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.

That’s all he wanted/needed.

When I was growing up with Type 1 diabetes (we called it “juvenile diabetes” back then) my mom, Flo, made me carry a medical card with me whenever I left the house. “I AM NOT DRUNK,” the card declared in all capital letters. “I AM A DIABETIC.” It went on to explain that if I was acting woozy, unable to speak clearly, or unresponsive, it was due to low blood sugar and I should be given a glass of orange juice. Only seven years old at the time, I thought the card was silly. “Mom, everyone knows I never get drunk!” She insisted I have that card with me, though, and you don’t mess with Flo.

I hadn’t thought about that little card in years, but a disturbing story RadioLab aired last week brought it back to mind:

On a fall afternoon in 1984, Dethorne Graham ran into a convenience store for a bottle of orange juice. Minutes later he was unconscious, injured, and in police handcuffs. In this episode, we explore a case that sent two Charlotte lawyers on a quest for true objectivity, and changed the face of policing in the US.

Dethorne Graham worked for Charlotte’s Department of Transportation back then. He had Type 1 diabetes, and he was Black. On that day in 1984 he felt the onset of an insulin reaction and asked a friend to drive him to a nearby convenient store for a bottle of orange juice. While his friend waited in the car, Mr. Graham ran inside and grabbed a bottle of OJ. The waiting line at the cashier was so long, that Mr. Graham gave up, set the orange juice back down, ran back to the waiting car and they took off.

A squad car was nearby, and after seeing Mr. Graham run in and out of the store like that, the police officer pulled them over and talked to the driver. Just as the officer was radioing in to get a hold of the convenience store to see if anything had happened there, Mr. Graham got out of the passenger door, stumbled along the car, sat down on the curb, went into convulsions and eventually passed out. Four more officers arrived, and you can probably guess what happened next. One officer rolled Mr. Graham over and handcuffed him. Another grabbed him by the handcuffs, lifted him off the curb from behind, and shoved his face into the hood of the car. In and out of consciousness at this point, Mr. Graham tried to tell the officers he was a diabetic and had a medical card in his wallet. They didn’t believe him. From an AP story:

Then four officers grabbed Graham and threw him head-first into the police car. Once police confirmed no crime had been committed inside the convenience store, they dropped Graham off at his home and left him lying in the yard with his handcuffs still on.

Mr. Graham recovered from his insulin reaction with a glass of orange juice at home, but this encounter with police left him with a broken foot, cuts on his wrists, a bruised forehead and an injured shoulder. Stories on RadioLab are an hour long, so I can’t give you all the details here. What I can say is that Mr. Graham sued the Charlotte Police Department in 1985, and the local jurisdiction ruled against him claming the officers did not use excessive force.

When RadioLab asked his son, Dethorne Graham, Jr. whether his dad talked about all of this much. He said no. “I mean, I don’t know his, his way of trying to deal with that…I don’t know. You know, when you are dehumanized like that, when another individual… when someone who has authority just, it’s like they take something away from you. When someone does something like that to you, it strikes at your core. It strikes at your very being. And I think you lose a part of yourself that you can’t get back.”

Mr. Graham did not give up. His case ended up in the Supreme Court, Graham v. Connor, and the highest court in the land ruled in his favor, emphasizing the overriding function of the Fourth Amendment is to protect an individual’s personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusion by the government. The Court decision requires careful attention to the facts and circumstance of each case, including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect posed an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether the suspect was actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.

Mr. Graham was 38 years old when he was beaten by cops for needing a glass of orange Juice. He died in 2000, at age 54.

I strongly urge you to listen to the RadioLab story in its entirety – you can tell they put a lot of work into researching court cases for the story and I couldn’t do it justice here in 800 words.

During the dot.com craze I worked for a tech firm. Together with my colleagues, we alternately experienced exhilaration, a sense of triumph, and a sense of doom. Sometimes all within 24 hours. At moments, we believed we would one day rule the world. Then, some news would make us wonder whether we’d still be in business in three months.

Stress weighed on everyone—especially at the top. But even plebes like me suffered from it. There were moments when I thought my head was going to explode right there at my desk. You likely know the feeling.

On a flight home from a business trip, I sat next to a serviceman and got into a long strangers on the plane discussion. The guy had an enormous intellect and had a deep interest in Buddhism and Eastern medicine. As we stood up to file out, he handed me a little paperback called “Living Buddha, Living Christ,” by Thich Nhat Hanh.

“Are you sure,” I asked.

“Just promise me you’ll read it,” he said. We wished each other well and that’s the last I ever saw of my seatmate.

I’m a skeptic by nature, and often a cynic. I’m not particularly religious, though I believe there’s a big force out there that most of us are trying to understand. On my own, I would’ve never been inclined to read such a book. But the thoughtfulness of the gift was compelling. And, well, I made a promise.

I read it, and I’m glad I did. The book itself is a kind of meditation, and it includes simple breathing and meditative exercises.

I read it back in oh, 1996. When I’d feel the pressure and stress building and could picture it bursting out of my chest like the Alien, I’d close the door to my office (oh, for real offices again), sit, and practice these little exercises. It only took five or 10 minutes to slow my pulse, and presumably lowered my blood pressure.

And for years since then, I’ve used those exercises whenever necessary. On June 2nd of this year, my birthday, Beth gifted me a book entitled “Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art.” She and I had listened to a radio interview with the author, James Nestor.

Years earlier Nestor wrote a book called “Deep” about free divers—people who can hold their breath and swim underwater for 10 minutes at a time. When Nestor learned that they’d trained themselves to increase lung capacity, he was fascinated.

Motivated also by his own chronic maladies, including respiratory and sinus issues, he went on a 10-year personal research crusade.

In “Breath,” he takes the reader around the globe, meeting cutting edge breathing experts he calls “pulmonauts.” Some are credentialed researchers and scientists. Others came from all walks of life, and had been helped by one or another breathing technique and were driven to learn more.

The author signs up for a harrowing experiment that requires him to breathe only through his mouth for 10 days, then normally for 10 days, then only through his nose for 10 days. The physiological results for nose breathing compared to the other methods were stunningly improved.

He also crawls deep beneath Paris in its catacombs to study…skulls. Turns out mouths used to be a lot bigger than they are now. When our ancestors learned to cook and otherwise process food, they chewed less, and over time, our mouths got smaller. Our airways also got smaller, and…our teeth got crooked. Skulls before that uniformly showed perfectly straight teeth, all without braces.

As it turns out, people have been studying and practicing intentional therapeutic breathing techniques pretty much forever across cultures, religions and geographies. And they arrived at strikingly similar conclusions about how to breathe. From the book:

In 2001, researchers at the University of Pavia in Italy gather two dozen subjects, covered them with sensors to measure blood flow, heart rate and nervous system feedback, then had them recite a Buddhist mantra as well as the original Latin version of the rosary, the Catholic prayer cycle of the Ave Maria, which is repeated half by a priest and half by the congregation. They were stunned to find the average number of breaths for each cycle was “almost exactly” identical, just a bit quicker than the Hindu, Taoist, and Native American prayers: 5.5 breaths per minute.

But what was even more stunning was what breathing like this did to the subjects. Whenever they followed this slow breathing pattern, blood flow to the brain increased and the systems in the body entered state of coherence, when the functions of the heart, circulation, and nervous system are coordinated to peak efficiency.

Lately, breath and breathing (and the denial thereof) have been headline subjects on more than one front. After my bout with covid19, I’ve had a hard time filling my lungs to their fullest. I can’t climb flights of stairs like I used to, and the shortest of walks can leave me winded. After some exercise and using techniques from this book, that’s improving.

It’s easy to take breathing for granted. I never will again.

I am pleased to introduce Nancy O’Shea as our featured “Saturdays with Seniors” blogger today. The former Public Relations Director for Chicago’s Field Museum, Nancy also edited the museum’s membership magazine. Now retired, she enjoys taking classes in memoir writing. Lucky for us: we all enjoy hearing her read her essays out loud in class, too!

This week is the last meeting of our six-week experiment in Zoom memoir classes, and to mark its success I came up with an assignment I hoped writers might find challenging — and fun. “Write an essay that is 26 sentences long about any topic you choose,” I told them. “Have the first sentence begin with any letter of the alphabet, and have each sentence after that begin with the subsequent letter of the alphabet.” To help explain, I came up with an example off the top of my head. “You mean it? Zany assignment. A challenge for sure. But I’ll give it a try…”.

Writers rose to the occasion, returning the next week with essays about gardening, trips to Japan, work conflicts, mountain biking, a beloved dog, you name it. Nancy took the opportunity to write this poignant piece about her mother, starting with the letter “I.” Read closely and you’ll see how she took the alphabet full-circle: her last sentence starts with “H.”

There Will be Hugs

Nancy and her mother back when they could be together.

by Nancy O’Shea

I should be writing to my mother. Just thinking of her makes me sad. Knitting together memories, I reflect on her and the life she used to have.

Living — if you can call it that — in a senior facility during this pandemic, it’s like she’s on a desert island. Meals and mail deliveries are measurements of time. Nothing else changes for her. Oh, how good it will be when we can get together again!

Pre-coronavirus, we took our visits for granted. Quiz shows we watched, sitting in her apartment — Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! — are cherished memories now. Really, the mundane has been elevated. Simple things — embracing, sharing coffee and cookies — have taken on new meaning.

The pandemic has shown us what’s essential in life. Unless this illness had descended upon us, would we have known? Very likely we would have continued day in, day out, unaware of our need for human contact.

We have improvised, using technology as a map that guides us to each other. X marks the spot. Yet technology has its limits. Zoom meetings are a fragile lifeline.

A history of this time will call it a crisis. But I think there will be an upside. Clouds will part. Driving once again on society’s open highway, I hope we will have learned to appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

Everyone will have a different take on what this time meant to them. For some, it will represent hardship, even death. Gosh, I’m so fortunate in that regard!

Hugs may be delayed, but there will be hugs, and they will be long and tight.

Hello everybody. Hope you are well.

Last Wednesday was our first date night in a loooonnnng time.

Let’s get the citizen business out of the way first.

Here’s a reading assignment.

It includes practical steps toward making things better.

My finding this article was sparked by a conversation I had last night with two friends. Both are highly accomplished professionals working for publicly traded corporations. Both are Black. One is a woman, with whom I had a long discussion long ago about the talk she had to have with her son as he came of age. About how to act and not to act, in great specificity, in any encounter with law enforcement. I don’t remember having such a talk with my parents.

She and I and mutual friends have had difficult discussions about our different experiences more than once in the past. We’ve touched nerves. And wondered whether we’d crossed lines. But as she pointed out, we somehow always worked through them. I’ve learned a lot. I cherish our friendship.

That’s Kasey’s tavern across the street. It’s boarded up windows were transformed into the City of Chicago flag by muralists.

She said that a lot of white colleagues at work have reached out to her since this all started. In her view, some have really wanted to learn something, but others just want to tell her they feel guilty and be done with it. She and I have a lot in common, including the concern that once the protests ebb, nothing will change. We’ve both seen this before. Her number one recommendation about action to take? Vote. Get skin—black or white or brown—in the game. And keep voting. And act locally. Go to dreary public meetings. Pressure your city council, state representatives, and mayors. It’s a slog. But as she put it, “We have to do this from the ground up.”

The other friend leans libertarian. He’s a bigshot corporate lawyer. He wouldn’t like me saying that, but I’m not lying. He’s suspicious of government. He’s nothing if not practical. And his recommendation: Get rid of qualified immunity for police. Of course, it takes a lawyer to make a recommendation like that. He patiently explained the term. Wanna know what qualified immunity is? Do the reading assignment above. (Shorthand: It’s a bad thing, and it dates back to really ugly stuff). I’ve learned a lot from my lawyer friend. I cherish our friendship.

Thanks to neighborhood activists, what was once a parking lot, which was going to be a high rise, is now our little park.

We had this discussion last night. In the park next to our building. Socially distanced. With libations. It was great.

Lots of businesses, and our condo building, are still boarded up. But the boards look better. Muralists have seen to that. Two of our favorite businesses, Sandmeyer’s Bookstore and The Grail Café, were somehow, miraculously, untouched by looters. (BTW, looters and protesters here in Chicago, by what I have been able to judge, are mutually exclusive groups.)

Last week Beth and I had dinner at Sofi, an exquisite Italian restaurant in the first floor of our building. I put on my fancy sport jacket. Beth put on her elegant red dress. Friends saw us and said, “Schnazzy!”

It was the first day of Chicago’s phase III of opening. Sofi started serving at their sidewalk patio by reservation. There are specified seating times. Between them staff wipes down everything.

The waiters were masked, and place settings included packets of hand sanitizer.

It was kind of weird.

It was the best dinner out I’ve ever had.