Everything is everywhere

     "You want to go for a walk?"
     "I'll walk one of your cigars."
     "That sounds like a plan."
     Except I was down to my last one — a holdover from Thanksgiving. The weather wasn't conducive, and I've cut back on the habit. Unhealthy. But extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures. I told my wife that the boys and I were driving over to Binny's. My wife was against it — not the cigars, this time, but the outing. Exposing ourselves to plague.
I promised to wash my hands before and after. And wear a mask.
     I had a package of 3M dust masks I used in my shop, for sanding and such. We grabbed a pair.
     In the Binny's parking lot, I put it on, fitted the elastic bands around my head, pressed the metal strip to the contour of my nose. I checked out myself in the rear view mirror.
     "I look like I'm going to rob the place," I said.
     We went in. I wanted to get a case of Pabst NA — they come in cans — but they were out. I went up to two Binny's clerks to interrupt their conversation and asked if they had moved the Pabst. As I did, I inadvertently coughed. I'm not sure why. The mask, a mote of dust blown off a bottle of The Macallan 18. Something. A dry cough.
     One of the clerks stepped back so fast it was as if he was yanked on a string. I almost mumbled, "Not a sick cough, just a cough cough. My wife is making me wear the mask." But that seemed unnecessary. They aren't carrying Pabst NA anymore, but could special order. Nah, no need, not in the current crisis. I said I only really need it when I go up to the UP in the fall — the guys had the regular Pabst and I had the NA. We had a Pabst theme going. But otherwise, Clausthaler is fine; tastes far better, in fact. I just liked the cans and figured, with the future uncertain, Pabst represented a laudable economy.
     Five cigars. Rocky Patel Vintage 1990s; some standards must be maintained. A few other shoppers also wore masks. That helped, incredibly so. Support. Approval. We are such social animals. You'd feel comfortable wearing your underwear on your head as a hat if enough people on the block were doing the same. Our president is killing people, not wearing one. But then his hands are already red up to the shoulder. In for a dime, in for a thousand dollars.
      Back at the car, we squirted hand sanitizer on our fingers, rubbed it around, then removed our masks.
     "I guess those hijabs aren't a problem anymore," I said.
     "What?"
     "All that hubbub to ban headscarves and burkas and such. I guess people covering their faces in public isn't a problem anymore."
     "That was just in France," he said.
     Nothing is just in France anymore. Or China. Or here. Everything is everywhere. That's one lesson of this thing.

Flashback 2000: The g-r-r-r-r-r-eatest threat to mankind

Tiger, by Kishi Ganku (Metropolitan Museum)

     I'm trying to never say that I enjoy having the boys around, because it's a short hop from that to "Isn't this pandemic FUN?" and I want to avoid that at all costs. 

    Still, I think it's safe to say I am more plugged in with them under my roof. For instance, the burst of publicity over the aptly-named hit "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness" documentary series on Netflix meant nothing to me. Low rent Florida Safari Steves in mullets and eyebrow rings peddling nature's most beautiful animal to underwrite their louche lives. Pass. That lasted until my older son said, "You want to watch a series about tigers?"

    "Sure," I said, and watched the first two episodes Thursday night. OMG. I must admit, I recommend it. Yes, the people are thoroughly unpleasant, every single one. But the thing does explain how we ended up with Trump. And the tigers are gorgeous. It made me think of this column—Tip No. 3 is particularly relevant, as you'll see if you watch the program. I can't believe I haven't posted it before. Back then, I wondered how so many people can be mauled by tigers. Having seen two episodes, the wonder is that there aren't many more. 

     The drawback of these political conventions is they don't address the real problems facing Americans today.
     Tiger attacks, for example.
     While politicians talk, the risk of tiger attack is on the rise, based on my unscientific reading of the news wires, and nobody is doing anything about it.
     Just this week, the latest mauling took place in Boise, Idaho. A woman was attending a fund-raiser at the Boise Zoo (it calls itself "Zoo Boise," but that doesn't mean we have to). The unfortunate lady at the annual "Feast for the Beast" (I wonder what the fundamentalists make of that) found herself in a hallway outside the tiger building, the door of which, in a curious lapse, was left unlatched.
    She got off pretty light, considering. At least she had her arms and legs when the tiger was done, which is not always the case with tigers. The most damage seems to have been inflicted not by the animal, but by a local police officer, who showed up on the scene and managed to shoot the woman in the thigh, breaking the bone. (Geez, what are the odds that being mauled by a tiger isn't the worst thing to happen to you in one day?)
     You might be so cavalier as to find this funny, forgetting that there is a real woman resting uncomfortably at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center.
     I wouldn't dream of laughing at such a thing, not publicly, anyway. Rather, I am offering it as a cautionary tale. Since tiger attacks are, if not rising, then not nearly as infrequent as they should be, I have studied the alarming number of incidents over the last few years and come up with this list of commonsense tips to help you avoid tiger-induced injury. Think it couldn't happen to you? So did these people.

Tip No. 1: Children and tigers don't mix.

     A surprising number of parents in this country permit their children to get in very close proximity to a tiger.
     Lorin Casey Villafana, 10, was actually in the cage last year with her stepfather's pet tigers in Texas when one of them turned and killed her.
     Last March, a 4-year-old Texas boy, Jayton Tildwell, wandered away from a family reunion unnoticed, back to where the tiger pen was. He had his right arm bitten off at the elbow.
     In 1996, a 7-year-old girl visiting a television station was mauled by a tiger about to appear on a television program with her father, the education director of the Cincinnati Zoo.

Tip No. 2: Cameras don't make you immune.

     Jannell Waldo, 45, of San Jose, was clawed by a tiger in 1998 after falling while having her picture taken next to Juma, a 340-pound tiger, at Marine World in San Jose.
     Rather than scare people off, the attack prompted a surge of interest in Marine World's exotic animal photo sessions, though the theme park decided to exclude tigers, no doubt to people's disappointment.

Tip No. 3: Don't stick your arm in the cage:

     In May, a volunteer at the Prairie Wind Wild Animal Refuge in Colorado was asked if the tigers there were friendly.
     To demonstrate, she reached into the cage of Boris, a full-grown Siberian tiger, and petted him. Boris reacted by chewing the woman's arm off.

Tip No. 4: Be particularly careful if the tiger already has killed somebody.

     In November 1998, Doris Guay, a Florida tiger trainer, was leading Jupiter, a 400-pound white Bengal she had raised from a cub, when the animal turned on her and killed her with a single bite to the neck.
     A month previous, the same cat had killed its trainer, Charles Lizza, also with a bite to the neck. At the time Guay insisted Jupiter was not vicious.
     The tiger issue will not go away. I invited both the Brookfield and the Lincoln Park zoos to address tiger safety, and both refused. This timidity will not help anyone. Be careful around tigers.
              —Originally published in Sun-Times, Aug. 17, 2000

Can’t get to AA? Read this now and every day as necessary

     Hello, my name is Neil and I’m an alcoholic.
     Hello, Neil!
     Welcome to the Friday Morning Inky Newshound Fellowship Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, where we gather to (reading from a card) “share our experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.”
     I’m glad to be here — I’m glad to be anywhere — and glad that you’re here, especially the newcomers. As you know, the COVID-19 virus has caused the cancellation of thousands of AA meetings usually held in church basements and conference rooms. And since attending an online meeting is, for some, well, weird, I thought I would convene one here.
     General chair scraping, coffee sipping. Somebody rushes in. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, stating the obvious. There’s a lot of that in AA, stating of the obvious. But since ignoring the obvious, for years, is how a person gets here, that’s actually useful.
     No worries. There’s a chair at the back. The good thing about a meeting like this — sprung by surprise — is that it’s hard to avoid. None of that “I don’t have time” or “I’m stuck inside” or “Every aspect of life is convulsed by a global plague” to keep you from attending.
     Amidst the havoc, this pandemic is serving up the two things most dangerous to an alcoholic: isolation and an excuse. Oh, and lack of employment. So, three things most dangerous ...

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Flashback 2009: Art lives! With a little help

Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, MCA Chicago—May 1 - Sept. 13, 2009 (Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago)

    I spoke to a curator at The Art Institute yesterday, for a future column on COVID-19 kneecapping Chicago culture. Which made me think of this piece from 2009, when I benefited from the insight of the director of the MCA. 

     One of the pitfalls of my job is something I call "The Curator Effect," where you are led through an experience by an expert and later undervalue the role of your guide — I guess we could also call it "The Virgil Syndrome." A prime example of this occurred years ago, in Boulder, Colo. My colleague Roger Ebert was showing "La Dolce Vita," stopping the film almost frame by frame to comment on the Fellini masterpiece. 
     It was fascinating, a bravura display of knowledge and passion.
     Later, I rented "La Dolce Vita," excited to see it again, only to be disappointed to find that, without Roger, it seemed flat, a lugubrious black-and-white movie in Italian. I couldn't finish it.    

(Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago)

     My fault, I'm sure. Yet a reminder that certain experiences pall without an expert — the Colosseum in Rome is just a ruin baking in the sun unless you pony up the euros for a guide to tell you the stories behind the stones. 
     Or the Museum of Contemporary Art. Over spring break, the boys and I, looking for an alternative to the standard slog through The Art Institute, took in the MCA, a process that didn't fill an hour, including the gift shop, and left us all agreeing that while the museum store was truly remarkable, the museum itself was a pretty box with not much inside.
     Unfair, since at the time, half of the museum was being set up for a big show by Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The show opened Friday, and I felt obligated to return and walk through it, led by museum director Madeleine Grynsztejn.
    "You are standing in a room of light," she said, as we stepped into a large space bathed in a lemon glow. "Light is the material he knows in his bones." This is exactly what I'm talking about. Left to my own devices, I might sweep through the yellow room with a shrugging glance at the placard. It would reinforce my general belief that contemporary art is a symptom of cultural decline—Renaissance Italians hewed pietas from white marble, and we install a few yellow bulbs in a bare room, cook up a few lines of explanatory gibberish and call it art.
     Then, Grynsztejn, who came to Chicago last year from San Francisco, where she curated an Eliasson show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, went to work, pointing out how, in the yellow room, the colors fall away—everything looks black-and-white. Indeed very cool. Then, the viewer looks into the next room, and the white walls appear blue.
     "You've created blue!" she said. "When you see that room, that's when this piece is completed— he wants you to co-complete this piece with him. That blue is totally yours." I'm not doing Grynsztejn justice. Most people can't put four words together, even if you feed them the first two, so I never carry a digital recorder. But Grynsztejn offered such a torrent of erudition and enthusiasm, I cursed myself for not bringing a recorder while I desperately tried to scribble down the highlights. Still, 80 percent of her words outraced my overwhelmed fingers and were lost into the ether, itself a small, spontaneous act of performance art, a subtle comment on the ephemerality of knowledge, like those Nepalese monks who create gorgeous mandalas out of colored sand, sing a little song, then sweep them away. Nothing lasts.
     Eliasson is from Iceland, and several works attempt to convey the harsh landscape and austere beauty of that remote island nation.
     "Can you smell the piece?" Grynsztejn said, as we walked into a room where an entire wall was covered with delicate bone-colored clumps of arctic moss. "We shipped it out from Iceland." A complex fragrance, pleasant, like herbal lace.
     The next room had a wall of black hexagonal shapes.

For some reason I didn't mention this room, where an
industrial fan raged above visitors' heads, like a chained
beast. (Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago)

     "This is compressed Icelandic soil," she said. "Aren't they beautiful? Aren't they gorgeous?" They did indeed seem gorgeous, though I worried that I was under her spell, bewitched by erudition, and that readers, not so blessed, would merely wander, puzzled and disappointed, through the galleries.
     Some of the works seem like they might dazzle without commentary.
     "This is a piece he created in response to my request for him to create something new for San Francisco," she said, standing inside "One-way colour tunnel," a passageway of rainbow glass. "The piece symbolized where we live now in the 21st century, half on screens and half in the real world. It looks like a computer rendering, but it is also physical, like our lives now." Unlike the online world, you need to be present to grasp it.
     "Olafur gives us the gift of actual experience," she said. "It cannot be commodified because it belongs to your personal self." As long as you have the background, I suggested.
     "This is very visceral work," she said. "You don't need a degree in art. You need curiosity, you need empathy." Perhaps. I left the Museum of Contemporary Art impressed with the austere beauty of Iceland, the virtuosity of Olafur Eliasson and the geysering intelligence of Madeleine Grynsztejn, though not in that order. You can only see something for the first time once, so I can't go back and experience it afresh without her, though I imagine public reaction will range from viewing it, like much art, as something of a scam, to being swept up in the artist's complex vision.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? Two -- one to hold the zebra, the other to cover the sofa with brightly colored dental tools.

              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 3, 2009

(Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago)

April Fools Day is every day nowadays

Samuel Pepys

     This is my seventh April 1 writing the blog. For the previous six, I posted some prank. They were fun to write and, I hope, fun to read. Some people were fooled, most people laughed, it seemed worth doing.

     This year not only couldn't I do an April Fools prank post, but I never considered doing it. For a moment maybe. But my heart wasn't in it. Writing a column is a go-by-your-gut kind of thing, and my gut said to write this instead. Apologies to those disappointed.

     Wednesday is April 1, April Fools Day. Were I on my game, this might be a prank column to underscore some ridiculous aspect of our locked-down, social-distancing moment. America at full stop, waiting for the crunch of the iceberg.
     Hats off to whomever pulls off the feat today. I’m not that guy.
     Frankly, reality impoverishes parody lately. You don’t need me. If you want a sick joke, turn on the television this afternoon and you’ll find reality that beggars the imagination. Compared to the daily presidential pratfall, I got nothin’. Every day is April Fools’ Day.
     Besides, deceit stings, even when intended as humor. People have been posting alerts on Facebook announcing a certain state suspending liquor sales — don’t worry boozehounds, it isn’t happening. A jest, yet I silently unfriend the poster anyway. Not in the mood.
     It isn’t that nothing is funny. That deadpan video Mayor Lori Lightfoot made, urging Chicagoans to “Stay Home, Save Lives” (“Your dog doesn’t need to see its friends,” she says). That’s wry — Lori Lightfoot is the Harold Lloyd of politicians.
     Still. When this is over — assuming it ever ends — I don’t want to look back at myself yukking it up as the death toll mounts. I’m not even comfortable giving my own report — boys and wife home, working remotely, all fine. It smacks of obliviousness, of those posts demanding that instead of marking the death toll we should celebrate those who HAVEN’T died. I unfriend them too, thinking of Samuel Pepys.

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Flashback 1918: When flu stalked Chicago

Chicago city workers receive their masks

      Occasionally, despite my best efforts to avoid them, I'll catch a whiff of Fox-befouled yokel who bobs to the top of the social media cesspool and declares that the coronavirus is "only the flu." Which is double idiocy because a) it's not; and b) the flu was even worse. In 1918, it slew more than World War I, as I laid out in 1998, on the 80th anniversary of it gripping Chicago. Some of the insanity back then will be sadly familiar today. 

     Shortly after noon on Oct. 1, 1918, the entire Chicago street cleaning department gathered at the foot of Randolph Street, where they were handed white paper masks and ordered to wear them while they worked.
     So began the deadliest month of the deadliest epidemic Chicago and the nation has seen this century. Eighty years have passed, but we are still feeling the repercussions of the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, as scientists search for the virus responsible and epidemiologists worry that the world is as vulnerable now to a killer flu bug as it was then.
     The Spanish flu (actually a misnomer; it seems to have started in the United States) roared to life in spring 1918, did its worst damage over the next few months, and was gone by the end of summer 1919. It was truly a global epidemic: Samoan Islanders and Inuit Eskimos were both devastated by the disease. Conservative estimates place worldwide deaths at 51 million people, 12 million of them in India. Twenty-eight percent of Americans caught the flu, and 550,000 of them died. Nearly 200,000 people died in the United States in the month of October.

     In Chicago, the crisis tended to be overshadowed by the celebration of the end of World War I. Caught up in that excitement, Chicagoans were slow to grasp the impact of the Spanish flu, though it extracted a far greater toll than the war. In the United States, the flu toll was five times higher than the war toll. Greater, in fact, than all U.S. military deaths in the 20th century.
     The flu was first detected here Sept. 25 at the Great Lakes Naval Base and spread to the general population with stunning ferocity. In a week, 50 people a day were dying in Chicago and in two weeks 100 a day were dying.
     At least 100,000 Chicagoans fell ill. Hundreds of telephone company operators were bedridden, so many that the company asked the public to place fewer calls. Half the nurses in Chicago were sick, and appeals for medical help from as far away as Salem, Mass., were turned down.
     By the middle of the first week of October, the board of health instructed police to arrest people spitting in the street or sneezing without covering their mouths. The first offense got a warning; the second, a $1 fine.
     The northern suburbs were particularly hard hit. In Winnetka and Glencoe, military guards patrolled, "breaking up gatherings on the streets and urging citizens to remain in their homes as much as possible." North suburban schools, theaters and churches were closed, and attendance at funerals was limited to immediate families.
     As the epidemic worsened, city and state leaders, conferring at the Sherman Hotel, struggled to form a plan. They knew the disease passed through the air, and they considered closing Chicago schools, churches and places of public gatherings.
     But they didn't do it. When they requested that churches close voluntarily, religious leaders refused. The fear was that closing the schools would send children pouring into the streets, to spread the virus more quickly. So students attended classes in their overcoats, all the windows open to admit healthful air (which was considered so beneficial that, even before the flu, 700 Chicago children attended "Fresh Air Schools" that met outside).
     Streetcar windows and doors were also kept open; when chilly passengers closed them, officials nailed the doors and windows open.
     Still the plague advanced. The medical establishment, already strained by the war, was quickly swamped. Hotels were converted to hospitals, as was the Indian Hill Golf Club, its nursing staff made up of society women.
     Midway through the lethal month, Daily News columnist Frank Crane weighed in with his opinion: The Spanish flu was a fad, possibly a delusion, certainly no different from bugs of the 1890s, and "if we all take reasonable care of ourselves and by simple rules of health fortify ourselves against bad colds we shall not be in serious danger." The next day, 317 people died in Chicago of the flu.
     Efforts to stop the spread of the disease were remarkably haphazard. Taverns were kept open, but political meetings were banned—the election of 1918 was called "the speechless campaign." In the middle of the crisis, with hundreds dying every day, the city held a gigantic liberty loan parade through the Loop, the streets "jammed to the point of suffocation with cheering crowds."
     Police, however, were instructed to arrest parade goers who spat, and the city health commissioner warned those watching the parade "not to expose themselves to any chills."
     The city closed the theaters for 2 1/2 weeks. Hard-working actors found themselves suddenly stranded with time on their hands. Actor Tyrone Power Sr., whose son, Tyrone Jr., later became a film star, spent his idle time "tramping from one end of the city to the other" -- hiking was a fad at the time.
     Chicagoans, accustomed to going out, turned to other pursuits. The Chicago Public Library reported a 50 percent jump in book circulation. Mrs. Samuel T. Chase reported that society folk were "getting acquainted with their own families."
     The death toll peaked Oct. 17, when 520 people died. Many were among the poorest classes, who could not afford medical care. Charitable institutions, going door-to-door, found entire families sick, delirious and uncared for.
     Minds snapped. Even though the flu was fatal in only about 2 percent of the cases, it was seen as a death sentence. After his family became sick, Pater Marrazzo, a laborer living on South Morgan Street, cut his own throat and the throats of his wife and four children. Only he survived.
     Businesses were quick to try to cash in. All manner of nostrums advertised themselves as helpful against the flu, from Gude's Pepto-Mangan ("Fortify your body against Spanish Influenza") to Smo-ko Tobaccoless Cigarettes ("Influenza Germ Killer"). Something called Ely's Cream Balm advised "Cream Applied in Nostrils May Prevent Spanish Influenza."
      Even public health officials tended to intersperse practical advice with bunkum. "Wet feet will make you an easy victim of the 'flu,' Mr. and Mrs. Individual," warned John Hill Robertson, the city health commissioner.
     Toward the end of the month, the daily death toll began to fall. In November, the rate of infection and death dropped dramatically.
     By then the theaters had reopened, though a new act was added to every stage: a two-minute address by a city health department official on the subject of "How to Escape the Influenza."
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 18, 1998

Happiness is spread as easily as any virus

Josefina Olivo at home

     "The first thing that the plague brought to our fellow citizens was exile,” Albert Camus writes in his novel, "The Plague." That, and “being separated from a loved one… the greatest agony of that long period of exile.” 
     Which is why, even with everything going on, the little sidewalk celebrations that have been popping up everywhere are still noteworthy. They might not be as key as social distancing and hand washing. But they are still important—Camus thought such kindnesses were essential: “It may seem a ridiculous idea," he writes, "but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.”

     ”Abre la puerta!” said Josefina Olivo, seeing her family line the sidewalk in front of her house on West 58th Street. Open the door.
     ”No abre la puerta,” her son gently cautioned. Don’t open the door.
     It was March 20, Olivo’s 95th birthday. Five years ago her big family — she has five children, 19 grandchildren, 29 great-grandchildren — threw a big party for her at a fancy restaurant, with purple balloons, her favorite color.

      Now in the time of coronavirus, the woman referred to as “our matriarch” by her family stood in a purple dress — one granddaughter calls her “Lil Petunia” — and was serenaded with music and signs. She waved.
    Life has a habit of plucking away our joys even in the best of times. It was hard enough for Olivo, then in her late 80s, to stop making 20 lamb cakes every Easter — a tradition she borrowed from a Polish friend in the West Loop bindery where they worked. Pressed by her family — baking took three full days — she cut back to only 10 “los borreguitos,” or little lambs. Now she can’t even hug her grandchildren.
      Still, everyone is free to spread joy, even during a plague. With all the worries about contamination, jobs, supplies, social distancing, it should be noted that people also take time to brighten the days of loved ones, or even complete strangers.

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