Serendipity.
One of the 50-cent words of which I’m notoriously fond. Means “fortunate accident.” Seems common enough to me. Plus relevant, regarding the high-stakes struggle of downtown Chicago to remain solvent. An issue where I’m torn.
People discovered they can work at home. The cat is out of the bag. Deal with it. You can work at home. I can work at home, flop my fingers on the keyboard, craft something, call it a day.
What does going downtown do? Besides waste time and money. Sometimes you take the bother and trouble, only to find yourself at a pointless meeting. The last meeting I went to at our Navy Pier office, eight people had signed up for, but I was the only person to actually appear — stupid me — so the presenter did a one-on-one, imparting little of value.
But not a waste. I try to multitask. So while I was there, I took a colleague to lunch at Chef Art Smith’s Reunion, which served up fine jambalaya and biscuits. So there was that.
I’ve been officially permitted to work at home since... 1997. Quite a long time, really. But even though I haven’t been required to go into the office, I still went, ritualistically on Tuesdays, because I didn’t want to be one of those people who never show their face. I found that, go in twice week and you are nevertheless considered “Always there.”
Since I don’t know what my job entails — that is, no beat, no topics I’m supposed to cover — I never know whence my material might come. I once had a front page exclusive literally fall out of the sky, in the form of a chunk of Union Station ceiling that hit a woman in the head as we waited in line for the Madison Street exit, fracturing her skull.
I wish I could draw a line between going into the city and writing something effective. But truth is I can spend the day crawling around Lower Wacker Drive with the Night Ministry, write a column vibrating with tragic urban experience, and the readers yawn and flip the page. While let me share a shopping trip to the Northbrook Aldi, and the online world goes berserk, vibrating for days.
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Neil, I DO NOT yawn at your many serious, moving columns. I might shed a tear…What can I add when you’ve already made a point so movingly?
ReplyDeleteAn Aldi column, tho—what fun! Engage with others with my frivolous opinions, have some lighthearted moments.
The serious columns are why I read you.
I know. My wife always points that out when I bemoan the chorus of crickets meeting some column I thought would move people, that they usually only write in to complain and, lacking complaint, are silent.
DeleteI never think of Serendipity as a “50 cent word” because deliberately misspelled versions of that word are used by several of my young relatives as social media handles since it can be used for a play on words on our last name. Something like “Soaring-dipity 123” And as far as interest in certain topics, as aTheater critic recently mused, interest is a “stubbornly voluntary” thing. Grocery stores where most people go regularly are more interesting to many then important topics about a world they have no familiarity with.
ReplyDeleteIt rather spoils the story that you don't mention your last name, Anonymous at 7:43, but it inspires me to mention mine, "O'Rourke," as a prelude to what I've always considered a hilarious tale. Upon graduation from Naval boot camp in San Diego, in 1960, just around the time our illustrious host was being born, I was getting my picture taken by a Navy photographer. He no doubt noticed my efforts to force my lips into a glum smile and mentioned that he had been on a rather bumpy cruise just that past weekend and that several of his shipmates were calling my name. That sparked my interest. He continued, "Yes, they were leaning over the side yelling, "OooooRaaaaarrrrkkgghaah, OooooRaaaarrrkkgghaah" A toothy grin lit up my face and the photographer immortalized it. The photo is still my favorite.
Deletejohn
That's a swell tale, indeed, John. I hadn't realized that your surname qualified as onomatopoeia for throwing up...
DeleteI think many of us don’t know how to express ourselves well when moved, and certainly can’t do as well as you.
ReplyDeleteNodding with approval at your perfect deployment of "whence."
ReplyDeleteSo many writers reflexively write "from whence," which is, of course, a grave and shameful redundancy.
Thanks Eric. Since I'm shaving off every redundant word, trying to get under the 750 word limit, I was able to avoid that.
DeleteI find misued words almost every day in the Sun-Times print edition. Does the paper still have a copy desk? In his review today of "Fast Charlie," Richard Roeper describes James Caan's appearance as "notably frail." The correct word is "noticeably," unless the director told Caan, "OK, I want you to look frail in the movie," and Caan nailed it.
DeleteMost readers who complain about errors are themselves wrong, and the more stridently they bitch, the wronger they tend to be. You are no exception. "Notably," in my dictionary, means "especially" or "in a way that is remarkable" and so Richard's usage is correct.
DeleteI became aware of the Night Ministry through your columns, and became a regular donor, as did several members of my family.
ReplyDeleteMy children think I'm weird and have too much time on my hands if I comment on stuff, so I try to use discretion. Your wife is right.
ReplyDeleteThat woman at Union Station was lucky to have survived, Mr. S. Stuff happens. Things fall from buildings, and sometimes they kill people. I still remember the awful story of the man who died in 1994, when he was struck by falling ice on Michigan Avenue. You wrote about him again at EGD, just a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteFour decades ago, when the addition to the original Board of Trade building was being built, I was about to enter the lobby when a falling three-inch bolt missed my cabeza by THAT much...and embedded itself in the asphalt.
Had I been plodding just a little bit faster to my mind-numbing brokerage job, the bolt would have embedded itself in my skull, instead. And I'd have been a construction accident statistic, at 33. That possibility definitely woke me up.
A woman was killed by a stone that fell off an old church at 19th & Michigan some years ago.
DeleteI just emerged from under a CTA viaduct in Rogers Park a few decades ago when a sleet scraper went flying off an Evanston Express train. I still have it, it weighs a few pounds & has a few very sharp steel edges. Great paperweight!
I think it's important (he said pedantly) to note that Serendipity is not just blind good fortune. The idea is that you are working hard at something and a wonderful something else results. The classic example is digging for gold and striking oil.
ReplyDeleteCan’t say I’ve ever known that to be a necessary component. Can you substantiate that?
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