Evanston RoundTable, Oct. 3, 2019

For the first time since 2014, the Cubs will be missing the National League playoffs. In the end it wasn’t even close. They finished the season nine games behind the Nationals and five games behind the Brewers for the two Wild Card playoff spots.

Worse yet was the crushing way they were eliminated, losing their last four home games to the rival Cardinals. It was the Cards’ first four-game sweep at Wrigley since 1921.

More humiliation? The Cubs lost their last five games at Wrigley by one run. You’d have to go back to 1915 to replicate that sad streak.

All this when they had a 3½ game lead in the division as recently as Aug. 9. Despite having a fabulous lineup . . .

Evanston RoundTable, Sept. 19, 2019

Thirteen hundred miles straight west is that other Evanston, the one we occasionally get confused with, the one we sometimes think about, the one in the southwest corner of Wyoming.

What’s it like?

“It’s a really nice town with good people,” says Mayor Kent Williams.

The mayor should know. He has lived there 35 years and raised a family of four, with two grandchildren and two more on the way—all of whom live nearby.

In many ways the two Evanston cities are dissimilar. Our western namesake is 90% white, with few people of color. (We’re 66% white, 17% black and 10% Asian.) The western Evanston lies at an elevation of 6,750 feet, in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains. (We’re 585 feet, with no foothills in sight, unless you count Mount Trashmore.) Their closest metropolis is Salt Lake City, 90 miles west. (We are across the street from the nation’s third-largest city.) Hunting is popular, so as with the rest of Wyoming, guns are widespread. “We like our Second Amendment rights,” says Mayor Williams. And the western Evanston is a lot more sparsely populated: 1,200 people per square mile vs. almost 10,000 here.

Still, there are some similarities, . . .

Evanston RoundTable, Sept. 5, 2019

Once every hundred years the village of Brigadoon, nestled deep in the Scottish Highlands, emerges from the mists of obscurity to restore and enrapture the villagers, who laugh and fuss, fall in and out of love, and celebrate the wonder and beauty of life during its brief flicker of time.

That at least is the premise of Lerner and Loewe’s great musical of the same name, which premiered on Broadway in 1947.

So it is here in Evanston, where one day every year, cars are magically banned and people emerge to renew old friendships and frolic on their lawns, sidewalks, parkways and pavements. Time for the annual block party! So far this summer, there have been more than 150 in Evanston.

We held ours, our 41st, two Saturdays ago and as always it was delightful. We have a long block, with 37 homes, plus we invite households around the corner and on the next block. With additional friends and family members the turnout can easily exceed a hundred people.

My 10-year-old grandson Ben, an avid block partygoer, and I started out as we do every year . . .

Evanston RoundTable, Aug. 22, 2019

Just back from a trip to Toronto with Neil, my best friend from high school, way back when.

First: Toronto. Go! It’s a terrific city—clean, colorful and vibrant. We hung out at the waterfront and took the ferry to Centre Island where we rode bikes and tossed a frisbee. We also visited the Hockey Hall of Fame and Niagara Falls. Only 100 minutes from O’Hare by plane.

But the best part of being with Neil, as always—and despite the fact that he lives 800 miles away in New York (where we grew up)—was the warm and hilarious time we always have together, like two big kids let loose on the world.

What is it about old friends? The most important factor may be that they still see you as the kid you were then—and that makes you more kid-like to be with them now.

Because despite our advancing years, we still love to act like kids. As we grow older people increasingly miss the joy and freedom of childhood. Adulthood brings burdens of responsibility . . .

Evanston RoundTable, Aug. 8, 2019

A 2013 exhibit at the Field Museum about the ancient paintings at Lascaux devoted a wing to recreating part of the original caves. Greeting museum visitors as they entered were two full-size fiberglass models of Neolithic people, a man and a woman, dressed in their finest animal furs and jewelry. There they stood, peering out incredulous at the passing museum crowd, doubtless thinking: what slobs!

Sad but true. “Dressing down” has become our national passion. We’ve regressed from “casual Friday” to “constantly scraggly.” Anywhere one goes in public, there they are: the scruffy and unkempt, flaunting their torn jeans, pajama bottoms, baggy pants, cut-off shorts, flip-flops and rumpled and ripped T-shirts.

This is a new stage in our sartorial evolution. Sumptuary laws going back thousands of years dictated how people should look. The great American panjandrums of a century ago—Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Warren Harding—went camping together in their suits and ties. Old photos show Chicagoans of a century ago thronging the Loop or Wrigley Field in their best clothing.

And recall the iconic Robert Young in the midcentury TV series “Father Knows Best,” sitting down to dinner with Mom, Princess and Bud in his gray suit, dark tie and white shirt and carefully folded pocket square. . . .

Evanston RoundTable, July 25, 2019

Tuesday nights my grandson Ben sleeps over. He is 10, a rising fifth grader (as they say) in the Chicago Public Schools, and therefore capable of profound observations. Last night as we were getting ready for bed he told me that sleep is the time when you “bypass time,” when an hour goes by like a minute, both statements which pretty much knocked me out.

Good kid, adorably cute, STEM nerd, though he likes social studies too, he told me.

“Pops, what should I be when I grow up,” he asked amidst this conversational romp. I told him a physicist. An Einstein in the family would be nice. I asked him what he wanted to be, and he said “animator,” by which he meant painter of Japanese anime drawings. He loves all things Japanese, especially sushi. But I thought he said “innovator.”

“Yeah, that would be good too,” he agreed. Inventors and scientists are like guiding spirits . . .

Evanston RoundTable, July 11, 2019

I love you!

 Just three little words, eight letters in all. And yet they make up the most powerful and perilous sentence in the English language.

Powerful because it is the ultimate spoken expression of romantic desire, the great aim and glory of serious relationships, the Big Bang of love and passion.

Perilous because it is the most intimate and vulnerable sentiment a person can make, putting the speaker in the thrall and power of the listener. It humbles us to say it, to mute and minimize, if only for a moment, our usually overwhelming ego.

Ego is what love is not. Love is the triumph of the other over our own needs and desires. I love youis like an arrow traveling to its target, capturing and . . .

Evanston RoundTable, June 27, 2019

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. To be young in the 1960s was, as Wordsworth said about another crazy era, very heaven.

Also hell. We fought with our parents, were confused about rapidly changing mores, suffered through a murderous war, witnessed terrible assassinations and felt at times like social outcasts.

Full disclosure: I’m not quite the World’s Oldest Baby Boomer. I arrived at 8 a.m. on Dec. 31, 1945. The Baby Boom, according to most definitions, includes the cohort born from 1946 to 1964. So technically I’m 18 hours too old. But believe me, that is the generation I identify with!

We were definitely not the greatest generation—we didn’t defeat the Axis and save Western democracy—but our activism and population bulge heavily influenced culture, politics and commerce.

Perhaps we were the luckiest, growing up in the richest, freest and most secure nation in history. The dollar and employment were strong. I paid just $97 a quarter for college tuition, and saved enough money to travel halfway around the world during my junior year abroad.

There were also plenty of traumas. Ours was a generation shattered by assassinations—JFK, RFK, MLK and later John Lennon—and marked by campus protests and tens . . .

Evanston RoundTable, June 13, 2019

Taking the dog for a walk along the lake. What could be more mundane, what could be more magical?

The mundane comes with the calendar: a late May day, unremarkable except for a cool, light breeze and a warming sun, one of the first after our extended dreary spring. The magic comes with a fresh mindset: to take in every molecule and atom that sparkles and shimmers in the morning light. New perception brings new appreciation: relish how wonderful are the everyday details of life!

Start with the spectrum of sights: the infinite shades of green—from seafoam to shamrock and Kelly to forest—on grass, bushes and trees; the varied, speckled blues and grays glinting in the water; the pastel-splashed wildflowers peeping up from the cracks in the pathway cement; the twinkling sunlight sparkling off the waves lapping on the beach.

The dog—Juney—likes to stop at every vertical thing—tree, pole and bench—to give it a thorough sniffing over before adding his territorial salute. I indulge him because . . .