Last Sunday, my wife, our daughter and I hitched our bikes to our car, drove toward downtown and parked just across from MacArthur Park, otherwise known as Langer’s Deli adjacent.
Before Gilberto Escobar, the head baker at Bibi’s Bakery and Cafe, starts preparing the pita, cinnamon rolls, challah or anything else that comes out of the kosher bakery’s ovens, first he has to get through what he called the hardest part of his job.
Look up the term “unintended consequences” and you’ll find an entire school of thought on the subject. According to one source, consequences of this sort can be classified as positive, negative or, oddly denoted, perverse. How wonderful are those moments when a new discovery emerges from a serendipitous mistake, like the discovery of penicillin in healing the sick, or the discovery of aspirin to help prevent heart attacks. So many lives have been saved from blunders and mishaps; there is a holiness in this type of discovery.
I had to look inside myself, which was kind of like looking into my high school locker: moldy half-eaten sandwich, a few loose Starburst candies, heaps of notebooks and burrito-stained gym clothes obscuring the few things of value. Sure, there’s a book of Sylvia Plath poems and a valid bus pass, but good luck finding them while avoiding that festering tuna salad from yesteryear.
When I read last week’s cover story (“An Indelible Film, ‘Shoah’ Also Reflects an Extraordinary Artist,” April 13), I was reminded of an incident in high school more than 20 years ago.
My first grandchild drew his first breath in a birthing clinic in Frankfurt, Germany. Just three weeks earlier, he had been on stage at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
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