Celebrate Babbitt’s 100th by reading ‘It Can’t Happen Here’

Sinclair Lewis in a Chicago hotel room in 1922.

     In professional journalism, the story you set out to tell sometimes is not the story you end up writing. You pull a thread thinking it will take you here, and it ends there instead.
     For instance. Thursday is the 100th anniversary of the publication of “Babbitt,’ by Sinclair Lewis, and, in that direct, plodding, linear way of mine, I thought that called for a column about the 1922 novel.
     My education being as flawed as the next guy’s, I had never read “Babbitt” or anything else written by Lewis, my sole interaction with the first American winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature being a lifelong struggle not to confuse him with Upton Sinclair, author of “The Jungle,” which I did read. (Mnemonic device: Up is how you want to throw after reading about Chicago meatpacking in “The Jungle.”)

     I did know that “babbitt,” lowercase b, has entered the language describing, as Webster’s puts it, “a business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards.” Which was criticism in 1922 but a century later, with society fracturing and half the individuals pursuing some insane conspiracy theory or cracked cult, now seems like a Lost Eden. At least Babbitt cared what others thought.
     The novel isn’t bad. George Babbitt is an unscrupulous real estate agent with overwhelming yearnings for social approval. We meet his dull wife, restless daughters and mechanically-inclined son. I would recommend it wholeheartedly but, alas, jumped the gun and finished it months ago. Giving me time to proceed to “Main Street,” Lewis’ 1920 best-seller, a superior book, given the strength of its main character, Carol Kennicott, married to a doctor in small town Gopher Prairie, which she becomes increasingly desperate to escape. Kennicott is to Babbitt as a CGI dinosaur is to a wooden marionette.

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Welcome to Chicago, Darren; let me show you around

     Darren, Darren, Darren ... the Hancock? Really? Was Trump Tower too expensive? Not that it’s a bad place, mind you. People live there. But you do know about the elevators, yes? Cables snap, people get stuck, and that 84-story plunge ... best not to think of it. I understand the problem is under control now, mostly.
     You’re moving to Chicago ... why? As a display of courage? You said, to immerse yourself in the culture. Fair enough, Darren Bailey, let’s get to it. You can’t just spend the next ... umm ... eight weeks rushing from the Hancock entrance, surrounded by a phalanx of linemen from Xenia Junior College into a pair of waiting black SUVs. What does that prove?
     Nothing erodes fear like experience. We need to get you out on the town, over to the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen. Founded by teachers, you know. C’mon, I’ll take you, and even pick up the admission (ote-nay oo-tay eaders-ray: ission-admay is ee-fray). Then lunch at 5 Rabanitos. I love that place. Or “5 Radishes” in Spanish. See? You’re learning already!
     Nor will we limit ourselves to one part of the city. We’ll ride the L, we’ll wander around Bronzeville, unafraid. Over the past 35 years, I’ve pretty much ranged across the entire city. From South Avenue O, within spitting distance of the Indiana border, to streets below Lower Wacker Drive. And let me tell you a secret: You can go anywhere in Chicago. It’s OK. Back when there were high-rise public housing projects — the Robert Taylor Homes, Cabrini-Green — I visited them all. At night. You know who lived there? Not demons with pitchforks. People. Working folks. Women lugging groceries. Some places are more dangerous, some less, but my personal rule is: If people can live there, I can visit. Never got shot once.
     We can do something fun, rack ’em up at Chris’s Billiards on North Milwaukee Avenue — they filmed “The Color of Money” there, you must have seen that. Or if that’s a sin to your brand of performative Christianity, we can visit the Art Institute; I can steer you quickly by the paintings of nekkid ladies, though we can linger by the Monet haystacks and a few Christs crucified. You’ll feel at home.

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Flashback 1990: Psychic-deli—We have seen the future, several times, in fact

The Fortune-Teller, by Georges de la Tour (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
If you look closely, you'll see why it encapsulates my view of psychics.

     I read with interest freelancer Aaron Gettinger's article in Monday's Sun-Times about psychics. Not so much because I wanted to know how the industry, to use his term, is faring post-COVID. But I was curious how he would treat the frauds-fleecing-the-gullible aspect of palm readers and swamis. The short answer is, he didn't. He spoke to mediums and their patrons without ever questioning their premise, and I wondered whether this was the right call or not, and whether it was in keeping with, or despite, his own views.

      Using my special abilities to actually ask authors about their intent, I queried him about this. "They're all frauds," he replied, plainly enough, adding that "to do a piece about how there’s no such thing as psychic readings would have been a completely different piece."

     No argument here. That makes sense. The Sun-Times prints an astrology column every day, without adding a big notice that it's nonsense for nincompoops. Sometimes a realm can be explored on its own terms, and readers trusted to reach their own conclusions.

      Gettinger is a reporter on staff at the Hyde Park Herald. We talked for a while — he is a graduate from Stanford, with a masters from the University of Chicago, and seems a man with aspirations. He's 29, and I remember that I addressed the same subject when I was almost exactly Gettinger's age. I dug it up to see how I handled the charlatan aspect. It's worth noting that I wasn't a columnist when I wrote this — that was more than five years in the future — and it strikes me as having quite a bit of voice for a general assignment reporter. Then again, those were different days.

     August is a time to look to the future, to harken to the murmurings of fall and all that lies beyond.
     Because it's National Psychic Week through Saturday, I enlisted the help of professional prognosticators — traffickers in the occult sciences.
     I was curious, not so much in the details of my life to be, which I will find out eventually, but whether these mystics could predict a major event — to wit, my pending marriage, set to take place with Busby Berkeley-like restraint at the Babylonianly-splendid Hotel Inter-Continental on Sept. 2.
     I figured, with 200 people across the country preparing to attend, not to mention the intense psychokinetic aura streaming from a woman who has dated a guy for seven years and is finally getting her due, forseeing the event should be a piece of cake.
     Here are the results of three Chicago soothsayers, selected at random (call ahead, many are booked for weeks):

     The seer: Miss Ruth
     The site: North LaSalle Street. First floor. A nondescript kitchen, free from any incense, crystal balls or goat heads. Miss Ruth's grandchildren played around the table and had to be constantly shushed.
     Technique: Without any subtle questioning, Miss Ruth asked me to hold my fee ($22) in my right hand and make wishes. I told her one (regarding publication of a book) and she began flipping cards. The juxtaposition of the cards, and whether they were upside-down when flipped, seemed to mean something.

     Accuracy on marriage question: Poor. She got that I would be married, but said the marriage would be in 2 1/2 years to a wealthy woman I hadn't met yet. This worried my fiance.

     The seer: Steve MacDonald
     ("Palmistry over the Phone")
     The site: My kitchen phone. My fiance's cats, Anna and Vronsky, mewed in the background, and I was afraid Steve would grasp their deeper significance.
     Technique: Steve asked me to draw my palms and fingers over the mouthpiece, then place it over the spot between my eyes (my "third eye"). Then, to his credit, he instructed me to not give him any verbal encouragement, but to listen to his barrage of intuition, most of which was completely wrong ("someone near you attended Vanderbilt University") and some of which struck me as utter truth ("You are a talented person.") Still, for an introductory free reading, it was not bad.
     Accuracy on marriage: Hard to say. He didn't mention weddings or romance at all. He did say I would apply a coat of paint to a door.

     The seer: Rochelle Bates
     The site: Her office, a small, pleasant, new-age sort of room.
     Technique: Coated palms with printer's ink and made prints. Studied prints for a moment, then reeled off a portrait of my personality that couldn't have been more accurate if she was reading from my resume. Her prognostication contained lots of useful health and lifestyle tips, some of which I took to heart. The encounter left me facing two equally unpalatable choices: either a) I had a streak of gullible dupishness heretofore unrecognized; or b) people's lives, past and future, are recorded in the lines on their palms.
     Accuracy on marriage question: Good, at first. She said that I would marry between the ages of 30 and 32 (correct). But, to my cynical relief, she added a bit of psychic prediction and conjured up a dark-haired East Coaster (my fiance is a strawberry blond born in Chicago) whom I would meet perhaps in five years.
     That's a nice summer thought to end on. Some mysterious dark-haired Easterner showing up at a family wiener roast in August 1995. Maybe she'll agree to have a frank and a cold one and the three of us can sit around the back yard, marveling at the beautiful interplay of stars, fate and struggle that brought us to our benighted state.

         —originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 8, 1990

Enough with the complaining already

     Show of hands: how many of you are tired of City Council members always complaining? Everybody? I thought so. These alderpeople jostle like piglets at the public teat, for years, slurping up their six-figure aldermanic salaries, enhanced with all sorts of quasi-legal side hustles. Then a sweeter gig beckons, they raise dripping snouts from the mire, wipe a trotter across their mouths, and start bellyaching.
     Boo hoo! People opposed me. Lori Lightfoot was mean to me. It isn’t fair!
     Get over it. You’re not special. Lightfoot doesn’t like anybody.
     So why I am complaining about the complaining of others? Maybe I caught the hypocrisy virus fogging the air. Maybe I’m just annoyed over Ald. Howard Brookins (21st) exit interview in last Thursday’s Sun-Times, the one where he starts out griping that he could “write a whole book called ‘The Backstabbers’” about Chicago politics because of how treacherous everybody has been to him.
     “People who were my friends in office and fraternity brothers subsequently ran against me...”
     “Friends”? FRIENDS! Did Brookins, an adult man of 58 years, pair the word “friends” with “in office”?
     Howard, let Uncle Neil tell you something you should have known long ago: There are no friends in public life. The affection of politicians, to quote a wiser colleague — OK, Lynn Sweet — is “situational and transactional.” They’re always there when they need you. Then they’re gone, gone, gone.

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'Don't you go' — Breaking the bad news to bees

Bee hives at the Chicago Botanic Garden

      "Oh no!" I said, surprised though not stricken, to learn of Queen Elizabeth II's death Thursday afternoon on Twitter. I immediately passed the news on — informing my wife, who was sitting a few feet from me. Since then I, no doubt like you, have been eagerly lapping at the endless ocean of reports and commentaries on the seismic shift, because that's what royalty does: give us something grand to think about, embroider our drab, work-a-daddy lives with regal purples and heraldic oranges.

      Like most, I imagine, I was pleased that Sad Sack Charles finally got his big promotion, and understood, if not entirely appreciated, those who used the moment to remind us what brutal imperialists the Brits used to be. Though it does seem bad form. I've gone to the funerals of people who had significant flaws, yet managed not to announce those flaws in a loud voice across the funeral parlor. But I understand the motivation. Someone used the queen's passing to tweet the opening sentence of Patrick Freyne's delicious analysis of royalty and celebrity on the occasion of Oprah's interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last year. I admired its concision, metaphor and pacing and passed the lines along:

Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.

      Prose like that reinforced my natural inclination to say nothing. I don't have a dog in this race, nor any particular insight to add. When I tried to ponder writing something, the first thought that came to mind — trying unsuccessfully to arrange tea with the Queen when I went to London to give a speech in 2009 — was not about her at all, but about me, my go-to inclination that I constantly battle. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent," Wittgenstein writes. Sound advice.
      But my 48 hours of unusual reticence crumbled at a touch Saturday when I saw a brief report from Rolling Stone, of all places, headlined, with beautiful simplicity, "Queen Elizabeth II's Bees Have Been Informed of Her Death."
     Normally, implausible news should be checked out, but this, by Daniel Kreps, has a purity, sweetness and veracity that immediately manifests itself in the opening lines:

     The hives of bees that reside within the gardens of Buckingham Palace have been informed of Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
     In keeping with one of the stranger traditions connected to the British royal family, the palace’s official beekeeper broke the news of Her Majesty’s death at the age of 96 to the roughly 30,000 bees currently on the grounds, with the royal beekeeper also tying black ribbons around the hives in memory of Queen Elizabeth II.

     I would stake my reputation on that being true. A thousand writers from the Onion working for a century couldn't approach that tone. And if it isn't true, well then I will happily, as Sherlock Holmes always threatened to do, retire to Sussex and keep bees.
     I don't want to seize Kreps' work — click on the link, it's the best thing you'll read today — though to urge you toward it, I'll share the words that royal beekeeper John Chappie used to break the bad news:
     "The mistress is dead, but don’t you go. Your master will be a good master to you."

     Reading that gave me a mad impulse to again ask Mayor Lori Lightfoot to meet me at the hives which, for years, were on the roof atop City Hall. Then I remembered that, a) she always refuses, via her underlings and b) the hives have been removed, I was told when I was fact-checking the book, which of course has a few lines about Chicago beekeeping. As to whether the bees were exiled through Lightfoot's hostility toward bees — maybe she was stung once as a lass in Massillon and harbors grudges, her particular genius, or maybe as sentient creatures other than herself, they naturally draw her contempt. Or maybe she is completely indifferent to bees — that sounds right — and the hives were dismantled independent to her, as part of the general program of deterioration that grips the city. 

     Anyway, the queen is gone and Chicago hives are gone, I am told. In Britain, the bees now labor for King Charles III, and know it.

 

Northshore Notes: No Moor

     I'm almost embarrassed to say what my primary takeaway is on Northshore Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey's lovely rumination on childhood and royalty. But a writer should be who he is, so here goes: There's a Sock Monkey Museum? Why was I not told? Until now of course. Enjoy.

By Caren Jeskey

     Long Grove Confectionery was the Disneyland of Lake County when we were kids. We’d pile into a wood paneled station wagon and take the very long (for little people) journey northwest of the city to a magical land of candy. Just beyond the fairytale forest — perhaps Deer Grove or Lions Woods — an idyllic town appeared to us in the windshield. Thousands of lights twinkled between the trees as the cozy skyline of Long Grove came into view.  

      My brother, sister and I jumped around, bursting with anticipation, from our unbuckled spots in the back, the way back, or the way-way-back. This was the '70s. As you well know, children were allowed to nestle between mom and dad in the front seat of a car, sit unbuckled anywhere, or even lay down in the back, seats folded down, on sleeping bags.
     The good old days! We were closer to death but it sure was fun.
     My father would drop us off to go park and then trek back alone — our quiet and steady hero (with my mom being more of a Wonder Woman type of hero, on top of the quiet, steady work she did for the family). We’d hop out of the car and stand before the confectionery, which was a perfect replica of a little red schoolhouse. We had arrived. We were royalty and nothing could stop us from getting the giant peanut butter cups and turtles that we’d later chomp down in record time.
     When Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor died at the age of 96 this week it was very sad to hear. I’m sorry for the loss to her family, and everyone else who loved her. Her death is also a mortality reminder for several people in my life. It was easy to immortalize such a powerful person.
     The awareness of memento mori was passed down to me, as a person with Irish Catholic Polish Lithuanian blue- and lower-collar roots, and a heavy dose of Jewish influence. It’s not bad to remember that we are all going to die. Everyone we love is going to die. And as a friend pointed out, everyone we don't like is going to die too. For me, remembering that simple fact can make vitriol towards others less appealing. It can steer us out of judgment and into living our own lives rather than getting lost in anger towards others.
     Memento mori is “God willing,” or “b’ezrat HaShem,” in Jewish and Hebrew tradition. It’s “today is a good day to die," a phrase credited to everyone from Hunkpapa Lakota leader Low Dog to a Methodist preacher named Wilbur Fisk in the 1800s, to a character in the movie Smoke Signals, and even to Klingons. It’s “In sha’Allah” in Arabic. “Lord willing and the crick don’t rise” poetically said by a southern redhead friend. “Deo volente” in Latin.
     Since mortality is inevitable for most of us — not sure about Elon yet, but time will tell — trying to live a good life is comforting. As a non believer in higher powers, my purpose is doing what I can to make the world a better place while I am here, and when I am not, in the form of good memories. Yes. Easier said than done, and an endless journey.
     Good health starts with a strong sense of oneself. Not a grandiose or insecure ego, but a healthy ego. Knowing what we can change and what we cannot change, and then taking reasonable steps to get the results we want while being able to accept disappointment as a part of life.
     I often speak about the past with nostalgia. It is not lost on me that there are countless reasons to be grateful that the days of yore are in the past. For us to bid them adieu.
     The idea of blue bloods is one such reason. There is no such thing as royal blood. Even their legacy is rife with every ailment and affliction known to the rest of us. They are just much, much richer.
     I cringed when I saw that Oprah and Harry had a show on AppleTV called The Me You Can’t See. I wrote it off as probable fluff. Then I decided to give it a watch, rather than being an uninformed critic. The first episode was done very well. Harry speaks of what it felt like to lose his mother, and how his very needs as a young child were ignored in the name of keeping up appearances at that time. It exhausted the little fellow. Harry, like many people, had give up his essence as a child to perform, in order to maintain his attachments to those he relied on. A recipe for disaster as far as human development goes.
     The term blue blood came from the idea that milky white people in Spain, whose veins show through their skin, are superior. Their blood must not get mucked up with the blood of darker skinned people such as the Moors. It’s time for this archaic false belief to be put to rest. I realize that it’s not at all that simple, and the monarchy has its place in the stability of the world; however, let’s revisit who gets revered and who gets trampled upon on this planet.
     To get through this thing called life, I often take day trips to fun places like Long Grove, still. Last Sunday was for Irish Fest. My family and I tapped along to Irish jigs, marveled at the strength of the young dancers, and enjoyed the bagpipe parade as musicians in full Irish regalia marched through the crowd. My niece and I found a stream with rocks to cross, and a patch of grass to run around on, then collapse and look for four leaf clovers.
     We popped into the Sock Monkey Museum. We ate on the patio of a restaurant perched on a lake. We had some simple fun, in the melee of this complicated week of 2022.

‘Homelessness’ finally eliminated!

Night Ministry worker checks on unhoused couple on Lower Wacker Drive.

     “Look at his shirt!” I said to my wife, aghast, as we watched two extremely fit young men trade volleys at the U.S. Open. Square neck, with a bib effect that made Karen Khachanov seem like he was wearing a barista apron.
     “Take it up with Nike,” she replied, dismissively.
     Translation: Change happens, deal with it.
     As if the reality that “the goat” Charlie Brown was, for baseball ineptitude, has completely morphed into “the GOAT” that Serena Williams is, the Greatest Of All Time, were not strain enough, now comes another linguistic shift, courtesy of my friends at the Night Ministry.
     ”Revised Mission Statement Recognizes Primacy of Human Connection and Dignity of Clients” reads the headline across that organization’s Fall 2022 Nightlights newsletter. 

     “The Night Ministry’s previous mission statement referred to those we serve as ‘experiencing homelessness’” it explains. “The word ‘homeless’ has been deliberately replaced with ‘unhoused,’ as the former often has derogatory connotations.”
     Progress?
     The problem with designating new words to describe negative conditions is that, no matter how carefully chosen, they quickly become negative words themselves, sometimes insults. Changing conditions is hard, often impossible, so we change the words describing them instead. Go for the low-hanging fruit.
     The idea, I believe, is that changing language helps change conditions. Maybe so. Though this also leads to something I call “euphemism creep” where any word attached with certain populations assumes the difficulties of the groups described, and becomes pejorative. “Special needs” was supposed to replace developmentally disabled, but soon kids were taunting each other as “special.”      The tendency has been to stop labeling people under all-encompassing terms. Thus you’re not blind, but a person with visual challenges. Focus on the human, not the difficulty.
     That’s why “slave” has been shown the gate. The word fell from favor to describe the condition afflicting many Black Americans before 1865 because it was based on the perspective of white society, which viewed them as chattel, period. When in reality they possessed all the qualities other people have. So instead of “her grandmother was born a slave,” I write, “her grandmother was born in slavery,” which isn’t a loss in style or comprehension and leaves the door open to her grandmother’s many fine qualities.
     But banishing negativity can blur the experience being described. Get vague enough and the reader won’t know what you’re talking about. I once wrote a long piece on what it’s like to be disfigured, talking to people with no noses, burned faces, or features distorted through neurofibromatosis.
     Mosaic, the London medical website publishing the article, was uncomfortable with the word “disfigured.” They wanted such people called “different.”

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