‘Every difficult problem ... is disguising a blessing’

 

André De Shields in "Hadestown."

     Christmas has pagan roots, in holidays designed to illuminate the darkness of winter and keep the gathering cold at bay with the warmth of love and celebration.
     Which can be tough to manage in the best of times. Our COVID-19 Christmas, with so many people isolated, careers wrecked, bank accounts emptied, is even harder.
     You need a light to guide you.
     On top of everything, 2020 has been almost entirely devoid of live performance: no concerts, no theater. Unless you were lucky enough to catch one at the beginning of the year, and I was. Singer Anaïs Mitchell took the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice and turned it into a thoughtful musical, “Hadestown.” Last February, just before the world shut down, my wife and I met our boys in New York City and we saw it on Broadway.
     In the tale, lovely Eurydice goes down to Hell to live with Hades, king of the underworld, and her lover Orpheus tries to bring her back, with a helping hand from Persephone, Hades’ wife. Her absence brings the winter; her return, the spring.
     The star of the show is veteran Broadway actor André De Shields, and he has one line that kept returning to my mind as the days grew shorter, colder and grimmer.
     “The world ... came back ... to life!”

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Bye bye BK Lounge

Burger King's creepy mascot

     Food is emotional.
     That's obvious. Every bite wrapped in taste and memory, smell and perception. Satisfying a craving older than language, older than fire, broader than humanity, felt by every creature, from flea to vole, hawk to whale.

    Yet for some reason, as obvious as that is, as much as I've not only eaten, but thought about eating, talked about it, wrote about it, the food/emotion link didn't really stand up and wave until I read that the Burger King in Evanston has closed permanently. 

     Because I felt nothing.
      Which is odd for several reasons. The food at McDonald's is crap, generally, but I nevertheless have fond feelings toward the chain, despite its way creepy mascot, Ronald. A bond stretching back to the red and white tile buildings that had nowhere to sit (okay, a small alcove, if 50 year old memory series, that people never actually used). I have complex associations with the yellow paper that wraps McDonald's cheeseburgers, and every year or three I find myself wanting one—the way you taste that pickle when you bite into it. Somehow the pickle is key, the ketchup. The cheeseburger itself is just the vehicle.

     Every few years, I think, "I'd like a McDonald's cheeseburger." Despite being sober. And I have to actively remind myself of that grotesque moment after you've eaten something  from McDonald's, and your body shudders with the violation done to it, and you feel that oily residue on your teeth, and that McDonald's smell, the same smell that invades every corner of a Metra car the moment someone opens a McDonald's bag, started to percolate out your pores. I think it's the grease.
     Burger King is far better, food-wise. Flame-broiled. Real lettuce. Its own even more horrifying mascot. Yet Burger King is an eternal also-ran, Pepsi to McDonald's Coke. I might have to bat away temptation to patronize McDonald's every few years, but I never, ever think: "We should go to Burger King." It never crosses my mind, and were it to vanish, I would never notice it was gone, the way you typically never wonder what happened to Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips. The last Burger King I ate in was seven years ago, because I happened to be in a car with someone who stopped at Burger King to eat as we were driving to the UP.
    Even stranger. I have very specific memories of that Burger King in Evanston, closed permanently due to the pandemic after 44 years in business. "The BK Lounge" we called it, an undergraduate stab at ... what? Hipness I suppose.

     I lived for two years directly across the street, 1725 Orrington Avenue, at what was then the Northwestern Apartments, a vast 600 student freshman hive. The building is still there, but it's the McManus Center, housing Kellogg School of Management students and their families.  Once upon a time, reporters would have hung out, interviewing people going in and out of the center about their views of Burger King closing. But nobody has the staff or the time or the inclination anymore, and there's a pandemic going on, and even the Daily Northwestern didn't bother. Nor did it track down anyone with memories of the place.

     Here, I'll do your legwork for you, and contribute mine, for what it's worth.

     My first day at college, in 1978. My family drove in from Berea, Ohio. We unloaded my boxes of records and stereo system and big ass speakers and steamer trunk. Then it was time for lunch, and we trooped across the street to Burger King.
     Here's the memory: we get our food—burgers, fries, soft drinks, not much else you could get there back then. Whoppers, I suppose. And my little brother is fussing with his ketchup packet, for the fries, and both squeezes and tears it at the same moment, projecting a splurt of red ketchup across my sternum.
    And I remember looking down at the splash, with dumb bovine incomprehension, then up at him, and then off to the side, as if looking for the studio audience. I wasn't mad. I wasn't even particularly surprised. It was almost as if I had expected this, or something like it, and now it had occurred. The reaction was more a "So this is how it's going to be, eh?" resignation. Which was apt, because that was indeed about how it went. 

Happy birthday, pizza matriarch Jean Malnati

Jean Malnati, center, with sons Rick, left, and Marc.

     We had a nickname for my Grandma Sarah: “The Christ Child.” Please forgive the blasphemy. But she was born on Christmas Day, and certainly adored. Besides, it wasn’t our religion we were playing loose and weird with.
     People born on Christmas get their celebrations lost in the glare of the holiday. Even those born near the holiday. In some ways, they have it worse. All the preparations, the distractions, and not even the quiet of Christmas Day. Add COVID, when all our birthdays are denied the attention they deserve.
     And some individuals really deserve attention.
     Where to begin? Let’s start in 1980, with the great Sun-Times sports columnist Bill Gleason sitting in the Bears locker room, amidst the discarded tape and sweaty socks, having a post-game chat. Gleason brings up Brian Piccolo, the Bears running back who died of cancer 10 years earlier, at age 26.
     “What made you think of Brian?” he is asked.
     Gleason replies he always thinks of Brian this time of year. Someone makes it easy for him to remember.
     “He is garlanded with fresh flowers, a gentle hero among us,” Gleason later wrote, “because a lady who is beautiful on the inside as well as on the outside throws a party for him every autumn.”
     That lady is Jean Malnati, who with her husband, Lou, founded Lou Malnati’s Pizza in 1971. She is one of those unfortunates whose birthday (Dec. 22) falls around Christmas.
     “We’ll always have the Brian Piccolo Scholarship Party,” Jean told Gleason, 40 years ago. “I’ve never given a thought to discontinuing it.”

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Sore loser

Stag at Sharkey's, by George Bellows (Cleveland Museum of Art)

    “Honey, I forgot to duck.” 

     Many people credit that line to Ronald Reagan, who supposedly said it to his wife Nancy after being shot on March 30, 1981.
     But as was often the case with Reagan, he was just re-packaging popular culture from his youth. In this case, what Jack Dempsey said to his wife after losing to Gene Tunney in Philadelphia in 1926.
     "What happened?" Estelle Taylor wailed.
     "Honey..." etc., Dempsey said.
     “From that day on, the gallant loser was a folk hero whose fame never diminished,” Red Smith wrote when Dempsey died in 1983. Dempsey was far more popular than Tunney, who beat him. Twice.
      "Gallant loser." Now, there's a concept you just don't see bruited around much in 2020.  When did showing class in defeat go out of style? Because among the long line of pejoratives that can be accurately added to Donald Trump's name—liar, bully, fraud, con man, traitor, adulterer, cad, hypocrite, imbecile—the most recent should be among the most damning: the sorest loser ever, like so much about the man, is contrary to decades if not centuries of American values, in this case, all notions of sportsmanship, dignity, fair play. 

     Not a drop of grace, style, pizzazz. Just bracing himself in the doorway, squinching his eyes closed and screaming that he ain't going. No no no no NO!

     He will go, of course. Because he lost.  Not that he admits it. No, we get this constant whining sound. This shriek. It's like a sawmill. It's unbearable. Yet millions smile and nod. That's our guy! Loser McLoser, bitchin' about losing.

      I mean, if he wants to be president so much, you'd think he'd spend these last few weeks being president. It isn't as if there's no pressing work to be done. Instead he's on the toilet, tweeting.

      Really. Imagine if other people started imitating Trump. Sports would grind to a halt, first of all. Every play appealed, every call questioned. The cheers for every victor would be drown out by the howls of the defeated. No official would ever leave office, no county commissioner replaced without leaving claw marks on his desk. It would be awful. 

     Just this one situation is awful. Doesn't he have any friends? Obviously not. 
     I guess 40 percent of Americans don't care. They're like parents of a newborn. The spittle dribbling down the onesie is beautiful. They fall asleep at night smiling to the lullaby of his infantile mewls of "No fair!" The 2-year-old tantrums of "rigged election." The fact free farting of conspiracy crap?  C'mon folks. Discipline your child.

     I've had years to wrap my head around it, but it's still difficult. Our troubled yet in some ways still glorious democracy. Thrown over for this. This crybaby. It's like trading your house on the lake for a cardboard box on Lower Wacker Drive. 

Countdown to anti-vaccine backlash

 

Dr. Nancy Glick, an infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital, prepares for its first round of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccinations. (photo by Ashlee Rezin Garcia for the Sun-Times)  

   
     Welcome to the Chicago Sun-Times Latin Lockdown Workshop. Please direct your attention to the chalkboard, where I’ve written: “Post hoc ergo propter hoc.”
     Let’s say it together and remember to trill your Rs. Ancient Romans called “R” the “littera canina,” or dog letter, for the little growl in it.
     “Post hoc, errrgo prrropter hoc.”
     Good, good.
     In English: “After this, therefore because of this.” It’s what we pointy-heads call a “logical fallacy,” the faulty circuit that connects you to a wrong conclusion when two events occur close together.
     I mention it now because the joy of getting millions of vaccines to millions of American arms will be quickly followed by a backlash of imaginary bad results. That isn’t a crystal ball prediction; it’s a take-it-to-the-bank certainty. With the exception of a few extremely rare allergic reactions, the most common vaccine side effect will be passing soreness. But some getting the vaccine will blame it for later being hit by a bus. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
     “With the vaccine, you’ve got to be careful when you hear side effects,” said Dr. Michael Ruchim, a gastroenterologist at Northwestern Medicine well-versed in pharmaceutical trials. “The question arises, ‘Are they cause and effect? Or something random the person getting the vaccine was going to get anyway?’” On average, 730 Americans per 100,000 die every year. About two a day. So if you give everyone in a random group of 100,000 a teaspoon of water, expect 14 to die over the next week. From heart attacks. Cancer. Hit by buses.
     Now give them a vaccine. A week later, another 14 deaths. But in public perception, the vaccine is now deadly. Two people died the very next day! Don’t laugh, this is how the anti-vaxxer movement started. “Timmy got a polio shot, and now he’s autistic!”
     Especially since vaccines will be given to seniors first, who are not a random slice of the population but a group already more likely to get sick.

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Stud

     

     So we're remodeling the downstairs TV room. A new light maple floor over the hideous old white linoleum one. New cool blue paint. It seemed criminal to return the dented, chipped, rusty beige metal baseboard heater covers. So into the garbage with them, and in with fancy baseboard covers that look great. Cover Luxe from Plastx. I was hesitant to order an element of the house made of plastic. But we have a small bathroom with even more foul baseboard covers—you don't want to know—and I ordered a small Plastx cover for that, as an experiment, and it looks awesome. I grew up with plastic being a shoddy, flimsy material. But it seems they've gotten better at it. The plastic is sturdy, looks better than the metal, and won't corrode like metal does. 
     I might have hired somebody to put the covers in, but during the small one in the bathroom experiment, I seemed to manage, even though it involved the Cirque du Soleil level calisthenic trick of folding myself into a corner behind the toilet while drilling, I seemed to manage. 

    The fancy baseboard covers require brackets to be put into the studs. I usually shrug off the whole "put-it-into-a-stud" aspect of home improvement—the framed posters and paintings never fall off the wall. But these fancy baseboard covers really need to sit flush. Tight. My wife urged me to and, reader, she was right. This demanded a stud finder. Off to Ace, where they had one that cost $30, a Zircon, the substance that Frank Zappa encrusts a pair of heavy duty tweezers with in his ode to dental floss, "Montana." I held it in my hand and thought. "This can't work." It looks like the data recorder from some 1970s Chinese line of knock-off Star Trek toys. 

     On Amazon, checking its dozens of cautionary reviews, frantically waving off potential buyers—"Doesn't work" and "Garbage" and "More accurate randomly guessing" and "You couldn't give me a free one"—I got the impression it was an unwise purchase. To work, it seems a stud finder must cost $75, at least.

      If you live 60 years without a particular device, the temptation is to keep going through life without it. I strolled through YouTube, the home improvement amateur's friend. First looking at videos evaluating the vast universe of stud finders when I noticed this one, "5 genius ways to find a stud ... without a stud finder." Intrigued, I gave it a look, and they said basically, to get a general idea where the stud should be, since the electrical socket box will be screwed against one, then wave a strong magnet up and down and you'll find a nail in the stud (for readers even more clueless about construction than I am, "stud" refers, not to a certain kind of man's wildly-inaccurate self image in the 1990s, but to the vertical 2x4 lumber within a wall). 
     I looked at the metal bulletin board in our kitchen, and there, holding coupons, was a red magnetic dart from a long-ago dart set—I guess the idea was that these would not be as injurious if the boys started throwing them at each other. It needed a pretty strong magnet to affix itself to a target when thrown from a distant, and the tail made a handy way to hold it.   

    Damn. It worked. I passed the dart up and down the wall by the electrical socket, then at 16 inch intervals, and found the studs to put the anchors in so my brand new baseboard covers would be flush to the wall and not pull away. I loved having the little red dart just stuck to the wall, boldly outing the deeply closeted nail head, bird-dogging the stud, telling me where to screw the baseboard bracket. It was an arduous morning of lying on our new floor, concentrating not to somehow drag the spinning drill bit across it, putting in those brackets, cutting the moldings to length. But I put an entire wall's worth in. Only two more walls to go.
     Plus—and this is the surprising part—I felt happiness at denying the Jeff Bezos Pricy Ineffective Electronic Stud Finder Cabal its pound of flesh, and clawed back $30 or $75 from a the project, which could turn out to be as much as 1/2 a percent of the total cost.

Texas Notes: Things That Go Bump In The Night

    Into the realm of darkness with Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey. 

     Early one morning I heard something running around my tiny house as I slept. It knocked a few small things down on the cedar chest that I use as my bedside table. I was slightly startled but more than that I was tired, so I told myself not to worry and I fell right back asleep. I forgot about it until the next day when I saw a bright green anole lizard clinging to the screen of an open window in the bathroom. I wasted no time and moved quickly. I caught him gently under a jar and brought him outside where he belongs.
     A few days later in the wee hours before dawn, I heard something drop onto my bed with a thud. Little feet scampered past my ears at a furious pace. Like the last time, I forgot about it until the next day when I felt somebody watching me. Another lizard—this one staring at me while perched frozen on a kalanchoe plant. After some hilarious cartoon-like running around on both of our parts, I finally caught him under a Tupperware container. He tried desperately to contort his way out. Despite his acrobatics I was able to slide a piece of cardboard over the lid and escort him out to the yard. His poor little tail was caught between the cardboard and the plastic and I was worried I may have hurt him. Later, a friend told me that their tails can regenerate. What a relief.
     Sleep has been a bit of an adventure for me lately—much more so than I’d prefer. I’m usually a very good sleeper. I’m serious about habits that lend to a solid night of rest. I teach classes that promote sleep, including one called Beditation. Lately I get into bed between 8 and 10pm, and am out like a light for 8 or 9 hours, sometimes more.
     That’s why the past couple of weeks have been difficult. One night while deep in REM sleep I woke up with a dream fresh in my mind. I noticed that the bottom of my bed was shifting around. It seemed that someone was sitting there and my legs rolled towards the indentation. I was half-asleep and didn’t even bother taking my big silk eye mask off. In and out of awareness, I thought “did the opossum that lives under the house get inside?” I realized that was probably not possible, and I was too tired to really care. The bed kept moving.
     I thought, “Is it June? Is she visiting me?” June is the elderly lady who lived in this house until she died last year, I’m assuming in this bed. I don’t really believe in ghosts but in my half-dream state I decided to let her know that she is welcome here. I thought “If it’s you June, that’s OK. You can stay.” I drifted off. Then the bed started moving again, and I imagined a scary demonic ghost of June hovering over me, unhappy that I was in her bed. I felt terrified for a moment, but then reminded myself that there was nothing to be afraid of. I finally fell asleep again.
     I was woken up every half hour or so for the rest of the night. The bed kept shifting. I actually thought “maybe some lizards have hatched in the mattress.”
     The next night it happened again, and then again on the the third night. I finally thought to Google “side effects of SSRIs.” I had started taking an SSRI, aka an antidepressant, to boost my mood a month or two earlier. Sure enough, tactile hallucinations, as well as tremors and night terrors are all possible side-effects of this class of medication.
     I immediately consulted with my doctor and stopped taking it. As soon as I did, the next night was slightly better. I was awoken by the magical moving mattress, but remembered that it was a side effect, nothing more. I noticed that my legs seemed to be vibrating from the inside, another known side effect. Over the next few days I was woken up before it was time. Armed with knowledge, and also from the effects of weaning off of the medication, I was able to simply notice what was happening, and put myself back to sleep.
     It’s been two weeks since I’ve been off the SSRI. Luckily my mood is fine, though my energy seems lower. The unwelcome nighttime activity has almost ceased.
     On top of all of this, I’ve also had a few nightmares that seem to be COVID related phenomena many are experiencing. Collectively, people are reporting an increase of vivid dreams and nightmares. This indicates increased central image intensity, the central image considered the emotional focus of a dream, according to Yale Medicine’s website.
     This Fall I’ve been telling myself “this too shall pass,” and it will be 2021 soon. Now I am starting to see that we are a long way from how things used to be. I am preparing myself for the inevitable truth that it will be years before things seem normal, and even then some things will never be the same again.