Rattling the cup

     So we moved my mother and father, a week ago Monday. The next day I asked my mother how she liked the new place.
     "I'm not getting my paper," she complained.
     Ah, right, the paper. Did not take care of that. But I will, immediately, I told her. Jumped online to use the subscriber app. It's hard enough to change the address of your own subscription, never mind someone else's, and I was thwarted.
     But I had a Plan B. Last year we donated our van to the paper, and I got to know our membership director. She owed me a favor. Perhaps, I asked, she could point me toward someone who could change my mother's subscription. She did, and it was handled easily. While she had my attention, however, she said, in effect, You know ... we've been sending out these emails, fundraising, and perhaps you'd like to write one. For World Press Freedom Day, Friday. This was, oh, Wednesday.
     Too soon. Next time, I said, not wanting to rush something out half-baked. Not really wanting to do it at all. But she asked nicely, so gave the old Boy Scout try and wrote this:

Dear reader:

Almost 40 years ago, I visited the Chicago public high school located in Cook County Jail so incarcerated teens could go to school. One lesson I watched taught where to put the stamp on an envelope. Later I asked the teacher: is this really necessary? He looked at me pityingly and replied that while students here may have killed someone, may have fathered children, they often did not know where the stamp goes because they'd never written a letter because they can't read.

That stuck with me, and decades later I decided to go back and check up on the place. Yes, I'd written about it before, but no readers rattle the paper and say: "Hey...I read about this 30 years ago!" The Chicago Public Schools didn't want to let me return. But I kept badgering them. Finally, they relented, and when I went back I found out why they didn't want me there, after several teachers pulled me aside and said that, trying to goose the numbers, the school was graduating students who had left the jail long ago. Some had died. The inspector general investigated for a year. The principal was fired.

Exposing corruption and making changes is the heart of what the Sun-Times does, and what gets mentioned on days like World Press Freedom Day. While that's crucial and I'm all for it, done by others, in my career here — now in its fifth decade — I've always emphasized the visit-interesting-places part. To show readers something they didn't know was there. So I've gone down the Deep Tunnel and up the western spire of 875 N. Michigan, then the John Hancock Building, with the workmen changing the lightbulbs on the antennae. I've watched a heart transplanted, a manhole cover forged, and Wilco record a song. It's important to uncover hard truths and confront the powerful with them. But it's also good to have institutional memory and to go places, uncover intriguing truths and share them: the first blood bank in the world opened in Chicago, as did the first public school for children with disabilities. To pray toward Mecca in Chicago, you face northeast.

SUPPORT A FREE PRESS

This is a very long way of saying that my daily column, which has appeared for 28 continual years in the Sun-Times, shines a light in the odd corners, sometimes afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. Sometimes merely being interesting, which is also important. While my colleagues uncover corruption and hold elected officials' feet to the fire, I'm wondering where Fresca went during COVID, who opens Cologuard jars, and what goes on at the dominatrix dungeon on Lake Street, three blocks from the governor's office. One column examined how blind people pick up after their dogs. 

Asking questions that readers might never think to ask, but nevertheless enjoy learning about. I've always found Chicago an infinitely fascinating place, and feel lucky to be able to explore it three times a week in the Chicago Sun-Times. People who don't read the paper literally do not know what they're missing — theirs is a smaller, drier, blander, paler, scarier world. 

Since October 2022, the Chicago Sun-Times has been community-supported, funded by readers like you. If you haven't contributed to the paper, please consider doing so — reflect on how much poorer the city would be without us, not just the crimes that would go undetected, but the wonders that would go unheralded. Then dig deep. To me, you need the Sun-Times the way people need glasses: in order to see properly. You'd think nothing of spending a few hundred dollars on an extra pair. I hope you consider contributing the same to Chicago's preeminent newspaper for the past 76 years. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely, 

Neil Steinberg
Columnist
Chicago Sun-Times

     That brought in thousands of dollars. But more importantly, to me anyway, a cascade of letters like this:

Hi Neil,

I don't have much, but I wanted you to know I just donated to the Sun-Times because of you.
When I lived & worked in Chicago, the Times was my favorite paper and you were my favorite columnist.

I thought it only fair to show a little respect.

Thanks, Neil.
You have taught me & entertained me a lot.
peace,
Eric R.
Kissimmee, Florida

     Maybe I'm a little shell-shocked lately. But there was something very moving in seeing people I'd never met dig into their pockets, inspired by my column, and say nice stuff on top of it. Anyway, thanks to everybody who pitched in or is going to pitch in. They gave out the Pulitzers on Monday — never getting one of those. But these emails were a suitable consolation. Odd to think it all came about from getting my mother's paper delivered to her new address.