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Can America Be A Welcoming Country Again?

The Statue of Liberty and downtown Manhattan. (Credit: EAS ART/Flickr)

A successful man in his early 40’s, working in an industry he loves, Faisal Siddiqui is the first to tell you that he’s a lucky man. He has a perennially sunny outlook on the world – it takes a serious effort to put him in a bad mood. Blessed with a wife he loves and three daughters who dote on him when he comes home from twelve-hour days, Faisal is none-the-less passionate about his work, moving from hospital to hospital as a CEO who specializes in difficult turnaround cases.

He’s a voracious reader, consuming as much material as he can make time for, often stacking up books focused on whatever esoteric business problem he’s currently puzzling out. A believer in fitness to focus the mind, Faisal is an avid racquet sports player and hits the soccer pitch too, striving to out-run his opponents – both sports with intense cardio demands.

Although he’s a practicing Muslim who’s noticed attitude changes since 9/11, Faisal still thinks America as the best of countries. “I think of it as the most welcoming and open country,” he told me last week. But the rise of President Donald Trump worries him. “The greatness of the United States has been denigrated because of the extreme thought processes out there. He has been fanning a lot of extremism that’s not just in the U.S.”

One of my closest friends, I haven’t seen Faisal in person in over ten years, but I called him up at his home in Mumbai, India last week as part of a check in with a few non-American friends on how the U.S. has changed in their perspective. I’ll write about more of my conversations next week, but Faisal told a story that made me think hard about what America offers to the world today.

An Indian patriot, Faisal’s father was a decorated brigadier general in the Indian Army who fought in the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. As a son of an Indian national hero, life has been privileged for Faisal, and he knows it, so he’s committed himself to lifting up his country, one of the reasons he’s so passionate about health care.

Faisal’s sense of morality and devotion to merit is emblematic of the best of liberal democracy, a core value of both the United States and India, and what Americans hope for when we take in new immigrants.

I asked him to tell me his thoughts on the United States as an Indian, and he sounded like a man torn between two countries, unsure if either one could be a good home for him and his family.

“I spent five years in the U.S. in the shadow of 9/11. And then continued to live there and work there, and not once did I have to realize the color of my skin or religion,” said Faisal with pain in his voice. “But in my own country I have come to realize that I can’t live in certain areas because I’m a Muslim.”

The rise of Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi, the leader of the Hindu nationalist party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has brought a chill to India, Faisal says, as right-wing Hindus have suppressed and sometimes terrorized the country’s Muslim minority, which makes up about 15%, or 200 million people of the country’s 1.3 billion people. Before becoming the Indian PM in 2014, Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat State, where RSS actively suppressed the state’s Muslim minority.

Faisal started a new job in Hyderabad, the capital of Gujarat in 2013, to run a failing hospital. And already, you might know where this story is heading.

After a few weeks of living in a hotel, Faisal decided to look for an apartment, so his wife and kids could move to Hyderabad to live with him. He hired a broker and began to look at apartments.

“I’d go with a broker, find an apartment I like. [Then] they’d talk in Gujarati saying that they’d get back, and the call never came. This happened multiple times,” Faisal told me.

“Eventually someone on my team said, ‘You will not find an apartment in this area, the community lines run very deep. Because of your religion you are not supposed to live here, you live 10 kilometers from here.’ So I said, OK, I’ll take a look.”

“We go to the area. It’s a ghetto. It’s over a bridge, very nice on the Hindi side, but on this side, it’s a royal muck. I’m told by the broker there, who is a Muslim, ‘All the wealthy Muslims stay over here, because we are supposed to say here.’ So, show me an option, I tell him. He shows me something then asks if I’m a Sunni or Shia. Are you screwing around with me? I say. If you’re Sunni, you get this block, a Shia, that area.”

Faisal was shocked. Maybe he shouldn’t be, but raised by a veteran of India’s highly meritocratic Army, and educated in the United States, he expected more from his country.

“Eventually I found a man who said God dammit, I’m a Gujarati Hindu and I’ll do what I want. We got a ground level apartment in a good neighborhood. Very nice place.” So and his family moved in. “But then I’ll tell you what happened: Every day people put garbage in front of my door; one day a dead pigeon.”

Eventually, the harassment got bad enough that his wife told him a ghetto would be better than their “good neighborhood”. She begged him to move.

At one point, a man claiming to be a top member of the RSS, the far-right Hindu party run by Modi, visited Faisal at his hospital office. “He told me, ‘Hospitals are very difficult to run. I’ve seen CEOs like you get burnt up. I hope bad things don’t happen to you.’”

To his credit, Faisal ran the man out of his office, but he was shaken up. “Discriminated to the core, in my own country,” he said.

Soon after, the owner of a apartment building next to Faisal’s hospital visited him, wondering if any doctors might like to rent an apartment. “Can I see it? I said to him immediately. So we went to look at it, and it was wonderful. I offered him a lease on the spot. We moved into the apartment.” But now an experienced Gujarat resident, Faisal was smarter. “When I got the apartment, my company made the lease in the company name, which gave the owner cover.” Nobody could claim the Hindu apartment owner knew he was renting to a Muslim – even if he was a hospital CEO.

Fast forward seven years to today: Faisal’s older brother lives in Charlotte, North Carolina and after almost 20 years of living and working in the U.S., he’s decided to apply for permanent American residency, and is attempting to bring his parents along too. This has set off new thoughts for Faisal, of maybe moving to the U.S. himself.

When I met Faisal seventeen years ago, he was so gung-ho on India, that he tried to convince me to move there after graduate school. His persuasion skills are so strong, I almost did. But now, he’s thinks he might want to move to the U.S. Yet, he hesitates because he hears things have changed in the U.S. since he lived here.

“What we hear about America is that is not what it used to be, as a free country, as a place accepting of people of different backgrounds,” he said. “Nobody is going to make me a hospital CEO that’s for sure.”

“If I make this move it’ll not be for myself. I want to bring a better upbringing for my children. What’s going on now, it’s something my wife and I have not seen growing up,” Faisal said.

All around the developing world, there are talented men and women like Faisal who would like to be part of the American dream. Even though racism has come out of the darkness under President Trump, the Faisals of the world still want to come.

We need to change America back to a place where everyone who dreams of a better life can have a chance to build one.

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Four Reports From Abroad

The American consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. (From NBC News)

For Americans living overseas, the rest of the world’s reality is difficult to escape, since they’re swimming in it daily. I wondered about those differences and what it’s like to be an American expatriate, so last week I interviewed four friends and family members living overseas: An Episcopalian priest in England, an English teacher in Vietnam, a journalist in Turkey and a teacher in Nigeria. Each one has lived in their current country for a least a year, most have lived overseas for ten years or more.

Most of them spend a good deal of time explaining the allure of President Donald Trump to their foreign friends. My friend Mike Gibson, who works for an English-language news service based in Istanbul, Turkey says, “When people look at what’s going on [in America]. It’s really bad. We’ve basically lost any credibility we might have had, that was tenuous at best. The whole Trump election, it looks awful. It encourages the worst elements,” he says. “It encourages the worst elements in different societies to follow their worst instincts.”

“I get asked the most about Trump. It’s the thing Britons find so confusing,” says Devin McLachlin, an Episcopalian priest living in Cambridge, England. “There’s a large [American] cultural influence [in Britain], so they do find Trump disorienting. It’s creates a cognitive dissonance with what they understand of the optimistic view of American culture.”

They all had fewer reports on foreign views of Trump than they did about than they did about the difference between living in the United States versus in their new home. All of them remarked on how little crime they experience – no matter where they live.

In Lagos, Nigeria, a constantly growing city of 20 million people where my sister Susanna Pav is a teacher at an American School, there’s tremendous income inequality, sometimes within the same block, but that doesn’t translate into crime, like it does in the United States. “There isn’t the same sense of threat of crime. There’s guns and drugs, but it doesn’t feel as unsafe,” as in the United States. “My perception of crime is that it’s much lower because it doesn’t get the same media hype as it does in the U.S. and gun violence against expats is low relative to general population,” she says.

Even though there is is much poverty in Lagos, people are unfailingly polite in surprising ways, Susanna says. For instance, ever-present traffic ”go-slows” caused by people hawking everything from bananas to toilet seats result in people getting out of cars to argue. But Susanna recounted one man stepping out to shout at another driver, “Excuse me sir, did you not see the sign there that tells you to go left? I beg you, why did you not respect the sign?” The politeness can be shocking to how harsh Americans typically act, she says.

Father Devin, a Chicago native who lived in Hyde Park, is floored by the lack of crime in England. “I never see police officers here. Not only are they not armed, they just aren’t there. Even to me it feels underpoliced,” he says. “I went for a hike recently and grabbed a kitchen knife to bring on the trip, and my colleagues were very concerned, because they think about knives a lot here, because they don’t have guns.

“Our gun murder rate is unimaginable to people in Europe. They had a wave of youth violence which amounts to a bad weekend in Chicago. It amounts to how normalized violence has become to me in the city of Chicago. We’ve gotten used to a lot of violence [in the U.S.]”

Mike, who has lived in Istanbul for five years says that even in a country with political violence, he’s barely seen crime. “Turks are easy to get along with. I’ve never been robbed or physically assaulted. Like, we had a military coup!”

For these people living in a different country, It also becomes clear how culture permeates every decision and interaction.

Bill McGowan, an English teacher in Saigon after doing the same in China for eight years, grew up in sunny, suburban Los Angeles with a very non-political family. Now, he feels like he’s had a kind of awakening.

“I think with China and Vietnam and a lot of the Asian cultures, they are collectivist. They’re much more into it together, where the family is most important thing. Whereas looking at America, you can really see how individualistic we are. That has really affected me. American is a more selfish country. In terms of the health care thing: We’re such a rich and powerful country, but we could give a shit about our fellow Americans. ‘I’m going to get my own, screw the rest of you.’ Not to say that doesn’t happen in China or Vietnam. But there, there’s a sense of a group thinking moving forward,” Bill says.

Living in Nigeria, Susanna says she has become acutely aware of wealth. “One of the most striking things [about coming back to the U.S.]  is the size of the cars, the supermarket with twenty different brands of mustard. The consumerism. The space everyone takes up. The houses, the yards, everything is so well taken care of. It’s just dripping with wealth. Even in middle-income neighborhoods. The sense of privilege that you’ll always have these things. It will all be OK.,” she says.

Mike in Istanbul says the Turkish culture of politeness can be very difficult for Westerners to navigate.

“You will hear a lot of foreigners say, ‘The Turks are polite. But you can’t trust them. They don’t do what they say.’ I’ve been here five years, on a thousand occasions, people will say let’s make sure we have dinner that weekend. They are saying that, and it never happens. As a Westerner, my response is, that person is untrustworthy. But the reality is they are just being friendly. The distinction is in how Americans understand the relationship between truth and a lie.

“I think [Turks] think it’s important to be polite and tell people what they want to hear.

“For instance, asking for directions. ‘Do you know where this street is?’ And you can ask three or four Turkish people. They will all get it wrong, but will spend real time trying to explain how to get there, rather than say, ‘No I don’t know where it is.’ They all want to help you try to help you find it, even through they don’t know where it is. They can’t say, ‘No I don’t know where it is.’ They’re all trying to be courteous and helpful. That’s something every Westerner will have encountered here at some point.”

As alien as Lagos might seem to an American, once you get used to way life works, it can be managable, says Susanna, who has lived in Nigeria with her family for almost six years now. “Nigeria is different from other places in Africa, where there is more development. Nigeria is notoriously corrupt, [other countries are] corrupt, but Nigeria really takes the cake…Going out shopping, to the movies, locals are warm, helpful. We never experience hassles for the most part where there shouldn’t be. Every once in a while, we get stopped by a police officer with a machine gun, and they’ll ask us for money. They say like, ‘Hello! Hello! Do you have something for us today?’ And then you pay them and that’s it.”

There’s a flip side to the corruption too Susanna says, by applying a bit of “dash”, what Nigerians call bribes, you can smooth out bureaucratic paperwork, like when clearing customs or brushing aside getting fingerprinted for a new job. “The positive experiences far outweigh those negative ones.”

For all of my ex-pat friends, American identity never fades away, but the reality of where they live has maybe changed what it means to be a patriot.

“[America] is farther away,” says Father Devin in Cambridge. “Which is to say, more uniform than when I was living there. All that diversity does merge together…I’m aware of how particular and peculiar the U.S. is, that vast geography. That sense of being a nation of immigrants and that sort of diversity that you don’t have in the same way here in England, outside of London.”

“It’s home,” Bill, who is living in Saigon, says of America, “But maybe I’m seeing it without the American flag waving behind me, and a hand on my heart.”

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The Death of Adventure




Above, the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest, where I’ve got to get to at some point.

Lately my idle moments have been spent surfing Orbitz, Hotels.com and every manner of travel website. I’m trying to devise a getaway that satisfies three conditions that are ever at tension with one another: expense, exoticness and time limitations. There is an undefinable, perfect vacation that I imagine for myself, my wife and my ten-year-old son. A place that’s fun for all of us, not too expensive, and reachable within a brief, not-even-a-week time period because she-and-I-have-real-jobs-dammit, that is frankly impossible to achieve, but I still keep thinking about it daily.

Oh, God, I think about it.

It usually takes hold in the mid-afternoon, after lunch and when I have trouble setting myself back to work. “Maybe skiing in Idaho?” I think. And away I go, looking up flights to Spokane in late March or early April, rental cars, lift and lodge packages. But then it either crosses a cost threshold, or a time threshold, “It takes that long to get out there and back? What the heck?” And the whole idea crashes. No getaway for us.

I’ve done this too many times to count. Puerto Rico. New Orleans, Quebec City, Philadelphia, Mexico City, London, Reykjavik, Paris, Chennai, Bangkok, Saigon. Buenos Aires. 

My mind is constantly wandering, wondering: Could we get out there and back in a cost-effective way that would allow us to keep our jobs?

The answer is no, unless…

And arrrgh, the thing that kills my adventurous heart. 

I must plan. Plan many months in advance. 

Killing the dashing adventurer in me, with my passport in the top drawer and Instagram at the ready!

No, instead I must plan.

Plan.

So, honey, what do you think about a trip to such-and-such?

“Oh, I’m not sure I have enough vacation time left. Eight days in August? Can we afford it?”

Well, how much time do we have to spend with your family for Christmas?

“Let’s not get into that again.”

And so it goes.

In my twenties, every December, Cathay Pacific would advertise, in the Washington PostSunday Travel section, an unbelievable deal. Get yourself to Los Angeles, and then for $999 you could fly from LA to Hong Kong, and then to as many Cathay Pacific destinations as you could fit in during the month of January. It was an open jawed ticket, meaning you just had to show up at the airport, present your ticket stub (this was the 90’s, so stubs were still a thing), and be willing to fly standby to your destination.

I could easily have taken off the month of January. No job was that important! But scraping together $999? Impossible. That was almost three times my monthly rent! The trip never happened.

And now, through the power of credit and cash flow, if such a deal still existed (it doesn’t, I check every year), I would now be obligated to triple the costs (wife and son!) and then have to leave our lucrative, responsible jobs and pull our son out of school.

Is it bad of me to look forward to my son heading to college, already?

There are people who manage to work around this and have amazing vacations.

I think they have either considerably more capital, or killer planning skills.

And so I go back to obsessing…

If I’ve got a trip planned for Thanksgiving, and it’ll cost XX, could I fit in a trip in August, that could cost YY?

Mexico City in summer? Budapest in January? Why doesn’t Orbitz provide a “cheap off-season trips” button?

I am excited to point out that Chicago’s first round of mayoral elections narrowed the choices down to two progressive Black women, Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle. I have been a long-time supporter of Toni. She has achieved an obscene number of boring but essential progressive accomplishments as Cook County Board President, like getting the Cook County Hospital in the black, urging along cash bail reform, putting tens of thousands of people on CountyCare health insurance and more. This is real work from a true progressive. 

But if Lori Lightfoot were to win, I would not despair for Chicago. Both choices will bring our city into a new world. Both prioritize bringing development into our neighborhoods and reversing the cycle of despair so many underserved communities struggle with. Both plan to break the cycle of insider dealing that benefits the haves, over the have-nots.

I’m also ecstatic Melissa Conyears-Ervin is in a runoff for City Treasurer. Melissa, the only MBA in the Treasurer race, wants to focus on turning the Treasurer’s office into a fiscal counter balance to the Mayor, by becoming the source of fiscal analysis of the city books, so we get an accurate portrayal of city government from an independent source, rather than rely on the Mayor to tell us everything and hope that it’s enough information for a good decision.

Election Day, April 2, 2019 is going to be amazing.

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I Have No Idea What Happens Next

Thirteen candidates showed up for the January 10, 2019 Chicago mayoral candidate forum! (Credit: ABC7Chicago).

There is one thing I can say for certain about Chicago’s election coming on Tuesday: That there will be runoff elections on April 2 for mayor. That’s unfamiliar territory for people like me, who invest a great deal of energy into trying to figure out what’s will happen next in Chicago politics. With fourteen mayoral candidates, six realistically in the hunt to make it to the runoff, and a likely low turnout, it’s almost impossible to tell who’s going make it to round two.

For decades Chicago has been a political incongruity, touting a weak mayor system on paper but living with a strong mayor system in reality. Yet, looking back on history, that strong mayor system has been unraveling for the last fifteen years. Local Democratic party organizations have disappeared, mayoral endorsements have mattered less, aldermen have bucked mayoral authority in Council votes more often. The drip-drip-drip has led us to this moment, where the outgoing mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is hugely unpopular, unable to endorse a successor and a fractured Cook County Democratic Party won’t rally behind their own party Chair, Toni Preckwinkle.

The 14 candidates offer a spectrum of ideologies and personalities. Bill Daley, brother of the former mayor and President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, is the big business candidate, more fiscally conservative than most. Willie Wilson, an African-American business leader famous for creating a popular gospel song television show, is socially conservative, but is totally unclear on any other policies. And then there’s the former police commissioner, Gerry McCarthy; the scion of a South Side political broker, Jerry Joyce, Jr.; the Latino backroom politico, Gery Chico; the Illinois Comptroller, Susana Mendoza; the police reformer, Lori Lightfoot; and the aforementioned Preckwinkle, backed by liberal service unions and the current Cook County Board President.

There is no lack of talent in the race, and every single one is likely to take Chicago in a totally different direction. While I may find certain aspects of each candidate attractive or objectionable, the electorate at large seems lost without a clear signal of who to support.

How do we choose?

Clearly Chicagoans are overwhelmed. Early voting numbers have dropped, possibly an important indicator since early voting as a percentage of turnout has increased with almost every election, as voters discover its convenience. Does that mean voters are holding off to vote until the last minute? Or are they waiting for the runoff election when their choices are narrowed down? Or are they sick of politics and just opting out of the whole process?

I have no idea.

If Chicago does actually have a low turnout, and people don’t show up in droves to vote Tuesday, whom does low turnout benefit? And will it be just low African-American and Latino turnout, while progressive whites turnout in droves like they did in November 2018?

I could hazard some guesses. For instance, maybe it helps Bill Daley and Susana Mendoza, who enjoy higher white voter support but low overall turnout hurts Toni Preckwinkle, who relies on an African-American base. I have no idea how this would help or hurt Lori Lightfoot, who has been surging lately. Polling I’ve seen shows her support higher among liberal whites who might have problems with Toni Preckwinkle. Maybe higher white turnout helps her? But would it be more or less than Daley or Mendoza?

Hard to say.

Meanwhile there’s about sixteen competitive aldermanic races, out of the 50 wards. That’s fewer than in 2015, which had over twenty. And in this year’s 16 competitive races, maybe eight will go to a runoff. Progressive service unions like SEIU and the Chicago Teachers Union are pouring in cash to help their candidates. But so are conservative trade unions like the Plumbers and Carpenters. And of course developers are too. Given all that money, which candidates will spend their money well versus just spray it all over indiscriminate TV ads and direct mail campaigns?

I don’t know.

I’ve listened to consultants in all kinds of campaigns tell me with absolute certainty they know how things will turn out. That makes sense, since they’re selling certainty, and people quickly forget failures when they’re drowned by the noise of success. But I’m counseling caution, and for candidates and voters alike to act on their conscience.

Candidates: Go as hard as you can as long as you can. You’ll never regret taking action, only the ones you didn’t take.

Voters: Forget who you’re supposed to vote for, and vote for who moves you, if even a little. Chicago will change tremendously with the next mayor, and you’ll likely never have another Chicago election where your conscience will matter so much.

Go vote Chicago. Your voice needs to be heard.

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How Do We Decide You’re Enough?

Some postcards I found.

Aren’t you enough?

I don’t really mean you, per se. I mean the plural you. All of you reading this.

Shouldn’t you be enough?

Addressed directly, personalizing the question – I’m now imagining faces and names I know – the answer is obvious. Yes. You are enough. The mere fact that you group of people are interested in reading this is flattering. When you write me emails, or mention in conversation that you like what I’m writing, my face gets warm and I am positively delighted that someone actually enjoys my efforts.

But in the abstract: considering you readers as numbered, faceless masses, of course I want more. I want more Facebook clicks, more email opens, more shares, more you. The more people reading what I write means more recognition, more status, more importance. 

I admit: Not far under the surface lurks a wish that my ticky-tacky writing will find a bigger, broader audience. One that will recognize me as the next, great American voice. One who speaks truth about our world and our souls!

My grandiose dreams seem downright laughable when considering “Middling Industries”. I mean it’s a BLOG for God’s sake. But when considering clicks, opens, shares and all that, how can you not consider the thought? When our personal experiences, our personal interactions are reduced to numbers and metrics, isn’t it natural to wonder, “Wouldn’t it be great if I saw 4,000 shares rather than just two?”

Our social mediaized world has given us piles of metrics with which to judge the velocity of our words. How many people are reading me? Are my cat pics popular? My rant about Trump? Or Pelosi?  Post often enough and you can figure out what’s popular; what people want to see. My Facebook series #wouldyoueatthis has a following, but why aren’t more of you liking and sharing it?

You’re great. But you’re just not enough. It has turned personal communications into a commodity.

Last month I interviewed my friend Ruth Nawrocki, who decided to leave Facebook and social media, because Facebook was, “not actual interaction because your emotions [are] played. You end up feeling exhausted.” She has a point, and I’ve been thinking about her decision quite a bit since then. Why not just quit social media?

I can’t though, because of the kind of work I do, political communications. I don’t feel like I can really afford to leave social media. Too much happens there that I can’t miss. 

But, if I can’t remove the toxicity of social media’s NOWness and commoditization of the personal, what can I do to slow things down, increase my attention to the personal?

Tim Carmody, a veteran blogger at Kottke.org, suggests that back in the 90’s and early naughts the blogosphere engendered a much slower, more considerate environment. While I wasn’t really blogging much then, I did read a lot of blogs (Kottke since 2001, for instance) and I admit, the bloggers and their commenters did create a tight, friendly environment. Two friends of mine, Erin Shea Smith with ejshea.com and Rachelle Bowden with rachelleb.com, have been keeping their blogs since the early naughts (amazing!) and both have made friendships and launched careers because of them.

Personal newsletters have lately seemed to have taken the place of blogs, lately. At least one friend, Andre Natta, has started a great personal newsletter that I love to read, since he’s a genuinely smart guy and just a wonderful person in general. When I read it, I remember why I like to hang out with him so much. And various writers I admire send out somewhat-personal newsletters, like Ed Yong and Tyler Coats. 

Other professionals I like in media and politics, like Kate Gardiner, Ann Friedman and Nancy Kohn also put out newsletters, but theirs bleeds into the professional, including links to people looking for work, promotion of projects they’re working on and in the case of Friedman, an opportunity to subscribe to a paid version of her newsletter that’s even more professional leaning.

I admire their forthrightness, but then, I’m trying to slow things down, rather than speed them up, right?

Video blogs, an incredible way to express intimacy have exploded in this space. Casey Neistat, the king of personal video bloggers, has been doing it for five years now, with 1.5 million views every other day while his friend `, who blogs from South Africa, gets about a quarter million views weekly. There are plenty of other examples in this space – but I think the pressure to come up with interesting content and then edit it down weekly or daily (!!) squeezes out the realness. Even Simone Giertz, whom I really think highly of for her incredible science empowerment of girls and total honesty in her videos, offers a link to an exclusive t-shirt in her most recent video announcing her brain tumor is back. 

If you like me, click, subscribe, share, buy, join my Patreon. Then, maybe you’ll be enough.

Maybe.

I can’t guarantee that I’m not going to ask you to click, subscribe, share, buy or join my Patreon. But for now, I have a different idea. I’d like to send you a postcard. 

I found a couple dozen European postcards from the 1960’s in my dad’s stuff and I also have some postcards of the Indiana Dunes my grandmother made in the 1960’s. So, I thought I’d send them to you. Email me your street address, and I’ll send you one with a note from me. Then, keep it, or write back! Whatever. We’re going to just share and communicate like humans do, when they can. It’ll be fun!

Thank you for reading. I really do appreciate it.

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This is the place.

Our house, before and after we got new siding in 2011.

I live on the top floor of a two-flat on a leafy street, just a few doors from Western Avenue, one of Chicago’s main drags. Chicago’s Elevated train runs behind the houses across the street from me, and Western Avenue has an L train stop, so in the summer when our windows are open, we can hear the electronic “bing-bong” of the train as the driver warns riders to get on before the doors close.

Covered in stucco when we bought it thirteen years ago, we switched it to blue clapboards with grey trim eight years ago, after some of the stucco slid off the house. The new color is still sharp, and makes our house standout on the block, I think. We still have the original, grungy front porch though, which provides plenty of space for sitting on both the first and second floors. In summer nights, my wife, Teresa, and I like to sit on the upstairs front porch, feel the breeze and listen to couples talking as they walk beneath us. 

Most of the houses on our block are two or three-flats, occupied by renters. We’re one of the few owner-occupied homes, so my wife and I haven’t gotten to know many of our neighbors. But the Bakers live right next door, and their two kids are about my son, Nicolas’, age, so in warmer months, they play outside or run back and forth between each other’s houses. 

So much of our lives are centered on our neighborhood within a few square blocks. Nicolas’ public school is just two blocks away. Only in fourth grade, he walks to school on his own every day. A nearby park hosts Nicolas’ little league baseball. I swim laps in the fieldhouse there three times a week. Teresa attends a weekly art class a couple blocks away, across the street from a first-run movie theater. Every month I go to a book club with some neighborhood dads in a bar just down the street. And perhaps my favorite feature, I can walk to my neighborhood grocery store, where the owner every year sells me a trussed up pig for my birthday pig roast.

It’s idyllic and hard to believe that we live in a big city with these kinds of amenities. When we were engaged, we talked a lot about where we would settle down and chose the city more for ideological reasons than anything else, I think. We believed the city was where humanity was trying hardest to solve societal problems, and where we would most likely be challenged by people and cultures unlooked for. 

While we get some of that where we live, I more often just find myself ambling from place to place, getting to know the various shopkeepers and characters of the neighborhood. We’ve woven ourselves into the community, by coaching little league, volunteering for our local public school, making local friend groups. 

Truthfully, we stumbled into our situation. Teresa and I started looking for a house to move into almost as soon as we got back from our honeymoon. It was a long and arduous process, since we had a specific price target and a long list of demands: To be in the city, near a rail line, a big park and with a backyard and parking. For months our Saturdays and Sundays were consumed by reviewing listings and visiting homes. I didn’t keep track, but I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that we walked through forty or fifty homes.

When got to the house we’re in now, it was in sore shape. Many of the windows were broken, it had poor insulation, the garage was collapsing, the house had original electric from the 1920’s and many of the rooms were filthy. But, my wife the architect, after examining everything carefully said, “It has great bones.”

Indeed, “the bones” were good, and the neighborhood was exactly what we were looking for. But I was squeamish because it needed so much work, and if we rented out the bottom floor, we’d have barely over 1,000 square feet of living space. We didn’t have kids then, but it was easy to imagine how the house could fill up quickly.

“This is the place,” our Realtor said, leaning in to me to make his point clear. “You’re not going to find anything better.” After forty houses, he was probably right.

We’ve poured money into our house ever since, and still rent out the bottom floor. We’d love the extra space, but the extra income too hard to give up. Meanwhile our neighborhood’s average income has raced ahead of us as numerous two-flats have been converted to single-family luxury homes. At one point last year, five houses on the block surrounding us were listed for more than $1,000,000. Hard to believe.

The rising prices has changed the kind of neighbors we have. When we moved in, it was a smattering of white professionals in a soup of Latino, Italian, Greek and Serbian families, mostly working class, many retired. 

Before it collapsed, we took down our garage, giving us a clear view of the alley, and people in the alley, a good view of our back yard, where my wife and I are usually found on summer weekends. Frank, an older gentleman with a thick Italian accent and a button-down sweater he’d wear no matter what the weather, would walk up and down the alley on summer afternoons, looking for useful junk people might have thrown away. He lived down and across the alley from us, and after talking with him a bit, we learned that he owned four different houses on the block, acquired through probate court over the years. 

Frank was paleolithic in his attitude. He’d stop and talk about all kinds of ancient things in the neighborhood, and how women should behave. Once, he was walking past us as Teresa and I were working in the yard. Teresa was trying to get my attention as I was working intently on something, so I said something like, “Can you hold on, Sweetheart? I’m trying to do this.” 

Frank, hearing this, immediately chimed in, “That’s the ladies!” Then, moving his hand like it was talking, “Yappita-yappita-yappita!”

Looking up, I said, “Yep! That’s it, Frank!” then looked pleadingly at my wife. She made a gagging motion, I think.

The old ones have moved on or died. Frank’s junk-stuffed garage no longer houses an illicit wine-making operation, since a nephew or somebody related came by to clean it out one weekend. We haven’t seen Frank in years. He’s probably passed on.

I haven’t really gotten to know many of the new neighbors. Most of them either don’t have kids, or their kids are a different age from mine. It’s lazy, I know, but kids are the major way I’ve gotten to know most people in my neighborhood. They’re a natural social lubricant, since kids are able to just walk up to another kid and start playing.

The area around my house is full of this kind of kid stuff. Halloween is gangbusters for trick or treaters, kids hang out at the elementary school park nearby, and going to the little league games us adults horn in by hanging out with all kinds of neighbors. Bring a bottle of wine, some chips and a blanket to the game. You’ll have plenty of people to hang out with.

I suppose none of this is remarkable, you may have a very similar kind of story about where you live. But for me, it is a kind of warmth and inclusion I never anticipated when I was a young man trying to imagine my middle-age years. Growing up in fast-gentrifying Lincoln Park with my mom, or crime-ridden Hyde Park with my dad, neither I, nor my parents felt the kinds a connection to their communities we experience today.

As strongly bound to the neighborhood I feel today, I wonder how tenuous it is in the long run. Will we feel this way once my son moves out for college? What about if my grocer retires? My dry cleaner? What if a new crop of rich idiots moves in?

I feel like I’m in the middle of a good ride right now, and I don’t know how long it’ll last. Maybe a couple years, maybe forever. Let’s hope for the latter.

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‘I wasn’t really an activist – I just learned a lot.’

Embed from Getty Images

Far, far in the back, there’s Lou Fourcher.

Last month my father, Lou Fourcher, passed away after a fourteen-year struggle with Alzheimer’s. Since then, our family has been going through old papers and photos, rekindling our memories of him. Last week, my aunt, Charlene, found a printed copy of this old email exchange between my father and his niece, my cousin, Abby, who was working on a high school report on the Civil Rights Movement in 2001. 

From a small New England town and the first in his family to go to college in 1961, my dad was quickly swept up by the civil rights movement. Although he was far from important, he was one of thousands who participated. Dad response to Abby’s questions remind me of ha many war veterans talk about their war experience – I was just one of many, it was no big deal compared to others. And yet, there he was, doing his part.

Dad was incredibly modest, throughout his entire life. It is as remarkable to read how much he downplayed his role, as it is to understand how far he pushed himself to live in the shoes of others. 

Abby, although she was just sixteen or so, asked some really good questions. I’ve made a couple grammatical fixes, but most of what’s here is how he wrote, eighteen years ago, about his experience.

Subj:    Civil Rights Movement Interview

Date:   1/14/2001 11:55:53 PM EST

From: Fishy333

To:       LAFOURCHER

Hi Uncle Lou,

How are you? I’m pretty well. Anyway, thank you for agreeing to do this. My assignment is to interview someone who lived through an important event in U.S. history, such as the Civil Rights Movement. Mom told me that you were involved with the Civil Rights Movement, so I figured that you would be an excellent person to interview. I will list my questions below and you may answer them whenever you have time. Feel free to omit any questions that you don’t know or don’t want to answer, but for those that you do answer, please write as much as youcan.

Thank you,

Abby

1. What made you decide to become active in the Civil Rights Movement? Was there something that happened or someone that influenced you in particular?

I don’t think I was ever an “activist” in the Civil Rights Movement. However, there were some early experiences that probably helped me to be tolerant and curious about people who were not “white .” My parents, despite the old prejudices of their pasts, were certainly accepting of the very few black playmates I had. Then there was Jerry, an older Jewish kid on our block (he was probably 16 at the time); I remember hearing him telling a couple of us – with anger and tears – how local business people wouldn’t hire him for summer work because he was Jewish. That affected me. Sometime in 1960-61, when I was in high school, there was young African-American man (Rev. Woody White) who had come to our church in New Bedford to be the “Assistant Minister.” He was studying theology in Boston and would come down on weekends. I guess he was the “youth” minister. He won over the group of teens at church pretty well. But one day he said that he and a fellow student were going to picket (or sit-in if possible) at the local Woolworth’s in New Bedford – todemonstrate solidarity with the people who were sitting in stores and lunch counters across the South. He invited all of us in the youth group to join him the following Saturday. I really wanted tojoinhim but I had to ask my parents.Of course, they had heard the news reports from theSouth; they were scared, they thought it might be dangerous, and there were those old prejudices.We argued – I argued – a lot;it was probably the worst disagreement we had had. It changed me. But I was a church-going “good” kid and I obeyed my parents. As it turned out none of the other kids wenteither.

Perhaps as a way of compensating for my non-participation in the Woolworth’s demonstration, I began to think about organizing – again through the church (and with Woody’s support) – a kind of conference on civil rights and racial tolerance. joined with another teenager, David (from another church), and an old and wise minister and leader of the local “interfaith council.” Together we managed to get several hundred teen-agers – Protestants, Catholics and Jews in an auditorium to listen to mostly adults talk about race. It was a pretty good event – lots of good talk.

Perhaps as a way of compensating for my non-participation in the Woolworth’s demonstration, I began to think about organizing – again through the church (and with Woody’s support) – a kind of conference on civil rights and racial tolerance. joined with another teenager, David (from another church), and an old and wise minister and leader of the local “interfaith council.” Together we managed to get several hundred teen-agers – Protestants, Catholics and Jews in an auditorium to listen to mostly adults talk about race. It was a pretty good event – lots of good talk.

2. (I switched this question to keep the chronology straight.) Mom also mentioned that you participated in the March on Washington. When did this occur? What was it like? Who did you go with? What did you hope to accomplish by participating in it? Do you think that you did accomplish your hopes? How does it feel to have participated in such a significant event of U.S. history? Did you hear Martin Luther King’s speech? What was listening to his voice like? Did it influence you? How?

At the end of my sophomore year in college (Bowdoin), I was looking for something “different” to do that summer (1963). I volunteered for a job working with “inner city kids” in New Haven, CT, under the auspices of a big old Episcopal Church. I was not a great “youth worker” but I learned a lot. Much of my time was spent with Black kids living in the local public housing – not far from Yale. There were gang fights that I would hear about the next day; there was lots of tension between Blacks and Italians – the old Italian neighborhood was shrinking… The church had a basketball team that was quite famous – they had won something like their last 40 games. Their coach was this very earthy Italian guy who gained the respect of these young black guys most of whom lived in the “projects.” But for some reason, when I arrived he decided to quit. It became my job to take over the team though I knew nothing about coaching basketball. I was not popular with the team. Nevertheless, a game was scheduled with a very tough team on the lower East Side of New York . I drove someone’s Volkswagen bus and the assistant pastor at the church drove the remainder of the team as we tried to find our way to a blacktopped basketball court somewhere on the East Side. We did; I tried to be coach-like, but the older guys on the team knew better what to do; so I mostly cheered them on. The team lost its first game in years… [The New York team came up to New Haven several months later…and we won.] At the end of the summer, the head pastor (Priest?), who was very active in civil rights, asked me to join a large New Haven group who were going to “March On Washington.” We went by train – it was dubbed the “Freedom Train.” On it were hundreds of people, just a few of whom I had met in passing during the summer. In our car was William Sloan Coffin, a pretty famous minister-activist who was the Chaplain at Yale. It was my first trip to D.C. It was very hot; and there were lots of people; and it was very exciting. I ended up with some of the people from New Haven that I had met, but we were a long, long way from the Lincoln Memorial (which is where I think the speeches were made (but maybe it was the Capital steps…). I do remember being moved by King’s speech (over loudspeakers in the trees of the Washington Monument park). There was certainly a sense of history being made that day, but I was probably more overwhelmed with the size and momentousness of the event than I wasinspired.

I had arranged that on the train back to New Haven I would get off in Penn Station in New York City to go to a conference on Religion and the Arts at Columbia (arranged for me again by the Pastor in New Haven). I mention this because at the conference there were two Black students at Morehouse College in Atlanta who had met some Bowdoin students who had visited for a couple of weeks. They talked about setting up a real exchange of students between the two colleges. This interestedme.

3. Mom mentioned that you attended Morehouse College, an all-Black school, for one semester as an exchange student. Where is Morehouse College located? What year did you attend this school? How was this school different from all-White schools? Which school did you like better? How did the other Morehouse students treat you? What was it like when you returned from Morehouse to your regular school? Were you ridiculed by anyone when they learned you were going to spend a semester at Morehouse? How did your experience at Morehouse influence you?

Lou Fourcher’s Morehouse College student ID.

In the Fall of 1963 there was a whole process of applying to be an exchange student at Morehouse (not very many people applied…). I was very pleased to be accepted (and my parents were supportive). Unlike Bowdoin, Morehouse was on a Quarter system; so I got to be a student there for two ten week terms from January to June of 1964. Morehouse was, like Bowdoin at the time, an all men’s liberal arts school attended largely by middle class students. Unlike Bowdoin it was surrounded by several inter-related schools – including the women’s school, Spellman College. The facilities were not as good as Bowdoin’s; there was less money. But there were some very good teachers. One especially, Mr. Campbell (who taught Shakespeare and took groups of us to movies that we later critiqued) had a great effect on me. The place, in many ways, was in the center of civil rights activities. M.L King, Jr. preached at his father’s church which was a walking distance from the school. King senior was on the Board of the School. Its President at the time was Benjamin E. Mays). I did get to hear King preach a couple of times; I met a young activist (perhaps 2 or 3 years past his graduation from Morehouse), John Lewis, who has been a Congressman from Atlanta for quite a few years. He was famous for being in the think of many sit-ins, demonstrations, etc. Julian Bond. another Morehouse graduate who later became mayor of Atlanta, spoke to us a couple of times. But most impressive were the SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) people who we met and learned from as we joined them on several demonstrations in Downtown Atlanta. Like John Lewis they were the real activists – in Atlanta and across the south. Imagine these very preppy looking white guys from New England, standing on a sidewalk in downtown Atlanta getting taught to hold tight to your fellow demonstrators’ hands in order to avoid the powerful shock of the cattle prods used by restaurant and store owners (and police I think) to discourage sit-in demonstrators. I never got shocked – we usually left the restaurant when the police were called.

Atlanta was going through incredible change. There were integrated restaurants popping up all over, but there were still plenty of segregated places. There was this one segregated restaurant, a very famous place in one of Atlanta’s neighborhoods. It was run by Lester Maddox who was famous for having a weekly “advertisement” in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper that really was a vehicle for him to comment (negatively) on the civil rights movement, promote segregationist ideas, and generally comment on politics. Early one weekend morning several of us, both Bowdoin and Morehouse students, had been told that there was going to be an attempt to demonstrate at many restaurants simultaneously at once around the city that very day. Actually, our information was bogus, there were no other demonstrations. Nevertheless, about eight of us decided that we would go to Lester Maddox’s famous fried chicken restaurant. We went in two cars – the drivers (wisely, it turned out) stayed in the cars; the rest of us went to the main door – but got no further. There was immediately lots of yelling and threats. Mr. Maddox was giving orders. The black help at the restaurant seemed to be pretty well versed in what to do with demonstrators – out came these wooden axe handles – yes, axe handles (big axe handles). We stupidly kept standing there saying we wanted to eat… Then there was this old maid on a balcony across the street yelling out something like “Go get ’em Lester, get those “nigger lovers.” By then we were already backing off and yelling to the drivers of the cars – the restaurant guys were bringing out a big fire hose and one (at least) picked up a brick (and threw it and more) as we retreated to the cars – flying around the parking lot with doors open and us trying to get away…One thing we learned that day – civil disobedience is a serious thing – not a game. I think it was in the early 70’s that Lester Maddox became governor of Georgia.

I never really was able to express what I felt during those times. Later I kind of expressed it with my actions. Otherwise, I’ve pretty been inarticulate about the feelings that I must have had, and the things I saw in Atlanta, the transportation system was pretty much officially integrated, but most white people still sat in the front of the bus. On my first bus ride there I went to the back of the bus – no big deal for the black people sitting there, but I felt like I crossed over some very strange boundary). Well there’s a memory I haven’t had since then!

4. Did you participate in any sit-ins? Where? When? Were you afraid that you might be arrested? Did you know anyone who was arrested? Were you afraid you might be hurt? Can you tell me anything else about thesit-ins?

I sort of answered this above, but… yes, I was pretty much afraid at each demonstration (though I never thought my life was in danger (accept maybe at Lester Maddox’s place). I participated probably in five demonstrations while there. Though I must admit I was pretty self-conscious at this very nice downtown “integrated” restaurant – whenever a mixed group of us would enter it, the place would go silent for a fewminutes…

5. What other kinds of protests did you participate in? How did you feel when you protested? Scared? Nervous? Powerful? Benevolent?

I participated, but, again, I wasn’t really an activist – I just learned a lot.

6. Does your experience during the Civil Rights Movement still affect you today? Do things that happen around the world today remind you that time? How does it make youfeel?

Yes, it has affected me and how I think. I was the clinical director of a mental health center in Skokie, Illinois which has a very much white population about 35% of which is Jewish. Our staff make-up reflected the population (though not our clientele). I felt good about hiring the first black person to thestaff.

Later I was the Executive Director of a Community Health Center [Ed. Note: Erie Family Health Center] (several sites) in a largely Hispanic community – actually there were several communities – some largely of Mexican descent; then there was a large Puerto Rican population as well as many different nationalities from Central America.I felt very good about working well with various community groups, opened our facilities up for community meetings, etc. Because we were concerned about AIDS in these populations, we joined with a new community organization to form a the “Hispanic AIDS Network” which did HIV education and preventive work on the streets (especially with drug addicts). I was proud to be the Treasurer of thatorganization.

Then there were clashes between Hispanic and black gangs on the West Side – they would have battles in Humboldt Park – the blacks came from the south of the park and Hispanics from the north. Our clinic site – the “Humboldt Park Health Center” – was on the north end of the park and it was dominated by Hispanic patients and Hispanic staff. Black mothers were afraid to bring their kids to the clinic because they would have to cross a (symbolic) boundary. I got some of our staff to start planning a new “satellite” clinic in south Humboldt Park. We hired black staff, and finally got space in a school. It still functions.

7. Do you think that the U.S. has pretty much dissolved racial discrimination since the Civil Rights Movement? If no, where do you most often see racial discrimination? What do you think can be done to eliminate racial discrimination?

I think there is still plenty of discrimination. But the worst of it is experienced by poor people. Middle class people are discriminated against (there are still plenty of scared, ignorant people who will respond to people they know little about with stereotypes and anger). But black people (and to a great extent Hispanics) in cities deal with a state of poverty that has evolved over many years in which for example, many jobs were lost because of the closing down of large unionized industrial companies (i.e., good paying blue collar jobs) and economically integrated neighborhoods were destroyed because of the process of integration which brought middle-class blacks out of the poor neighborhoods – leaving them all the poorer. This is the case in Chicago and several of the old “rust belt” cities. So, in some neighborhoods there are huge numbers of young (teen­ age) single mothers, kids still in gangs, many young men in jail for drug offenses, crummy schools, and some neighborhood that are so poor that the local McDonald’s can’t survive. I worked as director of another community health center in such a poor community [Ed. Note: New City Health Center, in Englewood] – it wasn’t really a community – it was a place where I might see (out of my second story office window) a young boy on a bike at noon time, stop for a moment, take aim with a large pistol, fire it at some other kid down the street and then disappear down an alley…

8. Is there anything that you wish you had or hadn’t done during that time? What would you have done differently?

I wish I had paid attention more. Much, much more happened in New Haven or Atlanta – or even on the west side of Chicago – when I was around, but I was often paying attention to the small stuff – what movie to go to, watching the 10- o’clock news, etc…l didn’t really understand that the news was happening around me.

9. How did the Civil Rights Movement affect you overall? Who or what was the most influential part of the Civil Rights Movement in your opinion? Why?

Perhaps it was my age (around 13), but Jerry’s tears and anger at not being hired for a summer job because he was Jewish has stuck with me as much as any events since. The “Movement” for me was some of the people I met and respected. I think it led me to choosing the various community health care jobs that I’ve had over the years in Chicago.

10. Please write anything that you can think of pertaining to the Civil Rights Movement that I have leftout.

You asked some good questions. I think l’ve waxed a little biographical, but I hope some of the historical stuff is useful.

Well, that’s it! Sorry for any misspelled words or unclear questions. I appreciate you taking the time to write as much as you can. Thank you once again.

Thanks for asking. It was fun!

[Final Note: Incidentally, my mother, Barbara Ireland, and her father Paul, were at the March too, but Barbara and Lou were not to meet for another two years.]

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Finding The Mindset For Major Personal Change

Sometimes an RV is bigger than a house. Rob and Susanna’s RV before they left Denver for good.

I’ve become fascinated with people who actually make major life changes after 40. It’s expected that in our twenties and thirties that we might move to a new city, start a new career, or commit to a life-long relationship. But people who manage to make those kinds of changes later in life seem braver than the rest of us.

As we get older, and collect the life baggage we call kids, mortgages and careers, it becomes harder to consider big changes, let alone actually make them. Stability becomes a kind of shield against the world’s ills, encouraging us to do whatever we can to make sure things stay the same.

So, recently I interviewed three friends who’ve made major life changes to learn why and how they did them. Rob, who convinced his wife to sell their suburban Denver home and trade it in for an RV and a year of driving around the United States. Sandra, who created a plan five years ago to retire early, and recently left her lucrative civil engineering job in Chicago to retire at age 50. And Ruth, who, despite a passel of kids in Western Massachusetts and friends around the world she loves, decided to stop using Facebook.

Rob, Sandra and Ruth each made changes I’m not sure I could undergo. But each person says they feel secure and happy with their choice and can’t imagine doing anything different.

Until last month Rob and his wife Susanna lived in a 4,000 square foot house outside Denver, with a view of the mountains. Rob was an urban planner in Thornton, Colorado, while Susanna managed a federal grant program. They lived in a friendly community, and their five-year old son, Rafe, was happy.

But something just didn’t seem right for either Rob or Susanna. “We started thinking from a materialism point of view. Why do we need all this stuff?” said Rob.

Filling a big house with possessions, climbing the career ladder, and living far away from family (Rob’s parents live in far-upstate New York, while Susanna’s live in New Mexico) was just not fulfilling. Sitting outside with a friend one day, Rob realized, he wanted to leave Denver. And then talking about it later with Susanna, Rob suggested selling everything and moving into an RV for a year. 

Susanna was not against the idea. Her job was coming to a close in early 2019. Maybe this was an opportunity, they realized. “I think we were done with Denver after 25-plus years,” said Rob. “It took from the end of June to August 1 for us to commit to the idea.” 

Since the Denver housing market is booming, Rob and Susanna sold their house at a big profit, allowing them to buy the RV and keep their retirement savings safe. They sold or donated most of their household items (“One place had to close for two days to process everything we gave them,” said Rob. “We had enough stuff to create six starter kitchens for refugee families coming to Colorado.) and put the rest into a 10×15-foot storage unit.

“I had 45 button-down shirts. Thirty-eight hats. Why do I have all that stuff? I believe I still have half of them, because I haven’t been able to get through them. I must have had 20-plus jerseys. It’s ridiculous. You collect,” said Rob.

At the start of December, they moved into their 28-foot Winnebago RV, and drove to Albuquerque, to stay with Susanna’s parents for a while. Later they’ll drive across Texas to Florida, then up along the Atlantic Coast, stopping to visit friends along the way. By fall they want to end up in Cairo, New York, to visit Rob’s parents, who owned a dairy farm there.

“We are focused on our son’s life now. Time on organic farms, digging in the dirt. I want him to ride his bike. Dial down the electronics and working on becoming respectful, with more face-to-face time and learning how to do things,” said Rob.

They made plans for a year, since Rafe would normally start first grade next year, but Rob and Susanna are maybe up for homeschooling. 

“I am a fan of unschooling,” said Rob. “I would be stepping further into experiential learning. I feel between Susanna and I, Rafe can get what he needs without the benefit of public education. What would be underserved would be socialization. We might enroll him in classes just to spend time with other kids.”

“There is no set end time on this adventure,” said Rob. “There will be a significant amount of time at the Larsen homestead. And then we’ll go to Canada, and then to Alaska, because Rafe has been talking about Alaska.”

Ruth has two boys, aged 15 and 10, and one girl, 13. A part-time English as a Second Language teacher today, Ruth served in the Peace Corps in Albania and Romania right after college, and ever since I’ve known her those in college years, she’s managed to keep a broad collection of friends from every corner of the world. 

But then last month she decided to stop using Facebook and delete her account. Her reasons why are excellent, so let me just transcribe what she said to me on the phone recently.

“They [Facebook] have the winning formula for keeping you as a customer. It’s not a normal service they’re offering. They’re selling you your own life; your emotions. You’re so invested emotionally: your pictures, recipes. Your life: it’s all there. Without it, you’re potentially throwing away anything you might see again. ‘I might not be able to find that friend again.’ They have people as captives, because people can’t break away.

“But I decided to reject it anyway. I don’t like feeling trapped. In the end, I was feeling exhausted. It’s a series of pictures and it elicits emotions. You feel all these different things: nostalgia, remorse. But it’s all in your head. There’s not an actual interaction because your emotions have been played. You end up feeling exhausted. 

“Then, the people you’re actually with: your family. [The time you spend on Facebook is] at the expense of the people around you. You could instead take a shower, go outside, meditate, cook. It’s not relaxing. It just makes you more tired.

“What will happen if I don’t do it? What will the cost be to me?

“You feel like you have to keep giving and giving. In the end its all fake. Your friend on Facebook feel like they’ve seen you, they know you, but it’s not really there.”

But, Ruth admits she has a few advantages: Her husband doesn’t use Facebook, and all of hers and her husband’s family live within a short drive of her house. Her oldest daughter uses Instagram, but none of the kids are Facebook users. 

When I checked in with her, she said feels pretty good about being without Facebook or social media. 

“I feel better, because I don’t have nagging in the back of my mind to look at it. It’s one less thing on my to do list. I’m not drawn to my phone.”

She’s noticing the lack of interaction, though. “I miss the Mike Fourchers in my life. I like seeing what people are doing, but I’m ok with not having seen it. If I could check in again in five years, that would be good. You could call me or let me know if you’re going to be nearby.”

For Sandra, the decision to retire at 50 was about gaining time for her many hobbies. Originally a theater major, Sandra graduated college and started working in small storefront theaters, eventually helping to run Stage Left Theater, a well-respected non-equity theater in Chicago. But she was always working a waitstaff job on the side to make ends meet, so by the time she was thirty, she’d figured out math and gone to graduate school to earn an engineering degree at University of Illinois-Chicago. 

“My starting salary [out of school], was almost double what I’d ever made my entire life. I was hired out of school by Parsons Brinkerhoff and I haven’t worked anywhere else since then.”

Work was always satisfactory, Sanda says, but it was never really the core of her life. One of her hobbies, political activism, is how I met her over ten years ago. She is also an avid dancer, loves to read, and has a habit of walking all over Chicago, long distances.

“I’m not that into [work]. It was just a day job to me,” Sandra said.

Never extravagant, Sandra lives in a one-bedroom condo that she paid off years ago. She’s not married, doesn’t have kids, and managed to pay her student loans off quickly.

“I have a lifestyle where I don’t care about fancy stuff. I worked at a place where I was paid well and got lots of money. I basically decided I didn’t want stuff,” so she spent a lot of time saving, rather than spending.

Five years ago, Sandra decided that what she really wanted was more time for her hobbies and friends. So, like the engineer she is, she made a plan to retire at 50.

“All I had to do was get to 59 and a half when I could get into my 401K.”

Quietly, Sandra enacted her plan. The reality of it arrived about a year ago.

“Last December, I was talking to my boss. I’d been there 15 years, and he was talking about 2018 and all the projects coming up. I felt bad for him. And then I told him I would be retiring in 2018.”

Sandra’s firm specializes highway construction, and Sandra specialized in roadway hydrology. She was basically the person who figured out if the planned road would be able to drain water, rather than make pools you’d skid across and kill yourself from.

“When I told Dave, my boss, I was afraid of his reaction, but he said, ‘That sounds great, I wish I could do that too.’ But he makes a ton of money, much more than me. I‘m sure he could retire now if he wanted.”

Sandra’s firm needed her, because there really aren’t too many people that can do what she does. A one-year notice seemed about right.

“I gave them a long lead time. But even then, the last month was crazy before I left.”

Right after quitting work, Sandra had some elective surgery to take care of a cartilage problem in her knee. Now she’s using her convalescence to think about what to do with all of her time – for the rest of her life.

She thinks of becoming a personal financial coach. Or maybe taking a part-time job in a coffee shop just to have structure and a guarantee that she’ll talk to people on a regular basis. She has dance classes, and for summer, she’s planning walking dates with friends along Lake Michigan. 

More than anything, what strikes me about Rob, Ruth and Sandra is how clear minded they all seem about their choices. None of them expressed any hesitation now they’re committed to their choice, and all of them described their decision-making process as matter-of-fact. Almost to the point where they couldn’t imagine doing anything different. In retrospect, their decisions seemed obvious.

But their choices are certainly their own. When I told each one about the others, they were all impressed by one another. (“That would be psychologically harder than what we’re doing,” Rob said about Ruth leaving Facebook. “I haven’t totally committed to that kind of disconnect yet.”) 

So, it seems to me that while each person has circumstances that made their choice easier than it might be for others, those circumstances are no accident. There’s a kind of psychological positioning each person seemed to begin for themselves, long before they sold their house, left Facebook or took early retirement.

Perhaps, it’s not the decision, or taking the big leap that’s the hard part. It’s creating a mindset to make those decisions in the first place. 

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The Great And Good Things Dad Did For Me

A movie I made 18 years ago, of a day Dad and I spent in New York City. Here he is at his best.

Lou Fourcher was far from perfect, no man could ever be. But as his only child, I was showered with love, encouragement and wisdom like no other. Of course, he and I had our fights, but they were usually because of my own impatience, rather than something he did.

“He was a man completely without guile or ego,” remembers his long-time friend Steve Wheatley, words that described him perfectly as a father. 

My mom and dad divorced when I was two. It was a sorrowful split, but friendly. Dad moved a short distance away, within walking distance in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. He gave me as much of himself as he could, with two overnights a week in his series of tiny studio and one bedroom apartments. I didn’t notice their shortcomings, because we played and played together with Legos, trips to the park and my favorite, a make-believe game called “Emergency” where I’d climb in his lap, and he’d make helicopter noises as I pretended to pilot him to find a person in need of rescue.

Those years when he was single and mostly poor, bound us together as tight as you can imagine. A cerebral man who just couldn’t figure out how to make money, the 1970’s were slim for him. A big weekend outing for us would be to go to a Sunday morning matinee, which were extra cheap, and maybe to the Museum of Science and Industry for the one hundredth time, which was still free back then.

My grandfather, Charles, with me and my dad, as we waited in Logan Airport for a plane to take us home to Chicago. Probably taken by my dad.

One extra slim Christmas when I was six, Dad told me he could barely afford presents, and definitely not a tree. So, in a stroke of genius, he suggested we cut out our own ornaments from magazine ads, and hang them from his rubber plant with paper clips. Topped off with a short strand of blinking multi-colored lights, I was tremendously proud of the tree my dad and I had made together. Years later, in wealthier times, we’d recall the “ornaments” with gales of laughter. We had us, and I loved it.

Later, when I was eight, dad remarried, choosing a wonderful woman, Penny. She was warm and caring, with two older children of her own from a previous marriage. Dad and Penny also eventually split, sorrowfully but amicably, but for years Dad and Penny loved all us step-children, and their home became a refuge during my bumpy teenage career.

Through the years, Dad, a natural athlete and one-time captain of his high school football team, gently encouraged me to get outside and play sports. A bookish kid, I resisted fiercely, but he persisted. In my pre-teens, he pulled me outside for long walks to the park with a baseball and gloves he kept to play catch. Then, one Sunday afternoon we stumbled on a pickup softball game. He pushed me to join, first volunteering himself to play. I had never played any organized sports, but that game, and the following Sunday pick-up games in that field with my dad and neighborhood kids, converted me into a baseball lover. 

Middle school and high school were difficult for me. Enrolled in an elite private school, and constantly told I was a smart kid, I still struggled in class and often erupted in fits of rage. The elite school setting didn’t fit me well, as I was acutely aware of the income disparity between me and much wealthier classmates. 

My father, and his home with Penny, was where I retreated every weekend, to prepare for the week to come. More than anything, he gave me empathy, as I’d yell, rage, cry or just sulk through my twice-a-week visits to his house. It was a relief from the pressure cooker I believed teenage-hood to be. When the weather was warm, we’d walk around Hyde Park, bouncing a ball between us on the sidewalk. I’d talk about whatever, or not, and he’d just be there. 

We usually ended up in the many bookstores of Hyde Park, and I’d struggle to stay entertained, as dad plunged into the philosophy, sociology or anthropology sections stocked for brainy University of Chicago students and graduates like him. 

“Ooh, I got some good ones,” he’d say, and I’d glance at the long, meaningless titles, wondering how he stayed awake when reading them.

His bookcase was magnificent. Self-built, it was far from artful. It was just really, really big. Hundreds of books, all of which plumbed the mind, the psychology of inter-personal relations, or just something super deep and full of academic gobbledygook. He read them all, filled them with underlines and notes in the margins. 

The bookcase was in the same room I slept in at his house, so as I drifted asleep, I’d admire it wondering if I could ever be so well read. 

Noticing my interest, Dad gave me books of my own. They were often hard, always challenging. Biographies of people he thought I should know and admire. Edward R. Murrow, Saul Alinsky, George Orwell, Phil Burton, Robert Moses. The lives in those books set my mind on fire. They enabled me to dream big, and set my own course for working in Congress, starting my own news publication and believing that I could change the world for the better, just like my dad.

If you knew him, you understood that Dad believed that fighting for social justice was the highest calling a person could answer. The first in his family to go to college, he found himself pulled to the civil rights movement almost immediately after leaving his small New England town. Once, as part of a group of white students who attended the historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta for a semester in 1962, and then joining Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington the next year. 

As a graduate student, he was part of one of the first community health centers, the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Valley Project, in 1971. That brief stint led to a stunning set of photographs he took of people living in one of Chicago’s poorest ghettos, and then a life-long passion for community health care. 

Although he was a practicing psychologist, Dad’s real career became managing community health centers across Chicago, most in neighborhoods devoid of investment and ignored by white society. He pulled me along to his jobs, pressing me to volunteer, where I inflicted patients with my high school Spanish, and learned about a world my elite private school barely acknowledged.

Dad, some time in the early 1990’s, on the back stoop of his sister Charlene’s house. Credit: Richard Carle.

He was selfless in his commitment to work. There were plenty of people that needed much more than he could give, and they were ignored by society, he’d say. If he could make a difference, he would try to do his best.

His passion for fixing society’s ills never included personal glorification or accolades. He was embarrassed to be recognized for his work, and when we was, by me or others, it was uniformly met with, “Well, thank you. That’s enough, now.”

It’s a tricky thing to achieve: a drive for good works without personal ambition. It’s a standard that has eluded me throughout my own work, but one I constantly reference. Dad’s love of people, and his need to make the world better is a thread that runs through almost all of my career decisions.

Dad struggled with the ravages of Alzheimer’s for a long time. The first external signs of it came almost fourteen years ago, he was diagnosed twelve years ago, and lived in a care facility over eight years. When he was able, he and I talked about his fears, and mine, constantly. I loved being his friend and confidante, it was an easy way to repay him for all the great and good things he’d done for me over the years. 

Like an acid test for personalities, they say that Alzheimer’s strips away the edifices, your barriers, as it progresses. For Dad, that meant he just became calmer, and more giving as the disease took away his memory. The nursing home staff told me Dad would minister to other patients, holding their hands, sitting with the anxious. Befriending the lonely. “We all love him so much,” each of his nurses said to me in turn.

In a strange quirk, the nurse who admitted him eight years ago, was the one who ministered to his final hours, and pronounced him dead. “He was a great man,” she said to me as I left his room the last time last Sunday night.

Dad loved jazz, played it constantly, and dragged me to Chicago Jazz Fest and Blues Fest performances. He knew the names of obscure drummers and bassists and would regale me of times he’d seen them at the old Jazz Showcase club years ago. 

But anyone that knew Dad well, knew him for his piano playing. Eschewing sheet music, he’d play his own songs, a unique one every time, because he claimed, he couldn’t remember anything he’d played before. But wherever he lived, most weekend afternoons, you’d find him at his stand-up piano, starting with a boogie-woogie, then a tune that transformed into a sweeping rhapsody with a repeating leit motif. 

His piano playing could come at any time: Waiting for people to put on jackets, venting rage from a terrible Bears game, digesting dinner. The songs were an expression of his emotion and state of being; a way to talk to anyone who could hear.

Like a fingerprint, his music was unique and indescribable. But if you heard it a few times, you’d recognize four or five themes that repeated themselves. Never sad, they always ended up ranging and expansive, drawing you to imagine a vast world of many wonders. After he played for a while, he’d be relaxed, happier, ready for whatever was to come.

There is so much more I would like to tell you about Lou Fourcher. The sound of his walk down the hall, his love of sly humor and his guffaw-like laughter, his love affair with Lake Michigan and bodies of water in general, the natural way he took to a picnic blanket in a patch of grass, like it was the best place in the world, no matter where it might be. His radiant intelligence that was somehow never cutting, but instead managed to fold you in.

I have anticipated writing this memorial essay for years. And to finish it, I feel like I am letting go of him just that much more. Feeling the beauty and love that was my father, slip away from me. 

It is so hard to stop writing.

Sitting at his piano bench, playing that piano with the funky A key he could never get fixed, is how I’ll remember Dad forever. I am so grateful he was my father.

—

If you read this in time, and remember him, please join us at his open memorial service, Sunday, January 27 at 2:30 p.m., at The First Unitarian Church of Chicago, 5650 S. Woodlawn Ave. Dad was also a huge fan of Ruth Rothstein, with whom he worked to help make Erie Family Health Center one of first health centers to apply Medicaid funding to treating AIDS patients. So, in lieu of flowers, please consider making a contribution to The CORE Foundation, 312-572-4549, 2020 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 60624, which benefits the Ruth M. Rothstein CORE Center, a clinic that focuses on the prevention, care and research of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.