The circus that American politics has become recalls one of my favorite George Carlin quotes: “When you’re born into this world, you get tickets to the freak show. If you’re born in America, you get front row seats.”

But a funny thing has happened over the past two years. The Biden administration has accomplished a lot. I voted for him, but even I—who prides myself on staying up to date—was surprised when a politically savvy friend forwarded an opinion piece to me that enumerated some pretty big wins after years/decades of congressional gridlock on stuff like infrastructure. (Remember infrastructure week? It was infrastructure weak.)

Here’s a list of the major bills that the writer, Art Friedson, enumerated:

The American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which will funnel billions to states and local governments to upgrade outdated roads, bridges, and transit systems.

The CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to bring chip manufacturing back on shore and bolster research to regain technological supremacy vis-à-vis China.

The gun safety bill was a small step—but it was a step—after decades of inaction.

And most recently, probably nearest and dearest to my heart, is the poorly named Inflation Reduction Act. Poorly because it’s as much about reducing addressing climate change as inflation.

In my day job, reducing carbon in the built environment is our mission. I hang with a lot of knowledgeable people. And people who know think this bill, as Biden reminded Obama, is a big deal. It’s long overdue, but again, after eons of inaction, it’s a giant step forward. It involved compromise with Senator Joe Manchin—but it’s a net win. (And, in fact, we simply can’t switch off fossil fuel, even if we’d like to.)

Full disclosure: The bill promises to be good for my organization. Here’s a rundown from a Phius policy expert on how it may affect us and our constituents.

I’ll end with this quote from the same piece by Friedson. It’s from Stuart Steven, a former Republican strategist:

“Republicans had years to pass an alternative to Obamacare. Never did it. Republicans had years to pass an infrastructure bill. Never did it. 

Governing isn’t attacking the other side, it’s getting sh*t done.”

The good news is Lollapalooza, the mega-music festival that brings hundreds of thousands of fans to Chicago over four days, is over.

The bad news is that the City just signed a deal to hold Lolla for the next 10 years. (And, next year, we’ll also have a NASCAR race downtown that will shut down Grant Park for two weeks. Between that and Lolla, the park will be largely off limits to the public for a month over the summer next year.)

You may remember that eight years ago I blogged about my annoyancewith Lollapalooza.  Well, I’m eight years crankier. Each year there’s a different uniform of sorts, with the general trend of young women wearing less and less every year. Glitter is the constant. And Lollapalemmings still travel in packs and they still are oblivious to their surroundings, regularly blocking sidewalks and crosswalks. Helicopters and ambulance sirens are nearly constant.

But it brings in money and fills the hotels and yada, yada, yada. It also takes a huge swath of public parkland out of commission for weeks between preparation and cleanup. And selling access to a public facility that taxpayers have paid for to a private entity, in principle, is hard to swallow. On balance, though, I’m willing to live with it. We’re pretty close to Grant Park so we feel the inconvenience more than people who live in other parts of the city. If it’s good for the city, OK I guess.

Ugh.

There’s another aspect to it that’s a function of our times: During any big gathering now we cross our fingers that there will not be some kind of mass shooting. Of course, so does the City of Chicago. And that was plenty evident on Sunday at the Hilton Towers on Michigan Avenue, across from Grant Park. Beth swims there and I use the gym, and we went Sunday afternoon, the last day of Lolla. After my workout, a sauna and a shower, I got dressed and came out into the lobby to meet Beth and Luna and walk home together.

As I turned to drop my locker key off at the desk, I was greeted by a jolting image. A Chicago police officer was at the desk. Which wasn’t itself a big deal. The big deal was that in addition to his service revolver, an assault-style rifle was clipped to bullet-proof body armor. The thing was terrifying just to look at.

A second officer, similarly equipped, joined him. They chatted with the desk attendants and then headed outside to a terrace that is attached to the health club.

The club and terrace are on the eighth floor, so it affords a wide view. My guess is that officers were perched on buildings up and down Michigan Avenue—and probably at hi-rise condos at the end of the park, too.

I’m elated to say there was no incident–other than probably a fair number of ODs that likely necessitated all those ambulances and sirens.

But, Mike, Mike, Mike: For the last time, make plans now to be out of Chicago for the next Lolla.

In August of 1978, I was newly returned to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from an internship in Washington, D.C. And, for the first time in my life, I was a little cocky. I’d lived outside of the Chicago area! I knew stuff that you didn’t’! I’d lived in Washington, D.C. dammit!

I held hopes that I’d land a job back in D.C. as the result of that internship, but I had one year plus a summer of college to go.  And let’s say I wasn’t the most serious student for my senior year + a summer.  U of I had something called “new student week” back then. It was a full week of orientation in August. In its time, that meant a lot of debauchery, so old students came down to enjoy, too.

I learned a new club was opening on Green Street in Campustown, which was the main campus drag. The place was called Mabel’s. A university bigwig who handled its money decided Champaign-Urbana could use a New York-style jazz club. And Mabel’s was born. He’d  bought a bunch of antiques and curios at an estate sale for someone named Mabel, and the club was strewn with those relics.

It was a long flight of stairs up to the first floor of the club. And another shorter flight up to a balcony seating area.

I took a job there as a cocktail waiter. I didn’t care much about jazz, but well, it looked fun. Being a male server at a campus bar was sort of earth shaking back then, when just down the block young women servers dressed in skin tight Danskins. (Which all seems quaint in these times.)

Mabel’s first floor near the stage was quite the hip deal: It was big pillows on the floor. People laid on the floor propped up by those pillows. So I’d bring drinks out and set them on little weighted “tables” in the midst of the pillows. Back then, all you needed was a university ID to get into a bar, so we got lots of 18-year-olds on dates drinking strawberry daiquiris. At closing, some couples would be in oblivious liplocks. The manager would pump out the 1812 Overture as loud as it could go and that was that.

I digress. What I didn’t realize was that I was already a jazz fan, but didn’t know it. My favorite band at the time was Steely Dan, and the album Aja was hot as a firecracker. And my favorite part? The title song, and a solo by jazz great Wayne Shorter. Wayne was my gateway drug.

The University of Illinois has always had a vibrant jazz program in its music department, but perhaps never more vibrant then back then. There was UI Jazz Band #5, #4, #3, #2, and the vaunted #1. They were all good but #1 had ringers who were down from Chicago or other places as adjuncts.

The program was led by John Garvey, a character who regularly rode a mo-ped around campus while smoking a pipe. He had a thing for all kinds of music, including Russian folk, and he founded a Russian folk group as well as leading the jazz program.

The first time I heard #1’s horns crank it up, powerful, in complete synchronization, I was floored—and hooked. You can feel that shit, and it ain’t electrified like, say, The Who. It’s humans moving air.

The Mabel’s owner had done his homework and was a true jazz lover. He managed to book greats like the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it). And Gary Burton on the vibes. All this in a college town in East Central Illinois.

Tonight we went to Jazz Showcase to see the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, an umpteen-piece band that took me back, and reminded me why I love a big jazz band. If you’ve never experienced a jazz big band, try it out. The arrangements, the musicianship, in my view, are unequalled.

1978 turned into 1979. Mabel’s waitresses didn’t need Danskins, they were just gorgeous. I fell in love with one of them; it was the first time I felt that way. (Not the last.) We had a sultry, carefree summer. I moved back to D.C. to take that job in August.

Oh, also, because I was out of sync with the Journalism calendar, I took basic reporting late. A young woman named Beth was in that class. We became friends.

On my last night working at Mabel’s on the day I handed in my graduating paper  (I was bartending by then), Beth came to help me celebrate. I gave her what would be my work number in D.C. should she ever be in town.

So yeah, I love a big jazz band.

The view of Printers Row Park from our window.

Don’t let that headline mislead you about what I think about COVID.

COVID continues to suck. Not as bad as it did, but still pretty bad. I, for example, still have spells where my balance is compromised and it feels like I’m going to tip over. It’s not often, but still too often.

Based on the behavior of motorists, bicyclists, and those crazy electric scooter riders, it feels a lot like COVID left people with a sense that none of the pre-COVID rules and norms apply. (I’m talking to you, bicyclists who ride on the sidewalks.)

COVID did, however, force us to be creative and resourceful. For us and our friends here in our Printers Row neighborhood, that question became how can we get together safely. The answer was and is right outside Beth and my place’s window: Printers Row Park.

It’s more of an urban plaza, there isn’t much green space. I wrote in earlier post about our get-togethers there. I’m happy to report that even though we gather indoors, as we did last night for dinner at our place, we are keeping the park tradition alive.

Camp chairs are de rigueur. Sometimes food is involved, and an informal pot luck ensues. Beth will whip up some yummy deviled eggs. Our friend Jim brings a fold up table.

Conversation and laughter commence. Our last outing was badly needed. It was on the Fourth of July, the day of the Highland Park shootings. Despite the threat of rain, we chanced it. And we were lucky for a while. Then it started drizzling. Then it picked up. For some reason we didn’t fold. We sat out there eating polish sausage that Jim fixed, getting rained on. Umbrellas came out, with one of our party telling another–noticing that he had a domed umbrella and was holding a wine glass, pinky up–that he looked like Mary Poppins.

Still, we persisted. It was absurd, really.

But then the rain stopped. And then the sun came out. And we ended up staying out until dark. It was delightful, all in all.

Best part? Our pal Jim brought a radio control model of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. I’ll leave you with this:

You know those “Questions Kids Ask” lists I post here after visiting third-grade classrooms with Luna? Those visits are arranged by a disability awareness program called “Educating Outside the Lines,” and every one of the schools they have me visit is located in…Highland Park, Illinois.

”Is your dog blind, too?” they ask. “Is it scary being blind?” “Do you ever go anywhere by yourself?” “Do you get sad sometimes?”

Luna and I at a school visit in Highland Park this past May. As always, lots of questions. (photo by Jamie Ceaser)

When regular radio programming was interrupted Monday to report a mass shooting at the Highland Park 4th of July parade, I immediately thought of those third-graders. “Please, please, please,” I whispered to whatever God might listen. “Don’t let any third-graders get shot.” The kids, their teachers, the school secretaries, so many of the people I meet during those visits had to be at that parade Monday. Highland Park is just that sort of town: bucolic, huge oak trees, birds singing, big parks, small shops. If you live in Highland Park, you go to the 4th of July parade!

I’ve been keeping an ear open ever since Monday for a list of those injured or killed. No seven-or-eight-year-olds. Not so far. But Highland Park is such a small, friendly community — everyone there has to know someone personally affected.

I thought of those third-graders all day Monday. Then again yesterday. And still today. When I get stuck on something like this, I turn to writing to help me think it through. So here I am. And I still can’t make sense of it.

Just heard that WBEZ-Fm has posted a list of resources on its web site put together by the federal government’s Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs to help children, families, educators, and community members cope after mass shootings. I am not a family member of any of those kids, I’m not their teacher, and I don’t even live in their community. But I may check that list out anyway. Maybe one of their suggested resources will help.