Jan. 6, 2021

Cast of George Washington's face made by Jean-Antoine Houdon in 1785 (Smithsonian)

     The mob was summoned. 

     It came, and was dispatched to the Capitol.

     None of that was secret.

     But first they were harangued.

     "These people are not going to take it any longer," President Donald Trump said. "They're not going to take it any longer."

     The crowd chanted: "Fight for Trump!"

      "We will stop the steal," the president said. "Today."
      "We are not going to let it happen," the president said. "I am not going to let it happen."
      The crowd chanted "We love Trump!"
     "You're stronger, you're smarter," the president said. "You're the real people, the people that built this nation."
     "Now it's up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy," the president said. "And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down. We're going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here.we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer our brave senators and congressmen and women and we're going to probably not be cheering much for some of them."
     Within hours, there was to be much not cheering.
     "Because you'll never take our country back with weakness," the president said. "You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated."
     "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard," said the president.
     Don't let that "peacefully" throw you. Donald Trump also talked about the importance of election integrity, the kind of gas-lighting he perfected, the political version of a bully grabbing your hand and ramming it into your face while sneering, "Why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself!"
     Words do have meaning, even in Trump's world, but only certain words, at certain times. The rest is code that must be deciphered or, alas, not. One year has passed, and still understanding is slow in dawning. Democrats lack the vigor and singularity of purpose in saving our democracy that Republicans show in tearing it down. Which is unsurprising, if unforgivable, because it's hard to believe. The whole thing is hard to believe. That's the trick. It's real, and we — patriotic Americans who want to live in a free, small-d democratic country, have to believe it. We must make ourselves believe it. That's the trick. See that it isn't a joke. But real. It happened, is happening. The insurrection of Jan. 6 not only occurred it never stopped, and never will, until somebody stops it.
     "The most corrupt election in the history, maybe, of the world," the president said.
     "We fight. We fight like hell," the president said. "And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
     "And we're going to the Capitol," the president said. "So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue."

     And so they did. The mob, that is. The president stayed put and watched. For hours. Delighted.

You’re not fine and neither am I

     Hi, how are you doing? You all right? Good to hear. I’m fine too.
     But are you? Really? Fine, that is. Because things everywhere aren’t “fine.” Far from it. These are such strange times. That’s what I’ll say to my wife, out of the blue, just to fill the air with words.
     Maybe we’ll be eating dinner, or sitting, reading.
     “Strange times,” I’ll say. And she will agree that yes, these are strange times indeed.
     No need to explain why. We all know. With the plague and the politics, the isolation and inflation. Not to forget school and work, for those who have children or jobs. Or both. All odd for so long it could almost seem normal by now except it’s not normal and will never be. COVID-19 is a threat both to our physical and mental health.
     Though Omicron doesn’t seem so bad. Not as deadly as the Delta variant. I stopped going to the Y when Omicron first struck, because it is so contagious, and all the kids were home from college. Too crowded. Monday, I started going back, shrugging. “Life is to be lived,” I said, figuring, if I get it, I get it. Not so bad when you’re boosted.
     But only 20% of the country have their boosters. Just 62% are fully vaccinated, and 20% aren’t vaccinated at all. More than 60 million people. Quite a lot.
     A vast petri dish to cultivate new strains. Still plenty of Greek letters left. Nor is it just people. One of the more terrifying things I read — as if you need another worry — is that up to 80% of the deer in Iowa have COVID-19. A horror movie twist.
     By the way, that bit about Omicron not being so bad. That isn’t an official medical statement. Nor a denial of all the people who are going to die from it unless they get their shots.

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Wear everything.

     Confession: I don't hate Facebook as much as some people do. Maybe most people. As much as you probably do.
     It's useful. A ready pool of almost 5,000 noses under which to slide my column or, four days a week, my blog. 

     A curated audience. Jerks can be shown the gate. I guess they can be blocked on gmail and filtered away here. But the exile on Facebook seems more permanent. They vanish more completely, without a trace, forever.
     And Facebook is constant source of ideas. I was scrolling through Facebook yesterday afternoon on my phone, and saw a friend's announcement about ... well, I guess I shouldn't say. Something involving butterflies. I thought it would make a great column, and would put it in the newspaper right away. But, alas, she didn't want to be in the newspaper: worried about getting in trouble with her boss. Because of her personal butterfly activities. Which itself was interesting. I gently requested she think about it, maybe talk it over with her boss. The story would buck people up.

     It would sure buck me up.     

     A very 1930s, Jack London kind of expression, isn't that? "Buck you up." Sounds almost obscene now, though.

     I'm sorry, where were we? Ah yes, Facebook. Much interest there; because it has much interest in me. A robotic fascination with my past doings and jottings and quips, one that outstrips even my own, which is really saying something.

     Two days after Christmas, Facebook served up this, from 2017, when the temperature dipped to 4 below:

"It isn't bad if you dress for it," I told my wife, returning from walking the dog. "Wear everything."     

     Wear everything. Quite a good phrase, if I say so myself. Is there better advice for surviving the Chicago winter? Monday morning it was 7 degrees outside. I put on an REI fleece, with a thicker Boston Traders fleece over that, and THEN my Eddie Bauer Gore-Tex Ridgeline Parka, the one I bought when I hoped to go to the South Pole for Rolling Stone and report on the social life of graduate students at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. The trip fell through, alas; the station is run by the National Science Foundation, and you need their permission. I thickly explained what I hoped to write about, and they said no. Should have lied...

       Back to the matter at hand: Out from storage came the snow pants. Lobster gloves. Two hats—a skullcap like wind block, and then a big fake rabbit-lined Northwestern hat with ear flaps that I bought for my kid when he got into school but he was too cool to actually wear, not realizing the joy with which I would appropriate it: warm AND nostalgic....
      My go-to phrase regarding clothes and the weather is, "It's never too cold in Chicago; you're just underdressed." But "Wear everything" packs more of a punch in less than a quarter of the words. It has a certain urgency, like the famous line in "Jaws," "You're going to need a bigger boat."

      It almost sounds like it applies to more than clothing, to a general need to emotionally armor yourself against everything that's going on, the plague and the politics, employment and isolation. Do everything you can to preserve your warmth, keep your spark, stay alive. Reach out to friends, plunge into literature, art, music, exercise. Layer it on. Wear everything.  

The problems of 2021 are still here

     Why do they call this a “new” year? There’s nothing new about it. We’re still the same old people, dragging the same old problems after us.
     A flash of fresh energy and hope, as if the clockwork arrival of a new digit — a 2 instead of a 1 — is going to make it all somehow work, and the world become better, kinder, thinner.
     Yes, that’s what the problem was: 2021, the numeral. Changing to “2022” will fix everything!
     Then a few hours pass, maybe a day or two. We get hungry, and our old selves come loping back, like extras in a low-rent zombie movie. “Hi! Didja miss us?”
     The COVID we grappled with all through 2021 is right where we left it, in its supercharged Omicron form. Filling the hospitals with those who won’t take the free vaccine, for the same reason a toddler won’t eat his pureed peas. “I don’t want to! You can’t make me!”
     Yet they still show up at the hospital when they can’t breathe. So the same doctors whose advice they mocked a week earlier can stick a tube down their throats.
     And the same old Jan. 6 insurrection, whose first anniversary is Thursday, sits there and ticks. I guess it’s my job to Explain What It All Means, though, honestly, my heart isn’t in it.
     Really, for whom is explanation necessary? Either you understood all too well long ago or you never will. Among the many myths that liberals embrace — we can delude ourselves, too — a key delusion is that reason will prevail, truth reign triumphant, and at some point Trumpsters will slap their foreheads and go, “Ohhh, wait. We’re dupes swallowing lies spewed by a traitor! That’s so embarrassing!”
     It’ll never happen. Seventy percent of Russians today think Stalin was good for their country (Sigh, historians consider him responsible for the deaths of 20 million Russians, between his forced collectivization and gulags. Not to forget his non-aggression pact with Hitler).

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Beating up J.K. Rowling won’t help

 

Fall '91, 1992 by Charles Ray
(The Broad, Los Angeles)

   Almost 30 years ago, I was scanning the Chicago Reader, looking for ideas, when I noticed a classified ad for a shop on Elston Avenue selling women’s clothing in large sizes to men.
     ”Now there’s something you don’t see in the paper every day,” I thought, and headed over.
     Chatting with the owner, I realized there was a larger story here. Not just one boutique, but a community. So I plunged in, visiting safe houses — cross-dressers often did not tell their spouses, so they needed places to store clothes and wigs — and attending a dance at a Northwest Side banquet hall, selecting “Miss Chicago Gender Society 1992.”
     The story holds up, in my view, because it isn’t condescending. It uses “she” to refer to the people encountered. Why? Because that’s the word they used. When you’re a reporter, it gets in the way if you stand in judgment. Honestly portray any group — a skill many people never master — and praise or blame won’t be necessary.
     The only outdated aspect of the story is the term “transvestites.” That is what they were called then. Or so I thought.
     At the dance, I found myself talking to Leslie, who seemed an attractive young woman. “So you’re gay?” I asked.
     No, she said, but she lives as a woman and dates men.
     That was almost a paradox. These days, she might instead say she “is a woman” rather than “lives as a woman,” and it is easy to tumble into that semantic gap the way J.K. Rowling, famed author of the wildly popular Harry Potter books, has over the past two years.
     Rowling began her slide into the bog of disrepute by defending a woman fired for angrily insisting on the preeminence of biological differences. The more Rowling explained herself, the more mired she became, until the stars of the Harry Potter movies felt the need to distance themselves from her. Fans wondered if she’d even be mentioned in the 20th anniversary show about the films that HBO Max began airing Saturday Jan. 1. She is.

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Ravenswood Notes: 'The moment we choose to love, we move towards freedom'

The Equestrian, by Bisa Butler 

     I saw that feminist author and teacher bell hooks had died, and that her passing moved many people. But I'd never heard of her before, and the news was swept away without my addressing that lapse—I think her lower case name might have put me off. Leave it to Ravenswood bureau chief Caren Jeskey to grab me by the ear and further my education—and perhaps yours too. Her Saturday report:

     “Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

    ― bell hooks (Sept. 25, 1952 – Dec. 15, 2021)

     bell hooks died last week. I dove into her work and found that her words resonate deeply with the current times. She talked about intersectionality decades ago—specifically the ability of race, capitalism, and gender to “produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination.” I believe that an unjust world will never be pleasant to live in.

     She also writes a lot about self love, and loving others:

      “The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.” 

     Personally, I put down my rage hat weeks ago for the most part. It's more fun to feel goodwill towards others, than judgment and hatred. Vestiges of anger still kick up when I am treated unjustly, or in unwelcome ways. I am hoping that the the 25 day meditation program I am embarking on next week with a small group of others will help me learn to turn the volume down on what others are doing that displeases me, and turn it up on finding joy, peace, inspiration, and calm.

     bell hooks is a name that stuck with me from the first time I heard it. It was probably in high school AP English, with Michael Conroy teaching. Conroy, as we called him, was one of those rare teachers who inspired me. (Ms. Minor, Mr. Bakrins, Jeanne Marsh, Father Jim Halstead, Derise Tolliver Atta, and Stanley McCracken are notable others). Conroy, in his calm commanding voice, made the Iliad, The Odyssey and Shakespeare more than palatable. Downright exciting, in fact! He was never condescending, and always encouraging.
     I recently came across a grade from him for a journalism class I don’t even remember taking, back in the '80s. The grade came on a piece of fancy parchment paper in true North Shore Country Day School savoir faire, and notes that I was a "very promising writer." He added that I could have been an editor of the school paper by then, had I done my work more diligently the previous year. He suggested that I buckle down and do so at that time. I did not.
     It took me decades to realize the lack of value that irresponsible (albeit exciting) adventure must hold for me in order for me to feel well. I do better with stability and simplicity, turns out. I was a person who collected experiences, as an astute therapist once pointed out. I have almost forgiven myself, since my inner chaos was honestly gleaned and not a choice of my own. No one “loves drama.” Trust me.
     What has this year held for all of us? Perhaps a lot of fear and uncertainty. Hopefully, an opportunity to slow down and hold our families and true friends closer. Folks read more, baked more, took longer walks, pared down friendships that were not working, and reassessed values. This pandemic will not be done with us until we show that we are serious about beating it down. That has not happened yet. I haven’t done the research but it seems obvious that Omicron is not the last variant. COVID is not going to "end", and we must learn to adjust to what is really happening.
     Fortunately, I work for myself in that I make my own hours, and I am able to work remotely. I wish that was true for everyone else. It’s hard to accept the back breaking roles so many must play. The stress of this year is taking a heavy toll on many of our fellow humans. I am sure many of you are finding ways to be of service, and thank you for that.
     So how do we come to peace with our lives, and take advantage of the very privilege that allows us to sip a hot cup of coffee and read a blog? How do we stay hopeful and mentally well? There have been movements over time for humans to work less and spend more time focusing on nurturing other parts of the self, in order to become better people.
     I half listened to a piece on NPR yesterday that speaks to the work less movement. "Evidence suggests that one of the biggest advantages of working fewer weekly hours is that it makes people better workers." The four day work week has become a hot topic. The puritanical, punishing idea that idle hands are the devil’s work is being challenged. For what is the purpose of this existence if not to be calm and loving enough to be humans who can play well with each other? I hope we can all find ways, in this fresh new year, to hone in on what we can do to improve our own personal happiness, for ourselves and also so that it may trickle down to others. Happy New Year!

Flashback 1992: A visit to Chicago's secretive transgender community

     The Sun-Times doesn't have its deep archive online, and since I refer to this story in my Sunday column, I thought I would post it here, where readers could see it. It ran under the headline, "Pretty, Witty—and Male; Cross-dressers keep culture close to vest."

     Jenny has sparkling blue eyes, a small, upturned nose and a cascade of curly blond hair tumbling over her right shoulder.
     With a rhinestone nail charm centered on each red fingernail, a dab of blush at her decolletage, and deftly applied make-up, it's easy to believe her when she says she spent three hours getting ready to go out.
     The shimmery blue and silver dress is custom-made, she says, and it's easy to believe that, too, since with the spike heels, Jenny tops out at perhaps 6-foot-7.
     "I'm a bigger girl, I know," she says, smiling radiantly. "I can't go out to a mall—hey, I've got a football player's shoulders.
     So instead, Jenny has come here, to a banquet hall on the Northwest Side of Chicago, where the city's tiny, secretive transvestite community is having one of its many regular social functions—this one a dinner and gala pageant to select "Miss Chicago Gender Society 1992."
     About 110 people—mostly men dressed as women, with a smattering of wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and even somebody's mother—mingle and chat, complimenting each others' dresses, primping at their wigs, sipping drinks.
     Less than 15 years ago, it was against the law in Chicago for people to wear clothing of the opposite sex. The ordinance was in place until 1978, when the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the conviction of two men arrested in 1974 for wearing dresses.
      Today, several hundred people belong to Chicago's two transvestite groups—the Chicago Gender Society, which admits any cross-dresser of any sexual orientation, and the Society of Second Self, or Tri-S, which limits its members to heterosexual transvestites and is more family-oriented.
     Still, transvestism is one of society's deepest taboos. While homosexuals have made progress in becoming better understood and, in places, accepted by society as a whole, transvestites struggle against a stigma so strong that few feel they can risk even revealing their real names.
     The president of Tri-S refused to have his picture taken, even dressed as Naomi, for fear fellow lawyers at his Loop law firm would recognize him. The president of the Gender Society, posing for a newspaper picture, quips, "My life is over."
     "I personally don't care (if people know I'm a transvestite)," says Leslie, a six-footer in a white mini-skirt and hoop earings who works as a contractor in the suburbs. "But I have to protect the rest of those people: my 7-year-old son, my wife, my other family members."
     Most transvestites describe themselves as heterosexual, though the term sometimes gets stretched a bit. One transvestite at the gala says he is heterosexual, but adds that he lives as a woman and dates men.
     Still, many transvestites have wives, families, and are not effeminate when dressed as men, many say.
     "I'm straight, married, I have a 9-to-5 job, a sales job," says Jenny. "I battle over turf with the rest of the sales people. I play baseball."
     Indeed, one academic explanation of transvestism is that it is the ironic result of a sort of super-masculinity.
     "One of the ways we understand transvestism is an attempt to integrate what are otherwise carefully separate parts of one's self," says Dr. Richard Carroll, director of the Sex and Marital Therapy program at the University of Chicago. "Some men, in most of their lives, are aggressive and hypermasculine, and it's as if some men have split off the feminine aspects of themselves so completely they have to cross dress and play a role to get in touch with the more feminine part of themselves."
     What is a mystery, however, is whether the strong masculinity is a cause of, or a reaction to, transvestism.
     "A lot of transvestites will overcompensate in male life," says Anjelica, who worked for years as a mailman "partly because of the uniform."
     Transvestites themselves, who generally say they began dressing in female clothing at a very young age, describe cross-dressing as a compulsion.
     "I just have to do it; it's like this urge," says Leslie.
     While transvestites are initially drawn to women's clothing as an erotic experience, the appeal often changes into a general state of well-being.
     "The sexual element becomes less important and dressing and passing as female more important. Just the experience of being cross-dressed is associated with a sense of calm, peace, and freedom from stress," says Carroll. "For many transvestites, the sexual aspect becomes less important as they grow older. It just feels peaceful to them. Some men describe it like finally being at home."
     Despite the calm transvestites find in cross-dressing, they can face a variety of severe emotional problems, the result of conflict between their inner impulses and the outer dictates of society. Transvestites are thought to commit suicide more frequently.
     Pervasive public ridicule, which can result in physical attack, also is a problem.
     Then there is the issue of dealing with their families. Some wives divorce their husbands after learning that they are transvestites. Others grow to accept it.
     Nicole, attending the Gender Society gala with her husband, Gloria, was married for four years before she discovered women's clothing in the trunk of their car.
     "I was devastated—I thought he had a girlfriend," she says, holding back tears. Learning that it was her husband's clothing came as a relief. "I thought, 'Oh, is that all? We don't have to get a divorce.' "
     Asked if she liked the fact that her husband is a transvestite, Nicole says: "I understand she has her needs." But some wives actually feel closer to their husbands when they are in their female roles.
     "In some ways, the partner preferred him when he was cross-dressed," says Carroll, referring to a high-level business executive and his wife. "He was calmer, open, more relaxed and more intimate."
     And not all transvestites tell their wives. Michele, attending the gala while his wife of 22 years was out of town, says the wife has no idea of his transvestism and he isn't going to tell her. "Why create a problem?" he says.
     Marriage can actually facilitate the development of a man's transvestism, since it takes him out of the posturing of the dating world and, not incidentally, provides ready access to women's clothing.
     "In the dating scene, you have to be one of the macho guys, a male male," says one cross-dresser. "When I got married, I didn't have to go through that ritual, all that pressure trying to find a woman."
     Several businesses in Chicago cater to transvestites. In addition to a photography studio, a beauty salon and a meeting service, there is at least one boutique, a nondescript storefront on Elston Avenue.
     Inside the boutique are racks of Cover Girl cosmetics, costume jewelry, jumbo-size Frederick's of Hollywood-type undergarments and clothes, mostly culled from secondhand shops.
     "We try to keep a low profile," says the owner, who goes by the name Karen when dressed as a woman. "They come here because we are discreet, quiet and no one bothers them."
     While he talks, four men, one at a time, slip into the store and head to the back.
     In the back of the store are a variety of transvestite publications on dressing, makeup and feminine deportment, as well as racks of paperback novels with titles such as "Trio in Skirts," "Girl for a Week," and "Men in Skirts." Karen describes them as "basically good, wholesome fantasies," though it is safe to say not everyone would agree.
     A common refrain heard again and again from cross-dressers is they are not trying to hurt anybody, just be themselves, living life the best they can.
     "Once you get over the question of men dressing as women, there is really very little unusual about it," says Karen, and, indeed, perhaps what is most unexpected about transvestites is how ordinary their lives can be, outside of their cross-dressing.
     Karen has a photo album of himself, in women's clothes, posing inside suburban interiors, mugging with friends at parties, dressed as a cheerleader, as Little Bo Peep, in an evening gown.
     But in the back of the album are a different set of photos—Ebbets Field memorabilia, Stan Musial's locker, a bat once swung by Babe Ruth—taken during a cherished visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
     "That's my primary interest," Karen says.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 24, 1992