There are a lot of sane ones too

    Most people aren't nuts. Most people are sane enough. And smart. So it occurred to me Sunday, sharing yet another Alan P. Leonard letter—the sixth—that I was perhaps doing my readers a disservice by being a valve where only the toxically vindictive can pass through to join the cyber wordstorm.
     Actually, it didn't occur then. But later, cleaning off my desk. Sometimes the thing devolves to a mass of business cards, electronic cords, receipts, clippings, rubber bands and discarded Post-It Notes, and I have to just dive in and start filing and flinging into the garbage can.
     There, I usually find a letter or three, so interesting and well-reasoned that I set it aside to contemplate at my leisure and then answer in some witty, measured way, but invariably never do.
    Such as this, from David Stein, who has been writing to me for years. He offers some worthwhile advice—"QUIT FACEBOOK"—supporting it in a strong and articulate fashion. "Really, what would happen if you opted out?"
     I don't know, I'd ... ah ... disappear. Actually, the image he offers, "the Untouchable of Northbrook," with his begging bowl and the neighbors averting their eyes, sounds about right. This business is all about clicks, right now, and Facebook is the biggest pond where we fish for them. Anyway, there's some good lines in this, a bit of Orwell, and I felt guilty just pitching it after it sat on my desk for ... ulp ... two years, judging by his mention of naked women, which I think is a reference to this column about Howard Tullman's art collection, which got banned from Facebook for violating community standards by reproducing a photo of the risque artworks I was talking about. Anyway, it's a good read. Thanks to Dave, and to all the readers who take the time to write in, and deserve a response, even though I don't always have the time to send one.

Trump doesn’t know Chicago, but Chicago knows Trump

     Alice Qiu works in a law firm. Yaraneli Otero is a sixth grader at Thorp Elementary. Roger Green is homeless on the West Side. Desmond Sullivan is a plant operation engineer at the University of Illinois . . .
     Four of the 2.7 million people living in Chicago, the third-largest city in the United States. A complicated metropolis that President Donald Trump tries to reduce to a caricature, a buzz phrase for, take your pick: epidemic crime, failed Democratic leadership, unwise immigration, ineffective gun control or some toxic combination of all of the above.
     “The city of Chicago,” he once said, whipping up a rally in Florida. “What the hell is going on in Chicago?”
     Trump doesn’t wait for an answer. He doesn’t want an answer, batting away any reality in conflict with the comic-book Midwest Gotham City of his imagination.
     But with the president set to visit the actual Chicago, our Chicago, on Monday for the first time since being elected — to talk to a police chiefs’ convention and squeeze money from deep-pocketed backers — this seems a good moment to welcome him with a healthy portion of the one thing his administration is most starved for — the truth, served up by those in the best position to tell it: the people of Chicago.
     “Chicago is beautiful. I like Chicago,” said Qiu, who came here from China a year ago and hopes to remain. “That’s why I stay here. It’s hard for Chinese people to come here and stay here, now, because of Trump.”
     Otero is an 11-year-old girl but knows how Trump could be a better leader.
     “He needs to accept people,” she says, marching in a CTU protest with her mother. “It doesn’t matter the race. To learn to accept everybody. People have emotions and they have feelings. He needs to know that.”
     Good manners keep Green from revealing what he would tell the president.
     “You don’t want to know,” he said with a laugh, wishing Trump understood this is a city of “people living, struggling.”
     Sullivan, 58, of East Ukrainian Village, has only a few words for Trump, but they’re choice.
     “Be a man,” he says. “Men don’t lie. Men tell the truth.”

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The Era of Contempt VI

    How long can genius maintain its spark? Can any person, being mortal, be expected to top all previous effort, time and time again? Is it even fair of us to even hope it might be possible? No, of course not. A miracle cannot be demanded with regularity.
    But people are greedy, and it was with a thrill of expectation that I lifted an envelope from the mail and recognized the Tinley Park peel-and-stick return address label of Alan P. Leonard, and held my breath at the thought of what wonders must wait within. 
     Regular readers of course remember his introduction to these pages, his March 10, 2018 defense of "our wonderful president." A star was born. "A masterpiece of unintentional humor," one critic raved.  Not to forget his four subsequent installments, a body of work I labeled "The Era of Contempt." You can—indeed, you must—catch up with them here and here  and here—his classic attack on Michelle Obama, a racist excrescence one can hardly believe exists in the real world—and here, his most recent symphony in words, inspired by a passion for Trump, now elevated from "wonderful" to "glorious." What's next? Gloria in excelsis Trump.
     In light of those marvels, well, what can I say of his latest opus? Even noble Homer dozed. And while Mr. Leonard does reprise a few of his trademark flourishes: the misspelled name, the grammatical flub in the midst of calling for editorial rigor—"Does anyone review your articles and verify there accuracy?" You can see why I can't help but cherish the man—the seething contempt, the whole somehow never comes together.  It's so ... unspecific. he doesn't take time to articulate the supposed errors and departures from fact—so precious to a man of his caliber—that have moved him to once again take pen and floral stationery in hand. 
    Still, credit where due. He has produced another letter for our times, which the Republicans have has made into being far more about abuse than argument or correction. His points are at best allusions. Nothing like his previous installment's demand: "What do all of 'God's mistakes' have to be proud of?" The subtext of course being that he, Alan P. Leonard, is the self-appointed editor of God, and can confidently red pencil His errors. 
     But enough preface. Perhaps, spoiled by past masterworks, I have become overly-critical. You can judge for yourself. Has the craftsman entered into a decline that is the inevitable fate of a prodigy? We can only hope that he is merely tired. Sapped by his labors. That is certainly the prerogative of genius. And remember, he has disappointed before; his third letter also prompted me to wonder, "Is this up to his high standards for nitwittery?" Perhaps this is merely another dip, a fallow period, a retrenchment, the natural variance that even the artist at peak talent is liable to experience. A rest, a lacuna before he comes surging back, full strength, blooming anew, as he did after that third letter, once again the Alan P. Leonard that we have come to know and love. I'm sure you, as I, will be able to greet this latest missive not with disappointment, but with the proper sense of gratitude of those who have already been given so much. We must be thankful for this latest message, limited though it may be, and not demand too much of the man.

We're going to need a bigger tent.

     Just when you get comfortable with something, it changes. That's life. I had wrapped my mind and my tongue around LGBTQ—for "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (or Questioning)"—when along comes this new designation: LGBTQIA, the last two letters standing for Intersex and Asexual, which I actually knew, perhaps thanks to osmosis, though not with enough confidence to do away with a quick check online. Plus I was challenged to parse one from the other. 
     "Intersex" is a more physical term.
    "Intersex is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male," says the Intersex Society of North America, which should know. "For example, a person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside."      
     There's quite a bit more, and if you want the details, you can find them here.
     "Asexual" is lack of sexual attraction to others. I might volunteer that this seems a sad way to go through life, but then that is exactly the kind of judgment that spurs churches to put out signs behind little red picket fences. Though I leap to point out that I'm not at all against including them in whatever I was doing: beach parties, book clubs, bowling leagues, whatever. (Dances, well, they'd kind of just sit there, right?) I think people get confused when it comes to differing between inclusion and acceptance. I'll never accept anti-vaxxers, but they can ride the bus if they've got $2.50. Were I a baker working in a public establishment, I would feel obligated to bake a cake commemorating the 25th anniversary of an asexual couple not being drawn to each other. Tolerance doesn't mean you have to like everything; I hate egg salad, but I'm not trying to stop anybody from eating it, so long as I don't have to join in. Ditto for asexuality.
    Maybe I'm showing my age, but my primary concern regarding this topic is fear of having to adjust to an-ever growing acronym of acceptance. Before you know it, we'll be adding handicapped persons and immigrants and those who go to furry conventions—LBGTQIAHPITWGTFC—and the term will start to look like the name of a village in Wales.
     Yes, this is serious stuff, with the U.S. Supreme Court at this moment deciding if you can fire anybody in the quintogrammaton (bad pun, a play on one of my favorite obscure words, tetragrammaton, or YHWH, the unutterable Hebrew name of God). It's too easy to be light-hearted when the topic is the rights of others. Maybe because those who drape themselves in the mantle of religious piety, using their faith as a club to beat down others they've never met, I just can't align my mouth into the same grim set as theirs in the name of humanity's glorious spectrum of possibility. 
     A little irreverence might even help this brave new world go down a little more easily with the general population, which can be good at heart and well intentioned and still sometimes feel like a high hurdler going over a never-ending string of hurdles.
     Maybe we could find a general term. Repurpose "weird" the way a spectrum of homosexuality rescued "queer" from being a slur. "We welcome the weird" is a sign I'd put on my front lawn, though my neighbors might mutter with a significant look in our home's direction that they've been doing that for years.
     Good for them. Including people is broadening. Being asexual has its advantages, I suppose. None of those sticky situations which we attracted-to-folks types stumble into during the course of our lives. No need to hurriedly gather your clothing and fling yourself naked out the window when the hubby unexpectedly arrives home from his business trip.  Not that I've ever found myself in a situation like that, mind you, though I'm sure if I put my mind to it I could recall a moment or two better left sealed in the vault of memory. I hope you accept that, because you kinda have to.

‘Lucky to be alive’ — morbid cartoonist faces dementia

     Charles Addams isn’t forgotten. Not with “The Addams Family,” the black-and-white TV trifle that lasted two seasons in the mid-1960s and forever in syndication. Plus the sharp 1991 movie and a new, animated one, out last week.
     Addams was more than that, of course. Readers of the New Yorker magazine savored his gorgeous, full page cartoons delving into the macabre. My favorite showed a pleasant suburban couple, the father with his pipe, the mother informing a trick-or-treating spaceman at the door, “I’m sorry sonny. We’ve run out of candy.” A second look shows the darkened neighborhood overrun with identical spacemen, the sky filled with hovering motherships. 

     After Addams died in 1988, his mantle of morbid fun, though not his fame, was taken up by Gahan Wilson. No movies to make him a household name. But he checked in at every phase of my life. In the 1960s, he illustrated a series of kids books by Jerome Beatty Jr. about a moon boy name Matthew Looney.
     In the 1970s, Wilson had a monthly strip in the National Lampoon. It was something of a horror story about growing up, called “Nuts” — that had to be a play on “Peanuts.” Its protagonist was a large-headed boy in a plaid cap, his face just peeking out, rolling in the agony of childhood that Charles Schulz could only hint at.
     “Nuts” hit the sweet spot between the hope and disillusionment of being a kid. I was shocked at how many specific strips came back after 40 years, particularly the one where the boy builds a pathetic shelf of a fort: just a board in a tree. “Nice to have something work out OK for once,” the kid muses. You could feel the weight of all those things that didn’t work out, hovering just off the page.

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Among my favorite Gahan Wilson cartoons is the one heaven I could imagine actually existing.
The caption: "Somehow I thought the whole thing would be a lot classier."

Pride comes from what you do

     Status is a stern taskmaster. Wherever we are on the greased pole of life, we wish we were a little higher, our bright shiny life a littler shinier.  Whenever I get to know a rich guy, even a little, one of the first things I discover is that he's pricked with shame because there are even richer guys.  There'a always a bigger plane, and if you have the biggest plane, well, there are always doubts stowed aboard it. 
     Look at Donald Trump: president of the United States, famous, powerful, rich, though not as wealthy as he pretends to be. Air Force One—a mighty nice ride. Yet his life is a cleary desperate hunger for status, a junkie scramble toward the sense of adequacy that obviously eludes him, and is replaced by an inflamed egotism frantically trying to obscure the hollow within. He's truly pathetic.
     The virus that corrupts his blood infects us all, to a greater or lesser extent. Look at the car above, which I pass on my way walking Kitty through our leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook. Do you see what caused me to stop, smile, and take its picture? And no, not the license plate, I obscured that, so as to protect the privacy of the owner. Here, I'll give you a closer look.
     See it now?

     The car is a Hyundi which someone has tricked out with a Jaguar logo. My impulse was to march up to the door, ring the doorbell and quiz the owner. But it was early and, besides, what would I say? "What's wrong with you?" Nobody responds well to that question.
     First off, Jaguars are not even status cars, not anymore. Too problematic. Having an actual Jaguar is like owning a Hummer—you wonder about the judgment of the owner as it is. It's like wearing a Trump brand necktie. Really? You're trying to impress us with that? Couldn't you just wet yourself?
     If that's the real McCoy, what is a cobbled-together approximation of a shoddy grab at status? What do you call that? Being human, I suppose. There was a time when I was as susceptible to status as the next guy.
    But a few decades of lumpen suburban living squeezed that out of me. Consider it a benefit of age. I'm happy to drive my 2005 Honda Odyssey with 180,000 miles on it. When my older son scraped off the driver's side mirror, I reattached it with wire and duct tape. Repairing my car with duct tape, I realized that I had also put on a piece of aluminum siding that had fallen off the back of the house with duct tape. Which made me smile: both the house and the car sporting duct tape for the world to see. That's some serious lack of concern toward the opinion of the world which—spoiler alert—doesn't care what kind of car you drive. Or whether there's duct tape on it. 
    There's a nice coda to the driver's mirror story. My wife nudged me to get a replacement mirror. Not because of the opinion of the world but because you couldn't adjust the reattached mirror. The controls didn't work. The Honda place said a new factory-authorized mirror would cost $600. The car is barely worth $600. So I bought a brand new generic replacement on Amazon for $60. The guy at the shop said it would be $75 to $125 to install my new mirror. Girding my loins, I took a screwdriver, popped off the cover inside, removed the four bolts, unattached the electrical connection, put on the new mirror, reattached the connection, and the car was good to go. Took 10 minutes and cost 10 cents, for the bolt that I dropped on the driveway and lost and had to replace at the hardware store. 
    And was I proud? You better believe it. Clever, handy me. Proud without anyone even knowing. Which is the secret lost to all who grab at status. Pride comes from what you do. Not what you own.

A scary spider adventure for Halloween

     Maybe I’m doing this whole column-writing thing wrong.
     I try to choose interesting topics. But maybe I’m dancing to music nobody hears. There are worrisome hints.
     One day earlier this month, I posted two items on Facebook. The first was an in-depth look at a hospital emergency department, written after hours spent observing, talking to doctors, nurses, patients.
     That column got 13 comments and 18 "likes."
     Then I posted a photo of a spider.
     ”Anyone able to ID this bad boy, noticed on our front porch?” I asked.
     That got 78 comments and 40 "likes."
     Readers, it seems, care about spiders.
    Fine. I can do spiders.
     The obvious question is: what kind of spider are we talking about? How do you go about identifying a spider?
     ”I love that question! It’s a great question” said Petra Sierwald, associate curator of arachnids and myriapods—spiders and centipedes—at The Field Museum.
     She directed me to the Field’s online Common Spiders of the Chicago Region. I didn’t have to hunt long: my new neighbor is No. 2, Argiope aurantia, or yellow garden spider.
     Spiders have complicated sex lives. A male spider will wrap a fly in silk and mate with the female while she’s busy eating it. If no bug is handy, he’ll wrap a pebble in silk and trick her, deceit on a near-human level. 

     The worry about spiders is, like snakes, whether they’re venomous. All spiders are, but usually their fangs are too tiny, designed for incapacitating insects, to hurt something as big as a human being. And Illinois’ 800 or so types of spiders are particularly benign.
     ”You are pretty safe,” Sierwald said. “Driving a car is far more dangerous than encountering a spider.”
     Yet half the Halloween displays seem feature huge, menacing spiders. Why are people so afraid of spiders? We should be terrified of bees instead—eight times more Americans die of bee and wasp stings than spider bites. Where does this fear come from?
     ”Certain things we are evolutionarily prepared to develop phobia of,” said Dr. Stewart Shankman, chief psychologist at Northwestern Medicine. The threat from spiders might be less now, but “throughout history more people get hurt by spiders than stoves.”
     Shankman noted that fears are transmitted from parent to child—your mother screams because of a spider, that scares you too.

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