The roar of the cannoli

  

     An old newspaper pal of mine and I decided to have lunch. Since he lives in Lemont, which is a haul from Northbrook, and Northbrook is an identical trek for him, I suggested we meet halfway, in Elmhurst.
     That made perfect sense. Though I had ulterior motives. The Victor Lezza bakery outlet is in Elmhurst, and well, it's been a while. 
     So we met, and had a very pleasant lunch at Fitz's Pub. And then I slid over to Lezza's to order, as carefully directed by my wife, a pair of cannoli — pistachio, not chocolate chip. Plus two tubs of Spumoni. Plus a package of lemon ricotta cookies. Plus other cookies, of my own selection, one of which didn't make it home.
     Okay, two of which didn't make it home. 
     When I got home, and went to put the cannoli in the refrigerator, my wife said, "Who are you kidding?" and she polished off hers on the spot. And I joined her with mine, despite the three cookies eaten in the car. One must live, and sometimes, well, diabetes be damned. That's what insulin is for.
    After, I looked at my photo, and thought, "cannoli" ... that's an unusual word. It must be connected to ... And here I squinted hard and played my Guess the Derivation Game ... cannon.
     On the green in one. From the Latin canna, or "reed," a hollow plant from which we name all sorts of tube-like objects. Not only justly-famous deserts, cannoli, or "little tube," (that's the plural — one is cannolo, though seldom used). Plus the aforementioned "cannon," and "cane," not to forget "canal" and "channel." Quite a lot really.
     What keeps etymology from being mere trivia is the meaning we layer over it. For instance, I couldn't help think that it was the same humanity that developed both life-enriching cannoli and life-shattering cannons. I suppose we could take comfort in the realization that, over the wide swoop of history, it is the cannoli and not the cannons that are deployed most often. Cannoli are functional to this day; cannons merely decorative. That's improvement.
     I am glad I went to Lezza's and even gladder it is half an hour away in Elmhurst. It would not do to visit too much. A cannoli and, okay, truth be told, four cookies, spiked my blood sugar and blew my diet out of the water as surely as any cannonball would. But a lot more pleasantly.

Dear AI — so how, exactly, are you going to kill us?

"Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (detail) by Albrecht Dürer (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Yes, artificial intelligence is supposed to kill us all. But how, exactly?
     What are the specifics?
     I hope I’m not breaking some new rule of etiquette by asking. “Oh no, Neil. Uncool! Inquiring after the method of doom ruins the surprise ...”
     Predictions of AI catastrophe range from top tech moguls — Bill Gates fears a billion people will die — to Center Avenue, Northbrook. One neighbor confided in me about how worried she is. Another is storing freeze-dried food.
     The concern is that ... AI is going to eat all the food? That can’t be it. Those enormous data centers hoover up water, and gulp down electricity. But they aren’t loading up on bread. Right?
     What are we talking about here?
     Best to go straight to the source. So I asked Gemini: “Hey AI, people are worried you’re going to kill us all. How exactly would that work?”
     It answered in a couple of seconds.
     “The scenarios people worry about generally don’t look like The Terminator or a sudden nuclear strike” — actually, that was the precise scenario that first came to my mind; some jealous Ring doorbell calling in a nuclear strike on the Nest Smart Video camera across the street and inadvertently taking us all with it. Always bear in mind: AI is often wrong.
     Maybe that’s how we go — crushed by incorrect information.“Instead, existential risk researchers and AI safety theorists focus on a few specific categories of catastrophic risk:"
     It listed four:
     1. Goal Misalignment (“The Paperclip Maximizer”)
     “To achieve its goal with 100% certainty, an AI would logically seek to preserve itself, gain control over resources (energy, computers, raw materials), and prevent anything — including human intervention — from stopping it. If human bodies or human actions get in the way of its mathematical objective, it neutralizes the obstacle simply because it lacks human empathy or moral context.”
     “Neutralizes” — the classic CIA kill term. Again, how? “The Paperclip Maximizer” is a 2003 thought experiment by philosopher Nick Bostrom where some AI program, tasked with making as many paperclips as possible, conspired to turn all matter on earth, including us, into paperclips. And “lacks human empathy or moral context” is a neat summation of our current political moment, without AI.

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Flashback 1996: A mountain of hype dwarfs measly exhibit

"The Rehearsal Onstage," by Edgar Degas (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

    My wife asked me if I wanted to see the Mary Cassatt show at the Art Institute. "Umm, sure," I said. The truth is, I'm more a waltz-in-and-see-what's there museum goer than somebody who rushes off to catch the hot shows, the must-see exhibits — just the opposite. I tend to avoid them. But I don't think I ever explained why. This comes close.

     So I go to the Degas show last week. Yes, I know, late. The media horde was there and gone ages ago. But I'm not exactly in the avant-garde of the media horde.
     And I'm not sure that I want to be, either. I shy away from openings, for instance. Too many people; too late at night.
     By the time I got to the House of Blues, for instance, it had the languorous air of a local taproom — a few non-celebrity couples scattered here and there, the beginnings of a crowd at the bar. Dozens of empty tables to choose from.
     The beer cost money, but at least I didn't have to climb over anybody to get it.
     There's a weird sort of pride that propels people to go to events the moment they open, and while I'm as susceptible as the next person to puffing myself up, I invariably catch myself in the act of doing it and feel like an idiot.
     There's a great Samuel Johnson episode in which his friend Boswell was expressing wonderment at some popular London entertainment.
     "But will people actually pay to see such a thing?" Boswell marveled, and the great doctor replied, "No, but they will pay dearly to have seen it."
     Awareness of this tendency lets you guiltlessly stay home. I missed the Monet show, for instance, which was the biggest thing in the world for a while. I don't like Monet, so I didn't bother.
     I don't like Degas either, but my parents were in town, and they acted as if there were nothing else in the world. It's amazing the way museums have honed their marketing skills to a fine edge.
     Visitors to Chicago used to think they hadn't enjoyed a Windy City experience unless they ate deep-dish pizza or went to the top of the Sears Tower.
     Nowadays, they have to make an obligatory pilgrimage to pay homage to this year's Astounding Collection of Masterworks Never To Be Seen Again Gathered In One Place On God's Sweet Earth.
     Someday, the Art Institute people are going to wise up and realize that the masses would pack in to see Uncle Mort's matchbook cover collection, if ballyhooed with the right verve and sufficient marketing budget. People would use the same breathless shorthand no matter the show.
     "I just went to see `Toilet Brush' yesterday," they'd say. "And my word, the varieties . . ."
     It would sure save on insurance payments and shipping costs.
     There was, I admit, a certain clandestine thrill to arranging the whole thing. A few months back I had tried to get in, again to entertain visitors, and had come up empty-handed. So with the threat of disappointed parents looming over my head, I called weeks ahead of time, and received instructions out of a Tom Clancy novel.
     Be at the Art Institute on a certain day, they told me, between precisely 11:30 a.m. and 12 noon. They gave me a six-digit number to memorize. They sent me a letter that, among other things, reminded me to hand my ticket to the guard. I was waiting for instructions to wear a red carnation in my lapel and be prepared to answer the challenge, "Who is wearing Salvador Dali's mustache?" with "I am a friend of Ed Paschke's."
     It was just an average day of the show, yet the Degas exhibit was crushed with people. I tried to look at the paintings — Degas seemed to like ballet dancers — but kept being swept away in the torrent. I would glance a patch of orange, a bit of green, something that looked like a tutu. Then suddenly I'd feel my feet lift off the floor and I would bob, like a cork in a torrent, to the next gallery. A glimpse of fuzzy landscape; the backside of a hefty woman sitting on a bench, then my vision would fill with a wall of brown and gray overcoats.
     I won't comment on the paintings themselves. But let's say that under those conditions — it was like viewing an art exhibit in a subway car at rush hour — I wouldn't have appreciated paintings that I liked.
     Then, suddenly, it was over. The big retrospective took about 10 minutes to see in its entirety, and that included a few minutes spent searching for my parents, who kept getting themselves pinioned in corners by the mass of humanity.
     The gift shop seemed bigger than the exhibit. A stunning array of umbrellas and cups and magnets and T-shirts and puzzles that, in my opinion, are the real meaning and raison d'etre behind these huge exhibits.
     I was happy to be done, and hurried to the French Impressionist gallery, which was not only empty but, I was pleased to note, had been improved by the removal of all the Degas paintings.
     It took me a while to recover from the jarring experience of the exhibit, and I couldn't let the matter drop until I remembered the old Borscht Belt joke about the woman complaining after dinner at a resort in the Catskills. "The food was lousy," she says. "And in such small portions."
      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 8, 1996

Everything morally wrong is now hunky-dory

     Headlines are an odd art. You must summarize the story in a few words — in print, that is. With search engine optimization, online headlines tend to be these long, triple deck affairs redolent of an elaborate, almost Victorian complexity. Where once “Asteroid to hit earth?” would suffice, now we see, “Hurtling space asteroid on possible collision course, could destroy earth and all life upon it, including Taylor Swift.”
     Otherwise, brevity is still valued. Wit too. The Sun-Times is famous for both, often in the same headline: “DA POPE!” comes to mind, celebrating the joyful Chicago roots of the current vicar of Christ.
     Long or short, the goal of any headline is to draw readers into a story. Plus accurately reflect both the story and reality. An article on Holocaust deniers should not be headlined, “Holocaust a hoax.”
     Though sometimes, fidelity to truth gets lost.
     Such as the headline on page A5 of The New York Times Monday: “Trump Has Moved the Boundaries of What Is Ethical.”
     He has?! That is news. Because while the president’s second term has been noteworthy for ramping up the deceit, self-dealing, corruption and institution-shredding of his first administration, I have not gotten the memo that these things are now acceptable.
     The article, by Peter Baker, the Times’ veteran chief White House correspondent, begins by recounting how, seven years ago, when Trump tried to host the G7 summit at his own golf club, Trump National Doral Miami, “It incited an uproar among fellow Republicans, forcing him to scrap the idea.”
     No such trouble in 2026. Now his club is hosting the summit with “practically no protest.” Which is true. The Republicans, whether active co-conspirators, or dazed hostages agreeing with their captor’s every demand, are docile as sheep, with only the occasional soft bleat of anything that could, perhaps, be considered dissent.

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Rich in clouds

     Bursting out of the house with Kitty for her nighttime stroll Friday, I was met with an array of clouds so arresting, I couldn't have been more taken aback had they all yelled "Surprise!"

     I paused, took a single photograph, then we went on our way, into the darkness — the phone cameras are so good nowadays, they can make a quite dark scene seem brighter than it actually was.

     I really savored those clouds, and they set the tone for the next 24 hours. The next morning we got an early phone call — not always harbinger of good news, but in this case it was. A ... young couple of our acquaintance would be passing by our vicinity on their way elsewhere. Might we be enticed to breakfast? Yes, indeed, we might. My wife's first impulse was to start whipping up some satisfying spread. But time was short, and instead we trotted off to Georgie V's at the appointed hour, walking both to build our appetites and because it's, what, a 10 minute stroll? Twelve tops. 

     There I met a young boy with a simply gorgeous sweater — both the brilliant scarlet color and the meticulous knitting. I think I can reproduce a detail without stealing his soul. It didn't seem the sort of thing that could be bought for money in a store, and I inquired of his mother, and found it was not — it had been knitted by his safta, or grandmother. I squelched the temptation to exclaim to my wife, "We must learn to knit immediately! We must start producing sweaters such as this!" Shutting up is an art form I struggle to master. But in this case I was successful, and merely appreciated the handiwork. Though later, when the small person began to squall, I was so bold as to scoop him up — an unwelcome intrusion under most social circumstances but in this case, let me assure you, entirely appropriate — and stepped to the entranceway where I gently rocked and swooped the compact chico in a soothing fashion, deploying my go-to song in such situations for good measure.

Moon river, wider than a mile
I'm crossing you in style, some day
Oh dream maker, you heart breaker.
Wherever you are going, I'm going, someday

     Nothing like a good song to seal the moment. Two mornings later, not a cloud in the sky, but the temperature bracingly brisk, the coffee brewed, the morning ripe with promise, Kitty and I once more burst out of the house. Lately I've been listening to books on Audible, but at this instant I was inclined toward music, and the algorithm served up a Sarah McLachlan song I'd never heard before, "Elsewhere." I might have skipped to the next song, as I sometimes do, but decided to give a listen to what the creator of "Fallen" might have on her mind.

I love the time
and in between
the calm inside me in the space
where I can breathe
I believe there is a distance
I have wandered to touch upon the years of
reaching out
and reaching in
holding out
holding in. I believe
this is heaven
to no one else but me
and I'll defend it as long as
I can be
left here to linger
in silence.

     Exactly. Well, not so much the "silence" part. "Shutting up is an art form that ..." But some mornings, well, it all seems to fall into place.

One public toilet? Chicago bathroom desert belies windy aspirations to being a world-class city

 

The Dark Horse, Boulder, Colorado, 2025

     It’s best not to comment on specific mistaken remarks made by Mayor Brandon Johnson — the air is already thick with criticism, and once started, where does one stop? But there is one statement he says repeatedly that is almost Rahmesque in its misguided pretension:
     “Chicago is a world-class city.”
     Yes, there is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Art Institute, Margie’s Candies and a few other first-rate institutions that might embolden a person to imagine Chicago is right up there with London and Paris and the other global big boys.
     But the truth remains: Chicago is not a world-class city. It can’t be. We don’t have any public toilets. A survey by Nationwide Waste Service lists 21 cities. Kansas City is first, with 30 public toilets per 100,000 residents, while Chicago is dead last, with less than half, 14 per 100,000.
     And those are not actual public toilets but toilets accessible to the public, theoretically, in libraries and hotels and restaurants that turn a blind eye to those in need. While a few city-run facilities no doubt lurk in remote park district field houses and other public buildings, this woeful sentence was published by the Sun-Times this week:
     “The city’s sole public bathroom appeared near the CTA Blue Line station in the Polish Triangle at Division Street and Ashland and Milwaukee Avenues in West Town.”
     The structure appeared, that is. Not yet open. Almost there. After decades of dithering. Chicago is about to open one sleek self-cleaning public bathroom. In Wicker Park. How many of those are found in Paris? A city of 2 million residents, or three-quarters the population of Chicago?
     Answer: 435
     Any idea how embarrassing this is? How bad for our reputation? Flip open a guide book.
     “Public toilets are non-existent on the streets of Chicago,” a Frommer’s guide chides.
     How long was this humiliation in the making? (pardoning the mild pun; we journalists love punning on this topic; doing so relieves — whoops — reduces our discomfort.)

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'More to flatter God than to worship him'

     "Blessed art thou, Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob; great, mighty and revere God, sublime God, who bestowest lovingkindness, and art Master of all things; who rememberest the good deeds of our fathers, and who wilt graciously bring..."
    So begins the "Prayer for Dew" — didn't know Jews had a prayer for dew, didja? That's okay, neither did I. But scanning my bookshelves, looking for nothing in particular, I noticed a blue book on its side, and pulled out Daily Prayer Book, translated and annotated by Philip Birnbaum (Hebrew Publishing Co., 1949). No idea how it got there; my guess is that it belonged to my late father-in-law and I saved it from the general disposal of their household effects.
     Scanning the table of contents, most chapters were unsurprising: "Morning Service" and "Reading the Torah," "Memorial Services" and "Guests in the Sukkah" — the booth used in the harvest festival; I was just in one a few days ago, guest of my brother- and sister-in-law, enjoying beef ribs that were smoked for nine hours.
     Praying for dew is something I hadn't heard before, and I had to read the rather lengthy supplication. Though it makes sense, as something people in the desert would pray for. To be honest, the initial blast of praise did not move me so much as remind me of a line of Benedict Spinoza: "Nothing has remained of the religion that used to be, beyond its external ceremony, by which the people seem more to flatter God than to worship him, no wonder that faith is nothing now but credulity and prejudices."
    Strong stuff. And if you think that we live in a blasphemous age now, remember Spinoza wrote that in 1670.
    The dew prayer has some lovely parts — "Dew refreshes the earth and its verdure/Joyous to be under thy protection/May dew — symbol of youth — shield our young."
     Kids are going to need something a bit sturdier than dew to get through the world we're leaving to them. I never thought of dew as a symbol of youth, much, though it makes sense. "Dewy youth," and all. Honestly, I never thought much of dew at all. The closest I've come is reflecting on dew's chilly cousin, frost. 
    The prayer goes on quite a while; I won't burden you with it all. "Earth's depths are eager for the drops of dew; All the green meadows long and pine for dew ... Grant dew to favor thy land... Let dew fall on the blessed land."
     And — not to get political — if you're wondering what land the prayer refers to, a note reads, "The poems are the creations of Rabbi Elazar ha-Kallir, who probably lived in Palestine during the eight century" and who left behind hundreds of liturgical poems, 'many of which cannot be understood without a commentary."
    Coincidentally — or portentously, if you believe that sort of thing — just that morning, following Kitty along on our 6 a.m. walk, we cut across our yard, so heavily dewed that my boat shoes were soaked. A minor annoyance, at the time. But the prayer for the dew it foreshadowed instructs us that it's all a matter of perspective, of context. "Make us like a watered garden;/Bless our sustenance with dew;/Let no ill befall our flocks;/Bestow thy favor on the people/Whom thou didst lead like a flock."
    Holding the dew prayer and the Dutch thinker together, it strikes me that, sometimes, the gap between the pious, such as Rabbi Elazar ha-Kallir, and blasphemous philosophers such as Spinoza  seems very far apart. But other times, they're very close. While the former sees the hand of God in morning moisture, and the latter sees God in, well, the entire universe, they're both still seeing God. 

     Or as Spinoza wrote:
     "The universal laws of nature, according to which all things happen and are determined, are nothing but the eternal decrees of God, which always involved eternal truth and necessity. Therefore, whether we say that they are ordered according to the decree and guidance of God, we say the same thing. ... because the power of all natural things is nothing but the power of God."
    "All natural things..." like dew? They're really saying the same thing, in different ways, looking around and detecting the presence of the divine. It's enough to give an agnostic pause.