Perhaps it still seemed possible, last summer, to stem the tide of thwick-thwacking, near-naked feet invading offices and social events and White House photo opportunities. But, at a certain moment, the once-humble rubber thong crossed over into mainstream acceptability.
The flip-flop is, in fact, rather understated when compared to the latest craze in plastic footwear: the Croc.
Because, while it is entirely possible to overlook a pair of flip-flops, Crocs, most often worn in Palm Beach shades of pink, green and yellow, have a kind of in-your-face casual-ness.
Originally created as a lightweight, non-slip deck shoe for boaters, Crocs hit the market in fall 2002. Soon adopted by active, outdoorsy types (who'd seen their beloved Tevas snapped up by tourists and were desperately looking for a less conspicuously trendy replacement), the foamy cloglike Crocs later found their way to the hard-working feet of chefs, nurses and pregnant women everywhere.
Which is where they might have stayed. Because, Mario Batali notwithstanding, chefs, nurses and pregnant women don't exactly form a holy trinity of fashion coolness.
Then kids started wearing them.
Not teenager kids. Actual small children.
And, somehow -- unlike, say, aqua-socks or sneakers with light-up soles or other kiddie footwear trends of summers past -- Crocs began to catch on with adults everywhere.
They are, of course, incredibly comfortable. Over time, they mold themselves to the shape of your foot, cushioning your arches in all the right places.
But they are ridiculously goofy looking. Not just juvenile, but actually ugly. And it's an insistent kind of ugliness, like the ugliness of fuzzy bunny slippers, that dares you to stare at their wearer's feet.
The sociology of shoes
There is probably some sort of sociological meaning that can be teased out of the Croc-wearing trend, the way grown-ups now find it charming to dress like their children, rather than vice-versa. And it probably says something about our self-obsessed culture, the way people have taken to Crocs, wearing them like campaign buttons that say, "Comfortable feet are my top priority in life."
One could also, if one were so inclined, trace the evolution of office etiquette from the days when people wore dress shoes because it was expected of them, to the critical, Zeitgeist-changing moment when pragmatism, and a major transit strike, prompted them to start commuting in sneakers and changing into heels and oxfords once they arrived at their desks. It's been a slippery slide since then, right past the shoe industry's failed looks-like-a-pump-feels-like-a-sneaker campaigns, into a business casual world in which it seems hopelessly square to use a footwear choice to convey your professionalism.
But I'm not going to write about any of that. Because I'm really just interested what the Croc-wearers have done to make the world safe for flip-flops.
'Appropriate' is a relative thing
Last summer, people actually bothered to get upset when several members of Northwestern University's national champion women's lacrosse team wore flip-flops at their congratulatory White House reception. Even at the time, this struck me as kind of a funny thing to be outraged about. (Personally, I try to save my fits of righteous indignation for, um, violations of the Constitution and Geneva Convention. But that's just me.)
A year later, though, when creators of expensive leather shoes are so consistently borrowing from the design elements of $5 plastic sandals that it's hard to tell the difference between Old Navy flip-flops and the latest Italian imports, the idea that toe-baring thongs would be inappropriate for a big occasion seems laughable indeed.
At least, you have to say now, taking a second look at the photo of the Northwestern lacrosse players, posing with the President in their summer skirts and dresses, none of them is wearing a pair of bright orange Crocs.
And, yet, as soon as we draw the inappropriateness line at Crocs, some other trend will pop up to make them look positively subtle and refined.
This is, inevitably, a generational thing. At some (biologically determined and/or culturally influenced) age, our brains start to lock in certain ideas. We become less eager to try new foods, new music and new looks. "New" starts to morph into "strange." And familiar becomes a synonym for right.
Last year, I immediately recognized this creeping fuddy-duddyism in the people who raised a fuss about college women wearing flip flops to the White House. So I had to wonder if my nose-wrinkling reaction to the Crocs trend was coming from the same "you kids today with your funny-looking shoes" sort of place.
Which is why I went to try on a pair of Crocs for myself. And why I can't wait to get home to wear them. In private.
So there was that whole conversation in which R. said I should, if I'm having trouble sleeping, feel free to wake him up. You know, so he could share in the joys of pregnancy, too. And I responded that I probably wouldn't do that -- on purpose. much. -- because there was no point in both of us being sleepless and cranky.
Then there was the reality of me waking him up at 2:30 this morning to ask, "Do only dogs get hip dysplasia?"
[Answer: Apparently not. Though it seems unlikely that I have it, despite the fact that I'm sure this is what it feels like.]
He responded with something mildly comforting, like that leg cramps are apparently very common in pregnant women. (I love that he read a couple of the pregnancy books without telling me.) He also mentioned that cows get hip dysplasia, too, which is not as rude as it sounds because we actually own cows. (Long story.)
Then, he went back to sleep.
Two hours later, when I noticed him stirring slightly, I asked if he wanted to play cards. (Isn't that what people with insomnia do?)
This made him laugh. But he declined. Largely because I don't actually know any card games. And because he knew I'd fall back asleep eventually.
I am trying to come up with some sort of hard-and-fast rule on what constitutes being a pain-in-the-ass versus just being honest about one's needs. So far, I'm just making it up as I go along.
And, so far, pretty much anything I want is reasonable. Right?
Leslie's "She Said" column today should be required reading for anyone who is pregnant, has been pregnant, is thinking about getting pregnant, or knows-and-loves anyone in any of those categories.
Leslie, who is slim and petite, proudly claims to have gained 50 pounds with each of her pregnancies. She reported this to me the other day with an almost giddy smile.
I have to admit that my initial reaction was not all that positive. Fifty pounds is a pretty significant percentage of my normal body weight. I couldn't imagine being happy about having to carry that around.
And, while I certainly haven't been dieting, I have been very conscious about how much weight I gain while pregnant. Partly, it's vanity: even though, thank goodness, the aesthetic standards of local public television are a lot looser than, say, a major national network, I do have the weekly TV gig going on and I'd rather not look like a blob on camera.
Mostly, though, it's a weird sort of Protestant work ethic feeling of guilt that had me believing I should look a certain way: with the cute, symmetrical and perfectly proportioned "bump" that all the Hollywood pregnant people seem to have -- and then very quickly lose.
Which is strange, actually, since it's not like I've looked like a movie star at any other point in my life.
Anyway, without being too ridiculously cheesey and Oprah-esque, reading Leslie's essay today was kind of an eye opener for me.
(Also, there was the very sweet older male colleage who spotted me in the hallway and, upon taking in the great expanse that is my belly declared, "Looking good, kid!" That was one of my favorite compliments ever.)
So, while I've already bought the post-partum workout books and videos, I'm going to work on being more Zen about the whole thing. And if it takes a while to get back into the skinny jeans, oh well. I mean, I do get a kid out of the deal. Which is really pretty great.
On WBEZ's 848 this morning, political reporter Ben Calhoun used a phrase that, I think, perfectly sums up the dominant attitude about the trial that wraps up today.
He said he was wondering if people were really paying attention to the trial, or if there wasn't a certain amount of "corruption fatigue."
Young people, in particular, are presumed to be totally cynical about politics (this study, "The Daily Show Effect" has some interesting things to say about that assumption) and, it's generally assumed that the decline in newspaper readership (which is, I am required to point out, a tragic reflection of social disengagement) reflects a kind of why-bother-caring attitude about all things civic.
I've long wondered, though, if, on some level, the opposite is true. What I hear from a lot of people is not so much cynicism as idealism, and a feeling of being overwhelmed. When I pester people (especially young-ish women) about voting, and, specifically, about why they don't vote, they often say that they don't feel like they know or understand enough about the candidates and issues to make an informed choice.
Of course, this is the sort of comment that drives a lot of reporters and media types nuts. "Read the paper!" they scream, "Get informed!"
But, in defense of the non-voters, that's a lot harder to do than it looks. Our stories about the great issues of the day are often so full of back references and "inside baseball" names and terms that we're almost taunting new readers with their ignorance.
If we want people to pay attention to what's going on, especially with all the intersecting scandals in Chicago and Illinois, without having to completely exhaust themselves with history lessons and organizational charts, we need to find new ways of presenting information, like an occassional "corruption score card" that would give a quick update on who's been indicted for what and how they connect to each other. I'd also like to see a flow chart that begins with, say, a dollar I pay in property tax or the cost of my city sticker or license plate and takes me through all the places where money is being wasted on jobs for political cronies or contracts for connected businesses. That's the sort of stuff that can jolt a person out of their fatigue.
It's a tough job, being stretched out on the couch like this for hours at a time, but someone's got to do it. Just in case you have slightly less reading time than I do, here are several items not to miss:
1. For the guilty liberal who has everything: Want to stay ahead of the political correctness curve and eat only humane foods, but can't imagine giving up both lobster and foie gras? A brief piece in the Business section has just the thing for you -- a new gadget that will kill your lobster without letting it suffer. Introducing the CrustaStun.
2. For the perfectionist wife who can't quite let the socks-on-the-floor thing go: Yes, yes, we know we're not supposed to compare the housebreaking of a husband to the training of an animal. But how about an exotic animal? A nicely domesticated Modern Love.
4. What's in the Magazine today? I don't know. It didn't get delivered with my copy. And, because I work for a newspaper, I am obligated to pretend that I don't know you can read things online.
At 45, Regina Taylor has the kind of serene beauty that makes you think she's figured out a few of life's major secrets.
Her face, still recognizable from her stint, 15 years ago now, as housekeeper Lilly Harper on the acclaimed television drama "I'll Fly Away," has a fullness to it now, and an almost-fixed expression of quiet satisfaction.
So it's hard to know, just by looking, that Taylor is busier than she has ever been. She is back on television, in the David Mamet-created series, "The Unit." And she is the playwright and director behind the Goodman Theatre's current mainstage production, "The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove," based on the life of entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker.
"There was no one like her before her," says Taylor of her subject. "She really invented herself."
Taylor's voice is soft and refined, but she has an actor's ability to make herself heard over the din of the crowd at the bustling Catch 35 restaurant on Wacker Drive. And the effect of this effortless projection is soothing, almost misleadingly so. Because, while her tone seems cool, even detached, Taylor's words make clear that she has a streak of fierceness.
'Possibility of being true'
Over an elegant lunch of seared Chilean sea bass, she describes the life of Sarah Breedlove, the woman who would come to call herself Madam C.J. Walker.
"Child of slaves," Taylor begins, "orphaned at 7, married at 15, a widow and mother at 17 . . . she was a washerwoman, making $1.50 or $2 a week and yet she had these hopes, these dreams."
Walker's life, she says, is "really the story of the American dream, the washerwoman who winds up living on an estate next to the Rockefellers."
And the play she has written, Taylor adds, is all about "following this dream, this American desire, which for so many black people is a lie."
There is no flash of anger in her eye when she says this, no discernable change in her manner. But something in our conversation has changed.
Until now, we've been chatting amiably about the play's run here in Chicago, about its quickly bonding cast and their ritual of breaking bread together at area restaurants. Taylor has mentioned her life in Southern California, where "The Unit" is filmed, and how she, a fairly committed non-driver, gets around there. She has described her late mother's Texas garden and her fondness for drinking tea.
But Taylor seems to have reached her limit on friendly actress small talk.
"A lie?" I ask, wondering where this will go.
"Yes," she says. And continues, answering my raised eyebrow, adding, "A lie always has the possibility of being true."
Dreams' role in real life
So Taylor has taken, as the centerpiece of this play, a dream Walker claimed to have, in which a mysterious African man came to her and whispered in her ear the secret ingredients for a hair growth tonic.
"Some people say it's a lie," Taylor says of Walker's tale of the genesis of her hair care empire. "But, either way, what she did with it was pretty miraculous."
Taylor, who grew up in Texas and Oklahoma -- "Mary Kay country" -- had long thought of Walker as an advertising genius but, when she started researching her, came to see her as a more complicated, and important, figure.
"She was the first dark-skinned, African-American woman to put her own image on a product," Taylor says. "She changed the world's perspective on black women."
Six more years of research followed, during which Walker "did start to come to me in my dreams," Taylor says, and the figure that emerged was a "visionary who can't see what's right in front of her."
Walker's personal relationships were troubled. She was married three times and clashed often with her strong-willed daughter. She died, Taylor says, "literally because she worked herself to death."
Taylor can sometimes seem to talk in circles. She is obsessed with the idea of "being able to name yourself," as Walker did, and with the ways in which dreams work their way into real life. She deflects questions on other subjects -- her own career, the dearth of roles for actresses in their 40s -- and returns, again and again, to the story of C.J. Walker.
Only Walker
"Where she came from, literally the mud of the Delta, she couldn't read or write," says the hyper-literate Taylor. "But she educates herself and becomes this brilliant business woman."
Though she remarks that Oprah Winfrey is clearly Walker's modern-day counterpart, Taylor is not interested in discussing that further. For her, right now, there is only Walker.
So, yes, there is the hit TV show. And the next play she's writing, and maybe a musical, as well.
But, this afternoon, after a cappuccino and a short walk, she will return to the Goodman, for another day's rehearsal, another day of channeling the woman who comes to her in her dreams. And she will keep life's major secrets to herself.
They should call it the Taste of Indiana," sniffed the well-dressed guy in the elevator. "They're the only people who go." And the rest of us smiled and nodded, the way you do when someone says something in an elevator that is obviously meant to be overheard. Because it is, of course, required of city dwellers that we express a certain baseline level of contempt for the people who merely visit the downtown area. None of us wanted to look like suburban rubes.
It has become a ritual of the summer festival season in Chicago -- a natural evolution of the festivals themselves, really -- to bemoan the crowded awfulness of the largest street fairs. True Chicagoans remember when these events were better. Things were more real then, before the tourists and poseurs started coming, before there were corporate sponsors and live radio broadcasts.
And, the rest of us, late-comers who know, because we cannot say which ward we were born in, that we can make no real claim to originality or authenticity of experience, have to cling to our own complicated levels of snobbery. At least we didn't drive. Or buy the T-shirt.
Irony on the side, please
If we deign to attend the Taste of Chicago at all, we expect to do so only with a sense of ironic detachment. We go so that we can sniff about how fat (the rest of) America is getting, how poorly behaved other people's children are and how tragic it is when old guys wear their baseball caps at non-standard angles.
We are supposed to laugh at the notion that the Taste has anything to do with "street food," which we, with our Bourdain-esque sensibilities, associate with teeming Vietnamese markets and other Lonely Planet destinations, rather than the hyper-groomed grounds of Grant Park.
But I can't make myself do it anymore.
My secret and deeply-held affection for the Taste has, for too long, been a love that dared not speak its name. I have pretended to be appalled by this 10-day-long orgy of giant turkey legs and dubious refrigeration, making excuses for my attendance like "writing a column about it" and "entertaining out-of-town guests."
Even this year, I have recruited friends from New York to visit next weekend so they can be my Taste beards.
The truth, though, is that they had me at the miniature portions -- an uncredited precursor to the tapas craze -- and the brilliantly obscure ticket-pricing scheme. I would find a reason to go to the Taste even if I had to do it alone.
So, this summer, I am coming out of the closet.
I have loved the Taste of Chicago since I first stumbled on it as a high school student in town for a campus tour in Hyde Park. And, when I was thinking about moving here, years later, the delicious memory of a teeny, tiny semi-frozen slice of cheesecake pretty much clinched my decision. (OK, it was the cheesecake and a looming break-up with a bad boyfriend in another city. But mainly the cheesecake.)
I love the corn on a stick and the half-cheeseburgers and the rainbow sherbet. I love making a meal from pad thai and catfish. I love creating culinary themes, like "dumplings of multiple cultures," and charting a path from pierogies to potstickers to ravioli to samosas.
And I love the cherries, the ones that come in a bag at the Dominick's booth and have been stored on ice. Of course I know that they are no different than the ones I could buy at the actual grocery store. And, though I've never stopped to do the math, I'm sure the grocery store ones are cheaper, too, though spending those little tickets, like spending foreign currency, is a kind of alternate-reality experience for me, both liberating and strangely affirming.
(Personal note to Freakonomics author and University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt: Why is it so tantalizing to spend those little tickets? Are we all just collectively really bad at math, or is there a more complicated psycho-economic phenomenon at work?)
Next stop: Naperville?
I worry, naturally, that my feelings about the Taste are a sign of incipient suburban-ness, that I am on my way to becoming one of those people who'll claim to be from Chicago and then later explain that they actually live in, say, northwest Indiana.
So I soothe myself with rationalizations -- I don't go on fireworks day; I'm not like those people -- and subtle distinctions. I don't spend more than an hour or two at a time. I have never eaten one of the turkey legs. I was appalled when McDonald's set up a booth.
I tell myself that -- rather than a first step on the slippery slope that leads to Merrillville or Naperville or any other ville -- my goofy, tourist-y love for the Taste is a kind of civic pride, the same sort of native boosterism that has long characterized true Chicagoans. It's like going to see "The Break-Up," despite all the bad reviews.
Besides, if savoring that bag of cherries is wrong, I don't want to be right.
I was sharing dinner with a few friends when one of them posed a half-serious question to the group: Who would you vote for in 2008?
Everyone else, citing a serious shortage of good options, refused to answer. But I pride myself on making the best of a situation, so I blurted out, "Russ Feingold."
This drew mixed reactions, from raised eyebrows to outright derisive laughter, but R. understood my reasoning immediately.
"Oh," he said, as if something had suddenly become very clear, "Because Paul Wellstone is dead."
The man understands me.
Since that evening, I've decided to commit myself fully to the Senate's most unabashed liberal. And I read, with giggling, giddy interest, GQ's Q&A with him.
It's interesting and semi-insightful and all that, but the best part, to me, is this exchange:
Did she [Hillary Clinton, with whom Feingold traveled to Iraq] pack more than everybody else?
[laughs] That would be a dangerous area for me to get into, because I may pack a little more than I should.
So you pack like a girl?
There would be those who would say that. And it would not be the easiest thing to deny.
Could we please have a liberal, metrosexual President? Please?!
Where's the line that marks a person's crossing over into serious over-sharing territory?
Like beauty, over-sharing is, perhaps, in the eye of beholder. Which means it's quite subjective. What might be an interesting personal tidbit to you could be a major dose of Too Much Information to me. (OK, actually, the reverse is likely to be true. I have a sick fascination for the too-personal things that people share when they let their guard down. Or, you know, have a long lunch with a reporter.)
Women, clearly, share more than men. And younger people share more than older people. And people who are in the public eye, well, let's just say they're generally not shy. About anything.
So it's probably no surprise that NBC5 anchor Marion Brooks decided it was totally OK to share with visitors to her video blog the very graphic details of giving birth to and nursing her new daughter.
Rob Feder writes about it in his column today. (If you've got Windows Media, you can also check out the video itself on WMAQ's website, here.)
She discusses, among other things, the pain and difficulty of breast-feeding. She doesn't really say why she's sharing this information, but I'm betting on some combination of the standard responses: "I wish someone had told me this stuff!" and "People do seem to be interested."
I was lucky enough, if "lucky" is really the right term, to have someone tell me most of that stuff, but that's really the very happy coincidence of my best friend helpfully getting pregnant about 6 months before I did. She's been an incredible test-case/field researcher. And, really, I happen to believe that nipple information is generally something you should be getting from a close friend or relative, not from a news anchor. (Call me old fashioned.)
I'm more interested in the second line of reasoning, that it's OK to share really personal information because, well, people do seem to want to know. Some people.
Since first mentioning my own pregnancy in a column, I've gotten tons of great letters and e-mails from people full of congratualtions and unsolicited (but generally quite useful) advice. I also got one e-mail, this weekend, from someone who asked, "Is every column now going to be about your pregnancy? If that's the case I'm done reading it. . . . God I miss Mike Royko!"
So far, I haven't responded to this message. Mostly, I'm not sure how I should. First, I guess I'd say that we all miss Mike Royko, or at least everyone except the family members he neglected throughout his long career. And, second, I'd point out that writing a column about modern fatherhood didn't seem like a tough call on Father's Day weekend. Oh, and third, no, not every column. Not last week's. And probably not next week's. But some.
Still, I see this person's point. It wasn't so long ago that the word "pregnant" wasn't even uttered in mixed company. To have someone writing about it from a relatively personal perspective (though, not quite Marion Brooks personal, I assure you) on page 2 of the newspaper could be slightly disconcerting.
There aren't a lot of ground rules, so I often feel like I'm just making this up as I go along -- sharing the stuff that I think has some larger meaning within this particular cultural moment and, mostly, keeping the nipple details to myself. That seems about right.
1. Seth Stevenson has a great essay on those new Mac vs. PC ads on Slate.com. I'm pretty solidly in the Mac camp, but Stevenson makes a great point about the way these ads fail to really do much more than preaching to those of us already enjoying ourselves in the choir.
3. Pretty much everyone has something to say about Linda Hirshman's new book, Get to Work. Salon.com's Broadsheet blog has a nice summary of what's out there. New Sun-Times books editor Cheryl Reed also took a crack at Hirshman. (Click "continue reading" below to see her essay.) I think Cheryl gets it mostly right, though she glides over what, to me, is an absolutely essential point in this whole debate: "Feminism is supposed to be about achieving equality with men. But what man out there can 'choose' whether he wants to work?"
As far as I'm concerned, this is the heart of the matter. Work is what responsible adults in this society do. All this happy-talk about "opting out" is really about maintaining separate standards for women (who can work, if they want) and men (who are socially expected to suck it up and work no matter what).
Feminism shaken, Not stirred: According to author, there's no choice allowed for smart, educated, capable women
By Cheryl R. Reed
Smart women have gotten lazy.
That's what radical feminist Linda Hirshman thinks. The former Chicago lawyer has devised a plan to get women out of nurseries and back into boardrooms. Laid out in her brief book, Get to Work: A Manifesto For Women of the World, Hirshman targets the Ivy League, New York Times wedding-announcement crowd, who have "opted out" of their law firms and corporate offices to stay home to raise Baby Gap.
That graduates from Harvard Business School are now shelving their expensive educations and lucrative livelihoods to attend Mommy & Me classes irritates Hirshman. She believes it should upset all of us when elite, educated women choose hearth over commerce. After all, these are women with credentials, access and power. They are the ones who can call a legislator directly, throw their prestige and money behind important causes, educate their powerful male bosses about the difficulties of raising a child and making partner.
These women, Hirshman argues, could change the world as future senators, scientists and Supreme Court justices. Instead, they're at home finger-painting with their kids.
It's appropriate that Hirshman's pocket-size book is red because it reads much like a communist manifesto, calling on women to live by strict codes for the betterment of society and for the advancement of feminism overall. Individual concerns, desires and the pursuit of happiness have no place in Hirshman's scheme.
In her view, women should have only one child, persevere in jobs they hate, marry much younger or much older men, turn a blind eye to dust bunnies and ignore milk expiration dates. Forget art and poetry, Hirshman says. Those pursuits don't pay.
It's not that Hirshman's plan wouldn't work. Her formula, if followed religiously, would no doubt produce a lucrative and prestigious career, and it does provide a guidepost to young women who are wondering what they might have to sacrifice to make it in the corporate world. But following Hirshman's rules -- as she calls them -- would be about as joyful as a rigid, no-carbs diet. Then again, pleasure does not figure high in Hirshman's equation.
"Just because work isn't as wonderful as people fantasized does not mean it isn't usually the best alternative available," Hirshman writes. "There's no such thing as a perfect job. Condoleezza Rice actually wanted to be a pianist. . . . Don't look to work for love."
Hirshman is not a big fan of choice. She believes feminism's greatest downfall was allowing women the choice of whether they wanted to work. She has a point. Feminism is supposed to be about achieving equality with men. But what man out there can "choose" whether he wants to work?
Hirshman presents defendable arguments and she's done her homework, tracking down census and labor statistics and stalking New York Times brides to find out what happened to them 10 years later -- 85 percent in her sampling had either left the workplace altogether or were working part-time. What she doesn't seem to grasp is why women are leaving their jobs.
Smart women don't just pack up their BlackBerrys because they have a baby. Many use their planned pregnancies as politically correct reasons for leaving jobs they find excruciating. They realize the professions they have labored to achieve are just not that rewarding. Today's working women have less to prove than Hirshman's generation.
And once a woman has attained a certain level of success -- the junior partner at a prestigious firm, a mid-level manager in a corporation, an assistant professor -- the work to achieve the higher levels of success require tremendous sacrifice, long hours -- and luck.
Some women are smart enough to realize achieving success is a big gamble. They've calculated the trade-offs and decided that enduring a job they find unbearable isn't worth their happiness nor is it worth the time it will cost them to be away from their children. So they opt out -- because they can.
And for this elite set, opting out of work often means opting in to a community of other highly educated moms who lunch together, go to the club together, hang out at one another's houses, one hand clutching the coffee cup and the other rocking the pram.
What Hirshman doesn't get is that these upper-crust mothers are not home cleaning the stove a la Betty Friedan in the Feminine Mystique. They are at the spa getting pedicures and taking Pilates. They have traded in the race for the corner offices for summers at the pool and bodies that can don a bikini even after a Cesarean. This is a choice about quality of life. And that's something Hirshman doesn't address.
Arguing that women should work for the good of humanity makes for a hollow plea in today's world, where individualism reigns supreme. According to some research, today's young women have opted out because of the lack of attention they received from their own Baby Boomer mothers. Like all yin-and-yang cycles in life, once today's elite, stay-at-home moms have grown into empty-nesters, they might grow bored with spinning classes. Then maybe they'll look for a job.
I've had a weird affection for NASCAR ever since I interviewed Dale Earnhardt, Jr. I wouldn't actually watch a race on television -- seriously, people, they are just driving around in a circle most of the time -- but I do listen for the results and watch the highlights, should I happen to surf across them. (Sadly, my primary source of electronic media, public radio, doesn't do a lot in the way of NASCAR reporting. Wonder why.)
Anyway, I think it's sort of an interesting cultural moment when NASCAR drivers are contemplating the health benefits of giving up fast food.
(Oh -- and the pickles and ice cream reference comes right at the end of the article, in a weird attempt to be witty by, I guess, comparing Jeff Gordon to a pregnant woman.)
Click "continue reading" if you want to read the Earnhardt interview from July 2004.
Lunch With Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
We tried to get better, and we ended up getting worse," Dale Earnhardt Jr. says as he comes in from making his test laps around the track at the Chicagoland Speedway on Friday afternoon.
He's clocked the ninth-fastest lap in the 46-car field, but he knows it's not what it could have been. After meeting with his pit crew and giving them his version of a motivational speech -- "We're trying to get our s--- together right now" -- he's sprawled out on the black leather couch in the back of his tractor trailer, in a gray Under Armour T-shirt with the top half of his fireproof racing suit hanging from his waist, staring at the satellite TV.
Lunch is a double burger cooked on the gas grill outside, in the heat and noise of the Speedway's infield garage area, and a can of Sun Drop soda.
"You know the world's a f---ed up place when you come in and 'I Love Lucy' is on and you don't even change the channel," he says, nodding at the black-and-white rerun on the wall-mounted TV. His usual tastes run to the "Adult Swim" cartoons on the Cartoon Network and the History Network war documentaries that TiVo picks out for him, but this afternoon, he'll take what he can get.
There's a sudden downpour outside and he's half hoping the afternoon's qualifying laps will be canceled, so that pole positions will be determined on points alone. By that measure, he's in second place.
He looks tired, the brim of his Budweiser hat pulled down almost all the way over his blue eyes.
He'd finished his appearance at the NASCAR fan fest in downtown Joliet by 10:15 Thursday night but hadn't gotten to bed until hours later.
"I stay up and play video games," he says. "It's hard for me to get myself into bed."
Lately, he's been obsessed with "Fight Night," spending hours at a time on his Xbox, inhabiting the virtual body of boxer Arturo Gatti.
"He bleeds a lot, and he has a nasty left hook," says Earnhardt, who has all of Gatti's fights on tape and has studied them. "You have to watch them in slow motion. One time, he hit a guy with a knockout punch and then hit him like three more times on the way down... And one time he broke his right hand in a fight and then beat the hell out of the son of a bitch with one hand."
Gatti is a classic fighter, in the Rocky Marciano mode, and Earnhardt admires that lack of showiness. He seems to wish it was an option for him.
But Earnhardt -- known to his mobs of fans simply as "Junior" -- knows it isn't. He is rock star famous. And people expect a rock star quality showing-off from him. When he walks into a room, women actually squeal.
Giving autographs Thursday night, he looked alternately grim and dazed, mostly just nodding in acknowledgment of the admirers who handed him all manner of memorabilia to sign, from replicas of his race car to a cold, sweating can of the day-fresh beer brewed by his main racing sponsor, Budweiser.
"You have to understand I've been at this for two days," he said then, as we stole a few minutes for a quick, introductory interview between sets at Bud's "One Night Stand" concert in the Rialto Theater, where he sat on stage for an audience question-and-answer session before introducing the headlining act, Saliva.
That was the second thing he said to me. The first was, "You got any gum?"
We're like old friends now, on the second day of our acquaintance. On the road during racing season, Earnhardt spends most of his days inside a tightly maintained shell, as a small army of handlers work hard to protect him from the seemingly endless streams of people who want to get close to him. It gets to be a rare thing in his insular and stage-managed world, just sitting down with someone and having a conversation.
"You withdraw so much when you get this much attention," he said, as two cops and a couple of private security guards tried to bring some order to the crowd of autograph-seekers who'd managed to make it into the VIP room at the Rialto. "You withdraw and you withdraw."
The two-second encounters with fans are sometimes the best he can do for human contact.
"If it wasn't for things like this," he said at the Rialto, "I'd probably be sitting in my motor home, playing video games, and that's not that healthy, either."
Interacting with people, he said, "keeps me right."
Earnhardt says he isn't sure what accounts for his incredible popularity, which has transcended even the NASCAR superstar status of his legendary father.
"What do you think it is?" he asks his publicist, Mike Davis.
"I think it's that he's such a regular guy," Davis suggests. "He's someone you could go have a beer with. He's the neighbor you borrow eggs from."
"The neighbor you buy 'ex' from?" Earnhardt jokes, imitating Davis' drawl, which is of a slightly different variety than his own North Carolina inflection.
There is something to that, of course, the winning combination of a royal blood line and a common touch. Earnhardt is the kind of celebrity who, talking to a fan he met in an Atlanta bar, agreed to show up at the guy's wedding the next day -- as the best man.
"The preacher was trying to say all this stuff about NASCAR flags," he says as he laughingly recalls the ceremony, "like the caution flags of life and the big Victory Lane in the sky."
He's got a friend for life in that groom, he says happily.
Some days are like that for Earnhardt, like he could be friends with anyone he meets. Other days, he says, "I wake up in a bad mood, and I don't feel like talking."
His sister and mother, who are also his employees, try to monitor his moods, he says, and remind him that he's got to act like the massively popular celebrity he is. "They always have to beat it into my head," he says. "I don't see myself as so big... Maybe that's a self-esteem thing because I was real short in high school and stuff."
Still, at just 29, he has been so famous for so long that it's hard to imagine life any other way. He's just learned to manage around it.
He plans to watch Saturday's Busch series race, before his own run in the Tropicana 400 race on Sunday, and he'd love to do it up close, perched in a seat on top of a giant tool cabinet in his team's pit area, "but things don't go right when I'm there. People get tense." So he'll probably just watch it on TV in his motor home, where he won't cause a distraction.
And, even in his personal life, which almost -- but not quite -- lives up to its reputation as bachelor nirvana, he finds he has to work on keeping his fame, and the groupies who chase it, out of the way.
"You've got to test them," he says of the many women he meets. "Because a lot of people put on fronts when you first get to know them. So I give them a lot of tests. I'll make them clean [his cat] Buddy's litter box or something, just to see how they'll do it."
He's still laughing about that when his pit crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., walks in. Earnhardt's smile fades and he says, "Four pounds up in the left and 12 up in the right."
He's unhappy with an adjustment in tire pressure that slowed down some of his later test laps.
"It's all good," Eury assures him.
"That first lap," Earnhardt says, referring to the qualifying laps that he'll run later this afternoon, "I'll just be testing it out again."
"You don't have to test anything out," Eury says.
Earnhardt shakes his head. "You're sending me into a whorehouse blindfolded. I need to test things out a little bit."
For all of its 150 years, Baird & Warner, the Chicago real estate company, has been a family business.
Current chairman of the board John Baird, 91, passed day-to-day control to his son Stephen, 53, now CEO and president, in 1991. Three decades earlier, John Baird had taken over for his father, Warner Baird, who remained as the firm's chairman of the board from 1963 to 1983.
These father-to-son handoffs have, all things considered, gone remarkably smoothly.
"I consider myself lucky," Stephen says, as he settles in to a booth at the elegantly appointed Custom House restaurant in Printers Row, "because I have a lot of friends whose relationships [with their fathers] are more challenging."
John Baird, wearing his signature bow tie, nods sagely at this. He says the secret to their relationship, working and otherwise, is that he just stays out of the way.
But, a few minutes into our lunch of salads and iced teas, it's clear that this is not quite true.
Stephen Baird clearly enjoys his father's company and relishes John's ability to charmingly hold forth on Chicago history, politics and business. If he is the one running the business these days, it is also true that his father is still running the show.
Being chairman of the board is "just a nominal thing," says John Baird. Then he proceeds to completely dominate the next hour's conversation, telling stories, gently needling his son and making clear in a hundred other small ways that he is still the company's heart and soul.
'Probably have disinherited me'
The Baird family (Warner was an in-law) has held to a firm commitment to keep their business in one piece, with the heirs in each generation selling their ownership shares to a single sibling or cousin who will take over.
For Stephen, that meant negotiating with his brothers, sisters and cousins before he could assume full control. "One brother also had some interest," he says tactfully. "He really wanted to go into real estate development."
That brother now has his own business in another state.
"I'm sure there were issues with you and your brother," Stephen says to his father.
"Never with my brother," John replies, "but one of my first jobs was to negotiate with my father's sister to buy out her piece -- because he couldn't do it."
Stephen just nods. Since taking over the family business 15 years ago, he has transformed the company from a many-armed real estate conglomerate, with development projects and a full-service property management division, into a purely residential brokerage.
I ask John how he feels about the reshaping of the company he helped build.
"It's very simple," he says, "the real estate industry really changed fundamentally at the time he took over."
"I know that my grandfather would not recognize the company," Stephen says. "He didn't think much of residential realty. ... He'd probably have disinherited me when I sold that property management company."
"No --" John replies, but doesn't go on. His expression seems to say that, yes, Warner Baird would have been a little upset about that one.
Spearheaded downtown boom
There's a brief lull in conversation, as both men, who frequently eat lunch at their desks, quickly consume their salads. As he eats, John Baird looks out the window at the busy street scene that surrounds this corner building. He doesn't really need to see what's there. He can name, from memory, the buildings that surround us: the Pontiac Building, the Morton Building, a half dozen others.
He sees them, he says, not only as they are now and how they once were, but also how they once might have been, when plans were made to make them into apartments rather than offices.
Under his direction, Baird & Warner spearheaded much of the early '80s redevelopment of this neighborhood. It's a point of pride with him, this great gamble that he took.
"I don't mean to be egotistical," he says, "but our building at 200 N. Dearborn, which was an urban renewal site ... that [building] and Printers Row really demonstrated to the real estate community that people would live close to the Loop."
Before that, he tells me, "I remember someone in your capacity asking me why we were doing this rather than some nice subdivision out in the suburbs."
Stephen laughs -- it is awfully funny now -- but he also reminds his father of just how dicey things were back then. One of his first assignments when he joined the firm was to recruit a grocery chain to build a store in the retail space in the Transportation Building. It couldn't be done.
He says, as his father nods in agreement, "I remember talking to people, people saying it's just not safe there."
"At one time," John says, "we actually pulled the police reports for Dearborn, south of Congress, and compared them to North Michigan Avenue. There was a lot more crime up there. But no one paid a lot of attention to that."
John Baird has always had something of the crusader in him. An early advocate of open-housing laws and integration, he took on development projects in blighted neighborhoods at a time when gentrification was not yet such a sure thing.
"If he was solely interested in making money," Stephen, a Harvard MBA, says of his father, "he wouldn't have gotten into some of that."
"Well," John says, "I guess that's true." And he smiles a little, like it might or might not be.
The modern mother comes in many forms. There are career balancers and stay-at-homes. There are hip, yummy fashion-plate mothers who favor expensive strollers and resolutely uncoiffed, Birkenstock-wearing attachment moms who prefer to carry their babies in batik-print slings.
There are the early-in-life moms, embracing the post-feminist new domesticity, and the late-in-life ones, making last-ditch attempts to have it all. There are home-schoolers and ultra-competitive pre-schoolers, La Leche disciples and bottle-feeders, Baby-Whisperers and Ferberizers.
But the modern father comes in only one variety.
He works full time, preferably at a job that provides an income large enough to render his wife's financial contribution completely optional. But he doesn't work too much because he's expected to show up at soccer games and school plays. He has the kind of hands-on relationship with his kids that his father never had with him. He wakes up for 2 a.m. feedings, changes diapers and does not use the term "baby-sitting" when describing the time he spends alone with his children.
These things are all points of pride with the modern dad, who knows that should he ever slip up and admit that he'd really prefer a round of golf with his buddies to a tea party with his 5-year-old daughter, he would be quickly dismissed as a Cro-Magnon throwback.
Not a lot of choices for Dad
The sheer array of "choices" -- or, if you're a stickler for truth in advertising, "massively complicated, mutually exclusive and seemingly irrevocable life decisions" -- for mothers was overwhelming to me even before I was pregnant.
But for my husband, things were relatively straightforward. He was obligated to fetch a pint of Heath Bar Crunch ice cream whenever I demanded it, to tell me that I was "glowing," and to read, with enthusiasm, the "Your Baby, Week by Week" e-mails we get each Sunday afternoon that fill us in on the week's developmental milestones, generally in terms of comparing the baby's current size to a fruit or vegetable.
Beyond this, we both figured, there wasn't much else for him to do.
We'd clearly missed the "modern dad" memo.
Because when I started having regular doctor's appointments, I got a look at how modern dad-hood begins. I was, in fact, one of a distinct minority of women sitting alone in my obstetrician's large waiting room.
And these fathers-to-be were not, as I was, killing time by reading a magazine or scanning their e-mails. They were studying up for their appointments, making lists of questions in their leather-bound notebooks, already busily fulfilling their all-important partner-and-coach role.
"Do you, um, want to come to the doctor's office with me?" I asked my husband before the next appointment.
"Do you want me to?" he asked skeptically, knowing that I have an almost fanatical devotion to keeping certain things, especially bodily functions, private.
"Not particularly," I said, "but I thought you might want to be there."
"Is there anything I need to do?" he asked. Because he'd happily give me a pint of blood or an internal organ. But just sitting there, without anything to contribute, seemed utterly ridiculous to him.
And all I could really offer was the lame explanation that all the other guys seemed to be doing it.
Celebrating the retro Dad
Since then, we've come to terms with our old-fashioned leanings. And we've learned to keep them pretty much to ourselves.
After all, for the modern dad, it's "our" pregnancy and "our" delivery, the beginning of the shared experience of raising a child together. The modern dad enthusiastically shares labor stories and tales of colic. When he is not physically present, he gets cell phone and e-mail updates on his child's progress throughout the day. He knows about every tear and every skinned knee.
Being "detached" from these experiences is considered hopelessly retro. Even irresponsible.
That's why we have to keep quiet about our plans for parenthood. Because, while I have no doubt that my husband will make an awesome father, he will probably not quite live up to the don't-miss-a-minute expectations of modern dad-hood. And, for that, I'm exceedingly glad.
This is partly because I want us to have something to talk about other than our kid. But it's mainly because I really liked growing up with a pre-modern dad, the kind who kept a little distance from the daily ins and outs of raising me.
My dad was the role model for my college years and career, the person I trusted for objective counsel and no-BS assessments.
While my mom dried my tears and taped a million Band-Aids on my perpetually skinned knees, my dad was the one who had the nerve to take the training wheels off my bike. Which, it turns out, is one of the best gifts a parent can give a kid.
The big NeoCon trade show has been here at the Merchandise Mart for the last few days and the neighborhood has been packed with badge-wearing conventioneers.
They're heading out today, creating a massive cab crisis.
So, as I was walking on Orleans Street this afternoon, I happened to catch this scene.
A business suit-clad woman, having just exited the west side of the Mart, waves to hail an approaching cab. The cab slows down, as if to stop for her, but an orange-vested Mart Security guy waves the cab on, telling the driver that he has to wait in the cab line on the other side of the building if he's going to pick up Mart passengers.
The woman quickly becomes indignant.
Orange vest guy tells her that she, too, has to wait in the cab line on the other side of the building.
"But," she sputters, "I'm not with them."
He tells her it doesn't matter; that these are the rules today.
"But," she tries again, "I have a meeting to get to. I live here."
"Too bad," he says, pointing her, again, toward the growing line of bag-laden convention-goers.
While I don't buy into that whole be-your-kids'-best-friend dynamic that seems to be common among affluent parents of teen-agers right now, it is my ambition to be my child's "cool parent."
The truth is that both R. and I are fairly big-time geeks, who got good grades, read serious books and listen to public radio. We know our kid is going to think we're hopelessly lame.
But, no matter how un-hip your parents are, as a kid, you almost always have a sense of one of them being far cooler than the other. This is the parent to whom you can make your pitch for expensive sneakers or non-plastic eyeglasses, the parent who understands that certain things are required for, say, surviving junior high school.
With me, it was, I always thought, Mom.
Dad was the hard-working, primary bread winning guy, who despite being brilliant and successful, couldn't get salespeople to wait on him because, on weekends, he was often dressed like a bum. (There was one pair of bell bottomed jeans and a zippered hooded sweatshirt that lasted so long they almost made it back to trendiness. They were retired, 10 years ago, by mom.)
Mom understood things like fashion. And, while she didn't always buy the "everyone else has one" argument for a purchase, she did grasp that a certain coolness bar had to be reached when shopping for back-to-school clothes. She paid for professional hair cuts. She served, when Dad was not around, breakfast food for dinner. She did not enforce bedtimes if there was something interesting going on.
Dad, on the other hand, managed to convey the impression -- though I don't remember him saying it out loud all that often -- that he knew how much all that stuff cost. And he didn't really think it was worth it.
Dad was the enforcer of structure and routine. If he said we were leaving at 4:45, you were either ready at 4:45 or you stayed home. That kind of rigidity is, of course, the opposite of cool.
And I got it from him. (Genetic or learned? You decide.)
In our house, I am the one who is super-anal about being on time, about sticking to commitments and all that hopelessly uncool stuff. I have little tolerance for mess or really looseness of any sort.
R., on the other hand, is the world's most easy going human being. Nothing phases him.
Attitude-wise, he's got the coolness thing nailed, while I am hopelessly uptight.
I've been slowly coming to terms with the idea that he is destined to be our kid's cool parent, the person who will let certain rules slide and make creative exceptions when necessary.
Then I got into the car this morning to find the satellite radio tuned to "Hits of the 70s."
And that's when it dawned on me. This is a man who would seriously consider buying a flowbee to save money on haircuts, a man whose wardrobe has become my continuing project. (Me: "You know you have brown shoes that you could wear with those pants, right?" Him: "Yeah, I guess. Why?")
I am our child's last, best hope for a cool parent. This is probably my scariest realization about parenthood so far.
I think it started when I made a joke about alcohol and pregnancy.
R. and I were attending a cocktail reception and, when he stepped away for a moment, I held on to his drink. A few minutes later, a woman I didn't know walked up to meand informed me that I really shouldn't be drinking.
"Yeah, tell me about it," I said, patting my belly, "alcohol is what got me into this mess."
Fortunately for me, R. was one of very few other people to find that remark funny.
Since then, I have flirted with violating several other pregnancy consumption no-nos. [Actually, for the record, there's been no alcohol at all, thus far. But that will end with a glass (or two) of champagne when we celebrate our first anniversary.]
There was the time that I said I wasn't worried about caffeine (possibly associated with a risk of low birth weight and prematurity) because I wouldn't mind having a baby smaller than the usual jumbo size that runs in my husband's family.
And, falling similarly flat, was my remark, also regarding alcohol, now that I think of it, that I wouldn't mind shaving a few points off my kid's IQ because it would make high school a lot more pleasant.
Apparently, these comments were not in particularly good taste.
Somehow, though, I managed to convince myself that, despite this obviously cavalier attitude toward my future child's health and well-being, I had a good shot at being a decent mother.
Now, though, I'm starting to have my doubts.
I got my first free issue of Parenting magazine in the mail this weekend. (They sign you up at the maternity stores. It's a whole giant maternal-industrial complex. But that's a topic for another day.)
And, while I know I was supposed to be looking through it to learn all about important developmental milestones and safety tips and such, I ended up only marking a couple of pages.
Sporting a Greg Norman windbreaker and the pale, slightly scruffy look known in geek circles as a "monitor tan," Larry Hodgson looks just like the software engineer and hack golfer that he is. There is little about him that screams "major technology mogul."
But Hodgson, 44, is, in fact, a pretty big deal.
The coin-operated video game he invented, Golden Tee, is the most popular such game in the world. Ever. And Hodgson, known mostly as "the Golden Tee guy," is both hero and tormentor to the more than 20 million people who play the video golf game in restaurants and bars.
A serious foodie who spent years working in restaurant kitchens before deciding that he should "grow up and take a day job," Hodgson is enjoying raw oysters and spicy tuna roll sushi at the upscale Blue Water Grill, a chic downtown spot that's a far cry from the casual hangouts that usually house Golden Tee machines. But Hodgson, a suburb-dweller who keeps a pied-a-terre in the luxury apartment building across the street, is more than comfortable here. It's the kind of place that offers a certain quiet, anonymous elegance.
'We need that other thing'
Hodgson grew up in Calumet Park, the kind of kid who people politely called "different." He spent his time doing things like dismantling a streetlight to see how it worked and stealing his sister's roller skates because he needed the parts for an invention. He was not an academic superstar.
So, yes, it worried his widowed mom that, when other kids were heading for college and careers, Larry spent his days working at his restaurant kitchen job and then coming home to play with his computer -- remember the Commodore 64? -- until all hours.
But, Hodgson says, "I think she kind of got it," when, a couple of years after he took that "day job" with Arlington Heights-based Incredible Technologies, then a small-time developer of video game software for other coin-op manufac- turers, Golden Tee hit the market.
The company is now an industry leader, with more than 100,000 Golden Tee machines in play around the world. And Hodgson, who has worked there for 19 years, has been married to company president Elaine Hodgson for seven years. He's an important part of its management team -- "My wife owns the company, so I get a lot of leeway" -- and he's working on several new projects. In overseeing the company's development group, including the programmers who make the games work and the artists who give them their look (one key difference between the two groups: artists hate fluorescent lights), Hodgson is, theoretically, doing less hands-on programming these days.
Sometimes, he says, though, he can't help himself.
"I love programming so much that I could do it constantly. It's addictive -- and you get instant gratification. You write a line of code and a character moves across the screen," he says.
And, in his heart, Hodgson says that he is still pretty much "the Golden Tee guy."
The game, Hodgson says, "is designed for you and I to sit there and play while we have a beer. It's something else to do. Especially for men, we wouldn't sit there just shooting the breeze. We need that other thing."
"If you think about classic bar games," he says, "like darts, they're not games where you have to be totally connected to it."
'Not that great of a video golfer'
A self-described "bad golfer," Hodgson says he's "not that great of a video golfer, either, it turns out, which is doubly depressing."
But, as every dedicated fan of Golden Tee knows, being good at the game is not what keeps you coming back.
After Hodgson and a small team of developers created the first version of the game, he says, "we'd get together each night -- none of us were married at the time -- so we'd get together each night and play. It made memorable times out of ordinary nights. And the minute we felt that, that became our vision for the game. We wanted to do that for people. And now, when someone tells me, 'My buddies and I play,' that's the greatest compliment."
It's hard, even for Hodgson, to quantify the game's exact appeal, though. There's something about the way it lets you have a Tiger Woods-quality swing. And something about the cool, slightly surreal look of it.
It's golf, but not really.
"I'm not sure that the natural skills of golf translate," he says, "but some knowledge of the game does, like how to manage a course and manage risks."
Hodgson hasn't given up on improving his own real-life golf skills -- "it's like the Cubs," he says, "there's always next year" -- and he joined a weekly golf league at work.
Now that Niles mayor Nicholas Blase has been arrested on corruption charges, it's even harder -- like Cicero wasn't confusing enough -- to distinguish the city from the suburbs.
So we're going to have to do something to make ourselves really stand out. And I think Ald. Ed Burke has got exactly the right idea.
If other municipalities are going to horn in on the corruption thing, we can easily outflank them by going the other way. As everyone else chases that whole Sopranos-inspired corruption-is-cool-again trend, we can go to work on the next big thing in local government: the nanny city.
Sure, certain nations, like regulation-crazy Singapore (it once banned gum chewing!) and most of the European Union, are way ahead of us, already banning things that we've barely had a chance to get addicted to yet. And, yes, certain U.S. cities, like San Francisco and pretty much every single college town, have been quietly making wear-your-helmet-and-eat-your-vegetables-and-put-out-that-nasty-cigarette laws for years.
But Chicago has a chance to really do it big.
With 3 million people and 50 hardworking aldermen, we could generate the kind of hyper-regulatory paradise that Berkeley, Calif. (with 100,000 people and a paltry eight city council members) can only dream about. We could ban everything that ever made anyone cough, cry, sneeze, blush or retain water weight.
French fries? Small potatoes!
Starting with foie gras was an excellent move. Aside from assuaging the all-powerful goose lobby, banning a pricey luxury food established the council's "regular person" bona fides. Nobody has much sympathy for cries of oppression from people who'd pay a hundred bucks a pound for what is, essentially, potted meat.
But, as Ald. Burke made clear on Wednesday, foie gras is only the beginning. Dangerously fatty fried foods could be next. And, from there, a whole host of unhealthy/ cruel-to-animals/dangerous/just-plain-naughty stuff awaits.
Obviously sushi needs to go. Dramatically revealed by the Tribune to be a source of Moonie funding and -- almost as bad! -- full of toxic mercury, my favorite spicy tuna roll is already on the not-allowed-for-pregnant-women list. And, by the logic of new federal health guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "all women capable of conceiving a baby" are supposed to treat themselves as "pre-pregnant," avoiding dangers that might cause harm during the early weeks of an unplanned, undetected pregnancy. So, if raw fish is off-limits for women from 13 to 50, it's only fair to disallow it for everyone else, too. We wouldn't want to be ageist or sexist. And, anyway, who wants to hang out in a guys-only sushi bar?
Along the same lines, other items on the pregnant woman's forbidden list, like caffeine, alcohol, cigarettes, deli meat, steak tartare and bleu cheese, should probably also be banned in Chicago. There's really no such thing as being "too safe," is there?
It's for your own good, people
And, of course, we shouldn't stop with food.
We've banned driving-with-cell-phones and, as spectacularly effective as that's been, it's time to take a look at other risky behind-the-wheel behaviors as well. Like driving-while-tuning-the-radio and driving-on-the-Ryan-at-rush-hour, which doesn't carry much danger of high-speed crashes but does contribute to a lot of heart attacks and strokes. Come to think of it, just plain driving is kind of a menace to society. Not when I do it. But when all the rest of you do.
Once everyone is biking to work -- in helmets, knee pads, elbow protectors and light-reflective clothing -- the city will be a far better place.
That's when we can really make our move.
We can institute mandatory midday power naps, anger-management classes and tai chi lessons (proven to reduce industrial accidents, homicides and slips-and-falls, respectively).
And, even though I don't (yet) have a lot of science to back me up on this one, I'm also pretty sure that our quality of life will be vastly improved when everyone has to send each other thank-you notes whenever gifts are exchanged.
Sweating the small stuff
Some will say these proposals are absurd. These people have no vision.
They run around insisting that the city has larger problems to worry about, that we should be "fixing the schools" or "helping the homeless" rather than legislating the minutiae of personal behavior.
But, ultimately, isn't it personal behavior that will fix the schools? Aren't healthy foie-gras-and-french-fry-free children far more likely to do well on standardized achievement tests?
And can't all those now-forbidden cars be stacked up somewhere to create a highly efficient housing complex -- with personal stereos and air conditioning, even -- for the homeless?
It's time we finally started thinking big, Chicago. Real change begins with a single resolution.
It's always fun to check out the targeted-at-the-young-hipster-demographic ads that run during The Daily Show.
This week, there's been a blitz of commercials promoting the new, aged tequila, Cuervo Black Medallion. The tagline is "ask for Cuervo Black and cola." And all sorts of fabulous people are seen asking their super-cool bartenders for this concoction.
Is this truly the best they could do for an ad campaign?
Admittedly, I have probably, at some point in my lif (OK, let's call it "college") consumed a tequila-and-coke combination. But not really on purpose.
If tequila is going to be marketed at all (and it hardly seems necessary), wouldn't the best tagline be something like, "Tequila: it's efficient."
Department of Unsolicited Endorsements: Four fabulous maternity shops
Yes, what everyone says is absolutely true, maternity clothes are a lot better than they used to be. But they're still a little odd. (And heaven help you if you're looking for a semi-normal-looking business suit.)
Here are four awesome (if pricey) boutiques in Chicago with cool clothes:
Show and Tell (formerly Swell), 1206 W. Webster
Belly Dance, 1647 N. Damen
Kickin', 2142 W. Roscoe
Krista K., 3458 N. Southport
And, if you're up for a drive (hint: bring a snack), there's a really nice Maternity Works outlet store at the fancy new outlet mall in Aurora.
Between these places and the usual suspects (Carson's, Marshall Field's and Old Navy), it is almost possible to buy a reasonably cool pregnancy wardrobe.
A few weeks ago, my slightly crunchy (vegetarian, Dean-voting, Birkenstock-wearing) sister-in-law gave R. and I a great pregnancy "care package," which included some mother-to-be herbal tea, a book on how to give your kids non-conformist names and, most usefully, a pre-natal yoga video.
I'm enough of a yoga video fan that I've learned long ago to disregard the new age music and other silliness and just make use of the very nice stretching and breathing exercises. And, since I was quickly reaching the limits of my ability to follow my usual favorite, the well-sculpted and scantily-clad Rodney Yee, I immediately started using the one she'd given me.
It was, admittedly, even more ridiculous than your usual yoga fare.
First of all, there was the instructor, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, a (non-pregnant) woman in a white turban who reminds me of the flight attendant in the Airplane movies.
I checked out her bio on-line and found this:
Gurmukh is the co-founder and director of Golden Bridge Nite Moon, Los Angeles' premier center for the study and practice of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation. Since being baptized 35 years ago with the Sikh spiritual name meaning "One who helps people across the world ocean," Gurmukh has dedicated her life to fulfilling her namesake. For nearly three decades, students in Los Angeles and from around the world have sought out her classes in Kundalini Yoga, meditation, and pre-and post-natal care. She has been married for 22 years and has a 22 year old daughter who also lives in Los Angeles.
Throughout the video, Gurmukh offers up classic yoga-isms, like "Breathe through your pituitary gland," but what really makes the experience special is that she suggests all kinds of great suggestions for visualization exercises.
"Imagine yourself in a forest," she says (I'm paraphrasing here), "where you can give birth surrounded only by wise women." She's all about how you don't need Western medicine or how-to books and how great it would be if you could just squat in the woods to give birth.
Personally, while I do jive with the whole "I'm not sick; I'm pregnant" philosophy that holds that the average healthy woman doesn't need a ton of medical intervention when she gives birth, I am kind of a fan of Western medicine and its ability to, say, keep preemies alive and prevent women from dying in childbirth.
So I just tune out Gurmukh when she gets into the chanting weirdness, or substitute my own chants, like "Epi - Dur - Al" and "Lux - ur - y Birth - ing Suite."
In fact, I'd really come to enjoy my morning yoga routine. And I think of the other women in the video (Gurmukh's students) as people I know, sort of my compatriots in the whole pregnancy thing. (Even though, having been pregnant in 1998 when the video was made, they are now, presumably, the mothers of third graders.)
I hate the woman in the yellow and black outfit because she's ridiculously flexible. But I like the Asian woman in the red shirt, since she seems to be carrying her baby in the same uncomfortable "low" position that I am. And I really like the very pregnant woman in braided pigtails and black shorts who occassionally just stops doing whatever the prescribed yoga move is and takes a little rest. I bet she snacked a lot during the rehearsals.
Anyway, the whole thing had become so normal to me that I was completely unprepared for R.'s reaction to it, when, working in his home office, he happened to overhear Gurmukh's utterly ridiculous audio commentary. He was laughing so hard that he had to stop working and come out to the living room to see if I'd completly lost my mind and joined some sort of pregnancy cult.
If I were more technically skilled, I'd dub over Gurmukh with someone else's voice, like Rodney Yee's, saying things like, "Reach over the right. Now breathe. Now think about ice cream. Exhale."
For now, though, I'll just have to hang out with my imaginary yoga friends in private.
There is only one thing you can think about when you meet Nando Parrado for the first time. And, though it is not fair to base your entire impression of him on something he did more than 30 years ago, you find yourself doing it anyway.
Parrado has crossed a line that most of us will never even get close to. And you can't look at him without wondering how it has changed him.
One of 16 survivors of a 1972 plane crash in the Andes, Parrado spent 72 days in the mountains before hiking his way down to a remote settlement where he was able to summon help. Seventy-two days.
To save themselves from starvation, Parrado and his companions (mostly teammates in his rugby club) ate the bodies of those who had not survived the crash.
Parrado does not use the word cannibalism, though it is frequently applied to his story, made famous in Piers Paul Reed's 1974 book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (Avon: 416 pages, $7.99) and later made into a movie in which Parrado was portrayed by Ethan Hawke. The correct term, the word he uses if he uses one at all, is "necrophagy," which specifically refers to eating the flesh from corpses, rather than killing people for the purpose of eating them. Mostly, though, he makes allusions.
"What we did to survive," he'll say and you instantly understand what he means, "to us it was -- not unimportant -- but we had so many issues to deal with: the cold, the thirst. The mountains, they kill you."
No survivor's guilt
Parrado has just left the Borders bookstore on State Street and walked down the block to the bustling Atwood Cafe. He is dressed in a cashmere sweater and clutching a copy of Autosport magazine. He hates to be bored.
Explaining that he's just shaken 150 hands at the signing of his newly published memoir, Miracle in the Andes (Crown: 284 pages, $25), he quickly excuses himself to go wash up. You wonder about his fastidiousness. Was it always in him? Or, has his experience made the ritual of eating a meal somehow more significant?
When the waiter arrives, a slim European with an elegant accent, Parrado, who lives in Montevideo, Uruguay, orders his lunch in perfect French. He's having a Croque Madame, a grilled ham and cheese sandwich topped with a fried egg. You wonder if he ever had any trouble eating meat and you mumble something, trying to be light and funny but knowing you'll fail, about how you'd been trying to guess what he'd order. You decide to have the quiche.
He mentions that he's very hungry -- did he say "starving?" or did you just hear it that way? -- and hasn't eaten all day. He flew in from another bookstore appearance in Minneapolis this morning and, after oversleeping and then busting the zipper on his suitcase, didn't have time to grab breakfast before catching his plane. For anyone else, you figure, this would count as a bad travel day.
You ask if he is a nervous flier. He laughs.
"When I get around a beautiful woman, I get nervous," he says, "but no other times. No."
He tells you that only Americans ask this question. "And they always ask about survivor's guilt, too," he adds. "What is this, survivor's guilt? None of us have it. We're happy."
No counseling
All but one of the 16 survivors still live in Montevideo. Nine of them live in the same neighborhood. Their sons and nephews play for the same rugby club where they once played. They have not had counseling. Parrado sniffs with contempt -- a gesture you think of as particularly evocative of a certain South American machismo -- when he hears the word "closure."
Yes, he says, he has gone back to visit the site of the crash -- which requires three days on horseback to reach -- 11 times since the crash, but "just to put flowers on the graves of my mother, sister and friends."
"Now," he says, "I know a psychologist gets hold of this, they think all kinds of things," but Parrado is not interested in discussing those things.
For 20 years, he never spoke about the crash. "I was too busy," he says.
He recovered his strength, went to Europe, became a race car driver. He married Veronique, his wife, now, for 27 years, the mother of his two daughters. He started hosting a South American television show about auto racing and built his own production company.
In the aftermath of the crash, when a media frenzy surrounded the elated and shell-shocked survivors, they agreed that they would all cooperate with one journalist, Reed, to tell their story. Otherwise, they knew, there would have been dozens of books and dozens of competing versions of what happened.
Then, for the most part, they simply went on.
"Life goes on," Parrado says. "Life is simpler than it looks. . . . Everything we have faced after has seemed easy."
The 16 of them have a special bond, but they are not each others' only friends. Old friends re-connected with them after the crash. New ones have met them since, not always knowing their remarkable histories.
When they are together, though, there are certain things they can say to each other, things that other people might not understand.
Eat every sandwich, they say. Kiss every girl.
Parrado's escort has been hovering near the lunch table. He is due on the radio in five minutes.
But Parrado has just ordered some fresh strawberries and creme for dessert and he wants to stay to savor at least a few bites of it. The escort, though nervous, is not going to argue the point.
Finally, Parrado decides that he is ready to go.
"Eat every sandwich," he tells you as he leaves. And, strangely, it does not sound strange.
Friday's column: Encasing the nursery in bubble wrap
People don't generally try to freak out expectant parents. It just happens.
So I'm sure that when our friends came over for dinner the other night, with their adorable toddler son in tow, they had not actually planned to demonstrate that our lovingly remodeled home is, in fact, a nightmarish death trap.
It was, in fact, almost funny when their little boy, immediately upon entering our kitchen, went straight for the below-the-sink cabinet door behind which we store gallons of cleaning products and other toxic chemicals. And everyone laughed with only slightly less good humor when next he reached for the non-safety-compliant cords on the window blinds. But, by the time he went for the teetering piles of hardcovers on our living room bookshelves, no one was particularly amused.
His mother, in an utterly kind and non-judgmental tone, mentioned that we might consider hiring a baby-proofing consultant. For about $500, she said, someone came to their North Side home, identified all the potential hazards and then installed the necessary latches, locks and other fixes to make the place kid-friendly.
My husband and I silently exchanged horrified glances.
"Five hundred dollars?" he was thinking. "That's insane."
"No books on the lower shelves?" I was thinking. "That's impossible."
What price, safety?
Since then, I've become a little obsessed with the idea of baby-proofing. It is, for me, a philosophical quandary, a measure of not just of my readiness for motherhood but of my essential character, of the kind of person I am. And things are not looking good.
Because, I've got to tell you, when I read on the Web site of one baby-proofing service that, "Kitchen stoves, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves and dishwashers ... should be secured with guards, latches and straps," my immediate reaction is that I will not, under any circumstances, be locking up my refrigerator. Nor will I be buying a $13.95 Kidco toilet lock to prevent my child from drowning. Or even a $12.95 Plant Saver cover that could prevent my baby from eating fertilizer-tainted dirt from the pots that contain our long-suffering houseplants.
There is, of course, some possibility that I will one day be pulling my burned/soaked/poisoned child from the oven/toilet/window box and carting him or her to the emergency room, where someone, inevitably, will be waiting to hand me a copy of this column just before calling to report me to the mommy police.
"Oh," the mom cops will say, just before I am sentenced on charges of selfishness and attempting to maintain pre-baby aesthetic standards, "you're the one who thought your time was just too valuable to lock and unlock the toilet multiple times each day."
And then they'll punish me by redecorating my living room with plastic furniture in developmentally friendly primary colors. And hiding the grown-up books and sharp knives in locked cabinets that I can't reach.
Dr. Spock said it was OK
There's a certain blithe arrogance that accompanies the pre-parenthood phase of life. From an evolutionary point of view it's quite necessary, I'm sure, since none of us would reproduce if we fully understood all the consequences.
Still, there is a part of my brain that insists I am being completely realistic in believing that certain aspects of my life will not have to change in order to accommodate raising a child.
Six months from now, when I hire someone to encase my child's nursery in surgically sterile bubble wrap, it will be funny to look back on these days and on my current insistence that I'm not going to give in to the "age of anxiety" mentality that seems to govern modern yuppie parenting standards.
At the moment, though, it's my ambition to emulate my own parents' 1970s approach to baby care. Blissfully unaware of the many ways I faced death everyday -- from traveling without a car seat to riding a tricycle without a helmet -- they figured that I'd probably get into a lot of semi-dangerous stuff, but that I'd most likely survive it. Sticking my finger in an electrical socket was assumed to be the sort of thing that I'd only have to do once before figuring out it was not the best idea.
Peer pressure
Of course, this is precisely the sentiment that, when expressed by an expectant parent in the presence of actual, current, modern-day, educated-about-all-the-risks parents, is greeted with polite, isn't-that-quaint laughter.
Because they know that even if you could live with the idea that you had placed your own desire to open the refrigerator without the use of a combination lock above your desire to keep your child safe, you'd never be able to admit it in public.
OK, so I keep trying to convince myself that it was just pregnancy-related hormone weirdness that had me yelling at the television last night and crying tears of frustration. But, the truth of the matter is that I've done it before (though not so much the crying part.)
And the thing that had me going was the interview with Franklin Graham. (Read a partial transcript of the interview here.)
He's a "spiritual advisor" to President Bush and is rightly credited with encouraging the evangelical community to show compassion for people impacted by HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa.
Franklin was talking about the "moral imperative" of the AIDS pandemic. And he's right about that.
Of course he left unsaid the widespread feeling that the women and children of Africa are "innocent" victims of AIDS, while the drug users, sex workers and others who make up a large portion of the infected population globally are somehow less deserving of compassion. I'm not super-familiar with the Bible, but I'm pretty sure Jesus wasn't into making those distinctions.
More than that, though, it was Franklin's stance on prevention programs that had me going crazy.
Because, while he can rightly claim some credit for influencing the US policy that has provided vital medicines for 2 million AIDS sufferers worldwide, he is also the person most responsible for continually whispering in the President's ear that the US should not support sex education and condom distribution programs.
Around the world, community organizations face the terrible choice of missing out on US funds and medicines if they dare to educate people (including, I might add, married women) on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.
15 million people have become newly infected with AIDS. How many of them might have been spared this fate if they'd had basic education and access to condoms?
Is it really better for the state of person's soul that they get infected than that they make the practical, personal choice to use a condom? I'm at a loss to understand what is "moral" about that. I have a hard time seeing it as anything other than digustingly cruel.
Personally, I don't believe in hell. But Franklin Graham does. I'd like to ask him who he thinks winds up in hell. Because it seems like an excellent place for someone who would condemn millions to death and call it "moral."
I just want two minutes with Graham. I just want to ask him, "Are you sure? Are you absolutely positive that sex is such a sin that you're willing to condemn people to death for it? Would you rather watch your own children suffer and die than give them a chance to protect themselves? Why do some people get to be 'born again' after a lifetime of sin while others get no second chance?"
I don't want to send him a letter. I don't want to write a column about him. I just want to talk to him. And, failing that, I want to scream at him.
In the Frontline documentary, there's a section about Uganda. They had a hugely successful public health campaign there, which has gone a long way toward bringing new infection rates way down. President Bush even showed up there to praise it.
And then his administration's policies, via PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS Relief, backed the Ugandan government into dismantling a key component of it.
It was the ABC approach: Abstinence, Be faithful and Condoms. Now, it's pretty much just AB. And, if that doesn't work for you, or your partner isn't honest with you . . . well, too bad.
A Ugandan health educator, Noerine Kaleeba, is interviewed in the Frontline piece and says, of this development,
"I have met President Bush twice. He strikes me as a very brilliant, very passionate and very caring person. But when I contrast the President Bush that I have met with the policies and practices that are coming out of the United States, I can't reconcile it.
I can't, either. Where is the compassion from these men who once called themselves compassionate conservatives?
