A Buddhist’s Christmas Present

Dec 242010
 

“Give oranges,” said the voice.

I looked up from doing Christmas cards on our dining room table. No one else in the room. It was a grey, cold Sunday afternoon. Maria was lost in a frenzy of baking. She bakes the way Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Maybe even the way Gandhi walked the dusty streets of a village.

Christmas music filled the house and fueled her every motion. The football game played without sound as the Chicago Bears played with heart this year.

“Give oranges,” I heard it again.

“Honey, I got to get something upstairs, I shouted into the kitchen as she danced from the stove to the sink and sang, “OK.”

Climbing the stairs and walking into my closet where all the important stuff that wouldn’t fit anywhere else was tossed in a big white plastic bin, I pulled out the yellow envelope and slipped out the death certificate.

January 12. 2007. Yep. My Aunt Mavis, the Buddhist, was still dead.

Almost three years now. Still sometimes I check. Especially when I hear a voice saying things I don’t understand. Like, “Give oranges.”

It’s usually her.

Walking back downstairs and looking out the front window at the tiny bare tree on Grace Street where I could sometimes feel her presence, I remembered the Zen “Koan.” One of those stories that demands a second read before it even begins to make sense. She loved those kind of stories.

“One day as Manjusri stood outside the gate, the Buddha called to him, “Manjusri, Manjusri, why do you not enter?” Manjusri replied, “I do not see myself as outside. Why enter?””

I heard Mavis laugh and clap her hands with delight and then recognized her voice saying once more “Give oranges!”

Walking into the kitchen, I pulled a book off the shelf that I had bought just after she died. “The Seat of the Soul.” It was by the author of “The Dancing Wu Li Masters,” one of Mavis’s favorites. I bought the book thinking about how I’d never get to talk to her about it. Then put it on a shelf unopened.

Today I opened it. It had been long enough.

What if, the book said, there were more than the 5 senses we humans use to make sense of the world?

Imagine how good that orange would taste. Tossing up the orange and catching it, I can see and touch its skin. Shaking it up next to my ear I can hear a faint sloshing. A taste like a thousand summer nights. And the smell is heavenly. But that’s just 5 senses. What if there were more?

What if a “multi-sensory” (as author Gary Zukav calls it) person; could expand the channels through which they take in the world? What if my personal frame of reference somehow grew to the size of a blue and endless Montana sky?

Then I heard her say again, “Give oranges!” And I still didn’t understand.

I walked into the kitchen where Maria was unraveling dough like an ancient rabbi rolling out a Torah.

“Well, this year didn’t turn out like we planned,” I said. “Turns out the world didn’t change in a year.”

“Does the world ever change in a year?” she asked.

“Probably not, I answered. But I sure wish we could buy each other all sorts of cool Christmas presents. I wish we could take that trip up north.”

“I know. But we’re making it. We’ll get by. We have enough.

“I think what I want for Christmas is an orange, “I proclaimed.

She’s used to hearing things like that. It’s been almost 15 years now. So she just smiled and said, “OK!” Then she ramped back up into her baking speed and I went back to the dining room to finish up the Christmas cards.

I sat down, picked up the pen, and as I did, I heard Mavis say, “So you’re not really giving up writing are you?”

“No.”

“What will you write about? Especially all those times no one reads what you write.”

“Stewardship. Taking care of something I don’t own. Something infinitely bigger than me.”

“What does that mean?”

“Mavis, I said, (now it was my turn to roll my eyes) you’re the one who’s dead. Why are you asking me? Don’t you know?”

“I do. But we’re talking about you here. So, do you have a story to share right now?”

“Well yeah. I didn’t write it. It’s kind of long. 4 minutes.”

“4 minutes is long huh?”

“Well I. . . .”

“And maybe the point is not whether you wrote it. Maybe the point is whether or not it’s a good story. Hey! Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” I answered.

“What I just told you. The part about the good story being the point. That little pearl is your present. That’s YOUR present.”

“So, no IPADS you could pass along from heaven huh?”

“That’s right smart ass. Now one more question. Would a Buddhist like this story?”

I answered. “As much as a Buddhist would like emptiness?”

And that’s when I heard her laugh the loudest. I looked outside and it had begun to snow in Chicago. A gentle snow that stilled the troubled ground.

“Ok, I said, “I’ll share the story. It’s called “The Train. It’s by a group called “Celestial Navigation.” I don’t know how much you’ll like the middle part. But I am certain you will like the end. Maybe we could talk about it when we’re done? Maybe if you just told me where I could find you? Where you’ll be?

And Mavis answered, “Remember Steinbeck’s story? Remember what Tom Joad said to his mother when she asked him that question?”

“I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be ever’-where – wherever you can look. Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad – I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise, and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.”

“That’s where I’ll be,” she said.

“So what do I do now?”

“You listen. Listen for stories like the one you’re about to share. Never you mind if they are YOUR stories. You pay attention to whether they are GOOD stories. Stories that prompt people to think”

“Ok. I can do that. But what’s next? That’s the scary part! What’s next? What do I do next?”

“Give oranges, Roger. Just keep giving oranges.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITrwCNq9iBI]

Rod Will Be Seeing You Soon

Dec 092010
 

Listen to how this man takes on restoring his sight.

The facts are pasted in below.

But as the truth behind the facts drenched down in my soul, I could feel this golden orange Florida sunset on the water bathing my tired face and reminding me that the suns warmth will be back tomorrow. Stop for a second. Can you hear the waves? Listen. You are welcome here. If you are reading this, let your heart slow down just a little. Someone will hand you a glass of something cold and you can hear the sounds of the ice cubes tinkling, now your shoulders relax. The happy smell of the juniper berry drifts by singing gin songs. You are welcome here. This is a party for Rod. A celebration.

Rod is here. Telling the story. And the inspiration in the room rises like the tide. Courage is too weak a word to describe what he’s talking about. To know this kind of bravery, facts simply won’t suffice. You’ve got to come to the party. Listen to his story.

The story calls to mind theologian John Howard Yoder’s two “Perspectives” on getting things to turn out the way we want.
The “Majority Perspective” assumes that it’s power and wealth that makes something happen. Power and wealth simply make it happen. That’s it.

The “Minority” perspective never makes that assumption. The minority perspective uses imagination, uses courage, and is in it for the long haul. Knows that power structures fade. Learns to hope. Knows that there is something larger than ME. Goes beyond embracing the power and the money. Creates a party just like this one.

And sits there at sunset dreaming of a new day. Staying strong. Staying brave. Read what a brave man wrote here. Raise your glass to him.

Maybe you’ll be just a little bit braver too. I know I will.

Rod’s Letter:

My Dear Friends,

My business associate, Donna, is helping me prepare this letter.

As many of you know, I suffered a detached retina in my left eye in February of 2010.
Since then, I have had 4 surgeries and am expecting to have another next week. Hopefully once that surgery is complete my vision in that eye will be improved over what it currently is (approximately 20%). How much improvement is as yet unknown. However, it is expected that it will be approximately 20/70.

During these past months I have been able to rely on my right eye the vision of which has been 20/25 to 20/30 unfortunately the night of November 28th for some unknown reason blood flow to that eye was cut off and I was rendered totally blind in that eye. The following morning the pressure in that eye was reduced and some blood flow was restored. To this point, very little vision has returned. It is unknown if vision will ever return but to the extinct that it does, it will be limited. Therefore, I can no longer read or write as I once did.

I am sharing this with you because so many of you have become my friends and shared with me those things in your life that are of importance and interest, and I want you to know that I will miss continuing that exchange. But for the foreseeable future, I will no longer be able to communicate with you as I once did.

I know that for many of you this will come as a shock and that you will want to reach out and express your concern as well as good will. Trust that I know this in my heart, and therefore you need not send those wishes to me by mail. All is well. This is the beginning not the end of a new adventure… One that I anticipate will lead to restored vision. Until that time, I remain.

Your friend

Rod

Dec 032010
 

When your hero dies, it’s as if the very shape of the earth has now changed. Ripples of heavy heart pain stab your soul, you walk down the street and you stumble for no reason, and the timing of the seasons goes awry. Spring could be a little late this year.

My hero, a man named Ron Santo, died in Phoenix Arizona last night. Complications of bladder cancer. He made it to 70. But it’s what he made it through that’s the story. He was a baseball player and a broadcaster. But to define him by baseball is like defining a human being by their blood. It’s narrowing the focus of why they are your hero. When your hero dies, it’s about so much more than what they do for a living.

We are floating in the green grass late summer roar of 40,000 of our closest friends as the man wearing “Number 10” walks out unto the baseball field sunshine . . .. with no legs.

Two prosthetic legs kept Ron Santo walking. Just one of the physical battles this professional athlete had faced down and conquered since discovering at age 18 that he had diabetes. A disease, which, the 18-year-old Santo went to the library and found out, predicted a life expectancy of 25.

The outpouring of love roaring in the sounds of all those voices on Ron Santo Day washed across the park, circled the ball field in the billowing of ivy along the outfield walls, leapt to the scoreboard, fueled the wind in the flags around the top of the, park and soared like a home run slammed up beyond all sight and time. This was about so much more than baseball. This was about inspiring hope. If Ronnie could do it—whatever “it” was—than so could you.

One day the 18 year old Ron had no idea what juvenile diabetes was. The next day, after the routine physical, he was in the library reading that the 25-year life expectancy also included blindness, kidney failure and hardening of the arteries.

So, and the words sound so simple, such paltry representations of his decision, he decided he was going to fight the disease and beat it.

In addition to the amputation of his legs, he fought through numerous heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, bladder surgery and vision problems. And that just the list that’s reported.

Along the way raising millions of dollars to combat the disease and always, always, having time for those individuals who fought the battles with him.

The roar subsiding on that September day, Ron Santo stepped up to the microphone and told us all, “This couldn’t have been any better. With all the adversity I have been through if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.” Santo was famous for being the player most deserving to be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame who never received that honor. But on that September day he told us: “This means more to me. This is my Hall of Fame.”

And the toughest, grittiest, street smart hardest cadre of Chicagoans—those who had seen it all, shrugged, and then went to work the next day, wiped away tears,

Memories of your hero never really stop. Especially when your hero dies.

It’s a pristine autumn day in the golden wonder of upstate New York. Cooperstown. The National Baseball Hall of fame. Six of us. Souring the souvenir shops looking for the perfect Ron Santo baseball card. His rookie year. That night, tiptoeing out to the ball field next to the Hall of Fame in the dead of a cool autumn night, we all climb the fence to jump down to the grandstands that ring the ball field. (Not realizing till it’s time to leave that the gate was unlocked and we could have simply walked in.) We trot out to our positions on the field. Heads down. Cool guy baseball player style. No real ball or bat but it doesn’t matter. We run the bases and slide roaring out SAFE! We scramble back fast to catch the pop up not being winded because we’re not old men, we are baseball players. We hurl a change up over the plate. Smack it hard up into the stars of a cool country night.

And exhausted we troop out to find a bar. Leaving traces of our youth in the very same dust where once Babe Ruth rounded third and headed home.

The next day was our ceremony. Ron Santo’s induction into the hall of fame. If the political powers behind the hall wouldn’t do it—then we would.

The 6 of us. Drenched in serious business and a mission stood on a step. Everyone said something. Along the likes of “Go Ronnie!” And then we did it.
We went into the hall and while 5 of us provided cover, one of us scotch taped that baseball card of Santo’s rookie year up next to Ernie Banks.

Where it stayed for at least 10 minutes. When a security guard took it down.

Ron Santo was a guy who made a character out of his hairpiece. Often he’d wear, as he called it, his “Gamer.” But sometimes, he’d switch off to other pieces. All of it chronicled in conversation with his masterful rock of a partner Pat Hughes. There was the time the hairpiece caught on fire from the space heater in the booth at a Mets game. The Ron Santo stories flowing like the very rhythm of the game itself and the way it gave the larger games of our lives order or a solace or escape or even sometimes pure simple joy.

That’s what happens when your hero dies. The stories spin in to memories; an autumn sadness settles in, you think about how nothing will ever be the same.

This morning when I walked outside, helicopters were circling Wrigley Field. Grabbing pictures for news shots. This is a big story here in Chicago.

But there is a bigger story that this touches, applicable to all of us. What is it that happens when your hero dies?

Ron Santo thought he had tops seven years to live. But he wanted to be a big league ballplayer so bad that he battled. And he won.

So what happens when your hero dies?

You remember.

You trudge through snow on a day so cold it burns. You look up at a flagpole, empty now, where you know that in the eternal spring there will be green grass again. And whatever it is you, just you, no one else, whatever it is you battle: unemployment, hunger, illness, family, loneliness, depressions, crying at the winds of our sad and troubled world, you keep walking.

Even if you have no legs, you keep walking.

Just like your hero would have done it. You know that because you have stories.

Like the stories of Ron Santo.

My hero.

Sarah Palin In Spirit Lake Iowa

Dec 022010
 

Walking with purpose out of the snowy night cornfield where my plane went down on February 3rd 1959 and I died just outside of Clear Lake Iowa, I boarded the Sarah Palin bus for the trip to Spirit Lake where she was off to sell books and deliver her message.

Why? Because I’ve come across Sarah Palin before. Even now. She might have a different face, a different voice; she might look like a whole different person. But I know her. She’s always been here. And you can trust me when I tell you I have it on the highest authority that she always will be here.

So when she comes to Clear Lake, Spirit Lake, or anywhere in Iowa, I take a look. If only to just let her feel somehow in the tingling breeze at the back of her neck; that I am watching her.

I’m a musician. You might know my name. Might not. Might not know my music. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that when some folks hear the words “Clear Lake Iowa,” or when folks think about someplace called “Spirit Lake,” they think of me. So I’m here. I’m everywhere they still play my music. But I’m also here in Iowa. So when the likes of a Sarah Palin shows up to sell her books, I pay attention. There are other places I could be. Tonight there is a concert. Johnny Cash is playing. And I never miss him. But I couldn’t miss what was happening here either. So I looked toward their bus.

The bus was idling by the side of the road when I walked up to it. Three black SUV’s, bulletproof I noticed, all with tinted windows, had just driven up behind the bus. The lady, Sarah Palin, got out of the vehicle in the middle and immediately, even on this lost, snowy road with no one in sight, she was surrounded by men in long coats scanning the horizon and looking for trouble.

Of course none of them saw me.

We all climbed up on to the bus. They all were talking about how warm it was. Sarah barked out “Coffee!” and immediately there was a cup in her left hand.

Then they all went to a table in the back of the bus and sat down. One lady started working on Sarah Palin’s hair. Another on her nails. And as they all had their meeting, the tones in their voices were like military marches. Somber and serious. Lock step marching forward. These were very smart people. None of them were smiling. All of them were looking at little computers in their hands even when they talked. Every now and then, Sarah Palin would say something like, “I need more!” or “You know we have people we all answer to.” But through it all no one smiled. That’s when I saw the first difference between these people and my music. With these people, nothing was fun.

With my music, we started off with fun.

As the bus rolled toward town, it seemed like they were all coming up with little phrases for her to say. Kinda like I do when I write songs. But as I kept listening hard to all these little phrases they came up with, I figured out the second big difference between these people and me. Everything they said meant something else! It was as if they had all decided to talk in some sort of code where everything they said meant the opposite! They said, “Cut taxes” which meant, “Give me money.” They said “Freedom” which meant, “Start a war.” And it went on.

These people were working on destroying the very meaning of words! These people were killing words! Exactly the opposite of my songs.

Mile or so down the road, we came to town. Big crowd. Folks all excited as she stepped off the bus. But then she started talking. And that’s when I really saw the evil that was going on here. See, when I’d sing a song, I’d mostly do it to lift someone’s spirit. Even my sad songs. I wrote them and I sang them so sad folks wouldn’t feel so alone. But what she was doing was the total opposite.

She was trying to scare people.

Oh she did it with a smile. She was laughing now. Not like back on the bus. As she talked in front of people, she seemed to get dumber and dumber. I knew that was a lie because I had seen how smart she was back in the bus. But where this was all going was: she was doing her best to make people afraid.

Not afraid on the outside. Afraid on the inside. Like when you walk away from what somebody just said to you and you suddenly realize that you are really, really scared. And you didn’t know why. That kind of scared.

That was about the size of it. There were numbers of people; there were TV cameras, folks writing about her. You can find all that other places.

That’s not what I came here to tell you about.

What I came to say are the three things she did that were so very, very, different than the way I wrote and sang my songs. First, she didn’t have any fun. Second, she killed the words. And finally, she did her very best to scare all the people—making them feel good when she scared them. Like a roller coaster of evil. But underneath still scaring them.

She finished up in Spirit Lake. Back on the bus to leave the city limits, then back to the SUV’s to take her to the airport where she scurried up the stairs inside her private jet.

That was the last I saw of her. Scurrying up those stairs to her jet. So I looked real hard at the back of her neck. Just to make sure she knew I was watching her. And always would. No matter what little town she tried to terrify.

And as I stared hard those last few moments, I saw her scratch the back of her neck, as if she could make my stare go away. She scratched hard. Like she had something really itchy in her collar. Then she turned and looked out at my snowy cornfields here in Iowa. I could see it in her eyes. She would not give up. She’d never give up.

But she knew that I was watching her.

At Karzai’s Restaurant in Chicago

Nov 292010
 

Outside Ahmed Wali Karzai’s Helmand restaurant at Belmont and Halsted in Chicago, thousands of people would spill out into the glittering rumbling celebration of joy that is the Gay Pride Parade for one sunshine day each June.

Before and after Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed, ran the restaurant, it would change hands every few years. Once it was a flower shop. Running a restaurant, or any small retail store, in Chicago is a brutally competitive business. Most close up shop in the first three years.

So in 1992 Karzai moved on. Went back to those stunning blue skies of Afghanistan. In business now with his brother. The President. And as Wikileaks tells us—- in perhaps more detail than anyone would want, without any real context to help us separate things people say, assorted facts, and truth into anything resembling a coherent story—-business appears to be good for the Karzai’s.

Back in Chicago, the restaurant is now called “Jacks.” It gets decent reviews. Across the street at an old diner, friends meet for breakfast. Buses rumble out back of the restaurant and then turn the other way. A block west, troubled kids flock from all over the Midwest to stand in front of a Dunkin Donuts, their piercings glinting in the street light nights. The Gay Pride parade still fills the streets with joy every June.

And the connection that we all have to an endless war, in the ‘graveyard of the empires’ a half a world away gets just a shadow closer.

Like a snake you thought you might have seen, but weren’t quite sure, slithering just below your street.

Thanksgiving’s Better Place to Be

Nov 242010
 

He was at the end of the silver counter huddled over his coffee cup, still in his painter’s whites, his cap pushed back on his head. Sleet storm wind blew wet down Irving Park Road and would have shivered the world if she hadn’t been there making her rounds with her coffee pot and her friendly open smile. She had always been a waitress. And she really didn’t mind working Thanksgiving. It wasn’t like there was a crowd waiting to flick on the lights in her third floor apartment, ready to great her with the smell of roast turkey, candles and wine.

So she circled the room as her shift counted down till six o’clock and it would be time to go home. She didn’t speak when she glided past his corner of the counter. But she looked straight at him. Her eyes clear. He would raise his head, offer a shy smile and a nod. Start to almost speak. But then he wouldn’t need to because she already knew what he was going to say. It was as if they were alone in their kitchen. Like the darkness settling in outside the steamed windows of the diner held them both to some unspoken promise of winter night warmth.

And when the clock went straight up six o’clock and she nodded hello to her relief, she went over and stood to lift her coat of the hook next to the sink. Her back to the painter. She stood there for what seemed like a very long time. Her shoulders tense. The painter in the corner looked up, cleared his throat, and stood as she turned around and looked in his eyes. He buttoned up his coat, looked at the waitress now ready to go out into the sleeting cold. Still not a word exchanged. As if the sight of the other were enough to propel each of them forward. He opened the door for her and she glided through smiling like a city street queen.

Once outside she linked her arm through his and they walked off together into the street light night.

Walked off together, having now found, as Harry Chapin once sang, a better place to be.

Thanksgiving Alone

Nov 232010
 

I could do Thanksgiving alone. Lots of people do that.

Hanging up the phone, I could barely remember why she cancelled. Something about “needing space.” But I was already getting ready to be a frozen turkey dinner tough guy. Remembering, from experience, that a shirttail doesn’t work when you pull the hot tin tray from the oven.

There really wasn’t anyone to call. It was Wednesday. Thanksgiving was tomorrow. I had already begged off on invitations from my two aunts because I had expected an out of town guest. And it wasn’t like I had a phone book full of friends to call. Or even a scrap from the corner of a phone book page.

This was back when people used phone books. A different time. Back when Chicago was a grid of streets and alleys colored only in history and shades of gray. Especially in the slippery shadow winds of November. Not like today when rainbow flowers spill out of the dividers between lanes of traffic and thousands upon thousands of trees have been planted.

Back then. The very late 1970’s. Chicago was no longer the brooding black, railroad cross road muscle of manufacturing soot. The air had lightened to gray. There was a woman Mayor. A tough Irish lady named Jane Byrne had electrified the city by actually winning. Instead of stacking the souls of poor people straight up into the sky in housing projects, she was going to go spend a week in a project. Cabrini Green. Just over the line that marked where I felt safe to walk. I didn’t know what I thought about her moving in to Cabrini Green for a week or however long it was. But I knew it was different. There was a sense that something was just about to happen in Chicago.

Late that Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, more than anything the city felt deserted. As if all the people had somehow been sucked into airplanes, like the one she would not be on, and blown out to Grandmother’s houses over a million different rivers and woods.

Best way to make sure I was ready for my coming Thanksgiving alone was to go for a walk. Having come from a family of walkers, I pretty much believed that going for walk was the way one got ready for anything.

So in the early grey glowing twilight long ago, I set out into the empty streets and sidewalks, rounding first the school where I was a special education teacher. It had only been a few hours since we had closed up the education shop early. But people need touchstones when they walk and back then the school was mine. The school was one of the beating hearts of a neighborhood called Uptown. Back then, there were also streets in that neighborhood that were best not walked by all. But I had learned those streets trailing the guy who had hired me to be a teacher. His name was Pat. He started the school up in the late sixties himself. He started it as what was then called a “Free School.” But as the neighborhood and the needs changed over the years, it became a special ed school. The thing I loved about a classroom of 25 kids, teaching all subjects, was that in special ed it was all about the kid first—and not the subject. So if a kid started bouncing a basketball in the middle of social studies, I could coax the dribbler into a game of catch and then lead us all back to social studies as the ball flew back and forth. I didn’t have to worry so much about rules.

Most important was that school didn’t end at the walls of the classroom. Sometimes when kids didn’t or couldn’t show up in the morning, I’d follow Pat east on Montrose Avenue, turn left at Beacon, run to the back of a building while Pat started ringing doorbells. And then as the kids came rushing out the back door, I’d corral them and we’d all trudge back to the school.

But on that long ago day before Thanksgiving as I walked east on Montrose, crossed Clark Street and looked north into those very same streets, even they seemed somehow deserted. As if a lonely tumbleweed could go blowing through. No sign of any of my kids.

Still not dark, I wasn’t yet ready to hole up alone for the holiday in my little yellow kitchen with the round table. So I kept walking towards the lake.

When all else fails. Keep walking towards the water.

Walking alone would be good practice for being alone. I was still glad I hadn’t attached myself to some gathering or another. The only thing worse than being alone was being alone in a crowd.

But I could do Thanksgiving alone. Lots of people do that.

There was plenty of beer, football games, food I didn’t know how to cook. Frozen dinners that were no problem. This was back in the time when a person could hum songs with lyrics like, “I have my books, and my poetry to protect me. I am shielded in my armor.” And those were brand new thoughts.

Still walking, almost to the Lake, I turned right on inner Lake Shore Drive. And that’s when I saw him.

As the last of that grey light was just about to fall, I saw the bright red and white checked shirt, like a walking beacon of light, underneath the open gray raincoat. Walking alone. Just like me.

It was Studs Terkel. Of course I knew who it was. Every single person in Chicago would know who it was. I had grown up in a house where Studs Terkel was always on the radio. I had to say something. We were the only people on the street. I had to say something. And besides, even though I had never actually spoken to him, I now actually had a real, honest to goodness connection. I took a deep breath.

“Good afternoon or evening Mr. Terkel.”

“Well good afternoon young fella. What brings you out on to these streets today?”

“Oh just walking.” I told him my name and said. “I’m a teacher. I work at the Southern School. Pat hired me. I saw you come in once for a Board Meeting, but we never met.”

“Ah a teacher!” he smiled in the deep warm gravel of a voice I had only heard on the radio. And if Pat hired you, you must also be a good teacher. Pat’s in my book “Working” you know.”

“Yes sir. I know. My copy of the book is very well read. And thank you sir. I guess I’m learning. Schools over for the holiday now. Kind of empty out here.”

“Ah,” said Studs Terkel. “Empty? No. Keep listening. It’s not empty at all. Especially for a young teacher. You just keep listening young man. You just keep listening.”

The exchange took 5 seconds. It was more years ago than I care to count.

But I can tell you that even after all these years I still remember how good that frozen turkey dinner tasted.

And how not for one moment that Thanksgiving did I feel alone.

The Rich Are Different

Nov 172010
 

December 2050. As he punched in the security code that snowy night at the armed entrance of the gated community, Ricketts Glen, at the corner of Clark and Addison in Chicago, the wind was so cold that his hands felt as if he had plunged them in fire. The vacant, snow flake stares of the street people cowering in front of the Hyatt and Best Buy across the street were making her nervous, so he hurried to punch in the code. And he kept chattering. “You know there used to be a baseball stadium here. They called it Wrigley Field.”

“No way!” she said, shaking her long blonde hair back from her face and shivering all in one move. Her blue eyes wide. “I had heard there was like a church or something here?” He loved how most everything she said sounded like a question. Questions he pretty much knew the answers to. Maybe tonight would turn out better than he thought.

“Actually. . .” be began. He was being extra careful to try and sound smart. She had told him in the bar that she liked guys with big ah. . .brains; was the way she put it. That’s when she tossed off that killer smile. And he pretty much forgot everything after that. Except to try and sound smart. So he was trying to get the, ‘yeah, I’m older and that means I know stuff, kinda like a college professor’ kind of thing going. Starting sentences with words like “actually” seemed to fit. What he did not see was how her eyes zeroed in on his Ricketts Glen ID card when he pulled it out and signaled for another round of drinks. “Actually,” he said, “There was a church here. That was a really long time ago. A seminary. They trained ministers here. But the Clark Street bars got a little wild. That’s when they built the baseball park. Wrigley Field they called it. It was here until they tore it down to build Ricketts Glen.”

The security code took, he heard the buzzer, the green iron door whooshed open and he saw the man in the glass booth holding the Chinese made automatic weapon nod at him. He nodded back and then watched as she immediately unbuttoned her coat in the climate-controlled air. “Oh my God. It is like what, 69 in here or something?”

“To be precise, it’s kept at a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit.” He said authoritatively. “So you like our little corner of the world?”

“I had like seen stories about places like this, but I’d never actually like been in one? So like, who is Ricketts?”

“Oh they were the family that owned the stadium and the baseball team.”

“So what happened? I mean look at this place,” she said, taking in the sweeping green grass lawns lit by artificial light designed to lower blood pressure, each of the homes with their own green space, gardens, streams sprinkling through the community all encased inside a translucent bubble thin as a microchip yet capable of deflecting a nuclear attack. “I mean this place is like heaven! These Ricketts people, they must have been like geniuses or something, right?”

“Well, depends on how you read history I guess,” I said like someone who should be smoking a pipe and wearing a faded corduroy blazer with patches on the elbow.

“The Ricketts kids bought the baseball team and the stadium for the same reason any of us would have. It was a toy. And their Daddy had the money, so why not?”

“Mmm,” she said, as we walked through the artificial summer air to my house.

“They wanted to fix up the stadium. So they did what any of the wealthy folks of that era would do. They went looking for other people’s money to pay for it.”

“So they like really did that back then?”

“Oh but of course my dear,” I said punching in the security code for my front door. As we walked in, the size of the rooms, the décor, maybe the music I’m not sure, made her eyes go wide again. “This place is something!” she whispered as she tossed her coat on a chair and begin to take it all in.

“C’mon” I said, the elevator is this way. I’ll show you my Tower Room.” Or, as some people called it, I thought, my bedroom.

“OK,’ she said, for some reason now a bit meekly. She then got a quizzical look on her face, “But wait, she said, these Ricketts people?” Why couldn’t they get other people’s money?”

“Oh, that’s the interesting part. I mean they really tried. The first place they went was of course to the government. That was back when the way the government worked was that if the politicians and the business people who owned them said something the right way, they could make anybody believe anything.”

“Huh?”

“Well the Ricketts tried to get tax money, bonds, to pay to fix up their stadium. And in those days people actually believed that the more money flowed to the rich people, the better life would be for poor people.”

“What? People like believed that? No way!”

“Oh yeah,” I said. Back in those days, people voted against their own self interest all the time. Why I remember reading about when all this was going on. The Ricketts kids said they wanted tax money that would have gone to schools or firemen to pay for their baseball team. And at the very same time, their Daddy, the one that actually made the money the kids were given, actually made a video saying that he wanted smaller government.”

“But that like, I mean I know maybe I don’t like understand this stuff, but that makes no sense at all! How did they like pull that off?” she said as the elevator door swooshed open unto the tower room. A 360 degree view of the twinkling Chicago night, the stars blending in with the city lights.

Kicking off her heels, she ran past the bed to the window, “Oh. My. God! This is like beautiful! No wonder they wanted to like tear down the baseball stadium!”

“Actually they didn’t want to tear it down. They did everything they could to get the free money. The Ricketts kids never really understood. They thought they were owed the money to fix up their place.”

“Really? They thought people would just like PAY them? With taxes?”

“Oh they tossed off all the usual garbage talk about creating jobs and it being a good thing for the community and they threatened to leave and they got a few politicians to try and make it law. They skipped a few politicians too.”

“Which ones did they skip?”

“The smart ones.”

“So like, I am really having trouble getting this.”

“Here it is in one sentence. They were rich people. They thought this was their due. Even though what they were saying was, pay me to fix my house before you pay a fireman to be ready in case your house starts to burn.”

“Wow! I never knew rich people could be that dumb.”

“Oh they weren’t dumb. This is the way a lot of people thought back then. Sure, it was all a con game, this idea that making rich people richer helped poor people. But it was so well played that most of the poor people believed it too.”

“Well I’ll tell you one thing,” she said, dancing over to the bed and leaping into the middle then motioning me over with her finger.

“What’s that?” I said as she grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me down beside her.”

“I’m sure glad that I didn’t live back when there was a yucky old baseball stadium here.”

“Me too. I said. Me too.”

Then no words. Only the snow. Falling on the bubble where there used to be a baseball park.

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

James Joyce.

“The Dead”

Our Veterans Day 2010

Nov 112010
 

Stumbling south along a scratchy concrete sidewalk he can feel through his shoes, he passes the Lakeview Pantry storefront on Broadway in Chicago and tries to remember their distribution day but gets confused because the sky, so achingly blue and wide feels just like Afghanistan.

Across the street next to the big hotel that used to be the whore house shopping center back in the day when the Paul Whitman Orchestra played the gilded Spanish columns of the Aragon Theater and the ushers tapped you on the shoulder if your dancing crossed the line; he hears a child yelping in the swing set park —and his hand is on the red clay hut in Kabul, he hears that same child again, seven clicks, there is a gun, there is a gun, the flashing of the Taliban eyes and the beard and he fires and the child ripped apart, the ancient black eyes of a 5 year old, the blood pouring from his mouth as he writhes on the floor, never knowing why. . .never knowing why. . .the running sounds of the bearded rebel scampering up to the roof of the red clay death scene. . . .

The #36 Broadway bus steams over to swoosh open it’s doors and let him in. Flopping on a seat. Looking out the window again at the cruelty of the clear blue sky. It is Thursday. He tries to remember which church has the meal tonight. It is warm today, he thinks it’s November but he’s not sure. In that warmth he knows there is an undertone of a brutal hard winter in Chicago coming. He wonders where he’ll sleep when blackness comes tonight.

But then for him.

The honored veteran.

It might as well be spring.

Barack Obama Plays Dirty

Nov 102010
 

It was in the men’s locker room at the East Bank club in Chicago that the guy with the big ears asked me the question.

I had no business being in that locker room. If W-2 forms had to be flashed to get into this East Bank Club today, I might be able to sneak in while security collapsed laughing. But that would be my only chance. Back then in the early nineties, when I recognized the guy but couldn’t remember the name, I thought he was some kind of lowest on the food chain politician like a state representative or something. Back then I could have afforded the membership. But I never would have done it. Give me the YMCA any day. Way above spandex heaven. The East Bank Club had two coat rooms. One just for fur coats. The only reason I was in the building is that the software company where I worked had reserved a room for an executive team meeting. And the only reason I was in the locker room was that I snuck in after the meeting. Figured this might be my only chance to sweat with Chicago’s elite.

So I was sitting on the bench after a workout when this tall skinny guy says to me, “Hey! You know where the gym is?”

And when I answered, “Man, I don’t know where anything is here,” the guy smiled. Now, when I say he smiled, that really doesn’t even begin to describe what happened. This guy had a smile that could fire the sun. So he smiled and said, “Hey don’t worry about that! My first time here too. I got this new job and I know a few guys, just a little friendly game of hoops. You can come if you want.”

The smile was so bright I almost said yes. But somehow the fact that he was taller, younger, undoubtedly richer and MUCH better looking took hold. That and the fact that I really didn’t play basketball. So I said “Sorry! But I’m sure if you walk for a mile or so you’ll find it.”

And he says to me, “Well, take it easy!” Then he padded off into the carpeted climate controlled distance and I finished getting dressed.

I got my bag packed up and realized I wasn’t really sure how to get out of the place either. The facility is larger than many small towns. So I went through this door and I found myself on a balcony type thing overlooking a basketball court where Mr. Big Ears and a bunch of other guys where hard charging, full throttle going at a very serious game of basketball. There was a Ref. Whistles. The whole deal. And remember, these were the Michael Jordan years, so basketball meant something big in Chicago. Everyone was a basketball fan. So I put down my bag and decided to watch for a minute. First impression was that there were two kinds of guys on the court. Rich guys who spent a lot of time at the gym and rich guys who thought they could play without putting in that time.

But Mister Big Ears was different. Everything about him was different.

The other guys on the court were playing basketball. Huffing and sweating and charging and talking trash. Not Mr. Big Ears. Oh he moved. He wasn’t winded at all. But while the other guys were all playing basketball, it was almost as if Mister Big Ears was playing chess.

His eyes drew my complete attention. I watched him watch the court, and it was as if he knew everybody’s moves, all the trajectories, everything everybody was about to do before they even did it. The guy oozed strategy like everyone else sweated. Like Jordon in a way. The guy had this ethereal sense of floating. You watched him and it was almost as if he wasn’t there. Like he was 5 steps ahead of the game waiting for everyone else to catch up.

Until his team started losing. That’s when everything changed.

He missed a pass. Somebody yelled “Barry!” And I saw a focus I hadn’t seen before.

And that was when the ref swallowed his whistle.

Maybe you’ve heard that before? Swallowing his whistle? It means, well it means a few things. But one of them is that the players now own the game. There are no rules.

And that’s when this Big ears guy turned it on. At first it was hard to see. The elbows to the opposing team came so quick, you really weren’t sure you saw them All you saw was his opposition grabbing themselves in pain.

Then there were the feints. Big Ears would charge —remember, there is no ref anymore—and totally fool the bumbling opponent. Even make him look kind of stupid.

The feints built into a rhythm. Big Ears team had pulled out ahead. The speed of the game cranked up yet another notch.

Then the blood.

I don’t know how big ears drew blood. I never really saw it. Another guy had come on to their team. A talker. He kept up a patter. Talked so loud, so hard it was as if his talk was a weapon in itself. Big ears team started laughing. Because the other guys had nothing. They had nothing and it showed. Meanwhile this James guy, bald guy with glasses? He kept talking,

All the while Big Ears was dodging and feinting and slipping in elbows so fast that I am still not sure, till this day, what I saw. It happened that fast.

All I know is that when the game was over, Big Ears team had won. That guy who was so good with the talking came over and put his arm around Big Ears. Both of them laughing.

But the strangest thing of all? The part I still don’t understand? I was up in this balcony or grandstand or whatever. I thought no one could see me. I was the one watching. No one knew I was there.

But as Big Ears walked off the court? He looked up at me. Straight at me. Eye to eye. And he smiled and waved.

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