I will be the first to admit that I'm a political mope

My father was one of those guys who knew every senator and representative, canvassed for his local favorites, and treated every election, from the local alderman to the presidential race, like a blood sport. His was a Chicago streetwise political interest, one based on the old-school adage of you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours, and if you help elect the alderman, you'll always get your street plowed.

I've fallen about as far from that tree as an apple can without breaking all the laws of physics.

My idea of political involvement is the faint nostalgia I feel stirring when I find my old Mondale/Ferraro and Dukakis/Betnsen  buttons on the bottom of my desk drawer. I'm one of those uninformed philistines who ticks down the endless list of judges on the ballot and votes for whoever has the coolest names -- although lately I've taken to simply voting against the incumbent.

Maybe it's because I have a history of backing losers (except for the times I voted Republican -- my bad, but it WASN'T W either time -- ) which has soured me on the process. (Besides, we're not really electing anyone, the Electoral College is -- but that's another rant). I'm so bitter about the two-party system that last election I voted the Green ticket, and have voted Libertarian in the past, too.

I find it scary listening to pieces like the recent interview on NPR of two former Clinton aides (interracial, married), who felt they were facing a major life crisis because one of them was backing Hillary, the other Obama. Listening to them rhapsodize about their chosen candidates was like listening to some wild-eyed evangelical Christian who has just seen the light. I found it depressing that anyone could get that excited about something as venal as someone you don't know who is running for political office. I mean, it's not like a Bears/Packers marriage, or something.

I will admit I got faintly excited earlier on in this seemingly endless presidential campaign about Ron Paul. Aside from his stance on abortion, he pushes all my buttons -- eliminating income tax, the Federal Reserve and pretty much doing away with all unnecessary government -- plus he wants to legalize pot! He's quirky and popular with Generation Z, or whatever they're calling themselves. What's not to like? Well, besides the fact that he has a snowball's chance in hell, that is.

Now that the departures of Guiliani and Edwards have left the field less cluttered, it's time to concentrate on who the hell to vote for.

In spite of the nightmarish W legacy, I'm not completely opposed to voting Republican -- not that party affiliations count for much anymore. Look at John McCain, who takes the traditional GOP stance on the military and abortion, but who waxes downright Greenish on global warming, God bless him. Unlike Huckabee and Romney, he doesn't scare the hell out of me; his military record at least proves that he can walk the talk.

Still, although having a nice white-haired father figure as President may be nice in a nostalgic, milk-and-cookies way, I don't really think it's what we need anymore. Which leaves us with Hill and Barack.

And I'm not one of those voters who will select them on their performance, American Idol-style. I'm old enough to remember when the televised presidential debates were the be-all and end-all of discourse. Admittedly, I am a political mope, remember -- but this time around I haven't watched any of the debates on TV. Instead, I've relied on position updates and voting record tracking from Web sites like votesmart.org and factcheck.org.

So who will it be -- Hillary or Obama?

The jury is still out -- stay tuned. 

We're in the final days of 2007, and it's as good at time as any to post some deep thoughts that have been banging around in my head lately.

First of all, I'm glad this year is ending, because it's been a weird one -- not nececessarily bad, just weird. How else can you describe a year that included getting a speeding ticket in a parking garage, getting in a car accident because my dog Ralph vomited in my lap (that's why he's called Ralph), and almost getting fired because of a lame attempt at humor e-mailed from work to a local disk jockey? So I'm hoping that 2008 will be relatively dumb-event-free.

I don't have much hope for what's going on in the world in general. I wish those events were merely stupid and innocuous, instead of stupid and cataclysmic. Instead we have an economic meltdown that's been years in the making, along with a lingering war, the usual lack of viable choices for political office (Christ, I'm sick of voting for the lesser of two evils...), and increasing hatred and violence, both at home and abroad.

In times like these I guess it's no wonder I don't want to leave the house (at least not with the dog in my car). But mostly it's just been general inertia that's kept me cooped up in the house lately, even though I've had the past week off. I haven't done much this week -- the kids are too old for Santa-related festivities, and for Christmas fun in general. Evidently disconnection from various electronic devices has a disastrous effect on teenagers. Oh, who am I kidding -- as age has caught up with me, I've just become a slug.

One of the major changes has been a reluctance -- nay, an aversion -- to expressing myself in the written word. In short, I hate writing. Oh sure, I can still edit and offer advice on other people's writing, in fact I enjoy it. But these days, I'd much rather cook than write. I've replaced verbs with herbs, and the results are much more palatable than another unreadable novel.

There is no doubt about it. I have the laziest and most reprehensible blog in all of Internetia.

The last post was last year at this time. I suppose it's just a seasonal thing to want to publicly vent about something inane for me. This from someone who used to compulsively keep journals back in the day when everything was pen and paper -- charming little notebooks that I carried about with me.

I guess it's just an example of being born too early, in a rare instance for me. My daughter tells me if I was a teenager in the days of YouTube and Facebook, I would be a "total Facebook whore," plastering my kisser and my lame opinions everywhere in cyberspace.

I'm sure she's right. As it is, however, my lame forays into Web 2.0 consist of a brief stab at MySpace (hell, everyone is there, from Ron Paul to Svengoolie) and Facebook (where I did enjoy linking in to book and film reviews, but soon got bored).

The irony is, I'm actually going to school for this sort of thing starting in January -- I'll be taking courses at DePaul in the New Media graduate program.

It's not like I don't have things on my mind. I do. I guess I don't think it's worth the time to post my meanderings. Somehow it was OK to vent in those cute little Hallmark notebooks. Nobody saw them, and there was no expectation that one's writing had to be stellar, one's opinions politically correct, one's very existence was being judged on something dashed off in the few grabbed minutes between getting home from work and falling into bed (or in this case, lying in bed on a Saturday morning and waiting for the plumber. Wait, that came out all wrong). 

The stakes are higher today. People I don't even know could weigh in on the sort of half-baked drivel I'm writing now. Back in the day, what you showed to the public was edited, polished, thought about, plucked, tweezed and bikini-waxed into perfection. Now everybody and his brother gets to see you in your skivvies with your legs unshaved, just rolled out of bed. I don't know if I'm ready for that.

But I also know I'm too lazy (bottom line for everything) to put any real effort into blogging which by its very nature seems to me an off-the-cuff activity, sort of like doodling stupid cartoons on a telephone pad while you're on hold for something bigger.

I'm sure not all bloggers feel that way. But I do, so what you see is what you get.

Off subject (whatever the hell that subject is):

Tracy from Work introduced me to the wonderful work of James Lileks, author of such tomes as The Gallery of Regrettable Food and other delights. James is a journalist of a certain age who is in love with popular culture ranging from the turn of the last century to the '70s. I've spent hours at his wonderful Web page, which is filled with great photos from the past and present, featuring such delights as the long-gone Gobbler restaurant/motel in Wisconsin and other delights. He is my new inspiration.

Visit his site at www.lileks.com.

So there's a big flap over by a Chicago suburban middle school about the kids putting on a Mafia farce play. Seems the Sons of Italy are calling for a formal protest of the school on performance night, while the school principal is standing firm on the grounds that the play is just a bit of pre-teen fun, in the lighthearted spirit of oh, let's say, The Godfather and the Sopranos.

I have to admit I'm torn on this issue.

My kneejerk reaction is to say, "Damn right!" Why is it OK to portray Italians in everything from TV shows to films to pizza commercials, for godsake, as bumbling, opera-singing, red-wine-swilling, pasta-snapping, pizza-flipping guys (or gals) with big black moustaches, yelling "At's a nice!"

Try replacing the goofy (or mobbed-up) Italian stereotype with Amos and Andy, Stepin Fetchit, or the Frito Bandito (anybody remember him?). Black and Latino groups would rise up in righteous outrage, even if the stereotype was a "good-natured" poke at their ethic group. (I mean, come on -- Chief Illinewek? Yeah, he's had a huge impact on unemployment and fetal alcohol syndrome among Native Americans, right?)

On the other hand, though, I want to say, "Go for it!" Hell, I like the Godfather and the Sopranos, and will be the first to admit that -- at least in the case of Italian stereotypes -- most contain at least a grain of truth.

More to the point, it's too bad that the no-holds-barred attitude our society has about stereotyping Italians can't be applied across the board. Not that I'm advocating a return to minstrel shows, but even the most politically correct of us has to admit that in spite of the elimination of these stereotypes, our collective sense of humor is more mean-spirited now than ever.

We've become a dour, humorless prig of a society, in so many areas -- from humor to smoking in public. I suppose you could make the case that both smoking and ethnic stereotypes can hurt people, even indirectly. I prefer to think that incendiary comic legend Lenny Bruce was right when he advocated the open use of all sorts of language, including what could be construed as ethnic slurs. Say them out loud, drag the sorry old stereotypes into the spotlight, and they lose their power to harm us.

Or maybe I'm just a crazy wop bitch. Abbundanza!

Inspired by the This I Believe series on NPR, I wrote this.

As an Italian-American raised working-class Catholic in the 1960s, I'm genetically and socially programmed to believe in God. In spite of its rigid structure, the religion of my youth had a hominess about it -- like a big, extended family that was always there for you, whether you wanted it or not. God the Father and Jesus were busy handling world affairs, but you had your own personal guardian angel and a communion of saints to help you out of whatever trouble you might get into. And you could always put in a word with Mary to smooth things over between you and Jesus.

Over the years, like most families, this relationship broke down -- eroded by a combination of hard knocks, doubts, and too many 3 a.m.s spent staring into the darkness, begging for a sign of the existence of a personal, caring God. But although I let the phone ring off the hook in those 3 a.m. calls, I never got an answer – not even a prerecorded message assuring me that in spite of an unusually high call volume,  mine would eventually be answered.

So over the years, I've resorted to my own devices to touch the divine. I found it in the uniquely human realm of creativity -- whether it's figuring out how to play a Mozart piece on the piano, developing a fictional character in a novel, or stirring sautéed garlic and onions into tomato puree.

When you're creating something, you're rummaging around in humankind's collective unconscious with both hands. It's messy, engrossing, fulfilling work, like making mud pies when you were a kid. Remember feeling the mud between your fingers, patting it into an old pie tin, then sprinkling the top with sugary dry sand? You couldn't eat it, but it sure looked good.

Similarly, creating art doesn't always put food on the table, but it satisfies in other ways. It makes and keeps us sane. The more we bury the creative urge under the artificial drive to consume junk media, sex, food, alcohol and material meaninglessness, the more alienated we become – from ourselves, from each other, and from God.

As a writer, I'm fascinated with the phenomenon known as "character possession." This happens when a writer has developed his fictional characters so thoroughly that they actually end up doing things on their own, sometimes in direct defiance of the writer's outlines, plot maps and best intentions. Character possession is an ironic analogy for mankind using free will to determine his destiny.

The Socratic quote that says an unexamined life is not worth living speaks to the human drive to create something bigger than ourselves – something that will last, even beyond our human progeny. Besides the solace it brings to us while we're doing it, creativity – or imitating God – reminds us of where we came from, and leaves an indelible footprint in the sand of the future -- truly the only thing we leave behind after we are gone.

Well, thank God the 2006 midterm elections are over. All those snarky and negative TV/radio ads have gotten to be quite boring. I miss the days when candidates could run an ad like SCTV's Mayor Tommy Shanks, sitting in front of the fireplace with his stuffed dog, saying things like, "So how are things with you? Things are going pretty good for me. Stubbed my toe the other day. Gee, that hurt. Well, see you!"

I'm not going to weigh in and try to sound intellectual about the elections. I hate politics in pretty much all of its forms. IMHO, by the time you get to be a viable candidate for any party, you've already slept with so many corporate slimebags to garner support or bucks that you're ready to do whatever they say. But frankly I'm glad that both the House and the Senate are back with the Dems to at least give some sort of objectivity a fighting chance. (And another two years for a possible presidential impeachment.)

I'm also glad that Our Town has finally passed a referendum requiring new construction to be "in the spirit of" the original flavor of the neighborhood. Although that gives developers plenty of room for interpretation, at least it might stem the tide of teardowns being replaced with outrageously huge and ostentatious McMansions.

Our neighboring town of Western Springs does quite a nice job of remodeling its tiny homes -- instead of teardowns, they add a modest second story, very much in the flavor of the neighborhood, and each one is unique -- but all in proportion to other homes in the area. Let's hope Our Town adopts similar guidelines.

OK, so I don't write much on this blog anymore.  It's not very interesting, anyhow, and I've kinda subliminated my opinions, heck, nobody listens anyhow, right?

But I simply must share my latest boondoggle with the world.  It's a 1926 Kimball player piano.  The player part doesn't work, and even the regular piano stuff sounds pretty funky -- like the rinky-tink noise you'd hear in some Wild Western dance hall.

But heck, the cabinet looks great, and the guts of the player part are still there, and I now have two boxes of piano rolls, most of them Czechoslovakian folk songs, since the original owners were Bohemians from Cicero (I should know, since I have the original 1926 bill of sale in the matching piano bench).

Sit back and allow me to regale you with the Saga of the Piano.

There was an ad in the classified section of the suburban newspaper, proclaiming a player piano for $100.  Was it a typo?  I had to call and find out.  No, it wasn't.  The player part didn't work, I was told upfront, but the piano itself was OK.

Curiosity piqued, I drove out to Westchester to check it out -- in some deceased old woman's basement.

It looked great!  The cabinet was in fabulous shape, a lever on the front cleverly let down the pump pedals, and there were those two boxes of Czechoslovakian piano rolls, after all.  I couldn't resist -- I wrote the check then and there.

Then reality set in.  I had to get the sucka out the basement and into my house.  A little Yellow Pages cold-calling revealed that most movers don't handle pianos, and the guys who do charge a left nut.  I finally landed one that sounded reasonably priced, and figured I was home free.

Lo and behold, the day of the Great Migration, the mover called to tell me he couldn't get the piano out of the original owner's basement!  "How the hell did they get it in in the first place???" I asked.  Turns out that even if slight architectural modifications were made in the house over the years, it could compromise the ability to move the piano -- even an inch or two of lost headroom makes the difference between delivery and despair.

But the mover had an idea -- he knew a piano guy who could take the thing apart at the original owner's house, move the piano to my house, and reassemble it there.  Great!  Except for the fact that the piano guy charged extra for this service, which now put the moving bill up to much more than I paid for the thing in the first place.

So then we had to coordinate another date at the convenience of the mover, the original owner, and the piano guy.  Doing this was analogous to coordinating the Landing at Normandy.  And when they finally hit on a date, and I think we're golden, I get a call on my cell phone in the middle of a meeting at work.  The mover's truck has broken down en route to the owner's house and they have to reschedule!

Now I'm pissed, and absolutely determined to get the goddamn thing into my house ASAP, at ANY price.  The day finally comes, everyone worked it out, and now it's standing in my dining room, a really big paperweight at this point.  But damn, it looks good!  Never mind the fact that the Piano Guy predicts the thing needs a "massive overhauling" that could include restringing, replacing the sound board, and a lot more expensive stuff.

The latest: Piano Guy #2 (at the recommendation of my son's piano teacher) comes out to take a gander at the behemoth and assess the damage.  (This is just to get the thing playing, for starters.  Never mind the player piano mechanism, which is a mind-boggling mass of gears, tubing, levers, bellows large and small, and other arcane stuff not even related to what happens when you press your finger against a key.)  I feel like I'm at the auto repair shop, when the guy sticks his head under the hood and shakes his head, saying nothing.

Actually, the news is surprisingly good -- the sound board is OK (since the keys aren't buzzing), the cabinet is in good shape (did I mention the cabinet is in good shape?), and there is no serious damage or abuse, just age.  He can partially restring, replace the felts, and do some other stuff that I don't understand for a couple of grand.  Great.  Of course, this STILL doesn't take care of the player piano part -- since there's only one guy in the area who does that, and he's literally booked up months in advance (who knew there were that many of these things sitting around in people's basements?).  And that will be another couple of grand.

The surprising news?  It's STILL a deal.  Evidently, a big, beautiful Kimball piano like this simply isn't available at any price in today's market, and anything comparable would run in the five figures, Piano Guy #2 says.  Or maybe he just hates to see a grown woman cry.

So anyway, in a week or so, he'll start taking things apart, measuring strings, and ordering parts.  And I'll be out some money.  But when it's done -- well, I'll be able to play it, kinda like the 1960s out-of-tune Winter that's sitting in my living room, staring daggers at the elegant old Kimball in the dining room.

Hey, some people gamble -- some shoot dope -- others drink.  I sink my money into boondoggles...

Stay tuned.

it's a tagline from some lame commercial, but it's true.

Everywhere you turn, all you hear is NO.  It's impossible, we can't do this, it would never work, that just can't be fixed, it's too late, we've never done it that way before, but I just can't fix it, we need a new one, it's broken, you can't change things, etc., etc. etc.

I want to hear something else.  Let's try this, I'll do it myself, follow your heart, do something (anything!) different, it IS possible, I WILL make it work, I CAN and WILL change things to make them right, to make myself happy.

"YES is the answer."

It occurred to me today that when Our Generation is dead, music like the Beatles will be played on the PA in nursing homes, just the way Glenn Miller is played for today's old people.  I even commented to 13-year-old Em that when we're gone, the Beatles will go the way of Glenn Miller.

"You're wrong," sez she.  "A lot of people love the Beatles, and they're not all old."

I suppose that's true -- and I should be glad I passed the flag along to my kids and other kids who now love the stuff we grew up listening to.  "But it won't be the same," I responded.  "It will be like me loving Bix, even though I'm too young to ever have heard his music first-hand."  So I guess what got me isn't that the Beatles will die -- obviously, they won't -- but that I won't be around forever to listen to their music.

And realizing that the important thing isn't the fame and fortune, which has by now long passed me by, but the PASSING ON -- the handing off of whatever I have to offer from living this life for over 50 years.  I won't be as bold to say that it's wisdom.  I doubt there's a wise bone in my body.  Experience, perhaps.  Perception.  Seeing things through my eyes.  Forget the best-seller, TV appearances, column in the New York Times.  I just want people in the future to know I existed, to feel things I felt -- to know I didn't live in vain.

So go ahead and play my music in the nursing home.  That's OK.  As long as someone is listening.

My writing pal Robbo is giving me writing assignments in the hopes of generating some poetry.  To get the ball rolling, he asked me to come up with an idea of who or what inspires me.  I'm embarrassed to say it took awhile to come up with an answer.

My mother inspired me when she was fighting a losing battle against cancer; my father inspired me when he struggled back from a stroke to walk again.  Carol, my best friend from high school and college, inspires me because she goes on living day after day even though she’s practically immobilized by multiple sclerosis, raddled by pain and seizures. Other than that, I don’t have very many examples of inspiration to keep me going -- at least not big ones.

Maybe it’s just because I’m damn lucky.  Yes, I’ve lost my parents, but that is the natural order of things.  But I just don’t know a lot of people who have had it tough enough so that their lives were inspirational.  The problems we struggle with are all part and parcel of living in the world today – unhappy marriages, monetary problems, kids run amok, looming old age.  We’re all pretty healthy and solvent here in our little world; we don’t face poverty, disease or misery on a grand scale, the type of problems that create a Mother Theresa or a Gandhi.

So maybe it’s the little, everyday battles that make my heroes proportionate to scale – little heroes, if you will.  Like Georgia, my friend from high school, who has taught kindergarten at a parochial inner-city school for the last 30 years now.  She’s seen generations of kids pass through the doors of her classroom, grow up, and now she’s teaching their kids.  For years we’ve tried to persuade her to hang it up, move to the burbs, even open her own daycare; God knows she’s got the experience.  And she bitches and moans, but still goes on teaching – all-day kindergarten to as many as 30 kids, many who don’t speak English, some who have learning disabilities.  She’ll do it until she drops.

Or Eileen, my oldest friend, who I met when we was in kindergarten.  In grammar and high school, she was always the loudmouth who never took crap from anyone.  She was married to a doctor for over 20 years, living in a nice house in Hinsdale, raising their two sons and pretty much swallowing whatever grief he gave her, all for the sake of peace in the family.  Over the years she got tired of the dismissive way he treated her and filed for divorce.  Now she’s living in an apartment in Darien and life for her is uncertain.  But she’s rediscovered the loudmouth who never takes crap from anyone, and she truly enjoys life, probably now more than ever.

Then there’s Kristi, a Canadian writer of fine horror stories with a comedic edge.  KAC as I call her is formally educated in comparative religious studies who does her research on the French revolutionary period in the original language.  She’s conversant in everything from Québécois punk rock to the worship of Kali, the goddess of destruction.  She’s got a wacky sense of humor that encompasses everything from life to death because she knows it’s all one, anyway.  She also has Crohn’s disease and has had part of her intestines removed, with an ostomy device attached to her belly.  It doesn’t stop her from being the sexy blonde punkette she is.

Oh, and I can’t forget my cousin Rosalie.  She’s the daughter of my Uncle Albert, my dad’s brother, one of the funniest guys I knew, who was lucky enough to drop dead in his 80s at an Italian festival, surrounded by his family.  Rosalie and her husband Carl have been married since 1964 – I was the “junior bridesmaidâ€� at their wedding.  Rosalie and Carl were like our very own Jack and Jackie – beautiful people who had two beautiful children and lived a charmed life in Barrington, although none of their blessings kept them far from their Old Neighborhood roots.  Several years ago Carl had a stroke, followed by a series of smaller strokes that left him crippled, confused and barely able to talk.  Rosalie and her grown son and daughter take turns caring for Carl along with Rosalie’s mother Mary, who is pushing 90 and has Alzheimer’s.  They quite simply take care of their own.

And then there’s Carol, who was my closest friend for many years.  She was diagnosed with MS when she was just 21.  The disease remained dormant for many years, except for the occasional flare-up; but as she grew older, Carol developed more problems, mostly affecting her ability to walk.  There were times when she was able to get around fine, and other times when she walked stiffly and with difficulty, like an old woman.  It was understood that MS is a mysterious disease that is unpredictable in its progression.

But then several years ago Carol had a seizure, characterized by a blackout that wiped away many of her motor skills and a lot of short-term memory.  Although she was on medication to control it, the seizures kept coming.  Now she lives during the week with her elderly parents because her husband has to work.  She comes home on weekends when he or one of her three sons can keep an eye on her.  She can’t read a book because she can’t put it down and remember what she read when she picks it up again.  She can hardly walk up or down even a few stairs.  She uses a walker on level surfaces and needs to be supported with one of us on each side of her.  There are times she is despondent and wishes it would all just end – and this is a religious woman who used to attend Mass every morning.

But there are also times when we laugh like the idiot high school girls we once were, remembering silliness that happened years ago.  The disease has given her a blunt honesty that she didn’t have when she was more physically blessed; she has the wisdom that comes when the hours and days we’re allotted has suddenly become finite.  She is the most accepting, non-judgmental person I know.

Finally, there is my son Doug, who has a mild form of autism known as Asperger’s Syndrome.  He’s 10 now, a tall, rangy blond with blue eyes and glasses. He’s in the fourth grade and works well in a regular classroom with an aide.  I have no idea what will happen to Doug when he gets older.  I hope he will be able to live independently.  Ordinary things are sometimes a struggle for him; he has problems with both receptive and expressive communication.  It’s hard to get through to him, to have a real conversation.  But it’s been happening more often lately, and that indeed inspires me.  Helping him with his piano lesson and seeing how he is gradually taking to music inspires me, too.  The most important thing is I feel we are finally getting through to him, and he’s getting through to us. 

Getting to know Doug is like opening a door to a dark room and thinking it’s empty, but as your eyes become accustomed to the darkness, realizing it’s full of wonderful things – full of potential.  If anyone inspires me, it’s probably him.

I suppose I could have racked my brain and come up with some more grandiose examples of inspiration – something you’d read about in Reader’s Digest or hear about from the pulpit in church.  But these little heroes are my inspiration – and when I think about it, I realize they’re all just as valiant and inspiring as the ones who get holidays named after them.  In fact, instead of one big quasar, I have a constellation of inspirations surrounding me with their pulsing, sporadic brilliance.  I hope I never have to live without their light.