Rollin’ Down the River

For years, I drove along River Road and Milwaukee Avenue with the Des Plaines River flowing beside me. It was part of the scenery, something to glance at while waiting for traffic to move. I never expected to trade my steering wheel for a paddle.

My friend Tom, a former medical school classmate, is a true outdoorsman. He and his family camp and fish; some also hunt. None of those activities appears on my LinkedIn profile. The closest I’ve come to fishing was living a block from Farwell Beach when the alewives washed ashore to die—a smelly mess that needed no help from me. And if a tent lacks a sink, a toilet, and plenty of running water, count me out. As for hunting…

So, when Tom texted me last month to ask if I wanted to go kayaking, I surprised myself by saying yes. We picked a day and time, and Tom sent me everything else I needed to know. I supplied the courage.

I had kayaked once before, in a two-person craft on a river in Israel. My co-pilot was the cantor from our temple. I figured I couldn’t be more firmly in the Lord’s hands if I were aboard Noah’s ark, so I let the cantor navigate while I did the paddling. We were quite a team.

This time, I would be master and commander of my own ship.

When I arrived at Tom’s house, the sun was shining and the kayaks were already loaded into his SUV. A short drive brought us to a launch point in Wheeling, where we dragged them down to the river.

When I asked about life jackets, Tom gave a little smirk and tossed one to me.

“You probably don’t need to wear this,” he said. “The river’s only about three feet deep.”

Remembering all the rock stars who had drowned in their bathtubs, I put on the life jacket, and we pushed off.

We moved with the gentle current, and I quickly found a paddling rhythm that kept me on a steady course down the middle of the river. A large heron flew overhead to lead the way, often doubling back to make sure we were following. Tom pointed out half-submerged rocks and small eddies to avoid. We drifted past forest preserves, a nature center, and wooded trails, the serenity broken only by road noise from a hundred yards away.

We finished about seven miles downstream, each of us with a pair of wobbly legs as we pulled the kayaks up the grassy embankment.

“Next time we’ll go upstream too,” Tom said as we were saying goodbye.

We’ve done it nice and easy. Next time, we’re going to do it nice and rough.

Rolling down the river.

Come From Away—A Long Way From Schroeder

I hope you have had a chance to see Come From Away at Lincolnshire’s Marriott Theatre. It is an outstanding production of the musical about the planes, passengers, crews, and residents of Gander, Newfoundland, who were linked in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Following the show, I might not have remembered all the songs, but the characters and their compassion left a lasting impression.

And I remembered who earned the evening’s first round of applause. It was me!

For those of you unfamiliar with the theater, it has a central square stage with five or six rows of seats on each side. There really isn’t a bad seat in the house. Barb and I were seated along with another couple in Row E. Before the lights went down and the play began, Alex Goodrich, soon to portray the mayor of Gander, pulled a chair onto the stage directly in front of us. He produced a crossword book and pencil and proceeded to work on the puzzle.

“Four-letter word for pain, beginning with an ‘a.’ That’s easy, that’s ache,” he said to the audience. “But this next one looks like a toughie. Six-letter word for music without key or melody, also beginning with an ‘a.’”

Mr. Goodrich paused. The audience was silent.

“Atonal,” I muttered to Barb.

“Say it louder,” she encouraged.

So with the authoritative voice I use when I am addressing our own mayor at one of our Village Board meetings, I cried out, “Atonal!”

Mr. Goodrich looked up and asked, “Who said that?”

I rose from my seat, gave a slight bow, and felt the warmth of admiration as all of Section 2 applauded my vocabulary and problem-solving skills. It was even more heartwarming than the ovation I received a few years back when reminding the County Board that yes, mosquitoes really were a bad thing to have in our neighborhoods.

Unlike the professional performers, I had no admirers waiting for me outside the stage door after the performance. No one requested my autograph. But for the first time since playing Schroeder in an unsanctioned high school performance of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, I was a star of the theater.

And I can’t wait to do it again.

A Stormy Night for Donald and Me

Finally, Donald Trump and I have something in common. It might not be something to be proud of.

I was watching Party Down, a 2009 sitcom about a catering crew whose members would generally prefer to be doing something else. In this episode, they are working at an after-party for an adult film awards ceremony.

One of the actresses playing a porn starlet looked vaguely familiar.

I can name the Best Actress Oscar winners for the past 50 years. I could probably do the same for the Emmys. But if the Final Jeopardy! category is PORN PEOPLE, I’m wagering $0 of my hard-earned winnings.

In fact, there is only one porn star I can name. And when the credits rolled, there she was: Stormy Daniels.

This is an odd cultural development. I know her name and recognize her face because of her involvement with the man who became president. I thought I was watching a sitcom about caterers. Instead, I was watching the extended Trump universe.

So Donald Trump and I both know who Stormy Daniels is. The difference is, I needed the credits.

And now that Katie Zacharia’s brief tenure as White House press secretary has ended, perhaps Stormy should be considered for the position. She has television experience, is comfortable answering embarrassing questions, and already knows the boss.

There could be a problem, though. This time, he would be paying her to talk.

Back to Eden—and Those Nasty Women

Barb and I are enjoying the new Netflix adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Watching the program reminded me of a blog from 2016. You can read it below. It’s a fun piece, the irony is that 10 years later we are still dealing with Donald Trump.

10/20/2016

Yes, Hillary accused Donald Trump of cheating on his taxes. And how did he respond? As everyone knows, he called her a “nasty woman.” For the sake of argument, let’s say her remark earned her a one star  (★) evil rating. How does she stack up against some other famous nasty women in history?

  • Eve ★ ★ ★ :  Here was a gal who knew how to get her man in trouble. If she hadn’t gone after that apple, none of us would be paying income tax.
  • Bonnie Parker ★ ★ : Yeah, she robbed banks, killed people, and wrote awful poetry. But Faye Dunaway was just so damn alluring.
  • Norman Bates’ Mother ★ ★ ★ : Now this was a mean one. Even dead and mummified she got poor old Tony Perkins to off Janet Lee. But that was a great shower scene.
  • Marie Antoinette ★ ★ ★ : No, she didn’t cause the French Revolution by herself. Did she really say “let them eat cake”? In any case, it’s a great line.
  • Hansel and Gretel’s Witch ★ ★ ★ ★ : A true nasty. Kidnap kids, fatten up kids, eat kids. It wasn’t until Hannibal Lecter came around that we had a comparable male maniac.
  • Cathy Ames ★ ★ ★ : John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” is one of my all-time favorite reads, and Cathy is my favorite character. A prostitute without a heart of gold, she killed her parents and slept with her brother-in-law on her wedding night. But at least she didn’t eat her children.
  • Polk Salad Annie’s Mama★ ★ : A wretched spiteful, straight-razor totin’ women. And I hear Annie was no sweetheart herself!
  • Queen Isabella ★ ★ ★ ★ :  Whether you hate her for sending Columbus to the New World and blowing the ecosystem, or her role in the villainous Spanish Inquisition, there is not much for redemption.
  • Gemma Teller Morrow ★ ★ ★ : The Mama Bear of “Sons of Anarchy, ” she almost killed her first daughter-in-law, and succeeded in killing her second one. And I had always thought that is was daughters-in-laws that wanted to kill their mothers-in-law.
  • Elizabeth Holmes ★ ★ : Yes, I know, I should stop picking on the Temptress of Theranos. But her whole deal just gets me so pissed off…

So Hillary, you barely nudge the nasty meter. So keep on smiling that smile and do what you’ve got to do. Only one person on the ballot is truly evil.

One More Song For Me

Today was a jingle-jangle morning.

I was hitting the halfway point in my early morning elliptical routine when Roger McGuinn’s 12-string guitar led me into the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man.” I pumped up the volume, and soon I was nine years old again, and it was the summer of 1965.

My mother and I were sitting in a diner on the corner of Argyle and Broadway when those same chiming notes came over the restaurant’s speakers. It was a little before the lunchtime rush, so the place was nearly empty. Not Nighthawks empty, but there were only a few customers at the tables or counter. Soft rain spattered against the plate-glass windows.

Mom and I had just been visiting my grandmother. Mama, as I called her, was then in her mid-seventies. She had fled Nazi-controlled Austria with my mother and grandfather. They had built comfortable lives in Chicago, settling first in Hyde Park, then moving north in the 1950s.

In 1963, Mama and Papa moved to a senior living building populated mostly by German immigrants. They were among its handful of Austrians.

Papa passed away within months of the move, and Mama was assigned a new roommate. Mama lived with Mrs. Palmer for ten years—ten years in which they never once addressed each other by their first names. Prussian formality, I assume!

Mom visited Mama twice a week. At least once a month, I would join her. The ride on the El to the Argyle “A” stop took barely fifteen minutes from our Rogers Park neighborhood. Once there, we would help tidy up, do some hand laundry, and politely ask Mrs. Palmer how she was doing before she hustled out of the room.

We didn’t often go to a restaurant after our visits. I don’t recall whether this was a special day or whether we were simply taking a few minutes out of the rain before walking back to the El stop. But there we were, my mother and I, splitting a piece of sesame seed cake before returning to the bustle of the train.

I think that was the first time I heard “Mr. Tambourine Man.” I was just forming my taste in music, and the song stuck. I didn’t realize then that it was also my introduction to Bob Dylan.

Nothing remarkable happened that morning. But more than sixty years later, a few chiming notes brought me back to that table, with rain against the windows, sesame seed cake on a plate, and my mother beside me.

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play one more song for me.

Streaming Back to the Future

My calendar had a big red circle on September 16th. I didn’t want to forget that this past Wednesday Apple TV would be broadcasting Episode 1 of the sixth season of Slow Horses, my favorite off-kilter British spy series.

So I sank into my favorite chair, lowered the window shade, and dimmed the lights as the Mick Jagger theme song began. I watched, enraptured, for an hour as the slovenly Jackson Lamb farted, the immaculate First Desk Diana Taverner calculated, and the insufferable Roddy Ho preened.

And then it was over.

No Episode 2 to help fill my afternoon. No binging horses for me. I’d have to remember the plot line until next week!

Of course, waiting a week for another episode shouldn’t seem strange to me. That’s how I watched television for much of my life.

In the ’60s and ’70s, you watched an episode of a show and came back a week later for another. Most episodes were self-contained, so there wasn’t much to remember. Later, shows like Hill Street Blues began stretching stories over multiple episodes, forcing viewers to pay attention to the “arc.”

Then came streaming and binging.

Barb and I started by discovering shows after they had been on for years. We watched Parenthood, Breaking Bad, and Sons of Anarchy long after their first episodes, and sometimes their last ones, had aired. We could watch one episode a night and get the full story in a matter of weeks, or, in the case of 11 seasons of Shameless, a few months.

Netflix took things a step further. Instead of making viewers wait, it began releasing entire seasons of new shows at once. Suddenly, the only thing standing between you and the next episode was self-control.

But now I’m wondering whether something was lost along the way.

When you wait a week, you have time to think about what you watched. You wonder what happens next. You talk about it with someone else who saw it. A character or plot twist has time to settle into your brain before another one pushes it aside.

With binging, one episode can blur into the next. Barb and I have watched some very good series that we can barely remember a year later. Did that happen because we’re getting older, or because we swallowed eight hours of Your Friends and Neighbors in a week?

Probably a little of both.

So maybe Apple is doing me a favor by making me wait for my next Slow Horses. Maybe anticipation really does add something to the pleasure.

Now after decades of VCRs, DVRs, DVDs, and streaming, television has accomplished something remarkable. It has brought me right back to where I started. I’ll have to wait until next week to find out what happens.

I’d better circle next Wednesday on my calendar.

Barb Tells It Better

On paper, I am the storyteller of the family. But in real life, my tales tend to be short and to the point, while Barb can mesmerize an audience, weaving a story she has honed to perfection. Here is Barb’s latest not-so-tall tale. Not surprisingly, I am the straight man.

“It was about 2 a.m. when the alarm went off,” Barb begins.

“I was disoriented and felt around the nightstand for my glasses. Once I found them, I looked for Les, but he wasn’t in bed. I staggered to the alarm pad and saw that the family room sliding patio door was the cause of the alarm. I used our code to turn it off.

“Calling for Les, I made my way to the offending door. I remembered that a serviceman had used it that morning. We had probably forgotten to lock it, but that didn’t explain why it had opened a little and set off the alarm.

“I knew the police would show up, so I went to the front door to wait for them. And still no Les.

“After about a minute, I saw flashlights coming up the walk and two policemen appeared.

“‘We’re sorry, ma’am, but we got a call that there was an alarm going off. It turns out it was for the house next door, but we came to your house by mistake a few minutes ago. While checking all your doors, I think we set off your alarm.’

“‘OK, that explains the alarm. But I have a bigger problem. My husband is missing.’”

At this point in telling her story, Barb is beginning to grin, a twinkle coming to her eye. It is the officer’s next words that send her—and her audience—into hysterics.

“Looking over my shoulder, the policeman says, ‘You mean the man in the green underpants standing behind you?’”

As the laughter engulfs Barb’s audience, I explain that I had trouble sleeping that night and had gone into the guest bedroom so I wouldn’t wake Barb, only to appear when the police were at the door

“And he didn’t hear the alarm! No wonder his doctor says he needs to get the wax out of his ears.”

And that is the difference between the two storytellers in our family. I’ll write this one down and you’ll smile. Hear Barb tell it, and you’ll be laughing until tears run down your face—and my underpants will be getting greener with every telling.

Sorry! Hasbro. You Can’t Change That Rule!

Barb and I were absorbed in an intense game of Sorry! with Captain Comeback and Superheroine Girl, our 5- and 8-year-old grandchildren, when I made the discovery.

The game set we were using was the third or fourth set our family has gone through since we first started playing the board game with our children more than 35 years ago. We have spent countless rainy days, afternoons, and evenings chasing each other’s colorful pegs around the board.

Playing Sorry! has helped first our kids and then our grandkids learn counting and strategy. They have also learned how not to have a fit when a sibling or cousin flips over a dreaded Sorry card and sends their peg back to Start. And most importantly, they have learned patience, as turn after turn goes by without drawing the 1 or 2 card that allows one of their markers to leave Start and begin the trek toward home.

By the age of 5, any family member knows the rules backwards and forwards. We have made a few minor changes as the years have gone by, but waiting for that 1 or 2 card has been the requirement that anchors the game. So I was amazed when, casually reading the latest set of instructions, I discovered that a player can now start moving a peg after drawing any number card. This is heresy!

I suppose Hasbro has updated the rules to fit with modern times and limited attention spans. I am sure the new rules speed up the game and keep everyone more actively involved. But to my family, this change is as absurd and unnecessary as, well, I don’t know, automatically putting a runner on second base in the 10th inning of a baseball game.

Sorry!, like baseball, is not meant to be played at a TikTok pace. It needs to build slowly, with plenty of time for Captain Comebacks and Superheroine Girls to rebound and claim the lead.

And that is how we will play it in our house, for every generation that comes our way.

You Can Still Call Me Doctor

I’m still called an admiral / Yet I gave up the sea long ago. Tim Rice, Evita

With barely any notice, I went through a significant transition at the end of July. My Illinois medical license, something I have cherished for almost 50 years, expired. I made no attempt to renew it.

It wasn’t the minimal fee that kept me from renewing. It was my lack of the necessary continuing medical education hours. When I renewed the license the first time after retirement, I still had more than enough allowable hours from my working days to meet the requirement. But for the last three years, I have barely dipped into a pathology journal, attended a conference, or attempted an online course.

A friend suggested applying anyway, and just “creating” some CME hours. “No one will catch you,” he said. Of course, that’s not me. I wouldn’t do that, equal parts moral compass and fear of being discovered. Besides the point of all those hours isn’t just to list them on a data sheet, but to keep current with my profession, so as not to be using an abacus in an AI world. Molecular pathology, barely budding when I left the field, is now in full bloom. Unless you’ve been a constant gardener, reading, watching, and using, there is no way to keep up.

Would there be any benefit to me in maintaining my license? None that I can think of. I already turn down the monthly calls from locum tenens companies seeking a temporary pathologist for this lab in Idaho or that one in Maine. The companies I once thought I would do remote digital pathology for seem to have crashed and burned, or at least discovered that they didn’t need me. I won’t be able to prescribe an antibiotic for Barb or for a grandkid, but I never did much of that anyway.

So my Illinois license is a thing of the past, alongside ones from Indiana and Wisconsin. But you can still call me a doctor. That came with a degree that will never expire, no matter how long it’s been since I went to sea.

Hugh Jackman’s One Mistake

The skies were threatening, but the predicted rainstorm never came. Instead, we had a pleasant evening sitting with friends at Ravinia in Highland Park, enjoying dinner and the showmanship of Broadway and movie star Hugh Jackman.

Backed by the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra and a quartet of backup singers, Jackman romped across the stage in a carefully timed 90-minute performance that offered glimpses of the numerous personas he has occupied during his long and varied career.

For Neil Diamond fans such as Barb, there were “Crunchy Granola Suite” and “Sweet Caroline,” from last year’s movie Song Sung Blue. Jackman even donned a stars-and-stripes vest to salute Thunder and Lightning, the Neil Diamond and Patsy Cline impersonators the film was based on. At least I think that’s what he was saluting.

Jackman made his Broadway debut in 2003 and won a Tony Award portraying his Australian counterpart Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, so it was not surprising that songs written by Allen were featured in a lengthy medley. Jackman closed with “Once Before I Go,” the 11 o’clock number from the musical.

I missed my chance to see Jackman in the Broadway revival of The Music Man, one of my favorite musicals and the show that reopened Broadway after Covid, so I was glad to see him perform a number from the show. As Harold Hill, he strutted through the newly renovated pavilion and out onto the lawn, warning us all about the trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for pool.

Jackman chose to portray two opposite characters from Les Misérables. After telling a story about his first audition for a musical, he sang “Stars,” the song that gives insight into the dark Inspector Javert. A few numbers later, Jackman returned to his own character in the film, singing the moving “Valjean’s Soliloquy.” I’m sure the versatile Jackman could have handled “Master of the House” and gotten a few laughs as well.

The Greatest Showman was celebrated with four songs. Jackman dazzled with “The Greatest Show,” while “A Million Dreams” gave solo opportunities to the backup singers. Their voices easily rivaled Jackman’s, who may be more of a performer than a technically outstanding singer.

Where did Jackman blunder? He closed a set of American classics with a pair of Frank Sinatra tunes, “That’s Life” and “New York, New York.” Surely in the several months since his last concert performance, someone should have told him that you can’t sing “New York, New York” in Chicago without following up with at least a few verses of “My Kind of Town.”

If he had sung that, he could have blown the roof off the new pavilion.

And that would have been fine, since it never did rain.