Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friend will sing no more.
Les Miserables

Sometimes accidents happen. We really didn’t plan to do it, but when it hit us in the face, we just went ahead and did.

Barb and I used to be semi-foodies. We never took pictures of our restaurant meals and post them, but we did have a line-up of favorite places to go multiple times a week, as well as a line-up of special places to go on special occasions. I would scour the Tribune and Chicago Magazine for hot new places to try. It was a major part of our social life.

COVID has changed all that–though we love the alternative of having friends and family having socially distanced celebrations on our back deck. We have dined in the parking lot of Wildfire twice, but other than that, restaurant dining has been limited to carry-outs once or twice a week, including treating our granddaughters with Superdawg every now and then (Fact-check: We like Superdawg more than our granddaughters do.)

Yesterday I had the morning off and Barb suggested breakfast outside at Walker Brothers in Lincolnshire, one of our favorite haunts in the “old days.” We arrived at the nearly empty parking lot, noticing lots of tables set up on the patio and under the trees. We were cut off by the hostess who asked us if we wanted to eat inside or outside with a caveat “If you eat outside you will hate it, the bees are terrible. We have lots of room inside, you will be safe.”

Barb and I looked at each other and pondered the situation. We were craving a good WB breakfast, but why take unnecessary chances? We debated while the hostess politely turned away. Finally, we decided the food would be no more dangerous inside than out, the seating areas were pretty empty, and we would have our masks on 90% of the time. “What the hell, let’s go for it,” I finally said.

And so we did. I had my bacon waffle, Barb her Healthy Start Breakfast. Service was a bit spotty, perhaps the waitress wanting to make sure we didn’t feel crowded. The food was good and we got our caffeine kick-starts (coffee for Barb, tea for me) but surrounded by so many empty tables the feeling just wasn’t the same. Everything was still very different.

Will we do it again soon? I don’t think so. While we decided we didn’t regret our choice of entering the restaurant, the risk, however minimal, may have outweighed the reward. And like everything we do during this craziness, that’s the decision we need to make every time. Even at our favorite restaurant.

VOTE! VOTE EARLY! VOTE AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT!

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photo credit: arbyreed Empty via photopin (license)

Trumpers Don’t Need Truth

All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
Paul Simon

I have a few conservative “friends” on Facebook. Craig is one of them, a guy I knew casually in high school. Another is Martin, a naturalized American who was always a friendly guy in our weekly tennis league. They were added to my Facebook Friends list in an era when it was easy to just click “Accept as Friend,” without thinking about what a person’s politics might be and what they might post. Facebook was a place for admiring pictures of grandkids and birthday celebrations, and reminiscing over teenage memories.

Now things are different. But Craig and Martin are still on my Friends list. And that has its benefits. I don’t watch Fox News or subscribe to Breibart, but by watching the feed of this pair I can see what is being disseminated as news. I can see what is being used to stoke the flames. I can see what a president who has no use for honesty has brought upon us. I read their posts and their shares. I rarely react. Instead, I fume; then I go back and preach to my own choir.

But sometimes, when a post seems more even more preposterous than usual, I do chime in. And when I do, I usually get a response.

Martin posted a picture purporting to show a priest assaulted at a Black Lives Matter protest. A terrible story, if it were true. But a bit of fact-checking (I love Snopes) demonstrated that almost every “fact” in the story was a non-fact. The assault as described never happened. When I pointed this out in a comment, Martin responded with “I thought a picture was worth a thousand words. No need reading.” A Trumpism for the ages.

(Martin also told me that while I was book-smart, I lacked street smarts. If he means I know some history, and some science, and have read some in the humanities, well good for me.)

A few days ago Craig shared a post with racial overtones stating “the Saint Louis City School District had to go and buy back 50 chrome books from the pawn shop. WHY? Because 50 different parents had pawn (sic) them.” Again I did an online search and tryed to do some fact checking but found no evidence of this occurring. (I did eventually find a story in the St. Louis-Post Dispatch stating burglars had stolen hundreds of laptops from nine schools in Hazelwood, MO–a story with a dateline of July 9, 2009.) Craig’s response to my asking for a reference to the post he shared: “I make my posts on this silly thing called facebook. I dont feel a need to verify anything.” Why should you Craig, when truth no longer is held in high regard?

It’s all about lies and damn lies. The falsehoods are coming faster and faster. Too many people believe those inventions, and I have never been this worried before in my life.

If you believe in truth, please make your plans now in order to make sure your vote is counted in November. And share this blog. Every little bit helps.

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You Trump’s Have Got It Wrong. I’m Not sending You A Dime

How did I get so lucky? Through no effort or fault of my own, I have earned a place on Donny Trump’s messaging list.

How did I get here? I don’t think that I have signed into any Republican National Committee websites. I don’t think I have ever worn a MAGA hat or signed any petitions saying all foreigners and Puerto Ricans should be sent back to their native countries. And in four years of blogging, I don’t think I have ever said anything nice about Donald Trump–though I did apply for a job in his cabinet. (No hard feelings on that one, Donald–I wouldn’t have lasted a week.)

But somehow, Donald and Donny think I am on their side. In pursuit of my monetary contribution to “the cause” D & D have told me I am one of 15 lucky Trump Patriots; they have told me how important it is we keep Biden and Harris out of the White House while retaking the Trump Majority; they have told me that I have a Trump Police Flag Shirt reserved just for me — to be delivered after I make my generous contribution.

And now they tell me I can help keep that huge Trump momentum flowing. The momentum that has solved COVID, welcomed people of all races, religions, gender, and sexual preference to the tent, and made us the most popular, most admired country in the world!

So, Donald, you can try to hold that momentum. but remember. In baseball, “momentum” is tomorrow’s pitcher. For the country, “momentum” will be Joe Biden, tomorrow’s President.

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Some Songs of Chicago-The City, Not The Band

It’s getting old. We haven’t left the Chicago area since February–and no plans to go anywhere. So Chicago songs are in my head. I was going to list ten of them, but in the great Chicago tradition, my late grandmother voted for an eleventh. So in no particular order, here are

The Les is More Sounds of Chicago

Let’s start with the schlock! Paper Lace’s The Night Chicago Died imagined Chicago’s own most-wanted, Al Capone, in a shoot-out with the Chicago Police Department. Incredibly, this hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Englands’s Paper Lace a true USA one-hit-wonder.
And talking about bad Chicago dudes, who can forget Jim Croce’s Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown from the South Side of Chicago. What’s the only thing wrong with this #1 hit? It was a poor knock-off of Croce’s own You Don’t Mess Around With Jim. If Croce had lived longer, maybe he would have sued himself.
Another slickster to move through Chicago, traveling from L.A. to Key Largo was Sade’s Smooth Operator. Ladies beware, this dude was only out to break your heart. As far as I know, Sade never sang about such a cool villain, or Chicago, again.
Someone else just passing through Chitown? Good ole boy Lido in Boz Scaggs’ Lido Shuffle. Another drifter looking for a big score in the City of Big Shoulders (and easy marks?)
Listen carefully or you’ll miss the reference to the “city by the lake” in the Smashing Pumpkin’s Tonight, Tonight. For a Chicago born boy like Billy Corgan, what other city or what other lake could there ever be?
With the end of the Democratic National Convention, and as we await the beginning of the Republican’s revver, let’s not forget Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Chicago, love-song to our fair city (not)–forever memorializing the battles in the streets during the Democratic Convention of 1968 and its courtroom aftermath. “Won’t you please come to Chicago for the help that we can bring.”
Then there is the sweet little number also titled Chicago, by the slightly unusual Sufjan Stevens. The number is on his album Illinoise which as you might have guessed is all about the 21st state to enter the Union. Does any radio station in town besides ‘XRT play this song?
Who remembers the Ides of March? Their biggest hit was certainly Vehicle but for my listening pleasure, their best song was the under-appreciated L.A. Goodbye with beautiful harmonies on the lyric “from the West side of Chicago,” perhaps a salute to the town of Berwyn, the birthplace of the band.
While we have vehicles on our mind, a shout out to Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah’s classic Lake Shore Drive. No, there is no name-check of Chicago, but there is no doubt what this song is about.
When should you come to Chicago? When the Levee Breaks, of course. An old blues number about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, but Led Zeppelin made it their own.
The only choice with which to wrap up this list? Its got to be My Kind of Town (Chicago Is.) Did Frank Sinatra care a whit about Chicago? Who cares! At least he isn’t singing New York, New York.

That is my list. What would be on yours?

photo credit: dharder9475 City in quarantine, sad in gray via photopin (license)

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Here Is What It Takes To Make My Day

“Hi Dr. Raff,

I look forward, and am hopeful for, another well-orchestrated roll-out, just as you did with the rectal culture workflow.

Thank you for your professionalism and leadership!

KC”

Wow.

It has been a tough few months for all of us. Pandemic, social unrest, product shortages, political nihilism. It’s not the best time to be rolling out a major change in a necessary product line to our “client” offices. But the move to the exciting field of molecular microbiology was something that we had begun before the world had heard of COVID-19. Significant financial investments had been made. The administration wanted us to push on.

Our lab staff did a tremendous job of finding workarounds for supplies that proved absolutely impossible to obtain. Procedures that had been previously validated needed to be reanalyzed and revalidated to take into account changes in technique.

We devised new strategies for informing our offices about the new procedure, and the not insignificant changes in office workflow that would be needed. We made a video and emailed FAQs and asked the group’s nurse coordinator to schedule face-to-face training where possible. Hundreds of supply kits were sent via courier to each office and our IT team made the necessary changes to our ordering and reporting paradigms.

Of course, there were grumbles. Why this? Why now? Do we HAVE to? But we responded, “Yes you do!” in as nice and as polite and as firm a way as possible. We set a date for when the old test would no longer be orderable.

Over the course of seven days, we watched as the percentage of testing using the new method increased. When the cut-off day arrived we told IT to flip the switch. As far as we were concerned the old method no longer existed.

We are now working on Phase 2 of our molecular microbiology project. That’s what prompted the email above from KC, the Practice Manager at one of our offices. I thanked him for the props and told him he had made my day.

And it’s true. A kind word, a word of support, a word of praise, can truly make my day.

What makes yours?

The above are the opinions of the author and not necessarily UroPartners LLC.

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Trump Calls Harris Nasty–Nothing New Under the Sun

So now we know. Kamala Harris, Senator from California, will be Joe Biden’s running mate in the November election. And President Trump has wasted no time in bringing out the “nasty” adjective. That gives me an opportunity for me to resurrect a blog post from 2016 when Trump called Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman.”

(October 20, 2016) Yes, Hillary accused Donald Trump of cheating on his taxes. And how did he respond? As everyone knows, he called her a “nasty woman.” For the sake of argument, let’s say her remark earned her a one-star (★) evil rating. How does she stack up against some other famous nasty women in history?

Eve ★ ★ ★ : Here was a gal who knew how to get her man in trouble. If she hadn’t gone after that apple, none of us would be paying income tax.
Bonnie Parker ★ ★ : Yeah, she robbed banks, killed people, and wrote awful poetry. But Faye Dunaway was just so damn alluring.
Norman Bates’ Mother ★ ★ ★ : Now this was a mean one. Even dead and mummified she got poor old Tony Perkins to off Janet Lee. But that was a great shower scene.
Marie Antoinette ★ ★ ★ : No, she didn’t cause the French Revolution by herself. Did she really say “let them eat cake”? In any case, it’s a great line.
Hansel and Gretel’s Witch ★ ★ ★ ★ : A true nasty. Kidnap kids, fatten up kids, eat kids. It wasn’t until Hannibal Lecter came around that we had a comparable male maniac.
Cathy Ames ★ ★ ★ : John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” is one of my all-time favorite reads, and Cathy is my favorite character. A prostitute without a heart of gold, she killed her parents and slept with her brother-in-law on her wedding night. But at least she didn’t eat her children.
Polk Salad Annie’s Mama★ ★ : A wretched spiteful, straight-razor totin’ women. And I hear Annie was no sweetheart herself!
Queen Isabella ★ ★ ★ ★ : Whether you hate her for sending Columbus to the New World and blowing the ecosystem, or her role in the villainous Spanish Inquisition, there is not much for redemption.
Gemma Teller Morrow ★ ★ ★ : The Mama Bear of “Sons of Anarchy, ” she almost killed her first daughter-in-law, and succeeded in killing her second one. And I had always thought that is was daughters-in-law that wanted to kill their mothers-in-law.
Elizabeth Holmes ★ ★ : Yes, I know, I should stop picking on the Temptress of Theranos. But her whole deal just gets me so pissed off…

So Hillary, you barely nudge the nasty meter. So keep on smiling that smile and do what you’ve got to do. Only one person on the ballot is truly evil.

Don’t forget to vote on or before November 3, 2020

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TikTok Problem Solved. No, Not THAT TikTok

So many of you wrote in with your thoughts, suggestions, and tips in regards to that awful tick-tick-tick in our walls. Though all of your help is appreciated, none of you nailed the cause of the noise. It wasn’t bees, or raccoons, or birds in the venting. It wasn’t the house settling. And much to my relief, it wasn’t scary mojo from long-forgotten burial grounds beneath the basement. But it is to the basement we shall go to solve our problem…

Thursday evening the printer died. Alexa2 stopped answering questions. By checking our phones I could tell that one of our wifi networks had died (no, I don’t know why we have two networks, the installer just did it that way.) So I visited the basement utility room to reboot the router or modem or whatever the black box is called. And the ticking down here was louder. I knew I was near the source.

I hunted around and saw a small green signal light flashing in time with the ticking. I flipped a switch under the flashing light and the ticking ended. Eureka! And what was the device that had been causing the ticks and the flashing light? It was an electronic air cleaner, part of our HVAC system.

When I think of house air filters, I think of fiberglass sheets in flimsy cardboard panels that slide into metal frames in the air duct system. You buy the filters by the case, and if you remember, you change them every few months, trying to avoid skinning your knuckles forcing them into place. That type of filter served us well in all our prior homes.

But the architect for this house designed the system with more “state-of-the-art” electronic air cleaners. These use filters to trap large particles, and electric charges to clump and remove smaller particles. But as the repairman explained to Barb, they are temperamental little beasts. They get dirty, they stop filtering, they click—and unless you pledge to clean all the parts several times a year, they are expensive to maintain. The workman let us know that many households left the casing in place but pulled out the electronic innards and inserted replaceable HEPA filters. Something for us to chew on.

Barb and I have developed a philosophy. We believe that the more gizmos and gadgets we have in the home, the more gizmos and gadgets we have that can go wrong. Yes, of course we love some of the doodads. Alexa keeps us entertained, the electronic keypad on our side door lets me go for a run without bringing keys. But sometimes plain-old plain-old wins the day. Give me those old cardboard air filters any day. I’ll live with a set of skinned knuckles. That is what Band-Aids are for.

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You Chose These As The Top Ten. And I Am Sure You Were Right.

Getting More From Les has passed another milestone. Yesterdays Tick Tick Tick was the 400th posting in ChicagoNow. It’s a good moment to look back over the past 100 blogs, and recap and update the 10 most widely read posts of that batch (yes, I do know how many readers there are, even if I don’t know who those readers might be.) As a frame of reference, the last 100 posts were all composed on or after May of 2019. Here we go!

Ten Most Read Posts from Getting More from Les (postings #301-#400)

10. Hey James Holzhauer, I Lost on Jeopardy Too! The end of a champion’s reign. I’m afraid the day will come when I will be writing about another Jeopardy ending. I hope it is far in the future.

9. Happy Anniversary to Our Home on the Pond. Three years in our new forever home. It is really suiting us well during the pandemic.

8. Another PSA for P.S.A. My annual reminder to make sure the men in your life are prostate aware and having their blood tested for Prostate Specific Antigen. I worry that men are skipping their annual physicals now, and we will miss opportunities to make early diagnoses of prostate cancer.

7. We Need Good COVID Tests and Testing. A Pathologist’s View. Early on in the pandemic, I realized that we lacked sufficient rapid and testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its antibodies. That has not changed.

6. Did a Vegetarian Diet Cure Prostate Cancer? I Need More Evidence. I wasn’t buying it then, and I am not buying it now. But nothing wrong with reducing the number of animal products in our diet.

5. Goodbye to a Fellow Pathologist, and to Mary Dixon Too. A bon voyage to a long time associate on his retirement, and a (brief) farewell to one of the morning voices on WXRT. George is now quarantining in his home, Mary is giving us the news on WBEZ. Good to hear her voice again.

4. Disasters are Not New. Why Does This One Feel So Different? A picture gallery appraisal of where we are, and where we have been.

3*. Is Terry Boer’s Autobiography the Bore of a Lifetime? Although this post was 3rd most read post since May of 2019 it was actually published in 2018. You still search for it every time the former sports-talk host appears on the Score.

3. John Mulaney Says Middle-Aged Men Don’t Make Friends. OK, Boomer. A riff on Mulaney’s Saturday Night Live monologue, back when Saturday night was still Saturday night.

2. Is $23 Million CEO Compensation the Reason Your Hospital Bill is So High? A year-ago look at the effects of the merger of 2 hospital networks. And since COVID, consolidation in health care is predicted to increase at an even more rapid rate.

1. Haiku for Our Time: COVID 19 Edition. 170 syllables about the pandemic, back when we had high hopes for a short lockdown and a rapid recovery.

Where will the next 100 posts take us? Who knows how the world will turn, but whatever happens I hope to be here writing about it. Please be with me reading about it.

For those wondering what was causing our wall ticking — look for the answer next week.

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There Is Ticking In The Walls

There’s ticking in the walls.

It started a few weeks ago. A tick-tick-tick. Steady and incessant in the wall of our bedroom. The sound is not from a clock nor is it the whirring of our ceiling fan. It is loudest at night; at least that is how it seems to me.

Barb hears it too. But she has a portable fan on her nightstand. The fan keeps her cool and as an added benefit drowns out the sound for her and the kitten at her hip. But I still hear the tick-tick-tick every night.

There’s more ticking in the walls.

We think it is coming from one of the air conditioning vents. It’s the vent that we relocated so it wouldn’t be obstructed by the dresser and the flat-screen TV.

So I unscrew the vent cover. It isn’t that easy to do. The hex screw heads are small and I don’t have a wrench that works with them. I find a pair of needle-nosed pliers. With those, I can grasp the screw heads and carefully turn them counter-clockwise to loosen them. I release both screws and take off the vent cover. I feel around but can’t detect any obstructions or any material in the duct that might be knocking and ticking. I can’t find a thing. But when I screw the vent back on there is blissful silence.

And then–it’s another night and I am awake at 4 a.m.

There’s still ticking in the walls.

I am imagining the possibilities. Is the noise something in the bowels of the HVAC system? Or something buried deeper under our house? Is that why this was the last unbuilt lot in this development of 300 houses? Did something keep other potential buyers away?

Perhaps the ticking is signifying not the past but the future. Maybe it’s a doomsday clock counting viral particles spreading through the atmosphere or measuring the micro degrees the planet is warming. At 4 a.m. it all seems possible.

In the light of the day I know it is all nonsense. The sunrise was magnificent this morning as I sped down the Tollway. Reds and oranges and dark grey clouds. I know the house can’t warn me of catastrophe. As long as we are careful, all will be well.

But why is there ticking in the walls?

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photo credit: bjcoving Pictures of My Random Items via photopin (license)

Donald Trump Is No Doctor Ben Casey

We have been inundated with the news that Donald Trump successfully remembered for a few minutes the sequence “person, woman, man, camera, TV” as part of his recent cognitive skills test. Well, I can remember five words with a similar cadence, and they are from a lot more than a few minutes ago. In fact, they are from the 1960s. I first heard the words in 1961 when I was five years old. My cognitive skills must be pretty good because I have no trouble remembering “Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity.”

A memorable moment in John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s inauguration speech? No way. The recitation was the introduction to each week’s episode of Ben Casey, the TV drama about earnest young physician Dr. Casey (Vince Edwards) and his older mentor, Dr. Zorba. Each week the two docs would battle deadly diseases on ABC, while also waging a ratings battle with much more handsome, but much less broody, James Kildare (a pre-Thorn Birds Richard Chamberlain) on rival NBC’s Dr. Kildare.

Being the curious sort, I decided to see how Dr. Casey would compare with President Trump. Let’s see how they stack up!

Dr. Ben Casey Vs President Trump

For me, Dr. Ben has it nailed. And hey, I just remembered another 5 words I want you to remember: Vote for Biden in November!

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