"You are going to hell!" (We are already there)

        Downtown on Friday, not to shop—we never set foot in a store—but to take a family visit to the David Bowie exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Quite enjoyable, and I marveled how Bowie, always a master at manipulating his image, managed to celebrate every aspect of his life, raise public awareness of his music, promote his new album, and no doubt pocket considerable cash in the bargain, all by cleaning out his closets. 
        The new album promotion aspect did give me pause. One display said it "provoked a phenomenal response"—I suppose you could argue general indifference and light snickering represented a new phenomenon in Bowie's long career, but it seemed more press agentry and less museum curation. That said, we all liked the show well enough.
        Afterward, we crossed Michigan Avenue to go to lunch. RL was full to the rafters, so we called an audible and headed to Flaco Taco across the street. 
        On the way back, we encountered this knot of religious fanatics.
       "You are a sinner!" one shouted at us as I hotfooted by.
       "Every chance I get," I muttered under my breath, as we crossed Michigan. 
       It says something—something good, I hope, though I'm not sure—about our tolerance, as a society, that zealots can drag their medieval belief systems out into public, use them to berate random passerby, inflict annoyance, or at least inconvenience, and then go home feeling smug, certain they've done the Lord's work.
      Though it hardly seems fair. It isn't as if the secular society shows up in their backyards, condemning their children, urging them to abandon their beliefs, to drink and fornicate and commit any of the wide range of activities that they consider sin, which is basically anything beyond praying and working and mowing the lawn, and not even that on Sundays.
       Then I realized—and I hate to bat for their team, but it's true—that that is exactly what happens. Free-to-be-you-and-me liberal consumer capitalism certainly radiates its values across the landscape, through a spectrum of finely crafted, technologically advanced forms of communications: movies, TV, video games, songs, and on and on. You can't avoid it.  
     In that light, can you really begrudge the losing side, the remnant who haven't yet been crushed under the steamroller of progress, to show up on a street corner with their low tech signs and megaphones, to hector pedestrians? Have the sympathy for them that they would never extend toward us. Sure they're impassioned and angry. Because it hurts to be wrong, and to believe something idiotic: I'm convinced that, somewhere, in their hearts, they must know this, which is what makes them so generally unpleasant, shrill and insistent. If they were actually nestled under God's wing, they'd be more content. Which is why they need to create converts, as a away to reassure themselves, to shore up their shaky position. They can't calm down, can't pause to think, because doing so, they'd realize how crazed it all is, their imaginary, vengeful God peeking down your pants to see if you make the cut into eternal bliss, sending you to hell for dancing. They've wasted their lives peering through their keyhole of a worldview and their only redemption now is to browbeat a few credulous stragglers into following them over the cliff and wasting their lives too. Blessed are we who realize it, and enjoy the divine gift of being able to hotfoot past. Bad enough to pass them in the street; imagine being them, and have pity, and forgive. 

While you're trying to figure out where that bronze abomination is located...

     I thought I would dig out the column item that caused Frank Kruesi to send me his tie. (If you don't remember Kruesi, he was head of the Chicago Transit Authority for nearly a decade, and is perhaps best known, not for his neckwear, but for goading Richard Daley into digging up Meigs Field in the dead of night. Or so people said).
     This column gives background on the special prize for today's Saturday Fun Activity, posted below. It also, if I recall, inspired a men's store to send Kruesi some decent ties that a man would not be embarrassed to wear. A good government sort, when he wasn't egging unbalanced mayors to midnight illegality, he sent me $100 to cover their expense. Only the men's store refused to take the money, which put me in a delicate situation which, if memory serves, I managed to resolve to everyone's satisfaction.

     The Chicago Transit Authority crisis builds to a crescendo, with millions to be slashed out of the budget, service to be strangled, routes to be canceled, riders and politicians up in arms.
    And what am I thinking about? Frank Kruesi's necktie. Kruesi is the president of the CTA, and every time I see him he's wearing the exact same tie, one showing a CTA route map, the same kind of thin, jokey tie that sometimes have fish or whatever on them.
    I hate those ties. Weisenheimers wear them because they make the wearer seem like a goof. Which I suppose is the point, to say hey, aren't I wild and crazy and unconventional? But what they really say is that you are a goof in a bad, why-do-we-have-to-deal-with-this-goof-send-in-the-adults kind of way.
     Which isn't so bad if the buses run. If you're stopping by for a routine checkup, you might not mind if the doctor has on a tie with Marilyn Monroe's face silkscreened on it. Funny tie, Dr. Katz.
     But when he's delivering the bad news -- they'll have to operate and soon -- suddenly the tie isn't so funny. Suddenly you don't want to glance at his chest and worry your life is in the hands of Chuckles the Clown.
     Maybe if Kruesi wasn't wearing that tie, the Legislature in Springfield would take the problem seriously and give the CTA the money it needs. Or when Kruesi goes before the cameras to announce that the system is bankrupt and buses are being replaced by ox carts, at least he should wear a serious necktie. Something in a somber black.

                          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 15, 2005

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

    Okay, you guys. You think you're so good, just because you've cracked every "Where IS this?" I've thrown at you so far, even that chunk of stone that turned out to be tucked in a corner of the Baha'i Temple.
    Well, I think I was being kind. Letting you off easy. Lobbing you softballs. Which I wasn't even aware of, not until I saw this whatsit sitting right out in this ... very public place. 

   I have no idea what it is. Something allegorical. The  scupture evokes a certain 1940s painting, Peter Blume's "The Rock," in the Art Institute. Not that it's there, though it is ... within 10 blocks. 
     Have you seen this bronze thingy? You needn't know what it is, but you need to answer: Where is it? The correct guess will win something very special—this CTA sent to me, years ago, by Frank Kruesi, when he was the head of the CTA, after I wrote a column mocking his choice of neckwear (I basically said he shouldn't be announcing major cutbacks and CTA snafus in a joke necktie).
     The tie is silk, and has a lovely (okay, not so lovely) CTA map of downtown Chicago on it. (hideous, really). It's never been worn, obviously, but it's a true piece of Chicagoana that has hung in my office for years, certain to spice up your holiday parties and gatherings. The winner snags it. Good luck. Post your guesses below. 

The last time I saw "The Seventh Seal"

  

     "Let's watch a movie!" my older son, fresh from college, said brightly, as soon as we had polished off our Welcome Home pizza. If life were a TV sitcom we'd all groan and exchange glances.  But really it was more of a collective flinch. Ross has many wonderful qualities, but his effect upon the family movie-watching dynamic is not one of them. He wants films that are challenging, disturbing, edgy. It's always, "Let's watch 'Lost in Translation' for the fifth time," or some art film with Bjork. In the three months he was away at school, the Steinbergs happily reverted to watching old films we like, or seeing new movies that seem entertaining. Now, for the duration of winter break, that is over, and we are back to obscure Italian comedies. I believe the boy takes as much pleasure in our squirming as he does in whatever movie he supposedly wants to see.
     We ended up not watching a movie of any kind (we did, just as in the column below, play chess, only it was Blitz, with me getting six minutes on my clock and him getting two. He beat me every time). I was reminded that, with my older boy, it is now as it twas always, as this column from a dozen years ago is evidence.

    There are 8 billion people on Earth, so I hesitate to call any human scenario unique. But as I stood in my 7-year-old's bedroom one morning this week, reading to him from the Book of Revelation, it occurred to me that he is probably the only Jewish first-grader to be absorbing Christian end-of-the-world theology before his Rice Krispies.

     Furthermore, the terrifying thought struck me, standing there, open Bible in hand, reading about the Beast and the Lamb and the wasps with human faces, that this is how people lose their kids to the Department of Children and Family Services. One wrong comment in school—"Can I have a red crayon for my sea of blood?"—and there's a white van in the driveway and our boys are being hustled into foster care.

     All my fault. I admit it. I'm a bad dad. One morning, two weeks ago, I was playing chess with the 7-year-old. He was taking a long time to move. I am also a blowsy kind of guy who feels compelled to fill silences. So, vis-a-vis nothing, I raised my hand, waggled my fingers, and said, "This is my hand, I can move it, feel the blood running through it. The sun is high in the sky, and I, Antonius Block, am playing chess with death."

     Which is more or less what Max von Sydow, the knight, says in "The Seventh Seal."

     You'd think this isn't the sort of thing that would catch a first-grader's attention. But that's the crafty thing about kids—you never know what is going to click. My son snapped out of his what-move-next? reverie and asked about what I had said. I told him about the movie.

     Everything else faded away. He whined, morning, noon and night, to see "The Seventh Seal." I, of course, resisted. "It's not for little boys," I said. "It's about death, plague." His eyes glittered, hungrily. "Besides," I said, groping. "It's in Swedish. I'd have to read you the subtitles."

     This went on for days. To my credit, I held my ground. Until last Saturday morning. We're in the Northbrook Public Library, getting movies to watch over the weekend. I tell the boys to pick one movie each. They run off. My 5-year-old returns with some cutesy cartoon thing. And my older boy—you see this coming, don't you? I didn't—returns with "The Seventh Seal."

      There was a slogan during World War II: "Is this trip necessary?" used to encourage people to avoid needless travel. I have adopted it as a maxim of parenthood, and I trot it out when I find myself going over the same ground again and again. With all the exploding heads and fountains of blood that pass for entertainment, is 90 minutes of dark Ingmar Bergman imagery really going to damage my boys? I hadn't seen the movie in years, but remembered pretty well the scenes that might disturb him. The corpse of the plague victim. Grim allegories of cruelty and suffering.

     And, of course, old Mr. Death. I was about to put the movie back, when I saw that it was dubbed into English. I weakened. At least I wouldn't have to read the subtitles. I rented it. He was happier than when I took him to the circus.

     We all gathered on the couch the next night, with our snacks and our blankies, and followed Antonius Block and his more-or-less faithful squire on his journey home from the Crusades, through his famous chess match with the stern master, Death.

     I tried not to look at my wife, particularly when the penitents—dragging huge crosses, beating themselves, wailing—came onscreen. But when Block said he'd keep asking questions, even if he didn't get answers, we did exchange a look. Our oldest asks lots of questions.

     After, I asked each what they thought of the movie. "Good," said the 5-year-old. "Good," said the 7-year-old. "Very good," said my wife.

     I was pleased. I thought I had gotten off scot-free, but the oldest wanted to know where the seven seals were in the movie. He thought there'd be actual seals, the kind with flippers. I explained about how in olden times important letters were sealed by wax, and about how in the Christian Bible there is a story about the end of the world.

     The next morning, he ran into my office, hugged me, as always, but instead of asking for our chess game, he asked for "the story of the movie." I wasn't quite sure what he meant — at first I thought he wanted me to read from Roger Ebert's The Great Movies, since my wife and I had read the entry on "The Seventh Seal," afterward, as commentary. But no, he wanted the Book of Revelation.

     Tell me, what would you do? Say no? Make it a Big Deal? A Mystery? So I sighed and grabbed my New Testament — kept for reference not reverence — and started to read.

     Eventually, my wife came in and sat down on the bed. I was reading, "When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and there came a great earthquake, the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars fell to earth ... " Finally, I worked up the courage to look at her, and was greeted with that just-what-kind-of-idiot-are-you? look. Eventually, skipping ahead, I got the seals opened, and managed to close the book. Then the questions came. Did this friend believe it? And did that friend? And what did we believe? ("We believe," I said, making it up as I went along, "that the world will just go on and on.")

     A few days have passed. DCFS hasn't shown up, yet. I'm hoping the danger has passed. Next time we're playing chess and I feel like opening my big yap, I'm going to quote from "Scooby-Doo: The Movie."

"Was that today?"

 
     For all the talking, talking, talking we do—in person, over the phone, or through conversation written out in emails, tweets and texts—very rarely does someone say something witty.  We can gossip and pontificate and bore. But it's rare, nearly a miracle to deliver the exact right word at the exact right moment, a quick, short, sharp—and it must be all three—rejoinder. Just a word or two, a phrase, that shuts down any further conversation. The French call it a "bon mot"—literally "good word"—or a "mot juste," the "right word."  
     The instance I always think of as the perfect example of this is a comic strip, of all things, a 1960 "Peanuts" Sunday cartoon where Linus is teaching Charlie Brown's little sister to clutch a blanket and Charlie -- well, it's easier if you read the strip.

 
    "Like her brother?" That's perfect, plucking a string that everybody is familiar with, the universally understood slough of unhappiness that is Charlie Brown's life. A great riposte does that, ringing down the curtain of truth on a conversation. For all my struggles to say something concise and cutting in print, I can't recall ever doing that myself; I need to edit, to fiddle with the phrasing first.

Kate Moss

     My wife, however, is a master. She coined one just as good as Linus' if not better. I think I told this story in a column, years ago, but it bears repeating. We were driving downtown—pre-children, back when we lived in the city, we would commute together in the car to work, she going to Jenner & Block in the IBM Building, me to the Sun-Times across the street. A CTA bus pulled up with a Calvin Klein poster on it featuring Kate Moss, the gaunt and boyish British model. There was some debate about whether she was indeed attractive, and I mused, idly, something along the lines of, "Well, I don't care what people say, I'd have an affair with her." 
     At which my wife shot me a glance and I realized to whom I was talking, and quickly added, "But I'd always come running home..."
     "To what?" Edie interjected crisply.
     I loved that. I'm as proud of that as if she had climbed a mountain. 
     This skill is passed down in the generations, apparently. On Wednesday morning, looking forward to my older son flying home from California, where he has been at college for the past three months, I sent him a text wishing him safe travels, reminding him that I would be at the airport waiting at the foot of the escalators leading into baggage claim, and asking that he let me know if the plane he is taking is delayed.
     Now there is an infinity of ways a teenager can reply to that. I suppose if I had to imagine one, I would come up with, "Sure pop, can't wait to see you." Or some such banal thing.
    Not my boy, not his mother's son.
    He replied, "Was that today?"
    Which caught me off guard. First: Could he really...? Then: No, of course not... Then: Or could he? Perfect, because for a moment I thought he was serious, or at least had to figure out that he wasn't, falling into the trap and thrashing around for a few seconds. Then trying to climb out by formulating my own smart reply, failing, coming up only with "In theory, yes," which was lame, and I didn't even send, deciding that was being too gullible. Instead surrendering and mutely waving the white flag of an emoticon: ; )
    I wanted to communicate: I get it. 
    To which he didn't reply at all. Silence is sometime even more eloquent. 
    Anyway, enough of this. Happy Thanksgiving to all. Hope you conversation around the turkey is sharp, well-informed and tempered with love and kindness. Just because you think of a really witty retort doesn't mean it has to be said.  Shutting up, as I like to say, is an under-appreciated art form. 
     The boy, by the way, got home fine. Wearing shorts and a t-shirt. No coat. No shoes, only flip flops. He didn't even pack shoes. A true Californian already. 

The opera is over if the fat ladies sing

     The good news is: advertising works. Ever since the newspaper started running an ad (Page 27 today) promoting our Sun-Times Goes to the Lyric contest, people who never brought up the subject before are asking me about opera.
     “How do I get those tickets?” asked the Thomas-the-Tank-Engine Metra conductor.
     “You’ve got to enter the contest!” I breezily replied to him and to the security guard who asked the same question, and to the other random folk who brought it up.
     Another surprisingly common reader reaction is succinctly stated by Bill Anders:
     “I think it is wrong not to give some attribution in the ad to the lovely woman you stand next to. She is not identified.”
     “I’m sure it’s unintentional,” adds Sharon McGowan, “but it feels disrespectful to me.”
     Can’t have that. The purpose of journalism is to clarify mysteries, not create them.
     The woman to my left in the orange dress is Adina Aaron, American soprano, singing Bess at the Lyric’s production of “Porgy and Bess.” I sat down with her last week for a surprisingly candid conversation about the future of opera — so candid that I almost blurted out, “You know this is going into the newspaper, right?” But, I figured, opera has no purpose if not to excite the passions.
     I began by asking Aaron, who grew up in Florida and has starred internationally from Finland to Tel Aviv, how people react when they find out she’s an opera singer.
     "They're a bit in awe because they don't know much about it," she said. "I know, the first thing is, they don't expect an opera singer to look the way I look, of course."
     "You mean," I said, groping for the proper word, " tall?"
     "Just not obese," replied Aaron. "Unfortunately, you see commercials with the big horns and Wagnerian look. They still have that perception. So they look at me like, 'Really?' "
     Aaron was always athletic and had no interest in opera growing up. Instead she played piano, and was "heavy into sports: basketball, tennis, karate, you name it."
     She got a basketball scholarship to one college and a music scholarship at another.
     "I had to sit down and decide," she said. "I loved both, but at that time there was no future in basketball. No WNBA. You had to go to Europe. I said, 'You know, I don't really want to go to Europe.' " Which is ironic.
     Only in college did she discover opera.
     "A teacher said 'go to the library, go look at these opera videos,' " she said. "I saw 'Traviata' by Verdi. That was the beginning."
     But she keeps an athlete's discipline - she rode her bike to our interview.
     "It's so important to stay healthy," she said. "To me, health and singing are one and the same. I never imagine giving up one for another. I don't know how singers do it who don't exercise, if you gain too much weight and you're too out of shape."
     Modern productions require agile singers.
     "In Europe, all of the productions are updated," she said. "You never get a traditional production; it's a miracle if you get a traditional production. You always know you'll be asked to do something physical."
    Yet the public thinks of opera as a 300-pound Brunhilda standing in one spot, holding a spear and warbling — what Aaron dismissively calls "park and bark."
     "Opera has to get away from that," she said. "I don't see opera surviving if we don't get away from that: stand and sing, the cliche. You know, it's taught. You still have teachers who tell you, 'This is the hard part, just tell the director you can't move.' That, to me, is the death of opera."
     As an opera goer, while I certainly appreciate a well-formed star and so understand Aaron's point, my focus is on the music and the staging. I don't consider the cast's bulk when deciding what operas to attend.
     "I'm not saying you have to be skinny," she said. "But you have to be fit enough and comfortable enough to move. And if you're too overweight, you're putting a lot of pressure on your body. You're going to huff and puff. Look at Pavarotti. By the midpoint of his career he couldn't even walk because he let himself get so out of shape. It's insane to think that's a good way to make a living. Opera has to adjust. We can't compete with all the different art forms if we do that."
     Which brings us back to "Porgy and Bess." You can win tickets until Sunday; the performance we're seeing is Dec. 8. Aaron said it's a truly wonderful opera, especially for newcomers.
     "I steer them in the direction of the most accessible: 'Boheme,' 'Butterfly,' 'Aida,' '' she said. "This is obviously a great one. You can't get anything better. It's genius."

Trying to survive the holiday horror

  

    Well, it's the holidays, again, almost. Lots of preparation, lots of expectation. A time of joy, in theory, that nevertheless manages to be quite joy-free for many. I wrote this Thanksgiving column in 2008, after receiving a phone call from a reader who said he was going to kill himself. I don't know what happened to that reader; I never heard back from the guy. But I tried to reach out to him, and to anyone struggling through the holiday season. Have fun, if you can, and if you can't, well, try to find a way to get through it, somehow. Soldier through, endure, and all this forced jollity will be over in ... five weeks. Courage.   

OPENING SHOT . . .

    "You know, winter will soon be here," sings Michelle Shocked. "And except for the holidays, except for the holidays, it's a fine time of year."

     Isn't that the truth? An under-recognized truth. Because while society plunges into this big, annual five-week-long festival del grubbo that begins tomorrow and doesn't really let up until Jan. 2, my guess is that for every person champing at the bit to embrace this holiday wonderland of family and parties and dinners and gifts — children, mostly, and grandmothers — there are three others grimly twitching their jaws and thinking, "Geez, not again. Not already. Didn't we just do this?"

     I wish all those store soundtracks and 24-hour Christmas carol radio stations would take a break, just now and then, and play something like Shocked's lovely dirge, "Cold Comfort," or Loudon Wainright III's ode to family dysfunction, "Thanksgiving." ("Look around and recognize/A sister and a brother/ We rarely see our parents now/We hardly see each other...")

     But they don't, and all the painted smiles and chirpy music can start to get to a person, particularly against a backdrop of pending economic collapse.

     Unhappiness is always bad, but the holidays make it worse, with all the expectations of instant closeness, of warmth on demand, the notion that somewhere else people are whooping it up at Fezziwig's Ball while you're microwaving a Swanson turkey dinner alone.

     My only insight is, as Shocked sings, you need to hold on, pass the time, and life will improve "in a year or 10."

     "It is a fact of life," she sings, "that we learn to live again."

     Sometimes all you can do is hold on, hope and wait for spring.

THIS MORNING'S PHONE CALL

     People just don't telephone the newspaper like they used to — they e-mail instead. Tuesday morning, I received a grand total of one phone call, but it was a doozy.

     The phone rings, I pick it up, say my name, as is my habit.

     "In about half an hour, I'm simply putting an end to this," a man says in a flat tone, by way of introduction, and my first thought is, Geez, can't anybody just cancel their damn subscription? Must it be such a production?

     He's going to be locked out of where he lives, he says, agencies won't help, and it dawns on me that he's talking about ending something more significant than home delivery.

     "I simply do not want to face freezing to death in my car," he says.

     Who does? I don't say that, but try to get his name from him — that seems the thing to do. He doesn't want to tell me his name or where he lives.

     "Why not?" I ask. "If you're going to kill yourself in half an hour, why be shy now?"

     He doesn't fall for that, but gives a litany of his woes. No job. No medical attention for his diabetes. No relatives or friends in this area anymore.

     The "in this area" seems odd, and I wonder if he's for real, or somebody pulling a stunt. Frankly, he doesn't sound like one of my readers.

     "No one is writing the truth anymore," he says. "Everyone seems to think it's the person's fault, and that's not true."

     I point out that, if he reads the papers, he'll notice that the economic collapse is being pretty well blamed on large corporations.

     "I don't think anyone's saying it's your fault," I say.

     He goes on a bit, until I ask him what he wants me to do. He says I should be helpful to people in his situation, and I tell him that I'm perfectly happy to help him right now. What does he need?

     "I write for a newspaper — what is it you want to happen?" I say. "We'll put it in the paper tomorrow and see if it catches anybody's interest. You can't expect anyone to care about what happens to you if you don't care yourself. Nobody is going to care about you unless you do."

     I have a sense that I'm saying the wrong thing, but am making this up as I go along.

     "I don't have any recourse," he says, and then hangs up. The whole conversation is over in a minute or two.

     I wasn't as rattled as I should have been. On one hand, there's a lot of trouble in the world, and I don't become responsible for everyone who manages to dial my number.  I'm not a social service. On the other, it strikes me that a person should know what to do, since the economy cratering must make this situation increasingly common.

     "Yes, definitely," said Stephanie Weber, executive director of Suicide Prevention Services in Batavia. "We have seen an upswing in our calls and our walk-ins."

     I ran our conversation by her, and while I didn't do quite the botch job that I feared — I did listen, which is important — my biggest mistake was in not quickly referring him to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, (800-273- 8255), where trained professionals help people understand the importance of sticking with life, even as difficulties mount, and know where to steer callers to various practical services that can help with woes that seem insurmountable but really aren't. You might want to jot that number down in your wallet, because you never know when you're going to need it.

—Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 26, 2008