I Get To Do This–Thoughts From A Veteran Teacher

I rarely have guest bloggers, but an experienced teacher I know sent me this, and in the face of all the hostility between the Chicago Public School System and the Chicago Teacher’s Union I thought I would post it.

Full Disclosure for total transparency:

The teacher, Laury Wolf, is a veteran high shcool math teacher, with experience in New York City and Chicago, but does not teach in the CPS System.
She is my daughter (and that is not her picture at the top of the blog.)

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“I get to do this.”

I never thought I would be one to write a blog post, but if anything, the last two years have allowed us to try new things. Also, time, time is just different. I haven’t had time to leave our house, see friends, try new restaurants or travel. I have had time to think, and I mean really think. I lot of the things have been related to my career. I am a math teacher, and I mostly love it. I have been thinking if I move on what would that look like, what else can I do?

I grew up with a dad who was a first-generation American, understanding the importance of education. My grandparents escaped Nazi Germany and created a life in Chicago, instilling in my dad the value of learning. Throughout my years of schooling, my dad was president of our high school’s school board. My mom always encouraged me to further myself too. No matter what, you could always learn. I learned the value of education, and not just to get into a “good” college. I am very grateful for my upbringing.

It’s hard to define what exactly drew me to teaching, but I think I liked the constant motion in the school building. Everyone has a role, responsibilities, and a general sense of purpose. Every day was a challenge, and every day I came in determined to be better. The relationships and watching the students growing in front of me made it worth it.

As I reflect on my role as a teacher, I am amazed at the craziness of the last two years. Classes that were remote, hybrid, in person, asynchronous, on a park bench? And sometimes I question what makes this worth it. Why do we subjugate ourselves to emails overnight, bad professional development, little sick leave, constant changes, and most importantly a lot of disrespect?

I think back to a conversation I had at a math conference a few years back. I was sitting next to what I call a baby teacher (someone who is new to the profession). The workshop was about using your own interests in the classroom. Supposedly if I create word problems about watching The Office, my students will double their engagement. The first prompt was to ask your partner why they chose to teach, the baby teacher’s response still resonates with me.

“I get to do this”.

That’s right we are lucky as educators. Every day we get the opportunity to shape, better, and learn from the next generation. I am not sure where in education I will end up, but I know I will still be thinking.

“I get to do this.”

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A Song, A Memory, A Sad Discovery

“I wonder what happened to Mark.”

Barb and I were eating dinner, Pandora music playing on our kitchen speakers. “One For My Baby” began to play. It’s been one of Barb’s favorite songs ever since Bette Midler sang it to Johny Carson on his penultimate night as host of The Tonight Show. But what we were hearing was the classic Frank Sinatra version. And it brought back different memories to me, leading me to a sad discovery.

My memory was of the mid-’60s, sitting in my family apartment, listening to the radio–rock’n’roll on WCFL. Joel Sebastian, the morning DJ on Super ‘CFL always ended his shift turning over to airways to fellow jock Dick Williamson, as Ol’ Blue Eyes crooned “one for my baby and one more for the road” in the background.

I never knew Joel, but I did know his son Mark. When I was a pathology resident at Evanston Hospital, Mark was one of several dieners, the hospital employees who, in addition to other duties, helped the pathologists perform autopsies.

The dieners kept the morgue clean and supplied, transferred the deceased from the refrigerator to the autopsy table, and helped with incisions and evisceration–the process of removing organs for examination to determine the cause of death and other morbidities. They then had the responsibility of cleaning the body and preparing it for delivery to the funeral home.

A good diener is invaluable to pathologists-in-training, and Mark was a solid one. He was a cheerful, smart, young man with a good grasp of anatomy, taking a post-college Sebastian Sabbatical while waiting to go to medical school in a year or two. Eyes twinkling, he would keep us newbies from making too many rookie mistakes.

Mark became my friend and confidante as well, teaching me how to debone a chicken for the surprise dinner I made for my 3rd wedding anniversary. We had a side-hustle doing autopsies at a few neighboring hospitals and even went on a double date or two–sometimes on the same day as our autopsy rounds.

After a year or so, Mark moved on. I completed my residency and began my long-term gig as a staff pathologist at Holy Family Hospital. I hadn’t thought much about him until the other night, listening to Sinatra, remembering the Joel Sebastian connection, when the thought popped into my head.

“I wonder what happened to Mark,” I said.

It didn’t take long to find out. The Google search combination of Mark and Joel Sebastian quickly brought me to all the information I was seeking. Mark had indeed become a physician, an Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Connecticut, and Director of Trauma at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. And no surprise to me, he was an award-winning teacher of medical students and a profound doer of good deeds

But as you may have guessed the article I was reading was in Memorium. Mark had taken his own life in 2013 at the age of 55.

I don’t know the path that took him to that point. I only know the sadness that hit me as I read of his passing. He was truly one of the good guys.

So Mark, whenever I hear “One for My Baby,” be it Sinatra, Midler, or anyone at all, please know I will be thinking of you.

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The Entertainment Book. Fun in the ’80s.

There was a time before the Internet. Before Grub-Hub and Amazon, before Facebook and Tik-Tok. And it was before Groupon, the 2008 Chicago innovation that has had its ups and downs as it pioneered online discount offers. Before all these, it was the time of The Book.

I am not talking about the Holy Bible, though some of our friends saw it as such. It was the “Entertainment Book;” a softbound collection of coupons, published annually that was filled with two-for-ones and half-offs for (a few of) our favorite restaurants and (lots of) places with greasy floors and tables, sticky menus, and cheery “Opas” arising from waiters as they charred the next batch of saganaki.

The Book entered our lives via my mother, a member of ORT, a Jewish women’s group that sold the coupon book as a fundraiser. Since my birthday in early January coincided with the new book release for the year, my mother could kill two birds with one volume, getting a birthday gift for me while meeting her ORT quota. She knew it was a gift I couldn’t return.

For much of the early 1980s, The Book ruled our social life. Most of our friends, also the children of quota-seeking moms, had their copies as well. For Saturday night couples outings, restaurants were chosen with The Book in hand, and an eye to any blackout dates on the coupons.

At times The Book served us well. It became a tradition for Barb and me, along with three other coupon-laden couples to choose one Saturday night a year to corral a full table at Ichiban of Northbrook, our favorite teppanyaki restaurant. Our joyous reunions only ended when the restaurant site become the home of a Reform Jewish Congregation. It became clear we would never have another piece of tempura shrimp there.

The Book contained coupons for other things–bowling lanes and baseball games and the like. But it was the restaurants that comprised 85% of the coupon pages. And as I mentioned above, the restaurants were not necessarily of the 4-star variety. As our disposable income grew above pathology resident level, Barb and I made a pact not to choose a place to dine “just because it is in The Book.”

Eventually, many of my mother’s friends moved away, and she herself lost her mobility. Her Jewish volunteer groups faded into her past. My birthday gifts became 365 Daily-Page-A-Day Calendars, featuring Jeopardy questions or knock-knock jokes. None of them had two-for-one coupons in the back.

A quick Google search tells me that the Entertainment company, status-post a bankruptcy or two, still exists. Its product is of course now digital, Apple or Google Play apps readily available. But who wants an app for a birthday present from their mother?

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Holmes is Where the Heart Is

After hearing that I had enjoyed watching Benedict Cumberbatch in The Year of the Dog my brother-in-law recommended that I watch Mr. Cumberbatch in the Sherlock TV series. I haven’t checked off that box yet, but the mention did set off memories of Sherlock Holmes, and of one heavyweight book that I used to own.

The book was almost as thick (over 1100 pages) as the title was long —The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All Four Novels/All Fifty-Six Adventures. It was a Bar Mitzvah gift from a good friend who was also a lover of mysteries and the written word. Much of my 13th year was spent devouring every word of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 60 pieces of the Holmesian mythos. And unlike Elizabeth, the current Holmes in the news who claimed to solve blood chemistries from a tiny drop of blood, Sherlock really did make much out of little, solving crimes from the smallest piece of evidence.

A Study in Scarlet, The Red-Headed League, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Famous stories, and names I remember so well. Yet I couldn’t tell you the plot or the denouement of any of them. In fact, the part of the volume I remember the best is the forward — a few pages that were written by an American Holmes aficionado, Christopher Morley.

While I read each story once, I must have read that forward fifty times. It is odd, but my mental picture of Holmes was penned more by Mr. Morley than by Sir Conan Doyle. And just to be sure my memories were accurate I tracked down the four-page forward online. As I read it this morning I was quite impressed with my own recall. There were paragraphs that I could recite almost word for word. I wish I could say the same for my Torah portion from that long ago Bar Mitzvah!

As for my friend who gave me the book, we are still in touch, although he lives across the country. A movie critic and college lecturer, he still acts as the post hoc unpaid editor for this blog, taking up the slack when Grammarly fails me. One day I will have to ask him which one of the dozens of actors who have portrayed Sherlock Holmes have been the best. And thank him for that gift from so long ago.

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Our Holiday Verse

A Holiday Greeting,
It's meant for the masses,
No matter how full,
Or how empty your glass is.

The year was a weird one
With DC insurrection
From Big Lie believers
And in the end from Joe Manchin.

With Covid we battled
Through every Greek letter
And vaccines J and J--
Moderna - Pfizer did better.

We boosted when able
Though we formed a greater schism
'Tween the vaxers and those 
Who feared the jabs caused magnetism.

At times we were joyful,
We thought our lives would recover
And we travelled a great distance.
To see a spouse, child, or lover.

But flying's a hassle,
The skies sometimes unpleasant
Unless you're first class or private,
And not in coach like a peasant.

We went out to the movies,
Or at least some of us tried to
Most found Prime, Netflix or Hulu,
The theaters we were confined to.

We had an Atlanta World Series, 
And a Super Bowl for Tom Brady.
The Summer Olympics were delayed
And not terribly paradey.

And with Omicron sweeping
This month to remember
Some leagues are postponing
Their games in December.

There's now a new worry
That is raising its head.
Prices are rising,
Inflation, it's said.

The costs they are higher
On cars new and used.
On gas and on beef steaks
And the Fed seems confused.

But a New Year is coming.
We hope life will be brighter.
So all raise your glasses,
And say "Cheers" with this writer.

———————————————————————-

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Have I Found My Missing 1%?

I have mentioned my devotion to Grammarly before. It is an app that lives on my desktop PC, monitoring my spelling and my grammar. It has saved me from dozens of there for their swaps, from hundreds of misplaced commas, and from tens of thousands of ~~mispellings~~ misspellings.

Grammarly also uses its Artificial Intelligence brain to categorize the “tone” of my writings. My latest report card was:

Confident:     33%
Optimistic:    33%
Informal:       22%
Friendly:        11%

I guess that is a fairly good assessment of my personality and of the way I write. But when you add it up, it only comes to 99%, not 100%. Since that report, I have been wrestling with myself, trying to figure out what makes up the final 1% of me.

This morning I discovered it! I became ANGRY and it felt good. Some background: Over the weekend, we traded in Barb’s car for an updated, gently used one. We handled the haggling and paperwork on Friday and Saturday (The price of a one-year-old used car was practically as high as the original MSRP, but that’s a story for another day.)

Barb picked up the sparkling white sedan yesterday. I told her to be sure to notify our insurance agency about the update, and gave her the name and phone number of our local agent. Barb called twice, left two voice mails, and got no response. I called the agency main number, left a message, and got the same response as Barb–nothing.

Starting to get fed up, and not wanting Barb to be driving around an uninsured car, I tried a different tact. I called the national emergency number on the back of our insurance card, explained the situation, and begged to be transferred to the correct extension at the national office.

I was connected with someone who could give us immediate coverage, though he pointed out this was really supposed to be done by the local agent. I nodded my head and thought “whatever you say, just get me covered.”

Today I got a call back from the local agency. “Did you leave a message about something?” That’s when my 1% let loose.

“Why didn’t anyone answer our calls yesterday? What happened to our agent? Why weren’t we informed she was no longer with the agency? Who was taking care of our account?”

I didn’t lose control. I didn’t act like Matt Nagy dropping F-Bombs on the officials in last night’s Bear’s game. But I made no attempt to hide my anger at such poor customer service to a “Private-Client” at a very high-end insurance agency.

I know it was a small thing to become furious with. I know most people have much greater concerns and existential reasons for anger. But it felt good to let that 1% of me fly–even if just for a moment.

So maybe 1% Anger will show up on my next Grammarly report card. Until then, I just hope it just keeps finding my missing commas.

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Springsteen Sells It.

Bruce Springsteen: Image courtesy of Chicago Tribune

Word is out on the street that Bruce Springsteen, the tough kid from New Jersey, America’s storyteller, Mr. Broadway, and of course, The Boss, has sold the rights to his music to Sony. The reported sale price, about $500,000,000 dollars. That is, half a billion bucks, or 1/10th of 1 percent of a Musk.

Selling music rights has become the current rage. Dylan, Paul Simon, Neil Young; all have taken the money and run, though none will be able to run as far as Bruce and his big bundle.

I am a big Springsteen fan, though for many years the only music of his that was bought and paid for was a tape cassette of the Born in the USA. All the songs from the Born to Run album are on my iPhone, but I think that has more to do with something called Napster than any laying out of cash.

I enjoyed the one time we saw Bruce and the E Street boys live at the United Center, though Barb was regretting leaving her earplugs at home as the band’s booming sound bounced off the concrete. My two Bruce disappointments: his autobiography and the TV version of his Broadway show. I gave up on both before reaching the halfway point.

How much was Bruce worth before the deal with Sony? “Reliable sources” online give his previous net worth also at half a billion, so I guess with the additional half-billion he has hit billionaire status. I know it is a lot of money, but I can’t help feeling my daughter would be worth that much if someone had given her 3 shares of Tesla stock instead of 3 shares of Walgreens as a Bat Mitzvah gift.

Of course, Mr. Springsteen is not universally loved. In a question I once posed to a Facebook group, asking who was the better storyteller, Springsteen or John Mellencamp, most respondents just wanted the opportunity to dump on Bruce. I think it had more to do with politics than with music. And now those haters probably just want to get a loan from him.

So Bruce, more power to you. I hope you spread a little of that cash with the bandmates who supported you, guys like Steven and Max. And don’t forget Clarence’s and Danny’s families. And there better be a big new bauble for Patti–and maybe some charitable donations, too.

Oh, and Sony execs, if you are reading this, the rights to my blogs are available. It won’t even cost you $500 mill. I’ll take $500 plain.

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I Will Think About Michael Nesmith Whenever I Remember My Puffy Sleeves Green “Monkees” Shirt.

Michael Nesmith. (Photo Courtesy Chicago Tribune)

Michael Nesmith has died. Three-quarters of the Monkees have now passed away, leaving Mickey Dolenz as the sole survivor of the TV super-group. And breaking one more of the strands that held our generation together.

Did you watch The Monkees religiously, Monday nights on Channel 5? I’m sure in the memory of many of us it lasted for years and years, but it really only survived for two seasons.

Was it a good TV show? Not at all. Even my pre-teen critic’s eye recognized that. It was just a string of music videos strung together with a slight, silly, plot. We didn’t know Nesmith would eventually be one of the forces behind the whole music video revolution.

But yes, the show was fun–and bringing the boys into our living rooms every week made them our friends. We knew their eccentricities–Mike’s wool hat, Peter’s kookiness, Davy’s accent, and Mickey’s wanting to be the boss. By the way, if they ever make a biopic about the boys, can anyone but Adrian Grenier play the role of Mickey?

The Monkees popularized the puffy-sleeved shirt, years before Seinfeld satirized it. Maybe the boys wanted to look like pirates. I bought a green number, probably at Leonard’s Juvenile Shop on Morse Avenue. I wore it to the school dances, in heavy rotation with my two Nehru shirts. I thought I was very fashionable back in the day.

Davy, Peter, and now Michael have left us. Mickey is 76. Monkee business is winding down. But I’m a believer that a little bit of me and a little bit of you will remember them even when the last train to Clarksville has gone.

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It’s Time for Time Travel. Where would you go?

Good news! It is “Pretend to Be a Time Traveller Day!” OK, PTBATTD was actually a few days ago, December 8th to be precise. But let’s pretend to travel back to the 8th, and then we can pretend to time travel even more.

Is there any spot in your life you would like to travel back to? Any moment that was so marvelous you want to experience it again and again, ala a good Groundhog Day? Or any Sliding Doors instant that you would have changed, and that may truly have altered the flow of your life, presumably for the better? How about the moment that you decided to do something out of the ordinary that set you on an unexpected course? Lots of instants to choose from.

I’m going to set some ground rules, some restrictions. It must be a moment you were actually present for. And let’s knock out the obvious choices; no choices of “the day my partner and I formed an official union” or “the day that my child was born or adopted.” Now the moment your baby was conceived…that could be a perfectly acceptable choice if it really was that great of a morning, night, plane flight, or whatever.

I’ll go first–and I’ll volunteer an example for each of the three situations I described above.

Most fabulous moment–the instant Barb and I walked into the ballroom at our daughter’s wedding and began to dance. It was electric: the band, the room, the people, the joy-the culmination of months of planning, all the details melding into surreal perfection. I hope it was as exquisite for our daughter and her new husband.
My sliding door? The ranking of residency choices for “The Match.” I chose an outstanding community hospital program over a challenging academic one. I have had a great career in pathology, but it could have been very different (and at least as rewarding) had I ventured into a program where I would have done research as well.
And then the unexpected. I volunteered to serve on a committee in the local grammar school district. I never anticipated that this would lead to a 20 year committment to public school leadership. And if I get to choose two more fantastic moments, they would presenting each of my children with their high school diplomas signed by me as President of the Board of Education.

OK, enough of me baring my soul. What about you? If you could go back to any single day in your life, what would it be? And you don’t have to stop at one. The more you spill, the better we will get to know you. And be glad I didn’t choose to honor “Let’s All Talk Like a Pirate Day!”

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From 1 to 500. It All Started with Elizabeth Holmes.

Yes, this is the 500th contribution I am making to the pages of ChicagoNow. My blog, first known as “Downside, Maybe” joined the Chicago Tribune network in October of 2015. My first topic? Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. You know, the blonde CEO who is currently on trial in San Jose, California for bamboozling investors and the public.

And though it may feel like I have wound up where I started, I think I have said a lot in those 500 blogs, those roughly quarter of a million words.

What started as a cataloging of the stresses of building a modern, stylish, empty nest home in suburban Chicago, has come to be (at least to me) so much more.

It has been a love song to my family, as that family has grown, while also giving me a chance to look back at those I have lost through the years. I have honored mentors and vilified a nemesis or two. I have welcomed, and said goodbye to, various 4-pawed family members, and described walking through our neighborhood in their company.

I have written of all the politics, as many of us moved from mocking Donald Trump to fearing him, the tropes he spouts, and the troops he spawns. I berated Hillary Clinton for her losing campaign, but I am not sure that I ever congratulated Joe Biden for his winning one.

I have let you know what I think about music and art, about movies, television, and my first love, the theater. You read about it when we pedaled in Hanoi, noshed in New York, and bought a time-share in Mexico. And you cruised the tollway with me as I described my daily commute in my embezzler’s Beemer and its successors.

I have written in free verse and in haiku. I have sent you song lyrics and raps. I have asked for your help in getting jobs (host of Jeopardy!, Tribune columnist) and I have given you my thoughts on health and medicine.

As a physician, my first motto is primum non nocere—first, do no harm. I have tried to remember those words when advocating PSA testing, pushing immunizations (well before COVID), and explaining just what it is like to be a pathologist.

The best part? Connecting with friends, old and new, and hearing back from so many readers. Nothing is more rewarding than having one of you relate what a particular post meant to you or referencing an obscure point from something I had written months ago. Yes, I have been heckled, but most responses have been positive, friendly, and informative.

So let me know what blogs you have liked and what you haven’t. And I promise you–the show will go on!

500 more
500 more
I hope that you will read
500 more!

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