The Killer Bees didn't get me... but the wasps sure have

I can't say for sure whether this is the type of bug that bit me Monday. It fits the general profile of the bees or wasps that are buzzing around the side of my house where we keep the garbage bins.

The local NBC outlet ran a story a couple of weeks ago about how aggressive wasps are in this area at this time of year, and all I can say is that I agree.

I'm guessing that, whether this picture correctly depicts them or not, my particular tormentors are ground nesters, and that they've found a home in the narrow space between my house and the house directly west of me -- there are bushes and a fence and ground cover -- and yesterday there was, when I looked, a virtual cloud of a half dozen or more of the creatures, patrolling the space between the bushes and the garbage bins.

We don't have to go through there often. I can't get the lawnmower into the backyard without running through the insect gauntlet. And the garbage bins have to be accessed, and the appropriate bins moved to the curb, once a week, on Mondays, for Garbage Day. But our yard is also accessible from sliding glass doors in our den, and the door hasn't tried to kill me since July, so that's pretty good. That's also another story entirely.

For years I have carefully avoided getting stung. That's the best gloss I can put on my cowardice, manifested on many occasions over the years, bravely running away, like Sir Robin in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, from any sort of buzzing insect or rumor thereof. I was concerned that I might be seriously allergic -- as many of my relatives apparently were -- and, as you know, there is really only one certain way to find out for certain if that might be the case.

I did finally get stung or bit last fall. I brought the flag in around dusk on Labor Day and was preparing to put it away when I got bit by a bee or wasp that had been chilling on the flag. Taking the flag in from the front of the house, across the lawn, into the house -- none of this was enough to rouse the insect to action... or flight... but when my hand got near it, it must have seemed the wasp or bee equivalent of a cheeseburger or something because the insect decided to take a healthy bite. We got the bug out of the house; I kept my hand. I was apparently not super allergic after all.

Which was fortunate indeed because, a couple of weeks ago, as I was getting the garbage bins, I got bit. I didn't cry like a baby, but I did expostulate about my bad fortune, apparently at a loud volume, because my wife intercepted me before I could cross the living room, demanding to see where the wound had been inflicted. I remember sitting on the couch with her examining my hand. I complained that my foot hurt, too, like something was biting my foot. I loosened my shoe just enough to see a bee or wasp or whatever trying to munch through my sock. Maybe it was the same one that bit my hand, maybe it was a different one. That one, at least, will bite no one ever again.

This brings us to this past Monday. I had gotten the garbage out the week before without incident; perhaps this week I let my guard down a tad. All I know for certain is that I grabbed the garbage bin to wheel it up front and an insect grabbed my right ring finger and took a good chomp. I may have responded with a shout, using a word that the three young boys in that house to my west really shouldn't hear. Hopefully, on Monday, they didn't.

Anyway, despite the prompt and repeated topical application of a Benadryl cream, the finger is swollen and clenching a fist is somewhat difficult. At least I didn't get one in my shoe this time.

It was Tuesday, yesterday, when I had to cut to cut the grass in the back, and therefore bring the lawnmower past the bins and through the gate, that I observed a cloud of the little buggers -- but I got in and out of the backyard, with the lawnmower, and without further injury. Brave, brave, brave Sir Robin indeed.

When I was a younger man, it was widely asserted that Killer Bees were going to swarm out of Mexico, into America's heartlands, and sting us all to death. If you think that sounds a little like the current AI hysteria, well, I do, too.

There are -- Google assures me this morning -- still killer bees about. Their range may still be advancing, although, obviously at a much slower rate than that forecast three decades ago. Oh, and the aggressive qualities that distinguished the africanized honeybees are seemingly modifynig as the incoming species mixes and mingles with similar bees already in situ. So nothing to sneeze at, not exactly a hoax, but certainly nothing like the doomsday scenarios that were once shouted by the media.

Meanwhile, in the real world, it's the things that are already here -- like wasps -- that get uber-aggressive around this time every year, as their colonies reach maximum size, and as they somehow perceive that Winter is Coming -- that provide the real threat. And the actual injuries.

So it may also prove to be with AI. While everyone is waiting for Artificial Intelligence to enslave us all, and destroy all human economies, and sap human initiative, it may be the surveillance cameras already in place that actually harm us. Maybe it will be something else. There is enough scary stuff right here, right now, to merit our vigilance, without getting carried away with the latest doomsday narrative about AI.

Curmudgeon is reminded that he lives in the city

The ride to work is usually uneventful. I take the CTA Blue Line from O'Hare to the Loop. Granted, the outbound trip has been more exciting, particularly on one recent occasion....

But that's the exception, not the rule.

The Blue Line is generally pretty tame. There are occasional homeless people camping out in the train cars; there probably have been more than usual this winter, given the terrible weather we had. But even the bums on the Blue Line are generally a cut above the bums on other CTA lines. A couple of weeks ago, for example, I had to change to a Red Line train to get somewhere, probably a doctor's appointment. I notice that the car that stopped right in front om me seemed rather empty and I had just begun to congratulate myself on my good fortune when I stepped into the train and into a cloud of the most terrible stench I can recall ever smelling. There were three or four recumbent forms in the car, at various locations throughout. I couldn't tell which was the prime offender. There were a few ordinary commuters, like myself, sitting in the car, stony-faced, glassy-eyed, breathing as little as possible. I made it one stop before I bailed out, gulping lung-fulls of subway platform air as if I were suddenly transported to a springtime orchard in full bloom.

So, yes, some of our bums on the Blue Line may be a tad pungent, but never, ever anything to match that.

There was a sleeping bum on the train when I got on the other morning. I took my seat across the aisle and busied myself in the morning Sun-Times. The train filled up in the usual course. As is ordinarily the case, even when the train car was full and people began standing in the aisles, no one had sat next to the sleeping man.

Here's a tip for you travelers out there: If you want to get your own seat on the train, don't bathe or shave for at least a week. Make sure your clothes are filthy and that you are carrying a plastic bag or something similar that all and sundry will assume is the sum total of all your possessions on this earth. Make the occasional random noise, preferably in a low sing-song voice, and you should be able to keep a seat entirely to yourself all through the rush hour, no matter how crowded the train may get otherwise.

The operative word in the preceding sentence, however, is "should."

The other morning, a younger man, with tattoos covering all his visible skin (his face excepted), with long, greasy black hair and wearing an orange T-shirt, boarded the train and decided that he would sit next to our sleeping bum. The newcomer took the bum's plastic bag off the seat next to the seemingly sleeping bum and put it on the floor.

That woke the bum up.

He did not wake up in a cheerful mood. Indeed, he took offense that this younger man had moved his bag and he said so. Loudly.

The bum was older than the newcomer, but I wouldn't want to guess whether he was 30 or 40 or 50. Nobody looks their best when they've been drinking for a long time, and my guess would be that he'd been drinking as often as possible for a loooooong time. Still, he was bigger than the newcomer and, by waking up like that, he did have the element of surprise working for him.

The younger man was not fazed by the sudden revival of the bum. In fact, it soon became clear that he would not likely be fazed by much short of a shotgun blast, and only then at close range. I would be guessing were I to suggest what drugs he was taking, but his drug of choice was not alcohol; of that much I can be certain.

He therefore responded to the challenge from the bum in a belligerent manner, unapologetic about moving the bag. A lively debate thereafter ensued. An increasingly loud and lively debate.

I looked up from my newspaper and watched my fellow passengers carefully sneak peeks at the two disputants. They were calculating, as I was, just how likely this argument was to end badly. I would dare say that most people, even most persons impaired by drink or drugs, would have responded to the bum's challenge by mumbling an insincere apology and getting the hell out of there. But not our tattooed gentleman. Retreat was not in his vocabulary.

As the dispute escalated ("You got no right to move a man's stuff!" "You got no right to leave your stuff on the seat so people can't sit down!" I don't want you sitting down by me!), I found I could no longer pretend to read the newspaper. My fellow passengers had put away their screens as well. One young woman, deciding it might be more prudent to go stand over at the other end of the car, offered Mr. Tattoo her seat on her way out. A lot of the passengers immediately adjacent to these two began to move out of their seats. I followed. I didn't know whether either of these two had a weapon of some sort. I did know that I did not want to be collateral damage.

The train moved from the elevated Milwaukee tracks into the subway, approaching the Division Street station. The doors opened; the disputants stood up.

GO TIME!

I don't know who swung first. I do know that almost all the passengers surged out the doors at this point, onto the platform. I was looking for the button to alert the motorman; there's one by one set of doors in every car, but it must have been the one closer to them than it was to safety. I wasn't going there. I got off the train with everybody else. Almost everybody else. The two combatants now had more room to flail at one another.

I found a button on a column on the station platform that is supposed to summon a station agent at the same time a young lady did.

And then I realized that not everyone had left the train besides the two guys fighting.

There's a Cook County Deputy Sheriff that gets on the train at my stop; I've seen him around for years. He's assigned to the Daley Center. Going on 10 years ago now, he used to be the courtroom deputy in a room that I was in every week without fail. Naturally, we've struck up a nodding acquaintance. I've never learned his name; he doesn't know mine either. I say, "Hey, how ya doin'?" and he says, "Hey, counsel."

He's not a young guy, and he's not tall or particularly muscular. If anything, he's a little pear-shaped. There is, or has been, a deputy on the 22nd floor at the Daley Center who has as many tattoos as the guy on the train, and this particular deputy has massive muscles. He's also a little mean, I think. (Steroids? Who knows?) When he shushes you in the hallway, you get the distinct impression he'd prefer that you didn't shush as requested so he could wail on you. Maybe even use his service revolver on you. Either as a club or according to manufacturer's directions depending on how much lip you wanted to give. But scary muscular deputy wasn't there. Deputy Howyadoin was. I don't want to guess how old he is. I'd say he's my age, but I'm terrible at guessing ages. Anyone from 40 to 70 seems to be my age these days. I'm pretty sure he's not 70, or even 60. But he's no kid.

Still, he was trained to intervene and he did. He waded in between the two of them, grabbing Tattoo Man from behind and pushing him away from the bum, all the while telling the bum to back off.

I'm still on the platform at this point. I know this because I remember seeing the CTA station agent running up, a slender young man armed only with a walkie-talkie, stopping right next to me. Oh, good, I thought, that'll be a big help. He was talking into the radio. "...two men fighting... African-American and Hispanic males... there's a Cook County Deputy Sheriff trying to break it up...."

I marveled a little at that. Chicago police and Cook County Sheriff's deputies may travel in uniform, but they generally wear baseball jerseys over them. So, unless you already know, you really can't tell. The young man on the walkie-talkie was more perceptive than I at first thought. Still, I wished he was two or three rather burly cops, in uniform, with billy clubs. But, alas.

Deputy Howyadoin seemed to be having some success in getting the two separated. He got Tattoo Man to sit down, a couple of rows away. The bum, meanwhile, was still on his feet, rockin' and ready for more, and making no secret of his desire in this regard. A couple of younger African-American men tried -- very gingerly -- to walk the bum back from the situation, but it didn't look or feel resolved.

I got back on the train. I had no idea of what I was going to do, or how. It's just -- well, I know this guy, sort of, and if things reignited, I felt I should try to do something.

It happened quickly. Tattoo Man was back on his feet facing the bum, barking at him. The bum had never left his feet and he was barking right back. The deputy was trying to move Tattoo Man back again; the Good Samaritans were trying to move back the bum.

Now, again, the way it works in all the best movies is that the two combatants, or one of them at least, lets himself get pushed away, barking all the while so it doesn't look like he's backing down, but allowing himself to be maneuvered to a safe distance. Bob Hope used to do this to great comic effect. But that wasn't happening here. Both guys were being pushed, but both were resisting. And, just like that --

ROUND 2!!

The bum got off a good one almost right away, pushing Tattoo Man into a window -- and breaking it (it's safety glass, so it did not shatter but merely spidered, but still, these guys were not playing) and I was still ineffectually trying to figure out what I could or should do that might help and -- suddenly -- it was all over.

The bum took off.

Maybe honor had somehow been satisfied when he nearly pushed the punk Tattoo Man through the window. Maybe the bum thought that, now that there was significant property damage, he did not want to face the police. Maybe he'd been doing a silent countdown in his head right along, calculating the time he had before the police might arrive. Whatever, he suddenly departed for greener pastures. Deputy Howyadoin got Tattoo Man (who to all appearances was entirely uninjured despite the collision with the window) to sit down again. The passengers got back on the train and we resumed our trip to the Loop.

Now it was Tattoo Man who had a seat to himself. And the seat in front of him and behind him, too. No one wanted to set him off again.

Tattoo Man decided to get off at Clark and Lake. I thought he might barrel through the people in front of him when the doors opened. I think they thought so too; they moved with some alacrity just as soon as the doors parted.

Deputy Howyadoin and I got off at Washington, at the Daley Center. I made it a point to engage him a little in conversation as we trudged with the rest of the commuting hoard down the platform. "Heck of a morning," I offered lamely. "Not the best way to start the day," he acknowledged. "Thank you," I said. I probably said some other stuff, too, and so did he. But "thank you" was the important bit, I think.

Curmudgeon swirling in the Polar Vortex with mixed opinions

The Chicago Public Schools are closed again today, for a second day in a row, because of the killer cold snap that's gripping the Midwest and much of the rest of the country besides.

All the Archdiocesan grammar schools were closed in Cook and Lake Counties yesterday, and most of the high schools as well. Local colleges and universities canceled classes. Most local museums were closed. The Lincoln Park Zoo was open, but planned to close early; Brookfield Zoo was closed entirely. (The polar bears and American bison can stand these temperatures, a zoo official explained, but most of the rest of the animals could not.) Most local officials were encouraging people to stay home yesterday. Except for those angling for face time on the local newscasts, many public servants stayed home yesterday, too.

Long Suffering Spouse was supposed to start school yesterday -- but, as noted, school was closed. No 8th grader was more giddy than my bride at the prospect of extending Christmas break another day.

"It's a mistake," I harrumphed.

"Why?" my wife asked.

"They're all closing down for the wrong reason," I said. We haven't had this kind of really cold weather here in Chicago for a long time -- but it is not unprecedented. As I told the kids, Long Suffering Spouse and I had been out at the bar on January 10, 1982, when the temperature sank to -26̊ F. The radio was on at the bar, as I recall, and when the announcer recited the temperature all of us stupid enough to be out started cheering like we'd accomplished some great feat. Of course, I was 32 years younger then. I continued explaining things to my wife. "If they're going to close everything just because it's too cold, they'll have to do it again tomorrow."

"Why? The temperature is supposed to get above zero on Tuesday."

"But it won't start there. It'll be ten below again, at least, when the kids are supposed to be going to school. If it's too cold for them to venture out today, why will tomorrow morning be different?"

Sure enough, darn near everything that was closed yesterday is closed again this morning. They'd kind of painted themselves into a corner on this.

And it's not the dumbest idea to close down in these extreme conditions, especially in the modern world when we can do (or allegedly do) so much from home. Road salt doesn't work so well when the temperature gets down below 10̊ F. Brave, but ignorant souls who started to drive to work this morning spun out in sufficient numbers on bridges and ramps to thoroughly clog our expressway system despite the reduced volume of cars.

But not everything was closed, even yesterday. I had court yesterday morning. Courts were open. (The Cook County Sheriff decided it was too cold to bring prisoners to court, but that wouldn't affect the operation of the civil courts where I practice.)

I was supposed to be out in the suburbs yesterday so I had to drive. I gave the family van a long time to warm up before forcing it into action. It still wasn't very pleased with me. The thermometer inside the car said the temperature outside was as cold as -18̊ -- and never warmer than -14̊ F. Still, the Tollway was passable. Even with the strong breezes yesterday there were at least ruts of pavement showing in every lane. Of course, one did have to get to the Tollway. The ramps were treacherous. And every stop sign, every stop light on the way to and from the Tollway was an adventure: The van wanted to fishtail every time I started or stopped, but I kept it largely under control.

Perhaps surprisingly, everyone who was supposed to be at court on my matters yesterday was present and accounted for. Like the much younger Curmudgeon in the bar in 1982, I felt like I'd accomplished something, just by getting there too.

The reason that driving was (and remains) so challenging (and, in particular, the reason that I am so concerned about the melting properties of road salt) was that, in addition to the cold, we were still digging out from two feet of snow that fell in the Chicago area since Tuesday afternoon. The first foot fell Tuesday and Wednesday; the other foot dropped Saturday evening and Sunday.

If I'd been made philosopher king for the day, I might have canceled everything on Monday -- but Monday only -- because of the snow clean-up. A foot of snow, particularly if it comes at rush hour, can shut Chicago down. The clean-up of this latest snowfall, even though it fell on the weekend, would understandably take longer because of the extreme cold that followed the snow, and it has, as the drivers spinning out this morning can attest.

But this business of shutting down schools and some businesses and government offices but not the courts and a lot of other businesses is just plain aggravating. I finished my business in court yesterday and went home for lunch; I didn't bother trying to go downtown after that. I figured I could work from home. I retrieved my phone calls and even connected -- eventually -- with most of the people who'd called and emailed me during the day.

But I missed the one call I really needed to get. He called around 4:00 p.m. I probably last checked my office voice mail about five minutes before he called. I was still working my cell phone, though, returning the calls I'd already retrieved. At 5:00 p.m., I was, I thought, the good man, at rest at last from his labors. It was around this time, also, that the call finally came for my wife advising (as I knew would have to be the case, given the pretext offered Monday) that school would not be open tomorrow either. Again, she was giddy. I'm happy for her -- but the courts are open again today, too.

I was not a happy camper weighed down by my Zero King this morning. But I made it to court on time this morning and, thereafter, to the Undisclosed Location. I spoke -- too late! -- with the man who called at 4:00 p.m. I'll be screwing around the rest of the day trying to straighten that out. But the Holidaze, two feet of snow and temperatures of nearly 20 below can undermine even well-formed plans.

On the passing of Larry Lujack

The passing of a radio DJ is seldom national news, and I was thinking that Larry Lujack's death yesterday from cancer at 73 probably wouldn't be.

But it is. No less than überblogger Ken Levine mourns the passage of the one, the only Superjock this morning.

I picked up my youngest son from college yesterday -- before the news of Lujack's death -- and somehow we got to talking about the passage of time. I think it was a sign advertising places in the high school class of 2018 (next fall's freshmen, believe it or not) that got Youngest Son going. "Can you believe it?" he asked. "2018 already?"

This coming year, I told him, 2014, marks 40 years since I graduated high school. "How do you think I feel?" I asked.

As bad as I felt at that moment, I felt much worse when Robert Feder broke the news about ol' Uncle Lar.

Uncle Lar was still Suprejock -- WCFL, the Voice of Labor, recast itself as "SuperCFL" in honor of their most valuable property -- when I was in high school. Superjock on WCFL and Bob Sirott on WLS were, if I recall correctly, the voices of afternoon drive 40 years ago and every new driver knew how to push the buttons on the AM radio to switch between 890 and 1000 without taking their eyes off the road. Button pushing might be prompted by a bad song -- there were some truly awful songs in heavy rotation on both stations 40 years ago -- or by "zit cream" commercials. But the "bits" between the songs were the really good stuff.

Sirott was the enfant terrible, the challenger. Lujack was the grizzled, bitter, burned-out veteran. His deep, deliberate, laconic delivery was unique, and seemingly entirely inappropriate to rock 'n' roll (Levine explains it better in his piece than I can but, then, he's a former DJ as well as a better writer). But whatever Lujack was doing, it worked for him.

A couple of years after I graduated high school, WCFL changed formats, going from Top 40 to elevator music. The station didn't fire Lujack, however, and he wouldn't quit. Here is how he announced the format switch.



Lujack would go back to WLS later -- his "Animal Stories" with "Little Snot-Nosed Tommy" Edwards are being remembered a lot this morning. I tuned in for them, too, even after I'd otherwise grown out of the Top 40 format.

All too soon, however, in 1987, Lujack retired, moving out west eventually. Except for a six month stint on FM and a reunion with Edwards that lasted a few years on what wasn't much more than a 10-watt AM station in the early 2000s, Lujack stayed retired. But he stayed with us, too.

Nine or 10 years ago, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of our parish, I was asked to do the voiceover for the commemorative video. The parish hired a real filmmaker and everything -- her brother has directed several popular Disney features -- and she booked some studio time for me to come in and read the script.

Well.

This was the first time I'd been in a real studio, with a professional microphone and headphones and all the knobs and dials I was told not to touch on pain of death. But when we were doing sound checks, I did my best Larry Lujack imitation. It was, presumably, an awful imitation. But imitation, even awful imitation, is the most sincere form of flattery.

R.I.P. Mr. Lujack. I hope today you have a whole lot more of Jesus... and all the rock 'n' roll you may want.

(Chicagoans will catch the reference; the rest of you... well....)

The Big Red "A" is for Atheist

Perhaps this story has made the national news. At the east end of the Daley Center Plaza, wedged in between the skyscraping Hanukkah Menorah and the giant Nativity Scene is a festive Big Red "A," with a sign in front wishing passersby a Happy Winter Solstice.

A group of atheists thought they would be clever and obtain the permits necessary to put up this display and thereby thumb their snooty noses at all of us superstitious inferiors who still profess belief in a power greater than man.

Far be it from me to complain that the atheists don't have a right to believe in Nothing. But it seems to me that, with their Big Red "A," the atheists are doubly represented at the Daley Center.

I mean, at the Daley Center these days, the Jews have only the Menorah. Christians have only the Stable. (The giant Christmas tree on the south end of the plaza is not a religious symbol.) But all the empty space in between -- all the Nothing -- is that not the sign and symbol of the true atheist? Now the atheists also also have a Big Red "A." Seems to me that's two representations for the anti-religionists, but only one each for each religious group.

I said as much to Long Suffering Spouse when the story aired on the news here a week or so ago. Some smug professional atheist was interviewed, overjoyed that this rather pathetic ploy for attention was being taken seriously, at least by the TV reporter. You might not think that being an atheist would be incompatible with missionary zeal. But this guy sure acted like a True Believer, even if he believes only in Nothing.

"Is that what the 'A' stands for?" she asked. "Atheist?"

I assured her that this was the case.

"Hmmm," she said. "I would have guessed it stood for something else."

Fr. Houdini vanishes

The religious order that has staffed our parish church for more than a century recently pulled up stakes and left town. They sold off the monastery next door and informed the parish that, starting this summer, our spiritual needs would be tended by priests assigned by the Chicago Archdiocese.

It's a sad commentary on the state of vocations in this country that religious orders are no longer able to maintain parish churches, but it's the truth. And it's not as if the Archdiocese is teeming with priests that can fill the void. So it's a very unsettling time for all of us in the parish.

It's a particularly unhappy time for us in the Curmudgeon home because we've become very fond, over the years, of Fr. Ed, the departing pastor. I served with him on the parish school board many years ago and my wife and I worked with him on other parish projects; he married Younger Daughter and Olaf and he provided pre cana counseling for Oldest Son and Abby and Hank and Older Daughter, too. He's a prickly, stubborn German and he's always rubbed some people in the parish the wrong way but he's been here, as pastor, twice as acting pastor, or as associate pastor for close to 20 years. He's probably pushing 80 -- but, if he's taken to fibbing about his age, he truly does have the energy of a much younger man. And, like a much younger man, our pastor has not been wild about being put out to pasture.

There's been talk he'd be allowed to stay on as pastor emeritus but he seems to have pushed his superiors in his own religious order once too often for this to be graciously allowed. I hear he's looking for a job.

Meanwhile, we had a grand farewell luncheon a couple of weeks ago at a local banquet hall. Many of the priests who've served our parish came back for the Noon Mass on June 30. The principal celebrant was the local provincial of the order that's pulling out. Our local bishop showed up to thank the departing order for its service and to reassure us that we'd still like our parish next Sunday, too. Fr. Ed was there, of course, but he and the admitted octogenarian who's been helping out this past year were consigned to the opposite ends of the long line of priests who gathered on the altar for the Consecration. Fr. Ed was a little late getting in line; he was helping an older priest in a walker get up the altar stairs.

I noted, at the end of the Mass, as the priests processed out, Fr. Ed lingered on the altar, tidying up. I wondered if there weren't some purpose in his dawdling; perhaps he was showing one and all that he was determined to stay on?

Long Suffering Spouse and I went to that final Mass and to the luncheon as well. We wanted to talk to Fr. Ed -- maybe even ask about some of the rumors about whether he would, or would not, be able to stay around. But there were thousands of people and we were not pushy. We'd find out something eventually; in the meantime, did it really matter whether we wished him well in person?

This past weekend was the official beginning of our parish's full integration into the Archdiocese. My mother-in-law attended the anticipatory Mass on Saturday evening and called Long Suffering Spouse with a full -- and highly critical -- report about the new pastor. "He didn't know what he was doing," she said -- repeatedly -- "and everything was different."

Note to non-Catholics: You probably don't see why that's funny. Well, the truth is, there is very little room for variance in the Order of the Mass. On any given Sunday, the prayers are the same, the readings are the same, the responses are the same in our church and in every church the world over. Only the language in which the Mass is offered changes. Some priests fudge the Eucharistic Prayer, I'm told, probably more because, even with glasses, they can't read while looking down at the Missal on the altar (it changes somewhat Mass to Mass) than from any intentional departure from orthodoxy. Fr. Pfleger, down at St. Sabina's on Chicago's South Side, somehow manages to make his Masses into spectacles lasting several hours, but I assume all the stuff he adds, including all the speakers we see on the Sunday night news shows, are placed after Communion when it is customary to make [much shorter] announcements (I don't know this for a fact, though someday I'd be interested in seeing for myself). But the bottom line is that there's not room for a lot of variety, and things couldn't have been too different, despite my mother-in-law's high dudgeon Saturday night. ("We skipped the Creed," Abuela fumed also, but lots of priests will skip that depending on how long, or overlong, their sermon went. And there was apparently some confusion about returning the unused Hosts to the Tabernacle after Communion. "I don't know if I can continue going there if things are going to be so different," my mother-in-law said.)

Long Suffering Spouse did her best to reassure her mother that things would be better, but Abuela was in no mood to be comforted. Eventually, she tired of repeating how different things were, however, so my wife could terminate the phone call and we could resume watching the White Sox lose. Again.

I told you yesterday how I began my Sunday morning. But, despite that, Long Suffering Spouse and I were only about 10 minutes late for 7:00 a.m. Mass (which, for us, is not terrible). We were interested in seeing how the First-Sunday-Mass-of-the-Post-Fr.-Ed Era might be handled, especially after Abuela's preview. We walked in the back of the church and discovered that the First-Sunday-Mass-of-the-Post-Fr.-Ed Era was being presided over by... Fr. Ed.

"Perhaps this morning we can talk to him," I whispered to my wife as we took our accustomed pew. She nodded.

The early Sunday Mass is the least formal of the Sunday Masses -- the organist isn't even there yet -- but Fr. Ed likes to sing. And unlike the octogenarian who'd been assisting him this year, he always liked to process down the center aisle after Mass, out into the vestibule, and to the parking lot entrance, there to greet parishioners. The altar servers, of course, always hope for a 'side out' -- a short walk into the Sacristy, where they could peel out of their gowns and race home to breakfast that much faster. At the end of Mass the altar servers stood on either side of Fr. Ed as he faced the Tabernacle, singing the final hymn a capella, waiting for the final bow that would signal their release. Without missing a note, Fr. Ed tried to signal that they should lead the procession down the center aisle, but they hightailed it for the Sacristy without a backward glance. Undeterred, Fr. Ed, still singing, headed down the center aisle and toward the vestibule.

It is considered good form to wait, in these circumstances, until the priest actually passes you before leaving your pew -- anything else would be leaving early. Since we always arrive late, we try never to leave early. Still, we left as soon as propriety allowed, intending to follow Fr. Ed out and chat him up a bit.

We hit the vestibule at a good trot -- and couldn't see him. Instead, inside the door to the parking lot, stood the new curate, offering to shake hands with any who would pause. We both stopped to take the new man's hand and offer words of welcome. But I was looking over his shoulder for Fr. Ed, and darned if I couldn't see him.

Confused now, Long Suffering Spouse and I stepped out of the church and into the parking lot, only to see the new pastor, also shaking hands with anyone who would pause. We paused. He noted Long Suffering Spouse's White Sox hat. "I'm glad to see that there are Sox fans up here," he said (our parish being firmly on the Cubs side of town). "There aren't that many of us, Father," said Long Suffering Spouse. I was still looking for Fr. Ed. I even had on my glasses.

"He's Houdini," I told my wife as we got back in the car. "He simply vanished."

"I'm sorry we didn't get to see him," Long Suffering Spouse agreed, "but I'm sure this was planned. The new guys were waiting while Fr. Ed ducked out."

"But where?" I wondered.

Our best guess was that he dove into the Ushers' Room -- it doubles as the Bride's Room, when occasion demands. It would have been on his flight path. Still, it was a pretty good vanishing act -- and a pretty good way to *ahem* usher in The-Post-Fr.-Ed Era. Meanwhile I suppose we'll catch up to Fr. Ed... eventually.

One footnote: Youngest Son, of course, did not join us for 7:00 a.m. Mass. But he did make it to the 6:00 p.m. "Last Chance" Mass. Youngest Son reported that the 6:00 Mass was presided over by the new curate. It didn't strike him as all that "different"....

So... it's June, right?

The calendar page has been turned. All the bills that I paid in May are coming due again. It must be June.

Right?

But yesterday morning I got up and turned off the air conditioner because the temperature outside (according to the radio) was 60 degrees. That was overly optimistic; it wasn't 60 according to the thermometer in the van when we went to church yesterday morning. A couple hours later, when my wife went to the grocery, she called me because the temperature had dropped to 53.

I'd put on a long-sleeve flannel shirt for Mass, but it did seem a bit chilly to me in the house so I added an Irish wool sweater.

It had been in the high 80s during the week before the rains set in, so there have been some signs of summer, and this is Chicago: We have to expect some variety in the weather. We can get two and sometimes three seasons on any given day.

On Sunday, though, we had only one season. Fall. The sky was slate gray and spitting drizzle and I was wearing flannel and wool -- but it really is June, you know. The calendar says so.

Payton Prep forfeits baseball game after parents refuse to let kids drive to Roseland on a Saturday night

Bee, I know you're going to think this is about sports, but it's not really. Nor is this really about race, but that's the way it's being reported here.

Walter Payton College Prep and Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep are two of the best, most prestigious high schools in Illinois. That's not my opinion; that's the verdict of the current U.S. News & World Report rankings. Payton checks in at #2, Brooks at #13. These are both Chicago Public Schools (indeed, seven of the top 20 in the state are CPS schools -- most of them, Payton and Brooks included, highly selective "magnet" schools).

Payton is located not far from the Loop, at 1034 N. Wells, in an area the Realtors call the Near North neighborhood, close to both the Gold Coast and River North neighborhoods. Brooks, on the other hand, is located at 250 E. 111th Street, about two miles east of I-57, in the Roseland neighborhood.

Roseland is increasingly in the news these days, and not in a good way. It is wracked by gang violence, shootings, drugs, and all manner of crime. You can get mugged near Payton on a Saturday night, too. Cabrini Green used to be just a couple of blocks away -- but that neighborhood is, objectively, far safer these days than Roseland.

The Brooks baseball team plays on its own field, on the school grounds. According to one account I saw, the field is literally locked away from its surrounding environs. Ninth Ward Ald. Anthony Beale, who happens to be an assistant coach on the Brooks team, says that Brooks has the nicest high school field in the City. Even if he is a Chicago alderman, on this point at least, I take him at his word. It looked pretty sweet on TV.

The story broke this way: Sunday morning it was reported that Payton forfeited its scheduled night game at Brooks because 'team parents' refused to let their kids venture into the Roseland neighborhood. The Payton coach was embarrassed. The Brooks coach was embarrassed -- and angry. Furious backtracking has been underway since.

We will probably never know exactly what happened. It seems, however, that a bus was supposed to take the team to and from the game -- which may or may not have been hastily arranged. It's been an awful spring around here, folks. Coaches can't reschedule all the rain-outs and freeze-outs and they are grasping at any opportunities they can to get their kids some playing time. It's quite possible that last-second bus arrangements might have fallen through.

Unless you've had kids who've played high school baseball you may not know what that means.

Let me tell you: Some parents would have been able to take their own kids and maybe a couple of others. But, on a Saturday night, in families with more than one kid, there may have been -- would likely have been -- conflicts. Who knows? Maybe some of the moms and dads had plans of their own. So that means that kids would be expected to get themselves there. To carpool. To drive to an unfamiliar, and dangerous, neighborhood, where kids can, and do, get killed because they looked like someone else. Or maybe just because they looked like they didn't belong.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell, an African-American, wasn't happy about the situation, but, she wrote, "Given the steady stream of shootings and killings occurring on the South Side, I really can’t blame any parent for having concerns about a night game." She added:

I’m not proud to admit it, but I don’t travel certain streets at night when I have my grandson in the car.

Crime can happen anywhere. But by now, I have a good idea where I run the greatest risk.

Obviously, this is not something parents should have to worry about, but they do — especially when they are not familiar with the area.

Unfortunately, because of the increase in homicides that we experienced last year on the South Side, the entire area must seem like one big shooting gallery.

Mitchell writes that there were 13 shootings in Chicago this weekend, one resulting in a fatality, and most on the South and West Sides. "Although none of the shootings occurred in Roseland," she writes, "the entire South Side has been stigmatized by the gun violence."

I agree with Ms. Mitchell about the stigma that attaches to the entire South Side -- but the fact that none of this weekend's shootings were in Roseland is no more than a happy coincidence.

But at least Ms. Mitchell is trying not to see this controversy in terms of black and white. Simply calling this a black and white issue is overly simplistic, of course, and (although perhaps not just because it is the simplest) it is the the one adopted by the media generally: Brooks is in an African-American community, therefore Payton parents must be bigots for refusing to let their kids go play. A picture of the Payton team, gathered around their coach during a game Monday at Taft (in a largely white neighborhood on the Northwest Side), on page 10 of this morning's Sun-Times, subtly reinforces this view. The kids sure look white, at least from a distance. I'll bet some of them are.

But there is no such thing as a lily-white Chicago Public High School, and certainly not a magnet school. Every race and nationality is represented at Payton. If Brooks is predominantly African-American, it is a function of its location in such an overwhelmingly African-American area -- but I'd bet there are white kids there from Mt. Greenwood and Beverly, too. That makes it a little harder to just cry bigotry.

Image from this morning's Chicago Sun-Times

I'll also bet that, even if there aren't a lot of African-American kids on the Payton squad, there probably are a lot of Hispanic players. A lot of high school baseball teams in this area are heavily, if not predominantly, Hispanic. And appearances can be deceiving: My kids are half Cuban. Middle Son's high school catcher, a 6'4" behemoth who looks more like a Viking than anything else, is half Dominican. The picture that accompanies the on-line version of the page 10 story I just referenced shows Mayor Emanuel making nice with the Brooks players. Some of the kids are surely African-American, but -- again -- I'd bet money that the Brooks squad is heavily Hispanic, too.

Moreover, although I'm sure Payton students are drawn from all over Chicago, I'd guess that the majority may be native to the North Side. It is a fact of Chicago life that North Siders are cheerfully ignorant of anything south of Roosevelt -- Soldier Field and McCormick Place occasionally excepted -- just as many South Siders, white and black alike, are ignorant of anything north of Oak Street (North Avenue, perhaps, for the adventurous). I am a rarity among my fellow Chicagoans. I was born on the South Side and I've lived on the North and Northwest Sides. There aren't that many of us. So it's neither surprising nor conclusive evidence of racism if Payton parents plead unfamiliarity with the far South Side.

Sixty-six years after Jackie Robinson, white Payton parents weren't refusing to let their kids play against African-Americans. Parents, white and Hispanic alike, weren't comfortable allowing their kids to go to an unfamiliar, dangerous neighborhood on a Saturday night. Especially when they'd have to drive themselves. Is that really racism? Or is it prudence?

(Those who think that having a bus available would have solved everything need to consult the very politically incorrect police blog, Second City Cop. In SCC's coverage of this story, in NEWSFLASH! South Side Isn't Safe and in today's post, More Payton vs. Brooks Controversy, it is noted that school buses are sometimes targeted by gangbangers with guns.)

However, as the linked Sun-Times story notes, the game will finally be played this Saturday night, weather permitting. We can assume that the 5th and 22nd Police Districts will be employing surge tactics along 111th Street: Mayor Emanuel will insist that there be no incidents. The kids will be happy to play, as kids are. It'll take some time, though, for the alleged grown-ups to work through all this.

Remembering the "Great Chicago Flood"

In the course of preparing this week's posts for The Blog of Days, I couldn't help but notice that April 13 will mark the 21st anniversary of the Great Chicago Flood. April 13 also happened to be the date of the White Sox home opener that year. Oh yes, I remember it well -- and then I found a journal entry I'd made within a few days of the event. Here is that entry, cleaned up a bit, with many of the digressions removed, and with naming conventions conforming to those previously used here....

Our alarm went off at 5:30 a.m., as usual. As usual, it was closer to 6:30 a.m. before I could actually focus in on what the radio was saying.

The first alarm had been turned in at 5:57 a.m. from the Merchandise Mart. Unexplained basement flooding. The City was looking to turn off a 48" water main, underneath Lake Street, I think, in the hopes that this would stop the problem which, early on, was reported as having spread to Marshall Field's and other landmarks. Then, a few minutes later, fish were reported in some of the affected sub-basements. That's when it became apparent -- at least to me -- that the Chicago River had sprung a leak.

Although it was Opening Day, I had to be in the office in the morning, because I had an 11:00 a.m. motion in court. My plan was to take the train to work. Why fight traffic at the ball park when I could ride the CTA and then drink with impunity?

I scrapped this plan early on, however. I told Long Suffering Spouse that the subway would be effected by this problem. It was already understood that freight tunnels used in the first half of this century by the Chicago Tunnel Company were involved. I didn't know how that would affect the subways, or how the tunnels intersected, if at all. I just knew that the subway would go down as the waters came up. So I resolved to drive.

Ordinarily, on Opening Day, the key problem is what to wear. There are two criteria, usually, for me: What can I wear to both the office and the ballpark -- and how can I keep from freezing? The plan was to wear my heavy brown sportjacket and my Levis for old, fat people (which the company prefers to refer to as "Dockers") and risk being called Frazier throughout the game.

The weather forecast was cold, wet and miserable. The Frazier get-up would not be warm enough. My heaviest clothes were full suits. My warmest coats were for work as well. So I wore a Winter suit.

By the time these momentous decisions had been taken, the flood waters had knocked out several buildings in the Loop. The 10 S. LaSalle Building was one of the first to go out. The flood waters reached the electrical panels of that building (in a second sub-basement) causing a brief, smoky fire. The 222 N. LaSalle Street Building was also an early casualty. [There were a lot of law firms in that building -- and many of those lawyers had Sox tickets -- but their tickets were in the building. And they couldn't get in.]

I called Steve at home before I left. It sounded like I woke him up -- and I later confirmed that I had. (He had planned on taking the whole day off.) I told him about the flooding -- and City Hall was reporting severe problems of its own by this time -- and warned him about the subway, too, even though the radio was still saying the CTA was experiencing no service problems and was still in fact encouraging people to use public transit. Steve went back to bed muttering dark imprecations against me.

The drive in was not that bad, probably because the media's exhortations to use public transportation. But the morning, if I can use this term, was a washout. I listened more to the radio than I worked. I did go to court in time for my 11:00.

When I left for court, at 10:30, the subway was still open, but it had just been announced that power would be shut down and buildings evacuated in an area bounded by the River, Adams, Dearborn and Michigan at 11:00. I decided to walk [my office back then was about a mile north of the Daley Center].

City Hall and the State of Illinois Building were, I believe, already closed. The Daley Center, though right in the middle of all this, was still open and was apparently dry. The explanation offered for this was simple: Buildings build after about 1959 were not tied into the freight tunnel system, which in its heyday delivered coal to buildings and hauled ashes away. The tunnel openings had been sealed after the bankruptcy of the narrow gauge railroad that ran through it, but the brick and mortar walls that were typically erected for this purpose had been swept aside in the torrent of water that morning like toy blocks.

When I got to the Daley Center I asked the deputy who checked my ID if there had been any announcements about closing the courthouse down. She'd heard none, she said, but she thought it was crazy that they were still working when much of the Loop had already been abandoned.

The exodus in fact was well underway as I walked to the courthouse. Gold Coast residents (I assume) were strolling home, happy, for the most part, for the unexpected holiday. But I had to go to court. I didn't necessarily expect my opponent to be there. I knew his building was not open. But, if there's a chance the hearing would proceed, there was an obligation on my part to be there.

My opponent was there, although I didn't spot him immediately. I later found out that he had been in the courtroom since the door was unlocked. This was the only motion on his docket for the day. He had nowhere else to go.

The judge was running late, as she often did. I'd arrived about 10:55, and the judge started started the 11:00 call at about 11:10 -- and that wasn't too bad in that courtroom in those days. The problem was that the judge had gotten through only motion number 1 (we were motion no. 9) when the evacuation order came. (The Daley Center never lost power, but it was evacuated in case they had to cut power there suddenly. At this point, remember, the waters were still rising relentlessly.)

The judge made the announcement. She said that the elevators would stop running in an hour. I was sitting in the back of the room. I hollered out, "How will we know the difference?" and got a big laugh. (The elevators in the courthouse had been under repair for a year or more and are incredibly slow.) But the call was over for the day and everything was continued to her next available date -- May 29. [All this, according to my Journal, to get a decision on a motion taken under advisement on February 19.] Opposing counsel and I tried to ask her if she could make her decision available any time before that, but she was not interested in idle chit-chat. She wanted to get out of the building.

So now it was time to turn my attention back to Opening Day. My car was parked in front of the office. Steve was supposed to be on his way -- but I had found out, before leaving the courthouse, that the subways were now also shut down. The waters had arrived.

Steve called shortly after I got back. Long Suffering Spouse and Charlotte were looking at houses [without reading further I don't remember if they were looking for Steve and Charlotte, or whether Long Suffering Spouse was already looking for a new house for us.] Charlotte was willing to drive Steve downtown, or to the ballpark, but not real pleased about it. I told Steve to have her come down to our office.

He got there fairly quickly.

We left the office shortly he arrived. Having listened to the radio all morning, I thought I was prepared to make an intelligent approach to the ballpark. I knew traffic would be a mess and the radio confirmed that the Ryan was a zoo. So I took Lake Shore Drive to the Stevenson, got off at Damen (that's about 31st Street) and went South to 35th. This took maybe 15 minutes. Then I turned left -- and stopped.

It was no later than 12:45 when we got onto 35th Street. It was 2:47p.m. -- the fifth inning -- when we finally got to our Uecker seats, 24 rows high in the right field upper deck.

The only thing that the radio had said about traffic in the immediate vicinity of the ballpark was that there was plenty of parking. When we finally got to the lot by the old coal yard (West of the viaduct), we were waved off. The game had just started then. The police told us to keep moving East.

Police. Ordinarily, there's a cop on every block from Halsted East. On this Opening Day, there were no cops until the coal yard lot, not even by the police station a block West. All but a skeleton traffic patrol had apparently been pulled out and sent downtown.

So we moved East. Glaciers have moved faster. No parking at the site of the old park. We turned down Wentworth. And sat. And sat some more. Some idiots were honking horns. What good does that do anyone? We could all maybe melt away and he could ease into his God-given parking spot? No one melted away; we continued to sit.

There was no parking along the east side of the ballpark. Or along the south. Nor were there any helpful private lot owners waving people in. The City had cracked down on them, Steve told me. He was in a position to know.

So we snaked back through Bridgeport west of the ballpark, winding up on Canal heading back toward home. It was after 2:00. Where was the first legal street parking north of the ballpark? The parking expert with said we had to go North of 31st Street. In fact, we had to go North of 29th Street. We parked -- legally -- on the street at 28th and Canal. And then we walked back. I was damned if I would give up. I had entertained thoughts of going back to the office -- a mile north of the Loop, remember? -- but Steve had no office to go to even if he'd wanted to. His building had been among those evacuated. I did not want to sit in a gin mill watching the game.

So we walked a mile and a half to the park -- and another mile and half up the ramps and stairs. We stopped at the bathroom (and waited in a long line) and Steve bought three beers (one for both of us, and one for the gentleman were were supposed to meet at the park -- and he was there). Because it was so cold, there was no real wait for beer. We got our seats at 2:47. Even with all the Opening Day festivities, the game started by about 1:30. The record will reflect it was played in two hours and 18 minutes. It was over at 4:00 and I was home by 5:30. I had no interest in stopping along the way.

The Sox won 1-0. We had missed the run by the time we arrived.

The Subways (which, after all, run beneath the Chicago River) stayed closed for at least two weeks -- and I believe they did not reopen until sometime in May).

Steve has a large helping of Catholic guilt at a party

Regular readers may remember my friend Steve, the guy who 'retired' after 30 years' service with various public agencies. Once he could pull his pension, he went to work 'part time' for a charity that he'd worked for many years. Some weeks 'part time' comes to 80 hours. He gets a stipend for his labors, but nowhere near enough to live on without that pension.

When we read about public pension double dippers, folks who quit one public job, then take another so that they receive both salary and pension, I think of Steve: Not everybody takes advantage. Some people try to do good with the advantages they already have.

Anyway, Steve is an observant Catholic, just as I claim to be. He could hardly be anything else; one of his uncles was a priest, two of his aunts were nuns.

In addition to his 'part time' charity work, Steve volunteers at the neighborhood food pantry. The food pantry is run from the local Methodist church, but all the neighborhood churches support it to one degree or other. Steve is not the only member of our parish to volunteer his time there.

As a result of his weekly service there, Steve has become friendly with the Methodist minister and several members of her congregation. And, over the holidays, the minister began talking up a party for the pantry volunteers. She finally set the date for last Sunday, after her morning service. Steve decided he would go.

Steve's life is complicated, just like everyone else's. His wife, Charlotte, is taking care of her aging parents (they're both nearing 90 and in rapidly failing health) and that takes up a lot of their time. And we found out that the father of a college friend of ours passed away last week; the wake would be Sunday. And between what they had to do on Saturday and Charlotte working during the day on Sunday and the wake on Sunday evening, Steve realized that he hadn't figured out when he'd go to Mass.

"Maybe I'll just go to the Methodist service," Steve told Charlotte. She didn't say anything; she looked at him and waited.

"It's the same Jesus," he protested, a little defensively.

"Your uncle and your aunts are spinning in their graves," Charlotte said. But, ultimately, if he was to get to the party and if they were to get to the wake, going to the Methodist service seemed the best fit for his schedule.

Still, he told me, he was feeling a little guilty as he walked over to the Methodist church. He headed for the side door, the better to slink in anonymously.

That proved to be a bad idea. Just at that moment, the minister emerged from the parsonage next to the church, wearing her vestments for the service, also planning to enter by the side door. She greeted Steve with a big hug.

"I had to go then, didn't I?" Steve asked me later.

I agreed.

"I wonder. Does she get any extra points for bagging a Catholic convert?"

No, I assured him. Methodists are mainline, mainstream Protestants. It's the Evangelicals who think converting a Catholic is the next best thing to baptizing a pagan baby. (I'm very good at inventing stuff like this when the situation demands.)

Steve explained that one other of our fellow parishioners had also come over for the service; a food pantry volunteer, she was planning on going to the party, too. The minister sent Steve over to sit with her.

"I wonder what she must have thought," Steve said, speaking of the lady from our parish. "Half the congregation greeted me by name." He paused. "It's a small congregation -- there weren't that many people there -- but most of them seemed to work in the pantry."

She probably knows them, too, and the same way, I suggested.

"It was a nice enough service," Steve said, continuing, "and I was right at home during the sermon. It went on way too long. She kind of meandered, just like our priests do." He named one priest in particular; some years back, Steve had wound up on a committee to advise the poor man on how to tighten up his homilies.

(Olaf happened to be in the kitchen when I told this story to Long Suffering Spouse. He snorted derisively at the bit about the wandering sermon. "You should see the pastors at my parents' church," he said. "There are three. Each one takes longer than the next."

You know, thinking about it, I wonder if unfocused preaching isn't something of an unconscious homage to Moses and the Jews wandering in the desert. They wandered around lost for 40 years, according to the Bible -- and I've sat through a great many sermons that seem just as lost, and last nearly as long.)

Anyway, Steve said, the party was nice enough and he stayed long enough to make clear that he appreciated being invited. But soon enough it was time to walk home.

Steve paused.

"You know," he said, "on that walk home, I encountered one person. Just one. Care to guess who that person was?"

I thought about it for a second or two. "Our pastor?" I asked.

"Yes," said Steve, "Fr. Ed. As he came up to me on the sidewalk he said, 'Good afternoon, young man. I'm on my way over to my friend Sam's to watch the football games.' He was asking me to tell him where I was coming from, I just know it. And what was I supposed to say? I'm just coming back from services at the Methodist Church? I didn't have time to come over to our own church this morning?"

I tried to think of something witty to add here, but I was laughing too hard. So Steve continued. "A light must have gone off at the Rectory," he said, "one of ours has gone off into one of their buildings."

"Maybe they put microchips into us at Baptism," I ventured. (No, I didn't mean it; I just wanted him to keep going.)

"I thought of that," Steve said, "but Charlotte reminded me that microchips hadn't been invented when we were born."

Good point, I said.

"Charlotte figured it out. 'I warned you your aunts and uncle wouldn't let you get away with this one,' she told me. That's got to be it. They have more pull than I realized."

Now we were both laughing. "You know," Steve said, "you can't write stuff like this."

But I just did.

"Bozo's Circus is on the air!"

Über-blogger Ken Levine describes his recent trip with the Seattle Mariners (he broadcasts for the team part-time) in blog posts today and yesterday. Levine's post this morning included this remark, and it got me to thinking:

Hawked my book [The Me Generation... By Me] on the WGN-9 Mid-Day News. The station is God knows where. Certainly the cab driver didn’t have a clue. Drove by Wrigley Field and I think Wisconsin.

Neither Levine nor his cabbie were Chicago natives. Growing up in Chicago in the 60s kids learned two addresses -- their home address and WGN's -- and not necessarily in that order.

Ringmaster Ned, Bob Trendler, Bozo,
Oliver O. Oliver and Sandy the Tramp

2501 W. Bradley Place was the address for the postcards that kids sent in hopes of becoming the 'at home' player on The Grand Prize Game -- a daily feature of Bozo's Circus (in those days, a live TV extravaganza, with Ringmaster Ned and Bob Trendler and the Big Top Band). Creaky old Vaudeville animal acts -- and some creaky old Vaudeville sketches -- were part of the package. And, however creaky and old some of the bits were, they were all new to us kids. There were cartoons sometimes, too.

Kids could go home from school for lunch in those days and that's when Bozo was on. My mother would have sandwiches waiting and we'd watch the show. Because the show was live, there was a lot of spontaneous ad-libbing -- not all of it suitable for (or aimed at) children. My mother watched that show long after all of my siblings were grown.

The show was put on before a live audience and tickets were impossible to come by. Engaged couples would register for china patterns and Bozo tickets. Maybe the tickets would come in time for their kids to use. Maybe their grandkids. That's why kids send in so many postcards to be at-home players in the Grand Prize Game. After the "magic arrows" picked the day's lucky contestants Ringmaster Ned would shout, "Let's go over to the Bozo Drum!"

The Bozo Drum was a giant, hollow monstrosity. It looked like a Ferris Wheel, only a little smaller. The sides were clear so we could see all the postcards inside -- and it was stuffed. There was a little door in the side of the drum. The day's contestants would reach in and choose the at-home players -- the boy would pick a boy's card, the girl would pick the girl's. When the boy picked a girl's card, Ringmaster Ned would pluck it from the kid's hand and tell him to plunge in again.

This is from a later iteration of the show. Ringmaster
Ned was gone; even Frazier Thomas has come and gone.
I'll bet Professor Andy was all that was left of Bob Trendler's
Big Top Band. But the Grand Prize Game remained.

The Grand Prize Game itself involved tossing a ping pong ball into each of six painted garbage cans. It was harder than it looked: Even if one's aim was true, that darned ball might bounce out. And the pressure increased with each bucket: Kids got bigger and better prizes with each bucket safely reached (and the at-home players got duplicates). For years, the game would start with Ringmaster Ned pulling out a shiny silver dollar and letting one of the kids put that in Bucket No. 6. The pot would roll over every day. And a new bicycle awaited that lucky kid who successfully reached Bucket No. 6.

Those few kids who did beat the Grand Prize Game had icewater in their veins. They're probably cleaning up today on golf courses all over the country.

I never got to play the Grand Prize Game but I did get to go to Bozo once -- and I even got picked for a tug of war contest. Ringmaster Ned asked my name and everything -- but I must have mumbled because he called me by the wrong name. And my team lost the tug of war. Still, I was rewarded with a genuine Bozo decal. It was stuck to a dresser for years before some Philistine painted it over.

Fast forward nearly 50 years. Earlier this year I had to be at WGN for a political show (OK, I didn't have to be there; I was on the list to get by security because I'd arranged for one of the show's actual guests to be there). Anyway, on my way to the newsroom, I got to peek inside the old Bozo studio -- much of the set is still there -- and I was instantly transported. Hey, the newsroom was interesting, too -- but I saw the Bozo set.

Curmudgeon goes underground for a lunchtime walk

It's a nice day in Chicago today. The welcome rains of last night and this morning have subsided; the fairly thick cloud cover is punctured, here and there, by shafts of sunlight. The thought of getting out from behind my desk here at the Undisclosed Location, coupled with a pressing need for some office supplies, prompted me to take a lunchtime stroll.

I went above ground to the Staples at Washington and Wabash, and quickly discharged my errand.

But there were lots of folks today who must also have been itching for an opportunity to come out of the air conditioning and into the air and the sidewalks were crowded. I decided to go back via the Pedway.

The Chicago Pedway is not on the must-see list for Chicago tourists, nor should it be, not at this point. It's a way of getting from Point A to Point B, often a roundabout way, but for all that quicker, usually, than dealing with cars and stop lights and heavy pedestrian traffic. And it's dry when it's raining or snowing, warm enough in winter, and cool enough on even the hottest summer days.

Detail from the City of Chicago's current Pedway map.
No, it's not up-to-date.

Instead of heading back west, then, I walked over to Michigan Avenue and gawked at the tourists for a block or so before turning into what I guess is now called the Crain Communications Building at 150 N. Michigan Ave. In pictures of the Chicago skyline, taken from the lake and looking west, this is the white building that looks like some giant took a diagonal slice out of its side.

I could have gone straight back from there, I suppose, but I decided to go out to what I call the east end first.

At different times the Pedway network has been more extensive. After 9/11, for example, the skybridge over Madison Street between One and Three First National was removed. A mini-mall under the One North Dearborn Building provided another connection between the State Street and Dearborn Street subways. I could have sworn that it was once possible to walk from City Hall to Illinois Center, at Michigan and Wacker, without once stepping out of doors. In fact, I'm sure I've done it. But you can't do that now.

Still, there's some ground to cover. I doubled back from 150 N. Michigan underneath Randloph and then Michigan Avenues, through the Metra Electric Railroad Station (what us old-timers might remember better as the South Shore Station) and up into the Prudential Building. There's a spacious interior courtyard there, with some inviting seating areas in the middle, ringed by stores. The Pedway in the Aon Center, next on the tour, is a mini-mall, with lots of different restaurants for the office workers. There are also a couple of magazine stores and a post office.

The path leads next into the Fairmont Hotel. I don't know why, but the hotel smells like travel. I don't mean to suggest that the odor is offensive -- it isn't -- but it is distinct -- and it's the same smell in airports and hotels I've been in all around the country. Perhaps they all use the same carpet cleaner.

There's nowhere really for the Pedway to go past the hotel, but it does anyway, past the Lakeshore Athletic Club and all the way to the entrance of the garage of the Park Millennium Condo building. In between those two points of interest there is one more: Too wide for a hallway, it is really a spacious room, an underground ballroom.

Don't get me wrong. It's not fancy. There is drab carpet and utilitarian drywall and the constant sound of air handling equipment. But I've never seen another soul there -- and this is a trip I make at least a few times a month, just to shake off the cobwebs at work. On many prior trips I tried to figure out how I could commandeer that space for Younger Daughter's recent wedding reception. (Hey! I'd tell her when she screamed at me, how many brides get wedding receptions in downtown Chicago?) There are security cameras, though. I doubt that the fastest caterer could get set up before being challenged.

Still, that room's a continuing mystery to me. Surely someone must have had a different plan for this space, else why make it so big?

I got to think about these things all over again when I did the quick turnaround at the Park Millennium (my "east end").

Heading back, I turned left coming out of the Metra Electric Station and cut under the old main public library building (now the Chicago Cultural Center). Today, as on all days recently, a man was strumming a guitar, harmonica mounted on a chest harness, trying to fill the space with music. The Cultural Center links with a building at 139 N. Wabash which, in turn, links to the downtown Macy's -- Marshall Field's to us die-hards.

The Pedway here is a bit of a faded dowager -- well-intended, perhaps, wide, better decorated than most sections (you can see a section of this Pedway portion here) -- but the alcoves and columns often conceal homeless persons. Like the rest of us, the homeless also use the Pedway, and particularly this section, when it's cold, or too hot, or when it rains or snows. They weren't in evidence today -- I suppose the homeless folks must have wanted to get out and take the air, too. I can't help but think, when I wander through here, that this particular stretch could be put to better use. Tourists already shop at the Macy's that the Pedway winds around here; you'd think this stretch of walkway could be made a year-round tourist trap, too.

From Macy's we enter the Red Line subway station -- it used to be the Washington stop; for the foreseeable future, it will be the Lake Street stop. The station has been prettied up to the point where the change seems permanent.

The Pedway goes next under Block 37, the unromantically named shopping mall that occupies (what else?) Block 37 between State and Dearborn, Washington and Randolph, and then the Blue Line station (where the Washington stop is still Washington) and into the Daley Center. The Pedway passes under Clark Street next and into the County Building. The County Building and City Hall are two sides of the same building, really, east and west. You can turn north here and go back underground, past the Marriage Court and into the Thompson Building. You can if you want to, but I went straight through to LaSalle Street because I had to get back to work.

And I still do.

Toot toot toot, lookin' out my back door

Remember, as I tell this true story, that I live within the corporate limits of the great City of Chicago.

I was sitting in the den the other night at dusk, minding my own business, watching the ballgame on TV, when I chanced to look at the glass sliding door leading to the backyard.

I must have heard something. Or felt something. (With my glaucoma, it's unlikely that I saw something out of the corner of my eye....)

I looked out through the sliding glass door and a good size raccoon looked back at me.

He was about as close to me in my command chair as I am to the computer screen right now. That's pretty close. Too close, if you ask me, even with the glass door closed.

I stood up and started banging on the glass and that raccoon turned tail and ran away from the house, right over a skunk, who just happened to be patrolling the middle of the backyard at that moment.

Well, they looked at each other, each trying to size up the other's intentions. The skunk's tail did go up, but he was apparently inclined to accept the raccoon's apology because nothing bad happened after that. The raccoon continued toward the back fence (there's a garden shed back there and I'm going to be wary on opening it any time soon -- I couldn't tell for sure where the raccoon was headed in the dim light).

The skunk lowered its tail and looked around some, eventually resuming its evening patrol.

Who needs Animal Planet?

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The post title is taken from the old Creedence Clearwater Revival song. But you already knew that, didn't you?

Curmudgeon won't take sides in the looming Chicago school strike... however....

Maybe this isn't national news yet, but it will be: Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Teachers Union seem to be careening headlong toward a strike this fall.

The issues are familiar: The teachers want more money, smaller class sizes and job security. And they don't want to go along with the Mayor's plan to keep the kids in school longer each day (he's backed down from his original proposal of 7½ hours, to a 7 hour day).

Cynics might charge that the longer the kids are in school, the less time they have to be shot at in the streets.

I'm pretty sure our rising murder statistics have made the national news -- basically, the street gangs in certain areas of our fair city are at war with each other. While they don't always succeed in killing each other, they too often succeed in killing or wounding bystanders.

Of course, there are some areas of the City where some accommodation with the local gang culture (if not outright membership) is pretty much required. And there's a deeply ingrained "no snitching" concept that (as you might expect) makes police work so much more challenging. If it weren't for the unseemly mortality rate among persons willing to testify against gang members, it might be easy to criticize that "no snitching" concept....

But this is an essay about Chicago schools, not about (far too many) Chicago students.

Suffice it to say that the teachers believe that, in addition to a raise, the teachers should receive an increase in salary to cover the lengthening of the school day. On a superficial level, of course, this makes sense: If persons ordinarily work on the assembly line at the widget factory for six hours a day, and Mr. Simon Legree, the factory owner, decides that everyone must work eight hours instead, then, logically, the employees should receive extra compensation commensurate with the longer workday.

The Chicago Public Schools would lengthen the school day to seven hours (in recent years, many Chicago kids attended school for only five hours and 45 minutes). But the analogy to the assembly line at the widget factory simply does not hold -- as the teachers themselves argued! Quoting now, from pp. 36-37 of the fact finders' report (footnotes omitted):

The Union attacks any implication that CPS teachers have short work days, citing a study conducted by University of Illinois Professors Robert Bruno and Steven Ashby, Beyond the Classroom, An Analysis of a Chicago Public School Teacher’s Actual Workday (April 9, 2012), which concluded:

Results from this survey revealed that claims that teachers are working “too short a day” are unwarranted at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. The following are some key findings:

• Teachers on average work 58 hours per week during the school year.
• The work of a teacher happens before, during, and after the school bell rings.
• Teachers on average work a 10 hour and 48 minute standard school day.
• Teachers are at school an average of almost nine hours per day even though elementary students attend school for 5 hours and 45 minutes and high school students for 6 hours and 45 minutes.
• A typical teacher spends almost 2 hours more working at home in the evening.
• Teachers carve out another 3 hours and 45 minutes to do school-related work each weekend.
• A teacher’s role goes beyond merely instructing in the classroom. Teachers spend just over 3 hours each day performing non-teaching related activities.
• Teachers also spend an average of 12 days during summer break doing at least one school-related activity.
• Teachers average 30 hours of professional development training while the school year is not in session.

But would a teacher's already-long workday really get longer because the kids are in the building (and off the streets) for an extra hour? That is by no means obvious, even if the fact-finder seems to have assumed it. And how much longer? Minute for minute, like the poor slob on the assembly line at Mr. Legree's widget factory? (That's the way the fact-finder calculated what CPS should pay as a raise -- even though he readily acknowledged that the money for such an increase doesn't exist.)

Of course, it doesn't really matter. The City rejected the report almost instantaneously, Mayor Emanuel offering his 'thanks' to Mr. Benn in the same tone of voice that one might 'thank' the IRS for demanding an audit. Not to be outdone, the Chicago Teachers' Union unanimously rejected the report as well.

Mr. Benn was certainly right about the "toxic" relationship between the parties.

But Long Suffering Spouse is happy.

Long Suffering Spouse is a teacher in the Chicago Catholic schools. Barring a miracle, she will never get paid what a kid straight out of teacher's college gets from CPS right now ($54,000). But the compensation is not what she's thinking about.

My wife is thinking about her own job security. Catholic schools are getting very expensive -- a family that undertakes to send their children to a Catholic school is making a major sacrifice. If the local public schools are even arguably competitive, it is very difficult to justify that sacrifice.

On the other hand, with the prospect of a public school strike this year, a possible attempt to break the union, labor strife for years to come... well, Mr. and Mrs. Bungalow Belt will be more willing to bite that big bullet and pay the Catholic school tuition after all. The CTU says it is concerned about job security -- and it is providing some... for my wife.

A disconcerting sight -- initially

Whilst driving around Saturday morning discharging my weekend errands, I chanced by the Park Ridge VFW Hall. Those weren't barrels in the parking lot; they weren't barbecue grills. Maybe the receptacles were barrel shaped, but smaller. Flames were clearly visible over the tops; that's what first caught my attention.

But that didn't last, not when I saw what was being burned.

There were two or three flaming receptacles and two or three men at each -- and each man was handling an American flag.

They were burning American flags.

No, these were not the anti-NATO protesters taking over the veterans' hall for one final act of outrage.

These were older men, veterans all (I assume, given the venue), burning old and faded American flags because that is exactly what the Flag Code provides for the disposal of our nation's emblem.

Isn't that amazing? Burning the American flag is supposed to be the ultimate act of outrage and defiance -- but it's also the prescribed method for appropriately retiring a flag.

Burning a flag may be either an act of reverence or outrage, depending on the burner's intent. With flags, as with so much else in life, it's not what you do that's important, it's why you do it.

Dear Anti-NATO protestors: What are you for?

Dear Anti-NATO Protestors:

I get it. Honest, I do. You're against the war in Afghanistan.

Well, so am I.

Now what?

Chanting is great; thinking, though, is better.

We went into Afghanistan, in the aftermath of 9/11, because the Taliban regime was harboring -- serving as a base of operations for -- Al Qaeda, the very sick and twisted people who brought down the Twin Towers and crashed another airplane full of civilians into the Pentagon.

They'd all been our friends once. You probably don't know any of this because your memory doesn't go past the first screen on your Facebook page, but most of the Taliban and Al Qaeda -- even Bin Laden himself -- were mujahideen that we supported when they were resisting the attempted Soviet takeover of Afghanistan. "Friends" may be too strong a word for many of them -- although some of them were apparently friendly to us, then -- but at least they were the enemy of our enemy.

I know, I know, you probably didn't learn about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in school -- but that's the reason why the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. You could look it up on that neat phone your parents gave you for graduation.

Anyway, by 2001, the bloom was definitely off the rose: If the Taliban weren't going to give us Al Qaeda, we were going to take them. And (although Bin Laden and a few other big fish got away) we did what we set out to do, tearing up Al Qaeda's infrastructure and kicking the Taliban out in the process. Kicking out the Taliban meant, by default, we'd gotten involved in an Afghan civil war.

Apparently, there's almost always a civil war on in Afghanistan, at least since 1978 or so, when a Soviet-backed regime seized power in a bloody coup. The Soviets tried to prop up their proxies, eventually committing thousands upon thousands of their own kids, and history will recall this as one of the nails in the coffin of Soviet Communism.

The Russians had had designs on Afghanistan since the days of the Tsars. In the 19th Century, the British tried to occupy Afghanistan (if only to frustrate the Tsars), and suffered dearly for it. The Russians learned nothing from Britain's example -- just as the English had learned nothing from the example of Alexander the Great, who also tried, and failed, to conquer Afghanistan.

Kids, you can criticize our Military-Industrial Complex all you want. I do. Heck, even President Eisenhower did. But American policy in Afghanistan never included hopes of conquest. If we've nevertheless been guilty of propping up the corrupt regime of Hamid Karzai, what would you suggest as an alternative?

The only alternative I know of is a return of the Taliban -- and they do kooky, nutty things like blowing up 1,700 year old statues because the statues are un-Islamic. (Not that they could be otherwise, given that they were carved centuries before the Prophet was born, but logic is not the strong suit of these fine men.) Educating your daughter is a death penalty offense with these charming and delightful folks, for parents and daughters alike. They gleefully blow up girls' schools (there really aren't any mixed schools) -- and they think gang rape is a perfectly acceptable means of punishing a girl for daring to appear in public without a male relative as her escort. No, as a general policy, maybe we should be like Starfleet and follow a non-interference directive... but isn't it kind of hard not to take sides in this case? I mean, seeing as how we were already there?

But, relax, kids, you've already won. The United States is bailing out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. We're trying to make our retreat look dignified, unlike some of our so-called NATO allies (the French for example?) who are racing pell-mell for the exits. The hope is that, somehow, with our additional expenditures to train and equip his troops, Karzai will be able to hold on for a decent interval after we've gone.

We tried to train and equip the South Vietnamese, too.

As I remember, it seemed like an awfully short time between our pullout and the fall of Saigon. Maybe it will be different this time. Maybe.

But, hey, kids, don't give those Afghan people a second thought. Not that you've given them a first thought.

Yours sincerely,

Curmudgeon

P.S. -- A bunch of y'all were still out marching yesterday afternoon when I left the office to go out on errands. All the big shots have gone home and you're still messing up traffic? Go home.