Time to trade tweets for toots?

 

Art generated by Dream by Wombo 

    Hey there! I see you. Through the page, as you cast your eyes — deep, soulful, intelligent eyes — downward at this column. And I want to say, how very special you are, for all your delightful qualities and how flattered I am that you would add your delightful presence to the Sun-Times family of readers today in your unique, quite extraordinary way.     

     Feel better? Of course you do. Attention is addictive. That’s the shortest possible explanation for social media. Facebook lets us set up these little shrines to ourselves and then join in a mutual admiration society with assorted strangers. Instagram lets us direct fabulous little movies about our fabulous little lives.
     And Twitter. The cynosure of the moment. Since I’m sure some readers will only vaguely perceive Twitter as the gadget that car/space tycoon Elon Musk bought for $44 billion, twice what it’s supposedly worth, I should explain: It’s an online platform where you spitball brief opinions at your followers, while others in turn knuckleball their views at you, to either swing at or let fly by. It’s like writing your thoughts down, folding them into paper airplanes, then launching them into a hurricane.
     I joined a dozen years ago because not joining seemed journalistic malpractice and I find it a useful tool in my job, both writing stuff — you can track people down on Twitter — and then disseminating what I’ve written. Occasionally, I get lucky and a Neil Gaiman will retweet my column to his 3 million-plus followers, the arc light of significance sweeping over me for a moment before all is darkness again.
     Though mainly I’m a part of an audience, like everybody else. The truism, that if you aren’t paying for something online, then the product being sold is you, applies double for Twitter.
     This past week, we’ve all been supernumeraries in the Elon Musk Show, watching the richest man in the world whine and gripe and beg people on Twitter to start paying $8 a month for the blue check marks that go beside their name, originally issued to show tweeters are indeed who they claim to be.

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"Everybody hates the Jews"

 

Lindsey Liss (Photo courtesy of Robert Chiarito)

     Fish don't feel wet, or moist, or clammy, or any of the other sensations we associate with water. Or so I assume. It isn't as if we can ask them. Though it would make sense. The water surrounds them, they're immersed in it, always. It's what they swim in. Fish can't always be thinking, "Look at me, I'm submerged."
     I feel the same way about antisemitism. My friends are fretting about it being on the rise, and it certainly is. But being alarmed or outraged or offended or even irked — it's kind of the reaction they're going for, no? How about being bored instead? Antisemitism is so dull, always the same plots and libels, the same ooo-scary cabal running the world. I wish. To me, antisemitism is like the price of gas: it goes up, it goes down, but you're always paying something. You're never free of the cost. Sometimes Jews are singled out and hated and harried more than other times. But the pilot light is always burning.
     A friend posted on his Facebook page a cri du coeur by David Telisman called "Anti-Semitism Hurts So Badly That It's Hard To Put It Into Words," and while I understand that people are entitled to their reactions, I also wanted to say, "Really? You're hurt? So badly? By Kyrie Irving?" 

     To me, Kyrie Irving doesn't even register on the antisemitic scale. If you're hurt badly by the various nutteries expressed by a basketball star, then how do you process Dachau? 
     Maybe because I'm of the first post-Holocaust generation that had this stuff really ground into me. At times the religion seemed a death cult; pushing back again antisemitism — and the antisemitism of previous generations at that — was all we did. The religion itself was an afterthought, the way we passed the time, waiting to be killed.

      I was born 15 and a half years after Auschwitz was liberated. That was antisemitism. Kanye and Kyrie is mental illness, focused on Jews, vented freely thanks to the liberation of wealth and fame. Think of all the people who feel the same way but never make a peep. Prejudice is so universal, such an easy high, emotional heroin for the lazy and stupid, that almost everybody shoots up some bigotry at one point or another. And hating Jews is so easy, so consequence free, generally. The shocking thing to me about West and Irving is not that they said what they did, but that they actually had real world repercussions for saying it. That isn't worrisome; that's good. 

      But I also don't think their censure is going to change anything, except maybe make antisemitism worse, by provoking the aggrievement that feeds it in the first place.  The old Louis Farrakhan two-step: say loathsome things about the Jews, then point to the alarmed reaction to what you said as more evidence they're out to get you. Talk about a vicious circle. 

     To me, antisemitism draws not so much fear, as a grin of recognition. There's no need for me to draw attention to it, because either you already understand it too well, or you never will.  Besides, it's a self-own. Anyone who expresses that kind of garbage has already undercut themselves. Who cares what they think? I mean honesty, with Kanye West, you could wipe away every remark he ever made about Jews, and he still seemed crazy, years ago. 

     Maybe I just got in the habit of shrugging it off. I grew up in a completely gentile area. Some years, I was the only Jew in my school. Antisemitism has been rearing up, now and then, since I was 6, and Bobby Koch told me I was going to hell. I wasn't hurt, never mind badly. I was slightly confused. Hell? What's that? And why? You believe that? Really? Gosh.

     It isn't as if Bobby Koch, 6, was an antisemite, just aping whatever his parents or priests or both told him. Can't really blame him for it. Kanye West is emotionally 6 years old. How much mental space do I have to spend on his personal problems? And he's one guy. Think of how many others there are.
     What's the classic Tom Lehrer refrain from "National Brotherhood Week."
   

               Oh the Protestants, hate the Catholics.

               And the Catholics, hate the Protestants.

              All the Hindus hate all the Muslims.

              And everybody hates the Jews.

     That's funny. Because it's true. More or less. Who can really tell? The guy down the block who's walking his dog and sees me walking mine and bolts in the opposite direction, every time. Antisemitic? Socially awkward? Upset by some column I wrote nine years ago? Could be. Could be because I'm a dick and don't know it — they never do — and am being justly shunned. Some combination? Who can tell? He might not even know himself. Though I do suspect that if we had bonded at Bible camp, we'd be chatting it up while our pooches sniffed each other.
     What to do about it then? I push back by not being ashamed of being Jewish. I've written about every aspect of being Jewish in my column — holidays, bar mitzvahs, brises. The best refutation to those who want to cast Judaism as something malign is to portray it as a benefit, a boon, something wonderful. Which it is. 

     Generally, I sidestep haters and bullies. No need to let the poison in, to react. Too many of them anyway, and they want you down in the gutter with them, where they feel at home. I'm not one for symbolic acts, but I do admire people who take the trouble to try to confront evil, to do something about problems in the living world, feeble though those gestures be. So when a reader sent me photos of Chicago artist Lindsey Liss draping some altered Chicago flags over the Kennedy, as a little push back for the antisemitic displays in Los Angeles, I felt like talking with her.

     "What really made me think I really need to do something was seeing those banners over the freeway in Los Angeles; the white supremacists. Just crazy," she said. "Seeing Kanye, and his number of followers continue to rise, was absolutely shocking."
     Liss doesn't think you can be a bigot and claim to love Chicago.
     "He says he's from Chicago, he even named one of his kids, 'Chicago,'" she said. "We're taking in refugees now. Thinking about the rich history of our city. It's not just about Jewish people and antisemitism. It's about equality. Think about the great migration of Blacks from the South to the North, to our city. It just doesn't jibe with us. It's not who we are."
    Pretty to think so. While the great migration aspect is certainly true, as is the sanctuary city aspect now, Chicago also has a tradition of racism as wide and deep as can be found in any Southern backwater. It might be the most segregated city on the planet. Antisemitism was so strong here that the Standard Club was one of the few Jewish organizations to discriminate against Jews, the Germanic founders turning up their noses at their unwashed Eastern European brethren.  Louis Farrakhan is based in Chicago. Eugene Sawyer had staffers telling the media that AIDS was a plot by Jewish doctors. 

     I asked Liss: isn't hatred as Chicago as deep dish pizza? 
     "That's what we were," she said. "I like to think, with all these refugees coming in now, that's who we are."
     And who she is demands action.
     "If felt like if I don't do something, say something, who will?" she said. "My kids are the great grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. So are my nieces and nephews. If you're not outraged..."
      I'm not outraged. To me, being outraged is like being pregnant. You can't be a little outraged. If I'm outraged that Kyrie Irving tweeted out links to an antisemitic film, what am I going to be when jeering Red Hats make me clean the streets of Northbrook with a toothbrush? Which I can very well see happening in 2026. I'm hoarding outrage for when I truly need it. Hopefully never; maybe soon. I can see the argument that by piling on every slight now, we avoid worse. I'm not sure if that's how it works though.
     One of Liss's signs said "Honk if you believe in equality." There were many honks, much support. And much opposition.
     "Lots of people gave me the finger," she said. "I was shocked."
      I'm not. She's lucky she didn't hang that banner in Mount Greenwood. 

     Liss is 47, lives in Lakeview, has four kids.
     "Raising kids in the city is tough," she said.
      I told her I seldom experience what I consider antisemitism, perhaps because I so thoroughly screen it out. Readers venting outrage doesn't count — they'll say anything mean. I discount it. It's a meaningless buzz.

     Not so her.
     "I can't even tell you , how many times people say things inappropriate to me," she said. "Microaggressions. not knowing I'm Jewish. Saying, 'But you don't look Jewish.' What does that even mean?"
     Maybe that's what insulates me. I look as Jewish as the leering moneychanger on the cover of a copy of Der Sturmer. Maybe people put on their best there's-a-Jew-right-over-there behavior when I'm around. Ix-nay on the ew-Jay atred-hay.
     Maybe I find the whole thing is so ridiculously stupid that I can't believe it's real. Would have a hard time carrying on if I focus too much on its reality. Maybe that's the problem. Because I also know, intellectually, it is indeed very real. All too real. Always has been.




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Northshore Notes: Namaste, asshole

 

     We haven't completely come out of our COVID shells yet, have we? I thought we had. But lately suspect we've merely accustomed ourselves to a new, more isolated way of living. Or as Bruce Springsteen sang, "Sooner or later, it just becomes your life." A topic our Northshore bureau chief, Caren Jeskey, explores in today's post:

 

By Caren Jeskey

    “The ego is a terrible master but it’s an excellent servant.” 

     During screen time with a friend in California the other day, he dropped this bomb. Not an original thought, but that’s okay. He thought it important to say.
     COVID isolation allowed those of us who lived alone and far away from family to enjoy a solitary— selfish, even— life. I loved it. I found out I’m not an extrovert.* There were many benefits to 18 months alone in Texas. I was able to hear myself think, and feel emotions deeply. The noise and haste of the world were avoidable. I recognized that I was not simply “okay” or “fine,” or “pissed” or “happy;” there were countless nuances. The quietude uncovered heretofore subconscious corners of my inner landscape. I realized that I’d been living from an external locus of control, with the more ideal approach living from an internal locus. In other words, being true to, and trusting, oneself. 

     I used Ken McGill’s tools to increase emotional self awareness. He also gave me great tips on how to communicate honestly and succinctly with others.
     The key to a better world, in my opinion, is humans who know themselves and use self-knowledge to thrive, and also to behave better. Good cogs in the wheel of life, as yoga teacher Rich Logan once said to to me back in the good old days when we were footloose and fancy free young adults. I find myself asking if I am being a good cog when I’m on a walk, bike ride, drive, or with others. (I have failed miserably more than a time or two, but it's getting easier with effort).

     With the gift of ample free time mixed with the fear of death, there was plenty of time and a dire need to meditate. Meditation improves cognition, and oils our internal neurological functioning. It helps us grow accustomed to sitting with discomfort and coming to peace with what’s happening inside— the good, the bad, and the ugly— instead of numbing or denying the truth of who we are. Being more mindful of how you feel, and how you want to act, is the first step to behaving better towards yourself and others.
     Sitting on a meditation cushion or yoga mat, in a place of worship, with a trusted mentor, in a support group, at a desk with a journal or recorder, or any other means towards introspection is crucial. Inner work can translate to being a better outer person. It’s at least worth a try. We owe it to future generations. It’s acceptable that this is a bumpy journey. We will make mistakes, but as long as we can apologize when we need to, that’s the best we can be expected to do. As my left coast friend said, if we value personal responsibility in enhancing the quality of our beings, as well looking out for others to the best of our abilities, life gets easier. Anger, fear, dread, judgment of others and greed will not get us there. Pick the most difficult person in your life and send them good thoughts. It works.
     I suggested that a client use a simple loving kindness phrase, silently in her mind, when confronted by her irritable spouse. She was pleased to share that silently repeating “may you be well, happy and peaceful” diffused her anger. Well, she added “you son of a bitch,” to the end. It's easy to be angry at others for not doing what we want them to do, if we are not careful. Bitterness kills.
     To assuage my fear of death, I studied with a death doula once. I do not believe in heaven, or an after life. I feel that I can come to terms with death if I live a life that is tolerable at the least— coping with pain and the other challenges of being human, and aging — and a life that’s often joyful at best. The more comfortable we are with realizing that we are simply corpses waiting to happen, the less seriously we can take ourselves. The more quickly we can accept life on life's terms, rather than letting the dangerous parts of our egos run the show, the more we can settle down.

     Self-knowledge mixed with effort, humility and courage can lead to a more authentic self. This is illustrated beautifully by Desiree Ford who told her story on the This Is Actually Happening podcast. After extensive rehab for a traumatic brain injury that resulted in a coma, her memory started returning. She tried to get back to her old self, and the harder she tried, the worse she felt. She finally realized that she must embrace the new version of herself, and then she found relief.

“Your life is yours to create.
You may only exist in your mind
It seems like everyone is sleepwalking through their waking life,
Or wake-walking through their dreams
I am just trying to get a sense of where I am
Just wake up.”
— Waking Life, film by Richard Linklater

* Editor's note: She IS an extrovert.  

GOP cheers a ghastly crime

By Barbar Kruger (Art Institute)

     When liberals are being routinely dragged out of their beds at night and killed in the street, decent Americans awaiting their turn will ruefully remember Paul Pelosi.
     Not the crime against him, terrible though it is. David DePape, a man apparently deranged by years of drugs and Republican demonization of Nancy Pelosi, is accused of breaking into her home in San Francisco last Friday, shouting “Where’s Nancy?” — the same words used by the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
     In the federal complaint, DePape is quoted saying he was there to break her kneecaps. She was away, so he had to settle with shattering her 82-year-old husband’s skull with a hammer.
     Awful. But that isn’t the haunting part. The haunting part is the reaction after. The gales of GOP laughter, mingled with the lies they immediately, reflexively formed to shrug off responsibility for crime. They imagined the home invasion a hookup gone bad; it is San Francisco, after all, wink wink. Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, used his $44 billion megaphone to magnify that lie.
     None of this is new. The GOP has settled into a kind of lurid, unashamed performative cruelty. Yet this reaction to the attack against an elderly man in his home adds a new dimension of true horror to their mockery. Nobody thought of Donald Trump Jr. as anything but a leering, entitled idiot. But to see him tweeting photos of hammers, joined in by his father’s typical gauzy speculation about the reality of various slurs and frauds. It was disgusting in a fresh way. And given the six years of moral collapse this country has been experiencing under the grotesque mass of ethical rot represented by Trump and his imitators, that’s really saying something.

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Smashing pumpkins

Richardson Adventure Farm invites visitors to smash pumpkins from a tall tower.

    
     Unlike the Internet, stories printed in a newspaper are finite. You can't fit everything in.
     For instance, my column on pan de muerto in Tuesday's paper, focusing on a Jewish-Mexican bakery called Masa Madre, originally included a three-paragraph digression into the history of Jews in Mexico, which I ended up cutting because the column was just too long. Anyone who read the abbreviated story and thought "Jews in Mexico? Tell me more!" was flat out of luck, and had to dig on their own.

     Or the article Wednesday on page 10, "Pumpkin disposal—a smashing (green) idea to consider," a fun piece by Indira Khera at WBEZ about breaking up pumpkins for compost.

     When simply thrown away, "pumpkins end up in landfills as food waste," she wrote. "Buried under heaps of trash, they rot and release methane — one of the most potent greenhouse gasses."
     But smashing and composting pumpkins "reduces methane creation and transforms the pumpkins into useful, organic nutrients for soil or mulch."

     Which is fine, as far as it went. But the story left me wondering: smashing pumpkins and composting pumpkins reduces methane creation how? Why is it that pumpkins buried under  old diapers and other garbage vent lots of methane, while those diced and mixed with coffee grounds put out less? What physical process is at work? 

     I formed theories — exposure to air, light, certain bacteria — then poked around the Internet looking for confirmation. Finding much about the alternates of making those pumpkins into beer, or drawing off the methane to create energy, but nothing that would explain the differing methane output. Granted, I didn't look very long. 

     Giving up, I queried Khera. What's going on here? Honestly, just asking seemed fraught. We were colleagues, true, now, in theory. But didn't know each other. I wasn't sure she'd even respond, or if she did, she might feel somehow criticized, that I was questioning her article, calling it deficient.  I took the risk, since I was curious, and the Sun-Times and WBEZ are  supposed to be covalently compounded now, our atoms intermingled, bound together by the strong force of media synergy. Seemed worth a try.

     Khera, a recent graduate from the University of Chicago with a degree in biology, welcomed the question  and answered fully:

     "When food waste goes to a landfill, it sits in these giant heaps — there's no oxygen, and the microbes present use anaerobic digestion (digestion done in the absence of oxygen). This process produces something called biogas, which includes quite a bit of methane.

     "In compost (most common type, aerobic compost) — food waste isn't piled. It's mixed together and turned over on a regular basis. The microbes use aerobic processes (digestion in the presence of oxygen), and produce far less methane due to the chemical nature of the process. There is some literature that has found a small amount of methane production at the bottom of compost heaps (naturally, things are a little more piled up and there's less oxygen). But much less than a landfill / driven by the nature of aerobic vs anaerobic processes."

     My hunch about air was right (anaerobic = without oxygen; aerobic = with oxygen). She then shared a number of resources — something from the heretofore unimagined Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (unimagined by me that is; obviously Khera is clued in) and some general information on composting from the Environmental Protection Agency.
     Funny. I had lunch Wednesday on the balcony of the Cliff Dwellers Club with a well-known business executive who had a hand — actually, a central role — in marrying the paper with the radio station, and she asked me how I thought the union is going.
     I almost replied, "Just great; I contacted a 'BEZ reporter today asking for clarification about her story on rotting pumpkins and she didn't get ruffled or act like I had somehow threw shade on her work, but enthusiastically shared the information I was looking for!"
      But that seemed, oh, small ball compared with the vast world of tectonically shifting money that my friend dwells in, so I kept mum. But it seems a hopeful sign.

Hope wafting up from Brazil

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Last weekend I flew to Texas on a quick reporting trip. As we were shuffling off the plane, it struck me how fortunate the United States is to be so big yet still a single country.
     Almost a thousand miles from Chicago to Dallas. Yet no customs to go through, no passport control, no immigration lines. No reason to pause from plane door to cab stand.
     That was once very different in Europe. Also about a thousand miles from London to Berlin, with the Netherlands, France and Belgium jammed between. Differing currencies, contradictory rules and burdensome duties. Time-wasting security and regulations.
     A lot of friction going from A to B, both people and products. Wouldn’t it be better, economically, to mimic the United States? To have one unified financial system? A European Union?
     So they built one. Wasn’t easy and took years. Few liked the idea of being dictated to from Brussels about how to make cheese. Currencies that went back centuries — the franc, the lira, the mark — were abandoned for one currency, the euro. That stung.
     It worked, but time passes, and things can go so well that you forget what got you there — as we saw with vaccines. And the European Union had what some considered downsides. Brits worried that Greeks or, worse, Turks, would start showing up as their neighbors in Devonshire. A movement grew to drop out of the EU, fanned by nationalists building their castles of power upon the sand of hatred.
     On June 23, 2016, Britain voted, and 51.89% chose to leave the EU, 48.11% voted to stay — it’s astoundingly consistent how evenly divided the world is right now between those who want to proceed into the future and those who want to try to claw their way back into the past.

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Baking the bread of the dead

  

     Tamar Fasja Unikel, left, sets out pan de muerto as Elena Vázquez Felgueres works on a
          laptop at Masa Madre, their "virtual" bakery blending Jewish and Mexican traditions.

     “We’re about to bake the pan de muerto,” says Tamar Fasja Unikel, heading into the depths of the Hatchery, the vast East Garfield Park restaurant and food service incubator.

     Fasja Unikel is half of Masa Madre, an artisanal bakery fusing Mexican and Jewish traditions. Pan de muerto, literally, “bread of the dead,” are sweet, pillowy round loafs, decorated with symbolic bones, that can be eaten plain, dipped in coffee or hot chocolate, or reverently placed along with marigolds and photos on an ofrenda, the altar honoring the memories of departed loved ones (both family and pets). Placing food there is an act of both love and sacrifice, since you don’t eat those offerings yourself. You mustn’t; it’s their food.
     In kitchen D-119 waits her business partner, Elena Vázquez Felgueres. The two met about 10 years ago at Centro, an arts and fashion school in Mexico City. Both moved to Chicago with their spouses independently, then reconnected here and decided to go into business together.
     Why not pursue fashion?
     “Chicago is not a fashion-forward city, so we had to change gears,” says Fasja Unikel.
     True enough. Chicago has always been a far greater source of food than fashion. More cow, less leather jacket.

     Though the women’s training is subtly reflected in the unusual rose aprons they wear — crossing in the back, straps spaced wide, hanging from their shoulders instead of their necks.
     “When we first started it was just two of us, we were baking long hours. The other aprons that go on our neck hurt a lot,” says Vázquez Felgueres. “We tried this shape and it’s very comfortable. You can wear it all day.”
     They can and do, at least Wednesday through Friday, their baking days, which begin at 4 a.m. and run until orders go out about 11:30 a.m. They lead a team of four bakers, but are very hands-on, plucking finished breads from the oven, painting them with butter, handing them over to be doused in sugar.
      Masa Madre is a “virtual” bakery — they work in a single rented space, a kitchen crammed with baking racks and tables and stacks of boxes. They have outlets and take orders for pick-up and delivery, but hope to open a bricks-and-mortar bakery in the West Loop next year.
     Masa Madre means “mother dough.” They chose the name because back when they started in 2018, buying ingredients at Costco and baking at home, they focused on sourdough, with its venerated eternal starter.

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