"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.