Flashback 2012: UL fights fires with science

Ready to burn: a bedroom at UL in a house about to be torched.

     A reader who works at UL, the former Underwriters Laboratories, commented on a column, and I thought I would share the visit I made to UL; a habit of mine, probably a bad one, of pushing my stuff on strangers. But as I tell young writers, if you don't care about your work, then nobody does. It didn't matter; I found I hadn't posted it. Let's correct that. Not many reporters get into UL; I lucked out. A neighbor who worked there was telling me that UL would be burning down a few houses the following week, and I asked, "Can that process be observed?"  She managed to get me in, but it was a near thing, and I could tell UL is one of those organizations that shrinks from the public gaze. I'm not sure why. Maybe they're just terrible at publicity, a common ailment.

     The fire in the house at 333 Pfingsten Rd. in Northbrook started on a sofa in the living room. In minutes, the room was engulfed in flames, the smoke detectors bleating out their alarm, unheeded.
     No one called the fire department—indeed, firefighters were already there, nearly a dozen, from departments across the country, watching the progress of the blaze on television monitors in a nearby room.
     The world headquarters campus of UL—formerly Underwriters Laboratories—is at 333 Pfingsten, the house on fire is one of two homes built side-by-side within UL's Building 11, an enormous hangar, 120 feet square.
     The false ceiling is the largest land-based elevator in the world, raised and lowered by four enormous hydraulic cylinders, one at each corner, to test the ideal height of sprinkler systems and see if they can put out burning roomfuls of car dashboards or barrels of whiskey (or, memorably, rolls of toilet paper, the charred, soggy remains of which took two days to clean up using front-end loaders). The ventilation system is so powerful it can capture the black smoke pouring out of a house aflame and scrub it clean by actually reburning the smoke. Fresh air is pumped back in to keep house fires from sucking out all the oxygen in the room.
     UL runs more than 100,000 tests a year on 19,000 products from toasters to X-ray machines at 68 facilities around the world. Founded in 1894, with 1,700 employees in Northbrook, UL nevertheless is one of the lower profile Chicago-based businesses.
     "Most of my neighbors have no idea we're out here," said John Drengenberg, Consumer Safety Director at UL.
     In this test, UL has been investigating firefighting procedures, funded by FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.
     "What we're researching is the best way to ventilate the fire," Drengenberg said. "This is focused not on consumers, but on firefighters. How can they best do their job, how can they best keep their men safe?"
     Residential fires have declined but firefighter injuries have not, and the theory is outdated techniques might be to blame. Under scrutiny in today's test is the practice of chopping holes in the roof to let out heat.
     "That was the best way at one time—it may not be the best way today, and the reason is that so many materials in your home are synthetic," Drengenberg said. "The backing on your carpet is reconstituted soda bottles. You've got synthetics on your drapes, your furniture. They're infinitely more flammable than cotton, silk or leather, because they're oil-based."
     In decades past, homeowners were told they had 17 minutes to get out after a fire started. Now they have three, four minutes.
     Gathered in an observation room are firefighters from Chicago, the suburbs, New York and Cleveland, plus representatives from federal agencies and colleges.
     "The fuel has changed, construction has changed, our mindset has not," said Frank Rodgers, district chief of the Morton Grove Fire Department.
     Eight minutes after the fire is set, the house's front door is opened, as if firefighters were entering. Black smoke pulses from under the lintel. Two firefighters—UL has its own full-time fire department —advance with a hose. Meanwhile, on the roof, a 4-by-4 hatch is opened—as if a hole were being chopped—and water is shot through. Sensors measure temperature, smoke density.
     The fire is put out quickly—it will be a longer process to repair the damage so the house is in condition to be burned again. Tests run through the end of February.
     While some firefighters present are eager to take the results back to their departments, UL will carefully study the results before issuing an official report.
     "We still have to analyze the data," Drengenberg said.
     "Since everything in the fire service has been largely based on tradition, now it's more science-based, but before they accept any new options, they want to see the data," said Daniel Madrzykowski, a fire protection engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "The thinking is, 'This isn't how we've always done it, so why should we change?' And that's really the importance of all these tests."

       —Originally published in the Sun-Times Jan. 25, 2012

Texas Notes: Virtue Signaling

     Our regular Saturday report from EGD Austin Bureau Chief, Caren Jeskey.

 “We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”                               ― Immanuel Kant

     I once spent time on a tobacco farm in a small town in Kentucky. The land owners, rich and humble, were still overseers. The migrant workers lived in a large dorm-like building with beds, a kitchen and bathrooms. The beds were spaced apart for privacy, but there were no room dividers. It was very clean, temperate and well appointed yet it was still just a giant room where grown men had to live together for meager wages. Couldn’t the landowners have truly shared their wealth with the men who did dangerous and back-breaking work every day? What if they'd each had a small home where brothers or friends could be roommates, and spouses and children could come and join them and wages to support a family? Wouldn't this be more humane?
     The land owner told me a story. One of the workers came from Guanajuato Mexico to work on the farm and quickly found his new job to be untenable. I was young and very fit back then and helped plant one day, it was brutal. This young man was so distraught that he packed his bags and left after just a few days. He was walking down the road trying to get back home to Mexico when the landowners and his brother, also a worker on the farm, drove down and found him. The owners escorted him back home via airplane and spent some time with his family. This surely created a tighter bond and more trust between the owners and this family of workers. The land owners did their best to be good people; however, they were in an industry that included marginal employment of a corral of men hired on as workhorses, and it just didn’t sit quite right.
     Yes, we can have industry and hire workers. No, we cannot sit in ivory towers like Jeff Bezos (worth an estimated $178.4 billion) is doing today while his Whole Food workers are expected to have face time with hundreds of potentially COVID ridden members of the public each day. One person should not possess such wealth and if they do, they should not be allowed to exploit others to keep their deep pockets from tearing.  

      My Busia (great grandma) used to tell me to “be kind to everyone.” Her daughter, my Grandma Marie, also showed kindness to strangers around every corner. My Grandma Olive always had a smile and a joke, and I don’t think I ever heard her say an unkind word about another human being. My parents taught me about the value of justice since I was a young child, and tried to give me diversity of experience. They chose socially redeeming work when they could, and showed me the value of integrity and honesty in less-redeeming work. I believe that these messages have molded me into a person who cares about others. I have not always been a good person to those I love (including myself) and I have had relationship challenges like everyone else. I knew, though, that I (must always strive to be more balanced in order to be a better member of society. I now seek to have harmony across all boards and minimize conflict when I can. I admit when I am wrong to the best of my ego’s ability, and say I am sorry when I need to. I will continue to use my voice and take actions to contribute to social justice. 

Our Present Image (detail) by David Alfaro Siqueiros (MoMA)

  In my estimation virtue signaling, if honest, is a proper use of one’s voice. Had I not heard stories of the importance of practicing ethical humanism as a child, had I not witnessed my family doing so, who would I be today? Living in the South has provided me with a brand new challenge to test my mettle. For the first time in my life I find that I have right-leaning, Trump supporting, all lives matter believing (of course they do, but that misses the point of striving for justice for all), non mask-wearing, anti-vaxxers— some with ingrained white supremacist beliefs— in my life. Shouting and screaming at them won’t get us anywhere, from what I have seen, but patient discourse and modeling just might. Let’s keep holding out for hope.

     “Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.”                                                                            ― Kofi Annan

 

Douglas statue flap: ‘A lot of catching up to do’

Sherry Williams

     Unlike you, I’ve actually been to the Stephen Douglas Tomb at 35th and Cottage Grove. Three years ago, at the invitation of Sherry Williams, president and founder of the Bronzeville Historical Society. The BHS had stashed its collection in the tombkeeper’s house and was being kicked out — by the Illinois Historical Preservation Agency, ironically enough.
     I mean, I assume you haven’t been there. Maybe you have, on a school field trip or something. So I apologize. It’s bad practice to make broad statements about groups of people you don’t know. A kind of prejudice, really, no matter who does it.
     Where was I? The Douglas Tomb. Not a must-see spot. Not exactly the Bean. As a fan of historic preservation, I was sorry to see the society’s collection, meager though it is, without a home.
     Which tips my hand regarding the statue. There’s no question Douglas was a bad guy — Williams called him “despicable.” He not only owned slaves but treated them so badly that other slaveholders complained, which is really saying a lot. Douglas was something worse than a sincere advocate of slavery — he did so cynically, politically, to hoover up votes from displaced Southerners downstate.
     So ditch the statue? Honestly, it’s not my call. Whose call is it? J.B. Pritzker’s? Three state reps wrote the governor Tuesday asking that the 9-foot-tall statue be removed from its 96-foot granite pedestal and the site no longer promoted to tourists.
     If you’re asking me — OK, you’re not, but let’s pretend — I view the site as a complete historical artifact. The tomb of Douglas. After he died, the neighborhood became a brutal prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers, plus a few stray traitors like former Chicago Mayor Buckner Morris, held for nine months for conspiring with the Confederacy to free prisoners. (Is his portrait up with the rest of Chicago’s mayors outside Lori Lightfoot’s office? Still waiting to hear. Another problem with purging history of the unworthy: it’s an endless task).

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Flashback 2002: Readers' thoughts on reparations

     A reader remembered a column I had written on reparations in 2002, and I posted it Tuesday. It makes sense to then share some of the reader reaction I got to it. Reading this nearly two decades later, I'm struck by how much more crazed we've become, as country.

     My column last week on the issue of reparations for slavery seems to have touched a nerve with a lot of people, white and black. Most gratifying of the many responses I got, and thought were worth sharing, were letters and e-mails from African Americans who were astounded to find a white person expressing an opinion that made sense to them. Like this one from Kathy B. Hayes of Chicago:

     "This is a 'thank you' for being bold enough to share your thoughts with the public on this very sensitive matter. I, being African American, was beginning to feel that this was something that 'White America' would never fully understand. Though it just seems to be so clear cut, most people I've discussed the matter with say, 'I didn't do it . . . [African Americans] should be grateful they've come so far.' Many won't accept the fact that America was built on the backs of my ancestors! The issue is deep, and many African Americans are suffering from generational curses, but many seem unable to break the curse. As you seem to be aware, there are people today who have been unable to recover from the days of slavery up to the '60s, when the hatred toward African Americans was as deep as in the days of raw slavery. 

   "The first step is to resolve this issue. What better way than monetary reparations in some form or another? The Bible tells us that money serves ALL purposes (Ecclesiastes 10:19),whether in the form of low-rate mortgages, college tuition, etc. Time has not healed the marks from all that's transpired right here on American soil. America must remember the Bible also tells us that whatsoever a man sows, that will he also reap.     "Now is the perfect opportunity to show some compassion for the crimes that took place."

     White readers, on the other hand, tended to take what I call the "that's not my table" approach. Their relatives were in Ireland, or Sicily, or somewhere else, and the whole thing is not their problem. Ron Moran wrote:

     "I'm a bit more cynical on the subject of Americans being blamed for slavery and having various panderers like Jesse J. demanding payments. You are correct in establishing the issue of slavery going back to before we were a country, as well as for the plight of the Irish, Jews, Asians, Italians et al. as they assimilated.
     "Slavery has been a worldwide practice to the detriment of the temporarily enslaved in many cultures, from the Egyptians, Romans, Chinese, and still exists today in various parts of Africa, India and some S.E. Asia areas.
     "The African slavery trade would not have been possible (then as now) if it did not have the cooperation of various strong African tribal chiefs going out and rounding up weaker tribes and hauling them to the coast to trade (primarily) for rum.     "Slavery has been a worldwide practice to the detriment of the temporarily enslaved in many cultures, from the Egyptians, Romans, Chinese, and still exists today in various parts of Africa, India and some S.E. Asia areas.     "The African slavery trade would not have been possible (then as now) if it did not have the cooperation of various strong African tribal chiefs going out and rounding up weaker tribes and hauling them to the coast to trade (primarily) for rum.     "If there are reparations to be paid, then it should begin at the source, which is with the African tribal chiefs' descendants -- which would be a difficult task, but a proper beginning. The first of the initial purchasers/traders in slaves to this country were the English. Let's start and end there."

     The problem with this approach is that it isn't extended toward other aspects of American life. Nobody says, "Gee, I'd like to be protected by the Bill of Rights, but my relatives were in Prague when it was ratified." You come to this country, you become an American, you inherit the country's burdens along with its joys.
     James Reyes argues that reparations could galvanize black youth to new achievement:

     "The big lie about reparations is that white people would be negatively affected. This is the real reason why there is a great reluctance to even discuss the issue . . .     "If free college tuition is offered to descendants of slaves, or even all African-Americans, they better be ready to take advantage . . . . The disillusioned, bored, directionless young people of this country would be the new heroes of the civil rights movement."

     Many who wrote in opposition of reparations had an amusing tendency to unconsciously illustrate the pervasive racism that blacks are still up against. Perhaps sensing the loathsomeness of their opinions, they tended to write anonymously. Here is "Frank L." explaining his viewpoint:

     "What created slums, and why are they still there? Blacks did it all by themselves, and it's not gonna get any better because they don't care. I lived in those neighborhoods, and where the white people moved out, they were beautiful and well-kept. If you build new, they will wreck that in no time. Take a look at all those buildings on the South, West and North sides that have to be torn down. Who wrecked them? Common sense will tell you that's where all the gangbangers come form. Reparations? Hell no."

     I can't end on that note. Let's return to planet Earth with Phoebe Novak, of Chicago:

     "Yes, history is what has brought us here today, as each generation builds on the previous one. When previous generations of one group were held in slavery, we cannot say that we all have run this race from the same starting line. When the gun went off at the starting line, [they] were chained at the starting blocks. Well, eventually the race officials (no pun intended) released those people, and they started running, trying to catch up to all the others . . . . They would have to be superhuman to catch up at that point. Fair race? No, a false start, but the race was not rerun.     "Your column put this issue in very clear words. The United States should set this matter right. Maybe scholarships are one way to begin. I don't have the answers, but we should at least start."

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 17, 2002 

All that natural beauty made my eyes itch

   Nobody will ever ask me to create a school curriculum. But if they did, I would suggest just two essential classes to help students navigate life.
     Not home economics or shop. You can figure out how to hammer or bake on your own. While I’ve had reason to use algebra since learning it in 7th grade, I’ve never again used a band saw.
     No, my two classes would be Dealing with Deceit and Managing Toxicity. The first is so obvious I’m surprised it isn’t already taught. Lies infect much of our world. Not just in the miserable nadir of Trump, but before. Religion demands we accept the most ludicrous untruths without a flicker of doubt. History encourages wild overvaluation of ourselves and our accomplishments. Commerce puts us on a treadmill, doing jobs we don’t like so we can buy crap we don’t need but are tricked into wanting.
     Yet we assume people are honest. Back in April, when Trump said the nation would open up by Easter, I was talking to a neighbor who said, in essence, “Well, he must know something, have some secret plan, or he wouldn’t say that.” I almost screamed. Knowing all we know, educated people cling to a touching, baseless faith in the president’s honesty. Our default is still to automatically believe any random stranger is telling the truth.
     We have to fix that. “Is this person lying?” should be our go-to reaction to just about anything. I’d have the class chanting it, declining it like grammar: “Am I lying? Are you lying? Is he lying? Are we lying?”
     And toxicity. Social media is a snake pit of mean, stupid people, inflamed by certainty, shielded by anonymity, gleefully inflicting damage. Maybe if we learned that in 2nd grade, kids — and adults — wouldn’t suffer so much.

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Flashback 2002: Fighting slavery's legacy—Reparations reconsidered

Family of freed slaves, Crawfordsville, Georgia, 1866 (G. Gable; Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Sometimes my wife will say, "Good column today..." then pause, pondering, "...what was it about?" And I will tell her, if I remember—I sometimes also forget and I wrote the damn thing. The day before.
     So it's a great compliment, when a reader remembers a column, not just for a few hours, but, in the case of the column below, for 18 years. She noticed I mentioned "reparations" in Monday's column and sent me a column I wrote, sharing her reaction to the one below. 
     So I thought today I would post the original column, which I believe holds up well to the grind of nearly 20 years, and Thursday post her reaction. 
     The sad part, of course, hardly needs to be mentioned, but I think I will: since this ran in 2002 our nation has backslid, has lost sight of its purpose and its goal, certainly on a national level, and no doubt among individuals, who are so used to operating as scattered shards of party and region, race and class, that the idea of our belong to a cohesive nation with common goals can seem breathtakingly radical. But I believe that figuring out how things can be better is particularly important during times when they're growing worse.

     Most people never change their minds. Blame ego for this, probably. Reversing your opinion is an act of humility. It suggests that, previously, you were wrong. Wrong! Nobody wants to be wrong. We'd rather be consistent. Changing your mind takes effort, too. It almost hurts.
     So we cling to our beliefs. To make this easier, we limit our intake of information to stuff we agree with. Whatever might rock the boat is screened out. Thus keeping up with the news becomes more an act of comfort, like eating ice cream, than an intellectual exercise.
     I try not to be that way. Not being an especially smart person, I've developed a bag of tricks to make myself seem brainier than I really am. One of those tricks is to ask, if only occasionally, "Am I wrong here?" It's an enormously helpful tool. I can't tell you how many times it has saved me: in arguments with my wife, in discussions at work.
     And it helps when trying to make sense of the pulsing chaos of the world. For instance, when the idea of reparations to black Americans for slavery in this country was recently raised--again--I prepared myself, as I did two years ago, to return to the ramparts to defend patriotism and historical truth. Demanding reparations for slavery seemed to paint black Americans, inaccurately, as victims, while their middle class was actually growing year by year. It was unpatriotic--a slap at all those abolitionists and Union soldiers. A slap at Harriet Beecher Stowe.
     My thinking went like this: History is a rough place, filled with bad things, and to try to cash in on your misfortune now is extortion, the same lunging after a sliver of pie that Rainbow/PUSH is famous for. Blacks were taking their inspiration from Jews, ironically enough, using the Jews' unseemly success at prying a few billion dollars out of the Germans due to the 20th century Holocaust as an excuse to try to right this dusty 19th century wrong … an impossible task that would only lead to further dissension and fragmentation. Next Mexico would demand Texas back and, having caved in on the slavery issue, we'd end up forced to pay them off.
     That was my thinking. I had it all worked out, down to the pithy ending, and had flopped my fingers on the keyboard and started to write, when an objection occurred to me that I just couldn't bat away.
     What about the big black slums on the South and West sides of Chicago, and in every city in America? What about Detroit? What about South Central L.A.? What about the entrenched poverty and pervasive dysfunction which, despite gains, is such a problem for black America? What created that, and why is it still here?
     Remember, all manner of national and ethnic groups were once dirt poor in this nation. The Irish who arrived were penniless and hated. The Jews, no strangers to hate, sold rags on Maxwell Street. You could pass it off to skin color. Those Colleens and Cohens could melt into society in a way black people couldn't. But now we are seeing groups of other ethnicities--Asians, Hispanics--arrive in this country and scramble up the ladder in a way that black Americans haven't. Why?
     What is it about black people? If you believe, as all rational people do, that everyone is the same at the start, human beings, equal in their potentials and abilities, that we all have the same capacity to grow, live, learn, love, then where did this mass of black poverty and generation-to-generation dysfunction come from?
     At first it seemed ludicrous to me to write it off to slavery. That ended 140 years ago. A long time. But slavery really didn't end with the Civil War. In the South, it continued on with an additional century of repression that, if not actual chattel slavery, was very close. In the North, it continued as 100 years of bigotry and segregation.
     Could the 200 years of institutional slavery (unlike reparationists, who don't help their cause by exaggerating, I trace slavery, not back to 1492, but to the 1600s, when slaves actually appeared) plus 100 years of repression that have not ended to this day, somehow have a role in the widespread poverty we barely recognize, never mind deal with?
     Well, to quote young people: duh.
     This does not mean I believe the United States should cut a check.
     Frankly, I'm not sure what the nation should do. Apology isn't it. Apologies are symbolic and don't help people. But I do know--now--that we need to commence a process that begins with the thought: How did this group of Americans, who happen to be black and poor, get to this position in life? And what can their country, the United States, do to make sure that the promise of America is as true for them as it is for others? What can be done now that hasn't been done?
     I am beginning to suspect that it is the people demanding the issue of slavery be addressed who are the patriotic ones, the ones who believe in the grandeur of the United States and the sweep of history.
     History is what brought us to today. I have no trouble believing one reason I'm a bookish kind of guy is my great-grandfather studied the Talmud. So why is it so hard to accept that one reason, perhaps the main reason, a certain segment of America is poor and dysfunctional is its great-great-grandparents were separated in chains on a slaver's dock?
     And to accept that idea--and really, what other explanation is there--is to be on the road to believing that the same nation that fractured a group of citizens at one point in history can, 150 years later, do more to set matters right.
      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 10, 2002

Day after day after day after day after day

The last normal thing: Northbrook Chamber of Commerce meeting, March 6, 2020. 

     “Any idiot can survive a crisis,” Anton Chekhov once wrote, “It’s this day-to-day living that grinds you down.”
     OK, Chekhov didn’t actually write that — at least not anywhere anyone could find it. Witty, anonymous thoughts are sometimes paired with him, or Hemingway, or Kurt Vonnegut, to give them a little extra pop.
     Though the non-Chekhovian observation is popping aplenty right now, with an additional twist as we try to survive day-to-day living in a crisis. The worst of both worlds. Of many worlds, all burning. Since it can be easy to lose track — it’s Monday, right? — let’s review.
     Mid-July in the Plague Year of 2020. Four months since what I consider the last normal thing, the March Northbrook Chamber of Commerce meeting. The benchmark before life got strange. Take a look at the picture. Crowded, huh? Shoulder to shoulder. Did you ever think you’d miss crowds? Not me.
     More than 135,000 Americans dead. Six hundred Americans die of COVID-19 every day. No end in sight. Economic collapse. Thirty million unemployed. Complete paralysis of the federal government, frozen, punctuated by the continual yapping sound of our imbecile president.
     Plus, his clueless fans demanding to die. Plus, nationwide civic unrest over racist police brutality followed by ... well, where are we now, exactly? Some Great Awakening to the racial disparities of our country? Pretty to think so — that is Hemingway. Although to me, it seems the only people really confronting the situation are those who already know.

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