Tag: creative non-fiction

Doomsday Prophecies: From Hal Lindsey to Trump’s NAR

FeaturedDoomsday Prophecies: From Hal Lindsey to Trump’s NAR

In the early 1970s the doomsday prophecies in Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, stoked my Toms River, New Jersey, Christian fundamentalist cult. Little did I know that the prophesies of the cult religion of my youth would come true through a new religious movement, the National Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Fifty years later.

Based on his interpretations of the Book of Revelations, Hal Lindsey connected end-of-the-world Biblical prophecies to current events. In his view, Satan’s plans to form a one-world government and religion were triggered by the establishment of the state of Israel and the World Council of Churches—both in 1948. 

Converts, like me, of the 1970s Jesus movement, still flash-backing to acid trips, saw signs of the end times around every corner. In our small church community, anti-globalism was our protest because Satan was using the banks to form a global economy. We boycotted the Bank of America. We refused to use credit cards. We wrote letters condemning the birth of the European Union. An increase in the divorce rate, recreational drugs, new technology, the gasoline shortage, religious ecumenism. All these signaled the diabolic end of the world, the coming of the Antichrist, or some kind of unearthly vision that terrified vulnerable young comfort-seekers.

I left the Christian cult after sobering up in Alcoholics Anonymous, divorcing an abusive husband, and moving 1,500 miles away from the scene. 

Starting in the 1980’s, unbeknownst to me, Christian fundamentalism slowly morphed into the New Apostolic Reformation. The prime NAR chronicler, Matthew D. Taylor, describes the NAR’s leadership as a “spiritual oligarchy” of apostles and prophets. Apparently God has told NAR adherents that Donald Trump is their spiritual leader. You’ll have to figure that one out for yourself, but the results are obvious. 

The NAR apostles and prophets tell Trump his job is to “advance God’s earthly kingdom so Christ can return.” Advancing the earthly kingdom is outlined in Project 2025. The elimination of abortion and women’s rights; same-sex marriage and gay rights; dismantling USAID as a stand against globalism—all the shockers in the first year of Trump 2.0 are advancing the earthly kingdom.

Venezuela is the biggest shocker so far, at least for me. Fifty years ago I learned that the Book of Revelations prophesied God would make the United States, Russia and China the world’s three spheres of influence. The United States would get the entire Western Hemisphere. Russia gets its region, and Europe. China gets all of Asia, India, Africa. This is the umbrella of national sovereignty, the opposite of international integration and the seeds of anti-globalization.

A radio broadcaster startled me on Saturday morning, January 3, with the news that the US invaded Venezuela. The long-forgotten voice of myself as a 25-year-old Jesus Freak bellowed, “Uh. Oh. Wake up. It’s happening.” 

Donald Trump, in a 2017 speech to the Joint Congress, announced he was not the President of the world. Instead, he stated, he was the President of America. These words sent a signal to anti-globalists and end-times prophets around the world.  It was a declaration that the US will once again dominate the Western Hemisphere. Vladimir Putin confidante Alexander Dugin, heard the call and issued a statement that traditionalism had won, globalism lost. 

Anthropologists say pandemic uncertainty, virtual reality, environmental issues, old-age anxiety, border disputes, memory disorder, and gender trouble put society in a self-protective liminal state, a state betwixt and between. Perhaps these unsettling markers ushered in Donald Trump as the leader of the new world order. Now that we’ve fallen over the threshold, what do we do?

I don’t know. 

But holy shit. 

Wake up. 

It’s happening.

Dead Dogs

FeaturedDead Dogs

The cat jumped from the cabinet behind the Christmas tree onto the back of the couch and slinked over to perch behind the woman sitting across from me. 

“Watch out! The cat’s behind you,” a nearby party-goer warned.

“Oh that’s ok. I like cats,” said the guest in proper guise.

Staring down the resident pet, I drifted off to a time long ago when I was in the same position as the proper guest. When I turned to greet the host’s cat  (a stupid-human gesture), she swatted me in the face, claws out.

The Christmas party conversation turned to pets.

“Do you have any pets?” I was asked.

“Oh yes, I have a Westie.”

I love my dog and I talk to her a lot, but I don’t talk about her much. My mother, Agnes, hated people who anthropomorphized their pets. Really hated them. My feelings aren’t as strong but I have the genes—an aversion to pet talk.

It turns out Agnes was onto something. As long ago as the 1870s Charles Darwin criticized the natural tendency to ascribe humanlike attributes to non-human animals. His pitch was for humans to show as much interest to the natural world of insects and plants as we do to our pets. In doing so, he opened the forbidden subject of anthropomorphism. Darwin’s England was ground zero for the upper classes treating their pets like children or stand-ins for friends. Since then, many scientific abstracts and PhD theses have tried to punctuate the negative consequences of anthropomorphism: over-spending on human-like clothes, feeding pets non-compatible human food, beautifying dogs with toxic cologne, nail polish, breath freshener and worst of all, expecting non-human animals to have human emotions.

I suspect Agnes was more drawn to anthropomorphism than her sophistication would allow. Her sobering suggestion that trees are worth adoration are probably my earliest spiritual experience of our life together. Another was her reverence in quietly revealing the nesting robin’s eggs outside the bathroom window. But she’d never stand for conversations about them. In her world, if you didn’t present a funny story based on serious articles from the New York Times or Time Magazine, you were an out and out bore. Her ghost leads me to the Never-Trumper’s Bulwark podcasts, whose tagline reads “a few laughs to wash down the crazy.”

There’s a trail of dead dogs nipping at my aging heels. I threw this into the mix at the Christmas party in order to join the pet talk.

“Do you dream about dogs from your past?” Someone asked of no one in particular.

“All my dead dogs are present,” I blurted out. 

It’s a goofy thing to say, like I’m a Buddhist or Spiritualist or the crazy white-hair in the corner with her Diet Coke. Other than my dog Henry, who talked to me during the Covid shutdown, I’ve always thought of my pets as nothing more than animals (forgetting that I, too, am an animal). No fancy garments, doggy day care or prepared meals. But as dead pals, they are sentient. Here. They may be the beings between the here and the hereafter, waiting to guide me to wherever that is. I hope so.

I’ll need protection to escape the cruel and the crazy running my country.

Knock On Wood

FeaturedKnock On Wood

The activist community that confronted ICE in Chicago has quieted down for the winter since ICE commander Gregory Bovino hightailed it out of town with 100 of his 200 military combatants. Southern activists report that ICE is wreaking havoc on the streets of New Orleans and other Gulf Coast towns while training the 10,000 newly-enrolled ICE recruits. In the Upper Midwest, we’re like mama bears and cubs in hibernation. We’re squirreling away our esprit to ready ourselves for the war we expect ICE to launch over the threshold in the spring.

Oh, there are cadres of fresh revolutionaries protesting against high property taxes at winterized town halls. Indivisible and other groups are keeping the newly activated engaged with Happy Hours, Coffee Hours and Sound Baths. And eager canvassers are stepping out in the cold to knock on doors for their favorite state and local candidates.

llinois’ 2026 primary is March 17. In times past, a St. Patrick’s Day election meant a big turnout at the polls. Can you guess why? Yeah, a lot of people took the day off for the parade and voted afterwards. But Illinois Governor Pritzker has told us that Bovino and his returning troops may try to disrupt our elections. What does that mean?

No one has a clue.

Amidst all this dread of the future present, I received an unexpected message about my life story that put the worries of the world on the back burner. In 2020 Tortoise Books Chicago published a memoir I’d written thanks to the encouragement of friends. 

A few years after I retired I attended a poetry reading at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Shuffling up to Poet/Author/Moviemaker Kevin Coval, I disclosed, “I wish I could write”. 

“Everyone can write. Everyone has stories to tell,” Kevin responded. “Come Saturday afternoon to the writing class. It’s free.”

Kevin and the others welcomed me, a much older student, into the upper room of significant creatives. One day he introduced me as “one of our writers,” and a bolt-of-lightning zipped around my bones. 

Beth Finke, memoir writing teacher extraordinaire, praised my weekly essays while x’ing out the “weak” verbs and extraneous paragraphs. Writing expended a lot of brain energy and I often gave up from exhaustion. Then Beth would assign an energizing prompt like, “the tune you most remember from childhood” (Elvis’ Hound Dog). Poor thing had to listen to every detail of every step in the long saga of getting my book published.

Vivienne, an accomplice in many adventures, insisted I write a book so she could make a movie about my life. This seemed preposterous, but slipped into the maybe compartment when she wrote, produced and directed her full-length feature, “Dare to be Wild” (Netflix). It still seemed preposterous because as a friend asked me recently, “Is your life that interesting?” No. Yet, Kevin Coval attests every life is interesting.

The unexpected news I received this week puts the idea of a production, based on my book, on the front burner, in the cards, out front, on center stage, in the spotlight, on the radar, on a winning streak, ahead of the game, beating the odds, nailing it, on fire.

Knock. On. Wood.

Is Scott Galloway out of Touch?

FeaturedIs Scott Galloway out of Touch?

For the first time in my life, I attended a Sunday service at a Unitarian Universalist Church, to see Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, in dialog with the pastor. I was curious to hear what this progressive Black mayor had to say to a progressive Northside (White) church.

The pastor began the service with an announcement.

“The Unitarian Universalist Church was established by and for people who do not believe in hell.”

“Whaat?” I was so startled I hardly heard the rest of the preamble. I don’t believe in hell. No one I know believes in hell. But I’ve never heard nor would I ever expect to hear such good news from any church pulpit. 

But wait, there’s more good news! The “UU’s” reject original sin, believe in a God who loves and redeems all human beings, and trains congregants in social justice work. These are my beliefs too.

The bias I’ve had against the Unitarian Universalist Church stems from old thinking that Unitarianism is a heretical religion because they don’t display a cross. Where did I get that crap? Since I’ve been attending a Presbyterian Church for over 45 years, it must have slipped into my head when I was half asleep some Sunday morning. 

Speaking of old ideas, on Friday, December 5, podcaster Scott Galloway responded to a young man who asked:

“How do I get more involved in politics?”

Galloway said “… because young people don’t vote, old people keep voting themselves more money, right? $40 billion child tax credit gets ripped out of the infrastructure bill, but the $120 billion cost of living adjustment for Social Security flies right through.

…our old people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money, and the fact that people under the age of 18 don’t vote, the budget reflects values, and our values are that we don’t really love our children.”*

This is a typical Scott Galloway motivator: money. He will happily reveal how much he’s worth and how he manipulated the modern system to get there. But his statement pitting the young against the old using the antiquated idea that we old citizens are sapping federal dollars from the young shows a decided lack of sophistication and reality. 

First of all, we want young people to succeed. We were young Pete Buttigieg’s biggest voting bloc, long before he announced his Gray New Deal in Iowa 2020. We vote for SNAP and child tax credits. We volunteer at food kitchens, tutor at public schools, babysit our grandchildren and are worried about ours, yours and future generations.

Secondly, we pay. We will pay the government $202.90 a month in 2026 for Medicare Part B, which covers doctor’s visits. That’s a 9.7 percent increase from 2025. We count on the Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to offset that Medicare increase. But in 2026, the Social Security COLA is only a 2.8 percent increase, posing a hardship for Social Security recipients who live check to check in this era of (non) affordability.

Third, don’t we all know that the way young people get involved in politics is to volunteer? What? Is that just a Chicago thing?

After 40 years, curiosity brought me, 79 years old, to an unexpected new idea about the Unitarian Universalist Church. 

Let’s hope Scott Galloway, 61years old, becomes curious enough to come to a new idea about how the real world works.

______________

You can find Scott Galloway’s email address here:

*The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway: How to Get Involved in Politics, How Scott Galloway Writes, and How He Follows the News, Dec 5, 2025https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-get-involved-in-politics-how-scott-galloway/id1498802610?i=1000739823645&r=196.38 This material may be protected by copyright.

Chicagoans: People of the Water

FeaturedChicagoans: 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.
______________

“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

FeaturedBroadview: Silent Resistance

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.

___________________________________________________

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:

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

MLK: “…only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

MLK: “…only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

On a podcast about grief, artist Laurie Anderson revealed to Anderson Cooper that she felt sad without being sad when her husband, rocker Lou Reed died in 2013. She came to this awareness at a class on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The teacher, Bob Thurman, said there is no dead. Dead doesn’t exist. He was referring, in part, to post mortem existence.

Different concepts of the afterlife exist in most religions and philosophies. For atheists who believe nothing happens after death, Thurman, a Tibetan Buddhist, teaches there is no nothing. Dead is not nothing.

I’m about as sure of what happens when the body breathes its last as I am of next week’s weather. Oh, I tacitly agree with those who suggest I’ll see my dead dogs again, the same way I concur it’s going to snow tomorrow. Maybe. Maybe not. Surely, dead is not nothing?

On November 22,1963, my mother called from New Jersey to the Catholic boarding school where I was sent to “shape up” in Williamsburg, Virginia. I picked up the black handle dangling from its stretched out cord in the one allowable phone booth for us wayward boarders.

“Kennedy’s been shot.” She said.

I replied, “I know. He’s dead. It’s on the radio.”

There’s a reason my mother called me. She knew, even at seventeen years old that I’d be upset, more like hysterical. Politics had grabbed me as a pre-teenager watching the Vietnam war on TV. By the time Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, I, a twenty-two year old hippie, had been to two marches on Washington and written hundreds of letters to Congress and President Johnson. I was in support of the Civil Rights bill, the Voting Rights bill, banning the bomb and against the Vietnam war. Anytime the morning news stirred an injustice I had to fix, I reached for my stash of pre-stamped postcards to fire off messages to Congress. I harangued my friends—at work, in bars, on the beach, at parties—to think and talk like me. They didn’t. I kept going.

MLK’s admonition, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” initially whipped me into a frenzy of activism—more letters, more phone calls, more marches, more recruiting. Then in his “Drum Major Instinct,” speech in 1968 he preached to act as a servant, not a savior. It is noble to help just one person, change one person’s viewpoint, get one person to vote. Gradually, I adhered to King’s spirit and put into practice a daily mindfulness mantra:  the worries of the world don’t own me, I don’t own the worries of the world. 

DNA has proven dead is not dead. DNA, our physical manifestation of life itself, apparently lives forever. Anyone who has had a DNA test questions their reported trace variants of first peoples like Neanderthal listed in their results, as if our DNA was there at the beginning, or, before? Some religions teach physical immortality, that our dead bodies will rise (or have risen) to live in Paradise. It begs the question: wherever our raised bodies take up residence, will they have our same DNA?

Martin Luther King’s DNA lives in the generative marrow of his words. I always feel sad, without being sad on this day, his birthday, like Laurie Anderson grieving over Lou Reed. His death forever transitions into the endorphins between my dreams and awareness. He lives in that zero-gravity mirage of my inner life that says:  serve, get out there, be brave, do it, say it.

Yep. Dead is not nothing.

Listen: Laurie Anderson & Anderson Cooper

(updated from 2023 MLK day)

The DOGE and Aging

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

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”.

‘There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’

‘There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’
There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

If it be now, ’tis not to come.

If it be not to come, it will be now.

If it be not now, yet it will come – the readiness is all.

— Hamlet

A sparrow fell from the sky and plopped down next to me on a sidewalk corner beside the church as neighbors, shoppers, and tourists bustled to their places.

“Damn! That’s disgusting!” Said a snap-back-hatted young man sidestepping around the splat. Looking the revenant himself as if returning from a dead weekend that probably started out fun on Friday night, he looked up. Was he searching for someone behind the clouds to blame?

“Look at it. So gross!” Looking down now, seemingly blaming the sparrow for its dead ugly existence.

Perhaps because I was headed to church, the sparrow’s lasting legacy in the bible came to mind. Scriptures tell us to look at how God cares for the lowly sparrow as a metaphor for how that same God cares even more for humans. But here I was, staring at a dead bird. Did that God in the bible throw the bird down beside me so I’d know who’s in charge around here? Is it an omen of a bad year ahead? A symbol of immortality? A sign to repent?

There’s a peregrine falcon nest directly east on Lake Michigan in the intake crib of Chicago’s water system. Those tricky raptors attack other birds in mid-air and sometimes miss their prey as they swoop down to catch them. On my dog walks, I’m constantly on the lookout for bird carcasses (sometimes impaled in the bushes) because Elsa will sneak a forbidden lick if I’m not vigilant.  I assumed the unfortunate sparrow was one of these victims.

If God set this complicated natural aerodynamic food chain in motion, so be it. I’ll accept that God. However, no God is going to snap me to attention about the upcoming election or remind me of some regrettable remark I’ve made by throwing foreboding dead birds at me. The same force may have set all the emotions of fear and regret in my DNA, but a god that powerful better not have my same human characteristics. I’m conscious of an impersonal force, something outside of myself, an unexplained presence. I believe there’s a higher power, that I call God. Holding that power out as a relatable, reasoned person that acts as a mean-spirited human, to get my attention is not my idea of a god. At least not today, or, not at this moment.

The ubiquitous house sparrow is not native to the United States, I’ve been told by birders. They chirp most of the US awake in the morning and nest outside our homes’ nooks and crannies. At Chicago’s Navy Pier, if you try to eat McDonald’s fries outside, you’ll be sharing them with sparrows. If you look at your phone outside the Pancake House to catch up on text messages, sparrows will swoop in and pluck at the remnants of your Dutch Baby. This diminutive invasive species is so plentiful that I give it short shrift, ignore it, as if it’s not important.

Until one drops from the sky on my way to church.

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