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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

The great composer had plenty to say about maniacal dictators Evanston RoundTable, Oct. 13, 2022 Dmitri Shostakovich died in 1975, two years after being serenaded by Northwestern students at the school commencement ceremony in Evanston, where he received an honorary doctorate. Vladimir Putin, the current president of Russia, was born 70 years ago in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). He was too young to have met the celebrated composer. In 1975, the year Shostakovich died at age 68, Putin had just graduated from Leningrad State University and joined the KGB Foreign Intelligence Service. How would the shy, nervous Shostakovich have reacted to today’s brutal dictator, who invades a peaceful neighbor and threatens the world with nuclear weapons? Impossible to say, of course, except for one thing: The same fear of speaking out in Putin’s Russia was even more pronounced in Shostakovich’s day. In the 1930s the supreme leader was Joseph Stalin, the dreaded Koba, the Vozhd, the Man of Steel, who sent millions of innocent citizens to their deaths or to the gulags. Yet astonishingly, Shostakovich did speak the truth, producing a symphonic template of life under Stalin. Was that courageous or suicidal? The infamous opera In 1934, the then-28-year-old composer premiered … Continue reading →