What I can’t say anymore

     When my official Maria Pappas, Cook County treasurer 2023 wall calendar arrived last December, I immediately put it on prominent display. How could I not? Every month, Pappas models from her wardrobe of flashy fashion. The whole thing harkening back to a bygone era of outsized personalities in public office. She thoughtfully autographed it.
     Of course I thought of writing about this amusing artifact But there’s so much to unpack. It’s not just a calendar; it’s a relationship. Or was, anyway. We haven’t spoken in years.
     I became better acquainted with Pappas 23 years ago, by complete accident after walking over to the 2000 Gay Pride Parade. There she was, in a spangly top, high-stepping down the center of Broadway, twirling a baton.
     The moment’s significance is examined in my memoir, “You Were Never in Chicago:”
     “Pappas represents, to me, a glimpse of the vanished idiosyncratic glory of the city, the colorful past which always seems to be disappearing over the horizon, if not utterly lost already. The carnation-wearers, the bamboo-cane leaners, the nudge-and-winkers, the organ-grinders, the First Ward Ball revelers ...”
     After I wrote as much in the newspaper, she reached out — actually made my wife and me dinner on the roof of John Regas’s mansion on Astor Street. A relationship ensued, and she ended up hiring my brother, who became chief financial officer of her office.
     Therein lies the rub. Am I hopelessly compromised, ballyhooing her calendar because she made me dinner and hired my brother? Or score-settling, because he ended up fleeing her employment for a better gig?

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A book of matches

     A couple weeks ago I rode my bike to the post office and mailed a matchbook to a man I've never met.
     But I'm getting ahead of myself.
     This story should really begin with Bookman's Alley, the marvelous used bookstore that Roger Carlson ran behind the Varsity Theater in Evanston. I started going there as a freshman at Northwestern, and stopped as a man in his 50s when Mr. Carlson finally retired.
     Mr. Carlson was a savvy businessman. His books were not cheap. And while he would sometimes, writing up a receipt, he would give me a 10 percent "Friend of the store" discount, he only gave me one free book in all that time.
     The book was "War! War! War" by "Cincinnatus," an anonymous anti-Semite who printed the book in October, 1940. The book blames Jews for all wars, for the Great Depression, and pretty much anything that ever went wrong anywhere.  It almost defies characterization, but I managed to pluck out a single sentence that can represent the entirety:

     Every unbiased student of history and foreign affairs knows that the new world war is not a war for Democracy, but a war to maintain the British-Jewish Empire, its tremendous wealth, its commercial supremacy and overlordship of the seven seas, and above all for the unconditional return of central Europe to Jewish control, even though it results in the destruction of millions of lives and the hopeless insolvency of all the civilized world.   

     Memory had Mr. Carlson giving it to me because he didn't want to make money from selling it. But that wasn't quite correct, I learned when I pulled the book down, for the first time, and discovered a pair of notes written on the little Bookman's Alley slips of paper he used as receipts. Dated Feb. 19, 2010, the message reads, in his distinctive all-caps handwriting: "30's AND 40's AMERICAN ANTI-SEMITISM; I'D RATHER YOU HAVE IT AS A HISTORY TEXT INSTEAD OF SELLING IT TO SOME A-HOLE WHO BUYS INTO IT. MR. C."
     That is an attitude one can't help but admire, but really there was no occasion to apply it in my own life.
      Until I got an email out of the blue, from a young man named Matthew in Los Angeles:

     I came across an old blog post of yours from 2014 regarding the "Fagots stay out" Barney's Beanery matchbook you have. Or, at least, Im hoping you still have it! I started collecting matchbooks through estate sales here in LA and, as a young gay man who lives right behind Barney's, I've become fascinated by the history of Barney's. Amazingly, very few people my age know this history but I've had a good time learning about it and spreading it to my friends. So, when I came across your blog post, I came to the conclusion I have to find those matches! I've been searching the internet but haven't found anyone else with them and then I realized I should just reach out to you. Do you still have those matches? If so, and if you're willing to sell them, I'd love to buy them from you. At this point it feels like they're an important part of West Hollywood history and I don't want that history to be lost! And, at least in my opinion, there's something fun about the idea of those matches going on a journey with you and now, a few decades later, returning to where it all began. If I'm able to buy them from you, my first stop with them in my pocket will be to Barney's for a beer and then after that I plan on displaying them in my apartment and telling everyone who comes over about them and their history. Let me know!"

      Of course I had the matches. I thought carefully about the situation, remembered "War! War! War!" and realized I would not be selling him my matches. I wrote back:

     Good to hear from you. Yes, I have those matches right here, in a little drawer in my roll top desk. As for selling them, no, I'm not interested in doing that. Their being a relic of baseless hatred, I don't think I should profit from them. But if the matches would mean something to you, then please send me your address, and I'll mail them to you, gratis. I've had them for more than 40 years. I think that's long enough.

  

     Actually, it was that last sentiment that was most important. I'm at an age when I'm surrounded by great masses of detritus, aka, crap. Files and furniture, notes and boxes, mugs, souvenirs, relics. I hate to include books, which are holy, but hundreds of books, most of which I'll never read. After I wrote the above, I went to walk the dog, and can't tell you how good I felt. The mixture of performing a small kindness plus the liberation of divestment was a real boost. Only a little thing, true: an old, used matchbook. But it's a start of the great give-away that will end with me being put, possessionless, into the ground.
     Matthew sent me his address, adding this: 

     "Wow Neil, that means a lot to me. In a way I think you doing that completes something of a moral arc for those matches, they've seen the worst and now the best side of humanity. Thank you." 

     Completing the moral arc — there's a good thought for today. I tucked the matches in an envelope and mailed them the next day. He received them a few days later. A very small thing, a drop of generosity. But each one of those those waters the world, and ourselves.

Meet Tai Shan Wan

Tai Shan Wan

     Given that my job — as best as I understand it — is to comment on the relevant news of the day, I sometimes surprise myself by what I don't write about. Such as former president Donald Trump being arraigned for a third time last week, his desperate plot to retain power despite losing the 2020 election, as laid out in full horrific detail by special counsel Jack Smith.
     I could say that the ground is so thoroughly picked over, there is no need for me to weigh in. I'm not one for piling on, or joining the chorus. There's more than enough material without me and, honestly, I don't have a particular angle beyond the obvious — Donald Trump tried to overthrow a free and fair election, in a criminal fashion. Now the rule of law, which he hasn't destroyed yet, is coming for him, though of course his fans don't give a damn about any of that and never will. He is still trying to subvert American democracy and will continue to do so until utterly defeated. None of this is new or surprising, right? By now, either you understood the situation perfectly long ago. Or you never will.

     Besides, I did turn in a column on the Trump enormity, but it got held so the Powers That Be could think about it. They've given their approval — thank you, PTB — and it's running in the paper Monday.
     In the meantime, allow me to introduce you to Tai Shan Wan, whom I encountered Wednesday at the "Death: Life's Greatest Mystery" show at the Field Museum. I imagine I'll write something about the exhibit in the day to come.
     China's vast bureaucracy goes back thousands of years, and was thought to continue on into the afterworld. Tai Shan Wan, seen above, was a judge in the 7th Court of Hell, "where liars and gossipers had their tongues removed."
     And if you imagine that I learned this, smiled, and thought, "Boy, could we sure use you now," then you are right, I did. I suppose that's an angle you haven't read before. 

Don't mess with Aldi customers

     Readers seem to be getting this, which is a relief. For added perspective, if you have a copy of George Orwell's "1984," you might want to compare its final sentence with the last sentence of this column. 

     On my second visit to Aldi, I paused in the parking lot to admire its lovely logo: twin trios of stylized wavy blue lines, representing the rivers of life and happiness, perhaps.
     My quarter was already in hand. I slid it into a slot and a cart was released. An ingenious system that frees Aldi from having to hire someone to wrangle carts — maybe so they can go to college, study to be a doctor, cure cancer.
     Where to begin? Romaine hearts, $2.69 — I’d bought the exact same trio of lettuce for $4.99 at Sunset several days before and they’d already started to rot. A bag of white cheddar popcorn, $2.19, almost half what I usually pay. But equally delicious.
     Words cannot convey the magic of Aldi. The products. The bargains. My fellow shoppers, spanning the ages of humanity, from the pair of energetic little boys racing around, to the elderly lady being guided by her attentive grandson. They were all so ... beautiful.
     OK, a bit of background, so you don’t think I’ve gone mad. I have a personal blog, everygoddamnday.com. On days when this column doesn’t run, I cook up something else, often conveying moments of staggering banality, of the “Neil discovers ordinary life” variety. A week ago I went to the discount supermarket Aldi, where I’d never been before, accompanying my wife.
     Granted, I wasn’t in the best mood. My report, “Wrangle carts, earn quarters” was, shall we say .... ungenerous. The passage that got me in trouble, I believe, was:

     Aldi was new and kinda empty, not enough products filling the void and what they had were off-brands that I’d never heard of. Millville? I’d have left immediately, but my wife declared the prices low, and wanted to walk every aisle, exploring.

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A brick shy of a load

      Lots of construction in my neighborhood. Fences go up, small humble Monopoly houses come down, equipment arrives, and far larger edifices go up in their place. With two nearby projects, to my amazement, the owners of large, attractive new homes have bought the lot next door to theirs and built secondary additions as large as the original home. I'm tempted to knock on the door and demand, "Why....?" But haven't gathered the courage yet. 

     Anyway, I have an idea as to the answer: because there's a lot of money in the world.
     At least the previous fashion — faux Norman mansion — seems to have fallen from favor. Now the style is American Gothic on steroids — someone's idea of a farmhouse, all vertical clapboard and metal roofs, but grown huge, perhaps due to exposure to radiation, like those ants in 1950s horror movies. How they resisted putting in a symbolic patch of real corn in front yard — I would — is a mystery.  The corn would pull everything together.
    Living in an actual 1905 farmhouse, one built when the surrounding area was an apple orchard, I sometimes envy the owners of these new places. How pristine they must be. How huge. How perfect. Our house has all sorts of idiosyncratic quirks — the bottom of the closet in one bedroom is three feet off the floor.  They bedrooms range from modest in size to small. If I don't duck strategically while walking through the basement, I risk smacking my head into a beam. The garage, which once held horses, is not designed for our modern bloated SUVs. My car just fits. That kind of thing.
      Thus I welcome reminders that the owners of these new homes have troubles of their own. I watched this particular neo-farm house go up a little south of my place. It seems aesthetic enough, if a little soulless. At least they left themselves a little bit of a front porch; a lot of places don't, I'll never understand why — well, actually, I do understand: because they are never going to sit out there, and if they did, there are no people walking by to greet. 

     Not quite. I was walking Kitty by there Tuesday night, and notice that the freshly laid steps had already lost a brick, smack in the middle. The construction couldn't have finished a month ago. Two, tops. And look. 

     This isn't schadenfreude. I hope. I'm not any better or smarter than the owner of this place. Probably a lot less. And when we bought our place, the front steps were also bricks. They also promptly began to fall away, so much that it was dangerous to go in through the front door. We ended up having to put on a new set of wooden steps which, 20 years on, are rotting in all sorts of alarming ways. I'll start to remove a rotten part, so I can patch and paint it, and the next thing I know a section a foot square is gone and I'm making custom molding in the basement. I should probably just rip the entire thing off and put on a new one. But that would be a big job, and if I can patch and delay another year, well, that works for me.

      Anyway, I paused to snap a photo. I intended to blur the address of the place, so as not to cast derision on any specific individual.  But when I took a look at it, I noticed that the pillar had been unintentionally lined up to block the address. As I always say, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. 

Religious zeal keeps demanding more

     Readers sometimes suggest that I am against religion. Which is simply not true.
     Life is a long time, pocked with misfortune and death. Faith in some kind of comforting story seems to help, filling the empty hours, creating the illusion of meaning, and comforting sufferers when reason fails. I’d never dream of trying to yank that blankie away.
     Rather, I believe religion should be voluntary. A radical thought, I know, so let me explain. You review the beliefs and practices dictated by a particular faith — angels, Kashrut, the giant tortoise balancing the universe on his shell, whatever — and freely decide what to embrace and what to reject. Your call. Not mine.
     This liberal lunacy can confuse religious types, who consider forcing their practices upon the unwilling an integral part of their belief system. So much that to oppose their doing so strikes them as attacking their faith, root and branch. If I decide not to celebrate Christmas, I am deliberately offending them.
     And the faithful have a genius for taking offense. The acts of others, if contrary to their religion, are a sort of death ray, effective over huge distances. That baffles me. There’s almost nothing you can do to offend me. Call me awful names? Get in line. Make a big pile of my books and set them on fire? Fine, if you paid for them. I’ll tweet a photo of the flames. That kind of vituperation is a compliment — people sharing hate mail are slyly bragging: “I matter; look at the reaction I inspire!”
     To me, taking offense only draws attention to criticism. By culling books on America’s racist past, the state of Florida didn’t suppress history; it magnified it.
     The ability to absorb criticism is a challenge everywhere. Are you following the problems radiating from Sweden? On June 28, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee, burned pages torn from a Quran in front of a Stockholm mosque during the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Adha (while waving Swedish flags and blasting the Swedish national anthem — a dramatic touch). The complication is that in Sweden, you need official approval to hold a protest. He had it.
     The burning turned an isolated act into an international crisis. Iraq expelled its Swedish ambassador and a mob attacked the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad. Some argue that burning Qurans is not free speech, but hate speech, and thus illegal. That makes some sense to me — a burning Quran could be like a burning cross. The whole imbroglio might stall Sweden’s membership in NATO.

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Homophone Smackdown: Flower v. Flour

   Rudbeckia Hirta - Prairie Sun

     Honestly, I just want to share a few photos of gorgeous flowers taken Sunday at the Chicago Botanic Garden. But to do that and call it a day seems a failure of effort on my part. So perhaps we should play "Homophone Smackdown" to give the endeavor a little heft.

     There is "flower," the seed-bearing, reproductive organ of a plant, usually involving petals. And "flour," the ground grain baked into bread. Any connection? And, more importantly, which came first?

     Usually I put my bets on a contestant before diving in. But I was so eager to get at it, I cracked open my Oxford English Dictionary without premeditation and opened right to "flour," defined as "Originally, the 'flower' or finest quality of meal." Well that's it, then; sort of gives away the game at the outset. 

     Or does it? The OED cites this, from 1250: "Kalues fleis, and flures bred. And buttere." 
     It's a near miss. The first cite for "flower" is from 1225, "bringed ford misliche flures."    

     Reading through the various definitions, we reach metaphorical use, "7. The choicest individual or individuals among a number of persons or things; 'the pick'." Which might be even older, the first usage being "c. 1200" ""Moder milde flur of alle."

     Checking in with my main man, Samuel Johnson, I see that while his 1755 dictionary includes "flosculous adj. [flosculus, Latin.] Composed of flowers; having the nature or form of flowers." and "flower" ("the part of the plant that contains the seeds") he does not have an entry for "flour" but tucks its meaning into "flower" — "4. The edible part of corn; the meal." and indeed that is the spelling Shakespeare uses.

     One of the lesser Roman deities was Flora, goddess of spring vegetation. The festival honoring her was the Floralia, at the end of April and into early May, when people dressed in colorful clothes and made offerings of flowers, which sounds delightful.

     To move from the sacred to the profane, Wentworth and Flexner's "Dictionary of American Slang" cite "flower" as a homosexual (including the more common, and specific, "pansy"), and "flour" as face powder, leading to the possibility of a floured flower.

      The flower/flour dynamic makes one of a touching sight gag in the 2006 romantic comedy "Stranger than Fiction" (spoiler alert, so if you haven't seen it — well, first I pity you, because it's utter genius, one of my favorite movies; I've seen it three or four times; but stop reading now and go see the movie. Will Ferrell. Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman. A valuable lesson about life and really, really funny to boot).

     Those who have already seen it will recall the moment when robotic accountant Will Ferrell is trying to woo tattooed hot baker babe Maggie Gyllenhaal, and shows up with a cardboard box of small bags of some kind of powder.

     "What are they?" she demands.

     "Flours," he said. "I brought you flours."

     And thus her heart is won.

Coneflowers