Test the actual soil underlying Chicago City Hall.
No one would be surprised if trace elements of ethical lapses were somehow ingrained in the earth.
It’s been that way since the first Indian standing watch one dark night on the shores of the Big Lake watched the first smiling white man jump from the canoe, yell a hearty hello and set the standard price for anything as being ten cents on the dollar.
With a wink and a handshake. It’s always been that way. Because we’ve always been able to pay the cost. Be it in dollars, culture, human suffering, a strange kind of pride or even bottled up rage. We have always paid the cost for turning away from the smoke of the roaring ethical fires.
But now we can’t afford that anymore. The money’s shriveled up. So now it might change.
Yesterday, Mayor Emanuel appointed an Ethics Reform Task Force unlike any ever seen in this city.
A group of four who have made careers based on being ethical.
Their task is to review Chicago’s Ethics Ordinance. And then make it work. Make it stronger.
Cindi Canary will chair the Task Force. Cindi Canary is a groundbreaking force in city and state ethical reform. Her organization is the “Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.” Pore over any tiny or large steps forward in the fight for government accountability in Illinois and you will find her name.
Alderman Will Burns, who along with counterparts like Alderman Ameya Pawar, has been part of the new crop of city leaders. Leaders who focus on social justice organizations ranging from The Mikva Challenge and the Shriver Center for Poverty Law to The Common Pantry—Chicago’s longest operating Food Pantry.
And if there is any concern at all that real political change needs more than sunlight to make it work, Sergio Accosta, the third member of the group, is a former supervising U.S. Attorney specializing in areas like criminal civil rights.
Turns out that civil rights violations are still crimes.
But it’s the fourth member of the panel that brings the golden soul of the city into the mix of this new effort. Her name is Dawn Clark Netsch. She’s a former State Comptroller, State Senator and gubernatorial candidate. All facts. None of which give substance to the story of why she could be the soul of the new ethics machine.
It’s a short story—but its telling.
Back when there were only two telephone companies, I opened up the effort to sell the little telephone company, MCI, into Illinois State Government. I found a partner to help me learn the backstreets, darkened hallways and phone numbers of Springfield, a state political capital that made Chicago look like Andy Griffith’s home town Mayberry.
In the rotunda of the state capital, pretty much every door was closed up tight to me and my little telephone company. Most times no one even wanted to talk. And I mean not even talk about the weather. Everyone but Dawn Clark Netsch.
It was a simple thing. She didn’t know me. I never made a deal with her. Never even a formal meeting. But she was accessible. She talked to anybody. Even me. And that simply didn’t happen anywhere else. Not without access. Not without knowing someone who knows someone else.
Flash forward decades. I’m walking my dog in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago. And she’s walking her dog. She stops. She chats. That regular nodding hello that fellow dog lovers have. She’s still open to the world.
And that would be the first key strategy of the new ethics task force.
Be open to the world.
The Mayor tried to do that in his transition. But he failed. You still had to be in the club. The great blogger driftglass’s 2 rules of Chicago politics:
1. There is a club.
2. You’re not in it.
Those two rules still own the day.
But what if that could change? What next?
Next is a mapping of the problem as a systemic problem. It’s not a problem where catching one rogue rascal with his hand in another’s pocket solves anything. It’s about a system.
And third, it’s about performance standards and measures that sound a bit different from the norm.
Turns out that notions of confidence, integrity, pride and passion really can be measured in the laboratory of opinion.
So the right people are on board. All four of them. Especially my hero, Dawn Clark Netsch.
And the right strategy can be put in place:
1. Accessibility and Transparency from those who serve the public.
2. Mapping the system to really grasp the full problem.
3. Performance standards and measures—to drive the real, concrete action that could produce something none of us have ever seen before, something most of us think isn’t even possible.
A renewed Chicago. Known for the ethical standards we practice.
This group could make it happen. And if they need any help?
Just before she snapped this picture, I had brushed some dirt off your gravestone. We were in Asheville, North Carolina. Breathing in that pure mountain air like it was a cool, cleansing tonic that really could clear tubercular lungs.
I wondered if that air could make me write like you.
As I knelt at your grave, I never imagined you as a Thanksgiving Day guest.
That would be impossible. Right? You being dead and all.
Of course, back then I also thought it would be impossible that she’d dump me. I thought we were for keeps.
She never even bothered to say, “It’s not you. It’s me.” Always a good line. Especially when it’s not true.
We spoke by phone a lot. She lived in a small town in Missouri. I lived in Chicago. Not the best set up for destiny. And when I started hearing stories about how much fun she was having going fishing with this guy she knew from town; when she told me that he owned a jewelry store. When her voice got more and more faded and distant with each call, I kind of figured that the jeweler would eventually close the sale and make them a couple.
It happened just before Thanksgiving. I got the call that there would be no more calls. I finally saw destiny drift away on a warm southern wind.
Yeah, I know. Old story. It’s not “Look Homeward Angel.” It’s just a young guy, who would not be venturing out from Chicago to her Mother’s house in Gulfport, Mississippi for Thanksgiving that year.
Which left me alone at Thanksgiving. And I’d been through that once. Had to take some action. Did not know what. But I had to do something.
I would not be stuck around some dinner table where everyone gathered because they thought they were supposed to gather. Following some genetic instinct of what holidays and family are supposed to mean. A rhythm unstoppable by anything else than a nuclear blast because most times, if you’re dancing to that rhythm, you don’t even know it’s there.
What does that mean? Sorry for that last sentence going on forever. I think I’m a little nervous telling you this story Mr. Thomas Wolff. And I tend to go on and on when I get nervous.
All I was trying to say was that I didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving with someone just because I was supposed to spend it with them. I didn’t want it to be about obligations. Even if I liked the people. I didn’t want obligation to be the orchestra leader.
Or, worse yet, I didn’t want to be that last minute guest with nowhere else to go. Sitting in the chair with the nametag in front that said LOSER.
What I was missing though, was an actual solution. I really didn’t know what to do.
So going down to the local tavern seemed like a good choice. Thanksgiving was two nights away. Maybe if I drank enough between now and then, I’d figure it out.
It had just started to snow, the Chicago winter winds like jet engines revving up for takeoff. Coming into the bar, a joint over on Wabansia, I opened the door under the faded neon of a Hamm’s Beer sign, and there was a shout of “Hey, close the damned door, kid!”
I wasn’t sure at first, who had yelled. The bartender, faceless in the shadows at the back of the dark bar. Or was it the guy with wire-rimmed glasses and very intense eyes sitting at the bar?
Stomping the dusty snow off my boots and unzipping my big down coat, I looked again at the guy hunched over at the bar. He was like a shadow. He seemed to fade in and out.
Thinking I better drink quick, I ordered a beer and a shot of Jack Daniels before I had even sat down. That faceless bartender put it down, I put a $10 on the bar, turned to offer a toast to the guy with the glasses, and once again, he seemed to fade away. Where he had been, was only an empty bar stool. The bartender had retreated back to his corner. So I felt totally alone. And as soon as I felt most alone, the ghost on the bar stool faded back into view, gave me a wink and said, “Yeah. It’s me. Sorry about the whole Thanksgiving thing, kid. I know what it’s like getting dumped. Me and Frenchy. . . . . “
I interrupted. Couldn’t help it. I knew who he was. I knew Frenchy is what he called Simone deBeauvoir. “No way. Algren? Really? Nelson Algren?”
“Do I look like Papa Hemingway, kid?”
“How did you . . . what is. . .why am I. . .what the . . .”
“Easy kid, We’ll let you ask your questions. But first, lets get a table. We’re gonna have some company.”
Algren motioned me over to an even darker corner of the bar. And that’s when I saw you, Mr. Wolff. This time, alive as you could be! Wild hair, eyes darting all over the room. I could see you writing without even having a pen or paper or typewriter. Just sitting there fidgeting in your chair, you were writing!
You said to me “Sorry about the Thanksgiving thing kid. Thought I’d pop by. See if I could help. Awful nice of you to come by the grave that time.”
“Yeah,” said Algren. “We figured we’d have Thanksgiving tonight. See, where we come from, the exact day doesn’t really matter too much.”
“I have,” I said, close to losing the ability to speak, “so many questions!”
“Well, that’s nice. kid. But why don’t you wait till everybody gets here.”
“Who else is . . .” and just then the barroom door opened. Framed with another swirl of snow, in walked perhaps the greatest of all American male vocalists, Joe Williams. As if reading my mind while he watched my jaw drop, he boomed out a laugh and said, “That whole being the greatest male vocalist? Not the way Frank Sinatra
sees it. But truth told. Does it matter?”
“No. I guess not. But why are you here, too? I mean this has got to be the greatest Thanksgiving night I’ve ever spent. And it’s not even Thanksgiving night! But there is so much here I don’t understand…”
“Which is why you get to ask each of us one question,” said Thomas Wolff.
“But—why can’t I ask more?”
“How about this, kid. If you asked us each more than one, it would make the story too long. Christ kid, you already tossed in the bit about getting dumped at the beginning. What was the point of that? To make us like you more or something? Ever hear of editing, kid? Ever hear of getting to the point? Story is already too long. So you get one question answered by each of us.”
“Well sure, but I . . .well Mr. Wolff . . .gee, I remember when I first started reading you, how many times did I think, why the hell do I want to write? I’ll never, ever, ever be as good as Thomas Wolff! So why bother? I guess that’s my question. Why bother trying to write? What’s the point?”
”Ok,” answered Wolff, “you ready for your answer?”
“Yes sir.”
“Here’s the answer: I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You’re Thomas Wolff! If you don’t know why we bother to write—especially now, with you being dead and all—how will I ever figure it out?”
“You won’t, kid. You’ll never figure it out. Because the answer is a mystery. No one knows. That’s the point. No one knows.”
“So what do I do?”
“You stop asking questions like that. You just write. Because here’s the thing kid. When I write—and of course I still do it now—when I write I am never alone. So I just write. So enough on that. Nelson, it’s your turn.”
Nelson Algren had sold books all around the world, Hemingway considered him one of the greats; he is still read today. Yet his books were never in the Chicago Public Libraries. He wasn’t all that well-liked in his home city of Chicago. So little liked that he, towards the end of his life, eventually left Chicago. If I had to choose one of the million questions I had for this teacher it would be the one I spoke out loud that night in the dark bar. “Mr. Algren, what if people don’t like your writing? Don’t like or don’t care. If people don’t respond to your writing, what do you do?”
And this is what he said. “Kid, let me ask you a question. Is this about you or about the writing?”
“Well, I. . .”
“Do the right people like your stuff?”
“You mean the people who will buy it?”
“No kid. I mean the right people. And right people means something different to every writer. Take, for example, you. You remember that lady writer from Ohio? You know the one. She’s living in my neighborhood now.”
“Karen Novak?”
“Of course Karen Novak! Do you remember what happened when she wrote you and told you that you were the real deal? That you could write? Do you remember what that did for you? How your self-confidence shot up like a rocket? Do you remember the fact that Roger Ebert has tweeted your stuff? Do you remember that writers read you? Writers you respect?”
“Well I. . .yeah.”
“Then that’s the answer. When somebody doesn’t like or worse yet, doesn’t care, about your work; when no one comments on what you do, then what do you do? You ask yourself, do the right people care?”
There was silence for a moment. The wind had started to pick up outside.
“Oh. Well then I guess I got one more question. Mr. Williams sir, I am honored you are here. But I’m not sure why. So I guess my question is this, why are you here?”
“That’s an easy one, son. I’m here because good writing is always full of music. So everywhere somebody is talking about writing, I’m there too.
But there’s another reason I am here today. A more important one. It’s to tell you this: Every time someone writes, every time someone tells a story, it’s an act of Thanksgiving. That’s what it is, son. Telling a story is an act of Thanksgiving. And when you are giving thanks, you are never, ever alone.”
As I let that sink in, it was as if the wind had stopped blowing for a moment. I closed my eyes to think about what he had said, and when I opened them, my three Thanksgiving companions had vanished.
Left with their answers. Left with Joe Williams’ words:
“Every time you tell a story, you are giving thanks. And when you give thanks, you’re not alone.”
I said that out loud again as I put on my coat and opened the door to walk out into the snow. I thought about my Thanksgiving. The one I ended up sharing with three of my teachers.
“Every time you tell a story, you’re giving thanks. And when you give thanks, you’re not alone.”
And as I spoke his words out loud to the snowy winter wind, I could hear Joe Williams sing.
So who signed the letter?” asked my wife, “SATAN?!!!”
“No.” I answered. “It was signed Human Resources.”
“And the difference is . . . .”
“Exactly.” I unfolded the email I had printed out. It read, verbatim:
Dear $applicantname$,
Thank you for submitting your application for the above referenced position. This is to inform you that the search committee is pursuing other candidates at this time. We want to thank you for the interest that you have shown in this position and the United Church of Christ, National Offices.
Sincerely,
Human Resources
“The Dollar Signs bookending the word “Applicantname.” Nice touch. Warm. Personal.”
“And strangely symbolic of something. Not sure what. Maybe I better call in a theologian.”
“Good idea Roger. You do that.”
The United Church of Christ is one of the mainline denominations. There was a corporate merger of two denominations in 1959. The corporate headquarters is in an office building in Cleveland. And, like most all of the mainline denominations, has been loosing members since the 1960’s. The church prides itself on NOT rejecting people. Differing points of view are encouraged by the church. I remember the elder of my own UCC church who once said to me, “You know the problems with this church? They come from people who don’t own property.”
President Obama (when he wasn’t being a Kenyan Muslim) was a member of the largest United Church of Christ in the United States. He was married in a UCC Church.
So was I.
But somehow the irony of being rejected by the church, rejected so profoundly that they didn’t even want to talk, zoomed right past being upset and ended up in a kind of giddy amusement. It really was kind of funny to get a form rejection letter from a church.
And it’s not like I was rejected for all the usual reasons people get rejected from a church. I’m not gay. Poor. From somewhere else.
Of course we had stopped going to our church on any regular basis. Around the time they put the sign up on the side of the church that said, “God loves you. Whether you know it or not.”
We missed the church. Missed it fiercely. But we simply didn’t fit anymore. We didn’t have the 2.5 kids. We were far from the income bracket of most of the folks in the church. We weren’t part of the church of the 1%. We simply couldn’t afford the dues. Not literally. But emotionally. And most of all, the characters of the church, the elderly, the heroes, people who you wouldn’t look twice at if you were walking down the street, they had all died or drifted away. Several of them went to neighboring churches. On a warm autumn day this year, we saw one of them marching in the annual neighborhood Von Steuben Parade—the day Chicago turns German—and we got so excited we ran out into the middle of the street and hugged her. We literally ran out into the parade.
That was church. And that was gone.
No animosity. Or even any ill will. We adore so many of the members. Still call them friends. Still in touch. Maybe we’ll go back and visit someday. As so many others do. But church is something different.
That’s why the rejection from the United Church of Christ for a job was like some sort of joke told by David Letterman on an off night. And no one can really reject you if they’ve never talked to you. They are rejecting a resume. Not you.
The job was called “Director of Publishing, Identity and Communication.” And I probably would have been a bad fit. My first directive would have been, “How about if we edit the JOB TITLES!”
Which would not have gone over well.
They said, in the job spec, that they wanted somebody who could help them tell the church’s story.
I could have helped them with that. I’ve told some stories.
And I thought of comments on UCC corporate that I’d heard first hand from other pastors—I’d done a lot of work with the UCC on their marketing campaign “God is Still Speaking” as well as the years I was with the Faith Consulting Practice for Gallup where I wrote training. There was the UCC Pastor I met on line who told me of Cleveland Corporate, “They ought to blow the whole place up and start again.” The Pastor who told me today, “You know, this is kinda funny.” And then there was the one who told me a few years ago, “I gained 100 pounds during the time I worked in Cleveland.”
My favorite comment though was from my friend Pastor Pete, who said. “This is a blessing.”
And it is. Because here’s the thing. If you are looking for the tired cliché swats at organized religion, the smarmy Bill Maher live from the Playboy Club snark bites, the tortured prose of Christopher Hitchens trying to say something, you won’t find it here.
I understand all the harm that has been done in the name of religion. I understand not wanting to believe in something you can’t see. I have met, at least by email, Human Resources of the United Church of Christ. A demomination known for being reluctant to say the name “Jesus” in services. I’m not even in the income bracket of the people who go to the church I used to attend. I don’t fit in there anymore.
So I get it.
But I also get that feeling in my feet of the worn floorboards in the church I now miss, the creaking ancient echoes of the Christian story. Being part of something that’s bigger than me. A community that takes care of each other. I get that.
That’s what home means to me.
That is my walk down Grace Street in Chicago. In the words of the Psalm:
You have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. Psalm 63
What song comes to mind first? It’s called “Walking in Memphis. By a guy named Mark Cohn.
I love the part of the song’s story when she says to him, “Son, are you a Christian.” And he answers.
“Ma’am I am tonight.”
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The story had a state governor, an archbishop, a young girl and a lesson in power.
A story that seemed to fit the cruel, grey November skies. As if the Governor of Illinois and the Archbishop of Chicago were competing banks of storm clouds. Not just two guys arguing over a young girl who was raped.
And if the two men, the Governor and the Archbishop, perhaps fancied themselves storm clouds, perhaps the young victim was like that feeling a person gets just before the rain.
What the two men were arguing about was that the Governor wanted to give the woman an award for advocating for the rights of women, and especially rape victims. And the Archbishop’s point was that “baby killers” and the organizations they represent must not be honored.
The woman’s name was Jennie Goodman. That we even know her name is the lesson in power. Course, I didn’t know that. Had no idea. Not till Pastor Pete helped me figure it out. But that comes later.
The attack happened a long time ago. She was 18.
Jennie Goodman came from the green lawn suburbs of Chicago. Quiet, leafy streets where stuff like this just did not happen.
Not until l that summer morning in 1991 when the football player bad boy she knew from school stopped by her house just as she had gotten up. Looking at her kind of funny. Asking, “Is there someplace we could go where your mother wouldn’t hear us?”
And because this was the suburbs, there was a small shed out back of the house. Jennie Goodman said “Sure.” She figured maybe they’d make out. It would be exciting. He was a football player.
What happened in the shed. The rape. The violation beyond words. It of course changed her life.
And if I think about this too much . . . .I am outraged beyond words. The violation of the most vulnerable being a violation of us all. Ripping us all apart at the very place where we all connect.
In my imagination, I am gripping an oily, cold metal AK-47. They are not that hard to get here in Chicago. I can tell you the corner where they are sold. And if I would have been there, if Jennie Goodman just happened to be my sister, my friend, I would use the gun.
Which is why I thought I better go see Pastor Pete.
Pastor Pete didn’t have a church at the moment. But he was working. When you are called, like Pastor Pete, you’re always working. So I knew if I found him we could talk. Pastor Pete wasn’t a company man.
He was not a passive aggressive, pandering purveyor of the cloth. A preacher who put up signs of the side of the church that said things like: “God loves you. Whether you know it or not.”
He might marvel at how many things were wrong with that statement. But he would never say it.
Pastor Pete. Grey haired ponytail. Five foot 4. A whirling bundle of electricity with a current of kindness when he preached. As if the comedian Sam Kinnison has somehow come alive in Wisconsin.
Pastor Pete would help. Who knows? He might even help me pull the trigger when I told him about Jennie Goodman. You gotta love a Pastor who knew when to say “Fuck it.”
But I hoped he wouldn’t. I hoped he would help me control how much I wanted to make that guy pay for what he did to Jennie Goodman.
Pastor Pete and I met at Hot Doug’s. Best hot dogs in Chicago. When I walked in, he was ordering everything with an extra side of cheese.
I got right down to it.
“Why does a good God let this happen! This women has been raped. Now she’s a political football between the Governor and the catholic church. That simply isn’t fair! And I can’t help thinking, Pastor Pete, ‘Why God why?”
Pastor Pete took a long low bite of his cheese dog. Scooped up his cheese fries. And gave me this answer.
“Roger? I don’t know.”
“You don’t know! But you’re a Pastor! Why can’t you tell me WHY??”
“Because that’s not the question.”
“What do you mean it’s not the question?
“If I could answer “Why God why?” than I’d be. . . .”
“Oh, Wait. I get it. How do you answer “Why?” without you being God too?”
“Yep” He nodded, chewing on the cheese covered corn dog he had gotten on the side. “Why God why?” is an unanswerable question.” At least for those of us who are not God.
“OK. That’s nice. But I still don’t have an answer to why this woman was raped and now 20 years later is still paying for it. This time by being a political football”
“Maybe you need a different question.”
“Huh?”
“How about this question. ‘Where God, where?’
“What does that mean?”
“It means, ‘Where is God in all of this horror show?’”
“ I sure don’t see much of God in all of this.”
“Well,” he took a sip of his coke, “You see the headlines yesterday. Jennie Goodman saying to the Catholic hierarchy, “How dare you?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Well, what was different about Jennie Goodman’s story?”
“That she came forward? Pastor, you know how hard that is. You know that it’s a set up for a second round of attacks. She’s a rape counselor. I bet she’d never tell a victim that coming forward was her best option.’
“Probably not. But I’m not talking about advice. I’m talking about the raw courage it took to put yourself out there. I’m talking about why she’s getting that award in the first place. For what her coming forward says to the countless unnamed victims, also brutalized, for the message that maybe taking back your power is possible. For communicating by what she does that maybe there is hope.
That message. Right there. The one you can’t see. The one you’ll never know till you look for in. Wrapped in pain. Like a shining light. A light. One that says maybe there is hope.”
“And that’s where God is?”
“Could be. Of course figuring that out is up to you. Hope is awfully hard to see.”
“Mmm”
“And then, “ the Pastor finished off the last of his cheese fries, “there’s also the other part.”
“Which part is that, Pastor Pete?”
“The part where when she came out, gave her name, told her story, then the catholic hierarchy could no longer use her as a football to pummel the governor. The church backed down. Said that had they known she was a rape victim, they would have found some other way to beat on the governor.”
“So it was all right to criticize the governor for giving an award to a woman who advocated for a women’s right to control their own body. But when the woman was a rape victim. . .then never mind. They were sorry?”
“Yep,” said Pastor Pete.
“That must have had some PR flack working overtime.”
“Hah!” laughed Pastor Pete. “Takes an awful lot of power to make the church back down. But that woman did it. She did it. I remember when I used to think that ‘turning the other cheek’ was a passive act. She sure showed how wrong THAT thought was.”
“Interesting thought.” I said. ‘Turning the other cheek doesn’t have to be passive act.’ “Well there was nothing passive about Jennie Goodman.”
“Yep” said Pastor Pete. “She’s not about passive. She is all about power.”
“She is all about power. She is no one’s victim anymore.”
“Yep.” Said Pastor Pete. “She took back the power. God bless her.”
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The bartender’s name was Sam.
And as the golden Indian summer songs of October gave way to the chilly dark winds of November in the seemingly deserted city night around Wrigley Field in Chicago; Sam kept watch with her one customer, an old man named Rick.
The bar was called Bernie’s. From April thru September, and rarely for a few days in October, a carnival of red and blue celebration shouts, spilling over and into the neighborhood like sunlight as 40,000 anticipating people streamed into the old ballpark across the street. A field of dazzling green grass inside a coliseum on the grounds of what once had been a Lutheran Seminary. Bernie’s was always throbbing and full.
But on November nights, there was just Samantha and Rick. At the far end of the long polished bar that separated them like a river of time that passed much too quick. Both of them sitting with their backs against a wall, she pages through a newspaper, he looks out at the hulking empty ball field across the street. There is a comfortable silence. As if they’d sat together that way for years.
He says to her. “So you’ve settled on piano then? At Columbia?”
She looks over. Dancing hazel grey eyes. “Rick, I’m not settling for anything. It just seems like if you can play piano, you can play anything. And the program is good. So. . “
“Ah Sam,” he smiles at her. Seeing her face like a promise of tomorrow’s joy. “You will break a lot of hearts.”
And she laughs in a bubbly joy. “But I will never, ever, break yours!” Somewhere, he thinks, there is an old soul in there. Hidden in the sparking beauty of her youth. He wonders if she’s found it yet. He says, “Hey Sam?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you like baseball?”
She has put down her newspaper and is happily texting. While her thumbs beat out a rhythm to some conversation he’ll never hear, she answers, “Not really. I’m not sure there’s much to like.”
“How so?”
“It seems like baseball is all about memory and money,” she says.
“Well,” he puts an old man’s authority into his voice, “Baseball has always had its share of flim flam men. Smooth operators.”
She shoots back, cutting right through the tone of authority, smiling like a sunrise on a Caribbean Island even here, in a Chicago wind.
“Flim flam men, smooth operators? God I love the way you talk! No I don’t mean that. I don’t even know what that means! I mean money. As in, how many games did you pay to go see last year?”
“Well, ah . . .”
“”Exactly. None! And you know a lot about baseball.”
“I’m just a fan. I’m not some expert,” said the old man.
“You’re not one of those slick announcers with the voice like a greased bullfrog. All serious and saying nothing and being pretty?”
“I thought the girls liked guys like that?”
“Not this girl.”
“Hmm. You’d think I would have figured all this out by now huh? At my age.”
“Rick, said Sam, you are about the most NOT old man I’ve ever met. There are boys in my program at Columbia. They’re 23. But they are older than you.”
“So that’s good?”
“Of course that’s good. Now what else were we talking about?’
“Loosing the memory Sam?” smiled Rick.
“Shut up!” She grinned. “We were talking memory. Everything about baseball is in the past. Statistics, stories, all of it. I hear more about Ron Santo than I do about anybody who plays today.”
“That’s just because the Cubs have been trying to replace him since 1972.”
“I wasn’t even BORN in 1972! Which is another thing. Baseball is all about middle aged white guys remembering things. No kids. No women. Nobody who isn’t white. They put the world series games on past most kid’s bedtimes. I guess kids don’t buy much beer. So no point in kids watching all those beer commercials.”
“You make a good point Sam.”
The two lapsed back into their silence for awhile. Samantha kept texting. Rick kept looking out the window. After awhile, he said to her, “Hey Sam?”
“Mmm?
“Play it. Play that song again?”
She reached out her left hand, never stopping her texting, and the sounds of this song filled the empty bar.
http://youtu.be/kz-uIe_hKQs
And while the song played, the old man heard a bell chime, a bell like a door opening into the dusty corridors of time. The young girl kept texting. But the old man saw the door open, felt the November wind sweep in as the woman, not a young girl, a woman with laughing eyes, from the echoes of his mind, walked into the bar. And said to him. “Go ahead. Say it.”
Rick laughed. Pretending just for a second he didn’t know what she meant. “Say it!”
“OK. I’ll say it. But you finish it.”
“Deal.” She nodded.
“Of all the gin joints in all the world. . .”
“She,” the woman finished, “Had to come into mine.”
“So.” Rick stumbled for a moment. “How’s your life been?”
“Hah! How do you answer that question? And how much time you have?”
“I wish I knew the answers to those questions.” Rick said. “Especially the last one.”
“Well, what do you know then?” asked the woman.
And he looked at her hard and said; “I know that it was always you. And I know that you had to go.”
“Who’s choice was that?” she asked.
“Does it matter now?” he answered.
And there was silence, as they both knew the answer. The song was ending as the woman said, “Remember that lyric you had on your wall. The song was “The Dutchman.” By Michael Smith. Remember the part where it said,
She hums a line or two
They sing together in the dark
The Dutchman falls asleep
And Margaret blows the candle out
“Perfect, “ he said. “Even if your name isn’t Margaret.
“And even if you’re not Dutch.”
They took one last look at each other as she faded into the November darkness of the old man’s memory.
“Rick! Sam punched his arm across the bar. So what about baseball? We were talking about baseball. And I think you went somewhere else while we were talking. So why should I like baseball? Are you saying I’m right? That it is all about money and memory?”
And the old man answered, “Sam, let me see if I can remember this. It’s from Bart Giamatti’s “A Great and Glorious Game”
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then just as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high tides alive and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it the most, it stops. Today, October, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf clogged streets, it stopped and summer was gone. Somehow the summer seemed to slip by faster this time.
“Wow,” said the young woman. “That is beautiful. That’s really about baseball? Maybe there is something there besides the money and the memory. Not sure what. But something.” And as she said this she picked up the newspaper again. “Maybe there’s something about baseball in here. Hey Rick, who’s Theo Epstein?”
“He’s the kid from Boston who’s gonna try to run the Cubs. Young, smart, good looking, rich . . .Hey Sam, you know I bet he’ll come in here . . .”
“Shut up Rick,” she smiled without looking up. Any guy that pretty . . ..
Hey wait. Listen to this!”
“Suddenly you’re interested in baseball?”
“No, listen. It says that Epstein’s Grandfather and Great Uncle were two of the writers who worked on the script for the movie Casablanca! Hey that’s my favorite movie! Hey Rick, that’s pretty cool! Baseball Casablanca! Hey Rick, here’s a question. What if baseball was somehow, someway like a trip to Casablanca?”
“That,” said Rick looking out into the city night and the massive walls of the ballpark soon to be covered in snow, “that is a wonderful question.”
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“And wondered if I need your face
To ease my pain
Maybe I won’t ever see that face again
But loving you will have to last at least till then”
-Holly Near & Jeff Langley
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.
*******************************************
This piece originally appeared in www.fictionique.com
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Listen to the drumming in the rain. A heartbeat to Occupy America.
Listen and start walking. The walk below is in Chicago. But the drum beats everywhere.
**************
Before dawn. Walking upstairs from the subway under the lights of the Chicago Theater. Into the cold dark rain of the empty city streets. And I could hear it. The drum. The echoes bouncing off the towers tumbling from blocks west. From the financial district. As if the drum had arrived alone before the people showed up.
The Artist and the Drumbeat
Turning left on Randolph Street past the studios of the Joffrey Ballet.
And the drum beat for the dying embers of all the artists under fire in a coming world where swirling ballerinas hung suspended in mid air because the funding for dancing had gone dry. “There is a budget deficit you know. So we’re sorry. But there is just no place for you to land. We’re out of money.”
While unborn story tellers, painters of pictures, sculptors with hands dipped in clay, poets gone silent looked up and saw the dancers. And then they all went still.
With no way to make a living with their art, the drum beat rose to a lyric for all the artists sitting in soulless cubicles. The fortunate ones cause they had day jobs. For the moment. They had jobs in the cold autumn rain. That lyric for the soul sucked artists went:
How the hell can a person
Go to work in the morning
Come home in the evening
And have nothing to say.
The dancer freezes in mid air. All is quiet except for the drum beat.
The Politically Entitled and the Drum Beat
You walk a few steps east. In front of a hot dog stand. A black Escalade with tinted windows pulls over. Out pops the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. His companion, a 6’5” African American man in a $1,000 suit. The two men talking and laughing together. As if they had known each other all their lives. The Mayor blends, with his companion, into the flow of sidewalk traffic. The Mayor just wanted to walk his last few blocks to work. Smiling. Looks like the happiest guy on earth.
As the Mayor and his “friend” pass, you notice the headline of a newspaper staring out from a box. You slide the coins in and begin to read as you walk. The story is about how the Mayor gave raises to himself and his inner circle.
You think first of all the decisions he’s made that have been solid. The gentle perception you have drawn from seeing him with his kids when no one is watching, the toughness he’s shown in trying to govern a very tough town. Now come raises for the inner circle.
And this phrase takes hold: “The politically entitled.” As it does, you can hear the drum beat. The politically entitled. Why do I give raises to my friends? Why do I keep the circle of power closed? I do it because I can.
You remember all the ways you tried to break into that inner circle of the politically entitled. All the years of trying. Buying the illusion that your little program and policy proposals could even be read in the inner circle. Scratching to where you actually got a phone number of the Mayor’s patronage chief Matt Hynes, clocking in now, the newspaper tells you, with a salary of $180,000.
You did get his phone number. A phone number from the inner circle. Those are rare. But you had one.
Oh, and a new way of thinking about connecting people and jobs. Something that really was unique. And a completed book and training program to make it real. So you called. And of course were shocked but not surprised when the calls were never returned.
You are not part of the politically entitled. The Hynes family had been working on the deal making, the horse trading, and the withdrawal of support for those who really could make a difference, working on it for two generations. The great blogger “Driftglasses’ quote on the two rules of politics comes to mind:
1. Rule #1: There is a club.
2. Rule #2: You’re not in it.
Of course you didn’t get calls returned. The insider didn’t know you. Because you are not in the politically entitled class.
Sour grapes? Taking your ball and going home? Bitter and not being let in to a club where you will never belong?
Could be.
So you keep walking.
The Prophet and the Drum Beat
You cross the street. Under the engraved Marshall Field and Company sign on the Macy’s store. Sitting on the sidewalk. Huddled in the rain. Face hidden. Coughing. Obviously ill. He holds a sign:
I am a veteran. I am hungry.
As you approach, this happens in a nano second, a scraggly bearded long haired guy with the eyes of time squats down. His face is even with the veteran on the sidewalk. You see Mr. Scraggly Beard make eye contact with the vet and say:
“Who needs a doctor? The healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this means: I’m after mercy, not religion. I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”
And as the drum beat rises, the scraggly bearded one presses a $50 bill, I am close enough to see this, into the dirty hand of the coughing veteran on the sidewalk.
And the drum beat sings,
“And the years
That I spent lost
In the mystery
Fall away
Leaving only the sound of the drum.”
The Character and the Drum Beat
You keep walking towards Michigan Avenue. Cross and up a slight incline into the lobby of the Prudential Building. A breakfast place in the corner of the lobby. Inside, your pal. The character, Lester Lapczynski. Red plaid jacket. Black cheap hairpiece like a comb over gone very wrong. Lower lip protruding so that you need to always sit out of range of his mouth to avoid getting seriously sprayed. Usually never leaves the bar. But this morning he agreed to breakfast. Approaching the table you see he’s already ordered. 3 plates of bacon. Just bacon. And black coffee.
“Lester. Bacon? You’re only having bacon?”
“What else do you need Roger?”
“Well I. . . “
“So what is it today Roger? Feeling sorry for yourself or worried about the world? Which is it today yuppie scum?”
“Lester, I don’t have the money to be a yuppie scum anymore.”
“Ah. Feeling sorry for yourself huh? The whole nobody reads what you write, nobody listens, you’re not in the, what did you call it, the politically entitled club. Or whatever that line of crap of yours was . . . that it?”
“No I . . .I’m fine. I’m making it. More than most folks! I’m in the 99%. But who isn’t!”
“Pfft,” Lester shoots a bit of bacon from his mouth that goes half way across the room. Lemme ask you a question college boy. It’s the one you been thinking about. A question about all this Occupy Wall Street, occupy my car, occupy my basement stuff. Here’s the question. What does it all mean?
“Lester, I have no idea. Not a clue. I’m just trying to listen. Trying to tell the stories. I’m letting the people in the streets tell me. Not the other way around. I’m just trying to tell the stories.”
Lester was quiet for a moment. Something rare. “You’re just trying to tell the stories, are you?”
I nod my head. “Course nobody wants to hear them . . . I’m not in any kind of publishing club anymore than I’m in a politically entitled club. No one’s gonna pay me. . .no one will read this. . . .”
“Ah ah ah!” Lester held up his hand in a stop motion. “Go back to that part where you actually said something smart.”
“What part?”
“Think dumb ass. Before the ‘poor me’ part. What did you effen SAY!”
“I said I had no idea what this movement was really about. Not really. I am here to listen. And then all I can do is tell the stories. Whether anyone cares or not. Whether anyone reads them or not. I can only tell the stories”
Lester nodded. Took another slice of bacon. And said, “There might be hope for you yet, kid.”
There was a heartbeat of silence.
And again I heard the drum.
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From the crowd came the taunt. “The wine is cheap! Just like your soul!
As the tall blond woman in the shimmering cocktail dress walked into the Art Institute of Chicago to join in the formal dinner of The American Futures Association last night, she pretended not to hear. But I recognized the voice. Emily Bananas. And if Emily was here, so was Jerry.
Stand Up Chicago had joined with Occupy Chicago to produce big numbers. Scanning the crowd estimated at 7,000 streaming in from five feeder parades to congregate underneath the glassed in wall of the Art Museum’s Terzo Piano restaurant three stories up, members of the 1% class of Americans were looking down on the crowd, pointing, and taking pictures with their cell phones.
Scanning the growing throng, I looked north and saw the tie dyed t-shirt, grey ponytailed figure of Jerry Bananas standing in the brown autumn prairie grass square of Millennium Park. Eyes wide open like he was some kind of deer come down to drink at the prairie stream, he waved and motioned me over.
I hadn’t seen Jerry since the old days. Back in Rogers Park when everybody’s apartment had the steam clanging radiators that kept us all warm against the wild snows of winter and everybody could walk to the shores of Lake Michigan from wherever they lived.
How he got the name Jerry Bananas? Long story. Involved some very tasty brownies, a bootleg Grateful Dead tape and a shopping list that included things like “Six quarts of world peace.”
But of course we started talking as if no time had passed at all.
“So whattya think Jerry? These kids got something here?”
“Oh yeah. They’re close. I can feel it. People are breathing differently here.”
Jerry had always said things like that. I wasn’t sure what he meant. But I liked it.
“Still got the van Jerry?”
“It’s parked right below here. Right beneath the flowers? There’s a parking lot! Cool huh?”
“Mmm. So what do you think will happen next Jerry?”
“Same as always. They’ll start dreaming up fantasies of outside agitators. Make sure that the folks doing this are painted as too crazy, dumb, or young to do this on their own.”
“Way I’ve heard it that’s already happened.”
“Then the screaming from the rich and the powerful starts,”
“You mean like Rand Paul saying that the purpose of all this is to steal rich people’s IPADs?”
Jerry laughed. “Yep. Calling them mobs and all. That’s textbook Roger. You know that’s coming. That means its working.”
“But what about the whole ‘take me to your leader’ bit, Jerry? What’s that all about. It seems like there’s no General here. How do they make anything happen without a leader?”
“Mmm. Yeah,” Jerry closed his eyes and drifted back. Didn’t speak for a moment and then said, “I wish we would have been that smart.”
“OK, but here’s the part that worries me. How scattered they are. How unfocused. Don’t we need specifics? Plans, Flow charts?”
“Hey Roger?”
“Yeah Jerry.”
“Remember when you were a teacher? Back in Uptown? That red ramshakle old building at the corner of Montrose and Clark, right across from Graceland Cemetery?”
“Course I remember. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Just wondering if you needed any of that stuff back then?”
“Well I. . .”
“They do have specifics,” Jerry said. And he whipped out his I-Phone and punched up www.occupychi.com. Here look. 12 items. Which one isn’t clear?
1.PASS HR 1489 REINSTATING GLASS-STEAGALL. – A depression era safeguard that separated the commercial lending and investment banking portions of banks. Its repeal in 1999 is considered the major cause of the global financial meltdown of 2008-2009.
2. REPEAL BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY
3. FULLY INVESTIGATE AND PROSECUTE THE WALL STREET CRIMINALS who clearly broke the law and helped cause the 2008 financial crisis.
4.OVERTURN CITIZENS UNITED v. US. – A 2010 Supreme Court Decision which ruled that money is speech. Corporations, as legal persons, are now allowed to contribute unlimited amounts of money to campaigns in the exercise of free “speech.”
5. PASS THE BUFFET RULE ON FAIR TAXATION, CLOSE CORPORATE TAX LOOPHOLES, PROHIBIT HIDING FUNDS OFFSHORE.
6. GIVE THE SEC STRICTER REGULATORY POWER, STRENGTHEN THE CONSUMER PROTECTION BUREAU, AND PROVIDE ASSISTANCE FOR OWNERS OF FORECLOSED MORTGAGES WHO WERE VICTIMS OF PREDATORY LENDING.
7.TAKE STEPS TO LIMIT THE INFLUENCE OF LOBBYISTS AND ELIMINATE THE PRACTICE OF LOBBYISTS WRITING LEGISLATION.
8. ELIMINATE RIGHT OF FORMER GOVERNMENT REGULATORS TO WORK FOR CORPORATIONS OR INDUSTRIES THEY ONCE REGULATED.
9. ELIMINATE CORPORATE PERSONHOOD.
10. INSIST THE FEC STAND UP FOR THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN REGULATING PRIVATE USE OF PUBLIC AIRWAVES to help ensure that political candidates ARE GIVEN EQUAL TIME for free at reasonable intervals during campaign season.
11. REFORM CAMPAIGN FINANCE WITH THE PASSAGE OF THE FAIR ELECTIONS NOW ACT (S.750, H.R. 1404).
12. FORGIVE STUDENT DEBT – The same institutions that gave almost $2T in bailouts and then extended $16T of loans at little to no interest for banks can surely afford to forgive the $946B of student debt currently held
“Well, I now know more than I did a few minutes ago.”
“Cool”
“But it seems like they’re still missing something. Something they need to make them successful. Something that will make this message flow into action.”
“Well they are,” Jerry said. “They are missing a vision. They’ve got everything they need to say it, they all feel it, and they will get there. But they’ve got to say it out loud.
They’ve got to paint the picture of the way they want things to be. All the action items, bills passed, policies wonked, all of it won’t mean squat without the vision.”
“So what’s the vision Jerry? What are the words to paint the picture so the bad guys won’t paint it for us? So we will have a picture of the dream made real?”
And Jerry swept his hand through a strand of brown prairie grass, looked up at the October sky of youth’s bright promise, shook his grey ponytail and he said:
“Here’s the vision for them Roger:
Take care of each other
Take care of those who can’t take care of themselves
Bring back possibility
And once again make words have a meaning.”
“I like that Jerry. I like that a lot. But is there anything else?”
And Jerry pointed up to the glassed in cage of the third floor patrons looking out on the assembled crowd of the other 99% of America. He pointed his finger straight at the 1% up in the sky and he said,
“Break the glass.”
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Back before their last names were Obama and Blagojevich. Michelle and Patti were two little girls on very similar playgrounds in two very different Chicago neighborhoods.
Michelle, the smart girl. From the South Side. South Shore. Patti the tough girl. From the Northwest Side. Both from strong, dinner around the table every night, families. Families of what we used to call “the middle class.” Parents who paid attention. Parents who loved.
In 2008 Michelle getting ready to leave her elegant home in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. In the shadow of desolate poverty, a home bought from the money her husband earned writing a book. Michelle, her two girls and her husband sitting on the steps of their home. An alternate take from the 1950’s show “Leave It To Beaver.” Michelle steeped in the swirling musical hard working culture of Chicago’s African American South Side, is asked, “What will you miss most about your life here in Chicago. And she answers, “I’ll miss shopping at the Target Store on Roosevelt Road.”
So with memories of that time she and her big eared strange gangly boyfriend Barry went to get that ice cream cone at the Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors Shop in Hyde Park, Michelle leaves home on an adventure of a lifetime. Off to live where Jackie Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Todd Lincoln lived. That was Michelle leaving home. Knowing some day she’d return.
Three years later. Patti isn’t just leaving home. She’s the real estate agent selling her home in the tree lined quiet streets of Chicago’s Old Ravenswood Neighborhood. Her husband, also in politics, but no more. So there are money issues. Patti does what she has always done. She muscles through.
The TV cameras offering free publicity because this home sale is also a news story. Patti describes the $1.1 million dollar home. Patti remembers a Northwest Side dance. Once beneath this same October moon. Her boyfriend Rod was funny. He was handsome. She was in love. And as the TV shot pitched as a news story is there to be engineered by her to sell the home, she’s asked, “What’s it like for you, having to sell the house?”
And in her answer, the tone of cold blue steel that made her so tough on that playground comes through. It took a fraction of a second. She showed that steel and said, “Rod and I have moved lots of times. But this is the only home our girls have known.” She speaks of her daughters. The toughness shows. And then in a blink she’s back describing the home.
Patti leaving the home and not knowing where she’s going.
At the exact same time Michelle, now sitting deep inside Mary Todd Lincoln’s Old White House, decides she’s going shopping at Target. Fuck it. She’s going to Target.
So the emails are shot off to the press office in a well-practiced drill, a photographer is assigned, and a convoy is rolled out to transport First Lady One. Commentators start to ramp up. A verbal barrage is orchestrated. All for the same lady who once said what she’d miss most when she left home in Kenwood, what she’d miss most was shopping at a Target Store. She said it. And she actually meant it.
Michelle’s convoy moves out, a flurry of black tinted glass SUV’s that stop traffic. On the way to Target.
While the TV cameras go dark on Patti’s pitch to sell her house.
Patti takes a breath. Squares her shoulders. She has a sister, Deb, who will be over later tonight. A Dad who is fierce in his love for his kids. A memory of a Mom who knew what it meant to make a home and taught her daughters well. Patti is tough. She always has been.
She’s leaving her home.
Michelle will, many years from now, leave Roslyn Carter’s White House and go home back to Kenwood. Back to Chicago.
One women leaving home and then going back home.
One woman just leaving home. Destination unknown.
So both listen. Listen hard. And oh so faintly under the same October moon, shining over all of Chicago, comes the strains of an old British rocker named Nick Lowe. A singer neither of them even knew.
Word has it that he once wrote and sang a song called “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll.” And now, after all these years he is singing a song called “House for Sale.”
And even before they listen they are amused by that. If only for a moment. But that moment means a lot.
Two women leaving home. Tough women.
Who will find home.
Again.
http://youtu.be/uGQm38ujdaM
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David Axelrod, eating his second Egg McMuffin and seemingly alone, sat among the empty desks early on a Sunday morning in September. The sound turned down on the four-screen TV monitor. The Labor Day Weekend making a ghost town of the Obama 2012 Campaign Headquarters in Chicago’s Prudential Building. Axelrod had been staring blankly at the same page in one of the 6 newspapers he had spread out in front of him.
Axelrod looked up, thinking he had heard something, gazed out the window on Millennium Park and Lake Michigan, felt a strange kind of breeze drift by and suddenly his head started hurting. As if someone had bopped him right in the forehead with some kind of large ball. So he stood up. Walked slowly towards the window . . . .
While the spirit of Mike Royko, gone so many years but never really having left Chicago, picked up the 16 inch softball, that had rolled back invisibly after he had tossed it straight at Axelrod’s head.
Royko started pacing. Making “C’mon lets go, go go,” circles with his hand. Royko still in a hurry. Even now. Still wanting to get to the part where he polished his 800 words till the column dazzled like a diamond. Royko wanting to help this guy. But also wanting to whip the softball straight at his head again.
“Let’s GO!” Royko shouted to the eternal winds that blew far beyond anything Axelrod could hear. “You want the answer? Here’s the answer. Shaft. That’s right. Shaft. Richard Fucking Roundtree. This whole “don’t ever make the Black man scary” thing just ain’t working. So from now on? No more hail to the chief. From now on, I want to hear the theme from Shaft every time the guy walks into a room! One does not find truth by splitting the difference between good and bad. And your ship is sinking. So,give me Shaft!”
Axelrod, looking out at summer fading into a cool breeze off the Lake. That strange feeling of a song in his head that he just can’t quite make out, goes back to the desk and grabs his coffee. Takes a sip. Wishes for just a second that he smoked. Which he hasn’t done since he was a kid. He quit years ago. Why is he thinking about cigarettes?
And as he asks himself that question, a spirit voice he can’t hear, the great American writer Nelson Algren, leaning up against the wall, wrapped in cigarette smoke. A sad, bemused smile on his face. Algren says to the indifferent sky, “David you lost the story. You lost it. You know what I heard somebody say the other day David? And this was a good man. A good man who just didn’t know. This man said that you were no different than Lee Atwater. That you were like the same guy. Lee Atwater. Who invented the slash and burn political tactics of our time. Lee Atwater who spawned Karl Rove and Ed Rollins and all the rest of them.
And your candidate David? You let people believe he wasn’t even born in this country!
David, Algren was now talking softly, but the words poured out of his lyrical troubled soul like molten lava on scratchy concrete under a neon light. It is not about the fucking talking points David. It’s about the story. The story! You gotta get the real story out there. Of just how much pain is slowly strangling and choking the life force out of the American soul while the bad guys have put this stake in the ground and started screaming so loud that all people hear are those screams. Their screams of, WORDS DO NOT MATTER ANY MORE! WORDS MEAN ONLY WHAT WE WANT THEM TO MEAN!
Listen to them scream David. Listen to them scream and then become the owners of the words. And when they own the words, the own the world!
You know what you need to do now David? Start the WPA Writers Project up again. Make it so small that they don’t even see it coming till it’s too late. And when they come to attack. Put the writers on the front lines. They’ll know what to do.
You know the WPA Project David. Updated to fit these times of course. An army of writers detailing the American experience right now and then doing something with what they write. And every time one of the bad guys hurls “This is a make work project. This is welfare!” . . .Every time that happens, turn to a writer and say “Answer that.” Put the writers on the front lines David. They’ll know what to do.
Axelrod started walking in circles around the empty office. Perhaps it was the Egg McMuffins that were getting to him. It was as if even in the seemingly empty office he could feel the country he loved so deeply turning sour, turning away. And then he heard this click.
He didn’t hear it again. He had no clue what it was. Kind of like someone trying to turn on a machine and they weren’t sure how. So they just started punching buttons.
And then somehow he started to turn calm. And he had ho idea why. The image of white hair. A red checked shirt. A smile. Someone who could listen in a way that no one else could listen. Axelrod wished he had Studs Terkel there with him. Studs would help. He’d know what to do.
His tape recorder running, Studs’ great spirit settled in on the chair across the desk, which Axelrod of course saw as empty. And as Studs started to listen Axelrod began to feel calm. He began to think.
Axelrod began to mentally page through Studs’ book “Working.” Axelrod thinking. “What is it that’s missing in all this talk about jobs?”
Studs, unknown to Axelrod, nodded.
Axelrod thought on. All the tired solutions. All the big picture crap. The tax incentives. The getting government out of the way big lie that the bad guys had morphed into truth in the minds of so many Americans.
What’s missing?
Then as if he could almost hear Studs gravel voice say it out loud, the words came to him, he asked himself. “What’s missing?”
And Axelrod said out loud to the seemingly empty room. “What’s missing is the connection. Between the individual person and the job. It’s not programs, or government or no government or the business confidence fairy, it’s connecting a person with a job. The system we have to do that is broken. In most places it doesn’t even exist. Workforce development programs —our old tired way of making that connection are being closed. We need principles here! We need the CONNECTION between the person and the job. No one’s even talked about that. And we need to build that connection on principles. Not steps. This is not a one size fits all situation. We need principles.
What principles David? asked Studs.
And without hearing the question Axelrod answered.
These principles There are 5 of them.
#1: Telling a Story. That’s the first principle. (This got Algren’s attention.) People have got to get beyond resumes and applications. They’ve got to be able to tell their story.
Royko got interested again and said, “So what? So we gotta lotta bad story tellers then?”
But Axelrod, knowing Studs was listening, was on a roll. Axelrod continued.
#2: Adding Music. That line between the personal and the work? It’s gotten to be the size of the Grand Canyon. People can’t make the jump anymore, to really tell a story—you can’t stop with just the story. You gotta add music. Because everybody’s story needs to be different. Needs to be their own! And that’s what the music does—it makes the person’s story unique. Music can be whatever you want it to be. Just so the song makes the individual person stand out.
Are you almost done? Royko asked, I do have a deadline.
And then Axelrod started to sprint in his mind towards the finish line, He filled in the final 3 principles that a person, any person, needed to find work when there are no jobs.
#3: Communitize. Become part of a community. Don’t network. Computers network. People communitize.
#4: Solve a Mystery. Doesn’t matter what it is. If you can solve somebody else’s mystery—you are filling a need. And that means work. Doesn’t matter WHAT the mystery is. All that matters is that someone else thinks its a mystery and you can solve it.
#5: Practice Stewardship. Take Care of something larger than you.
That’s it! Axelrod said to the room. That’s the piece I was missing. The CONNECTION. The connection between the jobs and the people. 5 principles to build that connection. Because maybe if I can figure out the missing piece in finding work when there are no jobs, maybe if I can do that. . . . I can guide Barack to fix everything else that’s gone wrong.
Axelrod nodded to himself, started towards the elevator.
Royko snarled. About fucking time. And 300 words too long. And I still haven’t heard the Shaft theme.
Algren wondered off to the northwest. He was gonna meet a guy later.
And the last to leave, Studs Terkel, turned off his tape recorder.
And smiled.
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