North Shore Notes: Au Revoir For Now

By Caren Jeskey

            

     It’s been a tragically big week. It’s probably fair to say that all of us are feeling sick with sadness, terror, worry, and/or grief for our global family members in Syria and Turkey. Or we are in some form of protective denial. Every ounce of my body and mind wanted to get picked up by a jet to join everyone else in the world who’s able enough to make the journey and get there to help. I lamented the fact that no such corps was organized. Help is finally arriving, but too little and too late. Here are ways you can pitch in.
     I feel moved to offer a secular prayer of sorts. I found out back in 2015 (when I — an atheist — first tried to tolerate the god language of twelve step programs) that I can easily transpose the prayers from my Catholic childhood into a comforting form of wise well-wishes.
     The Our Father, which is ingrained in my head:

     Our Father who art in heaven,
     Hallowed be thy name.
     Thy kingdom come,
     Thy will be done,
     On earth as it is in heaven.
     Give us this day
     Our daily bread,
     And forgive us our trespasses,
     As we forgive those
    Who trespass against us.
     Lead us not into temptation,
     But deliver us from evil.
     For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
     Forever and ever.
     Amen

     Our Father Variation (by me):

     Our parents, (parental figures, or internal parents), who are (or were) here on this earth with us,
     Let us respect you, and the memories of you.
     You have paved the way for your legacy to continue on.
     You have passed your wise advice to us, to the best of your abilities.
     We are grounded and hopeful because of you.
     We are grateful for food on our tables, and those who help us when we are without.
     We hope we can repair damage we have done to others, and to harm less, moving forward.
     We try to forgive. We believe in peace and reconciliation.
     We strive to stay connected to others in healthy ways, so we can be our best selves.
     We stay away from danger and surround ourselves with those who love and care about us.
     When we die, we hope to be remembered as people who added goodness to this world.

     God-prayers at times like this make me sad, since why would a god who allows such destruction be the one to help? That’s a rhetorical question.

     And on a separate topic — this is my last Saturday post for Every Goddamn Day, the Blog of Neil Steinberg. A combination of factors added up to propel us each into a new chapter. I’ll now be able to enjoy Neil Every Goddamn Day, myself.
     It's been a pleasure and an honor to have hitched a wagon to Neil's star for the past nearly three years. It all started with my first post as EGD's Saturday Correspondent on April 11, 2020.I will miss seeing you all here. You have given me so much. Thank you for your presence, and your thoughtful discourse.

     Please keep in touch by tuning in every Sunday at or after 8:30 a.m. Central Time to give my audio blog “Authentically Imperfect” a listen on SoundCloud. These 5-50 minute audio pieces will be recorded each Sunday morning and posted by 8:30am for your listening pleasure and comments.

     I will leave you with a suggestion if I may. Find a moment or more of joy every day, like the luminescent lake glass I gleefully discovered this week.
     Turns out that a good percentage of the glass I've found between Evanston and Fort Sheridan is known by some as Vaseline Glass because of the yellow glow that emits when the right (365nm, not 395nm) UV light hits it. The glow is caused by uranium, which Wikipedia says was first added to glass in 79 AD, and used in mosaics.
     The thought of dead-looking chemical goo dug out of a little plastic tub is not the best memory I have as a 70s child. The antidote to this proved to be a clear memory of my dear Grandma Marie who loved the stuff. Pretty sure she had a small container of it in her purse at all times, along with calendula cream (which fixed "everything" in her eyes, the duct tape of goo). Come to think of it I’m not sure what the Vaseline was used for. She also believed in the power of green beans and had a six foot tall forest of vines in her yard under the skyway in warm months. We’d head out to the labyrinth with straw baskets to collect them, sit at the table snapping them to cook, and nibble on them along the way; the crunch and green flavor filling our mouths, little beans popping out and making us giggle.
     Grandma Marie would let me rummage through her black vinyl "handbag" where I'd find interesting things. A pack of skinny menthol cigarettes and a lighter tucked into a case with two pieces of metal at the top that closed with a satisfying click, at least one rosary and a small bible, hard candy for her smoker's throat and to keep me quiet during mass, and cash in an envelope for the tithing basket. Grandma’s purse, an indoor playground.
     My Grandma was addicted to the radio — an AM prayer channel as well as WGN and WBBM news radio played from a tiny transistor radio set on her table on 95th and Commercial. I'd like to honor the memory of my Grandmother who gave me unconditional positive regard and faith in myself, even when I screwed up, or just felt screwed up. She left us, died, when I was in my late twenties. The love in her eyes was palpable and I can still see her gaze upon me, like Hanuman the monkey headed Hindu god whose eyes emit compassion. She was no angel, but I was hers. Today I am feeling grateful for my warm, green-thumbed, funny, intelligent family. We all have hobbies we are immersed in, thankfully, and the roots are clear.
     My Lake Michigan morsels are also known as "Canary Glass… a yellow-green glass mainly [used in] tableware and household items from around 1840 up until World War II. It gets its yellow or greenish-yellow color from uranium dioxide (UO2), which was used as a colorant. Vaseline glass came as glasses, plates, lamps, doorknobs, bottles, decorative items, decanters, and more.”

Jews, bicycle riders and trans folk

     Some jokes are more true than funny. A favorite of mine goes like this:
     A man stands atop a soap box in city park in Berlin in the 1930s.
     “The Jews and the bicycle riders will be the ruin of Germany,” he begins.
     A crowd gathers. The man continues his speech, repeating the refrain: “The Jews and the bicycle riders will be the ruin of Germany.” Finally someone in the crowd interrupts.
     “Wait a second,” the audience member asks, “why the bicycle riders?”
     “Aha!” the speaker replies, lighting up. “Why the Jews?”
     Now set that joke aside. We’ll return to it later. In the meantime, let’s play, “Who said it?” the game where I share a quote and you have to guess what politician uttered it. Ready? Then let’s begin:
     “Do we want our schools to impose on our children, from their earliest days in school, perversions that lead to degradation and extinction? Do we want to drum into their heads the ideas that certain other genders exist along with women and men and to offer them gender reassignment surgery? Is that what we want for our country and our children?”
     I know what you’re thinking: Ron DeSantis. The governor of Florida has been buffing his presidential credentials with a salvo of rhetoric against trans kids, and constraints against any legal or educational steps designed to help them. A one-two punch alongside exaggerating education hinting at our nation’s racist past into ooo-scary “critical race theory” that must be stamped out.

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Flashback 1998: `Wash me' sign honors grime

     With the Sun-Times marking its 75th anniversary this year, I thought I would play along on my blog now and then, since I've been here for half that span. 

     Twenty-five years ago, my column ran Tuesdays and Thursdays in a cramped spot in the features pages. This one is 590 words long, or about 2/3 of its current size. This is what I call a riff — no news, no sources, just noodling on a particular topic, thinking about something that usually gets passed over with a shrug.

     Not much sunlight this past month. But as any photographer can tell you, overcast days are great for providing clear images. Which is why our car looked extra awful, in the midwinter morning gloom, parked on the street in front of the apartment, the dirt of the season weighing heavy upon it.
     "I took it by the car filth and had it filthed," I said to my wife, floating a joke to try to make light of the situation. "They missed a spot."
     "Where?" she said, skeptically. She was right. There wasn't a clean square inch.
     What amazes me now, hours later, thinking about the scene is, at that moment, sweeping my gaze over the crusted vehicle, I felt a sort of pride.
     There is a glorious tension about a dirty car. On one hand, it screams out for soap and water. Something in your gut wants to see a mob clutching big wet sponges rush in from the wings and descend upon it, feverishly scrubbing the dirt away, making the car gleam.
     That's why strangers — who generally don't care if you have bad brakes or no brakes or a license plate that expired three years ago — nevertheless line up to trace the words "WASH ME" with their fingers in the brown film on the hoods and trunks and back windows of particularly offensive vehicles. Usually in big letters. They are willing to sully their fingertips for the pleasure of drawing public attention to your shame.
     But I suspect they also just want to touch it. There's something weirdly wonderful about dirty cars. A really squalid automobile, like, oh, a coral reef, takes a long time to reach full maturity.
     I think, at least subconsciously, those "WASH ME" scribblers just want to disturb something pristine and perfect, the way neighborhood kids will gleefully tramp through the scenic fresh snowfall in your front yard, leaving behind angels and footprints and, if you're unlucky, phrases of their own devising.
     Not that I wouldn't prefer to drive a clean car. That's a great feeling. Fresh from the car wash, looking newer than I've seen it in months, little water droplets shining like diamonds on the crystal clear windshield, the car rolling out into the street which suddenly seems all warm and friendly, with happy Mr. Sun smiling down and pedestrians and kids and dogs all stopping to gaze in admiration and dreamily sweep their arms back and forth in big waving gestures.
     But car washes take time. And who has time? After work it's dark (heck, this time of year, after lunch it's dark) and you want to get home. And nobody gets their cars washed before work. I've seen garages that will wash your car while you're working, but those usually cost about $27.50, and for that price I'd rather just wait until the dirt condenses into thick sheets and sheers off the car, spinning off to shatter on the road behind, the way big panels of snow will fly off the roofs of cars left unbrushed after being outside during a blizzard.
     Unless the finish of my car is already so mottled and corroded from never being washed, plus the drippings of acid water in decaying parking garages, that the thick sheets of dirt adhere instead of falling off.
     In that case, come spring, I can seed the car with grass and watch it grow. That would look great, for a while. I have the sneaking suspicion that, by July, it would all be scorched and dead from lack of watering and general neglect.
                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 3, 1998

Five days after ‘The Day the Music Died’

Waylon Jennings, left, and Buddy Holly.

     Today is Feb. 8, 2023, probably, if you are reading this in a physical, ink and wood pulp newspaper on Wednesday, and not stumbling across it on the internet some other day in the tractless span of time before, or after.
     Whatever day it is, were I to ask you what significant event occurred on Feb. 8, you might be stumped.
     Now the third of February might be easier. On Feb. 3, 1959, in what would be widely remembered as the “Day the Music Died,” pop stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.D. “Big Bopper” Richardson, along with young pilot Roger Peterson, died in a plane crash the morning after playing the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. The on-this-day-in-history vignette usually ends with Don McLean penning his homage, “American Pie,” a cryptic, 8 minute and 42 second hit song released in 1971.
     A shame to stop here. Because this is where the story starts to get interesting.
     The music did not die Feb. 3. Only the musicians did, and then just the top stars of the 24-date “Winter Dance Party Tour” of the Midwest. The rest of the performers went by balky, cold, broken-down bus. Where the Big Bopper, singer of “Chantilly Lace,” was supposed to ride. But he had a cold and asked 21-year-old Waylon Jennings, Holly’s bassist, for his seat on the airplane, and the two swapped. Valens won his fatal seat in a coin toss.
     The surviving musicians, shocked and grief-stricken, performed the day of the crash, in Moorhead, Minnesota.
     They played Sioux City the day after the crash. And Des Moines the day after that. Cedar Rapids the day after that. Spring Valley, Illinois, the day after that.
     The next night, Feb. 8, was the Aragon Ballroom in Uptown.

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Flashback 1995: Private Olive Still Everybody's Hero

Milton Olive III

    Sometimes when readers suggest topics, I get testy: thank you very much, but I am neither a lounge pianist nor a short-order cook. I don't take requests. 

     But Monday a reader offered an idea that could not be easily dismissed:
     "As you are aware, this is Black History Month and I would like to mention Olive-Harvey College in Chicago. Milton Olive was a young black man and Carmel Harvey was a young white man. They were both killed in Vietnam. Milton Olive fell on a grenade to save his buddies. Is there any way you can mention him? I would be very grateful if it can be done."
     Indeed it can. Not only do I know who Olive is, but I've written about him, a column I'm happy to post today, in an era sorely in need of heroes.

     Milton Olive III only had a second to react to the Viet Cong grenade that landed at his feet that October day in Vietnam in 1965. He yelled to the members of his platoon around him, something like, "Look out! Grenade!"
     Then the 18-year-old Chicago private bent over, picked up the grenade and hugged it to his abdomen, hunching over to shield his comrades from the blast that killed him instantly.
     He was the only Chicago African American ever awarded the Medal of Honor — the nation's highest award for bravery — and Sunday, 30 years to the day after his act of heroism in a war that so divided the country, about 60 people gathered at his memorial in Olive Park, Ohio Street and Lake Shore Drive, which was named for him. They invoked the legacy of the selfless paratrooper against the racial discord that now frequently divides the country.
     "He didn't pause and consider the number of ethnic and racial groups in his midst," said Jim Balcer, Chicago's director of veteran affairs. "He gave his life so that others could live."
     Rochelle Crump, of Chicago Veterans Advisory Council, said: "This should set a precedent for how we should live our lives today."
     The ceremony included a 21-gun salute, two color guards and the laying of wreaths at the plaque bearing Olive's Medal of Honor citation.
     Olive's first cousin Charles Carter spoke of the soldier everyone called "Skipper."
     "No one will ever know what went through Skipper's mind when he picked up that grenade," Carter said. "But he didn't stop to think he was saving the lives of African Americans or white men. They were comrades in arms . . . we hope Olive Park will become a symbol of racial harmony for Chicago."
     One comrade who couldn't attend, but nevertheless was thinking of Olive on Sunday, was former Capt. Jimmy Stanford. He was standing a few feet away when Olive grabbed the grenade.
     "I really didn't get to know the man until after he died," said Stanford, 60, from his home in Brazoria, Texas. "People often ask me why he did that. I really don't know — an extraordinary person. Something happens on the spur of the moment, and special individuals are there."
     Stanford agreed that Olive's actions carry a message of harmony.
     "That's one thing that combat does for you," he said. "You forget who's black, who's white, who's brown. There's no time for that."
     Stanford, father of four, grandfather of 12, great-grandfather of one, says he thinks a lot about the man who gave him the rest of his life at the cost of his own, a man of a different color, a man he barely knew. He urged others to remember Milton Olive, and his sacrifice as well.
     "Just don't forget him," said Stanford, fighting back tears.

                     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 23, 1995

Salad maker for the world

Terri Burnett

     Draped head to toe, from hairnet to shoe covers, Terri Burnett stands alongside dozens of similarly clad workers in a 37-degree room, grabbing handfuls of dark green spinach from a white trough and poking them into round clear plastic jars of pesto pasta hurrying past her on a conveyor line.
     What’s her job like?
     “It’s fun,” she said.
     “Fun?” How can that be?
     “They let you just do you. They let you just be calm,” said Burnett, 41. “There’s no rush. They let you work at a pace.”
     Nor is she uncomfortable.
     “I’m actually not cold,” she said, noting that when she first arrived, three years ago, she bundled up in layers. “You need two pair of pants on when you first start, or you won’t survive,” she recalled. But that passed, and now she gets by with a hoodie and small knit gloves.
     We’re on the South Side, in the assembly room at Farmer’s Fridge, a company that produces fresh salads — and meal bowls and desserts like chocolate chia raspberry pudding — nestles them into clear plastic jars and dispatches them across the country.
     Readers might recall I first tried their Harvest Salad during a few hours of idleness at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, noticed that it’s a Chicago endeavor, talked to founder Luke Saunders and was intrigued by the fact that the salads, with their fleeting shelf life are not produced at satellite plants around the country, but are all created in Chicago, at a single 100,000-square-foot production facility.
     Even though Midway Airport is literally across 54th Street, the perishables are not put on airplanes but trucked overland to 20 markets in Texas, California and the Northeast: 700 locations, not just their distinctive vending machines — there’s one just off the great hall at Union Station — but stores like Target and Jewel-Osco.

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The nick of all time

      

     “You cut yourself shaving.”
     Yes, yes I did. Six hours earlier, getting ready to go to the big get-to-know-each-other party for the Sun-Times and WBEZ staffs. I knew it was bad when I saw the blood running down my face and dripping into the sink.
     “So it’s noticeable, huh?” I said sheepishly. Was it ever. A triangular divot an inch long high on my right cheek. Vivisected during the deft, almost unconscious motions of plying the razor. I can truly say, in 45 years of shaving, I’d never managed a gash of that proportions. It wasn’t a nick; it was a wound.
     “You have lipstick on your cheek,” a friend said at the party said, floating the bright spin.
     Funny, my first thought had been of cosmetics. A few pats of my wife’s base and I’d be good to go. But she stopped wearing that years ago. And even if I found an old compact, people might notice. “Did you see Steinberg? Is he wearing makeup? He looks like Raggedy Andy.” They’ll assume I’m trying to seem young, like Gustav von Aschenbach in "Death in Venice," rouged and dyed, tripping down the Lido after Tadzio, his fading heart all aflutter.  No makeup.
     Next thought: maybe I should just stay home. Too soon to socialize anyway. Blame COVID.
     No, that's the coward's way. This could be repaired. Pressure, that’s the thing. I swabbed the raw skin with rubbing alcohol, then pressed a folded up pad of toilet paper against it, daubing the blood.
     “Is that a shaving cut?”
     “No, Jenn Kho kissed me,” I said, sarcastically, thinking: go with the lipstick notion. Then immediately feared the comment would come off, not as a glib party quip, but the sort of oblivious sexist remark that gets a man fired. Not joviality, but harassment of our executive editor. A harmless (I thought) face-saving jest morphing into some career-killing Hitchcockian nightmare. I’d end up running through a corn field while being strafed by a crop duster.
    “Just a shaving cut,” I said, quickly correcting myself, hoping it was not too late.

     At least it isn't just me. "Everyone’s just kind of rusty," New York Magazine concluded recently, surveying our current social mores. Public interaction is a skill and like most skills, you use it or lose it.
     Why do people go to parties? It certainly wasn’t convenient. Put myself in presentable shape, or try to. Take the 4:33 Metra downtown. Grab an Uber to Bronzeville. Here my plan hit a bump. Uber wanted $44. I had time. Preferring to spend $2.75 for the same journey, I hopped on the No. 1 bus at Canal and Jackson. Hopped off at 11th Street. Grabbed the Red Line at Roosevelt Road. Got off at 47th and leapt aboard a waiting 43rd Street bus.
     I'll be honest. Rumbling along 43rd Street, a certain out-of-placeness occurred to me. Maybe because it was dark outside. Perhaps, I wondered, this was not the best idea. At such moments I reassure myself by thinking of all those readers in Florida who get some kind of contact fear high from whiffing the vapors of crime wafting southward from Chicago. So afraid of the city, still, they’re ululating in fear, snug in their sunwashed deluxe senior living unit down in Margaritaville a thousand miles away. While I’m on a CTA bus crossing Indiana Avenue at night, safe as a clam. I read a book. Nobody on the bus mentioned my face. Nobody seemed to even look at me.
     “You could tell someone you fell and cut yourself,” someone at the party suggested. I shook my head. How is that better? I did not keep count how many pointed it out. Between five and 10. It wasn’t that every colleague said that. One broke away for the bar with, “Can I get you a drink?”
     “No thanks, I’m fine,” I said, and his face darkened as the realization struck him.
     “Oh gee, I’m sorry...” he said. “I mean, I forgot that you...”
     “No problem,” I said. “I’m good.”
     “A Coke. I could get you a Coke...” He continued in this vein for some time until I finally explained, “There’s nothing wrong with the offer. It’s all this stuff afterward that I could live without.” Which seemed almost harsh, so I added, soothingly: “I learned a long time ago you can’t stay sober because you don’t know how to get booze.” We both laughed at this and he fled from me like I was on fire. I took two steps and greeted a young reporter whom I hadn’t seen in three years.
     “I’m going to the bar," he replied. "Can I get you a drink?”
     “No thanks, I’m fine.”
     “Oh gee, I'm sorry....” he began, but I cut him off, practically grabbing him by the elbow and dragging him to the bar.
     “No, let me buy you a drink,” I said. “The big ass columnist buy the drinks...”
     On the bar was a large hexagonal glass urn dispensing lemon ice water, and I asked the bartender for a cup. She gave me one, and I held it under the spigot. A few drops dribbled out. A round slice of lemon had floated against the spigot, blocking the water. I shook the urn, without effect, then looked at the reporter, observing my struggles with a pitying eye, sucking his beer.
     "My whole life has been this way," I said. The bartender went to get a long wooden stick to nudge the lemon aside.
     Later, I circled around and noticed the friend who had imagined that gash could be lipstick. She was entertaining a group of young staffers and I slid over to join them. She was telling a funny story about some doofus who managed to pull a 7-foot tall bookshelf over onto himself, sending the whole newsroom running over to dig him out from under all the tumbled books.
     “And here he is now!” she exulted, or words to that effect, welcoming me into the grinning crowd with a sweep of her hand.

     If this all seems an unexpected combination of the trivial and personal, I should underline the moral of the story. In post COVID, while some people race to socialize, others hold back, and I figured, it’s good for you to know that, no matter how awkward a situation turns out to be, it could be worse, and you survive. I didn't get sick, nor crushed with shame. In fact, as you see here, managed to view it as amusing, eventually, which is key. Going to the party was worth the two trains and two buses needed to get there. I showed up, which is important in business. The night wasn’t a total loss. I mingled, ate a couple chicken tacos and half a slice of Portillo's chocolate cake, delivered several long diatribes to various bosses that I’m sure embarrassed me in ways no shaving mishap ever could approach. We all got bags of Dark Matter coffee heading out the door.
     My wife was asleep when I got home at 10:30. The next morning I thought I’d keep quiet — I can do that — and run an experiment and see if she noticed anything odd about my appearance.
     “You cut yourself shaving, dollie,” she said, as we both got ready for the train. “At least you’re going to be on the radio.” The “where no one can see you” was unvoiced.
     I told her the cut happened yesterday, before that party, and wondered why everybody feels the need to point it out. I certainly know it's there.
     “It’s what people say,” she said. “It’s on your face.”
     Yes, yes it is.
     I told her I hadn’t mentioned the cut to see if she noticed. She started to laugh.
     “I noticed it across the room!”