'The cold passes through everything'

... and it wasn't even all that cold

11-2-2023 (issue No. 112)

This week

• Last week’s winning tweet

• What are the migrants going to do when it really is winter in Chicago?

• News and Views — On not-guilty pleas, newspaper circulation plunges, the revenge trial in Lake County and more

• What the forkin’ heck? — A strange moment in self-censorship at the Sun-Times

• Blowin’ on the stage — A clip from the hilariously bad 2006 Bob Dylan musical

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• “Songs of Good Cheer” update — A rare and wonderful Christmas song

• Mary Schmich — On emails of the dead

• You have the right to remain silent, but do so at your peril in a civil trial

• “The Mincing Rascals” podcast preview

• Re:Tweets — The winning visual tweet and this week’s contest finalists

• Tune of the Week — “I Can’t Explain” nominated by Cate Plys, who can explain

Last week’s winning tweet

I need a new Halloween party to attend this year, because I don't think "Speedo-Man" is getting a return invitation. — @WilliamAder

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-tweets poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

‘How are we going to survive winter here?’

That quote, from recently arrived Venezuelan migrant Yessika Karolina Badell, was part of a powerful report in the Wednesday’s Tribune by reporters Laura Rodríguez Presa and Nell Salzman. Monday into Tuesday, when “temperatures plummeted overnight to a low of 30 degrees at O’Hare International Airport,” the reporters traveled the city observing the efforts of unhoused migrants to stay warm and talking to them about their plight.

The front-page story tugged at the heartstrings of anyone who can imagine themselves in the position of those living on the streets of a foreign city some 2,500 miles from their home country, where temperatures hovered around 80 degrees that same night.

At the 12th District station in Little Italy Monday night, several people slept on the ground or on cardboard boxes. Only a few had blankets or jackets. …

Two brothers who arrived in Chicago just four days ago got a jacket from some people while searching for a job, they said. They hadn’t worried too much about where they were going to spend the night until the temperatures dropped.

They got four cardboard boxes and another asylum-seeker lent them a blanket. … Like many of the asylum-seekers, they did not know the brutality of Chicago’s winter. …

At a makeshift encampment with over 50 tents in a park across the street from the police station in Austin, Nelys Cedeño, 48, said she had to rush her 2-year-old granddaughter Dayneli to the hospital four days ago because the young girl was showing symptoms of pneumonia. They covered her with layers of blankets, but she said it wasn’t enough.

“The cold passes through everything,” she said in Spanish.

And the thing is, it wasn’t even really that cold Monday night. Sure, it felt cold to all of us — the first freeze of the winter, 12 days later than the average first freeze — but the average low in the city is going to be around 22 degrees in January —

— and it was only four years ago that the polar vortex plunged us into the negative 20s. In other words, the problems the migrants are facing just staying warm and healthy are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

From the Oct. 27 aldermanic briefing:

The good news is that the average of a little more than two busloads of migrants a day arriving from the southern border is way lower than the alarming predictions we heard a month ago:

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker was told to prepare for up to 25 buses full of migrants each day as Chicago struggles to shelter and keep up with an influx of migrants being sent from Texas.

But the bad news is that neighborhood after neighborhood is balking at the idea of hosting migrants in tent camps (see a rundown in “Chicago can be a ‘sanctuary city,’ sure. Just not in my backyard,” a Tribune editorial this week), and first-year Mayor Brandon Johnson is not exhibiting much leadership.

From the Tribune editorial:

(Johnson) is going to have to abandon his typical platitudes about Chicago’s welcoming spirit and face up to the reality that migrant shelters do impact the quality of life of those around them. That entails spending some major political capital in brokering a citywide plan that might actually work for the winter and that every ward can get behind. … But all of this requires Johnson to talk reality to the people of Chicago, either through the media, which he apparently hates to do, or directly through some kind of major address. And it requires him to answer reasonable questions.

It’s been more than three weeks since Johnson stood in front of a bouquet of microphones and answered questions from the reporters who cover him — three weeks during which residents have been increasingly wondering what he’s going to do to make sure migrants don’t suffer and even die on our sidewalks if he can’t find locations for those tent encampments, three weeks during which bitter January has been creeping up on us.

Those who thought this week’s cold passed through everything haven’t felt anything yet.

News & Views

News: Plainfield man pleads not guilty in alleged hate-crime killing of Palestinian boy

View: The brutal knifing was a huge and horrific story, but the accused’s plea was not news. The opening gambit of every defendant in a major case is to plead not guilty at the first court appearance, no matter how powerful the evidence of guilt. Defense attorneys and prosecutors then begin their negotiations.

“Accused person pleads not guilty at arraignment” is not a “Man bites dog” story. It’s not even a “Dog bites man” story. It’s a “Dog sniff’s man’s shoe” story.

News: The largest 25 U.S. newspapers saw a combined circulation drop of 14% in the first quarter of this year.

View: The Seattle Times story noting this drop referred to the peril it poses to democracy itself, which is not hyperbole. Good, trusted sources of local news are fundamental to a functioning civic life, and if you’re unhappy with government now, just wait until the watchdogs go out of business.

Chicagoans are lucky. The online and print news operations are relatively robust and diverse. But it’s a false economy to try to save a bit of money by not subscribing to or otherwise financially supporting your local journalism shops.

News: Robert Crimo Jr. will face trial next week in Lake County, charged with reckless conduct for helping his underaged son buy the gun allegedly used in the fatal Highland Park parade shootings.

View: I view the father’s act as hideously irresponsible, but I want to resurface the argument I made in August when I asked, “Are the sins of the father really a crime?”

Briefly, the son, Robert Crimo III, was 19 in December 2019, when his father signed an affidavit that allowed him to get a state of Illinois firearm owner’s identification card. The father is alleged to have minimized or ignored his son’s troubling words and deeds.

However, the son was just shy of his 22nd birthday when he allegedly opened fire from a rooftop on the parade route, killing seven people. He was no longer a minor and no longer needed anyone’s help or say-so to buy or own a gun.

Putting the father on trial looks like an expression of civic rage — a rage I share — but if he’s convicted, I can’t imagine dispassionate appellate courts upholding the conviction.

News: Illinois lawmakers propose allowing Chicago’s school board members to be paid

View: Yes. Having unpaid positions of genuine responsibility disadvantages low-income people. I feel about them the way I feel about unpaid internships. Having big chunks of time to donate is a sign of privilege.

News: Elon Musk predicts X will replace banks in 2024

View: Musk is nuts.

Strange moment in self-censorship at the Sun-Times

From Tuesday’s review of “The Holdovers” in the print edition of the Sun-Times:

As several of my Facebook friends pointed out, the portion of the word “asshole” that some find offensive is the “ass” part and not the “hole” part.

Also strange is that the writer wasn’t attempting to quote someone else in a delicate fashion. He (or his editor) simply punted on seeking a clean or clever synonym for asshole. “Ass——” causes you, the reader, to think “asshole,” which is very unlikely to send you into a tailspin.

The Picayune Sentinel is not a “family” publication (see, for instance, this week’s winning visual tweet). And I’m not sure I see the reason for newspapers to be prissy about language that’s all over magazines and streaming TV and, of course, social media. When public figures curse within a quote you want to use, print the word! If you are writing and no other word conveys quite the sentiment you want to convey, fuckin’ use it or at least allude to it in an amusing way.

Tip of the cap, for instance, to Joe Scarborough on MSNBC the other morning for referring to the craziness in the House Republican caucus as “a certain kind of show.”

Related: Poynter columnist Tom Jones reacts to readers who criticized him for not using the word “shit” in a quote. (fourth item)

I understand the sentiment. Maybe the old newspaperman in me tends to lean conservative when it comes to salty language in my column. My response on Monday was that everyone knew exactly what word Tapper used without me saying it, so the reader wasn’t missing anything. In addition, I provided a link to the actual video, so readers could have actually heard exactly what Tapper said.

How does it feel? Excruciating!

Please treat yourself to this clip from “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” the deliciously bad Broadway musical about Bob Dylan that opened on Oct. 26, 2006, and closed a little more than three weeks later. The dancers are rolling on stones, get it?

Land of Linkin’

• “Why’d I take speed for 20 years?” P.J. Vogt takes a very personal look at the history of prescription amphetamines in the latest episode of his “Search Engine” podcast.

• “When Art Pranksters Invaded Melrose Place” is an astonishing and amusing episode of Slate’s “Decoder Ring” podcast. “In the mid-1990s, the prime-time drama Melrose Place became home to hundreds of pieces of contemporary art—and no one noticed. In this episode, Isaac Butler tells the story of the artist collective that smuggled subversive quilts, sperm-shaped pool floats, and dozens of other provocative works onto the set of the hit TV show.”

• Busted! Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller takes to task TV stations for amplifying “protests” that are often just gatherings of a handful of people, such as this meeting of five concerned Morgan Park-area citizens. They were “making their voices heard” in objecting to a migrant camp in a parking lot, according to the ABC-7 report, but only because TV stations lured to the site had airtime to fill.

• City of Chicago: “Information about how you can help Chicago’s newest arrivals.” Also see this (but note that distribution day, Nov. 4, is actually Saturday, not Friday):

  

• Former Tribune reporter Kevin Pang and his father, Jeffrey, “offer a wide-ranging and affectionately irreverent look at Chinese cooking. In a voice that’s entertaining and encouraging, ‘A Very Chinese Cookbook’ spotlights more than 100 recipes from weeknight dinners like Clay Pot Chicken Rice and Twice-Cooked Pork to comfort classics like Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup and celebratory fare such as Cantonese Crispy Pork Belly and Ginger-Scallion Lobster.”

• Mark Jacob: “Fact-checking isn’t enough. We need fact-crusading” and “12 questions for radical House Speaker Mike Johnson.”

• Jewish Currents: “What Does ‘From the River to the Sea’ Really Mean?”

• Bruce Weber’s New York Times obituary for basketball coach Bobby Knight: “Known as a principled perfectionist and a master teacher, he was also a driven competitor for whom losing was agony and a relentless motivator whose chief tool, it often seemed, was the anger-fueled rant.” Includes a link to a Lee Elia-like halftime rant at his players.

• Update: Carol Marin won the Axios poll to name Chicago's all-time best retired news anchor in a 61% landslide victory over Bill Kurtis.

• Laughing about this to keep from crying:

• The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square. First, a collection of links relating to new House Speaker Michael Johnson:

■ The Daily Beast reports that new House Speaker Mike Johnson has never listed a bank account on his financial disclosures—and, on his newest form, doesn’t list a single asset at all.

■ The AP: Johnson was the dean of a small Baptist law school that didn’t exist.

■ Public Notice dives into Johnson’s history of being “deep in the Christofascist derp.”

■ Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin lists “the absolute most WTF things the new speaker has said.”

■ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin offers political reporters a collection of adjectives that describe Johnson more accurately than conservative.

Elsewhere:

■ Author and digital agitator Cory Doctorow compares Amazon’s stripping of features from Alexa to one of Darth Vader’s dick moves.

■ The Conversation explores the history of what many consider Halloween’s creepiest song.

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here. And I would add “Kelly Johnson Takes Down Website With Anti-LGBTQ Language” and “We listened to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s podcast so you don’t have to” to Meyerson’s list of speaker links.

Cheer Chat

Paul Tyler based his take on “Ain’t That A’Rockin’,” an unfamiliar but very catchy Christmas carol, on Odetta’s version. We’ve presented it before at “Songs of Good Cheer,” but this was our first run-through for the 25th anniversary shows Dec. 7-10. We had just changed the key to E when I turned on the camera, which makes Anna Jacobson’s improvisational break on the fiddle even more impressive to me.

Come sing “Rockin’ in a Weary Land” and many other songs of the season with us and 450 of our closest friends in the magnificent main auditorium of the Old Town School of Folk Music. Songbooks provided.

Here is the ticket link.

Want to try to win tickets? This year, my co-host Mary Schmich and I are reviving one of the most successful reader contests we’ve had: Tell us the story of your most memorable holiday gift.

A memorable gift can be a great gift. Or an awful one. Your story can be funny. Or moving. Things you might want to include in your story: What did the gift look like? What do you remember about the moment you received it? Where is it now? How do you feel now when you summon the memory?

We ask that you keep your entry to 200 words or fewer. The deadline is the Monday after Thanksgiving, Nov. 27. Email submissions only — use this link or write to ericzorn@gmail.com using the subject heading “Memorable Gift Essay.”

Winners will get two free tickets to “Songs of Good Cheer” ($108 value!), a caroling party at which Mary and I are joined by a band of accomplished local musicians who lead the audience in familiar and unfamiliar songs of the season.

Winners will also get the chance to join us on the stage to read their essays.

Mary Schmich: An email feast of souls

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is her most recent offering:

My friend Francois died in October. He was smart, elegant, energetic, French. A little younger than I am. A man who seemed destined to live to a robust old age. But he didn't, and I was glad that we had the chance to exchange emails--each of us saying thanks for the good times--shortly before he left us.

I've kept that email exchange live in my inbox for the past few weeks, not quite ready to inter it in the archives, where other emails from the dearly departed reside.

Thinking about Francois's email, I remembered a column I wrote in early November 2018 about how our inboxes contain our lost people. Here it is, along with a photo I took yesterday, of a leaf in transition from life to the mysterious beyond;

In preparation for my November birthday, determined to enter my new age with a clear mind, I recently decided to empty my personal email inbox.

Little did I realize that this clerical exercise would turn into a feast of souls.

This is a time of year when the deceased are invited to walk among us. All Souls' Day. Dia de Los Muertos.

The timing on my inbox feast of souls could not have been more fitting.

When I started purging my Gmail, it was with impatient efficiency. Delete, delete, delete. Why had I saved all this stuff anyway?

Laziness, in part. Easier to let the old email sink to the bottom of the infinite pit than to decide whether it should be trashed or kept.

Another part of the problem was a hoarder’s urge, the impulse that convinces people to save plastic bags and rubber bands: What if I needed that Delta reservation receipt one day?

But with my birthday on approach, I felt a need to exterminate the unnecessary, and so, over a period of days, a few minutes at a time, I deleted hundreds, then thousands, of old messages.

A lot of it was easy and obvious. Anything marked “CVS” was gone in a nanosecond.

But before I could delete, I had to at least glance at the sender. Sitting at my laptop, I was taken on a time traveler’s tour of people I love, places I’ve been. Occasionally, I couldn’t help but open the email.

There, in 2010, was my dear friend and Tribune colleague Steve Daley, thanking me for recommending the TV show “Justified” and also responding to the fact that I was in Oregon caring for my dying mother.

“All I really know about caring for parents,” he wrote, with wisdom I still quote, “is that long after their passing (Joe in 2000, Betty in 2003) I do not regret one minute I spent trying to help them, nor do I spend even a moment thinking I didn't do enough. Because I did the best I could.”

Steve died a year later.

And there, in a 2011 email, was my brother Bill, thanking his siblings after we sent him a collective check to help him deal with unemployment and cancer:

“I've been walking around with this check in my wallet for a couple of days now trying to compose a clever and witty, yet pithy, response. My defense mechanism in all this, unfortunately, has been to just duck it. Not denial, just avoidance for now. So, forget pithy, and just know that all of you, along with the rest of my family, are the most important people in my life and I'm more grateful than you could know to have you.”

Bill died in 2013.

In a 2012 email, I re-encountered Jack Quinlan, my boss in my first real job, as an admissions officer at Pomona College. Jack, who was in some ways my surrogate father, was writing with kind words about my newspaper work. He also mentioned that he and his ill wife were moving into a retirement facility:

“So life will be chaos for the next couple months. It's amazing how much stuff accumulates in a house in 46 years.”

Jack died in 2014.

And there in the email was Dave Burgin, who hired me at my first newspaper in 1982, writing me 30 years later to see if I’d finally paid off my piano and my car.

“I still worry over that,” he wrote.

Dave, too, died in 2014.

Ah, and there was Virginia Crosby, my college French professor who became one of my dearest friends, writing in 2015 at the age of 98:

“I am preparing a review of ‘H is for Hawk’ by Helen Macdonald for my book group meeting next week and wish I could discuss it with you. If it hasn’t crossed your path, a quick check with Google might indicate why her memoir fascinates me and why I think you would respond to it also.”

Virginia, a voracious intellect until the end, died at 99.

And then there was Sharman. My friend since we were in our early 20s, with whom I traded hundreds of emails, including this one she wrote after finishing chemo last year:

“I feel a massive desire to ENJOY S*** NOW. Opt for the happy, lighter alternative. Have another glass of wine. Yes, go to the movie, the dinner, the play, the whatever. Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

Sharman died in May.

This email inventory of souls — Steve, Jack, Dave, Virginia, Sharman, my mother, my brother — may sound sad. It was.

It was startling, too. I hadn’t realized how many of the people closest to me had vanished in so short a time. And yet it was also beautiful and comforting. There they were, all these souls, living on in the email.

I created Gmail labels like “Friends” and “Family” and tucked the emails I didn’t discard inside the appropriate folders. As of Thursday I was down to 10 messages.

My inbox was clean. My heart was clear. There’s a reason we have rituals to remember the dead, and an email feast of souls may work as well as any other.

— Mary Schmich

You have the right to remain silent, but do so at your peril in a civil trial

News stories about the ongoing civil proceeding against Donald Trump in New York prompted speculation that his sons — Don Jr. and Eric — and his daughter Ivanka would plead the Fifth Amendment when called to testify.

As you probably know, the Fifth Amendment establishes the right to remain silent and not to be a witness against yourself in a criminal case, and courts have held that judges and juries are not to draw any inferences from a refusal to answer questions or testify. It violates common sense and human experience, of course — if you ask your daughter if she ate Halloween candy before dinner against your specific instructions and she refuses to answer, you are very likely to assume that she did.

But finders of fact in civil cases are entitled to employ their common sense. From Advocate, a magazine for plaintiffs’ trial attorneys:

In civil cases, “the Fifth Amendment does not forbid adverse inferences against parties to civil actions when they refuse to testify in response to probative evidence offered against them.” (Baxter v. Palmigiano (1976) 425 U.S. 308, 318.)

Under Baxter, an opposing party can’t simply point to the silence and claim victory in their civil case. (But) a court is entitled to draw adverse inferences against the party who “pleads the Fifth.” As Justice Louis Brandeis said, “Silence is often evidence of the most persuasive character.” (United States ex rel. Bilokumsky v. Tod (1923) 263 U.S. 149, 153-154.)

So Don Jr. did not take the Fifth Wednesday when he testified, and it appears unlikely the other children will either.

Minced Words

On this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, Cate Plys, Brandon Pope, Austin Berg and I joined host John Williams to discuss trends in college sports, the migrant challenge/crisis in Chicago, the war in the Middle East, the prospects for the Invest in Kids program and the overdue protection of migratory birds flying through the city. Austin and I have our usual disagreement about Invest in Kids.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

One reader objected to this entry and asked that I remove it from the contest— not on the grounds of bad language but because:

It shows the moment when George W Bush was told by a staff member of the attack on the World Trade Center. Over 2000 people died on U.S. soil that day and it led to policy decisions where tens of thousands died needlessly. I find it personally offensive and most insensitive. It represents the beginning of the longest war the U.S. has ever engaged in and the legacy of that blunder that will play out for decades to come.

Voters did not agree, but I thought I’d amplify the complaint for your consideration.

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• I like it when the clocks change because it's a law that feels like a prank. The government's going to change the time while you're asleep. Next month they're going to unscrew your salt shakers while you're at work. — @MartinPilgrim1

• Everyone on this flight acting like they've never seen anyone peel a sack of hard boiled eggs before. — @BrickMahoney

• My life is ruined. I wish to live no more. Never mind, I found the remote. — @oconeebuildr

• No one actually agrees to terms and conditions. We just click so we can make them go away. — @catcerveny

• I don't make predictions and I never will. — @wildethingy

• Dates typically go off the rails when I ask women what their favorite dinosaur is. — @OfficeofSteve

• Me: One of us drank the last cup of coffee and there isn’t any more. Partner: One of us? Me: I wasn’t going to mention names because that won’t solve anything. — @neenertothe3

• I used to work in a water cooler factory. To be honest, we didn't get much done. — @Phil_Pagett

• A library patron stops in her tracks at the reference desk, studies me, and says: "You've gotten a few gray hairs!" “Yeah, I get one every time there’s something I want to say out loud at work but hold it in instead. Oops, there’s a new one.” — @LousyLibrarian

• Not saying my marriage is bad but I swiped left when I saw my husband on Tinder. — @heyitsJudeD

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tune of the Week

This week’s nominator is Cate Plys, a former Chicago reporter and columnist for the Reader, Sun-Times and Tribune. She currently writes the hybrid Chicago history/novel website “Roseland, Chicago: 1972.” The book section of the site is the story of Steve Bertolucci, a 10-year-old Roselander in 1972, and what becomes of him. Readers can immerse themselves in Steve’s 1972 world via other sections following and explaining the city’s daily ‘72 newspaper coverage and Mike Royko columns, plus posts covering Chicago ephemera from the Wrigley Building to a Mayor Daley primer.

Some songs are great and catchy, but only ascend to the pantheon of special because of their hallowed place in your own personal history. Everybody has at least one such song. For my husband and me, that song is the Who’s first single--“Can’t Explain.”

Got a feeling inside (can't explain)
It's a certain kind (can't explain)
I feel hot and cold (can't explain)
Yeah, down in my soul, yeah (can't explain)

But I can explain. Young ones, gather around: The Who is probably the third greatest classic 1960s English rock band, just behind the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Maybe they’re tied with the Kinks.

Anyway, as someone who came of age in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I never thought I’d get to see the Who in person. But then the band released their “Who Are You” album in 1978, not touring for it until late ’79 and early ’80 due to the death of their notorious drummer Keith Moon.

When the May 3, 1980, Who date at the Amphitheatre was announced—one single night!—I had to be there. Nothing was more crucial to my entire life than procuring the tickets via Ticketron for me and my high school pals. Why was it so crucial to my entire life? I thought it was because the band members were doddering old men who would never again be physically capable of performing live.

I was wrong, and not just because a quick check with Wikipedia shows that in 1980, lead singer Roger Daltry was 36. Ditto for bassist John Entwistle. Pete Townshend was all of 35. So no, not that. It turned out to be crucial to my entire life because what happened at the Amphitheater on May 3, 1980, is what made my friend’s older brother ask me out by the end of the month, and later ask me to marry him.

I don’t remember getting to the Amphitheater myself that night. Ron recalls driving there with his college buddies, one of them cleaning pot and rolling joints in a Frisbee set in his lap. My friends and I preferred small pipes, one-hitters they were called back then, and these would have been used in our car. We were all good and ready for the Who by the time the opening band finished. Ron’s group was settled in their seats in the mezzanine. I was heading for the main floor from a seat a tad higher than Ron’s. In those days, if you could get seats in the mezzanine, you could walk directly down onto the main floor. Once there, I never saw any reason not to walk up the center aisle to the stage.

Different times, young ones. Different times.

Ron saw me walking past and yelled. I stopped, explaining my purpose. His friends didn’t believe you could just waltz all the way up to the stage. Being a teenage girl admittedly made it easier. As the Who came onstage—playing “Substitute”—Ron decided to come with me and find out. I’ll never forget pulling him up the main aisle, the Who straight ahead, armies of fans standing on either side of us. At the second row, noting the security guards standing at the stage itself, I darted in. The rows of folding chairs were so wide, there was plenty of room to run down the row. But we didn’t have to run far, because two seats were open, waiting for us.

We stopped. The Who had moved into “Can’t Explain,” and Ron kissed me. The end.

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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