The pen and the wrench

    My wife is busily equipping our older boy for his relocation to college at the end of next month, packing boxes to be shipped off to California. While I have been urging her to practice what I call the Buy-Things-There method—they have Targets and Office Depots in Los Angeles—the fact is there's only a day or two after he arrives before he has to start classes, so in practice, my philosophy will be refined to Buy-Big-Heavy-Things-There.
     Thus my wife showed off this little mesh cup filled with pens, which she was charmed with for its beginning-life-afresh quality. "I bought him this metal cup!" she announced, proudly. I admired it, but noticed that one of the pens was very different than the others—positively wrench-like.
     "I got it at the dollar store," she explained. "The college recommends you provide them with simple tools. I got him a screwdriver too."
     To be honest, I can't imagine a circumstance where my scholar would be prompted to tighten a bolt. I'm not sure he knows what bolts are or that they occasionally need to be tightened. My fault. Still, I was pleased that she had included the wrench, and double pleased with its juxtaposition among the pens. As somebody who manipulates words and thoughts for a living, I have a natural affinity for the nuts-and-bolts physical world, and believe that our general praise for academic excellence we sometimes give the realm of tangible stuff short shrift. I have heard many, many kids, including, sadly, my own, brag about their good grades, but very few—okay, none—brag about building a good chair. I don't know if he'll ever use the little wrench in his cup of pens, but I'm glad it'll be sitting there when school starts, reminding him, subtly, of the quiet, unassuming presence of objects.
     "You're your father's daughter," I said to my wife, a high compliment. I was thinking of 14 years ago, when we bought the house. Her father showed up out of the blue, and gave me a gift. It was a cordless electric drill, the first I ever had. What, I remember thinking, is this for? It wasn't my birthday, it wasn't a housewarming gift. It wasn't wrapped. It was, he knew and I found out, something I would need, a lot. Most practical gift anyone ever gave me, I used it continually for a decade until the drill eventually expired in my hands. My wife cried when we got rid of it. I bought another just like it, because I knew, every homeowner needs a cordless electric drill. 
     Love is many things, but giving people the tools they'll need before they need them is as good a definition as any.

All told, I prefer my wasps as metaphor

     I’m a cautious person, so nothing bad ever happens to me.
     Mostly.
     I’ve never broken my arm. I’ve never lost my wallet, or accidentally set myself on fire, or any of the accidents and happenstance that seem to afflict so many people.
     I’ve developed rituals to help prevent bad things from happening. Stepping out a cab I pause before closing the door and scan the seat, to see if I’ve left anything behind. I suppose that creates a different risk—the cabbie driving away while I’m holding the door, tearing my fingers off, a reminder that trying to skirt one peril sometimes puts you in the path of a worse one, like somebody who jumps away from a speeding bicyclist into the path of a truck.
     But in general, being careful pays off.
     It must be genetic. My father was always a very cautious man. He would no sooner ride a roller coaster than take heroin. My older son, when he learned to walk, would mutter “keh-ful, keh-ful” as he gingerly placed one foot in front of the other.
     But even a careful person manages to bumble into harm’s way, eventually.
     Such as Monday night. Guests were coming over after dinner.  My wife suggested a fire. This being a cool summer, we’ve had a lot of fires in the fire pit in our back yard—a dish of bronze set on a cast iron base that people admire as if it were some exotic accouterment, even though it cost 50 bucks.
     Anyway, lots of fires, going through lots of firewood. The pile was almost gone after I stacked wood up for the fire; down to kindling and one half hollow log, a curving piece of what had once been a large catalpa tree that blew down, years ago. Picture an arc of bark, maybe a foot wide and a yard long. I looked at it, and thought, “I can break this apart and use it to feed the fire while our guests are here.”
     So I stepped on the log, hard.
     It broke easily because of all the wasps living inside.
     For a guy who has trained himself to immediately blurt out quips on the radio, the thought, I’m being stung by wasps was actually slow in forming. I think I was halfway to the house, operating on some limbic fight-or-flight response hard-wired into the cerebellum, before it consciously occurred to me that something bad was happening.
     I burst into the kitchen with a shriek and a cloud of wasps—okay, two or three—in hot pursuit.  My wife, who has her own reflexive instinct, that motherly ability to shift instantly from the mundane to full crisis mode, took charge, ordering me to strip off my shirt, while the younger boy went after the wasps with a fly swatter.
     “Windex,” she decreed, and within three seconds was spraying me with the blue substance on the bites, which were limited to my legs, arms, torso and face.
     “This … really … hurts,” I hissed, arms out. I had often used the term “jamming my arm into a wasp’s nest” to describe the reaction to a column. Now I see what an exaggeration that was. Right wing revanchist trolls have nothing on actual wasps.
     I thought the whole Windex thing was a joke propagated by “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” and said words to that effect.
     “It’s the ammonia” my wife explained, hosing me down. It did feel better.
     Actually, it’s a placebo, I later found.
     “Windex is just folk lore,” said Dr. Anju Peters, an allergist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Rubbing with aspirin, copper, none of those has been scientifically studied. There is no data. For a local reaction, ice is best.”
     Peters said that the important thing is, if you have trouble breathing, or feel lightheaded, or your throat is closing up, call 911 immediately; 50 people a year in the U.S. die of anaphylactic shock from insect bites.
     My wife asked if we should go to the ER. I asked myself if I felt as if I were dying: no, we’ll ride this out.
     The boy for some reason stood gawping at one of the wasps as it progressed across the kitchen screen. “Kill it!” my wife cried
     “No,” I said, reaching for the swatter. “Give it me. He’s mine.”
     I slapped true, and the evil thing fell among the drained dishes. Distinctive black-and-yellow stripes — a yellowjacket.
     The funny thing is, despite the utterly random nature of the mishap, even though it didn’t involve any particularly risky behavior — I stepped on a log — it bugged me that I let it occur. It seemed to mean something. Human nature. People have the tendency to assign meaning to random fate, whether viewing their good luck as somehow being an earned reward, or bad luck coming as a kind of punishment. Neither need be true. Sometimes stuff just happens.

   
Photo -- mayflies, not wasps, at Put-in-Bay, Ohio

"Go out there kiddo"

Maggie Portman (Meg Brockie) puts the moves on Rod Thomas (Jeff Douglas)

     For a person who  just wants to go home and curl up with a book, I sure get out a lot.  
     Blame other people—the most convenient people to blame.
     While I like to attend cultural events, in theory, and invariably enjoy myself once doing them, there's that little hump of committing to go out, the ticket-getting and plan-making, that lately I've been lacking the steam to get over.
     I knew it was getting bad when after I let "Henry V" come and go at the Chicago Shakespeare. Uncharacteristic. Younger Former Me would have never let that happen. But Old Tired Current Me heaved a sigh and let the production smack into the catcher's mitt, the bat resting on my shoulder.  
    That is how it's been. And how it would be still. My saving grace is that, when other people are involved, I leap to my duty, panting enthusiasm like a dog. 

Renaissance Faire

     The weekend before last, we had a young cousin in from St. Louis, so of course wanted to show her all that makes Chicago a far better place than the Gateway to the West—the Art Institute, Millennium Park, the Chicago History Museum and such. She was here for nearly five days, so as a change of pace we headed up to the Renaissance Faire in Bristol, Wisconsin. It was good, sarsaparilla-soaked fun, as it always is, with cast members and visitors lost in private fantasy intermingling, hard to tell apart, and of course the Mud Show, even funnier than I remember, and a new trio of acrobats that had me muttering the highest praise I could think of, "Very Cirque du Soleil-like."
      Or last weekend. I cruised into Friday delighted to have no plans at all. At last! I thought. Then my older boy, on the train into work, asked: are we not going to see "Brigadoon" at at the Goodman? It got good reviews. 
     I almost replied that the Lyric's "Sound of Music" had used up our allotment of musicals that we'd never wanted to see again in our lives yet somehow do for the year, and since that turned out to be inexplicably splendid—the absence of Julie Andrews is a wonderful tonic for a production—we ought not to press our luck. I am not a big fan of musicals—not tragic enough to mesh with my understanding of the world.

  But lately my teenager expressing interest in events that I might be involved in has been pretty much limited to ... ah ... this. So what I actually said was:
    "I was in 'Brigadoon.' In high school. Mr. Lundy. 'There's a gunna be a weddin'." 
    He looked at me, quizzically, like Nipper on the RCA label, and I recovered.
    "Right," I said. "I'll see if I can get tickets."
     I could and did. Goodman's "Brigadoon" was, to my surprise, as good as all the raves said it was. Excellent dancing, the show stolen by Meg Brockie, who played the (checking the thesaurus for a word that means "slut" but won't bring down feminists in Australia upon me) village tramp with great red-cheeked gusto and humor. I am not in love with the Lerner and Loewe songs, with the possible exception of "Almost Like Being in Love," but the choreography and costumes were first rate and it scored as a charming spectacle.  
     Most impressive was the presence of Chicago stage veteran Kevin Earley, playing the romantic lead Tommy Albright, in best the-show-must-go-on fashion, despite the fact that his mother, former Marriott Lincolnshire artistic director Dyanne Earley, had died the night before. There was a moment, at one song's end, when he looked up and smiled, and the audience, most of whom seemed clued in to what happened, applauded warmly.
     Saturday was an impromptu dash to the United Center ("Kent doesn't want to go hang with Joakim Noah and Derrick Rose, does he?" I had asked my wife, on my way out to the garden, only to look up with slight puzzlement when she called out, an hour later, "He wants to know when you two are going.")
      By that night, when my wife dragged me to Loyola Park to see "A Midsummer Night's Dream" performed by the Chicago Shakespeare Festival, I had surrendered. Though I had initially resisted when she asked if I wanted to go. ("God no," I said. "Do you?") I have learned that there is an inverse relationship between how little I want to do something and how wonderful it turns out to be. Lowered expectations perhaps. Shakespeare's romp, with its fairies and tangled up love, was perfect for a pleasant sumer night, the crowd colorful and engaged, the Bard with his full compliment of royal tricks—a queen, a duke, quarts of potions and a play within a play, all whittled down to an easy-t0-swallow two hours. "The course of true love never did run smooth." Aint it the truth?
      Society takes the time to warn us of all sorts of stereotyped Bad Men: Stranger Danger, the Phony Nigerian Prince, the Quack Doctors and such. But there is rarely a murmur about the risk of becoming Grumpy Stick-in-the-Mud Dad, a species I imagine is very common and probably causes his share of damage to the collective good of humanity. The one escape hatch to salvation for me is that I've know that kind of guy, and as much as I just want to go home, crawl into bed, and read, I want to be that person just a little bit less, so out I go. Something to think about. The Renaissance Faire runs until Sept. 1. "Brigadoon" until Aug. 17, and "Midsummer's Night Dream" is playing tonight, if you're reading this Tuesday, July 29, in Rilis Park and tomorrow, Wednesday, July 30 in Piotrowski Park. Admission is $24 for the RenFaire, tickets start at $35.50 for "Brigadoon" and "Midsummer's Night's Dream, " the deal of the three, is free. 
     Talking to the Sun-Times Miriam Di Nunzio, Kevin Earley said, “It will be hard [to go out on the stage tonight], but as mom often said, ‘Go out there kiddo. That’s what you do’.”
     That's good advice for anybody. Life is short. Summer fleets. Go out there, kiddos. It's what we do.

Basketball has a shot as alternative to gangs

     Back in the 1980s, First Lady Nancy Reagan coined her “Just Say No” campaign to combat drug use. I remember a social worker explaining to me why it was misguided. If you’re a 16-year-old new mother living in the Robert Taylor homes, she said,  with no job, no education and no future, drugs are the best part of your day, the time when you feel most real and alive, and until they come up with a program to counter that, to offer people a life better than drugs, nothing is going to work.

     I thought of that Saturday, sitting at the United Center, watching the South Side beat the West Side, 46-45, in Joakim Noah’s One City Basketball Tournament.

     It happened to be held right after 11-year-old Shamiya Adams, killed last week while she made s’mores at a sleep over, was buried—Gov. Pat Quinn came from the funeral, and talked about how exceptional she was.

     The extreme tragedy of these cases captivates the media and public—the sweet faces of these innocent victims, usually girls, in stark contrast with the mug shots of the older, tougher, young men who kill them. 

     But in order to hope to solve the problem, or rather, to be less ineffectual facing it, we need to care about those young men, too, to understand that, just as people who take drugs have reasons to do so, that it seems in their best interests, so those who join gangs do so, not out of irrational bloodlust or mere greed, but because it makes sense: a grim, skewed sense, but sense nevertheless. In many places, joining a gang is obligatory, kids have to if they want to stay safe. The gangs offer protection, love, respect, a purpose. Who in Chicago really wants young poor black men? Gangs sure do.
     Mourning the dead is inevitable. But the shooters are also victims of a system that brings them to that moment when they pull the trigger and make the decision to commit some random, violent act that destroys another life and theirs, too often. The key is to get to that person before they do it.
     How? Maybe efforts like this tournament. It really wasn’t a matter of athletic excellence, but these players, Noah explained, were tapped by his Noah’s Arc Foundation, as older guys, in their 20s, who might have influence on younger men in their neighborhoods. Basketball has a powerful allure — it’s one of the rare endeavors that crosses racial and social boundaries in the city, and while I’d never be so naive as to suggest that basketball can stop the violence, it seems to be something that can offer what gangs offer. Gang shooters seek respect; this is respect found through a different sort of shooting.
      The trophies handed out were elaborate. No scrimping here. The impressive thing about Noah’s tournament was how thorough it was. They weren’t just using the empty United Center court. They had real NBA refs. The Luvabulls cheered. T-shirts were hurled to the thousand spectators. The Rockets’ Patrick Beverly coached the West Side team — seriously, prowling the sidelines, shouting. Derrick Rose coached the South Side, just serious, mostly watching.
     “I’m here for the kids,” was all the taciturn star would say, when pressed.
     When a crime occurs, what people usually do is drop their heads and hurry away. It’s the rare person who gets involved. So I give credit to Noah for trying something. It opens him up to criticism — people will say he’s a rich star rushing in to slap a bandage over an enormous problem. But that didn’t stop him; he did it anyway, with the passionate sincerity he brings to the game.
     “This is so important,” he said, at the press conference beforehand. “It’s bigger than basketball.”
     He’s right, both in the sense that slashing the murder rate would be a feat the city could take more pride in than an NBA championship, and in that basketball alone can’t fix it — it’s only one facet in creating that world to counterbalance the false benefit of gangs.
     People do stuff for selfish reasons. I was there, on a Saturday, not to focus on urban violence, but because I wanted my teenage Bulls fan to meet Noah. Kids join gangs for selfish reasons: to find the respect, love, purpose and safety that the world otherwise denies them. We can put a cop on every corner, and maybe we should. But until those kids avoid gangs for selfish reasons, until they can find respect, love, purpose and safety in other places, this problem is going to plague Chicago.
     Cycles repeat themselves. The kids in Northbrook study hard, stay in school and soar away to college because that’s what their world demands they do. On the South and West sides, the world demands they join gangs. Until that changes, nothing changes.

   

Hatching a plan, of sorts

     We live about a block from the railroad tracks—really as close as a person wants his house to be. Very convenient when it comes to walking to the train station, which is maybe a block and a half away. Close enough that, as long as the bells aren't actually ringing when I leave the house, I know I'll make it at a brisk stroll. Though a heavy freight train can rattle our windows, I think that is more a function of dry, ancient window frames.
      Heading to the dry cleaners Saturday morning—we're also close to downtown, and I like to walk on errands— I waited while these  ominous black tanker cars rumbled by, with their red "FLAMMABLE" diamonds, and thought about the derailment in Slinger, Wisconsin last Sunday. Nobody was hurt, but 4,000 gallons of fuel spilled, and 100 nearby residents were evacuated, for their own safety, while they cleaned it up.
      I've thought, over the years, we should have some kind of emergency plan, a bug-out bag ready to go when I hear the defending crash and see the fireball swirling up into the sky a block east. But then I try to think what would be in that bag. A change of clothes? A few bottles of water. Power bars. Money. Socks.
      It seems so trivial. And then the bag would sit there, taking up room, caution incarnate. And then, should a train accident happen, which it won't, we wouldn't be home, or we'd grab the dog, pile in the car and bolt, forgetting the bag. They sell clothes in plenty of places, and power bars, and bottles of water too. Heck, the Red Cross would give those out. As long I had my wallet—which wouldn't be a in the bug-out bag anyway—we'd all be okay wherever we went.  Slap down the Mastercard. Send the bill to the Canadian National Railway. A true blessing. Trying to take plan to take the sting out of any future happenstance, well, it seems like gilding the lilly. So we'll take our chances, unprepared.
       Which I suppose is a plan of sorts. A plan not to have a plan. An acknowledgement that Fate will toss her dice and our little bag won't help us. We plan so we feel we have a bit of control over events that we really have no control over at all. Our plan is to understand that. 

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

    One of the sadder manifestations of the general weakening of religious faith in this country is the fate of church buildings, often lovely, charming old structures that find themselves without congregants or purpose, slowly declining over decades before falling into decay, if not ruin, then finally torn down, a loss to architecture and to their individual neighborhoods. 
     The few churches being built today are typically constructed in the suburbs, new homes for urban congregations that have pulled up roots and fled, taking their prosperity elsewhere.   
      But when I investigated these gleaming new copper domes this week, what I found was a brand new construction of considerable size, right next to the old church building that it will replace. The new building is scheduled to be completed next year. 
      What's the name of this Chicago church? Were is it? Since my winner last week got so excited over her book, let's give away another—a copy of "Complete & Utter Failure," perhaps my favorite. Make sure to post your guesses below. 

Richard Branson is taking a bath

     Richard Branson is taking a bath.

     Or was, 23 minutes ago.

     I know this as a fact because he tweeted a photo of himself, in the tub, discreetly shielded by bubbles, thank God.

     “Right now I’m delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath,” he wrote.

    Oh wait, “had”—the bath might be over by now. In fact, by the time you read this, the bath is certainly over. Let’s start again.

     Richard Branson took a bath.

     In a lovely, oval shaped Turkish stone tub that probably set him back $20,000. But the billionaire owner of Virgin Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and hundreds of other companies in the Virgin Group can certainly afford it.

     Thursday morning he tweeted that message and photo; you can see the nice slat wood of the bathroom, a hint of green—Necker Island?—through a window, to his 4.27 million followers, including myself.

     The photo is what got me thinking. Somebody else had to take it.  It’s not a selfie. An assistant no doubt. “Snap me in the bath, Reginald, and we’ll alert the masses.”

     But I don’t want to mock Branson; a nice, exuberant man, by all indications. Three years ago he came to Chicago to promote Virgin Airlines and rode the Blue Line in from O’Hare, giving free tickets to San Francisco to those riding the L with him. 

    “Life is much richer if you say ‘yes’ than if you say ‘no,’” he told the Sun-Times.

     So an affable fellow, as far as tycoons go. He describes himself on his Twitter account:

     “Tie-loathing adventurer and thrill seeker, who believes in turning ideas into reality.” (Were I his media consultant, I’d lose the “tie-loathing” since it dates him, a blow struck in a battle that ended long ago. He might as well say, “white tie loathing” at this point. The younger generation never had ties to loath, judging from the kids packing the elevators in our building: t-shirts, cargo shorts, sandals. Not much left to hate as a workday imposition, though I suppose they’ll find something.  “Dude, I’m so glad to be out of those flip flops I had to wear to the office,” they’ll say, running barefoot on the weekends. “My big toe felt so isolated...”)

     Not that I blame Branson. We live in an age where....

The rest of this post vanished during one of the Sun-Times rejiggerings of its computer system.