Ready and waiting

     Work on a longer story that's set to run this Monday took me to various locations downtown Wednesday morning, and at one point we passed Racine, a few blocks south of the newspaper office, and I felt a passing desire to stop in, even though I had no reason to stop by and knew there would be no one there. Just to see the place, because it has been ... what? ... three months since I last visited. Quite a long time really.
     In late October, I went to the office because I happened to be downtown anyway—using the special collections room at Harold Washington Library—and I thought I'd check in to see if there was any mail.
    There was mail, some readers thanking me for a particular columns, others complaining bitterly, a few more copies of Poetry Magazine; man, they stack up quickly. Nothing urgent. I looked out at the utterly empty newsroom. It all seemed so ... wrong.  Usual life frozen in time, like a bakery in Pompeii. All that was missing was the ash.
      The paper was the subject of conversation Wednesday with the colleague I was working with, as the Sun-Times' merger with WBEZ seems as if it has gone through, and we talked about how good it'll be when COVID is behind us and everybody is back working in the same place again. If we are ever back working in the same place again. There's an energy, a life, that's has been missing, well, for years.

    Though the whole point of newspapering is seldom to be found in the office; it's usually anyplace but the office. (Except for editors and such; it's hard to copy edit a piece in a dark alley). Out and about, as we were, climbing over fences and clambering over concrete abutments. 

     As I was reminded in October, when I gazed around the newsroom, and noticed this bulletproof vest, slumped against a colleague's desk, as if exhausted, no doubt left there after some summertime disturbance. I wouldn't lump reporters in with cops and firefighters—that's closing your eyes, tilting your chin up, and asking to be socked. But we do  
run toward danger too, sometimes.
     Anyway, it was a long day, Wednesday, with more climbing and clambering than I'm used to. And very cold. So really, apologies, but all I've got at the moment to share with you are these three photos. Above, the homeless encampment under the Kennedy at Belmont. The flak jacket at right. And below, the newsroom as it appeared last time I was there, on Oct. 20. Ready, and waiting. That's two of us. Well, not ready right now. But surely tomorrow. 

‘People are hungry for puppetry’

“The Bluest Eye" will be performed as a puppet drama Jan. 28-30 at the DuSable Museum.

     Chicago is a puppet town. Or was. Not only did the word “puppeteer” first see print here in 1915, but perhaps the most influential puppet show in American history, Burr Tillstrom’s “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” debuted on TV here in 1947. It not only got parents buying televisions en masse, but — my own pet theory — the funny, ad-libbed program helped spawn Chicago’s live improv comedy scene in the 1950s.
     Chicago is certainly Puppetville from now until the end of the month, as the 4th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival takes over, offering 100 performances from 20 local and national companies at more than a dozen locations, from the American Indian Center in Albany Park to the DuSable Museum in Hyde Park.
     I’ve always felt an affinity to puppets. When the Festival began in 2015, I threw “Puppetry Week” on my blog, and tried to explain the appeal:

     This odd subcellar of culture, part sculpture, part folk art, part vaudeville, also has personal appeal to me. There is a kinship between journalism and puppetry. Both require dedicated craftsmen, albeit in dwindling numbers, practicing a profession that neither thrives nor vanishes, but somehow remains perpetually defunct. Both are rough simulacra of life; both had some legendary moment in the cultural spotlight in the hazy past — Hayden composed puppet operas for the royal court, a popular puppet dinner theater was steps off Michigan Avenue — but now linger on in the margins, practiced by various oddballs and misfits.

     Puppets are generally seen as comic, Kermit the Frog types. So it can surprise some that puppets are also dramatic, even tragic. Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is being performed during the festival. One excerpt I saw in preview: Nick Lehane’s “The Chimpanzee,” to be performed at the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago Jan. 22-24, is a poignant, almost heartbreaking work about a chimp who once lived with a family, now mournfully remembering happier times, a captivity that strikes a chord in our COVID-19 locked-down world.
     “When we see puppets, we see ourselves in the puppets’ experience,” said Chicago puppeteer Blair Thomas, the festival founder and artistic director. “When we are caught up in the suffering of the pandemic, the puppet world is not caught up in that, but reflecting back, a mirror to us.”
     Last year Thomas didn’t consider holding the festival. Why risk it this year?

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Martin Luther King Drive

Barbara Kruger

     I have a benefit that most bloggers don't: my work often runs in print, a newspaper. And unlike the internet, a newspaper is not an endless plain where enormous assemblages of words may be parked. Most days, I can't write beyond 719 words.

     Quite brief really. Thus I write, then I cut. 
     Generally a good thing. You lose a lot of fat. But you also lose some fascination. I didn't really miss the part below until I read Rick Kogan's fine piece on honoring Martin Luther King Jr. by naming streets after him, in Chicago and across the country.
     This graph was cut from my Monday column, explaining the chilly reception that King often got in Chicago: 

     Thus Chicago had is own entrenched Black leaders, men like Rev. J. H. Jackson, powerful pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church, who were more than willing to tell King to go back where he came from.   

      Jackson opposed King's non-violence campaign (because, he said, it suggested that Black people were violent). Indeed, he opposed the word "black" (arguing that "negro" was more inclusive). After King was assassinated and South Park Way was re-named "Martin Luther King Drive" Jackson changed the church address to 405 E. 31st. while denying that it was done to shun King. "You entered from 31st St., didn't you?" he told a newsman.
     "You entered from 31st Street." A reminder: there is always a code. No one says "I'm bought off" or "I'm turning my back on one of the great men in American history." Just in the way Donald Trump gained national political prominence by doubting the birthplace of Barack Obama—a ludicrous, easily-disproved lie that stood in for questioning whether a Black man could ever be a citizen, never mind president. Or calling the accurate portrayal of America's racist past and present as "critical race theory," an obscure academic term that at this point is nearly meaningless.

     Another tangent I really didn't get to explore was King's remarks on Black anti-semitism, which I mentioned just to illustrate that history is not about making you feel good. One Black reader, doubtful that such a thing could exist, since he hadn't noticed it, asked me for my source. It was a Sep. 28, 1967 letter from King to Morris B. Abram, president of the American Jewish Committee:

     "The limited degree of Negro anti-Semitism is substantially a Northern ghetto phenomenon; it virtually does not exist in the South. The urban Negro has a special and unique relationship to Jews. He meets them in two dissimilar roles. On the one hand, he is associated with Jews as some of his most committed and generous partners in the civil rights struggle. On the other hand, he meets them daily as some of his most direct exploiters in the ghetto as slum landlords and gouging shopkeepers. Jews have identified with Negroes voluntarily in the freedom movement, motivated by their religious and cultural commitment to justice. The other Jews who are engaged in commerce in the ghettos are remnants of older communities. A great number of Negro ghettos were formerly Jewish neighborhoods; some storekeepers and landlords remained as population changes occurred. They operate with the ethics of marginal business entrepreneurs, not Jewish ethics, but the distinction is lost on some Negroes who are maltreated by them. Such Negroes, caught in frustration and irrational anger, parrot racial epithets. They foolishly add to the social poison that injures themselves and their own people.

    "It would be a tragic and immoral mistake to identify the mass of Negroes with the very small number that succumb to cheap and dishonest slogans, just as it would be a serious error to identify all Jews with the few who exploit Negroes under their economic sway."

     The last part that I had to cut was perhaps the biggest loss: King reflecting on the impact that living in Lawndale had on his own children:

     He was concerned at how his own children were being affected, living in a slum two blocks from the Vice Lords street gang headquarters.  
     "Our own children lived with us in Lawndale, and it was only a few days before we became aware of the change in their behavior," King wrote. "Their tempers flared, and they sometimes reverted to almost infantile behavior. During the summer, I realized that the crowded flat in which we lived was about to produce an emotional explosion in my own family. It was just too hot, too crowded too devoid of creative forms of recreation."
     For how many is that true of today?

 

King’s time in Chicago echoes today

Martin Luther King, struck by a rock in 
Marquette Park (Sun-Times file photo)

     Martin Luther King Jr. lived in Chicago, briefly. At 1550 S. Hamlin Avenue. He moved in Jan. 26, 1966, with his four children and wife Coretta, who found the stench of urine in their new apartment “overpowering.” But King felt he had to come to Lawndale to spread his message of non-violent resistance to America’s entrenched racism.
     “There are more Negroes in Chicago than in the whole state of Mississippi,” King said.
On Martin Luther King Day 2022, it is doubly important to reflect on the history of race in this country, because that history is imperiled in a way both real and chilling to any truly patriotic American.
     The Republican Party is at war with the past, part of its general campaign against any reality that reflects the party as it truly is: a totalitarian cult that has turned its back on democracy and freedom. That feels obligated to smudge any shiny surface: science is wrong, the press is fake.
     And history.
     The GOP premise is that any true telling of America’s racial past is some kind of plot to make their children feel bad, perhaps by cluing them in to what haters their parents really are. Talk about snowflakes ...
     They don’t realize that any true telling of history is a challenge to anyone’s inflated sense of self worth. For instance, before we take too much pride in Martin Luther King, Chicago resident, we should understand how hard a challenge the city posed for King. The city’s Black population was far less promising material than King was used to molding.
     “The Negroes of Chicago have a greater sense of powerlessness than I ever saw,” said Hosea WIlliams, King’s chief lieutenant. “They don’t participate in the government process because they are beaten down, psychologically. We are used to working with people who want to be free.”

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Comforting Effect of Unprofessional Environment

 

     It says something about myself—whether good or bad I can't decide— that I've had the same scraps of ephemera stuck to the wall by my desk for more than 30 years.
     For instance, the "Have you forgotten anything?" sign snagged from an Amtrak sleeper compartment in 1979, heading from Cleveland to Chicago at the end of winter break, into an epic snowstorm. It struck me as useful advice in professional journalism. (Both that side and the flip side, which shows a sleeper and the words, "Quiet please.")

     Or the photo of a hangdog pooch snipped, if I recall, from some kind of veterinary magazine I was scanning to pass the time on the night shift back in the late '80s, posted by my desk as an unsubtle "Fuck You" to my bosses.
     Above the dog is the caption: "Terrifying Effect of Unprofessional Environment."
     Why display that clipping? Maybe because I had a job where I had to show up at 4 or 6 or 7 p.m, and do whatever anybody on the desk told me to do, often attend some tedious zoning hearing, or try to find some spot where a crime or fire or accident had occurred and hang around the yellow tape with a few other reporters and wait for some official to come out and talk to us. Maybe because more than a few of my bosses viewed me with bewilderment and contempt, at least in my view. It was all so disappointing. I never had much of a plan in life, but whatever it was I once wanted, this wasn't it. So "terrified" might have been a slight exaggeration to describe my state of stymied ambition, but it wasn't far off. 
      Now of course those fluorescent-lit offices we all scorned and decorated with countless "Dilbert" cartoons bewailing our fate, are a Lost Eden. Remember the colleagues, commotion, desks, chairs, mail, snacks. People would show up unannounced! Coworkers would bake things! And bring them in to the office, cranberry bread and cookies and red velvet cupcakes, simply because they were so kind and generous and what else were they going to do, eat all this stuff themselves?  ("You're going to poison us all someday, aren't you?" I once quipped to an older colleague, a lovely Southern lady, whose stricken expression haunts me to this day).

       Swapped for an endless exile of computer screens and intruding spouses and the same meals eaten again and again and again. The torpid grind of working, or trying to, in some basement next to a washer and dryer, or while the kids try to learn long division, or in some similar dire situation. In a corner of the living room. In a coffee shop.
    Not me of course. I'm very lucky. I've been working at home since 1997, when I quit my job at the Sun-Times and, in allowing myself to be wooed back, inserted the right to work two days a week from home. And it's a pretty nice home. I've always had an office: this one might be the best room in the house, on the second floor, with a bay window, facing trees. I can see the sun coming up as I type this, will watch it transit the sky through the day, eventually setting to my right. Literally able to watch the world turn. If I look up at the right moment I can see birds, hawks. The train occasionally makes itself known. People walk their dogs past.

    But still I keep this woebegone mutt. Why? Habit, I guess. Though when I think about it, now that I'm in an extremely unprofessional environment: no one barging in while I'm trying to work, no hour-long commute, no bothersome dress code, no time-wasting meetings, no interrupting phone calls, no science experiment communal refrigerator in a dreary lunch room. I get to eat in my own luxe kitchen, often in the company of my beloved wife, who is working downstairs. That is many things, but terrifying is not among them. 

Ravenswood Notes: TKO

     One of the more difficult parts of being a professional writer is learning to trust the people you work with. Sometimes my book editor will make a decision that rubs me the wrong way, and I'll have to pause and remind myself that I had no trouble embracing his judgment when he was praising me, so maybe I ought to consider that he still might be right about this edit I disagree with.      

    With Caren Jeskey's Saturday offering below, I was nearing the end, and references to me  started thudding down like hail. I was just at her last paragraph, thinking, "All this has to go," when I got to the part where she says that no, Neil-be-damned, it has to stay. Well, okay. If you insist, but it goes against my better judgment. Speaking of which, I thought it high time to add a formal bio of Caren to the blog, and you can find it on the right hand side of the page, under mine.

“The world feels dusty when we stop to die; we want the dew then.” 

          —Emily Dickinson (who died at the age of 56, with ten of her poems published).

     Lately I’ve been reminded that time is short. How do I want to live my one wild and precious life?? My first choice would not have been to experience a deadly pandemic on a dangerously warming planet with the threat of oligarchy at our heels right here on US soil. But what choice do I have?
     I am no Pollyanna. I’m dismayed at the state of the world, and sometimes scared. My saving grace is savoring micro moments. Simple pleasures are all around us all the time, if we pay attention. Helping others—(trigger warning: virtue signaling ahead), which this week came in the form of coordinating a donation and delivery of furniture to two young Afghan men who’ve recently relocated nearly 6,000 miles away from home—helps me remember how lucky I am, and brings light to others. Warm baths, long walks, connecting with people, fresh air, stretching, resting, playing music that makes me happy, taking deep breaths, reading EGD to keep me laughing, and keeping a house full of plants helps too.
     One of the most delightful things that happened this past week was noticing that mushrooms had sprung up among the peppers I am growing from the seeds of a big red, orange, and yellow pepper I ate last year. I dried the seeds and did not follow propagation protocol the babies popped out of the rich dark soil anyway. When I noticed that fungi had voluntarily joined the party I did what anyone would do. I laughed and smiled and talked to them. Then I snapped some photos for others to enjoy.
     I’m not sure what prompted it, but I also ended up in a Facebook chat with a friend who lives on Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. Sir Sidney Poitier’s name came up, and my friend shared some thoughts that a Bahamian local, Leslie Vanderpool, had posted on Facebook about Sir Sidney. I quoted Leslie in last week’s piece, and then I had the true pleasure of a 90 minute Zoom conversation with her yesterday.
     Leslie is the founder and Executive Director of the Bahamas International Film Festival, which is entering its 18th year. Leslie was born in The Bahamas, where her father Dr. Cyril Osborne Vanderpool was the first government dentist in 1960, before starting his thriving private practice. Dr. Vanderpool played golf with Sir Sidney. The Doctor and the Sir were dear friends. “I was always hearing great stories,” the kind where “you wish you could live them out again. They were such gentlemen. They loved life. They loved to have fun. They lived as if life was going to be their one last day.” Leslie had the good fortune of having Sir Sidney in her life, and he became a lifelong mentor.  

  “He was loving and unguarded; one of the memorable," she said. "Because of Sir Sidney, I always knew I wanted to act— since the age of 10. Having him around when he was in town, my father referring to him, seeing this larger than life person” made an impression. 

      Through her studies in performance schools, and throughout stints of living in New York, LA and The Bahamas, Leslie experienced Sir Sidney’s comforting presence as a constant thread. “He was a gift who came into my family’s life that I will never forget. That shining light that never lets you go.” They may not have spoken often, but when they did Leslie felt “in my adult life I had somebody who knew my family, and had my best interests” in mind. “He was honest. He did not tell you things you wanted to hear. He was intuitive. His daughters Anika and Sydney always talked about how he’d never hurt a fly. Or an animal. Or an ant. He was always so present and conscious.”
     “I see Sir Sidney in his children. They all have unique personalities. Charm. Gentleness. Concision that Sir Sidney had. Conviction. Tenacity.” Their mother is “the classiest lady. They all exude love and kindness. My breath was taken away in his presence. I felt comfortable, loved. He instilled in himself and others a sense of wanting to do the best we can. He strove every day to be better than the last day."
     Leslie feels that “his generation really wanted to nurture and guide and mentor. They knew they had nothing to lose by giving. They always shared. I remember several conversations” where Sir Sidney said “'I am talking to you as though you are my child. I want the best for you.' He was a mammoth of a human being, this soul that had my back. And that was enough. I still make decisions based on what he told me, keeping those thoughts and discussions present. An actor of that magnitude, the intuitive ability he was gifted with, it was so strong."
     "He really respected himself and wanted to make sure people gave him that respect. Everything was serious, with light-hearted undertones. He was adamant about what he wanted to convey and how he wanted to deliver. What he wanted to see in The Bahamas. He constantly made sure arts were prevalent in The Bahamas. He made a video for me on our website" to help make sure people come to the film fest.
     “The last time I saw [Sir Sidney] was in 2017, in LA. I remember being in his home office. He was always curious, very curious. He was still wanting to learn and know what’s going on in The Bahamas."
     Leslie feels a strong calling to continue to bring arts to The Bahamas, and seeks to use film to "celebrate, entertain, and educate."
     “We need people who are mentors and see the vision we don’t see for ourselves. We have to continue to lift people up. There are people who believe in others. You are blessed to have Neil in your life.” 

     I am. The experience of writing for this blog has been one of the most fun and exciting things I’ve experienced. It also gave me a part of my purpose since the pandemic began, and I lost most of my livelihood. As Leslie said, mentors like Neil help people like me “continue that torch and flame” of talent within ourselves. Leslie shared a little ditty where "Muhammad Ali's wife used to ride my horse," and showed me a photo of Ali holding her in his arms, lifting her off of her horse. Another giant we all love.
     When I think of the fact that I write for THE Neil Steinberg, I do get a little bit starstruck here and there. He's the same guy I've read for much of my adult life, who my parents have read at the kitchen table for many years, and who they revere and respect. He's the guy whose signed book I read and re-read years ago. I am sure Neil will try to edit this out, but I'll try not to let him. Talking to Leslie was another delightful moment in my week. She reminded me that it's important to express gratitude. So thank you Neil. It's time we continue to knock this thing called life right out of the ring as we support, celebrate, and uplift each other.
     Over the last several days the ‘shrooms did some funny things. They morphed and turned gray. Some passed away. New ones keep sprouting. It’s quite the journey and I’m grateful to be here for all of this, drinking from the dew of life. Thank you, dear readers.

Stalking the elusive present participle

    When I was in third grade, Mrs. Nemeth handed out a mimeographed worksheet listing phrases that students had to deem either “possible” or “impossible.” One was “a pig with a bushy tail.” I checked “possible” and she marked it wrong.
     This offended me to the bottom of my fussy little 8-year-old soul, and the next day I marched into class with my Giant Golden Book of Biology, and showed Mrs. Nemeth the page about salamander body parts being grafted onto each other. If the leg of a big salamander could be attached to the body of a small salamander, I huffed, was it not possible that a bushy fox’s tail could be grafted onto a pig?

     I think she hated me after that.
     Correction by students — either rightly or wrongly — is one of the countless challenges of being a teacher.
     When I was cobbling together my faux English class for Wednesday’s paper, parsing Lori Lightfoot’s very schoolmarmish “You’re not listening!” (really, our mayor has more snaps than a onesie) and surfing grammar web sites, it did cross my mind that I was out of my depth and should enlist an English teacher to check my work.
     But I was fairly confident — always dangerous — so I shrugged and decided, were I wrong, well, somebody would correct me. And besides, wouldn’t being wrong add a layer of verisimilitude to my classroom presentation? A sly dig.
     Consequences began rolling in. Here’s Peg Cain, who taught literature for 20 years at Nazareth Academy in LaGrange:

     “Are listening,” of course, is a compound verb. “Listening” is, in this case, not a gerund, but the present participle of the verb. ... “Not listening,” therefore, cannot be a predicate nominative because “listening” is not a noun in this sentence. “Not” is merely an adverb, hanging around ...

    So not a gerund but ... a present participle?
     Jeanne Parker, who was teaching English at Palatine Township High School before I was born, joined in:

     In the sentence “You’re not listening,” listening is indeed a verb; you’re the contraction, does indeed contain the subject you as well as the verb are, which is NOT, however, the main verb but rather an auxiliary verb, making are listening the main verb phrase, NOT a predicate nominative.

     So ... a main verb phrase?

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