Some of you have asked why there hasn’t been a new blog in a few days. Here is the sad reason why.
Last week I wrote a lovely blog
Deep thoughts and inspiration
It took me hours to get it right.
A mighty fine creation.
My fingers danced upon the keys
Choosing words and illustrations.
When I read the piece back to myself
I felt trembling sensations.
In all my years of writing posts
No one was ever better.
I knew I'd found the perfect place,
For each comma, verb, and letter.
I was sure I'd win a prize
For the column that I wrote.
Perhaps I'd get a Pulitzer,
Or some other plum of note.
A movie would be made of it
With big stars like Jane Fonda.
They'd have to film the closing scene
On location in Uganda.
I would go to Hollywood
Where an Oscar they would hand me
And if they gave me two or three
Well that would be just dandy!
In my speech, I'd want to thank
All my family, pets, and friends.
Then drive away in a fancy car,
A big blue Bentley or a Benz.
But I'm in tears, because you see
This all won't happen ever.
I forgot to "Save" when I finished my piece,
I lost the whole endeavor.
So words of advice to my loyal fans
Who have followed through this story.
Always remember to save your work,
Or bye-bye to your fame and glory.
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(Not the New York Times, June 29, 2023, Chicago, Il)
In an unprecedented move, Jerry Reinsdorf, majority owner of the Chicago White Sox Baseball Club, has announced the hiring of a new manager for his consistently beleaguered team. The Ghost of Al Lopez will replace outgoing manager Pedro Grifol as the 43rd manager, beginning after the All-Star Break.
The White Sox are currently mired deep in the American League Central Division and have suffered with a losing record continuously since the 7th game of the season. This has been Mr. Grifol’s first season as a major league manager and he has watched as his team has been plagued by inconsistent play and a plethora of injuries. This poor performance has been matched by decreased attendance as White Sox fans continue to avoid Guaranteed Rate Field during losing seasons.
In making his announcement, Mr. Reinsdorf said “I know our fans deserve better than what they have seen in the past decade. I thought bringing back an old-timer like Tony LaRussa would be the answer, but Tony was never given a fair chance by the media in this town. We took a shot with Pedro, but I don’t like what I am seeing, and neither do the paying customers.
“When I realized that the Ghost of Al Lopez was available, I knew this was a move I had to make. I loved Al’s Go-Go White Sox. Some of you old-timers will recall they won an American League Championship.”
Mr. Lopez, known affectionately as El Señor died in 2005 at the age of 97. The pennant Mr. Reinsdorf refers to was in 1959, with a team that featured players such as Hall of Famers Nellie Fox, Luis Aparicio, and Early Wynn. Mr. Lopez also won an American League pennant in 1954 with the Cleveland Indians. The White Sox have won one pennant and accompanying World Series in the intervening 64 years. Mr. Reinsdorf has been the owner for 42 of those years.
General Manager Rick Hahn commented that although he had not been consulted by Mr. Reinsdorf, he fully supported the decision to release Grifol, whom he had personally chosen to lead the White Sox. “When a Hall of Fame Manager like the Ghost of Al Lopez becomes available, you have to go for him, even if that didn’t work out so well with LaRussa.” (Lopez was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1977, LaRussa in 2014)
No contract terms were announced. Efforts to reach the Ghost of Al Lopez or any agent representing him failed. When asked about the move most players on the White Sox responded through a translator “Who?”
Gambling sites removed the White Sox from all sports lines. Paul Parsons, public media representative for the YouBet online gaming app called this “the most appalling hiring in the history of professional sports.”
Tickets for all remaining White Sox home games are available via Ticketmaster. No secondary market exists for these games.
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The other night Barb and I began teaching some good friends Canasta. For those of you who don’t know, it is an old card game that has regained popularity. It’s played with two decks of cards, a scorepad, and lots and lots of rules, many of which seem entirely arbitrary. “House rules” are also a staple. It’s a tough game to learn, so I thought I would teach it with a song.
Beth and Ira, this one’s for you.
(To the tune of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover)
[Verse 1] To play this card game is not really hard, you'll see.
You're dealt ten cards and then you get another three
And with luck the cards you get aren't too crappy,
There must be 50 rules to play Canasta.
50 rules to play Canasta.
[Verse 2] I said "it's seven of a kind that you must get.
Your partner joins you, in your quest to make a set.
It's not a solo game it's more of a duet."
There must be 50 ways to win Canasta.
50 ways to win Canasta.
[Verse 3] There's lots of wild cards that can help you in your quest.
The twos and Jokers, they can get you to the crest.
Put them together and that's probably the best!
There's 50 ways to win Canasta.
50 ways to win Canasta
[Chorus] Put your cards in your rack, Mack.
Don't show me your hand, Jan.
That's a good ploy, boy.
Play your aces with glee.
Don't make a big fuss, Russ
It's not mysterious, just
Drop off your threes, Bea.
That's the way it must be.
Put your cards in your rack, Mack.
Don't show me your hand, Jan.
That's a good ploy, boy.
Play your aces with glee.
Don't make a big fuss, Russ
It's not mysterious, just
Drop off your threes, Bea.
That's the way it must be.
[Verse 4] I said don't play those sevens, girl, you'll just get screwed
They'll count against you and you'll be in a foul mood.
The risk ain't worth until more sevens you've accrued,
There's 50 ways to lose Canasta.
50 ways to lose Canasta.
[Verse 5] "A special hand is what I want to get," she said.
"If you don't make it--go home with someone else instead."
It doesn't matter if your cards are black or red.
There must be 50 ways to lose Canasta.
50 ways to lose Canasta.
[Verse 6] Perhaps it's best to stick to tiles and to Mah Jongg.
No partner yelling if perchance you get it wrong.
Plenty of direct flights go from here into Hong Kong
There's 50 ways to quit Canasta.
50 ways to quit Canasta.
[Chorus]Put your cards in your rack, Mack.
Don't show me your hand, Jan.
That's a good ploy, boy.
Play your aces with glee.
Don't make a big fuss, Russ
It's not mysterious, just
Drop off your threes, Bea.
That's the way it must be.
Put your cards in your rack, Mack.
Don't show me your hand, Jan.
That's a good ploy, boy.
Play your aces with glee.
Don't make a big fuss, Russ
It's not mysterious, just
Drop off your threes, Bea.
That's the way it must be.
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It’s a creepy feeling. The feeling you get when suddenly a new person’s posts start appearing in your Facebook feed. Someone who you don’t know and you don’t care about. You can’t fathom why you should suddenly be seeing their stories, their missives to their loving spouses, and their Fathers’ Day remembrances of their gone but much-missed parent.
So for the last week, I have been a bit creeped out to open my Facebook page and find another post by Marlo Thomas. Yes, that Marlo Thomas, That Girl herself.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Marlo Thomas’s posts. She shows photos of herself with her husband Phil Donahue; she remembers her daddy Danny; she sends out a message of peace and love on Juneteenth. It is wholesome and uplifting and just what you would expect.
So why does it give me the shivers? I just can’t figure out how the Facebook algorithm decided to share Marlo and Phil’s life with me. I am quite certain that I have never said her name aloud in our kitchen where Alexa might overhear and report the info to Facebook. I have never done a Google search on Ms. Thomas, nor asked ChatGPT what it would be like to be Marlo Thomas. And a comprehensive review of my nearly eight years of blogging would not bring up her name even once. So why the new Facebook connection?
Of course, I am not unaware of the existence of Marlo Thomas. As a youngster, Make Room for Daddy was one of my favorite shows (yes I know, Angela Cartwright, not Marlo, played Danny’s daughter.) The mid-1960s brought us That Girl and although it wasn’t quite as compelling as The Mary Tyler Moore Show it was ok. It had a hat toss now and then and it introduced the world to Ted Bessell before he went on to fame and fortune in Me and the Chimp.
Marlo does have a Chicago connection, marrying Phil Donahue during the period when The Phil Donahue Show was being produced here. I even saw Marlo in a Chicago theater role here a few years later, as she starred in the Briar Street Theater production of Six Degrees of Separation. No hat tossing or Ted Bessell with that one.
In recent years, we all saw her fundraising for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. For her good works, she has been presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She is a beacon to all.
I just can’t figure out how she wound up invading my Facebook space. Who is going to be next, Agent 99?
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“I want something medical, but not too medical.” Those were the words that launched a high school senior on a more than 40-year love affair.
The words were a response to a career question from Barb’s high school counselor. The counselor had a friend, or perhaps a friend of a friend, named Jan. Jan was an Occupational Therapist, an “OT.” While Barb had never heard of the field, she agreed to spend a day shadowing the woman in the hospital where she practiced her craft. Jan was a little dynamo, and Barb was hooked. She applied to and was admitted into the Occupational Therapy program at the University of Illinois for the following year.
Three years of a general curriculum at Champaign-Urbana were followed by 18 months of specialized OT training at U of I’s west side Chicago medical center campus. This included clinical rotations around Chicagoland–and also included meeting me, a medical student and a co-resident in the med center dorm.
We picked out an engagement ring while Barb was taking her clinical exams. I married my OTR (registered Occupational Therapist) a few months after her graduation. By then she was working full-time at the first of her positions, as a therapist at one of Rush University’s facilities.
As she gained experience, Barb’s career path took her to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and with some prodding from a good friend to Lutheran General Hospital in the northern suburbs. While working as a general therapist at LGH Barb discovered her true calling.
It wasn’t in the pediatrics clinic, where Barb helped out often enough to be exposed to and catch a bad case of chicken pox. It wasn’t with stroke patients needing the standard OT “assistance with daily living” therapy. What Barb was drawn to, and made into her career, was hand therapy–assisting patients, who either following disease, injury, or surgery, required precise and specialized care and instruction to improve the utilization of their hand and arm.
Barb studied hard to learn her craft. Acceptance into the American Society of Hand Therapists was a year-long slog. Barb found a study group to join, and a hand surgeon to sponsor her. We spent many weekends at my Evanston Hospital Laboratory Office, writing up case histories on a first-of-its-kind machine, a word processor. It all paid off, as Barb was one of the few candidates nationwide to pass the difficult ASHT certification exam on their first try.
Barb’s career flourished as a well-liked and well-respected hand therapist throughout the Chicago area. She loved her patients and became involved in their life stories as their professional therapist and personal confidant. She greatly enjoyed being a mentor training a multitude of young professionals, a gaggle we call the “Barbettes.”
Officially, Barb stopped working a few years ago. Of course, that hasn’t stopped her interest in the field. If she has seen you on the street or in a grocery store with your hand in a splint, you can bet she has asked you what your injury was and how it was being treated–and maybe even offered a suggestion or two.
Just yesterday, Barb received a letter from the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy, informing her that she had not renewed her membership and was no longer entitled to use the letters OTR, a registered trademark of the Board.
I am not sure if Barb shed a physical tear, but I know there was a mental one. Her illustrious career has truly drawn to a close. But Barb, on behalf of the patients you helped, the surgeons you worked so closely with, and the young professionals you trained so well, I say thank you for a job well done!
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We streamed the Ben Affleck-Matt Damon movie Air the other day. Set in 1984, it is the air-brushed story of how a talent scout for the Nike Shoe brand successfully pursued Michael Jordan, finally signing him to a massive contract to become the face of Nike’s basketball shoe division. It’s a fun movie, and as we all know, things went pretty well for Michael Jordan and for Nike, Inc. after that. But I’m still not a big fan of the company, and it is because of a bit of non-nuclear fallout from the Cold War.
Remember the Cold War? The duck and cover drills, the Dr. Strangelove mutual destruction scenarios. To ensure our survival, the US military constructed anti-aircraft missile silos throughout the country. Over 200 of these missile silos batteries were deployed nationwide to protect 40 “defense areas.” The name of this massive project? Nike, after the Greek Goddess of Victory.
The Chicago-Gary region was number three on the list of “defense areas.” Twenty battery sites were constructed in the area. Our Northwest Suburban site, Site C92/94 was located in the town of Vernon Hills. The site was active for 8 short years, from 1955 until 1963 when it was supplanted by other local missile emplacements.
The site sat unused until 2000 when the military turned over the decommissioned site to a consortium composed of the Village of Vernon Hills, Community High School District 128, Stevenson High School District 125, and Lincolnshire Prairie View District 103. As a member of the Board of Education of Stevenson, I welcomed the opportunity to utilize the acreage as athletic fields to supplement the ones on our landlocked Lincolnshire campus.
It took some years to develop the site. The Village and the school districts cooperated on plans for a sports complex, a complex to be named Nike in remembrance of the site’s historical significance. But that part of the dream fell away when in October of 2003, Vernon Hills received a letter from Kenneth Kwartler, Nike, Inc’s Assistant General Counsel stating “Neither the site’s location nor its history requires or entitles you to use our famous brand as your own.”1
We had been swooshed! Instead of The Nike Sports Facility, the Vernon Hills Athletic Complex was born. The seven of us on the Stevenson Board, and the administrative team as well, were initially disappointed, but to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a field, is a field, is a field.
Even so, the Nike episode left me with a sour taste for the shoe retailer. And since neither the lineage nor the history of Air Jordans requires that I ever purchase a pair, believe me, Assistant General Counsel Kwartler, I never will!
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If necessity is the mother of invention, 600 trucks are the motivation of a movement.
When our Homeowners Association Board elected Barb to be their President (full transparency–I am proud to be First Gentleman) she knew the heat would be on this summer. A total renovation of the streets of our 300+ home subdivision was on the schedule, a project made more difficult and expensive by rises in both asphalt costs and interest rates. Barb girded herself for whatever flack would come. What no one in the subdivision yet knew was that the real challenge was around the corner, or more literally, right across the street.
We were stunned when word first leaked out that Baxter International was planning on selling its corporate headquarters campus, over 100 acres in unincorporated Lake County, to an industrial company with the intent of annexing the land to Deerfield and constructing over a million sq feet of warehouse space. Located immediately to the east of our Riverwoods subdivision, the warehouse development promised to bring us noise, air pollution, and a minimum of 600 trucks a day that would share the same stoplight that is the sole access to our homes.
It took less than two days for our community to jump into opposition action. A land use attorney was identified and hired virtually overnight. Unofficial committees were formed to create and disseminate an online petition, print and distribute lawn signs, and contact local media. A Facebook Group blossomed. Successfully persuading Riverwoods to stand with us required meetings with the Mayor, Trustees, and the village attorney. Our kitchen island became buried in Barb’s notes as she and several key players coordinated the effort.
As the effort plowed forward, well-meaning friends advised Barb to resign as President to avoid any personal liability. Others advised us that this was a “done deal,” and the community might as well give up. No one in our subdivision was buying that!
A first public hearing before the Deerfield Planning Commission was postponed when the masses of residents of Deerfield and Riverwoods in attendance overwhelmed the Village Hall facilities. A raucous crowd showed up for the rescheduled meeting in the Deerfield High School gymnasium. The presentation by the industrial company underwhelmed the residents, and perhaps the Planning Commission members as well.
In anticipation of our opportunity to present to the Planning Commission, our attorney and his team of expert consultants prepared outstanding position papers on the irresponsibility of placing a massive warehouse center adjacent to residential housing, a house of worship, daycare centers, and a center for persons with developmental disabilities. Legislation from California and New Jersey, two states that have codified appropriate placement of warehouse facilities, was heavily referenced to support our position.
Yesterday, one day prior to the scheduled meeting at which our team would be presenting, the industrial company withdrew its request for Deerfield to annex the site. A round-one victory for our side.
The final determination of what happens on the Baxter site may be months away. We hope a more creative use can be found for the acreage, possibly preserving the historically significant current structures.
In the meantime, our neighbors will attempt to push both Lake County and the Illinois legislature to mirror New Jersey and California in creating guidelines for the placement of warehouse sites. We want to protect other communities, communities that might not have the wherewithal to put up a fight, from 600 trucks in their backyard.
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What songs do you associate with members of your family? Your spouse’s favorite love song? A tune that makes you remember dear old mom? Or one that makes you think of your daughter who has moved far away?
When I hear Frank Sinatra crooning I think of my dad, who was a fan of “Ole Blue Eyes,” maybe because they shared the same eye color. I can’t say which of Sinatra’s tunes was Dad’s favorite, though I think the choice would be between “I’ve Got the World on a String” and “Come Fly With Me.” Two upbeat songs–a good way to remember Dad.
My mother never seemed to care much about popular music. But there is one German song I can remember her singing. “Muss I denn” dates back to 1827 and must have been a song of Mom’s childhood in Vienna. She sang the first verse frequently, so it’s no surprise that I still remember the lyrics.
Most of my friends were introduced to rock’n’roll by older brothers and sisters. That didn’t happen to me. My sister Linda, five years my senior, was not a music connoisseur. She didn’t live with a transistor radio by her ear or spend her money at the local record shop. The only 45 I can remember her buying was “Venus in Blue Jeans” by Jimmy Clanton, the”swamp pop R&B teenage idol” who long ago disappeared into the swamp of time.
Rather than “Venus”, the song that makes me think of Linda is one by a more well-known band, a group from Liverpool England called The Beatles. I am pretty sure “Here, There, and Everywhere” was the first song she and her new husband Alan danced to at their wedding, and it is the one that reminds me how much I wish Linda was here.
As for Barb, all of you who know her, either in real life or through my blog, would expect me to pick a Neil Diamond song–perhaps “Brooklyn Roads” or “Holly Holy.” But actually, I am torn between two non-Neil songs. I could choose “Lady in Red,” as sung to Barb every night by our waiter on the first cruise we ever took. But instead, I think I will opt for “Bring Him Home,” Jean Valjean’s amazing prayer from “Les Misérables.” It brings chills to each of us whenever we hear it.
My song for our son Michael is — a TV commercial! The theme for his Bar Mitzvah was “Be Like Mike,” the Gatorade commercial featuring Michael Jordan and a bouncy melody. I never drink Gatorade, but when I see a bottle at one of the grandkid’s baseball games, I remember those fine times when young Mike was 13.
My Laury song is easy. She was a newborn in 1986 and I remember sitting with her in my arms, early in the morning half-asleep, watching MTV and feeding her the first bottle of the day. The video for Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” was on non-stop, heavy rotation. It melded into my mind, and these days I can’t hear the song, or see an image of the striking models the video featured, without remembering the feeling of Laury in my arms, contentedly enjoying that bottle.
I don’t have songs yet for the grandkids, but I am sure someday I will!
So that’s it for my family. What song would you pick for yours?
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The apartment was on the third floor of a Rogers Park six-flat, on Farwell Avenue east of Sheridan Road. My family lived there in the 1960s, wedged between a small orthodox shul to the west and a foreboding-looking nursing home to our east.
My bedroom was at the front of the apartment. French Doors opened onto a small balcony, the perfect site for calling out to friends waiting below or for launching snowballs at slowly moving cars after the Blizzard of ’67.
My narrow room was barely wide enough for a single bed and my bookcase. A Chicago White Sox poster and a near-life-sized rendering of Alfred E. Neuman adorned the walls.
It was my wooden bookcase that I remember most fondly. I don’t know where my parents found it and I doubt that it was new when they made the purchase. Always economical, even their own bedroom set was purchased via the “Used Furniture” section of the Sun-Times Classified Ads. Old or new, the bookcase contained almost all that I cherished.
The top of the bookcase, at a little over waist high, was covered with knickknacks–a coin bank, a gold-plated Empire State Building, a kippah from a cousin’s wedding. Cool, but the best stuff came on the shelves below.
Ninety percent of the top shelf was filled by my collection of the Tom Swift Jr. book series. While most other kids I knew were reading the Hardy Boys, I was getting my introduction to science through Tom and his buddy Bud Barclay. On each birthday my parents would add another volume of the hardback yellow-orange spined books to the shelf. Soon those contributions were outpacing the rate at which new books in the series were published. After 33 books the series and my collection came to a halt.
After the row of Swifties came shelves and shelves loaded down with over 100 books, predominantly paperbacks gathered throughout my childhood. I carefully curated them, filing each in alphabetical order, by author. There were Agatha Christie whodunits followed by Beverly Cleary books for kids. Arthur Conan Doyle had a place, as did a book of mathematical games written by Scientific American’s Martin Gardener. After Gardner came two volumes from German author Erich Kästner, courtesy of Uncle Herbert in Switzerland.
Ngaio Marsh’s Artists in Crime, a British mystery much too sophisticated for my youngish eyes, must have originated on my father’s reading table but found a permanent home among the “M’s”. John Tunis’s baseball sagas were well represented as well. And somehow I found space for a few joke books, along with biographies of Helen Keller and Thomas Edison.
The bottom shelf was for treasures. Oversized books of Greek mythology from my Aunt Paula and Uncle Poldi lay next to stacks of dog-eared, folded-in Mad Magazines. A shoebox held my 1964 Topps baseball cards, just a Dal Maxvill card #563 shy of a complete collector’s set.
In 1970 our family moved to another apartment, across the street on the south side of Farwell. As a classmate of mine put it, we were moving to a better neighborhood. I don’t remember why, but my bookcase and most of my beloved books didn’t make the half-a-block move with us.
I don’t have much of a bookcase anymore. I read loads of library books and indulge in way too many online articles, so there is no need for an old bookcase with sagging shelves. But I would love one more crack at the bookcase of my youth–and a final chance to find that Dal Maxvill collectible!
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I was listening to SiriusXM today when I heard an old Broadway tune titled “I Feel Like I’m Not Out of Bed Yet.” It’s the opening number from the musical “On the Town” and is sung by a gruff workman not wanting to leave his wife and their warm bed.
It’s in the second verse that our sleepy workman calls his wife “his old woman.” Hearing that archaic and very non-wokish phrase (the musical dates to 1944) reminded me of an employment decision I once made–a decision that was certainly not the best one of my career.
It was in the first six months of the development of our private laboratory. We were in the process of creating a fairly specialized area of the lab, one dealing with small cells and colorful signals. The applicant pool was not a large one, and my decision was narrowed down to two candidates, both of whom looked good on paper.
The company had no Human Resources Department in those early days, so the decision of who to hire was all mine. I interviewed each of the candidates, first Pamela, and then Frank, running through their work experience and trying to assess their capabilities for creating and then leading the lab section.
Pam had solid experience and had worked in both the clinical and industrial aspects of the lab business. She answered all my questions appropriately and made no glaring faux pas. I had no formal rubric for evaluating candidates, but I probably would have given Pamela a score of 7.5 out of 10.
When I interviewed Frank, he was knocking it out of the park. Personable and experienced (though admittedly not quite as widely experienced as Pam,) he was well on his way to racking up a score 8.5 and a job offer. And then he did it…he referred to his life partner as “THE Wife.” I can’t explain it, and with no objective reason for it, my mental rating of Frank was sliced in half.
So yes, I hired Pamela. And yes, as you can surely predict, her tenure turned into a disaster. Rigid and inflexible, she did not play well in the sandbox with any of us. Although she wrote some excellent policies and procedures we all breathed a sigh of relief when she resigned to go back to industry, shortly before her lab section was to open for business.
I called Frank and was delighted to hear him say he was still interested in our position. He gave his then-current employer his two-week notice and was with us for the section kick-off.
For more than 10 years Frank was a wonderful asset to our lab. He was a thorough and accurate technologist, an excellent section leader and organizer, and a great friend to all. He was truly the heart of our workplace.
Over those 10 years, I met Frank’s Sheila on numerous occasions. Frank and Sheila were a loving couple and treated each other well. She was “THE Wife”, he was her husband–and it was my mistake that I almost didn’t hire him.
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