Not everything is about money

     One of the many drawback of living in a capitalist society is we tend to view our endeavors through the lens of monetary profit and loss.  And on that scale, going to Cleveland to do a book signing on my own dime was a bust. I spent $200 to fly out there, sold a dozen books, made maybe $10. Not a smart business plan.

     But money is only one factor, and not always the most important one. 
     Add to the non-monetary side of the tally sheet the  lovely lunch my friend Laura made when I arrived, one we enjoyed on her stone patio, surrounded by trees and gardens. Walking around my hometown, noting what had changed, and what hadn't. The hours of conversation with her and her husband Jim, my oldest friend. Sitting on their front porch Saturday morning, watching the rain pelt the streets of Berea, contented as a clam.
     All profit, though not one that could show up on my tax returns.
     I snapped the above photo in Barnes & Noble at 1 p.m., the starting time of my talk. It might sound odd, but I felt genuine relief, almost a thrill, at the little phalanx of six empty chairs -- such low expectations, and even those were unmet. You had to laugh, and I did. "What matters," I said to Jim and Laura, quoting Charles Bukowski from our book, "is how well you walk through the fire." 
    And people did show up shortly thereafter—that helped, I won't lie to you. Two classmates from high school. A friend from the synagogue I attended, Beth Israel. The sister-in-law of a Chicago friend. And strangers ... six, maybe eight. A mother and daughter. A women sent by a therapist colleague. A father who hurried in, a half hour late after the talk was done. He explained to me that his wife was following the Mary Worth comic strip, deep in an episode about addiction, and turned to the comic page, where the article about my signing happened to be. The coincidence rattled her.
     "My wife said you were sent by God," he explained, in utter sincerity. Their son, 23, ravaged by addiction, driven from college. She dispatched him to get the book. I explained that the book is not a panacea, that it can't help anybody who isn't trying to to stay sober already, that people have to decide for themselves they are going to try to get better and maybe this could help give them perspective and insight. 
    "You might get more out of it than he does," I said. We talked for a long time, after my presentation. Then a set of parents stepped up with a similar story. The child beyond help. Looking for anything. We talked some more. They were so subdued, the bone-deep humility of the defeated. 

     So my visit might help them. And it certainly helped me. I went, not to turn a profit, not just to toss a rope to strangers, though I hoped to do that, but also because, as I tell young writers, if you don't care about your writing, no one will. Sure it's pointless. Still, I wanted to get a couple planes off the cratered runway and into the air to challenge wave after wave of the sky-darkening squadrons of obscurity, bombing my latest little literary vessel. I knew I could go to my hometown and the local paper would maybe carry something -- yes, it was vinegary and hastily-cobbled together, but prominently displayed, and it did get a few people there, including that kid's father. And 30 minutes on a big radio station. It was fun of spending a half hour talking to the smart, sensitive Alan Cox on WMMS -- a legendary radio station in Cleveland that I listened to religiously as a teenager. The resulting turn-out might have seemed paltry compared to the push behind it, but only if you consider touching a person or two paltry. I really don't. I had such a good time visiting my friends that I said my only mistake was scheduling a reading—I should have just come, hung out with them for a day and then gone home. "But you wouldn't have come without the reading," Jim said, and I realized he was right. The motive was commercial, but the benefits were purely spiritual. And who knows? Maybe someday, at another sparsely-attended reading, a man will step up and say, "You don't know me, but my parents met you at a book store in Cleveland in 2016, and mister, your book saved my life."  That would be true treasure though, again, not in a monetary sense. Something that would enrich me even though it could never be spent.

Saturday fun activity: What IS this?

     Okay, this is a tough one. Then again, I'm in Cleveland this morning, getting ready for my reading at the Barnes & Noble in Westlake, and it wouldn't do for you to solve it at 7:01 a.m. and have nothing to do for the rest of the day. 
     So where is this thing? And what is it? I'm looking forward to telling you this afternoon, to explaining exactly why I find it so appealing. 
     The winner gets ... something good ... a copy of my new book, "Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery," published last week by University of Chicago Press. Provided I can get my hands on one. I keep giving away my copies, and I figure, if I can send one to Stephen King, for all the good it'll do (because he's in it) then I can send one to you.
    If you figure out the location of this very enigmatic object. Good luck. Place your guesses below. 
  
     Postscript
     What caught my eye about this artwork, by Welsh artist Jon Langford, when I saw it Thursday in the window of the Thomas Masters Gallery, 245 W. North, was its similarity to the cowboy atop the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I love that image, and Langford's twist on it is an improvement on the original. It's painted on wood, and the opposite side is black with a number of mottos on it.  The piece is for sale for $2500, and if I didn't have two boys in college, I might snap it up for myself. But as it is, it'll have to suffice to admire it here. 

Chasing the elusive Butterfly of Responsibility

     If this topic seems familiar, it began as yesterday's blog post, but when I got to work Thursday morning, the question still hung there, with colleagues from fellow reporters to Mike, who supervises the coffee room, asking me who was responsible. (If you're coming late to the game, this issue began Wednesday with a chunk of concrete falling on a commuter's head). I didn't solve the mystery of why the party legally obligated to make the repairs isn't doing so. But I sure tried. Late in the day Union Station announced it was shutting down the Madison Street entrance indefinitely. I didn't know whether to feel proud or guilty. 

     My wife never learned to touch type. In the mid-1970s, a young woman learning to type seemed to be punching her ticket for a life of secretarial work. I, on the other hand, wanted to be a writer, so I sat in a 7th grade classroom listening to a voice on a 33 rpm record intone, “F F F, J J J,” while dutifully tapping keys on a Royal manual typewriter.

     It also meant I typed all my beloved’s law school papers while she was barreling through the Chicago Kent College of Law. (All save one; I made her find a typist once, out of pure contrariness). Still, typing those papers gave me an appreciation for the law, for its storytelling qualities. I thought of those complex take-home exam questions this week when concrete chunks plunging from the plaza above Union Station drew me into the world of legal responsibility.
     Pencils ready? Then let’s begin.
     1) A commuter railroad delivers passengers into a station it does not own. That station is owned by another, national railroad. But the national railroad does not own the air rights above the station, secured by real estate investors constructing an office building in the mid-1960s. All this takes place in Chicago.
     If a chunk of concrete falls from the plaza belonging to the real estate investor’s office building and hits one of the commuter railroad’s passengers, who is responsible for this tort?

     a) The commuter railroad, Metra;
     b) the national railroad, Amtrak;
     c) the owners of the office building, 10 S. Riverside Plaza, a real estate investment firm called Callahan Capital Properties
     d) the city of Chicago?

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Chasing the elusive Butterfly of Responsibility

     Yesterday's column on a passenger getting beaned by falling rubble got a lot of attention on TV. But what amazes me even more than chunks of debris showering upon commuters' heads as they slog through the loud, smokey, dim stygian underworld of Union Station is the resultant rondo of official evasion so convoluted it sounds like the set-up for a story problem on a law school exam.
     Let's try to state it clearly. Pencils ready? Then let's begin.
     1) Metra runs a railroad that delivers passengers into a building it does not own. That building, Union Station. is owned by Amtrak, the national rail service. But Amtrak does not own the air rights, which it sold to 10 S. Riverside Plaza Ltd. when a 21-story office block was constructed above their tracks in the mid-1960s.
     If a piece of plaza dislodges itself from the underside of 10 S. Riverside Plaza and hits a Metra passenger walking through the north platform of Amtrak's Union Station, who is actually responsible for the tort? Metra, which ferries people into harm's way? Amtrak, which owns the building they are conveyed into? 10 S. Riverside Plaza, which runs above the people and the building, and is the source for crumbling concrete being subjected to the laws of gravity if not the laws of the state of Illinois?  

      Is it a) Metra; b) Amtrak; c) 10 S. Riverside; d) the injured passenger, or e) the city of Chicago?
     A toughie, right?
     We know how Metra feels ("Sorry, not my table.") And we how Amtrak feels ("Sorry, not my table.") While I had a good guess about how 10 S. Riverside Plaza—or more precisely, its owner, Callahan Capital Properties—feels, I didn't want to put words in their mouths.
     I called Noah Gens, general manager of building operations for 10 S. Riverside Plaza, and asked him, or more precisely, his voicemail: If you are responsible for this, as Amtrak says you are, then why aren't you fixing  the hazard that you are responsible for fixing?
     He did not, as I expected, leap to reply, perhaps adhering to the If-I-ignore-the-problem-it'll-go-away mentality that is serving Metra and Amtrak so well.
     Amtrak meanwhile, on Wednesday, offered this bit of enlightenment, which I will share in full since, hell, this is a blog:

Amtrak statement:Amtrak is working with partners at Chicago Union Station to ensure a safe environment for all passengers. While it is the responsibility of the third-party property owners to maintain the property over the tracks, Amtrak has brought in an independent contractor to continue inspections and reinforce overhead protections, where appropriate, to immediately secure the area for the safety of passengers and the general public. During this time, three tracks remain out of service however we’re working to minimize delays. Amtrak has invested considerable resources to address these issues in the past and will continue to work with property owners, the City, and Metra to do so in the future. If third-party property owners fail to inspect and maintain the property over the tracks, Amtrak will take appropriate steps to ensure public safety, including taking legal action. In a similar case in Chicago, Amtrak and Chicago Union Station invested more than half a million dollars in repairs in the interest of public safety.

     Which I think I was supposed to be grateful to receive. But only lead to more questions, in my case:

Thanks though I'm confused. If it's their responsibility, then why aren't they taking care of it? If it isn't your responsibility, then why are you taking care of it? Any plans to sue them? It is, after all, their responsibility, not yours. Just curious.NS

     This lead to a phone call which, alas, was taken off the record after an on-the-record long sigh and a rueful chuckle on Amtrak's part. I learned the word "plenum" which is defined as "a space completely filled with matter" which I think, in this case, is a fancy term for "the plaza above the tracks."
     I was also directed to a Sun-Times story from last year which was supposed to enlighten me, but actually only made the subject even murkier, as it is about Amtrak suing, not 10 S. Riverside Plaza, but the City of Chicago for not taking care of the plaza since the city supposedly assumed responsibility for the task in 1980?
     Huh? The city? Where did they come from? The city can't be the mystery "third-party property owner" Amtrak is referring to; it doesn't own it.

     Though I'm not saying the answer is "e." Frankly, I don't know what the answer is. Maybe nobody does. Though for all practical purposes, the answer is "d," the passenger, who is basically forced to run a gantlet of hazards at Union Station—cascading liquids one prays are water, resultant ice from those liquids, crumbling pillars, walls and ceilings, construction equipment and scaffolding and, oh yeah, trains.
    Okay, enough for today. We'll put on our pith helmet, grab our butterfly net, and search for the elusive Butterfly of Responsibility again tomorrow, applying ourselves at both Rahm Emanuel's Hall of Mirrors, and the money matterhorn that is Callahn Capital Properties, a real estate private equity firm which seems to take great pride in the 160 million square feet of property it owns across the country. One assumes they also take pride in fulfilling their legal obligations to maintain that huge portfolio of profitable property so it doesn't fall down on people's heads. 

     But we'll let them explain that themselves.  If we can find them. And if they'll talk. Two big "ifs."

Union Station is falling down on commuters' heads

     One interesting aspect of this story was how I shifted from bystander to reporter. I gathered the concrete, with the man holding them, thinking they should be preserved, for the young woman who was hit. And I took a picture of the chunks, thinking I didn't want to hang onto them. But the woman was in the background, and I angled the shot to include her. I still wasn't quite in the reporter mode. I followed her and my wife back into the train car, said some reassuring words, then left with my wife.
    I got maybe 10 feet, realized this all should go in the paper, then doubled back and got the victim's name. 
     To be honest, even later, back at the office, I wondered whether I was blowing this out of proportion because I happened to be there; maybe this wasn't news, but just an incident that occurred in my vicinity.  But it seemed more real than riffing on Donald Trump's latest. Every TV station in town leapt to cover the story, so I wasn't alone in finding importance here. It felt good, catching the 9:45 to Northbrook after staying late, to see Metra had closed down the track we were on. That might not have happened had it not been in the paper.

     Union Station is dangerous. The place is falling apart in chunks, showering debris on commuters hurrying through its dim, decaying bowels. People get hurt.
     At least one person got hurt Tuesday. The Metra Milwaukee North line had just arrived on track 9 at 8:37 a.m. Passengers poured out to begin the loud, slow shuffle toward the Madison Street exit. Several pounds of concrete, blackened by soot, fell from the ceiling. A piece struck Hilda Piell, 48, of Northbrook, atop the head, fracturing her skull. She let out a cry and doubled over in pain.
      A smaller chunk also struck my wife, Edie, standing in front of Piell. But it glanced off her back, and she wasn’t badly hurt.
     “I thought somebody smashed me with their bag,” Edie said. “It was the debris that hit me, really hard. I turned around, thought maybe she had dropped her bag. There was still more stuff falling down.”
     I was next to my wife, lost in the commuter bubble, wearing Bose noise-canceling headphones. But I felt a spray of gravel and noticed Edie was gone, so I turned to see a woman crying, my wife comforting her, commuters flowing around. I yanked off the headphones; the roar of the station turned to a howl...

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Where's H.L. Mencken when we need him?

H.L. Mencken

     As Donald Trump, the most idiotic and unfit man to run for the American presidency in living memory, deforms our political discourse, it can be a comfort to remind ourselves that imbecility is nothing new, but has a long, rich tradition in American politics. And no voice more clearly outlined what he called the "booboisie" than H.L. Mencken, whose 136th birthday was Monday. 

     He injected his venom into the relatively benign figure of Warren G. Harding. What would he have made of a poisonous sac of mendacious malice like Donald Trump? One likes to think he'd dice Trump into cubes. But given the way Trump, like the Terminator, can be blown apart by criticism and censure and the mercury drops of his solipsistic essence just reconstitute, the red eye blinks to life, he pulls himself to his feet and continues on his inexorable march to the White House. 

    This originally ran in 2006.

     Anniversary stories are lazy journalism. Every day is the 75th anniversary of this or 25 years since that. Births and battles, deaths and discoveries. In a dynamic world where so much is new and fascinating, it seems shameful to turn your back on the thrilling present and sit around regurgitating the well-chewed past, working up an air of false wonder that it has been 100 years since Mr. Fig met Mr. Newton.
     But anniversary stories do serve a twofold purpose. First, they remind us of the passage of time. The 30th anniversary of the Queen song "Bohemian Rhapsody" might not have meant much to you. But as a guy who twisted crepe paper, decorating a gym, to the song when it was new, it was bittersweet to realize how much of my life — the good part, I suppose — has slipped away.
     Second, they do inform certain people of what they may have missed. As routine as those Dec. 7 Pearl Harbor commemorations are, every year there must be a new crop of youngsters who say, "Gee, Dad, did you realize the people who make Pokemon also bombed our ships?"

HE SAW US AS THE IDIOTS WE ARE

     On the train Wednesday night, a neighbor asked, "How's the column going?"
     "Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the death of H.L. Mencken," I replied, rather literally. "I thought I would write about him."
     He looked at me blankly.
     "Who's Mencken?" he said.
     Sigh.
     Henry Louis Mencken, the bard of Baltimore, the American Anti-Christ, was the most famous newspaperman of the 20th century, bar none. In the 1920s, the nation hung on his biting, acerbic observations in a way not seen before or since. In a profession where the work is by definition disposable, where little we do holds interest for a week, never mind a year, Mencken's words have endured, and are still sharp, 50 years after his passing and 80 after his heyday.
     Read Mencken on government:
     "Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right."
     It could have been written yesterday, in response to the Alito hearings. 

     Read Mencken on faith:
     "The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion's ally, magic. It is impossible to imagine this world being really civilized so long as so much nonsense survives. In even its highest forms religion embraces concepts that run counter to all common sense."
     Who has the guts to write that kind of thing today? No matter what topic a writer tackles, odds are Mencken was already there, and did a better job. Feel like complaining about telephones?
     "The thing, indeed, becomes an unmitigated curse," he wrote in "The Telephone Menace" in 1927. "The telephone has become as great a boon to bores as the movies are to morons. . . . What is needed is a national secret organization, with members bound by a bloody oath to avoid telephone calls whenever possible and to boycott all persons who make them unnecessarily."
     That secret group is needed now more than ever.
     Quoting Mencken is addictive, and I have to stop. He was no knee-jerk critic — he wrote in praise of his favorite composers, writers, artists, and pioneered study of the American language. But his lasting contribution was to hold up a mirror to the United States in all its naked idiocy. Not only has Mencken not been topped, but in our culture of victimhood and complaint, we have slipped into a state of permanent babyhood where any extreme statement leads to demands for apology and censure. This week, a young columnist at the Los Angeles Times began his column, "I don't support our troops," and though the rest of the column went on to back our soldiers in ways sunshine patriots forget to do — calling for improved benefits and such — his tart opening sentence brought howls for his head. Mencken is still current because, alas, we have not changed.
         —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 27, 2006

Remembering Professor Paul Green

Paul Green, left, at the City Club, 2012

 
     People die. But the spirits that occupied those perishable bodies live on, in the memories their friends, loved ones and associates who remember them.
     I remember Prof. Paul Green, who died Saturday at 73. The dean sine pari of political scholarship in Chicago for years, teacher, writer, oft-quoted source, public speaker, serving a key role at City Club luncheons, where he was chairman, handling the delicate task of deftly stage-managing the programs and politicians, collecting questions and delivering them, while puckishly deflating folly, correcting error, and adding a running commentary of his own that was frequently more valuable than what was being said by the speaker, at least when that speaker was me.
    People also live on in their acts of kindness. Paul Green, director of the Institute for Politics and Arthur Rubloff professor of Policy Studies at Roosevelt University, was the fire axe behind glass for working journalists — or again, at least for me, I can't speak for the others, but I assume I was not alone. Paul knew the answers, and he would guide you through understanding what he already knew. He was patient. He was available. He was modest— sometimes he received credit. Sometimes his insight was passed along as a particularly astute observation of my own. 
     And for those of us lucky enough to write books, we also can live on in our words committed to print. Sunday I took down my well-thumbed copy of The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition, edited by Paul Green and Melvin G. Holli, and Green's insight lived again. 
    I re-read his biography of Anton Cermak, who walked Chicago's streets once more under Green's concise description, his "large and heavy-set physique coupled with his capacity for anger," a poor public speaker almost taking pride in his coarseness. 
   "Yet this man who trusted few people, who was not a good mixer or back-slapper, and who generated loyalty through ethnic attachments and shred political deals emerged as boss of Chicago," Green writes. "Why? The simple truth is that Anton J. Cermak was a political survivor who eventually outlasted his old opponents and outsmarted his new ones."  
     That last line might serve for Green. Though he had no opponents, he had smarts in abundance and outlasted half a dozen mayors he wrote about.
    In the conclusion of the book, Green offers an observation that our current mayor would have been well-served to bear in mind.
     "No mayor has been able to bring true reform to the city," he writes. "At the same time, no word in Chicago history has had more meanings, more champions, and more causes, than reform. From Medill to Washington, no mayor has run for office without espousing major reforms to improve city life. However once in office, Chicago's chief executives have found that most of their constituents were not 'ready' to replace power politics with reform politics." 
    So it didn't start with Rahm Emanuel promising to fix the system and ending up being fixed by it. 
    But not to let the politics he loved overshadow the man loved by so many. To return to his essay on the only foreign born mayor Chicago has ever had:
    "Cermak was a winner," Green concludes. "He demonstrated that if you were smart enough, tough enough and lucky enough, you could have it all in Chicago politics." 
     I did not know Paul Green well enough to know whether he indeed "had it all." But he had a lot, and was certainly a winner who had something that few politicians ever possess: the affection and respect of his contemporaries.     
    "Paul was loyal and grateful," Jay Doherty, president of the City Club, said Sunday. "Fun to be with. He will be sorely missed."
    Yes he will. There will be a tribute held in October, date to be announced, at Maggiano's of course. It will certainly lack the wit and sparkle found in abundance at meetings where Paul Green was present in person. But we will invoke his spirit to fill the void as best as we can. 

     To see Paul Green in action, go to the 27 minute mark of my 2012 talk before the City Club.