Down the rat hole for Valentine's Day

Rat & Heart, by Banksy (Sotheby's)

     Once upon a time my wife-to-be lived in an apartment on Melrose, down the block from the Nettelhorst School.
     The two things I most remember about that apartment are both romance-related. First, on Feb. 14, possessing both the key to her place and more creativity than money, I let myself into her apartment while she was at work and cleaned it, thoroughly, as a Valentine's Day present.
     Second, on the south side of the sidewalk was a hole shaped like a heart. Not a perfect Valentine's heart. A lopsided heart, one lobe somewhat bigger than the other. The discrepancy made it extra endearing. 
     Whether you see what is coming next can be considered a test of how romantic you are. Take those two facts — 1) a young courting couple and 2) a heart-shaped depression in the sidewalk. 

     What happens next?
     Of course the heart becomes part of the pair's personal romantic mythology. One of us — I can't remember who, probably me — notices it.
     I say "probably me" because, in most relationships, the less attractive half tends to try harder. And as a stocky, large-headed, potato-nosed, endomorphic struggling writer improbably dating a lithe, strawberry blond stone beauty attorney sprinting up the big law ladder, try I did.
     One Valentine's Day she got in the car for our date, holding a card and a small box containing four chocolates. She handed me the gift. I glanced nervously toward the back seat. Waiting there was a red laundry basket filled with presents. A bottle of wine. Flowers. A balloon. Candy. I'd seen the basket, first, in some bazaar in the basement of Field's and decided to just fill it. Kinda pathetic, really.
     So I noticed this heart, stopped, and stood on it. She stopped. We kissed. Doing so quickly becomes a private tradition. We spent the better part of a decade in the neighborhood, first when she lived on Melrose, then when we lived together a bit south on Pine Grove. So we'd often stop on our sidewalk heart and kiss.

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Genug shoyn

"Jews in a Synagogue," by Rembrandt van Rijn (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     The rules for the comments section on this blog are fairly simple. I ask that remarks make sense. I expect them to be on topic, not to go on too much about other articles about other things in other publications, for instance. They should not suggest that I am an idiot.

     Otherwise, readers are free to expound upon ... almost anything. Their own lives. Related or semi-related situations. 
     But there are always exceptions. Novel situations arise. My November 6, 2022 post, "Everybody hates the Jews" recently started receiving numerous comments. At first I happily assumed that some group had noticed it, perhaps based on the latest surge in anti-Semitism, and were debating it among themselves. Pretty to think so. Then I saw what was being posted — long ruminations on Israel that had appeared elsewhere online. Written in the same style. Obviously posted by the same person. Because I agreed with them, I let them go.    

     They kept coming, usually beginning, "A person typed online earlier..." I read them, at first, then scanned them. Three dozen over the past two weeks. They kept coming and coming. And while discussion continuing on this blog, is one thing, I'm not running a bulletin board for fanatics to spew — even spew that I generally agree with. A meal is as good as a feast. Better.
     Monday I'd had enough. The only question was, how to express it?  I came up with a two-word phrase. I don't speak Yiddish, but I heard enough growing up that this remained tucked away in mind. A very useful, very Jewish expression, one that I am happy to boost here: genug shoyn. Pronounced "guh-NUUG shhhayn". Or in English: "Enough already." In the "stop it, you're bothering me" sense. Not entirely obscure — the New York Times explored the expression in 1998. Try it out: "genug shoyn. I have the sinking feeling it will be an increasingly useful concept in the near future.

We need to remember — people forget

 

     Talk about conspiracies!
     The first LVIII Super Bowl commercial I saw, days before that glorious pageant of sport and commerce, was the “Don’t Forget Uber Eats” spot pinballing around social media.
     It begins on a movie backlot with a young assistant handing Jennifer Aniston a green bag filled with flowers.
     ”I didn’t know you could get all this stuff on Uber Eats,” the gofer enthuses. “Gotta remember that.”
     ”You know what they say,” Aniston sermonizes. “In order to remember something, you’ve got to forget something else. Make a little room.”
     Then we’re off to the races, in a series of celebrity vignettes about forgetting. David and Victoria Beckham, in their kitchen, trying to put their finger on a certain 1990s pop group.
     “Remember when you used to be a Pepper Lady?” David asks, waving a jar of pepper.
     “Wasn’t it the Cinnamon Sisters?” former Spice Girl replies.
     Has to be a plot, right? Can’t be a coincidence. President Joe Biden is mercilessly grilled for being a forgetful octogenarian. And boom, the Super Bowl, already rigged to highlight Taylor Swift and thereby increase the impact of her eventual endorsement of Sleepy Joe, immediately unloads a highly effective ad that is basically a valentine to forgetfulness.
     None of the actors in the commercial are particularly old. Though David Schwimmer (who, for those just joining us, starred with Aniston in “Friends,”) does have a certain, ah, weariness in the best vignette, as he makes a beeline to his former co-star.
     “Jenn!” he says, arms spread for the hug. “Hey!”

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Photos provided by Uber.

Flashback 1987: Ending the agony of terminal illness by suicide — Hemlock Society fights for the right to die.

 

"The Death of Socrates," by Jacques Louis David (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     My colleague Tina Sfondeles wrote an important story on a pending law that would let terminally ill Illinoisans end their lives. When I read it, I immediately thought of this story, written a few weeks before I was hired by the Sun-Times. It made an impression on me. I can still remember Don Shaw pulling that big amber bottle out of the drawer. I also distinctly recall thinking, "These people are hot to kill themselves." I was 26. Now that I've had 37 years more of experience, I know that one reason the American medical system is the cruel, expensive farce it often seems to be is because control is wrenched away from the people who should exert it. 

     Don Shaw died at 81 in May, 2001, at a senior care facility in Evansville, Indiana. The Hemlock Society was renamed End-of-Life Choices in 2003, and the next year became Compassion and Choices. 

     Asked what he would do if he ever was struck by a catastrophic illness, Donald Shaw pulls open a desk drawer and reaches for an amber plastic bottle filled with 50 red capsules. Each capsule contains 100 milligrams of the tranquilizer Seconal.
     "What I would do is take it out of the little shells — a hell of a job — and mix it with honey or ice cream," he says. "The stuff is bitter."
     Shaw goes on to describe how he would drink whiskey, to multiply the fatal effect of the overdose, eat a light snack and take an antiregurgitative to help keep the poisonous mixture down.
     An amiable, robust man of 67, Shaw talks casually about the prospects of suicide, as do many members of the Hemlock Society, an international group advocating that terminally ill people should have the right to kill themselves.
     The Hemlock Society reports having 13,000 members, most of them in the United States. About 300 of those members are in Illinois, mostly around Chicago.
     Shaw, a former Episcopalian priest, is chairman of the Illinois chapter. His interest in the subject of escaping terminal illness through suicide began after his mother's protracted death.
     "My mother died of cancer when I was 25," he says. "My aunt and I took turns caring for her 24 hours a day. Until one day she said: `Don, I'm going to stop eating. I just want to die.' And for me it was absolutely sensible."
     Members of the Hemlock Society plan for their own deaths, convincing relatives not to take "heroic" measures to keep them alive, stockpiling fatal doses of drugs and lobbying for a variety of "right-to-die" issues.
     They support legislation, such as the Illinois Living Will Act of 1983, which created a document where signers request "that my moment of death shall not be artificially postponed . . . if at any time I should have an incurable injury, disease or illness judged to be a terminal condition by my attending physician. . . . "
     The society was formed in 1980 by Derek Humphry, a British journalist who assisted his terminally ill wife in killing herself. His book chronicling that experience, Jean's Way, and other writings, including Let Me Die Before I Wake, a guide to suicide methods, are distributed by the society.
     The name of the society, "Hemlock," refers to a poisonous herb of the carrot family. The poison is famous as being the one Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was forced to drink in 399 B.C., a suicide that ironically goes against Hemlock Society principles, which state that suicide should be voluntary and not due to any emotional, traumatic or financial reason unassociated with terminal illness.
     "I'm sorry we have the name, but I'm perfectly willing to make the best of it," says Shaw.
     The Illinois chapter holds monthly meetings, where members watch films related to the right-to-die movement, discuss issues and socialize.
     "It's an interesting group of people," said Louise Haack, a retired teacher. "I've been to two meetings; it's nice to be with people of like mind. So often the perception is that this must be a bunch of Gloomy Guses. But this is not the case. The people I have met through Hemlock are very lively indeed, and most are bent on living a long and productive life."
     Haack, 62, has her own stockpile of drugs, but worries about the drugs losing their potency over time.
     "I probably do not have a lethal dose of anything at this point," she says, "because medicines do become outdated. You need a spectrum of medical doctors who will prescribe 30 of this or 30 of that so you can acquire a lethal dosage, and that is a handicap nowadays."
     Like Shaw, Haack's interest in the Hemlock Society came from the death of a parent. Five years ago her father died of colon cancer at age 88.
     "That made me realize it would have been nice if he and I could have had a conversation about how we'd like to leave this earth," she says. "Fortunately, we had pretty good nursing-home care, and the principal physician in charge was in tune to not having this old gentleman returned to the hospital for any reason. The doctor knew how I felt, and had some discussions with the nursing-home staff. Nothing in writing, but a tacit understanding.
     "My father was struck with influenza, which could have been `cured.' They could have called for an ambulance, taken him to a hospital, all that garbage. But they did allow my father to die, without making an issue of it, and I'm very grateful for that. He did have a peaceful departure, certainly compared to what it could have been. A certain amount of homework can prevent the horror stories we have heard of.
     "A friend had mentioned the Hemlock Society. I wrote away for literature and joined. I've been very, very impressed with the thoughtfulness and leadership and care with which these subjects are being discussed. I don't thing everybody needs to make this commitment, but everyone needs to look at this issue and think about it."
     According to Shaw, while death was once an accepted part of the cycle of life, today it is a distant and taboo subject.
     "Death is a part of living, a part of life, Shaw says. "In most cases it's welcome. But still death is something that is not talked about, not prepared for. One reason is that people don't die at home anymore. They used to die at home. Everybody knew what death was about. Children saw it. In the old days, there was no place else to die. I think the problem began when death was removed from home and placed in the hands of specialists, hospitals and funeral directors."
     Shaw has certainly planned out his own death in some detail. Not only has he arranged a convenient means of suicide, should the opportunity to kill himself arise, but he has planned the ceremonies surrounding his passing. His tombstone is already in place, in a cemetery in Enid, Okla., and preparations have been made for his wake.
     "A cocktail party: hors d'oeuvres, some of my special music," he says, smiling at the thought. "It's going to be a joyous occasion, if I die soon enough. If I get to be 85, they're won't be as many people there.
     "I have here my suicide letter to my family," he continues, producing a 1,200-word document beginning "Dear Family and Selected Friends" and dealing mostly with Shaw's belief that suicide is a valid avenue should "the dissatisfactions of life significantly outweigh the satisfactions."
     When asked what he meant when he referred to a suicide-inducing "catastrophic" illness, Shaw said it was "some physical condition the treatment of which I was not able to pay for."
     It is an attitude that is questioned by some people.
     "When do you decide a disease is life- threatening?" asked Ken Howard, head of the clinical psychology department at Northwestern University and an expert in the area of suicide. "I see a potential harm in having a support group that says whenever life is too hard for you - you have skin cancer that may or may not metastasize - you monitor it yourself, and whenever you get too scared go ahead and take these pills. I don't think that's good advice.
     "I'd like to see the extent that their plans are really followed through," Howard said. "My experience with people who have taken that position is once they get the first signs of a life-threatening disease they do what everybody else does: fight dearly."
     Howard said that, rather than being ultimately concerned with death, Hemlock Society members instead are trying to gain a feeling of control over their own lives.
     "One way to make peace with the fact that you're going to die is to say you have the power to make that happen," he says. "It's a case of ultimate control; one way of saying: This is my life, and I have some say in it."
     And in fact, Shaw reports that, in the five years of his being chairman of the Hemlock Society in Illinois, he has never had a member commit suicide.
     Shaw's son, David Shaw, 37, a lawyer in Evansville, Ind., finds himself in general agreement with his father's principles, but also suspects that there are other issues at work, beyond avoidance of terminal illness.
     "I'd say that's probably a fair observation," says David Shaw. "If he's going to go, he'd rather do it himself. I'd say it's a matter of control. I'd think he'd like to go out with style."
            —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 3, 1987

Auto Show Flashback: 2012: Tesla Model S electrifies Chicago

2012 Tesla Model S

     The Chicago Auto Show opens to the public Saturday at McCormick Place, so I reached back into my almost limitless supply of car stories and came up with this, when I was one of the first people to drive a Tesla Model S. I think I assessed it well — mentioning range anxiety and cost. It's poignant to remember Elon Musk back when he was just a brilliant business innovator and not a logorrheic Henry Ford wannabe troll, egomaniac and cheerleader for right wing nuttery. Ah well. Enjoy.

     From the curb, the Tesla Model S does not look radically different from other new cars. Attractive, yes, sleek and streamlined, this one a pleasant gray, with a hatchback and a certain Jaguar-ish quality.
     But not the sort of vehicle that has the kiddies pressing their faces to the van window, shrieking “Look! Look!” as it blows past.
     Slide behind the wheel, however, as I got the chance to do last week in Oak Brook, and some of its more distinctive features present themselves. There are no physical gauges or buttons — just a screen where the speedometer would be, and, to the right, where a radio would be, a 17-inch diameter flat screen, the largest in any car, according to Tesla. The car has no gas tank, no tailpipe, no engine; in electric cars it’s called a motor.
     Electric cars are no longer new — regular readers will recall my blowing around town in a Nissan Leaf last year. But the Tesla Model S is unique, in that it is the first luxury sedan designed from the ground up as an electric car — a necessity, since the company producing it, Tesla Motors, has built only one previous model, its short-lived Roadster.
     Indeed, the company is perhaps more interesting than the car. Tesla, founded in 2003, is that rarest of birds — a new independent American car company. And while the initial temptation is to lump it with previous quixotic attempts to start a car company — Tucker, Bricklin, DeLorean — Tesla might be different, in light of the jaw-dropping resume of past successes of its billionaire co-founder, Elon Musk: PayPal, the online payment system; plus SpaceX, a private rocket company, contracted to NASA to supply the International Space Station, and more.
     What is Tesla selling? The Model S has an all-aluminum body, a low center of gravity, its motor giving torque that pins you back in the seat when you mash the accelerator.
     There’s no key to turn, no button to push. Sitting in the driver’s seat is enough.
     “When you sat down in the car, your butt turned it on,” said Shanna Hendriks, Tesla’s communications manager, noting the weight sensor in the seat (and yes, I couldn’t resist the inevitable reply: “It’s been a long time since my butt turned anything on.”)
     Range is still an issue. At first I was impressed the Model S advertises a 300-mile range between charges, but that is for its top-of-the-line $85,000 model with a brawnier battery. The basic $57,400 model has a range of 160 miles. Which is more than most drive in a day, but a big part of our love affair with cars is the illusion of endless possibility, and not being certain you can make it to Rockford and back is something of a buzz kill, but one Tesla insists people will get over.
     Then there is the stereo volume control.
     “It goes to 11,” said Hendriks. “I don’t know if you’re a Spinal Tap fan, but it goes to 11.” This has to be the first cult movie punchline to find its way into automotive design.
     “That was Elon Musk’s idea,” she said.
     The Model S also has way-cool door handles, smooth oblongs of chrome flush with the door until you touch them, when they gracefully glide out to be opened.
     The rear window is small, but the biggest design flaw I noticed is the cup-holders — there are just two, hidden under the center armrests, which slide back to reveal them, meaning you drive with the point of your elbow sitting on your coffee cup. Hendriks assured me they are working on a console to hold cups out of harm’s way.
     If you buy a Model S now, expect delivery around July 2013; you’re behind the 10,000 or so fans who put down deposits three or four years ago. “People have waited a long time for this car,” said Hendriks.
     The Tesla business model is also distinctive. There is nothing as 20th century as dealership lots crowded with cars. You can try a Model S — I was permitted 10 minutes behind the wheel — but you aren’t allowed to purchase the car you drive and take it home. This is no impulse buy. Rather, you order the Model S, like kitchen cabinets; pay $5,000 to prove you mean business, then wait three months until the factory is ready to turn its attention to you, when you pony up another $5,000 and specify colors and options.“Every car we sell is custom built,” said Hendriks.
     This year, Tesla Motors is making 5,000 cars — intentionally fewer than demand — but next year it plans to produce 20,000.
     The cynic in me is tempted to shrug off the Tesla Model S as the new Tucker Torpedo — snazzy but foredoomed. Making cars is a very costly undertaking. Ford has a tough enough time staying in business, and they’ve been doing this for a while. Upstarts can flourish, for a time, then wither. At least up to now. The Oak Brook dealership has a very clean, well-thought-out feel — think the Apple store but for cars. The sense I left with is that while launching a successful American car company — the Model S is made in California — is still a longshot, if anybody can pull it off, these people can.
        — Originally published in the Sun-Times, August 2, 2012

Letting go of department stores

     “I’m going to visit my mother,” I’ll say, then catch myself: “My parents.” An easy mistake to make. Because while my mother, 87, is alert, attending concerts, reading the paper (hi Mom!) my father, 91, is well along his slow retreat from the world. I’ve come to think of him not so much as my father as the box my father came in. A bit cold? Perhaps. But if we can't change things, at least we can call them what they are.
     Here, yet not here. A sad state, and common. I visited Macy’s downtown this week, inspired by Lynn Becker’s elegy in the Sun-Times last week, headlined “The long decline of Macy’s in Chicago, now a shell of a once-great department store.”
     A shell it is. The store is still open, still here. But also not here, the physical place without its essence. The still-grand Marshall Field’s box with crumbs of Macy’s rattling around inside.
     I entered into the vast women’s fragrance department. It wasn’t deserted. A few customers, contemplating bottles. A few clerks. I moved toward the men’s department — Macy’s covers a city block. An enormous, neck-craning atrium, with a Tiffany glass dome. We’ll miss that splendid bigness, like the waiting rooms of long-demolished train stations.
     Nature tapped me on the shoulder. A quick detour into the basement, and its vista of carefully folded towels, large platters, gifty housewares. I didn’t notice any china. My wife and I picked out our wedding pattern here; now china is a shunned, outrageous, indulgent affectation.
     No one to ask. I searched for a sign. Finally, in Barbara’s Bookstore, a clerk, who pointed.
     Book department. Stamp department. Stationery department. Did a young man really once order dove grey personal stationery, the address, 2948 N. Pine Grove Avenue, embossed in glossy black letters, because fans writing an author deserve something classy in return? I must have been insane.

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Diving into Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap

Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap,  1172 E. 55th Street

     They roll the sidewalks up early in Hyde Park. Surprisingly so, for a college town. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists conversation about their Doomsday Clock that I moderated at International House — thank you everyone who came out — ended shortly after 7 p.m. Pulling myself away from enthusiastic Sun-Times readers who wanted to say hello, share a story, or register complicated opinions regarding past columns, took 15 minutes or so. By 7:20, and we headed to dinner, first trying a noodle shop, but that was about to close, so we went next door to Medici on 57th.
    The waiter seating us said the kitchen closed at 7:45 p.m. — I glanced at my phone — 7:35.  He added that, if we want dessert, we should order it now. We passed on dessert. I got the steak sandwich, which was excellent, the bun fresh, the meat tender and garnished with a pleasing medley of diced peppers and onions. A generous helping of coleslaw, shaming the eyecup that most places serve. 

     By 8:20 Medici had almost completely emptied out. I wasn't going to make the 8:35 Metra. There wasn't another train until 9:45. But we couldn't stay here. I asked a waiter if there was somewhere to get dessert, maybe ice cream. He mentioned Insomnia Cookies, a student hangout. I made a face — big soft melty oversweet cookies aren't my thing. "Or the CVS," he ventured. "Something to go...." Eating a Little Debbie Cake in the car didn't sound like a good idea.
     How about a bar? I asked, and Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap was mentioned. "I've never been to Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap," I said, and that sealed it. Over to East 55th Street. "I don't drink, but I still like to go to bars," I said as we walked in, and my companion, who doesn't drink either, agreed. The place was hopping, but two open stools beckoned us right in the middle of the bar.

     "Do you have any NA beers?" I asked.

     "Yes," the bartender said. "Heineken Zero and Coragghle..." The last word was lost in the bar noise. Heineken 0.0 is adequate, the imported version of O'Doul's. A fan of novelty, I told him I'd have the second one, whatever it was. My companion ordered a Shirley Temple.

     Conversation ranged from what is a Shirley Temple — ginger ale with a splash of grenadine — t0 the role of a good bartender. I mentioned Phyllis Smith, the bartender at the Billy Goat on Washington. "We got to be good friends," I said. "I visited her at her home when she was dying of cancer. She'd been to my house, for parties." 

     Some accounts of the Woodlawn Tap allude to Dylan Thomas drinking there, as if it were some hazy, unverifiable rumor lost in the mock heroic past. It was no rumor; the great Welsh poet drank there on March 16, 1950, stacking his empty glasses up, one after another, and the bar's guest book has his signature to prove it.

     There is much to recommend drinking, while not-drinking is often given a short shrift as some kind of deprivation. But you know what real deprivation is? Being dead. Dylan Thomas died at 39. I might wish I had come up with something like "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," but I wouldn't swap the past quarter century of being alive for it. Not drinking is its own kind of fun. I've grown to like it. One makes fewer mistakes. My faux beer arrived, a Corona with a lime jammed in its neck. I never drank that sort of thing back when it was popular — apparently it still is — but gave it a try. Actually quite good — the lime providing a citrus note, the malt very beerlike.  

     There is something about sitting at a bar that encourages confidentiality, even if you aren't drinking, and we leaned against the deeply gouged bar and talked about important things for half an hour. Time passed quickly. I looked around the place, thinking to take a photo of something distinctive, but Jimmy's, with its black walls, didn't really offer up a lot of decoration, beyond a backlit university seal, which I positioned in the upper right corner of the photo above. It's a classic dive bar, beloved by locals, famous for mixing all types, mechanics and professors — though I imagine, nowadays, the former does better than the latter. 

     The food looked good, and is indeed supposed to be very good. I'll certainly be returning to Jimmy's soon. It's the sort of place where, back in the day, I'd enjoy a cheeseburger and a Jack on the rocks or three. But now just the cheeseburger will do fine.