Tag: Chicago Mayor

Surviving Amnesia

God! How I love WebMD! This online ingenious, comprehensive, and reliable health and medical source has saved me from many time-gnawing trips to the Emergency Room.

Last week I found myself at the bus stop on State Street near the Hilton Hotel with a “Netroots Nation” Convention credential swinging from my neck. I have no memory of the previous four hours. Zilch. I’d planned to attend the Netroots Nation Convention at the Hilton; the swinging credential assured me I’d at least registered.

Are you thinking I may have experienced an alcoholic blackout? Nope. Those days are long gone. I haven’t had a drink in forty-five years. Arriving home around 9:30 pm, I dove right into my laptop and searched for “lost memories”, which returned a description of something I’d hoped hadn’t happened to me: 

“Losing time, or having large blocks of time for which one has no memory is a symptom of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Sometimes a person will lose so much time that they “wake up” in an unfamiliar town or place. This is called Dissociative Fugue.

Uh-oh. That sounds like the multiple personalities portrayed by Sally Field in the horror movie, “Sybil”. I’d hoped I didn’t murder anyone, or go to some stranger’s hotel room whilst in a fugue state. I searched further—typed “sudden memory loss”:

“Transient global amnesia, TGA, is a sudden loss of memory. It’s an alarming but harmless condition. Symptoms usually last for hours and then memory returns. It has no lasting consequences. Doctors aren’t sure what causes it. It’s more common in people over 50 and with a history of migraines.

Whoa! That’s me! Thank you WebMD and for the good news:

“TGA …is not caused by a neurological condition like epilepsy or stroke. With TGA, you remember who you are and recognize the people you know well.

Netroots Nation’s mission is “to bring together online citizens across America, inject progressive voices into the national conversation, and advance the values of justice, equality, and community in our nation’s politics.” Their annual convention in my hometown came at the right time for my aging activism. Chicago had just elected a progressive, smart, kind-hearted new mayor, Brandon Johnson. I believe with my whole heart that within a few years, Chicago will be a role model of common solutions for all American cities. At the convention, I’d hoped to replenish my quiver’s rah-rah-cis-boom-bah that had fizzled since Mayor Johnson’s inauguration. 

In the late afternoon of the TGA incident, I planned to attend an event in the Waldorf Room, “Solidarity Across Differences: Organizing When We Disagree.” There’s no evidence I was there. But I was somewhere. My little black-and-white pocket notebook has three new quotes in my handwriting:

“There’s a collective out there that wants to shrink the hope of the possible.” Emma Tai, Director United Working Families—the grassroots organization that helped elect Brandon Johnson

“Chicago is a town that’s gonna show the world what the future looks like.”  Randi Weingarten, President American Federation of Teachers

“Safety is not blue lights.”  Brandon Johnson, Chicago Mayor

My iPhone displays several close-up photos of Mayor Johnson giving a speech, two selfies at the food table, and one selfie with Heather Booth a long-time political activist from Washington, DC. With the exception of the food table, these are exactly what I would have photographed, had I been in my right mind, proving once again how competent my online doctor, WebMD, is. 

“…in TGA the patient cannot acquire new memories but otherwise can function normally; personal identity is retained…”

Whew! What a relief; between the notebook inscriptions and my photos, I have proof I acted my best self, and confirmation I had all the symptoms of an episode of  TGA, Transient Global Amnesia.

Do I feel safe? Absolutely. Dr. WebMD tells me there’s rarely more than one occurrence. And no one has come forward to tell me I acted like Sybil.

At least not yet.

Shut Down Week 2

Nothing’s changed in my one-bedroom condo.

I wake up frozen in fear. My old Ikea down comforter shrouds my body. Before peeking out at the same world I fell asleep in, I breathe in and say, “The troubles of the world don’t own me.” I breathe out and say, “I don’t own the troubles of the world.” After twenty or thirty minutes forcing my mind back to this cushioning mantra, I go to my computer for the latest messages and news about friends impacted by the coronovirus.

At the hospital, a friend is off a ventilator and in for a long recovery, thanking those around him for saving his life. The Panama Canal Authoirty finally approved passage of a cruise ship that had been stranded off the coast of Chile, shunned at every port. Four people died onboard, and my friend, healthy but worried is locked down in a cabin with no windows and scant information. 

IMG_4785Henry jumps around to say he’s ready to go out and read his drizzled mail on the low hanging boxwood branches. There’s a shift on the sidewalk; less people than the day before, fewer parked cars, more birds. And Henry makes less and less whiffer stops. His friends must be on a later schedule, sleeping in. It’s the second week after all.

We pause at a neglected sidewalk garden, elevated in a bas-relief concrete trough. In there a crow pecks at dead twigs and tendrils from last year’s plantings. We’re not more than ten feet from her. She drops a brittle stick on the cement ledge, plunks a claw down on one end, grabs the other end and pulls up, breaking off a piece of nesting material. Gathering a few more right-sized pieces she jumps down and walks across the empty street with a full beak. Henry is nonchalant, as if she were just another member of the family. Dogs have a way of knowing. They read souls.

Around the corner, we stop to watch workmen covering another couture clothing shop with sheets of plywood. Pretty soon the whole street will look like a war zone of boarded up storefronts. Crows caw overhead. It’s our mother and her kin squawking about the lack of garbage pickings in the alleys behind the shut-down restaurants.

Back home you’d never know Chicago is on STAY-AT-HOME orders from the mayor unless you open the freezer and see 25 frozen Mac ’n’ Cheeses from Trader Joe’s. Other than that, nothing’s changed inside. I spend the whole day in hysterics laughing at jokes, memes and cartoons that people send me and post online. At first there were all dog jokes, like two dogs looking at a couch full of papers and a computer. One says to the other, “Do you think we’ll ever get our couch back?” The other says, “I think it’s going to
be a couple of weeks.”

After that, there were husband and wife jokes, like the photo of a woman knitting aIMG_5462 noose for her husband. And one of a woman digging a grave in the garden. Now I’m getting a lot of jokes with swear words:

Today the devil whispered in my ear, “You’re not strong enough to withstand the storm.”

And I whispered back, “Six feet, motherfucker.”

That’s another way of saying the troubles of the world don’t own me. I don’t own the troubles of the world.

It Pays To Know The Right People

It Pays To Know The Right People

Inauguration of Mayor Lori Lightfoot 2019

I hopped on the number three bus at Chicago and Michigan Avenues having no clue when to pull the cord for the Wintrust Arena. It was 7:30 A.M., too early for rush hour but people dressed in their finest stepped up at every stop as we moved on down the avenue. There was no mistaking the Wintrust bus stop. The cross streets swarmed with jaywalkers, Uber poolers, truants, bus trippers, policemen, VIPs and parkers from the garages. Parades of citizens streamed toward the entrances lining up for the eight o’clock opening. Volunteers in blue “Bring In The Light” t-shirts hoisted colossal signs pointing to the ADA entrances.

“What’s going on?” asked the bus driver.

“Lori Lightfoot’s Inauguration,” I said.

“Oh! The new mayor!” he said. “Great day. End of the Machine.”

Inside the Arena, old friends who’ve fought entrenched politicians for decades worked the event. Hi, Regan! Hi! Hi! I heard victorious voices all around helping me and other revelers find our way. They directed me to two seats, eight rows from the stage. The personification of old-style politics, the Daley clan, took their seats behind me. Even they couldn’t stop the trickle of joy dripping from their upended well-oiled machine.

A Chicago policeman came running over to say hello. Matt Baio and I have known each other since we both worked for Speaker Michael Madigan in the late 1980s. Matt’s official post is guarding the inside entrance of City Hall. We’ve seen each other every time I’ve marched into that building protesting the previous mayor, or bought a dog license, or renewed my senior bus pass. I greeted him laughing, anticipating he’d be tickled about the new mayor.

“Matt, I just finished writing a book and you’re in it,” I said.

“What? No way! When’s it coming out?” 

“Early 2020. But I changed your name to protect you.”

“Is it about the time you asked me to be Bill Clinton’s driver?”

Yes, it is. And we had a riot reliving the story of what Matt, the silent navigator, overheard at the wheel in March 1992 during Illinois’ presidential primary.*

“Is it too late to use my name? It won’t hurt me. I’ve never been in a book. I’d be proud. Use Matthew Baio. I’ll buy a bunch and pass them out at City Hall. I gotta go tell my daughters. I’ll be over there by the stage if you need anything.”

My friend Peter arrived via train and bus from the far southwest side of the city. A security guard said he was ticketed for the bleachers and prevented him from joining me. As it turned out, I was also ticketed for the bleachers. I had been inadvertently led to the VIP seats. I eyeballed Officer Baio through crowd. After a brief kerfuffle including murmurs on the security guard’s walkie-talkie, Peter and I secured our prized seats. Reverend Jesse Jackson’s bodyguard sat down next to us keeping eyes on The Reverend in the row ahead.

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Reverend Jesse Jackson and Peter Feldman

After the elected officials paraded onto the stage and took their seats, the diminutive powerhouse, Lori Lightfoot, was sworn in and came to the microphone. The articulation of her vision for Chicago hit every issue. And right smack in the middle of her speech she highlighted a fear I’d expressed to her during a meet-and-greet in a friend’s condo at the beginning of her campaign. 

“I’m looking ahead to a city where people want to grow old and not flee. A city that is affordable for families and seniors,” she said.

Was it because we were so close that Peter and I felt as if our new mayor was talking directly to us? Would we have sighed with relief feeling she actually cared about us if we’d been in the bleachers? I don’t know. But I do know that it still pays to be friends with the right people in Chicago.

_______________________________

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Officer Matthew Baio Lori Lightfoot Inauguration May 20, 2019

 

*To find out what Matt overheard, go to City Hall and ask him. Or, even better, read my book I Want To Be In That Number, due in early 2020.