Republicans turn their party into a newt

 

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

      Early in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” there’s a scene where filth-spattered villagers gleefully drag a woman to their lord, shouting “We’ve got a witch! Burn her! Burn her!”
     “How do you know she is a witch?” trills Sir Bedevere, a particularly dim-witted future knight of the Round Table.
     “She looks like one!” the villagers say.
     “They dressed me up like this!” the woman objects.
     Bedevere tries again.
     “What makes you think she is a witch?” he says.
     “She turned me into a newt!” exclaims a large peasant, played by John Cleese.
     The assembled look at him. Cleese glances down at his shoulders, as if detecting a flaw in this line of reasoning.
     “I got better...” he ventures, in a small voice.
     Which illustrates a problem with insisting on ludicrous lies. Even in the outrageous world of Monty Python, at some point you may get called on it.
     Donald Trump delivered two main messages to the Conservative Political Action Committee in Florida Sunday: The 2020 presidential election was stolen; and his followers must defeat every Republican who spoke out against him. A pair of propositions that scream for somebody to draw a line connecting the two.

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R.I.P., Terry O'Brien

Terry O'Brien

     Terry O'Brien had the map of Ireland on his face—I always thought he bore a resemblance to Rich Daley, though with a lineage of service to the city that goes back even further: both his father and grandfather worked for the water department, and he rose to be president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, where he served for 16 years and I would sometimes bump into him, in always cordial and informative encounters. So I was sorry to hear he passed away this week at the too-early age of 64. He and I had a mutual friend, the great Ed McElroy, publicist for the MWRD. Ed made sure that our paths crossed from time to time, so it was not accidental. And out of deference to Ed, I would try to find something to highlight. I particularly remember when O'Brien ran for Cook County Board president in 2010, I met with him, an awkward conversation—he was not a natural politician, which speaks to the quality of the man. But I just couldn't find a way to write anything about him, which perhaps speaks to mine. I had better luck when there was infrastructure around to add interest. Though even then, the subject matter could prove a challenge, as this chestnut demonstrates. And yes, I meant the headline as a kind of pun.

ANNALS OF THE LOWER WORLD

     After you have made your deposit, so to speak, after you have performed the final step in the alimentary process, to use a fancy term, after you have completed the necessary paperwork, to be coy, and flushed, to be blunt, the end result, no pun intended, is shot by a gallon or so of water into the secret netherworld of pipes criss-crossing beneath Chicago.
     There, it joins similar contributions from each and every Chicagoan. The gallons add up quickly—to give you an idea how quickly, the pipe carrying this material is about 21/2 inches wide when it leaves your house, but 13 feet in diameter when it reaches the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District's Stickney plant.
     Stickney is not only the largest of the seven wastewater treatment plants in the Chicago area, it is the largest such facility on earth, serving 2.38 million people in a 260-square-mile area including Chicago and 43 suburbs.
    I have an affinity for matters infrastructural, for pipes and conduits and the overlooked underpinnings that make a great city work. I'd like to tell you that it was my idea to hie out to Stickney and watch the sewage flow in, but it wasn't. They invited me, though I happily blocked out a day because, really, how often does one get the chance to stand on a metal walkway 40 feet above the dark gray River Styx of sewage as it begins its transformation back into clean water?
     "The scum rises to the top," said Reed Dring, an engineer explaining the complex process of screening, settling and treating the waste.
     "As it usually does," I said, before I realized that I was sitting next to the reclamation district's able president, Terry O'Brien. I flashed him an apologetic smile and quickly added, "Present company excluded."
     About 800 million gallons come into the plant every day on average—since the storm sewers are also connected, that number spikes up when it rains.
     What you dump down the drain does have an effect on water quality—the reclamation district has been trying to keep Chicagoans from flushing old prescription drugs down the toilet, because their complex compounds resist being removed and build up in the water.
     Industrial polluters can really foul up the works, the most extreme case being in 1989, when the P & H Plating Company on West Belmont poured 4,000 gallons of cyanide into the sewers. The poison killed off the bacteria used for filtering waste in the district's Skokie plant—not to mention 20,000 fish—shutting the plant down. The company's owner eventually was sent to prison.
     If you want to drop a dime on anybody pouring poison into our wastewater, you can call, toll-free (800) 332-DUMP.
     "We don't ask people's names," said O'Brien. Although they do take just about everything else.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 28, 2007

Homeless 'L' riders get Night Ministry care

Dr. Ralph Ryan advises a homeless patient (photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Garcia Rezin)

     This is the end of the line, literally. The CTA Blue Line terminates at Forest Park, where L trains arrive every 15 minutes, linger briefly, then begin their 26.9 mile return journey east to downtown then northwest to O’Hare.
     This is also the end of the line, figuratively, for Chicagoans whose combination of mental illness, bad luck, bad life choices and inability to manage in a bad, COVID-ravaged economy forces them to ride the trains tonight, seeking a warm, dry refuge on this 30 degree night at the end of February.
     “It’s been rough,” says Ladislao Vasquez, shortly after 9 p.m. He worked construction for 20 years, he says, but lost an eye after being shot. “Times are hard.”
     He is here because on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. the Night Ministry, the final strands of Chicago’s frayed social service net, runs a sort of field hospital/free commissary/clinic for the homeless, offering services of a social worker, piles of supplies—socks, hats, underwear, combs — paper bags of snacks, pallets of water and a nurse or, tonight, a doctor.
     “I’m setting up my office,” says Dr. Ralph Ryan, a retired cardiologist, unfolding a gray screen by a staircase in the station’s entry, to offer a shred of privacy to homeless patients as they explain their afflictions and addictions to him.
     What prompts a 69-year-old physician to leave the relative paradise of Elmhurst to treat homeless people for free six nights a month? The answer is deceptively simple.
     “I enjoy serving the underserved,” says Ryan, who has been doing this four years. “I started on the bus” — the rolling medical clinic bus that the Night Ministry sends into low-income areas of the city — ”then gravitated to street medicine.”

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Do it yourself.

 

     "You're going to have to put it together," my wife said. Which, in married couple code meant, "Can you put it together? Are you capable?" An IKEA console she was considering ordering online.
     Last summer we had hired someone to replace the water damaged drywall in what we still call nostalgically "The Toy Room" even though there are no toys there nor boys to play with them. In the fall, we had a maple wooden floor put down (by Chicago Hardwood Floors; the best) and painted the walls a marvelous blue—first slapping swatches of no fewer than seven sample colors (we had originally thought "Yellow!" and it took us a while to get to ("Not yellow!") I had installed a grand's worth of lovely white baseboard covers to replace the hideous beige rusted metal covers in place since the late 1950s. And after risking our lives in six or 10 furniture stores, bought a pair of leather recliners (Electric, which has a drawback. "They seem like medical devices," I noted). And a concrete-colored sofa. Consoles that you don't put together, but purchase at a real furniture store, cost a thousand bucks, or two. This one, the "Hemnes" from IKEA, costs $229. And looked pretty nice, at least online. Real wood. The web site links you directly to Task Rabbit, the chore site, which informed me that someone would come to a house in our Zip code and put it together for $38. But that would involve letting a person in the house, and be a personal failure of handiness on my part. She didn't say that. She didn't have to. I knew.
     "Sure,"I said. "I can put it together."
     Every bit of cultural static about assembling IKEA products is about how maddeningly complex they are and how confusing the instructions can be. The Internet is alive with web sites like "25 IKEA Assembly Fails" and "Six of the best IKEA furniture assembly fails." That didn't deter me. I figured, by doing it myself, I would be participating in the larger society that I've been cut off from for the past year, not that I ever was much a party of it. Assembling an IKEA console would be time consuming and vexing, but in a culturally-appropriate way, like going to a Bears game. And. wouldn't get cold. Bottom line, I welcomed the distraction.
     "It'll be a break from writing stuff," I said.
     The console arrived Saturday morning in two flat pack boxes. I threw on a mask, went outside and asked the delivery guys to take them around to the back of the house, where the Toy Room is. I figured I'd give each guy $10 if they did, but didn't say that. The driver looked at me as if I had asked him to dance.
     "We're not supposed to take it up the steps," he said, depositing his box at the base of our steps. The second guy put the second box there. They were heavy. With my back in mind, I kinda rolled them up the stairs, using a corner as a fulcrum to pivot each one up. That worked. Inside, I began to tear the boxes apart in our front parlor trying to open them. My wife suggested we keep the boxes intact, the implication being that I'd somehow fail to assemble them and we'd have to return the whole thing in shame. That wasn't happening. I ripped apart the boxes, and my wife and I carried the several dozen oddly shaped wooden pieces down to the Toy Room, plus enough hardware, screws and metal tabs and stuff, to assemble an automobile, in my estimation. In the Toy Room there was a carpet pad waiting for a carpet that was supposed to be delivered yesterday. That made the perfect staging area.

This one, not that one

     It looked like the photo above.
     I poured a cup of Peet's, twisted in my Air Pods, and set to work about 11 a.m.
     First I read the instructions. Well, not read, since there were no words. Looked them over, carefully, studying the pieces, the steps. Which is maturity. In the past, I'd just jump in, then later consult the instructions to see what had gone wrong. Not this time. I could see that they make a point of not only showing the builder what pieces to use, but which similar pieces NOT to use. That's smart. And useful.
     I assembled the drawers, and was thrown for a momentary loop because the bottoms, with their pre-printed lined liners, were only supported by a groove on two sides, front and back. This seemed a design flaw. Shoddy. They'd bow. I quickly realized that the metal pull assemblies also held the other two sides of the bottoms up. Not a flaw, but clever design. If I had to give one piece of assembly advice I learned Saturday morning, it's this: trust IKEA. They've figured this out. If you think they're wrong, they're not. It's just you haven't figured out their logic yet. It's there, waiting.

     I worked steadily away, finished the three drawers. It wasn't unpleasant, but almost athletic, a kind of IKEA yoga, standing over the parts, stretching, reaching, holding, pounding dowels with a rubber mallet, lining parts up. 

     At 12:37 p.m. I broke for lunch, checked the sterile and pointless online work, then returned about 1:20 p.m. I was glad to get back at it. It was like a hobby that requires focus, like building a ship in a bottle. 

     Maybe the chore gods were with me Saturday. Typically, my wife shows up at the precise instant when I've messed something up, as if my brain sends out a silent alarm and she hears it and comes running to witness the disaster aborning. Which usually makes it worse, looking up as the sickening oh-I've-botched-this realization hits to see my wife vectoring into the room smiling brightly with misplaced confidence in me, here to certify my shame. But now the several times she checked in were all at the exact right moment when I could use a second person—the instructions say you need two—to hold something, or consult over a puzzling glyph, or look for my screwdriver, which I had a tendency to put down and lose.

     We can cut to the chase. Just because I found it pleasant to go through the many steps to put together an IKEA console doesn't mean it's something interesting to read about. I lack the skill to do that, or at least the inclination to try. So I get it done, and flip the console over, and the thing looks wonderful. The wood stained, not painted. Real wood, not particleboard. The black knobs are less than ideal, but I only had that thought because my wife, in her due diligence before buying it, saw the hint online to class up the piece by buying higher grade festive porcelain knobs and replacing them. We plan to do that.

     After admiring it for five seconds, I did notice something amiss. The right side was projecting a millimeter or two from under the top, showing the slightest strip of beige unstained wood. I looked at its counterpart on the left side, and saw that it is tucked under the top, as you'd expect. I must not have pushed the right side all the way in during the initial stages of construction,. My wife saw it too.

     "Is that going to bother you?" she said, knowing my OCD way of being tormented by that kind of thing, and anticipating I might immediately tear the thing apart and begin again. Which I did consider. But then I looked at the physiognomy of the piece, which remember I had just constructed, and thus had not only a certain investment in, but knowledge of. Acting intuitively, I took the heel of my right hand, drew it back, and drove it as hard as I could against the part that was jutting out from under the top. It shifted perfectly into place.

     "There," I said.

     We moved it into its position against the wall. When I dragged the boxes to the recycling, I made a point to see where the Hemnes came from. Any guesses? Not the United States—my wife's guess. Not Sweden—where IKEA is based. Not Canada, source of a lot of furniture.

     Anybody?

     Russia.

Texas notes: chickens

Ruby

     Just when you think you've got a sense of Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey, a door opens leading to rooms you hadn't imagined, like today's post.

     When I pay too much attention to Blanche and Thelma they get seem to get excited and poop all over my porch. I tolerate it (and wash it away with boiling water from the kettle) since they are adolescent chickens.

     Being an urban girl from Chicago I never thought I’d live in a tiny house with nine backyard chickens. They are smarter and more social than I’d ever imagined. They all know their names, even if I keep mixing up Flo and Flossie. When you coo to them and tell them how pretty they are, they stare at you from one eye, head cocked, and loudly agree.

Blanche and Thelma are the youngest— they came to us as wee chicks several months back. Somehow buttery colored Blanche has sprouted up and resembles a clumsy Big Bird, tripping

around with bony knees. Thelma is always by her side. They travel as a pair, joined at the wing.
     They discovered my porch as soon as they got old enough to roam free. Each day I’d find them nestled under the passion vine flowers, or pecking away at the silver cover that fits over my bikes. I felt special that they had adopted my house as their favorite spot and it’s nice to have buddies waiting for you each day when you leave the house.        When I first moved in I could not pass the brood by without giving them a treat, which turned out to create little monsters. As soon as I opened my front door they'd come galloping towards me and calling out “Treats please! Now!” I’d alway think “Chicken Run,” and laugh to myself.   The bravest ones stand right in front of the metal cans of seeds to prevent me from passing without opening the lid. When I relent, at least one of them promptly flies to the lip of the can and I have to use the lid as a shield to keep her from jumping right in.

      Ruby is the boldest. Her partner Edna, orange and red like Ruby, lurks in the grass nearby while Ruby pecks away at my lower legs. It doesn’t hurt, but it does amuse me.

Flossie, Flo (foreground) and Lily 

   The more established girls are Alice and Lily, who both seem to be pretty independent. I often see light gray Lily calmly doing her own thing, and she’s never rude. She runs over too, but more demurely, and has never pecked or yelled at me. I believe she’s a Lavender Brahma, thus the elegance.
     Alice is the queen of the gang. She’s dark chocolate brown with a bright red beak. Finally, there’s Kouna, whose caramel colored feathers make me want to pet her. Which I don’t. Yes, you “can” pick up a chicken but they really don't seem to like it, from what I can tell.
     I write this with sadness, since finding out this week that the tiny home will only be mine until the end of April. It was always a temporary arrangement, yet leaving it is bittersweet. I look forward to new journeys, but will miss almost everything about this stint of living.”

     I will spend this weekend packing and cleaning and planning my next move. I have options in Austin and in Chicago, so time will tell.
     I will make time to sit on my porch and talk to the girls before I go.

Artist’s portraits capture our plague year

Phil Gayter, self-portrait

     The mask.
     We spend so much time complaining about wearing it, we might not have noticed how much the mask has come to define the past year, physically, emotionally and, yes, visually.
     But Phil Gayter, artist and ad man, has noticed, and is painting a series of masked portraits.
     “I decided to do a self-portrait, painting myself with bright yellow gloves and an N95 mask. That was the start,” said Gayter, who lives in Highland Park. “It was going to be a one-off. As the pandemic was setting in, I was spending more and more time at home, I had my daughter over, and I did a portrait of her in a mask.”
     Artists tend to work in themes — blue periods, haystacks series and such. Gayter saw potential in the masked subject.
     “All of a sudden I thought something’s going on here that I really, really like,” he said. “A coming together of myself as an artist and a business thinker, coming up with an idea that holds together. That’s what I do for my clients, create branded messages. The mask proved to be that point of distinction, allowing me to think of a collection of paintings that capture the moment, poignant yet whimsical.”
     Gayter, 63, was born in England.
     ”I went to Manchester Metropolitan School of Art and studied as a fine artist,” he said. “But being a working-class kid, being a painter was not going to make me financially secure, so I moved into advertising.”

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The third side to the video game coin

 

   
     The guilty secret of columnists is we don't really want you to call back. We contact a subject because that is the fair and expected thing to do. But if you don't respond, it gives us the field to express ourselves, unencumbered by disagreement.
     Or maybe that's just me. Maybe other, more responsible writers are eager to get all sides, and water down their strong brew of opinion with a seltzer spritz of balance.
     So when I phoned State Rep. Marcus Evans Jr. to talk to him about his proposing a ban on sales of Grand Theft Auto to children, I expected to include a line that I had reached out to him and hadn't heard back, which itself is indicting.
     But he did call back, and made a strong case. Immediately, I saw the specter of white privilege rising before me. Here I am, snug in Northbrook, the son of a nuclear physicist, talking about science, while Evans is on the South Side, with his mom scared of being carjacked. There was only one thing to do in the column, and that was to present his side, fully and respectfully and hope that I wasn't merely folding.
     Not that the issue can be neatly divided between the two of us. There were other aspects to the question I never considered in my rush to present the issue, and am happy to share a pair of emails offering thoughtful perspectives.
     The first: 

     My name is Austin and I am a professional video game developer. I went into this article expecting some crack-pot nonsense about the game and its effects on society, but the points Marcus Evans Jr. were making sounded completely reasonable. The data show there isn't a correlation, but who knows how movies, games, and music create more of a sense of invincibility and life to emulate.
     (It does remind me of The Program cutting a hazing scene from their film in the early 90s when high schoolers were replicating what they were seeing in the movie. Or a classroom shooting scene cut from The Basketball Diaries.)
     I don't want to take much of your time, but want to call to attention the last statement you made in your article

     I’m a liberal, but not so liberal as to argue that children have a constitutional right to pretend to steal cars and pistol-whip prostitutes.

    The emphasis was added by me, and I am in complete agreement that children do not have a constitutional right to play these games. We are a nation of laws where we prevent children from purchasing pornography, but it seems like no one knows or cares about the ESRB rating system in video games. It has been around a very long time and is an incredibly informative rating system.
     Modern consoles have parental controls built into the systems to prevent children from even being able to load these games. I have three children under the age of 10 and our Playstation 4 is set up in a way that the kids can't see the cover art or name of the game when logging into their own accounts (which is more than I can say for zombie show billboards or commercials.)
     The rating system also has a list of objective criteria with each rating, so parents and guardians can know what content is in the game they are purchasing.
     Past laws always seem to want to ban individual games, or ban sales of M rated games, versus just regulating the sale to minors and allowing adults to still purchase M rated games.  
     I wish more parents and politicians were aware of the tools already at their disposal for keeping this content out of their kids hands. If you happen to cover this topic further I hope the information I have shared can be of use.
                                                                                      —Austin

     Brian from Crestwood sent this:

     Yesterday morning I read in the Chicago Sun-Times the recent bill that seeks to amend the sale of certain video games filed by IL State Congressman Marcus Evans Jr. I'm a lifelong video game player, including the oft-maligned series of Grand Theft Auto, and immediately wrote both Mr. Evans Jr. and my own state representative, Mr. Justin Slaughter, to express my opposition to this bill. I'm writing to you because of your piece this morning where you express a slight change of mind about the worthiness of pursuing this policy. I've long come to the conclusion that you are a reasonable person and wanted to see if I could possibly change your mind back to where it was the first time. Whether I succeed or not, thank you for your work in general, and the thoughtful way you approach it. Anyway, below is my admittedly non-expert thoughts on the subject:
     1) "Normalization" is the new "Desensitization." Just a little under two decades ago various states all over the country were taking on violent video games (again with Grand Theft Auto as the centerpiece) because some believed it would cause desensitization to violence and therefore increase the likelihood for said players to engage in violence themselves. This was properly debunked thanks to research and general statistics, much in the same way that the current argument about carjacking does now. After having played all of the Grand Theft Auto games, plus taking in other violent media I find myself in 2021 feeling upset still about the violence seen on Jan. 6th and also wondering what time of day I should fill my car up with gas to best avoid being a potential carjack victim. If I'm worried about that while playing the same games as the offenders, doesn't reason tell us that the underlying cause is something else?
     2) Speaking of those battles in the early '00s, it's worth mentioning that the result of the various cases throughout this country were exactly what everyone expected them to be: video games are as protected by the U.S. Constitution's 1st amendment as that of movies, television and music. What I believe often gets forgotten is the cost to taxpayers for fighting a battle that couldn't and shouldn't be won. Illinois hasn't been in the best fiscal position for a long time and we should be careful about said waste, and that was before the upheaval of COVID 19. Where will that money come from, and where could it go. Would you rather we spend it on defending unconstitutional laws, or on health, social, educational, and job programs? I think the latter is more difficult, as you said in this morning's piece, but it still seems like money better spent.
     3) I do take issue with a particular part of the logic in today's piece. It's stated by Congressman Evans that he knows what the data is, but this is a new generation and things could be different. I can understand that as well as understand in general that things can and do change, however we just finally ousted a president in this country who abhorred science in every form and half a million people have died as a result of it. Let's not do the same here. If the congressman believes that something might have changed, then he should be able to lead a movement to do new research on the subject. Instead, he is placing the cart before the horse. I am personally tired of politicians (regardless of party stripe) making decisions that don't use the best available science. Best available science as of 2/24/21 states that this is a worthless effort that will restrict one of the few booming industries we have, undermine the prime amendment in the bill of rights, and not resolve any issue.
     I thank you for reading if you made it this far. Stay well!

     While I agree with both, I still see Evans point. Perhaps a metaphor is in order. Your house is burning down. The fire department is nowhere to be seen. Do you take your garden hose and direct it at the fire? I imagine many people would, even though it does nothing, and coming by to point that out, well, it seems almost cruel. Grand Theft Auto has sold more than a quarter billion copies in the past 20 years. Being restricted to minors in Chicago won't hurt it. And as Evans says, it might help someone. Though as I point out, we've been banning stuff for almost 120 years, and it's gotten us to the tough place we find ourselves in today.