On a warm, windy March afternoon, Keisha is wrestling an overstuffed laundry bag almost as big as she is down to the bus stop on Chicago Avenue. It’s Sunday. Reduced bus service. So she has a 15-20 minute wait. And Sunday is the only day free to make the ¾ mile trip west across the Chicago River, the giant printing plant and on to the nearest laundromat. So this is a regular trip for her. She’s smiling. She’s got music. Two babies at home, being looked after by a neighbor. Reason she can find someone to watch her kids is that there is still a little bit of the Cabrini Green community left. The row houses. They were the original Cabrini Green. Even before they started stacking people up in towers in the sky, they built the row houses. And Keisha knows she’s lucky to have one to call home. Waiting list for her was only three years. That’s nothing.
In fact, when the towers of Cabrini Green started to buckle under the tsunami like wave of money rolling in from the east and north to gobble up what could be very valuable land; and when that land grab met the realization that stacking human beings in cinderblock cages on top of each other might not be such a great idea; there was no real plan for answering the question, “Where will the people from the community go, when there is no more community?”
There was a “10 Year Transformation” plan—a maze of good intentions, developer plans, details capable of discussion long into the night, with a sprinkle of community input, all wrapped in the fog of bureaucratic indifference But if you were to say, “What’s the exact address of where this person from the 17th floor of Cabrini’s Red Zone will live?” You’d be hard pressed to get an answer.
Which is why Keisha considers herself lucky. She has a place.
Of course when the developers came in to rehab the original row houses, there were cost considerations. After all, this was public housing. So the developers had to set priorities. And one of the things they eliminated was hook-ups for laundry in the individual units. So the only reliable place to do laundry was a laundromat a bus ride away.
Seems that the sewer system couldn’t handle letting people have their own washers and dryers. That was the story.
But Keisha considered herself lucky. She was taking a full load of courses to be a medical tech downtown. She worked 30 hours a week at Potbelly sandwiches. She had her babies. And deep into the night she did schoolwork. So it wasn’t so bad. Weekly trip to the laundromat never hurt anyone. Gave her some exercise.
The Chicago Avenue bus pulls over. Keisha and her human sized laundry bag get on and take a seat near the front. The bus is crowded.
One stop later, the bus pulls over next to the giant 600 West Chicago building. Home of the internet sensation Groupon. Megan Pauly and Kristi Pierce, briefly glance up from their texting to stick their fare cards in the slot and take the only available seat, right behind Keisha.
Looking up again from their texting, the two young, almost interchangeable, blonde women slowly take in the fact that there is a giant laundry bag, containing a weeks worth of dirty clothes, on the seat in front of them. They look at the bag. One of them giggles. They both roll their eyes. And the other one says, “What. Ever.”
Keisha hears the giggle. Feels some sort of disturbance right behind her. Doesn’t know what it is. And she is too polite to turn around and stare. Much less say anything to the interchangeable women. So she starts to get that warm, tired feeling she gets sometimes. When her manager is yelling at the sandwich shop, then brushing way too close behind her on the line, or when it’s 1:00 am and she’s still got another hour of homework. Or when one of her babies starts coughing and there is nothing, nothing, nothing she can do except to hold her tight and pray. That feeling.
And she remembers an old song. Her own Mama used to sing it to her. There was a part where the song said;
Measuring public corruption is useful. But so is looking out your window. And if the Mayor of Chicago were to look out the window of his home at around 7:30 on any even given morning. Or perhaps walk one block west to Ravenswood Avenue. He’d see Cassie. She walks by my house too.
The connection between Cassie and the national measures of public corruption, released in a report this week by Professor Dick Simpson at the University of Illinois Chicago, would not be immediately obvious. The talking point would not jump out. Most of us would shake our heads. Focus on the numbers. Not look out our window and see Cassie walking by.
A former Alderman, Professor Simpson measured the corruption conviction rate of politicians across the country. Between 1976 and 2010, Chicago clocked in at 1,531. To not one single Chicagoan’s surprise: We won! Most corrupt place ever! Woo!
Then a city shrugs its shoulders and wonders what’s on TV tonight.
What could this study possibly have to do with the woman in the dirty brown down coat with the tattered shoes, pulling the shopping cart behind her like some ancient boulder of shame? How could political corruption possibly touch or relate to the woman who never lifts her eyes from the street? Her head always hooded through both bitter cold winds or sweltering blankets of wet heat. Sure, she walks past the Mayors house or a parallel street every day. In the mornings she walks north. At night she goes south. Where she goes, sleeps, or eats, I don’t know. I don’t even know her name. That’s why I call her Cassie. Because doesn’t everyone at least deserve a name?
She shuffles past the Mayor’s house. Her back bent as if she is part of the street itself. The waves of sadness reverberating out like someone just banged a weeping gong.
But measures of corruption? The connection isn’t clear yet. The Simpson study didn’t measure all those who did not get caught. Or break down the numbers to the type of corruption. But that is not a criticism. It’s a call for more study. Because isn’t measuring corruption a bit like approaching an elephant with a tape measure, stretching out the tape as far as your hands can reach, putting your hands on the side of the elephant, and then reading the length of your reach?
And once you’ve recorded how far your arms can stretch, what’s next? Could the number you come up with somehow touch Cassie’s walk? Change her route? Help fight back the demonic strain of thought floated by so many that somehow Cassie’s eternal walk is her fault?
Do the numbers justify blaming the victim? Tying up the problem with a nice little solution bow? Convene a roundtable on how the market will handle human pain?
Or could he real value in the number simply a way to start a conversation that could lead you back to Cassie?
The Simpson political corruption study made the national news cycle. And tomorrow it will fade into the ether where old news stories go. But Cassie will still be walking past the Mayor’s house.
Cassie probably didn’t catch another recent story, one that touches on what’s behind the corruption. And that leads back to her.
In this story, Sun-Times political reporter Fran Spielman offered a clue. That clue involves a thread that connects those who get caught, those who don’t, those who make legal deals and even includes Cassie.
That thread is access. Pure and simple access.
Cassie will never have a conversation with the Mayor of Chicago. It will not happen. And the access needed for her survival? That torn bleeding “safety net” that is somehow supposed to help? Because of course the Mayor doesn’t have time for every homeless person.
Fran Spielman gives a clue as to why that won’t help either. Why Cassie will keep walking.
The clue is in a February 8th article titled. “Rahm’s Inner Circle.” It details exactly whom the Mayor speaks with regularly. Who DOES get the access. The names of those with access in politics, labor, business, African American issues, city council and inside his own administration.
Notice anything missing on that list?
Human Services is missing. Not one name.
Who’s the safety net czar? Who takes care of Cassie? Where’s his or her seat in the circle of power? Where’s the person who has the access to help Cassie?
There isn’t one. And that’s the connection between Cassie and the corruption study. There is a closed loop of power. Access to power. And there is no one to take care of people. The Mayor reaches out to a huge constiteuncy. He has lots of advisors. Some of them return phone calls. Some don’t. But only if you are in that loop of power as well.
The last time I was without a full time job, doing contract work as I am now, I somehow on a fluke because I have no access, got an interview in a nice building on West Chicago Avenue, where Mayor Daley consolidated all the human services functions. There was a federal monitor in the interview. It went well. We all understood that I was a serious candidate for the job, my resume was nice, and I mastered all of the interview questions. I was more than qualified.
And as the interviewers all marched out of earshot at the end, the Federal monitor whispered to me, “That was great. You even had me interested. And I do this all day.” And then he looked at me and said “Sorry.”
Because we both knew I wouldn’t get the job. I have no access. That common thread that runs just below the headlines and the back room smoke of all corruption.
Access.
The story is told first by the respected Judge Abner Mikva. The punch line is so good that it’s a book title and perhaps the single most important truth in the access problem that underlies all corruption and keeps Cassie on the street. Young Abner Mikva looking for his first political job bounds into the ward office and says, “I’d like some work. I can even volunteer.”
The ward boss takes his cigar out of his mouth and says, “Who sent you kid?”
Mikva answers, “Nobody sent me.”
To which the ward boss utters those immortal words that still grace Chicago politics as a foundational truth:
He and I were having an after work beer at a bar with a dirty red door on the lower level of Michigan Avenue, just north of the Chicago Loop.
These days with everybody either working two jobs or looking for jobs, nobody saw each other as much as they used to. But his seven-year-old daughter Melinda, my god-daughter, and world’s most beautiful kid, gave Donnie and I a chance to get together more than most. We uncles, aunts, godfathers, godmothers take our jobs seriously. A lot more seriously than Donnie took his UPS truck, parked illegally outside the bar, or I took the cubicle where I did the contract corporate job, making the world safe for software.
“What do you mean easy? I said. There’s no such thing as easy racism.”
“I mean easy to see. You’ve seen the news. A November 2009 sales meeting of the German Company Thyssen Krupp. Chicago’s newest corporate citizen. And a guy gets up to do a skit in black face.” That is easy. That’s racist. Everyone can see it. There is no argument. It’s as simple as. . .”
“Black and white?”
We clinked glasses as we had been doing for pretty much as long as I remember. Laughed because that’s all you can do sometimes.
“Hard racism is what you do NOT see.” Donnie continued.
“You mean like how the black guy had to sit in his car alone every day before he went into work. Just to psych himself in to going inside to start his workday? How every tiny pinprick of the culture poked and jabbed at the guy for no other reason than he was black?” I said.
“Yeah cracker north side,” Donnie smiled. Like that. Saying ‘it has nothing to do with him being black.’ That’s where all the bullshit starts flowing. It’s how this guy can’t get phone calls returned. How he works triple time and it’s never good enough. How there is an email joke that goes around and he ain’t included.”
We were quiet for awhile. Then to a subject we both loved more than anything. “What’s going on with my god daughter?” I asked.
“It ain’t easy,” Donnie replied. “Both kids can’t play outside at all. We thought it would get better. But Roger, I got two daughters. Seven and nine. And both of them know that when they hear the sound of guns poppin on any given night, to slip off the couch where they are watching TV, and make themselves small, laying on the floor, because so many times the bullets come through some one’s wall and well. . .you know.”
I nodded
“Tell me again why I bought in Englewood? 25% of the murders in the city. The whole city. And that’s where I live. I am some kind of fool. . .thinking I could get a deal if I bought in there.”
“Donnie. Nobody knew what would happen when you bought the place. And you bought it cause it was cheap! And you being one tight ass cheap. . .”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So you can’t leave, cause you can’t sell without selling those girl’s future. That is one hard choice my friend.”
He nodded. “I don’t know. Maybe it will get better.”
“What about that white guy they just put in as district police commander? You think that’s racism? Having a white guy in charge of the cops. 14,000 police officers in Chicago and they couldn’t find a black guy to run Englewood?”
“Roger, you gotta read the rest of the story. That ain’t racism. That’s the same shit you got living 4 blocks from the Mayor. You know the real problem? It ain’t that the guy is white. He has 26 years experience on the job. He ran a district and he ran gang crimes, which is kinda the whole ballgame. It ain’t that he’s white. It’s that no one from the mayor’s office or the police department made anybody from the neighborhood part of the decision. They didn’t think it was important to TALK with us. It’s not racism. It’s cronyism. That good old boys club. Not letting anybody in that old circle of power. Mayor would have sent some boys over to talk with a bunch of us, asking us, “What do you think?” That would have changed a lot of things.
We know the mayor, the chief, they will make the call. We are fine with that. But when that ole boys club circle just sends down the word the same way they always do everywhere, when they say “This is how it is” that is what puts a bullet in that trust they are always talking about.
“So the guy who is the new commander. . .he is fine and. . .”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But let me have a piece of that decision. We are talking about Melinda being safe. Your goddaughter. And you know I ain’t gonna be taking her to no church! So you are in this too, Mister North Side.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s my job.”
We were quiet for awhile. Like old friends can be. Finally I said, “So there is easy racism and hard racism. Easy you can see. And hard racism. Hard is how our Melinda has to dive off the couch in your living room and hit the floor every time she hears a bullet pop outside.”
“No, hard is that she has to even think about doing that. That’s hard.”
There was talk of a movie, starring Humphrey Bogart, after the “Ball Bearing” mission to Sweden was completed and Hitler’s war machine was dealt a crippling blow.
Bogart was the name mentioned, in a Washington Times piece, as a likely candidate to play Stanton Griffis. A 57-year-old investment banker who was the central figure in the story, a chapter in the history of World War II now virtually lost outside my family and Griffis’s long out of print book “Lying In State.” And calling him an “investment banker” is a bit like calling Warren Buffett, with whom Griffis shared some interesting traits, “a business guy.”
Before marrying my Grandmother’s sister, Griffis was an Oregon fruit farmer. Then, from way across the whole of the American continent, he heard the siren song of serious money singing about Wall Street.
So goodbye fruit farmer.
Along the way, Griffis popped in and out of public service serving as the ambassador to Poland, Egypt, Spain and Argentina during the time of Eva Peron.
Making friends world wide, his business interests involved running Madison Square Garden, and senior roles at Paramount pictures and Brentano Bookstores.
That and making money.
Within that circle of friends, were some folks from the OSS, the precursor of the CIA. And that’s where Hitler’s ball bearings entered the story.
The German war machine needed ball bearings for just about every weapon of moderate destruction they had. Planes wouldn’t fly without ball bearings. And when the Allies bombed German ball bearing factories, the Swedes took up the slack.
And that’s when “they”—Griffis’s friends who worked outside the normal channels of the State Department—called up and asked if Griffis could do a better job than the State Department at keeping the Swedish ball bearings out of Nazi hands. Griffis answered:
“I couldn’t do a worse job.”
Within 24 hours he and an associate were strapped into a British Mosquito bomber hurtling through the polar night at 400 mph bound for Stockholm.
Unbound the conventions of normal diplomacy, Griffis relates this moment of the negotiations with both the Swedish manufacturers and the Swedish government.
“One of the most effective suggestions occurred when the other side seemed to be making more progress then we liked, So I told them, “You know gentlemen, you have a lot of fog on your coast and you know that our bombers sometimes get lost even going to Germany. It would be a very sad thing if a thousand of our great bombers should loose their way along your coast and mistake Goteborg for Hamburg. It would be a very sad thing to wake up one morning and find your factories missing. We would be very sorry to have this happen and of course we would apologize, and I am sure that many years from now when the war is over and the reparations commissions complete their testimony, we would pay for the damage. But these things take time.”
The negotiations were soon over.
America bought the stock of ball bearings and the Swedes agreed to sell less than 10% of the former quota to the Nazi’s.
And before a hail of official Nazi diplomatic protests could hit the first Swedish diplomat’s desk—Griffis and his associate were back on that British bomber zooming back to London.
The number of Allied lives they had saved by cutting off the supply of ball bearings? Uncountable.
I met Griffis once. A family wedding on the sparkling warm shore of Lake Michigan. He was likely the oldest one there. And I was very young.
Fruit farmer, investment banker . . . .war hero without firing a shot.
You never knew the full story. How I knew you were coming.
It was New Year’s Eve. Two weeks or so before I ventured out under the frozen stars of a Wisconsin sky. From that bone-smacking wind-whipped cold into the chocolate chip cookie baking warmth of your kitchen. Linda Ronstadt singing “Lovesick Blues.” And then to the radiance of your smile I said, “I was just in the neighborhood . . .”
Likely you thought that’s where it started. All those years ago.
But it was two weeks before that New Year’s Eve, when the notion first wound its way inside me like the smell of a wood fire burning, holding back the coldest winter night. The notion that something was coming. Something big. That woodsmoke notion was not a passing thought. It settled in and stayed the night. And what a night!
To have a New Year’s Eve, like grown-ups spend New Year’s Eve. My first. That first time you do something you believe is just about as cool as cool can be. You have arrived. You’ve got the story all planned to tell before it even happens. Because you’re that sure that what you’ve got planned is the best.
See, for me, at that time in Chicago, there simply was no better place to be than The Earl of Old Town. Add to that, the fact that it was New Years Eve. And if that wasn’t cool enough, Steve Goodman was the featured act. Me and a pal, going to the late show.
It was a good story before it even happened.
Standing in the foot stomping line on windswept Wells Street, waiting for the show to start. My pal and I would be counting down the last seconds of the year with Steve Goodman. As we waited for the early show to end so that we could go in, it started to snow.
With the soft snow swirling down across the lights of the icy winter city, we trooped inside the Earl and took our seats; it was like sitting down in the living room of that guy from the neighborhood who we had always wanted to be.
The stage was a tiny riser, the bar along the opposite wall. Tables clustered tightly around, like there was really just one table. We were sitting right in back of Nancy Goodman, Steve’s wife. Told ourselves we were now on “salt-passing terms” with Steve Goodman’s wife. And outside, the snow, a soft reminder of just how warm it was in this living room tonight.
As the bouncing bundle of laconic joy that was Steve Goodman sang, I started to feel that notion. Something big was coming. I had no idea what it was. But it was big.
Wide-eyed, held tight by the show. Those days in Chicago, there was Steve Goodman and Bonnie Koloc and John Prine. If you were there, they used their musical gifts to paint pictures, to take you to places only reached by imagination. The three of them, good beyond belief.
Goodman finished. My pal and I trudged off into the still falling snow, back to his place. Me on the couch alone, still with this notion. That something big was coming.
The next day, brilliant blue-sky-bright morning, when it really hit hard. We were tramping through the snow in Lincoln Park on New Year’s morning, with the place to ourselves. Past the new neighborhood restaurant, RJ Grunts. Just about to walk inside the grounds of the Lincoln Park Zoo.
That notion spoke like the very voice of winter itself. It said; “Your life is going to change. It’s going to change big. There will be something beyond what you’d ever imagined. You don’t know what it is and you don’t know when. But you are growing up now. And there will be a change.”
I remember going from the blue frozen morning into the Lincoln Park Conservatory. Stepping from the arctic into the tropics, a green wet jungle. A miracle when you think about it. How do you go from frigid cold to the beating heart jungle in just a few steps? And having the “plant zoo” as we called it, all to ourselves?
What happened after the Lincoln Park conservatory, the dripping green leaves against the glass that shielded them from the deep blue freeze of the day—I draw a blank. Up to Wisconsin must have happened. I was a college student. I had classes to take. I don’t remember what they were. I remember only two weeks later in the very dead of January venturing outside into the dark and ending up in your kitchen.
The part of the story that you know, too.
Then there was that lifetime. 20 years. Until your garden in Berkeley. Blue ceramic mugs of coffee for a carefully planned half hour visit. Tiptoeing past the closed door where your partner and new son slept in. If I remember right, maybe we said we’ll check in again, when we hit 60. If we all make it that long.
That might happen, but in case it doesn’t…this will have to do. I thought you should know the rest of the story. The part that happened just before we became us.
I wanted you to know what I knew. I want you to know that I remember, after those cookies came out of the oven in that two-weeks-after-New-Year’s kitchen, we walked on to the campus through the cold. Holding hands. And that’s when that notion that something was just about to happen…
he Selig Polyscope Company was one of the very first movie studios in the country. Located on a 200 acre parcel in what is now a residential area of Chicago, Selig produced the first version of Chicago native L. Frank Baum’s ‘Wizard of Oz.”
In the flickering candlelight, she sat rocking the baby at the back of the empty dining hall. Smelling the sandalwood candle, with some unknown part of me wanting to leap straight and true right into her eyes, came this thought, I wish I could give her more than Mister Foster’s song.
Which made no sense at all.
First, because there were no women living here. This was 1901. Women don’t live, or even take their meals, in a house on the Western Road halfway between the stone quarry and the Selig Polyscope Company, where they made moving pictures; the place I was lucky enough to find work this cold December of the new century.
But there was more than that. She looked at me as if she was waiting for a fight. As if she knew she could take me. A soul who would, down to her very core, never accept anything from anyone.
As I breathed in the sandalwood, something made me wonder. Just where upon this earth, have I met you before?
I met her defiant and somehow amused gaze. She nodded. Rocking the baby. And I wondered if this is why I was here.
My journey here had begun with a ship. A cold winter ship stuffed with Christmas trees.
Christmas trees from all of our farms across the Door Peninsula, in Northern Wisconsin. Hundreds of Christmas trees. Fruit of our harvest. Bound for Chicago. The chilled mint scent of evergreen like a blanket, as we departed the Port of Sturgeon Bay guided only by uncountable shimmering stars. The harvest was over. There was money to be made.
On the ship is where I first remember the smell of the sandalwood candle. A tiny flickering flame in the captain’s quarters. My job was to bring him his meals. He’d have a sandalwood candle lit. As if the fingernail flame could stand guard against the dark waves of the giant Lake Michigan.
I remember my fear. Why is there fire on this ship full of trees?
Then docking in Chicago. I remember clearly how I got from the smoky grinding sewage-stinking port on the shores of the Chicago River, where we unloaded the trees, on up to Colonel Selig’s Polyscope Movie Studios seven miles north. I walked.
Into the strange city night I walked: beyond the rows of worker’s homes, millionaires’ mansions and miles of wooden shacks inhabited by the very poor. Out to the crossroads of Western Road and a road named for a place called Irving Park. I remember looking up, wondering where the stars went in this strange place called a city, where there always seemed to be some sort of noise and it never really got to the dark part of night.
On through the night, it was just before dawn when I first saw the giant cluster of buildings and fields where the Colonel made his moving pictures. In fact, I remember walking under a sign that said OFFICE and into a room where a man clearly in charge was terrifying a trembling woman at a desk, with the mere volume of his voice.
“I told you, Mr. Thomas Edison is a brilliant man! A lawyer first, a man of science next…but above all, he is a scoundrel! Bless him and his moving picture machine. But his machine is different. My Polyscope is of course the superior contraption. And he will never, ever, ever shut me down!”
On the word “down” he thrust his index finger high above his head, made a grand circle in the air, and then marched towards the door, where I stood open-mouthed. As he huffed by me, he winked so that only I, a perfect stranger, would see him and he whispered, “Of course Edison’s lawyers will never find me here. And if they do? I’ll move all the making of the motion pictures to the western coast. I’ve heard tell of this place called Hollywood.”
There was a beat of silence. I remember the woman behind the desk was also burning a sandalwood candle. She turned to me and said, “Well, that was our employer. Colonel Selig himself. And who, might I ask, are you?”
“I’m William. I come from the north. From the Door Peninsula. My ship is docked now for a month, and I hear there’s work here. May I have a job? All I know is hard work.”
The woman looked at me a moment. Then she moved her shoulder towards a broom in the corner. “Well, there’s the tool you’ll need for the inside. And we shoot outdoors as well, so you’ll need to make the snow go away. There ‘s a roadhouse with rooms a bit south of here. They’ll feed you. You can settle in there.”
“Ma’am when you say “shoot,” I’m afraid I. . . .”
“Shooting the motion pictures. At least 5 or 6 per week. Well, I suppose I’d best show you around. Now that you’ve met the Colonel, I can introduce you to the others. Course, we’re growing so fast, I no longer know everyone’s name. But I know most of them.”
I learned on my tour that the Selig Polyscope studio lot was a sprawling 200 acres. The same size as my Daddy’s tree farm in Door County. There were wooden stages from the vaudeville theaters like the one in Green Bay. Miles of cables and giant lights and Polyscope machines and yelling and commanding and the actors weeping on cue. Easy to fit in, too, what with everybody raising their hands to draw attention to themselves. Blending into the background was as easy as maple syrup dripping from a tree.
Having learned of the roadhouse, that night I took a room. I began taking my meals in the dining room with the other boarders. I was at the motion picture studio at six and didn’t leave till all the winter darkness had been settled in for hours, not till seven or so.
And it was good to just work hard. To jump in cleaning, carrying the rolled up cables, carrying the painted wooden pictures of mountains and saloons from one stage to another. As if I was helping build some kind of brand new world, in these motion pictures.
The days passed quickly at Polyscope Studios. The winter nights came early just like home. I was alone.
But I didn’t mind. In fact no one really did more than nod in my direction, until that morning of December 24th when a man I’d never even seen before, a gentleman, said to me. “Son, I am wondering if you would be good as my Tin Man.”
I wasn’t even close to understanding what that meant. I knew the man’s name. He was Mister L. Frank Baum. A friend of Colonel Selig. He had never spoken to me before, but I’d learned in my two weeks at the Selig Polyscope Studio that it was always better to say something. So I replied, “Would you like me to lift some tin for you sir?”
He smiled. In his white frock coat, a distinguished gentleman. His eyes were kind. “No son. Come with me to the eastern lot. I’ll show you what I mean.”
Mr. Baum motioned me to a chair. For the very first time since I had begun the job, I sat down. And I had watched the making of what he called his “Fairylogue.” The scenes were built around a young girl they called “Dorothy.” Although I knew her by her real name of Romola Remus.
In Mr. Baum’s Fairylogue, he would do something I heard people say had never been done before. He would point the Polyscope machine at the wall. The pictures he had taken of his characters talking would appear on the wall. And Mr. Baum would talk to the pictures! He somehow had sound in these little entertainments. Sometimes he called them “radio plays.” But what they were, basically, was he himself sitting and talking to Dorothy and her friends as they traveled to a place called Oz.
This “Oz” had what Mister Baum called a “Wizard.” And the Wizard knew all.
These were hard, hard times, that winter. Times when it seemed like that tiny sliver of rich folk was just getting richer, and the rest of us had to just make do.
So this Wizard. This Oz. It sounded good to me. Mister L. Frank Baum, I think he understood something about the world that I could not quite put into words…something about how there’s more to the world than what we see. In his white frock coat, with his kind eyes that took in every detail of the world; then somehow tried to paint what he saw in brighter colors, better days.
He told me that the Tin Man, and that would be me, was on the journey to Oz to find a heart. But that the surprise in the story is that once he got to Oz, he’d find that he already had a heart.
I wondered if there’d be surprises like finding hearts for me. If, in this cold winter, maybe something would change.
Or maybe there would always be hard times. Which is why we needed as many songs, as many stories as we could grow.
So that day I made one of Mister Baum’s Fairylogues with him. That day I was the Tin Man.
Tomorrow was Christmas. There would be no work at the Selig Polyscope Company. I’d just be in my room in the Western Avenue road house. And because it was Christmas Eve, Colonel Selig let us all out early. That’s why, when I wandered back to the Road House, the dining hall was still empty. Save for her and the baby.
Seeing the two of them, I didn’t speak; I just walked into the kitchen and told Maureen, the old cook who had taken a shine to me, that a bit of her hot vegetable soup and some cheese with an apple would be just the thing.
Thanking Maureen, I took the food out to the woman; put it down in front of her without saying a word. She began to eat as if it was her very first meal. As she ate, the other boarders started trickling in; some would pay her and her baby no mind. But others would stare, some with malice. And though the woman’s defiance showed, I could feel her slight tremor as I sat across the table.
So I took her hand, and I held on. We still had yet to say a word. But I took her hand. As we sat, holding hands across the table, her cradling the baby in her other arm, I nodded at the baby and she passed him over the table. As I took the baby in my arm, she reached across the table for my hand again.
Dinner was ending and someone started singing Christmas songs. She and I were quiet. Neither of us touched by false cheer.
And it was then I remembered that first thought. It was then I remembered thinking that I wish I could sing her Mister Stephen Foster’s song. It’s not a Christmas song. It’s not a song of false cheer or empty hope. It’s a song that looks the hard times straight in the eye. Just like she did. Like I did.
Hard Times come again no more.
She and I? We started singing. Somehow the harmony was perfect. And before we were done, we had the whole dining hall, lighting up the winter night, with the sad yet hopeful sounds of the music. Not for a moment believing that it wasn’t hard times. But just for a song length, believing through the music that the hard times would come again no more.
And when the echo of the song’s last breath was a memory, we all sat down and she spoke her first words to me.
Test the actual soil underlying Chicago City Hall.
No one would be surprised if trace elements of ethical lapses were somehow ingrained in the earth.
It’s been that way since the first Indian standing watch one dark night on the shores of the Big Lake watched the first smiling white man jump from the canoe, yell a hearty hello and set the standard price for anything as being ten cents on the dollar.
With a wink and a handshake. It’s always been that way. Because we’ve always been able to pay the cost. Be it in dollars, culture, human suffering, a strange kind of pride or even bottled up rage. We have always paid the cost for turning away from the smoke of the roaring ethical fires.
But now we can’t afford that anymore. The money’s shriveled up. So now it might change.
Yesterday, Mayor Emanuel appointed an Ethics Reform Task Force unlike any ever seen in this city.
A group of four who have made careers based on being ethical.
Their task is to review Chicago’s Ethics Ordinance. And then make it work. Make it stronger.
Cindi Canary will chair the Task Force. Cindi Canary is a groundbreaking force in city and state ethical reform. Her organization is the “Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.” Pore over any tiny or large steps forward in the fight for government accountability in Illinois and you will find her name.
Alderman Will Burns, who along with counterparts like Alderman Ameya Pawar, has been part of the new crop of city leaders. Leaders who focus on social justice organizations ranging from The Mikva Challenge and the Shriver Center for Poverty Law to The Common Pantry—Chicago’s longest operating Food Pantry.
And if there is any concern at all that real political change needs more than sunlight to make it work, Sergio Accosta, the third member of the group, is a former supervising U.S. Attorney specializing in areas like criminal civil rights.
Turns out that civil rights violations are still crimes.
But it’s the fourth member of the panel that brings the golden soul of the city into the mix of this new effort. Her name is Dawn Clark Netsch. She’s a former State Comptroller, State Senator and gubernatorial candidate. All facts. None of which give substance to the story of why she could be the soul of the new ethics machine.
It’s a short story—but its telling.
Back when there were only two telephone companies, I opened up the effort to sell the little telephone company, MCI, into Illinois State Government. I found a partner to help me learn the backstreets, darkened hallways and phone numbers of Springfield, a state political capital that made Chicago look like Andy Griffith’s home town Mayberry.
In the rotunda of the state capital, pretty much every door was closed up tight to me and my little telephone company. Most times no one even wanted to talk. And I mean not even talk about the weather. Everyone but Dawn Clark Netsch.
It was a simple thing. She didn’t know me. I never made a deal with her. Never even a formal meeting. But she was accessible. She talked to anybody. Even me. And that simply didn’t happen anywhere else. Not without access. Not without knowing someone who knows someone else.
Flash forward decades. I’m walking my dog in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago. And she’s walking her dog. She stops. She chats. That regular nodding hello that fellow dog lovers have. She’s still open to the world.
And that would be the first key strategy of the new ethics task force.
Be open to the world.
The Mayor tried to do that in his transition. But he failed. You still had to be in the club. The great blogger driftglass’s 2 rules of Chicago politics:
1. There is a club.
2. You’re not in it.
Those two rules still own the day.
But what if that could change? What next?
Next is a mapping of the problem as a systemic problem. It’s not a problem where catching one rogue rascal with his hand in another’s pocket solves anything. It’s about a system.
And third, it’s about performance standards and measures that sound a bit different from the norm.
Turns out that notions of confidence, integrity, pride and passion really can be measured in the laboratory of opinion.
So the right people are on board. All four of them. Especially my hero, Dawn Clark Netsch.
And the right strategy can be put in place:
1. Accessibility and Transparency from those who serve the public.
2. Mapping the system to really grasp the full problem.
3. Performance standards and measures—to drive the real, concrete action that could produce something none of us have ever seen before, something most of us think isn’t even possible.
A renewed Chicago. Known for the ethical standards we practice.
This group could make it happen. And if they need any help?
Just before she snapped this picture, I had brushed some dirt off your gravestone. We were in Asheville, North Carolina. Breathing in that pure mountain air like it was a cool, cleansing tonic that really could clear tubercular lungs.
I wondered if that air could make me write like you.
As I knelt at your grave, I never imagined you as a Thanksgiving Day guest.
That would be impossible. Right? You being dead and all.
Of course, back then I also thought it would be impossible that she’d dump me. I thought we were for keeps.
She never even bothered to say, “It’s not you. It’s me.” Always a good line. Especially when it’s not true.
We spoke by phone a lot. She lived in a small town in Missouri. I lived in Chicago. Not the best set up for destiny. And when I started hearing stories about how much fun she was having going fishing with this guy she knew from town; when she told me that he owned a jewelry store. When her voice got more and more faded and distant with each call, I kind of figured that the jeweler would eventually close the sale and make them a couple.
It happened just before Thanksgiving. I got the call that there would be no more calls. I finally saw destiny drift away on a warm southern wind.
Yeah, I know. Old story. It’s not “Look Homeward Angel.” It’s just a young guy, who would not be venturing out from Chicago to her Mother’s house in Gulfport, Mississippi for Thanksgiving that year.
Which left me alone at Thanksgiving. And I’d been through that once. Had to take some action. Did not know what. But I had to do something.
I would not be stuck around some dinner table where everyone gathered because they thought they were supposed to gather. Following some genetic instinct of what holidays and family are supposed to mean. A rhythm unstoppable by anything else than a nuclear blast because most times, if you’re dancing to that rhythm, you don’t even know it’s there.
What does that mean? Sorry for that last sentence going on forever. I think I’m a little nervous telling you this story Mr. Thomas Wolff. And I tend to go on and on when I get nervous.
All I was trying to say was that I didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving with someone just because I was supposed to spend it with them. I didn’t want it to be about obligations. Even if I liked the people. I didn’t want obligation to be the orchestra leader.
Or, worse yet, I didn’t want to be that last minute guest with nowhere else to go. Sitting in the chair with the nametag in front that said LOSER.
What I was missing though, was an actual solution. I really didn’t know what to do.
So going down to the local tavern seemed like a good choice. Thanksgiving was two nights away. Maybe if I drank enough between now and then, I’d figure it out.
It had just started to snow, the Chicago winter winds like jet engines revving up for takeoff. Coming into the bar, a joint over on Wabansia, I opened the door under the faded neon of a Hamm’s Beer sign, and there was a shout of “Hey, close the damned door, kid!”
I wasn’t sure at first, who had yelled. The bartender, faceless in the shadows at the back of the dark bar. Or was it the guy with wire-rimmed glasses and very intense eyes sitting at the bar?
Stomping the dusty snow off my boots and unzipping my big down coat, I looked again at the guy hunched over at the bar. He was like a shadow. He seemed to fade in and out.
Thinking I better drink quick, I ordered a beer and a shot of Jack Daniels before I had even sat down. That faceless bartender put it down, I put a $10 on the bar, turned to offer a toast to the guy with the glasses, and once again, he seemed to fade away. Where he had been, was only an empty bar stool. The bartender had retreated back to his corner. So I felt totally alone. And as soon as I felt most alone, the ghost on the bar stool faded back into view, gave me a wink and said, “Yeah. It’s me. Sorry about the whole Thanksgiving thing, kid. I know what it’s like getting dumped. Me and Frenchy. . . . . “
I interrupted. Couldn’t help it. I knew who he was. I knew Frenchy is what he called Simone deBeauvoir. “No way. Algren? Really? Nelson Algren?”
“Do I look like Papa Hemingway, kid?”
“How did you . . . what is. . .why am I. . .what the . . .”
“Easy kid, We’ll let you ask your questions. But first, lets get a table. We’re gonna have some company.”
Algren motioned me over to an even darker corner of the bar. And that’s when I saw you, Mr. Wolff. This time, alive as you could be! Wild hair, eyes darting all over the room. I could see you writing without even having a pen or paper or typewriter. Just sitting there fidgeting in your chair, you were writing!
You said to me “Sorry about the Thanksgiving thing kid. Thought I’d pop by. See if I could help. Awful nice of you to come by the grave that time.”
“Yeah,” said Algren. “We figured we’d have Thanksgiving tonight. See, where we come from, the exact day doesn’t really matter too much.”
“I have,” I said, close to losing the ability to speak, “so many questions!”
“Well, that’s nice. kid. But why don’t you wait till everybody gets here.”
“Who else is . . .” and just then the barroom door opened. Framed with another swirl of snow, in walked perhaps the greatest of all American male vocalists, Joe Williams. As if reading my mind while he watched my jaw drop, he boomed out a laugh and said, “That whole being the greatest male vocalist? Not the way Frank Sinatra
sees it. But truth told. Does it matter?”
“No. I guess not. But why are you here, too? I mean this has got to be the greatest Thanksgiving night I’ve ever spent. And it’s not even Thanksgiving night! But there is so much here I don’t understand…”
“Which is why you get to ask each of us one question,” said Thomas Wolff.
“But—why can’t I ask more?”
“How about this, kid. If you asked us each more than one, it would make the story too long. Christ kid, you already tossed in the bit about getting dumped at the beginning. What was the point of that? To make us like you more or something? Ever hear of editing, kid? Ever hear of getting to the point? Story is already too long. So you get one question answered by each of us.”
“Well sure, but I . . .well Mr. Wolff . . .gee, I remember when I first started reading you, how many times did I think, why the hell do I want to write? I’ll never, ever, ever be as good as Thomas Wolff! So why bother? I guess that’s my question. Why bother trying to write? What’s the point?”
”Ok,” answered Wolff, “you ready for your answer?”
“Yes sir.”
“Here’s the answer: I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You’re Thomas Wolff! If you don’t know why we bother to write—especially now, with you being dead and all—how will I ever figure it out?”
“You won’t, kid. You’ll never figure it out. Because the answer is a mystery. No one knows. That’s the point. No one knows.”
“So what do I do?”
“You stop asking questions like that. You just write. Because here’s the thing kid. When I write—and of course I still do it now—when I write I am never alone. So I just write. So enough on that. Nelson, it’s your turn.”
Nelson Algren had sold books all around the world, Hemingway considered him one of the greats; he is still read today. Yet his books were never in the Chicago Public Libraries. He wasn’t all that well-liked in his home city of Chicago. So little liked that he, towards the end of his life, eventually left Chicago. If I had to choose one of the million questions I had for this teacher it would be the one I spoke out loud that night in the dark bar. “Mr. Algren, what if people don’t like your writing? Don’t like or don’t care. If people don’t respond to your writing, what do you do?”
And this is what he said. “Kid, let me ask you a question. Is this about you or about the writing?”
“Well, I. . .”
“Do the right people like your stuff?”
“You mean the people who will buy it?”
“No kid. I mean the right people. And right people means something different to every writer. Take, for example, you. You remember that lady writer from Ohio? You know the one. She’s living in my neighborhood now.”
“Karen Novak?”
“Of course Karen Novak! Do you remember what happened when she wrote you and told you that you were the real deal? That you could write? Do you remember what that did for you? How your self-confidence shot up like a rocket? Do you remember the fact that Roger Ebert has tweeted your stuff? Do you remember that writers read you? Writers you respect?”
“Well I. . .yeah.”
“Then that’s the answer. When somebody doesn’t like or worse yet, doesn’t care, about your work; when no one comments on what you do, then what do you do? You ask yourself, do the right people care?”
There was silence for a moment. The wind had started to pick up outside.
“Oh. Well then I guess I got one more question. Mr. Williams sir, I am honored you are here. But I’m not sure why. So I guess my question is this, why are you here?”
“That’s an easy one, son. I’m here because good writing is always full of music. So everywhere somebody is talking about writing, I’m there too.
But there’s another reason I am here today. A more important one. It’s to tell you this: Every time someone writes, every time someone tells a story, it’s an act of Thanksgiving. That’s what it is, son. Telling a story is an act of Thanksgiving. And when you are giving thanks, you are never, ever alone.”
As I let that sink in, it was as if the wind had stopped blowing for a moment. I closed my eyes to think about what he had said, and when I opened them, my three Thanksgiving companions had vanished.
Left with their answers. Left with Joe Williams’ words:
“Every time you tell a story, you are giving thanks. And when you give thanks, you’re not alone.”
I said that out loud again as I put on my coat and opened the door to walk out into the snow. I thought about my Thanksgiving. The one I ended up sharing with three of my teachers.
“Every time you tell a story, you’re giving thanks. And when you give thanks, you’re not alone.”
And as I spoke his words out loud to the snowy winter wind, I could hear Joe Williams sing.
So who signed the letter?” asked my wife, “SATAN?!!!”
“No.” I answered. “It was signed Human Resources.”
“And the difference is . . . .”
“Exactly.” I unfolded the email I had printed out. It read, verbatim:
Dear $applicantname$,
Thank you for submitting your application for the above referenced position. This is to inform you that the search committee is pursuing other candidates at this time. We want to thank you for the interest that you have shown in this position and the United Church of Christ, National Offices.
Sincerely,
Human Resources
“The Dollar Signs bookending the word “Applicantname.” Nice touch. Warm. Personal.”
“And strangely symbolic of something. Not sure what. Maybe I better call in a theologian.”
“Good idea Roger. You do that.”
The United Church of Christ is one of the mainline denominations. There was a corporate merger of two denominations in 1959. The corporate headquarters is in an office building in Cleveland. And, like most all of the mainline denominations, has been loosing members since the 1960’s. The church prides itself on NOT rejecting people. Differing points of view are encouraged by the church. I remember the elder of my own UCC church who once said to me, “You know the problems with this church? They come from people who don’t own property.”
President Obama (when he wasn’t being a Kenyan Muslim) was a member of the largest United Church of Christ in the United States. He was married in a UCC Church.
So was I.
But somehow the irony of being rejected by the church, rejected so profoundly that they didn’t even want to talk, zoomed right past being upset and ended up in a kind of giddy amusement. It really was kind of funny to get a form rejection letter from a church.
And it’s not like I was rejected for all the usual reasons people get rejected from a church. I’m not gay. Poor. From somewhere else.
Of course we had stopped going to our church on any regular basis. Around the time they put the sign up on the side of the church that said, “God loves you. Whether you know it or not.”
We missed the church. Missed it fiercely. But we simply didn’t fit anymore. We didn’t have the 2.5 kids. We were far from the income bracket of most of the folks in the church. We weren’t part of the church of the 1%. We simply couldn’t afford the dues. Not literally. But emotionally. And most of all, the characters of the church, the elderly, the heroes, people who you wouldn’t look twice at if you were walking down the street, they had all died or drifted away. Several of them went to neighboring churches. On a warm autumn day this year, we saw one of them marching in the annual neighborhood Von Steuben Parade—the day Chicago turns German—and we got so excited we ran out into the middle of the street and hugged her. We literally ran out into the parade.
That was church. And that was gone.
No animosity. Or even any ill will. We adore so many of the members. Still call them friends. Still in touch. Maybe we’ll go back and visit someday. As so many others do. But church is something different.
That’s why the rejection from the United Church of Christ for a job was like some sort of joke told by David Letterman on an off night. And no one can really reject you if they’ve never talked to you. They are rejecting a resume. Not you.
The job was called “Director of Publishing, Identity and Communication.” And I probably would have been a bad fit. My first directive would have been, “How about if we edit the JOB TITLES!”
Which would not have gone over well.
They said, in the job spec, that they wanted somebody who could help them tell the church’s story.
I could have helped them with that. I’ve told some stories.
And I thought of comments on UCC corporate that I’d heard first hand from other pastors—I’d done a lot of work with the UCC on their marketing campaign “God is Still Speaking” as well as the years I was with the Faith Consulting Practice for Gallup where I wrote training. There was the UCC Pastor I met on line who told me of Cleveland Corporate, “They ought to blow the whole place up and start again.” The Pastor who told me today, “You know, this is kinda funny.” And then there was the one who told me a few years ago, “I gained 100 pounds during the time I worked in Cleveland.”
My favorite comment though was from my friend Pastor Pete, who said. “This is a blessing.”
And it is. Because here’s the thing. If you are looking for the tired cliché swats at organized religion, the smarmy Bill Maher live from the Playboy Club snark bites, the tortured prose of Christopher Hitchens trying to say something, you won’t find it here.
I understand all the harm that has been done in the name of religion. I understand not wanting to believe in something you can’t see. I have met, at least by email, Human Resources of the United Church of Christ. A demomination known for being reluctant to say the name “Jesus” in services. I’m not even in the income bracket of the people who go to the church I used to attend. I don’t fit in there anymore.
So I get it.
But I also get that feeling in my feet of the worn floorboards in the church I now miss, the creaking ancient echoes of the Christian story. Being part of something that’s bigger than me. A community that takes care of each other. I get that.
That’s what home means to me.
That is my walk down Grace Street in Chicago. In the words of the Psalm:
You have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. Psalm 63
What song comes to mind first? It’s called “Walking in Memphis. By a guy named Mark Cohn.
I love the part of the song’s story when she says to him, “Son, are you a Christian.” And he answers.
The story had a state governor, an archbishop, a young girl and a lesson in power.
A story that seemed to fit the cruel, grey November skies. As if the Governor of Illinois and the Archbishop of Chicago were competing banks of storm clouds. Not just two guys arguing over a young girl who was raped.
And if the two men, the Governor and the Archbishop, perhaps fancied themselves storm clouds, perhaps the young victim was like that feeling a person gets just before the rain.
What the two men were arguing about was that the Governor wanted to give the woman an award for advocating for the rights of women, and especially rape victims. And the Archbishop’s point was that “baby killers” and the organizations they represent must not be honored.
The woman’s name was Jennie Goodman. That we even know her name is the lesson in power. Course, I didn’t know that. Had no idea. Not till Pastor Pete helped me figure it out. But that comes later.
The attack happened a long time ago. She was 18.
Jennie Goodman came from the green lawn suburbs of Chicago. Quiet, leafy streets where stuff like this just did not happen.
Not until l that summer morning in 1991 when the football player bad boy she knew from school stopped by her house just as she had gotten up. Looking at her kind of funny. Asking, “Is there someplace we could go where your mother wouldn’t hear us?”
And because this was the suburbs, there was a small shed out back of the house. Jennie Goodman said “Sure.” She figured maybe they’d make out. It would be exciting. He was a football player.
What happened in the shed. The rape. The violation beyond words. It of course changed her life.
And if I think about this too much . . . .I am outraged beyond words. The violation of the most vulnerable being a violation of us all. Ripping us all apart at the very place where we all connect.
In my imagination, I am gripping an oily, cold metal AK-47. They are not that hard to get here in Chicago. I can tell you the corner where they are sold. And if I would have been there, if Jennie Goodman just happened to be my sister, my friend, I would use the gun.
Which is why I thought I better go see Pastor Pete.
Pastor Pete didn’t have a church at the moment. But he was working. When you are called, like Pastor Pete, you’re always working. So I knew if I found him we could talk. Pastor Pete wasn’t a company man.
He was not a passive aggressive, pandering purveyor of the cloth. A preacher who put up signs of the side of the church that said things like: “God loves you. Whether you know it or not.”
He might marvel at how many things were wrong with that statement. But he would never say it.
Pastor Pete. Grey haired ponytail. Five foot 4. A whirling bundle of electricity with a current of kindness when he preached. As if the comedian Sam Kinnison has somehow come alive in Wisconsin.
Pastor Pete would help. Who knows? He might even help me pull the trigger when I told him about Jennie Goodman. You gotta love a Pastor who knew when to say “Fuck it.”
But I hoped he wouldn’t. I hoped he would help me control how much I wanted to make that guy pay for what he did to Jennie Goodman.
Pastor Pete and I met at Hot Doug’s. Best hot dogs in Chicago. When I walked in, he was ordering everything with an extra side of cheese.
I got right down to it.
“Why does a good God let this happen! This women has been raped. Now she’s a political football between the Governor and the catholic church. That simply isn’t fair! And I can’t help thinking, Pastor Pete, ‘Why God why?”
Pastor Pete took a long low bite of his cheese dog. Scooped up his cheese fries. And gave me this answer.
“Roger? I don’t know.”
“You don’t know! But you’re a Pastor! Why can’t you tell me WHY??”
“Because that’s not the question.”
“What do you mean it’s not the question?
“If I could answer “Why God why?” than I’d be. . . .”
“Oh, Wait. I get it. How do you answer “Why?” without you being God too?”
“Yep” He nodded, chewing on the cheese covered corn dog he had gotten on the side. “Why God why?” is an unanswerable question.” At least for those of us who are not God.
“OK. That’s nice. But I still don’t have an answer to why this woman was raped and now 20 years later is still paying for it. This time by being a political football”
“Maybe you need a different question.”
“Huh?”
“How about this question. ‘Where God, where?’
“What does that mean?”
“It means, ‘Where is God in all of this horror show?’”
“ I sure don’t see much of God in all of this.”
“Well,” he took a sip of his coke, “You see the headlines yesterday. Jennie Goodman saying to the Catholic hierarchy, “How dare you?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Well, what was different about Jennie Goodman’s story?”
“That she came forward? Pastor, you know how hard that is. You know that it’s a set up for a second round of attacks. She’s a rape counselor. I bet she’d never tell a victim that coming forward was her best option.’
“Probably not. But I’m not talking about advice. I’m talking about the raw courage it took to put yourself out there. I’m talking about why she’s getting that award in the first place. For what her coming forward says to the countless unnamed victims, also brutalized, for the message that maybe taking back your power is possible. For communicating by what she does that maybe there is hope.
That message. Right there. The one you can’t see. The one you’ll never know till you look for in. Wrapped in pain. Like a shining light. A light. One that says maybe there is hope.”
“And that’s where God is?”
“Could be. Of course figuring that out is up to you. Hope is awfully hard to see.”
“Mmm”
“And then, “ the Pastor finished off the last of his cheese fries, “there’s also the other part.”
“Which part is that, Pastor Pete?”
“The part where when she came out, gave her name, told her story, then the catholic hierarchy could no longer use her as a football to pummel the governor. The church backed down. Said that had they known she was a rape victim, they would have found some other way to beat on the governor.”
“So it was all right to criticize the governor for giving an award to a woman who advocated for a women’s right to control their own body. But when the woman was a rape victim. . .then never mind. They were sorry?”
“Yep,” said Pastor Pete.
“That must have had some PR flack working overtime.”
“Hah!” laughed Pastor Pete. “Takes an awful lot of power to make the church back down. But that woman did it. She did it. I remember when I used to think that ‘turning the other cheek’ was a passive act. She sure showed how wrong THAT thought was.”
“Interesting thought.” I said. ‘Turning the other cheek doesn’t have to be passive act.’ “Well there was nothing passive about Jennie Goodman.”
“Yep” said Pastor Pete. “She’s not about passive. She is all about power.”
“She is all about power. She is no one’s victim anymore.”
“Yep.” Said Pastor Pete. “She took back the power. God bless her.”
