"Remember the Maine!"

 

     Many communities have a square, a little park at the center of their downtown. My hometown, Berea, Ohio has a triangle, aptly called "The Triangle," and I was strolling around it with the friends we were visiting in May, on our way out to Virginia for our younger son's graduation.     
    "Wait a minute," I said, breaking away from our group. "I want to go look at that plaque made out of a piece of the Maine."
     I hadn't seen it in a decade or two, but I knew it was there, somewhere. It took a bit of searching. For an uneasy moment I thought it had been carted away. Not every tribute that is taken down is done so because it's become offensive; some just are irrelevant. 

     But there it was, an actual memento, cast from a piece of the ship that blew up in Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898. That fact must have impressed me as a child and stuck in mind. "Cast from metal recovered from the USS Maine," it says on the plaque, the way after 9/11 pieces of the Twin Towers were worked into memorials. 

     It was a similar attack, maybe, with a considerable loss of life. The USS Maine sank with a loss of most of its crew. Hit by a mine, it was believed at the time, and the sinking was cast as provocation and atrocity and blamed on the Spanish, who were trying to put down a Cuban independence movement. "Remember the Maine!" became a rallying cry, and the U.S. entered into one of its more lopsided imperialist wars.

     I pass it along as a reminder that monuments do, in fact, influence us. I know what the Maine was, not because of any history class, but because of this green oxidized slab of bronze that I passed regularly for the first 18 years of my life. The memorial doesn't mean I particularly venerate the Maine—some historians suspect it was blown up, not by a Spanish mine, but through some ineptness in the management of the ship's engines and coal supplies. I could see that. My concern was nostalgic, not historic. Some U.S. history books never even mention the Maine, and probably just as well. You can't remember everything.

     Though there is a value to the story. The moral of the Maine sinking is to remember the dubious excuses we use for going to war—like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or the weapons of mass destruction that weren't there. They seem so important at the time. But they're really not. We say we remember them, and we do, for a time. Then we forget and move on.

Rambling Notes: The South of the North

     The less preface I add to this, the better.  Without further ado, the Saturday report from Caren Jeskey. Strap in, you're in for a wild ride:

    “I send you a postcard. It says ‘Pulaski at night.’ Greetings from Chicago, city of light. City of light. Come back to Chicago, city of light, city of light.” 

                                                          —Andrew Bird

     It’s not easy being from a fabulous, international city. Home calls to all of us, but for many, home does not offer the richness of the city of wild garlic. Still, it was just not enough. I knew there was a reason I had not unpacked my car.
     After six long weeks back (after living in Austin Texas for 7 years), I found myself propelled south once again. I realized “I don’t have to be here,” and my steering wheel did the rest. While I felt welcomed in many ways, coming back to Chicago was not what I had expected. Life seemed so much easier, more harmonious in the music capitol of the world. In retrospect, living amidst a sea of Peter Pans who will never grow up but will have fun until their dying days is appealing. I used to criticize their hedonism in my quest to “mature” but since I don’t have the answers who’s to say who is right? 

     Coming home reminded me of my failings. In Texas I can be someone new. I am not painted into boxes by anyone because my friends are relatively new. They met me as an adult rather than holding old images in their minds, images that cloud their ability to see me clearly. To listen actively, instead of assuming they know who I am.
     In Austin I always feel like I am on vacation. It’s not really home, but it’s a place I can explore and stay alive, stay curious.
     So I am back in the Lone Star State, at last. Ah! I’ve missed you. Pick-up trucks that push me off the road. A land where science isn’t real. Fantasy is more fun anyway. Maybe I’ll become a flat-earther. Now that seems amazing. Biking on a smooth plane forever and ever? And if it ends I am sure God will save me. How comforting.
     I’ve missed the eclectic gardens and street art that seems to pop up everywhere. Horses and cowboys and real country music. Souped up hotrods racing around— Harleys rumbling my insides. I guess a place can grow on you.
     I’ve missed the endless greenery and 90 degree temps. Seeing all of my neighbors out there running and biking and walking and paddling. Such an active city!
     Chicago, that is. You see, I did not leave. I was just joshin’. I am still here. I’ve noticed that Chicago and Austin are very similar. Everything I described above happened in Edison Park, Norwood Park, and Park Ridge. Who’d-a thunk it? Not me.
     I’ve managed to stay in a very specific enclave for most of my life. Rogers Park, Uptown, Edgewater, Boystown, Lakeview, Wicker Park, downtown, Hyde Park, Oak Park, Evanston, and the Southeast side of Chicago. Where I meet kindred spirits around every corner.
     The past six weeks living on the Northwest side has really opened my eyes. As a kid I had openly racist family members who lived on the far south side in Hegewisch. Up here on the northwest side the climate is similar; well-kept homes with manicured lawns, and lots of police presence. Neighbors have screwed blue lightbulbs into the sockets on their porches to support “Blue Lives.” One home has flooded the entire exterior with blue. Blue Lives Matter flags pepper the houses and businesses. These are the same folks I felt I had to get away from in my younger days. As painful as it is to be estranged from family, I’d become enraged every time I’d hear the “n” word spoken, and I did, often. I once made the relative who was hosting us break down in tears after I confronted a Bud drinking good ol’ boy neighbor who had joined us. As I recall, we left the party and as my folks drove us home they told me how proud they are of me. Still, that kind of family drama is never fun.

     I felt scared during my walkabouts on the NW side. It seemed I was in a fortress, and since I have several family members who are cops I know that fierce protection of their home court might mean hair trigger reactions to perceived and not real threats. I say this because I was harassed more than once when I brought POC into white areas in a way that never, ever happened when I was alone or with other white people. I was considered a possible enemy for having a POC in my presence. It was terrifying and embarrassing— for example I was driving with a friend past my hight school on a weekend drive and got pulled over “for having a broken taillight” BS.

     I was struck that the cops' homes were modest; small compared to the fancy mansions just a few blocks farther west. That made me a little bit sad— those who rally for blue lives? What are they really doing for officers? Their pocketbooks? Their mental health?. I heard about another Chicago police officer's suicide today. He was just 24. This was the third death by suicide of a CPD officer this year. The rigid standoff we are in is a lose-lose for all.

     When I passed people, almost no one said hi; an insulated community where strangers are not to be trusted. Thank goodness I packed up and moved east this week, to Ravenswood, where I fit every stereotype Peter Sagal jokes about in his NPR games show "Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me."  I’m a Birkenstock wearing foodie who reduces, reuses and recycles. I’ll talk to you about farm to table products any day, and I want to know where the best freshly harvested mushrooms can be found. I love the Sunday New York Times, and I like my coffee freshly ground each day.

     It saddens me to know that my kinfolk in the O’Hare flight path land cannot comprehend why Black Lives Must Matter. They do not have any understanding of what it must be like to live under the shadow of harassment at all times.
     Yes, the lives of our public servants do matter. But why can’t they see that their lives have always mattered more than Black lives in this city? Not only that, but Black lives have been smote.
     Now that’s criminal.
     When I hear comments about the “scum” who are killing each other with gang violence, I feel physically sick. Those who say that are racist to the bone. How can they continue ignoring the history of POC in the U.S.? Still?
     I don’t have a lot of hope that one day we will all live together harmoniously, loving and trusting each other and sharing resources equally. But I am a dreamer and I am not giving up all hope just yet. If that sounds naive that’s OK with me, for isn’t it better to feel what joy we can rather than wallowing in pain?

“It’s not about win or lose, ‘cause we all lose when they feed on the souls of the innocent; blood-drenched pavement. Keep on moving’ though the waters stay ragin’. In this maze you can lose your way, your way. It might drive you crazy but doc’t let it faze you no way, no way!”
                                       —Matisyahu

Relax, Cook County is not spying on your dog as it poops

 

     Look at this photo, sent by a reader.
     “ATTENTION DOG OWNERS,” the sign announces. “As part of a pilot program between Northwestern University and the Department of Public Health, this area has been selected for enhanced dog waste ordinance enforcement. DNA MATCHING AND DRONE SURVEILLANCE IN EFFECT.”
     In bright magenta.
     “Found this sign on my block (6500 N. Greenview),” the reader wrote.
     What do you think?
     Have Cook County and Northwestern joined forces to monitor dog poop via drone?
     Like much disgorged by the internet, the sign evokes the “No, that couldn’t be, could it?” reflex. You want to dismiss a thing as an obvious fraud. But there’s that little backdoor of doubt. Stranger things have happened.
     First to Mr. Google. Slim pickings. A company in the Netherlands, Dogdrones, in 2017 said it would use drones, in conjunction with on-the-ground robots, to clear neighborhoods of dog poop. I sent emails to the two founders, not expecting a reply.
     Queries to Cook County and Northwestern — a process we professional journalists call “finding out if something is true.” I recommend it heartily to those who attempt the same by holding up new information against their engrained prejudices to see how well they match.
     Northwestern started the country’s first forensic crime lab, trying to solve the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. So this would be in their wheelhouse.
     Alas, no.
     “The University is unaware of any such study,” said Jon Yates, assistant vice president of communications.
     The Cook County Department of Public Health pointed out something I ought to have known: it has jurisdiction over the enormous realm that is Cook County except Chicago, Skokie, Oak Park, Stickney and Evanston. They have their own health departments.
     “One of the commissioners saw those signs around Northwestern,” said Tom McFeeley, the county health department’s communications manager. “It’s posted outside their jurisdiction. That’s why the dog poop story doesn’t add up.”

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Flower power

     Rarity is overrated. Or, maybe, branding is underrated. Or rather, make that both.
     Take a look at the flower above. If I said it was an Illinois Chalkweed, an invasive species clogging the forest preserves, you wouldn't doubt my assessment, would nod at my hope that the folks at Cook County get on the stick and eradicate this blight before it destroys our native habitat. 
     But it's not. It's a "Ghost Orchid," according to the Chicago Botanic Garden. "You're looking at one of North America's rarest orchids," its plaque pants. "It is extraordinary to see the ghost orchid in bloom," the flower "world renown for its ethereal beauty."
     I'll take their word on it. To me, it's a pale paper figurine, dancing, eclipses by almost every other flower at the Botanic Garden. 
     Compare the Ghost Orchid to the Bumble Rumble Collarette Dahlia, below. First, a far better name, right? Second, well, just look at it. Colorful, which is what flowers are supposed to be about. Fun too; it's a birthday party of a flower, a circus clown bloom.

     But not rare, or highlighted by the Botanic Garden with its own little enclosure, ballyhooed by signs nearby ordering passersby to go check out the fabulous Ghost Orchid. Given the same treatment, a stalk of straw would be marveled at.
     Yes, there's no accounting for taste, and orchids are a cult all their own. But the Botanic Garden is busily drumming for the meh Ghost Orchid, while the Bumble Rumble does its thing unheralded and unpraised. I guess that's life.

Life through the eyes of Edith Renfrow Smith

 

Edith Renfrow Smith receives her honorary doctorate from Grinnell College in 2019.

     A big part of my job is brevity. To take a story, sift it down to its essentials, and tell the tale in 719 words. But that seemed a crime with a life as long and interesting as Edith Renfrow Smith's, even running at more than twice the length, as my first column on her did Monday. So I divided out a second part, and still had to overlook important aspects to her life.

     “There is no message!” objected Edith Renfrow Smith, when I suggested that readers will expect her to share wisdom gleaned over her long life — she turns 107 on Wednesday. “People worked hard! And didn’t let the kids run the street. They always kept their children busy doing something and they were always looking to the future.”
     I’d call that wisdom aplenty.
     On Monday, Sun-Times readers were introduced to Smith, and learned about her extraordinary life: how her grandparents were born into slavery, how she became the first Black graduate of Grinnell College and came to Chicago to work in 1937. Though we never even got to the bulk of her career, from 1954 to 1976, as a Chicago Public Schools teacher.
     That’s how I met her; thanks to a CPS colleague and reader, George Lopatka.
     “I was just out of college when Beethoven school opened,” said Lopatka, 81. “I was a 22-year-old. She was 47, a master teacher.”
     For years, he’d phone her. Recently Lopatka decided to visit, and asked if I wanted to come along. I went, knowing absolutely nothing of the marvelous person who awaited me. Just the opposite: expecting every cliche of old age that I’d be embarrassed to articulate here. Imagine my surprise.

George Lopatka and Edith Renfrow Smith

     

     Lopatka told the story of Muhammad Ali coming to their school.
     “He was telling the kids, ‘Black is beautiful,’” Lopatka remembered. “Before that, you’d never say somebody was ‘Black.’ ... ‘Black’ was an insult. I would break up a fight, and ask the kids, ‘What are you fighting for?’ and one would say, ‘He said my mother was Black.’”
     One moment in a whirl of history Smith has seen. Yet she seems a person who seemingly glided untouched through a century of struggle. She doesn’t present herself as someone who had to overcome anything, but rather as someone blessed.

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Not everyone is dug in all the time

"Progress of the American Negro," by Charles White (Howard University Gallery of Art)

     The days when I happily crossed swords with any reader who could flop his fingers onto a keyboard are long past. That just leads to quick deterioration into insults, and the aggressor running off to complain to my boss—nobody cries like a bully—wasting his time and mine.

     So I rarely answer emails from two groups of people—Trump supporters and haters. Were they open to reason, they wouldn't hold the opinions they have.
     But occasionally an email will have something so patently false that I'll be lured in, such as this one, which postulated the notion that you never see stories about gang violence. That drew a reply, against my better judgment. I also used the email in my column about the strange ritual of tallying shooting deaths in Chicago, "We keep track of shootings like a box score." Which lead to an exchange out of the ordinary, as you will see. The initial email read:

Biden is here to talk about the violence in Chicago. Everyone knows what the problem is. Why is there never a story about the low life, scum bag gang bangers who have absolutely no respect for human life. I'll tell you why. Because people are afraid of the gangs. Your never going to submit an article calling out the gangs for their killing of innocent people. I'll tell you a little secret. I'm a 58 year old white male. So everything i say is wrong. But i do not understand the BLM movement. 60 to a 100 people shot a week. Most of them black. Do these people not matter? I'm extremely happy with the sentence that Chauvin got for killing George Floyd. I have a question for you. Would it be racist to write an article saying that the shootings in the news every week are all from black gang bangers. Put the faces of the leaders of these gangs on the front page. I'm tired of blaming these shootings on Republicans and democrats. The blame lies with the black gang bangers. Their spineless leaders have names.

     I considered remarking on the "Oh poor me!" quality to the "everything i say is wrong" line, but resisted, instead writing back with a link:

That story you say you never see runs all the time. I would speculate about why it always eludes you, but then you would start crying about THAT, and frankly, I've had enough for one day. Thanks for writing.

    I never expected to hear back. So imagine my surprise when I got this:

Thank you for your article today. That was a good explanation of the BLM movement. And i needed to hear that. I wish the BLM would talk more about the violence in Chicago and what they think should be done to help stop the violence. Sometimes i need to be hit over the head to see things. Going forward i will give my little speech i sent you the other day a rest. And try to be more understanding. Not that it matters but i do care about the people being shot every day in Chicago. I cant imagine the pain of going through something like that. I'm like the police chief you mentioned in your article, I lash out because i really don't have an answer. I'll try and stay open, helpful and hopeful. Have a good weekend.

     At the risk of overstating the case, I don't believe I get one email a year showing that sort of re-evaluation. Frankly, I might have never gotten one. But one is enough. Perhaps there's hope for our country. I wrote back:

     That's an encouraging email. Thank you. Seriously—and since sarcasm is the water we swim in lately, I feel the need to say that. People are so dug in. Your email helped me to address a topic that puts me in a bind. To me, it's cowardice to say nothing, but as a white guy living snugly in hyper-safe Northbrook, what can I possibly add that is of any use to anyone? We all need to be open to suasion, to change, to evaluating our beliefs in light of the evidence before us.

‘Nobody’s better than you’

Edith Renfrow Smith

     On those long ago Sundays in Iowa, Edith Renfrow Smith’s mother Eva Pearl made Jell-O with black walnuts in it. Her older sister Helen would play the piano at their house on 1st Avenue, and the young men from Grinnell College would gather around. This was in the 1920s.
     “They would come, sing songs — not all of them, the ones that liked to sing,” said Smith, 106. “There were 10 of them.”
     Those details — the walnuts, that some guests sang, some didn’t, and exactly how many came nearly 100 years ago — are typical of the sharp, specific memories of Smith, who turns 107 on July 14.
     She recalls how these visitors were not just any Grinnell undergraduates, but the 10 Black students given scholarships by Julius Rosenwald, the Chicago Sears executive who donated millions of dollars to promote Black education.
     They frequented the Renfrow house on Sundays because it was one of the few Black homes in town, and their example inspired Smith to later attend Grinnell herself — Class of ’37, the first African American woman to graduate there. 

     That might sound impressive. But if one quality stands out when visiting Smith at her tidy apartment at the Bethany Retirement Community on North Ashland Avenue, it is that she is never overly impressed with herself or anybody else.
     “When my nephew heard that I had met Amelia Earhart, he had a fit,” she recalled. “I said, ‘She’s just like everybody else.’ She came to Grinnell. Everybody who was famous came to Grinnell.”
     Shaking Renfrow’s hand, it is impossible not to reflect that you are shaking hands with a woman whose grandparents were born in slavery. She remembers them, too.
     “My grandfather came from Virginia. His father was a white owner. My grandmother was born in South Carolina. Her father was a Frenchman, and her mother was a slave, but she wasn’t all slave. They wouldn’t put a dark slave in the house. Both of them were part white, so consequently, you know they already mixed with whites. It made no difference. You could look white; you were slaves.”
     Edith Renfrow was born in 1914 in Grinnell, where her father Lee was a chef at the Monroe Hotel. Her earliest memories involve the end of World War I.

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