Chicagoans: People of the Water

Chicago is a water town. Lake Michigan and the sky above are our watermarks, the invisible identifier embedded in the soul of anyone who lives here for more than a year, or so. We are built around the lakeshore, the river banks, the canals, the bridges. Oh those bridges! For the next two to three years, three downtown bridges over the Chicago River are closed for repair. I know the river. I know those bridges. Whenever I’m a passenger in a car headed toward the Chicago River, I, a non-driver, turn into a navigational virtuoso.

“Turn left on La Salle Street! Now! Go to Jackson and make a right. Yes, Jackson.”

I’m insufferable. And always right.

Once you’ve lived anywhere in Chicago with even the thinnest view of the lake or the river, you can never go back, never not have water in your sights. Magical is an inadequate adjective. It’s cellular. What must it have been like for those who settled this land we call Chicago? Did a wild black and blue sky moving over Lake Michigan shout danger to our native ancestors? On windy days, did the lake and river together kick up such a fuss that the confluence was unnavigable? Were their beliefs tied to a cellular connection between the water, the land, the ancestors? Dare we imagine that those first peoples inseminated future generations, yes us, with a cellular connection to the water?

My favorite visitors are those whose excitement about the Chicago Harbor Lock exceeds mine. The Lock is at the confluence of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. It is part of multiple locks and dams that allow water from Lake Michigan to flow inland, toward the mighty Mississippi. Chicago devised reversing the flow of the river in the 1900s to send our sewage downstream, away from our beloved lake. Lucky for us. Unlucky for St. Louis.

Boats and cargo ships moving from the river to the lake first enter the lock and tie up. Like a water elevator, the water raises or lowers to meet the level of the lake. I’ve been on tourist boats waiting in line on either side for tankers and cargo boats to get through the Lock. Thousands of Chicagoans live in high-rises with floor to ceiling windows where they can pull up their work desk and chair and watch the Lock all day long as they work from home. What a great city. This water town.

In mid-September, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents were dispatched to Chicago as part of the Trump Administration’s ICE operation to arrest illegal immigrants with criminal records. They announced themselves by cruising up and down our cherished Chicago River, in and out of tour boats and kayaks. Some were masked. All were uniformed. All were armed with semi-automatic long guns. How did such an invasion get through the Lock?

Since that absurd melodramatic entrance into our city, the CBP has cruised into neighborhoods in military vehicles, springing into action to terrorize Chicagoans, citizens and non-citizens.

Chicago responded with multiple layers of volunteer rapid response teams covering every scenario of civic and private life. New and old activists carry whistles to alert neighbors of CPD/ICE presence on our streets. Neighborhood school patrols walk children to school.

The Customs and Border Patrol floated into Chicago with 250 agents. There’s reason to believe that number is reduced to 100 for the winter. One of their most horrific tools, tear gas, doesn’t work in cold weather. They’ve gone off to warmer climes for training — to figure out how to deal with the likes of Chicagoans. Reportedly they will be back a thousand fold in the spring.

Oh these blue-minded Chicagoans.

These people of the water.

Will be ready.
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“Yet once you’ve come to be part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.”― Nelson Algren

Broadview: Silent Resistance

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The announcement of a “Peace is our Protest” silent meditation hit my incoming a few weeks ago. I asked my Zoom meditation group to join me at The Broadview ICE Detention Center outside Chicago.

“I thought you were joking!” Rita said afterwards.

And why wouldn’t she think it was a joke? Since the start of the Trump Administration’s Operation Midway Blitz in late 2025, Broadview has been newsworthy. Masked men in military costumes with automatic weapons shoot protesters in the head with pepper balls that explode into disabling chemicals. Demonstrators have been wrestled to the ground, zip-tied and arrested. Who in our group of graying meditators with varying degrees of mobility and vitality would be going someplace like that?

Well, Abigail and I did go. It was an easy drive. We arrived early. There were a few people already settled on their meditation mats, facing west. We set our lawn chairs down behind them. All was quiet. Two noisy protesters yelled out from time to time but experienced meditators treat ambient noise as neutral thoughts, not sound. We followed their piety and remained unstirred. Silent. Eyes closed. Forty-five minutes passed. A gong sounded. We stretched.

“Look behind us,” Abigail whispered.

Over my shoulder I caught sight of about two hundred people. Sitting. Quietly. These valorous contemplatives came in behind us and squatted so softly we had no idea they were even there.

“I tried silent protesting and it never works!” A noisy bystander on a bike screamed at us.

No one responded. No one felt compelled to yell back, argue, persuade. We remained silent.

An unnamed man read a passage from Gandhi on non-violent resistance. We then folded our chairs and walked softheartedly to the car. As I passed by an Illinois State Trooper, he locked eyes with mine and said, “Thank you for coming.”

Broadview, an immigration processing center constructed in the 1970s, is a spit from the interstate highway leading to downtown Chicago. For thirteen years, a vigil at Broadview has been organized by the Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants. Every Friday morning, Sisters of Mercy Pat Murphy and JoAnn Persch have led peacekeepers in prayer for detainees, some of whom are in transit to other facilities or are awaiting deportation.

“We are brothers and sisters, and it doesn’t make any difference the color of our skin or our religion or the country we come from,” Sister Murphy says, “we believe in one human being to another, a theology of presence.”

At the silent meditation protest we neither asked for nor received answers. No conclusions. No changes. No one needed to be there. We came to be present. A living theology of presence. I call this God. Others call it something else — the universe, spiritual essence, nature, mindfulness, other God names.

A week later the whole world watched millions peacefully protest at No Kings’ rallies. In Chicago, I walked all around the Butler Field rally in Grant Park and saw very few hateful slogans on signs. I’ve never seen such a noble protest. We marched up Michigan Avenue converging with streams of others walking from the south and west carrying woke messages.

Love not hate.

Faith Over Fear.

Love Your Neighbor.

The Woodstock Nation. Long may it last.

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Satyāgraha, from Sanskrit: “holding firmly to truth”, is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948). Gandhi proposed a series of rules to follow in a resistance campaign:

Harbor no anger.
Suffer the anger of the opponent.
Never retaliate to assaults or punishment, but do not submit, out of fear of punishment or assault, to an order given in anger.
Voluntarily submit to arrest or confiscation of your own property.
If you are a trustee of property, defend that property (non-violently) from confiscation with your life.
Do not curse or swear.
Do not insult the opponent.
Neither salute nor insult the flag of your opponent or your opponent’s leaders.
If anyone attempts to insult or assault your opponent, defend your opponent (non-violently) with your life.
As a prisoner, behave courteously and obey prison regulations (except any that are contrary to self-respect).
As a prisoner, do not ask for special favorable treatment.
As a prisoner, do not fast in an attempt to gain conveniences whose deprivation does not involve any injury to your self-respect.
Joyfully obey the orders of the leaders of the civil disobedience action.

Texas Goodness

Something fluttered around me, as if I’d stepped into a web of butterflies. But I hadn’t. Butterflies were off in the distance. On the Nature Boardwalk surrounding the marshy South Pond in Lincoln Park I was soaking in the August-blooming bubblegum-colored big-flowered swamp mallows. And there on a daisy branch sat a goldfinch. And another, on a farther branch. Hidden in the yellow coneflowers were a few more, pecking at seeds. Goldfinches had entered my airspace as they headed for the wild prairie flowers at the swamp’s edge. Goodness nurturing goodness.

My held-breath whispered, “You know, Regan, God did not have to give us the goldfinch.” At that moment, as others before it, I believed in God. The previous morning, fearing all goodness had vanished from the earth, I assumed God, like the butterflies, had flittered off in the distance, out of sight, out of the picture.

I lost my faith in goodness for the umpteenth time the day President Trump told Texas Governor Greg Abbott to redistrict Texas in order to gain five more gerrymandered Republican Congressional seats. Americans, who vote with their pockets, are realizing everything they buy to survive in this world since Trump became President has skyrocketed. Because of that, commentators suggest Trump is afraid we’ll all vote against his MAGA party in the 2026 mid-term elections yielding more Democrats in Congress. Cynics say Trump needs more Republicans in Congress in case he declares an “election emergency” and tells Congress to appoint him for another term.

No one need explain redistricting to me. In the 1980s I worked in the Illinois legislature where computerized gerrymandering was invented in the basement. Drawing legislative lines to benefit Democratic incumbents was de riguer, not just acceptable, but expected. No one uttered the word gerrymander then. Today, Illinoisans are surprised to hear Republicans scoffing that their state takes the cake on gerrymandering. The secret is out.

Republican Governor Abbott yielded to Trump’s demand. He introduced a newly drawn map with the five added Republican Congressional seats to the Texas legislature. The Democratic Texas lawmakers promptly left the state. The Texas legislature needs those Democrats in the Austin capital to make up the necessary quorum to vote on that map.

And those Texas Freedom Fighters, as they’re described at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, are housed in a high-security hotel outside of Chicago. They’ve had bomb scares and death threats. They cannot move around without security. I can’t think of a lower hell than being far from home stowed away in an exurb hotel with no end in sight.

One of the exiled Texans, James Talarico from Austin, attends a Christian seminary to ground himself in the fight against White Christian Nationalism that’s roiling the Texas legislature. A nurturing goodness, he speaks of hope and love and responsibility to the United States.

These Texans, these democracy heroes, are saving us from the worst of gut-wrenching trumpism. When the day comes to proclaim their victory, let’s stroll around the Nature Boardwalk among the goldfinches, daisies and butterflies, nurturing goodness.

Maybe then God will come back into the picture.

More about James Talarico

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Fritz Edelstein on ‘Let it Be’

Guest Blogger Fritz Edelstein, Principal at Public Private Action, was the Director of Constituent Services in the U.S. Department of Education where we became friends during the Bill Clinton administration. Fritz lives in Park City, Utah, and for many years he produced the “Fritzwire” newsletter.

Let it Be by Fritz Edelstein:

“Let It Be,” one of The Beatles’ most iconic songs, is often seen as a poignant farewell to the band’s incredible journey. Written by Paul McCartney, it was released as a single in 1970 and became the title track of their final studio album. The song carries a timeless message of hope, resilience, and acceptance, making it a beacon of comfort for listeners across generations.

Moved by the dream, McCartney turned his feelings into music. The lyrics reflect his mother’s comforting presence, with lines like “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: Let it be.”While some interpreted the song as having religious undertones, McCartney clarified that “Mother Mary” referred to his own mother, whose memory brought him peace during a difficult time.

Musically, “Let It Be” is both simple and profound. The gentle piano melody and soulful vocal delivery create a sense of serenity, while the gospel-inspired arrangement adds emotional depth. The song’s climactic guitar solo, played by George Harrison, gives it a stirring, cathartic energy. This combination of elements underscores the song’s universal message: even in times of uncertainty, there is solace in acceptance and hope.

The release of “Let It Be” coincided with the official breakup of The Beatles, giving the song additional weight. For fans, it felt like a farewell gift from the band—a reminder to cherish the good moments and embrace change with grace. The song’s themes of resilience and faith resonated deeply, particularly during the social and political upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Over the years, “Let It Be” has become a cultural touchstone, often played during moments of collective reflection or mourning. Its message transcends its origins, offering comfort in times of personal or global crises. For McCartney, the song remains one of his most personal creations, rooted in the memory of his mother’s wisdom and love.

As The Beatles’ final single before their disbandment, “Let It Be” serves as both a farewell and a timeless message of hope. It reminds us that even in the face of loss or uncertainty, there is peace to be found in letting go and trusting the passage of time.

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Join us in Chicago on July 20 to sing ‘Let it Be’ and 17 other Beatles tunes. It’s always the best event of the summer.

Normal/Abnormal

Two nests of crow chicks fledged on my city street this past week. I wonder if the high-rise humans down the block noticed the chicks’ noisy beginning of life in the urban wild. Everyday for two weeks, I looked up from under the trees while walking Elsa. I saw the chicks poking their hungry beaks out of the nests, then stepping out to bounce from leafy limb to limb to rooftop to balcony, squawking away. The parent crows flew farther and farther, screaming at their offspring as encouragement to get those wings flapping and join them in pursuing edible horizons. And then, quiet. They’re gone. They’ll be back, of course. But for now, the daily racket of new young crows has flown the coop.

How comforting to observe the steadfast natural order of things. These days, the built world I’ve known my whole life is breaking down so fast that I half expect the natural world to follow; Lake Michigan to dry up and all the birds to drop from the sky. That bad? Sometimes. Experts say old-age limits short-term memory, exaggerates long-term. My long-term emotional memories are thus resistant to age-related decline. I’m in my 80th year, having just celebrated the 79th. The fear I felt watching the original Mad Max (1979), Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Blade Runner (1982) bubbles up without reference to those movies. It simply presents itself as the world we know is over.

On the other hand, I’m convinced The Wizard of Oz gave me a love for birds, if not a curiosity about an unearthly world. Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow; why, then, oh why can’t I?

Yeah, why can’t I?

Every time a crow chick leaves the nest, some transcendental part of me follows. My earliest dreams were flying visions. I willed myself off the ground and flew around the neighborhood spying on people. God help me, if I had a drone. I’d probably be peeking in the windows of high-rise residences.

There’s no question movies have influenced my core. They’re not saving me from worry, nor diverting the fear of living in a militarized police state. That long-term memory perverts itself into real and present danger. Can the now-pardoned Jan 6 insurrectionists show up as a Mad-Max-type private army? Would there be a search and rescue operation if my transatlantic ship capsized like the Poseidon? And worse, will there be an antidote for experimental robots gone bad as in Blade Runner?

Fortunately, the clouds of knowing break open every morning to a normal reality. Recent shoulder surgery grounds me in pain. Friends gather for coffee. My granddaughter is marrying a super guy. Regulars show up at church. The same 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are read at every meeting. The “No Kings’ protest is actually a movement. The rabbits are back in the park. Elsa goes for walks.

Normal and abnormal live side by side.

For now.

Fear of Kudzu City

The gardeners in the small neighborhood park I call my own, butchered the beauty out of the spring flowers and attendant bird migration. In their zeal to prune away the dead and diseased tree branches, they yanked out all non-native “invasive” species. This disrupted the seasonal pattern of our expectations. As I wandered through the other day, a neighbor with her spaniel in tow stopped me.

“What happened to our flowers?” She yelled across the boxwood.
“The gardeners mulched it all into last years’ compost.” I said. I don’t know her, but here we were joined by a sudden mutual experience.
“They went too far! Can’t you do something about it?”

Me? I must have spoken with authority about the Chicago Park District’s program to remove invasive species and introduce native plants. As usual, I imparted knowledge based on next to nothing. Last summer as my allergies exploded, I read an article in the Chicago Tribune about the Park District planting more allergen-producing native plants, like goldenrod. A passing employee of the Chicago Park District once educated me on the park’s introduction of native plants, especially those glorious hibiscus. And a neighbor who is a volunteer gardener at the Lincoln Park Zoo spends her summer eliminating “invasives”. That’s the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

“You can go to the Park District Board meetings and ask about it,” was my know-it-all answer.

But Nature has once again reigned supreme in my city neighborhood. On my street, there is no human control over the crow’s nest and its four chicks that are flapping around in the branches. I watch them strengthen their young wings to fly out from their birthplace and fend for themselves. Wildlife never needs permission to be. But it does need protection.

The New York Times reported this week on one of Chicago’s best nature stories. The Lakeside Center at McCormick Place applied a treatment on its glass building to deter migrating birds from banging into it. Last year up to 1,000 birds died in one night at McCormick Place. This year, the deaths, due to the widow treatment, were down by 95%. Chicago’s unpopular mayor should take credit. For some of us this fact alone is enough to vote for his reelection.

Unfortunately there’s no treatment we can apply to protect ourselves from bumping up against the current man-made enemy that is called the United States of America. What can protect us from dirty air and water unleashed by industrial, vehicle and power plant toxins?

I envision a doomsday scenario, a post-apocalyptic environment like “the Last of Us.” Will my city’s native species die off and be replaced by invasive, toxic-loving kudzu? The White Christian Nationalists setting ecological policy have abandoned the Bible as their guide. Genesis 2:15, in all versions, clearly states we must tend to God’s creation.

NIV: The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

KJV: And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

NLT: The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.

CSB: The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.

NYT: An Illinois Building Was a Bird Killer. A Simple Change Made a World of Difference.

Chicago’s Urban Wildlife: Embracing Pluralism and Nature

All over early-morning Chicago, garbage trucks back in and out of alleys using rapid beep-beep-beep signals announcing their hulking presence. Elsa the dog and I are indifferent to this annoyance as we take our morning walk. But in mid-April, we both jumped to attention. We heard what seemed like a hundred garbage trucks backing up. The wildly unfamiliar bellowed from a block down the street.

“What’s going on Elsa?” I shouted down to my agitated Westie on the sidewalk. All of a sudden two honking Sandhill Cranes flew through the center of the street below the treetops. Their wingspan swooped past us from sidewalk to sidewalk as they glided and bellowed toward Lake Michigan.

Elsa flew into a barking rage. I lost my breath. My knees buckled. The Sandhill Crane is an ancient animal whose sole purpose is entertainment.

I love these four-foot high red-headed trumpeting birds. I once traveled to the Platte River on the edge of Nebraska’s Sandhills for their spring migration. My friends and I joined serious birders on the 5:00 am riverbank to view 600,000 roosting Sandhill Cranes. Their summer and winter homes are the northern and southern edges of the Great Plains. They are North Americans, Midwesterners.

Where did this duo come from and where were they going? They were likely in a flock following the Great Lakes Flyway, the migration route to their summer home in the boundary waters between the U.S. and Canada. Perhaps they were lured away by a mischief of rats feasting on the overflowing garbage bins in the alleys of nearby restaurants. Did a garage truck disturb their hunt? Whatever the story, I am deeply grateful they strayed from the flock and flew into my morning fugue.

Fugue? Yes, lately every morning I awake in a seemingly altered state. Oh, I tend a regular household routine, brain-fogged by radio news from the psycho-battleground that is my home country. Any diversion is welcome, particularly wildlife making its way through my city street.

But diversions, like bird spotting, are fleeting. The pluralistic society we’ve known as democracy is under siege. Pluralism, a word as ancient as the Sandhills themselves, one we learned in middle school, has been displaced of late by DEI or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. DEI was corporate America’s answer to the communal guilt stemming from the sight of George Floyd’s on-air murder. The lofty goal of transforming Human Resource departments into offices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion crashed and burned on the heels of Donald Trump’s name-calling presidential candidate Kamala Harris a “DEI” hire. Little did we know then, the summer of 2024. The weaponizing of DEI was not a diversion. Instead, it was a tactic in a larger strategy to destroy pluralism and make America White and Christian.

Interfaith America, the nation’s premier interfaith organization, has come to the battlefield now — taking the case for pluralism to the streets. A giant digital billboard in one of the most diverse locations in the country, Times Square, New York City, shows Interfaith America’s devotion to American pluralism. The message: diversity makes our country stronger. I’m in here, proud to represent my cohort, old white ladies with their dogs. Take a look.

Anita Bryant’s Legacy: Gay Rights Activism

As I was about to cross the threshold toward the elevator with Elsa tethered to my thick gloves, I reached back for the handle to close the door behind me. At that moment, WBBM news radio announced Anita Bryant had died. Out in the park, Elsa tiptoed on the crunchy December earth — a slower walk leading to a longer think. Memories arose about Anita Bryant and her anti-homosexual campaign in the 1970s.

Anita Bryant, a Miss American pop singer who sold Tropicana Orange Juice on TV was so well-known in US culture that her startling attack on homosexuality betrayed her seemingly good-natured Christian persona.

Elders in the fundamentalist Christian cult where I spent a few years in the 1970s never addressed homosexuality. They also ignored any other moralistic culture clash that evolved because of Bryant’s media campaign. I doubt any of us in that community even knew a homosexual. Oh, there were instances of men going off on drug-addled toots and ending up in gay bath houses. They’d come crawling back to church asking forgiveness from an uncomfortable congregation that had no knowledge of gay life. I was never sure what we were meant to forgive since no sin was committed against us.

Bryant, sparked by a Dade County, Florida decision to protect sexual orientation as a civil right, created the Save Our Children coalition to build anti-gay public support. She succeeded. In June 1977, the Miami area voted against homosexuality as a civil right, an act that lasted twenty years.

Fresh from the Florida victory, Anita Bryant brought her teethy bigotry to Chicago to perform a white-bread repertoire including her signature “Paper Roses” at the Medinah Temple. She was met by 5,000 gay rights protesters.

Christian churches throughout the country were called upon to take a stand, including mine. Homosexuality was justified as sin through church elders’ literal interpretation of a few bible passages. It became a disqualifying dictum for church membership. I knew nothing about homosexuality. Shunning people, however, didn’t fit with what brought me to Jesus, namely the parable of the Good Samaritan, or love one another, especially the least among us. I’ve needed that Jesus all my life. Extending unconditional love is a hard practice. In fact, it’s really impossible. I’ve always known it’s required of me nonetheless.

Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign invigorated gay activism in the civil rights movement. We had a new cause. We boycotted orange juice. We attended Chicago’s Gay Pride parade that year. We mocked Tropicana’s tagline by wearing t-shirts that said, “A day without human rights is like a day without sunshine.” Gay rights, women’s rights, equal rights, all blended into one big active advocacy movement.

I moved on to La Salle Street Church, which made no small point of accepting all people. Founded by rejects from the Moody Bible Church down the street, these Christians were definitely descendants of the real Jesus. They left Moody because the church elders required blue-jeaned converts to sit in the balcony and wouldn’t allow them to receive the Eucharist. In the 1970s, no one wore blue jeans except anti-establishment long-haired hippies, known these days as Progressives.

The noise generated by the blue-jeaned Christians galvanized the nascent Christian fundamentalists, known these days as White Christian Nationalists.

I’m not sure what happened to separate the civil rights groups. Gay rights, abortion rights, voting rights and anti-violence organizations eventually established their own fundraising machines side-by-side with their own causes. Everyone started marching to a different drummer. We came together to protest the Iraq war and for the pink-hatted Women’s March after the 2016 election. But not all my friends showed at the NATO protest in 2012.

As a straight white old lady, I’ve recently tried with scant success to advocate against ageism. I no longer wear blue jeans. Dress codes are almost extinct. This is evident by Elon Musk’s t-shirt, MAGA hat, and long, black, steampunk coat at an Oval Office press conference.

Anti-ageism is the most difficult cause to rail against. It’s an implicit or subconscious bias, practiced by those who are discriminated against and by those who do the discriminating. Dismissing Elon Musks’ functionaries as teenagers and constantly stating their ages is a display of age-bias. The same applies when stating Joe Biden’s or Donald Trump’s age. Or mine.

“You don’t act like a 78-year old,” remarked a friend last week.

“Yes I do. This is what 78 acts like.” I shot back.

It’s not that age isn’t a good descriptor to place people in their lived experiences. But age as a descriptor is most often used to put people in their place. The unchecked functionaries have stolen my Social Security records inside the US Treasury Department. They are no better or worse than me because of age. They are wrong no matter how old or young they are.

As happened with Anita Bryant, is it too dreamy to imagine a galvanizing backlash? Is a movement forming to neutralize the extreme bigotry falling out of the dirty mouths of Washington DC?

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Click to see Anita Bryant sing, “Paper Roses” https://youtu.be/0UoRKstI8Q4?si=3ar2deoIWIu6YwVN

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The DOGE and Aging

Adlai Stevenson III (1930 – 2021) entered the 1982 race for Illinois governor just as I had become unemployed. My only memory of that forsaken job, like all the others, is my shameful obsequiousness to the forgettable male boss.

A journalist friend, Paul Galloway (1934-2009) interceded on my behalf to the Stevenson campaign for a volunteer position. Yes, that was necessary. And still. The sublime expression, “We don’t want nobody nobody sent,” originated in a Chicago ward campaign office. Campaigns still scrutinize volunteers with more than an eye roll. Because of my juice through the local newspaper, people were cautious about what was said around me.

I floundered around the office of Adlai Stevenson’s wife, Nancy, who was usually out campaigning. One day, I had the great fortune to be tagged to drive her to Oak Park for an event. That fluke set off a campaign-long assignment as Nancy’s driver.

Nancy and I regularly stepped into community rooms where older adults were having lunch through the federal Meals on Wheels program. Older women would clasp Nancy’s wrist, pull her ear close to their lips and whisper messages for her to take back to her husband. The Meals on Wheels crowd assumed Adlai III was his father, Adlai II, the governor when most of them were young. Nancy, who had a gentle and keen understanding of aging, let most of them hold this holy untruth. She displayed genuine kindness in her friendly interactions with old people who were in obvious cognitive decline. This helped me admit my own subconscious bias toward the aging. My ageism has changed overtime, especially now that I’m old and experience age discrimination against myself and my friends.

Meals on Wheels is funded through the Older Americans Act Nutrition Program which was permanently authorized by Congress in 1972. The purpose is three-fold: 1) reduce hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition; 2) promote socialization; 3) promote health and well-being by preventing health-related diseases. The Program is available to adults age 60 years and older. Priority is given to low-income individuals, racial or ethnic minorities, rural communities, those with limited English proficiency, and/or those at risk of institutionalization.

One of our campaign stops was a community space in the neighborhood of Hegewich. It is located on the far south side of Chicago, known as the perfect workingman’s neighborhood. When Chicago’s steel mills shut down in the 1980s, the Polish immigrants who’d settled in Hegewich lost their jobs. They also lost their pensions. People survived on government subsistence and odd jobs.

As Nancy began her round of shaking hands, bobbing up and down to lean over to hear the messages of the elderly, she announced, “You know, my husband, Ad, voted for Meals-on-Wheels when he was a senator in Washington.”

Before she could get out another word, a large woman in the corner who looked like a George Booth cartoon yelled:

“Yeah? Well, he oughta be here now for the corned beef! ‘Cause it stinks!”

“Well, I’ll be sure to tell Adlai!” Nancy shouted back.

Funding runs out on December 31, 2024 for the Older Americans Act and the Meals on Wheels Program. If Congress doesn’t vote to reauthorize the Act, the Nutrition Program will be at the mercy of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). And they have vowed to eliminate all programs that have not been reauthorized by Congress.

My guess is neither of them have come to terms with ageism.

Election Distraction: Lincoln Park Hibiscus

Rounding the corner by Cafe Brauer, the 115-year old red brick refectory on Lincoln Park Zoo’s South Pond, I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of blooming Chinese-red hibiscus. Hundreds of blossoms the size and shape of CDs preened in the bright sun. They were onion-skin thin. I could practically see through them. I inched along the path flower by flower scanning each one for an answer. What. Were. They. Doing. There?

I’d rounded that corner hundreds of times in my life and had never seen those flowers. A woman in a dark green shirt marked with the telltale Lincoln Park Zoo logos wandered by.

“Do you know anything about these flowers?” I shouted.

“Yes, they’re Lord Baltimore hardy hibiscus.”

“Were they here last year?”

“Nope. We cultivated them.”

She introduced herself as the head horticulturist at the Zoo and gave me a hibiscus primer. There are four species of hibiscus native to Illinois around the Zoo and the South Pond.

“Everyone thinks they’re tropical. We have a unique collection — the only accredited perennial herbaceous native hibiscus collection in the country.”

On the way home, I spotted a couple I’ve known for years taking their afternoon walk. They informed me they’re thinking of buying a summer house in Michigan.

“What? How could you leave here in the summer? Did you know we have four native hibiscus around the South Pond and the Zoo?”

At the time, I thought this fresh information established the best reason to summer in Chicago. I doubled down on what I’d just learned. Without taking a breath I told them the hibiscus feed bees, hummingbirds and butterflies. Each flower on a hibiscus stalk lives only for a day or two, like a daylily. But, the plants keep opening new blooms from July to September. Garden Clubs from all over the Midwest send busloads of flower lovers to gaze at our hibiscus.

“You must walk by the pond and see them!”

That was the summer of 2019. I see them walking from time to time now, a little slower, a little quieter. A few weeks ago, I’d been in the zoo luxuriating in what I’ve come to think of now, five years later, as my hibiscus. I ran into my friends on the way home and fed them new information.

“Did you see the news?”

“What news?”

There’s so much real news or breaking news these days they looked anxious.

“My friend Karen who volunteers at the zoo told me it’s in the paper today. Lincoln Park Zoo has just been named a National Botanic Garden!”

“Oh.”

“Yep. It’s a big deal. There are only two zoos in the country that are botanic gardens.”

“Oh yeah? What’s the other one?”

“Dunno. Maybe San Diego.”

I had no idea what I was talking about. The media and Time Out have touted San Diego plenty. So, I used this acclaim to put the best spin on our zoo.

“And the international Botanic Garden show will be in Chicago in summer 2027. First time its been in the U.S, in 27 years.” I said.

“Wow, that’s great. Is that like the Chelsea Garden Show?”

“Yes! Only better.”

“Well, we’ll see you around. We need to keep walking.”

“Ok. Great to see you. Glad you didn’t buy that summer house in New Buffalo.”

“Oh, we did buy it. Stayed for a few weekends before the pandemic hit. Tried it that summer for a few weeks. Mistake. Too lonely. You’re right. Theres’s nothing like Chicago in the summer.”

“Ah. It’s the flowers, right?”

“Maay-bee”.

Regan Burke

Author "In That Number" from local booksellers or Amazon

Tag: Chicago