"Let them know Africans do love Trump"

    "Everyone here loves Trump," said the friend I was staying with while working on a story in North Carolina. "Even black people."
     How do you know? I thought, but did not say—guestly manners, and I suppose the restraint that puts Democrats at a permanent disadvantage in our current national tug-o-war. 
     I had barely seen a person, never mind a person of color, during my stay in this lovely suburb of Raleigh. Lots of tall, straight southern pine trees—growing telephone poles is big business here. Many old tobacco smoking sheds, little rough cabins preserved as a hint of the rustic charm being pushed out by suburban sprawl. But most people were obscured behind the tinted windows of wide-hipped Ford F-150 pick-ups.
     The government shut-down finally ended while I was away, and the victory for Nancy Pelosi and the Dems was being ululated on the pages of the liberal media.
     But the permanent opposition is having none of it. My friend roundly damned Pelosi while I pursed my lips, and is convinced this re-opening is but a three-week pause before Trump, master tactician, presses his struggle anew. Meanwhile, United Airlines sent an email pointedly suggesting I slip home early, ahead of Monday's polar vortex snowstorm. So I gratefully changed my flight, to find O'Hare oddly congested for Saturday night at 9 p.m.
     No matter. I confidently dialed American Taxi, with the relief felt when you spy your mother's face at the window. I was practically home.
     American Taxi let me down. Rather than briskly dispatch a taxi, an automated voice informed me they were short of cabs. It took my order, yes, and said they'd send a text. But no text came as I stood shivering outside. Only one or two American Taxis slipped by. Not promising. I called American Taxi back, busted through the electronic shells and found a real person, who told me there is a shortage of cabs. Several times, while I tried to pry out the information I needed: would there be, not only cabs available some time in the foreseeable future, but a specific cab available for me? And when might that be? He wouldn't say, and eventually I realized I was on my own. The government is being run by a egomaniacal fraud. Congress is seized up. And now, betrayed by American Taxi. It was as if they had snarled, “walk!”

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The Oriental Institute is no doubt next

"Western Gentleman in Oriental Costume" by unknown British painter
Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Workmen changed the letters on the sign of the Oriental Theater Wednesday night—a Facebook friend sent me a video of himself and a pal, having just seen "Kinky Boots," heckling the workers.

    "Blasphemy! Sacrilege!" one cried, while the other chimed in, "Boooo! Boooo!"
    Yes, change, how we hate it, sometimes.

     The official renaming, to the James M. Nederlander Theatre, is Feb. 8—my pal Chris Jones has a comprehensive story in the Tribune. He explains that there is no reason to get all weepy over the loss of the "Oriental" name; that wasn't even the original name of the  original theater in the site: The Iroquois Theater, the one that notoriously burned in 1903, with a loss of 600 lives, which puts disputes over names in context.
      "Oriental" has to go because the term is now considered offensive. I don't have a dog in this race, but my opinion on the subject was well-expressed by Jayne Tsuchiyama in the Los Angles Times in a 2016 piece headlined "The Term 'Oriental' is outdated, but is it racist?"
     She quotes Erika Lee, , director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota and author of "The Making of Asian America: A History:" 

"In the U.S., the term 'Oriental' has been used to reinforce the idea that Asians were/are forever foreign and could never become American. These ideas helped to justify immigration exclusion, racial discrimination and violence, political disfranchisement and segregation." Lee also claimed that continued use of the term "perpetuates inequality, disrespect, discrimination and stereotypes towards Asian Americans."

     Tsuchiyama doesn't buy it.
     "I don't see it that way," she writes. "I see self-righteous, fragile egos eager to find offense where none is intended."
     Racial analysis has a strict set of rules, manners and conventions. Tsuchiyama, being Asian herself, has standing to take strong stands that I couldn't prudently adopt.  Though even unfettered, I wouldn't put it that strongly, not only because it would be unwise, but because I have a vague sympathy for those who indulge in such semantic hurtmongering. We're all scrabbling around in society, and there is an immediate power and dignity that comes from objecting to something, from insisting you are being wronged somehow. That's why the Fox crowd, no matter the topic, always veers into their own victimization, whether notional, as is usually the case, or in certain instances real.  It's easy, rewarding, and many people itch to plug into it. Who knows, it might even be sincere. This is not to deny actual oppression. Asian-Americans of course have suffered their share of discrimination, from the abuses against Chinese railroad workers to World War II Japanese interment camps. But there are people who leap to object. The word "oriental" is dying out on its own, as Tsuchiyama notes, and trying to back form it into something offensive is of marginal utility.

     The Federal government banned the word from official documents and now it is being scrubbed from a marque in Chicago. I'd like to say that human tolerance is thereby improved. But I don't see the connection. Maybe the reason we agonize over the frills and trappings is because we can't get close to the heart of the problem.

The Saturday Snapshot #24

Todd

     You never get a second chance.
     Unless you do. 
     I was sitting in the The Pit in Raleigh, North Carolina, with my old friend Bob Ringham, when I saw this dramatic hairstyle slide past the window, atop a young man riding a scooter. Scooters are the thing in Raleigh, apparently.
    I drew Bob's attention to the stiff ridge of pointy hair as its owner disappeared.
    "Odd," I said. "Mohawks were a way to broadcast punk rebellion in 1977 and, 40 years later, they still are."
     I wanted to elaborate how they never aged, like other rebellious cuts, the DA, which went from genuine tough guy Rebel-Without-a-Cause talisman to toothless coiffure sunk in nostalgia and the mock heroic. A mohawk is still strange; like a tantrum in hair, a way each generation expresses anew its displeasure with the world.
     A few minutes later, he was back. I couldn't let a second chance slip by. I quickly stood up excused myself, hurrying outside and introducing myself, mentioning Chicago and this blog as if they were charms. He said his name is Todd and apologetically said his girlfriend had just been in a traffic accident and he had to go. Though nicely, nicely enough that I implored, "Two seconds," and he posed, briefly, in profile as instructed. In the first two photos, his magnificent crest was lost in the background but, for this final frame, I dipped my knees and silhouetted it against the sky. And then he was gone, off down the street.
    "I hope she's okay!" I called after him, and returned to the restaurant, where I was met by an inquisitive waitstaff.
    "Do you know that guy?" one waiter said. 
    "No," I replied, "we just met."

Where's Neil?

     I'm not the man in motion I sometimes pretend to be. In fact, fairly homebound and glad of it, partially because I can be bad about doing all the planning necessary for a trip. I'm out-of-town today, working on a story. But before I left, my wife and I had an exchange that made me smile: 

     She: Could you send me the address where you're staying?
     Me: I don't know where I'm staying.
     She: Well then, could you tell me what state you'll be in?
     Me: North Carolina.

Flashback 1998: Aunt leaves cache of trinkets—and mystery

   Occasionally, I'll reprint an old column and someone will ask me how I can remember something written so long ago. And the honest answer is, often I don't, but just blunder upon them, looking for something else.
     But this one I did remember, after 20 years, and went looking for. I'm posting it because I'm out of town, on assignment, and the 23rd anniversary of my column is Saturday, so I figured I would fill the gap with some of my favorites. This is one of my favorites, for reasons that I think will be obvious if you read it. If I had to write it again, I'd start with the the third paragraph, beginning "Alice-Lu Unthank lived alone..." and delete the first two as unnecessary.
     "Unthank"—what an odd name. Only now does its symbolism strike me. 

     Most people lead quiet lives, privately. Modest lives unseen, except by their families, if even then. Lives of love and loss and remembrance.
     But every once and a while, a life breaks open for all to see.
     Alice-Lu Unthank lived alone, in a single bed in a tiny room with file boxes of yarn, bolts of felt, knitting needles and embroidery supplies piled around her, up to the crumbling, cigarette-stained ceiling.
     The retired secretary lived in a two-bedroom flat on Addison Street. The second bedroom was as sparse as hers was cluttered, the beautiful mahogany furniture polished, the double bed made, a brush and comb set neatly on the dresser, as if she were expecting at any moment the room's former occupant, Unthank's father, John J. Joppeck, dead for 20 years.
     "She kept a room for him, as if he was here," said her niece, Penny Young, of Williamsburg, Va. "Like a shrine. I've seen photographs of his dresser when he was alive. It's the same now."
     Unthank, who died March 16 at age 83, left behind no children. Her husband died in 1949. She adored her niece, whom she last saw in 1985. Young was surprised to learn she had inherited her household possessions. She inherited, along with the engagement rings and the gold watches, the melancholy task of shutting down the apartment. She was here, doing that, all last week, and is stunned by the strangeness of what she found, the flotsam saved by her Aunt Alice, a woman she barely knew.
     Not just the huge amounts of handicraft supplies, the hundreds of pattern books, shelf after shelf. Not just the dozens of hand-knit afghans, all labeled and sealed in plastic bags. Not just the shock of seeing her own high school portrait, framed, or an urn containing ashes of a dog named Penny.
     Rather, what prompted Penny Young to call a newspaper were the ornaments—hundreds of them, all made by hand by Joppeck. Ducks and bunnies, hearts and butterflies, napkin racks and spoon racks, toast holders and note holders. Some on display, the bulk—and there may be 1,000—wrapped in brittle newspapers, decades old, stored in careful layers, in box after box after box.
     "I'm in shock," she said. "It's more than I can take."
     Each piece is signed on the back, "JJJ," dated and dedicated to "ALU"—Alice-Lu Unthank. Some have little notes of appreciation, or praise. Behind them all, as best Penny Young can figure out, is a sad tale of a broken family.
     Joppeck and his wife, Nell Kugelman, divorced on Feb. 5, 1927, after 16 years of marriage. Alice-Lu was 13. Young found the papers in her aunt's careful collection of documents. They list the grounds for divorce as "extreme and repeated cruelty," but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. You needed to list some sort of reason then.
     Joppeck disappeared and his oldest daughter did not see him again until March 22, 1966, when they met again at Nell's funeral at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside.
     Father and daughter got to talking. They had several lunches. Soon they were living together. And he started making the ornaments and tokens, almost every day, until his death about a decade later.
     "He made them for her to show love, because he left her," said Young.
     The tokens are not art. "You either like them or you don't," said Young. Many are imitations of cartoons—squirrels, deer, clowns, all vaguely Disneyesque. They are made from old apple crates and bits of wood that Joppeck, a painter and paper hanger, would scavenge. The hangers on the back are made from beer can pull-tabs.
     Young found a heart-shaped locket containing a picture of Alice and a man. At first Young thought it was the deceased husband, Wilson Unthank. "I went, 'Oh my God, this isn't Wilson,' " she said. It was John Joppeck.
     In light of his 40-year absence, the hundreds of tokens have a desperate, guilty quality. And there are indications that Unthank carried anger. Certain accusations in a letter in a strongbox, the details of which aren't to be mentioned.
     Young plans on keeping a curio cabinet Joppeck made, and some of the better wooden trinkets. The others—hundreds of them—she couldn't bring herself to throw away. As luck would have it, she doesn't have to. Her aunt, who left typed inventories of everything in the house, left the phone number of a yarn store. Young called, hoping they would take the yarn—hundreds of skeins and balls of it, ready for somebody to knit.
     Lynette Opolka, the owner of Midwest Discount Yarns, at 5723 W. Irving Park Road, agreed to take the yarn; she plans to donate it to the Veterans Hospital and other charities to use for patient projects.
     Opolka is also taking most of John Joppeck's trinkets. She'll give them away to anyone who stops by her store and asks for one. So you can share a bit of the mystery, if you like. I took a duck and a rabbit.
     I walked out of Alice-Lu Unthank's apartment, thinking about love and knitting and the temporary tyranny of things. No matter how well-ordered your world, no matter how neat the labels, your prized possessions are only a few decades away from the auction block or the resale shop or the dumpster.
     Many of us won't even get the benefit of a Penny Young—a decent, caring person who tries to dispose of our treasures with a little dignity.
     "It's killing me to look at this," she said.
     Balls of yarn. Bits of wood carved like ducks. Old legal documents and prayer cards from funerals. We leave behind so little, and so much.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 24, 1998

One hint a policy might not represent America at her best: Nazis love it.

     The past, the past, what do we do with it? Push it down and it bobs back up.
     I was cleaning my desk at home—a walnut roll-top, cubbyholes and odd drawers and secret compartments, bought when I was 14 with five years worth of paper route savings. It's big: the entire Oxford English Dictionary fits on top with room to spare. The thing tends to accumulate junk. I was re-arranging piles of files when I came across a creme colored envelope. Inside, an invitation to my high school commencement.
     "Wednesday evening, June fourteenth. Nineteen hundred and seventy-eight..."
     Where did that come from? It didn't sit there, unnoticed, for 40 years? Did it? I hope not.
     I tucked the invite away and pushed onward with my clean-up.
     Hanging from the bulletin board, a Congressional candidate's flyer. Nothing is more disposable than campaign literature after the election is over, but this, well, I just couldn't throw away. I took it down to admire anew.
     "A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO YOU FROM ARTHUR JONES" it blared. "YOUR CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESSMAN."
     The Nazi, if you recall, or alleged Nazi, if you're feeling charitable. The guy who throws birthday parties for Hitler.
     A flag, of course and a photo of the U.S. Capital.
     "WHERE I STAND:" and a dozen bullet points.
     Guess which is first? C'mon, guess!
      No, not "Make English the Official Language!" — because nothing imperils the greatness of a country like having more than one language spoken there. That's fifth. Though I would argue that propping up your native tongue and defending its supposed purity is worse than un-American, it's French. They're big on that.
     Not "No Amnesty for Illegal Aliens!" That's fourth. What a handy word, "illegal"—the bigot's friend, the open gate through which a truckload of fear and hate is driven. The fig leaf hiding—in the mind of the bigot—his obscene shame.
     Enough preface. Drumroll please. Arthur Jones' Numero Uno—whoops, where are my manners? That's Spanish. And Italian. The Number One reason he felt he should be elected:
     "Build The Wall!"
     Of course it is.  Both obvious and demanding explanation.
     Why would a Holocaust-denying, immigrant-hating, anti-Semitic wack job like Jones care about building Trump's Wall? Because he's concerned with stemming crime and the flow of drugs? That's what Trump has been tweet-blasting for days.

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Dogs at work

     Nothing beats going out on a story.
     Yes, the telephone is helpful: quick, often necessary, and usually you have to settle for that. Voices on a line. Email is easier and worse—harder = better in journalism, as in so much of life—because people writing emails tend to sound like minor functionaries crafting official statements.
     But visiting tops them all because being there answers questions you never think to ask.
     For instance. At the end of last year I was writing a big piece on manufacturing in Illinois, and I decided to focus, among several companies, on PBC Linear in Roscoe, Illinois. The PBC stands for "Pacific Bearing Corporation." Why them? Bearings seemed hard core industry. They just said "industrial" to me in a loud voice.
     So I drive out to Roscoe, find the company. The secretary summons Tom Schroeder, chief operating officer and son of the founder, and as we step into the office, dogs come running to check me out. They have a "dog-friendly" office and, true to promise, these are friendly dogs; well, indifferent anyway, mildly curious, which is friendly enough. Why? Basically because Schroeder wanted to bring his dog, and it only seemed fair to let anybody else who wanted to bring a dog as well. A fair boss, miribile dictu. The dogs give a warmth to what otherwise could have been a bland and starkly functional corporate place. They lend humanity, ironically enough. Had I done my business over the phone, I never would have thought to say, "And dogs ... do you have dogs in your office?" While their web site does say they are "dog-friendly" that wouldn't catch my attention the way seeing a pack of dogs loping around the headquarters did. 
     The practice is highly unusual. A small, but growing phenomenon: only 7 percent of employer allow pets in the workplace in 2016, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, up from 4 percent two years earlier. 
    That's it. That's all I have to say at the moment. Dogs in the office. But more, you know, tomorrow. I hope.