Flashback 1986: COCAINE BABIES — Drug's tiniest victims start out hooked

Photo for the Sun-Times by Al Podgorski Jr. 

    I was talking to a young reporter about how to get hired at a big newspaper — a triple rarity, for a) the desire, b) the conversation and c) the act being discussed — and mentioned the benefit of writing something outstanding, from his own initiative. I cited this story, which is what finally got me hired up by the Sun-Times, only five months later, after nearly three years of freelancing. 

     As I described it to him, he said, somewhat dismissively, "It sounds like a 1990s type of story." 

     "Actually, mid-1980s," I said, sheepishly. 

     Nobody assigned it. I read a quote in a Newsweek story  from Ira Chasnoff, at Northwestern's perinatal dependency clinic, and thought, "That's right here!" One benefit of not having a job is that nobody expected the story, and I could work on it as long as I liked. I worked on it a lot. I remember standing at the clinic, on the phone, negotiating with my addict to make her clinic appointment. She wanted me to pay the cab, which is not a no-brainer when you are an unemployed 25-year-old writing a story on spec.

     What strikes me now is that is the story 2780 words long, or almost the length of four columns. If the world were coming to an end, the main story on the meteor bearing down on us wouldn't be 2780 words long. But I am in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan today, staring at the flat line of Lake Superior, so this will have to do. I hope it holds your attention.

     Last May 9, Delores Dorsett got together with friends to freebase cocaine. For about an hour they passed around a small glass pipe until they had smoked 2 grams of cocaine, for which they had paid $110.
     The evening was typical for the 30-year-old Dorsett, who had been doing drugs since she was 16. In fact, the only difference that night was that Delores Dorsett was six months pregnant with her seventh child, and after inhaling the cocaine, she began experiencing cramps and abdominal pain.
     So, on May 11 — Mother's Day — Dorsett went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Prentice Center for Women, where she had been participating in a program for chemically dependent mothers. At first, her doctor planned to administer Ritodrine, a drug that stops contractions and delays labor. But Dorsett was too far along by the time she arrived at the hospital. Nothing could be done to prevent the delivery. At 7:34 a.m. the next day she gave birth to her fourth daughter, Leanna. The newborn was Dorsett's second child affected by cocaine use, and one of the 100 or so "cocaine babies" delivered in the past year at Northwestern Memorial.
     Leanna suffered from several problems frequently found in cocaine babies. Premature and underweight (1 pound, 13 ounces at birth), she had a clubfoot, deformed genitalia (doctors had to analyze her chromosomes to determine she was female) and other problems that required a colostomy, which was performed the day after her birth. At the same time, the traces of cocaine that had been detected in her blood at birth began to dissipate, and several days later Leanna went into cocaine withdrawal.
     And Leanna was lucky. Because Delores Dorsett had been in Northwestern's in-patient treatment program, at least 21 days of her pregnancy were drug free. Doctors were ready to respond to Leanna's difficult birth, and afterward her development could be monitored by the handful of doctors in Chicago intimately familiar with cocaine's ravaging effects on newborns.
     Most cocaine babies are born to women who have received no drug treatment, or even regular prenatal care, according to Chicago drug professionals.
     "We get more and more calls," said Dr. Ira Chasnoff, director of Northwestern's Perinatal Center for Chemical Dependence, "from different hospitals saying, `We've just had a mother give birth, and the baby's terrible, and we found out the mother was on cocaine. What do we do?' "
     The Northwestern program was begun 10 years ago to treat female heroin addicts and their babies. Cocaine babies were unheard of then. But within the past three years there has been a radical shift in the patterns of drug use in the streets. Today 80 percent of the women in Northwestern's perinatal program are primarily cocaine addicts.
     There are no statistics available to determine how many cocaine babies are born in Chicago. One doctor at Northwestern estimated that hospital sees half of the cocaine babies born in the city, while another suggested it sees only 2 percent.
     Whatever the number of cocaine births, there are indications they are rising. Not only do programs such as Northwestern's universally report huge increases in the number of cocaine addicts seen, but figures associated with cocaine — emergency room visits and deaths attributed to cocaine, for example — have shot up.
     The closest to a hard statistic on general incidence of cocaine births is kept by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. By law, cocaine babies have to be reported to the DCFS, which is supposed to investigate the family situations. Reports given to DCFS are lumped under the agency's "substance misuse" category, along with those of parents who give drugs to their children. Substance misuse reports for Illinois jumped 27 percent to 423 in fiscal 1986, a rise DCFS attributed primarily to an increase in reports of drug-affected newborns. And hospitals only report children who have cocaine in their bloodstreams when born, so not all babies influenced by cocaine are reported.
     While Northwestern's program is the only one in the Chicago area devoted to addicted mothers and their infants, cocaine babies also are born to women in various drug and perinatal programs scattered around the city.
     Substance Abuse Services Inc., a network of drug-treatment facilities, has approximately 100 women who are pregnant or new mothers or who have recently miscarried participating in its programs. Michael Reese Hospital places cocaine-addicted pregnant women into its high risk obstetrics-gynecology program, where the emphasis is on their pregnancy, not their drug addiction. For each pregnant woman receiving treatment, many more women — some estimates say as many as 100 others — never seek help for their cocaine addiction, or special treatment for their cocaine-affected babies. "We don't see a lot of these people because they die before they get to us, and that includes children too," said the director of a large drug treatment program.
     Many factors conspire to keep pregnant women from seeking treatment for cocaine abuse: cocaine's effect on developing fetuses is not widely known; addiction to the drug is very difficult to treat, almost requiring hospitalization for any hope of success; women face particular hurdles, and undergo personality changes. Finally, not enough treatment programs in the city are geared toward either cocaine addicts in general or pregnant women in particular.
     Research on cocaine babies is itself in its infancy. The first medical paper on the subject, Chasnoff's "Cocaine Use in Pregnancy," was published in the New England Journal of Medicine only a year ago. While some basic questions — the effect of dosage and frequency of use on the fetus, the exact risk of deformity, the length of time cocaine stays in the baby's system — have not been answered, doctors are piecing together a picture of cocaine's impact on fetuses and infants.
     The stage of pregnancy when cocaine is taken is extremely important. The first and third trimesters are the most dangerous times to use cocaine, experts say.
     In the first trimester of pregnancy, cocaine can affect the development of the fetus. Cocaine constricts the blood vessels in the placenta, cutting the flow of nutrients and oxygen to the fetus, risking stillbirth and retarded development. The fetus's blood vessels also contract, causing deformities, particularly of the heart, lungs, digestive system and genital tracts. Increased blood pressure also means that fetuses are susceptible to suffering strokes in the womb.
     Cocaine use in the third trimester of pregnancy can affect the delivery. Doctors have found that cocaine addicts have a very high rate of abruptio placenta — premature separation of the placenta from the wall of the uterus — that can cause both mother and child to bleed to death. As in Leanna's case, premature labor frequently is a problem and once born, cocaine babies have slowed developmental responses and a higher rate of sudden infant death syndrome.
     Cocaine does not "cause" these problems in the same way that thalidomide caused defects in children born to pregnant women who took the sedative in the early 1960s. Rather, cocaine greatly increases the odds that these defects will occur. Doctors haven't seen enough cocaine babies to develop statistics, but a current estimate is that women who use cocaine have at least five times as many defective babies as non-user mothers. And, just as using cocaine one time may cause death in an adult, so a single cocaine use can affect an infant's development or cause miscarriage. Doctors say it is not uncommon for a woman to go into labor and deliver immediately after using cocaine.
     One problem found in most cocaine babies is withdrawal — a nervous, jumpy, tremulous state that affects 90 percent of cocaine babies. While withdrawal is physically temporary, it can cause long-term developmental problems. Babies in withdrawal are so irritable that a touch can set off spasms and crying. Their mothers tend to hold and nurture them less because of this, and lack of maternal contact hampers normal psychological development of the child. Thus an important part of treating mothers of cocaine babies is to teach them parenting skills and ways to calm the baby, such as swaddling.
     Ignorance of the risks does not fully explain why cocaine-addicted women don't seek help. Cocaine — once considered a relatively benign drug of the rich — recently has been revealed as one of the most addictive drugs known, a "cunning and powerful, insane disease," according to one therapist.
     Not only is it addictive, but addiction to cocaine is very difficult to conquer — one survey showed that 90 percent of cocaine addicts who become cocaine-free through treatment become addicts again.
     It is not uncommon for women in cocaine treatment programs to deny the medical facts when presented to them. A woman who had been through inpatient treatment programs at Northwestern and Weiss Memorial Hospital described her addiction this way:
     "I just wanted to do it, so I did it. Cocaine is a selfish drug. You might have your last $30, and you might have bills to pay, but you go out and spend it on cocaine. You really don't care. I knew I was pregnant. I knew the consequences. I'm a nurse. I work in a hospital. When you have that urge you really don't care. You do it."
     Drug counselors often compare giving up cocaine to the death of a loved one. Cocaine addicts trying to give up the drug go through all of the stages normally associated with grief — denial, bargaining, anger. Often that anger is directed toward the new baby, who is blamed for the trial of treatment and the inevitable depression that follows giving up cocaine.
     Not only do women fail to seek help because of the powerful grip of the drug, but the lifestyle that the drug almost always demands makes breaking addiction very difficult. People who use drugs gravitate together, addicts surrounding themselves with other addicts, who encourage their habits.
     Most women in Northwestern's program are on public aid, and to pay for their addiction they sometimes turn to prostitution, theft and drug dealing, pursuits that in themselves are not easily abandoned once begun.
     And finally, for women who manage to overcome all these obstacles to treatment, there is one more: treatment is not always easy to find. Pregnant women are in a double bind — they must find a program that accepts both their pregnancy and their cocaine addiction. This is not a simple task.
     For example, the Garfield Women's Center is a state-run drug treatment facility with a program that can serve 90 women at a time. It accepts pregnant women — seven babies were born to patients last year. But, the methadone maintenance program does not accept cocaine addicts.
     "Heroin was the primary drug of choice and now it is cocaine," said Jackie Freeney, director at Garfield. Freeney said that despite the shift, Garfield is not allowed to take in cocaine addicts because of funding restrictions. According to Freeney, a handful of cocaine addicts — no more than three at a time — are slipped into the program.
     "We get calls every day (from women addicted to cocaine) — there's no place to refer these women and the places that do take them have extensive waiting lists," said Freeney. "There need to be more programs designed to meet just the needs of the cocaine abuser."
     On the other hand, the Gateway Foundation, one of the largest drug treatment programs in the state, accepts cocaine addicts. Since 1983, the number of cocaine addicts treated at Gateway has quadrupled.
     But it doesn't accept pregnant women, an "unfortunate reality," according to a Gateway director, who said that of the 2,000 patients treated there last year, only one was pregnant. The foundation simply cannot meet the medical needs of a pregnant addict.
     It is a cliche that public programs are inadequate to handle the problems presented to them. But that doesn't diminish the fact that, due to the overcrowding and waiting lists, people — particularly pregnant women — seek out help and are turned away.
     "The thing is being able to respond to a person when a person really wants to come in," said Chuck Corley, a counselor at Substance Abuse Services Inc. "When a person makes up their mind, you have to be ready, and if you're not ready, they slip back into drugs. In our case, what happens, the majority of the time, is by the time we get a pregnant woman (into our program), she's going into second or third trimester, and we'd like to get them in much earlier."
     Private groups certainly have sprung up to meet the need. Due to demand, Weiss Memorial Hospital has had to triple the size of Lifeline — its rehabilitation program for cocaine addicts — since it began in January, 1985 Lifeline now sees more than 500 patients a year. Many private hospitals have substance abuse programs, along with facilities to handle pregnant women.
     For example, Northwestern Memorial has a well-rounded program for pregnant cocaine addicts, with an inpatient program to help keep the mother off drugs, expert physicians in the field and clinics that track the child's development. Northwestern has no waiting list and is ready to accept new patients —at $600 a day, or $13,000 for the 21-day inpatient program. The assessment interview alone costs $60.
     While medical insurance or public aid can cover most or all of the expenses, approximately half of the women in Chicago could not afford a private drug treatment program such as Northwestern's, either because they don't qualify for public aid and don't have insurance, or because they have insurance that doesn't cover drug treatment or that carries deductibles.
     "Previously, people who used cocaine had significantly high financial resources — if they could afford the drug, they could afford the treatment," said Dr. Richard Sherman, head of Chicago's Alcoholic Treatment Program, who cited a reduction in the cost of cocaine as a major factor contributing to the problem of treatment. "Now we're seeing people who've gotten into trouble and can't afford a hospital stay. A lot of these people who don't get into private hospital programs don't get treated. There is a real need for residential treatment programs in the city."
     Every Friday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., Northwestern Memorial has a clinic for cocaine babies. The waiting room is crowded with women holding infants. In one examination room Dr. Chasnoff is testing a 4-day-old infant for withdrawal — he pumps on the baby's arms and releases, and the baby cries a choppy, rasped cry, hands reaching out spasmodically, trembling.
     "Cocaine babies tend to be very jittery, especially when lying nude," Chasnoff says. "They lose their boundaries."
     In the next room, Dr. Dan Griffith, a psychologist, puts a month-old boy through a series of developmental tests.
     "OK, let's check out your reflexes, big guy," he coos, running a finger over each tiny foot. Griffith is a large man who played off-tackle at Wabash College in Indiana, and it is a little surprising to see how tenderly he handles the baby.
     "How's that grip" he asks, wrapping the baby's fist around his finger. "Oh good." He holds the baby up and tries to get him to take a step.
     "Let's try some flying," he says, holding the baby out at arm's length and sweeping him through an arc. Griffith keeps up a running conversation with the baby, supplying his own responses. "Let's see how your eyes work. They work pretty well. You're supposed to turn your head. Right."
     Griffith plants himself in a chair, holding the baby in front of him. "You're looking for me. Whoop! You found me!"
     He holds his face inches from the baby's. "Hi big guy!"
     The next patient is Leanna Dorsett, discharged from Northwestern just two weeks before. At three months of age, she weighs 5 pounds, 6 ounces — underweight for a newborn. Her eyes are milky and huge. With Leanna is her mother, Delores Dorsett, who prepared for her arrival home from the hospital the same way she prepared for her birth, by using cocaine.
     The colostomy bag is irritating Leanna's skin, and Chasnoff shows Dorsett how to apply the bag properly. Dorsett asks if her baby is still suffering from withdrawal.
     "Well, with babies this premature it's hard to tell," Chasnoff says. "She's a little shaky, but I can't tell if it's withdrawal or prematurity."
     Someone asks whether the colostomy bag is permanent, and Chasnoff says that corrective surgery will be done as soon as Leanna weighs 20 pounds.
     "Her big sister is 2 and hasn't got to 20 pounds yet," whispers psychologist Diane April, referring to Shanetta Dorsett, who was born with lung and heart defects. "So she may have to wait awhile."
     The examination ends and Dorsett dresses her daughter in a light purple jumpsuit. Chasnoff, about to walk out to the other examining room to see another baby, consults his clipboard. "I need to see her next week," he says to Delores Dorsett. "She comes to term next week." He smiles. "It's her birthday."

                   —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct 12, 1986.

If you haven't read enough, and are curious as what happened to Leanna Dorsett, I followed up in 2000. Read it with a tissue. 

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.