Saying goodbye, and thank you

If this column were “The Fugitive,” it would be the episode where Dr. Richard Kimble catches the one-armed man.

In other words, the last one.

Twenty-two years ago, I transferred from the advertising department to the newsroom of The Alliance Review. I had maybe six bylines under my belt when I began to pester then-editor Susan Shea to let me write a column.

She said no.

But I kept asking. At least once a week. For months.

Finally, in what must have been a moment of weakness, she told me to go write one. Just one. I came back the next day with a draft, which she accepted. Then she told me something I’ve never forgotten: “You know, once you start writing a column, you have to do it every week. I mean, every single one.”

I took that advice to heart. In the last 21.5 years, I’ve written around 1,118 columns, taking maybe three weeks off. At 600 words a week (often more), that’s an estimated 670,800 words, or the equivalent of six or seven novels, a pretty good output.

At first, I only wanted to be funny. The late, great Sally Ailes, Spanish teacher extraordinaire at Alliance High School, once paid me the greatest compliment when she said I was a male Erma Bombeck. Mission accomplished.

My first column ran on Thursday, Aug. 16, 2001, and was a lighthearted look at first-day school photos involving my daughter, who was starting the fifth grade.

Three weeks later, terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers, and I realized I couldn’t write about funny stuff all the time. I started to alternate between serious and frivolous topics, trusting that readers would know the difference and come along for the ride.

In the decades since, I went from full-time reporter to editor to teacher, but I kept my hand in the newspaper business with various projects, including this column. I tackled issues as diverse as mowing the grass during a tornado, the Boston Marathon bombing, urinal cakes, white supremacy, various crises in education, and throwing a bag of poop onto my neighbor’s roof.

I created a few alter-egos (Dear Shabby, who wrote a conservative advice column; and Beatrice Bluenose, children’s book censor), wrote two columns that were published as comic strips, and basically did whatever I wanted with minimal editorial oversight. I was a lucky writer indeed.

So, before the orchestra plays me off, I want to thank a few people.

First, my appreciation to a murderers’ row of fantastic editors: the aforementioned Susan Shea, Michael Patterson, Sarah Reed Gold, Rob Todor and Laura Kessel, all of whom put up with my shenanigans and ran interference with readers who thought I’d gone too far, even when I’d gone too far.

Thanks to Georgette Huff, former Review columnist, who served as a weekly email sounding board for my drafts. You rock!

Next, sincere gratitude to my family, all of whom allowed me to use our interactions as raw material. My daughter, all grown up and a physical therapist in the area, still gets the occasional comment about things she said or did as a kid that found their way into this space.

A special shout-out to my long-suffering wife, Holly, who good-naturedly indulged my use of our marital life and graciously gave me time and space to work on this column for hours every week, all out of proportion with the amount of money it made. I love you, honey.


Finally, and most importantly, a huge thank you to all the readers who let me know by email, snail mail, social media and even the occasional phone call that they were still out there, reading and thinking, agreeing and disagreeing. I asked a lot of you as I veered in topic and tone from week to week and sometimes from sentence to sentence. Thank you for supporting local journalism, even when I made you mad enough to spit.

Hey, I’ve had the opportunity to do something I love for a long time. I’m a happy guy.

So, as they say in the biz:

-30-

Meatless Mondays in 2023

I’m old enough to remember when Chipotle workers asked what meat you wanted with your meal, not what protein.

Calling meat “protein” makes people aware of other ways to get it than just from red meat. For example, black beans, eggs and nuts, to name only a few.

Excessive consumption of red meat and processed meat is linked to many health concerns, including increased risks of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer death, according to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Then there’s the environmental impact. Production of red meat is a major contributor to climate change, since methane is a potent greenhouse gas. (The National Dairy Council notes ways that methane can be captured on farms and used in environmentally sustainable ways, so there’s that.)

All this was eye-opening to me, even though I’d heard it dozens if not hundreds of times before. But, as the old saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And I was ready to learn more about cutting back on red meat, just in time for a New Year’s resolution.

A recent study started me thinking more seriously about a change. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic linked higher levels of a specific stomach byproduct — phenylacetylglutamine, or PAG — in people with heart failure.

PAG is created when the gut breaks down protein. The more protein, the higher the PAG.

A conclusion from the research is that PAG blood tests would be a good weapon in a cardiologist’s arsenal for diagnosing heart disease, not that people should necessarily go vegetarian or vegan.

However, one of the suggestions from the study was to cut back on red meat, possibly through a plan that has already gained traction in other circles: Meatless Mondays.

My wife and I had one of our usual deep discussions before agreeing to implement Meatless Mondays in the New Year.

Me: Hey, you wanna go meatless on Mondays? I hear it’d be good for us.

Her: Sure.

Long-time readers may remember our disastrous attempt to go completely vegetarian in 2013. My wife broke her resolution during Carnation Days in the Park, when the Methodists lured her away with their delicious steak burgers, like the Pied Piper leading all the children out of town.

I held on for the entire year, breaking my meat sabbatical with an Arnold-the-Pig-sized pork roast at 12:01 a.m. on New Year’s Day 2014. I freely admit to being a garbage vegetarian who survived on frozen cheese pizzas and snack foods, gaining about 15 pounds over the year.

Despite my previous lack of success with a vegetarian lifestyle and the lackadaisical way I’m backing into Meatless Mondays, I am sincere about it, and about making better food choices overall.

Maybe I can’t abandon meat entirely because of my love affair with the All-American hamburger, but I can try to do better on the days when I’m not gorging on one of those.

So, the next time a Chipotle worker asks me what protein I want, I may answer, “Black beans.” And shed a tiny tear.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

The Christmas fish lives!

Every year, my wife and I and my sister-in-law and her husband keep a fishy tradition in our family alive. This year is no different. 

What you see above is the fish as it was gifted to us last year, in full Gene Simmons attire. This year, it's our turn to redecorate. My wife came up with a doozy of an idea. It's being implemented even as I type these words. 

Meanwhile, from Dec. 19, 2020, here is the story of the fish, complete with my imitation of Ringo Starr's passive-aggressive "peace and love" message to fans. 

* * *

Every family, I’m convinced, no matter how straitlaced and proper, has an oddball holiday tradition.

For my family, it is fish.

Not a Christmas Day meal. Not an expedition where we cut a hole in an icy lake and squat in a shanty, waiting for a nibble on our cane poles.

No, this is a ceramic fish.

It is a cross between Big Mouth Billy Bass and Flounder from Disney’s “Little Mermaid,” if the latter were drawn by a singularly untalented four-year-old and bereft of any aesthetic appeal.

Technically, this hideous sculpture is a koi (not the real McKoi), but I’m not one to carp about labels. Whatever it is, it is truly horrific, with bulging eyes and a gaping mouth questing upward, ever upward, in search of some elusive worm. Or possibly human flesh.

The fish travels back and forth between our house and my sister-in-law and her husband’s house each year, sometimes wrapped as a gag gift — emphasis on the gag — and sometimes secreted outside, on top of a car, or dangling from a tree.

Legend has it this piscine monstrosity was once the size of a tennis ball, but has been painted so many times over the years it has ballooned to its present size, roughly the dimensions of Rosemary’s Baby or some other dark denizen of the netherworld.

One year, the fish was pink and teal. Another, it was yellow and black, a nod to a certain team in Pittsburgh whose name shall not be spoken. Occasionally, it has been adorned with battery-operated lights or pinwheels or pictures of loved ones in compromising positions. (OK, not that compromising — we’re not that kind of family.)

Two years ago, my wife and I plastered peace and love stickers across its scaly surface and affixed it with a QR code. The code led to a YouTube video where I imitated Ringo Starr’s passive-aggressive message to fans to stop mailing him merchandise to be signed. We shipped the fish special delivery, requiring a signature by the recipient.

This was where I learned two horrible lessons. First, marking “fragile” sixteen times on a box is still no guarantee mailroom gorillas won’t play catch with a package. Second, ceramic fish can break.

The fish arrived a few days before Christmas in pieces. (I am tempted to say “in Pisces.”) Photos were sent. Services were arranged. The fish, we assumed, would receive a burial at sea. Another custom lost to the vagaries of the USPS.

But it was not to be. By Christmas Day, the fish had been resurrected, shades of Danny DeVito’s Penguin, who bragged to Batman that “a lot of tape and a little patience make all the difference.”

Not tape, but glue allowed my in-laws to stitch Frankenfish back together and re-gift it, with bolts on each side of its neck. Later that year, they stole it out of our house on Mother’s Day and gave it to us again last Christmas. This time, it was green, white and red, wearing a tie.

It has lived a hellish half-life in our basement ever since, awaiting another chance to rise and thwart our revels.

My wife and I are plotting what to do with Mr. Chips this year, aware time is running out, especially if we want to find a way to get it inside our victims’ … er, family’s house without them knowing. Thank goodness they don’t read the paper.

Some years, I’ll be honest, the fish has been a damn — or is it dam? — nuisance. But this year, when so many other traditions have been postponed or canceled, it has provided a sense of continuity and familiarity, an activity we can complete in isolation and deliver while social distancing.

Provided the backdoor key we have still works.

Shhh. Don’t tell. And Happy Haddock Days to you and yours.


chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

  

Postmodern 'Woman in Black'

I re-read The Woman in Black recently after somebody online pointed out it was a Christmas story. The first chapter takes place on Christmas Eve, with family members gathering to tell ghost stories, a British tradition that sadly did not find its way to America. After that introduction, however, the story is decidedly non-holiday. No last-minute Ebenezer Scrooge redemption scene here, that's for sure.

I first encountered the novel in 2014 during an online literature class. Because I read it so quickly, revisiting it felt very much like a first encounter, albeit with intermittent deja vu.

The following remarks are from a paper I wrote after that initial reading. Viewing Susan Hill's novel from a postmodernist perspective isn't something I would have done on my own; it was a requirement of the prompt. Still, I'm not unhappy with the results.

There are spoilers aplenty below, so if you haven't read the book, beware.

***

The Postmodern Woman in Black?

She is mesmerizing, this woman in black, from the moment that Arthur Kipps first spies her, lurking in the shadows at the periphery of Mrs. Drablow’s funeral:

        … she was suffering from some wasting disease, for not only
        was she extremely pale, even more than a contrast with the
        blackness of her garments could account for, but the skin and, it
        seemed, only the thinnest layer of flesh was tautly stretched and
        strained across her bones, so that it gleamed with a curious, blue
        white sheen, and her eyes seemed sunken back into her head.
        (Hill 45)

From this initial glimpse, the reader comes to anticipate — or perhaps dread — each subsequent appearance, recognizing the latest incarnation of the thing that goes bump in the night, the eternal bogeyman, not only of literature but of our worst dreams. Jennet Humfrye is another entry in the encyclopedia of supernatural horror figures, taking her rightful place alongside Dracula, Frankenstein (and his monster), Jekyll and Hyde, and the spectral duo of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw. Yet Susan Hill’s Woman in Black is also steeped in the postmodernist tradition, demonstrating the second-class status of women in the Victorian era and how easily they could be manipulated by a male-dominated society.

Humfrye’s backstory is tragic. As was customary for unmarried society ladies of the day, she must give her child, Nathaniel, to her married sister to raise. She lives under the same roof as the boy at Eel Marsh House, but is forbidden to tell him that she is his mother. On the day that she has planned to take Nathaniel and leave Crythin Gifford forever, a carriage accident in the local marsh — because every gothic story must have a local marsh — takes his life. Humfrye goes insane, and a physical wasting away accompanies her descent into madness. After her death, each sighting of her ghost is followed in short order by the death of a child, as if her spirit is exacting revenge for her own boy’s drowning.

If readers wait for a redemptive moment for Humfrye in the novel, they will wait in vain. She remains as unrepentant in death as in life, and Hill uses her unwavering nature to deliver a final shock to the protagonist, one she waits until the final page to deliver in a sleight-of-hand that is as dreadful as it is unexpected. Yet, in giving the ghost the last word, as it were, Hill concludes a process of postmodernist empowerment that that has characterized Humfrye from the start:

        Jennet Humphrye, during her lifetime, refuses to be ostracized

        from ‘respectable’ society, often returning to her sister’s house in

        an attempt to reclaim her son. Later, in the form of a ghost, she

        has complete freedom of space and time in which to wreak

        vengeance against other parents by causing the death of their

        children. In The Woman in Black, Jennet Humphrye plays the 

        role more often attributed to the wandering male Gothic

        protagonist. She is neither locked out nor locked in, but has the

        haunting power to ‘lock’ and open her son’s nursery at will in

        order to torment Kipps. She might, therefore, be considered an

        excessively transgressive Gothic ‘heroine.’ (Scullion 296)

The Woman in Black is also postmodernist in the way it seeks to emulate the traditional structure of a gothic tale. Oddly enough, the story that it most closely resembles, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, in many ways anticipates postmodernism in a way that The Woman in Black does not. In the latter novella, the governess may or may not be seeing ghosts; indeed, many critics have found ample evidence in her character to dismiss the notion that the two young children under her protection are truly being haunted. Instead, critics see the governess as suffering for any number of psychological ailments and that the “ghosts” are figments only of her imagination. The Woman in Black, by contrast, deals with its ghost unequivocally. The sanity of Arthur Kipps is never questioned, and his sightings of Humfrye are corroborated by similar stories circulated throughout Crythin Gifford. The woman in black is objectively there, something that cannot be said of the two alleged spirits in The Turn of the Screw.

Additionally, James takes great efforts to set the sightings of the ghosts at times and in situations that run counter to the traditional gothic tale. Hence, James has the governess spot the ghosts in broad daylight, under clear skies, with nary a rainstorm in sight. The same cannot be said of The Woman in Black, which uses deteriorating weather as a pathetic fallacy to indicate the waning of Kipps’s fortunes at Eel Marsh House and the ascendency of the ghost over his mental state. Few key scenes in Hill’s novel do not take place under at least the threat, if not the actuality, of a cold English rain.

Ultimately, then, the greatest postmodernist element of The Woman in Black is undoubtedly the title character herself. Despite the presence of a male first-person narrator, Hill allows Jennet Humphrye to drive the plot, even in scenes where she is not present. Merely her implied threat casts a pall over this neo-gothic nightmare, infusing a mother’s love with sinister intent, especially when said love is thwarted by staid Victorian standards of propriety. “I had seen the ghost of Jennet Humfrye and she had had her revenge,” writes Arthur Kipps. “The asked for my story. I have told it. Enough.” (Hill 164). Yet the message of Humfrye’s mistreatment and the gender inequality that drives it lives on, both for Kipps and the reader, long after the last page is turned.

Works Cited

Hill, Susan. The Woman in Black. New York: Vintage, 1983. Print.

  Scullion, Val. “Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black : Gothic Horror For

    the 1980s.” Women 14.3 (2003): 292. Literary Reference Center.

       Web. 30 June 2014.

'Back for Christmas'

 

Frequent New Yorker contributor John Collier wrote a nasty little story, "Back for Christmas" (1939) that has become an atypical holiday favorite. 

Last year, it was featured in American Christmas Stories, a Library of America volume edited by Connie Willis. Despite the story's title, it has little to do with Christmas. The protagonist's wife promises the couple will return from America in time to celebrate the holiday in England, but the setting is actually several months earlier. 

I first learned of "Back for Christmas" from one of its radio adaptations. It has been featured three times on Suspense and once on Escape. In the script, writer Robert Tallman changed the main character from a medical doctor to a professor of botany and added some business about a devil's garden in the basement. Both revisions are effective. 

The Suspense episode starring Peter Lorre is justly praised as a classic. However, I prefer the Escape episode with Paul Frees in the title role. Lorre sounds too creepy from the start, so his descent into homicidal madness isn't as shocking as Frees's. The listener is still able to muster some sympathy for Frees's doctor, despite his crime. Not so with Lorre's portrayal. (Sirius XM's Radio Classics is playing the Lorre version several times this week; it's also available on demand to subscribers.) 

All of the radio adaptations do justice to Collier's work, but searching out the original story is still worthwhile.  

A Suspect Santa

For somebody who professes to dislike Christmas, I've sure written about it enough. This holiday-themed column is from The Alliance Review in 2014. 

I guess I’m playing Santa this year.

Some people say this whenever they hand out gifts, but I mean it literally. My mom has invested in a suit and beard and wants me to play the jolly old elf for my two-year-old niece. That’s the upper age limit of anybody who will be fooled by my imitation, to be sure.

Unbeknownst to me, I’ve been preparing for the role all year. Over the past twelve months, I’ve packed on about twenty pounds. While I have a way to go before I’m truly in Santa’s weight class, I still should require fewer pillows to create Claus’s trademark plumpness.

In terms of Santa’s characterization, I’d like to say I’m from the Marlon Brando and Daniel Day-Lewis school of method acting. Those two gentlemen get into character and stay in character — past tense in the case of Brando, who died in 2004 — whether the cameras are rolling or not.

If I followed their lead between now and Christmas Eve, I’d be Santa fulltime, booming out a baritone “Ho! Ho! Ho!” to students on exam day, yelling encouragement to Rudolph when accelerating my Neon down the street, and giving out candy canes to stray passersby.

However, with only one suit, I’m afraid I might start to smell a little ripe before Christmas, like a fruitcake gone horribly bad. And playing Santa without a suit is like playing Tiny Tim without the crutch or Little Ralphie without a Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with the compass in the stock. It can’t be done.

Instead, I’m steeping myself in the classics in hopes that the characterizations will rub off. Last weekend, I watched Tim Allen in “The Santa Clause,” a movie about a down-on-his-luck schlep who magically transforms into Santa after his marriage goes sour and he loses custody of his kid. A real upbeat holiday film, that.

Then there is “Miracle of 34th Street,” about a department store Santa who thinks he is the real thing. He ends up in court, trying to prove he’s not insane. Another heartwarming hit.

Maybe I’d have better luck sticking to Santa stories in print. L. Frank Baum, the creator of “The Wizard of Oz,” wrote a novel called “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus,” but I’ve never been able to get past the first couple of chapters. Imagine Santa as delineated by J.R.R. Tolkien after a night of heavy drinking and you’ll get the general drift.

Then there’s Dr. Seuss’s classic, “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” about another crazed character who gets his Santa fix by dressing up as Anti Claus and stealing an entire town’s Christmas. Yeah, sure, he gives it all back and the Whos even invite him to carve the roast beast, but I’m sure that on Dec. 26 they arrest him for multiple B&E’s and throw the book at him. Because they’re white and he’s green, he probably gets choked out for “resisting arrest” or spends the rest of his life as Charles Manson’s cellmate.

Hey, what is it with all these Santa stories and delusional, tragic characters? Is my mother trying to tell me something?

Maybe I should stick with Clement Clark Moore’s “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” better known as “The Night Before Christmas.” It’s probably the most quoted poem in the English language, which doesn’t say too much for America’s taste in verse. But at least the Santa it presents is of the non-postmodernist, non-ironic, Victorian variety: He’s (ital.) really (end ital.) St. Nick, and nobody carts him off to the asylum halfway through or threatens legal action when he slips down their chimneys and eats their cookies.

He’s also mostly silent, other than a few shouts to his reindeer. In many ways, this is good news. I don’t have to disguise my voice, learn any lines or, worst of all, offer any extemporaneous comments, like railing against crass consumerism (which Santa represents) or criticizing the military-industrial complex. When I go off script is when I get myself in trouble. Santa as the strong and silent type. That’s the ticket.

As long as I don’t get him confused with Brando and start screaming, “Hey, STELLA!,” halfway through handing out presents, I think I’ll get through this without permanently scarring any children.

Here’s hoping.


chris.schillig@yahoo.com

cschillig on Twitter

A 'perfect' Christmas

This was originally published in The Alliance Review waaaaay back in 2006. My definition of a perfect Christmas has changed a little. Maybe. 

A wise person – if not Gandhi, then probably Dear Abby – once wrote that the perfect Christmas could take more than one year to celebrate.

Important and time-consuming elements can be parceled out over several years to avoid fatigue: One year to put up the perfect tree and bake cookies, the next to focus on outdoor lighting and Christmas carols, a third to doll up gifts with ribbons and bows, and so on.

When one looks back over the years, these memories will blur together to create the “perfect” Christmas.

I can buy that – a slacker philosophy disguised as new-age wisdom.

That being the case, I guess this is my year for outdoor lighting and Christmas carols, not because last year I erected a pristine tree and baked 50 dozen gingerbread men, but because the weather was accommodating for the lights and I can’t escape the carols if I tried.

Temperatures approached 60 degrees the day I decked my halls, leading to two firsts – the first time I have decorated wearing only a T-shirt (OK, I wore pants and shoes, too, but you knew that, didn’t you?) and the first time I ventured on top of the porch roof.

My porch isn’t high, but for a guy who cries “Mommy” when he gets to the third rung on a step ladder, tiptoeing onto it is akin to rappelling down the side of the Alps.

It didn’t help that I had three strands of icicle lights underfoot and a wife who kept calling up from the safety of the ground, “Be careful. Your cousin’s porch is the same height, and somebody died falling off of it.”

(Little plastic fixtures under the shingles: $5. Holiday lights: $25. A loving and supportive spouse: Priceless. For everything else…)

Obviously, I survived. If the weather holds, the silly things are coming down next Tuesday, before an ice storm or some other freak of nature cements them up there until Easter, no matter how Grinchly it makes me look in the neighborhood,.

But I said this is also my year for Christmas carols. Friends and family need not worry: I’m not singing door to door. I know my voice can curl an elephant’s nose hairs, falling as it does somewhere between Michael Bolton and truly awful. (Not that Bolton is far from truly awful himself, but I digress.)

No, I’ve been (ital.) listening (end ital.) to carols this year, which puts me more in mind of Groundhog’s Day than Christmas, since there are only about a dozen songs that get played to death between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

Take “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays” – please (with apologies to Henny Youngman). We have perfectly acceptable Perry Como versions (he recorded two), a not-quite-so-acceptable Carpenters version, and a truly frightening Jim Nabors’ rendition, which proves that even a guy with great pipes can’t escape the long shadow of Gomer Pyle, USMC.

I’ve heard all of them this season, and I could probably live a long and happy life without ever hearing any of them again.

Not all carols affect me that way. I like “Silent Night” (the less instrumentation the better), “Deck the Halls” (those fa-la-la’s get me every time), and even “Frosty the Snowman,” although it’s more of a winter song with a little snatch of Christmas thrown in at the end.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been listening to albums by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a mostly Christmas hard rock/heavy metal band that dresses up classical pieces with a lot of three-chord bombast, cheesy lyrics, and production values reminiscent of Queen. The results are sometimes tacky and gaudy, but it stirs blood made sluggish by too much eggnog, I tell ya.

Yet even those guys I’m weary of by Dec. 25. I’m fickle that way.

Probably the only Christmas song I can listen to repeatedly, even in June, is “Father Christmas” by the Kinks. It perfectly captures the madness of the holiday consumer season and the gulf between the haves and have-nots.

The song is loud and a little depressing, just like Christmas is sometimes, even when you’re assigning parts to different years to avoid total Yuletide burnout.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, and if you see some guy being pushed down the street in a full body cast next week, humming disjointed lyrics like “Father Christmas, give me some money!” that will be me.

At least you’ll know I took down my lights.

Readers Sound Off on Tipping Mickeys

For Those Who Came in Late: A few weeks back, I wrote about tipping costumed characters in New York City.

I had a close encounter with five such folks − Elmo, Mickey, two Minnies and a Grinch − on Thanksgiving morning. One of them used my phone to snap a photo of me with the other four. I tipped five bucks. They insisted, loudly, that the interaction was worth $20. Nevertheless, I held firm with my original tip.

I asked readers whether five dollars was an acceptable gratuity and why (or why not).

Thirty-seven readers responded to the survey, a big reality check since I had been expecting tens of thousands of people to weigh in on a topic so vital to the future of civilized society. My wife, who excels at keeping me grounded, said without guile that 36 was twice as many as she had expected.

Despite the miniscule numbers, I was gratified that the statement “Chris’s five-dollar tip was JUST RIGHT” attracted a razor-thin majority, 51.4%. If I had been a candidate in Georgia, I wouldn’t have needed a run-off.

I’m compelled to note that in last week’s run-off in the Peach State, Raphael Warnock, as honest and upright a candidate as one could find anywhere, corralled the same percentage, which means that 48.6% still voted for Herschel Walker, werewolf hunter, who lives just a few doors down from Beelzebub.

My own 48.6% broke down differently between the two remaining choices.

Surprisingly, 37.8% of respondents agreed with “Hey, they asked Chris for a picture! He should have tipped LESS than five dollars.”

Only 10.8% of readers clicked, “Chris was a scrooge! He should have tipped twenty dollars or MORE.”

Because I’m more of a qualitative than quantitative guy, I was especially interested in the comments. Readers didn’t disappoint.

“Elmo should have at least combed his face. He deserves none of the $5,” wrote one.

“They prey on tourists,” said another. “You weren’t even a memory when they left you. They were on their way to another victim.”

“These costumers didn't drive in from Ohio,” wrote a cartoon-character sympathizer. “They most probably live in the Big Apple, and life expenses for them are a lot more comparatively than a dinky little town such as Alliance.” Later, the same commenter opined that “if you couldn't afford to give that much, you should have not agreed to have had any pictures taken.”

Another offered a similar observation: “In NYC $20 is like $5 here in flyover land. When in Rome …”

A couple respondents further noted that Starbucks, which I had just exited, bag in hand, when my tale of mouse tails (and Grinch feet and ticklish Elmos) began, was more expensive than Starbucks here in northeast Ohio. So my tip should have been larger, too.

Point taken.

But I would also argue that, if costumed mice made me say cheese in the greater Alliance area, I would have tipped a dollar or two. So I did inflate my tip because of geography.

Finally, one respondent shared a similar encounter in the Philippines, in the company of a group of fellow Marines. A street hustler painted a young Marine’s tennis shoes with white dye, effectively ruining the shoes.

“With age comes wisdom,” the reader said, “and I can say with relative confidence that you have a greater sense of tact and social grace than that young Marine had at the time. But an ass kicking seems an appropriate response in both cases.”

In closing, let me reiterate I tip generously in most situations, and I urge readers to do the same.

Especially at the holidays, when tempers are short and patience wears thin, support the people who are doing their best to make your interactions merry and bright.

Even if one of them is dressed like Elmo with an unkempt face. Maybe especially then.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

Poem of the Year written 150 years early

Tell all the truth but tell it slant -

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind -

— Emily Dickinson

It’s the time of year for dictionary publishers to announce their Word of the Year selections.

Merriam-Webster chose “gaslighting.” Cambridge Dictionary went with “homer,” the Wordle answer on May 5 that garnered more lookups than any other word. Oxford Dictionary is leaving the choice to readers, who can vote for one of three options: metaverse, #IStandWith, and Goblin Mode.

I don’t know if there is a Poem of the Year, but if so, I vote for Emily Dickinson’s verse above, often known by its first line since the author declined to title her work.

Dickinson scholars estimate “Tell all the truth but tell it slant -” was written in 1872, but some date it several decades earlier. It wasn’t published until after the poet’s death in 1886. (Dickinson’s long, strange road to publication is just as fascinating as her singular life and work.)

So, what makes a 150-year-old poem speak to our cultural moment in 2022?

For one thing, it’s still important to be diplomatic when telling the truth. There is truth, unvarnished truth, and truth that leads the hearer to understand the unvarnished truth.

Many spouses can attest to the importance of “slant” when their significant others ask, “How do I look in this?” While the fate of the universe doesn’t hinge on the answer, the fate of the relationship might.

The recent election, too, speaks to a gradual dazzling of the truth. For many voters, the truth about the kinds of people running for various positions up and down the ticket may have finally dawned on them.

It can be fun for a while to back mavericks, conspiracy theorists and so-called straight shooters, but not at the expense of our system of government, of democracy itself. What is sometimes mischaracterized as refreshing honesty in a candidate is often nothing more than cold-heartedness writ large and shouted through a microphone.

In the weeks after the midterm election, the nominal leader of this certain category of politicians continues to tell the American public who he is, not even bothering to slant the truth anymore. The question is whether more Americans will believe what he is saying when he breaks bread with a white nationalist/Holocaust denier and an antisemite, or espouses the belief that even the Constitution itself should be set aside to allow him to remain in office.

Ultimately, Dickinson’s poem speaks to those who have not been bedazzled by false promises, serving as a reminder of how to speak to those who have.

It’s not easy to deprogram a cult member. Likewise, it’s not easy to steer family and friends back into the mainstream after they have been besotted by demagogues. “Success in circuit” means starting small, finding areas of agreement and building from there.

The sort of dissatisfaction with the economy and culture that led to such a severe break didn’t happen overnight. It won’t be healed overnight either. Certainly, a holiday party is not the place to unleash “the Truth’s superb surprise.” Save that for the New Year.

Dickinson was a famous recluse. We don’t have to be to avoid tough talk. Nor do we have to lie.

But telling all the truth means providing a little slant, or spin, that makes everybody more amenable to the lesson.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

@cschillig on Twitter

Was I Santa or Scrooge with my holiday tipping?

I like to think I’m a generous customer.

In restaurants, I tip 20%. Often more when the service is exceptional. Seldom less even if the service is poor.

You know a “but” is coming. Be patient, it’ll be here in a few more paragraphs.

A recent NBC News story on “tipflation” made me stop and think. It discussed how some retail establishments are adding a tipping option at checkout for jobs that are traditionally not augmented by gratuities.

That’s ludicrous. When I use the self-checkout at a certain big-box retailer, I feel the company should tip me because I’m doing most of the work − loading and unloading the cart, scanning, paying, everything except stocking the shelves. And I’d probably do that too if I could.

However, the NBC report made me realize that I should start tipping for takeout orders. After all, somebody took time to make and package the food, and that’s a service. In the piece, Thomas Farley, a.k.a. Mr. Manners, advised 10%.

Now, here comes the big “but” (he said with a wink and just the slightest hint − a crack, if you will − of a smile).

But I didn’t know how much I was expected to tip in the following situation:

I was in New York City for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade this year. While waiting for the parade to step off, I headed to Starbucks to grab some breakfast and take it back to my wife, who was waiting along the route.

As I exited the restaurant, I saw Mickey, two Minnies, Elmo and the Grinch walking down the street. (If they walked into a bar, it would be the setup for a joke.) Being an infrequent visitor to the Big Apple, I didn’t realize people dress like this often. I snapped a photo with my phone.

This brought me to the attention of the entire cartoon menagerie, who made a beeline in my direction to pose with me. I guess they gave me a choice, but it also felt aggressive, with lots of masked people surrounding me.

Three photos and five seconds later, all their little costumed hands were extended for a tip. I pulled out my wallet, which was my first mistake. I gave them a five, which was maybe my second.

“Five dollars?” one of them said, whipping out a roll of bills from some secret pocket in Minnie’s skirt. “There are five of us! It is more like $20!”

Indeed, the wad of money had at least one twenty on top, although I suspect this was for show and that underneath were ones and fives.

The frugal Midwesterner in me bristled. Twenty bucks per “photo shoot” would be equivalent to $240 per hour and almost $2,000 a shift. Granted, these characters weren’t ever going to make that much since most of their day was spent hustling (in multiple senses of the word) for business. And they did have the expense of the suits.

They also were using my equipment (which, thankfully, they returned) and likely weren’t claiming any of their tips as taxable income. They certainly weren’t paying licensing fees to Disney, the Dr. Seuss estate or Sesame Street. I doubt executives would be tickled that Elmo was shaking down pedestrians in Manhattan.

Armed with this knowledge, along with a certain bravado because maybe they should have been paying for a picture with me (educator, native Ohioan, proudly bald fifty-something), I stood firm with the $5. Take it or leave it.


They took it but grumbled as they disappeared into the early morning gloom. If any of them responded to my “Happy Thanksgiving,” I didn’t hear it.

Now, however, I’m wracked with guilt. Well, “wracked” may be an exaggeration, but I am thinking about these folks and wondering if I was more Scroogish than I should have been.

After all, I did get three pictures out of the deal, along with an idea for this column, which ain’t nothing.

So, I’ve decided to solicit your opinions, dear readers. If I should have tipped more, less, or about the same to the Mice, Grinch and Elmo crowd, let me know in the survey below. As a bonus, you’ll get to see one of the photos. I’ll report back with the results in a future column.

And if I’ve made you happy at any point while you were reading this column, well, I accept Venmo and all major credit cards.

Not really.

But maybe.

Survey link (use this shortened link):

bit.ly/3VkXOUf

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

@cschillig on Twitter

Lick a stamp, send a turkey

Something unusual happened to me this month: I received a Thanksgiving card.

I mean, it’s not completely unheard of. Years ago, when I worked in sales, I had a customer who insisted on giving each of his clients a card at Thanksgiving instead of at Christmas.

He said it bypassed the whole “should it say Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas” falderol (the alleged War on Christmas was a thing even 30 years ago, it seems) and, as a bonus, the card became a conversation piece because it was unique.

He was right, at least as it relates to the greeting I received decades later. “Oh, look,” I said, as though I were a character in an early-reader Dick and Jane book. “It’s a card, a Thanksgiving card from my insurance agent. See the card. What a special card. I must hang it on my wall. Jane, will you help me hang it? Will you help me hang my card on the wall?”

Spoiler Alert One: The card never made it to the wall.

Spoiler Alert Two: I didn’t think like Dick and Jane. I’m not really a Dick.

Still, the card did get me thinking about the somewhat odd practice of sending Thanksgiving greetings. Hallmark says Americans send 16 million cards annually to commemorate the fourth Thursday of November. More accurately, the company said Americans “exchanged” them, which makes me think of a giant swap meet with cardstock images of Norman Rockwell-esque dinner tables, cranberries and stuffing. I’ll trade your candied yams for two slices of pumpkin pie with whipped cream!

Spoiler Alert Three: It didn’t really make me think of this.

By way of comparison, Hallmark says Americans send 1.3 billion Christmas cards annually, so Santa has cooked Tom Turkey’s goose in that department.

All this sent me on a nostalgic stroll through Internet images of Thanksgiving cards past, courtesy of clickamericana.com, which offers 14 such cards allegedly from the turn of the last century. (Since it’s on the Internet, it’s hard to know for sure.)

A common theme across many of the images is a woebegone attempt to turn living turkeys into a holiday symbol in much the same way that Santa has come to represent a secular Christmas. One key difference is revelers don’t chow down on roasted St. Nick at the climax of the Yule season, so any attempts to transform Tom Turkey into a fun-loving harbinger of late November must reckon with the oven at the end of the tale.

The images offer lushly painted images of kids petting turkeys or shyly offering ears of corn to the birds. In one, two turkeys − I would assume husband and wife, but I can’t speak to the matrimonial customs of genus Meleagris − are out for a Sunday (or is that Thursday?) drive in an open-top automobile. While their progress appears leisurely, perhaps they are really putting the pedal to the metal, or the shank to the crank, to escape the cook’s hatchet.

Some of the cards have sentiments straight out of squaresville. They are also examples of exceedingly poor verse. One reads, “I welcome this day of mellow fruitfulness, As just one more occasion to wish you happiness.”

Another unimaginatively offers, “May all your dreams come true Thanksgiving Day.” A third promises “good wishes for Thanksgiving Day,” accompanied by a freshly killed turkey, its head still attached.

Maybe it’s not so hard to see why Thanksgiving cards have failed to become an enduring custom.

Nevertheless, some copywriter scored with this message: “While we indulge in the prosperity and pleasures of the present, let us have high hopes for the future.”

That sounds so nice I’m going to put it in all the Thanksgiving cards I send out this year.

Spoiler Alert Four: C’mon, you know better.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig

The thrill of the hill

This was originally published in The Alliance Review in 2006. A student's essay about rollercoasters reminded me of it, so I decided to dust it off and send it out into the world again.

It’s the same story every time.

I’m too old for amusement parks. I don’t find any thrill in being herded through long lines. The thought of flying is much less attractive than it was when I was a kid, watching George Reeves soar through clouds on a not-too-carefully-hidden ironing board.

I plan to hold bags, purses, and sandals while family and friends allow themselves to be strapped into uncomfortable plastic chairs and hurtle through the air at ridiculous speeds, flipping upside down and side to side while screaming uncontrollably.

Roller coasters are for the young, after all, for people whose bodies bounce back faster after defying the laws of gravity and the dictates of good sense.

In the weeks prior, I politely promise to ride, but intend to do nothing of the sort. To paraphrase Casey Kasem, I will keep my feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.

So how do I find myself harnessed into a seat, flat on my back, blinking back tears as I stare into the sun, the car in which I’m riding click click clicking toward the apex of a metallic hill, with only the whimpering of fellow guests and the distant cawing of gulls to keep me company?

And why do I find myself doing it again and again and again, vowing every time that this is absolutely, positively the last time?

Call it stupidity. Or a loathing of Casey Kasem.

I’m trying to keep my mind off the fact I’m claustrophobic, and that right now I’m restrained by shoulder harnesses the size of semi-truck tires and a plastic pommel pressing against some very private parts.

Disjointed thoughts flip through my mind.

I think of the acne-pocked teenagers below, checking my safety harnesses while making doe-eyes at each another, worrying more about lunch and a rendezvous behind the Big Dipper than my safety and comfort.

I think of news reports of riders who have been stranded for hours while technicians contemplate how to get them down. Or people with undiagnosed heart conditions whose final view is all the tiny, colored rectangles in the parking lot below, and who will be cut dangling from harnesses, eyes transformed into x’s like erased cartoon characters.

I think how odd it is that if any employer subjected me to even half this much torture, I would contact state representatives, human rights groups, and every attorney who ever advertised on the back cover of a phone book. But on my free time, I pay for the privilege.

I think how businesslike I am about having fun at an amusement park, how once I’ve climbed aboard one monstrous coaster, I won’t be happy until I’ve ridden them all, big alloy and wooden behemoths with names like Steel Cobra and X-Flight, rides they have to close down when somebody’s lunch makes an encore appearance on his lap.

The click click clicking stops, and there is one blissful moment when I am poised on the precipice, a moment that can be as long or as brief as I choose to make it.

Eyes still closed, I retreat to my happy place. I’m stretched out on a beach towel, a paperback book tented over my face, the waves lapping the shore in the distance. At any time, I know I can sit up and walk into the ocean, splash water on my feet, and maybe watch the annoying kid beside me be eaten by a shark.

It is a comforting place, far away from any screeching guests and testosterone-fueled expressions of manliness.

Then I open my eyes.

And I’m screaming and screaming and screaming, even as my face starts to bend and twist like those melting Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and I don’t want to die and Jane stop this crazy thing and I’m speaking in tongues and I don’t want to die and my ears are bouncing off the shoulder harnesses and I wonder how I could have ever thought the straps were too tight they’re loose too freaking loose and nobody treats me like this nobody and I don’t want to die.

The cars screech to a halt, and I dismount, smiling and shaking and walking on Jell-o legs.

And already deciding which coaster is next, because I have paid for this torture, and by God, I’m going to get my money’s worth. Even if it kills me.

 

Red Wave crashes into GOP

The much-ballyhooed Red Wave predicted for last week’s midterms ended as a low-tide tickling of the country’s collective ankles.

Following Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s projected win announced Saturday, Democrats will retain control of the Senate. They could solidify their hold if Raphael Warnock defeats Herschel Walker next month in a Georgia runoff.

And control of the House could break Democrats’ way, as well, although this appears less likely given the trajectory of the vote counting thus far.

In any event, predictions of a red tide were, as Mark Twain once observed about erroneous reports of his own death, “grossly exaggerated.”

I’d like to think this is because voters were able to step away from concerns over the economy, compelling and important as they are, and focus on long-term issues, one of which is the preservation of democracy.

It is heartening that so many candidates who embraced false election narratives were defeated in their bids for election-oversight positions. These included aspirants for secretary of state in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told Time magazine, “I hope it means we are closer to breaking the fever.”

However, a Washington Post survey noted that, as of Sunday morning, some 170 election deniers had either won or were projected to win various other posts. And surveys show that an alarming number of Republicans, 67%, still believe that Biden stole the election in 2020.

So, some voters still have a low-grade fever where baseless election fraud is concerned. Others may have thought the issue wasn’t as important when weighing different factors about candidates, including their positions on the economy, the environment or abortion.

Still other voters may have rationalized their choices by saying candidates didn’t really believe claims about election fraud but were saying what they did as a litmus test for a small but still statistically significant number of overall Americans who have bought into such false claims.

Overall, however, the trend toward the MAGA mindset appears to be dwindling as people get on with their lives and recognize the toxicity of the brand.

It seems to me that sensible Republicans, the ones who no longer want to descend into the vile snake pit that the former president amplified in 2016 and 2020, now have a choice.

They can support candidates and policies that are a reasonable reflection of their conservative views. Or they can follow the increasingly unpopular fringe groups that desperately want to drag the party into a never-ending spiral of white grievance and evidence-free conspiracy theories.

The party will be put to the test again this week, as Trump was widely expected to announce his bid for the 2024 presidency. (At press time, he has not.)

Will Republican leaders fall in line behind a man who could not, and has not, committed to one of the basic tenets of American democracy − the peaceful transfer of power? Or will this be the moment when they say enough’s enough?

As one Twitter commentator noted last week, the more extreme members of the Republican party, the ones who rightly should be named RINOs, have been looking for a civil war. Now they may have found one in their own party.

Indeed, the only Red Wave might be the one that splits the Republican party in half.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

Originally published in The Alliance Review on Nov. 16, 2022.

Will schools' fights over phones fade away?

The fight against cell phones in schools often feels like the age-old dispute over jaywalking. For every student caught using a phone at an inappropriate time, dozens of other offenders may skate away unscathed.

Just like jaywalking, the cell phone battle can create accusations of selective enforcement, with all the unsavory overtones the term implies. Can so-called “good” kids get away with using phones more than “troublemakers”? What about students who use phones to complete assignments? Or to answer a text from a parent or guardian?

That last hypothetical really isn’t hypothetical. A recent Associated Press report notes that many disagreements over phone use in schools have less to do with battling students and more with battling parents. This is especially true as schools over the past two years have bucked the trend of loosening phone restrictions, likely because the devices are seen as distractions to addressing learning gaps caused by COVID.

But when students and staff must practice active-shooter drills periodically as a price for living in a society that values guns over people, it’s hard to blame a parent or guardian for wanting a constant connection to their children.

With added concerns over students’ mental health because of the COVID pandemic, it also makes sense that adults would want the reassurance of knowing their children are just a call or text away.

I teach at a high school that allows students to use their phones in the lunchroom and hallways (but not for traditional voice calls), yet requires them to put the devices away when they enter classrooms or restrooms.

It’s a great improvement over a previous policy that banned the devices completely. Enforcing the earlier restriction really did feel like catching one or two jaywalkers on a busy downtown street during lunch hour.

Most of my students obey the policy. Yes, it’s not always “clean.” Sometimes, students will not quite finish texting before they enter a classroom, prompting some redirection from the teacher. Occasionally, students will take surreptitious peeks at their phones during class, especially during March Madness or afternoon MLB games.

And sometimes students will ask if they can step out into the hallway “really fast” to let somebody at home know that a practice time has changed or to tell a boss that yes, they can come into work later that day.

To me, this all feels like part of an educator’s job: teaching responsible use of technology, normalizing asking for permission rather than begging for forgiveness, and helping students navigate a world where these devices are omnipresent.

I am also confident that policies about phone usage will become more permissive as districts recognize how walling off a resource with so much potential is counterintuitive. When teens today have more knowledge at their fingertips than the president of the United States did just 10 years ago, it makes little sense to prohibit their use.

Furthermore, busting kids for cell phones feels like selective enforcement when more and more of their peers wear smart watches, making those surreptitious checks of text messages almost impossible to catch.

“Everything in moderation” has seldom applied so perfectly as it does to cell phones, for adults and kids. Most districts don’t want students binge watching entire seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy” on their devices in school, but I can’t believe they begrudge those same students a message from home to see how their day is going.

And, yeah, I know we didn’t have pocket phones a generation ago and we grew up just fine. Just like our parents or grandparents didn’t have televisions, and their parents or grandparents didn’t have radios. Go back far enough and you’ll find somebody griping about kids and abacuses. It’s a specious argument.

Banning phones entirely doesn’t teach kids anything except blind obedience or, more likely, how to outwit an out-of-step restriction. Better to integrate the devices more fully into the school day, with consequences for offenders who misuse a revolutionary tool in education.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig

Originally published in The Alliance Review on Nov. 9, 2022. 

Nobody is laughing at fake news now

It’s easy to laugh at QAnon and “fake news.”

Easy to say it’s all just a bunch of random, conspiracy-laden theories, that the people who believe them are incels sequestered in their parents’ basements, far out of touch with reality. I’ve made such jokes myself.

But then we must square the guffawing with something like what happened to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband last Friday.

Paul Pelosi, 82, was allegedly attacked by a hammer-wielding 42-year-old QAnon adherent, David DePape, whose mind was a spaghetti dish of weird and outré beliefs. Among them, pizzagate, white genocide and Holocaust denial, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Without a doubt, DePape is a troubled man who needs psychiatric care. Yet while he is an aggressor in this instance, he is also in many ways a victim.

No, he’s not a victim of the Great Replacement or pizzagate or any of the other bizarre ideas he allegedly endorsed across multiple online platforms. Instead, he is a victim of the many individuals who popularize and amplify such theories, who target people like him to pump full of useless information, who then give the rhetorical equivalent of an eyeroll when asked to discredit them.

Both sides of the political spectrum are at fault for twisting and exaggerating news and cultural trends, but the ones who most often radicalize people like David DePape are those on the far-right.

You will find sanitized and slightly more socially acceptable versions of DePape’s beliefs across various right-leaning news networks, talk radio and online sites. You will even find politicians weaponizing these beliefs to drum up votes.

Take, for instance, any number of conservative office holders and candidates who will not say President Biden won the 2020 election. Or who will not commit to the peaceful transfer of power pending the results of next week’s election.

Or the ones like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who condemned the violence against Paul Pelosi, but couldn’t resist the urge to toss in, “but we’re gonna’ send [Nancy Pelosi] back to be with him in California” at the end of his statement, lest he be seen as soft on violence against his political enemies.

Last year, Mark Follman, writing in Mother Jones, noted that the term “stochastic terrorism” can be applied to leaders who use language to provoke action, yet maintain plausible deniability because they never specifically called for violence. Follman applied the term to Donald Trump, who often shrugs off responsibility for criminal actions done in his name. The former president is still at it today, refusing to acknowledge his loss in 2020, wearing a QAnon-related pin, and playing a QAnon anthem (or an anthem-adjacent song − there’s that plausible deniability again) at a rally earlier this year.

All this points, more than ever, to the value of teaching critical thinking skills in schools so that the next generation of Americans is less susceptible to manipulation. However, this is a task that could become more difficult as QAnon-tolerant or -supportive candidates seek to win elections to school boards and tie the hands of teachers and other curriculum experts.

In an essay called “The Art of Persuasion in a Polarized Age” in the Nov. 7/14 Time magazine, Anand Giridharadas notes that we should not blame disinformation victims. Instead, we should help them.

“When our friends and neighbors fall prey to these cons,” Giridharadas writes, “we in the evidence-based world often make the mistake of condemning them as harshly as those who conned them.” Instead, he says, we should try to dig deeper, to get at the root of the complicated feelings they are experiencing in an era of great social, political and demographic change.

Which sounds like a plan, except that there are a lot of potential David DePapes in the world, with far-right media sucking in more and more daily. To say nothing of those who would never dream of taking a hammer to the spouse of an elected official, but who would secretly applaud it, nonetheless. Call them stochastic-terrorism enablers, maybe.

At the bare minimum, perhaps all thinking people could agree not to vote for people who use theories like the ones that sucked in DePape for their own advantage.

Candidates who wink at such lunacy or use it to attract voters have no place in our government. Their ascendency only normalizes beliefs that people of all political persuasions should run from, not laugh at.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

Originally published in The Alliance Review on Nov. 2, 2022

Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

Good news for luddites seeking something people can do better than machines: Robots suck at folding clothes.

That’s the general consensus of experts over the years who have tried to build machines to do this most mundane of household tasks.

Of course, researchers didn’t say “suck.” In a National Public Radio report, they favored people over machines for clothes-folding because of “the complex configuration space as well as the highly non-linear dynamics of deformable objects.”

In other words, it’s hard to build a robot that can fit in the places where clothes need to be folded − both industrially and domestically − and a pile of clothes is a real mess to sort. In other, other words, robots suck at folding.

The latest attempt to straighten this wrinkly state of affairs will unfold (ahem) at a robotics conference in Japan later this month. There, German creators will make a case for their SpeedFolding system, a device with two bubbly, plastic arms that taper down to pinchers.

The inventors have already released a video on YouTube. It shows the SpeedFolding robot attempting two different methods of folding a shirt.

The first is the “fling to fold,” which looks like the way most people fold when they want to do a decent job. The robot picks up the rumpled shirt, shakes it like a Polaroid picture, and places it flat on the work surface. It then folds back each sleeve before performing a third fold at about mid-chest height. The results are pretty good, too. (I define “pretty good” as a folded shirt that would pass muster with my wife.)

The second is the “two-seconds fold,” which looks like the way most 5-year-olds fold shirts, by grabbing it at random and scrunching it together. The results are about what you would expect.

I feel sorry for the robot. The NPR article notes that it can fold only about 30 to 40 garments per hour with a 93% success rate. That’s far slower than all but the most inept of human clothes-folders.

This is no John Henry vs. a steam-powered machine to see who could crack more rocks. If you know that old song, Henry and his hammer win, but then he dies from the strain, with the implication being that modern technology may not be victorious yet, but will be eventually.

No, any sort of robot vs. person laundry battle is going to end with the human winning easily, then sauntering off to enjoy a pina colada on the veranda while the robot folder is still licking its pneumatic wounds.

Especially with an estimated price tag of $58,000.

I mean, maybe that would pay off in an industrial setting where there are thousands of items to be folded each day. Here at Casa Schillig, where there are but dozens of items each week, I can’t see the need, unless the robot could also be trained to clean out the gutters, mow the grass and wash the car.

Even then, $58,000 is a lot.

However, I humbly suggest that the SpeedFolding folks could score a big win if they would focus on just one aspect of the task − fitted sheets.

In my experience, there is no way to fold a fitted sheet that doesn’t involve copious amounts of swearing, pulling of the sheet in diverse directions at once, shaking (both the sheet and one’s fist at the gods), and eventual acknowledgment that it can’t be done.

Except that it can. Every fitted sheet came nicely folded when originally purchased, even if it never looks that way again.

If a robot could do that, maybe I could lay down my hammer and accept defeat.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

The turkey — America's national bird?

Originally published in The Alliance Review in 2008. 

If Ben Franklin had succeeded in enshrining the turkey as our national bird, would we be eating eagle on Thanksgiving?

It’s one of life’s little imponderables. Either way, the turkey is a bird that needs some positive PR. Unlike beef and chicken, it has no fast-food representation. There is no McTom, no BK Gobbler, no Turkey McNuggets value meal.

Instead, the language is rife with negative turkey connotations. Everybody’s dated at least one turkey, and people who “gobble” up food are considered hogs (another animal that needs spin control). Hearing “tough turkey” means you’re not getting your way, and the loser of a fight is trussed up or stuffed like a turkey. Synonyms for turkey include failure, dud, bomb, washout and fiasco.

About the only positive reference comes in bowling, where three consecutive strikes earns the roller a “turkey,” but he’s still, you know, bowling, so how cool can it be, really?

To be fair, nobody likes being called a chicken or a cow, either, but at least both those animals are adequately represented on the dinner menu at home or in restaurants. Outside of a 6-inch turkey breast at sub shops or the rare turkey burger on health-food menus, old Tom is the least respected of the meats.

No, the turkey gets one blip on the public radar, November, when the White House issues a presidential pardon for one of his brethren, but 45,999,999 more go under the ax to serve as the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving meals. According to the Associated Press, shoppers won’t get a break on the bird at the grocery store, either: The average cost of a 16-pound bird is up $1.46 over last year.

The eagle, meanwhile, protected as he is by federal law, gets all the positive euphemisms – eagle eyes, Eagle Scout, legal eagle, and double eagle. A five-dollar gold piece issued from 1795 to 1916 and in 1929 is a half eagle, which even sounds weighty, and the bird is all over money and stationary, portrayed as strong, powerful – and inedible. Maybe we have a psychological need to mock in language the animals we eat.

Ben Franklin, however, had no love for the eagle. In a letter to his daughter, he wrote, “… I wish the eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

“With all this injustice, he is never in good case but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank coward: The little king bird not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district.”

Later in the same letter, Franklin praises the turkey as “a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain and silly, a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”

Given many Americans belief in entitlement, or taking something for nothing, maybe the eagle as described by Franklin isn’t such a bad symbol after all.

Maybe the rest of us, who work everyday and hand over our eagle-imprinted money to those who don’t, are the real turkeys. It’s another imponderable to consider this Thanksgiving.

My favorite monsters

Halloween is close at hand, a time when I trot out some of my favorite cinematic and literary horrors.

In the former category is almost every fright film made by Universal Studios in the 1930s and ’40s, black-and-white gems like Bela Lugosi’s “Dracula,” Boris Karloff’s “Frankenstein,” Lon Chaney Jr.’s “Wolf Man” and a boatload of sequels, mostly of lesser quality. They exude atmosphere — crackling bolts of lightning, cobwebbed castles, foggy marshes — and practically define the iconography and conventions of the horror genre.

On the literary side, my tastes run further afield. Many of the early works of Ray Bradbury, especially the short stories “Night Fever” and “The Jar,” eschew the creaky staircases and midnight settings of the Universal front. In the same vein (pun intended), Richard Matheson modernized many of the traditional conventions of horror in the 1950s by finding a pseudo-scientific explanation for vampirism (“I Am Legend”) and placing stories on passenger planes (“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”) and highways (“Duel”). Stephen King picked up the torch — not to march on Baron Frankenstein’s castle — and shredded nerves with rabies (“Cujo”), a mutated flu virus (“The Stand”) and psychotic fans (“Misery”), to name just three.

But a short novel I read every year — both because I assign it to students and because it never fails to make me think as well as shudder — is Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw.” Originally published in 1898, the novel avoids most of the conventions the cinema would enshrine as standards decades later and anticipates the psychological suspense that drives modern horror.

Like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” “The Turn of the Screw” is a frame story, beginning on Christmas Eve in an old house where revelers gather to tell ghost stories, a mostly British tradition at Yuletide that I wish would catch on here in the States. The discussion ’round the fire turns to one-upmanship, and a guest notes that ghost stories involving a child give an already frightening subject an additional layer of terror.

“If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw,” he says, “what do you say to two children?”

The story that unfolds from this observation is purportedly from the manuscript of an old governess who, as a young woman, is placed in complete control of two orphans on a rambling country estate. James never gives the governess a name, but allows her story to unspool in first-person, creating a simultaneous sense of familiarity and distance that serves the tale well.

In short order, the governess becomes convinced the children are being haunted by ghosts of their former governess and valet, Miss Jessel and Peter Quint, who were having an affair in the months before their deaths.

For years after the novella’s publication, it was accepted as a quintessential ghost story. But critics soon began digging beneath the surface, questioning the mental state of the children’s second governess, who claims to have saved the two from demonic possession by these spirits. Do the ghosts exist, or are they figments of her imagination?

In a parallel interpretation, critics have found much in James’s portrait to support a reading of catastrophic class differences, as the affair between the first governess and the valet required the crossing of several social strata. Further readings have looked at the novella as a prototypical feminist text, a study in sexual repression and possible pedophilia involving multiple characters, living and dead.

While some of these analyses range far afield, they can all be supported, more or less, by the ambiguous — and, to my mind, perfect — narrative techniques that James employs, which allow multiple readings without decisively refuting any.

And the final pages, when little Miles and the governess are alone in the house, fending off what she believes to be the Quint’s final attempt to corrupt the boy’s soul, are among the creepiest in literature. James’s ending, soberingly final, allows readers to see the governess as either hero or villain.

For his part, James stolidly maintained that he had written a traditional ghost story, and that alternate readings should be viewed with suspicion. But writers are notoriously reticent to discuss what their work “really means,” and even when they make such pronouncements, their opinions should be taken with a degree of skepticism. Once a work is published, its interpretation belongs no longer to the writer, but to the audience.

And “The Turn of the Screw” is a many-layered delight, one that thumbs its nose at the conventions ascribed to “traditional” horror stories (including my beloved Universal movies), becoming all the more frightening because its monster, if one even exists, lives not in the attic or the basement, but in the human heart.


If this column inspires you to read “The Turn of the Screw,” I’d love to hear your interpretation. Email me at chris.schillig@yahoo.com or tweet me @cschillig on Twitter.

This was originally published in October, 2015, but I'd still welcome comments today. 

Mixing pumpkins, bread could create cross-cultural nirvana

Two unrelated, food-related stories caught my attention recently.

In California, organizers of the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off logged a new North American record. A pumpkin grown by Travis Gienger, a horticulture teacher in Minnesota, came in at 2,560 pounds. That’s only 143 pounds shy of the world record, set by a squash in Italy just last year.

I’ve always had a soft spot for pumpkins, even if the quintessential Thanksgiving pie made from the gourd isn’t my favorite. (I prefer apple or cherry.)

Each year, my wife and I gawk at the size of pumpkins at the Canfield Fair, usually in the 1,500-pound range. This is still large enough to warrant an appreciative whistle and, despite signs that admonish visitors not to touch, a fond caress.

Oh, and a selfie.

Why I need a picture standing in front of some anonymous farmer’s accomplishment is something I haven’t analyzed too deeply, but I snap one every year.

The first thought I had when I heard of Gienger’s prize-winning effort was how I could get my photo with it. Isn’t that weird? I mean, I don’t scamper around snapping pictures of myself with other produce − man, look at the size of that cumquat, I gotta get a picture with that! − or holding up gigantic ears of corn. Well, just that once.

Seriously, though, I’ve always been into David and Goliath-like size differentials, where the natural order of things is upended. I love movies where giant bugs stomp on hapless humans. Or where people are reduced to the size of your average under-the-bed dust bunny. To this day, “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” who battles a housecat and a spider among other normally inconsequential trappings of suburbia, is a favorite.

So super-sized pumpkins? Yeah, I like those.

I once thought of raising my own giant pumpkins and bought seeds that promised larger-than-average results. But I never got around to planting them. I was probably too busy watching “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.”

Anyway, I gave the seeds to my in-laws. If they shepherded any pumpkins bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle, they didn’t bother telling me.

The other food-related story, also in California (imagine that!), involves a bakery in San Francisco. Workers there created a 6-foot bread sculpture of Han Solo encased in carbonite.

For those who need context, Han Solo is a Star Wars character played by Harrison Ford. In “The Empire Strikes Back,” Solo is captured by the bad guys and freeze-dried before being carted off to Jabba the Hutt’s palace, where he’s displayed like a deer’s head. Later, he gets better.

Anyway, “Pan Solo,” as the bakers christened their sculpture, is composed of “wood and two types of dough, including a type of yeastless dough with a higher sugar content that will last longer,” according to the Associated Press.

A mother-daughter duo, Catherine Pervan and Hanalee Pervan, worked on their masterpiece after regular business hours for several weeks as part of the Downtown Benicia Main Street Scarecrow Contest.

As Homer Simpson might say, “D’oh!”

Imagine living within driving distance of the world’s largest pumpkin and a bakery that displays a Star Wars character made from bread. The mind boggles.

Then I realized the two events are almost cross-curricular. What if the giant-pumpkin people dressed up their offerings to look like members of the Hutt family, those large, sluglike beings in Star Wars with fat tongues and excess saliva?

Heck, Hutts are practically begging to be pumpkin-fied.

Far off in the background, so faint nobody else can hear it (I understand there are meds for this), I discern the drumbeats of destiny, calling me to organize a cultural mash-up between horticulture and geek culture, jack-o’-lanterns and Jabba, Squash Wars and Star Wars.

And me, out in front, taking a selfie with it all.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

Dogs deserve respect, but owners must use care

Family pets mauled two siblings, ages 2 and 5 months, last month in Tennessee.

The attacks left the children’s mother with grave injuries after she threw herself on top of the older child to shield her. Nevertheless, both children died.

The dogs were pit bulls.

According to the mother’s friend, quoted in USA Today, the animals had been with the family for eight years and had given no indication of being aggressive. Authorities are investigating, and both dogs have been euthanized.

America has a love affair with canines. The American Veterinary Medical Association says some 38.4% of American households have dogs, but other sources estimate almost twice as many.

Whatever the exact number, millions of dogs and dog owners live in the United States, with the vast majority going about their business without incident.

Pit bulls, many owners would say, have been unfairly vilified and singled out as “dangerous.” The AVMA notes on its website that “any dog can bite: big or small, male or female, young or old.”

The organization does not support breed-specific legislation. Instead, it recommends laws that designate specific animals as dangerous, based on that animal’s history.

This position is sensible. A dog that bites is a dog that bites, after all, meaning that if an animal attacks once, it is likely to do it again. Protecting the community from that animal by requiring the owners to take certain steps, up to and including euthanization, is warranted.

However, for a particular dog to be designated as dangerous, a dangerous incident must occur. Here is the problem with waiting for an attack − someone gets hurt before the animal is identified.

The nonprofit DogsBite.org says that pit bulls contributed to 67% of the 568 American deaths from dog bites from 2005 to 2020.

Some readers will see such numbers as a scare tactic, pointing out that dog-attack fatalities over a 16-year period are minuscule compared to the 647,000 U.S. deaths annually from heart disease or 1,670 per day from cancer. No argument there.

The AVMA also notes the challenge of correctly identifying dog breeds, especially with mixed breeds. It can be hard to tell a dog’s breed by the way it looks, so some dangerous dogs may be incorrectly labeled as pit bulls. That’s not fair.

So, these statistics should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

Still, the numbers would be enough for me, if I had small children, to think long and hard before introducing a pit bull into the family. Or to allow a pit bull to remain, even if it were a long-standing part of the household, once I had children.

Yes, there may be a prejudice among the public regarding the breed. And perhaps pit-bull attacks have gained greater traction in the media than attacks by other breeds. I have no doubt that many pit bulls are gentle, lovable and loyal toward family and friends, just as some terriers and toy poodles are vicious.

Despite what the law in a particular community might or might not dictate, is it worth the chance?

Pit bulls feel too risky, like having an open well on the property but not fixing it because nobody has fallen in yet.

I can’t imagine the pain of owners who shrug off the risks or pooh-pooh the warnings, only to have their pet attack a passerby or a family member. Did they look at the numbers and still convince themselves that their case was the exception?

Because it’s better to be unfair to a dog breed a million times over than to a child even once.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

Luring customers to McDonald's with adult Happy Meals

Folks needing another reason to eat badly have one: McDonald’s is selling adult Happy Meals.

I’m doom scrolling through a series of stories that place the promotion somewhere between Dante’s third level of Hell and the Second Coming. Apparently, nothing is lukewarm where McDonald’s is concerned. Except the food itself, of course.

Anyway, the fast-food giant announced adult Happy Meals this way: “One day you ordered a Happy Meal for the last time, and you didn't even know it.” 

If that statement is designed to make people feel horrible about aging, then mission accomplished, Mickey Dee’s.

I mean, what’s next? A funeral-home promotion that begins, “One day, you kissed your grandmother goodbye for the last time, and you didn’t even know it?”

Gosh, better Biggie Size that sentiment, dontcha think?

Once consumers shake off the impending sense of doom that comes from corporate recognition that youth is fleeting and the grave is closer than they think, they can take a look inside the festive red box.

But remember Nietzsche 101. When you stare into the Happy Meal, the Happy Meal stares back.

The choices for adults are consistent with the fact that people with mortgages require more calories and won’t be content with a mushy burger and a few carelessly tossed fries.

No, the adult version of Happy Meals includes options like a 10-piece McNuggets or Big Mac. Enough calories to clog whatever arteries are still semi-open after a regular diet of pizza, beer and Skittles. Maybe it comes with a $100-off coupon for a good cardiac specialist.

But let’s face it, Happy Meals were never about the food. They were always about snorkeling through the grease to find the prize at the bottom.

Here’s where the McDonald’s promotion gets really strange. Because the toys are designed in conjunction with Cactus Plant Flea Market. If this name means nothing to you, don’t feel bad.

CPFM is − and I’m copying directly from Google here − “a fashion label crafting original streetwear with signature dye treatments and lettering.” So, this partnership of opposites is somewhat like the Vatican releasing Madonna’s next album. I mean, what’s next, Versace teaming with Walmart?

The toys feature the beloved (?) McDonald’s characters from past generations — Grimace, Hamburglar and Birdie the Early Bird. But here’s the kicker: They all have four eyes instead of two! How clever! How cutting edge!

A fourth character, Cactus Buddy, is also included in the image McDonald’s is using to promote this gastronomic trip down memory lane.

How to describe Cactus Buddy? It looks a little like Pac Man devoured the woozy-face emoji and then slipped on the hat and shirt a McDonald’s employee left behind when she stormed out of the restaurant for better opportunities across the street at Subway.

I mean, why Cactus Buddy and not Ronald? Why is McDonald’s downplaying the role a clown had in its worldwide success?

It couldn’t be that clowns have become super-scary, associated with homicidal killers in Stephen King novels and showcased in urban legends where they’re spotted walking around in the woods, could it?

To be fair, Ronald is hanging out on the periphery of a McDonald’s shirt from Cactus Plant Flea Market, but he looks to be just one of the guys, no more prominent than Mayor McCheese or Officer Big Mac, secondary deities in the fast-food pantheon.

And this is one reason the promotion will struggle, because McDonald’s won’t embrace the essential … uh, cheesiness of its former mascot. Many 20- and 30-somethings would like an edgy McDonald’s to lean into the creepy clown factor.

If your company has an iconic children’s character who has become synonymous with sewer grates and razor-sharp teeth, don’t hide it. Flaunt it.

Give adults a McDonaldland that looks more like a haunted house, and they’ll make the successful Monopoly promotion of years gone by look feeble in comparison.

Heck, a scary Ronald McDonald might even make them eat an adult Happy Meal.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.