Wednesday, March 25, 2020

‘It hurts’ — Food pantries shut by coronavirus crisis

Homeless men crowd around Night Ministry worker handing out toiletries, 2016.

     It isn’t just restaurants and bars, museums and stores.
     Organizations that provide food to the poorest and most vulnerable Illinoisans are shutting down in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Other social service agencies, like homeless shelters, are struggling to adjust.
     In the past two weeks, 112 Chicago-area food pantries have closed; 82 in Cook County — almost a quarter of the 370 food pantries served by the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
     “The number is shocking” said Greg Trotter, spokesman for depository. “It hurts and it has an impact.” 
     In the 13 collar counties, another 30 food pantries closed in the past week, according to the Northern Illinois Food Bank, mostly because those who run them don’t want to risk exposure to COVID-19.   
     “Our pantries largely rely upon the help from volunteers, and a lot of our volunteers tend to be older folks, seniors who have time to spare,” said Liz Gartman, communications manager for the food bank. ”Many of those same folks are taking health precautions very seriously, as they should, so they don’t feel comfortable coming in.”


To continue reading, click here

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Fuck You Monster: I'm Not Afraid of You.

  
     I very rarely welcome a guest writer to the blog. But then Tony Fitzpatrick is no ordinary jamoke. Extraordinary in so many regards, he's the most Chicago guy I've ever met (and I've met Studs Terkel, Mike Royko and Saul Bellow). A fantastic artist, star of stage and screen, both movies and TV—he was great as Jack Birdbath in the recent Amazon series, "Patriot." I consider myself lucky to have spent as many hours as I have in his company, lucky to call him friend and hang his art on my walls. Monday was a very full day tracking down a hard news story—rare for me, I know—that will be, I believe, fairly eye catching when it hits the paper on Wednesday. To keep you groundlings happy in the meantime, I asked Tony if I could reprint this essay he posted on Facebook, and he graciously agreed:


This is an essay I wrote on the 7th day of the Coronavirus crisis in Chicago:

     Walking through Humboldt park on Wednesday, I sat down on a bench after a loop around the Boathouse and the Bird Sanctuary part of the park. I'd been trying to keep from freaking out about the enormous changes in our world manifested in the last week. I quit my health club because of expenses and shuttered both of the galleries.As I sat there I realized that they might never re-open. That walking this park in the morning would be the new normal; and this was more than okay.
     For the first time since this whole mess started. I was somewhere ... Quiet. There was Green—trees grasses, marsh weeds , and water. It was the stillness of solitude. I needed to think and this was a place to do it. I looked at the Water and saw Canadian Geese, Mallards, and Wood Ducks; and around me in the park I'd noticed Robins, Red Winged Blackbirds and Grackles as well as copious Gulls.This place was perfect for all I had to think about which was how to remain calm.How to accept what I could not change. How to go forward with the sometimes arduous business of living one day at a time and being grateful for it.
I grew up watching Monster Movies as a kid: Giant Gila Monster, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, Willard (bunch of Rats eat Earnest Borgnine),The Abominable Dr. Phibes. You name it--I saw every gruesome mutation the movie racket could concoct in the relatively naive age of 1960's America-- where there were plenty of societal horrors, wars and assassinations-- but THOSE were too real. Those were things one heard on the news.      

     Those were somebody else's Monsters. Mine were out of the Comics—Creepy, Eerie, and pulp novels. The one that scared the shit out of me was "I am Legion" by Richard Mathissen it became an equally scary movie with Charlton Heston and Anthony Zerbe. Heston plays the last man alive, or so he thinks, he is holed up in a building in what I think is Downtown L.A. or SanFrancisco, not sure which; and he is surrounded by an Army of Zombie-Like mutants who can only come out at night.Led by the amazing Zerbe (an underrated character actor his whole life) who plays a former news anchor gone mad after becoming a mutant from an unnamed plague.
     That was the truly frightening part—the Un-named plague. The one that wiped most of humanity out and made the rest into mindless fanatical Zombies who practice some inane religion. Led by a psychologically stunted leering Madman. Actually ?—A lot like Trump voters. I would SAY that—but Zerbe's Mathias is infinitely smarter and more likable than Trump—which is still to say: Not at all. The real monster is the plague itself—Heston survives it because he is injured while bringing the vaccine for this back to America—he injects himself—and he is cured. This , by the way, in NO way portends a happy ending.
I could not stop thinking of this movie while walking an empty Park yesterday—while able to hear every sound of every bird in that park. It centered me --I sat down and was able to cobble together something like a plan B. I was also able to accept that life was changing in a tidal way. That nothing that comes after this; If I live through it, will be the same. I'm 61 years old-- I've lived longer than anyone ever thought I would . I've been lucky in my life, my wife and kids, my work,I've got no complaints.
     While this thing descends upon us I'm going to try to be the best version of human that I can be. I make sense of the world by making pictures about it . One of the things or devices I relied on. as a kid was drawing giant creatures taking revenge on us—Lizards, Locusts, Eagles, Cicadas, and Wolves. All of them opening giant cans of Whoop-Ass on whichever segment of humanity I thought needed a good Ass-Kicking that day...Mostly? ...It was Nuns and Christian Brothers-- who took turns playing tether-ball with my head as a kid. Hell—I learned how to throw a left-hook from a Nun--she would pretend she was going to smack me with her right hand?...then?... she would hammer me with her left.I made a note to myself:         
In case of a rematch? Punch the Nun FIRST...
     These drawings were great fun . They allowed me to get a little Karmic revenge on the Nuns, Teachers, Cops ,and anyone else I considered a pain in the ass who ought to mind their own fucking business.
     This Drawing is a bit like that. It's a way of saying: "Fuck You Monster—I'm not afraid of You". The only thing I know about the coming days is that we have the best weapon known to mankind. We have each other.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Toilet paper gives strength to face crisis


     As the COVID-19 global pandemic unfolds, and the confusing whir of current events slowly gives way to the certainties of history, one question will echo down the years, fascinating scholars yet unborn:
     What was the deal with toilet paper?
     With a deadly plague spreading everywhere, consumers stripped stores, not of batteries or booze, coffee or toothpaste.
     But toilet paper. In enormous, cart-filling mega-packs.
     And not just in the United States. Australian media described a toilet paper “frenzy” where shoppers pulled knives on each other. In Hong Kong, armed robbers stole pallets of TP. Shelves were stripped in Singapore and Taiwan.
     Journalists quizzed those buying the paper for their perspective.
     “If everyone’s doing it, I’m doing it, too,” one Sydney shopper reasoned.
     The world seemed divided into people either loading up on what was called “therapeutic paper” when it was first patented in 1857, or condemning those who did so for panicking.
     It struck me there had to be a third path to understanding. There had to be someone wise. Someone oracular. Someone who knows toilet paper.
     “It has been a crazy couple of weeks as related to toilet paper purchasing,” said Kim Sackey. She is consumer knowledge leader at Georgia-Pacific and was speaking from the global headquarters in Atlanta of one of the world’s leading manufacturers of what the company demurely calls “bath tissue.”

To continue reading, click here.

Sunday, March 22, 2020

As colon cancer rises among the young, NU doctors use old tool in a new way


     I wrote this a couple weeks ago, and it got held,  first to find space in the paper, second by all the news regarding the coronavirus. While there is nothing in it about the epidemic riveting our attention, I do think there is a message here that is valuable to anyone facing any kind of dire situation.

     Sometimes fate hits you with both barrels, the good and the bad in one life-altering blast.
     In August 2017, Shannon Harrity found out she was pregnant. Two days later, her husband Sean O’Reilly learned he had metastatic cancer. It had started years earlier in his colon, then spread to his liver.
     O’Reilly’s previous doctors had puzzled over his stomach problems, his bloody stools. Maybe hemorrhoids, they speculated. He was so young — in his late 30s. Too young to bother with a colonoscopy. Too young to worry about what the NU doctors found — spreading colon cancer, Stage 4.
     “You hear the ‘C-word,’ and you think it’s over, you’re dead,” O’Reilly says. “There is no Stage 5. You’re six feet under the ground.”
     Chemotherapy started two weeks later. In a second irony, while he was back at Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center for his first chemotherapy session, as the virulent chemicals were dripping into his veins, his wife was across the street at Northwestern’s Prentice Women’s Hospital, learning she was carrying twins.
     How does a couple respond to this kind of one-two punch?
     “Happy but devastated,” says O’Reilly, an analyst for the federal government.
     “A lot of life changes in very little time,” says Harrity, who works in human resources for a consulting company. “We were definitely overwhelmed.”
     Even his doctors were moved.
     “Emotional for all of us,” says Dr. Ryan Merkow, O’Reilly’s surgical oncologist. “It had a big impact.”
     O’Reilly was 39 when he learned he had cancer, making him part of a new development doctors have identified but don’t yet fully understand. Colon cancer is down among older Americans — those over 50 — but up sharply among the young, jumping by 20%.
     “We’re definitely seeing a trend here,” says Dr. Mary F. Mulcahy, O’Reilly’s medical oncologist. “Reports from across the United States show it is on the rise in people less than 50, on the decline in every other age group.”
     Nobody knows why.

To continue reading, click here.

Sean O'Reilly holding an example of the hepatic liver artery infusion pump helping him fight colon cancer.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Full house


     When the boys went away to college, my wife and I discussed downsizing, moving to a smaller place, maybe two bedrooms in the city.
     That conversation lasted about 30 seconds.
     Because we love the old place, and the neighbors, and moving is such an enormous chore.
     "We moved here for a reason," I'd say, alluding to the schools. "Let's move somewhere else for a reason too." That sounded like logic. Then I'd pause, and add another thought, to seal the argument. "And you never know. The boys could end up back at home."
     That was meant as an improbability. Almost a joke. A little light flourish at the end of a conversation. That wasn't happening. We didn't really expect them back in their old bedrooms, still painted the same aqua that welcomed them when they were 3 and 4.
     But back they are. As of yesterday. With both law schools shifted to remote classes, and one campus emptying out, while the other, New York City, perhaps not the place to ride out a pandemic of unknown scope, return to the heretofore empty nest suddenly seemed prudent. If they don't come back now, I cautioned, coming back later might be more difficult. "You could end up having to walk back from Virginia" I told the younger boy. Air travel still works, for the moment, let's use it. Without coordinating their plans, they arrived at O'Hare within 10 minutes of each other Friday afternoon. I went outdoors to collect them. Normally I'd park and go into the terminal get them—less stress and at $2 to park for 30 minutes, the best deal in the city. But now my wife forbade me from setting foot inside O'Hare. Infection. A changed world. So I pulled over to Terminal 3 and they hopped in.
     I won't lie. I am happy to have my sons home. The younger boy brought his kitten, now almost a cat. The older brought me cigars from his recent travels. "Corona," he pointed out dryly. I nodded, missing the joke completely. Ah. Sorry. Old, slow on the uptake. Corona...like the disease. Good one. That's one of the wonderful things about kids. They keep you on your toes.
     Happy to have them. At least on Day One. Happy to be on my toes, while understanding that happiness at a practical measure taking during a global crisis is perhaps wrong and bound to be fleeting anyway. My wife is already working in a corner of the living room. They'll be upstairs, attending classes remotely and editing law reviews, in bedrooms flanking mine. We'll all be trying not to get in each other's way. Serenity will be a flickering ember we'll all have to puff on to keep lit.
     The first family dinner went well—not in the kitchen, where it would usually be, but in the dining room, the better to spread out and encourage social distancing. The legality of J.B. Pritzker's order for people to stay in their homes was critiqued, and various other practical steps discussed. Then the younger one said, "You should get a gun, dad."
     "That's right," the older chimed in. "You should get a gun."
     I couldn't tell if they were joking or not. They didn't seem to be joking. Too many zombie movies. I have my second FOID card—they expire every 10 years. We'd all gone shooting a couple times, but I hadn't pegged them as gun fans.
     "What would I need a gun for?" I asked.
     "To stop looting," one said.
     "To stop looting by who?" I wondered.
     "To stop looting by whom?" the older one corrected. "Just because the laws of society are crumbling doesn't mean the laws of grammar have to."
     Actually, those two developments usually go hand-in-hand. I didn't say that. Nor did I get annoyed; trying not to be annoyed with each other is, if not as important as washing our hands frequently, still pretty darn important. I just laughed, shaking my head. Which is also important. Because besides the risk of infection, there will be the risks that come with living in an altered world, with changes in jobs as industries grind to a halt and the economy seizes up. Shifting family dynamics, close quarters, all sorts of new stresses vectoring in from unexpected directions. I'm not expecting looters, but I am expecting a certain number of folks to snap and start shooting each other, or themselves, just because that happens periodically already, when there isn't a global crisis. This period is a challenge and, being a challenge, is also an opportunity for us to fall apart or shine. I for one do not intend to shine by sitting in my living room with a shotgun across my knees, waiting to shoot the first person who jiggles the door handle. They can have the toilet paper.

   

Friday, March 20, 2020

Hard work, prayer and carry-out

Sisters (from left) Kim, Minah and Tran Dao opened a Northbrook restaurant and coffee bar, Basu, in late February. Kim encouraged her younger sisters to quit their jobs and go into the restaurant business. “It’s very bad timing,” she said.

    Sarah Stegner looked at the deserted dining room of her restaurant at 6 p.m. Monday and said words that perhaps no professional chef has ever uttered before:
     “I was afraid it was going to be too packed.” 
Sarah Stegner, chef at Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook, with husband
and co-owrner Rohit Nambiar. “The plan is to keep cooking,” she said
 

     She was explaining why, even though she could have held a final, last hurrah dinner at her Prairie Grass Cafe before Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s order to indefinitely close all Illinois restaurants and bars went into effect, “that’s not the right thing to do.”
     She said it twice.
     “That’s not the right thing to do.”
     While a goodbye dinner would have raked in money that she, her partners and staff may desperately need in the weeks and months to come, it would also put those who love her Northbrook restaurant in jeopardy for contracting the virus. That, she was unwilling to do.
     Instead, Prairie Grass, like many restaurants, is offering carry-out. I was there picking up dinner out of a sense of moral duty. Part of what gives Chicago its luster is the bountiful array of unique and delightful restaurants in and around the city, from beloved hot dog stands to world-famous 3-Michelin-star eateries. They have been there for us, framing the joyous moments of our lives — we had our 25th wedding anniversary dinner at Prairie Grass. It seems natural for customers to stand with them now that they need us most.


To continue reading, click here.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Readiness is all



     I strive to be rational, and to live a rational life. But I'm not Mr. Spock, so fall prey to some of the same irrational practices dabbled in by everybody else. I wish upon stars, touch wood, and consider certain situations "lucky."
    Or unlucky. Baseless fears and oddball notions afflict just about everybody, and such tendencies are amplified by strain, such as the current crisis.
     For the past few days I've been seeing crows—large, deeply black birds—as not just a welcome indication that the crow population has rebounded. But a sign. A bad sign. A warning.
     Crows aren't quite vultures, but they are omnivores, and will eat almost anything, including carrion and, given the chance, our corpses. It's like they're watching us. Waiting.
     Nor is it just the crows. I set out to walk our dog Kitty Wednesday morning. After a few steps, her attention was riveted to a spot on the lawn in front of our house. She snuffed mightily, and I noticed a scattering of white wisps. Fur of some sort. Plus a bloody leaf, and, at third glance, a white puff that had to have been, until very recently, a rabbit's tail. The culprit? A hawk, probably. Or perhaps a pre-dawn coyote—we saw one only a few weeks ago.
    I gazed down at the white tufts and had a single, chill thought —I'm almost embarrassed to say: "An augury!" A presentiment of what is to come.
    And that is? Difficult to put into words. Something along the lines of: Nature doesn't care about our little edifice of society and culture and hopes and selves. Death just scythes the field, it doesn't first sort the good from the bad. I'm sure that was a fine rabbit, handsome, intelligent, with a tidy hutch somewhere, nosing the morning air for a waft of delicious ... whatever the heck it is rabbits eat. Then bam! Doom from above. Or a final thought, "Oh sh..." as the coyote pounces.
     A prediction. An augury.
     Luckily, I had a few lines of Shakespeare to bat that away with.
    "We defy augury..." then—God, this is really embarrassing—"There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all." I said it out loud.
      No kidding. Getting ready is about all anyone can do nowadays. That and wait. And worry.
      The readiness is all. That seems a sentiment worth sharing in these parlous times. Readiness is good, is it not? 

    And yes—don't all shout it out at once—I know the trepidation that Hamlet feels is well-placed: he is reluctant to agree to a duel with Laertes that will in fact—spoiler alert!—kill them both.  Readiness doesn't help him much; he shoulda paid attention to the signs.
      But the current contest is one that will go on with or without our consent. Ready or not, the sword's hilt is thrust into our freshly-Purelled hands and we must duel with this invisible thing, this virus, defending ourselves by ... geez, washing our hands a lot I guess and keeping a sword-length of distance. 
     We defy augury. How? Yes, by being ready. By doing what we can to prepare. Also by not being too afraid. Notice, I didn't say "by not being afraid." A certain amount of fear is inevitable, and even useful, to the degree that it prompts you to vigilance, doing the steps you're supposed to do to keep yourself and others safe. 
     But not so much fear that it poisons these pre-spring days.  Even in the very worst scenarios, the vast majority of people will be fine, only suffering the harm of having to live through the coming ordeal. Unlike that poor rabbit.