I have made a change. You may not have noticed, but beginning today, my blog has a shiny new name.”Downsize, Maybe” has been retired.

When I started writing in the middle of 2015, Barb and I were still contemplating what sort of house we would build. We thought we would probably be downsizing, but we weren’t quite sure that things would turn out that way, hence the original title of the blog “Downsize, Maybe.” I wonder if anyone recognized the phrasing as a take-off on the hit song, “Call Me Maybe?” As Carly Rae Jepsen sang, and Barb and I knew, “this is crazy.”

So a lot of the early posts, particularly from the pre-ChicagoNow days, were adventures in home designing, financing, and building. It was often a rocky road (when isn’t it) and lots of the frustrations made it into these pages. But Barb and I have been in the house since January, and since that time we are just typical suburbanites. I really haven’t written very much about our “Crystal Palace” these last few months. So like Dart on Stranger Things, the time has come for this blog to molt its skin and take on a new identity. “Downsize, Maybe” is becoming “Getting More From Les.”  The king is dead, long live the king!

Where will we go from here? I suspect there will still be plenty of glimpses into our lives and passions and challenges. I will continue to observe the absurd, police the politicians, promote the prostate, and chime in for or against the national zeitgeist. I may return a bit more to the music I love.

I hope to keep writing as long as you will keep reading. As always, comments, criticisms and new subscribers are welcome. Pass it on!Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!

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“Dr. Raff, the new stainer won’t turn on.”

“That’s strange, the electrical safety engineer said it was fine yesterday…”

Our lab has been in business for almost 12 years now. We use lots of automated analyzers, stainers, cover-slippers. They are subjected to daily use, so plenty of wear and tear. We purchase some of them used from a handful of vendors that specialize in refurbished laboratory equipment. And being of a fairly small size, we don’t have much back-up. A particular machine better run or the serviceman better get here quickly. We keep up a good relationship with the service companies, we don’t want their technicians feeling like lonely Maytag repairmen (or women.)

We also want to keep a safe work environment and meet our credentialing requirements, so we hire an electrical safety engineer to check all our equipment each year. The rule is simple; if it has a plug, it gets inspected. He tests each piece for leakage and shorting and any other electric hazard and slaps an “Inspected” sticker on it. And any new piece of equipment we bring into the lab gets a safety check before it gets put into service. We don’t want anyone shocked when they flip the “On” switch for the first time.

Last week we took delivery of two pieces of equipment, a new incubator for our ever-increasing number of bacteriology cultures (shipped with the wrong power cord,) and a gently used stainer for our Cytology Department, replacing a workhorse stainer whose microswitches were failing and unreplaceable. The new incubator looks sharp and it only took a handful of emails and phone calls to get the correct power cord from the manufacturer. And the replacement stainer is more environmentally and worker safety friendly than its predecessor, so that’s a win-win situation.

I called Bill, our electrical safety engineer, to let him know about the new instruments and he came yesterday afternoon when the lab was quiet for the safety check. Bill was here for a half hour and then stopped by my office to drop of his worksheet and let me know our equipment passed the safety check; we were ready to rock.

So imagine my surprise this morning when the staff couldn’t get the stainer to turn on! We read the quick start manual, flipped the switches, checked the circuit breakers, but nothing happened. No lights flashing, no whirring engines.

Once again, I called Bill. “Our stainer won’t turn on, but you had it working yesterday, right?” “Well,” he said “it passed its safety check, but when I turned the power on nothing happened. You seemed busy, so I didn’t mention it to you. I guess I should have.”

Um, yeah! Not telling me the equipment you just checked is “safe” but won’t actually operate is sort of like a pilot announcing halfway to Europe “We don’t really have enough fuel to cross the Atlantic, but you all seemed to be in a hurry so I took off without refueling. Please prepare for an emergency water landing.”

Our great lab staff did the troubleshooting and solved the problem, but from now on, no service person leaves the front door without answering one basic question. “Does it work???”

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For those of you asking after the blog earlier this week, the new car is an Audi A6. So far, it purrs.

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Tonight Barb and I will sign the papers, write the check, and trade in my black stallion for its replacement.  It will all happen at a dealer out in Naperville, a suburb as foreign to a Northsider like me as wins are to the current Bulls team. It took weeks of combing car dealer websites, days of studying comparison charts, and hours of test drives before I found the low-mileage, gently pre-driven car I was looking for. A new companion to make my daily commute down the Tri-State Tollway speed by–at a speed acceptable to me and allowable by the state highway patrol.

It is not easy to give up the old black beauty. She started as another man’s mistress, the back up to his primary ride. And since she was his mistress he loaded her up. Every amenity available for a 2011 luxury car — infrared night vision, rear seat DVD screens, a lovely coffee-colored leather interior, driver assist speed control–nothing was too good for her. And under it all, the lovely eight-cylinder engine that purred.

But he was an embezzler and they both paid the price. He went from Wall Street to a prison, she went from a suburban New York villa to an impound lot. She traveled west after her dealer auction and ended up in my hands. And we melded.

For four years we have zipped along. The night vision and the DVD screens have languished, but I have loved the brown leather. The powerful engine synching up with the speed control has been a perfect match for my driving style, purring until I would roar into the left lane. And although the car always felt a little stiff and uncomfortable to Barb, I have loved every minute of driving her.

But now she is a little gray. She is showing her age, showing all those miles I have pushed her through. Things that used to work don’t work anymore, and like any aging heiress, she is getting too expensive to keep beautiful, and much too expensive to maintain.

The new car doesn’t have as many features or as interesting a backstory. But it has enough oomph and glamor to satisfy my desires, and a long, long warranty to satisfy my practical side.

So I will Waze my way back to Naperville tonight as the Bulls battle the Cavaliers. I may not be trading for Lebron James, but I still think I am trading for a winner!

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I was a 13-year-old kid, the son of the company’s office manager, spending a blistering hot summer helping out in the warehouse. The guy was about 25, part of the regular warehouse crew, pulling boxes of shoes and socks for delivery to the 20 or so stores the company had in the Chicago area. He had no power over me, at least as far as the employment situation. On the contrary, I am sure that one word from me and he would have been out on the street, looking for a minimum wage job somewhere else. It was a complete reversal of the typical workplace harassment situation.

But that didn’t stop him from being the aggressor, in a quiet, insidious, way. The warehouse contained rows and rows of high shelving units packed to the ceiling with cartons of shoes. Standing in the aisles between those racks was like being in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, hidden from view and detection. It was in one of those secretive corridors that he made his move.

First, he showed me some “French postcards ” that he claimed to have just found on the sidewalk outside the warehouse. Porn was much harder to find in those pre-Hustler, pre-Internet, pre-Comcast days, so it was quite a surprise to have an older guy showing me risque snapshots. He followed the peep show with increasingly personal questions until I finally got the drift of where he hoped this encounter was heading.

I mumbled  “not interested,” in my 13-year old Bar Mitzvah boy’s voice. He backed off.  I didn’t say a word about it to anyone, certainly not to my dad. The other warehouse workers were unaware of the incident but played nasty tricks on the man on the basis of generalized homophobia. I can only wonder if there may have been other propositions made between the shoe racks, but at least the other recipients would have been above the age of consent.

Was I a victim? Yes. Was he a predator? Absolutely. Was I traumatized by the episode? I don’t think so, although it is certainly made enough of an impression on me that it is the only incident of that summer job that I clearly recall. While it was unfortunate that my first interaction with someone who I recognized to be gay was a negative one, that has not colored my association with the many LGBT individuals with whom I have worked, celebrated and shared with over the years.

I don’t believe I have ever acted inappropriately towards a woman-I don’t believe I ever will. But perhaps looking back on this episode helps me understand the pain, the discomfort, and the torment of  women who must deal with harassment on a routine basis, particularly when the predator has the power to put the victim’s well-being or livelihood at risk. And after reading the outpouring of #metoo personal stories this week,  I will be ready to intercede if I become aware of that type of behavior around me.

So that our mothers, wives, and daughters can stop becoming #metoo.

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In a startling announcement, T. Mueller-Hinton Ph.D. of the National Constitutional Archivists (NCA) has conclusively demonstrated that the Second Amendment to the Constitution contains a transcription error. After reviewing notes from the attendees of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and numerous drafts of the Bill of Rights, Dr. Mueller-Hinton has clear proof that the amendment speaks of the rights of citizens to have uncovered upper extremities.

“The evidence was there all along,” Mueller-Hinton said in his press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. “We know that English spelling wasn’t totally standardized in the 1700’s and the words like bear and bare were frequently interchanged. Up until Draft 4, the word is consistently written as “bare”, but sometime between then and the final copy, a scribe switched to the alternate spelling “bear.” This amendment never was about guns, rifles or bazookas. It is strictly about bare arms.”

Dr. Mueller-Hinton, a post-graduate student at the National University of Traditional Scholars (NUTS,) a Minnesota think tank, began his research project after viewing a production of “Hamilton,” the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical about the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. “After I learned that Mr. Hamilton was born and lived his early life in the Caribbean, I began to wonder what impact that had on his thought process. In reading some of his “Federalist Papers” I noticed commentary on the joy of feeling the sun on his sleeveless arms while a youth. He was unhappy with the stuffy dress conventions of the United States. It was easy to put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4 after that.”

Clint McWhitlock, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association (NRA), immediately released a statement stating that Constitutional protection was not really needed for his association’s goal of “a handgun in every pot, two rifles in every garage.” The statement further went on to say “firearms are the American way of life, and we don’t need the Second Amendment to preserve that. After all, we have great laws like Concealed Carry now.”

Also releasing a joint statement were Elizabeth Shagreen MD, President of the Dermatological Society of North America and Gordon Calomine of the Coppertone Corporation. “Suns don’t kill people, people kill people. We are advancing legislation to require all bare body parts must be protected by sunscreen with an SPF of 75 or higher. We cannot let this new Constitutional interpretation cause us to lose lives.”

Vice-President Mike Pence commented that it was OK for Americans to get a suntan, as long as they didn’t kneel while doing so.

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There haven’t been any new blogs from me for a week or so. It is not that I haven’t been thinking about my ChicagoNow readers, I just haven’t found a topic that has inspired the necessary 500 words. I suppose it is a form of writer’s block, but as long as writing is not my profession, that particular malady doesn’t overly damage my psyche.

Just to prove that I have been giving it a shot, here is a list of 10 topics that I have tried, and failed, to blog about.

1. Our cat that thinks it is a dog. Barb wants me to write a book about this one, but are there enough cat ladies out there who would want to read it?
2. A story in the New York Times about the difficulties in the Medical Examiners Office in New Hampshire. Overdose deaths have lead to an overworked ME. While in training I spent several months in the Cook County Medical Examiners Office, but I lack the knowledge and skill to adequately discuss what this story is really about, the opioid crisis.
3. The distressing comments of a rabbi who has buried 28 young adults, lost to overdose deaths. See #2.
4. The appeal of sitting in a dark room and listening to an album (ok, it was digital, not vinyl) from start to finish. For those interested in my musical taste, the album was the first Crosby, Stills and Nash release, the one creatively titled “Crosby, Stills, and Nash.” It is the one with the song that is the source of my ringtone for Barb–can you guess which one?
5. The sounds of silence. One afternoon I actually turned off the radio in my office. I gave up the usual background noise for a surprising calmness. After a day or two I broke, and the radio came back on.
6. My new role as a teacher.  I am educating my fitness trainer about classic rock music. For every extra ten push-ups he makes me do, I lecture him on an even more obscure band from the 60’s or 70’s. Quicksilver Messenger Service anyone?
7. Why we do this. ChicagoNow bloggers were posting on the CN  Facebook page about why they write. It made me think about why I keep writing, but it didn’t turn into 500 words of contemplation. It did make me think I need a new name for this blog, since I am no longer writing about building a house. Any suggestions?
8. Another assault on Trump. I was working on an acrostic, with the first letter of each line linking up to spell “Great Again.” I stopped after “Greedy” and “Repulsive.” I suppose the poem, if ever completed, could be about Harvey Weinstein too.
9. The return of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I have never been much of an enthusiast, and just wonder if Jeff Garlin does nothing but scream in real life, too.
10. Life hacking. The little sideways things that make life work better. Barb and I share one that I can’t discuss here…

Ten concepts, but no blog posts. I’ll keep pushing on my writer’s brick wall, maybe it will come tumbling down soon!

Peace and Love,

Les

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Ruminations at 6:00 a.m. this morning.

“Let’s see, it looks like someone brought a big bag of treats into the lunchroom for us bleary-eyed coworkers. From the size and shape of the package, it looks like about a month’s supply of some crunchy snack from Costco. The package has drawings and cartoons, so that’s a little bit more suggestive of Trader Joe’s. Got to be one of the other. I’m gonna try to hold off until after lunch before I dig in and have a few pieces of whatever it is.”

Post-Lunch snack time

“Hmm, OK here we go. Time to check out those “Veggie Chips.” I’m looking at the label, and it feels like I am reading the Google “Do No Evil” credo, or maybe my physician pledge to “first do no harm.” These things pass every hippy-dippy requirement of the decade.  The label says the chips are gluten-free (but I love gluten,) vegan (I love meat almost as much as I love gluten,) Kosher (good, tomorrow is Yom Kippur, but wait-I can’t eat on Yom Kippur,) free of dairy products (ice cream is my third love,) non-GMO (I think GMO’s will someday save the world,) and without hydrogenated or trans-fat (OK, even I don’t want hydrogenated or trans-fat anymore.)

“I flip the bag over and take a look at the ingredient list, see what tasty vegetables are part of this good for our souls and the world around us veggie snack food. Ingredient number one: potato flour. Ingredient number two: potato starch. Huh?  Where are the veggies? I know that technically potatoes are vegetables, but who thinks of them that way? Finally, after I read through the salt and the sugar and the (non-trans, non-hydrogenated) oil we get to things like tomato paste (remember, ketchup is a vegetable,) turmeric (more of a flavoring and coloring than a four-star vegetable,) spinach powder and beetroot powder. And that makes these Veggie Chips?  I think not. These are extruded potato chips. Pringles with a fancy disguise and a little red beet powder. And not even a stackable can.

“The question becomes, do I really want to eat any of these? I don’t see anything else laying on the table, and something crunchy/salty would be good, keep me from having food cravings all afternoon long. I think I will have one or two.”

Ten Minutes Later

“I can’t believe how many I ate. They are tasteless but addictive. I had better stop.

“Oh no, what’s this? Has a rep just brought in twenty bags of Garrett’s Popcorn? The caramel and cheddar mix? Now we’re talking. Pseudo-Pringles be gone, the King of Snack Foods is here!”

I made MY choice. Which would YOU choose?

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Recent posts:

http://www.chicagonow.com/downsize-maybe/2017/09/did-48-years-worth-of-suckers-elect-donald-trump/

http://www.chicagonow.com/downsize-maybe/2017/09/pancreatic-cancer-took-my-dear-sister-but-not-her-light/

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Sunday was a day spent at my friend Art’s lake house with a few other high school buddies, walking along the beach, downing chili, and watching the Cubs soar while the Bears and Sox flopped. My friend Gary mentioned that he enjoyed the blogs I have written about my family history. He quoted a line I had used in discussing my dad in a blog from two years ago, a piece that had faded from my mind, about looking into a mirror and seeing my father. Gary asked if I had any more family member to write about.  I hesitated, and Art said I needed to write about my sister.

I have always been reluctant to write about my late sister, Linda. Maybe it is a feeling that her story didn’t belong to me, but rather to her husband or to her two sons. Maybe I thought there is just too much pain involved. But with the exception of my cousin Judy, there is no one alive who knew Linda as a young girl, who remembers some of the early moments. So I have decided to try to honor her, as I have my mom and aunt, my dad, and my father-in-law in previous blogs.

When does a boy first understand he has an older sister, and how important she will be to him as he grows up? I first remember Linda as a flower girl at Cousin Judy’s wedding.  Was she seven or eight? I just remember being very sleepy as she walked down the aisle, doing an important grown-up thing. It was a few years later that she had first chance to “mother” me during our family’s month-long visit to our uncle and grandmother in Switzerland. Mom and Dad were traveling for a week in Austria, and Uncle Herbert really didn’t know what to do with his young niece and nephew. Linda made sure that there was food I would eat, that my blistered feet were taken care of, that we had time to swim and play in Lake Thun.

Linda was five years older than me, and because I spent part of my education in a parochial school, we never attended the same school at the same time. But I followed her at a few schools and had her reputation to live up to. I was expected to be well-behaved, courteous, a scholar and a willing volunteer.  Mr. Wohlberg, everyone’s favorite eighth-grade teacher, and Miss Nee, the freshman algebra teacher, insisted on nothing less from Linda Raff’s little brother.

I know Linda had the usual ups and downs in high school. Her four-girl gang would tighten and loosen, sometimes bringing hugs, other times bringing tears. Boys, dating, proms; it all followed as I looked on from one or two maturity levels below. I remember the cramped family drive to deliver her to Northern Illinois University, my uncle’s Chevy Impala totally unsuited for transporting six people and the clothes, makeup, and bric-a-brac needed for a seventeen-year-old girl to start university life.

Linda completed college in Chicago. She met Alan while I was busy being a high school over-achiever. Then in the blink of an eye, I was in med school and Linda was married and a teacher. Another blink and I was wed, Linda and Alan had two children, Barb and I had a pair of our own. Through it all, we never lived more than 10 miles apart. We spent so many birthday celebrations and happy holidays together and shared so much sadness over my mother’s bad accident and my dad’s passing away.

Linda never lost her sweetness and devotion to her family, but something inside her was changing and we had no way of knowing. She was only 46 when pancreatic cancer made its appearance. Alan and the boys did all they could for her, as did some amazing medical teams. We all lost Linda in January of 1999–a special light had flickered and gone.

But the reflection of that light continues, burning strongly in the eyes of her sons. Alan and his wife Yvonne made sure the boys always had a home and special place to be loved, and I hope Barb and I did so as well.

It is what Linda would have asked of us.

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Did it make you laugh? The first time you saw the Hyundai TV commercial using  “Sweet Caroline” to sell Sonatas? It suddenly seemed as if it were everywhere. The bum-bum-bum sing-along between the guy and gal commuters  ranked as the most frequently viewed car commercial for a week over the summer. And audiophiles like me know that there’s a radio version too. Much to Barb’s delight Neil Diamond was back in our lives.

So with a song catalog that stretches back over 50 years, I thought I would give some thought to how Barb’s favorite singer-songwriter could cash in on a few more of his hits. Here are 10 for his consideration:

1. Chicago Tourism can link in with The Last Picasso. The last Picasso may be in some old museum, but we have our own rusting in Daley Plaza.
2. Kentucky Bourbon and Kentucky Women. A match made in whiskey heaven.
3. Nature Valley should be pushing product using Crunchy Granola Suite.
4. Joel Osteen and Rick Warren can battle it out over the rights to Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show. They can afford it.
   
5. Red Red Wine will make Gallo fine.
6. And while we’re drinking, Cracklin’ Rosie will fill the bill for Aldi’s $9 a bottle Rosé award winner.
7. In concert Diamond likes to show a video of his youth while he sings Brooklyn Roads. Sell the rights and let all the roads lead to The Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets. Grab some of that NBA cash, Neil.
8. And how about  September Morn for the beginning of the NFL season? You’ve got more fans than Hank Williams Jr., and we all need Sunday Morning Football.
9. President Trump might like the rights to Coming to America. “On the boats and on the planes, they’re coming to America–that’s because I built my wall and they can’t get here by land.”
10. And of course, Levi’s will pay whatever it takes to have the world Forever in Blue Jeans, even if it’s mostly those funky dad jeans now.

If some of these are a stretch, at least none are quite as much of a grab as the Cherry Cherry Christmas song from a few years ago; the one with the “Holly Holy, Rocky Rolly” lyrics where you wedged in as many of your own songs as you could. As one nice Jewish boy to another, all I can say is oy vey.

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