Quite radiant

     Any Sunday worth the name should include time spent sprawled on the sofa with the Sunday papers. 

     But this Sunday saw a house full of family, here to see my sister. My brother and his wife stopped by bearing a shopping bag filled with peppers from their garden. My son and daughter-in-law brought their dog Virginia and my grandson. My wife grilled up an excellent flank steak, the baby was passed around and admired, and a good time was had by all. 

     So the papers didn't get read. Nothing is perfect. When Monday morning I found myself going to Hyde Park again — second time this week, to the University of Chicago, something you'll read about tomorrow — I grabbed the Times Book Review to read on the train. I figured, the news could wait. 
     The section included A.O. Scott's review of "The Radiance," by Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. Scott calls the book "autofiction," a term I hadn't heard before — not stories about cars, but a fiction/nonfiction blend about "a man named Ayad, who shares many traits with the real-world Akhtar."       

     While Scott couldn't quite tell what he was reading — "Is this a campus comedy? A novel of ideas" A medical mystery? A spiritual quest narrative?" — the bottom line is, he liked it. "Whatever this book is, it's alive."
     But that's not why I'm sharing this with you. The campus section draws this description. "Ayad's class is stocked with the kind of overmedicated, trauma-curious, identity-obsessed youngsters who have figured in countless op-eds and magazines stories over the past couple of decades. The fluctuating power dynamic between them and their instructors, and the overall climate of hypersensitivity, ideological conformity and bureaucratic surveillance that hovers over the college, are by now commonplaces of fiction and creative nonfiction alike."

     Scott might read a lot more than I do, so he seems to think these are stock descriptions. To me, they don't seem very commonplace at all — certainly not nearly commonplace enough — and I wanted to share them. Identify-obsessed. Hypersensitivity. Ideological conformity. It is really refreshing to see someone just come out and say it. 

'I look forward to reviewing your proposal and learning more about The Quest for Pie.'

     Scams suck. You don't even have to be taken in by them. Just the fact of their existence. They're so depressing.
     It was such a beautiful fall afternoon Sunday. We took my sister to the Chicago Botanic Garden and just wandered around. The air was fragrant, the light, golden, the colors varied, the crowd, happy.
     Yet I was grimacing, mulling over an email I had gotten the day before. It began:

In Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life, what stands out is the refusal to treat recovery as a simple turning point between a troubled past and a better future. Your account of loving your work and family while remaining attached to alcohol captures the contradictions that make addiction so difficult to confront...

     Do you see the markers of AI in that? The lack of a salutation. Using the full title, including sub-title, of the book. The generic summation of the book's reception — in 2012. I should have just deleted it and kept going. I've received a number of similar book marketing scams before.
     But this wasn't a shill for book marketing. It was, supposedly, from the executive publisher of a London imprint. Another sign. Why would someone that high up be trolling around for mid-list authors? Over the weekend. They wouldn't. I should have just deleted it.
    But hope is a funny thing. I checked online, on the publisher's web site. She was a real person. Only this email wasn't from that person. I was fairly sure of that. The email ended in ".gmail." Another giveaway. I wrote back: 

Thank you for your kind note. There are so many AI scams related to book publishing, I hope you don't mind my asking you a question: how did "Drunkard" come to your attention? Thanks.

       She replied, beginning:

I came across Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life on Amazon, and I was drawn to the candour and perceptiveness with which you examine addiction, recovery, and their effects on personal and family life.

     The "u" in candour was good. English spelling. But again, the subtitle. Still — and here I did the part I'm embarrassed about — I took 10 or 15 minutes and composed an email about where my career is right now, and what project I'd like to see published: the unpublished memoir I wrote about going out West with my boys, "The Quest for Pie." That means a lot to me. I sent the email Sunday morning. She wrote back immediately.
     Another tip-off. What publisher is writing to anybody Sunday morning? Or Sunday evening, assuming she's in England? Which she — if it's a "she" — is not. Things move slow in publishing.
     I'll spare you the rest. We went back and forth a bit. I made it clear I'm not paying for anything. "There are two things a man should never pay for," I wrote. "One of them is editorial direction." She said that is fine. 
     But as I walked around the garden, I realized. "This isn't real. This is someone in Ghana using AI to mimic an editor." I should have known that. I did know that. Yet proceeded anyway, on the slimmest, most pathetic hope. What really bothered me, I think, is that I couldn't figure out what the scam is. Maybe this is like a romance scam, only targeting authors. We'd go over the book for six months and then she'd spring the trap. 

     That might have been what really saddened me. The knowledge that this is our future, being forced to decide, again and again, if something is real, is human, or just another attempted rip-off, a little better disguised than previous attempts. Email has become a street jammed with pick-pockets and muggers, with fewer and fewer actual pedestrians in between. The ability to see through this, to decide who's who, to determine if something is the work of humans, or not, is going to be increasingly important. And exhausting. My gut told me: this isn't right. Listen to your gut. And to experience. 

     The lesson of experience is clear. In 34 years since my first book came out from St. Martin's, no publisher has ever reached out to me with this kind of query. Never. When something has never happened before, the odds that it is happening now go way, way down. Truth might be a hard road, but allow yourself to stray from it and you quickly go into the bog. I wrote back, and said what we need to do is set up a Zoom call to discuss this further. I assumed that will be the end of it.

   Not quite. When I got that first email on Saturday, I did, immediately write to the publishing house itself, an interesting group called Bookouture, to see if their executive had indeed written to me. I'm not a complete fool. They wrote back early Monday:

Good afternoon Neil,
Thanks for getting in touch. We are aware of emails currently circulating that are impersonating our editorial staff, and our cyber team is investigating this issue. Please be advised that the email you received was not sent from Ruth, or anyone at Bookouture – we would suggest reporting the message and blocking the sender.
Thanks so much again for alerting us.

Best regards,
The Admin Team

    Well, there you have it.  

    

 

Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, the Prairie State and… America’s Pumpkin Capital. Here's why.

John Ackerman, in a pumpkin field in Morton, Illinois.

     This story began in mid-August, when the Chicago Teachers Union sued the Illinois Policy Institute for being critical of them. In looking at the IPI web site, I noticed a story on how Illinois is head-and-shoulders the top pumpkin producing state in the nation. My column on the lawsuit mentioned pumpkins, but didn't answer the question: why Illinois? Why not Iowa or Indiana? The answer is easy — because Libby's is here. But my hunch was there was more here, that if I dug a little, my efforts would be rewarded, and I believe I was right. 

     A pumpkin seed weighs about 1/100th of an ounce, when planted in April. By late September, through an unappreciated conspiracy of miracles: the balm of time, the embrace of Midwest weather, the kiss of rich soil and the careful application of husbandry — fertilizer spread, pests thwarted — managed by Illinois farmers, some who have been at this for generations, that little oval the size of a fingernail can increase in size 18,000 times, into a 12-pound pumpkin, ready for picking.

     “There are days, when the conditions are right, I’m pretty sure I can hear them grow,” says John H. Ackerman, a fourth-generation farmer in downstate Morton, which, about two hours southwest of Chicago, is the self-proclaimed pumpkin capital of the world.
   Morton seized the title, though Illinois could easily dub itself “Pumpkin Heaven.” It must be because the state grows so many of the distinctive orange fruit, the icon of the fall season. (Botanically, a pumpkin is a fruit because it contains seeds and grows from a pollinated flower, though cooks treat it as a vegetable, for its savory qualities.)
     Fruit or vegetable, or both, in 2025, our state grew 535 million pounds of pumpkin, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More than the next four top pumpkin-growing states — California, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania — combined.
     Why? What makes Illinois so pumpkin-friendly?
     “The region offers the optimal combination of soil composition, climate and geography, with about 120 days of summer heat, warm nights and moderate rainfall that create great growing conditions,” says Jacqueline Jimenez, senior director, brand marketing, culinary and confectionery for Nestle, the owner of Libby’s, which has an enormous pureed-pumpkin processing plant in Morton.
      “However, what sets the region apart is our deep roots here, including not only our factory but our multi-generational partnerships with the local farmers who grow our Libby’s pumpkins. Some of these farming families have grown Libby’s pumpkins for 60 years. We know them by name, and they understand this land and climate in a way that’s irreplaceable.”
     More than soil or climate, the presence of the Libby’s canning operation in Morton is responsible for Illinois’ pumpkin preeminence. About 90% of the canned pumpkin produced in the United States is grown within a 60-mile radius of Morton. And most of that goes to Libby’s, though there also is another cannery, Seneca Foods, in Princeville, about 33 miles away.

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And those XXS are going fast...

 

   

     I settled into bed with the this week's New Yorker, admired the front cover, glanced at the back and paused, puzzled, then looked closer for a more careful examination. There was something odd about the photo. Not your standard fashion shot — a smiling woman, maybe a bit more crinkled around the eyes, with deeper crow's feet, than is usual. Is that it? Her hair, a sort of ginger pink, with a few loose strands flying off. Normal, rather than high-style. Wearing a white t-shirt that took up a third of the page. No text, except a faint pair of scribbled words, "The Row," written in the upper right hand corner.

     "I don't even know what this is an ad for," I told my wife, listing my first three guesses: 1) the shirt; 2) her teeth ("The Row") 3) some TV show.
     Choice #1.
     The Row is a $1 billion luxury fashion house, founded in 2005 by former tween movie stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (long-time readers might remember my April 1, 2019 post confessing to producing their first three movies).
     I found The Row web site, and see the all-cotton white t-shirt that I think is depicted costs $550. It comes in XXS, XS, S, M, L and XL.
     I'd never heard the term XXS and, wondering who it is intended for, checked out the "Size Guide" and see it corresponds to a 22 inch waist, which is the average waist size of an 8-year-old child. Golly.
     Funny. I'd actually purchased a t-shirt for myself this week. My wife was putting in an order at Land's End, and asked if I wanted anything. I do wear their t-shirts, so looked at the colors and, throwing caution to the wind, bought one in a sky blue, thinking I could pair it with a light blue L.L. Bean summer shirt that is a particular favorite. On sale, it was $17.
     Later in the evening, I had second thoughts — I really have enough t-shirts to last me the rest of my life — and asked my wife if she could perhaps cancel her order, or somehow strike my shirt from it. Why load up on t-shirts? My wife, used to this, said no, she couldn't, and if I didn't want the shirt, she would give it to Goodwill. I said I would make room for it, somehow.
     $550 for a white cotton t-shirt. And the kicker is, five of the six sizes are already sold out, with XXS no doubt going fast.

An open letter to Pope Leo XIV on cancer and how to survive it

Debbie Dana

Dear Pope Leo:

     Whenever a friend gets cancer, I usually buy them a copy of “Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors,” by Evan Handler. The actor’s 1996 memoir is an excellent guide to navigating cancer, full of practical tips, such as making sure your nurses wash their hands.
     It’s funny, honest, and best of all — spoiler alert! — Handler survives, to this day.
     While I did consider shipping a copy to Rome, I immediately envisioned the package being tossed into one of dozens of huge canvas-sided rolling postal carts jammed with goodwill offerings: prayer cards and inspirational books and charms from the spectrum of faiths. You’re a popular guy, as I’m sure you already know.
     So I figured, better to drop my advice into this newspaper bottle and toss it into the electronic sea. Perhaps a favorable breeze will nudge it your direction. If not — the sure bet — it might help someone else in a similar position.
     My apologies about giving advice. I have a few rules regarding friends plunged into sickness or misfortune, and Rule No. 1 is: “Don’t try to fix things,” a rule frequently broken. It’s hard to resist trying to help, and handwashing is so important. People forget, and nice guys such as ourselves, we have a hard time greeting a nurse striding into our room with: “Did you wash your hands?”
     I imagine the pope gets first-class treatment, something to be thankful for. Gratitude is key in overcoming travails. My major health troubles have all been mostly mechanical rather than metastatic — spine, hip and now shoulder — which strikes me as far less severe than the Big C. I try to focus on how lucky I am to have access to advanced medical treatment, as opposed to most people in the world, who don’t. Attitude is important.
     “A cheerful heart is good medicine,” says Proverbs. But look who I’m quoting Scripture to. I’m not someone who believes in divine providence. But coincidences happen. Within hours of your lung cancer surgery Tuesday, my older sister, Debbie, arrived from Dallas. I don’t write about Debbie much, because she’s usually deep in the heart of Texas, arm wrestling the Angel of Death. But she’s here now, visiting, and as a true cancer warrior — she’s had three kinds over the last 14 years — I asked her for any wisdom she might share with a newbie such as yourself.

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Me and Debbie, circa 1963

   
 

'Look at Miss Ohio'

 

Berea, Ohio

 

    At the start of my morning stretches — have to push this rotator cuff repair back to normalacy — I called up Apple music on my iPhone where I'd left off last night, at Gillian Welch singing "Look at Miss Ohio." Usually I'd progress to the next song; instead I backtracked to the beginning:

Oh me oh my oh

Look at Miss Ohio
She’s a-running around with her ragtop down
She says "I wanna do right, but not right now"

     Not sure what the song is about, exactly, but the terminology evokes the Ohio I remember, with beauty queens and tiaras, fun times and convertibles. I actually went out, once, with a high school classmate who had a red 1965 Mustang convertible — her father's, I assume. I remember the car well; the date, not so much.
     I'm a sucker for Ohio songs, which are distinct from Cleveland songs, like Ian Hunter's "Cleveland Rocks," — pressed into service as the theme song for the Drew Carey show, with its joyful burst into downtown, though they, sadly, cheaped out when it came to paying rights for the vastly superior original and hired an imitator.

     Ohio songs, like the state itself, are good but idiosyncratic, both stuck in certain eras and timeless, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's classic protest ,"Ohio," 
      Lately, like "Look at Miss Ohio," Ohio tunes are vaguer, less defined. The National's "Blood Buzz Ohio" has a weird, somber quality to it over driving drums.

I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I never married, but Ohio don't remember me

     I like bees, and Ohio certainly doesn't remember me. As for marriage, well, you can't relate to everything. Though looking at the video, the song seems to be about the miserable trudge of active alcoholism, which might explain its appeal to me. 
     Chrissie Hynde feels like she deserves a category of her own, with many references to her hometown of Akron, and "My City Was Gone," her classic spin on Thomas Wolfe's edict about the impossibility of going home.

 I went back to Ohio, but my city was gone
 There was no train station
 There was no downtown

     As with Chicago, "Cuyahoga" is a Native-American word that started out describing a body of water — it means "crooked river" in a language thought to be Mohawk — and then gets attached to the place around it, now the name of both the county containing Cleveland, and the river that runs through it. I never listened hard to R.E.M.'s "Cuyahoga" beyond its nostalgic tone. 

This is where we walked
This is where we swam
Take a picture here
Take a souvenir

       The line that touches me now, seeing that my home state has slid into MAGAland, is "Let's put our heads together/And start a new country up." Someone has to.
     Just being about Ohio isn't enough to save a song. Patty Griffin's "Ohio" is a droning dirge. Not even the talents of Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant are able to save it.
     There's only one way to end this. I wouldn't be here without Ohio State University, where my parents met in 1954. "The Buckeye Battle Cry" might not touch on the University of Michigan fight song, "The Victors," but it's the best we've got, and it'll have to do. "Our honor defend/We fight to the end." That sounds like a plan.

Downtown, Berea

Trump weighs a public execution, which once elicited delight — and revulsion

     A reader writes, aghast at government plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army major who murdered 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009.
     “I am so upset, so disgusted and in disbelief,” she says. “What has happened to this country?”
     I want to sympathize, but can’
     “Disbelief?” I reply. “Really? You are paying attention, right? This is very on brand for them.”
     Between condemning children in Africa to death by denying food — and now vaccines — to shooting Americans in the street for failing to comply promptly to the orders of masked men, to the certain atrocities going on out of sight in windowless ICE prisons nationwide, the idea of the government beginning to ballyhoo their horrors has a certain appeal. At least we’ll be able to witness this one. And unlike most victims of official violence, Hasan bears undeniable guilt.
     I’m generally against the death penalty, because it is so misapplied, racially and economically. But I’m willing to make exceptions — I’m glad Timothy McVeigh is not still around, writing manifestos, enjoying cheeseburgers and watching Netflix in his cell. Hasan falls into that category.
     Which doesn’t mean his death should be served up as public entertainment? Or should it?
     We’ve fallen out of practice watching public executions. To get myself in the spirit, I pulled down a collection of William Makepeace Thackeray’s journalism and reread “Going to See a Man Hanged.”
     Writing in 1840, the future author of “Vanity Fair” spends pages setting the scene — his sleepless night before friends arrive in a carriage at 3 a.m., imagining the final hours of “the poor wretch” awaiting execution. The gallows set up in the street before Newgate Prison; the sight sends “a kind of dumb electric shock” through Thackeray. The “gentle and good humored” crowd of 40,000 — Charles Dickens is also there. The cursing ragamuffins and teenage prostitutes, “giggling, drinking, and romping.” The jokes, the rumors, the catcalls.
     The condemned man, François Courvoisier, a Swiss valet who slit the throat of his employer, regards the crowd with “a wild, imploring look. His mouth, contracted into a sort of pitiful smile.”

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