Off the beaten track in London

Sir John Soane's Museum

    When my older boy told me he wasn't coming home over spring break: he'd be visiting London for the first time instead, conducting research at the School of Economics, I manfully resisted suggesting what he should do in his free time.
    Let him discover the city himself.
    Besides, kids never listen to their parents, mine especially, and I'd describe my favorite places, only to have him shrug them off.
     That would hurt. 
    Well, at least I tried not to make suggestions. I did break down and mention Sir John Soane's Museum—I always do, to anybody visiting London, since somebody mentioned it to me, and I feel the need to pass it forward. The place is special, to me, for reasons that will be clear below. But I mentioned it to my son in a casual, off-hand way, knowing that he'd never go, certainly not, not just because his dad suggested it. Why would he?
    When he got back, he phoned to describe his adventures: lunch at the Dorchester, shopping at Harrod's, drinks at the American Bar at the Savoy. The British Museum and, oh yeah, Sir John Soane's Museum. He liked it. I was surprised, shocked almost. Occasionally old dad catches a break.

    We are all just dice rattling around in fate's dice cup.

     Among the countless reasons why I happened to be walking down Lincoln's Inn Fields, a street facing a park, one was how the square tail fin of a 500-pound incendiary bomb caught the air as it tumbled from a German bomber high above the city in May 1941.
     Not that I realized it, as I searched for No. 13. I thought I was there simply because, a week earlier in Chicago, I had encountered Hal Weitzman, Midwest correspondent for the Financial Times. I've been to London repeatedly, I said, and already seen the usual things.
     "What should I see in London?" I asked. "Something that tourists don't know about; something off the beaten track."
     "John Soane's Museum," he answered immediately. That was good enough for me to find the address though, characteristically, I did so without investigating what the museum might be.
     I'm bad at premeditating trips — I prefer to simply go and see what happens. Surprise magnifies wonder. In addition to quizzing Hal, my sole attempt at planning consisted of asking myself what I would most like to do while in London.
     The answer? "See the queen."
     So I phoned Buckingham Palace, with typical American cheekiness. "I realize we're not going to have tea together," I blathered, "but maybe she'll be cutting a ribbon someplace and I could be in the crowd. . . ."
     Alas, I was told, the queen will be at her castle in Balmoral, Scotland.
     Rebuffed by royalty, I instead found myself in the middle of a block of elegant townhouses, looking at a white stone facade of tall arched windows, flanked by a pair of Greek statues. I went up the front steps, signed my name, and stepped into one of the most singular and unusual spaces I've ever visited.
     John Soane was the foremost architect in Britain in the early 1800s. He designed the Bank of England. The flattened dome atop the red London phone booths that still dot the streets here was inspired by the tomb Soane built for his wife.
     He moved into this house in 1813 and filled it with artwork and architectural ornaments — plaster casts, bits of molding, statuary, urns, medallions — intending it as a place of study for his students. In his old age, the 1830s, Soane was heaped with honors. One of them, in 1833, was an act of Parliament that decreed his house and its contents should remain unchanged forever.
     And so they have, lit by skylights and mirrors. The main hall is painted a deep Pompeian red — Soane was at the excavation of Pompeii in 1779 — its mahogany chairs so inviting that a thistle is set on the seat of each, to prevent visitors from accepting the invitation.
     It took me an hour to get through the first floor, lingering in the Picture Room, a small chamber jammed with paintings. The eight canvases of "Rake's Progress" are there, plus others by Hogarth, and a Turner watercolor, one of three.
     Soane had more masterpieces than wall space, so the Picture Room's walls are ingeniously hinged, folding forward to reveal a second wall of paintings within. That wall also opens to reveal a hidden nymph and other artifacts.
     How could such a place survive the fury of time? It nearly didn't. Soane's son sued to pry away the house. He lost. Despite attentive docents, visitors sometimes walk off with artifacts. My attention was drawn to a black oblong box, whose inscription explained that this was the pistol of Russia's Peter the Great, given to Napoleon, who gave it to "a gentleman."
     The box was empty.
     "What happened to Peter the Great's pistol?" I asked a guard.
     "A visitor stole it 40 years ago!" David Gardener said, hotly, as if it happened yesterday.
     Upstairs, in a yellow parlor, I noticed a small clear window pane standing out from the colorful stained glass. It bore a neatly etched inscription:
     "This window having been broken by enemy action in 1941 was restored with the inclusion of the only surviving panel from the window opposite in 1951."
     During the Blitz, a bomb fell across the park, destroying another museum, the Hunterian.      
     "There's a horrid modern building there now," a guard explained. The bomb blew out the windows and spattered burning rubble inside Soane's house. Gardener showed me a charred patch, the size of an egg cup, on a mahogany bench.
     "Luckily, someone was staying here and put it out," he said. "And many of the most important objects had been moved for safekeeping."
     Jealous Time sent other agents to attack the house — in the late 1980s, robbers struck the museum, but the police had been warned and were waiting across the street.
     "A man was shot dead in the entranceway," said Gardener. As I left, very reluctantly, I saw the bullet hole in the plaster, covered by a small piece of Plexiglas.
     I walked across the park to look at the new building — charmless, flat-faced, glass and red brick. And strange as it may sound, despite all that I've read and seen about the horrific destruction of World War II, the millions dead and cities ravaged, I don't think the terrible random savagery and incredible loss of war ever struck me quite the way it did thinking about that one bomb, whistling and twisting through the sky one day in May, the buffeting winds deciding whether John Soane's lovingly assembled legacy would continue or abruptly perish in a flash, whether a visitor in 2009 would get off the Central underground line at Holborn or go on to St. Paul's.

        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 2, 2009

To solve labor troubles, Loyola needs to live its supposed values

Picket line, by Walker Evans (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 

     Teaching is hard.
     I blundered into teaching a class at Loyola University a decade ago: a pal asked if I’d talk to his journalism students about writing celebrity profiles. Happily! I showed up, leaned on a lectern for an hour, droning on about walking 18 holes with Arnold Palmer, discussing Snoopy with Charles Schulz and watching Dizzy Gillespie play trumpet.
     “You’re good at this,” my pal said and, being a fool, I believed him. Everyone dog-paddling in the icy chop of professional journalism has an eye out for a safe harbor, so I stopped by the dean’s office to offer my services. They checked that I had a pulse and waved me aboard.
     The next thing I knew I was photocopying readings, drawing up two-hour lesson plans, then gazing at 21 slack 21-year-old faces. When a student plagiarized an assignment, boldly copying off the Internet, I called in the dean. Without going into details, let’s say I naively assumed the dean would apply discipline, and enforce the antique notion that the ability to cut and paste text undetected might not be the kind of excellence that a Loyola degree represents.
     All for a fee that I could have earned dashing off one of those celebrity profiles.
     So I don’t want to feign impartiality toward the 300 non-tenured track instructors who held a one-day strike at Loyola last Wednesday, trying to spur the university to negotiate more sincerely with Service Employees International Union Local 73.

To continue reading, click here.

It was a a very good year

     I try never to get in a tug-o-war with strangers on Facebook.
     There's no end to it. 
     Because there's more of them than there are of me.
     But, being human, sometimes I get sucked in.
     Someone posted a painting of a farmer and his son gazing off into the sunrise with a caption "I miss the American I grew up in."
    Talk about a slow pitch down the middle. I couldn't help it. I swung on my heels.
      "Then you don't remember it," I wrote.
     She objected, naturally enough, and I removed my gotcha question from its special lead-lined case.
    What year, I asked, specifically, are you missing? When is this lost time of happiness that you wouldn't mind returning? 
    "1952," she said.
     I did a little research research—as I said, no end to it—and then returned to her page.
    Did she, I asked, miss the thousands of Americans who died in Korea? 
    Or was it the thousands, mostly children, who died of polio? 1952 was the worst year ever for that dread disease: 57,000 cases in the United States. In one week in July, 11 of the 14 Thiel children of Mapleton, Iowa, got sick. That September, four of six children in a family in Milwaukee caught a particularly virulent strain of polio and quickly died, one after another. Is that what she wants back?
    Maybe it was the Red Scare that she was shedding a nostalgic tear for: Joe Stalin was very much alive in 1952, and loyalty oaths were big. Or McCarthyism—Tailgunner Joe had not yet been chastised by his fellow senators. 
    Maybe it was rampant Jim Crow. That was fun.
    Here the conversation ended. Which is the main reason not to engage in these conversations, to stretch the word. Because even if you win, you lose. Changing your mind is hard, particularly for a person old enough to pine for 1952. They'd rather shrug and move on than face the shattering prospect of being wrong.
    I just don't get that. I'm wrong all the time. I thought the Kinks song "Lola" was about a girl. I thought cell phones were a fad. Being wrong, and the ability to admit it, doesn't undercut my worth as a human—it emphasizes it. When I cop to making a mistake, it's almost like revealing a superpower, because so few can do it. It's as if I could turn invisible or fly, and almost as useful.
    And I understand what motivates people to nostalgia. The wonderful details of your life remain clear; the less felt details of the news fade away.  
     It isn't that I'm not nostalgic myself. I am. I was 17 in 1977, and there were cool things going on. Punk was big in London, and I was there, on Wardor Street, bouncing to the Vibrators at the Marquee Club.  In my hometown, if you stopped at the gas station, Clark's, Jack would come out, pump your gas, check your oil, chat a bit, and maybe slip you stick of gum. That was nice.
    But I would never, ever argue that 1977 was a Golden Age. I'm not saying that all years are the same. Some are worse—1942—some are better. But however you see a year, you have to recognize that you are viewing it through the lens of your own experience. The day my first son was born in 1995 was a very good day. For me. Not so good for the parents of the seven kids who died when a bus was hit by a train in Fox River Grove. 
     I'm going to really try to stop engaging strangers on Facebook. It's a challenge enough to do it with your friends and loved ones.
    My father once said to me, "You know, people were just kinder when I was growing up."
    And I answered, "This era of kindness of which you speak, dad, was that the Great Depression or World War II, because I just don't see it."
    I don't remember his reaction. 

"Everything I ever knew was behind my thumb,"

Left to right, Robert Kurson, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman

    "Why didn't you tell me it was going to be like this!?" my wife enthused. 
     We were hurrying through a windowless hallway at the Museum of Science & Industry on Thursday night, heading to the Crown Space Center to view the Apollo 8 spacecraft, having been thrilled and uplifted by the launch festivities of "Rocket Men" by Robert Kurson, which featured the author interviewing the three astronauts from Apollo 8. 
     "I didn't know," I confessed. "It could have been Bob at a card table with the astronauts and a handful of people."
      I do have a tendency to underplay literary occasions—just in case. The instance lodged in my wife's mind is when I suggested, in a half-hearted, might-as-well sense, that we go to this library dinner, which turned out to be the Carl Sandburg awards, making cocktail chatter with Don DeLillo and Scott Turow, and me on stage with the assembled Chicago literary luminaries, such as we are. 
     The truth is, with these book events, you really never do know. Perhaps I am influenced by my own book signings, where I can be the only attendee. I naturally assumed that the people going would be like me, longtime admirers of the author acting out of loyalty. The thought that 500 people would cram the MSI theater at $35 a pop out of, not only interest in Bob's work, but from passionate respect for the astronauts and the space program never crossed my mind. 
    But there they were, a full house at the MSI auditorium, giving a standing ovation to the astronauts before they said a word. 
    Maybe I was just projecting. At the beginning of the evening, I had no knowledge of Apollo 8 except that it came between Apollos 7 and 9.  My strong memories were with Apollo 11, and the Moon landing, and Apollo 13, dramatically limping home after the explosion, and of course Ron Howard's brilliant movie.
     Then Bob took the microphone and started by talking about the Apollo 8 mission, how Neil Armstrong considered it more daring than his own, because it was assembled quickly--in four months—out of fear the Russians would orbit the moon first. Up to that point, in mid-1968, only Mercury capsules had orbited the earth and returned. The Saturn 5 rocket, to this day the most powerful machine ever made, had been tested exactly twice, the second time a catastrophic failure.
     Bob made the leap sound like the most exciting thing in the world, and maybe it was. The crew of Apollo 8 would be going on a journey 2,000 times further than what was planned: 240,000 miles to the Moon as opposed to parking 125 miles up in Earth orbit.
    All that was before we heard Kurson lead the Apollo 8 crew, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, through 90 minutes that was in turns moving and informative, funny and fascinating.  
     Even before it began there was a surprise. While we sat waiting my wife turned to me and said that astronaut Eugene Cernan, was from her hometown of Bellwood and she remembered him coming back for a parade, and what a thrill it was. She tapped at her phone to call up details of the parade—all this technology surrounding us boosted by the space program. I looked at her dumbfounded—you know a woman for 35 years, you think you know everything about her, so it's notable when you learn something new.
     Then the astronauts, amazingly sharp despite being in their 80s, started sharing their personal stories: Lovell talking about arranging Neiman Marcus to deliver a fur to his wife on Christmas, while they were in space. Borman throwing up, which you really do not want to do in zero gravity.
     Anders talked about the iconic earthrise photo, driving home to those back on Earth what a small blue planet we live upon.

      "It's ironic, we came to explore the Moon but we really discovered the Earth," said Anders.
     Lovell—who, I was surprised to learn, flew on 8 as well as 13—spoke of holding his thumb so it blotted out the Earth.
     "Everything I ever knew was behind my thumb," he said.
     The Apollo 8 mission began Dec. 21—officials worried that a Christmas tragedy in space would forever mar the holiday, that a capsule with three American corpses inside eternally circling the moon would kill it as a romantic nighttime icon. The three astronauts, all career military, were tasked with speaking to the largest audience to listen to human voices—an estimated third of the earth's population. The sum of the guidance they got to prepare their marks, said Borman, was 'Do something appropriate."
     Talk about trust.
     "That's one of the great hallmarks of our country," he added.
     Or at least was. The ghost of our current political predicament hovered over the event, at least for me. While never directly evoked, it flashed when Borman expressed relief that nobody from Washington was involved to mess up their plans, or Bob spoke of the unifying force of the mission, what good people can do when they work together.
     The astronauts ended up, at the advice of the friend of a friend, a former fighter in the French Resistance, reading the opening lines of the Book of Genesis. 
     And yes, they got sued for injecting religion into a government sponsored program, Borman laughed. But the lawsuit was thrown out.
     I haven't read the book yet, but Bob does a typical Bob thing—he explores a section of the story heretofore ignored, in this case the wives and families of the astronauts.
    "We are the only crews in Gemini or Apollo that still have our original wives," said Borman, turning to Bob, and telling him that, of all the books written about Apollo 8, his was "the only one who gave the wives proper credit."
     That was the only unsurprising part of the program, because that's what Bob does. At the beginning of the program, he explained how he was taking friends to the Museum of Science & Industry, noticed the capsule on display, and became intrigued. It was hiding in plain sight. Think of all the people who walked past that capsule. Millions, including me. Which is as good a recommendation of a writer as I know: the guy who looks at something right in front of everybody, sees the thing we all ignore, understands its true value, and then does the hard work to make everyone else finally understand it too. 
    Okay, I'm signing off now so I can start reading.

DePaul law school ‘N-word’ flap: ‘Intent makes a word hateful’

"The problem we all live with" by Norman Rockwell (Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts)

     This column was almost twice as long when I first finished it, and some important aspects were lost in cutting it to fit the paper. First, that the whole thing was prompted by not one but two thoughtful emails form reader Scott Zapel, a Glen Ellyn attorney. Second, that the above powerful painting by Norman Rockwell—with its subtle but unmistakable taboo word scrawled on the wall above the girl being escorted to school—ran in the Sun-Times without incident last week. "I'm not editing Norman Rockwell" an editor explained. Third, an explanation of why white people can and should comment on racial matters even though some think they can't and shouldn't. I saved the paragraphs to send to those who try to make the case for the latter.
      There were more points I couldn't even begin to enter into, such as the need for law school to anneal would-be lawyers for what can be a tough, demanding profession, one that is undermined if they have to cater to their sensitivities or risk being cut off at the knees by tremulous administrators. All the DePaul students did was wound a veteran teacher, undermine the value of their own degree, and present themselves as unwilling to face the fraught world into which they must practice the profession of law.  

     Let’s pretend that I am passionately against flag burning. It’s disrespectful. One day I am outraged to discover there is an organization that routinely burns flags. To make matters worse, this group is not some band of anarchists, but the American Legion, which collects worn flags and burns them in solemn ceremony.
     So I condemn the veterans’ group. Organize protests. Demand their suppression. And should somebody be so rude as to observe that I’m lashing out at the wrong people — you’re supposed to burn worn-out flags, it’s the respectful way to dispose of them — I reply, “Yeah, but anarchists are elusive. American Legion posts are so easy to find.”
     Would you experience a warm glow of admiration for me? No? Good, because that’s how I feel when the foes of what I am obligated to call “the N-word” manifest themselves, such as recently at DePaul University College of Law, where a professor, Don Hermann, had his class taken away after students complained when he uttered the lately unprintable word in the set-up to a legal problem.
     The professor didn’t hurl the word at a student, or toss it out as the punchline of a ribald joke. The offensiveness of the word was part of the issue students were to sort out.
     No matter. Haters who use the word vindictively, like my flag-burning anarchists, are not easily punished. But the professor is right there.
     Still, my gut impulse was to let the matter pass in silence. History is a horror show, people are hurt, and react in all sorts of curious ways. If some grasp at what they consider empowerment by conducting epistemological snipe hunts, why should I care? My copy of “Huck Finn” isn’t going to be sanitized. It isn’t as if I’m chafing to use the word. Yes, it felt silly not to be able to articulate what noun Ira Gershwin cut from “Porgy & Bess” in 1954; I can’t believe one black child would cry himself to sleep if I had.
     Context is everything. I can't 100 percent support Prof. Hermann because I wasn't there. On one hand, 50 of the 80 students in his class, given the chance to transfer out, did so, which doesn't speak well to his technique. On the other, he has taught college for decades, and if he were a raving bigot, it would have come out by now.
     I've taught college; it's a ballet, and if your students are rushing off to report you, then you haven't taken their measure. You should know before you leap if they're going to catch you.
     Being young, they're extremists, and miss the crux, what Dan Savage, appearing on Matt Fiddler's excellent podcast "Very Bad Words" explained in five words:
     "Intent makes a word hateful."
     Bingo. People get confused because the word is accepted from black comics but can undermine the employment of law professors. Rather than expend mental effort to gauge each instance, they react to the race of the user.
     An understandable lapse. It is a vile word, barbed with suffering from the past, present and—sorry to be the one to tell you—future. Trying to bar it from historical and artistic uses is futile, but is your right. As is mine to oppose you. Which I do because trying to ban a word is an insult to those who were lashed by it. The past is a bad place we must look at with open eyes. Were I to insist that history texts be scrubbed of photos of naked bodies of Jews being cast into pits in the Holocaust, because they're upsetting, I too would be wrong and worthy of rebuke.
     On Wednesday we marked 5o years since the assassination of Dr. King with respectful solemnity. A jubilee of progress it was not, as the sickness of racism festers in Americas. Our president is an unfit white bigot whose campaign was built on hate. The internet, a continuous howl of invective. The finely-honed sensibilities of the DePaul law students are not a sign of racial progress, but of frustration. Denied general victory, they clutch at tiny symbolic triumphs, no matter how vindictive. General white indifference to the controversy is a sure sign of just how illusionary their triumph is, because you know white folk cling to their prerogatives. I object because, in my view, if you respect somebody, you tell them when they're wrong.

Letter to the future

Dear 2060 America:

     I was reading an article in the New York Times today, about the echo chamber between President Donald Trump and Fox News, and how a group of Central American immigrants moving through Mexico became, in the little fear-shriveled minds of the president and his supporters, a terrifying invasion. 
     And it occurred to me, in not all that many decades, when our country is certain to be 25 percent Hispanic — it's already 18 percent Hispanic now — you'll look back on this period and wonder how it could have been possible, how such an important element of this great nation could have been allowed to be abused. How such an often great nation, the United States of America, could have elected this unfit clown, this unashamed hater, whose thoughts and policies used to be found on vile booklets left on bus station urinals, as president of the United States. 
     You've got to wonder: What was wrong with these people?
     I wish I had an answer. It amazes us and we were there the whole time.
     Not to be glib about something so wrong, so dangerous. If you're wondering whether we knew that something horrible was coming, that all wouldn't be staff firing and inane misstatements of reality, well...
     Yeah, we knew. Or we should have known. People have already been hurt, our country has already been damaged, at home and abroad. Did we know that worse was to come? Yeah, we knew. Or should have known. Or let ourselves guess and then pushed the knowledge away. Or denied the obvious.
     At least I know. If I had to summarize the Trump presidency up to today, I would say: we've been lucky, so far. If Trump were a skilled tactician, if he actually had a malign agenda beyond aggrandizing himself, and saying anything to please those who support him, he could have caused enormous damage. 
     But that might be coming. Probably is coming. Because each day we drift away from what we used to be, a normal, fact-driven, respectable society that at least paid lip service to notions of fairness and equality. That's gone, and while you can argue we've had some pretty dark chapters in our history — the bad stuff is oddly a comfort now, a reminder that we've done some heinous screwing up before — at least we weren't being led by such a ridiculous asshat. At least we weren't what we are now. Something both ridiculous and terrifying, our usual courage led by the pants-wetting swagger of the chronically terrified. 
     In our defense, there is a lot of that going around. We didn't invent prophylactic surrender of our ideals. The British dropping out of the European Union because they were afraid they'd have to let in Turks. The rise of nationalism in France and elsewhere. The Philippines electing a murderous madman. Israel lurching further and further to the right under the wildly corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu. Even segments of Germany are thinking, "That whole Nazi thing, it wasn't so bad for us..."
     This is terrible time for democracy all round. 
     Yes, we used to lead the world, not catch its every ailment. Now we don't (lead) and do (catch). Now the rest of the world looks on at us with fear, confusion and pity.
     Maybe you do too.
     Anyway, I don't want to belabor the point. Usually I write for people today, but I wanted to drop this note in a pixel bottle and toss it in the electronic ocean where maybe you'll find it or, more likely, you won't. Assuming you'll care and, given what's happening in 2018, I'd expect a bull market in not caring about much of anything.
     A pity. You should know, millions of Americans in 2018 were aghast and ashamed and eager to do whatever they can to winch our country out of this ditch of idiocy it has slid into, upside down, wheels spinning. It's a big task, and I am certain the aftershocks of our folly will be felt by you in 42 years. My hope is, not too much. Try to understand the improbable nature of the threat, and the way amazement and disgust blinded us to what was really happening. Be kind, and forgive us. I figure, by 2060, when I'm 100, kindness will have come back in style. At least I hope so. Because it's sure in short supply now.
    With apology, regret and best wishes,
    
    2018 America

Notes from underground

J.J. Madia, in the tunnels under the Loop that he manages.

    When the choice is go somewhere or not go somewhere, my default is: go.
    Because you never know.
    Not that I rush out to every opportunity.
    That would be impossible.
    Not to mention tiring.
    But when it's a 50-50 coin toss, when I'm teetering on whether something is worthwhile or not, my little personal rule pushes me over the edge.
     Though it doesn't always work out.
     For instance, last week.
     A British film crew was in town, shooting some kind of engineering special in the freight tunnels under the Loop, the ones that flooded so disastrously in 1992. The producers had read my 25th anniversary story online. Would I, a nice woman wondered, mind talking to their cameras about the flood?
     Well...
     On one hand, I could be on British television 24 hours a day and never know it. Any advantage to me would be slight.  Hours of my precious time would be spent to benefit some person not myself.
     On the other, it meant going down into the tunnels—how often do you get a chance to do that? (I had, just a year ago, for the story; but still...)
     Not to forget the allure of TV. Being on TV means something. It is significant, and British TV, double significant. They're so refined, the Brits. My flashing appearance could lead to something....
     True, I had to be at City Hall at 8:30 a.m. to do it. But heck, if I didn't, I'd be doing the same old pottering around the office I always do. Put yourself out. You never know. Maybe these TV folks will become my best friends.
     So I'm there, by the bronze "CITY HALL" sign at 8:30 a.m., bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I get a text from the producer. Traffic. Running late. That happens! No worries! I slide over to Petra's for a cup of coffee, thinking of H.T. Webster.
    You don't remember H.T. Webster, a cartoonist popular between the world wars. Don't feel bad. Nobody does. Except for, I suppose, me. His claim to fame was creating the character "Caspar Milquetoast," star of a series of panels he called "The Timid Soul." In one, poor Caspar stands in the driving rain and, well, it's easier to just show it.
    That's how I felt, a half hour and a $4 cup of coffee later, still waiting for the TV crew. Eventually they showed. Handshakes all around, and down into the bowels of City Hall we go. Boots on, reflective vests, hard hats, we follow J.J. Madia, the city worker whose full time job it is to make sure those tunnels don't flood again.
     To tell you the truth, the Brits—producer, cameraman, sound guy—were not as friendly as I expected. A little distant almost. And as one hour folded into two, it dawned on me: they weren't talking to me, they were talking to Madia. I was just ... well, there, for no particular purpose, sloshing in the water after them.  
     At 11:30 a.m. I decided I had enough. I was supposed to meet my brother, back at Petra's, for lunch at 12 noon. He's be sitting in a booth, gazing at the door, wondering where the flip I was, while I was standing up to my shins in water 40 feet underground. The crew was busily filming Madia expounding over some aspect of the tunnel. I decided to go back myself. I knew the way.
     Or, rather, I thought I knew the way. Turns out I didn't, which I learned when I came face-to-face with a steel bulkhead at a dead end I was certain I hadn't been to before. Getting lost would be bad: there are 39 miles of tunnels under the Loop.
     I turned around, pushing away that sinking, oh-I'm-screwed feeling and, heading back down the tunnel, saw Madia's flashlight, way ahead of me at an intersection of tunnel—I had taken the wrong turn. The Brits were a little nicer since after I left — the producer apologized, and explained that she had put me down for 11:45. A miscommunication. We shot me standing at the corner of Randolph and LaSalle, talking about the Flood. The producer handed me my fee: a dollar.
    Afterward, I had lunch with my brother—that was good, some redemption from being in the neighborhood. A good conversation, as always. Off to the station, waited half an hour for the train, and caught the 2:35.
     Maybe my "go and see" approach needs adjustment, I thought. Maybe the lesson is to stay chained to the computer and work and don't go to iffy opportunities. My new attitude toward such opportunities could be: "Fuck you. Find some other sap to fill your empty airtime."
    No. Just because something doesn't work, once, isn't an indictment of the philosophy. Baseball players employ the walk-up-to-the-plate-and-swing strategy, even though it fails two out of three, that doesn't undercut the value of their approach. You can't get a hit every time. You still keep swinging.
    The train was stopped at Morton Grove. A medical emergency, the conductor announced. The emergency, I realized from muffled screams on the sidewalk, involved a man who had gone berserk in the next car and was being subdued by about eight officers. I joined a group of suburbanites watching blandly from a couple car lengths away. The troubled man was joined by a young lady, also screaming and twisting and flailing as three cops dragged her off.
     Better you than me, bub. Watching the crisis settled my mood completely. A complicated thing, life. Work had lately seemed particularly burdensome—I sent my new 5,000-word story on smiling off to Mosaic Tuesday night—and this lost day turned out to be a reminder that I actually enjoy my work and hate to be interrupted without good reason. A reader among the knot of inconvenienced commuters struck up a conversation with me, waiting for the cops to drag the pair off. That new Sun-Times web site, he enthused. It's fantastic! I told him I was glad to hear that. I won't say it made the previous eight hours worth it. But it helped.