Meet my metaphors #1: Lord Jim

Hedy Lamar as Tondelayo in the 1942 film "White Cargo."
Thurber, writing in 1933, was referring to the book.

     I'm not in the paper for the next two weeks — taking time off. So as not to leave you in the lurch, I'm starting with a series I'm calling "Meet my metaphors." Why that? Honestly, I'm the type of writer who would rather coin a sharp, original metaphor than break real news. Assuming that's a "type" and not solely me. Is that a good or bad thing? Probably both. As always, your indulgence is appreciated.

     Lord Jim, Conrad's haunted wanderer, seemed the natural place to begin.

     Growing up, I loved James Thurber. Loved "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." Loved "The Catbird Seat." Loved the cartoons. Loved the man himself, half blind, often fully drunk, early on pairing up, quite improbably, with the trim, generally upright E.B. White. As a young man, I wanted to be James Thurber.
     I particularly loved his similes. Nearing 40, his "faculties may have closed up like flowers at evening." He worries about heading to his publisher and disappearing "like Ambrose Bierce." Both found in the second paragraph of "Preface to a Life," at the beginning of his classic "My Life and Hard Times."
    That slim volume's "A Note at the End" contains this passage that has never left me:

    The mistaken exits and entrances of my thirties have moved me several times to some thought of spending the rest of my days wandering aimlessly around the South Seas, like a character out of Conrad, silent and inscrutable. But the necessity for frequent visits to my oculist and dentist has prevented this. You can't be running back from Singapore every few months to get your lenses changed and still retain the proper mood for wandering. Furthermore, my horn-rimmed glasses and my Ohio accent betray me, even when I sit on the terrasses of little tropical cafes, wearing a pith helmet, starting straight ahead, and twitching a muscle in my jaw. I found this out when I tried wandering around the West Indies one summer. Instead of being followed by the whispers of men and the glances of women, I was followed by bead salesmen and native women with postcards. Nor did any dark girl, looking at all like Tondelayo in "White Cargo," come forward and offer to go to pieces with me. They tried to sell me baskets.
     Under these circumstances it is impossible to inscrutable, and a wanderer who isn't inscrutable might just as well be back at Broad and High Streets in Columbus sitting in the Baltimore Dairy Lunch
     There was, of course, even for Conrad's Lord Jim, no running away. The cloud of his special discomfiture followed him like a pup, no matter what ships he took or what wildernesses he entered.

      I thought about, and referred to, this passage for many years — I think it kept me from ever even being tempted to become one of those adventuresome young people who travel for long stretches, spend a long time staring at some distant horizon, considering themselves thus ennobled. Now that I reread the above, I realize that one of my favorite similes I believe I coined — that certain annoyances follow me "quacking like a pull toy duck," is just a reworking of Thurber's tagalong pup.

     Eventually I read Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim," and was surprised at how dense and difficult it is. 

    But a handy metaphor. In 2020, trying to fathom the collapse of Republican leadership in "Struggling to understand GOP cowardice," I summarized the plot — and you know a metaphor is on its last legs when you have to explain it:

     But when reflecting on the moral repugnance of men like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — four powerful Republican senators who know better, who see what Trump is attempting, yet do nothing, or worse abet him — I search history in vain for similar craven cowardice.
     Literature offers a few: “Lord Jim,” by Joseph Conrad. Jim is a British sailor on the crew of the Patna, a ship on the Red Sea. The ship founders, and the captain and crew — and after some hesitation, Jim — abandon the ship and its 800 Muslim pilgrims.
     Only the Patna doesn’t sink. It’s towed into port, and Jim and his shipmates are publicly vilified. He wanders the world, fleeing his shame. But that’s fiction.

     The book, if I recall properly, is narrated by an admirer of Jim's, Captain Marlowe, with more homoerotic notes than I had expected in a novel written in 1900.
   Asked in 2015 to wax eloquent on the plight of Steve Bartman (have we finally forgotten?) the man unfairly blamed for the Cubs' 2003 collapse against the Marlins in a decisive game in the National League Championship, I supported his careful silence:

     What could Bartman possibly say that would reward the media for its dozen-year quest? He could have lived the existence of Job, squatting in dust at the gates of the city, and express it with the eloquence of Joseph Conrad describing Lord Jim's wanderings around the South Seas, trying to escape his shame, and frankly it would still be inadequate. Silence is his best option.

     Being a meek man afraid of rigors, of course I embrace Thurber's self-assessment, even if it means grabbing a 126-year-old character most readers have never heard of. This, from last year, writing about getting a passport of an upcoming trip aboard:

    I am what they call "a worrier." You probably already figured that out. And I knew as the cab pulled away from my house, heading off to our big trip, in addition to my worrying about the toaster coming to life and setting fire to the drapes which we don't have, and the refrigerator door hanging open, and everything else I conjure up to mock the idea that I am Conradian wanderer out of Lord Jim, I'll also worry until we get back that every checkpoint we pass would snag me on my passport. "Oh sorry Mr., ah, Steinberg, your whole trip is ruined because your passport expires five months and 27 days after this trip is scheduled to end..."

     Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Time to retire Lord Jim. Yes, I will do so. If I can. I know he's loitering languorously somewhere along one of the dusty, narrow back alleys of my brain, in white hat and linen suit, flipping through a small volume he has picked up off a stand. It will be no easy task to find him and flush him out.

 

Dunkin' Bagels

Actual bagels made in Brooklyn

     A friend of mine flew out of Midway on Friday. Had she asked me, I would have strongly advised her to a) never buy food at an airport if you can possibly avoid it and b) never eat at a Dunkin' Donuts for any reason whatsoever and c) never forget, of the range of foodstuff never eaten at the Dunkin' Donuts you never patronize, to particularly abstain from ordering bagels. You risk rending the fabric of time.
     Not to minimize her food service nightmare, which was sufficiently nuts that I asked if she would permit me to share her subsequent complaint to Dunkin's, if only to ladle the scorn upon Dunkin's that they deserve on their best day. In her defense, she was under the impression that a Great American Bagel was at Midway ("don’t mistake me for someone who thinks a Dunkin Donuts bagel is acceptable" is how she phrased it, in our considerable post -fiasco parsing) and was looking for that, when its non-presence made her stoop to order a Dunkin's bagel (heck, they can't even make a good DONUT, in my estimation). She asked that I shield her identity to escape the shame of patronizing Dunkin' Donuts — whose coffee, I am told, can be acceptable — and I agreed. 

     Greetings, your Twitter account suggested I DM you with feedback re concessions. 
     First, please find a way to put a few tables along the terminals and especially at the ends. Many of the concessions have no seating areas themselves, so you buy food that really requires more than a lap at the end of terminal B and then find you have to walk all the way back to the start to sit down. 
     Two: If you can contact whoever manages the Midway Dunkin' Donuts to pass along my input, please do: since the central DD was so jammed I walked to the end of Terminal B and ordered two sesame bagels sliced and well toasted and a medium coffee. First I had to persuade the counter person to take my order, because even though she was doing nothing, she insisted I use the kiosk. But the kiosk would not let me choose a bagel flavor. Finally she sulkily agreed to take the order.
      Some time later I got the coffee and asked where the creamers were. They seemed shocked that anyone would put cream in coffee but eventually brought me a paper cup with about two drops of milk in it. When I asked for more, like Oliver Twist, the worker turned to a manager and said, “Do I have to give it to her?” 
     Finally I had my coffee and bag of bagels and realized there was nowhere for my husband and I to eat. We ran back to the center to be able to sit and eat before our flight. Ripped open the bag and found that the DD people at the end of the terminal had put the bagels into the toaster without slicing them. I took the bagels to the nearby center Dunkin and asked the girl at the window to help me out on that. She stared at me, then continued handing out other orders as soon as I made space at the counter, thinking my problem would be attended to. After a while I realized no one was going to help me. The girl at there would not respond to me so I finally had to stand right at the window again until she asked me to move so she could hand out other orders. I repeated my problem. She claimed it wasn’t Dunkin bagels. I showed her the Dunkin bag. A manager came over and finally agreed to give me a refund and charge me for new bagels. But then he couldn’t make the register work. 
     Eventually he agreed to give me two new bagels, and when I asked for two sesame, he said Dunkin' Donuts doesn’t have sesame at the airport. I pointed out that I had just purchased two from Dunkin' at the airport. Then he got really nasty. Eventually we agreed on two plain bagels, sliced and well toasted. I don’t ask for and did not receive fresh cream cheese. And when I opened the bag, I found two plain bagels barely warm, not at all toasted. All this cost me, with tip, almost $17. I finally went to Tall Boy Tacos and got a breakfast burrito, costing me $18 more dollars. Quite an expensive breakfast. I will send you next a picture of the Dunkin with its sesame bagels—and a sign identifying them as such. Thank you.

Know your enemy: buckthorn

Fear it.

     I had more fun with my column on Arbor Day than a person should probably have while getting paid. The first draft ran 30 percent long, and I had to leave a few interesting bits on the cutting room floor. Hallmark and American Greetings do not sell Arbor Day cards, as far as I can tell — I cut that first, as it's hard to prove a negative, and figured I was inviting someone to wave their some undetected Hugs for Trees series under my nose.
    Beer companies also do up the holiday — I checked because initially I said they didn't, then thought: "Better find out." The following was trimmed from the end of the first graph:

     A few small local beer companies make an effort — Yards Brewing in Philadelphia has "ArBrew Day," giving away free saplings and beer. But the big boys stand pat, waiting for Memorial Day. A pity. I'd like to see Angry Orchard do it up right. "Slam a cold hard cider for the trees that made it!"

     One of the Arbor Day tips I suggested was this:

     Learn what buckthorn is — an aggressively invasive tree, illegal in Illinois to buy, sell or plant, that will crowd out the entirety of nature if we let it — and carefully pull the next sprout you see.

     But I couldn't imagine anyone actually doing it.
     The only lawful way to plant buckthorn is if you get a permit and are studying improved ways to kill it. Once buckthorn takes hold, you can't pull it, you have to dig it out. I try to get an early jump. I walked my yard yesterday, for the second time this spring, doing buckthorn suppression. I must have dug out 25 buckthorn sprouts. Their roots race to the center of the earth and if you wait until they're six inches tall they can be devilishly hard to extract. When we bought this property, 25 years ago, the northeast corner of our yard had buckthorn trees 15 feet tall, and without constant vigilance, they'll be back in no time. Friday I took out a tree that had hidden inside a large bush that was easily seven feet tall, with thorns an inch long (they call it buckthorn for a reason). Some of my neighbors down the block still have buckthorn hedges, decades old, and while I have considered stopping by with a gas can and wordlessly setting them on fire, that would be wrong. The birds gobble their berries and poop the seeds in my yard. Sadly, buckthorns are not illegal to own, though that would be a logical next step if any legislator wants to take the hint. We're in a war and buckthorn is winning.

We love trees. So why isn't Arbor Day a bigger deal?

"A-mal-gam" by Nick Cave.

     Happy Arbor Day! Did it sneak up on you, again? Or are you ready with the ... well, not a lot to do on Arbor Day. No gifts to give, no cards to send. No parties to throw unless you're a municipality, and even then, they celebrate by doing the same thing they do all year long: Put a few trees in the ground. It's like treating your wife to dinner at home and a TV show for her birthday.
     It doesn't make sense. Love is elusive, fleeting, heartbreaking, yet Valentine's Day is huge. Trees are everywhere, permanent, uplifting. Yet we give them the cold shoulder. Why isn't Arbor Day a bigger deal?
     "That's a really good question," said David Horvath, a certified arborist with the Davey Tree Expert Company. "It doesn't get much mention in the media. You guys aren't reporting on it."
     Oh right. Our fault. Maybe so. This is my first Arbor Day column in 30 years. Horvath must have detected my air of injury, because he mused that lack of attention might be a good thing.
     "We're doing a pretty good job, preserving trees," he said. "We don't have a lot of news stories about hundreds of acres being clear cut."
     Not yet. That may be coming, with the Trump administration dismantling the U.S. Forest Service and going gaga for logging.
     It's a good time to reaffirm our love of trees. Trees are cool, and very Chicago. How so? For starters, we have a direct, familial link to Arbor Day: J. Sterling Morton, who created Arbor Day in 1872 as a way to forest treeless Nebraska. Fifty years later, his son Joy Morton, founder of Morton Salt, created the Morton Arboretum on his country estate in west suburban Lisle.
     Arbor Day was a state-by-state affair until 1970, when Richard Nixon established national Arbor Day as the last Friday in April (though states still celebrate at peak planting times. Texas Arbor Day is the first Friday in November).
     The city of Chicago has about 3.5 million trees, and I wish I could tell you a dozen tree stories. Space limits us to one. In 1972, students voted for an Illinois state tree. The white oak won. At Austin High School, however, students disagreed, pooled their money — each chipped in a penny — and bought a black oak, which they planted in the school courtyard.
     "The black student body felt a closer identification with this type of oak," the Chicago Daily News helpfully explained. (The tree, alas, is no longer there, according to the Chicago Public Schools. "No sign of the black oak tree," said Ben Pagani, of CPS, who added engineers were sent to scope out the situation).

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A note on comments

 

"Expressman" by Norman Rockwell
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     You can't comment after stories on the Sun-Times homepage, and haven't been able to for quite a while — since 2014. Why did we stop posting them? Doing so was a pain in the ass, and patrolling the racist, sexist, unkind remarks was a full-time job — often taking more editorial time than writing the stories themselves. There was no upside. Nobody said, "Yeah, I read the Sun-Times because the comments after stories are so sharp."

     Most papers don't post them.         

     Not that the negative comments were uninteresting. They were, but in a bad way. You couldn't run a story about a 6-year-old getting hit by a bus without having the lad taunted in the comments. It was sad. To read them was to flip over a rock and expose the underside of human life, better left hidden. 

     Despite such drawbacks, I allow comments on my blog because they seem to encourage engagement, and vetting them is not particularly difficult. I get to answer reader questions. I often learn things — facts, ideas, perspectives, arguments. True, I have to read them, which takes time. Sometimes I'm torn whether something is so toxic and crazy that its entertainment value outweighs the unpleasantness of reading it.

     I vet them rigorously. I don't want to let EGD devolve into a carnival of cruelty and snark. There is enough of that everywhere else.

     But comments are valuable. They alert me to typos, errors, oversights — that's important in a one man show (though it really isn't; I have you).

     Sometimes I get sucked into personalities. I try to avoid prima donas. Only room for one of those here, me. I don't mind people telling me I'm mistaken, more or less politely — if they're telling me I'm mistaken because I'm a idiot, well, bad enough that I have to read it, it's funny that someone would think I'd want to share the news on my own blog. I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm an idiot, not ballyhoo it. 
     Sometimes I just don't feel like having a topic explored. The Israeli policy on hanging Palestinians seems patently racist, mind-boggling and grotesque, but that doesn't mean I want someone to expound upon it at length under an unrelated post. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood for a certain topic. It's my show, and I can call the tunes.

     To post or not is a spot judgment call. Sometimes I delete a remark and immediately regret it — sometimes it's a slip of the hand, honestly. I don't like out-of-the-blue comments, but sometimes an unrelated comment is valuable. Under yesterday's Ozempic post, a reader complained about these bothersome McAfee ads that pop up on the paper's web site. I asked him to send me an email, and, full-service columnist that I am, forwarded it to the paper's CEO and the editor-in-chief. Both responded — we value our readers — and said that this is a real issue, that other people have complained, including staffers, that solutions were being discussed in meetings, and they were on it. So hurrah for us, right? 

     Sometimes readers will be inspired to go on in-depth personal reminiscences — we're mostly  old, remember — and I tend to post those, though I'm not sure what they add to the conversation. When I reflect on my past, I begin by assuming, correctly, that nobody but nobody cares what happened to me, and I have to find a way to slather on enough art to make them care. Others give it a shot, with varying degrees of success, and I don't see a reason not to share them. 

     Lately, when people sign up, in my little note thanking them, I invite the new readers to comment — sincerely. I do appreciate people taking the time to read, and to comment, and feel a piece has resonated when it gets 20 or 30 comments and not just two or three. If you haven't commented yet, please do. It's fun, apparently.

    There have been, since the blog began in 2013, exactly 4,878 posts, and over 60,000 comments. Or an average of about a dozen comments per post. That isn't bad. The record, I believe, is my ill-starred 2023 introduction to Aldi, which drew 138 remarks, most of them pro-Aldi. I think comments add to the experience that is everygoddamnday.com. So long as you take the time to write them, I will take the time to read them, and post all that bring something to the table, and more than a few that don't. 

     

Praise the Lord and pass the Ozempic

     Sure, I’m taking Ozempic. Aren’t you? Isn’t everybody?
     OK, that’s an exaggeration. There’s also Zepbound and Wegovy and all those other drugs that belong to the GLP-1 class of weight-blasting tonics. Some folks take those instead (though really, just among us Ozempic users — we view those as cheap knockoffs, right? Like a restaurant serving Red Gold ketchup instead of Heinz. We’ve got the good stuff).
     Thirty million American adults — 1 in 8 — take GLP-1 drugs, which not only curb your appetite so you can be a svelter, happier, more successful you, but seem to offer a wide and expanding range of positive results, from quieting the howl of addiction to healing brain trauma. According to the rapidly building data, taking such drugs can cut your risk of heart attack or stroke by 20%. I mentioned to a young person of my acquaintance that I was taking Ozempic, and he expressed an emotion not often heard when old people are cataloging their medicines: envy. Ozempic is supposed to keep you young, he said, wishing he could get some.
     I believe that ship has already sailed for me, though freezing the decline process at this point would be welcome.
     All of this is relatively new. Ozempic received FDA approval in December 2017. Researchers are dancing as fast as they can, but if after 10 full years of use, Ozempic causes your head to tumble off your shoulders, then the joke will be on humanity, again. Remember another hugely popular drug that helps keep you thin, nicotine. People didn’t figure out tobacco’s lethality for 400 years after Europeans first embraced it. Millions still haven’t.
     Though given Ozempic’s fat-busting abilities, we’ll accept the occasional head bouncing down the sidewalk, giving it a quick soccer flick as we pass.
     Despite dieting continually for the past half-century — I’ve counted more calories than stars in the known universe — I would have never sought out Ozempic had Type I diabetes not fried my pancreas and a doctor suggested I might try it. Technically, Ozempic is used for Type II diabetes, to help your not-dead pancreas produce insulin, which doesn’t mean much if the organ is merely decorative (There’s a fun online shop for Type I diabetes T-shirts and various gadgets called “The Useless Pancreas.”) But apparently mine is still quivering, kind of — I seem to have what some call Type 1.5; doctors tend to shrug and mumble when pressed for details — so a GLP-1 drug might do some good.

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Put that mirror down or I'll sue!

"Toppers," by Jan Pieter van Baurschelt (Rijksmuseum)

     When the Trump Era finally comes to an end, with its corruption, cruelty and incompetence, that last quality will be seen almost as a godsend; we will be grateful for how the damage, though extensive, was also constrained by the unfathomable laziness and stupidity of the toadies selected for their blind obedience and nothing else. 
      A vigorous, disciplined and skilled FBI director, determined to do the bidding of his master, could have cut a swath of damage across the country. And Kash Patel, the FBI director, is trying to do just that. But he keeps tripping over his limitations, at least according to a story, "The FBI Director is MIA," published in The Atlantic. Rather than manage his 38,000 agents, Patel, the magazine said, spends his time "with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences." 
     But that isn't why I'm writing this. Patel, trained at the Trump knee, is now suing the magazine for $250 million — these lawsuits reflect the heavy-handed tactics the Trump administration is increasingly turning to trying to stifle valid media criticism. ICE will be tossing reporters into white vans next. For now, though suing is Trump's go-to move, or, rather, threatening to sue. Though I can't help but notice he has never, to my knowledge, sued anyone accusing him of molesting girls under the aegis of Jeffrey Epstein, I wonder why that is? 
     Could it be that he didn't want to end up in a court of law where the defendant would of course present evidence that the accusations are true? A thought that clearly did not occur to Patel. 
    Needless to say, I've never met the man. He could be sober as a church mouse, and dedicated to his craft, and I hope he is. 

      But I am familiar with The Atlantic, and my hunch is they would not publish such a story if it weren't true. The story is almost comically well documented — the initial humiliating vignette of Patel being unable to log onto this computer, then panicking and announcing he had been fired is "according to nine people familiar with his outreach." Nine people? I haven't read a story backing up a fact with nine sources in my entire life. The article names the bars he's drinking at — Ned's in DC, the Poodle Room in Vegas. Nor does the news shock.
     "Patel's drinking is no secret," the magazine reports, pointing out that he was filmed chugging beer with the U.S. Men's Olympic hockey in their locker room after their gold medal game.
     Suing is both bluster and blunder. Rather than repairing the damage to Patel's good reputation — not that such a thing exists — he is merely broadcasting the accusations and ensuring they remain in the public eye for the foreseeable future, or until he's summarily canned by Trump for being pathetic. 
     "Some at the FBI are concerned that Patel's behavior has left the country more vulnerable," the magazine wrote. I dispute that. Better Patel doing shots in Vegas than at his desk in DC, pursuing what FBI agents retain their sense of justice and patriotism. 
     Or as one official told The Atlantic: "Part of me is glad he's wasting his time on bullshit, because it's less dangerous for the rule of law."
    Make that two of us.

    Now Patel's genius idea is to force that official to repeat his statement in open court.  If the suit ever comes to trial. My bet is, it won't — the only question is, which is shitcanned first, the lawsuit or Patel.