Arnold Loeb: more than a meat maven, a nice man

     In 30 years of writing obits, I have never phoned a bereaved family and been asked to come over the house to talk as they sit shiva, or observe the weeklong mourning period.
     Yet when the daughters of the deceased made the request Monday, I immediately agreed. This was no ordinary man, after all, but Mr. Arnold Loeb, owner of the Romanian Kosher Sausage Co. at Touhy and Clark.
     Yes, I had already eaten lunch, I thought ruefully, driving over. A mistake. Still, I couldn’t help but imagine the spread: The corned beef. The pastrami. The salami. The tubs of chopped liver. Romanian chopped liver. Shivas are normally awash in food. But this. Perhaps, our business complete, I could assemble a heaping plate to take home. Would that be bad form?
     Daughters Katharine Loeb and Karen Levin met me and took seats on mourning chairs, with the widow, Lynne Loeb. Orthodox Jews in mourning cover mirrors in the house — you aren’t supposed to think of yourself. They sit shiva on special low chairs, a symbolic returning to earth. (Job 2:13: “And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights ... for they saw that his suffering was very great.”)
     For all the shivas I’ve attended, I’d never noticed the chairs. Nor picked up on another tradition. I looked at the bare table and made a remark about cold cuts. Chutzpa.
     “The tradition is, people are supposed to bring us food and serve us,” Katharine explained, good-naturedly. “It’s their turn to feed us.”
     Ah, I thought.
     Arnold Loeb’s father, Eugene Loeb started the business in Bucharest, Romania, making sausages in his mother’s kitchen.
     “Much to her dismay at times,” Karen said.
     The Loeb family survived World War II intact — Romanian Jews fared far better than Jews in, say, Poland. In 1946 the family moved, first to the Dominican Republic, sending their only child ahead to Chicago, where he had uncles.
     Arnold Loeb, 83, who died Feb. 27 of pancreatic cancer, went to the Illinois Institute of Technology and became an electrical engineer. 

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"We don't deserve to be erased by a bunch of libs/dems"

     Lots of reaction to yesterday's column on the Chicago Public Schools scrapping Columbus Day. I particularly appreciated those from Italian-Americans saying they share my sentiments.     

     Though this one, from Charlotte Ulmanis, made my day:

Good Morning,Good Columbus-Native American column.If my father Scott Williams Thundercloud was still around he would try to adopt you into the Ottawa nation.

     Some brought up aspects that I agree with but didn't have space to explore: Certain native-American groups were themselves barbaric, and why do they get the soft-focus "Dances with Wolves" treatment while people keep trying to pry the Columbus blankie out of their hands? 

     Easy. Because life ain't fair. Because society undulates in peaks and valleys, which is what makes the cling-to-the-past-because-it's-what-we're-comfortable-with approach such a non-starter. I could see arguing that Columbus Day could be kept as a grim day of reflection, like Holocaust Remembrance Day. But nobody seems to want that.

     Of course, others were ... well, maybe I should let them speak for themselves. This, from Alfred Pilotto who, to his credit, allowed me to reprint it, can stand in for them all, and I will post it without commentary:

Your totally missing the point..its the fact that italians are getting erased in history more and more and by whom...people who have no idea probably who Columbus even was..I'm talking about the chicago public school system, frankly you can call it idiot day because all of the kids in CPS care about is a day off school. The liberal masses no matter how small win again. If this day was about an African American no matter what atrocities he committed there is no way it would be changed to anything else but what it is. Do we analyze every single person who was given a holiday,,I'm sure we can even find several wrongs with even dr.king for that matter but the Democrats/liberals who would never upset the African American community simply for their votes are using this to show how diverse or worse that they really care..how bout eliminating Thanksgiving or even changing the name..how bout veterans day because well they killed people with guns..Italians are a proud community and worked extremely hard for everything they have with no help from anyone. We dont deserve to be erased by a bunch of libs/dems who either pander or after 100 yrs think they know better..back in the day people used to say merry Christmas without insulting someone and that's the way it was, leave well enough alone..how bout this..how bout we have a happy indictment day for half of these moron aldermen who get indicted on an regular basis or give the kids a day off every time a CPS official fails to do their job..call it clueless day..that's what the cps needs to be concerned about..thanks, sincerely a proud Italian

Friends to Columbus, but not to truth

     Alds. Nick Sposato and Anthony Napolitano belong to a people notorious for their theatrical emotion and looseness with fact. I’m referring, of course, to the Chicago City Council. Those qualities vibrated off the page in the Sun-Times Friday, in Fran Spielman and Nader Issa’s story detailing aldermanic outrage at the Chicago Public School’s decision to drop Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous People’s Day.
     ”He found America,” Sposato said of Columbus, declaring “war” on the CPS over its disinclination to honor the Italian explorer.
     ”It’s absolutely ridiculous,” added Napolitano, inflating elimination of the holiday into a general slur “that Italian Americans haven’t contributed to the United States.”
     Sigh.
     Let me begin by saying I have sympathy for the underlying issue here: the importance of the Italian-American community, their invaluable culture and vital contribution to Chicago. I could not have spent as many hours as I did sitting at Gene & Georgetti, across a table from that charming booster of all things Italian, the late Dominic DiFrisco, hearing him expound on this very issue, and not be sympathetic.
     A huge deal, Columbus was. In the 19th century. From Columbus Ohio, founded in 1812, to the 1893 Columbian Fair.
     But guess what? We’re in the 21st century now, and the political climate has shifted. Columbus Day, while a chance for some Italians to display their pride — something which, judging from these two alderman, needs no special holiday to rear snorting and pawing its hooves in the air — has turned into open season on Italy’s famous son.
     Were I to create a holiday specifically designed to generate ill will toward Italians, I would call it “Columbus Day” and encourage students to work themselves into a lather revisiting his atrocities, which are real no matter what Nick Sposato imagines.
     ”You think he could do the things they’re claiming he did with 90 people?” he said.
     Columbus sure thought so. The crimes lain at his feet are not some slur cooked up the anti-Italian legions infecting this pair of aldermanic brains. Read Columbus’ journal:
     ”They do not bear arms, and do not know them,” Columbus wrote of those he encountered. “They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane ... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
     Sposato returned my call. I read him that entry.

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Heal your soul with useless crap

     Yes, three-quarters of Americans believe in angels. They leap to follow the most obvious charlatans, from Oprah Winfrey's feel-good magical thinking, to the caustic, near-Masonic conspiracy theories of Fox News.
     And as a rule, I don't resent people their fantasies. The unvarnished facts of life are hard (all of nature including us is a fuzz on a tiny planet in an obscure corner of an unimaginably enormous and utterly indifferent cosmos. Nothing you do matters in the long run). So yes, squinch your eyes together and conjure up a God who loves you. I'm not going to pop your bubble, this present post notwithstanding.
     But I do get surprised, sometimes, when mystic hoo-ha spiritualism intrudes where I do not expect it, like in the ABC Carpet & Home store on E. 19th Street in New York City. I had seen their advertisements for years and years in the New York Times. Pillows and poufs, coffee tables and candlesticks, silverware and ceramic bowls. I was excited to finally see the place, so as soon as we finished our brunch at their high-end eatery, abcV, I hurried over to check out the store.
      Yes, rich for my blood. Five hundred dollar baby quilts. Many, many types of salt cellars. But it was the Marianne Williamson books that first tipped me off. They had a lot of them, various titles scattered around. Here I had just gratefully seen her vanish from the presidential debate stage, and her especially risible brand of empower-yourself-by-enriching-me shysterism is suddenly peppering department stores.
      But nothing over the top. Not until the big display of giant crystals.

     "These pristine quartz specimens were sustainably and ethically sourced from the Zigras Mine in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas by Avant Mining," the placard begins, rationally enough. "With exceptional clarity, luster, and quality, the raw, un-cut crystals emit a powerful aura of positive energy."
    What if they don't? Can you return them? "I'm sorry, but the energy radiating from this crystal just isn't as positive I expected it to be..."
    Looking for a price online, I kept running into the most atrocious ABC swami ballyhoo. "Crystals are powerful wisdom keepers..." "Cosmic release. Grounding by nature, smokey quartz detoxifies and balances the energies to the free the mind of anxiety and stress." That isn't even grammatically correct, with the unnecessary definite article before "free." All for a piece of rock that is 13 inches wide, 16 inches deep and 9 inches high. For $10,000.
     It suddenly became important to me that someone in New York City has already mocked these people. Can a place as cynical and free-wheeling as NYC simply permit a place to sell snake oil along with $9,000 chandeliers without a few Bronx cheers of derision flung their way? The Times comes close with, "A Souk for Trust-Fund Hobbits" by Ruth La Ferla. That ran almost 10 years ago, so we know ABC didn't just recently slide into the occult. A "souk," by the way, is an Arab market or bazaar:

Part souk, part woodsy-mossy Middle Earth, the ground floor of this temple of eclecticism was conceived as a magnet for the tribes of self-styled aristo-gypsies and unregenerate hippies who maintain riads in Essaouira or thatched lean-tos in Bali — if only in their dreams.

      But the story swerves into an appreciative shopping spree, tutting only at the cost of the merchandise. Please, New York readers, tell me somebody is pouring derision on this place. It can't just be me.
      Maybe ABC Carpet is too local. Ridicule is certainly heaped upon national hucksters, like that movie-star-turned-P.T.-Barnum-in-yoga-pants charlatan Gwyneth Paltrow and her jaw-dropping Goop brand separating trophy wives from their money for a variety of galaxy lotions, young forever creams and detoxifying cleanses. Of course, now that I look at Goop's web site, with its "cosmic health" and rejuvenation tonics, tongue cleaners and—oh look — $80 crystal water bottles, suddenly ABC Carpet looks as practical as Ace Hardware. 

     
     

Biting into the Big Apple

Basket of rolls at Balthazar

     If I told you that I ordered a croissant for brunch at a fancy French restaurant in New York City and it cost $4.80, well, you wouldn't think much of that, would you? Big city. Expensive.
      So why, when looking at the menu for Balthazar ahead of time, something my family does the way other people look at guidebooks to cities they plan to visit, did my gaze lock on the $24 basket of pastries, which I immediately dubbed the "Twenty-four Dollar Basket of Rolls." I had to order it. I like a good roll, and these had to be extraordinary. At that price, they'd better be.
      They were okay. Nothing that wouldn't have seemed out of place passed over the counter in a waxy bag at Panera. And to be honest, I glanced enviously at the basket of bread given free to diners on other side of us, people not cracked enough to order the pricey basket and thought: "Dumb."
      I realize that a percentage of readers consider the whole fine dining thing is dumb, a scam designed to separate people who have too much money and too little sense from a portion of that money. I hear ya. But the truth is, looking at our long weekend in New York City, while the peak aesthetic experiences had to be the "Vida Americana" show at the Whitney, and seeing Anais Mitchell's "Hadestown" at the Walter Kerr Theater, the swank eateries were right up there. They were a lot of fun, each with its own glory.
    The best thing about Balthazar was the room. It looked like Le Grand Zinc in Paris, or, even more so, a place I loved, back in the day, the old Un, Deux, Trois Cafe at 123 W. 44th Street. I'm glad I ate at Balthazar once, but wouldn't go back until I've eaten at every other restaurant there is.
      Uncle Boons, 7 Spring Street, seemed promising and unusual, just for being a One Michelin Star Thai restaurant. I didn't know those existed. Most memorable here was the elaborate, almost dramatic process required to get in. You can't make a reservation. That would be too easy. What you do—what we did—is show up shortly before the place opens at 5:30. Join the enormous line, stretching around the block. Wait half an hour which, in my dewy innocence, I thought meant we were waiting to get in to eat an early dinner. When I said as much, my older son explained, with a touch more asperity than I might have preferred, considering he was addressing the man paying for all this, that I hadn't been listening to the plan.  We were in line, not to eat, but to be given a time, which turned out to be .... three and a half hours hence. We then repaired to a different restaurant to eat some truly strange Georgian bread concoction involving cheese and a stirred egg in the center and tarragon-flavored soda. Then to the common area at my kid's dorm to play a fun labyrinth building game, which perked my spirits—it had been a long day.

Duck at Uncle Boons

    Suddenly, he got a text. Our table was ready, or about to be ready—an important distinction because once it was "ready" we had 10 minutes to park ourselves at the ready table or it went to the next group of would-be patrons—sparking a mad dash for a cab and frantic ride to Lower Manhattan to grab the table before our window of opportunity closed. While I paid the cabbie, the two boys ran into the restaurant and my wife and I followed. There was still a knot of people in the door, and when we tried to push past—"our table is ready"—my wife said, the woman in front of us snapped, over her shoulder, "Mine is ready too!" But a group left, and when the line squeezed to the right to let them up the stairs, we barreled down through the gap, and found the boys intensely studying the menu as if it were a treasure map.
     The next hour was a highlight. First, I was having dinner at 10 p.m. in New York City, which is life as I understand it. We ate "Heavenly Pig Ears" and sweetbread mee krob, blood sausage, yellowtail and gaeng supalot duck and pork jowl. Dessert was sticky rice and a coconut sundae that reinvented the form. Everything tasted fantastic. It was the sort of place you could only justify leaving by making a solemn vow to return.
     New York interior space is given to weird combinations: kitchens with bathtubs in them, living rooms with sleep platforms. abcV is Jean-Georges vegetarian restaurant inside ABC Carpet, whose prosaic name belies a sprawling pillow and silverware emporium for Manhattan's money set—I think I'll give them their due tomorrow. 
     A large, white room, filled with beautiful people. Friendly, attentive service. None of the pretension radiating off their mission statement:
      "Plant based, non GMO, sustainable, artisanal and organic whenever possible. Locally and globally from small & family farms. abcV is here to serve, inform and inspire a cultural shift towards plant based intelligence, through creativity and deliciousness...." 
    It goes on, but you get the point.
    Oh heck, why not? It's too good not to share in full: "Offering high vibration foods, embracing balance with beauty, wellness, wisdom & love to nurture our personal and planetary ecosystems."
    And liberals wonder why people hate us.

    Like many vegetarian restaurants, they have to be on their top game, and they were. I don't know if "wild blueberry bowl, jungle peanut butter, fresh and dried fruits" sounds good to you, but it did to me, and man, was it. As was the slow roasted beets, dijon, avocado puree, chili aoili and pickles.

Late afternoon snack at Katz's Deli

      I'll stop now. We ate, by my count, in 16 restaurants in four days, from the aforementioned Balthazar to Olympic Pita in the West Village. Two delis, Katz's and Russ & Daughters. We went back to Mizoun in Chelsea Market, whose grilled cauliflower disappointed, last time, so much that I was surprised to see us there again (I am, if you haven't noticed, a very go-along-to-get-along type of dad, trotting after my family as they rush wherever it is they're going, consulted only at moments that require me to take out my wallet). I was glad we returned, because the cauliflower and bag of green beans, salted and garlicked, were much better than last time. Plus now, having gone three times, I'm a regular.
      Talking about restaurants strikes me as running the risk of becoming dull quickly, and if this is, my apologies. Not to mention late, going up shortly after 7 a.m. Saturday, which is not my habit. But the truth is I worked yesterday dawn to dusk, writing Monday's column and diving into an exciting new project I hope to tell you about shortly. So I appreciate your indulgence. One thing I found eating out, is you tend to get what you pay for.

Trump lights a match under the New York Times

Man burning books, by Marco Dente (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Sue me!
     Haven’t I always reported the truth about Donald Trump?
     Years before he descended that escalator at Trump Tower, I was pointing in alarm at the loamy soil the GOP was preparing for him or somebody like him.
     “When I look at the Republicans, I am tempted to dismiss them as the Treason Party,” I wrote in the Sun-Times on July 4, 2012. “Seriously, were a band of traitors to concoct a series of positions deliberately designed to weaken America, they would be hard pressed to beat the current GOP dogma — hobble education, starve the government by slashing taxes to the rich, kneecap attempts to jumpstart the economy by fixating on debt, invite corporations to dominate political discourse, balkanize the population by demonizing minorities and immigrants and let favored religions dictate social policy.”
     Once Trump was in office, I tried to explain him in frank, unambiguous terms.
”He is a deeply un-American hate monger, in thrall to the Russians, who is working to undermine the country morally, economically, physically — yanking away health insurance from 24 million people, many of whom are so out to sea they voted for the man,” I wrote in 2017. “That every day he works to undermine the legitimacy of the media, the courts, the idea of truth itself. He’s a liar, a bully and fraud.”

     Those last three words—"liar, bully and fraud" I settled on as a shorthand, a synecdoche to stand in for a much longer list of character flaws. I'd use again and again, as a trope, like Homer's "wine dark sea," sometimes adding "and possible traitor," that "possible" a fig leaf formality, like referring to a man recording committing a crime, arrested with the knife in his hand, as the "alleged murderer."
     But did Donald Trump’s reelection campaign sue me for libel on Wednesday? No, they did not. They sued the New York Times — these Eastern elites, even in conflict they see only each other. As if the Times needs another distinction to go with its 127 Pulitzer Prizes. The Trump campaign claims it was wronged by an opinion piece suggesting the Russians hurt Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances so Trump would roll like a puppy at Putin’s feet.

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"The kindly genius of the spot"—The Garfield Park Conservatory

Ava Carney's sculptures, inspired by a Lorado Taft quote referring to "the kindly genius of the spot" will be on display at the Garfield Park Conservatory until March 8.

  
      So here's a riddle.
      When I woke up Wednesday morning, I had a full day scheduled, and no intention whatsoever of going to Garfield Park Conservatory.
      I walked the dog, drank a cup of coffee, ate half a bagel, read the paper, hopped on the Metra downtown, never once thinking of the 113-year-old West Side treasure, hidden from too many Chicagoans on the Near West Side, never mind planning to visit. I went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital to talk to a patient undergoing chemo, had lunch with my brother at the always-excellent Dearborn, then got on the Green line and headed to a Chicago Public High School to look at a mural for a future story, never once thinking: ferns, cacti, flowers.
      Yet I ended up at Garfield Park Conservatory, walking gloriously through its changing environments, from desert to rainforest. Any idea how? There is a clue in the previous description.
      That's right, the high school was the Al Raby High School, directly across the street from Garfield Park Conservatory. I finished my business there about 2:15 p.m. It had been over six years—since I did a story on repairs to the greenhouse after a hailstorm broke out 70 percent of the glass. And before that, I think I'd gone once: to see the installation of Dale Chihuly glassworks in 2002. Given that dismal track record, what kind of monster would not go in? It's free (Well, they ask for a donation, recommending $10 for adults, $5 for children. I didn't have $10, but I had $5, so gave them that, thinking they'd get at least five bucks worth of publicity here.
    I spent about an hour, slowly wandering the place. They had five sculptures from Ava Carney, who held the Chicago's Park District's 2019 Athletic Field Ceramics Residency. Though so subtly placed that I only noticed two, which is a good thing. 
    Ancient ferns strained toward the iron and glass ceiling, delicately-patterned ground cover spread before my feet, spiky cacti stood guard. 
    Then there was this pair of jiggly eyes that someone—I can't decide if it was another resident artist, or a passing wag with a pocket full of jiggly eyes—anthropomorphized this out-of-the-way bloom. I paused to admire it. Normally I would be opposed to decorating plants like that, on aesthetic, almost moral grounds—it's like putting clothing on animals. But in this case, it worked, so who am I to argue? It isn't as if the plant minds. Examining it, I wondered if the culprit—prankster? artist?—responsible was thorough enough to have put an eye on the other side of the plant, to complete the pair, but where none but the most vigorously inquisitive would see it. They had! I admired the thoroughness of that.
     The place was not crowded. Not deserted either. A mother and child. An older couple. A smattering of students. The Golden Hour Spring Flower Show is also going on, until May 10, with banks of colorful azalea, hydrangea, and calibrachoa, and some interesting string art displays.
    So quite the thing to stumble upon. It was a great place to sit on a bench, and just gaze. The Garfield Park Conservatory is very conveniently located to downtown: the Green line stops a few steps away. My next visit will be intentional.