Friday's column: Warmer weather ushers in cell phone humility
Something happened Thursday morning, when the sun came out and the first warm, spring breezes nuzzled into the tulip planters downtown. Chicago's seasons change without warning, rhyme or reason, without anything so pedestrian as a transition period or a gradual warming trend. One day it's winter, same as it's been since October, and the next day the banks' time-and-temp displays are racing each other to get to 70 degrees.
And, with this sea change -- an event every bit as distinct, though nowhere near as predictably scheduled, as the switching on of Buckingham Fountain -- comes a turning point in the city's collective mood.
Relief washes over us. The siege has ended. We can smile and laugh more easily.
Maybe it's biological: a sort of collective, low-grade case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Or, possibly, it's evolution at work: a dose of patience and goodwill just in time for the start of road construction season.
But whatever the cause, our annual burst of fine weather euphoria arrived yesterday.
'I don't want to be That Guy.'
On the Brown Line, extra-crowded due to the ironically named "Capacity Expansion Project," standing passengers selflessly rearranged themselves to make room for a few more. And at each stop, they piled out onto the platform to allow for easier departures. Rumor had it that a seat had been given up for a pregnant woman, though this could not be independently confirmed.
The thing that everyone noticed, though, the thing that was really notably different on Thursday morning, was the quiet. Strangely and suddenly, cell phone conversation volume had been dialed down to near zero.
A middle-age woman, bragging to a friend about the big award her previously-presumed-to-be-a-slacker son had just won, looked around and realized she was the only commuter in the entire car using the can-you-hear-me-now? tone required for extended phone-on-train chatter and quickly decided she should hang up.
She took only a few more seconds -- just long enough to point out that her ex-husband, who had never shown any faith in, or offered any encouragement of the kid's obviously artistic temperament, should not be invited to the awards banquet -- and then declared, "You know what? I'm on the L and I'm being rude. I'd better go."
For a moment, there was the possibility that a round of spontaneous applause might break out, but no one wanted to be sarcastic and so, instead, everyone just smiled.
An electronic trill soon rippled across this smooth surface of benevolence and well-being and an embarrassed-looking young guy quickly grabbed for his phone.
He asked a couple of brief questions to his caller -- Was it OK to cancel lunch today? Could they meet up sometime this weekend instead? -- and then, following the example of the older woman, he said, "Let me call you later. I'm on the Brown Line right now and I don't want to be That Guy."
Kinder, gentler, warmer
The need to talk on a cell phone would not seem to be a seasonal thing.
It is, presumably, just as necessary to announce in a semi-public way that you are on your way, running late, unsure of directions and/or viciously hung over in the springtime as it is in the fall. And while my understanding of the physics involved is admittedly rather limited, there does not appear to be any marked improvement in sound quality or signal transmission that would make it easier to communicate without shouting or repeating yourself.
Instead, it's simply a question of desire. Perspective, even.
No longer in survival mode, finally releasing muscles that have long been clenched against the wind, it is possible to take a more charitable view of humanity. The shared sense of having come through something -- even, this year, to have gotten off easy -- creates a certain atmosphere of conviviality.
It is, to put it plainly, easy to be nice when you are not cold, miserable and depressed.
Parties for hosting, etc.
Christmas is reputed to be the most wonderful time of the year, but everyone knows that no quantity of spiked egg nog and sugar cookies can really make up for the gnawing, consumerist anxiety associated with attempting to buy gifts for your in-laws.
For my money, this is it: the brief period when things are as excellent as they can possibly be.
So we have to hold on to this moment, when warm weather pleasures -- Mark the demographically appropriate choice: Italian ice, ice cream cone, frappuccino -- are all the more thrilling for having been nearly forgotten, and warm weather complaints, like hair-spoiling humidity, are virtually impossible to imagine.
It will pass, of course. Entirely too quickly.
But for the next few weeks, the city will be shedding its old skin and celebrating its new colors.
Having been an artsy-fartsy kid myself, I'm a big one for arts education in the schools. So I get invited sometimes to check out programs, like the Franklin Fine Arts magnet school and the Ravinia-sponsored Music Discovery Program.
Yesterday, I went to Cleveland Elementary, on the North Side, to visit Virginia Oviedo's 2nd grade class, where musician Tricia Sebastian has been teaching the kids all kinds of cool stuff using songs and instruments from around the world.
It's the sort of thing that sounds ridiculously PC and silly when described on paper -- yes, they learned a song in the Miriam Mir language from the Torres Strait Islands and a dance that celebrates Australian Harmony Day -- but is actually totally inspiring and cool in practice.
The kids, almost all of whom are Latino, were dressed in their quasi-uniforms of white shirts and navy blue pants. When I arrived, the kids were sort of squirmy and whiny in the way of seven year olds around the world. (News flash: little girls still make those foldy paper fortune teller things.) But when Ms. Tricia arrived and began to tune her guitar, they got impressively quiet.
And, when they started singing, it was amazing to see how the kids had total command of lyrics and hand movements that they'd learned months ago. Kids who might, in the context of a math class or a reading lesson, be convinced that they're not smart or can't learn, were busting out with total confidence and joy.
I'm a total sucker for this sort of thing, I know, but, as the kids were busy choreographing dance steps to a Brazilian song, I was thinking that maybe this is precisely the sort of stuff we shouldn't be eliminating.
If you haven't already seen it, check out this scary New York Times story about how schools are killing everything other than reading and math in order to keep up with No Child Left Behind requirements.
Where's the special interest teach-them-Miriam-Mir lobby when you really need it?
The challenge of modern life is the problem of too much choice. There is, of course, no reason that there should be 9 million different types of faucets for a kitchen sink. But, since there are, in fact, at least that many, it suddenly seems necessary to examine and evaluate them all. Because surely my kitchen sink requires the best of all possible faucets.
Someone told us that the first six months of marriage represented the "honeymoon" phase, while the second six months would involve fighting like cats and dogs. Or cat and dog, anyway.
But I guess we're just not fighters generally, so the over-cute and extra-harmonious honeymoon phase has continued, even into the throes of home remodeling.
Flush with the success (OK, non-disaster) of our kitchen project, we've broadened our horizons and our relationship with the fabulous handyman, and, even as we wait for the counter top to be completed, we're moving into two bathrooms and a totally new paint job.
Weeks from now, this will probably seem like extreme folly, or at least overconfidence. But right now it's ridiculously exciting.
And so, in this moment of extreme positivity, I've been thinking about what's been working so well. (It will be so amusing to read this when it all goes to hell. ed.)
So here's my marital-wisdom-as-accumulated-in-eight-months:
1. When disagreeing on something (i.e., "that tile is hideous"; "I really like it"), there's no point in repeating yourself more than once. There are 400,000 varieties of tile out there, so it is not necessary to choose a style that one of us loathes. But there's no point in trying to change the other person's mind about it.
2. If you don't care, don't fight. R. has something against stainless steel sinks. I don't understand it, frankly, since they seem pretty harmless, but I also have no strong feelings about sinks whatsoever. So we're getting cast iron.
3. Sometimes, the best response to a ridiculous statement ("I'm thinking about purple for the bedroom walls. Do you think that would work?") is the time-tested, "S'pose so." It's so much more civil than, "No, absolutely not, you idiot."
"I like this place because it's nostalgic," state Sen. James Meeks (I-Chicago) says as he settles into a dark, undersized booth at Miller's Pub on South Wabash. "It's not a new, trendy place."
Meeks, dressed in a sharp pin-striped suit, orders a virgin pina colada and looks over the menu.
It's the day before the primary election, and Meeks, who is running unopposed for the Democratic Party nomination for the Senate seat he currently holds as an independent, seems to have all the time in the world. His fancy cell phone, with the wireless earpiece, has been switched to "silent" and stashed away. The coterie of aides and staff members that often surrounds him is nowhere to be seen.
But this low-key arrival belies Meeks' current state of mind. He is not focused on his slam-dunk chances of re-election.
He is thinking, in fact, about entering a completely different electoral contest, one that could change the face of Illinois politics for years to come.
Meeks, 49, the powerfully connected pastor of the South Side's 20,000-member Salem Baptist Church, is planning to run for governor.
He's ready to start circulating petitions that will put his name on the ballot as an independent candidate.
"On March 28, I can start putting petitions on the street," Meeks says. "And, so far, I've had nothing to deter me from putting petitions on the street on March 28."
State election law makes Tuesday the first day when third-party candidates such as Meeks can begin circulating nominating petitions for the fall election. He needs a minimum of 25,000 signatures by June 26 and must run with an entire slate of candidates for lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller and treasurer.
Theme: 'At the moral center'
Saying that Gov. Blagojevich and the state's Democratic-controlled House and Senate are "morally wrong" for having failed to deliver school funding changes and other reforms important to the African-American community, Meeks says he views his candidacy as a way to bring the black vote, often taken for granted by Democrats, into focus as an important "swing" constituency.
"Not one time has the governor called together African-American leaders and said, 'What do you need?' " Meeks says, and adds that, unless this happens soon, he will go forward with his gubernatorial bid.
Meeks can hedge his bets until the "point of no return" on June 26, when he would surrender his Senate seat in order to be placed on the November ballot as an independent candidate for governor.
From then on, he says, he would launch a statewide campaign with a "moral center" theme.
"You'll have Judy Baar Topinka, who believes in abortion and gay rights . . . and Rod Blagojevich, who believes in abortion and gay rights," says Meeks, who opposes both. "Theologically, politically, for the white conservative voter, I'm their guy. I have their philosophy."
Meeks, who grew up in Englewood and was president of the Harper High School class of 1974, says his understanding of Illinois politics has changed enormously -- "it's night and day" -- since he defeated Democrat William Shaw in 2002 in the state's 15th senatorial district.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand," he says, quoting Frederick Douglass. "And the African-American constituency, we have not placed a demand on the Democratic Party."
Meeks cites the $40 million World Shooting Complex in downstate Sparta as an example of a project that received state funds because its supporters are perceived to be swing voters.
"Three hundred million dollars went to Republican pet projects to get their support on the budget," he says, after offering a blessing over our meals. "Nine million dollars went to a meth clinic in Southern Illinois. But we've got crack, cocaine and heroin on the North and West Sides. Where are those clinics?"
Does he really want to be gov?
If lawmakers in the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, which Meeks chairs, could band together and similarly hold out on supporting the state budget until their initiatives were funded, Meeks says, spending priorities would look radically different.
I ask if he thinks this could actually happen.
He nods enthusiastically and says, between bites of Miller's famous baby-back ribs, "I hope to be the No. 1 cat that's making it happen."
So, is all this talk about a gubernatorial run just so much posturing for power in upcoming budget negotiations? I ask Meeks if he really wants to be governor.
"I want all people in the state of Illinois to be equally represented," he says.
When I point out that this is not exactly an answer to a basic yes-or-no question, he responds by repeating it.
I ask if he's really prepared for the possibility of being a spoiler in the November election, drawing enough votes away from Gov. Blagojevich to propel Judy Baar Topinka to victory.
"If the Democratic Party chooses to ignore its base," he says, "that's not me."
Meeks says he likes Blagojevich, whom he has hosted at Salem Baptist many times, and considers him a personal friend.
"It's not this administration only," Meeks says, describing the way he believes African-American voters have been taken for granted, "It's a national strategy. The blacks are put in the win column. So my new question is why shouldn't African-Americans nationwide become a swing vote? Why not put ourselves in that position?"
There is, Meeks says, a viable place for African-Americans, "at the moral center" of the American electorate.
During our "Lunch With . . ." interview, I asked Rev. Meeks what he thinks about the white evangelical community's interest in Africa.
Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, whom Meeks considers a friend and colleague, has been particularly active in raising awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Zambia.
Here's what Meeks said: "It's easier to go to Africa and have a one week mission trip and feel good about yourself than to drive a few miles to Englewood."
I've got my own critiques about the evangelical approach to Africa (economic development, not charity; education, not Bibles; etc.), but being a timid white chick, I've never had the nerve to say this out loud. Is it possible that some of us are a lot more comfortable helping black people who live far away than those who live in our own community?
Harvard Professor Harvey C. Mansfield thinks there's a crisis of manliness in America, that the all-powerful liberal feminists have gone too far in establishing a "gender neutral" society that won't let boys be boys or men be men.
His new book, Manliness (Yale University Press, 304 pages, $27.50), argues that this problem of "unemployed manliness" is a critical issue of modern life and if we keep on trying to squelch manly behavior, we'll soon be living with a generation of boys who have no idea how to safely, productively channel their aggressive, masculine impulses.
It's hard to know whether to laugh -- Why couldn't the all-powerful feminists get it together in South Dakota? Or during the Alito confirmation hearings? -- or cry about Mansfield's screed.
Because I, too, believe there's a manliness crisis going on.
But I'd say there's a bit too much manliness in the air, rather than too little. And if one recent poll is any indication, a lot of women happen to agree.
A manly administration
Mansfield has many definitions for manliness, including "confidence in the face of risk," and "easy assumption of authority."
He says manliness "seeks and welcomes drama, prefers times of war, conflict, and risk, and brings change or restores order at crucial moments." And it "can be heroic. But it can also be vainly boastful, prone to meaningless scuffling, and unfriendly. It jeers at those who do not seem to measure up, and asks men to continually prove themselves. It defines turf and fights for it -- sometimes to defend precious rights, sometimes for no good reason."
By these definitions, it's clear that the war in Iraq is one of our most manly national undertakings in a long time and the Bush administration is, in fact, just chock full of manly men (and Condoleezza Rice) doing manly things.
There's the pile of over-confident predictions of victory, and all those easy assumptions of authority -- "Warrants? We don't need no stinking warrants." -- and, of course, the jeering stance against those who would dare question the wisdom and efficacy of the so-called War on Terror.
This is an administration that casts its mistakes, like the increasingly apparent presence of innocent men among the enemy combatants being held at Guantanamo Bay, as virtues and its failures as successes-yet-to-come.
Much as we'd all like our kids -- both boys and girls -- to develop great self-confidence as they grow up, this kind of unassailable manly bluster is probably taking things a bit too far.
Crossing the line
Women, unsurprisingly, have less patience than men for manliness-run-amok. And that probably goes a long way toward explaining why the president's approval ratings are 14 points lower among women than among men.
Just 30 percent of women say they approve of the job President Bush is doing in office.
Though a "gender gap" in political sentiment is nothing new, this one is notable because the president, in his 2004 campaign, managed to appeal to many women -- "soccer moms" was the term of art then -- who might usually have tended to vote Democratic but were persuaded by his manly insistence that he'd keep us all safe from the terrorists and evil-doers.
Sometime between then and now the president's tough-guy appeal has crossed an invisible border from John Wayne territory into Rambo land.
Man-hating? Not quite
Mansfield says the hairy, scary feminists are rapidly doing away with all differences between the sexes and that they hate all things masculine.
I don't happen to know any women, feminist or otherwise, who feel that way -- childbirth being a real sticking point on the whole elimination-of-differences front -- but lots of us have a certain intolerance for people who seem to live as caricatures of sex-based stereotypes. The girly girl who is scared of bugs, dressed in immobilizing high heels and unable to master the proper use of a hammer and nail is just as ridiculous to us as the manly man with his car, meat and beer obsessions and his forever-stunted emotional life.
Manliness, by this estimation, is no more or less of a virtue than femininity. It's one aspect of a (hopefully) complex personality. But, like any single trait, too much of it can be a problem.
Maybe our supposedly gender-neutral society is emphasizing this idea more than it used to and is less inclined to let bad behavior off the hook with a "boys will be boys" wink and nod. But moving away from having completely separate standards of conduct doesn't mean we've abandoned the notion that men and women are different.
I kind of like the idea of holding each other accountable, of, for example, being able to tell a whining complainer -- of either sex -- that it's time to "man it up."
Perhaps this week's poll numbers are a message to the president that he ought to get in touch with his feminine side.
when you hire professionals to do the drudge work and can still have a job. Elle magazine's interview with the next big thing in making women feel bad, Caitlin Flanagan, will raise your blood pressure.
She'll need some body fat to make it through the winter
Word is out that Jennifer Aniston is moving here. This probably ups our coolness quotient, but won't do a thing for the economy, since it's not like she eats in restaurants or anything.
Demolition day went off without a hitch. All the old cabinets have been ripped out and the kitchen is now a blank slate for our remodeling ambitions.
OK, did I say "without a hitch"?
That was a lie.
What I meant was: no one was killed. But our "two week"-long project has already hit one major snafu.We have cabinets. But we don't have a countertop. And we just ordered one last night.
The thing is, the countertop people have to come and measure the kitchen AFTER the new cabinets are put in. And then it takes 3 - 4 weeks for them to make the countertop.
That's 3 or 4 weeks without, um, a kitchen sink. Bummer.
So we had this gift certificate for a free night at a nice downtown hotel. It was a door prize or part of a silent auction package that we got at a charity event last spring and it was about to expire. With our place in the throes of renovation madness (kitchen stuff in boxes everywhere; just-assembled cabinets stacked up in the living room and bedroom), we thought it would be fun to spend an evening in the luxurious neatness of the Hotel Allegro.
We decided on Sunday night, since it offered the added bonus of watching The Sopranos on HBO.
We watch about 30 minutes of television per day, so it's hard to make an argument for paying for a premium channel, although I suspect we'd watch more tv if we had HBO. But can you really say that's a good thing?
Still, its absence from our home does make us feel even less hip and in-touch than usual.
Thus, the formation of a super-cool plan for Sunday night that would involve watching the Sopranos in a king-size bed while eating ice cream from room service.
Things were looking great as we checked into our room and discovered the animal-print (one leopard; one zebra) robes waiting there in the closet for us. How much would Tony love that?
One tiny flaw in our plan: the Allegro doesn't get HBO.
So we watched the first two episodes of the Discovery Channel series, Perfect Disaster. Dallas was destoryed by a super tornado and New York taken out by a solar storm. Fun stuff.
Having spent much of the past week in bed with a wretched headache/sinus infection/early warning case of bird flu, I missed out on so much.
Like my alma mater's mercifully brief appearance in the NCAA tournament. The University of Pennsylvania Quakers actually make it to the, um "Big Dance," (if that is, in fact, the term of art) rather frequently since we're the dumb jocks of the Ivy League. Sadly, though, Ivy League dumb jocks don't generally hold up well against actual basketball players, so we pretty much always lose in the first round. (And my school loyalty always messes up my bracket pool chances.) So, belatedly, Go Quakers! It would have been so cool to beat Texas at, you know, something. Ah, well, as the beloved old cheer goes, "That's all right, that's OK. You'll all work for us someday." Ivy League sportsmanship at its best.
And, sure, some other stuff happened, like John Stroger's stroke (does anyone else think it's weird that he didn't go to Stroger Hospital?) and James Laski's guilty plea.
On Friday, R. rented a truck and went out to the Ikea warehouse to pick up the 83 boxes that contain our some-assembly-required cabinets. And, very impressively, he spent the weekend making actual cabinet-like objects out of the large piles of flat, seemingly identical, pieces of
