jimmymac1025's Open Salon Blog

Will marry for food

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:03:26 -0400

It is said that men marry their mothers. If that were the case, I would be content with meat loaf covered in catsup, overcooked pork chops and, on Fridays, bowing to the dictates of our church, canned salmon somehow transformed into burgers, as if we wouldn’t notice. My mother was many wonderful things, I should stress, and I don’t wish to appear ungrateful for her devotion and labors, which were considerable if for no other reason that five of her six offspring were boys, each of whom wet the bed far longer than whatever is considered the norm in this regard. She bore children for ten years, so a rough estimate indicates she spend fifteen to seventeen years changing diapers and bedding daily.

So she can certainly be forgiven her lack of culinary expertise based upon the limited number of hours in a day. My father traveled for many years, covering a dozen states in the Great Midwest. He often departed on Sunday night and returned Thursday night or Friday, leaving Mom with, well, everything, except a budget which would allow such luxuries as a cook or a visit to a restaurant now and again. But I don’t recall ever being hungry. There was always food. It was almost always prepared by Mom. There was the occasional T.V. Dinner, with its breaded something under heavy foil coverings, and baked apples which would melt flesh if not allowed to cool sufficiently. But such convience food was not for us, if for no other reason that there wasn’t enough room in the freezer to hold more than a single dinner of seven or eight packages.

What we had was an endless parade of overcooked roasts (beef, chicken or ham) always accompanied by potatoes (baked or mashed) and vegetables out of a can (peas, corn, green beans). These were followed the next night with casseroles made from the leftovers. You tossed them into a pan with macaroni, then added American cheese and a can or two of Campbells Cream of Mushroom soup. Nutritionally speaking, the best thing on the table was milk, which flowed out of glass half-gallon bottles delivered before dawn twice a week. The meals did advance family cohesion. We always ate dinner together. And no one left the table without finishing everything on it, or at least making it appear as if they had, a practice for which the family dog was forever grateful and overweight.

But the roasts, while prepared with love and the best of intentions, were always overcooked, particularly pork and poultry products. Food safety was not taken for granted in 1956, when I was born. If the recipe in the red-checkered Betty Crocker Cookbook said to cook a pork chop at 375 degrees for forty minutes, well, it was cooked at 400 degrees for an hour. Can’t be too careful, particularly if you are a mother who nearly lost a son to polio, not an unusual occurance back then. (Dr. Jonas Salk’s vaccine was not available in 1955, too late for one of my brothers, who still displays minor paralysis on one side of his face after surviving the disease as an infant.)

Dinner with Dad was more fun, at least. Who doesn’t love pancakes? My father’s favorite concoction was called a boloney special. Oscar Meyer provided the lunch meat for the family on those rare occaisions when Skippy and Smuckers took the day off. Marshmallow Fluff would be invented later. If someone complained that they had already had a boloney sandwich for lunch, Dad would insist that he was preparing something entirely different. He would fry the slice of pink paste in a pan and toast the bread before slathering it in Heilimann’s Mayonaise, and serving it with a sweet picklestick on the side. It’s not a boloney sandwich, Dad would say, it’s a boloney special!

You may have noticed my spelling of the word, baloney, which is commonly used to depict or describe something not quit true. A fib. Balderdash, hooey and hokum. The true spelling of the meat, of course, is “bologna,” and is derived from a region in Italy, Bologne. I am reluctant to connect the region to whatever it was that Mr. Meyer served up, and still does, according to his website, to the tune of more than one million boloney sandwiches every day. For as any decendant of the Bologne region knows, seasoned meats like salami are an intoxicating delight and quite unlike what ever passes for baloney in America. If you want to experience real bologna, try its Italian mother, mortadella, on a piece of Italian bread, which I always assumed was stale, since I had grown up on Holsum and Wonder and the like, which are in fact about 93 percent air and seven percent bread and if you don’t believe me, take a loaf out of a bag and squeeze it and you will easily get it down to about the size of a tennis ball, which can be devoured in a gulp or two. Or you can take my word for it and buy good bread.

It was just this sort of meat which attracted me to my wife. We met at a wedding of one of her cousins, who happened to be an old grade school chum of mine. She and I danced the night away and when I called the following week for a date, I suggested we simply meet at a park near her folks’ house, it being a splendid fall afternoon. I thought it was a bit early in the relationship for me to be meeting anyone’s parents, for I enjoyed my bachelorhood and took it quite seriously. I wondered as I approacher her what sort of greeting would be appropriate. Hello and a handshake seemed far too cold, since we did manage a bit of backseat bachanallia after the wedding. Still, a full-fledged kiss seemed presumptive. I decided a modest hug would be appropriate, so I placed my hands on her arms and bent in for a passing kiss on the cheek.

It was there that I was struck by the immistakable smell of garlic, a key ingredient in any seasoned meat. Garlic does not leave one’s breath with a mere swig of mouthwash. Upon consumption it enters the bloodstream and exits the pores on the skin, creating an invisible aromatic cloud. One can either love a garlic lover or not. It would make more sense for a man to marry a blonde and then complain she is not a brunette than it would to marry someone raised on Genoa Salami and then insist she stop eating the stuff because you can’t stand the smell. For hair color, I am told, can be altered, but no man worth marrying would ask his love to sacrifice the joys of sweet capicola and proscuitto ham.

My first experience with these meats came in first grade, at lunchtime. I attended a parochial school populated mostly by Irish kids (McCarty, McCaffery and MacInerney) and Italian kids (Biondi, Boilini and Bernardi), with a few Germans thrown in for good measure. We un-Italians scoffed at our Mediterranian friends and the meats on hard rolls which they ate for lunch. We share no culinary history, as the Italians actually have a culinary history and the Irish do not. But our parents did share a frugality which dictated that kids brought their lunches to school.

It would be decades before I discovered real food when my college degree got me a job as a waiter. I was stunned to see chefs serving pork chops after only several minutes in a broiler, served still spitting juices from their pink centers. I saw real steaks (not “chopped steak” which is hamburger, nor “salisbury steak,” which is hamburger which has started to spoil and is thus drowned in gravy), but real steaks, running red with blood and seasoned only with salt and pepper.

I dove into the task of educating myself about food and its skillful preparation and quickly discovered that the meats I had scoffed at in first grade were highly desirable but prohibitively expensive, double or triple the price of roast beef or ham. How then had these families of modest means provided them to their kids for school lunches? The answer, I would learn later, was culture. An exemplary Italian meal can be prepared for nearly nothing, if one is willing to put in the time and effort. Don’t ask me what the Irish were doing with their time that was more valuable than eating great food without spending any money. Writing poetry perhaps, about how hungry they were.

The Irish spent centuries fighting wars with the British, and usually losing. It was their misfortune that they weren’t conquered by the French, from whom they might have learned a thing or two about cooking, rather than by those boring Brits, whose pallates were every bit as unsophisticated as their own. Then, in the 1890’s, a famine caused those who could to flee and those who couldn’t to starve. My great grandparents were among the former, and when they arrived in America, they didn’t want to be Irish. They wanted to be American. What lay ahead was better than what they had left behind. The idea was to make money. Money bought food, and though most of that food came out of boxes and cans, it was better than what they were used to.

The Italians had of course suffered invasion. But something odd occurred when they did. Usually, the invaders become the dominant culture, with the conquered folks attempting to blend in. But the reverse has occurred in Italy, several times. The conquerers become Italian. Historians have debated the reasons for this, but obviously, it is the food. Like me, the Huns said a silent prayer that their mothers never discover their newfound love of olive oil and fresh tomato, with a leaf or two of basil tossed on top. Then they set out to marry an Italian girl, and the conquest, in reverse, was complete.

After a few more walks in the park with Adele, I finally accepted an invitation to meet the folks. There on the table was a chunk of brick cheese bigger than an actual brick. Next to it sat a loaf of Italian bread and a hunk of dried salami. A pot of soup sat over a low flame on the stove, its steam carrying the scent of chopped vegetables and chicken throughout the house. Downstairs were a dozen or more five-gallon glass bottles filled with wine in varying stages of fermentation, glass tubes spiraling out of rubber stoppers. Hanging from the cross beams in the unfinished ceiling were salamis, mortadellas, capicolas, green peppers, artichokes, onions, and of course, garlic, thousands of dolllars worth of treasure in the basement of a man who mowed lawns for a living. But when Mike wasn’t mowing lawns, he made wine. And he traded the wine for the meats, which were made in someone else’s basement. Everyone in that house ate like a king, and this is the culture of the Northern Italians. Everyone makes something. While Mike and his friends went to Chicago’s Maxwell Street to haggle over the price of grapes, the women would gather to make tortellini. They roll out sheets of pasta as big as the kitchen table. The filling is a blend of cooked pork and veal, mixed with cheese and spinach. The pasta is cut into squares slightly more than an inch. The tiniest dollop of the filling is dotted into the center of each square, which is then folded and crimped by hand by the thousands. The project provided every family in the group with their holiday dinners for the year.

It drove me crazy later, when I would volunteer to serve dinner at Christmas. I had become fairly competent in the kitchen. But when the turkey or crown roast or prime rib or filet mignon came out of the oven cooked to perfection, it inevitably sat on the stove for hours, while the family consumed bowl after bowl after bowl of tortellini soup and plate after plate of sliced salami and cheese and bread. By the time the main course was served, it had cooled to room temperature, its sumptious pink juices now covered with congealed grease. I wised up soon enough. This Irishman was not going to teach them how to eat. I started buying a pre-cooked, spiral-sliced Honey Baked Ham for these events, served cold. They raved. They loved it. They saluted my genius with bottle after bottle of Mike’s best wine, for I also learned that there was no room on their tables for milk.

I wonder now if I need to come clean to my wife about all this. I suppose every woman likes to know that her husband appreciates her meals. But what would she think if she knew that it was food that drew me to her.

Would her heart break? Would the discovery that my attraction to her was triggered not by lust or romance but hunger not merely put a crack in her heart, but send it through a Cuisinart, leaving it sliced, diced, minced, jullianned, pureed and, eventually, I supposed, liquified, dribbling over her diaphram, inching along the intestines, forming a creek over the quadricep and calve muscles before puddling under the plantar facia?

I tell her I love her, and it’s true. She is a lovely and affectionate woman. We have been happily married for 24 years. I praise her appearance every time I speak to her. But the subject comes up from time to time--what was the first thing you noticed?--and I have to check myself before accidentaly blurting out the truth. I usually buy time by filling my mouth with something, not hard to do in my house.

Prog Rock rolls at Ravinia

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 13:07:22 -0400

Any week that includes Jethro Tull and The Moody Blues is a pretty good week. But after digesting the progressive rock hitmakers that performed at Ravinia Festival last week, and updating my i-pod accordingly, the sounds swirling in my head, the ones that linger, are from Tull's opening act, Procol Harum and their Grand Hotels, doomed sailors and Salty Dogs.

There may not be much of the original line-ups left in these bands, but the music that left such an indelible impression in the late sixties and early seventies holds enough power to keep these guys out of the "oldies act" categories. All three bands still feature their original singers and all three remain in fine form.

If you've never been to The Ravinia Festival, you are missing one of the hidden treasures of music in Chicagoland. Located in Highland Park, Ravinia Park offers an inexpensive and convenient outdoor concert experience. (The Metra stops at the front door.) The pavillion holds a few thousand, but the real joy of Ravinia is the lawn. More than 30 acres becon, and don't worry about the skeeters and flies that intrude on picnics, as the clever folks at Ravinia keep a home for bats on the grounds, keeping flying insects scarce.

The most attractive element of the park is its picnic atmosphere. While most music venues gouge concertgoers for substandard fare, (seven bucks for a bottle of warm water?!), Ravinia welcomes coolers and lawn chairs. The park opens at 5 p.m. for a 7:30 show, leaving plenty of time to imbibe before the music starts. Lawn tickets are usually between $20 or $30. If you are too rushed to bring a picnic, there is plenty of food and drink available.

The informal air on the grounds can be a distraction, as many of the folks in attendance are there for the outdoor cocktail party. Some seem not to know or care who is playing on a given night. The volume level of conversation on the farther reaches of the lawn is annoying and screams out for an upgrade of the speaker system. I have to concede though, that the same yak-yak mentality seems to pervade indoor auditorium concerts which cost a lot more.

PROCOL HARUM--This band has lost all it's original members save the one it couldn't live without. Gary Brooker sounds much like he did in 1967 when the group toured as the opening act for Jimi Hendrix in support of it's self-titled debut album, which featured the group's signature song, "A Whiter Shade of Pale." The line-up changes over the years are too numerous to catalogue here (entire websites have been dedicated to the task) but all I can say is that the guitar chops of founding member Robin Trower are covered ably by Geoff Whitehorn, and the haunting beauty of the Hamond Organ that so defined the group's original sound is kept intact by Josh Phillips.

Brooker started touring with the new band in the ninties and "The Commander" does a splendid job of pumping life into the Bach-inspired "Whiter Shade"; the heavy guitar vehicle, "Simple Sister"; and my fave, the trippy "Shine on Brightly," in which Trower once traded acid-tinged leads with original organist Matthew Fisher.

These numbers brought the crowd to its feet several times, though most had obviously come to see Jethro Tull, whom the guy sitting next to me claimed to have seen 30 times.

This music surely could have benefited from the symphony the band employed in its heyday, but Brooker has done a fantastic job of keeping the music alive with a crack touring band. I have to concede that some of the newer material doesn't approach the lofty heights of the group's first four albums, but Brooker keeps those selections to a modest few and instead reminds us what an remarkable catalogue Procol Harum created. This is music well worth remembering.

JETHRO TULL--Flutist Ian Anderson looks leaner and meaner than when I saw him in 1973. He can still play the flute from a ballerina's pose, can still leap and bouce around the stage like a ragged Peter Pan and can still get through an entire show without a single dropped lyric.

Jethro Tull played a perfect summer set, starting out with "Nothing is Easy" from their second album, "Stand Up." A perfect opener as it begins with a flourish on flute, joined quickly by the band in a bluesy romp. "Beggar's Farm" followed, from the first Tull album, back when their management company envisioned them as a blues band and urged Anderson to put away that silly flute.

"Thick as a Brick" was next, Tull's opus. The forty-minute track was shortened to nearly ten for this tour, just enough to hit the familiar spots, an acoustic guitar opening over the classic line, "your sperm's in the gutter, your love's in the sink."

"Brick" bounces from chimes and harpsichord, to blaring organ runs followed by electric chops from master guitarist Martin Barre, then back to a bass-driven flute run and combines all the band's elements into a joyous romp of uninhibited theatrical rock for the ages.

They returned to their blues roots next with "New Day Yesterday," featuring an extended guitar flourish while Anderson backed up Barre with some nasty blues harp.

It was about this time I realized my spot on the lawn couldn't do justice to a Tull Concert. If you don't mind standing, the area to the west of the pavillion offers a decent view of the stage, particularly since Jumbotron screens were added this season. I arrived in time for "Songs From the Wood," the title track from an endless series of "departure" albums. Anderson joked throughout the evening about the many labels critics have tossed on the band: Blues rock, prog rock, folk rock, rock opera.

(One can hardly blame them. I intended to post this article a week ago but instead--trying to get a handle on this puzzling band--have gotten lost reading reviews, downloading albums, going blind watching grainy videos from 1972. I feel no shame for this. Ian Anderson has confounded many during his illustrious career. The Grammy Awards in 1988 decided they needed a new category to recognize heavy metal bands like Metallica. The award inexplicably went to Tull for "Crest of a Knave," which I suppose made them a heavy metal band, as well. One wonders what might have been. Tony Iommi played on 1969's "Stand Up," before joining Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath.)

But seeing the band close-up through the middle section of the show reminded me of how I felt seeing them perform "A Passion Play" at the Chicago Stadium in 1973. Amazed, but confused. What kind of friggin' band is this? The pounding drums and slashing guitars can hold their own against Led Zeppelin. But what's with the pennywhistle and harpsichord and why are they clapping and singing acapella and who the fuck brings a flute to a rock concert, anyway, and then plays it while scat singing and standing on one leg?

Only Ian Anderson, who continued through the show with a number penned by Henry VIII, another by J.S. Bach, (the lovely "Bouree,"), a six-minute flute solo, then "Farm on the Freeway," which, if you simply read the lyrics you might mistake for a Springsteen anthem, some poor farmer losing his simple-yet-ennobling plot to progress and eminent domain, being left with only his pick-up truck.

Through it all Anderson prances, whirls and commands the multi-instrumentalist band members about waving his flute like a baton. (Or a whip, maybe? Ain't no one in this band doesn't know whose band it is. A theme throughout the web sites devoted to all these bands is the never-ending line-up changes, any one of which could make a great novel if only it weren't so confusing.) He's clean-shaven now, and looking rather bad-ass and ripped, like he might have ridden off the set of "Sons of Anarchy" on a Harley. Quite a departure from the early days when tights were the norm, his hair was measured by the foot and his beard appeared to have been spewed, rather than grown.

Finally, we move back to familiar ground. For the big finish, he returns to his most popular album, "Aqualung" for "My God," then the a perfect seven-plus minute rendition of the title track. The encore is "Locomotive Breath," in which the band mimicks a train starting up.

Now that's heavy metal. And worthy of any award you want to throw at it.

The Moody Blues--It's skunk-at-the-garden-party time. I was never a fan of the Moody Blues. I didn't dislike them, but I never bought an album. The other 20,000 or so revelers at last week's Ravinia show would probably say that's my loss, and I walked away from the show thinking they would probably be right.

I love strolling and kibbitzing at Ravinia, since I have lived here in Highland Park most of my life and can usually count on running into old classmates. I saw several, and they all had stories to tell.

"I was at the Red Rocks Show....It changed my life."

"They were Pink Floyd before Pink Floyd was Pink Floyd."

"The colors, man. The colors...."

*******

I have my own story. I'll make it quick, but if you are still with me at this point, I figger you got nothing else to do. I'm in a basement room with crumbling drywall and two real bad dudes. Cher chez la' femme? I was seeing a girl who used to date one of them. I never should have gone down there. We got way too high for so early in the day. The ex starts leaning on me, but the other sticks on "In Search of the Lost Chord," the one that starts with the spoken-shouted word poem-song, "Departure."

The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,

Or the strength of an arquebus deep in the ground

The wonder of flowers, to be covered, and then to burst up

Thru tarmack, to the sun again,

Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing,

To lie in the meadow and hear the grass sing....

I flip. Ignoring the dude leaning on me, I crawl to the phonograph searching for my lost mind.

"What is that?" I stammer, as the band kicks into "Ride My See-Saw." I was sufficiently impressed and agog at that wondrous noise that the dudes either thought I must be allright or couldn't stop laughing. I walked out of the basement that day.

They really were king tripsters, and in the mellowest, orange sunshiney kind of way. They mourned Dr. Timothy Leary. They told us thinking is the best way to travel and we knew exactly what they meant, and when they sang "Hurry high, butterfly, as clouds roll past my head," we didn't laugh, but instead chanted "OM, OM, Heaven, OM," along with them.

Perhaps some of us never really bought into the whole peace-love-dope thing, except for the last part. I know I favored tough guy rock stars with bulging crotches who sneered and smashed guitars and guzzled cynicism by the gallon. Sick fucks like Morrison.

I had a hand in the banning of rock shows at Ravinia for decades. Janis Joplin played here, not long before she died. Frank Zappa. Iron Butterfly (now there was some music to trip to!) Me and my droogs loved to hop the fence, save three bucks and fifty. Steal bottles of wine from lovers in their sleeping bags. Smoke dope and run from the Andy Frains, unconcerned we were stepping on flower children as we ran, cackling.

They finally had enough. When B.B. King played, they hired off-duty bulls from Waukegan. Lined 'em every fifty feet or so outside the fence. Plenty of room, we figured, fat pigs. We'd flash past before they could fart. I hit the chain link and spotted another bull in the woods on the other side, billy club gripped tight. I dropped and flew back. The guy next to me took my cue and dropped, but turned an ankle. They beat him good. That was it. No more rock shows.

Years later, they started up again, easy-like. Mellow folkies from Chicago. Steve Goodman, John Prine, Bonnie Kolak, David Bromberg. Things change. Darwin rules. Both dudes in the basement got locked up forever. Murder. And I'm sitting under a flashlight moon nearly forty years later, with these incredible people....

*******

My (almost) Irish twin brother, a singer and picker himself; my only sister, who grabbed my spiritual umbilical cord when they snipped it off Mom, and plugged it into her heart; two girlfriends of hers, all cool vibes and smiles; my sister-in-law, the same; her daughter, the first of the next generation of Mac, who sings and paints and earned her way through college on a scholarship, (a Mac scholar! My mother's genes skipped a generation); and of course my wife, shapely and sure-footed, who insists we go to these things and without whom I would surely grow moss....

And I start to really dig on the band. They are Justin Hayward on guitar and remarkable vocals, sings lead on most songs in a familiar soaring timbre; John Lodge on flying bass and vocals; and Graeme Edge on drums and vocals. These are the three from the old days. (Don't get me started on line-up changes. Denny Laine is long-gone and so, apparently, is their first hit, "Go Now.")

The show starts to take off. "I Know You're Out There Somewhere." Then, "The Story in Your Eyes." Hayward's guitar reminds me of the old J-school adage: Write to express, not to impress. His every lick means something, takes the melody and the band somewhere new.

There is a Jumbotron, so we can see from the lawn. The backing band is top-notch. I notice the guy listed as second drummer seems to be doing the heavy lifting, while Edge seems content to use his seat behind a drum kit as the best seat in the house. My Mr. Hyde chuckles, old fart, can't keep up anymore. They take a break and when they return there is nothing unfamiliar, nothing that doesn't make me smile. "Your Wildest Dreams," "The Other Side of Life," "Isn't Life Strange."

Edge steps out from behind his kit and grabs a mic. He makes a Viagra joke and I wince, but he announces he's 69 years old and can't believe people will still come to see him strut around a stage. The gratitude is rehearsed, no doubt, but it seems genuine to me. He leads on vocals for "Higher and Higher," and thirty acres of fans follow. It's soaring a little higher with every song, now. "Tuesday Afternoon," "Nights in White Satin," "I'm Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band." And finally, "Ride My See-Saw."

I was disappointed they didn't do Graeme's "Departure," as a lead-in, like on the album, but if I can be forgiven, I can happily return the kindness.

Peace and love ruled the night.

The Courthouse, again

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:06:05 -0400

I give her ten for the train so she can go back to jail and she calls next day, hey can you take me up there? I don't ask where she's been and what happened to yesterday's ten.

I can't take her. I have to go to Cicero, to the halfway house that gave her the boot, the second one in two months. Otherwise they give her clothes to the pawn shop downstairs. The girls in the house get a kick out of seeing their clothes on someone else.

Someone scoots and two months later comes back to see someone new wearing a sweatshirt she used to own.

"Damn! That was my shirt."

"Mine now."

Rose didn't have shoes or clothes the first time I picked her up at the jail, just the paper sandals and scrubs from the hospital. So we've taken her to Target, gotten her outfitted. I don't want to lose the stuff.

My wife takes her to the jail, while I haul ten Hefty bags full of stuff down from the third floor in Cicero. I get it home and shove it in the crawl space, hoping it can stay there for a long time this time.

Mom texts me: She won't go in. What do I do?

Call 911, I respond, thinking it shouldn't take 'em long to get there, parked outside the jail.

Rose is developing institutional thinking. Might as well get buzzed if you gotta go back in. But she'll have to pee in a cup upon entering the facility. A dirty drop is a violation. This apparently occurs to her after getting buzzed, so it's, I'll go tomorrow, for four days.

I head north and thirty minutes later see a cop dropping a twenty-five dollar ticket on my wife's car. No sign of anyone else. I half-expected to see swat teams, black helicopters, a bullhorn sqwaking we don't care your father is an asshole. Come out with your hands up.

I park, feed the meter, knowing a cop circles the block around the jail all day, and see my wife walking toward her car. The Public Defender walked out of the jail and saw them screaming at each other. He talked Rose into going in, promises her he'll get her a court date tomorrow.

*******

I go to court the next day and bring Elmore Leonard with me, Road Dogs. It continues the story from Out of Sight, in which the bank robber escapes and screws a U.S. Marshal, before she shoots him and sends him back to the slam. George Clooney played the robber in Steven Soderbergh's wonderful film. Jenifer Lopez was the marshal. The sex was nice, but the issue of primacy was at the heart of the story. Over and over, a crook who thought he was in charge turned out not to be in charge.

Clooney helped a Michael Milken character survive his stretch. Clooney gets out and the Milken guy thinks he'll even up by giving him a job as his chauffeur. Clooney saved his skin in prison and figured he was due a few mill, but his criminal wiles were no match for the security staff of a corporate raider.

*******

The stories here are just as interesting, I think. Rose's case gets slapped on the docket after a sentencing hearing involving a shooting. Guy breaks into a house and issues a beat-down to someone inside. Another guy who lives there comes into the room and shoots the intruder. The shooter faces serious time. I am sitting in between the two families, who fill forty or more seats in the courtroom. The judge gives the shooter probation if he helps pay the injured party's hospital bills. The shooter could've called the cops, or intervened without a gun, as the assailant was unarmed. But he's never been in trouble with the law. He's the main provider for his family. He owns a business and signs paychecks. The judge says there's no way the community benefits from this guy doing time.

He then addresses the families, who had been addressing each other throughout the hearing.

"The families involved really need to think about healing. If you don't, then we'll all be back here next week or next year and maybe someone does have to go to jail. No one wins these things."

*******

I love the judge. He speaks carefully and personally to everyone who appears before him, but I think he is losing interest in Rose's case. He's given her chances. The State's Attorney and the Public Defender say they'll have an agreement by the end of next week. The PD says she is suffering from panic attacks and he has spoken to the mental health department. They have agreed to keep her for observation until her trial date. The judge shrugs, as does the SA.

I move from the courtroom to the waiting room at the jail, and finish my book. I like how it ends, these crooks and schemers tripping over each other and by the time the primacy issues are settled, there are a couple of bodies in a walk-in freezer. Chick was gonna have the second body, when it was still walking around, dump the first one in a river, but then the second one flew off a roof and landed splat on the patio.

The bank robber isn't as tough as the thugs around him, but he's smarter and settles stuff by shifting alliances and playing one off the other better than they play him.

"Here's how this is gonna play out...." he says to the girl with the gun, then explains why she shouldn't pull the trigger.

*******

She's out in a couple of hours. Without her meds. She has to ask for them and never does. So she tells the girl behind the bulletproof glass. The girl calls for the nurse. This will take twenty minutes. I send Rose across the street with a fin for a dog and cheeze fries. I catch the nurse when he comes down.

"How's she doin'?" he asks.

"Not good."

"I didn't think so."

A slight girl with brown hair pulled up in a bun whisks past us.

"Hey, Billy."

"Go get 'em girl."

She jumps into a '95 Honda Civic with red tape where a tail light used to be. Billy says she used to be worse than Rose. Now she never misses a drop. Works and goes to school. It can happen, Billy tells me. Hang in there.

*******

A girl at the mental health department interviews Rose, then asks me to join the meeting. They can't take her. Rose is too healthy. She sees a doctor, takes her meds, has been through treatment. The county program is for people off the street. Rose has resources. Rose has me and my insurance card.

I wondered what the lawyer was thinking, sending her here. I assumed maybe he knew someone and asked for a favor, trying to give Rose a soft landing. Jailhouse detox sucks. I call. He impressed upon me he has to be somewhere very soon but will make a phone call. If it doesn't work, she has to go back in. It's after four o'clock on a Friday. We drive back over to the jail. I want her out of my car. She was batshit yesterday and I don't want another episode.

*******

She says since no one specifically told her that she has to go back in, she is free to go where she wants for the week, long as she shows up at the next court date.

"They assumed you would get in the clinic," I say. "But you're still under arrest. You already violated your parole with all the relapses. You bolt now, they'll add an escape charge."

The lawyer isn't returning calls. Rose says she isn't doing anything without talking to him.

"Here's how this is gonna play out," I say. "You are going to get out of my car. If you don't, I call 911. You get out of my car, you can do whatever you want, see if you can roust someone to come get you. Up to you.

"What you ought to do is go back inside and wait for your court date. I think they're gonna kick you loose, let you plead down. From there, you deal with a probation officer. Otherwise, you're in DOC for a couple years at least. Your call."

She asks if she can have a cigarette first. They don't let you smoke inside. And maybe, while she smokes, a tornado comes by and blows the jail down and she doesn't have to go in. I say no. She goes in.

*******

Illinois primary skews democratic process

Sat, 22 May 2010 13:05:32 -0400

I'm very jealous today. I wish I lived in Pennsylvania. Folks in Pennsylvania got to go to the polls this week. Our primary elections in Illinois were held Feb. 3.

If Pennsylvanians did it the way we did it, Arlen Spector would be been the Democratic Party nominee. Instead, by giving voters an extended primary campaign in which they got a long look at the candidates, Pennsylvania Democrats chose a far stronger candidate in Joe Sestak.

We in Illinois aren't so lucky. We are stuck with Alexi Giannoulias. His primary challenger, David Hoffman, surged in the days leading up to the primary, but still lost by six percent.

Hoffman wasn't well known around the state, except in the Chicago area. He made headlines as inspector general in Chicago by criticizing Mayor Richard Daley's deal to privatize the city's parking meters, a move which brought in a ton of cash early, but which in the long run will cost the city untold millions of dollars.

One doesn't get ahead in politics around here by butting heads with Daley. So Hoffman had trouble getting his campaign started. Illinois Democrats went with the better known candidate, and Giannoulais had been elected to statewide treasurer's office four years earlier.

Would Democrats make that call today? I doubt it. Not after the feds siezed Broadway Bank a few weeks ago. Giannoulias resigned from the family business when he took office as treasurer. There is little doubt, however, that the decisions he made while working at the family's business, most notably over-investing in the commercial real estate market, led to the bank's demise when the market crashed.

Giannoulais makes some reasonable points in his defense. The bank wasn't heavily involved in the derivitives trading which contributed to the crash of 2008. No one at the bank has been charged with wrongdoing or illegal behavior. Broadway was a community bank, not one of the too-big-to-fail monsters. It gets complicated here, but hefty bonuses paid to bank officials before it crashed were used to pay inheritance taxes involved in keeping the bank in family hands following the death of his father.

Seems fair enough. But politics ain't fair. And does anyone really think Illinois Democrats would have selected him as their candidate if the primary were held this week? His opponent, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, has been gleefully asking voters if they want a banker whose bank has been siezed by federal regulators to go to the Senate where he will vote on banking regulation. Giannoulias has gone so far as to demand that media stop running stories when Kirk criticizes him over the bank issue. No fair, he cries.

I doubt Kirk is worried about this, even though some media outlets have challenged him to start talking about other issues. And why should he be worried? The Blago trial starts soon. Disgraced former Governor Rod Blagojevich faces corruption charges. He allegedly auctioned off the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.

"This thing is f***ing golden," he said into a federal wiretap. "I'm not going to just f***ing give it away."

Blago eventually decided to pawn off Obama's Senate seat to Roland Burris in return for a fund-raiser Burris promised to hold for him. Burris professes innocence in the matter because he never was able to come up with the cash for Gov. Elvis. Blago demanded a golden parachute from the Obama administration, something involving cash up front and a cozy job, maybe ambassodor to somewhere no one's ever heard of. If he didn't get it, he promised, he would sing like a bird in order to save his own skin, and he knows where the bodies are buried.

Alexi isn't accused in having had a hand in this fiasco. He has, however, had to defend himself against charges that his bank lent money to convicted felon and fixer Tony Rezko, who was a huge speed bump in Obama's quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, so don't expect any photo ops of Obama and Alexi shooting hoops, as they did in the old days.

This can't reflect well on the Democratic Party in Illinois. But say we had a primary this week? One in which one of the candidates is a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office, one whose job it was to put corrupt politicians in jail? One who enhanced his reputation as a reformer by butting heads with the Daley Machine?

Does anyone really expect that Giannoulais would win now? My guess is he would have bowed out of the race weeks ago, and Hoffman could run a winning campaign focused on his opponent's support for the invasion of Iraq and his flip-flop on climate change legislation. He dropped his support for it when he announced for the Senate.

And with the current mood of voter discontent with incumbents of both parties, Hoffman could paint the five-term congressman as a Washington insider and reliable vote for the Bush-Cheney regime and himself as the fresh face who is seeking national office for the first time.

Why does a state hold it's primaries in the first week of February, for an election in November? The reason most often cited is that, gee, Illinois is such a big state. It takes a candidate nine months to get around the place and introduce himself to voters. Do you know how far it is to Carbondale? My guess is that the power brokers in Chicago couldn't find Carbondale on a map. (Way down south. If you hit Kentucky, you missed it.)

Only one reason passes the smell test. It is to make it tough on challengers. February in Chicago qualifies as some of the worst weather on the planet. Ice and snow are crusted into place several inches high on most sidewalks outside the downtown Loop.

It forces challengers to begin their campaigns so early. If you are running against someone in a two-year seat--a state or U.S. Rep.--the person you are running against hasn't completed the first year of the two-year term. Than you have to hold off on the campaign during Christmas and New Year's Day. Then you have a month to knock on doors in January. Good luck with that.

I tried to prove my theory by checking vote totals in the primaries in both states, but I was proved wrong. A quick scan of Pennsylvania results shows there was better turnout here as a percentage of registered voters. There were reports of rain holding down turnout in Pennsylvania. Wussies!

But how much information did Illinois voters have? And how hard is it for a challenger to make a dent? I stand by my assumption that Illinois primaries are held early to make it tough on challengers. Polling in Pennsylvania shows Sestak losing by a landslide among registered Democrats back on Feb. 3, when Illinois voters had to make their decision.

How hard is it now to make a case against Kirk's assertion that the issue of corruption lies behind everything in Illinois?

Personnally, I can't imagine casting my vote for a guy I have voted against five times in his congressional races. But by burying the primary under three inches of snow that fell Feb. 3, the powers-that-be in Illinois have nationalized the case for Gianoullais, "It's a Democratic vote in the Senate!"

The same could be said for place-holder Burris. We Democrats could have, and should have, a much stronger case to take to voters in November.

Board backs Arizona hoops trip cancelation

Tue, 18 May 2010 07:05:19 -0400

Administrators on the hot seat for canceling a trip to Arizona because of its new immigration law received backing from their school board Monday night.

The decision by administrators in District 113 in northeastern Illinois brought on a wave a criticism around the country last week after former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin lambasted it while speaking near Chicago and accused administrators of foisting a liberal political agenda on students at Highland Park High School and members of its girls basketball team.

The decision was not intended as a political statement, said Board President Bonnie Shlensky, but was simply taken to assure the safety of students. She made no comment on the Arizona law, other than to say that the uncertainty about how the law will be enforced was enough to concern the administrators, who have the responsibility to provide education to residents regardless of their immigration status.

It is too early to tell whether SB 1070 will result in racial profiling, or whether it will subject students to unwarranted scrutiny, she said. Superintendent George Fornero said the trip was planned only recently and without final approval from the district. He added the administration would see to it that parents have input to decisions before they are made regarding future trips.

The board opened the floor to public comment on the decision for 30 minutes, limiting comments to two minutes each. About 15 people spoke.

A slight majority of those speaking were opposed to the decision, 8-6 by my count, and those opposed seemed to have slightly louder support among the crowd of about 180.

The most noteworthy statement may have been delivered by a member of the girls basketball team, who said the team has "accepted" the decision, and looks forward to competing in a similar tournament in Orlando, Florida. She said the team had hoped to participate in the most competitive tourney possible and wished to voice no opinion about the debate over immigration laws.

Some of the most strident commentary came from students at HPHS. One junior identified himelf as a "Republican who hates Fox News," and supported the decision to "boycott intolerance." A girl said she "has never been so proud to be a student at this school. Thank you for taking a stand."

On the other side, a student whose sister plays on the team declared "Shame on every one of you sitting up there." He said that by focusing media attention on the presence of people here without legal citizenship, the board has put the very people it claims to protect under greater threat of deportation.

Another said the Arizona law "strictly prohibits racial profiling."

Several opponents of the decision said team members and their parents should have been able to make the decision themselves, whether they decided to make the trip or not.

*******

EDITOR'S NOTE: I spoke in support of the decision, expressing my opinion that administrators were not making a statement to folks in Arizona regarding the immigration issue there, but simply looking out for the interests of students here. I am an HPHS grad, as are both of my daughters.

PILE-ON CONTINUES: Media criticism of the decision continued Monday, with Sun Times columnist Richard Roeper playing it for yucks by noting some absurd laws on the books in Florida, such as the prohibition against women falling asleep under hair dryers. HP officials must be okay with that, he mused, because "you're supposed to inject your personal political views into the equation, right?"

I've always been of the opinion that Roeper is a bit too cool for school.

EDITORIAL JUJITSU: More interesting was the Chicago-Sun Times editorial that ran Monday in which it managed to take both sides of the issue and still miss the point. First off, they declare, the district is right.

"The law is outrageous. Principled Americans are right to penalize the state by shunning it."

But wait! The district was wrong, because it made the decision behind closed doors. Hold on, now, they have a solution, but not before reciting Palin's talking points, only not the way she meant them.

"It was a deeply political statement. It was a way to protest the Arizona law."

And they know this because?

"Assistant Supt. Susan Hebson conceded as much...when, shortly after the trip was canceled, ostensibly for safety reasons, she admitted it 'would not align with our beliefs and values.'"

Conceded? Ostensibly? Admitted?

The "beliefs and values" quote has been the sharp edge of the sword for those criticizing the decision. They translate it without question as meaning Hebson is telling folks in Arizona to go jump in the Grand Canyon. (Which the Sun-Times is happy to do.)

Might there be another explaination? Did Hebson think Arizona's action would force her to ask Hispanic students making the trip to make sure they had documentation with them? And if a student didn't posess such documentation, might Hebson have felt obliged to advise the student not to make the trip? And might she have believed such an action would violate the "beliefs and values"of the district because it drags educators into immigration enforcement duty?

That's how I saw it from the giddyap. She was watching out for students here in District 113, not telling people in Arizona what to do. Then again, I have not mastered the art of substituting loaded words like "conceded" and "admitted," for the more objective "said." Nor do I often find use for the term "ostensibly," which I believe should be written with one eyebrow arched high, or at the very least ought be accompanied by a disbelieving roll of the eyes.

No matter. They see this injection of personal opinion into board policy as a good thing. Guess they and Roeper don't talk much. So, how to fix this mess? Easy. First, the decision gets tossed out. Then the Board, "after listening to all views expressed at an exhaustive public hearing" goes ahead and tells off Arizona "with a bold public statement that carries real weight."

I'm running out of adjectives here. "Astonishingly" comes to mind. Astonishingly, the editorial about wraps it up there. They restate their opposition to the law, then weep that folks in the community didn't get to be part of this grand gesture, because "nobody ever asked." (Sniff.)

Did it occur to anyone over there that an exhaustive public hearing might have produced an 8 to 6 vote, as it did tonight? Or an 80 to 60 vote? That the community might not reach consensus?

Astonishingly, remarkably, amazingly, unbelieveably--oh, hell you pick one--it did, but stated its sincere hope that the Board would then vote to cancel the trip because "Declaring the trip back on just might divide the school further...."

'Ya think?

THE REAL BEAUTY OF THIS: Monday was the last day of school for seniors at HPHS. Prom beckons. The graduation ceremony is just around the corner. (Maybe we should hold our exhaustive public hearing there, since everyone is already in one place, right? How long could it take?)

Many students will start summer jobs as they prepare for college. Others might just chill and take in the summer after graduation before beginning the rest of their lives. If the Sun-Times and others have their way, we can twist our tits into knots for another month or two without being any closer to solving this thing.

By taking the action they did Monday night, endorsing the decision with one voice, the board has mercifully spared us all of that. This case is closed. Those angry enough to "vote 'em all out" in the next election are free to do so.

The way I see it, administrators saw where this all might go and how long it might take to get there--or not get there--and said, "Fuck it! Let's earn our money."