Friday, March 29, 2024

We love and value you — whoever you are


     Humans and machines ... they're not the same yet, right? We recognize a difference.
     A big difference, in my estimation. The difference between a plumber at your door and frantically thumbing through a fix-it manual. The difference between a lover and pornography. A very big difference.
     Maybe the distinction is hiding in plain sight, overlooked in the general hurrah for artificial intelligence. The chasm, still, between something from a real person and something from an algorithm. Or is that an antique distinction?
     Last Saturday I received an email from CHICAGO SUN-TIMES MEDIA INC. It read:
     "Happy 37th Work Anniversary Neil Steinberg! Congratulations on another successful year with CHICAGO SUN-TIMES MEDIA INC. Your dedication and hard work continue to inspire us. Here's to more achievements and growth in the coming years!"
     Time to play "You be the Columnist." Reading that, I felt a) embraced, recognized and loved by my bosses and peers; b) slightly amused and a little impressed that someone would bother programming this generic boilerplate flattery into the payroll system to be automatically spat out on anniversaries or c) a blast of chill wind blowing across the barren hearth of modern life.
     Hint: Not "a."
     Perhaps in recognition of that third choice, there was, below the email, a big orange button reading "See who's Celebrating." Click it, and you're brought to Paylocity, the payroll system. In case anyone was so moved, a few helpful hints were offered. "Happy anniversary!" "Congrats!" "Appreciate You!" and "Thank You!" and a counter showing "0 Comments."
     This isn't a complaint. I don't believe, while plugging my hours into the payroll system, I've ever noticed, never mind clicked, to wish a colleague "happy anniversary." My guess is they aren't crying in their pillows.

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Thursday, March 28, 2024

"A little somethin' you can't take off."


    "But I do have one question," Aldo the Apache asks the Jew Hunter at the end of "Inglourious Basterds. "When you get to your little place on Nantucket Island, I 'magine you're gonna take off that handsome-lookin' S.S. uniform of yours, ain'tcha?... That's what I thought. Now that I can't abide... I mean, if I had my way... you'd wear that goddamn uniform for the rest of your pecker-suckin' life."
    Quentin Tarantino's violent revenge fantasy about World War II ends up with the Nazi villain having a swastika carved on his forehead, or as Lt. Raine puts it: "a little somethin' you can't take off."
    I thought of that moment when Ronna McDaniel was trounced out of NBC News after four days trying to pass as a journalist. The former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee thought she could shed her Trump-coddling, election-denying, democracy-shredding raiment and simply rejoin polite society. And, sadly, the out-of-touch NBC brass hoped she could too, briefly. Imagined McDaniel might provide some of that good old fashioned Red State perspective, make the case for lies and delusion, maybe snag a few viewers drifting away from Fox News.
     But legitimate NBC journalists rebelled, on air. Thank God. That's how it should be. Some things cannot be forgiven. Maybe casting a ballot for Trump two or three times, in the privacy of the voting booth, can be reframed as a secret shame. But at some point, as you rise up the ladder in the pyramid of cowards, quisling and craven opportunists, you lose the chance to walk away from your treachery. At some point you end up in the dock in a plexiglas booth.
     And if you're hung up on my comparing Nazis to MAGAzis, well, tough. Get over it. Or don't. The common element is clear — an identical ability to suspend decent moral values. To be blind to ethical duty. To confuse right and wrong. To hurt innocents and call it purity.
      Those who love America should, at some point, state the obvious: that denying the rule of law is unforgivable. That being a dupe in service of a fraud, year in and year out, in spite of clear, enormous evidence, is unforgivable. That rebelling against our country is unforgivable. Betraying our nation to despotic foreign enemies is unforgivable. 
     I'm sick of the media pretending otherwise. Pretending there is a balance. There is no balance. Joe Biden isn't perfect: he's old. He's a political hack. But he also could live to be 105 and he would still never become a seditionist. Never become a liar, bully, fraud and traitor. There is no comparison. The Trump enormity is clear, or should be clear, and those who don't get it, who willfully refuse to understand, should know they are following him down. 
     They should know that when he loses — as he will — they lose too. They have already lost. Now and forever. They can't just shower off their infamy and try to reclaim a spot at the table of the decent. Not at my table anyway. They can take their red baseball cap and stow it, lovingly, in a closet. And while it's a shame Aldo Raine can't take his gleaming bowie knife and carve, "MAGA" on their foreheads, it will still be there, nevertheless, for those of us who can't help but see it. Some stains never wash off. If you don't like it, well, you should have thought of that when you began betraying your country. Too late now.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Flag burning IS free speech — so is sham patriotism

 
A U.S. flag is retired by burning in 2018. The U.S. Flag Code states that worn-out flags “should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

     Monday, June 16, 1997, was memorable for two reasons.
     First, my younger son was born that afternoon. The nurse toweled him off, handed him to me. I gazed down and thought — sorry, buddy — "He looks just like Edward G. Robinson." Truly, there should have been the tiny stump of a cigar hanging off his quivering lower lip.
     The other memorable event was that morning, the start of what began as a regular workday. I was having breakfast downtown with U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez. You'd think the life-changing event later that day would have wiped out any memory of what we discussed. But it didn't. Our exchange stuck with me.
     Flag burning was in the news. Congressional action pending. I was surprised that Gutiérrez, a Democrat and supposed champion of liberal causes, would not oppose any ban. He explained that a Chicago TV station had a video clip of him, talking into a microphone at a forgotten 1970s protest rally where, behind him, somebody set fire to an American flag. If he opposed the latest government attempt to bunch the flag into a ball and jam it down the throats of protesters, that video would be disinterred and aired.
     Not a profile in courage. It burned into my memory, because of the visceral disgust I felt. Really? You'd stand, hands in your pockets, gazing at the sky and whistling while free speech gets mugged in an alley? So you don't risk looking bad?
     Thus I can't stand by while 25th Ward Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez gets beat up for appearing at a rally outside City Hall after a U.S. flag was burned. Ald. Chris Taliaferro (28th) and "quite a few" of his colleagues are considering censuring Sigcho-Lopez. I bet they are. Flag-waving theatrics are the go-to move of Trumpies who think that if they smooch Old Glory long enough, then their betraying every value America represents will be OK.
     Let's be crystal clear. Setting flags on fire isn't the issue. Every VFW hall has a special bin where used American flags are to be deposited, later to be burned, with respect. It's burning a flag without respect, as a protest — aka free speech — that twists my-way-or-the-highway false patriots into a knot.

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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Nowruz celebration

           Northeastern Illinois University student Tahmina Herewaie holds the Afghan flag,
                  joined by other Afghan Refugee Transition Program scholarship students.

     The upside of my job is that I get to go interesting places. The downside is that when at those places, I am always working. At some level. Since literally any experience can be captured, retained, understood, synthesized, and shared with others, I need to be always on, listening, taking notes, looking around, processing. Or at the very least the pilot light has to be lit, waiting, ready to leap into action.
     It gets tiring. Sometimes you want to stop, put your pen down, shut your brain off, and live. Like last Thursday night. The Afghan sisters whom I wrote about earlier this month, doing their paperwork at a Loop law firm invited me to attend a celebration of Nowruz — the Persian New Year observed by communities from Albania to Iran— at their school, Northeastern Illinois University. 
      It didn't seem a particularly compelling story — Students Celebrate Holiday With Food. But they invited me. It seemed to mean something to them, and to me too, being invited somewhere, not by an organization, but by a person. So I said I'd go, representing the newspaper at an event held by a growing ethnic community. Colorful Afghan dress was involved, so I assigned a photographer.
     I asked my wife to come along — she is an alumnus of NEIU and hadn't been back since she graduated, decades ago. She agreed. 
     In researching what I was going to — "Nowruz" means "New Day" in Persian and falls on the spring equinox — I came upon a video from Disney, of Mickey Mouse explaining Nowruz. No wonder the Republicans are so mad at Disney, treating other people's faiths as if they have value too.
     Dinner was late — after 7, because it is Ramadan, and devout Muslims can't eat until after sundown. It can be a struggle — someone I was talking to checked his watch as we spoke, said something about Ramadan and bolted for the buffet table. My wife urged me to go up and eat. "I'm not pushing ahead of people who've been fasting all day," I said, keeping my seat, waiting for everybody else to get up first. 
     The grub was worth the wait — succulent chicken kebabs and rice, Jerusalem salad and pita bread, custard and cookies and haft mewa, a traditional Nowruz dessert of nuts and fruit in rose water. 
     Several NEIU officials said hello. Handshakes and introductions. I briefly sat down next to a sociology professor, here to support a student in his class. We talked, but nothing noteworthy came of it. There was music, and poetry, some in English, some in Dari. There was a dramatic moment when some of the young women present, dressed in flowing Afghan outfits, marched in waving an Afghan flag to a stirring patriotic song, Watan Ishq Tu Iftikharm ("Love of my homeland is my pride") and I slipped over, knelt down, took a couple photos.
    Back at the table, taking in general vibe. listening to poetry in a language I don't understand, I had a moment to reflect, yet again, how everybody is pretty much the same: glad to be in this country but proud of where they, or their parents or grandparents, came from. And that thing right wingers are so terrified of — a diverse nation welcoming all sorts of people who get to live their lives, even if those lives are markedly different than the general flow— is a very desirable dynamic and an economic necessity to boot. These red staters are afraid of the very thing that actually does make American great.
     After 90 minutes my wife noted it was getting late, and I went over to offer my thanks and goodbye to one of the sisters, who was so surprised I was leaving that I worried that I'd committed some kind of gaffe. Then she asked when I would be writing something about Nowruz, and I paused. "Never," caught in my throat. But that lit the fuse. Honestly, I didn't think about it again until yesterday, looking through my photos for something to write about today, and saw the shot above of that statuesque young woman waving a flag, and said to myself, "Heck, maybe I could put a few words together; it is the New Year, after all. Why not welcome it in a spirit of generosity?"






Monday, March 25, 2024

'Black Houses Matter' with radio jock treasurer


     "I see trees of green ... I see snowflakes, too," sings Maria Pappas, only a little off-key, accompanying the Louis Armstrong song "What a Wonderful World." "Red roses, too. Nothing's blooming! For me and you. And I think to myself, what kind of city is this? ... Hey hey, this is WVON, 'Black Houses Matter!'"
     It's just after 11:30 a.m. last Monday. The Cook County treasurer is sitting behind a microphone in the River City studio of the historic Black radio station, doing what she likes to do best: reaching out to ethnic communities, trying to give back money overpaid in property taxes.
     "And we are killin' it, killin' it!" she says. "Get these numbers, kids. From 3/20 of 2020, until 3/15 of 2024, we are up to ... almost to $300 million. We're at $285,571,000. How about that?"
     Pappas has brought along five staffers, including one in the chair across from her.
     "I've got Maurice Torrance with me this morning," she says.
     "Like the street," he observes, in classic radio sidekick fashion.
     "Maurice is my guy," Pappas says. "He's in charge of the tax sale in Cook County. He's in the legal department."
     Pappas began the radio show on AM 1690 in 2020, designed to prompt taxpayers in the Black community to find out if they've overpaid their property taxes. Last year, she added "Latino Houses Matter" on WVON's sister station, WRLL-AM 1450.
     "We are ready to roll," Torrance says. "And treasurer, for all those callers out there that are saying, 'Oh no, I never overpay, I never double pay,' just how easy it is to do so? Let's say your mortgage company does and you do, too. Guess what? That's an over-payment. Or if you pay, and the wife or spouse doesn't tell you that they pay, too — it's happened to me already. Guess what? You overpaid."
     The show is simulcast on Facebook Live. Pappas, who publishes an annual calendar illustrated by photos of herself wearing chic outfits, stands up and vamps for her viewers. She is wearing a cornflower blue coat, large round earrings and a white spiky pixie hairdo.
     "Don't throw eggs at me, this is phony fur," she says. "I bought on sale. I got it for 40 bucks. This is not one of these designer things. ... I have something very special to tell you this week. I have a good friend, and she told me to go to — get this! — 7214 N. Harlem. This is called Juju's, J-U-J-U apostrophe S. Vintage, Antique and ReSale Shop ..."
     Pappas takes two prearranged calls from people receiving refunds.
     "Denise! Denise! It's Pappas!" she cries. "How are you? Are you retired?"

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Sunday, March 24, 2024

The burden of our illusions

   
     Saturday morning I handled two cutting surfaces.
     The first was a small cutting board, a white, plastic, five-by-eight inch rectangle. We were having lox and bagels for breakfast, and I used it to slice up some cucumbers to go on top. Typically tomatoes are used for this purpose, but this isn't the season for tomatoes and, frankly, I like cucumbers better.
     The other was an enormous butcher block that I moved a few feet to vacuum underneath. It occurred to me that it has been many years since I've cut anything on it; typically it sits in the corner of our dining room, with a strip of South American cloth on it. Not the ideal spot for a cutting board — it belongs in a kitchen. But there isn't room there.
     How, you might wonder, does a person end up with such a thing? And the answer is, well, embarrassing. But I'll give it anyway. When I was a young man, and began to work, and receive a regular paycheck, from holding a job, there were two purchases that I considered with my newfound solvency.
     The first was a set of stamps, Scott #C13-15, the Graf Zeppelin set. I'd been a stamp collector growing up, with a special fondness for airmail stamps, and an aesthetic appreciation for zeppelins. They looked cool. I had always wanted this particular set, produced specifically for letters carried aboard that famous airship. They cost about $600 back then. But I saw that purchase as impractical.
     So instead I bought this butcher block at J.D. Brauner on Ashland Avenue. Something useful, a kitchen tool. I know I custom ordered it, nearly 40 years ago, because I remember pondering whether to get it with wheels or not. On one hand, I thought the wheels would detract from the clean line of the legs. On the other, I also knew that butcher blocks are intensely heavy, and that being able to roll it would be of practical value. Butcher blocks also tend to be square, and I got this one in a rectangular shape, to make it less massive. So in the spirit of practicality, I ordered the wheels.
     Why? Well, the honest answer is, that as a young man, I felt I needed a butcher block. To cut up things. And to add to the continual festivity that would be my life. Indeed, I remember, when we lived on Logan Boulevard, using it to dice meat to go into enormous pots of jambalaya and chili, and cut bags of citrus to go into the rum punches which I liked to prepare. The block did see use, based on the cross-hatching of cuts slashed across the top, which I used to regularly dose with block oil. 
   I'm only mildly embarrassed by all this, because I imagine most people have some tangible representation of their youthful illusions, whether an object, or a tattoo, or a scar — some people manage to combine a butcher block with a scar, a professional chef of my acquaintance who contrived to pull hers over — they are top heavy — and broke her foot. Looking back, I wish I'd gone with the zeppelin stamps instead — they're more beautiful than a butcher block, and a mint set will run you $1,750, so their value tripled, while I doubt the butcher block would draw much from anybody — I'd probably have to pay someone to haul it away.
     My wife would get rid of it in a heartbeat. But I've refused. Sure, it's been useless these past, umm, nearly 40 years. But maybe it's just biding its time, waiting for its true use to manifest itself. As it is, it stands very stolidly in the corner of our dining room, holding whatever is put upon it very steadily and without complaint. It represents something, that big hunk of wood. I'm not sure exactly what. The burden of our illusions perhaps. Anyway, I imagine — or at least hope — that I'm not alone in this. 
   So what's yours? 






Saturday, March 23, 2024

Flashback 1989: Viewers rate eclipse a total joy

"Two Men Contemplating the Moon," by Caspar David Friedrich (Metropolitan Museum)

     My job sends me places. I decide where, mostly, like the Nowruz celebration — Afghan New Year — at Northeastern Illinois University Thursday night, where I shot the photo atop the blog. It didn't generate a story — none presented itself. But I was invited, so I went.
     Back in the day, after I first joined the staff of the Sun-Times — 37 years ago today — I'd show up for work, for a while at 7 p.m., and be sent somewhere unexpected, whether a zoning board meeting or a church fire or an alley where a man had leapt out of window and been cut in half on the sharp edge of a dumpster.  I never knew where I might be going or what I might find when I got there, which was both a blessing and a hardship.
    For this story, one warm summer evening, I was told to go over to the Adler Planetarium. Two memories stick out. First I walked from 401 N. Wabash. And second, as I did, I wondered, "Who the hell is going to go to bother going there watch an occurrence they can see as easily literally anywhere?" A thought I held until I got to the point where I crested a rise and the planetarium hoved into view. A lot of people, as it turned out, gathered on the lawn for the communal thrill of it. That isn't in the story, for some reason. I clearly remember Willard Fontain sitting on a lawn chair, in a yachtsman cap, a portable radio set to soft music. As well as the lip-smacking relish he used after I asked him why he was there and he replied: "I'm a moon watch-ah!"

     Willard Fontain raised a snifter of cognac toward the moon, a dusty smudge of deep rose, and offered a toast as it was eclipsed for the first time in seven years Wednesday night.
     "A very beautiful sight," said Fontain, who went to Adler Planetarium with his friend Jerry Williams to watch the moon on its 3 1/2-hour transit through Earth's shadow.
     "It lets you know there's really a man up above," he said.
     The first hour of the eclipse was partially obscured by clouds, but the spectators' enthusiasm wasn't dampened. Hundreds of people on the grounds of the planetarium cheered when they saw the last glimmer of light disappear in a gauzy haze, and people waxed poetic while the moon waned.
     "The moon's always been a romantic thing; it symbolizes the unattainable," said Bob Pejovic, of Chicago, fiddling with his telescope. "We'd like to reach out and touch it, like Neil Armstrong did. But in the meantime, we look."
     For the planetarium, the eclipse drew a rare nighttime crowd, pressing around the exhibits and packing lecture halls to hear astronomers speak of the eclipse and to watch it on video monitors.
     "I think it is very good for the planetarium," said astronomer Larry Ciupik. "People don't understand eclipses, and they want to learn more."
     At the Images Lounge, on the 95th floor of the John Hancock Center, the crowd was less welcome.
     "It's been crazy," complained a waiter. "I don't know what the moon does to people, but it's been nuts."
     The moon was completely covered for one hour and 36 minutes, just 11 minutes less than the maximum time physically possible.
     A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon, the Earth and the sun are in a straight line, with the moon in the Earth's shadow.
     As the moon began to pass out of the Earth's shadow, at about 10:30 p.m., student filmmaker Hal Marshall, 24, began packing away the 16-mm. camera he used in taking stop-action photographs from the Hancock's observation deck.
     "It's a symbol of the highest thing that man's attained," he said. "Our machines are there. The American flag is planted there."
     The next total eclipse of the moon will occur on Dec. 9, 1992.
           —Originally published in the Sun-Times, August 17, 1989