Ooh, how I love my general store!  Strosnider’s, a quick, six block walk from home, my local True Value Hardware outlet, never fails me. Last week, instant success in my holiday quest for a pudding mold , essential for making a proper Christmas pudding. Steamer ? Check. Dried fruit? Check. Rum? Check. Spices, check. Flour? Check.  Sugar, check. Suet. . . .SUET!!!! Well, not so fast. I haven’t seen suet since the days my mom trimmed up her own, uh, “budget” cuts of beef.  Nigella Lawson substitutes butter.  Stay tuned.

Our friend Heidi was a high-level environmental policy adviser to a progressive  governor out West. Well-educated, well-informed, committed and successful,  Heidi has an impressive resume, and is a formidable strategist and policy pro.  She’s run a congressional campaign, staffed a think tank, and held down several other notable paid and unpaid political organizing positions over the years.  Exquisitely articulate, yet fast on her feet, Heidi is a natural  for a press op.

Just after fellow office staffers  pushed Heidi in front of the cameras on short notice, they voiced amazed satisfaction at her quick, poised, successful performance. Yet whom did Heidi credit? Her training? No.  Her experience?  No. Her savvy? No.   Nope, nope, nope.  Her first credit was to–shades of the Oscars — her upbringing!!!!  Heidi’s retort: “I grew up in a family of journalists and lawyers.  Every night at the dinner table was like a press op!”

Now, Heidi left home at the age of 17.  She has not warmed a regular seat at her mother’s table in more than three decades. Yet in Heidi’s telling, those early years were so influential and so formative that she continues to chalk up her TV smarts to the grilling from dad and three older brothers  oh-those-many-years ago. On the up side, this is a marvelous testament to the importance of the dinnertime tutorial more common in the bygone era of the evening family meal.  On the down side, Heidi seemed too quick to minimize the role of  her subsequent excellent education, experience, and training, and thus discredit her own hard-won political and public speaking skills.  I’m all for the warm embrace of childhood, especially the parts that build character.  We all tag  declarations with the qualifier that “I grew up ” . .  ., e.g.,  eating white bread, walking to school, singing hymns, camping out, what have you.  But let’s also hear it for the wit and  wisdom we accumulate once we’ve left the nest.

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Chelsea Clinton campaigned for her mother, Senator Hillary Clinton,  with this tag: “I want her for my president!”

To this, I reply with a simple,  onomotopaeic cry:   Eeeeuwwww!!!  Having suffered nearly eight years of Republican misrule under GW Bush, I cringe at the notion of a “personal president.”  Chelsea’s creepy locution echoed dangerously close to the evangelical notion of a “personal savior.”  But maybe Chelsea’s tic is yet another Protestant conceit.  Hyper-individualistic Protestants own their Jesus.  He’s an individual, i.e.  “mine.”  By extension, the next highest-ranking authority figure, the President, similarly becomes “mine.”

Having been raised Catholic,  the concept of personal possession of  Jesus,  much less the U.S. President, seems alien, if not outright weird.  In Catholicism,  neither God, nor his Son, nor  the Son’s Mother, Mary,  were claimed as “mine.”  They were “ours.”  Or, the world’s.  Or, belonging to and creatures of and belonging ever after, to eternity, if you will.

So, in keeping with my lapsed Catholic theology, the President of the U.S.  is simply “the” President.”  Or, at worst, “our” president.  I would never claim him (or her) as mine. Even Obama!  How on earth does one assign a personal, possessive pronoun to an institution?  The Executive Branch?  It’s not “mine.”  It’s ours.  As in, the People’s.

What’s with the Broadway Musical these days? The family caught a Sunday-night showing of “Hairspray” over Memorial day weekend, to our three daughters’ everlasting delight. From the opening number, however, I found myself straining for a glimpse of the singers’ strangely stilled throats, the better to catch them in a little Milli-Vanilli. (Quick! Call my old friend Clint Krislov!)

21st century stage performers are apparently fitted with magical invisible microphones, blasting their music and lyrics in multi-direction splendor from monstrous amplifiers throughout the theater. It’s terribly unsettling. I couldn’t shake the sensation that I was bearing witness to a giant hoax. Sensurround-like waves emanate down from the ceiling–not out from the stage. The sound level and quality bears no relation to a performer’s visible effort. Granting the benefit of the doubt, I can only guess that the radio-wave transmission of the singer’s voices creates a nano-second time lag, thus creating the appearance of lip-synching.

The twelve-piece orchestra was also hidden from sight, only adding to my overal sense of loss. During last season’s theatre strike, Harvey Fierstein militantly supported the musician’s union, declaring that live music was essential to the theater-goer’s experience, and that no one wants to go hear “recorded” music on Broadway. But the powerful, multi-directional amplifiers now in use grossly distorted the aesthetics of live musical theater. Maybe the producers won the war, after all.

My Chicago connections keep rearing up and biting me on the bottom, this time when Hillary Clinton’s attack machine clubbed Barack Obama with his not-for-profit connection to Bill Ayers. In the 21st century Bill and wife Bernardine Dohrn had become mainstream political fixtures in Chicago, doing good work around education and children’s issues. They have led a positively tame life. Bill and his late father frequently took Bill’s kids to Cubs games, and Bill and Bernardine burst with pride when their kids made it to the Ivy League–and won a Rhodes Scholarship. But in the eyes of media and political scandal-mongers, mere “association” with aging radicals is enough to taint one for life. This has me worried. It also has me grinning at the irony.

I worry because my husband Monte recently “associated” with Bill Ayers at a dinner in Chicago. The host is a relative of Bills, and Bill had dropped by for a visit. Recalling the dinner, I immediately fretted that Monte’s recent “association” with Bill might imperil my chances of election to the PTA .

I grin, however, at the irony of at my own long-ago “association” with Bill and Bernardine. I met them at an election night party in November 1992 celebrating Bill Clinton’s Presidential victory returning a Democrat to the White House. Bernardine was distracted by residual pain from a wisdom tooth extraction, but Ayers was ebullient, and chucked our infant daughter under the chin. Both cheered elatedly when the networks called it for Clinton.

Oh, and where was Barack Obama in 1992? Spearheading a voter registration drive in Chicago–to help elect Bill Clinton.

Dear Jack Slain, who fled Cravath, Swain and Moore in the late ’70s for the comforts of teaching corporate law at NYU, also taught accounting for lawyers. In that class he often cited a compelling example of looming obsolescense: the buggy whip manufacturer, circa 1915. Not a trade for the dawn of the Model T era, nor ever again to provide the least prospect for business success.

I have often reflected on buggy whips over the last quarter century as I watched successive loves undermined, left behind, and overtaken by technology or changing tastes: Amtrak; record players; post cards; letter-writing ; home-baking; card catalogues; newspapers; books.

So it is with dread, recognition, and grief that I read this requiem for literary criticism in The Nation. So I’ve chosen a “slowly dying” profession! Another venture in buggy-whip production. Literary criticism joins the museum rooms of my now-middle-aged life.

Lost my cellphone last month, so we trekked to the Verizon store for a replacement. Blue-eyed, sandy-haired Nelson, dead-ringer for my oh-so-Irish-looking cousin Tom Costello., shepherded me through the upgrade. Twenty if he was a day, and new on the job, Nelson was chipper and personable, and endlessly charmed by my middle daughter R., and her non-stop patter and high octane enthusiasm. I pegged him for a college kid from upcounty. I felt a kinship. His resemblance to cousin Tom established a tribal connection. An entire narrative evolved without conscious effort.

My husband mixed it up a bit, adding an earpiece and new charger for his Blackberry to the sale. My paperwork seemed endless, but the sales pitch was low key. Affable Jalal, a senior sales guy, together with the weekend manager, a white guy like Nelson, stepped in when Nelson needed an assist, but the transaction ended smoothly. As we wrapped up, Nelson urged me to call if I had any questions, or needed to change the package, or to add minutes, or if I found the old phone and wanted to come back and transfer my address book to the new phone. He handed me his card, apologizing for the inky scratches. “Since I’m so new here, I have to write my name on the card. Here you go.” I took the card.

Illegible ink squiggled across the the print. I squinted. Baffled, I looked up. I pointed to the card. “Who’s that?” “that’s me,” said Nelson. I pointed to the cursive. Jalal Aboo. My narrative collapsed. My inner ethno-meter spun wildly. A million conjectures and warm fuzzies and our ancient Celtic connection dissolved in a mash of confusion and bewilderment. Egyptian? Palestinian? Second generation? But that suburban affect! The college-boy ease! The unself-consciousness. The All-American grin. My cousin’s double! Aboo? Jalal? Like . . . Abdul, but with– those sky blue eyes? I gestured at his lapel.

He looked at his pin. He nonchalantly removed it. “Oh, Nelson and I were playing around this morning, swapping name tags. We just forgot to switch back.” He grinned. He swapped pins. Jalal, my Irish homie, happily affixed his name to his pocket.

Enough with the commentary and analysis. Make way for criticism! Went back to grad school today, plunging right in with English 602: “Critical Theory and Literary Criticism.” U Md. let me take classes in graduate school on “advanced special status.” My tax dollars at work! (We’ll see if I’m still “special” after 14 weeks.) My fellow students are a nice mix –theater majors, poets, comp. lit scholars, and a few brash young PhD students who naturally knew the secret to finding the textbook before the first class, even before the prof. posted the info. The professor is, well, a self-described Theory “Jane” (not Jock, thank you very much) whose first hour lecture seemed devoted  to scaring us into dropping the class. I have confidence that my classmates will stay put, or even urge their friends to register! We’ll bloody well learn from divine Professor S!

Was anyone else as annoyed as I was by Howard Kurtz’s tantrum
in today’s Washington Post? Waah, waaah, waah, someone forgot to kiss up to the press! Oh, puhleeze. Why can’t the press, oh, say, do its job and report the campaign?

My daughter N. often exclaims, “everything traces back to Chicago!” Those were certainly our formative years. Chicago is where I started my career, met my husband, bought my first home, birthed my two older daughters, forged my deepest friendships, gained my political education, discovered labor history, and confirmed my enduring passion for my native Great Lakes bioregion.

Spending the 80s and 90s in Chicago also meant that we crossed paths with lots of prominent Democrats. (I blogged about this before, here.

Back in the 80s, the public interest law firm in Chicago to work for was Davis, Miner, Barnhill, and Galland. True, serving an assistant corporation counsel during the Harold Washington administration, as I did, also won progressive brownie points, but Davis, Miner was hot, hot, hot. Name partner Judd Miner became Harold’s second Corporation Counsel, following James Montgomery’s return to private practice. Name partner Allison Davis, who was later to provide technical advice to the producers of the film version of Phillip Roth’s The Human Stain, was extremely successful in real estate practice, and also did his own real estate development. Chuck Barnhill moved to Madison, Wisconsin, but somehow stayed affiliated with the firm. And curly haired George Galland was active in the progressive bar association, the Chicago Council of Lawyers. The brilliant Brigette Arimond, then an associate at Davis, Miner, joined the corporation counsel for a time, and years later popped up with my dear friend Cyd as a fellow Bell magnet school mom .

Naturally, I had to chuckle when I read today’s Washington Post column, “The Fact Checker,” in which Michael Dobbs susses out a line of attack against Senator Barack Obama. I sat right up when I reached the fifth graph, quoting Obama’s “supervisor at the law firm,” William Miceli. Bill Miceli was at the corporation counsel when I arrived in 1985; at that time he and his wife occupied the Rogers Park apartment directly beneath my friends Ken and Caryn. Bill was one of the least partisan guys I knew. He was one of the legions of skilled City attorneys whose fine work was overshadowed by an office reputation sullied by decades of patronage sloth. Bill’s fine work, fortunately, drew the attention of the top dog, Judd Miner, who wisely took Bill with him when it was time to return to private practice. And it was completely fitting that a talented, public-interest minded, Ivy-educated community organizer-turned-attorney would later be snapped up by Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland. Look where he is now!

I haven’t shown my daughter the news clip yet. She’ll just grin and nod knowingly. Another tracer, back to Chicago.