I am pleased to feature 99-year-old Wanda Bridgeforth as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. If you’ve followed our blog for a while, you know Wanda – she’d been attending the memoir writing class I led in downtown Chicago for nearly two decades before coronavirus hit last year.

What you might not know about Wanda is that she is an immigrant: she was born in Canada. Hamilton, Ontario to be exact. The woman Wanda has always affectionately called Mama is the woman who adopted Wanda as an infant and loved and raised her. Mama had to work “in family” during the Great Depression, and the “Ma Hale” mentioned in this essay was one of many helpful women in Chicago’s Black Metropolis who pitched in to take care of young Wanda while Mama lived with the families she cooked and cleaned for.

Mama’s resilience and determination has influenced Wanda’s own life ever since. Sheltering-in-place in her apartment now, Wanda fills her days with episodes of Jeopardy!, naps, meals, and visits from Wanda Jr. The rest of the time you’ll find her looking out the window, amazed at the beauty of Lake Michigan and the sky above. “And sometimes I just close my eyes and reminisce,” she says. “It makes me happy.”

By Wanda Bridgeforth

A young friend asked me how I was surviving the quarantine. “Just like I lived through other crises,” I told her.

It is hard to believe that the first house we lived in when we came to Chicago was still lit by gas lamps on the walls, fireplaces in every room and a wood-burning stove in the kitchen. The kitchen was so large -Ma Hale’s work space was an old dining table set in the center of the room. Chairs lined two walls, and we children had our snacks, played games, and did our homework on one side and the end of it. On Friday and Saturday evenings the family gathered around the table for games and chit-chat.

This past year I received a container of herbal vegetable soup in the mail for my birthday. The first spoonful took me back to pre-depression days when a pot of soup and a pot of coffee were on the back burners every day. Mama and Ma Hale called it “Scrap Soup.” How comforting and cozy to sit at the table with hands wrapped around a mug, sipping soup that warmed body and soul.

When I moved to Jefferey Avenue, I introduced my nephews and niece there to this delicious dish, but there was a bit of difference in the flavor (the early soup was made with vegetables fresh from Ma Hale’s backyard garden). Ma Hale would put a soup bone into a big stew pot, add water, the saved tips, ends from beets, carrots, skin from onions and potatoes, stems from greens, hulls from green peas, cores from cabbage and cauliflower. She’d add a bit of salt pork or bacon rind, and, lastly, seasoning to taste. The aroma filled the house as it steeped slowly on the back burner of the wood-fired stove, and the soup I received for my birthday reminded me so much of the scrap soup of yesteryears that I keep ordering more!

José with his wife, Kate .

I am pleased to feature José DiMauro as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Born in Argentina, José graduated from medical school at Univ De Buenos Aires. He left home in 1963 to start his medical career at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital, then became board certified as a pathologist at University of Illinois in Chicago. After retiring, Dr. DiMauro moved with his wife Kate to Admiral at the Lake, where I lead a weekly memoir-writing class via Zoom. All of us who continue wearing masks to keep ourselves and others safe will surely relate to this essay.

by José DeMauro

A summer day in 2020. With the invisible threat around us, we had finally set into a daily routine. Every day after breakfast we would put on our masks and go for a walk along our stretch of Lincoln Park, or along Lake Michigan itself. Those walks were our escape from the lockdown.

Yes, we visited our children a couple of times, too, but always in their backyards, masks up. We occasionally ventured to restaurants, nervously eyeing the other customers sitting six feet from us. Trips to the grocery? those were just furtive 100-meter dashes.

But those daily walks to the park or lakefront were our real moments of freedom. Even if some viral particles were floating around, they would not possibly survive the fresh air and the beauty!

So we felt safe on that late summer morning. We rushed from our apartment energized, not wanting to waste any more time inside. We happily greeted neighbors and the personnel in the lobby. They greeted back to us. The world was perfect.

Through the sliding doors we went, carefree, east, towards the Lake, the sun stroking our faces. It was then that I raised my hand, and a sudden feeling of dread overtook me.

I had forgotten my mask!

Not even Kate, with her own mask neatly secured to her face, had noticed it. The people that greeted us had said nothing! Was its shyness on their part? Or had they really missed my absent mask? We see what we expect to see at times.

My hand covered my mouth with shame, as Eve hiding her nude body when expelled from the Garden of Eden. I felt desolate, suddenly ejected from bliss and freedom. The inviting and safe world had turned foreign, hostile, dangerous. I felt…Naked!

What to do?

I thought of turning back. We hesitated. The sunny park was calling from across the street. The traffic light turned green. With my hand still on my mouth, we crossed.

The long winding path canopied by a full foliage was relaxing. Each time we came upon other nature lovers, I instinctively raised my hand to my face.

Funny, in years past, when I would see TV images with people wearing face masks on the streets during flu season in East Asian countries, I would dismiss that as just an “Oriental thing.”. It was my new normal now!

I felt as if I was in one of those dreams where we are suddenly found without clothes, exposed to ridicule and disgrace. But passersby seemed unconcerned. Many were not wearing masks themselves, some carrying them under their noses. We continued, greeted by birds and squirrels oblivious to my fears, interested only in picking up the nuts that Kate invariably carried to throw for them. Toddlers ran free around young parents, discovering summer for the first time. Would it be their normal to see people with masks?

We finally completed our usual periplus and returned to the familiar confines of our building, but this time, I did it hurriedly, with my head down, hands over my mouth. As soon as I entered the lobby, I ran for the box with the supply of masks for visitors, snatched the first one on top, and donned it quickly

What a sense of relief…as if I had finally pulled my pants up!

A couple of the responses I got to the post I wrote about the high cost of insulin were so encouraging and helpful I thought I’d share them with you blog readers today. First, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) wrote to let me know they have partnered with dozens of other organizations to create getInsulin.org, a site full of resources to help with insulin access. Kudos to those organizations for working together to get all those helpful resources available in one place. And then, a note from a mom on Long Island who remembers me from a 2014 visit to her daughter’s elementary school. Penny has worked in the clinical trials industry for 23 years, and her note brought up some unsung heroes I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. I appreciated her insight, asked if I could share her note here as a guest blog, and…here it is.

by Penny Wong-Matzelle

Your article Cheaper Than Water struck a chord with me. I work in a clinical trials lab, so my customers are these Pharma Companies.

I’ve worked in this industry with so many amazing individuals whose hearts and minds are in the right place. For sure, many get into this line of work because they know their efforts can bring life-saving drugs to market and improve the quality of life for patients. But clearly, something happens between that person’s seat at the lab and that of the CEOs of these corporations.

Stockholders and greedy boards send the message that the almighty dollar is the most important bottom line. And that saddens me, especially for all of the incredible work that is done at lower levels within these organizations.

We are working with so many companies right now that are trying to bring COVID cures and vaccines into reality. I can’t adequately express the tireless efforts so many individuals are putting forth in order to achieve this. Here are a few examples of the lengths they are going to in order to see that safe vaccine are created and distributed as quickly as possible:

• moving from one region to another as needed
• leaving their kids and family behind temporarily in order to work under quarantine
• working seven days a week to ensure critical path trials continue on their fast-track course to drug approval
• making genuine efforts from every clinical trial arena to be a part of the solution to this pandemic.

Many of these workers are doing all of that while home-schooling, no less! Their dedication keeps me going. Their determination encourages me to stick around for the good fight, even when things are trying. Their selflessness gives me hope that there is good in the world.

So when I am reminded of the challenges of health care in our country, it’s disheartening to think forward and fear that some of these treatments will not be available to some who may not have access to health care in the U.S., all because of policies, red tape and greed. Awareness is step one, and I’ve shared your post with everyone I know in the industry and beyond. If any of them rise up the ladders of those corporate entities that hold the power, or if they get involved in local governance, little by little, we can be a part of the change that so many of us would love to see.

Boy, last Monday sure feels like a long time ago. What a week.

If you haven’t seen this ad yet, give it a watch. Very clever.

Having finally gotten my blood pressure down, I’m not going there. Instead, let’s talk about the happy subject of dogs. And the complex subject of race. Bear with me, there is an intersection here.

Start with dogs. Back in December WBEZ aired an episode of 1A,  a news magazine show produced by WAMU in Washington, D.C., that was devoted to the great growth in pet ownership, especially dogs, during the pandemic. It’s a pretty good listen.

Overall, pretty interesting stuff, including discussion about how Rafael Warnock, the Black pastor who won a Senate seat in Georgia last week, was running a successful political ad featuring him and his pet Beagle. Apparently there are perceptions about certain breeds being white-people dogs, including Beagles. And that there are notions that idealize the loving relationships that white people have with their dogs while sort of dismissing that possibility for Black people. It’s a little bit of a stretch, but one of the panelists made a pretty good case.

In any case, the Beagle ad must have worked. (It’s brilliant, by the way.)

The program included several panelists, including Laurie Williams, a certified dog trainer who happens to be black. Jen White, the host, asked the trainer, “Can dogs be racist or biased?

A funny question maybe, but the trainer said she is frequently asked by white dog owners whether their dogs are indeed, racists, because they’re agitated when they’re around Black people.

“They don’t know what race is,” Williams said about dogs. “They know what they are familiar with. The best thing to do is for people to get out, and let their dogs be around other people.”

Williams says that when a white client says they think their dog is racist, she asks, “Well, how do you feel about Black people?” And typically,  the client is taken aback — before realizing there are no Black people in their inner circle, and therefore their dog is rarely around Black people. The trainer encourages those clients to broaden their inner circle in order to better socialize their dogs (and perhaps themselves, though she didn’t say that in so many words).

And I concluded that, on this score, I’m like the dogs the trainer talked about. That is, I routinely find myself in situations that, if I’m honest with myself, would’ve made me uncomfortable back when we moved to Printers Row in 2003. Like being the only white guy on a packed subway car. Having an honest and difficult conversation with Black friends at the bar. I thought I was fairly enlightened about race back in 2003, but I wasn’t.

I’m still working at it, but I’ve come light years, simply by living with, working with, and talking with Black people routinely. And also, from the rich oral histories that Beth’s Black memoir writers are good enough to share.

To be clear, Chicago is renowned for its segregated housing (as are many cities) but I’ve never lived a more integrated day-to-day life anywhere. That’s partly a numbers phenomenon—30 percent of Chicago’s population is Black. Our particular zip code includes roughly 20 percent Black residents. (Nationally, Black people comprise 14 percent of the U.S. population.”

So, an old dog can learn new tricks, and I’m still learning.

I don’t know much about football, but I do know this: the Chicago Bears are playing the New Orleans Saints later today.

The Quarter was joyous.

I’m kind of a Saints fan. My appreciation for that team started during a 2007 vacation. Mike and I happened to have been in New Orleans 14 years ago on the weekend the Saints beat the Philadelphia Eagles in a playoff game, and before, during, and after the game, the sidewalks in the French Quarter were packed. People were singing in the streets. Makeshift parades rolled down Toulouse, Royal and Rampart Street. In Jackson Square, street musicians played “When the Saints Go Marching In” over and over. And over and over. And over.

It wasn’t Mardi Gras. It was football.

The win that day meant the Saints would head to Soldier Field the next week for the NFC championship game against the Bears. “It’s just like old times,” our bartender laughed. She meant, of course, that it was the way things were before Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane had hit over a year before, but People down there still referred to the disaster in everyday conversation. B.K. and P.K. Before Katrina, Post-Katrina.

I asked the bartender how her life had changed since the hurricane. She used to tend bar Uptown, she said. That place is still closed. But she felt lucky. She only had to leave town for a month after the levee failure. And when she got back, her landlord didn’t raise her rent.

When we visited our favorite jewelry store in New Orleans, the owner told us her house had flooded, she and her kids had to move into her sister’s place in New York, and her marriage ended up in divorce. Her employees had scattered to places like Arizona and North Carolina. They weren’t coming back.

And yet, she said she felt lucky. When she and her children returned to New Orleans in October, her old landlord said it’d be okay to rent her store space month to month. See how business goes before committing to staying. She confessed she wasn’t a football fan, but she was glad the Saints were winning. People were coming into her store. And they were happy. Buying things. And during her exile in New York, her kids went to private school. They got free tuition. “You know, because we were Katrina refugees!”

At our favorite bookstore (not exactly a hangout for football fans) the guy at the counter said business was up. There was a buzz in town. He hadn’t seen it like this since B.K. Before Katrina. “Go Saints!” he called out to us as we picked up our bag of books and headed outside.

That playoff win wasn’t enough to make the people of New Orleans forget the empty storefronts. The boarded-up buildings. The desolate, abandoned 9th ward. The friends who have left. Or have died.
But for one day, in New Orleans, the sun was shining, the streets were full, and things were looking up. Everybody felt lucky to be there – including Mike and me.

When we returned later that week to our Printers Row neighborhood here in Chicago, I told our Hackney’s bartender the reasons I’d be backing the Saints in the upcoming game against the Bears. Things have been so horrible down there, I said. New Orleans needed something to cheer about.

“Oh, brother, Screw that!” he said. Actually, he used more colorful language. And then he went on. “I am so sick of that, the whole country backing the Saints because of that hurricane,” he said in disgust. “C’mon, Beth, How about Chicago? We had a fire!”

I had to laugh.

This year is the 150th anniversary of that Great Chicago Fire. And this year, every city with a NFL football team has fans looking at empty storefronts, boarded-up buildings, desolate and abandoned neighborhoods. All have friends who have left. Or have died. So who to root for in 2021?

All of us.