A beautiful wooden horse

     The Art Institute is playing around with its American art wing. Which is nice because, well, when you visit the place as often as I do, everything becomes familiar, and familiarity and wonder are not friends.
     After exiting the Cezanne show — not bad, if you like Cezanne. I enjoyed the painting of his father, but that might have been because he is reading a newspaper — I checked out the American wing, paused to study, yet again, Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks." Then I saw this carousel horse or, as the Art Institute calls it with surprising specificity, this "Middle Row Jumping Horse (Carousel Figure)."
     The row a carved horse occupies on its merry-go-round has unexpected significance: the outer horses are generally the better horses, more finely crafted, as the Metropolitan Museum of Art writes, boasting about its "Outside Row Standing Horse (Carousel Figure)."
     "The animals," the Met explains,"especially those placed on a carousel’s outside row, feature extraordinary attention to detail intended to delight riders young and old." They don't quite spell it out, but the suggestion is since the outer ring of animals is the one easiest for potential patrons to inspect, it was reserved for the craftsmen's best work. And I want to draw attention to that "delight riders young and old." Almost a bit of showman's ballyhoo, a whiff of sawdust and cotton candy, preserved in a bottle and influencing the curator's academic description.    
     Both Chicago and Gotham horses are the work of Philadelphia's Daniel Müller, renown for his realistic horses. The Art Institute scholars also determined the steed is made of basswood and "possibly painted" by Angelo Calsamilia, "who traveled the country to repaint carousel figures in active use."
     That enigmatic detail made me want to follow Calsamilia around 1950s America, in his battered old Chevy, from fair to carnival — this horse was featured in Rock Springs Park, West Virginia from 1924 t0 1970. His oil paints and brushes in the trunk, his lonely wandering life, consulting tattered maps, dealing with the locals, missing his family. I'd read that novel.
     Regular readers might recall that I have a particular fondness for carousels, the melancholy of merry-go-rounds, and appreciate the Art Institute allowing me to admire this one. Which I'm happy to share to you.
     That's it. No larger point. A beautiful wooden horse on a beautiful summer day to celebrate the end of July.

A reader on Twitter asked to see the entire horse (Photo courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Northshore Notes: Tart Cherries

     By week's end my head wasn't a very good place to be, and I appreciated our North Shore correspondent, Caren Jeskey, taking us on one of her trademark rambles through a world that seems much more expansive and welcoming than the cramped confines most of us inhabit, cages of our own construction.

   By Caren Jeskey

 The opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s creation.
                 —John Larson, Rent

     This week I got tired of analyzing every goddamn thing. I wanted to just say “anything goes!” and throw caution to the wind rather than trying to live a carefully measured life. Why not? What’s the point of taking things so seriously when there’s so little that can be controlled? Existential theory suggests that it is possible to shape our own existence. As Sartre said “any purpose or meaning in your life is created by you.” If that’s true, I have a long way to go if I’m going to be content. I have not fully embraced the concept that my destiny is in my hands and sometimes I think it's not based on inner and outer resources or lack thereof.
     I spent almost four days indoors. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and until 5 p.m. on Thursday. A friend who’s currently in Denmark helped me feel less bad about it. “There is nothing wrong with a period of hygge,” which Wikipedia defines as “a word in Danish and Norwegian that describes a mood of coziness and ‘comfortable conviviality’ with feelings of wellness and contentment.”
     I realized that my friend was at least partially right. I like my cozy abode. I did, after all, play flutes, talk and tend to happy plants, cook healthy meals, soak in lavender baths, dance, meditate, and stretch between long work days and lying on the couch watching Prime. I felt I could not deal with people, not even in passing on the sidewalks. I just needed to hibernate a bit after the world got so scary. Science explains all of it, but Armageddon embodies how it feels.
     It’s not as though my dance card is empty. It’s that all of my invitations during times like this are “nos.” And besides, I’m supposed to be (and usually am) a champion of the value of solitude and being good company for oneself. Still, hermit days are harder to bear when it’s perfectly temperate summertime in the Midwest.

     Rather than more work on Thursday night after my last client of the week, the call to get out there finally came from within, and my Birkenstocks and I hit the pavement. We strolled intuitively — I like to walk down the streets that look the brightest with the clearest paths — and noticed a little art school on Park Drive. A mile west, we stopped and drank in the expanse of the azure lake from the overlook at Kenilworth Beach.
     Thumping music led us to Plaza del Lago where the lead singer of The Molly Ringwalds enchanted us with a gorgeously sung German intro to "Ninety Nine Red Balloons." I treated myself to whitefish and Pellegrino on the patio of Convito with a front row seat to the band, noise cancelling ear pods (iLuv brand, cheap and good) protecting the hearing that I have left.
     Fine dancers from 2 to 92 embodied the adage that all things are possible. Maybe Cocoon was a true story. At first I thought “that’s how old people look dancing” until I realized that I will be they one day in the not too distant future, if I’m lucky. Maybe I look like that already, who knows? I suddenly saw them with new eyes. Children in grown up suits, like all of us. I noticed their couture styles, talent, and joie de vivre. Their lack of flexibility, wrinkles and stooped spines disappeared.

Alone in one’s mind.
Open to the sea of one.
Fear will disappear.
        —Haiku

     That’s what I am seeking, these sacred moments of calm connection that are always within my home and myself, and just outside the front door for the taking.
     I thought back to my Austin walkabout days when the pandemic started. With few family and friends nearby and COVID job loss, I had plenty of free time to walk and walk. Usually upwards of 10 miles most days. I was in a state of hygge partly thanks to denying certain realities such as economic uncertainty and housing instability. Still, I spent thousands of hours putting one foot in front of the other and communing with whatever I came across on the journey — a nature trail, a lizard, backyard goats, a neighbor, a park bench. The grounds of the Elisabet Ney Museum, where their kind docent Oliver (who invited me and 2 friends in on my birthday for a small private tour), died of the cancer he’d told me about. A loss to Austin.
     “Perhaps Scandinavians are better able to appreciate the small, hygge things in life because they already have all the big ones nailed down: free university education, social security, universal health care, efficient infrastructure, paid family leave, and at least a month of vacation a year," the New Yorker noted in a 2016 article on the practice. "With those necessities secured, Danes are free to become ‘aware of the decoupling between wealth and wellbeing.’” Lucky them!
     Since I’ve last written I did one very bad thing, throwing caution right out the window. I jumped into a private “no swimming” lake and took a short swim to the middle and back. The friend I was with said “please don’t do this.” It was warm and rainy and the placid lake had tiny divots where the raindrops hit. I needed to feel differently in that moment. The water beckoned. I was wearing shorts and a top that could easily pass as a swimsuit. I took off my rain boots and dress and jumped in. I was instantly gratified, and I swam and floated on my back, raindrops hitting my closed eyes and lips. I could have stayed there forever.
     When I looked back at it the next day, I realized that I could have been cited. Arrested even. A scary thought.   

     I found safer moments of contentment after that dip. A farmers market with my father. Sweet-tart cherries, basil plants, and baskets of peaches. Discovering prolific muralist Max Sansing working on his newest creation in Evanston. I’d noticed his work on Grand near Milwaukee when I moved back to Chicago last year, and also on the housing shelter behind the Wilson red line, and had even snapped photos. It was a treat to come across Max, filling in the outline of his mural from top to bottom on a bright orange mobile hydraulic high rise work platform.
     As a friend recently asked, since we are atheists and "we don’t bow to a white sky daddy in the sky” then what IS the point of working so hard to be good? Trying to change bad habits and becoming more peaceful? Better cogs in the wheel? Spreaders of peace? I’m not sure, but I cannot let myself off the hook. Have I inherited a chronic sense of Catholic inferiority where I will never be good enough, the sinful human that I am? That others are not good enough? I hope I have not been cursed forever.
     As I warred with myself on and off this week, my solace has been in a pleased client caseload, growth and less suffering in their ranks, enjoyment on my part of our sessions together, Irish jigs played on my silver flute, sitting down to write this, fresh fruits and vegetables, and a feeling that it’s, overall, good to be alive.

Judas, Benedict Arnold and Donald Trump

      The Circle of the Traitors — Dante's Foot Striking Bocca Degli Abati, by William Blake

     “Trump and his accomplices are the most pathetic traitors ever,” controversial Democratic fundraiser Scott Dworkin tweeted to his million followers in mid-July. “Cowards who need to be arrested immediately.”
     I know you’re not supposed to think about tweets. They’re just random shots in the Twitter free-fire zone, tiny sparks flying off a burning lumberyard.
     But occasionally one ember will lodge under the skin. In this case, the word “pathetic,” which I took not for its current popular meaning, “miserably inadequate; of very low standard,” but for its original sense of “arousing pity.”
     Rinse off the contempt and there is indeed something pitiable about traitors. Merely feeling scorn for them is too simple, too easy, and ignores the essential tragedy of betrayal.
     Start with the original traitor of Western culture, Judas Iscariot. Why did he betray Jesus? The 30 pieces of silver are what’s remembered, but that’s a smoke screen. Small payout for the magnitude of his crime. (One of the several ways Donald Trump is outstanding in the traitor field: Unlike most, he’s playing for large stakes. The average traitor gets but little. Jonathan Pollard sold his country for a $2,500-a-year Israeli salary.)
     Silver aside, Judas’ betrayal was almost preordained. If the Bible is to be trusted, Jesus seems in on the plan. He announces that one of his disciples will betray him. The Gang of 12 immediately demand to know who. Jesus says the person he’ll hand this bread to is the bad guy, and gives a chunk of challah to Judas, saying, “Do quickly what you’re going to do.”
     Which kinda undercuts the obloquy that Judas has been held in for 2,000 years, doesn’t it? As Joan Acocella put it in The New Yorker: “If Jesus informs you that you will betray him, and tells you to hurry up and do it, are you really responsible for your act?”
     I could see an argument where the least responsible party in the current betrayal of America is Trump himself — he arrived on the political scene a long-established grifter and con man, congenital liar and serial fraud. How can he be held responsible for what followed? Can a man without convictions, devoted only to advancing himself, be said to betray anything? There’s almost an innocence to Trump, the great orange man-baby, kicking and crying, pooping and dribbling, demanding his needs be met now.

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Routine is your friend

     Routine gets a bad name. It's equated with boredom, sameness. But routine — the same thing, done in the same way, every single time — can be your friend. It is not only efficient, but protective. You break your routine, even a little, even doing something that makes perfect sense in itself, and you're asking for trouble. You're asking for coffee grounds in your shoes.
     I guess I'd better just tell the story.
     So every morning I make coffee. Nothing dramatic there. A complicated, multi-step process. Which I have down to a series of smooth, efficient motions. Take the bag of coffee beans and the filters from the cabinet to my left. Rinse the pot and the filter holder from the day before in the kitchen sink to my right. Grind the beans while water runs in the pot. Dump and return the pot and the filter holder and insert the paper filter. Take the canister of ground beans and dump it into the filter. Fill the water chamber.
     The only variant is whether I use the ideal coffee that God intended us to use, Peet's Major Dickason's. Or Dunkin Donuts Hazelnut, the preference of ... let's say, a certain person who lives with me and probably shouldn't be exposed to the public shame of preferring hazelnut coffee to regular Joe joyously drunk by decent people.
     Though the Dunkin' coffee is already ground. That is easier. While Peet's needs grinding. 
     Where everything fell apart Wednesday is because something new entered my finely-tuned system. On Monday, as I tapped out the ground coffee from the little clear container, well, it didn't seem so clear. Not entirely clean. It was ... yes ... dirty. From months of coffee being ground into it. Not wildly dirty. Not filthy. Just a little. Since nothing about the coffee making system should be dirty, I took the little clear container and cleaned it out with a soapy sponge, and set it aside to dry.
     Honestly, I felt thorough, observant. No detail ignored.

     But a detail was ignored.

     Do you see what's coming? I didn't.

     Tuesday passed. I didn't make coffee Tuesday. I drank what was left over from the day before. An economy. My wife winces at that. I consider it manly.

      So I began preparing the coffee Wednesday. Everything normal. The sense that something was amiss came to me after I had returned the pot and filter holder, placed the unbleached filter, and reached for the clear plastic canister in the grinder. My fingertips touched coffee grounds. That's not supposed to happen. But it did happen. Because the canister was still to the right of the sink, where it had been placed to dry on Monday. I had obliviously ground four scoops of coffee while they spilled out of the grinder, across the counter, onto the kitchen floor — a rough slate floor, just the thing for trapping coffee grounds forever. My blindly reaching over had further spread the mess. Onto my top-siders. Even inside one. Have you ever gotten coffee grounds in your shoe? I have. Now.
     Here I must have uttered a wild beast cry of pain, because my wife came running, calling "What's wrong!?!" from the stairs.
     "Don't come down here!" I replied. Why? Maybe I thought I could somehow clean this up and conceal the blunder from her. Avoid diminishing my heroic stature in her eyes. Or maybe I knew she would just make it worse, by taking charge of the clean-up, as if, having fomented this disaster through my carelessness I was now to be deemed incapable for cleaning up my own mess. 

    Which is exactly what happened. She didn't quite body check me aside with, "Out of the way, you clod, haven't you done enough damage for one day?!" But the tone was there.
     I grabbed the Dustbuster and dove in. Between the two of us, we made short work of the spilled grounds. And she did make the useful suggestion that the grounds, spread across the clean granite counter, could merely be slid onto a plate and then put into the coffee maker and brewed, which I did, at least salvaging that.
     "You do the same thing every day, you're bound to screw up eventually," I said, trying to put a bright spin on my oversight. Then a larger concern, in that vein, dawned on me. "I wonder what the column version of this will be?"

     Twenty-six years and counting. But one fine day... a misfired joke. An underchecked claim presented as fact.
     "That's what editors are for," she said.

     Later in the day, I managed to wreck the ending. I noticed the clear canister, still among the dried dishes, to the right side of the sink. In all the commotion, it hadn't moved from its spot. I might have had the whole disaster happen again, a second time. Wouldn't that be a great ending? But this time, I grabbed the canister and slid it back where it belonged.

You can’t go dome again

     Again with the dome.
     Forgive me for lapsing into Yiddishkeit. But to see Mayor Lori Lightfoot drag out the dome will-o’-the-wisp, like a much-adored toddler’s blankie now worn to a nubbin, and wave it over her head, as if it were an original genius divination of her own — it taps into a well of deep Chicago nostalgia. It makes me want to set up a cart in Maxwell Street and start selling bottles of Professor Steinberg’s Amazing Old World Cure-All.
     Because if people will buy the dome notion, they’ll buy anything.
     For years, decades, well over half a century, the idea of putting a dome over Soldier Field, or building a vast domed sports complex nearby, has been dangled in front of the city’s eyes by whomever is currently parked on the 5th floor of City Hall, joined by anybody else with a dog in this race who can find their way to a podium.
     In 1964, it was the general superintendent of the Chicago Park District, Erwin Weiner, observing it would cost $8 million to put a dome over Soldier Field (say it in a Dr. Evil voice: “Eight MILLION dollars!”) and transform the stadium into “a modern, all-purpose sports arena.”
     The timing wasn’t accidental. In the early 1960s, Major League Baseball created two expansion teams. One became the New York Mets. The other was slated for Houston, provided they could build a covered stadium. (Which might confuse native Chicagoans. A dome? In Houston? Whatever for? It never snows there. Answer: the Texas weather was considered too hell-like for human beings to play sports in a venue that wasn’t air-conditioned.)

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Brunch at Superkhana International

 

Superkhana International, 3059 W. Diversey. 

     Running a restaurant is a tough puzzle to get right. There is the great food piece. And the attentive service piece. And the pleasing ambience piece. And a bunch of others, a challenge to assemble under the best of circumstances. Mix in endemic staffing and supply chain problems — think of them as the stray pieces lost under the sofa — and a customer base still skittish about gathering inside, and putting together a good restaurant sometimes seems well nigh impossible.
     Lately, I've been thinking of dialing back eating out. Why spend the money, waste the time, take the risk?
     Then I had brunch Sunday morning at Superkhana International in Logan Square, and fell in love with restaurants all over again.
     My younger son's idea. And frankly, I was dubious. It wasn't the usual Indian buffett. There was no chicken tikka masala — my go-to choice — at all. A lot of favorites were missing from the menu. And Indian food for breakfast? (They describe it, a tad obliquely, as "Indian-ish food.")

     Still, the fare looked . . . intriguing. And I didn't have much choice in the matter — our understanding is: the boy picks the place, we show up and pay for the meal, an agreement that any parent of a 25-year-old will instantly understand.
     Superkhana (the name is a Bollywood joke, "khana" being "food" in Hindi) was almost empty Sunday at 9:45 a.m. My wife and I came in, showed our vaccination cards — they take that very seriously here — were shown a seat, and instantly my wife began interrogating the waitress over the kind of milk that goes into the chai, going on at such length that I considered quietly sliding to the floor, belly-crawling out of the place, finding a florist open and wiring a bouquet to the waitperson by way of apology. Even without flowers, the inquisition was accepted with equanimity. I was ready to order black coffee. I always order black coffee. In fact, I did order black coffee. But I took a nip of the sample of chai brought to placate my wife's concerns. It was ... appealing. Enigmatic. Complicated. We both ordered a glass of hot chai.

     The second the chai was brought, on a beautiful china plate with two unexpected gift biscuits, I felt a glimmer, like the overture of a favorite opera. This wasn't going to be the standard eat-and-get-out experience. This was going to be special.
     My son and his girlfriend arrived. I haven't ordered french toast at a restaurant in years. But Superkhana's version comes crusted in halva. I couldn't not try it, but didn't want it to be my entire meal. We all decided that french toast would be an appetizer.
     Sometimes, rather than ordering everything at once, we like to order in stages, one dish at a time. It draws the meal out. Good for us, but this can irk some waitpersons, who of course want to turn over the room as quickly as possible. Caroline didn't seem to mind.

     The french toast was hot and very good. It had a kick — cademon in the gulab jamon.

     For a main course, I made an usual choice: the green salad. My wife ordered one, and I followed suit. No protein, but what the heck. I already had a french toast base, and we ordered uttapam and coconut chutney for the table to share.
     It ... was ... so good. The salad. Why? The freshness. The maple tahini vinaigrette. The crunchy chickpeas. Bliss. I eat a salad almost every day, but this was a salad beyond my capabilities. A salad to drive to Diversey Avenue to experience. 

     We sat there for two and a half hours, talking. The waitperson — they have a sign on the door asking that patrons respect non-gendered pronouns, which might be a bit hectoring, akin to instructing diners to put their napkins on their laps and not talk so loud. I'd say most customers savvy enough to go here are also aware it's 2022 and can read the room. But maybe boors find their way here and need to be educated. I suppose they post it for a reason. I did originally refer to a "waitress" whom I assumed went by "she," only banishing that phraseology as the language of hate on a subsequent edit. It's a brave new world, Golda.

     Caroline, whatever orientation he/she/they flies by, was perfect. Never so much as a why-are-you-still-here? raised eyebrow. Superkhana does add 20 percent gratuity, and that perplexed me, briefly. Normally, a really good waitstaff, I'd tip 25 percent, but adding $5 — the bill was $95 for the four of us, before tax and tip, not bad since we ordered six plates and six drinks — seemed not to sufficiently express my gratitude for a special meal, so I added $10.   

     This made for a gratuity of nearly 30 percent but, honestly, I was in such a good mood, the food was so unexpected and fun, the experience was worth it. The little fucsia explanatory card also helped — no confusing verbal appeal sprung by the waiter along with the check, like last November at big jones, whose food was merely sufficient. I felt Caroline had earned it by gracefully enduring the prosecutorial grilling and agonized Hamlet-holding-a-skull pondering of whole milk versus oat milk that so easily could have gone into a ditch but thankfully didn't.
     The ambience was pleasurable, too. Spare, clean room. Serving food on mismatched china can look like a shelf at Goodwill if not done well, but they used gorgeous plates and artistic bowls. I even admired the bathroom. So many places fall down on the job regarding the bathroom. Clean and beautiful.
     Okay, I don't want to enthuse too much. I'm both eager and frightened to go back. The sophomore visit to a new favorite can be a letdown, regression to the mean. I remember loving our first visit to Spirit Elephant, the sprawling vegetarian place in Winnetka. As with Superkhana, we were just thrilled. So much so that we hurried back dragging a mob of friends and relations back. When Spirit Elephant promptly dropped the ball. Meals we had adored the week before were different, inferior. We haven't been back since, though we're gathering our courage for another try.

     Honestly, I'm considering never returning to Superkhana, to keep the spell unbroken and not spoil the memory. Cherish our single lovely brunch. No need to get greedy and try for another.

     But honestly, I want to sample their other menu items (while, at the same time, ordering everything I already ordered, especially that salad).
     So I think we'll just cross our fingers, utter a silent prayer, and return for dinner next time, to try the coconut brisket (Haleem Style Brisket, Freekeh, Coconut Milk Vinaigrette, Ginger Carrot Slaw). How could we not? Fortune favors the bold.

DuSable aiming for ‘somewhere better and different’

     A recent Saturday morning found me standing in front of the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center in Washington Park, waiting for a man who, due to a miscommunication, was at that moment waiting in North Lawndale.
     A quick phone call sorted the confusion out, and rather than race across town, we postponed. The remainder of my morning suddenly freed just as the museum’s revolving door was being unbolted. I sensed an opportunity.
     I’d be more reluctant to admit that up to that point I’d never visited the DuSable museum if I thought it made me some kind of freakish anomaly. To be honest, I consider myself exceptional in that I sincerely wanted to see the place but never had an occasion to go, never heard of any exhibit that caught my interest and seemed worth making the trip.
     I imagine a number of Chicagoans must succumb to the racism of low expectations when it comes to the DuSable, picturing something akin to the House on the Rock, up in Wisconsin, an aggregation of random artifacts, maybe with slightly skewed typewritten cards explaining them.
     Frankly, I was content to stay away. What if I went to the museum and didn’t like it? What then? Volunteer myself as the White Guy Who Didn’t Like the DuSable Museum? No upside there. Or worse, cough silently into my fist and say nothing, itself a kind of racism?
      Turns out, my fears outstripped reality, as fears often do. The museum has an in-depth exhibit on Black soldiers in World War I, with original letters and a real rifle. An interesting display on Civil Rights and redlining. A movie that places you in the 1963 March on Washington. Professionally done. A newish interactive display about life in an African village — albeit an idealized, Black Panther-ish village — held my attention.

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