A happy 2024 to you all, and thanks for stopping by.

I am not doing Dry-uary but I wholly support all who are. Me, I may drink more because you know, it’s an election year. Numbing is in order.

Our holiday season starts in earnest on December 23, Beth’s birthday. We went to Hamilton, and then to dinner at a funky, delightful place called Rootstock in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. Our friend Val, who works across the street from our apartment at Printers Row Wine Shop, works Saturday nights at Rootstock, which aligned very nicely on December 23. She and the owner took great care of us and our friend Ruth. Beth’s birthday was just about perfect.

The next morning things went off the rails a bit: Beth awoke in the 5 o’clock a.m. hour, as she always does, to feed Luna. And, as she always does, Beth took her morning medications. One of those meds, a pesky little time-release capsule, decided not to go down all the way. Heimlich maneuvers, water, calisthenics—nothing worked. She never had trouble breathing, thank God, but the dang thing just sat there and burned in her throat.

She finally dozed off and when she awoke, the pill seemed to have dissolved but the irritation was front and center. This is already TMI but I’ll fast forward and say that a week after her birthday and one visit to an urgent care, we spent 11 hours at the emergency room and left with a prescription for two medications and not a whole lot of instant gratification.

But, as of this writing, those two meds seem to be a good idea and Beth is feeling better than she has for over a week and once we get some more sugar-free pudding in her we’ll be off to the races. (She couldn’t eat this past week because it was so hard to swallow.)

OK, let me say that I feel wholly lucky that we have wonderful friends and health insurance. That the nurses and doctors at Northwestern were fantastic, as were the intake folks and other staff. But, I must also say what I’ve been saying since my twenties and we were navigating the health care system because of Beth’s eyes and Gus’ many maladies—“system” is the biggest freaking euphemism since Reagan coined the term “peacekeeper” for a nuclear missile.

I’ll stop there for fear of starting 2024 on the wrong foot. The bottom line is we’re fortunate, Beth is feeling better, and we’re both exhausted.

In a period when Beth was out of bed and on the couch, we watched an absolutely fantastic documentary on Netflix called “American Symphony.” The foundation of the story told is the process that the multitalented Jon Batiste followed in writing a symphony. That part of it is powerful—watching him collaborate to create an unconventional orchestra to play an unconventional piece of music is fascinating and gives shape to the ephemeral term “creativity.”

The documentary would be good if that’s all it did—but the whole process is spliced with Batiste’s complicated personal situation—that being his girlfriend-eventually-wife being treated for a relapse of leukemia. It’s one of those experiences that’s real, heartbreaking and inspirational all at once.

Finally, I invite your help in helping Beth and me solve a mystery. Sometime around her birthday we got notice from our building that a package was waiting at the desk. It turned out to be a big box, and our door person, who’s seen the two of us through various maladies over the years, put it on a hand truck and brought it to our place. (We love you Chauncey!)

It turned out to be a case of rosé wine from Argentina. It’s called Rule of 3, it’s made from Malbec, and it’s delicious.

The problem? The card that came with it said only, “Merry Christmas!” No name, no hint at who gave us the lovely gift.

So, if you are the generous, thoughtful soul who sent it and have been wondering whether we got it, we did and thank you! And please, raise your hand!

Here’s to a safe, healthy, and peaceful 2024. A man can dream.

Beth models her gifts–bracelets made by her 9-year-old great niece.

Forty years ago this coming Sunday, December 24, Beth and I got in my junky Pontiac Ventura and headed north from Beth’s house on California Street in Urbana, to Beth’s mother Flo’s house on Colfax in Elmhurst, Illinois—a suburb west of Chicago.

Phew, if I only known what was coming. To start, the temperature (not wind chill mind you) reached minus 20 Fahrenheit that night. (The wind chill reached well below -60 overnight.) The advertising slogan for my Pontiac when it was new was, “It’s a prestige car. It’s an economy car.” Kind of like that Saturday Night Live skit that touted a fake product as “A desert topping…no, it’s a floor wax!,” my Pontiac was neither economical nor prestigious.

But it did start. What it didn’t do was warm up. The temperature gauge wouldn’t budge and, even set to its warmest setting, the heater fan blew cold air. Enter a big piece of cardboard and a bungee cord, and I blocked the radiator from the cold air so the engine reached proper operating temperature, and Beth and I remained reasonably comfortable.

Out of towners could skip treacherous drives and teleport in.

The wind was howling and visibility was bad but we motored on. When I stopped for gas it was like an arctic landscape and it felt like an act of survival to just get out, get the pump started, and fill the tank. I imagined being found next to the pump with icicles hanging off my beard, the way they find unlucky Mt. Everest climbers.

We made it that night. As did Beth’s sisters and their families from points around the United States. It was my first full blown introduction to the full complement of the Finke family, which I came to call Finke Nation. I grew up with one sister, so Beth’s mom’s living room looked like Beijing, China that night. Beth and I slept under the dining room table. Snoozing kids were strewn across the living room carpet.

The next day I participated in my first homemade Christmas. Beth’s family, being as prodigious as it was (and is), concluded that gift giving would bankrupt everyone and decided to do a drawing. Whoever’s name you draw, you make a gift for. (This being Chicago, there have been known to be shenanigans around these drawings.)

Back then, the soft rule was that it couldn’t cost more than $5. But whatever, the main thing was you had to make it.

I don’t remember much clearly about that day. I recall being drafted into being Santa. Other than that, children skittered everywhere and, well, it was all a little overwhelming.

Yesterday, I attended my 40^th homemade Christmas. It was hosted by Beth’s nephew and his wife Julie. Ben was maybe 13 back at my first one in 1983. He and Julie have four kids. And a lot of those skittering kids from Flo’s living room have kids of their own.

There’s always plenty to eat.

This year’s event was well-attended, and it included Zoomers from Florida and Minnesota and a hospital room in Kentucky (not to worry, patient is unbreakable). I mean, you can only drive through blizzards so many times in a lifetime, and Zoom worked fine.

What I didn’t know back in year one of homemade Christmas about Beth’s and my future was as massive and dense as a black hole. For everything that’s happened, this homemade tradition—one that I’ve groused about (and I think everyone else has, too) at times—has been a lovely constant.

Thank you Finke Nation.

Earlier this week I got word that Hannelore (Hanna) Bratman, a writer in the memoir-writing class I used to lead at the Chicago Cultural Center, had died Monday, just short of her 104th birthday.

That’s Hanna in a Photo taken by her granddaughter Nora Isabel Bratman)

Hannelore had age-related macular degeneration and found out about my “Me, Myself and I” writing class decades ago from volunteers who read mail out loud to her every week at Blind Service Association (now referred to as Blind Service Chicago).

“They are the ones who told me about this blind lady who teaches a writing class,” Hanna told me years later. “I just had to come and find out how she does it.”

We were so fortunate to have Hannelore in that class –her essays taught us so much. She had grown up in a German industrial city called Mannheim, her family was Jewish and owned a substantial home and butcher shop there, her father died when she was a child, and her mother went on to single-handedly raise her daughter Hannelore and run the family butcher shop. To give you an example of the sorts of things we learned from Hanna’s stories, I’m sharing an essay she wrote about what life was like for a young Jewish student in 1933 Nazi Germany

What’s In My Head

by Hanna Bratman

I told my mother the trouble I had with my algebra teacher, the one who started each class with a loud Hitler salute. He raises his arm and shouts in a loud voice, HEIL HITLER as he walks in the room.

“Heil Hitler,” he shouts, and everybody in the class stands up, raises their arm, and shouts Heil Hitler back. If it is not loud enough, we all repeat the routine.

Then there are some comments about how the Jews are destroying Germany, that Jews should be banned, and sometimes he also mentions the Gypsies.

Now I am telling her about the problem I had just yesterday with Herr Professor Buhl. I had not told my mother that I had gotten a “B” on that important test, and now I had to confess: On that last test that he gave us, after his Heil Hitler, he handed out the papers, and I had a B instead of an A. All of my answers were correct. I raised my hand and got up, shouted Heil Hitler, and asked him why I had a B instead of an A. His reply: “I gave you a B because you did not follow the formula I taught. You followed a formula I had not taught as yet. Besides, you are a nervy Jew to challenge me. I will downgrade all of your papers.”

I said to my mother, “I didn’t tell you about it, but I will never go back to that school. They don’t want me there.” I started crying again.

My mother said, “If you really don’t want to go back, I won’t make you. You know, Hitler will not last much longer. There will be a change in government, and Hitler will not last. In the meantime, even if you don’t go to school, you will have to keep up with all your schoolwork and study French and English. I will arrange to get the assignments, and when Hitler is gone, you can go back” I never did go back, but my mother left me with these words that have guided me through the rest of my life: “You know, they can take everything away from you, except what’s in your head.”

Hannelore was only 19 when she escaped Germany on her own — other family members didn’t make it out in time. She met her future husband, Eugene Bratman, on the MS Saturnia on their way to America. When they arrived here, no one could pronounce her name, so she changed it to Hanna. She will be missed, but fortunately for us, she lives on through these stories she wrote.

Today’s guest blogger, Andrew Bendelow.

I am pleased to introduce Andrew Bendelow as our guest blogger today. A retired school teacher, Andrew joined our weekly Zoom class this past year and generously agreed to share this little ditty — a fresh look at a classic holiday story — with you Safe & Sound readers.

It’s a Wonderful Lie

by Andrew Bendelow

Around this time of year, my wife and I look ahead to the holidays, when the desire to spend time with adult children and grandchildren is large. I make a suggestion or two for events that could bring us together with the younger generations, then she proposes something we’ve been doing every year for the past several. “Let’s reserve tickets for ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ at American Blues Theater.”

“Well, we’ve done that the last several years. Maybe they’d like something else better.”

“It has always been wonderful.”

“Mmm. I guess you’re right.”

The discussion ends, because almost everyone finds it wonderful. I, too, am a sucker for the story. I, too, thrill to George Bailey’s supernatural happy ending. The film and its forms — like the one at the American Blues show — have been popular with Baby Boomers and Gen Xers since they were raised watching it on public TV in the 70s and 80s. But at least a couple of Gen Zers I know look forward to experiencing this “holiday classic” every year

I wonder why? What feelings, values, or hopes does this narrative carry for today’s young adults?

Perhaps the same that made Dickens’ A Christmas Carol a best-seller in the 1840s and after: its suggestion that something like social justice or fairness is possible within capitalism, that human compassion and “good will toward men” can actually win over greed.

Dickens’ mass audience of readers, well-acquainted with the horrors of the modern industrial workplace — child labor, huge wealth disparities, etc. — found in Scrooge’s story an escape from the dog-eat-dog marketplace to a wondrous place, where normal human lives mattered, and where even the frosty heart of a calculating businessman could open to the poor.

Tiny Tim’s “God Bless Us, Every One!” asserts a belief in a democratic benevolence sorely lacking in Victorian England, and thus fervently wished.

The 1946 Frank Capra fantasy directly descends from Scrooge, and as with Dickens, Capra’s Depression-era audience was wise to capitalism’s lies and abuses of power. His 1941 hit, Meet John Doe, according to a contemporary review, left film-goers with the hope “that some day, selfishness, fraud and deceit will be expunged from human affairs.”

Five years later, Capra delivered on that promise. He gave his audience “It’s A Wonderful Life,” set in a world where good guys like John Doe win in the end. To pull it off, his audience willingly accepts that the universe is unwilling to see a good man, in this case the Everyman, George Bailey, throw his life away merely for material reasons. Imagine a town in which people transcend self-seeking and surmount the merciless ethic of the marketplace. That place is Bedford Falls in Capra’s movie.

How nice to reside, even for the space of a two-hour show, in a world where individuals hold each other in high regard, and actually invest in each other’s well being. Perhaps there lies the secret of its appeal to Gen Zers, who know very well untrammeled ambition.

In the scene where George and his newlywed sacrifice their honeymoon money to keep the building & loan afloat, his words and generosity soothe the panic of the bank rushers:

“You’re thinking about this all wrong,” he tells the mob. “Your money isn’t here, it’s in Joe’s house, right next to yours, and then the Kennedy house, and then Mrs. Maclan’s house, and a hundred others. It’s what banks do.”

George is their teacher, reminding these wage-earners that the lending and housing markets can be human, too. “We’ve got to stick together,” he says. “We’ve got to have faith in each other!”

Fine and brave words. If only they were more often true!

I usually avoid reading fiction or watching movies starring characters who are blind. Too many writers and filmmakers portray blind characters one-dimensionally — we’re either heroic or tragic, bumbling or, particularly lately, blessed with super-powers.

But Netflix is releasing a limited series of four episodes of the film All the Light We Cannot Seetomorrow, November 2, and I am eager check it out.

The film is based on Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-Prize winning bestseller. I listened to the audio version when it came out in 2014, and if you ask me, he deserved that Pulitzer!

One of the main characters in Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See is blind, but there’s much more to Marie-Laure LeBlanc than that. She grew up in Paris, her father is raising her on his own, and the two of them evacuate to a village in Brittany called St. Malo after Paris is invaded by the Nazis. Her father goes missing, and she’s a teenager by the time the Americans arrive on D-Day.

Written in third-person, Doerr’s chapters are very short — they swing back and forth between the changes young Marie-Laure is enduring in France and those that Werner Pfennig, an orphaned teenager in Germany, faces when placed in an elite Nazi training school there during WWII. The author avoids using visual descriptions in the chapters about Marie-Laure, since they are written from her point of view. So here’s a question for you blog readers who’ve read the book already: I bet you can describe Marie-Laure’s beloved Papa , but any idea what he looks like? Probably not, because the author never tells us that. There is little, if any, visual description of Étienne or Madame Manec (the pair Marie-Laure and her Papa live with in exile) either, yet readers come to know these characters very well, too. Here’s an example from early in the book, before Marie-Laure’s cigarette-smoking Papa goes missing:

Every time she comes within earshot, Marie-Laure hears the “Pfsssst!” of her father lighting another match. His hands flutter between his pockets.

Afternoons he repairs things around Étienne’s house: a loose cabinet door, a squeaking stair board. He asks Madame Manec about the reliability of the neighbors. He flips the locking clasp on his toolcase over and over, until Marie-Laure begs him to stop.

Marie-Laure doesn’t have to be able to see her Papa to know he is anxious, and neither do we. If Marie-Laure could see, the author wouldn’t have pointed out that she sees the cabinet door he is fixing, he would have just said “he’s fixing a cabinet door.” And so, he doesn’t use extra words to point out Marie-Laure hears the squeaky cabinet door, either. We know he’s fixing the cabinet door the same way Marie-Laure would know, and that helps us stay right in her head and experience her life during WWII the way she is.

As I continued reading, I noticed how often Doerr chose the verb “find” rather than describing Mari-Laure “feeling through” something or “”touching” an object. Sounds simple, I guess, but to me, keeping it simple like this is brilliant. Over and over again, the author resists the temptation to sound trumpets to remind the reader that Marie-Laure can’t see, and that keeps readers in the moment. Here’s another example, this one from later in the book when Marie Laure is alone and escaping into the attic:

Only thing to do is climb. Seven runs up into the long triangular tunnel of the garret. The raw timbered ceiling rises on both sides toward the peak, just higher than the top of her head.
Heat has lodged itself up here. No window. No exit. No where else to run. No way out, except the way she has come.

The passage continues:

Her outstretched fingers find an old shaving bowl, an umbrella stand, and a crate full of who-knows-what. The attic floor boards beneath her feet are as wide across as her hands. She knows from experience how much noise a person walking on them makes.

Isn’t it something, the way that using senses beyond the visual can make writing more colorful? Aria Mia Loberti, who is blind due to a severe form of the genetic condition achromatopsia, plays Marie-Laure Leblanc in the Netflix adaptation, which also stars Louis Hofmann, Hugh Laurie, and Mark Ruffalo. I’m hoping to start streaming it tomorrow – stay tuned!