With COVID-19, a new 9/11 every day

 

     A decade ago, I looked back at Sept. 11, 2001 on its 10th anniversary, recalled its “crashing planes, burning buildings, tumbling bodies” and noted, “it hardly needs to be recounted now.”
     Of course not. Because the wounds of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the hijacked flight that went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, were too fresh to require much description, but too raw to overlook.
     Remembering was a duty. The lives lost that day — almost 3,000 — demanded attention. Demanded to be put into context, to understand how enormous a loss it really was.
     “More Americans died on 9/11 than in the War of 1812,” I wrote. “It was the bloodiest morning on American soil since the Civil War.”
     Things have changed. In 2021, we don’t need to reach into the 19th century in search of perspective. We can look back to a week ago Thursday — 9/2 — a date which will live in obscurity, when 2,937 Americans were killed by the current foe attacking our country, COVID-19.
     Or Feb. 10, when 3,254 died. Or Jan. 21: 4,135. Or hundreds of other days. About 650,000 Americans slain, out of sight, the nation hardly noticing, never mind honoring its loss. Yet killed all the same by a far more lethal foreign assailant.

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Michigan Flashback 2003: "The howdy boys"

     While I'm heading to the shores of Lake Superior, I thought I'd distract you with a previous foray into Michigan.

     ROTHBURY, Michigan: Frederick Jackson Turner famously declared the American frontier closed in 1893, and our national psyche has yearned toward the spirit of adventure represented by the untamed West ever since. Just the words "dude ranch" and "horses" were enough to get me in a car with my family on a Friday afternoon, fighting 200 miles through Memorial Day traffic from Chicago to the Double JJ Ranch, just north of Muskegon.
     We wanted riding, cowboys and adventure, and we got it, though first we had to pass through an initiation of sorts.
     No matter how much research you do, vacationing in a new place is something of a trust drop. You close your eyes and pitch backward, hoping the unfamiliar place will catch you in a pleasant fashion.
     At first, I thought the Double JJ was going to drop the Steinberg family. We arrived at the quaint Western town, complete with jail and ice cream parlor, that is the center of "The Back Forty," the family section of the resort (there is also "The Ranch" for adults only, and "The Thoroughbred" for golfers) at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday, hours behind schedule because of snarled traffic and the one-hour Michigan time change.
     The front office was mobbed—I counted 17 people milling before the check-in desk—and when our turn came, a pale young clerk was maddeningly vague about exactly what amenities the resort had and how we might gain access to them. As she mumbled her "yeah, maybes" as if she wasn't quite sure where she was working, my wife and I locked eyes and I had that plunging "what have I done with my weekend?" feeling of doom foretold.
     Thankfully, it was smooth sailing from there. The cabin was woodsy, but new and clean, with an upper loft for the boys and a bedroom with a big Jacuzzi for the exhausted adults. By the time the pre-dinner cocktails arrived at the handsome Sundance Steakhouse, overlooking the resort's championship 18-hole golf course, we were adjusting ourselves to the place.
     It was the next morning, however, that we really started to love it. We signed our boys up for the beginning corral rides—they like horses and I like putting them on horses, and they came prepared in their cowboy boots, belts, shirts and hats. The Double JJ has more than 100 horses and 1,500 acres of lovely Michigan property, and I could tell right away that this was no "walk 'em in a circle three times and call it a day" type of horse experience. Even at the most junior levels (my boys are 5 and 7) there was an emphasis on teaching them how to handle the horses, putting them through the paces of turning and stopping. You couldn't spit without hitting wranglers—at one point, with eight kids on horseback, I counted six staffers in the ring, helping them in the most gentle fashion.
     After the lesson, the kids were tested. I admired the way the wrangler, Nicole, kindly gave my 5-year-old his ribbon, while letting me know with a meaningful glance that he wasn't ready for the trail yet. So while he was hanging out with a group of kids and counselors, playing golf and doing crafts (one of the beauties of the Double JJ is there are activities for kids that you can hand them off to—even overnight cabins—then pluck them out as need be) my wife and I and the older boy spent a pleasurable 90 minutes on the trail, going through some of the scenic woodland and farm. The younger boy barely noticed we were gone.
     The rest of the weekend was a blur of activity—we swam in the pool and rode down the towering water slide, went on a hay ride and watched a pleasantly corny "stunt show." The ranch has about 30 sled dogs—they have dogsled races in the winter—and my boys insisted on walking one. I loved the frantic scene of the four of us, hanging on to this leash for dear life, being pulled along at a fast clip by one of these enormously-powerful, 80-pound wolfish animals.
     There were also cattle drives and camp fires, a pig roast and a rodeo—which, though we missed it, all the other guests were raving about, and seems to be a must-see.
     The best way to think of the Double JJ is as a Western summer camp for families. Guests who didn't wear their rustic name tags were called to the front of the dining hall (the food was tasty if unextraordinary) and compelled to sing—a fact I neglected to tell my wife until after she was caught tagless.
     Still, she kept calling the Double JJ "perfect" and vowed we would we return. And when we left, the boys were practically hanging out the windows, calling their goodbyes to their various horses by name. It was a rare, special weekend, and I'm glad that we went.  

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 15, 2003

 The Double JJ Ranch is still going strong, and you can learn more about it here.

‘Success means I get to do it again tomorrow’

Steve Albini

     One reason I let almost 40 years go by without reaching out to Steve Albini is that our last conversation was so engrained in my mind. It was the summer of 1982. I bumped into him at Norris Center, Northwestern's student hangout, and he showed me this little electronic drum machine he had just gotten. I told him that I was leaving soon for my first job in Los Angeles. "Well, don't die," he said tersely, and walked away. Coming from Steve Albini, that remark was the equivalent of a teary hug from anyone else, and I doubted I'd do any better than that. But perhaps driven mad by COVID isolation, I leapt across the chasm, and was glad I did.  A smart man, and there aren't enough of those around. I only wish I could have printed more of our conversation. 

     “Do you feel successful?” I asked Steve Albini, at a taco place near his Belmont Avenue recording studio, which readers visited Monday.
     Albini is successful, by any measure. A legendary sound engineer — known for producing Nirvana’s last album. Notorious lead man of Big Black, “some of the nastiest noisemakers in rock” according to Rolling Stone, and, more recently, Shellac of North America. They tour the world.
     But those tough on others, as Albini certainly is, are often hardest on themselves. So I was curious. Does he consider himself a success?
     “To the extent that I could care about that, I would say yes,” he replied. “I’ve lived my whole life without having goals, and I think that’s very valuable, because then I never am in a state of anxiety or dissatisfaction. I never feel I haven’t achieved something. I never feel there is something yet to be accomplished. I feel like goals are quite counterproductive. They give you a target, and until the moment you reach that target, you are stressed and unsatisfied, and at the moment you reach that specific target you are aimless and have lost the lodestar of your existence. I’ve always tried to see everything as a process. I want to do things in a certain way that I can be proud of that is sustainable and is fair and equitable to everybody that I interact with. If I can do that, then that’s a success, and success means that I get to do it again tomorrow.”
     COVID-19 has turned many friendships into slag heaps of cold ash. It seemed perverse to seek out Albini, whom I hadn’t seen in decades, who doesn’t suffer fools and can summarize your failings with a precision that’ll haunt you to your grave. Driving to lunch, I wondered if I was ready for his notorious scrutiny, conjuring a potential headline: “Steve Albini explains why I suck.”
     I told him I have a hard time sharing his perspective.
     “I can’t conceive of somebody who’s done what he’s wanted to do every day for four decades, published books and still writes a daily column and have that person think of himself as anything other than a success,” he said.
     That was unexpected.
     “You’re mellower than when we were in school,” I said.

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Put Dante in the game.

     Guys talk. And not everything we say, we want to share with the public, right? For instance. In Sunday's description of going to the Cubs game, I left out a certain digression of mine at the ballpark. Didn't seem germane. But it actually was germane, as you will see. The problem was, it's embarrassing.  A little. Okay. A lot.
     I started talking about Dante. At the ballgame. I was with book editors, remember, and the topic came to books I'd like to write someday, and I explained my theory that Dante is funny, in a wicked, Spy magazine sense, creating this hell and putting all his enemies in it. They nodded politely.

    It wasn't easy for Dante. It took some creativity, see? I continued. For instance. He was betrayed by Pope Boniface VIII. Whom he very much wanted to put in his newly-minted hell. But he couldn't, because the Inferno actually takes place at a certain time, over Easter weekend, 1300. And Boniface had not yet died. So trying to be faithful to the faux verisimilitude that lets people forget this is all something he made up, in the narrative, Dante, led by Virgil, comes to this hole, where the popes are kept, head down, their feet kicking, the red flames burning their feet a parody of their red papal slippers. And one pope hears a sound above, and says, "What, Boniface? Is that you? You're early?"

     Funny, right?

     Eventually I stopped. And no harm done, except perhaps two guys really, really sorry for whom they decided to invite to the game. My shame would have been hidden.

     Then a Facebook pal, Ann Hilton Fisher, alerted me to a program that begins tomorrow, that I have to alert you to: "100 Days of Dante," beginning Sept. 8 and running until Easter Sunday, they are reading three cantos of the Divine Comedy a week. Here's a story about it.
     I'm not endorsing the project en toto. And if you watch the video, you'll see they slip in that the Divine Comedy is "which has taught generation of people a deeper way to love God." That's one take. It could also better rationalize apostasy. It's put together by a consortium of American Christian universities, who are not famous for the range of their intellectual scope, and the lead organization is Baylor University, the Waco Texas Baptist school. For all I know, it's a thinly disguised 100-day orgy of anti-Catholicism, which Baylor was once known for. Though I hope not.

    The 700th anniversary of Dante's death is Sept. 14, and we have to do something, right? I plan to at least tune in until I have reason to drop out, and figure you might want to join me.

‘I want the music to survive’

Steve Albini

Monday is Labor Day, an apt moment to consider a profession rarely featured in a daily newspaper.

     “Let me show you the rest of the studio,” said Steve Albini, moving through a musician’s paradise of musical instruments — fine guitars, timpani, two grand pianos — plus an audiophile’s dream of equipment: Marshall amplifiers, reel-to-reel Ampex tape machines, high-end speakers, coiled cords, headphones, mixing boards, rows of phase shifters and fuzzboxes and other effect pedals. The walls are enormous bricks, each weighing 13 pounds.
     “These are adobe bricks we had brought up from New Mexico,” he explains. “They have some interesting acoustic properties. The walls are self-isolating ... massive, enormously heavy and that stops the transmission of sound from room to room. We built this whole place. Everything you see is a new construction.”
     Since 1997, here at Electrical Audio on Belmont Avenue, Albini has recorded music by thousands of musicians, from the world famous to the deeply obscure. Commercial clients, too. A few cases of Mamba fruity candy are scattered around the foyer — the manufacturer needed a recording studio to shoot a commercial, and hired the space, which has a feel that is somehow both cutting edge and classic.
     “Everything that we’ve seen so far is Studio A — the bigger, fancier studio,” Albini said. “Each of the rooms has a different sound footprint, and that is intentional, so you can make an active choice about what you’re recording. That room over there is Alcatraz — super dead, super dry sound. This room is called the Kentucky room, much brighter and more lively recording environment. It has a quick slap of reverb and not a long-sustaining decay. Very good for drums. Any acoustic instruments, acoustic guitar, banjo violin, mandolin. Any percussion instruments, vibes and marimbas and all that kind of thing — all that sounds great in there because you get this quick, bright, reverberant sound from the room.”
     If you’re wondering why we’re here, it’s complicated. Among the many bad things that COVID-19 has done is isolate people. Casual relationships vanish. It gets lonely. A few weeks back, I read a Tribune story about speed cameras that quoted Albini saying the typically challenging, contrarian things I remember him saying when we were in college together. Unlike drivers such as myself, merely irked to get speeding tickets, Albini finds the automatic speed cameras “a nicely implemented, mild reminder to keep speed under control in those areas.” Besides, he said, better to trust automatic cameras than give discretion to cops, who have proved “they will abuse that discretion.”

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'Take me out to the ballgame...'

     Confession: I have never gone to Wrigley Field of my own initiative.
     That is, never conceived the thought, "I think I'll go to a game," and either taken myself, or invited a friend and headed to the Friendly Confines.
     I've gone because someone was in town—a business associate, relative, friend—and I wanted ot show off the park. I've gone to take my children, so they can experience a game. And I've accepted many invitations, such as Friday, when a pair of book editors invited me along to round out their group, blessed—or should that be burdened?—with free tickets from some season ticket holder too disgusted with the Ricketts gutting the team to attend another game.

    It occurred to me, arriving to meet them, slipping into my seat, Section 31, Row 7, Seat 1, that this was nice. Even. being by myself, even knowing the Cubs had traded away their good players. I vowed to someday come alone, of my own volition, just for the heck of it, maybe next summer. Just because I can.

     The whole process was enjoyable. Parking at the Skokie Swift. Getting on the 'L' at one of its rare forays into the 'burbs, with a variety of folks clad in their Cubbie gear, a few kids carrying gloves, the zenith of optimism 
     The seats were great. "Like sitting on the field," I texted to my wife. I bought a Bud Zero—a new and welcome development, and only $8. Munched peanuts, bought a hot dog from a vendor (the condiment options are ketchup, mustard and relish. Just sayin'). The game was exciting, to the degree I watched, with a home run, a wildly overthrown pitch.
      The really fun part was the conversation. A lot about Nicholson Baker, whom one of the editors had met and worked with. When he revealed that, I reached out and touched his shoulder with the pad of my index finger, as if to access by contact a bit of the Nicholson Baker writerly mojo. An extraordinary novelist.
     And there was one moment I really savored, which I should explain, because I doubt anyone at the ballpark would pick it as the highlight. Cubs coach David Ross being out with the COVID, Andy Green stepped in. He was spectacularly upset over the umpire's call at second base—we all missed the play, and my pals turned to their phones to find out what had happened. I didn't actually care that much, so my gaze strayed to the left field scoreboard while Green foamed and gesticulated and marched around the umpire.
     Whoever operates the video scoreboard, kudos to that person. At one point the camera zeroed in on the Wrigley clock, as if to say, "Tick tock, Andy, let's wrap up your tirade and get on with the game." I fumbled for my phone, but the operator cut away, and I took a photo of the clock.

    A reminder that as much as we focus on the players and coaches, there is an enormous substrata of people who make baseball worth experiencing, to the degree that it is. Friendly usher when you walk in. Unsung heroes, like the rangy afro'ed attendant—once I would have called him a "ball boy"—who sat on the field in front of us, snagging stray balls that rolled his way. When he did, a small boy would inevitably appear at his elbow and wait patiently, glove proffered. Eventually he would turn, tuck the ball through the net, into the mitt, and the boy would turn, agog and delighted, bearing his treasure in triumph. I listened as a father gently urge his son to do that—7-year-old boys can be maddeningly shy—and eventually he went and learned one of life's key lessons: you don't get what you want unless you ask.

David, left, and Gary.

       It rained for almost an hour, but a gentle rain, and we sat in it without complaining too much. I struck up a conversation with the beer vendor, Gary from Albany Park, who delighted to see that I was Jewish, spent a long time discussing Romanian hot dogs, which are sold at a certain stand in the field, as well as the Jewel on Howard, "the Jewish Jewel" he called it. Gary has been selling beer at Wrigley since 1984. But that's nuthin', he effused, calling over David, who has sold beer here for 58 years, or since I was in nursery school. I took their photo.
     We stood and sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and shortly thereafter the game was over. Filing out, I thanked my friends for inviting me, and thought what a thoroughly enjoyable time I had had at the ballgame. Just as we reached the steps down to the causeway out, I paused.
     "Just a second," I said, and turned, my eyes searching the scoreboard. Six to five, the Cubs won—I thought they had, based on how the crowd cheered when it was over.
      "My wife might ask me the score," I said, hurrying to catch up.

Ravenswood Notes: Fancy

       

     Like most people, I hold onto my possessions longer than I should: that butcher block my wife hates, jammed in a corner of the dining room. That red chair in our foyer that really doesn't match the style of the house. I'd probably be lighter and freer if I could give them up. The house certainly would be less cluttered. But as Walt Whitman suggests, they own me more than I own them. There is another way, as Caren Jeskey illustrates in her post today.

            “Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.”                                                                                          ― Anais Nin

     As I look around my home now, I see that it is filled with gifts. A cedar wardrobe friends in Texas brought to my home in the woods in 2016, that other friends drove back up to Chicago for me. A rug from a neighbor. A leather storage cube, and an orange poof to sit on.
     When I left Austin I gave away a beloved cedar chest, a memory foam mattress, frame and bedding, a full dish set and so much more. I miss these things sometimes, and then I remember that people like us will always have all we need, and much more— even if we don’t realize it at times.

     Giving and receiving possessions, as needed, makes more sense than clinging to them always. That's the genius of Buy Nothing, a movement that promotes creating a hyper-local gift economy.  I joined my first group in Texas a couple years back. Buy Nothing operates on Facebook and other social media platforms, and they also encourage groups.
     Buy Nothing is where I received gift cards last March when I abruptly lost my job and then my rental home. It’s where I met neighbors who came to find me sitting in a park, garnishing fresh eggs from their backyard chickens. This same pair offered me a below market rental — the charming tiny house I’ve shared about in previous posts, like this one, to bail me out during a peak of the COVID crisis.
     It’s where I met neighbors who dropped off bag after bag of masks, food, sanitizer, backpacks, blankets, clothes and more on my porch, which I then passed out to a group home and folks living on the streets in our neighborhood. A member made extra Thanksgiving food and offered it to those who were without families in November of 2020.
     Funny thing is that even with all of this goodness there were problems. Who was it who said “put two people in a room together and you have a problem?” There was the neighbor who was unhappy that I was giving hand sanitizer to folks he said were sure to drink it. Neighbors who were rigid and unwilling to have conversations, and pretty much trolled others rather than coexisting harmoniously.
     I decided to start a local Buy Nothing group in my neighborhood here in Chicago and already have people mansplaining incorrect things to me and criticizing the way I am using one of my new gifts— a fabulous piano-room-red velvet sofa.
     It started with a post on another giveaway group called Free Box. A person posted a photo of the couch with its approximate location in an alley, and I immediately jumped into action. My emergent root canal earlier that day would not stop me from scoring this baby. When I got to her I knew she was mine. Don’t worry! I’m not interested in a bedbug infestation either.
     I rang the bell of the impressive Frame Two Flat home with a Victorian feel, which I learned was built in 1890. A kind man introduced, who himself as Mr. Reece, and his little princess dog greeted me.  She vetted me, and he graciously wrapped up a call to give me the scoop. The couch came from Domicile and has had several incarnations. She’s lived in two offices of a food designer and more recently their backyard, which was set up for an outdoor soiree. She has not been touched by bedbugs.

     After her party debut where the guests marveled at her beauty, it was time for her to say goodbye to the Reece’s. She was standing up on her end, leaning against a garage. Mr. Reece gingerly placed her back down on the ground so I could sit on her while I figured out how to get her home. He also brought me a cup of ice and a Diet Coke.
     As luck would have it, new friends who work on the block where I live were able to come to the rescue with their landscaping truck. They were all the way on 31st and California dumping trash, and I was in the Lakeview area. It was 4pm on a weekday. I settled in for the wait. An antique coffee table came with the couch, so I sat down with my Coke on the table and enjoyed the smiles and laughs from a copious amount of alley walkers and drivers who passed by.
     When we got the couch to the back porch of my 3rd floor walk up it would not fit into the undersized door frame. We took the legs off and the couch was still several inches too wide and too tall to make it happen. (Please don’t suggest what we could have done. It won’t fit, and a professional couch disassembler has quoted me at $700 if I want them to get it inside). My friend said “why don’t you just leave it on the porch?” Aha! Solution. Along with my patio chairs I now have a perfect COVID visiting spot.
     Now I have a regal sofa where I spent all day yesterday working from home. Some folks in the free groups are criticizing me for leaving a couch “that nice” outside. Well it’s my choice and I love it there. She’s awkwardly covered with plastic bags right now since there’s a threat of rain, and her permanent, waterproof, forest green cover will be here soon enough. She and I can survive what’s sure to be a colder damper winter than I’m used to in Texas.
     Happy lounging y’all.