Uncategorized » Roger Wright - Chicago

Pete Seeger Still Sings

Jan 282014

Pete Seeger upstairs at the People’s Church on Lawrence Avenue in Chicago; rail thin, head thrust out, jeans and flannel shirt with rolled up sleeves, picking banjo, leading the crowd in song—his voice is almost gone now. And it doesn’t even matter. He has taught us.

He lifts his right hand from the banjo ever so slightly, a welcome to all, and then like a community having lived each moment of their very lives together, we sing:

Inch by inch, row by row,

Gonna make this garden grow.

Just east of the Peoples Church on this rain speckled gray city night, decades earlier, Studs Terkel tells the story of the two cross country travelers, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, needing a place to stay in Chicago that night. Studs went on ahead to make sure it was all right with his angelic wife Ida. And that night, Seeger and Guthrie spent the night on the Terkel’s kitchen floor.

Pete Seeger slept on kitchen floors, rode the rails, sometimes with Guthrie, sometimes alone. He made over 100 albums, sold millions of records, sang to millions all over the world. Yet upon induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Arlo Guthrie noted that “Goodnight Irene” reached #1 and then the New York Times reports, Guthrie added, “I can’t think of a single event in Pete Seeger’s life that is probably less important to him.”

Spending years being hounded and blacklisted by various incarnations of the radical right, a massive persecution that went so far as to cite him for contempt of congress, Seeger never stopped singing. Seeger was, many would say, “hated by all the right people.”

Through all that, over a career that spanned six decades, Seeger stood alone, wound around the very heart of the American soul. Perhaps, because above all else he practiced the redemptive power of community. A man whose very life breath exhorted not just the world, but every single individual in it, to just sing along.

This morning broke clear and brutally cold in Chicago. Grief being that continual search to find flowers in the snow. Sometimes so much so that words stop, one goes mute and there is simply nothing to say. The old hymn asks “How Can I Keep From Singing?” and you answer, “Easy.”

But then comes Pete Seeger, and of course you have to sing! How could it be any other way? And then comes an image of those you love most dearly, whether absent or near, they are smiling and laughing, even celebrating the sound of their own voice because they are singing now with Pete. You think, whatever separates you from those you love? Just start singing.

Your community comes alive. Chicago radio steps up masterfully as Lin Brehmer of WXRT writes, “Tom Joad was a character in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Pete Seeger gave him a voice. R.I.P.”

Carl Grapentine, of WFMT, as always, steps up and guides those of us who are both grateful and grieving and seamlessly weaves together Bach and the banjo and even Odetta.

Pete keeps singing. But of course, it’s our turn now.

“Pullin’ weeds and pickin’ stones,

We are made of dreams and bones

Need spot to call my own

Cause the time is close at hand.

Grain for grain, sun and rain

I’ll find my way in nature’s chain

Tune my body and my brain

To the music of the land.”

You remember an old Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee song sang with Pete called “Passing Through.”

“I saw Adam leave the garden with an apple in his hand

I said now you’re out what are you gonna do

Plant my crops and prey for rain

Maybe raise a little Cain

We’ve so little time

And we’re just passing through.”

Then one more time. I am 16 years old. Lining up on the stage of the Auditorium Theater in Chicago with all the real reporters to ask Pete Seeger a question. I get to the head of the line, its my turn, I look up into those wise eyes of kindness. I see the way he rolls up the sleeves of his flannel shirt. And I have no idea what to say.

So I just say “thank you!”

To which he brightly replies as if I am the very first and possibly the only person in the whole world to tell him that. “Why, you are quite welcome young man!”

Then he gingerly lays his banjo in its case, snaps it shut, walks down the steps into the now empty theater, bounds up and out into the taxi honking Chicago night, hails a cab, gets in and drives away.

And the sleeves on my flannel shirt have been rolled up ever since.

Thanks Pete.

************************

Songwriting Credits:

“Garden Song” written by Dave Mallet. “Passing Through” composed by Dick Blakeslee

A New Years Beatle Party!

Dec 312013

It’s a Beatle party. You’re invited!

That quiet snow on New Years Eve—calls to mind my brother in law: The Beatle. This week marks his birthday—he’s in his extremely late 50’s now. But still unquestionably a Beatle. So of course there is a party.

Where? Anywhere you are.

C’mon in! The doors to the tent are thrown open in all directions. Just like on the Plains of Abraham. So all are welcome. It’s the birthday of a Beatle.

And if you step inside, it might prompt the thought that there is a Beatle in your life too.

In our collective human lifting of voices into one resounding song, some people are just Beatles. Maybe it’s just for a moment, for a week, a year or even a lifetime. A Beatle is a person who makes a difference. Their song sounds in ways that changes things. Beatles change other people’s worlds. The Beatle can capture the golden moments in even the most brutally tough years.

Beatles are often people you wouldn’t look twice at if they passed you on the street. Picture John, Paul, George and Ringo standing in the gray English rain on a street in Liverpool, all at age 10. Who knew they’d change the world?

Wendy’s Beatle grew up close to Liverpool. In Manchester. Felt that same English rain on his face.

When Wendy first brought him home to our parent’s house, no one knew he was a Beatle but her. He was the kind of longhaired, bearded, revolutionary spirit likely to storm the temples of complacency, preach something frighteningly radical and overturn the moneychanger’s tables. He stood at the counter in my parent’s kitchen, took a long swig of an ice-cold Lite beer and spit it on the floor, saying, “You really drink this stuff?”

This was long before he took me into my first English Pub, warmed in the glow of the fireplace, the laughter in the conversation, the cheese and sausage pub lunch, the beer that leaves you thinking, this just might be like wine to quench the thirst of every tomorrow I am ever blessed to have.

When your sister marries a Beatle. You get to be a Beatles’ brother. Which is nice.

At their wedding, which might have been 30 years or 30 seconds ago, throngs of longhaired English people filled our parents back yard bringing the very same warmth of an English Pub. Our Dad made his now very famous in the family quote, “I don’t feel like I’ve lost a daughter. I feel like I’ve gained a country!”

I got to play basketball with guys that did things like see Van Morrison sing down at the local pub for a dollar, and Wendy and her Beatle went off to make a life.

As the years went by, the rest of us began to understand what Wendy already knew: this guy really was a Beatle.

I could see it when I watched him write a song. He did this every week.

Every week.

I got to see this more than once. Here’s how he’d do it. He’d start pacing around the room. Sometimes in circles. Faster and faster. As if any second he could careen off a wall like a silver rolling pin ball. He’d be muttering to himself. Every now and then he’d go look at this big book that always lay open on a table. Then he’d start pacing again.

I don’t remember the part where he wrote anything down. But I sure remember when he sang these songs. There would be two or more of us gathered, and Wendy’s Beatle would start off. No notes. He’d hold all who listened just with his words. And I knew it was him singing. I saw it. Those words coming from his mouth. But I also knew that what he was singing about was much bigger than anything he said.

See, that’s what a Beatle can do. A Beatle can lead you past what you see and bring you face to face with a mystery. Face to face with magic. With things you don’t really understand, with things you doubt.

Doubt. That essential element of faith. Singing songs of praise that don’t teach, preach, or sell—but instead reveal. A Beatle can do that. Sometimes with words, sometimes with actions. It depends on the Beatle. And the varieties of Beatles are infinite.

In fact, now that you’re thinking about it—doesn’t a Beatle from your life come to mind?

Wendy’s job, in her life’s travels with her Beatle, has always been, as the poet Mary Oliver wrote, “loving the world.”

Wendy’s Beatle sang songs of love. So that meant bringing in the rest of the world to sing along. John, Paul, George and Ringo did a lot of that too. They listened very hard to Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, even the Broadway songwriter Meredith Wilson, and then they carried on the song.

Wendy’s Beatle did the same thing. He read from that big open book. He drew from the real life, everyday world around him, and then he put together all those love songs. And delivered them pretty near every week of his life.

Now, all these years later, Wendy and her Beatle have two children and a daughter in law off in the wider world. Doing things like walking dusty roads in India looking to give comfort. And striding through hospitals in the U.K, looking to give care. Wendy and her Beatle now have a sparkling joyful granddaughter in Wales and a full throttle Skype connection to help connect them all.

Beatles abound!

So, take a look around. You might see a Beatle too.

They’re the ones the ones who are speaking words of wisdom. And singing, let it be.

It’s a Beatle Party! You’re invited!

C’mon in and let it be.

http://youtu.be/tB-Yxa8mN9U

Connecting to the PERFECT JOB

Dec 192013

Illinois Guide

Originally published in January 2009. Before the truly brilliant editing that turned this into the last chapter of Finding Work When There Are No Jobs. Here is one person’s unedited story of making a connection to their own perfect work.

“And you are? . . . . .” asked the first of what looked like many receptionists standing guard on the outer reaches of the Oval Office of President Barack Obama.

It was raining hard in Washington DC. I didn’t have a power broker raincoat, so my only good suit was soaked in all the worst possible places.

And I needed a drink of water really badly.

“I’m ah, um. . . Chicago Guy.”

“So is pretty much every one else around here now,” said the receptionist over the top of her glasses. “Unless of course they are “Chicago Gal. What we need to do is for you to tell me your name, young man.”

“Chicago Guy really is my blogging name” I answered—too scared to speak in anything but my very most earnest tones. Much less give a straight answer.

“Ah. I see. Well, perhaps we should call Mr. Emanuel. The President is extremely busy today. If you’ll have a seat I’ll. . . . oh here he is now. Mr. Emanuel sir, this gentleman says he’s here for the one hour lobbying session with the President.”

Rahm Emanuel stopped, swiveled and stared.” Do I know you?”

“Well, no sir. Not really. I mean, I do live down the street from you back in Chicago. But no, you don’t really. . .”

“Wait a minute. I remember talking to you and your wife when you walked past my house She’s a ballet dancer right? “

“Yes sir, and..”

“Also took from Joel Hall Dance Studios, same place I did?”

“Well, she teaches there now.. “

“Yeah. Ok. So the reason for this little visit?’

“I was sent by . . . . ..

“Ah huh. Yeah well, we don’t want nobody, nobody sent.”

“Well sir, this won’t take long. See I won this contest kind of thing. “If you had one hour to lobby the President on anything, what would it be?”

“Well, I can tell you one thing, the President doesn’t have an hour to listen to anybody on anything.”

“Ok, I can do it in half an hour.”

“Hey, you are from Chicago! Ok. What’s your topic?”

“Writers”

Writers? You mean like education? Or NEA grants or something?”

“No, writers. I’m here to lobby for writers.”

“Ok. I’ll give you 15 minutes. Let’s go.”

And before I could draw another breath I was in front of the President. Who actually smiled at me like he knew me!”

“Cubs or Sox fan?” he asked me.

“Baseball fan sir.”

“Hah!” said the president. “Nice answer! Wrong answer, but nice one.” Now, what we got?”

“Mr. President I’m here to ask you to consider reviving the Federal Writers’ Project.—a key piece of Roosevelt’s WPA—and an ideal piece of strategy for supporting your plan to stimulate the economy.”

“Well, laughed the President. Believe me, I know most writers have it pretty tough these days. But we do have grants. But help me with the connection to economic stimulus here?”

“Well, I guess I’d start with this picture,” I began.

“Ah, the Grand Coulee Dam.”

“Yes sir. A direct historical precedent to your plan to rebuild our infrastructure. Building it put 2,000 men to work. Putting people to work just like you plan to do.”

“Impressive project,” said the President.

“Yes sir. As you know, it was one of the first times that employee health care became a factor in a job.”

And who got these jobs? Asked the President

They were mostly white males sir. But they weren’t all white males. American Indians from the Colville Reservation were also hired, as were African Americans.

Well, if you’re here to convince that it was a good idea—I already know that.”

No sir, I’m here because of the connection just ONE of those 2,000 men had with the project. Just one man.

Looking at what he did shows us a way to connect writers (and eventually all artists) with the infrastructure and economic recovery you’ve trying to build.

I continued. He was a sign painter, songwriter from Okemah, Oklahoma. The Bonneville Power Administration hired this writer to do a month’s worth of work. They paid him $270.00. He wrote 26 songs.

If I may include an example of his lyrics?” And I handed him a copy of “Roll On Columbia.” He scanned it. I saw the hint of a smile. And he looked back up at me.

“So sir. Imagine we rebuild the infrastructure of the country

Who will tell the story? Do you really want it written down and recorded with power point?”

“I hear,” the President smiled. “That power point makes you stupid. And I understand that Woody Guthrie did really did connect the infrastructure to art. But he was just one man. That all you got for me?”

“Well sir, there were 48 guidebooks written. One for every state. Books that were both practical–telling how to get from one town to the next. But they also spoke to the history, the stories of the state. Here’s one that was done for California .”

“The detail is so rich it practically jumps up off the page.”

Speaking directly to the President I said,

“Imagine he story of your stewardship of our great country being told not in “spin” driven bullet points; but with the richness of true story tellers. True writers who can bring the music to the words just like Guthrie did.”

“Who wrote these books? Who were the writers of the Federal Writers Project?” asked the President.

“People like Zora Neale Huston.”

There was a lot more than state guides produced. She wrote this:

“Who else?”

Well, Saul Bellow. He wrote for the FWP. Nelson Algren, Richard Wright, Malcolm Cowley.

Ralph Ellison began writing “Invisible Man” while he was working on the project.

Studs Terkel, Rexroth, Patchen. Jim Thompson in Oklahoma.

Remember: these were NOT big name writers at the time. They were writers of immense talent who—like everyone else–needed jobs.

It was here. In the Federal Writer’s project, that Studs Terkel began what would eventually become his life long work of telling the story of our history in the voices of everyday, working Americans.

Which brings us to right now. Today. With no one writing the history of our times in the voices of ordinary Americans. No one connecting our challenges and pride through the common social themes that unite us all. No one to tell THEIR stories of what unemployment, education, hunger, health, arts, culture, innovation and growth mean in real peoples lives. No writers.”

“So what would something like this cost?”

“We could do it for very little sir. Easy.”

“We?”

“Yes sir. As fate would have it—I actually have experience at running a national organization in the private sector. Managed a P/L; employed hundreds of folks.”

“What did you do?” asked the President.

Training and Customer Service.

“I like that,” said the President. “Training and Customer Service.

Kind of sums up what we do here.”

“I found it all came down to stewardship sir. Taking care of something bigger than we are.”

“What about people? Asked the president. Who will the writers be?”

That’s the easy part sir. There are a lot of writers. The creativity would amaze you.”

“I am expecting you to amaze me.” Said the President. Now how much would something like this cost?”

“”Well, that depends on how good we wanted it to be.”

And for the first time, Rahm Emanuel spoke up. “Cut the crap Chicago Guy. Will this primarily be financed by partnerships with organizations? I mean, if you publish a book for a corporation on their corporate social responsibility, shouldn’t they pay for it? And if a Food Pantry or a Youth Services Project wants a book they can use for fund raising, one that will give them a return on their investment—shouldn’t they pay for it? Hmmm???”

“Well yes but start up costs. . . I stammered.”

He looked at the President. Two million. That’s enough. And you put it back in donations to the NEA in 5 years when you’ve got at least 3 best selling books. And we’ll let you work out of some old offices we have in Chicago.”

“If we had 3 million”. . .I began

If you had nothing, Emanuel smiled. But we do have an office you could use in Chicago. And you could start tomorrow.

“No, said the President.

Start now.”

The Wild Grey Yonder

Nov 262013

Binge-watching the TV show Scandal on a gray Sunday afternoon in November. Glancing out the window I do a double take. Brought to my feet, wide eyed, an American Bald Eagle swooping and soaring against the rumbling trouble in the sky. “Laura!!!” My shout unanswered, she’d gone to Walmart. Yeah, that was it. Walmart. She’d remember if we’d ever had an eagle visit us before.

Our place is on the prairie. Between Washington and Bloomington Illinois. The flat green fields of forever, feeding the world. There are wetlands north of Peoria. The Illinois River isn’t far. But there are certainly no peaks or towering trees near our flatland home. So an eagle here? I didn’t understand.

And I couldn’t remember when Laura would be back.

I paused the TV. Olivia Pope and the President were in this house in Vermont and they were just about to . . . well, I could wait to see what they were just about to do. I might have lost a bit through the years, I am not a young man. But I did not lose memory of that.

I walked outside to say hello to Mr. Eagle. Whistled for Pabst, our wise old mutt to get up and come along. Maybe between the two of us we could figure out why old Mr. Eagle had come to call on us out here on the prairie. And maybe we’d see the dust clouds on the long winding driveway that meant Laura was on her way home.

Outside in the slowly building winds, the eagle seemed like he was painting the sky just above our place. Swooping and soaring. Remembering the line of an old Kristofferson song. Something about “aching with the freedom of the feeling of an eagle when she flies.”

What was the name of that song again? And why did it rise up just now?

Because as I stood there with my hands on my hips, staring up at that eagle, the winds started to shift, to ramp up speed and start to swirl just like that eagle did above. And suddenly the earth itself let forth a smell of bone chilling terror. As if the ground itself was getting scared and beginning to rot. I could hear some sort of ancient creaking sound. A frequency carrying an echo of a long ago scream. I was ready to toss myself over Laura. Cover her from all harm. Take our chances with the earth to make sure she’d be safe from the winds and the ripping of that scream.

But she had gone to Walmart.

I saw the distant cell tower snap and crumble. So propelled only by what lets love march through this torn and bleeding world of other times and better places, I started sending her the messages that we would be safe, that we would make it through this storm. Bouncing back to me, I could feel her very soul telling me, take the dog, get inside. Take the dog, get inside.

And what they tell you about the sound of a freight train is true.

Grabbing Pabst, closing the door to the bathroom where there was no windows, holing up head down next to the toilet The creaking, grinding roar as the tornado slivered our house, ripped off the roof and the walls. The dog and I shaking as if hope was a plywood splinter wrapped in pink insulation spread out where the kitchen floor used to be.

So I just kept singing this song to Laura. Singing it above the wind and the rain that was pummeling the ripped open wound of what once was our home. I kept singing this song.

Till the dark. And the quiet. Till there was only the quiet.

And then I came up from some faraway tunnel to the sound of Pabst barking. Opening my eyes, across the rubble of what used to be our kitchen. Three young military guys. Army National Guard. Clipboards. I heard them say my name. Then another one, a voice I recognized, maybe one of the kids from our sub division said, “Number of occupants. One.”

“Says here, that number of occupants is two. You sure on that number, soldier?”

“Yes sir. I’m sure. This old man, kind of a town character. He did live here with his wife. But she left him. Years ago. So it’s just him and his dog now.”

“Alright son. We’ll put it down as a “one.” Hmm, I wonder if the old man made it. Let’s go inside and have a look.”

Hearing their boots in the rubble, I tried again to send that song out to Laura.

Closed my eyes. And hoped she would hear. Hoped she was OK.

Hoped she made it through the storm.

And that hope was still alive.

Barry and Jake Get Married

Nov 202013

Barry and Jake got married about two miles or so from right here at the old Dickinson Tobacco Warehouse that sits at the very center of Edgerton,Wisconsin.

Weathered by Wisconsin snows and blistering heat, still proud with the earthy rich smells of time. Surrounded by the tender rhythms of the Sunday afternoon small town and then splayed out into what were once all tobacco fields that made the money flow straight from the rich northern soil from about 1880 to 1930.

The Dickinson Tobacco Warehouse. Like a reminder of what endures.

Barry and Jake got married here.

Before it was the Dickinson Tobacco Warehouse, it was the original Pauline Pottery factory. At the 1892-3 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, right down the White City Midway from where John Ferris built his first giant Ferris Wheel; Pauline Jacobus, who probably never used the phrase “woman owned business” in her life brought her exquisitely crafted pottery, creating —just like Rodin did—both art and an industry.

A monumental success at a Worlds Fair that was a virtual fountain of what was new, exciting and best in the world.

The woman put tiny Edgerton on the map. And her pottery; art like a reminder of what endures.

Barry and Jake got married here.

Oh, I guess technically they got married in Iowa. A detail that someday soon will be a curious shard of history.

Like the time I had to ask, “Why did my grandmother have to fly to Reno Nevada to get her divorce in the 1940’s?” A kid will ask a parent “Why did Barry and Jake have to go to Iowa to get married?” And the fact that Barry and Jake were pioneers. That there was suffering. That there was epic struggle. That will become a curious blip of history.

Perhaps the best place to start would be with the love that Sunday afternoon when the celebration of the wedding took place.

That day Jake could smile and say to me, “Hey, we came to your wedding. And you came to ours.”

Such a simple statement. Like a reminder of what endures.

I remember the drive up Highway 90 from Chicago. A silver river of steel rushing concrete barreling across the land and connecting the cities with the towns.

We pull over to the side of the sun baked country road when we see the “Just Married” sign stuck in the ground next to the driveway leading into the woods.

A field of rustling corn in the wind on the other side of this two-lane country road.

Our big city nieces open up the back doors of the car and start to step out of their carriage. Impeccably dressed for the wedding.

And nestled in the woods, you start seeing the fountains.

Jake builds fountains. And today all of them were flowing. Little islands of flowing water delight. Water like a reminder of what endures.

The house, an architectural wonder of angles and light and warmth against the snows and Ansel Adams and Georgia O’Keeffe. At its center are weathered old utility poles. The previous owner having been with Wisconsin Power and Light.

At the center of the house. Literally. Wisconsin Power and Light.

Outside is a tire swing Jake somehow managed to hang from a branch on the tallest of trees. A hammock. Tables set out with food that just keeps coming. And just when you think you’ve eaten as much as you can, more food.

Behind the house is the garden. A giant, sprawling wonder of tomatoes falling off the vines, cabbages popping up like friendly blue green little heads, Swiss chard, and oceans of vegetables—food to feed the world. Immaculately tended and cared for. A garden like a reminder of what endures.

A piñata for the little kids. A toast for the big kids.

Then the sky began to smell like rain. Good luck for a wedding day.

In that yard, standing there with maybe my 10^th piece of roasted chicken. The day Barry and Jake got married. I looked around me and saw it.

It was the people. That amazing patchwork, cross section all shapes and sizes and colors and beliefs and people eating chicken while others ate deserts or took cookies from the resplendent tower of heaping home made platter of cookies made by the best baker I’ve ever known; cookies packed in ice with the very same care Pauline Jacobus used when she’d seal the design on a piece of her pottery.

Here on the outskirts of Edgerton, just a couple miles from the old Dickinson Tobacco Warehouse.

It was the people. The football fans and the artists. The city and the small towns. It was that true and real cacophony of separate souls connected into one.

That’s what endures.

On that day Barry and Jake got married in Wisconsin. And built something that promised to last.

With all the colors of the rainbow.

http://youtu.be/h2soIL_0ICE

IF MIKE ROYKO CAME BACK

Nov 162013

If the joint had not been empty, somebody would have wondered what Mayor Rahm Emanuel was doing, wearing sunglasses, sitting up ramrod straight at a back table in a place that everyone still called Jury’s on a clear blue-sky day in October.

It had only taken one call to get him there. All I had said was, “He’s back.Come to Jury’s. No one will be there. I’ll fill you in.”

Jury’s used to be a neighborhood treasure. But then it got sold, 2 guys turned it into a low rent, college dive. So I knew it would be empty. And I had told the Mayor’s ‘associate’ to call in advance and make sure that my martinis were brought in from Tiny’s bar across the street. And that they came at a steady pace.

I arrived late. But the martini was chilled. And the Mayor, pushing the sunglasses down on his nose and giving me his best tough guy look said, “You said he was back. Where is he now? When will he write? And oh, “Who are you?”

“So he worries you, huh?”

The Mayor said, “When he died? On April 29th 1997. After that? It was easier. For Richie. For Cellini. Imagine if he had been here? To write about Cellini. Most powerful man in Illinois. Gets a year in the pen? For shaking down a movie producer? And Blago? Too easy a target. 14 years. For failure to steal?”

“So then why are you here Mr. Mayor? Why did the message ‘He’s back and ready to write,’ get your attention?”

“I will tell you why. It’s because I do not need. The people of Chicago do not need . . .”

“Oh stop with the people of Chicago bit. No one will read this, right? He’s not writing this. I am. So it’s just us talking. 10-12 people will see this. Maybe 5 might “Like “ it on Facebook. That’s it. It’s not like he was writing this.

“As I was saying, I do not need him now. The one man who could come in here. At this time. In Chicago’s history. And turn an 800-word newspaper column into a surgical scalpel. Ready to cut. All my plans. For the city.”

“Mr. Mayor, Everybody’s got an opinion and a blog. Why would you worry so much about this one writer? I mean, he has—as far as you know, been dead since 1997. Right?”

“Everyone’s opinion? I don’t care. I don’t even listen. Sometimes my wife? Amy Rule? She will give an opinion. Take out the trash Rahm. Pick up your socks Rahm. That is her opinion. I don’t care.”

“So why him? Why would you be so worried about him? Enough to come meet with me, who you don’t even know, on the chance he’d still be around?”

“It’s because of the children. The children of the city of Chicago. I made a promise that I. . .”

“Rahm. You’re playing the children card to dodge the question. So let’s do this. Lets give you children. I believe you care about children. I’m sure others would argue. But I’m gonna give you “caring about children.” Now will you answer why it’s so important to you that he stay dead? You afraid he’d write a story about who you hire?”

I hired JC Brizard. Superintendent of Schools. Now he has resigned. All this. And no one asks me about the children. Is this fair? Is this right?”

“That was awhile ago sir. Why bring him up? He’s gone.“

“JC and I. We had a discussion. We decided that for the good of the children, he would move on”

“See? You did it again! You dodged the question. And you know what “he” would do?

“Who? JC?”

“No. Don’t be cute Mr. Mayor. I’m talking about the one who worries you. Do you know what he’d write?”

The Mayor looked around the empty bar. Made sure no one was in sight. “What would he do? What would he write?”

“He’d write that you only hire two kinds of people. People like JC, or Barbara Byrd Bennett, who you can control. . .”

“But I. . .”

“Mayor. You don’t hire talent. I’m not even sure you know what that means. Or how to do it. You didn’t let J.C. speak at his first news conference. And you hired all his lieutenants.” Mrs. Bennett looks great on paper. Nice lady. But we know who is in charge. The first type of person you hire is a person you can control.”

“JC understood . . .”

“ Mr. Mayor. Let’s cut to the point. Like he would. JC didn’t have the talent to do the job.”

“I know there were experience issues. Rochester New York had 32,000 students. We had 400,000 . . .”

“Mayor, you’re not listening. I didn’t say experience. I said talent. The innate stuff you are born with. ”

“You know, we’ve been here 5 minutes hot shot. And I still haven’t gotten an answer. Is he coming back? And if he does, what will he say?”

“Mayor, I told you he’d write that you only hire two kinds of people. People you can control are the first kind. Don’t you want to hear about the second kind of people?”

“Listen,” the Mayor started wagging a finger in my face,” I am now certain, you are bluffing. He is not coming back. I am not concerned. The children of Chicago are not concerned . . .” and with that he pushed his chair back from the table, ready to get up.

“So you don’t want to hear about the second type of people you’d hire”

“No. We’re done. He’s not back. He is dead. You’re bluffing.”

“Tell you what Mayor, I’ll tell you anyway. Here’s who he’d write about. This second kind of people you hire? They are the ones with connections to power and money.”

“So you are saying, I am not acting in the best interests of the people of Chicago?”

“No, I’m saying you hire the wrong people for the wrong reasons. That you ignore talent when you hire.”

The Mayor reached for the front door of the empty bar and as he pulled it open, shouted back at me, “Well, thank goodness the people of Chicago don’t have to worry about him writing this. Thank goodness he’s not coming back!”

And with that, the old bar was silent.

Sitting alone at the back table, sipping my martini, I looked up at the windows out on to Lincoln Avenue. The sun was going down. No trace of the Mayor. Just some guy out on the sidewalk, whose face I couldn’t see, walking north, tossing a 16 inch softball up in the air and catching it as he strolled.

And from somewhere very far away I heard this voice say,

“Nice try kid. But its 300 words too long.

So cut it.

Or get the fuck out of my newsroom.

A Rosalyn Carter Moment

Nov 082013

We had just gotten the kids settled, sitting cross-legged with us on the carpeted floor in a semi-circle, when the two secret service guys, laser eyed tree trunks in suits, led Rosalyn Carter through the locked doors of the Ward to the single chair at the front of the room.

The building where this happened, lifetimes ago, The Northwestern Institute of Psychiatry on Huron Street in Chicago, is being demolished as I write these words. But the memory of Mrs. Carter’s small chat with those children is as sparkling golden fresh as this morning’s sunlight streaming through my window right now.

Later on this morning, Mrs. Carter will be standing next to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius in Atlanta, for the announcement that we, as a country, have taken some steps in treating illnesses of the brain on parity with the ways we treat illnesses of the rest of the body.

What follows will be the usual piercing shrillness of commentary on the Affordable Care Act. The attacks grounded in an ethic that says, “If I don’t like something, it’s OK to just make stuff up when I say why I don’t like it.” Celebrating a world where words have no meaning. Or a history that only goes back a day. A fight destined for the dustbins of history.

But as the torrent of venom spews out on Ms. Sibelius and The President, and all those struggling to change the ragged, sickly broken way we all try and take care of each other; to make a system change at it’s core where all the poison has been buried in the very way we think, while all that is happening, Roslyn Carter will be at the front of the room. Just as she was when she spoke with us on that sixth floor locked ward all those years ago.

She said to the kids, “If you’d like, you can ask me questions. Anything you want.” And what happened next was something we counselors didn’t see too often from our kids. We saw their wide eyed, bone deep silence of what it means to be in the presence of someone who is important for all the right reasons.

None of the kids and none of us know it all counselors could have named any of the reasons why the woman was able to elicit an immediate and heartfelt respect simply by completing our circle and speaking 11 words.

Perhaps because kids have a built in bullshit detector. One set at a much higher frequency, And perhaps kids with an illness of the mind, perhaps their bullshit detectors are tuned up the highest of all.

Spending eight hours of the day on the ward taught us counselors to feel the rise and fall, the trouble and the terrors of the group, We might have had words for that at the time. If we did, I don’t remember them. But I can remember vividly how those waves and swings of group feelings would move us through our days and nights. So, I can remember so clearly, even now, how when Mrs. Carter started talking with us, she instantly owned the room and every living shred of respect in that room.

A kid asked her what it was like living in the White House. And her eyes got all wide and she said, “Oh my goodness, we still get lost! See, my office is on one side and Jimmy’s is on the other, and the other day I thought it would be nice to have lunch? So I tried to take a shortcut? And I had NO idea where I was! I ended up having to ask,” and here she burst into laughter, “how to get to Jimmy’s office!”

And as she begin to laugh harder, she opened up the floodgates of 20 children who none of us counselors had ever seen laugh all that much at all. Seeing what laughter could do to heal, something I never, ever forgot. And that’s where I saw it first. That’s where I learned it.

Then, because this was a real conversation, she started asking questions. Her voice was soft and soothing like a southern pine tree alive in the wind. Not lost on the young buck counselors was the thought, this is an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Later, the whispered line in the nurses station was, “Now we know why Jimmy always smiles.”

She asked one young girl. “Why are you here?” Perhaps the most important question of all. But one that most visitors would avoid. And the young girl, electrically charged, just lit up to be noticed, answered her back with the simple elegance and honesty Mrs Carter had brought onto the ward and populated every inch of that room. The girl answered, “I’m here because my Daddy died last month, I got so sad, that I didn’t know what to do. So I tried to hurt myself. Then someone brought me here.”

“What’s your name, child?” Mrs. Carter asked.

“Sarah.”

“How old are you Sarah?”

“Thirteen.”

“You know, I was just about your age when my Daddy died. I didn’t know what to do either. But Sarah?”

“Yes?” The girl barely breathing. Riveted to this one moment in her life.

“Sarah, I really hope you don’t ever try and hurt yourself again.”

Sarah les out a breath, you could see a tension in her core relax. She looks down at the floor, and all of us counselors see something we have never seen before. A tiny flowering bud of a smile.

This morning when they sign the papers saying that taking care of the mentally ill is just as important as taking care of the physically ill, maybe Sarah wherever she is, will hear the news, cut through the noise and remember that moment. Her smile. I don’t know.

But I do know that Rosalyn Carter will be standing there when we all take a step towards taking better care of each other.

Just like the time when she said to the little girl, “Sarah, I really hope you don’t try and hurt yourself again.”

Faces

Nov 072013

The empty red plastic shopping cart from the Target store padlocked to the street sign outside the boarded up Blockbuster Video?

Yeah. That’s mine.

Most people don’t even see it. Almost nobody wonders what that cart carried last. And I’m guessing that no one wonders where the last load of that shopping cart is right now.
Which is fine. Because it’s nobody’s business.
The cart holds everything I own. Where I keep it at night is my business.

I keep nothing in a shelter. I can tell you that. I’ve seen rusty can opener knife cuts, screwdriver slashing to the face fights just to get into a shelter. Then inside the shelters? Once you’re in? Even in the ones where they keep the lights on all night, I’ve seen real fights. The kind you don’t talk about.

So I got a place for me and my stuff at night. It will last as long as it lasts. I don’t really think about it that much. The nights come early, with October in the winds. So I unload my stuff and lock the cart up tight by the time the sun goes down.

Now your picture? That old snapshot? That always stays with me. It got a little messed up when I stuck an old bar of soap next to it in the pocket of my jeans. But never mind about that. I couldn’t see it all that well anyways. My eyes ain’t the same since that day a crazy pick up driver almost hit me, my glasses came whipping off and shattered on the street. But I remember the picture so well that I guess it doesn’t matter.

It started like this. You were bending over some tomato seedlings, surrounding them with basil. Back when the whole north side of Chicago seemed to have community gardens everywhere. Ours was in Old Town, across from a Standard Gas Station and Lincoln Park where the hippies had tried to set up camp. It was spring of course. But there was something in the wind off the lake that said autumn. Something that said this was more about continual beginnings and endings than it was about a solitary season.

Coming up behind you, quite a view I might add, you were wearing short cut off jeans and a yellow top. You stood up, turned, put your hands on your hips and said, “Hey, why don’t you take a picture. It lasts longer!”

So I did.

We talked gardening, summer, the other people who had the plots, the conversation was like some sort of river that just never stopped. As the sun came up higher, we traipsed across Wells Street to Nookie’s and had pancakes, bacon, eggs, orange juice and a lot of coffee. A breakfast like we had known each other forever.

Over the years, buildings went up where the garden used to be. No more scraggly carrots yanked out of the urban soil. But I held on to that picture of you.
Years of dwindling chance meetings. A White Sox game where I obnoxiously lectured you on the evils of smoking. That Jill Clayburgh movie where you did the play by play and rooted for the weaselly investment banker to kick the bearded artists’ ass. I remember a postcard from Japan where you just wrote, “Watching lesbian sumo wrestling. Wish you were here.”

But I never let go of that picture of your face.
Finally there was that last time. Again seeing you first bending over from the rear. This time in the recycling bin. Outside a 7-11 store.

That time, I was busy not understanding that being broken in a billion pieces could be the springboard for hope. You tried to show me that. I didn’t get it.

How it would end up this time is that I would decide, with virtually no thought at all, that another marriage destined to end was the right answer.

For a very short while, I saw both you and her.
Then one day when you called to ask if you should take a pound of chuck out of the freezer for dinner, I said no. And I never made it over for dinner.

Again.

Left just with that picture of your face.
Which is why when I saw that face again this morning, just as I was going to unlock my red shopping cart, when I saw that face it all came flooding back. The garden, the breakfast the stolen moments through a lifetime. I saw your face.

It was early. Sunday morning. She was walking her dog along Lincoln Avenue. Both of them curious, young, and calm. She had that look in her eyes—like you—that the world was a very amusing place. Jeans and a baseball cap. And your face.
Now most people, when they pass the old man pushing the shopping cart through the streets and alleys, most people don’t see me. Some pretend not to see me. Some just do not see me.

But as she passed, she and her dog, she looked up. She looked up and saw me.

Then she smiled.

And I saw your face.
**************

Ray Bradbury In Autumn

Nov 012013

Under the dusky red Martian sun a hazy glow seemed to make the rhythm of time itself slow down. The elderly couple clinked their chilled martini glasses, looked at the blue water rippling in their backyard pool, sat up straighter, scraping patio chairs on bleached white cement, and took their first sip. He was quiet for a moment. And because they could read each other’s quiet like a morning newspaper, she said, “The connection thing, right?”

He nodded.

The Martian wind blew tenderly warm off the endless red prairies onto the cool tree-lined, paved streets of the green-lawned and sidewalked settlement. The first of it’s kind. Now replicated like giant stepping-stones across this corner of the planet. When the first ships had arrived from earth, all those years ago, the settlements were hodgepodge mixes of architecture awkwardly blending styles from the entire American landscape circa 1930-1960. What the initial planners hadn’t taken into account was that a house in Chicago looked different from one in LA, New York, or Miami. So Clarissa and Jason lived in an orange pastel one-story home perfectly suited for small town south Florida that had somehow been plunked down in the middle of a northern Illinois forest next to a deep dark scary ravine and a burbling clear stream. All of it man-made. All of it made fast. So lives could begin again. Serene and lush, but still somehow off.

There really was no way at all to forget you were now on another planet.

Every now and then one of them slipped and said the word “home.” But they didn’t use it often, because they weren’t sure what it really meant.

“Hey!” She laughed that same soul-lifting laugh he’d been listening to for over 40 years. “At least we can drink again and it doesn’t matter because we’re old!”

“And we really don’t even know how old either. How cool is that?”

The first set of ships had in fact been pumped full of an unnamed compound that did effect memory. To leave one’s planet without the deepest of emotional scars did take planning. One really need not remember everything.

In the latter weeks of the last great war there was so very much that needed to be forgotten. That’s when the migration to Mars had begun.

It was with the Earth’s last great gasp that Clarissa and Jason had come together. Seeing each other in the crowded hold of the ship. Strangers, who without even speaking felt that there had been some other time when they belonged together. Even if they couldn’t remember when. Quiet at first, while they held back the pain of leaving. The rippling disasters across the world that had all seemed related by a bloody red thread of terror.

His thoughts mired in the killing fields of Syria. The atrocities so unspeakable that even the distance of television could not blunt the pain.

Her thoughts with the attack on the fresh water supplies of the United States. The drying up of drinkable water that prompted all restrictions on any kind of firearms to vanish because, as the pundits preached, “People got a right to protect their drinking water.”

Both of them still carrying images of the electrical wars when the power grids of nations sizzled to black, quiet and forever gone in puffs of coughing grey smoke. And then there was the day when the flowers were gone. Somewhere, something they used to call a “folk song” connected to that memory blip. But he wasn’t sure how or why. No one person could remember all of it. So it was to Mars they went to try again. Because that’s what humans do.

The ships carried health care for all. Medicine unknown to most of those in the naked dawn. Medicine that had been kept in secret storage for the 1%, should they ever need it. Mars was a cakewalk for this crew. No one even knew how long the life span was up here. Age became an afterthought.

That health-for-all meant that Clarissa and Jason could make love with their old bodies and somehow still feel the slippery, hard, wet, firm rhythm of strength in their blending, wrapped and exploding like a cascading tower of a joyful sun. Love that had no age. Only a rhythm.

Their strange little orange pastel palace was plunked down in the settlement of Bradbury Village. An irony that made them laugh most every day. The village had a town square with a clock almost set to noon. A soda shop. A Mayor named Clem. And a 4th of July marching band. Friendly competition over whose lawn looked the best.

Bradbury Village did not have everything. That’s what prompted one of them to say to ask the other, “That connection thing.”

Sometimes they’d be able to tell what was missing. One of them could dream up an answer to just exactly what it was they missed about the earth. Of course there were no oceans on Mars. The rain came once every seven years. And buried deep inside their secret hearts was a memory of a city that had its own stop and start rhythm. Its parade of characters. Its snow-kissed January morning when the wind would howl and the feeling would be something they called “cold.” These were times they knew where that connection was broken.

But there were other times when they couldn’t figure it out. Didn’t know what was missing. The feeling was one of a loss they couldn’t put their finger on. Those times were the toughest, but those were also the times when one of them saved the other. One of them connected the other to what had vanished in the Martian breeze.

They had seen so much danger in those last days on earth, danger that overstepped every kind of boundary. Shattered all their precious crystal beliefs. They were over danger now; so much so that when they got to Bradbury Village, they created their own place of danger. They made the dark green ravine. It was a place where they could play with danger. So they’d never have to be so scared again.

The ravine was a shadow place of tattooed October carnival barkers, circus clown shadows, and Mr. Electro, Ray Bradbury’s knight from the future who would place his sword on the shoulder of all the memories of children and shout to the Martian sun, “You will live forever!”

In Bradbury Village they created their danger as a way to keep themselves safe.

Those first settlers built their settlements in the image of what they called back on earth, “the good old days.” A manufactured world dreamed into paved roads and white picket fences by the politicians of a certain stripe in the second decade of the 21st century. A place that only really existed in dreams. But as Mars in so many ways was a dream, why not?

On Mars they would say “the good old days,” but no one would really know why.

On earth he had been a newspaperman. The Chicago Sun Times, The Miami Herald, Albuquerque, Denver and Portland and finally the Times Picayune. All of them, of course, long gone.

She had painted. Actually sold her art. Landscapes with colors that would have made O’Keeffe put down her brush and applaud. But there wasn’t a lot to paint beyond their manufactured little stepping stone villages. The dry Martian landscape streaked only with the red and grey dust of other worlds that had crumbled.

So there they sat there with their martinis looking out at nothing. She repeated, “That connection thing,” and he answered.

“My love, we are okay. We do have everything we really need here. And it’s not like we have to go to work every morning. We can spend our day in the soda shop on the town square. We do have everything we need. I know we’re connected, to those who are left behind and those on other worlds. In fact with the earth’s core cooling, someday maybe we’ll even go back. We do have time my love. We do have time.”

To which she answered, “Okay. Nice speech, hot shot. But we’re missing something. We’ve never talked about it. Not even once. Maybe we didn’t even know how much we missed it.”

He sat up straight, swung his feet to the cement, got up and walked over to stand right in front of her. The joyful electricity of what it meant to be close, still as alive as it had always been. In both this world and the last. And he looked at her, saying nothing, but with eyes that she knew were posing the question, “Okay, now what are you talking about?”

Then, saying nothing, reaching behind herself, looking up at those eyes she’d known forever, she handed him a rolled up tube of paper.

And as both their hands touched this paper, something cold and dead came alive again.

“My God. It’s a newspaper! It is a newspaper!”

“Delivered daily now. The ship will bring it in. Right before breakfast,” she smiled like a sun from long ago.

“With our coffee!” He ran his hands over the crinkled newsprint. As if magic was somehow now on paper. Paper where the pages turned at just the right speed. Paper and ink and print.

And right then and there, Bradbury Village, Planet Mars, took one more giant step towards connecting distant stars.

One more giant step towards being home.

*in memory of Ray Bradbury, August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012…on Earth.

When Linda Ronstadt Sings

Oct 242013

Cassie is the name I’ve given to the homeless woman who walks by our house, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house, early every morning and returns by the very same route every evening. Sometimes, when the weather is bad, I have seen her take shelter in the Sulzer Regional Library. A haven for many of us in all sorts of ways. The song in this story, Adios, was written by the brilliant songwriter Jimmy Webb. And Linda Ronstadt, who recently announced she was no longer able to sing. Well, all I can say is “Listen to her.”

Six sets of gauzy, hooded eyes watch her every morning. A shift change at night.

Bathed in the grey dawn light of a late October snow sky, Cassie leans in north. Head down, skin and bones, straining to push her shopping cart past the stately home of the Mayor of Chicago. Those six sets of eyes. Cops in unmarked cars barely shift in their seats. Triangulating justifiable protection for the Mayor and his family. They know there is no danger from Cassie. She’s a regular. And the Mayor is usually gone by the time Cassie trudges past each morning.

The wide sidewalks, bare trees and spacious lawns sport a dog walker or two. Early morning commuters, walk to catch their trains. Cassie has her route. She is as much a part of the street as the wind. If the day turns rainy, she’ll sit in the entryway of the Sulzer Regional library. A child might see her and wonder ‘Is the sad lady hungry?’ A Mommy might step down from a gleaming black SUV and sense a presence other than her own. But that will pass quick. The doors of the library let the howling, hawk wind seep in with icy blasts like frozen train whistles.

But wrapped up in her coat, Cassie doesn’t mind. She doesn’t look up once. Never sees Mommy of the SUV or the curious child. The whooshing of the traffic like a white noise screens out everything but the song. The song starts up and Cassie is as far from that library lobby as she can be, hearing the voice of the timeless singer, Linda Ronstadt start to tell the story again with the words of the songwriter Jimmy Webb. Cassie hears Ronstadt sitting in the empty space right next to her, as if holding her hand, Ronstadt sings,

Ran away from home when I was seventeen

To be with you on the California Coast.

And that very instant , , ,

A golden, peach orchard breeze explodes in Cassie’s mind. Sweeping out weary, as if the California sunshine really could let us all, every one of us, start fresh and alive and spilling out fruit tree sun.

Ronstadt sings,

Drinking margaritas all night in the old cantina

Out on the California coast.

And in her voice, those times at the sunset ending of the work day when the promise of their night come rolling from quiet laughter and looks and then the love. As if they had their very own solid, smooth stepping stones across the wild and raging Pacific waters of their lives to come. Anything was possible back then. And whatever it was they could handle it. Could always get it done.

In the lobby of the library while she sits still as the ocean right before a storm, a security guard walks by. Just checking. He gives Cassie a look. Then keeps walking.

But Cassie in looking at the ocean from Highway One. Hearing only Linda Ronstadt sing,

Don’t think that I’m ungrateful

And don’t look so morose.

Every day, when the song comes and lifts her and she says goodbye to him again, she grabs hold of the endless currents of the love that runs between the lines of the song like the power of every one of the rivers flowing down to the sea. Not just one river. All of them. And she is wondering and knowing at the very same time, that of course he had to go and never come back. It was better that way. So much better that way.

Cassie listens to the song. Holding on to it for dear life. Her heart as blistered, raw and sore as her feet.

For a split second she lets herself ask again, “What happened?” Then she answers. Mumbling. To keep that security guard walking past. Cassie again tells the story. If only cause maybe this time there will some sense to it. She says, “He followed the winds and the crops to do the picking. Left me in town while he walked and rode the state and the fields. Fact, some days, most days. There was only that few minutes at the end of the work when he would come in sweaty from the fields and call me on the phone. There would be just those few minutes to review the whole day and tomorrow. But when he told me that he loved me? That was enough.

And Ronstadt sings,

We never really made it baby

But we came pretty close.

Cassie shifts her position. Crosses her arms. Saying in quick, mumbling bursts of staccato sounds unintelligible to the passing crowds through the library lobby.

‘I don’t know why he didn’t call that time he went up north to those winter green hills. I knew I couldn’t have that though. I was hungry. I was tired, he was gone. I couldn’t have silence. I couldn’t live with the silence. No one could. No one could.

Cassie shakes her head clear and wonders if he was ever really there at all. Tucked into her corner of the library. Safe now. Safe. This is not the streets. Right this moment, not the streets. The streets will come when she pushes her cart south as the library, a shelter now connected to that cantina, the California coast itself. Right now this moment, she forgets to blame. Forgets who was silent. The streets are too hard for that. It was too long ago. She only hears Ronstadt sing,

And I miss the blood red sunset

But I miss you the most

Adios

While across the lobby he sits. He’s right there too. And neither of them know it. Cassie’s grizzled and grey silent fruit picker farmer from all those years ago. Head buried in a book. He lives for the library. Carries his life in two brown paper bags. Of course, Cassie doesn’t see him. She only looks down. And he doesn’t see her. But he remembers. Every single one of the all to few moments.

Yesterday he read that Linda Ronstadt will never sing again. And that might be true.

But as the old man sits directly across the lobby, in the safe and warm confines of the Sulzer Library, his great, gone past love just yards away; he hears the exact same voice, the very same song as Cassie does. He hears Linda Ronstadt sing,

And I miss the blood red sunset

But I miss you the most.

He hears that voice and thinks, she might stop singing. But with her voice . . .

There will always be someone who listens.

*************************

Click here and MAYBE the song will play

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