Author Archives: Lester Jacobson

The bully in the bird feeder

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Evanston RoundTable, Feb. 22, 2023 A year or two ago we bought a clear plastic bird feeder and attached it outside on our family room window. The idea was to observe our avian friends at close hand, to admire their grace and beauty and appreciate their swift and incredibly intricate landing maneuvers. We loved watching the delicate way they used their tongues to turn the seeds in their mouths and their beaks to crush them to get at the nuts. It was a wonderful education into these ubiquitous flying creatures, our lifelong if mostly unobserved and underappreciated aerial friends. How marvelous to see them so close, within a few feet. The primary visitors to our bird feeder are local sparrows and a pair of cardinals, male and female, whom we believe have long nested in our backyard. House sparrows, we learn, are native to and abundant in Illinois. They are, to my taste, rather dull-looking birds, even with their striated gray and brown plumage. The large, long-tailed cardinal is the state bird of Illinois, and the male cardinal is one of the most beautiful birds in the avian constellation, with a brilliant red crown and chest and black mask and … Continue reading →

The happiest place on earth

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Evanston RoundTable, Feb. 2, 2023 There are lots of claimants to the title. Of course, it has been said of Disneyland so often I’m surprised they haven’t copyrighted the phrase. Having never been there, I can’t say. I have my own favorites. There is Portobello Road market on a crisp weekend morning. The main concourse of Grand Central Station with the light streaming through the vast overhead windows. Strawberry Fields in Central Park. Concert nights at the Pritzker Pavilion downtown. Any cross-country train leaving Chicago’s Union Station, heading northwest to Seattle or southeast to New Orleans. (Or anywhere else.) But the local title, by my vote, goes to the weekend family gym sessions at the McGaw YMCA. There you will find hoopsters going long for their threes, taking the rebound on one bounce and executing a slick move or two for a nice layup. Nearby, watched by their moms and dads, are dozens of kids, hooting and hollering with joy, tooling around on little tyke bikes, scooting down the bouncy house, spinning their hula hoops, diving over the soft foam blocks and dodging each other and the errant basketballs and just generally having the time of their little lives. Does … Continue reading →

The Write Stuff

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Evanston RoundTable, Jan. 18, 2023 Along with the winter solstice come annual new year resolutions, a tradition said to be thousands of years old. The most popular resolutions are exercise more, lose weight and get organized. These are all fine and worthy goals. But I have another – more demanding perhaps but arguably more valuable: consider writing for the RoundTable. In most daily RoundTable newsletters we include the following encouragement: “Join our team: The Evanston RoundTable is growing! Check out our jobs page for opportunities in editorial.” Why would you, dear reader, want to write for our news site? Two reasons. Serve your community. It has been said that “Evanston is heavenston,” a phrase sometimes attributed to Frances Willard, although A Brief History of Evanston says it derives from the city’s historically “strong Methodist influence.”   If so, we need to work to maintain and strengthen our celestial status, because even heaven has its problems. In the afterlife, said Nietzsche, all the interesting people are missing – reason enough to work for its improvement. More seriously, there are the problems we see and write about all the time: the long history of racism, the current challenge of fixing fundamental issues, the city’s huge disparities … Continue reading →

Highly resolved, in 2023…

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Evanston RoundTable, Jan. 4, 2023 Each succeeding year demonstrates to me how much less I know of the universe than the year before – going right back to when I was 18 or so and knew pretty much everything. Nevertheless, from the depth of my ignorance I am free (and indeed encouraged) to do what I can for the common good. As the Mishnah, the codification of Jewish oral law, states: “It is not required that you complete the work, but neither may you refrain from it.” A good time to declare that work is now, around the first of the year, in the form of a traditional New Year’s resolution. Common sense suggests we have a better chance of realizing our annual goals if they are few in number, achievable and reasonably significant. So here are three: 1. Work to improve myself. This one is simple but challenging. Be a better spouse, father, grandfather, friend, colleague. Control my ego. Learn when to speak and when to stay silent, when to stand up and when to stay seated. I need to push myself with my writing. I must not let age, pain or exhaustion provide an excuse to be lazy, shallow or … Continue reading →

How to survive those Gray Day Blues

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Evanston RoundTable, Dec. 21, 2022 I got those Gray Day Blues, O yeah, the Gray Day Blues, When my cerebellum goes on snooze. So maybe you can advise, O one so sage and wise, How to cope under gray skies? I got some real good news: Don’t dwell on sunless views, Just get busy — to end your blues! Not much of a song, as blues songs go, but this weather can dull one’s creativity. How many days in a row can the Chicago area endure dreary weather? Apparently quite a few. As far as I can tell, we’ve had two sunny days the last month. Otherwise, it’s gray, grayer and grayest, with a helping of winter storms and single-digit temps to come. As my dear friend and former RoundTable columnist Charlie Wilkinson recently put it: “My solar battery is puckered.” If like me you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (the cutesy acronym of which is SAD), you know that lack of sun is the equivalent of lack of sleep or (worse) lack of chocolate. But in Chicago, for meteorological reasons that remain obscure to me (despite this explanation), we experience long spells of overcast skies this time every year. … Continue reading →

NorthShore’s new policy charging for portal inquiries gets mixed reviews

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Evanston RoundTable, Dec. 8, 2022 NorthShore University HealthSystem has adopted a new policy charging for some online medical advice. The move may have been inevitable, many patients concede, but not everyone is on board. Last month NorthShore – which consists of Evanston, Skokie, Highland Park and Glenbrook hospitals as well as facilities in Chicago, Arlington Heights, Naperville and Elmhurst – announced a change in policy regarding its electronic portal, NorthShore Connect. An email dated Nov. 2 sent to all NorthShore patients with the heading, “Changes to NorthShore Connect medical advice messages,” read: “Beginning Nov. 8, 2022, if a response to your message – when a provider provides their medical expertise and more than a few minutes of their time – we may request that you either schedule a visit with us or we will bill your insurance for providing that medical advice.” The email gave several examples of medical advice messages “that may result in a charge,” including a new issue or symptom, adjusting or prescribing a new medication, a flare-up or change in an ongoing condition or extensive time reviewing a patient’s medical history. Fees would be billed through the patient’s insurance, the email said, and patients would have … Continue reading →

Lake Shore unlimited

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Evanston RoundTable, Dec. 7, 2022 What is it about a train ride? I’ve been asking myself that question, consciously or unconsciously, ever since I was a kid on my first overnight train from New York’s Grand Central Station to Portland, Maine, on my way to summer camp. There was something transcendent about the sights streaming past our window, the small towns and brightly lit factories of upstate New York and New England, the bridges and lakes and rivers, the jostle of the train rattling along, the impatient cars behind the merry dinging gates and the sound of the train whistle, plangent and insistent — that drew me like a fly to a light. I was trapped forever in the thrall of the tracks. Since then I’ve traveled by rail across Europe, even through Russia and Africa, as well as toured America extensively. My favorite domestic trips were the Coast Starlight from Seattle to San Francisco, with the moonlit mountain lakes; Chicago to San Francisco featuring spectacular views through the Rockies; and the Wilderness Express from Anchorage to Mt. Denali across the vast expanse of Alaska. But the most memorable – and frightening – ride was through East Germany in late … Continue reading →

Protect democracy

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Evanston RoundTable, Nov. 23, 2022 The RoundTable’s fall fund drive is underway, and if you’re not a contributing member you should consider joining our membership family. These are the supporters we rely on to help us provide award-winning, round-the-clock coverage of our beloved city – everything from breaking news and thoughtful analyses to delightful and informative features, wonderful photography and timely event calendars. I know the importance of local journalism because half a century ago I started my career that way. In 1973 I joined Lerner Newspapers as a cub reporter. Founded in 1926 by Leo Lerner, the paper’s focus was always and exclusively local news. “If a bomb went off in the Loop,” we were instructed, “our lead would be, ‘North Side windows were shattered.’” Local news consisted of several dozen different weekly editions, covering neighborhoods from Belmont Avenue in Chicago to Highland Park. I have a vivid newsroom memory, after only a few days on the job, of busily scribbling a first draft of a story on yellow legal paper when our crusty managing editor, Art Rotstein, suddenly loomed over me. “What are you doing?” he growled. “Uh, writing a story?” “Well, write it in your typewriter.” So … Continue reading →

Autumn glory

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Evanston RoundTable, Nov. 9, 2022 I used to dread fall. I’m an outdoors guy: I love to hike, bike, swim, go to the beach, appreciate the sunny blue skies. That would be summer. But fall is different: shorter days, the onset of grey skies and – worst of all – winter looming ahead. And we all know about winter in the Midwest, with its bone-chilling temps, snow and ice, layers of clothing and dangerous conditions. Chicago’s fierce winter wind even has a name: The Hawk. (“They call it the Windy City because of the Hawk. The Hawk, almighty Hawk,” sings Chicago native Lou Rawls on his 1967 song Dead End Street.) Keep that durn bird away from me! I knew it was irrational to judge one season by the one that follows, but I couldn’t clear my head of the notion that fall was winter’s harbinger, its sign-on, its door mat. But this year is different. I’m into fall in a big way. Not sure what has made the difference. Maybe it’s because as I slide along into old age, I’ve learned to appreciate the special privilege and beauty of being alive every single day. Or maybe I see fall … Continue reading →

Mind the Gap

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Evanston RoundTable, Oct. 26, 2022 Visitors to London often hear the phrase “Mind the gap” when alighting from the venerable Underground tube trains, the city’s equivalent of our CTA subways. The gap is the space between the floor of the train and the station platform, which might in some places be as wide as a foot. Tread carefully, or as we Yanks would say, “Watch your step.” But “Mind the gap” has a wider application, possibly even as a metaphor for life itself, a thought brought to mind by a terrific recent week exploring this greatest of cities with my son Dan. We have been traveling together since he moved to Los Angeles in 2008 to build his budding music career. I would fly out to explore the city with him and then we’d drive north on I-5 to San Francisco and after a few days of sight-seeing meander south down the Pacific Coast Highway, following the 17-Mile drive, touring San Simeon and wandering in awe among the Redwoods at Big Sur. On one trip we rented a Gulf Stream trailer on Airbnb at Joshua Tree National Park, two hours east of L.A., and hiked for two days through the … Continue reading →