The twirling solar system pauses to focus on ... Carbondale

     The Train Inn has four rooms and two cabins. All of them are available for the highly coveted days around Aug. 21, when the twirling clockwork of the universe, no less, has placed humble Carbondale smack dab in the center of an event of cosmic magnificence: the total eclipse of the sun.
     No one has booked a room, though not for want of trying.
     "I've had 4,000 plus calls," said Paul Lewers, owner of the train-themed bed and breakfast. "I started getting requests five years ago: the first was an astronomy professor from Sweden."
     And why hasn't he booked any?
     "I'm not coming up with a price," he explained. "I didn't want to have them re-sold."
     Usually, rooms there start at $125, swelling to $245 for prime Southern Illinois University events. But the eclipse, reaching totality longer in Carbondale than any other place in the country, ah, eclipses any football game or graduation. Carbondale businesses are hoping to squeeze every dime out of pilgrim sky gazers. The Holiday Inn is asking $499 a night, paid in advance. SIU is renting out four-person dorm suites: $800 for three nights ("That's only $66 per person per night" an SIU representative helpfully pointed out).
     The university has an eclipse website with an end-of-the-world countdown clock. It's teaming with NASA, the Adler Planetarium and the Louisiana Space Consortium for a two-day celebration that is part tail-gate blowout, part science fair. Aug. 21 was also to be the first day of SIU classes, but those were canceled so as not to distract from the business at hand.

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Heaven, charred

     I can't remember a trip that settled as gently into memory as our April trek through Italy and France. The cities—Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris. The museums. The streets.
     And of course the food. While we ate at some fancy places—particular Astrance in Paris, one of the 50 best restaurants in the world, and enjoyed all sorts of exotic dishes, such as truffles, caviar, crepes, one surprising dish lingers as our hands-down favorite: a head of cauliflower.
    And the amazing thing is, I don't even like cauliflower.
    But we certainly liked this, served up the leaves charred on the outside, hot and moist and salty on the inside, fresh off the grill at Miznon, a packed restaurant in the Jewish quarter of Paris.
    That was our lunch. Cauliflower, artichokes and ... big eyes on my part ... broccoli.
    I'm writing this not in the hope that I can convey the savory joy of that vegetable. Nor because I really expect you to rush there and order it. But because we're tried to replicate it on our backyard grill and can't come close.  We assume you have to gently boil the cauliflower first. But we haven't achieved the tasty tenderness of Miznon. We should have quizzed them, but they were so busy, plus the language barrier.
     So ... readers ... any tips for grilling entire heads of cauliflower? We know it can be done to perfection. But how?

  

Reaction to 'Julius Caesar' truly a tragedy

     "Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges."
     That's Shakespeare, not me, I should mention, lest I be accused of plagiarism.
     I'm not even sure what a "whirligig" is — a spinning contraption, I imagine. (Bingo. "A toy that spins around," the dictionary tells us, "a top or a pinwheel.")
     As to what the sentence means, being literature, it's open to interpretation. I'd guess it's a fancy way of saying, "You get what you pay for."
     Do we ever. The initial pushback against Donald Trump — the mass protests, the investigations — are encouraging to Democrats eager to soften the throbbing sting of our country electing this guy.
     But being liberals, we are allowed — nay, required — to question our own assumptions. The idea that Trump's election awoke this slumbering liberal behemoth that somehow couldn't get out of bed Nov. 8 has to be, to some degree, a self-flattering narrative, a comforting illusion.
     There's a lot of that going around. There is pushback, sure. But the country is also becoming more Trumpian every day. It has to.
     For instance, The Public Theater production of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in New York's Central Park just lost two sponsors...

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Are they out there?

    If you don't see something, despite looking for it, it could be:
   A) it isn't there.
   B) it is there, but occurring outside of your range of vision.
    A new Facebook friend pointed out the impossibility of persuading anybody who supports Donald Trump and his malignant botch of a presidency to reconsider their position.
   "A popular meme goes around Facebook saying that nobody’s mind is changed by seeing anything on social media," she wrote.   
    That sounds true. As the Trump disaster unfolds, drip drip drip, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, there is no misstep that can't be explained away. Colluding with Russia? Well, Russia ain't so bad. Firing the FBI director to squelch the investigation? Well, he's allowed to do that. Receiving money from foreign governments in violation of the Constitution? Good business!
     At no point does anyone say, "Hmmm...is this what I voted for?"
     I've never seen, or heard of it.
     Is there anyone, in the United State of America, who voted for Trump, but now, seeing him in operation, thinks,"Golly, I might have made a mistake."
    Because I've never gotten an email, or a letter, or a phone call that betrays even a whisper of that sentiment. Or even the beginning of that sentiment. Rather, we get what is popularly referred to as "doubling down." Angry, aggrieved bemoaning of the unfairness facing our president, the greatest president ever, mixed with condemnations of the bitch he defeated, and nostalgic denunciations of the Muslim sleeper agent he replaced.
    So I'm asking you, the great unseen EGD audience. Have any of you, in your personal experience, heard of anyone dissatisfied with how Trump is performing in the White House? If so, under what circumstances -- and no names, please. I don't want to out anybody or expose them to the caustic ridicule and abuse that passes for political argument from the Republican camp.
    And if not -- and I would guess that common answer is "no" — what does that mean for our country? Even should Trump be booted from office—a long shot—or quit, bored, or be riven with a thunderbolt by the severe God of Deuteronomy, how can we face our difficult American future, knowing that so many of our brethren are blind to the evidence of their senses? Or what would be the evidence of their senses, if those senses could receive evidence?
    We're sorta screwed. Are we not?

Trump Tower? No, I live at 401 N. Wabash....

The hated letters went up on Trump Tower three years ago this week.

     We all know how well Donald Trump is doing as a president.
     Well, not all of us know. Thirty-seven percent of the country seems locked in a kind of trance, a willed blindness almost as unsettling to consider as the grim carnival they ignore.
     Still, many of us are painfully aware of how Trump is performing as president.
     But how is the Trump brand?
     Those hotels and condos and neckties. Will they, boosted by the prestige of the presidency, become a permanent part of the consumer landscape, even after the 45th president, please God, moves on? Is “Trump” the next Coke or Chevy?
     Or will the name vanish as quickly as Jimmy Carter peanut keepsakes?
     I will admit bias. I thought “Trump” represented the most vapid kind of tin-plated junk before he ran for president. I’d compare the Trump brand to the Playboy rabbit logo. On the rare occasions you see it, on someone’s car bumper, you do not think, “Oh, look, Playboy. The driver must do very well with highly attractive women and own a $25,000 stereo system.” Rather, the rabbit represents a kind of naive yearning, a juvenile greed that is almost sweet.
     But my view can be set aside. We are a marketing capital, here in Chicago. Surely experts are observing this process.

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Why carry a money clip?

     The money clip in Ann Tyler's 14th novel, A Patchwork Planet is modest—"A leather money clip, the kind you make from a kit"—yet carries quite a bit of symbolic heft. 
    At first it is a sign of affection from Opel, the daughter of the mope narrator, Barnaby Gaitlin, who carries it around in his pocket even when he has no cash to tuck into it, showing the token off. 
    "Everyone admired it."
     Later it becomes the vessel where the 30-year-old failure will certainly put the $8700 he owes his parents, as soon as he scrapes the currency together.
      Then again, money clips are as much symbol as function. Yes, they keep your money in neat order in your pocket, so you may draw out your wad without the bother of fumbling in a wallet.
    But money clips are also part of the ensemble of a put-together man, a suite that once included cufflinks and tie-bars, fancy pens and embroidered handkerchiefs.
     On Saturday, I reposted a 2002 column on my first cell phone. It contained this line: "...the phone is just another thing to carry, to keep in my drawer and load in my pockets every morning--wallet, keys, money clip, handkerchief and, now, telephone."
     Which prompted a query from a regular reader.
     "I've never understood the point of a money clip," Ann Hilton Fisher wrote on Facebook. "Do you still carry one? Isn't it redundant if you also carry a wallet?"

      Yes, I do. And no, not really redundant. Bills will bulk up your wallet—Frank Sinatra carried just a gold money clip stuffed with hundreds because he didn't like how wallets bulged his pants—and a money clip allows you to keep cash in a separate pocket. It's also safer. When making small cash purchases, you do not have to drag out your entire wallet, but can spend a buck while your vital IDs and credit cards remain stowed and secure. (Money clips are also harder for pickpockets to steal, and some security experts suggest men carry the clips instead of wallets with perhaps a cash card or ID slipped in with the currency).

    Although that is not why I started carrying a money clip. As a teen, a clip that had belonged to my grandfather, showing a long 1950s car, fell into my possession, and it seemed a relic from nightclubs and early dawns, a continental affectation I could adopt immediately, along with crossing my 7s and using a cigarette holder.

    Money clips were part of the luxe life.
    "Ruber wears a star sapphire ring and has a large collection of oversize cufflinks," John O'Hara writes in a 1963 short story, "John Barton Rosedale, Actors' actor." "He has at least twenty suits that he rotates, a Patek Philippe wristwatch, and a golden dollar-sign money clip which he displays when the day's bridge score is toted up."   

       There is definitely the element of display, of show, to a money clip. Your money isn't hidden in your wallet, but flashed at the world. They are supposed to be impressed. I know that is why I like to keep a hundred or two ready for action. There is an immigrant scrambling to that, the way patrons in a certain kind of bar or club will keep their money stacked on the table in front of them and pay out as they go. Of course the largest bill migrates to the outside. 

    Indeed, the practice of gilding your wad of cash with a large bill, concealing the smaller within, became associated to whatever striving ethnic group you want to sneer at: "a Jewish bankroll," a "Polish bankroll," etc.

     Then when I got married, my gift to my groomsmen was a money clip with a desert scene in wood and brass and stone. I gave one to myself while I was at it, one with a rectangle of lapis lazuli, and I've been carrying it ever since. Somewhere along the way it lost one of the goldish bars framing the blue stone, but it still works. There's something comforting about the object.
     Money clips make a great gift for Father's Day, a week from today, in that they are relatively inexpensive, or can be, and odds are the man on your list doesn't have one. They suggest the recipient has a certain panache, and who doesn't appreciate a gift that suggests that?

     Jazz man Thelonius Monk not only carried a money clip, but one with a $1,000 bill tucked into it, which drew attention of the East German border guards when Monk visited in 1967. They thought the clip might have to be impounded.

    "You ain't taking my thousand dollars," Monk informed the guards.

    "I had to explain to them, in German, that it was kind of a good luck charm," said his associate, Michael Blackwood. "We explained that he was a cultural figure and he lives in his own world."

     That explains the allure of money clips as well as anything: they might not make you Thelonius Monk. But they encourage the illusion that one is a cultural figure, living in his own world.
    Although an item that certainly clashes with the practical world, even before electronics really began mooting cash. In the 1998 Ann Tyler novel, when Barnaby Gaitlin finally assembles his 87 $100 bills and goes to repay his debt, only to find the wad too thick for Opal's money clip. He uses a paper bank band instead.

     

Newfangled device

     A cell phone today is as necessary as shoes, and most of us would feel as naked leaving the house without a phone as we would going outside barefoot.  But 15 years ago a cell phone—a little blue Nokia—was more of an option, a luxury item that an indulgent wife would give her husband, particularly if he sometimes nodded off and missed his train stop. As today is my birthday, I thought I'd dig into the past for a previous birthday column. The day this column ran, the city editor saw me, smiled, and shouted across the newsroom, "Throw it! Throw it!"  

     When I was 17, I bought a switchblade. I was spending the summer in Switzerland, where such knives were legal. Passing the window of a cutlery shop in Zurich, I noticed an impressive array of switchblades. Entranced, I went in and bought one. The first few minutes were pure thrill--to press the round button and have the knife snap open with a hard metallic click. To fold the long pointed blade back inside the black handle again with a smooth motion. I felt cool, dangerous.
     But very soon I began thinking, and qualms set in. As I walked home, I questioned buying the knife. "Why," I wondered, "did I buy this thing? What am I going to do with it?" I tried telling myself that it was for self-defense. That, confronted by bullies, I would pull out my switchblade and they would back off, terrified. Stupid of me.
     OK, I reasoned, maybe I won't use it against bullies. I'll show it off, to impress people. It will make me seem tough. Girls will be impressed.
     Double stupid.
     I was walking on a causeway, across a lake, having these thoughts when, acting impulsively, I took the switchblade out of my pocket and flung it into the water. It made a small blooping splash.
     Over the years, from time to time I've regretted not having the switchblade, just as a relic. But in the main I am proud that, at 17, I realized that toting a switchblade around was a bad idea, and believe that my life has gone more smoothly without it.
     The memory of the switchblade's final dive slumbered in my mind for 25 years, to be triggered afresh this morning as I crossed the Madison Street bridge over the Chicago River on my way from the train station to work. I turned 42 earlier in the week and my wife gave me a cell phone as a present. Thanks, honey. I let it sit on the coffee table for a few days, but I knew I'd have to come to terms with the thing, eventually. This morning I noticed it, sighed, and slipped the phone into my shirt pocket as I left for the train.
     Hurtling downtown, I plunged into the 148-page instruction book. It began with a raft of unexpected warnings: Don't use the phone at a gas station! Don't use it near chemicals, or at a blasting site! Don't point the infrared beam (the infrared beam?) at anyone's eyes! The thing made a switchblade seem as benign as a soup spoon.
     Calling people, it turns out, is the least of the phone's abilities. It is a calculator and an alarm clock. You can store phone numbers, send text messages. My phone plays games. (Such as Snake 2: "Feed the snake with as many goodies as possible and watch it grow ...")
     Not that these tricks came easy. Getting the phone to work was like studying for a math test. There were mysterious glyphs to decipher, buttons to find, tasks to master. I did manage to place a call, to my wife, whom I had just spoken to 20 minutes earlier.
    "Hello," I bellowed, as if shouting down a well. "I'm on the train. The TRAIN! That's right." I had to yell that phrase--it's what everyone with a cell phone seems compelled to say. If I was now a cell phone guy, I should play the part.
     I suppose a cell phone does not seem the most romantic birthday gift, but we are practical people. My wife got me the phone because she knew I would never buy one myself. In fact, I had never even thought of buying one, and my face must have reflected puzzlement, opening the gift, because she felt the need to point out its utility.
     "If you think you're going to fall asleep on the train, you can tell me to call you before your stop and wake you up," said my wife, cheerily.
     I paused on the bridge, took out the phone, and looked at it. An amazing bit of technology. The size of a squashed Milky Way bar, a cool industrial blue, with a dozen little oval keys set in four discretely arcing rows under a screen the size of a big postage stamp.
     A modern miracle, really. Half the people in the country have them, and they seem to use them all the time, yammering happily away as they march down the street. Why not me?
     Because it made me uneasy. I bounced it in my palm, remembering the knife, smiling just at the thought of pitching it off the bridge. We are defined by our tools. A guy carrying a switchblade is itching to cut somebody; a guy carrying a phone must be eager to talk.
     Which is not me. I'm trying to talk less, not more. I've gotten three phone calls in the past 10 minutes, while writing this, each more bothersome than the next. Frankly, rather than get a new phone, I'd be happier losing the ones I've got. Communication could use a few hurdles.
     Yes, a cell phone is handy if the train is late. But the train isn't usually late, and when it's on time the phone is just another thing to carry, to keep in my drawer and load in my pockets every morning--wallet, keys, money clip, handkerchief and, now, telephone. You have to worry about losing it, worry is it on, or off, worry does it have enough juice? It's practically like carrying around a tiny electronic baby.
     Yet I didn't throw the phone into the river. I put it back in my pocket and plodded on. Dramatic displays are for teenagers. And the phone was, after all, a gift from my wife. But even as I kept the phone, I felt a pang for my former, unconnected self, now gone forever. I have become hooked to the big grid, like everybody else. Well, I comforted myself, the good thing is, knowing me, it won't be long before I lose it.
                 — Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 14, 2002