'To write is to err'

    

     With time on my hands, I thought I would catch up on my movie viewing. I don't remember ever actually watching any of the Marx Brothers, movies or, if I did,0 it was so long ago, in the distant mist of the 1970s, that I've forgotten. 

     So I started in on "Animal Crackers," but barely got a minute into the film when I had to stop and go back (I originally said, "rewind"). The spelling of the first name of the Groucho character, Captain Spaulding, in the credits was different than the spelling in the movie itself, "Jeffrey" versus "Geoffrey." The kind of continuity flaw you don't see in modern Hollywood movies very much. I wonder how many viewers notice.

     Errors are both trivial and important. Trivial in the sense that we all make them. When a loyal Sun-Times reader with basic math skills pointed out to me that the Chicago Tribune had botched some simple math trying to figure out what 10.5% of $10 might be — "Not that the Sun-Times would ever gloat..." he began — my impulse was not to rush it into print. 

     He then followed up with the Trib:

"Please check your arithmetic. Your editorial last Friday stated that "beginning Saturday, Chicagoans will pay $1.50
on every $10 in retail purchases. On August 1 the sales tax is going from 10.25% to 10.50%. 10.5% of $10.00 is $1.05 not $1.50. Whether this error is AI related, the work of a summer intern or just a simple mistake, the prominence of the Tribune's erroneous statement entitles the readers to an explanation."

    Of course the Trib neither ran the letter nor corrected the error.

    Still, my thinking was mostly: "There but for the grace of God ..." Particularly after I noticed that the $22 million Alex Giannoulias has in his campaign fund was inflated into $22 billion in Tuesday's Sun-Times. We all do it.

     But the growing world of AI slop and constant social media bilge raises the questions of how we approach the slurry of mistakes sprayed at us along with it. Obviously finding the creator and demanding some kind of fix isn't possible. Nor is the problem limited to anonymous content creators I've noticed that the more august source, the more reluctant they are to fix mistakes. I've given up notifying the New York Times of their occasional gaffes. They never respond.

     Can we become so comfortable with mistakes that we start to accept them? That the margin between fact and fiction, ever broadening in the Trump era, can grow so wide that nobody cares what's real and what's not, and we all live in our own dream worlds of delusion and fantasy. Maybe we already do. For instance, I'm convinced this thinking and veracity stuff is important.

     For writers, our duty is clear. We have to be fierce proponents for accuracy in our own work. An easy task for me as every mistake that's ever found its way into print still stings. Thirty years ago, on the opening page of "Complete and Utter Failure" I refer to a cornet, the instrument, but spelled it "coronet," like the crown. Thank God, the chapter was excerpted in Doubleday's company magazine, and a New England English professor pointed out to me in time for the typo to be corrected in the book itself.

      That's the weird dichotomy a writer must straddle: vigorously trying to eradicate mistakes while acknowledging that they're bound to happen no matter what. Or as I sometimes say: too right is two air.

     Whoops, what I meant was, "to write is to err."

Flashback 2010: Lots of innovation goes into housing inmates

     Two days on "Paradise Lost" worked surprisingly well. So when Facebook served up the memory of this column, built around "Prometheus Unbound," I couldn't help sharing it. What I remember most about it is I was doing weekly commentary with Bob Sirott on Channel 32 and I tried to get the station to send a film crew to Navy Pier. They sort of looked at me strangely and said "We don't do that kind of thing." Most of the studio cameras were automatic, and they were very few people around. A harbinger of things to come.

     Need a straitjacket? Humane Restraint of Waunakee, Wis., sells a handsome model in heavy-duty canvas with leather straps. List price $163.50.
     But don't call it a "straitjacket."
     "It's the 'humane jacket,' " corrected company rep Stacy Schultz.
     We were at Navy Pier, at the 140th annual Congress of Correction, the American Correctional Association's convention.
     Yes, 140th -- the group began in 1870 as the National Prison Association, the trade organization for the ever-burgeoning American incarceration industry.
     As I wandered the booths promoting one-piece steel toilets, digital imaging, heavy-duty locks and concertina wire, I had to adjust my vocabulary to meet industry trends. What I considered an electric fence, for instance, is now a "non-lethal electrified system."
     We don't think about jails much, and some products defy imagination, though once you see them, they make perfect sense.
     For instance, the Swintec Clear Cabinet Typewriter, which is just as it sounds: an electric typewriter made of clear plastic -- even the ribbon cartridge is transparent -- so prisoners can prepare their legal briefs without having a place to stash their shivs and drugs.
     Prisons are a $40 billion industry in the U.S. because we are addicted to punishment -- about one out of 100 adults in this country is currently in jail.
     "No other rich country is nearly as punitive as the Land of the Free," the Economist noted in a scolding cover story last week. "The rate of incarceration is a fifth of America's level in Britain, a ninth in Germany and a twelfth in Japan."
     None of this is ACA's fault -- their job isn't to decide how many prisoners should use Humane Restraint's No-Shank Toothbrush -- think of a plastic thimble with bristles. They just have to figure out how to safely and economically warehouse the millions upon millions of people we insist on sending them.
     The corrections conference offered five days of workshops, most on practical topics like "Upgrading Suicide Risk Assessment Practice" and "The North Dakota Department of Corrections' Better Results for Therapy of Hepatitis C."
     But one session Tuesday afternoon seemed out of place: "Prometheus Bound -- A Reading of the Greek Tragedy and Its Relation to Corrections."
     The workshop is the creation of Bryan Doerries, a New York writer and translator who founded Theater of War, a group that puts on readings of ancient Greek plays for soldiers, to get them talking about the war.
     He realized that prison guards are another group under constant pressure with little opportunity to discuss it, and that "Prometheus," the tale of a god chained to a rock, punished for stealing fire and giving it to humans, might provide such an opportunity.
     He brought the idea to George Lombardi, director of the state of Missouri's Department of Corrections, where last year "Prometheus" was performed four times for staff.
     "They got it," Lombardi said. "We do lots of stuff for offenders, all kinds of programs, but we don't have a whole lot for staff.
     "Prometheus has great relevance for those of us working in correctional institutions, particularly with very recalcitrant offenders."
     A quartet of Chicago actors from the Steppenwolf Theater read four scenes, with James Meredith particularly fine as Prometheus. A discussion followed, and participants -- most weren't turnkeys fresh from the cell block, but longtime administrators -- immediately offered ways the play relates to them.
     "He was resolute," said S. Elwood York Jr., director of pretrial services for Key West, Florida's 16th District, who heard in "Prometheus" the echo of boastful gang members. "His attitude was, 'I'm taking my lumps. I'm tough. I'm proud of what I did.' "
     Beforehand, I had thought Prometheus' pride would make the play less relevant -- he did something noble, in bringing fire to man. But the corrections workers said many criminals feel exactly the same way.
     "Sometimes we forget that the person who committed the offense is committed to the cause," said York, mentioning gang loyalty. "It's a different set of priorities."
     John Gannon, a forensic psychologist, called it "a kind of heroic disorder" -- a pride in their ability to absorb punishment, a failure to see the goal of correction.
     Bringing prisoners around to a different view is more important than ever.
     "With overcrowding, you get double bunks, triple bunks, 3,200 people in a space for 1,600," said Adrienne Poteat, a federal corrections official from Washington, D.C. "That's a lot of people, and what do you do with them?"
     What indeed? Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who oversees nearly 10,000 prisoners at any given time at the County Jail, is concerned with this issue, and I asked him about it.
      "Other than a very small segment of the jail population, they're all getting out," he said. "The question is: How would you want them to be when they get out? Better or worse than when they went in?"
     He said that except for a minority who are "damn close to evil," this "other, much, much, much larger group should be handled with far more flexibility" than we currently muster, focusing more on treating their problems with programs far less costly than prison.
     "You don't even have to get into the debate whether you're liberal, conservative, tough-on-crime -- let's talk about being fiscally smart, for once," Dart said. "We cannot continue to do it this way. Our grandchildren -- heck, our children -- will have nothing left."

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, August 4, 2010 

'Complicit in our own seduction'

    While I am the sole writer, editor, and proprietor of this blog, I'm not the only person who helps make it a success. Sometimes I forget that. Not only are there occasional contributors, such as my pals who helped tide me over after surgery, but there are readers whose comments point out errors and add valuable perspective. 

     Being a little abashed Sunday at not having read "Paradise Lost," I invited any readers who have read the book to share their thoughts. 

     I was impressed by the quality of the replies, particularly this email, which I found both interesting and beautiful, and will share with you in full. 

     Linda Clarke-Borre writes:

     Best wishes for a swift recovery. At least you are in a leafy suburban paradise. You mentioned Paradise Lost. It’s epic, and I thought you might appreciate a couple lessons I derived from reading it before life happened- and I began to understand…
     It’s a Puritan Epic for our times. Milton gives the Devil the best lines. “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Milton, the failed revolutionary, writes his own fury into the fallen angel. (In Christian writings the Devil’s name is Lucifer — which means angel of light. Milton seduces readers into admiring his elaborate lies, making us complicit in our own seduction). 

     Then there’s heartfelt humanity of Adam and Eve. Their fall isn’t about an apple. It’s encoded in the conversation between them. Eve isn’t seduced by fruit, but by the flattery of her own reflection. Adam cannot bear to lose her. He looks at her and says, “She is my other self,” and chooses her over God. It’s the writing that is so moving; Milton makes you feel the bones of their relationship. When they hold hands and walk into a world of thorns, they are us.

     The third “thread” running through the epic story is the blind poet’s prayer. At the very beginning, Milton invokes a muse, calling on the Holy Spirit to illumine him, because he is blind. He can’t see the page, and dictates this entire epic to his daughters at night, as he asks God to be his inward eye. So when he describes the light of Heaven or murky Hell, he isn’t painting pictures; he is remembering light. Here, the poem becomes an act of radical faith, not in certainty, but in the very act of seeking. He dares to “justify the ways of God to men,” but in the end, he doesn’t justify them logically. He justifies them aesthetically, through the exquisite beauty of his verse. The poem is a glorious paradox: a Puritan epic about disobedience, a political tract that transcends politics, a tragedy that ends with hope. Every time I read the final lines—“They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way”—I am still much moved, not because they are punished. But because they are together.

     I don't know about you, but that makes me want to read the book.

William Blake

'The mind is its own place'

Satan, Sin and Death, by Thomas Rowlandson. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  
     "F… F… F… J… J… J…"

     I don't remember much about seventh grade. But for some reason, I remember sitting in touch typing class, listening to a monotonous voice on a record slowly enunciate the letters to type, starting with the above, first with our left index finger then with our right. Maybe because it was so god-awful dull. We drilled and drilled, practiced and practiced, until it became hardwired into our limbic systems. I couldn't tell you where any of the letters are on a keyboard; my body just knows.

      Why did I take typing? My wife-to-be studiously avoided it, because she didn't want to end up a secretary. But I wanted to be a writer, and a writer needs to know how to type. About the same time I also used all my paper route money to buy a walnut roll top desk, because a writer also needs one of those. It wasn't quite as useful, but it's sitting right behind me now as I talk, and it does hold a lot of stuff.

     Frankly, it's not something I think much about. Flop my fingers onto the keyboard, start to write and what I want to say appears on the computer screen in front of me. Like magic. Until a few days ago when, already looking ahead to returning to work, and with my left arm and a sling for the next four weeks, I figured I better learn how to dictate.

     You would think, being a newspaper man, I would have dictated before. When I started, there were reporters, out in the field, collecting information, jotting down notes, and what were called "rewrite men." They would sit in the paper and take dictation. They never left. Heck, I used to joke that I never saw one particular rewrite man, Phillip J. O'Connor, stand up. Though I must have, because he was very tall. I might've dictated once or twice; I remember being at some event, clutching a payphone, composing lines into the receiver. But that seldom happened.

     I'll tell you what my first thought was after I decided I had to learn to dictate these columns. It's a little embarrassing, but I thought of John Milton, the author of "Paradise Lost." Any idea why? That's right. Milton was blind and dictated the masterpiece to his daughters, composing it in his head, 40 lines at a time. 

     I've never read "Paradise Lost" – an astounding lapse, I know, for all the times I read "The Inferno." Let's say the opportunity never arose. Plus, I heard it was dull – maybe you guys can help here: has anybody read it? Liked it? 

     Sorry to toss the ball in your court. I wanted to read it now, while recovering from shoulder surgery – it seemed the ideal time. But I was deep into other books and I just couldn't muster the gumption to do it. Its reputation is not one of deep fascination. Though I shouldn't criticize because, as I said, I haven't read it. Yet.

     I do recall a quote from it that I use from time to time, one very apt in my present condition: in a sling, sleeping in a chair under a wool blanket, trying to heal, day by day: "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Hell of heaven, a heaven of Hell."

     That has to be true, as anyone knows who has been in a good situation, only to see it sour due to some unforeseen circumstance, or managed to redeem a bad situation by approaching it with the right attitude. 

And you think that's a good thing?

     “Help yourself to some salad,“ said my wife, pushing an attractive bowl of feta, tomato and cucumber in my direction. I gazed at the pair of salad tongs tucked in the bowl, at the ready, for a two-handed person.
     "I can't help myself,“ I said. 
     We both laughed.
      Habit a stern taskmaster. Even in my second of six weeks of having my left arm in a sling, immobilized with a foam pillow against my chest, our default occasionally still is: I can do it myself. Which, to be fair, sometimes I can. And sometimes I can't.
     The good news is the surgery went well, the torn rotator cuff repaired, apparently, and I am off narcotics and on the mend. Sleeping in a chair in the TV room — 10 days and counting — is not the brutal hardship I had imagined, and quite necessary when twisting in my sleep could rip out the surgeon's handiwork. Don't want that.

     Plus, it's a really nice chair. A blue leather electric recliner. When we bought it, I worried it was a cross between a prop from "Wall-E" and a medical device for the infirm. Now I'm glad it is.

     My wife has been extraordinarily helpful and while I don't wanna speak for her, I'm fairly confident she'd agree that the process has been generally endurable, even pleasant, generally, at least more pleasant than I anticipated it would be. 

     There's been a surprising amount of laughter. The biggest laugh came on Tuesday, when I joined Edie outside for the morning dog walk and then was invigorated enough to actually go up to my office and give writing by dictation a try. Which is how I am doing this now. Weird for a touch typist since the 7th grade, and there are definite kinks in the system. I say "surely" and it types, stupidly, "Shirley." But it works well enough.

     Toward lunchtime, I walked downstairs. into the living room and kissed her on the head
     "I feel almost like my old self again,” I said
     “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she replied, not missing a beat.
     We both laughed so hard I almost felt lightheaded.

Flashback 2009: A kernel of truth about risk obsession

     When the history of our current disaster is written — if we still do that sort of thing — I'm sure the Democrats will get their share of blame for being handmaidens to our ruin, between Joe Biden running for a second term despite his clearly being too diminished by age to pull it off and our current tendency to take our eye off the ball and squabble over secondary issues. The Republicans are buffing the golden calf of Donald Trump with their long tresses, fluttering timbrals and singing praise to the liar, bully, fraud and traitor, while the Democrats still can't seem to find their ass with both hands.

     I was looking for last week's lung transplant story when I noticed this. The second item is a sobering reminder that elevating toxic narcissists and self-dealing clowns is unfortunately not a Republican monopoly.

OPENING SHOT . . .

     Popcorn is the only food that explodes. The moisture inside the corn kernels gets agitated, by heat or microwave, then blows up and turns the kernels inside out. The result is tasty and fun, the only food you'll sit in the dark and shovel into your face by the cubic foot and not worry about.
     Or try not to worry about. Sure, popcorn has its drawbacks — salt and oil and whatever. Cracking a tooth on an unpopped kernel. But I try not to think about those perils. You can't worry about everything. You have to mark out certain areas in life as worry-free zones, regions whose hazards you blithely ignore, because if you fret about every aspect of existence, then the worry itself gets you.
     So I'm wandering Sunset Foods, just killing time until my wife picks up the groceries, and my attention falls upon a box of "Smart Balance Non-Hydrogenated Light Butter Flavor Deluxe Microwave Popcorn." As if that weren't a mouthful already, a bright orange star on the box proclaims "No Diacetyl added," the word "added" in tiny letters.
     Which of course made me suspect the stuff is just silly with naturally occurring diacetyl and raised the immediate question — all together now! — "What's diacetyl?"
     Diacetyl is a chemical in artificial butter flavor linked to a rare but severe respiratory disease — bronchiolitis obliterans — also known as "popcorn lung." So far it's mostly a concern in popcorn factories; only one consumer has gotten it — some poor Joe who ate two bags of microwave popcorn a day for 10 years.
     But we are a nation obscured with tiny risks, so much so that a popcorn manufacturer would ballyhoo the fact that it doesn't go out of its way to add extra doses of something that might give you an exotic ailment cured only by a lung transplant or death. I'm no big shot marketer, but I would have gone with "tasty and fluffy" in the big orange star and left lung disease out of it.

WHAT ABOUT US, ROLAND?

     A few years back, when a heart-wrenching crime story grabbed the editorial board's attention and sparked outrage, the gears of opinionating would sometimes start to turn.
     At that point one member would snap forward and say something along the lines of, "So, you want the paper to take a position AGAINST murdering children?"
     At least in my own mind. Maybe I just mumbled. But the point is, some things go without saying. This column has turned its attention away from Roland Burris for the past week because no explanation is necessary; the situation is all too apparent.
     Blinded by self-regard, elected by nobody (worse, rejected by voters statewide in his most recent bids for office), Burris clings to his illegitimate power and blathers on about himself — I didn't do wrong; I did not lie; I will be vindicated.
     A reader of mine sometimes cuts out this column, circles every "I" with a red felt tip pen and sends it back. It stings, but also conveys two lessons, one easy and one hard. The easy lesson: use "I" less — it isn't a very colorful word, is it? The second, much tougher lesson: remember that it isn't all about me, that the footprint I'm leaving is tiny and will be washed away by the first wave. I'm only sorry it took me this long to figure that out.
     Then again, Roland Burris is 71, and with him, it's I, I, I all the time. Why can't he talk about us for once? Let's hear him say why the state of Illinois needs him to lead us through this nightmare panorama of crisis over the next two years. How his fellow citizens really are best served by watching the mill wheels of justice slowly grind him into a powder. How the Democratic Party is served by keeping this unelected and unelectable pol in power. Let him deny that almost any random Illinoisan that Gov. Quinn might tap on the shoulder during the lunch rush at Potbelly would become a better senator than Burris is going to be.
     Those are obvious points, in my mind, but sometimes I guess you have to state the obvious.
      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 23, 2009

Flashback 2012: Chicago museums have military kin covered

     

   This is a fun story from the summer before this blog began. Checking on the family involved, I see Peter Blake retired from the Marines a year after this was written. If you want to know more about Molly Blake, at that time she wrote an essay in the New York Times.

     You may not consider the Thorne Miniature Rooms — those finely detailed dioramas in the basement of the Art Institute — to be one of the more thrilling examples of art to be found in that institution.
     But then you are not the Blake sisters, Helen and Leah, of Yuma, Ariz., who visited there Thursday morning.
     “Pink! Pink! Pink! It’s pink!” enthused Helen, 7, clasping her hands together and bouncing, almost levitating, with excitement in front of the Pennsylvania Drawing Room.
     “Momma, look at that!” Leah, 5½, called to Molly Blake, pointing at another room. “Stairs!” Their home has none, so she identified stairs again and again, with wonder.
     The three were in town visiting Molly’s parents in Westmont. Her husband, Peter, is a Marine Harrier pilot, just returned from a six-month tour in Japan. Right now he’s back at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma.
     Blake and her daughters visited the Art Institute thanks to Blue Star Museums, a program set up two years ago by Blue Star Families, a group that supports military families. Blue Star Museums invites military personnel and their families to visit 1,800 museums across the country, free of charge, between Memorial Day and Labor Day. All they have to do is show their military ID.
     “They’re all over the place,” Molly said.
     In Chicago, the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art, plus 11 smaller museums take part (but not the Museum of Science and Industry or the Field Museum, though the Field admits active-duty military personnel for free year-round).
     “We’re really proud to participate in the program,” said Erin Hogan, Art Institute spokeswoman and herself “a military brat.”
     “My dad was unexpectedly deployed,” she said. “It can be tough on military kids, you move around a lot, especially in the past 10 years. It’s very tough.” Here museums can help. “We see it as a way for families to spend positive and enriching time together.”
     You can never predict what kids will notice at a museum. The Blake girls blew by Grant Wood’s stern couple in “American Gothic” without a glance, then stopped to study the couples dancing in Archibald Motley’s jazzy red Harlem Renaissance “Blues.”
     “They’re about to kiss!” explained Helen.
     The girls are among nearly 2 million family members of our country’s 1.4 million active-duty military personnel. These families face all kinds of trouble stemming from the service of their loved ones. Blue Star Families did a survey of military families and found concern about the effects of deployment on children was cited as their No. 1 worry more often than even post-traumatic stress was mentioned. Families try to stay positive.
     “There are times of stress,” said Molly Blake. “But we’ve worked hard to educate them about why we go through these things and why Peter deployed, and try to instill pride in them. We don’t focus on the negatives. We focus on some of the fun things we do while he was gone.”
     Nor is the stress limited to children. The Harrier is known as the “widow maker,” but Molly says she tries not to worry anymore.
     “I’m used to it by now,” she said. “The ejection seats work really well.”
     The trio took in the Roy Lichtenstein special exhibit, giving his large pop art canvases of cartoon pilots a more literal analysis than the typical art connoisseur might conjure up.
     “Some of the pictures are of military pilots, just like daddy,” said Molly Blake.
     “I don’t get it,” said Helen, of “Seascape,” a 1964 field of blue dots. “It’s art,” her mother said. “You don’t have to get it.”
     This being an art museum, however, some works demanded a certain parental finesse, such as Lichtenstein’s enormous canvas of naked women playing volleyball. “Oh my gosh,” said Molly, quickening her stride. “What are those girls doing?”
     Leah didn’t notice. Helen crinkled her freckled nose and said, “I would never, ever do that.”
     Later, in the Thorne rooms, Leah skipped past Virginia Keep Clark’s oil portrait of a grand, tight-mouthed Mrs. James Ward Thorne, and tossed off an opinion that is perhaps unique in the painting’s 97-year-history.
      “That girl’s pretty!” she said.
     About 300,000 service-member families took advantage of the program this year, and while it is fitting to salute the museums that participate, it’s also appropriate to remember that not enough people even consider the families of the military and what they go through when their loved ones deploy, as Lt. Col. Peter Blake has done five times already.
     The Blue Star Families asked those it surveyed whether they agree with this statement: “The general public does not truly understand or appreciate the sacrifices made by service members and their families.”
     A whopping 95 percent said yes, they do agree, an answer that may shock, but shouldn’t surprise the public. Or it would shock, if they ever paused to think about it.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 22, 2012

I remember liking this photo, with Molly gazing into the glass, and her daughter's reflection
staring back.