Flashback 2003: Some of life's treasures uncovered amid a blizzard

The boys, 6 and 8, work on a clue. Saturday, Dec. 6, 2003

      I heard from a reader on Sunday with an unusual request.

    "I hope I'm not bugging you," she wrote. "My 86 year old Dad passed away this week and I'm writing his eulogy. Years ago, you wrote a column about walking home and the warm glow coming from the windows of home. Maybe you talked about your childhood home. My Dad read your column regularly and he was telling me about your column that day and as he spoke of it, he choked up. He never cried, and your column meant a lot to him. I was hoping to reference it in the eulogy, but, I cannot find it. I have no idea when you wrote it. It could be 10 years ago, could be 5. Do you have any recollection? I like to think that what you wrote in your column was his conception of an afterlife, if there is one. Any help you can provide, I am most grateful."

     I vaguely remembered that it involved a cancelled flight, and that was enough to let me, eventually, dig up the following. The neat thing about this column is that I have a family photo that illustrates it. I could never photograph the boys playing the Clue Game, because I was always gone when they played it. But I wasn't gone this one time, due to the cancelled flight, so could get a single shot of them working on the opening clue.

     My mother calls. This is last Friday, a week ago today. There's going to be five feet of snow in Boston, she says. Mmm, I say, mildly concerned, even though I am set to fly to Boston on Saturday to spend a few days at the John F. Kennedy Library and then on to New York.
     Hanging up, I apply the formula designed to transfer my mother's concerns into quotidian reality. Now my mom is great (Hi, Mom! Don't be mad; it's just humor) but sometimes, when a lone sentry of fact enters her centrifuge of love and anxiety, it emerges as a battalion.
    I log onto the National Weather Service Web site, expecting to find, perhaps, light flurries. To my vast surprise, a major storm is coming to Boston. Not five feet, but two, which is close enough. Score one for mom.
     Still, I go home and pack and try to gather the research materials that an organized person would have been assembling for weeks. On top of it, I have the Clue Game to concoct. I have never written about the Clue Game, because it goes against the image I cultivate as a bitter and cynical man living on bile and bourbon. But whenever I go out of town, I leave behind a scavenger hunt of envelopes containing clues and prizes to occupy my boys until I return. They love it, and I'd explain how it works in detail—each clue is a puzzle or riddle leading to the location of the next—except I'm certain nobody else in the world would bother doing it. Even I forgot, until Friday morning, when my wife mentioned the youngest had asked about the Clue Game, and I leapt into action.
     So I'm packing, I'm writing rebuses and coded messages in purple ink and hiding envelopes underneath carpets. Meanwhile, the weather in Boston—monitored through the miracle of the Web—gets worse and worse. I go to bed anxious, hopeful and resigned.
     Now it's Saturday, 4:30 a.m. With the distant storm in full cry, I'm just steeling myself to a day at the airport, slouched uncomfortably in a plastic chair, when I make an uncharacteristically bold decision. Don't wait for them to cancel the flight. Don't go. Don't try. Call now before everybody else wakes up and shuts down the system. So I phone American—the automatic voice tells me I have to wait four minutes—and shift the flight to Sunday afternoon.

Happy to have Dad underfoot

     And here's the surprising part, the reason I'm boring you with all these travel arrangements. The rest of the day goes wonderfully. The boys, who have their bored-with-dad moments, are delighted that I am so unexpectedly home. They insist on hugs and Monopoly. The wife—and how shall I say this?—who is, like me, like anyone in the third decade of a close relationship, sometimes not exactly aglow with the wonder of being in proximity to another person, seems truly happy to have me clumping around the house.
     Or maybe they are the same and it's me who is different. I still want to go to Boston, with New York to follow. I want to paw through the stacks of the Kennedy Library and marvel at the soaring reading room in the New York Public Library. But I am so happy to be home. It's as if I've never been there before, as if I'm one of those dead people in the movies who comes back to wander among the living. The boys insist on starting the Clue Game, though I haven't left, and when I point out the envelope resting on the sideboard, marked "Begin," the youngest one seems about to vibrate himself apart with excitement. I've been making those damn games for four years, and this is the first time I ever got to see the boys do one—I'm usually gone—and it makes every minute spent composing riddles and burying pirate chests worth it.
     Sunday is a repeat. We finish Monopoly, make french toast. It's still snowing in Boston. American kindly cancels my flight before I even consider going to the airport. I phone—now the wait is 23 minutes—and reschedule.
     About dusk Sunday I walk over to the Northbrook Public Library, in my back yard, to return a book that's a few weeks overdue. Coming home—and I wish I were a good enough writer to convey this properly—walking back through the chill evening. Carrying the stack of books I of course had to check out while I was there. Softly singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" to myself. Catching sight of the lighted windows of the house through the fir trees. It's one of those inexplicably joyful moments that live in memory. I stop, marveling, and remember what Ruth Elias once said in a speech. Elias wrote an excruciating book about surviving Auschwitz. I heard her five years ago, so can't quote her, directly, but she ended her speech by saying something like this:

     I have this dream. I dream I am walking up to my family's home in Czechoslovakia. The windows are all lit up, and I know that everybody is well, and there, home, waiting for me. And then I awaken, and it's so sweet, because they were all there, clearly, and so sad, because it was only a dream. And that is what I'd like to tell you today—if you are lucky enough to be going home later, and the lights of your house are bright, and your family is all there, waiting, you should stop and savor it as the precious gift it is, because someday it too will be just a dream.

     It was sort of like that.
                            —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 12, 2003

Two little birds are causing a big controversy

Piping plover on Montrose beach. (Photo by Fran Morel) 

     Even birds get tired.
     After a long dark flight over Lake Michigan — most songbirds migrate at night — they’re ready to flop down on the first solid ground they see.
     “The sun comes up, and they will immediately look for the closest place to land where they can find shelter, and in the Chicago area that place is Montrose,” said Greg Neise of the American Birding Association.
     Montrose juts out, a half-mile long welcome mat offering a smorgasbord of habitats for 300 types of birds: trees for warblers and thrushes, grassland for bobolink and meadowlarks, and of course beach, where endangered piping plovers scoop out tiny nests in the sand and lay their brown-speckled eggs.
     I admit, when the piping plover saga erupted, I did not rush to the ramparts. For those late to the party, JAM is moving its “Mamby on the Beach” music festival to Montrose, raising concerns about trampled plover nests.
     I like birds, but I’m not fanatical about it. There are a number of plovers, and if the piping plover goes down, well, the Wilson’s plover will do.
     This callousness vaporized after my friend Tony Fitzpatrick got me on the phone. You know Tony — artist, actor, writer, general Chicago renaissance man.

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It all adds up to something

     What to do? How to react?     
     The most frustrating thing about the constant random, cruel initiatives from Washington—after the continual shock that this is happening to our country— is knowing what to highlight, what to dig in against. There is so much that is wrong, and you can't push in all directions at once.. 
     Children held in inhuman conditions on the border? The no-brainer of all time. Of course anyone with a shred of decency is outraged—that's a given. But how can that be stopped? Getting into a pointless debate over the use of the phrase "concentration camp" certainly isn't going to do it. The Holocaust dead sure don't care one way or another. The Holocaust is an apt point of reference, not because the situation today is equal to it, but because it's going down the path, in the direction. The lesson of the Holocaust is that it unfolded while a pliant population approved or did nothing. It starts with one child. Then more.
      What can be done that is not symbolic, but real, effective? 
     The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were supposed to start today nationwide, in 10 cities, including Chicago.
     Punishment for their "sanctuary city" openness. From San Francisco to Miami.
     Why? What crisis is being addressed? That would be Donald Trump's crisis in popularity. With the election nearing, and even his base growing restive over their leader's imbecilic antics, the president seeks to stir up his supporters with the only thing that raises a tingle in their blown-out senses—by playing upon their hatred for others, in this case, the immigrant, the foreigner, the person of color.
     Never mind that they have lived here for years, and are our neighbors, employees, and friends. Never mind they have worked here for decades, often at the hardest, most grueling, lowest paid, jobs our society offers. In fields and kitchens, tending children and mowing lawns. Not to devolve to stereotypes: they are also students, entrepreneurs, senior citizens, veterans, scholars, poets, the same mix of humanity as anyone else.
     A decent country would welcome such people. Who found their way here, leaving everything they knew -- their homes and families, nation and language. Who often fled terrible conditions with nothing but their clothes and their loved ones. We would embrace them and help them, knowing that not too long ago, almost every American was in their shoes, strangers in a strange land.
     But we are not that decent country. Not officially. Not anymore, but a land of lies ruled by a cruel and capricious despot.  At least we have a free press, so far. We can point in horror and say, "This isn't right." Trump has spat in his hands and tried to figure out how to pull that down. It hasn't happened yet, but if it does, we will be truly lost.
     A grim moment in this grim time, and if the decent citizens of this country cannot stand by while these were occurring. This past week cities mobilized. Officials denounced the raids, offered assistance to threatened immigrants, and ordered police forces to not cooperate with federal authorities. Lori Lightfoot was front and center in this, taking decisive steps and speaking out against this "hateful" action, going personally through immigrant communities, handing out cards detailing their rights. 
      And it worked, for the moment. Trump, who is making a habit of caving in, caved in, lashing out at Chicago as he did.
     ”Some cities are going to fight it,” Trump said, as he backpedaled. “If you notice, they are generally high-crime cities. If you look at Chicago, they are fighting it and if you look at the other cities that are fighting it, many of those cities are high-crime cities and they are sanctuary cities.”
      Another lie. The presence of immigrants has nothing to do with the crime in a city, except to lower it. Study after study shows this, and it makes sense. If you can be deported for a traffic ticket, you tend to drive carefully. Trump associates the two because besides being a bigot he is a coward, and cannot even own up to the hatred that so obviously motivates him, or at least which he plays upon to appeal to his base. He might not really even care, which is in a sense worse: a cynical ploy to appeal to haters.
    There's a lesson there. Do something, anything, everything. All we can do is all we can do. Every pushback, every voice raised, every vote cast, every dollar spent. Each individual act might seem small, but it all adds up to something. It has to.

The younger generation reveals its genius

     Those of the younger generation—"Generation Z," we oldsters call them—get a bad rap: entitled, lazy, inconsiderate. 
      I disagree.  While I haven't surveyed the entirety of the early 20ish cohort, mind you, I have had a chance to observe certain members up close, and let me tell you what I call them: bold, creative, boundary-defying.  
     What's the old, ordinary, dull, established way to, oh, interact with a pot of mac and cheese you've been eating with a spoon? Take it to the kitchen? Put it in the sink, maybe even rinse it out so the contents don't set up like concrete?
     Borrr-rrrring!
     Certainly what I'd do, with my laughable late 50ish antique ways.
     How much more daring to just balance the thing on the arm of the couch. It's almost art, a piece of performance art. Pot on the Sofa. One in a series, including Mug on the Bed and, my favorite, Bowl in a Drawer. Edgy, Dadaesque. Convention-shattering. Playing with middle-class expectations in a way that Marcel Duchamp would nod at with understanding and approval.
     We guardians of the established order could rail at these new ways. No doubt most do. Or we could welcome them as the marks of genius that they are. I feel privileged to be present at the creation of a new modern age. 
     
     

The Stones: Important men making unimportant music

Rolling Stones

     The Rolling Stones are in town — Hi, Mick! Hi, Keith! — for two shows at Soldier Field, Friday and Tuesday, kicking off their North American tour.
     I’m going to the second show. Yes, I know, you’re thinking, “That’s out-of-character for you, Neil. Aren’t you more of an opera guy?”
 

Jimmy Johnson

   Yes, yes I am. But there is an explanation: My wife really likes the Stones. I’ve forced her to sit through many hours of Wagner. Turnabout is fair play.
     The tour almost got scuttled after Mick Jagger had a health scare. But a new heart valve got tucked in and he seems good to go.
     The man is 75, but that’s nothing for a bluesman. Jimmy Johnson performed a strong set at Blues Fest a few weeks ago and he’s 90. Bobby Rush is 86, and shimmied for an hour with two enormous, scantily-clad dancers.
 

Venus of Willendorf

    (Am I the first guy to see Rush’s dancers and think, “Venus of Willendorf”? Maybe. They were very large. That is not a criticism. My attitude was: ‘Good for them, I bet employment opportunities are limited for 250-pound dancers.’ My wife was uneasy with Rush’s sexism, and it did cross my mind that the city of Chicago was sponsoring a bawdy show. But the dynamics of race, music and offense are complicated, and I can’t imagine any complaint getting traction.)
     See why I’m not the ideal rock audience? I’m not good at unreflective enthusiasm, at forming my fingers into horns and waving them above my head, screaming “Woooo!!!”
     Here, I’ll try it.
     ”Woo.”
     Pathetic, like a koala moaning in its sleep.

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The Era of Contempt V

Five Butterflies, by Wenceslaus Hollar (1646) Metropolitan Museum of Art 

    
     A lepidopterist is, as any Nabokov fan knows, a butterfly collector. It is fitting that the colorful stationery bearing Alan P. Leonard's latest missive to this column has butterflies on it. Because I always think of myself as a lepidopterist when it comes to processing hateful mail. I try to bring a connoisseur's discernment to their ravings, a protective measure to keep the poison within from raising a welt on my delicate mental skin. I net the odious thing, put it carefully in the killing bottle, using tongs, then pin the little corpse to a board and admire its patterns, its grotesque variegation. 
      We met Mr. Leonard last year, with three emails I dubbed "The Era of Contempt."  As with the one below, they were informed by fear of those whose sexuality is at variance with his. 
     You may find them here, here and here, if you are so inclined. 
     They proved decidedly popular, as freak shows often do.
     Then two months ago, he was back, with a racist screed decrying the looks of Michelle Obama (an revulsive scrap of classic 1859 bigotry that one just doesn't expect to see expressed publicly by someone proudly signing his name. A shocking anachronism, like finding a child with rickets).
      This one, as he makes clear, is in reaction to my June 10 column about Boston's idiotic "Straight Pride" parade. The twist is that he doesn't sign his name, perhaps forgetting that he has written four times before, with the same stationery and his distinctive block printing. 
      As before, I paused, wondering if it were somehow cruel to share Mr. Leonard's thoughts, to stretch the term. The man is afraid, as haters are at core. A shameful fear he has to share, trying to alleviate it. The usual terror of his correspondence ratcheted up a notch as, for the first time, he signs his letter with a nom de guerre, "A normal person." As if it were normal to write anonymous notes to newspaper columnists, venting your bile and your sexual insecurity.
     Which it sorta is, sadly. But still. I don't have to take the bait. Isn't posting the letter itself a minor cruelty? "When battling monsters," as Nietzsche reminds us, "make sure not to become a monster."
     Perhaps. But if so, it is cruelty with a higher purpose. It is not monstrous to print a letter sent to a newspaper, nor to note that hatred is an acid that, increasingly, eats up the possessor more than the object. I believe airing it is therapeutic, if not for him, obviously, at least for us. Don't be like this.
    And lest we feel too superior, lest we chuckle too much, remember this: these are the people running our country now. These are the people we let take charge.




  

Trump calls the tune, and his fans dance

      You gotta dance with them what brung ya.
     I’m not given to rustic turns of phrase, especially those including colloquialisms like “gotta,” “brung” or “ya.”
     Yet there is truth here.
     After — golly — four years of continually condemning Donald Trump as a liar, bully and fraud, I believe now, with his circus-like announcement Tuesday in Florida of his quest for a second term, is a good time to pause and give credit where due:
     Donald Trump is a master.
     A master what? Well, liar, bully and fraud, for starters. Those who don’t see that by now never will. But that is a huge, unwavering group of Americans — tens of millions. Time to tip the hat and acknowledge something I have not previously recognized: what a good liar, bully and fraud Donald Trump really is.
     A master of his craft, really. A genius. Begin with his skill as a liar. Democrats tote up his lies like some disturbed individual counting the passing cars, oblivious to the fact that the total doesn’t matter. Nearly half the country doesn’t care. Trump has rendered the truth un-important for his followers, and that is a feat I did not previously think possible. But obviously, tragically, it is.
     How does he do it?
     By force of personality. He can say one thing today, another in an hour, then contradict both the next day. Anyone rude enough to draw attention to this is attacked by himself and his crew of lackeys and bootlickers, who have sold their souls for access to his presence, not to forget our version of State TV, Fox News. The mushroom cloud of controversy forms with a “whump,” rises into the air, floats away and is forgotten. The past is a vapor, reality a dreamworld inhabited by losers. You can choose truth or you can choose Trump.

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