Time to call the Redskins something else

    Tucked into the back of our downstairs medicine cabinet is my secret shame. A tube of "Darkie" toothpaste, bought in Thailand in the late 1980s on a lark and kept, well, as an oddity, because you aren't going to be able to find it again. Maybe I figured it would come in helpful, as a metaphor.
      Times change. You can't buy Darkie toothpaste anymore, even in Thailand. Where once we decorated our lawns with grinning jockeys, and laughed at the exaggerated gay neighbor characters on TV, lisping and mincing their way to help advance the plot, those cliches got stripped away, along with comic postcards showed hook-nosed Jews kwelling about such a bargain and comedians pretending to be Asian by squinting and talking in a chop-suey accent.
       Swept away.
       Sure, at times it felt like a loss. It's hard to know where to draw the line. Was the Lyric Opera right to take "the n-word" —I hate that term, but it seems necessary—out of "Porgy and Bess"? Well they didn't. That was librettist Ira Gershwin, who removed it in 1954. Was the Sun-Times right to forbid me from mentioning the exact word that was taken out in an article about the opera? Does that mean we should remove the word from from Huck Finn as well? What if it bothers people? I would say "No fucking way," but then I'm not black, and I'm a writer, and tend to be sensitive about allowing anybody who claims offense to edit my stuff. History's a nasty place, and I can't see the value of prettying it up so nobody trips over something that makes them think.
      If we let people pluck the stuff out of culture they don't like, we're going to be left with ... well, not much. 
      But history is not the present. Wal-Mart couldn't get away with Darkie toothpaste, and few would want it to. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Wednesday cancelled federal trademark protection to the name "Washington Redskins," because the name is "disparaging to Native-Americans." Hard to argue that. It's a ruling of huge consequence—probably the end of the team name, though perhaps not. An NBC Sports analysis—"That would mean all those Redskins shirts and hats and other officially licensed gear would no longer need to be officially licensed. It could be sold anywhere, by anyone"—made me think, "You mean that isn't the case already?"
     I would imagine the Redskins management would hold out, for a while, out of pure rich guy contrariety.  But the writing is now on the wall.
     Is that good? 
     Would you want the copyright office to, oh, yank the copyright of Richard Wright's Native Son. I'm sure lots of readers find Bigger Thomas "disparaging" to African-Americans. Is that next?
     On one hand, you have to worry when a group of protesters get to seize somebody else's brand, built up over decades. Native-Americans, like any group, are not a solid block of unanimity. The New Yorker attended a powwow in Brooklyn for the Talk of the Town this week and had no trouble finding actual Native-Americans who support the name.  This is like Donald Sterling losing his team over an angry slur—quite a change over how it used to be, and perhaps an over-compensation.
      On the other, any business, when a brand becomes a liability, changes that brand. Jays Potato Chips was Japp's Potato Chips until Pearl Harbor. Aunt Jemima had her hair in a do-rag until the 1980s, when suddenly having a plantation mammy selling your waffles was out-of-step and she got a 'fro. For years, I was all for keeping Chief Illiniwek, the University of Illinois mascot, far less noxious than the term "Redskins." But there came a point when it was distracting attention from the sports program, and he had to go. The games still get played, and people attend.
     The wonder with these professional sports mascots is not that they're being pushed out now, but that they lasted this long. Then again, professional sports tends to be a cultural backwater lagging years behind society at large: look at the to-do over a gay NFL draftee, the sort of fuss the media would make over a gay postman in 1972.
     Teams change their mascots all the time. You can list the vanished team names all day long—from the Atlanta Flames to the Seattle Pilots. The question is: at what point does a sports franchise make the change to stop the steady drip-drip-drip of opposition? It's a shame the government had to be the one to push them—true, it's not a First Amendment issue. You don't have a constitutional right to a trademark. But it's a worrisome precedent that places a supposedly neutral government agency in the role of arbitrating what is culturally acceptable and what is not.
      That said, losing its trademark protection seems a good moment to at least seriously consider taking the plunge. It's time.

With the Heat beat, we turn to—gulp—World Cup soccer

     Basketball season ended Sunday with another satisfying blowout of the Miami Heat by the superlative San Antonio Spurs. Though I’d have much preferred that fate had chosen the Bulls to dominate and humiliate LeBron James et al, at least somebody beat the Heat.

     My family watched, of course, the on-court proceedings enlivened by the by-now ritualistic banter between my younger son and myself as we took every opportunity to gleefully excoriate James as a flopper and a crybaby, a quitter and a showboat, even though he was the only player on his team who seemed to be trying. Our calumny was made even sweeter by the sincere protests of my wife, who seems to think that James somehow hears and feels sad whenever any fan anywhere says anything bad about him.

     At least her inexplicable sympathy was limited to James. She had no problem condemning Chris Anderson. Whenever the heavily tattooed “Birdman” appeared, she or I, or both, announced severely, “I hate that Birdman.” Appearance bias, I know, but when you tattoo your neck, people judge you unkindly. Maybe in 2034 they won’t. But it is not 2034 yet. Don’t blame me for saying it.

     I calculated when basketball will return — late October, when our hearts and hopes will congregate around Derrick Rose’s right knee — and set my mental sports clock to wake me up then. The idea of now starting to follow baseball is unimaginable. I go to baseball games the way some people visit parks, to enjoy the sunshine. Keeping track of baseball would be like reading park district reports that keep track of their trees.

     So imagine my surprise Monday to see the gigantic flat screen in our family room displaying a bright green soccer field.

     “The United States is playing Ghana,” my younger son informed me. “We scored in the first 30 seconds. Wanna watch?”
     God no, I thought, but managed not to say aloud. Really? Soccer? Is it that bad, son? Poor boy. The NBA goes dormant and within hours you resort to soccer, like a thirsty man sucking pebbles in the desert.
     But I try to be an open and receptive dad, so I paused to watch with him a moment.
     "This is sort of like hockey on grass," I said. "More like foosball with people," my older son chimed in.  
     Later, trying to make some kind of soccer conversation, I pointed out that the World Cup was held in Chicago in 1996 (actually it was 1994, but close enough).
     "Did you go?" my younger boy asked, sharply. The question caught me off guard.
     Did I go? Of course I didn't go. I never thought of going, merely noted the bands of soccer addicts, with their flags and their horns, marching along Columbus Drive. I sensed the trap even as I fell in.
     "Well, your brother was an infant," I began, a paltry excuse that would have been valid for 1996 but not 1994. Too late. I saw, reflected in his face, my mother, setting down her iron when my sister asked what she had thought of the Beatles in their heyday. "My children were very young," she sighed. Or my father, the NASA scientist, when I demanded to know why he passed on chances to go watch the space shuttle launch. "It wasn't my program . . . " For the first time, I wished I had gone to a soccer game, just so I could someday tell my as-yet-unborn son that I had.
     All fathers look like drudges in their sons' eyes: blinders on, pulling the plow while life's carnival of wonder passes, almost unobserved, all around them. All around us.
     You know what? Soccer looks really good on a gigantic HDTV flat screen. You can actually see what's happening. It is not outside of reason to imagine that this change in technology — cheap, giant, flat screens — will be the long-awaited spark that the sport was always lacking in this country. Kids play soccer in schoolyards across America. Maybe now, at last, we'll start watching the pros play, too.
     After all, technology drives these things. Football was mostly a college phenomenon until color TV injected pro ball directly into the hearts of mainstream America.
     While still a mystery to me, I suspect there might be a value to soccer, and I'll tell you why: The rest of the world loves it. America has a genius for rejecting things that much of the globe embraces — think national health care or humane prison systems. We should force ourselves to be open to the possibility that, if the world accepts an endeavor, it might actually have benefits beyond our immediate comprehension. So I am going to watch this soccer stuff. Who knows? Maybe the world is onto something.

A meatloafy kind of glory

     What are we doing when we take photographs of our food?
     Bragging, obviously, since such shots are intended to be posted on Facebook and tweeted on Twitter, tumbled through Tumblr and pinned on Pinterest and a half dozen other networks I can't think of right now. 
     We do so to say, "Hey, I'm eating this good stuff, at this trendy hotspot."
     I try not to do that. 
     Not because I'm reluctant to brag. I've got that down to a science. Rather, I have difficulty snapping the picture. There is something low-rent about photographing your food in restaurant. It's akin to eating with your hands, or filling your pockets with bread. Just as you should win as if you've won before, so you should eat in a restaurant as if you've eaten out before. 
     Plus, if you think about poking around on Facebook, you never come to some food shot and think, "Wow, that looks GREAT; I better go eat there right away." We tend to ignore those photos, and just as well, if we can give any credence to a Brigham Young University study, that last fall suggested that looking at photos of food blunted our enjoyment of eating, since our tastebuds became dulled by just the sight of food. 
     Actually, now that I think of it, we tend to ignore, or overlook, or miss, the vast majority of everything online. When the history of social media is written, I'm afraid it's going to be the story of a lot of people talking to themselves in cyberspace.
     So I try to eat my food, not photograph it. But sometimes I give in, sometimes I feel I have to, not because the food is so good, or the place so trendy, but because the meal just looks so beautiful, like this plate of meatloaf, whipped potatoes and peas and carrots at the County Clare, a lovely pub and restaurant near the art museum in Milwaukee.
      It wasn't even my meal, but Ross's. As soon as it was set down I whipped out my phone and fired off a shot.
     What made it beautiful? The colors, to start, I suppose, the rich reddish brown of the sauce on the meatloaf, the green and orange peas and carrots, the delicate waves of the potatoes. But more. A certain serenity, a quiet, an innocence, if a plate of meatloaf and potatoes can be said to be innocent. And perhaps it can, it does have its own perfection. The classic meal. Meat and potatoes, literally. A sort of repose. In a moment if would be cut up and chewed over, down the pipe and on its way into something much, much less beautiful. 
      As are we all. 
      But before the inevitable arrives, I captured them at their zenith, their pinnacle, and saved them, basking in their glory, albeit a meatloafy kind of glory.  

500 women, 1000 pounds of flour, and me

   You can’t assume things in this job. I’d like to pretend that of course everybody knows challah is a rich, dense, slightly sweet, often braided egg bread, that it entered American consciousness years ago, along with bagels and gefilte fish and other Jewish foodstuffs. But the truth is, some readers probably have no clue, probably would pronounce the word with a hard “ch,” like “choice” —“CHallah”—instead of the back-of-the-throat scraping H so prevalent in Hebrew, Arabic and other languages where spitting is an essential aspect of communication. So I really must explain challah.

     Which I just did, except for the obvious: that challah is really good — think of how fantastic fresh homemade bread tastes. Challah is even better. Once I stopped at Tel-Aviv Kosher Bakery on Devon, and even though I had no plan to buy challah, it was just coming out of the oven, and once that aroma hooked its fingers under my nose, I had to follow, had to buy a loaf, in the naive belief it would last until I drove home. It didn’t, beyond a tiny, pathetic, scrap.

     Which is a long way of saying that when Chicago’s Lubavitch Chabad had its Mega Challah Bake at the Holiday Inn in Skokie last week, I was there, drawn not only by the siren lure of challah, but by the fact that they assembled 500, count ’em, 500 women to make dough. A lot of women.

     It did not start well for me, as not only the sole representative of the media, but the only man in the room. The first several women I went up to, trying to do the whole tell-me-about-what’s-going-on thing that we media jackals are so fond of, briskly directed me to someone else who didn’t want to talk either, and I was at the point of giving up and fleeing into the night when I encountered Mina Schanowitz, of Deerfield by way of Paris who, perhaps being French, was able to overcome her reluctance to speak to a man to whom she was not married.

     “It’s a very special thing, being together, because the power of prayer is strong,” she said. Has she baked challah before?

    “Of course. I do it every week,” she said. Though like much of what Chabad does, the event was designed to attract the unfamiliar.

     "A lot of women who will come tonight never braid challah," she said. "For a lot of people, that will be a new thing."
     According to tradition, baking challah is one of the three mitzvot - blessings - expected of Jewish women, along with lighting Sabbath candles observing the purity laws associated with mikvah, or ritual bathing.
     The event was conceived by the family of Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, the late leader of the Lubavitch in Illinois, who died unexpectedly after a minor medical procedure March 4, and would have turned 60 last week.
     Others came because of an aura of good fortune associated with preparing challah.
     "I have a son I want to marry [off]," said Rivkah Leah Bernath, 47, who is a member of the Chabad Shidduch Group - a network of matchmakers - and said that many people were there to tap the power of challah.
     "Some people have a sick one, some people want to marry someone," she said, "Some want to get married themselves. Some people are looking for a job. Everybody has a different reason. Some are doing it because they loved Rabbi Moscowitz and want to honor him."
     Each participant paid $25, underwriting the night's considerable logistics: 47 gallons of water; 16 cups of salt; 250 cups of sugar; 31 cups of yeast; 1,000 pounds of flour; 8 gallons of oil, 45 dozen eggs, not to mention 500 bowls and aprons, divided into 500 portions by students at the Lubavitch girls high school, part of a chain of volunteers, including 50 captains, one per table.
     "Oh my goodness, dozens and dozens and dozens of people," said Sara Moscowitz, a daughter-in-law, who practiced demonstrating braiding techniques the night before using Play-Doh. There was a spoons and bowls committee, a committee for aprons, an ingredients committee, a centerpiece committee, a recipe committee and a committee of volunteers enlisting more volunteers.
     "I have close to a dozen committees just to make sure everything is done," said Moscowitz. "Subcommittee upon subcommittee," added Yona Posner. "It really was a community group effort."
     The women assembled the ingredients, kneaded dough, then braided it. While the dough rose, they heard a brief concert. To my disappointment, they took the dough home to bake. All that and I didn't even get a taste. But those ferrying challah home agreed it was, for them, a lovely experience.
     "It's just a good time," said Moscowitz. "Who doesn't love warm pretty bread that tastes good?"

"I wondered what I wanted out of this trip"

     Father's Day.  

      Like many men my age, I am sandwiched between two generations. Prompted by the holiday, I can either look to my own children, or to my dad, 81 and living in Boulder, Colorado.  

     I'm thinking more of my father lately--I just saw the old commander a few weeks back, when my oldest boy graduated from high school.  

     Then in a bookstore Saturday, I came upon a copy of Bowditch's "The American Practical Navigator," a thick nautical reference. "I read this on the ship," I told my wife, and suddenly I was sailing the Empire State.
      You might not know it, but I wrote a book about my dad.  No reason that you would: the thing sold 2,000 copies, maybe. Sank like a stone. I don't talk about it much. Frankly, I don't think about it much. It was 15 years ago that we crossed the Atlantic together on his old ship, the Empire State, run by the State University of New York Maritime College, used to train cadets. 
     In 2002, my book about it came out, "Don't Give Up the Ship." I had high hopes for the book--unlike all these feel-good dad and lad adventures, this was a challenging tale without the classic epiphanies or happy ending. I thought people would relate to its very human messiness. 
    Instead we annoyed people. "I found these two men highly irritating" said the critic for UPI, which nevertheless had picked it as "Book of the Week." 
      Yeah, well, hard to argue that one. But you have to be who you are, and you have to dance with who brung ya.  I thought, in honor of the holiday, I would drag out this excerpt, which ran in the Sun-Times. Happy Father's Day, if possible.

     The big morning finally arrived. My father and I did our sweeping checks of the room, the "V.I.P. Suite" at the State University of New York's Maritime College in the Bronx. Thin industrial carpeting over a concrete floor, nautical prints, spartan, sturdy furniture; a state college's idea of luxury. We peered under beds, searched every drawer and closet, even those we had never used, not wanting to leave anything behind, trying to be smart and thorough.

     We wheeled our suitcases into the bright 7 a.m. mid-May sunshine and across the Maritime campus. Mostly 1950s brick buildings, square and charmless, in the shadow of the Throg's Neck Bridge, but also Fort Schuyler, an 1830s pentagonal stone structure built to defend the Hell Gate against the British, with thick walls and gun slits and a parade ground. We walked toward the Empire State--our ship, for the next month, sailing down the coast to the Caribbean and then across the Atlantic to Italy-- gleaming white at the pier.

     The pier was hectic with a festive, pre-summer-camp sort of commotion, busy with families, girlfriends, boyfriends and cadets--trim teens in bright white shirts and dark navy pants, their "salt and pepper'' uniforms. They towered over their parents. Mothers held bunches of balloons. Fathers lugged big portable coolers, cases of soda, cases of juice. I worried that we were unprepared--we had no juice--and puzzled over the balloons. At least a dozen families had brought bunches of them. They seemed an odd, child's-birthday-party touch.

     My father stopped short and I ran thud into him. Like a vaudeville act. Disentangling ourselves and our rolling luggage, I wondered, "Is this how it's going to be? Frick and Frack?" I looked around to see if anybody noticed.

     Turning onto Dock 19, where the ship was tied up, I saw that the dock was named for A.F. Olivet, the no-nonsense captain during my father's cruises. I paused to make note of that, and of the dinghies moored under a protective wooden roof leading to the ship--they had bold, forward-straining names: Courageous, Freedom, America, Magic.

     Looking up, I saw that my father, the good New Yorker, had kept walking. I called to him--"Dad! Wait!"--and he turned. "I'll go slow," he shouted back. But he didn't go slow. He strode toward the ship. I hurried after him, the luggage wheels humming against the concrete.

     I got alongside the ship, almost to the gangway, just in time to see him go up without me, lugging his suitcase, a wide smile spread across his face. He said something pleasant to the officer at the top of the gangway and disappeared inside the Empire State. I stood on the pier a moment, shocked, then raced after him, hefting my suitcase in both hands and clattering up the awkward low metal steps. After months of arranging--the conversations, the phone calls, the formal letters, the visits--I had figured that our boarding the ship would be an obvious moment of high drama: an exchange of loving glances, a pat on the back, a shy filial smile, a fatherly ruffle of the hair, a deep breath and up we go together, arms linked. Ta-daaaaaaaah!

     Not in this life.

     "What's your hurry, sailor?" I hissed, out of breath, catching up to him at the cabin, C1, marked by a note card reading "Mr. Stienburg Sr." and "Mr. Stienburg Jr."

      He offered this explanation: he wanted to get his suitcase aboard before the tide came in, raising the angle of the gangway, making it more difficult to walk up. He actually said this. Stunned, I turned away, puzzling whether his excuse was a mountainous lie or, worse, a sincere delusion.

     I stood in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror: how was I going to do this? Six weeks with my father. A month at sea, then 10 days in Italy. We'd kill each other. Or I'd kill him. Or myself. Or he'd kill me. One way or another, somebody was going to be killed.

     Then the anger, a hot fluid at the back of my brain, drained away and I almost laughed--the tide; so ridiculous--and I remembered that, up to this moment, I had been genuinely worried my father wouldn't get on the ship at all. That despite his promises, when the moment finally came, he would freeze up on the gangway. Many times I had imagined, not entirely without pleasure, him grasping the handrails, white knuckled, rigid, me behind him, ramming the heel of my hand into the small of his back, forcing him forward. "Get on the goddamn ship, dad!"

     That had been the preconception. The reality was 180 degrees opposite. Instead of hanging back, fearful, needing a shove, he had raced ahead, excited, forgetting all about me. Realizing this shocked away the anger. It struck me that, after all these years, I didn't know my father at all. Not a bit.

     We stowed our luggage in the cabin. When we had seen it for the first time, the night before, it had seemed huge. But now it looked very small. Two single beds, bolted to the floor, 19 inches apart. Between them, a single square window, facing forward, offering the vista of the foredeck, nearly the length and breadth of a football field. The window couldn't open.

     I set my laptop computer on the desk. The newspaper had refused to grant me the leave I requested. Instead, they insisted I file my column from the sea. Not exactly convenient. Still, given how I had botched my request, I was relieved they let me go at all.

     Newspaper editors-in-chief are not famous for their bonhomie, and my boss at the time at the Sun-Times, Nigel Wade, was perhaps more aloof than most. A large, ruddy, well-tailored New Zealander with a dramatic head of silvery hair, he was not given to long, friendly exchanges with the staff. Or even short, friendly exchanges.

     Granted, it would have been difficult to pick a worse moment to bring up the trip. I had written a column about not having an idea for a column--something I thought was very hip, very Seinfeld, and also happened to be true, always a plus in journalism. I enjoyed puncturing the notion of columnist-as-infallible-font-of-endless-wisdom, and admired the portrait I painted of myself slumped before the computer, mouth open, head empty. "This must be what stupid people feel like all the time," I wrote.

     Nigel hated it. "If you can't think of an idea for your coh-lum, then perhaps you should not be writing a coh-lum," he said, after I was summoned to his office for a chewing out. At first I bristled--the column did have an idea behind it: not having an idea for a column. He just didn't like my argument, didn't like the suggestion that some days there is no wisdom to sell for 35 cents. That didn't go over well either. I tried a second approach: I was tired, working very hard, maybe the grind was getting to me, but I certainly still had something left to say. He liked that better. I was off the hook. The flames died down, we entered in that phase of relaxation that comes after a tense talk; the raking of embers, decompressing back into the workday, when I unwisely said something along the lines of: Besides, I've got this ocean voyage with my dad coming up, will need to take off a few months from work, and that should give me a chance to recharge my batteries.

     What could I have been expecting? "A nautical adventure? Jolly good! Splendid. Just the medicine for you. Don't know why you waste your time on all this newspaper nonsense anyway. We must lift a few brandies at the 410 Club before you sail."

     The actuality was different.

     "Fuck off then!' Nigel shouted, leaping up and waving me toward the door. "Fuck off! Get out of here!" I fled, backing out of the office, babbling apologies, hands spread in defensive entreaty, almost bowing. Not the heigh-ho send-off I might have hoped for.

     Just before the Empire State sailed, my father and I went back down to the pier, to walk around on land one last time, more relaxed, without the physical and psychological burden of our luggage. People were hugging. A girl sat on the low concrete wall by the water and wept. Their own stories being forged, I thought. Would their unborn children someday be drawn to the sea after them, sucked into the vortex of their parents' romantic notions? I sent a mental message of solidarity to those unborn voyagers--good luck, kiddos, I'm with you!

     Departure approached, and we went back aboard, together. Officials from the college, alumni, all sorts of people crowded the officer's lounge on the cabin deck and along the rails outside, picking at cheese and pretzels, a cocktail party without the cocktails. Joe Gerson, a spry old gent in a baseball cap emblazoned "EMPIRE STATE--1949-1999" had been on my father's cruises, and knew a lot of the same people, such as third mate Bill Hawley.

     "Bill Hawley was my rabbi," Gerson said. "He was a great guy. He was my rabbi, Mr. Hawley. Without Bill Hawley I would never have made it. I remember him telling me as if it were today: 'Every stevedore carries a tin cup. Have a drink with him. You'll get more with a little booze than with the vinegar. Remember: be a Third Mate and act the part. Always be in the swim. Never be out of the swim. . . .'"

     At that moment, the ship's horn blasted and the pier began to move away. I checked my watch: 10 a.m. We were leaving. I clanged up the metal stairway to the bridge and scanned the huge crowd lining the shore. Admiral David C. Brown, the head of the school, was leaning against the rail, watching the fort recede. "You will notice," he observed, "that the ship left promptly at 10 a.m."

     I nodded, thinking: A complete anti-climax. The second dramatic high point of the morning shot to hell. I didn't even know where my father was at the moment. That's why it is bad to anticipate. The times you imagine are going to be significant fall flat, while excitement boils up where it isn't expected. Whatever this trip is going to offer, I thought, won't be in the departure. Still, I kept my eyes on the skyline of New York City as it fell away, feeling very much out of the swim, wondering how things would be by the time Charleston--our first stop--loomed into sight. The people on the dock were tiny dots, interrupted by bunches of balloons. That's what the balloons were for: so those on board could spot their families and loved ones, could cling to the sight of them as long as possible as the ship sailed away.

     All the first day, my father and I explored the ship, at first together, and then splitting up. Living in a world of general flimsiness, of thin sheet metal and plastic bumpers, all designed to just barely work and no more, I found a real thrill in the overengineering of a ship, basically a 50-story building designed to lie on its side and be pounded by the might of the ocean.

     I wandered, delighting in just how solid everything was. In the bow, twin capstans to pull up the anchors--a pair of 12,000 pound, two-pronged black monsters. The capstans were huge spools, three feet wide and made of a brass alloy that you could tell, just by tapping with a knuckle, were something far denser and stronger than the fragile substances typically encountered on shore.

     The links of the anchor chain were eight inches long, shaped like the numeral 8, the center stud to prevent tangling. Bolts as thick as forearms were secured by nuts as big as fists.

     I went to the bridge, a wide, shallow room at the top of the ship, glassed in on three sides.

     A cadet stood at the helm, which was not a grand wooden spoked wheel like in the pirate movies, but small, the size of a dinner plate. The tiny wheel lent a certain air of delicacy to the act of piloting the ship, like an immense chef cracking a quail's egg. Other cadets--maybe half a dozen--stood at charts and at the two new, colorful Raytheon radar stations. I slipped behind the helmsman and watched, quietly.

     Perhaps 15 seconds later, my father appeared in the starboard doorway, a look of concern etched on his face. I smiled at him. He made an abrupt, "come here" gesture. I went there.

     "You're on the bridge," he whispered, deadly earnest.

     "I know," I whispered back. "That's where I can see what's going on."

     "The captain won't like it," my father warned.    

     "Let's see," I said. I turned around and walked over to the man who was obviously Captain Joseph Ahlstrom--the tall, pleasant-faced officer with sandy hair whom everybody was listening to. I introduced myself. We shook hands. "Do you mind if I'm on the bridge?" I said.

     "Make yourself at home," the captain said, in a strong Staten Island accent. Flashing my father an "easy-as-pie" shrug, I returned to my spot behind the helm. When I next looked in my father's direction, he was gone.

     It took a while for my father to actually step inside the bridge, and when he did, he ventured in tentatively, as if expecting snakes. It was a different world than when he was a sailor, and he never quite adjusted to it.

     I left the bridge and returned to wandering, stepping through high doorways, over chains. At the very end of the ship--the stern--I stood on the fantail and watched the foamy white trail of the ship bubbling back fast, spreading behind the ship. A cadet always stood watch at the stern, on the platform above the supply house, facing backward, to make sure some careless faster ship didn't sneak up on the Empire State, unnoticed, and ram her.

     That, and as a final, desperate hope to anybody who fell overboard. I studied the churning surf passing behind the ship, focusing on a particular bit of foam and counting. It moved away fast. You'd have about five seconds to catch that lookout's attention. Then it would just be you, alone, in the vast, wide, deep ocean.

     I wondered what I wanted out of this trip. People do not change. I firmly believed that. My father and I would come to no understandings. The past would remain enigmatic. Nothing would be solved. No hugs at the happy ending, eyes wet with love and reconciliation. No epiphanies. No life's lessons learned. We would end up, I was certain, exactly as we began, shaking our fists at each other as the taxicabs screeched away in opposite directions.

     That's what I told myself. But it was a lie, a protective fiction, concocted to soften the impact of what I feared would happen to my unspoken hopes. In my secret heart, I wanted everything to work out. To salve the old wounds, to discover something new, to find some better, more genuine father beneath the one I knew too well, to craft myself into the son he truly wanted. I was a fool and, like most fools, believed that I was wise.

From Don't Give Up the Ship by Neil Steinberg. Copyright 2002 by Neil Steinberg. Reprinted by arrangement with Ballantine Books, a division of Random House Inc.

You can buy the book online for a penny, $4 total, delivered, if you include the $3.99 shipping, on Amazon, by clicking here. 

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

    Today is Flag Day.
    Happy Flag Day.
    Not the most popular holiday.
    Kind of a low rent, odd man out banner festival jammed between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. 
    Three patriotic holidays in the space of five and a half weeks.
    Quite a lot, really.
    Four, if you count June 6, the anniversary of D-Day, which is practically a holiday, and certainly carries more emotional heft than Flag Day. 
    Most days do.
    Makes sense that one would get the short shrift.
    Flag Day is not a federal holiday. It celebrates...for those who notice...the adoption of the United States flag on June 14, 1777 by the Second Continental Congress. Though not of course this particular flag, not the current flag, with its 50 five-pointed stars, one for each state. That only dates to 1959, when Hawaii and Alaska entered the union. 
    The original 1777 resolution reads:
    “Resolved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.”
    That flag looks like this:

    So not the biggest deal, as far as holidays go. Sort of an Arbor Day level holiday but for flags instead of trees. Beer companies don't even notice it. 
    No Flag Day picnics. No greeting cards. You don't get the day off of work.
    A few stores have sales, I suppose.
    And the only only obligation to fly the flag.
    Which the vast majority of folks don't bother to do.
    I am not one of those folks.
    I actually look forward to Flag Day.
    Because I have a flag. 
    That I love to fly.
    I'd keep it out all the time. 
    But then flying it wouldn't be special.
    So I hold back and fly it whenever I can.
    Such as on Flag Day.
    I tend to notice flags too.
    Like this enormous beauty, hanging properly—the union to the left, I checked—in...well, a public space in Chicago.
    Frankly, I figured readers will ID the spot immediately.
    But I like the picture, so decided to use it anyway. Today being both Flag Day and a Saturday, when my Where IS This contest runs. 
    Besides, given how photos I'm sure will stump people get guessed quickly, maybe, in that perverse way life has, the one that seems obvious to me will leave you scratching your heads.
     Maybe not.
     Make sure to post your guesses in the comments section below. 
     The winner will receive ... what? ... I'm getting tired of handing out posters and copies of my books. 
     How about someone else's book? 
     How about a copy of First Son: The Biography of Richard M. Daley, by Keith Koeneman, published by the University of Chicago Press. It's about Rich Daley, but no book is perfect. 
      I have an extra copy that's yours, if you guess correctly.
      Good luck.   
       

Not an "issue," a "traffic snarl from hell"

     In the name of all that is holy, STAY OFF THE KENNEDY EXPRESSWAY for the next three weekends! That is, unless you want to be plunged into a TRAFFIC JAM NIGHTMARE HORROR beyond your worst imaginings!!!

     Not that state officials will put it that way.

     “The city of Chicago is still open for business,” enthused Ann Schneider, secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, at a press conference at IDOT’s emergency center at 35th and Normal on Tuesday. “People should, when they make their travel plans for these weekends, make sure they do so understanding there’s going to be some traffic issues. For sure, definitely understand that the city is open for business.”

     Translation: Part of the monolithic Ontario Street bridge, built in 1959, over the Kennedy Expressway is being demolished. Beginning at 10 p.m. Friday the clotted-on-a-good-day five lanes of the Kennedy will go down to a sclerotic two lanes, with speed limits of 10 to 15 mph, in theory, exiting at Ohio, executing a hairpin turn, and returning to the highway, eventually. While the $16.5 million project is underway, chamber of commerce types want you to fight your way into the city to stores. If you must, DON’T FOR ANY REASON DRIVE DOWNTOWN DURING THE WEEKENDS OF JUNE 13, 20 AND 27!!!!!

     In a strange marriage of traffic warning and tourist board puffery, state officials listed the two dozen special events taking place in the midst of this construction, from the Chicago Blues Fest, the Gay Pride Parade and the Gospel Music Festival.

     The bridge is a relic of 1950s gigantism, making it even harder to remove.

     “It was poured in one piece and, because of that, it has to be removed as one unit,” said Sarah Wilson, a bridge maintenance engineer at IDOT. She said that because of deterioration of the bridge, traffic has been restricted to the legal load limit of 40 tons four years ago — as opposed to allowing heavier loads by permit — and if the bridge wasn’t replaced, they’d eventually have to ban trucks from the Kennedy. “This is a safety issue in terms of getting this very old structure demolished and out of the way.”

     “Issue” was definitely the term of the day, along with “challenge.” But it is an indication of just what a SNARLED CREEPING ORDEAL OF MISERABLE MOTIONLESSNESS anyone entering the Kennedy during that time will face during that the dreaded p-word — “problem” was almost uttered.
     "That is a pro . . ." Schneider began when a reporter asked what would become of their schedule if it rains in June (average rainfall in Chicago in June: 3.45 inches, more than in April or November), before catching herself.
      "That is a challenge for us," she said. "There is the potential that the weather could delay some of this."
     Another issue will be the 260,000 cars that daily use the Kennedy pouring onto side streets, and state officials warn bicyclists to TAKE EXTRA CARE THAT THEY ARE NOT KILLED by frustrated drivers, though of course not in those words either.
     "Bicyclists are also urged to be aware that there will be additional traffic on arterial streets, and like motorists, are encouraged to plan accordingly," IDOT suggested in a press release.
     (Seasoned commuters know there's a slim chance that so many will be scared off the Kennedy that, at times, those few brave souls who hazard traveling it will find driving a breeze, at least until everyone else realizes the other guy is avoiding it, flooding back, jamming the thing totally).
     "Make no mistake, the city is open for business," echoed Gary Schenkel, executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communication. "There is no place like Chicago in the summer, after the long winter . . . " (It must be Rahm's tireless civic ballyhoo; it infects people) " . . . so whether you are planning to attend our festivals, special events, beaches, ballgames, shopping dining downtown or in our neighborhoods, we are asking motorists to plan accordingly and to cooperate with IDOT's request to use alternate routes and public transportation over the next three weekends . . . there are increased public transportation options for those who want to take advantage of all this world-class city has to offer."
     Translation: Take the train, if you can find a place to stand. Otherwise, have you considered visiting beautiful Milwaukee? Our neighbor to the north has a fine art museum and lovely lakefront. Just 90 minutes away, assuming YOU DON'T FOOLISHLY TRY TO TAKE THE KENNEDY THROUGH DOWNTOWN TO GET THERE!!!