Walk in the garden

     You cannot say, "Let there be light," and there will be light. 
     Oh, you can flip on the lights. But that's not quite the same.
     Maybe a better example: You cannot create the heavens and the earth. Nor can you turn Lot's wife into a pillar of salt.
    In fact, I can only think of one activity enjoyed by God in the Bible that you can also do yourself: stroll in a garden.
    "And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day," is how Genesis 3:8 puts it.
     Though I bet God didn't have to reserve a time, the way we do now that the Chicago Botanic Garden has re-opened into the COVID-19 era. You have to snag an hour slot—I've never been turned away, but it takes a bit of fussing on the computer and drains a little of the spontaneity away. You don't just go, but instead watch the clock and arrive during your appointed hour. They check the ticket on your phone going in.
     Still, it hasn't kept my wife from visiting the Botanic Garden four times in the past week. Quite a lot, really. We must need it, must need to admire the glorious flowers at our feet and the gorgeous vistas stretching in all directins. The rolling 385-acre garden is a welcome relief after being cooped up at home, a chance to soak in beauty, stretch our legs, converse with each other. You're outside, so while people do tend to wear masks, at least while passing  on the paths, for most of the visit you can let yours dangle from an ear.
     The Botanic Garden is a place you can go again and again and it never gets dull.  It is divided into a variety of realms: The rose garden. The English walled garden. The Japanese garden. The prairie. And so on.

    "We've never been to this part before," I'll say, something as a running joke, something as an acknowledgement that it changes so much it seems like a new place. Different times of day, of year, qualities of light, blooms. If you look to your right it's a completely different experience than if you look left. 
     Yes, it's high standards have suffered from the pandemic. A little sign apologized for the weeds that haven't been picked by the volunteers who can't come. Though in truth, I hadn't noticed them before, and it made me think that perhaps my practice of confessing my flaws before they can be pointed out is unwise, alerting readers to deficiencies they'd overlook otherwise. Still, for an hour afterward, my wife and I would point out various prickly intruders and say, "Look, a weed!"
     Which in my case is hypocrisy itself, since I have a ton of weeds at home, in my own garden. Now that I think of it, God also plants a garden in the Bible—"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden" (Genesis 2:8). But that achievement is closer to the other divine tasks of molding universes, destroying cities, and other superhuman efforts that are off-limits to we mortals, who suffer should we even attempt them.
     At least I do. I have a garden at home, but cannot walk in it, not for long. I can kneel in it, and do, pulling the weeds and grasses that grow with enormous profusion. But that is more obligation than pleasure, though if we don't get decent tomatoes this year, I swear I'm going to turn it into a rectangle of green-dyed concrete, my own version of an angry God smiting those who deceive him, and call it good.

   

Texas Notes: Bitter and Sweet

     EGD's Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey moved this week, but still found time to check in. 

     “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect, ” said Anais Nin. I am not so sure I want to taste many moments of this pandemic life twice, yet I often feel guilty about the lack of gratitude for my life as it is. I wonder who else feels that way? I am caught between two worlds lately— the bearable one consists of mantras used to clear my mind (aka cognitive restructuring), delightful breezes on hot days, arms raised to catch the stroke of wind under sweaty armpits, peaceful and endless walks into the dusk and then into the soft blanket of darkness, and doses of magical thinking that seem to make everything OK.
     Then there’s the world of harsh realities, which for me includes job loss (and job gain) and housing loss in the past 12 weeks. This necessitated a move during a mind boggling COVID spike in Austin, thankfully to a very sweet, (albeit temporary) soft landing spot— a tiny house, in fact, how cool is that? See? Feeling guilty for the ingratitude already. I had to tell you of the silver lining right away because I feel I am not allowed to say “this whole thing has been so scary that I’ve lost countless nights of sleep and wake up many mornings in full panic mode not knowing quite why, until I remember,” since that will just be met with “count your blessings,” “we love you,” “you can do this” and other phrases that in effect snuff out the very feelings I am trying to honestly share. This only serves to make me feel more alone.
     “But Caren, you’re _______ [insert here a yoga teacher, a therapist, a meditator, so strong] and you’ve got this!” I hear myself saying “sure, I do, I know,” and apologize for taking up so much time. I turn back to myself, returning to my true feelings of gut-punch grief for all of the lives lost and knowing that this virus has changed the world forever. I do not let myself dwell upon fears of who else might be lost. On one level this feel responsible. I have been taught not to “future trip” or worry about what might happen. On the other hand, why is it not OK to be who we are, with our fears and hopes alike?
     The good news (there I go again) is that I have found myself in a deeper way than ever before. I reside in my own skin and am comfortable there. I do not resent those with pat advice designed to cheer me up (though depression cannot be cheered up) and I just hope that I become more and more self sufficient and know what to do when the unpleasant kind of darkness comes.
     Over the years the words of Thomas Banyacya, Sr. (1910-1999) known as Speaker of the Wolf, Fox and Coyote Clan and and Elder of the Hopi Nation have been shared with me many times by wise teachers and friends. The words have taken on a new meaning— an excerpt: “To My Fellow Swimmers: Here is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid, who will try to hold on to the shore. They are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river and keep our heads above water. And I say see who is there with you and celebrate. The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves. Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. For we are the ones we have been waiting for. I am the one I’ve been looking for.”
     Even with the low points, forced solitude and material insecurity have given me a lush playground. I’ve been able to become self-reliant. I do not feel let down by others. I feel a love for myself, friends, family and even strangers in increasing frequency. To cultivate this — when I am up to it and not stuck in a morass of fear in between my ears — I repeat “may you be well, happy and peaceful,” in my mind towards each person whose path crosses mine. Why not? If I can learn to live with my own pain, receive love and gifts from others without demanding it, and learn to be the best cog in the wheel of life that I can be, this is a life worth living. I admit that I have stuck my tongue out at two separate drivers while on COVID walkabouts when they did not yield, but hey? Progress not perfection is alright with me.
     Carl Jung suggested that to feel a deeper sense of well-being we can find our inner partner rather than looking outwards to material possessions or attachments to other people. Turns out I quite like my inner partner. Hi Caren! (That’s not weird). In finding this unconditional love of myself with all of its aspects, I find myself chuckling more (walking down the street laughing isn’t weird either). Sometimes I have a big smile on my face that seems odd (no comment) but when I check in I feel truly happy so why not smile? Sure, the pull of a lifelong depression still, and may always, grab for my ankles or sit on my chest. It might put my insides on the outside, leaving me raw and exposed. I usually know that this will pass, and I will feel better tomorrow, or the next day, or at least the day after that.
     For years I've known that yoga and other healing modalities can bring us more into our bodies and inner being, out of our self-critical and judgmental minds, and assuage loneliness. It seems years of practice are paying off now. I still feel grief, sadness, despair and the whole range of human emotions but I also feel a stillness at my core. I no longer try to run away from uncomfortable feelings and instead welcome myself completely.
     For now, for me, it will be “clear mind” on the inhale, “don’t know, don’t know, don’t know” on the exhale, which Ana Forrest suggested during a mediation class at Moksha Yoga Chicago back in the early 2000s. The premise is that if we can stay in the moment life will feel more worth living. Or, as Timothy Leary’s friend Ram Dass reminds us, “be here now.” This is easy enough when one has few earthly problems or is able to put them aside for periods of time to meditate. I will continue to do whatever it takes — avoid, deflect, deny, accept — to be present in moments of connection with the good things in life. There was the spry little black and white speckled red-beaked woodpecker in the tree in my new yard today, my new landlord’s orange kitty Dolley using my (hairy COVID) legs as a scratching post, feeding popcorn to the backyard chickens and saying hello to the kind souls who offered me a furnished tiny home of 288 square feet (with a washer/dryer and bidet!) until the next step emerges.

It won’t kill you to get out of the house

     Summer rain pelted my face as I stood on my pedals, flying down the gravel trail alongside the I&M Canal. For one moment, boom, the whole knotted mess just fell away — the virus, the masks, the mango Lord of the Lies, everything — and I was just a kid on a bike going through the woods in far southwest Channahon. Gliding through green leaves, past great blue herons and angular waterways that were part of history yet also right there.
     Or more precisely, I realized it was gone. That somehow the door to my electronic cage had swung open and I had slipped back into the living world. It took a bit of groping to reconstruct regular life: each day a carbon copy of the day before, walking the dog, meals, work, sleep, rinse, repeat.   

     How’d I get from that treadmill to a village in Will County? Looking back, they didn’t actually invite me. What the folks hyping Illinois & Michigan Canal — ”This outdoor museum, perfect for social distancing, is the nation’s first official National Heritage Area” — did was offer photos and a phone call.
     ”Please let us know if you would be interested in images or if you would like to speak with Robin Malpass regarding the Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Area,” is how they put it.
     How about, I countered, we explore the area together? Like most men, I had a hidden agenda — to clap eyes on the I&M Canal, the pathway that led baby Chicago on its first tottering steps from being a few hovels clustered around the pointy log stockage of Fort Dearborn to the sprawling, skyscrapered, dynamic, carnival of a metropolis — on summers other than this one that is — we know and love.

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Damn you, J.B., for trying to save our lives!

      When pausing to photograph this distinctive sign in generally pleasant, rustic Channahon Monday. I did not consider the juxtaposition with the nostalgic tableau next to it: the classic Schwinn bicycle, its basket full of flowers, the sweet little girl statue.
    And then "J.B. PRITZKER SUCKS." In case you can't read the fine print, it continues, "THE LIFE OUT OF ILLINOIS SMALL BUSINESS."
     It was only later, looking at the picture, that the disconnect between folksy and hateful jumped out. Which is rather like what often happens when you meet people downstate—lovely folks, on the surface, but with a few odious beliefs jingling around their pockets like loose ammunition. 
     The sign doesn't go on to explain exactly how the governor is hoovering vitality from mom and pop establishments. No room and, besides, it's a given. It's assumed you know the problem is his closing down the state, more or less, trying to keep residents from dying of COVID-19.
     Can't the guy who posted the sign see what happens when you don't? 52,000 new cases. Tuesday. Isn't trying to tamp down that curve—surging up again—the kind of effort that even residents of this small community, 60 miles southwest of Chicago, can wrap their heads around. It's not like you need a Ph.D. to figure it out.
      Then again, I have a job, and my wife has a job. Maybe if we were sitting on our hands, day after day, watching our livelihoods shrivel and die and our life savings dwindle away, we might have a very different take on the matter. I don't want to be one of those guys sitting warm and dry in the boat, raising my hot tea and lemon to my lips, tut-tutting at how unseemly are all those thrashing about in the water, splashing in such an unseemly fashion. And those awful cries! Really. Can't they sink wordlessly? That's what I'd do in their position. Blow a few kisses at the governor as I expire.
     Or am I succumbing to that Democratic folk disease, empathy? Wear your fuckin' mask, Jethro.
     If I had presence of mind, I'd have pulled over and knock on the door (and no doubt been shot through it by someone in fear for his life; it isn't only the Right who can traffic in stereotypes). But I was already 20 minutes late—construction traffic on the Stevenson—heading down, and after I had been biking for three hours and just wanted to get home and eat dinner.
    Then again, I don't need to quiz the sign owner. This week the Sun-Times ran a story on the dozen or so death threats against the governor. The Illinoisans making the threats seem to be mostly the mentally ill, or the incarcerated, and not beleaguered small businessmen whose cupcake shops are languishing due to social distancing. The true nature of people come out in a crisis, for good and ill, and it is to be expected that along with the selfless acts of nurses and social service types there are bitter red staters just itchin' to shoot sumptin'.  Not to tell the governor his business, or make my colleague's work any more difficult, but myself, I'd squelch reports of death threats, just so as not to give anybody any ideas. 
     Think about how much you have to hate somebody to condemn him on a sign in your front yard. I like to think, no matter how extreme a situation I'd find myself in, I wouldn't do that. In fact, I don't have to assume. I know. For three years I've watched a liar, bully, fraud and traitor ripping at the foundations of my beloved country, which is worse than driving your bar into receivership. And yet not once found myself condemning him to passing cars. 
    Although, now that I think of it, I have put up a sign.  A neighbor had them printed up, and I eagerly bought one and placed it at the strip of forest along the edge of our yard. Here it is.

   

Virus mystery: The case of the missing Fresca

 

     It is not the most pressing question.
     Let’s get that said right away.
     Among the clamor of impassioned debates and thorny controversies, solving this particular puzzle is not high on anybody’s list. Not even mine, which is why through April, May and the first half of June, I stifled my curiosity, certain that even asking is the definition of privilege.
     The world in chaos — sirens screaming through the streets, a raging pandemic, flames of unrest licking the foundations of our deeply racist society, jobs shattered, the helm spinning. Envision a tumultuous landscape, smoke billowing, thick with cops in riot gear battling protesters waving signs, all noise and conflict and commotion.
     I raise a finger and clear my throat, “A-hem!,” and it somehow magically falls still and silent. All heads — sweaty, masked, soot-stained — swivel in my direction, and I inquire:
     “What happened to Fresca?”

     Because I really like Fresca and typically enjoy a can at lunch. Then Fresca just vanished from stores in March. But unlike toilet paper, it never came back, at least not to the Sunset or the Jewel or other stores near me. There must be a reason, right? If only there were an organization, a company perhaps, that I could ask . . . but who . . . who . . . ?
     Here is where 35 years of journalist experience comes in.
     “I’m a news columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times,” I began in my plea to the Coca-Cola Co. “I’m wondering where Fresca is and when it might come back.”

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Wear your damn mask: State of the Blog: Year Seven

  

O'Hare, Feb. 13, 2020

     Are you having a good pandemic? I mean, not dead, and nobody you know dead? Not yet anyway. Good, good, that's the important thing.
     And your job? Secure so far? Excellent. Mine too. Sure, it could change at any time. But that was true before COVID-19 burst out of whatever bat's ass or pangolin's lymph gland or wherever the hell it came from. In December. Times can change. Fast.
     Not round here, of course. We soldier on, immutable. Every ... goddamn ... day. I won't belabor the state of the blog this year. First, I realized—and file this under "Obvious, realizations of"—that I've been doing two summations each year. One at the end of June, since the blog began July 1, 2013. And another at the end of December. That's one too many.
     No number crunching this time, for instance. Spambots made that pointless. One day in January we had 246,583 hits, which is about 245,000 more than usual. I thought, fleetingly, of presenting that as some kind of triumph. Alas, it's not. I don't think the whirling Chinese techno-dervish or thrumming chip caused the spike benefited from my high caliber prose. Otherwise, we lope along as usual, doing about the traffic we did three years ago—somewhat shy of 2,000 views a day.
     Hardly worth doing, right? Though if there were a hall with 1,500 people in it, I sure would show up, and be amazed and pleased at how I had packed them in. So it shouldn't be different here, though of course it is. Perhaps tweeting this every day is the problem. Every attitudinal 40-year-old seems to have 200,000 followers on Twitter. I have 8,600 and am stuck there. Twitter feels like I'm printing the day's blog out, rolling it into a tube, sticking it in a bottle and casting it into the sea.
     Again, hardly seems worth doing. 
     But it is, because, well, if not this, what? What would I do instead? Watch television?
     I must like paddling my little canoe among the big tankers and destroyers and nimble racing sloops of the more significant communications efforts. Year Seven certainly has been personally memorable, with all that spine surgery in July—an oddly uplifting experience, sort of in the way Churchill once said nothing is more exhilarating for a man than to be shot at without effect.  And then in February I wrote about getting a new hip. Which I'm reluctant to even mention now—makes me sound old and falling apart. But if I have one overarching principle to this, it's "Be who you are." I think a lot of bad writing comes from people trying to be who they're not—better, younger, smarter, whatever.  A writer doesn't want to sit around vomiting out complaints and unwelcome personal details either. But I think there's a sweet spot in there and I hope that, on some days, I hit it.
     The pandemic arrived in mid-February. My wife and I were on our way to New York, and a JAL flight crew came by, all masked, and I stepped in front of them and snapped off a picture of the unusual sight and sent it to the city desk. Might be news. Turns out it was, though we didn't realize it quite then.
      My goal was to cover the story, best I could, and not just sit on my ass in Northbrook, and I was satisfied I carried my share of the burden. I had contacts at hospitals, and so brought readers there, into the struggle to fight the virus, first at Mount Sinai, then Roseland. I started working regularly with one of our excellent staff photographers, Ashlee Rezin Garcia, and that was a very rewarding and fun collaboration.
     Three days a week EGD features my column from the paper. The other four I'll repost old columns, or write a fresh essay.  Saturdays I tried for a change of pace, for something fun. If you remember, I used to run the Saturday Fun Activity, but got tired of sending out prizes. Then I shifted to the Saturday snapshot, usually sent in by readers, and that proved a lovely rest at the end of the week. In April, Saturdays were given over to an uprooted Chicagoan now living in Austin, Texas, Caren Jeskey, and her detailed and heartfelt reports have been a welcome addition to the blog—some weeks her numbers are better than anything I've written.
     What else? The University of Chicago Press asked me to write a book entitled "Every goddamn day: Neil Steinberg's Chicago." That seems a kind of significance. Though the title may be a little deceptive. It's not a collection of blog posts, but a quotidian history of Chicago in 366 dated entries. (Jan. 1, 1920 is the beginning of the Palmer raids, eager Chicago cops jumping the gun on the rest of the country. Jan. 2, 1900 is the reversal of the Chicago River, and so on). I've had a lot of fun working on it,  It's due in March, which probably puts it out in early 2022.  The neat thing about that structure is it is limiting, like haiku. You have to choose which episodes to explore. Some days there are three or four worthy candidates. I'm working hard to get the balance and tone right, and it speaks to the question: what is history? What stories do we tell and why do we tell them?
    Which is the same challenge I have here. Thanks for sticking around for seven years while I try to figure it out.  Thank you to the core dozen or two who regularly comment, and of course to my advertiser, Marc Schulman of Eli's Cheesecake. Thank you to John for birddogging all the typos. Thanks to Caren Jeskey—like the readers, I've enjoyed getting to know her—for all your hard work. Thank you Ashlee Rezin Garcia for allowing me to repost your marvelous and dramatic photographs.
     I remember, when I began the blog, reading somewhere that most people make the mistake of giving up too soon, and one should stick it out three years to see if it's going to catch fire. I've stuck it out double that plus a year, and success, whatever that is, still floats somewhere in the distance.
    Unless just doing this is the success. "You are the music," T.S. Eliot writes, in the last section of "The Dry Salvages"—I've been reading a lot of Eliot this year—"While the music lasts."

For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying.

     That sounds about right.

Statue savvy? Play to (not) win big prizes!

     Howdy folks, it’s time to play ... WHEEL ... OF ... DISASTER!
     Let’s get right to it. Give the old sinister circle a spin and see what comes up.
     Click click click click....
     What will it be? Raging Global Pandemic? Spreading Economic Collapse? Erratic, Ineffectual and Traitorous President? Ongoing Social Unrest? Murder of Chicago Children in Unchecked Random Violence?
     And it’s .... it’s ...
     Destruction of Civic Monuments. A good one! Johnny, a little background if you please.
     Thank you Neil. Along with peaceful protests following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis came anger directed at monuments to to the slaveholding South. First confined to Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee, eventually far more laudable historical figures, like Ulysses S. Grant and George Washington found also themselves toppled.
     Thank you Johnny. Let’s get the round started. For $50, answer the following: On Friday, the president of the United States issued an executive order related to monuments. Did he a) Resolve to address the festering institutional racism that sparked these attacks on public iconography; b) Form a committee to investigate how the federal government collaborated with the defeated Confederacy to steamroll the rights of its newest citizens; c) attempt to knit up our unraveling rule of law by assuring citizens that we are all part of this grand, if flawed American experiment or d) promise to prosecute “to the fullest extent permitted” anyone caught damaging a public monument or statue? Suzy!

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