What is the state’s most dangerous job?

     Larry Lucas, Robert Wiggins, Leonard Olson and William Walsh.
     Those names probably mean nothing to you, and why should they? It was almost 48 years ago — April 11, 1973 — that the four employees of Westinghouse’s elevator division were putting finishing touches on an elevator shaft at the nearly-topped-out Sears Tower, using turpentine to scrub away oil the foundry put on the steel rails to keep them from rusting.
     They were on a platform on the 42nd floor, in a “blind shaft” — two entrances, one 20 feet above their heads and another 100 feet below — when a spark ignited the turpentine. Other workers heard their screams and tried to break into the shaft to get to them, hammering at the concrete walls. But of course it was too late.
     We seldom consider workers who lose their lives. They don’t even get the little gratuitous nod we give first responders, though it might be argued that they do one better than saving the city: They built it in the first place, and keep it running.
     I thought of these four lost workers Monday morning because of an email with the enigmatic subject line: “BLS Midwest News Update: March 22-26, 2021.” You’d never open that, right? I did. The “BLS” is Bureau of Labor Statistics — part of the same federal government that took the lead in developing vaccines; I sure hope their medical judgment is better than their ability to craft catchy subject lines, or we’re all in trouble.
     The email inside is clear, and the message isn’t good: 5,333 fatal work injuries in the United States in 2019, up 2% from the year before and the highest toll in a dozen years. Of those deaths, 158 were in Illinois.

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Thirty-four years a staffer.

     "Twenty years ago I was a nobody," comic Joe E. Lewis once quipped, "but today I am a non-entity."
     I never saw him deliver that line, alas, but read it in his autobiography, "The Joker is Wild." I like to think Lewis ended the sentence by drawing himself up to his full 5'7 height, pressing his hand to his heart, and fluttering his eyes in dignity, with a tone of hauteur. "Today I am a NON-ENTITY!"
     That came to mind because today is my 34th anniversary on the staff of the Sun-Times, and between the general howl of the online world, the degraded status of newspapers in general and newspaper columnists in particular, I feel like some exotic animal—a cross between an Irish elk and a platypus—the last of its species, living alone on an island rock, where every day the sea level rises another six inches. The island isn't submerged, yet. But it's coming.     
     Until then, to mark the anniversary, as I have in the past, I thought I'd cast a line into my bottomless backlist, and randomly hooked this, from 2010, to share with you today. It is, alas, astoundingly current, as writing about prejudice invariably is. The original title was "So many of us are blind to anti-Muslim bigotry." You can see the effect my arguing for tolerance has had on the nation. But honestly, despite having had no impact whatsoever and transiting across my career without touching anyone or achieving anything, I am still glad that I made the effort.

Tile panel (Metropolitan Museum)

     Last spring, I spoke at the Dante luncheon of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans.
     It was fun, to talk about the Divine Comedy. I concluded by pointing out how Dante, describing his elaborate paradise, pauses to mention that half of heaven is occupied by Jews.

     "Not only that," I said. "But it's the better half."
     I explained that, being Jewish myself and having soldiered through thousands of lines of Dante's often-abstruse terza rima verse, I felt rewarded by this gesture, an extraordinarily generous act for an Italian poet in 1300—an unexpected nod to a widely despised minority—and how today it represents a challenge to us all.
     "There is a lesson there," I said, explaining that it is easy to deal sympathetically with your own kind, to demand others treat you with the respect and humanity that you deserve.
     The hard part is to do this with other people, to treat them the way you yourself expect to be treated.
     This isn't profound. It's just a wordier version of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Everyone endorses it in theory. But try to apply it to a specific case, and it just vanishes, crumbling to nothing at a touch, like ash, as if it weren't a timeless moral code at all, but mere words, empty of meaning

'WHY CAN'T THEY BE SENSITIVE?'

     "I don't understand!" said the caller, a reader from Morton Grove, summarizing a column I wrote earlier this month about the Islamic community center planned for two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City.
     I let him talk—fielding complaints is like fishing. Never try to reel them in too soon; play out some line and first let them tire themselves, flapping around.
     Three thousand dead! 9/11! The feelings of the families trampled by inconsiderate Muslims!
     "Couldn't they just put it a few blocks away!?!" he said, genuinely baffled.
     "No," I said, "and here's why . . ." 

     But he was off again. He was a lawyer, he said, and himself Jewish.
     I waited, with a fisherman's patience, and tried again.
     "Do you own a house?" I asked. At first the question didn't register.
     "What?" he said.
     "Do you own a house?"
     "Yes . . ." he said, reluctantly; lawyers tend to be circumspect.
     "What color is it?" I asked.
     "Blue . . ." he said, puzzled.
     "OK," I continued. "Let's say you want to paint it white. You file whatever notice you need with Morton Grove that you're painting your house white. But your neighbors complain—they don't want you to paint it white. White's the color of purity, and you're a Jew, and Jews killed Christ. So no white for you. It offends them. How much weight do you put on their feelings?"
     He didn't see the connection at all. This was not a matter of rights. It was simple. Build the mosque elsewhere.
     Yes, and if only that were the end of it. But it isn't—it's just the beginning of what is going to be a painful process in this country, particularly between now and November, as Republicans gleefully fall upon another tiny minority they can demonize to whip up their eager base.
     Seven out of 10 Americans agree with my Morton Grove reader, which means that 7 out of 10 Americans believe that all Muslims shoulder collective blame for 9/11—because that's the only thing opposing the mosque can possibly mean.

   I've had this same conversation half a dozen times this past week—on the train, with co-workers, with my own mother. It's maddening.
     For some reason, they do not see this as the classic textbook example of bigotry that it so obviously is. I try to find metaphors to cut through their fearful certainty.
     Make the Islamic community center into a Catholic seminary—parents oppose it, arguing that their children will be at risk, since everyone knows that priests are pedophiles.
     Do we respect the concerns of the parents? I'd say no.
     Why not? Some priests are pedophiles. Would not considering all as suspect be a reasonable precaution for a responsible parent?
     No, because all groups have criminal members. There are lots of white Protestant pedophiles, for instance, but nobody protests the construction of a golf course because it might draw the WASP element.
     This guilt by association is a sham smoke screen employed to indict people who are already feared because they are different.
     The sad fact is, people are fighting the construction of mosques, not just in Manhattan, but all across the country, and for the same reason: they  are afraid of them. In that sense, it is inevitable, maybe even good, that this is happening now, so we can examine and treat this festering wound in the American spirit.
     It is too easy to lazily suspect mosques as nests of nascent terror, and too hard to understand that not only is barring them un-American and morally wrong, but dangerous too, in that it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy—if you tell people long enough that they are potential terrorists who don't belong here, some fraction might eventually believe you.
     It's always too easy to brush away someone else's rights as trivial and intrusive. Why do they have to sit at the lunch counter? Why does she have to go to the prom? Why build it there? Imagine the question were posed to you, based solely on who you are: Why are you here, when we're so afraid of you? Why don't you go somewhere else?
     If it were being done to you, you'd understand in a heartbeat.
         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 15, 2010

Silence can be more than just complicity

Tomb figure, Han dynasty (Field Museum)

     "Silence is complicity," the president said Friday, in the aftermath of eight people, six of them Asian American women, being murdered in Atlanta.
     Well, I thought, guess I know what I’m going to write about for Monday. Don’t want to be complicit in any murders.
     Although I don’t agree with Joe Biden.
     Silence can be many other things. For instance, I jammed something about the murders into Friday’s column about getting vaccinated because I didn’t want to be accused of ignoring them. But the reference clashed with the jokey tone of the column, and my editor didn’t like it. So I took it out. In that case, silence was tact.
     One murder is terrible. Eight murders are extra terrible. Eight murders stemming from racial animus or dehumanizing sexism or religious repression or heck, all three—journalists are not supposed to announce the culprit of a crime, never mind decide upon his motive—with a few psychoses and way-too-lax gun laws tossed in, are super extra terrible. Do you really need me to tell you that? I hope not; I try not to traffic in the obvious. When Kamala Harris said Friday, “Racism is real,” who is her audience? Because those listening to her tend to already be all-too aware of the pervasive reality of racism. And those who need to hear it sure aren’t taking their cues from the vice president.
     The most important voices over the past few days have been Asian Americans, themselves, talking about the hostility they’ve coped with. That has to be news to a lot of white Americans. But those sharing their stories don’t need me standing over their shoulder, nodding. “What she said!” Silence can be deference.
     I’ve been writing about mass shootings since 1988, when Laurie Dann shot up a classroom at Hubbard Woods Elementary in Winnetka, and I’ve always hated, hated, hated doing so. Such stories can be exploitive, particularly in the mad rush to grill survivors and declare motives. Puff away the pieties and vows for change, and you’ve often got morbid fascination putting on airs. Plus an opportunistic dipping of your fingers into real people’s blood to finger draw your favorite conclusions. If I were going to use Atlanta as an occasion for self-expression, I’d do a mural about mind-stunting, body-shaming fundamentalist misogyny and repression. Where’s the rally denouncing that? But then, that’s me. So silence can be humility.
     Statistics show Donald Trump’s cruel slurs and his irresponsibly blaming COVID-19 on China increased hate crimes against Asian Americans. That was true last week and last month and last year, even if the Atlanta shooter — I’m not using his name — is so crazy he didn’t even notice his victims were Asian. An example isn’t proof, even of something you know to be true.
     People are trained to hate, and it’s a diminishment of the Asian American journey in this country to even mention Donald Trump, which is basically the past five minutes of a gantlet of abuse we can trace back to the United States sending Admiral Perry prying open Japan at gunpoint, the West’s century-long subjugation of China, the Opium War, building the railroads, the first don’t-think-about-setting-foot-here racial laws, World War II internment camps, World War II propaganda, Korean War propaganda, Vietnam War propaganda, not to mention blasting our geopolitical paranoia for about a dozen years over that devastated small country. There’s more, but that’s a start. Silence can be a recognition of the complexity of an issue.
     The truth is, we all suffer from bias, both as perpetrators and victims, in various times and various places. I tend to keep quiet at these moments, because what I have to say — bigotry isn’t going away because you have a rally, no matter how good you feel afterward — well, I read the room, and can tell it won’t be appreciated. Silence can be self-protective.
     The trouble with demanding that people weigh in on a matter is that it runs into the tendency to condemn anybody who phrases something in a slightly different way, or betrays a sentiment that isn't as highly polished as theirs, or is a little behind the times, or departs from the most simplistic slogan. I'm all behind #StopAsianHate; I just don't feel inclined to chant it, and don't see the utility of flooding Twitter with it. If you do, well, that's great. But I'm not saying your failure to do so makes you an accomplice in any crime.
       It comes down to this: Are we working to be a better society by learning and growing together? Or by brutalizing those who fail to bark the right virtue-signaling slogan on cue along with everybody else? If the president is going to demand that we all speak out about racism, it raises the question of who will be speaking, what will be said, and whether anybody is listening.

"It don't do a bit of good."

New Salem, Illinois, 2015 (Photo by Tony Galati)

     "It don't do a child a bit of good," a neighbor unconvinced of the worth of vaccination told Abraham Lincoln. "I had a child vaccinated once, and in three days it fell out of a window and broke its neck."
     A reminder that the same ignorance that is a pervasive national problem today was also a problem more than 150 years ago. People never change.
     Speaking of which, the story is untrue. During Lincoln's time, any half humorous remark was given a bit of extra oomph by attaching it to the famously jocular president. Joseph Howard of the Brooklyn Eagle admitted to making up the story, according to Paul M. Zall, in his enjoyable, "Abe Lincoln's Legacy of Laughter."   
     At least Howard admitted the lie. There's hope then.

Photo by Tony Galati

      

Texas notes: Olive and Carl

     The image of a tiny green olive with a bright red pimento on the inside of my right wrist has been popping into my mind’s eye. I’ve been seeing it there for months, along with a vine of bright purple morning glory flowers on my left shoulder and upper arm. These may be my first tattoos (if I find myself brave enough), and they came to me from who knows where. I don’t believe in god, and I am not even spiritual as many folks think I am. Still, I’ve been imagining— no doubt it’s wishful thinking— that my Grandma Olive and my Grandpa Carl are somehow still with me, even though they are both “resting” at Rosehill Cemetery.
     Olive and I used to wedge plump salty black olives firmly onto each of our ten fingers at the Thanksgiving table, and waggle them around at everyone. After the show that was brilliantly entertaining in our minds only, we’d suck the fleshy fruits into our mouths, one by one. I thought she was the absolute coolest.
     She had a permanent smile on her face. Revlon Orange Flip lipstick was the choix du jour, each day, for Olive. She wore the most colorful dresses imaginable and proudly adorned them with giant battery operated, blinking Cubs buttons, or the similarly gigantic Kiss Me I’m Irish one. She laughed as much as she smiled. Her ample chest would bounce up and down with each hearty guffaw. It’s as though she hadn’t a care in the world.
     She was addicted to the Cubs, or perhaps it was Harry Caray. She didn’t miss one single game the whole time I knew her, as a kid until I was in my 20s. I’m not sure how many games she actually got to see, but her trusty little black transistor radio with the long antenna was always on the ready. She’d pull it out of her big black purse and plunk in the middle of the table, wherever she was, when it was game time.
     She lived on Pine Grove and Diversey above Granny’s Waffle and Pancake House. One summer I was the cashier at Granny’s. For a while I lived with Olive and she’d wake me up before 6 a.m. to let me know it was time to get to work. She’d come down with me, sit at a big round table near the window (she was a fixture there), eat breakfast, drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. I think they were Virginia Slims.
     At noon or so I’d kiss her on the cheek and head off to my second job at Marshall Field’s in Water Tower Place. I’d walk all the way there, along the lakefront. Life was perfect back then. At least it felt like it sometimes.
     I’d walk past Oak Street Beach where Olive had met the man who’d become her husband, Carl, many moons before. Someone in my family has a photo of her as a teenager in an old-time bathing costume standing on a post at that very beach. What a cutie she was.
 

  Olive was born in Wilmington, Delaware—wink, nod, hello Joe!—where her parents owned a butcher shop. Tragically she lost them both when she was a baby, and was brought up by an aunt. Eventually, as many Irish girls did at that time, she got on a bus and moved to Chicago as a teen, on her own. She lived with other Irish girls and embarked on a career in the restaurant business.
     Carl died when I was in pre-school, but I remember him clearly. The snappiest dresser you could find, replete with fedoras and wool felted hats topping his head each day, as much a pièce de résistance as Olive’s Orange Flip. He was an avid gardener and grew much of his own food over the years. His living room looked like a botanic garden. My favorite thing was a birdcage full of vines. He lived near Senn High School (by then Olive and Carl had split) where the huge fence along Ridge always bursted with morning glories. As a child, when we were lucky enough to pass them opening up to the sun, my mother would remind us that those were Carl’s favorite flowers.
     As I prepare to place my feet back onto Chicago soil and sidewalks, it seems Olive and Carl are alive in me more than ever. I am deeply grateful to have inherited their joie de vivre, green thumb, high intelligence, cleverness, classiness, and the fact that I knew Harry Caray style glasses were in fashion long before hipsters arrived on the scene.
     Can’t wait to visit you, Grandma and Grandpa. Thank you for loving me unconditionally.

Yup, got myself vaccinated, but won’t say how

      Yes, I got my first COVID vaccination on Monday. And no, I’m not going to tell you how it happened. In a manner embarrassing enough that I decided to never share the specifics. I didn’t lie. I didn’t body-check anybody out of line. Let’s leave it at that.
     The moment I made this uncharacteristic decision — discreet silence not being my forte — my immediate qualm was, “So what do I say if people ask?”

     And the fully-formed thought instantly flashing into mind was:
     “I’ll just say I got vaccinated at the synagogue with everybody else, in late 2019, just before the virus was released.”
     That’s a joke. I make jokes. It’s a twitch, a reflex, to cover unease at getting the life-saving shot that 88% of Illinoisans haven’t gotten yet. Is a good joke? Well, it plays on the psycho conspiracy theories that millions of Americans lap up like kittens around a dish of cream. Certainly not as wild as Secret Jewish Space Lasers.
     Is it a bad joke? Hateful? Anti-Semitic? Something that will lodge in the head of a nut? My gut says the Jews-to-the-front-of-the-line joke is not one whose unacceptability will only become clear to me after I’m flayed alive on social media. Yes, claiming that prejudice is mere humor is the traditional way haters dive for cover when called out on their bigotry. But jokes also have value, as a way for the targets of prejudice to process the contempt directed at them, making bigotry easier to live with, since it’s obviously never going away. Someone designed a “Secret Jewish Space Laser Corps” pin, and I thought of buying one, then decided people might think it was real, and that could be awkward.
     OK, OK. The vaccine. I have to tell you. So I volunteered to chauffeur a couple to Springfield to get their shots, because the woman can’t drive and the man shouldn’t, and I’m the nicest person ever. To Springfield, because many folks down there are numbed to the COVID peril by the barge of BS delivered nightly on Fox News, and so are uninterested in getting vaccinated. “It’s a gubment plot!”

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Deely Bobbers

John Belushi as a "Killer Bee" on Saturday Night Live.

     My column in the Sun-Times is limited to 719 words, unless I get special dispensation for something longer, and often tangents must be stripped away to get the column down to the proper length, like a wrestler wrapping himself in a mat to make weight before a bout.
     For instance. Wednesday's bit of fun about St. Patrick's Day originally contained a deep dive into the history and etymology of "deely bobbers," which I first remembered as "deely boppers," those plastic headbands topped with a pair of springs holding a variety of festive trappings: stars, balls, or, in my mind most definitively, shamrocks. They seem a necessary part of the clueless mis-celebration of Irish culture: the pints of green Miller beer, the grass green "Kiss Me I'm Irish" t-shirts, the painted faces, the deely bobbers.
     Fashion often disappears into the mist. But deely bobbers are quite specific, at least according to Wikipedia:

Stephen Askin invented the original deely bobber in 1981, inspired by the "Killer Bees" costumes on Saturday Night Live....Askin made prototype Deely Bobbers in his kitchen and test-marketed them at the Los Angeles Street Fair of summer 1981, selling 800 at $5 each. He sold the invention to the Ace Novelty Co. of Bellevue, Washington, which launched it in January 1982 at the California Gift Fair. The name "Deely Bobber" was suggested by the wife of John Minkove, an Ace marketer; it had been her schoolfriend's placeholder name for "thingamajig". It was previously a brand of toy block sold 1969–1973.

    I remember the "Killer Bees" as being a recurrent theme on Saturday Night Live. There was something inherently funny about seeing John Belushi in this ridiculous bee costume, and he would show up from time to time, almost randomly, dressed as a bee, and the sproingy deely bobbers bouncing around his head were part of the overall effect. 
     In looking at the clips for deely bobbers, I noticed an early New York Times story of June 7, 1982, "A New Fad Invades: Martian Antennae" which is distinctive in that it completely misses both the origin of the novelty, a TV show of some note broadcast not terribly far from the Times newsroom, as well as the headdress's actual name.  Yes, it's easier now with the Internet. But still. It couldn't have taken that much effort to figure out where they came from.

      And here I thought the general cluelessness of the Times cultural coverage is a recent deterioration. I have to remember that Spy magazine had no trouble in the 1980s running a densely-packed monthly column cataloguing the Times' flaws and follies. 

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