Flashback 2007: 'A terrify, pitch-black cloud'

From "Ashen Sky," illustrated by Barry Moser

     I'm continually surprised what I can slip into the paper. Such as a review of letters from Pliny the Younger, which I think about whenever someone says a version of "fortune favors the bold," and I have to bite back my retort: "You do realize ... or more likely, don't ... that the guy who said that was rewarded for his daring by being buried in ash?"

     Fortune often favors the brave. Not always. I leapt to grab Ashen Sky, the new illustrated volume of Pliny the Younger's pair of all-too-brief letters describing the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii.

    

     The book is beautifully illustrated by Barry Moser's stark black and white woodcuts, and Virgil's famous edict on the usefulness of courage is spoken by Pliny the Younger's uncle, Pliny the Elder, a revered statesman and writer at the time of the catastrophe.
     Old Pliny has taken his family aboard a ship, seeking safety from the spouting volcano.
     "Suddenly the water became shallow and the shore was blocked by the collapse of the mountain," Pliny the Younger writes. His uncle "hesitated a bit, wondering whether to turn back," but then turns to the helmsman who urged him to do so and said, " 'Fortune favors the brave,' "
     In this case, boldness was fatal — Pliny the Elder was killed at his destination, on Aug. 25, 79 A.D.
     Since you probably won't rush out to get the book — I merely bumbled across it — I'll tell you what struck me as the most poignant detail. Pliny the Younger notes the people fleeing around him in fear as burning pumice stones rained down from the sky.
     "To protect themselves against falling objects, they tied pillows on their heads," he writes.
     You can't make that kind of thing up, a reminder of the frequent pitifulness of human effort in the face of nature's fury.
        — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 17, 2007

Flashback 2010: Silhouette artist presents profile of a gentler time

The silhouette in the foreground is from May 26, 1946, when my mother
was 9. The sculpture of an alien head is by Allen Littlefield.

     My mother's effects included several silhouettes — quite the thing back then. And I recalled that I had my own silhouette cut for a column once.  Sally Newcomb passed away just last year, at age 96.

     "Shall I do your silhouette?" asks Sally Newcomb, gesturing me into a chair in her elegant, book-filled apartment in Glenview. "Here is where the victim sits."
      I face the window, while Newcomb, a spry lady with a ready laugh and a refined manner of speaking — think Aunt May in the "SpiderMan" movies — quickly sketches my outline. I ask about her parents, Richard Southern Shreve and Mary Grey Andrews.
     "My mother was from Salt Lake City and my dad was from Virginia, and his family used to feed Mosby at the back door."
     "Mosby?"
     "Rebel raider. Once the whole family got hauled into the courthouse because they were definitely Rebel sympathizers."
     Newcomb grew up in Washington, D.C.
     "I went to a girl's junior college in Virginia where my cousin Mary Frances had gone" — she slips into a deep drawl for "Meh Frances" — "with the idea that I was going to be a Southern belle. Well, it didn't work. But I had a very good time."

Nose not to scale.

     And here she unleashes that laugh.
     "My mom had silhouettes all over the house -- she fancied them, she collected them -- so I knew what they were."
     Newcomb began cutting silhouettes out of black paper in 1956.
     "I was in the Bound Brook, New Jersey, Junior Women's Club, and they were going to have something they called the Easter Bunny Fair, and someone said, 'You take the silhouette booth.' "
     The phone rings. She steps across the room, adorned with many, many silhouettes — family members, children, both when girls were portrayed with big ribbons in their hair to girls wearing karate outfits or pulling wheeled backpacks.
     "I am being interviewed by the press," Newcomb says into the receiver. "I'm terribly sorry. I'm thrilled that you called."
     She returns, and takes up her work.
     The tool she uses is seven-inch Singer sewing shears. Not something smaller?
     "You try working with little tinies all day long, and you have nothing left of your hands. It's like a Western saddle. You use a cute little saddle for jumping and showing off. If you are going to be there all day, you want something big and comfy."
     How did she pick up the skill?
     "There was a kit that you could send for that was in the back of the New York Times magazine, and it was supposed to make everything possible, so I sent for the kit, and it was a stinker to work with, so finally I thrust it from me and just winged it. They were pretty bad, but there was no competition. So that worked out well. Now, I've got to make a delicate cut here, so I'm going to shut up for a minute . . . "
     More like five seconds. She turns the portrait so I can see.
     "What do you think of you?"
     The speed is surprising — two minutes total, maybe three. I study my profile, notice she included my new beard, and observe that she has been kind to my profile.
     "I gave up kind a long time ago," she says. "People don't want kind. They want true."
     In my experience, I point out, people want truth regarding others but kindness for themselves. Either way, I will accept her version of my nose as a form of higher truth.
     Does she ever botch one, lop the head off?
     "Sometimes, I'm not quite pleased with it, but people are."
     She gives me a tour of her apartment — or, more accurately, the silhouettes in it.
     "This was done at Greenfield Village," she says of a proud rooster. "This was local. . . . This was something I've not seen done in silhouette before. It's a mommy who was very happily throwing her infant in the air."
     Did the mom have to throw the baby a lot for her to get that? "A couple of times."
     Pets are better behaved than children
     She shows me some of her greatest hits -- five figures, characters from Mark Twain, one with a paintbrush; another, a slingshot.
     "This was one of the first ones I did for the junior women's club -- they were having a play of Tom Sawyer.
     "This is when I was visiting a family in England and did all of their livestock, including their kids," she says, showing off a tableau of animals and people, including a goat and a pony. She names the rest.
     "Gifty the dog, Porridge the cat and Petrochelli the rooster."
     Are pets a challenge?
     "They're better behaved than the kids."
     She shows me her schedule from 1989. About two-thirds of the month was filled. She has gone to England, Scotland, Denmark.
      "I worked in Copenhagen and in Fields, Dillards in St. Louis and Florida and hopped all over the place. Rochester, New York. The Museum at Stonybrook. Mystic Seaport. I pretty much peppered New England."
     Now, alas, despite the popularity of classic Americana and parents' endless desire to memorialize their children, Newcomb says this charming artform is on the wane.
     "I rode the crest of the wave when it had a revival, now it's really disappearing," she laughs.    

     "Silhouettes are at a nadir."
     But not quite gone.
     "I'm 82, and I'm tapering down," she says. "I'm going to be in Winnetka at the Harkness Outreach Center. Nov. 20" -- that's Saturday. "I'll be in Lake Forest at the Gorton Community Center Dec. 3 and 4."
     "Silhouettes have been very good to me," she says. "They've taken me all over this country, I've met some fascinating people and had a great time."

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 19, 2010

Flashback 2000: Hunting a lost talisman

The odd thing is, I knew exactly where this guy was stashed after 25 years.

     Am I the only one surprised to realize that I've been using eBay for 25 years? For some reason, online technology still seems "new" even though of course it isn't. When I made my first purchase, over a quarter century ago, I used the power of the internet to retrieve something I'd lost and wanted back. This is from when the column appeared in the Features section, and was 50 percent shorter than it is today. 

     The box came. A blue, white and red Priority Mail carton, with a lovely maroon oval "INSURED" hand stamp. I checked the return address: Las Vegas, Nev. This was it!
     I have never anticipated a package the way I had this one. I hurried into the apartment. The boys called happily from upstairs. "In a minute," I said, and went into my office. Shut the door.
     "Thirty years," I muttered to myself, fumbling with the box. Of course thinking of the Sidney Greenstreet character in "The Maltese Falcon" clawing at the wrappings around the black bird.
     Two weeks earlier, late one weary afternoon, I had put aside work and plopped online, looking for distraction. I plugged into eBay, that vast network of sellers and buyers. What in the world did I want?
     When I was a child, I had Rat Finks. They were little charms, an inch high. A mouse with beady eyes and an addled grin — the mascot for a hot rod. They came in gumball machines and cost a dime. I have no idea why I loved them, but I did.
      I carried a Rat Fink for years, as a talisman, as a friend. If my mother stopped and gossiped in the supermarket I would pull out my Rat Fink and gaze at it, rapt.
      The last Rat Fink was orange. I remember it clearly. The ears had melted into stumps by trips through the dryer. The tail of course was gone. I was in the May Co. department store in Cleveland, playing on the escalator. I gave the Rat Fink a ski ride down the trough next to the moving handrail, planning to retrieve it at the bottom. But at the bottom it was gone.
     That was 30 years ago. Since then, I had kept my eye on gumball machines, toy stores. Once, I wrote to a Rat Fink collector who was advertising in a toy magazine. But he didn't reply.
     That first minute on eBay, I wondered whether anybody possibly would be selling Rat Finks. It seemed a long shot. I typed the words into the search engine.
     There were 151 Rat Fink items for sale. Model kits, posters and dozens upon dozens of the gumball finks I was looking for, some in their original packages.
     I browsed. They were getting money for the things — $45 for one sealed in its bag, with the Rat Fink oath.
     No need for that. I found one in less-than-pristine condition. The tail was gone, but the tails of mine were always gone. Opening bid: $6.99.
     The eBay software is amazingly simple. It leads you by the hand through registering.
     No one bid against me. The sale ended, and I was directed to dispatch a check to a Michael Devinney of Las Vegas. Writing out the check — $9.50 with shipping and insurance — I was still uncertain about the whole thing. Las Vegas: Isn't that where all the crooks are? Still, what was the risk? If I could learn that eBay was a rip-off for under 10 bucks, that would be a lesson worth the tuition.
     The dingus was so well-wrapped, I finally had to use a scissors. Out tumbled the Rat Fink. It was the same. Beady eyes. Big leering grin. I smiled broadly, as if imitating the lump of red plastic in my hand.
     A colleague at the newspaper had warned me about seeking out beloved childhood objects on eBay  — "They aren't the same ones you owned," he said. "They're somebody else's." But he was wrong. This wasn't somebody else's Rat Fink — it was mine, now. I slipped it into my jacket pocket, and together we went upstairs.

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 21, 2000

Flashback 2011: Comic duck canned for being human

 

    I mentioned a column about tragedy and humor in yesterday's post, and wondered what it might say. The column also fits this very unusual week. I've pulled together some remarks for my mother's funeral, and while there are no jokes, per se, there is a moment early on where I expect people will laugh. At least I hope they do.

     Gilbert Gottfried was never my cup of tea. I prefer the cool paradoxes of Steven Wright, say, to Gottfried’s squinty, barking dog comic routine, though he was funny in the delightfully filthy documentary “The Aristocrats.”
     His squawk made him perfect for the voice of the Aflac duck, mascot for the insurance giant, which promptly canned Gottfried on Monday over tweets he sent cracking crude jokes about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
     “Japan is really advanced,” he wrote in one of the more printable efforts. “They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.”
     When firing Gottfried, Aflac placed the jokes squarely beyond the pale of humanity.
     “There is no place for anything but compassion and concern during these difficult times,” said Michael Zuna, a senior VP and chief marketing officer for Aflac.
     Really? No place? No place at all? Because my understanding is that every tragedy in the history of the world quickly becomes the butt of jokes, and humor is especially important to those trying to survive the most extreme and awful circumstances.
     Slaves in chains joked about their masters. Jews in Auschwitz put on vaudeville shows.
     “Wit produced on the precipice of hell was not frivolity, but psychological necessity,” Steve Lipman writes in Laughter in Hell: The Use of Humor During the Holocaust. “ ‘We kept our morale through humor,’ says Emil Fachenheim, an Auschwitz survivor.”
     In public, the right to joke is reserved for those most affected: Gottfried did not lose his children to a tsunami and thus can’t make jokes. To live as a slave or in a concentration camp and joke about your condition is not the same as us making jokes about either today.
     And yet. Are we all not also affected by this, to a far milder but still real degree, as fellow humans? It’s been nearly a week since the Japan earthquake and tsunami hit. The world has been processing a continuously unfolding horror — uncounted thousands dead, far more homeless, plus crippled reactors on the brink of full-blown catastrophe. I’m not so sure that cracking a joke at some point isn’t a natural human response, as opposed to maintaining an unwavering expression of generic anguish and continual pro forma concern.
     People joke — part of the issue here is how technology has blurred the line between public and private. I’m sure Gottfried didn’t realize he was quitting his Aflac gig when he made those tweets; his timing was off and, as a comic should know, timing is everything.
     Private laughter is inevitable, especially during tragedies. I laughed over the situation in Japan, and I’ll tell you exactly when: It was when news broke about the volcano. It just seemed to be cruel fate turning the knife one twist too many. An earthquake. A tsunami. Pending nuclear disaster. And now an erupting volcano. You have to laugh, don’t you?
     “Jeez,” I said out loud to myself, with an amazed, sardonic chuckle, “Poor Japan. What’s next — a hail of burning frogs?”
     Does that make me a bad person? Indifferent to the plight of the Japanese? Should the paper fire me, too, for printing that just now?
     I would suggest that, while you’re always safe with nodding solemnity, laughter is what people who are themselves under the lash of fate find true comfort in.
     The French editor Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a brain stem stroke in 1995 that left him completely paralyzed. All he could do was flutter his left eyelid, which he used to dictate the bittersweet, haunting memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
     In it, he is parked every day in front of a glass case at a hospital on the Norman Coast, facing a marble bust of the Empress Eugenie.
     Eventually he notices his own reflection:
     “An unknown face interposed itself between us. Reflected in the glass I saw the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde. His mouth was twisted, his nose damaged, his hair tousled, his gaze full of fear. One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled. . . .
     “Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter — when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke. My jovial cackling at first disconcerted Eugenie, until she herself was infected by my mirth. We laughed until we cried.”
     That is sometimes all you can do in a world where horror and humor blur into one.
     “Our house is gone,” said Kyoko Nambu, 49, as she gazed at Soma, her ruined hometown, “and now they are telling us to stay indoors.”

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 16, 2011

Flashback 2011: Death takes us all, yet the good lingers

     I'm taking time off from the newspaper to mourn my mother and help tie up her worldly affairs. This chestnut from the vault seems apt.

     Catholics believe that when a person dies with his soul in a state of grace, that person ascends to heaven. And as Jim Tyree, the owner of the Sun-Times, who died Wednesday, was both a Catholic and a man of thoroughness, it is safe to assume that he took care of the necessary preliminaries, and so now is in a better place than this, freed of the suffering he endured for so long fighting a series of maladies with courage and humor.
     Jews, of which I am one, do not generally believe in heaven as a place, a celestial sphere with angels and clouds and shafts of light. We believe heaven is here on earth, God help us, that our rewards are found in this life, and after we die our spirit continues living in the form of our children, of which Jim had three, and in our loved ones and good works, which he had many, and in the good name we leave behind, which in Jim’s case constitutes a kind of immortality, in that he pulled off the rare trick of being both a hugely successful businessman and a universally acclaimed nice guy. I’ve worked for five owners at the paper, at least, and Tyree was easily the best — friendly, modest, direct, candid, ethical.
     Myself, I share the view of the poet Samuel Coleridge, who wrote, “We all look up to the blue sky for comfort, but nothing appears there, nothing comforts, nothing answers us, and so we die.” Yawning eternity stretches before our arrival, we flash into being at birth, a miracle of chemistry and electricity.
     We blink at the world and chew on it and gradually discover who we are and what it is, live and laugh and love and grow in complexity and understanding, manifesting ourselves to the indifferent cosmos until, suddenly, just when we were getting good at it, the tide goes out again, and every gift that life has given us — youth and beauty and strength and intelligence — is snatched back, one by one, until we are left with nothing and wink out, with all the magic and wonder of a charge draining off a battery. And eternity rolls on.
     Though not without a ripple. While we do not, in my view, literally live on in those who knew us, we do continue to ruffle their lives, like wind through leaves. The dead linger with us, at times. To this day, a question will come up at the paper, and I’ll think: this is something I should run by Steve Neal . . . or Charles Nicodemus, or Ray Coffey. Then I’ll realize that they’re all gone, and I’m the old guy now and will have to figure it out for myself.
     So Jim Tyree will endure, not only in the hearts of his family and friends, but also in this newspaper. In October 2009, the Sun-Times was being quick-marched toward oblivion when Jim interceded. Without him, I and hundreds of other writers, photographers, editors, advertising reps, computer geeks, office managers and assistants would be out of work, and there would be a big gaping hole in the civic life of Chicago.
     Instead he gave us the daily gift of employment and gave you a paper. “After that, it was all gravy, every minute of it,” to quote Raymond Carver. “Longer than I or anyone expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”
     We won’t. We’ll try not to. The day Jim Tyree passed away my column was about tragedy and humor, and how jokes can relieve sorrow. I truly believe that, and here is an old chestnut I’d like to present as evidence:
     A priest, a senator, and a newspaper owner die on the same day, and ascend to heaven, where St. Peter greets them at the pearly gates and tells them he will be escorting them to where they will spend eternity.
     First the group arrives at a fancy house: arching windows, double doorway, lush lawn.
     “Father,” St. Peter says to the priest, “this is your home in paradise.” The priest thanks him and walks up to the door.
     They continue to a much larger home — a mansion really — with a fountain and a circular drive. “Senator,” says St. Peter, “you will be spending eternity here. Enjoy.” He hugs the senator, who strides up the walk.
     St. Peter and the newspaper owner walk on. They come to a truly enormous residence, with towers and gardens. A palace, really.
     “And here is your home,” says St. Peter. He turns to go, but the owner grabs his arm.
     “Wait a minute,” says the owner. “It’s very nice. Too nice. Much nicer than the priest’s home or the senator’s home — why?”
     “Oh that’s simple,” says St. Peter, with an angelic smile. “We get lots of priests here, and even a few senators. But you’re the first newspaper owner who ever made it to heaven.”
     I think Jim Tyree, who liked a joke and a beer, might chuckle at that. Condolences to his family and many friends.
     Rest in peace.
   — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 17, 2011

Flashback 2009: Mourning privacy in age of Oprah

The Four Justices, by Nelson Shanks (National Portrait Gallery). Sonia Sotomayor, upper left, and Elena Kagan. Seated: Sandra Day O’Connor, left, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

     I know it might seem off-brand for me to draw the veil on my mother's death Saturday, and the subsequent funeral arrangements. All I can say is this job is a constant gut call, and silence is what feels right at the moment. I trust you will indulge me. 

     Though I of course will not strand you here, but keep up a steady stream of past columns that resonate with the present day. Here I go to bat for privacy, plus a couple other items — and if you think I must have loved encountering the "popsicle" vignette, you're right. That teenager, now grown to adulthood, had a baby 10 days ago. 

     This is from when the column filled a page, and I've kept the original subheadings.

OPENING SHOT . . .

     If only Bill Clinton had snapped, "That's none of your business," when a student asked him whether he wore boxers or briefs. He might have saved us our descent into this current low state.
     Lots of e-mail about Friday's item on the nomination to the Supreme Court of Sonia Sotomayor.
     The best line came from Paul Sadowski.
     "She edited the Yale Law Review, she has a distinguished record," he wrote. "Why does the coverage read exactly like the blurb of an American Girl doll?"
     Let me take a swing at that. At some point, our society lost its hold on the idea of public figures having private lives — also blame Oprah.
     While Franklin Roosevelt managed to get elected, four times, without mentioning polio, the first thing that anybody does today who wants a Senate seat, a judgeship or the presidency is hop on the couch and start talking about how much it hurt when Rinty got hit by a car.
     Can't we go back to the old way? So Sarah Palin could run without waving her daughter's bedsheets over her head? Or Joe Biden could accept a nomination without shining a light into the deepest depths of his family tragedy? I guess not.

HAPPY NEW 4,600,000,009!!!

      I try not to lobby for things that are never going to happen. So even if I believed that, for instance, children should call adults by honorifics — "Mr. Smith" or "Mrs. Jones" instead of "Bill" or "Edna" or "hey you" — I'd never seriously suggest that in a column because it would go nowhere and seem naive.
     Nor would I advocate a return to antimacassars — those doilies designed to keep the backs of chairs from being soiled by hair tonic -- or urge we go back to vinyl records.
     And yet. I have a soft spot for people who tilt at windmills, despite the odds, who devote their lives to the Esperanto Club, or to boosting the metric system.
     Meet Ed Geary, 47, of Villa Park. Ed has been lobbying me with periodic calls and letters. I have tried ignoring him. But he pressed onward. As much as I don't want to encourage perseverance in readers, at some point you have to admit defeat.
     So Ed, the stage is yours. Make your case:
     "Do you think the United States knows what year it is? What religious electioneering for Jesus is? What true separation of church and state is?" he began, pointing out that despite official separation of church and state, we nevertheless use the Georgian calendar, which dates back to the birth of Jesus, approximately.
     "This B.C., meaning Before Christ and A.D., meaning Anno Domini, which is Latin for year of the Lord, is religious electioneering by the United States government," he continued. "I do not think it's right to make a person use a religious calendar for civic affairs. The calendar should be upgraded and revised. . . . Scientist say the Earth, moon and meteorites are four billion, six hundred million years old. I think time should be based on the age of the Earth, not on the birth of a religious leader."
     Thus, according to Geary's proposed calendar, Sunday would not be May 31, 2009 A.D., but May 31, 4B600M09.
     There you have it. Before we close the curtain, I had to ask — is this his first cause, or were there others?
     "I was real big on health care," he admitted. And why did he give up on that? "I just don't think it's ever going to happen."

WHO'S YOUR DADDY?

     Speaking of what children call adults . . .
     "Have a good day, popsicle," my 13-year-old said breezily as he left for school one morning last week.
      "You, too," I said. "Love you."
     "Popsicle" is acceptable because it is a form of "Pop." I also get "Pa" and "Dad" and "Father," when he's asking for something, and "mon pere," since he's studying French. For a while, he tried to get away with "Pap," after we read Huck Finn, but Huck's pappy is not exactly the paternal image I want associated with myself, so I asked him to stop.
     Nor is "Neil" acceptable. He'd occasionally try out a "pass the lemonade, please, Neil," and I'd continue staring straight ahead. He'd say it a second time and I'd mutter, "It's 'Dad' to you, bub."
     Everybody is free to parent however they like, unfortunately. But I just can't understand parents who let their kids call them by their first names. It isn't as if kids don't have plenty of other people in the world they can address casually. Mothers and fathers go through a lot for their kids, from the hellish 2 a.m. forced march of baby-rearing to the constant what-do-I-do-NOW? crises of childhood and the how-could-I-have-gone-so-wrong? teen years to the financial cataclysm of college. You've worked hard for that "Mom" or "Dad," so the least your kid can do is call you by the title you so richly earned.
     Yes, I understand there is a counterargument — the whole touchy-feely 1970s friendship circle trip, where parents want to be pals with their kids and not oppress them with rules or authority.
     Space dwindles, so the simplest way to address that view is: They're wrong. It's a romantic gloss on childhood ("You don't need direction," Carole King sings, idiotically, in "Child of Mine," "you know which way to go") that ignores the truth that the average toddler will beat another child senseless over a cookie unless there is an adult there to stop him.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 31, 2009

June Steinberg, 1936-2025

   

     My mother died yesterday. In her honor, I'm taking the day off.