The morning after

 
      So now I've watched all five Republican presidential debates.
     Ten hours—more or less—staring into the cesspool of the GOP psyche. The fear. The bluster. The Donald.
      The press leaps to critique their performance, citing various lines, moments, gaffes.
      And my impulse is to say ... nothing. Because it really twists the gut to imagine that one of these guys—or, gasp, Carly Fiorina—could end up president of the United States. A big country with big problems.  They could be the ones to apply their intelligence and world view to our running our nation for the next four or eight years.
     The impulse is to fall silent, stare at a spot on the floor. But you sort of have to try, to say something sensible, if only to wave the flag for sense.
     Lest it fall from favor entirely.
     So what's the takeaway?
     First:
     Man, they hate Obama. You'd think the country was a smoldering ruin the way they talk about the past seven years, that other landmarks had been desolated in more 9/11-like assaults. You'd think 10 million people didn't get health insurance or the banks saved and the economy righted. You'd think Osama bin Laden hadn't been killed, and unwise wars wound down. None of it matters of course. To them, he's the Worst. President. Ever. I wonder why they feel that way? I'd say racism, but then, they really, really hated Bill Clinton too. Partisan blindness perhaps. I could scrape together the good things George W. Bush did. No one is completely bad. But not a syllable in support of anything Obama ever did cross the lips of any of these debaters. Not once. Evidence of the vast areas of life they just can't see. That Marco Rubio can say he'll roll back gay marriage ... why? Because of all the damage it causes to straight marriage?
    Second. They are willing to surrender our freedom for the illusion of security. I'm being influenced by the last night's debate more than the others, but if these debates are a testament to anything, they are proof of the fact that a mouse right now dwarfs an elephant last week. You'd think that the San Bernardino massacre occurs every day.
     Actually it does—general gun violence. Many times over. But they never talk about that either. Another region their eyes just can't focus on. Listening to their view of the country was really a case of the Blind Men and the Elephant.
     And Carly Fiorina. Has ever a dud career of failure ever been spun so vigorously? And regarding foreign relations. You'd think she had been Secretary General of the United Nations, to hear her talk. I guess Hewlett-Packard once pressed a button in response to a national security request. Or maybe she went on a Carnival Cruise once. Hard to say.
     Third. The whole thing is so sad, so painfully sad, for patriotic Americans who love the country and want it run well. Donald Trump, pressed to the wall, invokes the best and the brightest, the great minds who'll come in a fix things in some as-yet-to-be-seen fashion. Hasn't he read a history book? Sometimes the smartest people make the biggest blunders. Ted Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard, not that he'd ever mention that—too smart, given the people he's trying to fool. For all the good it did him.
     Okay, enough. Too damn depressing. I had only one central thought, after each debate, after them all. Not a happy thought, but a grim, determined thought: Hillary Clinton better fuckin' win. Not the perfect candidate either. But a clear-thinker living in the fact-based world. Better do all the basic, meat-and-potatoes campaign work necessary: register the voters, kiss the babies, collect the money, produce the TV commercials. Because our nation depends on it. When somebody asks me why I don't wave palm fronds at Bernie Sanders, I reply: because he won't win. This national moment is too fraught for naivete. I won't say that a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz would destroy the United States—a great nation, it survived eight years of George W. Bush, it can survive anything.
     But they'd sure give it their best shot.

Jeff Magill: " A profound part of that order"

Jeff Magill

     Early this year, Tom Chiarella wrote a fantastic profile of Jeff Magill for Chicago magazine. So when a boss suggested that I was the person to serenade Magill into retirement, I almost blurted out: "It's already been done!" But that sounded kind of lame, and Jeff's a complex enough guy that a little room could exist for my own take on the man.  Though I deliberately left myself out of the equation—didn't want to get between him and the reader.

     Jeff Magill stands behind the bar at the Billy Goat Tavern and hooks his right arm around a Schlitz beer tap as he speaks, a gesture of utter confidence and familiarity, as if he's part of the bar itself, which of course he is.
     He has been tending bar at the subterranean landmark at the corner of Lower Michigan and Hubbard for nearly 35 years. His 35th anniversary would be March 4, if he stayed that long.
     But he won't; Magill is retiring when his shift ends at 7 p.m. Christmas Eve. 

     "It's one of the happiest days of the year," says Magill, in a soft, pleasant voice you lean forward and strain to hear above the bar clatter. "Especially with this place. It starts out, very frenetic in the morning. People are tying up loose ends, with shopping. Almost a crescendo down here. Early afternoon, people peter out. For the most part, quiet. When I walk out the door it's very quiet. So there's a wonderful contrast, the activity of the morning and the quiet of the evening. I love that. I always have. For whatever it's worth, I found a little bit of a symbolic parallel there, trying to figure out the right day to retire on."
     If his language—"frenetic," "crescendo" "symbolic" "—does not sound like the typical "Whaddaya have, pal?" bartender snarl, well, that's Jeff.
     "Jeff has a background in psychology," says long-time patron Michael Gillespie, 72. "Very apropos to this job. He's probably the most eclectic bartender I've ever met, and I used to be in the business."
     And yet there is nothing pretentious about him. He wears his erudition lightly.

   "He's an old-time bartender," says Gillespie. "Today, you know, they're mixologists. In the old days, this place used to be a shot and a beer place."
     Magill once offered a shot and a beer to Hillary Clinton as she was visiting the bar—equal part sincere hospitality and sly taunt, also characteristic. He was there when Julia Child got behind the grill to flip burgers and when George H.W. Bush stopped by for lunch, none of which be brings up. Nor does he mention Mike Royko, the great columnist. But I do.
     "He kind of tested me," remembers Jeff, recalling a moment about six months after he started."Some guy at the bar was talking, and he said, 'Mike, you live in the suburbs.'  
     Jeff drops his voice to a growl to imitate Royko:  "'I don't live in the suburbs! I hate the fuckin' suburbs! When I go out to the suburbs I throw up on the steering wheel.'" Jeff jerks his thumb.
     "He looked at me and said, 'He lives in the suburbs!"
     "I said, 'Mike, as a matter of fact, I don't. Live at Diversey and Ashland. But you live in Edgebrook. Literally just a couple of blocks from the suburbs, a neighborhood indiscernible from the suburbs.' He hesitated for a minute and said, 'I pay my taxes in the city.' And that was it. And I never had any kind of negative thing with Mike from the on. We got along from then on. We played golf a handful of times together."
     Hours can pass like this, but time is short. What has Jeff learned from his 35 years behind the bar?
     'Certainly a lot is revealed in a tavern," he replies. "We know that. We know that sometimes, for good or for bad, alcohol can be a kind of truth serum. For a lot of people, it can reduce inhibitions, in a good sense. I see good fellowship. I'm amazed at how people of disparate backgrounds, income, social status, can get along famously and develop real intimacy. That's the great joy of this business. To see that. All of those friendships, truly devoted to each other. It sounds grandiose, But to preside over that, there's really an honor in that. I don't want to be corny about it, but it really is."
     So what will he do when he retires?
     "No plans," he says. "I've never been good at compartmentalizing my life. I admire people who can. I think they're the most successful among us. But I won't know until I enter that space. That's my intention. Get there first and decide what to do next. Doing repairs around the house that are long overdue."
     Patrons drift in. A couple of pilots, so conversation floats to Meigs Field and, of course, wings back to Jeff.
      "Jeff symbolizes, to me, the era when a local bar was part of Chicago's personality," says Tim Coverick, a retired pilot. "He was able to perpetuate the true essence of a local bar, a classy bar, to downtown and it will never be the same."
     Bars aren't supposed to change.  The Goat has stayed the same for half a century, the same yellowed clippings, the same black and white photos for forgotten politicians and beauty queens.
     But the people inside change.
     "I've seen people's lives evolve over 35 years," Magill says. "I've had the good fortune to have enough regulars. A lot of lives develop and change. the irony is what people look for coming here down in a tavern is a constant, something you shouldn't change. Perhaps that's the function of me being here all those years. Leaving, and some recognition of my leaving, confirms that. I'm finding that this meant more to me probably than I thought it did. There's an ordering of our lives, conscious or unconscious, and you find you're a profound part of that order for a significant number of people..."
     Something catches his eye and he breaks off and hurries down the bar.
     "What will you have?" he says.

Closing the Los Angeles school system is a mistake

     I said it before, at the end of November, when the University of Chicago cancelled classes after what turned out to be an empty threat, posted by some angry idiot and retracted, but not quickly enough to keep someone from sending it to the FBI.
     But it merits saying again:
     We over-react to these online threats at our peril. The Los Angeles public school system cancelled class Tuesday for nearly 700,000 kids.
     Dumb.
     Why?
     Someone who intends to carry out a terror attack doesn't issue threats—they don't want to scare their targets away. Threats are issued by hoaxers or mopes or idiots or someone who wants to cancel something for some small personal reason and hasn't thought through the Now-I-go-to-prison part.  There might be instances of threats being followed by action, but I can't think of any.
     Closing down a school system like Los Angeles' doesn't just deprive hundreds of thousands of kids of a day's worth of education. It also puts the students at very real peril, because instead of being in classes they'll be at home or on the streets or somewhere they could be hurt or injured or get into some other kind of trouble. I would bet money that no true peril will be found from whoever is behind this threat. But the peril of keeping the kids home is very real, a more tangible threat than the threat that prompted authorities to close the schools in the first place.
    It also represents a cowardice on our parts. When I wrote that U of C made a mistake, a number of people replied along the lines of : We must do EVERYTHING to stay safe!!!
     No we must not. That is the direction of tyranny and totalitarianism and defeat. New York City received similar threats and did not shut its schools. Places that have regular random attacks know the importance of carrying on. You sweep the glass away, right the tables, mop the blood up, and re-open the next day. Otherwise we're cowering in fear, no one goes to school and whoever wants to carry out an attack will still do it.
     There's an easy way to tell that this is a mistake: ask yourself, if LA gets another threat tomorrow, what will it do? Close? And the day after that? And the day after that?

"I'm a homeless child in need"

   
     Yesterday's Letters to Santa column mentioned my attempt to play Santa to a needy child in 2011. I went back and looked at that column to check which distant street I traveled to—West 123rd—and discovered that it was actually two columns, and it struck me that maybe you guys might enjoy seeing them. Coincidentally, both Monday's column and the pair in 2011 began with a quote from my wife.

     "Feel my hair," my wife said. I did what I was instructed, taking a handful of reddish golden locks.
     "Soft," I ventured, hoping it was the right response.
     "It's that oil!" she said. That what? Oh right, the oil — "L'or D'Afrique — 100% Organic Argan Oil," the pride of Morocco; a sample had been delivered to me months ago by Tarik Khribech over at the Billy Goat Tavern. I sure wasn't sure what to do with the stuff, so I left the sample for my wife.
     "Do ladies really oil their hair?" I said.
     "You know how women brush their long hair 100 times?" she said. "It's done to get the oil from their scalps to the ends."
     Who knew? I'd read about brushing but never knew why they did it. See, that's how we stay married — I make her laugh, she claims, and she always surprises me.
     Another example of her catching me off-guard. A kindhearted editor passed me a homeless child's letter to Santa. Might I, she asked, help this poor girl? Sure, in an ideal world. I foot-dragged for days. The editor prodded me — what about that little girl? I finally read it, each letter printed in a different color, underlined in yellow, decorated with colorful hearts.
     "I'm a homeless child in need," it began. "My situation is bad and I know it's bad because my mom doesn't talk about it, that means she's trying to protect me."
     Touching. But it's a bad world, and we're all busy. The last thing I wanted to do was play Santa to some child I'd never met. I have my own children to worry about.
     Besides, she wanted a lot: "LPS" — whatever that was — "A Secret Password Journal, Monster High dolls, and Bratz."
     Google told me LPS is "Little Pet Shop," an ultra cute animal play set. But it was the journal that pierced my indifference — as if being homeless weren't bad enough, homeless and a budding writer, too. The poor waif. We writers must stick together.
     My wife announced she was going to Target. They sell toys at Target. "I'll go with you," I replied, worried that, being frugal, she'd balk at my buying gifts for unknown girls. I told her about my mission.
     "Only $20 or $30," I promised, since "$10 is too little and $40 is too much."
     At Target, we started with Bratz. "Platinum Shimmerz Yasmin" with purple hair and extra "Shimmer Powder," a doll that makes Barbie look like an Amish widow. Price: $12.99. Then Monster High. "Cleo De Mummy." Another $10.99. Our limit reached, I was ready to head for the registers. But my wife was off talking to a clerk. Did they have Password Journals? ("Of course not!" I answered, to myself, hopefully) Sure, next aisle over. The journal cost $23.89. Obviously a deal-breaker. As I went to put the box back and make our escape, my wife took it from my hands and added it to our cart.
     "Don't be cheap," she said, a cast coming over her eyes, a fierce determination I knew better than to question. We pushed on to the Little Pet Shop section to discuss which "Shimmer and Shine Pet" was the cutest.
     "A girl wants four toys, you get her four toys," she said, returning to Monster High to swap the basic Cleo I had selected for a more complex and expensive — $18.89 — doll classroom set. By then this girl might as well have been our own daughter.
     "How's she going to carry all this stuff around if she doesn't have a home?" my wife fretted, sadly, and I realized I'd be lucky to be out only 60 bucks and not end up with my wife inviting this gal's family to move into our guest room.
     See, that's the drawback of caring. Once you start, who knows what'll happen? Not that I'm complaining — it was worth it to see my wife click into this unimagined cost-be-damned, mama-bear-feeds-the-cub mode. Even I felt odd, unfamiliar stirrings of altruism. And heck, maybe it'll make this little homeless girl happy.
     Anyway, if you still want to help, despite all your valid reasons not to, you may request a child's letter — and they still have 500 to place by Friday — at www.suntimes.com/santa, or e-mail elves@suntimes.com or call (773) 890-7373.
     Or donate money by going to suntimes.com/santa or by sending a check or money order made out to Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust to: Sun-Times Season of Sharing, P.O. Box 3596, Chicago, IL 60654. But don't say I didn't warn you. Caring is addictive.
                        —Originally published Dec. 14, 2011

     Some days, it all makes sense.
     I was standing at the kitchen counter early one morning last week when my older boy knocked over his lunch bag. It fell to the floor and the can of Diet Dr Pepper he had snuck inside cracked open in such a way that it sent a sheet of soda pop spraying four feet into the air between us.
     I was regarding this phenomenon, not with distress, but a certain bovine curiosity, musing that you couldn't re-create that curtain of mist if you dropped 100 cans, when my younger son's voice shouted from the next room. "There's a dead mouse!" he cried.
     "You get the soda, I'll get the mouse," I said, grabbing a paper towel, choking back my snarky comment ("You wear size 12 shoes; take care of the mouse yourself.") I did the dirty work, returned to the kitchen, and thought, sincerely, "I'll miss this."
     Half an hour later, I strode out of the house, toward the train station, got half a block, remembered, "Oh, the gifts!"—the shopping bag of neatly wrapped presents, the purchase of which, for a Season of Sharing letter, was outlined in a recent column.
     I pirouetted, raced back, grabbed the bag—"Can't talk!"—and bolted for the train.
     At the office, I asked the editor who gave me the letter where I should deliver the gifts. I thought she'd say a certain room on the 10th floor executive offices. Instead, she gave me an address on West 123rd Street. I didn't know there was a West 123rd Street in Chicago. But there is, in West Pullman.
     "The donors are responsible for hand-delivering the gifts," she said.

     Now you tell me.
     I assessed my options. I could go down to the street and try to press the gifts on random passing girls— "Here honey, take a present." But considering our world today, that might not go well. It seems fraught.
     I asked a hotshot colleague who lives in Pullman. Could you . . . ? "Busy!" Clarity descended on me, and I had what I call a "Nineveh Moment." If you recall your Bible, God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh but, also being a busy, can't-be-bothered kind of guy, Jonah tries to shuck the task, a storm comes up, buffeting the ship he is trying to escape on, and Jonah gets tossed into the sea.
     That happens. Shirking certain missions only backfires and you end up in a big fish. I told my editor that I'd take care of it.
     My intention was to drop the gifts off the next morning then flee downtown. Between the round trip the day before and today, I had already schlepped the gifts 100 miles. The lady at the shelter had a different idea.
     "I want her to meet you," said Marshe Owens, a case manager at the shelter, located in an old convent house, the floors and woodwork worn, the ceiling patched in places, the space tight —60 people living in 13 small rooms. But clean and homey.
     I sputtered, trying to back off: aren't donors supposed to be anonymous? But that was brushed aside. First I met the mother, a bright-eyed lady to whom fate has handed some bad breaks. I had jokingly supposed her daughter wanted to be a writer, based on her asking Santa for a journal. But more than a glib line, that turned out to be true. The girl has the optimism that gets writers through the disappointments of our profession, ascribing significance to trivial matters such as meeting a newspaper columnist.
     "She said, 'I'm on my way, Mom! This is a big break!' " her mother told me. I've been having that thought daily for the past 30 years. So the girl, 12, was sent for.
     There we should draw the veil. Suffice it to say that I found myself driving north up South Halsted, really, really, really glad that I had, with prodding, paused from dancing around the bonfire of my own ego to think of someone else for once. I felt nestled in a rare bubble of happiness and tranquility. A very—dare I say it?—Christmassy feeling, followed by a realization: Don't wait until next Christmas to do this kind of thing again.                          
                                                  —Originally published Dec. 23, 2011

Brighten the Christmas of a needy child, damn you!

     "I wish you wouldn't say that," my wife said.
     "Say what?" I replied.
     "Say, 'I'm not a social service,'" she said, mimicking some pompous dope's voice; me, apparently.
     A favorite phrase of mine when I'm ducking some do-goody task somebody feels I ought to do.
     "Well, I'm not!" I blustered. Helping people is a fool's errand. 
     When I saw the table set out in the newsroom for the Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust's Letters to Santa program this year, my first, unvarnished thought was: Hell no! Not AGAIN!  I've done that in the past. Talk about a hassle. You have to track down some obscure toy for an anonymous child. One year I was late getting it, and was forced to drive to West 123rd Street to deliver the gift. I bet you didn't know Chicago has a West 123rd Street; it sounds like it should be in New York City, and by the time you drive there, it might as well be.  I ended up being pressured into meeting the recipient at a shelter, face-to-face. It was awkward and ate up half a day.
     Besides, it costs money. I've got two boys in college. I'm helping kids plenty already.
     And then I would have to write one of those stiff Letters to Santa" columns trying to gull others into joining me in perdition. Who reads those?
     Well, I do. At least I read Dan Mihalopoulos' Nov. 17 article. I noticed his name and picture and figured, "Maybe he's blowing the lid off the whole Letters to Santa scam. The toys end up being burned into the fireplaces of Bruce Rauner's nine homes, because the sight of flaming toys intended for underprivileged kids is the only thing that can bring a smile to his thin, cold, lipless face....
     No. It turns out that Mihalopoulos was merely promoting the program, how it's "making wishes come true" for impoverished kids at Christmas.
     Fuck you, Dan, I thought. If you think you're better than me, you have another thing coming.

    I marched over to the table, intending to grab a letter. But which letter? Not a girl's letter, obviously — outside of my skill set, maybe even creepy. I'd end up lingering by the Barbies, trying to find the specific outfit demanded by my tyke, only to catch the paranoid attention of some gimlet-eyed mom and, trying to explain my mission find myself arrested.  "EX-COLUMNIST NABBED LOITERING IN BARBIE AISLE."
     The first letter off the boys pile wanted a pair of soccer shoes and a soccer ball and a soccer net and maybe an entire soccer team, too, for all I know. I stopped reading and tossed it back: too expensive. The next few seemed similarly unpromising, until I hit upon one from Diego O., age 7, a second grader from the Burroughs School. He did not, like other kids, begin his letter "Dear Santa," but "Dear santa's helper." As if the boy saw through the entire charade. He knew he wasn't appealing to the supposed good nature of some ludicrous aged elf who, despite his morbid obesity, nevertheless brings presents to good little boys and girls in one physically impossible orgy of global generosity each Dec. 25. He knew he was trying to touch the heart of some anonymous henchman who, like himself, was trying to navigate a harsh social structure maze built on guilt and lies. A kindred spirit.
     He continued: "tonk you for the gifts I will receive...."
     I'd offer that "tonk" as an indictment of the Chicago Public School system, but I distinctly remember taking a spelling test in 2nd grade where we were asked to spell "of" and, stumped, I wrote down "ove." Another commonality; we were also brothers in poor spelling. 
     Diego went on:

I hope you have a great christmas with your family. I would like you to bring me toy soldiers, minecraft legos or a sniper nerf gun. may god bless you and all your family? I greatly appreciate it, you are truly a nice person for thinking about the child from school.

     Laying it on a bit thick, aren't we kid? Still, I admired the fulsome praise in return for expected benefit — he could have a future in Chicago politics. And "thinking about the child from school." The third person, it was, well, somehow touching.
     There are no toy stores anymore, but Target had a whole section of Minecraft Legos, ("Minecraft," I assume, is a video game where the play constructs roadside bombs). Minecraft Lego sets topped out at $110, I noticed with stomach-dropping dread. But I found a set that didn't look too paltry for $21, and then went over to the armory of Nerf weapons. No designated "sniper" gun, so I picked a long rifle that looked like something Oswald left behind in the Texas School Depository, only with orange parts to encourage member of the Chicago Police Department not to shoot him if he's bold enough to play with it outside.
      It only set me back $15, which left room for the toy soldiers, not that Target had any. American servicemen are fighting all over the world to preserve our freedom, yet parents dab a perfumed hankie to their lips in horror at the thought of their kids playing with soldiers. 
     Now all I have to wrap the stuff, and get it to whatever staffer at the paper has been saddled with this task, assuming I don't end up having to drive it down to West Pullman again.
    Cynical? Sure. But I would draw your attention to one germane point: I did it. A Jewish agnostic who never celebrated Christmas in his life, who thinks of all organized religion as dueling fairy tales. A bitter alcoholic whose entire life is an ash heap of disappointment and failure. Yet, somehow, out of a vague spark of professional jealousy toward Dan Mihalopoulos, I roused myself, and helped make a child's Christmas a little brighter, assuming the gifts don't end up as Yule logs at Bruce Rauner's ski chalet.
     If I can do it, so can you. but time is short. Go online at www.suntimes.com/santa or call 312-321-3114 and asking for a Letter to Santa. You can be a solipsistic bastard concerned with only your own comfort the rest of the year. Who knows, it might even make you feel good. It didn't do a thing for me. But it might do something for you. Stranger things have happened. 

"Training for the marathon of life"

Therese Schmidt

In my career, I've found myself in some odd positions trying to research a story: hitting the beach with Marine Reserves on maneuvers on the coast of California. Climbing a communications mast atop the John Hancock with the men who were changing the light bulbs on it. Interviewing a nurse who was giving me a prostate exam. Tied naked to a St. Andrew's cross at a dungeon. 

      This story really stands out, because it required running along the subterranean streets under the Loop with Therese Schmidt, watching her deliver packages for her store, Atlas Stationers.  She really moves, wasn't about to delay her deliveries just because she had company, and I struggled to keep up while jotting down her comments as we ran. 

    I go to Atlas all the time, for all my office supply needs, and always stop to chat with Therese if she's in the store and realized, last time we did, that with the cold weather coming on, eventually, I should  post this story. Every business owner should be so determined to serve customers. 

     'This is where the dead guy was," Therese Schmidt calls over her shoulder, taking a quick right at Post Place and hitting Lower Wacker Drive at a brisk trot.
     She gestures at a gathering of dumpsters underneath 205 W. Wacker, where a corpse once turned up, while pushing a cart of $2,000 in office supplies: toner cartridges, binders, batteries, bubble wrap.
     It's Thursday, just past 8 a.m.
     Schmidt, 53, delivers office supplies for Atlas Stationers. She's also co-owner; her husband's grandfather founded Atlas in 1939. Nevertheless, five days a week she spends hours sprinting around downtown Chicago, fulfilling the store's promise, posted on a sign in the window of its Lake Street store: "Free Loop Delivery."
     "I always run when I'm making deliveries," she says.
     Then again, she always runs when she's not making deliveries - she ran two miles already today, about 4:30 a.m. around her neighborhood in Lake Villa, before coming downtown to run more.
     And sometimes, to unwind after running in the early morning and at midday, she'll run again in the evening, on a treadmill at home.
     She has run when it was 30 degrees below zero and 105 above. When the blizzard struck last February she ran behind a snow plow.
     "I never miss it," says Schmidt, who was a three-sport athlete at Morgan Park High School. When her four children were in athletics, she'd drive them to practice, and run until they were done.
     "I run every day," she says. "I run through sprained ankles. I've had minor surgery I've run through. All our vacations. It's one of those things. If you don't run you're afraid you won't run again."
     So she never skips a day? "Not 100 percent," admits Schmidt, estimating that, over the past five years, she has not run on a total of five days. Otherwise, she averages between four and 10 miles a day.
     Why run? That's complicated.
     At 222 N. LaSalle, Schmidt transfers 14 packages from her hand cart to the basement loading dock - these buildings are meant to accept deliveries from trucks, not runners. She chats with the guard at the desk, chats with the men in the mail room accepting the packages.
     "How you doin' today?" she says. "Nice to see you." By 8:20 a.m. she is sprinting back to Atlas along Lower Wacker. Crime doesn't worry her —"Cameras!" she says. She picks up another two orders, already packed on a smaller cart — $17.39 worth of vinyl covered paper clips and $109.73 in mailing labels — heading to two law firms at 1 E. Wacker.
     Schmidt is not one of those inner-focused runners oblivious to the world. She notices and ponders everything as she passes it by, such as a knot of half a dozen homeless men sprawled at Garvey Court.
     "Those guys are always out there sleeping; I feel bad for them," she says, though giving them a wide berth. "You just don't know if they're schizophrenic or not."

   She spies an inert form under a blue and white quilt on Lower Wacker, wrapped head to toe in plastic, and stops to investigate.
     "Is there someone in there?" she says. "I feel bad, all these guys. They came from somewhere."
     As Schmidt runs, she lets her mind roam too; this morning about veterans and post-traumatic stress. "How could they not all have it?" she thinks. About atheists. "They must have faith," she muses, "in their atheism."
     At 1 E. Wacker, a lady in a green scarf gets on the elevator.
     "Hello, how are you doing?" Schmidt says. "That's a pretty scarf. It looks great on you."
     "Thank you," the lady says, adding, "I wish it was Friday."
     "Well, it's almost there," Schmidt replies brightly. "It's Thursday. Thursday's good because tomorrow's Friday."
     "She always upbeat," says Bryan, who works security in the lobby at 1 E. Wacker. "It's always good to see her smiling face."
     Schmidt has a degree in economics from Knox College in Galesburg.
     She shrugs off some ribald humor overheard on an elevator.
     "I have five brothers," she says, and two sisters. She now includes one who died when just a few days old.
     "It wasn't until Daley," she says. "He always talked about, always included, his one son who died, Kevin. Once he did that, my sister and I started to acknowledge our little sister Francine."
     Gozdecki, Del Giudice, Americus & Farkas; Pfaff & Gill; The National Association of Charter School Authorizers; Michael B. Rosen Architect.
     She hands over her driver's license, chatting happily with a variety of guards, some stern, some smiling. She unpacks her cart to put each package through a metal detector. She is given temporary passes, buzzed through doors.
     "You're always smiling," a secretary says to her.
     "Well, it's always a good day," she answers.
     

     Floor 17. Floor 33. She used to design offices for a living. She just made a sale to a company she was delivering something to after observing that their chairs would wreck the new carpets. They ordered 10 vinyl floor mats; she delivered them the next day.
     "They're all really nice," she says, of the people she interacts with. "People don't realize, they're working two jobs. Some are going to school. One girl on Hubbard has three jobs. . . . But extremely nice."
     Schmidt notices nuances. "The building moves," she says, standing still, for once, in the lobby of Willis Tower — and it does, you can feel vibration under your feet.
     She hands out yellow gel highlighters to three security guards in gray blazers at the front desk.
     "Look where this is going!" says Omar, genuinely delighted, tucking the pen into his sportscoat. "Thanks, you made our day. I love it. We ALWAYS need highlighters!"
     "It's a Uni-ball," Schmidt says upstairs, offering a pen.
     "Oooooh," the law clerk enthuses. "It feels really nice."
     "It's a great pen," Schmidt says. "Of course, if you need 100 of them, you know where to go."
     She runs full bore down Adams, heading west, past the J.W. Hotel, and thinks about Occupy Chicago, coming up quickly.
     "I kinda feel bad for them," she says. "They need some direction. Everyone needs a leader."
     Schmidt feeds off the energy of those she encounters - the only time her mood sags is upstairs at the Monadnock Building, its hallways shadowy and dim.
     "You always feel like a church in this building, because it's so quiet," she says, striding on the 16th floor.
     Returning from the Monadnock, she turns on the gas, rounds Jackson and cuts north on La Salle, passing the three, count 'em, three Occupy Chicago protesters.
     At Monroe, running hard, she notes a homeless man and his "homeless dog" who used to always be there when she passed.
     "I get kind of nervous, thinking what happened to them," she says.
     There are hills in the Loop - not just down to Lower Wacker, but also at Franklin to the River.
     "You don't even notice it," she says. "It's a slight hill. You don't notice it until you're pushing some weight, when you're doing 500 pounds of paper."

     By 1 p.m. she has done 17 deliveries. When not running, she's in the office of the store, where her son Brian also works. "The time goes by so fast," she says. She'll slip out at 3 p.m. for an 18th delivery.
     Why all the running? She had plantar fascitis once, she says, both feet, "before anyone knew what it was."
     "I could not do anything," she says. "Two years. I used a cane." Surgery cleared that up. "Once I could run, I never wanted to stop. I'm always afraid my feet will start hurting again."
     But that isn't the main reason she runs. Running does her heart good, literally.
     "My dad was 47 years old," she says. "He had a heart attack and died in front of me. I was 16. That was a little traumatic."
     "That's why she runs," her husband, Don, adds.
     "Nothing's ever as bad as that," she says, smiling. "I'm training for the marathon of life."

                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 4, 2011

Nicole Cabell: "I was always drawn to unusual music"

     My older son is in town, visiting from college this weekend, and we slid by the Civic Opera House Friday afternoon to hear Nicole Cabell sing Hanna in the Lyric Opera's production of "The Merry Widow"—she's sharing the role with the great Renee Fleming. A few weeks earlier, we had sat down and talked about the part, her career, and opera in general.
     When the Californian was cast in Franz Lehar's delightful frolic, she had not only never appeared in the opera, she had never seen it.  That did not deter her, even though she doesn't have a lot of experience with frothy operetta. 
    Well, why not? she thought. 
    "I know the music will be good for me," she said. "Everything I'm doing this year is outside of my comfort zone. So why not do this crazy thing and come back to the Lyric and just have fun?"
     I  began our conversation by pointing out that she seems to put out more recordings than the average soprano.
     "I think it's really good, especially if you can put unusual repertoire into recordings," she said. "Because people are making them less now. For me it was, okay, this is stuff you don't find."
     The reviving of obscure works is interesting to me, but I've always come to it from an audience perspective, as experiencing, if not enduring, compositions put on for your edification more than your enjoyment, a painful shot delivered to improve the general health of opera as an art form. 
     I never thought about how the artists themselves view it, and Cabell quickly took me to school, explaining such pieces offer an opportunity to shine.

     "You have your own special interpretation of A, B and C," she said. "But if you also have something unusual, like I did a Ricky Ian Gordon record. He doesn't have a lot of recordings of only his music. [So I do] that as opposed to doing another version of 'O Mio Babbino Cara.'"
     On the other hand, you don't want to just do unfamiliar works either.
     "You have to have a balance," she agreed. "For me, of course, I like to bookend, to alternate my popular recordings with unusual recordings. Or my roles. I need it as an artist. I need to be challenged and to go outside of my comfort zone. If I just sing the Top 40 of opera, I get a little bit bored. You have to consider your audience, and they might get a little bored. I was always drawn to unusual music,  I think because there is a freedom in that. You get a little bit in the box when you sing stuff that's been sung a million times. People look at you as an artist in a fresh way if you're singing something that is not something they always see. 
     "For instance, 'La Traviata,' Everyone has seen and has an opinion on 'La Traviata'" [you can find mine here]."So all they do is compare you to other people. When I sing "Capuletti e i Montecchi," that is not done very often, and they say, 'Oh, what does she have to say?' I would like to make everything my own." 
     Cabell is not alone in this.
     "Most artists, probably love to be challenged," she said. "You feel fresh. If you haven't heard it before, or not very often. You think, 'Oh, I'm giving birth to something new, something very fresh.' But I'm also a traditionalist in a lot of ways, so I need to come back to my Mimis, to my Juliets, to my Violettas. I need this as well."
     Speaking of being compared to others, how is sharing a role with Rene Fleming? Does that invite comparison?
     "Totally different, apples and oranges, right?" she said. "If somebody compares me to Rene Fleming I feel they have no imagination. It's apple and oranges. She's a beautiful, red delicious apple. I'm a tangerine."
     She tries not to obsess over reviews or the techniques of others.
     "I try not to watch people too much for fear of becoming a poor man's version of them," she said. 
     On the subject of comparisons, one detail of Cabell's resume demands being shared, because Chicagoans, particularly when it comes to the arts , can feel as if they're dwelling in the shadows of New York. Cabell was a young singer, accepted into the Juilliard School in New York, when a chance to audition for the Lyric Ryan Opera Center came her way. 
   "What happened was, I sang for [then Ryan director] Richard Pearlman back in 2001," she said. "At the time I had already been accepted to Juilliard. The summer before I was to start at Juilliard. It was totally a fluke I sang for him. I got to the finals. I thought, 'I'm already going to Juilliard. There's a snowball's chance in hell I'll actually get into the [Ryan] program.' That was my thinking. I went to Juilliard for ... two days. Then I went here to audition for the program, got into the program, flew home Sept. 10, 2001. Sept. 11, 2001 was my third day of class at Juilliard. Of course I only had two periods before they shut down everything."
    What made up her mind?
    "I had been thinking over the course of the weekend, 'Do I stay or do I go?' When Sept. 11 happened, that was my official date of withdrawal from Juilliard. "
    Did the 9/11 attacks factor into her decision?
    "I hadn't made up my mind if I was going to stay the semester," she said. "I remember watching the TV, thinking, 'I don't feel safe anymore.' For somebody 23 years old, to say that, that anything could happen at any moment and everybody living on borrowed time. When they finally reopened a week later  I had already made up my mind: I don't want to stay in New York. I stayed for another three weeks then I left."
    Not that leaving was easy. It took her a while to find the proper perspective. 
    "I told somebody at Juilliard that I got into this program and I was going to drop out," Cabell said. "They said, "Oh, but this is Juilliard, you can't do this!' Then I talked to another person, one of the counselors there, and said they were giving me a hard time, and she said: 'This is what you go to Juilliard to do. To get into a program like this.' And I said, "Oh. Right. Goodbye.' Of course it was the best thing I could have possibly done."

     Nicole Cabell sings Hanna in this season's final production of "The Merry Widow" on Sunday, Dec. 13.


    
     
     

Rahm's crocodile tears

     Oh please.
     I don't know which is worse. The drama and self-importance of the protesters, reeling around Michigan Avenue, venting their demands, insisting that Rahm Emanuel resign, as if that would do anything. Or the dewy-eyed performance of the mayor, who can quiver his lip and apologize and take responsibility and insist that Things Are Going to Change without giving any indication of what that change might be.
     First, the protests. I would bet none of them have the foggiest idea who would be mayor if Emanuel quit, which he won't. Do you? It would be the city's vice mayor, Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd). Sure, he's the man to fix everything. Just last month, while black aldermen were condemning Garry McCarthy, Reilly was most prominent among the white aldermen genuflecting before the doomed police superintendent, singing his praises.
     "Yours is one of the most difficult jobs in the City of Chicago, and we just want to make sure that you've got the resources that you need to complete the mission," Reilly warbled.
     So that's the guy who'll fix the police department when Rahm resigns? Which he won't. Reilly would soon be replaced by the Chicago City Council, and we all know what kind of genius they've made mayor in living memory: puppet Eugene Sawyer.
     Yet the mob calls for Emanuel's head. Long term strategic planning is not the strong suit of mobs.
     Leading us to the man who is never resigning, Rahm Emanuel. He's been mayor for nearly five years. Don't you know him yet? This is the guy when Hillary Clinton fired him, refused to go, but wrapped his arms around Bill Clinton's knees and pleaded until he was allowed to stay. He doesn't quit, because that would mean he hasn't won, and Rahm has to always win. It's a rule. He aims high.
     "Nothing less than complete and total reform of the system and the culture that it breeds will meet the standard we have set for ourselves as a city," Emanuel said Wednesday, somehow restraining himself from adding, "except of course the mayor. The mayor stays."
     Empty words. "The standard we have set for ourselves as a city." Since when? When did we set that standard? On Wednesday? And why was it set? Because after nearly five years of ignoring police malfeasance Emanuel finally snapped to attention. And why did he snap to attention? Because the blood of Laquan McDonald touched whatever spider web of a soul is to be found within the mayor? It sure didn't for the first 13 months after it happened. Emanuel couldn't even bring himself to watch the video. Or so he says.
     No, the New York Times published a call for his resignation—that's gotta hurt—and the The Magnificent Mile Association keeps phoning, shrieking, "Can't you get these people out from in front our stores. It's Christmas!" And suddenly he's solving our nation's racial biases on the backs of the police department.
     Sure, they could do a better job of weeding out bad apples. But protecting incompetents is what unions do: I've belonged to one and watched it operate for nearly 30 years, and while I think unions are important organizations, I also know that no reporter could be so big a screw-up or head case that the union wouldn't go to bat for him. In a newspaper, it leaves you with goldbricks, in the teacher's union, lousy teachers, but with the police that kills people. Every cop involved in one of these horrific shootings has a jacket as long as my arm, where nothing was done. The only reason we're worked up now is because of advances in video technology, which the whole ossified buddy-buddy Mount Greenwood cabal of inbred law enforcement has yet to figure out how to sidestep. But they will. Meanwhile, it'll be interesting to see how the mayor creates the illusion of change, so he can get through this, see out his term, and then go on to wherever it is mayors go, exiting with all the dignity he can muster, citing figures and statistics like an auctioneer that proves, to him if no one else, that he was the best mayor ever.
     Speaking of ex-mayors. You know who must be having a good laugh right now? Richard M. Daley? I really wish he dwelled in the temporal world so I could ask him. But he's on some whatever astral plane, being ferried on his buddies private jets from the Gold Coast to Shanghai and back, chuckling so hard his shoulders shake. Here's the guy who shrugged off pleas from Amnesty International to investigate torture allegations against Jon Burge, who sold off the city's assets to cover the commitments he traded for votes but couldn't keep, and left the city a stinking financial mess sliding toward utter ruin. Lauded as the best mayor in the country, rode off into the sunset as the city blew kisses at him. Meanwhile Rahm, twice the administrator Daley was, has fallen and can't get up.
     That's my takeaway from his speech. Don't be fooled by emotion. Rahm Emanuel is just the latest politician signing a check he can't cash.

Housekeeping note.

We are a family here at Every goddamn day, so therefore....

Okay, maybe not a family, but a community, like the Amish, in that...

No, not the Amish. Not even a community. An amorphous mass, perhaps, a constantly-mutating blob of pixilated opinions and semi-shielded identities that....

Oh, heck, cut to the chase: A reader, Bill O'Callaghan, sent me this note Thursday, Shaving off the preliminary niceties, he said:

    I asked quite some time ago in the comments section of EGD if it wouldn’t be better if the sign-in process could be changed to require people to sign in using something other than “Anonymous.” At the risk of being a presumptuous pest,     I’m renewing that request today. There are clearly others who find it confusing and annoying to have to try to figure out which “Anonymous” is which in order to follow the back-and-forth in the conversation each day; and from one day—and column—to the next. Yes, often one can figure out who is who based on their tone and style and viewpoints, but wouldn’t it be far less cumbersome if each comment had a unique name or screen-name attached to it?
    The comments section has grown to be quite vibrant and the site of a great deal of healthy and illuminating debate. Obviously there are also some meatheads, mooks and morons (or do I repeat myself?) but for the most part the comments and commenters are thoughtful and interesting. It would just be improved (IMO) if one didn’t have to guess who is who for so many posts.
     People don’t have to use their real names (and many have good cause not to want to, for good or bad reasons) but if everyone used a unique name the threads would read better and the posts by both the worthy and the assholes could be more easily identified. That way, a decision could be made immediately whether to engage or ignore the comment, without the guesswork and wasted time.
    Obviously it’s your playground and you get to make the rules. You can take a poll or dismiss the idea again, but I’d bet there are many others who feel the same way I do on this issue. My only goal is to try to help transform the debate in the comments section from very good to truly outstanding. If your reluctance to make the change is because it would be a giant pain to change the protocol, I suppose I understand, but maybe one of your techie friends or readers could do the initial legwork to make the change?
    In any case, thanks again for listening and for being an ongoing resource for interesting and thought-provoking material to read and discuss.

    Makes sense to me. I gotta admit, keeping track of all the "ANONYMOUS" could be a pain-in-the-ass, even for me. You want to reply to some bit of madness, and you have to tag the time and the person reading it has to check back and it becomes a chore, like reading all the footnotes in Infinite Jest. Anyway, beginning tomorrow, in order to comment, you'll have to log in. You don't have to use your real name, but you have to use some kind of name. I can't see how that would rock anybody's world, but feel free to weigh in today, anonymously if you wish, and I'll make the change at midnight.  Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, and I hope this improves your Every goddamn day reading experience. 

Henry Ford and Donald Trump

     Donald Trump is not the first rich guy to try to lead his country over a cliff.
     Eighty years ago there was Henry Ford.
    Also rich. Also famous. Also an object of fascination.
    Which he used as a platform to spew his vicious anti-Semitism. He blamed the Jews for World War I, for all wars. And for controlling the press, and Hollywood.
    As bad as it is to be a fan of Hitler, Ford was worse.
    Hitler was a fan of his—Henry Ford is the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf.
    “You can tell Herr Ford that I am a great admirer of his,” Hitler once said. “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany. ... I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.” 
     And he did. Hitler was grateful to Ford.  In 1938, Nazi Germany awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, which Ford accepted. The medal was displayed at his museum at Greenfield Village. I saw it.
    Now Donald Trump, the 2015 Henry Ford, tells us that our enemies are Muslims. He fans the real fear in our hearts, put there by terror attacks by Muslim fanatics. And in doing that, he does the bidding of terrorists, because they commit these acts as a way to drive a wedge between Islam and the modernizing force of the West. Donald Trump is a pawn of ISIS as much as if he showed up in a cave fingering a Kalashnikov.
    Many Republicans seem to be fooled, to their permanent shame. Trump is an embarrassment that won't soon wash off. Then again, they're just being true to form. The GOP has long been the party that would take this country back to the white-dominated, Christian-centric country they imagine it once was. 
    Even though it was never that way.
    Trump speaks to fear and ignorance and prejudice. And the fearful and ignorant and prejudiced love him for it.
     But this is America, still, and we who are not fearful, not ignorant, not prejudiced, can speak too.
     What should we say?
     I know what I'd like to say. Something simple, forceful, and direct. Something like:
     Fuck you, Donald Trump. 
     Because I'll be damned if Trump represents my country, a beautiful land where people are free to believe, free to worship, free to speak. Where the narrow tribalism that wrecks so much of the world has no place. Where we judge people by their own words and actions, and not by the actions of some other members of their religious or racial group. Trump's words and actions have already done much to damage our country, to encourage and inspire our foes. White nativists, normally so scorned and marginalized, love Trump, because they know that a man who would bar all Muslims would burn all Jews. A man who says Mexicans are rapists would say blacks are lazy. He is capable of anything.
      Up to now, decent people have tried to ignore Trump's rantings because he's a clown, a sideshow. Hitler was a clown, too. Right up to the time he wasn't. And Henry Ford was his helper and inspiration. We must not tolerate Donald Trump, our present day Henry Ford, long enough for him to become more serious than he already is. This has gone on too long already. 

"I feel like a newborn baby."

Abdul Jabbar

     Abdul Jabbar, 30, stood in front of Exit B at Terminal 5 in O'Hare International Airport, waiting.
     "For them, it's really hard," he said, of the people who would be coming through the door in a few minutes.
     He knows. He is also a Rohingya, an oppressed Muslim minority in Myanmar, as Burma is now known. How oppressed? Last year, the Myanmar government refused to let anyone register as "Rohingya" on the national census.
     "Rohingya doesn’t exist,” said a member of the Burmese parliament, news to the untold millions — the government won't count them, remember — who live in camps, or hiding, or have fled the country because they cannot hold jobs or go to government schools, and are being attacked by Buddhist mobs, beaten or burned to death.
     Something to think about next time you're whining about the War on Christmas.
     "That is the main reason people are leaving," said Jabbar. "They are not allowed to legally work."
     When he was 12, he would be seized on his way to school and forced to work, unpaid, pressed by local military officers into being a porter—in essence, a slave. When his uncles decided to flee, his mother urged Jabbar to join them.
     "My mother said, 'Follow your uncles; save your life.'" he recalled, the start of a 15-year odyssey through Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, dealing with treacherous human traffickers and police whose only interest was to send him back.
     "Nine times I was arrested in Malaysia," he said. "Each time I was deported to Thailand."
     "We are most persecuted minority in the world," he said.
     But not the only persecuted minority. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees estimates that 40,000 people a day leave their homes fleeing armed conflict—it administers to some 15 million refugees. For decades, the main source of refugees was Afghanistan, but in 2014 that became Syria.
     "The crisis was going on for four years, but no one was paying attention," said Suzanne Akhras Sahloul from the Syrian Community Network of Chicago. "Many advocacy groups were talking about the refugee crisis,but no one was really listening. it was not something that would affect their life. It was another conflict in the Middle East."
     For a brief time in the fall, the world's heart softened to their plight. But after the Paris attacks, unrelated though they were to Syrian refugees,, nativism surged in Europe, and in the United States. Congress leapt to block refugees from Syria. Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday went even further, demanding a complete ban to all Muslims entering the United States. As frightening as that is to any Muslim, it leaves Syrian refugees particularly stunned and confused.
     "You're blaming the victim," said Sahloul, who said Syrian refugees in this country are aghast to be lumped in with the evil that drove them from their homes.
     "The governor, he's really upset them," she said, before Trump's shocking declaration. "They'll say, 'We're not ISIS.' It's hurt their feelings, and offended them, greatly. [They say] 'We're good people. Look at my children.'"
     Americans tend to have narrow preconceptions when it comes to the Middle East. They imagine sand, camels, poverty. With Syria, the cliche was particularly spurious.
     "Syria used to be a beautiful country, good infrastructure, great houses, cafes, restaurants, excellent education," said Chandreyee Banerjee, Catholic Relief Services' regional development director for the Great Lakes Area. "Exchange students would go from the U.S. and Europe to study in Damascus. You are talking about people who are very cultured, very educated, and had a pretty good life.
     In 2011, that all changed.
     "Then you look at what their status is today, it's very sad," she said. "It just breaks your heart. Their life is such a dark contrast to before the war. And for them, not much of a preparation phase. They went from a life just like yours and mine to their houses being bombed, losing their family members, losing their homes. Extremely dire conditions. They leave their country and everything they hold dear as refugees."
     Prior to her posting here, Banerjee was a CRS representative in Turkey. Last fall, she stood at the Macedonia border and watched thousands fleeing for their lives.
     "I love history," she said. "I read a lot about World War II. Just looking at these numbers of people coming through, it made me feel: This is exactly what it must have looked like during the world war."
     And just as in World War II, many nations that could—that should—offer them refuge are barring the gates based on fear and ignorance, the United States being among the most derelict.
     "It's criminal for the world to their backs on these people, who are just like you and me," Banerjee said. Working with Syrian refugees, she encounters bewilderment.
     "A quote I often heard from families is, 'We are good people. We have had to leave behind our country and everything we hold dear. We are perceived as non-good people because of certain forces., We are running away from evil.' We need to understand in the United State, people seeking refuge in US are running away from forces that any citizen of us would want to run away, these people have lost family, home, hands of ISIS."
     Banerjee can't understand how the United States can so completely forget its own history.
     "This country was formed by people who had the courage to bring themselves and their families here and make a life for themselves" she said. "It's hard for me to understand a country with such as glorious past would turn their eyes from similar people in similar situations."
     When I asked Banerjee what Catholic Relief needs most? Money? She said No. "We need advocacy, for people at decision-making levels to provide support for Syrian refugees. Ask your congressmen to open up their doors to more refugees, and bring about a lasting solution to the Syrian crisis."
     The family Abdul Jabbar was waiting for arrived; he greeted them, went along with the church group sponsoring them to their apartment, where he translated. The father said his family had fled Burma 13 years previously.
     "Our children were not allowed to study in the government schools," Jabbar translated for him. "We had to study at UN schools."
     He was a construction worker, and his fondest hope was to become a citizen. His son, 12, would like to be an engineer.
     "I have a big hope for myself and especially my children," the man said. "They will become educated and I will become a citizen. That is my big hope."
     It's hard to overestimate the gratitude of the lucky few who manage to find refuge in the United States.
     Abdul Jabbar settled on West Devon, part of a Rohingya community that he estimated at about 200 families. He works for Heartland Alliance. And his life in America now?
     "I feel like a newborn baby," he said. "I saw the freedom of life, of peace. People are really friendly here. Really nice. People help me. I feel very happy here. Not like Malaysia."

Flashback: big bookstore chains v. small independent shops

     December 8 is James Thurber's 121st birthday. Hard to believe. It seems just yesterday I was celebrating his centennial by taking myself to lunch at Shaw's Crab House and reading my favorite story, "The Catbird Seat," over a seafood salad and a split of champagne. 

James Thurber

      But I thought I would mark the day, in a more temperate fashion, and looking around in my clips for something on the great Ohio humorist—capturing his essence afresh seemed just too high a mountain as a sorbet in between courses of refugees—I stumbled upon this clever column from the late 1990s. It doesn't explain who Thurber was, or why I have 41 books by and about him on my shelf. I figure most readers will know and those who don't won't care, even after I explain it. To be honest, read "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" — it staggers me to think there are people who never read it—and you'll begin to understand. They'll also get heady whiff of his war-between-men-and-women approach that hasn't helped his work endure. Maybe we'll attempt to give Thurber his due next year.        
     Until then, this column is a party all its own, a relic of those pre-Amazon days when the only thing book lovers had to worry about were large discount chains. 

     The problem with truisms is they're not always true.
     He who hesitates is not always lost. Sometimes he who hesitates isn't hit by the truck.
     A penny saved is not always a penny earned. Sometimes a penny saved is another filthy slug in the big box of pennies, filled with dirt and twisted paper clips and God knows what, the box you never redeem.
     So I've always wondered about the common wisdom about bookstores. You know, that small, independent bookstores are bastions of the literary life, where knowledgeable clerks steer loyal customers toward the best in reading, while chain bookstores are gigantic mega-markets where bovine, illiterate clerks chew their gum like cud and dream of coffee breaks.
     I once believed that. Passionately. So much that I would try to always troop past the three huge book stores near our place to make my purchases at a tiny independent, the Lincoln Park Bookshop.
     That changed a few years ago after a single jarring purchase. I had made the walk to buy the $40, 1,200-page Harrison Kinney biography of James Thurber. As the young clerk handed the book over in one hand, accepting the money in the other, he chirped, "Who's Thurber?"
     Now, I don't want to single out a particular bookstore. LPB is a lovely place, with a pair of wing chairs in the back. I know the owner, Joel Jacobson. Once he produced a bottle of fine bourbon from the back room and we sat in the wing chairs, sipping and talking of things literary.
     But I was so taken aback by the "Who's Thurber?" comment (It would be like going to a nice restaurant, asking for merlot and having the waiter say, "Mer-what?") that I started shopping at Borders.
     For a year or two I went around telling people the Thurber story, as a putdown to independents. But gradually I began to suspect that, like all fanatics, I had swung too far the other way. So I devised an experiment to see which is more helpful, setting up a three-round contest.
     Round One began at the neighborhood Borders. I walked up to the information desk and stood before a young lady with long hair. "I'm looking for a novel," I said. "It's about migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression."
     Her reply was automatic, like pushing a button. No sooner had I pronounced the "n" in "Depression," when she said: The Grapes of Wrath.
     I then walked down to LPB. The store was utterly empty, and there were two clerks (one's heart does break for these places), one behind the counter, one dusting the shelves. Not wanting to double their chances, I waited until the dusting clerk drifted out of earshot.
     "I'm looking for a novel," I began, and unspooled the same request as at Borders. He looked at me blankly. I proceeded to hint No. 2: "I think it's called Angry Raisins. "
     "Grapes?" said the guy with the feather duster, who had drifted back. "Grapes of Wrath?"
     "Yes," I said, feigning excitement.
     The first clerk, obviously abashed, explained that he assumed I was looking for something more "obscure," and there is probably some truth to that. You'd get a blank look at McDonald's, too, if you asked for a slice of meat between two discs of bread. Still, big chains won the round.
     Round Two pitted Barnes & Noble vs. Unabridged Books, a capacious independent on North Broadway. The clerk behind the information counter at B&N listened to my request and chirped: "Contemporary?" I told him I thought it was a classic, and he not only coughed up Grapes of Wrath, but, as I fled, shouted that it was by John Steinbeck, the better to help me find it.
     At that point, I was worried about a sweep. But Unabridged Books put on a stellar performance. Not only did the woman at the cash register know immediately, but she was the first person out of the four stores to march me back to where the book was located, press it into my hands, and tell me it was "great." The independents tied the series.
     For the tie-breaker I was downtown, so I matched the brand new Brent bookstore, the return of the storied Brent name to Michigan Avenue, vs. the nearby B. Dalton on Wabash, the fading flagship of a losing brand in the book wars. It was a mismatch, but they were nearby.
     The Brent clerk, in tortoiseshell glasses, knocked out the title instantly, serving up the author and inquiring—quite reasonably, considering my question—if I was able to find my way to Literature.
     And B. Dalton? The initial request drew an "I have no idea." The Angry Raisins hint drew an "Is that the title?" Then I fell back to the final hint, which I had been itching to use. "I think it's by John Steinbok."
     She moved over to the computer. I spelled "S-T-E-I-N-B-O-K." A light somewhere glimmered. "Isn't it 'Steinbeck?' " she said, then declared the title. It was a small redemptive moment, but the round, and match, went to the independents. Those truisms do tend to be true.
                            —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 1, 1998