"Mister, your book ... your book ... your book ... saved my life."

Tin man folk art (National Portrait Gallery)

     As Artificial Intelligence blooms and social media spreads, filling every crevice of our culture, those of us who still care what is true, and what is not, are going to have to lean more and more on what can be considered "common sense."

     So I am happy to present another contribution from Jack Clark, the former cab driver turned prolific mystery writer. I think he points at a phenomenon we're going to see more and more of, the sinking, "Is this a person or is this AI?" dilemma.

     Before you read it, I want to give you the perspective I brought to Jack's piece. I have been a published author for more than 30 years, maybe one click better known than Jack (meaning, on a scale of 1 to 100, if 100 is Stephen King, then I am 3 and Jack is 2). In all that time, I heard one comment from a more prominent author, unbidden (I'm not counting those ahead of me on the greased pole who I reached out to, begging for blurbs, and kindly complied). 

     After my book on failure came out, I got a phone call from Harlan Ellison, the renown science fiction writer, to tell me  he really liked the book. At least I thought it was Harlan Ellison. Now that I read Jack's piece, I can't really be sure anymore.

   

     I recently got an email which claimed to be from best-selling author Karin Slaughter. She was writing to tell me how much she enjoyed my book ‘On the Home Front,’ which I wrote with my mother Mary Jo Clark. “I felt compelled to reach out and express my admiration for the quiet strength and restraint that seem to define this remarkable work.”

     Well, that made my day. There are best-selling authors, mid-list authors, and then there are guys like me (and my poor mother, I guess) who are so far down the list that publishers, probably to avoid causing embarrassment, don’t even bother to categorize us. To hear a best-selling author call my book, which was published nearly 25 years ago,  remarkable, well, that in itself is truly remarkable.

     I kept reading: “What strikes me most is the refusal to mythologize. In revisiting the years from Prohibition through World War II, the book appears to focus not on grand speeches or sweeping heroics, but on lived experience: shiny new shoes in a butcher shop, sawdust underfoot, the intimate texture of childhood memory. These private moments feel just as historically significant as the news of Pearl Harbor or the tragedy of the Dorchester. It’s in that balance between the domestic and the historic that real life emerges.”

     Well, that burst my bubble. I went to my archives and picked up the latest edition of ‘On the Home Front,’ and read this on the back cover: "The book itself is a marvel of writerly restraint... Some are private moments--being 4 years old, getting shiny new shoes and remembering looking down at them as she toed circles in the sawdust on a butcher shop floor. Other brush against history — news of Pearl Harbor, or the Dorchester, a World War II troop ship sunk off the coast of Greenland. It was famous for the four chaplains who gave up their life vests to other sailors, but Bill, who was dating Mary Jo's younger sister, wasn't one of the lucky survivors... The books strength is that it doesn't stoop to Greatest Generation mythologizing. The Clarks are real people, and Mary Jo doesn't try to make them heroes." —Chicago Sun-Times

     Back to Karin: “There is something profoundly moving about honoring ordinary people without turning them into symbols. By allowing Mary Jo’s voice to remain natural and unembellished, the narrative seems to trust the power of memory itself. That kind of writerly restraint requires confidence  and deep respect for the truth of a life as it was lived.”

     You’re probably asking the same questions I did. Could this be A.I. talking? And what exactly were they trying to sell me?

     Karin seemed to know what I was thinking: “There is no agenda behind this message, only sincere appreciation for a work that reminds us of history is carried not just in headlines, but in kitchens, shop floors, and family stories. Thank you for preserving such an authentic portrait of American life. I would be delighted to stay in touch.”

     But she wasn’t quite done. “I would be honored for you to take a look at my own novel, which you can find here:”

     There was no way I was clicking on that link. Who knew where it might take me?

     Instead I found Karin Slaughter’s website and wrote a note mentioning that I had received the letter, that it kind of looked like it might have been written by A.I., and that I wondered if she had actually sent it. My suspicion that this was just another scam did not come out of the blue.

     I’ve been hit by several of these in the past few months. Book clubs that want to feature one of my books, a TV show that would like to feature another, someone in Ireland who wants to feature a book in their Christmas Anniversary Spotlight Event, whatever that might be. They always start out by telling me how much they enjoyed my book, and they always seem to use the exact same words that you’d find in about three seconds by checking the Amazon listing. There’s always a catch, of course, and it always involves me sending them money. Thank you for thinking of me but no thanks.

     When I decided to write this, I thought I better click on the link first. If you’re going to be a writer, you have to be willing to put yourself in danger now and then. And I was right to be hesitant. The link led me to a dark corner of the universe, Amazon, and Karin Slaughter’s 2015 book “Pretty Girls.”

     What caught my eye immediately was that the book had 151,070 ratings for an average of 4.2 stars. On Goodreads, it only got 4.0 stars but this was based on 728,923 ratings. Now that is a best-selling author! My most popular book is knocking on the door of 200 ratings on both Amazon and Goodreads, (4.2 and 3.8 stars) and I’ve been looking forward to the day it crosses that threshold. I thought that would make me sort of a big-time writer. I now see that I have many more miles yet to travel.

     The other thing that caught my eye was that the book was first published in 2015. Why would an author who publishes a book every single year, and sometimes three books in the same year, send me to one that’s ten years old? Was this her favorite?

     So what’s going on here? It seems highly unlikely that Karin Slaughter became a best-selling author by trolling the internet for bottom-of-the-list writers, and trying to entice them into spending a few of their precious dollars to buy one of  her books? According to Google, Karin has already sold 40 million copies of her books. If that’s how she did it, one writer at a time, that would make her the most successful troll in publishing history. Which makes no sense at all, of course, and aren’t trolls supposed to be sitting in the darkness under bridges? How could she possibly write all those books down there?

     I looked at the email address the letter came from and it was a Gmail account. Now I use Gmail as my writer’s address but I haven’t sold anywhere near 40 million books. I’m lucky if I’ve sold 40,000, and that’s over the last 30 years. I promise when I reach one million, Gmail will be history.

            I took another dangerous leap and wrote back to Karin:

Hey Karin,

Thanks for writing. Glad you liked the book. I ordered yours at my local library and look forward to reading it.

All the best,

           

     When I’m feeling optimistic I think, well, maybe Karin really did read and like my mother’s book. I got a letter years ago from another writer who told me how much she liked the book and how helpful it was to her when she was writing a novel set during the Depression.

     Anyway Karin, if by some chance that really was you, thank you very much for reaching out, and I’m sorry for being suspicious. But that’s the world we are currently living in. And I do understand, after selling 40 million books, you probably don’t have time to personally answer all your mail. So A.I., if that’s what your letter was, is probably a very valuable tool. Hell, I’d use it myself if I had all those fans.

     If you really want to do something nice for my mother’s book, tell your fans about it. That would be greatly appreciated. And if you’re going to rely so heavily on a single newspaper article, it would be nice if you credited the paper. The Sun-Times, like most other newspapers, needs all the help and credit it can get.

     Speaking of that article, it was written by none other than my host here, Neil Steinberg, but I had to drag it out of him.

     I sent him an advance copy of the book and he said he would try to write something about it, but months passed, the publication date passed, and he never did. Now I’m the kind of guy that usually will take no for an answer. But in this case, I thought I owed it to my mother to keep pestering Neil. He eventually wrote back to tell me the reason he hadn’t written about the book was because he didn’t think it was very good.

     That’s one of the dangers of dealing with Neil, he believes in honesty.

     But I knew what had happened. The original edition of the book starts slowly — which is my fault, but that’s another story — and Neil had given up before he’d gotten to the really good stuff.

     So I wrote Neil back and asked him to read certain stories. I know I mentioned “The Coloring Business,” and the “Sinking of the Dorchester.” Those are two of my favorites. There are 80 stories all together. To my eyes, they’re all good, even the slow ones, and a dozen or so are really, really great.

     Sometimes being a pest pays off. Neil was open enough to look at the book again and change his mind. He wrote an entire Sun-Times column on the book. Two years later, I called him once again, and he was kind enough to write my mother’s obituary.

     The book went out of print after a few years, and I took the rights back and published it myself. I reordered the stories to get rid of that slow beginning. I started off with the story that Neil had highlighted in his review. It’s from my mother’s fourth birthday in 1918, where she remembered drawing circles in the sawdust on the butcher shop floor. At 200 words, it’s one of the shortest in the book, which I think sets a nice opening pace.

     Now getting back to Karin Slaughter, which I hadn’t planned on doing but, after I’d written this entire piece, she responded to my email.

Hi Jack,

Thank you so much  that truly means a lot to me. I’m really glad you ordered the book through your local library. There’s something special about stories finding their way into libraries and new hands that way.

I’m so pleased you enjoyed my book, and I genuinely look forward to hearing your thoughts once you’ve had a chance to read it. I’d love to know what resonates with you most.

Wishing you continued success with your work  and many more readers discovering it.

All the best,

 

     So now I feel like a heel. She didn’t ask for money or try to sell me anything, just my thoughts on that single book, which I just this moment ordered from the library. Yes. I lied in that last email when I thought I was responding to a scam.

     I still have reservations, of course. Could this be just another small step in a long con? That second paragraph is a bit incoherent but, hell, I’ve written plenty of those myself. If that’s an A.I. letter, it’s an early-stage one. The programs will keep getting better and better — sucking up more and more water and electricity — and pretty soon no one will be able to tell who or what wrote anything.

     This is not a good development. I’m sure you agree. But you’re just a small group of readers and I’m just another down-the-list writer. Nobody cares what we think.

     Maybe Karin does. I sure hope so. And I hope she forgives me for this story. I’d already spent two days on it by the time she wrote back. I couldn’t just throw it away.

     I suppose A.I. would have been able to write it in minutes. And that’s supposed to be progress. I don’t know. I had a lot of fun writing this — just like I had fun driving taxis and over-the-road trucks — and I got to talk to my friends Steve, Mary, and Robin, and my wife Helene, who all took a look at various drafts and shared their thoughts and suggestions. Like most of my writing, it was in many ways a team effort.

     What would I have done with all that time A.I. could have saved me? You can only watch so much TV, or soak in the bath for so long. Maybe that’s how A.I. will finally do us in. They’ll suck up all the water and drain all the electricity. We won’t even be able to take baths or watch TV and we won’t have to work because A.I. will do everything for us.

     I’ve got a pretty good idea how it’s going to end. It’s already boring me silly.

The wind

Aboard the Resolute, 2019, Antarctic Chile

     Man, the wind.
     It's blowing now, as I write this, in the pre-dawn Friday darkness of Center Avenue. "Blow, blow, thou winter wind," as Shakespeare writes, in As You Like It.
     It was blowing half the night. I got up at some point — 2 a.m., 3 a.m. — to the sound of toppling garbage cans. Went downstairs, and looked out the window at the wind-whipped trees. Lots of trees in the old leafy suburban paradise. Particularly over at our windbreak of five very tall, very old California incense cedars. It used to be six evergreen trees, if you recall, until one toppled over in 2018 and nearly killed me. Ever since, I've been waiting for another to go, especially as I walk by with Kitty. All in place, protecting the ghost sugar maple that isn't there anymore.

Wind speed is measured
with an anemometer

     When we finally went out, Kitty and I had to really lean into what Yeats called the "assault and battery of the wind," gusting to 35 miles an hour — up to 64 mph at O'Hare — ruffling her fur, tossling the treetops. The bagged newspapers had blown halfway up our driveway.
     There was a gale warning in the night. "Mariners should remain in port," the National Weather Service advised, and "secure the vessel for severe conditions." Good general life advice for our present moment, if you ask me.
     The house creaked like a wooden ship at sea. Maybe for that reason, I conferred with Bowditch's American Practical Navigator, which mentions "wind" nearly 300 times, starting with "true wind," the speed relative to a fixed point, as opposed to your ship, which might be zipping along after it.

Wind direction is indicated by a weather
vane, like this one atop Rick Telander's
 barn in Ontonagon, Michigan.

     I expected Bowditch's definition of "wind" to be enormous, but it was seven succinct words: "air in horizontal motion over the earth," although there were 20 other wind words (not to be confused with "windward," or "the general direction from which the wind blows" among other things).
     Which leads us to the word itself. Playing guess-the- derivation of wind, all one has to do is pronounce the word, with its strong opening whoosh, "whhhhind" to assume it's very old, some kind of Norse onomatopoeia — words that imitate what they describe (pausing to nod respectfully at the Todd Rundgren song of the same name, which begins, delightfully, "Onomatopoeia, every time I see ya...")
     The Oxford English Dictionary serves up seven plus pages of definitions, tracing wind back to Old Teutonic and pointing out, surprisingly, that for most of its existence, "wind" rhymed with "mind" and "behind" (a pronunciation preserved in "wind your watch") but that changed "in polite speech" in the 18th century explaining, "the short vowel of (wind) is presumably due to the influence of the derivatives windmill, windy , in which is normal."  I'm not exactly following that, but it must make sense to somebody.    
      The OED starts out even more concise than Bowditch's, with three words: 1. Air in motion" and leaps into Beowulf, circa 897: "Holm storme weol, won wio winde."

     The 10th definition gets to "'air' or gas in the stomach or intestines" leading to the still common "to break wind" (which led, during World War I usage, "to get the wind up," meaning "to become or make apprehensive," according to John Ayto's Twentieth Century Words, explaining, "Wars are rich sources of joke euphemisms for fear. This one probably comes form the idea of the fart-inducing quality of terror" which, honestly, is not a dynamic I've considered before or, honestly, care to consider now. The Dictionary of American Slang points out that this is mostly a British military usage, thank God, and adds the delightful, if "prob. synthetic," "wind-wagon.")
     By the 14th definition we get the common ""applied to something empty, vain, trifling, or unsubstantial. a. Empty talk, vain or ineffectual speech, mere 'breath,'" a usage going back to 1290. One of the "obvious combinations of "wind" is the worth-reviving "windpuff" and "winddog," which is defined as a fragment of a rainbow. There is "windrake," which is used for "the raking up of windfalls, or the right to do this," pointing at a more literal meaning for "windfall," which first is wood, or fruit, blown down by the wind and ripe for plunder, before it is considered ""A casual or unexpected acquisition or advantage" such as the "windfall apples" that Captain Francis Grose mentions in his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

A kestrel (Wiki)

     Oddly, though the OED clasps a perfumed hankie to its lips and hurries past "fuck" without comment, it offers up "windfucker," as a kind of hawk, a kestrel. Given last night, we shouldn't overlook "windshake," which means exactly as it sounds, and the valve in a bellows is a "windsucker."
     I probably shouldn't go on too long about this, though there is still fascination aplenty. (What would you call a hole in a building to let the wind in? A "window," of course.)
     This has to end somehow — you probably have things to do; I know I do. The wind is a metaphor for oblivion, nowhere, the void. When Bob Dylan sings, "The answer is blowin' in the wind," he is not alluding to a response that you can expect to lay your hands upon, ever. 

    Warren Zevon's song "Hasten Down the Wind" approaches a similar meaning mentioned in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary, defining "down the wind" as "to decay."

    Leading us to the perfect title of Warren Zevon's brilliant 12th and final album, "The Wind," composed and recorded after he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, which would kill him at 56. It was a struggle to get the album completed; not only was he dying, but he had seized upon his death sentence as an excuse to relapse into active alcoholism. Zevon uses "wind" as the thing the blows us all away, sooner or later. In the slow, stately "Please Stay" he implores his love to hang around, despite all of his problems. "Will you stay with me til the end?" he sings, backed up by Emmylou Harris. "When there's nothing left but you and me and the wind."

A man goes into a voting booth ...

     Wednesday afternoon I voted, early, folding my partisan cheat sheet, jamming it in my pocket, and strolling out my front door, turning right. Taking another right at the corner, and over to the Northbrook Village Hall, midblock.
     Easy-peasy. In many nations, citizens can't vote at all, or only have sham elections. In the United States of America, our votes still matter, still carry significance and can lead to changes in policy and values. We've witnessed that, big time, in the whipsaw of national elections. Bill Clinton. George W. Bush. Barack Obama. Donald Trump. Joe Biden. Donald Trump redux.
     Line up behind whomever you please. But is there anyone who can say there isn't a difference between electing one of these men or the other? (Actually yes, my viva la revolution pals who are so lost in lefty dogma they miss subtle differences, like one president trying to give millions of Americans health insurance and another trying to pluck them off the street and deport them because their papers aren't in order).
     To claim otherwise, to call elections "rigged" based on nothing but hurt feelings —"Ooh, I didn't win; somebody must have cheated because I ALWAYS win!" — is to insult the core of our national identity.
     Many do just that. Many Americans don't vote at all. Some 90 million sat out the last presidential election, 36% of eligible voters. Thanks guys. Of course, I'm assuming those with better things to do would have saved the day. Maybe if they got off the couch and did their patriotic duty, Trump would have won ever more bigly. My faith in the electorate is at a low ebb.
     As for the politicians ... I scanned my cheat sheet as I walked over. For a big shot major metro newspaper columnist such as myself, voting is also personal. I've broken bread with eight different candidates on the ballot at various points over the years. Quite a lot really. Some have sulked off, stung by something I'd written. I voted for them anyway, even though I don't like them personally. They still seem like they're doing their jobs.
     "I figure, might as well vote while I still can," I joked to an election judge. It was supposed to be a joke, though it isn't very funny.
     The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy organization, has a page called "Timeline of the Trump Administration’s Efforts to Undermine Elections." It begins:
     "In 2025, a new threat to free and fair elections emerged: the federal government."
     "Since day one of his second term, the Trump administration has attempted to rewrite election rules to burden voters and usurp control of election systems, targeted and threatened election officials and others who keep elections free and fair, supported people who undermine election administration, and retreated from the federal government’s role of protecting voters and the electoral process."

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"One hybrid mountain goat. One goat produced by a wild goat. One suckling goat..."

 

     Monday was a gorgeous day to be downtown, and I gave myself extra time to walk across the Loop from Union Station to my interview on North Michigan Avenue.
     It had been a few months since I've done that — because winter — and maybe my bearings were a little off. Walking east on Washington, when I hit LaSalle Street, and saw this row of empty storefronts, pictured above, my first thought was a shocked, "Hey wait a minute? Harlan J. Berk went out of business? Nooooo!" 

     The store had been there for decades. I used to bring the boys there to buy coins. I'd always stop by and chat with Robert, who went to the same synagogue as my father-in-law....

     The flash of dread lasted only for a few seconds. I did some quick orienteering. We were just south of the City Hall. I gazed over toward the Picasso. Wait a sec...  

     My step quickened. Soon this parallaxed into view.  Not LaSalle Street. Clark. Whew. Still there.  

    Given that little psychic contortion, I had to go in. You can't worry about the fate of someplace then skip past it. Beside, I had a little time to kill. 

     So I went in. Robert retired last month, lucky soul. I chatted with the clerk about gold prices. The bullion value of a double eagle — a $20 gold piece — is so great, nearly $5,000, that it's numismatic value, the price added to the value of the gold by it being a coin of a certain year and quality, has dwindled to almost nothing. 

     Though people do still collect coins, he said. 

    Looking for something to say, I asked if he ever got any cuneiform tablets in. Besides coins, Berk sells antiquities, Roman lamps and vases, kraters and Egyptian trinkets. I'm a writer, and have written about deciphering ancient languages. I always thought a pristine cuneiform tablet would look good on my desk, maybe displayed in some kind of cool brass stand, suspended by pincers. Look, early writing.

    The next thing I knew I had been handed over to great man himself, Harlan Berk, 62 years in the business, and we were heading upstairs to his suite of offices, stuffed with all manner of statue shards and ancient detritus. I tried to beg off — look at the time, mustn't be late to my appointment. But I think he saw me as a fish on the hook, and he would not be deterred until the tablets he knew he had were dug out from the charming confusion of his offices, all cases and dusty volumes about coins. It took time. I tried to be patient. 

And only $300

     After some searching, a pair of cuneiform tablets were produced, in plastic bags — the first one, a 4,000-year-old Sumerian receipt for slaughtered meat (most ancient writing is not poetry or political speech, but accounts of grain shipments and recipes for beer).  It cost $600 for a piece of baked clay two inches long and an inch wide with some scratches on it. There was a second, with a single line of writing, basically an ancient notepad, for $300.

I was thinking of something
more like this (Met)

     I said it seemed a lot for objects which were not the beautiful, intricately hash-marked tablets I'd seen at museums. I had in mind something much more ... well. aesthetic. Mr. Berk explained that, because of changes in international law, such tablets could not longer be exported from the Middle East, and supplies are extremely limited. Not a situation the current war in Iran will help, I imagine.  

     Just as well. A tablet of the quality I had in mind would be wildly expensive, all for another trinket to join the others, more stuff my kids don't want. I need to be getting rid of junk at this point, not acquiring more. I pushed on to my interview, but was very glad of my quick dip into the back rooms of Harlan Berk. That's the thing with the city; you set out to interview bagpipers — my appointment on Michigan Avenue — and end up eyeballing Sumerian tablets.

    Not entirely true. I ended up, as I like to, after the interview, standing at the plaza just east of the Madison Street entrance to Union Station, enjoying a Rocky Patel Vintage 1990, watching the river flow and waiting for my train. A man was nearby, having a cigarette, and I considered saying something along the lines of "Nice day for it, eh?" But he seemed as if he were nursing a private sorrow, and I decided to leave well enough alone.

Harlan J. Berk

With 2 Passover Seders, it helps to have 2 working wrists

     Two days after Thanksgiving, my wife broke her wrist in two places. Slipping on ice in the parking lot of Sunset Foods. And no, she didn't sue. Not yet anyway.
     For a few months, she couldn't twist the cap off a jar. She's a little better now, though the injury has been slow to heal. It still hurts, sometimes a lot. I try to help as best I can. Cooking, for instance, has become a two-person job. She instructs, I comply.
     Which matters, since Passover is bearing down on us: April 1, for you fans of irony. A Seder is a long, complicated feast, served to lots of guests. Seders would be a challenge to prepare with three strong wrists and a prehensile tail. For someone who's hurt ...
     And to top it off — because religion is, if nothing else, ritual excess — I'll tell you a secret that only Jews are privy to: There are TWO Seders. Not even all Jews know that — growing up a Reform Jew, I sure didn't. One Seder was plenty for us. It might take a whole hour. Giving up bread for a few days was our Golgotha.
     But observant Jews who aren't in Israel hold two — count 'em two — Seders, on consecutive nights, because ... well, it's complicated. Something about the crescent moon, and diaspora Jews not being sure when it appears over a land where we supposedly don't belong even though we've been living there continually for 2,000 years. So two Seders, to make sure the moon is in the right place over Israel.
     I'll be honest — twin Seders strike me as a lurch into fanaticism. Then again, I regularly indulge visiting cheder boys — young Hassidim in black garb — by praying with them when they stop by, our devotions somehow nudging the tarrying messiah along. So who am I to judge?
     Typically, my sister-in-law Janice holds the second Seder, a briefer, more casual affair. (Ours can clock in at six hours, speaking of pious excess, though that cuts down on outsiders angling for invites). But in one of those odd spasms of sisterly competitiveness, Janice contrived to recently break her wrist, too, just to one-up my wife.
     So now we're hosting both Seders.
     Madness, right? I started offering solutions.
     "Scrap the second Seder," I urged.
     No, my wife said. We man the ramparts of our faith and must stick our landing, moon-wise.
     "Let Prairie Grass cater them."
     No. We do not offload our religious responsibilities. We did not hire Sarah Stegner to bless our children when they married. Nor will chef Sarah be preparing our Seder feast, as delightful as the result would certainly be. Like Christmas trees, carryout festive meals are for the enjoyment of others. Not us.
     "I will prepare the Seder!" I announced.
     My wife snorted and gave me a pitying look. Really, it's as if, 35 years ago, I'd said, "OK, I will bear our children then!"
     "We could go to Paris again ..."
     One year, a decade ago, we shucked our responsibilities and fled to Paris during Passover, where we marked the holiday by walking arm-in-arm down the Rue Mouffetard, eating warm bread out of a paper bag. That's one beauty of Judaism — a very flexible faith. The last Jew excommunicated was Spinoza.
     Again no. I opened my mouth to point out that, what with the price of brisket at Romanian Kosher Meats, a trip to Paris might be cheaper. But ...
     The canyon floor is hurtling up, and this is the place where I'd typically offer a neat resolution, though one is not at hand. My bet: two Seders, prepared by my wife, me, and an "I am Spartacus!" cast of family volunteers. Seders were held in concentration camps. Our North Shore bed of ease and plenty will manage, even if our prime movers are creaky in the wrist department.

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Flashback 2011: Home + Housewares Show participants want items to be made in America

     The Inspired Home Show opens today. In the wake of last year's "A philosopher goes to the housewares show" I decided to skip this year. Beside, I've gone so many times, there are unseen visits in the vault. Such as this, which is noteworthy for a couple things. First, a reminder that US manufacturing was coming back in 2011 — the orange enormity didn't need his idiotic tariffs. Second, notice how many people I speak with — those visits are taxing. And last, the observation about flatware maybe being made in Utica someday overlooked Utica Cutlery, which has been making silverware in the New York town since 1910. The photos are from last year's show.

     When Jeff Bollengier began CaliBowl, he manufactured the colorful curled lip plastic bowls in China, where labor is famously cheap.
     But that was back in 2008; it’s 2011 now, and China is not so cheap.
     "Times are changing," said Bollengier, explaining that the company is shifting manufacturing to California this June. "We’re coming back."
     "China’s labor is creeping up," said John Armaly Jr., president of Armaly Brands, which makes Brillo Pads in Ohio. "Their middle class wants what you and I want. They want more money, and the Chinese government is going to raise wages. There are manufacturers in this building today looking to bring their manufacturing back."

     Bollengier and Armaly are two of nearly 2,000 exhibitors at the International Home + Housewares Show at McCormick Place earlier this week. Knowing both the common wisdom — that nothing is made in the United States anymore, that we’ve become a nation of baristas and dog walkers — and also that U.S. manufacturing is struggling to rebound, I spent Monday talking to exhibitors at the show either returning production to this country, or who never left.
      The reasons for optimism are many. The dollar is falling, making goods from abroad more expensive. The recession focused attention on job loss. "That’s a huge question coming through our booth the past three years — where’s it made?" said Bollengier. "Americans are willing to pay an extra $1 for something made here."
     Manufacturers were not only hawking their own home-produced products, but trolling for China’s business.
     "Their prices have gone up, we’ve come down and closed the spread," said Steve Roberts, president of Polar Plastech, an injection molding company in Florida. "Our approach is: ‘Hey, give us a chance, bring it home.’ We’ve had four or five serious inquiries just here at the show."
     Another key to China’s success has been cheap shipping; skyrocketing fuel costs have pushed that up as well.
     Bob Etherton, vice president of Chicago Stool & Chair Co., explained that a 40-foot container that cost $3,000 to ship from China two years ago costs $4,500 to ship today.
     "If a container holds 600 pieces, that’s a $2 a piece increase," said Etherton. "On a $30 item, that’s a lot."

   Chicago Stool & Chair’s business model depends on a quirk of shipping — with bulky items, like chairs, the savings of assembly in China are lost by the extra cost of shipping it completed — and thus bigger — vs. flat. So Chinese furniture makers send disassembled chair pieces here to be put together at a factory in Elgin.
     Catskill Craftsmen of Stamford, N.Y., sells hardwood kitchen islands that come in several big boxes, which would get separated traveling from China.
     "We drop ship right from the factory," said Ken Smith, Catskill CFO. "They can’t keep two or three boxes together. We focus on larger pieces that require multiple boxes, and that’s how we survive. It’s a niche."
     There is also the time factor.
     "You can look at two months before you can get your goods from China," said Jaysen Thorne, director of marketing for Fun-Time International, noting its customers get Krazy Straws from their factory in Mexico in two or three weeks.
     Efficiency is another successful tactic.
     "We’re the only ones doing a co-injection molding product in the states, in Tennessee," said Jeff Goldberg, president of Clear Choice Housewares, which makes Farberware brand products. "Our manufacturers were able to do creative automation to knock the price down even cheaper than China’s."
     High-profile scandals related to contaminated Chinese goods made health concerns another selling point.   

      "We’re all-American because our products are mostly food-touch items," said Lynn Everts, with a Texas twang, referring to his line of Evert-Fresh produce bags. "They’re used by our neighbors and children, and we want to know what’s in ’em. I want to be able to look you in the eye and say, ’Pard, these are safe for your babies.’ "
     Companies manufacturing in the United States are usually smaller, relatively new, and with dynamic owners.
     "We gotta put America back to work," Everts said. "We can’t do it with a service economy. I could make my products 60 percent cheaper in China, but I’m not interested."
     The future isn’t rosy — entire industries have been lost, millions of jobs are not coming back. The assumption remains that growth requires a move to China.
     "We’re not so huge yet, where we need massive factories," said Kristen Kleinsorge, marketing director at Clear Choice. "If we were a huge international company, who knows if we could maintain it?
      But experts confirm good things are happening in U.S. factories.
     "There really is a remarkable recovery going on in the manufacturing sector," said Greg Ip, U.S. economics editor for The Economist and author of The Little Book of Economics. "This recovery is actually being led by exports and business investment."
     U.S. industry is trying to recover.
     "It’s tough," said Ken Bausch, a vice president at Oneida, the flatware company named for a town in New York whose product is now made mostly overseas. "We’d actually like to go back. ‘Made in America’ strikes a chord with people. If we could profitably make it in the United States, we would love to."
     Over at Utica, another old-line cutlery company, that day might be coming.
     "We have more long-range plans," said CEO David S. Allen. "The disparity is still pretty big. It used to be, if it cost $1 to make something here, they could do it for 10 cents. Now it’s 20 or 30 cents. Prices are going up pretty rapidly, but we have a ways to go."
     Allen, 50, said that when he started, 28 years ago, "70 percent of what we sold, we made in the United States. If we stayed with that model, I don’t think I’d be standing here talking to you."
     Now it’s 5 percent. Still, it’s becoming conceivable that Utica flatware might again be made in Utica.

     "I didn’t think I’d see it in my lifetime," Allen said. "But maybe I will."

        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 9, 2011

  

 

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

     The media has so much going wrong at the moment — bowing before a despot, decimated staffs, meddling owners — that it seems almost unfair to mention traditional flaws.

      But when it comes to certain aspects of American psychology — UFOs, the lottery, and the supposedly paranormal — the media collapses into a heap and just can't seem to get up. 

      There is no persuasive evidence that UFOs are anything but lies, delusions, fakes, or misinterpretations. Yet supposed sightings are still routinely ballyhooed. The lottery is an expensive dream — you can fantasize about winning millions without ponying up any cash yourself, and the odds of actually getting a huge payout are exactly the same — and yet the media cheerleads relentlessly for them in a full-throated chorus.

     And the paranormal....well look at the headline above, snipped from the electronic Washington Post.

    That first part is pure credulousness. It should read, "These patients THINK they saw what comes after death." And the next part, "Should we believe them?" makes it seem that this wild claim is is simple plain truth, just sitting there, waiting for us to accept it.

    The story, by Mark Johnson, refers to near death experiences reported by thousands, the "strange visions and journeys that challenge what we know of science." 

     They don't. I dream every night, and the Washington Post doesn't speculate on an actual dreamworld where Madonna and I are walking hand and hand through her Manhattan apartment, admiring the antiques. The Washington Post would never — not yet anyway, let us count our blessings — run a headline, "God spoke directly to these people — should we believe them." 

    The question here is not, "Is there an afterlife and is this evidence of it?" but "Why do people so need to believe their precious selves continue on after obvious and undeniable physical death?" (Just as the question regarding UFOs, as I've written previously, is not, "Are these smudges glimpsed in the sky really visitors from outer space?" but, as Carl Jung pointed out, "Why do people look up in the sky to find validation?")

    There is a journalistic edge that is different than the usual go-along-to-get-along attitude. A cross-armed skepticism that does not give into the normal nodding grease of social nicety. If you write to me and say that your Timmy is in heaven with Jesus, I would never dream of arguing with you. Who am I to strip away this clear source of comfort? But if the Sun-Times ran the story of a the tragic go-kart death of a 10-year-old with, "Boy skips helmet, winds up in heaven with God," I would complain to the editor. We don't, can't know that. I complained when the Sun-Times started calling ourselves, "The hardest working paper in America." How do we know? Did we do a survey? Sure, it can slide by on mere puffery. It's like "The world's best coffee." But why put a lie — or at best, an exaggeration — on every page of our newspaper? Nobody listened, of course. But I still said it, and as I sometimes tell readers, "I just work there. I don't run the place."

     You might point out that the desire for immortality and unchecked ego go hand in hand — that's why rich people are always trying to freeze their heads and embrace all sorts of nutritional hoo-hah — which also gets credulously lapped up by the media. Isn't one life enough? Such a rare and exquisite gift, What does it say about humans that we waste the precious time we have clawing after time we don't? I'd like to see the Washington Post tackle that one. Oh right, they can't, not so long as they're owned by another self-adoring billionaire, who reminds us of Gore Vidal's deathless line about the very rich: "They don't have to conspire because they all think alike."