"You don't need a weatherman..."

     Half the fun of travelling is what you do to pad the spaces around the reason for your visit.
     For instance, last month we drove to central New York to spend Thanksgiving with our younger son's in-laws.     

     It's a two-day drive — we stretched it to three, spending nights in Cleveland and Buffalo.
     We arrived in Cooperstown Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning was a no-brainer: the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which is well worth visiting — so much so that I have a big write-up about the place scheduled to run in the paper this Sunday.
     We spent the morning and the early afternoon there. But what of the late afternoon? My wife, who has a marvelous facility for sniffing out such places, suggested the Fenimore Art Museum, located in the former mansion of author James Fenimore Cooper. Who did not live in Cooperstown coincidentally — turns out his father, William, a Quaker leader, founded the village in 1768.

      The museum has an unusual Georgia O'Keeffe — "Brown and Tan Leaves," a 1928 autumnal still life — and an adequate John Singer Sargent. But what really sets it apart is its collection of American folk art. I particularly enjoyed the weather vane collection. Beautiful, rural, they made me wonder what exactly weather vanes  are good for besides being pretty. Yes, to tell which way the wind is blowing. But how is that useful to a farmer? In predicting the weather, mostly — for instance, in a certain location, an easterly wind might mean an increased chance of rain, while westerly was more an indication of fair weather ahead.

    To understand just how important the wind was to weather prediction, all we have to do is turn to etymology. The word "weather" is easily a thousand years old, from the Old English weder, meaning "air and sky." Or, going back further, to the Indo-Germanic weh, meaning "blow." To get a sense of how words formed. Say it out loud and create a little breeze yourself — "weather"and "wind" have the same root.

    Moving on, Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary traces "vane" to the Dutch vaan, flag or banner, while its homophone "vain" is from the Latin, vanus meaning empty or insubstantial. To round out the homophone hat trick, "vein" is from the Latin venio, or pass through a conduit; a reminder that even though words sound the same they can trace their origins to different places.

     Not that the definitions don't blend at times. One of Webster's definitions of "vain" is "inconstant," and a weather vane is certainly that, leading to a slur for unreliable people, such as in the 1623 folio of "Love's Labor Lost."    

    "What plume of feathers is hee that indited this Letter?" the Queen asks. "What veine? What wethercocke?"

    Of course "inconstant" is so judgy. I prefer to think of it as "flexible."     

"Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" — The State of the Blog, 2024

     Exactly one year ago, EGD's State of the Blog 2023 was headlined, "Trump strangles puppy, popularity soars." Our dean of commentators, Grizz, ended his remarks with: "Right now, I'm looking forward to making it to 2025. Yes, you read that right. A year from now, the suspense will be over, and we will know whether we've survived a narrow escape...or if we're toast."
     Be careful what you wish for. Though I suppose his assumption was we would not be toast. And we are not quite, yet, burnt beyond hope. A little scraping — okay, a lot of scraping — could someday set it right. 
      But not yet. We are still in the browning phase. We are indeed, for want of a better term, toast. Or if you prefer, still emitting our usual frog croaks, to move onto a new metaphor, bobbing on the surface of a pot of water on the stove, enjoying the growing warmth, occasionally casting uneasy glances down at the blue flames, going full bore against the bottom of the pot. Getting hot down there.
     So how did 2024 go, blogwise? What's the joke? "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?" The numbers are up. Way up. But they're bots. Historically, a bit more than half the hits come from the United States. The past year it was 18 percent, with two-thirds occurring in China and Hong Kong. I posed the question to Google, and Artificial Intelligence served up this among the possibilities: "China is often associated with high volumes of automated bot activity, which may be scanning your site for potential security weaknesses."
     Scanning for weaknesses? Are they not obvious? The whole blog is one big weakness. An ad hoc array of words set down on by a solitary, aging newspaperman on a creaky platform. Can it be that tough to crack? I'd think a sharp Chinese hacker could get inside in a heartbeat, without knocking on the door hundreds of thousands of times. Though toward what end I can't imagine. No money here. Still, somebody is trying something, so if EGD suddenly vanishes one day, assume that the Chinese finally jimmied the lock, ran in and shut off all the lights, rather than I finally went mad and deleted the thing. Though that is always a possibility.

     For now, it's here. And how did the year go? Honestly, thinking back toward calendar 2024, no highlight initially came to mind. Not one. Forgetfulness or self-effacement? You choose! But let me paw over the listings and see what we can find.
    In January, we began the month and year attending a legal clinic for immigrants at the courthouse, with "Legal community steps up for migrants" certainly putting a finger on what would be the big issue of 2024 and, no doubt, into next year and beyond.
     In February, we said goodbye to another friend and colleague, "Jack Higgins drew from the heart of Chicago." 

     In March, a blog post I had hoped to be a column in the newspaper, but didn't pass the 501(c)3 test, "Drink poison or eat Chex? The choice is yours." It is a restriction I would chafe against all year, leading to what I considered Timidity Creep: from not endorsing a candidate to not saying anything strong about anyone. 

     In April I wrote two columns worth recalling — one about a woman who bought the first Ford Mustang ever sold in the United States, 60 years ago, and still has it. The story has been told before, but I'm proud to have realized it isn't about the car; it's about the woman. The piece became among of our best read articles of the year. A week later, I published one of those deep dives that are so much fun to write, about the trumpet. If you read only one story cited here, read that one. A long piece needs a narrative arc, and this one seemed obvious: start with Esteban Batalan, lead trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, playing at Orchestra Hall, snake through the Conn Selmer factory in Indiana, and end up at a high school on the South Side. 

     But narrative arc shouldn't trump humanity, and while I was crushing these two Morgan Park students I'd met to fit into the final paragraph of my enormous trumpet saga, I realized that by. turning them into a literary device I was short-changing their story. So I ran them as a second, separate column, even though it sheered the neat ending off my trumpet magnus opus. I'm proud of that decision.    

     In May, I held my breath and verrrrrry carefully picked my way through the Gaza protests, with "Student protesters hold their breath, turn blue," trying my gosh-darned best not to step on the tails of a single kitty sleeping in the hallways of Navy Pier.

    In June, after years and years of trying to get the Chicago Police Department to let me follow a cop who'd been shot in rehab, I shrugged and wrote a column about a CPD officer who quit the force and moved to the suburbs. Working with the Northbrook police reminded me of everything the Chicago cops could be and aren't. 

    In July, I was able to write candidly to Joe Biden's debate disaster in a way that I didn't even bother trying to get into the newspaper. 

    In August I used the commotion of the convention to spend a few hours with Brandon Johnson, lightly gumming him, thinking that maybe doing so would mean there would be a second. But I might as well have chomped, because there wasn't and probably won't be. The man's a train wreck on a scale seldom seen outside of Roadrunner cartoons. I also managed to sneak my older son's wedding into the paper. My younger son got married four months later without any requests for media coverage, to my relief, as I didn't see how I could pull off that backflip a second time.

    In September we comforted the White Sox — okay, laughed at them — after their historically awful season.  In October, we looked how far women had come on the 50th anniversary of a law allowing them to get credit cards in their own name. And how much they had to lose in the upcoming election. 

    In November, EGD gazed through latticed fingers at the infamy of a second Trump administration, and what erosions to our Republic we can expect. In December I invited readers to share a cab with me while the driver tried to rip me off with "How much do you tip the guy who tries to rob you."

     There you have it: I'm glad I bothered to check, as the year turns out to be not as meh as I initially remembered. To those of you who are not Chinese spambots, thank you, as always, for reading my stuff. Thank you to all the commenters — and their numbers are swelling, I believe, because I invite comment in the morning letter sending out my blog link (if you would like to receive it, email me at dailysteinberg@gmail.com). Thank you Marc Schulman, of Eli's Cheesecake, for being this blog's advertiser for the 12th year in a row. If you haven't ordered your cheesecake, well, get to it. 

     As grim as the prospects for the upcoming year certainly are, I do not find myself feeling downhearted. I share Grizz's 2023 sense of anticipation. Two personal landmarks on the horizon that I'm fairly certain have a good chance of happening, neither of which I would dream of jinxing by specifying. You'll find out if and when they occur. 

     As for the country, well, having marked time through years of historical slough, we who love democracy find ourselves in a situation where we are called upon to fight for everything good about this country, against, if not the forces of evil, then its henchmen and lackeys, handmaidens and toadies. They might straddle the country in 2025, but they will not win for the simple reason they can't win. If they're winning, then the story isn't over yet. Not to suggest the fight is either easy or certain. Times will be awful and terrifying, and could go on for years, maybe decades. But really, can you think of a better purpose than to try to save the United States of America from those who would cavalierly betray everything she represents and destroy her? I can't. So let's get to it.

Always a pleasure to work with our head of photography, Ashlee Rezin.

Ghost bird

     Neither of us heard the crash. It must have happened when nobody was in the kitchen.

     But one day, weeks if not months ago, I noticed this ghostly imprint of a bird on our window. It doesn't photograph well. But it was like a snapshot — raised wings, neck, head, beak, body. No mistaking it. A bird.

      And here is the odd part.

     Having seen it, registered it, repeatedly, over a span of time, I then did ... nothing. There seemed nothing to do. I went about my business, making coffee, washing dishes, warming dinner. All the stuff one does in the kitchen.

    Now and then, I'd see the outline, and eventually a thought came to me:

    "I ought to wash that off."

    And even then the thought was held in suspended animation, not acted upon, and another period of days or weeks went by, which is odd, because I like to keep that window clean, because it is the window through which I watch the birdfeeder, and its constant menagerie of little brown birds and cardinals, doves and woodpeckers, swallows, wrens. Even the occasional hawk, though they feed, not at the feeder, but on the squirrels under it. 

     Then one day I decided it was time to do away with the ghost bird. I grabbed a bottle of Windex and a rag, exited the kitchen door with purpose, and walked around the sofa and coffee table and two chairs, to stand before the window, in order to spritz it with the blue liquid and wipe it clean.

      The human mind is a funny thing. How many times are you home, because it's 4th of July or Christmas or whatever, and you think, "I wonder if the mail is here?" and you pop your upper body out the front door and have your hand on the mailbox handle when you think, "Duh. A federal holiday. No mail."

     So it was only standing there, with Windex in one hand, and a rag in the other, ready to wipe away the ghost bird, that I angled my gaze down, to below the window, and ...

    The funny thing is, I was surprised. Taken aback. As if there hadn't been weeks if not months of foreshadowing.

     No need to go into the gory details. A dove of some sort. I went to get a shovel to transfer it to the wooded patch along our property. The ghost bird is still there. 

"Chicago native repairs a ladder aboard USS Abraham Lincoln"

     You can't be too careful in this job.
     An email arrived from the Navy on Dec. 18. I always glance at those, because you never know what they're offering. I once got a fun column because a Romeoville native was made captain of the Zumwalt, "a slab-sided techno-iceberg" of a ship. I got to interview the captain, and even tracked down a biography of Zumwalt, so I could know about the guy this ultra cool-looking vessel was named for. I didn't use any of it, but I might have, and I felt thorough, flipping through the book. Thoroughness is important. Tuck that away.
    This particular email was the exact opposite of a futuristic battleship. The email subject line was: "Chicago native repairs a ladder aboard USS Abraham Lincoln deployed in the Pacific Ocean." 
     Can you get more humble than that? This is all the information the Navy provided:

      241213-N-OR861-1053 PACIFIC OCEAN (Dec. 13, 2024) Boatswain’s Mate Seaman Apprentice Angel Garcia assists Boatswain’s Mate 3rd Class Corion Black, left, from Chicago, repair a ladder aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72). Abraham Lincoln, flagship carrier of Carrier Strike Group Three, is underway conducting routine operations in the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of operations. As an integral part of U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. 3rd Fleet operates naval forces in the Indo-Pacific in addition to providing realistic and relevant training necessary to flawlessly execute our Navy’s timeless roles of sea control and power projection. U.S. 3rd Fleet works in close coordination with other numbered fleets to provide commanders with capable, ready forces to deploy forward and win in day-to-day competition, in crisis, and in conflict. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Zoe Simpson)

     You probably did not read that and think, "Christmas!" But the holiday was a week away. Exactly the season when those who protect our nation, aboard ships on the other side of the world, should be welcomed into the warmth of our hearts, at least metaphorically. It's hard to be far from home, and harder at the holidays, when mom's home cooking is replaced by glop  slapped onto a steel tray with a big spoon.
     So I asked the Navy to put me in touch with Boatswain Mate 3rd Class Black's mother — who I assumed was sighing and trimming the tree, thinking of Corion on the other side of the globe. Or his father, or cousin — not everyone has the cliche family. Somebody back in Chicago.
     The Navy got right on it. But couldn't do that, they told me. Okay, I said — improvise, adapt, overcome, it isn't just the Marines — how about direct communication with the sailor? We lose the element of surprise, but so be it. Perhaps he would say something interesting. Safety is important on a ship. Those ladders have to stay put. We could talk about that.

     The navy could not serve him up, either. Honestly, sometimes I'm surprised the ships manage to float.
    But I am not without resources. I fired up the internet contraption, and quickly found ... oh look at that ... Carrier Strike Group Three returned to its San Diego home port after a five-month deployment on Dec. 17. The day before the email went out. So not "deployed in the Pacific Ocean" any longer. A rather germane bit of information. You would think the Navy would tuck that tidbit into their press release instead of suggesting they were way the hell over in the Indo-Pacific Ocean. You would think they would care. Because I certainly care.

     I had mentioned the story to my bosses, and they were ready to splash the Boatswain Mate 3rd Class on the front page of the paper. Which would lose its oomph if I took out a violin to serenade him on the far side of the world when in reality he was back here at home watching Netflix. Having made my share of gaffes, just that thought — Sailor Black, rhapsodized as serving his country in the Pacific on Christmas in the Sun-Times on Wednesday morning, intead pops up Wednesday afternoon to say he's home on leave in Chatham, or wherever, and didn't they all get a laugh when the Sun-Times, which is supposed to be a newspaper, suggested otherwise. Fake news!

      So good that I checked. No harm done. Still. Turning our attention to the Navy Office of Community Outreach, well, c'mon guys, do better. You should not be dangling embarrassing gaffes at hardworking journalists whose only sin is paying attention to your emails. Check to see the boat you're ballyhooing is still afloat, and in the general vicinity where you suggest it is to be found. You're supposed to be building goodwill for the Navy. Not scuttling it. 

Newberry Library spotlights 'invisible labor' of Chicago immigrants

Curt Teich's citizenship papers.

     Immigrants are often hidden. Living in neighborhoods you don't visit, doing unheralded jobs. A pint of strawberries lists the origin of the fruit but not of who picked it. Your hospital bill lists every procedure but ignores where the medical staff tending to you came from. We will never really know how vital immigrants are to our country until the incoming administration starts plucking them off the street and deporting them. Assuming Donald Trump does what he promises, always an iffy proposition.
     This is nothing new. If you look at old postcards in a thrift store, nothing says, "Made by German immigrants in Chicago." Beautifully bound books don't credit, "Sewn by Bohemians."
     Which was a big problem for Jill Gage, custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing at the Newberry Library — her title, in the vernacular, means the person who wrangles the library's extensive collection of posters, handbills, catalogs, books, typefaces and other printed material, which includes bus tickets and sheet music.
     When she set out to curate the latest exhibition at the Newberry, "Making an Impression: Immigrant Printing in Chicago," she started by looking at what the Newberry doesn't have.
     "I wanted to think about what we don't see in the collection so much," she told me, when we met to walk through the small but significant show at the library's Hanson Gallery. "I wanted to poke at the collection and think about printing from a different angle."
     Some people might know Chicago is the former printing capital of the nation, between R.R. Donnelley churning out Yellow Pages and Rand McNally making maps. But there was also Curt Teich, who came from Germany for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and noticed a need for postcards.
     "If you had to think about the most important printer in the history of Chicago, I would say Curt Teich," Gage said. "He really brought the postcard industry to the U.S. It really opened up this huge part of American culture."
     The Newberry has 3 million postcards, and the Teich collection includes fascinating production material, plus the family archive, including their all-important citizenship papers. Finding Teich was easy; other contributors to Chicago printing, not so much.
     "They're hidden," she said. "I wanted to think about what you can't see. I'm obsessed by what I call 'invisible labor.'"

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Artificial intelligence is still pretty stupid.

Not a Christmas tree.

     I pay Apple some set sum — I think it's $14.95 a month, though it might be part of my phone plan — for access to something called "Apple Music." It's a fairly intuitive, comprehensive selection of more music than I could listen to in a thousand lifetimes, if a rip-off for artists who instead of getting a dollar when I buy their 45 now get .00001 of a penny when I listen to their song. If that.     

     Still, I listen to music a lot, particularly when exercising, or walking the dog, or doing chores, like folding laundry. I usually play my own "Library," of self-selected songs, though recently I discovered a feature called "Neil Steinberg's Radio" that plays songs which ... well, I'm not exactly sure what the curation procedure is. Some are often-played favorites. Others songs I've never heard from groups I'm unfamiliar with.
     What I've noticed is how really bad it is. How often it repeats songs I declined to listen to an hour ago. How many times it has served up "27 Jennifers." The thing has all of recorded music to choose from and ends up serving up a half-appealing mash, supposedly based on my own tastes. 
     And I take comfort in that. If AI can't pick songs that are halfway intriguing, it probably isn't near able to take over the world. Or maybe that's part of the plan. AI is being honed every day, and I assume, once it gets its algorithm together, it will cause all sorts of havoc in our lives — whether being monitored and influenced by the totalitarians even now tightening their grip around the throat of the body politic.
     Until then, I happily note each AI stumble and blunder. Maybe that's my way of blinding myself to he growing peril. Still, you can't help but be more impressed by its failures than its successes. So yes, when I asked iPhoto to serve up photos of a "Christmas tree" to illustrate the blog yesterday, most pictures were evergreens trimmed with tinsel and ornaments. But also my wife and boys wearing pointed birthday hats. And a house with a conical turret. And a Nick Cave sock monkey suit, above and Félix González-Torres' "Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)" at the Art institute of Chicago below. One of the rare artworks in a major museum that you can not only touch, but take a bit of. Visitors are encouraged remove a candy, and the pile is replenished regularly, kept at 175 pounds, the weight of the man being honored, who died of AIDS in the early 1990s.
      I know that. AI thinks it's a Christmas tree. Hardly seems a fair fight. So far.

Also not a Christmas tree.

Not every Christmas memory involves Marshall Field's windows.

 

     Merry Christmas! I hope you're having a memorable one. Of course I'm working. And honestly, some of my most memorable Christmases have been thanks to Xmas duty at the Chicago Sun-Times.
     There was the Christmas Eve I spent in the back seat of a Chicago police cruiser — observing, not arrested, shadowing a pair of rookies as they tried to keep the night silent in Englewood. The memory of that night always makes me wish the CPD still trusted its officers enough to let the media watch them in action.
     Pulling a story out of the stillness of Christmas Day is always a challenge — one Christmas I made the rounds of Thai and Chinese restaurants, talking to diners — not only Jews, but Muslims, too. Though the really memorable moment came afterward; a rabbi phoned me, outraged, because I quoted someone saying that Chinese food on Christmas is "a Jewish tradition." This, the rabbi fumed, is an insult to Jewish tradition. By the time we were done talking, well, let's say meetings and apologies were involved.
     Otherwise, Chicago history offers up several noteworthy Christmases. These are from my latest book, "Every Goddamn Day," which the paper is giving away in a drawing to five readers who subscribe or donate here through Dec. 31 at midnight.
     There is 1904, when the city of Chicago was broke and the treasurer went to La Salle Street and secured personal loans to make the city's payroll on Christmas Eve. There was the "boisterous crowd" gathered in 1955 in front of the Oak Park home of Dorothy Martin, who had announced the world would end on Christmas while spacemen arrived to usher herself and her followers to heaven. Or 1973, when a 350-pound slab of marble fell off the newly constructed Standard Oil Building, the overture in an engineering disaster that would end with the entire stone skin of the 82-story tower being replaced, at an expense greater than the original cost of construction.
     And my favorite: Christmas 1945. For the three Christmases before that year, 12 million Americans in uniform had dreamed of one thing — to be home, instead of at whatever rocky Pacific atoll, British bomber base, Alaskan radar station or German POW camp they happened to find themselves.
     The trains were utterly full — the Southern Railroad estimated 94% of passengers were service men and women. Six Marines grabbed a cab in San Diego and hired the driver to take them to New York City. Illinois servicemen who borrowed a furniture van in Denver spent Christmas snowbound in Kansas City.
     As a major rail hub, Chicago hosted an occupying army of stranded servicemen — over 100,000.

     Those who can’t go home, call. Bell Telephone reported all of its long-distance operators were on duty, a first. In part, because the pricey calls were being given away — 1,000 wounded vets recovering at Great Lakes Naval Hospital each get a five-minute call home, paid for by the Phone Home Fund, financed by readers of the Chicago Times, a predecessor of this newspaper.

     Compounding the chaos, Chicago, like much of the Midwest, was glazed by ice, the worst since records have been kept. A Navy plane carrying nine sailors landed at Municipal Airport (now Midway) but couldn’t take off. Dale Drew and June Kemper, two ticket agents for Consolidated Airlines, saw the Pacific vets moping around the airport in the morning. The agents phoned their mothers, already preparing family Christmas dinners for 11 and eight, respectively. What’s a few more? They divvied up the swabbies, each taking some home, where presents for all nine of them materialized under the trees.

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Might as well make merry

     The holiday cookies are at the front of the store as you walk in — they know their business at Sunset Foods — and I was pausing to admire them when a burst of plaid entered my field of vision. Ron Bernardi, whose four uncles, the Cortesi brothers, started Sunset in 1937. Or, more accurately, a red plaid tuxedo jacket with Ron Bernardi inside. He was joyous. 

    "Get the shoes," he ordered, when I took a photo close in, concentrating on the jacket, and I stepped back to capture the full effect.
     Ron is 81, and has worked at Sunset longer than I have been alive. I can't recount our conversation Monday except that he had me feel the velvet of his lapels. I wished him Merry Christmas and he wished me Happy Holidays as other shoppers — the parking lot was full — nudged me aside to claim their Ron time.
     I've heard people say that this holiday is muted, between our nation electing a moron as its  president, again, and ... well, that's about it, isn't it? But honestly, I don't feel downcast. Myself, I find the holidays highly welcome. Might as well be festive; we'll have reason aplenty to be glum in February. 

The plaid jacket had these sunglasses 
in the pocket when Ron got them, no 
doubt to shield the original owner from 
the harsh Vegas sun.

    

     Maybe it helps that Hanukkah begins on Christmas Day, one of those rare congruences when the two holidays line up. We're partying at the same time this year. Otherwise Hanukkah ranges over the calendar, starting as early as Nov 28, or as late as Dec. 27 (in 2013, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving overlapped).  Since Jews, like Muslims, are old school, and set their holidays based on a lunar calendar. 

     We aren't holding our family party until toward the end of Hanukkah's 8-day span (it runs until Jan. 2). But we have to fit everyone's ever-more-complex schedules. Twos boys, both married in the past year, two new brides, flitting around the globe like luna moths.
     "Thirty people," my wife said, looking around the kitchen with a flash of desperation.

     Nothing fancy. Beer, brats, latkes — since EGD has so many new readers, and Jews have slipped a bit from their position as America's Official Also-Ran Faith, I should probably explain that a latke is a potato pancake fried in oil. 

     Hanukkah being close to Christmas might increase the usual confusion of what the holiday is actually about,  and sometimes non-Jews query me: "Hanukkah is sort of your Christmas, yes?"

     No, it's not. It's more like V-E Day. Hanukkah celebrates a military victory — the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after the surprise triumph of Judah and his Maccabees over the occupying Greek-Syrian army in 200 BC. (I could expand upon this fact to make several salient points about more current events. But it's Christmas so let's keep it light. My guess is that crowing about military victories won't be quite so enthusiastic this year).

     Previously, I've compared Hanukkah to Arbor Day, grown massive by its proximity to Christmas, like those ants exposed to radiation in a 1950s horror flick. I hobbyhorsed the Arbor Day metaphor at length in one of the first columns I wrote for an online platform — actually, one of the first columns anybody wrote for an online platform, as this was in 1996 for American Online. It was a surprise feature, an Easter egg — back then,  you would click on the AOL logo and get a cartoon, or an essay. The editor was John Scalzi, who went on to considerable wealth and fame as a science fiction writer (I recommend his Collapsing Empire trilogy; much fun).

    We spin dreidels — sigh, four-sided tops used in ancient gambling — sing Hanukkah songs which really lag behind Christmas carols. It seems unfair that Jews gave the world "White Christmas" and "Frosty the Snowman" and "Jingle Bell Rock" and half the songs on the radio this time of year, but when it comes to honoring our own holiday it's "I Have a Little Dreidel" which is really like fingernails on a chalkboard, and "Rock of Ages." What cannot be avoided must be endured.

     The moment I really like is lighting the menorahs in the window. Usually Jewish holidays are interior — around the table — or closed away in a synagogue, such as on Yom Kippur. The lighting candles on Hanukkah is really the one moment when the religion really confronts the outside world, lighting our candles against the darkness and saying, "Hey, Jews on your block. Get over it." 

     Well...I think that'll do. It's Christmas after all, nearly. And Hanukkah, almost.

GroceryLand ready for 'wild ride to come' — 'We're here to fight back'

Lori Cannon, center, Jose Jimenez, right. 

     You can't buy shampoo, toothpaste or toilet paper with food stamps. An echo of tightfisted Dickensian notions of charity, making sure the shiftless poor won't be living it up on their dime, washing their hair and brushing their teeth and similar displays of wild extravagance.
     "I don't consider toilet paper a luxury, I consider it a necessity," said Lori Cannon, when I visited her Saturday afternoon at GroceryLand, 5543 N. Broadway, the Edgewater food pantry for people living with HIV and, between us , for anyone else in need who stops by. "What we need are personal care items because people on food stamps aren't allowed to use them for anything but food."
     Cannon prefers donations of goods rather than money, given the very public disintegration of the umbrella organization that used to shelter GroceryLand. "This has been a very stressful year," she said, thanks to "the utter and complete collapse of the Heartland Alliance."
     Heartland Alliance was a major provider of social services in Chicago and considered itself among the oldest social welfare organizations in the country, tracing its roots to Jane Addams.
     Cannon, joined by local AIDS activists Greg Harris, Tom Tunney and James Cappleman, created OpenHand Chicago in 1988 to feed those in the LGBTQ community affected by HIV/AIDS.
     "We had one thing in common," Cannon told the Sun-Times in 2019. "Everyone we knew was either dead, dying or struggling to help someone who was heading there. We were tired. We were scared. We were angry. And we needed to do something other than sew AIDS quilt panels.”
      When I first reported on Cannon's efforts 30 years ago, the idea was to give AIDS patients independence by allowing them to select and prepare their own food themselves, rather than being forced to eat whatever meal was delivered that day.
     Then she was serving 40 people a week. Now it's 400.
     A flamboyant woman with magenta hair, Cannon tries to make GroceryLand as colorful and festive as she is.
     "What we try to do is create a space that doesn't look like a doctor's waiting room or a government office," she said.
     In 2011, OpenHand was renamed Vital Bridges and came under the umbrella of Heartland Alliance Health — a vital distinction, since HAH was spun off and survived when Heartland Alliance collapsed, kicking its staff to the curb.
     Cannon credits her core of volunteers and donors for getting them through.
     "The LGBTQ community is very familiar to being in a place of struggle," she said. "We live another day to fight, and I'm very happy to lead the charge."
     Does Cannon, 74, ever think about retiring?

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No wrapping paper for YOU!

     The wife and I popped into Target for some last minute essentials, including scotch tape and wrapping paper. The store had lots and lots of wrapping paper, and we hurried down aisles lined with red boxes crammed with the stuff at the way reasonable price of $3 a roll. Neither of us had to tell the other what we were looking for, and not finding.

     "Maybe the penguins are supposed to be Jewish," I ventured.

    Not that the wrapping paper was heavily Christian. "Joy" surrounded by a pine wreath. A shark in a Santa hat. It wasn't like they were Three Wise Men Adoring the Christ Child at the Manger paper. But still harkening back to a holiday other than the one we were celebrating. 
     My wife said perhaps they had Hanukkah paper earlier in the season but were cleaned out. But Hanukkah begins on Christmas Day this year, and there would be no reason that Jews would clean out Target while the store groans under Christmas paper five days before Christmas. Hoarding against changes in society? I doubted that. My thought was that we just didn't clear the bar anymore, as a body of customers. They don't sell wrapping paper aimed at the Shakers either.
     "Jews are only 1 percent of the population," I said.

     Or maybe Target's wrapping paper buyer is a 28-year-0ld who went to Oberlin College, who struck us off the list to light a candle for Gaza.
     Gauging one's status in society from the holiday wrapping paper sold at Target is either invalid or inspired. It's probably a better gauge, not of them, but of us. Of unease. Between Israel's reaction to Oct. 7 becoming the oxygen-laden whirlwind that stoked every spark of anti-Semitism into a brush fire, and that person who glided back to the presidency on thick ooze of bigotry, there are reasons aplenty to be uneasy.  The Jews aren't in the crosshairs, yet. But prejudice is practical — it oppresses whomever it can get away with oppressing.

     Liberals get slammed for being inclusive — we kept accepting trans people, it freaked out a chunk of the traditional Democratic base, and they voted for a liar, bully, fraud and traitor instead. There is sense lurking there. In 2016, British people were so worried a Turk would move next door that they left the European Union, shitcaning their whole economic system. Half the country is stretching to include everybody in one big happy family — well, not Jews, of course, thank you Gaza. We don't get a booth on the quad on Oppressed Peoples Day. And the other half is scanning the horizon, looking for someone to beat up. Not Jews, yet. But our number does have a way of coming up.

      On Friday, Elon Musk, dissatisfied with being the shadow president elect in this country, entered German politics as well.

      "Only the AfD can save Germany," Musk wrote to his 200 million plus followers on X. AfD is The Alternative for Germany, the racist, far-right party. Or, if you're in a rush, Nazis. I haven't deleted my account, yet, but I haven't posted there in weeks. I went on and unfriended Musk. Striking a blow for equality. So now he has 208,299,999 followers. Progress.

     Target did offer a quite attractive snowflake pattern wrapping paper, in wintery aqua rather than Christmassy red, and as that wasn't tied in with the celebration of a faith not our own, we bought some.

      For me, it isn't so much fear — I really don't think I'll be strolling down Michigan Avenue this spring, admiring the clouds, when a bunch of grinning jackbooted Red Hats will surround me and pluck out my beard, or force me to scrub the street with a toothbrush. Though the prospect comes to mind easily enough. It happened before.
 

Saturday guest: Bob Katzman Didn’t Disappear Forever

      Saturdays are a day to sleep late, kick back, and let the gears of modern life grind without you for a few hours. As someone who works continually, I like to offer the Saturday slot of EGD to worthy writers who cross my path. Today we feature an essay from a Chicago stalwart who will be known to many of you, Bob Katzman:

     I am that Chicago guy from long ago. Your parents or grandparents knew about me, if you are under forty.
     Maybe if you are old, you may remember my original 4x4 foot wooden Bob’s Newsstand which opened in Hyde Park in 1965 when I was 15, to pay my tuition at The University of Chicago Lab School.
     I ran away from a terrifying, violent home at 14 and had to rebuild my life somehow.

"You weren't kidnapped, were you?" I 
I asked after Bob sent this photo. He 
was illustrating how to fold a paper.

     I grabbed the chance to open a newsstand. I was a good enough carpenter to build it, using tools inherited from my Byelorussian-Jewish grandfather Jacob, who was a carpenter in Chicago.
     That tiny shack eventually became an international newsstand, with 3,000 world periodicals, famed across America with five stores across Chicago. One of the five was that now-vanished newsstand at Randolph and Michigan atop the IC steps, on the north side of the old Chicago Public Library, now a landmark.
     The five stores employed 55 employees at its brief peak, and as Fate turned on me, the stores closed one after another, with the original Bob’s in Hyde Park being the last to go. Turning out the lights in that place was for me the beginning of two years of damning unemployment. No one would hire a former entrepreneur. Many told me, I would leave them the minute I had “two nickels to rub together.” My former fame turned into an anvil.
     I got two jobs, regular jobs – horrible jobs with dress requirements, the worst being after meeting with a head-hunter whose blind ad I’d responded to, and I was hired to manage, of all things, a limousine company.
     But at the end of my tortured year there, through an old friend, I was hired, then bought the old Europa Bookstore at Clark & Belmont. It was a dirty, shabby place; a dimly lit store carrying cheaply printed paperbacks from Europe in five languages. But after 17 years in business, it had very few customers.

     I figured out what to do with it, now Grand Tour Bookstore, adding bright lights and air-conditioning. It had 100 language-learning systems, thousands of travel books from 150 countries, 200 world flags, foreign candy, imported cigarettes, international newspapers and magazines. Then I got this idea: Printed coffee mugs that would say, “Kiss Me I’m Greek”, etc. It was easy to find Irish mugs like that, but what about Kiss Me, I’m Ethiopian? Queer? Lithuanian? Luxembourgian?
     That idea, unique in America, became mugs about 70 nationalities. I sold thousands of them. Then I made matching buttons and T-shirts. Everything sold. I received publicity and my sales tripled.
     But then came the Black Death for bookstores, from the east. The giant chains rolled across the country killing 5,000 independent stores, including mine, there from 1988 to 1994. At 44, I felt damned. Now what?
     After some scrambling among childhood friends, I acquired enough jack to open a 600 ft. back-issue magazine store at 6400 W. Devon. This grew and grew and grew and then became Magazine Memories in Morton Grove. 5,000 sq ft with 150,000 old periodicals and newspapers back to 1576. 30,000 old posters.
     I ran it until cancer cursed Joyce, my fine wife of 40 years. At 66, I closed my last store in Skokie in 2016. I cared for her for 13 months. Joyce died in 2017.
     Long before all these parts of my life happened, I’d always been a writer, a poet beginning in 1958, at 8. I should mention that between 1951 and now, I’ve had 42 surgeries. As I grew older, my sometimes emotionally wrenching experiences gave birth to story after story – never any fiction.
     Then after brain surgery – twice — in 2004, I was terrified that I’d lose my memory.
     A lifetime Chicago friend, Rick Munden, told me to write down my extraordinary life story.
     When I protested to him, “Who would care about my miserable life?”
     He responded, “Many people are like you. They too have fallen down, then gotten back up, no matter how hard their struggle. Like you, they never gave up.” I was stunned. He offered to pay for printing my first book. This led to book after book after book, selling 7,000 of my first four books from 2004 to 2008. Some first editions of them are still available.
     Neil Steinberg kindly gave me 800 words. I am now 74. Quite forgotten. I’ve completed 25 new books. With my amazing wife Nancy, I created a cool website. I’ve written about Chicago corruption, fighting back against bullies, child abuse, love, sex, Judaism, cops, friendship, Queer rights, anti-Semitism, my Deli-Dali Delicatessen, how to create a store, and more. My Facebook site is Bob Katzman. I’m also a speaker for hire.

     E-mail robertmkatzman@gmail.com Contact: dontgoquietlypress.com

Tales from the propeller beanie trade

Charlie Wheeler

     Charlie Wheeler was walking south on Rush Street Tuesday morning as I turned the corner from Chicago Avenue, heading north toward the Newberry Library. On his head was a gray beanie with an orange propeller. For all the cartoons I've seen featuring guys in pinwheel hats, I'd never had the chance to actually speak with one before. The exhibition on the influence of immigrants on printing in Chicago would have to wait.
     "Do you mind if I take your photo for the Chicago Sun-Times?" I asked.
     Wheeler did not.
     He is 68, from Crown Point, Indiana, and has been in the propeller beanie business for six years. Before that?
     "A little bit of everything," he said.
     How does one get into the pinwheel hat trade?
     "Somebody gave me a baseball cap," he explained. "I don't wear baseball caps — the visor gets in the way. So I removed the visor and looked at it a minute."
     Inspiration struck.
     "And then I thought, 'Oh, no! I know what that needs,'" he said.
     The typical pinwheel beanie, Wheeler said, is a shoddy affair. His creations sell for $40.
     "There's a very high-end hat," he said.
     Juan Bolanos came hurrying over, a big grin on his face.
     "Are those for sale?" he asked. Wheeler admitted they are.
     "I usually charge $40," he began, slipping into his salesman's patter. "But as you seem to be a working-class guy, I'll take 25% right off the top, bringing it down to a paltry $30."
     Bolanos, manager at Devil Dawgs across the street, laughed.
     "You don't have a solid black color?" he asked.
     Wheeler did not.
     "These things are hilarious," Bolanos said. "I love it."
     "This is the closest I have," said Wheeler, producing a two-tone gray.

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Flashback 1999: Cranes lift city's profile

Atop the future Park Hyatt in 1999 (photograph by Robert A. Davis)

     Stories can resonate for a very long time. More than 25 years after this was written, I stopped by the Park Hyatt Hotel Tuesday and had a friendly talk with the front office manager, collecting information for an out-of-left-field follow-up that will run ... at some point in the indeterminate future. 

     In our conversation, I mentioned having been on a tower crane atop the building while it was being constructed. I assumed that this article had been posted before. But it hasn't. Which is surprising, because I remember reporting it so clearly — how could you not? Particularly the moment when I suggested to ace photographer Bob Davis that he needed to climb into the little car that held the tower crane's hook lowering mechanism, have himself run out to the end, and shoot the crane operator down the length of the boom. Normally the hardiest of collaborators, in my memory, in this one instance, Bob demurred, wordlessly handing his $2,000 motor drive Nikon to me. What could I do? It was my idea. I climbed into the open car, held tight to a metal bar with one hand and to the Nikon with the other, and was shot out to the tip of the crane. That much I expected. Then the operator swept the boom in a wide arc out over the street, 700 feet above Michigan Avenue. Not a moment that leaves a fellow.

    Enough preface. The following piece is 1300 words long, almost twice the length of a column today. I hope it merits the time it takes to read; this is my favorite kind of story, filling readers in on the fascinating details of something they've seen many times and perhaps wondered about.

     The view between Mike Femali's feet will cost condo owners $1 million or more when they finally move into their luxury suites atop the Park Tower after it is completed next year.
     But for Femali, the view is not only free, he's being paid $29.60 an hour to look at the sweeping panorama from the top of Water Tower Place to the coast of Michigan on a good day.
     When he has the time.
     "It's beautiful, but to tell you the truth we never have time to even look at the view," said Femali, a veteran tower crane operator who at the moment is working 700 feet above the street, ferrying concrete panels to the roof of the new hotel; condo high-rise going up just west of the corner of Michigan and Chicago.
     These are boom times for cranes. The red-hot downtown high-rise market has brought a flock of them to roost, like their namesake birds, upon the growing steel skeletons of buildings citywide.
     "This is the most I've seen in 10 years," said Bill Tierney, vice president of Imperial Crane Services in Bridgeview.
     "There's still more going up_that's the unbelievable thing," said Mike Regal, Midwest sales manager for Morrow Crane Co., the nation's largest supplier of tower cranes. "They'll probably be 30 to 35 tower cranes in downtown Chicago by the end of the year."
     Morrow, based in Salem, Ore., has 450 tower cranes and rents them throughout the world. They're not cheap, ranging in price from $600,000 to $4.5 million for the largest models. Most construction companies rent them, though that isn't cheap either, costing up to $70,000 a month. Crane rental, erection and operation can add $1 million to the cost of a building.
     Like wine auctions and $750,000 one-bedroom condos, cranes are a sign of a robust economy.
     "Cranes are usually a pretty good indication of how the construction industry and the economy is going," said Don Sheil, of Gatwood Crane Services in Arlington Heights. "Five or six years ago you'd see maybe one or two on a rare occasion. Now you go through the city and see a dozen, 15 of them."
     There are two basic kinds of crane.
     Tower cranes are fixed — they either sit on top of a building, or are anchored three or more floors into the structure rising around them. They rise with the building, "jumping" several stories at a time through a complicated process in which the crane is jacked up with a hydraulic ram and new sections inserted. Other tower cranes rise alongside the entire length of the building.
     Mobile cranes, or crawlers, are more common and cost less to rent. They can lift heavier loads, but obviously not as high. They'd never reach, for instance, the top of the 67-story Park Tower.
     They also take up room. A construction job, particularly downtown, is a headache of logistics. Even if a crane would be large enough to reach the top of the Park Hyatt, the city would be loath to shut down Chicago Avenue so it could sit there for months and months while the building was going up. Atop buildings, tower cranes are not in the way.
     They also are safer. By law, tower cranes must "weather vane," that is, be free to spin into the wind, 360 degrees, when not in use. While the cause of the crane collapse at Illinois and Rush hasn't been determined, the long, non-spinning booms of crawling cranes take more stress from winds because they can't swing.
     That's sometimes a problem when it comes to tower cranes. Across the street from the new Park Tower is another hotel, the Peninsula, which is just starting to be built and will rise 25 stories above the Ralph Lauren store at Michigan and Chicago. One large crane in the center of the job might be cheaper to use. But because it couldn't reach all the way around the building and still weather vane without hitting the apartment building to the west, two smaller cranes are being used.
     Like every other of the 18,000 crane operators in Illinois and parts of surrounding states, Femali belongs to the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, based in Countryside.
     "I've been in the union 30 years," he said. The biggest change has been the pumping of concrete on construction sites. Cranes used to haul concrete up in large cauldrons.
     Femali's crane — made in Germany, like most big cranes — can lift 22,000 pounds. To try to lift more is an invitation to pull the crane off the top of the building. Cranes today use special sensors to automatically refuse to hoist anything too heavy. "It shuts off," Femali said. "These cranes are smarter than their operators."
     Crane accidents are rare but not unknown. One man was killed at the LTV Steel Co. plant in 1996 and another seriously injured when a crane dropped some roofing material on them. A concrete bucket once fell to the street during the construction of Water Tower Place. When 900 N. Michigan was being built, the heater in a crane cab caught fire. No one was hurt, but firefighters watched helplessly from the street while it burned.
     The most significant recent accident occurred in Milwaukee in July, when a 567-foot crane lifting a section of roof onto the Brewers' new Miller Park stadium collapsed, killing three workers and delaying the opening of the new ballpark.
     Even when hauling a load within limits, the end of the crane (called the jib; the part at the back is the counter-jib) can dip three feet.
     "That tightens you up a little bit because you might think it's not going to stop," said Jim Miller, assistant to the president of Local 150.
     Also scary is the occasional lightning strike.
     "We all get hit by lightning," said Femali. "It's loud. But you don't feel anything. It's all grounded."
     The hardest part about the job is that, most of the time, the operator can't see what's happening on the ground below and has to operate the lift by hand and radio commands.
     "Every time you move a load you could hurt somebody," Femali said. "Working in the blind, you don't know what they're doing down there. You have to have competent people down there — it can be stressful."
     They work in teams of two, an operator and an oiler who makes sure the bolts are tight and lines are lubricated.
     There is a lot of winking dismissal of oilers. "It's just a union thing," Regal said. "In some places it's not required."
     But oilers allow the operator to take breaks, and they play an apprentice role.
     "One of the primary things is training," Miller said. "The oiler can get to break in as an operator of the rig. Otherwise, there's no real way to get on-the-job training."
     It is an odd sort of job, but those in it tend to stay. Mike Femali's son is an operator. Ken Doogan, 49, has been one for 32 years.
     "My wife thinks I'm crazy. My twin brother wouldn't come up here," he said, standing on the windswept counter-jib of the north crane of the Park Tower. "But you should see the sunrises. They are beautiful."

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 17, 1999

Kennedy calling for study of polio vaccine isn't skepticism, it's rejectionism

 

     Study! I love to study. A pot of coffee, a comfortable chair and a deadline that isn't today — nothing makes me happier than to dive into a subject, stacks of books around me, obscure databases on the screen. It's perhaps the most appealing aspect of my job.
     One day, I'm digging into the circumstances behind Oscar Wilde's famous line about the Water Tower ("a castellated monstrosity with pepperboxes stuck all over it" — not a quip, as commonly described, but premeditated provocation). The next, I'm exploring solar eclipses (if you are ever stumped as to where helium was first detected, remember helios is Greek for "the sun," where the gas was noticed spectrographically during an eclipse in India in 1868).
     So study is good. However. I also know that "study" can be a code word for wanton dismissal of facts that don't serve your personal narrative, and I'll give you an example. If someone says they are studying the Holocaust, trying to determine what really happened, then you can be sure you are not dealing with a scholar, but an antisemite. Your immediate answer should be along the lines of: "Well, I hope your 'study' involves reading a few of the thousands of meticulously documented books outlining the precise enormity of the crime, you odious bigot. Sticklers for bookkeeping, those Germans were. Fifteen minutes in a library should lay it out pretty clearly."
     With anti-vax advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. up for the role of secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, whose spine occasionally stiffens before going soft again, warned that nominees hoping for Senate approval should "steer clear" of undermining the polio vaccine.
     Prompting a classic weasel response from Katie Miller, RFK Jr.'s transition spokesperson.
     "Mr. Kennedy believes the Polio Vaccine should be available to the public and thoroughly and properly studied," she said.
     Proper study! What a good idea. Let's look into it! How about taking 1,349,135 children and submitting them to a blind trial at 244 test areas around the country, with half getting the cherry-red vaccine, and half a placebo, or nothing. Then we'll really find out if this vaccine is any good.
     Oh wait, we did that. In the spring and summer of 1954. To this day, it's the largest medical experiment in United States history. Thousands of doctors, nurses, principals, teachers, parents and other volunteers banded together, working for free — the government wasn't paying because that smacked of socialized medicine.
     Gosh Neil, you might ask, being yourself an inquisitive sort, just like me, why did thousands of doctors, nurses, principals, etc., all supposedly with busy lives, drop everything to help run this giant medical test for no compensation? Possibly because polio was scything through their children: more than 57,000 cases in 1952, with over 3,000 deaths. A child could be healthy at breakfast and dead by dinner. That catches the attention of the neighbors and dials up public spiritedness.

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International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago.

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee."

Laocoon and his Sons, by Francesco Righetti (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

     "Their reward for enduring the awful experience was the right to tell about it," J.K. Rowling writes in her novel, "The Casual Vacancy."
     And in that sense, I'm blessed to have a newspaper column, since my dire downs — and happy ups — can be whipped into a wordy froth and spooned to the public. Those without such an outlet sometimes write to me, and Monday's adventure ordering coasters and shoelaces inspired a number of readers to share their consumer travails — including several whose woes involved subscribing to the Sun-Times. Those I tried to help. And since I've got this maw every goddamn day to fill, I thought I would share John F.'s ordeal:

     As a regular reader I can sympathize with you on your recent foray into the world of AI and the shoelace incident. It really hit home as I reflect on my recent encounter with Comcast. Not long ago, Comcast lost the NBC Sports Channel. I know you are not a big sports guy so in case you did not know (I'm sure you do) was the home to the Bulls, Blackhawks and White Sox.  
     Originally, there was no price adjustment to customers for losing local professional sports in a major market while they negotiate with a new channel similar to the Cub's Marquee network. To date, these negotiations are still ongoing in spite of the fact that promises were made that a solution would be announced by the end of November.

     Meanwhile, Comcast decided that they would offer customers a rebate backdated to the date when NBC Sports went off the air. It was to be just over $8/month. I received the first rebate of just over $6/month on my bill but nothing for the first 2 months so it was not backdated as promised. Add to that the fact that next next bill did not include the rebate so I was right back to the higher rate.

     This is where the AI part comes in. It is virtually impossible to get a live person on a phone with Comcast. Instead you are directed on line to a 'live chat'. I am assigned an agent with what sounds like a human name attached to it. After typing in, at length my issue I am greeted with "rest assured that I am the person who will take care of your issue". Fasting forward, It took four hours and a total of five 'agents' each of whom promised that they were the 'person' to take care of my issue. Each time I was promised that the new agent has reviewed my chat so that they would be able to pick up right where I left off. Needless to say, with each new agent I had to start from Square One. During that time they offered me a new deal that would cost an additional $5/month while still not providing local sports. I chose to reduce my service to the lowest level where I would lose some channels but save me $30/month. This was negotiated on 11/18.

     Then came my next bill which not only did not include the discount for the Sports Channel issue but it reverted to the original price for the higher tier programming. So it was back to the 'live chat'... It turns out that because I have auto pay to save $5/month, that bill which was generated on 11/16 to to paid on 12/12. They claim that that is why the bill was for the higher rate. The bill did show that my next bill would have the corrections for the original issues which included the missed credits and lower programming tier ($151 down from the new rate of $188). So my current issue was that the bill I received for $208 should have been $188). This time, it only took three hours and two agents so I suppose that is an improvement. I was promised that my next bill will have the additional credit and will be $115 as this was negotiated prior to the autopay billing date.

   Had I not called to fix my issues, I wonder how many other people out there who do not have hours to wait on-line end up overpaying. By the way, if there is a local Comcast brick and mortar store it is a waste of time going there for billing issues as that is above their pay scale and they'll just direct you to the 'live chat'.

     Life was so much easier when you could get an actual person the phone. Good luck with your shoelaces.

     

Ordering stuff online is a depersonalized process, until it isn't.

These new Pisgah Range shoelaces had to brave the aftermath of Hurricane Helene to get to me.

     Do you care that a person wrote this?
     If the same column were spat out by a machine, would you read it differently? Would you read it at all?
     I'm not sure.
     We are nearing a time when algorithms can tell a story. Maybe even a good story; why not, since it's scraped from every other story ever written?
     So expect even more thrilling thrillers. Steamier romances. Funnier comedies. Who'll care they were composed in .002 seconds by a computer? The important thing is there is no author to pay.
     Still. AI doesn't replace a person, yet. Not to me anyway. I've had several unexpected human encounters in the anonymous electronic churn of online commerce and am grateful for them.
     First, I had some post-wedding business to take care of. My mother wanted to give a gift to my younger son and his new bride, and since she no longer navigates the online world, I volunteered to do it.
     On their wedding website, I selected a set of lovely coasters and was directed to someplace called Scully & Scully. I took my father's credit card and made the purchase. Lovely embroidered pink elephant coasters. No new household is complete without them.
     A day went by.
     The phone rang. "Scully & Scully" calling. The person on the line pointed out the address where the gift was to be shipped — our home, since the happy couple was honeymooning in Mexico — and the address on the credit card didn't match.
      A security issue. I tried to explain — it wasn't my card but my father's. I was authorized to use it. That didn't fly; the order was canceled.
     The next day, I phoned Scully & Scully, thinking to remedy the situation, and ended up with Carol Tytla, in the registry department. And here is where things got strange — several phone calls were needed to finally get those coasters on their way.
     And at one point, Carol and I were just talking, chatting like friends — about weddings, our lives, what sort of store Scully & Scully is. Like Neiman Marcus? I wondered. No, she said, more like Gump's. Oh, I've been to Gump's! I exclaimed. In Dallas. My sister lives there ...
     Suddenly, I worried Carol might get in trouble. I'd hate to get the woman fired. She said, no, things were quiet at the bridal registry department. Scully & Scully, at 59th and Madison in New York City, is an old school kind of store.
     "Mr. Scully is here every day," she said.
     That seemed worth investigating.

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