Gun Owners Claim the Holocaust

Apr 222011
 

The faded blue numbers on her Grandmother’s forearm. That’s what she’d see. Then she’d smell the bread.

The weeks of endless grey rain that often came just before Easter always brought back the fresh baked bread smells as her Grandmother pulled the pans out of the oven. The faded blue numbers on her Grandmother’s forearm guiding the golden warm bread to the kitchen counter. Closing the oven door, as if she had conquered something unspeakable, her Grandmother would let out a breath and say, “Well, that work is done.”

Julia would be sitting at the worn maple kitchen table. As a girl, all bony knees and elbows. Drawing pictures on scraps of paper her Grandmother would deliver from nowhere. Then, years later, as a young woman writing poems in a spiral notebook her Grandmother had given her, ‘just because.’

“Why do you have the blue numbers, Grandma?” Julia tossed her long black hair back and asked first when she was eight years old. The question came on a Good Friday. On a day when the city was blanketed by a sad, lonely grey rain that made you think that there must be parties going on in other places. Parties that would never, ever, ever, include you.

“The numbers help us remember, liebchen,” the Grandmother said.
“Remember what?”

“Remember so many stories, that none of us on our own has the words for them.”

“Good stories?”

“Well darling child, why don’t you tell me a good story and we’ll find out?”

And Julia would launch into an account of something that happened at school that day. A complicated transaction of trading lunches that ended up with her getting 3 chocolate cupcakes.

As the years past, Julia would return to her question. “Why do you have the blue numbers Grandma?” Each time, the river of their ongoing conversation in the kitchen would shift more and more to her Grandmother’s stories. And Julia would listen.

Names like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Cousins lost. Those who made it out. Stories, her Grandmother explained, where the words still struggled even after all these years, even through the generations, the words still struggled to match the horror.

“That is why,” her Grandmother would tell her, gently, with the bread buttered, still warm from the oven, “That is why we don’t forget. That is why we keep trying. Why we keep looking for hope. And most of all child, why we do our best to tell the true stories.”

Julia didn’t get the part about true stories for a long time. Making up stories was much more fun. And one day, because she had been taught to be direct, she told her Grandmother, “I like making up stories! Can’t I do that?”

And her Grandmother did something she couldn’t ever remember her doing. She stopped moving. Stopped working. Came over to the table and sat down next to her Granddaughter.

“Julia. Of course you can make up stories. There can be just as much truth, more truth, in made up stories than there is if you were to look out the window right now and tell me about the rain.”

“Then how will I know I’m doing this right?”

“Here’s how you’ll know. You’ll make sure your words never loose their meaning. You’ll make sure that when you compare one thing to another, that the comparison is true! Child, let me say that again, cause it’s so very important, words must have meaning. Hold on to that meaning with your very life breath. And when comparisons are made that are not true, not real, then battle that back for all you are worth. Words must have meaning!”

The old woman with the kind eyes laced with an unfathomable sorrow got up from the table, looked out the window at the rain, and walked over to the sink to start scrubbing out the bread pans.

Julia’s Grandmother never got to meet Paul. So just before the wedding, Julia took him to the grave. A sweeping green hill in a light rain northwest of Chicago.

As they knelt down before the stone, Julia made the introductions. “Grandma, this is Paul. I wish he could have known what it was like to sit in your kitchen when you baked bread. I wish you two could have known each other. But this will have to do.”

After some silence the young couple walked back to the car and circled out through the drizzle to the entrance of the cemetery. Julia saw a newspaper machine and said, “Stop for a second, I want a newspaper.” Looking for stories to distract. Looking to bring her mind back to the world from the fields of distant sorrow, she knew the paper would help.

She ran out and put the money in the slot and then back to the warmth of the car. The young couple didn’t speak as he drove south to the rhythm of their windshield wipers. Julia paging through the paper.

It was Good Friday.

“Some days,” Paul said out of nowhere, “Some days I think are just supposed to be sad.”

“Mmm,” said his soon to be wife. And as she said that, her eyes fell on a story in that paper.

The group” Guns For Life” has compared the plight of gun owners who do not want their names to be made public, with victims of the holocaust. State Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the Illinois State Police are calling for the names of gun owners to be public. The headline, “Madigan’s List.” A play on the book and movie “Schindler’s List.”

Julia started reading the article to Paul as he drove. And he kept interrupting. “Wait. That doesn’t make sense. That can’t be true. So what they are saying is that keeping gun owners names private deserves to be compared to the holocaust?”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

“Jesus.” Paul said. “I know it’s 10 in the morning. But maybe we should find a bar.’

Julia smiled.

“Later,” she said. “I gotta write a story.”

Tina Fey’s Gyros Joint

Apr 132011
 

You’re in “The Athenian Room.” In Chicago. It’s a few years back. Tina Fey is about to arrive and order the Greek chicken. And if you’re not careful, you’ll miss her. Should that happen, you might also miss a glimpse into improvisation for the theater, a force in American popular culture that winds it’s way off of midnight stages populated only with two chairs, past Second City alumni lists, Saturday Night Live reruns, memories of John Belushi and settles in the corners of everyday lives. Far from show business. Maybe even saving people. Changing people.

You think, this sure changed me.

Grab a small table next to the exposed brick wall, underneath the sunlight blue and white hand painted mural of a Greek fishing village.

Your eyes are drawn out the front window to the people strolling through the soft twilight of Webster Avenue on a warm summer night. Imagining the stories of each of them.

Alex looks out on the room. Gives you a nod and you nod back. You wave off the menu. Alex raises his eyebrows. You nod again and Alex leans over the front counter to tell the grill man you’ll have the gyros, fries and coke.

You’ve been here since the early years. When there was no grey in Alex’s beard. And as the sun would rise over the lake offering another summer day chance, you’d get off the shuttle bus on Halsted Street, grab a newspaper from a machine, find your coffee poured before you sat down and Alex would make the 2 eggs, toast and bacon breakfast for $1.99.

Lost in thoughts of those days of a brighter sunlight pouring through the third floor window of your tiny apartment in the yellow brick building, drinking in Saul Bellow and Algren as if they both rode in on the sunlight of the morning. So you don’t even notice the 3 people at the round table behind you, when they came in, what they looked like, you don’t notice anything until they stop talking.

That’s when you notice the intensity of the silence. You drop a napkin, shoot a look, and framed at the table, two young women and a man, are having a conversation, bubbling over with laughter, but then they all three do something remarkable. They all listen. Listen to each other as if listening was a contact sport. That silence you hear is the echo of someone listening. Listening like it was a thing you could put on the table right next to the Greek fries smothered in the juices of the gyros and flavored with a touch of vinegar.

Listening like no one else listens is the first key to improvisation.

You hear one of the women called Tina. But you can’t really get a sense of who these three are. So you shift your chair. And a second glance shows something else at the foundation of improvisation for the theater. There are no stars. Not here. Not now. Learning the craft demands that there be no stars. Because everything you do depends on someone else. The three fellow diners conversationally bounce off each other like three silver pinballs. But no one is a star.

You look again and you swear that one of the women has noticed you noticing. And given you ‘a look’ back! You put it down to wishful thinking on your part. But when she looked, you saw in her eyes a unique kind of intelligent awareness. Intelligence that comes from not being scared.

Their conversation deepens. You listen harder. And you start hearing names rarely, if ever tossed into the spotlights of Saturday Night Live.

You hear the name Neva Boyd. A woman born in 1876. Friend of the pioneers of social service Julia Lathrop and Jane Addams. Neva Boyd, who figured out that encouraging children to play games with each other made for deeper, richer lives.

You imagine what it would be like to live in a time when people didn’t know that. Oh maybe they knew it about their own kids. Neighbor’s kids.

But not about the children of the immigrant, the children of the vulnerable.

The laughter at the table next to you stops for a moment as the food comes and you hear the gasps of awe. Years from the night you sat at that table, you’d co-author a book with a name author on customer service. A book that was shelved and never published for one that became a New York Times best seller. Maybe a good business decision? Not so good for you. Good thing you knew how to improvise with what came next.

But as you listen to the three at the next table, no one is talking about “me.” You hear the name Viola Spolin. Author of “Improvisation for the Theater.” She took Neva’s work to the next level. Her son Paul Sills pushed the work forward.

The Compass Players, a University of Chicago troupe that evolved into The Second City, put the work on stage. The names are flowing, way too many to mention in anything less than book length form, and it becomes clear that the third key to improvisation for the theater is the deep history of this cultural force. First listening, then absence of stars, then history.

Tina Fey, bubbling up with unquestioned inborn talent, has a river of history behind her. Traced all the way back to a woman born in 1876.

The sun is starting to go down on Webster Avenue. The people at the next table are done. And Alex looks over at you with a glance that says, “Hey! I need the table.”

So you’re all back out on streets of a city summer night.

Just a few blocks north on Lincoln Avenue is The Players Workshop. A place for those not destined for the main stage of Second City on Wells Street. At Players Workshop, you can pay to learn the craft of improvisation for the theater.

That’s what you do. 2 years of classes. Single best training in anything you’ve ever had. Not a lot of days go by without using what you leaned.

Like for example. A couple days ago on the first 80-degree day of spring. A large square table full of well meaning people lecturing to three 13 year old boys on what it means to be part of a church, while the summer winds of distant lands came blowing in the window.

So as the boys bravely fought to keep their “I’m paying attention” faces in place, you stop the drill of one way communication and say, “OK boys, now when each of us big kids is done talking, and we will hurry our talking along, then you—as a team, because church, (like improvisation), is all about being a team, you together are going to repeat back one thing that each of us said.”

That’s improv. The kind that helps save. Even if it’s just for a moment.

Next night eating Chicago’s best chicken wings, burgers, a salad and killer mozzarella sticks in an almost empty restaurant, the welcome of the place being a lot like the way Alex does in at the Athenian Room. And your 17-year-old niece suddenly jumps up next to the table, and shouts out, “A rapper reading the labels on a can of corn, pushing a shopping cart in a supermarket!”

And out of nothing she creates that scene. “Sarah Palin reading labels!” Donald Trump being disgusted at how much stuff costs!”

Bam, Bam, Bam, she nails each scene. It lasts about 20 seconds.

The laughter fills the room.

While somewhere Neva Boyd, Viola Spolin, Del Close, Paul Sills, Tina Fey and all of those who arrived at being stars by learning a craft based on the fact that there are no stars, just sit back and smile.

Their work goes on.

Simple Gifts in Hard Times

Apr 082011
 


That black plumed Old Coot paddling the North Branch of the Chicago River in the rain is her best friend at work.

He swims among and yet separate from the other waterfowl patrolling the river. He’s hard to see. Black feathers merging with the dark waters. Dodging the tour boats. Riding the waves. Looking for food. Keeping a distance from the other birds. Most often he’s unseen.

But everyday. Wednesday through Sunday. She walks to the water alone. Stands at the fence. The exact same spot. And from the unseen depths of the river comes the Old Coot. Pulling away from the other birds, he paddles to the edge of the water, right below where she stands, and he stops. As near to her as he can possibly be. As if he could see her smile. As if he’s always known her smile. Her hands on the fence. Both of them still. She whispers, “Hello Old Coot.” And neither of them needs to say anything more.

She is one of hundreds. In what used to be a cavernous empty warehouse full of electrical cable garbage and broken dreams of better days. Right between the River and one of the very last patches of housing projects that feel like a prison camp.

Now that old catalogue warehouse is reborn. Gleaming and shiny, managed brilliantly, bursting with the invisible pulsating rhythms of being Chicago’s Technology Hub. The streaming crowds of texting madly workers pouring in every morning, the lights burning brightly deep into the night. Way past the time when the river goes dark.

She is paid to talk on the phone and answer emails according to a script. Above all to do it quickly. Just go fast.

All day each day, she almost never speaks to any of the hundreds around her. All of them in headphones. Multi tasking. Looking at their computer screens. When there is some tiny almost invisible shred of an exchange, she always mentions it at home that night. “Ashley said hello to me! Rick asked me how my weekend was!”

So she goes to see that Old Coot. And they are silent. But it’s a different kind of silent.

A silence born of her real job, which the Old Coot and the poet Mary Oliver know is ‘loving the world.’

So when she approaches the shore, The Old Coot breaks from the pack and comes to swim by her. She doesn’t feed him. She just smiles.

Her talent. The way she was born. The stuff no one taught her. It’s a talent called Restorative. The talent is described like this:

“What is certain is that you enjoy bringing things back to life. It is a wonderful feeling to find underlying factors and restore something to its true glory. Intuitively you know that without your work, this thing—this machine, this person, this technique, this company, this living being, might have ceased to exist. You fixed it, resuscitated it, rekindled its vitality. You saved it.”

Back in the old warehouse, her RESTORITIVE talent is bottled up, never used. As if it’s inside another container of hand sanitizer. One with no pump on top.

So inside the warehouse she sits and simply tries to go faster. Something she is simply hard wired not to do. Something that will never happen.

Nothing wrong with going faster.

But, rekindling a life force isn’t measured with a stopwatch.

When the hours are over, she goes home. Opening the front door of her house to applause as she once again starts her real job of loving the world.

Tomorrow at lunch she’ll go visit that Old Coot.

Her best friend at work.

Steve Goodman’s Cubs

Apr 012011
 

‘Do they still play the blues in Chicago?’

He sings that line. Just that one line. And the musical progression. The sound sums up the place.

Algren and James T. Farrell, and Bellow and Royko. They all wrote stories and books that dazzled in the billion different ways they summed up the place. Studs asked the right questions, listened harder than anyone and then edited what other people said and summed up the place.

Steve Goodman showed he could distill the place in that one musical phrase. Then with the song he told a story about how baseball goes way beyond a game or even a metaphor and gets woven into the very fabric of not just a person’s life, but the life of a place.

First pitch is in 10 minutes. My back window is open. There is a white sky and a springtime drizzle. The helicopters are circling above Wrigley Field. On the diamond, I see on TV with the sound turned down, they are honoring Ron Santo.

One more time they play Goodman’s song.

And the faint sounds of the crowd comes drifting in my back window in wistful waves of memories spiced in blue. The season starts while I’m listening to Steve Goodman sing one more time.

‘Do they still play the blues in Chicago?’

Play Ball!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xBxZGQ1dJk]

Baseball for Everyone!

Mar 312011
 

Feel that faint summer breeze? That’s baseball. And you don’t even have to like the game to feel that breeze. Baseball is back.

Chester the Peanut Guy singing “Cheaper on the outside. Get ‘um here now” is standing at the corner of Clark and Waveland in Chicago like the center of a compass that spans this whole wavering American land from the sandlot scratch game popping up on the tip of Maine to Willie McCovey Cove—baseball on the water even—in the sparkling San Francisco breeze.

Baseball is back. And it sweeps up every major, minor, playground city back alley smack of the ball that arcs screaming across the summer sky. Baseball is back and anyone can play.

It slows you down. Like a long ago remembered summer evening as the sun streaked sky held only promises of tomorrow. And someone started telling a story.

It reminds you where you came from. “Chester,” I say to the peanut guy. “What kind of year we gonna have?”

“We’ll find out come August,” he says with a shrug.

It gives you an order to your life. Everything is counted. Everything.

“Why, I might be mistaken,” says the radio color announcer, “but I believe that is sixteen times the pitcher has scratched his nose!” Last time we had that many scratches was a 1952 game in the Polo Grounds when. . .”

Baseball is back. And so is your history.

There were only about 5,000 fans in the stadium. Someday, there will be a million who claim they were here. But we saw it. We saw Kerry Wood mow down the mighty Houston Astros. A pitching performance of a lifetime. Baseball is back.

And the connections to the rest of the world somehow seem fresher. Renewed.

You’re sitting in the upper deck. Scanning the rooftops that circle Wrigley Field in Chicago. And you see something you’ve never seen before.

“Larry,” you say to your pal. “There are guys with guns on the rooftops!”

And you hear the crowd rumble, look over up behind home plate where the announcers and the press sit, and you see the silver grey hair. The wave. You can see the smile. “Hey that’s President Clinton!”

And just then. Just at that very second. Sammy Sosa smacks a home run. The white ball soaring up into the blue summer sky, tracing a shimmering arc of hope over the fence bouncing on to Waveland Avenue rolling towards the old red brick firehouse, while the scampering hordes of generations of children chase that little white ball,

Baseball is back.

Bringing all the baggage that has plagued the game since before the very first town father of Cooperstown New York said out loud, “Hey here’s an idea. Let’s pretend the game started here. We’ll build a museum. People will shell out cash by the bucketful. We will make a bundle!” The charlatan and the assorted devils of greed have always been there. Watching from the arid deserts of sin, ready to pounce. The masters of using other people’s money to make more for themselves. The cash fueled obstacles that keep more and more people every year of even having the dream that someday they’d walk inside a major league park. Those cash fueled Temples of exclusion screaming to the kid whose Dad works two jobs so they’ve never really had that game of catch, screaming to that kid, “Child, you don’t belong here.” All of that is clear and true as the summer sun.

Yet through all that, the little girl walks around back of her building tossing a ball up in the air and catching it. Tossing it higher and higher. And then one day her big brother says to her, “Hey our right fielder has a doctors appointment. Why don’t you come down to the park with us?”

And her little heart sings.

The real giants of the game, people like Bill Veeck, sitting around those endless heavenly summer fields of fun telling stories, they got their eyes on that little girl. Looking after her. And you hear the laughter and the singing of all the voices of the game and despite all baseball’s baggage, somewhere there is a minor league park that a kid of 8 or 88 has just walked into and the first sight of the green fields of summer make that kids eyes go wide in complete and total amazement.

Baseball is back. And the real giants of the game, now joined by Ron Santo. Your own hero. Gone now. You try and stretch your mind to imagine a season of the game without him. Because you’ve never known a season like that.

So you close your eyes. And you can see him. Still watching the game. His seats just a little bit further away then before. They start the interview. “Ronnie, what kind of year do you think we’re gonna have?”

He answers, “Well, Pat. I think our prospects look real good this year. If we could get one more pitcher. Maybe a left hander. Bring in a big stick. Get some speed. I think we got a shot.”

The man is in heaven. And he’s predicting a Cubs Championship. Just like he’s always done! Doesn’t he know what will happen???

Then you realize that perhaps he didn’t really leave. Oh perhaps he was quiet for the winter. Played some golf in Arizona. But the start of the season brought him back.

The start of the season brings everything back.

Chicago’s Bonnie Hunt once said that “Wrigley Field is the most romantic place on earth.”

When did she say that? Was around the time your wife started quoting baseball stats to you? When she started talking strategy? When, as your jaw hit the floor, she whipped off an explanation of the infield fly rule? Is that when?

Chester the Peanut guy stands in front of Bernie’s bar. The old men and women smile at all the memories, the young folks search, their eyes playing it cool, keeping all that wonder in check and the children catch that summer breeze first.

“Get your peanuts here!” Chester sings.

And the warm enveloping summer winds of baseball swoop in like the streaming crowds walking down Waveland Avenue, including all who even thought about running it out between home plate and first base, all who ever tossed a ball in the air, listened to a late night story from an Uncle or a Grandpa or a Grandma. Including all who ever yearned with all their heart for a hero, for time to slow down, for the green fields of summer to come alive again.

Baseball is back.

Like a trip to the promised land.

Billboard of Shame

Mar 292011
 

She’ll walk past this billboard everyday. Telling her she’s worthless. That she made the wrong decision

Call her LaShonda. She’s 21. Everyday she travels to her downtown retail job from her small apartment near the 5800 block of South State Street in Chicago where they will put this billboard. The bus and the el trains are always crowded. On some days it’s an hour trip each way. She makes $8.00 per hour.

There’s a junkyard on the block where they’ll put this billboard. Bare trees on a hardscrabble city street in a neighborhood where 40% of the people are under 25. Most of the people living in the area are children, age four to nine. Most of the 41,000 people who live in the area have an income of under $10,000 per year.

LaShonda had the abortion when she was 19. She went alone. And when she came home, walking past the lot where the billboard will be, she was alone. She turned on the TV, put the water on for some tea, her retail job is in a tea store, and sat down in her chair. No one heard her cry.

The billboard is scheduled to go up in the next few weeks. After being taken down in New York City, Chicago now gets to see these billboards. 30 of them. Just like the one LaShonda will walk by every day.

The political wars go on. The attack on Planned Parenthood. The lobbying for government control of life’s most intimate decisions. The twisted use of the President’s image.

While a shoulder slumping, vacant eyed young woman will soon walk past a billboard twice a day that reminds her that she’s worthless. That she made the wrong decision.

She doesn’t think too much about the baby. The one that might have been. At least that’s what she’d say if you asked.

And she doesn’t think much about the future.

Sometimes on the el train when she can get a seat, she’ll take out her pencil and start to draw. Forests and mountains and pencil grey sun filled skies of hope. She can see the color in her grey sketches. If there was anyone to tell her–here—take this paintbrush–perhaps she could change the world with her art.

She makes stories with her sketches. She has something in her mind that makes her reverse the letters when she reads. So she doesn’t read much. But she loves to hear the stories. And she loves to sketch. Most of them she just throws away when the train gets downtown. No place to keep them while she works.

So there will be no sketches in her hands when she walks past the billboard.

Maybe in awhile, she’ll forget the billboard is even there.

As if there was a way her eyes could become even more empty and cold.

On a bitter cold street with a billboard looking down on her.

A young woman with her head down. Trying to get home.

Leaving the U.S. Forever

Mar 182011
 

Tomorrow he’ll leave the United States of America for good, and I can’t think of a single reason to tell him why that’s a bad idea.

I’ve known him all my life. He’s family. Not close. But we’re related. I ever saw him all that much. But the chances are now that I’ll never see him again.

I don’t get to Thailand much.

He’s career military. Navy. Retired now. An MP. Faced down bad guys with guns everywhere from the steaming jungles of Columbia to the harbors of Indonesia.

If it’s a place on earth, he’s been there. So empty platitudes of patriotism don’t mean much to him. He’s served.

With what’s left of his GI Bill he’s going to finish his teaching degree in Thailand and teach English as a second language. Because here in the United States, there are no jobs. Not really. Not for him. In the blood lust frenzy to cut government funding these past six months and control that deficit that’s been tossed over the vulnerable and the weary like a ripped, scraggly blanket that will never keep out the cold; there have been zero job creation bills passed by the U.S. Congress. So there are no jobs. Especially if you’re over 50. And being a veteran doesn’t really make a difference in daily living. A parade and a politician’s speech do not pay a mortgage. Nor does the tiny stipend he gets.

Private industry? The world does not need too many more “Security Consultants.” Especially ones who are weary of the guns and the death. There is no job for him here.

So he’s leaving.

A lot of us talk about leaving. “If this person wins the election, if they yank away collective bargaining, if corporate profits get any higher, if I can’t afford to go to the doctor—there are millions of solid, individual good reasons to leave. Lots of us talk about it.

He’s doing it.

It’s been four years now since he scattered his Mom’s ashes off the windy, sun struck coast of San Diego. Her Irish heritage taken by the wind. And his Irish, American Indian Dad, his crinkly smiling eyes and movie star good looks has been gone for years. Finally, his brother. His brother battled hard through seven years with the cancer. But then his time came too.

There is a woman in Thailand. There has never been a shortage of women in his life. This one is a farmer. But she’s not the reason he’s leaving. He’s learned too much to make her the reason. They will live on the ocean. Live on almost nothing. Because that’s all they need.

There is a daughter. A sparkling, smiling young lady of intelligence brought up by her mother in Europe and now almost ready to go out on her own. Maybe some day she’ll come see the relatives she has in Chicago. Maybe she’ll go see her Dad in Thailand some day.

So he’s leaving. He’s thought it through hard.

And for the life of me, I can’t come up with one good reason why he’s wrong.

So I am left with an even larger, weary sadness. Of just what that means.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0kAZJy_3o]

What If Japan Was My Problem?

Mar 182011
 

“John, I just can’t handle this Japan thing anymore.

Apocalypse right now. Does radiation smell?”

It was Crazy Mike. My Cousin from Chicago. I knew I shouldn’t have picked up the phone. But he’s family. I could listen to him with the sound down on the TV. The Marquette game was on. Janet was off doing something on the Internet. The beer was cold. He is family.

“Yeah, I hear you Mike. They got it rough. I never seen anything like that.”

“John, the pictures of the old people standing in perfect lines trudging up the steps to escape the water. Nobody pushing, screaming, looting. Jesus John. Those people are just. . .well hell. I don’t know how to say it. You got big time news people talking over there. Their voices cracking. They don’t know how to describe this.”

“Yeah,” I said as a point guard hit a three from half court. “It’s rough. And you got to hand it to them. Gotta respect those people. They know how to handle this kind of thing.”

“John, I don’t know if there’s ever been this kind of thing. I wonder if we gotta start thinking about this differently.”

“Mike, this was a natural disaster. I didn’t make the earth move and the big waves come. I already sent a check to the Red Cross. It wasn’t much. But I don’t have much.”

“No, no no. I’m not talking about money. I got less of that than you do. In fact I don’t even know too many people that have much of that anymore. I’m talking about something different. Can I explain?”

There was a commercial on, so I said, “Sure.”

“OK. Here it is. I’m talking about changing the whole way we think about this.”

“Mike, did you start one of those on-line philosophy classes again?”

“No. Can’t afford um. What I’m talking about is thinking, ‘What if this wasn’t just a Japanese problem? What if this was our problem too?’

“Mike. I know you’re a sensitive guy and all that. And that’s a nice thought. But you’re on the northside of Chicago. I’m in Cedarburg. Just north of Milwaukee. Neither of us is north of Tokyo. We can feel for them. Or we can pray for them. But we can’t be them.”

“No wait. Let me finish. We can’t be them. That’s not what I’m saying. Listen, you know how everyone has their own story? Every single person is different in some way or another? Right?”

The game was back on. I knew I wasn’t being hit up for money. So I settled in. “Yeah. I guess”

“Well, what if there is a collective story as well? One we all share. A common story.”

“Like communism or something? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“Are you sure you’re a real history teacher,?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. Ok. So there’s a collective story. I can see that”

“Are you sure? I don’t think most people would buy it. Not really.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Well, people who don’t get that there could be something bigger than themselves. I’m not criticizing. I’m just trying to describe what I see. When you start talking about something bigger than the self, its a pretty quick jump into religion. And I see people carrying around their hatred of religion like a badge.

All those who were abused by religion, those who are more comfortable with science as an explanation because it can, maybe someday if we get good at it, leave nothing to the imagination. Those who don’t believe there ever could be a higher power.

Those who are so sure of what they believe that it makes your teeth hurt? Ever have a conversation with someone who was positive about NOT believing anything? I bet they’d think that a collective story was a boatload of crap. Because to have a collective story, there’s got yo be forces larger than the self. Forces we don’t totally understand. And there are a lot of people who do not like that kind of thinking.”

“So you’re telling me I should go to church? Mike, you didn’t join a cult or something did you?

“No, it has nothing to do with church. Especially if your faith is one which includes doubt as an essential element.”

“What does that mean?”

It means you don’t pretend you know everything. Or that what you believe or don’t believe is any better than anyone else. Guy named Paul Tillich. But that’s not important now. What’s important is that you believe there is something larger than you.”

“Something larger than you?”

“Yeah. It’s a hard thing for most of us to get. Especially if we try and do it alone. I know I couldn’t understand it alone. Not that I’m an expert.

But I think it comes down to thinking that I am not the center of the universe.

That there is one collective beating heart.

Because if that were true, if there really was one story, one heart that included all of us, then it would mean that we are all in this together.”

“OK. Lets say I buy this. I mean you know how long it’s been since I been to church.”

“Yeah, you tell me on a pretty regular basis. Often my teeth hurt when you do. But like I said, it’s only about church if you choose it to be about church.”

“Ok, so if I buy this, this idea that there is a collective story. A larger story that we all play a part in—what do I have to do?”

“Well I . . .oh wait. This is interesting. The news just came on.”

“You’re watching TV too?””

“Yeah. And listen to this story. The radiation alarms in the airports in Seattle, Dallas and Chicago just started going off today as passengers got off the planes from Japan.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, but the government said don’t worry. It’s not the people. It’s the luggage. The luggage has the radiation contamination. It’s coming from medical equipment. So no one has to worry. Kind of reminds me of how no one was supposed to worry about Hitler before World War Two.”

“Oh that’s good. I feel much better now.”

“Yeah.”

So Mike what is it you were saying? Sum it up for me buddy. What’s your point? How are we supposed to start thinking about this differently?”

“It’s this. What if there was a collective heart? It included all of us.

What if this wasn’t their problem?

What if it was our problem?

What would we do differently?”

Who Lost In Wisconsin?

Mar 142011
 

“Did we lose Wisconsin? Of course we did. I’ve been a high school teacher in the Wisconsin Public Schools for 25 years. Graduated from Beloit College. B.A. in Psychology. Masters in Teaching. I started the year Liz was born. She was our first. Molly came next.

That Masters program is gone now. Just like my union bargaining rights. I used to have a union. Now I don’t. It’s really pretty simple. We lost.

I’m not saying I liked the union. No one likes writing that check for the dues every month and then hearing the stories of where that money goes. Union treasurer caught with his hand in the cookie jar of embezzled funds.

But I don’t like taking out the garbage after dinner in the winter either. I’d much rather go sit in my chair and watch basketball and have one more beer while Liz and Molly fade into their rooms and twitter or Facebook or whatever it is they do and my wife Janet talks to her sister on the phone. There’s a lot of things I don’t like. I still haven’t found an institution that’s perfect. I teach American history to high school kids, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss the news on any perfect institution that came before me. If I had missed one, my kids would have clued me in. Twittered me or something. Just because some of the people who run the union are idiots, that doesn’t I would stop writing that check to the union. I go to church. And a lot of people who work there are idiots too.

I wrote the check to keep the foot of guys like Scott Walker off my throat.

Now there’s no one to help me do that.

Am I mad? I don’t get mad anymore. I’m tired. And as long as it’s just you and me talking? I’m scared.

Janet gets mad enough for both of us. Once, true story, I had to pull her back from a biker in a roadhouse just outside of Whitewater. She used to dance. And there was a time when she could be standing right in front of you and connect the heel of her foot to your chin, before you could even take a breath. And that was before she took kickboxing.

Even now. She’s told me about something she calls “muscle memory.” Like the kick is still there inside. Ready for when she really needs it.

So this guy with the leather Harley vest, stringy hair, at least 260, maybe 280 pounds, arms like tree trunks, thought he should get his beers before Janet, who was first. There was almost real trouble. Janet might have killed the guy.

I was sitting with my back to the whole thing, there was a Brewers game on, and I hear the voices rising. I turn and see her right leg starting to tense, so I am there, right then, between her and mister seriously bad breath and all the years of staring down kids, well, it somehow worked. Because the guy could have done me serious damage.

I get a little mad when they started funding the PR campaign saying we teachers were the money grubbing pigs.

At first it made me laugh. When I first started, I remember the guy I student taught for. He says to me, “Kid, if you want to make some money in this job, I got two words for you. ‘Drivers Education.” That’s where the money is. Guys name, and I’m serious, was Mr. Fly.

No one teaches for the money.

And I did teach drivers ed. In addition to my regular load. During the eighties. When things got tough for awhile. Our girls were growing up. Janet sold real estate. That helped a lot. And it kept her schedule flexible for her real job—chauffer to the girls. But we did need the money.

And I’ve always coached baseball. Long as no one’s gonna read this, and I can be frank? I’ll tell you. Sometimes I forget that I even get paid for coaching baseball.

So when I heard about all this lazy, dumb teacher stuff, I started to get a little mad. Till I remembered something my Cousin Mike from Chicago told me. I call him ‘My Cousin Vinnie’ for a lotta reasons. But his name is Mike. And I remember the time Mike said to me, “Hey. Don’t get mad. Get even.” He told me he never bought that line himself. But he thought I’d like it. And I did.

Mike’s an odd duck. He’s been nothing but happy these past 15 years or so. Ever since he hooked up with Marisa. She’s Sicilian. Doesn’t look it though. On the street, in stores, people do double takes because she is a spot on identical twin of Sandra Bullock. The last time I saw her was oh maybe a year ago when they drove up from Chicago to see a Brewers game.

Mostly Mike and I talk on the phone. I don’t know what it is about him. Sometimes I think he’s freaking out of his mind. Sometimes I think he just sees things that other people don’t see. He makes connections between things that don’t seem like they connect at all. Till you think about it for awhile. Which might mean he is crazy.

But in the past few years, as things have gotten so, so tough for so many people, it seems like Mike has eased up inside. And he’s got less money every day. So figure that out.

Like yesterday. He calls and says, “Yo! I figured it out! ”He never says hello. He just starts talking. He also says “What if” a lot.

“What have you figured out Mike?”

“What if the point was to thank God for the things that are hardest for you?”

Now personally that sounded like a load of religious crap. But I let him talk.

“For Marisa and me, it gets tough sometimes. We’re always the ones that are a little bit different. Always standing on the outside. Not quite like everyone else. It’s hard for us to feel be belong. Anywhere we go. But you’ll never believe what happened. Just now. I am driving past I saw this big huge open field smack in the middle of the city. Just now!! And the open field made me feel like I belong!”

“And you are calling at 7:15 on a Saturday morning to tell me this why?”

“It’s incredible. I’m driving down Larabee. And 5 years ago I couldn’t drive through here without getting shot! It’s where Cabrini Green used to be.

I just dropped Marisa off at work, turned around to come home and I’m going through these open fields. There is nothing here. And I’m thinking, “Oh my God. Anything can happen here now. Anything. It was like the open fields became possibilities. And a possibility is something that can include anyone.

“Not following you Mike.”

“Listen Cousin John. This open field here reminded me of you. Of Wisconsin. You think you lost, right?”

“I know I lost.”

“No you didn’t. You won. Because what you got up there my favorite Cheese Head pal, is a big open field. Just like this one. You got people who care. You got people who were fooled, so now they are mad. And you got people waking up to what’s really important. You got people waking up to what it means to take care of each other! You got a possibility. Just like this field!

“ I got no union Mike.”

“John, you got people ready to rebuild one. To stop voting against their own self interest just because some whack job tells them too. You know what you got now John?

“What?

“ Possibilities. Like an open field. You got good things.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQOCdE0E64o]

Bookstore Resurrection

Mar 082011
 


First, there was the faint, distant smell of a chocolate croissant warm from the oven on a busy corner in Chicago. A blue-sky day. Spring maybe just around the corner. And not a bakery in site. Just the smell.

The Borders Book Store. Empty shelves. Selling off fixtures. Wrinkled rows of greeting cards for holidays we never needed. Splattered stacks of books like stains on empty boxes once crammed with our culture, our memories, our dances with dreams.

He smells that chocolate croissant again. Picks up a book laying face down. Back jacket blurbs by Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart and Kinky Friedman. Thinks, “Geez. Whoever wrote this had some high powered friends.”

Opens it up. Starts reading. Laughs out loud 3 times in the first 5 pages. People shoot him looks. Bad form to laugh at funerals. The epigram at the front of the book,

“Boy meets girl. So what?”
-Bertolt Brecht

He turns to the cover. “Millard Fillmore. Mon Amour.” The author: John Blumenthal.

He walks up to the skinny, pierced cashier. A sentry for the funeral party. And as he starts to hand the book over to be scanned, and gets his money out, there is this tiny flicker of motion that runs down his arm and into his hand and he does not want to let the book go. Silly. He hands it over. Gets it back. And as he clutches it tight, walking out of the store, there is something like a binding electrical current between his hand and this bound together sheaf of paper. A connection almost physical. Brought alive through the turning of the pages.

He is an admitted Kinddleholic. Imagines meetings in dank church basements. Faceless people sitting in a circle. “Hi, my name is Roger. I’m a Kindleholic.” The droning chorus from the group.

“Hi Roger.”

The 30 second thrill of a “book” appearing in his hands late at night. A transaction so quick you almost forget money is involved. He likes the Kindle a lot. Like he likes chocolate éclairs. And, as he walks away from the empty shell of what once was Borders, west past what once was Barnes and Noble, the touch of the real book. The feel of the paper. The completeness of that bond begins to take him away.

He again smells that chocolate croissant fresh baked in the wind and he’s no longer on West Diversey in Chicago. He’s in the 5th arrondissment in Paris’s Left Bank.

This time in Paris it’s different. Twice before he’d been to Paris. Both times alone. But this time, this time, he finally got to go back in love.

“This is it!” he tells her. “C’mon! This is Shakespeare and Company! Can you believe it! It’s like it’s always been here. Like it was waiting just so I could show it to you!” It’s a bookstore that never went away!

He reigns in the excitement, careful not to reign it in too much, and start blathering on like a bored history professor. “This isn’t the original one that Sylvia Beach started. The one where Hemingway, Joyce and Ezra Pound and well everyone,” he pauses to make sure he’s not babbling, “the one where they all hung out.

Sylvia Beach. She was from New Jersey you know. Imagine being the person who published Ulysses. Imagine writing Ulysses! Bringing it in here. Little guy from Ireland with really thick glasses. I wonder what he said when he first handed Sylvia Beach the manuscript?’

“This is really hard to read?” she laughs.

“Hah! Could be.”

“So why isn’t this the original store? What happened?”

“Little thing called World War II.”

“That would do it,” she says.

“But then they came back. After the war. Another guy. George Whitman. He opened another English language bookstore in 1951. And when Sylvia Beach died, this store got the name. “Shakespeare and Company.” And a whole new generation of writers. The Beats. Corso, Ginsburg. This is where they hung out. This building? It goes back to the 16th century. It was a monastery.

“That’s perfect,” she said. Then for uncounted hours, the two explored the bookstore that came back. Their journey through the store was like a chance to pick up history and hold it in your hands.

And as the lapping waters against ancient stone riverbanks of the Seine faded, the Paris sky turned to dusk. As wine and a smoky jazz bar up on Montmartre where the saxophone memory tunes of Coleman Hawkins calmed the coming night; Paris faded.

Back on a Chicago street, he passed an empty storefront.

Looked inside and envisioned a new Shakespeare and Company. Stocked the shelves. Swept the floors. Made it into something that would last. Even through World Wars.

An empty storefront in the Chicago spring.

“I wonder if I should talk to my commercial real estate friend,” he thought.
How can anything break the bond with the book? How can that just disappear? Shakespeare and Company came back. So you can come back.

I know retail. I know independent bookstores in general are hurting. I know starting up an independent bookstore now would be crazy on about 15 different levels.

Of course the printing press was pretty crazy in its time too”

But then he smelled that just warmed chocolate croissant again. And he thought of the song by the great Bonnie Koloc. That song where she started:

“I’m gonna look out my window.
Gonna let in the sun.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8b92Wgqo70]

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