3/17/03 - The coldest Chicago winter in 7 years (really, I looked it up) has ended. This weekend temperatures rose 30 degrees in about 24 hours. I spent much time keeping warm and thinking during the freeze. What follows are bits of a season's worth of contemplation.

***

On the last morning of the Orange Alert, I came across a large green gym bag abandoned in the south entrance of the Wilson El stop. It was placed carefully in the center of the landing between the first and second flight of stairs. The stairs branch off in two directions at that point, and the rush hour crowd flowed around it without noticing.

My first thought was a thrill of anticipatory voyeurism. I'm a member of the "found art" crowd, which thrives on accidental, often cryptic, glimpses into the lives of other people. We tell ourselves this is pure than an interest in reality TV or webcam girls. I wonder, however, if refinement is an issue here.

I always turn in what I find, of course. I do have morals, and good citizenship allows a guilt-free rummage though someone else's stuff.

My second thought was a sudden orange alertness. Until then, Homeland Security hype had been a source of amusement. The only anxiety I felt was that the administration's ham-fisted paranoia propaganda might inspire some wingnut to act out.

Now here I was facing a possible recipe from The Anarchist's Cookbook. This was way cooler than peeking at someone's forgotten laundry. I crouched carefully over the bag and gingerly pulled the zipper with my fingertips. From suspense films I know a bomb is safe as long as one moves very slowly, as if the bomb was an easily startled wild animal.

It was all very dramatic. I'm sure I appeared to be rehearsing some butoh dance called "Defusing the Bomb."

I was interrupted by a man who came bounding up the stairs. "Excuse me," he called out, "that's mine, I dropped it while helping her." He gestured to a woman at the foot stairs with some large boxes.

"Sorry," I said, standing up quickly, "It's just, y'know, these days..."

"Oh I know, I totally," he replied, "It was sitting there..."

It was odd how both of us couldn't voice the thought, as if Homeland Fear was a dirty and embarrassing tendency. We exchanged rueful smiles, like Victorian gentlemen caught fondling their walking sticks, and then went our separate ways.

I was in a pleasant state of awareness as I got on the train. I do not think I'm alone in reacting to the official state of national distress with cynicism and a perverse excitement.

I wasn't in Manhattan on That September Day, but I was in London when the IRA resumed their bombing campaign in 1982. I understand the reality of terror.

Yet some part, a very American part, is charmed by the action movie concept of flame and tumult. If I ever got married, my ideal wedding invitation would be a photo of the bride and I leaping forward while a building explodes in the background.

***

Winter was unusually dry and plants haven't yet responded to the sudden thaw. Trees are bare and the ground is brown and dead. The thin layer of snow and ice has melted, revealing, as usual, old piles of litter and dogshit. St. Patrick's day has a creepy disconnect - beautiful climate, barren nature.

It's tempting to pull some melodramatic metaphor out of the weird spring day and the harsh winter before it, perhaps adding the passing of Fred Rogers and the self-suffocating crowd at E2 to create an overwrought portrait of a mean season for the country.

Gothic brooding seems okay as it is a bleak moment for America. We're on the brink of the Done Deal War. Iraq, however, is just the dominant anxiety of a mass of disturbing developments. Satirist Neal Pollack, discussing events behind his humor, sums it up this way:

"The preservation of our satirical heritage is vital, especially now. We live in times that seem to combine elements of the Great Depression, Vietnam, Prohibition and McCarthyism, not to mention the worst elements of the Reagan years, times ten. The language of government finally sounds like, and I mean exactly, not vaguely, the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove and the final chapters of 1984."

My friend Lisa is a sociology grad student and prone to phraseology. The Sunday after the shuttle blew up she coined the term news clog to describe the coverage. She was inspired by a bad head cold which stopped up her ears, but I thought of a drain blocked by a clump of scum, hair and press releases.

Shortly after the shuttle story broke, the full details were knonw, including that it would take months of investigation before there were any new details. Despite this limitation, news organizations suspended all other coverage for much of Saturday, and devoted newscasts to it for days. The rest of journalism was a stagnant pool. It was a full blown news clog, saying "shuttle go boom!" over and over.

The energy applied to a news clog seems like a thing unto itself. Perhaps it could applied to a topic complex enough to fill hours of uninterrupted coverage with new information. With the right graphics and breathless reporting, a line by line examination of the tax bill could capture viewers.

Writer Aaron Kinney pointed out another element of the shuttle clog:

"Newspapers tell us that 'a nation mourns.' Does it really?...Can you think of a more abstract concept than that which lumps all 300 million Americans into a single word/entity and provides them with the verb 'mourn? It is the rare event -- the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and JFK; Sept. 11 -- that can bring that noun and that verb together in a credible union...who is mourning? Every single American? I daresay no. The 'Band of Brothers,' camaraderie-out-the-ass-having-platoon that the American people comprise? Let's get serious."

Kurt Vonnegut says people can be warped by constant exposure to narrative, coming to believe their lives must resemble a shapely story. This is what I see behind the news clog; a craving to locate defining moments to mark the new grand chapter of a national novel.

After September 11, I remember being annoyed by phrases such as "never the same" and "the day it all changed." My worldview changed after seeing how terror affected London. My ideas of America were never the same after the first Gulf War, after the Iran-Contra hearings, after the hostage crisis, after the 2000 Supreme Court decision...

The Rodney King beating crystallized my view of the American narrative. I was a kid in Florida when the 1980 Miami riots broke out. They started when an all white jury acquitted white police officers who had beaten a black man to death and tried to pretend it was an accident. Given this context, I was amazed when my peers acted as if events in LA as startling and unprecedented. I realized context is not a big part of the American story; if I hadn't been raised in Florida my viewpoint may have been the same.

Such blissful ignorance produced the simplified version of 911. Never the same? When was it not different?

Now Gulf II looms with less context or justification than the previous one. It's the mother of all news clogs, and almost welcome. Even friends who aviod watching the news feel the pressure of current events on their conversation. We want to rant about everything and ignore it at the same time. As I said before, the war distills various frustrations into a single fury. Clog it up, Junior, clog it up.

***

I believe in democracy to the point of saccharine optimism, but I'm also a Chicagoan, which makes me an expert in recognizing bullshit. This is not an idle boast; political shenanigans which are hidden in most places are conducted openly in this town, and one becomes attuned to it.

In February, local elections provided another object lesson. As usual, the 46th ward was the locus of dirty pool, although it was more subdued than usual. Alderman Helen Shiller, the renegade Democrat on the City Council, surprised everyone by getting the Mayor's endorsement. She did approve his budget this year (usually she's the single opposing vote), but in all other ways she's still the loyal, often strident, opposition. It appears Daley II realized she's not just a radical leftist, but a master of the ancient art of clout. I think he appreciates someone who respects tradition.

No one was more shocked by Daley's change of heart Sandra Reed. Until this point, she was a product of the Machine, her career designed to take out Shiller in this years elections (as I detailed in a previous essay). I don't know if she pissed off City Hall, or was a victim of convenience, but now she was the outsider candidate.

She was still a machine operative in her methods. She ran the same campaign used by every Daley-backed challenger to Shiller: go negative, fight dirty. After 16 years of getting whupped, you'd think they'd try something different.

Reed's smear and fear tactics were comically obvious. One mailing accused Shiller of "dragging her feet" on the issues and featured a photo of a faceless person soaking her feet (having hurt them with all that dragging, I guess). The Helen stand-in had ugly unshaven legs. Next to the foot-bath, at the edge of the picture, was an open copy of - I'm not kidding - The Communist Manifesto. Red baiting? In 2003? In a Democratic primary in a city which passed a resolution opposing the war? Whatever, Sandra.

Another flyer read "46%!" and claimed 46% of all major crime on the North Side happened in the ward. Reed must have invested in asbestos panties, because her ass was in flames from this lie. A quick check of the Chicago Police Department website reveals the statistic was completely fabricated. The 46th ward is the 20th and 23rd, two of the lowest crime areas in the entire city.

Perhaps, I thought, Reed's people found some way to reinterpret the statistics. But no math could produce 46 - they'd just used that number to match the ward.

It was sort of odd Reed would play up Uptown's dangerous rep. The myth relies on equating any poor or homeless population with danger, even though a majority of Uptown residents are working or upper class. The ugly part of this myth is the undesirables are black, making it an unwise issue for a black candidate to use. She aligned herself with many of the bigots in the neighborhood. Not a winning coalition in this multihued area; it's no wonder she got stomped. Now if only this were true for all of America.

[A side note: I admit I don't completely object to continuation of Uptown's dangerous image - it keeps my rent low.]

****
On February 4, I was walking to the el for the morning commute and found myself in a massive traffic jam at Wilson and Broadway. Cars backed up half a mile in all directions. The sidewalks were crowded as well, as large groups of people got out of buses and poured out of the Wilson El stop.

All of them were headed towards Truman College. All of them were wearing office clothes and all of them were black. I had never seen that many well dressed people of any color gathered on Wilson Avenue at one time. At first I thought it was a rally, but people were just milling about, looking at sheets of paper.

I asked around and was told they had turned out for a employment push by Ford. The car company was hiring hundreds for its south side plant at wages of $18.70 an hour. The entire hiring process was supposed to take place - resumes gathered, interviews, even drug tests and physicals.

It was a hoax. There was a meeting at Truman that morning, an informational session sponsored by the city about future opportunities at the Chicago Manufacturing Campus being built on the Southeast Side. The Truman meeting was the first of a city-wide series of presentations. No jobs were being offered.

This event had been transformed into the $18.70 job fair. Most people said it had been advertised "on the internet" but couldn't tell me where. At first it sounded like an urban legend incident, but I discovered the false information had been circulated by email and flyers at college campuses and churches in black neighborhoods on the South Side.

Over 1,500 turned out for the "job fair." Hundreds started lining up hours before the college opened.

Let me restate that: On a freezing cold day more than one thousand five hundred people traveled miles across the city - a journey of several hours for some - looking for work. And though the advertised positions were blue collar, many of them were college educated or laid off white collar workers.

The college distributed flyers explaining the misinformation as soon as it opened. People took it rather well; many attended a presentation. Folks milled about outside, somewhat stunned at being fooled and discussing where they could find real job opportunities.

Most people seemed to think it was an accidental hoax, or perhaps they just preferred to think so. Authorities never discovered how or why the disinformation was spread. I did a google search on 1870 and discovered the voting rights act was passed on February 3, 1870, but I think this was mere an interesting coincidence. Numerology is fueled by coincidence and paranoia.

The cops were visibly bit freaked out but kept their cool as the crowd was well behaved and it's Uptown, home to many civil rights activist including the Alderman. No misbehavior would go down here.

Despite the atmosphere of friendly disappointment, it was very disturbing. It was impossible to see such a huge mass of jobseekers and not feel the economy has some serious problem. Meeting so many college educated people willing to take an assembly job made it clear the racial gulf in opportunities still exists.

As I got on the el the groups were still arriving, bubbling with the excitement of potential employment. People getting back on the train were considerably quieter.

"I've been up since 5 am, full of hope," one older man told me, "Oh, well."

On the train I saw him staring blankly out the window. He opened his briefcase, brought out a flask and took a huge swallow. For a moment a look of anguish crossed his face, then he went blank again.

***

The evening after the first Orange Alert went Yellow, I went to see The 25th Hour. There's this one scene: Two buddies meet in an apartment overlooking ground zero and have an emotional but subdued conversation about a friend who is going to jail. Out the window, bulldozers clear the wreckage of the towers. The loud, sorrowful music which accompanies the scene doesn't match the tone of the dialogue. It is the soundtrack of the background image. This scene encapsulates the whole movie - characters and plot are interesting, but mere forground for a song of pain. I'm not sure how well this works as a movie, but it captures how 2001 lingers even as we must deal with newer events.

I left the film in a bit of a funk. The movie theater is a new multiplex near the lake, an area of hotels and offices, very tall but non-descript buildings. As I rounded a corner I saw a paper airplane on the sidewalk. The wings were covered in bold letters which said:

"PICK ME UP"

and

"TOUCHING YOU I START TO BLOOM"

Unfolded, there was a drawing of a stick figure with a questioning look and the note:

"Doesn't something like this make you wonder? Satisfy your curiosity. Email me:"

and an address.

Airplanes were scattered all over, all with similar messages. The few pedestrians hurrying through the cold didn't notice them. A sanitation worker was approaching, riding one of those futuristic sidewalk sweepers they have downtown, so I took them all. I found sixteen in all, scattered over a city block. I continued to search for a good mile before I gave up. It's surprising how much white detritus there is in the cleanest parts of Chicago: receipts, religious tracts, a pair of socks, a single latex glove outside Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

When I stopped searching I was grinning. The whimsical attempt to connect with strangers and provoke curiosity blew away the dark weighty thoughts. Even now, the world can be friendly, odd and cheerful.

----

Postscript: As war draws closer, Mayor Daley is agitating for a no-fly zone over the downtown, like New York City and DC have. Dude, face it - Chicago is not a vital target for international terror. It does not diminish the status of the city to admit this; to me, it's a recommendation.

----

All material copyright the authors, printed with permission.