong stuff, yes. But that's what opera is all about—intense emotions unleashed by the power of music and story, the pageantry and wonderment that Lyric Opera of Chicago offers throughout the season. Enjoy.

       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 20, 2013

There's still more hiding in that closet.

     
      Twenty-one years ago, I was scanning the classified ads in the Reader, looking for story ideas, when I noticed an ad for a shop on Elston Avenue that sold women's clothing in large sizes to men. "Hmmm," I thought. "Now THERE'S something you don't see every day." It lead to the only in-depth examination the Sun-Times has ever printed about the Chicago transgender community, and gave me a lot of sympathy for people who feel their true sexual orientation is different than the one they were born with. It's a struggle. 

     An interesting social question now is whether transgender folk will be able to piggyback on the advances made by gays and lesbians. On the surface, they are a harder pill for the straight world to accept, just by appearances, plus their numbers are a fraction of the percentage of homosexuals, which makes them even easier to abuse. And many consider themselves straight, which only adds to the confusion. So far they have made surprising progress—a rising tide floats all boats—though expect a backlash.

     Wednesday, Nov. 20, is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a solemn event designed to honor those murdered for their orientation. Whether or not you feel comfortable around such people, I hope everyone agrees it's not something a person should be killed for.

      So now is a good moment to haul this story out of the vault. You'll notice I never mention the word "transgender" — the term wasn't in vogue then — nor do I use the word "transsexual," because I mistakenly assumed they were a subset of transvestism, and I was trying to make the thing as simple as I could. An error I learned when an angry transsexual whom I had identified as a "transvestite" in a photo--a slur, since she considered transvestites to be amateurs—showed up at the newspaper and demanded a correction, which we ran.

PRETTY, WITTY — AND MALE 

CROSS-DRESSERS KEEP CULTURE CLOSE TO VEST

     Jenny has sparkling blue eyes, a small, upturned nose and a
cascade of curly blond hair tumbling over her right shoulder.
     With a rhinestone nail charm centered on each red fingernail, a
dab of blush at her decolletage, and deftly applied make-up, it's
easy to believe her when she says she spent three hours getting ready
to go out.
     The shimmery blue and silver dress is custom-made, she says, and
it's easy to believe that, too, since with the spike heels, Jenny
tops out at perhaps 6-foot-7.
     "I'm a bigger girl, I know," she says, smiling radiantly. "I
can't go out to a mall — hey, I've got a football player's
shoulders."
     So instead, Jenny has come here, to a banquet hall on the
Northwest Side of Chicago, where the city's tiny, secretive
transvestite community is having one of its many regular social
functions — this one a dinner and gala pageant to select "Miss
Chicago Gender Society 1992."
     About 110 people — mostly men dressed as women, with a
smattering of wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and even
somebody's mother — mingle and chat, complimenting each others'
dresses, primping at their wigs, sipping drinks.
     Less than 15 years ago, it was against the law in Chicago for
people to wear clothing of the opposite sex. The ordinance was in
place until 1978, when the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the
conviction of two men arrested in 1974 for wearing dresses.
     Today, several hundred people belong to Chicago's two
transvestite groups — the Chicago Gender Society, which admits any
cross-dresser of any sexual orientation, and the Society of Second
Self, or Tri-S, which limits its members to heterosexual
transvestites and is more family-oriented.
     Still, transvestism is one of society's deepest taboos. While
homosexuals have made progress in becoming better understood and, in
places, accepted by society as a whole, transvestites struggle
against a stigma so strong that few feel they can risk even revealing
their real names.
     The president of Tri-S refused to have his picture taken, even
dressed as Naomi, for fear fellow lawyers at his Loop law firm would
recognize him. The president of the Gender Society, posing for a
newspaper picture, quips, "My life is over."
     "I personally don't care (if people know I'm a transvestite),"
says Leslie, a six-footer in a white mini-skirt and hoop earings who
works as a contractor in the suburbs. "But I have to protect the rest
of those people: my 7-year-old son, my wife, my other family
members."
     Most transvestites describe themselves as heterosexual, though
the term sometimes gets stretched a bit. One transvestite at the gala
says he is heterosexual, but adds that he lives as a woman and dates
men.
     Still, many transvestites have wives, families, and are not
effeminate when dressed as men, many say.
     "I'm straight, married, I have a 9-to-5 job, a sales job," says
Jenny. "I battle over turf with the rest of the sales people. I play
baseball."
    Indeed, one academic explanation of transvestism is that
 it is the ironic result of a sort of super-masculinity.
     "One of the ways we understand transvestism is an attempt to
integrate what are otherwise carefully separate parts of one's self,"
says Dr. Richard Carroll, director of the Sex and Marital Therapy
program at the University of Chicago. "Some men, in most of their
lives, are aggressive and hypermasculine, and it's as if some men
have split off the feminine aspects of themselves so completely they
have to cross dress and play a role to get in touch with the more
feminine part of themselves."
     What is a mystery, however, is whether the strong masculinity is
a cause of, or a reaction to, transvestism.
     "A lot of transvestites will overcompensate in male life," says
Anjelica, who worked for years as a mailman "partly because of the
uniform."
     Transvestites themselves, who generally say they began dressing
in female clothing at a very young age, describe cross-dressing as a
compulsion.
     "I just have to do it; it's like this urge," says Leslie.
     While transvestites are initially drawn to women's clothing as
an erotic experience, the appeal often changes into a general state
of well-being.
     "The sexual element becomes less important and dressing and
passing as female more important. Just the experience of being
 cross-dressed is associated with a sense of calm, peace, and freedom
from stress," says Carroll. "For many transvestites, the sexual aspect 
becomes less important as they grow older. It just feels peaceful to 
them. Some men describe it like finally being at home."

     Despite the calm transvestites find in cross-dressing, they can
face a variety of severe emotional problems, the result of conflict
between their inner impulses and the outer dictates of society.
Transvestites are thought to commit suicide more frequently.
     Pervasive public ridicule, which can result in physical attack,
also is a problem.
     Then there is the issue of dealing with their families. Some
wives divorce their husbands after learning that they are
transvestites. Others grow to accept it.
     Nicole, attending the Gender Society gala with her husband,
Gloria, was married for four years before she discovered women's
clothing in the trunk of their car.
     "I was devastated — I thought he had a girlfriend," she says,
holding back tears. Learning that it was her husband's clothing came
as a relief. "I thought, `Oh, is that all? We don't have to get a
divorce.'"
     Asked if she liked the fact that her husband is a transvestite,
Nicole says: "I understand she has her needs." But some wives
actually feel closer to their husbands when they are in their female
roles.
     "In some ways, the partner preferred him when he was
cross-dressed," says Carroll, referring to a high-level business
executive and his wife. "He was calmer, open, more relaxed and more
intimate."
      And not all transvestites tell their wives. Michele, attending
the gala while his wife of 22 years was out of town, says the wife
has no idea of his transvestism and he isn't going to tell her. "Why
create a problem?" he says.
     Marriage can actually facilitate the development of a man's
transvestism, since it takes him out of the posturing of the dating
world and, not incidentally, provides ready access to women's
clothing.
     "In the dating scene, you have to be one of the macho guys, a
male male," says one cross-dresser. "When I got married, I didn't
have to go through that ritual, all that pressure trying to find a
woman."
    Several businesses in Chicago cater to transvestites. In addition
to a photography studio, a beauty salon and a meeting service, there
is at least one boutique, a nondescript storefront on Elston Avenue.
     Inside the boutique are racks of Cover Girl cosmetics, costume
jewelry, jumbo-size Frederick's of Hollywood-type undergarments and
clothes, mostly culled from secondhand shops.
     "We try to keep a low profile," says the owner, who goes by the
name Karen when dressed as a woman. "They come here because we are
discreet, quiet and no one bothers them."
     While he talks, four men, one at a time, slip into the store and
head to the back.
     In the back of the store are a variety of transvestite
publications on dressing, makeup and feminine deportment, as well as
racks of paperback novels with titles such as "Trio in Skirts," "Girl
for a Week," and "Men in Skirts." Karen describes them as "basically
good, wholesome fantasies," though it is safe to say not everyone
would agree.
     A common refrain heard again and again from cross-dressers is
they are not trying to hurt anybody, just be themselves, living life
the best they can.
     "Once you get over the question of men dressing as women, there
is really very little unusual about it," says Karen, and, indeed,
perhaps what is most unexpected about transvestites is how ordinary
their lives can be, outside of their cross-dressing.
     Karen has a photo album of himself, in women's clothes, posing
inside suburban interiors, mugging with friends at parties, dressed
as a cheerleader, as Little Bo Peep, in an evening gown.
     But in the back of the album are a different set of photos —
Ebbetts Field memorabilia, Stan Musial's locker, a bat once swung by
Babe Ruth — taken during a cherished visit to the Baseball Hall of
Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
     "That's my primary interest," Karen says.
                   Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, May 24, 1992

Why not cast out the demon of homophobia?

.    I pause whenever the subject of the Catholic Church comes up and ask myself the old World War II question: "Is this trip necessary?" Because, to be honest, you get a lot of grief, from Opus Dei sorts who collapse into a heap of quivering offense, condemning me for hating Catholics and lashing out at their faith by questioning their right to tell non-Catholics how to live their lives. But to do otherwise is to yield the field to them, and I'm not going to do that. It's a dirty, thankless job, but somebody has got to do it.

     The good news out of China is that the Communist Party, having looked around at the 21st century for the past 13 years and suddenly felt a disconnect, announced Friday that, among other reforms, it is getting rid of forced labor camps to “re-educate” political prisoners and scaling back the one-child policy that prompted citizens to abandon their girl babies in the woods to die.

     Excellent. Congratulations guys.

     Meanwhile, another large, powerful entity, the Roman Catholic Church, is having a harder time adapting to this confusing blur we call the modern world. While its breath-of-fresh-air new Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis, has been issuing a series of bracingly human statements, as if religion were intended as a vehicle for compassion, bishops closer to home are not showing the kind of flexibility China somehow mustered.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki

     The news of the next few days is going to be owned by Thomas Paprocki, bishop of Springfield, who announced last week that he will hold an exorcism Wednesday to coincide with Gov. Pat Quinn's signing same-sex marriage into law in Illinois.
     "It is scandalous that so many Catholic politicians are responsible for enabling the passage of this legislation and even twisting the words of the pope to rationalize their actions despite the clear teaching of the church," Paprocki said in a statement. He explained that what Pope Francis really meant, rather than any tolerance for gays as fellow human beings deserving of basic civil rights such as marriage, was that same-sex marriage "comes from the devil."
     Give the man points for consistency. Paprocki is the same guy who, six years ago, said the inspiration behind sex-abuse lawsuits against the church is "none other than the devil." Prince of Darkness, Evil One, Source of Litigation. It does sound right.
     Perhaps chafing at being left out of the fun when gays are being bound to Satan's hooves and given the bum's rush out of church, our own Cardinal Francis George weighed in. He said that while being allowed to marry might make "some gays and lesbians happy, and that is not a bad thing in itself"— a startling admission from our flinty cardinal and, for him, the rhetorical equivalent of prancing down Broadway in a tiara and a Speedo on the last Sunday in June — then, recovering himself, continued, "the law, however, is bad law because it will contribute over the long run to the further dissolution of marriage and family life."
     That's a lie, or, to be charitable, an assertion based not on fact but on rancor, ill will that causes Paprocki to call the law "destructive of the plan of God." Just the opposite; it is hostility of prelates like these two that undermines families and dissolves marriages, or would if people were listening.
     Increasingly they're not. There is a harm here, and at some point the hurt being inflicted shifts from the traditional victim — the LGBT community — to the people doing the baseless slurring. In 1974, 47 percent of Catholics attended mass once a week, according to Pew Research. In 2012, it was almost exactly half that, 24 percent. Compare this to Protestant church attendance, which went up in that same period, from 29 percent to 38 percent.
    Exorcise that, fellows. And while we can't lay the blame entirely on intolerance of gays or marginalizing women — the endless sex-abuse scandal no doubt had a hand — the numbers still reflect what happens when you put a medieval doctrine above people.
     None of this is loving, none of this is ministering to souls. It is a mean, small, fearful gazing beneath the sheets — a church tradition, yes, but now clearly jamming their noses into realms where they never belonged and belong even less today.
     It should stop. Church die-hards will say that, unlike policy in communist China, we are not dealing with malleable rules but timeless moral codes. Pretty to think so. So was condemnation of divorce and premarital sex, which managed to move from venial sins to popular general pastimes despite the continuous disapproval of the church, which itself changes. Not a lot of thundering against divorce nowadays. The Latin mass got dumped, and limbo abolished ("I hope they promoted those babies up to heaven," George Carlin mused, "didn't just cut them loose into space.")
     If the Mormon God can change his mind about black people, I bet the Catholic God can do the same. Paprocki might consider directing that exorcism toward his own heart. He might be surprised at what demons fly out. Others sure wouldn't be surprised. Here's a hint: Expect horns, bat wings, hooves and a certain sulfurous smell.

"Get off get off get off"—Chicago spread the shocking news from Dallas

     This started as a story about Chicago the day Kennedy was killed, but the more I found out about the UPI office here, the more that seemed the story to tell—given how familiar we are with the Kennedy assassination, it struck me as something that most people would not know about.

     Nov. 22, 1963, was a Friday. Unseasonably warm in Chicago, in the mid-60s, cloudy with light rain.
     There was plenty of news going on around the city. At the Municipal Court, Hugh Hefner was on trial for obscenity. Miss December sat in the gallery, in street clothes.
     At 9:30 a.m., the World’s Invitational Bowling Championship kicked off at McCormick Place. Members of the Bowling Proprietors Association of Greater Chicago proudly wore identical maroon sports coats made for the event.
     Not all news of interest to Chicagoans was happening in Chicago. Cassius Clay, “the punching poet,” was in New York for a broadcast of the Jack Paar show that put him in the ring with another flamboyant showman, Liberace.
     Longtime Sun-Times Washington correspondent Carleton Kent was in Texas, traveling with President John F. Kennedy, at a breakfast with the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, where its colorful president, Raymond Buck, “Mr. Fort Worth,” praised “our great, courageous and brilliant leader of the world’s strongest nation.”
     Kennedy then flew 30 miles away, to Love Field in Dallas. From there, his motorcade headed to a lunch at the Dallas Trade Mart. Kent, 54, but with hair that turned snow-white during one endless night on Guadalcanal in World War II, was in the press bus, following along at hundreds of yards behind the president’s blue 1961 Lincoln Continental limo. Unable to see ahead, he looked at the buildings, noticing signs in the windows: “Because of my respect for the Presidency, I despise you and your brand of socialism,” read one.
     His colleagues on the bus agreed that Kennedy probably laughed at that.
     Further ahead was Merriman Smith, of United Press International, a “reporter’s reporter.” He was in the front seat of the press pool car, on loan from the local Bell Telephone office because it had a radio-telephone. Two other newsmen were in the car, one Jack Bell of the Associated Press.
     “Suddenly we heard three loud, almost painfully loud cracks,” Smith later recalled. “The first sounded as if it might have been a large firecracker. But the second and third blasts were unmistakable. Gunfire.”
     After the shots echoed across Dealey Plaza, there was a tussle for the phone. Smith won. He grabbed the receiver and rolled under the dashboard, curled up dictating as Jack Bell beat him on the back with his fists.
  
   ‘Stay off all of you’
 
    Chicago was the headquarters of United Press International’s broadcast department, UPR. Step off the elevator at the fifth floor of the Apollo Savings & Loan building, 430 N. Michigan, and you would hear the teletypes, 100 machines in a row, a constant clattering “din-din-din” as they spat out news, at 62 words a minute, from bureaus across the country, plus an “A-wire” for national feeds, a B-wire for lesser news, a London wire. The UPI and UPR office had a staff of 22, ran in three shifts 24 hours a day, editing the news into readable prose and transmitting it to UPR’s 3,500 radio and TV subscribers.
     It was a smoky room of scattered coffee cups and take-out trash. At 12:30 p.m., Henry Renwald, a shortish, quiet teletype operator, flipped a switch, “splitting the line,” to allow regional offices to transmit nationally.
     At 12:34, five bells — hollow metallic dings — pinged, an “urgent,” as the A-wire clacked out the news that Smith had dictated into his phone to UPI’s Dallas office as the press car veered out of the motorcade and chased Kennedy’s car toward Parkland Hospital.
     “Hey look at this,” said Bill Roberts, second desk editor. He tore the sheet off and read, “Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas.”
     “Jesus Christ!” replied editor Larry Lorenz, a bespectacled Marquette English major.
     Stories were typed, creating holes in a pale yellow tape then fed into machines that sent it over Western Union lines. Renwald started to resend the news to his broadcast outlets, but Kansas City was transmitting a weather report:

(SPECIAL WEATHER ADVISORY (KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI) -- THE WEATHER BUREAU AT KANSAS CITY HAS ISSUED THE FOLLOWING SPECIAL WEATHER ADVISORY... HAZARDOUS T Z

     Chicago had the power to override the feed, and tried:

BULLETIN PRECEDE (KENNEDY

     But Kansas’ tape kept transmitting. Renwald typed “GET OFF GET OFF GET OFF” then sent:

B U L L E T I N(DALLAS)1--AN UNKNOWN SNIPER FIRED THREE SHOTS AT ...

     Meanwhile, the A-wire machine started ringing again: 10 bells this time. A “flash”— the most urgent code they had. Roberts brought him the copy:

FLASHKENNEDY SERIOUSLY WOUNDED -----

     New York tried to resend the news from Dallas, but Renwald warned them off: STAY OFF ALL OF YOU GET OFF.

     Here is a bulletin

     “As the World Turns” was broadcast live in Chicago on the CBS affiliate, WBBM Channel 2. At 12:40 p.m, the image shifted to a card reading “CBS News Bulletin” and the voice of Walter Cronkite read a report rewritten from the UPR’s Chicago feed:
     “Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. More details just arrived. These details about the same as previously: President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy, she called ‘Oh, no!’ The motorcade sped on. United Press says that the wounds for President Kennedy perhaps could be fatal. Repeating, a bulletin from CBS News, President Kennedy has been shot by a would-be assassin in Dallas, Texas. Stay tuned to CBS News for further details.”
  
    Flash president dead

     At 1:30 p.m., Alice Guenther, took over the teletype keyboard at UPR Chicago. Four minutes later, official word from Dallas: The president was dead.
     UPR’s national news editor, John Pelletreu, a lean, hawk-eyed man with a small mustache, said, “Alice, type ‘Flash President Dead.’” Instead she raised her hands from the keyboard, covered her face and cried out, “Oh my God.”
     In one smooth motion, another operator lifted her by the elbows out of the chair, eased her, sobbing, onto the floor next to her desk, and sat down to type the words.
     Of course UPI was only one of several wire services — there was the Associated Press, Reuters. The news filled the newspapers — Chicago had four, the Sun-Times, its afternoon sister the Daily News, the Tribune and the American.
     The news spread, passed along by radio, TV, “Extra” editions, word of mouth. Chicagoans heard the news in their schools, homes, restaurants and experienced a surreal shock that would remain a vivid emotional wound for the rest of their lives.
     When Larry Lorenz got off work at UPR, he walked over to the Chicago Press Club for a drink, but a couple of advertising men at the end of the bar were complaining loudly about how their commercials had been yanked off the television. He couldn’t take that and left, walking south down Michigan to the Radio Grill, where he knew other UPI colleagues would be gathering.
     It was raining again. Lorenz started to cry, thinking, goddamn it. He was glad it was raining so nobody would see him. Newsmen weren’t supposed to cry.

Larry Lorenz’s online essay, “FLASH President Dead,” contributed to this story.

Reading aloud

'Virgil reading "The Aeneid" to Augustus, Octavia and Livia,"
by Jean Baptiste Joseph Wicar (Art Institute of Chicago)

     Should I be embarrassed to admit that I once read The Odyssey aloud to my wife?
     I am, a bit.
     Not sure why. It sounds so ... decadent. 
     And she permitted it. To be honest, it was so long ago — pre-children — that the only aspect I remember is explaining, "It's supposed to be read aloud." Actually, it's supposed to be memorized and recited. But that's asking a lot in the modern world.
     Trying to be thorough, checking, I see the copyright date for our edition is 1996. So the oldest boy, Ross, was around. I must have read it during our first year with a newborn. 
     No wonder I don't remember it.
     Afterward, I tended to read to him; the younger boy would hover nearby, but never took to it in the same way. They're different kids. 
     The plan had been to read Dickens. I distinctly remember, before he was born, hunting around used book stores for an attractive set of Dickens to read during what I imagined to be the endless expanse of enforced idleness and eternal vigilance of parenthood.
     I never found the right set.
     Which is just as well, because I'm no particular fan of Dickens.
     Instead, when Ross was small — say 2 — I seized what was at hand, a lovely red facsimile of the first edition of Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland books, and read those to him. They're heavy lifting for toddlers — not really children's books at all or, rather, books for Victorian children, who seem to have been a more patient and attentive lot. Didn't matter; Ross enjoyed them.
     And so did I. I want to be sure that I don't cast reading to him as some sort of parental sacrifice. It wasn't. I loved it. The ritual, getting ourselves settled, cracking the book to the place where we left off, the rhythm of reading, interrupted by questions, using different voices for the characters. I did a great Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter books, gruff and snarling, "Constant vigilance!"
     Loved it. That's pretty much true for the entire parenting process; I see that now that the boys are both setting themselves in a runner's crouch, in the blocks, waiting for the starting gun to leap up and race off into their own lives, college and careers. 
      I'm lucky that way. Parenthood is hard enough when you love it. But I like to talk and I like to read and I like to experience new things, activities all the more sweet when you have  someone to do them with.
     After Alice I and II, it was adventure books, at first: Treasure Island — the dialect made it hard to read — and the entire Harry Potter series, several times, because each time a new one came out we'd go back and read them again. I had resisted, assumed that anything that popular had to be crap. But they really are wonderful books, and it was a thrill to be a parent of young children while they were being written. 
 

Reading 'The Odyssey,' summer 2005.

   As he got older, we turned classical. Seamus Heany's excellent Beowulf. Then the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid—the beautiful translations of Robert Fagles. Homer's tales are more simple, pure and true. But something about Virgil, he just packs more drama into his re-hash. There's no Trojan horse in Homer, [not true, as sharp-eyed reader Tricia Kessie of Glenview points out; in Book 8 of The Odyssey, during the song competition, the harper sings of the wooden horse, briefly] no Queen Dido, those are Virgil's additions. It's slicker, more polished, which is good and bad. Homer is to The Aeneid as Moby-Dick would be to a novel George W. Bush asked John Irving to write recasting Moby-Dick in order to better  promote New England tourism.
     As Ross got older, we got more complicated. He picked Dante's Inferno, the Robert Pinsky translation, off my office shelves -- I never would have picked it myself. I had read it when I was 35, didn't think much of it. I argued, but he persisted, as he tends to do, and I shrugged and went along -- we began reading it on the shores of Lake Michigan, at a friend's place in Michigan City. 
     The book had done little for me before, but when I was 46, however, having been through the mill, my outlook had changed, and I liked it immensely, as did he. So much so that he insisted we read Robert and Jean Hollander's translation of Purgatorio and Paradiso, the second and third volumes of the trilogy. If I said we had some wonderful laughs reading those, would you believe me? We did. Beatrice is such a scold. 
     We only abandoned two -- Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It was so bleak, so psychological. We just ran out of steam, cast the book aside. I almost suggested Lord Jim, but that's a slog, with more homoerotic overtones than I felt like delving into. I guess we also quit Remembrance of Things Past, but so early on, probably within 15 minutes, that it hardly counts. Not because it was dull, I believe. The length daunted him. 
     I wanted to read Don Quixote, because I never have. But he nixed that idea. For the past ... gee... three or four or five years, it's been Tolstoy's War and Peace, a vivid translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I liked that it included the French; 3 percent of the novel is in French, with the Russian aristocrats would speak. I'd read the French and then translate, which was good for him, because he's studying it.
     The secret about War and Peace is it's not boring; it's thrilling. It's the original romance novel: with war and, umm, peace, love, plus cameos by famous characters. When a horse comes snorting and foaming and sidestepping into a scene, you are reminded that Tolstoy had a farm, and knew horses.
      We would have finished it long ago, but the pattern was for me to read to him before he went to bed, and for the longest time he stays up later than me.
     But we're nearly done -- some 30 pages from the end. It seems like we've been 30 pages from the end for a year, if not two. True, the characters fade from view as Tolstoy prattles on about history and the book falls apart at the end. Rather like Tolstoy himself. Maybe I'm  rationalizing mediocrity, but it's hard to feel bad about not being Tolstoy once you realize how little being Tolstoy did for Tolstoy himself. 
     A psychologist would suggest that Ross and I don't want to finish it, neither wanting to close the door on that part of our lives. But that would be romanticizing. The truth is, he never thinks of it at all. I do, spying the thick, dog-eared volume on the coffee table shelf, and I think: Finish the damn book.
     Friday night, at dinner, he had the new New Yorker next to his plate. He never opened it, but I could tell he was eyeing it, he wanted to. "We should be able to read at dinner," he said. 
    "It's rude," my wife said.
    "Hey," I interjected, sensing an opening. "We've got to finish War and Peace."
    "Before I go to college," he promised.
     So that gives us nine months. I'll hold him to that. I do want to finish it, again. It seems only right. Even knowing that when we're done, we'll never read another book together again. Or if we do, it will be him reading to me next time. 

'Babywearing' warm and fuzzy fun until somebody gets hurt

    A newspaper is a dialogue, a chorus of voices conveying and commenting upon the news of the day.

     So I am not correcting a Thursday story in the Splash pages — “That’s a wrap” about “wearable baby carriers” — as much as continuing the conversation, elaborating on some caveats that were online but, alas, not in print, and adding a new dimension to a piece that did not, for instance, contain the phrase “baby airbag,” which my wife uses to refer to carriers.

Don't use these

      This is based on hard experience, one January day nearly 18 years ago, when she left our apartment on Pine Grove with 3-month-old Ross in one of those soft, front-facing carriers — a backpack you wear on your chest that you slide your baby into.

     She was only walking a block, to visit a friend. But it was a block of Chicago city sidewalk, with plenty of cracks and crevices, and she caught her toe on one and pitched forward, breaking her fall with her knee, an outstretched palm and our baby’s head.

     I was at home, having taken time off work to do my share of diaper changing. I don’t remember the phone call — I can’t say with any certainty whether she was composed or hysterical, though I would put my chips down on the latter.

     What I remember clearly, vividly, as if it were a scene in a black-and-white Ingmar Bergman movie, was grabbing the empty blue stroller — she must have told me to bring it — and running full bore the several blocks to St. Joseph Hospital, pushing the empty baby carriage, with no idea whether our happy little urban homestead was about to be plunged into some medical nightmare of irreparable cranial damage. 

     A slight skull fracture, which took sitting for six hours in windowless rooms for the hospital to ascertain, via X-ray and CAT scans. My wife’s main memory is of the CAT scan operator asking, “Can’t you make him hold still?” and her answering, “He’s a baby.” 

     The other moment I can recall from that day is, toward the end of our Big Hospital Day, when one of the endless series of doctors who kept hurrying into the room, burst in with a blustery, “So how’s our little patient?” to which I replied, with all the gravitas I could manage, “Doctor, he’s incontinent and babbling!” which caused a flash of concern over the physician’s face until he remembered that all 3-month-old babies are incontinent and babbling.

      Ross was fine, the shadow of fate that passed over us kept moving and darkened some other poor soul’s home.

     My wife threw the baby carrier away and became a one-woman truth squad against them. Still, because people are biased by their own experiences, I didn’t want to unfairly question baby carriers’ utility. There are risks associated with strollers, too. At crossings, there is a tendency to nudge them into the street — “testing the waters,” I call it — despite passing traffic, and I know that babies have been grievously injured that way.

     But a little checking shows the risks of baby carriers is not limited to my family. In 2010, the Consumer Product Safety Commission warned of the risk of suffocation to young infants in baby slings —14 deaths in a 20-year period, with three dying in 2009. Most were under 4 months old. 

Consumer Reports found three dozen serious injuries to babies in slings, and urged parents “Don’t use slings at all.” 

     Even the most cuddly, fuzzy mommy website about baby carriers has a list of warnings. TBW, “The Babywearer.com” warns of babies falling out of carriers and urges practice with a doll. “Most of the reported accidents involving babywearing are due to the wearer tripping and falling,” it cautions. 

     Among its suggestions:

     — Careful going through doorways.

     —Don’t cook or handle hot liquids, for obvious reasons. Mind that the tail of your baby sling doesn’t trail into flames or get stuck in closing doors.

     — Don’t wear a baby carrier in moving cars; it’s no substitute for a baby seat. “For playing sports or cycling, use your discretion: What would happen to your baby if you were knocked over?” it asks. “How much is your baby being bounced or shaken?”

      I would say “use your discretion” is a naive underestimation of just how god-awful stupid people can be, and substitute, “Never bicycle with your baby in a front carrier.” 

     I hadn’t planned on writing about baby carriers. But I felt morally obligated to inject a note of warning. Babies are resilient; they aren’t as fragile as new parents fear. But caution is still a good idea, and you can’t avoid perils you don’t know about.