My son Noah had been begging me to go to a Cubs game for several months.  Sunday morning, the second day of the National League Championship Series between the Cubs and the Dodgers, he called me and put the hard sell on.  I had no excuse to say no, except that it was so much easier and cheaper to watch the game on TV like I had done all season.  I hedged and told him I would think about it and get back to him in a few minutes.

For Noah, such decisions are pretty simple.  If you want to go, you go.  For me it seemed much more complicated.  I see the game so much better on my 60” Samsung.  I deal with constant double vision with one eye 20-300, the other 20-25, thanks to six retina surgeries.  Knee replacement, heart damage and 71 years make everything a little harder.

But Noah was persistent.  He texted me, “If not now, when?”  He used my own B.S. on me, and it worked.  I called him, told him to buy two tickets for $250 each or less off StubHub, and I’d meet him at the L station next to Wrigley.

I picked up the three o’clock train into the city.  A father and son were sitting across from me.  I was wearing a Joe Maddon Cubs jersey that I had just ripped the tag off of, and he had one too.  They were headed to the game and had been there the night before.  We started talking like we were members of the same family.  I guess we were.

These days most folks on trains have earbuds on, isolating themselves from the other passengers, but I was in a mood to engage.  A young guy next to me was wearing a Chicago Bulls sweatshirt and carrying a skateboard.  I tried talking to him about this year’s Bulls team.  He looked at me like I was a Martian, but a black fellow in front of me was delighted to talk hoops.  He knew the game, and I think he was amazed that I did too.  We talked about the seemingly brilliant trade the Bulls had pulled off that day of Tony Snell to the Milwaukee Bucks for Michael Carter Williams.

After the one-hour trip to the city, I got off the train and headed for the subway three blocks away to get to Wrigley Field.  There were 200 people there trying to get on a train that could accommodate maybe 100 more.  I squeezed on, inhaling deeply to fit in my ample behind ahead of the closing automatic door.  Just made it.

Lloyd and Noah Graff at the Cubs game at Wrigley Field.

At the Addison station I finally exhaled and exited the train.  Noah was parking a mile away at the lakefront tennis courts, the night’s only freebie.  I watched the teeming masses go by as I waited for him.  There were beggars with their pathetic pleas for dollars to fill their cups—to buy booze I imagined.  I gave to one of them.  Two fellows in electric wheelchairs looked upbeat.  A blind man in a Cubs jersey surveyed the street, crossing with all of his senses and his white and red cane.  Two sexy escorts with skirts wrapped tightly around their slender bodies ending just below their navels added some local color.

Noah finally ambled along.  We bought some relatively inexpensive bottled water at a little Latin grocery, liquor store.  We headed for the stadium to imbibe the vibe and met a cousin of my daughter-in-law who talked some baseball with us and then shot photos of Noah and me on our iPhones.

We entered Wrigley after traversing the metal detectors.  I think President Obama and Michelle were at the game, incognito, because there were four ominous black Suburbans parked next to a side entrance with a “Secret Servicey” looking guy standing guard.  On the way home the four Suburbans sped by us at 80 miles per hour, sirens blaring, headed toward the Obamas’ Chicago home.

We eventually shoehorned into our seats, about 50 rows up behind home plate.  Good seats for someone with some vision impairment.

Andre Dawson threw out the first ball, and Wayne Mesmer, the wonderful baritone voice of the Cubs, sang God Bless America and then the Star Spangled Banner.  I sang along as loud as I could and felt very patriotic and blessed to be an American and a Cubs fan, in that order.  If the rest of the game was rained out it still would have been worth coming.

As I was singing I remembered my mom taking me to Wrigley 60 years earlier to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play the Cubs.  The Dodgers had Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider and an 18-year-old Sandy Koufax.  I think she paid 25 cents to get in on Ladies Day.  I recalled her dad, who was a kid in 1908 when the Cubs last won a World Series.  He used to regale me as a kid about meeting Tinkers, Evers and Chance from that team.  They used to buy liquor at his mother’s little grocery.  My Cubs lineage runs deep.

I loved our seats, not for the view, but for the people sitting all around us.  There was a mom and daughter right in back of us who really loved the game.  They had been there the night before to the watch the Cubs win.  A man and his wife held their two babies through the entire game next to Noah, and the kids never cried.  A very knowledgeable fan interpreted some finer points of the game to me next to my right shoulder.

We had blue towels to wave and stood up every time it got exciting.  Unfortunately that wasn’t that often in a 1-0 game won by the Dodgers with five hits, total, by both teams.  Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers pitched like Sandy Koufax.

But it hardly mattered.  The game may be the “thing,” but the “vibe” was everything to me.  If not now, when?

Questions: What is the best sporting event you’ve ever attended, and why was it the best?

Are sports better on TV?

I lean left politically and come from a family of Democrats, but most of my extended family are conservatives. I grew up with my father’s ultra-liberal ideals based on the most profound teachings of Jesus, and my grandmother’s traditional conservative values based on her moderate Lutheran church’s weekly preaching and her Norwegian family values. That upbringing helps me understand the American people’s visceral attraction to and repulsion by both candidates as I watch the political circus of 2016.

My grandmother’s world is disappearing, and it saddens and scares her. At 19 she married my grandfather when he came of out of the Navy after WWII. She left her family and everything she knew in North Dakota when my grandfather, an electrical engineer, received a positive reply from a classified ad job posting for an engineering position in Cleveland. Eventually he landed a job with Amocams, a division of Amoco Oil, in the western suburbs of Chicago, where the story goes he was on the team that created the first printed circuit boards. He also worked on automating the oil pipelines in North Dakota. He was there when the pipelines were first operated remotely and they no longer needed men to drive hundreds of miles across the plains to manually crank the valves open or closed.

My grandmother, Corinne Halgrimson, visiting her childhood church in Leeds, North Dakota. 2014

Visiting my grandmother’s home today is a journey back in time to the best of the 1950s. My loving aunts are often there, and I am greeted by smiles and hugs and offers of homemade sweets and coffee. Everything is cared for and in its place. At 93 she still irons pillowcases and plans her home’s decorations for each holiday. The Steinway grand piano takes up half of the living room, and the chairs face each other in a way that allows visitors to feel comfortable and see each other well. Her week is planned around church, her quilting group, and the daily letter writing that she depends on now for connection, as her hearing is mostly gone. It’s peaceful, warm, simple and lovely. When I need a pick-me-up, I drive the hour from my home to visit this old-fashioned place that’s full of love.

In contrast, I am a modern Millennial. In my day-to-day world I often feel skeptical and bitter. Like many of those around me I no longer make an effort to wave at neighbors or slow down to let people cross the street.

I think, “Why get married when we can live together?” I have dogs instead of children, I don’t trust anything I hear on TV or in the papers, I work two jobs, resentfully pay for my own overpriced $10,000 deductible health insurance, and my friends pay down student loans for decades and balk at the idea of retirement savings. Many of us Millennials have given up on religion, politics or efforts at community based on anything but drinking. Our world can be very very cold. In this world, meaningless distractions are too accessible and real connections aren’t always worth the effort.

I wonder if Donald Trump’s supporters live in the cold world I often find myself in, but long for my grandmother’s world like I often do. Maybe they long for the goodness of those days so much they’re willing to forgive his many sins on the small chance that his promise to bring back the old way can somehow materialize.

Trump’s campaign resonates with the bitterness in me that’s angry about the changes that have taken place since my grandmother’s time, as well as the part of me that longs for social niceties and politeness, community and uniformity. He appeals to the part of me that says “screw you” to the establishment and those who seem to take and take, that visceral and deeply angry part of me. The Clinton campaign tugs at the hopeful side of me that believes my grandma’s world can still exist among diversity, and that there’s enough for all to go around. It is the side that longs to recreate an even better version of the past for my future children and my potential community.

This election is revealing the intense ideological divide between us, and maybe within us. If we look beyond the political antics and listen deeper, the debate Monday night may as well have been a struggle between the world views of me and my father, and my grandmother, each grasping for survival of their way of life.

Question: Is America great now?

Emily Halgrimson has worked at TMW for more than 8 years. She plans on voting for Hillary Clinton because to her it’s a vote for inclusiveness over hate, experience over fame, an acceptance of inevitable change, and hope for an even better era ahead for all.

At the beginning of September I spent some time traveling in Europe in search of lucrative machine tools, good salsa dancing and inspiration for an enlightening blog. These days the flavor of Europe has a bit of Middle Eastern spice thrown in, giving it a richer color and diverse tastes. The following account will give you a brief sample of the Middle Eastern spice that I encountered on my journey while in Denmark and Germany.

I arrived in Copenhagen on a grey day. I caught a taxi at the airport with a grouchy driver from Macedonia. He told me he has lived in Denmark for 30 years and that the only reason he has stayed was the money, as he dislikes Danish culture and Danish people.

After a wonderful much needed shower, understandably the first item on my agenda on my first night in Europe was to go salsa dancing. I’m trying to experience salsa dancing in as many countries as possible for a new blog I am starting. I quickly found that night’s salsa destination on the Web and caught an Uber taxi. The Uber driver’s name was Islam, and he hailed from Jordan. He was a nice guy and we stressed out together about finding the location of the salsa joint. Like my Macedonian driver, he said he came to Denmark just for the money and disliked the country and its people. On the way back to my hotel that night I had a Turkish Uber driver named Selman who had been born in Denmark. Unlike my previous taxi drivers he said liked living in Denmark and Danish people, though he wished he could move out of Copenhagen because he lives in one of the lesser known, dangerous areas of the city. When I asked him how he felt about Middle Eastern refugees in Europe he said he was conflicted. After a brief pause, he said that it was fine with him for immigrants to come into the country, but he believes they should learn to speak Danish and should not isolate themselves in their own communities. My subsequent Uber drivers in Copenhagen included Mohammad (from Spain), Abdelhafid (Morocco), and Shuaib (I can’t remember where he was from). The consensus among them was, “Money in Denmark is good, but there’s no place like home.” My first reaction when I heard this perspective was that these people should be more grateful for the prosperity and safety they have found in a beautiful First World country. The least they could do would be to appreciate the place. But then I tried to put myself in their shoes. What if I was forced to live in Saudi Arabia to earn enough money to feed my family? It is doubtful I would embrace Saudi culture, even with my worldly open mind. I would likely do my best to find an American community with people who would accept me, relate to me and speak my language. Heck, how would I feel if I was forced to go live in rural Mississippi? Maybe I could embrace the culture there, but I’m sure I would miss life in Chicago where I have spent the majority of my life.

Middle Eastern restaurant in Center of Copenhagen, Denmark.

I tasted my next spoonful of Middle Eastern Europe when I went salsa dancing in Stuttgart, Germany. Stuttgart actually has a surprisingly good salsa scene with places to dance almost every night of the week. That night I went dancing at a bar called “7grad.” I walked outside for some air and struck up a conversation with a tall, skinny Arab man who I had seen dancing inside a few minutes before. Ahmad was 29 years old and had come to Stuttgart from Syria 10 years before—he was a pretty decent dancer.

The dude had a lot on his mind. He was enamored with a blond woman inside the bar who we ogled as she danced with another man. Ahmad said he didn’t go out dancing a lot because he felt guilty about going out and having fun while much of his family remained stuck in Syria. When I asked him if any of his relatives had been killed in the war he surprisingly said that they were more or less safe right now because they had money. But still, Ahmad’s relatives remain trapped in Syria, and no matter how much money they have it is always dangerous living in a country besieged by a war that nobody knows how to stop.

An anti-immigrant poster in Berlin, Germany.

I asked him what he thought about the refugee crisis in Europe, and he said that the real solution was to stop the war in Syria—sensible answer I thought. But then when I asked him how to end the war he began muttering some conspiracy theories relating to Jews on Wall Street. I smiled and said something like, “Hey man, I’m Jewish, please stop with the Jewish stuff.” He kept on with the same nonsense but very calmly, more or less ignoring my comment. I again said, “Don’t talk about Jews like that, I’m Jewish.” But after a few minutes the nonsense ended. He had no hostility towards me. It seemed as though it had hardly registered to him that I was Jewish. He was just spouting some garbage he had been told in his community. He reminded me of Mustafa, my guide when I was in Morocco, who back in 2006 casually told my friend and me that Israel had been responsible for destroying the World Trade Center on 9-11. Both men were ignorant but not dangerous for me personally. On the other hand, when such hateful ignorance is widespread it is fuel for the extreme Islamic Terrorism plaguing the world.

But I digress. In a few minutes my conversation with Ahmad went back to talking about his crush on the blond salsa dancer in the bar, with me advising him about the delicate and strange intricacies of picking up salsa dancers. When our conversation ended I was not sure if Ahmad was more confused and stressed out about girl issues or war in the Middle East. I’m sure everyone can attest to the fact that both topics are eternally vexing. Yet I am happy to say that in the end I could tell Ahmad was at least feeling better having vented his anxiety to the wise American Jew.

Question: Would you like to visit Europe?