"Everyone, everywhere, gets up, and goes home"

     Twitter continually gives you the opportunity to endorse the ideas of strangers without really thinking about them.
     I was scrolling through the assortment of news and trivia, bleats and bullying last week when I came upon a Tweet from someone I was familiar with, but not on Twitter: Yoko Ono, who I guess nowadays must be identified as the Japanese artist who married Beatle John Lennon:

     Sounds good by me. Because discouragement comes, efforts flag, especially toward the tail end of your 50s. Collapsing across the finish line just doesn't seem an option any more. There is no finish line. Death maybe.
     So you keep doing it and doing it and doing it until ... what? You pop? Discouragement comes up on your from behind and tackles you, hard, into the ground?

     Maybe there are other options. 

     There's a beautiful poem by Jennifer Michael Hecht. Brief—just a dozen lines—married to the cumbersome title “On the Strength of All Conviction and the Stamina of Love.”
     It begins:

Sometimes I think
we could have gone on.
All of us. Trying. Forever.

     As a writer, I really value the "we" and the "all of us" in the above. We are not isolated at our looms and wheels and keyboards, but together, a cohort, a mass, a team. Some doing better than others, sure, but all of us unified in our dreams, our effort.
     Then Hecht moves the ball.

But they didn’t fill
the deserts with pyramids.
They just built some. Some.

     Changing the dynamic. We aren't the artisans we fancy ourselves to be; we're slaves. Rolling the giant slabs of our ambition up these improvised ramps. Our sun-burnt cheeks pressed hard against the rough surface of the task, heaving with all our might. The idea of a pyramid-chocked desert seems fantastic, futile, silly.
     Then we leap from ancient Egypt to today in a single bound.

They’re not still out there,
building them now. Everyone,
everywhere, gets up, and goes home.

     Which sounds so enticing. The negation of a whimsical image straight from Billy Collins—all of those workers still out there, Giza abuzz with activity, masses of slaves, ropes, pulleys, new pyramids going up to this day, somehow overlooked by the indifferent world. 
     And that final "home"—who doesn't want to go home? "The place where," as Robert Frost said so heartbreakingly, "when you have to go there, they have to take you in."
     Honestly, I read the poem and, inspired, thought of posting it here and simply quitting the blog cold after five years. Here, figure this one out, good-bye. Because whatever the world wants, this obviously is not it. Five years is plenty. 

      But then, I'm doing it for myself, because it's fun and not terribly demanding, really. I'd miss it. And maybe you'd miss it too. So on we go. Leading to the end of Hecht's poem, something of a rebuke, a twist to make us think harder about what has gone before. 

Yet we must not
Diabolize time. Right?
We must not curse the passage of time. 

     Why not? Time certainly won't care. Maybe because doing so is futile. There's a lot of that going around. Some days, everything is futile.
     Anyway, that's enough for today. See you tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow after that....

"Fight hard for Judge Jeanine"

     The law has many concepts useful for the non-legal world. One of my favorites is "stipulate." When opposing sides in a case agree on a certain fact, or set of facts, they can stipulate those facts, meaning—if I understand correctly—that they don't have to argue over them. 
     "We will stipulate that my client was indeed in the store the morning it was robbed, but will show that he left without taking anything."
     Privately, I stipulate situations because I don't want to belabor them. Donald Trump is a liar, a bully and a fraud. This is clear to everyone it is ever going to be clear to, and anyone who doesn't see that by now never will. There is no need to wave around various examples of new lies, new examples of his beating up on the weak, fresh instances of chicanery. We get it. We've gotten it. We're going to get it. 
    Stipulating this allows a person thoroughly disgusted with our nation's dive into shame to divert his gaze from the oozing and grotesque horror unfolding hourly in Washington or, on the weekends, Florida. There is life outside of Trump's little shoebox diorama of a world, and I want to look at that. 
     However. 
     There is a risk that the president will be tuned out so thoroughly, that the utter wrongness of his words and actions will be muted to a degree that is dangerous. We don't want to risk accepting his behavior by silence. We don't want to ignore the horror, repetitive though it may be. Sometimes we have to force ourselves to look, on general principles. As a patriotic duty. 
      Thus let me post a trio of his tweets Sunday, coming to the defense of a Fox host who was canned after suggesting that Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar couldn't be a good American because she wears a hijab. To read the president's tweets in chronological order, start from the bottom.
     

     This, 48 hours after 50 Muslims were slaughtered in New Zealand by a white nationalist who praised Trump before committing his atrocity.
      Judge Pirro was a Fox ranter—I can't comment on her because I've never seen her in action. But she seems to be among those mirroring Trump's thoughts back to him. Notice how the president of the United States calls for a TV host to be re-instated—itself a mile beneath the dignity of the presidency in normal times—then blames Fox News dumping her on the "Radical Left Democrats"—if they had control over Fox, one assumes the network would be sucked into the gaping hellmouth that opens up under it.
     In the second, a common theme: noticing the hatred they foment, against Muslims, against Hispanics, against whatever victim they've got their sights on at the moment, is "political correctness," a pearl-clutching collapse on the fainting couch of over-refinement.
    "Be strong & prosper, be weak & die." Where did he get that? It sounds like a snippet of Klingon philosophy that lodged in the Trumpian brain after watching "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." 
     And the third tweet. "Your competitors are jealous." Envy is a major motivating factor in the Trump world, second perhaps only to fear, so of course they see it everywhere they look. So many times I've heard from readers who can't wrap their head around opposing Trump for the aforementioned lies, bullying and fraud—it's just crrrrazy to them—nor perceive his valueless, pitiable life, but, dazzled by the gold-plated excess he wallows in, declare that those who oppose him are just "jealous" of his lux lifestyle. Like being Donald Trump were not a fate I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. 
     See why Trump is best ignored? Because if you don't, you have to think about this shit. And honestly, we haven't even parsed half of his grotesquely petty and sickening tweets on Sunday. With more certain to come today. I suppose we have to look, as punishment, for being part of a nation that permitted this. Then we have to look away. It's heartbreaking. 

Memento mori

     Rare is the weekend where I have to work. Well, except for Sunday mornings, when I usually write my Monday column. Except not this morning, because I'm so busy writing this big important project for the paper, the column got pushed aside. 
    I don't want to ignore the blog post though. However ... I can't say that after a day grinding at this task ideas are straining in their seats, waving their arms, going "Ooo, ooo! Me! Me!" 
     In addition. Maybe the slaughter of 50 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand makes the whole effort seem extra pointless. Social media, so stuffed with words as it is. Words, words, words. Suddenly words seem ... I almost said "cheap." But they're worse than cheap, aren't they? They're free, and worth every penny.
    Enough that I don't feel like adding more to them. 
    I do, however, have this photo I do not believe I have posted before. My wife and I were in Paris two years ago, visiting out oldest son at the Sorbonne, and we passed this florist on the Rue Monge in the 5th Arrondissement. Apt for spring, don't you think? Lovely to look at, colorful comfort in light of all the grim news. With perhaps a bit of apt symbolism tucked in, if you look hard.
    Oh okay: they're cut flowers. Which means the clock is ticking. Beautiful now. But later, soon, not so much.  Enjoy them while you can.

The Saturday Snapshot #31

     The Chicago Symphony Orchestra went on strike Monday, and on Friday Linda Spadlowski drove in from the far Northwest suburbs to join them.  She is not a musician—she's a patron, a paraprofessional at an elementary school in Carol Street. 
    "I came to lend my support to the musicians," she told me. "The orchestra is one of the best in the world, and its musicians should be treated with the respect they deserve."
      We spoke for a few minutes—I was just blundering by, heading to the train from the Hilton, where I had attended the the ACLU luncheon, guest of my friend Howard Suskin at Jenner & Block. Picketing is tiresome, and I was impressed that a concert-goer would go to the effort; it speaks to the devotion that patrons have to the music, particularly since this was her first year as a subscriber. 
    These sympathetic thoughts were in my head as I walked away. Then, as if to ground me in the greater reality, a remark from a man next to me cut through the Michigan Avenue background noise.
     "I'm supposed to feel sympathetic for folks playing the goddamn fiddle?" a man exclaimed. I stole sly glance to my right. Enormous cantilevered gut. Brush mustache. Terrified slip of a wife. Young daughter he was dragging along by her arm. 
     The music is out there, free to all. But not everybody can hear the music.  The CSO has cancelled its scheduled concerts for this weekend.

Don’t be scared; they’re only homeless young people — they don’t bite

     At the Crib, the Night Ministry’s youth shelter in the basement of the LakeView Lutheran Church on West Addison, there is a 9 p.m. ritual that can break the hardest heart.
     There is room for only 21 foam mattresses on the floor of the single-room shelter. So whenever more than 21 young people — mostly members of the LGBTQ community — are seeking refuge from the streets, they draw lots. The losers must leave. There are tears, embraces, couples sometimes split, and it is not unknown for one homeless youth to give his place to someone who needs it more. I’ve seen it happen.
     So when I first heard that the Night Ministry plans to move the Crib to a sprawling industrial building at 1735 N. Ashland, I assumed the idea is to accommodate more kids.
     They won’t. They’ll still house 21, to preserve a homey environment. The Crib will, however, introduce a new level of luxury.
     “There will actually be beds and not mattresses on the floor,” said the Night Ministry’s Burke Patten, the benefit of having several dedicated rooms. “People won’t be sleeping and recreating in the same space.
     Maybe. The new location is leased, but its use as a shelter needs government approval; the Chicago Zoning Board of Appeals will hear the case on Friday.

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Poisoned Ivy

     So that's why my boys didn't get into Harvard...
     Because the slots that should have gone to them were snapped up by the spawn of rich celebrities who bribed coaches to pretend their couch potatoes were athletes, and other venal acts of fraud and criminality.
     A spot in a top college projects whoever snags it to the fast-track to success. But those exclusive colleges bat away 95 out of every 100 students who apply, forcing them through an obstacle course where all sorts of secondary hurdles besides academic excellence suddenly loom in importance. If the college has accepted kids from 49 states, and needs someone from South Dakota so they can boast students "from all 50 states," then suddenly South Dakotans go to the top of the stack. If the band needs a xylophonist, suddenly xylophonists start to sparkle. Not to mention all the attempts to create a diverse student body. As Orwell said in Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Not to forget money: they have to remember to let some students in whose parents can actually pay the tuition. For starters.
    As Frank Bruni pointed out in Wednesday's New York Times, it isn't that much of a stretch from giving a college $2 million and having your kid waived in—legal!—to bribing a coach to pretend he's on the water polo team—illegal!
     I don't want to excuse the underhanded tricks used by parents to try to jam their kids into the best colleges.  It hasn't been so many years since my boys went through this, and I remember the frantic, what-can-I-do?!? approach to their quest.

Harvard Lampoon (photo by Harrison Roberts)

     But I had a few advantages. First, I had sought the advice of Bill Savage, NU literature professor, master of all things Chicago and, not incidentally, someone involved with the college selection machinery. He gave me what I consider the No. 1, key bit of advice for a student or parent contemplating the college process, which is: Don't get your heart set on a certain school. That's a recipe for disappointment. What happens is, a student, or her parents, or both, decide that they don't get into Boola Boola University then their lives will be ruined. When in fact they might have a better experience at a different college.  
     He also counseled against the general, I'm-gonna-die tone of despair that parents bring to the process. That doesn't help. Important decisions, yes. Key forms and essays and hoops to leap through or, often, not. But the whole upper echelon college thing is also a framework of values that is only of vast importance if you believe it is of vast importance. Donald Trump went to the Wharton School, and look how he turned out.
     Oh, and the boys didn't get into Harvard because neither of them applied. I can't speak for them, but that might be my fault. We visited Cambridge when they were in their mid-teens, and I steered us over to the Harvard Lampoon castle, a quirky building supposedly paid for by William Randolph Hearst and designed as kind of Dutch revival sphinx. I explained how, while researching my pranks book, I had spent a few days there happily poring over their archives, and what fine fellows the Lampooners were.
    Our timing was off. We arrived during some kind of Bacchic revel—maybe because it was Friday. A round metal pool had been set up in front of the castle, students were splashing around in it, drunk, and firing off fireworks. My boys were aghast. We fled.
     Just as well. The older boy went to Pomona, a liberal college in California routinely ranked higher than Harvard. And the younger boy went to Northwestern, applying early admission, because that's where his dad went. Bribes were not necessary.
   

Was Congress condemning hatred or expressing it?

Republican National Convention, 2016

     So my boss tells me to take today off and focus on a special project.
     Yes sir! I think.
     And then, as if to mock me, I flip open the paper and read about Congress last week declaring that hatred in all its varieties — including that against “African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and others”—is bad.
     What’s a guy to do?
     First, bigotry doesn’t have varieties. Underneath the thinnest veneer, it’s all the same thing: treating people in a particular group with contempt because doing so somehow makes you feel better about yourself.
     Sure, the forms that might appear to be different. But that’s just personal style: Chocolate or vanilla, rocky road or rum raisin, it’s all ice cream.
     I can’t tell you how many readers insisted I weigh in on Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, one of two Muslims new to Congress, and her pair of remarks regarding Israel. My hunch is they do so not out of their overflowing human kindness, but from their own low-grade fever anti-Semitism. They want to nudge me into a trap: Ha, make this Jewish Democrat denounce his fellow Democrat. Sort of the way Louis Farrakhan is used as a pry bar to wiggle apart Democratic coalitions.
     Honestly, Democrat or Republican, feeling queasy about Israel as it slides toward extremism under Benjamin Netanyahu seems more an expression of sincerely-held Judaism than of anti-Semitism, and if that were a sheitel on Omar’s head instead of a headscarf (sigh: sheitel = wig worn by Orthodox Jewish women) nobody would have noticed her opinion, never mind initiated an Act of Congress.

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