Those Winter Tuesdays

    
    
    "It's six below out," I told the back of my younger son's head, as he sat at the computer in the darkened living room, eating a bowl of cereal.
     He mumbled wetly in reply.
     "I'm going to take this recycling to the curb," I continued. "You want me to start the car for you? Warm it up?"
     It was about 6:30 a.m. He'd leave for school in a few minutes.
    "If it can be warmed up," he said, turning. "The heater light hasn't been on." 
    He's been complaining about having to drive such an old car. "A 20 year old car is not a thing," he'll say, trying to explain to me, through logic and figures, that buying a slightly used car is much more economical than continuing to own a car that needs a minor repair every six months. He has not yet convinced me.
    "Or not," I said, moving toward the door. "Up to you."
     He handed me the keys.
     "Tell me if the heater works," he said. 
    It was dark, the moon cast shadows through the trees, the snow was grey and crunched. I ferried a few shopping bags of cans and cardboard to the recycling bin, then opened the garage, got in, started the car, which groaned to life. I backed the sedan up, set it in park, lights on, running. 
     There's a popular poem, "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. Well, popular might be overstating the case. Popularity is relative, and you could argue that no poems are popular, not compared to, oh, video games. The Columbia University Press called "Those Winter Sundays" "the 266th most anthologized poem in English" which is either high praise or the worst kind of damnation. David Biespiel called it a "heart-wrenching domestic masterpiece" in his essay on the poem on the Poetry Foundation website. 
     The poem begins:

                 Sundays too my father got up early
                 and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold

     I won't reprint the entire 14-line poem—copyright law—but you can read it on the site of the Poetry Foundation, which did get permission, by clicking here. The father pokes the fire into life, calls his son into the warm room. "No one ever thanked him," Hayden notes.
     There is,  I realize, an element of self-justification in my quoting Hayden's poem, like those successful businessmen who love to quote Teddy Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" as an attempt to stifle valid criticisms against them. The Hayden poem is not a perfect fit. I am not a laborer whose hands ache. Our house does not seethe with unspoken anger, at least I hope it doesn't.
     No matter. As I backed the car out, I thought, justified or not, of the poem's great closing lines, as the son recalls his father long ago. I think I can get away with quoting them here.

                 Speaking indifferently to him,
                 who had driven out the cold
                 and polished my good shoes as well.
                 What did I know, what did I know
                 of love’s austere and lonely offices?  

     I went back inside, stamped the snow off my shoes.
     "How is it out there?" he asked.
    "Not bad,"  I said. 
    "The car going?" he said.
    "Yeah."   
     I looked at him. Handsome. Trim. Seventeen. 
     "You have a button half done on your sweater," I said, pointing to one big blue button not quite pushed through its buttonhole. He looked down, annoyed at first then. Then seeing that what had been said contained some grain of truth, apparently, despite being spoken by his father, pushed the button all the way through.
    We looked at each other.
     I thought of filling the silence with, "The phrase you're groping for is, 'Thank you.'" But that what good would that do? And, besides, it was unnecessary. No one raises a kid for the thanks. 

Is there life on Mars?

    It was so cold Monday that I thought of outer space.
    Zero degrees on the Metra platform, in a long, bundled line, waiting to exit Union Station onto Madison Street. I watched the warm breath steam out of my fellow humans and thought warmly, or as warmly as I could, about the 125 degrees or so above us, the temperature range of human life, of all life, excepting some hardy bacterium that live in thermal vents. 
    A pretty narrow window. Then again, life is very localized event, as far as we know.  
    Space is a different matter. Space is very big and very cold, and time is very long, so it's poignant that people waste so much of their far more limited time pondering whether  extraterrestrial life is here, now, watching us from nearby, when it's a far more probing question to ask if extraterritorial life is anywhere, ever, even long ago and far away. 
     I would say, given the vastness of creation, that the answer is probably yes, with an asterisk, and that asterisk is a) it's most likely so far away we'll never know about it and they'll never know about us; and b) it probably took place a billion years in the past, or will, in the future, or both.
     Two asterisks. 
     Which doesn't even raise the question of "intelligent life" as if that weren't pretty rare here on earth, among humans. Why does it have to be intelligent life to matter? If there are solar sponges, or unicorns on Mars, would they not count? Would that not rock our world in the way our world is supposed to be rocked by the wise and gentle overlords of Rigel 6? I suppose a being has to be smart so it can appreciate us. That's what this whole UFO charade is really being about: drumming up imaginary fans, ginning up some cosmic interest in we oh-so-important humans so we can feel as significant as we'd like to be and not as small and trivial and alone as we actually are, like some jilted interstellar suitor, in our straw hat and candy-striped suit, our bouquet wilting in our hands as we stare with sagging hope, awaiting our star date who never arrives or, rather, only arrives for those willing to make the leap and interpret a splotch in a photograph as the Starship Enterprise.
    Of which, I should point out, there are quite a number of us. About a third of Americans believe that UFOs are in fact space visitors. But then, a third of Americans believe in angels, and there is no doubt significant overlap in those two groups of believers.
    People turn every blur that someone else glimpsed in the sky into motherships from Alpha Centuri out of neediness and vanity. Once God was watching  over us and now, in his apparent absence, we conjure up new protectors and new judges to peer at us through the clouds. 
     So life, probably, somewhere, sometime, based on the undeniable fact that we popped up here, now—it's been done once, so it could be done again. One roll of the biochemical dice led to us, after only a billion years of slow transformation. Given the number of times those dice are being thrown, on trillions of planets over billions of years, odds are ... maybe not good, but certainly there, that other planets evolved similarly though, as I said, 10 million years ago and a billion light years away. Completely cut off from us by unspanable expanse of time and space.
    Not as satisfying a plot line as aliens picking us up willy-nilly for sex experimentation. Very few fairy tales involve a beautiful princess in a castle in Never Never Land and a handsome prince in Shangrila who never meet, though one suspects the other does exist. 
    That said, the issue is  worthy of at least a little contemplation. I think it is romantic, to stretch the idea of romance a bit. Usually the parties meet cute, interact, something happens, leading to the loss, and yearning that bring wisdom. But in this case, we start with the absence, the ache. You've got our swain hungering for company here, gazing up at the sky—and a tremendous yellow full moon Monday morning, the "Wolf Moon," the Native-Americans called it, which might have helped prompt all this. And whatever unimaginably alien multi-tentacled sweetheart over there, somewhere, across the galaxy and back, or ahead, in time, regarding the heavens with her one giant eyeball, or whatever, and wondering, in her own strange way, about us. Both parties never meeting, never knowing. But still, a kind of love.
     Anyway, it was enough to get me to the end of the Metra platform. 

"Dear Friend" — A final kindness from Judy Baar Topinka

     It couldn't be.

     Could it?
     I had been burning off a few excess vacation days at the end of December, working at home on home stuff instead of working at work on work stuff, when I stopped by the office the day before New Year's Eve, to write a column, schmooze and collect my mail. Last-minute Christmas cards, a manifesto of some sort and . . . a white legal envelope, bold return address: JUDY BAAR TOPINKA.
     Judy wrote to me — and I assume to all reporters, perhaps to all Illinoisans — more than any public official I know. I received more mail from her than from the rest of state government combined. After she died Dec. 10, I had hopelessly pawed through the piles of clutter in my office, looking for the quaint little 1950s-style folders she sent with a clipping tucked inside. One last one, as a keepsake. They were designed to send to constituents, but she used them to praise things I had written, with underlines and highlighted sections and exclamation marks and comments in her tiny, crabbed hand. The sort of thing you'd look at, smile at and throw away. I couldn't find any and felt bad. It would be good to have one.
     This . . . oh wait. I quickly remembered how a Topinka staffer had come by the office, the day after she died. Could she buy a few extra copies of the paper, with Judy's obituary? No, I said, she couldn't buy one. But we of course would be happy to give her some, and I handed her a stack. This must be her note of thanks. Who does that? But if anybody still did, it would be someone from Judy's office.
     No, not a thank you. The same cheesy folder, with a photo of the Capitol in Springfield, shaped to the outline of Illinois, with a retro "I Saw You in the News!" across it, and "STATE OF ILLINOIS COMPTROLLER — JUDY BAAR TOPINKA."
     "Dear Friend" began the form letter printed inside. "I enjoyed this clipping about you in the newspaper, and thought you might like a copy. Congratulations!"
 

   The clipping was a Nov. 17 column, where I begin by talking about the variety of books in my home office and end by talking about Kim Kardashian's backside. "What a wonderful column," Judy scrawled in the margin. "Gets me somewhat motivated to organize my voluminous library of books. If you ever need anything ever written about Elizabeth the 1st and her age, let me know (Sincerely) Comp. JBT."
     For the record, it wasn't a particularly good column, never mind wonderful. But if you were puzzled by the outpouring of general sadness at the passing of Judy Baar last month, I think that note explains a lot, and perhaps gives us all a few tips about living our own lives in the coming year.
     What does it show?
     1. Make an effort. Judy put herself out. She went to the trouble. There is no part of the comptroller's job that involves greasing reporters' massive egos and, indeed, her note wasn't done with the idea of a quid pro quo, of tilling the soil for good coverage. Her kindness would curdle if it were followed up by her rattling the cup for publicity. But she didn't. She was just being nice.
     2. Be nice. When people have a complaint, you sure hear from them. And sometimes I want to say, "You've never said a word, for years, about ever liking anything, and now something bothers you and I'm supposed to listen to you grouse?" Being nice is planting the seeds that flower later. I guarantee you, had Judy Baar been irked by something, I'd have snapped to attention, because that wasn't her way.

     3. Be interested. My column started by talking about books and ended by talking about Kardashian's butt. Judy moved the focus into the age of Elizabeth I. There's something refreshing about that. The range of interesting things is boundless, unless we blinder ourselves. Look around.
     There are more conclusions I could draw, but that's enough.
     I checked the postmark of the envelope. Dec. 2. I've never been so grateful for the foot-dragging of the post office, though the paper's decimated back-office staff might also have had a role. My guess is it worked its way through the Chicago mails for a week and spent another week in a bin at the paper.
     No matter. I have it now. I carefully returned the clipping to the folder, the folder to the envelope, and filed them under "Topinka, Judy Baar." A little scrap, a tangible token of the love and enthusiasm that she radiated. I was lucky to know her. We all were. And if you want people to miss you, too, when you're gone, the way everybody misses Judy, you might consider adopting a few of her practices.

But are your vegetables really clean?

     Tofu is white, cool and gelid, and if you need to find it in a grocery store, you would proceed to the ... 
     No, no, wait, hold that thought. I'll answer it shortly. 
     Well, eventually. I'll answer it eventually.
     There's something more incredible I want to tell yo about.
     Did you know they sell a product designed to clean the inside of your washing machine? 
     I didn't.    
     Tide, of course. "Washing Machine Cleaner." I took a photo in case you didn't believe me.  I could hardly believe it myself and the thing was right in front of me.
     Were I been less busy, maybe I'd have stayed and studied the product. As it is, I snapped this and hurried on to my task. I don't know if the cleaner is a sort of liquid or an infused sponge or a kind of hand grenade.
      I would have thought that the drum of a washing machine is already very clean, since it's always being filled with sudsy water, then agitated with wet clothes, and rinsed, thoroughly. 
     But wait, as Ron Popeil would say. There's more.
     They also sell a spray to clean vegetables.
     An expensive spray it is. $5.99 for 16 ounces. You can buy red wine for far less.
     Red wine from France.
     And the vegetable cleaner comes not in one, but in a variety of brands: three types offered for sale at Sunset Foods. Who buys that? You'd have to be insane. 

 If you're wondering where this is coming from, my wife has the flu. I was busy making peppermint tea and pumping ibuprofen into her when she informed me that I would have to do the shopping. Of course dear...
    What was I supposed to say? No...?
     Target. Sunset. Max & Benny's. Sure, I've been to these places. All the time, on small scale errands. But never on a Saturday. With a list. 
     A long list. 
     I'm tempted to post the list, but that strikes me as crossing some sort of line. Spousal cruelty, perhaps. As it is, this is a fraught topic, but my wife is a good sport, or will be, when she's feeling better. 
    I hope.
    The list. A full 8 x 10 sheet of paper, covered —covered—with a small scrawl detailing products and brands, flavors, sizes, prices, beginning with "—Bounty Paper towels [lg amount -select sizes if available]."
    Before I left she stressed the Bounty part. Don't be gulled into getting cheap paper towels that don't work. This was foreshadowing, but I missed the logic at work, and didn't realize it applied to more than paper towels.
    Nowadays a "large amount" is a given. Try buying a small amount somewhere that isn't a 7-11. Stores realized that customers will warehouse their merchandise for them if given a small discount. I bought an enormous slab of paper towels-- 8 rolls--for $9.99 and a second, equal size slab because it was half price. I didn't even try to figure out what "select sizes if available" meant. (A reference to the way the towels are perforated; my wife had actually explained that to me, prior to my leaving, but in the heat of the moment, I forgot).
     Space—or rather, your attention span; space here is unlimited—won't allow me to go into the careful calculations required before each item was slid into the huge red bin on wheels Target calls a shopping cart. My wife had written simply "Ibuprofen." The price range was astounding -- 100 200 mg tablets cost the same as 40 200 mg liquigels. Less than half the cost, per dose. I compared the small reddish pills—they looked like Tylenol, and we had that--with the ovoid blue caplets. I didn't remember any instructions as to one being superior to another. 

     The true difficulty came with "Aquaph0r." I was fairly confident, Aquaphor-wise, as I remembered the squat white jars with the blue lid scattered around the house. So I know what it looks like. But standing in the vastness of Target, I realized I had no idea what Acquaph0r is. A cream? A cleanser? A lotion? My wife and son both use it. Something for the skin. Not knowing its nature, I couldn't figure out where to search for it. Personal hygiene? Office supplies? I approached a lady with a name tag, begged for help, and she guided me to the right expanse of shelf,   which is where the real trouble began.
    A small, 3.5 ounce jar of Aquaphor is $6.99. A monster 14 ounce jar, $14.29. Two small jars would yield 7 ounces of the stuff, whatever it is, for $13.98. You were paying almost twice as much for the convenience of small jars.
     If my wife has a Primary Shopping Directive, paper towels notwithstanding, it is this: save money. Drilled into me. For years: I am  a spendthrift idiot for not looking at prices, figuring out amounts. Be be be. Frugal frugal frugal. Why buy brand names when the ShopCo brand costs a fraction of the amount? 
     So I tried to think on my own, using the Primary Directive as a guide. Was this not a huge saving?  Twice as much Aquaphor gloop, whatever it is, for the same price (God, I sure hope it isn't some embarrassing personal hygiene product. I'm utterly buggered then). I took the large jar and put it in my cart. She would admire my ingenuity.
     Or would she? Qualms set in. I had never seen a jar that size in our house. If it was such a bargain, why hadn't she bought it? Maybe I, me, could have some input in the household process. Okay ...  I ... I would swing by the pharmacy, where they had all those travel tubes and empty jars, buy a small jar—it wouldn't cost $7 certainly—and scoop out some of my bargain Aquaph0r. 
     Problem solved.
     The image of myself with a tablespoon transferring white cold cream, or clown make-up, or hemorrhoid ointment, or whatever, from one big jar to a little travel jar spurred me to whip the phone out and bother the sick woman to confirm the wisdom of this. 
     "Honey," I began, explaining my reasoning. 
      "Absolutely not," my wife instructed, explaining that in this case the need to divide the cream trumped the need to save money. My divide-the-larger-jar-ourselves idea was waved away as lunacy.
     I won't go into the internal debate over the dizzying array of brands of toilet paper. I was attracted to a brand with ridges. I had never seen it before. It looked futuristic, like the toilet paper you'd find aboard the Pan Am rocket ship from "2001 A Space Odyssey." But I had to buy 18 rolls of it. I couldn't sample one, as a test. We'd have to live with that ridged toilet paper for a while, and what if it was the Wrong Toilet Paper? What if there were something inherently wrong with ridges that I didn't know about? You can't very well take toilet paper back, can you? "I'm sorry, I'm returning this plastic wrapped palette of toilet paper. It has ridges." 
     That's when I encountered this display, for a product to clean out your clothes washer. To be honest, it further unsettled me, as if I had glanced down an aisle and seen a row of mummified puppy heads, the latest thing. What is this? (My wife later informed me that washer cleaner is not the scam it seems -- mold -- but that she used a rag with some Simply Green). 
      At this point in Target my mind must have shut down, because I simply left, without getting two of the 11 items on my list: milk and cereal. Basic stuff. I'd suppose that the idea of buying food at Target was alien to me, but I managed the Amy's frozen burritos--which my boys consume after they spurn home-cooked meals. I think I simply missed her elaborate explanation of the sort of milk to be gotten, four gallons (my younger boy guzzles it). As for cereal, my wife helpfully listed a few examples: Raisin Bran, Special K, Rice Krispies, in case I wasn't familiar with the term.
     Maybe it was because my cart was full, packed with blocks of paper towels and toilet paper. I'd need to start on a second cart. The bounty set me back $107.50.
      Perhaps rebelling against the Target mega-cart, at Sunset Foods, I chose one of those small, urban grocery carts that look like they're made for dolls. Usually they're fine for what I want, and more maneuverable, around my fellow Northbrookites, their faces masks of pain and the ravages of time, standing in the center of the aisle, blocking it with their carts, whining into their cell phones to Herbert, their husband, apparently. 
      I dragooned a butcher to help me with the Amish split fryers and the pork chops. With the later, he said something like, "I could make a joke about that," and I almost replied, "What? What is it? Tell me the joke! It's because I'm a Jew, isn't it?" I didn't actually say that, but took the thought as evidence my composure was starting to crack. I had been shopping for over and hour at that point. 
      Done? I've hardly bgun. There was the wait at the deli counter, the Banana Choice: yellow or green? Squinting at what seemed to be "comic pears" in my wife's handwriting. Looking at all the variety of pears—who knew. Anjou pears and Bartlet pears. Ah, comice pears, only 99 cents a pound. I wouldn't eat a pear if you put a gun to my head: mealy. I bought four.
     Near the end of my shopping trip at Sunset, I realized I had forgotten the milk and cereal at Target. Go back? Never. It's milk. And cereal. It's the same everywhere. Right? Raisin Bran was on sale -- that would do. By the time I got to the milk aisle, my little cart was tottering with merchandise piled upon it. I'd have to get another cart. Maybe two gallons will serve. Two gallons ought to last a while, right? He's just one teenager. 
      A quick swipe of a red card, $121.50 vanished from my life and I was on my way to the third stop, Max & Benny's, where my list was simple: chicken soup, to nurse the sick girl. No matzo ball, which I had a hard time understanding, intellectually. Chicken soup with no matzo ball? Some kasha varnishkas on the side. My people's comfort food. Think bow tie noodles with some kind of grain tossed in. Cookies for my college student to bring to a party.  Three items. 
     The soup was in a blizzard of sizes and varieties. I called home again. Do you want noodles and chicken in it? Or just broth? No noodles.
     I picked out a pound of cookies, added six ruggeleh—little square pastries, for the sick girl. My wife loves 'em. Total bill for my soup, cookies, kasha, half dozen ruggeleh and pint of broth: $31.97. They get you at Max & Benny's.
     And so home, having been gone about two hours on a cold, slushy, sleeting day. I would have been more relieved, had I not known what was coming.
     They took turns reacting in goggled horror. Two gallons of milk! My younger son was aghast. I was supposed to get four. Two would be gone in a moment.  And where was the Special K? "You didn't get Special K?" he said in a tone normally associated with "Lassie's dead!" 
    "The pills don't work," my wife informed me, of the ibuprofen. "Only the gel-caps work."
     "You could have told me that," I replied.
     "I can't think of every possibility," she replied.
     "You told me which flavors of Greek yogurt to get..."
     Then the soup. Why no chicken? 
     "I called," I said weakly. "I asked you. No chicken."
     "No noodles."
     "They were paired, on the sign. 'Chicken and noodles.'"
     She was sick, so I let the matter slide and slunk upstairs, happy to ... well, write this post assuming I don't delete the whole thing, which is probably prudent. 
     In the past, I vaguely resented my wife doing all the shopping -- obviously done to keep control on finances, to prevent spendthrift me from buying expensive stuff. From now on, I will only be humbled and grateful. Thank you honey for sparing me this. I thought my mind would crack. In the parking lot of Sunset, for one crazed moment I considered going home, grabbing the gasoline from the garage, spreading it around the ground floor and burning the house down, then starting life afresh as a hobo. But that would be bad. I decided it might be better just to let you do the shopping. 
     Tofu, by the way, though it is white and chilled and gelid, was not to be found among the cheeses and the yogurt and the kefirs and the eggs where I expected it to be, and where I searched for it, for quite some time, until I began to look for an employee, finding one on the other side of the store. It was in the "Organic produce" section, next to the lettuce, I learned this after asking a clerk, who obviously had never heard the word "tofu" before, and then accompanying him while he consulted with another clerk who had. Of course, tofu. Made from soybeans. Grown from the ground. Practically an apple. 
    This is what the philosophers would call a "Category error." I had lumped it with other white, cool, gelid materials, like cream cheese, when it really is a plant. Like lettuce—next to the lettuce, in fact. So learning was accomplished, though I fervently hope never to have to put my newfound shopping skills, at least not after this flu passes. Which, I'm told, should be another eight days. By evening, I was coming down with it too, and as I sniffled and hacked and ached, I thought, happily, "One of the boys can do the shopping..."  

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     Starbucks coffee is too strong for me. Industrial strength, I'm not sure what it's intended for. Stripping the paint off old buildings. Or maybe I drink too much coffee to be its target customer. I like a coffee I can drink in volume. One cup of Starbucks and not only don't I want another cup for a day or two, but the entire idea of coffee is thrown into question. I only go there if I'm meeting someone who suggests meeting in a particular Starbucks, and half the time I get a cup of tea. Drinking Starbucks coffee, it's like a wine connoisseur drinking a bottle of Thunderbird; too overpowering and destroys an experience that should be sublime. 
    Then there is the whole drink-it-and-get-out corporate vibe the place radiates. I can't settle in with my coffee and scone and newspapers and just be. It seems rude, with the line and the other people prowling around, looking for a place to sit themselves. Starbucks is like Whole Foods, a stage set of expensive fakery that many people fall for. And I used to fall for, years ago, if I recall. I suppose it's like McDonald's. Cool, during the initial red and white tile new stage. Now it's just commerce.
     Small coffee shops, on the other hand—independents, or modest chains—that's a different matter. They still have personality, soul, gumption. When I was living on Pine Grove and Oakdale, I'd love to walk up Broadway and hang out in Intelligensia or, if I was up in Evanston, sink into one of the old cast-off chairs at Kaffeine.  Maybe that isn't fair: they're commercial too, just on a tinier, small ball scale. Maybe that's why I prefer them: a certain kinship.
     Or this place. Quirky, with a resident ... well, I guess I better not say, lest I give away the game too easily. This one will probably be cracked in a moment by one of its patrons, who as a prize will get a bag of fine Bridgeport coffee—the kind I drink at home, and also the brand served at The Grind, the coffee stand in the Northbrook train station, which is where I discovered it.
     Remember to place your guesses below. Good luck. 

Spoiler alert:

This was a toughie, not solved until an unprecedented 2:13 p.m., and it took the sleuthing of King Dale, the Tiger Woods of the Saturday Fun Activity and now our four-time champion to ID this place as the Jupiter Outpost, 1139 W. Fulton Market. The resident I almost revealed is an "urban turtle" named Phoebe. 

Happy New Year, and follow the damn law

    We're a nation of laws, when convenient.
    If you're a conservative, for instance, trying to spin your fear of Hispanics into something noble, then respect for the rule of law is a hugely convenient fig leaf to cover your shame. You can cry a river over the stern demands of legality as you explain, again, how you would love to relieve the 11 million immigrants who live in a twilight limbo, would leap to give them hope for a measure of dignity and protection, but gosh, they entered the country illegally, and so the law requires them to be punished forever.. 
    It doesn't. But that's their story and they're sticking to it. 
    Except when the law cuts the other way -- say voters, and courts, and public officials, and basic human decency conspire to let gays out of their own second class cellar, at least when it comes to matrimony, suddenly the rule of law is a mere vapor, a frost of nothing, a hint to be accepted or rejected on an individual whim. Suddenly heroic government clerks and wedding cake bakers are applauded when they take it upon themselves to decide what laws to enforce and what laws to ignore. Individual morals matter, not the law. 
    That's their argument and they're sticking to it. I would suggest it's hard to have it both ways. Though I imagine that being a hypocrite with the self-awareness of a toaster must ease the process.
     Robert L. Hinkle, federal judge in Florida, issued a ruling Thursday—and good for him, or his staff anyway, for working New Year's Day —that addresses the situation in Florida, a state whose ban on gay marriages was found unconstitutional, but where clerks were nevertheless balking at actually issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. Hinkle's ruling, which you can read in full here, has a passage worth repeating:
    "History records no shortage of instances where state officials defied federal court orders on issues of federal constitutional law," the judge writes. "Happily, there are many more instances when responsible officials followed the law, like it or not. Reasonable people can debate whether the ruling in this case was correct and who it binds. There should be no debate, however, on the question whether a clerk of courts may follow the ruling. ... the Constitution requires the Clerk to issue such licenses." The judge ordered clerks statewide to do their jobs.
    The Florida ACLU called the order "a New Year's Day present from federal Judge Robert Hinkle."
    It's a present for everyone—maybe this is a contributing factor to those clerks dragging their feet.  Because any American citizen (or alien resident, for that matter) can get married in Florida. In fact, it's quicker for out-of-stater. In-state residents have a three-day waiting period and a funky training course they are encouraged to take. Out-of-staters can breeze right in without either. No residency requirement to get a marriage license in Florida, just a photo ID. The license will set you back $93.50. (If you want the full Florida marriage experience, go for the four-hour Florida Premarital Preparation Course designed to "increase your chances of creating a fulfilling, lasting marriage." I'm sure it's priceless and educational: traffic school meets Nathaniel West). The course costs $30, you can take it online, and they'll knock $32.50 off the cost of your license. Plus, if you're a Florida resident, taking the course entitles you to skip the three day waiting period to give residents a chance to decide if they really, really want to tie the knot. 
     The ceremony will set you back another $30. Plus they charge a buck for a copy of your marriage certificate, and you have to provide a stamped, self-addressed envelope to mail it to you.  
     Something to think about. The temperature in Miami was 84 degrees Thursday.
   

You need to do the gun math

 

Kent firing a Thompson submachine gun at the FBI range

    You don't want to rush to make hay from a tragedy, dipping your fingers into the fresh blood to underscore your political points.
      Besides, the poor woman who was shot to death by her 2-year-old in a Walmart in Idaho this week, well, really, do you really have to comment? It's clear, isn't it?
      Then I read that the mother was a nuclear researcher. Which just shows how this is not a matter of intelligence, but emotion. 
      Frankly, I view the argument about guns as purely a question of math.  If she had weighed the probability of a felon assaulting her in a way that let her get to the gun in her purse—in slow motion perhaps—versus the odds that her 2-year-old might dig into her purse when she wasn't looking, well, that isn't much of a puzzler either.
     I wrote this column nearly 20 years ago. It lays out my views on the subject in a way which even the staunchest gun rights advocate couldn't debate. Not that anybody's really debating this anymore.
     I've decided to include a few photos of myself and the boys when we were guests of the FBI at its training range in North Chicago, just to show that we're not anti-gun fanatics. We shot guns, we had fun, though we also left the guns with the FBI. where they belong and didn't start toting them around with us. Because guns are dangerous—that's seems really obvious, stated plainly. But look how many people miss this, to their sorrow.
     As a coda, after this column was published, there were two unexpected reactions. First, a top manager at the newspaper called me into his office and yelled at me. See if you can guess what he yelled at me for. And second, I received more complaints about this column than any other I've ever written in my entire career—thousands of angry emails—but not from gun rights advocates, or anything having to do with guns. Can you guess what set people off? I'll tell you after the story.

     The goal was to buy some aspirin. Nothing expensive — aspirin is aspirin. So I went for the generic store brand. But Walgreens has two types: "Extra Strength" 500 mg tablets, and regular, 325 mg tablets. I reached for the 500 mg size. I like to think of myself as an Extra Strength kind of guy.

A liberal takes aim.

     Then I stopped. The Extra Strength were $4.99 for 100 tablets. The regular, $3.99 for 300 tablets. I realized, to my horror, that I would have to do the math. I squinted hard. I held my breath. I let out a loud "Nnnnnnnn" sound that, I'm sure, attracted the attention of store clerks.
     One hundred tablets of 500 mg meant 50 two-pill doses of 1000 mg each; 300 regular tablets meant 100 three-pill doses at 975 mg each. I was about to pay a dollar more for approximately half the amount of aspirin. I grabbed the regular.
     In a world where people stopped to do the math, Walgreens wouldn't sell many bottles of Extra Strength at that price.
     But people don't do the math, as a rule, instead basing their decisions on a sexy label, such as "Extra Strength."
     The problem is not limited to cost-comparison shopping. I was reminded of this while reading Michael O'Neill's letter to the Sun-Times this week. O'Neill says that he wants the legal right to carry a gun to protect himself. He points out that 38 states already allow residents to carry firearms, and reassures us that he has "no criminal intentions."
     There is sound math behind O'Neill's reasoning. A gun's usefulness is directly proportional to how available it is. If my handgun is locked in an attic safe, the range of instances where it could do me any good is severely limited. Should polite felons remember to phone first and say they're on their way over to get me, then I'd be ready.
      Otherwise, the gun is almost useless. If, however, that gun is loaded and on my hip, the set of circumstances when it might come in handy is greatly expanded -- unarmed felons who demand their money before hitting me over the head with a brick are in trouble, for instance.
     So at first glance, the answer is simple: O'Neill is right. We should all carry guns. There is, however, more math to do. Like usefulness, the danger of a handgun is also directly tied to its availability. Carrying a gun around increases the chances that I will shoot myself in the foot while drawing it to scare off the newspaper boy, or that I may decide to rakishly thrust the gun into my belt — the way they do in the movies! — and accidentally unman myself.
     Conversely, locking the gun in a safe in the attic lessens the chance that your little Timmy, whom you carefully trained in firearms safety, is going to have his head blown off by little Billy, the dim neighbor child who discovers your chrome plated .38 Special in the bureau drawer.

Ross tries the Glock.

     To me, the decision is a no-brainer, not based on the Constitution, but on probability. Police carry guns because they can reasonably expect to encounter crime during an average day. I am not a policeman. Even if I thought I'd be attacked once a year, I wouldn't carry a gun. Because the slim chance it would help me during the few seconds of the attack wouldn't balance out against the risk the gun would pose to me and my family every moment of the rest of the year.
     I'm not anti-gun. Like any little boy, I love guns. I have fired handguns at target ranges and enjoyed doing so. But I wouldn't own one, for the same reason I wouldn't own a Bengal tiger. The pleasure of having a big cat padding around the apartment just doesn't outweigh the risk that — no matter how tame — the tiger would one day decide it wants to taste the baby.
     Maybe that makes me a coward.
     I wouldn't ride a motorcycle either. I understand that they are a lot of fun, that there is a close-knit community of motorcyclists, that a Harley-Davidson is a work of art whose engine sounds like God Almighty clearing his throat.

     But I also know that the nurses at Presbyterian-St. Luke's call them "donorcycles" and the answer to my favorite party trivia question — "Why are there more heart transplants in summer than in winter?" — is, "Because people ride motorcycles in summer, and that's where donated hearts come from."     
     In life, people put their chips down on the odds they like. I've placed my bets on a boring, work-a-daddy four-door sedan with an airbag and a shoulder belt. And any felon who asks for my wallet can have it -- to tell you the truth, even if I had a gun, I like to think I wouldn't shoot somebody over $17 and a few credit cards anyway.    

     But a lot of people would. A lot of people are so eager to shoot somebody that they want to carry around loaded weapons. Balancing the hazy, hard-to-figure risk of popping some mischievous teen or hapless motorist or themselves against the crystal-clear, ingrained movie fantasy of Clint Eastwood gunning down bad guys, they chose the fantasy.

     Math is tough, after all, and not that much fun.

     —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, April 14, 1996.

     What upset Larry Green about the above was that it mentioned Walgreens, a big advertiser, even in a neutral, discussing-the-price-of-aspirin fashion. They hadn't even complained; he was just terrified they might and, if I recall, the head of advertising had complained. I tried to explain my philosophy that specificity leads to more interesting writing. Didn't get me very far, but I'm still here, and he's long gone.
     And the line about the donorcycles enraged the top flack at the American Motorcyclist Association, the group that lobbies to allow motorcycle riders to not wear helmets, who wrote a deceptive post fingering me as the enemy of freedom and directing their membership to deluge me with hate emails, which they did. For years afterward, if I got an email saying simply, "You're an asshole," I would write back, "Don't believe everything your motorcycle masters tell you."