New AI platforms hand hackers powerful new tools for cracking cybersecurity

Bundles of currency on display at the Federal Reserve Bank's Money Museum, 230 S. LaSalle St. 

     Everyone has a morning routine. With me, I open my eyes, muse darkly upon my life, then flee upstairs to my office — even before coffee is made or the dog walked — blast out the day's blog post to my hearty band of followers, then ritualistically log into a financial service company to check on my 401(k). A moment emotionally somewhere between Scrooge McDuck going down into his vault to roll around on his piles of gold and a castaway in a rubber raft checking the amount of water left in the jug. It takes a minute.
     Except one Sunday morning a few weeks ago. I plug in my username and password. Nothing. A second, more careful try. It warns me, in red letters, that a few more such attempts and I will be locked out.
     Not wanting that, I hit "Forgot password." It asks for my birthday, my email and the last four digits of my Social Security number. Normally, you never share that information. But this wasn't something over the transom; I'd logged into my 401(k) site. I plug in the info.
     No account associated with me. I try again. Nothing.
     A few more attempts, with growing alarm, that I'll spare you. In brief, my 401(k) account, with my entire nest egg needed for looming retirement, built over decades, the provisions that must sustain us on our one way journey into the dark woods of decline, had simply vanished.
     Money, as you know, is no longer bullion slumbering in vaults or even stacks of fresh currency, but mostly bundles of electrons flitting through systems of unfathomable complexity. You buy a pack of gum, tap your phone to a contactless payment terminal, and great institutions briefly kiss. Visa slips Walmart $3 and debits your account. You get a pack of Hubba Bubba Sour Blue Raspberry.
     We hardly even think about it. But maybe we should. While we're used to the idea of endless legions of scammers assailing us through every mode of communications short of semaphore flag, the latest and most ominous twist is coming from a new weapon of immense power that is already derailing modern life: artificial intelligence.
     Yes, AI. The thing that keeps trying to summarize your email. That your kid uses to write his report on Cotton Mather instead of actually doing the work and learning something. AI is so incredibly powerful, not only does it produce videos of obese porch pirates getting their faces painted with blue dye, but it can code/write computer programs.
     Or crack them. A story that might have gotten lost in the whirl of general disaster is that on April 7, Anthropic, an AI company that started five years ago and is now worth $380 billion, provided a preview of its Mythos AI model to 40 Big tech giants — Apple, Google, Microsoft, JPMorganChase. The reason for this effort, dubbed Project Glasswing, is because AI can cut through cybersecurity like a hot knife through butter, thwarting encryption, discovering hidden vulnerabilities that escaped notice for years.

     So Anthropic is giving the biggest players a chance to fix their heretofore undetected flaws before Mythos is available to the general public, one of whom might decide to type, "Drain Neil Steinberg's 401(k) and transfer the contents to my Apple Wallet."

To continue reading, click here.

Barbara Flynn Currie, 'trailblazer who opened doors for generations of women' dies

     This ran in the paper on Saturday. 

     After a vote in the Illinois House on a key part of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pension relief plan in 2016, Barbara Flynn Currie did something not often seen in these times of our divided, dysfunctional government. She crossed the aisle and shook hands with the three Republican lawmakers who broke ranks with the GOP and voted to override Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a measure deferring police and fire pension payments.
     That was Currie, 85, who died Thursday. She not only represented her Hyde Park district in Springfield for 40 years — 20 as majority leader and the first woman to hold that role in the Illinois General Assembly — she but was a tireless promoter of active, engaged, effective government. 

Barbara Flynn Currie (Wikipedia)

     "Last night we lost a giant," House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch, D-Hillside, posted on his Facebook page Friday. "Barbara Flynn Currie was more than a leader — she was a trailblazer who opened doors for generations of women in the Illinois House, many of whom continue her legacy today. ... She set the standard for what it means to serve with purpose. Her impact will be felt for generations."
     She was an enthusiastic advocate of clean air and clean water, and juvenile justice reform.
     “Barbara Flynn Currie was one of a kind," Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. "Her intelligence, decency, and absolute command of the issues were without equal in Illinois politics... Barbara was a passionate, tireless advocate for the people who needed one most. She delivered on issues like raising the minimum wage, early childhood education, gun safety." ... She lived a life of genuine public service and leaves behind an extraordinary record of accomplishment.”
     Her district encompassed Hyde Park, Woodlawn, South Shore and Kenwood, and she was a vigorous proponent of liberal causes, such as prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace and offering all-day kindergarten. She spearheaded a compromise on welfare reform and helped extend state contracts to minority- and female-owned businesses.
     In 2009, she chaired the special 21-member bipartisan committee that recommended the impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
     ”We stand here today because of the perfidy of one man: Rod Blagojevich,” said Currie. “To overturn the results of an election is not something that should be undertaken lightly.”
     Every member of the Illinois House and Senate, save one, voted to impeach.
     State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat, (14th) sat next to her on the House floor.
     "Every day was a master class in the work of the legislature," said Kelly. "She was unparalleled in debate, knew her bills inside out and backward, and could fire off a one-liner like nobody before or since."
     With women making up a record 32% of state legislatures across the country, it might be difficult to remember the male world that Currie entered. When she was elected in 1978, fewer than 11% of Springfield lawmakers legislators were women. When she announced her retirement in 2017, that figure was more than a third, and in 2025 the Illinois Legislature was 42% female.
     Then-House Speaker Michael Madigan's decision to name her as majority leader in 1997 was unexpected: Downstate Democrats felt they had a hereditary right to the position, didn’t like the powerful post to pass to a Chicagoan, a woman, and perhaps worst of all, a liberal. Women across the spectrum saw it as a milestone.
     ”Republican women gave me flowers,” Currie later recalled. “Secretaries and staff in the Capitol were thrilled. One of my girlfriends nearly ran her car off the road. The depth of excitement was really quite thrilling.”

To continue reading, click here.

Works in progress: Jack Clark in Paris

Paris, 2017

     Jack Clark spends his springs in Paris — talk about a good judgment call. This year he told me he was off for France with what struck me as an air of fare-thee-well-until-I-return. To which I responded, in essence, "not so fast, bub. Would you consider writing something from Paris?" Thankfully, he agreed, asking only that I remind you to visit www.jackclarkbooks.com.

     When I was 17 or so, I was in love with Christine who lived down the block. I never told Chris how I felt but she knew and she did like me, just not in the same way. Our block, on the far West Side, was Irish and Italian, Jewish, and Greek. I’m of Irish descent. Chris was the oddball. Her family was Lebanese. I probably couldn’t have found Lebanon on a globe back then.
     Four of us would spend hours night after night sitting on Patty’s porch. She lived across the street from Chris. Patty was Greek and her parents were strict. She couldn’t leave the porch. My friend TiTi lived next door. He was also Greek and was another Chris but we all called him by his nickname, which was pronounced "Tee Tee."
     We were all American kids. I’m pretty sure that most of our parents were born here too. Mine were. So were my grandparents.
     We talked about everything and anything, usually while a transistor radio played rock and roll with the volume down low. Most of that talk is now lost to the years. But one thing I remember clearly is Chris telling us proudly that Beirut was considered the Paris of the Middle East. I think her family visited relatives every few years.
     The neighborhood changed eventually and we all went our separate ways. Chris and I kept in touch for a bit over the telephone. I only remember seeing her one more time. She was working downtown and I was going to school out by Navy Pier, trying to figure out how to become a writer. We got sandwiches at Jerry’s Deli on Grand Avenue and carried them down to the river to have lunch. And that was it. A few years later, I heard she’d moved to Denver and we haven’t been in touch since.
     In the mid-70s a Civil War broke out in Lebanon with Beirut at the center. It went on for years and didn’t end officially until 1989. It’s never really ended, not for Beirut. There have been breaks here and there, otherwise it’s been one shock after another to the current dark days.
     Whenever Beirut made the front page, I’d think of Chris and our nights on Patty’s front porch and wonder what the Paris of the Middle East looked like after the latest round of troubles.
     Many years later, I fell in love again and ended up in the real Paris. And I don’t mean the tourist city, which I do my best to avoid. Hélène and I have pretty much been inseparable for the last 15 years, except for those long months when we’re living 4000 miles apart.
     Hélène lives in public housing. I like to joke that she’s in the Cabrini-Green of Paris. But Paris and Chicago are completely different worlds, and so is their public housing.
      Chicago is the larger city both by size and population. But Paris has over 250,000 public housing units. That’s close to 25% of total residences. By comparison, at its peak Chicago had around 40,000 units. It’s now down to 15,000 with an additional 35,000 families relying on Section 8 housing vouchers.
     The residents in Hélène’s building are mostly working people and their children. Her next-door neighbor is a woman named Thérèse. She’s Lebanese. I’m pretty sure that’s where she was born. She has three grown children. They’re French.
     If we run into Thérèse on the street or in the hallway, she and Hélène usually speak in French while I twiddle my thumbs. But if I run into Thérèse when I’m alone, we speak English and she almost always ends up apologizing for her lack of proficiency. I answer that I should be the one apologizing. I’ve spent almost half of the last 14 years in France and I still can’t speak the native tongue. I have zero proficiency and should probably apologize to the entire country. Although I will say, once I gave up trying to learn French, my Paris life has become much more enjoyable.
     I sometimes like to amuse myself by looking at the listings pasted in the windows of the real estate offices. A million doesn’t get you much anymore. Not in Paris. It’s only public housing that keeps the City of Light from turning into an amusement park populated exclusively by the rich. It’s still a livable place for people like Hélène and Thérèse, a couple of single moms who raised their kids next door to each other while working full time.
      Hélène is a retired social worker. I assume Thérèse is retired too. I know she goes to Lebanon for months on end. Unlike the typical vacationer, when she comes back she sometimes looks more distressed than before she left.
     We were on our way out last week while Thérèse was coming in. “Ça Va,” we all said, as both a question and a statement. Pronounced as "sava," this is one of my favorite French expressions. You ask, "It goes?" The standard answer is: "It goes." And then you ask back, "It goes?" It’s the equivalent of "How are you? Good. And yourself?" without all those extra words.
     And then Thérèse turned my way. “Ça Va aux États-Unis?” she asked with a bit of aggression in her tone. It goes in the United States?
     How could I answer that except to say no. It does not go in the United States. Not this year. Not this month. Maybe never again.
     Her expression changed and she brought her hand to her heart twice and bowed slightly. “Désolée. Désolée,” she said.
     Once again, I told her that I was the one who should be sorry. And I am, of course. I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been and also ashamed by the actions of my own country, but that doesn’t do her or anyone else any good.
     Decades back, when we were all sitting on Patty’s front porch, the Vietnam War was going full blast, while a couple of miles east of us, large sections of Madison Street and Roosevelt Road were going up in flames.
     Our families packed up their possessions and we scattered and moved away. The war finally ended. The riots burned themselves out. But everything was different. New neighborhoods. Lost friends. Still, life went on almost as before.
     Maybe that will happen again. This period will just become another one for the history books and life will go on almost like before. I tend to doubt it but I hope it’s so.
     In the former Paris of the Middle East, they’re not looking for life to go back to the recent status quo. That’s what they’re hoping to get away from, their own dark history.
     We might try that ourselves in the coming years. But I think we’ll probably find this an impossible task. Darkness doesn’t always lead to light. There’s no guarantee that the sun will rise, that a new morning will ever come.

                                                                       — Paris, April 2026

 

Technology always wins, but we can make our own magic until then

"The Hand & The Eye," $50 million worth of high end magic palace located in the old McCormick Mansion on East Ontario. It opens Saturday. 

     A lot of old people on Facebook wax nostalgic about drinking out of garden hoses, riding in the beds of pickup trucks without seat belts and the freedom of no cellphones.
     Count me out. I was there and recall a lot of boredom. Much thumb-twiddling, whistling and staring out of windows. As for seat belts — I was riding with Phil Flanigan in his mother's 1966 Ford Falcon when she hit the brakes and I went over the front seat and knocked out my front teeth on the dashboard — baby teeth, thank goodness. Still, I'm a big fan of seat belts. They save lives.
     As for iPhones, one question: Have you gotten lost lately? Me neither. Getting lost sucked. 
     Not to be confused with wandering. Wandering is great, I went Downtown twice this week, researching columns. Marching up the wide, sunny arc of Wacker Drive, marveling at the passersby, but also thinking how soon the striding pedestrians and zipping electric scooters (c'mon guys, pretend you have brains to protect and wear a helmet) will be forever joined by squads of little rolling robots, like the pair that took out a couple bus shelters in West Town and Old Town last month. These are the last days we can pad around without flocks of drones buzzing over our heads. 

     Yes, some complain about these robots. I'm glad I'm not so touchy as to feel violated by somebody's order of beef and broccoli trying to squeeze past on the sidewalk.
     Sorry, I know, lots of delivery workers out of jobs. And cabdrivers, by self-driving cars. And journalists.
     But not yet. Feeling lousy about it doesn't help. Every technological advance in history was greeted with howls of ambivalence. When Gutenberg created movable type, some worried that the personal connection of reading an author's own handwriting would be lost. The first programmable machine was not a computer, but a Jacquard loom, whose designs could be changed by switching punched cards. Outraged English textile workers attacked the looms. Got them nowhere. Robert Louis Stevenson complained in vain when gaslight was replaced by electric light, "a lamp for a nightmare," producing "ugly blinding glare." No matter. Technology always wins.
     I say this, despite AI coming for my job. But not yet. It can form words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs. But can AI do the footwork? How is AI at rambling? At wandering in a random fashion across an urban environment and stumbling upon interesting stuff?

To continue reading, click here.

Flashback 2009: Lump of coal from Keillor — His 'Christmas' gift won't keep on giving

     Garrison Keillor is coming to the Park West on May 4. I can't go — previous commitment — but I've seen him perform several times, at Ravinia and elsewhere, and know he always puts on a good show. That prompted me to look back at what I've written about him over the years — I interviewed him once, but that was already posted.

     Sidelined in 2017 over accusations of unwarranted sexual advances, none of then seemed as consequential as any given dozen crimes attributable to our president. I particularly appreciate the work he did promoting poetry, both in print — his "Good Poems" collections are priceless — and on the radio.

     This is an oddity — a pan of a little Christmas volume of his. A reminder that even the mighty — and I consider him the greatest American humorist since Mark Twain — have their lapses. I present it for the pure joy of a good pan. 

 
A CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD

By Garrison Keillor

Viking, 180 pages, $21.95

     This coming April, Mark Twain will have been dead 100 years, and were you to throw a cocktail party for all the American humorists since his demise who have created enduring fictional worlds, it would a very small gathering indeed:
     James Thurber, standing alone by the mantle, swilling his scotch and complaining how he never could manage to write a novel. Neil Simon, picking cashews out of the nut bowl.
     And that's about it. Robert Benchley and S.J. Perelman would have sent regrets — already sucked into the maw of obscurity that took Bill Nye and Josh Billings and everyone else whose work is too topical or too minor to withstand the grind of time.
     Of living authors, there would only be one: Garrison Keillor, well-loved for his long-running radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," but also respected for his short stories, novels and essays. His Lake Wobegone might not quite shine equally alongside Twain's Hannibal, Missouri, but if our progeny are still reading any comic fiction writer of our era a century from now, odds are it'll be Keillor. 

     Of course Keillor can't be expected to knock one out of the park every time — even Thurber started churning out those testy complaints about grammar as he aged — and A Christmas Blizzard, Keillor's latest, is a holiday trifle that will be relegated to the scrap heap of misfires by otherwise good authors, though many of his fans no doubt would rather read a mediocre book by Keillor than a good book by anyone else.
     A Christmas Blizzard is a tall holiday tale that rolls merrily along, crammed with inventive riffs on popular culture and quirky characters, all limned in Keillor's distinctive voice. We meet James Sparrow, a fabulously rich Chicagoan with a butler and a private jet, and his wife, Joyce, and if having the two main characters named James and Joyce is too much of a sly wink for you, you better get used to it, because the Hawaiian home where James longs to spend the holiday is called Kuhikuhikapap'u'maumau and the stand-in for Minnesota where our hero gets stranded when he goes to visit his prosaically named but dying Uncle Earl is called Looseleaf, North Dakota, and there is the standard contingent of Floyds and Elmers you'd expect with Keillor.
     Despite the cute names that are more Soupy Sales than Thomas Pynchon, Keillor's wit is generally sharp and intact, and along the way he skewers Americans, from blissed out New Agers to Right Wing conspiracy fanatics. Easy targets, maybe, but it's impossible to completely dislike a holiday book that refers to "the sheer horror of 'The Little Drummer Boy.'" Though by the time we get to the talking wolf, A Christmas Blizzard assumes a random, hallucinogenic quality that makes it feel longer than its 180 pages.
     Early on, Keillor's describes Joyce's writing this way: "She was clever and facile and could spackle bright words on a page in the shape of a poem but she lacked heart." The same could be said for this novel, where Keillor revisits favorite tropes — the indignity of middle age, the quirkiness of small towns, the melancholy of love — grafting them onto a miracles-and-redemption Christmas tale that flirts with incoherence.
     Keillor's 19 previous books are listed in the front, and any one of them would probably provide a richer, more nuanced experience than A Christmas Blizzard. But if you've read them all and enjoyed them all, then you'll probably enjoy this one too, at least a little.

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 29, 2009

Trump feuding with the pope? I thought he was the pope

 

     By now you know what happened.
     President Donald Trump, up to his neck in the Iran quagmire and thus perhaps more angry than usual, lashed out at Pope Leo XIV for doing what popes do: urging peace, while pointing out that the efforts of the Trump administration to paint its war as the Ninth Crusade was not Christianity in its highest form.

     "Pope Leo is WEAK ON CRIME, and terrible for Foreign Policy," Trump began, in a long tirade posted on his Truth Social network.
      No doubt you've read all or part of it.
     So the "what" being established, I want to explore an aspect that is being lost in the noise and thunder:
     Why?
     Why would a struggling and isolated leader, having failed to lure his erstwhile allies into saving his butt in Iran, start tongue-lashing the pope, a beloved figure internationally, but particularly in the United States, and especially in his hometown, Chicago? A pope who, remember, wasn't doing anything beyond normal pope stuff — promoting harmony, encouraging brotherhood. That's like blasting Mr. Rogers for being neighborly.
     You would think that anyone with half a grip, his back against the wall, closing the Strait of Hormuz himself because Iran won't open it, would not pick this battle. It's like a man in a blazing room setting fire to one sofa that isn't burning.
     Again: Why?
     If the answer isn't crystal clear — and really, it should be, by now — here's a clue:
     Last May, when Leo was named pope, Trump distributed an AI picture of himself, Donald Trump, in the garments of the Vicar of Christ. Because — and forgive me, this is obvious, but so much so that it gets overlooked — it's all about him. He is the subject of all sentences, the cynosure of all eyes, and anyone else — anyone else — who isn't actively groveling before him is an insult and a threat. There is no Congress. No courts. No law. No pope. He is the pope. Donald Trump, pontifex maximus.
     In his own mind To me, Donald Trump is a morality tale about the futility of ego. He suffers from a grandiosity so bottomless that being immensely rich, the president of the United States, adored by millions, the golden spoon stirring the world pot for the last decade, are not enough. Nothing is ever enough. He is King Midas, breaking his teeth on gilt apples, starving in a room full of food.
     That's the only way any of this makes sense. It explains his every action.

To continue reading, click here.

Freedom and coffee go together

Coffee break, Amsterdam

 

     Honest question:
     Have you ever gone to a coffee shop for a cup of coffee?
     I don't mean, have you ever gotten a cup of coffee at a coffee shop. Everybody has. I mean, have you ever thought, "I need coffee!" and then gotten up and gone out to a Starbucks or Intelligensia or whatever and bought a cup?
     Because I haven't. And I love coffee. But coffee is very easy to make. You rinse out the pot — or if there's a cup left from the day before, just heat that up and drink the day-old coffee, a skill I learned from my years at the Northwestern Anthropology Department. I'm doing that now. It's fine. It tastes like coffee.
     As I did that, thinking toward the future, I popped in a filter, add the coffee, the water. For more coffee. Coffee: the one addiction you never have to give up.
     That said, coffee shops are social places. You meet people there, Last week I wanted to talk to a man I might write a profile about, so I asked him to meet me at Bean Bar, a new coffee shop that is now the beating heart of Northbrook. Opened in an old bank, the place is enormous, and every table was filled — fortunately, there's usually room at the high tops way in the back.
     Should not be surprising. The importance of coffee shops as places where people gather is well-chewed over in academia. The American Revolution? Plotted in coffee shops. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels getting together to hatch communism? A coffee shop, Café de la Régence in Paris in August 1844.

    It should not be surprising that totalitarian regimes across the globe and throughout history have banned coffee and coffee shops. King Charles II banned both in 1675, considering such places a challenge to his regal authority. The ban didn't last — coffee proved stronger than kings.
     So it's interesting to see a coffee shop forget this heritage and botch the social aspect as badly as Philz Coffee has. To be honest, I never heard of Philz, nor saw one, to my knowledge. But according to Saturday's story in the Sun-Times, they prided themselves in their, well, pride, and displayed the gay pride flag until recently, when the company abruptly ordered all of them pulled.
     No skin off my nose. I'm fairly impartial about the pride flag — I don't own one or fly one, though consider myself an ally. I only have one flagpole at home, and only fly one flag, Old Glory, bought from W.G.N. Banners. Trying to imagine what might prompt me to fly one, I suppose, were social to clamp down on LGBTQ+ even harder than its doing now, I might fly one, in solidarity, the way I posted a green Islamic banner with a star and crescent as my Facebook profile picture in 2017 when Donald Trump first took office and started banning immigrants from Muslim majority countries.
     The whole thing would be beneath notice were it not for one word Philz CEO Mahesh Sadarangani used in explaining why banners had to be purged from the store.
     "We are working toward creating a more consistent, inclusive experience..."
     "Consistent" is meaningless here — you could also achieve consistency by demanding that all Philz shops display the flag. The giveaway is "inclusive" and by that, he means he wants to encourage MAGA world sorts creeped out the the idea of welcoming gays to nevertheless buy coffee there.

     That is a tactic the intolerant right has been deploying a lot lately, because it works. Tolerance is intolerable, to them, because certain groups are forbidden by their religion, their politics, their inclination. So to include the hated group is to exclude them. Acceptance is prejudice, and Orwell is achieved.

      Never forget the bottomless cup of selfishness that is prejudice: everything is about them, their bias, their fears. So out with the pride flag, and — the theory is — everyone will flock to their coffee shop.

      Except they won't. I don't see MAGA sorts as the type who will pop $5 for a cup of coffee. So Philz is alienating their own clientele while appealing to a group that isn't about to start patronizing them. It's stupid. But prejudice is stupidity in action, ignorance rampant. Of course they have a right to fly whatever flag they want. And potential customers have a right to never go there. 

    In the fall of 2013, Glenbrook North High School students from Glenbrook North's Gay-Straight Alliance, decorating windows in downtown Northbrook, put a pride flag in the window of the Caribou Coffee on Shermer. The owner, aghast, washed it off. I described the result in my blog:

     The Caribou Coffee in Northbrook is radioactive. You can't go in. A dead zone, our own Chernobyl. Oh, the building is there, a block from our house, but it no longer exists as a place a person could walk into and get coffee and a sweet roll and go online.

    The Caribou coffee in Northbrook closed down a few months later, part of a general retrenching by Caribou — dozens of stores closed. Today Caribou has about as many outlets as they did a dozen years ago. A reminder: hatred is not only wrong, it's bad business.

     

      

Older, sicker Americans waiting longer to get into crowded hospitals

     An endocrinologist is a doctor specializing in hormone-related diseases, such as, in my case, diabetes. When first diagnosed in late September 2024, I got a crash course in the huge demand for that profession's services. The first endocrinologist I approached wouldn't see me for a year. The second wouldn't see me at all; he was refusing all new patients.
     Figuring I would have to engage another gear if I didn't want to sit around, doing nothing, waiting to go blind, I grabbed my notebook and decided, if I couldn't meet with an endocrinologist as a patient, I'd find out what I needed to know by writing a column. Diabetes affects 40 million Americans; it isn't as if it's a personal affliction.
     That third endocrinologist not only spoke with me immediately — barred doors fly open for publicity — but put me in touch with a colleague who, either through a sea change in my luck or, I suspect, some kind of secret doctor-to-doctor dog whistle, took me under her wing as a patient.
     If this strikes you as morally squishy — the journalist pushing to the head of the line — I worried about that, too. But I didn't misrepresent anything; the column ran in the paper.
     Besides, with health care, you have to be a strong advocate for yourself. Faced with the prospect of letting my condition go unchecked while I hunted with increasingly numb fingers for an endocrinologist with an open slot, I did what I could. At that point, if meeting Morgan Finley in a Cicero motel room and handing over an envelope of cash would have gotten me an appointment, well, I certainly would have considered it.
     I thickly assumed this was a problem inherent to endocrinology. Getting diabetes is easy — I just woke up one morning with Type 1. Medical school is hard. Of course, there's a shortage. Now it turns out I was encountering, not a diabetes-specific bottleneck, but a generalized, widespread condition.
     This week, The Economist published a story with the musical title, "Hospitals are stuck in a deadly doom loop." Turns out the 2020 COVID crisis not only killed millions worldwide and shut down society, but it also "did lasting damage to health-care systems."
     Where? Everywhere, all over the world. What's been damaged? In a nutshell, everything.
     "From admission to discharge, hospital care is now harder to access, takes longer and is of worse quality," the magazine reports. "The resulting toll includes avoidable deaths. Almost everyone is affected: across 18 rich democracies, satisfaction with health-care quality fell sharply after the pandemic and remains well below the pre-pandemic norm."
     Getting an appointment takes forever. As does getting admitted after showing up in the emergency room. Last year, one in 10 patients visiting an emergency room in England had to wait 12 hours or longer before being shown a room.
     And in Chicago, an NBC News Channel 5 report found that Chicago has longer wait times to see a doctor than most American cities — a month to see a primary care doctor. For specialty care, like neurologists, up to five months.

To continue reading, click here.

Flashback 2011: Maybe that pain in your gut is cancer

     Sometimes one aspect of life can have an odd resonance with another. I was looking through the archive, noticed this story, and figured it might have the same potential positive effect now that it was intended to have 15 years ago. Then later in the day, I read the obituary of a woman who died from the same ailment that's spotlighted here. Which I took as a nudge to actually post it. Not as fun as dental floss, but perhaps of far more value.

     Even in the heyday of journalism, when newspapers were known for lavish expense accounts, the Sun-Times always embraced a distinct frugality, an attitude I expressed this way: “Before they issue you a new pencil, you have to turn in the stub of the old one.”
     The make-the-most-of-it mind set carried over to reportage. I remember 10 years ago wanting to accompany a team of Chicago surgeons from Shriner’s Hospital to Lithuania, despairing at my chances of being granted a full week for the journey, never mind the associated cost, and rejoicing when I realized the president of Lithuania at the time, Valdus Adamkus, had lived for 47 years in Chicago before renouncing his U.S. citizenship and going back to lead his country. Interviewing him at the palace would add heft to my plea — two birds with one stone! — I cooked up a few more angles: should Lithuania join NATO? What about Catholicism? By the time I was done piling on, we ran a weeklong series that fellow reporters still shake their heads over.
     The travel story was perhaps a stretch — I admitted that few Chicagoans were going to scrap their Disney World plans, but if you were of Lithuanian extraction, or had become bored with the typical European vacation spots, you could do worse than visit Vilnius.
     That story was written sincerely. Yet I was shocked — taken aback, almost frightened — when I later heard from a family who read the piece and were persuaded to go to Lithuania, had a great time and wanted to thank me.
     Somehow I managed not to blurt out, “You went?! To Lithuania?! On my advice!? What, are you crazy?!” But that’s what I thought.
     I felt responsible. Sure, it worked for them. But what if it hadn’t? What if they had a bad time in Lithuania? It would be all my fault.
     I shouldn’t say this: but occasionally, the messing-with-other-people’s-lives aspect of this job unnerves me. You try not to think of that part too often, try not to think of families shlepping to Eastern Europe on your say-so. But sometimes the fact clicks into focus.
     For instance . . .
     The day after Sun-Times owner Jim Tyree died, like everyone who knew him, I was upset, and wanted to write something appropriate. He was fighting stomach cancer, and since the public is not that familiar with stomach cancer, compared to, say, breast or lung cancer, I thought it might be a fitting tribute to use the tragedy to educate others. Tyree would have liked that.
     So I called Loyola University Medical Center and asked for a stomach cancer specialist.
     But by the time Dr. Gerard Aranha, a professor of surgery, called back the next day, I had already written something about Tyree. Still, the doctor was on the phone. It wouldn’t do to just say, “Column’s done, goodbye.” The polite thing was to talk with him for a while.
     “There were 21,000 new cases of stomach cancer reported in 2010,” Dr. Aranha said. “It is the sixth overall, much less common than esophageal or colon, but holding steady.”
     The connection between smoking and stomach cancer is weak, as opposed to charred foods and nitrates, which encourage it. Heredity is also an important factor.
     “There is a familial connection,” said Dr. Aranha. “I always like to ask which family died of gastric cancer — it was Napoleon and his mother.”
     What are the warning signs?
     “A feeling of getting full easily,” he said. “More often pain, like a patient has an ulcer, the sort of pain that doesn’t respond to the usual antacid therapy or, when it does, say with Prilosec, when you stop the Prilosec the pain comes back. Then you’ve got a problem.”
     Also “unease after eating, dyspepsia, bloating, belching, gas that persists for two weeks, are all clues.” Males get stomach cancer about 50 percent more than females do.
     What should a person with symptoms do?
     “See a doctor,” he said. “The doctor will put an endoscope — a tube — down your throat and look at the esophagus and stomach and, if he’s seeing any abnormalities, take a biopsy.”
     Early detection, as with all cancer, is key.
     In Japan, Dr. Aranha said, where use of the endoscope is more common, some 30 percent of stomach cancers are caught in the more treatable early stage. Here, where people are less aware, only 9 percent are found early.
     I almost let this subject drop — who wants to read about stomach cancer? But then I remembered that family going to Lithuania and realized that, once I had this information, it was my duty to pass it along. There might be one guy — maybe you — who looks up from the paper and says, “Geez, I’ve got those warning signs, I better see a doctor.” For me, it’s just another column. But for somebody, it could be a matter of life or death, and once you have that in mind, there’s only one thing to do.
      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 29, 2011 

Flashback 2012: Stealing bases? Just buy them

Not a bad view from the former section 219 in 2012. 

     April, warmer weather, finally, and a man's thoughts turn to baseball. Well, some men. Not me. That ship has sailed. Whatever residual fandom is left has boiled down to a single, quivering neuron that annually squeaks. "Maybe this year you should take in a game at Wrigley." Where all my happy memories are of: a) walking up to the park along Addison from the Red Line b) seeing that expanse of green as you rise from inside a tunnel and c) biting into a warm, moist Vienna frank. 

     Notice what's missing? The actual baseball part. Players playing the game. Never a priority. Nor a memory. I couldn't recall a single play at Wrigley if you put a gun to my head. But I do still go, every few years, usually squiring visitors, as in the story below. I just like the ballpark.

     A little update. The dog that cost $5 in 2012 will now set you back at least $9. Game-used bases cost $100 more than 14 years ago. You can also buy infield dirt for $20. The only thing the same is that you could have bought the cheapest tickets to Friday's game against the Pirates on Stubhub for $8. There is no section 219 anymore — it goes from 218 to 220, thanks to a re-numbering to squeeze in more luxury boxes — but with an assist from Cubs maven Bill Savage, we know that the old 219 would be around 215 today, where tickets were going for $11 on game day. (Perhaps an unfair comparison, as game day tickets tend to plunge).

     The really good news is that kids under 13 — the first thousand to get a wrist band anyway — can still run the bases for free at Wrigley after most Sunday games. 

     No need to steal second base anymore. You can just buy it.
     The ballplayers can’t, of course. They still get to second base the old fashioned way. But now, in our let’s-monetize-everything world, you can skip all those years of honing your batting skills and, for $250, purchase second base ­— or first, or third ­­— used during a game at Wrigley Field. Pay for the base beforehand in the concourse behind home plate; it’ll be swapped out with a fresh base after the fifth inning and delivered to your seat.
     At U.S. Cellular Field, you can’t buy a base, but you can pay to be the guy swapping them out, or dragging the infield, or sitting in the dugout during batting practice, or having dinner with Jerry Reinsdorf (though if they really wanted to clean up, they should sell the chance not to eat with Reinsdorf).
     Economics aside, Sunday was still a beautiful day for baseball, on my first visit to Wrigley in years, squiring around my cousin Harry from Boston and his family. As regular readers know, I’m the sort who, left to my own devices, shuns sporting events. But I am a genial host, and Harry suggested we might take in a game, the way people speculate about travel to Mars — as a remote, wouldn’t-it-be-something possibility, colored by his experience trying to get into Fenway Park, where you must plan to spend a fortune to buy the precious tickets passed from hand to hand, generation to generation.

Section 219 is now gone.

     Not so at Wrigley. Jump online the day before, eight tickets in section 219 — back under the upper deck, but with a great view of the field — for $33 apiece, plus change. I hate to be one of those columnists who discover regular life and starts gibbering in amazement. But I was taken aback by how cheaply you can get into Wrigley, thanks to dynamic ticket pricing. You can get seats for as low as $8, to see scrub “bronze” level teams like the Brewers or the Astros — the same ticket would cost you $29 to see the Red Sox or Cardinals.
     This isn’t to suggest things are inexpensive at Wrigley. Far from it. A non-jumbo hot dog costs $5. My wife went for a cup of vegetable sticks, a hummus-like dip paste, and a small bottle of water, for — place your guesses ­— $10.75.
     Someone has to pay for those player salaries, though judging from this year’s lineup, Cubs owner Tom Ricketts is not yet coughing up the elephant dollars for superstars. While no baseball expert — the thought “So Mark Grace isn’t here anymore?” popped into mind early in the game — I’ll admit, I didn’t recognize any of the players’ names. Brian LaHair? Darwin Barney? They seemed to radiate a deep, Joe Shlabotnik-type obscurity. Not entirely a bad thing. There was a certain joy, a purity in seeing two teams of complete nonentities ­— the Washington Nationals are not exactly the 1927 Yankees either ­­— battle it out in a hard-fought game. The Cubs won, so maybe it’s a building year. 

Back when there was a 219 (Image courtesy
of the Bill Savage Collection)

     I sat back, munched peanuts, tossed the shells at my feet, and enjoyed my afternoon at the ballpark. Even my older son looked up from reading Jane Eyre from time to time to glance at what was happening on the field.
     After the game, I swung by the base-selling table behind home plate, and found they sold two bases to a pair of poor souls with more money than sense, plus one from the day before for $200. Although that might be harsh; the most surprising thing about the base-vending is, judging by mark-up, the bases are one of the bigger values at Wrigley, since a new base costs about $150 online.
     After the game, the Cubs invited kids to go down and run the bases. Of course, Harry’s girls ­— 7 and 10 — were eager to do it, but I was surprised when my two surly teens joined them, big happy grins on their faces. My wife thought being on the field was magical, and even though I had been there before, I admit that just laying eyes on Wrigley Field is worth a visit. The fact that they also put on a game is an added bonus. Maybe I shouldn’t give them ideas, but there was no extra, kids-running-the-bases fee, which is ironic, because that was the most valuable part of the whole day.
       — Originally published April 11, 2012

What are the 400 uses of dental floss?

     "Old age isn't a battle," Philip Roth once wrote. "Old age is a massacre."
     One certainly suffers losses. First, friends and loved ones are scythed down by jealous time. Second, your body acts up in ways I shan't catalogue.
     But there are also advantages. For instance, after decades of trying, I've finally gotten good at flossing. In my younger years, I'd begin with determination anew after every visit to the dentist. But weeks would pass, I'd skip a day, then two, and the little white box of floss would be pushed aside in the bathroom, ignored until the next visit.
     Not anymore. Lately, I've been a champion, floss-wise. I'm not sure why — probably with the mounting problems of age, I don't want to lose my teeth too. I almost look forward to flossing, which gives you an idea of how exciting my life has become.
     So when I got to the end of one spool Tuesday night, I immediately toddled off to my wife's bathroom to raid her supply, grabbing a package of GUM Fine Floss — mint, waxed, the good stuff.
     As I opened it, I read this bit of ballyhoo on the package:
     "UP TO 400 USES."
     Four hundred ways to use dental floss?! I marveled. That's a lot of uses. I honestly couldn't imagine what they might be.
     Finding your way out of a labyrinth? There had to be some very strange, esoteric, highly amusing suggestions from the GUM folks. I must know.
     Jumping online, I found GUM to be a local establishment — part of SUNSTAR, a Japanese company whose American operation is based in Schaumburg. But no official "GUM 400."
     I wrote to the folks at GUM (an abbreviation of "Gentle Uletic Massage," "uletic" meaning, "pertaining to gums") Tuesday night. Not expecting much. If you remember our bitter experience with Smuckers, trying to get them to explain why their natural peanut butter tastes so good, you'll know that my hopes for any given corporation deigning to comment on any given subject are slim.
     Impatient, I explored online.
     The first hit, "11 Surprising Uses for Dental Floss" by the American Association of Retired Persons (I'm telling you: old people, we love our floss). The first was not what I would call hip: "1. Remove skin tags" Were I composing that list, I'd lead with "7. Detach sticky cookies." From baking sheets if — what? — your spatula is broken?
     The problem with the AARP list is, it's all notional. Is there anyone who actually uses dental floss to slice cheesecakes? (Answer: yes. YouTube offers many videos of cheesecakes being smartly cut with dental floss "No drag, no mess, perfection," says Chef Dave Martin. Eli's Cheesecake does not use floss to cut their cheesecakes — the crispy shortbread crust interferes — but does use it to slice unbaked pies).
     The internet is alive with lists of ways to use dental floss other than to clean between your teeth. Hawaii's Kaua’i Hiking Tours offers "27 Survival Uses For Dental Floss," starting with (AARP take note) "1. Make a Lean-To" and including clotheslines, thread, shoelaces, and my favorite, as "dummy cord": a secure line to keep your knife or compass from tumbling out of your backpack and being lost.

To continue reading, click here.

Flashback 2013: Reviewing movies was the least of it

Roger Ebert comments on NPR in 2006 (Photo courtesy of Sound Opinions)

     Shakespeare wrote, in "Julius Caesar," that "the evil men do lives after them, but the good is oft interred with their bones." That might be generally true — I'm not in a position to tell. But not always. Not with Roger Ebert, whose kindness and wisdom — and excellent writing — extend far beyond his time on earth, or the after-echo experienced by even the most successful journalists. 

     Certainly he lives on in my writing — I mention him from time to time, and recently started a column  with his lecturing on "La Dolce Vita." Facebook served up this piece, that ran 13 years ago today, and it's too enjoyable not to share.

    As is one moment that I mention on Facebook — truly, it's the part I remember best, as I was practically cringing. Here's how I describe it:

     "Roger Ebert's funeral at Holy Name was quite beautiful — my column will be posted [soon]. There was a bit of levity, before. I was sitting with the Sun-Times crew and the Holy Name, pastor, Msg. Mayall, came over to me, directly. 'You're not going to escort me out, are you?' I said, in a small voice. No, he wanted to thank me — I had helped raise money for repairs after their fire (I had forgotten). Nice guy."

 

     In the end, the movies weren’t the important part.
     Oh, being a film critic certainly made Roger Ebert a rich, famous, influential man.
     But — and as with all good surprise endings, I didn’t see this coming — when his loved ones, his friends, colleagues, regular readers and admirers gathered at Holy Name Cathedral Monday to say goodbye to Roger on what started as a rainy, gray, chill Chicago morning and ended in warm, golden sunlight, the world of box-office numbers and star-fueled glamour and good reviews and bad reviews felt very, very far away.
     What mattered was his noble soul, his quick mind, his big heart, his brave pen, his loyalty to his profession and his city. “We know he loved Chicago and Chicago loved Roger,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “He was the most American of American critics in the most American of American cities.”
     Mass was officiated by a trio of priests — Monsignor Daniel Mayall, parish pastor of Holy Name, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, St. Sabina’s firebrand and the Rev. John F. Costello, special assistant to the president of Loyola University, who delivered a homily that showed off his Jesuit training by explaining — without ever drawing attention to the fact he was explaining — a question perhaps on the mind of many: how Chicago’s most famous agnostic and public doubter of all doctrines ended up being delivered up to heaven at the city’s preeminent Catholic cathedral.
     The answer: He found God — well, a version of God, Costello said, “a new God, one of ironic compassion, of overpowering generosity, of racial love” — at the movie theater.
     “I am convinced from our conversations that Roger found in darkened places, especially theaters, just such a God,” Costello said. “In that discovery in the darkness, Roger found a Jesus very different from the one he had been handed as a young Catholic child growing up in the Heartland of our great country. This Jesus was an ironic one with unquenchable love, even for — especially for — people who betrayed him.”
     Costello cited the 1966 novel “ Silence,” by Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. Its main character, Father Sebastian Rodrigues, is a 17th century Portuguese Jesuit priest who learns that his beloved former seminary teacher has been captured in Japan, tortured and forced to renounce Christ.
     “Finding it impossible to believe that his mentor and teacher chose apostasy over ‘glorious martyrdom,’ ’’ Costello said, Rodrigues travels to Japan, where he finds himself in similar straits — captured by a Shogun warlord, who demands that he also condemn his faith — only there is a cruel twist this time. It is not Rodrigues who will be tortured, but three Christian peasants who will suffer in his place unless he renounces his belief by trampling upon an image of Jesus.
     “In the dark night of the soul, Rodrigues choose to apostatize for the love and compassion of those suffering,” Costello said. “In praying to the heretofore silent Jesus, Rodrigues hears from the face of Christ that he is about to defile, ‘Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into the world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.’ ’’
     In other words: Sometimes official doctrine has to be set aside in order to help people. Not a message the church is saturating the airwaves with. But then, that was Roger. He could bring out the best in anybody.
     “Roger loved being part of the humanity he embraced all of his life,” Costello said. “He, like Rodrigues, felt the compassion and love he saw among the shadows in the celluloid darkness, for the people in the stories, the viewer in the theater, and the hearts which meekly yet unwavering seek their Author.”
     Gov. Pat Quinn called Ebert “a great and humble man with a servant’s heart” who had “a passion for social justice, Catholic social justice.” If you’re wondering what reviewing movies has to do with social justice, the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s middle son, Jonathan, explained how Ebert was a passionate advocate for African-American filmmakers.
     “He took us seriously,” Jackson said, reading a note from director Spike Lee. “ ‘He saw young black children not as problems, but as people . . . Roger Ebert was a champion of my work and other black filmmakers at a critical time in American film history.”
     The last speaker was Roger’s widow, Chaz Ebert, moved by her daughter’s words, she said, to spontaneously take the pulpit.
     “He would have loved this, the whole thing,” she said. “Loved that you were all here. . . . He really was a soldier for social justice. He had the biggest heart I’ve ever seen. It didn’t matter your race, creed, color, level of ability, sexual orientation. He had a heart big enough to accept and love all.”
     Funerals are for the living, and Roger Ebert’s not only made being alive seem more precious, but sent those attending into the day wondering how to do a better job of it.

           — Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 9, 2013 

Ye facing the music over idiotic embrace of Nazism

Illinois Holocaust Museum

     Did you notice, in Monday's column, how I copped to not knowing about the Greek god Artemis before the current moon mission, despite all my talk about being educated? How can I do that? Because one of the things I learned is that the world is big, filled with stuff, and most people know absolutely nothing about almost everything. The shame is in pretending otherwise.
     So I can confess that it wasn't until Monday, reading my Sun-Times with my morning Nespresso, that I learned, on Page 12, that Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, last year released a song called "Heil Hitler." If, like me, you just found out about it now, what is your reaction?
     Are you offended? Incredulous? I hope not. As one of my cherished readers, I'd prefer your reaction to be curiosity, mirroring my own response: an enthusiastic, "I gotta hear this song."
     Easier said than done. One of the worst aspects of our current dilemma is the idea of gatekeepers preventing supposedly vulnerable populations from having their sensibilities seared. Whether the right, vindictively trying to purge life of people they hate. Or the left, timidly trying to pretend that hate doesn't exist. One is worse; neither are commendable.
     I started at YouTube. Nothing but criticisms and parodies. Then Apple Music. The same. So I did a Google search, and found the full song — of course — on that slop sink of hate, X, nee Twitter.
     I stopped using X regularly when Elon Musk went full fascist — his Nazi salute, his blowing kisses at European neo-Nazi groups. Kind of a giveaway. But I didn't quit, for eventualities like this.
     "With all of the money and fame I still can't get my kids back," Ye trills. "So I became a Nazi, yeah."
     Stop right there. Offended yet? Of course not. At this point, if you are like me, you feel sorry for Ye, who has four children with his former wife Kim Kardashian.
     Imagine connecting those two thoughts — complaining about not being able to see your children, then using that as an excuse to embrace Nazism. Is Ye expecting that to help? "Your honor, I need to see my kids. I know I had troubles in the past — never should grabbed that microphone from Taylor Swift. But I've worked hard to improve myself. I'm a Nazi now ..."
     Not a smart strategy, right?
     I shouldn't jest. Ye has admitted to being bipolar, and nobody disagreed with him. He also apologized for the song, though that's a tough one to claw back. Hard to argue it was a gaffe; he also sold Nazi merchandise.
     I think it's important to recognize that people still embrace the Nazis. It's valuable to be reminded of their error, which sadly is not confined to the 1930s. To embrace Nazism is to be lulled by a strong start — great uniforms, bold iconography, massive Nuremberg rallies, the Blitzkrieg, those diving Stukas — but ignore the bad end. Your nation bombed to total ruin, the Nuremberg trials.

To continue reading, click here.

Little life

     I've reflected previously on the Latin term, memento mori, literally "remember to die," but interpreted as, "remember that death is coming." A goad to use the time you have, as best you can, even as it slips through your fingers and is gone.
     But that's a tad bleak, on a sunny spring day. So I'd like to flip it around, to memento vivere, or "remember to live." Something I tell myself, continually particularly in the mornings, facing the prospect of what can seem isolated, dull days after the commotion of the holidays. 

     How to remember to live? Moving the great engines of commerce and literature, of science and government and politics, are well beyond my scope and I imagine yours too. So we notice the little things, like these fat pink magnolia blossoms, dappled with dew, Monday morning. They are full for so short a span — a few days really, a week at most — and then are blown away by winds or burnt brown by a frost. 

     The blossoms, and the little dog — almost 16 — playing in the yard beyond. I can drop her leash and she doesn't run off anymore, but dutifully trots ahead, or busies herself with her own exploration of the tiny world immediately in front of her.

     And beyond that, the moon, 3/4 illuminated, at the "waning gibbous" phase, for those who care, a chalky smudge against a painfully blue sky that Artemis II is even now about to swing around.

     You can view this two ways, each illustrated by its own song. There is Isabel Pless' "Little Life," a vindictive stab at a former lover after the Nashville-based Vermonter realizes, "forgiveness isn't working." It begins, "I hope hell's hotter than you thought it'd be/I hope people stop listening when you speak" after "you realize you're just some guy."

      I hope karma's the bitch she's always been 
      I hope the regret eats you from within

     That's one route, and I admit, most mornings I start there. But there's another, encapsulated, fittingly enough, in a Cordelia song, also named "Little Life" that I strive toward emulating, Monday more vigorously than usual. A lilting melody from the British folk pop singer that went viral in 2023, asking the question, "How would you have me described?"

     A little bit more
     A little bit less
     A little bit harder than I thought they said.
     A little fine
     A little bit stressed
     A little bit older than I thought I'd get.
     But I think I like this little life. 

     Amen to that. You have to like your life, make yourself like it, whatever it happens to be — it's a requirement — because otherwise you just waste your precious time over things that didn't happen and people who aren't there. The acceptance that a certain program of my acquaintance goes on about. It isn't easy. In fact, sometimes it's hard. But like many hard things, it's also worthwhile.

      Others appreciate it too. I couldn't help but notice that the Isabel Pless "Little Life" video has gotten 95 views in the past two years, while Cordelia's has had 868,000 views in the same span. Negativity grows tiresome. Trust me on that one.

NASA, of all people, gets back into the space biz

 

Artemis II crew.

     Too bad some of the fame attached to remarks made on humanity's first landing on the moon, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed," on July 20, 1969, and the even more renowned, "One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind" was never extended to the enthusiastic, if ungrammatical, burst at the last moon landing, Apollo 17, on Dec. 11, 1972.
     "We is here!" cried rookie astronaut Harrison (Jack) Schmitt. "Man, is we here."
     Now we are returning to the neighborhood for the first time in nearly 54 years. All exploration is grounded in the time when it occurs, and just as the Apollo program was an artifact of the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, so Artemis II, expected to swing closest to the moon on Monday, can be seen through a lens of 2026 and a nation in turmoil.
     A time when actual reality can be lost in the fun house of social media — for instance, we're skimming past, not landing on, the moon. Artemis II will fly about 5,000 miles above the lunar surface; to put that in context, the International Space Station orbits about 250 miles above the earth.
     Is the public enthralled by this latest foray into space? Hard to say. Boredom with the assumed wonder of space exploration is a theme almost as old as space exploration itself.
     If you remember Ron Howard's excellent movie "Apollo 13," interest in what would have been the third moon landing was tepid until an explosion damaged the ship and forced a dramatic skin-of-their-teeth return. Before the crisis, while Jim Lovell does a live broadcast from space, the guys at Mission Control in Houston sneak glances at the Astros game, and none of the networks chose to carry Lovell's show.
     When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Chicagoans were almost as amazed by the fact they could watch it live on television.
     ”We were all there, bound together by the miracle of communication that intertwined all the other miracles of technology that marketed man’s first step on a celestial body,” the Chicago Daily News said in an editorial.
     The Chicago Tribune, with characteristic modesty, editorialized that their coverage of the event was an achievement on par with the landing itself.
     To me, half the wonder is not the journey but who's doing it. After years of headlines about private space ventures, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX, I reacted to the Artemis II mission with a surprised, "Does NASA still do that kind of thing?" 
     To add context, Artemis II took off Wednesday night. On Friday, the Trump administration proposed chopping the NASA budget by 23%.
     I had two questions. Apollo used a three-man crew. So why does Artemis need four astronauts?
     The short answer is the Orion spacecraft is designed to be flown by four astronauts — it has 50% more living space than the Apollo command module — but reading the NASA release announcing the crew, you can't help but suspect there's some Biden-era diversity going on as well:

To continue reading, click here.

Recessional

 

Winged bull from the throne room of Sargon II (Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures)

     Saturday dawned quiet.  The big pots were scrubbed and back on a high shelf.  The extra tables, back down in the basement, along with the dozen folding chairs. The living room furniture was returned to its proper place. The dishwasher, going non-stop for a while, stilled. The rain continued, off and on, and a chill gray set in, as if spring were having second thoughts.

     Friday the older boy and his growing family had departed for Michigan. The younger and his growing bride, back to their dozen daily concerns in Hyde Park. I missed them more than I savored the silence, and thought, for some reason, of a dusty line from Rudyard Kipling.

    "The tumult and the shouting dies, the captains and the kings depart." 

     From "Recessional," written after Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. (A recessional is the hymn chanted in church after a service as the choir and clergy depart). I don't remember ever reading "Recessional," but found the poem online easy enough. It's out of copyright, and brief, so I can share the whole thing. I think it merits a read:

                              God of our fathers, known of old,

                                 Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

                              Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

                                Dominion over palm and pine—

                              Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

                              Lest we forget—lest we forget!

                             The tumult and the shouting dies;

                               The Captains and the Kings depart:

                             Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

                               An humble and a contrite heart.

                             Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

                             Lest we forget—lest we forget!

                             Far-called, our navies melt away;

                              On dune and headland sinks the fire:

                             Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

                               Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

                             Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

                             Lest we forget—lest we forget!

                             If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

                              Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

                             Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

                              Or lesser breeds without the Law—

                             Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

                             Lest we forget—lest we forget!

                             For heathen heart that puts her trust

                               In reeking tube and iron shard,

                             All valiant dust that builds on dust,

                              And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

                             For frantic boast and foolish word—

                             Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

         That seems an apt sentiment for Easter Sunday. Britain was at the height of its power and Kipling, the bard of colonialism and the White Man's Burden, tacked against type, invoking humility and God.

         Not entirely, of course. There's a lot to unpack in the poem. Did you notice "an humble." Correct once upon a time in England, where the "h" was unpronounced. 

         The expression "lesser breeds" pokes a 2026 reader in the eye.  But notice what makes someone a lesser breed: being "without the law." A condition that we are flirting with. Or swan diving into. Or already drowning in. Give "lesser breeds" credit — at least it's spoken plainly. We embrace the attitude while avoiding the candor. Which may be even worse.

         To his further credit, the "heathen heart" putting its faith in smoking guns and shattering shells is clearly Kipling's countrymen. And ours.

         "Drunk with sight of power." Ain't that the truth? Worth remembering, as former attorney general Pam Bondi slinks off into whatever eternal ignominy awaits those who make their devil's bargain, leap willingly into the sucking maw, serve their shameful span, then are shitted out Trump's enormous backside. As much as I'd like to let out a faint "yippee" at her being cashiered, it strangles in my throat, realizing why she was canned: for not being skilled enough at covering up Trump's crimes, nor successful enough when twisting the Justice Department to persecute his enemies. Expect her replacement to try harder.

         In critiquing the poem, I overlooked the most important part. Notice it? "Lest we forget." It must be important, he says it eight times. Lest we forget ... what? That power, like life, is fleeting, and when it ebbs all we have left is the memory of how we conducted ourselves — in honor, honesty, humanity. Or with greed, violence, shame. 

         It is worth realizing that Great Britain ain't so great anymore, yet still exists. If the United States is in decline — and the warning bells are flashing, the needles red-zoning, the sirens whirring — then we were not defeated by an outside foe, but we destroyed ourselves, by turning our backs on our supposed values and groveling before a golden calf that would embarrass the folks in Nineveh and Tyre, great cities in Biblical times. Not such a big deal anymore. It happened to them, then. It's happening to us now.