Leafy suburban paradise roiled by COVID stats

Lee Goodman updates the COVID death toll on his sign in Northbrook

     The media consisted of a camera crew from ABC 7, a helicopter, and me.
     Although I was there in my unofficial capacity. Not as newspaper columnist but as local resident. I had heard the chopper, looked at my phone — 3:57 p.m. — and remembered that at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Lee Goodman would update the number on his sign to 200,000 to reflect how many Americans have died from COVID-19.
     Lee is the sort of fellow no town should be without and, indeed, most towns have one. The local gadfly, or activist — lately I’ve referred to him as “the spoon that stirs the pot.” A retired lawyer, Goodman left the profession to devote his full energies to endeavors such as posting a sign at the busy corner of Shermer and Walters, an area set aside for free expression. It is significant that the other sign, already there, is promoting the annual Lobster Sale at The Episcopal Church of St. James the Less.
     As much as I would like to dive into exploring the identity of St. James the Less — cousin of Jesus, apparently — let’s keep our focus on Goodman’s sign.
     I witnessed its arrival Saturday — again, again, not in my journalistic capacity, but as a man smoking a cigar while walking a little dog. The sign drew reaction: a zealous spontaneous rally celebrating the glories of Donald Trump and the insulting absurdity of suggesting that a large number of Americans have died of COVID. I watched the commotion, briefly, then left with the conviction that this is going to be a very long six weeks, if not six months, if not six years.
     Tuesday, while I gazed at the helicopter, wondering what it costs to keep that thing in the air, a large, angry man marched up. “Why is the president’s name there?” he demanded. “What’s Trump got to do with this?” I am not given to direct personal confrontation. But the slow pitch of that question just hung there, right over the plate. Why should this guy be the only one allowed to yell? I swung on my heels.
     “If you have to ask,” I said, con brio, “you’ll never know.”

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Apology to Wisconsin

     In mid-September, against my cautious nature, if not my better judgment, I drove up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to Ontonagon, on the shores of Lake Superior. 

     Yes, it was risky. I'd be hanging out with half a dozen guys for the weekend. Mostly careful, older men like me. A couple younger guys, in their 30s. All people outside the bubble.

      I made up my mind not to go, initially. I've gone, geez, seven times before. Nothing worth getting myself sick over. Yet when the moment came: "Yes or no?" I surprised myself by saying, "Yes."
     Why? I always go. The year I didn't go, nobody went. It was my fault. I take risks as it is: shop in stores. Do interviews. I've been safe so far. It was a calculated risk. This pandemic could go on for years. You can't cower forever. Mental health is as important as physical health.

     I was more concerned about the drive up. My pal who has a place in the UP said he had gotten some hostile looks from gas station attendants on the trek. The mask. I knew we would stop at Held's. We always stop at Held's, in Slinger Wisconsin, about 90 minutes out, to load up on beef jerky for the weekend. It's thick, soft, homemade beef jerky. I used to buy enough to bring home. A souvenir from the Great North. But my wife complained about it smelling up the kitchen. My older son coined the perfect description:
     "It tastes like a burned-down house."

     That it does. So I only bought a pound and a half—about $33. It didn't last a day. 

     I was worried about walking into Held's. The transaction. Would I wear my mask? Or would I cave to local convention and go in unprotected? When in Trumpland, do as the Trumpkins do. How timid is that? Wear the mask and not care? I'd only be inside for a minute. Not a rough crowd, exactly, but not high tea in Andersonville either. Last year, a guy in front of me had a pistol. Not in a holster. Just sticking out of his trousers pocket.

     "Obscure columnist beaten to death with a side of jerky for wearing a mask..."
     I was relieved to see this sign on the door. Insisting, politely. The clerk—nah, that's too highfalutin a term for Wisconsin—the guy behind the counter, wore a mask. He cut me a generous hunk of jerky.
      Honestly, I wasn't worried until the drive back. What had I done? Now I have to wait two weeks to see if I get sick. Plus, when I got back home, I began to worry I'd have to quarantine. Went online, tried to figure out the requirements. I have a research day Friday at the Newberry. Would I have to cancel? No, there was a window—their numbers were down, while I was there. The COVID quarantine gate didn't slam shut, for a second time, until Tuesday. Whew. That was lucky. I've been home for 10 days, and not so much as a tickle. Lucky. So I seem in the clear. 

     Bottom line: I'm glad I went. Took the heat in the sauna, plunged shouting into the frigid lake, hiked for a few hours, smoked cigars and drank can after can of Pabst Blue Ribbon NA. Talked and laughed and cooked—well, cleaned up, Rory did the cooking. Told jokes, dirty jokes, if you can imagine. It was a lot of fun, and fun can be hard to find nowadays.

    And although I did some across some kind of spontaneous Trump parade near the aptly-named Butte des Mortes, I was wrong about the mask situation. So my apologies, Wisconsin, for underestimating you. Those folks in Wisconsin can still manage to surprise. Let's hope they do it again in November.

Cologuard has drawbacks, but better than doing nothing

from Bartholomeo Eustachi: Tabulae anatomicae

     Three times a week is a lot to stand on my little newsprint soapbox, raise a tin trumpet to my lips, and blow.
     So if I expect you to regularly listen, I’d better not sound the same note, but skip from one tune to another. Because repetition is boring. But sometimes a shoe is left dangling, such as when I wrote about the Cologuard colon cancer test on Sept. 8.
     Reaction fell into two camps. Those grateful to learn of this new way to detect colon cancer with a home test. And those concerned with aspects I didn’t address.
     “Your comprehensive article on Cologuard does not cover the most obvious question — how many false positives? False negatives?” wrote Dr. Robert W. Brandstatter, a North Side dentist.
     “We have no real data to help guide patients and clinicians with what to do after a Cologuard test is done,” wrote Dr. Tibor Krisko, a New York gastroenterologist and assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical in New York City. “If positive, a colonoscopy is clearly warranted (though there is evidence to suggest many people with positive results do not get the all-important, potentially life-saving colonoscopy).”
     The traditional colonoscopy — a doctor snakes a tiny camera into your intestines to look for tumors — has drawbacks. You must go to a hospital, risky in the age of COVID. You’re under general anesthesia, also presenting risks. Doctors might perforate your colon with the probe. The procedure is uncomfortable, time-consuming and expensive. So 40% of adults skip the test, despite its big benefit: detecting cancer when early and treatable instead of advanced and lethal.

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Druthers

    

     The summer of 2020 ends today.
     Thank God. What a strange season. No travel. No ballgames. No family barbecues. A summer of masks and anxiety.
     And yet; there were definite highlights.
     Most nights, when our work was done, my wife and I would go walking in the Chicago Botanic Garden. It seemed important, and was relaxing, although not without its own set of challenges. When you walk in, under the trellis of flowers, you are presented with a choice: break left, toward the Rose Garden, or right, proceeding along the lagoon, or straight, toward the orchard.
     "Which way?" my wife would ask, unless I asked first.
     "If I had my druthers..." I began once.
    "What's a druther?" my wife asked, interrupting me. 
     I stopped, mouth open. I had no idea. I've been saying it ... forever. But what does the word mean? From the context, I'd say "choice." It sounds kinda British. A good name for a character in a P.G. Wodehouse novel. "Jeeves, prepared for a weekend at Lord Druthers' estate in Cambury!"
     I had a presentiment, pulling down the "D-E" volume of the Oxford that it wouldn't be there, and it wasn't: straight from "drut" an obscure term for "Darling, love, friend" to "Druvy" a varient of Drovy "turbid, not clear or transparent."
     Not in the Oxford. A regional term, then? An Ohioism? No...couldn't be. Not in the American Heritage either. Am I spelling it right? Could it be, oh, "durothers?" No.
     Okay, time to cheat and go online. Merrian Webster: "free choice: PREFERENCE —used especially in the phrase 'if one had one's druthers.'"

     Another online dictionary pegged it as "Informal—North American." That's us! Particularly this summer. I never put on a tie or a suit jacket, not once. I think I put on khakis once.

     But where did the word come from? Webster's read my mind:

     Druther is an alteration of "would rather." "Any way you druther have it, that is the way I druther have it," says Huck to Tom in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, Detective. This example of metanalysis (the shifting of a sound from one constituent of a phrase to another) had likely been around for some time in everyday speech when Twain put those words in Huck's mouth. By then, in fact, druthers had already become a plural noun, so Tom could reply, "There ain't any druthers about it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about druthers." Druthers is essentially a dialectal term and it tends to suggest an informality of tone, but in current use it doesn't necessarily suggest a lack of sophistication or education. 

      Whew, that's a relief. Or should I say a disappointment, given how popular abandonment of both sophistication and education have become. Too late now to try to fake our way into the uneducated crowd: just this morning my wife and I spent a while discussing the etymology of the expression "Oh my." My suspicion is that it's what's known as a "minced oath." A digression I'll save for another day.

Has our nation hit rock bottom yet?

 

     Almost four years ago I was tagging along with medical workers from the Night Ministry. We found ourselves standing before three people sprawled in a nest of blankets and sleeping bags off Lower Wacker Drive.
     At first I held back. Then, I gingerly nudged forward, afraid they’d clam up as soon as I took out my notebook. But they didn’t. They answered whatever question I asked — their names, what drugs they were taking. I could take pictures. They weren’t embarrassed. They didn’t care about anything except getting those drugs inside themselves.
     Addiction does that. You are locked into feeling that pleasure, or relief, or passing sense of normality. End of the story. You don’t care about the damage you’re inflicting upon yourself or others. You don’t care that the addiction is killing you. You could shake this emaciated woman and ask what her younger self would think of what she’s become. She’d stare back at you, hollow-eyed and uncomprehending. She doesn’t bother to eat food; what does she care about lost dreams?
     That’s why I have to laugh when my somehow still idealistic friends wonder when Donald Trump’s base will abandon him. When they will finally see the ruin his presidency has caused this country and regret their role in supporting it. That’s easy: never. They’ll never give him up, just as many addicts never quit their substances, except by dying.
     The concept of addiction is the best way to make sense of our country today. Trump makes his followers feel good. He soothes the ache in their broken parts. Like heroin, he makes them feel safe and secure even while doing the exact opposite. They’re not safe and secure, but on the street, endangered, living in a country wracked by a pandemic that their drug of choice trivializes and ignores. They’re teetering on an economic cliff, while shivering in fear at pipe-dream fears about socialized medicine.
     What do they care of deterioration of American democratic institutions? They’re in denial. That’s like asking a drunk driver whether his tires are properly inflated. All he cares about is how much is left in the half pint.

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Ginsburg death makes a bad season worse

 

"The Four Justices," by Nelson Shanks (National Portrait Gallery)

     The stakes, already high as could be, just got higher.
     But before we dive into politics, a pause, to contemplate the humanity too easily swept aside in the rush to spin and analyze.
     Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an American legal hero who struggled upstream against a rushing river of sexism to become a respected attorney, winning key court victories for the rights of women.
     She was a wife, mother and grandmother, and her passing Friday evening at age 87 — on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, a time of hope and renewal — is deeply felt. She is mourned by her family, friends, and a nation that had come to idolize her — well, half did, anyways — for her courage, incisive legal mind and relentless efforts for the marginalized.
     She was also a liberal associate justice on the United States Supreme Court, and her vacancy will be immediately filled by a grinning arch conservative whose name Donald Trump will blindly pluck off the list provided by the Federalist Society. A slim Republican Senate majority will lunge to approve that choice, possibly before the Nov. 3 election.
     Those frantically waving Mitch McConnell’s words from 2016, when he blocked Barack Obama appointee Merrick Garland from consideration, are painfully naive, if not fools, appealing to a sense of fairness that has utterly vanished. Amazing at this late date they could even bother scraping together outrage. We’re long past that. The gears of American life are greased by hypocrisy.

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Texas Notes: Jazz Break

Hamid Drake

     A musical interlude from our Austin bureau chief, Caren Jeskey.

     Ernest Dawkins and his ensemble took the Velvet Lounge stage and solemnly bowed to each of the four directions. Bedecked in intricately woven golden hued cotton and silk garb, fezzes, and dreadlocks, they began to play. Their hybrid of free jazz, funk and soul reached inside of us and elicited feelings we didn’t know we had. At one moment the upright bass soothed our souls, and in the next, bright sounds of a Treme-style trumpet kicked into full gear and had us on our feet.
     We were at the original Velvet Lounge on Indiana near 21st. With its exposed brick walls and red velvet wallpaper, and a collection of musicians and audience members who are there to truly listen and not just drink, it was a cozy and captivating place to be. When it relocated around the corner to a  swanker listening room on Cermak it still held its power. Fred Anderson, the proprietor, was one of Chicago’s jazz greats and endowed us with his brilliance. He was wise and generous enough to also treat us to a showcase of artists. Only the cream of the crop stood on his stage. When the glass door closed and the $20 cover was paid, patrons were expected to sit down and pay attention to the show, and that we did. Drinks were quietly and discreetly secured between sets. 

     Certain music elicits deep inner worlds where there are no words, but only mystery and  possibility. It shocks the listener into silence, first, by the sheer prowess of the voices and instruments and how they are used and second, by a huge sigh of relief that life can feel so darn good for a stretch of time.

     Hamid Drake is another gifted showman in our midst who I first met at Velvet Lounge— a percussionist extraordinaire. (By ours, I mean yours up in Chicago). He is a towering presence of power often adorned in clothing fit for a king and amulets with secret meanings. Though I more easily picture him in a chariot, one just might run into him at Starbucks on Lincoln and Wilson as I once did (as he sat to wait for his daughter who was in music classes at the Old Town School). The area around him seemed to be filled with a vibrating presence. Perhaps his drums followed him around? I wonder if having such genius in one’s mind takes up more space?
     Hamid’s discography is endless and includes work with The Mandingo Griot Society, Herbie Hancock, Pharaoh Sanders. He is dedicated to the creation of his art and COVID has not stopped him. This year marks the 30th consecutive Annual Winter Solstice Percussion Concert that Mr. Drake and his creative partner Michael Zerang will offer as way to bring reverence to that time of the year. It’s an experience designed to get us off of the conveyor belt of holiday chaos and into a quiet, reflective zone.
     I started going to these concerts back in my Velvet Lounge days, the early 2000s. At that time they were running for 3 days straight— the 21st, 22nd and 23rd of December— at Links Hall on the corner of Sheffield, Newport, and Clark. The first time I went I was hooked and returned as many times as possible year after year. We’d line up at about 4:30 a.m. to be sure we’d have a good place to sit. The doors opened at 5:30 or so, and we’d silently shuffle up the stairs, many of us clutching pillows and meditation cushions. When we entered the dark space, we could just make out two drum kits set on woven rugs in the center of the hardwood floored room. Hundreds of tea light candles surrounded the drum kits. Peppered all around the kits were frame drums, mallets, bells, shells, rattles and other music makers. Floor to ceiling windows overlooked the 'L' tracks.
     I’d sit on the floor as close to Hamid’s kit as possible. Hamid and Michael would silently walk in at about 6 a.m., sit down, and start to play. They'd play on and on through rumbling 'L' trains as the sun came up. If I didn’t know better I’d think the trance we all fell into was drug induced, but it was not. When it ended we’d feel a sense of well-being, thanks to a combination of the steady, deeply resonant beats and the shared and joyful experience. We were wowed by the unique and unparalleled techniques we’d just witnessed. They played off of each other, speaking in the language of music. Sometimes it was delicate and tinkling, other times thunderous. There were also deep moments of silence. We felt we were hearing a lullaby that drowned out fears and doubts, and replaced them with an emptier mind with more space to rest and breathe. Whether we were heading to brunch or to work the rest of the day would be blanketed in a sense of calm. 

     This year I see that the show is planned to be held virtually at ESS, also known as Elastic Arts, in their Quarantine Concert Series. Who knows where we will be in December of 2020, this mad year? Instead of being glued to the revolution that very well may still be televised, perhaps we can consider taking a break.