Texas notes: Whole big world

     Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey is not only interesting herself, but knows so many interesting people. Her report.

     Sarah has flaxen hair and a ready smile that crinkles up the corners of her blue blue eyes. She’s a Minnesotan, and peppers her speech with “you betcha.” She has a quick wit, is full of puns, and keeps others laughing. Her Whippet’s name is Snippet. Sarah has completed several triathlons. She has great taste and introduced me to some of the best music I know—Yo La Tengo and Heartless Bastards to name a couple. She is bright and inquisitive, and sie spricht deutsch (she speaks German). If all of that that wasn’t impressive enough, she’s a great adventurer. She takes enviable journeys every chance she gets, which is often since she works as a private school counselor. If she’s not camping solo on an island that takes two ferries to get to, she’s exploring Machu Pichu or Timbuktu.
     I’m grateful for the day in the mid 2000s when I was in the locker room changing clothes at the Galter Life Center, the gym connected to Swedish Covenant Hospital. On that particular day, as usual, I kept my eyes down and avoided looking around at others in various stages of undress. I was surprised to hear a voice gently say “Caren?” I looked up and it was Sarah, my old pal from graduate school. We’d lost touch when I left the program mid-stream for a one year hiatus about five years prior.
     Not only was it good to see her, but she’s one of few people I’d want chatting me up while I had nothing but a towel on. We realized that we were neighbors, and a friendship ensued. We started running around town together, taking long walks in Lincoln Square or along the River in Albany Park, and going to concerts at the Harris Theater and Lincoln Hall. We snow-shoed to Over Easy on Damen for brunch the day after a blizzard once. Of course she had two pair of snow shoes.
      We had some unusual experiences, such as seeing an adult skateboarder with a broken leg trying to propel himself, belly to board, to the hospital. Another time we were at an acquaintance’s home in Garfield Park and I was offered a caramel. I popped the whole thing in my mouth, chewed and swallowed—what can I say? I’m a chocolate lover. Unbeknownst to me it was a magic candy, aka full of THC and meant to be eaten (for those who eat weed) a nibble at a time. Sarah nursed me through hours of laughing and turned me over to another friend for the crying spell that ensued after the joy. Another time, a flasher got our attention right near a children’s playground—he actually laid in wait by a tree until we approached. Of course we called 911 and warned the parents in the playground. So many stories.
     This past week Sarah texted me “hello from Japan!” with photos of cherry blossoms and white goats on the streets of Osaka. I was shocked. How could she be in Japan? Well, it IS Spring Break week and Sarah is known for jetting off to fabulous places. I thought “wow, I can’t believe she got on a plane,” but I knew she was vaccinated and I trust her judgment. I even got a little bit emotional. I texted her and said “thank you so much for sharing. I forgot there’s a whole big world out there!”
     I realized how traumatized I’ve been. I also like to hop on a plane or a train to take a break from life, and it’s been stultifying not to be able to do so with this wretched virus. Sarah’s trip inspired me to get on the ball. I looked up flights to Maui for February 2022 and emailed my family “let’s plan a trip!” Sarah’s journey to Osaka opened up a longing in me and gave me the impetus to plan an epic journey of my own.
     As I searched Kayak.com for air fare I noticed I’d missed a call from her so I called her right back. “Sarah?! How can you be using your phone in Japan??” “Caren. I need tell you that you’re right. There IS a big wide world out there, but at the moment I am at Six Corners, just leaving Pearle Vision in Chicago.” Oh. It was April 1 after all. She got me. I deserved it; Neil and I had gotten her earlier that day.
     Sure, I did not have my thinking cap on when she fooled me. Of course she was not in Japan. We are not even allowed to travel there with COVID restrictions. But I wanted to believe. Call me naive but I’d prefer to say that hope springs eternal within me, even with all of the loss and chaos we’ve endured over the past year-plus. May you all have a Spring full of cherry blossoms, good udon, and sake or fine sanpin cha.

Baked goods manage to outlive coronavirus

Marc Becker, left, with Once Upon A Bagel owners Shana and Steve Geffen

     Marc Becker is a baker, the son of a baker, and the grandson of a baker. Baking is his life. When he moved his Leonard’s Bakery—named for his father—Chicago to Northbrook in 1987 he was 28 years old. Last spring, when COVID struck, he was 61.
     A lifetime worth of almond horns, poppyseed cookies, onion bagels and cinnamon rugelach, of customers and suppliers and days that start at 3:30 a.m. Then it just stopped. Leonard’s was a small space; behind the counters was hard for two clerks to pass each other. In the spring of 2020, the pandemic was new and surging. He shut the bakery down for five weeks.
His friends and family urged him to re-open. So he gave it a try. That lasted another two weeks.
“Then I said, ‘This is it. I’m done,” Becker remembered Wednesday. “I don’t want to be under these conditions.”

     Why?
     “I felt like I’m going to hell every day,” he said. “I used to go to work and have the best time of my life. I loved it. Now I hated, hated, hated it.”
     That was clear. I happened to go to Leonard’s just before it closed for good. Usually I’d chat with Marc. But with social distancing, a line out the door, there wasn’t time. Becker seemed frazzled, anxious. He was worried about his employees.
     “For all these people to get sick?” he said. “The customers.”
      Leonard’s permanently closed last May. A shock, then then it never should have been there in the first place, an authentic outpost of Chicago Yiddishkeit in a strip mall next to a suburban Dairy Queen. I wasn’t a regular customer; in fact, I had a personal rule: I never went to Leonard’s alone. “Because if I did, I’d go every day.” I explained. So I’d take the boys after a game, or guests—out-of-towners insisted on visiting Leonard’s on their way home, to stock up.      It was that good.

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Marc Becker behind the counter at Leonard's Bakery in 2017

Texas notes: Midweek beckons your best self

Watercolor by Jim Koehn

     Over the past year, readers have come to look forward more and more to Saturdays, when Austin Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey shares her insight, observations and philosophy from the Lone Star State. Her feature has become popular—incredibly popular, really, with a readership exceeding the other six days, umm, combined.
     So in the "Give the lady what she wants" spirit that has always informed my blog, Caren has agreed not only to come to Chicago, but to write the blog jointly with me, her only stipulation being that the "goddamn"—which she was never comfortable with, it violating her sense of joy in the divine in all of us—be changed to something more positive. I readily agreed. And to try to encourage readers to check out the blog on days that AREN'T Saturday, I've asked Caren to write once or twice—or more—on weekdays. So welcome Caren Jeskey to a more prominent role in the EGD —whoops, EFD—family! Times change, and we change with them!     

     When I visited Präzision (Precision) Western Wear I was greeted warmly by the great-great grandson of Anja and Franz, Stefen Weber, and his wife Theresa. They offered me coffee and kolaches. The Texas Kolache is more like a pig in a fluffy blanket. They explained that Germans brought hot dogs to our shores, as well as hamburgers and the original cooking methods that became known as barbecue.
     Precision Western Wear has been tucked away in the town of Shiner, Texas since 1937. Germans make up the fourth largest population of the Lone Star State after Anglos, LatinX, and Black/African American residents. In the 1840s, the Adelsverein (The Society for the Protection of German Immigrants) organized on the Rhine in Biebrich to assist citizens who wanted to emigrate. The Weber family hailed from Bavaria, and for generations had farmed hops on a small plot of land. While they were able to survive off of their modest profits, the promise of more success and better treatment of working class families drew them to the United States of America.
     Anja and Franz Weber were both 18, and they forged the trail. They each collected a small parcel and made their way to the shores of the Rhine, where they embarked on their 12 week journey to Ellis Island. From there they made their way, financed by Adelsverien, down to the Wild West. The Webers dug right in and with the help of their community, started brewing beer. What started as just enough brew to serve their local church community on Saturdays turned into what's now Spoetzl Brewery. You may know them as Shiner.
     Once my belly was full of a hotdog kolache and a jelly filled one to balance things out, Theresa insisted that her mission was to get me fitted for a pair of custom boots. Not only that, but I’d also get a glimpse of the process from start to finish.
     First I was invited into the curing barn where giant cow pelts hung from the rafters. I picked out a black and white spotted pelt. Hey, I am leaving Texas soon and at least I can come home with a proper pair of boots. Theresa personally fitted me for a boot that won’t destroy my feet as I break them in, but will still look authentic. She told me stories of her Irish Catholic upbringing in Boston, and meeting her husband at SXSW (South By Southwest) music festival nearly 20 years ago. Her 10-year-old son watched us from a distance, a little too shy to get to know this Yankee stranger.
     Their homestead grew, and they acquired cows, goats, and chickens, and over the year the family business grew into a little village unto itself. The original Webers had four children, whose families settled down on the compound and contributed to their endeavor.
As their cattle herd grew, the possibilities became endless. They sold pelts, milk, cheese, and eventually decided to fill another great need in their town. Boots. Their small empire grew, and they are now the largest boot and beer purveyor in the region.
     Their earlier beers were created with hops that were delivered to them from the Pacific Northwest. Despite the Texas heat, this young entrepreneurial couple manage to start growing their own Humulus lupulus (hops) vines. They were the only outfit in town, so all of the neighbors did what they could to help supply them with water and hands on help to keep the crops alive.
     We spent the rest of the day riding horses on a dusty trail (I could not walk for a week after that), touring the brewery, and finally sitting around a roaring fire with friends and family while Stefan prepared a brisket extraordinaire.
     Days like this will make it even harder to leave this complicated state, but at least I’ll have proper footwear to prove that I was here.

     For a complete schedule of Caren Jeskey's midweek columns for the month of April, click here. 

The watercolor above, and other marvelous artworks, are available for purchase here.

I didn’t expect ‘doom’ to be so exhausting

     “Impending doom.”

     I read the words aloud to my wife.
     “Now there’s a phrase that you just don’t see very much,” I continued. “I wonder if other things ‘impend.’ Or is it just doom?”
     She started to read something on her phone. The winds buffeted the old house, which groaned like a clipper ship rounding the Horn Monday night, as we fished the internet for news which, despite an upswing in positive developments — vaccines rolling out more and more, weather improving, that ship stuck in the Suez Canal finally freed — suddenly seems grim.
     “The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of ‘impending doom’ from a potential fourth surge of the pandemic,” I read. “CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, appeared to fight back tears as she pleaded with Americans to ‘hold on a little while longer’ and continue following public health advice, like wearing masks and social distancing, to curb the virus’s spread.”
     When government officials start to cry, that’s usually bad, right? Despite everything that’s gone on for the past ... ah ... year plus, the people in charge do not generally weep.
     Wasn’t it only last week we had turned the corner and were ready to skip into springtime? Robins twittering, tank cars of vaccines rumbling across the country, the buds on the saucer magnolia just beginning to emerge fat and pink? That is not necessarily good either — the weather is supposed to drop into the mid-20s Wednesday and Thursday. If the blooms come out too early, and the temperature plummets, those blossoms can get burned, and the blossoms are not luxurious and pink, adding a week of festivity to springtime, but brown, like burnt marshmallows stuck on the ends of twigs, an omen, a foretaste of autumn and death when spring has barely begun.

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Trumpspeak, translated

 

     One of the joys of the Joe Biden era—besides seeing our national problems addressed honestly and vigorously, which is happiness aplenty, or should be—is we aren't pinned to the wall by a firehose of lies and self-puffery geysering hourly out of the mouth of Donald Trump and his supporters.
     Oh sure, Trump's still off somewhere, haranguing wedding parties at Mar-a-Lago. But the condemnation of history is hardening around him already, and maybe the law too, and the latest Republican go-to move of restricting voting so the people disgusted with them have a harder time booting them out of office, well, that isn't really a tactic of the strong and confident, is it? 

     That doesn't mean the battle is over, however. Those who haven't figured Trump out by now never will, and they are on the move. Though the putsch of Jan. 6 was thwarted, and it was a come-to-Jesus moment for a few, the reset continue on as before. The trouble is, once you commit yourself fully to ignoring reality and crafting your own alternative world, then it doesn't matter the enormity of the particular reality you are ignoring. You can always slap a few rolls of pure fabrication over the rot, stand back, and admire the shimmering effect. 

      The forces of authoritarianism, denied the executive office, have gone local. It isn't just in southern statehouses. Here in my quaint little village of Northbrook, there is an election of town officials next week, and one faction is vigorously winking and gesturing at the MAGA crowd, in code of course. Let me draw your attention to the sign above, several of which are jammed into the ground along with the various candidate signs in front of our red brick village hall.
     Let's unpack the code in this sign—it bears no attribution, of course; nobody becomes a fear-peddling bigot out of surfeit of courage—shall we?
     "INSIST ON HONEST ELECTIONS" means undercutting the election process that you are losing. Which Trump was already doing back in 2016, assuming his own defeat, which through some malign fate did not happen. A strategy he returned to in full-throated fury in 2020, stirring up that rebellion against our government Jan. 6, and pushing the lie onward, as Republican legislatures try to restrict and limit the casting of ballots, to improve their sweaty grasp on power. Remember, the 2020 election was thoroughly vetted, in court, triple-counted, and found to be impeccable, for those of us in the reality-based world. Honest elections were already insisted upon; that's why he lost. But "CORRUPT THE VOTE" makes for an uncomfortable banner, even for them, so they are mobilizing around the concept of "honest elections" in the service of dishonest elections.

     "FREE SPEECH" means shrugging off consequences of their own speech Once you've established yourself as a racist, for instance, speaking exclusively to your similarly-bigoted friends, it can be uncomfortable when your frame of reference shifts and you must attempt to justify yourself to those not crouched in the same cramped corner of the mental spectrum you occupy. So in an attempt to distract attention from the fact that you are doing and saying racist things, you focus on the criticism that you honestly receive and pretend you are being repressed, and pretend that your right to spout idiocy is being somehow squelched. Go on Fox News and complain that your voice is being silenced, the way a person who has said something stupid and been called out on it in those terms will point in indignation at the insult of being labeled "stupid" while completely overlooking the stupidity that prompted it. I suppose they consider that clever. It certainly fools themselves, if no one else.
    And finally, "UNBIASED MEDIA" is, in classic Orwellian "WAR IS PEACE" form, a hurrah for biased media, the type that curled purring at Trump's feet, uncritically passes along and amplifies his lies, and demands that everyone else does the same. News outlets that reflect the drumbeat of craven cowardice and demi-treason emitting from the Republican Party must be themselves skewed, because the only other explanation is the reality they are reflecting, and that was abandoned long ago.
     Not to forget the final decorative dollop of the American flag, brandished by those betraying literally everything it represents. 
     I went to vote Monday, and chatted with one of the Democratic candidates for trustee in front of the village hall—no Republican candidates in sight, I guess they're satisfied letting their anonymous signs do the talking. She said the Trumpite faction is ominously strong in Northbrook, and I do see their MAGA red everywhere. Before the election, there were those big rallies at Shermer and Walters, young people insulting the passing traffic, venting the free-floating grievance that passes for political philosophy. As I've said for a long time, Trump wasn't a cause, but a symptom, and the fear and perpetual indignation that spawned him has not gone away, just trickled down below the foundations of our homes, to emerge below our feet with the crocuses, an ominous bloom. These red signs have to be worrisome to those of us working to ensure that the Trump offense is confined to our shameful past, and not merely a preview of worse to come. Make sure you get out and vote, while you still can. Because what happened in Georgia can happen here, too.

Office sings its siren song as vaccine spreads

 

     On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, workers pouring out of the Sears Tower looked up as they cleared the building. The World Trade Center had come down about an hour before, and nobody knew what might happen next. Hurrying away, carrying laptops, they scanned the skies.
     I know that because I saw it. As employees streamed out of their offices, I was heading toward mine, the Sun-Times newsroom at 401 N. Wabash. I was going into work because that’s what people did in the morning. You went to work.
     Not for the past year, of course. COVID-19, a far more deadly disaster — in the United States, closing in on 200 times the toll of 9/11 — creating a chasm between those who could work at home and those who had to risk their lives to draw a paycheck.
     I’ve gone into the office three times over the past year, always because I was downtown anyway, going to the library or conducting an interview. Each time, the newsroom was silent and empty. It was grim, unnatural.
     When will that change? With millions of doses of vaccine being pumped into millions of arms every day, society is pondering a return to work.
     On March 29, Microsoft and Uber are welcoming employees back into their West Coast headquarters.
     Not everyone will be going back. A big British paper, the Daily Mirror, is closing its London office. Reporters can work out of their cars or homes.
     I can provide some insight of what that’s like. For most of my career, going in to the office was a choice. As a columnist I could work at home and usually did. But I routinely prodded myself to go in, for a variety of reasons. Usually because something specific was happening downtown, an event, interview, meeting, lunch, opera rehearsal. I was hoofing into the paper in 2001 because I joined the editorial board, a five-year detour into being a serious person.

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Flashback 2003: Go straight to the top to fulfill an elevator dream

     On Wednesday, I began a column on workplace fatalities by talking about four men burned to death installing the elevators at the Sears Tower in 1973—a story that appears in the new book that I'm turning in next week.
     I heard from a lot of grateful workers, including someone from IUEC Local 2, speaking for the 1300 of his "brothers and sisters who build, repair and maintain this equipment."
     Which reminded me that, intrigued by the certificates that used to be framed in elevators, I had spent a day with an elevator inspector from Local 2.
     There is a coda to this story: after it appears, someone asked me why I didn't include anything about the man I wrote about being nearly crushed by a malfunctioning elevator? Because when he said, "People get hurt" I didn't have the presence of mind to ask "Did YOU ever get hurt?" And he didn't volunteer the information, which is understandable. 

     If you've never seen an elevator silently whoosh down 28 floors and stop a few inches above your nose, it's quite a sight. Actually, most everything in the Blue Cross/Blue Shield building at 300 E. Randolph is quite a sight. Only five years old, cool gray, with an immense, open lobby dominated by a hovering circle of stainless steel, and glass elevators that rise like bubbles heavenward, it reminded me of those international corporate headquarters Bruce Willis is always stumbling into shortly before a squad of heavily armed Euro-terrorists seal the doors.
     I was there to fulfill a long-held dream. You see, some functions of the city are obvious. I can't walk a block without noticing a city worker milking parking meters — you know, the guy who rolls around a little, wheeled safe and marries it to the meters in a kind of machine mating, then funnels the quarters out? They're everywhere.
     Other functions are mysterious. What do bridge tenders do in the winter? Why do you never see people out on their condo balconies?
     And, most tantalizing of all, to me: elevator inspectors. I had never seen an elevator inspector, for all my years of riding elevators. Never. But they must exist. Their handiwork is right there, often at nose level, in a little frame. "This Certifies That," it begins, in the Gothic lettering we still associate with officialdom, "I HAVE THIS DAY" — and here it gives the date —INSPECTED" — and here it lists the address and particular elevator — "AND FIND THIS ELEVATOR AND MACHINERY IN SAFE OPERATING CONDITION."
     Inspected how? I have never seen an elevator inspector, but I've imagined every detail. A small man, 5' foot 6, in a derby hat and bow tie. A small, waxed mustache. Neat herringbone suit and vest — green — and thick, owlish glasses. He would carry a complex wooden case that opened like a Chinese box to all sorts of drawers and compartments, filled with an array of tools — brass calipers and dentist's mirrors on thin, extending wands. He would remove his green suit jacket, place it on a hook that folded out of a secret place in every elevator in the city, roll back his sleeves, sand his fingertips, then begin.
     Curiosity for the truth overwhelmed me. So I called the Buildings Department, and they hooked me up with Mike Lundin, elevator inspector and proud member of the International Union of Elevator Constructors, Local 2. The only thing Lundin had in common with the inspector of my imagination was a mustache, and, even then, it wasn't waxed, but a regular, Chicago-guy mustache. No bow tie, no suit. He wore black jeans and a golf shirt, his primary tool a flashlight.
     "This morning, I had a dumbwaiter," he said, explaining that Chicago's 13 full-time elevator inspectors are responsible not only for certifying the city's thousands of elevators, but also escalators, dumbwaiters, moving sidewalks, platform lifts and carnival rides.
     Our task for the moment was elevator No. 16 — an elegant, glassed-in job. We were met by the building's full-time elevator technician, Joe Goodwin, wearing a blue jumpsuit emblazoned with "Mitsubishi." The automaker's electrical division made the building's elevators.
     "First, we ride the car," said Lundin, a graduate of Gordon Tech, who has been on the job for nearly five years.
     We went up to the 28th floor, then up a flight of stairs to a room filled with gray electrical lockers and big motors driving wheels that spun quietly as the elevators zipped up and down. Each motor is paired with a generator — a "regenerative system" so that the extra oomph the motor expends running the elevator can be caught by the generator and turned into electricity, the power fed back into the building's system.
     "We'll look at the hoist cables," said Lundin. "We look for different telltale signs of wear."
     Each elevator is held by five 5/8-inch steel cables, any one of which could hold the elevator by itself. The cables are made of steel strands wound around, oddly enough, a rope. There is hemp at the center of all that steel because it is soaked in lubricant that oozes out as the cables run back and forth, helping to reduce friction that leads to wear.
     Lundin took out a round brass gauge to see how thick the cables were. "It's shut down right now, Joe?" he asked a little hesitantly before sticking his hands close to the cables.
     "Elevators are extremely dangerous," he said, checking to make sure the cables had not stretched out too far, a sign of wear. "There are a lot of moving parts. People get hurt. Our union preaches safety."
     He checked the brake system, the doors on each floor, the area on top of the car, the safety switches, the 15,000 pounds of counterweight.
     A few myths to dispel: You can't escape through the hatch in the elevator car roof, like in the movies. Most are locked and can only be opened from the outside. Pushing the call button again after it's already lit doesn't bring the elevator faster, nor does pushing the "Close door" button close the doors more quickly.
     After about 45 minutes, Lundin was done. The only thing left was the paperwork, the filling out of a new, enigmatic little inspection certificate to frame inside elevator No. 16. And, yes, he does point out the elevators he has inspected to his three children, Rachel, Sean and Annie.
     "See, I'm famous," he told his oldest, Rachel who, being 14, answered with the inevitable: "Dad, will you stop it?"
     —Originally appeared in the Sun-Times, February 7, 2003