"Would you like some cucumber with that?" my wife asked, busying over the stove while I read the paper at the kitchen table.
"What, in the eggs?" I said, wincing slightly. She was making eggs before our walk in the Botanic Garden Saturday morning.
"No, on the side."
"Sure!" I said.
It's hard to wait, and a plate of sliced cucumbers was just the thing to nibble on. Healthy, cool, refreshing.
"Cucumbers make a good appetizer," I observed, and she agreed.
We ate our eggs, sipped our coffee, read our papers. I kept working on the cucumber slices. One slice left.
"Would you like the last slice?" I asked.
"No, go ahead," she said. I ate it, reflecting on how much I like cucumber.
"Let me check the computer and we'll go," I said. I like to keep tabs on the blog.
I go upstairs, call up Twitter. This is the first tweet I see: "Woman dies from tainted cucumber, prompting recall in 27 states."
I click on the article and read it carefully. Yes, Illinois is one of the 27 states.
Well, I ate the first part of this particular cucumber ...Wednesday, in a salad. So if it were infected with salmonella, I would have figured it out by now. Whew.
Or so I tried to reassure myself.
Unless, that rebellious part of my brain that likes to cause trouble countered, the end you ate Wednesday wasn't the part with the salmonella. That was the part you and your wife ate just now!
Can there be salmonella on one part and not another? It's just a certain bacteria, right? It can be just on one spot. On the other hand, the woman who died was 99 years old. A bout of salmonella, while unpleasant, probably won't kill me.
What would kill me—what is killing people—is inactivity. Earlier this morning I read an Economist story that inactivity, worldwide, is "the new smoking," and "a silent killer" that is now the fourth leading cause of death, after high blood pressure, smoking and high blood sugar.
"C'mon, let's go for our walk," I told my wife, heading downstairs after posting this. If I'm going to keel over, I want it to be at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
It's pretty clear what these are: three merry-go-round horses. But where did I see them? A museum perhaps? Or a carnival? But I've said too much.
The person who knows the exact location of these three equine beauties will receive one of my now truly dwindling stock of 2015 blog posters, suitable for framing or thumb-taking up on a wall. Place your guesses below. Good luck.
These are dark days for McDonald's. Sales are down 11 percent this year, profits down 30 percent. Their Asian market is crumbling. The second September in a row when their financial news was grim.
Not
that McDonald's isn't desperately trying to arrest its tailspin,
tossing out qualities that once made it distinctive, experimenting with
radical notions such as letting customers choose what goes on their
burgers. Or, starting next month, serving breakfast all day. McDonald's seems to be back-engineering itself into a real restaurant, a version of
Woody Allen's joke about Noel Coward buying the rights to "My Fair
Lady," removing the songs and lyrics to change it back into "Pygmalion." McDonald's is transforming itself into Denny's with a clown.
It isn't working, judging by a recent survey of American consumer opinion.
"Consumers
don't think the food is high quality, healthy or even that tasty,"
began a scorching piece in Crain's by Peter Frost. "The restaurants seem
dated and unwelcoming. For a fast-food restaurant, it takes too long
for customers to receive their orders. And even accounting for changes
that McDonald's is making or considering, nearly half of Americans say
they wouldn't increase their visits to restaurants operated by the
nation's largest fast-food chain."
I sure wouldn't. I'm sticking
at zero. Why? I could list 50 reasons to despise McDonald's. But, space
being limited, we'll limit ourselves to 10:
Top Ten Reasons McDonald's is Tanking
1. Ambiance.
Ever since the cheery red and white tile drive-ins were replaced by horrible 1970s brown mansard-roofed monstrosities, McDonald's has been
lost, decor-wise. Urban restaurants have a vibe that is half psych ward,
half homeless shelter. Sometimes they display a few relics of the local culture that was, in part, displaced and destroyed by the arrival of McDonald's, which only makes it worse.
2. Omnipresence. Rarity creates value and overabundance erodes it. There
are just too many McDonald's: 32,000 worldwide. The market is glutted. The corporation seems to
realize this, closing 700 McDonald's franchises this year alone, trying
to cut their losses.
3. Ronald. Everyone hates
him. He's frightening. A scary clown. That sex toy mouth. Those leering
eyes. You never see a child holding a Ronald McDonald doll. And if you
did, you'd pity that child. It would be disturbing, like a toddler
cuddling a skinned goat's head.
4. Marketing. Last week, when Burger King challenged McDonald's to join them in creating
a McWhopper for the International Day of Peace, I immediately knew McDonald's would
pass. The behemoth is slow on its feet. Compare the oafish, witless, nearly hysterical
images that McDonald's serves up to, for example, the humor in Geico
commercials. Fifty years of watching McDonald's ads and I couldn't cite
one specifically. Well, maybe that "Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun" drone that nobody wanted rattling around in their brains. The marketing is as bad as the food.
5. Employees.
Harried cogs, desperately lunging to serve up the slop. Their
"Guh-
morn welkamtuh'm'donal" has the emotional heft of "Order 'n'
geh-out!" This is not to besmirch the employees themselves — no doubt
decent folk plunged into an impossible nightmare of minimum wage
slavery, fighting to keep a shred of humanity intact while endlessly
repeating some mechanical functions. Does Amnesty International know
about this?
6. Blandness. Nothing in McDonald's
is spicy. Even their attempt at a burrito tasted like a pot of paste. McDonald's idea of acknowledging our nation's rich ethnic diversity
in their fare is offering green shakes at St. Patrick's Day.
7. Happy Meals.
Anyone who has ever had kids loathes McDonald's for reaching over our
heads and luring our precious children into their trap with cheap
trinkets. They're drug dealers, hooking the young on heavily breaded
processed chicken.
8. McRib Sandwiches. No more need be said. Those responsible should stand trial at The Hague.
9. Competitors.
Just as Detroit never got off its fat and satisfied posteriors until
Japanese carmakers swept in and ate their lunch, so McDonald's was
satisfied with futile half measures — look, we've got muffins! — until
Five Guys and Red Robin and all sorts of good-burger-at-a-good-price
joints came along. The spell was broken and people suddenly realized,
"Wait. I'm eating this garbage when I could be eating actual food?!"
10. The food.
Last and least. The burgers are predigested mash. The fries are
sugared. The shakes, frozen gray gruel. Believe me, I ate my share. No
more. Now, if I enter a Metra car where someone is eating McDonalds, I
have to hold my breath and hurry to the next car.
Don't get your
hopes up. McDonald still took in $27 billion last year, going
gangbusters with those who don't know any better.The amazing thing isn't that McDonald's is in trouble; the amazing thing is it has lasted this long, and no doubt will go forward, for years, beccause many people can't stop themselves from eating it. Even I do, when abroad. Once I was in Vilnius,
and thought I'd visit the local McDonald's — an ironic tradition of
mine. I've eaten at Mickey D's in Tokyo, in Paris, out of anthropological curiosity, perhaps mixed with an unrecognized homesickness. But the one in Lithuania was so jammed I
could not get in the door. A mass of frenzied customers. Not that I was disappointed
to go elsewhere.
So let's see where we stand.
Rowan County clerk Kim Davis can't issue Kentucky marriage licenses to gays, even though that is her job requires it and a court has ordered her to, because God is against gays getting married, in her estimation, and being party to it would put her soul in peril.
"This is a heaven and hell issue for me and for every Christian who believes," she said, dragging a whole lot of people unwillingly into her God-made-me-intolerant camp. "I weighed the cost and I'm prepared to go to jail. I sure am."
So here is my question:
If God Himself wants her not to issue marriage licenses to gays, and she isn't doing so, to save herself from eternal perdition, then why isn't that something worth quitting your job over?
People quit their jobs over all sorts of lesser reasons: to get a higher paying job, because they were slighted when it came to raises and promotions, because they clash with a boss.
Having a duty you are ordered to perform that conflicts with the desires of the Lord God Almighty—in your own narrow, antique, fucked up notion of what religion means, that is—seems like a really good reason to turn in your resignation.
But she doesn't. Because she isn't really trying to pay respect to her own notions of faith, but to mess with the lives of people she hates. She could have been released by promising, not to issue the licenses herself, but just to refrain from stopping the other clerks, one of whom is her son, from doing so. Religion inspires many people to selfless acts of kindness, of charity, of good works, even to people different than themselves.
While to others, it's just a twist on solipsism, one more reflective surface in the hall of mirrors that is their lives. She isn't hurting innocent Kentuckians who just want to get married. She is the vessel of God, like Joan of Arc.
Now, like Joan, she is jailed. Making her a martyr for all the halfwit haters who believe right along with her. Even if she spends one night, it is the equivalent of the pyre in Rouen, at the center of the Place du Vieux-Marche. The smoke rises, the faithful are put to the test.
“Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubts about the criminalization of Christianity in this country," Mike Huckabee, one of the throng of Republican presidential candidates, tweeted. "We must defend #ReligiousLiberty!”
Madness. We in the fact-based world must keep foremost in mind that religious factionalism is what makes so much of the planet a blood-soaked hell. If every official enforced the law based on his, or her, own perception of divine will, the world would be anarchy. That GOP leaders are cravenly backing her is near-treason, undermining our nation of laws in favor of faith-fueled anarchy.
To be a martyr, one needs to suffer. A night in jail, or two, is little cost for the leap in station Kim Davis, hero to the cause, is about to experience. The crowdfunding. The best-selling God is My Co-Pilot ghost-written autobiography recounting her Golgotha, her sufferings for her beliefs. The made-for-Christian-cable TV special. The high-paid speeches. It would seem impossible, but the Lord works in mysterious ways.
There is no hell.
No flames. No fiery pit ringed with horned demons using pitchforks to keep sinners' heads under the boiling lead.
Sorry if I'm the one to tell you.
No hell. How could there be? Not only don't I believe in hell. To be honest, I have trouble believing anybody believes in it. How can they?
Rather hell was a story, obviously, concocted in order to get people to behave in a certain way that they might otherwise not behave. Maybe they'd want to fool around before marriage. Hell kept them in line. Maybe they considered slacking off on their obligations to the church. Hell was what awaited them if they did.
But the fires of hell cooled, in our modern world. I've never met anyone who sincerely worried about going to hell.
So new stories had to be crafted, by those who would control the behavior of others.
For instance, babies.
Not born babies -- I'm not sure "born babies" is a term, as opposed to a neologism required by where we're going.
But pre-born babies. What are under all other circumstances called "fetuses." In order to enlist them for their purposes, religious fanatics promote these forming fetuses to full babyhood, and use them as puppets to boss around women.
Under any other circumstance, nobody believes it.
Think about ordinary situations, outside the realm of the abortion debate. Outside the confines of the story.
Even the most conservative woman, upon learning she is pregnant, does not cry, "I have a baby!" (the confused answer would be "You do? Where?")
She would say, "I'm going to have a baby." Future tense, not needing to add, "Once this fetus is fully developed and born."
Until then, it isn't a baby yet. It's a proto baby. A fetus.
But just as some unseen region underground was converted to hell, so fetuses, hidden out of sight, were backformed into babies, one of many disingenuous tricks to corral and control women, who lately tend to break free.
You can tell that even the people who insist that fetuses are babies, for purposes of banning abortion, don't really believe it, because if you say, "So should we send women who have abortions to jail? For murdering these babies? Is that what you want?" most will just give you the I-refuse-to-think-about-this look. Because they don't really think it's a baby, they're just telling others that, to get them to conform, the way villagers cowered at the prospect of hell.
They also keep changing the story, adding new details, trying to keep it fresh and convincing.
In Ohio, the Republican legislature is expected to soon pass a law making it illegal to have an abortion in order to avoid giving birth to a baby with Down Syndrome.
A similar law is on the books in North Dakota, making it illegal to have an abortion due to concern over genetic anomalies, though nobody has been prosecuted under it and there is question whether anybody could be, as it is an unconstitutional intrusion into the mindset of a woman.
You can't make a legal activity illegal because of the reason you do it. It's a lousy reason, oh, to go to college in order to drink beer. But you can't pass laws trying to stop it.
The reason a woman has an abortion is only on the table in the minds of those who want to ban all abortions for all reasons, picking Down syndrome out of the same impulse that caused them to pick abortion in the first place: they see it as a realm where they can push their religion in a way that otherwise would be completely unacceptable and, as it is, is accepted by a narrowing segment of the country.
The Down syndrome aspect is a compelling detail, in their minds, a way to keep the story fresh, like Dante taking hell and giving it nine rings and winged demons.
Advocates of the law, who otherwise don't give a damn about Down syndrome, have been focusing on the full personhood of those with Down syndrome, and they are correct. But then the non-Down Syndrome people who would be born would also be full people, or would be, were they not aborted first, just as both people with Down syndrome and without would be born were it not for contraception, which fanatics have given up fighting in order to fall back to a line drawn at abortion.
They'd of course like to just ban abortion period, but Roe v. Wade seems to be preventing that, at the moment. So they nibble around the edges, throwing stuff up, seeing what sticks. Maybe the Down syndrome ploy will work. If not, there's always a new gambit, a new tangent to take the narrative down. The only thing not on the table is letting women make their own moral choices for themselves, unhindered by law or outside meddling. The way that religious fanatics came to their beliefs. But that would be impossible. That would be like a Saudi sheik letting his wife drive.
Ohio governor John Kasich, by the way, who is presenting himself as the voice of moderation, has signed 16 separate abortion restrictions since 2011. Quite a lot really. I grew up in Ohio, and don't remember it being the fundamentalist backwater it seems to be becoming, but I've been gone a long time, and it has been on hard times, and nothing like economic downturns to encourage people to really get their backs into manhandling the lives of others.
So keep in mind: there is no hell, and no babies involved in an abortion. It's just another lie that gets repeated so much people pretend it's true. I almost said, "no heaven either," but I know lots of people view heaven differently, because it is where they imagine their loved ones dwelling in eternal bliss. A beautiful and a comforting image, and not one I would strenuously contradict. Because life is difficult, and people believe, and do, all sorts of things in order to get by. To throw stumbling blocks in front of others who are in difficulty is wrong. I wouldn't do that to a grief stricken person just to prove a metaphysical point, and I'm an agnostic. You'd think that a religious person, awash in the kindness that religion supposedly imbues, would embrace that. Would not identify women coping with unwanted pregnancies as the moment to to try to spread their faith by hallucinating their rice kernel-sized fetuses into the Gerber baby. But apparently religion as an impulse toward loving kindness only goes so far. Or at least that story is whispered very quietly, by some people under certain situations, compared to the fantasy that gets thundered by huge choirs of the faithful, trying to force others to follow their religion, not through hell, whose fear has cooled, but through law, this time in the name of imaginary babies.
"Belts off, jackets off, pockets empty."
In line at the Daley Center, last Thursday, 8:20 a.m., just another John Q. Citizen arriving early for his 8:30 summons .
"Belts off, jackets off, pockets empty," a sheriff's deputy cries, to no one in particular, like a 19th century vender selling fruit off a cart.
Juggling a cup of coffee, a briefcase, jacket and ID, I slide off my belt and coil it in a grey plastic bin, along with the fistful of change the letter told us to bring for vending machines.
While most people to whom I mentioned my pending jury duty expressed sympathy, even pity, my mood is light. Anything that involves enforced idleness, reading and snacks can't be that bad.
"Belts off, jackets off, pockets empty."
Putting my belt back on by a table past security, I try to make small talk with the guy arranging himself next to me.
"Another indignity of the state," I venture.
"I got better things to do," he mutters, darkly, and I almost ask, "Like what?"
But that seemed impolite, perhaps even unwise. I'm at court. This guy might not be a juror, this guy might be here to go on trial for throttling some wisenheimer.
I say nothing.
Up
to the 17th floor, where we are assigned to groups -- I'm Panel 9, and given a slip of paper saying so. We're invited to sit in
a sea of chairs. I pop a green tea mint, crack David Axelrod's
"Believer" (excellent, filled with trenchant insight and telling
details). and begin to wait.
Forty minutes pass.
At 9:10, a video. "Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, my name is Timothy C. Evans..."
See,
I know Tim. I've dealt with him a dozen times. I'm certain they'll
never pick me for a jury. A newspaper columnist married to a lawyer.
Never. A couple hours of leisure and they'll send me on my way.
Famous TV newsman Lester Holt pops up. We learn fun facts. "Circuit court is a state court, not a county court." Four hundred judges, eight divisions, with 2.4 million cases a year. Lester Holt appears. "Your name was picked at random. It is impossible to know how long a trial will last."
Those of us going to trial. My wife agrees with me. Never in a thousand years.
"If you are excused you must not take it personally.'
Oh don't worry, Lester, I won't.
The music swells.
"You are now ready to serve as a juror in the Circuit Court of Cook County!"
Or be dismissed from serving, as the case may be.
Another ten minutes pass. Panel 3, is called Panel 5. Panel 7...
Just before 10, they call ... Panel 15. "Hey!" I think. "Unfair! Go in order."
About
10:15, we're called. Panel 9 escorted to a courtroom, where a judge
tells us that the lawyers saw our faces and decided to settle.
I
half expect we'll be dismissed right then. Instead we begin an odyssey, the
Wandering Jury. Led to one courtroom, then another. No one is ready for
us. Back to the 17th floor. Finally, about 11 a.m. we are escorted to a third
courtroom, then told to take lunch. Come
back in two and a half hours. I
Divvy to the office to do a bit of work and show off my JUROR sticker, my red badge of civic duty.
At 1:30 we reassemble at a courtroom. Judge Jim Ryan
welcomes us affably. We take seats in the jury box and he explains the
case.
A young woman driving an Acura was rear-ended by another driver on
Grand Avenue. Her insurance company paid $4,400 for repair and a rental
car, and now the company wants to collect from the guy who rear-ended
her, an unshaven, handsome, vaguely menacing young man in a black
v-necked sweater.
For
a moment, I wonder if we've begun the trial. No, this is "voir dire,"
jury selection. We are asked if any of us have been in accidents. Any lost our license? Any have trouble with the idea of an insurance company recovering damages?
"Mr. Steinberg..." one lawyer begins, reading from a form, and I sit up straight, smiling, ready for my moment in the spotlight. Time to be recognized, lauded, then dismissed. "...your wife is a lawyer. Will that affect your ability to view the case impartially?"
"Umm, no," I say.
There is a break. After five minutes, we are told six have been chosen. I'm among them. The other 12 are given their freedom.
The case takes two hours, start to finish. It consists of lawyers quizzing two witnesses: the woman whose car was hit, and the man who hit her.
Nobody questions the facts. Two photos are introduced into evidence: one of the woman's crushed bumper; the other of the man's car stopped on the grass beside a building.
Back in the jury room, I'm elected
foreman; I'm not sure why. One woman suggested it, everybody else went along and I accepted.
So what do people think? I poll the jury. Five find him negligent. One just
can't. "It could have happened to anyone," she says. For 40 minutes we
go back and forth. The guy was obviously inattentive; I point out that he could barely pay attention during the two hour trial. Society demands drivers stop for cars making lefts.
If you don't, you're negligent. Case closed.
We argue with her, but gently, respectfully. She seems fragile, about to cry, and goes into the bathroom for a
long time and doesn't come out. When she does, I ask if there's any
chance she'll change her mind. No. I ask the others if there's any
chance we'll come to her way of thinking. No. I have no interest in
browbeating the woman, nor in drawing this out pointlessly. While I think he's liable and should pay, I'm not an agent of the insurance company. I send a
note to the judge that we're deadlocked. We get certificates and checks
for $25 and are out by 5 p.m.
Two lessons. One, you never know
what will happen when you go to law. Here I was certain I'd be dismissed,
and end up jury foreman. Second, it's a flawed system—the guy was negligent—but one person
can derail the whole thing. Still, it works, sort of. Everyone was
exceedingly polite, and thanked us for us doing our civic duty. Compared
to the bloody chaos in most of the world, our justice system is a gift.
As the blog will receive its millionth visitor today, I'm hosting a live chat party in the Party Room— the upper right hand side of the page — at 7 p.m. It's BYOB, but there will be music and conversation. Dress is casual.
When automobiles first appeared on American roads, more than a century ago, they were considered unacceptably dangerous—too loud, too fast, apt to frighten the horses and run down pedestrians. Certain towns, in an attempt to minimize the hazard, enacted ordinances requiring that any horseless carriages traveling within city limits be preceded by a person holding a red flag, to warn of the approaching peril.
Such laws were soon swept aside in our rush toward the future. But knowing about them left a lingering notion of a red flag, as a safety device, as being quaint and antique, firmly ensconced in what the great James Thurber once called "the halls and parlors of the past." A way to express caution that is rarely found today, perhaps at the occasional construction site, or maybe on a lifeguard stand to convey beach conditions, or planted, probably due to some arcane law, at the end of an extra-wide trailer truck.
We were heading for the Lakeshore Arts Festival in Evanston's Dawes Park early in August when I was stopped dead in my tracks, while scooting with my family across Sheridan Road at Clark Street, by this singular sign. I told them to go on without me and I'd catch up after I marveled at the wonder..
Under the sign, a cylinder to hold the flags.
Empty, of course. There were no flags, though there used to be. A web site called "Legal Insurrection" posted this picture from a correspondent claiming they went up in 2012 as "a recent addition in a series of 'improvements' to this crossing where, to my knowledge, there has never been a mishap."
A little research tells us the flags were featured in the Pedestrian Safety Evaluation Report delivered at a special Evanston City Council meeting on Aug. 6, 2012, recommending the city "Place crossing flags at all of the park crossings to alert the drivers
when pedestrians are crossing the street."
About half a dozen intersections have them in Evanston, according to residents.
Claire Zulkey, writing about the flags on the WBEZ blog, pointed out that pilferage by "hooligans" is a drawback to the system, though not the only one.
There is also mockery. The Daily Northwestern noted that a budding NU comic ridiculed the flags during his routine though, in amateur journalist fashion, did not detail what was said.
There is an exhausted carelessness to the flag idea, almost a kind of paradox: any crossing dangerous enough to require that pedestrians vigorously wave flags over their heads in an attempt to save their lives probably needs a stop sign or a streetlight, if not an overhead pedestrian bridge. The flag strategy smacks of cheapness and intellectual failure. It's something you would expect to see in North Korea, in lieu of expensive traffic lights.
That said,
the flag system is not without charm. I have never strode across a busy intersection madly waving a red flag over my head, but imagine the experience has a certain frisson, assuming you aren't run down by a truck in the process. You really need the aforementioned James Thurber to convey the feeling, which he conveniently has already done, in his 1939 illustration of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's chestnut "Excelsior."
I left the intersection with conflicting emotions. One, that I wished I lived in a society where people wouldn't steal the flags—college students are prone to pranks, and a bucket of red flags is an invitation to midnight theft if ever there were. You'd like to think that even sophomores drunk on punch and grain alcohol would pause before undermining even this sadly inadequate, fragile, jury-rigged yet somehow quaint system of pedestrian safety, but obviously they don't.
Two, Evanston should stock the white cylinders or remove them. I felt positively naked, crossing flagless. If the flags are necessary, keep them supplied. If not, take down the signs.
Third, I know Evanston is a different sort of a town. But really, this is daft, a piece of performance art that somehow drifted into serious traffic management. It's something I'd expect to find in Oak Park.
