Flashback 2010: Voltaire's satire; nicks ox of paralyzed, fading America

Voltaire, by Jean-Antoine Houdon (National Portrait Gallery)

      You never know what is going to stick in a reader's mind. After a colleague approvingly retweeted my Wednesday column on Loredo Taft's "Fountain of Time" scupture, a Twitter follower observed that while I am a readable fellow, a certain aesthetic opinion I expressed 12 years ago diminishes everything I've written since. I immediately checked the original he quoted from, and found this review, which I think bears re-reading. I'll let you guess which opinion indicted me, in his eyes, and tell you after.

     If I had to point to one single historical episode to explain the entire human condition, I would highlight the little-known fact that a number of survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945, fled to Nagasaki in time for the second bomb dropped three days later.
     This out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire quality, so horrible that it becomes comic — at least when happening long ago to people far away whom you don't know — flashed as I sat in the Goodman Theatre Monday for opening night of "Candide."
     Leonard Bernstein's 54-year-old musical version of Voltaire's 250-year-old satire should not feel current. But something about its deep cynicism, its chain of self-interested rogues, puffed up rulers and luckless victims, makes it perfect for these times, when we stumble from natural disaster to pointless bloodletting to political upheaval. The randy Jesuits Voltaire parodies, well, let's say they did not have the dust of the ages upon them.
     I loved it.
     Then again, I'm an odd mix of deep cynicism and childlike innocence. I enjoyed the way the play's characters were casually butchered, its cities destroyed, sailors drowned, maidens defiled, all with director Mary Zimmerman's full palette of cute theatrical devices — ships on sticks, stoic red toy sheep, ribbons as blood — sugar-coating the three hours of musical mayhem. How many plays are there where the line "Throw the Jew into a ditch" draws a hearty laugh from the audience?
     For those unfamiliar with the story, Candide is a pleasant young simpleton who gets evicted from the idyllic palace where he was raised. He's forced to wander our world of endless outrage, misery and atrocity, searching for his lost love, Miss Cunegonde (played with show-stealing zest by Lauren Molina).
     No experience, no matter how awful, blunts Candide's optimism — I hate to say it, but he is very Barack Obama-ish in his tendency to place his trust in obvious enemies and his reluctance to let a steady rain of betrayals dampen his worldview.

'A CHAIN OF ASTONISHING CALAMITIES!'

     The music, alas, is not memorable. Bernstein wrote it, but "West Side Story" this ain't. Though when you have lyrics like "What a day for an auto de fe!" who cares about melody? Several of my associates, more experienced theatergoers than myself, complained that Zimmerman's bag of stage tricks has grown stale, so maybe enjoyment reveals a Candide-like naivete on my part. But how could you not love a musical with a number celebrating the transmission of venereal disease, sung by a character with a silver nose? ("Untreated syphilis destroys the cartilage in your nose," I explained to my 14-year-old, eager to show off knowledge that I never thought I'd have the chance to use. "People really did wear those noses.")
     That either intrigues or repels you. Now that every new musical seems designed to help 12-year-olds feel good about themselves, it's bracing to be reminded that theater used to be something adults did to make our scary world seem less so.
     A few who fled Hiroshima to Nagasaki survived both, by the way, living to face life's fresh horrors. Which is the message of the play. You survive; well, some do.

                   —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 29, 2010

     It was the backhand to the melodies of Leonard Bernstein that stuck in his craw, a judgment he found "stupid." To me, there's no accounting for taste, but I do know that others hold their own opinions so highly they come to believe they're absolutes. They're not. If you prefer Salieri to Mozart, well, I would not want to imitate the monks Voltaire decries who "who burn people that are not of their opinion."

Voltaire, by Jean-Antoine Houdon (National Portrait Gallery)

Fountain suffers lash of time

     Chicago is a big place — 234 square miles. Not only is the city big, but there’s a lot of stuff in it: buildings, parks, statues. So nobody can be faulted for missing any one particular thing. No shame there.
     I hope.
     So I was driving aimlessly around Washington Park Saturday, and passed Lorado Taft’s Fountain of Time, a 126-foot long tableau of 100 people plodding along from birth to doom, located at the west end of the Midway Plaisance.
     I pulled over and put on my flashers.

     Maybe you live on the South Side. Maybe you have passed this sprawling display all your life. Maybe, to you, not knowing about Fountain of Time is like not knowing there is a ballpark at the corner of Addison and Clark. You feel like giving a “harrumph” in superiority — go ahead, get it out. A key pleasure of city life is mocking the newbies. That’s what the whole ketchup-on-hot-dogs thing is really about: the joy of belittlement, harder to exercise nowadays without consequences.
     The sculpture is so big it’s hard to photograph. An enormous pool of water with one figure — Father Time, obviously — contemplating the human parade. Huge, yet strangely unimpressive. Maybe I saw it before and then forgot. Parts of its facade are cracked, missing, streaked.
     Blame the Art Institute for it being there, which approved money for the work in 1913, through its administration of the Ferguson Fund.
     “Undoubtedly the largest undertaking ever attempted in sculpture” Taft said. It was supposed to be part of an even larger beautification scheme, a companion Fountain of Creation, just as big, slated for the other end of the Midway.

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Because they're there.

     I've been doing this long enough to know that a column like yesterday's, about a summer camp for children with a parent who has died, won't get much reaction. There's nothing to object to, no way for reactionaries to beat their chests or whine about themselves as victims. So they fall into a sullen silence, biding their time.
     Mostly. I glanced into my spam filter, and there was a chronic complainer with this reaction:
"This is the type of organization that should get help via taxpayer money," which for him was sparkly generosity. Then he reverted to form: "But why add 'binary child' in the article?"

     The standard argument against gays standing up for their rights was that they were somehow flaunting themselves in the face of the public. When in fact they were just agitating to be allowed to do what everyone else enjoys — hold jobs, get married, raise families. 
     The same criticism is now applied toward trans people who manifest themselves and then are  slammed for existing, the idea that people innocently pursuing their own inclinations is somehow intolerable. The easiest way to try that is by pretending that their living causes some kind of harm to you, that stocking books urging tolerance is by definition recruitment, since your own kids' orientation is so lightly held, apparently, that a picture book about a penguin with two dads can send them crashing into the abyss of gender confusion.
     I considered my response, and then offered up: "Because the child was there, whether you like it or not."

A camp that saves young lives

"Physical touch is what made this place feel safe," says Grace Law, 24, a group leader at 
Hearts to Art, a camp for children who have lost a parent. (Sun-Times photo by Ashlee Rezin)

     Davion isn’t on stage with the other kids, talking, stretching, being put through their morning paces at the Vittum Theater.
     Instead he’s lying on the floor by the lobby door, silent, alone, facing the wall. But that’s OK. Camp director Sarah Illiatovitch-Goldman gently coaxes the 6-year-old to his feet.
     “Come with me,” she urges, “I need you with me.” She guides Davion into the auditorium. He dives into a seat, drawing his knees up against his lips, watching. 

     In front of him on stage are three dozen kids, warming up, rolling their shoulders. From diverse backgrounds — boys, girls, at least one non-binary child, ages 6 through 10. City and suburbs. Black and white, from across the economic spectrum.
     But they share one hard reality that has upended their young lives and sent them here, to Hearts to Art, a two-week summer camp for children with parents who have died.
     Now in its 18th year, applications are way up. The program, mixing creative arts and counseling, is run by the Auditorium Theatre and held at the Vittum. The theater, in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood, is part of Northwestern University’s Settlement House.
     “This year we had a record number,” Illiatovitch-Goldman says. “The amount of loss is bigger.”
     Both in Chicago and across the country. A study in Pediatrics last year estimated one in four COVID-19 deaths — 250,000 and counting — cause a child to lose a parent or caregiver. Between illness, accident and violence, an estimated 3.5% of children in America have a parent die before the age of 18. A 2-year-old boy lost both parents in the Highland Park 4th of July shooting.

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Wilmette Notes: The New Normal?

Paris Catacombs. "It's by the malice of the devil that death entered into the world."

     Due to mysterious technical difficulties, North Shore bureau chief Caren Jeskey's Saturday reflections are appearing on Sunday. The proprietor apologizes for this change in routine, though, now that I think of it, shaking up routine is very on-brand for Caren.

By Caren Jeskey

Can you look in the mirror
And tell me everything's alright?
This American crisis
Keeps me wide awake at night.
           — American Crisis, Bob Mould Band, 

     Square Roots Festival, hosted by the Old Town School of Folk Music, took over Lincoln Square last weekend. Bob Mould Band headlined Friday night. I felt a pull to go, but my body had other plans. I spent nearly the whole day and evening in bed. As many others, I was wiped out from the tragic July 4th week. (Plus fatigue, dizziness, and other unpleasantness have become my companions since I had COVID). I crashed with a combination of despondency for the victims of terror so close to home, grief for the violent rage and twisted imagination of the young shooter, and disgust about the availability of tools to act out the depravity he was feeling inside. 

     The facts that he had created an animated video of himself shooting into a crowd of people that was available on YouTube, he’d attempted suicide and threatened violence towards his family, had spray painted an image of himself holding a weapon of mass destruction on the outside wall of his mother’s house, and still had carte blanche access to an arsenal of guns adds to the absurdity of his story.
     The shooters are not adults. They are the children we are raising. Stigmatizing mental illness, addiction, and poverty to the point of forcing people into the fringes is a big part of the problem. I believe that if every one of us made some effort to stay connected to the larger community outside of our castles and nuclear tribes, we’d create a healthier and safer climate for all. Even just a few hours a month — such as becoming a mentor at Mercy Homes or somewhere similar — can make an incredible difference. Our children are growing up quickly— most of them anyway — and will soon be the adults who replace us. Let’s help them feel more secure and show them their value, and thus they will stand a chance of becoming empathic humans rather than isolated pariahs.
     We have to hold onto hope, and slivers come in many forms. A group of volunteer therapists organized to serve the Highland Park community last week is still going strong, and growing. As I’m sure you’ve seen on the news, the Highland Park community has continued banding together in impressive ways. A fundraiser that asked for $5000 to pay the bills and support a woman of meagre means who was injured by a ricocheting bullet has raised over $20,000 with one donor commenting “All of our love and support to you. Our community will not let you become saddled into debt by this.”
     I was in need of a good escape, so after a day of rest on Saturday a long lost friend and I took a walk from Brother’s K on Main Street in Evanston to Northwestern’s campus and back. I realize the importance of keeping my tribe strong, and have been reaching out to good people I’ve lost touch with over the years. This old friend and I once worked together in a small non-profit with a brilliant and unstable maverick at the helm. I took my leave after a key person there attached to me in an uncomfortable way, telling me that she believed I was the reincarnated being of the pregnancy she’d aborted the year I was born.
     You can’t make this stuff up. I wrote my letter of resignation and got out of Dodge. The woman and I did not part on good terms. In retrospect I wish I’d been kinder and more patient with her, less judgmental. I wish I’d been kinder and more patient with everyone in my past who I relegated as unworthy of such treatment. I wish I’d saved my self-righteous indignation for those who truly deserved it, not just those who seemed strange to me and ruffled my feathers.
     After our Evanston walk, I headed to the Square Roots Festival. Old Town School is a cozy haven. Even before frogs started raining from the sky back in 2016, acoustic guitars and group singalongs put their warm arms around us. We survived blizzards there — hot cocoa, homemade soup and warm cider served by Miki who cheerfully ran the concession stand for a decade. (Miki’s now a manager at Kopi Cafe, another welcoming urban oasis in Andersonville, if you ever want to say hello. You’ll recognize him by his long dark locks, sparkling eyes, always welcoming demeanor, and trademark fedora).
     My niece was dropped off to hang out at the fest with me on Saturday. At 9, she’s growing up quickly. She picked out a few things for Auntie Peaches (me) to buy her, as she strode around feeling pretty cool to be a part of the scene. Just as my parents imbued the folk community spirit in me, it’s my turn to pass the baton. After my niece was picked up, I made my way to hear Guided By Voices and got lost in rock and roll. By the time I got into bed at eleven or so, I’d forgotten about bleak realities.
     On Sunday back at Square Roots, the highlight for me was listening to West African drumming with dance moves led by Idy Ciss, a fixture at Old Town and a principal dancer and choreographer at Muntu Dance Company. As we sang in call and response style with Idy in Wolof, his Senegalese tongue, we were at least temporarily sheltered from the storm.

Flashback 1997: "And all these years I thought I was Jewish"

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson

     Our regular Saturday correspondent, Caren Jeskey, is taking the day off. In her place, I offer this chestnut from the vault.

     I'm running it because a Hasidic rabbi in Maryland whom I knew when he was a teen at a Chicago religious school got in touch with me this week, searching for a particular column I'd written years ago regarding his Lubavitch sect. Was it this one? No. That one? No. He wanted, he explained, the one that sparked my friendship with Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, the late head of the movement in the midwest. 

     Ah, that one! The one Moscowitz contacted the paper to complain about. I hesitated. It's a bit ... strident — I was much younger. But what the heck, he wants to see it, so here it is.

     What's the matter, guys — Talmud study getting boring?
     That's the only explanation I can think of for the salvo of words that a group of Orthodox Jewish leaders decided to fire off at the more watered-down branches of the faith.
     Monday, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis declared that the Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism — more than 80 percent of Jews in the United States — "are not Judaism at all."
     Geez, why didn't you announce that last week? Then I could have dyed eggs and eaten chocolate bunnies over Easter, instead of missing all the fun.
     The rabbis' statement, ironically, reminded me of those groups periodically announcing the Holocaust didn't happen. My response to them is always: "Great! Now I can look up all those relatives who I thought had died in Poland."
     Heck, the rabbis should have announced this years ago. Judaism is a great religion, but in a Christian society, Jews also miss out. If I, raised in Reform Judaism, wasn't really Jewish, than I could have trimmed Christmas trees, dated cheerleaders, gone fly-fishing and all that other stuff I imagined gentiles did.
     Seriously, this sort of high-handed nonsense is not exactly surprising. Just as blacks snipe at each other based on the darkness of their skin, and Hispanics differentiate between their various nations of origin, so Jews denigrate each other for their various approaches to the religion.
     I knew already, for instance, that Hasidic Jews didn't consider me Jewish. But it seemed like a benign judgment — they were always trolling around in those vans, encouraging us lower forms of Semitic life to put on the ritual prayer boxes and get a taste of Orthodoxy. They wanted to be friends.
     But this week's pronouncement had the slap of a trademark lawyer's warning letter. "We understand that you're using our `Jewish' logo without permission — please cease and desist immediately."
     They can be like that. An Orthodox Jew once stopped by my house to pick up a pushke. A pushke is a little coin box where you deposit pocket change for charity — Orthodox groups use them a lot. And stupid, not-really-Jewish us, we had been packing our change into these pushkes and then phoning up our moral betters and asking them to come collect their money.
      Well, this Orthodox guy shows up at my house: big beard, fedora, long coat. He walks in, takes a look around, and his face freezes in a mask of disgust that I remember to this day. I guess we didn't have enough portraits of Rebbe Schneerson. He did, however, find the graciousness to accept the money.
     To tell you the truth, the entire episode reminds me of a woman I once worked with. She was a snippish, unfriendly person, nasty from Day One.
     I did something to offend her, and she fired off a nasty e-mail of reprimand. I read her criticisms, thought a moment, and then sent this reply:
     "Your criticism of me would have carried more weight if you had ever been nice to me in the first place."
     I think that goes for the Union of Rabbis, too.

            —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 2, 1997

‘Born a Crime’ speaks to now

     Keeping up with popular culture is exhausting and impossible. Why bother even trying? The new hit movie or song, the latest viral TikTok. There’s so much of it; most can be easily missed.
     But when somebody I know recommends something, I pay attention. What’s the point of talking otherwise? When a young man in his 20s — a Chicago teacher — urged me to read Trevor Noah’s book, “Born a Crime,” I immediately sought it out on Audible.
     The fact that it had been a No. 1 bestseller when it came out in 2016 was news to me. I knew exactly one thing about Noah: he replaced Jon Stewart on his TV show, which I never watch. Occasionally a quip of Noah’s might pop up on Twitter.
     Noah was born in South Africa. A good book introduces you not only to people — Noah, his parents, his friends — but to a place. “Born a Crime” — literally true in Noah’s case, born of an illegal union of his Black mother and Swiss father — does exactly that. We see South Africa with its 11 official languages, its oppressive Apartheid system where officials are sticking pencils in people’s hair and if the pencil stays in place, you’re Black, and you can’t live in certain areas. Chinese people are officially Black, but Japanese are officially white.
     The book contains one of the funniest set pieces I’ve ever read. Because of inadequate education — it isn’t just Texas — a Black South African family will sometimes name their baby “Hitler” in honor of the powerful guy in the distant past who caused so much trouble for other Europeans. I won’t go into detail, so as not to spoil it when you read the book, which you absolutely should. Let’s just say the episode involves Hitler and a dance party.
     But that isn’t why I’m writing this. I’m writing this because the book speaks to our moment.
     Noah is hustling pirated CDs in the street, living on the margins of crime. He buys a stolen camera.

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