In my 30 years — at the end of January — as a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, I've been tasked by readers with many odd missions. One gave me an urn holding a lady's ashes that he had been entrusted with. I handed the urn to her loved ones. Another reader, a VA social worker, drew me into trying to track down the family of a Marine vet, found frozen to death in a West Side doorway and headed toward a pauper's grave in Homewood. My column helped locate his family in Alabama, who had been looking for him.
An elderly reader once asked if I could arrange for the newspaper to be delivered closer to her front door, as her driveway was icy. She was worried about falling. I knew that would prove beyond my capabilities, so I went over and scraped the ice off her driveway myself, to her surprise, and mine.
I tend to take such situations seriously, because I appreciate people reading this stuff, and I try to help them, best as I can. Ditto for those who cooperate with being put in the paper. When I profiled a homeless man living in a van in the Glen of North Glenview train station parking lot, whose dream was to work in Appleton, Wisconsin, I phoned the mayor of Appleton to see what could be done. Nothing, as it turned out. But I made the call.
I don't always. "I'm not a social service," as I sometimes testily snap, to my wife's consternation. But certain situations just demand action. Such as this email, which arrived Sunday afternoon from Cathryn of Burr Ridge:
"Hi Neil. Watched Bear’s game last night & admired how beautiful Chicago presents on TV. Until the shot of Navy Pier — some lights on Chicago Children’s Museum are burned out which looked second rate on the national stage. I thought maybe you’d know who to contact so it could be corrected before next game. Thank you. Your long time reader..."I'd watched the same game — my wife's suggestion. "Let's join the zeitgeist!" she said, cheerily. (Zeitgeist, German: "the spirit or mood of a particular time." Shows what can happen to a person if she hangs around me for 40 years.) I'd admired the swooping shots of the glittering city and did not notice any balky Children's Museum sign. That could have been during the third quarter when, with the Bears on the ropes, we got bored and watched an episode of "Victoria."
Something about Cathryn's request seemed irresistible. It was a trust drop. No AI aggregator is going to ask the Children's Museum about their sign. I reached out to their PR guy, who put me in touch with Peter Williams, the vice president of exhibits and building operations at the museum. I forwarded the email. Williams replied:
"Chicago Children's Museum has an old school neon sign on the Navy Pier Head House. Sometimes when it rains, a neon transformer ground fault interrupter (GFI) will trip causing three letters to go out. Typically, the GFI will dry out and reset in less than a day. The part of the sign that went out on Saturday night was back on by noon on Sunday."
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So nice of you to help with that ladies driveway.
ReplyDeleteI don’t have kids or grandkids, but now I want to go see the tops!
ReplyDeleteSo they went & replaced the entire sign?
ReplyDeleteHow much did that cost us Chicago taxpayers?
Why not just figure out where the leak in the sign is & fix that?
Clark Street! I suggest you re-read the column, with a focus on comprehension.
DeleteWhen I first read the column this morning, I thought, "Oh, oh. Somebody is going to take that little fiction out of context and complain Tsk, tsk, Clark.
Deletetate
By the way, a "Ground Fault Interruptor" is part of any electrical receptacle that has a "reset" button. It is a safety feature designed to prevent short circuits and electrocutions, especially in the rain. The museum should replace or repair the faulty lights.
Deletetate
A GFCI trips if there's a short causing a grounding. What was shorting out? Why not figure out where the short is? The column states the entire sign was replaced. Why not just replace the GFCI? It's just a microcomputer that senses an imbalance in the electrical load & then cuts off the power in a fortieth of a second.
DeleteTate: Yeah, I forget how easily confused some people are. Though note that, even after I attempted to correct him, CS merely restates his error. That's human beans for ya!
DeleteGreat column and love the response to good ol Clark St. Are you starting a shoveling service in retirement? Thanks for the smile on my face!
ReplyDeleteI too noticed the Chic Children's Museum sign.
ReplyDeleteFunny, the only thing i thought was "classic"
Thank you for the column, Neil; and your courteous and refined manner.
I feel for the elderly lady. Sun-Times customer service is what finally did me in after getting the paper delivered for years. I would see the delivery guy literally throw the paper out his car window without even stopping. And then it was up to me to get dressed, depending on the weather, and search it out. I called time after time requesting that the paper be put on my front porch, and they actually said they couldn't do that for me! It was probably for the best, I guess. By that time the paper was just a shell of what it had been.
ReplyDeletei try to guess the topic of your column by the title. I could only see the first 6 words before I opened the email, so I guessed you wrote about the horridness of last week's Bears-Packers game airing only on Amazon Prime for out-of-state fans. Obviously wrong! Truth be told, I found the aerial views of the city during the telecast quite beautiful and didnt even notice the Children's museum's glitchy lights.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to celebrating your 30 year milestone here.... recounting your acts of ancillary social service through the years is a great start.
Neil, I too noticed the burned out lights during the game. I thought it was a perfect example of Chicago, beautiful, but imperfectly real.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your column. Felt a great sense of pride looking at the Super Bowl shots of our “hellhole”.
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