They Say “Senior Citizen”—I Say “Old Man”

A young man was walking out of the library as I was walking in.  He grinned and said, “Hey, old man.  Good morning!”

I liked that.  I liked it then, and I like it now.  He made an honest call.  If it walks like an old man and looks like an old man and acts like an old man, call it what it is.

And he needed more than a little nerve to use the term old man on someone he didn’t know in a society that shuns talk of growing old by hiding behind the euphemism senior citizen. 

Not only is senior citizen a euphemism, it lacks punch.  Ernest Hemingway would have fallen by the wayside if he’d called his masterpiece The Senior Citizen and the Sea.  And my mother’s favorite insult— “the old fool”—becomes worthless as the “senior citizen fool.”

The term came to life in 1938 when a Time magazine writer said a California politician “had an inspiration to do something on behalf of what he calls, for campaign purposes, 'our senior citizens.'”  For campaign purposes there was a lot of pandering for the old folks’ votes in those days since Social Security benefits, implemented in 1935, proved to be so popular.  (For comments on senior citizen and a lot of other topics see Barry Popik’s The Big Apple, at http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/senior_citizen )

It’s possible that euphemisms breed more euphemisms.  A restaurant I eat at doesn’t use the words “senior citizen discount” on its menu but does offer special deals on a page titled, “For Our Honored Guests over 55.”

What garbage.  I’m not a guest of a restaurant but a customer, and I haven’t done anything to warrant being honored.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I like plain, honest language.  Forget about me being a senior citizen.  Just call me old man.

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I’m from Chicago—Wanna See My Bullet Hole?

Our oldest daughter and a friend recently went to Chicago.  They saw a White Sox Game, took in a Jimmy Buffet concert, ambled in and out of attractions on the lake front, rode a tour boat and a water taxi, and used the El.  They were there for a weekend and came home without any bullet holes in them.

I mention that because Forbes magazine recently ran an article that began, “Chicago has a reputation as one of America's most violent cities. 2016 was the worst year for homicides in nearly two decades in the Windy City with 762 murders, 3,550 shooting incidents and 4,331 shooting victims. On average, 12 people are shot in Chicago every single day and it experienced more murders than New York and Los Angeles combined last year.” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/06/21/is-chicago-really-americas-most-dangerous-city-infographic/#7e7831e650da.)

But, according to that same article, in terms of shooting victims per 100,000 residents, more than a dozen U.S. cities are more lethal than Chicago.

So, what about that “reputation as one of America's most violent cities”?

I wondered about that myself, as a kid growing up in Chicago.  From books and movies and radio programs I had learned that Al Capone and bunches of gangsters roamed the city with machine guns, slaughtering at will.  But that ended before I was born, and at its worst it affected very few people.  I never heard any adults tell of the horrible old days that they lived through, but the reputation was there.

It was a reputation that I had fun with when I enlisted in the air force.   The military was going through a big buildup in the early months of the Korean War.  Because of that buildup, I was transferred from base to base three times in my first year, and when I wasn’t being moved around, new guys were coming into whatever outfit I was in at the time.

When you met someone, a ritual took place:  You would introduce yourself and say where you were from.  Very early I began saying, after I gave my name, “I’m from Chicago—wanna see my bullet hole?”  That remark always got a smile, such was Chicago’s reputation.

And it drew a smile from a man I met just last week; such is Chicago’s reputation today.

But—let’s have the disclaimer first:  People are being gunned down in Chicago.  That is truly unfortunate, but no matter where you go or what you do, much of life is a crapshoot.  And this post is not travel advice but merely a little help with sorting out what you get from the media about violence in Chicago.

Chicago is a city of sides, and most shootings occur on the South Side.  The media mention that, usually without making a big deal about it, so the impression that’s given is that Chicago as a whole is a generic term for death by gunshot.

The South Side is the city’s largest side.  In the screwy way that the city grew, the South Side expanded and expanded and expanded, curving east around Lake Michigan, bumping into the Indiana state line, and adding on to the south.  If someone hadn’t put the brakes on, St. Louis and Memphis would have become suburbs.

It’s a shame that the South Side gets such a bad rap.  There are wealthy neighborhoods down there, nice places to live, along with major universities, important hospitals, beautiful parks, and the longest stretch of lake front in the city.  But there are also pockets of people who are trigger happy.

Violence has spilled over these days to the West Side.  I honestly don’t remember there being a West Side when I was growing up.  There had to be, but maybe it was under the radar back then.

I grew up on the Northwest Side, the peaceful Northwest Side.  My parents allowed me a staggering amount of freedom (maybe they were hoping that when I went out one night I might not come back).  I could, and did, go anywhere in the city with only one restriction:  Don’t go to the South Side.

That was in the 1930s and ‘40s, and I suspect that a lot of people follow that stricture these days:  Stay away from the South Side.

That’s not always easy to do.  If you want to go to the University of Chicago, you have to go to the South Side.  If you want to see the White Sox play, that’s on the South Side.  One of the city’s famous St. Patrick’s Day parades is held deep in the South Side.

But when someone is shot in Chicago it happens at one spot, and the pavement isn’t slathered  with blood wherever you look.

I didn’t caution my daughter and her friend about safety.  They’ve traveled a lot and have surely picked up some street smarts.  And I didn’t want to get one of those looks from my daughter that said, Dad, really!

They went, and they had a good time.

And they brought back chocolates!

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From the Files: Peregrine Falcon

Every now and then I get the urge to delete files.  I don’t differentiate between necessary and unnecessary files; as far as I’m concerned all files are necessary, not to be deleted.  Some I’m using or have planned uses for, while others fall into that mysterious category of well-you-can-never-tell-when-I-might-need-that.

Nevertheless, I did click some bytes into the trash this time, while saving one set of files that I particularly liked.  They’re photos of a peregrine falcon at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. 

The wildlife refuge is in the Sacramento Valley, which sits under the Pacific Flyway.  The flyway is used by some 2 million migrating waterfowl that are fleeing winter’s frozen north for warmer climes.  Many of them glide down from the flyway to spend winter in the valley, on farmland or in wildlife refuges.  The refuges are collections of ponds and waterways designed for waterfowl--ducks, geese, and swans.

So I had this picture of a bird about which I was curious.  I went into the refuge’s headquarters and asked for the help of a uniformed young woman.  I pointed to a bird in a display case as if to say, that’s it.

“No,” she said.  “That bird has got webbed feet.  The bird out there perches in that same spot every day.  It doesn’t have webbed feet.  It’s a peregrine falcon.”

She was nice about it.  She could have said, You dummy!  Didn’t you look at the feet?  This place is for waterfowl.  Birds with webbed feet.  I had photographed an interloper.

She let me go after telling me the one fact about peregrine falcons that seemingly everyone latches onto:  They can dive at speeds of 200 miles per hour.  Actually, they can go quite a bit faster, as I learned later.

My education in this instance began with
http://www.10000birds.com/what-is-a-falcon.  On this site are essays, photos, and videos “for people who love birds, pictures of birds, and people who write about birds, birding, conservation, and much more.”  

About falcons: “For starters, they have the little notch in their bill that delivers the killing blow to spinal cords.  They have small bony protuberances in their nostrils that baffle air flow and allow them to breathe while flying at high speeds.  And there are those remarkable pointed wings, and their reputation for intelligence not shared with the rest of their former family.  These are special birds.”

But we could have lost them, writes Larry Jordan, in one of the site’s essays, “Peregrine Falcon–The Fastest Animal on The Planet”: 

“This beautiful raptor was almost driven to extinction from the use of DDT, a popular pesticide used in the early 20th century….  Beginning in the 1930’s Peregrine Falcon numbers were reduced until in 1970 there were a mere 39 breeding pairs left in the United States….

“The Peregrine Falcon is a success story brought about by the restrictions placed on the use of DDT, the protection afforded by the Endangered Species Act, and the reintroduction of captive-bred chicks.  A cleaner environment and the success of cooperative recovery efforts provide great promise of a bright future for the Peregrine Falcon in North America.”

Jordan’s article also offers a link to High-Velocity Falcon, a National Geographic video.  This short video about a skydiving peregrine named Frightful is enlarged on in a Smithsonian Air & Space magazine article, "Falling with the Falcon." These two pieces describe Frightful's high-speed dives.  In telling about the dives here, I relied on the Air & Space article.

Frightful was airlifted up to 17,000 feet; she had never been that high before.   Not to worry, for she was with her owner and skydiving partner, master falconer and pilot Ken Franklin; also part of the team was Norman Kent, a world-renowned skydiving videographer.

She was released from the plane; Franklin and Kent followed her out.  She dove after a lure, streamlining herself by tucking in wings and feet.  An altimeter-computer combination measured how far she fell over a certain time. On that dive she was clocked at 183 miles per hour.  On another dive a week later, she achieved a velocity of 242 miles per hour.

Now, about that hooked beak.  The top part--it's called a tomial tooth--and the bottom part fit together. The combination enables falcons to bite through cervical vertebrae and sever the spinal cord of their prey.  

Peregrine falcons primarily eat birds.  That dietary preference tends to upset people who don't like to think about one bird feasting on another.  Well, you can't mess with Mother Nature--whatever works, works.

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