I've been lucky enough, when "the news" has touched my life at all, to be on this side of it, the side that gets to tell the story. And, somehow, because I always felt like I was at least trying to be fair and accurate, I never truly understood where the popular conception that we in the dreaded MainStreamMedia can't be trusted to get things right.
But in reading and seeing the coverage of Senator Obama's trip to Africa, I increasingly have the sense we, collectively, come up short in telling some of the most important truths.
I was heartbroken and frustrated to read yesterday's dispatch from Kenya. (Lynn Sweet's story in the Sun-Times was headlined, "An eager welcome in a notorious slum.")
When you know a place and, more importantly, when you know people there, it is never just a "notorious slum." This is, I suspect, as true for East Africa as for the West Side of Chicago or the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans.
So, when reports describe the "ragged canvas tents and shacks covered with corrugated roofs," it bothers me that they don't note the often incredibly fastidious interiors of those dwellings, which often feature beautiful carved wood furniture and lace tablecloths.
Yes, there is garbage and sewage in the streets and, yes, the smell can be intolerable, especially on a hot day. But people's homes and clothes are generally strikingly clean.
And, no, there isn't much in the way of a formal economy or regular commerce, but, in the complete absence of regular employers and industry, many of the people of Kibera have carved out incredibly entrepreneurial ways to support themselves.
Through my volunteer work with Global Alliance for Africa, I've come to know two amazing women, Jackie and Josephine, who have organized a women's co-operative in Kibera that is helping dozens of these micro-enterprises grow.
I don't claim any deep knowledge of The Truth About Africa or any such thing. At the end of the day, I'm just a very fortunate white woman in Chicago who has had the chance to travel to these places a few times and do a very small amount of work there. But, even with the little I know, I understand that there is so much more to the place than the hopeless poverty/sick children snapshots that make the news from time to time.
As a "notorious slum," Kibera sounds like a hopeless place. But as Jackie and Josephine's neighborhood, it is humbling and inspiring and the location of something that, on a good day, might be called optimism.
We have a name: Gilbert for a boy or Gillian for a girl.
Actually, a name might not be enough. We might actually have to give our firstborn child to Gillware, the data recovery specialists in Madison, WI who rescued EVERYTHING off my damaged hard drive.
(Special note to Erin: I know sarcasm is not always easy to catch in written form, so, yes, I am SERIOUSLY comparing my broken computer to the priceless life of a child. Because that is the kind of person I am.)
R. seems to believe that just paying them the $700 (!) is enough, but, really, can something like this be rewarded in mere currency? We're talking about karma here.
And, while he says he wasn't in it for the glory, exactly, he did have certain ideas about redeeming himself, most of which have not really worked out.
I've called his cell phone multiple times to arrange our lunch meeting. Each time, he's called me back from a different land line. Most of them have had different area codes. He says he's "between homes" right now, mostly staying with friends around the country, living off a Social Security check he collects under a different name.
Two days before we're supposed to meet, he tells me what time.
One day before we're supposed to meet, he tells me the place will be "on the South Side."
A few hours before we're supposed to meet, he picks the restaurant: Fox's Pizza in Orland Park.
Maintains secret identity
Meeting Cooley, the former mob lawyer whose testimony in the "Operation Gambat" federal corruption probe of the 1990s resulted in more than 30 convictions, has something of a Spy-vs-Spy feeling to it. Though Cooley has declined to participate in the formal federal witness protection program, he does receive some assistance from the government in maintaining a new -- theoretically secret -- identity.
So I settle into a booth near the bar and try to look casual as I wait for him to arrive. I've seen 10-year-old photos of him and have a general idea of what he looks like, and somehow I've convinced myself that I'll be able to spot him when he arrives. When the first slightly edgy-looking middle-age Irish-looking guy settles in alone at the bar, I realize this is a complete delusion.
By the time the third similar-looking guy arrives, I realize that I've been staring at them all so intently that I must appear to have a real thing for pale-faced goodfellas. And it dawns on me that Cooley is only partly committed to lying low. Real anonymity is just not in his nature.
Cooley, of course, shows up at exactly this moment. Keeping his baseball cap and sunglasses on indoors, he is immediately the most conspicuous person in the room. If there is, as has been claimed, a million-dollar bounty on his head, sharing a pizza with him in these circumstances is not the brightest thing I've ever done.
Nor, indeed, does Cooley seem to be particularly adept at flying under the radar. As he sits down, he's talking a mile a minute about the lawsuit that is currently hindering his ability to sell the TV and movie rights to his true crime memoir, When Corruption Was King (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 384 pages, $26.)
A former associate who Cooley says in his 2004 book raped a young woman and then paid her hush money is suing for libel.
'I'm not making this up'
I'm interested in what makes a guy like Cooley tick, how the son of a hardworking and resolutely honest Irish-Catholic South Side cop grows up to be a "fixer" for the Chicago Outfit, handing out bribes to keep wise guys out of jail. And I want to know what made him give it all up. And if it has been worth it.
But Cooley has other ideas. He wants to talk about Ed Vrdolyak and Donald Stephens and how he told the feds about the Hired Truck Program years ago but couldn't get anyone to do anything about it. He wants to explain the links he sees between the modern Hispanic Democratic Organization and the 1st Ward Machine of the old days.
"I'm not making this up," he insists repeatedly, as I take it all in, knowing that it is largely unprovable and, therefore, unprintable.
Things are different now than they were in those pre-Greylord, pre-Silver Shovel days, he says, but not entirely.
"When I first came in," he says, describing the moment he walked into the offices of the Organized Crime Strike Force and offered to become a cooperating witness, "my only goal was to clean up the court system. In New York, they had a few corrupt cops, a few corrupt judges. But in Chicago, it was the whole system. In Chicago, we owned it."
Now, he says, the Outfit has been effectively neutralized -- "They don't kill people. They don't collect a street tax." -- and the court system is far cleaner.
These are the great accomplishments of Cooley's life. In achieving them, he has lost his livelihood -- his license to practice law was taken away as a result of the numerous shady dealings he confessed to in his testimony -- and his identity and many of his friends.
Once a womanizer with a luxe lifestyle, he has become something of a loner, counting on a few close friends for financial support and a spare bed.
I ask him if it was worth it. He says yes, then seems to change his mind.
I ask him if he'd do it again. He says no.
Bob Cooley thought he'd be a hero -- the guy who brought down the mob. But instead, he came to be seen as a rat, the kind of minor player worth maybe a single episode on "The Sopranos."
Even the U.S. attorneys and federal agents involved in Gambat (an abbreviated reference to attorney Cooley's gambling habits) seemed to find him distasteful, going out of their way to distance themselves from his role in securing the Gambat convictions. His father, James Cooley, was lost to Alzheimer's before he could ever know that his wild and rebellious son had finally done the right thing and gone straight.
'They won't kill me'
No one thanked him. He has largely been forgotten.
And this is probably the thing that gets at him most.
"People confuse my convictions," he says, referring to the cases that turned on his testimony against former clients and associates, "with [the Operation] Greylord" corruption investigation.
He tells me he's thinking of coming back. Living here in the Chicago area and just seeing what happens.
"They won't kill me," he says, with a certain amount of bravado. "What would be the point?"
Friday's column: Resisting the pull of fabulous baby furniture
The single greatest thing my husband did when we were getting married was to leave the country for several weeks. There really wasn't a huge amount of work involved in organizing our simple 60-person wedding, or even in combining our two single households into one, but the few tasks that did exist were made infinitely simpler by the fact that only one of us was making the decisions.
I did, of course, consult with him on the important stuff, and saved all the receipts on purchases made with our joint credit card. But not the itemized receipts. Please.
And, to this day, I believe our marriage has gotten off to a very healthy start due in no small part to the fact that he does not know how much "we" paid for the cool-looking stainless steel trash can in our kitchen or the high-design recycling bin that goes with it.
Lately, I find myself feeling a little wistful for those last, heady days of independence. Because it's time for us to start buying baby stuff. And, apparently, we are going to have to do this together.
Baby minimalism is very chic
I fancy myself a hip, postmodern mother-to-be. So I'm not getting wrapped up in the marketing-driven hysteria that says there are approximately 7,000 "must have" items for a newborn child's nursery.
My role model in this is my best friend, who, when shopping for her newborn daughter, routinely dismissed certain items as "infantilizing" or "childish." Having a child, she declared, was no reason to throw good taste out the window -- Disney characters simply don't belong on clothes or furniture -- or to start accumulating tons and tons of sparkly plastic junk.
All that notwithstanding, though, there are certain, completely irrational and utterly materialistic "needs" that I'm stuck on. Like buying a beautiful hardwood crib with a matching dresser.
Yes, I know that all the cribs sold in stores meet government safety standards. And that a baby is unlikely to have a strong opinion about room decor. And that a perfectly good used dresser could be bought cheaply and refinished to (almost) match a new crib, saving us hundreds of dollars. But none of that makes any difference to me.
Attempts to discuss this topic generally follow a predictable pattern.
HUSBAND: [Logical point #1]
ME: True.
HUSBAND: [Logical point #2]
ME: Yes, I can see that.
HUSBAND: [Logical point #3]
ME: Right. Absolutely.
HUSBAND: [Logical conclusion, drawn from points 1 - 3]
ME: Hmm, yeah. But I still want the pretty one at the expensive furniture place.
Economics 101
While I don't have a lot of logic to draw upon, I do have several key arguments on my side. First, there's the whole "bearing your child" thing, which does give me a certain moral authority on baby-related topics. Still, I try not to play the pregnancy card too much. It's demeaning.
Instead, I've tried to make an economic case for the fancy crib/dresser purchase. This is always a dangerous tactic when you are an English major married to an MBA, but I find that, sometimes, if I talk fast and throw in enough terms like "sunk cost" and "demand curve," I can make it work. With the baby furniture thing, I begin with the assumption (because, in my experience, the difference between a slightly shaky economic theory and a Nobel Prize is pretty much just the boldness of the assumptions) that we are going to have multiple children. Then, I extend the cost of the furniture over a very long "useful life" and it turns out that it actually pays for itself. Sort of. If you also assume certain key changes in the federal tax code.
If this gambit doesn't work, I'll have to move from argument to negotiation mode. The play here is to reluctantly "give up" something I don't really want in exchange for the crib and dresser set. Unfortunately, we worked together on assembling our list of baby needs and most of the fat, like the Pratesi crib sheets and the Alexander Calder mobile, has already been trimmed. And the wretchedly ugly plastic car seat is a legal requirement.
The baby-industrial complex
When you're expecting a child, there's a whole baby-industrial complex out there just waiting to suck you in, alternately playing on your fears and on your incredible vulnerability to all things cute and tiny. (The little socks! The itty-bitty hats!)
It's deeply insulting, of course, this totally retro idea that, somehow, the brains of pregnant women turn to mush and they lose the ability to, say, look at a price tag or make a rational purchase decision.
But as much as I hate to admit it, there is something to the notion that, in the midst of an experience that represents a fundamental loss of your ability to control even your own body, there is something empowering about being able to buy something beautiful. And lasting. And utterly free of Disney characters and sparkling plasticity.
Several weeks ago, I watched this extraordinary documentary on PBS, A Lion in the House. The short description of it is that it's about kids with cancer, but that definitely doesn't do it justice.
I mean, to be sure, I was sobbing hopelessly by the end, but I also found it deeply engaging and complicated.
When someone is terminally ill, we all tend to say things about wanting him or her to have a "good death," to be at peace, not in pain. Intellectually, we agree that it's "cruel" to prolong someone's suffering with heroic measures that can technically extend life, but do nothing to maintain its quality.
In watching this documentary, though, I got a real sense for just how hard it is to see those distinctions when the patient in question is your loved one, and, especially, your young child.
None of these parents wanted their kids to die in a hospital bed, attached to a bunch of tubes and machines, scared and struggling.
But they also had to be absolutely sure in their own minds that they had done everything possible to save the child.
I've probably come to that point with my damaged hard drive.
The dudes at Geek Squad decreed that nothing on it could be salvaged.
So, on Monday, I went and re-claimed it from them and shipped it off to some high-end "recovery specialists" (yes, my hard drive is in rehab) in Madison, WI.
This morning, the cheeseheads called and gave me a diagnosis of "total mechanical failure." The only hope for rescuing whatever might be left of the novel inovlves taking the drive into a "clean room" and completely disassembling it.
There is, of course, an extra charge for this service.
And, baby, I am paying it.
Because, even though my brain is telling me that the sooner I accept that the material is lost, the better off I'll be, I just have to be able to say that I did everything possible. No gentle goodnight for my hard drive; it's heroic measures all the way.
In an odd side note to all of this, I think that being pregnant has actually helped me through this whole ordeal, which is supposed to be a writer's absolute worst nightmare. I read this article about the effects of elevated progesterone levels on the brain, which says, in part,
During the third trimester of pregnancy, women secrete 20 times more progesterone than during the last two weeks of their normal menstrual cycle. Despite the discomfort of carrying excess weight, many women describe that they never felt better in their lives than during the third trimester of their pregnancies!
So, despite probably having lost a year's worth of work, I've got that blissed-out "everything zen" feeling about life. Which, honestly, is completely out of character.
My first, incredibly clueless, experience of the Air and Water show came in 1998. I was living up in Edgewater then, at Bryn Mawr and Sheridan, and was in my apartment minding my own business when a couple of fighter planes buzzed overhead, bringing with them a terrifying rumble that shook the whole building.
I jumped to the most logical conclusion possible: that Canada was invading us.
So I immediately switched on CNN for details. They were in serious breaking news mode, following U.S. air strikes against Sudan in retaliation for the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. I remember thinking, "Who knew that Canada and the Sudan had a secret alliance?"
In the years that followed, I never really did learn to stop worrying and love the air show.
In 2002, I thought, surely there's no way they're going to allow the planes to fly around the Loop high rises anymore, right? I mean, that's just freaky and scary -- not entertaining.
What do I know?
By then, I was dating R., who studied aerospace engineering as an undergrad and can come up with the model names and key details of most planes on sight. We sat on the beach that year and watched the air show and I did find it pretty cool.
Showing off our military might in those pre-Iraq days seemed, well, a little overly rah-rah America for my tastes, but not really in a bad way.
Years later, I still haven't quite sorted out my thoughts on the air show and my experience of it this year was even more complicated than usual.
On the pro side: Watching R., his brother (also an engineer) and 6-year-old nephew get completely geeked out by all the cool technical wizardry of the stuff.
On the con side: Military recruiters eager to chat up obviously enthusiastic 6-year-old nephew.
Pro: Great excuse to sit by lake on summer day.
Con: Hot, crowded, noisy.
Pro: Anti-war protestors offer opportunity for discussion of current issues.
Con: Protesters seem kind of lame and spoil-sport-ish.
Pro: All this impressive military might is on our side.
Con: Much of this impressive military might is being used to target places in the world where the concept of "bombing them back into the stone age" is not that much of a conceptual leap.
It was one of the hottest days of the summer, with the thermometer approaching the 100-degree mark. I was grateful to be in a cool city bus with my daughter, traveling down Fifth Avenue from 80th Street.
The bus was getting more crowded, with a number of people standing.
At one stop, right after a very pregnant woman came aboard, the driver made the following announcement:
“If someone does not get up and give this woman a seat by the next stop, I will turn off the air-conditioning.�
Someone immediately got up and offered this most appreciative woman her seat.
Katrina Markoff arrives a little late for lunch, breathlessly explaining that she has been testing a new product and things aren't going well.
"It's just too hot in Chicago right now," she says. "Nothing is working."
Markoff, the 33-year-old entrepreneur behind Vosges Haut-Chocolate, the gourmet chocolate company with the distinctive purple packaging, offers up a small white takeout food box as evidence: The truffles inside are delicious, but disk flat. Definitely not up to Vosges' (it's pronounced by combining "Vo" --as in Vogue magazine -- with a very French "j" sound, in a single syllable, sort of like "Voujsh") usual standards.
Though frustrated by her morning's work, Markoff seems delighted to have escaped her test kitchen for a relaxing hour at Tiffin, a favorite Devon Avenue Indian restaurant with a bustling buffet line.
"I've always been fascinated with the Indian culture," says Markoff, who grew up the child of a committedly bohemian mother in Fort Wayne, Ind., "and that Naga truffle [a blend of milk chocolate with coconut and sweet Indian curry powder Markoff first cooked up in her North Side apartment nine years ago] really sparked the whole idea of Vosges."
'Rebelled against Cool Whip'
Since Markoff opened her first small chocolate shop at 2105 W. Armitage in 1998, her company has grown from that single store, where she and a partner staffed the counter, to a multimillion-dollar enterprise with stores in Chicago, New York and Las Vegas, plus a catalog and online business. It has consistently earned a spot on Inc. magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the country.
In some ways, Markoff says, it all seems meant-to-be.
As a kid, she recalls, "at our garage sale every year, I'd always bake the Easy-Bake oven cakes and sell them with lemonade." Those early sales led to a small business, opened as a high schooler, with friend and early partner in Vosges, Julie Ruedebusch. Selling "strawberry delight cake" to teachers, her parents' friends and a local country club, Markoff was a young gourmet who "rebelled against Cool Whip."
After college at Vanderbilt University, where her course of study -- psychology and chemistry -- seemed perfectly suited for a budding chocolatier, Markoff headed to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and then traveled the world for a year, checking out exotic spice markets and other culinary adventures.
'A storytelling thing'
Markoff retains that spirit of adventure, sampling from nearly every dish on the buffet, and regularly concocting highly original flavor pairings, like bacon-and-chocolate or chocolate-and-yam, each of which feature in her latest collection of truffles.
"We're calling it 'Groove,'" she says, "and the idea is tracing different genres of music, specifically African-American music. So you begin with the oldest field songs, represented by more traditional African flavors like yams and spices, and make your way to hip-hop, with Krug champagne and gold leaf. The collection comes with a CD that has a song for each genre, along with an explanatory booklet."
As she sips a mango lassi, Markoff nearly bubbles over with enthusiasm for this "multi-sensory, multi-media chocolate collection," which represents the latest extension of the super-high-end Vosges brand.
"The brand isn't just about really good chocolate," Markoff says, "it's almost a lifestyle."
For Markoff, who seems to blend an artsy, yoga-influenced hippie-chick persona with serious entrepreneurial savvy, the incredible growth of her business has come as something of a surprise. Her attitude in the early days, she says now, was "there's nothing to lose."
She soon decided to buy out her partner Ruedebusch, since "she felt like there was actually a lot to lose."
"These things are hard," Markoff says now, "because we were friends since grade school."
But Markoff says she just had to see where this idea -- "traveling the world through chocolate" -- would lead.
"It is huge," she says now, with a Valley Girl-esque lilt. "It's unbelievable. And everyone is doing the exotic thing now. ... For me, I never really did it as a trend. I did it as a storytelling thing."
In keeping with her vision, Markoff hasn't taken on any more partners or accepted any private equity investment, though she says, "A lot of people are wanting to invest. They think chocolate is the next big Starbucks thing."
In fact, Markoff, who was married in September 2005, first met her husband, a real estate developer, when he proposed a business partnership. She turned that offer down, but accepted his next proposal, which came several years later.
Now he's helping plan some future retail sites for Vosges, while Markoff focuses on streamlining their manufacturing operations and exploring the possibility of building a highly efficient and environmentally friendly "green" factory somewhere in Chicago.
First, though, she's got to get these new truffles right. Pushing her slightly tousled hair back into a tiny clip, Markoff declares that she has got to run.
"At this point," she says, "I feel like I could work forever and not get done."
Then she smiles and takes a deep breath, inhaling the heady aroma of spices that hangs in the restaurant. The idea of never being done seems to have some real appeal.
William Kaper is apparently unfamiliar with the Saturn test. Kaper, the Barrington attorney who made headlines by suing the ex-wife he'd hoped to re-marry in order to get back the $98,000 engagement ring he'd given her, says he was shocked -- shocked! -- by the raw materialism of the dozens of angry women who left nasty messages on his office phone last week.
"All of them disliked me," he said, sounding just a little too sensitive for the aggressive litigator he actually is, "but none of them even knew me."
The basic gist of the messages was that Kaper's ex-wife was absolutely entitled to keep the five-carat diamond ring, even if they didn't re-marry, as a kind of payment for spending time with him. This line of reasoning struck Kaper, who says he's given his ex-wife lots of other expensive gifts over the years, as rather crass.
But if Kaper is offended by grabbing, gold-digging women, he might want to consider ditching the luxury cars -- a Rolls Royce and a Porsche -- he usually drives and cruising the streets of Barrington in a Saturn instead.
It's all about being honest. Sort of.
I've always found it funny to hear guys who drive expensive cars and throw around a lot cash complain about how women only seem to be interested in them for their money. (The female equivalent of this, of course, is the woman who goes clubbing in a micro-mini and halter top, then wonders why the men she attracts don't seem to value her intelligence.)
Kaper, for his part, says he's tried to avoid this problem by telling women when he first meets them that he works at the post office or sells insurance. And he doesn't show them his $30 million-dollar estate, he says, until the end of the first date.
"After they've seen my home," he says, "they really, really like me. And I don't think it's my good looks or personality or the fact that I like to dance."
When, chatting with him by phone Thursday afternoon, I asked if he'd ever considered waiting a little longer to show off the trappings of his luxe lifestyle, he laughed and answered, "Well, I have to take some advantage of what I have."
And, anyway, he continued, "you have to tell the truth at some point."
Breach of contract
As far as Kaper was concerned the suit he filed against his ex, Dr. Mary Ann Rosanova-Kaper, whom he refers to these days as "Dr. Kaper," was "really just a breach-of-contract suit."
The ring was meant to celebrate an engagement, he says, and, when it became clear that the engagement was off, he wanted it back.
But for a lot of women -- especially the ones who called his office to let him know what they thought of him -- the issue was not nearly so straightforward.
The explanation we like to give in public is that gifts like jewelry are supposed to represent a certain sentiment and, therefore, transcend material value. If we're holding on to a ring from an ex-fiance or a necklace from a former boyfriend, it's because of what the token meant at the time, not some petty concern about what it's now worth.
Unfortunately, when we try to articulate this, it often comes out as, "Honey, I earned that rock!" -- a sentiment that, to the untrained ear, might sound just the slightest bit like an admission of prostitution.
But, really, this is not what we mean.
If you get us in private, though, and ply us with a couple of cocktails, we will generally admit that there might be just the tiniest bit of avarice involved in the whole gifts-from-exes thing. Because getting a guy to give you an outrageously expensive gift is roughly equivalent to shooting a lion on safari. Who wouldn't want to hang on to a trophy that so celebrates your hunting prowess?
Live by the sword, die by the sword
It's a funny thing about $100,000 engagement rings and other such baubles: they so rarely seem to come from Mr. Right.
And while Kaper, who describes himself as a poor South Side kid made good, certainly seems like a nice enough guy, he is also the sort of fellow who just happened to mention the dollar value of his house -- twice -- in our 20-minute phone conversation. He does not seem to subscribe to the it's-the-thought-that-counts school of gift-giving.
As Kaper's suit, which is being withdrawn now that Rosanova-Kaper has given back the ring, briefly emerged as yet another skirmish in the ongoing battle of the sexes, the discussions it generated all seemed to boil down to one essential question: Who started modern courtship down this path of bling-encrusted materialism? Was it men, using money as a shorthand for expressing their emotions, or women, willingly accepting (or even encouraging) the substitution?
I wish I had the answer. But I married a guy who drove me home from our first date in his 5-year-old Saturn.
I can't say that I didn't see it coming. My home computer (a four-year old Dell desktop) had all the symptoms of a terminally ill young mother in a Lifetime TV movie. Tragedy hung in the air.
But, as the grieving spouse always ends up saying, "I thought we had more time." Denial is a powerful thing.
If I were smarter, I would have burned a jillion CDs and printed out a bunch of hard copies of things. Instead, I made a brilliant and elaborate plan, which is always, with me, where things start to go bad.
"This is actually a great opportunity," I told myself, as the computer slowed down ominiously, crashed repeatedly, and developed a hacking cough.
R. and I had decided to clear all of our work stuff out of the second bedroom anyway and streamline our work-at-home operations. I could de-commission the bulky desktop and transfer the work-related files to my Sun-Times-issued laptop.
And the few personal things, like the early scribblings for what will surely, someday, be recognized as The Next Great American Novel, could be moved to a portable hard drive that I could use with R.'s computer.
Perhaps when the message from Dell -- "Your warranty expires in 10 days." -- popped up in its own, red-framed window, I should have had a greater sense of urgency.
But no. I was busy. And heading out of town on a mini-vacation. I never got around to buying that external drive.
The warranty expired on Monday the 14th.
On Tuesday the 15th, I turned on the computer (an operation that involves jiggling the on-off switch with a filet knife) to find that the drive was dead.
I called Dell and talked to "Andy" (unless this is a newly common name in Madras, I think it's safe to assume that this is a call center alias) in technical support.
Andy was very nice, I'm sure, and, anyway, was either completely immune to, or totally unfamiliar with, the concept of sarcasm. (Me: "Yes, thanks for pointing out that the warranty expired yesterday."; Him: "You're very welcome, ma'am.")
But Andy's job is really just to read through the pre-scripted index cards. He's not much on emotional support. And I seriously doubt he could even vaguely imagine the scene in my home office as he instructed me on how to test to see if this was really a hard drive failure or simply a problem with, say, a cable or connection.
I suppose that's for the best, actually.
As he told me how to open up the computer and move around various parts of its "guts," I was crouched on the carpet, hunched over the CPU, which sits in a cabinet inside my desk, trying to find some position in which my giant belly was not in the way. Within minutes, I was sweating profusely (I'd been out all day and the A/C had been turned down), so, keeping "Andy" on speaker phone, I stripped down to my underwear and kept working on the computer.
This, incidentally, is the scene that R. came home to last night: giant, half-naked pregnant woman disassembling computer. Surely that is the stuff of serious nightmares.
Anyway, "Andy's" job was to go through as many tests as possible to determine that this truly was a hard drive problem. My focus was really on the whole "I want my novel back!" issue.
After an hour on the phone, I was actually close to sobbing. "I just want to take the computer somewhere and have someone try to recover what's on the hard drive," I said.
"Andy" gave me a phone number to call for data recovery to call. Once we were done "troubleshooting."
After two hours on the phone, including about 10 minutes of hold time while "Andy" checked a few things with his supervisor, he declared, "Well, I have some good news for you."
Because I am a hopeless idiot, I actually got excited. "What's that?" I asked, sounding like a six year old.
"Even though the warranty has expired, we are sending you a new hard drive," he said. "You'll just need to replace this one and then re-install all the original software. You do still have the original software CDs, don't you?"
The good news might as well have been that he just saved a bundle on his car insurance.
I started explaining that I wasn't sure if I did have the original CDs and, actually, downloading the software (his proposed solution to that problem) was going to be a bit difficult, too, what with THE COMPUTER NOT WORKING and all.
Then my cell phone dropped the call.
R., who is no fool, had quickly vacated the premises and gone to a business dinner. So there I was: on the carpet, sweating, crying, cursing, holding various computer parts in my hand and reminding myself of all the actually-great writers who have lost manuscripts in fires and other catastrophes. With me, the scene was not so much tragic as just plain pathetic.
I put my clothes back on, stuffed the computer's remains into a big backpack and hiked down Clybourn Avenue to Best Buy, home of the Geek Squad.
I don't know that it's possible to retain any dignity while handing your hard drive over to the 19-year-old tech guy and telling him that your novel is in there -- no, really! -- and, um, no you hadn't been backing up the files regularly. Somehow, when this was a plot line on Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw managed to do it with a little more panache, but the whole hugely pregnant thing sort of detracts from one's ability to be cool.
Geek boy says he'll call in a few days to let me know what, if anything, can be recovered. In the meanwhile, I have decided not to open the drawer where the old drafts and hard copies are stored. I choose to believe that most everything is there and I'm not sure I could handle finding out otherwise.
Sunday Lunch with WNBA players Stacey Lovelace and Jia Perkins
Here's how the WNBA is different from the NBA: When Chicago Sky players Stacey Lovelace and Jia Perkins arrive, escorted by a publicist, for our lunch interview, the first thing they do is ask the publicist for some cash so they'll have enough for cab fare on the way home.
Perkins, a single mother, has brought 2-year-old Aalirah along for a kid-friendly meal at the extra-touristy Ed Debevic's. Lovelace's daughter Ryann, who turned 3 on Friday, is vacationing out of town with her dad.
"How's the potty training going?" Lovelace asks Perkins, who rolls her eyes to indicate that it has been a bit of a struggle. "You have to make a really big deal out of everything," she advises, "which makes you sound kind of stupid, if you listen to yourself."
Mother-and-professional-athlete is a relatively new twist on the whole working mother thing, but for these two women, it's all they've ever known.
Lovelace, 32, took two seasons off from the WNBA to marry high school sweetheart Brian Tolbert and then give birth to Ryann. She returned to the European professional leagues -- playing in France -- when her daughter was just 4 months old.
For Perkins, the turnaround was even faster. After playing for Texas Tech through the first four months of her pregnancy, she arrived for training camp with the WNBA's Charlotte Sting when Aalirah was just 1 month old.
"She stayed with my mom in Texas," she says now, eliciting a nod of sympathy from Lovelace, who has regularly relied on her own mother for child care, especially while Tolbert has been pursuing his own pro basketball career in Europe.
"Ryann was 9 months old the first time I had to leave her," Lovelace recalls. "I was still breast-feeding then [when she was invited to try out for the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx], so it was, 'OK, guess I'd better wean her.' It wasn't hard on her as much as it was on me."
Lovelace remembers an early road trip with the team, when she was still using an electric breast pump to collect milk for Ryann. "I was rooming with one of the young rookies," she says, "and she happened to come back to the room when I was pumping. She looked like she didn't know what to think. But finally she said to me, 'OK, I can see that you're all really adults. This really is a professional thing.' When you play in college, you know, it's still just a game. But this is a job. I don't think she'd really gotten that before."
More accommodating in Europe
When Lovelace was a high school standout in Detroit, she had no idea a professional basketball career might be open to her. "I would have never thought 10 years after college, I'd still be playing," she says.
For Perkins, 25, the possibilities were only slightly more broad. "I used to think about trying out for the NBA," she says, "but once I knew about [professional women's teams], that was my goal."
Each has played in Europe, where, in contrast to the still-struggling 14-team league here, almost every country has a thriving league of a dozen or more teams. The season there is longer, which makes for a slightly less grueling schedule; games are played about once a week.
And, of course, Lovelace adds, "The money is better."
But, beyond that, she continues, "They're just so accommodating to players. When I first went over, [Ryann] was 4 and a half months old. And one month into it, Brian, a professional basketball player in Europe, got a spot with a team. So I was alone in France with a 51/2-month-old baby. The coach said I could miss some morning practices if I had to, and even though I think I only did it a couple of times, they rearranged my workouts, and it was so nice just to know that I could have that flexibility."
Perkins looks wide-eyed at the thought of it.
"Here," Lovelace says, "I'd like to have her in day care, but it's $300 a week. We don't make that kind of money. I really believe the league should be doing something to help us. We're talking about women. . . . The women's soccer league had a network of nannies in each city, I heard."
Something to celebrate
Lovelace might be coming to the end of her WNBA career. She and Tolbert would like to have more children, but, she says, "it will have to be after basketball." Spending much of the year overseas, away from family and friends, has become more difficult, and she has started to think about what life might look like, post-basketball. She has done some substitute teaching in the off-season and might be interested in a broadcast career.
"I don't know what I want to do, career-wise," Perkins says. She'll likely head to Europe after this season but isn't sure how best to take care of Aalirah while she's so far away from her usual support system.
The cheeseburgers, fries and milk shakes the women have ordered up for their post-practice lunch are just about to arrive, so Perkins steps away for a moment to see if she can get Aalirah to use the restaurant's bathroom.
She returns to the table pumping her fist in victory.
And Lovelace cheers, too, knowing how important it is to celebrate these things.
A solution to the whole pregnant woman on a train dilemma? Feministing has a great story, via Reuters, about the Japanese Health Ministry's distribution of "I am pregnant" badges to women (who, incidentally, don't actually have to prove they're pregnant) so that fellow commuters will offer them seats on crowded trains.
The comments that follow are interesting, especially the question of why, exactly, offering your seat to a pregnant woman is the chivalrous thing to do. Is it the weight or the nausea?
Before being pregnant, I'd always assumed it was the weight -- a free seat as compensation for having to carry around a 20+ pound burden and, um, continuing the human race.
But, while I never really had morning sickness, I do now grasp that the nausea/dizziness aspect of the first trimester when, if you're lucky, it's not at all obvious that you are pregnant, is a pretty big deal. Of course, so is going to work with the flu. Or a hangover.
In theory, you should be able to ask for a seat if you feel like you really need one, for whatever reason. And people, generally, are probably civil enough to comply.
Trading horror stories about United's legendarily bad customer service is a staple of conversation among business travelers. (Some of the best/worst tales can be found on the site untied.com)
In previous jobs, both R. and I used to travel on a pretty-much full-time basis, flying good old United twice or more per week. So we've come to approach the experience with a certain grim good humor. No in-flight meal? No problem. Three hours late? Built it into the schedule.
But our recent United adventure might be enough to finally put us off flying them for good, despite the gazillion UA frequently flier miles we jointly own.
We'll skip the part of the story that involves R. receiving $600 in travel vouchers from United for their impressive screw-ups of a past trip.
Fast forward, then, to the part where a change in plans necessitated the last-minute purchase of airline tickets from Chicago to Baltimore. (We'd originally planned on making a road trip to visit my grandparents there.)
We shopped and surfed for decent fares, but came up with only two even remotely viable options: $600 for round trip tickets for the two of us on Southwest or $660 on United.
This seemed like exactly the sort of circumstance in which having an enormous amount of travel voucher credit would come in very handy, especially since we really didn't anticipate a lot more travel this year and the vouchers, of course, have an expiration date.
As it turns out, you can't apply one of these vouchers over the phone or Internet. You have to either go to a travel agent or go to the airport.
We thought heading to the airport would be simple. In fact, we'd work it in with a [terrifying] scouting mission to a suburban baby superstore.
That's where things first went wrong.
Because you can't just walk up to any old ticket counter and buy a ticket anymore. You have to go to "future ticketing," which is a tiny, airless office at the end of the terminal, marked by a very small sign.
The set-up in "future ticketing" makes those take-a-number deli counters look like an incredible innovation in customer service efficiency. There should be a sign that says "Abandon all hope . . ." but, instead, it's just written on the faces of the two (count 'em two!) agents who work there.
The first thing you're supposed to do when you enter is sign your name, and the time you arrived, in the logbook. And, of course, when you do this, you can't help noticing that there are 7 people in front of you and that some of them have been waiting for more than an hour.
But I had a magazine. And R. had his Treo, for e-mail and web-browsing. And we figured that the $600 was worth the wait.
Right.
There are, apparently, two groups of people who use the "future ticketing" office: those who have vouchers like the ones we had (people who have already had a bad enough experience on United to have been financially compensated for it) and United employees.
It was a little frustrating to wait for the United employees to finish their transactions, since they seemed to be spending a lot of time socializing, griping, etc. (Not that I begrudge them this, per se. It's an important part of working for any big corporation. But it should probably happen in some semi-private area.)
But it was truly alarming to watch the voucher people try to get their tickets. Like the guy who had multiple $50 certificates, each one representing a late or canceled flight, a screwed up seat reservation or similar. He'd waited an hour and ten minutes to spin all those accumulated travel hassles into one nice, relaxing trip.
Then the agent told him he could only use them one at a time.
"I waited over an hour to save 50 bucks?!" he exclaimed.
"Well," she told him, "actually, to save $30. There's a $20 fee to book your tickets in person."
Ouch.
About that time, R. punched up the United website on his Treo so we could give the agent the exact details of the flights we wanted.
As we waited for our turn in line, the fare went from $660 to over $800.
In an hour, only four customers had been served. There were still three people in front of us.
We left. (And paid $4 for parking.)
In the end, we decided we'd rather pay $600 for Southwest tickets than get a "deal" on the United ones. And I suspect we're not the only ones who are writing off United.
More on Friday's column: reader responses and other reasons for optimism
In Friday's column, I wrote about the frustrating reality of trying to account for charitable contributions that went to a grassroots organization (a pet cause of mine) in Kenya.
Despite the odd technical glitch -- a too-effective new spam filter, I think -- that is still blocking people from making comments here, lots of readers took the time to write in with their responses and I thought I'd post excerpts from a few of them here.
David Gee of Chicago, sent a long, thoughtful e-mail, full of hard questions, including this passage:
"Is your message to the people of Chicago really that putting our human and financial resources into play to try to bring about change and make a positive difference in the lives of those we know to be in need equates to buying a potion from a snake-oil salesman? Is the reality that sometimes (maybe even more often than we'd like) a charity finds itself unable to execute its mission as promises, really worth suggesting that we bury our collective heads in the sand and stop trying? Even when the truth is that many times the failure to carry out its plan is the result of unforseen complications, the influence of outside, and sometimes destructive forces or yes, even someone's self-interested agenda? And more importantly, are you ignoring the reality that the majority of the organizations and individuals working to make a difference are "doing good well" and changing people's lives for the better every day?"
Larry Dunn, who describes himself simply as from the South Side, wrote about his own community development work in Woodlawn, saying:
"But your recent column (Friday's paper) shows this fight will always be difficult. It is so tied into the economic structure that distributes money. Imagine you are trying to build a concrete floor that would benefit the health of youth, but the money given can never go directly to the immediate use of the ones who have the need. Imagine all the paper I must write and process to get direct funds for new computers and things that would enhance our work at the center. Imagine the wrought iron gates my agency must build for security. Imagine all the money and politics wrapped up in the contracting of wrought iron gates."
And I heard from James Cohick, of the Shriners Hospital for Children, who wrote about his own experience working in Nairobi's Kibera slum (where much of the film version of The Constant Gardener was shot), sounding an optimistic note:
"Too many occasions occurred to cause discouragement -- misuse of donated resources, dysfunctional organization processing, lack of localized expertise and prioritization to name a few. In spite of those negatives, good work continues on and is growing to cover more of the African continent (and elsewhere in the world) through the good work of CURE International."
I also got several notes from people who run different charitable organizations, making pitches that I should become involved with their good work. (I didn't mind the spirit of those requests, but, in the end, they're somewhat beside the point, which is that all of this stuff is infinitely more complicated than almost any of us, in our do-gooder hearts, ever initially imagine it to be.)
In all honesty, I struggled for a long time about whether I should even write that column. On the one hand, I've been very public and vocal about the work that Chicagoans are doing, via Global Alliance for Africa, and I felt I should be completely open about the negatives and positives that go along with such projects. On the other, I was deeply worried that telling this story would just feed the idea that many people have that the situation in Africa is hopeless or beyond help.
A single newspaper column is far too short a space in which to sum up the feelings I have about efforts to deal with the AIDS pandemic in general or even with the Good Samaritan Children's Home in particular.
The first time I visited the place, I was convinced that Mama Mercy was a saint. Because, really, who else would take in dozens and dozens of unwanted children and make them her own? Who among us would take on that kind of burden?
As I got to know her better, I realized, of course, that she was no Mother Theresa. (Turns out, apparently, neither was Mother Theresa.)
But, even as I saw some of her flaws (many, like incredible stubbornness, are simply the flip side of her many virtues), my admiration for her took on a different cast. Like almost any charismatic leader or great personality, she could probably keep an army of psychotherapists busy for years.
At the same time, I've learned a lot about myself and my own impulses, not all of which is flattering. Although I've frequently expressed disdain for the celebrity show-up-in-Africa-give-the-kids-sneakers-then-leave model of volunteer work, I've definitely noticed in myself a need for some sort of gratification. I want to chart progress, take measurements, count out the returns on investments.
And, in the rush to do that, I can loose sight of my own ignorance.
With the stable project that I wrote about in Friday's column, I so wanted Mama Mercy to stay "on task" and get it done. But what is "on task" when your daily life includes a lack of resources that is simply unimaginable to most of us?
Frankly, almost anything she did with the money that was intended for the stables was probably a good. It's not, as one of my friends, offering consolation, pointed out, "like she has a heroin habit or a villa in France."
And, anyway, plenty of US charities -- and, ahem, city governments -- have spent money in ways that their donors did not exactly intend.
Still, it's grossly condescending to assume that it is completely unreasonable to expect accountability from organizations simply because they are run by poor people or Africans or any other marginalized group.
Which brings me back to what I wrote in Friday's column: Corny and fraught with idealism as it is, I am still convinced that we all, as privileged people, have a duty to do something that aims to make the world better. But, in doing that "something," we also have to be careful and humble and endlessly patient.
"I feel I've rather let the side down, getting the small filet," says Toby Young after placing his order at Gibsons, the uber-manly Rush Street steakhouse.
But the British writer best known for his comic memoir How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (Da Capo, paperback, 340 pages, $14.95) is used to disappointing people. He's made it his stock in trade.
Now touring the United States to promote his follow-up book, The Sound of No Hands Clapping (Da Capo, 264 pages, $24.95), Young has spent the past week reliving tales of the spectacular failure of his New York magazine-writing career, chronicled in the first book, and the faster, if somewhat less flashy, demise of his attempt at becoming a Hollywood screenwriter, chronicled in the second.
"You can fail upwards in Hollywood, too," he says, summing up the new memoir.
The major difference between New York, where he worked for Vanity Fair magazine, edited by the mercurial Graydon Carter, and Hollywood, where he almost had a production deal with a major industry figure he doesn't name, is that, "L.A. chewed me up in a few months. New York took five years."
Young did not set out to fail. Nor, really, did he set out to make a living by entertaining people with stories of his failure. His original concept for the first book, he says, was a kind of intellectual history of Vanity Fair. And for the second, he'd hoped to write a novel.
But once How to Lose Friends took off, Young's fate -- and literary persona -- was sealed.
'I'll kill you'
"Heroic failure is a very British concept," says Young, who now lives in London with his wife, Caroline, and two young children. But it was something of a surprise that American readers were drawn to Young's stories about his hapless efforts to impress Carter and make a name for himself on the New York scene. "Generally," he says, "there's only one kind of loser in America."
Young's memoir, though, hit a perfect revival-of-the-slacker, post-dot-com moment, when lots of would-have-been-hipster-superstars were busy licking their wounds and plotting their Next Big Move. Even he was surprised by its success.
As soon as it did hit the best-seller lists, though, Young began plotting how he might exploit its success and parlay his new standing into a certain level ("probably D-list") of celebrity. That's when he headed for Los Angeles.
And he swears that he wasn't trying to make a mess of things there. In fact, he had no problem promising that he wouldn't name the big-deal producer who was interested in his movie.
"He told me, 'if you write about me, I'll kill you.' And I was widely advised that he would, too," Young says. "Anyway, when I promised him, I really meant it. At the time."
In retrospect, of course, the quick crashing and burning of the movie project was a reasonably good outcome for Young, who, at the very least, got material for a book out of it. He's come to realize, by now, that, with his loser persona, "mild success is the worst possible outcome."
Life becomes a little strange when failure is your gig. So, though Young still resists thinking of himself as a memoirist, he has started keeping a journal.
"If something goes horribly wrong," he says, with a sarcastic twinkle in his eye, "like if my wife leaves me or something fantastic like that . . . ."
Some success
Meanwhile, though, he inhabits a reality-show-like level of almost famousness. Though he is not a "proper celebrity," he finds himself frequently asked to do things like appear on Celebrity Big Brother or, even more alarmingly, Celebrity Detox. And, in addition to the new book, he's writing a restaurant column for one London paper and a theater column for another. He's also mounting a play -- a farce about the royal family -- and, in a brilliant irony, still working toward some success as a screenwriter.
The screenplay of How To Lose Friends "actually seems to have some momentum" at the moment, he says, with names like Bill Murray and George Clooney being mentioned as possible Graydon Carters.
And if that doesn't work out, Young has also joined The Writers' Circle, a workshop of British writers who have all succeeded in other genres and are now working on screenplay projects.
"All the top people have come to talk to us," he says, sounding uncharacteristically star-struck. He recovers himself quickly, though, and adds, "Of course, they've all said different things."
He begins to list off what he's learned about crafting a story and working within an established genre. Then he seems to stop himself, as if realizing an inherent absurdity in what he's saying, given the box office success of, say, ''Pirates of the Caribbean.''
"Maybe inelegant and uncrafted with a plot as dense of Coriolanus is the way to go," he muses.
It's hard to tell if he's talking about a recipe for success or one for failure. Or if, for Young, there is really much of a difference.
Friday's column: When saving the world gets complicated
I gave up on saving the world a long time ago, right about the time that the kids who didn't mind being poor got into one line at the career planning center and I got into another. But, in recent years, I'd begun to think I had a reasonable shot at making a difference in the lives of a few hundred children. Having lucked into finding a Chicago organization, Global Alliance for Africa, that identifies and supports community groups working with kids who've been orphaned by AIDS, I'd started to think of myself as one of those people who has a "calling."
Since my first visits to Kenya and Tanzania, where I met some of the extraordinary people who have taken it upon themselves to care for the growing legions of children whose parents have been lost to the AIDS pandemic, I've felt an overwhelming need to do something. Mostly, this has meant making donations and raising money.
These are extremely simple things, like writing a check to keep a preschool going because it's the only place where orphaned kids, being raised by foster and extended families with extremely limited resources, can be the first in line to get something to eat.
In the moment, such miniscule gestures are both easy and satisfying.
It's later, when the initial rush of do-gooder dopamine wears off, that things start to get complicated.
The saga of the stables
In June 2005, I happened to arrive in Kenya just a couple of days after heavy rains had caused a deadly mudslide in Mathare, a sprawling and shabbily constructed slum in the capital city of Nairobi. At the Good Samaritan Children's Home there -- where several dozen former street kids are cared for by their tireless and charismatic Auntie, Mercy Thuo -- flooding had destroyed the ramshackle stables where Mama Mercy and her charges kept pigs and goats.
The animals, an important source of nutrition and income for Good Samaritan, were slopping around unsteadily in the toxic muck created when rain and mud had deluged the unpaved streets of the slum, where open sewers run down every alley. So Mama Mercy rounded them up and herded them into the small, semi-enclosed courtyard of the children's home.
Though it seemed there was no other choice -- if left outside, the valuable animals could be injured, lost or stolen -- this was clearly not a good situation. The animals and the children were living virtually on top of one another and it seemed like only a matter of time before the kids started getting sick or hurt.
So Global Alliance for Africa quickly transferred money to Good Samaritan to get the stables rebuilt.
I returned to Nairobi that December, looking forward to seeing the new structure, which I'd been told would have concrete floors and a strong foundation. I showed up to visit Mama Mercy, hoping to get the grand tour. She'd rounded up a group of previously unemployed young men from the neighborhood and had set them to work on excavating the site and setting pillars for the foundation. It didn't seem like a lot of progress had been made. And the animals were still in the courtyard.
Meanwhile, some of the money originally intended for construction costs had gone, instead, to an architect who had helped Mama Mercy design a multistory complex that would include stables, retail shops and apartments. This new building, he estimated, would cost nearly a million dollars to build. But, she pointed out, it could also provide rental income to support and expand the children's home, as well as economic stimulation for a desperately poor area.
It was not the sort of project Global Alliance had in mind.
Still, no one wanted to fault Mama Mercy for thinking big. This is a woman, after all, who has pretty much single-handedly rescued hundreds of children who might have, quite literally, died without her.
So, after a long and rather awkward conversation with the Global Alliance staff, Mama Mercy agreed to put her dreams of real estate development on hold and focus on getting the animals out of the courtyard. She once again received money to rebuild the stables in keeping with the original plan.
Six months later, in June 2006, another group of volunteers went to visit her.
"Take some pictures of the new stables," I'd urged them before they left Chicago. But, when they arrived, there were still no stables.
So, what now?
What's the difference between being a generous and compassionate donor, one who understands that the real world is an imperfect place, and simply being, well, a sucker? How much control can you really expect to have once you send in your check?
Things get complicated when you're trying to save the world, or even just one tiny section of it. But you have to try, anyway.
It's one of those decisions that, for the moment, seems like a no-brainer.
R. and I hardly ever use our home phone, since it's generally easier for people to catch us on our respective cell phones anyway. As many as a third of the calls we get are nuisance calls from organizations that have loopholes to the do-not-call list, trying to sell us upgrades to services we already buy or to get us to make additional donations to their charities.
And the bills, thanks to AT&T/SBC's "bundles" of services, aren't cheap.
Every month we asked ourselves why we should pay this much for an often-annoying service we barely use. So, we've finally decided to do something about it. We're killing the phone.
At first blush, this seems brilliant and savvy. And, while I have some lingering questions -- 911 service, for example, and also pizza delivery -- I'm pretty sure it's the right thing to do. It's not like we're pioneers or anything.
But, as phone D-day approaches (service is cut off tomorrow), I'm starting to feel a weird, sentimental attachment to the "home phone."
It's the only phone with both our names on the voice mail message. And, while I don't really expect our child to be getting a lot of phone calls (at least for a while), there is something about the idea of the "family" phone that still appeals. Now, when we give a phone number to someone, we'll have to decide if they get his or mine.
I can't decide if there's something "real" here, some notion about the family unit that is being challenged, or if I have just been a total sucker for years of those incredibly touching commercials for long-distance service.
When Sex and the City's Charlotte was romancing Trey, she carefully observed the relationship he had with his domineering mother, Bunny.
In a detail that, for some strange reason, remains etched in my memory, Bunny actually had a specific way of touching Trey's forearm that seemed to completely control his behavior. She'd gently place her hand just above his wrist, look in his eye and say, "Wouldn't you like to . . . ." or "Don't you think you should . . . ."
It worked every time. And Charlotte started doing it, too. Which is how she got him to propose.
This, of course, was completely laughable. But I did wonder if it worked. Or if every mother-son relationship had some similar key -- a semi-hypnotic tic that could, no matter what the circumstances, immediately re-establish a deep and obedient bond.
My purposes were, of course, purely selfish.
But, in Uganda, where a bloody civil war has dragged on for years, this question has actually taken on some serious relevance.
The government there has recruited 70-year-old Nora Oting, mother of rebel leader Joseph Kony, to try to convince him to enter peace talks. Kony's murderous group, The Lord's Resistance Army, is known the world over for kidnapping children and forcing them to become soldiers. So, at first blush, he doesn't really seem like the kind of guy who'd do something just because his mother tells him to.
On the other hand, some of history's greatest psychopaths really were just mama's boys.
Earlier this week, BBC News offered up an Internet survey on people's opinions about Oting's role in the Ugandan conflict . . . and about the power of mothers in general. You can check out some readers' comments here.
1. Those uber-fabulous stay-at-home moms aren't the only ones who are just totally "over" the whole idea of working for pay. Apparently, lots of middle-aged guys are, too. This New York Times piece, part of their ongoing series on "The New Gender Divide," looks at the new idleness. It's enough to make you wonder if we're reaching the point when no one's going to bother showing up anymore.
2. What is it about meth? Slate.com media critic Jack Shafer is one of several voices-of-reason who's been looking at the latest epidemic-that-isn't. Media and law enforcement types have achieved a kind of perfect synergy in hyping the idea that, despite all evidence to the contrary, pretty much everyone in America is hooked on meth. In this piece, Shafer takes on the "meth registries" that are the latest craze in battling this latest scourge. Because, really, stashing our cold medicine behind the counter isn't ridiculous enough.
3. News flash: full-time motherhood can be boring. In the kind of essay that would cause a nuclear meltdown in the United States, a British essayist confesses that her kids are, honestly, not always that interesting. In this London Daily Mail column, Helen Kiriwn-Taylor asserts that the honest admission that one's children are not, in fact, the center of the universe, might actually be good for kids. And parents.
Remember the exquisite joy of snow days, when, as soon as the AM radio announcer grimly intoned the name of your school, you were immediately freed from all rules and responsibility?
I got to eat breakfast in my pajamas, watch too much television and generally live out a kid's fantasy of what life would be like without school.
Adulthood, I've been sad to discover, has no real equivalent. Even the "mental health day," available to those of us lucky enough to get paid sick time, lacks the truly liberating qualities of a snow day. For one thing, your colleagues are still working, so voice and e-mails pile up while you're away. And, somehow, household chores and errands assert themselves, making demands on your theoretically free time.
I was thinking yesterday, as I spent the entire day at home, air conditioner cranked up, shades drawn and large pitcher of ice water at the ready, how lovely it would be to be able to declare the "excessive heat warning" version of a snow day.
Still, even as I read and wrote and checked my e-mails, it occured to me that society probably wouldn't grind to a halt if we all just took the day off. Americans get less vacation time than workers in almost any other country. Surely a few days -- maybe a couple of snow days and a heat day or two -- wouldn't cause the entire economy to collapse.
And wouldn't it be, ultimately, so much more civilized not to have to work so hard at maintaining your dignity when it's insanely hot outside?
