Flashback 1994: Agency Offering Free Groceries to Its AIDS Clients

The Afternoon Meal by Luis Meléndez Spanish (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Sometimes I post old articles because they resonate with some current event, or I think they're unique enough to merit re-reading. I'm sharing this ordinary news story because it is blown up and on display in the window of Open Hand Chicago's Groceryland, celebrating its 25th anniversary today.
     I'm still in touch with Open Hand founder Lori Cannon: in fact, I attended a party honoring her recently. She's as feisty and determined as ever, decrying budget cuts making it harder for Open Hand to feed the needy.

     "Just in time for the anniversary, and to kick off the season of service and gratitude, the CDPH slashes our food budget by $200,000," Lori writes.
     Groceryland moved to 5543 N. Broadway, so if you want to send money, send it there, zip code 60640. Make the check to Heartland Alliance Health /Food & Nutrition division and earmark it to the North Side Center, as they now have four, the only city in the United States to have that many.
     "Despite the recent kick in the teeth I remain committed to serve my clients as I always have—with dignity, self reliance, variety and tasty grub," writes Lori, who has fed 15 million meals to Chicagoans. "Twenty five years is a good start huh?

     For six years, Open Hand Chicago has been delivering hot meals to people with AIDS. Beginning today, the organization is doing something that can be even more helpful -- letting people make the meals themselves.
     "Not everyone is bedridden; not everyone is homebound," said Lori Cannon, one of the founders of Open Hand and the manager of its new North Side Grocery Center. "There are a lot of active people with AIDS who need a little help, and if they can get here, we have a beautiful order of groceries for them."
     The center, 3902 N. Sheridan, is giving free groceries to Open Hand clients who prefer to have more input in what they are eating. Organizers hope this will keep them eating nutritiously.
     "The opening of the grocery center represents a major step forward in AIDS nutrition services in the city," said Sam Clark, executive director of Open Hand. "The center will give our clients a greater sense of dignity and self-determination. They'll be able to cook for themselves or have food prepared for them according to their individual taste and cultural preferences."
     The center is painted in cheery colors of baby blue, lime green and bright yellow, and accented with fun touches, such as a mounted fish sporting orange polka dots and a gold earring.
     "Our clients spend so much time in Public Aid offices, in doctors' waiting rooms," Cannon said. "We wanted the place to be cheerful and warm."
     Initially, the center will serve about 45 clients a week, with that number rising to 100 or so by next year, when similar centers will be opened on the West and South sides. To receive food from the center, people must either be enrolled in the Open Hand program, which serves about 900 meals a day, or be recommended by a social worker and meet eligibility requirements.
     Allison Long, 25, is a center volunteer.
     "Being able to cook for yourself gives you more freedom, dignity and a sense of independence," she said. Except for Cannon, the center will be staffed by volunteers.

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, November 21, 1994,

Playing cards deal elegant new designs

  

    This story was impoverished, somewhat, by having to make it fit into the paper. I could only hint at just how fascinating Jonathan Bayme is, nor the world of whimsey he's creating around theory11: they put on shows in New York City, and go that extra mile, such as tucking hidden scavenger-hunt type games into their products, in one instance for those who thought to pull apart the boxes the cards come in. Let's put it like this, I plan to write a future post about his stationery.

    But I was happy to get this in the paper, a column whose main point is: "Look at these cards."

     Playing cards are not hard to find. Almost every household has a few decks. We have seven just in two drawers in the coffee table in our living room: three Bicycle Standard, one unopened; two with pictures of kitties, one in 3-D; two souvenir decks (Nashville, New Orleans) and a football-shaped deck, a favor from some long-ago birthday party. I’m sure I could hunt up more. 

     That’s plenty, since I never play cards or think about cards.
     Until recently.
     An ad popped up on Facebook for Provision Brand Playing Cards by theory11, showing an elegant, gold and orange trimmed box, prompting a thought I’ve never had before nor imagined possible:

   “What beautiful playing cards. I want those cards.”
     I clicked on the link, and marveled at a picture of an ace of hearts, the heart being held by a knight’s gauntlet. It was both new and old, different yet familiar.
     “Our original intention was to create cards for magicians,” said Jonathan Bayme, CEO and founder of theory11. “We were doing instructional videos for magic on the web.”
     The goal was to “make magic look cool and modern and relevant,” which is not easy.
     “People still associate magic with cheesy, hokey silks and canes and top hats,” said Bayme. “We thought: How do we combat that? What if we use tools like playing cards, which look cheesy, with pictures of baby angels on the back. They don’t look sophisticated and modern.”

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Flashback 2010: It was a year with no cake, no cookies

     This is the column that ran in 2011 about my apnea-inspired diet. It became a part of my article for Mosaic on obstructive sleep apnea, so I thought I would post it here, for people who wanted to read the full piece.

     Unlike you, I kept my New Year's resolutions.
     All through January and February, the gusts of March and the rains of April, when most earnest vows are already long forgotten, into May and June, I pursued my goals, cruising through the summer and fall until now, when success lies glittering at my feet.
     True, I only had two resolutions, but they were good ones: lose 30 pounds and snag another book deal. I nailed them both, losing 30.4 pounds on the East Bank Club scale by Tuesday, and coming to terms with a publisher.
     Check and double check.
     Achieving these resolutions was supposed to make it a better year, and it did, big-time, and since some — though not all — aspects of my success may be transferable, I thought I should pass along a few helpful tips, if only as a smokescreen to all this blatant bragging.
    First the diet. I have been dieting, off and on, for, geez, nearly 40 years, and I think those consistent failures were helpful in providing determination that it work this time. I turned 50, and if man can’t apply himself to something with purpose at 50, he never will. It’s bad enough to be growing older without growing fatter too. Get it done, I thought.
     I also brought a special attitude to this attempt. The beauty of being an alcoholic (now there’s two concepts you just don’t see paired in the same sentence very often) is that you master — eventually, if you work at it — the crucial concepts of a) avoiding bad stuff completely because you don’t want a little, you want a lot and b) doing the right thing consistently over a long period of time.
    I realized that, as with shots of whiskey, I didn’t want one cookie, didn’t want one scoop of ice cream, but lots of cookies, and lots of ice cream. Thus, last Jan. 1, I banned a whole range of foods from my diet — no cookies, no candy, no ice cream, no cake, no doughnuts. My goal was three pounds a month — very slow, very gradual, the way I put it on. There was no rush. I bought an electronic scale, watched what I ate, counted calories and waited for success to baby crawl into my open arms.
     What else helped? I had a debilitating condition — sleep apnea — and a doctor said, if I lost 30 pounds, it might go away. That’s where the 30-pound goal came from, and it was a huge motivation, for me. I suppose some people whose doctors tell them similar things ignore them. But you can’t ignore that mask, a fresh shock every night that I despised. Losing the weight did the trick. No more mask.
     What else? I drank case after case of Fresca, which tastes good and has no calories. Countless containers of Haagen-Dazs chocolate sorbet at 130 calories a half cup.
     I knew I was serious when I turned down cupcakes from Sprinkles, doughnuts from Deerfield’s Bakery, dark chocolates from See’s.
     I permitted myself pie — first because you don’t encounter opportunities for pie nearly as often as opportunities for cake or doughnuts and second, honestly, what is life without pie?
     Sure, there were rare lapses. Kent’s 13th birthday in June at Margie’s — while I initially contemplated miserably nibbling a scoop of sherbet, having lost 25 pounds by then, I thought, “the hell with it,” and sinned boldly: a scoop of vanilla with bittersweet hot fudge sauce. There was that slice of lemon bread on the Fourth of July that was really lemon cake, and an orange Sunkist Fruit Gem at Kent’s bar mitzvah I told myself I needed to give a good speech, plus some hamantaschen at Purim I classified as small pies, due to the fruit filling.
     But not one cookie, not one chocolate.
     My clothes swam — a dieter who lost 50 pounds advised me to give them away, and I did. It’s nice to be constantly told how great you look, although people get so enthusiastic at times I feel like I was Jabba the Hutt before.
     There’s a downside to losing weight — initially your body doesn’t like it. You have to adjust to being smaller, and at times I felt, not thinner, but diminished; this tiny reduced person, particularly since you don’t lose weight in your head. For a while I felt like an alien overlord. Not that I’m complaining — I picked losing 30 pounds because I knew, if I accomplished it, I’d be happy, at least for a while.
     And the book? The University of Chicago Press asked me to write a book — about Chicago, for you fans of irony — and I said “Yes.” As I mentioned, not every aspect of keeping these resolutions is transferable.
    A shiny new year — 2011, incredibly — awaits. My resolutions for next year flow from this year’s — keep the weight off, finish the book, though I’ll try to find a third.
     What would you like to do? If I can, you can.

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 2, 2011

Losing the war doesn’t mean he didn’t fight

”To have a problem in common is much like love and that kind of love was often the bread that we broke among us. And some of us survived and some of us didn’t, and it was sometimes a matter of what’s called luck.”
                             —Tennessee Williams, Memoirs

     Only one friend stopped by that first week after I was allowed to come home. Then again, Michael didn’t have very far to go: out his front door, turn left, walk a few steps, knock on mine. Bearing two cans of raspberry soda water and a bag of potato chips.
     We sat on the porch and talked. Which is what you most want to do when you first go into recovery: talk and talk and talk, trying to sort out how the greatest thing in your life has suddenly became the worst. And how now you have to give it up, somehow.
     It was October, 2005. I don’t remember anything we said. But I do remember, when we were done, Michael hugged me. He was much taller, a good four inches, and I got a face full of plaid flannel. Geez, I thought, not only do I have to give up booze, but now I gotta hug guys too?
     We started going to meetings together. Sometimes walking to the church around the corner in the warm autumn evening. Sometimes he would pick me up in that big old Cadillac he inherited. An inverted echo of high school, but instead of a buddy with a car coming to get me so we could hang out and drink beer, we were two 40ish men on our way to sobriety meetings in the Northwest suburbs.
     Meetings, meetings, meetings. I hated them. Michael liked them. He had a sponsor, and worked the 12 Steps, an eager advocate of How It Works.
     Only it didn’t work. Not for him. Not long term. For some reason, sobriety didn’t stick with Michael the way it has stuck with me, so far. Who knows why? Genetics, luck, something else. 

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Flashback 2003: A dirty joke to honor today's greatest humorist

Allen & Ginter cigarette card,1891 (Metropolitan Museum)

     A surprising number of readers said they enjoyed yesterday's joke. That's why I used to run them at the end of the column,  for a number of years—the brainchild of Michael Cooke, by the way—as a bit of music hall fun. I was walking a cigar up Shermer Saturday afternoon with a pal, who remarked upon the naughtier version of that joke, and I said how I once ran a somewhat risque joke in the paper. I was emboldened to print it because Garrison Keillor was coming to town with a show of dirty jokes. In 2017, he was fired from Minnesota Public Radio for alleged harassment of female coworkers. He denied the misbehavior, and I can't judge whether he is the aggressor or the victim. But I do know he was an original America comic voice, and I would hate to see his work fall from popularity because of his personal lapses. 

     I know only one dirty joke, but it's a good one. The chicken joke, I call it. Normally, I'm not the dirty-joke-telling type—too inhibited and awkward. But my chicken joke is special, beloved really, though, now that I think of it, not exactly family-newspaper material. Maybe later . . .
     Left on my own, I would never be bold enough to tell a dirty joke in my column, except that Garrison Keillor, of NPR fame, is hosting an evening of "bawdy humor" Monday at the Steppenwolf. Maybe that surprises you—it's like Norman Rockwell painting a scene of civic turmoil.
     Which, of course, Rockwell did. In the same way people try to marginalize Rockwell by forgetting, for instance, his painting of black girls hurrying past a mob during the civil rights era, so those dismissing Keillor as a folksy yarnsmith, his Lake Wobegon a bit of kitsch Americana alongside Reader's Digest and Currier & Ives, ignore his sharp and edgy material, usually because they've never heard or read him.
     I've done both, and I think he's a genius. Don't be fooled by the bumbling Lutheran pastors and clueless senior citizens of his radio stories. Keillor is slyly subversive. Like his outraged teenager nailing 95 complaints about small town life on the church door (and, really, how many Martin Luther puns does one get in life?), Keillor has issues with the town he so obviously cherishes. During the Gulf War, he offered a stark parable of dissent about the one boy in high school who refused to wear a yellow ribbon supporting our troops.
     He also wrote the funniest baseball story since Ring Lardner, a joyous, unhinged, taunting victory strut celebrating the Twins' championship. "My team won the World Series," he began. "You thought we couldn't but we knew we would and we did, and what did your team do? Not much. . . . You thought we were quiet and modest in the Midwest but that's because you're dumb, as dumb as a stump, dumber than dirt."
     Keillor will last—if I had to pick three humorists since the Civil War who will still be read 100 years from now, I'd say Mark Twain, James Thurber and Garrison Keillor. Who am I missing? H. L. Mencken? Maybe. But his references are so obscure now that half his pieces already read like Chaucer. Robert Benchley? Still funny, yes, but who reads him? To survive, you have to create a world, and Keillor's main setting—the mythical American small town trembling on the brink of extinction, its residents caught in the final moments before the modern behemoth steamrolls them away--will remain. Just as we yearn toward Huck and Tom, free on their raft, so our nation will--as we wander, rootless and placeless--grope back toward Lake Wobegon.
     Dirty joke alert: Skip this part!
     OK, on to the joke: A timid man goes to a brothel. He tells the madam that his wife is out of town and that for this, the lone transgression in his life, he wants the wildest thing she has to offer.
     The madam thinks, puffs her cigarette and casts an appraising eye up and down the timid man.
     "I have a chicken . . ." she says at last, "who will give you a back rub" (for our purposes, though "back rub" is not the act in my non-family newspaper version).
     The timid man agrees, and is ushered into an elegant room—circular bed, a big mirror on one wall. A small hatch opens and the chicken is shoved in (this is why I love this joke; the poor, bewildered chicken, skidding into the room, feathers flying). The man tries to … umm … interact with the chicken. But it's just a chicken. Nothing much happens. Still, the next day, he thinks, "That was fun." He returns to the brothel and sidles up to the madam.
     "Um, excuse me," he stammers, "is the, ah, chicken available?"
     "No, I'm sorry," coos the madam. "The chicken is with a customer. But, if you like to watch, there's a woman in the next room wrestling with a dog." Again, in the version I tell, it is a more specific form of wresting-like activity.
     The man is ushered into a dim room with a one-way mirror. Another patron is seated before the mirror, gazing raptly through it. The timid man joins him, and together they watch a woman rolling around with the dog. "This is incredible!" exudes the timid man.
     "You think this is something," says the first man. "You should have been here yesterday. There was a guy trying to get a back rub from a chicken."
     Dirty joke over: safe to read now.
     Another great thing about Keillor is how he rescues so much that falls by the wayside in our culture. Old pop songs and spoken stories, singalongs and, yes, raunchy jokes. It is safe to say that I would have spent my career, such as it is, and never been bold enough to tell my chicken joke, were I not given strength by Keillor's example.
     Not that Keillor is perfect. He loathes journalists, for instance. He has his reasons, I suppose, but it still stings, personally, and seems ungracious. Were I a comic genius, at the top of my craft, producing deathless humor entertaining the world, I think I'd extend a little pity toward the middling mediocrities brushing against the hem of my robe as I stride by.
     But that is quibbling—no wonder he hates us. I'll be in the audience Monday. Tickets are sold out, sadly, but he'll be back, and then there are all those books and tapes and radio programs. You shouldn't miss him just because you think you know who he is.

          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 3, 2003

Flashback 2006: Took shot at a politician, got call from a man

     Monday's column on the tempest over the Daily Northwestern daring to cover a news story mentioned that I once got was chewed out over the phone by Barack Obama. Regular reader Holger Meerbote was skeptical: "Barack Obama really called and yelled at you?? Over what, may I ask?" I sighed, and was about to explain it all, when I remembered I wrote a column about it—how could I not?

    It was back when my column filled a page and ended with a joke. I've kept the joke because it's an oldie but a goodie.

     The late Steve Neal was vigorous and unrelenting in his attacks on Sen. Dick Durbin. Eloquent, razor-sharp keelhaulings, again and again, for Durbin's bobbling O'Hare reconstruction, for his not commanding respect, for a variety of sins. This did not go over well with the senator. I remember Durbin once showing up for an editorial meeting. "Where's Steve Neal?" he demanded. "I want to see him!" You could tell he was angry. I, as the junior member of the board, was dispatched to Steve's office to go fetch him. But Steve had vanished, through luck or design, a skill I wish I could master.

                                                            * * *

     Late Friday afternoon. The Sunday column's in. Nothing much to do but clean off the desk, best I can—it never gets clean, or even close—drink one last cup of coffee, and call it a week.
     Phone rings. Barack Obama, from Africa. As if he's in the next room, as the cliche goes. My skin goes clammy, and I get a sinking in my gut, the way it felt when, as a kid, I'd get in bad trouble. Oh no. . . .
     He's mad. Not hopping mad, or temper-flaring mad, but steely, calm and controlled mad. We've crossed paths before, but that was politics, he says, and this is personal, and he's offended.
     "I didn't mean to offend you," I say, weakly, and that's true. I thought I was parsing the Gordian knot of racial politics. I presented his trip to Africa not as the sincere personal odyssey that the seal pack of journalists following him are describing, but as calculated political theater.
     Only Obama didn't read it that way. How could he? He saw it as my suggesting he's ashamed of his mother. Or neglecting his grandmother, whom he visits regularly. He was just Downstate, he says, just in Cairo—the press certainly covered it, though of course not to this extent. It wasn't the big deal Africa is because he only gets to Africa once every 14 years.
     I try to explain to Obama—I don't know about his personal life. I'm speaking of images, of politics, of how America views race, a subject that endlessly fascinates me. I didn't think he'd be offended—heck, I didn't even think he'd read it. Africa is far away, or used to be.
     He knows politics, he says, he knows the give and take. But we're friends, and this is over the line.
     "I'm sorry," I say, surrendering. "How can I make it up to you?"

                                                             * * *

     After Steve died, I felt duty-bound to take up the Durbin beat, to seize the bastinado and go after the senator. It was easy and fun.
     Then one day, the senator's office called—would I like to have breakfast with him?
     "You realize who you're calling?" I said. Yes indeedy.
     This put me in a pickle. I knew if I started taking meals with Durbin, I would never be able to lay into him the way I once had.
     On the other hand, a senator calls, you go. At least I do.
     At breakfast, Durbin waved off past misunderstandings. He was either sincere or masterful—probably both. Either way, I decided he wasn't the bad guy I once thought he was. We've been pals ever since. Co-opted? Educated? Probably both.

                                                               * * *

     Frankly, I can't even write about Obama's call without being aware that there's an undercurrent of bragging on my part—look at me, not an anonymous mediocrity trying to fill his space, but a real pundit, phoned up by God's chosen vessel in American politics, all the way from Africa on a Friday afternoon. Well, that's journalism. People hate us for a reason.
     In our defense, like politicians, we have various audiences. Readers who dislike Obama— and I've got 'em in droves—wonder who's paying for the trip, why he isn't at home, bringing the bacon to Illinois, instead of campaigning in a foreign land. They applauded my candor.
     Those who revere and respect Obama—and I've got them, too—hooted and questioned what I could possibly be thinking.
     My wife is among the latter group—she ran me over the coals so thoroughly Friday morning ("Africa is interesting. . . ," she said) as if warming me up for Obama, I asked her if she was on retainer.
     And me? I meant what I wrote when I wrote it—I always do—but I'm not the Jedi Council. Half the time, I write something because I'm trying to figure it out. I don't always succeed.
     After our phone call, I reeled into the newsroom, green around the gills, and bumped into the editor.
     "What's wrong?" he asked, reading my expression. I told him, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around and sent me back here to write this.
     As the sky darkened, I found myself thinking about my own father. I took a trip in his honor, too, once. We took his old Merchant Marine ship across the Atlantic together. I thought I was writing a book of remembrance, of love and reconciliation. He hated it. He thought I was lashing out at him, and didn't talk to me for a year. I was shocked.
     I wish I could portray that oblivious quality as courage—I write, and consequences be damned. But that isn't it. I never think of the consequences; they always surprise me.
     When I parsed Barack Obama, the politician, I never imagined I'd offend, and hear from Barack Obama, the man. Very few politicians would do that. I've been slagging Mayor Daley for years, and not a peep out of him. Frankly, I prefer it that way. But Obama is extraordinary—everybody knows that—and we expect great things of him. I certainly do, and if I resist joining the hallelujah chorus, well, that's just me doing my job as best I know how. It's nothing personal.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE

Nancy Rudins, of Champaign, offers this one:

     A guy goes to a supermarket and notices a beautiful woman smiling at him and waving.
     He's rather taken aback because he can't place how he knows her—he'd certainly remember a face like that.
     She walks over.
     "Do we know each other?" he says, tentatively.
     "I think you're the father of one of my kids,'' she says.
     The man is shocked. His mind races back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife.
     "My God," he says, "are you the stripper from my bachelor party when I laid on the pool table, with all my buddies watching, while your partner whipped me with wet celery???"
     She looks into his eyes and says, "No, I'm your son's math teacher."
                     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 27, 2006

Impeachment: A boring train wreck well worth watching

Rep. Adam Schiff begins the impeachment hearings.

     I loathe meetings, conferences, seminars, conclaves — assemblies of all kinds. I avoid trials, whether civil or criminal, religious services, whether of my own faith or others, and political rallies of all stripes. Anything that traps me so I must sit, be silent and listen to people talk for an indeterminate time.
     Thus I was surprised, mildly, to find myself Wednesday at 9 a.m. CST parked in front of CNN to watch the beginning of the House Intelligence Committee’s public hearings on whether Donald Trump should be impeached. The “This is history!” imperative must have overridden my natural disinclination to watch parliamentary proceedings. The president is being impeached. It’s like the moon catching fire; who doesn’t step outside and look up?
     Two minutes later it hadn’t started, and I was growing impatient.
     “It’s 9:02,” I tweeted. (Because really, if a thought goes unexpressed nowadays, does it even exist?) “You’re late. [C’mon] Dems, get with the program.”
     Be careful what you wish for.
     Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., gaveled the hearing to order and spoke for 36 seconds.
     “It is the intention of the committee to proceed without disruptions,” he said, then was interrupted by Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, asking about the “rules of engagement,” as if this were some kind of battle, which of course it is.
     But an odd sort of battle, a battle where the outcome is unimportant. Anyone who understands that the president put his own interests ahead of the nation’s already knew it Tuesday. And anyone who refuses to see that derailing American foreign policy to grease your chances in the next election is an impeachable offense will never grasp that fact, not after a thousand hours of damning testimony. Not after a century.
     The question, Schiff said, is “what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people can come to expect from their commander in chief?”
     Ooh, ooh, me, me! I know!

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