ChgoRed, Girl Editor

The Hygiene Library

Friday night, my husband and I came within $100 of buying a 62-year-old Ramses condom tin.  Although we really wanted it—really wanted it--we just couldn’t justify $115 for something smaller than an iPod Shuffle, even in mint condition.  At first I was bummed, and then I thought, happily, This collection is getting a little crazy.

Because there is a collection, and it makes both of us happy, so I should talk about it.

It’s this… thing we’ve been doing for several years now.  We call it “the collection,” “the sex ed. books,” and lately, “the hygiene library.”  It started with one book bought at the Printer’s Row Book Fair (I don’t even remember which one), then another and another.  Now we have close to a dozen books covering sex, eugenics, love, hygiene and the rhythm method, all but two written before 1950.  We also have a collection of informational pamphlets on VD and hygiene, from the state of Illinois, and a 1940s brochure from a diaphragm-maker.  Vintage condom tins are probably the next step.

I like these books because they’re fascinating, and because they put the lie to the idea that “No one ever talked about sex…”  It’s true that people didn’t talk about sex with anything like the openness and frequency they do now, but they did talk.  Or at least read.  The books are often wrong (Fashionable amusements and dancing can cause miscarriages—The Perfect Woman, 1901), and sometimes histrionic, but occasionally they are surprisingly modern (Children should be educated about sex—Eugenics and Sex Harmony, 1933).

At right: Diagram detailing the dangers of self-abuse (and cigarettes), also from Eugenics and Sex Harmony.

The next book fair is in two weeks, and our hopes are high. I expect we'll be doing this for a long, long time.  Like my husband said on the way home Friday night, "When we die, there's going to be one hell of an estate sale."

Five Beautiful Things: Chicago

Persian Colossal Bull Head at the Oriental Institute
Seriously—that's what they call it: the colossal bull head. It is incredibly imposing, about 7 feet tall and 5 feet wide. Yet his face is so gentle.  I would love to run my hand over that old stone.

 

Old Windows
I was thrilled to see Preservation Chicago list "'Old-fashioned' wood windows" as something worth preserving. I say this even as someone who suffered winter in a building with original (read: very drafty) 1900-era windows. I love them anyway--looking at and through old windows (wood or metal) is my favorite part of riding the El.

The King Tut at Bon Bon Chocolates
Chocolate outside; caramel and pear brandy inside—an inspired combination.  Shaped like King Tut and dusted with gold.  I could eat a whole box.

The Father Time Clock at 35 E. Wacker Drive

It seems too beautiful and too fragile for its location above crazy-busy Wacker Drive.  I always worry that something is going to happen to this clock, but still it remains.  At night, the clock faces are circled by little red lights, like jewels.  Appropriate, since the building used to be known as the Jewelers’ Building.

The Signage at Byron’s on Irving Park
How can you argue with these colors? 

   

Now I want a hotdog.

Is this thing on?

So, my husband has been bugging me to write something.

…and I don’t know what to say.

Last year was the most challenging, most grown-up year of my life, and in the process of Getting Through, I think I kind of lost my voice.  I was too busy for reflection some days; simply too tired on others.  Plus, you lose your appetite for self-promotion once you watch your sister rebuild your mother’s life with a patchwork of government services and assistance.

Also, I was wheedled — sort of — into joining Facebook.  It’s OK, as far as that goes, but I’m starting to get bored with it.  I like knowing about my friends’ lives, but not when the knowledge comes in two-sentence chunks that often focus on the mundane (my own posts there not excepted).  There's no real reflection, even lousy reflection.

An iPod has taking away from my during-commute reading.  Facebook is taking away from my writing.  And I think my attention span is starting to suffer.  My writing certainly is.  So, getting back to the blog is starting to appeal.  

So, maybe, yes, I am here.

Chinamen and Canaries

"Chicago isn’t the most corrupt American city. It’s the most theatrically corrupt." — Studs Terkel.

Assuming Studs didn’t work this one out in a sitdown with Jesus and Molly Ivins, he’s missing a hell of a show. Are you enjoying it so far?  From our seats it’s a doozy, a real feds-n-taps first-lady-bleepin’ circus.  As if that eye-popper of an indictment wasn’t enough (and really, you should read it), Jesse Jr.’s performance yesterday was masterful acting.  To claim that before Tuesday, Jesse hadn’t spoken to Blagojevich in four years?  As if he’d just shown up for their Tuesday meeting re: the Senate seat with no introduction, no talk beforehand, like some unknown going to a job interview. Like he was just nobody.  In this town, where you need an emissary (known as a “chinaman”) just to get a job cleaning sidewalks?

Oh, how we laughed.

We were shocked, too.  We’re not completely jaded.  Even we were caught off guard by a governor who would shake down a children’s hospital.  That’s some stone cold corrupt right there.  But perhaps we underestimated him. Up until now, Blagojevich was that guy who only speaks when he has a bad idea--the man had a 13% approval rating before all this happened.  Nobody liked him anyway. 

We certainly underestimated his ambition.  He’s thinking president (!?!), and we all thought he was a local guy.  Illinois politicians fall into two categories: Local guys and national guys.  It’s all about the scope of your ambition.  National guy: Dick Durbin.  Local guy: Mayor Daley.  The local guys are interested in moving only so high.  Their whole goal is to stake out a territory, hold onto it with both fists, and then maybe pass it to your kids.  Emil Jones has been in the state legislature since 1973, has been Senate president since 2003, and wants to hand the seat directly to his son.  Donald Stephens was mayor of Rosemont from 1956 until he died in 2007 (yes, 40 years), and his son now runs the place.  Mayor Daley…  well, you see what I mean.

The question now is, what next? 

Once the governor resigns (and he will, probably by Sunday), and Jesse Jr.’s chinaman is named, the rest of the country is going to lose interest.  The camera trucks will disappear and you all will remember him as, “…That corrupt guy from Illinois.  The one with the hair.  Blajogavitz?”  But don’t leave yet. There’s a whole second act coming, possibly with musical accompaniment. What do I mean?   I mean Blagojevich is going to sing.

Talking to the feds won’t keep him out of jail--he IS going to jail.  Those tapes (assuming they aren’t thrown out) are going to sink him but good.  But he also has two young daughters, and it’s Christmas.  He’s going to look at them by the pretty tree with all the lights and think, Prison?  No [bleeping] way.  Because he thinks he’s a negotiator, he’ll try to cut a deal, and he may have something good to offer. He’s been backstage at Chicago/Illinois politics for a long time.  What he knows could fill a very lurid and highly classified book.

Besides, it’s not like he has any friends left to alienate.  So he’s going to do whatever he can, and probably earn himself 18-24 months in the George Ryan Memorial Home for Governors in Wisconsin.  The public will know that he’s being punished (sort of), and he’ll get out while he’s still young enough to have a life.

Of all the people worrying about what he might say—there were so many unnamed characters in that indictment—the person who should be the most worried is Mayor Daley.  Maybe he and Blagojevich don’t like each other, but they have people in common.  Remember, Blagojevich wasn’t the only person arrested by the feds.  They also arrested his chief of staff, John Harris...who spent years working for Mayor Daley, first in the mayor's office and then at O'Hare Airport—a job you don't get without Daley's approval.  What does THAT guy know?

And in ways that only work in Chicago, Daley would be a bigger prize for the feds than Blagojevich.  They have wanted to catch that particular fish for years.  Jesse just happened to jump into the net.  So, unless someone pays Blagojevich enough to keep quiet—and with a federal rap, they really can’t pay him enough—he may sing.  He may sing until they ask him to shut up.

Stay tuned.  This is just getting good.

Armistice Day

Everyone Sang, by Siegfried Sassoon (1920)

EVERYONE suddenly burst out singing;  
And I was filled with such delight  
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,  
Winging wildly across the white  
Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.
  
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;  
And beauty came like the setting sun:  
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror  
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone  
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.