Rev Billy Graham, "America's pastor" had roots in Chicago

     Starting from a tiny basement church in the western suburbs of Chicago, the Rev. Billy Graham created a ministry that spanned the globe.
     The Wheaton College graduate who became the most popular, enduring and influential evangelical leader of the second half of the 20th century died Wednesday at his home in North Carolina, according to spokesman Mark DeMoss. Known as “America’s pastor,” he was the unofficial chaplain to the White House, of particular importance during the Johnson and Nixon years.
     Graham, 99, had long suffered from cancer, pneumonia and other ailments.
     In 70 years of spreading the gospel, Graham's message of personal deliverance through Jesus Christ was conveyed by speeches, books, magazines, radio, television and the internet. Through his trademark crusades alone he preached directly to an estimated 215 million people in 185 countries.
     During three weeks in June 1962, for instance, some 800,000 people attended his Chicago Crusade; 116,000 jammed Soldier Field on a single blisteringly hot day to hear Graham speak.     
     It was Graham’s influence, however, not on the common believer, but on America’s leaders that most distinguished him from other evangelical figures.
     He personally ministered to every president, Democrat and Republican, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, who was the first sitting president to visit Graham at his home.
     Graham baptized Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom he also urged to run for president while the general was still Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.
     Graham knew Richard Nixon’s mother, Hannah, before he met the future president. They became golfing buddies; Graham spoke at Nixon’s inauguration and at his funeral.
     Nixon credited Graham for his role in convincing him to try running for president a second time in 1968. Graham was also a frequent guest at the Reagan White House.
     Though most closely associated with Republicans, Graham was actually a lifelong registered Democrat, and was intimate with Democratic presidents, including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson — Graham delivered the invocation at LBJ’s inaugural in 1965.

To continue reading, click here.

Flash! There are poor Jews, and The Ark's dinner-less dinner helps them.

     Chicago has dozens of big fancy hotels. And every big fancy hotel has a big fancy ballroom, if not two or three. Many of those big fancy ballrooms on any given night hold big fancy charity dinners with crowded bars and framed Blackhawk memorabilia and baskets of wine laid out on endless silent auction tables.
     As the good hearted souls attending these dinners shout small talk at each other and angle themselves to strip chunks of prime rib off passing trays and in general passionately wish they were home watching "The Big Bang Theory," a thought forms: "Why don't we just give money to the charity and skip the dinner?"
     Good news: next year is here, and has been for 20 years.
     "It goes back to the 1990s," said Marc J. Swatez, executive director of the The Ark, which holds an annual "dinner-less dinner" to raise money for its programming. "We had a development director who saw an article about a New York charity that did it. In 1998 we did our first dinner-less fundraiser raiser and sent out a package of powdered soup, asking people to enjoy a cup of hot soup in your own home and help us. It was successful."
     This year, they sent a block of chocolate.
     "We've send out soup and tea, cookies and popcorn, luggage tags, keychains," said Swatez. "It gets people's attention. In 2008 we did our first chocolate. It's been very successful."
     Given the economics, it's surprising more charities don't do it, though Swatez noted there is a social, team-building aspect to actual dinners.
     "If you throw a dinner, about half the money you raise goes back into the dinner itself," said Swatez. "The dinner-less dinner costs us about $50,000 to put on and we bring in almost $800,000. Right from beginning, the dinner-less dinner brought at least as much as the dinners, if not more."
     My father-in-law, the late Irv Goldberg, used to volunteer for The Ark, delivering food to shut-ins, some younger than himself, and I assumed The Ark primarily serves the elderly. Not true.
     "There's a huge misunderstanding about what we do," said Swatez. "The Ark is a multi-service social service agency. We serve the Chicago Jewish community in the broadest way. We do case management and clinical work. Give away a lot of money in supplemental assistance. A very significant medical clinic, dental clinic, food pantry, homeless shelter. A huge phychiatric services department. All of our clients are poor."
     Wait a second, I said. There are poor Jews?
     "Half our clients are below 250 percent of the poverty line," he said. "We opened an office in Northbrook. I see 800 clients out of that office."
     We got on the subject about how poverty affects Jews. Could I say, I wondered, that Jewish people are affected equally by poverty as non-Jews?
     "You can say that very safely," he said
     Actually, I can't. Those pesky facts.
     Last year the Pew Research Center, did a study placing Jews at the top of American religions when it comes to household income, with only 16 percent earning below $30,000 a year, less than half the national average of 35 percent. Also, 44 percent of Jewish households earn more then $100,000 a year, compared to a national average of 19 percent.
     This doesn't mean there aren't poor Jews—that struggling 16 percent—but there is a financial upside to having parents noodge their kids about doing their homework.
     Not that education guarantees a person won't someday receive canned food from The Ark.
     "About half our clients have a college degree," said Swatez.
     If your degree served you well enough that you want to give to give back, you can participate in the dinner-less dinnerat http://arkchicago.org/dld/ I just did; it was easy, fun and I didn't have to dress up, show up at a hotel ballroom and make dinnertime small talk with people I've never met before and will never meet again.
     "Most social service agencies get money from three buckets," said Swatez. "A big chunk from government; second, from fees to clients, and third, fundraising. I take almost no federal money, and everything we do here is 100 percent free of charge. We have to raise everything else, which is why this dinner-less dinner is so important."

Some Italian cookies with those harsh words?

   
 
     Having written yesterday on the president's treasonous neglect of our country's defense, the only thing to do today is share the sputtering outrage of his supporters, who of course defend him contrary to all reason. It really defies belief. But don't trust me. Here's one, from Randy Stefani:

Hey Neil. So President Trump is shirking his responsibility because he has not done anything in five or six days since some indictments went out. Two things. First none of those charged are guilty of anything until proved in court. What about President Obama who found out in August of 2016 that the Russians were up to games. During his last five or six months he did NOTHING ABOUT IT!!!!!!!! Not five or six days but FIVE OR SIX MONTHS!!!!!! I saw a one time mention of this in liberal news and most certainly was not pressed on. Where was your article on this calling out PRESIDENT OBAMA? Or the article you wrote denouncing Obama's big two lies to the American people about his health care plan? There is an old saying. Once a liar always a liar. Obama and ALL POL"S AT EVERY LEVEL LIE ALL THE TIME. Can't believe anything any of them have to say for this reason. Their track record for any of them to tell the truth is as poor as can be. I guess Obama did not want to upset his buddy Putin. You know how he told Putin how he can do what he wants after he is elected again. The hot mic that caught him saying that. How Obama laughed at Romney at their debate in 2012 when Romney said Russia was our enemy. I watched Obama laugh out loud and say something about Romney taking us back to the 1980's. All liberals were laughing at Romney for that. Guess he was a whole lot smarter than the liberals and Obama were. BUT BOTTOM LINE. OBAMA KNEW FOR FIVE TO SIX MONTHS ABOUT RUSSIA TRYING TO PLAY GAMES AND DID NOTHING!!!!!!!!!! If President Trump is shirking his duty for not doing anything in five or six days what does that make President Obama? I will be looking for that article coming out soon........

     Can't make that up, can you? To demonstrate he isn't some odd outlier, let's grab another, this one from Steve Pearse:

Are you bipolar or just so liberal that you will write anything to advance their cause ?? Your column on Monday accusing the president of not protecting us against foreign enemies is so ridiculously slanted that it confirms to me that there does exist "fake news".
Trump is trying desperately to protect us from foreign enemies but you liberals challenge his every move in court. You scream at the top of your lungs that there is no threat coming through our borders or from immigration. You advocate open borders and no checks on immigration and subsequently write of treason by Trump when in actuality it should be Obama ( if anyone )who should be tried for treason for not recognizing the Russian threat nor acting on it. You have convinced me that if Hillary had been elected there would be no stories about Russian collusion. You are a propaganda monger who uses SELECTIVE facts while ignoring any facts contrary to your agenda !! It is journalists like you that precipitate the term "fake news". There are two sides to every story - TRY REPORTING BOTH !!!!!

     There, that'll do. I think you get the idea. Multiply those by a few dozen and you'll see why Monday, well, felt quite dreary, despite the warm weather. Sad that Trump exists; sadder still the people who created and maintain him. 
     Still, I don't want to just dump you where I was and leave you there.
     So Italians cookies. From Pasticceria Forno Bruschi Ivana on the Via dell'Ariento in Florence. I don't know if it's the best bakery, but it's the one by the train station where I popped into last April to set in a store of provisions for our rail trip to Venice.
     I would direct your attention to the chocolate swirls. Not too sweet, but freshly baked and firm, a little dry, the perfect thing to go with your take-out coffee.
     A reminder that as bleak as our political landscape is, there is always some good, if only a good thing to eat, somewhere. So don't divide your attention simply between our increasingly-unhinged president, whose tweetstorm over the long weekend was crazed, even by his standards, blaming the Parkland slaughter on the FBI, and his foaming followers, who seem to think that if they sputter and insult enough people will ignore their being a party to treason. As if abuse were persuasion. Remember to get your hands on the best baked goods you can, or at least cling to the memory of them. Nourish yourself, body and soul, to resist the ruin of our country. Better times in the past, better times ahead.

America is under attack—why isn't the president defending us?

Benedict Arnold

     America is not known for traitors.
     There were the Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel. Put to death in 1953 for slipping nuclear weapon secrets to the Soviets. And Jonathan Pollard, with his long prison stint for a two-bit treachery that was more about aiding Israel than hurting the United States.
     They're historical trivia now. The only really famous betrayer of our country is that original American traitor, Benedict Arnold. Most Americans know the name, though could not, I would bet, offer up much regarding who Arnold was or what he did to earn his deathless disgrace.
     Arnold was a hero in the Continental Army. In May 1775, he led a small party that seized Fort Ticonderoga from the British. He later invaded Canada, leading a march through Maine. The trek was famed for its hardship — his men were reduced to eating dogs and shoe leather. They attacked Quebec on New Year's Eve 1775 but did not succeed.
     A brave general. But by 1779, motivated by petty slights and a need for money, Arnold began communicating with the British. He accepted the command of West Point specifically because there he could "render the most essential service" to our enemy.
     Arnold's treason was twofold. Not only did he convey the design of the fort to the British, but in the summer of 1780, he neglected the defenses of West Point. He did not keep his troops in readiness because he planned to surrender the fort.
     Maybe you see where I'm going with this. That second part of Arnold's treason is relevant today.

To continue reading, click here.

It isn't as if we're ALL for Lipinski

Ichabod Crane

     A few readers expressed shock on my Facebook page that the Sun-Times would endorse Dan Lipinski. While I generally try to stand behind the paper—we're all in the boat together, pulling on the oars—this is a case where I have to set my face into a blank expression and mutter "sorry, not my table," as I hurry past. I'm not on the board. I don't make these decisions.

    But as people were also explaining to me the sketchy circumstances of Lipinski's elevation, I found myself  grumbling, "I know, I KNOW!" and thought I should dig out a few examples of my handling of the man, to illustrate that we might have lapsed on this race, but generally have done our part in the past and might do so again in the future. Even noble Homer dozed.

     Perhaps due to my own manifest bodily deficiencies—eggplant nose on a garbage can head teetering on a Baby Huey physique—I tend to notice personal flaws.
     When the Jedi Council sits around, for instance, trading tales of Sen. Peter Fitzgerald's shortcomings as a politician and legislator, I am apt to chime in, "And he's got that awful facial tic."
     Or when Rep. Rahm Emanuel—whom I admire—first visited, to be quizzed about his views, I had to restrain myself from chirping, "What happened to your finger?"
     Childish, I know. Even more starkly so on Wednesday, when college professor and hereditary Congressman Dan Lipinski stopped by to introduce himself. The mood in the room was somber, as befits a subversion of the democratic process, and as my colleagues established that he was going to stick to the ludicrous tale of how his father, Rep. Bill Lipinski, just happened to decide to retire so his son could miss the primary and run against a sham opponent, I fixated on his looks.
     An unsettling, bird-like quality to the man—rail-thin, glittering, deep-set eyes, a prominent Adam's apple. Like a character from literature, and I struggled to conjure which one. Then it hit me—Ichabod Crane, the guy from the Washington Irving tale, fleeing the Headless Horseman. He had the same timidity, the same lack of ... something.
     He spoke in bromides. "I believe my job is to help my constituents," he said. "My campaign is about what I'm going to do for the people." Golly.
     He said how he will be his own man, then explained his goal of finding a perch on his dad's congressional committee.
     The more I studied this frail, awkward-speaking academic (his poor students; the heart breaks) the more I felt an odd pang of sympathy. Clearly, he wasn't burning up the scholarly world, even down in the backwater of Tennessee. I'm convinced that, rather than run the risk of his son ending up behind the counter at Wendy's, Bill Lipinski decided to plunk him into a comfortable berth. He got his boy a good job, and while the U.S. Congress is supposed to be more than a sinecure for one's relatives, this can't be the first time it has happened. I can't see into the future. Maybe Dan Lipinski will surprise us, and surpass expectations. He certainly will, now that I think of it. He couldn't do worse.

                       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 20, 2004

CORRECTION

     Six years ago, when Rep. Bill Lipinski bequeathed his seat to his son, the fortunate boy visited the editorial board to try to charm us. I described the meeting this way:
     "College professor and hereditary Congressman Dan Lipinski stopped by to introduce himself. The mood in the room was somber, as befits a subversion of the democratic process, and as my colleagues established that he was going to stick to the ludicrous tale of how his father, Rep. Bill Lipinski, just happened to decide to retire so his son could miss the primary and run against a sham opponent, I fixated on his looks.
     "An unsettling, bird-like quality to the man—rail-thin, glittering, deep-set eyes, a prominent Adam's apple. Like a character from literature, and I struggled to conjure which one. Then it hit me—Ichabod Crane, the guy from the Washington Irving tale, fleeing the Headless Horseman. He had the same timidity, the same lack of . . . something. He spoke in bromides. 'I believe my job is to help my constituents,' he said. 'My campaign is about what I'm going to do for the people.' ''
     It turns out, what he is going to do for the people is make sure that not one federal dollar finds its way to an abortion clinic, even if it meant that the 57,000 voters in his district without health insurance never get any. He was one of the Democrats who said he was voting against health-care reform, out of his concern for life.
     It was surprising to see Lipinski making a stand—sort of like a guy who crashes your party turning around and complaining about the dip.
     Six years ago, I concluded that, considering the low expectations for this Tennessee carpetbagger, "he couldn't do worse."
     I stand corrected. He has done worse. The Sun-Times regrets the error.
                       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 22, 2010

"The sense of its necessity"

Four Men Aiming Guns—Cheyenne drawing from the Maffet Ledger, Oklahoma, circa 1880 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

    Is it me? The giddy optimist secretly curled up inside and hidden within my perpetually-disappointed, curmudgeonly shell. Or does the agonized cry of helplessness following the massacre of 17 students and teachers Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. feel a little different? A little less helpless?
     It certainly is different, because of the immediate, active role the surviving students took in pushing back against the usual Republican palms-to-the-sky shrug and muddled, vague talk about mental illness and it being continually too soon to talk about anything substantive.  That felt different. Perhaps significant.
     Too soon to tell, of course. And if history is any judge, we cry and fulminate, shake our fists to the sky, ask why God why, then revert to form.
    And yet.
    Maybe the habit of opposing the horrors of the administration of Donald Trump ($30 million from the gun lobby) and the venalities of Marco Rubio ($3.3 million) and Mitch McConnell ($1.25 million) and the rest have made apathy a little less acceptable. 
    Maybe the hollowness of the nothing-we-do-will-be-1oo-percent-effective-so-let's-do-nothing argument rings extra hollow. Maybe people are realizing they don't apply that non-logic to anything else, alas. (No wall across the Southern border will keep out all illegal immigrants so lets not waste money building it). 
    Maybe we've finally realized that unless we mobilize we are never, ever going to stop this. And just as it has happened again and again, it will happen again and again. And again. And again. 
    Maybe we're okay with that. We've vowed change and allowed nothing to happen before. There is always Newtown, and all the rest, mute testimony to our failure and inertia. The Republicans not only do nothing but get re-elected on a clear platform of never doing anything, no matter what. The solution to guns is always more guns, as brilliantly parodied in that Onion piece about gorilla sales skyrocketing after a spate of gorilla attacks.
    The truth is clear. Other countries don't go through this. Just us. Special America. The gun manufacturers have sold this lie, that guns are needed to stave off government overreach and raging criminals, even while the government contracts and crime falls, generally, to historic low levels.
       What was it Lord Byron wrote?   

And the commencement of atonement is
The sense of its necessity. 

     Many Americans know it is necessary. Big time. Most of us do, really. But is that enough? I am not so naive as to think any of this will be easy. But where we stand is all so clear: the Republicans are paid agents of the enormously-profitable gun industry, and they have sold our children's lives, and will continue to do so until somebody stops them. Until America rises up and stops them. Maybe now is the time.

Auto Show Spectacular #4: Motoring to Sycamore in a new Bentley

     The Auto Show is in Chicago, winding up this weekend, and to celebrate I'm running some of my favorite car columns.
     This one is special; it directly resulted in the creation of the blog you're reading. 

     After it was printed, one word stuck in the craw of the publisher at the time: "friend." He came to see me. "Why are you writing columns promoting your friend's business?" he demanded. I explained that George Kiebala was not my actual friend in the traditional sense of the word. I had met him exactly twice, both times so he could hand over a car for journalistic purposes, here and when I wrote a story about driving a Ferrari for Michigan Avenue magazine. "Friend" just seemed an apt term of affection for anybody who would loan me a $185,000 car.

     I might have gotten off the hook had I left it there. But, warming to my topic, I floated a question of my own, something along the lines of, "And how come when you asked me to write about the Tesla S, I didn't respond, 'Oh you mean the Tesla that Michael Ferro owns? The Tesla produced by his pal, Elon Musk? The Telsa that he's an investor in? You want me to write about THAT Tesla?' No, I just wrote the column. Why when it comes from you, it's journalism, but when it comes from me, it's corruption?"

    Boom.  A week's suspension. Which so shocked me. Not so much I told anybody at the paper. I just began doggedly reporting stories. But I also began think that I was going to be pitched into the water soon and had better build a boat. I took a web domain name I had bought, created a blog around it, and two months later everygoddamnday.com debuted. So it all turned out okay in the end. 

     A buddy throws a yearly party, which is good. Parties are good. But the party is in Sycamore, which is bad. A lovely town, Sycamore, but when storytellers of old coined "in a land far, far away," they had Sycamore in mind. OK, it's only 60 miles west of Chicago. Still a haul, especially if you plan on coming back; then it's 120 miles round-trip.

     Usually I solve this dilemma by not going to the party, which works, but is not all that friendly. This year though, well, we went to dinner and had such a fun time, I resolved I would get myself to his party, 120 miles or no.
     My mind—as regular readers know—can work strangely. I automatically strive to embellish life, to add pizzazz. So I thought, "Well, if my wife and I have to drive this 120 miles, then we might as well drive it in style."
     Which is where another friend, George Kiebala, comes in. George owns Curvy Road, an exotic car timeshare company in Palatine. It's like a condo timeshare, only for luxury cars, though you don't actually own part of the car but part of the car's use for a year.
     It works like this: Rich folk who own really expensive cars—Ferraris and Lamborghinis and such— often don't drive them much since they're always working to stay rich. Yet they don't want to sell their babies. So they turn them over to George, and he pairs the cars up with semi-rich folk.
     Four springs ago, I borrowed his Ferrari 355 F1 Spider. It was fun. My boys slightly altered their general opinion of Dad as some stone loser in a dying trade. George told me to come back any time. Every spring since, when the weather warms, I remember his offer but chicken out. Driving a super-fast car that belongs to someone else is a palm-moistening experience, at least for me, whose mind skips nimbly ahead to the bad as well as the good, to imagined encounters with bridge abutments and unhappy police officers and tickets for felony speeding. So I put it off.
     Into that mental mix add Sycamore, and those 120 miles.
     For those who pay, Curvy Road isn't cheap—you pay a $1,250 membership to join for three years, then purchase either a one-tenth share for $12,000 or more, depending on the car, or a one-fifth share for $18,000 or more, based on a 40-week year (leaving a dozen weeks for maintenance, delivery, etc.; the owner gets to use unbooked time). In other words, at least $3,000 a week for four weeks, or $2,250 a week for eight. Still a boatload of money for working folk, but far more affordable than the jaw-dropping sticker price of these cars.
     George tried to interest me in an Audi R8, a mid-engine monster sportscar with a glass hood. He took me out on a test spin. There was lots of laughter—joyful laughter, nervous laughter, oh-my-god-we're-gonna-die laughter. And while I enjoyed the experience, if only for its sheer terror, I preferred the 2013 Bentley Continental Twin Turbo GT V8, a brand new $185,000 coupe that belongs to a surgeon but could be mine, briefly, for driving-to-Sycamore purposes.
     "Bentley has always been the thinking man's Rolls-Royce," said George, with approval, during our test drive. The level of quality is amazing."
     That it is. The interior, flawless brown leather from cows that are not fenced, to avoid hide damage. Eucalyptus wood dashboard. A clock that is basically an $8,000 Breitling watch. Double-paned windows.
     "This is seriously a work of art," said George. "It's like riding around in a museum."
     A museum that leaves other cars at a light like their tires are nailed to the road. Cautious sort that I am, I fretted about insurance. George assured me I was fully covered. Besides, "A car like this, your awareness is heightened by an imaginary bubble around it. In 14 years, I've had virtually zero incidents. It's been unbelievable."
     My awareness certainly was heightened driving away from his Palatine headquarters in my new Bentley. I was keenly aware of how lucky I am, and laughed loud and long at fate that, even for a day, let me behind the wheel of this baby.
     On my block, the neighbors were outside, thank you God. They walked over as in a trance. "Beautiful," one sighed.
     Soon my wife and I were cutting through the cornfields—or whatever fields, I'm not a botanist— heading to the party. And there an interesting thing happened. I parked in the driveway. We mingled and nibbled and sipped and chatted. Conversation went here and there, and I puzzled over how to guide it toward the deluxe ride that had brought us, the better to bathe in its reflected, undeserved glow. But I was so warmed already, it wasn't a priority. I didn't have to brag or tell anybody—I knew. Suddenly it was time to go—a Bulls game to watch with the boys—and as I encouraged my wife toward the door, I found myself holding the elaborate Bentley key fob, not down at my side, but sort of up, before me, almost chest level, in both hands, as if I were fiddling with it, but actually just sort of displaying the winged "B" - that's what these fobs are for, I realized. No one noticed, and I didn't thrust it under anyone's nose, which normally would not be beyond me. But I was so centered, so in the zone, it wasn't necessary, and we drove home in our beautiful car.

      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 26, 2013