Know your enemy: buckthorn

Fear it.

     I had more fun with my column on Arbor Day than a person should probably have while getting paid. The first draft ran 30 percent long, and I had to leave a few interesting bits on the cutting room floor. Hallmark and American Greetings do not sell Arbor Day cards, as far as I can tell — I cut that first, as it's hard to prove a negative, and figured I was inviting someone to wave their some undetected Hugs for Trees series under my nose.
    Beer companies also do up the holiday — I checked because initially I said they didn't, then thought: "Better find out." The following was trimmed from the end of the first graph:

     A few small local beer companies make an effort — Yards Brewing in Philadelphia has "ArBrew Day," giving away free saplings and beer. But the big boys stand pat, waiting for Memorial Day. A pity. I'd like to see Angry Orchard do it up right. "Slam a cold hard cider for the trees that made it!"

     One of the Arbor Day tips I suggested was this:

     Learn what buckthorn is — an aggressively invasive tree, illegal in Illinois to buy, sell or plant, that will crowd out the entirety of nature if we let it — and carefully pull the next sprout you see.

     But I couldn't imagine anyone actually doing it.
     The only lawful way to plant buckthorn is if you get a permit and are studying improved ways to kill it. Once buckthorn takes hold, you can't pull it, you have to dig it out. I try to get an early jump. I walked my yard yesterday, for the second time this spring, doing buckthorn suppression. I must have dug out 25 buckthorn sprouts. Their roots race to the center of the earth and if you wait until they're six inches tall they can be devilishly hard to extract. When we bought this property, 25 years ago, the northeast corner of our yard had buckthorn trees 15 feet tall. Some of my neighbors down the block still have buckthorn hedges, decades old, and while I have considered stopping by with a gas can and wordlessly setting them on fire, that would be wrong. So I let the birds gobble their berries and poop the seeds in my yard. Sadly, buckthorns are not illegal to own, though that would be a logical next step if any legislator wants to take the hint. We're in a war and buckthorn is winning.

We love trees. So why isn't Arbor Day a bigger deal?

"A-mal-gam" by Nick Cave.

     Happy Arbor Day! Did it sneak up on you, again? Or are you ready with the ... well, not a lot to do on Arbor Day. No gifts to give, no cards to send. No parties to throw unless you're a municipality, and even then, they celebrate by doing the same thing they do all year long: Put a few trees in the ground. It's like treating your wife to dinner at home and a TV show for her birthday.
     It doesn't make sense. Love is elusive, fleeting, heartbreaking, yet Valentine's Day is huge. Trees are everywhere, permanent, uplifting. Yet we give them the cold shoulder. Why isn't Arbor Day a bigger deal?
     "That's a really good question," said David Horvath, a certified arborist with the Davey Tree Expert Company. "It doesn't get much mention in the media. You guys aren't reporting on it."
     Oh right. Our fault. Maybe so. This is my first Arbor Day column in 30 years. Horvath must have detected my air of injury, because he mused that lack of attention might be a good thing.
     "We're doing a pretty good job, preserving trees," he said. "We don't have a lot of news stories about hundreds of acres being clear cut."
     Not yet. That may be coming, with the Trump administration dismantling the U.S. Forest Service and going gaga for logging.
     It's a good time to reaffirm our love of trees. Trees are cool, and very Chicago. How so? For starters, we have a direct, familial link to Arbor Day: J. Sterling Morton, who created Arbor Day in 1872 as a way to forest treeless Nebraska. Fifty years later, his son Joy Morton, founder of Morton Salt, created the Morton Arboretum on his country estate in west suburban Lisle.
     Arbor Day was a state-by-state affair until 1970, when Richard Nixon established national Arbor Day as the last Friday in April (though states still celebrate at peak planting times. Texas Arbor Day is the first Friday in November).
     The city of Chicago has about 3.5 million trees, and I wish I could tell you a dozen tree stories. Space limits us to one. In 1972, students voted for an Illinois state tree. The white oak won. At Austin High School, however, students disagreed, pooled their money — each chipped in a penny — and bought a black oak, which they planted in the school courtyard.
     "The black student body felt a closer identification with this type of oak," the Chicago Daily News helpfully explained. (The tree, alas, is no longer there, according to the Chicago Public Schools. "No sign of the black oak tree," said Ben Pagani, of CPS, who added engineers were sent to scope out the situation).

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A note on comments

 

"Expressman" by Norman Rockwell
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     You can't comment after stories on the Sun-Times homepage, and haven't been able to for quite a while — since 2014. Why did we stop posting them? Doing so was a pain in the ass, and patrolling the racist, sexist, unkind remarks was a full-time job — often taking more editorial time than writing the stories themselves. There was no upside. Nobody said, "Yeah, I read the Sun-Times because the comments after stories are so sharp."

     Most papers don't post them.         

     Not that the negative comments were uninteresting. They were, but in a bad way. You couldn't run a story about a 6-year-old getting hit by a bus without having the lad taunted in the comments. It was sad. To read them was to flip over a rock and expose the underside of human life, better left hidden. 

     Despite such drawbacks, I allow comments on my blog because they seem to encourage engagement, and vetting them is not particularly difficult. I get to answer reader questions. I often learn things — facts, ideas, perspectives, arguments. True, I have to read them, which takes time. Sometimes I'm torn whether something is so toxic and crazy that its entertainment value outweighs the unpleasantness of reading it.

     I vet them rigorously. I don't want to let EGD devolve into a carnival of cruelty and snark. There is enough of that everywhere else.

     But comments are valuable. They alert me to typos, errors, oversights — that's important in a one man show (though it really isn't; I have you).

     Sometimes I get sucked into personalities. I try to avoid prima donas. Only room for one of those here, me. I don't mind people telling me I'm mistaken, more or less politely — if they're telling me I'm mistaken because I'm a idiot, well, bad enough that I have to read it, it's funny that someone would think I'd want to share the news on my own blog. I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm an idiot, not ballyhoo it. 
     Sometimes I just don't feel like having a topic explored. The Israeli policy on hanging Palestinians seems patently racist, mind-boggling and grotesque, but that doesn't mean I want someone to expound upon it at length under an unrelated post. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood for a certain topic. It's my show, and I can call the tunes.

     To post or not is a spot judgment call. Sometimes I delete a remark and immediately regret it — sometimes it's a slip of the hand, honestly. I don't like out-of-the-blue comments, but sometimes an unrelated comment is valuable. Under yesterday's Ozempic post, a reader complained about these bothersome McAfee ads that pop up on the paper's web site. I asked him to send me an email, and, full-service columnist that I am, forwarded it to the paper's CEO and the editor-in-chief. Both responded — we value our readers — and said that this is a real issue, that other people have complained, including staffers, that solutions were being discussed in meetings, and they were on it. So hurrah for us, right? 

     Sometimes readers will be inspired to go on in-depth personal reminiscences — we're mostly  old, remember — and I tend to post those, though I'm not sure what they add to the conversation. When I reflect on my past, I begin by assuming, correctly, that nobody but nobody cares what happened to me, and I have to find a way to slather on enough art to make them care. Others give it a shot, with varying degrees of success, and I don't see a reason not to share them. 

     Lately, when people sign up, in my little note thanking them, I invite the new readers to comment — sincerely. I do appreciate people taking the time to read, and to comment, and feel a piece has resonated when it gets 20 or 30 comments and not just two or three. If you haven't commented yet, please do. It's fun, apparently.

    There have been, since the blog began in 2013, exactly 4,878 posts, and over 60,000 comments. Or an average of about a dozen comments per post. That isn't bad. The record, I believe, is my ill-starred 2023 introduction to Aldi, which drew 138 remarks, most of them pro-Aldi. I think comments add to the experience that is everygoddamnday.com. So long as you take the time to write them, I will take the time to read them, and post all that bring something to the table, and more than a few that don't. 

     

Praise the Lord and pass the Ozempic

     Sure, I’m taking Ozempic. Aren’t you? Isn’t everybody?
     OK, that’s an exaggeration. There’s also Zepbound and Wegovy and all those other drugs that belong to the GLP-1 class of weight-blasting tonics. Some folks take those instead (though really, just among us Ozempic users — we view those as cheap knockoffs, right? Like a restaurant serving Red Gold ketchup instead of Heinz. We’ve got the good stuff).
     Thirty million American adults — 1 in 8 — take GLP-1 drugs, which not only curb your appetite so you can be a svelter, happier, more successful you, but seem to offer a wide and expanding range of positive results, from quieting the howl of addiction to healing brain trauma. According to the rapidly building data, taking such drugs can cut your risk of heart attack or stroke by 20%. I mentioned to a young person of my acquaintance that I was taking Ozempic, and he expressed an emotion not often heard when old people are cataloging their medicines: envy. Ozempic is supposed to keep you young, he said, wishing he could get some.
     I believe that ship has already sailed for me, though freezing the decline process at this point would be welcome.
     All of this is relatively new. Ozempic received FDA approval in December 2017. Researchers are dancing as fast as they can, but if after 10 full years of use, Ozempic causes your head to tumble off your shoulders, then the joke will be on humanity, again. Remember another hugely popular drug that helps keep you thin, nicotine. People didn’t figure out tobacco’s lethality for 400 years after Europeans first embraced it. Millions still haven’t.
     Though given Ozempic’s fat-busting abilities, we’ll accept the occasional head bouncing down the sidewalk, giving it a quick soccer flick as we pass.
     Despite dieting continually for the past half-century — I’ve counted more calories than stars in the known universe — I would have never sought out Ozempic had Type I diabetes not fried my pancreas and a doctor suggested I might try it. Technically, Ozempic is used for Type II diabetes, to help your not-dead pancreas produce insulin, which doesn’t mean much if the organ is merely decorative (There’s a fun online shop for Type I diabetes T-shirts and various gadgets called “The Useless Pancreas.”) But apparently mine is still quivering, kind of — I seem to have what some call Type 1.5; doctors tend to shrug and mumble when pressed for details — so a GLP-1 drug might do some good.

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Put that mirror down or I'll sue!

"Toppers," by Jan Pieter van Baurschelt (Rijksmuseum)

     When the Trump Era finally comes to an end, with its corruption, cruelty and incompetence, that last quality will be seen almost as a godsend; we will be grateful for how the damage, though extensive, was also constrained by the unfathomable laziness and stupidity of the toadies selected for their blind obedience and nothing else. 
      A vigorous, disciplined and skilled FBI director, determined to do the bidding of his master, could have cut a swath of damage across the country. And Kash Patel, the FBI director, is trying to do just that. But he keeps tripping over his limitations, at least according to a story, "The FBI Director is MIA," published in The Atlantic. Rather than manage his 38,000 agents, Patel, the magazine said, spends his time "with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences." 
     But that isn't why I'm writing this. Patel, trained at the Trump knee, is now suing the magazine for $250 million — these lawsuits reflect the heavy-handed tactics the Trump administration is increasingly turning to trying to stifle valid media criticism. ICE will be tossing reporters into white vans next. For now, though suing is Trump's go-to move, or, rather, threatening to sue. Though I can't help but notice he has never, to my knowledge, sued anyone accusing him of molesting girls under the aegis of Jeffrey Epstein, I wonder why that is? 
     Could it be that he didn't want to end up in a court of law where the defendant would of course present evidence that the accusations are true? A thought that clearly did not occur to Patel. 
    Needless to say, I've never met the man. He could be sober as a church mouse, and dedicated to his craft, and I hope he is. 

      But I am familiar with The Atlantic, and my hunch is they would not publish such a story if it weren't true. The story is almost comically well documented — the initial humiliating vignette of Patel being unable to log onto this computer, then panicking and announcing he had been fired is "according to nine people familiar with his outreach." Nine people? I haven't read a story backing up a fact with nine sources in my entire life. The article names the bars he's drinking at — Ned's in DC, the Poodle Room in Vegas. Nor does the news shock.
     "Patel's drinking is no secret," the magazine reports, pointing out that he was filmed chugging beer with the U.S. Men's Olympic hockey in their locker room after their gold medal game.
     Suing is both bluster and blunder. Rather than repairing the damage to Patel's good reputation — not that such a thing exists — he is merely broadcasting the accusations and ensuring they remain in the public eye for the foreseeable future, or until he's summarily canned by Trump for being pathetic. 
     "Some at the FBI are concerned that Patel's behavior has left the country more vulnerable," the magazine wrote. I dispute that. Better Patel doing shots in Vegas than at his desk in DC, pursuing what FBI agents retain their sense of justice and patriotism. 
     Or as one official told The Atlantic: "Part of me is glad he's wasting his time on bullshit, because it's less dangerous for the rule of law."
    Make that two of us.

    Now Patel's genius idea is to force that official to repeat his statement in open court.  If the suit ever comes to trial. My bet is, it won't — the only question is, which is shitcanned first, the lawsuit or Patel.
 

New AI platforms hand hackers powerful new tools for cracking cybersecurity

Bundles of currency on display at the Federal Reserve Bank's Money Museum, 230 S. LaSalle St. 

     Everyone has a morning routine. With me, I open my eyes, muse darkly upon my life, then flee upstairs to my office — even before coffee is made or the dog walked — blast out the day's blog post to my hearty band of followers, then ritualistically log into a financial service company to check on my 401(k). A moment emotionally somewhere between Scrooge McDuck going down into his vault to roll around on his piles of gold and a castaway in a rubber raft checking the amount of water left in the jug. It takes a minute.
     Except one Sunday morning a few weeks ago. I plug in my username and password. Nothing. A second, more careful try. It warns me, in red letters, that a few more such attempts and I will be locked out.
     Not wanting that, I hit "Forgot password." It asks for my birthday, my email and the last four digits of my Social Security number. Normally, you never share that information. But this wasn't something over the transom; I'd logged into my 401(k) site. I plug in the info.
     No account associated with me. I try again. Nothing.
     A few more attempts, with growing alarm, that I'll spare you. In brief, my 401(k) account, with my entire nest egg needed for looming retirement, built over decades, the provisions that must sustain us on our one way journey into the dark woods of decline, had simply vanished.
     Money, as you know, is no longer bullion slumbering in vaults or even stacks of fresh currency, but mostly bundles of electrons flitting through systems of unfathomable complexity. You buy a pack of gum, tap your phone to a contactless payment terminal, and great institutions briefly kiss. Visa slips Walmart $3 and debits your account. You get a pack of Hubba Bubba Sour Blue Raspberry.
     We hardly even think about it. But maybe we should. While we're used to the idea of endless legions of scammers assailing us through every mode of communications short of semaphore flag, the latest and most ominous twist is coming from a new weapon of immense power that is already derailing modern life: artificial intelligence.
     Yes, AI. The thing that keeps trying to summarize your email. That your kid uses to write his report on Cotton Mather instead of actually doing the work and learning something. AI is so incredibly powerful, not only does it produce videos of obese porch pirates getting their faces painted with blue dye, but it can code/write computer programs.
     Or crack them. A story that might have gotten lost in the whirl of general disaster is that on April 7, Anthropic, an AI company that started five years ago and is now worth $380 billion, provided a preview of its Mythos AI model to 40 Big tech giants — Apple, Google, Microsoft, JPMorganChase. The reason for this effort, dubbed Project Glasswing, is because AI can cut through cybersecurity like a hot knife through butter, thwarting encryption, discovering hidden vulnerabilities that escaped notice for years.

     So Anthropic is giving the biggest players a chance to fix their heretofore undetected flaws before Mythos is available to the general public, one of whom might decide to type, "Drain Neil Steinberg's 401(k) and transfer the contents to my Apple Wallet."

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Barbara Flynn Currie, 'trailblazer who opened doors for generations of women' dies

     This ran in the paper on Saturday. 

     After a vote in the Illinois House on a key part of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pension relief plan in 2016, Barbara Flynn Currie did something not often seen in these times of our divided, dysfunctional government. She crossed the aisle and shook hands with the three Republican lawmakers who broke ranks with the GOP and voted to override Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a measure deferring police and fire pension payments.
     That was Currie, 85, who died Thursday. She not only represented her Hyde Park district in Springfield for 40 years — 20 as majority leader and the first woman to hold that role in the Illinois General Assembly — she but was a tireless promoter of active, engaged, effective government. 

Barbara Flynn Currie (Wikipedia)

     "Last night we lost a giant," House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch, D-Hillside, posted on his Facebook page Friday. "Barbara Flynn Currie was more than a leader — she was a trailblazer who opened doors for generations of women in the Illinois House, many of whom continue her legacy today. ... She set the standard for what it means to serve with purpose. Her impact will be felt for generations."
     She was an enthusiastic advocate of clean air and clean water, and juvenile justice reform.
     “Barbara Flynn Currie was one of a kind," Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. "Her intelligence, decency, and absolute command of the issues were without equal in Illinois politics... Barbara was a passionate, tireless advocate for the people who needed one most. She delivered on issues like raising the minimum wage, early childhood education, gun safety." ... She lived a life of genuine public service and leaves behind an extraordinary record of accomplishment.”
     Her district encompassed Hyde Park, Woodlawn, South Shore and Kenwood, and she was a vigorous proponent of liberal causes, such as prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace and offering all-day kindergarten. She spearheaded a compromise on welfare reform and helped extend state contracts to minority- and female-owned businesses.
     In 2009, she chaired the special 21-member bipartisan committee that recommended the impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
     ”We stand here today because of the perfidy of one man: Rod Blagojevich,” said Currie. “To overturn the results of an election is not something that should be undertaken lightly.”
     Every member of the Illinois House and Senate, save one, voted to impeach.
     State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat, (14th) sat next to her on the House floor.
     "Every day was a master class in the work of the legislature," said Kelly. "She was unparalleled in debate, knew her bills inside out and backward, and could fire off a one-liner like nobody before or since."
     With women making up a record 32% of state legislatures across the country, it might be difficult to remember the male world that Currie entered. When she was elected in 1978, fewer than 11% of Springfield lawmakers legislators were women. When she announced her retirement in 2017, that figure was more than a third, and in 2025 the Illinois Legislature was 42% female.
     Then-House Speaker Michael Madigan's decision to name her as majority leader in 1997 was unexpected: Downstate Democrats felt they had a hereditary right to the position, didn’t like the powerful post to pass to a Chicagoan, a woman, and perhaps worst of all, a liberal. Women across the spectrum saw it as a milestone.
     ”Republican women gave me flowers,” Currie later recalled. “Secretaries and staff in the Capitol were thrilled. One of my girlfriends nearly ran her car off the road. The depth of excitement was really quite thrilling.”

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