The windows were broken, Floradora was not.

Back on June 1, I blogged about a week that included great kindness I experienced, as well as  the mayhem of looting our neighborhood endured during the post-demonstration riots on the night of May 30th and morning of May 31st.

I’m happy to say that we have all endured, and although some windows remain boarded up, most of the businesses behind the boards are open.

Floradora, the little boutique where Beth does her shopping, and which I wrote about in June 1 blog, is not one of them. But according to its owner, there are plans to reopen.

We learned more about that awful night in an email Michael Blossom, the owner, sent to the shop’s customer email list. Some parts are heartbreaking:

I received an alert that our alarm was triggered at midnight, and given what was on the news, I knew what was happening. So I headed to the Monadnock Building, navigating around all the raised bridges, and ended up staying all night as it continued. The security guard convinced me not to enter the shops while looters were actually in there, but during quiet times I was able to rescue some of our computer equipment that had important data. But looters kept coming back all night, even into the early daylight hours. Most, it seemed, came for the free stuff, while others came just to damage things. Police were called but never came, and boardup services were all too busy, so we couldn’t do anything to stop it. The feeling of helplessly sitting there for hours as it was happening is one I’ll never forget.

(Note: During the looting, the drawbridges over the Chicago River were raised to prevent access to the downtown.)

Other parts of the email—like this closing to the message–were heartbreakingly beautiful:

So…where do we go from here? Florodora was getting ready to reopen its doors and launch its online store all at once, but now we can do neither. If Nationwide Insurance comes through, we’ll be back for sure, though I can’t say when. But what is Florodora anyway? It’s not the merchandise. I’ve always seen it as more of a community-based collaboration, between me, our staff, and our customers. Nothing about that can be looted, so we are all still here, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a part of it.

Sent with love and hopes for peace,
Michael

If that doesn’t get you teared up, well, read this follow-up message. It thanks customers for their kindness, and their offers to set up GoFundMe pages for cleanup and reopening. Michael very appreciatively turns down those offers, explaining that he hoped that insurance would cover everything. And then, this invitation:

… for those who are willing, I’d like to redirect some of the goodwill and desire for healing toward a neighborhood where there is more need. Please join me, some of our crew past and present, and some of your fellow Florodora customers this Saturday, June 13th, 10am-1pm (meet 9:30), in Englewood for a “Florodora day” of volunteer service. We’ll be joining a neighborhood cleanup day organized by the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce. I am told that Aramark will be generously providing lunch for the volunteers afterward, and I am hopeful that NBC 5 will cover this in their ongoing profile of our recovery.

Englewood, for those of you who don’t live in the Chicago area, is the poster neighborhood for underserved and blighted poor Black neighborhoods. But the good people at the Chamber of Commerce give hope that it can come back, and Michael’s call to action demonstrated that maybe we can help.

And, Michael’s enormous kindness and grace provided a lot of his friends—including me—with inspiration and hope at a time when we needed it.

PS: I really hope you read Michael’s full message.

Today’s blogger, Sharon Kramer.

I am pleased to feature Sharon Kramer as a guest blogger for “Saturdays with Seniors” today. Sharon is a graduate of the online Beth Finke Memoir Teacher MasterClass, and after I was put on furlough, she generously volunteered to start (and lead) the Wednesday “Me, Myself and I” memoir-writing class for her fellow writers on Zoom. One writer  suggested they all write 500 words on what they would have done if they’d had a week’s notice before the Illinois stay-at-home order was announced, and Sharon joined her students to write this thoughtful — and fun — piece of her own on that prompt.

Regrets, I Have a Few

by Sharon Kramer

What would I have done if I had a weeks’ notice before the Illinois Covid-19 Stay at Home order on March 21st?

If I didn’t know exactly what was coming, probably nothing. I would have continued my love affair with buying and returning shoes from Zappos, my habit of putting off what was too difficult for me to face, and my casual acceptance of a life of choices.

But if I knew I had a week before the loss of almost everything I found familiar? I would have been busy every day with gratitude and appreciation.

I would have bought lots of hand sanitizers and masks and left them at my neighbors’ doors.

I would have gone out to dinner every night with my family. Japanese one night. Italian the next. And, Turkish the next. No chicken with broccoli or tuna fish on toast for me. Not that those are bad meals — just tiring.

My love of riding buses would have taken me downtown, Lake Michigan on my left, the Gold Coast on my right, down Michigan Avenue, dreaming of the thousands of tulips that would soon appear.

Walking on the lake front every morning with my dog, I would wave and smile at the bikers and runners. Since the closing of the lakefront trails, I haven’t seen Lake Michigan in months and now I avoid runners by crossing the street.

Every homeless person I saw would receive a twenty-dollar bill. Now I turn my back on the homeless. rushing away, feeling sad about my fear of unknown people.

I would have flown to New York City to visit my friend Sara who is having a difficult time in the epicenter of this disease. I would have taught her a few Zoom and iPhone skills, which she refuses to learn and complains about not knowing. I would have encouraged her to visit her friends upstate and, perhaps, stay there for a few months.

Since my sister depends on the public library for her reading, I would bring her 100 books — all mysteries and stories of dysfunctional families — her favorites.

At Trader Joe’s, I would do a jig in front of the frozen chicken and invite the whole store to join me. Now I dread walking down those narrow isles filled with enemies.

Before it was impossible to do so, I would have had my dog groomed. And, maybe a manicure and pedicure for me.

I would have put up a billboard to thank all the hospital staff for what was coming. Another billboard would thank all the deliverers of mail, food and packages and those keeping our grocery stores open and trash collected.

Finally, I would have invited everyone in Chicago with a birthday in March, April, May or June to join me in Millennium Park for Pizza and beer.

A version of Sharon’s essay appears on the In This Together page on the Chicago History Museum web site. In This together is the museum’s community-based initiative to collect digital records that capture personal experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you live in Chicago or its surrounding metropolitan area, they invite you to share your story through content such as photographs, audio/visual recordings, personal essays and interviews.

While sheltering in place I’ve been receiving daily updates called “Chicaago History at Home” from the Chicago History Museum. Monday’s message alerted me that legendary photographer and Chicago native Victor Skrebneski had died on April 4 this year. How’d I miss hearing this back then? Oh. Wait. That was the day Mike came home from the hospital, clear of COVID. I was a bit pre-occupied. From the message:

Victor Skrebneski was known for his striking images of models in advertisements and portraits of celebrities, extraordinary editorial photography, as well as numerous breathtaking books and catalogues. He also had a varied and exciting association with the Costume Council of the Chicago History Museum through the years.

Why would a blind woman have a fondness for a photographer? Well, I wasn’t always blind, and the Victor Skrebneski photos I saw when I was a teenager were mesmerizing.

Let me explain. One of my best friends from high school was Matt Klir. We met when I was 16. Seventeen years later, He died of AIDS. He was 33 years old. The COVID 19 pandemic we’re going through now has me thinking back to the horrific AIDS pandemic. And sadly, when I think of AIDS, I think of Matt.

Matt was a year younger than me, we were in the high school band together, and when he signed up for “summer band” after his freshman year we discovered we’d both be bicycling from miles away to attend. We started riding together. A friendship was born.

When neither of us could land a date for a school dance one year we pooled our money and bought Elton John tickets instead. Front row. I wore a polyester red, white and blue halter-topped bridesmaid dress, and Matt wore a powder blue leisure suit. He brought a dozen roses along, and when I handed them to Elton John’s lyricist at the end of the concert, Bernie Taupin said, “Thanks, love.” Matt and I congratulated ourselves all the way home, confident we’d had a wayyyyy better time than anyone at that dumb dance.

Matt’s house became my second home. He and his two sisters were beautiful. His parents were divorced, and the three of them lived with their young vivacious mother in a fancy 1970s sprawling home. Every single time I visited (and that was lots of times!) I’d venture into their dining room and gawk at the huge black and white Victor Skrebneski photos displayed on the walls.

Matt and his two sisters had been childhood models, and when I called Janine and Crystal to ask if either of them still had a copy of the huge b&w photo Victor Skrebneski took of Matt, they knew immediately which one I was talking about.

“I remember when Matt was at that shoot,” his older sister Janine wrote in an email. “Victor’s studio was so home-like. Lots of ladies and other people hanging around, comfy couches, along with his impressive photo studio in the main room.” Janine had found the photo of Matt in her basement workshop. “It was rolled up in a box with other old pictures.” She’d had the photo straightened, she scanned it for me, and here it is.

Click the image to expand. That’s Matt on the lower right.

I can no longer take in the photo Victor Skrebneski took of Matt back in the early 1960s for a Marshall Field & Company Christmas ad, but hey, Victor Skrebneski photos are memorable. Matt is there in the lower right hand corner, still a youngster, sporting a safari hat and surrounded by stuffed animals.

Thanks to Victor Skrebneski’s gift and his keen eye, I can still picture young Matt.

What a gift.

I hope you’ll watch it.

After NFL player Colin Kaepernick famously took a knee to protest police abuse of Black people and broader racial inequality, some fellow athletes spoke out in support. A lot of people responded by saying “Stick to sports.” That always happens to sports figures who speak up about things outside of the sports realm. (A Fox commentator once admonished LeBron James, “Shut up and dribble.”)

Same thing went for a lot of sports media. Jemele Hill lost her job at ESPN for speaking out. WSCR, the local leading sports channel once featured Dan Bernstein (a white guy) and Jason Goff (a black guy). They used to dive right into the intersection of American society and sports. I found it enlightening and spontaneous and honest. The then-ownership of the station disagreed. Goff was fired, Bernstein was matched up with a new (white) partner. “Stick to sports,” they said.

Fast forward. WSCR has new ownership. Bernstein is still on, solo from 9 a.m. to noon, and getting after it. From noon to 2 each day, Laurence Holmes has been dishing out his viewpoint as a Black man (the only Black host at the station) in addition to talking sports, or what little about actual sports there is to discuss. It’s actually been some of the best, most thoughtful, sometimes uncomfortable coverage I’ve seen or heard in any medium.

Since our move to Chicago, I’ve learned more about the Black American experience on a barstool talking to friends than I learned in elementary, middle and high school combined. That was the era of “Slavery ended with the Civil War, and so did racism. Please play along.” Hell, I didn’t know what Reconstruction and Jim Crow were until college. I’ve learned a lot about what I’d call a sort of passive racism. Which is to say, you don’t have to be a cross-burning KKK member to be part of the problem.

In sports, that can mean that as a white general manager, you might see in a potential first round draft pick a younger version of yourself. Someone with similar background, someone you can relate to without any special effort. And that can affect decisions. Example: the Chicago Bears drafted quarterback Mitch Trubisky (white) ahead of Pat Mahomes (Black, just won the Super Bowl) and Lamar Jackson (Black, electrifying and revolutionizing the NFL). Trubisky is fighting for a job when the games start back up. Maybe it was just a case of bad scouting, or maybe it’s the Bears being the Bears, but it sure makes you think.

A point of pride as a White Sox fan is that its owner has pushed diversity in front office management and managers in his organization. The current Executive Vice President is a Black man, Ken Williams. He previously served as General Manager of the White Sox, and he’s the exec who assembled the 2005 World Series winning team. He is Black, one of a very few such execs in baseball (Marlins owner Derek Jeter the most notable).

Williams has always been self-assured and very executive-like, cool and calm, sometimes to the point of cocky. I’ve never heard him, until now, speak about being Black. Being vulnerable. In baseball. In life.

Last week he sat down for an interview that turned into something of a therapy session—for him and for viewers like me. I implore you to watch it. It has nothing to do with sports, it has everything to do with American life and the role race plays in it.

Williams has a fascinating background. His Godfather is John Carlos, one of the two Olympic athletes who raised the fisted Black Power symbol when they received their medals at the 1968 games in Mexico City. (They were told to stick to sports way back then.) Williams’ biological mother was in the Black Panthers. Williams spent his early years in Oakland, but the family moved to San Jose when his father successfully sued the city fire department to get a job as a fire fighter.

I can’t do the interview justice. It’s about a half hour, but it’s worth every minute.

And it emphasizes a phenomenon that I’ve experienced since the Minneapolis murder: Black people are feeling freer to talk about what they’ve experienced. They’ve been given license to not put my comfort with them in front of their own experience.

Williams projects pain, anguish and utter relief at being able to talk about his experience. I have the distinct feeling that he, like our Black barstool fans, are feeling freer to be honest.

Because, at last, they feel like white guys like me have their backs.

Bill Gordon

I am pleased to feature Bill Gordon as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Born and raised in Kansas, Bill lived all over the country during his nearly 50-year career in library and association management. When he retired in 2002, he was the Executive Director of The American Library Association, located here in Chicago, and has called Chicago home ever since.

Nearing his 84th birthday, Bill says life so far has been “a great adventure.” Lucky for us, he enjoys remembering it through his participation in our Monday memoir-writing class.

My flexible assignment “One Crazy Summer” allowed those who needed/wanted to write about the summer ahead of us to do so. Those who preferred escaping to the past could do that, too. Bill often knows exactly what he’ll write about the minute he hears the prompt, and this piece about “Picnic” was no exception.

One Crazy Summer

by Bill Gordon

Rumors were flying that summer. Could it be true? A major studio was going to make a movie in Hutchinson, Kansas?

No one in my circle of friends knew for sure. We did know that William Inge, a Kansas playwright, had won a Pulitzer Prize a year earlier for his play, Picnic. When local newspaper articles started coming out about Inge and his play, we started getting suspicious. Could the movie be Picnic? Maybe the rumors were right, but we still didn’t have any proof.

That summer I was working Monday through Friday as part of the maintenance crew for a local bakery. On Saturdays I delivered flowers for Justice-Mercer Florists, located on Main Street just around the corner from the Baker Hotel, Hutchinson’s newest and tallest building and pride and joy of the Chamber of Commerce. I reported to work early on Saturday to find the other employees in what could only be described as a “dither.” Even the owner, Mr. Shepherd, seemed unable to control his excitement.

“Can y’all work tomorrow,” he asked me. I told him sure, and then I had a question of my own. “But why on Sunday?”

“Several bunches of flowers need deliverin’ to important guests arrivin’ at the Baker Hotel tomorrow,” he said. Before I could say anything, Mr. Shepherd said in an uncharacteristically high squeaky voice, “For the picnickers! Rosalind Russell, William Holden, Kim Novak, Susan Strasberg, Cliff Robertson, Joshua Logan — they’s all stayin’ at the Baker!”

So, it was true! Picnic would be filmed in Hutchinson, Kansas.

When an advertisement for extras and musicians appeared in the local paper, several friends filled out applications for jobs as extras. I applied for a job as a musician. I had been a member of the Musicians Union since I was fourteen. I had performed clarinet solos in practically every church in town, I was a paid member of the Municipal Band, I had been a substitute clarinetist for the Wichita Symphony for three concerts, and I had won several awards in contests supported by the State of Kansas.

I thought I had a competitive performance record.

I auditioned for the combo that would be playing Moonglow in the scene where Madge and Hal (Kim Novak and William Holden) dance provocatively at the Labor Day picnic celebration.

The audition was difficult. I had to play the same things over and over as they tested my tone and technique. The audition team seemed unimpressed, but a week later they called me back and tested me again, putting me through new musical exercises.

Much to my delight and surprise, I was hired. We rehearsed relentlessly to blend together as a musical unit and to be perfect for the Moonglow scene. The scene took eighteen takes — one week’s work, $30 an hour for rehearsals, $50 an hour for performing. Remember, this was the 1950’s. I made more money that week than I did all summer from my other jobs combined. The experience also gave me a fresh perspective on the less than glamorous lives of movie stars and the tedious business of movie making.

But it was a summer to remember.