Pay to the Order of ...

 

     You can look at something all your life and never quite see it. Then suddenly, one fine day, it snaps into focus and makes you wonder.
     I was updating my wife's checkbook — we pay bills online like the rest of the modern world, but still send checks sometimes, plus balancing a check book ensures we actually look at where the money is going — and noticed the standard phrase beside where the recipient's name goes: "Pay to the Order of." 

     We know what "pay" means —give 'em the money . But why "order"? What does order mean in this context? What is a person's order that we can pay it?

    AI is a little helpful, tending to consider the whole phrase and not wanting to pull "order" out. Though it does contrast "order" with "bearer," which is helpful. A financial instrument paid to the order has to be cashed by a specific person, as opposed to pay to the bearer, which is good for whoever has it in hand.

    Still, an old school investigation seemed in, ah, order.

    A reminder that "order" is like "set," one of those words with oodles of definitions. Off the top of my head: a sequence of events. A state free from disturbance. A request for goods, in a restaurant or a business. A military command.  

    Samuel Johnson offers 14 meanings in his 1755 dictionary, quite succinctly stated, starting with, "1. Method, regular disposition. 2. Established process. 3. Proper state" and including a few I hadn't considered, such as "8. A society of dignified persons, distinguished by marks of honour" and "12. Means to an end," which fits with my "seems in order" usage above.

    None quite fit the bill for our check, however.
    Noah Webster serves up 15 definitions in his 1828 dictionary, some clearly lifted, such as "15. In architecture, a system of several members, ornaments and proportions of columns and pilasters" which is Johnson, word for word.
     The Oxford English Dictionary has more than two full pages of definitions, and a semi-careful reading didn't find anything that would explain my check. 

     It struck me that this was a situation where you needed the right tool for the job. We are a household that is nothing if not rich in dictionaries, and I borrowed my wife's old Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition. There the second definition is what we're looking for: "A designation of the person to whom a bill of exchange or negotiable promissory note is to be paid. An 'order' is a direction to pay and must be more than an authorization or request. It must identify the person to pay with reasonable certainty."
      So why is it still on checks? Why not just say, "Pay..." and the person's name? 
     Black's explains that too, in its definition of "Check, n. A draft drawn upon a bank and payable on demand." It continues later with the Federal Reserve Board's definition of a check, ending: "It must contain the phrase 'pay to the order of.'"
    And so they do. "Order" is on checks, part of a phrase that is an obligatory legalism. As to why we're still using checks ... it aids record keeping, and is useful under certain circumstances: handing some money to someone without resorting to Zelle or Venmo or whatever the e-banker of the moment happens to be. 

Guest voice: Jack Clark

     Regular EGD readers are familiar with Jack Clark, the former Chicago cabbie turned mystery writer who checks in occasionally, most recently in 2023. Today he comments on a pervasive problem in our social media age: fraud.

     I opened my first bank account in 1957 with my First Communion money and closed it ten years later when I was 17. The bank officer was amused. He told me that, according to current rules, I was too young to open an account on my own.
     I’ve had plenty of banks and bank accounts since then, and I could bore you silly with some of my bank stories. But I’m going to skip that. Something exciting has finally happened. After 60-some years of banking, I’ve been the victim of check fraud. Twice, with a single transaction.
     It all started when I got a direct mail solicitation from Block Club Chicago. Now, I’m a nice enough guy, but I never donate to anyone but panhandlers. I’m the classic struggling writer (except about 50 years too old). People should be sending me money. But Block Club is really pretty cool and Jenny Sabella who is one of the founders and the executive editor is even cooler.
     We first met when she got hired as a waitress/bartender at the Grafton Pub in Lincoln Square. This was just around the corner from my apartment. I liked to stop in on the way home. “Hey Jack, you should meet Jenny,” the bartender said one night. “She’s a writer too.”
     “Oh cool,” I said. “What do you write about?”
     “Sex,” she said, and we’ve been friends ever since.
     For obvious reasons, I don’t get many solicitations. But when I do it’s usually for the Lyric Opera or the Art Institute, places like that. Somehow I’ve gotten myself on some arty mailing list. So I was impressed that Block Club had dropped a few dollars and given the list a try. Should I actually send them some money?
     Jenny, who knew a thing or two about being a struggling writer (and did it at the appropriate age and then moved on), had promised me that I’d never have to pay for Block Club. Maybe now was the time to pony up.
      And there was a bonus. If I donated $60 or more they’d send me six Chicago postcards. That may not be exciting to you but I’m a newlywed and my bride is a postcard freak. There’s no other way to put it. She likes to send them but, even more than that, she likes to buy them. I’d say for every postcard she sends, she buys 10 or 20. I’ve spent hours waiting outside cute little shops while she’s inside spinning the postcard racks.
     Well, this would impress the lovely Helene, I decided. I filled out the form and included a check for $100 and dropped the envelope in the mailbox before I could have second thoughts. The extra $40 was so Jenny wouldn’t think I was a cheapsteak. [I know. I think it’s funnier this way.]
     And then I waited for the postcards to arrive. Nothing. I checked my bank account. The check had not cleared. What was taking so long? It finally cleared nearly a month after I’d sent it. I was about to write Jenny: You’ve got to get those checks in the bank before people change their minds!
     The wonders of online banking. You don’t have to wait for your cancelled checks to arrive a month later. You can view them online. Before writing Jenny, I thought I’d take a look. The front of the check looked fine. It was to the order of Block Club and my signature was artistically scrawled along the bottom. On the back of the check the fraud finally arrived (I know you’ve been waiting). The check was not endorsed by Block Club; it was endorsed with my name, which makes no sense. Now if you were going to forge the name of the person who wrote the check wouldn’t you try to imitate his handwriting. Not this guy. You can actually read every letter of my name. What kind of signature is that? He’d obviously never been to art school. The check was deposited into an account at a credit union in Virginia.
     I wrote Jenny and sent her copies of the check. She wrote back: “This is SO weird. That was definitely not cashed by us.”
      Next I called my bank, Wintrust, who I’ve had very good luck with in the past. I figured the call would take about five minutes. Instead it took a half hour or more. Most of that time I was on hold. I talked to three different bankers. They all agreed that the check had almost certainly been stolen. They kept failing as they tried to connect me to the manager at my local branch. “Why do we have to talk to him?” I finally asked.
      “You’re going to have to close your account and open a new one.” (Note: all dialogue is reconstructed from memory.)
      “Why?”
      “Well, your account has been compromised. They have your account number and the routing number. They could. . .”
      “That’s ridiculous. You can find the routing number of any bank in about eight seconds.” Banks want you to send them money. “And both numbers are on the checks. Anybody I send a check to sees them.” And the world is full of scoundrels who often disguise themselves by working for legitimate businesses, even banks now and then.
      “I’m sorry, sir,” she said in a tone that let me know the discussion was over.
      I asked to speak to a supervisor and soon a manager was on the line. We went through the same song and dance. She said that the bank would recommend that I get a new account.
      “So I don’t have to?”
     “No. But you know we have recorded this entire conversation. So if you have another problem later on, you might not recover your money.”
     “Are you threatening me?” Is what I wish I’d said.
      When the call finally ended, I called right back. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to make sure I got the wording of their message exactly. “Please note: Your call may be recorded for quality and training purposes.” Not one word about legal purposes or retribution for not following bank recommendations.
      So that’s the second clear case of fraud. Consider yourself forewarned: You may be sitting in a courtroom some day or at a deposition, and somebody on the other side will play that recording supposedly made for quality and training purposes.

      Should we tell the person who picks up that recorded call, “I agree to have this conversation recorded for quality and training purposes only. Nothing beyond that?”

      One final question: Should I follow the bank’s advice and close my account and open another? Let me know what you think. I’m honestly confused.

In snowy weather, CTA bus riders must become mountaineers

Wynne Delacoma takes the bus (photo for the Sun-Times by Anthony Vazquez)

     On Monday, Wynne Delacoma went to ship Christmas presents — early, yes, but that's the sort of person she is. Organized. After dropping her parcels at the FedEx at Barry and Clark, she went to call a cab for her next errand.
     But the Curb taxi-hailing app was down. So she walked to the nearest bus stop, finding it icy and clogged with snow.
     Delacoma, 80, boarded as best she could, taking the bus to Gethsemane Garden Center.
     There she planned to deliver a length of red ribbon for her Christmas wreath. Pretty velvet ribbon; saved from last year's wreath. Good ribbon is hard to find. And she got a discount on the new wreath by providing her own ribbon. Practical and aesthetic.
     Again she had to survive a common challenge facing bus riders this very snowy winter: getting past the obstacle course at the bus stop.
     "It was terrible. Just awful. I was afraid I'd have to walk along the side of the bus in the street," said Delacoma. "That's where they'd plowed. I just couldn't do it. Luckily, some young women there were able to help me off."
     Walking close to a bus, and you take your life in your hands. Just the week before, a woman in South Shore was killed by a bus after appearing to slip as the vehicle began to move forward. 
     Yet snowbound stops are common.

     "Probably half of the stops I get on and off at are clogged with snow and ice," said Peter Nee, a Chicago resident. "Sometimes I have to climb over a little mountain of snow."
     When Delacoma got home, being civic-minded in addition to the aforementioned good qualities, she fired off a letter to the CTA, and cc'd a copy to me.
     "I'm writing to ask you why CTA bus stops have not been cleared of snow," she began. "I used the No. 22 and No. 77 buses today ... only one of the stops — the Belmont/Red/Brown/Purple Line station at 945 W. Belmont — was clear of snow. All the others were packed with snow, making it extremely treacherous to board or leave the buses."
     If that seems a particularly lucid account, it's worth mentioning that Delacoma was the classical music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times for many years. She raises an interesting question:
     "Who is responsible for cleaning the stops? The CTA or the city?"
     I told her I would try to find out.
     This must be a common enough public concern that the CTA has a webpage, "Snow Removal" dedicated to sidestepping responsibility.
     "One of the biggest challenges during the winter is navigating areas that are not cleared of snow and ice," it says, with apparent sympathy. "We're responsible for snow removal on our property, while most bus stops and areas adjacent/leading up to CTA property are the responsibility of others."
     There are nearly 11,000 bus stops in Chicago. If the CTA is not responsible for clearing the vast majority, who is?
     "We work closely with the Chicago Department of Transportation to ensure bus shelters are shoveled as quickly as possible," the CTA continued.
     Anyone who takes buses knows this is deceptive, since buses do not actually stop at shelters, which seem to exist primarily for the benefit of the homeless.
     CDOT also ID'ed other suspects:

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Bessie Coleman, in the news

     Former president Barack Obama was in Chicago this week, doing what celebrities do to light up social media: springing himself unexpected on ordinary people, in this case young kids at the Bessie Coleman branch of the Chicago Public Library in Woodlawn. There he read "Flying Free: How Bessie Coleman's Dreams Took Flight" by Karyn Parsons. 

     Which is all good -- Coleman is one of those Chicagoans who doesn't get enough attention. I learned about her so I could include a story in my 2022 book, "Every Goddamn Day" (which, now that I think about it, is being stocked again at the Book Bin in Northbrook. If you are looking for a Christmas gift for that Chicago history lover in your life, the book contains this and 365 other Chicago stories, will be gift-wrapped for free, inscribed however you like by me, and mailed to the lucky recipient for only an additional $5 shipping fee. You can reach the Book Bin at 847-498-4999). I can assume my version of Coleman's story has a bit more, ah, spice than the one Obama read to first graders.

June 15, 1921: Lots of jawboning goes on in a barbershop. Lots of idle talk, waiting for a shave, or a haircut. Chatting up the pretty manicurist in the window. Teasing her. 

     “You Chicago girls don't know shit,” one former doughboy says, or words to that effect. “Now those French girls, they know where it's at. There are French girls who know how to fly.”

     Usually this kind of thing leads nowhere. Not this time. Right then, Bessie Coleman makes a decision. “That’s it!” she says. “You just called it for me.” 

     She has always wanted to make something of herself. That's why she's in Chicago, doing nails, and not back home washing clothes in Waxahachie, Texas. If French girls can fly, so can she. There are airfields in Chicago and flying instructors, but nobody who is going to teach a Black manicurist how to pilot a plane. Coleman studies French. She saves her money. She gets some help — a manicurist holds the hands of many rich men. Maybe from Jessie Binga, the banker. Maybe from Robert S. Abbott, the publisher. 

     Today a French official fills out her license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. She is the first Black woman to hold a pilot's license, and returns to this country a star, performing acrobatic stunts. It will be 17 years before a Black woman earns a pilot's license in the United States.

Steiff, when you care enough to give a teddy bear not intended for children

 

     Hanukkah begins Sunday evening. With Christmas close behind, and all the buying of presents that both holidays demand.
     Let's not mince words: giving gifts is hard. Part mind-reading, part scavenger hunt, part potlatch. Even when you know exactly what to get, and have time to prepare.
     Maybe I should just tell the story.
     Last year, when I found out that I would be a grandfather, my very first thought was about a present. I hung up the phone and went directly onto the Steiff website.
     Steiff is a German toy company, founded in 1880, offering all the soft cute animals you'd expect. But Steiff also has a tradition of hard mohair animals that, in an astounding mercy of time's grindstone, are still made in Germany. Needless to say, they cost a lot.
     My connection to Steiff came about because of a scientific conference in Germany in 1962. My father, a nuclear physicist with NASA, went to present a paper. He saw these gorgeous Steiff animals in a shop. The dollar must have been very strong. He bought a turtle and an elephant, a lobster and a giraffe ... plus a lion, squirrel, various birds — so many toys he also bought a case to carry them back.
     But that isn't the lovely part. The lovely part, according to family lore, is when he gets home from his overseas trip, he opens the case, displaying its contents, and tells my sister, then 4, to take what she wants, and her toddling brother can have the rest. My sister surveys the menagerie and bursts into tears.
     "Didn't they have any dollies?" she wails. She wanted a Chatty Cathy, or whatever.
     Maybe that story isn't much, as far as family traditions go. But it is what I have, and I clung to it. The day my oldest boy was born, when my wife beeped me to tell me to get home now and whisk her to the hospital, I was in FAO Schwarz on Michigan Avenue, examining a little Steiff dog that ended up in his crib. Both boys got Steiff teddy bears when young.
     That brings us to 2025, and the new generation. Should be easy, right? Jump on the Steiff website, find a suitable bear, deploy the credit card, trying not to wince. I began browsing, and encountered a rude surprise:
     "CAUTION! This product is not a toy and is intended for adult collectors only."
     What? When did THAT happen? I appealed to Steiff, telling them I was "surprised to learn that [their mohair bears] are not considered toys, and should not be given to children. This is news to me, and not good news. ... Are the bears dangerous?"
     Their lengthy answer boiled down to two concerns.
     First: "Design & Safety — Certainly, wool-based mohair is still considered a safe material. But many of the mohair designs in our present assortment include elaborate accessories or features which were chosen to appeal to adult fans of the Steiff brand. These items sometimes include small, detachable parts (such as beads, crystals, glass eyes, cords, ribbons, etc.) which might not be considered safe for small children as they could be potential choking hazards."
     Second: "Convenience & Aesthetics — Though a lush and beautiful material, mohair, like other wool products, is not typically machine washable. This is a major concern for today’s parents. Mohair shrinks, and can lose its luster, texture, and color after washing. In this sense, mohair does not meet our own, internally defined standards for aesthetic quality and practical convenience."
     Giving me a choice: I could devolve to their washable, polyester bears that have the additional advantage of costing a sixth as much. Still Steiffs. Or stick with the mohair tradition, one of the few I've got.

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'Reconsider whether cars and trucks are the best way to deliver items in dense neighborhoods'

 

      On Monday, my column looked at the issues raised by Ald. Daniel La Spata's ordinance facilitating Chicagoans who want to turn in people who park in bike lanes. I thought I'd raised both sides of question, and did not expect my first email to be someone cancelling their subscription in protest.

Dear Mr. Steinberg:

     I paused my Sun Times membership just now after reading your latest column while on a bus on South Michigan that was delayed because we kept having to weave in and out of columns of double parkers in our travel lane.
     The sense of entitlement that you seem to share with so many drivers who think that they have some God-given right to block arterial streets is a major part of what makes this city more challenging and dangerous to get around in, whatever mode you might choose.
     Maybe if companies suffered a financial penalty for breaking parking laws, they would reconsider whether cars and trucks are the best way to deliver items in dense neighborhoods. If the price was passed onto the consumer, maybe they'd think twice about ordering something for delivery instead of getting off their butt and walking to the store.
     Nobody thinks every double parked delivery truck on a side street should be ticketed, but blocking main thoroughfares makes travel harder for all of us trying to get around the city. But then again, as you say, you live in Northbrook, so you're not really in the best position to opine on the subject, are you?
     I look forward to resubscribing to the Sun Times when my money doesn't support tired old baby boomers who belong in the Journal and Topics or yelling during public comment at Northfield Township board meetings.
     Sincerely,
     John A.

    The thing to do would have been to ignore it. But I'm not that sort. I replied:

Dear Mr. A.:

     I like to think of bike riders as a bit more hardy than that. But if you want to punish yourself by avoiding the best newspaper in Chicago because I expressed an opinion not your own, that is your right. I thought I presented both sides of the issue before coming down against a silly law which will not stop packages being delivered by truck, as seems your goal.
     I do plan to retire in two years, and would suggest it might be safe for you to return then, except it is quite possible that someone else might express another opinion that you don't like, and then you'd be right back where you are today. I've been on staff for 38 years, and dealt with all sorts of ruffled bigots. Typically, they have no idea they are expressing hatred toward a group, and I would imagine that ageists such as yourself are no different, even though [you] fancy yourself liberal-minded because you probably would not castigate a Muslim who flies a lot on airplanes or a Black person who likes the coal industry as holding those views because of their ethnicity or race the way you mock me for being 65. But trust me, it's just as unattractive, and indefensible, and if you are capable of reflection as well as outrage — an open question, judging from your note — I would encourage you to reflect on that.
     That said, thanks for writing, and I hope you bike more carefully than you write. Still, as a kindness, when I post your email Tuesday, for the education of my blog readers, I will withhold your identity, to shield you from the contempt you rightly deserve.

Neil Steinberg

     Not that all the emails were from loons. Most were sensible, and I'll include one, just as a reminder to what such reaction is like. It was one of many that took issue with Amazon; I thought that ship had sailed long ago:

     Here is one vote for "enforce the law" let the snitching begin. Amazon and others are taking over public property, the streets, to make additional billions for Jeff Bezos. Of course we will offer them an "out" let them take a 50% discount on the tickets they wrack up when the total exceeds one million!
     Following up on your interest in traffic: Why don't we have speed camera enforcement on Lake Shore Drive? I have asked several Alderman and there is no response. It seems like a no brainer. It would raise money for a city that needs it and undoubtedly have some impact on the rampant speeding that currently leads to all too often accidents, some of them deadly.
Someone has "put a brick" on this common sense idea. Who? 
     Your fan and reader,
     Andrew Davis

    A colleague was intrigued with your question, and found — through an AI search, always dubious, but this answer has the tang of veracity — that the Chicago speed camera program is limited to "Child Safety Zones," aka, areas by schools and parks. Thus LSD (whoops, JBPDSLSD —his joke, but I'm going with it) is excluded. For now. There is legislation pending that would extend those cameras to expressways. Something to look forward to.   

To snitch or not to snitch? Is proposed parking scofflaw law a good idea?

Bike park at the central train station in Copenhagen.

     This is a tough one.
     As a rule, I'm not a on-this-hand, on-the-other kind of columnist. That's chicken ... umm ... bleep. My job is to not equivocate but make a stand. If you're going to take Vienna, as Napoleon said, take Vienna. No half measures.
     But regarding the ordinance Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st) outlined in Fran Spielman's article Thursday, allowing Chicagoans to take photos and turn in commercial vehicles violating parking ordinances, leaving their big blue electric Prime vans in bike lanes and crosswalks, well, I'm torn here.
     It's good that it's being delayed, so the issues can be weighed.
      On the one hand, as a former avid city cyclist, in my younger days — for years after the Divvy system rolled out, I wrote a periodic "Divvy Diary" recounting the joys of blasting those big blue bombers down Chicago streets —I know you take your life in your hands every time you have to veer around some double-parked doofus.
     Why should innocent cyclists energetically going about their business be forced to risk getting themselves creamed by a bus so that housebound shopping addicts sprawled on their sofas can receive their daily, if not hourly, infusion of superfluous junk?
     On the other: I too order from Amazon. I too marvel when something bought a few hours ago shows up, Johnny-on-the-spot. I don't have a dog in this race, living as I do in the sprawling, low-density leafy suburban paradise that is Northbrook. A half dozen Prime vans could simultaneously pull up in front of our house, day or night, and easily find a place to park. Some days, it seems they do.
      In the city, most blocks are wall-to-wall parked cars. So where else are delivery trucks supposed to stop, if not in bike lanes and crosswalks? They only stop briefly, and if you happen to come hammering along and, checking your heart rate on your Apple watch, rear end one, well, tough luck. Maybe you should concentrate on where you're going, and you won't get doored while fiddling with your bike computer.
      Then there is the risk of dragooning the population into traffic enforcement. Is that respect for law? Or trying create a population of snitches?
      La Spata isn't only doing this out of concern for law, generally, but to scratch his own private itch. He's a cyclist, posting Instagram videos of himself leading critical mass bike rides to meetings of the City Council Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, which he chairs.
      All good, right? Onward toward a Scandinavian-style cyclist's paradise? Or another example of leaders putting their own priorities first? Maybe La Spata should sponsor an ordinance encouraging police officers to snitch on each other. Because right now the code of silence requires them to cough into into their fists twice upon detecting thin blue line crime, provided no one is around to hear the coughs.
      There is risk involved. As someone who walks around a lot, and often takes photos of what I see, I'd hate to be minding my own business, trying to capture an evocative arrangement of snow on a bare tree branch, only to have some burly delivery guy run over, knock my phone out of my hands and jump on it because he thinks I'm taking a photo of his license plate.
      OK, Steinberg, choose. Ordinance = bad. Is not a culture of snitching another milestone in the road to totalitarianism? Stukach they called it in Soviet Union. Squealing. We start by encouraging people to report someone parking in a crosswalk, then before we know it, schoolchildren are turning in their parents for working on Trump's birthday.
       We're closer than you think. In case you missed it, the National Park Service just scratched Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth from its free entry holiday list, replacing it with the 47th president's birthday. Thank God we're all so numb, or we'd have to scan the headlines with our phones in one hand and air sickness bags in the other.

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Flashback 1991: Pearl Harbor terror recalled at rites here

The 50th anniversary was front page news

  
     Today is Pearl Harbor Day — a Sunday, as it was in 1941. I will fly the flag. Can't say whether the newspaper will run anything — memories fade, passions cool, and 84 years after the event, only about a dozen survivors of the Japanese attack remain alive. Time was, if the Sun-Times didn't mark the anniversary, prominently, readers would complain bitterly. This isn't a column — I was a general assignment reporter at the time, reporting on the Dec. 7 anniversary commemoration — other stories had run the day before. Starting on the front page.

     How bad was it at Pearl Harbor? Enough for Arlandres Dixon to suddenly feel homesick for the Southern city he joined the Navy to escape
     "It was one of the few times in my life I missed Jackson, Miss.," said Dixon of the moment he stood on the deck of the U.S.S. Dale and watched Japanese bombers rip into the harbor. "I was scared as a fox with a pack of hounds behind him."

     The 72-year-old former gunner was one of hundreds of veterans who gathered at Daley Plaza on Saturday for a solemn ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 

     Maj. Gen. James H. Mukoyama Jr., a third generation Japanese American, said honoring the Pearl Harbor dead should not mean rekindling bigotry against Japanese Americans, many of whom fought bravely in World War II and almost all of whom were loyal citizens despite official government outrages committed against them.

     "During World War II, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were taken from their homes," he said. "In Hawaii, (they) were forced to wear black badges on their clothes, reminiscent of the cloth badges Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. The only crime committed by these American citizens were their parents were born in Japan."

     Despite somber speeches, the moment of silence, and the Marine bugler playing taps, it was still a gathering of veterans, complete with hearty handshakes, slaps on the back, more than one dirty joke, and a lot of reminiscing.

     Dixon, whose destroyer was the first ship to make it out of the harbor, recalled using blowtorches and bolt cutters to break into the ship's magazine to get at shells because the officer with the keys was on shore.

     Another attack survivor who was present was Clyde Leland Ernst, 85, who 50 years ago was chief warrant carpenter on Ford Island. He was warming up the engines of the ferryboat he operated when he saw waves of Japanese torpedo planes — at eye level, it seemed — pass by.

     "I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it," said Ernst, who would spend the next three days ferrying wounded to the mainland hospital. He said that despite his memories of burned sailors, he holds no animosity toward the Japanese today.

     "I've outgrown that," he said. "Time heals the deepest wounds."

       — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 8, 1991

Flashback 1998: Galoshes mark big milestone

     The aging brain retains many odd bits, the mental equivalent of drawers jammed with junk and jars brimming with buttons and pennies. Friday morning, contemplating the weekend, I thought, "Dec. 6 is James Thurber's birthday."  As to which one, I squinted and guessed: "...128." Close: Dec. 8, not 6th. And 131 years ago — 1894 . 

     I haven't read his stuff lately — haven't read much at all, now that I can scroll mindlessly through Instagram and TikTok like everybody else. But at one time was he was a point of ready reference.  

     This is briefer than columns lately, because it ran, at the time, in the Features section on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It evokes a time when most days I dutifully headed downtown to work, wearing a suit and Oxford shoes, ready for whatever came. Typically I don't like to repeat a word too often, but here I use "galoshes" nine times — I obviously shied away from the double entendre "rubbers." I was 38 when I wrote this. Imagine how I feel now.

     One of the advantages of growing up fat and kinda unattractive is that, as you enter middle age, you're prepared for it. You've been there.
     I weighed the same this morning as when I was 16. How many guys can say that? True, I was 198 pounds when I was 16. But hey, the logic still holds. At least I don't weigh 300 pounds. Some guys do.
     That said, there are still surprises, still milestones that catch your attention and cause you to pause, sighing, in the doorway that leads away from youth.
     The milestones I'm thinking about are more subtle than the typical markers of time's passage: the graduations, marriages, births. I'm referring to the buying life insurance milestone, the gray hair milestone, the making-the-same-groaning-noise-your-father-made-when-he-got-out-of-a-chair milestone.
     Or, as I discovered recently, the galoshes milestone.
     It was raining hard. As I plucked the umbrella out of the front closet I glimpsed my galoshes, turned inside out, where I had flung them last spring, the previous occasion, when, at my wife's urging, I wore them out of the house.
     Normally, I never wear them unless forced to. There is something terribly sad about galoshes, something dreary and middle-aged. Put on galoshes and you're halfway to wearing woolen underwear and walking about with a hot water bottle tied around your neck with a string.
     Men are supposed to be stronger than that. We must be nagged to wear our galoshes. In James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," galoshes are one of the mundane items that, along with puppy biscuits, Mitty's overbearing wife nags him to purchase.
     "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she says. He argues, "I don't need overshoes."
     "We've been through that," she snaps, then adding the coup de grace, a blow at the heart: "You're not a young man any longer."
     Heading out the door, seeing the galoshes on the floor of the closet, I actually looked over my shoulder, to see if my wife was around to order me to put them on. She wasn't. I hesitated. It was raining hard. I was wearing my Church's oxfords, lovely hunks of hand-made leather bought at great expense, shoes that I nurse through the years (they've had more new soles than a tent revival). It wouldn't do to wreck them while saluting some faded echo of youthful bravado.
     I put on my galoshes.
     The heavens did not crack. People on the street didn't point and stare. The oxfords were protected.
     But I felt a little more stooped, a little more tired. I got to work, peeled off the galoshes, and flung them on my desk, where they have sat since, turned inside out, awaiting the next downpour to be worn home.
     I don't know where being cautious became associated with age and decline. Teenagers leave their coats to flap open, defiantly, when they are forced to wear coats at all. Older people button up and wear those stupid hats with the flaps sticking out. It's smarter, and safer, but I miss the old way.
     At least I don't use the shoe trees. I have all these wooden shoe trees that I inherited from my father. They're in the bottom of the closet. The idea is that you put the trees in your shoes at night to, I don't know, keep them from collapsing in on themselves.
     I have never used the shoe trees, and my shoes seem fine. But maybe I'm just too immature to understand the benefit of a shoe tree. Maybe, in a few years, I'll come home one fine day and those wooden trees will make perfect sense.
     And kids think aging is without its thrills.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 20, 1998

A few of the comments refer to this photo, which was atop the blog the day this post ran.

Can't sleep? Don't count sheep — use this guided meditation for healthful snoozing

     Hey there, and welcome to the Chicago Sun-Times guided meditation for sleep. I'm your host, Neil Steinberg, and I'd like to invite you to get comfortable in a secure location. If you are driving your car, reading this on your phone at a stoplight, as people actually do, you are invited to ease your car over to the side of the road, angle your seat back, and hold the phone a comfortable four inches from your face.
     Or better yet, set this to MurmurMode, where one of 12 artificial voices will narrate this for you: Unemployed Hunky Actor, Older Lady Librarian, Whispering Mermaid, and such. Then you may place your hand over a flat surface, gently open your fingers, and execute a maneuver known as "setting your phone down." If you are experiencing the residual frozen claw that comes from holding an iPhone for 110 minutes straight, try wiggling your fingers until the numbness and tingling dissipate. Do not be alarmed by your hand being empty — your phone is still nearby and available. Give it a gentle pat to reassure yourself that it's still right there.
     Now sit back and close your eyes. Draw in a deep breath, filling your lungs with air. Hold that, savoring the quality of fullness. Then exhale the air out, preventing yourself from wondering how you've come to such a degraded state that you need to be told to breathe, an activity heretofore done automatically and without guidance, by you and most living creatures. Worms breathe unaided — through their skin, a process called cutaneous respiration.
     Now set an intentionality — what sort of sleep would you like to experience? The serene snuggling sleep of an infant nestled in a completely empty crib, devoid of bumpers, blankets or stuffed animals, because apparently those are considered lethal nowadays? The bivalve bliss of the ocean oyster, resting in the warm sand of an antediluvian sea? The restorative slumber of someone who didn't spend the past 40 years madly dashing like a gerbil on a wheel in a profession that was steadily dying all around him? The choice is yours.
     Identify something that happened today and be grateful about it. Is your skin pale enough that you could go to the Home Depot for a box of nails without worrying that ICE would grab you out of the parking lot and send you to a nameless prison in El Salvador? Do you live in a city where the mayor is not a bumbling buffoon trying to balance the budget on the backs of those businesses that stay despite his constant death-of-a-thousand-cuts harassment? Focus on this good thing while crossing your hands over your chest, executing the butterfly hug while repeating, "I am grateful. I am snug. I am protected."
     While we are utilizing the my-wishes-become-reality linkage between flitting intangible thoughts within and the generally harsh and unresponsive reality without, a charmed notion that Oprah years ago somehow convinced us was real, feel free to add: "I live in a functional democracy, where laws apply equally to smirking billionaires and nugatory losers such as me." Reach for the stars.

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'The Carrot Seed'

 

     The Thanksgiving holiday began early in my household this year, with the arrival of my older son, daughter-in-law and their 5 month old baby brood on the Monday before Turkey Day, and ended with their departure more than a week later. 
     For one week, first thing, I'd do every morning is pad downstairs to visit with my granddaughter, and let me tell you, what a great way to get the day off to the right start. Hard to play the crusty annoyed curmudgeon after that. I wish I could post a picture, but such things are forbidden — social media has not won over the young the way it supposedly has. We're back to photos stealing their souls. Just as well —the blazing cuteness might sear your retinas, like staring into the noonday sun. They've been gone 24 hours, and I'm still fairly dazzled.
     What did we do all day? We sang —I did quite an accurate cover of "The Gummy Bear Song"  — "Oh, I'm a gummy bear/Yes, I'm a gummy bear/Oh, I'm a yummy, tummy, funny, lucky gummy bear...") even getting the slightly electronic warble in my voice (though, I admit, I tossed in a few rhyming adjectives not in the song itself —like "rummy" and "scummy." No reason the adults can't entertain themselves as well.  We danced.

     We read. We were always a book household, and many, many old books were pulled down and read. The one that sticks in my mind is "The Carrot Seed," the 1945 classic written by Ruth Krauss, with pictures by her husband, Crockett Johnson, once famous for the "Barnaby" comic strip and his book, "Harold and the Purple Crayon."
     The plot of "The Carrot Seed" is simplicity itself. On the first page, an unnamed little boy —in the requisite beanie —plants a carrot seed. A parade of onlookers — his mother, father, big brother — tell him it won't come up. Still, he pulls up the weeds around the seed and sprinkles the ground with water.  Nothing happens, except those who told him it wouldn't come up continue to tell him that. This affects his persistent care of the seed not at all. He weeds. He waters and then — spoiler alert — a glorious carrot, bigger than he is, shoots up. "Just as the little boy had known it would."
    That's it. I don't know any young writers —or young people seized with any ambition. But its message  —keep plugging, your carrot is coming, no matter what people say —is an essential one. And not just for young people. Success waxes, and wanes, and you can reach a point where nobody but nobody knows or cares what your projects happen to be. You weed, and water, and persist. Even if the carrot never sprouts. What else can you do? 

       

     

Is this 'rage bait' if I'm not provoking you deliberately?

 

     Unlike you, I actually own a full set of the Oxford English Dictionary. A dozen massive volumes — each a foot tall and weighing about 8 pounds. A linear yard of navy blue spines — "Oxford blue," aptly enough — if you include the four supplements, stretched out across the upper shelf of the rolltop desk behind me. Spin around in my chair and I can yank one down, and sometimes do.
     Why go to the trouble when a few clicks will bring up any meaning without the risk of handling one of these big boys? Really, drop it on your foot, you could break a toe.
     My set was published in 1978, making it nearly a half-century out of date. The meaning of "computer" is given as, "One who computes; a calculator, reckoner; spec. a person employed to make calculations in an observatory, in surveying, etc." That's it. A brief, old definition — the way the word is defined in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary.
     Plug "computer def" into a search engine and you get: "an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program." Much more current.
     But not in-depth. If you find that explanation, like so much online, thin gruel, navigating a lake a thousand miles wide and an inch deep, you can also subscribe to the OED for $10 a month, $100 a year, then plunge into the etymologies and stay up on the blizzard of changes to a language that is mutable and plastic ("5. Susceptible of being moulded or shaped.") Why be behind the times?
     Well, for starters, have you had a close look at the times we're in? In a lunge for publicity, the folks who publish the OED designate a "word of the year." On Monday they announced 2025's term: "rage bait" defined as, "(n.) Online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account."
     Rage bait won out, by public vote, over two shortlist contenders: "aura farming," ("The cultivation of an impressive, attractive, or charismatic persona or public image by behaving or presenting oneself in a way intended subtly to convey an air of confidence, coolness, or mystique") and "biohack" — ("to attempt to improve or optimize one's physical or mental performance, health, longevity or wellbeing by altering one's diet, exercise routine or lifestyle by using other means, such as drugs, supplements or technological devices.")
     I'd never heard of any of them — of course not. I'm marooned on one of the increasingly scattered and windswept islands of professional daily journalism, my signal fire guttering, subsisting on coconut milk and grilled voles, watching the water rise up the beach. Though I'm told that kids in their 20s toss "rage bait" out regularly. Last year's word was certainly on point: "brain rot," which is "low quality, low value content found on social media and the internet" and what lapping that up three hours out of 24 — the average chunk of life blown every day on social media by Gen Z types — does to a person.

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Maybe if we put on a better show they wouldn't hate us so much.

      Lots of feedback to Monday's column about the Chicago Quantum Exchange at the University of Chicago, interviewing its director, David Awschalom. Somehow, this email stood out, from a medical doctor:

     Mr. Steinberg,
     If Dr. Awschalom is of our faith, it would have been an appropriate mention given the context of your article.
     All efforts to remind others of our worth, our contribution to society would be a benefit in this era of overt prejudice and anti-semitism.
     My thoughts are a sad commentary of our times.
     Sincerely,
     Lewis C., MD

    While Dr. C.'s remark appeared in my spam folder — he must have said something annoying in the past, though I can't recall what — it touched on a pet peeve of mine, and I thought it deserved a response:  

   Dear Dr. C:
    I disagree wholeheartedly. I don't have many personal rules of conduct, but one ironclad stricture is: don't write for people who hate you. The Jews constitute 0.2 percent of the world population, yet make huge contributions to most realms of culture and science, far outstripping our numbers. Either someone knows that already or they never will.  
    You are giving antisemites too much credit. There is an assumption in your suggestion that is common, and I would argue against: that people who are prejudiced reach that point by weighing reality, assessing the facts before them before coming to their conclusions. Just the opposite: they blinder themselves with their bigotry, and cherry pick what facts support them, when they're not fabricating calumnies out of whole cloth. 
   I see this attitude sometimes if I write about something that departs from the traditional practices of our faith —eat a pork chop, for instance. I'll hear from Jews frantic to put on a good show for the goyim. I guess we need to be all exemplars of our religion. Guess what? We don't.   
     Given the sort of people who go about unashamed, I don't see why I, or you, or Dr. Awschalom, can't do the same. I didn't mention his faith because it wasn't germane — he's not refugee, yet. Though the way our country is going, I could see that happening — no matter how many Jews are making the world a better place — so perhaps I'll have reason yet to mention his religion, prior to his fleeing to the relative safety and tolerance of a nation such as Germany.
     Thanks for writing.
     Neil Steinberg 

     I assumed it would end there — discussion doesn't seem high on anyone's list anymore. But Dr. C. did reply, in a thoughtful way that deserves sharing.

     I appreciate the eloquence and contents of your comments. However, there is a reversal, a stirring exhibited within the American Jewish communities.
Whereas until recently, we hid our Jewishness on campuses or walking down Michigan Avenue so as not to be the recipient of the wrath from irrational bigots, we now have struck a tone of “ here we are and we’re proud of who we are”.
     I do agree there was no natural transition to add the religion of Dr. Awschalom in a seemless way into your column.
     The newsroom guys, the medical colleagues, the factory workers, the small shop owners, the Amazon Prime drivers, the waitresses, the police, the construction workers, the housewives — it is directed toward them, a silent majority, that the Dr. Awschaloms of the world are the shining light, the vibrancy of our religious culture and invent the insanely brilliant stuff that benefits humanity.
     Thank you for reading this.

     It broke my heart, a little, to read that, the old-style notion of blue collar America nodding in admiration of the Jewish molecular physicist changing the world. Maybe they do — I can't speak for them. But looking at the politics of the moment, it's hard to imagine. 

     In my view, the religion would be buoyed, not by more public scientists, but by emphasizing the Jewish truck drivers, waitresses, police, construction workers, etc. — salt-of-the-earth sorts automatically admired in a way researchers are not. It dislodged an old memory. The Chicago Police Department has a Jewish chaplain, Moshe Wolfe. Intrigued by the idea of Jewish Chicago cops, I got him on the phone, and asked him to be the focal point on a story. He flatly refused — not so much because he's Jewish, I believe, but because he's a cop. The code of silence, remember, isn't just about bad apples. It's about everything. A Chicago Police Officer wouldn't want to be subject of a story about rescuing a kitten from a tree — anyone who stands up is hammered down. Not courage in the way I understand it. The whole thing struck me as very sad. 

     

Chicago's quantum computing center a benefit of tolerance

     Seeing that Chicago is the epicenter of a major effort in the future of technology, at the very moment our government is waging a glittery-eyed war on science, I checked in with the man coordinating it all.
     What's going on?
     "In the last couple of decades, scientists and engineers have been able to engineer the way that matter behaves at the atomic scale," said David Awschalom, a professor of molecular engineering and physics at the University of Chicago. "We can take the rule of nature and develop a new technology, which has unusual properties, while common in the atomic world, we don't see every day, like entangling bits of information, or thinking of a bit as not just a zero or one but an infinite combination of the two."
     While those with knowledge of physics are collecting their jaws off the floor at the suggestion of practical applications of entanglement and departure from the binary 0 or 1 holy writ of the digital age, I'll point out that Awschalom is director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, a massive initiative based in Hyde Park but involving Argonne National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and more — over 60 partners.
     "This could really be a new way for universities, national laboratories and companies to all work together at the birth of a new technology to move discoveries rapidly into society," he said.
     One way to conceive of what this is about is to consider the first sustained nuclear reaction — Dec. 2, 1942, also at the University of Chicago. If that was harnessing the energy locked in an atom, this is finding a way to access the information hidden within.
     "It's possible now to take a number of quantum bits, entangle them with one another and share a single bit of information," Awschalom said.
     Today, if you order your dog pajamas for Christmas on Amazon, your credit card number passes through intermediaries, where it can be stolen. But someday it could be sent directly, via entanglement.
     "A special link between two points," Awschalom said. "You could transmit information in a secure way."
     The strings of 0s and 1s are shattering into an infinite set of values, "like a miniature gyroscope you can spin in all three directions." Navigation could no longer need satellites orbiting the globe but use the earth's magnetic field, the way birds do.
     "This is important given the number of spoofing attacks on commercial aircraft," Awschalom said. "If you had a quantum system, it's safe."
     Plus the creation of very small computers would reduce the enormous amount of electricity artificial intelligence currently requires.
    The question that always fascinated me about Fermi splitting the atom in 1942 was: "Why here?" Why perform an experiment that Edward Teller worried might set the atmosphere on fire in the middle of a crowded college campus in the nation's second-largest city?
     The top reasons are gloriously random. For starters, Columbia University tried to split the atom first. But their uranium wasn't sufficiently pure, and the experiment failed. And they were building a lab to do the deed southwest of the city, in the Argonne Woods. But a labor dispute shut down the work and, with a war on, the empty space at Stagg Field was pressed into service.

     So why is quantum computing happening here? Did Caltech and MIT drop the ball?
     "It's not the weather," said Awschalom, who left California to come here. "This part of the country just collaborated beautifully, quickly, with support, from the mayor at the time." Rahm Emanuel, if you've forgotten that a mayor can draw business to the city as well as drive it away. Gov. JB Pritzker was an early advocate.
     Strong community colleges are also key, supplying workers for the hundreds of thousands of "really interesting, high-paid, high-tech jobs" that might come from "scalable atomic-size technologies."

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