Courting death by hauling top-heavy wooden floats in Japan — just another risky guy thing

     The news is flushing out my siblings lately.
     Just as my sister Debbie showed up in Chicago, Pope Leo XIV went under the knife for lung cancer. Deb has been kicking cancer’s ass for years, so tapping her wisdom seemed a no-brainer.
     Several readers replied, “You have a sister?” Well, I’m supposed to be writing a column for a Chicago newspaper, not a chatty meet-the-family Christmas letter.
     And yet. News has a will of its own.
     Now it’s my younger brother’s turn. Sam is no stranger to readers, particularly of my books. It is he who bails me out of jail in “Drunkard.” He’s also a plot point in “You Were Never in Chicago,” as I trace the classic newcomer’s path of coming here, getting a job, then bringing family to Chicago and helping them get jobs. I rented an apartment with a spare bedroom on Logan Boulevard, and enticed him to move here from Tokyo, where his apartment was so small I could span its width with my arms spread and one foot planted on the floor. And I have short arms.
     Sam still has the Big Love for Japan, and goes back often. He and his wife Yuri were there when my sister showed up, which would have not been the stuff of a column, except for one reason he went — to participate in the Danjiri Matsuri — an annual fall festival where huge wooden floats are maneuvered through the streets by acolytes wearing cotton happi coats.
     I knew it was dangerous — the festival is sort of a Japanese running of the bulls at Pamplona: a chance to party in the street, risk being killed, and survive. I thought of telling him, “Don’t get crushed.” But that seemed a prissy, older brother concern.
     What I said instead was, “I want to see a picture.” Because he can fall down in that department. I would have left it at that. Then two participants were crushed to death in Osaka, and 16 injured. The New York Times found four others who died in 2022 and 2023. Suddenly, I was sitting on a big international news story, so designated Sam as a Sun-Times foreign correspondent and got to work.
      Weren’t you worried about being killed?

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Not my circus: religion small and large

     Noticing this sign in the hallway of a Washington DC apartment building sent me tumbling down an interesting mental tangent. 
     I know a bit about Islam, and knew that shoes are removed during prayer in a mosque. But did not realize that also extended to quotidian life in the home. Makes sense — live a life of purity, keep the dirt outside. My daughter-in-law insists on the same thing, not out of religious scruple, but just trying to keep germs off the babies. I brought slippers and tried to remember, though old habits die hard.
     There are two tracks that religion occupies. Think of it as two levels. There is the individual, daily pathways each we blaze for ourselves, deciding how we pray, what to think, what we eat, whether our shoes stay on or off indoors
     And then there is, for want of a better term, the public track, faith as image, metaphor, communal consensus, political club to be wielded, for and against. Religion as concept, as it is talked about rather than lived. Not a distinction I see discussed much, which is unfortunate, because it strikes me as useful.
    They almost seem like two entirely different animals, do they not? Personal and public faith. I've said many times before that religion is a tool, like a hammer. You can build a house with it, or hit someone in the head. Same hammer. 
     But there is also religion as different tools, put to different purposes. A micrometer and a yardstick. Religion small and large. People rarely complain about religion small, religion as it actually manifests itself among regular folk. As much as people hate Jews, in often spectacular, creative fashion, you never hear bigots raging about the fuckin' Jews and their damn Sabbath candles and their yamulkes and their affinity for education. Not to give haters any ideas. I'd almost call it an unexpected charity, if I didn't know it's just an oversight. When you're damning people for being murderers drinking the blood of children and running the world, you don't think to add that they also eat gefilte fish.
     No, the faults of Jews bruited about by haters are either entirely imagined — run the banks, Hollywood, the world, whatever. Or attached by association — how do you expect me to be kind to you when all those kids are being killed in Gaza? Which is your fault. Because you're Jewish, and Jews also live in Israel. It makes as much sense as firebombing a Belgian waffle stand because of those historic atrocities in the Congo.
     I'm not sure why I shifted from Islam to Judaism. Maybe I was reluctant to reel off the generalized faults assigned to Islam — scary sharia law, responsibility for all terrorism everywhere, head scarves. (I can never quite get my head around that last one. Nuns sure got away with that, prior to the 1960s; what changed?) You can treat your own team more roughly. You get a pass.
      I did think about hammering on the door and asking about the sign. But that seemed, oh, intrusive. I'm sure guests appreciate the reminder. I sure would appreciate one in my son and daughter-in-law's apartment. Maybe I'd be less inclined to go blasting in, attending to some grandchild-related issue, only to be told, three paces in, to remove my shoes. It's an awkward moment. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Nobody ever removed their shoes with more alacrity. As if God Almighty was looking down going, "Tsk, tsk, shoes Neil." One key to successful grandparenting is to understand that this is not my circus, not my monkeys, not my rules. I'm just trying to follow them best I can. 

Rattling the cup

     The Chicago Sun-Times has no paywall, so depends on reader support. I've written several effective fundraising letters for the Sun-Times. But for some reason, when they came around recently, asking for another, I declined. Not in the mood. But the very next day, my attempt to expense a sandwich, tater tots, iced tea and a cake pop in Morton, Illinois, breaking open the pumpkin story, was kicked back. We don't pay for food (the confusion was my fault — I failed to mention that Morton is 150 miles away, and they assumed it was a suburb).
     Suddenly I had an idea for a new fundraising letter, and asked if I could do it after all. This is the result. Alas, they lost a few choice bits, such as Larry Green going through the photo department garbage, demanding to know why rolls of film are being processed with only a few shots exposed (Because if you pop in a fresh roll, and snap the Hindenburg blowing up at Lakehurst, New Jersey, you don't then carry the camera around for a few days while you fill the rest of the roll. You get that first shot in the paper). Nor would they permit mention of the challenge of getting compensated for tips to strippers, while investigating an embezzler who spent his ill-gotten gains at Thee Doll Hose on Kingsbury, since they tend not to give you a receipt when you stuff a dollar in their g-string. But it does convey the spirit of the thing. Please feel free to give generously.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dear Sun-Times reader,
     I like to say about the Sun-Times, “The paper won’t give you a new pencil until you hand in the stub of the old one.”     From the moment of our founding, the Sun-Times has always been the scrappy underdog, doing more with less, trying to scrape the last few morsels of journalistic quality from whatever resources we have to work with.
   Sometimes, we take that thriftiness to absurd lengths. Recently, when I tried to expense a CTA bus ride to Little Village, our accountant demanded my boss write a letter authorizing the expenditure.
      Or just last week, my attempt to expense lunch during a long day downstate talking with farmers was kicked back. I’d been talking with farmers about growing pumpkins - a skill honed over generations - and residents near a pumpkin processing plant about whether the facility made the air in their town smell like their grandmother’s kitchen, or “pumpkin vomit.”
      Food is not part of the story, I was told. It is, I replied, if you don’t want me swooning in a pumpkin field as the shadows lengthen. They paid.
      It’s important to get out into the world. That sometimes costs a little money. 

Metropolitan Museum

     What I’m trying to say is, the money you donate to the Chicago Sun-Times is not taken lightly.

     Every penny is scrutinized. Carefully. Sometimes too carefully. But that’s because we understand that you work hard for your money, and so do we.
     That’s what those dollars are for. Sending reporters out to ask questions, follow stories and bring back something worth knowing.
      Four years ago, the Sun-Times took down its paywall so everyone could read our journalism, whether they could afford to pay for it or not. Keeping that commitment takes resources, and readers willing to help provide them.
      We know that when you donate to the Chicago Sun-Times, you expect to see that money on the page. And you do.
      Please consider making a generous gift to help us keep that journalism available to everyone. And I promise you, from long experience, that it will not be wasted.

Neil Steinberg

How stupid are Ohioans? We're about to find out.

Vent Haven Museum, Fort Mitchell, Kentucky

  

     "Willful ignorance" is a familiar term, almost a cliche.
     Yet you don't see it used much of late, which is too bad,  because it's a useful concept in understanding our current political landscape.

     Look at the scandal over the vile attack ad put online Monday by Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Some MAGA operative tracked down the estranged mother of  the Democratic candidate, Dr. Amy Acton, and has her saying that Acton "lied her entire life."
      The GOP is putting millions of dollars behind the ad.
     You can see its appeal. "Even her mother thinks she's a liar," Strong stuff, if you stop there, will yourself to ignorance, learn nothing more, and do not permit yourself to actually examine the facts of the situation.
      Which are as follows: Acton was abused as a child. Raped between the ages of 1o and 12 by her step-father. The husband of the woman in the Ramaswamy ad, Donna Arthur, who remained married to her husband. A court took Acton and her brother away from their mother in 1978. They've had no contact since.

     The briefest survey of the facts casts the commercial in the light of a loathsome piece of bald deception, one that even some Republicans have decried.

      But not all. The liar, bully, fraud and traitor Donald Trump of course supports it. As does his morally void lapdog, JD Vance. In a decent world, the ad will ensure Acton's election and, looking at the polls, she seems on her way to that. It was an act of both desperation and folly, elevating Acton while reminding everyone just how bad a person Ramaswamy truly is.

     Nor is he alone, The episode is a reminder of an essential truth that is often lost in the fairness rituals of journalism: these are bad people, doing bad things. Trump is a bad person who ruins everything he touches. JD Vance is a bad person. Marco Rubio is a bad person.

     As for the excrescence, Ramaswamy, you might be unfamiliar with the hedge fund billionaire. His sole previous appearance on EGD was in 2023, when he participated in the Republican presidential debates, will give you a sense of the man:

     Thirty eight year old wackjob/businessman Vivek Ramaswamy promptly pronounced "climate change is a hoax,” and claimed, vis a vis nothing, that "more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.” In general, Ramaswamy was an incandescent spotlight of batshittery, confidently airing a variety of specious theories and crazed policy proposals, and was probably the big winner of the night, if drawing attention to yourself, your destructive hopes and fierce, misplaced self-regard can be considered winning

    He's gotten worse since then. Bad people seldom get better. Just the opposite. They deteriorate, driven to more extreme acts trying to support the unsupportable. 
     You can't be a good person and support Trump. Oh, you can have once been a good person. And you might do some good things that you can use to argue otherwise. But by now, the situation is undeniable: MAGA is moral poison, a toxic delusion based on lies, used to hurt people, dependent on the aforementioned willful ignorance. There's no reason that shouldn't be said, loud and clear and often.

'Oh noooooooo!'

     Harry Weese was a great Chicago architect whose love of triangles has already been dissected here on EGD — his two most significant Chicago buildings are the SwissHotel, an equilateral triangle at 323 E. Wacker, and the Metropolitan Correction Center, an isosceles right triangle at 71 W. Van Buren. 
     His other downtown building, the Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist, 55 E. Wacker Drive, is certainly not a triangle. More of a, well, I'm tempted to take inspiration from my colleague Lee Bey calling the new entrance to the Museum of Science and Industry a "carbuncle" and label it a "boil." Round in a bad way. He should have stuck to triangles.
     Which is ironic, because Weese's true masterwork is also not a triangle. Nor is it in Chicago, In fact, it's not a building at all, but the Washington DC Metro, whose vast, vaulted poured concrete interiors were designed by Weese. I feel a burst of Chicago pride every time I travel through them, such as a recent visit to Washington to meet Grandbabe #3. 

    I figure, at least a few readers don't know about this, and might appreciate being informed.
    The visit, I'm pleased to report, went very well. Grandbabe #1, now 16 months, seemed to remember me, or at least took to an older gent who did nothing but to read to her and tell her stories and dance and sing and whatever else she cared to do. 

      We spent a good amount of time stacking colorful boxes and then knocking them over, which I pretended was a shocking event — I put my hands on my ears, elbows out, stared wildly, and uttered a boggled, "Oh nooooooooo!" — a good-natured mix of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and Macaulay Culkin's hands-to-cheeks dismay gesture in "Home Alone." She would mimic the expression, to my delight, pressing her hands to her ears.  It soon became the payoff of the stacking process, and we would press our hands on our ears and beam at each other in mutual admiration, truly happy to be sharing this secret, this incredible witty spin we had invented. 
    The other noteworthy moment came when, suddenly at a loss for a story or song, I noticed her toes and went for the traditional. "This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef..."
    At that point, for the fourth little piggy, some long-dormant neuron fired and I said, "this little piggy had LESS roast beef than the previous piggy, but still enough roast beef to meet his nutritional needs."
   Where did THAT comes from? All I can think is that my wife, who is nothing if not kind hearted, felt bad for the hungry little piggy, denied roast beef, even though it only existed in myth, and decided to give the poor notional swine some cold cuts. Or it could have been me, making fun of her kind-heartedness. 
     Anyway, part of effective parenting (or, I suppose, grand-parenting) is keeping the process interesting for both yourself and your charges, and this door opening for the fourth toe, formally called the digitus quartus pedis (Latin for "fourth toe") or the "ring toe," to correspond with ring finger, has kept me creatively engaged. 
     "This little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy COULD have had roast beef but, being a vegetarian, opted for a chive cake instead...")
      A chive cake being an actual foodstuff that I watched this girl knock back at a Laotian restaurant. You learn a lot in this grandparent business, if you do it right.  

Two thumbs down

Rendering of proposed Siskel and Ebert statue 

    

     My first thought: there already IS a bad statue of Roger Ebert, down in Champaign. Do we really need another? As for Gene Siskel, well, best to draw the veil.  

     To be located on private property, so they're of course free to do whatever they like. And this is in the fine tradition of godawful tourist trap TV tributes, bronzes monstrosities of the Fonz and Bob Newhart and whomever. Just as postage stamps never again are the honors they once were before Thin and Fat Elvis, so bronze statues long ago sank from equestrian honors bestowed upon heroes to metallic essays in fatuousness. This is not to take anything away from Roger Ebert, whom I knew and admired deeply. But he already has his deathless tribute: his words.
     The thing is unveiled in 2028, and I'll probably never see it — most people won't, there being no compelling reason to step foot in Prudential Plaza. I guess this is supposed to draw them there.
      Will it? Have you ever gone anywhere in Chicago to look at a statue? I mean, I'll pause passing the Kup statue on Wacker Drive — quite a good, stylized work that has some of the panache the man himself possessed — maybe clap a comforting hand on his foot and say, "Oh Kup, you wouldn't recognize the place." But I wouldn't cross the street to do it.

 

A-line dress

     I went to the Obama Presidential Center Museum on Monday, for an interview and to accompany my sister, visiting from Texas — it was the one place in Chicago she asked to see. I just was there in June, so didn't give the place the most careful once over. 

   However, we did pause in front of the display of the First Lady's couture — I thought Debbie might like it — and noticed something I'd missed before. This sleeveless A-line dress that Michelle Obama wore on vacation a few times while her husband was president. What makes it noteworthy is not the designer, but where it was purchased: Target. The dress cost less than $40, and she wore it between 20o9 and 2013.
     It seemed to symbolize a lot more than a piece of discount clothing. I probably don't need to point out the yawning gap between that sensibility — a celebration of the dignity and worth of ordinary Americans — and the current plutocratic crew in the White House. We are so far from that, with the Oval Office festooned with gilt loving cups and faux gold crap and half the White House being ripped up, it seems, to satisfy whatever shrieking midget dictator-manque is crouched at the back of what's left of Donald Trump's decaying mind, I figured, it might be worth remembering that not so long ago we had a First Lady who wasn't a contemptuous Eastern European courtesan and a president who wasn't an odious liar, bully, fraud and traitor servicing Vladimir Putin and betraying democratic Ukraine along with most closely held American ideals and interests. If you're paying even the scantest attention, you don't need me to explain why this is horrendous. The New York Times editorial page did a good job of that Wednesday. Here's the gist:
     "He is aiding an autocratic leader and dangerous adversary of the United States who is waging a brutal war against a democratic neighbor. Mr. Trump is doing so partly in the faint hope that gas prices, which have jumped because of his reckless war in Iran, will fall over the next two weeks and help Republicans avoid big losses in the midterm elections. He is damaging America’s national interest, and likely sacrificing Ukrainian lives, for his own political interests."

     Not much else worth saying beyond that. I have no idea if the elections are going to help, or if Donald Trump will merely declare himself king while the military seizes control and a third of the country applauds like seals. Whatever happens, we must remember that we weren't always like this — that isn't an opinion, but a fact. And I believe we won't be like this forever. That is an opinion, a hope really, but one that I'm sticking with and sharing because the alternative is just too horrible to contemplate. We will not be like this forever, but oh boy, it sure fucking feels like forever right about now.