Saturday, November 12, 2022

Northshore Notes: I love you, Gene Hackman


     And if you suspect I was pleased to find a photo that includes both Gene Hackman AND luggage, well, you're right.

By Caren Jeskey

     “The Nanny costs $29.95 and is available at Chicago Trunk and Leather Works.” Somehow, this electronic babysitter that beeps when your child wanders too far never really took off, as far as I know. Luckily, Chicago Trunk and Leather Works at 12 South Wabash also sold Tumi suitcases and leased-out aluminum Halliburton briefcases. The shop opened back in the days when local phone numbers started alphabetically: 312-FR2-0845. By the time I found them in the late 80s, the store was owned and run by Ken and Ron Levine, whose grandfather created the business.
     Selling luggage and leather wallets in an old-school storefront on Wabash was the ultimate Chicago job as a teen. I felt urban and cool when the Red Line screeched towards downtown from my north side digs. “Watch the closing doors!” the ever cheerful conductor Michael Powell called out. (Yeah, so I was groped once in a CTA station, but I'd say just once counts as fortunate). Exiting somewhere on State, piss soaked tunnel air — tinny and cold in the winter and acrid in the summer — chased me from the platform all the way up the escalator. Mouth breathing was worse because then you could taste it. The reward came as olfactory senses yielded to the aroma of Garrett’s popcorn at street level. The fetching aroma of caramel and real cheddar cheese beckoned me into the shop to bag up and weigh out a portion. If I was sad, the bag was bigger. If I was happy, just a nibble would do. 
     The store hosted a gang of misfits, sitcom style. There was Betty, who seemed quite mature to me at all of 30. Her daily costume included perfectly coiffed finger waves, matte red lipstick, and a smart two piece suit 
à la Mad Men. There was Tom, who mostly stocked but would pitch in wherever needed. Tom and Betty (not their real names; I wouldn't want to injure somebody, even at this far remove) would fly apart from each other if I climbed the stairs to the storage loft too quickly and caught them in a tangle.
     Brad was the sweet, funny guy with smiling eyes. A member of the family. My kind boss Ken seemed to bring the best out in everyone. Ken and his wife Shelley took me under their wing and we became friends. When the store opened a second location, I happily took my station at 900 North Michigan in the new Bloomingdale’s Mall, as we called it. One day Ken, always looking out for others, pulled me aside. “Caren. We have a very special guest here. Gene Hackman. I want you to take care of him. Focus on what he wants, and don’t make too big a deal of it.” I did as I was told. Parents out there, I BET you wish your teens listened to you as willingly as I did to Ken.
     I helped the poised and respectful Mr. Hackman — who knew how to treat the help — pick out a wallet for his wife. As I handed the star his bag, I said “Mr. Hackman. My mother always tells my father that you are the only man she’d leave him for.” He laughed, of course, and offered “would you like me to write her a note?” We found him an 8x10 lined piece of notebook paper. He wrote “Dear Myra. I love you. Gene Hackman.” I wrapped it up and gave it to her as a gift for Christmas.
     "Dear Friends: As one who has experimented extensively with life in the home and community, using real people in true-life situations, I doubt that any playthings could prepare a child for one millionth of what is going to hit him in the teeth, ready or not." 
              —Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night


Friday, November 11, 2022

‘Ask for a little help’

Reg and Shana McCutcheon

     Reg McCutcheon grew up poor in southern Indiana, his father a disabled Korean vet.
     “I learned to appreciate government cheese,” said McCutcheon, who went into the Air Force in 1980, right out of high school. “Going into the military was my escape.”
     He became a satellite systems operator, and was sent to Afghanistan in 2011.
     “I thought I’d be looking at a computer screen and saying, ‘There’s a bad guy behind that rock,’” recalled McCutcheon, with a chuckle. “Turns out, they didn’t need that.”
     He found himself much closer to ground action than is typical for the Air Force.
     “I lost a good friend my fourth day there,” he said, of an engagement that killed eight other soldiers. “Outside the wire, all the time, you see things. It hit home pretty quick.”
     McCutcheon got hurt too — “pretty beat up” is how he puts it — earning the Bronze Star, a chest full of medals and 19 operations. But he put those memories away when he retired as a lieutenant-colonel in 2014, after 34 years of service. He became a therapist, working with vets struggling to readapt to civilian life.
     Then last July, he recognized an unexpected patient who needed professional help: himself.
     “He was struggling,” said his wife, Shana. They’d been married for two years, a second marriage for both.
     “A lot had been amazing, but also difficult,” she said. “We have lots of kids.”
     Eight between them.

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Thursday, November 10, 2022

It glows above and we glow below

  

     A third of the way into November, and gorgeous, summery, mid-70s weather. How lucky then to be able to attend an event that requires you to be outside, and in the velvet darkness at that, punctuated with glorious festive light and music?
     My wife and I attended Employee, Family & Friends Night at the Chicago Botanic Garden Wednesday, the opening of their holiday Lightscape show. Rather than go in the usual main entrance we were directed in off to the left, and that plunged us immediately into unfamiliar terrain. It was dark, about 6:30 p.m., and I had the delicious experience of being somewhere I was vastly familiar with — we'd been to the Botanic Garden hundreds of times — yet didn't know where we were, passing under an enormous wreath, marveling at distant spotlights sweeping the sky in unison. There were neon rings and blazing torches, hanging lamps and trees illuminated in gorgeous rust orange and electric purple and bright green. It was marvelously disorienting and fun.
     The music ranged from Christmas classics to contemporary orchestral music, stirring, celebratory, soaring. There were lots of people — I can't recall the garden ever being so crowded — but as we were all moving in the same direction, it wasn't a problem. And the people added to the experience, toddlers bouncing forward and the elderly in wheelchairs, young people talking, all of us journeying forward through light and color and music.
     "We're in the Rose Garden!" my wife marveled, breaking the spell. The tendency was to keep moving, but we had the presence of mind to occasionally step to the side and just watch. We grabbed a hot pretzel and some holiday cookies and stood at a table, watching light play off a fountain of mist in the lagoon.
     We passed through a tunnel of large stars, with Disney's "When You Wish Upon a Star" playing. Another time I might have found that too literal, but it's one of my favorite songs, particularly apt the day after the midterms giving democracy a well-deserved break.

Fate is kind.
She brings to those who love.
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing in.
Like a bolt out of the blue.
Fate steps in and sees you through.
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true.
    Somewhere an objection stirred. No, that is actually not how fate typically operates, current welcome events notwithstanding. But that seemed small and nitpicky observation, and I didn't actually say it. Shutting up is an art form. Toward the end — and it took maybe 90 minutes for us to go through — there was a long, lit arch, like the lancet window, the Winter Cathedral, and I looked up at it, beaming, glowing myself, my mind empty of all but the most inarticulate childlike wonder.

     Lightscape runs evenings at the Chicago Botanic Garden from Nov. 11 through Jan. 8. Tickets are $32 for adults, $16 for children, $2 less for garden members, and can be ordered here.




Wednesday, November 9, 2022

Buh-bye, Bailey. Don’t let the door ...


     Just when we were really getting to know Darren Bailey, history sweeps him back to the downstate cornfield whence he sprouted.
     A shame. I’m not sure exactly where Bailey belongs in the range of inept Illinois Republican candidates. Not as feckless as xenophobe airborne milkman Jim Oberweis, warning about the immigrant peril. Not as goofy as carpetbagger Alan Keyes. But then who could be? The man has a cameo in “Borat.”
     Maybe we could smile at Bailey because he was never a threat. Because Illinois has become an island of blue reason and civil liberty in a vast sea of red Trumpy malice, delusion and proto-fascism. Bailey was declared a loser by the Associated Press at the stroke of 7 p.m. At least, unlike his orange hero, it seems he’ll accept the results of a free election.
     What, if anything, will be remembered about Bailey? Kicking off his campaign by curling up in Donald Trump’s lap and purring until he was petted? His repeatedly calling Chicago a “hellhole?” His stunt of moving into 875 N. Michigan Avenue, in order to expose himself to the dangers of a Gold Coast luxury high-rise?
      The most interesting aspect of the race, to me, was back in June when the Democratic Governors Association poured millions into stealth commercials that boosted Bailey — the idea being Bailey would be easier to beat than Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin. That was either a) savvy politics, or b) playing with fire in an era when the GOP could rally behind former college football star and current nincompoop Herschel Walker as their offering to the U.S. Senate from Georgia.
     We can’t let the oddity of Bailey prompt us to ignore our governor entirely. J.B. Pritzker ... what do you say? He must really, really want to be governor. He plowed $171 million into his 2018 victory, and then put another $152 million into 2022. Can anyone make an observation about him that isn’t somehow tainted by the third of a billion dollars worth of hype firehosed at us over the past four years?

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Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Three places of worship

Interfaith Chapel in Terminal E, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport

     October was a busy month, bookended by Spain at the beginning and Texas at the end. Looking back, I realize that during October I hit two very different houses of worship: the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and the non-denominational chapel at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona
     I doubt they've been juxtaposed before. But take a look at each and compare. The Sagrada Familia, designed by the wild genius architect Antoni Gaudi, really defies capture in one photograph, or a dozen. It's enormous and complicated, soaring and sprawling, covered with birds and beasts, human figures and plant life. And the airport chapel, well, it's very small, and has this stained glass triptych at the front in a vague sunbursty pattern. I took a single photo, not entirely sure why.
     I'm going to do an entire post on the Sagrada Familia, part of a Spanish Notes series I plan to run next time I'm on vacation. I'd better get on that. In the meantime, I had to pose the question: what explains the difference in aesthetic achievement in these two sanctified spaces? 
    They have similarities. Both are trying to inject a sense of the spiritual into ordinary life. Both are meant to hold people as they try to commune with God, or their sense of the eternal, or whatever.
     And yet they seem to define the wide span of human achievement. Or do they?
     A number of explanations present themselves. A difference of ambition, certainly. Gaudi wanted a place where not only a community would gather, but pilgrims from across Spain and Europe. Dallas's Interfaith Chapel — actually chapels, plural, since there are five. This is the one at Terminal E. The airport chaplaincy describes itself as a "ministry of presence," meaning its purpose is to be there, "embracing the importance of compassionate and caring help available to all passengers, military troops and employees, 24 hours/day, 365 days/year."
     So something more individualistic, less communal. The airport chapel's modest aims are to be a place where a few individuals can go to meditate, to pray — there are prayer rugs off to the side. It strikes me that another, unspoken purpose is to shield the proceedings. Sort of a spiritual restroom where a person can perform their moral ablutions out of sight, though the chapel at Terminal D is larger, and they do hold regular communal services.
     I'd say that the Sagrada Familia also benefits from being the handiwork of one master architect, the apex of an imagination geysering creativity. Although the DFW airport, which marks its 50th anniversary next year, was designed by Gyo Obata, who was no slouch. He also designed the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, plus the Wrigley Company Global Innovation Center in Chicago, and the Lincoln Library down in Springfield. 
     The era when the two holy places were conceived matters. Gaudi was working in the late 19th century, the Art Nouveau era, already alive with sensual forms and nature intruding upon design. Obata was working in the 1970s, the tail end of modernism, with its spare lines that looked sweeping and clean and futuristic, at the time, and came to seem empty and dead and cavernous, at least to me. 
    Plus scale. As enormous as Sagrada Familia is — it made me think of St. Peter's — DFW covers 27 square miles. That doesn't leave much budget for a lot of elaborate bronze leaves and frogs on the doors. The public spaces swoop and inspire, as if God were replaced with aviation.
     When I mentioned this topic to my wife, she asked her typical penetrating question: which is better for contemplation? The vast sanctuary of the Sagrada Familia invites vertigo more than repose, and reflection proved difficult with platoons of tourists tramping past. The DFW chapel certainly was far quieter, though even lingering briefly in the empty room felt almost like a kind of trespass.  
     I can't overlook the faith differences: Gaudi was a devout Catholic, and say what you will about Catholicism, it is the go-to religion when it comes to inspiring fabulous architecture and timeless art. The melange of beliefs and practices gathered under the banner of interfaith has a less stellar track record.
    Although. If you look at the Baha'i, which are not pure generic interfaith, but do represent a blending of several traditions, they nevertheless have spectacular temples all over the world. The one in Wilmette, now that I think of it, we also visited in October. As I said, a busy month. And we sat in the Baha'i temple for quite a long while in quiet contemplation. So score one for ecumentalism. 







Monday, November 7, 2022

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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Sunday, November 6, 2022

"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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